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[worldseekerdragon]

Kaiju Thing

Whenever I see giant monsters fighting giant robots, the robots are usually the good guys. And I get it.

But what if we flipped the script?

Seven Cities may be the main thing on this blog, but I have other ideas I want to explore as well. Ones that are not such a big undertaking nor have so much worldbuilding behind them. Games about big monsters smashing stuff, for example!

No official title for this yet so I'm just going to tag it "Kaiju thing" for now. It's about needing to turn into a giant beast to protect what's left of humanity from a rogue (and annoyingly self-aggrandizing) artificial intelligence. It's silly. It's awesome. It's got lore if you want it and humongous lizards cutting mechs to pieces with rocket swords if you don't.

I'll still be working on Seven Cities (taking a lot from what I'm learning on this already), but this is a more realistic first project for me to see through to a finished state, I think. Questions about either are welcome, as always!

[worldseekerdragon]

Codex Entry: Astran

Spectrum: Flourish/Fade

Ruler: The Dragonslayer

Demonym: Astrani, various settlement-dependent

Unique Resource: Soul Amber

Hallmarks: Great iron cages with villages within, swords and sorceries, foreboding ruins, wailing faces in fog, narrative arcs, twisting dungeons deep within the earth, the ring of dark and endless sea

History

Astran is a lone island on an empty world, with frequently gloomy weather. It is a fantastical place, where different varieties of intelligent life seek wealth and adventure alongside dangerous monsters and mysterious magics. Also, there are ghosts.

The dead linger on Astran. For many, this is fine. Because it is expected, the change from a corporeal existence to a phantom one is not exceedingly troublesome, though it comes with its own loss and inconveniences. No one carries into death all that they had in life. Also, you can't pick stuff up anymore, and that can be frustrating!

Still, most people adjust. Most, but not all. A ghost can go feral if it loses too much of itself in the transition. The knowledge of its own fundamental lack can override everything else and cause it to trouble the living. These wraiths know only that those who still possess the spark of life have something they do not, and will seek to take it. The touch of a ghost is subtly corrosive in a metaphysical way. It fades the life from things. This effect is slight and slow with one ghost. But a roiling, billowing fog of phantoms joined in mournful purpose? This is why we have the cages.

The Cages

Any sufficiently-sized settlement is a beacon to intermittent wraith-fogs. Astrani build up the iron cages around their villages, which range from simple to luxuriant to viciously barbed. They needn't cage anything where humans and humanoids do not actively dwell, so most farmland lays outside. The cages are maintained with some regularity, though the resources and expertise required is harder to come by the farther one ventures from Astran's center and the Castle.

The Dragonslayer's Castle

At the island's heart, the Dragonslayer keeps watch over her domain. Its qualities as a fortress extend beyond the physical, and it needs no additional safeguards against fading, whether to ghost or simply time. It is older than memory, created with secrets known only to the ancients who carved the labyrinthine dungeons that wind deep beneath the island's surface.

The Dungeons

The deep ways beneath Astran seem to burrow down endlessly. Filled with devious puzzles and odd beasts, there seems to be no limit to their variety. The frequency with which new entrances are unearthed has led some fringe scholars to theorize that they are almost as living things, growing and replicating themselves. Most scoff at this belief. The dungeons are deadly, but the promise of wealth, fame, and knowledge are strong. Moreover, they are the only place in Astran where relics made from the Amber can be found.

Soul Amber

A strange material important to the ancients. It channels magic and reacts to the presence of ghosts. But its most important function by far is its ability to allow a ghost to move on at last. By consuming a portion of amber, a spirit may finally pass on from the physical plane. This is motivation enough for some to risk becoming ghosts themselves to obtain it.

[worldseekerdragon]

The Seven

They're kind of a big deal, since they're the reason the world is how it is and also pretty much the biggest bads of the setting, but depending on the kind of game you do, they might not show up much at all. At least not directly. Not for a while.

Or they could get personal with the party from the start. I want this to be the kind of game that works either way.

No matter what shape the story takes though, they're gonna be involved.

So I should probably go over them in a general sense. Here are some things that are true about the Seven.

None are ever without immense power, but only in one city are they ascendant.

When one of the Seven is ascendant, their power outclasses even that of the other six combined.

Even while ascendant, they can't fix the city they rule. It will never be what they hope for.

The Seven refuse to accept this.

The Seven forged a Compact together, the terms of which cannot be violated by any member.

The Compact prevents the Seven from directly harming one another, and guarantees each a place of power and protection within the others' cities.

Upon becoming one of the Seven, a piece of oneself is lost. One necessarily becomes more than they are, and can never go back. A name cannot suffice to describe them. It slides off. Each uses a title instead and exclusively.

They look and think human enough, though. When they are human. Hypothetically, those who were not human would look and think like what they were.

Lacking interference, the Seven will live forever.

Lacking interference, the Seven have always reigned.

Denizens of the cities face extreme difficulty in realizing there is anything strange or abnormal about the Seven. Their power does not go unnoticed or anything like that-

It's just hard to see how there shouldn't be an immortal god-tyrant, seeing as how there's always been one.

The Seven can be killed. They can be usurped.

A nonzero number of the Seven have been killed and usurped.

It did not make things better.

[worldseekerdragon]

Codex Entry: Ordinus

The cities exist on a circular continuum, so none of them is really "first." But I tend to always think about them in a certain order, and that sequence starts with Ordinus.

Spectrum: Order/Chaos

Ruler: The Prefect

Demonym: Ordinite

Unique Resource: Funnel, an inklike substance

Hallmarks: Brutalist, often physics-defying architecture. Typewriters, trains, and other tech that loudly clacks, chunks, and dings. Identical spaces. Topiary. Scheduled weather. Layers of beurocracy.

History

Ordinus is surrounded on all sides by chaos. It is all that remains of a world whose every atom has been randomized into noncompliance with every other. It is a sea of continuously shifting entropic muck, and the Boundary is all that prevents Ordinus itself from being consumed and converted endlessly. This is the history conjured for the city at the moment of its creation, but that does not make it any less real or true.

The Boundary

Ordinus is not a walled city in the traditional sense. The Boundary is not a high barrier looming over the outskirts of the city. In order to survive, Ordinus has become something that would be unrecognizable to the world it once occupied. It is topologically interwoven, looping over and back on itself across spatial dimensions. This is not a noticeable phenomenon to a citizen of Ordinus. The streets all connect and will take you where you wish to go. Everything follows logically from the ground.

What this means, though, is that the Boundary is everywhere, and Chaos can leak through wherever it is weakened. This is a fear deeply ingrained in every Ordinite.

Chaos

The entropic mass constantly pressuring Ordinus does not look like anything. It is not coherent enough to parse with the senses. But chaos that pours into Ordinus when the Boundary cracks is different. Every aspect of Ordinus' construction is suffused with intent. Within its bounds the chaos is constrained. It flows like a corrosive sea, it twists into monstrous approximations of life. It can be fought and driven back. Contact with it can be survived, though surviving unchanged is another matter. Breaches of the Boundary are often smaller than a full flood, manifesting as solitary monsters or alleys and corridors shifting as though alive, trapping anyone unfortunate enough to stumble in.

Funnel

The physical laws of Ordinus, the ways matter behaves and interacts with itself, are codified in actual documents. Localized alteration of these laws allows for the construction of buildings that spite gravity or contain more interior space than should be possible. More intense configurations are possible, but structures are designed to make efficient use of space while not putting strain on the mind.

The reason for all of this is an iridescent substance with the properties of metallic ink called Funnel. Its name is derived from its ability to act as a probabalistic funnel, bottlenecking ranges of probability down to a smaller set of outcomes. If Funnel existed in our world, you could ink a 20-sided die in such a way that it always rolled above a fifteen, or only rolled twenties, or any other permutation of outcomes that were already possible. You couldn't ink that die to make it float, or sing, or explode.

It's different in Ordinus. The city is order carved out of chaos. What makes the chaos deadly is that anything is possible, and everything is happening. The range of possibilities Funnel can create are therefore limited only by a programmer's knowledge of glyphs, the time it takes to write them, and the amount of Funnel in their possession. Funnel is strictly controlled within Ordinus, and unauthorized use of it is punished harshly.

Daily Life

Everything in Ordinus happens according to a plan and a schedule. It is efficient, but not cruel. Humans are not seen as expendable. The Prefect recognizes that in order for society to run smoothly, Ordinites require adequate rest, housing, nutrition, and exercise, as well as entertainment and social time. Society largely sees itself as benevolent. In many ways it is. However, the belief that everyone's exact needs and optimal path in life can be calculated by a dispassionate formula has led to unfortunate results for anyone that formula fails to account for, and blame tends to fall on such folk for their own unhappiness. People live within a system that wants to reduce them to numbers for their own good.

[worldseekerdragon]

What is Seven Cities?

Seven Cities is a tabletop roleplaying game about survival and discovery. It's also a game about an eldritch time snake telling you to overthrow the government.

Player characters are each ordinary denizens of one of seven different cities, who are one day infused with a power that they will struggle to control. Each city is a world unto itself, with its own quirks, potential allies, and threats to explore. From the meticulously curated, topologically twisted municipal labyrinth of Ordinus where the laws of physics are literal laws, and can be subverted with the proper permit, to the sublime, unceasing light of Seraphis where beauty is all, but is anything but truth. Seven cities, occupying the same metaphysical "space" but not the same time. Each effectively nonexistent to the others, save for the few beings that can move between them. And as of character creation, that includes the party.

This is not deliberate travel. Each dawn, they'll find themselves someplace new, until a full week has passed and they're right back where they started. Facing the same trouble as when they left. Just six days more exhausted, and six days more wise. Having this power makes you a target. But it also means you can fight back. Change things.

If you want to read a little backstory, including an explanation(?) of the time snake thing, that's below.

Once upon a time. . .

Seven souls hatched a plan to kill time. Itself. Or at least its avatar. The God of Time, if you don't mind a label that's equally helpful and unhelpful to your understanding. The Oroboros.

Who the Seven were before their triumph and how they accomplished it are not known. Furthermore, it's not a meaningful question. Taking the power of the Oroboros within themselves, they became more and less than what they were. And as of that one dreadful act, they have always been so.

What is known is that each believed that with this power they could create the perfect world. That each worked with the others only out of necessity, and that their visions were mutually exclusive, and could not be allowed to overlap lest they taint one another's purity. And so when it was done they cut reality into seven neat sections and willed their worlds into being.

It went as well as you might expect.

Like wishing on a monkey's paw, the flaws in the Seven's visions of perfection were amplified by the power that flowed through them. This power was not theirs to direct, and it fought them. The Seven Cities were born of a cosmic atrocity. They will always bear the scars of it.

Even so, the Seven now rule over their domains with near-absolute control. Cities can never fully be bent to their will, but there is nothing in them strong enough to meaningfully oppose them.

Except.

The Oroboros does not know death as those who experience a mere 3 dimensions understand it. In order to stop the slain god from waking once more, the Seven divided it and sealed it within the realms they had freshly carved with its might. Though the Seven watch them vigilantly, the seals on those prisons have nonetheless begun to slip. Power seeps through. And power demands a vessel.

That, players, is where you come in.