Vile
It is a Vile land, a rune-pocked and marred wasteland, a sun-beaten, weather bashed and often bloodied disgusting place. This carrion-world will be consumed by its inhabitants and born anew in chaotic and vile ways....
Long ago the aberrant star-gods emerged from the twilight and slithered onto the hardpan of the earth. The horrors spattered offspring onto its dry, craggy surface in a miasma of ecstasy. Their seed, the black ooze slipped beneath the ground and gestated. This was the beginning...
-The Book of Vile Memory, First Gleaning, lines 15-17;23-26
Introduction
Welcome to Vile, a faction game set in a world of eldritch power fused with mechanical horrors and vaguely on the same tech level as the american old west. Vampire land barons broker power with demons. Undead industrialists coax oil from the desert waste. Settlers mingle with mutants and clockwork automatons. The great rails carry mercenaries and sorcerers to the far reaches of the frontier. Zombie gunslingers collect bounties for Carrion Wurm overlords. Shadow cultists spill innards onto ancient mausoleum floors...technology and eldritch sorcery mix, mingle,collaborate. Necromancy, palmistry, bio-meddling, grafting, hexing, witchcraft, steam, gas and electricity are all sources of power. Adventurers explore vast subterranean caverns, sucken continents, ghostly ruins, mountains of bones. Species thrive and die, fortunes amass and fade, religions prosper and offend. Calamity. Rot. Disease. Good Luck!
Themes and Tone
- The Grotesque is the mundane. Sacrifice. Mutilation.
- Magic and Technology are nearly indistinguishable. Most sources of power are largely misunderstood. Old knowledge (even if it is technology) is often viewed as eldritch power. Necromancy, palmistry, bio-meddling, grafting, hexing, witchcraft, steam, gas and electric power all coexist, mingle and mix..
- The Dead Are People Too. Vampiric industrialists, Revenant oil-barons, horrors from the far realm-all part of society. Zombies make for great workers...they don't sleep or complain...
- The World is Old. Long ago cosmic horrors colonized this planet, changed it and corrupted the very order of nature. A millenia of darkness has resulted in a world rotting from the inside...Many denizens still worship the Great Old Ones.