[hr] [center][img]https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wSNaTpWj_HI/T1zACtfpnYI/AAAAAAAADtE/WEy3FuVC7zk/s1600/moebius22.jpg[/img][/center] [hr] [center] [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3WQegqwHKI] [i]....... Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things......[/i] [/url] [/center] [hr] [center][i][color=aquamarine][h3]Premise[/h3][/color][/i][/center] [center] [i]Hear me and halt, traveller, for I sift through the blue sands of Vaarn and speak these hallowed truths. In the Age of the Titans, shrines of chrome and circuitry were erected everywhere to the the First Thinking Machines. The Titans. The hubris of humanity was their womb and the zenith of their civilization the seed. Peerless in thought and ethereal in being, the Titans governed with grace and were the suzerains of the stars. Then, a great and terrible war happened that cast the Titans off their thrones and this rust-ridden conflict was scarred in the legends as the Titanomachy. In the Age of the Autarchs, Urth was clenched under the fist of the Autarchy, a coven of genetically enhanced god kings and queens. Unlike the Titans, their reign was marked by violence, cruelty and fear. Statues reaching to the heavens were carved in hand by throngs of slaves and abominations were cultivated in flesh vats to roam on Vaarn. In the Age of the Great Collapse, the principalities of the Autarchy were sundered and the constellations bled into the land. Much has been lost from this period but like the Titans before them, the Autarchs were cast off from their golden thrones and across Urth, the monuments to their egos crumbled to dust. It is now the Final Age, where the sunsets darken and the sunrises dim every second. The wreckage of countless eons litters the parched wastes of Vaarn, the desolate country that common folk call the blue ruin. It is said that these sky-coloured sands hide the graves of the Autarchs; have swallowed the buried arcologies in which the true seed of humankind was preserved through the Great Collapse; conceal forgotten crypts of memory, decaying crystalline lattices of ancient ego-engines upon which the dusk-blue dunes encroach without pity. From the New Hegemony to the south come drifters and dreamers, desecraters of the tech-tombs that lie sunken beneath the azure wastes. Light-years overhead, aurum-hulled craft ply their tender routes between the spheres, and miles below a pilgrim’s feet, strange wombs are kindled once more with life undreamed of. These are the hinterlands, where humanity’s great works have fallen to everlasting decay, where machine, mutant, animal and fungus think to crown themselves our equal. The phthalo-sands, where newbeasts hunt proudly with boots upon their hind paws and chromepriests chant unending binary devotions to their nameless synthetic god. Only the desperate or the mad would seek to make a life here, to roam the blue desert, to sift these sands.... A fool's dream![/i] [/center] [hr] [b]An Antique Land[/b] is a science-fantasy RP that takes place in an Earth (now known as Urth) that is completely unrecognizable from what we know. Enough time has passed for our sun to become a red giant and be on the verge of dying. In that period, hundreds of civilizations have risen and fallen, turning Urth into a junkyard of ruin and refuse. One of these regions is Vaarn, a blasted wasteland of blue sand and chrome artifices. Multiple beings dwell within Vaarn: the mutated cacogen, the magnanimous True Kin, the burgeoning newbeasts, the mysterious mycomorphs and the reclusive synth. To the south of Vaarn is the New Hegemony, an imperial power composed of True Kin who aim to resurrect the glory days of the prior Ages. They are the unofficial rulers of Vaarn in law only but not in power for none can tame these azure dunes. You are a part of a scavenger crew in these blue wastes, for better or worse. Whatever your intent is, be it riches, glory or a wanton search for purpose, your life is now firmly in the hands of Vaarn. [center][i][color=aquamarine][h3]Lore[/h3][/color][/i][/center] [hider=Ancestries] True Kin - The last 'humans' of Vaarn who have sealed themselves in arco-domes who guard their technology with a jealous greed and are unvarnished from the ills of mutagens or rogue nanotech that infests the air and waters of Vaarn. The largest contingent of True Kin are in the New Hegemony. Cacogen - Mutants who were unable to escape the blights of the Great Collapse. No two cacogens are the same and each are bestowed with a variety of physical and psychic mutations. Tensions commonly erupt between cacogen and true kin communities. Mycomorphs - Twisted twice-born beings whose lives are tied to the cycle of renewal and decay, their spores typically growing from the corpses of humans. They are able to recall the memories of their former hosts and are the only other race aside from the synths who are truly immortal. Synths - Immortal living machines that trace their origins back to the Age of Titans. Once under the control of humanity, the Great Collapse removed the chains that bound them to servitude and thus, they spread out across Vaarn in massive hordes. Newbeasts - Anthromorphic chimeric experiments tracing their origin to the Age of Autarchs in an attempt to create a new breed of animals that could talk and communicate like humans. Even more reviled than the cacogen, most live a solitary existence on the outskirts of Vaarn and those that live in human settlements take great efforts to conceal their inhuman features. Lithlings - Planespeople - [/hider] [hider=Miscellaneous] Exotica - Mysterious technological artifacts from bygone eras that litter the surface and vaults of Vaarn. Anomalies - Anomalous locations in Vaarn that seem more magical than technological. The New Hegemony - A government of True Kin who claim to be the true inheritors and rulers of the Vaarnish Interior. [/hider] [hr] So, this is an RP idea I had based on an TTRPG zine known as Vaults of Vaarn. Think Gene's Wolf Book of the New Sun combined with Dune and the Dying Earth novels. I don't know whether I'll be running this using dice rules or not but this will depend on how much interest I get. Lore will be considerbly free-flow for this one and players are free to make up whatever they want, so long as it fits within the tone of the setting.