SpaceOpera
In this document, I'm going to detail the work that my game group has done on this alternate setting. Feel free to contribute your own ideas and thoughts to the mix!... but please, put them in a seperate section so that I can keep everything straight. Enjoy!
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Creation is a system of planets, not a flat plane. The Elemental Poles do not exist. Planets are enveloped in atmosphere, and beyond that, space is a deadly lukewarm void filled with vacuum. While the space between worlds is vast, it's not so incomprehensible as our own reality. With Terrestial Sorcery, one can span the distance between planets in a quarter-year to a decade (Depending on proximity). With Celestial Sorcery, it's a matter of weeks.
The Ancients inhabited Creation at one time, and when they had dominion over the Void, they forged hundreds of 'jump gates' which helped to facilitate travel by common mortals who were unable to access Exalted sorcery (Think Cowboy Bebop, Freespace, Eve Online, Etc). These gates were protected by powerful warding computers, and in the absence of Ancients to operate them, they went unused for several millenia. Eventually, the codes by which the gates could be hacked were deciphered, and in the modern day a ship may carry a 'jumping module' which can allow the use of these ancient devices.
While Lookshy and a few other places such as Nexus remain under the protection of the Dragonblooded, most of Arbos has devolved into a feudal type system under the authority of 'The Undying'. These creatures represent the form the Great Contagion took after it evolved unhindered for hundreds of years. They are rather like Vampires, in that they are creatures of the night and associated with disease and powerful death magic. Each of them has a unique strain of the Contagion inside of them, a totemic disease which grants them power. Though the disease is no longer airborne, the Undying occasionally use supernatural abilities to infect malcontent villages and towns. Those who drink the blood of the Undying are immune to the disease of that particular creature for a month or so. Dragonblooded despise the undying; having lost much ground to them, they war against them unceasingly, largely without much success.
The world of Varid, equivelent to 'The South', has become the dominant power of Creation in conflict with Terra (The Realm). Varidians are administered by a peculiar pale-skinned race of technologists who claim to be the survivors of a Colony ship launched 5,000 years ago which failed to reach a habitable destination and eventually returned to Creation on autopilot. These 'Autocthonians' worship the metal Titan as benefactor even though he has never directly acknowledged them in modern history. They command strange spirits and Elementals through techniques lost to history, as well as a vast fleet of steam-powers starships.
I haven't done much Terra (The Realm) yet, but I want it to be recognisable and at the same time totally different. Wink
The Titans were never usurped. They are incomprehensible and unknowable entities who hover in the vastness of space apparantly doing nothing. These are huge, 'Jovian' type worlds. No Titans are hospitable to life; spacefaring vessels which draw near them are crushed by the awesome gravity they command. Legend has it they forged Creation, but nobody can speak authoritively to whether this is the case or not. The Builder is a Titan; a great metal sphere. Isidoros is a titan; a great smoke colored gas giant. The Two Suns are also Titans... Sol, and, Ligier. Are they watching?... or are they merely inert objects?... Once, it was said the Exalted had the power to approach them, but none know what they might have found.
Though the Titans created the matter of the various worlds, it was the Saurids who brought life to Creation. As colonists from a distant system orbiting a Red Star known as 'Rathess', they used incomprehensible means to sculpt living technolagy to serve them. The Saurids also created the Exalted, as well as the Gods, initially as tools of advanced terraforming. Some terrible malady came upon the Saurids and they are now believed extinct, though some stories hold they simply left this system after deciding it was unsuitable.
The Celestial Exalted have not been known in Creation since the time of the Saurids. They vanished along with the race that created them. Recently, they have again emerged... Terran soothsayers claim this corrosponds to the appearance of the dreaded 'Red Comet', a harbinger of the End Times. Many cultists believe the comet will collide with Terra and obliterate it.
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