Monday, October 28, 2013

The Blazing World


Acheron is a barbaric science fantasy setting based on reading but never actually getting to play Dark Sun back when it came out. I just started a regular campaign set in WRESTLEVANIA (excatly what it sounds like) but this is the kid of BS I think about running on the side. Some of these names have appeared before in my chronically half-assed blogging career. Here are a few facts and rumors:

The Tyrant Sun used to be Lawful until the Anti-Solar League corrupted it with their lies. Now it is a phasic nuclear chaos that hates us all. An illegal society of lawful Clerics is trying to build it an artificial heart in the hopes that it will love us again.

There is no rain. All water comes from a subsurface glacier called Gammafrost. This has given rise to a vast, incomprehensibly detailed system of Slaves-for-Water trading between the city-states of the surface and the subterranean cities of the Anti-Solar League.

At one point there were thirteen Sorcerer Kings, but war has reduced their number to seven; four dwell on the surface, three underground. All of them are complete dicks.

The Sorcerer Kings got where they are in life by killing gods. Slavery and genocide aren’t a big deal once you start slaying gods.

The caustic winds and mutagenic fields of the Radium Desert are spawned by the decaying corpse of a dead god eternally decomposing at its center.

The surface is lousy with saurian creatures until nightfall. Then the undead hordes of the Ghul Khanate come out.

The Last Forest is an oddly noble name for what is actually a toxic, fungus-infested shithole.

There is a forested moon. Weird things live on it.

There is a slave legend of a Free City but no living slave seems to know where it is.

Metal is rare and mostly salvaged from the orbital rustbelt. Goblins are the dominant force in salvage and metalsmithing.

Apart from the obvious Dark Sun inspirations, the principle influences at work are Bronze Age comics, Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit, Professional Wrestling, Metal, and a Troma-sized helping of gore, potty humor, and amateurism.