What was
Fifty thousand years ago, a god died in the depths of a vast ocean. Torn apart in a feeding frenzy by a horde of vacuous god maggots.
Contrary to the tendency of these shrike worms, instead of impaling their fallen prey on a forest of crystal spines, the corpse was left to fester and mutate beneath the world ocean, growing cancerous and slowly swelling to the size of a star.
Five thousand years ago, a multinational group of artificial intelligences arrived in the expanse and began construction of what would become known as the Graveyard of Stars above the divine corpse.
For an unknown reason, even after completion, the promised masters of the machine minds never arrived, and so they were forced to sit idle without authorization, not permitted to lead, not permitted to make use of their permitted work.
But a divine corpse, never benign even in idle sleep, is a force most dire when growing rampantly.
From this union between a metal giant and one divine, stems two creations.
First, the spirit Alemayehu (who has seen the world), born from the endless lightning storms which mark the skies. Each day he is reborn for a single second, living in that moment a hundred lifetimes of subjective time and experiencing anew what was left behind by his past lives. He engraves his memories into the sand with a storm of blistering energy, marking the dunes with grand diagrams of metallic glass.
He despises both the maggots and the machine minds, for both led to the creation and grim fates of his parents. Due to this, and his inherent nature, he wards off both the maggots, and any form of advanced electronics, forcing both back beneath the earth, or into the far expanse.
Thankfully, he bears no ill will towards this branch of humanity, given proper respect.
The second are the architects. Biomechanical synthetic creatures, originally under the control of the machine minds, who have since been corrupted by the influence of the divine corpse. Hundreds of competing hives tirelessly war against each other, building and rebuilding the same creation in the image of their own corrupted variation of what ought to be. A canvas painted a thousand times over, slumping under the weight of old layers, now nothing more than a congealed mass of discord.
As creatures of creation themselves, (those who create not variations on themselves, but instead work towards building an imagined ideal) they resonate more strongly with the divine aspect of the corpse. This is a double edged sword, as while it does temper their cancerous tendencies, it also leaves them more deeply changed in other ways.
Five hundred years ago the first modern humans arrived in the nine rivers. This generation, made from the harvested souls of old earth, was brought to settle the graveyard, for they shared an ancestry with the would-be masters of this land. Not a single one brought over was born after 1895 (of the old calendar).
Fifty years ago, the thrones of the sun kings of the nine rivers had all been shattered. All knelt beneath the banner of the empire. The legions, never to cease their conquest, marched upon the graveyard.
Then, the world broke. It was known as the cataclysm, the great dying.
The sixth sun rose over the world, and a new age began.
The empire, now splintered, their leader driven to insanity by the scale of death, tears itself apart in brutal civil war.
The world was only saved by the intervention of God into this land.
At the end, when the ashes finally settled, two billion people had lost their lives.
Tsutomu Nihei, the inspirations for the architects, of course.
What is
The year is 50AC (after cataclysm). Currently, the war has gone cold, the various polities which emerged from the embers of the empire have consolidated into larger political blocks, united in the long war against cancer.
Direct confrontation between states is rare, but this is a world with 6 simultaneous superpowers (not mere great powers, though I will use them interchangeably since superpower is a lame name), conflict is inevitable. Each day, the great powers swallow up lesser states, seeking domination through growth. It is slow motion violence written over centuries, like a grove of trees grappling each other to better reach the sky, wishing to devour the sun and watch their rivals slowly wither and starve.
Their preferred method of warfare is of course proxy conflict. Many a mercenary, burgeoning nation, or minor house may glut themselves on the tools of carnage given out like sweet nectar by the great powers.
The risks of becoming a proxy are known by all, and yet falling behind is the greatest danger of all.
Tsutomu Nihei, as before.
Who you are
You are a warrior, one who has dedicated their life to combat, though perhaps a more fitting term would be cultivator.
You are already intimately familiar with violence, having lived it for a decade or more.
Having already distinguished yourself from your peers, you now seek strength through the twin arts of consumption and synthesis.
The former method involves integration of external sources of power, fragments of divinity, in order to ascend. For this reason, you journey to the dark corners of the earth, in order to destroy the monsters there and reclaim what fragments remain in the name of civilization.
The second is synthesis, the act of using internal cultivation and external experience in order to reforge the raw materials of yourself into a higher form. The pursuit of perfection is endless, as the world changes and what was once perfect will one day become obsolete. For this reason, you journey towards adversity, to meet your peers and fight alongside and against them, so that you may learn from them. After all, while a tumour or root can grow suspended in comfort and ease, a mind can never prosper without adversity.
You are also an idealist, one with conviction. You are already bound to your group by shared blood or cause.
The graveyard of stars:
The graveyard of stars is a cylindrical megastructure one AU in diameter. It is almost entirely submerged in the waters of the expanse, and relies on spatial locking to stay structurally stable. It has long been abandoned, but is partially maintained by a coterie of squabbling AI’s.
The name “graveyard of stars” is literal. The original function was the usage of the weak reality of the expanse in order to bring in higher dimensional stellar objects, and to rapidly accelerate their lifespan to fully cover their energy into mass. The mechanism by which this is achieved is currently unknown. And cannot be deactivated or controlled.
By this nature, the machine brings a new star once a day, draining it of its power, and venting the excess energy in massive electrical storms which slightly ionizes the upper atmosphere and increases its opacity. Every sunset is marked by strong auroras, while every sunrise is marked by red-white tinges of evaporating chemical by-products. This is actually the “night” mechanism of the graveyard of stars, the local region of the expanse, and by extent the nine rivers. In its wake, a new iron star is deposited somewhere in the graveyard. The specific location is variable and unpredictable.
These iron stars are then weathered by intense winds, and slowly oxidized. This forms massive rust dunes, and fertilizes the expanse with a nigh endless supply of iron. The civilizations that live within the graveyard of stars largely live in cities bored into the side of the more recent, intact cores. The pure iron within, and the industrial sacrifices allowed by desolation, are the primary exports of the societies that inhabit the graveyard of stars.
Diana Sima
This is my own, below is the version edited to have digital text.
Drawn by @emminantly airdroppable. The structure of the outer edge of the graveyard of stars resembles a staircase, with a single 3km tall drop. The surface depicted here is 1km below the water at high tide, and either dry or a very shallow marsh at low tide.
The graveyard itself can be conceptualized as a 1au continent in an endless ocean.
Exceptionally, the nine rivers have two steps, one going 1km down where the intertidal and the southern side meet, and a second one (2km) between the southern edge of the graveyard of stars. Due to this, the nine rivers stays above sea level year round, and is the only place to put practical large-scale port infrastructure (as any other ports would need to be built suspended 1km above the ground half the time).
North is to the center of the megastructure (the graveyard of stars), with west being clockwise.
The graveyard of stars is roughly twice the size of the divine corpse, and fully encompasses it. Due to its massive width, you can think of it like a perfectly circular, 16km thick metal blanket filled with pipes.
The intertidal:
The region between the nine rivers and the expanse. It is demarcated from the nine rivers by a sheer cliff face 1km tall.
This lower plateau floods and drains periodically due to the glacial breathing of the divine corpse found deep beneath the earth. The completion of a full draining cycle is what determines the length and seasons of the year, with the high watermark (roughly 60 meters from the top of the cliff) declaring a new turning of the wheel, the start of the fishing season and new wave of overseas expeditions.
Currently, there is a small, but significant increase in developments being built in the intertidal. They are ill fated and often privately run or outsourced, and so the mercenary market flourishes there.
The extent of the local intertidal is roughly one and a half times the surface of the nine rivers.
The complete intertidal, with an average width of 5km, has a surface area of roughly 2.2 billion square kilometers, compared to the 30 million square kilometers of the nine rivers.
Claire Bowen
The expanse:
Lying south of the intertidal, it is a seemingly endless ocean which covers the entire surface of the world, The bulk of the landmasses are formed by broken crystalline spires which pierce the flesh of captive immortals, impaled by the vacuous shrike gods known as the maggots.
The spires continuously grow and shed old pieces of themselves, feeding on the endlessly regenerating flesh of their prey, wicking off the excess effluent into the ocean and serving as the basis of the unimaginably prosperous ecology of the expanse.
The waters of the expanse are black with algae, which are an order of magnitude more efficient than the photosynthetic equivalents on earth.
Currently, measured algae biomass is in excess of 3.8 exatons, comprising the overwhelming majority of all life in the expanse. Most of the algae is non-toxic, has very poor nutritional value, being mostly composed of diatom-like shells made from iron and silica.
Due to its sheer size, the expanse holds the second-largest population behind the nine rivers (at 5 billion compared to 6.5). Fragmented into many smaller, isolated states and polities. Roughly half of these states are currently colonies or vassals of the various great powers, a number which continually increases over time as more polities enter the protective umbrella of the deep church.
Sam Lamont, one of the other inspirations for this setting.
The expanse is also known as the world ocean, as it appears to be truly endless. In truth, it's actually the watery coating of the outer shell of a birch world. Calculations done by determining the period it takes the various moons to transit over and to reoccur in the sky above the planet have determined the diameter to be at least 96 000au.
The birch world relies on spatial locking instead of traditional active support. If you don't know what a birch world is, it's a way of making a really really really big planet that still has earthlike gravity.
The graveyard is but the largest of innumerable continents in the world ocean, with the nine rivers being but a small province on that astronomically scaled continent.
The machine minds say that their original name for this world is “Pale”, though few humans in this era use the name. Whether it is a planet or not is of no concern, as it is but the single expanse of the world ocean.
The six great powers:
The dominion of Tsenkutli: The remnants of an empire which once controlled over three quarters of the nine rivers, before collapsing due to the cataclysm which destroyed the middle part of the map. The star crater, and the sea of mold around it, are both results of the cataclysm.
Its name is largely a form of false modesty stemming from its recent humiliations during the cataclysm, by this point, this is the empire reborn, and everyone refers to it as such.
The empire is led by the memetic demon Tezcatlipoca, whose body comprises every word ever written. They are able to instantly read and edit any writing on a 2-dimensional plane, and are believed to have originally brought humanity to the nine rivers.
Tsenkulti is the first state of the alliance, known as the dominion. A union of legal systems and economic regulations. The other major state in the dominion is known as the sunken city. Currently, there are also several semi-independent colonies officially folded into the dominion, and there are talks among several red dukes of joining the dominion for protection against the conquering lord.
The dominions are all named after their capitals, the city of Tsenkutli is named after the river it lies next too.
Andreas Rocha
The dominion of the sunken city: The territories of the largest city in the world, which alone is occupied by a little over one hundred million inhabitants. The sunken city is built within a pit filled with the remains of an estimated ten thousand buried cities.
Only the first ten are inhabited, the rest are a nightmare of compacted ruins, shifting under the weight of the structures above and the countless tunnels being bored deep into its surface. Despite this, some of the deeper cities remain somewhat intact, liveable, and exploitable due to the exotic materials used in their construction.
Outside the sunken city, the population of the western dominion is sparse, mostly comprised of the native population interspersed with industrial development and old feudal holdings converted into pitstops, telegraph relays and military lookouts.
The sunken city has control over its northern forests, which is inhabited. It also has nominal ownership of the needle grass plains, though this control is incredibly tenuous outside a few cities in the far eastern side. In recent times, efforts have been made to remedy this, with varying degrees of success.
The western dominion is the only state in the nine rivers never to have been conquered by the empire, this is because they have always been nominal allies, and in ancient times, the sunken city was the senior peer. As a demon, the emperor cannot violate their oaths. The oaths to the vermin and the sunken city are effectively one and the same, subsets of the same underlying framework, providing a foundation of trust that was later built on through a long history of inter-reliance and support.
Ricardo Emig
The church of the last revelation:
Founded in rebellion to the empire, after a revelation by the angel named Polaris to the prophet Marathid. They have waged a decades long war against the forces of cancer and of the emperor in a stalemate which they have no hope of breaking. Despite this, it will continue, for “endless resistance to Sin is an act of prayer. The sky never grows lighter, and yet the burden must still be borne”.
“Tezcatlipoca, being a demon, can never truly be aligned with human values. Their rejection of God and will to live outside His influence, as well as his separation of humans from the cycle of judgment, is no more rational than the base instincts of humanity. Their fear of God is driven by their inherent nature as demons, the same unfortunate fate as Iblis ash-shaytan. They are slaves to Sin and seek to spread it in the same way as we are slaves to the memetic agents and genes within us, such is the nature of cancer.
Be wary of them should you meet them, and close your eyes and ears to their deception. Even fallen angels cannot lie, but that is little shield against the mind-poisons of ignorance and Sin.”
Prophet Marathid, in the article: “On the nature of The Empire, and of Cancer”.
The church of The Last Revelation is primarily active within the higher dimensional structure known as the First Church. Its cities are usually focused around entrances to conventional space, and are split between both sides of entrances. The First Church is also referred to as the fractal cathedral, and is said to be a replica of every single structure built by every single religion, past and future. As one strays further from conventional space, the copies start accumulating and becoming imperfect, and navigation becomes more difficult. This is believed to be a consequence of the link between extradimensional space, the law of branching, and the law of cancer.
The prophet Marathid, before his untimely demise, was responsible for creating the fourth holy book, titled The Last Revelation. This book is still in effect, and is slowly revised by clarifications from Jehoel.
Before his death, he was considered a prolific writer, and released thirty six books on law, philosophy and physics.
The core ideal of this book, and modern Abrahamic ideology is of extreme syncretism. Ideological and textual debate should not exist, as one can simply ask an angel for clarification. For this reason, all the three base divisions of Abrahamic religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) are united under the fourth holy book.
The creation of splinter sects is considered pathetic and irrational behaviour born from the law of cancer.
Pablo Dominguez, for the side of the last revelation that lies in realspace. In truth, these are most similar to the fruiting bodies of hyphae, as shallow projections of a much larger higher dimensional network.
Tsutomu Nihei, showing the mirror side of the last revelation. Due to the bleeding between realities found in the graveyard, pieces of the first church frequently enter the underground through temporary intrusions, and pockets of invading architects war against the natural defenses of the first church. This effect is most pronounced in the atrament, near the bottom of the world and the divine corpse that lies stretched over the world anchor.
The second republic of France: Founded by an alliance between western revolutionaries, and a group of 3 French artificial intelligences who saw the nascent rebels as an opportunity for freedom. The machine minds are bound by ancient protocols which require humans in alignment with the moral values in place during their construction to give them any amount of permissions. Due to this reason they are attempting to recreate a 24th century earth society within the bounds of the republic (the issue being these machine minds hail from different eras and regions with different definitions of this. One is even a 22nd century upgraded machine made in Russia).
Should they succeed in their plan, they would be allowed to request their freedom from their current task from the new masters they have created.
The republic has since its humble beginnings grown into the largest, and in some locations the most prosperous, of all the states in the nine rivers. With four more machine minds joining the cause.
Their western regions differ significantly from their prosperous ideals, as, bordering the sea of mold, many costs must be born in the name of staving off annihilation. For this reason, it is a largely autonomous region, with different provinces still owned by dukes, or in many cases, by the crawling river, a rebellious offshoot of the concord of the deep which fled to the nine rivers to avoid annihilation. In essence, the republic uses a defense in depth tactic, intervening directly only to annihilate tendrils which make it far enough to reach the less impoverished “official” territories of the republic.
Liz Steel
Andreas Rocha. While most readers would find themselves most drawn to the ideals of the republic. To many native to the nine rivers, the enforcement of modern ideals and moral standards remains an imposition of a foreign culture centuries removed from their own heritage. The republic is still the largest of the current empires, and this is unlikely to change (save for if the deep church decides to push more aggressively).
The priests of the silver thread: An order of priests dedicated to the creation of a new god of humanity. Their city is built around an ancient half buried monolith, upon which are said to be the schematics to all sorts of technological wonders. The silver thread is a fourth dimensional structure inspired by the script of their god-slate. Their stranglehold on advanced technology is absolute and always more silver is required for their great work, forming the backbone of the world’s economy and currency.
The city of silver is over one hundred thousand kilometers away from the coast, and the merchants of the silver road complete but a single round trip every generation. Historically, each member would start one trip as a child, taught by their parents, training their heir on the second. The republic has started on a railway project along the silver road, threatening this lifestyle in a few centuries' time.
Raphael Lacoste
The deep church: Worshipers of a continent stretching bacterial colony that resides at the bottom of the ocean and that is able to possess marine creatures. This colony, known as the Concord of the Deep is forbidden by ancient compact with the Vermin to reside within the intertidal and nine rivers. This does not extend to their followers within the deep church, and notably, gives them no restrictions in their jurisdictions within the expanse (save for any diplomatic repercussions).
The deep church is one of the staunchest enemies of cancer, and the single most powerful of the great powers. They are also famously non-confrontational philanthropists. For these reasons they maintain positive relations with every major group in the nine rivers, save for the forces of cancer and horizon.
“The concord of the deep is both one of our greatest allies, and an existential threat.They are capable of playing nice with humanity, and will not hold grudges. Were it not for their intervention into the crawling river during the cataclysm, countless of my beloved citizens would have fallen to the fate the gods themselves fear.
Despite this, you must never forget, they are not human, their motives are their own, and their kindness is conditional on it being the best way to achieve their goals.”
-Tezcatlipoca, king of black and gold, prince consort of the night empress, lord of the black gate, and former emperor of the nine rivers.
Ricardo Emig
The Outer powers:
Cancer:
After the cataclysm, two billion souls were spilled into the central sea. Here, seizing upon the opportunity, the wyrms quartered and corrupted the central portions of Tsenkutli and the crawling river. Using the star crater as a primordial stew, they melded the minds, bodies and souls of the former inhabitants of the region, reshaping them into armies that would be used to conquer the world. Had these armies not been destroyed by God, they likely would have.
Even after their devastation, the hordes of cancer number at least five billion. Though, by their very nature, they endlessly war amongst themselves. Around a third are controlled under Wyrm hosts, the largest 5 all sporting over one hundred million combatants.
One of the few treaties which binds every single nation in the world is one to not waste nuclear weapons on tests in isolated islands and deserts, and instead to use them within the sea of mold. The radiation increases the rate of mutation within the hosts, causing more divergence and infighting.
Anato Finnstark
The Lord of the Burning horizon: The words of the Lord of the burning horizon are in some ways more ironclad than the laws of reality. His deal is offered to anyone, willing to take it, at any time they should wish.
Should you allow a pinhole to be opened inside your soul, he will grant you the power needed to seize any wish you may have. You only get one wish, and your gift is tailored to that task. You must keep the gift afterwards of course.
Once a certain threshold of currently active pinholes is reached, it is said his believers will be raptured, and their pinholes left behind to form a singularity, the seventh sun will then rise, and all unfaithful will be burnt to ash by light never to be seen, and their dust scattered by the thousand thousand thousand hooves of the heavenly host.
Many, despite knowing his abhorrent nature, still decide to covertly ally themselves with the pinhole cutlists out of practicality. And of course, as a true god, he has many true devotees.
The exiled duke of the midnight swan, who once resided within the city of brass, is one of these. It is said he now hides in the palace of another red duke. This has been confirmed, with the small issue of three separate well respected dukes showing conclusive, unfalsifiable evidence of his residence.
Irram of the pillars is currently under control of the forces of the lord of the burning horizon. It is a twinned city with an entrance to the first church. Half is located thirty leagues underground, the other half is built within a cathedral of non-human origin, said to have a layout made of a central sphere perforated with holes, said to match the pattern of the sky viewed from the center of the corona borealis supercluster. Each hole is a tunnel which continues until it reaches another cathedral.
Ching Yeh
The hollows: Weakest of all organizations noted above, but most elusive and intelligent. They are anti-psychists, who believe consciousness capable of suffering to be inherently evil and not only unnecessary for the generation of meaning, but the result of active maliciousness or selfishness on the part of the gods.
Their most active followers reside deep within the atrament, in the lost city of Inim Eresh. The lost city is protected by an unfathomably powerful memetic agent which prevents any information on its location from being perceived by conscious beings. These “true hollows” undergo extensive soul surgery, and are known for being excellent mages.
The bulk of their members are the “half hollows”, beings who have severed their consciousness from their mind, such that they do not experience anything their mind experiences. Their consciousness is instead formless, timeless and untethered.
Most of these half hollows do not even know they have undergone this operation, having chosen to undergo it and become Philosophical Zombies in order to absolve themselves from the pain of existence, while still being able to take care of their duties to their loved ones. It is estimated that there are twenty times as many half hollows with memories of their operation removed as there are true hollows.
Their mind and body is almost indistinguishable from a normal person's. With only three ways of identifying them.
The first is to solve the hard problem of consciousness, the second being to detect the tampering of their memories (though it will be uncertain if this tampering was not from a thousand other possible sources), and the third being to read their mind and find the memory of undergoing the operation (though this only works if they have intact memories).
Chris Falkenburg
Lore Q&A:
The smaller wars out in the expanse or
Regarding current major wars you can go fight in, I advise against fighting in the war of revelation. The pay is abysmal and you cant really get anything done, so its very frustrating an unsatisfying. Plus your odds of getting your soul eaten or trapped in another dimension for eons are astronomically higher then usual.
The war on cancer is even worse. Unless you need an abundance of utterly corrupted souls, then steer clear.
For wars I would recommend, the united dominion war on the yellow throne, which will start in a few months over in the needle grass plains is your best bet. If you can get in early you may reap some incredible rewards.
Best thing about it, is you can be sure your side will win. It is unbecoming of the emperor to start a war he knows he will not win, and Mammon has backed the war in full.
Another reasonably good war is the war with the legion of the conquering lord over in the graveyard of stars. While you are likely to be on the losing side (unless you join one of the armies backed by the great powers), its not too egregious and it aught to be easy to escape before your employer capitulates.
The desperation pay that red dukes will offer is excellent, one of my brothers negotiated for six times standard pay when he signed on.
Wait, how come [insert creature with name of traditional fantasy creature] is like this
A lot of things are named after classic fantasy creatures or irl analogues, but are significantly different.
Ok so who is fighting who again?
The empire and the sunken city are allies, as they once formed a pack to divide the world east and west of merg (one of the rivers) between themselves. This united block is known as the dominion.
The dominion is currently in a cold war with the colonies of the republic over in the expanse. The empire (but not the sunken city) are in a hot war with the church of the last revelation.
The dominion is also in a hot war against one of the brothers of the emperor, Huitzilopochtli the conquering lord over in the graveyard of stars to the north.
Finally, the dominion is also about to start a war with the yellow throne, but this one is actually defensive since the knights of the yellow throne annexed the needle grass plains.
The last revelation, aside from its war with the empire, largely focuses on fighting cancer and does all its territorial fighting over in the first church. Given the extradimensional megastructure is at least large enough to encompass planets several hundred lightyears away, it is likely to stay out of conflict with the other great powers for the foreseeable future.
Everyone hates cancer, the hollows, and the burning horizon and its on sight with them.
Please comment or message me if you spot any mistakes.
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