The Empty Reach: A Sword and Planet Setting (Part 1)
This is the beginning of a campaign world that has been rattling around in my brain for the last couple years. Inspired by the sword and planet and planetary romance genres it’s a mushy sci-fi space fantasy thing. Don’t bother critiquing the science, I know it’s wrong, but hopefully just truthy enough to sort of hang together. My favorite such novel in this genre Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure and this harkens to that maybe a bit more than it does Barsoom, but the biggest influence here is something you probably have never heard of.
A refreshing trope reversal on the cover here
In August 2003 I picked up the then current issue of Dragon Magazine. I was interested in that since I was playing D&D with a regular group, but it was the other magazine on the flip side that really caught my attention. At the time each issue of Dragon was split with another publication Polyhedron or Poly starting on the reverse cover. This is where Paizo was publishing content for Wizard’s other d20 games, including d20 Modern, and Star Wars. Issue 160 had a mini-game for d20 Modern called Iron Lords of Jupiter by Lizard, that in addition to being a complete setting for Modern was also an analysis of the planetary romance genre. It had a small expansion in issue 161 and together are one of my all-time favorite RPG products. I have always wanted to run a campaign either in the Iron Lords setting or my own, it just never happened.
I woke up at 4:15 this morning and it all jumped into my head. So I got up, started the coffee and started typing. What came out is the first part of the game world. I intend to continue to expand this over time including a custom ruleset tailored from the Year Zero Engine SRD. I think the next section I’ll post will be characters but can’t know when that will be. Anway, I hope this is interesting and not just terrible fan fiction.
The Empty Reach
The Truths of Life and the Empty Reach
The first truth of life is that all will end. Over the countless eons that intelligent life has crawled out into the cosmos it has always perished there eventually. Leaving great artifacts and monuments worn into ambiguity, rarely recognized or pondered by those that will later come.
The second truth of life is that these explorers will come. The promise of the void will always lure fresh minds out of their cradle worlds. For an age they will revel in their expansion, and in their mastery of what they find.
The third truth of life is that this mastery is an illusion. Some have theorized that life can conquer all, and that a civilization can harness a galaxy. It is not so. There are phenomena that cannot be controlled. Certainly not in the brief span of a race’s vitality, before decadence, destruction, and death claim them.
For the last truth of life is also the first. All will end.
Midway out along the third galactic arm lies a stretch of stars that any spacefaring race will learn to avoid. Ships and probes sent here stop responding and never return. Eventually the star charts are updated with some version of “here be dragons” and these civilizations seek their destinies elsewhere, to rise, rule, and finally fall among brighter stars and nebulae. We know this region as the Empty Reach.
For this is a graveyard. An improbable and inhospitable stretch of ancient neutron stars and black holes scouring their few remaining mainline stellar companions with deadly radiation and complex gravitational forces. Many have sought to learn the secrets there in, but no seekers, or secrets, have ever escaped this place.
That is not to say that none have survived.
There is one place, one world, where life has both arisen and arrived. The only moon, of the only planet, of a lonely sunlike star. Shielded by the gentler fields of it parents, this moon is an oasis in a blasted celestial desert. Over the millennia the occasional vessel has through great skill or blind luck penetrated this deep into the hostile zone before its systems are invariably and finally disabled. Fewer still survived entry into the moon’s atmosphere or the uncontrolled landing on it surface. However, the survivors find a vibrant world of seemingly impossible wonders. They also discover that they are not alone. It is here and only here that the last remnants of the proceeding civilizations might still be found. They linger, protected for a time from the inevitable truth of life by the very death that surrounds them. This world has a name. It is a name older than comprehension.
They find themselves on Khosaga.
Humanity Among the Stars
The current age finds humanity ascendant in the stars. We swelled out into the galaxy rapidly and heedlessly. It has been over 3000 years since the first of the great generational colony ships lumbered out into the dark. Packed with the refugees of our overpopulated and dying world and slung to every corner of the galaxy at relativistic speeds. Hoping beyond hope that at least one would find a new home, that our species would get a second chance to stave off the looming first and final truth. Our cradle was burning, and survival depended on this last gasp of our waning resources.
Of the hundreds of such ships launched to distant points of light, only seven are known to have found planets that could support human and other Earth life. Of the seven, three succeeded in preserving their technological progress and soon expanded out into their stellar neighborhoods. Now the Three Empires rule most of the settled galaxy. Two descended into medieval technological and social models and were later absorbed by the growing empires. One grew into a communal democracy content to occupy a few close systems, using its advanced technology to defend itself from its more expansionist peers. The last known colony was found nearly 500 years ago on a barren and nearly lifeless world. Abandoned centuries before for reasons not entirely clear, it is speculated that here the human presence upset to native biome resulting in an ecological collapse.
There is however one other colony which will forever be unknown to the others. The colony ship Enki through ignorance or folly hurtled itself into the Empty Reach. Defying all probability it avoided the most destructive bands of radiation emanating from the stellar phenomena until its sensors detected a candidate world. It was only then that a massive wave of ionizing radiation fused nearly every device or computer on board. Enki splashed down into the great Southern Ocean of Khosaga near the shores of the polar continent of Kel. From their life rafts the survivors witnessed their first impossibility – The ancient city of Kel-Tan stretched along the shore. They were not alone.
Khosaga and Its Peoples
Khosaga should not exist. The Empty Reach should be truly devoid of life, but yet it is here, and so are we. It is speculated that some eccentricity of fields and orbits shield the surface from the worst of the radiation. The sensors and calculating machines that might be capable of answering these questions are however impossible here. Stellar storms still regularly rip through and interacting with the magnetic fields of Khosaga and its parent planet, the gas giant Tof, to produce electromagnetic pulses sufficient to render any technology more advanced than a compression fired internal combustion engine inert.
The eccentricity of its orbit and tilt also means Khosaga does not have anything like the seasons or climatic zones of old Earth. Its southern hemisphere is perpetually oriented to starward. This along with the Great Southern Ocean has led to a perpetually tropical polar region dominated by the continent of Kel and numerous archipelagos. The entire region is separated from the more northern regions of the world by a ring of nearly impassable mountains. This has caused some to reason the entire southern basin is in actuality a massive impact crater, perhaps of a huge icy comet that brought with it most of Khosaga’s water.
This basin is home to dozens of squabbling human polities that have established themselves on Kel and its surrounding islands. They share the region with the quiet but decadent Vin. The Vin claim to be the oldest non-native civilization on Khosaga and have records dating back millions of years that exist on solid state crystalline storage devices. These are the only example of their pre-moonfall technology that has survived. It is because of the Vin that humanity was able to establish itself after the loss of the Enki.
The Vin are reduced to a race of mostly philosophers and scholars. Thin and pale skinned with large black eyes they seem harmless, however they are still very capable of violence and harbor ancient weapons and techniques that can be recalled at need. It required only one aggressive human kingdom’s destruction to clearly establish that the Vin should be approached as friends or not at all. Since that time we have focused our wars only on other human nations, which are then documented in detail by observant Vin historians.
North of the Barrier Mountains lies the Great Equatorial Desert. This region is dominated by the Kor with their powerful ships capable of traversing both the sands and skies due to the miraculous Gef Crystals that can harness the Reach’s wild radiation. Most powerful at night when exposed to the pale light of the many neutron stars these ships can even carry themselves over the Barrier Mountains for both trade and occasional raiding expeditions. Others must utilize a small number of passes that less powerful airships or ground caravans can cross.
Kor themselves resemble nothing less than tree people. Their thick green hides both provide nourishment from photosynthesis, and also prevent water loss, meaning a Kor ship can sail with little provisions for extended periods of time. Their civilization is anchored on the wonderous spire cities. These cities predate any extant sentient species on Khorsaga. Built of a stonelike material so impervious to time it is believed they were constructed on ancient plains. Over the eons the surrounding land eroded away to leave cities perched thousands of meters above the sand. The Kor are believed to be the only native sentient species, deriving their name from the world. However, they are not the first as their evolution has been carefully documented by the Vin.
Traveling further north the desert gradually gives way to a grassy plain and finally a vast boreal forest. These are dominated by the nomadic Klig. A large stout bipedal race of herdsman and hunters. Though using only the simplest technologies they have avoided subjugation through their psychic abilities. While a small percentage of all sentient species of Khosaga can manifest psionics, it is among the Klig that these abilities are both more common and the techniques more refined. A single Klig warrior is a terror to behold and capable of tearing open a human tank and incinerating its occupants. It is not unusual for the rare talent arising among the other races to make a pilgrimage to the far north seeking a Klig teacher. Beyond the Klig lands the north pole rests upon the dark and lifeless Plateau of Akh. The elevation here is so high that not even the boldest Kor captain has ventured into this airless realm, nor has anything living ever descended from its massive approaches.
The Future
It is likely that other people will someday come here. If the human star empires continue to expand, they will again seek trade and attack routes through the Reach or attempt to plumb its secrets. It is only a matter of time before the next scout ship crashes down. Its occupants coming to terms with their new world as we have. Or perhaps we are already the last and must welcome a new race of castaways. The Vin assure us someone will come. They always do.
References
Iron Lords of Jupiter - Poly 160 Its not available here at the moment, but may exist on the internet somewhere else...