by Jeffrey Croft | Feb 28, 2015 | Recursions
Aeyre is a world of sky and floating islands, the four largest islands are ~30 miles across and are the homes of the four ruling houses; House Landgrave, House Windholm, House Marcone, and House Yarris. These houses control the gas trade and gas mining operations that fuel the economy of Aeyre, their dirigibles patrol the upper and lower reaches ensuring their investments and the safety of their protectorates, occasionally there is a small conflict, but typically the houses rely on subterfuge and bureaucracy to fight one another, rather than strength of arms. There are many smaller, independent islands and clusters of islands, but they tend to stay out of the politics and mining and are dependent on trade for their gas supply. Some of these smaller communities chafe under the dominance of the four houses and rumors of rebellion are frequent. The upper reaches of Aeyre are a low gravity environment where almost all the populace live on the floating islands that are spread throughout the reach. In places where the landmasses are close massive bridges have been built to promote traffic, but in most places people rely on dirigibles or wing suits to travel between islands. Frequent updrafts and low gravity enable individuals skilled with wing suits to travel between islands without paying for transport on an Aeyre Ship. The lower reaches are mostly composed of the heavy gases which the Houses collect to fuel their industry. The gases are too think for most people to breathe and require special equipment to operate in, equipment that is closely...
by Jennifer | Feb 21, 2015 | Recursions
Nexus is a flat plane, oval in shape, with two habitable sides, Overside and Underside. Surrounding the plane is a space of perpetual dawn and twilight, home to the recursion’s two constantly warring gods. The power struggle between them in the sky is reflected in the cycle of day and night on the plane below, and the Sun-Wreathed Lord has an advantage. Excessive sunlight is withering the crops on which the humans of Underside depend, and tensions are high between the Skycults and the Scorekeepers. Underside Today, most life on Nexus resides in Underside. There are a dozen small human settlements, with two more in ruins in the Rivenswood. Each settlement is home to two or three thousand inhabitants and a mayor; the two most powerful mayors are the Solarator and Siderator (Eliana and Hilian, both level 6), who lead the Skycults. The Skycults direct the worship of two gods, the Moon-Veiled Lady and the Sun-Wreathed Lord. Each god is strengthened by prayers and ritual devotions, and their power influences the length and intensity of night and day. Balance between them is essential to the agriculture that feeds Nexus, and in order to maintain it the Skycults demand obedience and a strict weekly routine from every adult—days cycle between field work, trade work, and worship. Children are raised by dedicated Skycult priests to insure the routine of their parents is not disrupted. Not everyone on Nexus believes that the Skycults are the most effective tool to balance the power between the gods, and the long days recently are swaying those who would be loyal to the Solarator and Siderator...
by A | Feb 21, 2015 | Recursions
MOTOLOT It is a time of ruin, gasoline & chaos. The dim future (or is it the present?) of Earth that never was, a hopeless age, a dark age… in a post apocalyptic landscape of humanity picking up the pieces after the Bigger Bang (or some greasers say “the Great Oops”), the horrendous apocalypse that almost wiped Man off the face of the Earth, it’s a time of warring cycle gangs & opposing petty warlords of the wastes of what remains, chieftains roaming the desolate countryside, questing for precious gasoline & the remnants of the ancients oil-wells & platforms & lost tech to have the upper hand in survival, scavenging power & high octanage — a dog eat dog world. Whomever brings unifies the gangs of the Wasteland, as every greaser likes to affectionately call it, will rise as Big Boss of the Land & will heal it, ushering a new era of “peace & prosperity”, or so the prophecy from the time of the Great Teevee foretold. In comes Art’s Cycle Knights; led by a charismatic leader, Art Drake, AKA King Drake, unifying the disparate gang bosses & the civie motor caravans; he’s got this crazee dream of looking for a new arcology of shiny chrome up on the hill, to build & settle. In a dream he’s called it Motolot, “Tha Place To Be” in Oldspeek. Right now, however, they’ll have to settle with a monstrous contraption made by the sheer crazee audacity & ingenuity of the infamous mutant, Merl the Mech, full of polished lines of steel rivets, belching toxic fumes as...
by TimothyMaguire | Feb 21, 2015 | Recursions
There is just one hard and fast rule in the recursion known as The City Beneath The Cloud: do not harm a Snatcher. Every inhabitant knows this rule and it colours their every action. Any recursor arriving in the city will quickly learn it, either by being told by an inhabitant or simple observation of a Snatcher in action. A few quick questions will explain why the law is obeyed with such intensity: the rest of the Snatchers will swarm any transgressor, before hunting down all those who are close to them, no matter how long it takes. The City Beneath The Cloud is a mysterious, fearful recursion whose ruler is so unknown that explaining the point of the recursion is, in itself, difficult. The great towers of the city are packed with people who live every day in fear of the Snatchers, the inscrutable lords of the City. Great winged humanoids, the Snatchers swoop down from the clouds overhead, grabbing a single victim before returning to their hidden eyries. No one, either recursor or inhabitant, knows what happens to them within the cloud layer, but they do know they never come back. Physically, The City Beneath The Cloud appears similar to any Earth city whose skyline is dominated by skyscrapers. Indeed, the only major difference is a lack of roads, replaced instead by wide boulevards between the buildings. Long pipes run down the sides of the buildings, supplying water and gruel, the only food available within the city. A thick grey cloud hides the city’s upper stories, making it seem as if the clouds are swallowing them. The image...
by Scott Robinson | Feb 21, 2015 | Recursions
Large fluorescent type appeared on metal door. “Do you have a lamda-level hall pass? Place your cog-box on the wall and wait for authorization. Response required in 5…4…3…2…1… A hall monitor has been notified. They will accompany you to your classroom. Please enjoy the upcoming tutorial.” Basic Description The Re-education Center is a small recursion where characters are trapped within an organizational dystopia. Like most people in the recursion, players are likely to be subjects — pupils — in the Re-education Center. Through the use of advanced technology, the Re-education Center is designed to pacify pupils, force them to report on each other (truthfully or not), and shape them for the purposes of whomever sentenced them to this location. Players can then navigate the surreal landscape of a technological educational system gone terribly wrong. The entire complex (with one exception discussed below) is shielded to prevent pupils from translating out. Each pupil in the re-education center is provided a unisex body suit and a small electronic box called a “cog box.” Each cog box is a metal box approximately 15cm square interspersed with glowing circuits. It emits a unique color matching similar lines of energy flowing along the pupils suit. The color and circuit design of each is unique — until a pupil fully accepts her or his programming and adopts a shared red glow. The cog box serves a variety of purposes for the pupil. First, it serves as an identity authenticator. Any process of confirming identity will begin with a request to see a pupil’s cog box. Second, the cog box connects pupils to the...
by Keith Garrett | Feb 20, 2015 | Recursions
The land was once completely green, from one edge of the world to the other. To the plants who lived there it was paradise, from the simplest blade of grass to the smartest walking tree. Water and soil were plentiful, and everyone coexisted peacefully—shrubs, trees, cacti, everyone. Almost a year ago, something changed. Temperatures started to rise at the far edges of the world. Water dried, and grasslands gradually devolved into desert. None of the plants knew why it was happening, but they did know one thing: the habitable world was shrinking. Now this recursion contains a single patch of temperate land, a last oasis surrounded by vast deserts. The animate plant inhabitants—who call themselves the Uprooted—vie with each other over the increasingly small supply of water and fertile soil. Uprooted Racial Options Recursors visiting the Last Oasis can choose to become one of the Uprooted, the sentient plant-based beings who live here. The Uprooted are the product of fictional leakage, originating from stories featuring intelligent, animate, talking plants. As such, the Uprooted have a few humanoid features incorporated into their vegetable bodies, including faces, branchy arms, and legs formed from roots. In other words, they can walk and talk, and might be offended if a human were to seem surprised at these facts. Several species of Uprooted live here, though they all possess certain common features. The Uprooted don’t need to eat, but do need water and sunlight, and they must spend about a third of each day with their roots planted in fertile soil. (Days and nights in the Last Oasis are similar to Earth’s.) Going...
