ACID DEATH FANTASY
For use with Troika! - Luke Gearing
"The slate was not wiped clean - it was shattered into
countless jagged pieces, splintering a new world with the debris of the old."
What happened is long forgotten. Remains of it, barely
understood by the most learned scholars, are rife throughout the lands, but
most are too busy surviving to ponder these relics, else maintaining their
strangleholds on water and power, power and water.
The greatest living city of the desert is Shalar, that
breeding ground of pleasure and nightmare. All people, all faiths, all goods
have a stake in Shalar, ruled by the Many Crowned King/Queen and her terrible
guard, a thousand strong. The wealth of Shalar is untouched, uncontested, and
many covet the throne.
Spinning outwards of Shalar are the Thousand Sultanates, a
great miscellany of egotism, pride and petty squabbles. There is much wealth,
for the titles of these many pretenders are not entirely false. They compete
endlessly in their petty games, although all are inevitably forgotten as the
hubris of the ruler eventually causes a fall. The oldest, and most stable are
the closest to Shalar, whilst the peripheral Emirs and Maliks barely stake a
hold for more than a generation.
Beyond this anarchic sprawl are the Wastes, riddled with all
manner of nomads and tribes, and beasts beneath the sands, all bowing in
respect to the worms which roam freely between the dunes. The Alqai, four armed
workers of metal, emerge from the Duneholds to sell exquisitely worked goods,
or else to continue the age-old war on the Dune Riders, their slender boats
neatly slicing the sand.
The Southern Wastes are the homes of the Slow Tribes, brutal
reptilian peoples leaving artful piles of butchered limbs whenever they find a
settlement of desperate people seeking some modicum of respite from the heat.
To the East, the Plastic Sea, a miraculous sea made entirely
of liquid plastic. Upon contact with living skin, it sets solid, leading to the
coast being filled with the Coated Men, duelling each other in elegant, fatal
contest, having made the choice to die young and glorious, coated in flexible
plastic armour.
The verdant jungles of the North would offer respite from
the desert, if not for the patriarchal Azure Apes. Whilst the stable nests will
happily accept visitors, the zones between are haunted by failed alpha-males,
who gladly prey upon travellers to build their strength for a challenge against
an aging nest-master. Not even these desperate beasts dare try themselves
against the shining, metallic ruins scattered about the jungle.
To the West is the graveyard of the Old Gods, their steel
skeletons looming over a great and terrible Rubble. Once a city of the chosen
peoples of these gods, their undoing was terrible, their grey stone, unknown to
us, marred with their burnt shadows still.
(Backgrounds after jump)
