>Night has utterly consumed the world. The last stars faded away ages ago, and now the owrld is fully in the thrall of the maddening Eternals, and the utterly unfathomable Ever-King.
>The only thing keeping the last flames of mankind alight are the brave Hunters who set out into the shadows to confront the spawn of Night.
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So Dark Souls?
So Dark Souls?
Darkness can be sapient and parasitic. A form of parasitic darkness that infects humans eats away at cavities in the human body. Varieties exist that infect the sinuses, inner ear, lungs, and stomach. The parasitic darkness will often drive their host to enter the shadows to allow larger ethereal predators to devour the man.
Certain cults use their parasitic darkness and accept their place as hosts, removing their soft palette or damaging their ears to allow the parasites far more room. Hearing a man speak in a garbled nasally voice can be a sign of secretly being a cultist. The mute and deaf are feared for this reason.
>The Eternals. None can say from whence these utterly unfathomable things of malign intent came from, or why they seek to snuff out the flames of Life, but one thing is certain: They are great and they are Dark. They are Ruin, and they are Death. They are the Hungering Maw that shall engulf all created things, all in the name of their Ever-King.
Okay. What do people eat?
The Hunters absorb the souls of the spawns of night and use it to better themselves or as currency with other Eternals.
They obviously eat crystals made out of the soul-stuff that the Spawn Of Night have ocnsumed over countless aeons. Duh.
...I don't want to derail the thread, but how come these are always start off with "something dreadful has happened and/or everything is terrible"? Or is that my imagination? Has Veeky Forums made setting threads with non-dark premises?
Not a lot of people even exist anymore. However enough energy comes out of volcanic vents to feed colonies of worms, insects, and more. Human settlements congregate around areas of volcanic activity.
In the old days, the Judges of Life reigned supreme until the Judges of Death banished them to the Heavens.
They're probably all started by the same guy, I notice he's more concerned with writing purple prose than making a setting you can actually run a game in.
Creatures of great power can provide crystal soulstuffs that can be forged into unique weapons based around the power the creature had in life, if the eternal hunter can find and afford to pay a master blacksmith.
>HURRRSOMEGUYMAKESTHREADSIDONTLIKESOLETMEGOINANDSHITPOSTINTHEMTOEXPRESSHOWMUCHIHATETHEMDURRRRRRRRRXD
I want Reddit to leave.
Goggle-like devices which use echolocation, thermal imaging, and photomultiplier-based nightvision to produce a composite picture of the world are now very popular. (Artificial light and Infrared-based nightvision attract too much attention.)
Same guy detected.
Yeah, definitely the same guy. He gets butthurt like this whenever someone criticizes him.
sounds like a world full of boring nothingness desu
I don't mind them, I was just wondering whether people here really love this sort of post-apocalyptic(ish?) stuff.
>Samefagging.
Yep, definitely a Redditfag.
Purple prose is really overhated.
>Everyone who calls me on my shit is le leddit boogeyman. Because I said so.
>Everyone who makes worldbuilding threads is the same person. Because I said so.
Even now in the bleakness so old that sun and stars and moon are forgotten not all hope is lost.
With no stars to be right the stars can't be wrong and what is dead my never die but if all is dead then the dead must live.
Ould'Halthrok of the Green Mark who dwealt under the sun when it was young stirs in his tomb, in his dreaming death. Ould'Halthrok in his dusty stone box under mountains that were flat when he first slept. Ould'Halthrok who sang the songs that broke the sky and shaped the land. Ould'Halthrok, the green smell of trees after rain.
He awakens and those few who still offer him prayer and holocaust, those who still fear, feel themselves drawn to look in the direction of his mountain.
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>The Ever-Lands. An utterly impossible Expanse of golden pillars, writhing viscera, Wailing and laughing sculptures, and twisting light.
>The Ever-Lands act as a direct manifestation of the power of the Eternals and the Ever-King, a place where nightmares and terrors beyond imagining dwell.
>Many raids have been attempted by Hunters hoping to topple this nightmarish construct, to provide the few remaining souls of Humanity with a little more hope. None have succeeded.
>posts made 13 seconds apart from each other
>samefagging
>everyone who makes threads with the exact same premise and the exact same writing style and the exact same lack of concern for creating something you can run an actual game in is a different person
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The Eyeless Man with his crown of stars is rising from the deep. They said he was a story to frighten children with but nothing more in a world already full of terrified children with much to be terrified with.
Why is he rising now? Who can say. In ages past he did battle with the sun and was burned blind for his sins but with no sun to fight now he should he content to lie dormant in the canyons on the deep waters.
His coming is not regarded by most as a good thing.
Thats some good read right there
>His coming is not regarded by most as a good thing.
These people need to chill out. I mean, honestly what's the *worst* that he could do?
Unknown. What is known is that he's big malevolent and although his rise to prominence might result in something nice happening
youtube.com
As it is the Hunters are just about holding their own. Another thing to go wrong might just tip the balance.
>Unknown. What is known is that he's big malevolent and although his rise to prominence might result in something nice happening
Maybe he'll get into a fight with one of the Eternals and just ignore everything else. Evil probably isn't a big happy family in this world anyway, (well barring everything serving the Ever-King, but who would ever want to fuck with 'him'?).
The life of a hunter is no life at all. They fight for the day that they can rest. In the old stories, older than this long age, it is said that they could not dwell in the sun. The sun hated them with a passion. It is said that they were once wicked men in service to the Eyeless Man, or at least their predecessors were.
Their sins still blight them and afflict them and mark them that they can be known but in this age a few sins are not much to be concerned of. They have a dark thirst that has to be quenched but when all is said and done, for their services, their selfless services in this bleak age, holding your arm out and looking the other way occasionally isn't so bad.
>Many of the most powerful entities of the Night are not given true names, if only for the simple reason that Names have power. To give the Dark Ones Names is to invite them to enter your mind and to sup deep from your memories and experiences.
>No, instead the Eternals and their Servitors are given simple phrases, or words, or mere descriptors in order to identify them.
The flames of mankind are a guttering candle held before the depredations of the night. Everyone has become insane, and the last remnants of humanity on this shattered world are nothing more than shivering madmen curled up in on themselves in the ruins of a once-great civilization. There is an Otherworld that lapses occasionally with ours, the former and vestigial home of humanity. To be sane in this world is to be insane, and death is life because those who die become one with the dimly glowing sun in the sky (which is a mass of bio luminescent fungus that draws in dead matter and feeds off of it).
Bacteria are still doing fine, though.
Of course they are. Bacteria can survive fucking anything.
The Hunters can't go to that world, whatever it is that makes them as they are also grounds them in some way. Pity, that other world sound nicer than this bleak age.
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Wait a fucking minute, is that Swamp-Thing's face?
There's also the sea.
Tides are gone so it's getting slightly stagnant but it holds enough life still to go fishing for disgusting pale nightmare looking shrimps and things.
Is this just that Night Land story?
The last real bastion of a functioning and intact society is on the western shore. Protected on one side by quite steep mountains that form a wall all the way to the sea they have been spared much of the horrors of the plains.
Also doesn't help that the locals can drink sea water.
Truth of the matter is that they were never fully human back in the old days, "blessed" by their god of the deep to be not unakin to things of the deep. They live off of fish as they have for time beyond mind though now the fish look and taste worse and there is less of it. Or at least they think that there is less fish, they won't sail too far from the coast anymore.
The children of their patriarch-god are presumed dead. They found a few corpses washed up on the shore from their deep places out beyond the reef and haven't heard anything of them since.
Their god is dead. They know that. They have an ossuary that holds the last pieces of him. It saddens them.
They aren't overtly hostile but they are very suspicious of foreigners. They won't chase you out of their coastal villages but don't ever expect a warm welcome unless you marry one of them.
>They won't chase you out of their coastal villages but don't ever expect a warm welcome unless you marry one of them.
Hmmm, at least they aren't "Innsmouth Look" levels of hideous. I think it could work.
Oh yes they are. Shallow end Innsmouth at any rate. Long webbed toes, flat noses, wide mouths, large eyes and sharp teeth.
Also webbing between the little, ring and middle fingers but none attached to index and thumb.
Skin is albino pale but in a land of perpetual night so is most peoples. Prone to chapped skin if kept dry for too long.
Also both genders suffer from premature balding.
On the happy side they seem far less susceptible to Darkness infection. They attribute this to the last lingering blessing of their dead god.
>Oh yes they are. Shallow end Innsmouth at any rate. Long webbed toes, flat noses, wide mouths, large eyes and sharp teeth.
Well shit. At the very least they aren't outright insane like most residents of that Deep One breeding ground. Seems like you could actually have a proper conversation with them, *without* them trying to gut/rape you.
That's what I was going for. But it is notable for being exceptional in this regard.
The rest of the world has devolved into mostly mildly insane tribals who will act only uncomfortably odd until you mention their trigger topic. Then they try to gut you. You can deal with them after a fashion but idle talk is like pogo sticking across a mine field, best to keep well out of arms reach and keep to strictly business.
The Fishermen are just regular rude and miserable with foreigners. But they were probably like that in previous eras also. Given their location and resistance to the bullshit going on if this bleak age ever ends they might inherit the world by virtue of being the last people left standing.
Or The Eyeless Man with his crow of stars might eat them because something happened to their cousin-kind in the water past the reef.
>In order to better combat the servants of eternal Night, Hunters are divided into various Orders.
>Each Order is a unique group that has their own specific style of Hunting as well as their own weaponry fine-tuned towards dealing with the monsters they hunt.
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>With no stars to be right the stars can't be wrong and what is dead my never die but if all is dead then the dead must live.
Totally pretentious bullshit, leave
Epic contribution there.
So the Hunters are in fact Dúnedain Vampires.
>56109834
Legacy of Kain flavoured Dúnedain Vampires.
I'm guessing that these would be the PCs in such a setting.
What should the technology levels be at?
There will be no wood so t hat limits shjt to stone, bone and skin for the most part as building materials.
Burning would be oil and hair candles.
Only things that would produce skin, bones and oil in useful amounts would be in the sea. Settlements, crude as they are, would be around the coast. Inland is where the Eternals and their mad thralls walk.
Much as the Rangers protected Bree and the Shire from shit coming down from the north the Hunters protect the last half mad remnants of humanity from shit coming from inland. It is a battle they are gradually loosing.
Has someone been reading The Night Land?
Hopefully.
>What should the technology levels be at?
Probably pretty simple really, pretty crude and almost primitive. Some places might have more advanced technology, but they would be constantly under siege as a result of this, barely keeping themselves alive in most cases. The Ever-Lands would also be pretty advanced, but it's also the location where the presence of the Ever-King is at its strongest, so it's a no-go.
Despite their grim appearance, the beings referred to as Usper Holds, are rather noble entities. They have been known to lend a hand to Hunters, and settlements, and on their own have been witnessed cutting down the larger, more terrible things that roam this lightless land. They have made no attempt at speaking to humans, nor has there been any sighting of Usper Hold settlements, but there are more of them, with slightly different appearances, in groups of at most seventeen.
They are named for the first sighting of them, in a small settlement know as Usper Hold that had been wiped out by some creature.
The monsters that dare encroach into the firelight.
Sounds a lot like dark souls and while dark souls is good it feels kinda dated now that bloodborne has introduced a much better setting/lore for this type of atmosphere.
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>The last stars faded away ages ago
>keeping the last flames of mankind alight
These flames had better be some kind of hypertech solar engines and/or magic because I don't think some fires would be enough to stave off that kind of cold.
Or just make it post-apocalyptic fantasy with the "darkness" actually being a cloud of self propagating nanomachines that are repelled by the "fires" which are some kind of device that keeps the machines at bay. The Kilns require fuel that can only be found in the darkness and the nanomachines need organic shells (which they "consume" and puppeteer) to penetrate the light of the device.
Hunters must carry small lanterns that contain fragments of the "fire" in order to traverse the darkness without being consumed immediately
How'd I do Veeky Forums, am I cool now?
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Cannibalism is frowned upon even by the dying. Infection seems to be cumulative and it's far better to die as yourself.
How long ago did the everlasting night roll in?
Long enough to be out of living memory but not so long as to be forgotten what it is.
Centuries rather than millennium maybe.
Probably close enough that people can still remember and understand it, but long enough ago that they've forgotten what *exactly* brought it on. It could have been anything that ended up drawing the ire of the Eternals really.
Map so far
It's very rare that anything can survive long in the darkness.
The few that do are taken by a parasitic darkness, one that forces it's way to the host's brain.
The fewer still that survive that somehow integrate the parasite to their brain, which has unusual consequences.
Some attain perfect clarity - these can fight the dark on equal footing with the light in their heads.
Some end up twisted into horrifying forms, misshapen caricatures of humans with a heavy darkness theme - these go willingly to the darkness, and live out their days as outcasts.
Some simply go stark raving mad and charge anything with even a little connection to darkness - they burn their torches bright and stave of the dark in vast waves, but burn out the moment their work is done.
There are very few, who suffer from all three.
These exile themselves to the Devil's Reef, where they build their eternally lit laboratories and research buildings, looking to the light to protect them and the darkness to teach them.
They're trying to craft more stars to replace those that have gone out.
And judging by the occasional flashes of blindingly bright light from the depths of the reef, they're on the cusp of a breakthrough...
There's something that looks like that at the hear of one of the old capital cities.
When the world is dying you should at least try to enjoy it, it's followers say. Nobody sane travels to that city anymore, even it's name is no longer remembered.
There are still people and things like people that go there.
>The Ever-King. No one knows *what* exactly the Ever-King is truly, not even it's greatest followers seem to truly be able to understand it. But what *is* known is that it is the force that 'commands' the Eternals, it is the thing that the terrors of the Night have their own nightmares about, it is the thing that dictates and rules this wasteland of evil and terror and it is that which will devour the last hope of Humanity in the end. It is the Random force that twists and warps fate itself to bring suffering upon the world without end, and it's power is truly unfathomable and beyond all measure.
>At least, that is what the stories say......
Were humans the only sapient species before the Night Everlasting?
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Honestly, a lot of stuff can be taken from Nightland.
Not that the book itself makes a good setting, it would need some work done to it.
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Might not be a good idea even if it works perfectly.
The Eyeless Man killed the god of the Deep Ones and wears a crown of stars.
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...Yeah, but somewhat more advanced technology allows for interesting esoterica, like the field of quasireal chemistry, which studies the interaction of normal matter with that of the newer things that roam the world, like the substance of the Ever-Lands. (It would be a very poorly known and dangerous field.)
Works either way, I guess.
A hoonter must hoont, after all.
How dangerous is light itself to the darkness?
Can you take an arquebus, fire some kind of incendiary shot, and dispel an abomination like so?
Concentrated Light likely hurts most forces of Night, but it might very well illuminate your location for the *entirety* of the horrible things urging out there, like a large beacon pointing towards a delicious feast. So I suspect that most hunters would keep themselves to only the most basic Light based weaponry, with the heavier stuff reserved for desperate situations.
Could a shitton of light-utilizing infantry push any advantage?
Say you developed a chemical mixture of gunpowder that produced what's basically a glowing "tracer" effect on the ball. Now give arquebuses with this power to 150 conscripts drilled with them and with a basic understanding of the do's and don'ts of fighting night-based abominations.
Could they make any headway? How would they fare in general?
They *might* last well against most of the lesser Night-beasts, but sooner or later they would draw the attention of the Eternals, their Servitors, and the greater aberrations. And once that happens, saying that they would suffer a fate worse than death would be a gross understatement.
There are artificial (read: magical) means of simulating what sunlight once was, diminutive mini-stars that are controlled by an austere, elitist, cultish society, run by a council of zealous priests who frequently demand tribute and sacrifice from those who would want to share in the sunlight. Their creed is that the greater part of humanity is unworthy of the sunlight, that is why things are the way they are, and anyone stuck out there in the darkness is there because they deserve to be.
Probably a subconscious common idea to keep the world building in the same direction, maybe if we didn't a common idea the thread would be all over the place and would die quickly, or the idea of a overpowering dreadful evil is easy to digest and add more of.
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Well, a common idea is necessary, sure, but it doesn’t have to be THAT horrible, you know? There’s always new inventions, undiscovered continents, and the like.
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So no one can see shit?
They see with oil lamps.
One day we'll find out that all these settings were used for the same dark multiverse when it becomes a hit new fantasy novel. I hope that day comes soon, so I don't have to keep hiding these threads.
Could work.
Collect all of the Dying Worlds into one great Stephen King Macroverse type setting.
Bad shit is invading, infecting, corrupting, assimilating and devouring all things everywhere ever as some sort of universal spiritual entropy/fatigue.
The party just wade through it all. They can't revere it, they can't halt it. All they can do is make the individual stories of those poor bastards they meet slightly less shit.
Maybe one day, one day, the trend will reverse. But it will not be by their hand, it will just be the way things are.
It's not like they care.
Their train of logic is pretty much "not enough light, not enough stars, stars make light, therefore we gotta make more stars."
Whether the Ever-King is deceiving them to get more stars to his crown or not is up for debate.
I am implying, however, that they end up making a star so big the Ever-King would figuratively snap his own neck under it's weight if he tried to put it on his crown.
Of course, that's several generations away, but, hey. There's a reason they're called the Starstruck.
>ever-king
*Eyeless One. My bad, i still haven't gotten my sleep schedule in check...
One of the few place inland that is "safe" is the Last Citadel.
It started out way back when as some sort of high temple of an ancient religion that spanned most of the northern half of the continent, then it became the capital building of a large nation or collection of nations unified under a single banner in some way and then it became a fortified city within a city.
Then the lights went out.
The city surrounding The Last Citadel is dead. The once fertile farmland surrounding the city is dead. The river that once flowed besides it is still there like a black ribbon under starless sky, the water is still drinkable. The hot springs that first had the place be a place of reverence that attracted the first temple are still warm which is a real blessing.
The city is not safe to traverse anymore, obviously, and neither is the land around it until you reach the coastline some three hundred miles to the north-west.
The Last Citadel's denizens are mostly human and live off of a largely fish and warm water invertebrate based diet when they can but mostly they live off of a cultivated type of lime that grows on the walls of the warm water caverns in the under-city that is nutritious, quick growing but hideous tasting. Rationing is in effect.
They are extremely wary of outsiders. They do not open their gates to unknowns and will throw rocks at you if you approach unannounced.
They are a great bastion of the Hunters as the relatively large human population can sustain many of them.
They are led by a high priest who claims dubious spiritual descent from the original high priests from when it was a temple.
New Setting
>An ancient evil has that plagued the world from the first days has now been defeated by a band of adventurers
>A new age of exploration has dawned as the saviors of the world strike out into unfamiliar territory to found new kingdoms