Oroborealis - Antifa Roleplay Setting (5E compatible)

 

This world was built with an amazing group of kids at community centers. These thoughts and ideas were first committed to paper in 2024, and remain relevant. 

The kids know what is going on.

Oroborealis

Our world is Dust, Ice, and Fire. There are two lights in the sky. Stories say there were more, once. Thousands and thousands. Like a sparkle of snow across a deep dark lake. It’d be a nice story, if it were true. 

Oroborealis is a world of extremes. Extreme heat and cold, rich and poor, high and low tech, old and young, living and dead. This is clockwork-necropolis setting, designed to accommodate tactical urban combat, deep roleplay, and philosophical discussions.

History

Long ago, a lich by the name of Malachor fled angelic persecution with millions of stolen souls. Each planet he visited was doomed, not by him, but by the angels in tow that deemed their populations corrupted by undead influence. He attempted to save one such planet with a magic trick. He gathered up space and time, pressed it down as if through a hole, and tied it off. The two suns, a handful of angels, and one and a half planets were hidden in a knot, cut off from the rest of reality. With the people successfully shrouded from starving angels, he continued his escape. The angels ignored the outer planets drifting untethered into the void, and continued their chase.

Astro-geology

The world of Oroborealis orbits in a figure-eight through a binary star system. Their magnetic fields intermingle in such a way that it always aligns the planet to the nearest star. Every six months when passing between the twin stars, the half of the planet that is a scorching desert, trades with the other that is a frozen tundra. Along the planet's meridian, where the sun perpetually rests on the horizon, a narrow strip of habitable land supports highly stratified societies. 

An unstable asteroid belt formed when half a planet was caught in the tying. Over many years it crumbled into a dense ring. At the very edge of the planet's orbit, meteoric bombardments become almost constant. Artificers, crafters, scientists, alchemists, arcanists and engineers rely upon the strange minerals and alloys mined from these meteorites making them incredibly valuable.

A mountain range of sediment has formed a high point around the meridian with deep canyons cut into it by the glacial melts moving from front to back. Two train tracks wrap around the planet crossing those canyons on bridges. The rail links four major cities, each with their own speciality.

Cosmology

This space-time Knot prevents anything from entering or exiting this cosmic island. The rest of the planar system is inaccessible. This has several effects.

Divine and Pact magic is rare and hard to access. The only extraplanar entities that you could draw power from are the ones that were here when the knot was tied. You might be able to find them walking around. It’s a small world, and these are small Gods. 

The weave of magic itself is tangled in the knot. Divination magic cannot see outside the knot. Messages cannot be relayed in or out. Teleportation cannot find targets into or out of the knot and will fizzle. 

With no access to the outer planes, there is no path for departing souls to reach an afterlife. Souls have nowhere to go after death, causing them to unravel if they lack purpose or connection. Honored souls linger but eventually begin to fray and revert back into cosmic energy. While Frayed, souls can become tangled with other strands of sentience. Frayed souls can knit their trauma into terrible amalgams that wreak havoc looking for bodies to hold them, and end their pain.

Geography

Four cities exist on the planet at each spoke of a compass rose. They have much in common, like the connection by a pair of rail lines that encircle the planet. Rail bridges lie at the heart of cities, passing over canyons. Cities all have bell towers and energy barriers protected through black tourmaline crystals to ward off untethered souls from the outside. Each city is home to unique industries and corporations.

• Northington - Agriculture/Textiles

• Scythe Farms

• Doctor Beak’s Botanicals

• Curtain Call Textiles

• Eastreach - Tech, Science

• Coatings, alloys, catalysts, materials science, neon, solar panels

• Styx Ice Liners 

• House of Commons - Political seat of power

• Styxborough (South)  - Stone, Fabrication, Metallurgy

• Epitaph Emporium - stone carvers

• Salt & Sulfur - minerals and supplements

• Reliable Tools, Machinery manufacture

• Meteorite mining supplier

• Marrow Hill (West) - Formaldehyde, tinctures, chemistry, alchemy

• Marrow Hill Formaldehyde

• Caduceus supplements

• Zomb-Eaze - post-mortem nutrition supplement

• New Life Hospital - renown medical institution
  

Sociology

Life on the planet is hard. The lack of fertile land, storms of souls, and the sudden and intense seasonal changes are harrowing. Those that can protect people with unique technological advancements have become wealthy. The organization and maintenance of that wealth requires a strict social order.

Possessions are commonplace and are disruptive to profit and property. To prevent this from happening people are expected to create vessels for the souls of their loved ones. The more your soul recognizes the vessel available to it, the slower it frays. 

Insiders

People that perpetuate the organization of wealth actively or passively enjoy the protection of cities. Institutions fund various public works just enough to perpetuate the system that maintains their control. Their factories, smelters, forges, offices and bureaus require energy and an easy proximity to lines of commerce and communication. These gleaming towers are built along mountainous ridgelines, straddling vast deep canyons.

Profiteers

People like Bureaucrats, Statesmen, Founders, Executives, Collectors, Foremen, Bosses, Bankers and Tycoons, are the ones who benefit most from the world being the way it is. They take what they can, and give only what they must. Those with means either have their bodies embalmed for further use, or commission teams of engineers to craft Coils which are exquisitely crafted clockwork androids for their ancestors to possess. This allows for an extreme concentration of wealth and power as rich people approach immortality.

Trogs

Working class city dwellers are known as Trogs. There are many things that machines cannot do, and to extract that value requires workers. Average folks find jobs as miners, coal shovelers, journeymen, bakers, line cooks, and couriers. Because their proximity to the rail line is less crucial, Trogs live in caves along the canyon walls, and the trains go by overhead. Flooding is a very real concern every half year. Trogs seek out painters, carvers, and sculptors to produce decorated urns, idols and effigies to house their family after death. A few rare people may intentionally be elevated to a higher social standing. An actor here, a politician there, and there’s just enough of an example that people can idolize. Even then, while they may have more money than they did before, their good fortune is corrosive. It eats away at their memories until they believe that this could have happened to anyone.

The Day of Remembrance is slowly being erased as corporations celebrate Beach Week. This is when the planet passes between its two suns every six months. It’s so hot, nothing can get done. Businesses have to reconfigure to accommodate the new seasons, and floods have to be diverted past the poor districts. What people don’t know is that a large amount of the weave is gathered in the knot, and the knot lies in the middle of the solar system. With the abundance of magic, spirits become easily visible and sometimes tangible.

Enforcers

Because untethered souls are potentially dangerous, they must be registered with your municipality. Under the guise of safety and community service, a well-funded elite team of exorcists, necromancers and death priests patrol the streets to keep them clear of wayward spirits. Imposition Ceremonial Exorcisms are also tasked with the exorcism of any unregistered vessels. Because the process to register your vessel is long, expensive, and arduous, a lot of folks don’t register their deceased. Without so much as knocking, these goons will kick down doors and start cracking urns. Authorities take advantage of the increased spectral activity to raid the homes of Trogs and find undocumented spirits. They take every opportunity to call these former living people “Ghosts” to further dehumanize them. They have convinced themselves that they are the thin thread that society is hanging by, and that their ends justify their means.

Outsiders

City life doesn’t suit all folks. Bandits, ice pirates, druids, cowboys and wildmen roam the wastes. Networks of insulated caves and aquifers hidden within these extreme landscapes, are guarded by naturalists. Outside the city, everyone needs a way to ward off possession: wards, charms, chimes, or good old fashion soul-screen lotion applied to the skin. Wasteland kids know an oral tradition, but it's so diluted it's impossible to parse. “One day we’ll all climb over the rainbow wall and find the rest of the world.”

Druids

Naturalists such as these live in caves and tunnels across the planet's surface. They feel the unnatural way of the world, and want to return the planet to the planar system. They want to find a gateway to the feywild where they could pass over into the deep green. Druids know the ancient ways of decomposition. When a person dies their deathbed transforms into a garden, an explosion of life, and their soul is immediately dispersed.

Bandits

Raw materials cities want come from the wastes. On the way back, wastelanders lie, cheat and steal to get what they need. Sometimes they’ll sneak into your camp, or just take what’s yours down the barrel of a gun. Operating on the cold side they’re known as ‘Ice Pirates.’

Miners

Miners have a foot in both worlds. They work in the wastes hollowing out space rocks, but they sell their finds back in the city. Every one of them has a story about how they saw their friend get crushed, eaten, exploded or had their soul sucked out through their nostrils because they couldn’t outrun a soulstorm.

The End is Nigh

People aren’t sure if it’s always been like this. It’s been like this long enough that people don’t remember a different way. Everyone knows there has to be a better way. People who are smart and could figure it out get hired by various companies to invent and reconfigure materials and technologies to reinforce the status quo.