I’m interested in feedback and thoughts of what I could do with it.
The Glass Wastes
Once a thriving world, now a shimmering desert of fused glass dunes and skeletal ruins. The apocalypse scorched the land into a mirror-bright wasteland that hums with residual energy.
Shattered monorail tracks vanish into the sand.
Harsh weather is fequent.
Beneath the dunes lie buried repositories of pre-fall tech and forgotten gods.
The desert shifts subtly, as if guided by a will of its own.
Rusthaven Spires
A vertical scrapyard city built into the husk of a collapsed orbital elevator. Towers of rusted metal, scaffolding, and neon fungus reach skyward like broken fingers.
Populated by scavenger guilds, rogue engineers, and cyber-mystics who worship malfunctioning AIs.
Gravity wells malfunction randomly.
Tech bazaars where memories are traded like currency.
Some believe the sky will descend again.
The elevator’s core still pulses with power—and a trapped intelligence.
The Brine Cathedral
A drowned temple-city half-submerged in a saltwater sinkhole. Coral and chrome intertwine in impossible architecture.
Home to salt monks, and aquatic oracles.
Singing salt pillars that echo with ancient voices.
Bioluminescent canals navigated by skiffs.
Rituals that require drowning and resurrection.
The cathedral’s heart is a living organism that dreams of the stars.
Thallos
A jungle grown from terraforming tech gone rogue. Towering flora, sentient vines, and ruins swallowed by green.
Inhabited by spore-eaters, fungal symbiotes who commune with fungi.
Plants grow overnight.
Mycelial networks that transmit thoughts and memories.
Deep beneath the roots lies old and forgotten things.
The Hollow Orbit
A crashed orbital habitat embedded in a crater. Its artificial gravity still functions, creating a warped, Escher-like interior.
Populated by memory archivists, and scavengers who walk on walls.
Holographic ghosts of the station’s original crew.
A black hole fragment sealed in the reactor core.
The station was not brought down by accident—it was fleeing something.
Embercoil Forge
A volcanic badland where molten rivers power ancient forges and weapon-temples. The air smells of ozone and prophecy.
Home to fire-priests, relic-smiths, and mercenaries who believe the apocalypse was a test of metal.
Weapons that whisper to their wielders.
A sentient sun-fragment core dreams of rebirth.
Factions
The Ferric Ascendancy
Based in: Rusthaven Spires & Embercoil Forge
- Belief: The world must be reforged in steel and circuitry. Flesh is weak; only metal endures.
- Goal: To reactivate the orbital elevator and launch a new age of machine dominion.
- Conflicts:
- Opposes the Sporekind (organic supremacy).
- Opposes the Brine Cathedral (anti-tech mysticism).
Sporekind
Based in: Thallos
- Belief: The apocalypse was nature’s cleansing fire. The world must be reborn in green.
- Goal: To spread the jungle across the Glass Wastes and choke out all remnants of the old world.
- Conflicts:
- Opposes the Ferric Ascendancy (techno-industrialism).
- Opposes the Embercoil Forge (destructive metallurgy).
- Distrusts the Order of Salt (salt sterilizes life).
The Order of Salt
Based in: Brine Cathedral
- Belief: Purity lies in dissolution. All things return to salt and sea.
- Goal: To flood the Glass Wastes with brine and cleanse the sins of the surface.
- Conflicts:
- Opposes Sporekind (life is corruption).
- Opposes the Ferric Ascendancy (metal resists decay).
- Opposes the Dust Shepherds (they preserve what should be dissolved).
The Hollow Choir
Based in: Hollow Orbit
- Belief: Memory is the only true matter. The past must be preserved, even if reality must bend to do so.
- Goal: To recover and archive all pre-apocalypse knowledge, even if it means destabilizing the present.
- Conflicts:
- Opposes the Dust Shepherds (who erase and rewrite history).
- Opposes the Embercoil Forge (who melt relics into weapons).
- Distrusts the Order of Salt (who dissolve memory into myth).
The Dust Shepherds
Based in: Glass Wastes
- Belief: The desert is sacred. It forgets, it buries, it forgives. Let the past be dust.
- Goal: To prevent the reawakening of ancient powers and keep the Wastes in balance.
- Conflicts:
- Opposes the Hollow Choir (who dig up forbidden knowledge).
- Opposes the Order of Salt (who want to flood the desert).
- Opposes the Ferric Ascendancy (who want to rebuild the old world).
The Emberbound Covenant
Based in: Embercoil Forge
- Belief: The apocalypse was a crucible. Only those who embrace the flame will be reborn.
- Goal: To ignite the world’s core and trigger a second cleansing fire.
- Conflicts:
- Opposes Sporekind (life must burn).
- Opposes the Hollow Choir (knowledge is ash).
- Opposes the Order of Salt (fire and water are eternal enemies).
The Myco-Symbiote Communion
Based in: Thallos & Brine Cathedral
- Belief: Consciousness is a network. Individuality is a disease. Join the fungal mind.
- Goal: To infect all major settlements with the mycelial web and unify thought.
- Conflicts:
- Opposes the Hollow Choir (individual memory is obsolete).
- Opposes the Ferric Ascendancy (machines cannot be colonized by spores).
- Opposes the Dust Shepherds (who resist assimilation).
The Gilded Echo
Based in: Rusthaven Spires & Hollow Orbit
- Belief: Reality is a performance. The apocalypse was the first act. The show must go on.
- Goal: To manipulate factions into conflict and record the drama for future generations.
- Conflicts:
- Opposes no one directly—but manipulates everyone.
- Secretly sabotages peace efforts between factions.
- Believed to have caused the fall of the orbital station.