Broken is my pet project; slow, meandering and gradually crawling towards the light. It’s an RPG, based in what I hope is a pretty unique setting, and I’ll be trying to post some of the setting stuff here, for general perusal and comment. Some rules stuff may go up, but I’m trying to keep that all together until finished.
Contents
(brief) Introduction
Broken is a shattered world; the inside surface of a hollow sphere, the tunnels below and the floating islands of rock above; remnants of pages ages of the World. Until the modern age is has undergone the Cycle; waves of destruction, the Turnings several thousand years apart, wiping clean the surface of the world, leaving but a few survivors. But now the Cycle appears to have ceased; it is the Last Sun, and sages claim either that the Cycle is finished; this is the final shape of the world, or that the last Turning will come, and with it the collapse of reality.
Broken is a strange world; Bipedal four-armed crocodilians raise mountains with their songs and seek apotheosis in the stone forms of their adopted ancestors. Sky-pirates sacrifice their captives to feed their floating tree-galleys. And cyborg angels from before the doors of time opened seek pacts with entities beyond meaning to tear down the roots of creation. Mountains float, suns burn with ice and darkness, and even the horses of Broken are spirit-creatures of wind and sky. Beneath all lie the Rivers; flows of aspected energy whose manifestations within the Void form the material world, accessible to those with the right gift or the right technology.
Broken is a different world. Technology as we know doesn’t exist, only a blend of the scientific and the supernatural; a science based on harnessing flows of paranormal energy. Clockwork mechanisms re-weave circuits in a thousand combinations of names and symbols; Names, which when properly harnessed can shape the world around and beyond. Spirits and elemental beings are bound to arcane machinery for power, motion and stranger applications. Even at the level of more rudimentary crafts, every smith or mason knows the Names to invoke and the sigils that should be carved to ensure the integrity of his work.
And amongst all of this stand the Adept. Men and women of all races (and even species…) who have taken the first step towards a higher state of being. Some event or choice has made them creatures of pure self-determination: no longer truly part of the people they came from they are something new and different. It is the Adept around which this age of the world will inevitably revolve; they are the key to the survival or destruction of the world.
History
The history of Broken is marked by the passing of the Cycle; the thousands-of-years apart holocausts that destroy and re-make much of the world. Each holocaust is counted as a Turning, and the years between them form a unit of time known as a Sun. There is no fixed period for a Sun – most last several thousand years, yet some, particularly since the fall of the Csöric Dominion are much, much shorter.
Cosmology
The World of Broken is not as we would understand. At its heart it is formed of Patterns of supernatural energy, described by the Urtongue and shaped by the Cycle. At heart it is a hollow sphere; layers of broken land radiating out from the suns at its heart, surrounding by the formless Abyss. The Wall of Bells; giant stone artifacts hanging throughout the world serve to stabilise it against the depredations of Abyssal entities and energies, and light, darkness, summer and winter are provided by the Great Dance of suns within its hollow heart.
The Great Dance
The Nature of Patterns
The Rivers
Adepthood
Urtongue
The Layers of the World
The Abyss
The Wall and its Builders
The World of Broken
Amongst this shatter, hostile world, some pockets of stability exist. The Thousand Tribes of man are strong and versatile; carving out domains and enclaves all across the Layers of the World. The Ethoun; ancient and mysterious still pursue their myriad quests and jihads, religious factions carving their edicts into the stone of their rivals’ fortress-libraries. The Anam, most ancient of the peoples lurk somewhere in their Otherworlds, strange survivalist forbears of humanity. And other, stranger peoples live amongst the World and the Otherworlds, birthed by alien energies. Ogres of brass and burning flesh, those tainted by Abyssal energies and the dreaming servants of Leviathan; they all have a part to play in the re-forming of the World.
Peoples of the World
Rivercraft and Riverwork
Places of Note
Gods, Daemons and Spirits
