Adventure Stew: The Weird World of 2999

[PTTG]

After a thousand years of chaos and primeval wilderness, your player's merciless savagery may be their only key to survival...

The idea behind Adventure Stew is that it is a combination and intermingling of diverse adventuring tropes of all sorts, intentionally selected to create a setting primed for adventure and barbarism. In this sense, it is inspired by everything from Korgoth of Barbaria to Adventure Time, AD&D to Game of Thrones, The music video of Knights of Cydonia to Fallout, and a healthy heaping of anything else worth adding. A prototypical party might include a laser-pistol-packin' cowboy, an uplifted dolphin with telekinetic psi powers and legs, a sorceress with a hulking alternate form, and a cyborg barbarian.

The story, such as it is, starts in the mists of lost time. Long ago, the fire-war scarred and poisoned the land, slaying nearly all. Those who survived sought to cure the world, but they only succeeded in part. They used the strange magic of Na'notek to clean the poison, but Na'notek is a capricious spirit that also destroyed much of their powerful machines. The ancients, too, sought to restore the creatures of the world, but their attempts often produced mutated parodies as grotesque as they are voracious; in some cases, they even produced trogloditic variants of humans, manipulated into forms more suited for the chaotic new world, or used machines and steel to replace weak flesh... but it was all for naught. One by one, the enclaves of survivors fell to their own hubris.

For centuries, only savages roamed the wastes of the world. Learning was all but forgotten. The strong dominated the weak. So it has been.

In the centuries of chaos, the poisons of the firewars, the influence of Na'notek, and the manipulation of the survivors has all together stewed into a toxic brew of strange and powerful influences. Many tribes have grown into new cities and enclaves, all of them islands in the wild and savage world of the year we today would know as 2999.

There's the basic idea. Any and all comments, suggestions, refinements, and question are welcome. In particular, what are some "adventury" tropes that can (and therefore should) be added, and what justifications are plausible?

For example, Zombies. They're a common trope in all sorts of adventures, so here's a justification for them. There may even be other kinds lurching about, but these are the common ones. Zombies are human corpses influenced by a nanotechnology device created during the fall of civilization, after the nuclear war. The nanotechnology was supposed to accelerate healing and restore metabolism, and was capable of using networked processing to enhance its functioning. However, it had a number of fatal flaws, in particular brain damage and dermal necrosis. The associated violent impulses in the victims is not well understood... The nanomachines are spread through body fluid contact, and in the early stages of infection are actually useful (Regeneration +1 FP/minute and Fast Healing), but after (HT+2d) days, it enters the terminal state as the nanites replicate out of control. The victim takes 1 toxic damage every 24 hours as the nanites infiltrate cells in greater numbers. When the subject dies, they collapse for a number of seconds equal to their old HT score (more robust people have more resilient cells), then rise as a zombie.

Zombies have 2 IQ, 8 PER and 5 DX. They only use all-out (powerful) attacks and grappling, and have Injury Tolerance (unliving). Despite their low individual IQ, their networking abilities allow them to execute alarmingly cunning tactics if there are enough of them. In effect, the zombies as a group have a Tactics skill equal to the number of zombies, but no more than 15. They retain physical traits, but lose all access to mental and social ones.

[(E)]

The noble bloodlines

Desendants of genetically enhanced individuals. Hybridization reduces the effectiveness of the genetics so "pureblooded" (and possibly inbred) Nobel houses exist.

[patchwork]

You know, Numenera has books and books of this stuff. Just throw out the stupid timeline and replace it with something more sensible. Heck, keep the stupid timeline as something many people believe but isn't true. But for your interest...

Glimmers are taken by many to be cursed locations and malefic possessing spirits. They're actually the end result centuries of memetic and neurological research turned into viral marketing, loaded into still-functioning processors with neural induction gear. Some of these devices may in fact be in orbit, which would explain their regular periods and lack of apparent connection to any terrestrial device; others are in fact linked to large devices on Earth, typically buried in rock. Glimmers begin by inducing visual and auditory hallucinations, catchy and soothing mantra-jingles while distorting the faces and voices of others to make it seem like they don't like you, don't understand you, only Kool-Pop understands you. The afflicted subject begins craving things that do not exist in 2999 (the most egregious example being a craving for human meat, a vat-grown macabre and outre specialty for the postmodern shock-jock at the time...and there's no vats anymore, so...yeah. Fully functional obedient robots are another ad that can lead to unfortunate consequences fast). They talk to themselves in sing-song and withdraw socially, perhaps trying to build the thing they can see will make them perfectly happy...and as they grow more desperate to acquire a product which no longer exists, become less rational and more prone to violent outbursts, while also convincing other people that they too need the product...here, stand under the open stars at this hour and listen to their song...

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by patchwork

You know, Numenera has books and books of this stuff. Just throw out the stupid timeline and replace it with something more sensible. Heck, keep the stupid timeline as something many people believe but isn't true. But for your interest...

I'll take a look into it. I like the lore bit too.