A Is For Armageddon

[deadmanshand]

This is an idea that popped into my head while taking a shower just a few minutes ago. But don't be alarmed. It has nothing to do with what I was doing in the shower. As far as you know. And it's not a game proposal. I just wanted to share the idea and see what people think. Mostly I just want to get it down before it leaves me.

What if there was a world built from the remnants of other worlds? Built from all the worlds that have ended. Worlds that have ended in every fashion imaginable and many that are not. A land of the dead for entire worlds. A patchwork of ruined cities and monuments and mix matched wildernesses with nuked wastelands and craters from meteors that fell from alien skies. Every time a world dies new places appear and when the last survivors of that world die so does it's parts in the world. Ripped clean into the void.

All populated by the survivors swept up in the ends of their worlds and brought here. People forging new lives in the remnants of old worlds. Having and raising children there. Some human, some not. Some so far from human that there very existence is a threat to mankind. Empires have been born, raised, and died without ever having known a true world of their own. Magic, alien science, and psychic abilities exist along side the riveted junkyard tech of the setting.

So this my idea. Planescape meets Post Apocalypse. A thousand worlds in one giant junkyard of a setting built from endless apocalypses. What do you think?

[Caehlim]

Pure awesome.

[Inkidu]

How do the people survive? :|

To elaborate:

There are quite a few ways the world could end, and most of them will wipe out humanity. All of them definitely will.

Zombie apocalypse plus gray good scenario equals planet-wiper.

[deadmanshand]

Because they were alive when their little chunk of the world slid into the junkyard world. Their world was in the midst of ending and then this section - maybe sections - get wrenched away. Slammed into this new world. One morning they are looking out over New York Bay and the next day they are looking over an alien forest from a world that lost a battle with pandemic. Every new world adds new threats to the junkyard - I really need a better name - but the apocalypse never spreads past the worlds it came with.

[Oniya]

So, theoretically, the people whose planet was going to be sucked into a dying star might have the medical tech to cure the zombie plague on the planet that went WWZ?

[deadmanshand]

Theoretically - yes but could they cure everyone? How long will there technology hold up? Will the be able to use the resources of this new world for it? Will their medicine work on a human or whatever that other species is?

[Oniya]

I was just trying to think of ways that the 'Armageddon' aspect could be kept in check or even mitigated, since combinations of disasters could easily end the scenario before anything interesting happens.

[deadmanshand]

Like I said the Armageddon's don't spread past the world they brought there. It stops where that world stops. If a zombie apocalypse brings New York there the zombie apocalypse won't leave New York. They bring new dangers to a world but they can't end it. Now some of the survivors of those other worlds... well... that's a different story.

[Inkidu]

I was just trying to think of ways that the 'Armageddon' aspect could be kept in check or even mitigated, since combinations of disasters could easily end the scenario before anything interesting happens.

That's my point of pondering as well.

Like I said the Armageddon's don't spread past the world they brought there. It stops where that world stops. If a zombie apocalypse brings New York there the zombie apocalypse won't leave New York. They bring new dangers to a world but they can't end it. Now some of the survivors of those other worlds... well... that's a different story.

Why?

[deadmanshand]

Because each end is tied to it's own world. It's a memory of an apocalypse not the apocalypse itself. A memory of a dead world. It can only exist where it's remembered.

[Inkidu]

Because each end is tied to it's own world. It's a memory of an apocalypse not the apocalypse itself. A memory of a dead world. It can only exist where it's remembered.

Wouldn't the memories of the survivors carry the world wherever they themselves walk?

[deadmanshand]

In little bits and pieces perhaps but not the full thing. The memory is just too big for one person or even a group of people. A small piece of it is different. That's why I mentioned magic and alien science and psychics. Maybe that man who survived the zombie apocalypse finds that he can call zombies when he's in danger. They are a threat to him to but at least he expects them. The blue skinned three fingered woman who's world was destroyed by an alien invasion? Maybe she can build alien devices when she needs too. Potent but they don't last long. Maybe the survivors of a pandemic find that they can inflict it's symptoms on others.

It's all context sensitive. A thematic logic binding everything together.

[Zakharra]

 Would the people be restricted to their specific world? If the disaster that destroyed their world is restricted to that chunk, why would the people be allowed to leave it?

[deadmanshand]

Because the people aren't a memory. They're real. Alive.

[Oniya]

So - the 'end agent' is kind of like the way Apollo was in the old Trek episode 'Who Mourns Adonis?'

[Joel]

This sounds a lot like "Dark Tower".  Might that be up your alley?

Also if you want to get all meta-physical about it... and maybe you might want to explore something non-linear where empirical truths do not apply... as in -- what is truth and what is knowable because then maybe you could consider the modern physics' perspective that both the past and the future fade into abstraction the further it is from the present?  For example... one world's perspective of reality contrasts with another world's perspective and where they do not mesh there are areas of the world where things simply... get weird.  In the same way, physics break down in the real world too, like in a black hole.  So anyway, my point being is that not everything can be explained and that could be a really interesting aspect to use in a setting as mind f-ky as yours. 

Hope you develop it more.

[deadmanshand]

Oniya - No earthly idea. I am not a Star Trek fan and have never seen that episode.

Joel - How I despise the Dark tower series. Just terrible, terrible writing from beginning to end. Especially the end.

But the metaphysical thing? That was always the idea. Different worlds and realities and ends coming together to make a world that isn't a world. Places where the laws of the world are more like guidelines. Physics becoming a suggestion rather than a reality. Metaphysics a certainty rather than a mystery.

[Oniya]

Oniya - No earthly idea. I am not a Star Trek fan and have never seen that episode.

Sorry for the assumption.  I can sum it up, though.  Basically, the crew of a space ship discovers a planet where a being with god-like powers exists.  After several interactions with him, they determine that those powers are able to be manifested due to a 'temple' structure, and more importantly, the fact that the crew believes that the being is a god.  Confronted by active rejection of his claim (and a couple zaps to the structure), the being quickly loses power and fades away.

[deadmanshand]

I would say that that is a close approximation to what I was thinking. Only the temple structure being the world it ended and the belief being the survivors of that world.

[Oniya]

That was how I was envisioning it.  Since the survivors of a world don't necessarily believe in a different world's apocalypse, it might not affect them (unless they are 'convinced' of its validity.)

[deadmanshand]

Not exactly. If you go into part of a world you are subject to the dangers there. Whether that danger is the inhabitants, the atmosphere of an alien world, an irradiated wasteland, or the zombies that ended life there. It takes belief to make it real outside that area. For as long as the survivors of a world exist the danger is real there. That world is always ending.

Now those ends can escape their worlds under certain circumstances. When the stars are right kind of thing. Bring enough people together under one banner, get them to believe in one apocalypse strongly enough, and you can watch a civilization be wiped out by the final breath of a dying world.