Shattered World: Players Guide A GURPS 4th edition campaign outline Suggested supplements ● Basic set ● High Tech ● Low Tech ● Pyramid 3-64, Spaceships 7 (primary inspiration for airship design and statistics) ​ ​ ● Pyramid 3-44, Alternate GURPS II, “Appendix Z: Survivable Guns" ​ ​ ​ ​ ● Supers: Vehicles as powers (p S84) + No School Grognard; Easier Armor Design (Mecha suits) ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Outline Campaign TL 6^ Semi-hard-Realism and Heroic-Raygun-Gothic Action-Adventure Airth was once a world much like ours, in approximately the leading edge of the 20th century. It had civilized lands of modern nations, rich histories decorated with artists and artisans, religion, politics and rampant urbanization. Ideology and doctrine rose up to conflagrate the age old border disputes and national tensions until full fledged war broke out. Armies marched to the front lines, ponderous mecha belching diesel fumes, and the forces clashing on battlefields of barbed wire, mud, and misery. Until One night, with the shadow of another day’s bloody dawn rising, there came a shuddering rumble and a flash of light. Millions of dancing colors scintillated in the black sky, throwing ghostly shadows dancing, and the earth shook below. The front lines of armies shattered and scattered, the borders redrew in an instant, and the continents themselves buckled and heaved. The great spine of the world snapped under the weight of war and strife. The very Airth died that fateful night. The Cataclysm broke the world open, and scattered the land itself to the heavens. In the aftermath of the mysterious ​ explosions, entire swaths of continents found themselves flying through the air, hovering over a hollow earth, the oceans and plains falling away to the cavernous planet below. Days of turmoil and chaos reigned, until a kind of peace settled. The aftermath was devastating; only a handful of nations still existed, the rest having fallen to The Underworld below. A new world ​ ​ of wide open airy skies dotted with flying islands and stormy clouds, in all directions, was all that remained. Below, in the depths, other people stirred! Over the months to come, entire races of people climbed up from the depths, having lived there for millenia below the very ground of Airth! Steady Dwarves, paranoid Kobolds and skittish animalistic gnomes were met, and their shattered lands exposed to the light and airs above. It has been One Thousand Days Since, and the world is once again poised on the brink of destruction. Who are you that would be there, ​ ​ in this dire hour? 2 PCs should be built with the assumption of realistic physical and mental ability for a person living in a fantastic world. Heroic adventurers come from many walks of life; those from Airth are often military trained, professionals, or are at-least self taught survivors. The world has been through a near-apocalyptic war so those left over were either very capable or very lucky to have lived to today. 150/-50 PC suggested starting power level 1. The Surface world is a roughly analogous terran WW1 Technology Level 6, with denizens of the underworld races mixed into the human populations. Many people live urban lives, with most rural folk consisting of either farmers/miners/protected resources of the major governments, or as colonists on far flung islands striking a new claim (For king, country, or good old profit). Adventuring types draw from the various military forces, explorers, scavengers, scientists and those lucky few who lived through the disaster. 2. The Underworld is a strange and still sparsely explored land; The Cataclysm reduced much of dwarven land ​ ​ to rubble or sunk it to the bottom of the new seas. It is full of dark secrets, ruins of the ancient past, and debris from the modern world. 3. Nobody has stepped forward, claiming responsibility for The Cataclysm, and many still point fingers at ‘the ​ ​ ​ enemy’. The world is a tense and unsafe place outside of the walled cities and protected borders of the ​ various empires. Piracy is a threat, vicious weather is a threat, and even “the other guy, over there” is a ​ ​ threat. Consider the following when making a PC ● For Surface-worlders: What nation am I from? Who were my enemies in the war? Did I participate in the ​ ​ combat? How? Where was I on the night The Cataclysm happened? How did I survive The Thousand Days ​ ​ ​ Since? What do I do now? ​ ● For Underworld races: Why am I on the surface now? Where was my home before? How do I relate to the ​ ​ Surface-world? What do I think of high technology? What do I do to get by? 3 The Surface Last Report of Action of U.G.F.S. Battleship “Atropus from Captain Airmaster Weatherfield recovered from wreckage recovered at Eastern border of Gaul federated territories; transcription of mag-tape recorded broadcast follows =[DATE.STAMP TIME.STAMP]= “[EM static damage to tape]...all hands! This is not a drill! All hands ​ ​ ​ -[broken tape section repaired]-...ustained massive structural damage and are ​ ​ attempting an emergency landi -[heavy static] -the sea is just GONE! By the ​ ​ maker! By the LORDS… Nothing is left below but air and storm! WAIT! What ​ ​ is...BRACE FOR IMPAC-” ​ ​ =[transcription ends [DATE.STAMP TIME.STAMP]= ​ The lands above, known collectively as The Surface, refers to the remains of the modern nations that survived the ​ ​ destruction of the Cataclysm. Scattered above and below these flying continents, smaller islands of stone and earth drift through the skies. The air swirls in a maelstrom, shimmering clear and blue, or wrapped in storm clouds tainted with deadly miasma, no telling which will turn with the wind. As the world continues to turn, and lives continue in the skies, it seems there may still be hope that humanity can recover. In the thousand days since The ​ Cataclysm, there has been a kind of peace. Society carries on picking at the wreckage of the near apocalypse, with ​ the constant terrible threat of war now looming again on the horizons. How many more days can it last? The Land of Airth The globe of Airth was a land of lush beauty and verdant landscapes. Sweeping vistas under bright skies and bordering shining oceans of blue waters. The Shattered Worlds of Airth are now a chaotic mess of drifting landmasses dotted with windswept heaths and rotten marshes, drifting over a maelstrom of roiling 4 storms and breakneck winds. Below, the ruins of the continents drift like flotsam on invisible currents, the bright paths of Aether shifting as the northern lights. Splashes of color and energy shifting between translucent greens and opaque deadly lightning, they toss earth, sea and ship until you reach the Underworld Depths. There the belly of the beast of the world is exposed. Showering energies of strange origins from the core lift waterspout and geysers, throwing oceans of water and a slurry of broken civilization about in its grasp. Several distinct layers of this new broken land and sky exist in a kind of equilibrium; the four areas make up the known world, as it is remapped and rediscovered daily, drifting on the will of the gods. The Surface is the layer where the majority of landmass still flies safely in the air. The nations of Galicia and ​ ​ ​ PVUT reside on mostly intact singular landmasses, riddled with broken drifting edges and cascading falls of ​ water and earth. The Confederation islands remain mostly intact as a kind of snaking series of archipelagos, ​ ​ though many single islands of land drift together in unison. The topmost layer, The Stratos, consists of several errant islands and landmasses mainly holding heavy ​ ​ deposits of the exotic Levistone and Sparkstone materials. The islands often carry remnant sections of the old surface world (sections of wilderness, farmland, or urban areas) but the high altitude and often constant exposure leaves them dessicated and frigid husks. An extreme environment to explore or visit, and now seen as highly valuable sources of their exotic resources by all modern nations. Below the safety of the upper layers is The Roil; a maelstrom of ruinous activity, it is composed of tumbling ​ ​ chunks of earth, cascading rivers of flying seawater, and vast fields of the Aetheric energies that toss the materiel about. The drifting lands found here are referred to as The Lost Islands, as any solid mass left to ​ ​ drift in the near constant assault of violent weather is often reduced to broken rubble within days of 5 descent. Many chunks of the lofty Surface have drifted down in The Thousand Days Since, broken away from ​ ​ their mother continents above, only to be crushed, boiled and blasted into so much broken rubble below. The solid land of the core of the world is known as The Underworld. The Kingdom of the dwarves, ​ ​ shattered but healing, sheltered from the Aether streams and more solid than any flying island above. A single remnant mass of the center of the world of Airth now orbited above by the storms and flying lands. Here, seas of the earthly waters have descended and found rest, between the broken ruins of dwarf-holds and warrens of the kobolds and gnomes. Ancient holds of the short peoples once in darkness and now only in misty shadow. A land plagued by monsters and madness, of ruin and calamity, and ripe with the promise of the future of Airth. General Knowledge ● The world is known as Airth; since the Cataclysm, there are the three major surviving countries (Galicia, ​ ​ ​ the PVUT, and The Confederation) that are on The Surface. There are free islands floating in the Stratos ​ ​ ​ and the Roil, but there are fewer every day. ● The world revolves in 24 hour days, measured in weeks, months and years.