GURPS Tempest Part Four
What’s going on with the setting on a Meta Level
To utilize terms from other GURPS sourcebooks, Tempest Earth used to be a rather normal late Cyberpunk world (TL 9 going into TL10), right up until the Nuclear War, where the detonations, coinciding with a planetary alignment (and perhaps some unknown X factor) turned the numerous atomic explosions into semi-permanent banestorms that raised global mana levels, awakening ley-lines across the planet. These banestorms triggered massive reality quakes across the planet, further transforming large sections of it beyond recognition.
What remains after approximately 150 years of turmoil, is a world with only a little resemblance to Earth prior to The Event. Human civilization is finally starting to rebuild, being a mix of descendants of survivors of the cataclysm and descendants of banestorm immigrants and temporally displaced reality quake victims. Temporal instabilities have made reconstructing historical events on a global scale rather difficult, and even the most widely accepted post-event date is more a matter of conjecture and agreed consensus than anything more accurate. As as a result, the commonly accepted “the nuclear disaster triggered the magical apocalypse” theory is only one of several, and other theories include a demonic invasion gone wrong, experiments with parachronic technology gone horribly wrong, and the Event being a natural occurrence that just coincided with the nuclear war.
The world is divided up into various regions with varying mana levels and science zones, some of which can change over time, either naturally or through artificial intervention. The cyclical changes in mana levels and science zones are part of the reason human civilization took so long to re-establish itself in the wake of the Event.
Magic-using civilizations managed to thrive in this chaos, and until recently technological civilizations had trouble truly expanding. But with the N.A.R.C.’s recent development (or acquisition) of a technology called the Reality Stabilizer, they have begun a slow campaign of expanding their zone of influence, and try to bring some normalcy (as THEY define it) back to the world.
The N.A.R.C. are not the only faction trying to push the alteration of reality to their desired outcome, however. There are other factions across the world, some Technological, others Supernatural, that seek to reshape the world according to their own desires.
Lexicon of Terms:
-Banestorm: localized events that transport beings and objects within a certain area to another dimension or timeline. These can range from a few yards to a few miles around. The Banestorms of Tempest are uniquely potent, in that they have had impacts across multiple miles, somehow acting in combination with the leylines to extend their effect.
-Mana: the ambient magical energy manipulated by spells. The amount of this energy, called the mana level, can fluctuate across different areas (or worlds). These variations are known as Mana Levels.
-Mana Level: the variation in Mana energies within a world or specific areas within it. This comes in five levels:
- Very High Mana: anyone who knows spells can cast them. Mages who know spells recover FP as soon as they spend it to cast spells. But any spellcasting failure turns into a critical failure, and actual critical failures turn into massive disasters.
- High Mana: anyone who knows spells can cast them.
- Normal Mana: only mages (someone with Magery) can cast spells, which work normally. This is the default for most fantasy settings.
- Low Mana: only mages can cast spells, and all spells perform at -5 to skill for all purposes.
- No Mana: no one can use magic at all.
-Science Zone (originally from the Pyramid article Yrth 2): These are regions of space were technological levels vary, preventing certain advanced technologies from working within them. When operating in a lower tech zone, higher tech devices will accumulate gadget bugs (Basic p 477) and item skill penalties over time, until the technology becomes essentially unusable. While many Zones are static, others move (some slowly, some quickly) and can pass through material objects: Science Zones sometimes combine into larger Zones and sometimes "bounce off" of each other.
-Science Zone One (SZ1): Permits the use of any technology up to the Industrial Revolution (TL 5), with electronics being mostly non-functional.
-Science Zone Two (SZ2): Permits the use of any technology up to the late Digital Age (Circa 2025, or TL 8). More advanced technologies are at increasing penalties for operation as the TL advances, and Super-Science technology use triggers a roll from the Random Side Effect Table (Basic p.479) on a failed roll.
-Science Zone Three (SZ3): allows technologies from approximately 2025 through 2070 to operate normally, while Super-Science technology use triggers a roll from the Random Side Effect Table (Basic p.479) on a critical failure.
-Science Zone Four (SZ4): Tolerates all levels of Technology and Super-Science works normally.
-Reality Quakes: Also known as “Ontoclysms” these are massive upheavals in space and time that rewrite history, leaving behind a new past and erasing the old timeline (although some remnants of lost timelines may remain: see Reality Shards). Reality Quakes can even alter laws of nature and physics; mana levels can shift dramatically (from High to No Mana or the reverse), geological features can be replaced, gods can die or be born, even new stars and planets might manifest.
-Reality Shards: reality shards are items (or creatures) that are anomalous fragments of other realities resulting from a reality quake, often “remnants” of overwritten timelines. In game terms, these are usually built as powers with Gadget limitations (breakable, can be stolen, etc).
-Reality Stabilizer: These Super-Science devices create a zone of static reality across an area of [X] miles that sets the local laws to settings decided by the creator of the device, allowing for manipulation of mana levels and science zone levels.
