Campaign Setting

Seemingly in the blink of an eye, the world of the Ancients was destroyed in the event now known as ‘the Fall’.

Nuclear holocaust ignited the Fall, but it was not the primary instrument of destruction. The sudden deaths of a billion people in the initial strikes triggered a psychic backlash. The sudden influx of energy sent mystic waves of energy rippling across the globe the like an earthquake. The earth shuddered and heaved, and millions more died – increasing the psychic energy yet again. A chain reaction was unleashed that could not be halted – magic had returned!

The Dark Ages

The Fall devastated the world. Civilization collapsed, and all that mankind had worked for was seemingly destroyed. Many of those left alive were mutated into foul creatures, their genes twisted painfully by lingering radiation as well as resurgent magic. As mutants wandered the scarred wastelands, human society fragmented and most of the knowledge of the Ancients was lost for eternity. The world was plunged into a new Dark Age.

Yet, somehow, some of humanity’s descendants slunk out from the ruins and continued their struggle for life. In time they adapted to the harsh conditions of the mutant future.

On the ruins of the old age, society began to build itself anew. In the wastelands people banded together, formed communities, fell in love and struggled for not only the right to life, but for a life worth living. Eventually, society re-formed into the nucleus of what might be considered a new civilization. Vast regions of the planet are ravaged by post-holocaust horrors, but some small areas have formed into a crude feudal system, somewhat reminiscent of medieval times.

The Affiliation

In one corner of the world, a loose network of economic, political, and military alliances known as the Affiliation has arisen to unite many of the independent feudal baronies, tribal clans, and freeholds of the region. The Affiliation serves to hold back raider warlords, diabolical sorcerers, mutant beasts, mad scientists, and the other forces of chaos which still arise from the wastes. Now, a millennium after the Fall, civilization is finally returning.

From its centre of the Free City and the Inner Baronies, the Affiliation reaches to the Outer Territories (or ‘Grass Plains’ to the east), the Beastmen Clans of the Barrier Peaks (to the west), the Dismal Swamps (to the north), and even to the edge of the radioactive Deadlands (to the south). Although the ruling Conclave attempts to exert a degree of control over the entire region, the Affiliation is far from a unified state. The Church of Law also provides a foundation of stability, though its agents strive against the Conclave for control of the Affiliation. Indeed, even as the prosperity of its inhabitants improves, the first cracks in the solidarity of the Affiliation have begun to surface as various rival factions vie for control of the rising empire…