Setting Bible

This is a guide for the content contributors about the established fiction about the Teraurge game world. Everything about the setting outside of this guide is free for writers to define. This can be extended as writers add things to the world.

Quick rules

• No stars, moon or sun (world is lit by an ambient light from above).
• No years, months, or global seasons (people count days and bundle them in different ways).
• The world is not a planet. It is an infinite plane (flat world).
• The world is populated by beings from other realities, but most think they are native.
• The landmass the game is situated on is not the whole known world.
• Teraurge is *not* the name of the world the game takes place in.
• All talking creatures understand each other to different degrees.

Game set-up

The player character gets pulled into the game world through a portal and, after an intro sequence, acclimatizes to the world and is free to roam the open world. The game expects the player to follow leads that might result in them returning back to their reality, and the player should be given options to explore the topic with relevant characters. The game is a collection of small and large events that the player stumbles on and resolves in some way.

Setting

The shipwreck dimension (or "The garbage bin universe") is a place where things from other realities fall into, a floor for the tables of other universes, and there is no known way to leave.

This reality has formed very differently from our universe: There are no planetary bodies nor stars, the universe has a definitive up and down, with heavier elements forming the down and lighter elements forming the up. This universe has rough spots where the elements haven't layered perfectly and where breathable gasses meet the heavier elements (ground/water). The world is lit by a cyclical ambient light from above.

The landmass the game takes place on, called Noih, is a massive, long dead bird "thing". The corpse also contains several smaller, gigantic, long dead beasts. Denizens of the world are not actually aware that they live on a massive fossilized bird thing, but they are aware of the smaller ancient corpses.

Cultures

The absolute majority of the creatures and people have lived countless generations in the world and have forgotten how they first arrived and assume themselves as native to the world. Some races are more organized than others and control large areas. Most governments are just city states or small tribes.

Economy

The economy is mostly based on two currencies that work side by side.

Krats

Krats are dirty, semi-translucent, brown pearls that grow everywhere in the world. They are used as money for perishable things like food and services. It's basically money for poor people. In gameplay context, the player can farm this currency via repeatable actions (encounters, etc).

Adats

Adats are gleaming, white, rounded and flat diamonds (rhomboids in shape, not actually crystals or diamonds). They are used to buy non-perishable and valuable things like houses, tools, stuff, weapons, armour, etc. – basically currency for rich people. In gameplay context, this currency cannot be farmed by repeatable actions.

Smaller things that are considered adat-worthy but not as a single item are "basketed" into adat-sized portions. For example, a single nail is not worth an adat, so they are basketed into an amount that is. A blacksmith would never sell a single nail for krats because they can sell them in an adat basket, but a baker cannot create an adat basket with bread, as food is commonly seen only worthy of krats.

Calendar

The world generally doesn't have cyclical events (other than days) that its inhabitants could use to keep time, so there's no traditional humanly understood calendar system (weeks, months, years, etc). The common way is to establish "baskets", "bundles", or any other container metaphor for a certain amount of time. These day rules are usually local to the population centre they are used in. For example, a village could have a "harvest basket" to refer to a number of days it takes for one of their fields to go through a harvest cycle.

The day container rule is a common way to measure time, but places and characters can use any other time keeping mechanism as they see fit. Measuring time inside days is usually done by splitting it into four slices: Morning, noon, evening and night. Lower time scales are uncommon and usually only used metaphorically or in a scientific environment.

Language

All talking creatures understand each other, even when talking in different languages or in different mediums (clicks, body language, smells, etc). This also extends to written things. People in the world understand that this is strange and attribute this phenomenon to magic or gods. The Understanding is one idea that this is attributed to.

However, talking creatures understand each other to differing degrees. Sometimes, some species will have trouble talking to some other species, and the message gets muddled (broken language, odd syntax, general trouble understanding the information). In extreme cases, trying to communicate with someone can result in mental distress or headache.

Tech

The setting isn't really stuck to any particular time. Equipment can go from obsidian spears to pulse guns and from power armour to spirit-infused bone armour. It's a messy place where urban cities with hovercars exist side by side with tribal people living in caves, painting with mud. There's no "march of progress".

Tech is concentrated in cities, and the denizens do not have a good understanding of it. Tech is considered obscure or arcane by most. Most tech is very old and can only be maintained by very dedicated and specialised people.

Technology does not work the same way as it does on Earth. Materials and scientific phenomena are different from normal, so things might not even be made from atoms, sound might not be vibrations in the air, and so forth.

Magic

A staple of the fantasy RPGs is also found here. Magic itself is a stranger to this world. As creatures fall into the shipwreck dimension, they bring their magic with them. Magical creatures, spirits, gods, etc, are trapped by the shipwreck dimension.

Magic is not commoditized. If a village has a healer he is most likely a person with tech, medical knowledge or just a quack. People who think they have magic are more common than the people who have magic. Some tech can also be misunderstood as magic. Magic as a rule is mysterious and uncommon. People fear magic and its users.