Explosions rock the apartment; the wave of sorcery and sound cracking the ceramic flooring beneath your feet. As the static clears and the dust settles the cries of the injured and the red smoke of the bombs drift into the open air, your view unblocked where once was a wall, it continues to rise melding into the darkness of that empty nothingness that has taken the sky away.

The throbbing headache only worsens as you descend deeper into the interior of the Sensorium. The flashing lights and pulsing music churned out of steam powered contraptions grinding it deeper into your head. The music and the lights a carefully crafted barrage of the senses to lure those unsure to give over to the Sensates that operate this “establishment”. You pass through a heavy door that blankets the sound. In the new found solitude you notice figures lounging around smoky orbs their fingers lightly tracing its surface. Each has a different expression a different emotion playing across their faces. A Sensate leads you to one, your fingers begin to caress the orb, you just need to get away from this headache.

Chaos has swept through the streets; the latest reports from the cartographers spreading panic as another plane has winked out of existence. The pressure waves of teleporting Gateships kicking up dust storms in the packed streets. You work your way through the crowds toward the makeshift Gates that had been assembled. As you step through the Gate the vision of your plane fades from sight, sound and smell it is gone. You are the last through to a new plane, one believed to be a sanctuary.

Sitting on the stone outcropping well above the thorny swamps below you watch the day and night unravel. The multiple red suns dance across the sky upward, leading a crescendo of noise in the city slowly being built below; millions of souls toiling to build a new life a pocket of their old on a new plane. As the suns dip low, never breaking that endless horizon they follow a morendo to the noise. The growing city becomes quiet besides for a light hum and chant, pyres are lit, sigils are cast, millions of people give their respects for the billions left behind.

- Recorded memories from Sensate Archives -

Who are You?

You are the last survivers, the refugees of a verse now gone. Your life before this was mirred by the coming of the Blackness. Either refugees grown used to months of going from plane to plane, world to world. Or one of the last to leave watching as the planes around your’s were blinked away till your’s was next and you too became a refugee. You and all others the couple million left are all refugees in this new plane, a endless plane. The history to follow is as much apart of you as it is the people and events that caused it.

The planar cartographers said this plane was invunerable that the Blackness seemed unable to penertrate, unable to consume this plane. For a time this seemed to be true as the cities and culture began to rebuild. Everyone worked, from all cultures, positions and races, yourself amongst them. It was one of the grandest of projects ever concieved. Cities began to dot the landscape; rising high into the sky, floating over the land and water, covering the plains or dug deep underground. Built using the knowledge from across the planes, from magi-tech, to steam-power, to the use of natural material. As the cities grew so did new culture grow inside them, a melding of all the planes; their clothing, language, superstitions and morals with new found culture being discovered in this new home. You were all in your own small or large part a founder of these new cultures and society.

Today many believe it was simply delusion and a untested sense of optimisim that allowed such creations to be forged. This unity of people did not last forever. It is a sight ingrained in the minds of all those who saw it, including your own. In less then 10 years the Blackness had come, it eclipsed the sky blanketing it in darkness from every direction, only the barest glimer of sky was visible on the horizon.

Chaos swept through the streets the sense of safety and security, the idea of a new life vanished in a instance. The oldest grudges and the basest of instincts and fears reered its head in the populace. Civil war, genocide, murder, rape, torture, cults (even to the Blackness itself) swept across the cities. The chaos continued for months without end. Governments collapsed, city-staes were left in ruin and warbands crisscrossed the land. You somehow managed to survive this, whether by cunning, skill, luck or sorcery you managed to survive to see the end. Once more you and others burried their dead.

In the vacuum of power stepped the Mega-Cabals; various Guilds, Eldritch Socities, Alchemist, Technicians had just like the people begun to group together forming massive bases of knowledge, industry, and power. Various cities and its regions soon found themselves under the leadership of the Mega-Cabals or as equal partner beside the ruling party. As the Mega-Cabals with all their resources created a new peace the elements spawned during the chaos either escaped into the wilderness or went underground forming a signifigant criminal underground.

Life Continues

With control now in the hands of the Mega-Cabal a surface stability has returned to many of the cities. The people still remain splintered, the bitterness not deep beneath the surface. The fear of the Blackness has also not lifted and many factions, philosphies and ideas has erupted because of this. The criminal underground and rogue cities and armies continues to exist across the harsh plane:

Following are various elements of life:

The Plane Itself: The plane itself stretches to the horizon and beyond. It is believed to have no end and continue on for infinity despite the best efforts of some (Dragon Slayers) to find a end. Its environment is harsh, some of the landscapes discovered so far include; swamps with massive thorny vines and giant mushrooms, black obsidian caverns and rocky plains crisscrossed with luminiscent ley lines, giant dunes of wet sand drenched in constant mist leading to giant pools of quicksand between the dunes.

The Blackness: It caused the chaos that swept through the plane and is still a cause for much of the conflict in the plane. It has taken the form of a blanket of emptiness in the sky above stretching to the horizon. In recent months however changes have been happening the the Blackness; tendrils and tentacles of the same blackness has begun to descend sweeping low they wipe away anything in their path. Many skyscrapers are now abandoned and torn asunder thanks to these tendrils. Ocassionally the Blackness will bugle with black bubbles that erupt revealing a churning miasma of gases underneath before quickly swallowed by the Blackness. Whenever a tendril comes near to the ground or a Airship flies near the Blackness a constant static whine can be heard.

The Cities:

The Underground:

Philosphies and Factions:

Travel: There are many ways to tranverse across the plane. Many cities are extremely far apart and require special means to reach one another. Both conventional and non-conventional means of travel exist.

• Beast of Burden: Horses, riding lizards, stilt-striders and dragons are used for local travel.
• Sorcery/Technology Vehicles: Airships both using Magi-Tech and Steam technology exist, as well as ornithopters, trains and Apparatus of Kwalish. Ships and barges are barely used anymore existing only in the poorest of regions. The hundreds of Gateships that made the journey to the plane has been left to rust or taken apart their main purpose to travel across the verse now extinct, they are rarely used in desperate circumstances to travel instantly across the plane.
• Sorcery: The Gatetowns scattered about the plane are the major source for mass transport of men or supplies. Personal teleportation is semi-common mainly among the rich or knowledable.

Clothing and Technology: