Post by marcoasalazarm on Aug 19, 2013 20:59:55 GMT
"It is the dawn of a new age. A decade ago, the world as we knew it ended. An event known nowadays as 'The Vanishing' destroyed the barriers of reality, dropping all kinds of beings, technologies and phenomena on Earth's lap, altering it forever.
The world has been divided between that which is real and that which is Fiction.
This is an Era of Badass. To be alive in such times is a constant test on your mental, ethical and physical resilience. It is a constant fight to adapt and prevail-or die trying. It is to live on the strangest and most brutal of crossovers-an ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny, the final victor still undetermined. Pity some of those stuck in the middle.
Forget anything you knew about rationality, for now the 'Rule of Cool' prevails. Embrace the power of the Tropes, for they now mold your destiny. Leave your sanity at the door, for in the world after The Vanishing, there is only chaos. There is no longer a safe place, only a Multiverse slowly going mad and one timeline-the CORE TimeLINE-which is almost too far gone.
We bid you welcome."
((()))
"'The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense'.
I wish I could remember which fucking asshole wrote that. I sure would like to meet him-and kick his teeth in.
It also illustrates what the fuck is going on. I don't see a rhyme, I don't see a reason. I see out the window and I see the world fucked up beyond recognition for the sake of… some… ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny, or something.
Who in their right fucking mind wrote the CLULESS Virus? What the fuck were they thinking? This will remain unknown, because they (dead or alive) are now within Worcester… and if they're dead, then may their souls burn forever in Hell.
Okay, then… here it goes. Apologies in advance.
Let us start with November the Fifth, what was, nine, ten years ago…? Regular day, you know. It was sunny, with some wind. People worked, drove, wrote, watched TV, fucked, whatever was normal for them.
I was like that until the 23 Hours came. It started with the Internet getting infected at a world-wide scale. The scale made it a big thing, and sure enough, the intelligence agencies and tech support hotlines throughout the world worked like crazy to find out what was going on.
The virus seemed innocuous, except for the fact that they couldn't delete the damn thing. It just kept evolving, so they said, being three steps ahead of every damn measure they took short of deactivating the Internet (and lemme tell you, I think it was ready for even *that*). They managed to trace it to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachussetts... for all the fat lot of good *that* did.
It started with Worcester getting a total blackout. No communications, no nothing. We didn't knew it yet, but it had become Ground Zero.
Then at some point in the afternoon, all infected computers world-wide, active and not, just shown this damn old-school-looking text saying that the CLULESS Virus was active.
I guess that many people who saw that were just expecting their files to be erased or something-bring us back into the stone age, or at least back to the 80's.
It was worse than that.
People disappeared, without a damn trace, right where they were standing. My momma disappeared in front of me. There were no lights, no sound-it was like that damn show with the witch wife. One moment she was there and the next the kitchenware she was holding was hitting the ground, and my momma… just… *poof*.
Cars crashed. Planes dropped. The ones who remained panicked, looted, prayed. The world burned.
That's how it started. With things looking like the fucking Rapture.
Then the Fictions came. Things got a lot worse.
People with big eyes and small mouths, talking animals, elves, robots, fucking *monsters*, you name it. They appeared. And then they fought each other and ran all over us in the process. The world burned even more, and it nothing but spread. The *whole fucking solar system* burned. And then the *GALAXY* burned.
We ran for the hills and looked for shelter-those of us who were smart, or still lucky to be alive. Some of us… took the war to them. Made them pay for every damn inch of ground and life that they have taken. Those 23 hours had a lot of last stands, pretty heroic, all of them. Some... in retrospective… *could* have been prevented. Maybe.
When the Hours were over, the people came back.
And they were fucking brainwashed. They looked all around them-looked at the world that burned, and the blood-soaked sons of bitches that did this… and then they welcomed them with their fucking arms wide open, and simply shrugged it all off.
They…. the Post-Vs… they took the Vanishing as a sign of things improving-that if us real humans and Fictions rebuilt, got together and lived all buddy-buddy, there would be…I don't know, there's so much crap out there these days, that it's hard to tell what is still being believed in.
Unity? A singularity? Cats and dogs living together? Who the hell cares?
It has now been almost a decade. The universe is still split in a thousand pieces, but the cleanup is going along nicely. We have established contact with the off-world colonies and the technological base is higher than ever.
Or so they say.
What do we have?
If you wanna get your damn brains blown off, there ain't a lack of things to do THAT with… although I would recommend that you'd be thorough, because there's a lot of things out there which can bring you back (and not often with you being a willing participant).
Several of our Presidents and Prime Ministers are Fictions. The Megacorporations rule themselves and whatever damn land they have bought. Governments will try and do whatever the fuck is necessary to keep some kind of order-even if, sometimes, it doesn't works. The whole damn planet is still an ever-changing mix-and-match of fictional things that is bound to drive anybody *still* sane into madness. Nothing seems to leave a lasting trace unless it's pretty destructive for someone.
Most of Manhattan is now a penitentiary. Los Angeles is now a Megacity covering a good deal of California and looking for independence (or so I've heard). Worcester is now inside a permanent super-tornado and nobody who has come in has come back alive (that I know of). The rest of Massachussetts is like King and Lovecraft owned the place. A lot of Colorado is a warzone and the rest is UFO-land. If you weren't born in Louisiana you have no business visiting it. Hawaii is a near-complete loss to the Bugs and Heaven-knows-what-else. Alaska is getting disputed by a Lich King, the Migou, vampires, and some pretty badass fauna.
The Britannians rule most of Siberia. Russia is all but officially back under the hammer and sickle. The UK is bad-London is back to Victorian times (and Judge Dredd is pretty much the rule, not exception, in law), and Scotland is overrun with Yoma. East Germany is now 'Neo Amestris'. China now has Firebenders. There are Ninja Villages all over the place. Japan... you would have to be *crazy* to live in Japan.
The government agencies and conspiracies appear and disappear every second of every day-like everything else. And all they do is step on each other's toes and cut each other's throats like nobody else's business-a zero-sum game, it's what it is.
The jungles have become a lot more fucking deadly. The deserts haven't changed much-if you don't mind the tank-sized scorpions and the occasional mummy. Antarctica is now populated by Eldritch Abominations and dinosaurs. The Poles are still pretty much alone-although the stories I've heard tell me it's for the best.
The oceans are under constant dispute, by the United Nations, the pirates, the sea monsters, the GIANT monsters, Atlantis, and people who went out there to find some place to live in peace.
There are now multiple planes-dimensions just out of phase with our own: Heaven, Hell, the Internet-to say a few.
Out there in the universe... take your pick. Go left and piss off a Klingon. Go right and piss off some guy from the Imperium. Go further and find one of several versions of damn Chaos who will want your skull (three, I think-not that I really care to stop and count 'em). Go back and tick off… the Orks, the Minbari, the Kilrathi, the Yautja, the Kree, the Daleks…
You wanna get consumed by something? Well, there's the Xenomorphs, the Xerg, the Tyranids, the Moties, the Borg, the Brood, the Reapers, some kinds of Chaos cultists, vampires… and those are just some of the big ones.
Plenty of planets to call home-if you don't mind the terraforming. Or the neighbors. Or the invaders.
Finally, on a multiversal point of view, there's a lot of people who think that we are essentially its center, the 'core timeline' so to speak-that the CLULESS Virus and the Vanishing and all of this shit is us taking our rightful place as the joint crossroads of all dimensions. Which only makes things worse.
And if you're the guy who created any of the Fictions… if you ever even thought about making something with them… the product of your imagination is somewhere out there, walking the Earth… and Heaven help you if he ever gets to find you. They call that the 'Authored Rage'. You really don't wanna experience it in the flesh.
'Coreline'. CORE TIMEline. That's what people call Earth on the streets now.
Welcome to it."
-The Journals of Abner McKinney, posted November 5th, 10 Post-Vanishing on LiveJournal.
Soon afterwards, McKinney was confirmed to have been en route to Arkham, Mass. He has not been heard of since.
((((())))
"Coreline" is a mega-crossover setting, currently made for D20 Modern and Mutants and Masterminds (although it can be adapted for other systems with some work).
It is several years (most of the fluff at the moment is set approx. at 10 years after the event, with some exploring of the years between, although some future fluff would obviously be set later onwards) after a particularly unusual apocalyptic event (called "The Vanishing" and occasionally "the 23 Hours of Madness") where the world-wide disappearance of 90% of mankind and its reappearance 23 hours afterwards, equipped and brainwashed into accepting the chaos at face value, is one of the most interesting factors of the world going more than a little nuts.
A sharp contrast between civilization and the wasteland exists, and rebuilding is going at a good pace (although bringing back civilization to everywhere in the world is gonna take some time).
As a place where multiple alternate universes (and timelines for said universe) clash, much insanity ensues. Especially when you discover the myriad ways your life could have gone... or that you're nothing more than the creation of some guy with a typewriter. And, oh yeah, that people exist out there who do not like you because of this. And maybe you have something rather strong to say to whoever is responsible for your plight... strong enough to become potentially lethal.
Anything goes. If you can think it, if you can stat it, it exists somewhere on the setting in some minor or major way.
The world has been divided between that which is real and that which is Fiction.
This is an Era of Badass. To be alive in such times is a constant test on your mental, ethical and physical resilience. It is a constant fight to adapt and prevail-or die trying. It is to live on the strangest and most brutal of crossovers-an ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny, the final victor still undetermined. Pity some of those stuck in the middle.
Forget anything you knew about rationality, for now the 'Rule of Cool' prevails. Embrace the power of the Tropes, for they now mold your destiny. Leave your sanity at the door, for in the world after The Vanishing, there is only chaos. There is no longer a safe place, only a Multiverse slowly going mad and one timeline-the CORE TimeLINE-which is almost too far gone.
We bid you welcome."
((()))
"'The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense'.
I wish I could remember which fucking asshole wrote that. I sure would like to meet him-and kick his teeth in.
It also illustrates what the fuck is going on. I don't see a rhyme, I don't see a reason. I see out the window and I see the world fucked up beyond recognition for the sake of… some… ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny, or something.
Who in their right fucking mind wrote the CLULESS Virus? What the fuck were they thinking? This will remain unknown, because they (dead or alive) are now within Worcester… and if they're dead, then may their souls burn forever in Hell.
Okay, then… here it goes. Apologies in advance.
Let us start with November the Fifth, what was, nine, ten years ago…? Regular day, you know. It was sunny, with some wind. People worked, drove, wrote, watched TV, fucked, whatever was normal for them.
I was like that until the 23 Hours came. It started with the Internet getting infected at a world-wide scale. The scale made it a big thing, and sure enough, the intelligence agencies and tech support hotlines throughout the world worked like crazy to find out what was going on.
The virus seemed innocuous, except for the fact that they couldn't delete the damn thing. It just kept evolving, so they said, being three steps ahead of every damn measure they took short of deactivating the Internet (and lemme tell you, I think it was ready for even *that*). They managed to trace it to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachussetts... for all the fat lot of good *that* did.
It started with Worcester getting a total blackout. No communications, no nothing. We didn't knew it yet, but it had become Ground Zero.
Then at some point in the afternoon, all infected computers world-wide, active and not, just shown this damn old-school-looking text saying that the CLULESS Virus was active.
I guess that many people who saw that were just expecting their files to be erased or something-bring us back into the stone age, or at least back to the 80's.
It was worse than that.
People disappeared, without a damn trace, right where they were standing. My momma disappeared in front of me. There were no lights, no sound-it was like that damn show with the witch wife. One moment she was there and the next the kitchenware she was holding was hitting the ground, and my momma… just… *poof*.
Cars crashed. Planes dropped. The ones who remained panicked, looted, prayed. The world burned.
That's how it started. With things looking like the fucking Rapture.
Then the Fictions came. Things got a lot worse.
People with big eyes and small mouths, talking animals, elves, robots, fucking *monsters*, you name it. They appeared. And then they fought each other and ran all over us in the process. The world burned even more, and it nothing but spread. The *whole fucking solar system* burned. And then the *GALAXY* burned.
We ran for the hills and looked for shelter-those of us who were smart, or still lucky to be alive. Some of us… took the war to them. Made them pay for every damn inch of ground and life that they have taken. Those 23 hours had a lot of last stands, pretty heroic, all of them. Some... in retrospective… *could* have been prevented. Maybe.
When the Hours were over, the people came back.
And they were fucking brainwashed. They looked all around them-looked at the world that burned, and the blood-soaked sons of bitches that did this… and then they welcomed them with their fucking arms wide open, and simply shrugged it all off.
They…. the Post-Vs… they took the Vanishing as a sign of things improving-that if us real humans and Fictions rebuilt, got together and lived all buddy-buddy, there would be…I don't know, there's so much crap out there these days, that it's hard to tell what is still being believed in.
Unity? A singularity? Cats and dogs living together? Who the hell cares?
It has now been almost a decade. The universe is still split in a thousand pieces, but the cleanup is going along nicely. We have established contact with the off-world colonies and the technological base is higher than ever.
Or so they say.
What do we have?
If you wanna get your damn brains blown off, there ain't a lack of things to do THAT with… although I would recommend that you'd be thorough, because there's a lot of things out there which can bring you back (and not often with you being a willing participant).
Several of our Presidents and Prime Ministers are Fictions. The Megacorporations rule themselves and whatever damn land they have bought. Governments will try and do whatever the fuck is necessary to keep some kind of order-even if, sometimes, it doesn't works. The whole damn planet is still an ever-changing mix-and-match of fictional things that is bound to drive anybody *still* sane into madness. Nothing seems to leave a lasting trace unless it's pretty destructive for someone.
Most of Manhattan is now a penitentiary. Los Angeles is now a Megacity covering a good deal of California and looking for independence (or so I've heard). Worcester is now inside a permanent super-tornado and nobody who has come in has come back alive (that I know of). The rest of Massachussetts is like King and Lovecraft owned the place. A lot of Colorado is a warzone and the rest is UFO-land. If you weren't born in Louisiana you have no business visiting it. Hawaii is a near-complete loss to the Bugs and Heaven-knows-what-else. Alaska is getting disputed by a Lich King, the Migou, vampires, and some pretty badass fauna.
The Britannians rule most of Siberia. Russia is all but officially back under the hammer and sickle. The UK is bad-London is back to Victorian times (and Judge Dredd is pretty much the rule, not exception, in law), and Scotland is overrun with Yoma. East Germany is now 'Neo Amestris'. China now has Firebenders. There are Ninja Villages all over the place. Japan... you would have to be *crazy* to live in Japan.
The government agencies and conspiracies appear and disappear every second of every day-like everything else. And all they do is step on each other's toes and cut each other's throats like nobody else's business-a zero-sum game, it's what it is.
The jungles have become a lot more fucking deadly. The deserts haven't changed much-if you don't mind the tank-sized scorpions and the occasional mummy. Antarctica is now populated by Eldritch Abominations and dinosaurs. The Poles are still pretty much alone-although the stories I've heard tell me it's for the best.
The oceans are under constant dispute, by the United Nations, the pirates, the sea monsters, the GIANT monsters, Atlantis, and people who went out there to find some place to live in peace.
There are now multiple planes-dimensions just out of phase with our own: Heaven, Hell, the Internet-to say a few.
Out there in the universe... take your pick. Go left and piss off a Klingon. Go right and piss off some guy from the Imperium. Go further and find one of several versions of damn Chaos who will want your skull (three, I think-not that I really care to stop and count 'em). Go back and tick off… the Orks, the Minbari, the Kilrathi, the Yautja, the Kree, the Daleks…
You wanna get consumed by something? Well, there's the Xenomorphs, the Xerg, the Tyranids, the Moties, the Borg, the Brood, the Reapers, some kinds of Chaos cultists, vampires… and those are just some of the big ones.
Plenty of planets to call home-if you don't mind the terraforming. Or the neighbors. Or the invaders.
Finally, on a multiversal point of view, there's a lot of people who think that we are essentially its center, the 'core timeline' so to speak-that the CLULESS Virus and the Vanishing and all of this shit is us taking our rightful place as the joint crossroads of all dimensions. Which only makes things worse.
And if you're the guy who created any of the Fictions… if you ever even thought about making something with them… the product of your imagination is somewhere out there, walking the Earth… and Heaven help you if he ever gets to find you. They call that the 'Authored Rage'. You really don't wanna experience it in the flesh.
'Coreline'. CORE TIMEline. That's what people call Earth on the streets now.
Welcome to it."
-The Journals of Abner McKinney, posted November 5th, 10 Post-Vanishing on LiveJournal.
Soon afterwards, McKinney was confirmed to have been en route to Arkham, Mass. He has not been heard of since.
((((())))
"Coreline" is a mega-crossover setting, currently made for D20 Modern and Mutants and Masterminds (although it can be adapted for other systems with some work).
It is several years (most of the fluff at the moment is set approx. at 10 years after the event, with some exploring of the years between, although some future fluff would obviously be set later onwards) after a particularly unusual apocalyptic event (called "The Vanishing" and occasionally "the 23 Hours of Madness") where the world-wide disappearance of 90% of mankind and its reappearance 23 hours afterwards, equipped and brainwashed into accepting the chaos at face value, is one of the most interesting factors of the world going more than a little nuts.
A sharp contrast between civilization and the wasteland exists, and rebuilding is going at a good pace (although bringing back civilization to everywhere in the world is gonna take some time).
As a place where multiple alternate universes (and timelines for said universe) clash, much insanity ensues. Especially when you discover the myriad ways your life could have gone... or that you're nothing more than the creation of some guy with a typewriter. And, oh yeah, that people exist out there who do not like you because of this. And maybe you have something rather strong to say to whoever is responsible for your plight... strong enough to become potentially lethal.
Anything goes. If you can think it, if you can stat it, it exists somewhere on the setting in some minor or major way.
)