Satrap of Saturn

  After X thousand years, the ancient engineers, who operate on a rather slower rate with respect to time, find their way into the meditations, ritual psychodelia, dreams, olfactory halucinations, and other unconventional cognitions of some set of the the Sorqite Quick: mammalian humans and beaked reptiloid shén, hexapodal ssû and decapodal hlÿs, wingèd hlaaka... The communications are not in the form of language or intelligible visions; the engineers did not make the effort to learn Quick semantic patterns; they did not want relations, or to be regarded as superior beings, or infernal ones, far less to be understood as yet another intelligent species sharing one small world. Concepts such as telepathy, revelation, mental domination, and demonic possession were now widespread among surface cultures, but few contactees interpreted their experiences as contact with other minds, as many of the new religions and wonder workers claimed.   [i guess i don’t need to explain what it wa...

Doc Illig, sometime celebrity science popularizer and streaming personality, best-selling writer, deep sea explorer, controversial treasure-hunter, mesmerist... Doc Illig has quiet quit from the intellectual influencer game, with rumors of substantial financing, both crowdfunded and donations from Silicon Valley futurists. The good Doktor observes exquisite data hygiene and operational security, but each of his monthly videos features intriguing objects placed oh so casually by his elbow or shoulder: a mastodon tooth and a picture frame incorporated bowhead whale teeth strongly suggest the Alaskan panhandle or islands of British Columbia. It is indeed a luxury mad scientist base, tidewater adjacent for interactions with deep ones, who are entirely blasé about their transactions with Illig. They borrow his cars without asking, apparently going for joyrides or private errand; they tinker with his observatory equipment at will, installing biological objects still dripping saltwater and m...

  "The Dead care not for Sorq! Not for its cities or seas or peoples. Sorq is a stain of squalor on an engine of unspeakable power. The Dead will take Sorq and possess it for eternity. We alone understand this instrument, we alone possess the whip to drive Sorq to the ends of this cosmos. We shall harry the foolish stars and cast them down into the Abyss! We shall feast on the murdered flesh of stars and defecate upon the restless churn of matter! The Dead will not rule this universe: this universe is beneath us, we will defile it and make of it what we will — and it is this orb presently smeared with living filth, that will doom any that oppose the Dead!!" —Propaganda message from the Lich Principalities, delivered by resistless dream-sending to thirty-five of the 156 Vicegerents; twenty-four of whom have retired from public appearances, four slew one another in a melee, and three more Vicegerents have declared for traitorous parties and rebels. Sorq is a planetary society...

  SORQ anti-canon Oops all tables all the time idea All of SORQ can be generated procedurally at table or in mini-games. Encourage sharing DM duties, rolling up new regions and springing them fully stocked and brimming with science-fantasy early-modern bureaucratic adventure. Generate world: session 0 with full table, all players and DMs Detail regions: each tableer takes homework, responsibility for rolling up one region; or table picks one region of interest to start with, and the Lifetime DM will begin to stock this home region.  Planetary regions come in bands around the globe. Equatorial sea, islands  Weather, ships, sea monsters, shipping lanes Shore lands — civilized in seven conventional regions (tables of names). City-states of note: metropole, large, ordinary poleis (tables of population and notables) [the poleis will receive substantial detail] Hinterlands inland from coastal poleis: , estates, reserves, parks, underworld access lands Scattered arc...

Sorq has a wide, wide orbit around its primary, Bale, the Usurper, a sullen and inconstant orange giant, but a refuge from the transformations of other local stars into compact objects. Bale was once of a pair with a blazing minor giant, the Old King, that Old One the Child. The Old King's transformation into a true giant was observed by the dominant sophonts of the system, and they shaped a moon of modest size but extraordinary mass of minerals, metals, fissionables into an orb that could bear their civilization and species well away from Old King's terrible light, changing its orbit in mere decades with no damage to structure, able to deflect and manipulate objects within several planetary radii, spread wings and stretch forth its grasp. That move accomplished, the originating civilization, the Children of the Old King, discovered talent for ontological translation, and quite soon ablated to minimal occupation and corporeal involvement with this cosmos . 1.5 billion years ...

So Barker named these three eyed flying sophonts hláka because of course he did; and he made them not only inscrutable and irrational but also unreliable and incapable of communicating their values and inner world, because of course he did — I've referred to this a couple of times, insha'allah I'll pull up the Blue Room listserv file where he explains how many human cultures are incapable of ever understanding each other, with the takeaway being "and why would i want to understand some dirty tribesman, and what do i care if they don't understand my sophistication", and also condescension that they have the right to be primitive and proud if they please to.  I hope I'm not exaggerating, in my memory it was brazen and dismissive. The peccant point being, why should he make up comprehensible aliens? Then players might want to play them, instead of this nice legionary of the Emperor's Own XXIV Child Molestor Regiment, they wear big red hats! I know you lik...

Worlds of Sorq's nexus TAMBRAX : metals, metallurgy, arms and armor — red zone, travel proscribed. The culture is chivalrous, with a universal kingship and a cosmic war on evil ideology [shiftingly defined]. Orrhinoechich : clockworks, recording and playback crystals Poasüu : Hyperborea, Atlantis, Mu, but with vast huge monsters. Rhiidusc : sorcerer-kings who would looove to rule the nexus, and have agents and conspiracies throughout; they are much hampered by one another, and rivals from Miidax Tam and Miibrax Cuu. Miidax Tam : mystics, ancient Tambrax colony moons of Miibrax Cuu. Miibrax Cuu : enormous shell world around a singularity. Home to the giants of Brax and Cuuax, long-lived and shrewd; mystics of a multiplanar, gnostic, levels-of-clearance, possibly shell-game nature — they interface benevolently in one instance, remain neutral or aloof in most, put vast energies into a few seemingly amoral events or apparent atrocities.      Whereas the Watchers of Tam are se...