More About the Ninth World
The Ninth World is the setting for my new Numenera roleplaying game. I’ve described it as a far future post-apocalyptic setting. Basically, it’s the backdrop of a young civilization that has grown up amid the ruins of very old, very advanced civilizations. A billion years from now, we are long gone, as are the civilizations that evolve and rise (and fall… or leave… or transcend) after us. And the one after them. A billion years is a long, long time. It’s far more time than there is between us today and the dinosaurs.
In the time of the Ninth World, the land masses of the planet have returned to form a vast supercontinent surrounded by seemingly endless seas with extremely dangerous storms. But is the Earth in the configuration it is because of natural forces and simply the march of time or did some prior civilization design it to be so? Certainly the ancient inhabitants of the so-called “prior worlds” had the ability to shape their planet–and likely other planets–as they saw fit. Proof of this is everywhere. “Impossible” landscapes are a normal part of the Ninth World’s topography. Islands of crystal float in the sky. Inverted mountains rise up above plains of broken glass. Abandoned structures the size of kingdoms stretch across distances so great that they affect the weather. Massive machines, some still active, churn and hum. But for what purpose?
Along the southeastern coast lies The Steadfast, a collection of kingdoms and principalities with little in common except for a unifying religion. This religion, called by its adherents The Order of Truth (and by all else as the Amber Papacy), reveres the past and the knowledge of the ancients as understood by the enigmatic Aeon Priests. By decree of the Amber Pope, The Steadfast and The Order of Truth wage war with the lands to the north, believed by many to be enthralled by a secretive and mysterious cult called the Gaeans. Nobles amid The Steadfast are called to the Crusades, making war against the infidels with ever stranger weapons discovered or devised by the priesthood.
Beyond the bounds of The Steadfast, however, lies The Beyond, a vast wilderness punctuated by very occasional, very isolated communities. The Beyond also has its Aeon Priests, but these are not linked by any kind of organized network. They do not answer to the Amber Pope. Instead, they dwell in sequestered claves. Around these claves, small villages and communities known as aldeia have arisen. Each clave has discovered and mastered various bits of numenera, giving every aldeia its own distinct identity. In one, the inhabitants might raise unique bio-engineered beasts for food. In another, people may pilot gravity-defying gliders and race along the rooftops of ancient ruins. In still another aldeia, the priests in the clave may have developed the means to stop aging almost entirely, making the residents immortal and willing to sell their secret–for an incredibly high price. Because the villages are remote and separated by dangerous distances, trade of these discoveries is occasional and haphazard.
But not every village or tribe in The Beyond has a clave to help guide them amid the dangers of the past. Some of these have discovered the numenera to their peril, unleashing terrible horrors, plagues, or mysteries beyond comprehension. Travelers might find a village where all the residents have been transformed into flesh-eating monstrosities, or another that whose populace works as slaves for some machine intelligence left over from an earlier era.
Outside the aldeia and other settlements, the dangers multiply. Amid the ruins of the past lie tribes of vicious abhumans, as likely to kill and eat an explorer as talk to her. Clouds of tiny invisible machines called the Iron Wind scour the wilderness, altering everything they touch. Monstrous predators, ancient death machines, and stranded extraterrestrial or transdimensional beings also all pose a threat in the uncharted reaches of The Beyond. But so too can a careful and capable explorer find awe-inspiring numenera that can accomplish anything one can imagine.
In the Ninth World, numenera is both the risk and the reward.
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I’m really liking your diversity here (as well as the ability to be diverse). From what I’m gathering, the current ‘era’ has little to no capability of creating these works of wonder from scratch, but rather only salvaging from the past?
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The possibilities are truly endless here… can’t wait to read in depth about all of these places in the world book
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This is an awesome setting, loaded with ideas and opportunities. I had ideas for three extended campaigns while I was reading your description, and I wasn’t even trying….
I really enjoyed the short story. What’s more, I could envision that story arising from a game very easily, based on what I’ve read of Numenera so far.
As I was reading, a question occurred to me (I was reminded of it as I was reading this post). Is your use of the”Iron Wind” a kind of homage to your time at ICE? I never owned that module, but the name evoked such strong images as I read through the ads in my first Dragon magazine as a kid that I never forgot it. (So you really tickled my old school / nostalgia funnybone there…)
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All glory to [Monte Cook] the originator[s] of truth and understanding !
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This setting post is the one I was most waiting for, and it certainly delivered. The most wonderful setting is nothing without interesting people living in it.
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I can’t wait to see a map. This is a really evocative post. Among other things it set me to thinking what “classic” infernal dimensions might be like a a billion years. Fun stuff.
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Numenera reminds me of the ads for the old vaporware game AI by Digest Publications. They had the same concept of a post apocalyptic setting but with technology instead of magic. On of the main protagonists were exploration ships which returned to earth and used their advanced technology to impress adventurers to go on quest to find out what happend in their absence, thus taking on the role of wizards in typical sword and sorcery. I really wanted that game and now Monte is going to create something that I am looking forward to just as bad.
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Got a little bit of a Dying Earth vibe going on. I like that. Was it intentional?
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It’s named by Monte as one of the key influences (check the Kickstarter description for the others).
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It reminds me of a number of Heavy Metal comics, and that is a good thing. I really relish introducing my gaming group to the world.
Oh, also *in a British boy’s accent* “Please, sir, I want some more.”
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Reminds me a little of Deus Irae, a collaboration between Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny. As much as I love both authors, I can’t really call it a *good* book, but probaby worth reading if you’re into weird post-apocalyptic SF with religious themes.
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Also, I suppose clave is short for conclave, but it reminds me mightily of the second Covenant trilogy — which was also post-post-apocalyptic, in its own way.
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Likely “Enclave” actually
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Hmm, enclave is one territory surrounded by another, which kind of fits, since the villages grow up around the claves.
But conclave also works (a sequestered meeting) and has specific connotations with the papacy.
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I’m wondering what the people of the Ninth World are like, even if they call themselves “human” and look relatively human they probably aren’t going to be human as we know it. In a setting that’s had such extreme, post-singularity technology levels *multiple times* in its history, they’ve got to be a little bit transhuman at the very least, if not some of them verging into full-on posthuman territory. With all those altered genes, nanites (piconites? Femtonites? Even *ontologinites*? The tech is extreme enough!) and exotic matter/radiation floating around, I could imagine that a typical Ninth Ager could look very strange indeed.
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Indeed. We get to play around with that a lot.
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If you translatate the names most people have for themselves, it generally comes out as “The People” “Human Beings” or “Men”. It would not be English but essence would be the same.
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So looking forward to this, now to find time to game…
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Married to the term ‘Amber Pope’? With so much effort into originality it seems really out of place to use the word ‘pope’ a billion years in the future.
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I think we can presume it’s “translated for the reader.” It’s no more likely that “amber” or “jack (of all trades)” are still used in a billion years. Heck, equating a male religious leader to a father (“pope” being a variant of “papa”) is one thing that might actually still be around.
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I feel uneasy about the word “Pope” being used. It’s tied so closely with catholicism, it would seem like some sort of commentary on the catholic faith. Using a variant of it would make a bit more sense. It got me thinking of the word rabbi make sense in anything other then a jewish related belief system even if the word rabbi means “my master”/ “great one”.
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Have you considered doing a little bit of Solar System rearrangement to accomodate our current understanding of solar system evolution?
With a billion additional years of age, the Sun will be 10 percent more luminous than it is now. Earth might need to have been relocated to the orbit of Mars. What would be kind of neat would be to have had the Moon obliterated in eons past and a perhaps “green?” Mars now being used as it’s replacement. The asteroid belt would probably have been cleaned up as an act of neccessity, bu perhaps a new one might have been made from the detonation of Luna which would have been left behind when Earth was moved.
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I’m actually really eager to see where this goes myself, Frank. There’s already mention of the ‘space stations’ effectively, and the ancient technology to reach them, so my curiosity is thoroughly poked (like poking the badger).
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It’s the setting that I’m looking forward to the most. A few years ago I read Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and it changed my whole perception of what fantasy and science fiction can be, and did it in a well written way. I’ve been looking for a system, a setting that will bring Wolfe’s weird future to the gaming table in a convincing way, and Numenera just seems right for that.
Of course it is my responsibility as a GM to make the setting come alive for the players, but having a consistent setting with rules that are integrated into this unique combination of science and fantasy will go a long way to make that job easier. I hope Numenera will help me do that.
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Today I watched the first episode of Revolution and it got me thinking about Numenera. 15 years without power and there is already a new civilization growing up in the ruins of the old one. I can only imagine what a Billion years would be like.
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Wow…just wow.
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I’m most hungry for setting details, too. It’s a billion years from now, but how many years has it been since the fall of the 8th world? Will cyphers left from each of the previous 8 worlds be distinct, or are they all so foreign that there are no discernable distinctions? Wouldn’t the remnants from the 8th world be a lot more common than those from the preceding 7?
I wonder if there will be a lot of explanatory info in the setting material or if it will mostly be left for the GM to create/explain.
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This book cannot be in my hands fast enough. Mr. Cook, you are a genius. It’s like you took everything I have always wanted a tabletop RPG to be and made it real.
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