Mostly original, based on Clinton’s book.
It has been 300 years since the SKYFIRE, a catastrophe that decimated the world. A giant asteroid ripped into the planet, forcing a part of it to separate into a large moon. Only luck and large mountain chains saved Near from the shockwave that obliterated most of the world. It still remains to be seen whether the broken world can sustain life indefinitely or whether the biosphere is doomed to perish as the atmosphere leaks into space or the continental plates realign catastrophically.
Although the lands known as Near were largely protected from the immediate impact, the Year of Shadow that immediately followed decimated the agriculture, leading to nine tenths of the population perishing. The remaining people struggle with a lost culture and changed world, surviving at a subsistence level.
Or that’s the pessimistic vision, anyway. In practice Near is a huge contradiction in play – I for one haven’t ever gone full-blown survivalist with this game, no matter how much TSoY flirts with realism mixed in with the fantasy. Just this last spring I started a new campaign, and the world certainly resembled nothing so much as the early medieval dark ages, complete with specialized service industries and money. This was simply what our group needed, we had no patience for exploring the implications of primitivism when our focus was on the clash of patriarchal society with wiccan theology.
As you come to read this book, you’ll notice that it is full of contradictions like this. Near is only consistent in play, not in a book. The group is expected to pare down and creatively ignore anything that doesn’t fit their campaign, as well as invent answers for any open questions they encounter.
Near is shadowed by the ROOF OF THE WORLD, a large mountain chain to the west. Everything falls into the great Eastern Sea on the other edge of the world. In between was the Empire of Maldor, the greatest civilization Near had ever known.
As the Skyfire broke the world, many changes happened: new mountains rose, valleys fell into sea and the sky itself occluded, darkened by great clouds of dust. The Sea of Teeth ripped into the Northern part of Near, drowning much and separating the rest.
Life in Near is for most people a constant struggle. The great majority of the people live in preliterate barter economies. The difference between cultures that survived the Year of Shadow as primitive hunter-gatherers and those that stockpiled technology into elaborate shelters is striking. It is now anybody’s guess as to how the world will shake out in the end.
The Moon is a terrible curse for those who cling to the values and ways of the past. For those who look to the future and change it becomes a symbol of rebirth. Often actual history has little say in where the battle-lines form: politics unanimously condemned by the Empire might be defended by invoking that very name, while ethics cherished then are being reintroduced as a new thing, with the Moon embroidered on the battle flag.
Let me introduce the players, or at least set the stage:
The heart of Near, wracked by war both secular and celestial. Immense in size and resources, but sick to its heart. Believers in duty, honor and obligations that would choke the world.
A corporation on the brink of dominance, trading in lives and riches of everybody from the Sea of Teeth to the Southern Continent. Rebelling subject people cast light on the utter immorality of their ways.
The callous frontier, a line between human and inhuman, if not monstrous. The last corner of Near truly free, and that only because nobody but its peoples want it.
A couple of words on this whole Skyfire thing and the Near in general; why is this historical back-story material useful in practice?
Most campaigns do not concern themselves directly with the Year of Shadow or the Skyfire, or in fact any old myths I might choose to include between these covers. Your typical campaign tells the stories of individual people who sometimes rise to change their own society into something better. For most purposes you can just file this Skyfire thing in the bottom drawer and concentrate on the now: these fictional people in this fictional situation.
Regardless, the Skyfire and the coming of the Moon are a common strand that ties together the stories of Near. The world is young and raw after the catastrophe, but the shadow of the past presses down on it; there’s lots of high-level thematic stuff in heroes who rebuild the world and need to choose between the past and the unknown future. The Story Guide or anybody interested in setting backstory can use this stuff to make sense of things for himself.
One thing I like to play with here is the symbolism of what the actions of player characters actually mean for the world: just like the characters are struggling to find their place in society, so is the world itself trying to find an equilibrium. It’s completely arbitrary, but I like to think that should the heroes fail in their own passion (whatever it may be), perhaps that doesn’t bode well for the whole world, either: as the days get longer and the Moon grows larger, this failed world goes into tidal lock and dies out of the last convulsion it was given by cruel fate.
Then again, heroic deeds go with the genre, so great successes are also narrated. The astronomy of Near is in shambles after the Moon appeared, the celestial objects themselves are still adjusting. Whenever a hero transcends (TRANSCENDENT success in an Ability check, you know) in Near, an eclipse blackens the sky for an hour, day or night. Perhaps it is a sign of hope for the people.
| Key of Yesterday |
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| The character’s identity is somehow tied to the past; perhaps he feels beholden to his ancestors, or yearns for the lost antiquity. |
| 1xp: The past is discussed. |
| 2xp: New facts are established about the history of the setting. |
| 5xp: The character chooses to serve what he perceives as the history on an issue. |
| Buyoff: Refute the ways of the past on an issue to go with a new solution. |
| Moonman Secret |
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| This character’s death is always a valid stake in conflict, regardless of propriety. When the character dies, the player gets to narrate how one part of Near fails; might be right here, might be far away, but something was depending on him. A part of the setting is now dead. Treat this as a transcendence narration insofar as the rest of the campaign is concerned. Requirement: only at character creation. |
| Secret of Bodhisattva |
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| The character refuses to let go, preferring to continue in the campaign: when the character makes a TRANSCENDENT (7) level success in an Ability check, the player may opt to roll additional penalty dice into the check before accepting the result, thus potentially lowering it from TRANSCENDENT. Cost: 1st level Harm per penalty die. Requirement: at least one Ability at GRAND MASTER (4). |