The World of Aarn

The inhabitable hemisphere of the planet Aarn.

The World of Aarn is a magitech setting with a crunchy exterior of playful whimsy and a chewy center of eldritch horror.

Too often in fantasy gaming, we run into roadblocks. Something in the setting just doesn't make sense. The society with high magic is still stuck in the middle ages. The wizards with the secrets of the universe haven't conquered the world. The society only collapses under its own weight when there's a new edition to be sold. Too often, we run into the explanation of "It is this way, because I said so."

Aarn is a homebrew setting that attempts to subvert this frustrating trend. As an affectionate parody, it has attempted to treat the tropes of fantasy gaming seriously.

• Magic, like electricity and magnetism, is considered a natural and scientific force in the world, studied by those who think of themselves no differently than the electronic engineers of Earth.

• The mages who cast through the power of divine faith cannot agree with one another on any consistent methods of casting this magic, because their belief is enough to make it work.

• Most of the religions of Aarn are wrong, and the rest are dead wrong, /especially/ the ones closest to the truth.

• The gods of the world, as omniscient, timeless entities, are fundamentally alien, unknowable creatures. What Aarnians worship as gods are the roleplaying characters of these entities. They are playing a game, only pretending to have mortal whims and desires. The world is their experiment, and the inhabitants of Aarn their children, their test subjects, and their victims.

The World of Aarn has been in development since October 2007, and continues to be worked on to this day, on an exterior blog and wiki.

The Planet Aarn

Aarn is a planet pockmarked by craters and blanketed by a magical storm that covers a full hemisphere, making that hemisphere completely uninhabitable. It is populated by sentient creatures called "Godtouched," who are in fact the genetic experiments of the gods. The most currently-successful godtouched race is the Humans, who have dominated the planet by harnessing the world's forces of magic with modern ideas of science and technology.

The Gods Themselves

Aarn's gods are not truly real. The images worshiped as Gods that interact with Aarn's populace are the roleplaying characters of timeless, multiverse-aware entities who wish to do nothing else but experiment with the notion of causality. These entities are uncaring, unfeeling, and unknowable. The identities they play vary from region to region, based on the beliefs of their local worshipers.

The Fey

The same entities that play Aarn's gods also play Aarn's fey. In the case of the fey, these entities impose upon themselves strict limitations which put them just slightly above the level of mortal races. Despite these limitations, fey are still mind bending, sanity-searing creatures that seem able to adjust the laws of the natural world to their whims.

The Demifey

Occasionally, the entities playing the gods and the fey can become separated from the identities they have created. These identities become autonomous, and quickly go insane. They are no longer immortal, and in fact are less than mortal, as their next death will annihilate them utterly. They keep their godly powers, and are given a very good reason to use them; self-preservation. Demifey are the most dangerous creatures Aarn has to offer.

The Godtouched Races

The magic-capable races of Aarn are the lone survivors of ancient bloody wars of genocide. The Gods created each race by splicing together the aspects of various animals, granting the resulting creation sentience and magic, then seeing how long the race survived. Godtouched races include, but are not limited to:

• Humans, who are the masters of the world. The first human civilization created magical experiments so powerful, they shattered an entire continent, creating a sea of islands to the east. Humans were created from giants, an animal that served as a base component in most of the godtouched civilizations that survived to this day.

• Ardlins, a race of diminutive velociraptor-goblin-kobolds. Their race was created not 75 years ago. Ardlins have a high technological aptitude, despite not yet developing their own culture or education. They are shunned and hunted because no race wishes to see Ardlins become the next race to dominate the planet. They were created by the god of procrastination, who is now beginning to be seen as the god of plucky resolve.

• Valdrex, a race of insects whose individuals have no egos. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, they nearly destroyed the planet by killing two of the gods. Since then, they have become merchants who seek to dominate through slavery and economics. They garb themselves in robes that make them appear humanoid, for diplomatic purposes.

• Spirit Animals, a race of sentient animals with ornery personalities. They have the special ability to become spirits upon death, avoiding the afterlife entirely. Spirit animals may then steal the bodies of other races. Those possessed by spirit animals have infiltrated Human society, and actually control Aarn's international banking system.

• Merfolk, an aquatic race that shuns the use of all magic. Instead, merfolk use biotechnology, including mile long eel battleships, laser-firing lamprey wrist-guards, and jellyfish bubble-cities. The Merfolk are literally ruled by their god, Occus, and have perpetrated genocide against all other aquatic godtouched races. Only the water dragons survived.

Magic

The magic of Aarn covers three distinct categories. Wizardry is the scientific magic of Humans, that obeys the mechanical laws of nature. Channeling is a custom, at-will magic system. Divine magic, also known as dream magic, is the ability for Godtouched races to borrow the powers of the gods and fey to reshape the world.

Wizardry

Aarn's Wizards use a Vancian spellcasting system called Spellweaving, where they program spells like computer code. Typically, each spell can be used once when woven, and is stored within the Wizard's aura before use. Atypically, Aarn wizards cannot use polymorph effects, summoning effects, or any effect that requires intelligence, adaptibility or creativity on the part of the spell itself.

Channeling

Channelers are magic users who develop their abilities naturally. A channeler is attuned to one of Aarn's 14 magical elements, which are Air, Water, Earth, Metal, Life, Death, Kanna (A catch-all physical element), Heat, Cold, Light, Dark, Sound, Electricity, and Manna (A catch-all energy element.) A channeler's abilities are either psychic, transmutational, or psychokinetic, or a combination of these. An individual Channeler has only a few of the availible abilities, but he or she can combine these abilities together to achieve greater effects. Channelers have a number of spell points they can burn each turn to use these abilities and effects as often as they wish.

Divine Magic

Mortals who have great faith, the favor of a god or fey, or simply a dream-like personality can use Divine Magic. The source of this magic is the Astral Sea, the home of the gods and fey, and the location of the afterlife. Divine magic is also known as Dream Magic, because when mortals dream, they are actually experiencing a pocket of the Astral Sea.

Divine magic is fueled by a manna point system (that are recharged when mortals dream or meditate) and the power of the spells can be augmented through varying casting methods. Divine magic has few rules save for the categories of spells, and each divine caster creates their own spells to suit their character.

The methods of casting vary widely from region to region, from chanting, to using cards and magic circles, to dancing, to wearing masks, or to the truly ridiculous, like making silly faces or eating "sacred" fruit. Divine magic is a magic that works if you believe it does, and conversely, if you believe it will not work, it will not. The culturally varied rituals involved in casting divine magic are not themselves magical, but the belief that these rituals are necessary is enough to make them so. What makes differing casting methods similar, however, is that they all involve some form of creative self-expression.

Elemancy

Elemancy is a special hybrid magic that allows a wizard with channeling abilities to create and dominate pets and constructs. An Elemancer does so by literally dividing his or her soul among many bodies. These creatures are called elementals, and are composed entirely out of an Elemancer's element. Biomancers create monsters, Necromancers create undead puppets, Animancers create constructs, and the like.

Mundanes

As godtouched races are inherently magical creatures, even those who do not use any magic can compete with the magic users. Those who do not use magic develop a high level of magical resistance, that allows them to soak spell damage. Further, godtouched races who physically train their bodies develop unbelievable levels of physical prowess. A non-magic-using swordsman can leap 20 feet into the air, cleave a thick tree with a single sword stroke, and sprint at the speed of a cheetah. It is largely this ability that has prevented swordplay from becoming obsolete in the face of magical devices that for all intents and purposes are military grade firearms.

Magitech

Aarn's magic is highly volatile, and magical items will explode horrifically if seriously damaged or improperly maintained. Despite this, magical technology is highly pervasive. Aarn's technological advancement is analogous to our own, and in some cases, such as medical technology, Aarn's technology surpasses ours. Aarn is filled with clockwork vehicles, airships, hover platforms, and huge city-maintaining golems.

Runecrafting

Runecrafting is the art of drawing magical runes, which resonate with the magical auras that lie in all things, especially nonmagical things. By using runes, a character can impart upon themselves or objects channeling effects that can neither be turned off nor controlled. If destroyed or improperly removed, a rune will seriously damage an object, which is why runes that are designed to create spells effects, like scrolls, are destroyed upon the release of the magical effect.

The Afterlife

Aarn's afterlife consists of nine and a half hells, and no heavens. These hells are not hellish by design, but because of bureaucratic missteps, it is quite difficult to find oneself in a hell one will enjoy. The hells are a satire of Dungeons & Dragons' alignment system, with each hell modeled after one of the nine alignments. These hells are very much like Aarn itself, with only the immortality of the residents and the bureaucracy of the demons setting the hells apart from Aarn.

The hells are seen by mortal eyes as planets orbiting a giant sun, the dream of a sleeping god named K'tellos. If K'tellos wakes, his material identity will become a demifey, and risks destroying the world.

Scattered amongst the planets and K'tellos's sun-like dream in the Astral Sea, there are hundreds of millions of stars, each star the dream of a sleeping mortal on Aarn.

Demons

Demons are the clerks of the afterlife, who created the nine and a half hells after the previous afterlife system was destroyed. They have knowledge of Earth, and follow earth religions. Their technology is also based on earth science fiction stories, but all of their devices are designed with a retro North American 1930s to 1950s vibe.

History

The first war of the gods nearly destroyed the world. Since then, things had calmed down, but only relatively so. Out of thousands of races, and thousands of gods, only between twenty and thirty goudtouhced races survived. A scant eight thousand years ago, Jennin decided to create the humans, and risk restarting the wars. Soon after, the humans had used wizardry to take over the world. They then accidentally blew up a fifth of the existing landmass. Immediately afterward, the god of perversion decided to become involved. He invented a magical virus that allowed him to control undead puppets much like elemancers, and he became the god of undeath. Doing so also created ghosts and spirits, which destroyed the then-current afterlife system.

By now, a new afterlife system has had enough time to become grievously misunderstood by Aarn's mortals, and the political structure of the world has somewhat stabilized, with humans still on top, more concerned with fighting amongst themselves than fighting other godtouched races. The fey and Gods obviously see this time as a new, prime opportunity to begin creating godtouched races again. They seek to rekindle the war of the gods, treating Aarn and its mortal inhabitants as their personal experiment.

External Links

Aarn's first /tg/ thread

Aarn's progress blog, occasionally updated.

Aarn's Wiki, constantly updated and under heavy construction.