SeventhSun:Home
The world may end tomorrow. It may continue for another twenty thousand years. In Tzaadra, this uncertainty is no excuse to neglect the vintage, abandon an expedition, default upon a debt, or leave the cat unfed.
Seventh Sun: Old Earth, Very Late
[edit]On Old Earth, six Suns have passed—not six stars, but six immense ages of humanity and its posthuman heirs. Civilizations have risen beyond counting. They remade the body, disciplined the mind, moved Earth through the heavens, and worked transformations for which no living language possesses an adequate verb. Most of their names are lost. Their works remain.
Now the Seventh Sun hangs vast and red above an Earth grown strange. Islands of stone float in tranquil skies. Roads arrive at destinations they did not formerly possess. In certain valleys light moves slowly enough to watch. Ancient engines sleep beneath vineyards, palaces and rubbish heaps. Some relics answer questions. Others take offense.
No one living understands more than a fraction of the Legacy. Science is not advancing; it has already advanced farther than the imagination can follow, a million times over, and been forgotten just as often. The learned do not invent miracles. They recover old procedures, consult surviving records, and persuade recalcitrant wonders to perform their proper functions.
Yet this is not a world waiting obediently for death. The red sunshine is warm. Gardens bloom. Children quarrel in the streets. Magistrates issue needless proclamations. Merchants cheat with impressive continuity. Songs are sung badly and then sung again. Tomorrow remains doubtful, and therefore today remains valuable.
The end of the world is a serious matter. This does not require everyone to be serious about it at all times.
Tzaadra
[edit]The continent of Tzaadra is a country of ancient roads, isolated city-states and impossible horizons, surrounded by an ocean broad enough to swallow histories. No single empire commands it. Optimates rule from old courts and floating cities; Inheritors crowd fantastic urban precincts; pastoral Viators follow routes older than their nations; and settlements separated by a few days’ travel may disagree about law, custom, posthumanity, and the proper direction of sunrise.
The Monitors are present throughout its life. They are worshiped as gods, petitioned as patrons, accused as meddlers and defended as the last guardians of posthumanity. Perhaps they will save Earth before the final darkness. Perhaps they have already done all they intend to do. Their Emissaries receive answers, but not necessarily explanations.
Beyond the walls and cultivated lands are abandoned works, altered regions and the remnants of wars fought under earlier Suns. Gorgonids, Behemoths, Scourge, nanite swarms and stranger beings inhabit a world never designed to remain tidy for so long.
Heroes of the Latter Days
[edit]Heroes of the Seventh Sun are posthuman travelers, protectors, adepts, couriers, antiquarians, opportunists and holy nuisances. They cross Tzaadra in search of lost routes, stolen relics, necessary truths, unreasonable fortunes and solutions to problems that were old before their species appeared.
Every hero belongs to one of the world’s posthuman lineages, but lineage is a beginning rather than a destiny. A character’s Path is likewise a guide—a recipe for realizing an heroic idea, never a class that dictates which Skills must be learned.
- Blades meet danger directly and make themselves the obstacle it must overcome.
- Shadows survive through movement, audacity, misdirection and inconvenient knowledge.
- Magisters control internally generated phasm through the living instrument of the vinculum.
- Emissaries receive phasmic power from the Monitors and bear all the complications of divine attention.
Begin with Character Creation, or meet the Sample Heroes.
Wonders, Relics and Phasm
[edit]A relic may resemble a sword, cup, mask, door, bridge or smooth stone. Its apparent simplicity says nothing about its nature. A blade may divide matter along a fractal edge; a hammer may lend gravity to its blow; a pistol may emit a ray whose makers considered it a household convenience. Some relics possess minds, memories, loyalties or grievances of their own.
Phasm is the disciplined action of mind upon reality: neither sorcery in the old sense nor science as the present age understands it. Magisters generate and shape it through the vinculum. Emissaries channel what the Monitors provide. To those without access to it, the distinction may be academically sound and practically unhelpful.
Reality itself has endured too much revision. Physical law fails locally, ancient systems awaken without warning, and geography sometimes behaves as custom rather than fact. These are not exceptions pasted onto an otherwise ordinary medieval world. They are part of what Old Earth has become.
Enter the Seventh Sun
[edit]- The Setting — Old Earth, Tzaadra and the long decline of the Sun
- Character Creation — build a hero without levels or compulsory skill packages
- Rules of Play — the core procedures of the game
- Posthuman Lineages — the peoples who inherit Old Earth
- Paths — Blade, Shadow, Magister and Emissary
- Phasm — mind, power and the vinculum
- Relics — surviving wonders of earlier Suns
- Creatures of Tzaadra — warforms, Behemoths, Scourge and stranger things
- Glossary — the language of the latter days
If the Sun dies tomorrow, how should one live today? If it does not die for twenty thousand years, does the answer change?
Seventh Sun Codex
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