Setting and Lore

History

No one really knows how the world ended. We can see the remnants of that other time. Everyone says there used to be more people. A lot more. A lot more animals too. I don't really know about all those things, but I do know they ain't here no more. The world has moved on. We're a remnant of another time, but for whatever reason when it all moved on, we stayed behind.

They say the Overseers weren't around back then either. That musta been nice. A time when we were the shepherds instead of the sheep. No one really knows how long ago this all went down, but all the signs point to it being a damn long time. There's a lot of rumors about who they are and where they came from. One I heard makes the most sense is that one day, Hell just damn run out of room, and the biggest meanest sons of bitches stood on the shoulders of everyone else and clawed their way loose.

Once they were loose, weren't no stopping them and they clogged up the gates to Hell and everything you can imagine came pouring out all over the place. Might be that ain't true. Might be they're like the mutants and just leftover accidents from radiation melting them, but if you ever see that dark Craft them Overseers do then you know there something not right about them anyways.

We don't hear much from cities other than ours. We get news from the occasional stragglers from time to time, and they seem to make it sound like those places are as shit-out-of-luck as we are. People say that we used to be able to talk to people far away by bouncing messages off the stars. Don't know nothing about that, but if some four eyes knows how to do that, they ain't tellin, or nobodies listening. Don't suppose it rightly matters. If the Overseers don't have them other places under their thumb yet, they will soon enough.

Overseers

Never run into one of the Overseers before? You should be happy about that. I was in town the day the first Overseer arrived here. Didn't see it, but I knew it was here. Felt like I needed to pop my ears and all of a sudden every hair on my body stood up. I started retching right there on the spot. It felt like some big bad predator was creeping up behind me. If I'm being honest, I don't know that the feeling's ever left. I think one of the reasons people go work out in the fields is they'll trade a hard day's labor for feeling like they can breathe easy for just a few hours.

The Houses of the Overseers and their Trueborn all rule things with their blessing, just like everywhere else. They let us elect a handful of officials in town, but everyone knows those fools got no teeth. The worst of it is, unlike other cities who have one, or if they're lucky, none of these vile things.... we got a pair of them, and they seem to be working together, or at least they have some kind of accord.

Knights

When the Overseers need their will enforced they dispatch some of their Knights. These are creatures that represent the strength and malicious will of the Overseers. They are alien beings that are incredibly dangerous to be near as they have very little regard for life, and usually whatever business they're on is ill business.

It is best to do what the knights say, and make yourself scarce if you ever see one. What's worse, they almost never travel by themselves. You'll usually see them in groups of three.

The Houses

Everything that came out of the gates seem to have a hierarchy among them, with the Overseers sitting on top, and when they interact with our kind, they seem to like us to shape up the same way. So there are people they Mark, and they let those people earn their favor and found their own Houses and live in the lap of luxury. We call the bigwigs Magnates, and they tend to get special treatment in whatever city their Overseer is, and while I can't blame them for that, nothing's free. The Houses end up enforcing the will of the Overseers in their cities.

Plenty of normal folk get swept up by some Magnate or another into their plans, always fighting to get a little more taste of comfort. I steer clear of it all personally. Some people think those who serve in the Houses have betrayed Humanity, others claim it's the only way to preserve us. I'll let you make your own decisions, but I'll say no one spends that much time around the Overseers and their ilk without a little bit of that sick rubbing off on them. Trust them at arm's length. Lastly, keep an eye out for the Trueborn. These folk were born with a hint of those creatures in them, and they get to act like royalty. This type usually wind up as Magnates too, but it can be hard to tell the two apart.

The Legion

There are plenty of other nightmares that followed in the wake of the Overseers. And just like a bad dream, they seem to come in all shapes and sizes. Most of the laws in Chalcedony don't apply to them. It's complicated and you'd have to ask one of the Houses for a better understanding of it. Long story short, no good comes from them, but if you're in the wilds and one of them is drooling after you: Shoot it and don't think twice.

We use The Legion to describe all of them. The creepy crawlies, the Overseers, their Knights. Anything that's not from here, that's The Legion.

Champions

Just like the Overseers have their Knights, Magnates tend to find some mean-spirited folk to serve a role for their houses. You can usually tell these heavily armed and armored a mile off. You don't need to give them any more wide a berth than you do for the rest of the Houses, but getting in their way still might piss off some Magnate prick and land you in a world of pain. Best to just say "Yes Sir" and let them get on with their business.

Chalcedony

That's us. Obviously you found your way here one way or another or we wouldn't be talking. Not too long ago we were just another quiet farming village on the edge of an irradiated barrens where we tended the Meat Fields for the Overseers. Nothing really distinguished us from anywhere else I've heard of. Not that I've been anywhere else....

One day things changed though. We had not one, but TWO Overseers move into town, and once they did they started having more people and machines sent here. And then we were set to digging in the hills. Didn't seem like anything at first, but they were determined. They worked us day and night at first, and before we knew it we'd hit a motherlode of Sulfur. Town has been booming ever since, with everyone wanting a piece of the action.

Seems like it might not have just been other workers drawn to Chalcedony as a result of the Sulfur Mine though, there have been rumors about strange creatures in the hills. Some people say the Legion are drawn to sulfur and that's all it is. It's too early to tell, but either way, not too long back we had been losing people faster than the Overseer could restock 'em, and so the mines all shut down. Rumor has it the Overseers are tasking the Houses with securing them so it's safe to work again.

The Lightbringer

Like I said before, I ain't never seen the Overseers, but when people split things up, they split up places. That's not how the Overseers did it though, instead they split up WHEN they'd rule. One of them rules during the day, and I guess this one's called The Lightbringer. Most of what we know about him we know from his Houses. It's not like he's doing puppet shows in the middle of town.

The thing I can tell you about The Houses of the Lightbringer though... they LOVE making laws. We got more laws than you can even imagine. One of the toughest things for new folks here is figuring them out, because justice is harsh too. The Bureaucracy of the Lightbringers is epic. Important thing is just... you can't give anything away for free. Everything done during the day needs to be a deal, and it needs to be authorized by one of the Lightbringer's Houses. The only thing that lot seems to like more than making laws, is talkin' about them, so you can find any of them and ask them if you don't understand a law and they'll be more than happy to go on.

The good news is if you break a law, everyone gets a trial, but just because there are rules and laws doesn't mean they aren't corrupted, and no one can lift a hand to save you if you have nothing or are found guilty. Handy side-effect is you occasionally two Houses really get into it, and they settle it with a Duel, and because it's sanctioned it happens at noon where everyone can see.

It's also good for business. With more and more people coming to Chalcedony, it's a good time to be a merchant, craftsman or worker. The Houses of the Lightbringer claim they're working to build a bigger, better city for everyone. It all just seems like politics to me though. Everyone in the Houses seems to be working an angle.

I still had to go out and break my back in the Sulfur Mines every day though, don't see how my life was getting any better.

The Umbrean

At Night, The Lightbringer's Houses hold no power. It takes some getting used to seeing this transition of power, but those people who held positions of authority and prestige at Day have no sway at Night when the other Overseer, The Umbrean, and it's Night Market reign. If The Lightbringer is a golden shackle, the Umbrean is a flashing knife in the dark.

In the Night Market, subtle lies and deception rule supreme. Any agreements made during the day hold no sway at night. Any contracts agreed to are just put on hold. The guards in the prisons swap, and some prisoners simply walk out at night.

But that doesn't mean there's no law and order. Grudges don't just disappear because it's night-time in Chalcedony. Night is when other deals and agreements get made. Those which shouldn't appear on any register. The knife that settles the score and makes sure the unjust ruling is made right.

Any crime which is committed at Night can only be resolved at Night however, as the Lightbringer's influence is dormant. The powerful and elite of the Houses of the Lightbringer have no more sway or authority than I do. Once Day rises the Umbrean loses all its authority, his House no longer sees his own brand of order maintained and those of his house lose their power.

The Cusp

The Cusp is a strange time of transition inside of Chalcedony, time where laws move from one set, to another. As a result there are certain deals, transactions and political alliances which can only happen during the Cusp, as this is a time when day and night are both in power, but neither fully so. While there is no official difference in power, Sunset mildly favors the Umbrean while Sunrise mildly favors the Lightbringers.

There are strange results of differing factions being in power at day and night. If those prisoners from before decide to wander out of jail at night, if they're not back in by the morning then they've fled the Justice of the Lightbringer, and the Lightbringer hates being robbed of its justice.

Because this is the only time when both powers have some authority, it's also the only time binding agreements can be made that carry from day into night. The hiring of Umbrean Bounty Hunters to catch and kill an escaped prisoner, is exactly the kind of agreement that must be made during the Cusp. If you paid a doctor to work on a friend who is wounded, you better be sure you make an agreement at the cusp so he checks in on your friend at night AND during the day.

Daily Life

At the end of the day it's hard to say how things are different now given that none of us really know how it was before. Sure plenty of people go diggin' around looking for lost books full of secrets of what came before, but if they ever existed those books have long since crumbled away. That and the Overseers have gone out of their way to stamp out any knowledge like that, so finding something like that would be like walking around holding a snake by the tail.

Most of us, we just keep our heads down and try to get by. We've got the decided misfortune, here in Chalcedony, of being under the thumb of not one, but two Overseers and they're both kicking each other under the table and we're all liable to get caught up in what comes next. It's not like we got any better options though. There's nowhere to go. We can wander the wastes or try to find some other hell-hole to scrape out a living in, but at least here we got a community to watch our backs, and the city is starting to come into its own with all the fresh souls showing up here.

Day to day life isn't too bad. Everyone has their work assignments and as long as you get those done and keep to yourself everything's fine. Some people start trouble and the Houses need to sort that out. There's plenty of crime they're always trying to track down, but as long as the crime is small and production in the mine doesn't slow down too much, they don't seem to care. Some people travel out into the wastes and dig through the old ruins and sometimes they come back with parts that we can salvage into some shadow of former tech.

The Houses have their own politics and occult rituals, but if you ask me that's the kind of business that got us into trouble here in the first place. But if you get enough going you can always make a deal with one of the Houses, maybe get some land and start a small homestead or farm of your own. As long as you keep paying taxes back to the city and don't start any trouble, people will generally give you a wide berth.

People at the end of the day, still make music and sing and dance. We find love and humanity seems to find a way to continue. There's this great big spooky out there, but the human spirit is an indomitable one. After all, that's the reason the Legion are so interested in it.