OPPOSING FORCES
Mortisphere is not a world divided between good and evil.
The universe has already passed beyond such simple distinctions.
Every creature that remains has a reason for continuing. Some seek survival. Some seek power. Some seek resources. Some follow instincts older than civilization itself.
A conflict in Mortisphere is not always a war between armies.
Sometimes it is a collision between different kinds of hunger.
—
CREATURES OF THE FINAL AGE
The inhabitants of Mortisphere come from every era that existed before the end.
Some were born after the universe began to collapse.
Some survived from civilizations that disappeared millions of years ago.
Some were never meant to survive at all.
The remains of countless ages now exist together:
- Survivors and scavengers. - Ancient machines. - Mutated organisms. - Mycelian hosts. - Forgotten weapons. - Remnants of extinct civilizations. - Things that have no name because the beings that named them are gone.
—
MYCELIANS
The Mycelians are among the most widespread forms of life in the final age.
They are not undead.
They are not resurrected.
They are organisms that use existing biological matter as a vehicle.
A dead body is not a person returned to life.
It is a resource.
A structure.
A means of movement.
The Mycelian inhabits the remains, replacing lost functions with its own biology. A corpse, skeleton or other organic remains can become a vessel through which the organism acts.
To outsiders, a Mycelian-controlled body may resemble something impossible.
To the Mycelian, it is simply adaptation.
—
VARIETY OF EXISTENCE
Not all Mycelians are the same.
Some are simple organisms driven by instinct.
Some operate in groups.
Some possess intelligence, memory or personality.
Some inhabit bodies chosen only for practical reasons.
Others have developed identities tied to their hosts, their experiences or their own ambitions.
A Mycelian crew member may be as individual as any other being in Mortisphere.
The body it uses does not define everything it is.
—
ANCIENT REMNANTS
Not everything that survived the end did so through biology.
Across Mortisphere lie machines and creations from civilizations that no longer exist.
Some still function.
Some follow commands that nobody understands.
Some have developed new purposes after their original creators vanished.
An ancient machine may consider itself a soldier defending an empire that disappeared before anyone remembers.
A weapon may continue searching for targets that no longer exist.
A construct may be the final representative of a species that left nothing else behind.
—
THE UNKNOWN
Mortisphere contains things that cannot be easily classified.
Some beings are too old.
Some are too strange.
Some have changed too much.
The survivors of the final age often create explanations for things they cannot understand.
They name them.
They worship them.
They fear them.
They trade with them.
Whether those explanations are correct is rarely important.
What matters is what the thing does.
—
OPPOSING CREWS
When two crews meet, both sides have their own reasons.
The enemy is not simply a target.
They are another group trying to survive the same impossible universe.
They may have:
- Different objectives. - Different values. - Different methods. - Different ideas about what should remain.
A battle may end with one crew defeated.
It does not mean the other crew was right.
In Mortisphere, victory and morality are rarely connected.
—
THE THINGS THAT REMAIN
The creatures of Mortisphere are not monsters because they are frightening.
They are monsters because they are what exists after everything else has disappeared.
The final age does not ask what should have survived.
It only asks what did.