Æthursday: Distopian Horror in the Iron Age!

Today’s setting is an Iron Age setting with Gunpowder technology set in a Dystopian Horror.

Alexander’s soldiers and men scoured the corners of the earth in search for artifacts while the young general set out to conquer the known world. Each time a new people was found little parts of their culture was rolled into Alexander’s view of the world, whether he borrowed bits of their mythology, their social structure, or their technology. Alexander was poised to bring into being the most powerful and most advanced civilization since Atlantis before his untimely death.

However, all of that knowledge, all of that science and alchemy, and all of that technology came at a terrible price. In their hubris, the general’s men had not listened to the guardians of ancient cairns and temples in the far corners of the world. These people were the protectors of many, keeping ancient evil at bay and making sure it still slumbered. With their warnings unheeded, the ages-old wards were broken and the evil was set loose upon the world.

It was small changes at first. Possessions, ghosts, and nightmares spread slowly across the land like a sleepless pox. Following the trade routes that were established to help unify the world, evil traveled from the wilds of central Asia to all corners of Africa and Europe. Taking some two hundred years to fully spread, it is finally knocking on the doors of the mightiest city in the world: Rome.

With the omen readers, soothsayers, and priests unable to effectively fight back against this supernatural plague of beasts, demons, ghosts, and monsters, the Romans turn to technology found by Alexander, improved by his alchemists, and perfected by Roman engineering. They finally had a new weapon that would stand up to the growing hordes of unspeakable horrors: the gun.

Small cohorts of troops were gathered to fight off the evil coming from the East, to purify areas that were hit in Europe and Africa and the Near East. As one of these troops, it is your job to rise up, use your newly minted flint-lock pistols and rifles along with an amazing array of assorted shot types and nerves stronger than iron.

Cities and governments are falling. People are turning to dark powers to fight what is becoming the twilight of Man. Take back what was yours and bring back the dawn!

Give this one a try today, or craft your own setting in minutes with the Random Setting Generator found in the Æther Core Book. Hit the link to pick it up in either PDF or Paperback+PDF!