The Ninth World
A billion years in the future ...
"There have been eight previous worlds. You may refer to them as ages, aeons, epochs, or eras, but it's not wrong to think of each as its own individual world. Each former world stretched across vast millennia of time. Each played host to a species whose civilizations rose to supremacy but eventually died or scattered, disappeared or transcended. During the time that each world flourished, those who ruled it spoke to the stars, reengineered their physical bodies, and mastered form and essence, all in their own unique ways.
"Each left behind remnants.
"The Ninth World is built on the bones of the previous eight, and in particular the last four. Reach into the dust and you'll find that each particle has been worked, manufactured, or grown, and then ground back into drit - a fine artificial soil - by the relentless power of time. Look to the horizon - is that a mountain, or part of an impossible monument tot he forgotten emperor of a lost people? Feel that subtle vibration beneath your feet and know that ancient engines - vast machines the size of kingdoms - still operate in the bowels of the earth.
"The Ninth World is about discovering the wonders of the worlds that came before it, not for their own sake, but as the means to improve the present and build a future.
"Each of the prior eight worlds, in its own way, is too distant, too different, too incomprehensible. Life today is too dangerous to dwell on a past that cannot be understood. The people excavate and study the marvels of the prior epochs just enough to help them survive in the world they have been given. They know that energies and knowledge are suspended invisibly in the air, that reshaped continents of iron and glass - below, upon, and above the earth - hold vast treasures and that secret doorways to stars and other dimensions and realms provide power and secrets and death. They sometimes call it magic, and who are we to say that they're wrong?"
-from Numenera: Discovery by Monte Cook, Bruce R. Cordell, and Sean K. Reynolds.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:17, Tue 04 June 2019.