Manifold Sky
Iknemi, Ikirsten 5, 10,000 AR (Fifth Day of the First Month, Year 10,000, Age of Reclaimation)
Scope
The motivation behind building Manifold Sky
My intent with building the Manifold Sky is to create a setting for written stories knit together with tabletop role-playing modules.
The goal of the project
I want the Manifold Sky and the BCGR tabletop RPG system to go hand-in-hand. I will write out the Garbage Man Arc as a novel, but other stories taking place in the world will be written such that they can be enjoyed either as self-contained stories or, alternatively, as setpiece adventures or battles with game statistics attached. This would function in a similar manner to setpiece experiences found in wargaming modules, though some stories would be left open-ended enough to allow readers to chose their own paths through them.
If enough of the world is fleshed out, I would like to create a setting where 'West Marches'-style adventures can take place, with players serving multiple factions simultaneously in the ever-churning war for resources and territory within the Manifold.
Manifold Sky's Unique Selling point
Other than taking place in a dieselpunk setting, the world of Manifold Sky features a unique, non-Euclidean environment. Extra care is taken to investigate the implications of the unusual geometries, technologies, and cultures of the setting, with an eye towards organic worldbuilding. Lastly, the cosmology of the setting links it to other settings, eventually allowing for crossover events.
Theme
Genre
The Manifold Sky is speculative fiction, specifically dieselpunk with elements of adventure, surrealism, and mathematical fiction. There is no 'magic' in the Manifold, though the geometries of the Manifold Sky are unusual and many phenomena have yet to be explained through direct evidence. The physical laws of the Manifold obey the correspondence principle.
Reader Experience
The further one strays from The Human Arc, the weirder the world gets. Within the Medial Tesseract, environments are recognizably terrestrial. Despite the relative stagnation of technology in the Manifold, humanoid settlements evoke Earthly forms, though the unique geometries of the Manifold sometimes permit more extreme architecture (i.e. the canyon city of Triple Mesa or the Sky Lattice megastructure). This status quo changes as one moves progressively farther away until, eventually, one reaches truly alien environments with strange terrain and ecospheres which operate on completely different principles from our own. Surreal locales are meant to evoke a sense of wonder and forboding in the reader in equal measure.
Reader Tone
Despite the various ongoing conflicts within the Manifold, the overall tone of the Manifold Sky setting is relatively bright. Even the century-long War of Reunification lacks the ultra-violence which would come from an ideologically-driven conflict, as the factions involved still share many cultural touchstones with one another. There is darkness to be found in the world, such as the events of the Charred Chard Murders, slave mining in the Eiquereus Craglands, or the machinations of factions like the Verdant Order or Manifold Conservation Society. Still, most people can live relatively safe lives within the confines of the major states, and the development of airships and skystation has opened the world to a new golden age of extra-tesseract exploration and adventure.
Recurring Themes
Interconnection
Just as the physical spaces within the Manifold are interconnected in bizarre and difficult to predict ways, the peoples and cultures of the Manifold are also interconnected with one another. People feel strong connections to each other, to their societies , to the natural world, and to the cosmos. Broken connections lead to a grasping desire for new connections - sometimes with dire consequences.Temperance
Because resources are limited and the world of the Manifold is a confined space, excess, waste, and imprecise force are to be avoided at all costs. Heroes are moderate and farsighted, while villains are indiscriminate.Atonement
While few are outright villains, everyone in the Manifold carries a burden of sin for which they must seek some form of closure. Some sins stretch all the way back to The Curved Time; Innocence was never lost because it never followed people into the Manifold in the first place. Characters in the Manifold strive towards atonement for the sins of the past while others remain unable to rise above their base, degenerate natures.Character Agency
The Manifold Sky is mostly meant to be taken seriously. It is moderately 'noblebright' (or 'knightglow') in the sense that, while dark tidings are on the near horizon, concerted effort and the advancement of human understanding provide glimmers of hope for the future. In such a small, confined world, every individual is capable of meaningfully shaping the world with their actions.
Focus
Drama
The ongoing conflict among the civilizations of the Manifold Sky setting is Society vs. Society, as different factions vie for control of limited resources.. This is most readily embodied in the War of Reunification, where Voxelia and the Coalition of Breakaway Colonies are currently fighting due to the historic seccession of the latter faction and the increasingly crowded nature of the Medial Tesseract
In the case of the Garbage Man arc, the primary conflict is Man vs. Society, as The Garbage Man rebels against the social strife which saw his home and family destroyed while operatives from societies across the Manifold seek to stop him from destroying the Manifold with them in it.
For travelers and explorers in the wold, the primary conflict is Man vs. Nature. Much of the Manifold is unexplored, inhospitable, or occupied by dangerous species, and certain organizations are tasked explicitly with making these places known to the rest of the world. For example, members of the Burning Hearts Social Club and Parasol Private Holdings press into such unexplored regions for fame and fortune, risking their skins in the process.
A Society vs. Society drama is playing out between the Navigator's Guild and the inevitable encroach of technologies which threaten to make them obsolete. The Guild, while steadfastly maintaining an air of neutrality, must also maintain its own relevance in the face of Data Engines Limited autopiloting systems, freelance navigators skirting Guild regulations, and nations seeking to leverage the Guild's social, financial, and technical clout to get a leg up on other nations.
While the humanoids of the Manifold are fighting one another, the ovinex are engaged in a Society vs. Self struggle to define their place in the world and what role they will play within it. Unlike hominids, the ovinex are still relatively new to sapience, possessing a level of technology roughly equivalent to the late neolithic or early bronze age. After suffering defeat at the hands of the Rostrans during the Rostran-Ovinex War, the Ovinex are torn between adherence to their very long-standing traditions(including the longest-running oral tradition in the Manifold) and changing to meet the demands of a world filled with wondrous technologies and rival sophonts.
Most people within the Manifold are running from some sort of personal vice or sin in a Man vs. Self conflict. This is a reflection of the fact that the sins of The Curved Time still weigh on the oldest souls within the setting, as these individuals were responsible for unsung suffering and death, the repercussions of which radiate up from lost, antedeluvian times to the present day.
by BCGR_Wurth