Excerpt from the Player's Handout for my Black Dawn campaign: Post-Apocalyptic Steampunk Fantasy

THE BLACK DAWN

In an instant, millions died.

The Black War had been over for a decade. The Blood Queen was dead; the Cruj, Eidolos and Gorgoloth had retreated back to their lands in the Reach and the Nethermost. Chul Gaerog, the Black Tower, exploded after Vlagoth’s body was thrown off of its bladed apex. The uneasy truce between Jlantria and Den’nar would continue, and they continued to work against Meldoar, the traitor empire led by the cursed Witch Knights who’d supported the Blood Queen’s thirty-year war. The world was scarred, but it would heal, given time.

Thirty years after the war, the Zero Engine exploded.

No one even knew what it was until after it had gone off: a Possible Bomb, a temporal explosive device that waited between folds in the time stream, between the membranes of separate realities. When it exploded, it exploded across worlds: mirror bombs, alternate bombs, bombs from several possible parallel universes all detonated simultaneously, and the effects of all of those explosions spilled over to the world of Malzaria.

When the Engine exploded, the world shook, and in an instant millions died. Cities exploded in shards of stone and steel; caustic vapors swept across the land in black clouds of ash and steam; the sun was hidden behind a veil of skeletal dust and rancid smoke. Over the course of one morning – the Black Dawn – a war that was already over took its greatest toll.

Now, the Empires are gone. The cities are just cinder and rubble, and the forests and pastures have been blasted into scorched fields and smoldering bogs. It’s been ten years now since the Black Dawn, and people of the Sethian continent are still putting together the pieces. Militant city-states spread across Sethia represent the last bastion of civilization’s hope, but these cruel fortress towns wage war with another and protect their own interests above all else. Every city, from the criminal trade ports of Thornn and Rhaine to the isolationist zealots of Corinth to the struggling mercantilism of Kalakkaii, has its share of problems.

New Koth, the most powerful of the new city-states, may be the worst of them all. Life there revolves around the Carrion Rift, a deep canyon that cuts through the heart of the city: in its depths lay the entrances to an ancient necropolis of arcane lore and treasure. This place is called Skullheim, and the exploration and plundering of its riches fuel the strongest city-state’s economy. But there are things in Skullheim that would best be left undisturbed, for that city's arcane citizens experimented with dark forces and foul magic. Worse, New Koth must contend with the Hungered, a militant force of vampires at war with the city’s rulers -- a ruthless band of cutthroats and mercenaries called the Ebon Hand – over the rights to explore Skullheim. New Koth’s war against the undead forces of the Hungered carries on, day and night, from the opposite sides of the grim canyon.

But however dangerous life is in the confines of the city-states, outside it’s worse. Lawless raiders, cannibal cults, Gorgoloth barbarians and Maloj hunters stalk the wastelands, from the edge of the poisoned Wormwood to the shifting horror of the Carnivore Mists, across the barren Bone March to the frozen fields of the Reach. And there are forces that want to tear down the city-states and destroy what’s left of humanity: the armies of the vast subterranean nations of the Nethermost; the twisted monstrosities in the tainted city of Dirge; and the Meldoarian Witchocracy’s last standing city, Rath.

In the era of the Black Dawn, magic and technology are the tools to civilization’s survival, and the means by which the city-states will pull themselves into the hard future. Whether you use thaumaturgic engines, firearms, magic-powered bio-arcana, ancient shamanism or a good old fashioned bastard sword, the world needs an adventurer like you to help rebuild, to explore, and to battle off the sometimes overwhelming evil forces that wait around every corner. Riches and opportunity await adventurers brave enough to undertake tasks as such charting the path to the Bloodwinter Tomb, exploring the ancient ruins of Krezzel Dul, navigating the deadly waters of Rimefang Loch, uncovering the secrets of the Witch’s Eye and the Chain of Scars, and foiling the nefarious plans of the Black Circle.

This is no world for the weak. Prepare yourself: the battle for survival already started. Now it's your turn to join the fight.

Welcome to the Black Dawn.