Jul 1, 2017 10:26:47 GMT -7
Post by Kitten4u on Jul 1, 2017 10:26:47 GMT -7
Welcome to the Jungle
Hundreds of years ago, calamity struck the world. Plants withered and died, bodies of water started drying up and rain stopped falling, seasons and weather vanished leaving only the hot sun blaring down on the world, and animals and people started dying in droves. The world started turning into a vast wasteland of sand and rock. Life became a desperate battle for survival. So much so that what caused the world to change, and what was done to save what little life remained, was lost.
Even now, most of the world is a vast wasteland. In the middle of it all is a small oasis of life, and over the centuries life thrived with in it. Eventually, the area turned into a sprawling metropolis as the people squeezed everything they could out of the land. Only the center of the city, an area covered in a thick jungle and crawling with dangerous, otherworldly creatures, remained untouched. The jungle's a dangerous place that few people dared go there despite the abundant resources. Because of that, and the population density of the city, resource management was always very important. Eventually, the city's growth started to slow to a crawl until the world changed yet again.
About 150 years ago, the people daring enough to enter the jungle started to change. Their bodies changed, ranging from very small mutations, like odd colored skin, to large ones, like growing wings. With those changes, they developed the ability to break certain laws of physics. People called this ability 'magic.' While they were still weaker than most of the monsters in the jungle, who could use a much stronger form of magic, it gave them more of a weapon against the creatures. The ability to fight them, or at least hide and avoid them better, allowed those people to get resources out of the jungle that they were unable to get before. Thus, the city started to grow again. Recently, some ruins were found under the biggest tree in the center of the jungle. The ruins were not only packed with resources, but were the only signs of a civilization that might have existed before the wasteland formed. Calls to explore the ruins rang throughout the city, and with the sudden burst of resources from both the jungle and the ruins, people have started exploring the wasteland as well.
The world has entered an age of exploration and is expecting another industrial boom. What will you do in this new age?
The Wasteland
The world only has a small pocket of life; the rest is covered in a vast wasteland of sand and rock. There's no weather, or even wind, so it rarely changes. When it does, it's because of human intervention. The wasteland isn't completely devoid of resources however. Even beyond sand being useful for certain technologies, there are several different kinds of rocks and it's abundant in fossil fuels. Plus, because there's not weather, it's used for massive solar farms to power the city. Because of this, efforts have been made to explore the wasteland to find new resources. However, this has proved difficult and not much progress has been made over the years despite the lack of monster dangers.
First, it's very hot with little shade. The sun beating down on the explorers can be dangerous for them. There's no water or anything edible in the wasteland, so they have to carry their own supplies too, further increasing the effects the sun can have on them.
The terrain is equally as difficult. There are a wide range of terrains that explorers have to deal with. Parts of it are salt flats, but that's the only kind of terrain that's easy to traverse. Some of the rock formations tower into mountains, or form deep canyons that rival the deep ocean trenches of our world. Much of it is also covered in sand, which makes the rock formations grainy and painful to grip onto, as well as a bit slippery. Some parts are even completely covered in sand, forming large sand dunes and all the hazards that come with them.
However, the single biggest problem with exploring the wasteland has been a mysterious phenomenon that causes people to die if they spend too long in it. It's not clear what causes these deaths. Even after examining the bodies, there are no signs of bodily trauma or even dehydration or starvation. It's as though their soul was simply sucked out of their body. People can spend a couple of days in the wasteland safely, but after about a week they're at risk for death. This is even worse for people that can use magic, as they can only survive for a day or two until this happens to them. As a result, the area directly around the city has been thoroughly explored, but everything beyond that is still a mystery.
Now that there are more resources to go around, people are funding expeditions out into the wasteland again in hopes to see if there's anything else useful out there, and to discover more about the world.