Vaults of Vaarn

Vaults of Vaarn is a science-fantasy tabletop RPG setting. It draws from novels like Dune, Hyperion, The Book of the New Sun, and the art of Moebius.

Vaarn is a surreal and colorful world: a post-apocalyptic, post-human landscape, where the dividing line between flesh and machinery has blurred and the borders between magic, science, and faith have likewise been obscured.

The sun is going out, it’s the end of history, and everything that could possibly happen has already happened and faded to dust. No two sources agree on the details of Vaarn's etiolated past, and in truth such debates hold little significance. However, there are some facts that every resident of Vaarn can agree upon:

• Vaarn is a sky-blue desert littered with the ruins of the far future.

• Vaarn is chiefly inhabited by true-kin (humans), cacogen (mutated humans), synths (robots), newbeasts (sapient animals), and mycomorphs (fungal revenants).

• The sun is a dying red giant. It won’t go out in a human lifetime, but the end is near.

• Vaarn is both archaic and futuristic. Think sword fights inside the wrecked husks of ancient spaceships.

• To the south lies the New Hegemony, a proud, expanding true-kin empire. Theoretically the Hegemony rules Vaarn, but they have little presence besides a few fortified border towns.

• Nanomachines are inside everything, and it’s normal to see wild animals with cameras growing out of their flesh.

• Nobody can agree on the cause, but there was a Great Collapse, which destroyed human civilization.

• Before the Great Collapse the planet was dominated by the Autarchy, a dictatorship enacted by a dynasty of genetically modified God-kings.

• Before the reign of the Autarchs, the Urth was ruled by AIs called the Titans. Something happened to them and they were overthrown, but the details are lost to history.

Game will have a loose structure, more sandbox than fixed story arcs. Various homebrew content can be found in the Resources tab, particularly Player Ancestries.