Creation and destruction, an endless cycle, looped so many times the history’s become a fog. No apocalypse remains. No post comes anymore. Eras upon eras, worlds upon worlds, like grains of sand upon the beach of cosmic awareness.

Optimism. Life. New beginnings from the primordial ooze of barbarism. From the planetary vents of life. Again, again, again.

Rain falls on mountains. Streams become rivers. Lakes meet seas. Tribes become cities. Prophets found kingdoms. Explorers cross horizons. Merchants bind cultures. Empires cross continents. Shamans ascend to the stars. Life spreads from fast star to slow star. Wanderers tunnel the wormways through the ever void.

All must come to pass in the infinite cosmoses.

Eternity eats the unwise.

You’re seeing now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I’ve been living on the edge so long, where the winds of Limbo roar. And I’m young enough to look at and far old to see. All the stars are on the inside.

—Veteran of the Psychic Wars (1975) Blue Öyster Cult

The Ultraviolet Grasslands
and the Black City

An epic voyage from the Rainbowlands on the shores of the Circle Sea to the end of the world, to the mythical Black City, to the shore of time and space.

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• 200 pages • 220+ color illustrations • 32 locations •
• alien factions • strange discoveries •
• one mythic steppe •

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Awards
2020 gold ennie — best interior art
2020 silver ennie – best cover

The Full Book

The Free Player Guide (74 pages, full color)

The Digital Referee Screen (loads in new tab)

Map, Screen, Cards, Hero Sheets

Zoa of the Vastlands

Naturalist explorers in the strange and infinite steppe. A creature generator for the unwary. Plots and complications. Shared invention of strange new lifeforms.

• UVG supplement • 20 pages • dozens of tables • a bunch of art •

Zoa of the Vastlands (2020) — pdf only. For now.

RRYPO

Traveling the anti-canons in a floating fortress. A tribute to strange glory that is Zardoz (1974). A giant floating head for the heroes to capture. Complications that ensue. A nuanced joke on the pretensions of balance and taste.

• UVG compatible • 40 pages • manuscript edition •

RRYPO (2020) — pdf only. Manuscript edition for now.

Red Sky / Dead City

The greatest city of all, Ebét, far away across the Seas of Moonbeams and Fog and Poison, beyond the farthest reaches of the limber golems and the swooning maidens of the liberties, has fallen. The mystical rationalist army of Iks has brought down the corpse-fat empire of Ebét and now the timeless sands of its necropolis are ripe for plunder. The offerings and sacrifices and jewels of millennia await.

“Ebét of the Hundred Gates, Mistress of the River of Life, City of the Living God, fallen to the hordes of Iks the Ninth, Ruler of the River of Death from Across the Poison Sea. Woe is become our name!”

—words scrawled on the Lime Wall of the Temple of the Everliving Cat by an Oppressor-Priest in his own blood.

An ongoing project on the stratometaship. Recently experiencing a bit of a hiatus due to the UVG and Seacat.

Voyages of the Black Obelisk

Welcome to the layered worlds behind the gates. Welcome to the tunnel worlds drilled through the palimpset creation. Welcome to worlds of eternal champions and cosmic misunderstanding. Welcome to travelers in time and space. Welcome ill-conceived creators and accidental destroyers of worlds.

Is this document-in-writing the UVG2? Yes, no, sort of, maybe. It ramifies from the UVG. It explicitly builds on the same madcap anti-canon mythology.

Eerie gates … to strange places emerge from the hazy Times Before Times … fools … plunder and treasure lie just beyond …

—Anachramos the Manifolded, Scribbles Against Creation (13,202.7 OE).

An ongoing project on the stratometaship. Updates irregularly.

Vastlands Posts

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  UVG2E & the Synthetic Dream Machine
  Where to sign up for UVG 2E? Where to get the freshly released SDM: Eternal Return Key ruleset? How to put up with the author’s maudlin ways? News for this blog?
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  The Purchased Brother: One-Shot Heist
  on running a one-shot heist / a game accelerating rule (criticality) / the story of the Purchased Brother / aftermath
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  Making a Game: There and Back Again
  An overview of where my writing and drawing is at.
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  Creative Permutations: Dead City
  —The slow horizon has eaten the living god. The millennial city falls. Gore runs in the archaic streets. Bones break beneath the stud wheels of the conquerors. —”Reason!” they yell as…
• Orgs, Organitrash
  UVG • VotBO • Mythos • Story • Faction Who are the Orgs? They are the shameful baseline humans of polymorph variety. A riot of creatures with strange shapes and terrible…

Visit the stratometaship.
Keep the spirit burning.
Stay awhile.
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Feel the music of the spheres.