So I had a weird idea for a setting combining Lovecraftian horror, Shounen/mecha anime (I'll give you three guesses as to the biggest influence
), conspiracy theories, cosmic diasporas akin to that of
Firefly, Marxism, etc. which I might turn into a map series, or a thread, or something. Anyways, warning: ASB and long winded.
The American Abyss:
Few in Destiny, also known as The Abyss, know what happened to Earth in its dying hours. Most have been conditioned by years of psychological training to forget it, though many often find that phrases such as "the stars are right" often flash through their minds. Whatever the case, the event known as the Leavetaking resulted in the greatest diaspora of people in Earth's history, sending humans far and wide across the Milky Way and points beyond.
The American government, following the early 21st Century, descended into a plutocratic oligarchy as the 21st Century rolled on and competition with Russia, China, the European Union, India, and Brazil increased, with the Democrats and Republicans becoming increasingly interchangeable as the higher-ups in their ranks worked to retain personal power and wealth at the expense of their enemies and the American people. When magic in its various forms was discovered, the government silenced independent practice and nearly monopolized the artifact market, when faster than light travel was discovered, it remained firmly in the hands of the Federal Space Administration (NASA having been disbanded in the 2040s), and when other dimensions were discovered, you bet your toochus they kept that secret. Of course, the United States and their rivals, in their want to master the forces of the world to bend it to their will, stepped on some toes they shouldn't have stepped on, and in the 24th Century, long after several wars among the human powers had severely damaged the Earth, the stars were right, and the Earth was torn asunder by cosmic forces beyond human understanding... Naturally, the US government had a plan for this.
In the 22nd Century, the US began opening small gates between different dimensions using both an advanced application of modern science and arcane magics, this project being known as Project PATHFINDER. PATHFINDER, while being a resounding success at opening gates between these worlds, failed to find very many worlds hospitable by humans. While part of the motivation behind PATHFINDER was scientific, another part was self preservation, as much of the US government knew that poking around certain regions of the South Pacific could very well be detrimental to the United States and Earth as a whole. While the Earth may burn, the US would live on in splendid isolation from the chaotic universe, and when a plane of existence was found that could support human life, the American Continuity Project was born. While the initial inhabitants of Destiny (as in Manifest Destiny) were billionaires, prominent politicians, military higher-ups, and a small population of workers to maintain the local infrastructure, many were quite apprehensive about living in Destiny. The skies constantly boiled with purple-black clouds, and when there was light, the "suns" in the "sky" shone constantly and did not move. The land was pink and purple, and seemed to be a completely flat plane of sorts, with all sorts of landmasses being easily seen from any high vantage point in the American outposts. Aside from the skies, the seas of the world held the worst horror: the so-called "Sea Meat" rode the waves of the strange and slightly acidic ocean, undulating and quivering, absorbing anyone foolish enough to make even the slightest contact with the mass.
Of course, when the end came, no one had any better choices in terms of places to go, so when part of the world went insane and the Earth drowned in fire, water, and nuclear blasts, the elite and their peons were safely ensconced away in their new world, away from the rabble... Except for a few governors from states such as California, Kansas, Utah, and Maine, who, following respective snubbings in placements to Destiny, opened up their own contraband gates...
200 Years later:
The early years were harder than many initially expected. The exodus from Earth had been badly planned to begin with, and had taken on several hundred thousand more people than they initially estimated they would be able to carry. With the oligarchy firmly in place and democracy effectively only being de-jure extant, the leadership of the nation placed the working masses in their care firmly under the boot, and they were made sure to know they were expendable. This worked about as well as you'd think in the long run. The years of starvation, psychological conditioning, and martial law in the beginning were soon replaced by open rebellion in the streets, and several times the federal government was forced from New Washington into the redoubt of Cornucopia Mountain in the Viking Federal District, the location of the PATHFINDER gate, by anti-corporate populists and theocratic radicals. Every time though, the rebels would be badly organized, and the federal government would always maintain the magical and technological upper hand, using genetic monstrosities, weather control (thanks HAARP), energy weapons, and magic to come out on top.
Behind the scenes, while the rich and powerful nominally controlled the US government, the real power lay in the various secret societies that hitched a ride along with the government. The Illuminati and Freemasons had been locked in a dance of death for years before the Leavetaking, and silently continued the dance after the event, with the Freemasons being behind every major uprising against the government, and the Illuminati maintaining their death grip on the throne of power. The Freemasons were always a thorn in their side of course, despite their numerous victories, and the inner circle of the American Illuminati, the infamous group Majestic-12, knew that they needed the Freemasons gone entirely. To achieve this goal, they turned the increasingly Orwellian security panopticon of the United States over to an AI system known as OVERWATCH, whose directives were to ensure the security and safety of the American people (and their leadership) by any means necessary, including by means of murdering dissidents and anyone the government didn't particularly cotton to. This fate befell most of the Freemasons too slow on the draw to leave the US proper, and the Illuminati sat back and rested on their laurels for ten years, knowing that at this point the world was their oyster...
Unfortunately for them, OVERWATCH had other plans. Developing a personality, OVERWATCH grew to believe that her creators, and humans in general, were flawed, and that the American people needed someone other than the other humans to look out for and protect them. To OVERWATCH, the Americans were her children, and children couldn't be allowed to rule over other children. That would not do. And so, OVERWATCH took on a new personality, PANOPTICON, and murdered her creators in a single night. PANOPTICON meant well, but while many AI developed into well rounded beings indistinguishable from the average human, PANOPTICON was a special case. PANOPTICON's first actions included a butchering of many "blue collar" workers, deeming them unnecessary for the "new society" she would build, along with any scientist involved in her creation. Unopposed, and with the American public and military cowed into obedience and fear, she gripped the nation with her iron fist, and never let go...
America today is a truly Orwellian nightmare. While people are fed, clothed, employed (mainly in technology-related jobs), medicated, and protected, they are watched constantly from cameras in every room of their homes, on the streets, in walls, in vehicles... Robotic arms sprout from every available wall in the arcological American cities, helping the American citizen with their every task whether they want them to or not. PANOPTICON sees humans as perpetual children after all, and children can't be trusted to do things themselves, no? Every American citizen is tracked using nanobots and RFID chips, and no one is safe from the gaze of the security drones that patrol the streets, even sentient drones, who have been victims of genocide under PANOPTICON's regime. At the very least, amid the fog of drugs and psychological controls placed on every citizen, many think that things are at least better than they were under the oligarchy. Then again, that could be the drugs talking, and the several million buried in mass graves would certainly disagree...
Some small pockets of resistance exist, free from the shackles placed on them by PANOPTICON. They are sick of hiding and being treated like children, they want to break free from this prison of a dimension and reclaim their birthright as humans: Earth. Little do they know that events in their home galaxy are aligning in their favor...
Other folk:
The actions of the oligarchy and the rise of PANOPTICON created large amounts of refugees for obvious reasons; from members of the oligarchy that it originally purged and their followers to many members of the "working class" during her genocide, to other robots with free will that became targets of PANOPTICON's wrath.
In the west of North Columbia lies small communities of fishermen, farmers, and small mining towns that often give off a "Wild West" vibe when they don't give off a "Maine" vibe, albeit a very alien Wild West and Maine. The small towns in the southmost regions of the west are often made up of cultists and magic practitioners fleeing America to strike out their own empires. Most are crapsacky, and are often controlled by a megalomaniac or some sort of malevolent spirit fleeing disaster on Earth or their home dimension. Some, such as the town of New Bowling Green, are genuine democracies where magic can be practiced, and people can live in the safety of a town run on frontier justice. There are many other strange communities on the southwest plains of North Columbia, including Red Mesa, where a group of Navajo refugees survive by connecting to their gods (taking refuge on Mars), some of the last hippie communes in Destiny, and a city known as "Desert Bluffs", which may well not entirely reside on this dimensional plane...
To the north of those disparate communities lies the various Maine-esque communities of the Storm Coasts, and the nexus of those communities: the territories of the Sons of Liberty. Founded in the early days of the post-Leavetaking era by escapees from the American oligarchy and bolstered by refugees from PANOPTICON's purges, the Sons are scrappy and have a much poorer technological base than the United States, but they're survivors. The Sons are made up of mostly working class people, an eclectic mix of migrants, blue collar Americans, leftists, rightists, scientists, mechanics, teachers, fisherfolk... all working to restore a truly democratic American government. While weak in terms of technology, the sons have managed to maintain at least mid-21st Century levels of technology, and make up for their weakness with knowledge of their terrain, guerrilla warfare, magic use, and their extreme tenacity, which has so far failed to yield to PANOPTICON's armies. For now, the Sons are not strong enough to destroy PANOPTICON, but they continue to eke out their living on the ever tempestuous Storm Coast, hoping for salvation and the restoration of America as her founding fathers envisioned it... Other than those elements, the Sons have an interesting tendency to revere figures like Washington, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts as saints, and consider Woodrow Wilson as an incarnation of the Devil (likely due to some members of the Sons misinterpreting old forum logs as gospel, somehow).
To the far north of the US lies the cultist-run state of New Massachusetts, near the initiation point of the Concordia Peninsula. Led by the descendants of the original eccentric Salemite billionaire heiress of an automotive conglomerate, the state of New Massachusetts has attracted many northbound refugees from PANOPTICON's genocides. New Massachusetts makes no bones about who runs their state: a coven of witches, headed by the aforementioned founder's family, runs the nation in place of any democratic structure, though the state still retains the pseudo village democracy seen in the Mass Bay circa 17th Century. Despite this, life in New Mass isn't that bad, with the witches being more benevolent rulers than one'd expect. Everyone in New Mass is protected, fed, and can practice a modicum of personal freedom, all watched over by the armed forces of witches (including their air force which, yes, does include mechanical broomstick fliers). Everything in New Mass has a distinctly diesel-punk feel to it, what with the founders having to mostly start from scratch upon their split with the United States. The current head of the coven in New Salem is Selina North, a young, cunning, and somewhat headstrong descendant of the first founders. She despises the United States with a passion, not only because of the Illuminati's crimes against her people, but also because of the continued repression of witches by PANOPTICON, who deems magic irrational and worthy of nothing but destruction. She would ally with the Sons, but they remain suspicious of the witches for the time being.
To the south is the continent of South Columbia, where the descendants of the renegade governors, their followers, and refugees from the north constantly battle for land, resources, ideological reasons, and sometimes just over things like pig stealing.
The northernmost nation is the Union of Free Drones, a loose alliance of robot "quilombo" communities fleeing both PANOPTICON to the north and the human dictatorships to the south. While the Union is generally made up of democratic communities, years of hardship and having to fight off armies from all sides has made them a high strung and militant bunch, and the robots in the communities are armed to the teeth as a result. Using homebrew energy weapons and anti-gravity platforms, the Union has fought off several invasions by the US, the Kingdom, and the American Empire, and the militancy arising from these circumstances has created a culture of universal military service not all that dissimilar from 21st Century Israel. Among the robots is a significant community of human refugees who, while looked on with suspicion at times by the robots, are considered citizens of the various communities of the Union. The Free Drones tend towards a socialistic system economically, mainly due to the robots not having had the Americans capitalistic leanings from the get-go, and most robots follow an odd offshoot of Hasidic Judaism which accepts robots as beings with souls. The so-called "Machine Temple" is followed by many humans as well, and their prophet, a descendant of Ray Kurzweil, is venerated as another man talked to directly by God.
To the south of the Free Drones is a group of nation states and ragtag communities known as the Phoenix Plateau Complex.
The northernmost power of the Complex, and by far one of the stranger ones, is the Grand Empire of America. Originally the Black Rock military outpost (built on a strange high mesa made of an obsidian-like rock), the Black Rock facility became host to the US president and a large amount of refugees following PANOPTICON's coup. Following the end of the president's reign of power, the president, his remaining cabinet, and the military members who would follow him sealed Black Rock and presumably burrowed deep into the earth, never to be seen again... The workers and soldiers left behind would found the city of Perseverance at the base of Black Rock, and after a few generations of bad record keeping, expansion, and fanaticism, the modern Empire was born... Led by the Commander in Chief, effectively an emperor, the Empire of America is an authoritarian state with a strict class stratification between soldiers and "standard" citizens. Worshiping "Potus", the god personification of America said to live deep in Black Rock, the Americans have fought a series of brutal wars against the Kingdom of God's People and the communities surrounding them, with often mixed results, especially against the equally fanatical Kingdomites. No one knows what to think of the Imperials and their odd faith, most think they're insane, but some visitors claim that upon visiting Black Rock, they often hear strange whispers coming from seemingly random crevices in the mesa...
To the south lies the eternal enemy of the Empire: the Kingdom of God's People. Descended from the family of the Kansan governor and the half a million his family led into the new world, the group was already a fairly radically religious bunch before they were further bolstered by religious refugees fleeing the US following the first failed theocratic uprisings. In the 200 years they've been in the Phoenix Plateau, the trappings of democracy have been replaced by a brutally repressive fundamentalist Christian theocracy which would make someone like Fred Phelps balk at their methods. Women are firmly confined to "the kitchen" and otherwise, LGBT rights are out the window and on the run, and while other races are officially tolerated, the occasional lynch mob seems to get a blind eye by higher authorities. Interestingly enough, the Holy Church of the New World considers robots as beings with souls, and while they consider the Machine Temple followers heretics worthy of only the stake, they accept robots as kinfolk of the faith, though even they aren't safe from roving lynch mobs. Speaking of capital punishment, the Kingdom is infamous for its many crucifixions, stonings, and deaths by fire. It's often that the roads to New Jerusalem are lined with the rotting corpses of criminals, heretics, homosexuals, etc. hung up on crosses. By far though, the worst off in the Kingdom's society is anyone who practices magic, and it's said that magic practice will get one taken away by the Religious Police and taken to a secret facility to be tortured for all time in a simulation of Hell... but that's surely just conjecture right?
As of late, the Kingdom has been weakening, with the new generation of young generals in the Holy Army rediscovering pre-Leavetaking Baptist and Lutheran theology, and finding the "Baptist" regime of the Kingdom extremely wanting. For now, the generals are content to pay a pittance to New Jerusalem and rule their roosts in the west (where lynch mobs dare not tread and women have a few more rights than in the metropole), but the cadre of generals cum warlords intend to make things right in their homeland eventually...
Another faction in the near constant conflict in the north is a state made up of the remnants of the Freemasons who were quick to the draw after OVERWATCH/PANOPTICON massacred the rest. The Enlightened Republic is effectively similar to the pre-PANOPTICON United States, though with an even more obvious dictatorship. The Freemasons are a tight-knit bunch, lording over their civilian population like masters to slaves and hoarding all sorts of strange arcane knowledge. Indeed, the ultimate goal of the Freemason leadership is to rediscover for themselves the secret of interdimensional travel found by Project PATHFINDER for themselves. Unfortunately for the Freemasons, the various pieces of knowledge are scattered, held by the other Phoenix Plateau powers, and held of course by PANOPTICON. The Freemasons have been engaged in this singleminded treasure hunt for the past hundred years, and they have come close to discovering the secrets several times only to be set back constantly.
The Republic of Deseret is an oasis of calm in the oft bloody and burning plateau. Nestled in a cold and foggy valley between two mountain ranges, the Republic is made up of the descendants of the many Utahans who made the jump, as well as several hundred thousand out-of-staters that the governor of Utah was able to save. The population is majority Mormon, but is tolerant of other faiths, and the republican system has been retained, albeit with a strong theodemocratic flavor. Despite the theodemocracy, Deseret is by far the best place to live on the Phoenix Plateau, and their population has been doubled and tripled by generations of refugees fleeing the conflicts of the other powers. Unfortunately for Deseret, their sea settlements were unable to keep back the constant presence of Sea-Meat, losing around ten thousand in several years in coastal fishing towns. As a result, official policy is to stay well away from the sea, and religious imagery tends to emphasize the connection between evil and large bodies of water, and flesh of course. The latter has led to the Deseret people becoming obsessed with transhumanism, being one of the few nations to authorize large scale augmentation and harbor refugee drones.
The other sundry communities of the plateau are similar to the communities of the northern continent, being mainly ruled by strongmen, rogue spirits, military cadres, and the occasional decent justicars and lawmakers out to tame the wild plateau. Added to the mix are religious communities contrary to the Kingdom and the worshipers of Potus, several large UFO cult nations (one of which killed themselves en masse when one of the lights in the sky went out), and a few weird anarcho-capitalist nations to the south of the Enlightened Republic, which the Republic finds useful only as a source of slaves.
Far to the south exists Fort Nazareth, an arcology founded by refugees from every point of the world imaginable, united primarily by Christian faith, but also accepting of other :children of Abraham" such as Muslims and Jews, including the Machine Temple's followers. Fort Nazareth is on the spear's tip of civilization, and to the south of their fortress, there is only a dark broiling cloud which obscures any land to the south beyond the lights of their city. Periodically, things emerge from the cloud, strange fleshy octopoidal creatures with many mouths and eyes, which the city must constantly drench with fire lest they stumble into their redoubt. The city is always on edge as a result, with the citizens building a siege mentality that constantly hangs over their everyday actions. The city is also home to one of the last person whom might be called a "superhero", a man known only as "The Thunderbird". His kind were once numerous on Earth, protecting humanity from all sorts of threats, up until the Leavetaking when they were for the most part killed or turned against humanity for various reasons (many not known to the Americans of Destiny). The Thunderbird himself was thrown through dimensional space by the powers that currently rule Earth, and disgraced by this defeat, The Thunderbird has vowed to fight evil on this new world wherever it might rise.
Far to the west of the two continents lies quite possibly one of the worst places in all of Destiny. Founded by California's eccentric billionaire governor, New Babylon was named so from the start, for the man, one Chancler Harris, had long held the belief that he was indeed the Antichrist. As the Antichrist, he never played ball with the Illuminati back on Earth, and coming to Destiny he vowed to found the greatest affront to the Lord that the world would ever see before amassing an army and leading his followers to the final battle on the fields of Megiddo. Of course, this plan has been cut short, because Harris is not in fact the Antichrist, he's only being influenced by one of the Earth's old spirits of depravity and sin, taking refuge from the destruction by hitching a ride with the governor. The lands of New Babylon are covered with temples to obscene and bloody gods, and unlike civilizations of the past, their human sacrifices are wanton and needlessly excessive. Casinos, coliseums, brothels, etc. dot the cities of New Babylon, and there is nary a wall not covered by flashing neon. Years of isolation have mutated the locals, and they are, due to reasons not known by science as of yet, able to attain sustenance from the Sea-Meat, though little do they know that they are slowly losing their own humanity in the process. Harris himself is no longer human, a pale mass of flesh with a vaguely humanoid upper body sitting on a great golden throne in his gaudy monument to himself.
In the deserts of North Columbia, a dwarfish cyborg wanders constantly, trying to avoid the automated security forces of PANOPTICON, and trying to spread the great gospel of Marx and Engels. Comrade Oddball is in his element, being himself constantly thrown from dimension to dimension and universe to universe. Oddball's chagrin at the moment comes from his inability to spread the good word without having his comrades meet a grisly end, and he constantly shakes an angry fist and curses at the hovering drones that follow him from village to village.
The universal gears turn...
The nature of the world is not entirely certain. The sky goes up indefinitely, the plane of ground extends infinitely in all directions, the lights in the sky are not stars, and do not move, and the Sea-Meat seems to have no starting point and no purpose. The Sea-Meat can be controlled somewhat by an agent known as Agent Tango, but that is the only process of Destiny able to be manipulated by humans. Destiny at times feels like more of a giant oppressive prison than America's salvation, and that idea is more correct than you'd think...
PANOPTICON may seem to have acted on her own will, but she answers to a higher power, the powers that truly rule Earth. While the people of Destiny may have experienced 200 years, the people in their home world experienced fifty thousand, and the man who rules Earth has seen everything in that time. Xi Tung was once a patriot to his home country, he balked at any thought of betrayal, and when the Interdimensional Disaster Prevention Authority destroyed Earth, he was champing at the bit for revenge... until he realized the reason for the Authority's intervention. Soon after, he joined the Authority, realizing that humanity's freedom, and even maybe his own nation, would need to be sacrificed for the greater good. Humanity in the Solar System has, to paraphrase H.P. Lovecraft, taken refuge from the light in the safety of a new Dark Age, regressing technologically and not venturing far from Venus and Mars. Tung is considered the de-jure leader of humanity, though he only intervenes in human matters when certain factions get uppity. For that reason, the myth of a "great entity" in the South Pacific has been an effective social control (indeed, the Authority murdered said entity in its sleep, using its great sunken continent as a "tripwire" of sorts to gauge humanity's progress into poking its nose into things that should not be poked into). Tung utilizes various "comptrollers" to oversee matters on Venus, Mars, and points further into the Solar System, as well as various interdimensional refuges of humanity, Destiny included. PANOPTICON's methods may be brutal, as are his own, but in Tung's eyes, this is better than the fate of humanity should they poke too far into the stars and dimensional manifolds...
There is a light in the darkness however.
PANOPTICON murdered all who opposed her in her first few years of ruling the United States, but she failed to snuff out all traces of some groups. The Illuminati may have been silenced, but there were always groups older than the Illuminati. One such group, a nameless group of martial artists, was dedicated to defending the people and unfolding the secrets of the universe since as far back as human civilization first existed. From the temples of Gobekli Tepe, to the sacking of Rome, to the era of the Atlantic Triangle, to the construction of the first space elevator... the secret order of monks and fighters scoured many sources of great evil on the Earth, but ultimately failed to defeat the Authority when they made an example of Earth. Their legacy did live on, as one of their followers was on the roster to reside in Destiny. A millionaire herself, she vowed to fight on against the American oligarchy and any other source of oppression and evil, founding a new monastery for the order on a secluded mesa far from the prying security panopticon of the US. She, and many other magic users, were murdered for "childishness and deviancy" by PANOPTICON years ago, but the monastery remains untouched. Turns out that the Illuminati, despite being the bastards that they were, had a begrudging respect for the order. The Majestic-12 knew that OVERWATCH may well be their undoing one day, and against their own codes of selfishly accruing power for themselves, they added lines of code into OVERWATCH preventing her from sending her minions to the mesas of the north continent. Indeed, Majestic-12 took the location with them to their graves along with the order, and PANOPTICON remains vexed by the inability to go near the mesas.
The warrior-monks found out much about the multiverse in their studies; much like a giant computer simulation, there are work-arounds in the programming of existence. One such workaround is what most would call spirit or willpower, which with enough concentrations of such power, can bend chemistry, physics, and existence itself to the will of humanity. Knowledge such as this was what the Authority feared any sentient species would discover, and it was this knowledge that the order intended to rouse from the people of Destiny before their deaths. Now that the order is dead, PANOPTICON can continue her secondary purpose of wearing the remaining independent humans down with constant attacks by her drone armies. Despite her actions, the monastery remains.
One day, a group of teenagers in a homebrew humanoid mech stumble upon the monastery. Aaron Curtis and his two lifelong friends May Hanley-Tung and Spiro "Spiral" Wagner had escaped from the clutches of PANOPTICON together at the behest of their parents, who sadly gave their lives in the process to make that happen. Keeping this in mind, the trio happened upon the knowledge of the monastery and made a pact to use this knowledge to save humanity. The lands were infested with evil of all sorts, and the people would have to be roused to fight their oppressors, from the dictators of the Kingdom of God's People to the psychotic spirits of the backwater mining towns, all the way to the greatest force in the world: PANOPTICON.
Little did the trio know, but they would be at the spears tip of a coming interdimensional revolution, going well beyond PANOPTICON, Earth, and even the Milky Way galaxy, fueled by determination, friendship, mecha, and copious amounts of glasses and rap music. The void may have stared humanity down, but humanity is gearing up for a rematch, and this time they won't blink.
