The sun is dying and the wreckage of countless eons litters the parched wastes of Vaarn, the desolate country that common folk call the blue ruin. It is said that these sky-coloured sands hide the graves of the Autarchs; have swallowed the buried arcologies in which the true seed of humankind was preserved through the Great Collapse; conceal forgotten crypts of memory, decaying crystalline lattices of ancient ego-engines upon which the dusk-blue dunes encroach without pity. From the New Hegemony to the south come drifters and dreamers, desecraters of the tech-tombs that lie sunken beneath the azure wastes. Light-years overhead, aurum-hulled craft ply their tender routes between the spheres, and miles below a pilgrim’s feet, strange wombs are kindled once more with life undreamed of.
These are the hinterlands, where humanity’s great works have fallen to everlasting decay, where machine and animal and fungus think to crown themselves our equal. The phthalo-sands, where newbeasts hunt proudly with boots upon their hind paws and chromepriests chant unending binary devotions to their nameless synthetic god. Only the desperate or the mad would seek to make a life here, to roam the blue desert in search of the secret VAULTS OF VAARN.
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 colourful 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 civilisation.
- 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.
Finally and most importantly, Vaarn is never the same twice. The fall of the dice determines how your own version of the setting develops. Readers and player alike are encouraged to make Vaarn their own.
| Issues | In Print | Print on Demand | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vaults of Vaarn Issue 1 | Antipode | Itch.io | |
| Vaults of Vaarn Issue 2 | Antipode | Lulu | Itch.io |
| Vaults of Vaarn Issue 3 | Antipode | Lulu | Itch.io |
| Vaults of Vaarn Issue 4 | Antipode | Itch.io | |
| Vaults of Vaarn Deluxe Edition | DriveThruRPG | ||
| Vaults of Vaarn Second Edition | Preorder | ||
| Pariahs of Vaarn Issue 1 | Antipode | Itch.io |