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#1 johnnyfive Apr 24, 2008 20:29:38

I moved this from another post of mine. This post is more appropriately placed here I'm building a d20 Apocalypse setting and any suggestions would be appreciated. So far: Progress Level (Prior to Apocalypse) 6 Elements of Devastation [Nuclear Armageddon, Supernatural Invasion] Magic: Low [No divine, arcane spells gained through demonic advisors, spell levels 1-5, 6-9 achievable through incantation system] Set in Generation 0 Campaign History: Behind the face of this reality lies the Scoured Wastes, a hellish representation of Earth. Fiendish mirrors of Chicago, Tokyo, and every other major city dot the fiery landscape In 2070 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) succeeded in generating a powerful neutrino based pulse signal capable of reliable through-the-earth communication. Physicists recorded several successful video transmissions, although the neutrino signal often became scrambled, displaying bizarre distorted imagery of a burning city on the other end. Later that same year, airlines began to report a dramatic increase in flight losses as more and more airplanes simply disappeared. In 2072, Flight 212 from O'Hare to LAX became the first flight to reappear after its disappearance from LAX's radar scopes. Panicked members of the flight crew and passengers alike gave hysterical accounts of massive systems failure as well as sighting the City of Los Angeles as a twisted, smoldering ruin. As the winter set in, many major cities began to experience a dramatic increase in fires and property damage. The nations homeless population began to disappear from the streets, their mutilated bodies found in dark alleys, and abandoned buildings. Soon, citizens began to report sightings of bizarre winged and horned creatures in the countryside. The fire and death counts began to skyrocket. Just as the U.S. annexed Canada to become the United States of North America, it found itself at war with multiple incursions of the creatures. Very little reliable intelligence was gathered on the outsiders, as any unit that encountered them never returned for a full debrief. Specialized combat units, called Pheonix Teams, were formed to hunt and kill the creatures as well as gather information on their characteristics and weaknesses. These teams accomplished this through the use of a device called the ANIMA (Accumulated Neural Imagery MAchine), invented by Dr. Harold Wyatt Jackson. Jackson's ANIMA was a cybernetic device that was surgically implanted into the soldiers brain. The device collected memories, impressions, and mental characteristics of the brain, and was set to flash transmit the data to a nearby Pheonix base when vital signs ceased. The data was then uploaded into ANIMA devices implanted into death row convicts, sentenced to brain death and kept medically alive. The Pheonix teams were able to gather information on the creatures supernatural abilities and resources, leading directly to the discovery of magical abilities, though all such magic was difficult for humans to wield. Pheonix Team Alpha was the first to encounter a demonway, a long stretch of road or tunnel in the air, near their northern Oregon bunker. When traversed in its entirety (usually a mile), the demonway shifted the travelers to another world. This world, eventually referred to as the Scoured Wastes, was plagued with fire and ashfalls, it's smoldering countryside and fiery cities an almost exact replica of Earth. Still in communication with their base, Alpha infiltrated a major city that strongly resembled Portland, if the City of Roses were made of iron which radiated with heat. Within the city, Pheonix Team Alpha encountered a large host of the demonic looking creatures rallying in what appeared to be the preparatory stages of a large scale assault.The teams position was compromised by an overflight of winged creatures; the team fell back into a fighting retreat, towards the demonway, transmitting video data to their base. The teams base commander, Col. Jonathan DeWitt, became worried that the large force would cross over near Portland and lay waste to the city. Col. DeWitt decided to neutralize the threat by launching a tactical nuclear strike through the demonway and into the midst of the attacking outsiders. A nuclear tipped AGM-84k Standoff Land Attack Missile bearing a 5 kiloton warhead was launched via an F15E Strike Eagle. The AGM SLAM sped through the demonway, and shifted successfully to the Wastes, acquired the attacking force and detonated in their midst. Pheonix Team Alpha was obliterated, the electromagnetic pulse rendering their ANIMA devices inert before they could transmit. The Pheonix team's base, hidden underground near Portland, contained a small cache of low yield nuclear weapons which suffered an inexplicable malfunction and detonated, obliterating the base, large swaths of Portland and severely damaging an area twelve miles in radius. The incident was ruled a tragic accident by in depth investigations. Alarmed at the sudden obliteration of hundreds of thousands of its forces, the outsiders began to pour through the demonway in record numbers. Fires raged in their wake, slowly transforming Oregon and Northern California into the hellish world they had come from. The USNA clamped down on the incursion but the demonic invasion was global. DARPA's through-the-earth communications experiments had created stress lines in the metaphysical barrier between the two worlds, which the the outsiders exploited to slip through. Called demons by the media, the creatures swarmed through the demonways opening worldwide, destroying everything and everyone that they encountered. Desperate, the superpowers of the era unleashed their full nuclear arsenal through the demonways, annihilating almost every major demonic city, and killing billions of the fiends. The nuclear conflagration mirrored itself on the Earth side of the barrier, resulting in the sudden detonation of many nuclear warheads kept in storage, worldwide. The sudden explosions caused knee jerk counter-launches, filling the dark skies with the burning streamers of cruise missiles bearing atomic death. Whole countries burnt to ash as the outsiders reveled in the destruction, heedless of the destruction of their own world. As the fallout drifted to the surface of the burned out earth, the demonic outsiders returned to their world to regroup, only to find it just as ravaged as the land they sought to conquer... ==================================================== Players take on roles of Pheonix Team Eta, awakening in new convict bodies eighty years after the bombs fell. Someone has transmitted their neural data to this isolated training bunker, but they do not know why. Barred classes [The following classes are inappropriate and cannot be taken]: Core book – Acolyte, Shadow Slayer, Occultist, Telepath, Battlemind. (Techie, Investigator and Personality are modified as detailed in Apoc book pg. 60) D20 Future - Dogfighter, Swindler, Purifier, Dimension Ranger, Concord Administrator, Star Law Officer, and Xenophile D20 Past – All Urban Arcana – All save for the artificer and archmage prestige classes More in development