Editing Caverns Without Number (section)

=Setting=
Disregard the setting as written in WWN. I dig the general vibe but I'm mostly going to be doing my own thing. The name of this world is Terminus (players in my previous campaigns may recognize the name; consider this a reboot.)

==History==
Terminus is not known to have ever had any natively intelligent life. Various intelligent beings from other places, human and otherwise, have come to settle there. It also has its own complement of extradimensional entities, beings which some might refer to as gods.

The earliest human settlers came from other worlds forgotten to the modern person. Something, however, caused a lapse in communication and logistical capability. The settlers were cut off from home. Whatever disaster occurred has cut off almost all contact with civilizations outside the solar system. Visitation by spacecraft is extremely rare and not well-known. Visitors who arrive via stranger means are, if they exist, keeping it on the down-low. 

It is believed by some scholars and most small children that there are inhabited cities on the moons.

==A Hypercompressed Timeline==
So as not to engage in the fantasy world designer's great sin of just adding a bunch of zeroes onto a reasonable timeline, I'm not providing any numbers here. Think of these as the approximate ages of the world, liberally seasoned with disinformation, misunderstanding, propaganda, temporal anomalies, and genuinely antique texts from different planets that were improperly mixed into the local historical record.

*'''Era Zero: The Precursors.''' There are occasionally objects or devices (such as the Cidrian Gates or the Sublunar Machinery) which seem to correspond to some time or people before the era of the Lizard Kings. Anything that old which is still operational can be presumed to have unimaginable power and sophistication. They may have been built by prior human civilizations or by entities even further removed from our understanding. It is presumed that human colonization occurred during this era due to the fact that some of these devices appear made for beings on the approximate size and body plan of modern humanity.
*'''Era One: Early Human Colonization.''' During this period, large numbers of humans arrived on the planet via means which are not known for certain, and engaged in widespread terraforming and genetic resequencing of themselves and everything else they could get their hands on. The early colonies “failed,” in that C&C with whoever sent them was lost, and whatever early governments were established collapsed. Humans went through a period of barbaric savagery, and then got it out of their systems. There is little evidence of heavy industry during this period, indicating a break from the precursor era, which did engage in large-scale engineering. 
*'''Era Two''': '''The Lizard Queens'''. The Lizardfolk were for a time the apex sophont on the planet. They built crystalline devices that ran on psionic rather than technological or magical principles, subjugated humans when they felt the need, and built ziggurats, pyramids, and canals. They revived the precursor habit of constructing Deeps, or at least cleared and restored to use a number that were already ancient. These enormous underground spaces were considered proof against enemies approaching overland or from the skies. It is believed that airborne attacks must have been a major hazard at the time. The decline in cognitive capability among lizardfolk is most likely what allowed humanity to eventually overtake them. 
*'''Era Three:''' '''The Amaranthan Empire'''. This human empire rose out of a small but wealthy kingdom by a bay, where innovative magicians laid down the foundation-stones of modern sorcery. It was a darker, cruder magic that they practiced, and they were insatiable for more power. Within a handful of generations, the leaders of the Amaranthan kingdoms had as much magic in their veins as blood, and they conquered the vast majority of the world. Between their spells, and pre-Saurian technology and learning they recovered from the Deeps, they easily brought to heel the feudal human societies that arose to fill the vacuum left by the Lizard Kings.
*'''Era Four:''' '''The Hubris.''' The Amaranthans declared war on everyone and everything that would not bend the knee to their Emperor. After a hundred years of blood and fire, they lost. 
*'''Era Five:''' '''The Long Dark.''' Little enough of this era is recorded. Vengeful beings of every sort preyed on humanity and dominated their cities. Much awful tribute was extracted, and the lore of the Amaranthans was destroyed whenever it could be found. The tech level at this time was definitely more medieval in character, as humans were lucky if their masters allowed them pointy sticks, in most places. This was the era of the Lex Sanguinis, codified by the Vampire Regents who ruled so many city-states. Much of the current law and custom is descended from these dark times, with appropriate adaptations.
*'''Era Six: The Thracian Hegemony'''. The Thracians began as a small group of seafaring city-states, in which a few privileged human servants formed a conspiracy. They managed to throw off the yokes of their inhuman masters and institute democracy. They rapidly became masters of the exchange of goods. Thracian civilization avoided reliance on direct sorcery, since they didn't wish to repeat the mistakes of the Amaranthans. They pursued alchemy, artifice, and technology. While they never approached the sophistication of Precursor technology, they could produce much more sophisticated machinery at scale than is possible in the current era. They were able to free most of the rest of human civilization via a combination of disaster capitalism and laser-armed airships. They also standardized weights, measures, and coinage, which standards are still used today. Currency from pre-Thracian cultures is often extremely non-standard. 
*'''Era Seven: The Decapitation'''. The leaders of the Thracian Combines attempted to make treaty with the various Lunar civilizations, just as they had done to the monstrous kingdoms that had existed on the terrestrial sphere. For whatever reason (but probably because the Lunatics weren't ignorant of how this had worked out for the vampire princes, etc.), negotiations fell through, and ended in several nights of orbital bombardment. When the smoke cleared, the Thracian civilization came apart at the seams. They had always kept their leadership and industrial base centralized, to maintain their hegemony. Unfortunately, that meant it was all destroyed by the swarm of large iron meteorites that turned their five greatest cities into a morass of smoking, flooded craters. Bereft of leadership and centralized industrial production, the Thracians were raided into nonexistence by tribal or feudal peoples, monsters, and various nonhuman intelligences. Their society disintegrated, and the lore of operating their great machines and mysterious facilities became lost.
*'''Era Eight: The Age of City-States'''. You are here! Over much of the world, humanity has reorganized itself into independent and semi-independent city-states. There is trade and communication between the various civilizations, but vast waste-lands full of ruins and ancient roads occupy the space between them. Human civilization seems to be somewhat drowsy at this time in history, and the people of the world are plagued by hedonism and sybaritic boredom. Greed takes the place of ambition, and everywhere men and women take the low and easy road to comfort. Globe-spanning ambitions are distinctly out of fashion. Non-human intelligences have many thriving civilizations of their own, and so far there's so much room that large-scale conflict hasn't broken out. 

==Contemporary Material Culture==
Industrial manufacturing and supply chains no longer exist. However, books and other repositories of information are still available, and it's not uncommon for people to be educated to a (real-world) modern standard, even if they can't lay hands on so much as a flashlight. 

The vast majority of work is done using human or animal muscle, or relatively simple wind or water mills.  That being said, the situation is not at all comparable to medieval Europe. Many technologies that have an extremely high payoff-to-effort ratio if you are already at a high Roman or Renaissance-era level of technology are still used. Movable-type printing presses are not common, but they have supplanted scriptoriums. They’re just too easy to build in comparison to how much effort they save.

The essential difficulty is that the creation of an industrial economy is a great deal of work, and nobody is really inclined to go to that kind of effort. Anyone with the resources, ambition, and will to build a steam train or an air conditioner factory is probably better off becoming an archmage and obligating their neighbors to appease them. 

Further, Precursor humanity genetically engineered a variety of plants to be unnaturally useful, and those strains are still cultivated. A wide variety of food plants and several types of mushroom are known to be results of the original sequencing project; they can be easily and rapidly farmed, and are tailored to human dietary needs. For this reason, simply supplying the population with food is not the crushing burden it was in real-world medieval societies, and even impoverished areas have sufficient time for leisure and social or intellectual pursuits. There are other examples, as well, such as the Library Trees with leaves uniquely suited to paper-making.

Advanced alloys, both alchemical and mundane, are still manufactured, although not in modern quantities. 

'''Summary:'''
*Individual artificers, magicians, and alchemists do produce items of enchantment or high technology, but these are rare, hand-crafted, and expensive. 
*High technology as it exists in our world is rarely available and typically only in very simple configurations. A hand-held UV light might be obtainable, but a computer is out of the question.
*The advanced technology that does exist often involves large glowing synthetic gemstones, runic circuitry, and alchemical materials. Gears, moving parts, conventional batteries, and other steampunk apparatuses are relatively rare. The dividing line between magic and this sort of science can be somewhat thin at times. Consult the rules for mods in the WWN rulebook for ideas. 
*The "hurlants" described on pg. 36 are available for purchase. In-setting, they're referred to as coilguns. They function via an extremely high-tension, alchemically produced metal spring, housed inside a barrel, which must be carefully wound with an integral handle before a specially made steel dart is loaded and clipped into place. Rather than the barrel being rifled, the dart is designed with a subtly helical fluting. Hand hurlants are often mounted on an arm bracer, but either may be made in a configuration similar to a modern firearm. They are, however, typically ornately carved or filigreed. They are considered a weapon of war or murder, and may not be carried openly in civilized cities. The user is expected to have them unloaded, "broken down" into components, and carried packed away. Note the AP tag on them - they ignore non-magical armor. A hand hurlant can throw its sliver of steel directly through an armored knight's breastplate and out his back. They are, therefore, especially disliked by the sorts of people wealthy enough to invest in heavy armor.

==Astronomy & Weather==
Terminus lacks the axial tilt & wobble of our own world. Seasons are caused by its eccentric and elliptical orbit. In plain terms, its distance from the sun varies sufficiently over the course of the year to produce winter and summer. This means the north and south hemisphere experience winter and summer at the same time. Terminus' magnetic poles are precisely perpendicular to the plane of orbit. It is highly likely that some intelligent agency altered these factors at some point in times ancient beyond reckoning. 

Terminus has three moons in an equidistant orbit around the planet. One is nearly white, like our own, and the other two are tinted red and blue. Absent cloud cover, the night sky almost always provides a little more light than a full moon on our own Earth.

==Calendar==
There are 13 lunar months, each of exactly 28 days. There are three months in each of the seasons that would be recognizable to us - a spring, a summer, an autumn, a winter. Even without axial tilt and wobble, the nature of the seasons varies according to distance from the equator and local geography. Coastal areas are milder, areas close to the poles are colder. 

The calendar of 13 months is standard almost all across the globe, at least in human civilizations. What varies is which months are counted part of which season. In general, an area with extreme conditions during one month of the year will count the "extra" month as outside of a regular season. A northern city might take the part of the year of most intense cold and count it as "Fimbulwinter," a time outside of even regular winter. An equatorial land might have the Dog Days, that month which is too hot to be placed within regular summertime. In a coastal land, the inhabitants might take the time of most intense storm activity, and name it the Monsoon Season. 

The area this campaign takes place in is a Mediterranean type of climate. Due to the proximity of a large body of water, while the summers can be hellishly humid, the extremes of temperature aren't as bad as they could be.

==Languages==
The PCs start out knowing Common & Trade Cant, with additional languages per their Connect & Know skills. See pg. 28 of WWN.

*Common is a modern form of Thracian, and is the most wide-spread human language. Insular or remote human civilizations might have divergent or distinct languages. 
*Trade Cant is a limited pidgin tongue commonly used in highly cosmopolitan areas or by far-traveling merchants. It's not good for higher pursuits, but has special vocabulary for economic concerns, commodities, travel & accommodations, et cetera. 
*Old Thracian has about as much in common with Common as classical Latin does with modern Italian. It was the language of the last powerful and widespread human civilization.
*Amaranthan, also known as Sorcerer's Speech, is even older than Old Thracian. It was the tongue of a powerful sorcerous empire that collapsed in blood and fire. 
*Lizard, or in derogatory terms "Hiss," is the language of the common lizardfolk and other reptilian intelligences. It's hard for humans to pronounce, and even harder for them to think in. The brains of the reptilian people are formed very differently to human ones. Something has gone very wrong with the lizardfolk, and 90% of them have cognitive limitations not present in their ancestors. The result is that only about 10% of them are literate in their own tongue. Note that in Lizard, humans are referred to as "Monkey Men," and their terms for our language are even more derogatory than "Hiss."
*Pelagic, or in derogatory terms "Glub," is the common language of undersea peoples. It's impossible to pronounce in atmosphere, so it can mostly only be learned underwater. Water-Adapted PCs (see pg. 27, under xeno-blooded) can learn to speak and understand this. 
*Fae is the language of the various half-worlder beings. It has Seelie and Unseelie dialects, and while most people will be more familiar with one or the other, they are comprehensible to each other.
*Sign Language exists for the use of the deaf, and is also commonly used by beings for whom normal conversation is difficult. For example, a non-water-adapted human and a greater octopus might both be intelligent, but the octopus can only speak underwater, and the human can only speak in the air. If they met at the shore, they could communicate via sign, with each staying in its own preferred medium. The gestures are abstract enough for beings with significantly different anatomy, so long as they have limbs. Dolphins don't have sufficient limbs to Sign, although they can learn to understand it, but they're telepathic anyway. 
*Various other species have their own languages.
*The Precursor civilization of humans presumably had their own language, but they don't seem to have written much down, or if they did, it was lost long ago. 

==Random Notes==
*"Greater" creatures are intelligent forms. A Greater Octopus is therefore a sophont form of octopod. The lizardfolk are greater lizards. Nonhuman intelligences, in their own languages, would typically refer to humans as Greater Monkeys. This is a scientific or technical classification and it is rude to refer to any intelligent being in their own person this way. This is distinct from a "Dire" form, which is a larger and usually more ferocious form of a more common creature. See the classical example, the Dire Wolf. Note that nonhumans often classify Ogres as Dire Humans, which humans are not especially appreciative of in most cases. 
*Human biology is rather enhanced by precursor engineering. The average lifespan, uninterrupted by disease or violence, is about 120 years, with only the last fifteen or so involving serious senescence. Most people will recover relatively fully from injuries or diseases that don't amount to amputation, and sepsis due to injuries is rare. Birth defects as we know them are unheard-of. Fertility is also optional for humans. Basically, look at the healing rules and be astonished how little medicine is required for stabbing victims. 
*There are no elves & dwarves in the typical D&D sense, so the Special Origin focus is not used. The Xenoblooded focus is freely available and represents the efforts of precursor genetic engineers, passed down through the long millenia; aquatic-adapted humans are still well-known in coastal areas. The Unique Gift focus is also available, and typically represents some inheritable genetic gift.

==Nibiru==
I don't want to spend too much time on this, because the whole point of the campaign is that you aren't there. But maybe a few notes won't go too far wrong.
*There is a system of public education, welfare, and public works that is unrivaled in the world. If you don't find a useful occupation for yourself, you '''will''' be trained and pressed into service in some capacity or another. 
*Nibiru has the wealth to support its people, but no room for idlers and malingerers. Literally, physical space is at a premium. 
*Social stratification is severe in terms of power and resources commanded, but there are no mansions or palaces. Everyone must make use of public spaces and facilities, hence they are well-maintained. 
*Security is tight. If any enemy ever penetrated to the machinery that allows peregrination, they could damage it in a way no one now living would know how to repair. Foreigners are allowed into the city itself only on an extremely limited basis. Criminal gangs are unheard of; and criminal activity is not tolerated. 
*All citizens are educated to at least something resembling a high school level and then given some additional training, vocational or otherwise, unless their employment is destined to be entirely menial. For those such as the PCs who have exceptional abilities, they may have attended one of the following programs:
**The Athenaeum is a tower most like a "university" program in Nibiru. Conventional scholarly and engineering students are likely to graduate from here.
**The Scholomance is the tower dedicated to magic, both High Magic & New Magic. The individual in charge of it, known as the Rector, is a black-robed figure wearing an alabaster mask. Their true identity has not been known in centuries - it may be the same superannuated individual, or it is possible that the Chairs of the various departments are electing a new individual from time to time. The board of the scholomance is is deeply secretive, and nothing can be said with certainty. 
**The Charterhouse tower trains Vowed. Charterhouse Vowed can select as their bonus skill (see pg. 86) either Exert or Sneak. PCs can take any path they wish, but the typical Charterhouse graduate works as a spy, agent, bodyguard, or assassin. 
**Skull Plaza is the military school. Obviously, many people learn the combat arts in more practical ways, but the regular army goes through Skull Plaza. Note that Nibiru does not maintain cavalry of any kind. Their combat doctrines and equipment are focused on siege defense and man-to-man or small unit combat. They produce numerous skilled duelists, and marching on the city would be a death sentence for nearly any attacker, but Nibiru can't field a large army.