Star Wars As Lovecraftian Horror-Fantasy

I mentioned in my review of Edge of the Empire that I know of Star Wars, but am not really a fan of it. Gamma World came out some three years ago, and I have on occassion thought of running a campaign by taking the Star Wars universe, and cramming everything onto one planet.

In this setting alien species would either be mutants or actual aliens from other worlds or dimensions, while planets would be represented either as geological regions or locations; Tatooine would be a desert, Hoth a frozen wasteland, Dagobah a swamp, Naboo an island chain, Coruscant a bit city, etc.

While playing The Old Republic another thought occurred to me while I watched my jedi smack humanoid-sharks with a sci-fi bokken (that apparently everyone has): why bother with the sci-fi elements at all? Also, what if the world was the battleground for numerous aberrant stars vying for control (making the name Star Wars a literal thing)?

The high concept is a…relatively nightmarish world where mortal races get caught up in the conflict between the denizens of various otherwordly entities, giving rise to many bizarre creatures that you would expect to see from Star Wars, like those aforementioned shark-people or gungans.

Just kidding, even Cthulhu has limits.

If you want to use some 4th Edition flavor, the Feywild could be a major player (though it could have also been destroyed).

In this setting the Jedi would be an order designed to instruct people on the proper usage of psionics (aka, the Force), which in most cases can cause insanity to those “gifted” with it that go untrained, the Sith would be those that have been corrupted by elder gods, lightsabers could be psi-blades, spaceships become airships, and various types of warforged take the place of droids.

Hyperspace would be a method of travel by which travelers exploit distortions in space and time due to the Far Realm encroaching on the world. The Death Star could be a kind of gate intended to allow an elder god to enter the world, or a weapon to destroy the prison of one. Maybe the world is a prison, and it is designed to destroy it? Maybe it will only annihilate all life to pave the way for a new race of an elder god’s design?

A Sundered World: Cosmology-ish

It has been a little over a year since I started working on  A Sundered World, which provided about six months of adventures before one of the key players could no longer play, and we had to pretty much drop it.

Though I initially wrote it for 4th Edition, Josh and I have been going over the notes and trying to create a largely system-neutral world bible, as I want it to be usable by people using 4th Edition, Dungeon World, D&D Next, and probably other fantasy role-playing games that we do not play.

During this process we have been revamping the world, such as it is, quite a bit. At least part of the premise–that the gods and primordials fought, but no one won–is still there. The other part, which could be summed up as, “Dungeons & Dragons, but in the Astral Sea”, is where we diverged: we felt that sticking everything in the Astral Sea, though visually awesome, was limiting, and made it difficult to rationalize where people obtained things like food and materials.

Also you needed a very expensive, magical ship to get around.

The world now is the result of every plane collapsing into each other after the Sundering. A lot of it is covered in ocean (mostly because of the Elemental Chaos/Inner Planes grossly upsetting the balance of everything), but now it is easier to explain how people grow food, get water, and find materials to make things, though there are still crazier elements, such as the shattered trunk of the World Tree in the center of existence, flying islands and celestial dominions, god-corpses, and so on.

Elements from other planes get mixed in, too, so where the dark influence of the Shadowfell settled, it created Shadowlands that draw in undead and restless spirits. Undead kings, which could be death knights or liches, rule kingdoms of undead vassals, occasionally sending forth black ships to claim lingering souls and bodies to expand their ranks. On the other hand, the verdant light of the Feywild causes plants to flourish where none should, animals and plants to possess uncanny intelligence (and sometimes speech), and in some cases time to flow differently.

Other planes get used more overtly.  The Astral Sea, or whatever you want to call the heavens, is a silvery, starry expanse that extends beyond the clouds. Here, above even the castles of the storm giants, are the remains of the celestial dominions and corpses of dead gods. Some are still inhabited by angels that try to make do, upholding the dogma of their former masters (though some tend to go by the letter and not the spirit), and providing at least some kind of mostly-eternal reward for the souls of the dead.

Some choose to remain on the world, protecting worshippers both alive and dead from the many threats that abound, not least of which are devils, because the Nine Hells is a place on a Sundered World: a massive iron sphere, it floats above twisted spires of iron that jut from the ocean like black, jagged teeth. A lattice of iron bridges connect the sphere to the towers, which teem with slaves, infernal citizens, and souls of the damned (or unlucky enough to get picked up by fiendish or undead raiding parties before the angels found them, though how unlucky that is depends on the angels).

And at the furthest edges of reality is the Far Realm. Creatures that venture too close often attract the attention of eldritch horrors, though even those that escape are often driven insane or mutated.

So, that is one part of the bigger picture. There really are not other planes, which might be a feature or a bug depending on how you look at it (I remember there being a huge uproar at 4th Edition’s cosmology). I think that by moving the setting from the Astral Sea to something a bit more normalish makes it a lot more accessible; when I first ran  A Sundered World I just gave Josh’s character an astral vessel, because if I did not then it would have made things a lot harder for them to get around and adventure.

The only part that I am a bit fuzzy on is how the days and nights work. Originally there was no day or night because the Astral Sea just kind of had a default luminescence, but I am thinking that maybe it could lighten or darken regularly, giving some semblance of night and day. Some regions could also just be lighter or darker (having bits of Feywild or Shadowfell layered on, but not too much), or even go with something a bit crazier like having angels that formerly served the sun god keep towing it across the sky.

What do you think?