[[StandardFantasySetting Highly nonstandard]] [[TabletopGames fantasy game]] created by M.A.R. Barker. First officially published in 1975.

The setting is Tekumel, home of the Tsolyani Empire and several other civilizations, both human and not.

!!This work contains examples of:
* AfterTheEnd: ''multiple'' ends actually, including the "Latter Times" (sometime after the "Time of Darkness" when Tekumel dropped into a pocket dimension nearly 50,000 years ago), to the more current (5,000 or so years ago) collapse of the worldwide empire of Engsvan Hla Ganga.
* AliensNeverInventedTheWheel: Actually, humans forget about the wheel for the most part, in their decline from technological civilization to agrarian culture. They have the wheel, but they have nothing like a horse for wheeled vehicles, and lost the idea for the [[NoBikesInTheApocalypse bicycle.]]
* AllPlanetsAreEarthlike: Only because the ancient settlers [[{{Terraform}} made Tekumel]] that way, installing gravity generators, suppressing the native life forms, and cultivating various reserves. The reserves later mingled, after a great disaster, averting the SingleBiomePlanet.
* ApocalypseHow: Tekumel has survived unorthodox planetary destruction (dropped into a pocket dimension) and multiple societal collapses.
* BizarreAlienSexes: All over the place. Shén, Tinalíya, and Pygmy Folk have three genders, while the Hlüss and Ssú have hive like arrangements. The Ahoggyá are rumored to have ''eight'' genders, and nobody knows how they reproduce.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: The aliens have, well, alien morality systems, and the humans have various group-oriented moral systems that are not at all modern Western.
* ConLang: One of the first, and most developed. Barker developed Tekumel for basically the same reasons [[LordOfTheRings Tolkien]] did: to build a language around. The results (there are several) are a combination of conversion and original.
** EternalEnglish: Completely averted. English is the dead language of a long dead culture.
** LanguageDrift: The setting has changed over tens of thousands of years, and drift applies.
** SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Tsolyani, at least, tends to flowery language and titles, including 27 forms of the pronoun "you".
* HorseOfADifferentColor: Averted, as there are no riding animals. There are draft animals, the chlen, and small pack animals, the hma, though.
* LostTechnology: Tekumel is riddled with devices from the Time of Darkness and the Latter Times that are just barely comprehensible to modern Tekumelani, including an underground antigravity car system.
* {{Mayincatec}}: The whole setting is a blend of Mesoamerican, Indian, Mogul, Chinese, and certain African cultures.
* MulticulturalAlienPlanet: Multicultural and multiple alien species, although humans are generally dominant.
* OrderVersusChaos: Or, in this case, Stability and Change, with attendant parallel pantheons, and not necessarily at odds.
* OrganicTechnology: Of a sort. Metal is rare, but the hide of a chlen can be stripped off the living animal (which sheds it), chemically processed, and shaped into a leather as hard as bronze, including armor and hand weapons.
* OurMonstersAreDifferent: Some of the creatures on Tekumel are Expies of standard fantasy role-play monsters, but they are distinctly different from your average D&D hack-ups.
* OurMonstersAreWeird: The monsters and other creatures are a hash chili of Earth creatures, genetically engineered Earth animals, alien creatures, native species, and possibly extradimensional creatures, all to some extent evolved over tens of thousands of years of history and adaptation. Some are friendly, some are neutral, some are hostile, some are animals, others intelligent, and most are exotic. No elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, trolls, or other standard Western fantasy creatures.
* PocketDimension: The whole solar system dropped into a pocket dimension eons ago.
* PsychicPowers: How [[MagicByAnyOtherName magic is justified]]. The psychic powers of humans are juiced by contact or near proximity of [[EldritchAbominations superpowerful beings]] from AnotherDimension.
* TheRightOfASuperiorSpecies: ''Humans'' are the ones who did this when they invaded Tekumel. The native Ssu and Hluss were living together in peace, and had about the kind of technology that we have now in RealLife. Humans had developed far a more advanced starfaring civilization, so "obviously" the Tekumelani species were inferior. Humans had no problem allying peacefully with other advanced starfaring species, but they terraformed the hell out of Tekumel, rearranged its orbit and even gravity, and tried their best to genocide the "primitive" natives. [[HumansAreBastards It's even noted that the other starfaring races wouldn't have bothered invading at all, if humans hadn't spearheaded the project.]]
* TheStarsAreGoingOut: Actually, the stars went out thousands of years ago. There were stars, but no only the local sun and the planets, because the system fell into a [[PocketDimension pocket universe]].
* WhenDimensionsCollide: The PocketDimension of the setting collided with another universe, with [[EldritchAbomination otherdimensional beings]], resulting in some humans gaining PsychicPowers, and religions based on limited human understanding of the more powerful creatures.

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