Diaspora: The Scattering was supposed to be a Web Comic. But, the Author realized that he can't draw worth shit. He is currently re-working it as a Tabletop RPG. Title needs work. Has nothing to do with the Post Cyber Punk novel.
Diaspora is set on an earth-parallell world known as Second. Humans came there after fleeing a Class One Apocalypse, and were given samples of an experimental Retrovirus made from Human DNA, known as the "Evolutionary Accellerant". Second was a world where the two main sentient species were Elves, who enjoyed a connection with the world's natural Magic, and Verdammt, who slept the millenia away in their crypts in thje center of the continent. The elves demanded that the humans, who had recently landed, leave. Humans responded by releasing the Evolutionary Accelerant, and enslaving the Uplifted Animals this created. Crushed beneath sheer weight of numbers, the long-lived but low-virilty Elves, they were forced to surrender. Humans, secure in their dominance, began to mine their new home. They uncovered a large ammount of Power Crystals that allowed them to perform magic. Now, after several thousand years, strange things are happening. Strange, shadowy armies destroy entire towns, and a patch of land on the border between the three factions is devastated by a column of fire...
Races:
- Humans: Everyday humans with a penchant for Bio-Augmentation. Has an Empire, composed of several clan-like Houses (Von Harkonnen, Von Krosp, a few others and the non-affiliated Freeholders; who owe loyalty to the emperor himself and none other), a merchant guild, and a rebel group whom developed by learning to get along with the natives.
- Zoomorphs: Furries (but don't call them that to their faces, you'll regret it) with a deep caste structure based on cunning and strength (Felinoids are by-and-large, theones running things). Genetically engineered as cannon fodder.
- Verdammt: Vampires who cannot die outside of their homeland. Invariably equipped in Gas Mask, Longcoat, and armed with weapons that are best described with words like "Nightmarish" and "Horrific". Males develop into huge bat-men known as "Chupwracks" and females drop their legs and grow hollow tongues. They are known as "Manarians" (those well-versed in vamp lore will know the author really meant "Mannangaal", he was going to use "Aswang" but that is like using "cock" for "rooster," it only invites trouble). Their native language is very close to terran germanic. Never seen without gasmasks and trenchcoats.
- Elves: Pointy-eared immortals with a penchant for magic. Patriarchal, due to the fact that they produce only one male for every 100 females.
- Terrans: Evolved humans from Earth That Was, adapted for high-radiation environments. Not being irradiated causes their immune system to stop, and so they rot. Strong sense of Justice, often cooking up horrible punishments for murderers, kidnappers, Necromancers, and rapists.
Magic types:
- Air Ships: Air Cruisers and Air Carriers.
- All There in the Manual: however, it has yet to be published
- Always Knight Templar: Terrans hang murderers, chop the hands off abusers/muggers (of any gender), and torture rapists to death. The vast majority of them work for the Church Militant, and anyone convicted of "corruption" is force-fed liquid gold.
- Animate Dead: the entire purpose of "Death" magic.
- Anti-Magic: "Void" element.
- Applied Phlebotinum
- Arm Cannon: Just about everyone has their weapons forearm-mounted.
- Author Appeal: Only certain animals became Uplifted, this was meant to be Hand Waved with "because the other ones don't look sexy when anthopomorphisized/it only affects mammals."
- Background Magic Field: Mutates people who live within it to be able to use magic.
- Battle Couple: Gun Crews, two genetically and magically enhanced teens (A Magical Girl and a male Magic Knight) who can unleash devastating magical attacks. The girl uses attack spells (and a BFG), the male is a Barrier Warrior with an Evolving Attack (starts out with a bubble shield, eventually gains Monomolecular Khatars and a Spiky Vitality Barrier), and also acts as a power-pack for the girl.
- Body Horror: "Mana Poisoning", Biotheurgy spell "Shape Flesh: Enemy", Dregs (Terrans who are no longer being irradiated), and several custom-made undead minions.
- Bio-Augmentation/ Anatomy Arsenal: Biocrafted weapons. Baisic package includes chitin plates, claws, venom sacs, Combat Tentacles, and Spawn Broodling.
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Vitality Points, which are a result of focusing the will to survive into a Deflector Shield. This also works as a Healing Factor.
- Curse: Several, all of which revolve around Grimy Water, airborne pagues, and Spawn Broodling. Special mention to Undead to Death (and before anyone points out what this does in D&D, I Thought It Meant Spawn Broodling and worked it in), it turns the affected into a Technically-Living Zombie who is suffering hellish agony and is incapable of disobeying it's master.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The Title sounds a lot less sexy once you realize that Diaspora means "to be scattered".
- Death Ray: "Radiation Projectors," standard issue weaponry for Terrans.
- Dem Bones: one for each element, based on what killed them, or their Necromancer master infusing them with that element.
- Darker and Edgier: Terrans routinely commit Genocide on cultures thy deem "Anathema", such as ones that allow slavery.
- Earth That Was: Earth is still there, but it's horrificly irradiated.
- Element No. 5: Void, actually "Element number Eight"
- Elemental Powers
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Life, Fire, and Earth are weak vs. Death, Water, and Air, and Vice Versa. Chaos is strong (and weak) against all, and Void counteracts magic.
- Energy Ball: The "Orb" spell lets one throw a sphere of whatever element they happen to be channeling.
- Evolutionary Levels: Verdammt "Adult" forms.
- Fantastic Slur: Calling a Zoomorph a "Furry" gets you a trip to the hospital.
- Gaia's LamentThey beheld, and wept, for never had they seen such good, green growing things.
- Gender Rarity Value: Type one with Elves. The men are in charge because there's so few of them.
- Genki Girl /Keet: An entire race of them, known as Deep Ones, who are Uplifted Sea Otters (whom rely on excersize, rather than fatty tissues to keep warm).
- Half-Human Hybrid: The aptly-named Chimeras.
- Hit Points/ Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Actually justified, "Vitality" is not just physical health, it's a Personal Deflector Shield made of one's will to live.
- Human Subspecies: Terrans. Their evolution is based on beneficial or superflous mutations caused by radiation, for example, bone spurrs, leathery skin all over, a third eye, a long, viciously thorned tail, and a sixth finger. they are also a One-Gender Race.
- Inter Continuity Crossover: Terrans wiped out the DearS host race, the Arume and the Alatra, those guys from The Wheel of Time who murder/ dismember their men whenever they feel like a little bloodshed (in fact, they pulled an Exterminatus on the Wheel of Time world because this pissed them off so much).
- Intrepid Merchant: The basic job description of the Merchant Guild.
- Insistent Terminology: In an attempt to avert Whatevermancy, the proper suffix for a wizard's dicipline is "-theurge" (Necrotheurge, Pyrotheurge, etc). Call them a "[X]-Mancer" and they'll correct you. "Furry" is also a grevious insult to Zoomorphs.
- Liquid Assets: the Vita Ex Nex Aura (Life from Death) drains the life-force and Mana of anyone not at full health-freind or foe! and adds it to the caster's power pool/ HP.
- Magic Misfire: Chaos magic has a chance to cost twice as much Mana as it should, and/or accidentally heal the target enemy. However, it also has a chance to be treated as a Free Action and do triple damage..
- Magitek: Thaumetic Gauntlets, which allow non-mages to cast spells, and Thaumetic Reactors, which power Cool Airships and cities.
- Mana: used roughly the same way as "Lumen" or "Decibel".
- Mental Fusion: One faction of the Terran church, as they beleive that wickedness stems from not personally experiencing the victim's pain (for further reading, see Cracked.com's article titled "the Monkeyshpere" for why this is a valid idea).
- Not Using the Zed Word: :You can call undead whatever you want, but "Furry" to a Zoomorph is the rough equivalent of "the N-Word" to a black person.
- One-Gender Race: Terrans are actually both sexes at once (Hermaphrodites).
- Our Elves Are Different: they're feircley patriarchal, and "drow" are not their Evil Counterpart, they're just the elven equivalent of a teenager with a deep suntan and bleached hair, kinda like gyaru girls (Those japanese chicks who wear blonde wigs and really thick brown makeup).
- Our Vampires Are Different: They're Gas Mask Mooks because radiation makes them decompose. they also can't die outside their homeland, because their Soul Jars have a minimum range.
- Powered Armor: can also be scaled up to Mini-Mecha and four-legged assault walkers (Humongous Mecha are too ineficient, so Spider Tanks are the next step).
- Power Crystal: Tachyonite.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Control Groups, two magically and genetically enhanced children used to control Thaumetic Reactors. The process, while not torturous, is very taxing. Once computers capable of performing the process were developed, Control Groups were rendered obsolete.
- Power of Rock: Bards use Tachyonite in their instruments. This lets them chuck fireballs at the enemy by playing "Disco Inferno" and the like.
- Precursors: The Ancients, whose ruins dot the landscape. Most of the worlds' Magitek was reverse engineered from their goodies.
- Proud Warrior Race: all of them, to an extent.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Terrans torture rapists to death, carve out his/her heart, and gibbet the corpse. They serve said heart to the victim however they want it (traditionally, "Sauteed in herb butter and served with Mint Jelly and a sprig of parsly.")
- Role-Playing Game 'Verse
- Rule of Three: Magic Missile is fired in three volleys of three. Metamagic "propogate" and "Cluster" also allows each projectile to split into three.
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Subverted, a Scary Dogmatic Human Subspecies.
- Science Fantasy: Bio Punk versus Dungeon Punk versus Atom Punk.
- Screw You, Elves!: the entire point of the war.
- Shout-Out: a "Corpse Cart" enemy/ minion blatantly plagarized from Warhammer Fantasy, and a Malevolent Mirror trap taken from Mirrors.
- Standard Fantasy Setting: no.
- Standard Sci-Fi History:Type Two triggers Type Three and Four.
- Technically-Living Zombie: Wretches, "A rotting person who is not qute dead, but close enough for the worms".
- Uplifted Animal: Zoomorphs.
- The Undead: Lots. Verdammt also become Zombies if they die outside of their homeland, and degenerate into Dem Bones.
- Undeath Always Ends: Subverted, free-willed undead must take a quest to die for real.
- Vader Breath: Whod'ya think?
- The Virus: Evolutionary Accelerant.
- What Might Have Been: Word of God: originally, there was High Elves and High Men (Terrans had implanted nanomachines that made them invincible, Elves had a super powered counterpart called Alfar), and a Flood Expy, and it was a Space Opera. Once the Author got inspired by TwoKinds, these were dropped and it mutated into a High Fantasy /Clock Punk hybrid work. This was then overshadowed by creating a Materia Expy, and it then became Dungeon Punk. Getting back to it's Sci-Fi inspired roots, the Terans were revived. The nuclear war backstory was blatantly cribbed from Fallout, terrans became a Human Subspecies, and it then became the current work. The author also started on a Character Sheet that has a bratty princess Zoomorp], a Defector from Decadence Verdammt, the last Precursor, and a Genre Savvy Human governor. Once he accepted that he can't draw, they were dropped.
- Worldbuilding: Rather extensively.
- The Worm That Walks: Vermen, Skeletons tainted with Death Energy that use carrion-feeding insects as skin and muscle tissue.
- Wutai: Elves have adopted Japanese architecture and weapon styles.
