Degenesis: Beyond the Protectorate

[Draconic]

The year is 2073 and humanity had hit it's stride. Dubbed the Transhuman Age, technology was progressing at an astounding clip. An Internet of Things connecting everything together was developed, robots were becoming more and more common, nanotech promised a panacea that could revolutionize medicine. Despite a number of societal problems, things were looking up for the human race… That is until a large swarm of asteroids hit Earth.

Dubbed Eshaton, the immediate consequences were nothing short of cataclysmic. Tsunamis, earthquakes, and massive tectonic shifts completely overthrew the old way of life and slowly more and more governments fell into chaos and discord as all of humanities vaunted technology failed us in the face of such overwhelming calamity, disease and death. But the true horror was only beginning:

From the impact craters came the Primer. It is pure, uncontrolled evolution. Those who get taken by it are irrevocably changed, and those born to it become parasitic beasts, following the will of their Earth Chakra, and hating the humans that ‘imprisoned’ them until it could awaken. Parentage means nothing to the Psychonauts.

The world has become a hard and barbarous place, the ruins of the Bygones standing in mute testimony to humanity’s apex before it's hard fall back to the Earth, with humanity’s descendents living in the shadows of these tombstones.

It’s been over five-hundred years since the end of human civilization. Eshaton tore everything down, and in its wake rose the Cults and Clans of the new era. And this is where your story begins.

Some of the Cults

Spitalians: The Last Bastion

Doctors to the last, and mankind’s last line of defense against the Primer and its spawn. They explore the spore fields, dissect dead Psychonauts, and develop poisons and weapons. With their fungicides they cut swathes into the Sepsis, and carry spore covered muscles in glass tubes to lead them to the Aberrants’ breeding grounds.The Spitalians cannot afford mercy: their legions of Preservists and Famulancers wade into swamps or trek across desolate plains to fight the consequences of leniency across Europe every day.

Chroniclers: The Omniscient

The Stream once extended over the world and touched every mind. Deep down, at the bottom of this sea of data, something stirred. Humans sought it and found something that they didn’t understand, but that they could believe in. The Chroniclers are the descendants of these Streamers. The Eshaton made the Stream dry up, petrifying the sea of knowledge. The Chroniclers continue its work, buying artifacts from the Scrappers and fueling an entire market as they search for the remainders of the past, and the last Stream servers.

Hellvetics: The Brotherhood of Arms

Deep within the Alps, they expected the Eshaton. They were not spared in the ensuing inferno, however. As hellfire swept through their lands, the Hellvetics confronted nature’s wrath. The Alps may have been broken, but the Hellvetics were not. Their Doctrine ties them to weapon, comrade, and country, and every unnecessary shot weakens the Fortress. Every miss is punished. No one can match them in their defenses, and no one can oppose their assault rifles: the Trailblazers.

Judges: The Hammer of Justice

The Judges brought law to the wastelands. With hammer and musket, they confronted the savages, hiding their faces behind wide brimmed hats. They conjured hailstorms of lead, slaughtered the Cockroach Clan and judged outlaws with a blow of their hammers. In the city of Justitian, they completed their vision of a just and safe world. The walls were insurmountable, the law was strong, the people were not free, but free of fear. Settlement after settlement placed themselves under Justitian’s custody. The Protectorate was born.

Clanners: Rulers of the Wasteland

The individual is nothing. Those who wanted to survive after the global conflagration joined groups, formed their own rules that they chose to live by, and fought and died for their new brothers and sisters. Strangers became friends, friends became lovers, lovers grew into family. The survivors had cast off their previous lives, and evolved into the Clanners. Some of them lost all pretense of dignity, tumbling into the darkness of the era of the beast. Others clung to the few traditions they could salvage from the ashes of history, latching onto morality, manners, and what little technology still functioned.

Scrappers: The Dirt Diggers

Drawn towards the ruins, away from the humming, raucous cities, Scrappers dig in the dust and dirt. Every cut of the spade brings them closer to the era of the ancient people. They work tirelessly, digging all the way down until they can drag technical wonders caked with soot into the light of day. When they hear the wind whistle through gaping windows and the old buildings creak in the midday sun, they know that this is their home. Here, they know every nook and cranny. No one can best them in the wasteland.

Apocalyptics: The Lords of Desire

Apocalyptics live a pure and unbridled life. They appear in Flocks, swooping into gambling dens and nesting in bordellos. Their distillate is stronger, their Burn more potent, their whores more beautiful. Any vice finds a welcome home with them. They live in the present. All emotions are sacred to them and equally celebrated as if they were the last. They name their Flocks for their origins or way of life. They earn the name of a bird that embodies their character. Knife fighters are Battle Crows. Whores and thieves are Magpies. Above all, the Raven leads the flock.

Palers: The Vault Crawlers

They have been waiting for the divine ones to awaken for centuries, trapped underground in eternal darkness in their crypts. Glowing blue figures speak to the Palers from the walls, deep and crackling voices reinforcing their conviction that they are the righteous few chosen to one day throw open the gates to the surface, ruling the nations of this Earth alongside the divine ones. One by one, their bunkers open. The Revivers among the Palers go searching for their kin in the remaining 44 bunkers, tightly gripping the holy Sun Discs they’ll soon brandish in front of locked entrances.

There are more Cults to choose from, but you'll have to move on to character creation to check them out.

Map of the Known World

So I'm trying to sell this again, and this time I'm using some of the materials and adding visuals.
Welcome to the world of Degenesis, a Primal Punk post-apocalyptic world by SIXMOREVODKA, full of danger, terror, thrilling stories, and characters both delightful and horrifying. The world at first glance might look a bit like Mad Max, Borderlands or STALKER, but there's a bit of every sort of post-apocalypse setting in this one because there's… well, there's a lot of places to go. Humanity was destroyed, but that was five-hundred years ago. They've rebuilt, but without access to all of their former technology, society has regressed a fair bit in some ways, while progressing in others.

I'll be running the game in Roll20 on a weekly basis, so joining the game sort of depends on whether you have time for that sort of thing, but the good news is that there aren't any hard dates set yet, so you can just open up my handy timetable, slot in your name and time-zone, and I'll try to fit you in.
The Almighty Schedule

I currently have two players already, and am looking for three more for a total of five.

Be warned. This isn't a swords and sorcery game. It's a game about choices. Stealth, provocation, manipulation, and scheming are all things your character can do in addition to combat. KatharSys is a fun system. It has very streamlined mechanics. Its combat is fast-paced and very exciting, but for new characters, it can also be incredibly lethal. That said, I'm a more forgiving GM than many of the people who run Degenesis. If you die, chances are, you won't be the only one, and in such scenarios, I will allow the party to 'reloading a previous save' so-to-speak.

Additionally, you are human. There's no getting around that. But don't let that fool you: There's no end to the stuff you can do.

The website itself has a ton of useful materials, lore, and other fun stuff to help acclimate to the setting. Making an account is easy, free, fast, and best of all, doesn't require any personal info. The books are also all completely free. You don't necessarily have to read the whole things, either, just what you need from whichever Cult and Culture you want to play as. But if you want to immerse yourself in the gritty details, and get acquainted with the meta-plot, check out as much as you want. A note about Culture: Just because your character is from a certain country does not mean they have to have lived there. It's just their heritage.

DEGENESIS

There's also a very useful intuitive character generator. Unfortunately, it's broken. It functions fine, but it no longer saves new characters, and won't be getting fixed any time soon. However, it also guides you through the character creation process, so if you want to jumpstart the PC creation process, you can use that, screenshot your options, and transplant them into a different character generator.

Here's an automated one, though it's not fully functional yet:
The Grindworks
The password to access it is: 65536

Here's an alternative form-fillable Character Sheet if you'd rather just use the official generator and transplant what you made afterwards. The catch is that this one isn't automated, so it's a bit harder to use, but you can put everything you need on it:
Alternative Character Sheet: PDF

Additionally, I'd like to put a limit on Legacies. They can be far too powerful in certain combinations, and since they're meant to change how the character is role-played, I want to keep their influence relatively limited so that people don't have to think too hard about playing to several Legacies in addition to their Concept.

Legacies are allowed, but I'd prefer that characters that want them only take 1. I might allow 2, but that will be subject to review, and will be the limit on Legacies for this game.

Backstories:
What you've all been waiting for. Backstories should be a minimum of one page, but there's no limit on how long they can be.

If you have any additional questions, I'll be on Discord.

[FlameStrike]

The setting looks interesting, but the main factor would be time I suppose. I do have free time for sessions, but only at specific hours.

[Draconic]

The time of the sessions needs to be mornings (EST) because my current players are both GMT.