The Antipodean Worlds
1 setting, 3 games, 3 worlds.
Extreme gratitude to Jay, Idra, Evil and all the other players of the Great Antarctica Campaign.
For the past year or so I’ve been a fairly consistent member of The Great Antarctica Campaign on the Big Purp Server: an overarching series of 3 campaigns set in the world of the Antarctica Adventure Jam, ran by 3 rotating GMs.
Being set in the same world, each game however manages to establishes its own unique vibe and setting, that nonetheless help bleed into one big cohesive slush-world.
Idraluna Archives’ Zurth
Set around the megadungeon known as Murdicog’s Manse, Zurth is by far the most “colorful” region in the antipodes continent that has been explored thus far. Though being in quotes I say colorful as praise: everything is bounding with vibrancy and an ever-present weirdness.
The place itself is something out of the Morrowind or a late 60s-early 70s pulp magazine, uncoincidentally being two of the largest inspirations for the region. Monsters like Carbuncle-Dromes and the various automatons scattered across the land help give the vibe of the “Slush-Past”, a feeling not unlike The Book of the New Sun with its naturalized aliens and mythologized machines.
Idraluna has a style of organic and whimsical curves in his art that help shape the world of Zurth, giving it the pronounced feeling of Weird-Familiarity that Antarctica always help give.
Jay_Zer0’s Cordillera and the Shrublands
The Traditional convention of the “DnD Adventure” has been likened to western stories and I feel the Shrublands and Cordillera wears that inspiration on their sleeves. The people and places of the Shrublands, while still colorful, feel more earth-toned and natural than the high-flying and Sword-and-Lazers of Zurth.
Many of the peoples and settlements of the two regions are inspired by the indigenous cultures of the Americas, such as the Pueblo-City of Pocete or the Wooden-Armored warriors of the Cordilleran Coast. Foreigners like the much revered Professor DuBoig feel just as out of place as things like the leech-mouthed men or the amber ribbon.
The monsters of the twin lands have a mythical quality, being passed down in stories as precursor beings abandoned eons ago. Doomed Heriotza and the Weedians help add that science-fantasy strangeness inherent to the overworld of Antarctica.
Evil Tables’ Northern Strata
Lovecraft and Deleuze walk into a bar, have a one-night stand and the photos are leaked as Verne-esque linocuts. The Northern Strata is, in my opinion, the most esoteric of the regions, in part due to its psychoanalytic origins.
Abstracts shapes loom amongst the land, carved into mountains and in the open sky that blankets the unending fields of snow. Even in sandy deserts, the winter feels everpresent, looming over the pockets of greenery as if in the ice age.
The two cleric-variants, the Psychoanalyst and the Alien Hunter, shape the scattered and individual nature of the supernatural: everyone has a personal view of the dead gods and shattered magic, contributing the almost paranoiac feeling of the strata. Oh, I also forgot to mention the grey aliens. They’re also there.