Saturday 10 December 2022

Zone Raiders - life in Megastrata 170622B on the post singularity Matrioshka

Hello and welcome back. 


I am getting my background fluff together for my Zone Raiders setting. Zone Raiders is a small skirmish game by Tony Xano that is set in a Matrioshka sphere in the post singularity. It is a high tech post apocalyptic setting on what is essentially a unimaginably sized space station. 


The Matrioshka sphere is a thinking machine powered by a Dyson sphere built around a sun (possibly our sun the background doesn’t specify!). It is constructed with many spheres built over each other, each split into uncountable continent sized Megastrata. 


The post humans built Matrioshia to develop a fully automated thinking machine that would enable them to join together as one consciousness in the Singularity. This took a long time and the post humans used humans as workers, companions and possibly pets. During the time taken to develop, construct and perfect the brain, the post humans entertained themselves by creating genetic constructs, sentient robots, machine animals and many new technologies. When the brain was complete the post humans vanished into the singularity leaving their creations and humans to survive in the Matrioshka alone.


Megastrata 170622B - is over 12,000Km x 12,000Km in size. The floor of the Megastrata is littered with all manner of dead machines, ancient 4d printers, pipes, ducts, vents, tanks, vats, cables, towers, domes, biodomes, toxic lakes, radiation pockets, ruins, rust deserts and more. What townships or city’s that exist in the Megastrata are hundreds of kilometres apart. The city zones are the only true safe spaces from the dangers of Matrioshka. Although the city zones have the other dangers usually associated with civilisation. Beneath the floor of the Megastrata there are many hundreds of levels filled with tunnels, pipes, ducts and travel tubes. Legends speak of old domes and storage bunkers deep below the ground of Megastrata 170622B. 


The Megastrata ceiling is some 10Km above the floor. Massive inverted towers hang like stalactites from the ceiling filled with artefacts of the ancients (the post humans) and possibly supplies. These towers are incredibly difficult to get at. Old disused mono rails hang from the ceiling. There are hundreds of levels above the ceiling reaching the upper edge of the Megastrata. No one knows what exactly is hidden in the levels above Megastrata 170622B. All of the outer bulkheads of the Megastrata are hyperdense and impenetrable although that doesn’t stop attempts to break into the neighbouring Megastrata.  


In addition to the many environmental hazards in the dark zones of Megastrata 170622B there are wild tribes of Morlocks, prowling Immunocytes looking to attack for anything sentient , sentry nodes, out of control ancient industrial machines, wild electrical discharges, unmapped Immunocyte nodes, nano-swarm leaks, strange plants, toxic fungi, strange creatures and technobeasts. 


There will be future posts with more detail of Megastrata 170622B. Stay tuned.


Thanks for reading.


Stay safe out there.

4 comments:

  1. That's certainly a wild scenario! I've never heard of a game based IN a Matrioshka Brain before. Innovative!

    Also, you could shoehorn almost any imaginable sci-fi concept into this. Maybe there are aliens that have somehow managed to get in past the impenetrable walls, and are trapped. Maybe there are groups of neoprimitives who have consciously chosen to go back to the Stone Age in insular pockets protected from the more dangerous critters. Animal-human hybrid cults, terrorist clones, psykers...

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    1. The Zone Raiders has pretty much everything like this covered.

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  2. Dang, that is a compelling narrative for sure! Is the megastrata concept from the Zone Raiders book or did you come up with it?

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    1. The megastrata idea came from the Zone Raiders book and I dreamt up my own my own megastra to run games in.

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