Welcome to The Book of Named Things, an attempt to document a world that's been bouncing around in my head for hot decade. The world at the heart of The Book of Named Things is called Hearth. Hearth resonates with a desire for a setting (as a home to stories) that meets three requirements.
- It has magic.
- It has technology.
- It isn't set on Earth.
It turns out, hitting these three together is hard.[1]
Magic is magic, not sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic. Technology is technology, not sufficiently advanced magic that allows for the tropes of technology. And I'd like the setting to be divorced from Earth, because tying into Earth culture and tropes and histories can be problematic.
Hearth is a world where magic exists, but the people of Hearth have been cut off from it. They can no longer manifest it directly - there are no wizards, no sorcerers, only warlocks and lawyers. In the absence of magic, the march of progress has continued, and cars and computers and power plants and guns are accessible to the people.
The world of Hearth is a dangerous one, ruined by wars of magic against the gods. Outside of the city walls, the wilderness is an untamed place that resists documentation, much less civilization. Inside the cities, powerful technocrats offer safety in exchange for freedom.
In Hearth, you can bargain with dark powers and with unhinged artificial intelligences, and even pit them against each other. It is a world where true power comes not merely from knowing the names of things, but from being able to name them.
But naming things is hard.
[1] As originally documented in this RPG.net post.
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