Shattered Sun

The Sun is broken.

Many ages ago, the Sun has sustained life and prosperity on our world. Everything that happened in the world went by the clockwork motion of the Sun across the sky, never ending in its motion and the benefits which the world reaped from it. People in particular became comfortable with the world, mastered in the existence of the Sun and all of the gifts granted by its Light.

In due time though, the Sun would become much less constant, much less perpetual than people had come to understand it as. Starting with a surreal crack and ending with the most terrifying roar one could imagine, the Sun violently unraveled in the eyes of the people. Emerging from the explosion was the most brilliant creature ever gazed upon - the mighty Phoenix of countless legends. It awakened from what happened to be its egg, our Sun, sprawling forth its flaming wings with an indescribable splendor. But that magnificence would soon turn into despair as the Phoenix did not herald the rebirth of the world as in the tales of the people.

Instead, the Phoenix had abandoned it.

The shimmering Light faded soon after the Phoenix's departure beyond the sight of the people. In the blast's wake approached a cloud of golden daggers, thrown to the discarded world as an assassin would do to a victim without remorse. As the Shards struck the world beneath the former Sun, the worst calamity in the history of the world came to pass. Entire civilizations burned to mere ash. The environment was irreversibly ravaged by the fires. The world's climate mutated dramatically in an instant. Everything the people under the Cerulean Heavens once knew vanished in a torrent of flame and destruction.

In due time, the fires died to a smolder. The world was set not in the burning light of a crimson inferno, but in a speckled sky of lavender as the Shards which didn't strike the world or fly into the inky abyss floated in the skies above. Dots of the Sun's former Light drifted through the darkened sky in all directions, perhaps lighting the way for the next chapter of the people, of the world.

For the Phoenix, Birth gives way to Death, which then gives way to Rebirth. When will the world be Reborn?

Overview

Shattered Sun is a setting created by a number of folks at /tg/, all sparked by the premise of "What would happen if the sun shattered?" It would take too much time to detail the evolution of the setting from the initial idea, but the folks at sup/tg/ have archived the original thread.

Concepts

The Phoenix's Awakening

The sun hatched, and the shell was strewn about the heavens. While it was a cataclysm in all senses of the word, erasing all existing civilization, it left more than enough survivors. These survivors have built their own lives in a changed world, seeking riches, glory, or even the old world's Rebirth.

The Shards

These are the remnants of the Sun left behind in the Phoenix's wake. Many fell to the world in a fiery fury, destroying all that their flames touched, and expending themselves in that manner. Others flew deep into the world's skies, never to be seen again. But most of the Shards now drift within the skies, orbiting the world and providing a much sought after and scarce light in the post-Awakening world. They have also been known for either coming too close or becoming too bright at times, burning people and plants near them.

Sunscrapes

These are the events in which particularly large or potent Shards fall to the world, or even pass close by it in its orbit. Massive geological events follow such a strike or passing, creating the most dramatic craters and endless canyons in their wake. While a relatively rare occurrence, Sunscrapes change the lives of the region and its people for a long time to come.

Astronomers

With such an importance of the Shards in the world under the Shattered Sun, there is even more importance on those who can track them. Such skills are vital for the survival of the people. As such, it is no surprise that the Astronomers of the Cities are nigh exalted for their abilities to forecast the movement of the Shards. Their accurate charts help decide the fate of the Cities, lending them a powerful voice in the politics of the Cities as well.

Peoples and Places

The world under the Shattered Sun is mostly defined by the shards that fly over it.

The Shardstreams

While few in number, the various Shardstreams of the world are the most stable areas for the emerging human civilization under the Shattered Sun. The coalesced bands of Shards provide constant Light and warmth for the Cities that spring up forth from these areas.

The Holy City

The Holy City is by far the largest and most populous City under the Shardstreams. Dominated in the sky by the Shard of Gargonel, the Holy City is the seat for the world's best Astronomers. It is also a hotbed of politics, many factions of people vying for attention and resources in the quickly growing City.

The City of Terec

The City of Terec is unlike any other in the Shardstreams. Instead of the usual civic splendor and rigid structure of Cities such as the Holy City, Terec was founded completely on the innovation of highly skilled Alchemists. Life in Terec is far more comfortable than in any other City known to man. However, Terec’s Astronomers have predicted a terrible Sunscrape in the coming years…

The City of Eternal Shardlight

A legendary City founded soon after the Phoenix’s Awakening under one of the first Shardstreams that stabilized. It lasted intact for hundreds of years until a stray Shard, unnoticed by even the City’s finest Astronomers, crashed into its Stream, sending down a rain of Shards unto it. It burns in the resulting inferno even today.

The Strobelands

The Strobelands make up most of the world, and hold most of its people. The shards over the Srobelands are erratic, and its people are nomadic as a result. No area remains habitable for longer than a few months, and settlements must frequently uproot to find new homes. The strobers send out adventurers all the time, guided only by their knowledge of Astronomy and protected only by their own strength, to find new places to settle, and clear the dark lands of potential threats.

Vampires

The vampires move about in the cold and dark where no humans go, and when Strobers are caught in the dark, the vampires fall upon them in search of blood.

Subfolk

White and shortened, the Subs live in a great underground cavern, lit by a single fallen shard. They lived peacefully for a long time, kept safe by the light of their Shard and far away from the Holy City.

Up until the point where their Shard ran out of juice. In desperation, a religious cult seized power on the policy of blood sacrifices.. which more or less worked. The Sunshard reignited when regularly fed with blood, but took on a strange, silvery glow instead of it's usual golden glory. The light began to do strange things to them. Over generations of inbreeding and exposure to the ghostlight, this culture mutated into a hive of diminutive albinoid creatures, only just recognisable as people any more.

They go out into the nightlands and hunt stray Strobers, hitting their caravans in bloodless ambushes, dragging the captives back to their home to sustain the Soulshard.

Tales of the Shattered Sun

I was just a boy when the Great Pheonix awoke from his slumber. When after thousands of years, he had regrown and regenerated from his great crusade against the swarms of the void. When he began to flex within his crystal shell, the normally yellow light slowly pulsing through the spectrum, from red to ultraviolet, changing every several days. Wizards and alchemists pondered the meaning, gazing at the sun in wonder, debating in their towers. Until The Cracking.

The slow changes between colors began to speed up. Faster and faster they came. Everyone in my village went out to look at the sun, captivated by its power. Staring up as colors spun like a child's kaleidoscope. I could not, for I was bedridden with fever. But I could see the lights playing with the shadow beyond the doorway of our hut.

Suddenly, a flare. Screams from outside as the onlookers were struck blind by the Phoenix's power, by the incredible influx of light. I stumbled from my fever bed and looked up at the sky. I and those others who had looked away or were busy indoors saw something not seen before or since. A great bird unfurling its wings across the sky, crystal slivers exploding outwards with incredible force in all directions, its feathers changing colors before our eyes. Women fainted, men wept, most soiled themselves. I could only look up in awe, mouth agape, as the great bird flapped its wings and flew off into the void, searching for its prey.

Weeks later the Shards began to fall. Daggers flying towards us, flung from an uncaring god. Forests burned, seas turned to steam, cities destroyed. Civilization died along with most of humanity.

But we persevered. Some shards dance across the sky now, smaller suns for smaller men. Others are stabbed deep into the earth, pillars of flaming stone burning evermore that no man may go near. All are intensely magical, creating new life and imbuing the mundane with the extraordinary. Wizards prize even the smallest of pieces. Some say there are great feathers within the Shards that can bring back the dead and give life everlasting.

One must get past the death cults. Exotic beasts driven mad by magic. Twilight cannibals that feast upon sun-fed flesh. Not to mention the mountains of fire themselves.

I've seen every Shard from here to the Scalding Sea. Join my crew and you shall as well. A life of fortune and fame is offered to you, my boys. The only question is, are you man enough to take it?

Al Adin

"Allow me to get this correct: A lowly savage such as yourself, a mere wanderer of the Strobelands, seeks an audience with His Luminance to warn him of a Shardfall in three weeks' time upon His glorious City? You dare disturb him with the very idea of an occurence deemed completely and utterly impossible by our Astronomers, the most expert and insightful in all of the land!?"

"E-exactly... I don't mean t'intrude, b-but..."

"SILENCE! There is reason His Luminance has dubbed His City the City of Eternal Shardlight. Not only do we lie under a stable Shardstream, but our storied Astronomers foresee a long and prosperous life for the City. I can understand if others such as yourself look upon the City with envy and desire, but I will not dare allow the hollow words of a Strober bring a most unnecessary panic upon the City! Guards!"

"I ain't tryin' to cause anything! I'm tryin' t'warn y'all b'fore-"

As the guard struck the young man in his dusty robes on the back of the head with the pommel of his blade, the advisor watched the youth collapse to the floor with a strained grunt. A lazy gesture wordlessly commanded the guards to take the unconscious youth to the dungeon for what amounted to treasonous conspiracy in the advisor's eyes. For too long has he worked to earn the trust of His Luminance and His Astronomers to get where he was today. He would not allow the hazardous words of a Strober urchin to set forth the demise of his standing and reputation.

Despite himself however, the worrisome man couldn't help but to wring his hands together once the guards were out of view. Even someone confident in the City's longevity as he remembers well the stories of the Phoenix's Awakening told by his elders. This most tragic tale resonates with every Citizen, high and low, as it does everyone else under the Shattered Heavens.

Those in the world before the Awakening were far more sophisticated than they, but they became too comfortable in the perceived permanence of their existence. They became the first to perish upon the Awakening, their magnificent realms but mere ruins in the Strobelands and the Twilight now. Perhaps the youth foresaw something the Astronomers cannot: the end of his people's Eternal Shardlight.

While the advisor's fears were stirred by the youth's drawled proclamation, his ambition drowned the fears. He kept the entire matter to himself, never spoke a word of it to his Liege or to the Astronomers...

Three weeks later, the youth's fears came to pass. An especially bright and vivid Shard streaked across the lavendar sky that day toward the Shardstream above the City. It crashed into one of the Shards in the Stream, bringing forth the more brilliant flash of light since the Awakening, and the most terrifying roar since then as well. From a distance, it looked like shining needles rained down upon the City and its proximity over the next few days, sparking a most relentless inferno upon its populace. The compassionate youth and the ambitious advisor paid the ultimate price.

If you seek the Eternal Shardlight, it remains upon the City's ruins, still burning everstrong until all of the Citizens' ambition and excess wither away.