The World As-Is is a post-post-apocalyptic fantasy-adjacent setting occupied by beasts, monsters, and races of Men: humans themselves (a remnant, few in number) as well as other sentient peoples whose consciousnesses are derived from the blasted remains of ancient humanity, collectively referred to as post-humans.
The world itself has a lot in common with our own, modern world: at a glance, a city street might seem perfectly typical, until you start to really look at the details and notice things like…
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Structures are built bigger, sometimes a lot bigger, like they need to accommodate something larger than humans.
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Transportation seems to mostly depend on big, mechano-skeletal horse-like golems pulling different kinds of carts. Sometimes there are trains and trams on set routes instead.
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There is a lot of mismatched technology. There are neon signs and traffic lights, but also gas lamps, handmade everything, and very few screens or personal devices.
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Chessmen, of course, are numerous and hugely successful in the World As-Is. They control the two greatest empires, Pyrania in the west and Czechia in the east, and are such masters of structure and warfare that nobody has much motivation to challenge them.
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Woven are the other most common race of people whose bodies resemble ball-jointed dolls sewn up with fabric. Many of them are renowned medics and doctors with unique skills in high demand in a world where old medicine no longer applies, and all of them have the powerful ability to transform their own bodies and compel their phantoform into matching it, donning new or unique limbs, tails, and other features.
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Beasts are flesh-and-blood animals, mostly unchanged from how they used to be before the end of the world. Many beasts are now extinct, while new ones also thrive in their place.
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Post-beasts are to beasts as post-humans are to humans: artificial-looking simulacra of creatures, possessed of phantoforms. Post-humans often prefer the use of post-beasts as they are strong and durable and some of them are capable of things normal beasts are not.
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Humans still exist, somewhere, but have sequestered themselves far away from a world that is now very dangerous to them. Lately, humans plucked directly from the past have also been appearing in the World As-Is.
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The Tower is a massive black monolith jutting out from the center of a huge abyss on the far edge of the World As-Is. It possesses a single tremendous eye, but does not speak; it only manifests an oppressive aura of burning hatred, and shudders the earth with blasts of terrible noise. No one knows what it does, and few care to get close enough to find out.
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The World As-Is is full of people who lived in the same age as you and I, and also with people who lived before. It is also a world that used to be the World Before--the place you and I now occupy.