Following is a background sketch for a potential campaign.

The rapture has come and gone. Any chosen departed. From below came the Adversary, no longer constrained to the Dungeon, to claim tyrannical dominion of what remained.

Though eternal, hubris afflicts the Adversary. Clever magic applied with savvy and sacrifice casts the Adversary back down into the Dungeon. Even the Adversary is part of existence and so subject to fundamental relations properly deployed.

So organized, the world staggers through cycles of evil and reprieve. When imprisoned, the Adversary cultivates temptations and treasures below. Invitation from those above alone is how the Adversary can return.

Inevitably, memories of past horrors fade and once vigilant guardians become complacent. Some come to doubt the existence of the Adversary below and ridicule the old rituals. Beliefs notwithstanding, opening the Dungeon’s gates requires only will and black magic.

Though deep seals prevent the Adversary from emerging fully even once the gates fail, lesser monsters are not similarly constrained. First as a trickle, then as a torrent, they come, messengers proclaiming by their rampage the Adversary’s impending arrival.

Again the gates are open. Strongholds stoke sentinel bonfires to keep the monsters at bay. Danger challenges the fellowship of humanity as alliances agreed in times of plenty crumble. As armies are tender fodder for greater monsters, only infiltration has any hope of success in reaching the inner sanctum. From the Adversary’s broken body renewed Dungeon gates may be fashioned.

To close the doors and renew all seals, venture below and defeat the Adversary. Or, seek wicked wages by breaking the seals to earn the Adversary’s acclaim and gratitude, inaugurating a new long night.

Eclipse image by T. Kuboki

History has never recorded more than temporary stalemates in the wars between the city-states of the Shallow Seas. Proud Patmos, our city, was one of the greatest. In a daring gambit our admirals sought to build a flotilla in secret with which to crush our greatest rival and establish unassailable command of all other cities. However, the plan was discovered, by treachery or ill luck, and our enemy struck first, burning the warships in their hidden coves and striking the forts on our shores with a ferocity that overwhelmed our unprepared defenses.

Our navy smoldering and our armies in retreat, the Primarchs were desperate. The sorcerer Ascidia Bel, long bereft of influence though as yet unbanished, took the crisis as an opportunity. He promised to defeat the invaders with ancient war magic if the coffers were put at his disposal and his fellow magicians were allowed back to aid him in the weaving of the great spell. With the bonfires of the enemy sighted from our towers and only days away, the Primarchs acquiesced.

Bel put out a call for his dispersed fellows and over the course of the next day a carnival of witches, warlocks, and diviners answered his summons. They worked feverishly through the night, preparing tribute and sacrifices. The wizards dug trenches in forbidden patterns and filled them with the herbed blood of oxen and prisoners. They stacked treasure in pyramids that reflected the light of tall cylindrical bonfires and chanted sibilant magic words that slid off the ears and defied comprehension despite superficial simplicity.

Ascidia Bel uttered the final syllable almost in a whisper but it was clear as a trumpet call. All was still for several moments. Then the ground began to shake and Bel began to scream. His face melted off and his body crumpled forward. His flesh ignited, burning with an intensity reserved for lost chemistries. Still it lies to this day in the central plaza, always burning, never consumed, too hot to approach closer than ten paces. Several of the taller towers, built by secret societies of masons using hidden techniques, collapsed. The faces of the other sorcerers burst into flame but they did not die. They scattered, crawling on all fours, scurrying like insects, fleeing from their fallen chief into the shadows.

We heard strange drums far off. Lights flickered beyond the hills and over the Shallow Seas. From the mist and smoke and raining ash they came. Some shambling, some stomping, some prancing like acrobats. The smallest was the height of four tall men and no two were alike. Hefting terrible weapons, all rust and spines and cleaving iron, they clustered near the radiant beacon of the ruined sorcerer husk, milling like bees around honey to receive their charge, then like wolves scenting prey, set off into the night.

The next day the sun rose shedding little light, obscured by a disk of blackness in permanent eclipse. After the sortie, no foreign travelers arrived. The roads were empty. Venturing forth, our envoys found abandoned way houses. Only dust inhabited nearby towns. Scouting parties spotted unmanned galleys drifting aimlessly, directed now by only tides and winds.

An outrider discovered one of the summoned creatures in a field outside one empty town, standing almost motionless, hundreds of vultures perched on its shoulders and the trees nearby. Soon after, three of Ascidia Bel’s giant avengers returned. At first we fled in panic, thinking that they meant to finish what began the night before the eclipse, but they seemed not to see us. Now, one walks up and down the river ceaselessly. Another stands by the great sundial. The last waded into a storehouse, structural timbers snapping like twigs, then halted as if it had forgotten its intent. They ignore us like we do not exist. Some of us call the creatures Guardians, and lay wreathes and fresh sacrifices at their titanic feet, to which they pay no attention, inscrutable.

Crops were left to rot in the fields. Some saw these events as heralding the dissolution of mortal law, and there was brief unrest, but the troublemakers were either slain or exiled. We do not know if the calamity outside our walls has claimed them. Grain stores remain plentiful, though they will not last indefinitely, and the river is lavish with fish, so our stomachs are filled though our spirits remain anxious.

Around this time beasts began to change, growing to unnatural sizes. We noticed first with the fish from the river, then stray dogs and hounds. The larger the animal, the more feral. Wicked hawks grown large have snatched lone venturers into the sky.

Our city is the last city. The day is drenched in shadow like constant twilight. The night is warm and fetid. I fear we have called up the agents of the end of the world. The bravest of us have formed small companies to venture beyond our walls, but others, terrified of the unknown, form coteries to safeguard what remains inside.

This is the setting background for a Hexagram play test.

I don’t even know what this is, but certainly it is something.

The overworld of Necropraxia consists of the moon, ruled by Darkseid, and an orbital weapons platform directed by Lord Vader. Both lords occasionally intervene on the surface, but generally prefer to work behind the scenes and rarely deploy their forces directly, beyond the occasional bombardment from outer space. Darkseid is slowly expanding his mining operations over the entire surface of the moon, and has constructed many transportation gates to the surface to facilitate his eventual invasion. He abandons his lunar complexes regularly, however, which are quickly taken over by other, often nameless, things.

After a freak accident in a research and development project, Vader and his starship were transported into orbit over Necropraxia. Lord Vader surveys the lands below from an orbital platform while he builds an artificial moon battle station and second moon, the Death Sun, which is designed to use newly discovered Necropraxian technology to channel energy directly from the sun. The chief scientists in his entourage believe that given control of the arcane resources on the planet below, a gate could be opened back to Vader’s original universe. The only problem with this plan is that those resources are currently under the control of other dark lords.

The surface of Necropraxia is the location of most active conflict, with the various dark lords in constantly shifting alliances. The seeming center of the world is mythistorical Transylvania, the domain of Count Dracula, which transects space and time, and is riddled with portals and doors to other places. Though Dracula’s military forces may seem limited compared to many other lords, the rocky landscapes and deep defiles of Transylvania are easy to defend, and the count is one of the least expansionist of the great dark powers, content to lurk within his realm, making temporary alliances only as needed.

The land of Latveria is ruled by Victor von Doom. One day, soon now, when his dark schemes come to fruition, he will march across the lands Necropraxia and all will bow before his rightful rulership. That is, if all those pesky adventurers stop getting in the way.

Skeletor, during one of his many attempts to seize the power of Castle Greyskull, disturbed some fundamental cosmic constraint and was flung, along with the castle, to Necropraxia. He has carved out the domain Terminia around Castle Greyskull, which he still has been unable to conquer. He seeks adventurers to venture into the depths of the castle and disable its defensive systems and guardians so that he may take full control of its power. He cares not about any treasure or minor technological weaponry recovered in the process. Rumor has it that the true power of the fortress can only be mastered by the possessor of the great power sword, which was split into two halves and lost. When the time is right, and Skeletor feels he has accumulated enough power, he plans to open a gate to Horde Prime and force all the other dark lords to bow to his inevitable supremacy (backed, of course, by interdimensional vampiric might of Hordak).

In New Utopia, Magneto’s realm, the vast majority the human population live as slaves to serve the superhuman mutant upper class. Actually, there are few mutants in Necropraxia, so Magneto has had to settle mostly for wizards, because at least they have some apparent powers, and thus a claim to superiority over mundane humanity. The psionically gifted are particularly welcome in New Utopia, and magneto regularly sends out undercover missions searching for worthy citizens.

The last of the surface realms is barely a realm at all, but instead a great smoking wasteland, presided over by the chaotic preeminence of the dragon Bryagh. His ruined lands were once rolling hills, but are now blasted with craters from his rage. The few civilized enclaves are tightly walled, and armed with great surface to air siege weapons. Despite the danger from dragon attacks (Bryagh has a preternatural nose for treasure, and will attack caravans and adventurers whenever possible to augment his glittering hoard), there is a strange attraction to living in this land of peril, it being one of the few states not ruled by the iron fist of a dark lord.

The underworld is divided between Lucifer and Hades. Both claim dominion over the afterlife. Cast down from Heaven for hubris, the fallen angel Lucifer, the Morningstar, found himself in the depths of Necropraxia, a land already claimed by the older god Hades. Lucifer quickly rallied other fallen angels, demons, and those bored by Hades’ unchanging court to wage war for control of everything below the surface.

Though Hades was taken by surprise by this radiant upstart, the Plutonian forces rallied, and a stalemate currently reigns, with a vast no-man’s land separating the domains of two underworld powers. Hades has the advantage in power, but the ambition of Lucifer is without limit, and he dreams of uniting all the dark lords (or at least their armies if the lords won’t submit), and leading the combined forces of Necropraxia in a siege on Heaven to redeem his wounded pride.

While discovering Necropraxia, I noticed the slightly disquiting fact that there were absolutely no women dark lords. Though there is no arguing gender politics with my twelve year old self, as partial recompense here is a list of some badass evil overlords who are also women.

• Kitiara the Dragon Highlord
• The wicked queen from Snow White
• Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty
• The Wicked Witch of the West
• Soulcatcher and The Lady from The Black Company
• The White Witch of Narnia
• Morgan le Fay
• Kushana from Nausicaa
• Queen Bavmorda from Willow
• The Queen of Hearts from Wonderland

Thanks to folks from G+ for helping me augment this list a while back, and also for suggesting a few of the pictures above.