Octas/_fallen

Welcome to the world of Octas.

Companion to the Octas D77 TTRPG system, is the world of Octas (no italics), a fantasy-wrapped hard(ish) sci-fi environment in which the game may, optionally, be played.

By fantasy-wrapped sci-fi, I mean that the game plays as fantasy but if you dig deeply enough you will notice the magic, creatures, etc. have a basis in a consistent and explainable set of physical systems (these systems are not guaranteed to be realistic, but they are supposed to be self-consistent). It is all explicitly designed that the sci-fi element can be safely ignored: this aspect is just about providing world-consistency, and won't ever impact actual game-play, to the point that even the GM can ignore it except if creating new creatures or magics that are intended to properly fit the Octas world.

The Octas world is not a catch-all for all (or even most) fantasy genre possibilities and is only a very specific instance of one. It was constructed explicitly to be a bit more removed from the more traditional human mythologies of Earth, both ancient and modern, which tend to provide the bulk of the 'feeder stock' for many fantasy worlds.

Note that you will still find outwardly-familiar fantasy elements in the Octas world. However they will often have been warped a bit to fit the underlying sci-fi world-building model. Octas Dragons, for example, are long-necked bat-like monotreme mammals, but are more than Dragon enough to earn the title.

A few useful notes on the world of Octas:

Follows are things anyone living on Octas would reasonably know about their world:

• It has a planetary ring, seven moons, one sun visible in the daytime sky, and many thousands of stars visible at night.
• Humans are the dominant language-capable species, but are not the only such. Characters may have directly interacted with Elephants (who cannot speak human languages but can understand, read and write them), Crows (which are everywhere and speak human languages with ease), and Orca (who can speak human languages directly, if oddly) as these three species freely interact with humans where their areas of habitation overlap. Characters likely also know of the existence of isolated communities of Capybara who seldom interact with humans but occasionally have reason to travel through human lands. Rumours of some (but not all) wolves and bears with language ability are also told.
• Here be dragons... and unicorns, drop-bears and numerous other beasts that might be considered 'mythological' elsewhere, but on Octas are simply not common near towns.
• The restless dead sometimes rise up to feast on the living, especially if not buried with proper care and ritual.
• Hell is an actual place deep below the ground, which is populated by Dæmons, who practice evil magics. Physical doors to Hell can be found, if one looks hard enough, and some brave souls have found ways to enter. Far fewer have returned, with far less bravery left in them when they do.
• Magic is everywhere, though most humans are distrustful of it, and of those who use it.
• Gods exist. They are not omnipotent, but are extremely powerful. And it is generally prudent to stay beneath their notice!
• The world has existed in its current medieval state since long before any memory, recorded histories or recognisable artefact. Even the Gods themselves have forgotten the details of the past, it is so distant.
• A year is 256 days, divided into 4 seasons with each season being 64 days long:
  • Summer, Fall, Winter, and Growth, in temperate regions.
  • Late-Monsoon, Hot-wet, Paradise (warm-dry), and Early-Monsoon, in the tropics.
  • Long-day, Darkening, Long-night, and Lightening, near the poles.
• A day is likewise divided into 4 segments (pre-dawn, morning, afternoon, evening) with each segment divided into 8 hours (about 45 Earth-minutes each) of 8 minutes (about 5 Earth-minutes each). Common people often only break time down to Early/Late segment (eg: early morning; late evening) so the day is commonly divided into just 8 parts.
• Standing on a vast plane, or on the shore of a sea, the horizon is around 32,500 lengths away (about 12km, 2x Earth). From this, Mathematicians have calculated that Octas is a sphere of 134,217,728 lengths (45,000km) radius, and 842,887,331 lengths (280,000km) circumference.

Plus, for players' convenience, a few additional comparisons to Earth:

(No-one living on Octas today is aware of the existence of Earth, or anything to do with it!)

• The planet is a little smaller than Saturn, with a circumference around 7x that of Earth, and a surface area about 60x Earth's. The surface has approximately 50% water coverage. Major landmasses tend to be smaller than on Earth, generally maxing-out at the size of Australia, and being far more numerous. About half the land-area is in islands the size of Tasmania or smaller. Oceans tend to be relatively narrow, averaging around 800km between major continents or island-groups.
• Surface-gravity is Earth-comparable, as are all other environmental conditions (Octas has a 20km-thick solid crust, but a gaseous core, so has far less mass than a solid planet of that size would).
• Octas is the sole planet in its solar-system, so there are no 'wandering stars' in the night sky (but it has 7 moons and a ring instead).
• Octas' star is an 'orange' main-sequence star about 1/4 of the way into its life, so a little smaller than the sun, but the planet is closer, so it appears much the same size in the sky and provides the same heat to the surface of the planet.

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