The Sands of Abu Zimán

This is a post apocalyptic fantasy setting that I made up while playing around with Animalball's Instant Game. It seems like it's worth more than just to sit around on my computer, but that's all I'm going to do with it. I'm never going to make a proper role playing game out of it, so anyone who wants it, can go ahead.

In case anyone is interested, I think what I rolled when this setting first occurred to me was Post Apocalyptic Swashbuckling, Time-Travel, Zombies, and Steampunk, which I quickly replaced in my imagination with Spring-Punk.

So the setting, before the apocalypse was your standard Arabian nights style setting, Haroon Ar-Rashid is the caliph in Baghdad, sort of thing.

But there is an ancient legend, almost forgotten about a stone observatory, a tower in fabulous Samarkand, that was built on one of the axis that all of creation turns upon, and when the tower was destroyed, even the rubble still held the import of what it once was.

Each of the PCs has a piece of that tower, either as a lucky rock, or the stone was carved into a handle for a knife, or the stone is used to sharpen a sword, or a paperweight. Whatever the reason, the PC has a rock, and it turns out to be magical, but nobody knew it before the apocalypse comes. Since the apocalypse has come, each stone is indestructible, and may have other properties that give clues to the PCs. (Basically the GM can make the stones glow or vibrate or give off heat or cold or a sound or something to kick off adventures or help players who get stuck figuring stuff out.)

The apocalypse is that a powerful wizard discovered another one of the axis upon which all of creation turns, and was able to build a clockwork device to halt the turning of creation, to stop time. As creation's natural movement strains to turn, this device gives the wizard power, which he uses to build his army of desiccated time zombies and monstrous clockwork automatons.

Now, the device is pretty course, so time only stops for people and animals larger than a cat. Animals smaller than that are slowed, but not stopped, and really tiny animals, like ants don't seem to be affected at all. You can imagine slowed down birds if you like. Also, people that have pieces of the tower of Samarkand are not stopped at all. And time flows normally for vegetables and minerals, except during time storms, in which time flows erratically for vegetables and minerals, sometimes really slow and sometimes super fast. In my imagination, the PCs get caught in a time storm and it's raining, and a horde of time zombies find them, and the ensuing fight takes place in a town square full of raindrops that take forever to fall.

So the post apocalyptic aspects come into it through the challenge of surviving in a world in which almost everyone is an indestructible statue. Until the PCs find each other, the only people they had to talk to were the time zombies.

Finding food is a bit of a challenge. One time storm sweeps through the area and the whole city is crumbling and reclaimed by nature. If the PCs travel at all, sometimes the only sign that there was a village in a certain place is the people standing around, frozen in time, stuck doing what they were doing on that day, while their homes crumbled around them.

I imagine it with only one race, humans, but if you want standard fantasy races, you could do that. Elves (Arabic: Jinn, pl. Jinnah) (Farsi: Peri, pl. Perian), and Dwarves (Amharic: Denq pl. Denqoch) could be part of the setting without terribly disturbing the Arabian nights feel. These other races could be in the same trouble as the world of men, or they could be affected by the time-stoppage in their own unique ways.

The basic threat against the PCs is the hordes of time zombies, who want to kill people who can move around. Some of them can be hulking brutes, like ogre time zombies, if normal time zombies get boring.

A secondary threat can be other survivors. Survivors will be very careful letting the PCs know what it is that makes them immune to the time-stoppage. If it is stolen from them, they will slow down and stop like everyone else. And the bit of stone can be given to someone else. A nice adventure might involve a lonely lover trying to find another piece of the tower of Samarkand to give to his lady-love, thus reanimating her, and reuniting them. If any of the PCs are careless about letting him know what it is that makes them immune, they may wake up with it stolen, and have to chase the lover-thief down before time catches up with them.

The evil wizard is a major threat. He has already harnessed one of the axis of the world. There are three. One is the one he has, the other is the one where the tower was build, somewhere in Samarkand. The last is a total mystery so far, but the PCs might find clues in the course of their adventures where these axes are, so they can stop the wizard from gaining ultimate power, or perhaps even restore the world.

The evil wizard's next tier henchmen, after time zombies, would be clockwork automatons, some really tiny, mechanical wasps, and some really huge mechanical giants or monsters. He may eventually come after the PCs for their stones, to help him find the location of the ancient tower, or he may just come after them because they get in the way of his plans.

The next tier henchmen shouldn't show up right away. As the wizard gets Samarkand stones, say if his time zombies kill some other unfortunate survivors, and bring the stones to the wizard, he could use the Samarkand stones to reanimate warlords, lesser evil wizards, assassins, and other villains and send them after the PCs. A badass 10th century warlord with a small army of time zombies, or a female assassin that masquerades as a damsel in distress to infiltrate the PCs' group both seem like awesome ideas.

If the PCs decide to try looting you could introduce another threat. Supposing they try to get into the a sultan's palace, it should be protected by clockwork traps and defenses.

Depending on what game system you eventually use or write for this, one or more of the PCs could have magical powers or spells. But to keep the post-apocalyptic feel, make the magical powers useless in the struggle for survival, and give many of the spells material components that get used up and are hard to acquire without civilization. Blasting stuff is good because it still doesn't put food in their bellies or a roof over their head. A spell that conjures a magical palace full of food and servants is good if it only lasts until dawn and requires smashing an emerald to cast the spell.

The actual 1001 Arabian Nights was chock full of stories featuring strange underground chambers, which seems to me pretty good justification (if one is even needed) for dungeon crawls. These “dungeons” could offer clues as to where the axes are, how to stop the evil wizard, etc. or they could offer refuge from the weather, from time storms, from time zombies, from other enemies, etc. They could be opportunities for food, wealth, magic items, magical knowledge, etc.

For magic items, you can obviously do them however you want, or however would be easiest, given the system you are using, but I think it would be cool if magic items fell into a few categories that fit the theme particularly well, like:

• Magic Stones and Jewels
• Magic Carpets (but like have all sorts of magic powers, one flies, another has a whole city woven into it that was spared the time-stoppage, like that Clive Barker novel, Weaveworld, teleport those standing on it to another place, or even another time, like teleport you to this one specific day before the apocalypse, for the PCs to change something or learn something that will help them in the present post apocalyptic world.) Obviously some could be little prayer rugs only big enough for one man to stand on, and some could be monstrous, too big to move without a lot of help.
• Magic Herbs (oils, incenses, perfumes, etc.)
• Magic Pools and Fountains
• Other Magic Items (magic swords and shields and stuff should be a small portion of the magic one finds in this game. Mostly they should be those other things, jewels, carpets, herbs, and pools)

Either I've forgotten, or I never made up what the evil wizard's ultimate goal was. Stopping the world and making an army of time zombies seems like a horrible waste of effort. I mean, they're not particularly pleasant. Maybe he hopes to go back in time and change a horrible error he made in his past. Maybe the other axes are different, like he just happened to seize the time axis, but the next one controls the elements, and the next one controls men's hearts, or something and when he has all three he can remake the world according to his designs.