Tenebris

Tenebris is the 10th shard of CreateThisWorld. It was opened on November 14th, 2021.

Map of Tenebris

## Intro to Tenebris

Welcome to the world of Tenebris — a world which is about 30 years ahead of ours, technologically, making it quite different from the more classical fantasy settings we’ve done in the past. In Tenebris, you can have major corporations, international organizations, podcasts, VR, fast food, and oh so many other things. But it’s not just like our world. No, this one will be full of the same strange assortment of sapient beings that we are used to seeing in CTW. In addition, there is also a level of magic that runs through the global population. Magic is relatively common, but not terribly powerful.

That’s not all, though. There are other features that define this world. In the abyssal depths of our great ocean, there are strange and terrifying things that threaten the planet. But there are also ancient technologies left by unknown ancestors waiting to be uncovered. And there are other hidden treasures scattered around that might make for some fun expeditions.

### Precursor Tech

Long ago, before the world became what it is today, beings of great power and technological achievement walked the earth. They are all gone now, but remnants of their achievements still remain. They may be ancient civilizations with knowledge that was lost to time, aliens from other worlds, or any other thing you can imagine! The technology they’ve left behind may lead to exciting discoveries with endless plot potential, from creating cults, to superhero origins, to government cover ups and so much more.

Every player can make one “precursor”, for their claim(s). Players cannot make multiple precursors but they can expand on the lore of precursors already made by inactive “NPC” players. You can't make a totally new Precursor for an NPC without, but you can expand a Precursor that already exists over that NPC. So less new Precursors, but you still have an ability to enrich that NPC and have more to work with. Players are highly encouraged to share precursors with their friends and neighbors, for the opportunities for shared lore and history. You can write a bit about the society, culture, and history of your claim’s precursors but their exact biology and origins should be left vague. (The focus of ctw is still on the shard, not the alien worlds that visited it.)

Because this quirk is inherently tech level and magic level scope breaking, every player can discover one “site” or particular object that is “precursor tech”, where you can find a thing or small cache of things, but your claim cannot be full of all different kinds of advanced technology. This technology (or magical technology) can be reverse engineered to create weaker duplicates, but cannot be fully replicated. The specifics of how it works and what it’s made of may be too foreign to your claim, but you can study it enough to get a good enough idea of how it works if you want to make a weaker facsimile of it. This is also why we must stress that players cannot make overpowered precursor tech.

  “What is Overpowered?” Is usually left up to common sense, and the mod team is always available to help answer questions about it. Generally speaking though, what we mean by OP is “a scope-breaking thing that gives a player’s claim or characters an insurmountable advantage over the rest of the shard that cannot be equaled or countered with the resources currently available.” If a player tries to make a Death Star or some smaller “press button: all enemies die” mechanism with no way for other nations to counter it, that is OP. If a player makes a thing that can immediately cure all diseases or raise the dead with no drawbacks, that the claim controls all the world’s access to with no alternatives, that is OP. This should not demand the creation of an arms race: a modern nation’s modern military or other tech sector should be able to counter the effect of one precursor item or arsenal of reverse engineered precursor items. These items can go beyond the normal magical and technological limits of the shard, but not to the point that they would dominate the shard. The mods will keep an eye on these posts and are always happy to help players with them.

### Eldritch Ocean

One of the major defining features of our shard is going to be the ocean. Our ocean is a terrifying and incomprehensible place. Daring seafarers will encounter spots where water doesn’t behave like water — where it will suddenly drop away into chasms, turn to ice in the tropics, or even start to boil and steam. Dense fogs or thunderstorms may appear in an instant and disappear just as fast. Ghostly apparitions of ships, or stranger sights, are common. The ocean may turn your course around without you realizing it, or generate an island where previously it was clear. Then, of course, there are the creatures that live in the deep.

There are leviathans out in the ocean that can swallow your cruise liner whole. Or hordes of man-sized amphibious creatures that can swarm around it. Some will not attack you, but just play tricks on your senses. Not everything in the ocean is dangerous, though. Some leviathans may give you safe passage, if you’re lucky. Sometimes the ocean behaviour is simply strange, but not harmful (like suddenly turning pink, or smelling like cinnamon) and sometimes it’s just annoying (like the water screaming at you from where it’s being cut by your propeller).

No part of the ocean is safe, but there are ways to make seafaring safer. An experienced captain can get familiar with the warning signs and be able to navigate from the worst of the dangers. (Understanding these warning signs requires the intuition of a living being, and cannot be understood by purely scientific means.) Centuries of experience have also shown us that the ocean has four focal points\* where the eldritch madness is most concentrated (precisely why, we still don’t know). Plotting your safest course involves staying as far from these focal points as possible. Heading towards a focal point, the ocean will get steadily more insane and deadly, but rumours of treasure at the epicentre still send mad adventurers into them. An irregular boundary has been drawn around each of these focal points and designated a no-fly zone, because even aircraft are not safe from the ocean within them.

Just as how in the real world, terrible storms can blow in from the sea, in this shard, eldritch horrors may make landfall in coastal regions. This becomes a greater concern the closer you are to a focal point, but beachgoers everywhere should stay on their guard.

The magic that infests the ocean is not bound by the same rules as the magic that players have access to for people in their own claims. But there are a few hard limits as to what the eldritch ocean can do. It cannot:

- Open a portal to the Void

- Allow definite communication with ghosts or an afterlife

- Allow you to travel through time

- Turn a character into an eldritch being that would defy the low magic limit of the shard.

\\* These four focal points are designated by the "Whirlpools" on the world map

### Hidden Wonders

Hidden Wonders are mysterious places tucked away around the world. In this modern era, new technologies and human(oid) expansion across the globe have led to the discovery of sites that otherwise would have been lost to time. These places may be magical in origin, products of precursor tech or the eldritch ocean, mundane curiosities, or may defy explanation. When a player gets a prompt, they can write about it as they wish, expand on it (many are left open ended for this reason), and generally treat it as a prompt for new stories. Each Hidden Wonder is located at the Hidden Wonder Icon on the map and corresponds to a prompt written by the mod team and by the users in our pre-shard submission post. A player can “uncover” the prompt for each location by several means: claiming or expanding over the area on the map that the icon is located in, signing up for our weekly Wander Wednesdays, or having a new Hidden Wonder appear in their claim area during a couple mid-shard shake-up events we will be running periodically through the shard. Players that want new Hidden Wonders in their claims will be more likely to get them in these events and the NPCs of inactive players are likely to be skipped entirely.

  Wander Wednesdays will be a weekly event like Tech Tuesdays and Feature Fridays, where a player can showcase their writing based on a prompt they either already found through claiming or expanding, or based on a prompt given to them when they sign up for the slot and ask for one. The latter category will be able to add an icon to the map for where they wish to place their Hidden Wonder. Players are encouraged to get creative with their prompts, but as always, they may not surpass the shard’s limits and be overpowered with their writing.

### Technology

Create This World encourages the development of new technologies and the practice of weird science! To do this, we offer weekly events in which players can specifically develop a piece of technology, making it accessible to all other players in the world. Players usually sign up for these events and submit a post idea for the moderators to review in the Schedule Sunday subthread--however, these posts can be collaborative!

Since we’re going to be stepping into an uncertain future with a lot of possibilities, the moderation team has compiled more extensive lists of technologies that are available to players to write about. It is important to note that THESE TECHNOLOGIES ARE JUST EXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE TOPICS AND NOT THE ONLY OPTIONS FOR WHAT CAN BE INVENTED. Often, you may hear of a cool technology that you want to invent that isn’t on the list--and that the mods haven’t heard of either. That’s why we are going to ask for a new requirement: submitting an information source on the technology along with your request. This will help give the moderation team some background and allow us to make a quicker and more accurate decision.

Tier 0 technologies already exist in the world, and every player can use them. We’ve made the list longer in order to give you a good overview of what’s on the table to start. **Tier 0 examples:** Cheap and easy audio/visual translator software for any language.  Self-driving vehicles.   Augmented reality. Mature battery technology.   Generation 4 nuclear fission.  Limited human gene editing.   Spaceplanes.  Smart houses.   Weak narrow AI.  Swarm robotics.   Civilian loadlifter frames.  Limb-based cybernetics--prosthetic legs and hands.

Tier 1 technologies can be developed right out of the gate! They’re powerful starters with considerable possibilities. **Tier 1 examples:**   Strong narrow AI.   Space-based energy weapons.   Mobile, in atmosphere energy weapons.  Stationary fusion powerplants.   Railguns.   Household robotics applications.   Full human gene editing.   Military power armor.   Complex cyberware, including internal organ and sensory organ replacements.  Long-term orbital space habitation.   Arcologies.   Generation 5 nuclear reactors.

Tier 2: These technologies will be unlocked as the shard advances. We will announce a release date beforehand. **Tier 2 examples:**  Artificial general intelligence.   Direct neural interfaces with electronics.  Superconductor power transmission.  ‘Mini-mecha.’  Human physiology augmentation.  Limited anti-aging treatments.  Long term habitable moon bases.

Tier 3: if the shard lasts long enough, we will open even more technologies for player development. These will be the apex technologies available in the shard. As before, a release date will be announced. **Tier 3 examples:**  Handheld energy weapons.  Mobile fusion power plants.  Full sized mecha. Biological human brain augmentation.  Macro level nanotechnology.   Spaceships that can cruise the solar system.  Orbital power transmission

### Magic

No CTW shard is complete without magic! (At least until “no magic” wins in the poll.) But we are going to be turning down the heat on magic as compared to last shard. Our scope for magic is still \*\*Common\*\*, which means magical abilities can occur in up to 1% of the population. However, our magic power has been set at \*\*Low\*\* for the first time since shard #4. Here’s a quick overview on what that means to you.

Under \*\*low magic\*\*, a magic user can affect natural forces over short range and small scale. These forces include such things as temperature, electricity/electromagnetism, air pressure, and gravity, but not strong/weak nuclear forces. If you want to affect these forces on a larger scale, you will need some combination of: a) multiple mages working in concert; b) a lot of preparation and build-up of magical energy over a period of time.

Low magic doesn’t have to be boring or especially subtle, and there are more soft limits than hard limits on mages’ abilities. While in a high magic shard, one mage could summon a large pillar of fire without too much effort, in a low magic shard, a similar mage would be restricted to creating small bursts of flame, or influencing the movement of existing blazes. If one wanted to create a large pillar of fire in this setting, one would either need to gather several fire mages together to pool abilities, or create a spell that takes considerable preparation and consumes a lot of energy.

Also, not all mages are created equal. In a low-magic setting, most magic users will be restricted to certain abilities, and will need to devote a lot of time and energy into unlocking new skills. So your rare powerful mages will be distinguished from common mages more by versatility than raw power.

Also, because it’s a high-tech shard, magic and technology will often go hand-in-hand. In the interest of balancing power, we’ve had to make any sort of “quantum magic” strictly off-limits, and we won’t allow loopholes that let you do something like create a hurricane by making arguably small changes to the atmosphere. What you can do is have a magic intuition that helps you figure out the best approach to a scientific experiment, and allow you to shortcut a lot of trial-and-error.

If you want helpful examples of low-magic in action, consider the following: lower-tier X-men, the Bene Gesserit in Dune, the characters in The Nevers, most of the powers in the Mistborn series, and most student-level spells at Hogwarts, minus transfiguration.

The following are completely off-limits:

- Teleportation

- Raising the dead

- Opening portals to the Void

- Time travel further than a matter of minutes

- Affecting the world on an atomic or subatomic level.