Carthyian

# General Lore

Carthyian is a world infused with nostalgia and dark secrets. This seemingly idyllic 1950's world of diners, drive-in movies, and poodle skirts is a blissful exterior hiding the horrors underneath. Aliens, monsters, and bizzare curses abound against a backdrop of quiet suburban living.
Carthyian is a Realm heavily inspired by 1950's (classic era) Science Fiction and Horror tropes. Think "Creature of the Black Lagoon", "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", and "Twilight Zone". While some mechanical features tie the cards together, most connective threads are more flavorful, with average humans interacting with invaders from time and space.

### Pleasantview, USE

The United States of Englica (U.S.E.) is at war to protect freedom, truth, and the Englican way. This has led to a few... questionable events in the lonely town of Pleasantview, where Flip's Burgers serves up the greatest food in the county, the Pleasantview Owl's football team goes undefeated for a the season, and children play baseball in the street. For one, there is a secret testing site (just a bit too close to the local schoolyard) where strange toxic runoff has leaked into the water system, causing many to get sick and a select few to develop unnatural changes. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to many, invaders from other worlds have already taken an interest in studying Humans and their culture, for reasons unknown. The hustle and bustle of the swiftly-expanding town has also displaced several wild creatures, including many that would rather stay hidden.

### Grallax

Grallax are a blue, four-eyed species of shapeshifting aliens that are visiting Englica not as invaders, but as tourists. The society of Grallax is peace-loving, post-scarcity, utopian communistic society that visit various planets, sharing technology and building foreign relations. Understanding from previous examples that low-tech societies don't take kindly to people from other worlds, they use their natural shapeshifting powers to try and blend in and learn as much as they can about society, eventually helping their technology progress to levels where it will be safe to reveal themselves. However, their shapeshifting abilities have a crucial flaw: They can appear in whatever form they please, but their color, their skin, their eyes are all fixed. To combat this, they use an "ambient telepathy" passed down from their ancestors to smooth over gaps in their appearance. This would be perfectly fine, however roughly one in every 2000 humans are immune to Grallaxian telepathy. Where others see fine, upstanding members of the community, these few see truly bizzarre creatures. Many are driven past the pale of sanity by this incongruity, a fate which tears at the very soul of the highly empathetic Grallax.

### The Others

Not everything on Carthyian is so pleasant to be around, monsters lurk in the nooks and crannies of the surburban landscape with claws that tear and jaws that bite. The toxic runoff from an increasingly industrialized society corrupts nature into something bizarre. Old beasts slumber in forgotten corners of the world and are put into cages and shipped to serve as exhibits. If you turn down the right corner of a certain busy street and a certain hour of the day, you might run into the curio shop of a certain Nick Kneady, who always has the knick-knacks and antiques that you need the most. Unlike other Realms with a single, unified source of threats, most monsters from Carthyian are more "monster-of-the-week" style creatures, many of which are the only instances of their kind.