Deadlands: Horror at Headstone Hill

The worldbuilding is mostly based on Stellaris (a toolboxy 4X video game), but I have zoomed into the gritty aftermath of the galaxy where every endgame crisis has already happened and the political structure has collapsed. The Stormtossed Commune At the start of the campaign, players will belong to the Stormtossed Commune. We are fanatic egalitarian and xenophile space pirates operating with the "shared burdens" civic. The Commune was founded 100 years ago by pirates who rebelled against a slaver megacorp called Minamar Specialized Industries. It is currently led by our First Speaker, Nightshade, a non-binary punk rocker who, in addition to governing, takes on a lot of odd jobs around the commune, from veterinary medicine to spaceship maintenance (and always seems to know exactly what they are doing). The Setting & The Threat The Stormtossed founded their commune in a remote location on the planet Breakwater. It sits on the edge of The Indigo, a storm of unnavigable psionic chaos that destroyed a star-faring civilization of space elves called the Isilfar Republic. Now, The Indigo has cleared, revealing the ruins of that society and its incredibly valuable "pre-tech" technology from before the collapse that current manufacturing infrastructure can no longer produce. A megacorp alliance called the Prosperity Axis (including Minamar, Harmonium, and Providence) is looking to exploit the newly opened Isilfar Spinward Frontier. The Stormtossed are in their way, sitting on a planet that would make a highly valuable beachhead. Your Mission Nightshade has gathered a crew of adventurous experts to go into the frontier and find lost technology that could help the Stormtossed resist and disrupt the megacorps and their exploitation. Captain Bax will be leading them as captain of The Vanguard.

AVATAR: THE SEVERED AGE "They told us the elements were sacred. Then they put a price on them, a chip in your skull, and a payment plan on your soul." The Premise Korra has been dead for three years. In the decades before her death, the Spirit Portal in Republic City stopped being a miracle and became an energy source. Spirit vines spread through the city's foundations, rail lines, power grid... and eventually into people. Engineers learned to route chi through circuitry. Ripperdocs learned to graft it into flesh. What should have taken a century took thirty years. The world woke up neon. Today, anyone with enough money or enough debt can buy bending. A non-bender walks into a corporate storefront, signs a financing contract for a Chi Emulator, and walks out throwing fire like a Fire Nation soldier. The Equalist dream came true. Not through revolution. Through retail. Every implant comes with a hidden cost. The more chrome you install, the quieter your own chi becomes. Benders slowly lose their connection to the elements until, eventually, they become Severed. No spirits. No bending. No way back... at least, that's what everyone believes. Meanwhile, somewhere in the world is an Earth Kingdom child who should have become the next Avatar. They are three years old. No one has found them. The White Lotus has searched for years without success. Some believe the child was born spirit-deaf. Others whisper a corporation found them first and is quietly discovering what an Avatar's soul is worth. Some fear the Avatar Cycle itself is breaking. Everyone is searching for the same missing child. You'll either find them first... ...or discover why no one else ever could. What You Can Play: A traditional bender trying to preserve a dying art. A Severed ex-bender willing to burn the world to reclaim their element. A Ghost, projecting their spirit into the digital Weave where something ancient may already be waiting. A ripperdoc, fixer, mercenary, or corporate Emulator runner drowning in debt. An Air Nomad who has rejected cybernetics entirely, remaining one of the few souls still fully connected to the spirits and uniquely capable of healing what technology has stolen. Themes: Cyberpunk noir Corporate corruption Spiritual horror Identity and humanity The price of progress Hope in a broken world This is a campaign about difficult choices with permanent consequences. Expect street-level jobs, corporate conspiracies, spirits hiding in fiber-optic cables, desperate people trying to reclaim what they've lost, and quiet moments between the action that remind everyone what's worth fighting for. The central question is simple: What are you willing to trade away... and can you ever get it back? System: Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (custom Avatar conversion) No prior Savage Worlds experience required. No Avatar knowledge required. All rules and setting information will be provided. The game is fast, cinematic, beginner-friendly, and focused on character-driven storytelling. "Chrome is easy to buy. Getting your soul back takes a lot longer." This game costs $20 per session

Laws, society, magic, none of that exists yet, or if it does you've never heard of such a thing. You are simply a nomadic hunter or a gatherer, that has just always been the only way to live. Maybe you used to travel in a herd, but for one reason or another, you are no longer with such group. You each manage to stumble upon a group of people who seemed to be content staying in one place, with permanent shelters, a system of telling each other what to do, and some kind of new concept where you can make your own food, which they call "Fameng", where you don't have to hunt or gather for anything, the food just grows out of the ground over time. As you are slowly accepted into this non-nomads, it very quickly becomes clear that their society stems from a strange bright red flower called "fa'ler". Fa'ler can bring harm to those who touch it, but they have found a way to use it to build and maintain their entire way of life. However, they haven't quite figured out where it came from, and while they've kept it burning for many days and many nights, it has started to shrink and die down. Soon it will be gone, and these people will completely lose their fundamental existence and starve. Having spent much longer as traditional nomads, you are the only ones truly fit to embark on a long journey to find the knowledge to bring back the fa'ler. You know that many days ago, a person appeared who could make the fa'ler just appear out of thin air with just a thought; they taught the people of this place what it can do and made it for them, although they didn't their methods or process, but it involved something they called "najeek". Now you have to venture out to find some way to learn about other Fa'ler or najeek and save this unconventional, but innocent people.