The Black Desert (The West): Black as far as the eye can see with a westerly backdrop of towering mountains abruptly rising from the ground. In some areas, the rocks are jagged, but in most places they’re smooth with a black sand filling in the depressions. Shifting black sand dunes exist in places. The rock feels porous. The air smells hot and gritty.

Weather and dark clouds come primarily from the east. Strong daily storms bring lots of lightning and sometimes rain. The rain quickly disappears into the ground where it’s held in place by deposits of a water bearing rock. Uncaptured water drains towards Nukpana Chasm or just disappears.

Greening operations dot its surface and are owned and primarily worked by miners known as grēners. The larger operations employee many workers, who live in company towns, and are characterized by massive rusting equipment that only a few can work and upkeep and large water towers. Some smaller mines, often dug by solo prospectors, consist of hand tools, a small cistern and a shack. Solo prospectors, often uneducated, who find a rich load of water-bearing rock, quickly come into wealth.

A typical greening operation prospects for water bearing rock. Once enough water bearing rock is welled, the machines grind the surface rock into small grains of sand. In other machines, over months, the sand bakes to a workable soil. Then the grēners install underground irrigation pipes across their claims. Years later, after planting successive seasons of specially chosen plants, the soil becomes richer until it supports food-bearing plants.

One native plant flowers across the desert. Its seeds germinate quickly, often overnight after a rain. Their roots, tiny white strands, reach out to scrap grains of black sand together. They consume the sand to grow, often to waste high. All the nutrition swells into the fist-sized seeds, which fly away on the next days wind trying to find a crack to wait in until the next rain. After the seeds fly, the stalks crumble to black dust. When people are around, the plants refuse to germinate. Flour made from the seeds is a gritty as rock. It wears teeth down quickly, but is nutritious–three seeds can feed a man for a day.

A small ecosystem of insects, rodents and reptiles revolve around the seeds. The insects pollinate the flowers and mine the seed’s meat, the rodents eat the insects and the reptiles eat the rodents. Nearer to the mountains, white tigers, eagles and yeti bear venture out onto the desert at night.

New Askja: An ordered and tranquil settlement organized into smaller kin-based communities and towns. Most families are young and well-educated. Decades and decades of greening work created an agrarian society and miles and miles of newly created farmland surround the city’s center protecting it from the dust and grime of other western places.

Three features define the city’s center: a date and citrus tree orchard, a public garden with unregulated fountains and a University built from white marble quarried in the mountains and shipped to New Askja on a high-speed railroad specifically built for the purpose.

Oasis (The Exile’s City): The greatest punishment for criminals is physical exile to Oasis, a city located at the only natural oasis in the Black Desert. Although miles from Oasis, the Nukpana Chasm limits access. Only one railroad bridge leads across the chasm. That bridge is guarded by highly trained federali.

Oasis’s economy centers around rich warlord-like exiles, who employee the rest of the exiles to do their bidding and help maintain their power. Because exiles are forbidden from making money outside of exile, they run into power struggles as their wealth and savings run out.

As rough as and as gritty and dirty Oasis is, on the surface it seems docile. People live out their lives, some have families. A weak government tries to keep the infrastructure functioning. Scientists with their maintenance skills are sought after and protected. They often live a privileged life in Oasis.

Nukpana Chasm: Over a half-millennium ago, the first explorers of the Black Desert settled within the water-rich walls of Nukpana Chasm. After a half-millennium of settlement, these people adapted their lifestyles to survive in the extreme environment of the chasm. Over a mile deep in places and a mile wide in places, it’s walls climb almost vertically.

The settlers, now considered natives, live in dwelling carved out of the black rock. Their bodies were adapted to to drink the stagnant, black, silty water below and modified to eat the native flower, but they eat primarily fish and rodents. Some dwellings are adapted to grow plants using soil stolen or bartered from the grēners.

A nature-worship religion, known as Nukpanism by scholars, has grown-up around the chasm and most natives follow it. Spirit animals protect practitioners, who are able to commune with the animals and plants of the world.
There are only two real places for non-natives to cross the chasm: the railroad bridge and the confusing, jumbled ford near the mountains.

Crossroads (Officially named Indra): A dirty, lawless, grēners city located on the crossroads of a rail line that runs between Oasis, New Askja and the east. It consists of quickly built false front buildings, uneven rock roads, supply warehouses, taverns and almost anything that anyone would desire.

The law enforcement–what limited laws there are–is overseen by one marshal, who commands a sheriff and several deputies. The federali occasionally seize power in the town by force replacing the entire enforcement team. Many of the wealthy business owners are connected to the railroad or the powerful back east. They often demand a change of law enforcement. If the federali won’t do it, they take it into their own hands.

Inhabitants of Crossroads are mainly young, impulsive males searching for quick wealth with a inclination to conflict. So many funnel in that the town experiences explosive growth. Many new innovations appear from Crossroads.

Railroad: A high-speed modern railroad built to open expansion into the Black Desert and, hopefully, when work finishes, through the western mountains to the fertile plains far beyond. It runs between Oasis and New Askja. Crossroads sits on this line and the connection to the east. From New Askja, the line extends to the mountain quarries and new tunnels. Lots of nomads work on the furthest reaches of the rails.

There are many small trading posts and forts connected by paths across the Black Desert.

On the surface, a motley group of living, sworn to protect a wild child from the undead, formulate an escape plan. A highly trained Teutonic Knight of the Church arrived on the Priest to help with the escape. This child could mean the end to the rule of the undead over the living. The evacuation team must bring the child to the hidden church planet, Vatican. They’ll have to follow a path across many planets finding contacts that will lead them forward while avoiding undead soldiers, agents, and sympathizers.

The stakes are high; this could be mean the survival of humanity. The undead are willing to do anything to stop the escape of the wild child, and galactic war seems inevitable. Undead agents are everywhere and they can offer the prize of everlasting life.

How will the Knight and his motley group escape Outer Liberty? Will they find the Vatican before being betrayed or found by the undead? Will their travels take them so far from home that time dilation will rob them of their loved ones?

And what is so important about this child’s bloodline?

State of the Universe
Once humanity discovered stardrive, which allows for travel faster than light, it spread among the stars. One hundred and forty planets were discovered that could support human life, and they were colonized. After 1000s of years and many wars, humanity united under the discovery of life in the physical form after death. An oligarchical theocracy rules humanity and bestows and maintains undead status to those it chooses. The source of this ability is a highly guarded secret. In the core world’s very few humans are left alive as most have assumed undead status and choose to live forever as undead. The undead throughout the years have amassed the power and wealth of the theocracy into the hands of the few.

The Church
Once the biggest belief system among humans and it’s banner was flown during the conquest of the galaxy. As humans became undead, they dropped the belief system which rewarded believers with nirvana after death. The church still has followers among some powerful factions of undead. It seeks to help the living, but it has been weakened.

Our Blessed Mother’s Breeding Program
A clandestine program that seeks out the remaining live women capable of child bearing now or in the future and places them under the protection of the Church. This program is dedicated to protecting and extending the sanctity of human life. It operates on many planets and always hiding in plain view. It is said that these women and their children have great powers that only increase as the breeding plan proceeds. They are always on the lookout for wild genes birthed outside the program.

Time Dilation
The use of stardrive subjects travelers to time dilation. For every day traveled, five pass at home. Some wealthy living families regulate aging at home using cryogenics. Some travelers meet their children’s children in old age.

Wild Genes
Throughout the breeding program, some outer rim planets were seeded with favorable genes and left alone for evolution to work its wonders. As the time passed, genes emerge with new powers. These are hunted and destroyed by the theocracy and sought out by the breeding program.

Constance
The capital world of the theocracy and home to the secret of undead immortality. Much of the ruling oligarchy calls this planet home and participates in the elaborate court. The outer planets in the Constance system serve as the center of trade, and the royal navy is based here. The Quantum Communication Commission is based on Constance’s only moon.

Outer Rim
The 23 planets considered part of the outer rim are mainly left to their own devices by the theocracy as the distance from Constance is great. These planets are mainly populated by live humans, and a few are left alone by the breeding program to produce wild genes. Some of the Outer Rim planets are highly advanced visions of hope for live humanity and others are depressing subjected to oppression. Almost anything goes in the Outer Rim.

Outer Liberty
A wild planet in the Outer Rim populated by the living ruled under the hammer fist of an undead family. Birthplace of many wild genes, and home to some of the players.