Rym

Rym is a fantasy / science fiction setting placed on the Web by artist Ollie Canal. It's set up as material for a tabletop RPG.

The premise: alien necromancers are slowly draining the life from a planet already suffering from a past apocalypses, including the fall of civilization and the death of five out of six gods. A kingdom of noble heroes arose to fight them... and got slaughtered. You come in well After the End.

The setting is divided between multiple Web sites and is very incomplete due to the author's elusiveness. The main setting site is here (here to skip Flash intro), with info on a default campaign setup here (continued here) and a more complete collection of links here.

Main tropes:


 * AI Is a Crapshoot: The Creators' "City Mind", a computer god, declared war on the official gods and got nearly everyone on both sides killed.
 * After the End: The high-tech Creator Empire fell thousands of years ago, killing five out of the six gods and wrecking the world.
 * Apocalypse How: Technically Class 2 (most humans and others die) in the backstory. The Spiral are working on Class 5 -- they're terraforming the planet to suit their own undead biology -- and probably X long-term.
 * Apocalyptic Log: One of the last radio broadcasts was: "We are all dead. Our world has become death. Stay away."
 * Author Existence Failure: Ollie posted the setting and related material, vanished from the Net, reappeared to post some related art, then vanished again.
 * Crapsack World: Besides the alien necromancers trying to annihilate all life, and the fact that the ecosystem and magic are collapsing, there's a slavery-heavy empire, a race of berserk drug-addled lizards, a corrupt greedy merchant race, and several whole civilizations devoted to getting off the planet. Oh, and there's a black hole in the vicinity.
 * Humongous Mecha: Visible overhead is Nigh, an ancient giant nuclear-armed god-slaying robot raven.
 * Jerkass Gods: The Creators' excuse for building the City Mind.
 * Magitech: Creator, Spiral and Hoomiku tech especially.
 * Petting Zoo People: Lutrai (friendly otters), skole (tribal wolves), hoomiku (paranoid genius cats), cepn (assassin bats), and so on.
 * Rage Against the Heavens: With giant robots.

Also featuring:
 * Always Chaotic Evil: Cepn, apparently with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: Anything the Spiral does to anyone, including necromantic cyberware and torture-chamber prisons.
 * Ghibli Hills: Cekus... mostly.
 * Goth Spirals: A whole civilization that loves these.
 * Living Forever Is Awesome: The Decider is an immortal empress, apparently a mighty sorceress, and the richest person on the planet.
 * Mecha Mooks: Creator robots, though some have developed their own personalities.
 * Mordor: The area around the three Spiral towers, especially Nirn's perpetual burning ash-storm terrain.
 * Orphanage of Fear: The setup for the default campaign.
 * Our Dragons Are Different: There's one that's more of a necromantically-raised dragon skin pumped full of cursed soul-dissolving oil, and something more horrific: another dragon posing as a human politician.
 * Our Elves Are Different: They have tails.
 * Powered By a Forsaken Child: Spiral facilities run on all-natural soul energy.
 * Sapient Cetaceans: Semi-intelligent magic dolphins.