Vaults of Vaarn
The sun is dying and the wreckage of countless eons litters the parched wastes of Vaarn, the desolate country that common folk call the blue ruin. It is said that these sky-coloured sands hide the graves of the Autarchs; have swallowed the buried arcologies in which the true seed of humankind was preserved through the Great Collapse; conceal forgotten crypts of memory, decaying crystalline lattices of ancient ego-engines upon which the dusk-blue dunes encroach without pity. From the New Hegemony to the south come drifters and dreamers, desecraters of the tech-tombs that lie sunken beneath the azure wastes. Light-years overhead, aurum-hulled craft ply their tender routes between the spheres, and miles below a pilgrim’s feet, strange wombs are kindled once more with life undreamed of.
These are the hinterlands, where humanity’s great works have fallen to everlasting decay, where machine and animal and fungus think to crown themselves our equal. The phthalo-sands, where newbeasts hunt proudly with boots upon their hind paws and chromepriests chant unending binary devotions to their nameless synthetic god. Only the desperate or the mad would seek to make a life here, to roam the blue desert in search of the secret VAULTS OF VAARN.
Vaults of Vaarn is compatible with the game Knave; however the material should work fine with any old-school RPG system that uses d20s, armour class, etc.
The PDF version is available for free on itch.io.
The full text is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
If you would like printed physical copies of the zine, they're available for purchase at Antipode Zines.
Alternatively, available from selected stores:
| Country | Store | Vov 1 | Vov 2 | Vov 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Worldwide | Lulu Print on Demand | link | link | link |
| UK | Igloo Tree | link | link | |
| US | Exalted Funeral | link | link | link |
| CA | Monkey's Paw Games | link |