GODBOUND...RECYCLED IN SPAAAACE!!!
The year is irrelevant, for no civilization keep the same calendar. Even more so, the universe is not only so vast, so ancient and complex that attempting to put a date on current events would be pointless for once upon a time the Ancients (the Progenitors, the Makers, whatever you want to call them...if they even were a singular force, civilization or race that is!) finally achieved was can be called the 'Theory of Everything': the ultimate knowledge, understanding and mastery of the entire universe and its working.
Some would say that perhaps the theory that our universe is a simulation was proven true, yet the greatest simulated mind of our universe found a way to either assume control of the simulation or perhaps were allowed to exist as Gods inside their simulated world and even allowed to expand beyond it. One could speculate this was the ultimate goal all along and the ultimate stage of our virtual existence or perhaps the term 'simulation' is a deeply flawed term to designate the true nature of existence, one which our current limited mortal, organic and three-dimensional brains cannot even begin to grasp.
With the power to rewrite and control reality as they saw fit, the Makers were as close to godhood as one can possibly conceive and some say their rewriting of reality went as far as to completely remake the universe to something which suited them better: perhaps this explain the absolute insanity that is trying to delve into the past or why the universe has an inordinate amount of worlds which support life. The old model of the universe was one of vast, empty space with extremely limited conditions for life and thus it was deemed obsolete, creating the modern multi-leveled model of reality.
Yet the Ancients are long-gone, somehow. Their disappearance is a mystery for all life to ponder, leaving a broken and imperfect universe behind, albeit one which has been able to sustain itself and flourish with life. Broken as it may be, this universe is one of endless wonder, war, madness and beauty in equal measure. The stars are without numbers (heh, get it?) and provide an endless opportunity for adventure.
The Uncreated Night - The Void Between
Much like it is described in the Godbound rulebook, the Uncreated Night remain the same 'primordial chaos out of which all things have come'. Also called the Void Between, it and deep space are the very same: indeed, should one go sufficiently deep into the twisted void beyond the sustaining bubble of 'reality' around inhabited sectors and lone planets alike they enter the darker reaches of the Uncreated Night. Some have speculated that this was a necessary price to pay when the Makers reshaped the cosmos, a necessary counterpoint to what we would call the physics-breaking reality of the inhabited worlds of the far future.
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| The Deep Void Collection, found here. |
The Uncreated Night takes two forms once one's ship leave the confine of charted (and relatively stable) space lanes: deep, endless cold void with no light and churning vortex of destruction and/or creation (sometimes at the very same time!). These are speculated to be scars or 'holes' in the fabric of reality, caused by impossibly destructive cataclysm or deliberately created for some arcane purpose long ago by the Makers, possibly to forge new star systems. Either way, these are not locales one would typically want to go, yet the Uncreated Night allows rapid transit between worlds. If this all sounds incredibly familiar and derivative, you are indeed correct as I'm a massive fan of Warhammer 40 000, stupid and silly as it may be. The Uncreated Night thus gets to serve a role rather similar to the Warp, complete with being inhabited by horrible monsters that want to kill you, eat you and soul-rape you, possibly in any permutation of that order.
The most powerful and advanced spaceships (well, they're more like dimensional ships at this point really) are Artifacts: such advanced works of metaphysical manipulation that only truly ascended beings can operate them.
Heaven - The Great Celestial Network
Rather than being called Heaven, it is called by many other names. However what is important to understand about it is that it exist parallel (or perhaps over/under, if such terms even apply) the three-dimensional space we'd call reality. It is where the Celestial Engines are housed. Most of the Celestial Network is lost/inaccessible to mortals (or even most type of semi-immortals, really) and as such the engines which contain the purest code of what makes reality remain tightly locked away from being tempered with.
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| Blinkmoth Nexus by Sam Burley. |
However, each and every single planet (or full solar system, it depend) has a small (compared to the impossible, multi-dimensional-can't-wrap-your-head-around-it full scope) portion of the Celestial Network which house its core functions and these can be tempered with: many worlds are fortunate enough to have these being lost somewhere in the uncharted places of the Network hidden behind multi-leveled eleven-dimensional locks. Other worlds have to contend with what keep their environment, gravity or even temporal fabric being a place something suitably powerful can walk up to and screw with the basic settings. Not everything about such a situation is bad, as many civilizations advance to massive level of development by exploiting their own Celestial Engines for power or to develop rare yet powerful artifact technologies.
There are places where the Network and reality are directly connected and where one can just flat out walk into it or fly a ship into a gas giant-sized portal to enter the Network. This provide a much more stable alternative to using the Uncreated Night with the caveat that such travel usually only work from Point A to Point B and straying from such path is either impossible (because its a multi-dimensional tunnel built into the Network's frame with walls made of REALITY ITSELF) or not really any better than getting lost into the Uncreated Night, assuming doesn't just slip into it anyway if they leave these stable paths.
Entire solid planets can exist inside the Network, as can all manners of artificial habitats, meaning there are civilizations which live inside the network itself. Quite a few ultra-advanced intergalactic trading hubs were made by building massive space stations inside the Network were various stable space-lane intersect.
The Subverses
These are pocket universe/layers of reality which are often held to be 'below' main reality. In truth they're not under reality (as such a thing would be impossible) but rather simply viewed as such by the vast majority of the three-dimensional, linear life which inhabitant the vast majority of what they call the 'known universe'. Time, gravity and who knows what else would work very differently there and it would remain uncharted space to beings similar to us or even their more advanced post human successors.
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| Funky dimensional fuckery. |
Beings inside the Subverses would be generated using the Metadimensional Deviancies found in Stars Without Numbers: Dead Names. The Subverse exist to allow truly alien environments without contradicting the idea that the universe is somehow filled with habitable worlds for plot convenience.
Posthuman Gods(?)
Where do the Godbound fit into this? Truth is, I'm not sure: yet. It is very likely that there would not be a singular origin for Godbound or even any Word-bound beings. Rather their category would encompass an impossibly vast variety of beings, from one of a kind accidents to sentient beings bounded (permanently) to a Maker artifact to the genetically and/or cybernetically engineered post human elite of a civilization to telepaths who have transcended mortality and physical form. Therefore a Godbound would not actually be a coherent in-universe concept, just a conceit of the rules that there is room for player character growth and that said characters abide by certain mechanical constraints.
Rather it is more likely that the vast majority of powerful beings in the universe (from augmented super soldiers to immortal cyborgs) are somewhere in the range of creatures found in the Godbound rulebook. The most powerful of their kind would be Word-bound, able to enact massive changes on a large scope, with the vast majority being simply powerful beings with a few gifts to extrapolate the myriad forms of their almost supernatural abilities.
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