Worlds Without Number and the Sine Nomine Shared Universe

In an era of franchises and 'cinematic universes', having a large shared universe is all the rage for companies. The wider and larger a universe is, the more one can produce additional movies, books, comics, videogames and more. While Worlds Without Number isn't out in its full form yet, there's plenty of material found in its pages which hint at an interesting prospect which may or may not be expanded by Kevin Crawford. Namely, that most (or perhaps all?) Sine Nomine games share a universe or at the very least a multiverse. Now perhaps this is just theories. Maybe its me digging too much into the pre established lore of his games, the myriad sandbox tables and, of course, all the repeating themes and ideas. Maybe Kevin Crawford never intended for these games to be connected and is merely recycling ideas that work as his personal tastes, likes and dislike create a tapestry of repeating and reused concepts.

Or perhaps it IS all connected after all.

The root of this connection lies in the beginning and the 'end'. They start with two games, one of which got an updated version: these are Stars Without Numbers, which is the 'central' and most popular Sine Nomine title and the setting for Labyrinth Lord called Red Tide. At a glance these two settings could not be more different, even if both are mostly mechanically compatible. One is mostly hard Scifi set in the future and the other is set in a fantasy world with Elves and Dwarves. However, given what we know of the latest Sine Nomine game, Worlds Without Number, we can see the two share an extremely suspicious amount of lore. We know the setting of Worlds Without Number to be the impossibly deep future of the Stars Without Numbers universe, which itself included that game and Other Dust. Combine the information we know from the Alpha of WWN with various Sine Nomine games and supplements and a clearer understanding of that multiverse emerge. These games are:

• Stars Without Numbers and Stars Without Numbers Revised
• Other Dust
• Red Tide
• Godbound
• Worlds Without Number

In addition there are two other Sine Nomine settings whose position within that universe is a bit harder to ascertain, which would be Spears of the Dawn and Silent Legion. It is likely they fit in, but the exact details are a bit more blurry due to having a bit less lore. One could very much treat Spears of the Dawn as a specific realm/continent/Iterum, but Silent Legion is a bit weirder. It could be that Silent Legion is a prequel to all this and that 'Meta Dimensional' concepts were never truly rooted in mostly modern soft science fiction but, rather, Lovecraftian madness. This can be up to interpretation.

Mankind's Expansion To The Stars

Art by Col Price

As established in Stars Without Numbers, humanity expand into the void of space. This may seem like an odd or even mundane place to start for a multiverse which will span alien realities and mechanical gods but big things often have small beginning. SWN gives us a date and general series of events, including The Scream. Around the 2100 humanity leave its homeworld to colonize the stars using the Spike Drive technology and humanity splinters into countless budding cultures and religious movements while Earth forms the Terran Mandate to oversee and control colonies, afraid of letting their resources and power slip through their grasp. Humanity make contact with aliens and Psychics first emerge from humans who were exposed to the Metadimensional Energies of the Spike drive and similar technology. This is the Golden Age of Man and it last until 2665. The Scream damages warp gates and humanity become one of isolated space sectors. This is the setting of Stars Without Numbers while the events which occur on the post apocalyptic Earth are covered in the game Other Dust. This era last for an unknown amount of time before leading into further, ill defined and ill explored eras. Both before and after this era, massive technological leaps are made, which sometimes depend on the 'Meta-Dimensional Climate'. Which I'll get into in a moment. In some forgotten corners of space, various branches of humanity began to diverge in form greatly from their cousins, including in some locations the ability to transfer or even duplicate minds. The details on this posthuman lifestyle can be found in the Deluxe version of SWN Revised.

Meanwhile, the SWN Revised supplement Codex of the Black Sun offers some optional material to add magic to a space science fiction game, as well as expanding on how such concept could work within the canon of Stars Without Number. There is a lot of technobabble involved but the long story short is that the Metadimensional Energies which created Psychics could be studied, harnessed, modified and used through a variety of interfaces and mental pathways to create what was functionally Magic. This is where the SWN universe radically diverges and cut ties with harder science fiction and goes fully into fantasy. One can surmise that, should humanity one day be reunited after the Scream and the following Silence that would include an incredibly varied array of subspecies, some of which have radically diverged through their use of Meta Dimensional energies and how they developed their arcane sciences. Ultimately the time scale of these successive eras is difficult to ascertain.

Art by Jeff Brown

The Outsiders of Worlds Without Numbers may have in part appeared in this era. While it is true some might be aliens, it is possible at least some of them are human-derived in some capacity, from posthuman who developed and re-engineered their bodies to adapt to impossible environments to alien crossbreed or even 'uplifted' alien animals. How and why such beings would one day attempt a takeover of Earth and enslave humanity is unclear but presumably it may involve some deep seated grudge against mankind, either completely justified or the result of xeno politics far beyond our understanding. It could simply be that two or more vastly different branches of mankind met and, not understanding their common root (and the Outsiders being too divergent to interface with the Legacy, having splintered off far before) they fought.

The Far Future and Latter Earth

Art by Jeff Brown

There's a lot that happen in between Stars Without Numbers/Other Dust and Worlds Without Numbers. Mankind advances to a level as to basically be Gods. Key to this is The Legacy which goes far beyond the primitive nanotech and psychic powers of the SWN era. The Legacy is all encompassing and is the term which is used describe the very reality-rewriting which mankind once integrated into both the world itself, humanity and all life. How far it goes and how long this perfect era last....is unclear. The central interface of the Legacy itself is housed in a meta-dimensional realm, which forms the underlying mechanism of creation itself. These are the Celestial Engines as described in Godbound, with the central processor of all reality being the Throne of Heaven.

Where exactly in the timeline of WWN that Godbound fit is difficult, if not impossible to ascertain. It does require one to somewhat 'retcon' that the Throne of Heaven tale is partially allegorical and that fighting for God's throne may have meant fighting for the control of the Legacy and its interfaces. The beings described in WWN lore as Imperators could have been the greatest Theurge as well as Made Gods of this era, each a God-King in its own right, fighting over an ever splintering reality. The Realm described in Godbound's core book, Arcem, makes no mention of beings which could be comparable to the Outsiders but it could simply be that the lands which Arcem was part of did not suffer their invasion and repelled them. It could also be that the era of Outsider rule of mankind predates what is called the Former Empires, which are post-Outsider rule. The splintered nature of time and realities make things extremely difficult to properly pinpoint.

Both WWN and Godbound's humanity are rather similar: they live in a broken world where the natural laws have degraded and become unstable, making advanced technology difficult to maintain. They both feature advanced magical-technological modifications of the human form, which have degraded and become lost, leaving behind often dangerous splinter groups of beings which are difficult to envision as truly human. It is likely these worlds are part of a shared multiverse/realm system (which WWN call 'Iterum') and are merely the same worlds from the point of view of mortal versus the point of view of Imperator-level beings. Any slight difference in setting material is quite easy to explain, as in-universe information is quite shattered, incomplete and has been subject to thousand and thousand of years of  information drift and the changes in language.This is also true of other Sine Nomine games or, at the very least, of Red Tide (and Scarlet Heroes which use the same setting):

• Dwarves claim that, in their history, their ancestors were humans enslaved by an evil goddess called the Mother Below. In truth, she was probably one of many Outsider overseers and would-be gods. The Dwarves described in Red Tide are clearly a major cultural group within the created race of living Legacy Interfaces which are known as Dwarves.
• Elves in both Red Tide and Worlds Without Numbers share many traits, including the fact they reincarnate. It is possible the Elves described in Red Tide are a splinter group which attempted to ascend to godhood through the Legacy and 'merely'  managed to install their souls in the decayed system of reincarnation or it could be that the Elven origin myth is only partially true. Either way both types of elves are clearly beings of a near identical nature.
• The Shou of Red Tide and the Anakim of WWN, however, are NOT the same type of being. While on the surface both are aggressive, engineered 'savage humanoids' they share completely different origins, with the former also being a form of living Legacy Interfaces similar to Dwarves while the latter are bio-engineered living weapons. If Spears of the Dawn is connected to all this, then the Night Men are a form of Anakim.
• The Red Tide and the Uncreated Night are similar and related expressions of either massive decay to the Legacy/Celestial Engines. Both 'unmake' worlds and both produce abominations which disrupt reality.
• If all Sine Nomine games are connected, then a recurring theme of Hell appear. Red Tide/Scarlet Heroes has one, as does Godbound and Wolves of God should it somehow be connected. It is likely Hell was once some sort of mechanism for souls and identities to be recycled by the Legacy but it has since become perverted and exploited.

The Missing Games?

Art by Igor Kirdeika

As mentioned, there are other Sine Nomine games whose place within the timeline is unclear. Spears of the Dawn is most probably a specific realm within Latter Earth. However, this still leave a few others without a clear location within the shared 'verse'. It is possible, as mentioned, that Silent Legions is a prequel and that the SWN universe was always one of Lovecraftian madness lurking below the surface. A strange universe which, in utter defiance to its themes, mankind would conquer and then prosper in. The Kelipot and other weird arcane secrets would all likely be harnessed and form the basis of SWN-era magic which would one day form the complex workings of the Legacy.

Alternatively, Silent Legions could take place inside an Iterum where one or more Imperator has reset history and is studying humanity in its pre-FTL days. Unfortunately, the simulation has broken down and allowed many different Outsiders and other strange beings to 'leak' into it. Under this theory, Wolves of God could also be in a similar situation. If that's the case, then it is going to be immensely depressing to its people to find out that God doesn't really exist as they understand it. Spears of the Dawn could also have been such a simulation, albeit one which had enough time to decay and diverge into more fantastical things or it could simply be its own Realm and not have been engineered as a simulation.