Worlds Without Number and the Sine Nomine Shared Universe: The Nine Immortals

A short(?) sequel post to this one, which discussed how the various Sine Nomine games could actually be a form of shared universe. This idea was one I used (in an earlier, cruder form) when running my old Godbound game, where Red Tide was made into a distant Realm to the custom one I was using.

The Nine Immortals

Art by M-Ing.

First described in Red Tide, a Labyrinth Lords supplement (and as far as I'm aware, one of the earlier Sine Nomine products), the Nine Immortals are the main deities of the Ninefold Celestial Empire and are described as nine semi-abstract beings (each tied a color and key domain) which appear to be the result of a composite of a centuries-old, if not a millennia-old ever evolving empire constantly syncretizing various beliefs into key archetypes.

In truth, the Nine Immortals (under this version of a shared 'verse) are not simply an accumulation of beliefs, although this does describe them perfectly at the same time. The Immortals began as part of a subsystem or alteration to the Legacy by ancient posthumans seeking to achieve a perfect system which would encompass all aspect of human nature and society, perfectly organized and maintained and they share many common roots with the ancestors of the Ren people found in Godbound. These systems for a perfect and virtuous society began as disturbing totalitarian systems which counted various aspects of people's very lives and nature and while there were indeed malicious roots to it, in time this system would break and reform. Ancient space colony algorithm which calculated the ideal way of life, ideal routine and more of people aggregated into more complex systems of artificial intelligence. Yet as much as these systems were cold, callous artifices which sought to control every single aspect of near posthuman life they also began to subtly change. The exact history and trajectory of these ancient systems are quite unclear and lost to time but some rare sages of Latter Earth believe that these social systems became so all-encompassing in their attempt to simply measure human lives and souls that these very concepts it sought to regulate in turn contaminated the system. From revolution to bloody coup to attempt at peace to more totalitarian rules to more bloody coup, the leftover of these all encompassing systems became more human-like. Human imperfections, archetypes and beliefs infected what was once mere synthetic thought control.

The next evolution of the system came from the concept of Made Gods and Arrayed Godbound, which became icons and eidolon, representing various concepts and social ideals. Great thinker, philosopher kings and also horrific tyrants emerged from this era but they too tapped into the same leftover synthetic systems which had connected society and evolved from a purely electronic form to something more complex as what would become the Legacy truly developed. The Nine Immortals are born of the synthetic patterns combined with human belief. They themselves aren't really self-aware beings but rather exist as thought-form or massive Iterum-spanning idea-spheres as egregores. They are recurring archetypes combined with a broken social control system which has evolved into myth-made-reality. Anywhere that has the influence of these proto-Ren people often tap into this system of archetypes and ideas, which has real power. Generations of Godbound, Legate and Imperator have subsumed themselves (often accidentally) into these 'power grids', which empower Clerics of the Nine Immortals across many worlds. What began as a cold system to crush human will and subordinate it has been taken over by human thoughts, emotions and ideas. It rules over them as God(s), but it is a set of Gods which are entirely controlled by humans. This create a rich tapestry of belief, ideas, heroes and gods which is ever-living and evolving.

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.

Red Tide 5e: Classes for Human

I realized that last post was too focused on class restriction for races other than human without really giving a clear indication of where I wanted to take the option for human. While it would be very easy to just shrug and say 'sure, they can do everything' this isn't as interesting.

Human Classes (by Nation)

By default, the human have the most option in classes. That's just how it is because generally speaking in fantasy we tend to treat human as the baseline and the every man. Less specialized around a certain theme which define their inhuman nature and more what skills they can pick up. However, this is still a bit boring so I've decided to narrow it down a tiny bit more to make some of the various human nations in Red Tide stand out a bit more.

• Humans can be Fighters, Rogues, Monks, Wizards and Clerics (with generally some restrictions on what God they worship and thus on their domain). They have access to the options found in the Player's Handbook. However, if one intend to keep the Elves a bit more unique then it could be worth it to remove those Fighter and Rogue sub-class who learn spells.
• Eirengarder add to their options the Paladin class. These are the holy, anointed knights of various religious and military orders dedicated to The Maker. Their Paladins generally take either the Oath of Devotion or the Oath of Redemption.
• Kueh add the option of the Samurai Martial Archetype. In addition, those who serve the Hell Kings are known to become Paladin of the Oath of Conquest.
• Skandr add the option of the Barbarian and Bard, the latter of which are much more common among their kind than 'regular' arcane spell casters.
• The Eshkanti, Gadaal, Imperials and others don't particularly have any strong thematic leanings and as such could be open to a variety of Wizard sub-classes to represent more unique spell casting traditions (Gadaal, for example, are very fond of Divination). Various options found in Xanathar's Guide or even third party and/or homebrew can work too.

Cleric Domains

One key thing in the Red Tide setting is that human have a connection with the divine which other races lack. This is obviously a byproduct of Labyrinth Lord and the fact the Cleric class isn't available to other races because they don't have classes. Their race is their class but obviously this is rambling about shit everybody knows. As such, Divine Magic is entirely the purview of the human (and the Shou but that is for another time).

The Nine Immortals

The Nine Immortals are the 'main' deities of the Red Tide setting but they are a little more complicated than simply being just nine deities. In many ways, they remind of the Sovereign Host of Eberron (down to their number!) crossed with the realities of how the myths and beliefs of the Indian world, China, Japan and neighboring countries have mixed and matched through syncretism and the fusion of various religion and philosophies. They exist, having Clerics who do cast spells, but my understanding of them is that they are not quite singular entities and more that each is a portfolio of key ideas and concepts created from absorbing other myths.

• Kusha the Red Goddess: War and Protection
• Fa Chia the Yellow God: Order
• Mimasa the Blue Goddess: Knowledge and Arcana
• Sankhya the Gray God: Peace
• Shinrai the White God: Grave
• Kega the Green Goddess: Travel
• Tendai the Black God: Trickery and Entropy
• Hesika the Vermillion Goddess: Love and Madness
• Inren the Purple God: He seemingly has no Clerics outside of Cleric who worship the entire Pantheon, being the God of 'blank spaces within schema'.

Currently there are no Domains which fit enough of the portfolio of each of the Nine Immortals so that leave them in this current state.

The Skandr Gods

The Gods of the Skandr are noticeably more simplistic than the complex history and theology of the Nine Immortals. My 'headcanon' of sort, for the Skandr Gods, call upon the idea of the Aesir-Asura correspondence, making this pantheon uniquely composed of Asura, which is what I've renamed what Red Tide call the negative emanation of a deity a 'Devil'. In this case, the Skandr Gods aren't evil as much as they are wilder, following a path of passion rather than restraint.

• Sifr: Tempest and Travel
• Anghad: Life and Forge
• Hjal: War and Strength

The Maker

Unique among the people of the Sunset Isles, the Eirengarder are monotheistic. While it would be easy to just shrug and say a Cleric of the Maker has access to everything I've instead chosen to focus on their imagery as hardened warriors and battle-priests as well as the more classically OD&D image of a Cleric as some kind of templar or crusader figure in both the more positive aspects as a stalwart protector of the weak as well as the negative aspects of zealotry.

• The Maker's domains consist of Life, Solidarity and Zeal.

Red Tide 5e: Race Conversions

Continuing off my 'mood' of D&D 5e and branching away from OSR, I've brought back from the grave a scrapped post written in 2018. These are my notes for converting Red Tide to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

Races (and Race-Based Class Restrictions)

The 'core' races of D&D are all already represented in Red Tide given that it was written to work with Labyrinth Lord. The ever-iconic setup of humans, elves, dwarves and halflings are all represented in a form which is both extremely familiar and iconic yet still unique to the setting. With the exception of the Drow (who lack any equivalent in Red Ride), the subraces of the elves/dwarves/halflings could seamlessly exist as variations without much need for a retcon: the elven subraces of High and Wood elves are simply different Elven Creed while the dwarven and halfling subraces could very much exist within the setting as distinct cultural groups who may or may not be noticeable to outsiders. Alternatively these may simply be abstractions of the rules representing variant racial traits and not distinct sub races much like in the case of the elves.

Red Tide-Accurate Class Restrictions

As an option to make the races a bit more accurate to what is presented in Red Tide, the following class restrictions would apply:

• Elves can only be Rangers or Wizards as well as Fighters and Rogues but only in those sub-classes which learn spells, such as Eldritch Knight, Arcane Archer or Arcane Trickster.
• Dwarves may only be Barbarian, Fighters or Rogues and cannot use a sub-class which learn spells, such as Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster. They can, however, channel the primal power of Barbarians through their connection to their ancestors.
• Hafllings can only be Fighters or Rogues and cannot use a sub-class which learn spells, such as Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster.  One possible option, to allow Halflings to do a bit more, would be to allow them to be Monks of some form. Certainly, Halfling ninjas are a scary thought.

Of course while this works just fine for OSR systems like Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy, nowadays people tend to expect a lot more option for their characters.

Alternate Spellcasting Options

Under this system, the restrictions are similar to those outlined above but they open up each race to a few unique origins for the Sorcerer, allowing each race to channel the unique origins and powers of their kind in ways ordinary Human and Shou Wizards cannot replicate.

• Elves function as above, but add to their option the Sorcerer with the origin of Ultimate Magus origin, representing an Elf with the peak potential for the arcane they have acquired, combining innate magic with several lifetime of wisdom and intellect.
• Dwarves, under this option, do have their own form of Wizardry which is unique to them: the Ring Warden from the Deep Magic: Ring Magic third party supplement from Kobold Press. These Dwarves have learned to cast magic through the forging of mystical rings of gold. Meanwhile, Dwarven Sorcerers can call upon the powers of the deep Earth through some of the options found in the homebrew called Yorviing's Sorcerous Grimoire: Children of the Earth. The origin called Deep Earth works well for such a connection.
• Halflings are a little harder to pin down, which might just be a fitting trait. That and their luck, which brings me Yorviing's Sorcerous Grimoire: Children of the Strange has an origin called Lucky One.
• Warlock Class: Here is an interesting one which both change the Red Tide setting while also fitting in very well. If magic is an internal process, born of a mixture of one's own soul and geomantic energies which demi-human races struggle with (except those damn smug elves...), even assuming the addition of their rare in-setting spellcaster class options, then what about the Warlock? Much like Clerics they derive their magic from an outside source. As it happen, it is said the Demi-Human of Red Tide shunned the Gods in some form or another but...what about other patrons, hmmm? Food for thought...

Contentious Races

Not everything is as easily translated to fitting in Red Tide as the core races of D&D. These are either races which exist within the lore and fluff of Red Tide but with some unique twist/traits which don't line up with core D&D 5e (such as Half Elves and Half Orcs) or races which don't exist but are now part of the D&D core races (the Tieflings).

Half Elves

In the Red Tide setting, Half Elves are not a naturally-occurring crossbreed but rather what happen when an elven soul is born to lowly mortal flesh: physically (mostly) human but spiritually elven. Now due to the race-as-class mechanics of Labyrinth Lord, the Half Elves of Red Tide are by default a bit...weirder...than your ordinary Half Elves. As a result there are a few loose ways to imagine them for 5e:

• Option A is the most boring which is to simply use the Half-Elf stat line and say that it represent these strange half men/half elven beings. They would have restrictions similar to Elves. However this is boring.
• Option B is to represent them with the Sorcerer class, more specifically the Wild Magic option which would be uniquely available to them. They could use the racial stats of human, elves or half-elves depending on what seem most appropriate. The Half-Elves are an odd case of a race more associated with their class when converted to 5e.

Tiefling

The default presentation of Tieflings as humans-damned-and-twisted-by-infernal-powers requires very little tweaking to fit into Red Tide as they would be the descendants of humans whose ancestors made dark deals with the Hell Kings. While there could be some enclaves of pre-existing Tieflings (some of which who may in fact be Shou-Tieflings!), a new generation of Tieflings could have been born in the Kueh lands as those who worship the Hell Kings sought their blessings such as the birth of mighty demonic champions. Yet these creatures would still be gifted with human souls and as such could very well turn against the very forces which created them. Kueh Tieflings could be called Majin or Akuma if one feel like being a weaboo draw from the Japanese influence found in the Kueh.

Godbound+Red Tide: Crossover Ideas

Both the game Godbound and the Labyrinth Lord setting Red Tide (found in the book of the same name and as the default setting to the stand-alone game Scarlet Heroes) were made by Kevin Crawford. Not only do they share a certain amount of aesthetic and thematic similarities but they also very much exist under the same core game system, making combining the two quite easy.

Take One: Epic Red Tide

In this version, the default setting and cosmology is that of Red Tide. It's history is true and a proven facy and there is no war for the Throne nor are there Made Gods or any of the setting elements of Godbound which relate to that game's backstory. In fact, the 'Godbound' themselves don't even really exist and rather are used as a loose approximation of high power characters. One could use mortal heroes or, perhaps more fittingly, could use rules akin to that of the 'Lesser Godbound' to represent the mightiest individuals of the Isles. This method is the simplest but, arguably, the most boring.

Take Two: Godbound in the Red Tide Universe

In this version, the previous assumption hold true same for one: the cosmic cataclysm which has affected the world of Red Tide has brought divine powers to the brink of desperation. In order to save their world, the Gods (both the pantheon of the Nine Immortals and other deities) agree to essentially commit a form of ritualistic suicide/self destruction. This will, initially, begin by causing a weakening of Divine Magic. In the short term there will be confusion. In the long term, mortals will be reborn as God-like beings (the Godbound), able to wield divine power in the material world and possibly slowly help repel the Red Tide.

Take Three: Red Tide in Godbound

In this version, the Red Tide setting is the future of the Godbound universe. The world which existed before the Tide consumed it is, in truth, a rather large and stable Realm. Or, rather, it was one until the Tide came to devour it: as it turns out, the Tide is very much a semi-sentient phenomena which hold it's origins in the Uncreated Night. This version does require you to rework quite a few bits of Red Tide lore so here are a few ideas:

• In this version, the line between Arcane and Divine magic (meaning, Magic-Users and Clerics) is vastly more blurred and more likely down to cultural conventions.
• That said, the Gods do exist: they are ancient beings of divine potential who underwent a form of abstract apotheosis in order to stabilize their Realm. Prayer-derived magic is the result of passing down their teachings, which are actually complex systems which allow the teaching of Low Magic and Theurgy.
• The Angels (renamed Celestials or Daeva, as Godbound's Angels are something else entirely), the Devils (or Asura) and other celestial beings are created by the abstract thoughts of the incorporeal Gods.
• Devils and the Hell-Kings are also Divine, just of a very different nature and persuasion. They hunger for souls to sustain their existence.
• Dwarves are degenerated and altered descendants of the slaves of some ravenous, underground Parasite Goddess. The deeper one dug into the world, the less stable it became and in ancient time a woman fell down a cave. She was changed and, in isolation from the outside world the Mother Below had centuries if not more to grow in power. Of course, being a Parasite Goddess she remained trapped within her domain, unable to ever return to the surface.
• Elves are the result of rediscovered and long-lost theotechnical soul-modification.
• Halflings likely have an origin of some distant relation to the other human-like races but what that history is remain vague.
• The Shou's origin is mostly unchanged: they are still magical transhumans. If anything, their origin ties into Godbound even better than everyone else. Shakun might have been a powerful Made God who ruled his own realm.
• Tidespawns are very much a type of Uncreated.