Undeath of History: Themes and Mood

Two years ago, I pitched a campaign idea that got a lot of positive attention: the Undeath of History, a time travel setting with a twist. Travel through time occurs by traversing a realm made up from the wreckage of alternate Earths. There the winds of time slowly convert travelers into the Undead. Thus traversing time involves not just the dangers of paradox but also former travelers who now hunger for one's life force.

Added to that concept was a theme of dead and doomed futures where the many possible branches of the future led to inexorably to the end of humanity. Averting that fate was one of several options for the Undeath of History.

The material I shared there assumed that I would use TimeWatch or something similar as the basis. With the post layout version of that game now available to the backers (finally), I think the time has come to revisit this setting concept.

Let’s revisit the themes and mood of the setting.

Themes

In my original pitch, I included two main themes:

The River of Time. Time functions as a vast river, slow and meandering. Sluggish and resistant to meddling, it inexorably crushes anything in its path, changing and transforming it to fit its current banks. It’s many branches issue in salty lakes of death.

This theme serves to underline the central darkness of the setting. Time resists change. Entropy appears inevitable.

This would manifest in the Undeath of History as simply the struggle to make any lasting change to the timelines. Stop the zombie plague and another disease kills off 99.99% of humanity. Boost technological development before a cataclysm occurs and humanity wipes itself out in a war.

Life and Death. Just as the horrors of history reveal the death of timelines, the flow of time can bring new life. If the heroes can but shift it, they might restore doomed worlds.

For every darkness there is a light. Here I hint at how the PCs can change things. By outmaneuvering the course of time. Perhaps they can place the pebble that will ultimately shift history to their liking. They restore dead worlds, perhaps by making those worlds more ‘real’ and less alternative than the current core timeline.

This theme would manifest, not just in the PCs’ victories but also in unexpected minor changes to history. Lives exist where there were none before. They might fail to stop a world from being destroyed by war but do inadvertently create conditions for a successful and lasting human presence in space.

Looking at the setting now however a few new themes occur to me.

Risks and Rewards: Whether pilfering a plague dead world or risking life and limb to pluck one life from the Final War, time travel offers many risks and incredible rewards. You can make history what you want it, rewrite your own past, and forge the perfect future. Or just steal the Mona Lisa all over again.

But spend too much time traveling back and forth through time and you risk not only physical harm but losing your humanity. The icy winds of the Patchworks will slowly rip away your connection to the flow of history, leaving you more dead than alive.

This theme manifests as sessions involving old time thieves reduced to shambling zombies or inhuman vampires as well as premises involving one of a kind artifacts within dead and dangerous worlds.

The next theme comes inspired by a new organization for the setting and my pet theory for Legends of Tomorrow. The Watchers are the setting’s equivalent of TimeWatch, a group dedicated to halting unauthorized alterations to the timelines.

Something Rotten in Time: Watchers hold a secret within their inner circle and oldest records, on that only their most faithful devotees learn. Whatever it is, it implicates the organization in the death of worlds. To protect this secret they will do anything: cordon off eras of time, unleash temporal assassins, and erase their foes from history.

The PCs begin as junior members believing the Watchers are an altruistic group working against time thieves, undead, and renegade time travelers. But as play progresses, they encounter hints of secret missions not on any logs, certain topics off-limits, remnants of erased timelines and lives, and even signs that some former Watchers were removed from history, including (apparently) former teammates and mentors.

Unable to simply walk away they dig further into those forbidden periods, fend off enslaved undead, and encounter fossilized artifacts too ancient to be made by human hands.

Ageless Conspiracy: the PCs are far from the original time travelers. In ages long past chrononauts traverse the timelines. These ancient immortals saw only one way to save humanity, forcing them to bend knee and follow the commands of their elders: the ageless mummies they had become. Echoes of this appear within the history of Egypt but other worlds already lie within their withered fists. Vampire reign over a frozen 21st century Europe. Reanimated men control the thrones of an altered 19th century. Zombie communes proliferate across the wastes of 14th century Asia.

Here in addition to the constant threat of the undead, the PCs encounter signs of the heat death of humanity: blighted timelines, vampires behind every dictator, mysterious men sporting tattooed hieroglyphs, really old money behind every major organization, and a constant theme of anachronism behind every problem they encounter.

Mood

The other item I wish to expand on is mood. By mood I mean the feel of the game. Are the sessions full of hope and wonder or depression and angst? Less a tangible thing, it is the dominant emotional state of the game.

In my original pitch I offered:

Bleak Twilight. Travel long enough through time and you will become an immortal undead thing. The future and much of the past are succumbing to inevitable doom. Every known branch of the tree of time leads to literal dead ends. But is the twilight the sign of approaching darkness or a new day? Can the heroes rise up and change history for the better?

Twilight is ambiguous. While the setting is bleak, full of destroyed worlds and the curse of undeath, the Undeath of History could go either way.
But that’s just one possible take on the setting. Some other moods a game master could run with include:

Pulp Adventure: Braving ruined London and punching mummies in the face amid the sands of Egypt, two-fisted time travelers and intrepid temporal historians search for treasure and truth while battling the nefarious forces of the Undead.

The focus is less on personal (or even global) doom and more on the action heavy setting.

Magical History: Secrets lurk in the architecture. The right (or wrong) turn can send one into the Patchworks and into the ruins of a 21st century Egypt still ruled by the Pharaohs. Or an alternate Renaissance where Da Vinci’s hold back the zombie tide.Or the court of the galvanically restored George the Third where a strangely unblinking aristocracy works to snuff out democracy.

With this mood I keep the doom but focus more on the wonder of the alternate worlds with fantastical countries, inventions, and historical personages.

That's it for now. Next week I'll tackle my sources of inspiration.