Ever-rising sea levels forced mankind to adapt, and now the majority of the human race live aboard vast floating arkologies; most of these city-states are united as Nations of the Oceanic Alliance (NOA), although there are independent arkologies pursuing their own agendas.

The arkologies are threatened by the Hadal Collective; originally a network of experimental undersea habitats, the scientists of the Collective began to experiment with Dark Life; microorganisms previously undescribed by science, descendants of trees of life unrelated to our own, with entirely different biochemistry. Whether by design or accident, members of the Collective became infected with Dark Life, altering their brain and body chemistries. Mutated to survive underwater, the Hadal Collective began building freakish biomechanical weapons and launched attacks upon the arkologies, forcibly converting prisoners to join their ranks.

The arkologies have fought back with the Deep Knights; undersea mecha that engage the Collective’s biomechanical monstrosities and root out their ocean floor hives. But Dark Life has already begun to infect the arkologies, leading to the appearance of strange cults and horrible mutations. Several cities have fallen to this plague, and fleets of warped pirates roam the oceans, harassing the NOA. The agents of Tidewatch fight to stop any more arkologies succumbing to sects, mutants, and terrors that have crawled out of the sea.

It is likely too late; Dark Life has probably infected everyone. The Deep Knights and Tidewatch can only hold back the darkness in the hopes that a cure can be found, before humanity is replaced with something from the depths.

 

For centuries at least, maybe for thousands of years, the cunning folk have guarded Britain against demons and spectres and monsters from other dimensions. In modern times, the role had become more theoretical and symbolic, as science slowly pushed magic into oblivion.

 

Now, magic is fighting back. Portals are opening in industrial estates, abandoned petrol stations, multistorey carparks. Civilisation is being infiltrated by vampires, reptilians, merfolk, and freakish star beings. Things from ancient myth and urban legend stalk the streets, preying upon the unwary.

 

The cunning folk have trained for this, but are untested. With one foot in modern life, and one foot in a mystical past, they straddle the border between reality and possibility. Their actions will decide if a balance can be reached, or if one side will win out.

 

There was once a world, ruled by a global technocracy, where nothing was beyond the reach of science; there were no ethics or practical concerns to hold back even the most unhinged research. Those scientists discovered and invented many wonderous and terrifying things, and finally, they broke the world.

 

Fierce storms roam constantly across the planet, remaking reality in their wake, fusing what was with things from elsewhere. All manner of freakish species now haunt the ever-changing ruins of a fallen civilisation, including the descendants of warped biomechanical experiments from the time before. In this new world, death is often something that can be walked off, although the dead risk becoming hollow ones; mindless terrors that exist only to consume life.

 

Adventurers can make use of weapons of weird science, as well as hover vehicles and powered armour; they also have access to strange abilities unleashed by the quantum storms.