What’s going on with the setting on a Meta Level

To utilize terms from other GURPS sourcebooks, Tempest Earth used to be a rather normal late Cyberpunk world (TL 9 going into TL10), right up until the Nuclear War, where the detonations, coinciding with a planetary alignment (and perhaps some unknown X factor) turned the numerous atomic explosions into semi-permanent banestorms that raised global mana levels, awakening ley-lines across the planet. These banestorms triggered massive reality quakes across the planet, further transforming large sections of it beyond recognition.

What remains after approximately 150 years of turmoil, is a world with only a little resemblance to Earth prior to The Event. Human civilization is finally starting to rebuild, being a mix of descendants of survivors of the cataclysm and descendants of banestorm immigrants and temporally displaced reality quake victims. Temporal instabilities have made reconstructing historical events on a global scale rather difficult, and even the most widely accepted post-event date is more a matter of conjecture and agreed consensus than anything more accurate. As as a result, the commonly accepted “the nuclear disaster triggered the magical apocalypse” theory is only one of several, and other theories include a demonic invasion gone wrong, experiments with parachronic technology gone horribly wrong, and the Event being a natural occurrence that just coincided with the nuclear war.

The world is divided up into various regions with varying mana levels and science zones, some of which can change over time, either naturally or through artificial intervention. The cyclical changes in mana levels and science zones are part of the reason human civilization took so long to re-establish itself in the wake of the Event.

Magic-using civilizations managed to thrive in this chaos, and until recently technological civilizations had trouble truly expanding. But with the N.A.R.C.’s recent development (or acquisition) of a technology called the Reality Stabilizer, they have begun a slow campaign of expanding their zone of influence, and try to bring some normalcy (as THEY define it) back to the world.

The N.A.R.C. are not the only faction trying to push the alteration of reality to their desired outcome, however. There are other factions across the world, some Technological, others Supernatural, that seek to reshape the world according to their own desires.

Lexicon of Terms:

-Banestorm: localized events that transport beings and objects within a certain area to another dimension or timeline. These can range from a few yards to a few miles around. The Banestorms of Tempest are uniquely potent, in that they have had impacts across multiple miles, somehow acting in combination with the leylines to extend their effect.

-Mana: the ambient magical energy manipulated by spells. The amount of this energy, called the mana level, can fluctuate across different areas (or worlds). These variations are known as Mana Levels.

-Mana Level: the variation in Mana energies within a world or specific areas within it. This comes in five levels:

- Very High Mana: anyone who knows spells can cast them. Mages who know spells recover FP as soon as they spend it to cast spells. But any spellcasting failure turns into a critical failure, and actual critical failures turn into massive disasters.

- High Mana: anyone who knows spells can cast them.

- Normal Mana: only mages (someone with Magery) can cast spells, which work normally. This is the default for most fantasy settings.

- Low Mana: only mages can cast spells, and all spells perform at -5 to skill for all purposes.

- No Mana: no one can use magic at all.

-Science Zone (originally from the Pyramid article Yrth 2): These are regions of space were technological levels vary, preventing certain advanced technologies from working within them. When operating in a lower tech zone, higher tech devices will accumulate gadget bugs (Basic p 477) and item skill penalties over time, until the technology becomes essentially unusable. While many Zones are static, others move (some slowly, some quickly) and can pass through material objects: Science Zones sometimes combine into larger Zones and sometimes "bounce off" of each other.

-Science Zone One (SZ1): Permits the use of any technology up to the Industrial Revolution (TL 5), with electronics being mostly non-functional.

-Science Zone Two (SZ2): Permits the use of any technology up to the late Digital Age (Circa 2025, or TL 8). More advanced technologies are at increasing penalties for operation as the TL advances, and Super-Science technology use triggers a roll from the Random Side Effect Table (Basic p.479) on a failed roll.

-Science Zone Three (SZ3): allows technologies from approximately 2025 through 2070 to operate normally, while Super-Science technology use triggers a roll from the Random Side Effect Table (Basic p.479) on a critical failure.

-Science Zone Four (SZ4): Tolerates all levels of Technology and Super-Science works normally.

-Reality Quakes: Also known as “Ontoclysms” these are massive upheavals in space and time that rewrite history, leaving behind a new past and erasing the old timeline (although some remnants of lost timelines may remain: see Reality Shards). Reality Quakes can even alter laws of nature and physics; mana levels can shift dramatically (from High to No Mana or the reverse), geological features can be replaced, gods can die or be born, even new stars and planets might manifest.

-Reality Shards: reality shards are items (or creatures) that are anomalous fragments of other realities resulting from a reality quake, often “remnants” of overwritten timelines. In game terms, these are usually built as powers with Gadget limitations (breakable, can be stolen, etc).

According to surviving records from Prior to the Apocalypse*, it seemed that at the time, humanity was finally pulling itself from the brink and approaching a new golden age.  Technology had advanced to such a point that clean fusion energy was now achievable, medical advances were putting an end to illnesses that had plagued humanity since the dawn of history, and robotics technology was slowly freeing humanity from labour.

*Due to the Banestorms and Reality Quakes, historical records are unreliable at best.

Nations had slowly unified into larger power blocks, such as the North-American Alliance, the Paneuropean Union, the South-American League, the Pan-African Federation, and the Pan-Asian Defense Pact.  Massive global conflict seemed like a thing of the past.

The mastery of genetic engineering and rising advances in nanotechnology and artificial intelligence were even allowing humanity to start pushing the boundaries of what constituted as “humanity.”

The nations of the world had even begun expanding out into space, building space stations and lunar bases, with new expeditions being sent to Mars.

And then it all went to Hell.

Records of the cause of the Apocalypse are spotty, but most evidence seems to suggest that some new artificial intelligence systems went haywire, and determined that humanity needed to be either exterminated entirely, or at the very least culled to a “manageable” level.  Other records suggest that this was supposed to be a “planned culling” of the global population orchestrated by the wealthiest elite of humanity to “reorganize the world order.”

Whoever or whatever planned this, however, could not foresee how horribly off-the-rails things would go.  

A sudden wave of border incidents sparked war between the global superpowers for the first time in decades, exacerbated by media manipulation on both sides.  New diseases emerged, somehow resistant to the latest vaccines and medicines available.  Environmental reclamation efforts suddenly failed, causing climate collapse in vulnerable areas.  When the first few nukes erupted, it was practically expected at that point.

What was not expected was the results.  The day of the nuclear apocalypse coincided with a syzygy of various celestial bodies.  This cosmic alignment, along with the death of millions of people across the world, their psychic energies released all at once, unknowingly closed a necromantic ritual.  Everywhere the Nukes detonated, the fireballs disappeared, the mushroom cloud remaining and turning into whirling storms of raging magical energy irradiating outward.  

The energy from these storms raced across the worlds along straight paths of energy (which would later be identified as ley lines). Along these paths, reality would start breaking down; freak weather conditions would abound, from thick fog banks to mysterious thunderstorms.  In many areas, when these freak storms (which would become known as Banestorms for some reason) faded away, so did everyone within their radius, somehow replaced.

Sometimes, these replacements were just normal people who remembered history somewhat differently.  Other times, these replacements were far stranger; alien beings, supernatural creatures, beings come out of mythology, or even odder entities.  People were not the only thing being replaced by those freak storms; buildings, whole communities, even entire natural regions across the world, disappeared and were replaced by beings and structures from alien worlds.

And among these new transported visitors were a wide range of dangerous threats, both supernatural and mundane.  Demons and monsters out of humanity’s worst nightmares.  Rebellious machines and rampaging nanobot swarms.  Hordes of undead monsters that could only be described as “Zombies.”  And most strange of all, actual Magic returning to the world.

As a result of all this turmoil, society as a whole collapsed on a global scale.  The great powers collapsed into multiple nation-states scrambling to secure their borders, and one by one, all of those ended up collapsing into general anarchy.  

What followed was at least a hundred years of the New Dark Ages.  The great nations were gone, replaced by scattered communities centered around various forms of protection, be they military protection, secure vaults, or even powerful magic users, psionicists or stranger forms of power.  

In recent years, new powers have arisen in North America and across the world, new nations formed by both human communities, as well as Newcomers brought from the Banestorms.  One of the most powerful of these is a collection of technologically advanced city-states calling themselves the New America Republican Coalition; they claim themselves the true descendents of the old American Empire, and claim to value liberty and democracy, seeking to reclaim Earth for Humanity. 

To the loyal humans within its borders, the N.A.R.C. is the last bastion of human sovereignty left in North America.  To those outside its borders, it’s an imperialistic power seeking to assimilate other human communities to expand their power.  To nonhumans within and outside its borders, it’s a xenophobic army seeking to subjugate, if not exterminate, anyone that doesn’t fit their arbitrary definition of “Pure Human.”  To free thinkers, it’s a hypocritical nation that claims to value liberty, while actually running a police state where dissent is forbidden.

The NARC is many things; it can be the main threat of a Rebellion campaign, the patron of a Helldivers-style military campaign, or a mere background element of a wandering raiders campaign.

This is a Master Post/Index of my GURPS Tempest worldbuilding rpg project.

Part One (Intro): https://www.tumblr.com/lonewolf23k/814798099863224320/gurps-tempest-a-post-apocalyptic-science-fantasy?source=share

Part Two: https://www.tumblr.com/lonewolf23k/814798245035474944/gurps-tempest-a-post-apocalyptic-science-fantasy?source=share

*Disclaimer: And I emphasize the point "Inspired" as I don't want to get sued. This is an independent rpg worldbuilding project that isn't intended to be a direct 1-to-1 adaptation of Palladium's Rifts setting.