This is a brief introduction to the world of OROBORO, the dark fantasy setting for works created by the Lab. If you want to see a list of works created for this world, check the “Games” and “Fiction” pages.
Summary
The universe of OROBORO is a dark fantasy world built on three pillars: ghosts, physiomancy, and immortality.
GHOSTS do not pass on to an afterlife, leaving them to wander the earth as their fractured memories slowly drive them mad. In this world, killing another person is strictly taboo and entails being haunted by their ghost forever. Many ghosts are enslaved by living family members as servants, teachers, and guardians, while untamed ghosts often hunt and possess the living to remember what it was like to be alive.
PHYSIOMANCY is the art of shaping the human body with surgery and spellcraft. It is seen as a tool to transcend humanity and stave off death. All levels of society seek out physiomancers to augment their body and replace failing organs.
IMMORTALITY is the ultimate goal of humanity, whether it means grafting young flesh to one’s body, undergoing self-mummification, or replacing the flesh with a gilded homunculus. Though all levels of society seek to evade death, few achieve immortality.
Setting Overview
Centuries ago, the world’s sun was extinguished in a war between the mortal gods, driving humans into subterranean kingdoms where they sought to stave off death by perfecting physiomancy—the practice of body modification using surgery and spellcraft.
Now, the sun has been reignited, and mortals are slipping out of the tyrannical grip of the subterranean Sunless Kingdoms to resettle the surface, which has become verdant once more. The ruins of ancient cities are being rebuilt, and new factions are vying for power over shattered regions and sunken continents.
While the ruins and wild places are home to wandering ghosts that seek to possess the living, practitioners of the art of immortality seek to bind the wealthy and powerful with promises of eternal life.
As mortals attempt to reclaim this broken world, some seek to usurp the old gods by consuming their flesh and blood—a sacred act of cannibalism that signals the end of one era and the birth of another. Meanwhile, others seek out the ghosts whose madness has given way to insight into the past, the future, and the cosmos itself.
Key Elements
A World Filled with Ghosts
The world of Oroboro is filled with ghosts: they wander the wilderness, linger in city alleyways, and lurk unseen in houses and estates. Their appearances can be bizarre and surreal, ranging from a tall, lanky woman with a broken mirror for a head to a floating rhizome of eyes and muscle fiber. Most are intelligent, but few are lucid—their minds are usually fragmented and twisted by death.
It is an accepted practice to bind ghosts to be servants—in fact, menial labor in this world is mostly carried out by the ghosts. Family dynasties are built on binding the spirits of their past generations, and necromancers sell wandering ghosts for high prices.
Physiomancy Dominates Society
The prospect of becoming a half-mad ghost bound to eternal servitude is a grim one, making the fear of death almost all-consuming in this world. To this end, the pursuit of immortality and the art of physiomancy have become valued above all others.
Physiomancers can grow replacement organs, excise cancers with magic, and even augment a person’s body: they may graft a bull’s muscles onto a client and give them a second heart to nourish those muscles. However, all of this usually means incurring a staggering debt that will likely take more than one lifetime to repay.
Cannibalism & Mortal Gods
Cannibalism grants a cannibal longer life, greater vitality, and even a portion of the victim’s soul. Because of this, it is the oldest and darkest taboo. However, the trio of gods who watch over the world only ascended to godhood by killing and consuming the previous pantheon—an act that conferred the old gods’ knowledge, power, and lifespan.
Despite their immense power, the current gods are still mortal, and have bodies that age and decay. For now, they hope to repair the world, which has fallen into disrepair—the sun has only recently been re-ignited, and earthquakes shake the world.
Magic & Mathematics
Magic is intimately connected to mathematical patterns, which can be expressed in the mandala-like geometry of written spells, the hidden symmetries of magical music, or the intricate movements of a martial arts form.
The greatest knowledge of magic comes from ghosts, whose madness grants them glimpses into the hidden workings of cosmos itself. Although extracting this knowledge from ghosts is a difficult and dangerous endeavor, living knowledge of magic is still fragmented and incomplete.
Necromancy
Necromancy, the art of communing with ghosts, is considered a cornerstone of society. Necromancers usually undergo rigorous training and are expected to not only communicate and command ghosts, but understand how to calm them and keep them obedient.
After the exodus from the Sunless Kingdoms, the importance of necromancers grew significantly: not only were they needed to care for and appease a family’s ancestral ghosts, they were now needed to protect people from ‘wild’ ghosts and capture them so they could be bound to the service of the living.