Taarsh - An Introduction
The following post is an outline of a setting which has been bouncing around in my head for a few years now - Taarsh, a world of garbage. The intent is to create a science-fantasy/planetary romance setting in which I can play RPGs or write stories with and for my friends.
The post follows a modified form of the Gygax 75 challenge. It will discuss the origin of Taarsh as an idea and how it changed over time, list a bibliography of inspiration for the setting, and present a series of posts which will help to flesh out the setting into a more fully-realized world. This post will NOT go into detail about the history of the world, its larger place in the universe, or anything else about it particularly.
The Seed of a Setting
The initial idea with Taarsh began with my discovery of the satirical RPG HoL - Human Occupied Landfill. Here was a challenge. HoL was never meant to be taken seriously, or even run as an RPG but that very challenge appealed to me. How might life on a world of garbage function? What kinds of creatures might be found there? What sorts of cultures might develop?
My interest in the idea grew when I connected the piles of garbage which litter the world with the scavenging tables of Atomic Highway, a quick beer-and-pretzels RPG I’ve played since my youth. How would D&D be different if the character could, at any time, rummage through their surroundings for discarded books, tools or medicine? What creative solutions to problems or strange contraptions might players create given time?
Taarsh remained a whimsical idea, tucked safely away at the back of my mind, for some time. At least, until I discovered the blog - Elfmaids and Octopi - and the setting - Xor, the Living Land of Meat. Here was a world like Taarsh - a science-fantasy planet where a single concept was taken to a bizarre extreme. Here too was a model to follow for my own world building. Thus inspired, I began to jot down every odd idea or little reference I could think of. From this jumbled heap of ideas, a skeleton for the world began to take shape.
Now I had ideas, but still lacked the detail to run a campaign. Once again, a blog provided the answer. Two years ago, Anne of DIYandDragons made a post about a trend among bloggers called Gygax 75 - a method to create a D&D campaign in under two months and begin playing. Here was a way to chisel my mass of ideas into a single cohesive campaign. Eager to get started, I wrote up a rough draft of my first post (the same rough draft I resurrected to create this one) before real life got in the way of my fantasies and once again Taarsh was relegated to collecting dust in one of the back corners of my mind.
Since then, my goals for the setting have changed. I am no longer interested in creating a megadungeon and its surroundings. Instead, drawing inspiration from Signs in the Wilderness’s Randomly Generated Campaigns and Monsters and Manual’s Yoon-Suin, I will create a ‘setting construction toolbox’. Once finished, this will let me and my readers quickly create unique snapshots of Taarsh’s landscape, creatures and cultures in order to tell a variety of unique stories.
Inspiration
The first week of the Gygax 75 Challenge is meant to explain the general concept for the setting and lay out the inspiration for it. I’ve already detailed some of the OSR inspirations for the setting, but there are other sources I intend to draw from for parts of it.
A major inspiration for the setting in general is the Victorian age - especially the scramble for Africa and the exploration of the South Seas and the Pacific. Taarsh’s surface is dotted with technologically advanced and often imperially minded bunker-citadels which exist in uneasy peace - sending forth air-, sea- and landships to project power over the various mutated ‘outlanders’ who carve out life beyond their environmentally controlled city-states. A sort of salvage steam-punk.
Another genre foundation to the setting is Plantery Romance - especially E.R. Burrough’s Barsoom and Amtor series. As a planetary romance, I intend stories on Taarsh to be pulpy, two-fisted tales filled with drama, double-crosses and romance. Well-muscled heroes will clash with swords as often as with pistols. Caravans will be made up of weird pack-beasts as often as flying machines. The planet itself should be a character in these stories - its gravity, climate, biomes, and creatures will all play a part in setting a colorful stage for the actions of the characters. It will also draw more specific aspects of these stories. Like Barsoom, Taarsh is a dead world divided between those living on the ruins of ancient technology (the red, white, and black martians) and those living wild and free apart from it (the green martians). The motif of ancient technology preserving the world will also come up - across Taarsh are still functioning terraforming stations which help to purify the planet’s air and water, much like the oxygen recyclers of Barsoom.
Another author Taarsh will draw from is Jack Vance, specifically his Demon Princes and Planet of Adventure stories. A major motif taken from Vance is the presence of strange cultures. Due to the large number of prisoners sent to Taarsh and the patchwork nature of biomes on the planet - the political and philosophical ideals of the inhabitants are also patchwork. The presence of arch-criminals ruling petty kingdoms mirrors another of Vance’s works - The Demon Princes - a series where the eponymous intergalactic outlaws remake entire planets to suit their eccentric desires. From the Planet of Adventure stories come other ideas. For example, the mysterious, emotionally-stunted bunker-dwellers mimic the various alien races of Tschai (the planet of the title) while their human servants mimic the mutated, technologically stunted outlanders of Taarsh’s many waste regions. The waves of alien colonization of Tschai mimics the waves of prisoners who have come to Taarsh. Finally, the goal of acquiring a spaceship with which to flee the planet has long been an assumed campaign goal for characters in the setting.
Other inspirations are numerous - such as the many random tables on Elfmaids & Octopi or Signs in the Wilderness mentioned in the post's introduction. Others include Paranoia, the vaults of Fallout, or W.H. Hodgeson's The Night Land - which informs the nature and culture of the bunker citadels. One Piece, a favourite since childhood, also provides inspiration with its island hopping adventures, weird and isolated cultures, and uneasy political peace.
Goals for Future Posts
My current goal is to release a new blog post detailing a distinct aspect of the setting once a month. If I find that writing the posts is easier than I expect then I will increase this output. What follows is a list of post topics laid out in an order that makes the most sense to me currently. I may find myself working through them in a different order. Only time will tell.
Islands of Taarsh: biomes for the setting including charts to expand their variety. Will borrow heavily from SitW's system for Randomly Generated Maps.
Beasts of Taarsh: a list of native creatures and invasive species brought by humans as well as a method for changing these to reflect the generations of mutation and evolution that have occurred since the first trash-fall. I hope to include lists of pre-generated creatures including d12 creature encounter charts for each biome (where applicable).
Blessings of Taarsh: fortune tables in the style of Luka Rejec’s UVG for traveling events and encounters which don’t warrant long pauses for negotiation or combat. Examples of non-threatening plants and animals, weather, disasters and other oddities. Either a d20 or an expanded d12 chart.
Stinking Pits of Taarsh: an outline for the various kinds of dungeons that can occur on the planet and rules of generating them. Caves and tunnels, wrecked starships, and even passages into the ruined core of the planet!
Treasures of Taarsh: discussion of what tables to use in what situations to generate treasure - from ancient lost technology to picking peoples pockets. A lot of these will probably be links to Elfmaids&Octopi or other bloggers, though I would like to create entirely new charts that better reflect Taarsh’s culture as well as the culture of the planets that use it as a waste bin. Also included here would be scavenging tables for different biomes.
Men of Taarsh: one (more likely three to four) blog posts detailing the generation of humanoids for different biomes, including the bunker-dwelling ‘beetles’ and off-worlder’s shanty-towns. I also intend to create a post ‘The Metal Men of Taarsh’ detailing the place robots have on the planet for those who wish to use it.
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