Working on a project in my own time where I'm planning on making my own setting and lore based in the Fallout universe, seeking to expand on the otherwise lacking lore of the continent of Europe compared to the US-focused games.
Feel free to ask me anything about the setting, feedback and suggestions are most definetely welcome!
I’m floating. Lost in an endless umbral sea. I have no memory nor identity, I do not exist, yet here I am. The shadows part and I see them slither away in fear; something new approaches the nothingness. A radiance, growing prominent in the empty abyss, one whose splendor is not welcome even after an eternity of nothing. It hums and groans with a metallic shriek, tearing at my perceptions and forcing the darkness to shake. My mind was so at peace in my stygian grave, and now I know only that light and the pain it brings.
The radiance seems to change the world around me, like the flame molds and refines ore to metal, I see the world take shape around me. The hum and groaning evens out, and the writhing shadows settle in place to form walls of steel. The radiant light reveals its identity; a ceiling lamp. More and more the waking state claims me, dispelling the grasp my dreams had held on my mind and replacing it with reality. Though brighter than that everlasting darkness, I can’t say that I find it any more inspiring.
The shrieks are nothing more than the groans of metal as they sway to unfathomable pressure, the light no more radiant than any other electrical device, and the groaning no more mystical than the headache I felt returning to me. Finding the light to be an annoyance, I turn to the window and find the darkness just where I had left it. A sensation best described as ‘relief’ washes over me as I escape the cruel light.
I rub my eyes in a futile attempt to remedy my headache, finding limited success from the action. Reluctantly I sit up from where I had gone to sleep, taking a deep breath smelling more of cigarettes than anything.
‘Anything left in you?’ I groan, reaching for the ashtray in hopes that I had not fully finished yesterday’s smoke.
Along the peaks of Pluto stretches a strange palace, built of ice and nightmares beyond the imagination of humanity’s most enlightened madmen.
The ice does not hold by nature alone. It is bound by a maddening black stone—one that does not sit idly in place. It flows. It slithers. It moves, and yet remains unmoved.
Along the peaks of Pluto, atop this frozen fortress, stand great spires of immense height, marked with symbols both beautiful and wrong.
When all else falls silent, listen between your thoughts. There, you will hear the palace breathe—uneven, and wrong.
Along the peaks of Pluto, atop those oppressive towers, stand immense dark shards. These alien shards of obsidian aspect, are the great stones of Yrg’alth.
Should you lay eyes upon them, avert your gaze swiftly– lest the observer become the observed. Their reflections dance; in those shadowed forms, more is shown than should be.
Along the peaks of Pluto, past the palace walls and rising spires, you will find broad, smooth slopes at the mountains’ base. These irradiated slabs serve as the parchment of terrible things.
Upon those slopes are written, in forbidden glyphs, the fate of all people—young and old, dead and not yet born. Every life is recorded in full: its hours, its path, its end.
Take heed, dear reader. Among those markings lies your own account. And should you learn their language—should you dare to read what is written—you may witness something unseen revising the glyphs before you.
For the peaks are not unobserved. The elder scribes of Z’thuul labor there still, their work intended only for the Great Old Ones. To read your fate is to invite their notice—and in being noticed, your ending may change.
And so one must ask—along the peaks of Pluto—whether knowing one’s fate is worth the cost of bringing it nearer.