Vaults of Vaarn: Issue 4

Of all the artefacts the ancients left littered across the cerulean sands of Vaarn, few are more imposing than the canted bulwark of pale ferrosteel that is known variously as the Great Wall of Vaarn, the Weeping Wall, the Backbone of the Gods, the Titanspine, or the Impediment. The Wall forms the western boundary of the trackless Vaarnish Interior, an artificial mountain range visible from a month’s ride away. At a distance it appears to be a colourless, irregular blockade that roils uneasily in the heat haze, more akin to the fortress-walls of ice that girdle the Urth’s polar regions than any work of human hands. Up close the Wall is more impressive still, a colossal ruin that exceeds four leagues in height, dwarfing even the Lazul Mountains that embrace its northern limit.

Return to the End

The acclaimed Vaults of Vaarn series returns for a fourth issue of psychedelic science-fantasy roleplaying. Vaarn is a 'dying earth' tabletop RPG setting, drawing from novels like Dune, Hyperion, The Book of the New Sun, and the artwork of Moebius. Vaarn is a surreal and colourful world: a post-apocalyptic, post-human landscape, where the dividing line between flesh and machinery has blurred and the borders between magic, science, and faith have likewise been obscured. 

This fourth installment takes readers beyond Vaarn's sky-blue deserts to the Great Wall, a towering megastructure so large that it contains entire civilisations within its ancient, decaying bounds. The Wall is inspired by the superstructure depicted in Tsutomu Nihei's manga Blame! and the overgrown industrial environments of the videogame Rain World.

The Wall can be used as a palette cleanser in a long-running Vaarn campaign, or it can be a campaign setting in itself, with the PCs hailing from the societies that have established themselves within the colossus. 

Inside this Issue

• An introduction to the Wall and the cultures dwelling within.
• Campaign seeds, if you need excuses to involve the PCs in the affairs of the Wallborn.
• Three new PC Ancestries: the climbing Wallborn, fearsome feathered Harpies, and gas-filled Stratosfolk.
• Five factions that influence the Wall's politics: the aristocratic Forty Families of Sargattea, the resolute Sargattean Guard, the cruel Royal Roost of Ostriel, the secretive Krypteia, and the mysterious, Wall-hating Levellers.
• Maps of the rival city-states of Sargattea and Ostriel.
• Wall travelling rules and procedures.
• 20 location generator tables to create a fully detailed Wall-crawl, including Beetle Ranches, Cloudspires, Hanging Jungles, Sky Pirate Dens, and more.
• A bestiary of 22 new Wall-dwelling monsters.
• Appendices, containing new rules for Vaarnish poisons and Alchemy .

Fully illustrated throughout with evocative line-art. Printed in black and white with colour covers.