What the hell is this?

 I don't really expect anyone else to ever read this, it's mostly a repository for my ideas regarding this setting that's aggressively ripping off the final fantasy MMOs and whatever else I'm arrogant enough to feel like I can do better than the rubes. Like ICON, which I want to run this whole thing in but since I've made a blogspot account I think I'm legally obliged to make (or in this case finish) my GLOGhack.

So, what the hell is this?

This is going to be a repository for lore and eventually statblocks and bullshit for a setting I'm going to be using to launder my and probably my friends' Final Fantasy 14 characters into. It's me finally admitting I'm never going to fix Warcraft in concept or in fanwork so I might as well plagiarize something better, and it's also me trying to get myself to write things by myself.

Let's talk a bit about it.

Torment: Tides Of Numenera (2017)

Something happened a long time ago in Pharion. Nobody's entirely sure what, but it's obvious that something  happened. If you dig far enough down just about anywhere in the world, you'll hit a layer of twisted, compacted metal and stranger things besides. Sometimes they glow, or hum, or spark, or burn. Sometimes they sing, if you believe the stories. Sometimes they contain smaller things, if you break through and do a bit of rooting around, little survivors of the Something that sometimes even still work.

For one reason or another, the world used to be entirely or almost entirely made by mortal contrivance, only to at some point be buried and left to hum and hiss and sing below the earth. This is generally understood in academic circles, though the exact nature of it is and remains a hotly-debated subject.

Whatever the reasons may be, excavation of these ancient sites is a common career choice for people who can't manage an actual career or a stable home-life, the sort of people commonly termed "adventurers." 

Valuable as this technology is (and make no mistake, some parts of the world run on it), it's generally not worth digging down to the layer where all things become metal. There are shafts made for this purpose, but they're expensive affairs and quite old besides, by now having been stripped of anything feasible to access. 

It's far more practical to exploit the great masses of elder metal occasionally found nearer to the surface, theorized to be the remains of great towers or similar structures. These structures often fuse with cave-systems or even open onto the surface. On rarer occasions, whole or nearly whole structures can be found aboveground, often serving as the locus of trading-posts and settlements when the surrounding land is navigable. Earthquakes and similar terrestrial upheavals (themselves often the result of deteriorating elder metal structures) can bring these structures closer to the surface, and one can expect a swarm of fortune-finders after any such event, no matter how terrible.

Moon Gate (1995)
Once we strip all the useful stuff off this I guess we'll live in it, and then we'll probably regret stripping the stuff out.

Cities and even principalities will often support their own modern conveniences; trains, radios, airships and so forth, but for the most part these things aren't ubiquitous. Elder metal is only found in these ruins, and no means to fabricate it from natural sources has ever been discovered. It can only be reworked and reforged, and this is not an easy nor inexpensive process. A lot of money goes into this work, which is why rootless killers-for-hire tend to go to them so often.

After all, those places are full of weird stuff, and a fair amount of it is still functional. A significant portion of the still-functional stuff is, in turn, rather unfriendly.

As an adventurer, you'll probably end up doing a lot more than rooting around in these places, but it's always a good fallback for if you need money or a favor from someone important. There's always more to find, and always some new terror that gets released insodoing.