In a three-dimensional universe, there are six directions. On the surface of a planet such as ours, we have Up (away from the planet) and Down (towards the planet); then have North and South, which go towards the poles of the planet; and the last two directions, East and West, are towards or against the rotation of the planet.

But Sideworld is not a round planet; it's flat. Unlike most flat worlds, gravity in the Sideworld universe works just like in our universe and pulls things towards the centres of large objects. This makes the flat surfaces of Sideworld pretty uninhabitable - everything would just slide to the middle. Civilisation on Sideworld exists on the edge, a ribbon of rock about a thousand kilometres wide.

The world spins, and is edge-on to the sun, so there's still East and West, pointing along the edge of the world; to the inhabitants of the Sideworld, the sun rises in the East and sets in the West every day, just like on Earth. But the Sideworld doesn't really have poles in the way Earth does, so instead the directions pointing towards the flat surfaces of the disk are named after those surfaces - Chaos and Order.

As you travel in the Orderly direction, the landscape and native creatures become more and more regular and orderly. As you leave the outskirts of Civilisation, the landscape will flatten out and rivers straighten, and vegetation peters out apart from tall grass that, increasingly, tends towards a uniform length and colour, and the temperature steadily drops. Around the point where rivers are completely straight, the neat grass (which by this point is growing individual strands in a neat hexagonal grid, each blade an exact distance, about six millimetres, apart) will stop in an abrupt line, where the soil ends. From then on, the ground is just white rock, perfectly flat. Shortly afterwards, the thermal motion of air molecules becomes unacceptable, and the air stops at an invisible barrier, and the temperature of the rock drops from -30 Celsius to absolute zero. A boring kilometre or so further, and the white rock will fall away (at a right angle) into an unblemished cliff; the Orderly face of the world. Beyond that, no matter exists; the inky blackness of space, devoid of stars. Any objects (living or not) that travel beyond the outskirts will survive unchanged at first, but the longer it stays or the further into the orderly zone it travels, life processes will slow down, power supplies will drain, fuels will produce less energy, and temperatures will decrease, lingering too long will cause death, no matter the equipment used. Any disruption to the orderly nature of the terrain will repair itself, and any "mess" left around (such as your own corpses) will dissolve away to nothing.

Towards Chaos, the landscape becomes rocky and mountainous with occasional patches of vegetation. The mountains will become more and more precarious, the weather more and more unpredictable, until it becomes impossible to pass be foot. Further on, the air appears to be continually in motion, with winds rapidly changing speed and direction. Further out, the air gives way to a mess of fast-changing winds, flying clumps of rock, soil, and unidentifiable materials of various sizes, and globs of various fluids at sizes from millimetres to hundreds of meters. This is nearly impossible to see through; all sensing devices will fail, and the air becomes unbreathable. The ground will soon give away at a jagged edge, crumbling away in places and growing in others as flying clumps of rock fall back onto it; beneath that, the Chaotic face of the world falls away.

Small 'islands' will float around beyond the edge for up to a hundred metres, and the air gets worse. Rivers (of water, or other liquids) will casced down this in waterfalls. Beyond that, all is a random soup. The air temperature in the Chaotic direction fluctuates rapidly and wildly, from deep sub-zero to roaring gusts of flame.

Civilisation occupies but a small portion of the edge. To the East are impassable mountains; to the West, an ocean. In the mountains live warlike trolls, ogres, dragons, and worse; to the West... well... nobody knows what lives over the sea. Various large islands have been colonised into independent nations, but the poor natural resources have led them to be largely occupied by territorial disputes and wars with each other. If anybody from Civilisation has found any larger land masses beyond the islands, they've never returned to tell about it.

Religion

Religion isn't a theoretical matter for the residents of Sideworld; their gods occasionally manifest and interfere with them. They are not kindly gods.

They never manifest in person, so their material form - or if they even have one - is unknown; they usually appear through dreams and waking visions, in which the recipient finds themselves suspended in a void filled with painfully bright white light, while a thunderous voice shouts commands into their ear; occasionally the brightness is replaced by an image, if the god desires it.

They are also able to act directly in the world, either through divine interventions ranging from creating objects out of thin air, moving things around, and changing the weather - up to huge fireballs falling from the sky and destroying cities.

They also manifest their avatars on the Sideworld, the Krakslaw, to do their (usually destructive) bidding.

What the gods want from the residents of the Sideworld is unknown. We do not know if they are the sole gods of the Sideworld, or if their domain is limited to the regions known to Civilisation; the people of the Mountains seem familiar with the same gods and no others. Their dreams and visions can come to anybody from any walk of life, and the instruction given range from what clothes they must wear today or a change in career up to committing a mass murder.

The penalty for refusing to follow the request is usually horrible and often fatal.

The gods show some signs of being in competition with each other, as their actions occasionally seem to contradict each other; but they do also seem to have some common goals and most of their demands do not conflict with those of other gods. People who have had dreams or visions from one god have only ever reported further dreams or vision from the same god; there have never been reports of a person who has spent significant time in prayer and pilgrimage towards a particular god receiving dreams or vision from another god, and those people seem somewhat less likely to be killed or otherwise made to suffer by "their" god than another.

The Priesthood is the organisation in Civilisation responsible for the study of the gods, and attempting to ensure that Civilisation survives their whims. The priests have developed a model to explain the personality traits of each of the gods, based on a tetrahedron, with each point being a "trait". The traits are:

1. Strength
2. Honour
3. Cruelty
4. Ignorance

Each god is associated with a face of the tetrahedron, and their traits are the three corners of that face.

Rak, god of Magic

Rak's traits are Strength, Honour, and Cruelty.

Rak favours spectacular methods of having their way; huge fireballs devour cities, furious Krakslaw turn up, and so on. Their favourite weapon is magic, and the arcane knowledge and techniques used by Civilisation's residents to manipulate magic came from a series of scrolls bestowed upon the Elves.

Thom, god of War

Thom's traits are Strength, Honour, and Ignorance.

Thom likes simple, military-style, attacks. A Krakslaw turns up with a heavy machine gun, swiftly dispatches some troops, and disappears. Their favourite weapons are modern devices, like missiles and guns; the engineering knowledge to produce these things was passed down to the Humans by Thom.

Val, god of the Elements

Val's traits are Strength, Cruelty, and Ignorance.

Val likes 'secret' operations; poison on the rim of the glass, bombs in the letterbox, etc. Also, seemingly accidental deaths are popular with them, like rocks dropping from the sky. The beginnings of scientific knowledge were passed down to the Elves by Val.

Jop, god of Death

Jop's traits are Honour, Cruelty, and Ignorance.

Jop likes traditional weapons, and has a similar style of action to Thom. A Krakslaw turns up with a huge hammer, flattens your house, and walks off. Their favourite weapons are traditional blunt or bladed hand to hand weapons, like hammers and axes. The technologies of metal mining, refining, and working were handed down to the Dwarves by Jop in antiquity.

The Krakslaw are huge, powerful, frightful creatures controlled by the gods from time to time. When not "in use", they usually sleep, exist as a statue, or just plain disappear. All the Krakslaw can cast spells; no particular limited repertoire has been identified for any Krakslaw, so they either know all possible spells, are able to make them up on demand, are given a set of spells appropriate to their mission by the god invoking them, or use some form of Essence Magic.

Here is a list of Krakslaw that have seen seen operating within Civilisation. It may not be complete.

Klarsis is a giant crab, measuring about 20x10m.

Karolor is a three meter high six-armed humanoid.

Kringal is a Hippogrif.

Kasothior is a shapeless mound of tiny red beetles.

Kantuin is a giant twelve meter long, twenty-armed, octopus. Usually only found in water, but occasionally seen to climb ashore and laboriously crawl along the ground.

Ketior is a cloud of black smoke, about 10m diameter, with eerie yellow flashes within. It can envelope and kill groups of people.

Klapiolon is a six meter long dragon with a snake's tail.

Kalath is a lion with black, silky, fur and large leathery wings. It is the only Krakslaw known to leave the ground, despite the fact that Klapiolon has wings, and it is often used to attack flying vehicles.

Krilinon is a huge amoeba-like creature, about three meters high, made of cryogenic liquified air. It will flow over things, freezing them.

Technology

The technological advancement of Sideworld is above ours, but not immensely. They have a similar range of weapons, but computers are much more powerful. Full 3-D virtual reality - indistinguishable from reality - is available, if you can afford the implants.

Cybernetics, the improvement of the human body by inserting high-tech implants, has come a long way from pacemakers. A delicate network of fibre optic cables and circuitry implanted into the brainstem allows cybernetic mechanisms to be controlled like an extra limb. See the equipment section for details.

Magic

Anybody can learn to perform magic in principle, but individual aptitudes vary. Magical training is tightly regulated by the Government; civilian wizards require licences to train and practice and are permitted only non-offensive spells, while military wizards gain access to more and more powerful spells as they progress through the ranks.

Races

There are several sentient language-capable races in Civilisation.

The Humans, a quite average species, evolved in the jungle plains between the mountains and the great sea.

The Elves, however, evolved near the shores of the Great Sea, and with few natural predators to worry about, traded in glorious wooden sailing ships and studied magic and science.

Dwarves evolved amongst the rocky plains towards Chaos, mining minerals and metals from the rocks.

Ents evolved in the foothills of the mountains, amongst feirce competition from brutal predators and short life expectancies. This gave rise to their incredible toughness and mythical sixth sense for approaching tigers, rockslides, and missiles.

The Avias, the most unusual and aloof of the races, evolved around the shores of the Great Sea; their amphibious abilities and fast reactions protecting them from predatory sharks.

The Mountains are occupied by swarthy Orcs and Trolls, fast-moving wily Goblins, and the rarely-seen spindly Gollem, the intellectuals of the Mountain civilisation. The Mountain civilisation possesses advanced technology and a seemingly total devotion to conquering the plains beneath, but are held back by a shortage of raw materials and population numbers; nonetheless, war rages constantly amongst the foothills of the Mountains.

The Military

All the player characters (PCs) in this game originate in the United States of Civilisation (USOC), population around two billion, bordered on one side by the Mountains, and on the other by a wide sea. The government is the Senate, a group of twelve annually re-elected senators who vote upon all major political decisions. They also control the armed forces. The armed forces accept recruits at the age of sixteen, when compulsory education ends. The top one hundred recruits of that year are offered the chance to be educated at the taxpayer's expense to become the Elite Units, loosely organised groups of four or five elite soldiers.

These groups generally operate alone, or are supplied with a few squads of regulars. Their training starts with a one year course in their chosen field, at the end of which groups of students who have become friends at some point will team up to become a Cadet Elite Unit, and to be eligible for the next stage of their education, they must complete a mission. This is the stage the PCs enter at. After completing their mission, they will all receive another six months of tuition, before completing another mission.

The Senate

The Senators are corrupt and paranoid, and they are known to keep huge amounts of data upon every individual in the data banks of the Priesthood (police force). Civil rights are mediocre, but it could be worse; the Senate are elected fairly, but election campaigns are vicious media circuses riddled with smear campaigns and lies. The hope of re-election provides some curb on government over-reach, but the government can still get away with anything that doesn't make it into the newsfeeds.

The priesthood are, nominally, tasked with preventing death and damage caused by the gods. Part of this is the academic study of the gods and Krakslaw; part of it is experimental attempts to solicit dreams and visions from them and advising the Senate; and part of it is policing the population to, in theory, ensure that behaviours that are known to anger the gods are prevented. Opinions vary on how much of the law they enforce originates in divine revelation as opposed to measures designed to increase the power of the Senate.

Money

The currency of the Sideworld is the Credit. It's quite a large unit - average pay for a semi-skilled worker is 20 credits a month, for instance, making them worth about £100 / $100 / €100 each in modern money.

A typical home costs 5-10 credits a month to rent, or 1000c to buy.

Credits are often abbreviated to "creds" or just "c". They can be represented by physical coins and notes, or stored in a bank account, and then payments made with a card or bank transfers made to an account number, using a computer connected to the telephone network.

Law and order

Law is maintained by priests, who serve as both policeman and religious leaders. See the priests section above.

Buying any worthwhile weapons requires a licence, attained from the government. Selling weapons is legally impossible - so a black market in second hand items has sprung up. Buying from the black market is completely legal, but being a black market salesman is not; the law, specifically, is against selling. However, the priesthood will obviously take a dim view of anybody who is obviously in possession of black market weapons and will happily rough them up a bit to try and gain information on the seller. And owning a weapon with a licence grade you do not possess is illegal (this does not apply to weapons that do not have a licence grade, such as those obtained from the Mountain civilisation).

To buy on the black market, the item is assigned an Availability, starting with five plus these modifiers:

Plus any other 'common sense' modifiers by the GM.

Then the player must roll 1D20 below the Availability to see if it is available.

Ammunition must be bought on the black market with the same mods as the weapon.

Price is worked out next; use the Availability on this table to get the percentage of the list price asked.

Selling things

Basically, due to the Black Market trading law, selling licenced equipment is illegal. 'Grade 0' equipment, needing no licence, may be sold at 50% original price; other equipment, however, may be sold at 1D6*5+80 percent of the list price to the black market (the character may pull out after price has been rolled). However, this is illegal; there is a 25% chance of capture and a fine of twice the original cost of the weapon - not to mention that you lose the weapon without being paid for it.

The USOC military hierarchy

The Senate are the ultimate power in the United States of Civilisation. They meet in the Senate Chamber to discuss important matters of state, but delegate day to day running of the military to the Military Committee, a panel of top military officers.

The Military Committee operate in shifts to ensure that at least three members are always on duty. At least two of them, at any time, will be connected via Computer Port direct neural link to STRACOMP, the Strategic Computer system located in the military headquarters in Titanium, the capital city.

STRACOMP integrates long-range radar systems, short-range radars based in every permanent military base connected by land line, mobile radar systems connected by radio to the nearest military base, mobile radar systems in Armorgeddon mobile battle stations, and status updates radioed direct from military bases and units to provide a real-time map of military activity in the USOC. The Military Committee issue orders through STRACOMP that are passed down to mobile Fleet Commanders in Armorgeddons, area commanders in major military bases, and to the Elite Unit office in Titanium.

Fleet Commanders (of which there are five hundred) use local radio data networks to communicate with fighter/bomber aircraft deployed from or assigned to the Armorgeddon, and Squad Commanders in armoured personnel carriers or assault helicopters.

Area Commanders (of which there are ten) use landlines to communicate with Base Commanders in military bases under their control (of which there are two hundred), which in turn use radio to communicate with aircraft and Squad Commanders, just like Fleet Commanders.

The Elite Unit Office (with branches in every city) maintains a roster of Elite Units who are not in training and awaiting a combat mission. There are about a thousand Elite Units active.

There are fifteen thousand Squads active, assigned either to bases or Fleets. Squads are hand-picked up the Squad Commander, and tend to be very tight-knit groups of people with their own group identity. A sample Squad might consist of the following members.

Everyone will also carry sidearms and other weapons.

An Elite Unit is usually smaller then a squad (3-5 individuals), often with more overlapping of roles. At least one or two members of an Elite Unit will be Wizards to some degree, although possibly only one will focus on advancing through to the higher Wizard levels. A typical starting Elite Unit might consist of Wizards and Warriors alone, and be limited to using civilian vehicles or public transport to get around at first. Established Elite Units will have a broader range of skills, with one or more trained Pilots able to get the unit around in an armoured personnel carrier or assault helicopter.

Healthcare

Standard healthcare is free. The injured may stay in hospital until they recuperate, but then they must leave. Ambulances are free, but they take 1D6 minutes to arrive in built up areas, and 5D6 minutes in rural areas. Beyond the borders, they will not arrive - and not to mention, they must be told to arrive - if there are no telephones, that's not their problem. A cellphone is a good investement for the accident prone. Beyond those places where ambulances can reach characters - for example, the tops of mountains, an Air Ambulance (helicopter) must be hired. This costs a flat rate of 5c. In war zones, these refuse to come, so the Mercenary Guild must be paid to send an air escort plane to pick the character up. This will take 1D20 minutes within the USOC, and beyond the borders, that depends upon 1D6 minutes for a plane to be readied, and however long it takes the plane to come from the border. Look up the speed and range yourself.

Evil

The ruthless, inhuman, sadistic Mountain folk and their constant attacks on Civilisation are bad enough, but Civilisation is also under attack from another quarter: Very unnerving supernatural events are also an occasional fact of life - gruesome deaths by clawing from invisible monsters, ghosts, floating eyes, pits opening in shopping centres and tentacles emerging to capture civilians... No motivation for these attacks has been found beyond pure evil and terror; the same things seem to happen in the Mountains, so it's probably not some advanced magical technique they've developed, and their source remains a mystery.

Bonus Points

Whenever a character does particularily well in a mission, they are awarded one or maybe two Bonus Points. These add up towards prestige and respect in the military community, as well as these goodies: