The Tower
Disaster, Hubris, Collapse, Calamity, Catastrophe, Coup, Thunderstruck, Renaissance
Death is bad, of course, but it’s both inevitable and final. It doesn’t capture the full spectrum of possible human catastrophe. For everything else, there’s the Tower, a more general symbol of “oh, shit”. It’s a real Critical Fail of a card.
While “shit hits fan in a big way” is the primary meaning of this card, it’s intended to be a depiction of the Tower of Babel, and so the card takes on the second meaning: hubris, struck down. The Tower was too tall, it never should have been built, and now this folly is collapsing back down to Earth.
This is a stock market crash card, a Titanic sinking card.
Everything has an upside, though, even catastrophe. Something ruined is an opportunity to build something newer, better — and, in fact, if a system is rotten enough, it is only through total upheaval that it can be replaced.
When the rickety old furnace finally dies, it’s an expensive catastrophe... but it will be nice to have a new furnace.
Friends & Foes
The Reconstructed was once amongst the lowest of the low, but through grit and self-determination they have rebuilt themselves and are more resilient than ever.
The Scorched Earth Revolutionary has become convinced that the only way to improve existing power structures is to utterly destroy them and rebuild from the ground up. They are willing to embrace any extreme in the pursuit of this.
The Utopian Architect is building something spectacular. They will drag society into the beautiful, idealistic future of their dreams, no matter how many people need to suffer along the way.
The Penitent Knight has sacrificed too many lives for their personal ambition already. What was the cost of their ambition? Whatever it was, it was too much and they refuse to pay it any longer.
The Bulwark is deeply invested in the maintenance of the status quo and will fight to protect it.
The Necessary Evil doesn’t like what they have had to become to prevent the catastrophe, but they feel like they have no choice in the matter.
The Become Like Unto A God has found some way to achieve an incredible, unstoppable, seemingly unlimited amount of power.
Hooks
With just a ragtag group of rebels, your players are going to have to topple an entire Evil Empire.
The Great Calamity comes every 1000 years and nobody is sure how exactly that happens or what exactly it does1, but it has been just about 999 years since the last one.
Locations
The Remnants of a Long-lost Society still stick around, in ruins2, after something terrible happened to them a very long time ago.
The Titanic is a vast ship, the largest and most impressive ever built, and its captain is convinced that no harm could ever befall such a magnificent vessel.
The City Underground3 was once the city proper, but after a landslide and a significant rebuild it’s only accessible through tunnels and ducts.
The Phoenix Nest, found in the caldera of a volcano, contains nothing more than a pile of ash and a single, delicate egg.
The Can’t Make anOmelas Without Breaking a Few Orphans is a society that seems, at first, to be happy and prosperous, but everything is built around something terrible at its heart — something that people don’t even want to talk about.
Treasures
The Chronicle of the Final Days is a series of books and journals collected from a lost society, in the time leading up to whatever befell them: it also serves as something of a treasure map as the writers make frequent mention of an important item.
Names
Calamity, Jinx, Mallory, Brescia, Halifax, Chernobyl, Banqiao, Pompeii, Transvaal, Vesuvius, Helens, Typhoon, Typhus