Occult skirmishes through the ruins of reality.
Across the shattered ruins of the polyverse…
A doom, forewarned a thousand times but thwarted each, was finally consummated. Reality fractured and devils vomited from the rifts. In every place, at every time, skies boil with fire and the laughter of blind idiotic gods can be heard. Ancient evils consume worlds and hosts of cackling demons raze civilizations to the ground. Nowhere is safe, no when is safe.
Through the chaos and madness move tiny figures; insignificant in the face of this cosmic pandemonium, but possessed of secrets that may yet serve them. If there is a way to undo this carnage, perhaps they will find it, but hope is slim. More likely, yet still a fleeting hope, is a notion of burrowing out a safehouse, a small pocket buried deep in the polyverse. There, hidden from rampaging and hungering horrors, one might keep some semblance of civilization alive.
You are one of these bands of impossible survivors. You exist because you are possessed of occult knowledge sufficient to traverse the fractured polyverse, esoteric or advanced weaponry sufficient to hold your own against the darkness, and clues toward some greater knowledge that might deliver you or your people from annihilation. You are a tiny candlelight in a squalling black storm that has already consumed most of reality, and the extra-dimensional wolves are circling.
The Incunabula
‘Books are lighthouses erected in the sea of time.’
Edwin Percy Whipple (and quoted by Behanphelia the Wise in The Book of Sequentia)
Scattered across reality, lurking in hidden places or guarded jealously by magi are the Incunabula, fragmentary azoic texts containing the secrets of the construction of the polyverse, left by its makers. To some, they are the first magic books, to others the schematics of the universe. To unlock the secrets of an incunabula is to gain control over the very fabric of reality.
The Incunabula is the dark science-fantasy warband skirmish game that I want to exist. It is card-driven, extremely fluid and three-dimensional, brutal and full of cinematic narrative prompts. It is highly miniature-permissive, welcoming kitbashing with open arms, and allowing you to genre-mash across fantasy, science-fiction and post-apocalyptic tropes.
It’s inspirations lie in Bayonetta. Rifts. Doctor Who. Doctor Strange. Lovecraft Country. Loki. Sandman. Inquisitor. Malifaux. Realms of Chaos. Cthulhu Apocalypse & Cthulhu City.
AI Disclosure: the disposable mock-up cover image above contains an image generated with Midjourney.