After the Chaos Event The Chaos The Chaos was a continent-wide civilisation-collapse spanning approximately ninety-eight years, beginning around year 1700 of the Inarin Calendar when the Iru Parliament of the... is a tabletop roleplaying game set on Elshore, a world built and then abandoned by a continent-spanning civilisation called the Inarin Empire Faction The Inarin Empire The great predecessor civilisation of Elshore, built by the Iru across thousands of years and ended by the servant-race rebellion known as the Chaos.. The Inarin wove a planetary system of nanoscale machinery into the air, water, soil, and bodies of the world; later peoples call this magic. Now the empire is gone, the servant races have rebelled, the makers have fled or fallen asleep, and the system runs on without anyone who fully understands it. The characters must decide what they will pay to keep themselves, or someone else, alive in its slow decline.
The Testament of Flame and Flesh
As preserved by Saint Randen Character Saint Randen Saint Randen is the revered and feared figure at the root of the Order of Randen and the Randenist faith, known through folktale, scripture, and institutional power in roughly e..., the creation myth of Elshore begins before time, with Uhiel Cosmology The Binary Suns Two stars share the sky of Elshore: Uhiel, the warmer and steadier light, and Namii, the smaller and more ominous companion., the golden yolk, floating alone inside the first egg, and Tharuun, the Chaos, circling outside it: a lifeless presence of swirling darkness, soulless and heartless, but never without danger. From the echo of Uhiel's longing was born Namii, a red ember of warmth, sparked into being not from power but from longing. Her first words were the first solace: 'You are no longer alone.'
To protect her, Uhiel pressed his might against the shell until the egg shattered into billions of pieces, scattering as stars across the void to hold Tharuun in check. The pair became the Twin Suns, golden and red, and they labored together: Uhiel holding the stars in place, Namii tending the safe way. But the work was unending, and Chaos is patient. Tharuun sang Uhiel a lullaby of rest until he slept, and in his sleep the safe way cracked and the stars wandered loose.
Unable to wake him, Namii reached into Chaos and learned to build. From defiance and grief she shaped the globe of Elshore, tore day from night, and wove the first rains from her tears. She set the world to orbit on the far side of Tharuun so Chaos was caught between Elshore and the gods. Then she bore three sons to guard it: Ooliel the Duty, Liir Cosmology The Two Moons Two moons attend Elshore: Liir, the near and swift one, and Ressor, the far and slow one. the Valor, and Ressor the Wisdom, who became the moons. Their birth woke Uhiel, who set the sons over Elshore as its last fortress against the dark.
When Tharuun returned to devour the young world, only Ooliel was awake to see it: Liir was far and busy, Ressor weary and asleep. Without command, without delay, without hope of return, Ooliel threw himself between Elshore and the Chaos. He shattered, the sky burned white, and the world was saved.
Grieving, Namii broke the single land Pandaara into three to remember her three sons: Tarkdaara Place Tarkdaara The northern continent of Elshore, called Northland in common speech, on which every chapter of the story so far unfolds., Eldaara Place Eldaara The equatorial middle continent of Elshore, between Tarkdaara to the north and Khaldaara to the south., and Khaldaara Place Khaldaara The southern continent of Elshore, called Southland in common speech, where forests give way to sands and then to stonebound frost at the world's edge.. She shaped Ooliel's spine into mountains, his slow silver blood into rivers, and his flesh into the peoples of Elshore, each different, each imperfect, each a fragment of the god, but each alive and capable of labor. Uhiel lifted Ooliel's still-warm heart into the sky as the Traveller, which circles the gods and waits to call the people home once every task is done and Ooliel can be made whole again.
The myth closes with a vigil and a warning: Liir still dances close, stirring the tides to uncover what Chaos buries; Ressor still watches from afar, his veil shimmering at the poles as the auroras; the people still labor, shaping order from Chaos, for indolence invites darkness and diligence keeps Tharuun at bay. And Tharuun still circles.
This is the Randenist origin myth, the emotional foundation of the world. Whether any of it is literally true is a question the game leaves open.
What this game is
After the Chaos is set on Elshore, a world whose foundations were built by the Inarin Empire and are now in slow collapse. The Inarin built machines below the threshold of sight and embedded them across the air, water, soil, plants, and bodies of the world, using them to do everything later peoples call magic. Then the Chaos came, the servant races rebelled, the makers fled or slept, and the planetary system was left running without anyone who fully understood how to operate it.
The system is still there. It still listens. It still spends its remaining attention on whoever it can recognise. Different peoples call it different things: magic, system usage, command language, the Sovereign Breath, the gift, sorcery, prayer, miracle. It is the same infrastructure in every case, technically named the ISEMH Technology ISEMH System The Infrastructure for Synthetic Emergence and Matter Hosting, the planet-scale Inarin-era system that underlies the fallen world: an identity, logistics, fabrication, and senso..., the planetary network of the fallen empire. And it is failing.
This is not a game about restoring the old order. It is a game about deciding what you will pay to keep yourself, or someone else, alive in the slow burn of its decline. The world that the Inarin built answered them; it still answers, to some, for a price.
The price: magic as access
What makes this game distinct: in most fantasy, magic is a craft, something a character weaves with will or skill. Here, magic is access. A character who casts a spell is not shaping energy. They are issuing a command to a damaged planetary network that may or may not recognise them, may or may not have system credits to spend, and may or may not be in a state to respond at all. The fiction at the table may look like magic; the truth underneath is a user with permissions on a damaged network.
This distinction shapes the three core tensions of play.
- The geography of magic. The system varies by location, because the network varies by location. Some places answer cleanly, some answer late, some refuse entirely.
- The cost of system credits. Every command costs system credits, the resource for system usage. They refill daily, and there is never enough. The empire's money was also called imperial credits; the rules treat system capacity and money as separate quantities.
- The price of the Ïsuulë Effect. The system responds more readily to those whose moral resistance has worn down. Power and corruption follow the same gradient, so the system rewards those whose values have eroded.
Two ways to play
The rulebook supports two campaign frames that share identical mechanics: the same dice, the same character creation, the same eight Attunements, the same Ïsuulë Effect. They differ sharply in technology, vocabulary, and tone. The difference is a deliberate design feature, not a setting flavour or a house-rule choice. What changes is the world the characters move through, not the system underneath it.
A short campaign should pick one frame and stay there; the choice belongs to the table and should be made before character creation, because the available cultures and equipment list shift with the era. A long generational campaign can begin in the early post-Chaos era and pass through the transition into a later mythic-medieval era naturally, as the technology degrades on schedule and the vocabulary shifts with it. There is no hard boundary once a campaign is underway: a mythic-medieval character who finds a working laser pistol can use it, and an AC-era character who chooses to fight with a sword fights with a sword. The frames describe the world the campaign starts in, not a constraint the mechanics enforce.
The two primary campaign frames
| Post-apocalyptic sci-fi (around AC 50) | Mythic-medieval adventure (around N.O. 64) | |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | The empire fell within living memory. | Centuries after the early post-Chaos era. |
| Technology | Much of the surviving Inarin technology still works: capsule trains on magnetic rails, slug-thrower firearms, recovered energy weapons in elite hands, aerocars in privileged circles, Skyseed pods at imperial silos. | The surviving technology has decayed beyond common use: no firearms, no aerocars, no capsule trains anyone knows how to launch, no Skyseeds. Local precious-metal currencies have replaced the empire's stamped Imperums. |
| How the system is understood | Understood by its technical name across educated society, as the planetary infrastructure of nanobots responding to authorised commands. The knowledge is widespread among the literate. | The system still answers, but ordinary people no longer know what it is. They call it magic, sorcery, witching, the gift, the rites of the breath, depending on which temple raised them. |
| Feel at the table | Science fiction in late collapse, not fantasy with technological flavour. Drawing a slug-thrower in an alley is something an imperial soldier would recognise. The dead Iru towers of Udhafa cast shadows over a city of working machinery in decline. | Sword-and-sorcery fantasy from the inside; from the reader's outside view, the same world centuries later with the machinery forgotten. What looks like a fireball is the same Energetics command an AC-era user would have called a discharge. |
Some cultures are era-locked: Capehavener culture to post-AC 138 and Republican culture to post-AC 200, both unavailable in earlier campaigns such as AC 50 unless the GM makes an exception.
Tone
The world of After the Chaos is not grim for its own sake. Maan People Maan The most numerous people of Elshore and the baseline cultural reference of the age. farmers still raise children. Bar People Bar Towering, massively built, and engineered for high-load work and vertical terrain, the Bar are the strength line. elders still teach Path-Songs to the canopy. Iru People Iru The progenitors, and the only naturally evolved people of Elshore. carvers still shape stone in their cliff-cities. Erg snowwatchers still read ice fractures on long winter mornings.
At the same time, the systems that should protect these people no longer fully work, and the people who can still command them pay a price for doing so. Both things are true at once. A campaign that forgets the first becomes joyless. A campaign that forgets the second becomes weightless.
Power and moral resistance erode along the same gradient, through the Ïsuulë Effect. The system rewards those whose values have worn down, which means the most capable characters are often the ones who have paid the most for that capability. That tension, between staying whole and getting things done, is the engine the game runs on.
The shape of play
A session involves a small group of characters facing situations that test them physically, mentally, and morally. The Game Master describes the world, voices everyone the characters are not, sets difficulties, and adjudicates outcomes. The players describe what their characters attempt and accept the consequences. Combat, social conflict, exploration, magic, and inner life all use the same resolution system; there is no separate subsystem for any of them.
The book contains a lot of rules, but they are tools, not contracts. The dice exist to resolve uncertainty when the fiction calls for it, not to fill time. If the outcome is clear, the GM tells the player what happens; if it is uncertain and the answer matters, the dice come out. When a rule is unclear or two rules seem to contradict, the GM rules and the decision is final for the scene. Story is the priority: if the rules say one thing and the story needs another, the story wins.
- The GM presents a situation. The Game Master frames the scene and the stakes.
- Players describe what their characters do. Players state intent and action in the fiction, not the dice they want to roll.
- Dice are rolled where outcomes are uncertain. When the answer matters and is in doubt, the dice resolve it.
- Costs are paid. System credits, energy, health, or moral weight are spent as the action demands.
- The fiction moves forward. The outcome changes the situation, and the loop begins again.
How the rulebook is organised
The rulebook is delivered in five separate parts to keep each one a manageable size. Part I (this document) opens with the Testament of Flame and Flesh and this introduction.
Part II covers the core rules: dice mechanics, ratings, the three pressure tracks, combat, system usage, biotech, and the Ïsuulë Effect. Part III handles character creation and progression. Part IV is the Living World of Elshore: flora, fauna, races, terra (geography), history, civitas (faiths, languages, polities, cultures), and habitus (goods, foods, customs). Part V is addressed to the Game Master and covers running the game, awarding Ïsuulë, the world in play, and Appendices A through F.
New GMs should read Part II for the rules, skim Part III for character creation, browse Part IV for the world, and turn to Part V for what to actually do in session one. The rest of the rulebook is reference material, to be opened as the campaign asks.
To play you need this rulebook, a character sheet per player, pencils and erasers, and at least ten ten-sided dice for the table (fifteen is more comfortable). Three to five players plus a GM is the comfortable size; a normal session runs about four hours.