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So I was playing Metro 2033 and I could help but think how it'd make an interesting setting for a chronicle.
Basic Setting
In 2013 the world was destroyed. Nukes leveled much of the world, including Moscow, leveling much of the city and choked the sky with a thick layer of dust. The war that devastated the world was short lived and no living human remembers the events that triggered the war. What everyone does know is the results, humanity driven to the brink of extinction in a hostile and desolate world.
What humans survived did so in the underground metros. Here survivors settled in the former stations of the old metro, fortified themselves, and made a home for themselves.
The tunnels between the stations are sometimes guarded, but more often they are dark, hazardous, and inhabited by strange and dangerous creatures. The surface is completely inhospitable to human life. Dust clouds from the nuclear blasts often block out the sky, perpetuating harsh winters that never end. Some life does survive in the form of large and aggressive creatures either mutated by the nuclear radiation or by darker forces. A few brave souls, called stalkers, do venture to the surface for supplies or to travel from one part of the metro to another if no tunnel exists.
Though humanity survived the greatest loss of life in history it doesn't mean that stopped factionalism or warfare. The metro's stations
were once managed by Metro Central Command, before infighting tore the metro into the factions of 2033. These days each station acts as their own city states, which form alliances and enemies in the metro. There are many factions, but there are four major alliances in 2033. Polis is an alliance of stations at the heart of the metro, who generally stay out of the fighting in other parts of the metro. The aptly named Red Line is led by communist ideals has the longest stretch of metro tunnels and possibly the largest population, and they war ceaselessly with the Fourth Reich. The Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line, also known as the Fourth Reich, a neo-nazi faction that often wars with the other stations and especially with the Red Line. Finally there is the Ring Line, or Hanza a capitalistic alliance that trades with almost every station of the metro.
Werewolves: Barren Shadow
This story is true. The world outside these stations is dead. Moscow's shadow is an almost unbroken barren, dotted with rare patches of healthy land or more frequently a gaping Wound. Much of the Shadow is empty, and what spirits do hold sway are usually powerful magath who desperately consumed what essence they could and were driven to gibbering madness by their clashing natures. Elsewhere wound spirits revel in the endless misery and pain this new world has to offer. The few healthy parts of the shadow exist either in spared corners of the city or in inhabited metro stations. Here surviving spirits huddle around the remains of humanity like men around a fire, and jealously guard what essence they have.
Most werewolves, Forsaken or Pure, abandoned the city as soon as they could. Uratha are one of the few beings that can survive out in the waste for any long period of time and many used their abilities to find greener pastures. What uratha remain do so out of a sense of duty to nurse the Shadow back to health, or to protect their human families.
But the Flesh is no less hostile to the uratha. Above the blasted world is, while survivable, no less hostile to the children of Father Wolf. Bellow the surface in the tunnels of the Metro the uratha find themselves in an endless war with the remains of the beshilu. The rat host multiply in the tunnels between the stations, and appear to have lost their minds with the destruction of the world. They still gnaw the Gauntlet where they can but they seem to do so in a mad thoughtless rage. They never speak, never communicate, and rarely flee even from the uratha.
Vampire: Dominion of the Haunts
The world died at the hands of thousands of small suns, many of which burned kindred to ash. In Moscow many kindred survived by fleeing into the metro system along with humanity. Soon after the end the Covenants had largely disbanded into social circles. While some do try to keep the practices of the old covenants most are more interested in survival than anything else. By 2033 three of the clans are confined to the stations that humanity made into shelters. Ventrue, mekhet and deva still cling to the remnants of humanity where there is food and safety. Of the remaining two gangrel often scour the surface in search of supplies.
However in the darkness of the tunnels that link the stations it is the nosferatu who have truly adapted to the new world. The darkness of the tunnels are a natural haven for the haunts. In the dark tunnels they have found great success in hunting travelers, bandits, and the strange beasts with which they share their domain.
Not all nosferatu abandon their humanity to take to the tunnels, but all haunts feel a pull towards the deep unlit places of the metro. As if some great chthonic voice is calling them down. Haunts who heed this call and never venture to the surface start to change. They appear even more grotesque to the point that no one could mistake them as human. Those who have heeded this call since the war can walk and hunt, even when the sun is in the sky above their heads. From time to time these haunts slip into the stations to steal away a human or two, or an unwitting kindred.
Geist: World of the Dead
The dead are a familiar sight in Moscow after the bombs fell. Much of the city's population was vaporized in an instant, and countless ghosts were created from their sudden death. However it soon became clear to the geists who survived that something was wrong.
What happened next was never understood. Perhaps the system was strained under the weight of so many new souls. Perhaps the sheer amount of death awoke a Death Lord, or perhaps the destruction offended some deity. Regardless of the reason the Underworld stopped dragging down ghosts. Instead it started pushing them out and soon ghosts came to wander the tunnels and stations of the metro. Most are too weak to interact with the living, still more are too wrapped in their own misery to do much more than replay their last moments of life. More powerful and conscious ghosts watch over their living relatives, or haunt the living in abandoned metro tunnels.
Geists with time for introspection have theorized that the metro may have become new layer of the Underwrold. With the world saturated in death it has become so intunned with the Underworld that the two realms have started to merge. The inevitable question is if the Underworld has moved "upward", what happened to the lower levels? A few brave crews have descended to the Underworld after things settled down. Explorers that entered the Autochthonous Depths brought back news that ancient ghosts and chthonians that would normally dwell deep in the Lower Mysteries have migrated to the shallowest parts of the Underworld. Crews that have dared venture to the Lower Mysteries proper have never returned, alive or dead. Until someone returns from the lower depths of the Underworld, the question is largely academic.
Ten years into the apocalypses after the younger ghosts had all escaped, a kerberoi emerged. How it escaped is a mystery to the geists of the city, but no one challenged the kerberoi when it set itself at the epicenter of the blast that leveled the city. It remains there, having carved its own Domain in the world of the living. Most mortals and supernaturals don't know exactly what lies at the center of the blast but stories circulate of a vengeful spirit that punishes those who break strange laws and warn them to stay away.
Changeling: Rule of Winter
When the bombs fell quick thinking or lucky Changelings survived the destruction of the world by hiding in the Hedge. Though even the Hedge was not completely spared from the destruction. Instead of green and entrancing, if treacherous, many parts of the Hedge have grown as barren as the Earth they border. When the changelings that survived returned they found a world burned to cinders and thrust into darkness. Changelings settled into the new existence, and of all the Seasonal Courts, Winter emerged as the dominant force in Moscow. Fear was plentiful, matched only by sorrow and more distantly anger. More importantly humanity turned to the Winter Court's means of survival, they dug in, they isolated themselves and they hid. Winter's dominion has grown so strong that the crowns of the other seasons have not appeared for two decades.
While Winter dominates the tunnels Fall has ingrained itself in circles of humans that search for the lore lost from the ages. Spring, while shrunk to a fraction of its original numbers, tries as it can to lift spirits in the dreariness of the metro and many encourage settlement of the surface. Summer was not content to shuffle off into obscurity. The surviving Summer courtiers decided that they could not fight their way to a better day on Earth. Instead in a moment of desperation and perhaps madness they swore to find greener pastures, and the greenest pastures any could think of is Arcadia. The majority of Summer courtiers have moved to the Hedge where they gather for raids into the lands they tried to escape. Most outside the court agree that conquering Arcadia is impossible, but most of the Summer Court have spent so long in the Hedge or in Arcadia that reality and fiction are impossible to interchange. On occasion war bands of Summer courtiers ride through the metro or over the surface, taking any changelings or humans they find like a True Fae hunting party.
Interestingly changelings found that creating a passage into the Hedge from the metro led to subterranean tunnels instead of the winding thickets most would expect. In these darkened tunnels new hobs lurk in wait and unique breeds of goblin fruit can be found. In the walls of the tunnels are barbed roots that keep an explorer from digging too far off the path. Strangest of all is that the True Fey rarely if ever wander the dark paths. On a few cases a True Fey has even hesitated to chase an escaped changeling into the tunnels, even if they didn't give up the chase.
Hunter: Children of the Metro
By 2033 humanity is just as beset by monsters as it was before the bombs fell, and so long as there are monsters there are hunters. While most people do not believe that vampires or werewolves exist the mutations caused by radiation has made people more willing to accept strange creatures with unusual powers. So in a strange way hunters have an easier time than they did before the bombs fell. People are more willing to believe that you needed to blow the strange pale man's head off, or that you had to collapse a tunnel on the head of some strange regenerating mutant. In some circumstances hunters can become local heroes of the stations, a far cry from hiding from the authorities in an abandoned house. Most compacts and conspiracies of the city were lost with the destruction of the city above, but new ones have formed in the darkness of the metro to take their places. The most notable compacts are the Children of the Metro, and the Harvesters.
The Children of the Metro are almost entirely made up of people born after or just before the bombs fall. This compact patrols dark and unguarded tunnels to make them usable. The Children of the Metro see claiming the metro for humanity to be a holy mission, and they cannot stand to allow any monster, whether supernatural or mutant to live within the tunnels. Of course charging into the most dangerous and uncharted parts of the metro means that the compact suffers grievous losses frequently. More damaging is the fact that the Children of the Metro suspect that particularly cunning monsters can hide among humanity, or even appear human. Their occasional rampages through stations to find these hidden monsters has made enemies throughout the metro, ironically keeping them to unguarded tunnels to avoid angry families or guards.
The Harvesters on the other hand are a common sight in Polis and many other parts of the metro. They are scavengers, bringing back useful tools, guns and parts. On occasion they bring unusual items. Sometimes its something useful but not strange, a gun that never jams, clothes that seem to never tear. Other times they bring blood that can heal any wound, a flute that can calm a raging mutant, the hand of a man who could open any door. Harvesters hunt supernaturals to steal special items to sell them to well paying customers. Sometimes they steal a magical trinket or if the supernatural trick is a part of the supernatural they aren't above cutting up that supernatural to get their pay. Harvesters can most often be found in Hanza but they wander the entirety of the metro.
Smaller hunter organizations are scattered throughout the metro, most are restricted to the protection of their own station. Hunter cells in general act much like they did before. What is different is that the frequent skirmishes and firefights between the stations can draw hunter cells against one another, and on occasion a hunter cell can grow influential enough to control an entire station themselves.
Basic Setting
In 2013 the world was destroyed. Nukes leveled much of the world, including Moscow, leveling much of the city and choked the sky with a thick layer of dust. The war that devastated the world was short lived and no living human remembers the events that triggered the war. What everyone does know is the results, humanity driven to the brink of extinction in a hostile and desolate world.
What humans survived did so in the underground metros. Here survivors settled in the former stations of the old metro, fortified themselves, and made a home for themselves.
The tunnels between the stations are sometimes guarded, but more often they are dark, hazardous, and inhabited by strange and dangerous creatures. The surface is completely inhospitable to human life. Dust clouds from the nuclear blasts often block out the sky, perpetuating harsh winters that never end. Some life does survive in the form of large and aggressive creatures either mutated by the nuclear radiation or by darker forces. A few brave souls, called stalkers, do venture to the surface for supplies or to travel from one part of the metro to another if no tunnel exists.
Though humanity survived the greatest loss of life in history it doesn't mean that stopped factionalism or warfare. The metro's stations
were once managed by Metro Central Command, before infighting tore the metro into the factions of 2033. These days each station acts as their own city states, which form alliances and enemies in the metro. There are many factions, but there are four major alliances in 2033. Polis is an alliance of stations at the heart of the metro, who generally stay out of the fighting in other parts of the metro. The aptly named Red Line is led by communist ideals has the longest stretch of metro tunnels and possibly the largest population, and they war ceaselessly with the Fourth Reich. The Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line, also known as the Fourth Reich, a neo-nazi faction that often wars with the other stations and especially with the Red Line. Finally there is the Ring Line, or Hanza a capitalistic alliance that trades with almost every station of the metro.
Werewolves: Barren Shadow
This story is true. The world outside these stations is dead. Moscow's shadow is an almost unbroken barren, dotted with rare patches of healthy land or more frequently a gaping Wound. Much of the Shadow is empty, and what spirits do hold sway are usually powerful magath who desperately consumed what essence they could and were driven to gibbering madness by their clashing natures. Elsewhere wound spirits revel in the endless misery and pain this new world has to offer. The few healthy parts of the shadow exist either in spared corners of the city or in inhabited metro stations. Here surviving spirits huddle around the remains of humanity like men around a fire, and jealously guard what essence they have.
Most werewolves, Forsaken or Pure, abandoned the city as soon as they could. Uratha are one of the few beings that can survive out in the waste for any long period of time and many used their abilities to find greener pastures. What uratha remain do so out of a sense of duty to nurse the Shadow back to health, or to protect their human families.
But the Flesh is no less hostile to the uratha. Above the blasted world is, while survivable, no less hostile to the children of Father Wolf. Bellow the surface in the tunnels of the Metro the uratha find themselves in an endless war with the remains of the beshilu. The rat host multiply in the tunnels between the stations, and appear to have lost their minds with the destruction of the world. They still gnaw the Gauntlet where they can but they seem to do so in a mad thoughtless rage. They never speak, never communicate, and rarely flee even from the uratha.
Vampire: Dominion of the Haunts
The world died at the hands of thousands of small suns, many of which burned kindred to ash. In Moscow many kindred survived by fleeing into the metro system along with humanity. Soon after the end the Covenants had largely disbanded into social circles. While some do try to keep the practices of the old covenants most are more interested in survival than anything else. By 2033 three of the clans are confined to the stations that humanity made into shelters. Ventrue, mekhet and deva still cling to the remnants of humanity where there is food and safety. Of the remaining two gangrel often scour the surface in search of supplies.
However in the darkness of the tunnels that link the stations it is the nosferatu who have truly adapted to the new world. The darkness of the tunnels are a natural haven for the haunts. In the dark tunnels they have found great success in hunting travelers, bandits, and the strange beasts with which they share their domain.
Not all nosferatu abandon their humanity to take to the tunnels, but all haunts feel a pull towards the deep unlit places of the metro. As if some great chthonic voice is calling them down. Haunts who heed this call and never venture to the surface start to change. They appear even more grotesque to the point that no one could mistake them as human. Those who have heeded this call since the war can walk and hunt, even when the sun is in the sky above their heads. From time to time these haunts slip into the stations to steal away a human or two, or an unwitting kindred.
Geist: World of the Dead
The dead are a familiar sight in Moscow after the bombs fell. Much of the city's population was vaporized in an instant, and countless ghosts were created from their sudden death. However it soon became clear to the geists who survived that something was wrong.
What happened next was never understood. Perhaps the system was strained under the weight of so many new souls. Perhaps the sheer amount of death awoke a Death Lord, or perhaps the destruction offended some deity. Regardless of the reason the Underworld stopped dragging down ghosts. Instead it started pushing them out and soon ghosts came to wander the tunnels and stations of the metro. Most are too weak to interact with the living, still more are too wrapped in their own misery to do much more than replay their last moments of life. More powerful and conscious ghosts watch over their living relatives, or haunt the living in abandoned metro tunnels.
Geists with time for introspection have theorized that the metro may have become new layer of the Underwrold. With the world saturated in death it has become so intunned with the Underworld that the two realms have started to merge. The inevitable question is if the Underworld has moved "upward", what happened to the lower levels? A few brave crews have descended to the Underworld after things settled down. Explorers that entered the Autochthonous Depths brought back news that ancient ghosts and chthonians that would normally dwell deep in the Lower Mysteries have migrated to the shallowest parts of the Underworld. Crews that have dared venture to the Lower Mysteries proper have never returned, alive or dead. Until someone returns from the lower depths of the Underworld, the question is largely academic.
Ten years into the apocalypses after the younger ghosts had all escaped, a kerberoi emerged. How it escaped is a mystery to the geists of the city, but no one challenged the kerberoi when it set itself at the epicenter of the blast that leveled the city. It remains there, having carved its own Domain in the world of the living. Most mortals and supernaturals don't know exactly what lies at the center of the blast but stories circulate of a vengeful spirit that punishes those who break strange laws and warn them to stay away.
Changeling: Rule of Winter
When the bombs fell quick thinking or lucky Changelings survived the destruction of the world by hiding in the Hedge. Though even the Hedge was not completely spared from the destruction. Instead of green and entrancing, if treacherous, many parts of the Hedge have grown as barren as the Earth they border. When the changelings that survived returned they found a world burned to cinders and thrust into darkness. Changelings settled into the new existence, and of all the Seasonal Courts, Winter emerged as the dominant force in Moscow. Fear was plentiful, matched only by sorrow and more distantly anger. More importantly humanity turned to the Winter Court's means of survival, they dug in, they isolated themselves and they hid. Winter's dominion has grown so strong that the crowns of the other seasons have not appeared for two decades.
While Winter dominates the tunnels Fall has ingrained itself in circles of humans that search for the lore lost from the ages. Spring, while shrunk to a fraction of its original numbers, tries as it can to lift spirits in the dreariness of the metro and many encourage settlement of the surface. Summer was not content to shuffle off into obscurity. The surviving Summer courtiers decided that they could not fight their way to a better day on Earth. Instead in a moment of desperation and perhaps madness they swore to find greener pastures, and the greenest pastures any could think of is Arcadia. The majority of Summer courtiers have moved to the Hedge where they gather for raids into the lands they tried to escape. Most outside the court agree that conquering Arcadia is impossible, but most of the Summer Court have spent so long in the Hedge or in Arcadia that reality and fiction are impossible to interchange. On occasion war bands of Summer courtiers ride through the metro or over the surface, taking any changelings or humans they find like a True Fae hunting party.
Interestingly changelings found that creating a passage into the Hedge from the metro led to subterranean tunnels instead of the winding thickets most would expect. In these darkened tunnels new hobs lurk in wait and unique breeds of goblin fruit can be found. In the walls of the tunnels are barbed roots that keep an explorer from digging too far off the path. Strangest of all is that the True Fey rarely if ever wander the dark paths. On a few cases a True Fey has even hesitated to chase an escaped changeling into the tunnels, even if they didn't give up the chase.
Hunter: Children of the Metro
By 2033 humanity is just as beset by monsters as it was before the bombs fell, and so long as there are monsters there are hunters. While most people do not believe that vampires or werewolves exist the mutations caused by radiation has made people more willing to accept strange creatures with unusual powers. So in a strange way hunters have an easier time than they did before the bombs fell. People are more willing to believe that you needed to blow the strange pale man's head off, or that you had to collapse a tunnel on the head of some strange regenerating mutant. In some circumstances hunters can become local heroes of the stations, a far cry from hiding from the authorities in an abandoned house. Most compacts and conspiracies of the city were lost with the destruction of the city above, but new ones have formed in the darkness of the metro to take their places. The most notable compacts are the Children of the Metro, and the Harvesters.
The Children of the Metro are almost entirely made up of people born after or just before the bombs fall. This compact patrols dark and unguarded tunnels to make them usable. The Children of the Metro see claiming the metro for humanity to be a holy mission, and they cannot stand to allow any monster, whether supernatural or mutant to live within the tunnels. Of course charging into the most dangerous and uncharted parts of the metro means that the compact suffers grievous losses frequently. More damaging is the fact that the Children of the Metro suspect that particularly cunning monsters can hide among humanity, or even appear human. Their occasional rampages through stations to find these hidden monsters has made enemies throughout the metro, ironically keeping them to unguarded tunnels to avoid angry families or guards.
The Harvesters on the other hand are a common sight in Polis and many other parts of the metro. They are scavengers, bringing back useful tools, guns and parts. On occasion they bring unusual items. Sometimes its something useful but not strange, a gun that never jams, clothes that seem to never tear. Other times they bring blood that can heal any wound, a flute that can calm a raging mutant, the hand of a man who could open any door. Harvesters hunt supernaturals to steal special items to sell them to well paying customers. Sometimes they steal a magical trinket or if the supernatural trick is a part of the supernatural they aren't above cutting up that supernatural to get their pay. Harvesters can most often be found in Hanza but they wander the entirety of the metro.
Smaller hunter organizations are scattered throughout the metro, most are restricted to the protection of their own station. Hunter cells in general act much like they did before. What is different is that the frequent skirmishes and firefights between the stations can draw hunter cells against one another, and on occasion a hunter cell can grow influential enough to control an entire station themselves.
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