Urban Arcana: The 10 semi-finalist 200-word pitches

Geek Native has revealed the ten semi-finalists for Evil Genius’ Urban Arcana world-building contest.

Each of these ten authors and designers can now expand their proposed world for Evil Genius’ Urban Arcana reboot into a 1,000-world proposal and will be paid to do so. At the end of the process, the winner will be hired.

Urban Arcana pitches

Evil Genius has given each 200-word pitch a nickname or title, and Geek Native has put those in alphabetical order. As a result, we can show you the proposals without linking them to the individual authors.

Please note the authors did not pick these working titles, and each submission may have been tweaked slightly for public display.

Chaos is King

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In the year known to much of the world as 1972, in a country then known as the Republic of South Vietnam, a group of soldiers from a distant land discovered an ancient and abandoned structure that they took for a temple of some forgotten faith. Entering it to take shelter from a storm, they accidentally performed a series of actions that completed what could only be called a magic ritual, one of immense, almost unimaginable power. Immediately, all over the world, magical beings of all sorts arose from the half-worlds in which they had been sleeping, while those of the formerly mundane world who had maintained a belief in occult secrets, or the gifts of beings beyond, now found that those powers were available to them. The planet itself was transformed, with great underground regions appearing from nowhere, causing the collapse of buildings on the surface when their foundations became unstable, and the arrival of alien cities on the land, beneath the sea, and in the sky. In the half century since, the world has become almost unrecognizable to those who lived before the return; as someone once said, “magic is loose in the world, and chaos is king.”

Ebb and Flow

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Magic is a tidal cosmological force, a rip current of protean energy that Ebbs and Flows across the universe. During Magical High Tides, many sapient beings evolve and rise to eminence on Gaia. When Magic inevitably Ebbs, a few civilizations and powerful entities successfully ride the cosmological Tide out of Gaia; fewer still construct Magic-infused pocket dimensions anchored to Gaia and hibernate. Most perish.

Magic reached a High Tide during humanity’s early industrial era, and brought with it global upheaval: pocket dimensions unfurled, reshaped landscapes, and reintroduced magical flora and fauna. Several elder civilizations returned with the Flow of Magic hopeful to recreate their ancestral dominion.

Civilizations composed of elder races and humans waged near-apocalyptic war, brokered truces, and forged economies. Humanity and the elder races raised (and razed) stratosphere-piercing, Mantle-colonizing megalopolises, and syncretized High Tide and Low Tide laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and ontology into new wonders and threats.

Despite the potentiality of the current Magic era, scholars and visionaries of humanity and the elder races grapple with the existential threat of Magic’s inevitable Ebb: which of this Era’s cultures can survive the next Ebb? What and who are they willing to sacrifice for an enduring Gaian presence?

Feng Shui

[Comment on Feng Shui below]

“You ever hear of Feng Shui, kid? And I don’t mean ‘western facing ficus for good luck’ either… I’m talkin’ cosmic level mojo here. Like, multiple realities and dreamscapes colliding and figuring out a way to wedge themselves together and coexist. That’s what I mean by Feng Shui. I don’t fully understand it myself, but, supposedly, that’s how it happened; somebody arranged things in proper alignment and… BOOM, Bilbo’s house is in your backyard and your neighbor’s chihuahua is the size of a moose. Like a bunch of pieces of twine that used to exist independently suddenly got twisted together to make a solid piece of rope and that’s where we find ourselves now.

Course, that was a couple of hundred years ago. Might even be a few dwarves or elves around that witnessed it happen, not that they’d waste their time talking to you or me… but magic… magic’s something anybody with the right gumption can pick up. It’s like I said before about Feng Shui: if you know how to put the right things in the right places, that cosmic level mojo can dance in the palms of your hands. Whadda’ you say kid? Feel like dancin’?”

Panoptic Glamor

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It is easy to forget how much our world has changed. Literally too easy, in fact… because we are ensorcelled.

Trolls are living under the L Train. Harpies roost in the scaffolding of unfinished skyscrapers. Gnomes sublet basements over the Internet. Unicorns graze in city parks… but it all seems normal. Whatever you may think, it is not the elves, dragons, and creatures of myth that are out of place.

For humans, it was a generation ago. A troupe of castaways from a world of concrete, glass, and steel washed up on our shores. All sympathy for the travelers but it would have been better if they had given up their quest before completing the trials; if they had never found The Well. With one misspoken wish, they warped our world into a foggy reflection of their own lost “modern Earth”.

We walk this world under panoptic glamor, living a dream in service to illusion. We can, for a time, awaken and awaken others. Our world is still here; mixed among condos and supermarkets. Primeval glens disguised as neighborhood parks. An office building concealing a sorcerer’s twisted tower beneath its veneer. Cave systems transformed to subways. Uncover what is real.

Places of Power

[Discuss this idea below]

The world itself has no native magic. However, the very fact it has no magic makes it the perfect place for magic from other planes to thrive and to contain unspeakable threats.

The Nazca Lines are a set of constellations, not from this world but from another. When the constellations align once more in relation to each other, magic will once again flow from portals and through the ley lines that criss cross our world.

Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and the Saint Louis Arch. Places where magic seeps through.
Atlantis, Tir Na Nog, Shangri-La. Civilizations that never existed here other than on the other side of portals.

Camelot, the Library of Alexandria, and the Bimini Road. Places that were destroyed when magic left the last time.

Unbeknownst to most, lost to history, the elves were not native to this place. They were assigned as jailers to unknown creatures trapped here due to the lack of native magic. The dwarves were sent here to mine precious ores and craft alloys to contain dangerous creatures from across the dimensions. Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, guard the hidden prisons of the Mi-go and the Starspawn. Of the jailers that watch R’lyeh, there is no knowledge.

Shadowkind

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Magic is a poorly kept secret. Shadowkind needs it to live, various factions want to research, guard against, exploit, or just coexist with it. In a modern world full of governments and corporations, it’s not about who’s ‘good’ or ‘evil’. You either play the game or become the ball.

The fabric of reality is like the Earth’s Crust. Magic comes through volcano-like’ vents’. Vents can erupt (magic on Earth, Buffy’s Hellmouth), have ‘magma chambers’ (otherworlds, e.g. the Backrooms), ‘hotspots’/’ subduction’ (portals in/out of Shadow (Owl House’s door). Vents emerge, erupt, and go extinct, warping their host environment. A supermarket eruption may produce mysterious new snacks. An eruption haunted slaughterhouse will ‘process’ the whole neighborhood if nobody stops it.

Vents connect to “Outside”: a sprawling, interconnected cosmos where ‘elf’ describes dozens of separate races and cultures. Shadowkind adapts to whatever culture they find themselves among. Elven tacos and dwarven sushi are equally likely.

LGBTQIA+ history inspires Shadowkind history. Both are groups living in secret. LGBTQIA+ history commonly features diverse factions uniting against common threats. The popularity of LGBT elements in Urban Fantasy (See: almost every IP listed above) means the heroes we glorify will be among our players.

Shadows Surrounding

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Remember when magic was secret? When things like elves, goblins, and beastmen stayed hidden?

Then the Atlanta Incident happened, when terrorists detonated a dirty bomb at the airport in 2014. A mage tried to contain it, tapped into a leyline in desperation, saved the city… and blew the charade wide open.

Now everybody knows. For decades strange people, often inhuman, from shadowy worlds have been showing up with no memories of their homes. Some brought supernatural talents. As for magic, it’s always been around, tucked away in the deep corners of the world, whether harnessed from mysterious spiritual energies, inner faith, the primal forces of the universe, or the power of the mind itself. Over the last decade, world powers have been reacting to this global upheaval: some to understand, some to control… some to eradicate.

The people who understand the most about the formerly hidden world know how much they still don’t know: the nature and extent of the multiverse, the true potential and source of magical power, the real history of the paranormal and supernatural… or what new upheaval might come next.

So, magic is real. Who knows what else waits in Shadows Surrounding?

Sub Rosa

[Comment on Sub Rosa below]

Magic is real and always has been. While most of humanity lives in a world where everything is as they assume the divine, the mystic, and the primal have always been with us, shaping our reality behind the scenes. The uninitiated, unaware and Mundane, ignore and explain away the fantastic. Even those who seek the hidden world pass it by as it hides in plain sight. To those who have been made Aware, all can be revealed.

Sub Rosa is a “hidden history” scenario based on folklore, conspiracy theory, and real history. In it, there is a hidden layer of magic and mad science that shapes world events. Cults, aliens, secret government agencies, and the fae influence politics, art, and entertainment, all without the rest of the world knowing.

Adventures can be ripped from the headlines, be inspired by urban legends, or taken from historical events. Players delve into the secret world as innocents caught up in events they don’t understand, agents of shadowy forces, investigators intent on exposing the hidden, and so much more. AI wizards run governments, giants and dragons sleep under mountains, madmen and demons dwell in volcano lairs, and much more awaits players in Sub Rosa.

Terra Arcana

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Twice upon a time, the gods created the Earth, with flora and fauna both magical and mundane, as well as several species to serve as caretakers.

Each god granted a gift to one of the species. Elves became masters of magic, dwarves became craftsmen, and humans would embrace technology.

Yet the Trickster god gave one extra gift to each species – desire. Desire would turn into war, and the world was nearly destroyed by those chosen to be its caretakers. Thus, the gods intervened.

The gods split the Earth into two separate worlds. One was a world of technology, while the other was a world of magic. For millennia, the two remained apart.

Yet each world was slowly dying. One could not live without the other. The gods intervened once more. The two worlds were merged back into one. Creatures of magic walked the Earth. Airplanes would soon share the sky with dragons. The ancient elven homeland of Avalon and the lost continent of Atlantis would reappear. Dwarves would find homes within the Rockies and Himalayan mountains, while halflings made a home in New Zealand.

The year is 2035. Welcome to Terra Arcana.

When Worlds Collide

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke

Some say the Large Hadron Collider was the first time a hole was punched through the barrier between the worlds. We know now that we were mistaken. There have been incursions before, way back in the antiquity of humanity in which beings who are Other have approached our campfires from the shadows. These appearances gave rise to such concepts as monsters and magic, stories that, despite our advancements and reason, humanity could never really shake from the far corners of our minds. These past incursions were just that, brief appearances from unknown beings, unable to anchor in place for longer than a generation. The collider changed all of that.

In our sheer hubris, we sought to create a window to peer into the infinitesimal spaces to find meaning. Instead we opened a door that we have been unable to close and that has brought ancient species and magics to Earth. Before, these Other beings were the ones who visited us, but now, we are inadvertently destroying their world, drawing it through to ours. The Large Hadron Collider was the technological singularity that created a new mythological age for humanity.

Quick Links

• Evil Genius Games
• Urban Arcana 10 semi-finalists