The World — The Mind of Nox

Genre: Grimdark Urban Fantasy — Industrial Noir
Magic: Rising Magic

PCs have access to Magic, Magic is aggressively taking over the material plane
Technology: High Tech
Everyone has access to technology

Time

For math simplicity and since this is an alternate world we don't have to play exactly to normal things.

There are 7 days in the week.
There are 91 days in a Season. Day 46 is the peak of the Season.
Each phase of the moon lasts 3 days.

The Realms

There are three separate realms

The Iron Veil or better know to most people as The Mortal Realm or The Material Plane — you know where we live right now. Magic doesn't exist in a natural state here.
The Nether — a dark, depressing realm similar to the material plane but magic exists and is dark, aggressive and wants to expand.
The Wyld — a mystical and whimsical realm similar to the material plan where magic exists

The City

Today the city is called Old New York. We are the first line of defense and the hub from which all other offense begins. The Nether forces call it "The Thorn." We harry them at all times — we are the tip of the spear.

The Iron-Root is the only place where the Chorari maintain a mound directly into Wyld. It is buried deep with in the caverns below the City where they protect the only clean and purified water source. It is the only reason the Iron-Root and humanity has survived this long.

The

The Timeline (1952–2026)

December 1952 – The Nether Incursion (The Great Smog): The Nether successfully breaks through the boundary of the Iron Veil, choosing London as its ground zero. The heavy, sulfurous smog that smothers the city isn't just pollution; it is the dark, aggressive magical atmosphere of the Nether bleeding into the Material Plane to force its expansion.
1953 to 1960 – The Unethical Conquest: The Nether doesn't launch a loud, explosive invasion; it uses the creeping dark to slowly conquer the Iron Veil. The aggressive magic corrupts the natural environment, cutting off global shipping lanes, disabling long-range radio frequencies, and transforming mundane wildlife into horrific, dark-magic monstrosities. Governments collapse or turn into totalitarian regimes just to keep order inside the encroaching dark.
1962 to 1968 – The Squeeze (The Death of the Rural World): As the Nether's dark magic expands outward from the initial breach zones, it targets global agriculture and infrastructure. Crops rot into ash overnight, livestock are mutated into aggressive predators, and the space between cities becomes completely unnavigable. Humanity has no choice but to abandon the countryside, farms, and small towns in a massive, panicked migration toward the largest industrial manufacturing hubs.
1970 – The Trap Closes (The Perimeter Protocols): The major metropolitan areas that successfully survived the migration rapidly build massive, diesel-fueled soot-furnaces and heavy iron perimeter walls to physically keep the Nether's creeping rot and monsters out. At first, humans view these walled strongholds as their salvation—the only places left on Earth with functioning analog grids, clean water processing, and concentrated defense forces.
1970 to 1985 – The Age of Hardened Analog Tech: With the sky permanently choked by Nether ash, humanity adapts to survive. Because digital silicon and micro-processors are highly volatile and easily corrupted by dark Nether magic, technological advancement completely freezes in the analog era. Society masters vacuum tubes, heavy diesel combustion, hardwired copper phone networks, and massive mechanical systems to keep the prison-cities running.
1980 – The Realization of the "Prison": Over the decades, the true nature of these strongholds becomes terrifyingly clear. The Nether didn't fail to destroy these cities; it herded humanity into them. By condensing billions of humans into a handful of hyper-dense, walled concrete labyrinths, the Nether effectively created massive pens.
2000 – The Rise of the Monster-Wright Class: Resources in the isolated, walled cities are dangerously low. Human survivors and Wyld Hunters discover that the aggressive Nether magic animating the monsters can be harvested. "Monster-wrights" emerge as a vital economic and survival class, using anatomical precision to butcher Nether beasts and craft their remains into heavy machinery, weapons, and arcane power conduits for the city grids.
2026 – The Present Day Gridlock: The Iron Veil is a grim, twilight world of industrial machinery, dark brick, and hissing steam pipes. Humanity is completely blind to the larger cosmic war, simply trying to survive the night inside their walled cities. Meanwhile, beneath the soot-gray sky, Wyld Hunters wage a quiet, brutal guerrilla war against the dominant Nether forces, utilizing the very monsters the Nether brought with them to fuel the resistance.

The Wyld's Response

1965 – The Wyld Response (The Lone Hunters): Realizing the Nether is winning and has unethically claimed the Iron Veil, the whimsical and mystical realm of the Wyld intervenes. Because the Wyld's denizens are long-lived, they view this war on a massive, patient timescale. They refuse to send destructive armies into the Mortal Realm; instead, they begin inserting elite, specialized single "Hunters" into the Iron Veil to systematically dismantle Nether influence from the shadows.

1974 – The Anchoring of the Wellsprings: The Nether attempts to corrupt the major underground aquifers feeding the newly formed prison-cities to poison humanity's water supply. Coordinated Wyld Hunters purify and seal key subterranean junctions by planting hidden, Wyld-infused flora deep within the plumbing networks. The water remains pure, providing a vital, invisible victory that keeps billions of humans alive.
1988 – The Great Purge of the Industrial District: A massive Nether Vanguard Fiend manifests inside a vital human manufacturing sector, threatening to collapse the perimeter walls from within. Operating entirely in the shadows, a small pack of Wyld Hunters lures the beast into the deep boiler rooms. Using guerrilla tactics and the city's own roaring steam infrastructure, they dismantle the entity over a brutal forty-eight-hour hunt. The human authorities attribute the explosion to a "spontaneous boiler malfunction."
1995 – The Whispering Code: As the Nether begins jamming the city's hardwired copper communication networks with oppressive magical static, Wyld Hunters quietly introduce a specific, rhythmic audio frequency derived from the natural, musical language of the Wyld. They teach this frequency to select human resistance cells, creating an un-interceptable underground auditory network to share blueprints and monster movements.
2000 – The Teaching of the Monster-Wright Art: Resources in the isolated, walled cities are dangerously low. Human survivors and Wyld Hunters discover that the aggressive Nether magic animating the monsters can be harvested. "Monster-wrights" emerge as a vital economic and survival class, using anatomical precision to butcher Nether beasts and craft their remains into heavy machinery, weapons, and arcane power conduits for the city grids.
2012 – The Blooming Fire Incident: A severe coal shortage threatens to shut down the massive soot-furnaces protecting a city's perimeter during a magically induced winter storm. A Wyld Hunter assassinates the Nether commander orchestrating the freeze and uses its concentrated core to hyper-charge the central furnaces. When the monster-wrights stoke the fires with the harvested essence, the furnaces roar with a blinding radiance that drives the invading horde back miles into the waste.
2026 – The Present Day Gridlock: The Iron Veil is a grim, twilight world of industrial machinery, dark brick, and hissing steam pipes. Humanity remains largely blind to the larger cosmic war, focused entirely on daily survival. Meanwhile, beneath the soot-gray sky, Wyld Hunters continue to wage their quiet, patient guerrilla war—utilizing the very monsters the Nether brought with them to fuel a slow-burning global resistance.