Dinosaurs roam the lush, semitropical recursion of Mesozoica. Flocks of T. rexes, triceratops, ankylosauruses, and other creatures that lived during the Mesozoic Era occupy the recursion. Various other terrestrially extinct but anachronistic creatures also inhabit Mesozoica, including mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and a couple of primitive hominid species. This recursion is classified as one of the “Lost World” recursions where dinosaurs yet roam for any number of reasons.
Mesozoica is a massive island ringed by fearsome cliffs. Colossal boulders, many of which resemble eroded sculptures of enigmatic creatures and faces, extend away from the cliffs into the surrounding surf. Inland past the cliffs, the air is moist and warm. Jungle smothers much of the interior. Day or night, the noises of thousands of living creatures blend into a soundscape of buzzing, singing, and occasionally roaring life.
Three volcanoes crown Mesozoica. The peaks smear pillars of smoke across the sky. Sometimes the entire land shakes with seismic violence, and when that happens, fire flares on the volcanic heights.
The foci that player characters can choose in Mesozoica—as well as any foci that are dragged into the recursion—are modified by the recursion’s context, as appropriate. If someone selects Slays Dragons, for example, the focus doesn’t refer to dragons, but to dinosaurs. Other modifications include replacing the sword or lance with a heavy rifle (if desired), both under Equipment and under the various tiers that grant training.
Exploring Mesozoica is dangerous. Every few hours, recursors moving across the island might have a random encounter with a wandering dinosaur or stumble across an island hazard. These encounters should be introduced as GM Intrusions. Not all encounters necessarily lead to combat; recursors should know when to run.
| d6 | Event |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1d6+1 pterodactyls |
| 2 | 1d6 tyrannosaurus rexes |
| 3 | 1d6+2 deinonychus (“velociraptors”) |
| 4 | 1d6 saber-toothed cats |
| 5 | 2d6 savage hominids |
| 6 | Hazard; roll for details |
Pterodactyl: level 5, Speed defense as level 4; health 30; flies a long distance each round
Tyrannosaurus rex: level 7, perception and Speed defense as level 5; health 50
Deinonychus: level 3, perception as level 5, Speed defense as level 4; health 15; Armor 1; bite inflicts 4 points of damage
Saber-toothed cat: level 5; bite inflicts 7 points of damage
The island is thick with hazards. Some are natural, and others were fashioned by hominids, serpent people, or giant insects.
| d6 | Event |
|---|---|
| 1–2 | Tar pit |
| 3 | Insect web |
| 4-5 | Hominid hunter’s trap |
| 6 | Earthquake |
Sometimes tar pits are obvious, but sometimes they’re obscured by tricks of the terrain or situated to catch creatures that slip and tumble from a higher location. Tar pits are filled with a sticky, black, clinging, semisolid fluid called bitumen. Victims who fall into a tar pit must be pulled free or succeed on a difficulty 5 Might-based task before they sink beneath the surface in 1d6+1 rounds.
Webs of almost any variety can be found, or blundered into, on Mesozoica. Some are created by spider colonies, where each spider is no bigger than a recursor’s head. Others are created by insects large enough to challenge a T. rex. It’s usually only a few rounds before a victim struggles free with a successful difficulty 4 Might-based task (unless he becomes particularly entangled, as might happen with a GM Intrusion). The bigger issue is that in struggling to free himself from the web, a victim is almost certain to alert whichever insect (or insect colony) spun the web that dinner is served.
The primitive hominids of the recursion hunt large game by creating camouflaged spiked pit traps (level 5). Explorers who fail a Speed defense roll fall 20 feet (6 m) onto sharpened wooden spikes that inflict 6 points of damage. Sometimes the hominids are close enough to finish off whatever stumbles into their trap.
An episode of unstable footing isn’t too bad, unless explorers happen to be inside a cave, or the earth tears open beneath them. In both cases, a Speed defense roll (whose difficulty is equal to the magnitude of the quake) gets a target out of immediate danger. Those who fail to find safety during a cave-in either are buried under a rockfall or find that their route back to the surface has collapsed. Those who fall into a newly formed crevasse face all manner of unpleasant possibilities, including a very long drop, a crushing experience when the crevasse flexes shut, or a dip into flowing magma.
Veins of gold and crystal, deposits of oil and gas, dinosaur meat, and exotic plants useful for spell components, perfumes, poisons, and medicines can be had in Mesozoica, if one knows how to collect these bounties. Additionally, artifacts of the ancient serpent people are sometimes found deep within caves and weathered temples far inland—artifacts that, despite their power, operate under the law of Standard Physics.
The following are just a few of the interesting locations hosted by Mesozoica, most of which can be found only after an expedition through the deep jungle. Fort Erish is the exception.
Fort Erish hunkers behind a surrounding stockade wall of stone that’s pierced by a main gate, over which two wooden watchtowers glower. At night, torches are lit along the wall tops. The fort is located along the coast, within one of the few gaps in the cliffs that ring the island. Trade ships (including chaos skiffs retrofitted to sail on water as well as in the Chaosphere) sometimes lie at anchor in the waters beyond the crashing surf.
Traders of Ardeyn (under contract to Jagger Shipping) claim Fort Erish, though they didn’t build it. They found the fortress empty and partly in ruins, with few clues about the original owners. The traders rebuilt the fort as best as they were able. Their repairs were crude because Ardeyn operates under the law of Magic, and the traders had to accomplish their construction using less exotic, brute-force methods available in a recursion that operates under the law of Weird Science.
Every few months, the traders are forced to flee the fort or be slaughtered by a dinosaur infestation, a hominid uprising, poisonous volcanic gasses, or something less well understood but blamed on the degenerate race of serpent people that live on the island. The evacuations aren’t always successful, but a new expedition usually arrives within a few months regardless—the resources of Mesozoica are too rich to ignore.
When the fort is occupied by traders, visitors who stumble upon the place are greeted by Captain Marab, who heads most expeditions. Marab treats civilized explorers well, and he puts them up for several days within the safety of the walls without any expectation of payment. Accommodations are basic, but food and ale are plentiful, as are stories and trade opportunities.
Captain Marab: level 4; health 20; long-range pistol attack with bullets coated in level 5 poison
When the fort is vacant, explorers find evidence of hasty evacuation, more than a few bodies of traders who failed to get out in time, and probably remnants of the danger that forced the evacuation.
Mesozoica hosts two savage hominid subspecies that constantly war with each other. The traders of Fort Erish refer to them as Greeneyes and Scarbacks, respectively (not to mention a slew of other less polite names, including “those tailed fuckers” and the “brain-eating brutes”).
Native hominids aren’t advanced enough for a formal language, but they can communicate broad sentiments to one another through grunts, screams, and violent displays. It’s entirely likely that individual outliers exist among both tribes, but most hominids of the recursion lead a savage life, where it’s better to kill strangers than try to communicate with them. After all, when you’re a cannibal who believes you’ll gain the strength of your enemies by roasting them alive and eating their still-sizzling brains, doing anything else is counterproductive.
The slighter, tailed hominid subspecies dyes the fur around their eyes bright green and lives predominantly in nestlike structures hidden in the jungle canopy. Greeneyes employ poison on their spear and dart tips that can paralyze or kill.
Greeneye warrior: level 3, tasks related to stealth as level 5; short-range poisoned dart attack paralyzes victim for two rounds
The upper torsos of the larger-boned, hulking hominid subrace are covered in ritual scarification symbols. Scarbacks tend to inhabit eroded cliff dwellings carved by a much more advanced and apparently extinct race of creatures, which were probably not human. Scarbacks sometimes ride mammoths when they hunt.
Scarback warrior: level 4, tasks related to being brave as level 5; short-range thrown rock attack
Mammoth: level 6, Speed defense as level 3; health 30; Armor 1; tusk attack deals 8 points of damage; trample attack deals 8 points of damage on all victims in immediate area
A structure of black stone slabs shot through with veins of yellowish crystal stands near the base of Mesozoica’s largest volcano. The massive slabs lean against each other to create a not-quite-symmetrical cone. Accessing the interior is as easy as walking through any one of the wide openings between the leaning slabs—or it would be, if the site wasn’t guarded by scaled humanoids with snakelike heads wielding crude weapons. The serpent people of Mesozoica may be devolved and have lost the technology and magic of their forebears, but they retain strong racial instincts. They react violently against mammals, especially those of the humanoid variety.
The enclosed space within the structure seems larger inside than outside. The air is cold and dry, illumination from the exterior doesn’t reach inside, and the floor is completely smooth. At the center is a haze of swirling yellowish radiance almost 10 feet (3 m) in diameter. The blot of rolling light constantly produces a series of tones and belling chimes. Anyone entering the light must succeed on a difficulty 3 Intellect-based defense roll or suffer a baleful time-related effect chosen by the GM: a victim ages a couple of years, disappears for a few hours and reappears without having experienced any intervening time, or devolves into something like one of the hominids (or, if already a hominid, into a large ratlike creature). Someone who succeeds on the Intellect defense roll gains a limited and local mastery over time, and she can choose to move back in time (taking up to three willing allies) to any temporal point that overlaps with her own presence in Mesozoica. Doing so is dangerous, because if her original-time self ever becomes aware of her time-traveling self, one is randomly annihilated, which might strand the survivor in a sealed time loop.
As it happens, many sealed time loops are “stored” in the Temple of Time. Many are filled with horrifying creatures, NPCs, and cursed objects, and restoring any of these prisoners would likely be exceedingly dangerous.
For instance, one of the many time-looped prisoners is a primeval creature the serpent people know as a naga. The black-scaled naga has multiple heads and is well over 100 feet (30 m) in length. In addition to its brute strength, the naga is a veteran schemer and has power over the weather.
Naga: level 8, Speed defense as level 3; Armor 1; three attacks as one action
A serpent person wearing clothing and wielding tools was seen entering the Temple of Time. Since then, the savage serpent people have been agitated, traveling to locations around the island where they haven’t previously ventured. Several seem intent on sailing a hollowed-out log to the recursion’s edge, and perhaps beyond.
Something so sudden and terrible happened in Fort Erish recently that none of the traders there managed to evacuate safely. Unlike with previous attacks, whatever happened in the outpost left behind no blood, no squatting hominids or dinosaurs, and no lingering sickness. Everyone just disappeared. Jagger Shipping wants to find out why.
OSR scientists put a tracker on a T. rex they affectionately call “Ellen” and have been tracking her for several months for research purposes. Now the tracker has gone offline, and the scientists are concerned for their experiment data, and perhaps for Ellen herself. They want someone to venture into Mesozoica’s dangerous interior to the location of the last tracking signal and investigate.
Level: 1d6
Form: Bronze ring shaped like a coiled serpent
Effect: The difficulty of all tasks associated with interacting with dinosaurs and reptiles is modified by one step to the wearer’s benefit. This effect requires no activation or depletion roll. When the ring is activated, it emits a ray of slithering energy at a foe within long range. The snake-shaped ray inflicts damage equal to the artifact’s level. If the wearer chooses to fire an empowered ray (which requires two depletion rolls), it deals 3 additional points of damage.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6+3
Form: Fist-sized orb of solid, swirling light
Effect: When the device is activated as part of another action, the user can look ahead to see how her actions might unfold. She then has an asset on the first task she performs before the end of the next round. If a time key is brought into the Temple of
Time and activated, one named creature or object stored in a sealed time loop is released. If no creature or object is named
(or if no creature or object answers to the name provided), a random creature or object is released.
Depletion: 1 in 1d10