The Planet at the End of the Universe
I conducted a poll on Mastodon, asking what folks would like to see in my next few posts, and the majority was very clear: you want to read about setting ideas. I've had a few over the years, but three stick with me. This is the first one.
The place? The last known planet in the universe, orbiting the last known red dwarf star still shining. The time? The end of the Stelliferous Era... effectively, the end of the Universe, as far as life is concerned, 100 trillion years after its birth in the Big Bang.
Some time in the deep past, a powerful civilization created a sanctuary on a small world orbiting a quiescent, long-lived red dwarf star. It sampled life from across the cosmos and placed living beings on this world, under a great shield. Bathed in the star's crimson light, or hidden in the glowing tunnels and caverns deep under the surface, this life thrived and changed. Other beings, held in stasis below to avoid overwhelming the ecosystem, were occasionally released.
As the stars and galaxies snuffed out, this last world continued hosting life, until it became all that was known to its inhabitants of the cosmos. Aside from the great red eye of the Last Sun, the sky is black. Empty. Silent.
Outside the dome, which rests upon a ring of mountains from which waters flow toward the inner sea, all is barren. There is no reason to try to escape. Under the dome, the fruitful lands surround the last sea. In the center of the sea stands an island with a strange tower. No one knows for certain what the tower contains, nor what its roots might lead to, as the island is considered sacrosanct. In truth, the tower is a projection of the great, ancient machines maintaining the shield, and it extends down to the very core of the world, full of incomprehensible miracles.
In the red light, growing plants have become black, to more efficiently absorb energy. Sophonts in a bewildering variety of forms gather in villages -- some tribal, others more cosmopolitan -- but never too many in one place. Underground, the world is riddled with caves and passages hosting even more bizarre life, and the walls glow in a riot of colors.
No one knows how much time is left before this last star too dies, and with it extinguishes light itself in the universe. No one even knows there was a universe beyond this, anymore.
Except the machines. The machines remember.
This is my attempt at a setting for "weird" fiction, fantasy and sci-fi divorced from modern tropes. I wanted somewhere I could play with my wildest imaginings. It has more in common with C. M. Kösemen's book "All Tomorrows" than it does with, say, Numenera, but that game could also be a good source of ideas. There's room for humans, as one of the species kept in stasis and released only relatively lately. There's room for pretty much everything you could want. All it needs is a system.