Cypher Setting Focus: Wyld Space

There was a time when the stars were out of our reach. We would see them hanging in the skies from our burrows and branches or reflected in the waters that surrounded us, and no matter how hard we stretched we could never quite touch them—or even really understand them.

But then things changed. We changed. And suddenly we were using those same stars to sail around the world and then we were looking at them from the windows of skyscrapers and finally we were traveling through them. We left our old home far behind us and took our place among those stars, settling into colonies that turned into collectives and finally into a full intergalactic network of planets and moons and stations that all had the same goal—the betterment of all wyldkind.

But we let the corporations have too much control. We traded our lives away for their credits, our knowledge for their entertainment, and our freedom for their convenience and protection. We let them take the spark that drove us to the stars in the first place. But there’s a chance that we can change again. Now that we’ve broken into flux space, we can take everything that we gave them back.

It’s time to remember what it means to be wyld.

Introducing Our Current Setting Focus: Wyld Space!

Wyld Space is a science fiction setting designed on the bones of the Cypher System, so many of the common features, mechanics, and tropes that you would expect from that combination will be present while you’re playing in this setting. However, Wyld Space is its own fully realized world (or system filled with worlds, as it may be) with all of its own original tweaks that make it what it is.

The important quirks of the Wyld Space setting are presented below, as a helpful primer to get you in the right headspace while you’re getting started. Most of these highlights will be explored in greater detail in their appropriate sections later in this book.

You Go Hard, The Sci-Fi Doesn’t

Wyld Space is not a hard science fiction setting. The capability of technology that is available strays far outside the realm of current possibility and dances on the outskirts of the fantastic. Starships powered by cores that make traveling through star systems and back as easy as taking a trip to the town over, nanotechnology that can mend metals designed to withstand the wildest space anomalies, machines that can create food and water out of thin air. The difference in access between those living in collective space and those braving the unknown of flux space may make the availability of certain advancements difficult to come by, but even the most backwater station floating past the bounds of the helix sphere will have use of some piece of tech that would look like magic to those out of the know.

Who You Are

In this setting, humans don’t exist. And beyond that, only the dustiest xenobiologist believes that those ancient aliens ever really existed in the first place. You instead play as wylds, the dominant sapient genus that has claimed the known galaxy and carried the torch of civilization into space. Wyldkind is varied and beautiful, composed of highly evolved anthropomorphic versions of the myriad mammals, birds, and reptiles that you can currently see around you on Earth.

Additionally, you play as an outlier—someone who has been designated as irregular and nonconformist by the Intergalactic Network of Collectives (the governing body of collective space) and the sinister megacorps that truly call the shots behind the scenes. Being designated as an outlier could mean a lot of things in Wyld Space. It could mean that you take direct action against the systems that you see as corrupt. It could simply mean that you want to live as freely and purely as possible on your own terms. It could also mean that you’re an active criminal running various contraband back and forth through flux space. At the end of the day, being an outlier means that you refuse to cow down to the accepted status quo.

Who They Are

The primary antagonists of Wyld Space are the government and the corporations that secretly control it. The Intergalactic Network of Collectives (INC), although founded with lofty goals and good intentions, was quickly corrupted by the influence and money of the three megacorps that were allowed to bloat out of control. Mercenary groups, bounty hunters, and purchased police are just a fraction of the corpo agents that you’ll have to maneuver as you traverse the setting.

Void Titans

Colossal beasts with their own biological equivalents of ship-to-ship weaponry, void titans (or simply titans) are creatures that stalk flux space and hunt the starships that brave the sector. Trapped behind the fury of the helix sphere, those who stay within the safety of collective space never have to worry about these alien terrors—which is knowledge that the megacorps are more than happy to propagate.

Element 427: Foxfire

Element 427, called foxfire by everyone but corpo scientists, was the miracle discovery that changed the course of wyldkind forever. Not truly understood, but coveted nonetheless, foxfire is a quantum material highly valued for its matter-enhancing and physics-defying characteristics. Any of the truly fantastic properties exhibited by ships, weapons, cyphers, or artifacts can be tied to foxfire, and its presence in flux space is what drives the megacorps to push into the sector.

Kinetics

Whether the result of genetic tampering, the presence of foxfire, or a little of both, there are wylds who can manipulate the world around them using only the powers of their mind. Called kinetics, these incredible people can create fire, generate electricity, or turn their bodies into living weapons with only a thought.

And that’s only a portion of what you’ll be able to unlock and explore in Wyld Space!

Ready To Get Wyld?

Join our Patreon at the $3 monthly tier and receive all early access updates for Wyld Space as well as exclusive feedback and playtest surveys that allow you to impact the setting!

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