Broken: The Memory of Solaris



Broken: The Memory of Solaris is a campaign setting for the d20 roleplaying system. It tells the story of the world of Solaris, which came to its untimely end. Survivors were thrust into the cold void of space with few resources, little hope and only magic and luck to keep them alive. It is 40 years later. The original survivors are well established, or at least adjusted to their lot in life, floating in space on a chunk of rock many miles from the next nearest rock. A second generation of survivors are growing up in the void with no memory of their lost world, seeking to make things better in a void they have always called home.

Broken explores the very real problems of weightlessness, radiation, cold, heat, how many plants are required to produce enough oxygen, carbon dioxide poisoning, and so on, that are encountered in space. Solutions are achieved with both mundane and magical means to keep the survivors, perhaps not flurishing, but alive.

This book is full color with sprawling spacescape backgrounds. A parchment, floating in space, starts on the first page and ends near the last and contains the text of the book. The book was originally created in a layout format (wide) because it fits very well on screen in its intended PDF format. For publication however, no such landscape format was available and the artwork was taken back to photoshop for editing into a portrait (tall) format. Most of the art was left unaltered but the backgrounds and certain full-page pictures had to be modified to suit the new format so that a print could be made.

Broken was written in 2002 by Mark Charke as a 10 page writing sample. A publisher asked Charke to develop it into a book, but went out of business before publishing it. The now 100 page Broken was playtested and editing off and on for several years, until it was accepted by The Le Games in fall 2006 who asked about art for the text. Creating more than 50 pieces of art and doing the layout, Charke finished the book in mid 2007.

Expansions for Broken are in progress and include Broken: The Lost Moon, the story of the moon of Solaris shrouded in sandstorms and populated by lycanthrope tribes, druids and undead and Broken: The Pipedream, home of the glomes where one young glome's plan may give new hope to the dream. Art, writing and layout will once again be performed by Mark Charke.