Elysium: An Eclipse Phase Supplement

Recently I did a series of maps of Elysium, a megacity in north-western Mars which dominates the region as a sort of transhuman sci-fi LA. This was actually part of a larger deep-dive project as part of a scenario I was making (stay tuned for that, eventually) which I decided to do as a sort of tester for expanding on my usual stuff and learning a bit about how to do more coherent, fuller supplements.

To that end, this set of two documents (one for players of 24 pages, and a larger one for GMs of 44 pages) collects a bunch of story, game, character and image concepts I had rattling around in my head in an effort to significantly expand the city as a living hub for people to explore.

The two images below link to PDFs which for players includes:

• A vignette flavour text set in the hustle of Kingsgate
• Expanded and improved versions of regional maps I’d previously done
• Four-page primer on the city’s history, politics, geography, demographics, transport, culture and economy
• 30+ new locations divided across the three main zones
• A brief intro to an additional zone, The Arches.

Meanwhile for GMs there’s an expanded version, including

• Secret locations,
• Location information not available in the “player” version (which they will need to discover),
• Fourteen fully-statted major NPCs,
• A page on the Oaxaca-Maartens royal family
• Three pages of specialist/generic NPC statlines.

One thing I will say is that while most of the expansion work here was a one-man band sort of effort, which does tend to increase the workload, it really highlighted to me how much work goes into the production of full-scale RPG books and systems. Fair play to the folks who do it full time!

Many thanks go to Posthuman, descriptions from Rimward underpin this supplement and it was only possible to make it in this form thanks to their decision to make Eclipse Phase’s writing and artwork Creative Commons Licensed. Full credits are on page two of the player guide and page 44 of the GM handbook. Thanks also go to Daos for giving it all a once-over.

And finally, a quick disclaimer: This supplement is homebrew, and while it’s in the vast majority as accurate to the original canon description as as I can manage, it does have a couple of minor differences to the Rimward descriptions.

The biggest is a rejig around Bainbridge, which in the canon version is described as “Bainbridge Canyon”, implying it is a canyon of its own to the north of the main part of Elysium North. Given the sizes involved it seemed a great deal more manageable to incorporate this at the top of the Elysium North map instead.

The other is a descriptive note that the Palembeng slums begin where Hyblaeus chasma meets Elysium Chasma. While I’ve not technically changed that, I have overlaid it with Kingsgate, as it made sense to me that this would be where the extraordinary wealth of the booming city would spill out into the surrounding slums, dome by dome, and produce the crossing point where impoverished hopefuls and exploitative sharks circle, looking for their ticket beyond the airlock, to the good life…