The Blood Map

The Lore of Retrograde and its Occult Vision of the Future

One of my favorite parts of creating Retrograde has been developing the lore of the narrative universe Retrograde’s adventures take place in. It’s also an intrinsic part of my creative process. While there are inevitably many things in my narratives that remain question marks, having a basic understanding of the context of Retrograde’s adventures is critical to their creation. I’ve developed a good deal of history, politics, and culture for the world of Retrograde in the course of writing my adventures, and I’m eager to share some of that lore here with you!

Blood Ink

Blood Ink Teleportation is at the core of Retrograde’s lore and is the primary jumping-off point for the Retrograde adventure Overprint. Blood Ink Teleportation, colloquially known as “Blinking,” is the only known way of traveling faster than the speed of light for the humans of the 25th century. Blinking is an arcane process by which the blood of human mutants is made into ink which is used to print star charts that teleport the printing press to the exact position indicated by the star chart. Starships are built to be massive printing presses, printing huge, ultra-detailed star charts to ensure the accuracy of the teleportation. Despite the greatest attention to detail, there is a limit to the precision possible with interstellar teleportation, and to avoid disastrous teleportation accidents, most Blinks typically travel only a few dozen light years away.

Blood Ink Teleportation is at the heart of Retrograde’s retrofuturist vision of the future. The speed of light prevents the formation of a galaxy-wide “internet,” and humanity returns to print mass media as a means to remain connected across the vastness of the stars, with Sanguitype Telepress ships carrying newspapers, magazines, and books to distant worlds. While most developed planets have their own internets and radio stations, having tangible news directly from distant peoples has brought about a general resurgence of print culture.

As well as making Blood Ink Teleportation possible, Blood Ink has immense supernatural power, and those who carefully study and experiment with its properties can learn to cast powerful spells and bend reality to their will. Alchemists and majisters continue to unlock new powers of Blood Ink, and scholars and explorers of all sorts seek to unravel the mystical origin of Blood Ink and search for answers in ancient legends of the Cosmos Unending.

The Gutenberg Hegemony

Gutenberg, Ink. is the largest pressing company in the galaxy and has a de facto monopoly over Blood Ink Teleportation within the primary sectors of Civilized Space. Gutenberg traces its origins to the Season Unending, the collapse of Earth’s biosphere at the end of the 21st century, and the company pioneered key terraforming technology that allowed it to lead reconstruction efforts. Gutenberg also claims to have discovered the secrets of Blood Ink Teleportation, and in the early years of humanity’s interstellar colonization Gutenberg secured an exclusive pressing license from the United Earth Government. Now, Gutenberg has thoroughly entrenched its power on every developed planet in the core systems, eclipsing the power of the UEG and standing as humanity’s hegemon.

Gutenberg’s control over interstellar pressing also gives it control over interstellar communication: all media distributed via Gutenberg pressers is subject to censorship, and most developed planets have major media organs controlled by Gutenberg. Among its many illicit projects, Gutenberg has the galaxy’s most learned alchemists and maddest scientists experimenting with the properties of Blood Ink, and Gutenberg is known to send expeditions to recover and study uncovered artifacts of the Cosmos Unending, no matter the danger such occult endeavors entail.

While Gutenberg’s power is great, many stand to gain from the downfall of such a titanic beast, and Gutenberg ruthlessly suppresses dissent and crushes competition. But Gutenberg’s immense size makes it unwieldy, and Gutenberg struggles to keep a grip on new colonies, particularly in the Blackletter Frontier. Smuggler bands have organized into semi-legitimate frontier pressing companies, and the Blackletter colonies are slowly but surely calling for independence and preparing to stand against Gutenberg’s inevitable reprisals.

While the colonies clamor for independence from Gutenberg, isolated pockets of humanity are already living beyond the company’s reach. These so-called “Lost Worlds” typically originate from early interstellar colonization efforts that lost contact with the United Earth Government, but stories also arise of bold sojourners setting forth into the unknown to break free from Gutenberg’s dominion. Many of these Lost Worlds have lost knowledge of Blood Ink Teleportation or have even regressed to technological levels reminiscent of human civilizations in the middle ages. While a few of these Lost Worlds have been encountered and absorbed, willingly or no, into Gutenberg’s domains, most slumber peacefully in quiet corners of the galaxy. Each Lost World has its own stargazers, trying to parse truth in the legends of their origins, wondering if there are others looking back when they gaze up at the heavens.

The Cosmos Unending

Simmering beneath humanity’s current position amongst the stars is a quiet, dreadful fact: Blood Ink Teleportation is an explicitly supernatural process, and the phenomena suggests that yet greater powers beyond human comprehension govern the mechanisms of the universe. Many esotericists and practitioners of Blood Magic have come to believe that these mechanisms are set into motion by a dualist force called the Cosmos Unending, the Unending Dark and the Unending Light. Scholars of the Cosmos Unending claim that avatars of the opposing cosmic forces have surfaced many times in human history, including the rumored alchemist Zosimos and their legendary intercession in the Season Unending. Reports of unexplainable phenmonena on remote planets have also led many to believe that animate Shards of the Unending are strewn across the galaxy, waiting to bestow cosmic gifts – or unleash great horrors – upon those who stir them from their ancient slumbers.

None of this, of course, is substantiated. But the legends persists – it may well fall to you to find the truth to them, and uncover secrets of the universe and its making hidden amongst the stars.

If you’re curious to see Retrograde’s lore in action, you can read The Bone Record adventure for free right here and back our Kickstarter campaign here! There are plenty of secrets to unravel and plenty of room for you to write your own adventures in the universe of Retrograde, and I’m immensely eager to hear about the stories you tell together.

Thanks for reading!

–Nathaniel