GAINS RPG is a dark fantasy post-apocalypse blending Dark Sun, Fallout, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Mad Max. Under two suns — one wandering, one fixed and flickering — four survivors protect Mihu, a child carrying the last great source of magic, from Morvath: an ancient lich who believes destroying magic will heal the world he shattered once already. His cult, the Order of the Source, hunts her across a wasteland of scavengers, insectoid Chitinikk, and a corrupted AI called Xaad-aaj. Themes: a natural cycle worth protecting even from good intentions; corruption that tempts rather than forces; ordinary people unknowingly serving evil; the cost of protection itself. Atmosphere: horror through implication, not exposition — clinical villains, quiet dread, dark humor holding the world together between despair.

The Fog That Counts the Living

The White Lung Basin appears first as a pale wound beneath the two suns. Salt stretches to every horizon, broken by black stone ribs and the skeletons of machines whose purpose no living person remembers. The wandering sun burns overhead, while the fixed sun flickers in place, turning every shadow into a brief, incorrect version of itself. Fog creeps along the ground despite the heat. It smells of pennies, wet ash, and something medicinal left too long in a sealed room. Half-buried wagons mark the old road. Their canvas has become translucent saltglass, and their wheels are arranged in careful circles around a dry firepit. Beneath the crust, something clicks once, then stops. Farther ahead, black spires divide the basin into the narrow passages of Needleback Ravine. A voice drifts from them in the wind, calm and bloodless: a route calculation, a child's name, and an assurance that the most efficient protection is sometimes abandonment. The wasteland does not force anyone to choose the cruel path. It merely makes that path sound practical. Every safe route costs water. Every ally has been lied to. Every useful machine remembers a master who may still be listening.