Repairing the World - A Solarpunk Nation RP
”... -n… -ome… in… -one… out there? -nyone out there? If… out there… -ease reply, -er. C-...-lling -nybody to… -ait… Allah b-... -raised! Ijah! We… signal! Hello?!crackle Hello! Come -n! This… Ashoka Bodh…padyai. Ugh-! Stu-... -d sig-...-al is so… There! Hello?! This is Ashoka Bodhisattvachatopadyai, calling from Basecamp Nusantara in what was once Indonesia. We have done out best to rebuild here after the… Well, I am sure I don't need to tell you anything. I am sure we both agree that, no matter what happened, Allah willing, we can only move up from here. We have a long road ahead, but hopefully we can rebuild a better world than what we inherited. Tell me: Where are you calling from and how many are with you?”
Art by Jimmy P. Duda, artstation.com/jimmy_duda.
The year is 2100. The wounds suffered upon the Planet Earth and its billions of inhabitants by the heritage of the Industrial Revolution has left the world in an unrecognisable state. The scale of destruction wrought during the past century and a half is beyond any method of measurement, and humanity and non-humanity have both paid dearly for the dreams of the few. Great sorrows have swept across every continent: war, famine, thirst, disease, infertility. Trauma lives in every heart.
Yet while time neither an arrow nor a circle but something in between, it is nonetheless impossible to rewind. Global communications are slowly coming back online, and while there are disagreements and bitter hatred over many things, all that remains of humanity agree on one thing: The mistakes of the past exist alongside us as very contemporary entities, and while they may never be undone, we can do our best to correct them.
In that sense, there is hope that the future may yet again improve.
In this roleplay, you take on the role of a nation, a community or even an individual and explore their existence in a world very similar and yet profoundly different from our own. Most global institutions, if not all, have collapsed completely, and many countries have become unrecognisable from their contemporary form. Perhaps your community will try to amend the consequences of climate change by returning a much less affluent, but stable way of life for its people? Or maybe you want to explore lives of descendants of the global elite who have isolated themselves in impenetrable bunkers on distant islands, continuing their lives much like before? Maybe your community believes climate change was a hoax and that the world ended because it was God's will? Or maybe you want to explore the life of a lone vagrant, travelling the vastness of the world and witnessing the undergrowth reclaiming the soil that concrete stole from it all those years ago? The world is your oyster (provided it hasn't gone extinct).
The aesthetic of the RP is inspired by solarpunk, but you may dress your community in any way you want, from sci-fi technology to palaeolithic. However, I would encourage everyone to explore the holistic consequences of their community's way of life: How would a coal-powered city be viewed by their neighbours in the wake of climate change? Where would the resources enabling your people's affluence come from? Can radical changes in ways of life take place if the community elders grew up in vast luxury? Lots of ways to conceptualise the future - let's play with them!
DISCLAIMER: As you may already have picked up, this RP will necessarily touch on a lot of political, philosophical and religious topics. All are welcome to join and explore these topics, and are encouraged to work with different angles, but I sincerely hope that we can remain respectful of each other regardless of our views.