Gah! Not More Inspiration…

So, I was reading a blog on nongaming matters (yeah, I know), and I ran across some ideas for what may be another neat sword & sorcery background. OK, it's really a sort of exaggerated look at the world around us, but it's specifically worded in ways to emphasize the, as the blog author puts it, pulp fantasy nature of the world we find ourselves in. Check these out (from here):

• We live in a world dominated by a vast, slowly decaying empire that gets quite literally superhuman powers by feeding on what we may as well call the blood of the Earth;
• That empire is ruled by a decadent aristocracy that holds court in soaring towers and bolsters its crumbling authority by conjuring vast amounts of wealth out of thin air;
• Backing the aristocracy is a caste of corrupt sorcerers whose incantations, projected into every home through the power of the blood of the Earth, keep the populace disorganized, deluded and passive;
• Entire provinces of the empire are ravaged by droughts, storms, and other disasters caused by the misuse of the Earth’s blood, while prophecies from the past warn of much worse to come;
• Meanwhile, far from the centers of power, the members of a scattered fellowship struggle to find and learn the forgotten lore of an earlier time, which might just hold the secret of survival...

and

Who is the hero or the heroine who will turn the pages of the long-lost Gaianomicon, use its forgotten lore to forge a wand of power out of the rays of the Sun, shatter the deceptive spells of the lords of High Finance, and rise up amidst the wreckage of a dying empire to become one of the seedbearers of an age that is not yet born?

It would make a good counterpoint, I think, to my Terra Ultima setting. Maybe I'll have to run two different games.

Initial thoughts: magic as technology (needs a magic item creation system); alternate magic system using the black blood of the Earth (maybe similar to defiler magic from Dark Sun?) which makes magic items easier to make, and gives more power to the user than the normal magic system, though not overwhelmingly so; alchemical overlords transforming the black blood of the Earth into gold; and so on.