The World of Lady Chiv’s
Character & World Exploration
Spring 2026, Exploration of the world featured in my thesis,
the table top roleplaying game Lady Chiv’s Haven
for Urchins & Gutternsipes
Medium: Graphite, Ink
the table top roleplaying game Lady Chiv’s Haven
for Urchins & Gutternsipes
Medium: Graphite, Ink
9 pages of character and creature exploration,
3 item explorations, 2 pages of enviromental exploration
3 item explorations, 2 pages of enviromental exploration
SYNOPSIS:
The Year is 1956. In an age of nuclear progress, mankind is found focused on the sorts of things it tends to be. In no less than two days, the United States and Soviet Union are reduced to a state of irradiated rubble. But you see, total atomic annihilation is a rather messy business. Something was lost in the wrong place or the wrong time, all that the residents of Isle Duncott knew was that a piece of the sky came whistling down and went splash into the harbor. The Palaemon bomb took it’s residence unter the water, and after decades it would begin leeching radiation into Isle Duncott. The story proposes a battle of ideals and an exploration on how Religion would survive given the destruction of society, albiet in a tongue-in-cheek-manner.
THE NUNS, THE ORPHANS, AND THE ORPHANAGE.
A bastion of this pre-apocalyptic delusion is Lady Chiv’s. A quaint little nunnery and orphanage, more formally known as Lady Chiv’s Haven for Urchins and Guttersnipes. As more and more information about life before the war is lost to time, the Sisters of Lady Chiv’s pick up the scraps of a dying religion to do something worthwhile; caring for the apocalypse’s abundance of parentless children. It is run by the enigmatic Lady Chiv herself, a quiet but towering woman with seemingly psychic powers. Both the nuns and the orphans are varied and lively cast of characters , I can only imagine nuclear apocalypse creating the strangest of people. They all each have their own little quirk or gimmick that makes them strange in our world, but fit in at Lady Chiv’s.
THE CHURCH OF PALAEMON:
Decades pass after the initial fallout, Isle Duncott scraps by significantly better than the places that had been directly hit. However, the bomb slowly leaches radiation into the waters of Isle Duncott, mutating it’s residents both human and marine. The Church of Palaemon is born, a cult revering the Palaemon bomb as the true rapture of God as it turns the townspeople more aquatic and the sea life more human. The church is made up of both people and sea creatures but with the growing mutations it’s almost hard to tell the difference between the two.
I took inspiration from the H.P. Lovecraft story The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The relevance to Lady Chiv’s through the concept of a cult in a secluded town worshiping an old god are slowly transformed into fish-like creatures. I wondered what if a cult revered a nuclear bomb as a similar sort of god? It’s something that can kill you without even touching you. It can level cities. Even if you survive, it can make you sick but produce no smell, no feeling, you can’t see it, it’s just there. In a world where there is no access to education and that is all they know, doesn’t it kind of seem like some sort of angry god?
The Year is 1956. In an age of nuclear progress, mankind is found focused on the sorts of things it tends to be. In no less than two days, the United States and Soviet Union are reduced to a state of irradiated rubble. But you see, total atomic annihilation is a rather messy business. Something was lost in the wrong place or the wrong time, all that the residents of Isle Duncott knew was that a piece of the sky came whistling down and went splash into the harbor. The Palaemon bomb took it’s residence unter the water, and after decades it would begin leeching radiation into Isle Duncott. The story proposes a battle of ideals and an exploration on how Religion would survive given the destruction of society, albiet in a tongue-in-cheek-manner.
THE NUNS, THE ORPHANS, AND THE ORPHANAGE.
A bastion of this pre-apocalyptic delusion is Lady Chiv’s. A quaint little nunnery and orphanage, more formally known as Lady Chiv’s Haven for Urchins and Guttersnipes. As more and more information about life before the war is lost to time, the Sisters of Lady Chiv’s pick up the scraps of a dying religion to do something worthwhile; caring for the apocalypse’s abundance of parentless children. It is run by the enigmatic Lady Chiv herself, a quiet but towering woman with seemingly psychic powers. Both the nuns and the orphans are varied and lively cast of characters , I can only imagine nuclear apocalypse creating the strangest of people. They all each have their own little quirk or gimmick that makes them strange in our world, but fit in at Lady Chiv’s.
THE CHURCH OF PALAEMON:
Decades pass after the initial fallout, Isle Duncott scraps by significantly better than the places that had been directly hit. However, the bomb slowly leaches radiation into the waters of Isle Duncott, mutating it’s residents both human and marine. The Church of Palaemon is born, a cult revering the Palaemon bomb as the true rapture of God as it turns the townspeople more aquatic and the sea life more human. The church is made up of both people and sea creatures but with the growing mutations it’s almost hard to tell the difference between the two.
I took inspiration from the H.P. Lovecraft story The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The relevance to Lady Chiv’s through the concept of a cult in a secluded town worshiping an old god are slowly transformed into fish-like creatures. I wondered what if a cult revered a nuclear bomb as a similar sort of god? It’s something that can kill you without even touching you. It can level cities. Even if you survive, it can make you sick but produce no smell, no feeling, you can’t see it, it’s just there. In a world where there is no access to education and that is all they know, doesn’t it kind of seem like some sort of angry god?