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Numenera: The Amber Archive

Created by Monte Cook Games

The wondrous and inspiring science-fantasy RPG Numenera returns in a new edition filled with new art, creatures, lore, numenera items, and adventures. Step into the amazing Ninth World—a critically acclaimed, fan-loved RPG setting like none other!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

A new, creepy creature from the Ninth World introduced by Bruce Cordell!
9 days ago – Thu, Oct 29, 2026 at 10:05:51 AM

Iadace, backers,

Happy spooky season! What are you going as for this Halloween—are you leaning into tricks or treats? We want to see some cat and dog seskii costumes!

Design work for Numenera, and all of the other amazing products, books, and games we funded in this crowdfunding campaign, is still underway! Today, we have an exciting update to share with you from MCG senior designer Bruce R. Cordell detailing a brand-new creature you could encounter in the Ninth World—or force your players to encounter.  

Want to hear about the keliths?



Discrepant and incongruous, keliths are a patchwork abhuman clade made of shuffled limbs, skin patches, hair tufts, and a bonanza of disparate flesh stitched with silvery threads. Rather than a sign of fragility, kelith variance signals their vitality: when a kelith is harmed, they shatter into pieces, and everything close enough to be affected does too, including other kelith and every other nearby creature. Then the biomechanical threads that run through each kelith (instead of arteries and veins) stitch them back together, creating a fully healthy individual, even if they’re not quite the same abhuman as before.

Kelith live like other abhumans, in low-tech hunter-gatherer communities. They communicate by extending biomechanical threads between them and they have higher-than-average empathy for each other, since one kelith’s health could one day affect another’s, but that grace doesn’t usually extend to other creatures.

–Bruce

How would you incorporate this abuman clade into your Numenera game?

“I don’t know what horses do, but they seem shifty…” (Check out this cool Numenera Actual Play on RPGbot.net!)

What happens when a mysterious cowboy rides out of a deadly desert, introduces himself, and immediately falls off his horse? Naturally, you trust his god, open a door that’s been locked for thousands of years, and discover your entire village might be living inside a dead monster. Welcome to Numenera, where the birds are terrifying, the technology is incomprehensible, and Tyler can’t roll above a five when it matters. At least Ash gets a pet dinosaur. Things are going great.

“It’s time to put Numenera to the test! In Part 1 of our RPGBOT.Quickstart Numenera actual play, Randall takes the GM’s chair while Tyler and Ash explore the Ninth World using the Cypher System.

Their adventure begins in the isolated village of La Gorge, where a wounded stranger arrives with warnings of an approaching scourge. A mysterious goddess reveals that the village hides an ancient secret, sending our heroes through a long-sealed door to awaken something that might save their home.

Inside, they encounter prehistoric nightmares, adopt an unexpected companion, and explore forgotten technology while learning Numenera combat, character abilities, GM intrusions, and the game’s unique crafting and salvaging mechanics. Along the way, they discover that ancient technology is considerably harder to operate when nobody remembers what a hydroelectric dam is.

It’s a hands-on introduction to playing Numenera!”


Soar in the air on your giant crow companion with Between Earth & Sky: the Roleplaying Game 

Celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic…bring your own story to life in the Meridian, the setting of Rebecca Roanhorse's bestselling Black Sun trilogy, with this TTRPG of fantastical magic, fickle gods, and dangerous choices!



The War of the Spear ravaged the people of the Meridian. The Treaty of Hokaia gave them three centuries of peace. Now the gods—and the forbidden magic—threaten to destroy all they built. The Celestial Tower has fallen; the Watchers dead or scattered; the Sun Priest no more… 

Based on the acclaimed bestselling novels of Rebecca Roanhorse—Black Sun, Fevered Star, and Mirrored Heavens—Between Earth & Sky: the Roleplaying Game immerses you in the Meridian, a rich and beautifully detailed high fantasy world inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas.

Have questions about the game? Lead Designer Shanna Germain (she/her) will be hosting a live AMA on TONIGHT at 7:30 PM CT! Won’t you join us? Head on over to the Cypher Unlimited Discord, (the ⁠ama-between-earth-and-sky channel) to post your questions—the earlier you leave them, the better chance they'll be answered live on stream!

Thanks for your support!
 – Team MCG

Design Update from Shanna Germain!
about 2 months ago – Thu, Sep 10, 2026 at 10:27:34 AM

Iadace, backers!

We hope you’ve managed to stay cool this summer. Today we have an exciting snippet to share with you from Shanna Germain about Iadace, You Beast! 

Your “helpful” companion can’t wait to meet you! 

Iadace, You Beast! is coming along nicely. All the options for your companion are now complete. You can roll randomly to see who accompanies your character, or you can build the cute little dude* (*gender neutral) of your dreams to keep you company on your travels. 

Will you trek with Torbin, a furry red grasshopper-like construct with two large prehensile antennae who hides behind you when it’s nervous and chatters very loudly about what it’s nervous about? 

Or maybe you'd rather put your fate into the "hands" of Fiachra, a gold and red metallic automaton with six dangling tubes, one of which it tries to keep attached to you at all times. Fair warning: Fiachra also tends to get bored easily and start poking things just to see what happens. 

What could possibly go wrong? 

–Shanna Germain, September 2026


Play Numenera on StartPlaying Games! 

“Ashes of the Sea is an introductory adventure to the Numenera game line, and a great occasion to learn to play Cypher! 

The adventure is rooted in exploration, mystery and danger, with a good dose of social interactions. You'll be playing as characters looking to salvage relics of the past to put to good use: the Numenera. The Numenera are the remains of ancient civilisations that roamed the world in ages past, and come in all shapes and sizes (from hand-held devices to whole buildings or even entire landscapes!). Knowledge of how they function or what their original purpose was are long forgotten, but they can still come in handy to those who can put to good use. 

Salvaging Numenera is bound to eventually lead to adventure. At times dangerous, always unpredictable, often weird... And that's exactly what's to like about it!” 

Thanks for your support!
 – Team MCG 

Fulfillment Mini-update: Cypher Character Rulebook in PDF and Print
4 months ago – Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 03:10:21 PM

Hello folks of the Ninth World,

We are fulfilling the print and PDF editions of the Cypher Character Rulebook—huzzah! If one or both of these products are among your rewards, head on over to the MCG Shop to redeem your copy now (unless, that is, you are waiting until absolutely all rewards are ready for fulfillment).

Oh, and have you heard about this?

Ninth World Options for Player Characters and Loot Pick up at Gen Con
4 months ago – Tue, Jul 07, 2026 at 12:42:18 PM

Iadace, backers!

We have more insight into the Ninth World from our designers for you, but first a quick note on picking up your loot at Gen Con.

Pick up at Gen Con

Our lovely logistics folks have enabled the "pick up at Gen Con" feature on the MCG Shop. This “shipping” option costs $5 USD and will be available until noon CDT US on July 22nd. If you are ordering anything from the MCG store or redeeming any available crowdfunding rewards and would like to pick these up at Gen Con in Indianapolis, then please make sure to place your order before the deadline! :)



Ninth World Options for Player Characters

We’re continuing to work on options for player characters. Here are some plans in the works for PCs in the upcoming book:
 
In the new Cypher, every character gets to pick a bonus genre-appropriate ability at tier 3 and tier 6, regardless of their type and focus. For Numenera characters, you’ll also get a bonus ability at tier 1 (in addition to the abilities you already get from your type and focus). You decide if this bonus ability is from a mutation, a permanently implanted numenera device, intense training, or whatever explanation suits your character.
 
This means that Numenera PCs will be a little more powerful or versatile than typical fantasy or sci-fi characters: three type abilities, two focus abilities, and a bonus ability.
 
For those players who like surprises, you can even get a second bonus ability at tier 1, but you randomly roll to see what you get, and you also get a random drawback—something akin to the harmful mutations from Numenera Discovery.

                                                                      – Sean Reynolds and Shanna Germain, July 2026

Who’s excited to upgrade their current character or create new ones?

Thanks for your support!
– Team MCG

Let’s Talk About Numenera Types
5 months ago – Thu, Jun 11, 2026 at 01:44:34 PM

Iadace, backers,
 
We have some great insight into Numenera types from Shanna and Sean, so grab your favorite Ninth World brew and read on!
 
One significant change in the new Cypher is that we sped up and simplified character creation by giving each type three specific abilities, instead of making you choose from a list of options. As we started updating the six types from Numenera Discovery and Destiny (Arkus, Delve, Glaive, Jack, Nano, and Wright) in the new Cypher rules, this led to some interesting design choices. This design is an early draft and may change as we work on the rest of the book, but here’s a peek under the hood at what we’re thinking so far.



Glaive: 

The word “glaive” is what people of the Ninth World call an elite warrior. We wanted the iconic Glaive type to be familiar with all kinds of armor, excellent with weapons (training in one kind or category of weapon; +1 damage with either melee or ranged weapons), and dangerous when wounded (gaining a free level of Effort if they have a certain number of wounds). But there are also many glaive-style types in the Cypher Character Rulebook that are appropriate for the Ninth World, like the Archer, Axe Fighter, Monk, and Swashbuckler. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel and make new versions of those, all they need is a little update about inabilities in the three numenera skills and they’re ready to go.

Nano: 

Nanos are the characters who wield the strangest powers of the numenera. In this case, we’re including two nano-style types, called the Nano and the Aeon Priest. You read that correctly, you can start as a PC who is already a member of the Order of Truth—after all, in a fantasy game you can play a cleric who is already a member of an organized religion or a noble who belongs to an established influential family, so it’s okay if your character concept is that you’re already an Aeon Priest. Both of these types have slightly different abilities. Also, you get to choose which one of the three numenera skills you’re trained in, instead of defaulting to being trained in understanding numenera and having inabilities in the other two.
 

Jack: 

Characters known as Jacks have a really diverse selection of abilities—they’re the “jack of all trades,” after all. For this type, we had a hard time paring that selection down to a specific set of three. After all, some jacks are slick talkers, some are sneaky and hard to kill, and some are especially dangerous in combat, and we don’t want someone who wants to play one kind of jack to get shoehorned into a different theme. So we made three different kinds of jacks—the Slyjack who changes their face and can hide things, the Spiderjack who is especially stealthy and good at overcoming obstacles, and the Shukkerjack who uses poisons and is dangerous when wounded. All three of these kinds of jacks have the flex skill, too, so they’re adaptable to many circumstances. (And like the many kinds of glaives, you could still choose a type like Burglar or Rogue, add in the numenera inabilities, and be ready to explore the Ninth World.)
 

Arkus, Delve, and Wright: 

There are precedents for all three of these kinds of characters in the Cypher Character Rulebook, and we’ve built a custom Ninth World version of each of them that really captures the gist of what they’re all about. And for the Delve and Wright, they’re like the Nano and Aeon Priest—you can choose which of the three numenera skills is your good one.
 


We’re also going to reiterate to the player and the GM that it’s okay to swap some abilities between types so you can play the character you want to play. For example, if you like the special abilities of the Archer and the “dangerous when wounded” Glaive ability, the GM can let you mix and match a bit. Plus, there are some miscellaneous abilities that haven’t yet landed in a particular type—these might end up on bonus list of abilities that any character can take at tier 1, perhaps by swapping out a type or focus ability or in exchange for something else. We’re still in the early stages and expect to experiment a bit before we lock anything down. And we’re still a ways away from working on the setting content, including the Steadfast, the Beyond, the Datasphere, and other strange places!
 
                                             From Shanna Germain and Sean K. Reynolds.

 Thanks again for your support!
– Team MCG