Ambrus
Explorer
So my players have been working on their characters as we gear up for a new campaign. They've fleshed out their character concepts and there's an odd theme that's developed.
• There's the one I spoke of here already; an alchemically created simulacrum of a human male – a wizard (transmuter) / spirit medium, recovered by the RHC from an abandoned lab in Flint.
• A reanimated Frankenstein-esque female creature – an artificer (battle smith) / technologist, made by her "father" from parts of his deceased daughter. They were separated during a voyage at sea.
• A female clockwork automaton – a fighter (samurai) / gunsmith, recovered in pieces by the RHC following a destructive altercation in the streets and reassembled by the artificer/technologist character.
So I've got three artificially created beings, all with very different natures who's mysterious origins I'm trying to work into the campaign's background. It's rather striking that such beings already figure quite prominently in Zeitgeist, like the reanimated Andrei von Recklinghausen. For the reanimated PC, it seems a given that Dr. Wolfgang Von Recklinghausen was somehow involved. I'm thinking that, when he fled from Andrei, he took his murdered wife's remains and later reanimated them as their "daughter" before an untimely pirate attack on the high seas split them apart. Alternatively, the PC's "father" could have been Wolfgang's father/mentor/teacher who's work Wolfgang was trying to replicate in creating Andrei.
The piecemeal automaton reassembled by the RHC is remarkably similar to the story of Alexander Grappa's bronze golem in adventure 5. I'm tempted to make them one in the same; with the PC unknowingly carrying Alexander Grappa's dormant spirit throughout the campaign until it finally resurfaces in that adventure. Alternatively, the PC could have been one of Pemberton's early prototype automatons which was destroyed while attempting to carry out an assassination on his behalf.
The alchemical simulacrum is a bit harder to find a point of similarity within the campaign. My best notion is concerning the odd abilities of Pemberton's duplicants. As written, it seems he invented them on his own before he enlisted Tinker Oddcog to help him mass produce them. Devising clockwork automata seems to be Pemberton's thing, but the duplicants' ability to telepathically bond at distance with a living creature and to somehow change their physical appearance to resemble their partner doesn't sound purely mechanical to me. It seems to me like Pemberton might have subcontracted that aspect of their design to someone with more arcane insight than he. My thinking is that the duplicants have a purely mechanical core but are each covered in a special mixture of witchoil-infused alchemical clay which automatically reshapes the duplicant's surface features into a likeness of its bonded partner. Pemberton would have had to have that witchoil-clay developed earlier in the design process; likely in Flint where witchoil is easier to source. So the PC would be an early experimental version of the witchoil-clay secretly created by an alchemist/wizard in one of Pemberton's secret laboratories; inadvertently seized by the HRC. Why did this particular batch of witchoil-clay assume a human male's appearance, become "alive" and self-willed? I've no idea yet. So who was this alchemist wizard? Considering his aptitude for enchantment magic and creating artificial sentience, I'm thinking that a pre-Ob Alexander Grappa might have been employed by Pemberton to develop the witchoil-clay remote-control components for later use in his duplicants. When his secret laboratory was raided by the RHC and he was afraid of being arrested and charged, that's when Grappa was recruited and given shelter by the Ob.
Anyone want to chime in on my musings and give their own insight? One thing I'm concerned about is how to logically fit in all these events into the timeline before the campaign begins and have it all make sense. Andrei's creation and Alexander Grappa's "death" would have to be shifted backwards by least a few years. Thoughts?
BTW, I may have missed it, but what did Alexander Grappa do with Bourne's consciousness once he removed it from the colossus and fled the Ob?
• There's the one I spoke of here already; an alchemically created simulacrum of a human male – a wizard (transmuter) / spirit medium, recovered by the RHC from an abandoned lab in Flint.
• A reanimated Frankenstein-esque female creature – an artificer (battle smith) / technologist, made by her "father" from parts of his deceased daughter. They were separated during a voyage at sea.
• A female clockwork automaton – a fighter (samurai) / gunsmith, recovered in pieces by the RHC following a destructive altercation in the streets and reassembled by the artificer/technologist character.
So I've got three artificially created beings, all with very different natures who's mysterious origins I'm trying to work into the campaign's background. It's rather striking that such beings already figure quite prominently in Zeitgeist, like the reanimated Andrei von Recklinghausen. For the reanimated PC, it seems a given that Dr. Wolfgang Von Recklinghausen was somehow involved. I'm thinking that, when he fled from Andrei, he took his murdered wife's remains and later reanimated them as their "daughter" before an untimely pirate attack on the high seas split them apart. Alternatively, the PC's "father" could have been Wolfgang's father/mentor/teacher who's work Wolfgang was trying to replicate in creating Andrei.
The piecemeal automaton reassembled by the RHC is remarkably similar to the story of Alexander Grappa's bronze golem in adventure 5. I'm tempted to make them one in the same; with the PC unknowingly carrying Alexander Grappa's dormant spirit throughout the campaign until it finally resurfaces in that adventure. Alternatively, the PC could have been one of Pemberton's early prototype automatons which was destroyed while attempting to carry out an assassination on his behalf.
The alchemical simulacrum is a bit harder to find a point of similarity within the campaign. My best notion is concerning the odd abilities of Pemberton's duplicants. As written, it seems he invented them on his own before he enlisted Tinker Oddcog to help him mass produce them. Devising clockwork automata seems to be Pemberton's thing, but the duplicants' ability to telepathically bond at distance with a living creature and to somehow change their physical appearance to resemble their partner doesn't sound purely mechanical to me. It seems to me like Pemberton might have subcontracted that aspect of their design to someone with more arcane insight than he. My thinking is that the duplicants have a purely mechanical core but are each covered in a special mixture of witchoil-infused alchemical clay which automatically reshapes the duplicant's surface features into a likeness of its bonded partner. Pemberton would have had to have that witchoil-clay developed earlier in the design process; likely in Flint where witchoil is easier to source. So the PC would be an early experimental version of the witchoil-clay secretly created by an alchemist/wizard in one of Pemberton's secret laboratories; inadvertently seized by the HRC. Why did this particular batch of witchoil-clay assume a human male's appearance, become "alive" and self-willed? I've no idea yet. So who was this alchemist wizard? Considering his aptitude for enchantment magic and creating artificial sentience, I'm thinking that a pre-Ob Alexander Grappa might have been employed by Pemberton to develop the witchoil-clay remote-control components for later use in his duplicants. When his secret laboratory was raided by the RHC and he was afraid of being arrested and charged, that's when Grappa was recruited and given shelter by the Ob.
Anyone want to chime in on my musings and give their own insight? One thing I'm concerned about is how to logically fit in all these events into the timeline before the campaign begins and have it all make sense. Andrei's creation and Alexander Grappa's "death" would have to be shifted backwards by least a few years. Thoughts?
BTW, I may have missed it, but what did Alexander Grappa do with Bourne's consciousness once he removed it from the colossus and fled the Ob?
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