Steampunk Setting (Empire of the Isle)

[DeVorn]

I need some help brainstorming a setting I'm developing. Any and all input is appreciated. I'm looking for more idea-work than specific mechanics.

To be fair and honest, I should point out that this is more a writing thing than a game-world thing, although I actually do intend to eventually run a campaign in this world.

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"In yet another example of tragically misapplied genius, the mysterious villain who calls himself Professor Hemlock has done it again--this time managing to cripple several of the Eastern Crown Bank's calculation engines through the use of irresponsible mathematics. The rogue chaotician claimed responsibility for the financial disaster in a letter delivered to the Isle Gazette (see page 9a), citing the company’s cutthroat business tactics, support of imperialism, and rude bank tellers as justification. Authorities continue to investigate the anarchist's activities while urging all citizens to behave no differently during this time of fiscal duress. Meanwhile, one question lingers upon the lips of every man, woman, and child: Who is Professor Hemlock?"

--Front page of the Isle Gazette, 'PROFESSOR HEMLOCK STRIKES AGAIN'

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The city of Lockcroft is the crown jewel of the Isle's vast empire; nestled within the cradle of a volcanic island, it remains the source for ideas and culture throughout the Isle at large. The city is powered by a sprawling maze of valves and sewers brimming with boilers kept heated by geothermal energy and piped up to the urban landscape by hissing pipes; above the lower level is a sprawling metropolis of shanties and slums forming the tangled map of the city's lower ward (otherwise known as the Rookeries) with it's upper ward built atop the numerous bridges and platforms that dot the many tall cliffs.

Transportation between one area to the next is a considerable problem, especially for the lower ward; trains form the heart and veins of the city, but these are available only for the upper ward (traveling from cliff to cliff by massive bridges cutting through the air and supported by stone columns that plunge down into the lower ward, often with shops and houses built atop of them like warts on a cow's hind leg). Moving from the lower ward to the upper ward (or vice versa) is often an exhausting exercise unless you have access to a hot air balloon or other climbing device.

Communication is handled by a series of pneumatic pipes that string throughout the city and create an informal 'pipe-net' (yes, the internet is a series of tubes, suppress your groans); business information is sent from calculation engine to calculation engine this way, rarely passing through the lower ward ('hackers', or people who intercept this sensitive information and/or modify it, are colloquially known as--YES, SUPPRESS YOUR GROANS--'pnackers').

Magic is present, but marginalized; aristocratic magicians are often celebrities, but magic is seen as a birthright (and an ultimately profitless hobby, much like cryptology) and when cast by lower classes is disdainfully dismissed as 'peasant magic'. There is a robust community of lower class magicians, however, and a frightful Night Market in the Rookeries below the city--including the Market of Intangibles, where anything and everything can be bought (even things that have no solid substance--such as fear, loathing, or true love).

Technology is king, both in the upper and lower wards; it's messy and dangerous in the lower wards (but many technologists go there because of the availability of test subjects and the lack of a rigorous enforcement of safety laws), but very standardized and rigid in the upper wards (which include the prestigious Academy of Reason, where science and mathematics are taught). The technological level is essentially late Victorian (1890s) with a few key differences and nods to the fantastical and whimsical; mecha-spiders of all sizes are present, and there is a suspicious lack of both incandescent light bulbs (they are not popular), galvanization (also not very popular), and a strange reliance upon natural gases (very popular, gas-lamps in particular).

Notable areas include:

• The Heap, a slag-like section of the city that caught on fire a few years back and was walled off to prevent the fire from spreading. Ten years ago, the King announced that the walls would be torn down and that there would be a formal ceremony, apologies, and tea and biscuits. When they brought the walls down, they discovered that not only was it still on fire, but it was now full of half-crazed lunatics and cannibals. The walls were put back up and pamphlets dropped by air promising they'd give it 'another try' in 'twenty years or so', and that next time they'd bring a far superior type of tea.
• The Rookeries, the poverty-stricken low-section of the city where law is seen as a fictitious thing you read about in newsrags.
• The Market of Intangibles, a place in the Rookeries where intangible things are regularly sold--experience, naivete, innocence, anger, a girl's first kiss in a summer field, bliss-in-a-box, so on.
• The Steamwork, a sprawling maze of pneumatic pipes and steam-pumps that serves as the tangled central knot that lays at the heart of Lockcroft's information and power grid. Nestled away in the Rookeries, it's one of the few places that's well guarded by the police--because any damage done to the Steamwork is damage done to the city at large. It's here that all the messages sent by pneumatic tubes are eventually routed--and all the gas and steam pressure is regulated and channeled to its proper location. Some of the top scientific minds reside at the Steamwork, struggling diligently to keep the heart of the city pumping; rumors persist that one scientist in particular is working to chain all the calculation engines of the city together into a single pneumatic-powered network to construct something akin to a math golem.

Notable characters include:

• Count Olek, a high-born student of machiavellian politics who was once described as possessing 'the patience of a spider, the cleverness of a fiend, and the heart of a lizard'. This was not taken as an insult. He is responsible for assuring that the trains of the upper ward always run on time. He is very, very serious about his job.
• The Silver Fox, a folklore hero of the lower classes of whom dozens of stories are told concerning his (or her, depending on who you ask) great deeds in the face of tyrannical adversity. The Silver Fox regularly flouts authority, out-cheats cheaters and out-schemes schemers. Most of the well-educated believe him to be nothing more than a myth--an anarchist's pipe-dream.
• Professor Hemlock, a mysterious (and villainous!) anarchist hellbent on tearing down the current system from the bottom up. Little is known about him beyond his reckless application of rogue mathematics; by tricking calculating engines into dividing by zero and other antics, he's effectively crippled the city's financial districts and cost both the government and several corporations countless dollars.

Notable factions include:

• The Order of the Silver Moon: A group of aristocratic nobles with an obsession concerning all matters of mysticism and occultism; their order is steeped in a liberal mixture of earnest magic and outright gibberish, with most of their adherents being nary more than bored busy-bodies with nothing better to do on a Friday night. Though many of them possess vast libraries and considerable resources, the majority cannot collectively cast so much as a cantrip. Often, they manage to stumble across a book of actual magical importance, and thus draw the interest of the rare specimen of magician who can cast magic.
• Anarchists: A compilation of savage anti-authoritarian brutes, street punks, pseudo-intellectual riff-raff, and brilliant chaoticians all united under the common banner of anti-Imperialism and anti-Royalism. Although they are mostly unorganized and divided on every issue from methodology through ideology, the recent appearance of Professor Hemlock and rumors of independent anarchist cells has caused a renewed interest between many so-called anarchists in creating a united front against governmental authority.
• The Society for Distinguished Gentlemen: A rather droll organization bent on both outer and inner exploration; a group of dabbling magicians, scientists, and gentlemen of peculiar abilities who are dedicated to matters of understanding the universe at large. Considered to be nothing more than a harmless gentleman's club, the 'Society' (as it's often called) is actually a secret organization steadfastly dedicated to preserving reality against encroachment from threats and horrors beyond the imagination of ordinary men--both magical and technological ones.
• The Fraternity for the Preservation of Superior Culture: Commonly known as 'Preservers', 'Jar-Heads', 'Jam-Heads', or 'Jammers', the Fraternity for the Preservation of Superior Culture is hellbent upon preserving Isle culture above all else--especially above the culture of the many indigenous people that the Isle's sprawling empire has served to displace. One of the most powerful political parties active in the Isle's parliament.
• Pnackers: The name given (or perhaps taken) by the collective web of street urchans, pipe-climbers, mathematicians, and repair men who are responsible for the maintenance of the chains of pneumatic tubing that form Lockcroft's information web. Usually applied in a derogative sense; to 'pnack' is to use the skills of pnacking in an illegitimate fashion (such as modifying information packets sent by tube, or spying on information). A growing subculture of pnackers is gaining in popularity among the Rookeries; pnacking is becoming a highly marketable skill as financers seek to gain an edge in a marketplace where the manipulation of numbers and information is becoming more valuable than selling product.
• Copperstreet Gang: The collective name given to the gangs of children linked together by a maze of careful alliances among the streets of the Rookeries. To mess with one gang is to mess with them all, and the wrath of the Copperstreet gang is said to be more fearsome than even the most ruthless of adult street gangs. Some of the children in the Copperstreet gang have reportedly gone feral; stories talk of children in face-paint with battered top-hats and overalls springing down from rooftops, screaming out war-cries with spears held tight in their grubby hands.

 

[DeVorn]

Brief description of a street in the Rookery:

It was usually the smell of the place that hit you first--like a freight train filled with flaming manure plowing straight through a field of stinkweed. It stabbed its way to the back of the brain, signing its signature at the top of your spine. At times it would be husky and ripe, like freshly burnt gunpowder; then it would grow dry and brittle like dead leaves mixed with sand. It was a smell you could always recognize but never quite remember.

The Rookery was several dozen tight knots of vendors, carts, and houses tied along a crooked and winding length of road. The tall and looming brick walls drew so close in some places that no more than two people could cross at a time--and the way they tilted inward toward the street implied an imminent avalanche of mortar and timber.

A gargantuan mechanical spider picked its way up and over the crowd, its delicate bronze legs scraping across cobblestone as thick ribbons of soot and steam belched out of its smokestack. A gondola containing a mobile smithery sat on top, filled to the brim with metalworkers in sweat-stained shirts who diligently reinforced any building that revealed signs of a potential collapse. Valves along the machine's metal belly hissed and released great clouds of vapor, thoroughly drenching anyone unfortunate enough to be below it; meanwhile, urchins in rags dashed in between the pincer-like feet to snatch up pieces of lead and metal that inevitably tumbled down from the workers' hands. Sometimes, a coveted lump of coal would fall, inciting the children into a frantic scramble.

Restaurants kept afloat by sheepskin balloons inflated with hot air or gas catered to the whims of their strange flying clientele, who would soar over the heads of the Rookery denizens and enjoy their lunch while people-watching from a lofty perch. A few of the nastier customers would dump their finished meals onto the people below, or even relieve themselves on some poor sod's head.

 

[Clay_More]

Hiya DeVorn, and welcome to the forums.

Seems like you have made yourself quite a bit of thoughts about how the setting is going to function. I wouldn't worry about some of the ideas being steampunk variants of contemporary concepts, such as the tube-network and pnackers. In my opinion, you should just shamelessly rip things from wherever you want, as long as it fits you needs. I don't think your ideas regarding the communication tubes are completely impossible to achieve with the level of technology you describe.

Have you found any books that deal with the level of technology you are going to use, or do you intend to make up the rules for the mechanical items yourself?

One important thing about a campaign setting is factions and NPC's that the players can interact with, who can become either a threat or a resource. All of your factions have some potential for becoming either of those two quite easily at different levels of play. All of the factions have a simple and iconic function that the players can get involved in, perhaps with the exception of the fraternity which I think might be a bit hard to introduce as an interactive faction.

 

[DeVorn]

In my opinion, you should just shamelessly rip things from wherever you want, as long as it fits you needs. I don't think your ideas regarding the communication tubes are completely impossible to achieve with the level of technology you describe.

I've got no problem with shamelessly stealing ideas. In many ways, I all ready have. And I'm not terribly broken up about defying the rules of science; if it's compelling, it goes in--regardless of whether or not it's possible. This is steampunk fantasy, after all.

Have you found any books that deal with the level of technology you are going to use, or do you intend to make up the rules for the mechanical items yourself?

Make it up myself.

All of your factions have some potential for becoming either of those two quite easily at different levels of play. All of the factions have a simple and iconic function that the players can get involved in, perhaps with the exception of the fraternity which I think might be a bit hard to introduce as an interactive faction.

The Preservers (or Jammers) are basically just villains; I kind of feel dirty for creating a faction with no real commendable traits, but I was thinking this could be taken care of later on (a few members of the Jammers are actually just technologists and humanists who want to expand the benefits of the Isle's technology to all cultures).