TheRPGSite

So, I've been brainstorming my "post-apocalyptic, supernatural Western" setting for several months now, most recently in this (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27561) thread. A lot of things in that thread have changed during the process, sometimes two or three times.

Rather than going back and correcting everything, I've decided to start a new thread with the most recent (and thus mostly correct) posts. Apologies for the reposts.

Thanks to everyone who read, commented, and offered suggestions.

The Future Came To Pass

In 2015, the rotting plague killed a quarter of humanity and shattered the existing social, economic, and governmental orders. Famine, civil strife, and outright warfare followed, killing another third of humanity (or more). A scant decade later, and the survivors were banding together, striving to restore order, when the Emergence began.

There is another world beyond ours, a world of magic and power. Vortexes connecting our world to the Beyond opened up, and out them came monsters, refugees, and magic itself. And in the middle of the Atlantic, a single vortex of immense size disgorged the ancient and uninhabited island of Atlantis.

All across the world, magic now worked. All across the world, monsters Emerged from the vortexes. And all across the world, the Beyonder races sought shelter from the evil consuming their homelands.

It is 2039, and the United States has been shattered. The government controls but small portions of the country.

The rest is "The Outlaw", places and people beyond the control of the government. The Outlaw is a chaotic place where people fend for themselves. No safety net, no police, no government save for what people make themselves.

There are dangers here. Bandits, thieves, and murderers. Bloodgangs, packs of vampires or ghouls that hunt humans for food and sport. And Emerged creatures, nightmarish and powerful.

Then there are the Guns. Freelance lawmen (or vigilantes), heroes (or thugs), and killers. Always killers.

When people need protection, when they need revenge, when they need a monster hunted and killed, they hire Guns. Some work for the wealthy, some even the government, others work for the dispossessed and powerless.

They are assassins, mercenaries, freelance lawmen, bounty hunters, and, yes, even criminals. Sometimes there is but a sliver of difference between the marauders who rape, kill, and steal, and the Guns who hunt them.

In post-Emergence America, Guns are the heroes and villains of The Outlaw.

What Are "Guns"?

Guns are the player characters of a GiTO campaign, the rough equivalent of D&D's "adventurers". They are mercenaries, bounty hunters, and freelance lawmen. They are hired to face and fight the various threats of the post-Emergence world.

Guns are not just gunfighters (though nearly all do, in fact, carry guns). Guns can be mages, technicians, con men, or hackers. What matters is that, no matter their skill set, they are willing and able to fight, and capable enough to survive. (Gun life has a high mortality rate.)

The following are the major archetypes that Guns tend to fall into. They are not absolute categories; any given Gun could mix and match skills and abilities from each. But when people hire Guns, they will tend to request one of these... "We need a magus, an iceman, and a cracker."

Magus — A spellcaster, one who follows either a Beyonder tradition or one native to Earth. Twiddle your fingers, say a few words, and you make things happen with magic.

Technomage — Magic responds to electrical current, and you can build gadgets that cast spells. Technomages carry several devices that allow them to duplicate the abilities of maguses.

Technoshaman / Sorcerer — Magic emanates from the shadow world, which is the domain of spirits. When magic flooded the world, these spirits came with it, and many took up residence in everyday objects. Technoshamans cannot cast spells, but they have the innate ability to commune with spirits and even summon them into the material world (or banish them from it). More, they can summon/banish while projecting inside a computer construct (see "cracker", below). "Sorcerer" is the Beyonder name for a technoshaman.

Gun Knight / Avowed — Magical abilities manifest in many ways: spellcasting, shadow-walking, spirit summoning, and augmentation. Augmentations are innate magical talents that enhance the abilities of a person. They can make one stronger, faster, more stealthy, and so forth. Developing these abilities requires intense studies and vows. There are dozens of Avowed schools, and each has their own moral code and required vows. On Earth, the Avowed were called knights (their vows and moral codes being mistaken for chivalry, and their schools being conflated with knightly orders) and those who hired themselves out as Guns became Gun Knights.

Augment — Properly constructed technomagical devices allow people to gain the abilities of a gun knight, without the need for years of study or vows. These require painful treatments however, and expensive metals, as runes must be etched onto a person's skeleton, then filled with metals. Augments are usually far less powerful than true Avowed, and usually less skilled.

Cracker — Shadow Walkers are mages who can project their mind into the shadow world. Electricity affects magic, including electronics. Computers, in particular, have a strange effect on the shadow world. They create small nodes in the energies of magic. Any magician with the ability to project their mind into the shadow world (via spell, technomagical device, or a shadow walker's projection ability) can enter these nodes and steal data from the computer. To combat this, people create constructs, false realities with their own internal laws of physics. To break into the computer, a person must penetrate the construct. Crackers are maguses, technomages, shadow walkers, or technoshamans who specialize in this sort of activity. (Though, as a rule, all shadow walkers are called crackers.)

Iceman — A person who specializes in combat abilities, typically a gunfighter, sharpshooter, or sniper.

Face — A negotiator, interrogator, interviewer, and seducer. Crackers hack constructs, faces hack people.

Tracker — A bounty hunter, someone skilled in finding other people. Usually assumes some facility with following tracks in the wilderness.

Stakers — Guns who specialize in fighting anthrophagians or "eaters" (vampires, ghouls, & wraiths).

Specialist — A catch-all category for roles not covered above, like wheelman, hacker (still necessary, oddly enough, because of limitations on cracking), gunsmith, lawman (someone familiar with legal codes, who can enforce the law), and so forth.

I'm currently building ∞ Infinity, my own little action-movie RPG. Guns in The Outlaw is being built as a setting for that system.

∞ Infinity is skill-based, so any character can learn any skill. (Though some have an additional cost, and those who spread points around tend to end up being mediocre at everything.) Therefore, the setting assumes that there are no strict classes, but rather abilities and skills that any character can acquire.

A character can start off as a magus, and learn to summon spirits. They can begin as an iceman, and later learn spellcasting. The above categories are thus descriptive, not proscriptive.

Magic and Technomagic

Alright, before I continue with the background information, I just wanted to touch on magic and technomagic.

Magic involves several abilities or talents: shadow walking, spirit summoning, spellcasting, augmentation, and imbuing. (Imbuing is the magical talent of enchanting items, for example to create magical swords, wands, rings, and so forth. Such magicians are called "thaumaturgists".) These abilities are called "talents" for a reason: they are innate capacities, that you have to train to use effectively. People can be born with them, or can develop their latent talents later, but everyone must learn how to channel them.

When the first vortexes opened up, magic flooded Earth. In its wake, Earthers discovered that they, too, had these innate magical talents. They could train to use them, just like Beyonders.

The other surprise was that magic — the energies of the shadow world — responded to electrical current flowing through a wire. With the right circuits (which make no physical sense), you could even craft electrical or electronic devices ("devisements") that could create a magical field.

Maguses can cast "flash freeze", and freeze an opponent. Technomages can do the exact same thing, with the correct devisement.

Creating technomagical devisements takes no innate talent, just a knowledge of the proper mathematics and the ability to solder, wrap wires, and screw together a case. Any mechanic can learn to do it, once they learn how to wire the correct circuits. Blank circuit boards, wire cutters, batteries, and spools of wire are the tools of the technomage.

Here's the key question, one that baffled Earthers for many years: why does electricity affect magic, while magnetism, heat, kinetic energy, and other phenomenon doesn't? And why just wired electricity, and not lightning?

Beyonder magics hold the key.

There are three "elements" in Beyonder cosmology: materials such as water, rocks, ores, air, basically anything tangible, energies such as electricity, heat, sound, "force" (or kinetic energy), and ephemera, like the soul, thought, emotions, and magic. These three elements pervade all Beyonder magic.

As an example, all wisps, a Beyonder race, are innately tied to one of the three elements. There are material-aspected wisps, energy-aspected wisps, and ephemera-aspected wisps. Each variety has different abilities, depending on its patron element.

Anthrophagians are people afflicted with a magical curse that forces them to feed on other people. Ghouls feed on the body, they're aspected towards the material. Vampires feed on the life force of victims; they're aspected towards energy. And wraiths consume the souls of their victims; their element is ephemera.

The Beyonders arrange the elements in a hierarchy: material -> energy -> ephemera. Energy is "close" to materials and ephemera, and materials and ephemera are "distant". Thus, it's easier to create energy with a spell (freezing a target) than it is to create material objects (a chair).

Materials affect energies, energies affect ephemera, but it is very rare for ephemera to affect the material in a lasting way (which is why all spells are temporary) and vice versa. Electricity, on the other hand, is an energy, and it is very common for energies to affect the ephemera.

But why electricity in a wire?

Metals, refined ores, have a special property: they can hold a magical charge better than any other material. This is why there are many different magical ores, why swords and rings are more often enchanted than wooden wands, and why augments have metal laced into their enruned bones (the metal holds the magic).

Electrical energy affects ephemeral magic, when it is flowing along metallic wires. The two phenomena, long known to maguses, work together to form something wholly new. (Beyonders lack the knowledge of electricity and electrical circuits.)

Each of the five talents has manifested in strange ways on Earth. Shadow walkers became crackers, sorcerers became technoshamans. Thaumaturgists enchanted rings and swords over the course of weeks or months, technomages can do the same thing with just some wire and a few batteries, in less than an hour.

Both sides have had to adjust to the new circumstances they find themselves in, and the adjustment has been hard for everyone.

Races of the Beyond: Trolls and Fae

When the vortexes opened up, monsters came to our world. The vortexes also disgorged the lost island of Atlantis, with its wrecked cities and powerful guardians. Of equal importance were the Beyonder races: trolls, fae, alfar, and wisps.

Trolls

Trolls are tall, muscular carnivores, with green or brown-shaded skin, and long limbs. Many trolls have upper or lower tusks, and horns of various sizes and shapes are not unknown. Trolls are roughly 25% larger than humans, on average, and tend to the very muscular.

Trolls are born leaders. Their confidence and strength of personality is magnetic, they are naturally charismatic. [Note: In game terms, trolls have a bonus to Strength and Influence, the social stat.]

Trolls are devastating combatants in hand-to-hand combat. They are also famed as warriors and leaders, and many of the most charismatic Beyonders are trolls. Trolls have — despite their appearance — been widely accepted in Outlaw settlements.

In the Beyond, trolls worked as mercenaries, generals, and military advisors. Post-Emergence, this effortlessly translated into service as Guns (especially Lawgivers).

The oldest kingdoms in the Beyond were Trollish. In most ways they were the dominant race. Trolls are as admired as they are feared, and other races often served in Trollish armies and emigrated to Trollish kingdoms.

Fae

Fae are an otherworldly race, famed for their shadow walkers, who generally keep themselves apart from other races. They are slightly shorter than humans, and tend to be extremely thin, unhealthily so from a human standpoint. ("Cadaverous" or "emaciated" are the terms often used.) They tend towards metallic shades of hair and eyes; their hair and eyes actually shine like metals — silver, copper, gold, iron, and so forth.

Fae are natural shadow walkers. Not all fae can or do project into the shadow world, but the facility is far more common among fae than any other race. (Which means, in The Outlaw, fae are often found in cracker circles.) [In game terms, fae characters can gain the shadow walking talent for free, though this isn't mandatory.]

Fae tend to be introspective and withdrawn, often reluctant to speak or act. This derives from the wyrd. Through the wyrd, Fae can sense oncoming misfortune. It's commonly believed that fae can see the moment of their own death; this isn't true, but the wyrd can warn fae of danger to themselves and others. (Though they get no warning of what that danger might be.)

This strange sense cannot be controlled or predicted. It strikes at random (not every misfortune is predicted), and usually unwelcome times.

It is an uncomfortable experience, to know that after anything you say or do, you can be struck with a great dread that suffuses your mind. Then, to know that this dread is well-founded, that it almost always presages some ill event. Then to know that this event may well be your fault... fae find the experience draining, and tend to separate even from each other, leading solitary lives.

Fae are few in number, and standoffish. In the Beyond, they had no kingdoms, nor a homeland. They were nomadic and shunned any allegiances beyond their family Line.

Races of the Beyond: Alfar and Wisps

Alfar

Alfar are the most human-appearing Beyonders. In fact, they look exactly like humans, but at three quarters the size.

Alfar are quick-learning and versatile. As a race, they possess an innate ability to master subjects faster than any other race. More, they can choose their talents (unlike humans). When young, alfar decide which area they wish to master, and their natural facility goes to work, allowing them to grow in that area faster than any other race.

As a result, Alfar are famed as artists, craftsmen, warriors, performers, and much beside. The most promising students tend to be alfar, and the most accomplished masters the same. [In game terms, they receive a bonus to one specific skill, chosen during character creation.]

The downside of this facility is the alfar tendency towards obsession. Alfar don't just seek to master their subject, they are driven to it. Each alfar has a specific obsession relating to one tiny area of their chosen subject, one area they are driven to master. Perhaps it is a specific model of firearm, or a painting technique, or searching for a means to temper gold. Whatever it is, they pursue this obsession for years and decades, until they have mastered that one thing, at which point some other obsession comes to dominate their interest.

Their obsessions don't dominate their entire lives, mind, just their professional life, their pursuit of excellence. Alfar cannot be generalists within their chosen area of expertise, they must focus on a very small part of it and master that one part.

Wisps

Wisps are among the more populous Beyonder races (tending towards multiple births, usually 2-3). Tiny humanoids (between 9 and 12 inches high) with elfin features, wisps are innately magical, and closely linked to one of the three elements of Beyonder sorcery: material, energy, and ephemera. This innate link grants them fantastic abilities, like the facility some wisps have for passing through metal without leaving a trace.

Wisps are winged, though their ability to hover and fly isn't linked to any physical feature. In personality they are — forgive the pun — flighty. They tend to extremes of emotion, extreme joyousness and energy, or extreme pessimism and depression. When excited, they tend to glow.

Wisps are short-lived, maturing in just a year and living for a total of 15, if very lucky. Their legendary drive — wisps seldom remain passive for long, and suffer no half-measures when pursuing a goal — and daring is no doubt due to their awareness of their short spans.

Wisps are naturally magical; every wisp has an innate talent with magic, usually spellcasting. Their diminutive stature means they find it difficult to fight in hand-to-hand combat, so their facility with magic was, very often, their only means of protection. [In game terms, they don't have to spend points at character creation to gain their first magical talent.]

As with all Beyonder races (and humans, as well), wisps are affected by the anthrophagus curses. Will-o-the-wisps are a common threat in the Outlaw, being packs of wisps who have become anthrophagians, either vampires, ghouls, or wraiths. (Unlike the other races, which variety of eater the wisp becomes is determined by their element, not their killer.) Flying near lone or unwary travelers, the eater wisp lures them away to a secluded spot with a mesmerizing light display. There the rest of the pack descends and consumes the luckless wanderer, like a school of piranha.

NYC: The Archetypal Enclave City

New York City is the most populous and most important city in post-Emergence America. In many ways, it is the Platonic ideal of an Enclave city; every other major city shares at least some elements with New York.

By modern reckoning, Manhattan is New York, the other boroughs are separate municipalities (a consequence of the breakdown of order during the plague). The center of the city, the core, comprises the neighborhoods from Midtown to the Battery. A clean and relatively peaceful place, it houses not only the city's businesses and residential districts, but the national government as well (headquartered in the old UN building).

There are a great many neighborhoods in the core, some patrolled more frequently and more thoroughly than others. Residents pay an annual fee for residency badges, which gives them permission to live in specific neighborhoods and access “munies” (municipal services like policing, water, power, sewage, trash collection, snow removal, pothole maintenance, etc.) The more exclusive the neighborhood, the more expensive the badge, the better the policing and munies. (This residency fee is the replacement for of the old income tax.) This pattern is followed across the country. The irony is that, for all that the feds rail against private security companies, they are, through residency fees, simply the biggest one.

Residency badges are a big deal, as is having one revoked. Building security and patrolling police have the right to check badges at any time, and people are required to keep them on hand. People who carry fake badges are detained (in the notoriously brutal city holding cells) and exiled. Serious offenses merit revocation of residency rights, and expulsion from the core.

Surrounding the core are “the jungles”. These neighborhoods lie outside the police cordon, and have no official access to munies. Policing is handled on an ad-hoc basis, by vigilante committees, criminal gangs, and private security firms. (Sometimes it’s difficult to tell these apart.) Other munies are also ad hoc, jungle residents maintaining infrastructure themselves, or contracting with a private municipal firm (called “bundeskorp”). Jungles residents are technically citizens, but have few rights.

The rotting plague and the aftermath killed 60% of the country. Like most cities, large chunks of New York (called “the wastes”) are mostly empty, abandoned to the elements. These deserted areas, outside the jungles, are a dangerous urban wasteland, filled with eaters (often feral), Emerged creatures, and many other dangers.

Scattered here and there in the wastes are compounds run by chartered companies. Chartered companies are businesses who pay an annual fee for certain legal rights, one of which is the right to operate in unincorporated areas (areas fully outside the control of the Feds) with near impunity. They can seize land and property from non-citizens, can train and maintain private security forces (in essence, their own armies), and have free reign on their compounds to do as they see fit (within a few strict limits). [These companies are analogous to the East India Company, except that colonizing other countries, they colonize unincorporated territory.]

Outside company compounds, the core is the safest area in the city. But even it isn’t fully secure. Gangs and creatures can make their way into the core, and do with some frequency. More, the underground tunnels (of which there are hundreds of miles) are sealed off, a haven for ghouls, other eaters, and the vilest sorts of Emerged monsters. Very frequently, these break through the barricades blocking off the subways and other tunnels, and make their way into the city to prey on innocents.

The tunnels out of the city are collapsed, filled with water. There are three surviving bridges off the island: Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and the George Washington. The first two are mostly well-maintained, a duty NYC shares with the neighboring Bronx Independent Municipality.

The George Washington is one of the most crucial routes out of the city, unfortunately it's far to the north, well into the wastes. The bridge itself is maintained by Jersey, who charges convoys ruinous fees to cross. Unfortunately, they only police the bridge itself, so everything between the core and the bridge is no man’s land.

Trade convoys to and from the farming communities upstate travel the bridge route, but go loaded for bear. On a good day, the trip out of town is like a peaceful journey through occupied territory: tense, but uneventful. On a bad day, it’s Baghdad.

killing 25% of the population isn't enough

In the US this would take you down to population levels in 1982 hardly throwing the country into chaos....

75% death takes you to 1902 which is better but for a real cataslysmic event you need 90 % (1860) but NY City still has a million people making it the size of Prague and gives it a a population density of c 7,000 people per square mile (its currently 66,940 per square mile in Manhattan) which is definitely suburban rather than rural and is actually higher than the population density of pretty large towns in California (San Luis Opisbo has a population density of 3,500 per square mile)

Quote from: jibbajibba;694136killing 25% of the population isn't enough

In the US this would take you down to population levels in 1982 hardly throwing the country into chaos....

I did some research about this (for previous projects), and when 1 in 5 people die from a plague, domestic order collapses. People withdraw from each other, out of fear of catching the disease, and commerce, travel, and law-and-order cease. That's all from 20% deaths. (The academics I read based that figure on historical accounts of past pandemics.)

Now, order can reassert itself fairly quickly, in less than a decade. (Which is what was happening here.) But that interregnum can be bloody and violent.

In the US, the rotting plague killed 25%. The ensuing famines (masses of urban dwellers, suddenly without food), civil disturbances, and near-civil war killed another 35% of the populace.

That's just under 200 million dead, 2.5 times the number killed by WWII. I think that two-and-a-half World War Two's, in less than a decade, is cataclysmic enough for anyone.

Quote from: jibbajibba;694136NY City still has a million people making it the size of Prague and gives it a a population density of c 7,000 people per square mile (its currently 66,940 per square mile in Manhattan) which is definitely suburban rather than rural

Suburban population density in NYC would leave a lot of apartments or whole buildings empty. This was deemed undesirable, for a few reasons.

Almost all Enclave cities have a densely populated core, surrounded by the less densely populated jungles, and the nearly-abandoned wastes. This is a side effect of a deliberate government policy: "urban concentration". The policy was to concentrate people at pre-plague levels, to "maximize utility of existing structures and transportation infrastructure, simplify service infrastructure maintenance, and reduce policing loads".

That is, they emptied out 60% of the city, so they'd have a smaller perimeter to patrol. Fewer occupied buildings also meant fewer buildings to maintain, and fewer sewage lines, power lines, and so forth.

(The Outlaw is far more spread out, to be sure.)

Quote from: jibbajibba;694136killing 25% of the population isn't enough

In the US this would take you down to population levels in 1982 hardly throwing the country into chaos ...

Of course it is.  The Black Death killed no more than a third of the population of Europe, and took half a century to do it, and it still transformed the history of the world.  Sheesh, 9/11 didn't kill as many as 10% of the people who were working in the Twin Towers at the time of the attack, and that act wrought serious changes in the United States as well as the world.

Quote from: Ravenswing;694176Of course it is.  The Black Death killed no more than a third of the population of Europe, and took half a century to do it, and it still transformed the history of the world.  Sheesh, 9/11 didn't kill as many as 10% of the people who were working in the Twin Towers at the time of the attack, and that act wrought serious changes in the United States as well as the world.

That's because Americans are more panicky and in need of authority than we lead ourselves to believe.  :D

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;694187That's because Americans are more panicky and in need of authority than we lead ourselves to believe.

I completely agree, and firmly believe that Osama bin Laden is laughing at us from Hell, because he won: he did exactly what he set out to do.

Of course, a more self-reliant, hardy folk wouldn't freak out so completely over a level of threat that would have your average Israeli sputtering with laughter, but that just validates the OP's assertion.  It's absolutely defensible, in any event, against the "well-I-don't-agree-with-25%-just-because-well-hurr-um-hrmm-I-just-don't-like-it-is-all" type of argument.

Sure, if one out of every four people I know died that would pretty devastating just on a personal level. It's an emotional tidal wave that a number of people wouldn't bounce back from right away, if ever. In any community it's going to be a lot of useful knowledge and skills that will be lost and take time to be relearned/retaught. Fewer doctors/police/emergency personnel right when you really need them. The potential for panic and violence would seem quite large.

Quote from: Simlasa;694208Sure, if one out of every four people I know died that would pretty devastating just on a personal level.

Then there's the disease itself. I haven't exactly described it, but the nickname "the rotting plague" and the medical name "Induced Systemic Necrosis" should be enough of a hint: your body rots while you're alive. Eventually you die of multiple organ failure.

Have you ever smelled rotting meat? Have you ever seen pictures of gangrenous flesh? Yeah, it's all that. Some people referred to it (inaccurately) as "slow motion Ebola", due to the copious bleeding that occurs late in the progression. It's a pretty horrible affliction (fortunately, it no longer occurs, except in very rare cases).

A mysterious, untreatable, and incurable affliction, with horrific symptoms, that's 100% fatal (the survivors never contracted it), uncontrollably sweeping the globe, killing 1 and three quarters billion people... yeah, that precipitated a social meltdown.

The Design of NYC

Many games have default or archetypal settings. Seattle, for Shadowrun, is a perfect example. GiTO has NYC. In many ways, NYC typifies the entire game, as nearly any type of adventure the setting supports can be found here.

The core is a typical Enclave, high tech, happy, clean. (Well, "happy" if you're a resident. Not so much otherwise.) There are many adventures possible here, from bank jobs to data runs, assassination or bounty hunter missions, body guarding or monster hunting, con jobs and political smear jobs.

The jungle is an urban nightmare. It has very different opportunities: gang warfare (against a gang or for a gang), lawmen-for-hire, raiding a company compound, guarding (or raiding) a convoy. Then there’s assassination or bounty hunter jobs, bodyguarding or monster hunting, and so forth.

The wild is largely empty of human life. Still, lone nuts and small settlements can be found here. It’s also filled with nests and lairs of strange and monstrous creatures that emerged from the vortexes. Also common are tribes of Beyonders who fled the dark forces consuming their world.

Then there’s the tunnels, an entire setting in and of itself, complete with settlers, survivors, and monstrous beasts.

And the vortexes.

Vortexes are not a rare thing. Many Guns find employ fighting the creatures that pour from a newly opened vortex; many find wealth venturing into the Beyond (a very different adventuring opportunity).

So, in the same city you can go from a high tech city, to a crime ridden slum, to a gang-ruled urban hellhole, to abandoned zones where monsters thrive. Nearly any adventure opportunity the game offers can be found somewhere in NYC.

Sounds a little bit like Pepe Moreno's Rebel -

http://www.thetimecapsule.com/folders/Joe%2085/9.2.246.jpg

Just wanted to say I think this is a very cool setting idea.

Quote from: dragoner;694752Sounds a little bit like Pepe Moreno's Rebel -

http://www.thetimecapsule.com/folders/Joe%2085/9.2.246.jpg

I've never heard of it, but that is an awesome picture! It captures the GiTO setting really well.

Quote from: danbuter;694766Just wanted to say I think this is a very cool setting idea.

Thanks! :)

The Empty World

This is an empty world. 60% of the population died off in the rotting plague and the aftermath, which means 60% of the buildings stand empty. This is a world of ghost towns. Ghost cities.

Blocks of tenements, with no inhabitants. Libraries, filled with books, abandoned and crumbling, the books slowly rotting away. High rises, office buildings, movie theaters, schools, police stations, hospitals, churches, all stand empty and abandoned, their windows shattered, leaving black gaps like teeth missing from a smile.

The wind blows through empty rooms. Rain pounds down. The sun shines on fading paint.

Trash litters the floors. Posters about the plague, about refugee centers, about rationing and hygiene. Graffiti covers the walls.

Paint peels from the crumbling walls. Furniture lies discarded in corners. Empty boxes, DVD players, television sets, all lie about, useless and unused.

Cars line the streets, their tires collapsed, their windows cracked, their paint fading. Trash, detritus, lies thick on the streets. Weeds and plants grow up, through the pavement, green growth in the urban gray.

This is a world empty of humanity.

I'd like to say I thought all this up, that this world sprang solely from my own, sheer imagination. It'd be a lie.

These images of urban decay and abandoned streets were inspired by a photo book, a photographic record of a real city. A city that is abandoned and crumbling.

Not Pripyat, devastated by Chernobyl, as apt as that'd be, but Detroit. Modern day Detroit, in many ways, embodies the wilds of 2039 America.

Yes, to my everlasting shame, I took inspiration from real life. Here are some of the photos:

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/20.jpg)

A library.

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/16.jpg)

An apartment building.

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/15.jpg)

A church.

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/12.jpg)

Effects of the sun.

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/11.jpg)

A house.

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/07.jpg)

A bank vault.

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/05.jpg)

A hallway.

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/01.jpg)

Michigan Central Station.

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/22.jpg)

A factory.

(http://daddywarpig.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/25.jpg)

A street.

Of course, in GiTO, these buildings are not all abandoned. Squatters live here, lone nuts, small gangs, or tiny communities of refugees or Beyonders. Bloodgangs (organized eaters of humanity), feral eaters, random monsters from out a vortex, all live here. These empty city streets are not totally empty, and all the more dangerous thereby.

(See more images here: http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html)

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;694834I've never heard of it, but that is an awesome picture! It captures the GiTO setting really well.

Thanks, it is from an old (80's) graphic novel I ordered from Heavy Metal the magazine back then. I see torrents of it, not so sure of all that, though.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;694220A mysterious, untreatable, and incurable affliction, with horrific symptoms, that's 100% fatal (the survivors never contracted it)

Hmm.  100% fatality is hard to look at as far as earlier models go as it never happened.  It seems like the absolute number one priority of every person and organization around would be to make sure it never comes back, but they can't because they don't know where it came from.  

Society would be living in the "Shadow of the Plague" forever.

Quote from: CRKrueger;694942Society would be living in the "Shadow of the Plague" forever.

Yes, the plague casts a very long shadow. Though no cases have been discovered since it burnt out — even among newborns — the rumor of one can set off a panic.

Of course, there have been no actual cases since the plague burned itself out, 22 years ago. The rising generation of adults were all born in a world free of the plague, but full of many other threats.

Eaters. Bezerkergangs. Random monstrosities, who can appear anywhere. And more mundane matters: shelter, food, fuel, security, immediate medical problems. It isn't that people are sanguine about it, it's that there are so many more pressing issues, that it gets kind of shunted aside.

Worries about your family starving to death this month, or this week, worries about a raid on a neighboring town, worries about foot-long locusts, worries about being able to afford enough fuel to get your corn to market, worries about finding antibiotics to fight your child's fever, worries about freezing to death come winter, all this tends to crowd such issues out.

Most people who lived through the plague, and can remember it (27-year-olds and older) tend to feel a deep disquiet when they are forced to confront the issue. But most are worried about far more immediate things, as there are plenty of immediate things for most people to worry about.

Or, at least, that's my take on it. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's defensible, at least.

People can adapt to anything. It's nearly impossible to stay panicked about a disease that hasn't been seen in 22 years. In this case, they've adapted.

(After all, people didn't really know what caused the Black Plague, but they adapted. It's either adapt, or die, and violence killed more people than the plague ever did.)

EDIT: The real effects of the plague would be indirect, vis a vis people's attitudes towards death, children, religion (or lack thereof), government, fate. The Black Plague had a lasting cultural impact, and the rotting plague would as well.

I'm thinking these sorts of things through. Nothing concrete, yet.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;694838I'd like to say I thought all this up, that this world sprang solely from my own, sheer imagination. It'd be a lie.

These images of urban decay and abandoned streets were inspired by a photo book, a photographic record of a real city. A city that is abandoned and crumbling.

Not Pripyat, devastated by Chernobyl, as apt as that'd be, but Detroit. Modern day Detroit, in many ways, embodies the wilds of 2039 America.

Of course, in GiTO, these buildings are not all abandoned. Squatters live here, lone nuts, small gangs, or tiny communities of refugees or Beyonders. Bloodgangs (organized eaters of humanity), feral eaters, random monsters from out a vortex, all live here. These empty city streets are not totally empty, and all the more dangerous thereby.

(See more images here: http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html)

In other words, they have MORE property value than Detroit.  ;)

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;694987In other words, they have MORE property value than Detroit.  ;)

:D :cool:

Technomagic FAQ

Before I start posting some more background material, these are a few questions that have been asked — or could have been asked — about technomagic. I hope these answers will clarify.

Q1) Why can’t technomagic be mass produced?

A1) The rule: most technomagical devisements can be used by anyone (with training), but can only be created by technomages.

Technomagic comes from thaumaturgy, which is the magical talent that imbues magic into items (creating a magic sword, for example). Technomagical devisements require wires, shaped into an electrical circuit, and flowing electricity, from a battery or generator. But creating them requires — you guessed it — imbuing. You have to imbue the circuitry with a tiny amount of magic (far less than necessary to create a magical sword, for example). Only technomages (or thaumaturgists) can imbue, therefore only they can create devisements.

More, they must create the entire devisement themselves, from raw parts (wires and batteries) to a finished case (hence, no assembly line). This process of creation is what links the mage to the devisement temporarily, and allows them to imbue it.

(Maguses claim this is an effect of the Law of Contagion. Thaumaturgists say the Magical Laws of spells have no effect on imbuing, and suggest the maguses mind their own damn business. Maguses suggest that thaumaturgy could do with a little bit of codification, if only the thaumaturgists would develop a minimal capacity to reason. Thaumaturgists say that maguses are arrogant, stuffy know-it-alls, more intent on book learning than working magic… and the arguments continue.)

For the foreseeable future, crafting devisements is a personal, small-scale enterprise.

Q2) Why does imbuing work with computers? Don’t you know that computer chips are silicon and other non-metallic substances, not metal?

A2) Let’s start with the basics: electrical current causes magical energies in the shadow world to flow, as energy (the electricity) affects ephemera (the magic). The concentrated, overlapping currents of electricity in a computer chip (or integrated circuit) creates a thick bundle of flowing energies, called a “node”. All this just happens, because of the innate relationship between energy and ephemera.

People with the shadow walking talent can project their mind into the shadow world. This allows them to enter a node, and read all the information on the computer. (Such individuals are called “crackers”.) This is an easy process, relatively speaking.

In order to protect computers, technomages created a devisement called a shroud. The shroud wrapped the node in magical energies, so a cracker couldn’t just read it at will. In order to read the node, the shadow walker has to penetrate the security in the shroud.

Shrouds create miniature worlds called constructs. The larger and more elaborate the construct, the more expensive the shroud.

(While in the construct, the cracker is vulnerable to damage or death, making cracking a serious endeavor. I’ll talk more about cracking in a future update.)

Some go even further, and use a technoshaman to summon spirits into the construct. These appear as sentries, guardian creatures, or whatever else the shaman desires. There are more dangerous, and hence more secure.

The upshot: only the shroud has to be imbued, not the computer. The node just happens.

I have a few more questions, which I’ll answer in later posts.

Cracking, Pt. 1: Magic in the Beyond

Well, the last update was about technomagic, and I promised some more about cracking. So here it is.

Magic emanates from the shadow world, an unearthly and quicksilver plane of gray mists and deep shadows. Imagine a sandstorm, at night, dimly lit by a full moon, and you will get the idea.

When the vortexes opened up between the Beyond and Earth, they allowed magic to flood our planet (an event called the Emergence). Energies from the shadow world inundated Earth, spirits from the shadow world could enter our plane of existence, and magicians could work magic, anywhere on the surface of the planet. So long as a single vortex remains open, this remains the case.

There are five different methods of working magic: augmentation, imbuing, shadow walking, sorcery, and spellcasting. These are called "the five talents", and each manipulates the energies of the shadow world in a different way. Most races can develop at least one of the talents, but only a few have the capacity to develop all five: the "mage" races, being alfars, faes, humans, trolls, and wisps.

For the mage races, developing a talent requires significant devotion and focus. Few develop even one talent (save among the fae), rarer still they who develop two. Those who develop all five are known as archmages, and they are personages of legendary power. There have been no archmages among the Beyonders for well over five centuries.

The talents have been known for millennia among the Beyonders, and their limits were well understood. Most believed these limits to be intrinsic to the magic itself. The Emergence proved them wrong.

A World In Flux (pt. 2)

The world is changing. This is obvious, as the plague shattered the old order and the Emergence dumped a bunch of new stuff from the Beyond. What may not be obvious is this: it isn't just our world that is changing.

Magic is a stable thing. Known for over 10,000 years, since the dominion of Atlantis, its nature, processes, and limits have been tried, tested, mapped, and mastered. Magic is a stable thing.

Until the Emergence changed all of that.

Our world is a new place, with new technologies. And these technologies, like electronics, interact with magic in ways that are unforeseen and unforeseeable. More, the Emergence happened just 14 years ago, and we are only now beginning to understand its effects and take advantage of the new opportunities magic affords us.

The first commercial technomage set up shop 11 years ago, but breadboard kits for technomages (suitable for quick-and-dirty devisements) are less than eight years old. Shadow walkers could read information from computers from the very first time they crossed over, but shrouds to protect that data weren't developed for four years (about a decade ago). And shadowjacks, which revolutionized computer use and cracking, are just three years old.

This is a time of flux, of great discoveries and revolutions in magic, technology, and technomagic, and cracking is a large part of that.

What Is Cracking? (pt. 3)

Cracking is a bit of cyberpunk virtual reality hacking added to the GiTO mix. It’s a way for mages to steal data from computers (or add data to, or take control of) solely through magical means.

I’ve covered the metaphysics of this in depth, but a quick recap: computers create nodes in the shadow world. Shadow walkers can enter these nodes and “use” the computer, as if they were sitting at it. Magical access grants them super-user privileges. (To the uninitiated, that means they can do the hell they want.) They don’t need to know passwords, they don’t need to know programming, they don’t need to know the specifics of the interface, they don’t need to hack anything.

Magical access just works — the walker can just sense the information, the way you can sense your hands. They just know it, without having to think about it. (Not all of it at once, you have to focus on specific bits.) It's pretty trippy, it's like the data is part of you.

This is a problem. Especially for people who, you know, own and use computers. So technomancers created shrouds. A shroud blocks access to the node: in order to access the node, you have to penetrate the shroud’s security.

For reasons specific to the shadow world (linked to shadow realms, which I’ll talk about some other time), shrouds create artificial realities. An estate villa, in Meiji-era Japan. A section of beach at Normandy, circa 1944. A weird technicolor domain of fragrances and swirling lights, something like living in a lava lamp. Anything the shroud’s controller can imagine can be implemented. These artificial realities are called constructs.

Constructs have their own laws of physics, unique to themselves. Every single “entity” entering the construct must follow the physical laws of the construct. In some constructs, gravity is relative to every surface, meaning you can stand on walls and ceilings, in addition to the floor. (This is known as Escher physics, to construct architects.) If Escher physics apply, they apply to all entities — people and spirits — in the construct, even the controller himself. Once the laws are set, they cannot be changed.

(Technically you can change them, but this requires rebooting the construct, which dumps all entities inside, meaning any spirits there are unbound and have to be re-summoned. A reboot also hard dumps any user entities, which is… less than pleasant. Reboots are saved for entirely replacing a construct or if a data penetration is close to the node.)

In addition to the unliving structures of the construct, technoshamans (and just plain sorcerers) can also summon spirits into the construct, to serve as additional security — roving sentries, guard dogs (or the equivalent), and so forth. For aesthetic reasons, these are typically structured to fit with the construct: Japanese swordsmen for the Meiji estate, Nazis for the Normandy bunker complex, coherent blobs of light for the living lava lamp.

More, the recent invention of shadowjacks — technomagical devisements which allow non-walkers to enter constructs and nodes — means real people can work in the construct, either as security or just office workers. Work in, or break into. Shadowjacks allow non-shadow walkers to crack. (But shadow walkers are much, much better at it.)

(Yeah, shadowjacks are a real boon for employers. You don’t have to teach people about how to click, double click, or right-click. Give them a shadowjack, send them into the construct, and they can enter data without needing to know jack about the UI. As long as they can use the construct correctly, you’re golden.)

Cracking is, at its most basic, breaking into the node by penetrating the security of the construct. I’ll discuss some more specifics next post.

Cracking A Construct (pt. 4)

So, let's break into a building. There's a chain link fence, walls, doors, locks, elevators, offices, card scanners, cameras, and guards. All the normal security one would expect in a building.

You're a group of thieves. You steal cards from guards, make copies of the keys, cut the power, sneak in. You use all your mundane skills: con, burglary, stealth, etc. If the patrolling guards catch you, you might have to fight. You shoot guns or tasers, or punch them out. All of this is normal.

Now, let's crack a construct. ("Constructs" are the artificial reality worlds surrounding a node.) Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that this construct looks like... an office building.

It has... exactly the same things as a mundane office building. The same locks, cameras, guards, and on and on. (Except the guards in a construct are usually bound spirits.) And each of them works exactly like their mundane counterpart. You can pick the locks, unhook cameras, sneak past the guards. You use the same mundane skills in a construct that you'd use in the real world. That's how you crack.

But shadow walkers have an edge. The laws of physics in a construct are inviolable and unchangeable. All entities (spirits and people) must follow them.

Except shadow walkers. Crackers can bend or break the laws of physics in a construct. They can see through walls, unlock the door with a wave of their hand, disrupt a keypad lock by willing it.

Crackers don't have to follow the rules. They can change the rules, simply by willing it.

Crackers are Gods in the construct.

Guns in The Construct (Cracking, pt. 5)

First, some clarification.

Crackers can bend or break the laws of physics in a construct. In a specific way, in a small space, for a short period of time. They can unlock one door without picking the lock, they can’t unlock all doors. But doing so isn’t without cost.

Each time they warp reality, it sends out a pulse of energy, which construct security can notice. Too many pulses, and they can call for extra spirits, security shadowjackers, an Admin shadow walker, or even boot cycle the construct (which aborts the run).

So crackers need mundane skills as well: stealth, burglary, etc. Which isn’t a problem, because it means they are useful outside the Mesh. [Mesh computing is a real-world thing; it’s replaced the Internet in the Outlaw. See here (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929294.500-meshnet-activists-rebuilding-the-internet-from-scratch.html).] The best crackers are the best burglars.

But suppose you’re not the best burglar. Or you just want more hands to help search the office building. Or suppose you just want some backup, for the times security swarms. In those cases, smart crackers bring along team mates.

Shadowjacks are technomagical devisements that allow mundanes to enter a construct. (There is also a spell which can do the same, and spirits can also effect this.) And, because mundane skills are of use in the construct, they can genuinely help. They can pick locks, blow safes, search vaults, or fight security. Anything they can do in the real world, they can do in the construct. (Assuming the local laws of physics allow.)

(Re: Combat in the construct. For shadowjackers, death means a hard dump, and sometimes the destruction of the shadowjack. For crackers, death means… death. They like bringing backup along.)

A party without a cracker can still crack a construct, just not as easily. And a party with a cracker can help him crack. Either way, computer intrusion is not a solo module.

The Chinese Zombie Apocalypse

The plague of 2015 was first reported in the news as "the Chinese Zombie Apocalypse". This was, of course, ridiculously incorrect, but it's easy to see why the mistake was made.

Induced Systemic Necrosis — ISN — came to be known as the rotting plague, for good reason. Once contracted (which 25% of humanity did), your body's tissues began to die and rot. Without a course of treatment, all patients eventually died of multiple organ failure, usually within a month of first symptoms.

ISN patients remained ambulatory for two to three weeks after developing the first symptoms, able to move about, speak, and take care of themselves as their bodies slowly rotted. It isn't hard to see why people thought they were zombies, especially those patients who suffered dementia or psychosis (from brain degradation).

Gangrene is a particularly ugly condition. (Don't google images of it. Trust me.) The sight of rotting flesh, and the smell of rotting meat, is overwhelming and nauseating. And the condition is excruciating in the extreme.

The disease was horrifying. It spread via means unknown. There was no vaccine, no treatment, no cure. It was 100% lethal. And in the summer and fall of 2015 it swept the globe, killing 1 and a quarter billion people.

Society broke down.

People fled each other. Nearly all abandoned their jobs and quarantined themselves. They grabbed what food and water they could, barricaded themselves in their homes, and waited the disease out.

Commerce ceased. Policing halted. Medical services were interrupted. Armies disintegrated. No one was harvesting food, processing the harvest, or bringing it to market.

The power company. The water company. Trash. Sewage. All stopped.

When the foodstuffs in the cities were consumed, millions fled. They spread out into the countryside, finding food where they could and, sometimes, taking food. Famine followed the disease, and violence followed the famine.

What is "The Outlaw"?

The Outlaw is every place not under control of the federal government ("the Fed"). It's every person who isn't a citizen, much less a resident. It's about half the population, 66% of the economy, and 75% of the territory.

The Outlaw is the lawless expanse.

How omnipresent is it? The seat of the national government is the former UN building in New York City. Close by is Central Park, the site of the largest open-air Outlaw market in the country. (You can buy and sell nearly anything in the Central Park Bazaar.) You can literally see the Outlaw from the upper floors of the Capitol Building.

But why? Why is so much of the country unorganized territory? Money and manpower.

All governments must have money. Income taxes are impossible to enforce — it's too easy to make undeclared money through the Outlaw economy, even while living in the Fed (see Central Park, above). Fees and tariffs are an alternative, but official corruption means many go uncollected (greasing palms is a survival skill in 2039). Without fees or income taxes, the government is impoverished, meaning it can't perform basic tasks (which corruption would make difficult in any case).

Residence fees are an effective solution, but endemic corruption in service bureaus and firms means most people are paying premium prices for shoddy work. Most people can get better services (cleaner water, better customer service, and so forth) via private companies or neighborhood associations (the "governments" in the jungle). So their fees go to those organizations, not the Fed.

This drives the best candidates (and the most motivated) to leave the Fed and join the hidden economy, where their abilities and efforts benefit Outlaw polities and Outlaw companies. As people leave the system for the Outlaw, their skills, knowledge, and experience travels with them, and the Fed economy shrinks, and the Fed has less money. It's an ongoing brain drain.

The manpower problem is simple: the plague, the collapse, and the Emergence killed off 2/3rds of the country. The population has grown slightly since then, but not enough to allow the Fed to colonize the vast lands outside their purview, especially given the ongoing losses to Outlaw polities. There are few people for the Fed to use as police and soldiers.

Civil order cannot be imposed by a token police force. It can only exist when people voluntarily obey the law, or there is sufficient force to impose it. In 2039 America, most people don't voluntarily obey Fed laws (even the rich and powerful subvert the law when they see fit) and the Fed cannot field enough soldiers or cops to impose them.

Without sufficient forces and materiel, the Fed can't protect its borders, not comprehensively, and in many cases Outlaw settlements thrive inside the Fed borders (as in New York City). In this situation, Outlaw settlements are parasitical: they are kept safe by the Fed, but leach away money and manpower.

Corruption leads to incompetence, and incompetence leads to people opting out. It is a vicious cycle that undermines the Fed's efforts to normalize governance and restore American prestige and power. The Outlaw is bigger, in every measurable way, and becoming more-so every day.

Life in the Two Americas

The great plague shattered the former social, political, and economic order, worldwide. The mass deaths of a quarter of humanity, and the ensuing chaos, disrupted all industries, and brought economic activity to a halt. Post-plague violence — riots, banditry, and outright warfare — killed anywhere from a third to half of the population. Then there was the Emergence, a whole ‘nother series of problems in and of itself.

No nation emerged unscathed, and most have ceased to exist at all. China broke apart into six separate countries, India into nearly a dozen, and the Green Eruption has killed off all civilization in Europe outside of a score of heavily armed city-states, most under the thumb of their own patron dragon. The US likewise suffered.

The United States — comprising an estimated 110 million people — is split roughly 50/50 between the Outlaw and the Fed. The Outlaw is the frontier, largely a place of anarchy and violence, with scattered pockets of civilization.

Most Outlaw polities are city-states, typically small settlements that stand on their own. (The three main exceptions being Alaska, Texas, and Utah.) Governments range from democratically elected town councils (of greater or lesser effectiveness), to absolute dictatorships (benign or cruel), to near-anarchy.

Life in the Outlaw is dangerous. You can literally be eaten alive by ghouls, robbed or murdered by bezerkergangs, or fall victim to any number of other horrors. When faced with these threats, citizens and local governments are on their own. (Hence the thriving market for Guns.)

Life in the Fed is safer, so long as you live in the Enclaves. You have police protection, functional infrastructure, and municipal necessaries. In consideration of this, you pay your annual residency fee for you and your family. (The replacement for the annual income tax.)

But your life is not your own. Your physical security requires residency, and that can be revoked at any time, by a corrupt policemen, an officious or offended bureaucrat, or your employer. Revocation of residency means exile, and people fear exile, for good reason.

Exile means being stripped of your job, your nice house, your secure neighborhood. It means you and your family being ejected from the core, to live without police protection or municipal services. Exile means life in the jungle.

Don't know if you have heard of it but a lot of your background and other genre tropes sounds like an old BRTC game called Warp World. Might want to check it out for inspiration and such. Has sufficient difference to not be the same but is similar.

Quote from: Artifacts of Amber;698015Don't know if you have heard of it but a lot of your background and other genre tropes sounds like an old BRTC game called Warp World. Might want to check it out for inspiration and such. Has sufficient difference to not be the same but is similar.

I have heard of it, but never read it. I'll try and locate a copy.

Thanks!

Life in the Jungle

Outside the enclaves, but part of the Fed, is the jungle, urban twilight zones that are half-Fed, half-Outlaw. Those who live in the jungle are entirely on their own. There are no municipal-supplied necessaries (water, power, etc.), no policing, and few outside opportunities for employment.

These conditions are alien to pre-plague Westerners, and lead to very odd adaptations. Like dirt vendors, who sell soil for rooftop gardeners and nightsoil disposal. Or honeywagons, who buy and compost human waste, to sell as fertilizer. (The safest of these use a pocket reactor to sterilize the soil. The least safest… don’t. Sometimes, this kills people.) Even in these circumstances, people adapted.

Without government, people were forced to fend for themselves, providing their own water, power, and other necessaries. The level of self-organization is strongly correlated with how prosperous and secure the neighborhood is.

There are two jungles in most of the Fed. One where people have self-organized effectively, one where they (for various reasons) have not. Life in the first is harsh, but not horrific. Life in the second is ugly and (to the eyes of a pre-plague American) unthinkable.

The pre-plague US standard of living was an aberration, both in historical terms and in comparison to the rest of the planet. Though the suffering from poverty in pre-plague America was very real, there were billions of people whose standard of living was far, far worse.

Life in the jungles has regressed to the poorest areas of the pre-plague Third World: the economy of post-War Europe, the politics of 1990’s Mogadishu, and the infrastructure of a Brazilian favela. Poverty is endemic and crushing. There are few jobs, few opportunities, and no social safety net.

[More next post.]

Life in the Jungle, II

There are two jungles in most of the Fed. One where people have self-organized effectively, one where they (for various reasons) have not. The level of self-organization is strongly correlated with how prosperous and secure the neighborhood is.

In the majority of areas, gangs roam freely, battling at will. There is not even a semblance of order or government. These areas are no-go zones, very nearly part of the wild. They are slowly dying.

Other zones are ruled by criminals or bandit gangs, de facto dictators or warlords who make a living through terrorizing those around them, raping and murdering to maintain their power. These places are dog-eat-dog, and people have only what they themselves provide. People here live a subsistence lifestyle, barely surviving, living day to day and hand to mouth. Vigilante gangs rule some areas, but the line between vigilantes and criminals is very thin, and there is no significant difference in prosperity (though much less crime — vigilante gangs are far less likely to engage in looting, murder, or rape, so long as their "fees" are paid).

The best-off areas have organized into neighborhood alliances, as a floor, a building, or several blocks, providing for themselves what the Fed cannot. In these areas, there are neighborhood schools, food co-ops, service alliances (to supply necessaries like water and power), even job boards. The skilled work for barter, trade with other alliances, or for black market currencies. Some areas are wealthy enough to contract with private service companies for security (private police forces), water, power, and so forth. These areas are typically referred to as "settlements", and are usually considered part of the Outlaw.

In all cases, life is hard and short. Epidemics and famine are common. Material security is unknown, and physical security is unknown. Conflicts between neighborhoods (low-intensity, disorganized wars of raid and reprisal) are routine.

As has held for most of human history, jungle dwellers live in perpetual fear of war or banditry. It is a measure of how fearsome people find the Outlaw, that they are willing to live in such poverty rather than take their chances with the dangers there.

These fears are exaggerated, and as a matter of deliberate policy. Life in the Outlaw is not as bad as jungle dwellers are told, but Fed officials spread the tales anyway. They find the jungles a useful safety valve and threat — exile to the jungles is the worst punishment enclave residents can imagine, and in the face of this threat, they toe the line.

Life in the enclaves is, of course, very different. Enclave residency is the carrot, the reward for political sycophancy.

Asked and Answered: Vortexes and Rangers

Fortunato, over on the Campaign Builders Guild (http://www.thecbg.org/), had a couple of questions about vortexes and Texas Rangers. This is the Q&A.

Q1: About vortexes, do they open anywhere at random or are they confined in some way?

A1: There's a lot about vortexes that is simply unknown. Right now, the best guess is that they can open basically anywhere, and apparently at random. No one has been able to prove or disprove this.

Q2: Can one open or close a vortex?

A2: So far as is known, no one can create a vortex (they seem to be a spontaneous magical phenomenon). However, it is possible to collapse one, using a specially designed technomagical devisement.

BP soldiers (and similar services in the Outlaw, like Texas Rangers) are specially trained to enter vortexes and close them. (After which, they are ejected from the Beyond.) Guns with that training can command premium fees.

Q3: Any more details on the Texas Rangers?

A3: Texas is the largest non-Fed polity in North America (measured by territory, population, and wealth). It is one of the two exporting oil states (the other being South Dakota), and so has the wealth to arm and equip a sizable internal security force and self-defense force (an army). The Rangers are their internal police and security force.

(One note of irony: since both polities lay claim to the mantle of the former US, they both fly the Stars-and-Stripes. If the Fed and Texas ever go to war, both armies will be flying the same flag and fighting in the name of the same country.)

The Rangers were instrumental in maintaining order during the Collapse, through the addition of thousands of deputies. Local jurisdictions were bolstered by roving bands of Rangers, who successfully maintained order during the mass exodus from urban centers (roughly 6 million refugees, in Texas’ case). Aggressive intervention in confrontations maintained public order and kept internecine violence in Texas at nearly the lowest level in the continental US. (The lowest being Utah.)

(Famine took its toll, and there were a few food riots, but nothing like plagued California. Then again, California's problems were of a much greater magnitude. Incompetence made the LA death march more lethal than might have been otherwise, but nothing could have prevented it.)

The public loved the Rangers, and through them the government in Austin. This kept Texas intact, when so many other states fell apart.

After the Collapse, the Rangers' role in internal security was increased, and their increased numbers were ratified by Austin. Any Texas city that had local problems they couldn't manage could call upon the Rangers for assistance.

In the aftermath of Emergence, the Rangers were assigned the duty of patrolling vortexes. (Much like the Border Patrol in the Fed.) The Rangers train extensively for this, and even cross train with the BP. (Both Austin and the Fed dislike this arrangement, but the commanders of both forces are given wide latitude to carry out their mission, and sharing tips and tactics between the forces has improved their effectiveness greatly.)

Texas is one of the few polities to officially recognize Guns, and (through the Rangers) even offer a charter service for Gun companies. By agreeing to abide by Texas laws and a professional code of conduct, Guns can be officially licensed and chartered. (There are even bonding companies who cover Guns.) Texas-licensed Guns are in high demand, and command higher fees.

The Rangers maintain a job board for Guns, a clearinghouse for information about who is hiring in Texas and surrounding areas. When a situation is bad, but not so bad as to require the Rangers' intervention, they recommend that local jurisdictions hire licensed Guns.

Asked and Answered: Utah in 2039

In yesterday's post, I made an offhand reference to Utah, prompting the following question from one of my blog readers:

Q1: What happened in Utah? Did I miss that post?

A1: No, you didn't miss that post. There's background information that I haven't posted yet. This includes Utah.

The State of Utah is a semi-independent member of the Fed. It participates in national elections, and sends Senators and Representatives to Congress, but doesn't accept the authority of the Reconciliation Committee, nor follow their dictates (including residency policies).

Though it officially only covers the geographic boundaries of the former State of Utah, unofficially Utah incorporates portions of southern Idaho, south-west Wyoming, and western Colorado. (The Free City of Denver is not included.) People in these areas participate in state and national elections as citizens of Utah, and are governed by Utah law and courts. The rest of the Fed doesn't like this, but turns a blind eye.

Utah is unique among American states, in that it's regained and even surpassed its population levels from before the plague (roughly 3 million, in 2039). This is due to the family sizes of LDS Church members (the "Mormon Church", members of which comprise about 66% of the state's population), approximately 4.8 children per family on average, and the number of refugees who settled there before Emergence (roughly 400,000).

Today, Utah is known for agriculture (it's the largest non-Chartered Company agricultural center in the 48), charity towards refugees, and firearms. "Don't fuck with the Mormons," the saying goes, "because they make good guns and aren't afraid to use them." Utahns tend to be friendly towards outsiders, but harsh towards malefactors.

Browning Arms Company is responsible for the State's reputation for firearms. The company is the largest arms producer in the western US, and manufactures weapons and ammunition (including rifles, shotguns, bows, and more) for internal sale and export. Browning weapons are known for their high quality, reliability, and low cost of ownership. Consequently, they are extremely popular weapons, especially in the Outlaw. Browning guns are the second-most common weapons in the Outlaw, just above locally produced firearms. (Pre-Collapse arms are the most common.)

Salt Lake City (the state capitol) is a linchpin for Fed travel routes, because of its location, lack of bandits, and local gasoline production. Nearly all traffic from California to the east has to pass through SLC, and the Fed's nascent freight rail lines run the same route. Utah markets sell goods from all over the Fed.

The Wasatch Mountains, Bonneville Salt Flats, and Zion National Park all see a large number of vortexes, far above the national average. Utah has a small bureau of officers trained in vortex-jumping, but they are nowhere near as expert as the Rangers or BP. The State of Utah relies heavily on Guns for these kinds of incursions.

Life in Utah is hard, but not as desperate as many other areas of the Fed. The State is a net agricultural exporter (if only just), meaning it produces enough food to feed all its citizens. The Church's food program (expanded to include refugees, post-Collapse) also provides a limited safety net: if they're willing to work, and the food is available, people won't starve. They may be hungry much of the time, but they won't die of starvation.

(I'll talk about the post-plague history of Utah in the next post.)

Eaters of Men

There are three elements in Beyonder mysticism: the material, the energic, the ephemeral. Tangible things, like water, gases, and metals, are material. Heat, light, and cold are energies. (Yes, cold and darkness are active energies.) Beyonders know of, and believe in, an immortal soul, something that continues to exist after the body has died. Both the soul and magic are ephemeral phenomenon, they transcend the mortal world.

Magic can manifest as curses, supernatural forces that causes harm to someone. There are curses of ill luck (a hex or juju), curses of death, or the morphic curses, that turn people into monsters. The most frightening curses are the anthrophagic: curses which turn people into cannibals.

Such monsters are known as eaters, because they consume their victims. There are many different strains of eaters, but all strains are linked to one of the mystical elements.

Ghouls eat the flesh of their victims, different strains preferring different organs (livers, lungs, hearts) or substances (bile, spinal fluid, blood). Some consume any flesh they can. All are oriented towards the material.

Vampires eat the energy of their victims (the electrochemical energies known as “life”), different strains draining this in different ways. Some drain through simple touch, others through consuming the flesh or fluids of their victims (their attacks appearing, at first glance, to be the work of a ghoul), others through… intimate contact. (These last are known as inccubi or succubi.) Vampires are linked to the energic world.

Revenants drain ephemera (often through consuming the flesh or fluids of their victims). The soul is of the ephemeral world, and some revenants feed off it. These revenants consume and destroy the soul, leaving the victim a mindless, but still living, husk. Other strains eat the magic of their victims — after being attacked, the person is absolutely normal, save that they cannot use their magical talents any more. (These last are known as mage-killers.)

Anthrophagic curses are contagious: after some period of time, their victims arise as new eaters. Some spawn eaters of their strain, some eaters of different strains. Some can chose when to spawn, or choose what strain they produce. (For example, some vampires can create ghoul servitors.) But all eaters pass along a curse to those they kill. (Some don’t even have to kill: a bite or touch is sufficient to spread the curse.)

Eaters are mystical beings, and very often they are only vulnerable to specific substances or weapons. Some can only be harmed by magic, others only by the faith of a true priest. Some can only be hurt by water, salt, or wood grown in soil from the land of their nativity. Knowing which variety of eater you face is essential.

When well-fed, eaters are frighteningly intelligent and cunning. Deprived of that which they consume, their intelligence devolves but their strength and resilience grows. Starving eaters (called “ferals”) are utterly mindless — ravening animals that consume without thought.

Eaters are widely feared, and for good reason. They are malevolent, voracious, and spread their curse to those they attack. Shortly after Emergence, a Eater plague spread along the East Coast, destroying several enclaves and settlements. (Among them, Boston and Chicago.) Soon after, the first bloodgangs appeared: nomadic bands of eaters who hunt in packs.

Eaters are one of the prime menaces in 2039. The BP and Texas Rangers both train in identifying and eliminating eater strains.

Hunters, Guns who specialize in tracking and killing eaters, are among the most highly trained and deadly mercenaries in the Outlaw. (And, often, the most fanatical. Hunting has a low life expectancy, and people who survive for a long time, and continue in the face of the horrors they suffer and see, are driven by something.) Guns can expect that many of their most lucrative, and dangerous, contracts will involve eaters, one way or the other.

[Note: I still need to post the other half of Utah's writeup. Tomorrow, hopefully.]

A History of Violence in Utah

Violence during the Collapse wasn’t universal. Internecine violence following the Collapse was largely due to fighting over food, the rise of gangs or packs, and the urban exodus. Areas with low population levels, rural areas, and areas with a high social cohesion suffered far lower levels of violence than the obverse.

Utah had the lowest level of post-plague violence in the United States, precisely due to these factors. It had a much smaller population than most states, a largely suburban or rural population, and a generally higher level of social cohesion.

More, its population had significant stores of privately held food (the result of Church teachings), meaning hunger was a smaller concern. Although Utah residents went hungry much of the time, they never faced outright starvation, much less the famines that plagued, for example, LA.

The suburban sprawl of the Wasatch Front meant people could convert their backyards into gardens, supplying food for their families. This practice was widespread before the Collapse, but became ubiquitous after the Mormon Church collectivized food distribution for members in summer of 2016 (the Black Summer, when the famines were at their worst). In later years, after the fall 2016 harvest, Utah even began feeding refugees from other states in large numbers.

(Members mostly complied with the "United Order" food distribution plan, but there were many who left the Church over it. It was discontinued in 2018, after the worst of the famines had passed.)

By the time of the Reconciliation Conference, in 2018, Utah had pretty much recovered from the Collapse. Thanks to the Wyoming pipeline (and Salt Lake refineries), it even had a small supply of gasoline.

[Note: There is probably one more Utah post. Hopefully tomorrow.]

Utah: Life On the Frontier

Life in Utah is very, very hard. The majority of the state works in agriculture, producing food for themselves and others. It’s a hardscrabble existence. Military service is mandatory, for men and women, and despite its importance as a trading center, Utahns are by and large materially poor.

In a way, it’s a modern American Israel. Utah is a lone polity, dominated by a majority religion, geographically isolated from similar polities, surrounded by enemies and under constant attack.

The enemies, in this case, are the monsters that emerge from three nearby vortex clusters (in the Salt Flats, Zion parkland, and the Wasatch Mountains). Incursions from these clusters can be expected twice a year, or more.

The state lacks a dedicated vortex-jumper unit, like the BP or Texas Rangers (though individual Utahns are as trained or better), instead military service being the responsibility of all Utahns. (They are not averse to hiring Guns as needed). The populace is on constant alert for attacks, and every male Utahn above the age of 15 is inducted into the State Guard. (Females above the age of 15 join the auxiliaries, where they fulfill support roles.)

Even after mustering out, at the age of 20, Utahns are perpetually in the reserves (and allowed to keep their service weapons, another similarity with Israel and Switzerland). Utahns are a well-armed people.

The state is a crossroads, the primary link between the East and West. (And hence sees a lot of convoy traffic. It's pretty easy for Guns to find employ in Utah, so long as vortex-jumping, bounty-hunting, and convoy duty are acceptable employments.) It trades primarily with the State of California (part of the Fed), the Seattle Domain, and the Free City of Denver. Utah has a large domestic arms industry, driven by Browning Arms in Morgan, and Browning weapons are among the most common and best-regarded post-Collapse weapons in the shattered country.

Other than technology, Utah has regressed to the lifestyle of the pioneer era. Farmwork is the most common employment (about 51%), followed by shopkeeping. All family members work from the time they are old enough to stand on their own.

Families produce most of what they need themselves, the chief exception being technological items. Children receive a strong primary education (by religious decree), but seldom attend college. People marry young, 15 or 16 on average, and start their own farm (or otherwise establish a household).

Clothing styles are modern cut (aping the styles of pre-Collapse America), but made of homespun cloth. Technological devices are expensive, and (other than pre-Collapse relics) very uncommon. Vehicles are rare, reserved for official use. Firearms are ubiquitous, but the state has a very low crime rate and a harsh, but fair judicial system. (Which makes extensive use of Gun contracts for bail-jumpers and fugitives. Utah hired Guns have claimed fugitives in New York's jungles, the ghoul cities of Boston and Chicago, and even Mexico. Utahns don't mind paying for justice.)

If you can stomach living like an 1840’s frontier farmer, and don’t mind the occasional mind-breaking beast from out a vortex, life in Utah is among the best in the Fed. There is no residency fee, meaning you are safe in your home and land, and there is little of the corruption that plagues politics and daily life in California and New York. The police provide good security and don’t demand bribes to do their job.

There is a small safety net, unlike the rest of the Fed. (Church members donating 10% of their annual increase to the Church, and donating more monthly for the care of the poor. Catholics and other religions also maintain missions and charities.) You are free to prosper, even if your definition of “prosperity” has to be adjusted sharply downwards.

Life in Utah is not pretty, not glamorous, not romantic. It it a harsh, desert land, frequently beset by ravening monstrosities, lost in the middle of the vast post-Collapse wilderness of 2039 North America.

[This is the last Utah post. Tomorrow, I want to talk about guns, lowercase.]

The Black Summer

I want to talk about guns, but before I do I have to talk about 2016. Everything odd about guns in the Outlaw — how the AK-47 became the iPhone of the Outlaw, how Utah became the arms-mongers of 2039 by selling AK's to the quarter million Communist Chinese refugees occupying Seattle (and later, the dragon who took the city), and how the Emergence caused the widening adoption of the 10mm round — starts in 2016.

The plague hit the US in September 2015. People began getting sick, and three or four weeks later, started dying. During October and November, approximately 25% of the United States died of contagious gangrene. In the aftermath of the plague, came the chaos.

Pandemics are horrifying. Nobody knows what exactly they are, how to ward them off, or how to cure them. (Or if they do, they can do nothing about it.) All you can do is make the dying comfortable, and wait for the disease to run its course.

Adversity can be ennobling; some of the greatest moments of compassion can arise from communal suffering. But pressed too hard, for too long, and people become desperate. Civilized habits and morals are stripped away by the constant need to fight for life.

Let me explain.

The disease spreads, and people are dying. You have a job, maybe a grocer, bus driver, or paramedic. But if you go out, into the world, you can catch the disease. Tens of millions of people are dying, their flesh rotting off their bones, and you see this every day. So you run away. You grab what supplies you can, bunker up, and wait out the plague.

And everybody does this. And food stops moving. And fuel stops moving. And policing stops. And trash is no longer picked up.

There is no food. The cities have been stripped clean. And you are hungry. And your kids are hungry. And the hunger never goes away. And you find yourself eating things you never would imagine.

And it is winter. And it is cold. And the snows begin to fall. And people begin freezing.

So you flee the cities, into the countryside. There are plants there, animals there, food there. Or there was, before 20 million other people headed south with you.

And your kids are hungry. And you are hungry. Not just hungry. Ravenous.

There is an empty pit in your belly, an aching pain that fills your torso, like getting punched in the gut. And it never goes away. Even when you eat leaves off trees, or the half-rotten carcass by the side of the road, or the time you found a single candy bar and had to split it four ways, and just for a moment, staring at the squashed, stepped-on Snickers bar inside the plastic wrap, your hands shaking with weakness, you thought about wolfing it down. Damn the kids, you needed to eat. After a moment of pounding hunger, you gave them the candy bar and wept after, dry sobs you tried to stifle, so the kids wouldn’t hear. So tired you couldn’t walk straight, you bedded down in the burned out store. You’d been carrying your youngest — she was just two — and the next day, she’d fallen asleep and never woke up.

Even after all that, the hunger never went away. And you were hungry and your kids were hungry.

Such people are desperate. There isn’t much they wouldn’t do to survive.

[Pt. 2, tomorrow.]

2016, Pt II

There's some key questions that need to be answered, for the setting to make any sense. We know that the US is (in 2039) fractured. There are six major polities, which govern only part of the country, and even those which are nominally part of the same polity (the Fed) are effectively different nations.

But why? Why is the United States so fractured? The answer is simple: it's all down to tribes.

Humans are tribalistic. It's innate, evolutionary, necessary to survive. We divide the world into Us and Them and (in most cases) hate and fear the Them. (Whoever the "Them" are.)

When two foreign tribes come into contact, 99% percent of the time the absolute best you can expect, the pinnacle of morality and decency, is benign indifference. They interact, usually trade, and go on their way. A step down is suspicion and distrust. Below that is active hostility and below that, killing. Two tribes who compete for the same resources will become enemies, and enemies, sooner or later, will kill each other. This is tribalism.

(I note that benign indifference isn't immoral behavior. When survival is a hard-won prize, when every day is spent on the edge of starvation, disease, or death, there is no generosity, because there is nothing to be generous with. The widow may have donated her two mites, but if there are no mites, have never been any mites, and will never be any mites, not for centuries, people give nothing because they have nothing to give. Generosity is a virtue of those who have something to be generous with.)

America, in 2039, is tribalized. It is broken into thousands of tribes, dozens of multi-tribal alliances, and six small nations.

Each settlement is a separate tribe, unto itself. Each city-state is a strong tribal alliance, each local or regional confederacy a weak one. Each of the six polities are (in effect) small nations, and they view the others as foreign and strange.

New York's urban warriors and agro-businessmen have little in common with the optimistic industrial laborers of the Dakotas or the devout but impoverished farmers of Utah. They see the world in different ways, have different customs, morals, and social norms, and are deeply suspicious of the "other".

America has regressed — it is no longer one nation. And 2016 is why.

2016, Part III

In Part I, I talked about people's suffering in 2016. In Part II, I talked about the tribalization of the US in 2039. But how did we get from the first to the second?

Group identity is an odd thing. It can be shattered by disaster, or forged into an unbreakable bond. People who suffer through adversity, who lean on each other, depend on each other, and save each other's lives over and over, bond in ways most people will never understand.

The plague and the Collapse caused people to break into small groups, then caused those groups to bond together tightly.

The plague broke the back of commerce, and food deliveries stopped. Stores emptied out, quite quickly, and people were left with what they had on hand, or what they could acquire. (However they went about it.) Packs — ad hoc mobs led by a strongman — formed, and fought over the scraps.

When the cities ran short of food, people left for the countryside. And they were desperate. And they fought for food any way they could — it was literally a matter of life and death. But there simply was not enough food to feed everyone.

In the countryside, the towns (on the whole) said "no". This usually ended badly, for both sides.

Sometimes the town could fend off the "locusts" (as they called the urban refugees). More often, the refugees overran the defenders and took the town. In rare cases, a modus vivendi was reached.

These conflicts, these bitter little wars over food and shelter are burned into the minds of those who lived through them. On either side, people were driven by sheer desperation to do things they abhorred. And the survivors remembered.

The refugee packs, by and large, bonded due to their shared experience of famine in the city, flight to the countryside, and supporting their leader in armed confrontations. They became proud of their group, proud of their leader, and became a family, a tribe. They became willing to fight and die for their tribe.

Rural cities bonded over shared struggles to restore order, feed themselves, and fend off locusts. They became proud of their town, proud of their fellow citizens, and proud of their successes in their struggle. (Towns who weren't successful disintegrated or simply died.) They became a tribe, and were willing to fight and die for it.

Military bases, cut off from command and each other, became a tribe. Families were sheltered there, fed, clothed, and cared for there, and soldiers fought to keep themselves and their families safe. People were willing to fight and die for this tribe.

Most people lived through similar experiences. By the end of 2016, nearly everyone in America saw themselves as part of a tribe, even if they didn't recognize it.

2015 shattered America. But 2016 cemented those divisions. After that year — a long year of famine and strife — people no longer thought of themselves as Americans, one indivisible nation.

They said they did, they thought they did, they aspired to. But deep in their hearts, those they fought and survived with were their tribe and everyone else was "Them".

Even the efforts of the Reconciliation Conference (in 2018) couldn't overcome the baked-in distrust and enmity that sprang from the events of 2016.

[Note: That's the end of the depressing stuff. Apologies, this really isn't a grimdark campaign setting. But to understand America in 2039, you have to understand 2016, and what happened then was pretty grim. Next time, the posts should be more upbeat. Or, at least, deal with less thoroughly horrible subjects.]

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;701666By the end of 2016, nearly everyone in America saw themselves as part of a tribe, even if they didn't recognize it.

2015 shattered America. But 2016 cemented those divisions. After that year — a long year of famine and strife — people no longer thought of themselves as Americans, one indivisible nation.

They said they did, they thought they did, they aspired to. But deep in their hearts, those they fought and survived with were their tribe and everyone else was "Them".

In other words, election season.

Quote[Note: That's the end of the depressing stuff. Apologies, this really isn't a grimdark campaign setting. But to understand America in 2039, you have to understand 2016, and what happened then was pretty grim. Next time, the posts should be more upbeat. Or, at least, deal with less thoroughly horrible subjects.]

Blowing stuff up with machine guns and fireballs.  :D

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;701863Blowing stuff up with machine guns and fireballs.  :D

Hell, yes! :D

And treasure hunting in ancient ruins on the other side of portals to an alien and magical world.

And breaking into computers by entering a dimension of shadow and magic.

And running bootleg contraband past the New York Border Patrol, while driving a souped-up modern replica of the 1958 Packard Hawk (which has at least been modded with a technomagical camouflage system, so you'll probably survive).

And tracking the last survivor of a bloodgang south, through the Mexicali Narco-kingdoms.

And bodyguarding a Chartered Company rep while he negotiates for trade rights (in Mandarin) with the clutch of dragons that rule Seattle.

Vortex-jumping underwater, off the coast of Cuban Florida.

Trying to rescue the passengers of a Dakota-manufactured Huey that crashed in the Black Hole of Oregon. (The so-called "Oregon Triangle".)

Talking your way into a troll warlord's camp, so you can bribe him with a chest of pre-plague Playboys.

Signing on for a suicide contract, to guard a tiny town from a brutal bezerkergang onslaught.

It's a big world, and there's a lot of bad things going on, which is why they need Guns. But this is an adventure game, not an exercise in grimdark misery tourism, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Packs of the Dying Years

Humans adapt to changing conditions. When the world around them changes, they develop (and innovate) new techniques, tools, and cultural norms. They adapt to the new conditions, and in a generation it becomes the new normal. In the aftermath of the rotting plague and the Collapse, people created packs.

"The most remarkable feature of these conflict-forged, ad hoc 'tribes' is the degree to which their dynamics resemble those of another emergent social phenomenon of the Collapse: the packs of feral dogs that coalesced out of the hundreds of thousands of pets abandoned by their owners during the chaos. They were both nomadic, both lead by an alpha figure, and both aggressive and untamable."


The milieu from which packs emerged was an anarchic one, a dog-eat-dog struggle for the barest supplies necessary to survive. On the run, desperate for food and shelter, people banded together in small (usually around 100 people), ad hoc, discrete groups, usually under the leadership of a charismatic leader or a strong man.

These were common people — stock brokers, lawyers, hair dressers, waiters, truck drivers, former police — from every socio-economic and cultural background, foraging together, hunting together, fighting together (with steak knives, improvised weapons, and their fists). They banded together to protect themselves and their families against millions of desperate survivors just like them.

Rural townsfolk called the refugees locusts, both because of their numbers and their tendency to strip the land bare. Conflict, in the aftermath of the plague, mainly occurred between town dwellers and packs of survivors, usually over matters of food and land.

Hundreds of thousands of packs formed from the urban exiles, and many didn't survive the dying years. Those who did had almost always bonded together into a tight, unbreakable social unit. After the famine subsided, they lived together, worked together, travelled together. They had become a tribe.

After the dying years had passed, many settled down. Those who usurped a town usually settled there. Others made their own tiny hamlets, small cities of tents and shacks cobbled together from scavenged materials. (Called settlements, the name came to apply to any independent Outlaw city.) Many of these settlements stand today, and are still occupied. Many other packs just kept moving.

And do today. The large numbers of itinerant groups in the Outlaw is an outgrowth of the emergence of packs. Warpacks, okiepacks, rotpacks, carnypacks, fleshgangs, bezerkergangs, and bloodgangs were all outgrowths of the refugee packs of 2015.

Packs of The Outlaw

In the chaos of the Collapse, hundreds of thousands of packs (ad hoc itinerant modern tribes), with millions of members, formed. Most packs eventually died out, the majority of the rest settled down, but thousands of these itinerant tribes never found a home. They continue their migrations today.

There are several types of modern packs, which differ in nature and function. "Packs" are made of families, parents and children. "Gangs", on the other hand, are almost always adult-only (in the Outlaw, you become an adult at the age of 15).

Okiepacks — Migrant workers, including farmhands, mechanics, electricians, tailors, and more. (The focus on skilled labor means Okiepacks are a magnet for Alfar.) For settlements too small to develop much division of labor, Okiepacks are a life-saver.

Carniepacks — Entertainers, including actors, singers, dancers (usually including a burlesque show), tumblers, musicians, and other performers. (Some even offer gambling.) Carnies are welcome, especially in the Outlaw where other forms of entertainment are rare. Welcome, but mistrusted. Carnies have a reputation for loose morals, thievery, and assorted illicit activities (like narcotics trafficking).

Flea markets — Packs who buy and sell sundries, including salvage. A key part of the Outlaw economy, as they can supply goods to a settlement that they cannot produce locally. (Such as salt, a necessary nutrient.)

Locusts — Packs who offer no services or goods, but forage, hunt, and fish on claimed land. While not actively hostile towards townies, still they are loathed for consuming resources towns need for their survival. Most move on relatively quickly; failing that there is usually some kind of armed confrontation.

Warpacks — The human name for a troll-lead warband (named so because each band is lead by a warlord), all-human warpacks have become increasingly common in the last decade. Warpacks survive through (and specialize in) foraging and hunting. They often offer martial services to towns (competing with Guns), or services as hunters or weapon trainers.

Rotpacks — The slow rot is the slow motion version of the rotting plague. The plague kills in weeks, the slow rot takes years. Much less contagious (people have lived with sufferers for years without catching the disease), and very difficult to detect or cure, the slow rot is the 2039 version of leprosy. (Rotters, once their skin begins to peel off, cover themselves with bandages or rags. The stench is incredible.) People who contract the disease are invariably exiled or killed. Rotpacks are groups of rotters who live together and survive together. (Unlike other packs, rotpacks have no families — the diseased are the only members.)

Fleshgangs — During the famines of 2016, some people turned cannibal. Fleshgangs are packs who hunt and feed off other humans. They are universally loathed and hunted. (Fleshgangs, despite their name, are usually groups of families, passing down their unique dietary predilections from parent to child.)

Bloodgangs — Ghouls must feed on human flesh, fleshgangers choose to. Bloodgangs are gangs of ghouls who hunt as a group. (The name comes from blood-drinker ghouls.) They are feared and hunted: fleshgangers can only eat you. Ghouls can make you one of them.

Bezerkergangs — Marauders, bezerkergangs rob, rape, and murder. They attack, take what they want, terrorize the locals, and drive off. Hated and hunted without quarter.

Towns that are hostile towards packs get a bad reputation, and packs avoid them in the future. This can be deadly — again, salt — so nearly all settlements at least tolerate packs (in general, specific packs may have a bad reputation), and most welcome them. Traditionally, towns charge packs a camping fee; settlements who charge too much drive packs away.

"If they catch us, we're going to be raped, killed and eaten.  And if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order."

Quote from: James Gillen;703047"If they catch us, we're going to be raped, killed and eaten.  And if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order."

:) It wouldn't be a post-apocalyptic supernatural western without some savages.

(Feral ghouls, Fed soldiers, fleshgangers, monsters from a vortex, bezerkergangers... okay, a lot of savages. :D)

Building the Outlaw

There are two main gameplay goals for the design of the world: to provide interesting material for players and GM's, and to provide a variety of options for players and GM's. Hence the several races, the 5 magical talents, the different polities, varied types of packs, and so forth.

Variety. Fascination.

As for the world itself, I'm trying to design it so that it feels plausible — enough like a world that could be real (given the fantastic conditions that exist) that people can accept it.

Trolls are born leaders, they draw others to them, and can motivate and inspire them. This is an ontological fact. Plausibility comes in when we consider the effects.

In the Beyond (in specific, the continent of Cienvue, where the mage races lived), trolls dominate war and politics. That makes sense. A race of people who are compelling leaders *would* dominate politics. That's plausible.

This is the sort of relatable internal logic that I'm trying to build the rest of the setting around. Sometimes it's working forward from a known event — "What effects would the rotting plague have?" — sometimes it's trying to justify a cool idea — "Why do computers affect the shadow world?" — sometimes its just making two ideas fit together — "How are spellcasting, shadow walking, and enchanting related?" — and often it's all three at the same time.

But no matter which I'm doing, I'm always working towards those dual goals — variety and fascination. The extent to which I can succeed, will mark the limit of the game being any damn good.

How To Make A World That Feels Real

So, I’m shooting for plausibility in setting design (behind variety and fascination). How do you build a plausible world? Last time I talked about sensibility: the world has to feel like it makes sense.

But there are two other concepts to making a setting and a history that works. These are “History Never Stops” and “Mankind Adapts”.

The world in which we live is ever changing, and we live in one moment of it. The past is different, the future is different, and things always change. History Never Stops.

The setting of 2039 is supposed to feel like one moment in an ever-changing world. Cracking via shadow walking is new, having materialized in the last decade. Many other technomagical devisements are also brand new, as in less than a couple of years old. And old things — AK-47’s and Land Rovers — are experiencing a resurgence, thanks to the new circumstances of the Outlaw.

The politics of America are fluid — there are tensions between the polities, and at any time the balance of power could change. Will change, I should say, at some point.

The Dakotas are the least invested in the Fed union, they may withdraw at any time. Or, unexpected events might push them closer to the Fed. Mexico’s dictatorship might expand north, in an effort to eliminate the Mexicali Narco-kingdoms, or it may fall apart into warring states. The Fed might liberalize its policies, or might move even closer to a police state. History never stops, and 2039 is just one moment in the long history of the world.

Mankind Adapts.

Humans thrived when we had sticks and stones, but no fire. We thrived when we had fire and metals, but no printing press, compasses, or electricity. We thrived when we had the internal combustion engine and assembly lines, but no computers. And we can thrive when we have technomagic and spells and vortexes.

We adapt to our changing circumstances.

The world economy broke down during the collapse, and the Emergence has made continent-wide supply networks problematic at best. People adapted by turning to old, rugged designs.

The most popular individual weapon in the Outlaw is based on the AK-47, and the most popular vehicle is a clone of the 1948 Land Rover. Both are simple to make, rugged, and easy to maintain. You can make AKs in any machine shop; the same machine shop can mill replacement parts for the Land Rover. Given difficult circumstances, people adapted.

Technomagic is the quintessential example of “Mankind Adapts”. Technomagic is the application of the principles of Enchanting to the technology of our world. And, using that same technology, we can do things with enchanting Beyonders never imagined.

We can surgically inscribe runes on people’s bones, allowing them to become Augments, artificial shadow warriors. Normal people can shadow walk, using technomagical bracelets. We can enchant our cars, our computers, even our bullets, allowing them to do incredible things.

So, in addition to variety and fascination, and in service of plausibility (or verisimilitude), the setting of the Outlaw is intended to reflect History Never Stops and Mankind Adapts. These are two truths evinced by all human history, and incorporating them in setting design makes the fictional world of the game feel more real.

California — The White Line Nightmare

California is the garden paradise of the Fed — balmy clime, full employment, and plenty of food. To those living in the cramped and rotting jungles of New York, it seems like Eden. Of course, all those benefits come with some serious drawbacks.

Like New York, California is less than free. The state is run by by a small group of powerful and wealthy families (politicians, business leaders, entertainers), and their hangers-on. The entire legal and economic system of the state is rigged to protect their economic interests and physical security.

Their businesses get all the government contracts (and the implicit protection of the regulatory regime), their woes are quickly addressed by fawning bureaucrats, and their wishes are law (through a rubber-stamp legislature). Elections are pro-forma, their outcome known ahead of time, and the families’ chosen candidate always wins. So although the state bills itself as a democracy, in practice it’s a banana republic.

The current state of California is much smaller than its predecessor. It runs from San Francisco, the current capitol, to Sacramento. It also controls most of the Central Valley, from Redding to Modesto, but other than those two corridors, the rest of the state is Outlaw, Emerged, or run by the Narco-gangs.

The northern 2/3rds of the Central Valley are a land of great bounty, and employ most of the workers in the state. California produces a surfeit of food, more than enough to feed its towns; it sells the remainder as luxuries to the rest of the Fed, Texas, and free convoys (for distribution across the continent). People willing to do backbreaking seasonal labor for rock-bottom wages are always welcome in the valley.

San Francisco is a dangerous urban landscape, much like New York. Like New York, a large portion of it is Outlaw — beyond the control of the government.

South of the capitol are a half-dozen smaller cities, the epicenter of the continent’s technomagical revolution. Cracking was developed here, as were augments, shrouds, and nearly every other significant technomagical breakthrough. It is a mecca for technomages, technoshamans, crackers, augments, and (of course) Guns.

The most famous city in California, isn’t actually in California. Instead, it’s sandwiched between Outlaw settlements, wild Emerged lands, and the Mexicali Narco-kingdoms. Bakersfield, the fortress city of oil, is a colony built deep inside enemy territory.

Southern California is controlled by Narco-gangs, refugees from the brutal anti-crime crackdown of the current Mexican dictatorship. Southern California is also the location of nearly all oil in the state.

The Dakotas have long been experts at establishing, protecting, and expanding resource colonies (their source for iron and coal, for example). Oil is the life’s blood of California, used in agricultural production and for military purposes. When California decided to begin their own domestic oil production, they turned to Dakota chartered companies. A company town, run by the Dakotas, Bakersfield exploits the oil fields of the Monterrey formation, producing (at first) thousands of barrels of oil per day, with a projected goal of tens of thousands by 2042.

Bakersfield is a walled city, very much along the European model. Within the walls are oil extraction facilities, refineries, domiciles, company shops, bars, strip clubs, and every other need a growing city has. Being a Dakota town, this includes a great many automobiles and even three Huey’s.

Convoys run constantly between Bakersfield and Modesto, carrying refined gasoline of many grades. Well-armed convoys, because the Narco-kingdoms covet it all.

Welcome to the California Highway Wars. A protracted and ongoing series of low-intensity conflicts between the Narco-kingdoms and Bakersfield Irregulars, the wars are fought with fleets of fast interceptors, armored gas tankers, and bruisers (built on Land Rover chassis and bristling with armor and machineguns).

Armed with their own oil wells, and their own industrial capacity, the narco-kingdoms launch raids constantly. All along the length of Highway 99 (the Black Vein, California’s jugular), the convoys and the bandits play a cat-and-mouse game, killing and being killed, for control of the latest convoy of gas.

(The road is littered with wrecks, bodies, and shell casings. Outlaw towns make a fortune clearing the patch close to their settlement, and helping maintain the highway. They sell what they take for salvage, of course, usually to the Irregulars or their narco-bandit opponents. Many also mill replacement parts for convoy vehicles, and sell them at a ridiculous profit. If it weren't for terror-raids and Emerged monstrosities, life would be pretty good.)

The sheer value of gas makes this possible. At one time, every single gallon of gas burnt in California had to be trucked in from Dakota or Texas, across thousands of miles of Emerged terrain or the Outlaw. Bakersfield to Modesto is a four hour drive, and even with the losses due to bandit activity, it’s more than worth it. The value of gas to both sides means the Wars are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

California is caught between the Oregon Anomaly and the Narco-kingdoms. Even so, it is wealthy and growing. Guns can find plenty of work here, in the Outlaw (especially the bandit-plagued Outlaw coastal tract from San Jose to Santa Barbara), the cities, the Emerged lands, and, of course, Bakersfield.

I would think killed, raped and eaten would be better...

Xiyatu: The City of Dragons

Xiyatu, the City of Dragons, is the Shanghai of the Pacific Northwest. Built in the ruins of Seattle, the majority Chinese city is a welter of contradictions and impossibilities.

A high-tech, cramped cyberpunk city, ruled by seven draconic monarchs. The computing capitol of America, and the origin of all magic traditions in America, yet nearly bereft of technomagic. An economic powerhouse, utterly dependent on imports from Alaska, China, and the Fed.

Xiyatu is a weird, imposing, magical and technological city. The story of this paradoxical metropolis begins where all Outlaw tales begin: in Beijing, with Patient Zero.

The rotting plague killed a quarter of the population of China, roughly 350 million people. China was the first country stricken, and Beijing was the first city. The disease spread outwards rapidly from there, and after two months of contagion and death, the familiar wave of collapse and violence spread across the nation.

From the beginning, people panicked. Many tried to flee to other Asian countries — Russia, Mongolia, India — but thousands fled to America. Smuggled by snakeheads in cargo containers, tens of thousands of Chinese refugees arrived in ports along the West Coast, from Vancouver to Los Angeles. The plague arrived with them.

In a panic, the Federal Government ordered the refugees quarantined in a camp located in Fort Lewis, Washington. Eventually, some 50,000 Chinese refugees were settled there. Living in makeshift tents, with temporary facilities, the camp was ill-prepared for the harsh winter of 2015. Most of the refugees died.

The survivors, some 25,000, escaped during the Collapse, when the base security perimeter collapsed. Making their way north, most settled in Seattle.

Like all major cities of the Collapse, Seattle was almost wholly depopulated, a vast urban landscape empty of people. The Chinese refugees took up residence in the abandoned buildings, feeding themselves off fish and foraged food. They converted yachts and motorboats into sail-powered fishing vessels, rode bicycles scavenged from the city (many without tires), and adapted to their new life, a small group of people in a massive, empty city.

From this modest beginning, the city-state of Xiyatu would emerge to become one of the six major states of 2039 America.

Xiyatu: The Chinese City-State

In the aftermath of the Collapse, the rest of the world began to see America the same way they once saw Africa: as a global backwater, riven by tribal divisions and endemic warfare, its various nations ruled by a collection of corrupt dictators, barbarism run amuck. Many of the country’s largest cities were emptied, abandoned, and there was no semblance of national military, transportation, or trade.

China, in contrast, managed to hold onto a functioning government. Six of them, in fact, fighting a bloody series of civil wars. It wasn’t long before refugees looked to flee the slaughter.

To a distant, uninhabited land. A land without a national military. A land where whole cities stood abandoned, just waiting to be taken. A land where a colony of refugees had been established.

The Xiyatu refugees — “Xiyatu” being the Sinocization of “Seattle” — communicated with the homeland via radio, telling them of the peace and relative prosperity of Puget Sound and the surrounding territory. Seattle, the abandoned metropolis of the Pacific Northwest, became the chosen destination for refugees fleeing the slaughter.

In 2016, snakeheads — Chinese human smugglers — first began arranging for sea passage out of the Chinese warzones to the Americas. The first sizable numbers of refugees began arriving in 2017. By 2018, there were approximately 100,000.

In 2018, the Civil War turned against the Communist stalwarts. Driven back at every turn, the Communist leadership made preparations to deploy nuclear weapons against the rebels.

The generals of the Red Army intervened, and negotiated a settlement. In return for turning over China’s nuclear weapons, the nearly-defeated Communist Party leadership would be granted asylum — in Xiyatu.

Nearly a million Communist Party officials, their families, and hangers-on departed for the Chinese city-state. Along with them went tens of billions in gold and other valuables, as well as 250,000 Red Army soldiers, vehicles (including warships), and materiel: gasoline, weapons, and ammunition. Seattle had been colonized, and the Pacific Northwest had a new nation.

Xiyatu: Shanghai on the Sound

Washington state weathered the Collapse better than any other place in the country, which is what killed it.

After the rotting plague came famine, strife, and other, lesser plagues. Starvation makes one vulnerable to infections, and in the absence of a robust medical system, the spread of disease can be fast and deadly.

Other than Seattle, Washington state managed the Collapse very well. The state government established refugee centers where people could come to be fed, sheltered, and receive a modicum of medical care. These centers enabled many to survive the Black Winter of 2015-2016, when they might otherwise have died.

They also concentrated much of the populace into tight clusters. Secondary diseases, when they came, hit the camps hard. When they arrived, cholera, dysentery, and the seasonal flu spread rapidly, killing millions. In the space of a few months, Washington lost more people to these lesser afflictions than it had to the rotting plague.

In all, the state suffered 90% casualties. By the end of 2016, there were less than 700,000 Washingtonians left alive. When the Communist Party exiles began arriving in late 2018, the state was overrun.

The million refugees from the collapsing Communist nation were slowly evacuated over the course of five years, on a multitude of different vessels (powered with fuel bought at dear prices from the Siberian junta). The top officials were evacuated on luxury liners, while the poorest were stacked into cargo containers in the holds of massive ships (that had once carried plastic toys to Wal*Marts). The soldiers came over on military ships and pretty much anything else that floated.

The city gradually grew in size and power, as more and more citizens, soldiers, and military vehicles arrived. It began to push outward into the depopulated Washingtonian countryside, first to the greater Seattle metropolitan area, then south to Olympia, west to Aberdeen, and north to Bellingham.

Starting in 2019, the state faced increasing military pressure from several surrounding enemies: Outlaw settlements and roaming gangs in Washington, the militia of the hardline state of Jefferson in Oregon and California, and several hundred thousand well-armed, peevish Canadians in Vancouver. (Peevish by American standards, that is, which made them rampaging barbarians by Canadian standards. Vancouver had become their capitol, after all.) Border spats with the two polities became increasingly common in 2020, and the Chinese were hard-pressed to maintain their territory.

That same year, they negotiated a trade treaty with the Fed (which effectively recognized Xiyatu's sovereignty over most of Washington), which allowed them to buy ammo, replacement parts, and fuel with the bullion and other artifacts brought from China. This trade gave Utah's arms industry its kickstart (leading to the popularization of the AK-47) and helped Dakota expand its nascent industrial base.

When the Chinese industrial base began to normalize in 2021, Xiyatu became one of its most loyal clients. It imported nuclear reactors, for electricity (and other purposes), and electric automobiles (for use of the elites). Due to this trade, Xiyatu became a major port city, the only continental source for computers (manufactured in China), and the primary export hub for American raw materials and finished goods.

Nominally Communist, in practice the city was an authoritarian polity, with a partially-liberalized economy (similar to New York and California). The ruling clique had a large number of perquisites, and there was severe restrictions on the press and non-State organizations, but other than that the economy was fairly unregulated.

Of course, all this changed after Emergence, when a clutch of dragons settled in the nearby mountains, and successfully claimed Xiyatu for their own. And with the dragons, magic.

Dragons of the Beyond

So, let's talk about dragons.

Dragons are mythical creatures, even to Beyonders. The continent of Cienvue, where the Beyonder races — trolls, fae, alfar, and wisps — live is analogous to Australia — geographically isolated and biologically discrete. Many strains of creatures exist only on Cienvue, and many of the creatures emerging from vortexes (the most monstrous and horrific strains) originate on other continents, and are wholly unknown to the Beyonders.

The first time Beyonders encountered draconic races was on Earth. They existed in myths, but if dragons had ever lived on Cienvue it was before the rise of the Atlantean Dominion, some 20,000 years ago. All that we know of dragons has come from encounters with them on Earth.

The are many different strains of dragons, hundreds, maybe thousands. Of these, less than a hundred strains are True Dragons or Great Dragons, dragons capable of spellcasting (crafting and using spells).

True Dragons are larger (house-sized or more), longer-lived, and more intelligent than the other strains (being as intelligent or more intelligent than humans). They cannot be tamed or domesticated (unlike, for example, the drakons of Europe).

Great Dragons are long lived, on the order of 500 years or so, but eventually will die. Great Dragons are the size of dinosaurs, and well-armored to boot. In the myths of the Beyond, dragons were unkillable, but experiences on Earth have shown this to be false. They can be killed, just not very easily.

A big enough explosion (for example, from a cruise missile), being shot by large enough rounds (30mm depleted uranium rounds from a GAU-8/A minigun seem to do the trick), and other massive amounts of damage seem sufficient. Lacking these, Great Dragons are effectively immune to physical and magical trauma.

Great Dragons are opponents to be feared. They are, as individuals, nearly invulnerable to personal weapons and spells. More, they are at least capable spellcasters, and very often maguses of great renown.

They are cunning, intelligent (for the most part), and acquisitive. Humans are pawns, to them, pieces to be manipulated to achieve their ends.

More, they are not solitary creatures, as a rule. Great Dragons travel in clutches, and pissing off one means you have, in all likelihood, pissed off 4-6 other nearly-unkillable, genius level, dinosaur-sized, armored flying death machines.

Life expectancy, in such cases, is rather low.

A Clutch of Dragons

The basic unit of Great Dragon society, analogous to a human family, is the clutch, a group of 5-7 dragons that were hatched together. Clutch-mates are bonded together emotionally and psychologically — dragons will kill for their clutch, suffer for their clutch, and even die for their clutch.

There are no inter-generational bonds, sibling bonds, or pair-bonds in draconic society, no parents, siblings, or lovers. There is only the clutch, only their clutch-mates. A clutch is born when the dragons are hatched together, and dies when they pass from this world (or when it is shattered). Clutches may ally with each other, but such alliances will never be as close or as lasting as the bonds within a clutch.

(Only Great Dragons form clutches, and nearly all Great Dragons belong to a clutch. There are lone dragons, but such beings are pitied and feared. They age much quicker than other dragons, and are prone to disease and deformity. More, they are prone to erratic behaviors, including total social isolation (an extreme aberration, as all Great Dragons crave the respect of their peers). Absent the bonds of a clutch, dragons are capable of nearly anything. Other dragons fear and avoid the loner.)

Unlike families, clutches are not accidental. They are crafted. An older clutch will purchase or steal eggs from other clutches, and when they have assembled 5-7 eggs of various strains (the ideal clutch has 7 dragons of different and rare strains), will quicken the eggs, place them in a nest, and allow the eggs to hatch. The newly hatched dragonlings imprint on each other within moments of emerging from the shell, and the clutch is born. Clutches cannot add new members, all there are at the beginning is all there will ever be.

Clutches are temporary arrangements. As dragons die or are killed, their numbers dwindle, and when all are dead, the clutch will cease to exist. More, as their numbers dwindle it becomes ever more fragile.

A 4-dragon clutch is a weak clutch, and they tend to quickly break down into lone dragons. (With the infirmities and strangeness noted previously.) A clutch of 8 or more is also a weak clutch, and never deliberately created as it would break down quickly.

If, for some reason, 8 or more dragonlings are born in the same nest, the larger and more powerful dragonlings will gang up on the smallest and weakest, slaying them, until there are 7 or fewer left. In those cases where the weaker dragonling is spared, they often turn out to be an unusually powerful, frequently a spellcaster of great renown.

Dragons can only breed within their strain. Dragons are hermaphroditic, they chose which sex they will be at the time of mating. Mating is a purely practical matter, dragons bargain with each other for mating privileges. The female is the buyer, they are buying a fertilized egg. (Dragons can produce two or maybe three eggs during their lifetime.)

Once fertilized, the dragon lays the egg. Eggs lie fallow until quickened, they can survive for centuries this way. Quickening involves a Great Dragon swallowing the fertilized egg, and allowing it to pass through their system. Once quickened, an egg will hatch in roughly 20 days. Any Great Dragon strain can quicken an egg, no matter what strain that egg is of.

For the most part, each egg produces one dragon, but twins are not unknown. As multiple births are usually unanticipated, this often results in too many dragonlings in the same nest. As is usual, the more powerful dragonlings slay the smaller and weaker.

The clutch is all to a Great Dragon. It was present from just after its birth, and lasts the rest of its life. The breakdown of a clutch is a traumatic event, deeply scarring, and tends to unhinge the dragon. As Great Dragons are nearly-unkillable, genius-level, dinosaur-sized, armored flying death machines, the thought of an insane one is somewhat unsettling.

The Pride of Dragons

Dragons are pride. Not the boasting, bragging, importunate pride that demands you acknowledge it, no matter what it may or may not have done, but pride in accomplishment, pride in prowess, pride in success.

Dragons command respect, and the respect of other dragons is their coin and their pride. They live to gain stature, honor, admiration. They treasure it, hunger for it, strive to achieve it. They slave and claw and grasp for each mote of stature. They are driven so by their biology, and that operates at the level of instinct, in the most ancient portion of the draconic mind.

Dragons strive for excellence, as spellcasters, warriors, leaders, artisans, healers, and more; the more skilled and impressive a dragon becomes, the more stature they are granted. They acquire knowledge and wisdom, both bring stature. They amass wealth; the more wealth, the more stature. They acquire territory, territory brings stature. They acquire influence in human governments or organizations, influence brings stature. They create serfs, creatures who imprint on the dragon and serve them with their lives, and the more serfs, and the more remarkable and capable the serfs, the more stature.

In ages past, dragons fought for the right to mate. The largest, fiercest, most attractive dragon won, and mated, and the losers did not.

In time, this became about more than an impressive crown of horns, or shining scales, or sheer muscular prowess. (At least among the more intelligent strains, including the Greats.) It became about achievement, accomplishment, excellence.

The most impressive, the most intelligent, the most accomplished, the most clever, the most skilled, the most talented — these could mate, and others did not. Mating was a dance of stature, and the constant, urgent need to compete with all other dragons for stature became the cornerstone of draconic civilization.

All dragons are pride, but for Great Dragons it is not individual pride that matters, but pride in their clutch. The entire goal of a Great Dragon's existence is to increase the stature of its clutch. Wealth, power, achievements, admiration, renown — it gains these, and its clutch increases in stature, and all the clutch-mates benefit.

Great Dragons crave wealth and stature, and conspire to acquire both. They are greedy creatures, devious and cunning.

Conspiracy and intrigue are second nature to the Greats, and nothing they do is straightforward or easily understood. Their conspiracies operate on a scale measured in decades, not years, and are renowned for their subtlety and obscurity. Sentients are little more than pawns to them.

There is a constant battle for stature and success. Cleverness in intrigue, cunning in plotting, and skill in deception also brings stature. The intrigues of dragons are the battlefield in a complex and incomprehensible game of precedence and stature. Feints within feints, double-blinds, triple agents — all of these gambits are deployed not just to advance their position, but because the sheer artistry and effectiveness of each gambit gains the clutch stature.

Great Dragons are alien beings, whose psychology is more primal and primeval than mankind's. They conspire not out of desire or malice, but because such machinations are instinctive.

The Greats are like especially intelligent, eloquent, and polite sharks. But no matter how civilized they seem, they are always but moments away from a bloody attack. (If not literally, then metaphorically. A Great Dragon attack can involve a decades-long plot that manipulates three nations, two bloodgangs, and a Chartered Company's most prized assets.)

Never show a dragon weakness, it is an irresistible inducement to attack. Even if they like you, even if they need you, weakness invites assault. And as Great Dragons are nearly-unkillable, genius-level, dinosaur-sized, armored flying death machines, such assaults nearly always prove lethal. (Even if it takes a while to notice.)

Dradhakh, Continent of Wyrms

Let's talk, a little bit, about the home of the dragons: Dradhakh, Continent of Wyrms. Like all the other continents of the Beyond, Dradakh is isolated by natural and magical barriers. It is biologically discrete, with its own distinct ecology (different from all other continents) and dominant species.

Earth, prior to 65 million years ago and the extinction event, was ruled by dinosaurs. They were the dominant form of life, and most ecological niches, from aquatic life to land animals to flyers, from herbivores to carnivores to carrion-eaters, were filled by dinosaurs. After the event, mammals filled those roles; Earth became the domain of mammals.

Dradhakh is the continent of dragons — they are the dominant form of life, and most ecological niches are filled by draconic strains. Six limbed, usually sharp toothed, usually winged, scaly beasts rule the air, sea, and land. From the tiny hovering drakelets, akin to hummingbirds and no bigger than a man's thumb, to the gigantic leviathans, sea serpents with vestigial limbs (who plague Atlantic and Pacific shipping), from massive herbivores like giant 6-limbed komodo dragons, to the intelligent draconic centaur-like Khadach, draconics are everywhere.

Greatest of these, of course, are the Great Dragons. Highly intelligent, cunning, driven, the continent is theirs.

The continent is shaped like a long, thin knife, with tall, frigid mountains running along the spine, and torrid swamps and beaches lining the edge. In between is every biome known — deserts, swamps, temperate forests, wide, flat plains. And everywhere, draconics.

In ages past, the Greats would mate and retreat to lay their eggs. They kept them in a vault with their hoard, where they were well guarded. They preferred to find or make long, thin caverns, walled off from aerial attack and with only one ingress to guard. The eggs would be guarded by the entire clutch, and safe in the lair the Greats could form and hatch a new clutch.

Greats would mark off massive swathes of terrain for the hunt — all Greats are meat eaters. This was their land, their domain, and woe to those who trespassed its borders.

(Vegetation grows insanely fast in Dradhakh, and herbivores are plentiful. Else the dragons would go extinct. As Europe discovered, this is not always a good thing.)

The Khadach were a semi-humanoid species, common across much of Dradhakh. Picture a slender, 6-legged komodo dragon, about six feet long, that can rear up on its hind quarters. The front two limbs have hands, which the Khadach could use to make and wield weapons. Khadach are less intelligent than humans, but more intelligent than animals.

The Greats would imprint Khadach tribes, turning them into serfs. The Khadach would serve the Greats, guarding their lairs and their hoard, flushing out game for the hunt, scouting for intruders, and fighting off unimprinted Khadach tribesmen. They would clean their masters' scales and teeth (removing parasites as well as detritus), gather fresh fronds and grasses for bedding, and hunt down vermin. As serfs, they lived in symbiosis with their masters.

Draconics come through vortexes quite often. The Green Eruption that covered Europe in violent jungle was born of Dradhakh, as were the drakes the Europeans train to burn back the verdant growth. Many of the creatures attacking Utah come from the draconic continent, and the leviathans and sea serpents who make ocean passages a dangerous venture also originated there. Then there is Xiyatu.

Xiyatu is the domain of a clutch of Greats, the center of their territory. The Greats have imprinted on many, who are their serfs. And in the mountains nearby, is dug the clutch's lair.

The dragons have shaped the city into what it is: a sovereign kingdom ruled by seven nearly-unkillable, genius-level, dinosaur-sized, armored flying death machines.

Xiyatu: Computing Capitol of North America

I'll get back to dragons and Xiyatu. Right now, let's talk rare earths.

"Rare earths" are a specific group of elements, utterly necessary for a great many industrial components. The magnets that allow wind turbines to produce electricity? Require rare earths. Semi-conductors (i.e. computer chips)? Require rare earths. So do night-vision goggles, precision-guided munitions, modern batteries (as are used in electrical vehicles), and many, many other common tools. Rare earths are required for the modern world to exist.

95% of the world's supply of rare earths comes from China. Less than 5% comes from a single mine in California. (Other mines exist in other countries, but they have been priced out of the market.)

So, 2039. Let's start with California, currently the only source for rare earths in the continental US. That California mine? Is in southern California, pretty close to Las Vegas, smack dab in the middle of Narco-kingdom territory.

Not only can't the Fed (or anyone else) manufacture computer chips, they can't even acquire the raw materials to begin manufacturing computer chips. The only source for semi-conductors, in 2039, is China. And the only continental US port with regular trade with China is Xiyatu.

China (specifically one of the two countries calling themselves the Republic of China) is the only source for semiconductors in the world. Rare earths are mined in one China (there are six), shipped to another for fabrication into chips, then shipped to Taiwan for assembly into computer components.

Some of these components are then shipped to Xiyatu (via a circuitous route), where they hit the American markets. The Fed, Texas, and various Outlaw trading companies all buy components in Xiyatu, and ship them across the continent, where locals make cases for the components. (Hence the phenomenon of dingy little Outlaw towns on the bare edge of survival who have one or two personal computers, both with carved wooden cases.) Monitors, hard disks, printers, and on and on: all are made in Asia, and shipped to America, thence transported across the continent on convoys. (Which hire Guns for security.)

Xityatu is the computing capitol of North America. It is the only source for computing equipment, and the center of Western OS design. (Computers in 2039 run Android. Technically an adulterated version of Android with components scavenged from BSD Unix and its cousin, Darwin. But you don't really care about that, right?) Commercial applications programming is centered in Xiyatu, video games (such as they are) are designed in Xiyatu, and the headquarters of mesh hardware companies are all in Xiyatu.

Hence the oddity: a city on the cutting edge of 2039 technology, the computing capitol of North America, is a city-state monarchy, run by a clutch of seven dragons, and is also the magical capitol of North America.

I hope to talk more about that tomorrow.

Xiyatu: The Coming of the Dragons

[This wasn't a hard post to write, I just got the seasonal blechhh really bad. Crackers and Sprite, and a whole lot of sleep.]

The Emergence began, according to most reports, over Seattle, at 8:09 PM, local time, on May 15, 2025. Renamed Xiyatu, it was a city of Chinese expatriates, Communists who fled the 6-way Chinese Civil War.

The vortex opened above the city, the center a whirling storm of energy that warped the air around it, the outer edges a thin corona of furiously spinning clouds of blank white mist. Bolts of white and gold lightning coruscated from the rift, lighting the evening sky.

From out the vortex flew seven massive dragons, in defiance of all physical laws, one of whom was bleeding thick, black blood. Three of the others were carrying it on their backs, helping it fly. The struggling quartet flew off towards Mt. Rainier.

The other three turned back, towards the vortex. Dark winged figures flew from out the vortex, and the three dragons attacked and fought each one. They flew at each other, fighting with tearing talons, gouts of flame and frost, snapping, tooth-filled maws, screams of terrifying, piercing strength. Windows in buildings and cars shattered.

The battle raged across the city, sometimes high in the air, other times low through the streets. The dragons crashed through buildings, threw cars and busses (abandoned since the Collapse, some 10 years ago), and pounded their opponents into the ground, digging massive furrows through the hardtop.

After half an hour, and just after sunset, the black things no longer poured through the vortex, and there was no more battle in the streets. The three dragons, bloody and battered, flew off to the south, towards the mountain. The vortex hung in the sky for another 12 hours, but nothing more emerged.

(There is no film of this event, though there are many still pictures, in both black-and-white and color. The battle through the city killed over 2000 Xiyatu citizens and wreaked hundreds of millions in damages, which may explain and, in some sense, forgive the city's reaction.)

Xiyatu: Magic of The Outlaw

Magic came to North America with the arrival of the dragons. As they insinuated themselves into the power structure of Xiyatu — the city is still officially Communist, but all members of the Central Committee are serfs of the dragons — they began forming schools of shadow warriors and magus traditions.

Dragons are not a mage race, even Great Dragons — they cannot develop all of the five mage talents. However, they are innately magical, and they can (through their serf bond) help humans develop these talents, and those humans can teach others. Though the way this happened seems out of character for dragons.

You’d expect dragons, in a new world, surrounded by new sapient races, to enserf them and train them. Indeed, the entire conquest of Xiyatu is prototypically draconic: they took the city, increasing their stature, and trained shadow warriors, sorcerers, and maguses, which increased their stature but also secured the clutch against outside threats (Emerged and otherwise). The initial confrontations with humans turned violent, perhaps inevitably, and by taking Xiyatu they neutralized that threat.

Yet, after taking the city and developing the magical talents of their serfs, they didn’t act to compartmentalize that information. You’d expect dragons to hoard information the same way they hoard eggs or wealth. Mastery is stature. And they do.

Yet they took no care to ensure that magic remained a secret only of their serfs, or their city. And so magic spread.

Even before Beyonders began to Emerge, shadow warriors trained in Xiyatu were roaming through the Outlaw, taking on acolytes and spreading their disciplines. Maguses began training others, establishing their traditions across the continent. Artificers, sorcerers, and shadow walkers all began to teach others. Beyonders added greatly to the knowledge base of all talents, but they were already known before the Beyonders came.

The power of magic was flooding the land, because of the vortexes, and magicians were spreading rapidly, because of the dragons. Magic in the Outlaw sprang from the dragons of Xiyatu.

Xiyatu: Chinese Boomtown

Xiyatu is marked not only by its cultural heritage as a Chinese city, but also by its ongoing relationship with the mainland. Beginning with computers, but expanding to other manufactured consumer goods, Xiyatu is a mercantile clearinghouse for Chinese exports. Washer-dryers, lawn mowers, lawn chairs — China is, once again, the source of nearly all manufactured consumer goods in America, and all of them pass through Xiyatu.

Most of Xiyatu's non-computing businesses are, in essence, middlemen. They buy goods from the mainland, ship them to Xiyatu, and sell them across the continent. Convoys hauling these goods leave the city daily. (And most hire Guns.) This is actually a fairly lucrative business, since these goods can command premium prices in the Fed and other polities, even if cheaply manufactured.

The city is a boomtown (the population having doubled in the last 10 years), with all the benefits and problems that implies (such as increasing crime and inflation). It attracts the poor and desperate, who come here looking for work, many of whom are turned away (that any are let in at all is due to the decrees of the dragons). Those who are allowed to stay can find work as convoy guards, loaders, or drivers (though labor alliances are changing this), manual laborers (especially on the docks and in agriculture), and household servants.

Yang guizi, non-Chinese, now comprise about 45% of the population (Chinese are 50% and Beyonders are 5%). (Yang guizi means "foreign devil", a derogatory term, though most Americans in the city believe it means "Yankee", and have Anglicized it as "yangui".) Non-Chinese are decidedly second-class citizens. They can't hold government positions, lack voting rights, and are second in line for all jobs, behind full-blooded Chinese. Nearly all high-paying jobs are reserved for full-bloods.

English is spoken in the city, though only among the yanguis. Putonghua, or Standard Chinese, is the official language of Xiyatu, and all government documents, contracts, and media must be in Standard Chinese. (There is a market for English media, nearly all of which is imported or scavenged from ruins.) English-only speakers make about 80% as much as those yangui who can speak even a little Standard.

The most common religion in the city is Daoism. Daoist principles heavily influenced the magical traditions founded by the First Students. Daoist alchemy heavily influenced the first imbuers, shadow warriors use qigong (meditation techniques taught by Daoists) extensively in their training, shadow walkers (who can sometimes see the future) use the I Ching when attempting to divine, and Daoist principles (including feng shui) are entwined with the original magus traditions.

The dragons have been incorporated into local Daoist beliefs as well, as manifestations of the Xian, the unearthly immortals. Xiyatu citizens honor or revere the dragons as unbelievably wise, and morally perfect, beings who surpass humanity. They include the dragons in their holiday ceremonies, and petition them in their prayers.

(In contrast, the serfs of the city worship their masters, body and soul, but number less than a hundred. The yangui have a very unromantic and jaundiced view of the draconics, though what privileges the yang have are thanks to them. Dragons are evil beasts in Beyonder lore, akin to Satan or devils in Christian tales, beings of great cunning who make grand promises of wealth or success in return for the client selling himself into servitude. Accordingly, most Beyonders fear and resent the Greats.)

Xiyatu: Ruling the Dragons' City

The dragons own Xiyatu, it is their domain. Not in a legal sense, there are no pieces of papers or contracts which unambiguously state their claim. Yet their serfs comprise the Central Committee, their serfs own the State Industries, their serfs command the military, and their serfs lead the most prominent shadow warrior schools and magus traditions.

Depending on your view of serfdom, the Greats don't even rule the city directly. Their serfs (and the bureaucracies they control) govern the city, in the dragons' name. The Greats provide guidance, broad policy and goals, but don't micromanage. Enserfment ensures obedience, so there is no need.

The city is no longer communist to any recognizable degree. In fact, when compared to most of the Fed, Xiyatu is among the most capitalistic polity in North America. New businesses can easily be licensed, there are no restrictions against competing with State Industries, and other than the requirement that all contracts be in Standard Chinese (a dialect of Mandarin called Putonghua), there are no official restrictions on hiring. (Discrimination against yangui and Beyonders is cultural, not statutory.)

Xiyatu is not democratic, however. There are no elections, all government positions are assigned on the basis of rigorous testing. (The Party structure exists now as a mere formality, it has no influence on governance.)

The city-state is very prosperous, the richest polity in North America. The wealth of individual citizens varies greatly. There are dirt poor yangui and Beyonders, and slightly-less-poor Chinese peasant laborers. There is a small, but growing merchant class (grocers, tailors, cobblers, and so forth), and, of course, the wealthy — CEO's, government officials, and so forth.

Xiyatu is not a police state, or authoritarian state. (There is no widespread police surveillance or informant network, for instance, and no Secret Police.) In form, it most closely resembles an absolutist monarchical oligarchy — theoretical total power vested in the Central Committee, said powers being delegated to subordinate bureaucrats, appointed by testing, not the committee.

There are a list of common rights guaranteed to citizens, rights the government (for the most part) respects. Citizens are generally free from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, have the right to counsel, and so forth.

The city has a large and aggressive police force, and harsh penalties for even the most minor infractions. (Bureaucratic corruption and nepotism are, in particular, harshly punished.) Its legal system is, no pun intended, draconian. Even so, the recent increase in population has placed a great strain on the police force, and crime has been steadily rising for the last 10 years. (As always, the key is to not get caught.)

There is a strong organized crime presence in the city, including Asian Triads and American-grown Tong. Street gangs are also a significant problem, especially in the yang and Beyonder ghettoes. (Shadow warriors are aggressively recruited by gangs, and the most prominent have their own warrior schools.)

In many cases gangs have infiltrated the police forces, or have recruited official patrons. Xiyatu has a dedicated organized crime unit, but it is notoriously inefficient and corrupt.

Xiyatu suffers from Emergences and nomadic gangs, as all North American polities do. As is common, their border is, in many cases, a formality, violated at will by nomadic packs and gangs. The further from the city and Mt. Rainier, the more tenuous their rule.

Vortexes are dealt with aggressively. The city has a standing bounty for reporting a new vortex, and an even higher bounty for scouting one. They also offer contracts for closing a vortex. In extremis, the dragons go vortex-jumping themselves.

Rumors have it that there's a massive vortex in the Rainier lair, that leads to Dradhakh (the dragon continent in the Beyond). This is likely only a rumor, but it is true that they have a large number of Khadach (humanoid draconic hexapeds) protecting the lair, Khadach who have been trained to use specially modified Type 56 rifles (an AK variant) and who wear tailored Teijin armor (a Kevlar clone, manufactured in Japan). The dragons are well protected in their tunnels.

Xiyatu: Energy and Transportation

The dragons are mad for self-sufficiency. Xiyatu wants to make everything themselves, and is willing to spend to achieve that goal.

If the city can't make something themselves, and often they can't, they are willing to purchase it from other polities and even invest in fledgling industries. If they can't purchase it or invest, they offer bounties for it, in the hopes of boosting the growth of a new industry.

Xiyatu money aided or created the Utah arms industry, Utah's copper and uranium mines, Dakota's automobile industry, Bakersfield's oil fields, and many others. This fight for self-sufficiency has a great impact on energy production and transportation, in particular.

Xiyatu has no native oil production capacity. Its electricity comes from three full-scale nuclear power plants, built by Chinese energy firms (using Utah-mined and refined uranium). These are not the micro-reactors used by wealthy Outlaw settlements, but full-scale plants (1000, 1200, and 1500 MW). These plants provide the electricity for the high-tech companies in the city, municipal electricity, and vehicle recharging stations.

There is no public transit in the city. The vast majority of people walk, or ride bicycles (bicycle tires are expensive and hence rare). The richest ride in electrical vehicles, manufactured on the mainland.

The Xiyatu military was one of the first large-scale customers for the Dakotas "Car Bazaar" factories (as the vehicles brought from China began to break down), purchasing (relatively) large quantities of Dakota Sue choppers (known by fogeys as "that MASH helicopter"), and later Dakota Hueys. They also purchased large numbers of Dakota Rovers (their Land Rover clone), especially the up-armored "tiny tank" version. (Ammo and guns, of course, they buy from Utah.)

(Since the dragons took over, Xiyatu's military expenditures have tripled. It's their largest single slice of government spending. This makes Vancouver nervous, for good reasons, which is why the Canadians themselves are upgrading and expanding their military. Right now, the Canadians are dependent on Dakota and Utah imports, but the Brit-Can government is trying hard to develop their local industrial base. (Canada consists of British Canada, formerly British Columbia, also known as Can-Fed, Quebec, called "Frog-Fed", and a whole lot of Outlaw.) If it does ever come to war with Xiyatu, the Canadians want to be prepared. Of course, a robust military proves useful in dealing with the Outlaw, as well.)

Military vehicles require petroleum, which is today imported from the Fed. In the bad old days, when war with Vancouver loomed and the Fed was a neutral-leaning-towards-hostile power, Xiyatu imported gasoline and diesel from the Siberian Junta. (At ruinous prices. The bullion they brought with them from the mainland took a big hit.)

After the treaty with the Fed, they started buying Utah gasoline and diesel, imported at great expense and in limited quantities. Lately they have been importing California crude, which is cheaper and available in greater quantities, and refining it themselves.

The Xiyatu government (under orders of the dragons) has invested in the Dakota companies who founded and run Bakersfield. There is even a small contingent of Xiyatu armed forces in the fortress town, protecting those convoys owned by Xiyatu's state petroleum company. And yes, their convoys also hire Guns.

Notes on Xiyatu

I’d like to do another nice little essay on some part of Xiyatu, but currently there’s only a few topics left, all of fairly short length. So, we’ll do those.

• Punching Your Ticket, Dragon Style: California is the most popular retirement destination for wealthy Guns, but Xiyatu is a close second. You can’t buy citizenship, but you can apply for it. It’s a difficult and lengthy process.

Getting permanent residency, however, is fairly easy, especially if you speak Standard Chinese. If you’ve made enough money, the city can be quite comfortable, and former Guns can find permanent employment in their government, their police, or their military (especially their vortex-jumpers). (Employment grants citizenship.)

• Xiyatu Cuisine: Xiyatu is a primarily agricultural economy, and the mix of native food-stuffs and Chinese cuisine is a strange one. The chefs of Xiyatu  make extensive use of mock rice (“Puget Rice”), made from wheat. Other substitutions are equally bizarre. (Puget rice remained popular, even after California began producing rice crops again. Even real rice, imported from the mainland, is prized only by the older population, who actually lived in China.)

• Sole Supplier: Before the rotting plague, there were four main ports for the West Coast transoceanic trade: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver. After the Collapse, only two were viable.

Los Angeles was a desert, filled with millions of corpses. Seattle was abandoned, a ghost city.

San Francisco had held on to a functioning government (based out of the suburbs south of the city), and even had a military presence. Vancouver was the main refugee center for Canadians, and the locus of their political recovery in the west.

None of this mattered at the time, as there was no foreign country to trade with. Later, of course, there was Xiyatu, the Chi-Com diaspora, and a trickle of trade that grew and grew.

Nowadays, contracts with the governments of coastal China (the first Republic of China) and Taiwan (the other Republic of China) specify that Xiyatu is the only North American port city authorized for export — all Chinese commercial traffic unloads at Xiyatu. Some smugglers may unload in Alaska or Vancouver, as they can make far more money there, but they risk revocation of their import license. China makes a lot of money from America, one of their most reliable foreign markets.

• Dragon’s Lair: To create their lair, the dragons have burrowed deep into Mt. Rainier. The first magicians and shadow warriors went to the mountain to train. Most trained with the Blind Master, a blind dragon who sleeps in the deepest part of the caverns. The Blind Master is the one who developed the syncretist philosophies and techniques that Sinocized the magic principles of the Beyond.

Unbeknownst to the Chinese (and everybody else except you and me), the Blind Master is scarred and crippled, and can no longer fly. (This was the wounded dragon who emerged from the vortex.) It never leaves the lair, but is still a vital component of the clutch. It is a powerful magician, and among its other duties, it is the last line of defense for the hoard.

• Dragon Politics: The dragons are responsible for the overthrow of Communism in the city. Their serfs, eventually encompassing the entire Central Committee, liberalized the economy, dismantled the police state, and began allowing immigration of non-Chinese.

(They also encouraged, or at least allowed, the spread of the dragon cult among the people. Dragons have a prominent place in Chinese mythology and mysticism, and the real-life dragons have used that to cement their leadership role in the city-state.)

There are two schools of thought on the situation. The first holds that the dragons allow a free market, because it is inherently more efficient, and so enriches the city and the dragons. The other holds that dragons are cruel and rapacious, so of course they’re capitalists. Saner theories hold that dragons are big and unkillable and can eat you, so it’s probably better not to speculate on their motives and character, especially in their own city.

• ...And They Have a Plan: A lot of the information given in the various Xiyatu posts hint at deeper issues underlying the whole phenomenon of vortexes and Emergence. Without giving away the hints, there is a reason for what the dragons do. They have a plan, and their administration of Xiyatu is aimed at more than just garnering stature for their clutch. (That is a reason, but there’s more to it than that.)

I will get to those issues at some point. (I hope.)

Just not right now.

That's it on Xiyatu. Tomorrow, some other part of the Outlaw. Thanks for reading!

What's The Point?

It’s called world-builder’s disease: the tendency of people writing a novel or creating an RPG setting, to layer detail upon detail to an inordinate degree.

“Well the K’vasish tribe of the east Erailia Plains, marked by the line of the dry riverbed of the K’tarn River, can only marry from tribes in their matrilineal line. More, they can only marry in Spring, defined as once the snows have melted from the shortest peak in the Talinin mountain range. This, except for the Mulairn sept, which (per their religious doctrines as recorded in section 17, mark 5 of ‘The Kommisan’) deny...”

...and so forth. It’s a lot of detail, not terribly pertinent to story or gameplay.

I will freely admit, that some of the posts for Guns in The Outlaw may seem to be just that — needless detail, layered on simply because the author thinks it’s neat. Economics, for example, including oil resources, mineral resources, industrial capacity, and all of that. Details on government and culture. Historical write-ups, of what happened during the Collapse and after. A lot of detail, not terribly pertinent to story or gameplay.

Here’s the thing: my goal, in writing this, is to make a playable, interesting world. And, to be interesting, there has to be some weirdness, some gonzo factors present. And those gonzo factors have to be explained. Not to players, or GM’s, but to myself.

Take Xiyatu. A dark, cyberpunk metropolis, straight out of Blade Runner, founded by expatriates from China, in the shadows of which rage Big Trouble In Little China martial arts gang wars. 20 minutes away is the Lonely Mountain, 20 minutes away in a different direction is Mad Max, and 20 minutes away in a third direction is John Carpenter’s Vampires.

That’s fairly gonzo (if not nearly as gonzo as some other games). Yet each element has a reason to exist, and is explained in depth.

There’s more. Can there really be a Chinese colony on the shores of Seattle? 24 years after an apocalypse, does it make sense that people could make and use cars? What about computers or nuclear power plants? I mean, really, this is the post-apocalypse. Can such things really be done?

Well, in all those cases, the answer is “Yes. Such things can happen.” I only know that, because I did some quick-and-dirty research on the pertinent topics, and justified to myself that they could.

See, a lot of the material I posted wouldn’t ever go into a sourcebook, wouldn’t ever have to be read by GM’s or players. But it influences the material players and GM’s should read.

An example: one of the prime sources for contracts are convoys. If you’re in City A and want to get to City B, it’s cheapest and quickest to find a convoy going your direction, and sign on. They drive you, feed you, pay for shells, and let you shoot bad guys. What could be better?

Suppose it becomes important what’s in the semi trucks. Well then, there’s a chart GM’s can read off, or randomly roll on, to tell them.

Utah Convoys. 1d3 trucks. One cargo per truck, roll 1d6.

1. A ’38 Packard Hawk. (10% of the time with technomagical augmentations.)
2. 1000 KB-35 assault rifles, packed in oiled paper in crates, with 1000 clips of ammo.
3. 8 massive spools of copper wire, each spool as high as a person.
4. 1d2 lead-lined crates, with uranium rods packed inside. Each marked with the “Nuclear Hazard” symbol.
5. Spare parts.
6. Foodstuffs, various grades.

And so forth. A quick, easy chart for GM’s to use. But that one chart is built off the economics of the setting, which comes from historical writeups, the details of which they don’t need to see.

Did you know Utah has one of the largest open-air copper mines in the world? No? Good, it’s probably irrelevant for you. For me, writing the setting, I know that Utah is one of the chief sources of copper wiring in NA, a very important commodity, and hence convoys coming from Utah often carry massive spools of wire. I make a single entry on the above chart, and there you go.

My only goal is to make something GM’s and players can use as the fodder for great and fun adventures. To get to that point, I have to troll through odd subjects and write up some obscure material. But it’s not worldbuilder’s disease, because it’s not detail for detail’s sake, but necessary detail that players and GM’s don’t ever need to see.

Totally different, right?

Right?

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;709160What's The Point?

Here's the thing: my goal, in writing this, is to make a playable, interesting world. And, to be interesting, there has to be some weirdness, some gonzo factors present. And those gonzo factors have to be explained. Not to players, or GM's, but to myself.

More designers should have that philosophy.  :D

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;709342More designers should have that philosophy.  :D

To be honest, it's less a philosophy, more a personality flaw. :)

A Problem of Borders

Take a small bowl of India ink. Dip your fingers in it, then flick them at a piece of white paper. What you'll get is a random pattern of dots, some bigger, some smaller, some so fine they can hardly be seen.

Now take a pencil and draw a shape around some of the dots. Circle, square, irregular pentagon, the exact shape doesn't matter.

What you end up with is a good approximation of a political unit in the Outlaw.

The ink dots are cities and settlements, some bigger, some smaller. People live and work there, and there are police or militia (of varying sizes and competency) to defend the town. (The tiniest dots have 100 people or less, and a single halfway-decent sheriff, if they're lucky.)

The line is the border, of Dakota, Xiyatu, the Siberian Junta, any polity anywhere in the world in 2039. It marks all the territory that polity claims for its own.

And the white space outside and inside the line? Well, folks, that's the Outlaw.

Borders, in 2039, are incredibly porous. There just aren't enough people or technology to police them or enforce them. So even the most vigorous, prosperous, thriving polity only controls a fraction of its claimed territory. The rest is wide open.

Bezerkergangs can cross the border at will, avoiding outlying settlements, striking deep in the interior. Bloodgangs can strike at the smaller cities on the edges of the map, taking food (that is, people) and fading away into the wilderness. And vortexes can appear anywhere, apparently at random, usually in the white spaces, with no one the wiser.

This is why Guns are important. Why they are needed. They aren't just nomadic mercenary killers. (Not just that.) And the cities that need them, that hire them, aren't just tiny independent hamlets lost in the vast wilderness of what used to be South Carolina.

The Outlaw is everywhere. The hazards and terrors of the Outlaw are everywhere. And Guns are needed...

Everywhere.

One Last Thing...

Maybe one last thing about Xiyatu...

The dragons are not nice beings. They are not kind, they are not generous, they are not paternal.

They are greedy, calculating, and pitiless. Humans are tools, and they no more grieve for their loss than a you would for losing a screw.

(At the same time, they are not sadists. They don't glory in human pain or suffering. They don't torture for the sake of torture, torment for the sake of torment, or play with their food. They are indifferent, not malevolent.)

The dragons increased freedom in the city, because it fit with their goals. They ensured the security of the city-state, because their plans required it. They foster economic development (which brings jobs and a measure of prosperity) because they need a prosperous domain.

None of this is done out of the kindness of their hearts. Dragon hearts have no kindness.

When dragons bargain with you, it is solely because it suits them. If it suited, they would kill you just as easily.

Do not romanticize them, do not mistake them, do not forget what you are dealing with: an entirely inhuman mind, utterly bereft of human emotions. Utterly bereft of humanity.

Guns of the Guns

“Don’t fuck with the Mormons; they make good guns and aren’t afraid to use them.” — Outlaw saying

Utah is known for three things: Mormons, monsters, and machineguns. (The last two are related.) The best firearms in the Outlaw and the Fed are made in Utah, made in great numbers and at high quality.

The .50 caliber Browning machine gun, standard on most convoys. The .45 Colt 1911A1 pistol. The 7.62mm KBR, a modified Type 56 clone (itself a modified clone of the AK-47). The “twin 35’s”, the KB-35 (a KBR rechambered for 10mm ammo) and the CB-35 (a Colt 1911A1, also rechambered for Browning 10mm rounds). And an assortment of hunting shotguns, rifles, and bows.

And ammo. Lots and lots of ammo.

The most common firearms in North America are pre-Collapse weapons. At the time of the plague, there were approximately 310 million non-military firearms (civilian-owned, plus local, state, and Federal agency weapons) in the United States. 47% of households owned at least one weapon, and there were 5,400 licensed firearms manufacturers.

Second most common are locally produced weapons, of many varieties. Ground out on machine shop benches by individual craftsmen across the continent, these pistols, rifles, and shotguns are of varying quality. They have the benefit of being cheap and locally-made — no need to wait for a convoy, just make it yourself. (Ammo can be a little trickier.)

The third most common weapons in the Outlaw are Browning arms, and the most popular Browning weapon is their clone of the venerable AK-47, the KBR. If there were an official weapon of the Outlaw, the KBR (Kalashnikov-Browning) would be it.

The AK is legendarily rugged and reliable, under a wide range of conditions. It can take insane amounts of abuse, up to and including sand in the mechanism, and still operate. AK’s have been fitted with a number of underbarrel accessories, like grenade launchers and shotguns. The rifle is very cheap to make, and can be turned out in large numbers quickly and easily.

Designed by a Soviet gunsmith at the tail end of WWII, the AK became ubiquitous in the Cold War because of its reliability, low cost, and high stopping power and penetration. As Outlaw settlements are about as rich and peaceful as your typical pre-plague Liberian village, the same conditions and qualities that made the AK attractive to Third World nations, also made it attractive to the Outlaw.

But what made it ubiquitous was the Chinese.

Guns of the Chinese

There’s a lot of good guns in the Outlaw, a lot of good, American guns. (5400 manufacturers and 310 million weapons, remember.) So how did a Chinese variant of a Soviet WW II assault rifle become the weapon of choice for a lot of good Americans in 2039?

The Chinese. They had the money, and the need.

When the fleeing Communist Party arrived in Xiyatu (Seattle) in force, they brought with them a (literal) boatload of Type 56 rifles and lots of ammo. A mistaken incursion into Vancouver territory (in 2019) started a long-running, low intensity conflict with the recovering Canadian state, which ate into their ammo reserves. Plus, there was the usual incursions from the various gangs roaming the Outlaw (though it wasn’t yet called the Outlaw).

The mainland was still fighting a vicious civil war, so trade was nonexistent. And American supplies of the 7.62mm round were scarce, to say the least. So the Chinese turned to the next best thing: a still-extant (and expanding) American arms manufacturer.

Utah had avoided much of the violence of the Black Year (the year of famine and disease after the rotting plague, 2015-2016). They had enough food on hand to feed their people (when redistributed), their economy was still functional, if only just, and they even had domestic sources of oil in southern Wyoming and refineries in the state capitol of Salt Lake City. Browning Arms (in Morgan, Utah) was making guns and bullets as fast as they could.

See, the word spread that Utah had food and gasoline. A great many packs and gangs thronged the state. The packs were taken care of as best as the state government could manage, but the gangs were dealt with harshly. This took weapons and ammo, which Browning could provide. So when the Chinese went shopping for ammo (in 2020), Browning was pretty much the only potential source. If they could be convinced to begin production.

The Chinese had escaped with billions in bullion and other valuables. They needed a steady supply of ammunition, so they contracted with Browning to provide 7.62mm rounds on a permanent basis, in exchange for gold (US and Chinese tender being useful only as tinder at that point). On the strength of that contract, Browning expanded their operations.

Browning took over a small building in Morgan (that used to be an Ace hardware store, before the Collapse), and began making 7.62mm shells. As time went on, they expanded their operation, even mechanizing it (to an extent). In the years to come, they would also begin manufacturing replacement parts for the Type 56 rifles and even assembling new ones for sale (they had the parts just lying around...).

Post-Collapse, violence was common and self-defense a necessity. People needed guns. AK’s are very easy to manufacture, and consequently cheap, so when presented with a rugged, effective, and cheap weapon, many people opted for the Chinese variant of a Soviet assault rifle, even if they were American.

The AK-47 was adopted for practical, identifiable reasons. But its first appearance in the Outlaw, and its ubiquity, was entirely due to the Chinese.

Crime and Gun Decisions

During the Collapse, self-defense became a necessity. There were no cops, no courts, not even an army to impose martial law. Firearms were a prerequisite for survival, and in the 24 years since, that hasn't changed.

The contract with China allowed Browning to begin manufacturing Type 56 rifles in large quantities. In addition to private citizens, Browning sold many to private security companies, Guns, and military forces throughout the Outlaw, including the State of Utah.

Browning introduced their own variant of the Type 56 in 2022 (2 years after the trade deal was signed). This was the famed Kalashnikov-Browning 2022, popularly known as the KBR. The KBR sold in great numbers, and continues to sell to this day.

Essentially every Utah home has a KBR (all Utah males serve in the state military, and all keep their rifles after mustering out). And KBRs are bought and sold in arms markets across the Fed and across the continent. The 7.62mm shell is the most common barter commodity on the continent, and can be found almost everywhere.

The only Fed polity which doesn't use the KBR as its main weapon is the Federal District of Manhattan (the Fed capital). Fed soldiers use the AR platform instead (itself an evolution of the M-16). This forces them to locally source their ammo, which has to be made by hand. Consequently, it is very expensive. (Lacking the deep pockets of the Fed, the city government of Manhattan outfits its police and security forces with KBRs.)

After the Emergence, massive and malevolent creatures became commonplace, and people began to demand a weapon with greater stopping power. In 2035, Browning selected a 10mm round for use in their new assault rifle, and designed a rechambered KBR around the bullet. The new weapon — the KB-35 — had the same benefits as an AK (rugged design, cheap manufacture) but simply did more damage, while maintaining penetration. This made it especially effective against Emerged monsters.

The same year, they introduced a Colt 1911A1 pistol variant — the CB-35 — that used the same 10mm shells. The pistol took a small hit to its stopping power, but could hold an extra round in the standard size clip.

The pistol and rifle were designed to use the same round, to allow people to use the same ammo for both, simplifying logistics (a critical advantage to people who spend a lot of time in the Outlaw). No longer did people have to haul around different calibers of ammo for their rifle and sidearm.

Though not yet common, the "twin 35's" are seeing a sharp uptick in sales, as they have proven very useful in fighting Emergences and for extended forays into the wild. Both the BP and Texas Rangers have begun an aggressive purchasing program, hoping to arm their forces completely in 3-5 years. Guns are also avid buyers of "2 35's", but the relative scarcity and high price of 10mm, in comparison to the ubiquitous 7.62, has slowed adoption.

Survival in the Outlaw requires that people be willing to defend themselves, and be capable of doing so. Familiarity with firearms is a simple necessity, and the better your gun, and the better you are with it, the greater chance you have of living until you die of old age.

"An armed society is a polite society."

Computing in The Outlaw

The Collapse blew up the existing social order. Most people died, and most of the rest were uprooted as they fled violence in the cities, consequential diseases, and famine.

With few exceptions, the nation’s infrastructure was largely abandoned. No one maintained roads, rail networks, power lines, substations, power generation facilities, telephone lines, switching stations, cellphone towers, Internet nodes, transcontinental backbones, DNS servers, and on and on. These emplacements gradually fell into disrepair, or were damaged in fighting (often for control of the facility), or were sabotaged or scavenged. (Copper thieves have, in the 24 years since the plague, stripped nearly all of the powerlines outside the Fed, and much inside.)

(Again, there were exceptions. Places which largely escaped or survived the violence, for whatever reason, suffered from degradation, but their infrastructure could be salvaged. This included Jefferson, California, the Dakotas, and other polities.)

By the end of the Collapse, and the beginning of Reconciliation (in 2018), there was no national power infrastructure, no national telecommunications infrastructure, and no Internet. (Local networks did survive, in some places, as did LAN’s, in places with access to power.) Road and rail networks were degrading quickly, often due to simple weather conditions. And satellites, used for telecommunication, weather prediction, and the GPS system, fell from the sky or gradually broke down. (Space debris, power failure, or just the march of time and the second Law of Thermodynamics.)

(And that was just the Collapse. The Emergence didn’t do anyone any favors, in these areas.)

People responded by adapting to the new conditions. "Mankind Adapts." (http://daddywarpig.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/how-to-make-a-world-that-feels-real-gito/) When phone lines went down, they used radios. When the Internet collapsed, they used jerry-rigged signal amplifiers to establish links to other extant sites. They repurposed underground phone cables, that weren’t damaged or scavenged. They established makeshift cellphone towers, using mobile cell hotspots. They stuck laptops high in a tree, with a signal amplifier, and established an ad hoc WIFI network that spread for 100 miles.

All of these solutions were ingenious and amazing, no less so because they actually Goddamn worked. In limited places, for a limited time.

Remember the borders (http://daddywarpig.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/a-problem-of-borders-gito/). Dip your fingers in india ink and flick it at a white piece of paper. Each black dot is a city or settlement.

WIFI nodes, or signal repeaters, or power substations can only exist at or near one of those dots. (And that’s assuming the dot has some kind of power source. This isn’t always true.) But around each one is the Outlaw. Powerlines, run through the Outlaw. Roads, run through the Outlaw. And each individual component of a wireless network is isolated from all the others, in the middle of the Outlaw.

A bezerkergang attacks. Down goes the phone switch. An Emerged creature blunders into power lines. Down goes the power grid. (And anything attached to it.) A fire breaks out in the forest. Down goes the Internet node.

Telecommunications, power, and other infrastructure is fragile, requires constant maintenance to avoid degradation, and requires multiple emplacements to operate over a wide area. This is a problem in the Outlaw.

The Internet uses multiple computer mainframes (nodes) to route communications from one computer to another. It was built to survive a nuclear war, and when one node goes down, signals are rerouted to other nodes. It is highly robust.

But what if the signals themselves are stopped? What if nodes simply cannot communicate with each other? In such a case, the Internet ceases to exist.

So, with no telecommunications network, no root DNS servers, and no reliable nodes, how do you establish and maintain a computer network across a continent or, God forbid, between continents?

The answer was the Skywave Mesh.

Skywave

The name “Skywave Mesh” sounds outrageously florid, almost Bond-worthy, a name a science fiction writer would give their fictional technology to make it sound all badass (while wholly failing to do so). In this case, it isn’t badassitude at all, but rather the name of the two different technologies that were smashed together to make the Internet of 2039.

But first, let’s talk about acoustic couplers.

The first modems were ridiculously low-tech, low-fidelity devices. They operated by means of an acoustic coupler, two circles of rubber, shaped like cups, attached to a plastic device. You clipped the handset of a bog-standard AT&T-issued home telephone into the device, the speaker in one cup, the mic in the other. The computer made noises in one cup, and listened for sounds in the other. By means of this baroque (nearly steampunk, almost Rube Goldbergian) device, computers could “talk” to each other over the phone lines.

Ingenious.

They took an existing technology and repurposed it, allowing it to do things the designers never intended. (The quintessential characteristic of humans.) And in so doing, allowed everyday computers to communicate without expensive, dedicated infrastructure or specialized equipment emplacements.

Let’s talk shortwave radio. Shortwave radio has an odd characteristic called “skywave propagation”: radio signals sent out from one station (which can be as small as a breadbox, or smaller) can bounce off the ionosphere and reflect back to Earth. These signals can be received across the continent, on the other side of the ocean, and even on the other side of the planet.

Literally, on the other side of the Goddamn planet.

Using a shortwave radio, you can talk to anyone, anywhere on the planet. (Intermittently. Depending on time of day, the season of the year, solar flare activity, available channels, and so forth.) Without satellites or transcontinental cables, shortwave is the easiest way of establishing worldwide communication.

So what? What good is shortwave radio to computer communications? Can it even be used for that?

Sure. Acoustic coupler, bitches.

Not the same piece of equipment, obviously, but the same general principle: transmit and receive sound over a communication channel. Encode digital data in sound, send it, receive sound, decode it. This is a common piece of equipment, called a modem, which was the successor to the acoustic coupler.

In extremis, you could literally stick a microphone in front of the speaker of the radio, and receive information that way. (Reverse it to send.) Of course, this isn’t very effective.

The smarter, and easier way, takes precisely two cables: radio speaker out to computer sound in, computer sound out to radio mic jack. Two cables, and a piece of software to do the encoding and decoding, and all of a sudden you can talk to computers on the other side of the planet.

Simple. Ingenious. Effective.

You can send data. Receive data. And have your own little network.

Slowly — real time video streaming is O-U-T. (You’ll take your painfully slow Unicode text transmission, and thank God for the privilege.) Intermittently — as affected by the health of the skywave bounce. And unreliably. (This is the Outlaw.) But it can be done.

A communications channel is just one part of setting up a replacement Internet. The other part was done via an existing technology called Mesh networking.

Skywave propagation + Mesh networking = a new Internet. And a name a Bond villain might have employed: the Skywave Mesh.

(“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”)

Black Skies

Let's take a step back, for a moment, and look at why shortwave radio became necessary. As a conduit for data, it's abominably slow and easily disrupted. So why choose it? As with so much in 2039, it's because of magic.

The Emergence began (in most people's estimation) on May 15, 2025 when a flight of dragons emerged from out a vortex, over the city of Xiyatu. Over the course of the next year, vortexes became more and more common and more and more beings Emerged into our world. On May 16, 2026 (a year and a day later), the vortexes reached critical mass.

Massive vortexes opened up simultaneously over every major population center of the globe (and many other places besides). What came out, however, wasn't monsters, Beyonders, or magical creatures. What came out was total darkness.

They called it "Black Skies", a total global disappearance of the sun, moon, and stars. The sky, horizon to horizon, was completely black, all over the world. No clouds, no smoke, no obscuring mists, just darkness. And it shrouded the skies.

Radio traffic was disrupted, including communications with orbiting satellites. Power grids went down. Computers failed. Cars stopped working. Flashlights, and all other electrical devices, failed. It was a gigantic, global EMP, but without any explosion.

Temperatures plummeted. Winds died off. Sound became muffled. People saw ghostly beings, wandering through the darkness. It was like living in the Shadow World.

The entire world was shrouded in night, cold, and silence. And it lasted for an entire day.

When the lights came back on, the world was radically different. In Europe, the vortexes released dozens of predator species, including the brutal and cunning Dire Wolves, and caused massive and rampant vegetative growth that continues to this day. (This is the "Green Eruption".)

In southern Canada, just north of the Dakotas, a massive vortex opened up, changing weather patterns across Canada and letting loose the gigantic armored Vishloess, the savage Losiv (whom people call "yetis"), and the crystalline (and cold-based) insectile Isek. Dakotas' everlasting struggle dates back to this day.

On the coast of Oregon, the breakaway republic of Jefferson was lost behind a massive anomaly. As far as can be determined, the Black Skies still rule there. No one knows for sure, because no one who enters has ever made it out.

The State of North Carolina (one of the founding members of the Fed) was wiped out overnight. No bodies, no deaths, the entire population of the state just disappeared, right in the middle of whatever they were doing. All that is left are ghost cities, places people used to live, but no more. Only the hardiest, or most desperate, scavenge there, and only the unbalanced live there — ghosts are said to haunt the ruins.

The first Accursed — the vampires, ghouls, weres, and more — appeared shortly after the Black Skies. And though Chicago and Boston didn't die that die, from that day it was only a matter of time.

Unique events, similar in magnitude, happened all around the globe. And even when the vortexes began to fade (though not all did), the strange events remained.

Radio went out during the Black Skies, and never came back on. No FM, no AM, no microwave, no television. You can set up a transmitter, and even broadcast up to three miles away, but further than that, nothing.

All telecommunications were cut off (including fiber optics and GPS), and most of the planet was isolated from each other. Messages and news were restricted to the speed of foot or car.

After the Black Skies, the vast unreclaimed wilderness became a dark continent. No one knew what was happening there, unless they went and looked. It may as well have been another planet, and that's what people began thinking of it as: an alien and dangerous land, beyond the world they knew. That's when all that space — which had once been an unreclaimed part of America — became the foreign country known as The Outlaw.

What they did not know, and would not discover for several weeks, is that shortwave radio still worked. When all other forms of communication failed, shortwave survived. And in the time of chaos after the Black Skies (which caused another wave of violence and breakdown, like a mini-Collapse), shortwave was the only means to communicate across the continent and across the world.

The Mesh

The Mesh, the computer network of 2039, is not the Internet. It is not a world-wide network of computers, linked with fast and reliable networking, that exchanges untold amounts of data, including real-time video and streaming media.

What it is, is an unreliable and slow means of linking together hundreds of nearly-isolated networks worldwide, a best-available-but-worst-imaginable solution that, for all its flaws and oddities, nonetheless works. If only just. It is slightly better than nothing at all.

Black Skies killed telecommunications - radio, microwave, telephone, telegraph, fiber optic cables, modulated power lines, pulsed signals, and nearly ever other form of communications tried since 2026. With all of these, as soon as the signal gets more than two to three miles away from its source, it just fades out. It become indistinguishable from noise.

The primary exception are purely visual communication methods, like semaphore, signal lamps, and smoke signals. Also excepted are mid-to-low frequency radio, otherwise known as shortwave.

Shortwave radio is highly limited in bandwidth. It is also easily disrupted (meaning information can get corrupted), and can go out for hours (up to a day). Given these limitations, the fact that the Mesh works at all is amazing.

Most major North American polities operate their own, very different, computer networks. They each have their own architecture, hardware, and strengths and limitations.

Each of these local nets has one or more Mesh nodes, which allows them to send and receive signals from the other networks. Messages come from their local net, through their node to another node, then on to its attached network. The Mesh is a bridge between computer systems that would otherwise be totally isolated.

In a Mesh network, each node talks to all the others at the same time. There are 30 or so nodes in North America (some Outlaw settlements operate nodes, every Chartered Company does, and some of the major polities operate more than one), and a maximum of 50 can be on-air simultaneously. Each of these nodes broadcasts on one channel, and receives on every other channel. This maximizes the bandwidth of any single node.

The Mesh is limited to 50kbps theoretical maximum throughput. More reasonably, people get around 40kbps effective speed (when error correction, routing information, and other overhead is taken into account).

In perspective, 50kbps is slower than an old 56k acoustic modem, and 40kbps is just a little faster than a 33.6k modem. The Mesh talks about as fast as the old squealing modems used to.

Any and all information that needs to be sent from one net to another has to travel through that single, slow connection. All email, all web pages, any and all information that bridges from one network to another.

As a result, cross-net traffic is expensive, and only done when the expense justifies it. As with all other changes in communications technology, this has heavily impacted how people send, receive, and perceive information.

A Matter of Resources

[Note: When you’re building something from scratch, sometimes you have to back up a little and change some things to fix a mistake or two. I’ve largely avoided that on this series of posts (at least that you’ve seen), which is a goddamn miracle. But I need to change something now: I’ve mentioned that telecommunications are limited to 2-3 miles, but that should be 25-30 miles, depending on the power of the transmitter. I’m going back to edit the original posts in my notes, and using that figure going forward.]

Most people don’t appreciate how deeply economic issues permeate our lives. What we as individuals, and we as societies, are capable of are strictly limited by the resources we have available to us. What raw materials we can draw on, what we know how to do with those raw materials, and how many people we can keep alive, functioning, and willing to do things with them, all strictly govern what a society can do.

It’s theoretically possible to build a series of repeater stations across the continent, from New York to California, and avoid the telecom “shroud”. It’s 2845 miles from Albany, New York, to Sacramento, California. That’s only 114 different posts, set slightly less than 25 miles apart.

Each post would need power, of course, a tall antenna, a radio transmitter, routing equipment, a building, people to operate and maintain the equipment, people to protect the building, food and water for those people, working sewage, ammo, spare parts for everything, transportation to and from the site, a power generation facility, people to protect and maintain that, munis (supplies and services) for those people, and...

In the Outlaw, each emplacement is a separate tiny settlement. And each requires a noticeable investment in resources. And one outage — one successful bezerkergang attack, a nearby Emergence, or even a heavy summer storm that knocks out power — would void the whole chain.

And that’s just from New York to California (taking in Utah along the way). What of a chain to Texas, or the Dakotas, or Xiyatu, Mexico, Vancouver, Quebec, or Alaska? And then there’s Outlaw settlements — how to bring them in?

Within the borders of a polity, maintaining a telecom network is possible. Difficult and expensive, perhaps, but possible. But stringing a series of posts across the Outlaw, and investing the manpower and resources to protect each one, is simply not practical. And it’s all down to economics.

The country has been locked in a Long Depression since the Collapse, meaning:

• Many people are out of work, and most that are employed work in agricultural fields, on a subsistence basis. They generate little economic activity.
• Credit — money that can be loaned to businesses, startups, or the government — is tightly constrained.
• Industrial output and employment is weak.
• Economic output (the value of goods and services produced in the economy) is stagnant.

Complicating this (and, to an extent, contributing to it):

• The country runs on a largely barter-based (commodity exchange) economy. Those poor farmers in Utah (and New York, Dakota, California)? They trade for what they can’t make themselves, and barter interactions generate no tax receipts, nor do they contribute to the larger economy.
• Fed currency is only accepted in the Fed, and not even all of that.
• The tax base is nearly nonexistent (meaning the government is almost totally broke).
• Most economic activity takes place “off books”, in barter exchanges or the Outlaw economy (black market).

The economic problems of the Fed are a tangled web, and the presence of the Outlaw makes them even tougher. Increase taxes? People go to work in the Outlaw economy, and the government loses money overall.

Issue new currency? The Outlaw works on barter (most things being standardized against a single Browning-made 7.62mm shell), and Outlaw settlements hate the Fed. If the Outlaw economy won’t take Fed bills, no one will (outside of Manhattan).

Borrow money for government spending? From who, and how can you pay them back?

The Fed can’t even occupy Manhattan, its own capitol, being limited to one half of one half of the island, and unable to police all of that. There's an open air market selling illegal weapons and contraband within sight of the Fed headquarters building, and they lack the manpower to shut it down permanently. That’s how starved for resources the government is. (Independent polities — Texas and Xiyatu — are not much better off.)

It costs money and resources to build a relay chain. Without money, you can’t build it.

The Fed lacks the manpower, firepower, and material resources to maintain even a token presence in the Outlaw, much less a string of forts across the continent. Unable to build, man, and maintain a telecom network, people accepted the worst imaginable, but only available solution: the Skywave Mesh.

All Right, Jerkface, Where’s The Fun?

So right now you’re probably irritated, wondering who the hell dragged in the Econ 101 text. Or you’re bored, wondering when we’ll hear more about something interesting. “Yeah, like ‘crystalline, cold-based insectoids’. What’s that all about?”

I’ll cop to the fact that the last two posts weren’t as interesting as some others. But they were absolutely necessary.

The entire game is based around Guns, who are (in essence) D&D adventurers in a different setting. You get hired to stop bandits, kill monsters, protect innocents. Or you can search through ruined cities. Or explore the Outlaw. Or go vortex jumping into the Beyond.

Guns are also cyberpunks in a different setting. You get hired to intervene in a gang war. Or raid a company outpost. Or enter the Shadow World and crack a computer system. Or steal a spell or martial technique from a rival magus Tradition or shadow warrior School. Or kidnap someone. Or rescue someone who’s been kidnapped. Or kill a guy who badly needs killing.

That’s the point of the game: jobs and adventure opportunities, interesting allies and enemies, and interesting places for all this to happen. It’s raw material for gameplay.

(There’s also interesting toys for PC’s to play with. That comes from setting details as well.)

So why the econ? Because I’m creating this setting, and I have to understand it. And until I can explain it to myself, I can’t explain it to other people. The economic issues are a primary explanation for a huge percentage of the game.

New York City, the capitol of the Fed, is divided into three zones: the Green Zone, heavily policed (think the Alliance planets, from Firefly), the Red Zone, an urban hellhole (think Robocop or Death Wish III, with the thick crowds of Blade Runner), and the Black Zone, a wasteland inhabited mainly by monsters (think New York from the Will Smith I Am Legend movie). But why? Why doesn’t the Fed just flood the city with soldiers and bring it under control?

Economics. It doesn’t have the money or men to do that. And even if it did, there’s better places to commit those resources.

What about the Outlaw? Any idiot can tell it’s a bad idea to allow bandits, bezerkergangs, and bloodgangs free reign over the countryside. Why not send out the troops, pacify the countryside, unite the country?

Again, economics. Not enough men, not enough vehicles, not enough bullets.

Well, why don’t the settlements just join the Fed? They’re Americans, they love their country, they should just sign up.

Well, now we’re back to the three depressing posts about the plague and the Collapse. For years after the Plague, Americans fought other Americans who were trying to take their homes and their food. People they know were killed, and they killed others.

And it wasn’t just strangers fleeing the cities, it was former neighbors, cities just up the road. Imagine the TV show “Jericho”, with the escalating conflict between Jericho and New Bern, and instead of ending with military intervention, the feud just continued for 24 years. This is the situation across much of the Outlaw.

America is tribalized. People trust those like them — members of their tribe — and distrust everyone else. Outlaw settlements both loathe and fear the Fed, and won’t join it voluntarily.

The central trope of the entire setting is this: “small islands of civilization in a vast ocean of chaos”. (Hence cyberpunks + adventurers.) To explain why this exists at all, I needed to understand why people remain apart (tribalism) and why the central government can’t just forcibly re-unite them (economics).

(These two issues, along with the Black Skies, also explain the Mesh’s existence. The Mesh itself, and the telecom shroud, explains other aspects of the setting.)

Those details on economics won’t appear anywhere in my final writeup. GM’s don’t have to read them, nor do players.

But when the equipment list gives prices in “shells” (how many 7.62mm bullets something costs), or when players notice everybody is poor, or when they dump some Fed dollars for 1/2 face value, because no one will take them, the economics will be there.

These issues will be implicitly embedded in setting details. And in order to do that, I have to understand and explain these issues.

(Next post — back to the Mesh.)

Back To That Mesh Thing...

Let's talk a little tech.

The Mesh was built by combining several already-extant pre-Collapse technologies. The first is digital radio.

Analog radio (your AM's and FM's) suffers from signal attenuation: the further you are from the source, the weaker the broadcast (the harder it is to perceive). This isn't a linear relationship: most of the drop-off happens very quickly. It also suffers from interference (which you can hear as static).

Digital radio compensates for both. Attenuation is pretty much inverse: the signal stays relatively constant until very nearly the edge of the range, then drops off suddenly. It's also fault tolerant; very little static.

The second tech is software defined radio. All Mesh nodes are software defined radios. An SDR replaces radio hardware (mixers, amplifiers, etc.) with software; the only piece of equipment you actually need is an antenna, everything else happens in the computer.

SDR has numerous benefits over hardware radios. It can use multiple protocols (and switch between them at will), it can adjust broadcast strength to the minimum required on-the-fly (reducing interference with other nodes on the same channel), and it can more easily detect faint signals (a critical advantage for the shortwave Mesh).

The last technology is the modem, the modulator-demodulator. Digital signals are encoded so they can be transmitted, and received signals are decoded back into digital information. (In the Mesh, this is a piece of software, not hardware.)

Taken together, these three technologies form the telecom aspect of the Mesh. Then there are the protocols: rules as to how the network will operate.

The Mesh divides up the shortwave frequencies into 50 separate channels. One node broadcasts on one channel, and receives on the other 49. (Mesh networking means all signals are sent to, and received by, every node at the same time. This is necessitated by the physical nature of radio itself.)

A root node has a specific and reserved channel, all other nodes get what space is available, top to bottom, first-come-first-served. Because North America only has 30 operating nodes, that means the bottom 20 channels are usually unused by standard Mesh traffic.

Some nodes reserve and use them for additional transmissions (doubling their bandwidth), some for duplicate transmissions (to ensure critical information is received), some for non-node Mesh transmissions (from groups out in the Outlaw), and some by pirate radio operators for actual voice transmissions. (Everybody hates those guys.) All of these uses are on a contingency-only basis; if standard Mesh traffic ever needed the space, they'd be displaced.

[Note: That paragraph packs a bunch of interesting setting info in a very tight space. Pirate radio and non-node Mesh traffic have interesting consequences, and interesting uses, and I hope to get back to them at some point.]

Of the 30 nodes in North America, eight are root nodes: one each for the four Fed states, plus the FDNY, Texas, Xiyatu, and Vancouver. Eastern Canada, Alaska, and Mexico have all applied for root licenses, but haven't been granted them yet. They each have nodes, just not certified root nodes. (It doesn't help that the three polities are generally untrusted, having reputations for unsavory dealings. Unjustly so in Mexico's case.)

As with the economic details, these technical details won't appear in the final writeup. They're useful to define the scope and nature of the Mesh for my purposes, but players and GM's will never have to understand what they mean other than: it's slow and flaky, and the powerful, connected, or rich have dibs. (I'm sorry. "Priority." Suck-ups and cronies have "priority".)

The Mesh in the Setting

Sometimes you create a piece of a setting because you need it, to explain some other aspect of the setting or satisfy some gameplay need. Sometimes you create things off the cuff, just because. And sometimes you create something off the cuff that fulfills needs you didn't even know you had.

The Mesh was one of the latter. As it turns out, the flawed, flaky, unreliable Mesh and the telecom shroud both serve important needs in the setting. For one, they underscore important themes of the game.

Islands of civilization in an ocean of chaos. In the enclaves, you have TV, phones, computer networks, and so forth. Computers within an enclave network can communicate fairly rapidly, meaning they can stream movies or video calls, access websites quickly, and so forth. "Islands of civilization."

In the Outlaw, none of that exists. There are no cell networks, no phone networks, no TV or radio to listen to or broadcast on. You can't radio back for help or orders. You can't check email, download a map, or do anything else that might otherwise be possible.

When PC's head into the Outlaw, they're heading into the unknown. They are cut off from the outside world, cut off from civilization, and they don't necessarily know what's ahead, unless the people out there have a radio and are using it (and are telling them the truth).

The only people around who can help are their team-mates and maybe — maybe, possibly, it could happen — the settlers in the next town. They are journeying along in the "vast ocean of chaos", and no one is coming to save them.

Outlaw settlements are frontier towns. Enclave cities have all the tech. Outlaw settlements usually don't have electricity, and if they do they usually don't have computers, and if they do, they have no Internet. The settlements are more limited, more primitive than the enclaves. The telecom shroud makes this so.

Connections and nepotism. (And low-tech high-tech.) The Mesh is less an Internet, more an inter-library loan: you request data from a foreign network, and get it when everyone involved is damn good and ready. Some people just have priority, so their messages go first: the connected, the powerful, and the government.

For everyone else, it's expensive (pay for priority), so they have to conserve data. Sending a Mesh email is like a telegraph used to be: you pay by the word, so you count each letter. The restrictions on the high tech means it operates like low-tech, 1800-era solutions.

Isolated places. To find out what's going on somewhere, you have to go there, or someone else does. News, therefore, is more often rumor than fact. Each settlement is alone, cut off from news until a traveler arrives. The more remote the settlement, the rarer travelers are. Even enclaves are largely isolated from each other, communicating only via a dog slow and unreliable radio connection.

Other places are other places. America has Balkanized into a few enclaves and thousands of small settlements. It is not one country, but many, many independent polities. Part of this is due to the tribalism, caused by the Collapse. Another part is due to their lengthy isolation.

The difficulty in communicating means each place has developed its own culture, its own customs, even its own linguistic traits. The people in California live in their own country, one far removed from New York or Texas. The Mesh helps explains why this is so.

And those are just some of the things the Mesh (and the telecom shroud) enhance. They also enhance adventure opportunities. I'll talk about those tomorrow.

Mesh Adventures

The Mesh, as any good setting element should, drives adventures. Its flaws and its strengths create new adventure opportunities, but also drive players towards more interesting adventures.

Cracking, not hacking. Hacking, realistic hacking (which this is), is freaking boring. It's months or years of sitting at a computer, researching the target, or trashing (going through their trash, looking for info), spear phishing (sending them emails with links to bad things), or social engineering (pretending to be people you're not, to dupe others into giving you info). It requires technical knowledge of the network in question (which varies from enclave to enclave) and personal knowledge of the people and organizations involved. It takes a long time, and isn't terribly interesting.

Cracking, on the other hand, is very interesting. Each computer creates a convergence in the shadow world. Inside each convergence is a small world, with its own physics, architecture, and geography (a construct). Deciphering the construct allows you to control the computer. This is a mini-adventure, and the whole party can (and should) play.

More, each construct is different. One might be a ghost-haunted cruise ship lost in Arctic waters, another might be a section of WW I trenches under attack by German werewolves, another a trackless desert beset by mirages that can suddenly, unexpectedly become real. Anything goes. (Half of you are thinking The Matrix, the other half Inception. That's fine. Either works.)

I'm of the opinion that cracking is more interesting, in terms of gaming, and the Mesh drives people towards cracking. Especially because hacking, in this world, is more difficult than ever.

See, radios broadcast in the clear: anyone can intercept them. So the Mesh encrypts all traffic, client to client. This means normal hacking is very difficult.

Both hacking and cracking can be done, but cracking is much quicker and more effective. Therefore, most computer intrusion attempts revolve around the shadow world and computer constructs. Which is something you'd want to encourage in any case, as that's a cool mini-adventure the entire party can participate in.

Moving data about. Given the flaky and slow nature of the Mesh, messages take a long time to travel. The chief solution? High tech sneakernet. Sometimes it's just faster to physically carry data from place to place.

In 2039, data is cargo and is moved like any other cargo. And that movement invariably involves Guns somewhere along the line.

• Cargo ships, in addition to spare parts and consumer goods, carry computers with requested data. Xiyatu is the crossroads of data cargo coming from Eurasia, especially the Chinas and Siberia.

• Convoys, in addition to carrying bullets and corn, also carry data. (They usually have their own mobile wireless network, as well.) Who guards convoys? Guns.

• The vast majority of settlements can't afford a node, but many still have computers. How do they get their data in to and out of town? Couriers. And courier contracts can be lucrative. (And if a courier disappears? Guns get hired to retrieve him.)

• One postal company, Taylor Couriers, pioneered a "Pony Express" style messaging service for data deliveries that have to be somewhere damn fast. They use dirt bikes, ATV's, and ultralights instead of ponies most of the time, but the same theory applies. Other courier companies have sprung up, but Taylor couriers is the first and most trusted.

• Many enclaves have need of internal couriers. Chartered Companies in Manhattan hire specialized data carriers all the time, to communicate with their outposts in the Black Zone.

This is an era of computers and high tech, but the telecom shroud means that, outside the enclaves, email has to be carried just like letters used to be. (Fortunately, you can fit a lot of letters on a thumb drive. Plus, you can back them up, meaning losing one courier doesn't mean losing the message.) This allows for PC adventure opportunities, but also highlights the strange technological contrasts of the setting: the past and the present, mixed in baroque and unexpected ways.

Isolated places. As I said yesterday, to find out what's going on somewhere, you have to go there, or someone else does. Sometimes, people hire Guns to do that, to find out what's going in in Georgia, to find out why a settlement dropped off the radar, and so forth.

The Mesh is odd, flaky, and barely usable. Yet by existing, it makes the setting better. It encourages adventure opportunities, makes the setting more colorful, and helps players get into the mindset of post-Emergence America.

Not bad for a barely workable, highly unreliable, dirty little kludge of a technology.

Hodge-Podge Mesh Post

And now, another hodge-podge post dealing with some final technical details not previously discussed.

Nodes and Clients

In the Mesh, there are nodes and clients. Client devices are what people use (PC, laptop, smartphone). They connect to the local network, using whatever devices and protocols apply. (Each Enclave has their own unique network.) Nodes send and receive data to and from other networks, on behalf of client devices.

If you're in New York, and request data from another New York computer, the Mesh doesn't know about it, doesn't care about it, and isn't involved in any way. It only cares if you request data from, say, San Francisco. Then the request is queued up, to be sent as soon as your priority allows. San Francisco's node will send the data back, as soon as your priority allows. This can take quite a while.

(Mesh traffic being slow and expensive, people are maniacally focused on using every single possible trick to compress the data. Typically, these are implemented as a preflight process, before encrypting the Mesh-bound data. Speaking of encryption...)

Encryption

Mesh broadcasts occur in the clear: anyone with a radio can receive them. (In fact, people operating deep in the Outlaw have special receivers that can tune in Mesh transmissions, allowing them to receive, but not send data.) Therefore, all Mesh traffic is encrypted at the client level. Failing that, the node encrypts the data (necessary for pre-Mesh clients).

Encryption works something like PGP: you encode with one key, and anyone with the correct key can decrypt it. (This is a "public" transmission.) Alternately, you can send a "private" transmission, which can only be decrypted on the device you're sending to.

Encryption is designed to be transparent and effortless. The protocols are built into every program with network access.

Technically, these protocols are only required for the Mesh, but most local networks apply them to all traffic. For the most part, all network traffic in 2039 is encrypted, and with lengthy keys. Mundane hacking is possible, but the easiest form of data intrusion is cracking via the Shadow World.

(Traffic is encrypted in "chunks" of data, the same size "chunks" the Mesh broadcasts. This ensures that any errors that slip through the error checking only corrupt a single chunk, not a whole file. It also ensures that Mesh nodes only have to resend that single chunk.)

Unless something comes up, that's the last of the Mesh posts. I'm hoping to post one more message about the telecom shroud tomorrow, but after that it's on to something new.

Theories of the Shroud

Magic is largely a mystery. The Emergence is only 14 years old, and no Earther has the time or experience to have learned any more than the basics of magical lore. Even the Beyonders, with over 10,000 years of experience with the five Talents, can't explain the vortexes, much less Black Skies.

As for the telecom shroud that hampers all telecommunication, Beyonders barely understand the theories behind electronics, much less what would cause them to go haywire. They simply have no explanations to offer.

So what theories have been cobbled together to explain the effects of the Emergence are unproven, tentative, and conflicting. Even so, they are the best that can be managed, for now.

The Shroud

After the Black Skies, conventional radio stations could operate, and could be clearly received, but only within 25 to 30 miles. Increasing the power of the broadcast does increase this range, but with decreasing efficacy: it takes larger and larger amounts of power to get smaller and smaller increases in range.

This dampening effect extends from mid-frequency radio waves, all the way through microwaves. It doesn't seem to affect infrared radiation or higher frequencies, or mid to low frequency radio. Shortwave radio (and lower frequencies) are not noticeably affected.

(Careful measurement by researchers revealed the same dampening effect does affect shortwave, but the range decreases are on the order of a few feet.)

[Note: The following theories are an attempt to take known or suspected physical and metaphysical facts, and extrapolate from those an explanation for the telecom shroud. No one in-world knows this, but that approach is problematic when discussing magic. At some point, I hope get back around to explaining why.]

Theory One: Photon Wake

Electricity moving along a wire causes currents in magic. (This is the basis of technomagic.) Similarly, magical energies can interfere with, or enhance, electrical phenomena and other forms of energy.

Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation, carried by photons. Certain frequencies of radio waves are believed to cause a wake in the magical field, a buildup of magical energy that is carried along with the photon.

This magical energy acts to disperse the energy of the photon, dampening the radio wave, causing it fade out far, far earlier than would otherwise be the case. An FM broadcast that might easily reach for hundreds of miles, is instead restricted to a range of only 25 or so.

(Different frequencies of EM energies interact with matter differently. Light and radio, for example, are the same thing, but one passes through walls and one does not. Thaumophysicists theorize that different frequencies of EM interact with magic differently, hence why light and shortwave isn't dampened, but high frequency broadcasts are. There has been no systematic study of the ways that other frequencies of EM radiation might interact with magic.)

Theory Two: Contra-Light

It is known that dark is an active force in the Beyond (called "contra-light" by thaumophysicists), an energy that affects the world by canceling light. (Hence darklamps, which radiate darkness around them.) It's also suspected that one of the fundamental laws of Beyonder physics is "Opposite energies are drawn to one another."

Light is one example of EM radiation. Darkness, it is theorized, might be just one example of contra-EM energies, possibly including contra-radio. If so, then contra-radio would be drawn to radio waves, and act to dampen them out. Under this model, the problems with radio broadcasts are not due to a "magical wake", but to contra-EM energy, of which dark is one example.

(This — posited but unproven — mutual attraction of opposite energies would also explain the dampening that afflicts fiber optic lines longer than 25 or 30 miles. Focused light would draw darkness to it, and that darkness would act to dampen it out.)

Empirical Problems

Direct observation of magical effects (to verify the photon wake or the attraction of opposite energies) is only possible through divining the shadow world (or by using one of the few spells and devisements that replicate applicable forms of divination). This is an inherently subjective and intuitive endeavor, subject to personal interpretation.

It is doubtful that observation of magic and magical energies could ever be mechanized, and thus the phenomenon never be precisely and specifically measured. Even if it could some day, it can't right now.

There is thus no direct confirmation of the photon wake, broad-spectrum contra-EM energy, or the attraction of opposite energies. Both theories rest on speculation and extrapolation.

There is one more wrinkle. Reports from a single team of Guns in the Beyond claimed that there was no telecom shroud there: their radio broadcasts functioned normally. This report is unconfirmed, and likely to remain unconfirmed for some time.

It is difficult to access the Beyond, and even more difficult to carry out experimentations there. It would require crossing over, separating a party by more than 30 miles, and carrying out controlled experiments on multiple radio bands. Such expeditions have been proposed in thaumophysics journals, but no action has yet been taken.

In the meantime, technomages and spellcasters continue trying to identify a cause for the planetary blackout, so a means to counteract it can be devised. Others ignore the cause, and just seek to find a way to skirt the limitations of the shroud, so the slow and flaky Mesh might be replaced with something speedy and reliable.

As long as we're on the subject of magic...

Just last week, I put together some introductory posts for a new venue. They contain information compiled from all of the previous posts, rewritten and integrated, with some new info. They're informative enough to post here. I'll start with:

Magic in The Outlaw

Magic permeates the Beyond, that alien world of monsters, mages, and magic. It emanates from the Shadow World, an unearthly and quicksilver plane of gray mists and deep shadows. (Imagine a sandstorm, at night, dimly lit by a full moon.)

When the vortexes opened, magic Emerged on Earth. Energies from the Shadow World inundated Earth, spirits from the Shadow World entered our plane of existence, and magicians could now work magic anywhere on our planet. So long as a single vortex remains open, this remains the case.

There are five different methods for people to work magic: augmentation, imbuing, shadow walking, sorcery, and spellcasting. These are called "the five Talents", and each manipulates the energies of the Shadow World in a different way. Each functions differently — different laws, different capabilities, different limitations. Characteristics that apply to one Talent do not bind the others.

These abilities are called "Talents" for a reason: they are innate capacities, that you have to train to use effectively. People can be born with them, or can develop their latent Talents later, but everyone must learn how to channel them.

Developing a Talent requires significant devotion and focus. Few develop even one Talent (save among the fae), rarer still they who develop two. Those who develop all five are known as archmages, and they are personages of legendary power. There have been no archmages among the Beyonders for well over five centuries.

These are not the only types of magic. There are dozens, maybe hundreds. Dragons have their own magic, and True Dragons have yet another. Ghouls and vampires have come under the sway of yet another form of magic, an anthrophagy curse. Archmages — magicians who mastered the five human Talents — were said to have their own magic, but as no archmage has arisen in the last five centuries, that cannot be verified.

All magicians draw upon the energies of the Shadow World to work magic. How they do so, what they can do with those energies, and what limitations they operate under define their Talent.

I'll start posting details on the five Talents tomorrow.

Spellcasting and Imbuing

These are two of the five Talents, as they existed in the Beyond. Though uncommon in the Outlaw, there are still many Beyonders who practice these abilities on a daily basis. ("Practice" as in "use professionally".) I'll talk about the Earther equivalents of these, the new form these Talents took, later.

Spellcasting - Spellcasting is the most common Talent, and the easiest for Earthers to grasp. You say the right words, wiggle your fingers, and boom! something happens.

Spellcasters must follow the laws of Contagion, Similarity, and Identification to cast spells, though each Tradition has their own specific iterations of this. In one Tradition, the number 6 must be used in a binding spell, as it represents imprisonment, in another you must use miniature metal shackles. The symbolism differs from one Tradition to another, but all obey the three laws.

Most spellcasters are, of necessity, scholars of the abstract and symbological — they need to study the correspondences of their Tradition to master its magic. People with the spellcasting Talent are called maguses.

Imbuing - Imbuing is the magical talent of enchanting items, for example to create magical swords, wands, rings, and so forth. (Such an item is called a "devisement".) Magicians with this Talent are known as enchanters or thaumaturgists.

Enchanters are above all craftsmen. To imbue magic into a sword, the magician has to forge it himself, from raw materials. The act of creation allows the magic to flow into the devisement, permanently linking the two. (All spells are temporary, they all eventually fade. Imbuing is permanent.)

Thaumaturgists are students of the material world. To craft devisements, they must know and master all of the various substances and their interactions. They must also learn which substances are better suited for specific enchantments, as using those substances makes the devisement more potent. They alone master the secrets of the strange substances of the Beyond, like liquid cold. (That is, the energy of cold (or contra-heat), as distilled into a liquid form.)

Enchanters don't have Schools or Traditions. Facts are facts, and either a substance works for a specific purpose, or it doesn't. Obsessing over symbological minutia is foolish and a waste of time. The material world doesn't respond to symbols, only craft and skill.

I'll talk about Shadow Walking and Sorcery tomorrow.

Shadow Walking and Sorcery

The next two Talents are closely related, as both deal with the realm of mists and shadows known as the Shadow World.

Shadow Walking - Shadow walkers can sense the otherworldly Shadow World, and even project their mind into the mists to traverse its shifting, ethereal terrain (traveling, in spirit, to the many Spirit Realms of the shadows). They can (after much training) even use the ever-shifting mists to discern truths about the natural world and the Shadow World (a technique called divining).

(Most walkers have to study intently to become diviners. Fae are natural diviners, and must study intently to learn shadow walking.)

Technomagical devisements and spells also allow people to enter the Shadow World (but not divine), but walkers can do things in shadow that no one else can. They can find and enter Shadow Realms, and even have a measure of control over the realm itself. They can fight spirits and monsters of the mists, even detect and disrupt burgeoning vortexes.

They can gain information about the material realm, by divining the shifting mists. Diviners can sense from afar, being able to listen to conversations from miles away. They can find lost objects, learn truths about a person or thing, and gather information of all kinds, all by consulting the mists. (This is much easier when they can see the target in the flesh.)

As all magic is of the Shadow World, while divining walkers can sense and disrupt spells, magical items, and the abilities of some Emerged creatures. The mental state of creatures disturbs the energies of the Shadow World, and walkers can see those currents while divining. They can even guess at what emotions or sensations people are feeling. Strangest of all, by divining the mists, they can catch glimpses of purported pasts and possible futures.  

Shadow walking is not a conscious, intellectual discipline. It relies entirely on intuition and hunches. It is the rarest of the mage Talents.

Sorcery - The Shadow World is populated by spirits of every variety and description, some hostile, some helpful, others too alien to understand. These spirits dwell in a series of Spirit Realms, or in the mists themselves. Some spirits have emerged from the Shadow World and taken up residence in the physical realm.

Sorcerers have the innate ability to sense, contact, and communicate with spirits. They can summon a spirit from the Shadow World into the physical realm, or banish one back to the mists. Through negotiation or compulsion, they can even gain the aid of spirits, which allows them to do incredible things.

Sorcerers are usually friendly and ingratiating, though often stubborn. They have a quick and subtle mind, and are expert at negotiating contracts, both to insert innocuous clauses which nevertheless undermine the intent of the contract, and to prevent the same. (Spirits are inextricably bound by the terms of a contract, and have a vested interest in being tough and wily negotiators.) Sorcerers who also train as lawyers are respected and hated in courts across the continent.

Tomorrow, Augmentation.

Augmentation - Magic flows through our bodies and pools in our chakras. Shadow warriors (those who have developed their augmentation Talent) can tap into their chakras, and use them to augment their natural abilities: making themselves stronger, faster, quieter, and so forth.

In Earther terms, shadow warriors are martial artists with supernatural powers that make them faster than any human could ever be, stronger than a normal human can manage, and quieter than an especially sneaky cumulo-nimbus cloud. Some shadow warriors can hear things from miles off, see through walls, even fly. Their abilities are innate, they require no ritual to activate nor devisement to operate. Shadow warriors are far less versatile than spellcasters and technomages, however.

Developing these abilities requires intense studies and vows. There are dozens of shadow warrior Schools, and each has their own moral code and required vows. Shadow warriors are highly disciplined, and practiced in meditation and physical exercises (which help them master the energies in their chakras).

The Talents On Earth

The five mage Talents have been known for millennia among the Beyonders, and their limits were well understood. Most believed these limits to be intrinsic to the magic itself. The Emergence proved them wrong.

On Earth, each of the Talents found new applications and took new forms. Sorcerers became technoshamans, enchanters became technomages, and the shadow walkers became crackers, magical computer hackers.

I'll talk about those forms of magic next.

Origins of Earthly Magic

Magic has been known and practiced for more than 15,000 years, since before the founding of the Empire of Atlantis. The Five Talents were first discovered among the Atlanteans, and formed the backbone of their strength. It is said that, at the height of their power, there were more archmages in Atlantis than stars in the sky. (But storytellers and songwriters are outrageous liars, and often found in their cups, so this is probably untrue.)

When the empire collapsed, and Atlantis was left uninhabited and demon-haunted (occurring all in a single night, the storytellers say), the four races of Cienvue took up the mantle of magic. For 10,000 years, during the rise and fall of kingdom after kingdom, during periods of drought and famine, during times of war and civil strife, the four races knew the Talents, used the Talents, and plumbed their uttermost depths.

Or so they thought.

On Earth were great workings of mundane craft undreampt of in the imaginations of all the storytellers and songwriters of all the races. Outrageous liars they might be, but none had imagined anything so outrageous as personal computers, electricity, firearms, plastics, automobiles, or cellphones. All of these things were new, and being new they stretched the bounds of what magic was capable of.

In great ways and small ways, the technologies of Earth warped magic. They gave birth to technomagic, which uses imbuing to create new and more flexible devisements (and ways to make them). Cracking, which is computer hacking via the Shadow World. Augments, which use technomagic devisements for augmentations. Technoshamanism, which is sorcery applied to spirits who inhabit machines, vehicles, and other technological works. And last, spellcasting, which hasn't changed all that much, but the presence of technology allows for rafts of new and interesting spells that can be cast on machines, electronic devices, firearms, and other Earthly inventions.

Taken together, the 14 years since the Emergence has seen more advances, more upset in magical theories and practices than the preceding 14 millennia. No one knows what the end result of this revolution will be, not magicians or priests, not scientists or technicians, and not the storytellers and songwriters. (Outrageous liars though they be.)

The Five Talents on Earth

Each of the five mage Talents has changed, in response to the new conditions, phenomena, and opportunities encountered on Earth. Beyonders — the four intelligent, nonhuman races from that other world — have adapted to the new circumstances, learning new applications of magic and helping Earthers develop their own magical Talents.

We begin with cracking — hacking computers with magic — which illustrates many of the changes in magic that lead to other developments. Cracking is an inextricable result of the interplay between magic and technology.

Cracking — Because of the way electricity and magic interact (gnarly details available upon request), shadow walkers can hack computers without touching the keyboard at all. By entering the Shadow World, they can access a computer directly.

Magical access grants crackers super-user privileges. (To the uninitiated, that means they can do the hell they want.) They don't need to know passwords, they don't need to know programming, they don't need to know the specifics of the interface, they don't need to hack anything.

This is a problem, so technomages created constructs, technomagical devisements designed to protect a computer from supernatural intrusion. Shadow walkers have to defeat the construct to access the computer.

Constructs are artificial Shadow Realms, and they can look like anything: An estate villa, in Meiji-era Japan. A section of beach at Normandy, circa 1944. A weird technicolor domain of fragrances and swirling lights, something like living in a lava lamp. Anything the construct's controller can imagine can be implemented.

Cracking Adventures

Anyone can enter a construct, via the right spell, technomagical devisement (called a shadowjack), or spirit power. In the Outlaw, the whole party helps hack a computer: everybody cracks, everybody hacks.

Cracking the construct involves entering the Realm, exploring it, and unlocking its secrets. It's a lot like raiding a Chartered Company compound or exploring a dungeon. Exactly like it, in fact, as the exact same skills can be used.

To get through a door, you pick the lock just like the real world. To sneak, you use your stealth skill. To shoot, your firearm skill.

Everyone can contribute. Everyone has a role to play.

Crackers, of course, can cheat. They can use their magical Talent to edge around the physics of the construct. To open a door, they can just wave their hands, affecting the artificial realm directly.

Cracking a computer isn't a solo adventure: it's fun for the whole party. It's different every time. Everyone can help, but crackers do it better.

That's magical hacking in the Outlaw.

Technomagic

Technomagic comes from Imbuing, and uses that magical Talent in a very strange way (at least to Beyonder ways of thinking.) Whereas enchanting an item (a Wand of Liquid Hope, for example) takes weeks or months, a technomage can create the exact same thing in a few hours, with the proper raw materials.

(These are known as "quick-and-dirty" devisements, or QaDD, pronounced "quad". Other technomagic devisements take much longer to craft.)

An enchanted item lasts until it's destroyed, but technomages can take the raw materials used to create one quad and tear them apart, using them in the next. This flexibility seems unnatural to those raised in the Beyond, but is very much appreciated in the chaotic and impoverished Outlaw.

Technomagic - Cracking is possible because electricity can affect magic, creating convergences in the Shadow World. Technomagic works on similar principles. Maguses can cast Flash Fire, and incinerate an opponent. Technomages can do the exact same thing, with the correct devisement.

Technomages use wires to create electric circuits, them imbue those circuits with a small amount of magic, creating a devisement. Each devisement is different — one might allow you to enter a computer construct, another might enhance the strength of a wearer, another might make bullets explode when fired. Once electricity — from a generator, power plant, or battery — is flowing through the circuit (a process the technomage must initialize), the effect comes into existence (and lasts until the power is cut off).

Creating quick and dirty devisements takes a knowledge of the proper circuits and the ability to solder, wrap wires, and screw together a case. Blank wiring boards, wire cutters, batteries, and spools of wire are the tools of the technomage.

Each different effect requires a different circuit, so above all technomages must memorize the several known circuits and what effects they cause. This is especially important because a poorly formed circuit doesn't just fail to work. It might, or it might feedback on the user or creator, might melt into slag, or do nearly anything else. This is magic, after all, and disasters can be spectacular.

Enchanted items (a magical sword, for example) are permanent (at least until the item is destroyed). Spells are evanescent. Devisements (even quads) are permanent, so long as the circuit is intact and a current is flowing. If the wires are torn loose, or the current is interrupted, the magic fades and can only be re-initialized by a technomage. (In fact, only technomages can switch batteries if they run dry.)

Technomages are at a disadvantage, when compared to maguses. A maguses' abilities are innate, they cannot be taken away. Nor do they depend on a power source (as the electrical devisements do). They are also more flexible.

At the same time, maguses are at a disadvantage, when compared to technomages. Once a devisement is finished, it can be used without tiring or hurting its wielder. Maguses are not so lucky.

Technomagic is a very new discipline, only discovered in the years after Emergence. The first commercial technomage set up shop 11 years ago, but breadboard kits for technomages (suitable for quick-and-dirty devisements) are less than eight years old. Shadow walkers could read information from computers from the very first time they crossed over, but constructs to protect that data weren’t developed until 9 years ago. And shadowjacks, which revolutionized computer use and cracking, are just three years old.

Technomagic is so new, no one knows what it might eventually be capable of. By increasing the complexity of the circuit and the power flowing through it, ever more powerful effects can be created. If there is a limit to this process, no one can say. Technomagic may eventually be able to duplicate, or exceed, the legendary abilities of the archmages.

Technomagic: "Slow and Steady" Devisements

Most technomages focus on quads — QUick And Dirty Devisements. Using a standard quad kit, they can gin up a circuit in 10-20 minutes. These have several limitations, including low battery life and fragility (it's easy to knock breadboarded wires loose).

Quads are not intended to be permanent, they are temporary creations for use in exigent circumstances. That said, well-done wiring, a sturdy circuit board, and quality soldering can make a quad as resilient as most electronic devices.

Some devisements, on the other hand, are more-or-less permanent. These are invariably built using "slow and steady" methods.

These require weeks or months of work by a dedicated technomage (as only one craftsmen can work on one devisement), frequently with hazardous substances. (And chemists laugh.) The benefit being that they are far more rugged and reliable, and can be powered with ambient current.

All technomage devisements are built around electrical circuits, and all require a power source of some kind. In most cases, this power source is a fundamental component of the devisement, meaning only a technomage can change the battery. (The first technomagical devisements required it be the same technomage who crafted it, but advances in crafting methods sidestepped that restriction.)

This is obviously quite limiting, especially for items which are meant to be used by non-technomages. Quite recently, technomages developed a way of powering devisements with the ambient energies of a person's body. (These methods are used in crafting, e.g., shadowjacks and steed collars.)

This method requires two very esoteric substances — firegold and frostsilver — which require special tools to create and work, and which are inherently hazardous. Most "slow and steady" creation methods require a large and well-equipped craft room, which is why the typically nomadic Guns tend to favor quads.

Liquid Cold and Liquid Heat

Technomagic came from enchanting, to the point where it is impossible to build a technomagic devisement without depending on ancient, time-tested enchanting methods and materials.

The Beyond is a world of magic — magical creatures, magical substances, magical abilities. Many things that are real there are simply impossible in our world. (Or were, until the Emergence.)

Cold, for example, is an active form of energy that negates heat. Where properly aspected magic is strong enough, and the ambient temperature low enough, pools of liquid cold can form. (And when aspected magic is strong enough, and the temperature high enough — in the most torrid of deserts on the hottest days of the year — pools of liquid heat can form.)

Liquid heat is reddish, with swirling golden highlights that glow. It's a thick sludge, about the consistency of a slurpee or milkshake.

Liquid cold is a clear liquid (barely thicker than water) with thin, white bands swirled in. The white layers reflect light, gleaming and shimmering like sun on snow.

Liquid heat and liquid cold have no temperature: they are energies, in liquid form. (In the Beyond, all energies can be made into liquids and solids, through arcane and difficult means.) They have no temperature, instead they invoke temperature: they cause hotness and coldness in that which they touch.

Liquid heat is inconceivably caustic, causing third-degree burns on contact. A tiny drop will flash ignite any flammable substance (by raising its temperature above the kindling point and causing autoignition). For safety reasons, it is stored in a specially enchanted flask of crystal glass, which insulates the surroundings against the liquid.

Liquid cold is a cryogenic liquid, capable of freezing nearly any mundane substance or object it comes into contact with (akin to liquid nitrogen). A liquid cold spill is invariably devastating, as everything mundane it touches is deep frozen, becoming highly brittle. Any heat energy will negate the cold, causing the fluid to evanesce, so it is typically stored in a vacuum flask (thus insulating it from outside heat), made from a different type of enchanted crystal glass.

When liquid cold and liquid heat come into contact, they both evanesce, becoming energetic heat and cold. If cold predominates, the surroundings grow colder. If there were more liquid heat, they grow hotter.

These liquids are inherently unstable, but both can be made into stable solids.

At the coldest temperature possible, liquid cold can coalesce into a solid. This solid — “perfect ice” — is clear as glass, cool to the touch, remains solid at temperatures far above the boiling point of water (indeed, it can only dissolve in liquid heat), and can be knapped like obsidian or flint.

There is a counterpart to perfect ice, called perfect fire, formed from heat. As a solid, heat is soft, like stiff clay, and looks like a black or dun volcanic rock that dimly glows red. It's warm to the touch, and a fist-sized chunk can provide enough heat for a person to survive a frigid night in a howling blizzard.

Perfect fire is formed deep in the earth or in volcanos, where the heat and pressure are incredibly intense. Unlike perfect ice, it can't be knapped, hammered, or permanently shaped — it's just too soft.

All of the foregoing is impossible. Utterly impossible. But it happens in the Beyond. And, since the Emergence, on Earth.

Enchanters are masters of these and other exotic materials. They must study them, experiment with them, and master their uses. In this case, liquid heat and liquid cold are used to make (respectively) firegold and frostsilver.

Firegold and Frostsilver

The Beyond is a world of magic and the impossible. Under specific conditions, both heat and cold can be condensed into liquids. Enchanters can even create metals from super-concentrated forms of these liquids.

By applying additional heat to liquid heat (via a fire or burner), enchanters can create a super-concentrated form of it. (This process can take more or less time, depending on the heating source used.) Super-concentrated liquid heat is highly energetic, swirling furiously in its container and giving off light that is painful to look at. This state typically lasts for but a short time before the liquid heat burns through its container and explodes.

Enchanters can also create super-concentrated liquid cold, by slowly leaching away residual heat in the flask and the environment, lowering the temperature of the fluid's surroundings. (An unpleasant process, as it requires them turning their workshop into an ice-box.) The absence of ambient heat allows the liquid cold to begin drawing cold energies to itself, concentrating them greatly.

At low enough temperatures, just above the crystallization point (which forms perfect ice), the liquid cold becomes super-concentrated. In this state it is quite thick, almost gelatinous, and the white strips become translucent. This is an unstable state, as the liquid cold is on the very verge of crystallization (which usually happens within a second or two).

While in their super-concentrated state, both fluids can be used to make metals with strange physical properties. A tiny mote of gold, introduced into the super-concentrated liquid heat, causes an instant reaction (much like dropping a salt crystal into a super-saturated water solution). Within moments, a lump of crystallized golden metal — firegold — precipitates out of the liquid heat, collecting on the bottom of the flask. (The liquid heat completely vanishes, being replaced with an equal volume of plasm, a watery substance made of spent magical energies. The plasm vanishes within a minute or two.)

A tiny mote of silver causes a similar reaction in the super-concentrated liquid cold. The liquid cold immediately desiccates, forming two powdery substances, thoroughly mixed together: plasm salt and frostsilver. Applying a small amount of heat causes the plasm salt to vanish, and applying even more heat melts the frostsilver.

Firegold and frostsilver are metals, nearly identical to their namesakes, save for an unusual coloration — red swirls for firegold and white bands for frostsilver. There is no known way of changing the metals back into heat or cold; once metallicized, they are simply metals.

As metals, they can be used to make jewelry or for any other use gold or silver could be put to. The two metals are infused with magic, however, and being magical, they have further applications beyond the mundane.

Technomancers use the metals to construct power taps, for use in powering devisements. A piece of firegold and frostsilver that are linked with appropriate wires generate a small amount of electrical current when placed against the skin of a person. This current is enough to sustain a small devisement indefinitely, without harming the individual in question. Technomancers use power taps in permanent devisements, obviating the need for another power source.

Devisements are in high demand, and so the procedure for creating and using firegold and frostsilver has become common among technomages, even though creating them is a tricky, involved, and hazardous process. Only the most skilled of enchanters or technomages can attempt it successfully, and none do so casually.

There are no shortcuts when creating firegold and frostsilver. Technomages have to use the same techniques, the same equipment, the same Talent as enchanters.

Technomagic is enchanting, in a different form. The same holds true for the other new forms of magic that arose on Earth. Each derive from an ancient Beyonder tradition that stretches back more than 10,000 years.

FAQ's of Life (and Death)

A couple of quick questions, based on some recent feedback.

Q1: Are the plague and the vortexes are somehow related?

A1: Induced Systemic Necrosis was an extremely odd disease. Researchers never identified a causal agent, and it spread in ways that are hard to explain in conventional epidemiological terms.

Could it have been a magical event, perhaps a curse? Maybe, but there is no proof of that, and the first known vortexes didn't open up until a decade later. There is no known evidence of magic during that time.

Q2: Can't you give me a straight answer? Why dance around the subject?

A2: Because you have been lied to, are being lied to, and will be lied to.

The campaign material presented thus far is a mix of truths, half-truths, omissions, and outright lies. It's a technique I developed years ago. I call it "baked-in secrets".

There are a lot of secrets in the campaign world, and I will not state them outright. I'll present consequences of those secrets (so you can infer or deduce their existence), include qualifiers that suggest the material might not be perfectly accurate ("most people think"), make straight-faced claims that seem illogical or extremely unlikely (to suggest that other explanations might exist), but never state them outright.

I'll lie, and tell you I'm lying, but never tell you the truth outright. (Except like once, in another venue.) Believe it or not, this is actually a good idea.

It has two benefits: players can discover what's going on behind the scenes (a cool "solve the mystery" moment), and it's easier for players and GM's to roleplay the setting.

I found, a long time ago, that when the campaign material straight out tells you deep cosmological truths that no one in the entire setting knows, players and GM's assume everyone knows it. Even if it's impossible to know those truths, they assume everyone knows them, and judge the behavior of NPC's by that knowledge.

"That's so stupid! On pg. 76, the rules specifically say that's impossible, so why is he even trying it?"

More, they tend to make plans in accordance with that secret knowledge.

If you never explicitly state those secrets, then this is never an issue. If you only give people what their characters (and NPC's) could know, then the mysteries of the universe remain just that — mysteries. (Until the GM is ready to reveal them.) Some of these secrets I would reveal in time (during play of the campaign), others I would always keep secret.

And, even though "solve the mystery" has the smallest amount of space in this little essay, it's the best reason to keep things secret. Players love it when mysteries suddenly make sense, even more so when they figured it out. And if that new knowledge allows them to accomplish great things, well hell, that's just gravy.

Accordingly, nearly all of the material presented has been limited to what people in the campaign know, or could know. That's why I use the phrase "so far as is known" or "it's generally believed". If a person in the setting doesn't have the real truth, I haven't told you the real truth. (That I can think of. Things may have slipped through.)

But those truths are there, and they have an effect on the material. You could, using hints and suggestions herein, make reasonable guesses as to what's going on behind the scenes. (In many cases.)

I've tried to make a setting that makes sense. If it seems illogical or improbable, there's a good chance that's actually a clue about something deeper.

So, is the rotting plague connected with Emergence? Maybe, or maybe it was a very strange disease that we would have understood medically, had we enough time. If there is a deeply buried truth there, I'm not going to reveal it now.

Just the FAQs

Second bout of questions, based on recent feedback.

Q3: Why "Atlantis"? Isn't that overdone?
Q4: Why are the creatures and monsters of the Beyond so much like legends from our world?

A4: (Which also ties into Atlantis.) Usually, they're not. The monsters and creatures of the Beyond are not exactly identical to our Earth legends and myths. Neither is Atlantis.

There are a great many Beyonder creatures that are completely novel (which I'll get to sooner or later), and many Earth legends which don't (yet) have Beyonder equivalents. So it's not a 1-for-1 correspondence.

But mostly, it comes down to names. Names like "Atlantis", "vampire", or "dragon" are not Beyonder words, they're English. These are not Beyonder names, not what Beyonders call that island, that monster, that nearly-unkillable, genius-level, dinosaur-sized, armored flying death machine.

They're English names. When we saw something from the Beyond, we called it by a familiar name. Vampires, dragons, basilisks: if their monsters loosely resembled ours, we used our names. They're not exactly like our legends, but were close enough.

The same holds for Atlantis. A strange continent that appears in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean will be called Atlantis, no matter what. It's inevitable.

Last is the Previous Contact theory, currently in vogue among the more disreputable fringe mages. They claim there have been several prior contacts between the Earth and the Beyond, so many of our legends come from those prior contacts. There is no verifiable evidence such contact occurred (save for Beyonder claims that humans used to live on Atlantis), but the theory is romantic and appealing, and many people assume it's true.

A3: Atlantis may be overdone, but there are good reasons for its inclusion.

• It's a great adventuring venue, offering adventure opportunities found nowhere else in the setting.
• It hints at deeper aspects of the world, such as Previous Contact theory.
• I needed something that would hint at an ancient link between the worlds, and an island continent convenient to North America (the main campaign setting) was a better solution than a hidden valley or lost city like Shangri-La.

As it stands, Atlantis is a key part of the setting, a dread and ominous place filled with empty buildings, treasure beyond imagining, and malign entities that chill the blood. It may be overdone, but I like it and I think it's gonna stay.

(After all, everything's overdone. Magic? Been there, done that. Sci-fi? Overplayed. Love stories? Blogger, please. We've seen all of that before, time and again, and Atlantis is no better. What matters is how well something's done, not whether it's been done. In my opinion, at least.)

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;718405(After all, everything's overdone. Magic? Been there, done that. Sci-fi? Overplayed. Love stories? Blogger, please. We've seen all of that before, time and again, and Atlantis is no better. What matters is how well something's done, not whether it's been done. In my opinion, at least.)

Something else that needs to be emphasized. ;)

JG

Hallo The New Year!

This is my last GiTO post for a long while. I intend on running the setting using my own little action-movie RPG, the ∞ Infinity Gaming System, and I need to focus on those mechanics for now. (Those interested can find that thread here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=28629), in the design forum.) Thanks for reading and commenting.

Augmentation - All people have chakras, where magical energies (called prana) pool. Shadow warriors tap into these energies and use them to augment their bodies, minds, and spirits. (Corresponding to the material, energetic, and ephemera elements.) This takes years of intense study with Prana Masters, and discipline far beyond that of mundane people.

Augments, in contrast, use technomagic devisements to achieve the same end. The devisements are implanted into their body, on the sites of the 5 chakras (the forehead, heart, liver, and both hands), and corral the prana energies therein, allowing the augment to duplicate the abilities of shadow warriors.

These devisements are made of hair-thin circuits, inlaid into the bone. They are, of course, powered with power taps, using firegold and frostsilver. (Theoretically, other paired enchanted metals could be used, like cold iron and searing lead, but searing lead is poisonous to most mage races and cold iron is poisonous to the three Shidhe races — fae, trolls, and wisps.)

Gunmages are a specific variety of augments, with powers oriented towards firearms. The best gunmages have also developed their enchanting Talent, allowing them to make magical firearms that operate as part of their body.

On both cases, the technologies of Earth work with the magical knowledge of the Beyond to create something neither world has ever seen before.

Spellcasting — This entry is, thankfully, short. Other than new spells — Tire Tear, to immobilize vehicles — spellcasting hasn't changed at all on Earth. Earthers have made new Traditions, exploring magic in their own, ahem, unique ways, but the fundamental principles are exactly the same.

Technoshamanism — The Shadow World is the realm of the ephemera. It is unimaginably vast, and in it are an unknowable number of Shadow Realms and spirit beings. The Spirit Realms and the Shadow World are peopled by hundreds of thousands or millions of varieties of spirits, in numbers akin to the atoms in a galaxy.

It's a big place. There are a lot of types of spirits. And a lot, a lot, a lot of individual spirits.

Some are selfish, others friendly and helpful. Some are great in power and grace, akin to angels, others great in malevolence, like unto demons. Some are indifferent to the material world, preferring their own Shadow Realms, and some are so alien, so incomprehensible, that they are inimical to life as we know it, just because of who they are.

Sorcerers are spirit masters. Their magical Talent is to sense the presence of spirits, in the material world or the Shadow World, and draw them to the sorcerer. There, they can negotiate bargains with them, or possibly compel the spirit to obey. Spirits can perform tasks for the sorcerer, or even grant them abilities beyond what mortals could normally achieve.

Spirits can leave the Shadow World and enter the material plane. There they can infest inanimate objects, or even possess animals and people. Sorcerers can expel those spirits, ejecting them back into the Shadow World.

On Earth, spirits can also possess machines. They can control the machine, as if it were their body, partially or completely. They can wreck the machine or just cause small malfunctions. (The weaker the spirit, the less it can accomplish.)

The reason airplanes are greatly shunned? A race of spirits who infest them and cause great calamities.

Technoshamans are focused on dealing with such spirits, exorcising machines or warding them against possession. Many couple their magical knowledge with technical skills as a driver and mechanic, so they can more readily differentiate between a normal malfunction and a lurking malform.

Another FAQ-ing Post?

Okay, so not quite the last. Had a couple more FAQ-able questions come up, so there's going to be a few more posts. (This and two others, it looks like.)

Q1: It's a Western. Any cowboys?

A1: Actually, I'm really glad of this question, because it lets me blather on about a piece of the setting I didn't get a chance to cover.

All your major states raise cattle, most obviously Texas and Utah. But the biggest beef industry in the Outlaw is Dakota. But not because of cows.

North of Dakota is a massive vortex that opens up to an ice continent somewhere in the Beyond. That continent has three main types of creatures: the gigantic armored Vishloess, the savage, furred Losiv (whom people call “yetis”), and the crystalline (and cold-based) insectile Yisek.

(The vortexes also dump a hell of a lot of cold into the atmosphere. It's iceboxing eastern Canada, and playing hell with global weather patterns.)

Vishloess are gigantic (triceratops, up to brontosaurus), furred creatures with 4-8 limbs, massive, fanged maws, huge horns, and hard, bony plates. They're mammals (or "mammals", being as how Beyonder magic-based biology has, at best, a loose relationship to Earther biology). Some are herbivores, some carnivores, some lone hunters, some pack hunters, some herd animals, but all are good eatin's.

They poured out of the vortex, into Dakota. Out of desperation, the Dakotas were forced to develop their manufacturing and oil industries, so they could make the fast, armored vehicles that fight the vishloess and the helicopters (the Dakota Sue, "that MASH helicopter") that spot them. (They also built a rail network across the Blue Line, so they can ship vehicles, men, and materiel to where the latest incursion is.)

Picture Land Rovers and dune buggies four-wheeling across the terrain (armed with .50 cal machineguns and grenade launchers), herding a beast with judiciously applied explosions and bursts of gunfire. Rolling after are up-armored pickups and Land Rovers, ersatz APC's, armed with harpoons. The smaller vehicles harry a furred beast the size of a tank, while the larger ones maneuver in for the kill.

Shoot, Boom!, and you drag back a huge carcass to the flatbed semis, for butchering in the local city. Dakotans are not in danger of starvation — there's lots of meat. (Oh, yeah, and pelts. Thick, huge, gorgeous pelts.)

(Ecology? The same impossibly fast plant growth that covered Europe with dense, hostile forest. Small vishloess feed on it, larger vishloess feed on them. "It's the cycle of life, Simba.")

Films of vishloess hunts are popular across the Outlaw. Major personalities among the Fur Hunters are stars. These shows are shot not on video, but with actual film. (Kind of like Mutual of Omaha.)

Beef (er, "beef") from these operations is sold across the continent. (Vishloess meat tastes like spicy beef, it's a fatty meat as fat is needed to survive the cold seasons.) It, and Dakota's wheat fields, feed Canada.

So, no cowboys, but vishloess wranglers do much the same thing, with ill-tempered furred, horned, fanged, gap-mawed, armored beasts the size of a tank. Or bigger.

*One* FAQ-ing Tank?

Q2: Only one tank in the whole continent of North America? How did that happen?

A2: Another chance to talk about Dakota. :)

Dakota has the only industrial manufacturing base in North America (and even that is pretty small-scale). If your car or truck isn't a pre-Collapse relic, it's made in one of hundreds of small factories. Each part is custom made from common blueprints, and the vehicles assembled one at a time by small groups of workers.

(They've been trying to expand, to build actual factories, but the vishloess and yisek (plus other problems of the Outlaw) constantly harry their forces, and it's been difficult. Logistics are also a challenge.)

The one operating tank is part of a pilot project to build bigger, better armed vehicles for use against the threats from the north. They built three prototypes, to test manufacturing techniques and usefulness in the field. The only surviving prototype is based on the Soviet T-34. It's cheap, rugged, has a pretty big main gun, and is easy to maintain.

The other two prototypes were a Panzer and Tiger, but the Panzer was too small for front-line deployment (it got gored in the engine, and sat in a field for six months before they could tow it back), and the Tiger had a couple of severe design flaws (it's still sitting in a field somewhere on the other side of the Canadian border, having blown its engine).

(Yes, all the prototypes were WWII era vehicles: T-34, Panzer, Tiger. Dakotans can't build the turbine engines that make Main Battle Tanks practical. US tanks from the Era were sh... not as effective, so weren't considered.)

The T-34 performed very well in field testing, so a few are under construction right now (as of 2039). This is crimping the industrial output of the region, and prices for Dakota made cars and trucks are rising.