SteamPunk - Overkill - Adventure
"Behold the Power of Steam."

History World For Characters Ideas

...Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, ---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will,
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
-- Taken from "Ulysses", Alfred Lord Tennyson

Go to the Sessions.

Introduction
Steampunk is 19th Century imagination. The real 19th century was an age of amazing inventions and discoveries - but these inspired visions of even greater achievements. Jules Verne's fictional odyesseys and H.G. Wells' scientific romances took contemporary readers on a journey into the realms of possibility. At the same time inventors such as Charles Babbage and Nikola Tesla (and Thomas Edison) proposed new technologies as radical as those in fiction, from steam powered mechanical computers to wireless electric power. All of these men looked forward to a future transformed by science and engineering.

At the end of the 20th century their visions have a renewed fascination to me. In some ways the age of steam is very familiar. In our time as in theirs, technology is making radical leaps forward and forcing society to change along with it. But the political and cultural differences make it exotic.

Imagine a world were vast tracts of land are yet unexplored. This era saw the taming of the American west (after prolonged Indian Wars), the exploration of South East Asia to the interior of New Guinea, and the exploration of the 'Dark Continent' Africa to the headwaters of the Nile and the heart of the Congo.

Character concepts can range from Inventors (Tesla, Edison), Captains of Industyr (Ford, etc), Explorers, Creations (steam/gear powered automatons), Aesthete (Dandy/Decadant), Army/Navy Officer, Engineer, Explorer, Reporter, Native Leader (Shaka Zulu, Gerinamo), Medium, Detective (Pinkertons), Demimondaine (Prostitute/spy/lady of the night), Scientist, Sportsman (Boxer/Judo etc) or any other. Magic is rare, but not unknown. Psionics is almost unknown. Variant forms of magic like Shamanism or Celtic types are the most common.

Sessions
  1. Unholy Matrimony "Hanging and wiving go by destiny."
    --William Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice, act 2. sc. 9.

  2. Ironman "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend."
    --Proverbs xxvii, 17

  3. Books Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future."
    --A Bishop�s Confession; Little, Brown 81

  4. Mountains "The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free."
    --George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824) Don Juan. Canto iii. Stanza 86. 3.

  5. The Minos Touch "In discourse more sweet; For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense. Others apart sat on a hill retir'd, In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute; And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost."
    --John Milton (1608-1674) Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 555.

  6. The Atlantis Stone "His nature is too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for �s power to thunder."
    --William Shakespeare (1564�1616) Coriolanus. Act iii. Sc. 1.

  7. Cards "Patience, and shuffle the cards."
    --Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) Don Quixote. Part ii. Chap. xxiii.

Characters and NPCs
  1. "Hunts the Wind"
  2. Dr. Samuel Rutheford Danes
  3. Chester McFinnley

    NPCs

    Bad NPCs

History World For Characters Ideas

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Updated this the Twenty-third day of January in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand One.