Cortex Steampunk Game 1 OOC Discussion

[WickedCadrach]

1 hour ago, MagnificentBastard said:

Lawlessness, I think one of the things that makes a western feel like a western is this sense of lawlessness, I think this also helps with horror and erotica.

Agreeing with this. The feeling of exposure and self-reliance when there's one lawman for your town and sometimes not even that (I'm thinking of Bass Reeves, the US Marshal who was the only lawman covering a frontier territory roughly the size of South Dakota and the real-world inspiration behind The Lone Ranger).

[WritesNaughtyStories]

I think I'm going to come at this in three steps. First, @Chiyako's biologist, then @IsabellaRose's religions and then a combination of @MagnificentBastard, @StarlitSiren and @WickedCadrach's balls, promiscuity and promiscuous balls.

So, @Chiyako, it seems the REALLY important thing is being in hiding, on the run and doing these shady experiments. That's more Doctor Frankenstein than vampire. The look is easy to achieve. Anemic and pale, or straight albino, and the experiments and history (removed from the big, fancy hospital back in Saint Linus for unapproved surgeries that revealed your experiments? Maybe to cure your hereditary anemia or perfect that animal soldier idea the army pulled the plug on?) mean you have to hide who you are and what you do. Just trying to find how to get the most important parts to fit the setting. I still have concerns that this could become 'you vs. us' which gets out of the rivalry business and into conflict.

@IsabellaRose, I was wondering how we got to the simple padre, in his dusty white cassock, helping the wounded gunfighter to the angry castigations Prudence delivered, and endured. I think your Puritan squared schism from the older church handles that well. But what are the Daughters of the Unbound's feelings about the Old Church? It feels like they don't like them, but aren't as vehement in their desire to tear it down. Not until the bigger problems are taken care of first. There's probably a new church, here in town, dragging people in front of their Judgements, shaming them, demanding their saloons be closed, I guess? The Old Church mission is probably out of town a ways, where the humble priest and tasty (there we go with the part you don't say aloud) nun try to shepherd settlers and save the heathen savages. Sound about right, or did the town run the new church out and they have a little white, clapboard square meeting house where they rail and rant at the evils of man?

 

Work, calls, me hardies (it's talk like a pirate day - go nuts) time to trim the mains and hoist the gallants!

[IsabellaRose]

16 hours ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

Yeah, that's why I really want her as part of our history. I really want to play a monk of the Daughters of the Unbound. I love the idea of someone like Kwai Chang Caine being the champion of her message of love, acceptance and caring (and being kind of a slut about it, because they love everybody).

So I'm thinking about Prudence and her Ashborn, and given the setting... Prudence would very likely still be active.

Perhaps her protection is a sort of frontier legend. Some people who say they've been protected by her have spread her legend, and some directly affected have now started a new faith, one of love and protection. This new faith draws all sorts of followers and is rapidly growing. Perhaps one of their first, or their very first, chapel is in the town where the players are based...

Just a thought, given her wild west themed origin.

[IsabellaRose]

28 minutes ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

, I was wondering how we got to the simple padre, in his dusty white cassock, helping the wounded gunfighter to the angry castigations Prudence delivered, and endured. I think your Puritan squared schism from the older church handles that well. But what are the Daughters of the Unbound's feelings about the Old Church? It feels like they don't like them, but aren't as vehement in their desire to tear it down. Not until the bigger problems are taken care of first. There's probably a new church, here in town, dragging people in front of their Judgements, shaming them, demanding their saloons be closed, I guess? The Old Church mission is probably out of town a ways, where the humble priest and tasty (there we go with the part you don't say aloud) nun try to shepherd settlers and save the heathen savages. Sound about right, or did the town run the new church out and they have a little white, clapboard square meeting house where they rail and rant at the evils of man?

I think there's room for everyone to have a presence in town. 

I'm imagining the various factions being sort of like the warring powermongers in Deadwood (the HBO series) - they are all in town, all trying to establish themselves in positions of power due to (resource) being abundant in the area and this being the main railroad stop closest to the mine, ruins, spring, or whatever source of (resource) we decide is nearby to create a gold rush feel. They need the people to follow them, to see them as the power in the area. I can imagine the schism church trying to exert its power, to spread its influence back east. I can also imagine other powerful organizations, individuals, etc. all trying to lock down their control over this town, and thus lock down their control of (resource).

The aforementioned resource could be gold, the "new coal", or something else. Whatever this unobtainium is, it is valuable and rare enough that people will kill for it. 

[WritesNaughtyStories]

Does this mean the New Church has bounties out for Ashborn and her blasphemous cultists?

Now that I'm actually on deck, I can slack off on the lines and think. Picking up where I left off in my earlier post this morning, ball, promiscuity, lawlessness and blue coal.

Balls. It sounds like we all agree, there need to be occasional galas, where what passes for wealth in town, shows up in their frontier finery and parades about in desperate attempts to seduce each other, impress the common folk and angle for alliances and influence.

How big of a deal is it when the musicians come into town for these balls? Do they happen on the solstices and equinoxes? I feel like there's powerful symbolism there that the churches don't much like, and those cults (maybe the First Nations too?) @MagnificentBastard mentioned use the townsfolk's distraction to have big gatherings of their own.

Promiscuity - I feel like this is frowned on by society (much as it is now) but debauchery has a long and happy history behind the scenes. Saha Sky Eyes, Who Walks Between The Rivers, (who I have just found a name for) makes no effort to hide her promiscuity though. She loves freely as Ashborn teaches. She loves the balls because it encourages everyone to be more open.

This unobtainium, I feel like needs to be some kind of energy resource. Zeppelins, automatons and crazy experiments all need power. Is it some kind of low temperature, high output "blue coal"?

Edited 6 hours ago by WritesNaughtyStories
more thoughts

[MagnificentBastard]

1 hour ago, IsabellaRose said:

I think there's room for everyone to have a presence in town. 

I'm imagining the various factions being sort of like the warring powermongers in Deadwood (the HBO series) - they are all in town, all trying to establish themselves in positions of power due to (resource) being abundant in the area and this being the main railroad stop closest to the mine, ruins, spring, or whatever source of (resource) we decide is nearby to create a gold rush feel. They need the people to follow them, to see them as the power in the area. I can imagine the schism church trying to exert its power, to spread its influence back east. I can also imagine other powerful organizations, individuals, etc. all trying to lock down their control over this town, and thus lock down their control of (resource).

The aforementioned resource could be gold, the "new coal", or something else. Whatever this unobtainium is, it is valuable and rare enough that people will kill for it. 

I couldn't agree more.

[StarlitSiren]

Sorry for slow response- stuff to add but working, will poke this when home <3

[IsabellaRose]

Okay, so far I have...

INCLUDE

• Ashborn: Prudence to have existed in our past and to have left her legacy of defending love in all its forms. With that comes the oppressive social and religious pressure that drove Prudence to condemn her lover.
• gunfighters in dusty streets
• Airships aesthetically, I would prefer zeppelins! and hot air balloons
• government agents in luxury train cars with odd, clockwork and steam-powered gadgets
• magic being a thing in the setting in the right, mystical, unobtainable doses (The big bad dabbling in something they don't understand and we won't either)
• automatons, or at least clockwork cybernetics of sorts, emblematic of the blight of progress, pushing out simple folk and making their lives harder while the wealthy robber barons control their manufacture and use from distant cities. I'm thinking *The Octopus* but with clockwork track-layers, coal shovelers, and even steam-driven oxen pulling Union-Pacific branded plows while the simple farmer behind on his payments to the land baron can only watch in dread at the technology in the next field slowly tilling him under with every row. The tension with Automatons can also go into John Henry veins and even spur Luddite groups to acts of sabotage and explosive, dynamite-fueled arson to fight back.
• minor supernatural stuff. More classics like werewolves, vampires, etc. Or, perhaps having been created by some sort of experimentation. Not a one-off, but probably a limited amount in the world
• the Army performing horrific and unethical experiments to better combat the First Nations
• The Invisible World: a strange, alien dimension overlapping the material world. perhaps some weird-science steam-tech has created a way to use the dimension for fuel, scientific study, or even the first stirrings of worm-hole travel It could be that the folk magic of the era or the exploding Spiritualist movement of the late 1800s is actually tapping into this invisible world without realizing.
• Spiritualism of the late 1800s: supernatural spookiness that contrasts the clockwork, steam, and steel. Some hucksters and charlatans, but also based in some reality (minor supernatural stuff)
• Gold/Resource Rush: We could use the almost magical ore mentioned in the original thread (coal that doesn't burn or burns with supernatural efficiency), or we could use actual gold, but I think having some resource rush (or the aftermath of one) gives us interesting tension points with desperate prospectors, sketchy land claims, and people who stand to win or lose fortunes on how quickly they act on whispered rumors.
• Balls: The working men and women contrasted with the rich land and business owners holding events like they're in the center of civilization, far from the frontier.
• Heists: a complicated plan with little to no chance of going off correctly.
• Horses: Work horses and steeds for riding would be important.
• Gadgets freedom to cobble silly gadgets and such together with that steampunk aesthetic.
• Saloons
• Steampunk prosthetics
• an element of the supernatural
• Lawlessness

THINGS TO TREAD CAREFULLY WITH

• Monsters: minor monster stuff, there's not packs of werewolves in the canyons, but there's THE wolf man who haunts the old swamp. vampires are folklore, but people still hang garlic wreathes and draw crosses inside carriage doors, the creature that's half-man half-fish dwells in the Rio Grande, ready to pull unsuspecting bathers to its subterranean I'm ok with them not being strictly 'evil', but think it works best if they are decidedly 'monstrous’
• Minor Supernatural Stuff: folk magic so subtle that most people don't believe in it anymore, but it is very much real. The gris-gris actually keeps ghosts away and might steer that bullet meant for you into the steel flask in your breast pocket.

EXCLUDE

• Full furries
• Real Historical figures
• Automobiles
• Planes
• Zombies
• Werewolves
• Vampires

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

• First Nations
• the US Army and what frontier forts look like and how they act on the world around them

POTENTIAL SETTING

• Large-ish town: a slightly larger town, perhaps built up around the church, with a sheriff and their deputy, a few shop owners, two saloons and a brothel that draws in enough visitors to the town from the nearby fort, mining claims and mountain trappers that everyone knows they need it.

[Chiyako]

I won't do a classic Vampire then, that is fine. Like I said, I do have other ideas as well.

That said (and maybe someone already brought this up but I was too tired last night to notice), maybe the being a weird Human thing would work. Sort of like the weirdo from another culture like @WritesNaughtyStories combined with the Dr. Frankenstein angle. Maybe they look a little vampiric, and they have a bad reputation of being a Vampire (for people who don't know them, sort of like @WickedCadrach's idea of weird being called, for example, "The Werewolf of ____"), and part of their looks and such were due to nature and/or experiments they have conducted on themselves. A science made Vampire of sorts. Some of the things (weakness to garlic and silver and drinking blood) could be rumors created from misunderstandings, and maybe she does have a weakness to sunlight (due to experiments and/or genetics). Rethinking everything, that might work for a character?

In any case my three character ideas would become:

• Weird science made 'Vampire' who isn't really a Vampire but who is definitely a mad scientist. See above. Could potentially be somewhat antagonistic but even with her background changes I would still probably keep her mannerisms as explained before (antagonistic but also practical and not entirely evil).
• Automaton clockwork cyborg. Someone's invention, for what purpose could be further defined. Trying to figure out what it means to be Human and trying to avoid being discovered as what she is. Probably psychologically programmed into being someone robotic in nature, or at least cold and ignorant of social norms.
• Gunslinger lady. Maybe an outlaw, or a wandering vigilante. Or a lawbringer. Probably at least one clockwork automaton limb. Maybe animal experiment stuff on the side.

Also everything listed above looks good to me!

[IsabellaRose]

25 minutes ago, Chiyako said:

That said (and maybe someone already brought this up but I was too tired last night to notice), maybe the being a weird Human thing would work. Sort of like the weirdo from another culture like @WritesNaughtyStories combined with the Dr. Frankenstein angle. Maybe they look a little vampiric, and they have a bad reputation of being a Vampire (for people who don't know them, sort of like @WickedCadrach's idea of weird being called, for example, "The Werewolf of ____"), and part of their looks and such were due to nature and/or experiments they have conducted on themselves. A science made Vampire of sorts. Some of the things (weakness to garlic and silver and drinking blood) could be rumors created from misunderstandings, and maybe she does have a weakness to sunlight (due to experiments and/or genetics). Rethinking everything, that might work for a character?

All of those character options sound like they'd fit pretty seamlessly!

For the vampire-esque character, you wouldn't even need to retain any of the actual weaknesses of a traditional vampire. You just "look" like one, so superstitious common folk assume you must be one. You're just an eccentric inventory/scientist who has fled persecution in Europe/back east and setup shop in this town, because you can get anything you need via the railroad in town, and you get the privacy to conduct your experiments without someone looking over your shoulder. But of course, rumors abound about what exactly it is you do in that big house all alone, and what are those big boxes you receive, and why do you never let anyone into your house beyond the parlor...? As a GM I can build some very fun drama around that misunderstanding. 

[WritesNaughtyStories]

I'm pretty much on board with Izzy's list. I want to campaign for having the discussion about First Nations and the Army - those both loom large in most westerns.

[StarlitSiren]

I like the crazy blue mineral/crystal. Two names to put forward: Luminite, or Cyanthium. Though that's what the smarty pants call it. The common folk might refer to it as 'Bluefire' or 'Glowstone.'

 

@WritesNaughtyStories I'm with you on the promiscuity, and it makes sense that it being a taboo absolutely does NOT stop people. 

@IsabellaRoseI'm on board with the list pretty much as is and I like the summing up there. Given we're working in an Alternate History of the real world, you'll all have to forgive my geographical or historical blunders (although I know we're not using real figures.) Ignorant Brit over here.

 

 

 

[WritesNaughtyStories]

56 minutes ago, StarlitSiren said:

Ignorant Brit over here

Everything you need to know can be learned from the Wild, Wild West TV series with Robert Conrad. 3 episodes should cover you.

OK, so maybe a couple of episodes of Kung Fu too.

Edited 1 hour ago by WritesNaughtyStories
Kung Fu

[StarlitSiren]

I'll see what I can do. Itching to write a silly little preamble for Millie back in the city!

 

[WickedCadrach]

50 minutes ago, StarlitSiren said:

Given we're working in an Alternate History of the real world, you'll all have to forgive my geographical or historical blunders (although I know we're not using real figures.) Ignorant Brit over here.

The geography's actually super easy. Just remember two rivers and California.

The Mississippi runs north to south and cuts the USA in half. In 1880, everything east is 'civilization', and everything west is wilderness, homesteads, and one-street towns (basically). 

The Rio Grande runs from the north-west to the south-east and divides the USA from Mexico. Mexico used to own a bunch of stuff north of the Rio Grande but lost it after people decided they'd rather be part of the USA, mainly because that meant they'd get to keep owning other people as property. The USA changes its mind on that idea a while later anyway. 

California is as west as west goes, and it's so rich and fertile that people are going to have serious talks about whether it should be its own country for awhile.

...

In my rambling, I think I've stumbled on another Old West trope that might need figuring out. In real-world history, 1880 is only 15 years after the end of the American Civil War. There's a formerly enslaved population, and a bunch of former rebel soldiers dealing with the fallout (many going west to start over or do some very un-nice things as their individual personalities dictate). 

Since it didn't come up so far, I don't know if anyone's interested in playing with those elements. So if we want to just say 'none of that happened' (not the slavery or the civil war), I'm happy to roll with that. If we leave it in, it sounds like it might just be backdrop since no one went out of their way to bring it up. 

[WritesNaughtyStories]

9 minutes ago, WickedCadrach said:

In my rambling, I think I've stumbled on another Old West trope that might need figuring out. In real-world history, 1880 is only 15 years after the end of the American Civil War. There's a formerly enslaved population, and a bunch of former rebel soldiers dealing with the fallout (many going west to start over or do some very un-nice things as their individual personalities dictate). 

Since it didn't come up so far, I don't know if anyone's interested in playing with those elements. So if we want to just say 'none of that happened' (not the slavery or the civil war), I'm happy to roll with that. If we leave it in, it sounds like it might just be backdrop since no one went out of their way to bring it up. 

I think we need to talk about this. The story seems to be taking a long, hard look at the human condition and the weight of expansion, technological advancement, wealth and power - slavery and its echoes are certainly part of that. I, for one, think if we're going to talk about the Army and the First Nations, enslaved people also need to be included.

[MagnificentBastard]

@IsabellaRose

I think you have great handle on everything, I understand you idea of not explaining were magic comes from but I just want to make sure if I do play a deviant British aristocract with some semblance of magic that I won't unwittingly be a servant of Cthulhu and go insane.

I also don't want to use native American source partially because I don't know anything about it but it also feels like appropriation.

[WickedCadrach]

9 minutes ago, MagnificentBastard said:

I also don't want to use native American source partially because I don't know anything about it but it also feels like appropriation.

I agree with this notion. It's a touch early for the Golden Dawn to be a thing, but it feels like Hermetic and Thelemic magic might be an aesthetic choice that makes sense for a character like that. 

EDIT: Oh! Also, if you want to go nuts with it, Google 'Thelemic sex magic'. Crowley was just... if I read about this man in a book, I'd say the author was stretching believability. 

EDIT 2: Eroto-comatose lucidity - aka, slow, tantric sex until you see the gods and spirits of the invisible world. Like I said... wild stuff.

Edited 1 hour ago by WickedCadrach

[Chiyako]

I feel like we could still explore a post-Civil War era without the civil war having been started for the same reason. The introduction of strange steampunk technology could result in the same sort of divide between the industrialized north and the plantation focused south. Perhaps we could use automatonized people instead? Or perhaps an inbalance in the existence of the special blue-coal type resource? It could be shifted instead into a war created mostly from a class disparity, perhaps one which existed much more heavily in the south. Maybe they instead shifted closer to neo-feudalism, and it wasn't a specific set of peoples but more a general populace set into a serf state. Maybe the sharecropping that started at the beginning of United States history twisted not to become an issue of poor white sharecroppers vs poor black sharecroppers, but instead of all sharecroppers being roped into worse and worse contracts, one which resulted in just a widespread extremely corrupt system of near-slavery within the south.

There are different ways to take it. We're already introducing some fractures from real history. We could use a bit more to make a setting fit which we are all comfortable with. But I do think a post-war era is important for this sort of thing. It was part of what lead to widespread displacement into the unknown.

[IsabellaRose]

  

19 minutes ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

I want to campaign for having the discussion about First Nations and the Army - those both loom large in most westerns.

 

21 minutes ago, WickedCadrach said:

In my rambling, I think I've stumbled on another Old West trope that might need figuring out. In real-world history, 1880 is only 15 years after the end of the American Civil War. There's a formerly enslaved population, and a bunch of former rebel soldiers dealing with the fallout (many going west to start over or do some very un-nice things as their individual personalities dictate). 

Since it didn't come up so far, I don't know if anyone's interested in playing with those elements. So if we want to just say 'none of that happened' (not the slavery or the civil war), I'm happy to roll with that. If we leave it in, it sounds like it might just be backdrop since no one went out of their way to bring it up. 

 

7 minutes ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

I think we need to talk about this. The story seems to be taking a long, hard look at the human condition and the weight of expansion, technological advancement, wealth and power - slavery and its echoes are certainly part of that. I, for one, think if we're going to talk about the Army and the First Nations, enslaved people also need to be included.

 

I was planning to just wholesale import basic historic reality (more like... um... well, as if it were a tv show - sometimes veering into exploring darker themes, sometimes just handwaving the troublesome aspects, depending on how much anyone wants to focus on them and what fits into the story) and alter whatever needed to be altered to fit the setting. That includes the the rebel remnants, ex-confederates, recently freed slaves, the encroachment of the settlers on First Nations lands, the Army carrying out its campaign to clear the "savages" from the lands... 

But as WickedCadrach said, as background unless it becomes useful to the plot. For instance, I can imagine creating a nasty, racist, misogynistic, ex-confederate who treats non-European people (including sentient automatons, hybrids, and anything else we come up with) as if they are less than him, and being quite the hateful and hated antagonist. He doesn't have to be anyone real, but he could be a target for working out things.

[WickedCadrach]

@IsabellaRose Thank you for putting what I was just working out how to express so cleanly and clearly.

[StarlitSiren]

I know it sounds like a silly, obvious thing to say, but we ofc have the OOC here to discuss anything if there's any discomfort that DOES arise. <3

[MagnificentBastard]

11 minutes ago, WickedCadrach said:

I agree with this notion. It's a touch early for the Golden Dawn to be a thing, but it feels like Hermetic and Thelemic magic might be an aesthetic choice that makes sense for a character like that. 

EDIT: Oh! Also, if you want to go nuts with it, Google 'Thelemic sex magic'. Crowley was just... if I read about this man in a book, I'd say the author was stretching believability. 

EDIT 2: Eroto-comatose lucidity - aka, slow, tantric sex until you see the gods and spirits of the invisible world. Like I said... wild stuff.

I think you can see why I want to play someone like him. Sex so good it's literally magic.

[StarlitSiren]

Just now, MagnificentBastard said:

I think you can see why I want to play someone like him. Sex so good it's literally magic.

Oh god, who would want to get mixed up in that! Is it too late to change my character?

[IsabellaRose]

It might be too early for the Golden Dawn, but it was inspired by Masonic organizations and I think the Rosicrucians... or was it the other way around? I get my esoteric orders all mixed up.

Regardless, if those organizations didn't exist til later, perhaps this character was an inspiration for them, a practitioner of secret thaumaturgic sexual arts, a coitamancer or something...