Cool, it'll be a bit until I have time to update the setting info or create an ooc.
EDIT: just a quick amendment, "a bit" here means a few days. I'm working and have plans tonight and tomorrow.
However, anyone can feel free to ask questions about the setting, and I will be checking the thread periodically to answer them. I haven't actually written much more than can be seen in the first post, so the questions you ask(or suggestions you make) will likely help form the world.
I intend for politics and society to be more or less the same as in real history, but I have yet to decide on a specific year that this takes place. The school is neutral, though, and somewhat isolated, so real-world history will probably play very little role in the game.
I think the term you're looking for is "Neo-Victorian", assuming the setting entails a Victorian era society/world persisting beyond the real world history?
Definitely an applicable word as well. I meant it in the same way you'd say faux fur. It's made to mimic the look, but isn't the real thing at all. Either term may be redundant, anyway, since we all know that's what Steampunk is.
So despite my hesitancy to write lore ahead of time, I've started on that. I'm gonna add a list of teachers and their subjects. I'm also hoping to come up with a map of the school/airship, but I don't yet know how I mean to do that.
Regarding the fake science I lay out: it's mainly there so that characters can have consistent technobabble. Don't think too hard about it. But if you have an idea of something to add to it, feel free to mention.
This will be pretty bare bones until I know that there's interest, and then I will start to flesh it out.
EDIT: that turned out to be a lie. Hider at the bottom has my world lore, it is a work in progress, though.
Here's the premise in a nutshell:
A slice of life story, set in a steam punk, faux-Victorian world, and focused on a school for mad scientists.
Depending on the demographics of the characters(or players) I was leaning towards it being an all boys school, but I want to include a plot where one of the characters uses his(or her, depending) skills to make a girlfriend. Antics ensue.
EDIT: Probably dropping this bit, unless anyone is interested in playing that story out.
Of course everyone's characters can(and hopefully will!) have their own things going on.
So, is anyone interested? Any questions at all?
I'd like to do a group RP with a fun cast, but depending on interest, I'm willing to do a 1x1 as well.
Franc and Stein's Polytechnic Institute
Franc's is a school dedicated to teaching the many sciences that mankind has discovered. The school is multinational, and maintains a strict policy of neutrality. Neutrality necessitating independence, the school has long since abandoned a traditional campus, and instead is held on an airship that floats above Europe, occasionally straying into Asia or the Atlantic.
Disciplines taught include:
Medicine: The practice of diagnosing and treating the many ailments of the frail human form.
Chemistry: The properties of different substances, their reactions with each other, and their uses.
Resurrection: The reanimation of dead tissue to create resurrected creatures(often called rezzies). Both animal and human parts are used, and combining parts from different animals is common(though more difficult). Resurrection is achieved by creating a sound body, balancing said body’s humors, and applying a current of aether to catalyze the many physical reactions that constitute life.
Engineering: Using mechanical and aetheric principles to create machines for any and all purposes.
Automation: A newer discipline, with a lot of overlap in engineering. Automation is focused on creating machines that can act on predetermined protocols, without the need for constant and direct control from a human being.
Doctor Thelonious Franc, a seventy year old Dutch man. Dr. Franc is the curmudgeonly school administrator. While he loves the students dearly as a whole, he doesn't seem to like them much on an individual basis. Any student who transgresses egregiously enough to be sent to his office is in for the harshest punishments the school provides. In addition to running the school, Dr. Franc also teaches mechanical engineering classes for the most advanced students.
Doctor Jurgen Vogel, a fifty-six year old German man. Soft-spoken and a little morose, Dr. Vogel is nonetheless well respected by students and faculty alike. He is widely considered the kindest of the teachers, and the most inviting of confidence. Dr. Vogel teaches chemistry and metallurgy.
Mister Isaac Turing, a thirty-five year old American man. Mister Turing is an anxious perfectionist. He has a jittery manner, and can become quite irritable if things don't go the way he expects. He teaches protocol for automatons, as well as mathematics in general.
Professor Tallulah Toste, a 48 year old British woman. A stickler for manners, it is widely joked that Professor Toast is the unofficial etiquette teacher at the school. She tends towards the indulgent side, and can be manipulated by polite flattery and good manners. Professor Toste teaches physics, aetheric principles, and mechanical engineering.
Miss Jane Walthrop, a 27 year old British woman. Though polite and perennially helpful, she is often marked by her distinct lack of humor. She doesn't seem overly serious, but rather misses the joke most of the time. She does, however, have a quiet appreciation for puns. Miss Walthrop teaches gross anatomy, biology, and behavior.
A living body contains three humors, which help it to function. Their balance is of vital importance to the health of an individual. In a living being, humors can be balanced by healthy activity, and can be unbalanced by poor health. In a resurrected creature, they must be calculated carefully, and checked for proper balance. The balance of humors in a rezzie(to use the commoner's parlance) is not the same as its living counterpart, simply because they are not living.
Red humors bring vitality and vigor. A deficit would leave one sluggish and weak. An excess causes fever and inflammation. Resurrects, being sensitive as they are to heat and fire, can be greatly affected by this excess, risking damage to valuable components.
Yellow humors aid in the function of the organs, and the purification of the body. Their balance is more complicated than simply too much or too little, as the location in the body is a good deal more important. Imbalanced yellow humors can cause bad smell, irregular bowels, and can cause a bad reaction to drink.
Gray humors relate to thought and intelligence. Select few physicians work with these, and resurrects are afforded very little, as they need only be intelligent enough to obey.
A mysterious force that exists all around us. Though it is capable of permeating any matter, it has been discovered that it tends to collect in vacuums(it is theorized that the vacuum beyond our atmosphere is dense with Aether, but no airship can reach that high… yet). As a result, vacuumed glass tubes can be used to collect, store, and direct aether, which can power devices and produce a wide variety of effects under the right circumstances.
"Letting him my ass..." Holly muttered darkly, not bothering you mute her comm. She wondered dismally if they would all die out here. Martin wouldn't let that happen if he could avoided it. Nor would Holly, for that matter, but the question was whether it would be left up to them.
She urged Stolas toward the rent in the hull, where the Big Boi was still floating, latched to the side. The manipulator arms on Stolas reached out, Holly was blown away by how intuitive it felt, even compared to her Rodi. On hand grabbed the sub-machine gun from its hands, the other grasped the empty mobile suit by the edge of its chest armor, at the gap on the neck. She pushed it out into space, moving Stolas out of the ship, and holding the Rodi above her as cover for the ongoing fire.
~~~
"Cap'n!" Mick called from his console, "Those unknown Ahab frequencies, they're mobile suits, coming out of that ship!"
"Where did they come from?" Brun shouted, leaning forward in her seat(her bottom starting to float off in the microgravity). "How the hell did you miss them, Mick?!" The end had a note of accusation, the likes of which she usually saved for the Human Debris.
"They blinked onto the scanners all at once!" He defended himself with an edge of fear in his voice. "No matches on reactor frequencies," Mick was scanning over a long list on one console, then glancing at a zoomed-in image of the mobile suits moving through the debris field. "Armor pattern is weird too. They look like damned antiques…" he trailed off as he watched the screen. One of the new suits was carrying Holly… or, rather, Familiar One's Rodi. It wasn't fighting back, even though the only damage to it was the sensor array.
"Captain," he began again slowly, "I think they were there the whole time. Familiar Squad's comms have gone silent, I think that's them!"
The captain of the Mercurial Witch pushed away from her chair, a little more violently than might be warranted, and stopped herself at Mick's shoulder, by grasping it tightly. She looked over his screens, and watched as one of them in the middle of the pack pushed against the hull of the ship, throwing a Man Rodi into the incoming fire from the Witch. A direct hit caused an explosion, silent in the vacuum, but brighter than the sun.
When their optics had readjusted, the mystery mobile suits had disappeared into the debris.
"Cease fire immediately!" Brun barked(Mick jerked his head away as she yelled in his ear). She pushed roughly off Mick again, and floated to the middle of the bridge. "I want Chain Squad sortied now! If those rats aren't back in their cages, you'll be sleeping chained to the Witch's hull tonight!"
~~~
After Holly's smoke screen, they traveled through the debris; a ludicrous risk that they were too ignorant to avoid. Their propellant tanks were dry, so they traveled by pushing off larger pieces of space garbage, so that they were "jumping" back and forth amongst the detritus, aided by the weaker propulsion from their Ahab thrusters.
They came, finally, to an edge of the Debris Zone, where they had been directed by their new benefactor. Apparently Martin knew him from the before times, and Holly was trusting him on the (rather weak) theory that he must be better than Brunhilde.
Holly hunkered down, her new mobile suit settling on an old, jettisoned armor plate from some large war ship. A small smile touched her face as Martin went on a fairly typical tirade of unearned positivity, but it vanished suddenly when Thom cut in to disabuse him of his delusions of friendship.
Holly sank dejectedly into her seat, but said nothing. This was what happened when you changed things. You always risked losing what you already had. But… it must be worth it, right? Hell, if Thom really wasn't their friend, they were only being kept together against their will anyway, right?
"There's no use getting ahead of ourselves," she finally answered, quite dully, "We dunno what we're walking into. I just hope…"
Before she could finish, the debris under her mobile suit's very feet shook, and she saw a gouge in the metal, mere meters from her position. Moments later, Stolas alerted her to an incoming Ahab wave.
Already, Holly recognized who was attacking her, and she pushed off the ancient armor plate, jumping up and away, so that she was obscured amongst smaller pieces of debris again.
Attacking with a long range weapon, before her reactor's presence could be read? That was Carrot's opening gambit. And if she was here, that meant the rest of Chain Squad, the free pirates who still piloted mobile suits for the Witch.
"Okay, rats," the hated voice of the Bosun cut in on an open LCS frequency, "I'm supposed to put you back in your cages… but I'm not sure I want to bother. Are you gonna make it easy, or do ya wanna just die?"
Holly peeked out from her cover, and saw two mobile suits. Carrot's Graze was still hanging back, and would likely harass them from a distance for as long as she could. She saw the Bosun's mongrel machine, cobbled together out of the most menacing parts he could find. It was painted(at great expense) mostly dark gray and black, but had a white skull-and-crossbones across the chest. It wielded a machine gun from a graze, and a large sickle like blade that Holly had never seen on another suit before.
The second suit that was plainly visible was Mack. Mick's older brother, and former Debris, like Carrot. He piloted a Graze that was more or less complete, hardware wise, but was painted in a patchwork, depending on what colors of nanolaminate were on hand when it needed patching up. It carried a longsword and a simple, round shield.
I'm gonna add a few things to my character as well.
One is a piece of equipment, a modified painting tool that can select colors at will, but it has had chemical deterrents added. Tear gas, laughing gas maybe, some kind of anti-electronic chemical(I'll be more specific when I write it properly), etc.
Bio: Cadence Corp is a leading producer of high end cybernetics. You won't find their products in a back alley mod-surgeon office; they only sell to medical doctors, and even amongst them, only to those who pass Cadence Corp Certification. It's the real ritzy stuff.
As one might imagine, Gideon grew up in the very lap of luxury. In his youth, he attended the best prep school, and was allowed to pursue any leisure he fancied. His parents later determined this to be their mistake. Gideon took up art, and never put it back down, even when it was time to buckle down at an Ivy League school for a business degree.
He flunked out of Yale, and used his expense account to get a loft in the city instead. There, he practiced his art, did designer drugs, and generally partied for four months before his mother found out. His parents cut him off, meaning for it to simply be a lesson, and to accept him back when he straightened up.
Gideon learned a lesson, alright, just not the one they intended. When the money dried up, all of his "friends" suddenly became scarce as well. He was able to sell paintings to get by, at least for a while, but he had to move to a poorer part of town, and eventually he couldn't even afford that. He realized that without money, no one had his back. He had thought himself popular, and the truth made him feel a loneliness that was altogether alien to him before that point in his life.
Before long, Gideon had to start taking odd jobs to keep a roof over his head. Then he started to break the law when necessary. It was when the law could no longer hold him back that he started the graffiti. Already a classically trained painter, he took to the new medium like a natural, and started learning the styles that he saw on the street.
Nowadays, most people don't even know he was once an heir. He seems for all the world like your average street artist and ne'er-do-well. And he's finally happy.
Cybernetics: Gideon has Cadence Optics, which were top of the line roughly six years ago. This still makes them pretty damn good, by today's street standards. He has incredible resolution, digital zoom and enhancement, and a robust identification and translation suite.
They also have a "Situational Awareness Protocol" that is designed to protect the user by identifying threats using data available to the system, and a complex algorithm.
Oh, and I want to clarify: are we assuming everyone who isn’t a regular worker or an Heir is in Sk8te, or can there be other unaffiliated gangs and such?
Boy I sure hope so!
Although I expect it can be assumed any character we play will be associated in some way.
So I'm interested, but I am also concerned that if you move it to Advanced the standard of post length will become overwhelming.
For a character, I don't know how you would feel about introducing a new group/cultural concept, but there's a sort of anarchist commune idea that I came up with for a different RP that sadly never got used.
Transient street samurai, somewhat inspired by the Nomads in Cyberpunk 2077. They disdain both corporations and the rule of law, both of which they view as irredeemably corrupt. This obviously is not an uncommon attitude even amongst ordinary citizens. The Ronin set themselves apart with exactly how far they're willing to take their refusal to participate.
It is exceptionally rare for a Ronin to own land or property. More commonly they will squat in old buildings, or take up residence in out of the way places. They do not make use of banks for any reason whatsoever, to do so would be grounds for ostracization by any and all Ronin who still keep to their code. They sometimes carry cash out of necessity, but are known for being strangely careless with it; either they will lose it, or even just give it away when their need has ended.
They will only purchase anything from what they dub "Individuals," an ill defined term with nearly as many interpretations as there are Ronin. As a result, any corporate owned establishment(and many privately owned ones) will bar them from entry, under the assumption that they intend to steal. This is not an unfounded expectation.
Their survival depends on two abilities that corporations have discouraged in the general populace. The first is the knowledge of how to grow(and very occasionally hunt for) food. Ronin maintain secret gardens all over the world, and guard them jealously. Very few people outside of this group are even aware of the practice. And to this day not a single person has entered a Ronin garden and lived to tell about it.
The second ability is the repair and creation of their own equipment. Ronin can be spotted easily by their garb and gear. Everything they own is out of date, off-brand, or just plain homemade. They can be distinguished from your garden variety pauper by the cleanliness and good repair that they keep everything in. Gear is expertly repaired, their vehicles(though absurdly old in most cases) run like new, or even better sometimes. Their clothes are patched or darned artfully, often improving the look rather than detracting from it. They also remove all brand logos or iconography from anything they own. It is not enough to cover or hide it, it must be cut away.
The Ronin have one of the few ongoing blade making traditions. Inspired of course by Japanese sword making, it is updated and improved with modern metallurgy. A Ronin sword looks much like a traditional katana(or wakazashi, tanto etc), though occasionally with some odd quirks in the color of the metal, or the construction of the hilt, owing to their penchant for using scavenged and recycled materials. Though their swords are unmarked(per the Ronin Code) most Ronin can spot one of their own swords by style, and may even recognize the smith who made it.
As far as more modern weapons are concerned, there are some gunsmiths among them, but it is more common for Ronin to carry antique fire arms(with logos and serial numbers filed off).
No single group, no matter how well organized(and the truth is that the Ronin are barely organized at all) can produce everything that they need. As mentioned, they will use money when necessary, but greatly prefer to barter in goods and services.
Any given Ronin only knows so much, and won't be able to offer everything, but if one is polite(and not already known to be an enemy) they will usually try to find someone who can offer what you need.
Rice wine, typically made from rice they cultivate in their hidden gardens. It is generally considered to be quite good.
Good, real vegetables. It is actually quite rare that they will offer this, as they rely heavily on it for survival(they generally refuse to eat food produced by corporations), but if a crop produces a particularly good surplus, or if the need is great enough, it does happen sometimes.
Repair of just about anything.
Medical services(either home remedies or stolen medications).
If you are a true friend to the Ronin, they might offer a sword, but this is a great honor and quite rare. Generally speaking they try very hard to keep their swords out of outsider hands.
There are many clans within the larger Ronin community, and some(including the FBI) liken them to an alliance of gangs. The truth is that a clan is much more akin to an extended family, and while most Ronin are at least technically a criminal of some sort, few of them do more than petty civil disobedience, or just being a general nuisance.
Ronin will accept those who shun the corporate lifestyle, and as a result there are some Ronin from all walks of life. However, most are born into their clan. A born Ronin and a convert can often be easily distinguished as those born to their clan will only receive cybernetics from a Ronin ripperdoc.
Ronin cybernetics are simple and sturdy. They don't interface with any other computers as they use a wholly unique operating system not seen outside of the clans.
[notes made in brackets are observations and interpretations by Ronin elder Jin Corso]
First, we must never engage in the buying and selling of money. Neither borrowing nor lending. Second, we exchange currency for nothing, except from Individuals.[there are some who ignore the second clause and never utilize money, but this isn't feasible for most, and the exception exists for a reason] Third, we must not wear or hold the marks of those who created the things we use. Nor should we mark those things that we make with our own hands. [no one should hold ownership over a thing except the one who keeps and maintains it] Fourth, we must not take from the Individual. [an "Individual" is one who acts only for themselves(excepting to help family, friends, or community), and so the property of a corporation is free to take and use as one pleases, provided they follow The Third when doing so] Fifth, we must endeavor to cause as little harm to Individuals as we can.
Slang terms for the Ronin include "sword bum" and "rino." The latter being a portmanteau of rice and wino, a reference to the rice wine they commonly sell.
There are some Ronin who are militant even to the point of terrorist action, but the vast majority are more akin to strange, orthodox monks.
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