The Campaign Builder's Guild

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, in Meta.) 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 the 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.