[OOC] God, Gatling, and Glory [Steampunk/Imperialism NRP]

[Ollumhammersong]

So I might just join this and for a location I kind of have my eye on that spot just south of Grodland and Masovia. I may not go there of course it but certainly seems like an interesting spot to take. And I would be happy to discuss some particulars with the owners of my possible neighbours instead of just plopping myself down. Trade connections etc. We will see what we see.

[rextremendum]

Afraid that location is claimed by our illustrious GM.

[rextremendum]

Faze, I'm going to have to ask you to tone down the Latin: at least bastardize it. Right now you have "Doge Merchant", "Queen Girl", "General Battle" and "Head Merchant Death Life" [mortem is the accusative, when there is no verb to be the object of. What's up with that?]. Also, some consistency in the military would be good but not necessary. Why is the navy "The Ocean of Kings", and the Army "The Kings of the Earth"? Also, you cannot melt down diamonds, then they would not be diamonds but just some random carbon. Platinum is a fucking terrible metal for warfare, seeing as it is expensive as shit and malleable AF, so why would you tip bayonets with it. Flintlocks are 250 years out of date at least, depending on where you look, and it is implied that you think we are using ships of the line, seeing as you say your ships "carry many cannon". Ironclads are the thing to have now, with the modern warship being developed slowly but surely.

[Ollumhammersong]

Afraid that location is claimed by our illustrious GM.

@rextremendum

Balls. Oh well i'll take a second look at the map tonight and see if another position seems appealing.

[Flagg]

WIP. There are two places below where I have foreign characters from the Old World in need of a home, so please let me know if I can use your nation as their country of origin. Feedback welcome!

The Consanguinity of the Dratha

Nation Name: The Consanguinity of the Dratha Flag Government: Clan Confederation/Feudal Military Dictatorship Economy: mainly agrarian/feudal, with pre-modern industries centered in the cities. Leaders/Important People: The Court of the Moon: A council of priestess residing in the Palace of the Moon and Stars, they are considered the representatives of the Heavenly Court and have extensive ceremonial and political functions. Vaos daz Nagath, the Foremost Dictator, Commander of the Lesser Commanders, the Sword of Heaven: The Foremost Dictator is head of state, nominally elected by a council of Clan Fathers and confirmed by the Court of the Moon. In practice the Dictatorship has remained in the hands of the most powerful clan for as long as they have been able to inspire loyalty and fear. The Dictatorship was previously held for two stable centuries by the reactionary Odros Clan, who were overthrown by the Nagath Clan and its allies in a recent civil war known as the Necessary Reorientation. Vaos daz Nagath is a modernizer, a deft political operator, and a ruthless warlord. Onas daz Yen, the Second Greatest Dictator: the head of the Consanguinity's internal spying/police apparatus, known as the Subtle Office. Responsible for domestic policing and internal espionage, anti-corruption measures, and monitoring foreign influences. Vo daz Sygo, the Least of the Several Dictators: directs economic policy and is responsible for collecting taxes from the Clan Fathers. Ixus Zo, Greatest of the Lesser Commanders: commoner raised to high office, Zo is a talented general and military modernizer. Colonel Gerholt Augustin Ramlacht Odlesmann von Unglestrab-Lingen, Tolerated Outlander In Recognized Service to the Foremost Dictator: Renowned Old World adventurer, mercenary, and drunk, formerly a colonel in the [insert old world army! any takers?]. Currently in the service of the Foremost Dictator, training the Drathan Army in the use of modern weapons and tactics. He also leads a large contingent of Old World mercenaries now working for the Drathans. Mister Caractacus Fysh, Esq. Tolerated Outlander In Recognized Service to the Foremost Dictator: the representative of the immensely powerful, international, old world financial house of Barrow & White in the Drathan Union. He is working with the Foremost Dictator to modernize the Consanguinity's economy and infrastructure and attract foreign investment and trade. Barrow & White wields immense influence among the elites of the otherwise famously xenophobic Consanguinity, and Fysh is referred to by many in the Old World as the 'King of the Drathans'. Desired Map location: [Southwest corner of southern continent, with the Chee to the north.] Important Locations: Zar Dratha: Capital city, hugely populated trade center near the coast, situated on the Ovos River. Zar Dratha has long outgrown its crumbling walls, with the upper castes living in the Old City, a dense conglomeration of ancient pagodas and towers dominated by the Dictator's Fortress, while the Outworks are a sprawl of clay and plaster dwellings stretching out from the Ovos river in all directions, eventually petering out into rice paddies and fungus beds. Non-Drathans are confined to the city's famous Foreign Quarter, an overcrowded center of the world-wide black market, filled with ex-patriots, exiles and lowlifes from every corner of the Old World. Zar Pellos Zar Aryon Zar Uln: major port city on the isle of Uln, controlled by the powerful Sygo Clan. Zar Uln is the second most populated and the most 'modernized' city in the Consanguinity, with a large foreign presence and Barrow & White factories springing up among its pagodas and clay-brick slums. Outside the metropolis, mining and drilling operations are being set up by Barrow & White personal amid the terrace farms and wayside shrines of the countryside. Palace of the Moon and Stars Cultural Overview: The Consanguinity is composed primarily of Drathans, a sub-species of humanity physiologically altered by its prolonged exposure to the large liquefied elan deposits just beneath the surface of their ancestral lands. Elan, called 'Ichor' by the Drathans, is omnipresent in their society- used in medicine, liquors, and to power various ingenious mechanical devices. The local water supply is heavily contaminated with elan residue, and most non-Drathans find the taste alarming, though they can drink it without harm. Drathans, in contrast to other humans, have dusky, bluish skin of a variety of hues and generally have dark eyes and hair. The products of an ancient culture, they tend to be conservative and highly xenophobic. Drathan religion is a messy combination of folk ancestral worship, astrological veneration of the moon and stars as deities, and sophisticated philosophy and metaphysics translated in various ways into religious parlance. Drathan worship, therefore, is not particularly unified nor consistent, especially given the steep class divides within their society: local shrines to ancestral figures and historical heroes and sages do the country side, while in larger towns and cities elaborate temple-based liturgies to the celestial deities take place for the moneyed castes. At universities, a sophisticated and ancient tradition of speculation is encouraged on the nature of causality, rationality, and the divine. Drathan society is highly stratified, with the vast majority of the population living as serfs cultivating crop paddies, fungus farms, and livestock. The warrior-aristocracy generally occupy castles and fortified estates on their land holdings. The Consanguinity's territories range from arid to tropical, with dense jungles and mangroves along the coast, and local cultures and practices vary across the extensive dominions governed by the Foremost Dictator. Technology Overview: While very few of the richest and most powerful members of the Consanguinity possess some Old World technology, the Dratha as a whole are technologically backwards. While they possess sophisticated [medieval and renaissance era] machinery, building techniques and agricultural methods, they almost totally lack the mass-productive steam-technology that characterizes the Old World. For the most part the conservative Dratha view such innovations with suspicion and hostility. Military Overview: The Consanguinity can call a very large number of soldiers to arms. Unfortunately, those arms mostly consist of spears, swords, crossbows and flintlocks. Centuries of internecine clan warfare and battles with the Chee have made the Drathans into formidable warriors, and the Foremost Dictator commands a sizable professional fighting force permanently under arms. The Foremost Dictator is scrambling to import modern weapons and train his men in their use before the Old World powers descend on his elan-rich nation, but the lack of an industrial base and native hostility to dishonorable innovations makes even most modest modernization efforts difficult. The Dratha have a fairly large navy of cannon-armed junks and galleons, almost totally useless against modern navies.

[rextremendum]

Feel free to have them be from Acier.

[So Boerd]

@So Boerd Not shooting for any precise date considering things are a little wacky in the tech department thanks to Elan, but generally speaking somewhere around the 70-80s would be appropriate as a baseline for you to play off of.

@Commodore Robot

Modified Majestic class will be the main ships of my navy then. They only represent doctrinal rather than technological advances from the Royal Sovereign class of the late 80s near as I can tell.

[rextremendum]

@So Boerd Modified Majestic class will be the main ships of my navy then. They only represent doctrinal rather than technological advances from the Royal Sovereign class of the late 80s near as I can tell.

@So Boerd

That seems reasonable: I am taking a few liberties with my service rifle, so I have no issues with pushing the ship designs a few years forward.

[Commodore Robot]

@So Boerd I'm totally fine with that, Ironclads are on their way out (they may still fill fleet registers in states but no new ones are being made by modern nations) and Steel-hulled ships are the new and latest thing. Plus anyone who accommodates my undying love for Pre-dreadnought battleships gets a free pass.

[Commodore Robot]

@Samebito Accepted. When you guys are finished with your sheets just send me a message or something.

[Flagg]

@Commodore Robot: My NS can use some continued tinkering, but I think it's mostly complete and ready for review. @Forest Bandit: Happy to work on some collaborative history, fellow New Worlder. I mention the Chee in my NS.

[So Boerd]

Should have plenty of time to work on my sheet today. I will prioritize the military so you guys can develop yours more accurately. (Huge NRP pet peeve, people getting butthurt when people change their militaries based on another NRPers military. Militaries aren't developed in a vacuum)

[Rhymer]

How are colonies treated? Do we already have settlements in Southern Adara?

[Forest Bandit]

@Commodore Robot: My NS can use some continued tinkering, but I think it's mostly complete and ready for review. @Forest Bandit: Happy to work on some collaborative history, fellow New Worlder. I mention the Chee in my NS.

@Flagg

Oh awesome, I'm not alone! That's a green light for the collaborative history. The Chee Nation is young, but the tribes that form it are ancient, so there would have been a fair amount of interaction between the two peoples. I'm going to go ahead and say the Chee is an ethnicity, based mostly in the Odase region (my territory, basically). I think I'll go and make that clear in my sheet. From what I've read, the Dratha are the more advanced, rooted and mightier of the two. Perhaps we could start off hostile, with the Chee having been pushed from the south slowly by Dratha, driving them into conflict with the northern territories. Then once civilised man starts abusing our lands and peoples, we can talk about uniting. Nothing says "fear me" like a multitude of semi-cannibalistic natives going on a War Path.

[Flagg]

Oh awesome, I'm not alone! That's a green light for the collaborative history. The Chee Nation is young, but the tribes that form it are ancient, so there would have been a fair amount of interaction between the two peoples. I'm going to go ahead and say the Chee is an ethnicity, based mostly in the Odase region (my territory, basically). I think I'll go and make that clear in my sheet. From what I've read, the Dratha are the more advanced, rooted and mightier of the two. Perhaps we could start off hostile, with the Chee having been pushed from the south slowly by Dratha, driving them into conflict with the northern territories. Then once civilised man starts abusing our lands and peoples, we can talk about uniting. Nothing says "fear me" like a multitude of semi-cannibalistic natives going on a War Path.

@Forest Bandit

Great! Yeah, since both ethnicities and their cultures are ancient, I'm sure the Dratha and Chee have been intermittently at each other's throats for centuries- as well as trade partners and perhaps sometime allies. If the Dratha did push the Chee northwards, it likely would have been a slow process over many centuries. Likewise, I'm sure the Chee in their time have invaded Drathan lands and there's been plenty of wars fought between the two, and internecine wars in which the other set of tribes/clans have gotten involved. Since the Chee are sun worshippers, I made the Drathan religion center around astrology, the moon and the stars, so I figure they could have some kind of old rivalry about the 'people of the sun' and the 'people of the moon' or the 'people of day' and the 'sons of the night' or w/e we come up with. It's likely the current Drathan dictator/warlord would want to make peace/ally with the Chee, since he recognizes the increasing threat of foreign incursion. Of course, few others among the Dratha do, and the Chee probably dont, so there's plenty of room for early game warfare.

[Flagg]

@Forest Bandit Another idea I had was that there could be a significant ethnically Chee population in Dratha lands- perhaps enslaved?- and maybe one of the Chee Nation tribes might be an exiled Dratha clan. Sorry for the double post.

[Forest Bandit]

@Forest Bandit Another idea I had was that there could be a significant ethnically Chee population in Dratha lands- perhaps enslaved?- and maybe one of the Chee Nation tribes might be an exiled Dratha clan. Sorry for the double post.

@Flagg

No problem. I like that last idea very much. There'll be no end of bad blood between our peoples, and it'll add to the fun of trying to establish common ground before the North invades and murders us. I like what you've done with the religious side of things. Man, our people are gonna hate each other from the get go. Also, referring to "if the Dratha did push the Chee northwards, it likely would have been a slow process over many centuries.", this is what I meant. The Dratha are the more "civilised", with permanent settlements and I'm assuming an expanding population, correct? MY peoples by contrast are nomadic, travelling from one area to the next. Their population would be relatively small in comparison, (at the moment I'm predicting around 4 million, which includes children and the infirm.) Naturally, when it came to competition for resources, I imagine the Dratha would have had the upper hand. So over the centuries, the Chee would have gradually moved further north.

[Flagg]

No problem. I like that last idea very much. There'll be no end of bad blood between our peoples, and it'll add to the fun of trying to establish common ground before the North invades and murders us. I like what you've done with the religious side of things. Man, our people are gonna hate each other from the get go. Also, referring to "if the Dratha did push the Chee northwards, it likely would have been a slow process over many centuries.", this is what I meant. The Dratha are the more "civilised", with permanent settlements and I'm assuming an expanding population, correct? MY peoples by contrast are nomadic, travelling from one area to the next. Their population would be relatively small in comparison, (at the moment I'm predicting around 4 million, which includes children and the infirm.) Naturally, when it came to competition for resources, I imagine the Dratha would have had the upper hand. So over the centuries, the Chee would have gradually moved further north.

@Forest Bandit

Yes. I imagine the Drathans will think of the Chee (somewhat correctly) as cultureless barbarians, and the Chee will think of the Drathans as cranky, conservative and closeminded bigots (correctly). The Drathans are very very settled and sedentary peoples, but one thing to note is that they are more of a feudal confederation of clan-states than a unitary nation, and inter-clan war is a very common thing in the Consanguinity. I didnt give too much detail on the different clan fathers, but I should add those to the NS. Anyway, all of that is to say there have probably been many times when internal chaos has allowed to the more mobile Chee the upper hand against the Drathans, and different clans/tribes may have formed complex configurations alliances over the years. Anyway, building up that history ICly should be a bunch of fun.

[Skylar]

Um, can someone help me with the map? I'm not sure which regions are taken and I'm not good with paint tools. I'm looking for a sizable area in the Old World for the Valkyrie Empire, preferably in contact with others so we could have had wars or conflicts in the past. Nearly done with nation, just need to get map and neighbors before final touches.