Happy New Year 1879
by Graham Evans · 02/26/2007 (3:39 pm) · 5 comments
Welp, after a lot of working on the game, I decided that it's time to introduce the true theme and style of the game I am working on.
Whilst previous blog posts have featured various styles of architecture and model, mostly these have been placeholders whilst I play with the mechanics and the tuning. (Although pretty much all will be used somewhere).
Sooooo without further ado, I welcome you to the full premise of my game...there won't be a quiz, but there is some fun here deciding what is truth, what is fiction and which is combined, and to those that recognise the theme, I hope you enjoy :)
So grab a beer and I hope you like the story.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Happy New Year one and all and welcome to 1879, and what a year it will be!
As you all know, in 1845, Haverlock's expedition returned from Mars, where he finally proved his long held conviction of a connection between the Descendant Race of the Red Planet and the Ancient Egyptian civilization here on earth. Haverlock is currently setting out on a new expedition to the heartland of the High Plains of Mars trying to determine what became of the Descendant Race, and whether they still exist in some form or another. To aid him in this mission, the noted Scientist and author Jules Verne, who undertook the Voyage to the Centre of the Earth in 1864 and his trip From the Earth to the Moon in 1865, will be hoping to elicit similar diary narratives from his Visit to the High Planes of Mars in 1879.
Of course, Haverlock's voyage to Mars would not have been possible without the development of Edison's Ether Flyer and Ether propeller drive in 1840 and the proof of the theory, first expounded in 1638 by Rene Descartes (and published in his Principia Philosophy in 1644), of an all pervasive Ether filling the space between the planets, which moved the planets around, kept them in place and was a navigable medium.
The discovery in 1850 of Sapient Risewood on Mars (Wood which has the ability to float on gravity rather than water) in the wild regions of that planet has now further enhanced the ability to freely move around the cosmos and some 20 years ago the first FloatShip was constructed from this resource. Sadly, all attempts to transplant Sapient Risewood from Mars to Earth have failed completely, so the only way to get this invaluable resource is to visit it's home world and harvest it in-situ.
While all of Earths great empires race to try to acquire some of these new resources, some expeditions are returning with fantastic rumours of strange lifeforms, machines and artifacts, and some expeditions are just not returning. In addition, a number of expeditions have been launched to other planets in the solar system and are somewhat overdue on their reports, although it is hoped that the newer generation of Ether Flyers being built today may be more successful, and possibly find some of these previous expeditions.
Steam power is now the universal power supply, both on Earth and on Mars. the steam engine in all it's forms has been refined with our modern technology to supply almost unlimited amounts of power. Certain radicals have experimented for nearly 70 years with a new medium called electric transmutation of energy, but as yet, all these experiments have accomplished is to create more harm to the experimenters than good to the community. (Witness the appalling case narrated by Mary Shelly in 1831 from an original episode believed to have occurred in 1818.).
Communication, as you know, is done by high energy gas-light and a code developed by Samuel Morse in 1840. Special devices called Heliographs have been constructed to focus and transmit the lights through the interplanetary ether so that messages can be sent between and around the planets. The speed of these messages was vastly increased when the genius Charles Babbage finally got his Steam Powered Differential Engine and gas-light focusing control working last year, which could transmit messages in a fraction of the time of Human engineers operating manual controls. It is obvious that the immense steam power needed to drive this machine was helped by a partnership between Babbage's son and the renowned engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel following developments on the latter's Railway and Steamship engines in Britain.
Most empires have now perfected some sort of planetary flyer which is capable of transporting people over large distances quickly, and protecting those in flight. The Colonial Settlers have a large fleet of Jutland class Planetary gunboats and Royal Class Interplanetary transports. The Austro-Hungarian Empire has a large fleet of Zeppelin class LiftBag Flyers and the Combined forces of the Eastern Collective have developed some large but as yet unknown specification steel-hulled flyers with Sapient Risewood interiors. It is understood that developments are also taking place on the Australasian Continent, but no details have emerged as yet.
Rumours that advanced technical devices have been found on Mars in forgotten underground cave systems have as yet proven to be unfounded, although there are certain devices such as the transport devices made of Sapient Risewood that have been discovered. These can transport people short distances on the planet between specific points, but their workings are completely unknown at this stage. Additionally, each settlement has a working defense system, which appears to allow Humans to use these settlements safely, at least whilst the settler maintains a correct and positive settlement behavioral demeanor.
Life on Mars for settlers, at this point, is still very primitive and really bears more relationship to that of Medieval Earth than our advanced way of life of 1879. In addition, although many have taken guns with them to the new colonies, they have found to their cost, that many of the chemicals required to create the ammunition, and metal required for repairs are in such short supply that a solid aldarin staff or saphidesword made locally on Mars, can provide much better protection beyond the compound gates. Many expeditions that set out into the High Country of Mars armed only with our modern gun-powder weaponry have been the expeditions that failed to return.
Very exciting developments took place in 1865, when it was ascertained that there is a field of mutable energy around each planet in the Solar System, now named after it's discoverer, Jolus Mageon. Followers of this explorer, known as Mageons (or Mage's for short), have finally devised ways to harness the power of this energy layer to do, what in olden times, would have been called spellcrafting or witchcraft. As is usual, in discoveries such as this, although Mageon envisioned the use of these powers for protective good, there were and are certain members of the community who have wandered off and explored a somewhat alternative meaning of the word good. Different areas of each planet have also been found to have alternative effects on the Mageon Accumulated Natural Aura (Mana) and can aid or hinder it's usage. Whilst full details are not yet known, it is certain that the floating seed heads in many areas of Mars do have a beneficial impact on Mana usage.
The recent spate of advertising on Earth, has attracted many young people, eager for adventure on a new frontier, and like you, have already traveled here on the Ether Flyers. Specialist skills and requirements have been determined and those of Fighter, Ranger, Mage and Craftsman have been the first skills dispatched to the planet. As your skills develop, these broad classifications will become more and more refined as you specialise. Many of you will survive and become great explorers using your specialist skills. Some of you may well be found in the future, in the wilderness where you fell and were forgotten for generations. By and large the choice is yours through your own actions.
Many settlements have taken over abandoned Descendant Race towns and villages and repaired them where necessary to make a safe and fortified base camp from which to explore, and provide a center of trade and training to people determined to venture into the wilds. We wish all of you luck and welcome you to Project Aurora, a Colonial Settler outpost set in a rebuilt Descendant Race village on the fringes of the known area of Planet Mars.
We recommend that time spent talking to the advisors, liaison officers and browsing the Library in town before you leave the safety of this area will assist you all in becoming a legend rather than a wilderness discovery.
Regards
Graham Evans
Colonial Officer
Project Aurora Settlement Advisor
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Project Aurora settlement :-
Whilst previous blog posts have featured various styles of architecture and model, mostly these have been placeholders whilst I play with the mechanics and the tuning. (Although pretty much all will be used somewhere).
Sooooo without further ado, I welcome you to the full premise of my game...there won't be a quiz, but there is some fun here deciding what is truth, what is fiction and which is combined, and to those that recognise the theme, I hope you enjoy :)
So grab a beer and I hope you like the story.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Happy New Year one and all and welcome to 1879, and what a year it will be!
As you all know, in 1845, Haverlock's expedition returned from Mars, where he finally proved his long held conviction of a connection between the Descendant Race of the Red Planet and the Ancient Egyptian civilization here on earth. Haverlock is currently setting out on a new expedition to the heartland of the High Plains of Mars trying to determine what became of the Descendant Race, and whether they still exist in some form or another. To aid him in this mission, the noted Scientist and author Jules Verne, who undertook the Voyage to the Centre of the Earth in 1864 and his trip From the Earth to the Moon in 1865, will be hoping to elicit similar diary narratives from his Visit to the High Planes of Mars in 1879.
Of course, Haverlock's voyage to Mars would not have been possible without the development of Edison's Ether Flyer and Ether propeller drive in 1840 and the proof of the theory, first expounded in 1638 by Rene Descartes (and published in his Principia Philosophy in 1644), of an all pervasive Ether filling the space between the planets, which moved the planets around, kept them in place and was a navigable medium.
The discovery in 1850 of Sapient Risewood on Mars (Wood which has the ability to float on gravity rather than water) in the wild regions of that planet has now further enhanced the ability to freely move around the cosmos and some 20 years ago the first FloatShip was constructed from this resource. Sadly, all attempts to transplant Sapient Risewood from Mars to Earth have failed completely, so the only way to get this invaluable resource is to visit it's home world and harvest it in-situ.
While all of Earths great empires race to try to acquire some of these new resources, some expeditions are returning with fantastic rumours of strange lifeforms, machines and artifacts, and some expeditions are just not returning. In addition, a number of expeditions have been launched to other planets in the solar system and are somewhat overdue on their reports, although it is hoped that the newer generation of Ether Flyers being built today may be more successful, and possibly find some of these previous expeditions.
Steam power is now the universal power supply, both on Earth and on Mars. the steam engine in all it's forms has been refined with our modern technology to supply almost unlimited amounts of power. Certain radicals have experimented for nearly 70 years with a new medium called electric transmutation of energy, but as yet, all these experiments have accomplished is to create more harm to the experimenters than good to the community. (Witness the appalling case narrated by Mary Shelly in 1831 from an original episode believed to have occurred in 1818.).
Communication, as you know, is done by high energy gas-light and a code developed by Samuel Morse in 1840. Special devices called Heliographs have been constructed to focus and transmit the lights through the interplanetary ether so that messages can be sent between and around the planets. The speed of these messages was vastly increased when the genius Charles Babbage finally got his Steam Powered Differential Engine and gas-light focusing control working last year, which could transmit messages in a fraction of the time of Human engineers operating manual controls. It is obvious that the immense steam power needed to drive this machine was helped by a partnership between Babbage's son and the renowned engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel following developments on the latter's Railway and Steamship engines in Britain.
Most empires have now perfected some sort of planetary flyer which is capable of transporting people over large distances quickly, and protecting those in flight. The Colonial Settlers have a large fleet of Jutland class Planetary gunboats and Royal Class Interplanetary transports. The Austro-Hungarian Empire has a large fleet of Zeppelin class LiftBag Flyers and the Combined forces of the Eastern Collective have developed some large but as yet unknown specification steel-hulled flyers with Sapient Risewood interiors. It is understood that developments are also taking place on the Australasian Continent, but no details have emerged as yet.
Rumours that advanced technical devices have been found on Mars in forgotten underground cave systems have as yet proven to be unfounded, although there are certain devices such as the transport devices made of Sapient Risewood that have been discovered. These can transport people short distances on the planet between specific points, but their workings are completely unknown at this stage. Additionally, each settlement has a working defense system, which appears to allow Humans to use these settlements safely, at least whilst the settler maintains a correct and positive settlement behavioral demeanor.
Life on Mars for settlers, at this point, is still very primitive and really bears more relationship to that of Medieval Earth than our advanced way of life of 1879. In addition, although many have taken guns with them to the new colonies, they have found to their cost, that many of the chemicals required to create the ammunition, and metal required for repairs are in such short supply that a solid aldarin staff or saphidesword made locally on Mars, can provide much better protection beyond the compound gates. Many expeditions that set out into the High Country of Mars armed only with our modern gun-powder weaponry have been the expeditions that failed to return.
Very exciting developments took place in 1865, when it was ascertained that there is a field of mutable energy around each planet in the Solar System, now named after it's discoverer, Jolus Mageon. Followers of this explorer, known as Mageons (or Mage's for short), have finally devised ways to harness the power of this energy layer to do, what in olden times, would have been called spellcrafting or witchcraft. As is usual, in discoveries such as this, although Mageon envisioned the use of these powers for protective good, there were and are certain members of the community who have wandered off and explored a somewhat alternative meaning of the word good. Different areas of each planet have also been found to have alternative effects on the Mageon Accumulated Natural Aura (Mana) and can aid or hinder it's usage. Whilst full details are not yet known, it is certain that the floating seed heads in many areas of Mars do have a beneficial impact on Mana usage.
The recent spate of advertising on Earth, has attracted many young people, eager for adventure on a new frontier, and like you, have already traveled here on the Ether Flyers. Specialist skills and requirements have been determined and those of Fighter, Ranger, Mage and Craftsman have been the first skills dispatched to the planet. As your skills develop, these broad classifications will become more and more refined as you specialise. Many of you will survive and become great explorers using your specialist skills. Some of you may well be found in the future, in the wilderness where you fell and were forgotten for generations. By and large the choice is yours through your own actions.
Many settlements have taken over abandoned Descendant Race towns and villages and repaired them where necessary to make a safe and fortified base camp from which to explore, and provide a center of trade and training to people determined to venture into the wilds. We wish all of you luck and welcome you to Project Aurora, a Colonial Settler outpost set in a rebuilt Descendant Race village on the fringes of the known area of Planet Mars.
We recommend that time spent talking to the advisors, liaison officers and browsing the Library in town before you leave the safety of this area will assist you all in becoming a legend rather than a wilderness discovery.
Regards
Graham Evans
Colonial Officer
Project Aurora Settlement Advisor
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Project Aurora settlement :-
About the author
#3
Gustavo, this is TGE 1.5 with AFX installed.
Regards
Graham
02/26/2007 (6:08 pm)
Thanks Clint.. there will be regular updates:)Gustavo, this is TGE 1.5 with AFX installed.
Regards
Graham
#4
02/26/2007 (6:47 pm)
Excellent stuff Graham! I never imagined we'd end up on a parallel Mars with your project. I've been reading Pynchon's "Against the Day" and you cover some common ground with the time period, Zeppelin flight, and Ether science. Can't wait to see this evolve.
#5
Oddly enough, as I was preparing to post this, I read the AFX blog from Matthew and was sitting here thinking.... oh wow that column that projects fireballs.. that is exactly the sort of thing I need to defend the outposts... as an alien technology, able to target all players or non-players with a certain karma or rating based on actions.. that would be truly awesome.. so you already have one buyer lined up waiting :)))
Regards
GRaham
02/26/2007 (7:03 pm)
Thanks Jeff.. sounds like a book I should read :)))Oddly enough, as I was preparing to post this, I read the AFX blog from Matthew and was sitting here thinking.... oh wow that column that projects fireballs.. that is exactly the sort of thing I need to defend the outposts... as an alien technology, able to target all players or non-players with a certain karma or rating based on actions.. that would be truly awesome.. so you already have one buyer lined up waiting :)))
Regards
GRaham
Torque Owner Clint Herron
The concept of a world in which electricity wasn't ever discovered is one that is intriguing to me, and I'm really glad to see an alternate-history storyline written around it (I know they are out there, though I haven't read any). This sounds excellent, and the art in the screenshot looks good as well.
Looking forward to more updates -- thanks!
--clint