The Lightning Age: (The Next Jaunt).

[powersthatbe]

THE LIGHTNING AGE
September 12th-October 19th

It is the Hijra year 1314, the 12th day of Rabi Al-Akhir, and in the Flying Market of Nova Venezia, there is trouble. That is not new. Nova Venezia is a balloon city, tethered above the neutral city-state of Venice, a Vatican protectorate. At first, the balloons were meant only to keep the buildings below from sinking, but the people who maintained them began to build settlements on their platforms, and eventually it became a small but thriving sky-port.

Northern Italy lies at the border of three of the Great Imperial Powers. To the north and east, the Prusso-Zaporizhian Empire, a warrior-state of aerialists whose superiority in the skies is unquestionable. To the south and east, the Golden Khanate, a pan-asian pluralist kingdom who have done things with gunpowder no other nation has dreamed of. To the west, both north and south, the Ummah Caliphate, careful mercantile masters of steam science whose rule circles the Mediterranean.

To all three of the Powers, no resource is more valuable, or weapon more dangerous, than the innovations of the human mind. And the Prussians and Caliphate have both dispatched forces to the Flying Market now seeking weapons of mass destruction.

Captain Phoenix, a pyromaniacal pirate, used to be a servant of the Caliph, may he live forever, before the Captain’s impetuous ways and destructive urges became simply too much. The greatest pyrotechnician in the world, the Captain is a human time-bomb in every sense but the literal, and is hiding in a city held up by vast envelopes of hydrogen gas.

Herr Doktor Kilroy Schweizerkaze Von Blitzkopf was once the greatest aeronautical engineer in the Prussian arsenal, designer of airships which could survive thunderstorms unscathed, until the good Doktor raided designs, arsenal, and fleet, and vanished utterly for causes unknown. Blitzkopf, along with the Masked Senseis of Uchinaa, is a master of electricity, deviser of devices which can run on this strange force and not mere hydraulic power or combustion. The nation who owns the Doktor can harness the lightning. But again, not the most comfortable personage to share a balloon with, really.

Into this morass of espionage, manhunt, and international trade; sky pirates, smugglers, and innovators from around the world, a new element has come into the mix. Foreigners not only to the nation, but to the world itself. Paranoids and conspiracy theorists have whispered of their existence for a year, and some in Venezia remember them, and know a few signs and tricks that may be used to identify and get the better of these strange invaders… because knowledge is power, power is money, money is opportunity - and opportunity is about to strike like lightning.

The question is what it will leave behind.

COLONIAL DISCLAIMER | WORLD INFO | MAPS | TECHNOLOGY | SKILLS | CALENDAR | CASTING CALL | INFILTRATOR INFORMATION | VETERAN INFORMATION | INTRIGUE & ESPIONAGE | PLAYER RESOURCES | QUESTIONS | PLOTTING

Comments

VEXATIOR

[thornsofmalkav]

... is not a person, but a secret organization from a couple years ago, with a hidden mountain base located in the Golden Khannate, an alliance of scientists (many of them mad scientists) from every nation, whose stated goal was to combine their various national disciplines in order to foster greater innovation and create things never yet seen.

So of course its true purpose was to one day take over the world, after they had enough members, shock troups and cunning war machines. But you know. Details.

Vexatior was roughly about twenty scientists strong when it was destroyed by their current experiment, the Mantis, a former sky pirate turned Zulu-style cyborg--with certain improvements, thanks to alchemy, magnetism, rocketry, etc. Basically, he turned on and slaughtered the lot of them. Obviously, they should have made sure that the brainwashing was holding correctly before they started work on his body, but details.

Anyway, a small handful of Vexatior's scientists, assistants, and servants managed to escape the Mantis' wholesale slaughter, so if anyone wants their Infiltrator characters to have ties to the organization, we should plot about it here. So far we have Thorne and Armin's Infiltrator selves as former members of the science team and Hajime as the Mantis. Some measure of amorality is probably required in your Investigator's Jaunt-self, unless you were a servant or another experiment. Or a pair of orphans over your heads and then only one of you needs to be amoral.

tl;dr if Hajime was going to be Rider One we really needed a Lightning Age Shocker

(p.s. thank you cygna for translating 'shocker' into latin for us)

NOTABLE MEMBERS OF VEXATIOR

[thornsofmalkav]

So, because we are terrible and obsessive, me and Airdra have been talking about some of Vexiator's top scientists who are all ripped off of Kamen Rider badguys and although the organization itself had roughly twenty members, not all scientists are created equal. So here are the Vexatior scientists me and Airdra have AU names and descriptions for, with their amorality score, their original county of residence, their specialities, and some notes about their personalities.

For the purposes of these profiles, amorality is ranked from 1 (able to realize when shit is fucked up) to 10 (GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU SIR/MADAME.) In the case of the Cho siblings, this refers to amorality at the time of Vexatior's destruction.

CHO, LING: Joseon. Assistant to her brother, Min, and a decent drug chemist in her own right. Funded Min's university education through various means, most of them illegal; their parents didn't trust banks, so all their savings had been lost in the fire that claimed the lives of the rest of the Cho family, roughly four years prior to the Mantis project. Since then, Ling had seen it as her duty to do all she could to take care of her brother. She did all the hands-on work on the Mantis for Min to make it easier for him and assisted with the project record-keeping. Fond of poetry. Amorality Score: 2.5/10.

CHO, MIN: Joseon. A child prodigy, with expertise in electromagnetism among other fields. Was scouted for recruitment after his first, incredibly gifted paper was published while he was still at university. Joined the organization under the impression it really was about greater innovation and sharing information; also as a way to give his sister a better life after all she'd sacrificed for him. Was very disappointed when Vexatior turned out to be an evil organization, but didn't think he could leave as he and Ling didn't have anywhere else to go. Amorality Score: 1/10.

"GREAT LEADER, THE": Zulu Paramountcy. The guy in charge of everybody; also, the man who came up with the idea for Vexatior and did the initial recruiting of the core science group. An expert on Zulu cybernetics who went renegade from his nation ten years ago, giving up his name in the process. He enjoys wearing face obscuring hooded red robes and making grandiose speeches. His son Siboniso, a photographer, did most of the documentation for the project, which would be destroyed during the Mantis' rampage. A man of strength and vision. Amorality Score: 10/10.

MAKKAR, DR KIRPAT: Chakravartin Raj. Sikh master of piezo-electrics. Has been obsessed with endings since he was a young boy. Was very close to his eight-years-older sister when he was a child until her death when he was ten; he keeps the clockwork doll she gave him with him at all times. Talks to it instead of other people. Seems cold and emotionless most of the time; conversely, is very easy to rile up. In fact, riling him up was something of a sport around the Vexatior headquarters. Hates most of his colleagues with the exception of the Cho siblings and even then the only one he even maybe likes is Min. Hates Dr. Wärring most of all. Amorality Score: 5/10.

"MEDICA": Vatican City. A gifted alchemist and talented dancer, she was in training to be a Vatican librarian along with her friends "Cerebrus" and "Cor." She was met and befriended by Dr. Wärring when he visited the library; over the course of a few days, he expanded her mind in ways that she could never have anticipated and quite destroyed her faith. She'd always been a bit morally flexible; however, his influence took all the breaks off. Gregarious and charming, but the longer one spends time around her, the more one can tell something is 'off.' Amorality Score: 11/10.

REN, MA-ZUO. Golden Khanate. An innovator in rocketry. He and the Great Leader have been cronies for a very long time. He was the first recruited to Vexatior, in fact. Their mountain headquarters was his summer home. He was once known for his charitable work as much as his work in rocketry; he funded several schools for mechanically gifted youth. A paternal sort of man, seemingly altruistic and kind, if reserved; however, he is capable of coldly calculated acts in the name of Vexatior and the Great Leader. Amorality Score: 7.5/10.

WÄRRING, DR ZEV: Prussia-Zaporizhian Empire. A gifted omni-disciplinarian and former child prodigy, his greatest expertise was in Zulu Cybertech, which he learned from the Great Leader himself. By the time it had come to create the Mantis, he had surpassed his teacher. Wärring has always had a fascination with the illogical and incongruous; he'd been dabbling in quasi-illegal science since he was twelve and no few old colleagues of his have gone to prison while he cheerfully remained free. A flippant, free-spirited man, fond of jokes and of teasing his more serious colleagues. His assistant, Málika, provides a balance to his levity. It was his idea to make their super-soldier based on a preying mantis. Amorality Score: 9/10.

Dr Makkar, Dr Wärring, Ren Ma-Zuo, and Min all had at least one paper published under their own names. Dr Makkar and Dr Wärring had the largest paper output.

FANFIC

[thornsofmalkav]

also airdra wrote a fanfic about the creation of the mantis it's awesome