For the main Witch West Wild Wood blog click here
For the Price Lists & Banking click here
For the Other Continent click here
For Cultural Development click here
For History & Future click here
For Visual Resources click here
For Brains&BrawnRPG® click here
FAMOUS HISTORICAL FIGURES
Vince
Vince escaped to the Forest continent from the Other Continent after the Sultan killed his family for his studying science.
The Sultan had set Vince the task of developing an elixir of youth / an elixir of immortality. Vince supposed the traditional methods of staying young looking might be applied internally. He accidentally discovered a method of creating an explosive black powder. The destruction to a part of the Sultans palace angered the Sultan. The technology and similar research was forbidden.
Vince worked with blacksmiths attempting create ways to control the explosiveness of black powder. He was inspired by the mechanical printing press and clockwork devices, technologies outlawed in the Sultanate who prefers traditional calligraphic brushwork to give purpose to the lives of people who would otherwise have no purpose of machinations replaced them.
Vince had seen such technologies gathering the dust of centuries in the Sultans secret museum of ancient mysteries where he had been researching from scholars of the past. He later reconstructed a basic version of it which is now used for publishing newspapers and books for those who can read.
Vince and his blacksmith friends invented the first cylinder-rifle and by applying a rotary device, the repeat-shooter pistol. Others have since refined his original devices. Using wrought-iron such guns are mass-produced by hand-operated machinery.
Vince had originally intended to create a vacuum cylinder pump using the black powder. After several failed and expensive experiments he went back to the drawing board and invented the first steam engine, powered by wood and coal. Vince envisaged the device to save himself time from having to make black powder to power his very simple clockwork engine.
What exactly it is he was working on as the end result of his experiments is unknown. Several components of it were constructed, some of which were damaged during testing. A museum of rusting objects exists at the site of the forge where he studied.
The inventions which resulted as spin-offs of Vince’s pioneering research are the foundation of the modern Colonial civilisation yet are all forbidden technologies in the Sultanate.
Vince discovered a principle that a slow, constant and controllable feed is preferable than a fast, volatile flash.
“Confidence in controllable sustainable consistency is superior than reliance on random, high-impact incidentals.” Vince
Vince was later shot in the back for being a smart-arse. Some say it was by an assassin from the Other Continent, others that it was a cowboy seeking to make a name for himself. Nobody knows for sure who did it although the several individuals who have independently claimed it was them were all hung by the neck until dead.
Vince is considered a founder of the Colonial civilisation.
Adaptations to the steam-engine technology have provided for a small-scale steam-engine suitable for boats. Although this technology has not yet been up-scaled for ocean-ships and reached back to the Other Continent it is only a matter of time.
Likewise, the small-scale steam-engine for a horseless rail-free wagons. These adaptations are not commonplace due to the prohibitive costs. Steam engines are owned by wealthy mine owners and railroad investors who will be the first to benefit from personal vehicles. The current focus is on developing them toward small and large water vehicles. It is widely believed that;
“The world will be a different place a generation or two from now.”
It is also believed that although progress ‘in the obvious direction’ is inevitable, what we do here and now does have the potential to impact the future.
Most people are simply trying to eke out a living during the Gold Rush era of colonial development.
The impact of the Witches and the Indian Tribes should not be ignored during this. In fact, both groups stand against the technologists in defining what is ‘the obvious, inevitable direction’.
This is the core dramatic tension of the backdrop in this game, for this generation of world-building.
If you get so far as to run this as a generational campaign, three important things are possible for future generations to explore.
The Colonists may declare war against the Sultanate. The Sultanate may lift the ban on emerging technology and discovers oil beneath her desert sands. Did I mention the Sultan is female? She runs her nation like a beehive, not as an Ant hive. She sustains the culture at a stone-age/bronze-age (populace/state) levels of society for easy management with her civic guard, elite guard and secret police. You can bet your bottom dollar she has spies all over the Colonies.
Reliance on colonial technological development to indicate any potential future path-working for this fantasy work which is inspired by our own realworld must compromise with the critical factor that in our gameworld, use of magic and interactions with Spirits are a more openly acknowledged and regular occurrence on both continents.