This week’s Random Setting is a Dark, Age of Exploration Steam Opera. Enjoy!
It’s 1584. The skies and seas are filled with great ships as they go to explore the world, moved by gigantic steam engines. Fire and Iron control the skies and sea and air. Great steam driven caravans dominate the land as they stretch from Calais to Shanghai. But with new technology and new travel comes new dangers.
A group of pirates and slavers known as the Ivory Band are waging a war against commerce, travel, and explorers over Africa and the Americas. With resources running thin, England and France set aside centuries of uneasiness and they form a military league. Prussia is considering joining, as is Spain and Italy, due to massive losses in the New World. The few colonies established in the Western Hemisphere are turning less into money making endeavors and more into fortified military posts. The Native Americans are also having some serious run-ins with the Ivory Band, as are several nations within Africa.
For the last twenty years, the Ivory Band has been growing, cornering the market on slavery in the world. Military escorts are common over land, sea, and air, but the militaries can’t protect every ship. A secondary group, the Argent Corsairs has been founded to fight missions against the Ivory Band. As military budgets are stretched thin and world trade has been decimated, the governments are quickly running out of resources to strike against the pirates. The Argent Corsairs, on the other hand, are privately funded, bound by Letters of Marque, and are made of men who are not bound by the same honor agreements as regular military.
Many people consider the Argent Corsairs to be almost as bad as the Ivory Band, and call them nothing more than a sanctioned group of pirates and mercenaries themselves. However, they do fight to keep travelers safe, and they do their job exceptionally well.
Set a pirate to catch a pirate! Join a side today and fight!
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