Today’s Random Setting is an Iron Age, WWII Tech, Dark Fantasy setting…
General Maximus Predatus had been leading the campaign for years; hard months of rain and heat, breaking only for the dismal winters. Summers were hard, winters were worse. All of us in Legio XIII filled with dread during the winters; we knew what was coming in the spring, we knew that evil like we were facing did not slumber during the winter like we did. Every season we marched hit us like the last season we would ever see our families.
The Alchemists discovered the powder first. Then the engineers figured out what to do with it. The Black Powder, made of but a few easily found dusts and minerals, first was used by itself, then the tacticians figured out how to use it even better. It only took 50 years of innovation to bring us from our muskets up to mechanized guns that belched lead shot at 600 rounds a minute. From pouring the black powder into the musket to encasing it in brass, to feeding the brass via a magazine whether it was a bin or a belt, technology moved fast.
And we loved it.
It didn’t take long for the escalation though. Dark druids in the mountains to the north east found other ways to combat us; not with men or magic, but with beasts pulled from another world. The beasts came from Hell and our nightmares and they fought tooth and nail for their masters.
And now, we are on the verge of more escalation as our alchemists are discovering how to make oil burn hotter with explosive capacity, and that insane Archimedes’ designs have been found in Alexandria. They say they can make us better armor, they say they can make us better weapons.
They say they can make us fly.
With the hell that we have brought upon ourselves, we’ll need everything we can get.