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RukiTanuki
2008-09-12, 12:29 PM
I haven't gotten any response to my steampunk campaign setting post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90608) in Homebrew (was that the right place to put it?), so I'll try to elicit feedback/ideas for one specific facet of my campaign's backstory.

A few hundred years back, the human empire on the western continent was ruled by tieflings after a coup. The new leadership, neglecting its populace in order to pour resources into military production, constructed (among other things) a giant battleship designed to take over small nations singlehandedly. This ship was still under construction when the dragonborn arrived and war began.

A charismatic resistance leader negotiated with the dragonborn and secured the construction site in a joint strike operation. The warforged constructing the ship were convinced to finish the job, with several significant modifications. With these alterations in place, the ship would serve as a massive refugee camp, instead of a battle platform.

As the dragonborn line pushed north, refugees fled south. By the time the ship was completed and left port, it had 50,000 refugees in tow: mostly human, with some defecting tieflings, a few injured dragonborn, and the warforged crew. Successfully navigating the difficult seas, the ship landed at the western continent, where the humans founded their new colony.

---

Some thoughts:
1) Does a ship nearly 1/3 of a mile long seem excessively ridiculous, even as a pinnacle of industrial construction in a magetech society?
2) Will 50,000 refugees serve as a sufficiently-sized colony?
3) Would these numbers be enough for humanity to expand and colonize a Europe-sized area in, say, 200 years, given sparse habitation (i.e. still mostly farms and small towns)?
4) How does this bit of history sound? It's going to be a defining moment in the history of humans in this campaign setting, and their arrival serves as "the day the world changed" for the other races as well.

Triaxx
2008-09-12, 12:55 PM
1)2000 feet? Not really. It's a little larger than a WWII destroyer. I don't know that you'd fit fifty-thousand people on one though.

2)We've had this discussion before, and came to the conclusion that it could be done, but you'd be low on genetic diversity for a while.

Yakk
2008-09-12, 01:03 PM
Modern US Aircraft Carriers, full length:
1115 feet = 0.211174242 miles

...

Sending a colony of 50,000 people over an ocean is not a cheap endevor. Did the resources to feed them come from magic? And if so, why not stay on the boat?

Grabbing the ship for a military purpose seems far too tempting... I suppose if they had to negotiate something with the warforged...

Sending refugees over the sea would require a rather horrid situation "back home".

You could steal a battlestar galactica meme, and have the carrier fleeing the attacking hordes with a rag-tag group of ships.

Krrth
2008-09-12, 01:14 PM
I'm not sure about the size, but the 50,000....The humans should be fine. If I remember correctly, the cut off for a viable genetic pool is somewhere between 20-30k. The dragonborn and tielflings would be in trouble, however.

Hoggmaster
2008-09-12, 01:26 PM
I'm not sure about the size, but the 50,000....The humans should be fine. If I remember correctly, the cut off for a viable genetic pool is somewhere between 20-30k. The dragonborn and tielflings would be in trouble, however.

Tieflings would be ok as they are genetically compatible with humans, though all offspring become Tieflings (according to 4e fluff)

Yakk
2008-09-12, 01:35 PM
I'm not sure about the size, but the 50,000....The humans should be fine. If I remember correctly, the cut off for a viable genetic pool is somewhere between 20-30k. The dragonborn and tielflings would be in trouble, however.

The Dragonborn carried with them a few large clutches of eggs. :-)

Have Dragonborn eggs last for centuries if unhatched. Hatching a dragonborn egg (or encouraging it to hatch) involves keeping it in a heated area for a long period of time...

Krrth
2008-09-12, 01:36 PM
Tieflings would be ok as they are genetically compatible with humans, though all offspring become Tieflings (according to 4e fluff)

Which just leaves the poor dragonborn out of luck. Depending on how many there were, and how careful the survivors were, they could hold out for a few generations.

edit: Even with the large clutch of eggs, it will still be difficult. Unless they have tens of thousands of eggs, it's still a genetic nightmare.

Fri
2008-09-12, 01:54 PM
The problem with your setting are, well, it's just too generic. I mean, the setting that you linked in the opening post. It's hard to make a steampunk setting now, because it's almost always 'been there done that.'

Yo need something... unusual for your setting. Something catchy. Maybe it's a generic steampunk setting, but if there's something catchy, it could become interesting.

ACtually this whole fleet of steampunk refugee is much more interesting. Like battleship galactica, only steampunk!

RukiTanuki
2008-09-12, 07:45 PM
The problem with your setting are, well, it's just too generic. I mean, the setting that you linked in the opening post. It's hard to make a steampunk setting now, because it's almost always 'been there done that.'

Yo need something... unusual for your setting. Something catchy. Maybe it's a generic steampunk setting, but if there's something catchy, it could become interesting.

ACtually this whole fleet of steampunk refugee is much more interesting. Like battleship galactica, only steampunk!

I suppose the summary of my notes could come off that way. I am trying to add interesting themes wherever possible. The core theme (as I world-build) is that humanity was almost annihilated, came to a new world, explored and expanded, and quickly butted heads with races that were previously content to mostly stay out of each other's business. As the humans spread out, it became clear that everyone was going to have to communicate and lay down ground rules. As such, the main city becomes the Babylon 5 of the campaign setting. (Much to my surprise; I've seen one full episode of that show.) I'm taking 4e's assumption that humanity's unique quality is an overabundance of ambition, and running with it.

Mind you, I'm the kind of worldbuilder who's more likely to put the odd kinks and twists into the characters populating the world, rather than invent an odd quirk for the world itself... and I haven't been able to write many characters yet. The world's big strokes have a few subversions so far: pantheons are out, hero worship is in; magic and tech aren't in direct opposition but they certainly have yet to pick out china together; astral travel is a bit more like "Treasure Planet" and a lot less like Stargate; etc.

I was drawing ship plans from the Knock Nevis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock_Nevis), largest ship ever constructed. A ship of this size could support 18,000 cargo carriers, so I thought 50,000 people might be reasonable. (I remember the genetic diversity thread; one of its contributors is helping me with this.) I like "The Raft" idea of many ships latching on for the exodus. I'd disregard the supership entirely, but my players like the idea.

I do need to flesh out some of the details of this thought exercise:
* How the ship went from empire to rebellion
* How to keep dragonborn realistically diverse
* How to keep humanity diverse. I'd like humans to come in as many sizes and shapes as they do on Earth, but how do I explain that, assuming they all derive from one event 200 years ago? This likely requires more work on the Empire history; the Empire will play a direct role in who lived where, and I'll need to decide how they got on the ship. (Did they congregate or did it start moving down the coast?)

Oracle_Hunter
2008-09-12, 08:09 PM
I do need to flesh out some of the details of this thought exercise:
* How the ship went from empire to rebellion
* How to keep dragonborn realistically diverse
* How to keep humanity diverse. I'd like humans to come in as many sizes and shapes as they do on Earth, but how do I explain that, assuming they all derive from one event 200 years ago? This likely requires more work on the Empire history; the Empire will play a direct role in who lived where, and I'll need to decide how they got on the ship. (Did they congregate or did it start moving down the coast?)

1) Officer's Coup. Have the commander in charge of Ship construction become disenchanted with the Tiefling's expansionist claims and sympathetic towards the refugees he saw moving ahead of the Dragonborn Army. When the Dragonborn arrived, he was able to take out the political commissars and work out a negotiation.

For extra awesome, make the "charismatic leader" a Tiefling :smalltongue:

2) Why should Dragonborn follow genetics? They're friggin' humanoid lizards that spit various impossible substances! Make it so that any given Dragonborn egg will hatch a random "coloration" of Dragonborn, and that lineage is a purely social construct for them.

3) A wide variety of refugees arrived at the ship, making it a kind of Noah's Ark for humanity. When they arrived in the New Lands many of the communities emigrated en mass to forge their own towns - and those that remained maintained semi-segregated communities on One Macross Babylon 5 Steam Ship Prime Town.

Triaxx
2008-09-13, 06:04 AM
There's no reason to dump the supership idea for the raft to work. Battlestar the far superior original, had one primary supership that had to defend all the little ships. And you don't even have to worry about cylons so you're set. :smallbiggrin:

Anyway, having the little ships and using the coastline boarding method will increase diversity. Perhaps the non-'I keel you' dragon born had settled along the coast, so that while it's a large clutch of eggs, no more than a few dozen come from each village.

Non-heritage genetics might be a better option. So the females become extremely hungry shortly before laying. Pardoning the pun, but eating red meat creates one flavor of young, while eating vegetables creates another.

Villager: You breathe fire?

Dragonborn: Yeah, mom had a craving for chili peppers.