Prohibition Index

Setting

The year is 1920, in a world quite different from the one you know. After the failed Martian invasion in 1899, mankind has been making leaps and strides into a new age of advanced technology. The era is somewhat more advanced, but also somewhat regressive compared to the current era, having never entire outgrown the utopian and nationalistic mass-movement cults of Marxism, Futurism and Fascism.

Appropriating the machines of the invaders, who were struck down by the microbes of the Earth's biosphere, has allowed scientific progress to climb ahead past the expectations of all previous eras. Energy weaponry, sophisticated smart materials and the improvement of the human being are ubiquitous, as the Industrial Revolution has given way to the Futurist Revolution, emboldened by the seizure of Martian technology. The universal robot and the android, servants of mankind, have increasingly replaced the poor working class, stabilizing and empowering mainland Europe and causing the United States to momentarily close its borders as it struggles to integrate vast immigrant populations that it cannot employ. The western players in the increasingly relevant League of Nations believes it can achieve hegemony by capturing more of the alien technology than its rivals.

Despite the apparent power of mass movements in the era, a single individual can do much. Industrialists found hidden enclaves for themselves and their entourages in the few frontiers of the world, including Antarctica, the bottom of the ocean and the highest places in the sky. A new type of supercriminal who employs his wits, alien overtechnology and manipulation of the law to cheat the system is rising from the restrictive bounds of Prohibition.

Everyone is looking for a pawn, from the electric old men of the homeland, to the rich robber barons of the New World, but as a child of the new era, you're too smart, too fast and too wild to be someone's chess piece. It won't be long before you break out of the rat race and seize a part of the century for yourself!

Notable Concepts

Overtechnology

A blanket term for all technology that derives from black-boxed alien wreckage, Overtechnology is the new oil, coal and opium of the post-Martian Invasion world. By quickly appropriating elements of alien design and integrating them into rising automotive technology, mankind was able to make a near complete jump to non-combustive power sources and quickly accelerate to the dawn of the information age. Despite this, most overtechnology has been replicated only by hijacking the base control systems behind Martian equipment, rather than fully replicating, meaning that much of the infrastructure behind the new era depends on the continued function of a limited (and diminishing) supply of wreckage from the invasion that took place twenty years ago.

Supranational entities such as the Tesla Institute and International Society of Futurists are doing their best to gather xenotech samples, and have had the greatest success reverse-engineering many examples of overtechnology, including the electric motor, solar sail, gravity attenuator and smart fabrics, freeing up remaining Martian replicators for other applications.

Overtechnology also heralded the discovery of psychics, who are also discussed in the section bellow. Psychic phenomenon are however extremely relevant in the discussion of overtechnology, as psi-capable individuals are able to manipulate and control active forms of Martian xenotech such as Red Mercury and Computronium with mental force alone, making them invaluable elements of the Futurist movement.

Red Mercury

Actually a dry-wet nanomachine chimera far beyond modern comprehension, Red Mercury is the most second most valuable form of over-technology because it has a variety of applications beyond the construction of xenotech-derived technology. Capable of limited molecular alchemy and organic recombination, it functions as a cure-all that can restore wounded and terminally ill humans from the brink of death, undo aging and restore limbs. In industrial applications, it's used as a universal polymer to make unfinished systems 'work', allowing human engineers to build systems that are effectively beyond their grasp. Red Mercury is effectively limited in supply, though the detonation of vast fuel carries in the upper atmosphere has scattered many trillions of gallons of the liquid in the air, which has been gradually precipitating in lakes, ravines and the bottom of the ocean over the decades.

Calculum

All active overtechnological devices contain Calculum, a consisting of a programmable lattice structure with a greater density and solidity than Red Mercury. Calculum effectively allows all functional elements of Martian design to be multipurpose and self-repairing. Recovered Calculum allows for the creation of the massive anti-gravitational Wells Engines that keel floating fortresses and cities in the air, as well as more mundane applications such as laser blasters, electric motors and smart fabric. Calculum, can be 'coaxed' into reproducing by a trained psi talent, making it far more sustainable for regular use than Red Mercury.

Elerium

Elerium is an acausal superfuel that takes the form of a blue-ish white liquid saturated with tiny crystals. Created through Red Mercury-based alchemical processes, it's actually a liquid suspension of zero-point battery sources that take decades to exhaust and can be refreshed with the injection of less than a gram of Red Mercury. Electric motors with Elerium reservoirs are essentially perpetual motion machines that do not need to plug into a solar sail station and require very little maintenance. Martian fuel carriers carried Elerium in addition to Red Mercury, so it is often found at the very bottom of reservoirs where the former accumulates.