Prohibition Index

Setting

The year is 1920, in a world quite different from the one you know. After the failed Martian invasion in 1889, 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

Red Mercury is low-density living metal said to have similar properties as the material it's named after, with a metallic sheen and a tendency to leech into exposed skin. It functions as a cure-all of all types, allowing for rapid repairs on living bodies, undoing age, dismemberment and disfigurement and curing even rare ailments such as the Spanish Flu and Common Cold. 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 Martian fuel carriers 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.

Red Mercury is related to the phenomenon known as Red Weed, a Martian plant that was seeded throughout waterways and caused tremendous infrastructural damage as it caused mass clogging and shut down a majority of European naval yards during the invasion. The plant did not react well with the Earth's biosphere, however, eventually becoming saturated with compounds toxic to it and dying off in large numbers. The plant, which has been confirmed to produce Red Mercury, is now only found in regions particularly hostile to human life, in Iceland, North Africa, the Middle East and near volcanic vents at the bottom of the oceans.

Calculum

All active overtechnological devices contain Calculum, a form of dense 'living metal' that can be formed into a number of mechanisms that are too complex to be wrought by human hands and industry. 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 mysterious liquid fuel 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 battery sources that draw electrical power from so-called extra-dimensional Telluric phenomenon. Electric motors with Elerium reservoirs are essentially perpetual motion machines that do not need to plug into a solar sail stations 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.

Elerium is unfortunately unstable when exposed to the Earth's atmosphere, vaporizing into a highly flammable gas and rising up into the outer atmosphere, where it precipitates and becomes emulsified with gaseous Red Mercury before falling back to the surface.

Futurists

The Futurist movement is one of the major forces in the Roaring 20's, emboldened by the appropriation and mass dissemination of martian overtechnology. Led by luminaries and industrialists across the globe, Futurists advocate the use of overtechnology as a means to improve the lot of humanity across the globe. Advocates of cybernetics, robotics and mass engineering projects, such as lunar colonization and the civilization of the Africa continent by floating entire cities onto choice land all generally fall under the umbrella of post-Martian Futurism, with the newly-formed League of Nations and other supranational entities that encourage the formation of more global communities are all heavily backed by international Futurists.

The reconstruction of war-ravaged Casablanca as Jupiter City was a major victory for the movement, as self-professed futurists poured millions of dollars into the city's post-war renewal. Now sprawling metropolis on the scale of London, Paris or New York, the city is the headquarters for a great many companies working in cutting edge overtechnology-based industries such as robotics, cybernetics and Wells engine technology.

Enclavists

The Enclavists are a fringe element of the Futurist movement who reject universal proliferation of overtechnology, espousing an individualist ideology that rejects the globalism and international governance of Futurist idealogues. The Enclavist movement is less organized and interrelated than the Futurists, but have had success in colonizing remote areas of the world such as Antarctica and the Atlantic seabed. Free from legal (and moral) constraints imposed by governments, Enclavist settlements have been able to pursue overtechnological research more freely than many nationally-affiliated Futurist think-tanks.

There is no consistent ideology or mindset in the Enclavist mindset besides an underlying desire to escape government intrusion (and the backing of wealthy industrialists). Many Enclavist sentlements are founded with libertarian ideals, while others function as self-contained socialist utopias (or so they claim). Despite this, most, if not all of such settlements are hostile to outside intrusion, in particular by the burgeoning League of Nations.