Steampunk Amahara

Steampunk Amahara is a period/fantasy/steampunk RPG run by Mal. It is about travelling a mildly steampunk fantasy world, working for clan, country, science, or profit. Join those westerners in the game of imperialism, looking for ancient loot, awakening and enshrining gods, defeating evil, possibly being evil, and such and such so on!

Steampunk Amahara Rules

Background

The year is 1878 and the balance of power in the world has been upset. Propelled by the steam revolution, the nation states of Rose Europe have spread the arm of colonialism across the globe. Empires have crumbled and indigenous tribes conquered, absorbed or wiped out. Their influence has even sunk into the Middle Kingdom, once thought of as the center of the civilised world, like a thousand knife cuts.

Seeing the threat of the foreign devils for what it is, the people of Amahara briefly set aside their ancient class boundaries and overthrew the ruling Yanari Shogunate. After a thousand years of rule by the samurai class, political power was returned to the court of the Apostle. The Serene Restoration also ushered in the era of modernity and industrial development. And now, a whole generation has passed. The restored Dominion of Amahara has surged from the mire of backwardness to a prominent position in Lotus Asia. Joining new technologies and armaments with age old traditions, the rising power is ready to confront the foreigners as equals.

No matter the beauty and tranquility of her garden, it is the world that Amahara, and you, must live in.

A Brief History of Amahara

Mythic Era

Long ago, at the beginning of time, the three creator goddesses summoned life, the universe, and everything into being in a fit of yuri. In the Mythic Era, gods and celestials toyed with the world freely and divine beasts struck terror in humans. The common people hid behind fire during the night and could scarcely carry on with their lives during the day. The greatest human, Tatehaya, slew the monsters of the realm, accomplished the five impossible requests of Kaguya the moon princess and then went on to conquer the world. His final, most hubristic campaign was a war against the homeland of his wife, a war by the humans of the Earth against the celestials who dwelt on the Moon. The war saw him killed, the celestials extinguished, and the world shattered. The Great Flood washed all trace of civilisation away, leaving humanity a long age of rebuilding. In the end, the great land of Yamato was submerged beneath the seas and cut off from the rest of the world, leaving only the lands closes to Heaven - Amahara. Even today, this creation and foundation myth is believed to explain why the nation of Amahara is superior to the rest of the world.

Classical Era

During the Classical Era, the methods and morals of civil governance were imported from the Middle Kingdom and the religion of Shinto developed out of the superstitions and shamanism of the Mythic Era. Where the older beliefs held gods and demons as awesome and ineffable natural phenomena that mortals could only hope to appease, Shinto came to both revere and understand them - they could be guides or protectors and could also be petitioned for aide. The two sides were to coexist and interact through rituals and ceremonies. Amahara came to be ruled by the Apostles, a matriarchal line of empresses who claim descent from Kaguya and to personally enshrine the foundation hero Tatehaya as a kami. Even through the Shogunate Era and into the modern day, the Apostle remains the ultimate religious leader of the realm.

Shogunate Era

Amahara was overthrown by warlords and the line of Apostles was broken and subsequently followed a sequential selection by the shrine maidens of the apostolic court instead. This allowed the clerics to more closely control the throne in the face of samurai encroachment and thus retain religious and moral leadership even as strongmen took over other aspects of administration. Buddhism was imported, which penetrated into a niche alongside Shinto. Both belief systems became allies of the ruling samurai class. They gained wealth, built vast fortified temples and shrines and acquired military power in their own right.

A series of five shogunates ruled Amahara from 888 to 1853, interspersed with long periods of fighting and civil wars. The transitions between the third and fifth shogunates proved especially violent and destructive. Amahara Shinto evolved from this militarism, leading to the conquest of Ryunan during the relatively shortlived Toyotomi Shongunate. Despite all efforts of preservation however, the last of the divine beasts retreated into the deepest of wildernesses and most gods fell silent in ever longer periods of slumber.

The Yanari Shogunate became the fifth and last shogun dynasty to rule Amahara, lasting the final 199 years of the shogunate era. Amahara and the rest of the east fell behind Rose Europe during those last two centuries

Bakumatsu and Modern Amahara

Foreign influences and weakness in the shogunate devolved into massive civil strife. The Serene Restoration toppled the Yanari Shogunate and was a quick, almost bloodless affair in the home islands, propelling the motherland into the modern era. The transition has proven much longer, more violent and less complete in the Ryunan region.

Overview of the Dominion of Amahara

Geography

Amahara is split into two major portions - the Home Islands and Ryunan.

The Home Islands are a large, volcanic archipelago about the size and climate of real life Japan - in short, it is mystic Japan. Here, the Serene Restoration was quick and mostly peaceful with only a few rebellions and insurgencies that provided work for the new Dominion Army the Apostle's Musha Miko. The Home Islands have been undergoing rapid industrial revolution for the past quarter century.

Ryunan is a mainland peninsula to the south - a sort of super mainland Ryukyu. Originally an honest colonial conquest of the Toyotomi Shogunate, connection to the land fell during the Yanari shogunate to which it never paid more than lip service of subservience. Amahara is busy trying to reassert its claim in the face of foreign powers but the civil war there was protracted and continues at a low level to this day.

Religion

The religion of Amahara is Amahara Shinto, an aggressively proselytising form of Shinto believing in a vast pantheon of gods who govern every aspect of the world from weather and earthquakes to steam engines and the fine moving parts of clockwork. The new Dominion of Amahara sees itself as having a responsibility to spread this faith, most commonly by establishing and protecting countless small shrines all over the world and encouraging people to recognize the role of the kami in day to day life. It is inclusive rather than exclusive, which is part of its attraction, readily absorbing local gods, spirits, and folk heroes into the pantheon. It promises spiritual progression through reincarnation (especially after dying well) and does not treat many of the things other religions frown on (like alcohol or casual sex) as misdemeanors. Its main conflict with the Abrahamic faiths is in the doctrine of monotheism, resulting in Christian, Jewish and Muslim clerics dragged through the streets and lynched or beheaded.

Amahara Shinto has multiple ranks of clergy based on their role in the service of the gods and attendant level of devotion. The most revered and respected lead highly regimented lives full of taboos, restrictions, vows of devotion, and ritual duties. In theory, their word is law as they speak for the gods themselves. The highest of these is the Dominion's head of state, the Apostle of Amahara, a girl periodically selected in the traditional manner, through the consultation of complex astrological tables and the analysis of shifting geomantic and meteorological patterns.

Your Mission

• Learn about foreign ways if they are useful.
• Awaken and enshrine spirits and kami in foreign lands.
• Recover artifacts and knowledge for the good of the state and academic progress.
• Do not piss off the foreigners.

Others

Homegrown Factions

Apostolic Government

The political and religious leadership of Amahara with the Apostle of Amahara as the holy figurehead.

Old Guard

White Lotus Cult

Gaijin

Yan Dynasty

The Middle Kingdom is the largest and most populous land empire in the world as well as the source of most overseas influence on Amahara in the classical and shogunate eras. Unlike Amahara, it never gained a lasting warrior tradition nor a particular penchant for religion (though its indigenous beliefs are broadly compatible with shinto principles). It has always been a state centered around civil and financial administration with both faith and military prestige as tertiary priorities. In contrast to shogunate Amahara, its dynastic transitions have tended to be swift, decisive affairs involving only a few sides and given the sheer might of the empire in the past, it hardly ever had outside rivals. After decades of foreign pressure, the mighty empire has collapsed into the mother of all civil wars which could well dictate the fate of the region if not the world depending on who wins and who is left alive at the end.

Francia

The Francian Revolution began in 1793 with riots and civil disruption rocking the country against the excesses of the kingdom and its privileged class. The revolution gave birth briefly tot he Francian Republic which was in turn toppled by 1800 by the rise of Napoleon who crowned himself emperor and then proceeded to make war on the rest of Rose Europe. He eventually destroyed, the original Britannian Empire in 1818. Francia then took over the lead in the industrial revolution and became the world's premier state power. It is currently ruled by Napoleon IV and its capital is Parys.

New Crusader States

Espana

Karlsland

A relatively large though only modestly populated country in the north of Europa, the Republic of Karlsland has recently risen to become one of the leading challengers of Francian hegemony. It is a technologically advanced country and build some of the world's largest and swiftest airships. Its capital is Nidaros.

Danuby

A country in the east of Europa which has seen significant success in wars against its neighbours in recent years. It is seen by some as another challenger of Francia but others consider it a Francian ally.

Rossiya

A former state that took up a large part of eastern Europa and had been starting to expand beyond it. Defeat by everyone else has utterly shattered the empire.

New Britannia

Catholic Church

The Vatican City is located centrally in Europa, ensconced among a varied collection of very small states. The region has many major churches, reliquaries and large foreign communities that serve pilgrims. While tiny on the map, the Vatican has massive, global reach through its knighthoods and missionary orders. The beliefs of the Catholic Church in a single supreme God is inherently inimical to Amahara Shinto. Recently, the Pope excommunicated both the Yan Supreme Emperor and the Apostle of Amahara and in response Amahara declared the Catholic faith to be illegal.

Caliphate

The Caliphate is a large but loose alliance (more like a vague union of understanding really) of countries following the Islamic faith, which also refuse to honour the Eight Million Kami and are thus just as bad as the Catholics. However, the two also seem to fight each other a great deal.