Silkpunk Victoria

A Northeast Pacific Silkpunk campaign

"Yŏnghéng zìyóu." ("Always free.")
— Motto of the Free City of Victoria

Latest Update: Encounters

Welcome to Silkpunk Victoria

Silkpunk Taijitu^[一]

Silkpunk Victoria is a science fantasy role-playing game campaign set in an alternate history at the close-of-the-19th Century. It is a steampunk setting which nevertheless eschews the traditional privileging of Victorian Britain — or the American frontier — in favour of a re-imagined, Pacific-inspired ethos — and æsthetic — that is more eclectically cosmopolitan.

The Northeast Pacific

The campaign is based at the Free City of Victoria on the northeastern shore of the Pacific Ocean — the northwestern coast of North America — at the southern tip of Vancouver Island. To the north, beyond the holdings of the re-chartered Vancouver Island Company, lies the Russian territory of Russkaya Alyáska. To the east, on the mainland, is the Canadian territory of New Caledonia. To the southeast is the independent Oregon Republic. Inland is the Plateau Confederacy of Indigenous Peoples in the inland regions of the Fraser and Columbia River basins.

Map of Victoria^[二]

Further south is the independent California Republic. Even further south along the coast is the Qīng territory of Qīng Jiāzhōu. Inland are the Great Basin Confederacy of Indigenous Peoples in the northern region of the Great Basin, and the Great Range Confederacy of Indigenous Peoples in the northern region of southwestern North America.

Far to the southwest is the Hawai Protectorate, a Japanese territory established in the Hawai'ian Islands, with capital at Honolulu.

The "Great Qing" (大清) is perhaps the most apparent foreign influence in Victoria. For example, there are likely be more Qing ships in Victoria's harbour on any given day than there are ships from Britain or the United States (or the Confederacy). Of course, there will likely be more ships in the harbour from Oregon, New Calendonia, Russian Alaska and California — and perhaps Japanese ships from the Hawai Protectorate — simply because these places are closer than the Qing Empire. (In most cases, Qing ships are themselves coming to Victoria from Qīng Jiāzhōu, the Qing territory on the Pacific coast south of California.) Similarly, while English is the most commonly-spoken language in Victoria, it is not uncommon to encounter people speaking Manchu, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Chinook, Spanish, Russian or one of the many Coast Salish languages, especially near the harbour or in the trading houses.

As with the foreign influences from across the Pacific to the west, Victoria is also influenced by societies in the North American interior to the east. In addition to Chinook and Coast Salish languages one is also likely to encounter people speaking the Interior Salish and Sahaptin languages of the Plateau Confederacy. People from the Great Basin Confederacy are as likely to be encountered in Victoria as are Canadians — other than those from New Caledonia — or Unionists or Confederates from the eastern Americas, all of whom must also travers the Northern Plains Confederacy and/or the Southern Plains Confederacy or travel by sea from the east coast to reach Victoria. Similar distances mean that people from the Great Range Confederacy are also rarely encountered in Victoria.

While Canada's formal embargo keeps ships from eastern Canada out of Victoria's harbour the relative isolation of New Caledonia — the northern overland route to eastern Canada, which avoids the tariffs of the Northern Plains Confederacy, adds several days of travel — means New Caledonian traders are a common sight in Victoria. Ships from the eastern Americas are also rare in Victoria, with those sailing across the Pacific rarely venturing north of San Francisco in California.

Merchant ships from Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Brazil — and the occasional warship — can also be encountered in Victoria's harbour. From time to time, ships from elsewhere in Oceania, from Southern Asia, from Southwestern Asia, from Africa and from Europe might also make their way to Victoria's harbour.

Clockwork, Steam and Thaumaturgy

Techtoria laboratory^[三]

The Silkpunk Victoria setting is characterized by the "clockwork and steam" technology of steampunk but adds a fantastical aspect: thaumaturgy, an emerging applied science employed to accomplish practical goals using scientific principles and natural phenomenon which are not yet well understood. The most apparent aspect of thaumaturgy is ætheron, a recently-discovered noble gas used as the thaumaturgical lifting agent in airships, as the thaumaturgical power source for pulse-energy "Rousseau guns" and as the thaumaturgical propellant in the æolipile engines used in airships, submarines and auto-mobiles.

Silkpunk vs. Steampunk

Image - Sniper and automaton with killed giant automaton

"Sniper"^[四]

One need look no farther than the role-playing game Space: 1889 to recognize the privileging of Victorian Britain in early steampunk. Within a decade, as demonstrated by the film Wild, Wild West, that privileging had expanded to include an idealized U.S. frontier. These commercial products understandably reflected the perspectives and expectations of the late 20th Century U.S. consumers of speculative fiction who were their customers (and often also their creators). Often progressive for their era — the Space: 1889 rule book notes that its "use of the masculine pronoun . . . should in no way be interpreted as excluding either female players or characters" while Wild, Wild West featured a Black actor in a role originally portrayed by a white actor (and now with a cross-dressing sidekick) — most steampunk works nevertheless typically featured a cast of characters which mostly overlooked the vast majority of humanity at the end of the 19th Century. (The "Remarkable Victorian Women" of Space: 1889 are all Britons or Americans just was Wild, Wild West's James West is an American.)

Silkpunk Victoria attempts to rectify this shortcoming. While set in a locale which would seem to epitomize the Victorian era in North America, the changes in the setting's alternate history — which are broader (and earlier) than simply those of technology and aesthetics which are commonplace in steampunk — have been re-imagined to create a campaign setting with a Pacific-inspired ethos and æthetic that is more eclectically cosmopolitan.

The Silkpunk Victoria setting imagines a world similar to the actual late 19th Century world but in which the privileging of European societies and the power of British hegemony are less predominant. This is a world where there are small, European-heritage states along the northern Pacific coast of North America, like the colony of Russkaya Alyáska ("Russian Alaska"), the independent Oregon Republic, the Canadian territory of New Caledonia and, of course, the Free City of Victoria.

It is a world where Qing China, unvanquished in the Opium Wars, has gained a foothold in North America — Qīng Jiāzhōu ("Qing California") along the southern coast of the former Alta California (south of the independent California Republic) — and where an expansionist Meiji Japan controls Hawai'i. In the Intermountain West and on the Canadian Prairies and the Great Plains there are independent confederations of Indigenous peoples: the Plateau Confederacy, the Great Basin Confederacy, the Great Range Confederacy, the Northern Plains Confederacy and the Southern Plains Confederacy. This is a world where the American civil war ended in stalemate^[*] and where Central and South America are comprised largely of Mestizo successor states to the Spanish and Portuguese empires which look different from the quasi-republican states of the actual world.

Silkpunk Victoria is a world which descends from a very different Asia, where Qing China did not seek to hide from the outside world, where Qajar Iran in the southwest, Maratha Bharat in southern Asia and Durrani Afghanistan in central Asia were not overwhelmed by Europeans, where the Dzungar Khanate was not subsumed by Qing China. It is a world where Europeans not only fought with each other in the "Scramble for Africa" but also with powerful, expansionist Asian states. It is a world where Great Power politics meant that more African states managed to maintain a degree of autonomy, if not actual sovereignty, by playing Asian invaders off against their European counterparts, and vice versa.

In the Silkpunk Victoria world Prussia did not come to eclipse Austria as the preeminent German state, where Poland — or Poland-Lithuania — was not consumed by Austria, Prussia and Russia, where Spain remained on relatively equal stature with France and Britain (or England), where an Ottoman-like state survives in southeastern Europe (and an independent Khedivate of Egypt in North Africa), where Sweden did not become a neutral backwater, where the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars — and the republican "Revolutions of 1848" — unfolded differently in Europe.

In the Silkpunk Victoria campaign, on the streets of Victoria one is as likely to encounter a Qing trader as a British naval officer, a Coast Salish artificer as a Confederate aeronaut, or a Japanese emissary as a Chilean shipwright. (Nevertheless, were one to travel to London — or St. Louis — one very likely would encounter a more traditional steampunk denizen.)

Image credits:
^[一] Original illustration by Bethany Jordan. No endorsement of Silkpunk Victoria has been made or is implied.
^[二] Image served by Invaluable, LLC. No endorsement of Silkpunk Victoria has been made or is implied.
^[三] Original design by Russell Papp. No endorsement of Silkpunk Victoria has been made or is implied.
^[四] Original illustration by Dmitry Grebenkov. No endorsement of Silkpunk Victoria has been made or is implied.

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