Steam and Clockwork

In addition, the Guild of Clockworkers really isn't keen on too many people making these things; the more clockworkers are allowed to work on them, the more likely it is that leaks will happen. As a result, in practice only the three most distinguished and respectable clockworkers in Horizon ever hold licences to make automatic weapons.

Automatic weapons operate on a simple basis. You load a clip of a few dozen bullets, or a continuous belt of bullets. You turn the small crank on the side of the weapon to wind up the mechanism. As soon as the trigger is squeezed, the mechanism is allowed to operate and the gun fires bullets at the rate of around one a second until the trigger is released, or until the bullets run out, or until the mechanism winds down - which, if the operator keeps cranking it up, won't happen for a long while.

One bullet a second isn't an especially impressive rate of fire by out of character terms. However, in the world of Horizon it's the best you can expect from guns. It's also kind of lethal - especially if you have a line of riflemen trained to stagger their shots by a fraction of a second, in order to set up a more-or-less continuous flow of bullets into the "kill zone". Automatic weapons were responsible for some of the bloodiest massacres of the Last War as generals struggled to adapt their out-of-date tactics to the demands of modern technology.

Steamworking

The Philosophy of Steam

Steam is of the people. It doesn't matter how many middle-class system designers or aristocratic investors you have supporting a project; if you want your machine to be anything other than a pretty blueprint and a nice idea, you need solid working class lads to build and maintain the thing. Often, this requires getting the Steam Union onboard; as ineffectual a lobbying force as they are, hiring scabs and strikebreakers is expensive in terms of both money and public sympathy, and the Union can make an awful lot of trouble for you if you cross it.

Steam is a sledgehammer. Steam machines are powerful. They make an impact. They are not at all subtle. And they are not at all precise. Pinpoint accuracy is not the order of the day; shock and awe is.

Steam transforms societies. Steam factories are bringing cheap, affordable, functional goods of adequate-but-not-brilliant quality within reach of the masses for the first time. The railways are forcing more traditional trade caravans to attempt ever riskier journeys in order to turn a profit. Steam technology always makes a huge impact upon the societies that adopt it - the Irgar owe their very independence to it.

The politics of the factory floor are also making themselves felt more and more. Otto Richter, inventor of the Horizon subway system, was one of a number of influential steam designers who began as just another mechanic in the factory, and even at the peak of his success never lost touch with his working class roots. After retiring from steam design he wrote a short manifesto entitled The Foreman and the World's Fate, which set forth a philosophy of world-as-machine, with the workingmen who build and maintain the means of production being oppressed by "counter-productive parasites" who have usurped control of the means of production from the workers. The tract was only ever supposed to be passed amongst Richter's friends, but several underground presses published copies following his death; the authorities were slow to realise its inflammatory nature, Richter having enjoyed the Emperor's favour due to the success of the subway system.

The tract itself is an angry, sometimes incoherent polemic against the moneyed classes, and in terms of political philosophy is somewhat simplistic (Conversations with Otto, published anonymously after The Foreman and the World's Fate became famous, presented a much more developed political philosophy, but some historians doubt that all the monologues recorded therein actually originated with Richter). It did, however, crystallise and clarify many of the grievances of factory workers everywhere, and many movements - such as Horizon's Steam Union - have drawn heavily on the ideas therein. Arguments over the finer point of Richterism between its proponents are always intesne; a meeting between delegates of the Horizon Steam Union and the Richterist Worker's Party of Irgar famously came to blows when the Irgarim workers sneered at the Union's insistance on the principle of decent working conditions for all.

Steam is ugly. Steam machines will never be mistaken for works of art. Aesthetics necessarily takes a backseat to efficiency and other engineering concerns. Building new factories requires knocking down large numbers of beautiful old buildings, or razing large tracts of countryside. Railwaylines force their way through sleepy forests and ancient hills, and bring with them the din and racket and roaring of the massive trains. And always, always, always the steam engines belch smoke and ash into the air.

The Practicalities of Steam

Portfolio Items
The items in a steam designer's Portfolio are as follows:

To produce a Portfolio item, the designer must spend a turnsheet action drawing up a set of blueprints for the specific machine to be made. They must then find the money required to build the thing - this often entails going cap in hand to the friendly neighbourhood loan shark. Once the money is available, teams of steamworkers must be hired (often via the Union), and it will take them three turns to build the machine - unless the steam designer is a former steamworker, in which case it takes only two turns to build the machine. You may also reduce the time taken to produce the machine by 1 turn for each additional Staggering investment you are able to obtain for the project above and beyond the minimum required (though a steam machine will never take less than a turn to produce).

Modifying a Machine
Sometimes a designer will want to modify a machine. There's two ways of going about this:

Alterations to an existing machine require a Major investment.

Backengineering a Machine
To backengineer a machine, you need to do one of two things:

Inventing a New Machine
The process of inventing new steam machines is as follows:

1: E-mail the GMs and tell us what you want to do. We will e-mail you back telling you how viable the project is. We hope to be able to say "yes" to most ideas - the closer your invention adheres to the philosophy behind steamworking, the more likely this is to happen.

2: Spend 1 turnsheet action producing the blueprints for your invention.

3: Convince investors to fund your project and hire steamworkers.

4: Spend four sleepless turns (three if you're an ex-steamworker and have therefore designed the machine from a steamworker's POV) hoping nobody sabotages the project before the steamworkers have finished building the thing. You may reduce the time taken to produce the machine by 1 turn for each additional Staggering investment you are able to obtain for the project above and beyond the minimum required (though a prototype steam machine will never take less than two turns to produce).

5: Have someone famous smash a bottle of champagne against the side of your machine as you throw the big lever to start the thing up.

It's that simple!

The State of the Art

Steam Ships
These vast, slow hulks can carry staggering amounts of trade goods over water - even the smallest are the size of several large warehouses. They are not perfect, however. They are slower than sailing ships, and less agile. Perishable goods cannot be carried great distances by steam ship, for they will be rotten in the hold by the time they reach their destinaton. Furthermore, any pirate ship can outmanoeuvre a steam ship with ease; the expense of hiring sailing escorts severely undermines the profits that would otherwise be making steamship operators rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Trains
Woo woo!

Steam trains are large, fast, and noisy. You can often hear the rumbling of the comparatively small subway trains beneath the city; out in the countryside, you can hear one of the gargantuan overland trains coming from miles away. Bandits can and do prey upon steam trains - there simply isn't enough soldiers and mercenaries in the world to guard every place the trains have to stop to refill their water tanks or drop off some mail.

The Steam Union

Rank 1: You are a rank-and-file Union member. You have the membership card, you turn up to the lunches and don't listen carefully at meetings, and you down tools and take up placards when you're told to.

Rank 2: You are a minor but known member of the Union. Factory foremen and Union-affiliated steam designers hold this rank by default, simply because their jobs involve having authority over other steamworkers. Alternately, you could be a normal steamworker who happens to be enthusiastic about the Union, Richterism, and worker's rights.

Rank 3: Union work is now taking up a significant amount of your spare time. Should strike action occur you're probably going to be closely involved in organising the pickets and keeping an eye out for strikebreaking Rumblers. The Union will pay you a Poor income (this could come in useful should you be fired for your Union-related activities), and may make Trivial purchases for you from time to time.

Rank 4: At this point you are probably spending more of your time working for the Union than you are actually on a factory floor. You will have a Moderate income from your Union work; you can also apply to get Minor purchases made for you through the Union. You're a bigshot in the Union now: you make speeches at meetings regularly and your motions may even be passed from time to time. If you're not on the Central Committee of the Union they still listen carefully to your advice, and you often get involved in heated debates about major policy decisions.

Calling for strike action involves a complicated voting process which, for reasons of sanity, we'll abstract out. Your rank in the Steam Union is roughly equivalent to your popularity: the higher your rank, the louder your voice. A Rank 4 member calling for strike action will get much more support than a Rank 1 member. When a call for strike action goes out, we will let all players of Steam Union PCs know and ask them to make their feelings felt in the housekeeping section of their turnsheets. We will then add up the number of Ranks in favour and the number of Ranks against, and factor in the opinions of any NPC Steam Union members who might have strong feelings about the issue (for the most part we'll restrict this to NPCs directly involved with the issue at hand, or have been convinced to vote one way or the other by PC steamworkers). So, a Rank 4 Union member effectively has 4 times the voting power of a Rank 1 member. A simple majority is required for limited strike action (for example, strikes happening at a specific factory or project). A three-quarters majority is required for a general strike.

Grey Engineering