Warflies - Picking the Bones of No Man's Land

War Stinks!

The Great War sucked, probably. No one alive today could say one way or the other. They played soccer one time, I saw it on Doctor Who. Doctor Who is kind of what inspired this vibey idea. But not that episode.

I make no secret as to my estimation of Chris McDowell's Into The Odd and Electric Bastionland settings. It's great! The setting is evocative, weird, and hearkens to the long 19th century, all of which, to me, is sort of hyperrelevant to our current dissolution of reality. The sort of game where you could fight some angelically mutated Rudlof Steiner motherfucker who went insane from browsing too deep in the Akashic records. Throw in some Martians and Psykranauts, blend with the powderkeg of Ruritanian Europe sans serial numbers, and the OSR sensibilities of absolute scoundrels, and I present, blogified, Warflies.

The Great and Terrible Starfall War

"Heavy are her shoulders, deep are her sorrows, as war rages and scars her crumbling heart!"

--- from Gluphesh Kerning's "Ode to Auld Ruritanea!"

A tenuous network of moldy alliances secured through centuries of intermarrying was bound to unravel. The assorted monarchies of Ruritanea could feel the tension, and their subjects roiled and boiled under the weight of their lords as new ideas spread from coffee shop to teahouse to patisserie.

But few expected the arrival of the Martians. 

As the stars crashed into the heart of Ruritanea, the Hounds of Zendak howled into the night, the Yulish Royal Army let out a yawp, and the Great Imperial Host of Alfaine mustered to preserve its heartland. Even the New Brecht Free Militia set sail for the Aulden Lands, glory bound.

The World was at war with itself, and with the stars above. Lunatics swooped down from our very moon raining fire, Martian thralls and acephalous mercenaries from Saturn trampled across the land.

As the war festers, as the rotting wound in the heart of Ruritanea lay open, vermin worm their way in. If war is anything at all it is horrible, but if it is anything else it is lucrative. That is where the Warflies come in, the stinging scavengers who pick the bones of empires clean.

Warflies

You belong to no nation, for little is left of the nations who fight ever on in the mud, blood, and slime of the Starfallen Heartland. Patriotism, honor, glory. These are the values of chumps. You may risk your bodies, your sanity, your lives in doing what you do, but you serve a nation of one.

The chaos of a decade-long war with no end in sight leaves great opportunity for those willing to cross into no-man's land and find alien artifacts, wyrd military science, or whatever odd hybrids of the two may yet lay buried in the mud and ruin.

Warflies operate as clandestine operatives, freebooters who search for any valuable remnants left in the wake of total war. They may find novel Martian tech buried in the rubble of a captured church, or deep in a trench maze they might find powerful serums and elixirs concocted by Zendaki scienticians. If nothing else, gold fillings in the teeth of the dead could buy you a resupply and a week's rest on the edge of the home front.

There is certainly more worth saying, but this is a work in progress. Hopefully this one gets further than a few blog entries.