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Starfaring Species in Really Wild West (part 3 and finale)
This is the third and final part of a series of articles looking at how to contextualize the starfaring species of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game into the world of the Really Wild West, a setting hack that uses the science-fantasy rpg for a campaign with magic, monsters, and weird science in an alternate Earth in 1891.
When looking at the Starfinder Roleplaying Game species for things I can use to tie them to a fantasy-science-fiction-pulp version of the real world, sometimes I have gone with cultural or game ability elements… and sometimes I have leaned on fantasy versions of biology, as is the case with shirren, vesk, and ysoki.
Shirren
Shirren are big bugs, which means they should have evolved someplace that supports larger arthropods. The largest land-dwelling arthropod currently in existence on Earth is the coconut crab, which is found on islands in the Indian and Pacific Ocean. Assuming they originated in the same regions in the timeline of the Really Wild West, shirren would have built their own island cultures (perhaps in conjunction with other species, perhaps not), and spread in Ancient times as trade blossomed throughout the Indian Ocean. This takes our ancient shirren to China, Egypt, India, Java, Somalia, and southeastern Europe. While they would have spread worldwide from there, I assume those regions along old trade routes going through the Indian Ocean still have the largest, most integrated populations of shirren. That gives me guidance on what cultures they might be drawn from, and what traditions they could have, without claiming something small-minded like “Arabs are shirren” (which erases real Arabs and eliminates numerous cultural advancements, historical figures, and real-world ethnicities from being part of RWW, and is also pretty structurally racist).
Vesk
Australia leads the world in reptile biodiversity, so that’s where I am having my vesk evolve. That has vesk populations being tightly concentrated in Australia, New Zealand, and surrounding islands. I’m guessing I’ll need to add a frontier wars or “Lizardman War” (as the colonial powers call it) between the British Empire and various vesk groups at some point, and chances are the vesk lost. But by now, they’re at least partially integrated, and some will have travelled throughout the British Empire, despite suffering a fair amount of racism. While vesk likely have a lot of native culture that impacts their fashion, those that travel abroad are likely to adopt Western clothing sensibilities when in western nations, including the Really Wild West.
Note that this is a change from my original thoughts on vesk, which was to make them the product of Doctor Moreau’s anthropomorphization of animals. I can hold on to that idea for more minor species (as I add them), but it ended up feeling too limited for a “core” species, and had some connotations I wasn’t comfortable with.
Ysoki
In the real world, rodents are populous on every continent except Antarctica. They date to the Paleocene on the supercontinent of Laurasia, spread across landmasses, crossed oceans, and pretty well got everywhere (even Australia) on their own, without human intervention.
So as much as I am tying most starfaring species to specific region of the Really Wild West? Ysoki are everywhere.
And they got there first.
With cheek pouches as built-in bags (allowing them to carry goods—even water—long distances before the invention of sacks or gourd-bottles), bonuses to Stealth and Survival, and darkvision? Ysoki were the main competition with humanity for global domination. Much as there were Neanderthals and other cousins to homo sapiens sapiens who didn’t make it, there were multiple lines of ysoki through the ages, though none of this is well understood in the RWW year of 1891.
In general, every culture has a ysoki element to it. There are sure to be exceptions—Egyptian cat-worshipers may not have taken to ysoki citizens, some ysoki clans likely existed in regions without significant human presence.
But the core assumption in Really Wild West is that ysoki are everywhere from the most remote, paleolithic cultures, to the suit-wearing bankers of New York.
Speaking of context!
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Starfinder Species in Really Wild West (Part 2)
We went over why it’s worthwhile to consider where the species from the Starfinder Roleplaying Game have major population centers in the world of Really Wild West (and why we won’t be using them as stand-ins to replace the humans of any real-world culture) in the first post in this series, where we also looked at the RWW take on androids. We continue our look at this idea with the kasatha and lashunta. It’s worth repeating that these touchstones are designed as one set of options, not absolute rules. Just as humans from differing ethnic and cultural backgrounds can be found on every continent, so too can our new sentient, sapient species be found in every culture of the Really Wild West.
Kasatha
Since one of the big defining traits of kasatha is that they have 4 arms, there’s an obvious temptation to have kasatha be linked to Hinduism, because of the prevalence of multiarmed deities in Hindu. However, Hinduism is a massive, modern religion with tens of millions of worshipers, in which things like what a deity carries in each arm can be important, and about which I am not an expert.
Looking to tie the multiarmed aspect to something less crucial than gods, Greek mythology has numerous multiarmed humanoids such as the Gegenees, and Hecatonchires. Though these are presented as giants, that just also gives me a place for Shobads. And there’s lots of ancient and closer-to-18901 history involving Greeks that is fascinating and interesting, which can help serve as context for kasatha players.
So if the Greek empires were all mix of human and kasatha, by the modern era of Really Wild West that can be expected to have large populations throughout Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. Greek ships were visiting the Americas by the early 1600s, and a significant Greek community developed in New Orleans during the 1850s. By the 1890 there were tens of thousands of Greeks in North America alone, many of them from the Ottoman Empire.
Lashunta
One of the defining traits of lashunta is their telepathy, which makes placing them in the world a bit tricky, because what westerns think of as telepathy doesn’t really have any notable real-world equivalents, even in theory or fiction, prior to the 1800s, which is too late to form a culture from that is well established by 1891. However, the Japanese idea of ishin-denshin (literally “”what the mind thinks, the heart transmits”) certainly seems similar to telepathy. That idea seems to have developed in China where it has links to traditions of Zen Buddhism.
So, having lashunta have developed in Asia, with strong populations in places where Zen Buddhism is prevalent (China, Japan, Korean, Vietnam) gives cultural texture to how the actual power of telepathy in Really Wild West might have been viewed in varying real-world cultures. It’s important to note that lashunta don’t replace any of those real-world cultures or the religious and philosophical advancements they created. But it does give context for how to view a fictional species in a historic framework. And all those nations have rich histories that include massive exploration, trade, and diplomacy as well as immigration which can place an Asian-origin lashunta anywhere in the world a player wants to be from (even before allowing for lashunta families who may have migrated from those nations centuries ago).
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Starfinder Species in Really Wild West
When running a Really Wild West game, which takes Starfinder Roleplaying Game concepts and sets them in a weird west version of the real world in 1891, one of the questions that can come up is where the nonhuman species come from. Given how much cultures and nations and lone people can interact, overlap, and move around, any individual character can obviously be from anywhere—in real-world history it’s easy to find Japanese expatriates in Manila and Mexico in the early 1600s, so ethnicity, nationality, and geography aren’t always as linked as typical examples of each might suggest.
But a question remains of where the most common cultures and ethnicities of various nonhuman species are found. It’s a bad idea to replace entire real-world ethnic groups with nonhumans, since that erases the possibilities of real-world options and may tell a player that their actual ancestry isn’t important enough to keep, but if we are presenting a world where dozens (or even hundreds) of species are sharing the planet, it makes sense to consider where our fictional species fit reasonable well with real-world culture, and key those as major cultural and population centers for kasatha and lashutna and others.
This is especially important for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game species. It’s easy to place dwarves, elves, gnomes, haflings, half-elves, and half-orcs in the European areas that inspired them and that lots of fantasy and modern games have drawn from to build fictional cultures for them. You can assume they all overlap with humanity 100%, or make the major population centers line up with the countries you think make interesting matches—perhaps dwarves are German and elves are French. Or perhaps dwarves are French, elves are Germanic, and gnomes Russian or Scandinavian, and orcs Spanish. There’s enough fiction and game material with those races to make it easy to build or match cultures to serve as backgrounds for them.
But there’s not nearly as much material to draw on for androids (especially as Really Wild West envisions them), vesk, or ysoki, and even less for kasatha and lashunta. Since the Really Wild West is set in an alternate version of the real world, if I want to place these new species somewhere I need to either think of places where I can add them to the existing populations, or add new places. I could slap a few new small continents—Atlantis. Lemuria, and Mu come to mind—in the middle of oceans to give me new space for new cultures if I wanted to, but that’d take a lot more effort than I am looking to do just to create some cultural touchstones.
It seems perfectly reasonable in a campaign setting that adds multiple new sapient, sentient species to a fantasy version of the real world to have those species be tied primarily to specific regions or cultures, so that is the approach I took here. That leaves the question of where to place each of these species primary population centers, and for that I looked at each in turn to determine what core feature or concept helps define each and how those can be integrated into existing real-world regions.
I used real-world art references for the art order representing clothing and styles for these new species. That’s not to suggest that all of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game species come from only these regions or look like the characters below, but it’s a baseline to give GM and players something to draw from.
Over the next few posts I’ll give some details where each of these new species is being centered in the world of Really Wild West, and why, beginning with the androids.
Android
Androids in the Really Wild West (far left) are visually and culturally notably different from androids in standard Starfinder Roelplaying Game campaigns. Given the 1890s aesthetic of the RWW, androids are presented as old-school robots, closer to Metropolis than Blade Runner. They could never pass for human. They function with the same rules, but the definition of android in this campaign is closer to “humanlike in form” than “machine that passed for human.”
Complex machines claiming to be automatons and clockworks did exist in the era, perhaps the most famous of which is the chess-playing automaton created in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen of the Hapsburg Empire, who usefully for our purposes also created a speaking machine. While von Kempelen’s chess-playing machine was not a true automaton (it hid a chess player in its integral cabinet), that looks a fine origin for our manlike machines. If the first automatons were created in 1770 in the Hapsburg empire, they can easily have spread to be much farther and wider by 1891. The Austro-Hungarian Empire that formed out of the Austrian Empire that followed the Hapsburg Empire is a European melting pot, and numerous immigrants from that region moved to New York City, Pittsburgh, and Chicago early in the 1800s, and then were part of the century.
We can assume that older androids are from the Austria and Hungary regions, and newer ones likely constructed in the big cities of New York City, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. At some point some form of Turing Test has developed, and androids have won recognition as “people” in the United States, Mexico, and most industrialized nations of the world. But they lack strong family roots, and are often looking for opportunities to make a life for themselves.
We’ll address the kasatha, lashunta, shirren, vesk, and ysoki soon!
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Really Wild West Dragon Guns (For the Starfinder Rolplaying Game)
In the Really Wild West setting hack for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, flame guns have been the most common form of energy-weapon for decades, and have a history going back centuries in the Quin Dynasty of China. While the great stability of government and vast, settled agrarian economy of the Qing and previous Ming Dynasty could have led to a great divide between the advanced of science and technology between China and European and American nations, the greater number of theosophic traditions in China (which, truthfully, significantly predate and are the origin of later western theosophy) and number of spiritual threats, from oni to dragons to kaiju, ensured that even with fewer conflict and greater stability, the constant need for innovation kept China on pace during the 1700s and 1800s. Further, victory over European powers in the Opium War, coupled with a strong global demand for Chinese silks and other goods and the looming threat of a Sino-Japanese War has kept the Qing government strongly invested in military technology, and placed their agents, allied merchants, and envoys in most major cities around the world—many carrying advanced flame weapons for self-defense.
The first flame-projecting weapons were double-piston pump naphtha flamethrowers used in 919 AD in China, known as pen huo qi or “spray fire devices.” There were generally large and slow-operating, deployed on wheeled carts, but their benefit against enemies lacking energy weaponry is not to be dismissed, and while some supernatural threats are immune to fire, those that are not are often more easily burned than stabbed or shot by projectiles. The pen hou qi were replaced by smaller and smaller units, until the modern single-person portable flamethrower was developed by famed statesman, general, and Confucian scholar Zeng Guofan in the mid-1800s. Flame pistols and flame rifles drew the attention of numerous other world militaries, but were generally seen as oddities too volatile for field use until the War of the Worlds, when flamethrowers proved to be among the cheapest and most reliable mass-produced energy weapons. Germany has done the best job creating their own designs for modern flame weapons, but their models remain behind the Chinese dragon guns.
In North American, numerous forms of flamethrowers were rushed into production to equip military units in the War of the Worlds… and were then suddenly no longer in significant demand when the Martians died unexpectedly on their own. These surplus guns, mostly local reproductions of German designs, can generally be bought on civilian markets in larger cities. Even more often, flame weapons are often found in the hands of communities with large Chinese immigrant populations, often in camps of near-slave labor imported for building and expanding railroads (which remain a major priority for most North American governments fearing a second Martian invasion and unable to move troops and vehicles quickly across their sprawling continent) and in major cities with trade ties, especially on the West Coast. Many small Chinese weaponworks shops have popped up to supply their superior designs of flame weapons, sometimes only to those of Chinese decent, but in other cases to anyone with the credits to pay for one in advance.
Table Small arms
One-Handed Weapons
Level Price Damage Range Critical Capacity Usage Bulk Special
Flame
Flammenpistole
1 90 1d3 F 30 ft. Burn 1d6 20 petrol 5 L —
Haoxian dragon pistol
2 450 1d4 F 20 ft. Burn 1d4 20 petrol 4 L Line, unwieldy
Flammenschwert
3 1,100* 1d6 F 30 ft. Burn 1d6 20 petrol 5 L —
Chaofeng dragon pistol
4 1,850* 1d6 F 20 ft. Burn 1d6 20 petrol 4 L Line, unwieldy
Suanmi dragon pistol
5 2,700* 2d4 F 20 ft. Burn 2d4 20 petrol 4 L Line, unwieldy
Yu dragon pistol
6 4,000* 2d4 F 30 ft. Burn 2d4 40 petrol 4 L Line, unwieldy
Zhayu dragon pistol
8 9,000* 2d6 F 20 ft. Burn 2d4 40 petrol 4 L Line, unwieldy
Yazhai dragon pistol
9 13,000* 2d6 F 30 ft. Burn 2d6 40 petrol 4 L Line, unwieldy
Zhurong god pistol
10 17,500* 2d8 F 30 ft. Burn 2d6 40 petrol 4 L Line, unwieldy
*Only 1,000 of this price can be covered in credits. The rest of the price must be covered using renown, as covered in the rules for Renown and Gear.
Table Longarms
Two-Handed Weapons
Level Price Damage Range Critical Capacity Usage Bulk Special
Flame
Flammengewehr
1 110 1d3 F 50 ft. Burn 1d6 20 petrol 4 1 —
Haoxian dragon rifle
2 750 1d4 F 40 ft. Burn 1d4 20 petrol 5 1 Line, unwieldy
Flammenlanze
3 1,300* 1d6 F 50 ft. Burn 1d6 20 petrol 4 1 —
Chaofeng dragon rifle
4 1,900* 1d6 F 40 ft. Burn 1d6 20 petrol 5 1 Line, unwieldy
Suanmi dragon rifle
5 2,800* 2d4 F 40 ft. Burn 2d4 20 petrol 5 1 Line, unwieldy
Yu dragon rifle
6 4,100* 2d4 F 50 ft. Burn 2d4 40 petrol 5 1 Line, unwieldy
Zhayu dragon rifle
8 9,100* 2d6 F 40 ft. Burn 2d4 40 petrol 5 1 Line, unwieldy
Yazhai dragon rifle
9 13,150* 2d6 F 50 ft. Burn 2d6 40 petrol 5 1 Line, unwieldy
Zhurong god rifle
10 17,800* 2d8 F 50 ft. Burn 2d6 40 petrol 5 1 Line, unwieldy
Table Heavy Weapons
Two-Handed Weapons
Level Price Damage Range Critical Capacity Usage Bulk Special
Flame
Flammenkanone
1 110 1d3 F 15 ft. Burn 1d6 20 petrol 5 2 Line
Haoxian dragon canon
2 750 1d4 F 20 ft. Burn 1d4 20 petrol 10 2 Blast, unwieldy
Flammewaffe
3 1,300* 1d6 F 20 ft. Burn 1d6 30 petrol 5 2 Line
Chaofeng dragon canon
4 1,900* 1d6 F 20 ft. Burn 1d6 30 petrol 10 2 Blast, unwieldy
Suanmi dragon canon
5 2,800* 2d4 F 20 ft. Burn 2d4 40 petrol 10 2 Blast, unwieldy
Yu dragon canon
6 4,100* 2d4 F 30 ft. Burn 2d4 50 petrol 10 2 Blast, unwieldy
Zhayu dragon canon
8 9,100* 2d6 F 30 ft. Burn 2d4 60 petrol 10 2 Blast, unwieldy
Yazhai dragon canon
9 13,150* 2d6 F 40 ft. Burn 2d6 60 petrol 10 2 Blast, unwieldy
Zhurong god canon
10 17,800* 2d8 F 30 ft. Burn 2d6 60 petrol 5 10 2 Blast, unwieldy
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Really Wild West Lightning Guns (For the Starfinder Roleplaying Game)
In the Really Wild West setting hack for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, lightning guns were experimented with by numerous inventors and scientists throughout the mid- and late 1800s, but the technology for focusing and directing electricity beyond a wire lead was consistently lacking for purposes of a practical weapon. The advancement of theosophy, though seen as the study of the spiritual and supernatural, proved to be the major breakthrough in lightning weaponry. Theosophy proved that inanimate objects could have the impression of events, thoughts, or even natural phenomena permanently infused into them. This lead to the idea of having the event of a lightning strike infused into a focusing orb, which could then ‘convince” electricity built up within a device to fire outward in a (roughly) predictably way. While many inventors sought to find the best material and theosophic infusion for practical lighting guns, it was the Menlo park workshop of Thomas Edison that ultimately created the “Menlo Storm” standard of “recording” the event of a lightning strike into a focusing orb and using that to store and focus electricity as part of a weapon.
Even with the Menlo Storm standard, early lightning guns were heavy, expensive, and not particularly superior to traditional firearms. However, many of those drawbacks became irrelevant when the Martian tripods attacked and turned out to be almost entirely immune to most kinetic attacks. Short of artillery, only energy weapons had any notable effect on tripods and the Martians other weapons of war. Suddenly it didn’t matter how limited lightning guns were, they were the go-to weapon for anti-tripod forces.
As is often the case when war breaks out, the technology used to fight quickly improved. German-born inventor Charles Proteus Steinmetz made numerous adjustments to lighting weapon technology, though his name remains not nearly as well-known as that of Edison. Steinmetz’s battery and coupling technology were quickly retrofit to nearly all lightning gun designs, and his own weapon designs were in field trials when the Tripods came crashing down worldwide, and the need for such specialty crafted high-end weapons ended. Westinghouse created a few commercial models based on Steinmetz’s designs, but simplified for mass production, though these remain less popular than the Menlo Park models. Steinmetz’s various field prototypes remain the most powerful lightning guns in existence, but they are exceedingly difficult to find.
Table: Small Arms
One-Handed Weapons
Level Price Damage Range Critical Capacity Usage Bulk
Shock
Spark gun, Westinghouse light
1 250 1d4 E 30 ft. Arc 1 20 charges 4 L
Lightning pistol, Menlo arc
2 750 1d6 E 40 ft. Arc 2 20 charges 5 L
Spark gun, Westinghouse heavy
3 1,400* 1d6 E 40 ft. Arc 1d4 20 charges 4 L
Lightning pistol, Menlo storm
4 2,100* 1d6 E 50 ft. Arc 1d6 40 charges 5 L
Lightning pistol, Menlo custom
5 3,000* 1d4+1d3 E 50 ft. Arc 1d6 40 charges 5 L
Proteus pistol, Perun
6 4,200* 1d8 E 60 ft. Arc 1d6 40 charges 5 L
Proteus pistol, Zeus
8 9,300* 1d10 E 60 ft. Arc 1d6 40 charges 5 L
Proteus pistol, Ukko
9 13,250* 2d6 E 60 ft. Arc 1d8 40 charges 5 L
Proteus pistol, Thor
10 18,000* 3d4 E 60 ft. Arc 2d6 40 charges 5 L
*Only 1,000 of this price can be covered in credits. The rest of the price must be covered using renown, as covered in the rules for Renown and Gear.
Table: Longarms
Two-Handed Weapons
Level Price Damage Range Critical Capacity Usage Bulk
Shock
Spark rifle, Westinghouse light
1 275 1d6 E 40 ft. Arc 1 20 charges 4 1
Lightning rifle, Menlo arc
2 800 1d8 E 50 ft. Arc 2 20 charges 5 1
Spark rifle, Westinghouse heavy
3 1,500* 1d8 E 50 ft. Arc 1d4 20 charges 4 1
Lightning rifle, Menlo storm
4 2,200* 1d8 E 60 ft. Arc 1d6 40 charges 5 1
Lightning rifle, Menlo custom
5 3,300* 1d10 E 60 ft. Arc 1d6 40 charges 5 1
Proteus rifle, Perun
6 4,600* 1d12 E 60 ft. Arc 1d6 40 charges 5 1
Proteus rifle, Zeus
8 9,900* 1d12 E 60 ft. Arc 1d6 80 charges 5 1
Proteus rifle, Ukko
9 14,250* 2d6 E 60 ft. Arc 2d4 80 charges 5 1
Proteus rifle, Thor
10 19,000* 3d4 E 60 ft. Arc 2d6 80 charges 5 1
Table: Heavy Weapons
Two-Handed Weapons
Level Price Damage Range Capacity Usage Bulk Special
Shock
Spark canon, Westinghouse light
1 275 1d6 E 40 ft. 20 charges 4 2 explode (5 ft.), unwealdy
Lightning canon, Menlo arc
2 800 1d8 E 50 ft. 20 charges 5 2 explode (5 ft.), unwealdy
Spark canon, Westinghouse heavy
3 1,500* 1d8 E 50 ft. 20 charges 4 2 explode (5 ft.), unwealdy
Lightning canon, Menlo storm
4 2,200* 1d8 E 60 ft. 40 charges 5 2 explode (10 ft.), unwealdy
Lightning canon, Menlo custom
5 3,300* 1d10 E 60 ft. 40 charges 5 2 explode (10 ft.), unwealdy
Proteus canon, Perun
6 4,600* 1d12 E 60 ft. 40 charges 5 2 explode (10 ft.), unwealdy
Proteus canon, Zeus
8 9,900* 1d12 E 60 ft. 80 charges 5 2 explode (10 ft.), unwealdy
Proteus canon, Ukko
9 14,250* 2d6 E 60 ft. 80 charges 5 2 explode (15 ft.), unwealdy
Proteus canon, Thor
10 19,000* 3d4 E 60 ft. 80 charges 5 2 explode (15 ft.), unwealdy
Over on Patreon!
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Really Wild West Science Agents (For Starfinder)
The room smelled strongly of sulfur, with scorch marks covering one wall and the adjacent floor and roof. Something had clearly exploded, driving fragments of wood away from the burned wall and scattering shattered glass, torn pages, and bent metal implements across the small space.
Rosa Abascal crouched near what appeared to be the origin of the detonation, careful to keep only the soles of her feet in contact with the ground, and dragged one gloved finger through the residue. It was dry, but still bright red and shiny, the color of blood.
“You see Agent Abascal?” The agitated man behind her was obviously nervous, but Rosa had found Americans were often nervous around her. Honestly, most men were nervous around her. An inevitable consequence of her badge and gun. But he sounded sincerely frightened, and has not tried to move closer to her, even when she turned her back on him. It was a risk she could only take because she trusted her partner to react faster than any fat businessman, though she also had her other hand close enough to the knife in her boot to handle any aggression herself if necessary.
But the American wasn’t moving any further into the room than the doorway, and he nearly vomited out his loud concerns.
“You smell it, don’t you Agent? Brimstone! And with these strange books and idols and runes? Satanists have infiltrated my mine, and summoned demons! I’d have called a marshal, but…”
But, thought Rosa, this close to the border we’d arrive faster. Or he had hoped we’d fail to notice something.
The room darkened slightly, and Rosa turned to see her partner, Agent Garza, stepping past the nervous American. She raised her fingertip, to let Garza see the mix of residual blasting powder and powdered stellar metals. He grunted, and nodded past the door to the scrublands beyond.
“Looks like a small group kept their horses in a nearby arroyo until recently.” Garza spoke in Esperanto, as was his habit. The Científicos’s rules on the use of the new hopefully universal lingua franca weren’t official yet, but Garza always liked to be just ahead of the rules.
“But the horses were scattered a day or two ago, and only one set of hoofprints are deep enough to have had a rider,” Garza finished.
Rosa nodded. She had kept one eye on the American, and not only did she not think he understood Esperanto, she was pretty sure he didn’t realize it wasn’t Spanish. That meant he was unlikely to give anything away with a reaction to Agent Garza’s report, but Rosa was fairly sure he didn’t know anything he wasn’t saying. His fear at the thought of demons seemed as genuine as it was unwarranted.
Rosa stood, and showed the American her fingertip, though she knew he was unlikely to grasp the relevance.
“Not demons, señor. Demolitions. Whoever stayed here was experimenting with a mix of stellar ores and explosives. Cavorite, most likely, or potentially even red mercury.”
The American looked confused, and then relieved. Rosa took out a small hand kerchief, and thoroughly cleaned her glove’s fingertip.
“So… there’s nothing to worry about!” The American seemed pleased. “You can return to your side of the border and…”
Agent Garza interrupted, speaking in English.
“No, sir. There’s no sign of planar visitors, but that’s far from saying there’s no danger. Such metals are rare and expensive. For someone to have had enough to leave this much residue, “he gestured to the scorchmarks covering half the cabin’s interior “almost certainly means he found a Martian fighting machine, or possibly an embankment machine, and scavenged from it.:
Rosa nodded, and she folded her kerchief, and laid it on the broken remains of the room’s table.
“If there’s more such metal, whoever experimented here might salvage enough for a bomb that could threaten a town or small city. Or, worse, there might be canisters of black smoke, or dormant red weed. It’s crucial we find the machine before anything left with it is activated or unleashed.”
“But…” the Amercian paused. “If the trail leads further into Texan territory… “
Rosa was already headed to her horse.
“If there’s a significant threat to the region as a whole, science agents are empowered by our government to operate wherever necessary.”
Her glove’s fingertip burst into flame, and the fire quickly began to spread to the ruined table. The cabin was on a patch of bare dirt, and bordered on three sides by rock. The flames would eliminate the cabin and any residues, and spread no farther.
In a world where weird science and theosophic magic are real, of course positivism cannot deny the existence of strange powers. What it CAN insist on is a rigorous testing of such powers and an analysis of how they function. In the Really Wild West, it has become crucially important for governments and major agencies to be able to tell the mysterious from the mystic, and the revolutionary from the disastrous. Among those with the best track record and reputation for such needs are the science agents of the Mexican Porfiriate.
Science Agent Archetype
Science agents are special federal law officers who work directly for the Científicos, the government council of scientist ministers and directors who are guiding Mexico into a new age of rationalism and modernity. They act as investigators, law keepers, trackers, spies, troubleshooters, and paramilitary advisers. They are respected as one of the great peacekeeping forces in North America, on par with the Canadian Mounties, Dread Templars, Justicers, Pinketons,Texas Rangers, and U.S. Martials.
Most science agents train at the Hall of Science in Mexico City, though it is also possible for a science agent to take a single deputy cadet and train them, with either method taking between 1 and 4 years depending on the cadet’s aptitude and previous education. All science agents must swear to apply the scientific method over intuition or superstition, and to protect Mexico in specific, and humanity, rational thought, and science in general. There is no other official requirement, and the Porfiriate’s insistence on promotion and decision-making based on evidence-based investigation has lead to a series of standards cadets must meet that do not include any gender, religion, age, or level of formal education. Anyone who can pass the strenuous entrance exams, which focus on logical thought (but not specific previous knowledge of any scientific principles), determination, and basic physical ability, may attempt to become a science agent. Roughly 1 in 5 cadets finish the course, but that number includes equal numbers of men, women, urbanites, and rural citizens.
Science agents are often given great latitude to track down potential threats, and often operate outside of Mexico. There legal authority to do so is questionable at best, but their strong reputation causes most honest folks to give the silver-eagle badges of the science agents some leeway as long as they aren’t committing crimes themselves.
Alternate Class Features
Scientific Method (Ex): At 2nd level, a science agent has learned enough about how theosophy, Martian technology, psychic phenomenon, planar creatures, and advanced science work to be able to examine an area and determine if anything in it is magical. This functions as detect magic, except it is an extraordinary ability. Additionally, a number of times per day equal to the science agent’s key ability score bonus, she can attempt to identify an item’s function as the identify spell, but as an extraordinary ability and using a character level check in place of a Mysticism or Engineering check. A science agent also gains a +2 bonus to AC and saving throws against attacks and effects from a specific object she successfully identified.
At this level a science agent also learns Esperanto and either English or French.
Keen Observer (Ex): At 4th level a science agent may choose from one of two abilities. The first is an insight bonus equal to half her character level to checks with any two of the following skills: Diplomacy, Perception, Sense Motive, and Survival. If either selected skill is not a class skill, it becomes a class skill. If the science agent has a feat that grants an insight bonus to either of these skills, she may retrain that feat immediately, or at the beginning of any future level, for a feat she meets the prerequisites for at 4th level.
Alternatively, the science agent may choose to gain blindsense (sound) with a range of 30 feet and blindsense (scent) with a range of 10 feet.
The choices made with this ability cannot be changed.
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