Steamfunkateers

by Balogun Ojetade

  Superb Strength: By working your muscles and mind in tandem, you can deliver more power than either on its own, effectively giving you superb strength.

  Drawbacks

  A lifetime of pulling things toward you with your mind, rather than your arms, either led to, or was a result of, your own Weak and Frail Body.

  This might be kind of gross, but your mental prowess is tied to your Huge, Visible, Pulsating Brain.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Holding Pattern: By pouring everything you have into your telekinetic special ability, you can lift everyone and everything in your zone and adjacent zones off the ground. Lifted targets cannot move or take physical actions that require movement, such as using Melee, but they can still use Marksman or mental attacks.

  Powerkinesis: You can lift something up to the size of a steam train’s caboose and hurl it, either to destroy a wall or similarly robust obstacle, or to attack every target in your zone or an adjacent zone.

  Telepathy

  You know what everyone is thinking.

  Basic Telepathy: Choose one skill from Empathy, Investigate, or Spot. You can use this skill to glean information from the minds of people in your zone or adjacent zones. If your target knows or suspects you are reading their mind, they can actively oppose you with Will. Empathy can discover what someone is feeling, Investigate delves into deep thoughts and memories, and Spot picks up surface thoughts and detects unfamiliar minds. You can also project words into the minds of anyone within range.

  Enhancements

  Master Telepathy: You are a skilled mind reader. You gain +2d to your telepathic skills when reading minds.

  Long-Distance Telepathy: You can read the minds of others regardless of distance, so long as you can see them.

  Mental Blasts: You can use Will to launch mental attacks up to three zones away. If you succeed with Four Successes or Five Successes or Straight Flush, you can either render them comatose or take control of their mind.

  Telepathic Flexibility: You know many ways to read a mind. Choose another skill you can also use to read minds.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Influence: Not only can you read minds, but you can also tweak them. Just a little. Just to your advantage.

  Animal Control: Human minds aren’t the only ones worth reading; animal minds are versatile and very malleable as well.

  Drawbacks

  When you can read others’ thoughts but nobody’s reading your own, you Tend to Abuse Your Power.

  Delving too deep into someone’s brain is risky; their thoughts may start to resonate with yours and generate Multiple Personalities.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Psychic Lockdown: You can mentally overwhelm everyone else in the scene, effectively freezing them. They can’t take physical actions, but they can still invoke descriptors and perform mental tasks. They can attempt to break out by surmounting with Will, opposed by your Will. On each of your turns, you must concentrate, using your action, to keep them frozen. The psychic brain-lock will definitely have lasting effects on their brains.

  Psychic Maelstrom: You open your mind, and your entire zone becomes inundated with psychic energy. Anyone who ends their turn in your zone takes two mild, sticky mental conditions, and anyone who ends in a zone adjacent to yours takes one mild, sticky mental condition. This effect persists until you choose to end it or the victim receives mental healing of some sort.

  Teleportation

  You go where you want, more or less instantaneously, without traveling through space.

  Basic Teleportation: You can move up to three zones as an action, provided that you can see where you are moving to.

  Enhancements

  Teleportation Mastery: You can move an additional zone when you teleport.

  Collective Teleportation: Normally you can only teleport yourself, but with a little effort you can teleport any human-sized target you touch. If the target resists, make an attack using Melee to grab them against their will.

  X Marks the Spot: By concentrating for a few minutes in a location, you can mark it. Thereafter, you can always teleport back to your marked location, regardless of distance. You may change your marked location whenever you want, but you can only have one marked location at a time.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Energy Blast: You don’t actually fire bolts of energy, but you can teleport bursts of fire, balls of lava, or similar nastiness directed at your foes, and that works pretty much the same.

  Item Summoning: Back home you’ve got a big collection of useful things, which you can teleport into your hands whenever you need to.

  Drawbacks

  Your teleportation fills you with energy that discharges as soon as you appear at your destination. You create an Involuntary Energy Field.

  When you teleport, you actually move through another dimension, one where physics works differently. The process creates Massive Clouds of Foul-Smelling Smoke.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Side Door: You can chain together two zones with a slightly unstable shortcut through space, tearing reality as you know it into little bits. Pick any two zones you can see; these zones are considered the same zone for all purposes.

  Sightseeing: You can teleport to any location in the city that you have seen before, even if just in paintings or tintypes. Unfortunately, this imprecise maneuver usually ends with you crashing through something important.

  Wall-Crawling

  You can cling to—and move along—objects or surfaces such as walls and ceilings.

  Basic Wall-Crawling: You can move along any solid surface, even upside-down, as easily as you move along the ground. In addition, you get +2d to Athletics while navigating obstacles that involve climbing.

  Enhancements

  Master Wall-Crawling: You gain an additional +2d bonus to Athletics when climbing.

  Rebound: You can leap off the wall to put a little more power into your strikes. You gain +2d to Melee if you can attack someone by jumping off a wall.

  Clingy: If you find a comfortable spot on a wall or ceiling, you can hang there for hours if need be. You can even sleep there perfectly safely.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Superb Agility: You can leap from wall to wall like a flea.

  Superb Strength: You can pull your entire body up a sheer surface by the power of your fingertips alone—you’re definitely strong.

  Drawbacks

  Fact is, the ability to hang onto a wall comes from the strange, viscous substance oozing out of your hands and feet. You are, literally, Sticky-Fingered.

  You can get a finger hold on even the tiniest, most insignificant nooks and crannies of a wall, but you Can’t Climb Perfectly Smooth Surfaces.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Gravity Manipulation: Your wall-crawling ability actually comes from your ability to adjust the pull of gravity on yourself so that “down” is where you want it to be, at least for a few minutes. You can expand this gravity trick to cover an entire zone, pulling everyone and everything not nailed down into the wall you’re standing on. Anyone who hasn’t braced for impact must surmount a level-1 obstacle using Athletics; otherwise, they land poorly and take a mild, sticky condition.

  Hold Fast: You can bring any moving object, up to the size and speed of a train, to a complete halt, provided you can hold onto it with one hand and onto something reasonably solid, like the ground, with the other. Doing this doesn’t hurt you—your body is built to handle these forces—but it will probably damage whatever you’re trying to stop.

  Weather Control

  You can manipulate and exert influence upon all the natural forces responsible for weather, creating rain, wind, hail, lightning, snow, sleet, fog, and temperature changes.

  Basic Weather Control: You can fill your zone with specific weather patterns by getting the upper hand using Will. You normally do this at -1d penalty, but the penalty increases to -2d with especially difficult weather, such as to
rnadoes, or especially inclement weather, such as snow during high summer. These weather patterns fade away when you will them to, when you leave the zone, or otherwise at the end of the scene.

  Enhancements

  Master Weather Control: You gain +1d to Will when creating a weather pattern and suffer no penalty or bonus for especially inclement weather.

  Weather Precision: You can use Will to attack any target in a zone in which you’ve created a weather pattern.

  Lingering Weather: Weather patterns you create linger while you are in an adjacent zone. In addition, you can create weather patterns in adjacent zones.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Energy Blast: Rather than firing blasts of pure energy, you can induce winds to blow with pinpoint precision, as effectively as another super might toss a fireball.

  Flight: With a few carefully choreographed updrafts, you can take to the skies.

  Improved Special Effect

  Dangerous Weather: Your weather pattern makes a +4d attack against a single target in its zone.

  Drawbacks

  Your moods tend to leech into the room’s weather, no matter how hard you try. You suffer from Sympathetic Weather Patterns.

  The weather you create can be impressive, but it’s easily overpowered by nature. That’s why you’re Only Effective While Indoors.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Maelstrom: When you need to, you can dial up your storms dangerously high. Your weather pattern attacks every target in its zone with a +4d attack.

  Winds of Change: Your weather pattern fills its zone with enough wind to push everyone except you into an adjacent zone of your choice. Until you end the effect, nobody can re-enter the zone.

  THE STEAMFUNKATEERS UNIVERSE

  Origin of the Brushed

  While much about the Brushed is still deeply shrouded in mystery during the Age of Steam—1837CE-1901CE—it is believed that Baas Bello—teacher of Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Banneker, Stagecoach Mary Fields and other great, Black heroes and sheroes throughout the world—is the first of the Brushed, although Baas neither confirms or denies this. It is known that Baas Bello is much older than the giant, Mama Maybelle, who claims to have been present at the forming of the Grand Canyon (although Mama Maybelle has been known to… exaggerate a bit).

  It is also known that Baas Bello is aware of—and even communicates with—his selves in alternate universes, which provides even more evidence that he is the first among the Brushed, as no other human being is known to have manifested such an ability.

  In fact, in the Southwest region of Nigeria, the Yoruba people consider Baas to be an Orisa—one of the 400+1 Forces of Nature (the “+1” means the Orisa are ever-expanding; ever-growing).

  Many believe the Brushed are all personifications of some Force of Nature or Cosmic Power. This belief is shared by animists and cultural traditionalists.

  Most Christians and Muslims believe the Brushed receive their special abilities from God/Allah or the Devil/Shaitan—depending on which entity they serve, or if they walk the path of good or evil.

  Most men and women of science believe the Brushed are genetic anomalies, or the next step in evolution.

  Mystics believe the Brushed have tapped into arcane energies and express them in sundry ways.

  Whatever the case may be, the number of the Brushed seems to be increasing. By Baas Bello’s estimate—he keeps thorough and in-depth records of sightings of the Brushed and their activities—there are over thirty of the Brushed in the United States alone.

  The World in the Age of Steam

  The Age of Steam—called the Victorian Era by some—conjures images of men in top hats and women in bustles and corsets walking along a foggy cobblestone street, or rugged men in Stetson hats and string ties and women in cotton dresses and bonnets running across a dirt road to avoid a stagecoach speeding by. Now, while all that is certainly a part of it, the truth is that, at the time, Great Britain and other European countries were ravaging Africa, stealing her people, cultures and resources, and exploiting and polluting countries throughout Asia.

  While the entire world may not have been controlled by Great Britain at the time, the entire world certainly felt Great Britain’s influence.

  In the United States, gunslingers left a bloody trail across the states and territories; cattle barons, corrupt landowners and slave traders made big business out of other people’s misery; and the indigenous people fought for justice and sovereignty in their own home.

  Driven by the industrial revolution, steam engines roared throughout the lands of the Diaspora, blanketing the sky with dense black smoke and crushing the hopes of the darker peoples of the planet.

  Vicarious Adventures

  In the Age of Steam, people from all walks of life hungered for stories that would take them to faraway lands, but they sought these adventures for very different reasons.

  Most Black people throughout the Diaspora wanted to go “home”—back to Mother Africa—where they believed they would be free and made equal to all man and mankind. In fact, a popular story among Black people was of enslaved Africans who had escaped slavery by turning into birds and flying free, back to Africa.

  Those who did not see flying home as an option, took to tales of outsmarting white people, giving them their comeuppance and having better lives because of it. Tales of John the Conqueror, also known as High John the Conqueror, John de Conquer, and many other variants, were wildly popular throughout the plantations of the United States and later throughout free Black communities still suffering from white oppression. John the Conqueror is associated with John the Conqueror root, or John the Conqueroo, to which magical powers are ascribed, especially among the hoodoo tradition of folk magic.

  John the Conqueror was an African prince who was sold as a slave in the Americas. Despite his enslavement, his spirit was never broken and he survived in folklore as a sort of a trickster figure, because of the tricks he played to evade his masters. Joel Chandler Harris’ Br’er Rabbit of the Uncle Remus stories is said to be patterned after High John the Conqueror.

  In one traditional John the Conqueror story, John falls in love with the Devil’s daughter. The Devil sets John a number of impossible tasks: he must clear sixty acres of land in half a day, and then sow it with corn and reap it in the other half a day. The Devil’s daughter furnishes John with a magical axe and plow that get these impossible tasks done, but warns John that her father the Devil means to kill him even if he performs them. John and the Devil’s daughter steal the Devil’s horses; the Devil pursues them, but they escape his clutches by shape-shifting.

  It is believed that High John the Conqueror went back to Africa, but left his power in the Americas, placing it in the root of a certain plant. Possess that root, and he can be summoned at any time. In Steamfunkateers, the truth is, High John the Conqueror is one of the town elders of Nicodemus, Kansas and is preparing for a prophesied war between the Brushed.

  Charles W. Chesnutt published The Conjure Woman in 1899. The book, a series of loosely associated short stories, focuses on Uncle Julius McAdoo’s efforts to manipulate and dupe his northern-born, white employers, with hilarious results.

  Like the famed trickster, High John the Conqueror, Uncle Julius overcomes an oppressive society through cunning, veiled courage and humor and his tales offer coded commentary on the psychological and social impact of slavery and racial inequality.

  The stories Of Uncle Julius combine a good bit of magic—”cunjuhring,” “root wuk,” “goophering” – and creatures of the supernatural.

  White people, on the other hand, sought to adventure in “exotic” places. “Exotic” usually referred to Asian cities, such as Bangkok, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. While the steamship and the Suez Canal dramatically cut travel times around the world, many people couldn’t afford to take long journeys to other lands. Travel novels filled that need, allowing readers to explore those places and cultures through the senses of the characters. W
hite people that could afford it imported carpets, furniture, clothes, and foodstuffs from the “exotic East.”

  Another important theme in the Age of Steam is westernization. Westernization—a polite way of saying “abandon your native cultures and beliefs and replace them with ours, primarily for our economic benefit—included the spreading of Christianity to the rest of the world, and the term goes much further. The British, with varying degrees of success, transported their “civil service” model to other cultures.

  Railroads, telegraphs, and other machines found their way to India, China, and Japan. Combat tactics changed forever as the rifle replaced the spear and bow and the machine gun tore through charging armies. Some leaders, such as the Emperor of Japan, saw westernization as a necessity in order to compete with imperial cultures.

  Westernization also included political dominance. Many early trade agreements turned into imperial influence and eventually conquest. The two competing models were imperialism and colonialism—both two sides of the same coin better known as Global White Supremacy.

  Imperialism left native cultures largely intact, with local rulers that swore fealty to the ruling country. The ruling country would only interfere when it was convenient, providing oversight and modernizing the nation (to the white mind during the Age of Steam, “modernization” and “westernization” were the same thing).

  Colonialism, on the other hand, was defined by direct rule by the dominating country, often displacing local populations with its own people. Colonialism was a more popular option in places where the natives were loosely organized and resources were easy to acquire.

  Society

  Society played a large role in Steam Age England. Officially, British society was divided into two classes, noble and commoner. Each was represented by a House in Parliament. Industry and trade, however, made some commoners very rich, and although they could never be nobles, which is a birthright, they shared little in common with the rest of their class. Victorian society, therefore, understood that British society was in fact made up of three classes. The British middle class aped the upper class in ritual and some middle class gentlemen were actually wealthier than some of their “betters.” Faced with dwindling finances, many upper class bachelors took middle class or foreign wives to acquire wealth. Society discouraged such cross-pollination, of course, and each class had its own constantly shifting rules of etiquette and manner. Classes were encouraged to keep to themselves, interacting with each other only when necessary.