Decided to do a fun art piece after writing out some setting information in my private notes. Sometimes it's fun to remind myself that I'm an artist, and can do pixel art for fun. So here we have some deep setting lore. To even talk about The Moonfisher, I have to go into the cosmology of the Brave Earth setting and why the world "ended", as well as how things began.
Firearms have a weird place in the New World, owing to the ever present effect of magic on technology, especially weapons of war. While there was a high availability of Old World guns found in old ruins and caches, the danger of using them made them unpopular in most parts of the world. At worst, guns would explode, often maiming the person trying to use it. At best, they were plagued by misfires, malfunctions and frequent jams. Even when operating correctly, the latent magic would seemingly slow their trajectory. Their target's soul would slow it even more. While magic interference has lessened over the last hundred years, most places, with the exception of Simeria, don't have a gun culture.
Firearms are an oddity in most of the world. While many places these days can easily support a robust bolt action rifle, it's simply hard to compete with compound crossbows and bows. They are not too uncommon as tools for various mercenaries and one-off troop units.
Gun Cultists (Found in Brave Earth: Prologue, actually) are one of those most common ways of achieving a functional firearm. Building, adoring, and worshipping your own firearm can create a magically imprinted gun which is protected by the user's soul when firing. The munitions still suffer from the same magical air resistance, but otherwise function normally. The nature of these cultists though means that most guns that they make are relatively crude muskets, or breach loaded weapons. Many get mangled in the process of trying to create a functional weapon.
Similarly, anyone using a firearm long enough has a chance of creating a slight bond that at least helps with reliability, though this is a hard thing to test for. Naturally this makes most gun users very superstitious.
The magically enhanced nature of a lot of New World fighters and the projectile slowing forces around them make firearms kinda reactable. Even in the Weiss, someone with a powerful enough soul can still slow a shot enough possibly dodge it on reaction. Wounds tend to be less serious too, though this, to some extent, applies to all weapons (the soul is good at trying to keep people alive).
As such, velocity is a thought after trait in firearms, though the equipment needed for extreme velocities mostly only exists in Simeria.
Most firearms are used in Simeria. Shiv, located in the Weiss Desert, the biggest magical deadzone in the world, had immediate use for them, even when magical interference was at its highest. Now, several hundred years in the future, Simeria is the only continent where firearms are produced at a "modern" level, at least at any type of scale, and the only place where wars are regularly fought with them. As the influence of technology spreads, so does Shiv's influence, as they can project their military further out into the world.
Since Simeria started off using recovered weapon stockpiles, most of the most common calibers are still in use today. Someone like Reese, trying to keep her old arsenal supplied, has no problem acquiring new 9mm, .45 ACP, or 5.56 Nato, she has a had time finding replacement 5.7x28 rounds. Rounds tend to be loaded heavier than their Old World counterparts, always looking for that little bit extra velocity.
Honestly most of the weapon choices in modern Shiv wouldn't be far out. Something not far out from a HK416, or something like a Steyr Scout as a simpler rifle to use in magically dense areas. Not exactly these guns, but if I was to design ones, I'd be looking in this direction. That's not that fun though. Instead, how would I design a more specialized gun to solve more specialized New World problems? Well I had fun trying to take a stab at this.
The F408 is a "Frontier Rifle" (released in 408 ACE), a firearm designed explicitly to be used on the boundary zones ("frontiers") between highly magical and technologically tolerant spaces. It is a weapon used almost exclusively by Shivic Rangers, as the gun is known to quirky, and unpleasant to use and maintain... on top of being rather expensive. But it is reliable at what it does and is well regarded amongst Rangers.
The gun itself is a pump action bullpup underfire revolver with a gas sealed cylinder system designed to fire flechette rounds, which is very silly, but were designed to work around both magic and the gun's own self-induced problems.
Other annoying traits.
Despite all this, the F408 is the most considered the most powerful, effective firearm that can be reliably used in high magic conditions. This is a narrow use case, but one that was important enough the fund the weapon's development. I imagine WF Zünd as a smaller arms manufacturer, and this contract and design a crazy engineering flex to show off what they can do. The end result of this might have been mixed though, as it's easy to see the F408 as an over-engineered novelty.
Either way, this gun is ridiculous, but my goal was to make something ridiculous in a semi-believable way. It's not supposed to be perfectly realistic but at least thought out enough as to not make it's design seem completely arbitrary. I had fun making it, and doing the pixel art for it, so I hope you enjoy reading about it!
I'm not ready to write a whole thing about Reese, Cass's mother, and her weird ass backstory involving her tripping into immortality, fighting in two world wars. While she has a very "Teenager Era OC" history vibe to her, I wanna keep it but just... tune it up to my modern standards. But some general things I can say.
Laon dela Alas is a character still in the works who has big boots to fill, being a potential replacement to Hikaru as Cassara's love interest.
Gotta get started with something. This is a redone version of my original cohost pinned post on my lore journal, reposted AGAIN from my Dreamwidth. I figure it'd be good to have something I can link to on any OC posts I put out.
In 2016 CE the Earth was Rended. an cataclysmic event of unknown origin, brought ruin upon to world. Somehow, humanity survived the upheaval of the old world, finding the an unrecognizable world. Survivors found themselves scattered across the savage new earth at random, building societies with people who didn't share their culture or language. Others found themselves lost in time, showing up decades or even centuries later. All this in a world wild with magic and that seemed intrinsically hostile to the technology that the old world was built on.
The World was shattered and unrecognizable, with those still on it trying to survive in savage landscapes, filled with wild magic. The very air seeming destructive to the technology of the Old World, while daemons, physical representations of humanity's myths and legends, ran rampant across the land.
Despite this, Humanity endured.
Those without language or culture in common came together to build something new. Societies learned from each other, merging into new, unique cultures. Without easy access to technology, old ways of life returned, as did inequality. The Soul made humanity stronger, but in increasing humanity's potential, so too did it create the conditions necessary for tyranny. The Era of Kings and Queens returned, as did war. As the harsh hellscape faded, Humanity's greatest enemy once again became itself.
Now, it is the 5th Century of the New Era. The Earth is green again. The chaotic wastelands of the past are almost long forgotten. The rules of magic have been studied and refined. Magic's abrasive force on technology has weakened in some places, allowing for the rise of great cities of machines and steel. Cultures and ethnicity have fused and where English, Mandarin or Hindi are not the standard language, pidgins and creoles fill the gaps. Many Old World Languages are now only known by nobility and scholars, a time in history that is quickly becoming a footnote, even while scavengers dig deep under mountains for now ancient artifacts.
Brave Earth is a setting where fantasy tropes can fuse with anachronistic 'modern' element, while also being directly connected our real world history. Originally conceived as a setting that was flexible for a lot of my old RP groups, it's been refined and has changed a lot over the years. Most of the modern stories in the setting, including Brave Earth Prologue, happen across the continents of Aistoria and Simeria, which represent the ruins of what used to be Europe and Asia. Aistoria, a land of knights and magic and it's distant neighbor of Shiv, a land of technology and industry. While the anti-technological effects of magic keep these regions separate, cultural exchange leads to a weird blend of influences. Knights, in plate armor, but arming doublets of kevlar. Medieval-esque cities with "modern"ish stores and fashion trends that cross back and forth. A setting with a noble woman can learn fencing and magic and then go back to their castle to listen to pop music on their super expensive reinforced, magic resistant MP3 player. The setting is designed to be eclectic and a little eccentric in it's fusing of elements. While not a setting designed to permissive to anything like it was 20-something years ago, it is still a fairly flexible setting.
There will probably be a lot of writing on here about how magic in Brave Earth works, but the quick version:
The earth of surrounded by a film of 'soul' power. Humanity all have souls. Souls are the mirror of the self. The body tries to have parity with the soul. It is suspected that humans might not have had souls before the Rending of the Earth.
Souls make modern humans live longer, heal faster, and be stronger and more capable of being their ideal selves (with caveats). Magic manipulates 'loose' soul energy (aether), influencing it to do your bidding. Magic is a science, but oddly more of a social science. Magic runes and writing work because people believe in them, and this believe propagates in the loose souls (the 'Aether Field'). Studious mages have gotten magic to the point where it is practically programming, but many use magic intuitively.
Beliefs echoing through soul mass that surround the world also cause 'ideas' to pop into existence. These "daemons" are entities that 'act' like monsters or other creatures from human culture. An orc exists because people believe in them. It is violent because that's what people think orcs are.
Daemons are not sapient. They're like weird NPCs. They can appear intelligent but prodding them shows a lack of any real long term memory and very repetitious behavior patterns. While this is understood by many magical scholars, it is common for humanity to treat these things at face value (The Church of Aistoria sees a daemon of a Demon as a literal satanic Demon). Killing a daemon doesn't really kill it as much as it just pushes the energy back to the Astral Plane. There are also weird and complicated exceptions to all of this.
The Aether Field is naturally hostile to technology. Cars will stall, electronics will fry, and in particular, things like guns have a tendency to fail catastrophically in high magic areas. Large populations of people and human foot traffic seem to lessen this effect ("real" souls taking up space rather than the vague, soul like energy) allowing say, some cities in Astoria to have say, lighting and refrigeration. Some places in border regions can use more advanced tech, as long as it's more robust. Many tricks are used to try and protect technology from magic to try and extend its usefulness. Despite the separation of magic and tech, both types of cultures are well aware and knowledgeable of the other, as business and trade relationships kinda requires it. Places like Aistoria benefit from goods manufactured with technological processes and Shiv benefits from good made in Aistoria with magic processes.... OOOOR by cheap labor, you know how it goes.
While I feel like I'm still missing a lot, this is about as reasonable of a primer as I can hope for.
A minor Brave Earth character that came up in RP. I'd consider using her in a game role at some point.
A war orphan, taken in and named as a baby by nuns of the Aistorian Catholic Church. Unwilling to become become a nun, but harboring deep resentment to the Aistorian Nobility, Antonella joined the militant side of the Church, becoming a Prefect.
Prefects kinda the "Church MPs" or enforcers, used to represent the Pope's will when dealing with Aistorian nations. Antonella is kinda a fireball, known for being a brazen and harsh when dealing with nobility. She's generally only sent someplace when someone needs a stern talking too. An angry, damaged, and unreasonable bitch, but relatable. 😭 Who isn't an angry queer, mad at injustice, who just wants to scream at people in power?