Kickstarter Manuscript Preview – Part 5 © 2021 White Wolf Entertainment © 2021 Onyx Path Publishing Chapter Nine: Around the World “If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.” Dr David Livingstone The reign of Queen Victoria begins on the 20th June, 1837, and lasts until the beginning of the 20th century. During those long years, change wracks the world — often with a terrible price in human lives, suffering, and dignity. The last days of piracy upon the high seas play out to their bloody conclusion under imperial cannonade and shot. The spark of revolutions ignites many times across the globe, all too often to gutter out as the pendulum of civic oppression swings back and forth; some inspire great change, others end in crushing defeat upon blood-slick streets as a stark warning, and others yet are simply forgotten. Gunfighters exchange salvos of lead in gripping stories of the Wild West, but the backdrop of such derring-do is an industrial-powered military machine grinding through a body count of native populations. Across the world, that which has gone before and is now deemed as “primitive” is crushed and brushed aside for the new order. Along with the carnage comes the infrastructure of imperial control and exploitation. Education spreads, but in a form approved of and controlled by authority; the halls of academia and power see an effort to chain languages in new, standardized forms, even as handwriting itself is meticulously curated into strictly set cursive styles. The Industrial Revolution burns at the era’s heart, a rabid expression of new (and sometimes stolen) technologies utterly changing innumerable lives at an incredibly swift rate. Smokestacks rise, tools split mountains, and machines cut the earth open to feed the belly of the industrial beast; cities, packed so full they must bulge and spill and spread, swallow whole villages and communities like ravening beasts. Among magi, the era is just as fundamentally transformative. The Order of Reason metamorphoses into the Technocratic Union, and its rivalry with the Traditions begins the Ascension War in earnest. Rigid systems of formality and propriety let the will of the powerful and the state press down on the individual, caging them in the foundations of the Order’s paradigm. A precious few rise against such magickal and mundane systems, but all too often become consumed by the very things they struggle against. This chapter presents a broad sweep of the world during Queen Victorian’s reign, including viewpoints of events through the eyes of various observers. It covers both the magickal and mundane, delving into the fall of nations and the advance of imperial power alongside the trials and tribulations of magi across the globe. Key events shape the attitudes, actions, and beliefs of the people of the day — and the consequences thereof. By necessity, this chapter can only serve as a starting point for games set in the Victorian era; to cover in detail the entire world’s worth of rich cultures, dramatic turning points, courageous struggles, and brutal atrocities is far beyond the limitations of any single text. Take what is presented here as a source of inspiration and plots for your own chronicles, and invent or research as you need. Furthermore, a Victorian Mage chronicle need not follow the rails of the past, whether it be historical events or already-established fictional happenings in other Mage: The Ascension products. The World of Darkness is a shared fiction, and each chronicle the possession of its particular players. Be adventurous, and do not feel limited by what has gone before. Magi have the opportunity to change the world, after all. A Brief Overview The world is vast, and filled with distinct peoples and unique situations; no single theme or law can be applied across the whole. Certain topics, however do come to affect vast swathes of the globe, whether imprinted through the influence of imperial conquest, stirred by the resistance to such, or spreading through the magickal societies of the Awakened themselves. Some consider this era an age of exploration — which perhaps comes as a surprise to the people already living in the regions supposedly being discovered. Isolated and isolationist nations open their borders, sometimes under duress and often at a cost in civil strife. Cultures mix and interact as the sheer size and power of the British Empire chains innumerable vassals into one greater whole, and expansion in the American west and south on the back of canals and railways drains ever more people into its melting pot. Migrations march throughout the era, as people seek new lives beyond the horizon — often unwillingly. Growing empires see mass slaughter and genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft in dealing with the cultures they newly meet; they exterminate entire populations to make way for new railroads and other expressions and avenues of power. Magi likewise strive to push back the boundaries of their knowledge, and often with equally heavy-handed means. Some press into the Umbra, seeking undiscovered realms in the infinite tapestry; others stride across the world to weave Magick or Science and uncover what they believe to be the hidden corners of the globe. Bygones long-hidden now stir and awaken as the Awakened disturb their last refuges on Earth. Spirits change shape and purpose, and new ones emerge from the deeds and works of humanity. Various branches of science and study erupt into oft-poisonous bloom. Fascination with the new juxtaposes the re-interpretation of the old — often in ways that conveniently suit the prejudices and mores of the Victorian ruling classes. Medical knowledge lurches forward in dangerously haphazard fashion; studies in physical and mental malady, in surgical and chemical treatments, rise upon a foundation of newly mixing ideas and the reeking corpses of progress’ victims. Often, methods of treatment are more akin to torture, especially for troubles of the mind. The growth of cultural studies fills academic journals and logbooks with everything from brilliant insights to blithering, conceited misunderstandings, as the empires of the day deal with the integration and unrest of native populations and colonies. With the cross-pollination of cultures previously distant, an obsession with the exotic and the macabre generates an incredible volume of muddled appropriation from peoples whose actual lives rarely resemble such lurid depictions. Interest in archaeology, conspiracy theories, and mythologized notions of Europe’s own past all skyrocket. For magi who already exploit such notions for their own workings, this can serve as both boon and bane. The fingerprints of imperialism manifest upon the great engineering works of the era; this is the time of the Industrial Revolution, and the Age of Steam. Transportation, motive force, work engines, military advancements, machine-filled mills and workshops, and the attitudes to employ them for maximum effect spread far and wide. New institutes of learning build up around the principles of engineering and technology. Towns swell and explode into cities as populations mass and surge around the new opportunities that they must by necessity grasp for. Almost every inch of advancement is paid for in someone’s blood, whether conquered peoples whose land will provide the needed resources or the broken bodies of laborers whose efforts underpin the great edifice of industry. Amid the steel and smoke and steam and the clever secrets that drive them all, the roots of the Technocratic Union run deep. Despite all the glories they build, these are the last days of the Order of Reason and of everything it was meant to be, brutally sacrificed on the altar of their new vision. The Order knows power under the reign of Queen Victoria like it has only dreamed of before. Such reach across the world of Sleepers, pushing the spread and benefits of Enlightened Science, is everything the Order thinks it ever wanted. Luminaries wax lyrical about a safe humanity, of horrors pushed back into the night, and a world under the dominion of reason. Or it will be, soon, and so they lie to themselves and each other that the end result will be worth such a hefty price paid by those very Sleepers they pretend they act on behalf of. The price is of death and suffering and toil, of sacrifice for this notional greater good that consumes entire populations through famine or slavery or labor or simple mass murder. The Order of Reason deems these tragedies and atrocities simply the “price of progress” or, at most, moralizing Luminaries wring their hangs as they speak of a “necessary evil”. The Order’s vision and purpose grows colder year by tear, a fist of authoritarian ideology tightening around its heart. The drawing back of boundaries does not only spur science; the era sees an explosion of literature. Yes, it is the time of Poe and Stoker, Shelly and Byron, of Dickens; and yes, it is the time of Sherlock Holmes and penny dreadfuls and dime novels; but this flowering of the written word is not limited to those famous western figures. The works of writers across the world come to fruition, whether more contemporary creators such as Jippensha Ikku, or the admixture of much older texts such as Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat across the world’s interconnected cultures that comes about from a new wave of translations. Cultural and political movements, imperial powers and commercial companies all exploit the easy creation of leaflets, pamphlets, and posters; they appear everywhere during the upheavals that stretch across Spain, France, and the Germanic states, and then among the fringes of empire where resistance simmers and sparks.