Pre-industrial Fantasy STGOD OOC/Rules Thread:

[Coop D'etat]

On that note Simon, while I haven't posted much recently, I am keeping track of this thread and am more than willing/able to collaborate with anyone who wants too. I've already thought through most of what I need to start playing, inaction is mostly do to not having a good free period of a few hours to get it all written out in presentable format.

That said, I'd be happy to PM you the gist of what I'm planning to be doing in your vicinity regarding the Great Lakes region.


EDIT:
I just saw your bit on the Queen Mother and would be willing to volunteer my guys as a origin point. I'm figuring that Commonwealth approach to religion will be in the same mode typical of Eurasian steppe empires or the Polish Lithuan Commonwealth which are the primary points of inspiration for what I'm doing. These which tended to be both multi-lingual and tolerate a range of religion due to being essentially coalitions held together by the military strength of the ruling regime rather than "national" states.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm, so it is plausible that there are high-status nobility who adhere to the Church of the Living Stars, and who would make a credible match for someone of royal blood like Louis IX of Ohio (the Ohioans and, it appears, at least a few other human nations, believe in that).

[madd0ct0r]

take a glance at Beowulf's OOB, they might be the type to give over a princess.

[Simon_Jester]

The idea of marrying into one of the Dragon Empire's aristocracies is quite charming. They're prone to superheroics, but I can think of several ways to finesse that. However, having Empress Anne personally be a princess from a superhuman royal line would... hmm... maybe complicate matters, maybe not. Maybe pose interesting complications, or none, but not bad complications. Am curious what Beo thinks.

[Dark Hellion]

I have a few more story ideas I am trying to work out in my head. The first is a "how they work" story about the subtlety by which the dragons can manipulate things to put good people into places to do good things.
The other is an encounter between a magician using mind control to keep a cult and one of the great dragons recruiting him for something... I just can't figure out what they are going to do with him. Perhaps this would work well with Maddocs ideas of a magocracy in the Northwest territories as a lever of power in place. Not sure.
I also want to establish some diplomacy with everyone through some small posts but I think I'll need to see a few more "daily working" posts to figure out the proper way that the dragons will bring their haughty arrogance to diplomacy without actually causing international incidents.

[Jub]

I have a few more story ideas I am trying to work out in my head. The first is a "how they work" story about the subtlety by which the dragons can manipulate things to put good people into places to do good things.
The other is an encounter between a magician using mind control to keep a cult and one of the great dragons recruiting him for something... I just can't figure out what they are going to do with him. Perhaps this would work well with Maddocs ideas of a magocracy in the Northwest territories as a lever of power in place. Not sure.
I also want to establish some diplomacy with everyone through some small posts but I think I'll need to see a few more "daily working" posts to figure out the proper way that the dragons will bring their haughty arrogance to diplomacy without actually causing international incidents.

My last two story posts deal with the creation of two mythic level heroes due in part to a deal with a lake monster named Gitaskog and one of your dragons. One of them specifically has the power of super persuasion with a fate specifically noted to be tied to the supernatural creatures that caused these changes. That ought to give you and in with my nation.

[madd0ct0r]

I have a few more story ideas I am trying to work out in my head. The first is a "how they work" story about the subtlety by which the dragons can manipulate things to put good people into places to do good things.
The other is an encounter between a magician using mind control to keep a cult and one of the great dragons recruiting him for something... I just can't figure out what they are going to do with him. Perhaps this would work well with Maddocs ideas of a magocracy in the Northwest territories as a lever of power in place. Not sure.
I also want to establish some diplomacy with everyone through some small posts but I think I'll need to see a few more "daily working" posts to figure out the proper way that the dragons will bring their haughty arrogance to diplomacy without actually causing international incidents.

I''ve added an entire unit faction that specialise in listening to the wind in the far north. A nice story chain might be them intervening to stop the main hyenorks body from selling uranium ore to the Orions (because we all know what Eternal freedom would want to do ).

I might also need your assistance dealing with a rampaging army of unread angels. Perhaps your mage cult is to stop necromancy being used with range of the angel's tower, but when the hyenorks invade the great bear lake region one of his followers uses the forbidden knowledge and accidentally sets off the angels awakening too early, followed by the angels rampaging towards tarn (who are completely innocent, but the most likely target once my own army is mashed)

[Imperial528]

Well, Imperial528 sticks his head in every week or two, and visits the forum frequently, but he's not participating in the sense that I can ask him questions about what his country is doing and get definitive answers.

It's especially problematic because the one thing I know about his country for sure is that it is a "confederation." This strongly implies that it may be:

1) Internally divided, which presents strategic opportunities for Ohio, and no I'm not just talking about 'conquest.'
2) May or may not have trouble maintaining large internal infrastructure projects, when it would have a direct impact on my economy if they did have a large internal infrastructure project.
3) Spread out interestingly in a jigsaw puzzle of lesser sub-polities of varying sizes, which is absolutely fascinating... except that I have no details whatsoever.

I could hardly care less about his order of battle, since unless something very unlikely happens, Ohio is not invading him for at least two years and probably quite a bit more.

But I need to know about his nation's geography and politics, since they have consequences for mine.

Well, embarrassingly, I've been held up by an inability to actually name anything. However, one of the major states is a bit fleshed out.

The city-state of Davinium* is the single largest economy in what I've been tentatively calling the Adirondack Commonwealth** and is perhaps the only one that could be said to be allied with the mage-cities that pushed for the Commonwealth's founding. It's an Old city, founded by overseas refugees/settlers from I Can't Believe It Wasn't Rome at some point long enough in the past that it's probably a footnote in an Orion history book. It's named after an enigmatic man known only as David -or as his friends call him, Dave***- who aided them after they reached land in Long Island, leading them to settle between the OTL Hudson and Mohawk rivers.

As to the source of their economic power, my ideas have been that they used their position on the rivers and knowledge of road building to facilitate trade coming south-west from the direction of Orion, and trade going to the Atlantic from Ohio's general direction, using over-land connections to link bodies of water that are naturally separate, until eventually over the span of a century or two prior to the current date they had constructed more or less replicas of the OTL Erie and Champlain canals.
Davinium itself has a population nearing a half-million, and controls several dozen smaller cities and hundreds of lesser settlements, primarily along the OTL Mohawk river and the southern portion of the Hudson, at the point where the rivers meet, along with a sizable fortified city at the site of OTL Ticonderoga.

Davinians**** are a Greco-Roman people, though the pantheon they follow focuses primarily on Helios and Neptune, with honors to Terra and Caelus, due to the aid of these gods in their journey across the Atlantic. Note that by aid, I mean the sheer audacity of the fact that they managed to survive such a journey with enough population to actually settle a genetically healthy community.*^5
That said, with the exception of the priestly orders, the average Davinian holds their religion in a more cultural than pious sense, though outright atheism is rare, even in these enlightened times.



*Or would it be Dawinium? For simplicity's sake I'll stick to the v.
**While not a commonwealth in the usual sense, i.e. a state founded for the public good, it's more a union founded for the good of each individual polity, so you could look at it as an indirect method of public well-being, in that if every little squabbling toddler-nation is bound by treaty to not go to war over rock-that-you-stole-from-me-#837 then at least the life of the general people isn't so violent.
***Contemporary theories abound as to Dave's true nature. The religious point of view is that he was a messenger sent on behalf of Helios, possibly at the behest of Neptune, though there is debate as to whether he was human, a sort of vision, et cetera. More agnostic scholars believe him to possibly be a mage, explaining his handful of miracles, or to be a very clever traveler from Orion. Note to self: talk to E_F about this.
****I'm not entirely sure if I should say Davinian, Davinite, Davite, or what as a demonym.
*^5 It was a "throw the boats at the ocean" sort of deal. No history remains of why they decided to try to cross the ocean. They probably thought they angered Jupiter or they actually did anger the rest of Not!Rome enough to justify essentially mass execution via exile. They most likely did not expect to survive at all.

[madd0ct0r]

Escape from Atlantis eh?

Before Simon jester starts muttering about canal engineering, can I suggest that thanks to Neptune they can summon seawater springs instead of the undead or demonic energies? Correctly placed and channelled, th he springs would carve a canal easily and would be in use over the previous years as a sort of logflume type deal, pushing boats along shallow streams.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, embarrassingly, I've been held up by an inability to actually name anything. However, one of the major states is a bit fleshed out.

I'm an algebra teacher half the time, so having a bunch of known relationships among unknown-value variables doesn't bother me. Could you PM me a listing where the locations are named "A," "B," "C," and so on?" At least I wouldn't be staring into a vacuum on my eastern border. And who knows, I might be able to help you name things.

As to the source of their economic power, my ideas have been that they used their position on the rivers and knowledge of road building to facilitate trade coming south-west from the direction of Orion, and trade going to the Atlantic from Ohio's general direction, using over-land connections to link bodies of water that are naturally separate, until eventually over the span of a century or two prior to the current date they had constructed more or less replicas of the OTL Erie and Champlain canals.

Yaaay! I am SO glad to have a definitive answer on that!

The Ohio Valley is a major grain exporter, and was capable of being so even before railroad infrastructure, so among other things, the odds are good that your nation hasn't had a famine in a looong time.

Also, surprisingly cheap Ohioan whiskey! We may be dumb enough to get trolled into banning chocolate, but that doesn't mean we can't have any fun.

Escape from Atlantis eh?

Before Simon jester starts muttering about canal engineering, can I suggest that thanks to Neptune they can summon seawater springs instead of the undead or demonic energies? Correctly placed and channelled, th he springs would carve a canal easily and would be in use over the previous years as a sort of logflume type deal, pushing boats along shallow streams.

What's to mutter about?

The only really critical technology needed to dig canals that isn't reliably present in a fantasy setting is gunpowder for blasting. There are lots of magical alternatives, and for that matter the technology level of the setting suggests gunpowder has been available for at least 200 years or so in principle. The Ohioans built a major canal, comparable in length though not as hard to build to the "Grand Atlantic Canal" (Ohioan name for the OTL Erie Canal Imperial528's got). And all they had was oxen, guys with shovels, and occasional uses of low-grade blasting powder.

The existence of the canal is perfectly plausible to me, magic or no magic. It sounds like the state of Davinium certainly has, and had, at least the same resources as the 1820s state of New York, which historically dug the canals.

Really, the biggest obstacle to canal-building in pre-industrial times, at least in parts of the world that aren't utterly forbidding and horrible to live in like the Sinai or the Isthmus of Panama, is just having governments stable and organized enough to oversee the construction.

[Eternal_Freedom]

@Maddoctor:

Oooo goodie rogue Hyenorks to kill! I figure I have a Company of Line Infantry (150 men with muskets, 150 points) and a Company of Dragoons (horsemen with sabre and carbine, 300 points total) plus the fort's own guns (most likely twelve 18-pdrs plus crews, call it another 150 points). Yeah, when we Orions do border garrisons, we do it properly

[madd0ct0r]

Glad you like it! You ok to write the battle or would you prefer if I did?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Glad you like it! You ok to write the battle or would you prefer if I did?

Hmmm...how about you draft something that mostly deals with the Hyenorks POV and mark where Orion bits should go, I can add them and send it back to you for your thoughts?

[madd0ct0r]

Will do. Flight boarding now. Wales awaits.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'd say "welcome home" but the weather is shite.

Also:

I''ve added an entire unit faction that specialise in listening to the wind in the far north. A nice story chain might be them intervening to stop the main hyenorks body from selling uranium ore to the Orions (because we all know what Eternal freedom would want to do ).

I can neither confirm not deny that my faction would do anything with Uranium ore...though it would be interesting to see how close I could get to a crude nuke with magic replacing technology.

EDIT: I will admit that my housemate just gave me an interesting idea for using magic to create shaped-charge effects with explosives

[Beowulf]

The idea of marrying into one of the Dragon Empire's aristocracies is quite charming. They're prone to superheroics, but I can think of several ways to finesse that. However, having Empress Anne personally be a princess from a superhuman royal line would... hmm... maybe complicate matters, maybe not. Maybe pose interesting complications, or none, but not bad complications. Am curious what Beo thinks.

It's not likely she'd be from a superhuman line. The dirty secret that can determined from lineages is that there's never any issue from a marriage between one of the old lines of nobility and someone recently ennobled. Those that may seem to occur have other explanations (yeah, she's cheating on him). For this reason, if Empress Anne was from the Dragon Empire, she'd not likely be a princess, or from any rank higher than duke (inclusive). It's possible she was a Graefin, probably from the Louisfurt area, in Sachsen. On the other hand, the lower rank of her may cause problems.

[Simon_Jester]

I can neither confirm not deny that my faction would do anything with Uranium ore...though it would be interesting to see how close I could get to a crude nuke with magic replacing technology.

Assuming one somehow solves the problem of refining the fissiles and knew what the thing were for, in the absence of an understanding of the structure of the nucleus, which is 1930-era science... The next big challenge would be just shaping the thing correctly (requiring 19th and 20th century mathematics, and historically a problem solved using 20th century electromechanical computers). Then you'd have the problem of precisely timing some mechanism for compressing the fissile material together to form a critical mass. In real life we do this using high explosives; gunpowder would not suffice because it burns rather than detonating, so it doesn't give you crisp, sharp, millisecond-precise blasts.

EDIT: I will admit that my housemate just gave me an interesting idea for using magic to create shaped-charge effects with explosives

Workable, although there really aren't a lot of things to shoot shaped charges at in a pre-industrial setting. Most of your likely targets are made out of organic matter, so if you can somehow light the fuse on a keg of gunpowder that's resting against them, that's pretty much the end of the story. And if you can't, then the shaped charge wouldn't work out anyway.

Shaped charges are best for drilling through tremendous thicknesses of steel plate or other very strong materials.

The idea of marrying into one of the Dragon Empire's aristocracies is quite charming. They're prone to superheroics, but I can think of several ways to finesse that. However, having Empress Anne personally be a princess from a superhuman royal line would... hmm... maybe complicate matters, maybe not. Maybe pose interesting complications, or none, but not bad complications. Am curious what Beo thinks.

It's not likely she'd be from a superhuman line. The dirty secret that can determined from lineages is that there's never any issue from a marriage between one of the old lines of nobility and someone recently ennobled. Those that may seem to occur have other explanations (yeah, she's cheating on him). For this reason, if Empress Anne was from the Dragon Empire, she'd not likely be a princess, or from any rank higher than duke (inclusive). It's possible she was a Graefin, probably from the Louisfurt area, in Sachsen. On the other hand, the lower rank of her may cause problems.

Actually, given Louis XIV's family history in real life...*

The idea that Anne and the previous king were reproductively incompatible wouldn't be an obstacle in and of itself, so long as the Ohioans (including, obviously, Louis IX, who'd be marrying her) didn't know that.

What would present a problem is Anne (and others like her) being able to conceive only with a select list of high ranking nobles who live in another country, simply because then you need more plot contortions to explain:

1) How she managed to have a kid in the first place, and
2) How the Ohioans didn't know about this in advance, because they would never have agreed to a royal marriage which had no realistic possibility of issue.

So if that constraint is firmly in place, then I'm better off going with Anne being a princess from:
A) One of the subject/ally states in the Assiniboine Commonwealth.
B) Or an NPC polity between them and me, say in OTL Wisconsin which I've already made references to as a place that has some societies with cultural and religious similarity to Ohio.
C) Or a princess of one of the several families of royal blood within Ohio proper. That could include either cadet branches of the royal family and the families that used to be royal dynasties in their own right of kingdoms that became imperial vassals during the formation fo the Empire 200-300 years ago.

The chief minister is still a foreign-born member of the Living Stars clergy, in any event.
_______________________________________

*There are considerable reasons to think that Louis XIV's actual father wasn't Louis XIII, among other things because the king and queen had been estranged for a long, long time. There was also at least one prisoner being kept around in France, kept in relatively obscure but comfy prisons, who was probably a few dozen years older than Louis XIV and who was required to remain anonymous and wear a mask at all times on penalty of death. One of the more popular speculations about his identity is that he may have been Louis XIV's real father. Cardinal Mazarin is also sometimes listed as a possible father, but I can't take that route because my clergy are all-female.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I can neither confirm not deny that my faction would do anything with Uranium ore...though it would be interesting to see how close I could get to a crude nuke with magic replacing technology.

Assuming one somehow solves the problem of refining the fissiles and knew what the thing were for, in the absence of an understanding of the structure of the nucleus, which is 1930-era science... The next big challenge would be just shaping the thing correctly (requiring 19th and 20th century mathematics, and historically a problem solved using 20th century electromechanical computers). Then you'd have the problem of precisely timing some mechanism for compressing the fissile material together to form a critical mass. In real life we do this using high explosives; gunpowder would not suffice because it burns rather than detonating, so it doesn't give you crisp, sharp, millisecond-precise blasts.

I kinda figured it would be difficult, but it's an amusing thought exercise nonetheless.

EDIT: I will admit that my housemate just gave me an interesting idea for using magic to create shaped-charge effects with explosives

Workable, although there really aren't a lot of things to shoot shaped charges at in a pre-industrial setting. Most of your likely targets are made out of organic matter, so if you can somehow light the fuse on a keg of gunpowder that's resting against them, that's pretty much the end of the story. And if you can't, then the shaped charge wouldn't work out anyway.

Shaped charges are best for drilling through tremendous thicknesses of steel plate or other very strong materials.

Well, when I say "shaped charge" effects it's probably more akin to what the bouncing bombs did to German dams, more of the energy went one way rather than be evenly distributed. Essentially I'm thinking some sort of magical field that's cone shaped, so all the blast and heat from an explosion is focused against a target. I'm thinking of deploying this (eventually) with my Siege Regiment for breaching city/fortress walls. 1750 was roughly when fortress walls became lower and thicker wasn't it? To make ordinary cannon less effective against them?

Incidentally, this shaped-charge-field-thingy was originally suggested by my housemate as part of the crude nuke; airburst it with the shaped cone pointing downwards for no wasted energy. Yeah, it's a strange house I live in aint it

[Beowulf]

I can neither confirm not deny that my faction would do anything with Uranium ore...though it would be interesting to see how close I could get to a crude nuke with magic replacing technology.

Assuming one somehow solves the problem of refining the fissiles and knew what the thing were for, in the absence of an understanding of the structure of the nucleus, which is 1930-era science... The next big challenge would be just shaping the thing correctly (requiring 19th and 20th century mathematics, and historically a problem solved using 20th century electromechanical computers). Then you'd have the problem of precisely timing some mechanism for compressing the fissile material together to form a critical mass. In real life we do this using high explosives; gunpowder would not suffice because it burns rather than detonating, so it doesn't give you crisp, sharp, millisecond-precise blasts.

High precision is needed for an implosion design. Gun type is doable with 1750s technology, really... assuming you have the fissile material. The problem is the fissiles. You don't have a way of enriching the uranium, and there's no reason why mages would even think about needing to do so.

Actually, given Louis XIV's family history in real life...*

The idea that Anne and the previous king were reproductively incompatible wouldn't be an obstacle in and of itself, so long as the Ohioans (including, obviously, Louis IX, who'd be marrying her) didn't know that.

What would present a problem is Anne (and others like her) being able to conceive only with a select list of high ranking nobles who live in another country, simply because then you need more plot contortions to explain:

1) How she managed to have a kid in the first place, and
2) How the Ohioans didn't know about this in advance, because they would never have agreed to a royal marriage which had no realistic possibility of issue.

So if that constraint is firmly in place, then I'm better off going with Anne being a princess from:
A) One of the subject/ally states in the Assiniboine Commonwealth.
B) Or an NPC polity between them and me, say in OTL Wisconsin which I've already made references to as a place that has some societies with cultural and religious similarity to Ohio.
C) Or a princess of one of the several families of royal blood within Ohio proper. That could include either cadet branches of the royal family and the families that used to be royal dynasties in their own right of kingdoms that became imperial vassals during the formation fo the Empire 200-300 years ago.

The chief minister is still a foreign-born member of the Living Stars clergy, in any event.
_______________________________________

*There are considerable reasons to think that Louis XIV's actual father wasn't Louis XIII, among other things because the king and queen had been estranged for a long, long time. There was also at least one prisoner being kept around in France, kept in relatively obscure but comfy prisons, who was probably a few dozen years older than Louis XIV and who was required to remain anonymous and wear a mask at all times on penalty of death. One of the more popular speculations about his identity is that he may have been Louis XIV's real father. Cardinal Mazarin is also sometimes listed as a possible father, but I can't take that route because my clergy are all-female.

It's not necessarily high ranking nobles, but the merely human nobles peter out at the count level. And yes, this constraint is fairly firmly in place.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I can neither confirm not deny that my faction would do anything with Uranium ore...though it would be interesting to see how close I could get to a crude nuke with magic replacing technology.

Assuming one somehow solves the problem of refining the fissiles and knew what the thing were for, in the absence of an understanding of the structure of the nucleus, which is 1930-era science... The next big challenge would be just shaping the thing correctly (requiring 19th and 20th century mathematics, and historically a problem solved using 20th century electromechanical computers). Then you'd have the problem of precisely timing some mechanism for compressing the fissile material together to form a critical mass. In real life we do this using high explosives; gunpowder would not suffice because it burns rather than detonating, so it doesn't give you crisp, sharp, millisecond-precise blasts.

High precision is needed for an implosion design. Gun type is doable with 1750s technology, really... assuming you have the fissile material. The problem is the fissiles. You don't have a way of enriching the uranium, and there's no reason why mages would even think about needing to do so.

Knowing that getting the fissiles is the only real stumbling block to a basic nuclear weapon in this game is simultaneously awesome and terrifying.

Though...IIRC, radioactive materials and so forth were originally discovered in slag heaps from the Joachimsthaller (sp?) silver mines. "Pechblende" I believe it was known as. And those mines had for centuries carried a reputation of making workers sick in unknown ways. Perhaps Orion Biomancers decided to investigate similar cases in a silver mine in our territory, leading to pondering about radiation. As for refining, well, alchemy is a thing in fantasy settings, no?

Suffice to say I have no intentions of deploying crude fission weapons for many decades of game-time yet...i]but[/i] it does provide me with a big overarching storyline I can work with, along with my "Succesion Crisis" plotline I'm cooking up.

[Beowulf]

Knowing that getting the fissiles is the only real stumbling block to a basic nuclear weapon in this game is simultaneously awesome and terrifying.

Though...IIRC, radioactive materials and so forth were originally discovered in slag heaps from the Joachimsthaller (sp?) silver mines. "Pechblende" I believe it was known as. And those mines had for centuries carried a reputation of making workers sick in unknown ways. Perhaps Orion Biomancers decided to investigate similar cases in a silver mine in our territory, leading to pondering about radiation. As for refining, well, alchemy is a thing in fantasy settings, no?

Suffice to say I have no intentions of deploying crude fission weapons for many decades of game-time yet...i]but[/i] it does provide me with a big overarching storyline I can work with, along with my "Succesion Crisis" plotline I'm cooking up.

You can pile up an unlimited amount of natural uranium and only cause radiation poisoning. You need to enrich the U-235 to get something usable, and that's both something that chemistry alone won't get you, and hard to figure out is necessary without knowing about stuff that's at least early 1900's in knowledge.

[Eternal_Freedom]

True. Though like I said, it will at least make an interesting ongoing side-story for my Academy to work on.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, when I say "shaped charge" effects it's probably more akin to what the bouncing bombs did to German dams, more of the energy went one way rather than be evenly distributed.

...Yes, and you will note that those bombs were used against hydroelectric dams, which are both (1) very large, and (2) made of concrete. You just plain don't need the same degree of 'oomph' to destroy things made out of dirt or wood that is required to destroy steel and masonry.

Essentially I'm thinking some sort of magical field that's cone shaped, so all the blast and heat from an explosion is focused against a target. I'm thinking of deploying this (eventually) with my Siege Regiment for breaching city/fortress walls. 1750 was roughly when fortress walls became lower and thicker wasn't it? To make ordinary cannon less effective against them?

The Italians were pioneering fortifications of this type as early as the 1400s. For this reason, the system of broad, earthen ramparts, wide, deep trenches, and complicated geometric arrangements of bastions and walls that allowed each part of the fortress to use gunfire to cover the other parts, became known as the "trace italienne." Guys like Michelangelo and da Vinci, when they weren't busy being legendary geniuses, often took some time as contractors to use their knowledge of geometry to lay out fortifications of this type.

Fast-forward to the 1600s and defenses like this were ubiquitous all over Europe.

Although there were still a lot of medieval-vintage fortifications with high stone walls in and around various European cities and towns. Because even though nobody'd built forts that way in 200 years, there were so many constructed in the Middle Ages, and they were so expensive to either tear down or refit, that in many cases the old medieval walls of a city simply remained in place regardless of circumstances.

If you attack a place in the Ohioan Empire that is of any real strategic value, you can assume there will be defenses built along the lines of the trace italienne to resist cannon fire. The scale of these defenses, and the extent of any outworks that will prolong the defenses' survivability, depends on the importance of the target, the politics of fortification, and so on.

Conversely, the Ohioans' methods of siege warfare are built around the need to reduce such defenses, because anyone smart enough to put up much of a fight already knows how to build them. We've got a new guy who's got some ideas for that, who's currently studying maps of the defenses of Detroit.

I imagine that Orion, similarly, will have extensive trace italienne defenses at any place important enough that it might plausibly be attacked with a cannon.

Incidentally, this shaped-charge-field-thingy was originally suggested by my housemate as part of the crude nuke; airburst it with the shaped cone pointing downwards for no wasted energy. Yeah, it's a strange house I live in aint it

Your gunpowder-based gun-type fission device weighs several tons; how exactly do you propose to get it airborne?

High precision is needed for an implosion design. Gun type is doable with 1750s technology, really... assuming you have the fissile material. The problem is the fissiles. You don't have a way of enriching the uranium, and there's no reason why mages would even think about needing to do so.

Assuming you have the fissiles, and the knowledge required to compute what constitutes a 'critical mass' and to detect and understand the behaviors of fissiles in the first place (which requires advanced scientific instruments to learn much about)...

Well, okay. Maybe you could make a gun-type device using black powder. Although if there's any way to fizzle a gun-type device, I suspect that you'd be the one to find it, trying to do that. Then again, even a "fizzle" with a fission device could have a yield of tons or tens of tons of TNT, which would be pretty darn impressive by pre-industrial standards, though not nearly impressive enough to justify the investment of effort that went into enriching fissiles to begin with.

Knowing that getting the fissiles is the only real stumbling block to a basic nuclear weapon in this game is simultaneously awesome and terrifying.

Well, the scientific knowledge is also a real stumbling block, since you need things like Geiger counters and laboratory assay balances and detailed knowledge of chemistry that in turn requires you to make high-grade glassware and metalwork for instruments that go into the scientific research, and so on, and so on. Science and technology build on themselves. A lot.

Another obstacle is being able to manufacture and handle the fissiles in an environment where production actually happens rather than just being a needlessly complicated way to get your entire work force killed uselessly.

Yet another is, as I alluded to earlier, the delivery vehicle. A realistic nuclear weapon made with primitive technology, even assuming it works on the minimal 'fizzle' level that would still be massively devastating and explosive by the standards of the era... it's going to weigh several tons. It's bulky, it's delicate, you have to physically PUT it somewhere. Your options are basically:

1) Fly it to the target, which none of us who are participating in this conversation have the means to do so far as I recall
2) Walk up to the target carrying it in a wagon, which has a lot of interesting ways to go wrong, among them the fact that getting out of range of the blast is likely to take a looong time on foot while you leave a ticking nuclear device with a literal fizzing gunpowder fuse (like those bombs from cartoons, or from the Legend of Zelda series, with a burning string) on the enemy's doorstep in a conspicuously large package.
3) Tunnel under the enemy and plant the bomb underneath their position. Which is a viable tactic, but if you HAVE a tunnel under the enemy's position you might as well just pile up five or ten tons of gunpowder, since that amount of gunpowder would be infinitely cheaper than a nuclear weapon, and would STILL be enough 'bang' to blast a massive crater in any conceivable defenses.

Though...IIRC, radioactive materials and so forth were originally discovered in slag heaps from the Joachimsthaller (sp?) silver mines. "Pechblende" I believe it was known as. And those mines had for centuries carried a reputation of making workers sick in unknown ways. Perhaps Orion Biomancers decided to investigate similar cases in a silver mine in our territory, leading to pondering about radiation. As for refining, well, alchemy is a thing in fantasy settings, no?

Alchemy that can duplicate 20th century industrial chemistry really, really ought to be barred under the "no post-1800 technology" statute.

Otherwise, that statute exists ONLY to punish those of us who play low-magic nations, by enabling high-magic nations to obtain capabilities we can't possibly hope to match.

Suffice to say I have no intentions of deploying crude fission weapons for many decades of game-time yet...i]but[/i] it does provide me with a big overarching storyline I can work with, along with my "Succesion Crisis" plotline I'm cooking up.

[Simon_Jester]

Talking about the Bomb has got me thinking about what, if anything, Ohio can truly be said to exist against.

And one of the things it exists against, is the idea of the vast, impersonal, nihilistic logical mechanism, of paths to transcendent power that begin by moving beyond the idea of being 'human,' in the sense of the word that gives us 'humane' and 'oh, the humanity.'

There is this idea, this idea that people are tiny and expendable and that it's okay to sacrifice that which is dear to the heart and comprehensible to the human experience, in exchange for greater power and success and riches.

All the magics that are based around mass killing, or the destruction of souls, or the like, are naturally an extension of this idea. However, the idea is not unique to a fantasy setting. In our own society, it expresses itself through bureaucracy, and conventional numbing mass society, and people hurting themselves for beauty or wealth, and through the methodical science of engineered destruction.

A lot of this is, with reason, anathema to Ohio, which may not be a 'humanist' society, but is a very human one and will never aspire to be anything else. Everything that gives them any real strength, has its roots in human terms, draws from things that are comprehensible on a human scale. Perhaps I can weave that into things, later.

My apologies if the ramble didn't make sense...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Your points are all well-taken Simon. Have no fear there is precisely zero chance if me coming close to using a crude fission device without, say, at least one hundred in-game years passing. It's merely an interesting thought experiment, and a possible long-term plotline to work on. Not building the bomb itself, but more the steady, gradual process that would lead to it.

Though it does beg the question of how exactly "magic" in this game interacts with things like nuclear and quantum physics, and if such a weapon would even be possible with 1950-level technology and magic.

On the question of delivery system, I was thinking of a combination of Technomantic weight-lifting, a crude parachute and a hired dragon