An additional innovation for Skerple's Magical Industrial Revolution. The innovations are broken down into six steps, each ramping up progress towards an world ending event. Will your players help or hinder the apocalypse?
Art by Heinrich Kley
1. Initial Innovation
Until now Alasdair Creedlee was known as a petty occultist
conman, an effete lothario and notorious self-abuser. Alasdair, an incendiary
hedonist, has forever railed against the authority of the church, it’s god and
its moral prescriptions. For years he has been vying to escape the influence of
the divine, to impugn god, but now he claims to have succeeded. One night, after
dallying with sailors, he was gifted a cursed ring that had been smuggled out
from some decadent desert kingdom, the ring of Ra-Har-Akht. The ring grants an
immunity clerical magic (Save against all clerical magic with a +4 bonus. On
success, the magic has no effect). It was almost perfect but while Creedlee couldn’t
replicate the ring’s effect to spread his crusade, he could use it in a grand lie.
He’d claim the effect of the ring was the result of a new pill that he had
invented. A placebo, the pill purports to temporally sever one’s connection to the
divine, leaving them to sin freely and it ‘not count’.
2. Public Introduction
The pills are easily produced, a handful or cheap alchemical
ingredients, some very weak hallucinogens and a phony chant to bless the batch.
The pills are somewhat harder to sell. Alasdair and his gang of occultists
flaunt about the city being nuisances. Unsurprisingly, the pills only circulate
among Creedlee’s cult but not much further. Alasdair wants money. An audacious
marketing strategy is called for. Creedlee – drunk and accompanied by a pair of
statuesque prostitutes lord into the grand cathedral and interrupt the High-Inquisitor’s
communion. Creedlee is protected by his ring so the Inquisitor’s spells bounce
harmlessly off of him. Alasdair knocks the Inquisitor to the ground and throws
a handful of pills into the congregation. By Jove Alasdair’s actually done it!
News spreads through the city like wildfire, a pill that lets you do anything
you want. People are curious.
3. Widespread Adoption
The pills are condemned widely but the illicit trade is proscribed
in name only and bans are unenforced. The pills are fun and besides, these are
revolutionary times. We should put those antiquated ideals behind us and make
some real progress. Pill-pushers stand on every street corner and middle-class
wastrels swan around doing as they please with general disregard for wider
society. People are becoming ruder, they blaspheme openly. Festivities are
increasingly boisterous and immoral and the crime rate ticks ever higher.
4. Scope Alteration
The pills are a hit. Casual usage is commonplace and
accepted. Lords and politicians are taking them to commit acts of infidelity
and their wives are taking them for the same reason. The pills are legalised.
To meet the market’s demand, the production of these pills must be fully industrialised.
Industrialists are supportive even if they don’t understand how the magic works
(just trust Alasdair – the magic’s far too complicated). From a certain point
of view producing the pills could be doubly profitable. The church teaches
things about human rights and morality, environmentalism and anti-materialism.
All things that could have been impeding a corporations’ profits for all this
time, well no longer. In the street, one lone man, bedraggled with a tatty book
of holy scripture in hand, shouts ‘The end is nigh! Repent!’ but is drowned out
by pill hawkers and the roar of hellish furnaces.
5. Height of Ambition
Everyone takes the pills and you’re vilified if you don’t. Societal
function and norms fall by the wayside. Lotharistic hedonism is the law of the
land. The city is awash with sin and incredibly dangerous. To an outsider the inhabitants
of the city are monstrous. Industrialism runs rampant, pollution spouts into
the streets and church halls are bulldozed or repurposed into factories. Wicked
bacchanalian horrors are perpetrated publicly. Still, there have been strange
happenings in the city as of late. Pale men in black flowing robes have been seen
in the city. They linger atop the spires of ruined churches and belching smoke
stacks, no one knows their origin only that they are watching us. Judging. We’ve
tried shooting at them with no success, they whisper at us to ‘repent’ so we
shoot at them some more.
6. Terminal Events
Something is wrong. Our souls feel heavy. Cool whispers wend
through the streets. We can hear a soft ancient exhale over the thrum of our
powerful machinery. It is not drowned out by our raucous festivities, our drums
and shrill flutes. Those scant few who know what is happening, who have no
swallowed the pills, flee to the gutted churches for refuge. The breath sweeps
aside the heavy smog that pervades the city and a shining light is revealed in
the now clear night sky. It’s a man. A man with a golden trumpet. A single
clear tone rings through the city as he plays - the machines seize up. The
lamps go out. The sky darkens as the stars disappear. The moon grows black. It
starts slowly at first, from the heavens a tendril of fire descends, a pillar
of flame strikes the heart of the city. Then another. And another. The ground
shakes and cracks. The wailing of the citizenry is matched by the wailing
rising from the depths of the earth. Nightmares crawl out of the polluted streets
and prance wickedly through the chaos. The city is dragged, quite literally, to
hell.
The Pills
How to placebo your players? Each pill supposedly lasts 24
hours. Should a player take one explain that “there isn’t really a mechanic for
sin but you can have a +1 on rolls to do naughty things if you want”. If a
player inquires about magical immunity, be vague and hint that you might be altering
numbers on your side of the DM’s screen when in actuality you aren’t.
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