Aetherpunk - Victorian Era Steampunk game - LGBT Friendly

[Crash]

That's a big reason why so many players had multiple characters in the first version. They could have as many scenes as suited their pace without needing to bog down other players more than they could handle.

+1

[RedPhoenix]

Name: Valentina Gruber (real name Magdalena Rejcka)
Player: RedPhoenix
Concept:  Nun turned Mad Scientist
Trouble:  Genius, Obsession, Neuroses
Sex: Female
Age: 28
Orientation: Fluid
On’s: Whims in the moment, whatever satisfies her the fastest so she can get back to work.
Off’s: Same

National Affiliation and Ancestry: Austro-Hungarian. Believes the concept of nations is a phenomenon of the malignant will that controls mankind and no different than tribalism or random violence.

Appearance: Unremarkable height and build, wild brown eyes, often unkempt in appearance due to working way too much.
Hair: Brown, thick, often tied up in a loose bun.
Eyes: Brown, wild, darting all over, possessed of manic energy.
Height: 5'5"
Weight: 140 lbs.

Description: See image.

Personality: A frantic mind possessed by a constantly swirling eddies of inspiration and madness, Valentina works extraordinarily hard and spends almost all of her time either actively overseeing experiments or seeking the funds to continue doing so. She is obsessive and manic and devastated by anything that could even be remotely perceived as failure. She has almost no connection at all to anyone socially and is barely capable of normal human interactions when she isn't concentrating hard on it.

Background: Valentina (real name Magdalena Rejcka) was born  into a middle class family in Vienna. Her father was a barrel maker and her mother the daughter of a lesser noble who was not landed and whose title died with him. She was the fifth of nine children and was often overlooked. She spent much of her time teaching herself how to read, how to write, and the maths and sciences. She would sneak into the University and listen to lectures while hiding in the rafters and in hallways, scribbling notes to herself in her little books. When she grew old enough that her parents could no longer afford to feed her she was sent off to a Cistercian Monastery called Aula Sanctae Mariae at the old Church of Our Lady Mary, where an order of nuns that were sisters to the Order of St. Augustine were housed.

Valentina easily understood the teachings of Christianity and found it child's play to recite the lineages and the words of the Bible, but she wasn't particularly interested in religion. She spent her time in the order's library, which housed a great deal of learning and natural science. She would have likely spent most of her life lost in mundane learning had it not been for the experiments of an Abbot at nearby St. Thomas's that begun some novel experiments into heredity and aether. Gregor Mendel was the abbot's name, and Valentina became his prize assistant.

Mendel's teachings set off sparks in Valentina's mind. But where the Abbot was an observer who wished to learn the nature of genetics and aether, Valentina saw opportunity to control it. Her experiments began to deviate more and more from Mendel's, infusing aether into plants and livestock to observe the consequences. They were often horrific. Valentina would refer to them as setbacks and move on. Her techniques in chemical engineering led to her independently discovering aethersprite. She would surreptitiously dose her fellow nuns and monks and certain townsfolk to observe the effect of various recipes on them. She refined her product until, at first unaware, she became the best aethersprite concocter in Europe. What fascinated her about it was how often those under the influence would claim to see God. She became convinced that aether was the key to interacting with the will that controlled the universe, and that the right dose would be able to break that will, and thus actually lead to true freedom.

Valentina never believed in God herself, but she believes in the phenomenological observations of Schopenhauer and Kant, and she believes "God" is a human attempt to make this will less terrifying. She believes that man cannot will what he wishes and that the malignant influence of will permeates and warps all human activities, with the primary goal of ensuring the survival and contemporaneous misery of mankind. Valentina believes it can be beaten with the right experimental procedures, and then mankind can abandon the hatred and petty infighting that ensures misery and backwardness.

Gradually, the disagreements between herself and Mendel came to a head and he exiled her from the abbey, which was tantamount to exile from the Empire. Valentina left in an outrage, taking most of her equipment with her. She traveled from city to city, slowly being thrown out of them all, leaving a trail of staggering mind-destroyed aethersprite addicts in her wake. But she accumulated wealth everywhere she went. Gradually she ended up where most exiles end up, San Francisco, a very rich, very smart, very good aethersprite manufacturer. She fit in perfectly with her assumed identity.

Valentina purchased a large mansion with an attached chapel and a staff that knew to keep their mouth shut. She lives near enough to Chinatown and has a lot of contacts there, quickly picking up their language although having no more use for their culture and customs than she does for her own. She appreciates how cheaply the Empress and her cohorts see life, it makes her experiments easier to process. Valentina funds herself with aethersprite, the commercial grade stuff is her day job. Her experiments on the interaction of aethersprite and the human mind continue in full force. She also takes special assignments to create aether infused weapons and ammunition for special buyers when the price is right.

Every once in awhile she finds it expedient to make social contacts and attends gatherings. She does a surprisingly good job of channeling her grandfather's nobility at these occasions, although she cannot stand be social for more than an hour or two at most. She very rarely uses her own product, only when she thinks she may have a breakthrough. She believes she will know when she is free.

Know For: Currently, being an eccentric loner, probably suspected of being some sort of exiled baroness or something like that.

Goals: Pierce the veil. Save you all.

Plots: She's Frankenstein mixed with MK-ULTRA and a dash of Schopenhauer in a Helena Bonham-Carter package. I'm sure we'll think of something. ;)

[Crash]

Name: Valentina Gruber (real name Magdalena Rejcka)
Player: RedPhoenix
Concept:  Nun turned Mad Scientist
Trouble:  Genius, Obsession, Neuroses

Oh my god!!!!!  One of my favorites.  Better play her this time!

[Karma]

Boy, if she's a supplier, I bet she and Rin know each other very well. Rin and her whole Corps would be an excellent testbed for her.

[Sara Nilsson]

Due to the time period and all, how are things like misogyny, homophobia, racism?

Religion the same as in our world or different?

[RedPhoenix]

Oh my god!!!!!  One of my favorites.  Better play her this time!

Hey I played her last time. Sort of. >.<

Boy, if she's a supplier, I bet she and Rin know each other very well. Rin and her whole Corps would be an excellent testbed for her.

Ooooooh *evil evil grin*

[Karma]

"Got a big kerfuffle tonight. I need the good stuff."

[CuriousEyes]

Oh man. This had looked so cool before... but I just don't think I can manage the pace of a group game. So mostly just wanted to wish you all good luck and fun times.

[Crash]

Due to the time period and all, how are things like misogyny, homophobia, racism?

Religion the same as in our world or different?

It’s there but how much the individual player wants it to come up is up to them.

Religion is mostly the same.  However things like Taoist sorcery, voodoo, mediums, that sort of stuff is real.

Think Penny Dreadful

[Crash]

Oh man. This had looked so cool before... but I just don't think I can manage the pace of a group game. So mostly just wanted to wish you all good luck and fun times.

We will have fast and slow posting.  Plots are really player driven so just let people know you can’t blaze for speed and jump in. 

[Sara Nilsson]

ok.. thank you :)

[Crash]

ok.. thank you :)

I won’t make my players uncomfortable and tend to play non-heterosexual characters. I like seeing non-white characters in my games too so yeah.

[Karma]

Yeah, the way we played it before was that if you wanted to confront those kind of social issues you could, and personally I was generally assuming they were present, but most of the characters in the game aren't "normies" so to speak so they're less likely to be vocal about it than average citizens might be.

[Geeklet]

So I saw something about lovecraftian horror in the initial post. While I don't have time for a full sheet now, I'm thinking possibly some type of archaeologist/historian, maybe one day digging up something she shouldn't.

[Crash]

So I saw something about lovecraftian horror in the initial post. While I don't have time for a full sheet now, I'm thinking possibly some type of archaeologist/historian, maybe one day digging up something she shouldn't.

I have some ideas she could pursue.   ::) >:)

[Fury Aphrodisia]

Aw, crap, Lovecraft. Am I gonna need to have some sort of familiarity with that guy?

[Crash]

Approved players can chart on plot in occ.  Please don’t post in game threads though unless it is the History thread

Aw, crap, Lovecraft. Am I gonna need to have some sort of familiarity with that guy?

Nope. Not at all.  Horror is only there for players that want it.

[Karma]

Naw, anything we ended up doing ingame would stand on its own. We can write Lovecraftian without needing to rely on existing lore.

[Fury Aphrodisia]

Okay. Cause I have exactly zero understanding of anything Lovecraftian aside from the fact that he was a writer and apparently an occultist. That's about... all I got.

[Geeklet]

I just mentioned it because I have a pic for character inspiration that just reminds me of someone prying into places they shouldn't, and that was just the first thing that came to mind.

[Dhi]

Tempting. I have a fang shi (exorcist) / con artist that hasn't been out to play in quite some time

shakes the six demon bag

Would this be suitable?

I began writing a fangshi during the first incarnation but she didn't have but one or two scenes. It would be great to have other characters along the same vein to play off of.

[Karma]

Okay. Cause I have exactly zero understanding of anything Lovecraftian aside from the fact that he was a writer and apparently an occultist. That's about... all I got.

The short version is extradimensional creatures that are beyond our imagining seeping into the real world and cracking the psyches of those that encounter them.

[Crash]

Not a lot of horror came into play the last time, because people weren’t interested.

I just mentioned it because I have a pic for character inspiration that just reminds me of someone prying into places they shouldn't, and that was just the first thing that came to mind.

That is fine too.  Character plots will very.

[Madame Professor]

Not a lot of horror came into play the last time, because people weren’t interested.

If I recall, we had a few horror-ish plot hooks but I don't believe they were picked up.

[Karma]

The last character I made was going to take part in all that, but I never got to play her.