Friday, January 16, 2015

Weird Cosmoses

The Baroque Space setting I've been occasionally posting on of late draws inspiration from a number of different sources. Here are two I've come across recently that are well worth checking out for rpg inspiration:

I got Brass Sun: The Wheel of Worlds for Christmas. Edginton and Culbard bring us a science fantasy (originally appearing in 2000AD) set in a world that's essentially a giant orrery. It's brass sun starts to die and a young girl has to go on a quest across the worlds to find the key to restart it.

Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle is an alternate history hard science fiction novel--though the science is the science of Aristotle! A thousand years after Alexander, the super-powers of Greece and the Middle Kingdom of China are in a protracted war. A scientist from the Delian League commands a daring expedition to fly a spacecraft built from a piece of the Moon through the crystal spheres to get the ultimate weapon, a piece of the elemental fire of the Sun, to defeat the Taoists once and for all.

3 comments:

BaronOpal said...

I found the characterization weak in Celestial Matters, but still found the story compelling due to the extrapolation of a world powered by Aristotolean physics. The interaction between the technology of the Delian League and the Taoist principles of the Middle Kingdom was also interesting.

It was a good Freshman effort for Garfinkle.

evangineer said...

Celestial Matters seems like particularly good fodder for science-fantasy RPGs like Troika! or Hypertellurians.

Trey said...

I think so.