Rough Magic 3e EN:Setting

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Camaret-sur-Mer

In Bretagne, at the northwest tip of France in the Franco-Prussian Empire, lies the appropriately-named region of Finistère, or "Land's End". On a rocky base of sandstone known as the Peninsula of Crozon rests the city of Camaret-sur-Mer.

Camaret-sur-Mer is the setting of Rough Magic, a film noir role-playing game of magic, mystery, and guns. Fog enshrouded cobblestone streets wind between Camaret-sur-Mer's tall art deco and gothic skyscrapers, and mysterious figures skulk beneath gargoyles, ornate ledges, and other architectural flourishes. riverfront scene Disreputable characters on streetcorners sell cheap amulets and potions to those who want love, protection, or success. In the sky above, grand passenger zeppelins carry the well-to-do to far off ports like St. Petersburg, Istanbul, and New York. In the city below, the monorail zips and winds its way, connecting Camaret-sur-Mer to the rest of the Empire, from Berlin to Rome, from Paris to London.

Districts

Being a very large and very old city, Camaret-sur-Mer is divided unevenly into various districts. While the centers of each are easy to find, the borders between one district and the next are sometimes less than obvious, even for the people who live there. These are social divisions, not geographical divisions.

Garment District

The semi-industrial Garment District is home to few, but provides honest (if grueling) work to most of Camaret-sur-Mer's Chinese immigrants and semi-literate poor. The district is dominated by sweatshops where men, women, and children work long hours for a few marks a week - not much, to be sure, but it's better than living in Shanghai, and much better than starving.

Lucarre

Camaret-sur-Mer is surrounded by docks, marinas, and piers, but the bulk of Camaret-sur-Mer's sea trade passes through the wharfs and warehouses of Lucarre. It is a rough neighborhood full of rough taverns frequented by rough people, and even the residents do not travel the night streets alone if they can help it.

Petit Chin

Wedged between the Garment District and warrens of Lucarre lies Petit Chin, home to the city's many Chinese immigrants. It is a poor but honest neighborhood, for the most part, but anyone of European ancestry is unlikely to feel welcome there.

Roscanvel

Nearly a city in its own right, Roscanvel is home to the countless families whose lives are devoted to fishing the Bay. Although part of Camaret-sur-Mer proper, Roscanvel is an insular working-class community with little interest in the wealthy and powerful of Saint Barbe, and little tolerance for the hoodlums that call the Lucarre district home.

Saint Barbe

The white cliffs of Saint Barbe are home to Camaret-sur-Mer's wealthiest citizens. Not a few Parisians and favorites of the Imperial Court have summer homes here.

Language

French is the official language of the Franco-Prussian Empire, and it is assumed to be the native tongue for people living in Camaret-sur-Mer. German is a second language for most people, and Spanish and English are unusual but not unknown (even in England, most educated people speak French). To the south is the Ottoman Republic, where people speak Turkish: a few people in Camaret-sur-Mer speak Turkish, but it's rare. Far to the east is the Russian Federation, which is host to a wide variety of different languages, few of which are spoken in Camaret-sur-Mer (outside of small reclusive ethnic communities).

For Rough Magic, we will gloss over the language issue unless it makes for an interesting scene.

Magic

The Franco-Prussian Empire was pitted against the Ottoman Republic in a bitter war that ended nearly 20 years ago. Camaret-sur-Mer, being far from the front, was spared most of the ravages of that war. Still, the consequences of the war were felt even here. Magic, which had been largely the domain of reclusive scholars, jazz musicians, and military warmages, played a large part in the defeat of the Ottoman Republic. As a result, after the war ended the Empire wanted to make sure that it maintained a monopoly on magic.

Practicing magic is illegal in Camaret-sur-Mer unless one has a license from the Société Impériale de Thaumaturgie, and even then a licensed thaumaturge must be careful and submit reports of what magic she casts upon whom and why. Anyone who does not adhere strictly to the SIT's guidelines risks having their certification revoked, and possibly faces criminal charges. Those who are convicted are sent along with the worst of Camaret-sur-Mer's criminals to The Keep, an ominous granite fortress built on and into an island just off the coast.

Throughout the Empire, about a million people are arrested by the Crown each year on magic-related charges, and about a quarter of those spend time in prison as a result. Mandatory minimum sentences mean that a convicted street mage (or "hex pusher"), or even someone convicted of possessing more than a half-dozen good-fortune amulets, faces more time in prison than a convicted mundane murderer ("Just say no to hex!"). Even so, the services of magicians are available to anyone willing to venture into unsavory neighborhoods, or who have the money required for a high-class "hexmaster" to make a housecall.

Technology

Technology in the world where Camaret-sur-Mer resides is roughly equivalent to that of our world in the 1960s, with minor differences. There is no nuclear power or nuclear weapons, but there is a curse called the Ritual of Devastation that was used by the Empire to destroy two cities in the Ottoman Republic at the end of the Ottoman War. The Ritual of Devastation is an Imperial state secret, but it is common knowledge that spies have smuggled the formula out of the Empire and that now both the Russian Federation and the Ottoman Republic have it. fly the Hindenburg

There are no jets, but there are large passenger zeppelins in the skies above Camaret-sur-Mer, docking at skyports at the top of artistically-sculptured skyscrapers. High-speed trains span the continent, even passing over the Alps to the Russian Federation and the Ottoman Republic. There are rockets, but these are used for entertainment rather than in warfare (in fireworks, and to power rocket-boats in races). Automobiles are expensive but fairly common, and may run on either petrol or electricity. Public transportation is provided by plentiful buses, which are owned by private individuals or companies that are licensed to operate by the municipality (much like taxis are in large cities in the USA). Buses come in all sizes, from station wagons to huge double-decker monstrosities.

Cameras, radios, and tape recorders are bulky devices, rarely smaller than a breadbox -- a large breadbox. Semiconductor technology has not been invented, meaning that what few electronic devices have been invented use vacuum tubes rather than transistors or integrated circuits. Computers exist, but they are huge, fragile, and horribly expensive machines. It is said that the Czarina of Russia is given an ornately jeweled computer each year on her birthday by the Faberge family, and that each of these computers is an expert on a single subject.

Religion

The state religion of the Franco-Prussian Empire is the Gallican Catholic Church, which places ultimate earthly authority in the person of the Emperor (whose authority is, by Divine will, inviolate), and reserves to the Pope in [ Map of Avignon ]Avignon authority only over spiritual matters. Further, papal authority is limited by the authority of the general council and that of the bishops, who alone can give to his decrees that infallible authority which, of themselves, they lack.

In practice, the Gallican Catholic Church has been a tool and servant of the Empire, promoting policies the Emperor wants promoted and denouncing those the Emperor wants denounced. The submission of the Church to the Empire has caused some to question the validity of the Church. This is at the heart of the persistent unrest in Ireland, and is one of the many obstacles to friendly Imperial relations with the Russian Federation.

Unsanctioned religions are practiced in the Empire, of course. These include Russian Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, a variety of Protestant Christian sects, and a larger number of small and secretive non-Christian sects and cults. These religions have no formal standing in the Empire, and as such they do not have the political and financial support that the Gallican Catholic Church has, but they are not illegal and are not subject to official censure or persecution as long as they refrain from criticizing the Empire and the Gallican Church.

Magic And The Church

The official stand of the Gallican Church is that hex use is a sin unless it is done by the will of the Emperor (who rules with the sanction of God), or it is the result of an answered prayer (in which case it is not "hex", but a "miracle"). It goes without saying that the prayers of priests, who are closer to God and better trained in what He wants to hear, are more likely to be heard and answered than the prayers of the laity. In the eyes of the Church use of magic without the sanction of the Church or the Emperor is an abomination, because it seeks to overrule the will of God with the will of Man. Such attempts are doomed to fail, even though they may appear to be successful in the short run.

War and the Church

Religious militant orders exist at the sufferance of the Empire. The Imperial Army supplies their weapons and ostensibly supervises their training, and officially it can assume control of the militant orders any time it sees fit. In reality, some militant orders are little more than fraternal organizations within the military proper, while others segregate themselves and have their own fortresses and bases. These segregated types usually have an explicit mission delineated in the charter granted them by the Crown.

There is a strong sense of unit loyalty among the militant orders, and there is a long history of them defying orders to perform great deeds against overwhelming odds. Perhaps this is why the Empire allows their continued existence.

Entertainment

There is television (even wide-screen television, if you have the marks to pay for it), but it is in black and white. There is no rock and roll: jazz and big band rule the airwaves (other than the official Imperial radio stations, which broadcast Bach, Mozart, Liszt, etc.). Most of the new music and nearly all of the commercially successful films (which do come in "living color") come from overseas, from the Confederation of American States. The Empire has placed limits on what percentage of popular entertainment created outside of the Empire may be sold or broadcast (generally 60% for broadcast media, and 40% for bookstores and magazine stands). There are heavy tariffs on foreign-made films and recordings, and thus a thriving black market for them. The largest portion of the black market, of course, consists of talismans and potions smuggled in from Africa and the Americas, which are totally banned and demand an absurdly high price. Weapons

Civilian arms are generally revolvers or small swords, but these are worn more for ornament than for defense. Many younger gentlemen don't even load their pistols (to the disgust of old-timers who remember the "invasion drills" of years gone by), and some carry pistols so elaborately engraved and decorated that using them to fire bullets would reduce their value or even damage them. (Visitors from the Confederation of American States can usually be discerned by the ludicrously large pistols they carry.) The police carry submachine guns, most typically the Heckler & Koch MP5, along with a few talismans to protect them against ever-increasing hex-related violence. They are polite, but they do not tolerate interference in police business, and they will not hesitate to aim their weapons at anyone who refuses to do as they are told.

Places Of Interest

Franco-Prussian Empire

Capital: Paris

The wealthiest and most advanced civilization on earth is the Franco-Prussian Empire. It stretches from the icy waters of the North Sea to the furthest reaches of the Dark Continent, and possesses more territory in the New World than any other empire.

Bretagne

France, Franco-Prussian Empire

Jutting defiantly into the Atlantic, France's northwest corner has long been culturally and geographically distinct from the main bulk of the country. Known to the Celts as Armorica, the land of the sea, Bretagne's past swirls with the legends of drowned cities and Arthurian forests. Prehistoric megaliths arise mysteriously from land and sea, and the medieval is never far from the modern.

Laouen Castle

Camaret-sur-Mer, Bretagne, France, Franco-Prussian Empire

Laouen Castle is the Bretagne headquarters for the Imperial Ministry of Information and Surveillance, better known as the Imperial Eye. This isn't public knowledge, but anyone who has a reason to want to know, knows.

Pénitencier du Camaret-sur-Mer
("The Keep")

Camaret-sur-Mer, Bretagne, France, Franco-Prussian Empire

Pénitencier du Camaret-sur-Mer is a forbidding granite fortress built on and into the Ile de Vauban, a rocky granite plateau thrusting as high as 60 meters above the ocean. Originally built to defend against Viking attacks in the ninth century, it was significantly expanded c. 1180-1200, with additions in the fourteenth century. A massive wall and gate encircle the castle keep. The enclosed area of the castle fortifications is one acre, contained within an oval wall of about 200 by 150 feet. The central three story "donjon" is the oldest of its kind in western Europe, and aboveground it has walls over two meters thick. Improvements in catapults in about 1200 necessitated higher walls for the exterior defensive ring. The castle was restored 1894-1914, and the Empire began using it for criminals too dangerous to imprison elsewhere.

The stones of The Keep and the granite bedrock into which its dungeons are tunneled are saturated with wards to prevent anyone from using magic to get in, and to keep those hexmasters already inside powerless. Rumours are that these potent wards require the ritual sacrifice of a few prisoners each year, but of course the Empire denies such wild tales.

Ottoman Republic

Capital: Istanbul

The Ottoman Republic is the greatest rival to the Franco-Prussian Empire. It stretches from the sands of Morocco and the rocky islands of Greece to the distant lands of Persia and Hindustan. The Turks divide their empire into semi-autonomous feudalmilitary divisions, each under the rule of a vassal prince who owes fealty to the Grand Turk, Sultan Selim IV. The Turks are even more barbaric than the Americans. They have fierce cannibalistic warriors (called "Janissaries"), depraved sexual practices (multiple wives kept in "hareems", decadent "Turkish baths", castrated slaves, and other practices too vulgar to mention here), and are notorious heathens as well (the Ottomans tolerate a variety of strange foreign cults, the practice of "Islam" chief among them).

Russian Federation

Capital: Moscow

The Russian Federation is a vast territory stretching from Poland to Mongolia, from the the bitter Arctic to blistering Afghanistan. It is the largest contiguous empire on earth, and also the most stable. Blessed by a series of competent and just Czars, Russia and its vassals have avoided the military entanglements which have ensnarled their Ottoman and Franco-Prussian neighbors, and an uneasy peace has existed between the Russian Federation and the other two great powers for several generations.

As has been the case since the time of Catherine the Great, the subject nations of the Russian Federation have very limited autonomy. While local governments have authority to deal with local matters, in all cases they may be overruled by the will of the Russian Parliament and the Czarina. This usually takes the form of standardizing the laws across the Federation, eliminating corruption and unrest in the subject nation's political organs, and funding public works which are deemed to enhance the Russian Federation as a whole. Unlike the Empire and the Ottoman Republic, travel between the subject nations of the Russian Federation is actually encouraged.

Confederation of American States

Capital: Philadelphia

The wealthiest nation in the New World is the Confederation of American States. Barbaric by European standards, the CAS is neither an empire nor a single nation-state, but a tightly knit union of sovereign States which are pledged to support one another in matters of foreign policy. Trade barriers among the Confederated States are forbidden by their Constitution, leading to increased specialization as the people of each State focus on those activities which at which they can compete most effectively. This economic flexibility and competitive motivation has catapulted the CAS from a backwater hellhole to the most affluent of the former Imperial Colonies.

Despite the apparent success of "The American Experiment", the CAS is a brutish, lawless land, where local police have little power to keep the peace and the Confederation central government has no troops of its own at all. Americans are reputed to be as unruly as Spaniards, militant as the Swiss, and lusty as Italians. In short, they have all the least-civilized qualities of the Imperial citizenry, with none of the Empire's culture and sophistication -- little better than the savages and pirates whose attacks they must constantly repel.

The Empire places strict limits on how much may be imported from the American States. The Imperial Foreign Office has urged the adoption of even stricter quotas, due to the growing popularity of uncouth American films, music, and hex in the Empire.

The Floating Worlds

There are many metaphors for the complex relationships between various realms: grains of sand on the beach, leaves on the World Tree, and threads in the cosmic tapestry are just a few. According to the Gallican Church and the Société Impériale de Thaumaturgie, the mortal world was created on a foundation laid down by God at the beginning of time. At the bottom of the stack is the Void, which is nothing, yet has limitless potential. Between the Void the mortal world are the worlds of "concept", which God used to slowly build up to the material, mortal world. On top of this mortal world, there are other realms, less flexible than ours, in which the form and structure established by God are increasingly rigid as one rises toward Heaven, which is the eternal and unchanging mind of God.

Some heretical magicians describe a different model of the mortal world and other realities. Rather than layers, they describe the worlds "above" and "below" ours as spheres. The Void, which is nothing yet potentially anything, is at the center, and each sphere outward is more structured, with more actuality and less potential. What makes this model heretical is the fact it postulates multiple worlds at each "level", implying that our world has no special status, being just one of any number of worlds with similar physical properties.

While neither the Church nor the SIT have published an official inventory of the worlds above and below ours, here are a few that have been documented by the SIT.

The Shadowlands

Some worlds, perhaps even most of them, are not simple finite realities. Many worlds have additional layers, or echoes, within them. The Société Impériale de Thaumaturgie calls these echoes "shadowlands". Typically, the inhabitants of one shadowland will consider theirs the "dominant" reality within the realm, with the others being merely shadows of it (thus the term).

Whether one realm is a shadow of another, or vice-versa, is largely a matter of perspective. For example, when a magician speaks of "the Shadowlands," they are usually referring to the Spirit Realm and the Dreamlands, which Société Impériale de Thaumaturgie has declared are "shadows" of the mortal world. However, there are magicians who think that the spirit realm is the "real" world, and that the mortal world is just a shadow of it. In other realms, the distinction is not even this clear. The Bright Lands, Annwn and Arnhem, with their Courts of Oak and of Holly (respectively) are nearly mirrors of each other. Who can say whether one of these is the real realm, and the other merely a Shadowland?

The Spirit World

The first of the shadowlands has gone by diverse names, depending on the frame of reference of the travelers who were visiting there at the time. Mediums and some parapsychologists call it the Spirit World, because they believe it to be populated by the spirits of deceased human beings. Some names for it among magicians are Tenebros, the Netherworld, and the Shadow Realm.

Some have described the Spirit World as a ghostly shadow of the mortal world, because there is a close correspondence between some locations and geography in the two worlds. However, this description implies that the Spirit World is a dark or gloomy place, which is not the case. The Spirit World is simply vague. Where the mortal world is solid and tangible, the Spirit World always seems to be on the edge of changing, as if all one sees there is but an illusion. A magician traveling in the Spirit World may pass close to her destination without noticing it, or a traveler may find a forest in the Spirit World where she would swear none had existed before.

There is evidence to support the claim that some of the spirits inhabiting the Netherworld were human beings until they were separated from their mortal shells: psychic remnants of deceased human beings. Ghosts. Yet other inhabitants of the Spirit World are distinctly alien in thought and deed, and claim to have been in existence since before humankind stood on its hind legs and began using tools.

The Dreamlands

All mortals have been to the Dreamlands at one time or another. Most visit nearly every night of their lives. Where the mortal world is ruled by the laws of physics, and the Spirit World is pure essence, the Dreamlands are a mixture of the two. The substance of the Dreamlands can be warped by a strong enough Will, even by those who do not have the talent for magic. Geography in the Dreamlands is an ephemeral thing. What can one moment be as real and solid as a block of granite on a mountainside under a sapphire sky, can the next moment be a sour-smelling hospital room where someone's grandmother slowly waits to die. The Dreamlands tend to reflect what lies within the heart and mind of the traveler, either consciously or unconsciously.

In the center of the Dreamlands, wherever that center may be (because the Dreamlands have no beginning and no end, there can be no certainty just where the center may lie), is the Court of the Dream King. The Dream King, the ruler of the Dreamlands, goes by many names. One commonly used by magicians is Nocturne. Although called the Dream King, Nocturne is more than simply the ruler of the Dreamlands: in a real sense he or she is the Dreamlands. In ages past, it was thought that the health of a king was mirrored by the health of his country. As the king prospered, so did his domain. If the king was angry, or upset, or made poor decisions, the kingdom would suffer equally: droughts, plagues, and poor crops were laid at the feet of the king. The source for these beliefs is the Dream King. Within his realm, he is the only force that matters. He may inspire dreamers with visions of beauty that drive them to create great works of art, or he may plague them with nightmares that haunt them even into their waking hours. Roused to anger, he can prevent a dreamer from ever awakening, or erase them from the Dream forever. Fortunately, he stirs from his demesne infrequently, and he rarely interferes in the affairs of mortals.

Sleeping people who venture here in their dreams leave their bodies behind, yet they appear to have bodies in the Dreamlands, as well. The creatures native to the Dreamlands seem every bit as real as creatures of the mortal realm. A magician who travels to the Dreamlands in her physical body (rather than as a dreamer) seems no more or less real than any dreamer or dream creature. Dreamers have a great advantage over magicians, however: barring intervention from the Dream King (or certain other rare and powerful dream creatures), a dreamer will never die in a dream -- she may wake up in a panic of fright, but she won't die. A magician who is killed physically while in the Dreamlands is not so lucky: she is just as dead as she would be in the mortal world. Or perhaps not, if it was only a dream.