I’m about to kick off a game with a crew of Shadows whose speciality is sabotage. They’ll be based in a rusted out train carriage in the old Coalridge rail yard. So the obvious thing they’ll be doing to start is sabotaging factories, trains and/or the goods going out on the trains.
The factions involved at this stage are the Rail Jacks, The Hive and the Grey Cloaks. I’ve got some idea about how these factions are going to be in conflict with each other (and the PCs), but I still have some questions:
– What kinds of goods would be produced in Coalridge for export?
– Who would stand to gain or lose from industrial sabotage?
– What other factions could be wrapped up in this situation?
– Where could saboteurs go as they move up in the world?
– What other ideas are jumping out at you?
– What kinds of goods would be produced in Coalridge for export?
Coal…pain…black lungs…old angry gods.
– Who would stand to gain or lose from industrial sabotage?
Lose: the rich folk who own the factories and their cruel foreman.
Gain: Competitors with factories in other cities or other districts.
– What other factions could be wrapped up in this situation?
City Council and the Fog Hounds, the Lost
– Where could saboteurs go as they move up in the world?
No idea.
– What other ideas are jumping out at you?
False flag operations in which industrialists pay saboteurs to make the unions look bad.
At some point they are going to have to decide what they stand for (if anything).
If you wanted to shift sabotage targets, the leviathan hunters monopoly could hire them to sabotage the sparkwrights’ research into alternative power sources. The sparkwrights could hire them to make sure fresh blood doesn’t make it off the docks.
– What kinds of goods would be produced in Coalridge for export?
The Ironworks specializes, obviously, in metalwork – refined metals, iron, steel, pig-iron. Construction material, ship parts, weapons, ammunition, lightning barrier & sparkwright parts – mostly individual parts rather than assembled products, since we’re probably talking pre-Ford (no assembly lines).
As well as housing ironworks, the Ironworks proper is also a collection of workhouses, so let’s see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse#Work
Removing hemp from telegraph wires, bone-crushing (for fertiliser) (good tidbit: “until a government inquiry into conditions in the Andover workhouse in 1845 found that starving paupers were reduced to fighting over the rotting bones they were supposed to be grinding, to suck out the marrow”), doing mass laundry (with caustic chemicals and accidents), wood chopping, corn grinding, rope-making.
There’ll be canneries, of course – potted meat must be an export.
Exports: Coal, refined metals, sundry metalwork, weapons, knives, brass goods (domestic goods), toys, buttons and buckles, trinkets, houseware, ships & ship-parts, sparkwright crafts, rope, fertilizer, potted meat.
– Who would stand to gain or lose from industrial sabotage?
Rival industrialists/factory-owners.
Complicated insurance schemes where a distant owner wants their own investment “accidentally” destroyed.
Imperial agents who need loose ends tidied up (e.g. a heretical sparkwright product they don’t want on the market).
Imperial agents who want private industrialists with too much power taken down a notch or two.
Investors who want to tamper with the market; e.g. drive up demand for their own product by destroying one of their own stockpiles.
Union reprisals against crooked foremen or bosses.
Capitalist reprisals against union organizers/workers.
– What other factions could be wrapped up in this situation?
The unions, the Skov consulate (who export their own competing products), the Ministry of Preservation (involved in train and rail parts, sparkwright/lightning-barrier parts, and food production/canneries/potted meat), the Imperial Military (involved with the gunmakers).
– Where could saboteurs go as they move up in the world?
The struggle of the unions is central to Coalridge, so I could imagine saboteurs either aligning with the unionists (gaining street-level support) or becoming a crucial tool of the industrialists (gaining money & power). Ultimately, either way, saboteurs are a political tool – do they become clandestine agents of the imperium, sabotaging the most powerful enemies of the Immortal Emperor? Or do they become agents of the Emperor’s enemies, working to undermine the government and military? Or perhaps they find themselves in the employ of a foreign power – working for the Skov or Iruvian consulate against Akorosi ambitions. Or maybe they try the most dangerous game – playing one side against the other, working for everyone and no-one.
Thanks all, some great ideas in there. Especially Tim, for that amazingly comprehensive answer! I’m definitely feeling the union angle. Let’s find out where their loyalties lie!