Engineers
The Engineers are obsessive experimenters, combining a keen creative intellect with a pragmatic need to provide techonology for Camp Hope. The original mandate of the Engineers was to provide solutions for public works projects (sewers, boilers, and roadways), but their increasingly experiments gnerally serve to satisfy only their insatiable curiosity. Sometimes their experiments yield useful technological advancements; other times they produce unintended gadgets or huge explosions — both of which can be useful in their own way.
The Engineers' most grandiose experiments typically concern public works projects and the restoration of Before Time techonology. These efforts use a methodology that relies on unexpected outcomes: all results are informative, even if they completely defy expectations. For example, an experiment that begins as the creation of a “laser focusing lens” might be renamed a “death beam” once the researchers discover more properties of what they have fashioned. Then, after a few tests, the apparatus gains the designation of “universal refuse disintegrator”. This sort of adjustment is par for the course in Engineer experiments; the “fiddle and find out” method is favored over any process of systematic scientific research. They value results over success, accepting and even anticipating that Engineer experiments will end in gloriously unpredictable ways.
The Engineers thirst for knowledge, cherish intellect, and speculate about the secrets of the universe. It brings to its scientific pursuits a flaming passion that turns its search for knowledge into an insatiable hunger, makes its cold intellect brilliantly fruitful, and widens its speculation into a search for connections between wildly disparate objects or concepts. It is manic in its expressions of creative energy, shifting from careful analysis to intuitive leap seemingly for no reason, always thinking outside the proverbial box. As the Engineers see it, unpredictable action, far from being antithetical to methodical research, has experimental value.
The only action worth taking is one with an unknown outcome. If you already know what will happen, you will learn nothing from doing it.-Shawnee Randell Frith
Diplomacy
They do their best to stay out of the politics and remain neutral with the other factions. Getting too involved with the politics just leads to making powerful people angry and detracts from the time that one could be spending on their projects.
Engineer Characters
- Alignment: Usually chaotic, often neutral
- Suggested Races: Human, Other, Awakened
- Suggested Classes: Civilian, Techie, Heavy
- Suggested Archtypes: Authority, Field Machinist, Driver, Selfless Protector
- Suggested Ladders: Savant
You might enjoy playing a character who belongs to the Engineers for any of the following reasons:
- You like to make things happen and don’t care about the consequences.
- You’re drawn to technology and dangerous explosions.
- You want to be an innovative genius.
- You relish the idea of pushing that shiny red button.
Background: Engineer
Armed with an inventive intellect, a love of technology, and an unquenchable energy, you are an enthusiastic participant in the research work of the Engineers. Though you’re likely to begin your career as a mere assistant, you can aspire to become a skilled Field Machinist, a shop supervisor, or even a flamethrower-wielding guard tasked with defending Timeless Tune-ups. The Engineers are obsessive, brilliant, inspired, and an unpredictable force of chaos, and you epitomize all of those qualities.
- Skill Proficiencies: Engineering, Investigation
- Languages: Choose one Language
- Tool Proficiencies: Tinker's Tools
- Equipment: An Engineer insignia, one set of Tinker’s tools, a hammer, a block and tackle, a set of common clothes, and 5 credits.
- 1 Renown and Rank 1 with the Engineers.
Suggested Characteristics
Feature: Urban Infrastructure
The popular conception of the Engineers is based on mad inventions, dangerous experiments, and explosive blasts. Much of that perception is accurate, but the Engineers are also involved with mundane tasks of construction and architecture — primarily in crafting the infrastructure that allows Camp Hope to enjoy running water, functioning computers, and technological wonders.
You have a basic knowledge of the structure of buildings, including the stuff behind the walls. You can also find blueprints of a specific building in order to learn the details of its construction. Such blueprints might provide knowledge of entry points, structural weaknesses, or secret spaces. Your access to such information isn’t unlimited. If obtaining or using the information gets you in trouble with the law, the faction can’t shield you from the repercussions.
Contacts
The shops of the Engineers are constantly starting up new projects and dissolving old ones, so it’s easy for even the lowliest assistant to make friends (and enemies) in various shops.
Roll twice on the Engineer Contacts table (for an ally and a rival) and once on the Non-Engineer Contacts table.
How Do I Fit In?
Whatever your role in the Engineers, you are expected to contribute to its research in some way. That contribution might involve participating in tests, whether as an assistant, a researcher, or a subject. You might be one of the guards who protects a shop, or a laborer responsible for lifting heavy pieces of equipment into place. Everyone’s contribution matters, even if the Engineers know that some matter more than others.
Rank and Renown
Renown within the Engineers brings with it more responsibility in your chosen field of study, as well as an increasing ability to choose the activities that interest you. This greater responsibility and independence is reflected in a progression of ranks, from that of a mere assistant to the coveted position of the Head Engineer.
Somebody's gotta fix it.
General Biases
These are the biases that are generally held by members of the Farmers Guild.
Positive Bias
Favors Engineers over others. This triggers if a character has renown 10 or more with the Engineers or if their Engineering skill is +10 or more.
Negative Biases
Dislikes those who are not Engineers. This triggers if a character has renown 9 or less with the Engineers or if their Engineering skill is +9 or less.
Engineer
Creating gadgets is how me make sure that this camp keeps running. We gotta keep the lights on and the toilets flushing!-Shawnee Randell Frith
Independent Engineer
Figuring out how the technology from the Before Time is like cracking open a piece of who we were before. I can't imagine what it would have been like to live in a time when all of this was just... everywhere.-Roger Frith
Scorchbringer
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.-Scott Adams
