Iron Horizons
January 15, 2606
Scope
The motivation behind building Iron Horizons
For me, personally, steampunk is kinda meh. As a whole, the aesthetic and philosophy don't resonate with me. I prefer the grimier, darker, more ambiguous world of dieselpunk. Technology is no longer humanity's savior or the vehicle for social reform. If anything, technology has proven itself more destructive than anything else.
And yet, something is compelling about the 1930s vehicles and the ideas of struggling through a world rocked with upheaval as the previous social order collapses. At the same time, technology has grown more and more advanced. I want to play with that sort of idea.
But I want to set it against an even bigger scope- the Milky Way. I love space and the possibilities of an infinite frontier that we will never be able to fully explore. Think Star Wars or Star Trek with diesel engines and P-51s retrofitted for space.
And then what happens when we the unfettered capitalism of the 1920s spreads across the stars and colonialist imperialism is rejuvenated by the infinite new territory rather than crumbling in a post-WW2 world? How does that conflict with technological development that supports individualization and autonomy?
Also, the whole idea that 'humans are space-orcs/live on a death world' is really compelling. It's something else I want to run with, especially when I get to the point that there are aliens with a more traditional space opera aesthetic. Humans come rolling in with starships belching diesel, exposing themselves to gene-mutating-multidimensional-energy whenever they travel faster than light, and using slug-throwing weapons, and calculating everything by hand/analog devices, and hurling themselves against unbeatable odds for the sake of putting up a fight.
I want to make a gritty, nobledark/grimbright epic painted across a canvas of infinity full of grimy overalls, leather bomber jackets, diesel fumes, analog technology, retro-sleek starships, the thunder of big guns along the hull of massive warships, and renegade tramp freighter captains waging private little wars for their own freedom.
The goal of the project
I think this would work great in a multimedia/transmedial setting.
With that, I have two streams of projects I want to work on:
1. Fiction- novels and short stories tracing the development of the universe and the epic stories that shape it.
2. Tabletop RPG Setting: I really like immersive, deep, well-developed settings for ttRPG campaigns, and I think tabletop games can be an excellent method for that, especially how big I'm beginning to envision it. As an indie RPG publisher, I want to do a series of core rulebooks/setting books for different eras, adventures, arcs, and the like. Right now, I'm looking at various mechanical systems and leaning towards Genesys, potentially.
Iron Horizons's Unique Selling point
Dieselpunk + Space Opera
There's some dieselpunk stuff out there, but mostly it's an alternate history in some form or another. It's rare for it to involve going into space, and even rarer to go beyond the Solar System. Rocket Punk is usually restricted to the Solar System.
So this does something different- takes the alternate history technology and 1930s aesthetic into a gritter, noble-dark setting across the furthest reaches of the Milky Way.
These almost always have far-future settings with impossibly alien technology, especially for something on a grand scope, like Foundation, Dune, or the Twilight Imperium board game setting. I want to tie it directly into the aesthetics and histories of the 20th century, but with a decidedly modern and progressive perspective.
Theme
Genre
- Dieselpunk: Retrofuturist science-fiction with a reliance on diesel technology, analog computing, hydraulics, and mechanical technology rather than electric or digital, which are areas that never really developed. Thematically, cynicism about technology being capable of fixing problems, industrialized colonial imperialism, societal trauma, and anti-authoritarian focus.
- Space Opera: Grand, epic dramas of the future with large-scale stories happening across the backdrop of an entire galaxy, with a particular emphasis on the emotional arcs and relations of the characters. Great, big sweeping movements of history, adventures in deep space on alien planets, and the clash of good and evil. High fantasy in space: more concerned with the narrative, emotions, and plot than the science.
Reader Experience
Full of both wonder and terror- both natural and human-created. I want to find a balance between the different extremes and capture the fact that wonder and terror are two sides of the same coin and underlie everything within our world. On the one hand, it should be grimy, lived in, dirty, and massive in scope, but on the other, it should also have the wonderment of the galaxy, the audacity of human dreams and ambition, and the capability of humans to exhibit great acts of selflessness.
That means, then, that this world should be a mirror of how our own feels. But there's a weightiness to it- the sins of the past still weigh heavy and cause problems, while the future is deeply uncertain and always precariously balanced.
Copyright Kaleb C. Kramer 2020-2024