nerdelemental
09-01-2009, 10:06 AM
The fiction of Malifaux is one of the best reasons to pick up the rulebook (good job Redstripe and others!).
In a loose overview, consider an alternate Earth in the mid to late 1800's where magic is more prevalent but diminishing. Like our current financial collapse the people of this Earth are desperate and strike out at the heavens where they still feel a tug of magic/spirituality and they open a gateway into this other world that's similar but obviously different from our own.
Like good white folk, they not only go exploring but claim the abandoned place as their own even though there's whispers in the wind and their nightmares are frighteningly real while they're there. They find an abandoned town called Malifaux and take up residence there.
There's a ton of great story that would be a great injustice to try to summarize. Suffice it to say that in Malifaux the humans discover stones imbued with a magical/spiritual essence and this rejuvenates the failing magics back home. There's great conflicts that ensue and the spiritual denizens of Malifaux take on physical presence again, fueled by the human explorers plundering their land.
Thus begins the game setting: Wild west and Victorian gas light London in a strange and kind of haunted place. Human factions are in conflict over their new rights in this world- the Guild are established to police and keep order, but it's a very tight and iron reign with a somewhat abusive hand (necessary, they feel, because of the abusive landscape), the Arcanists who feel that this world represents freedom to explore new powers and new possibilities (the direct rebels against the authority of the Guild), the Resurrectionists who have felt the connection of soulstones and this world with death and have turned their magic to vile practices of necromancy and corpse manipulation, and the Neverborn who are the remnants of the indigenous population of Malifaux - they're reborn and ****ed off and they've taken the form of Man's dreams and nightmares and use his dreams and nightmares against him. Finally are the Outcasts who have links to the world, its magics, but have either no direct allegiance to a faction or have accidentally gotten entangled in the mess.
That's the world of Malifaux: Wild West, Victorian, Steampunky, horror splashed in as psychological and physical, and a lot of unease between the groups as they explore a new world with hopes of fixing a problem, but very obviously unearthing a much bigger one.
In a loose overview, consider an alternate Earth in the mid to late 1800's where magic is more prevalent but diminishing. Like our current financial collapse the people of this Earth are desperate and strike out at the heavens where they still feel a tug of magic/spirituality and they open a gateway into this other world that's similar but obviously different from our own.
Like good white folk, they not only go exploring but claim the abandoned place as their own even though there's whispers in the wind and their nightmares are frighteningly real while they're there. They find an abandoned town called Malifaux and take up residence there.
There's a ton of great story that would be a great injustice to try to summarize. Suffice it to say that in Malifaux the humans discover stones imbued with a magical/spiritual essence and this rejuvenates the failing magics back home. There's great conflicts that ensue and the spiritual denizens of Malifaux take on physical presence again, fueled by the human explorers plundering their land.
Thus begins the game setting: Wild west and Victorian gas light London in a strange and kind of haunted place. Human factions are in conflict over their new rights in this world- the Guild are established to police and keep order, but it's a very tight and iron reign with a somewhat abusive hand (necessary, they feel, because of the abusive landscape), the Arcanists who feel that this world represents freedom to explore new powers and new possibilities (the direct rebels against the authority of the Guild), the Resurrectionists who have felt the connection of soulstones and this world with death and have turned their magic to vile practices of necromancy and corpse manipulation, and the Neverborn who are the remnants of the indigenous population of Malifaux - they're reborn and ****ed off and they've taken the form of Man's dreams and nightmares and use his dreams and nightmares against him. Finally are the Outcasts who have links to the world, its magics, but have either no direct allegiance to a faction or have accidentally gotten entangled in the mess.
That's the world of Malifaux: Wild West, Victorian, Steampunky, horror splashed in as psychological and physical, and a lot of unease between the groups as they explore a new world with hopes of fixing a problem, but very obviously unearthing a much bigger one.