A quick preview from our final chapter detailing Storyguide Characters and Rigs that you can use in your game of Trinity Continuum: Steam Wars. Today, we've got a trio of talented (lowercase) rig crew members ready to jump into your game. On Monday, I'll have another sneak peek at some of the Storyguide Rigs that may square off with your players.
The following characters are supporting characters and antagonists around whom plots might form or who might influence the tide of the Second Steam War. The protagonists in Trinity Continuum: Steam Wars might interact with any number of them during their stories.
William “Bill” Tunney: Gunnery Sergeant USSF
“Every boy wants to be a general, but every general wants to be a gunnery sergeant.”
No fighter exemplified the contradictory nature of the steam rigger more than Bill (middle name unknown) Tunney. In his thirties, by the Second Steam War, he was already a hardened veteran. The quote was no lie. There’s a reason the USSF gunnery sergeant was nicknamed “rig boss.” Officially, the rank (adapted from the Marine Corps) was responsible for all arms and ordnance, weapons-training and boarding drills aboard a steam rig. Like a team-captain in sports, he was often respected above the men who were (literally) at the top. That was Tunney.
By all accounts, his father Joseph Patrick Tunney was a hard humorless coal miner, and by age twelve, young Bill himself was working the mines. Apparently he was underage when he enlisted in US Army coastal artillery. Within two years he transferred to the fledgling Steam Force when its commander-in-chief Teddy Roosevelt had trouble recruiting. Tunney proved a natural, going from loader to starboard cranesman on the early US rig Javelin to gunnery sergeant on the hercules rig Van Buren, where he cut his teeth tamping down border incursions and smuggling runs.
Tunney was a gutsy never-do-anything-his-men-wouldn’t-do leader. But he also had a not-always-helpful mistrust of anyone in authority, that led to him being frequently rude, surly, arrogant, quick-to-drink and fast-to-punch. His impulsiveness to buck the brass was likely the biggest difference between him and equally troublesome pal Chief Duff. Regulations were made to be broken, especially if it saved the rig or crew. Tunney was practically the poster boy for the popular conception of steam force rank and file. The riggers are the worst rule breakers. That was only a slight exaggeration. As some wags scribbled over recruiting posters: “Bring us your foolhardy!”
Primary Pool: 8 (Inspirational Leadership, Talk Sense to Power) Secondary Pool: 6 (Dirty Fighting, Feats of Endurance) Desperation Pool: 4 Enhancements: +1 Leadership in Battle Defense: 3 Integrity: 2 Injuries: 6 Armor: 0 Initiative: 4 Qualities:Motivational Speech, Reckless
Motivational Speech: This character can take a simple action to bestows the Inspired status effect on any characters of their choice up to short range.
Reckless: As a reflexive action, the character can reduce their Defense by up to 2. They then apply the value they reduced as an Enhancement on their next simple action.
Lucy Tillencrest was the only child of celebrated Canadian engineer John Chandler Tillencrest, famous for his development of modern steam power (particularly fighting rigs) and his wife Sarah Crawford. The gifted Lucy, however, threatened to eclipse him with a remarkable string of inventions (contraptions, some say) that were frequently as eccentric as they were innovative. Lucy was born in 1864 on a trip to London at the time Great Britain assumed ownership of her father’s steam rig plans. The following year, Tillencrest sent his wife and daughter to London permanently for their protection, after the French used Sarah’s anarchist ties to blackmail him.
By age six, Lucy had fashioned a doll and windup monkey into a small steam-toy running on water. Later, she was one of the first women to graduate from Germany’s esteemed technical University of Karlsruhe in Baden Württemberg (had she been there a decade earlier, she may have encountered future Prussian steam commander Friedrich Conrad Voss). An accomplished pianist, Lucy constructed the Melodematon, and the later (improved) Ambulodeon. These are recreational steam-walkers driven by organ keyboard, but, in true Tillencrest whimsy, her operating tunes were unbearably atonal, leading to a number of complaints. Even her most commercial piece, the all-purpose High Hat Lifter construction rig, displayed an eccentricity of design that exemplified her “embrace something different or else” philosophy. It was testimony to her brilliance that sales were through the roof.
Lucy’s advances in steam aviation, such as the Tillencrest Airsled, conquered the fuel-weight challenge, thus aiding the GDR in the latter part of the Second Steam War and the eventual air-heavy Third Steam War.
Lucy’s interactions with Gunnery Sergeant Bill Tunney were notable for their prickliness, but more importantly for the surprising similarity of their maverick sensibilities and outspoken brashness. Their complement was the very picture of steam power: her stylish design to his rumbling furnace and gears. So too, Lucy’s chameleonlike appearance as she was only too happy to swap out her Victorian elegance for goggles and jumpsuit.
Talented Engineer: The character can attempt a difficulty 2 simple action to increase or reduce the characters’ steam dice pool by 1. The first time each scene that a rig they are in would lose 1 or more Ruin, reduce the Ruin lost by 2, to a minimum of 0, as they reroute systems.
Technobabble: The character adds 2 to their Integrity when resisting an influence action relating to their career/role on a rig.
Rikugun Shōsa Ikuma Arakawa: Rig Captain, Hero of Second Steam War
“Sound is important. Noise can defeat you. When you accept that a battle has no rhythm, that becomes your rhythm.”
When Ikuma Arakawa was twenty, he saw his father killed in the Battle of Shiroyama, the final engagement of the Satsuma Rebellion and the last gasp of the samurai class in the Meiji Restoration. He fought alongside his father, against the latter’s wishes (Ikuma was not a samurai). Before the final charge, his father knocked him over into some brush out of sight, thus saving his life.
As Arakawa grew older he continued to resent the modernization of Japan, and his bitterness emerged in aimless wanderings and criminal behavior. But when he went to work in a coal mine, something changed. He suddenly began to see the industrialization of Japan as something he could use. Upon his release, with the help of renowned female samurai Niijima Yae, he apprenticed with brilliant engineer Akio Hirohata, which led him to the team developing Japan’s first steam rigs. It was like a sign from heaven. The rigs were fashioned after samurai warriors. Of course. It made sense. What else? The honor, the importance, the grandeur, the loyalty of the samurai, had arisen again in the form of giant metal warriors, whose crews would carry on the tradition, even at the cost of their lives. To Arakawa, this was what it had all been about; the way he viewed his father — not the trite financial causes of the rebellion some liked to harp on.
Arakawa became the first “test pilot” for a 40-foot rig in the menpo style: the classic samurai look. He took to it like a duck to water, and when the JISF (Japanese Imperial Steam Rig) fleet was built, he stood proudly at its head as rig captain. His timing was heaven-sent as the First Steam War (also known as the Batavia Disagreement) seemed to come from nowhere, at least as far as the public was concerned. Arakawa saw it as a proving ground, a test, all for him. Though the war was short-lived (a stalemate), Ikuma Arakawa, now a Rikugun Shōsa (major) was acclaimed a hero, boasting seven kills (a considerable amount for fighting rigs). And while resentment lingered, the experience and success tempered it to an extent that allowed him to live (or die) with it.
