London Chronicles – Gaslight, Rift-Tech, and Supeheroes

Welcome to the dawn of my new campaign environment - London in 1880.

For a while now, I’ve been tinkering with a setting that has refused to leave my head. It’s a world where the soot of the Industrial Revolution mixes with cosmic radiation, where ancient Egyptian mysticism is treated as a corporate asset, and where the line between machine and mankind is violently blurred. A world whet the normal barrier of existence is crumbling. 

Welcome to the world of the;

London, 1880.

The British Empire stands at the height of its power — and increasingly, astride the heavens themselves. But beneath the gaslight and grandeur lies a city transformed, where Victorian ingenuity, Egyptian mysteries, and otherworldly energies interweave in ways that challenge reality itself.

Bronze automatons patrol the streets, powered by Rift energy first tapped by Charles Babbage. The Resurrected Labour — reanimated dead bound by rediscovered Egyptian rites — toil silently in the factories and docks. Airships drift above the Thames. And unbeknownst to most Londoners, their city sits at the crossing point of three ancient currents: the Abyssal force of creation, the Charnel energies that guard the border between life and death, and the elusive Enlightenment current said to grant glimpses of something transcendent.

Two revolutions have reshaped the city in a single generation — Meckmancy and Necromancy — and they are beginning, worryingly, to converge. Hybrid constructs blur the line between machine and corpse. Shamblers speak in tongues no one taught them. And ten years ago, Babbage’s own Nexus Engine tore open the sky above the Crystal Palace, killing hundreds and unleashing three days when the dead rose on their own and the spaces between buildings did not quite hold their shape.
The government called it a catastrophe. The Meckmancers called it a lesson. But in the shadows of the Cult of the Crawling Eye and the Daughters of Sekhmet, a different word is used: a warning.
This is London Chronicles — a world of steam, sorcery, and superheroes, where Victorian optimism has just discovered its limits. But who moves through this city, and what they’re willing to do about what’s coming, is a story still being written.

This is the world of the Hidden Society,  a group of special individuals who have pledged to protect the Queen, the Empire and mankind. 

Introducing: The Hidden Society

Protectors of the Empire. Guardians of London. Left to right:

Mr. Tonks
Charlotte Holmes — the Symbiotic Detective
The Augmented Man
The Voltaire
The city doesn’t know it needs them yet.

Next  -  some background on these characters - some invented, some adapted, and others stolen. Also ann introduction to the factions vying for London’s soul — and the first names you’ll need to know before Episode 1 begins.