PmWiki | Madlands / Magic

The lines between magic and super-tech are very blurred, but there is a constant; anything that works by magic or by scavenged technology is pretty much impossible to mass-produce. Some magic, some madness, is needed to keep even the Clock King's obedient creations ticking as well as they do. (The Clock Queen figured this out, but has given up on explaining it to her husband, besides, she thinks he's adorable when he's tinkering. They look a bit like chess pieces, she's a lot taller and more powerful than he is)

The Seamstress was perhaps one of the first to figure out this limitation, and worked around it as much as she could by providing a good -- life extension -- that is valuable even in tiny quantities. Unbeknownst to her, she is responsible for a fair bit of the Madlands' madness; what happens if a ruler has had centuries to get addicted to mad-science medicine?

In the Madlands, ultimately the anomaly is the New State's normalcy. After the initial wave of expansion, the New State opened its new borders, allowing Madlands denizens to visit its semicircular colony, trade, and do business there. But the fortress, and therefore the only passage through the Mountain Wall, remains off limits.

Efforts to fly past the Wall have doubled, now that it's known that there is land and civilization on the other side of it, but not even the harpy tribes that perch on its prealps or the Flying Circus with their steam biplanes can soar high enough.

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