Casting Shadows

The Casting Shadows blog’s second Serial Setting appears in weekly installments and is scheduled for a 6-month run which is nearly over. This series is focused on providing basic details for heroic pulp adventures for the Ubiquity Roleplaying System as presented in Hollow Earth Expedition  and to a much lesser extent Leagues of Adventure. These ideas, set in a fictionalized and mysticized version of the Korean peninsula in 1936, present a community oppressed by faceless enemies and their own countrymen. It will additionally suggest routes, leads, and hooks for GMs to entice groups based elsewhere in the world to get involved. This series portrays characters and situations which are often grim, oppressive, and hopeless in hope that once characters from your campaigns are introduced, you can change that, or part of that, for those whose lives your players’ PCs encounter. This series also contains very strong suggestions of ways to enable the characters to travel either to or from the Hollow Earth (and even a small suggestion of how they might come to learn to do both), and so has quite a few touches of the unexplained and unexplored.

19  The Hall of Glorious History –   Conquest from without and conquest from within

It is too costly in time and troops to be required to continually subjugate a subjugated people. Far better to break their spirits, strip them of any sense of independence, and fill their minds with your thoughts. While the final stages of this grand re-education program are not yet in force, large aspects of its foundations are already visible. Preferential treatment is given to all those who can speak the Oppressor’s language, positive attention is paid to those whose children are sent for schooling in the cities of Japan, and now schools, libraries, and museums are being constructed to tell history in the way it “should be told” – from the perspective of an island Empire seeking to expand.

About 60km from Samhang, the new network of roads and rails spreading across the nation has formed an unintentional nexus near what used to be a village of a barely a handful of people. In just a decade that village has grown from nothing into an unofficial administrative district with offices from each branch of service in both the military and civil sector. Corruption has distorted the official maps so that this unofficial town could remain nameless and off the government’s radar. Tax was collected, and contracts for development were awarded, but the profits went into the pockets of now-deceased military officials with dreams of grandeur.  Governance of this place has been added to the duties of the same officials responsible for Samhang and its neighboring towns and villages. Their first duty is to build a museum exploring and explaining the glorious history of the Empire at the expense of the truth.

Local legends, historical figures, scientific achievements, and culture will be replaced by new scholarship that points at a more easterly origin.

Construction is due to start immediately after the rainy season. All able-bodied men from the surrounding area are expected to contribute time and labour to its construction.

Hahn, YooJin – feeder of thousands

Yoojin Hahn is a widow in her late 40s with a reputation as being the best cook in the province. Strong of body and spirit, and with an almost mystical touch in the kitchen she has been sought by new husbands since hers passed on, but has found herself the servant of the Oppressor instead. Used to organize and pacify the large groups of workers pressed into the large-scale building and rebuilding projects of the last decade, YooJin has the status of a revered and precious tool.

Her exposure to the Oppressor and those forced to labour under that whip, has taught her that it is time to rise up and do something. With no formal education, and no practice in leadership outside her fiery domains, she will never be the one to take charge. She is, however, actively looking for the right man to stand behind and give the benefit of all she has learned and all the forces who trust her and rely on her.

In her mind rest all the details needed to cripple the military in this region. With the right organization, it may be enough to spark a revolution powerful enough to send them back where they came from.

Due to the importance of this project, YooJin has been given the task of overseeing the labour camp kitchens and servants dorms for the construction of the museum and town around it. She will feed common labourers and high government officials alike. In her heart, the countdown to rebellion has already begun…

Related articles

• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 18 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 17 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 16 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 15 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 14 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 13 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 12  (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 11  (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 10  (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 9  (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 8 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 7 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 6 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 5 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 4 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 3 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 2 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 2 ~ Week 1  (runeslinger.wordpress.com)