Board Thread:Roleplay Ideas/@comment-26237442-20151108212055

ok before I start I'm going to give you the link to the mortal engines wiki (it's rather died out I'm afraid) http://mortalengines.wikia.com/wiki/Mortal_Engines_Wiki

ok to start with here's the premise and basic timeline

Thousands of years in the future the earth is a desolate and barren place America is an uninhabitable wasteland, the middle east is an irradiated mess of craters (here's a map)

there are several major factions in the world of mortal engines I'll give you some info on each

Traction Cities

Traction Cities range in size from enormous metropolises (or Urbivores) with populations of millions, to tiny villages and hamlets propelled by small engines or even sails. Airships have become the most common method of transport in this new era, as they are the only practical way to travel between cities - actual heavier-than-air aeroplanes became an extinct technology after the Sixty Minute War (although the technology was rediscovered during the war between the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft and Green Storm, it was never mentioned to be used for anything other than fighting aircraft).

Larger cities are usually built on tiers similar to a wedding cake, with the poorer classes living on the lower tiers amongst the tracks and engines, and the higher classes living in mansions and villas at the top of the city. An exception to this was

Arkangel, a huge, not very ethical, Ice City. As well as being divided into tiers, there is an outer "shell", and an inner area, close to the engines. The poorer classes live on the outside of the city, while the rich live on the inside where it is warmer.

Most cities are urbivorous, and have attachments called "Jaws" to catch prey and drag them into the Gut. Here the prey is stripped, melted down and used as fuel for the predator city. Its inhabitants are integrated into the population of the predator city, or, in less ethical cities, taken as slaves.

Not all cities are predatory, however; some (notably Anchorage and Airhaven) are peaceful and make a living by trading. Smaller towns and hamlets (like Speedwell and Stayns) are also often peaceful and survive by trading or mining. Sometimes smaller towns meet in gatherings to trade known as "trading clusters."

The Anti Traction League

he Anti-Traction League is an organization opposed to the prevalence of the Nomad Empires and later Traction Cities and indeed Municipal Darwinism (the traction city system where everything eats each other and the strongest survives I.E survival of the fittest). The League is the dominant power in Southern Asia though it also has territories in Africa and the Andes A fan made interpretation of the ATL's embelem in Nuevo Maya (South/Latin America). Its symbol is a broken wheel.

Grimsby

Grimsby is a ruinous, underwater city. It was once a Raft City (and before that a seaport in Lincolnshire, England), but was sunk by the Anti-Traction League in the Iron Winter of 919 TE. After it sank, it was found and re-purposed by Uncle and the Lost Boys who used it as a base for their crimes.

Grimsby was known for being a predator city, and feared in the North by many smaller towns. It also seemed by extremely unpopular with most of the Northern raft cities, perhaps because of being such a successful urbivore.

Airhaven

before the events of Mortal Engines, the people of Airhaven got tired of constantly running from predators. So they inflated gas bags and flew into the air. The town travels through the air,

visiting different cities. The upper classes would be able to take trips up to visit the floating town.

It is the central place in the sky. As Airhaven is neutral, it has both tractionists and anti-tractionists.

Zagwa

Zagwa is an Anti-Traction state, and one of the last remaining Christian states. It's territory is most of central and southern Africa.

Anchorage

The only city from the dead continent of the American Empire Anchorage has stopped moving and now rests in one of the view (hidden) spots of inhabitable land in North America

Stalkers

Stalkers are robotically reanimated corpses before the sixty minute war (when everything was wiped out) they could still remember being human annd having emotions, now they are ruthless killing machines

ok here's a bit of history

The sixty minute war (copied and pasted because I'm lazy)

The WarEdit
It was a cataclysmic conflict which is deliberately left vague, but was evidently fought between the American Empire and Greater China. It is likely that the Middle East was involved, as this region has been reduced to a flooded maze of atomic craters.

The name suggests that the war took only an hour to begin and end, presumably due to the widespread destruction caused by the massive amounts of weaponry deployed. However, it is possible that there was a cold war leading up to this event and that the "sixty minutes" only refers to the actual fighting.

AftermathEdit
Most human technology was lost during the conflict, and the world collapsed into a post apocalyptic state.Following the war came a period of immense geological instability, as earthquakes, tsunamis, glaciers and volcanos swept across Earth. It is uncertain whether this was an unfortunate coincidence, or directly caused by technology used during the war (since weapons technology was greatly advanced at the time of the war, this is not out of the question). The isthmus linking North and South America was destroyed by Slow Bombs, volcanoes sprouted up in Europe and new oceans and mountain ranges were formed.

North America was reduced to a radioactive wasteland, along with much of eastern China. The surviving Chinese fled into the Himalayas and formed a new civilization that would later become Shan Guo, leading nation of the Anti-Traction League. Africa escaped much of the devastation and parts of it became the center of another new civilisation though it was weakened by the Traction Cities centuries later.

This destruction led to the so called "Black Centuries", an era presumably similar to the Dark Ages. During this period, barbaric nomad tribes wandered Europe. After this period (at least 10,000 years later), Nicholas Quirke transformed London into the first of the Traction Cities and this led to the rise of Municipal Darwinism and the Traction Era.

Remnants of weaponryEdit
Particle compressing weapons, some deployed upon orbital platforms, were utilized to great extent. More esoteric weapons may also have been used or at least developed; the American Empire is mentioned in passing to have possessed weaponry capable of somehow drawing power from parallel universes, though this is an in-universe rumour from a world many years after the War itself destroyed civilization so it might not be accurate. Whatever was actually employed has survived in legend as being powerful enough to have "made the gods quake in fear" and was capable of projecting at the very least nuclear-level energies, given the scale of destruction inflicted upon Earth during the war and the city-destroying firepower displayed by the few weapons actually seen in action in the books.

Several items featured in the series are deadly relics of the conflict, including a directed-energy weapon called MEDUSA which is later mounted upon the Traction City of London. This weapon (and the computer that controls it) was recovered by a group of explorers from an ancient military base on the American continent. MEDUSA is a key element of the plot in Mortal Engines.

Another featured weapon was the device known as ODIN (Orbital Defence INitiative), an ancient weapon consisting of a particle cannon mounted on a space platform in Earth's orbit. ODIN is a key element of the plot in Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain, as several major organizations (particularly the Green Storm) attempt to gain control of the device to destroy their enemies. Other Ancient orbital weapons mentioned in passing are the Diamond Bat, Jinju 14, and the Nine Sisters, although these take no part in the plot and are not described beyond their name. It is implied that they are likely to have fallen out of orbit during the long millennia between the Sixty Minute War and the rise of the Traction Cities.

Loose ends

Australia is tractionist but peaceful and actually didn't do so badly in the sixty minute

Airships are the common mode of transport

Suburbs are sort of mini cities controlled by a larger one

Some cities and locations

Arkangel: the largest ice city

Brighton: A rich raft city

Batmuh Gompa: the vast fortress used by the Anti-Tractionists to keep out the cities

London: the first traction city

Manchester: a powerful city obsessed with honour

Munich: the largest city in the world head of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft a group of cities fighting in the war between tractionists an anti-tractionists (the anti-tractionists were taken over by a group named the green storm who use stalker hybrids

Tunbridge Wheels: a pirate city

That big desert that looks like the sahara's grown: a massive land of scavengers, traction vehicles (train car things) 