Planescape through a Vernian lens: SteamPlanes

Planescape is a setting that lends itself to re-visioning, and modification for any time, place or mood. In that vein we present a primer on Planescape in the Vernian style (as in Jules) - a Victorian steam-punk vision of the planes as presented by Kobold Avenger. Questions, comments, and mad-scientist death rays should all be aimed at him.

Organizations
The Cabal of Perfected Moment
With the right action, done in the right place, with the right clarity of thought and purpose one can change the course of a life, of a destiny, a world and possibly the multiverse itself. This cabal of wanderers has many members from the Transcendent Order and the Mind's Eye. They seek to change the fates of themselves and others, mostly with the tool that has become their way of life and a powerful symbol of their struggle: the Gun. The Cabal of the Perfected Moment is perhaps some of the best gunslingers across the planes. These Gunslingers do look for conflict, but only use their weapons with purpose, for to use their pistols they can shape possibility with just a single action. For each Gunslinger it's all part of a quest for clarity, when to act and what to do for the one perfect moment in destiny.

The Society of the Transient Form
The sect known as the Transients are infamous for their rather gruesome interest in grafts and flesh-shaping. The Transients are an offshoot of the Mind's Eye and Godsmen who've taken to altering the physical form as a method of ascension. They use grafts, soul-crafting, arcane transmutations, psionic psychometabolism and animism for their methods. Their disparate ranks include Fleshwarpers, Xixchil artisans, and mystic surgeons. For the right price, they'll gladly reshape anyone. It's said that the elite of the transients are capable of effortlessly reshaping their form and abilities for any situation, despite the fact that they are of a practice that is not well liked by most.
See Fiend Folio, Lords of Madness, Magic of Eberron and Races of Dragon for examples.

Cults of the God-Machines
With the invention of difference engines, machines built for calculation, came the idea that you could build a sentient being from a combination of gears, index cards and various mechanical parts. Most of difference engines are just calculating machines, but some artificers have been able to create machines that can truly think, using touches such as esoteric energy sources, bound spirits, disembodied brains and imprinted telepathic crystals. It seems to be a trend across the multiverse on many worlds where such creations are made. Constructs of various types seeing more and more use along with these creations. These machines have reached levels of consciousness beyond that of most beings, and in many cases almost divine.

Some feel that it's the dawning of a new type of life across the multiverse, and cults of such technomancer artificer are spreading. Some say their agendas may be varied, but rumours speak of links these cults may have to links to the manipulation of exiled Modrons, or other forces originating from Mechanus. However there's also whispers of cults dedicated to thinking machines that other cultists find blasphemous containing the very essences of chaos and madness from Limbo and beyond.

Outland Militia
A standing army in the Outlands, that's supposedly unaffiliated with any realm or gatetown, though it's main "headquarters" is located in Rigus. The Outland militia is a volunteer army, composed of mainly Outland natives who want to protect the Outlands from dangerous incursions that spill into the Lands on a not that uncommon basis. The militia is supplied and funded by all of the gate-towns to varying degrees, and some of the Outland realms. They generally patrol the eighth and ninth rings.

Most of it's members are humans and planetouched, however there's a quite a number goblins, orcs, kobolds, dwarves, warforged, rilmani and other races that make up its ranks. As a "volunteer" force they are quite well armed with reliable rifles, cannon artillery, magic blades, spellcasting support, airships and aerial calvary. The Outlands Militia has its share of internal conflicts, such as that between its varied chaplains of different deities and its Athar volunteers, or the occasion gate-town politics. Their uniforms consist of a black coat with burgundy trim.

Travel
Travel is a key element in many steam-punk games as well as many Planescape games, so travel arrangements must be made in style.

Airships
Airships are a common way of getting around in many places. They vary from technological in construction to very, very arcane in construction. Some are dirigibles, some use levitating minerals, some use bound elementals and the methods are many and varied. Some airships are capable of planeshifting themselves rather than having to rely of portals big enough for them to fit through, which makes them highly sought after forms of transportation.

One infamous plane-shifting airship of note around the planes would be the Black Lotus, a Feng Huang Class destroyer. She is a military airship armed with cannons and ballista-rockets from a prime material nation known as Long Guo. The ship is shaped vaguely like a phoenix, and crewed by a bunch of deserters turned planar buccaneers now that they've realized their old purposes and causes are gone. Their captain is willing to take on most jobs for the right price.

Another infamous airship is more of a collection of flying cities, the Aleerin Nations of the Hintersky. These are massive flying cities that travel around the skies of the Hinterlands in the Outlands. Most of its citizens are beings humanoids known as the Aleerin (also known as the Mechalus). The Aleerin are a partially mechanical race of people, both parts flesh and mechanical clockwork. Commonly they may be found to have lenses that enable them to see far distances or wings that enable them to soar the skies outside the confines on their cities. The mechanical equipment of each individual Aleerin often varies by individual. The largest and most well known of these cities is Rhaelaera, a massive collection of metal citadels, floatstone, constantly humming propeller engines, and gas furnaces with patches of earth growing trees and food, surrounded by numbers of satellite 'towns'.

Inter-Planar Trains
The logistics laying a track into Sigil isn't practical given the nature of the Lady of Pain controlling Sigil's portals. However out on the planes, it's possible for trains to go to other planes, though the Upper Planes are more likely to have stable lines, and the Lawful ones more likely to have trains that run on time.

Gnomeway based out of Bytopia is perhaps the most successful train company across the outer planes, made even more successful with the help of the Planar Trade Consortium.

Sigil's Cursed Trains
When Sigil's train system was built within the city it was hardly perfect. It was first conceived by the Sigil Advisory Council, funded initially by the Planar Trade Consortium, and built by various machinist and factory guilds. Different rail lines had different plans and implementations which made the whole system confusing. The plentiful opposition from various guilds and other groups around the cage didn't make things any easier. In addition, any of the residents of Undersigil didn't want trains going through their homes.
There were many mishaps and sabotages hindering the trains during this time, when the train system was new. Many trains went missing and in some cases trains filled with passengers would arrive at a train-station mysteriously empty. Eventually the Sodkillers went in and cleared away most of the physical threats to Sigil's train system, but the problems still continued.

Trains often went through portals along their paths and it was determined by the Gate-seekers Guild that this was the result of many of the disappearances. With their help they kept most of the trains safe from most portal mishaps. Trains would no longer disappear and whenever a big portal was discovered, peculiar restrictions on what could be brought or done on a train would appear on the routes to prevent accidental triggers. However, these restrictions have never prevented individuals occasionally disappearing through portals while riding the train. Such incidents now are reported only a few times per year, making the trains mostly safe.

However in some cases, when the path of a tunnel dug for a train line shifts, a train may still go missing. Some say Sigil itself occasionally shifts causing these problems. The fate of these trains is unknown.

There are said to be 'ghost trains' around Sigil. Some of the trains are said to be spectral trains which appear only at anti-peak or in reflections. Other times it may be a rotting train filled with undead, who are more than enough of a menace. At least a couple of Undersigil tribes are said to have rogue trains of their own which they use to travel the tunnels and raid all along their routes. Some trains themselves have awakened and gained sentience of their own, rebelling against passengers and crew. There's even a train known as the Fh'ekrrilaan which was awakened and transformed by the Far Realm itself, becoming a living organic entity of a most alien physiology. It's intentions remain unknown.

Equipment

"Turn the crank and make some soddin' noise out of that horn, am I supposed to be impressed?
I don't care what those sods have to say about this Phonograph, it's a bleedin' frivolous toy for the idle rich and the obsessive collector.
This will never replace any live gig from a real musician."
-Frelassa Lucette, an infamous bard commenting on new technological wonders

Phonographing the Patterns of the Planes
The phonograph is one of the earliest audio recording and replaying devices invented, the minute vibrations of a pin when moved along the groove of a disc can be magnified into an approximation of sound. While hardly a revolutionary device around Sigil and the planes, where thoughts and experiences themselves can be recorded and music carries great mystical energies that can only be produced in person, the phonograph still became a curiosity among the elite who could afford such things. In most cases they were dismissed as mere toys, and it was the fact the a phonograph could 'read' certain patterns and create noises that interested some.

Soon a bunch sages and explorers determined how to use a phonograph needle on more than just discs. It was always said that minute patterns and signs were hidden out throughout the multiverse in hidden and obscure locations. In the darkest depths of Pandemonium one phonogram researcher, Welula Pirn (CE female aasimar, beguiler 5, bleak cabal) discovered a message that told of the soul's descent into madness by having a pin read the pattern of stalactite. From that discovery she also learned that 'playing' the pin off of the stalactite's pattern outside of Pandemonium could drive anyone to madness with the winds of that plane.

Another researcher Gurthan Mucar (LN male axani, archivist 6, guvner) discovered that the minute patterns on rocks, surfaces and even fauna across the planes could play patterns relaying ancient histories of events that happened around them. The conditions in which the phonograph plays such messages, is never something that can be accurately determined, but Gurthan was able to learn many details about the ancient past through years of research. It is said he recorded many of his secrets on surfaces hidden throughout the Cage, before he disappeared fearing for his safety after a visit from what some say were the Keepers.

The Eye of Umbral Camera
Cameras are devices that can capture images by focusing incoming light through a small lens onto an alchemically treated sheet. In most cases it takes several minutes of exposure for an image to be produced by such devices. Many inventors have circumvented such limitations through the use of magic. Some of these cameras seem to have the tendency to capture things in their images unseen or unthought of. Most of the time these appear as double images, a 'trick' in the pictures development. Other times they are glimpses of coexistant planes, psychic auras, possessing fiends, or even strange alien landscapes that barely resemble what is seen before the camera by the naked eye.

One particular device is the umbral camera, allegedly the invention of a mad shadowcaster looking to capture the essence of the soul through its lenses. However due to the nature of the Shadow Plane and the construction of such a device, it hungers instead for essence of all the falls before its eye, across multiple planes. Sometimes something or someone caught before the lenses will find itself on the Shadow Plane. Other times this unpredictable device has been known to create a simulacrum out of shadow stuff of what it has seen. The current location of the camera is unknown, as the last known owner Yilan Carth (CN male cansin, rogue 3/ shadowcaster 2, planewalker's guild) went into hiding after being visited by a gang of strange men dressed in black.

Example Personality
Hala Marynnelle
A scientist named Hala Marynnelle (N female aasimar, artificer 14+) working from a hidden lab located in Muspelheim, Ysgard developed a theory that it is possible to reach or create planes unthought of through the concentration and mixtures of varied and disparate planar energies. Much of her studies focused on the phenomena of planar breaches, bleeds and pockets. Some of her theories were based on the research of the infamous wizard Leicester.

Using a combination of her studies and research she created a massive mechanical and eldritch device capable of peering into almost any plane across the multiverse, and focusing the energies from that plane to any other plane. Calling this device the Planar Lenses, she can create breaches on some planes enabling her to easily travel and explore such places for specimens, and experiments.

It's said she's been to places no one else has yet, and counts herself among the many Planar Theorists who are disproving the orthodox view of the Great Wheel Cosmology. Much of her work is known in Sigil and across the known multiverse, and that has brought her as many enemies and many supporters. There are many people after her, and many unknowable things after her, forcing her to relocate her lab to the more inhospitable layer of Muspelheim of her native plane.