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Post by missyfan45 on Feb 14, 2020 22:08:44 GMT
self explanatory, adventures based on this unique period of history, you can reply and post ideas here
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Catsmate
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Post by Catsmate on Feb 17, 2020 9:42:45 GMT
An interestingly turbulent time, one that's only had two oblique references in the Whoniverse. Lots of opportunities for a party of out-of-place travellers o get into trouble....
Loosely I'd group possible scenario into four categories:
1. Historical A rarity in Who these days but it'd be quite possible, and perhaps a refreshing change, to drop the PCs into a situation that's free of alien or other weird influences. There are plenty of problems for them There was a lot of violence during the uprising, probably more than a hundred thousand dead overall. The 'Boxers' attacked Westerners, Christianised Chinese and anyone who didn't 'look right'. So a party of time travellers could easily be separated from their transport, and each other, and scattered into hiding. Or stuck in Peking in the Legation quarter during the siege. What do they do? Do they scrupulously avoid meddling? Or improvise a few things to assist? Do they try and stop the violence of both sides? And it's also a good place to inflict cholera on your players.
2. Almost historical My term for a historical setting with some oddness, unconnected to events, but no major outré elements. Perhaps on arrival the party accidentally alter some crucial detail and put the river of history onto a new path. Or they discover something, unconnected to the uprising, that's clearly out of place and investigate, while avoiding the mobs, the Eight-Power troops and looters.
3. Pseudo-historical The classic Who adventure; something weird is happening, maybe it caused the uprising, and needs to be dealt with. Perhaps the players needs to ally with the Boxers and/or the foreign troops? Or maybe someone is using the cover of the chaos for their own purposes; collecting slaves to brainwash to operate her secret inter-dimensional base perhaps? Extracting interesting chemicals from humans? Looting art works? The latter has the potential to introduce other time travellers, such as the Alexandrian Society who'd find plenty of opportunities for acquiring artworks. Or maybe they were searching for something more unusual? Alien artefacts perhaps? Lost time machine (such as Greel's cabinet) to extend their capabilities perhaps?
4. Meddling Finally maybe someone wants to alter events significantly. While actually united China would require serious alterations to history even earlier maybe the party notices such changes during the uprising and travels back to (say) the late 1860s to prevent them. Mortimus is an interesting candidate, perhaps disguised to appear Chinese. Or possibly a group of Chinese Nationalists for a future period who seeks to save their country from decades of strife.
Some other points.
1. Greel. While Greel is dead (supposedly) by 1900 and the Time Cabinet in London, perhaps another escapee from the fifty-first century followed a similar course and arrived a little later. Possibly arriving in the midst of a group of Boxers and being mistaken for an indication of divine support for their cause? Assuming they also require periodic life force infusions there'll soon be a train of desiccated corpses for teh PCs to stumble on, and be accused of causing.
2. First Doctor and Susan Were involved in the Boxer Rebellion, according to a comment in The Fire of Cadiz. He used smoke bombs to escape. So there'll be at least one other time traveller there
3. Jack Harkness. Was also present, doing something with explosives. Demolitions (for whom)? Safecracking?
4. Torchwood. Might also be around. Perhaps they've learned about Greel's Time Cabinet and are tracking back for find other anachronistic artefacts?
5. Cholera A fun disease to inflict on players (and a useful excuse when a player can't make a session). The Sixth Cholera Pandemic was happening (killing about 600,000) but didn't effect China that much.
6. Fu Manchu. Cay Van Ash speculated that Doctor Fu Manchu had been a member of the imperial family of China who'd backed the Boxers, an hence gone into exile and into fame. I've speculated elsewhere about a Doctor Who Manchu hybrid campaign with elements of The Talons of Weng Chiang. The events of the uprising could be a prequel.
7. 1910 Plague Topical... A bit later but the Manchurian Plague of 1910-11 killed at least sixty thousand people and was unusual for being almost entirely the pneumonic form of y. pestis, as opposed to the usually more common bubonic from. While this might have been a biological test by Fu Manchu, perhaps aimed at the Japanese and Russian encroachment, it might be linked to earlier events. Perhaps it wasn't actually plague?
8. War Lords The War Lords scooped troops from this period. Were they returned without memories of those events? Might a few people from other time periods have been mixed in? With anachronistic weapons and amnesia... Or was there a War Lord scouting party there, complete with SIDRAT and armed guards, scouting the period?
9. Mind Parasites While Sympathy for the Devil is explicitly an alternate universe the Master stated that the mind parasites he used in England and China came to Earth in the late nineteenth sentry and caused the Boxer Rebellion.
10. Disaster tourists I've also speculated about "disaster tourism" previously (specifically the films Thrill Seekers/The Time Shifters and Timescape/Grand Tour: Disaster in Time). Might the Boxer Rebellion be on their schedule? It's not a natural event and presumably some security would be needed, but that increases the opportunities for meddling, whether deliberate or accidental.
Hope this helps.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on May 12, 2021 11:44:36 GMT
As the Boxer Rebellion (or Yihequan Movement) has popped up again here are few bits dumped from my General Notes file
During the insurrection the 'Legation Quarter' in Peking (Beijing) was besieged by the rebels and defended by troops of the eight nations with embassies (legations) there; Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Less well knoen, but also under siege from 14JUN1900 to 16AUG1900, was the Roman Catholic North Cathedral, which was defended by a motley collection of French and Italian soldiers (about forty), non-Chinese Catholic priests and nuns, and about 3,200 Chinese Catholics, led by Monsignor Pierre-Marie-Alphonse Favier1. Also inside were around one hundred European civilians and about 850 orphans. Sniping, artillery fire and mines, plus starvation and disease, caused heavy casualties, despite Favier's preparations (he'd anticipated the siege and gathered stores of food, weapons and ammunition; however the large numbers of refugees necessitated severe rationing).
- Of the approximately 3,500 people in the cathedral, 2,700 were women and children; about four hundred died; forty from gunshots, at least 107 from the mines (some people simply disappeared in the explosions) and others from artillery fire, disease and starvation.
- Curiously fifty-one children disappeared during the siege; they were probably killed without traceby one of the explosions but then again.....
1. Described as "a burly, heavily-bearded Frenchman of about sixty-five". One of the "fighting missionary" school.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on May 13, 2021 9:14:05 GMT
Rural China. Now while the events in Peking (Beijing) and the multi-national relief force tend to monopolise Western attention there was plenty going on elsewhere in China. The 'Boxers' had started in the countryside of northern China (then experiencing serious droughts) and spread from there to the cities.
- In fact the 'Righteous and Harmonious Fists' arose in the rural areas of northern China's coastal province of Shandong; this area was prone to outbreaks of social unrest, as well as religious cults. The Boxers were so named (by American Christian missionaries) because of their unarmed and armed martial arts displays.
- They also engaged, rather like Norse berserkers and Filipino Juramentado, in a form of meditation intended to induce a different state of mind; chanting and rhythmic whirling of swords.
Outside the cities, especially in the north, the missionaries, vulnerable in their isolated 'stations' were hunted and murdered. There had been tensions between local officials and the missionaries and their converts for years, much linked to the abuse of privleges granted to Christians after the Chinese defeat in the Opium Wars. Of course at the time the main 'western' powers were busy extracting land and trading concessions and dividing China into 'Spheres of Influence' Many of the missionaries were young, poorly prepared, ignorant of China and deeply naive. Not to mention hostile to each other, mainly along Catholic/Protestant lines but also between different Protestant groups.
Many were to be killed, either in lonely stations or in towns, in events like the Taiyuan massacre. Perhaps two hundred foreigners and anything from a few hundred to tend of thousands of Chinese converts were killed.
Game use. Here is the potential for a somewhat different 'base under siege' game. The PCs arrive, meet some of the missionaries and find themselves swept up in events; the may know something of future events, do they warn people to flee? And are they believed? What happens when violence erupts? Will they try and evacuate their new acquaintances? Stay and fight? Are they wiling to use anachronistic weapons, technology or knowledge, and risk altering history? Can they leave, or have they been (in the great Whovian tradition) been cut off from their transport? What happens?
There is an episode in Rohmer's The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu when a mild mannered clergyman, the Reverend Eltham, is referred to: An opportunity for heroism in the classic vein of the 'Boys Own' fiction of the time? Or perhaps there is a MacGuffin that needs to be protected from the Boxers, some alien artefact or other object.
Interestingly Eltham is hardly portrayed sympathetically by Rohmer. Smith holds him responsible, by his evangelical zeal, in causing the Boxer Uprising and Rohmer portrays Eltham unsympathetically.
- This leaves the possibility of a sequel later on; the PCs bump into their old acquaintance, now retired at home (beautiful daughter optional) as he's experiencing strange problems. Is someone (Doctor Fu Manchu?) seeking the stolen artefact (which the players thought safely destroyed in China), or revenge for his earlier activities?
Comments? Suggestions? Ideas?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on May 18, 2021 11:21:12 GMT
It's Herbert Hoover's big debut.1
I was collating my somewhat chaotic General Notes files and I found this item. But first a digression into Herbert Clark Hoover (wiki) the 31st President of the USA. Hoover, while generally held to be a pretty terrible President, was a fascinating character. At Stanford (where were was perhaps the first student) he was a highly talented student and became an excellent engineer; he managed the baseball and (American) football teams as well. Hoover became a globe trotting mining engineer after some time in Australia (wo he could pop up in lots of odd places, onces where interesting things were found or encountered before the Great War.
- If you're looking more at Call of Cthulhu he translated De Re Metallica (wiki) into English and might have encountered....odd manuscripts.
He married Lou Henry (on 10FEB1899 in Monterey) and went on a honeymoon cruise to China (Hoover was to start a new job as a mining consultant to the Chinese emperor) but the Boxer business intervened and the pair got involved. They, and about 800 other westerners, were besieged in the city of Tientsin. Hoover led the enclave in building barricades and fortifying around their residential section of the city, while Lou volunteered in the hospital. It's possible that Hoover rescued some Chinese children caught in the crossfire of urban combat, though unconfirmed. Certainly both became fluent in Mandarin during their time.
- His wife Low was a geologist herself, was the first woman in Stanford's geology program and was co-author on many of Herbert's papers, including his De Re Metallica translation.
Eventually troops of the Eight Power coalition rescued the group and the westerners mostly left China.
(I'm going to skip the rest of Hoover's career; just to say that there was more than Hoovervilles)
So, there's another opportunity for an interesting encounter for PCs dropped into the Boxer business.
1. With apologies to the Animaniacs.
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