Hawkmoon:Science and Sorcery

Forbidden Science

In the world of Hawkmoon, what lesser settings would call magic is more often the half-understood working of ancient knowledge, occult experiment, lost machinery, mutagenic art, radiant force, alchemy, surgery, chemistry, and disciplines so old that the distinction between science and sorcery has ceased to matter.

This is Forbidden Science.

It is the black inheritance of the Tragic Millennium: the surviving fragments of elder learning, preserved in scraps, formulas, engines, vaults, rites, lenses, vapors, and weapons no sane age should have handed down intact. In the hands of the wise, it is dangerous. In the hands of the cruel, it is empire. In the hands of the ignorant, it is catastrophe.

In game terms, Forbidden Science is the primary source of supernatural or extraordinary powers in a Hawkmoon campaign. Conventional fantasy spellcasting does not belong here. A character who wields powers is not a cheerful wizard hurling familiar enchantments. He is a mechanician, relic-handler, alchemical savant, surgical experimenter, occult natural philosopher, or some other practitioner of dangerous arts that blur the line between laboratory and shrine.

Science And Sorcery

The people of the Tragic Millennium do not always distinguish neatly between science and sorcery, and often they are right not to do so.

A beam projected from a relic rod may seem no less miraculous than a curse. A mutagenic vapor may create transformations as horrifying as any witch’s malediction. A vault that responds to spoken formulae may behave like an enchanted tomb. A mind-engine that bends dreams and memory may look to a peasant, a priest, or even a noble no different from black magic. The outer form of the thing matters less than its effect. Hawkmoon is a world in which lost science has become occult because no living civilization entirely understands it.

For this reason, forbidden science and sorcery live in uneasy proximity. Some powers arise from devices. Some arise from processes. Some arise from disciplines of mind and body. Some are only possible when machinery, chemistry, and ritual are combined. A mechanician may deny he is a sorcerer. A hermit visionary may deny she is a scientist. Both may be standing waist-deep in the same poisoned river of ancient knowledge.

The difference is often one of method and culture rather than absolute principle. Science in Hawkmoon is not modern, transparent, and reproducible in the clean sense. It is fragmented, jealous, dangerous, half-remembered, and often dependent on rare materials or inscrutable relics. Sorcery is not necessarily supernatural in the fairy-tale sense. It may simply be the name given to those branches of forbidden knowledge whose operation has become too obscure, too symbolic, or too dreadful to describe in rational terms.

Thus the setting treats them as one broad domain: forbidden mastery over forces mankind was not meant to handle lightly.

Forbidden Science In SWADE

Forbidden Science is the only normal Arcane Background available in Hawkmoon.

Characters who possess powers do so through Arcane Background (Forbidden Science). The trapping of every power must reflect the setting: alchemical vapors, mutagenic injections, relic projectors, sonorous engines, hypnotic crystals, surgical grafts, occult formulae, lenses, rays, preserved glands, stimulants, resonance fields, psychometric disciplines, implanted mechanisms, and similar forms of dreadful ingenuity.

There are no conventional fantasy spellbooks, no friendly village wizards, and no casual fireball-slingers. If a power exists in Hawkmoon, it should feel rare, uncanny, dangerous, and rooted in the weird union of old science and sorcerous reputation.

A mechanician does not cast a spell. He unleashes a process.

Arcane Background (Forbidden Science)

Requirements: Novice, Smarts d8+, Repair d6+, Occult d6+

The hero has studied relics, forbidden formulae, hazardous procedures, or strange engines of ancient power. He gains Arcane Background (Forbidden Science) and may select powers as normal, subject to the setting restrictions below.

His Arcane Skill is Forbidden Science (Smarts).

The trappings of every power must be approved by the GM and should always feel like one of the following:

• relic technology
• alchemical or chemical process
• surgical or physiological intervention
• mutagenic or radiant emission
• psychic or mesmerist discipline
• occult-scientific apparatus
• a hybrid of machine, ritual, and dangerous knowledge

The practitioner must normally possess some appropriate means of activating or delivering his powers: a satchel of compounds, injector tools, a staff of unknown alloy, a relic gauntlet, lens apparatus, whispering engine, harmonic rod, nerve stimulants, surgical kit, mask apparatus, or similarly fitting paraphernalia.

At the GM’s option, losing this apparatus may prevent the use of some or all powers until it is recovered or replaced.

The Mechanician

One of the great character types of Hawkmoon is the mechanician.

He is not merely an engineer in the ordinary sense, though he may be one of those as well. He is a student of impossible devices, a salvager of lost principles, a manipulator of alchemy and mechanism, a constructor of engines, and sometimes a meddler in truths that should have stayed buried. He may be a court artificer, renegade savant, battlefield technician, plague-doctor, aeronautical designer, relic-hunter, or apprentice to some grim school of experimental lore.

The mechanician stands at the point where intellect becomes dangerous. In another world he might have been a scholar or inventor. In Hawkmoon he is something more ambiguous. His art can heal, destroy, transform, empower, poison, illuminate, terrify, or awaken old things that do not sleep kindly. He is valued because the age is hungry for advantage. He is feared because everyone knows such advantage comes with a cost.

In play, the mechanician is a natural character template alongside the mercenary, resistance fighter, noble, renegade, and wanderer. He brings rare utility, strange force, and narrative complication wherever he goes.

The Character Template: Mechanician

The mechanician is a scholar of dangerous processes and broken wonders. He studies fragments of old sciences, occult formulae, surgical arts, engines, and relics that other men rightly fear to touch.

A mechanician often favors Smarts above all things, with strong Repair, Occult, Notice, Healing, Research if used, and the Forbidden Science arcane skill. He may also develop Shooting or Athletics if his devices must be aimed or carried into peril.

Good Edges for a mechanician include scholarly, technical, investigative, and arcane-support options, as well as anything that helps with invention, survival, or relic handling.

A mechanician fits especially well in campaigns involving:

• relic hunting
• sabotage and counter-sabotage
• imperial laboratories
• plague, mutation, and unnatural disease
• ornithopters and engines of war
• old vaults and forgotten installations
• resistance networks in need of technical skill

A mechanician should never feel like a clean modern scientist. He is a dangerous savant in a dying age.

Power Trappings In Hawkmoon

All powers in this setting should be reskinned through Forbidden Science. The same game effect may look very different depending on the practitioner.

A bolt-like attack might be:

• a focused heat ray from a relic pistol
• a chemical projector
• a shock rod discharging caged force
• a swarm of glass splinters accelerated by a compact engine
• a nerve-flash emitted from a crystalline lens

A healing effect might be:

• a stimulant injection
• a blood-sealing powder
• a surgical sealant
• a glandular serum
• a restorative field projected from a relic brace

A protective effect might be:

• a vibrating force lattice
• a mirror-sheen chemical lacquer
• an electromantic field
• a shock-web harness
• a temporary hardening of flesh induced by alchemy

A transformation effect might be:

• mutagenic infusion
• adrenal overstimulation
• surgical release of grafted potential
• a resonance field that alters muscle and nerve response
• a relic mask that changes perception and bodily performance

These things may be spoken of as sorcery by common folk, but that does not make them less scientific in origin. In Hawkmoon, the categories have long since bled together.

Recommended Powers

The exact allowed power list is for the GM to decide, but the following sorts of powers are especially suitable for Forbidden Science in Hawkmoon:

• attack powers expressed as rays, vapors, toxins, shock-fields, or relic emissions
• protection powers expressed as fields, coatings, stimulants, or hardened grafts
• healing powers expressed as surgery, serum, stimulants, or tissue repair
• detection powers expressed as lenses, scents, resonance, augury engines, or psychic apparatus
• movement powers expressed as stimulants, lift harnesses, glider rigs, magnetic boots, or acceleration fields
• illusion, fear, or control powers expressed as mesmerism, sonic devices, pheromones, drugs, or psychic emitters
• transformation powers expressed as mutagens, masked systems, glandular release, or forced physiological alteration

Powers that feel too overtly high-fantasy should be excluded or heavily reskinned.

The Price Of Knowledge

Forbidden Science should never be comfortable.

Its use ought to remind players that they are handling something perilous, unstable, and morally compromised. Even benign applications may smell of burned metal, medicinal corruption, old dust, or the sharp stink of overheated chemicals. Even useful devices may whine, pulse, leak, scar, or provoke fearful reactions. The very fact that a power works may be unsettling.

At the GM’s option, dramatic failures, critical failures, or reckless experimentation may lead to:

• equipment damage
• toxic leaks
• relic backlash
• temporary mutation
• panic among onlookers
• strange emissions or visible signs
• unwanted attention from enemies or rival savants
• awakening dormant systems best left untouched

This need not become punitive bookkeeping, but it should preserve the tone. Forbidden Science is powerful because it is not safe.

Forbidden Science And Granbretan

Granbretan is the greatest organized patron of forbidden science in Europe.

Its laboratories, savants, surgeons, and war-artificers have advanced further than most because the Dark Empire places few moral limits on what may be attempted. Where another kingdom hesitates, Granbretan proceeds. It captures relics, enslaves learned men, funds monstrous experiments, and turns invention toward conquest. This is one reason its war engines, mutagens, aerial craft, and occult devices are so feared.

Yet Granbretan does not hold a monopoly on such things. Hermits, renegades, monastery scholars, ruined courts, ancient orders, nomad tinkerers, mutant enclaves, and scavenger savants may all possess fragments of the same dreadful inheritance. The empire is merely the greatest and most shameless systematizer of it.

This is important in play. Forbidden Science is not an imperial trademark. It is part of the world’s buried anatomy.

Forbidden Science And Society

Most ordinary people fear these arts, and often with reason.

Peasants may call all such practices witchcraft. Priests may condemn them as blasphemy. Nobles may covet them while also fearing their practitioners. Soldiers may tolerate a mechanician only so long as his devices help them survive. A healer who uses old methods may be respected in one village and driven out of the next. A relic-savvy wanderer may be treated as a treasure or a contagion.

Thus the mechanician’s social place is unstable. He may be valued, exploited, distrusted, patronized, hunted, or all four in the same month.

Final Advice

Forbidden Science is not just an excuse to repaint spells with brass fittings. It is one of the central imaginative engines of Hawkmoon.

It should feel rare, uncanny, half-legitimate, and morally dangerous. Its practitioners should seem useful but troubling. Its effects should carry the atmosphere of a dying world scavenging miracles from the bones of earlier ages.

That is the true relation between science and sorcery in the Tragic Millennium. They are the same forbidden inheritance, seen through different masks.

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