Supernatural Threats: Iram
almost 3 years ago
– Mon, Apr 03, 2023 at 08:21:11 PM
9K passed! Absolutely incredible. With that behind us, let's get a better look at one of your most prevalent foes in Guns Blazing: Iram
What is Iram?
As with all Supernatural Threats in Guns Blazing, there are two answers.
In fiction: Iram is an ancient fungal parasite, inadvertently reawakened by the British Empire in the late 18th century. It feeds on blood, sweat, and suffering, infecting victims, then working them to death or devouring them outright to spread its spores and create fungiform monsters. To get access to victims, it makes deals with the powerful, offering them fabulous treasures and loyal monsters if they but aid and protect it.
Narratively: Iram is colonialism as a parasite. It's a literalization of the extractive mechanisms, and the wealth they afforded colonizers, common to the period, and how those systems perpetuate themselves once the colonizer is gone. Iram is mercenary rather than ambitious: Should a colonial power be defeated, it's happy to make a new deal with those in charge to maintain access to victims.
It's not going to slip its bonds and become a world ending threat, it needs people to protect it from its own victims, and there's never going to be a grand reveal that forces everyone to work together to defeat it.
And that means it will happily persist so long as there are people to feed it.
A History of Iram
Iram is a city mentioned, very briefly, in the Qur'an. It was a city of grand and lofty pillars, whose rulers spread oppression on the land, and it was divinely destroyed at some point. More extensive descriptions tell of a city with grand buildings ruled by a horrible tyrant and wiped out by sandstorms (Or destroyed in a cataclysm that created the Empty Quarter).
Iram's been a periodic feature of genre fiction (Especially lovecraftian horror) due to both orientalist retellings of Islamic legends and Lovecraft mentioning it in the cthulhu mythos. These depictions tend to drop the religious and historical elements and make it a broadly depicted lost city, often with lovecraftian trappings.
Guns Blazing tries to bridge the two: Iram is an embodiment of the city's sin as a mystical threat. It's uncovered by British archaeologists in the late 18th century, inadvertently revived, and promptly started making deals across Europe as the colonial era entered its apex.
Iram in your Game
Iram is attached to most, but not all, colonial empires. It's most prominent in the British empire, with varying prominence elsewhere based on in-fiction political factors. The USA disdains Iram as a European invention, Portugal and the Ottoman Empire consider it politically controversial, while Spain is clinging ever-closer to it as its colonial empire crumbles.
This means it's going to be a prominent foe in most campaigns, where players will face off with Iramite fungiforms and destroy iramite infrastructure.
Fungiforms are monsters created by Iram to do its bidding, rnaging from dog-sized Sporelings to towering Grenadiers and Subalterns. Fungiforms are normally deployed in support of their human masters, but aren't particularly formidable foes on their own. They tend to have abilities that help their human masters, providing cover against attacks, guiding their shots, speeding their movements, or just providing a well of disposable bodies players must account for.
Iramite infrastructure are implements of colonialism: towering fungal factories and farms, turning the blood and sweat of the oppressed into alien treasures. Hidden nests, counting and surveiling the populace to grease the colonial machine. Fruiting garrisons, deploying monsters to enforce the will of colonial administrations.
Most upsetting, however, are the infected. Iram infects many of its victims with its spores, sapping at their vitality. To a healthy person, such an infection isn't dangerous, but it is insidious. And when the infected die, the spore consumes them, turning their body into fungiforms, spreading the infection, or integrating it into Iram's next design.
Of course, infection can be cured. A few months away from infection vectors, a few days of medical treatment, or even some quick field medicine can all get rid of the issue. But the infected are rarely allowed such luxuries. They're indentured laborers, the working poor, and those with few other options.
Others are volunteers. Colonial soldiers trying to serve their country, sure that if they just serve well enough they will earn the respect afforded white soldiers. Standing in the way of liberation for reasons heroic and venal, and just as dedicated to your defeat as any European soldier.
While You're Here
Look, if you're here you probably like punk fiction in the original, anti-authoritarian definition of the term. You are on board for ruining the day of some rich prick, maybe to make the world a better place, or maybe just to scrounge out a living in an increasingly desperate world. And if you can do it in the warm, relaxed atmosphere of a tropical vacation, all the better!
If that's your jam, check out Ettin's latest project: Wetrunner! It's a cyberpunk heist RPG set in a post-climate collapse earth. Enjoy the eternal summer dystopia! Infiltrate the tropical estates of rich assholes! And, when they least expect it, steal all their fish.
I've been reading and playing Ettin's work since before I joined the industry. He's a talented designer who creates really fun settings. If you enjoy any sort of cyberpunk action, im sure itll be worth your while.