From the Archives of Colony Two

The History of Colony Two

Colony Two was a role-playing game that ran at the MIT Strategic Games Society in the distant past, sometime after mankind had mastered the use of fire. It was a strange game, which combined fantasy, science fiction, and what might now be considered Steampunk into something that probably could not be recreated today. The campaign is long over, its players scattered to all the corners of the world, but its archives remain on crumbling sheets of paper, yellow with age, filled with a myriad strange and wondrous things.

Among these were the steam-powered landships of Asserone and Tradul -- two neighboring states on the east coast of the Continent of Man. The history of these states, like that of the continent and world on which they lay, was immesurably old and shrouded in myth, but it seems to have been a history of war. Like many conflicts, this one inspired cycles of innovation. One of these lead to Kempler's Universal Artillery Tractor. This was a coal-fired steam-powered vehicle, similar to a late nineteenth-century locomotive, armored, mounting breech-loading cannon and Gatling guns, designed for use on roads or in the field. In our world, such a thing would have been inferior to an armored car, and easy prey for a modern tank. But in their place and time, 'Kemplers' dominated the battlefield, to become icons of the cultures that created them.

My notes for Colony Two have decayed to the point where they can barely be deciphered. But I was able to create these scans, and hope to recover enough supporting information -- such as the meaning of those scrawled specifications -- to recreate the designs. Until then, I offer these fading sketches of a 1208 Chevalle, a Nordval scout carriage, a Kempler Mark V, and Treville's Improved Artillery Tractor for your curiosity.