Technophobia

'Technophobe' is a generic term to describe people who, for whatever reason, refuse to use alien tech.

Shivaree

Shivaree is the name of a human enclave enclosed by rock in the Carpathian Mountains. It has been in use for 24 of the 30 years since invasion.

Now it is the closest thing Earth has to a human city. A series of large caverns and tunnels is continually being added to as clockwork and alien tech earthmovers expand the underground network. A combination of fungus and vermin are farmed to make up the majority of the populations' diet. Artificial sunlight is becoming available to grow other crops, but the lack of soil is a significant hindrance.

Many tech advanced come from Shivaree, but it is by necessity fiercely secretive. It is legend to some humans that don't live there, but many more have never heard of it at all.

Obsolescence

So much of what used to be on Earth has fallen into obsolescence (WotD from the 9th), this one is a little too easy.

however, if you combine it pentimento (WotD from the 10th), it gets really interesting. this is defined as:

noun, plural pentimenti 

 [pen-tuh-men-tee] (Show IPA). Painting.

1.

the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over.

Together, I like this - its the idea of the remaining evidence of human things in a world being actively re-made by the invading species. 

Trains were a big thing when the aliens attacked, but they are easy targets, so humans avoided trains and their tracks in the early years post-invasion. But 30 years later ...  maybe there are clusters of survivors huddling in a railway tunnel in the Alps. Maybe the rails through the Florida swamps are the only source of scrap metal for local survivors, and the supply is dwindling. 

And what might the heavy machinery of a steam engine become if combined with alien technology? 

Moustufad the Mad was a desert raider in Morocco, set to be hanged by a rural colonial governor the day the invasion happened, in part of a celebration of the North African Empire Line reaching the area . He escaped, and since has reclaimed enough alien tech to outfit the abandoned locomotive with antigravity hoverpads and advanced tech. He has not cut his moustache since the day of the invasion. 

George Pullman is rumored to survive somewhere in the forests of Appalachia, the Lord of a colony of engineers covertly building anti-alien tech-steam dragon mechs.

Holophrase

000358, aka Threefive, aka Holophrase, was one of the early results of human breeding by the alien invaders. 

She was first-generation bred, born in captivity in 1906, had no contact with humans from birth, but was liberated in 1919 at the age of 13. 

She was genetically engineered, a part of ongoing experiments to create a human that could telepathically communicate with the aliens. The result wasn't entirely successful - Holophrase has the ability to broadcast basic emotions to those around her, in a range that increases with the intensity she is feeling them. Unfortunately, she has no control over the power, and other humans who don't have experience often mistake the emotions she's broadcasting as their own. 

Setting WotD: floccinaucinihilipilification

This is ridiculous.

I didn't even try to spell it, in the title of this post. I just copy/pasted.

Floccinaucinihilipilification - supposed to mean 'the estimation of something as valueless'

Any way I try to squeeze this into an rpg setting, it's gonna sound contrived as hell.

Maybe if I just play with it a bit ...

Floss Nose In Nihilist Pillow Fiction

Or I could pull out some science-y words ....

Flox NOS inositol lipifaction

Flaxen use in helipad live cat ions .. helipaddle vacations? hell paddle vacations?

Flash use in Hell Paddle Vacations?



I have something!

So, in the first 5-10 years of alien occupation of Earth, people were struggling to communicate with other colonies of survivors. Digital communication didn't exist in Earth tech, and electronic communications were in their infancy (mainly the telegraph and radio), and were easy for the aliens to intercept. Flash Marconi's Oxter station eventually found some defense by incorporating some alien tech, but early on this wasn't an option.

Aliens would intercept and read printed and written communications, but they quickly built machines to do it for them. And humans learned that if they filled the majority of a communication with nonsense, built from real words but ignoring sense or grammar, they could tuck in actual communications toward the end, and the machines would throw it out as garbage. Famously, Louis J Kohl managed to mass print a bulletin with clues to the locations of several survivor camps across Scandinavia that was not deciphered by the aliens for 3 years. It was titled "Floss Nose in Nihilist Pillow Fiction", and inspired the moniker 'Nihilist Pillow Fiction' for the practice of coding communications in nonsense.

Cryptozoology

So, the WOTD is Cryptozoology.


After the initial phase of the alien invasion in 1893, there was a 2 year period where the only aliens coming to and from Earth were soldiers, trained in the elimination of (to them) alien foes.

A bit later, other groups of aliens began showing up. Groups of paramilitary terraforming specialists, followed by engineers, followed by workers and heavy equipment. Eventually, non-military groups, to do advance work on alien infrastructure leading up to future colonization. And alien xenobiologists, curious about the native forms of life on Earth and eager to gather information and perform experiments.

Since humans in the 1890s had no common language for the study of xenobiology, the popular term for alien scientists interested in humans and Earth native species became 'Cryptozoologists', or more often 'Cryptos'.

While the alien weaponry is rightly feared and treated with immense caution, it has become the Cryptos that strike terror in the hearts of surviving humanity. The Cryptos won't just kill you if you are found -- people are collected, brought to experimental facilities, implanted with alien bionics, forced into breeding programs, and generally tested in every way imaginable.

New Setting WOTD

I want to generate some background for a setting for the next game I'm planning to run. Or maybe I'll just dream about this one and never run it.

Anyway, the idea sounds like I tried to mash as many genre tropes together as I could, but I think it actually has promise.

In 1893, an alien invasion assaulted Earth, and successfully destroyed every major population center, killing off more than 95% of the human population. The aliens then set about the slow process or rooting out and killing the surviving humans, collecting, breeding, and experimenting on other humans, and terraforming the planet to make it more hospitable for their kind to populate. Surviving humans begin to quickly learn from the far-advanced alien tech.

The game would be set about 30 years post-invasion. The result is .. wait for it ...  a post-apocalyptic alien invasion alternate history steampunk rpg setting. No zombies yet.


Anyway, here's the game i want to play by blog:

Every day I look at the dictionary.com word of the day, and I write a brief (or long, if I know myself) entry that somehow fleshes out the setting.

Today the WOTD is oxter, which means armpit.

Flare Marconi makes his way around the world however he can, broadcasting radio programs designed to inform, entertain, and encourage human survivors, on a radio station he has dubbed 'The Oxter'. The name is obviously a pseudonym, and his actual identity is unknown to most, but his broadcasts have reached many, many survivors, and he has incorporated some found tech to boost his broadcasting power and keep himself hidden as he does so.