The Dawn of Colonial Suns

We have begun work on a longer term project to develop a Victorian Science Fiction (VSF) setting and game: Colonial Suns. It's a universe I've been puttering around with for many years and it arose from my love of Space 1889 and movies like Zulu, The Men Who Would Be Kings, The Last Samurai, The Wind and the Lion, Glory, etc. 

I wanted to create an alternate history VSF setting that was also hard science and true to our own history. So in this setting there is no aether, no habitable Mars or Venus or the Moon, no steampunk stuff tacked on. 

What I did want was interesting locations, even more interesting alien races, the nations of Earth racing to stake their claims across a stellar network of a dozen plus worlds with high tensions among both themselves and the native inhabitants of those places with shifting allegiances and Realpolitik and the Great Game on an interstellar scale. And Napoleon! 

There have been significant changes geo-politically on Earth since Napoleon and his Old Guard summoned the first "Sky Whale" to Egypt in 1815 and found themselves on Haarkuun several weeks later. Humanity has had over 40 years to contend with the reality of this much larger universe. But human nature doesn't change and humanity in 1866 is much like in our own timeline.

I'm excited to bring this out but it will be a longer term development. We first need several hard plastic sets for the humans in the setting which will appear as standard Imperial Conquests sets. This will, of course, mean that the historical human sets will need their historical opponents in hard plastic - so there is a bit of work to do before the game can come along. The first of these sets is in tooling now. The first game-in-a-box will feature 3 factions (that can operate alone or ally with each other in some cases) and will be coming in 2027.

Although it's a long ways off, I did want to preview two of the alien races. The first are a crab-like race that can be found on several worlds in the network including our main setting on Haarkuun (where Napoleon forged his off-world empire). The Krukari are tribal nomads who act as mercenary forces for both human and Haarkuunian armies. These will first be released as a digital set if you'd like to use them for something else while you wait for the game! 

Krukari Warriors - shorter than an average human male. Sculpted by Gia Huy.

I had been a huge fan for many years of the Oshiro Models Martians. They were absolutely perfect for the main race of Haarkuun. James @ Oshiro was kind enough to sell me the range last year and we forged ahead to redesign them for hard plastic. Two other Haarkuunian frames are in development for the first game release as well. 

High Haarkuunian War Party. Painting and Photography by Chris Hindmarsh.

High Haarkuunians are traditionalists fighting against the intruders from Earth and Napoleon's empire on Haarkuun. Sculpted by Thieu Duong.

I hope you enjoyed this little preview. We have set up a Facebook group so that you can follow along as development happens over the next several months and into 2027. You can join the Facebook group for Colonial Suns here.