Industrialist

One who owns, runs, and draws power from massive industrial projects to create and wield brown aether.

Corrupted Aether

Brown aether, or brown msawhat, is what happens when aether is corrupted by msawhat. It is the fouling of the earth, the polluting of the air, the poisoning of the waters. It is the esoteric power of the destruction of the environment. The least is does is make water undrinkable, land unarable, and air unbreathable, but in largescale, it can cause extinctions, global warming, ecological collapse, and more.

It is generated by the act of poisoning the environment. Something small, like littering, may cause some unnoticeable spark of corruption, but when done on the scale of major industires - oil and gas, steel and mining, vast factories, etc. - it generates enough power to be devastating. If captured and directed, this energy can then be used to kill, destroy, and conquer.

When generated in large enough volume, it takes one of these forms:

• Black film: the smallest amount forms in a fine black film. It smears over anything it touches and leaves a poisonous layer of brown aether that stenches and blisters. If enough covers something organic, that matter will rot, decay, dissolve, or toxify.
• Petraluto: corrupted mud that hardens quickly and can be tapped for power.
• Burnt smog: mostly formed from factories, burnt smog is corrupted fog, smoke, or other air that burns anyone who breathes it or is touched by it.
• Lung scour: found in mines and textiles factories, tiny fibres or flakes or dust that gets in the lungs, builds up, and kills more painfully than black lung.
• Foul water: corrupted water or liquid of any kind becomes so highly toxic it works as a largescale poison that kills all life in it or around it for miles.
• Quicklead: liquid metal that is full of brown aether and more deadly than most poisons.
• Sour powder: byproduct of many industrial processes, sour powder is a stinking white powder that causes blistering if touched and can be used to make industrial acid.
• Industrial acid: industrial acid is any acid or caustic substance that is corrupted and used in industrial machinery. It acts as a burning agent, a poison, and a corrupting agent.
• Brown sludge: the most potent form of brown aether is a foul, thick fluid that burns organic matter, corrupts land, water, or air around it. It is poison, burning acid, and creates fumes that explode.
• Corpse-butter: the effect of brown aether on bodies is to make them a pulsing, burning, toxic mess the consistency of butter with the aroma of shit.

The only way to cure brown aether's effects other than other, more potent esoteric energy, is to alleviate it by draining it off into more industrial machinery. Thus, those who are affected by it become dependent on the industrialists.

Synthesized

If someone wields msawhat and directly applies it to aether, they can create brown aether synthetically, but rarely is this possible in quantity necessary to be effective.

Ownership

Who can control brown aether is determined by who owns the source of the pollution. A person who litters owns the trash they throw on the ground, and thus, the infinitesimal amount created belongs to them. When factories or industries do it, the brown aether belongs to the ones who own the factories or industries. They can, however, delegate it to their employees to wield, but only in ways they approve of. Thus, slaves, automatons, and desperate workers are best.

Machinery

Brown aether is dangerous to use without some kind of machine or device to act as intermediary. Only afulianists use it without some kind of machine; industrialists equip their workers, slaves, and lieutenants with major machinery that can wield the energy with relative safety. The industrialist must, however, keep a "core" of corrupted power and a machine called a "spinning devil".

Control

The industrialist controls the flow of brown aether through the spinning devil. If the industrialist is touching anything corrupted, the aether will draw to the spinning devil, and if they adjust the rate, direction, or rhythm of the devil, it will cause the aether to move in different ways. When in their factories or other industrial centers, they can control where it flows on a massive scale or delegate the control of it to lieutenants by giving them smaller spinning devils that respond to how his is set. The settings on the main spinning devil will draw all others back to their setting, though others will be able to temporarily adjust. In this way, they maintain the will of the industrialist while letting lieutenants adjust as necessary.

Equipment

Some of the machines and equipment used include

• Spinning Devil: the core of the industrialist's power, a metallic sheet with a wheel that runs around a brown aether in the form of corrupted mud called petraluto.
• Gas Masks: metal and rubber masks that filter out the worst of corrupted air, fumes, dusts, etc. to protect users of brown aether.
• Expandable Hoses: accordioned hoses made of rubber through which fluid forms of brown aether are pumped. These are often equipped with gauges, nozzles, and so on so they can be used as power hoses to spray down targets.
• Quicklead Lung: like an iron lung, but designed to separate brown aether-infused air from clean air, often torn from the lungs of victims, but not to heal them (they usually die, or are already dead).
• Slosh Furnace: a massive blast furnace that turns anything in it into burnt smog.
• Smogstack: factory smokestacks that convert even the non-supernatural materials in it into burnt smog.
• Smogships: the massive steamliners that produces smog and foul the water.
• 3-Gauge Needle: a huge needle that can extract brown aether from victims of it (only organic matter).
• Dredging Rake: a machine used on boats to dredge rivers or other bodies of water that draws up the brown aether for other use.
• Dual Drill: a massive mining drill that captures the corrupted dust created in the mines and funnels it back into the drill to corrupt the land all around.
• Dust Fans: massive fans used in mines and factories to direct corrupted dust, air, and so on. Smaller vesions, called spew fans, do the same on a personal scale.
• Processing Vat: a massive vat made of solidified quicklead in which various brown aether compounds are made.
• Long Bottle: a thin bottle, about three feet long, made of glass corrupted with sour powder that corrupts fluids put in it. If broken while full of corrupted fluid, it acts as a molotov cocktail, spewing poisonous fumes as well as burbing.
• Sludge-Cannon: a hose-cannon used to fire huge volumes of brown sludge, often used by militaries to destroy land so it can't be used to grow crops for the enemy.

Toxicity

Being affected by any form of brown aether is toxic to most living things. Dosage, target area, and form affect the power and effects of its toxicity, but the basic numbers are 1 point of poison damage per ounce.

Cancer

Anyone who works around brown aether long enough will get some kind of cancer, including the industrialist. However, the industrialist can use brown aether to draw power from the cancer they have. The power they get from it does not abate its progress in killing them, but it gives them the ability to poison others with their touch, breath, or bodily fluids.

Dying World

The more the world dies, the stronger the brown aether becomes. Ecological and environmental damage overall makes it such that any act of pollution creates more brown aether. In ancient settings before the Fall, brown aether is so weak it can barely exist. During a industrial period, it grows much stronger, and in periods of heavy imperialist domination, it is powerful to the point of being a genuine threat to mortal survival.

Societal Role

Industrialists make massive fortunes off of what their factories, businesses, mining operations, and so on produce. The brown aether is a byproduct of their work, which they then harness to power machinery, control workers, make people desperate, control what land, air, or water is usable, and otherwise profit. They have been driven out of most socialist countries and are not able to work in pre-industrialized societies, but they dominate capitalist and late-feudal ones. They also often encroach on the land of pre-industrialized societies.

Variations

Some variations include

• Fixer: an agent of an industrialist (or tycoon) who uses the machinery to take out their opponents or fix other "problems".
• Industrial Engineer: an engineer working for an industrialist who devises and/or builds the machines. These are a vital part of the industrialist's operation, and thus, they are usually a close ally or completely enslaved.
• Invasor: an industrialist whose factories turn grasslands into parking lots and warehouses, specializing in wiping out the biome.
• Slimste: an industrialist whose factories create massive amounts of light pollution in order to blot out the sky and drive people mad, terrorizing the population.
• Smogship Captain: an industrialist who specializes in captaining smogships. They often work as oil rigs, pirate ships, or warships.
• Tycoon: an industrialist who controls a whole industry or more.

Winchestrian Soldiers and Servants

The most common connected occupations are those of the Winchestrian soldiers and servants. Named for the Winchester family, who founded the steel corporations that originally developed the methods outlined above, Winchestrian soldiers are usually people enslaved to an industrialist who wear full-body hazmat suits, gas masks, and heavy gloves in order to wield the above-mentioned expandable hoses and sludge-cannons. They guard the assets of an industrialist and are often used as cannon fodder. Winchestrian servants are anyone who is a laborer, slave, or other worker for an industrialist who has been enslaved via brown aether.

Skills

Some common skills include

• Commerce
• Finance
• Mechanical engineering
• Ecology
• Investment strategy
• Accounting
• Management

Stats

Modifiers from base of nation/species:

PRO -1
ATH -2
STR +1
AWA +2
WIL +1
STH /
PRS -2