We talked a little bit more about Hellspace (which may need a name change) today and the theology of its universe. I got it into my head at some point that the demons of Hellspace are not the conniving types you might find in D&D or some other fantasy game, but rather animalistic predators. In the hundred or so years since humans first opened the Hell portals, the demons have adapted into a sort of infernal deep-sea angler fish. They use sin as their lure; so, one demon’s belly might glitter like a pile of gold (while the rest of it remains camouflaged until its too late), while another may possess a lustful siren’s song.Of course, this brings up the question of religion, and I think we’re going to try to make faith something resembling a sanity-point mechanism. Now, the setting is dominated by the Christian religion (after all, they have proof that Hell exists). But that doesn’t mean that every character has to be a true believer. Those with strength of faith, may use that to either harm or drive away the demons. However, they’ll have to deal with temptations of sin. Those weak of faith may instead take those same temptations and turn them into indulgences, bringing some much-needed relief after dealing with horrors from another dimension.

Of course, this all needs to be tested out.

About a year ago, I had the idea that is the seed of the Hellspace project: what if scientists opened a portal to a Hell dimension and instead of being instantly overrun by demons, we totally kicked their asses? I started to write a short story in that vein, but because I happened to be reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel at the time, it came out as a sort of Victoriana space thing.

I brought this idea, along with a rough timeline for how England conquers the solar system with the help of space-bending portals into Hell, to ISS with the question, “How do we make this a game? Should we even bother?” Epidiah and Jim were rather receptive and eventually we came up with the idea to tinker around with FATE and use that. I just finished running a short Spirit of the Century campaign, so the idea was appealing. We then bantered a bit about power levels and how to make a Victorian character and what exactly a Hellspace adventure might look like.

There’s still much to do, between fleshing out the setting and hammering out rules, so we might not get to playstorm this one for a few months. However, in the meantime, I’d like to make one thing abundantly clear—I don’t want this to be another “steampunk” game. The technology of the setting will be pretty modern and the tone more “space opera” than anything else. Plus demons.