Blackwater Bay Stories
The stories are free to download at the links below.
Blackwater Bay Stories is an illustrated series of Steampunk short stories, with art and story by Robert Dodd. The stories are set in an alternate world, in the city-state of Blackwater Bay: a city that is undergoing its Industrial Revolution and it's Age of Discovery (and colonialism) at the same time. Blackwater Bay and the other human-run city-states live in an extremely hostile world which has limited their expansion and knowledge of the planet up to this point. The humans are not alone either: there are four known sentient species other than humans and members of three of the non-human species live as refugees or the descendants of refugees in the city of Blackwater Bay.
Story One: Fishing for Monster
Story Three: The Young Clocker and the Sea
Story Four: The Grand Airship, Part One
Story Seven: The Grand Airship, Part Three
If you enjoy Blackwater Bay Stories and would like to help, please contribute at my Ko-Fi page which also contains a whole lot of my other art (and comics!) which are unrelated to Blackwater Bay Stories:
The Art of Robert Dodd
MAP OF THE KNOWN WORLD
OTHER STORIES
Some purists might consider these stories to not be Steampunk, since they are not set on Earth or in Britain in the Victorian era. They are set on a different world, but the technology is either the same or extrapolated from the tech available during the Victorian and Edwardian eras in Britain on Earth. The social issues that the stories deal with are also very similar to issues in the Victorian and somewhat earlier eras. The stories are also often but not always tech and science-driven. The city-state of Blackwater Bay is in its industrial revolution era (and in fact due to the peculiarities of their situation has been for a few hundred years) and is trying to embark on their Age of Discovery (and colonization.) The reason that they have not explored the world significantly up until this point is that the "civilized" human world is surrounded on all sides with hostile peoples and environments. To the north, a polar ice cap. To the west, the Reiver Steppe which is dominated by the extremely warlike Reivers, mobile human pastoral tribes. To the south, the Avanks, a relatively civilized (in the sense of living in large cities) but very hostile non-human race. And to the east, an ocean populated with massive aquatic predators which have thus far prevented them from exploring very far from their own shores.
While the five human city-states on the east coast of the continent are dominated and ruled by humans, they also contain an appreciable number of non-human refugees: generally refugees from the predations of the aforementioned Reivers and Avanks. These are the Doha, financially gifted traditionalists; the K'skissah, nimble creatures that somehow manage to be monkeylike, catlike and humanlike all at the same time; and the Ovuha, tall thin humanoids with round heads who are gifted in herbalism, alchemy and medicine generally.
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