Broken Hammer Games
The Nails That Break The Hammer
Lore Backstory
Our lore and backstory is based on the Guns of Icarus world. It is a post apocalyptic environment with a mix of Steampunk and Dieselpunk level of technology. Generally from the perspective of reality, a late 1800s-1930s. It could also possibly be as late as the 1940s. Guns of Icarus displays a lot of technology, both fantasy and reality, which gives it a large technological time frame.
The world itself is actually only a portion of the world that has come out of an ancient war that pretty much wiped out just about everyone or reduced them to small tribes. Big cities are either ruins or buried. How societies recover is dependent upon what technologies they rediscover from the old world.
In the Guns of Icarus lore, a man named Gabriel discovers plans for an airship and builds one. Which in turn ignites a race for air superiority, which creates a world where airships are the primary means of doing just about anything.
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Nations have since risen again and society as a whole is in a state of flux between fighting over resources or power. This is what is called, "The Age of Air," in our tale. The time period where Dust and Air takes place.
Exactly what date it is, we don't go into. Generally we place Dust and Air during the middle, or even perhaps, late, portion of this time period. Where all the nations are at their most stable point, at least in their borders.
We refer to the original map Muse created for the world rather than the new one they made for Alliance. This is simply because the original map had a bit more content.
Nations in our story will be much more structured since they've gone through prior decades or centuries of conflict to get to this point.
Some hatreds run deep, while others have created lasting alliances.
This is potentially one of the time periods which would determine the future course of the world. One where the technologies that destroyed it, are being brought to life again.
In Dust and Air, this is a visual novel with no cliched school setting or traditional dating sim tropes. It is a game which focuses on the "novel" part of the term visual novel.
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Unlike many visual novels where the story takes place in one main location with few branching locations (school days style), each story in our visual novel takes you to different areas in the Guns of Icarus world. Which is a great reason as to why the total word count for this project is over 700,000 words. There are literally 6 factions in the world. So that means, 6 complete stories! One for each faction!
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In fact the average word count for our story arcs is in the 90,000-100,000 range. Each is a novel and a game unto itself!
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To put that in perspective, most visual novels on Steam are lucky if they break out of the 10,000 word level. While some are pushing past 20, 30, or even 40,000, it is rare for them to ever go beyond that. Even more rare for it to happen in the west where visual novels have just recently been catching on.
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Do you need to be a Guns of Icarus mega fan to figure out the lore and backstory? No. We'll reveal things as we go. However, because our story is considered a "legend" in the overall Guns of Icarus lore, there will be differences between our story and the one Muse has.
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For starters, as we discussed earlier, there is no real set date for when our events happen in the Guns history. Guns of Icarus Alliance depicts a world in constant war, while we picked a somewhat peaceful period. You won't be battling for control over the world in this story like you are in Alliance.
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This allows us to take more of a cross section of the world and present it at a more reasonable pace. Where you really get time to meet each faction instead of just selecting something on a whim.
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The world may be a violent place but, it doesn't need to always be that way. In our story you get to meet people who have to live in it. Whether they go about trying to start war or trying to make peace, is entirely up to their ambitions.
From the ground up this visual novel has been designed to provide you, the player, the maximum amount of exposure to the Guns of Icarus world.
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While we cannot determine for Muse what is canon and what isn't, we hope you enjoy your stay in our vision of their world.
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Maybe if you spend some time in our's, you'll want to spend some time in their's. Then in return maybe, just maybe, you'll be inspired as we were.
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The world of Guns of Icarus is a big place. Full of villians and heroes.
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Be inspired and don't be afraid to take your inspiration to the next level!
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