Tappers and the Office of Containment

Here’s a couple of artwork pieces I’ve been working on for Connacht Disaster Zone. One is a logo for a dwarven organisation that is responsible for investigating “Fomorian infiltration” in the areas immediately surrounding the disaster zone, and the second below the fold is one of their propaganda posters.

I’m not 100% sure on the grammar of this, but this translates roughly as “Office of Containment”. They’re effectively a secret police organisation under the auspices of the dwarven church, with a fair amount of authority (and some friction with other units). I’m planning to add a few stories that involve them.

I had the original image completed a week ago, following this GIMP tutorial, and most of the intervening time has spent been trying to figure out a name for the unit. All of them were longer and more haphazardly spelled; I’ve occasionally joked that the first person to write Irish down must been severely dyslexic.

A poster which shows two characters skulking in an alleyway. One is listening to something; the other stands guard with a gun drawn — “Tappers” are equivalent to deckers in the Shadowrun franchise, or the stereotypical hoodie-clad hacker against a scrolling background of binary numbers from our world – somebody who specialises in interfering with the most advanced technology of the time. I doubt that intercepting telegraphs would be actually be as simple as running a cable down from the cable as shown above. In fact, I’d suspect that bribing a telegraph operator would be more effective and common-place, but that doesn’t have the same UBER-1337 H@X0R vibe (or whatever would be the equivalent for the early 20th Century). It *might* be possible to insert messages at one point or another, but again, old-fashioned bribery would likely work.

A good chunk of the series revolves around the fear that the Fomorians are trying to snatch people and forcibly turn them into…more Fomorians. It’s something along the lines of the Super Mutants in the Fallout games, although this one is not the result of government experiments at creating super soldiers. Whether or not “tappers” end up being involved in Fomorian raids outside west Connacht – as insinuated by the above poster – is another question.

Every time I finish something, I get more ideas. I should really just pick one and get on with it!