Infrastructure is an illustrated Web Original series made by Leighton White/Zor/Imperator-Zor.
The story begins with a group of sapient Mechanical Lifeforms who, after narrowly escaping a losing battle via a Blind Jump, find themselves making an emergency landing on a planet with elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, dragons and magic in a sparsely populated region.
Initially, they simply go about the business of taking account of themselves; they're more than capable of defending themselves from all but the most powerful entities on the planet, let alone the pre-feudal tribes populating the area. Their fabrication equipment survived the crash, and is more than capable of maintaining their bodies indefinitely. The bad news is that their fabrication equipment is not capable of self-replication and thus would take over three millennia to build the tools to build the tools(etc) to re-connect with their interstellar empire - and their power source is going to fail in about twelve years.
Thus, they embark upon a great plan of Technology Uplift; starting with a small collection of villages but growing steadily from there, bit by bit this Committee of alien survivors and its human followers build a new industrial nation to facilitate their needs known simply as Infrastructure. As time goes on and it rises in prominence it begins to have an effect on the more established civilizations of this world.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/infrastructure-an-illustrated-original-work.209283/
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/infrastructure-original-and-illustrated.5512/
http://imperator-zor.deviantart.com/gallery/34099542/Infrastructure
Infrastructure contains examples of:
- Alternative Calendar: The Survivors use their own, based on when they made their initial move to Dalatyr as opposed to their arrival on the planet; As of 10/28/2017, it is 37 IA(Infrastructural Age). Most human civilizations use the Order of Keepers calendar based around the founding of said order in 1379 BIA.
- Everyone Is Bi: Well, not everyone, but Coldlanders in general have a simple outlook on these sorts of things; homosexuality is not considered cheating. No one cares as long as those involved actually produce children with someone at some point.Having children was important to keep families and communities alive, but saw those who had an interest of people more similar to themselves as being fairly unremarkable and had no objections to those people making arrangements on the side.
- Beleaguered Bureaucrat: The Central Committee has a vast Bureaucracy to administrate its vast industrial projects and various other programs.
- Cult Colony: The Dark Elves establish one known as Fidelium.
- Badass Bureaucrat: Infrastructure is run by a large Bureaucracy tasked with managing it's various industrial an small-i infrastructural projects in addition to it's more coventional apparatii of state.
- More literally Yuna Igorova does NOT take rebels attacking her shipyard lying down.
- Gold–Silver–Copper Standard versus We Will Spend Credits in the Future: An ongoing plot element is that the exchange of precious metals is discouraged by the Survivors in favor of steel and paper credits. Merchants don't like them because they can't be spent outside of Infrastructure, but most citizens are relatively ambivalent about it. Refusing to accept payment in credits — or charging higher rates for them — is referred to as "Magpying" by Infrastructural Authorities and punishable by fines and labor. A big reason it's working so well is because exchanging credits for precious metals is not at all illegal, and posters on fair exchange rates between precious metals and credits are common throughout port towns.
- Grim Up North: The Coldlands before the arrival of Infrastructure were not nice. The winters are cold and bitter and most of it was dominated by petty warlords ruling over a few villages and fighting each other in an endless series of petty wars, raiding each others lands for booty and captives that were sold into slavery. Between the climate, the poverty and hostility of the natives and a low level of background magic the other established civilizations paid it little heed. At least until it started industrializing.
- Left-Justified Fantasy Map: Present and accounted for. In an interesting twist, the Survivors land in the Grim Up North, with nigh-impassible mountain ranges to their east, south and south-west. The only access to their lands is via a relatively small grassland to their west and a Mediterranean-size icy sea to the north, enabling them to build their industrial state with minimal harassment. Many capital-K kingdoms didn't even know Infrastructure existed until their first ironclads came steaming into their ports.
- Magitek: This was present in the early stages even before the Survivors arrived; Dwarves lacking fuel for their smelters invented solar furnaces, and discovered that metal refined thus was exceptionally useful for artificing.
- Medieval Morons: Defied. Though at first the citizens of Infrastructure aren't even literate, they take to industrial civilization Like a Duck Takes to Water. Within a year of the Survivors showing them the basics, they were crafting their own tools, printing their own books, and exercising modern hygiene. All they needed was the concept that The Future Will Be Better. One nation has been aided by a traitor, but his knowledge has been quickly outdated and many countries have built their own firearms, steam engines, and even radios(receivers at least - transmitters are still tetchy).
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The Survivors have made this an Exploited Trope, eagerly conquering every slave-keeping nation within their reach; though many richer nations complain about the economic impact of destroying the slave trade, the Survivors have found that freed and educated slaves become devoted supporters of Infrastructure and its policies even if they don't always immigrate and become citizens.
- Technology Uplift: Attempting to explore the concept from every angle. Though the Survivors have all the super-technology anticipated of the 21st century — most specifically Matter Replicators — their devices can only produce a few kilograms of product a day; enough to maintain their bodies and produce the occasional high-tech tool, but they can't replicate the replicators nor build a new starship. Thus, they start at the ground floor, building blast furnaces and muzzle-loading rifles. 37 years later, they're stuck at Steampunk — cased ammunition, ironclad ships, steam locomotives, etc. — because though they've located rich oil fields, setting up a supply line may have to wait until they do something about the Dark Elf pirates that won't quit harassing their fleets.
