Imagine a London that's every crevice and crack is penetrated with a thick smog; where zombies work the factories; where deformed freaks reign in London's criminal underworld and factions based on necromancy, opium trafficking and magic threaten the Empire; technological advances such as subways and zeppelins make their appearances decades earlier than in our recorded histories; British scientists conduct experiments on an alien race that landed near Stonehenge; Queen Victoria is protected in the court of the fairies from assassination attempts; palace guards are automatons; Charles Darwin writes "On the Origin of Fairies" and Jack the Ripper is a robot made from clock parts. That is Smog 1888.

The wargame is essentially a London where street warfare is as common as the technological and magical advances become too much for the British Empire to handle. Smog 1888's website is bloody difficult to navigate and doesn't really explain the game very well either. The pluses to this site, however, is the intricate backstory to the actual wargame. You can read about any of the factions, the numerous murders of Jack the Ripper and other 19th-century news stories, and a chronology of the alternative Victorian history created by SmartMax, the company that owns the game.

(Thank goodness I found unlacethevictorians.blogspot.com to explain to me what exactly Smog 1888 actually is because I've been trying to figure it out for a while now, sad as that might sound) I came across this miniature online a while ago and just fell in love with it, even though I had no idea what it actually was. It's a little hard to tell but Lady Usher is a Victorian Living Undead with a hairless cat and her skirts carried by black faeries.