Why the Rhinoceros?

Correct the Rhino was female and called Clara. At the end of 1749, Clara embarked at Marseille to travel to Italy. Avoiding the fate of Dürer's Rhinoceros, which drowned in a shipwreck off the Ligurian coast near Porto Venere in 1516, Clara visited Naples and Rome

She passed through Bologna in August and Milan in October. She arrived in Venice in January 1751, where she became a major attraction at the carnival and was painted by Pietro Longhi

Little is known of her exact movements from 1752 to 1758, but she visited Prague; then Warsaw, Kraków, Danzig and Breslau (a second time) in 1754; and Copenhagen in 1755. She returned to London in 1758, where she was exhibited. This was where she died on 14 April, aged about 20.

With thanks to my diverse historical knowledge and a bit of google.

Yes, but the 'Steampunk' details look more than a little out of date for the time of Carnevale: would fit better in 'Malifaux', for instance...

PS: was the aphrodisiac repute of powdered rhino horn known in Venice by then? Or was the poor beast amputated only to 'play it safe'?

"The Steampunk details are related to its faction The Doctors of the Ospedale, who are a kind of "mad doctors" that make experiments."

I understand, but to give 'Lacepunk' (18th C., the time of the 'Lace Wars') an atmosphere / character / 'feeling' clearly different from 'Steampunk' (2nd half of the 19th C.) I'd seen *biological* rather than mechanical experiments. 'Frankenstein' is early 19th C., and clearly antedates the 'Victorian Science Fiction' period. So much the more as the Doctors of the Ospedale are *medicine* doctors, physicians rather than physicists, biologists but not mechanics.

The GW Tyranids bioweapons are silly, firstly because they seem to imply that the Tyranids have absorbed genes for swords, pistols and guns :)! But chiefly because they are *held* in 'hand'. Now bioweapons are living organisms, actually ectoparasites of the wielder. They have to be fed -totally, in oxygen as well as in nutriments- just in the same way as an embryo is fed through the placenta. Thus bioweapons would not be held but pulled on *like a glove* and root themselves in the forearm of the wielder through a dense network of tendrils. Like the 'Witchblade' http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/w/wichbla3.jpg . http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/4000000/Witchblade-comic-books-4030584-1024-768.jpg , but of bone (for the blade) and flesh (for the 'body') with a -rather disgusting- network of tendrils instead of the vambrace.

Such a biowepon could be the cephalothorax of a giant spider put on like a glove -with the mouth and the poisonous chelicerae, and the 8 limbs; spiders produce their silk -sometimes like a retiarius' net- and for some throw a cloud of venomous hairs, with their abdomen, but 'bioengineered' why they could not do it with their front half?
These to arm an human; but variations are unlimited. think of a brainwashed human slave, or a gorilla, with the 'unfolding' mouth of the super-vampires of 'Blade 2' + the 'biting tongue' of the 'Alien' creature... The rhino, rather than flexible pipes, could carry on his back a 'biocannon' -the head of the 'spitting' termite http://www.lerako.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_5289.jpg , but the size of a little barrel, and orientable on 270° ...

Cool idea with the Rhinoceros, didn't know about the historical background, but the concept alone of such a monster running around in Venice is awesome!