"The people of the Empire have no national spirit, they have only family and clan solidarity. Without the Empire or its most illustrious rulers - the Kazymovs, the Azaryans, the Zyriazis - they are only a heap of loose sand.
The Others of the Galaxy - within, without, and beyond the light of our Empire Eternal - are the carving knife and serving dish, while we are the meat and dressing."
The Others of the Galaxy - within, without, and beyond the light of our Empire Eternal - are the carving knife and serving dish, while we are the meat and dressing."
— Dr. Iriya Muzaev
P R E M I S E
Mekhanauts is a military science-fiction RP inspired by works such as BattleTech, Dune, UnderRail, and Aposimz. It's intended to take some of the out-there tropes of hard, cold, facts-based science fiction, and with the introduction of fantastic and unearthly developments of the farther-than-perceivable future, all in a Gothic Realist subtext.
It's a blend of realism and fantasy means that the characters are developed as true to what they would be in the real world while they are place in situations that are completely supernatural. To put it simply, Gothic Realism is about how real people react in unreal situations.
To that end, Mekhanauts combines real, hard sci-fi concepts with the fantastic, combining and reconfiguring what can be known and what cannot be - until coalesced into one, syncretic faith: The Religion of Science, conjoined into what is referred to now as, "wisdom".
You are members of one of the uncountable numbers of warlord states in this fractured Imperium. Not as commanders nor bureaucrats, but as common people thrust unto their positions as the backbone upon which a new Empire shall be construed. You fight under the banner of the Admiralty-Governor Khorchidian - Lord of Kyzyl-Dash and heir-claimant to Sirius - common soldiers fighting over the fate of the Empire. There are countless warlord states, all claiming to be the true adherents and successors to Sirius, and Khorchidian is no different from the rest. But, you have a job to do, and your objections, aspirations, or motivations to be here may very well not matter to him one bit: He is still supplying you to do a job - with a large degree of autonomy to boot - is he not?
Mekhanauts is a military science-fiction RP inspired by works such as BattleTech, Dune, UnderRail, and Aposimz. It's intended to take some of the out-there tropes of hard, cold, facts-based science fiction, and with the introduction of fantastic and unearthly developments of the farther-than-perceivable future, all in a Gothic Realist subtext.
It's a blend of realism and fantasy means that the characters are developed as true to what they would be in the real world while they are place in situations that are completely supernatural. To put it simply, Gothic Realism is about how real people react in unreal situations.
To that end, Mekhanauts combines real, hard sci-fi concepts with the fantastic, combining and reconfiguring what can be known and what cannot be - until coalesced into one, syncretic faith: The Religion of Science, conjoined into what is referred to now as, "wisdom".
You are members of one of the uncountable numbers of warlord states in this fractured Imperium. Not as commanders nor bureaucrats, but as common people thrust unto their positions as the backbone upon which a new Empire shall be construed. You fight under the banner of the Admiralty-Governor Khorchidian - Lord of Kyzyl-Dash and heir-claimant to Sirius - common soldiers fighting over the fate of the Empire. There are countless warlord states, all claiming to be the true adherents and successors to Sirius, and Khorchidian is no different from the rest. But, you have a job to do, and your objections, aspirations, or motivations to be here may very well not matter to him one bit: He is still supplying you to do a job - with a large degree of autonomy to boot - is he not?
S E T T I N G
The Sirian Empire - which has ruled over near all-Mankind for close to six millennia - has found itself broken and scarred. Her children lord over their petty leftovers, where they bicker over the succession that was the Great Galactic War. The Milky Way Galaxy of Mekhanauts is a place of unbridled heroism with horrid acts and rectification of its structures, until one reaches reconciliation or apathy.
A majority of Mekhanauts' influences come from various older, more fantastical epic science fiction: It combines Dune's multilayered interactions with ecology, politics, religion, and emotion with the intrigue, fusion of science and magic into one entity of UnderRail. Mekhanaut's main nomenclature is of Kazakh, Armenian, Greek, and Slavic (Primarily Russian, Ukrainian, and Serbian) origin, fusing together old mysticism and legends of West and Central Asia with the cautious coolness of retro sci-fi. The world of Mekhanauts is as much of an operator of "Rule of Cool" as it is a cautionary tale of romanticism of empire and historical phoenixism.
Society in the 96th century is incredibly fractured, and drastically different from our own. A total coalescence into something that can be called "Imperial Culture" is, by all means, impossible. The Empire is a collection of thousands of worlds and even more floating colonies. Every world and colony contains hundreds of languages of various families and trees and countless more clans, and it is only by the tenuous connections of its upper strata has the Empire developed anything close to a coherent culture. Many even from the same world do not speak the same mother tongue as one another: It is only through Salchak - a trade language that remains only barely standardized enough to allow for some degree of mutual intelligibility throughout the wider galaxy - that any are able to even speak to one another. Even this is, from time to time, assisted by the utility of psyonik power to accentuate words or feelings, incorporating the necessity of psyoniks into language itself.
Slavery has always been a topic of incredibly nebulous legal tenure within the Empire. Slavery was never de jure legal within the borders of the Empire, but the practice had never been formally outlawed and persisted throughout the perpetuation of various indenturement and caste systems, which had transpired into may forms of coercive control - de facto allowing slavery. While most people who existed as various forms of property in this sense have had certain protections against them in the case of outright abuse or negligence, the hard fact of the matter was that the effectual enforcement of any of these rights were simply far too diffuse to realistically control - there were far too many planets and not enough infrastructure to effectively police these actions.
Many warlords - and Imperial Lordships before them - insist on the mass-creation of vat-cloned persons through the gene-banks of so-called "martial castes", where they are typically drilled from young annual age to fight for their creators', or otherwise are contracted out for mercenary service at hefty cost. Their freedom of movement is severely restricted, and their opportunities and knowledge are far removed from anything that is not combat-related. For all practical intents and purposes, they exist as the property of their creatives. Many local administrators believe that agrarian or industrial lifestyles has made a large part of the galactic population simply unfit for military service or warfare of any kind. Even with optimistic reforms, this belief is so wide-spread and well-entrenched in some regions of the galaxy that it would require at least a generation to overcome.
Juggernauts - great machines of war which have beared the brunt of thousands of conflicts across centuries of galactic warfare - are your companions, and you the eponymous "Mekhanaut". Juggernauts are war incarnate - towering machines that advance forwards with thunderous strides, bolts of war roaring from the weapons at their disposal, while connected to their core by their pilot's Psyonik Tether. They are terrifying combatants, fighting with all the skill and ferocity of a fully-fledged warrior as though they were moving their very own body, but combined with the durability and firepower of a main battle tank.
Juggernauts are not, however, simple machines. Though the continuous bond and the residual operation within each and every Core they posses, Juggernauts grow to possess a being all their own. Many Juggernaut suits are decades old, if not centuries, and have long grown to harbor their own sentience and persona. All but the most recent of Juggernauts develop what is a Spectre - a being that is unto itself another essence within the fusion of man, mind, and machine. To operate a juggernaut is no simple task as it is to drive a car or to steer a spacecraft, for each Juggernaut comes to bewitch their own senses of desire and self-preservation. They have their own intelligence - even if they are usually not capable of prolonged speech, but all operators know that, to a Juggernaut, they shall act far before they ever speak.
It is far from uncommon for old Juggernauts to be able to comprehend long-extinct languages from centuries or millennia ago, the result of far-lasting bonds between their former operators and their shared experience. Even the nature that they still stand is testament to their odds to their operators at times: While a nuclear blast or a solar pulsar might fry an operator inside until all that is recovered is a melted biological sludge, the Juggernaut often survives intact.
There is little more rewarding than to be a skilled juggernaut operator. Apropos riding a great dragon or tumultuous stallion into battle, moments between total control and no control.
The Sirian Empire - which has ruled over near all-Mankind for close to six millennia - has found itself broken and scarred. Her children lord over their petty leftovers, where they bicker over the succession that was the Great Galactic War. The Milky Way Galaxy of Mekhanauts is a place of unbridled heroism with horrid acts and rectification of its structures, until one reaches reconciliation or apathy.
A majority of Mekhanauts' influences come from various older, more fantastical epic science fiction: It combines Dune's multilayered interactions with ecology, politics, religion, and emotion with the intrigue, fusion of science and magic into one entity of UnderRail. Mekhanaut's main nomenclature is of Kazakh, Armenian, Greek, and Slavic (Primarily Russian, Ukrainian, and Serbian) origin, fusing together old mysticism and legends of West and Central Asia with the cautious coolness of retro sci-fi. The world of Mekhanauts is as much of an operator of "Rule of Cool" as it is a cautionary tale of romanticism of empire and historical phoenixism.
Society in the 96th century is incredibly fractured, and drastically different from our own. A total coalescence into something that can be called "Imperial Culture" is, by all means, impossible. The Empire is a collection of thousands of worlds and even more floating colonies. Every world and colony contains hundreds of languages of various families and trees and countless more clans, and it is only by the tenuous connections of its upper strata has the Empire developed anything close to a coherent culture. Many even from the same world do not speak the same mother tongue as one another: It is only through Salchak - a trade language that remains only barely standardized enough to allow for some degree of mutual intelligibility throughout the wider galaxy - that any are able to even speak to one another. Even this is, from time to time, assisted by the utility of psyonik power to accentuate words or feelings, incorporating the necessity of psyoniks into language itself.
Slavery has always been a topic of incredibly nebulous legal tenure within the Empire. Slavery was never de jure legal within the borders of the Empire, but the practice had never been formally outlawed and persisted throughout the perpetuation of various indenturement and caste systems, which had transpired into may forms of coercive control - de facto allowing slavery. While most people who existed as various forms of property in this sense have had certain protections against them in the case of outright abuse or negligence, the hard fact of the matter was that the effectual enforcement of any of these rights were simply far too diffuse to realistically control - there were far too many planets and not enough infrastructure to effectively police these actions.
Many warlords - and Imperial Lordships before them - insist on the mass-creation of vat-cloned persons through the gene-banks of so-called "martial castes", where they are typically drilled from young annual age to fight for their creators', or otherwise are contracted out for mercenary service at hefty cost. Their freedom of movement is severely restricted, and their opportunities and knowledge are far removed from anything that is not combat-related. For all practical intents and purposes, they exist as the property of their creatives. Many local administrators believe that agrarian or industrial lifestyles has made a large part of the galactic population simply unfit for military service or warfare of any kind. Even with optimistic reforms, this belief is so wide-spread and well-entrenched in some regions of the galaxy that it would require at least a generation to overcome.
Juggernauts - great machines of war which have beared the brunt of thousands of conflicts across centuries of galactic warfare - are your companions, and you the eponymous "Mekhanaut". Juggernauts are war incarnate - towering machines that advance forwards with thunderous strides, bolts of war roaring from the weapons at their disposal, while connected to their core by their pilot's Psyonik Tether. They are terrifying combatants, fighting with all the skill and ferocity of a fully-fledged warrior as though they were moving their very own body, but combined with the durability and firepower of a main battle tank.
Juggernauts are not, however, simple machines. Though the continuous bond and the residual operation within each and every Core they posses, Juggernauts grow to possess a being all their own. Many Juggernaut suits are decades old, if not centuries, and have long grown to harbor their own sentience and persona. All but the most recent of Juggernauts develop what is a Spectre - a being that is unto itself another essence within the fusion of man, mind, and machine. To operate a juggernaut is no simple task as it is to drive a car or to steer a spacecraft, for each Juggernaut comes to bewitch their own senses of desire and self-preservation. They have their own intelligence - even if they are usually not capable of prolonged speech, but all operators know that, to a Juggernaut, they shall act far before they ever speak.
It is far from uncommon for old Juggernauts to be able to comprehend long-extinct languages from centuries or millennia ago, the result of far-lasting bonds between their former operators and their shared experience. Even the nature that they still stand is testament to their odds to their operators at times: While a nuclear blast or a solar pulsar might fry an operator inside until all that is recovered is a melted biological sludge, the Juggernaut often survives intact.
There is little more rewarding than to be a skilled juggernaut operator. Apropos riding a great dragon or tumultuous stallion into battle, moments between total control and no control.
Z Y U N - A Y R A Q
At the intersection of several Enkoispace routes, the Ayg'hri (Аъгхрі) System at first glance seems to be an unassuming place - only home to some artificial colonies and small mining operations. In such an unassuming system belies the gem of Zyun-Araq.
She is a frigid, terrestrial planet, the fifth from her star and possessive of one thin set of rings and four moons. The majority of her surface is of a cold desert climate, rocky and with hot, dry summer periods followed by long, cold, freezing nights, and only broken up by a strip of temperate steppe at her equatorial region. She is habitable - just barely - through the efforts of timely adaptation and ingenious architecture. Her indigenous aliens are an amphibious ilk - though primitive compared to us, they are a hardy and perceptive peoples, and pick up on new concepts very quickly. They have built little of a civilization for themselves, and have bequeathed themselves to their ancestral lifestyles as subjects beneath the Empire.
Zyun-Ayraq has also found herself home to another flock - followers of old, Earthian Abrahamic religion: We know them as Avrakhans, and for as long as there has been a good Empire have they constantly been a thorn in the side of the good nature of Azvari and the Empire. The Avrakhans are a largely nomadic sort, traveling the vast reaches of the planet in single-file caravans of yak-like creatures they call "ghurts". They were long ago sent here to earn off their continuous debt to the Empire as well as to allow them to provide the Galaxy with an invaluable service.
Indeed, they both guard something of far greater value on Zyun-Ayraq.
Sozyak seeds are unassuming things - they are bumpy, black or slate spheres with tiny, pink-lined ridges. Each is barely the size of a ball bearing, and possess a distinct gritty, saltine taste to them when eaten raw. They are hardy things, capable of surviving under deep snow and ice, where they thrive in the rapid melting periods of Zyun-Ayraq's hot seasons.
And each Sozyak seed contains enormous amounts of DELTA - the most potent psyonik drug known, and has provided the overwhelming bulk of facilitation of psyonik power throughout most of history. Its use in both biological and mechanical applications for astral travel is far too omnipresent to every truly undersell. From these tiny seeds is the DELTA within extracted and refined into various psyonik powders and reagents, from industrial-grade Enkoinine meant to be churned and thrown by the barrel-full into Enkoimetic Astrogation Computers to Desat psy-drugs that open minds to peer into the threads of time and space themselves. From these inoccuous black-and-pink dots from the backwaters of the Galaxy are they shipped off by the tonne, where they are heated and crushed and titrated and blended where they supernova in value. It is no understatement to say that the known universe's navigation relies on DELTA - Whoever controls the manufacture of DELTA controls galactic space travel.
This unassuming planet harbors the one of the keys to intergalactic travel and psytek, and has carved for herself a place as the Galaxy's seedy trading post. Her moons shelter smugglers and traders from all corners, all hoping to nudge in on the lucrative trade of Sozyak. It is imperative to anyone in the Southern Galactic Hemisphere - so close to the old position of Sirius - to control the segment and with it the tide of the great struggle.
But DELTA must flow. No matter the cost.
Y O U R M I S S I O N
Your mission is the pacification of Zyun-Ayraq. The overall control over the planet is essential for the continued operations of the war's progression, and the control over Zyun-Ayraq's strategic position and its Sozyak production is essential.
You are, however, far from alone in this goal: Already several warlords and rivals have begun to stake operating bases on Zyun-Ayraq. We cannot accurately assess their total strength or influence on Zyun-Ayraq, but their influence over the control and production of Sozyak is likely a tremendous source of their income - one that we must appropriate at once.
The locals have also not been the...most cooperative. Many of them erroneously believe that, because the authority on Sirius has been called into question, that rules and laws somehow do not apply to them. The Avrakhans have a considerable sway over the cultivation and production of Sozyak as it stands. It was believed that - by giving these cultists a token goodwill measure and shipping them off to this frigid lands to forever and put themselves to greater utility to all Humankind than to stand idly and preach their horrendously antiquated scripture - this small act might allow some of these Avrakhans to be appeased with the idea of relative self-governance while producing an invaluable commodity to our Empire. Alas - it seems that, as the old saying goes, if you give a rat a biscuit, it shall ask next time for the entire pantry.
Your top priority, above all else, is the security of Sozyak production and the total control of Zyun-Ayraq. All other means are secondary, and you and your comrades are free to pacify the planet as you see fit.
We are likewise on something of a tight schedule: Our leader, the Admiralty-Governor Khorchidian - Lord of Kyzyl-Dash and heir-claimant to Sirius - is highly expectant of our success. It has been made clear in no uncertain terms that, once our mission is complete and the planet secure, that His Majesty expects total control to be transferred to his jurisdiction (Or warlordship - whichever you prefer).
Of course, when this is all said and done and Zyun-Ayraq is under our control, we might have something to say about that...
Your mission is the pacification of Zyun-Ayraq. The overall control over the planet is essential for the continued operations of the war's progression, and the control over Zyun-Ayraq's strategic position and its Sozyak production is essential.
You are, however, far from alone in this goal: Already several warlords and rivals have begun to stake operating bases on Zyun-Ayraq. We cannot accurately assess their total strength or influence on Zyun-Ayraq, but their influence over the control and production of Sozyak is likely a tremendous source of their income - one that we must appropriate at once.
The locals have also not been the...most cooperative. Many of them erroneously believe that, because the authority on Sirius has been called into question, that rules and laws somehow do not apply to them. The Avrakhans have a considerable sway over the cultivation and production of Sozyak as it stands. It was believed that - by giving these cultists a token goodwill measure and shipping them off to this frigid lands to forever and put themselves to greater utility to all Humankind than to stand idly and preach their horrendously antiquated scripture - this small act might allow some of these Avrakhans to be appeased with the idea of relative self-governance while producing an invaluable commodity to our Empire. Alas - it seems that, as the old saying goes, if you give a rat a biscuit, it shall ask next time for the entire pantry.
Your top priority, above all else, is the security of Sozyak production and the total control of Zyun-Ayraq. All other means are secondary, and you and your comrades are free to pacify the planet as you see fit.
We are likewise on something of a tight schedule: Our leader, the Admiralty-Governor Khorchidian - Lord of Kyzyl-Dash and heir-claimant to Sirius - is highly expectant of our success. It has been made clear in no uncertain terms that, once our mission is complete and the planet secure, that His Majesty expects total control to be transferred to his jurisdiction (Or warlordship - whichever you prefer).
Of course, when this is all said and done and Zyun-Ayraq is under our control, we might have something to say about that...
O R I G I N A L A R T W O R K
// Thanks to @GN FOREVER for the format.
D E S I G N I N G Y O U R J U G G E R N A U T
