Caasicam

Clad in Iron, War of the Worlds and Mecha

I can't take on new stuff rn but wanted to poke my head in to say this concept is insanely cool. o7

@kersel

thanks lad, it's pretty much gonna stay open for the full run so if ya ever want in down the line feel free to jump in.

Clad in Iron, War of the Worlds and Mecha

Charlatane updated, significant changes

@Perpenheimer

Looks good, have at it lad

Clad in Iron, War of the Worlds and Mecha

​IC:

Day broke as it always did, obscured by a fog that clung to the embankments of the river Meuse. The sun had yet to rise completely, or so it seemed through the blanketing haze that hung over the landscape. There was no brilliant disk of light shown down from the sky, simply an even glow that diffused through to the scenery around. Upon closer inspection a nearby observer might have noticed slight wisps of some black, opaque smoke that drifted through the fog on its own accord, driven by winds and currents unseen to any but it. Or perhaps they would have come to the realization that the grey tone which the dirt and foliage took on the banks of the river was not entirely the result of having been viewed through the haze around, but rather the fine, powdery dust which clung to nearly every available surface.

Suddenly a rapid succession of lights flashed from the western bank, breaking the eerie silence that had hung over the landscape, followed immediately by a thunderous crack and a faint whistling through the air.

And then all was silent once more.

Until a trio of explosions ripped into the landscape, one landing on the eastern bank and sending a huge gout of water and sand into the air. The other two sounded somewhere deeper into the mist, each more distant than the last. Scarcely had the debris from the massive impacts fly out of view did another barrage of artillery fire echo out across the grey landscape, melding with the cacophony of weapons fire which seemed to have taken the cue to begin. Not all originated from the western bank, however, as a pale green, ghostly shaft of light lanced out from within the mist on the opposite side, tracing a path like one would move the beam of a lantern across the landscape. Foliage burst into flames from its touch, and sand fused itself into glass. The water of the Meuse burst into a column of steam as the beam traced over its surface, and then it was lost in the fog.

* * *

Above the fog, suspended in the air nearly a thousand feet above hung the airship Thunderchild. The leviathan of steel and steam was, for the moment, motionless, though within the winding corridors and lightened frame in its interior it was anything but. At the heart of the massive airship, within its cavernous hanger space, engineers and officers rushed to and fro. They wore a multitude of uniforms and equipment, matched equally by the multitude of languages that echoed about the interior space of the airship. All were dwarfed by the massive fighting machines which they scurried about. Each was as unique as those that serviced them, bearing the flags of nearly every nation on the planet, though were still arranged in a pair of neat rows down the length of the hangar. The air was positively electric with activity.

“One minute,” Came a voice, projected by voice tubes from a far off location somewhere else on the airship. The hangar space began to clear, as service people made last second checks on the colossi before moving.

“Thirty seconds,” the voice sounded again, this time louder as the conversation which had filled the hangar not a bit earlier was pulled away with the crews.

“Five.”

“Four.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“On-”

The last bit of the final count was drowned out by the great sound of mechanisms engaging, and one by one the section of hull beneath each of the individual fighting machines dropped away to release the metal behemoths into the sky below.

It was not a complete freefall, however, as nearly as quickly as they had dropped did pressurized seals break and gaseous envelopes not unlike those that held the Thunderchild aloft inflated, slowing their descent to a more manageable speed.

Guided by the crews within, one by one these armored warriors slipped beneath the fog…

Clad in Iron, War of the Worlds and Mecha

Stormbringer

Name: Liam Haggerty

Age: 20

Gender: Male

Job: Chief Gunnery Operator

Country of Origin: England

Appearance: Wiry, brisk, and brimming with furious purpose. Liam is a young and frankly small man, standing only 170 cm or so even in ramrod naval posture, and he carries little in the way of extraneous bulk on his person, having neither need nor wish of living lavishly at altitude. Whatever blubber a fuller diet might have given him to insulate his frame from the outside world is burned away by the heat of constant motion on the gun decks of the mighty airship, as he loads, aims, and fires heavy comets of lead unto his hated foe a man possessed. In so doing, he often looks more the part of a engine worker than a uniformed soldier, topcoat stripped to hang around the waist as both his pale skin and white undershirts are constantly stained black by gunpowder. It too carries in the short head of mahogany hair he's topped with, never quite getting the odor out free from his follicles or pores. His eyes are a dark, stormy gray, as though cast from the same iron as his holy airship's namesake— and the vessel that saved his life, five years ago.

Personality: A stern, focused gunner, Operator Haggerty is a brash, outspoken individual on the floors of the cannonade decks, a man singularly focused: If there are Martians to rain down God's Judgement upon, he will see to it that they are tried. He is fiery in his passion for the craft of artillery, stating simply that "It's no coincidence that the Thunderchild—the First One— was the best weapon we had against those damned squids! The shells put them down! I was there!" when questioned. His anger at the demons from Mars, as a young man who survived the initial invasion of the British Isles, runs deep enough to touch his core. He was a boy who lost family, lost friends, lost his home, lost his nation— and watched many of them burn, screaming, beneath the devilish rays of heat. He hates none of his fellow men and women, and would call himself a friend to all mankind, regardless of their heritage— and on the other side of that coin, would gladly do whatever necessary to wipe the Martians that took his world away off the face of the planet— and theirs, too.

In the rare moments that he allows himself to be away from the mighty guns (and the thankfully less rare moments where he's forced away by outranking officers), he retreats into a quiet shell, keeping his words tight and controlled and close to his chest. At times, one wonders if part of him might realize that he was twisted irreparably from the joyous young man that lived in Hull up to the Summer of 1897, and that he needs to keep himself tightly wound and locked in place when he has no demons there to Hate so fervently. In these cases, socialization seems almost an unfamiliar chore, if not necessarily unwelcome. A few beers (or if you manage to steer a conversation somewhere he knows how to get going within) can sometimes change this— bringing out a ghost of the boy who died on the steamer's deck, in time with the valiant heart of the Ironclad.

History: A coastal lad hailing from the port town of Hull, Liam's origins are by necessity humble, the Haggerty family settling on the lower end of the newly birthed middle class post-Industrialization. His father was a hardy steel mill worker who moonlit as a fisherman and enjoyed jellied eels and meat pies with his daily pint at the local pub. His mother kept the house and routinely enlisted her boys— Liam and his older brother James— with the more labor-intensive work in the years of his adolescence, slotting cleaning and repair between their studies and ventures into the forests a few miles north. It was by all accounts a simple life— one that the Martians dispassionately tore from him at the age of 15, mere months after his brother had enlisted in the Army. The demons, in their impossible and deadly engines of destruction, cut a swath through the Isles mercilessly, with no warning to speak of. It was all he could do to take his ailing mother, feverish at the time, and hurry her through the streets of Hull onto the nearest ship they could— a small steamer, filled to the brim with similar refugees, that barely puffed out of port as the three-legged monsters loomed high above what was once his home. His father is to this day unaccounted for, and he presumes him dead, likely within the steel mill he was employed by.

The steamer limped southward, only making one daring stop— skirting along the Essex coast for supplies and fuel, its load unfortunately lighter. Those injured in the attacks could often not be adequately treated, and were grimly tossed overboard after they passed by the crew and whatever family could muster the courage. It was on this fateful stop that young Liam saw the shadows of those demons again. This time, his boat wasn't so lucky— small, slow, and surrounded by a trio of the striders, they were to be easy pickings.

And then, one of them fell to a crack of thunder, as a furious horn sounded from an ironclad bravely surging into the fray. He watched, awestruck, captivated, as the roaring ship bore down at full steam, heedless of the heat rays or warbling cries of the war machines. Their only answer came in the form of her mighty guns, her bellowing engine, the scream of metal tearing into metal, and the warrior calls of the men aboard as she rammed the second, defiant to the last as the final walker's heat ray melted her valiant heart. It was here that the shellshocked boy's soul changed forever, casting all his hope, all his hate, and all his sorrow into the single chant the refugees aboard the little steamer repeated, slinking away as the voice of legion.

"Come on, Thunder Child!"

As the ship made port in France, the boy's heart was set upon the one thing he saw that had made those demons bleed.

Five years later, his naval career has lead him aboard a new child of the storm, one that sits in the same leaden skies its sacred namesake fought beneath, each an indomitable testament to human will, in the face of a truly existential threat.

Equipment: A Webley Model 1887 revolver sidearm, opposed by a long, front-curved knife that hangs from his opposite hip to round out his personal protection should things ever become that disastrous— a kukri obtained from a Gurkha, reportedly as some form of trade bargained at some point prior to his stationing aboard the airship. That this is nonstandard seems to be overlooked, given his proficiency with the mapbook, wind charts, protractor, rangefinder, and texts on various artillerist's concerns such as the Coriolis effect, geometry, and gun maintenance. Always seems to have a stout on hand, especially when working.

Fighting Machine: HMS Thunderchild. Knows her inside and out, knows the Gun Decks every which way one can short of "biblically".

@HereComesTheSnow

get him in there, he's got tripods to shoot

Clad in Iron, War of the Worlds and Mecha

Player Characters

Erich Volk and König
Arnault Mongouse and La Charlatane
Marchesa Arabella Fortunado and Damocles
Liam Haggerty of HMS Thunderchild

---

NPCs and Reference

HMS Thunderchild

Description

If it weren’t for the construction of electro-mechanical wonders of the colossi, the Thunderchild would have been humanity’s greatest feat of engineering at the turn of the century. Even so, at 310 meters long, the airship dwarfs even the largest of sea-going battleships.

Crew

325

Weapons

Sixteen BL 7.5 in Mk II guns provide enough firepower to take on whatever enemy it may encounter, with numerous smaller weapons emplacements dotting the airship’s frame for defense.

Traits

While a formidable warship in its own right, the Thunderchild’s greatest strength lies in the Colossi it carries within its cavernous hangar. With sixteen separate bays and their associated launching mechanisms, the Thunderchild can at an instant deliver a wave of the human fighting machines upon any battlefield. In addition, the gargantuan airship has facilities to rearm and repair these fighting machines extensively, operating as a mobile base of operations for the crews.

Clad in Iron, War of the Worlds and Mecha

Name

Erich Volk

Age

27

Gender

Masculine

Job

Commander of the König

Country of Origin

Germany

Appearance

A stout, burly young man with a contemplative countenance, Erich stands at approximately 177 cm. He is generally dressed in utilitarian working clothing, his steel-toed boots and work vest make him fit right in with the engineers and mechanics assigned to maintaining the human fighting machines. Which is no surprise, given his tendency to supervise and assist with repairs and modifications to the König. His eyes are a bright grey, with short, jet black hair parted down the middle that matches a well kept mustache and near permanent stubble.

Personality

A usually jovial, if admittedly eccentric individual with an obvious interest in the deeply mechanical nature of the machines which he has spent his life building and maintaining.

Equipment

A variety of hand tools and equipment for the upkeep of his fighting machine. In addition, he carries a Navy P03 as a sidearm. An 8mm Luger self-loading rifle is stowed in the König for emergency use.

Fighting Machine

König

---

Designation

König

Country of Origin

Germany

Crew

5

Description

A shelled, angular colossi of broad proportions, standing slightly lower than most of the human fighting machines at 8.7 meters. Squat, and covered in riveted armor plate, the German fighting machine resembles a gargantuan iron arthropod in some respects, its four locomotive magneto-mechanic legs only adding to the image. Each ends in a broad, spade-like armor plate which extends up past the "knee" of each limb, working as feet, protection, as well as earthmoving entrenching tools. A humanoid torso rises up from the "waist" of the colossi, hunched and widening towards the top, with two arms on either side. The left is heavily armored, possessing a massive shield of thick armor plate, which terminates in a hydraulic pincer. The right is smaller, ending in a large multitool and winch assembly.
Two smaller magneto-mechanical limbs extend from the König's back, each ending in somewhat smaller armored shields. A gilded ornament extends over the front face of the machine's torso, around the flattened slit viewport for the commander.
Two paired rectangular funnels extend out from the fighting machine's back, one of the few unarmored sections of the machine.
Primarily painted a light battleship grey, sans the gilded ornament and red markings.

Weapons

Four 17 cm SK L/26 guns mounted in a quad semi-armored position over the 's right shoulder. Equipped with semi armor piercing HE and airburst fragmentation shells. Loaded using a hydraulic rammer and an experimental electric shell feed.
Four casemate mounted 4.7 cm SK L/32 revolver cannons provide closer, more rapid fire support. They are mounted above the König's left arm positioned forward, lateral, and backwards; while the fourth is mounted beneath the right arm near the waist.

Traits

Clad in Krupp cemented armor plate stripped from the battleship Kaiser Barbarossa, a full 300 mm on the shields and thinning down to 100 mm on the colossi itself. Its heavy armor and four-legged stance significantly slows down the König compared to many other human fighting machines, though the advantage in survivability and stability more than make up for the lack of maneuverability.
Emphasizing this, the König has the capability to collapse its shields down to form a single large shell around the colossi. Digging its spade-like limbs into the earth and diverting electrical power from its magneto-mechanic limbs to its shell feed hoist allows it to drastically increase the rate of fire of its main cannons, at the cost of all movement.

Clad in Iron, War of the Worlds and Mecha

If one had declared to the masses that, in the final years of the nineteenth century, this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than that of man, and yet just as mortal, none would take such a claim seriously. None would believe that as men busied themselves about their worldly concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, the people of this world scurried to and fro across this globe, going about their little affairs, serene and ignorant in their assured dominion over the material- probably not unlike the infusoria under the microscope. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of incontrovertible human danger; or, if they did, thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days- a bygone age where terrestrial men of greater imagination pondered whether there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet, across the gulf of space, there brooded minds that are to ours, as ours are to that of beasts; intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, appraising our world with envious eyes, slowly and carefully drawing their plans against us.

And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

The year is 1903, the Great Martian War rages on.

Five years ago, mankind received a bloody and violent answer to the eternal question - "are we alone?". Indeed, the first cylinder falling from the heavens was a surprise to all, but markedly was only the tip of the proverbial spear. The merciless attack on humanity itself that soon followed was destruction the likes of which no person had seen - a terrible assault from cold, vile intelligences which shook even the greatest of human nations to their very core.

Like lightning and rolling thunder the otherworldly invaders struck across Great Britain from the landing sites of their silvery vessels, sweeping south past the great city of London and up to the furthest reaches of Scotland in the north. In a matter of days, there was naught but destruction and desolate wasteland as far as the eye could see - that is, if any poor soul had managed to survive in the wake of the invader's advance. Even still, this was not the extent of the invaders’ insidious designs, and even now the Martians conspire to leave absolutely nothing for us. However, the mettle and resolve of humanity is poised to determine if our home is something that we shall give up so easily...

To this day, the nations of the world push back! Equipped with unbroken spirit and boundless valor, brave soldiers make use of mechanical marvels reverse-engineered from the Martians’ own fighting machines. These mighty few, clad in iron and possessing prodigious courage, may yet turn the tide. Terrae Impetus Retro.

The State of Things

Map

The British Empire Defeated! So said the headlines of newspapers across the world during the winter of 1898, not but a day after contact had fully and completely been lost with England. Only a few short months into the Martian invasion and one of the most powerful nations the world had ever seen was no more. Some nations celebrated, others quietly gathered their military forces, but many simply watched, unwilling to acknowledge or unaware of the danger that the otherworldly beings posed to them. This complacency was only compounded when the Martian’s advance simply stopped at the English Channel, and for two long years it seemed as though that was the extent of their assault on humanity.

Of course, none sat idly by during this time. The remnants of the British Empire, formerly scattered across the world, lobbied for the retaking of their homeland. Others, such as France and Germany, made quick work of snatching up what precious few pieces of the Martian technology could be acquired for their own use. The lack of activity looked to some as though the Martians had simply left, gone to return to their planet. Some academics even went as far as to say that the Martians had been wiped out by the Earth’s own microscopic biosphere, for surely they could not have developed an immunity to Earthly diseases as mankind had over the millennia.

Whatever the reason for the pause in action, it was not to last. In early Spring, after the turn of the century, the second Martian advance began with their fighting machines emerging from the waters of the channel onto the shores of Belgium and the Netherlands. There was little forewarning to prepare a defense, and in the time it took for the powers on mainland Europe to marshal their forces the aliens had made it far as the French and German borders to the East and West, leaving swathes of destruction in their wake. It has been three years since then, and while ironclad battleships from the world's nations hold the line from the Channel itself, landlocked defenses are slowly beginning to weaken as the Martians continue their unrelenting assault. But man has not been idle, and their newest weapon may be just what turns the tide of this war of worlds...

Ferreis Induti

No later than the first sightings of the Martian’s massive mechanical beasts did the minds of man begin to work, wildly speculating and postulating exactly how the various mechanisms by which the fighting machines of the otherworldly invaders operated. After the first of the tripodal giants were felled, its components were hurriedly collected and whisked away to nations that coveted them by enterprising individuals for these theories to be validated and amended. At first, various nations only received bits and pieces of the Martian’s strange technology, and information that could be gleaned from the disparate parts was fractured and incomplete at best. Indeed, it took the Martians’ second brutal assault for the inventors and engineers of the defending nations to come together and truly unlock the secrets of the Martians’ greatest weapon.

Thus soon after, mankind saw fit to create fighting machines of their own. With boilers and reciprocating engines powering dynamos, these man-made titans leverage the magnetic-mechano limbs derived from the Martian technology to achieve motion. However, the more esoteric of Martian technologies have proven to still be beyond our grasp for the time being - the heat ray in particular vexing the brightest of minds. Though not as large as the hundred-foot tall behemoths they are designed to fight against, a dedicated and determined crew gives these machines an edge.

Demons from Mars

Much has been written of the men from Mars in the years since they landed in their gleaming pods, though as of yet no live individual has yet to be found. From the bodies recovered from their destroyed fighting machines, the true face of the enemy has been closely studied. The Martians themselves are large, with oily grey bodies about the size of a bear. They possess no limbs like the kind familiar to us - instead, a plethora of long, whip-like tendrils surround the area underneath their V-shaped mouths. Two large eyes, round and lidless, are perhaps the only familiar aspect of their peculiar biology. Internally they appear to possess no organs save an enlarged brain which occupies the majority of their body. How such an organism is able to live and function is beyond our science thus far.

More striking, however, are the great machines they pilot. Approximately 100 feet tall, the machines stand atop three spindly legs with which they glide across all manner of terrain. These legs attach to a girdle of sorts that is secured to the body of the machine itself, with a mass of writhing tentacles extending down from the bottom of the machine. A hood caps the very top of the body, while the weaponry - such as the heat ray - that the Martians utilize is held at the ends of the tentacles.

It should be noted that there are a secondary, distinctive subspecies of Martians, separate from those who occupy the tripods. While the large, cephalopoid creatures are undoubtedly the masterminds of the invasion, a second, subservient species has also been observed. Peculiarly, they are two-armed and two-legged, a form that at great distance could be mistaken for mankind itself. Indeed, it was initially thought that these creatures might be some twisted abomination of humanity, until specimens could be properly investigated. These are no humans - with brittle siliceous skeletons and long limbs which attach to an overly rotund body, it appears that without wearing the form-fitting, metallic space-suits provided to them by their masters, they would be crushed by the increased gravitation of our world. Beginning with the launch of the second wave of Martian assaults, the two-meter tall bipeds have been observed being deployed as foot soldiers, equipped with odd hand-held projectile launchers that fire metallic bullets without the use of gunpowder.

To Hold the Line

The time for action has come, for the first time in recorded history humanity’s fighting machines will clash with those from the red planet. The first generation of these colossi, built by nations around the globe, have been gathered along the French line to prepare to push the Martians back off the mainland. Housed in the mighty airship Thunderchild, this will be a deciding battle!

Basic Character Sheet

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Job:
Country of Origin:
Appearance:
Personality:
History:
Equipment:
Fighting Machine:

Designation:
Country of Origin:
Crew:
Description:
Weapons:
Traits:

Rules of Engagement

• Listen to your GMs.
• Don’t metagame, godmod, or otherwise exceed the limits of fair play.
• Get your profiles approved first.

Clad in Iron, War of the Worlds and Mecha

If one had declared to the masses that, in the final years of the nineteenth century, this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than that of man, and yet just as mortal, none would take such a claim seriously. None would believe that as men busied themselves about their worldly concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, the people of this world scurried to and fro across this globe, going about their little affairs, serene and ignorant in their assured dominion over the material- probably not unlike the infusoria under the microscope. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of incontrovertible human danger; or, if they did, thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days- a bygone age where terrestrial men of greater imagination pondered whether there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet, across the gulf of space, there brooded minds that are to ours, as ours are to that of beasts; intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, appraising our world with envious eyes, slowly and carefully drawing their plans against us.

And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

The year is 1903, the Great Martian War rages on.

Five years ago, mankind received a bloody and violent answer to the eternal question - "are we alone?". Indeed, the first cylinder falling from the heavens was a surprise to all, but markedly was only the tip of the proverbial spear. The merciless attack on humanity itself that soon followed was destruction the likes of which no person had seen - a terrible assault from cold, vile intelligences which shook even the greatest of human nations to their very core.

Like lightning and rolling thunder the otherworldly invaders struck across Great Britain from the landing sites of their silvery vessels, sweeping south past the great city of London and up to the furthest reaches of Scotland in the north. In a matter of days, there was naught but destruction and desolate wasteland as far as the eye could see - that is, if any poor soul had managed to survive in the wake of the invader's advance. Even still, this was not the extent of the invaders’ insidious designs, and even now the Martians conspire to leave absolutely nothing for us. However, the mettle and resolve of humanity is poised to determine if our home is something that we shall give up so easily...

To this day, the nations of the world push back! Equipped with unbroken spirit and boundless valor, brave soldiers make use of mechanical marvels reverse-engineered from the Martians’ own fighting machines. These mighty few, clad in iron and possessing prodigious courage, may yet turn the tide. Terrae Impetus Retro.

The State of Things

Map

The British Empire Defeated! So said the headlines of newspapers across the world during the winter of 1898, not but a day after contact had fully and completely been lost with England. Only a few short months into the Martian invasion and one of the most powerful nations the world had ever seen was no more. Some nations celebrated, others quietly gathered their military forces, but many simply watched, unwilling to acknowledge or unaware of the danger that the otherworldly beings posed to them. This complacency was only compounded when the Martian’s advance simply stopped at the English Channel, and for two long years it seemed as though that was the extent of their assault on humanity.

Of course, none sat idly by during this time. The remnants of the British Empire, formerly scattered across the world, lobbied for the retaking of their homeland. Others, such as France and Germany, made quick work of snatching up what precious few pieces of the Martian technology could be acquired for their own use. The lack of activity looked to some as though the Martians had simply left, gone to return to their planet. Some academics even went as far as to say that the Martians had been wiped out by the Earth’s own microscopic biosphere, for surely they could not have developed an immunity to Earthly diseases as mankind had over the millennia.

Whatever the reason for the pause in action, it was not to last. In early Spring, after the turn of the century, the second Martian advance began with their fighting machines emerging from the waters of the channel onto the shores of Belgium and the Netherlands. There was little forewarning to prepare a defense, and in the time it took for the powers on mainland Europe to marshal their forces the aliens had made it far as the French and German borders to the East and West, leaving swathes of destruction in their wake. It has been three years since then, and while ironclad battleships from the world's nations hold the line from the Channel itself, landlocked defenses are slowly beginning to weaken as the Martians continue their unrelenting assault. But man has not been idle, and their newest weapon may be just what turns the tide of this war of worlds...

Ferreis Induti

No later than the first sightings of the Martian’s massive mechanical beasts did the minds of man begin to work, wildly speculating and postulating exactly how the various mechanisms by which the fighting machines of the otherworldly invaders operated. After the first of the tripodal giants were felled, its components were hurriedly collected and whisked away to nations that coveted them by enterprising individuals for these theories to be validated and amended. At first, various nations only received bits and pieces of the Martian’s strange technology, and information that could be gleaned from the disparate parts was fractured and incomplete at best. Indeed, it took the Martians’ second brutal assault for the inventors and engineers of the defending nations to come together and truly unlock the secrets of the Martians’ greatest weapon.

Thus soon after, mankind saw fit to create fighting machines of their own. With boilers and reciprocating engines powering dynamos, these man-made titans leverage the magnetic-mechano limbs derived from the Martian technology to achieve motion. However, the more esoteric of Martian technologies have proven to still be beyond our grasp for the time being - the heat ray in particular vexing the brightest of minds. Though not as large as the hundred-foot tall behemoths they are designed to fight against, a dedicated and determined crew gives these machines an edge.

Demons from Mars

Much has been written of the men from Mars in the years since they landed in their gleaming pods, though as of yet no live individual has yet to be found. From the bodies recovered from their destroyed fighting machines, the true face of the enemy has been closely studied. The Martians themselves are large, with oily grey bodies about the size of a bear. They possess no limbs like the kind familiar to us - instead, a plethora of long, whip-like tendrils surround the area underneath their V-shaped mouths. Two large eyes, round and lidless, are perhaps the only familiar aspect of their peculiar biology. Internally they appear to possess no organs save an enlarged brain which occupies the majority of their body. How such an organism is able to live and function is beyond our science thus far.

More striking, however, are the great machines they pilot. Approximately 100 feet tall, the machines stand atop three spindly legs with which they glide across all manner of terrain. These legs attach to a girdle of sorts that is secured to the body of the machine itself, with a mass of writhing tentacles extending down from the bottom of the machine. A hood caps the very top of the body, while the weaponry - such as the heat ray - that the Martians utilize is held at the ends of the tentacles.

It should be noted that there are a secondary, distinctive subspecies of Martians, separate from those who occupy the tripods. While the large, cephalopoid creatures are undoubtedly the masterminds of the invasion, a second, subservient species has also been observed. Peculiarly, they are two-armed and two-legged, a form that at great distance could be mistaken for mankind itself. Indeed, it was initially thought that these creatures might be some twisted abomination of humanity, until specimens could be properly investigated. These are no humans - with brittle siliceous skeletons and long limbs which attach to an overly rotund body, it appears that without wearing the form-fitting, metallic space-suits provided to them by their masters, they would be crushed by the increased gravitation of our world. Beginning with the launch of the second wave of Martian assaults, the two-meter tall bipeds have been observed being deployed as foot soldiers, equipped with odd hand-held projectile launchers that fire metallic bullets without the use of gunpowder.

To Hold the Line

The time for action has come, for the first time in recorded history humanity’s fighting machines will clash with those from the red planet. The first generation of these colossi, built by nations around the globe, have been gathered along the French line to prepare to push the Martians back off the mainland. Housed in the mighty airship Thunderchild, this will be a deciding battle!

---

war of the worlds stuff, gonna get some pre-made characters up soonish too for examples, unless the people i know are in do it first.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

---

Warnings pulsed rapidly from within the Aurora’s cockpit, casting a red-tinged light to Volana’s pale complexion from underneath her helmet’s visor. Various readouts calling for her attention all said the same thing, and she didn’t particularly feel like paying them any sort of mind. Pulling her Orbital back to its feet had been enough confirmation that most of the essential systems were in working order. The limb that had been in the grasp of the alien machine felt sluggish, the tactile feedback giving her motions a bit of resistance, but otherwise the Aurora’s defensive systems had done their job well enough.

She let out a breath, and felt a bead of sweat run down her temple.

The data packet which had been transmitted across her Orbital’s systems didn’t seem to be unique, but everything appeared to be in working order, as well as it could be. She glanced down at the hulking mass of metal which had only moments before been hell-bent on ripping her machine to pieces, with her inside of it, now utterly motionless as if it had never been active at all.

It gave her the creeps.

<<I am… okay. Sustained damage but operational.>> Volana finally spoke through the comms, the sound of her own voice knocking her out of her reverie.

A thought occurred to her.

Looking back up to the Voyager which stood across from her, she gave a noncommittal motion to the alien Orbital which they had been fighting, before turning back towards where all of this had begun.

It didn’t take long for Volana to come up to the lip of the ditch in the ground which she had dug out earlier, and the sleek mechanized form of the half-destroyed Orbital which she had extracted from it. The Cytherean pilot regarded it with a careful eye, before reaching down to lift it up over the Aurora’s shoulder.

With any luck, the ancient machine might have some answers.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

---

For the what felt like an eternity Volana's world was nothing but the pure white of a high power beam practically bathing the Aurora in a fiery wash of energy- and she wasn't even the one receiving the brunt of the attack. The Voyager's Lancier, true to its name, struck from above to envelope the monstrosity's head and upper torso. The sheer proximity to the intense beam overloaded her Orbital's sensors filling her cockpit with a brilliant white glow that was only marginally dampened by the safety protocols. There was a brief moment after the inferno of energy died down as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light being thrown into them.

While the readouts of the Aurora's energized plating indicated the armor had absorbed enough thermal energy to melt an unprotected orbital to slag, she still had a sinking feeling. A sinking feeling that was replaced by a sudden jerk that strained at her harness and nearly bounced her head off of the controls.

No, of course it wasn't dead.

Just really pissed off now.

Figures.

Volana's vision restored to find herself no longer in the clutches of the mechanoid, though her new position being ground into the soft sand of the planet could scarcely be called an improvement. She glanced to the side, in time to see the flare of thrusters as Voyager rocketed forward towards both the bandit and herself. What was...?

The recognition struck as soon as Artemie's voice came crackling over the comm. Good plan, honestly maybe their only shot at this point. The mechanoid was massive, and already clearly far stronger than any one of their Orbitals, but its size was also a disadvantage, if the were able to take away some of its unnatural maneuverability...

The smart thing to do would have been to use the oncoming impact as a means to pry the thing off of her, unfortunately Volana was beginning to get more than a tad incensed. Instead she reached up with both arms, clamping her Orbital's free hand onto the now strangely dull surface of the bandit, and digging Gram's blade as deeply as she could into the thing's limb. She wasn't going anywhere, and now the only place the alien mechanoid could go was optical-sensor first into the dirt. Out of the corner of her eye Volana tracked Artemie's approach, preparing to throw the Aurora up and over as soon as the pressure from the mechanoid's limb subsided in an attempt to use her entire Orbital to pin the bandit on the ground.

She counted down the seconds as Artemie got closer.

Closer.

Closer...

And then, breath held tightly in her lungs, she moved.