Senor Herp

What a Lovely Day (Mad Max NRP) [Now doing Pop. Rolls]

Get raided by, you mean. Having military grade quality with armored design ethics, that'd be tanks, or rather shitty little MG tankettes, plural, or at least various brands of light AFV. More armored cars than tracked vehicles, presumably, although it's probable that the nutters have dredged up the Christie suspension so they can have both at the same time. 'A Fucking Tank' is an actual chart result for the flagship vehicle, so MBTs are a no go. Legendary Car in combination with the traits probably translates to a super-Hummer or a Stryker or something with a cramped scrap turret.

I'll be looking over the chart to make sure whatever extrapolations I make from the rolls don't fall into other explicitly defined roll groups, but I'm thinking filetoothed borderline muties turned bad-tempered punks turned paramilitarist weapon-fetishists hailing from the nuked out surroundings of an Aussie silo that botched its launch cycle (Australia explored developing a nuclear capability historically, but signed the NNPT and never went through with it, yet considering how the Mad Max timeline went, there's probably a divergence here) who're driving imitative cold war tech versions of Hobart's funnies in an ill-conceived military campaign after the founder of the band broke into a secondary bunker of the silo, still running on reserve power, and using a blueprinting program (or else one of the personnel' novelty programs/games and thinking it's a military grade blueprinting program) to properly balance out the vehicles. Seeing as they consist of outback muties who only know that everything went to shit when the nukes went off- one over their heads, even, although not a proper fusion detonation nor at ideal airburst height- after getting rallied by a bunch of scrappers high on military vernacular, they've got the idea of organizedly sticking it to 'the fuckers' responsible for Mad Max's post-nuclear, post-peak oil shitshow while holding the pretension of but not actually establishing a transitional government, nor actually understanding what a transitional government entails, or is, save that they read it in a manual on martial law and it's a thing they need to establish.

This largely manifests in raiding the shit out of other raiders for being raiders, more prickly and insular settlers for holding onto surplus supplies that ought be redistributed (mostly to the column and whatever poor waste-lost sods they happen to pass by while the surplus lasts) or people who look at them a little too funny while the column is taking a pit stop and don't respond to the subsequent R. Lee Ermey treatment the right way as the muties peacock around. These habit produce a lot of fresh scrap, as does their home base/stomping ground, where the EMP of the nuke knocked out plenty of planes & motor vehicles as well as leaving lots of dead infrastructure to pull apart. And tesla coils draw their power off from some dubiously wired diesel-electric drives, since the engineers couldn't think of any better way to deal with the occasional overload. That's the very rough working concept, at least. The gears are turning.

What a Lovely Day (Mad Max NRP) [Now doing Pop. Rolls]

I've been roped in by Cap'n once again. Gimme the rolls, boss. Gimme the death cults culting death to die to cults.

[Advanced] The Fall of an Empire: Space Opera NRP

Sensible enough. If you're a mass of brain tissue and crawly tendrils that skipped most of the tech tree, bastardly complex multi-jointed stilts makes more sense than trying to mimic antigrav-supplanted ineffectual crawling, or using pure antigrav, which I don't imagine makes for a stable firing platform as far as holding a zero with large weapons goes. Again, opposite to the Claw approach for a similar heavy assault class vehicle, who instead slapped together a superheavy quadruple-tracked vehicle with low-output antigrav (compared to gravitic hovercraft, at least) to fiddle with its ground pressure on the fly. I imagine the Claw ditched three legs for six simply to get a more or at least par stable firing platform with simpler individual leg design.

Is that a go on having/hinting at the two having the same precursor-shapers, then? Just want to clarify, don't want to dicker around with ambiguity or jump the gun.

[Advanced] The Fall of an Empire: Space Opera NRP

It's funny you should mention long-lost precursors, actually. One of the four systems controlled by the saurian client state was going to have significant though mostly technologically devoid archaeological findings in the same style as older findings on the capital death world, raising forced evolution theories and all. Sort of hard to get natural radioactive heavy worlders otherwise. Might it be the very same ones between the Sarmakth and the Claw, maybe? Considering their completely inverted views on humanity- the Sarmakth despise them, while the Claw are fascinated by their peculiar hidden vitality, have copied the Arcturan court model and melded human ideas of valor through service above the call of duty and their own martial ideas to create a cult of suicidal heroism- it'd make for an interesting foundation for confrontation and dialogue. Further, as one of the Captain's brainchildren, the Claw have a two man vertically-stretched disc or spinning top type hexapod walker as a trench cleaning vehicle, which they might have themselves made as a rationalized derivation of the Precursor tripod in the same fashion as the Martian reproduction.

[Advanced] The Fall of an Empire: Space Opera NRP

40k/Dune/Star Wars, mind. That leaves room for light space magic/pyskers, as well as for proper artificial planetoid-scale megaprojects, although those'd be either yet to have been made or been put out of commission. I would not put it past War of the Worlds Martians to try and replace the planet's dead, mined-out core and make some kind of crudely unsubtle fusion reactor, a contained artificial star, to power an entire mechanized undercontinent beneath the planet's crust. Like a tiny Dyson sphere. I would also not put it past them to fuck it up and, instead of producing a stable fusion reaction they could harvest more energy from than they needed to spend to contain it, cause the entire planet to go up like Alderaan by making a pure fusion weapon the size of a tiny moon, causing immense damage to Earth. That'd leave the Martians with only any exterior population to work with on the other dead rocks and the asteroid belt, though, so one would have to work out how they'd have garnered enough numbers after waking up or while still in-transit stasis to pose a credible threat. Automated cloning, maybe, tubescum kids that never knew home. What do you think, Willy? Any of this spitballing sound like it's on the mark?

[Advanced] The Fall of an Empire: Space Opera NRP

Likewise making a change, although much smaller. Same xeno-race, tech, societal organization, and aesthetic, with the modest change of being well-established as loyalists, running a more or less autonomous client state with firm allegiance and love for (some/most?) Imperial institutions. Considering the heavy Darwinist philospohical slant and the preexistence of a selective and cooperative caste system, peaceable amalgamation into the conquering Empire is more or less plausible as a matter of both pragmatic acclamation and genuine acceptance of the right of the conqueror who could be doing far worse, silencing the usual grumblings and chafings you find in other xeno and techno-barbarian subjects. Chief value to the Empire was probably in military lease and fissile & fusion weapon manufacture, often both at once, since much of the weapons aren't terribly practical for other species to use or adapt. Less lizard Imperial Japan-Ummayads, more xeno-Byzantine Armenia, or maybe the Britons.

[Advanced] The Fall of an Empire: Space Opera NRP

@Willy Vereb
Not in the slightest! Something could be made of it, I'm sure. Maybe they're both fringe species who've been waging occasional internecine warfare, with no holds barred arms development and a mutual hostility to each other and the Arcturans. Maybe they're aligned with one another, making for less of a shock-and-awe chaotic tone as they race to sack the capital for a second time, and more one of slow erosion and a tightening noose. Or they could be unrelated or unknowing of each other entirely 'til they start butting in on each other's business, leading to realpolitking dickery. Plenty to make of the seperatists, furthermore.

[Advanced] The Fall of an Empire: Space Opera NRP

Likewise interested, per usual. Refurbishing something I threw together for another game, the Empire of the Terrible Claw. Probably sounds less cheesy in the native tongue, though that was rather the point. Wrote them to fill the seemingly nonexistent niche for biological corporatists in comparison to Starship Trooper-style civilized hive minds and also as a spin on the 'malevolent reptilians' archetype. Because said game had a gamey balancing act setup with a few huge, sweeping tech choices, they ended up with a severe focus on radiological weapons, volitions agents, gun-fired nuclear shaped charge tungsten plasma beams, and paradoxically hypereffective-yet-ineffective shielding technology. How much of that will directly translate I'm not sure, but they definitely use rough, dirty tech that is unquestionably and unorthodoxly effective, a bit of 40s-50s and 60s-80s in aesthetic. Vacuum tubes, rayguns and slab armor meld and contrast with rifled gun launchers, obtuse hover AFVs and combined arms warfare. Bits and bobs taken from Macedon for aesthetic and a little from Scythia, more Imperial Japan-like in social model. Feathers and sun symbolism everywhere as a dash from Mesoamerica. This, also, may or may not be subject to change, depending on how closely things need to adhere to proper Fall of Rome analogues or if things can get wonky. The entire history will obviously change, in the names and degrees of events if not the event archetypes. The Claw may be Seperatists or they may be Astrogoths, and I imagine they'd eventually segue into Pretender category; being resurgent xenos from fringe space with their own imperialist designs, who were either subjugated or observed the subjugation of nearby states, they fit snugly into the niche of the Ummayads or the Ottoman Turks. First eating at the edges of the empire, then at second heartlands like Space North Africa. Probably going to go at things from a protectionist-populist angle and of self-interested enlightened domination of those liberated from Arcturan shackles, as their semi-honestly propagandized potential subjects and they themselves would look at things respectively.

First post of origin here, first sheet iteration posted here, though I think I have a more filled out version. Not sure. May or may not be useful to peruse, but I thought I'd show the thought processes of the time, in case they are. Mind that it's text dense and probably not terribly easy on the eyes.

Civil Space (More Space NRPs)

Unless there's some kind of exception made, no. It's purely a what-could-have-been as far as I'm concerned.

Civil Space (More Space NRPs)

I'm glad it was enjoyable. Looking back over it, there's apparent formatting problems that ought to have been ironed out, but I was working too quick and giving no mind to proofreading then or after. Sloppy. And 'Celestian' used instead of 'Celestial,' don't know how I garbled that, maybe poor memory plus its sounding sufficiently space-y. I technically cannot use the sheet, since the slots are full, but I suppose I can talk theoreticals. Or theoreticals of theoreticals, since a timeframe would have to be worked out; the OP post mentions that the civilized have ruled 'for centuries,' but that seems to be more comparing the ARG to past rulers than a statement of the length of the shared-FTL period, which seems quite recent. Armor vignette mentions two years of relief work, but this is all working concept stuff, I can't say when there was a war or even if there was a war unless the Claw were cleared, again technically impossible under the current limit, and it were approved that they had unsuccessfully engaged in preventative decapitation strikes before suffering retaliation by a coalition. It's essentially a pilot sheet.

On the Fourth Staff, the window for them to enter is a bit narrow, yeah. Closed society with a strict ordering of things, not quite a command economy, but staunchly protectionist. Jingoist, xenophobic, although at the moment full post-Black Ship Japan in terms of rapidity of westernization, while on the level of 30's Japan in terms of military oversight, which is to say a fair bit. There's embassies, well-policed interstate research bases and relief/galactic integration headquarters, but while it's certainly not on the level of full on Sakoku, there's probably only so many spaceports that accept foreign traffic. Christoffel is written, more for sake of drama than any practical/gamey desire to go full bore with security, as an exception to the general rule of true espionage agents being rooted out. Especially ones trying to escape with ultra-rare exotic elements. So the infiltrators are likely to be pretty badly stuck on the level of physical listeners and informants. Hard to break into places guarded by four-meter tall lizards with chunky green-beam photon guns. Easy to get bugs on things in a place running on '50s-'60s sci-fi tech and therefore '50s-'60s' electronic security, hard to keep it from frying in the radioactive environs. What you'll probably end up with is a very large network of smugglers moving relatively few items in, more for sake of establishing presence than anything else. Recall that section from Tales of a Road Junky where the author ends up selling counterfeit garbage and dollar store items as a street peddler for the mafia, just like that, but in irritating and constantly dispersed bazaars full of weird aliens who occasionally manage to smuggle an item of some note out in bits and pieces.

In regards to gaser/graser pinching, the problem with pinching it is that it really is a rather hazardous technology to softer life, and as stupidly simple as written. Bomb-pumped xasers and nuclear shaped charges for gaser projection & tungsten-plasma propulsion, with a reuseable construction from exotic matter breech & barrel assembly. There's really nothing to easily purloin for direct snatching from the weapons project for other things, rather something to copy for further weaponizing, and more pointfully various other supporting gadgets that CAN be eventually lifted. The design could be refined, made more exacting, and more shielded, but you'd still need either the element or a synthetic replacement, and bomb fired lasers aren't at all constant enough for efficient power transfer even if one has very exacting standards as to each rounds' construction. But there's still potential aid the Claw can provide, willing or otherwise, in the Consortium's own fusion beamer project.

The main application and manifestation of gaser nonsense is simplistic and to some degree dead-ended by its miracle material dependence, but otherwise the science is sound in-game. The Claw've got a serious understanding of the atomic and of the exotic matter(s) endemic to their system, so what really would prevent them from moving forward from this design and developing anything more wieldy is that they don't have the computers and haven't had the time to conceive of such a thing as the Consortium's own project fully, only a rough space-60's tech equivalent. You could pinch various doohickeys, they've already got unsubtly industrially directed singularities & microstars for making cast homogenous steel out of the otherwise sillily unmeltable and unbreakable, plus I was thinking they'd use mostly inertial confinement fusion-type nuclear pulse propulsion & energy generation as I said, but another source might be in the Claw themselves. Put one behind a solid-state or better computer and he might have a less jury-rigged answer to the problems of the fusion beamer, if he's amicable. Or he might not, because one might have problems going straight from mechanical & early electronic computers to solid-state or quantum nonsense as far as practical application of untested theory, and adjustment to the new computational capacity might take a while.

In short, yes, the Claw could probably have a hand in assisting that project, if the Fourth Staff could keep at it for a very long time, if the Claw were willing or if they could somehow be duped. Considering they're likely to start chafing at some point under the present order, written explicitly for it, and also long for the sublight colonies lost within their own system, there might be common ground as allies of convenience once they start getting disgruntled. Although, I am not really certain how openly the Consortium and CE are at odds and how deep the enmity is. I believe Cale mentioned them being viewed essentially as insurgents and therefore treated as enemies of the state, and reflected that in the Shields vignette, but I might be misremembering. Definitely not a status-quo faction with terms like New Hegemony, though. I don't think I got it wrong, but correct me if I did.

@Silvan Haven Had the thought myself. The only difference between majors/minors is that, barring player subsidiary organizations, even the majors are in single systems, just with pre-colonized worlds. Galactic scale or any significant fraction of it just seems inconsistent with the rest.

@Cale Tucker I posted my work-in-progress sheet for others to peruse, in spite of the lack of an available slot. Didn't want the writing to go to waste, severely unpolished though it is, so I wanted there to be some kind of entertainment value for others to derive from it simply by having it in the open while I mull over whether to make a corp of privateers.