? Equipment slot?
The shell smasher is not a gun meant to smash the enemy shell. Instead, it is a gun that smashes the shell, INTO the enemy! Through a combination of air pressure and magnetic coils, and hard, Metallic-calcium shell projectile is launched like a cannon shell towards the target. Mid Flight, The secondary thrusters activate, Increasing the already menacing speed of the Disc-shaped shell and adding a rotation to its flight path to ensure stability over longer distances.
Upon collision, the projectile will hit like a truck, being comparable to a coilgun round in velocity.
Should the Shell survive the impact without shattering into a million pieces and the occupant of the shell with its impact resistant body survives, The ammonite like creature begins its gruesome work, using a mixture of sticky and incredible acidic tentacles to burrow itself under the armour of the impacted titan, During which the Living bomb activates the detonation charges placed within its rudimentary brain.
If it had died on impact, the detonation charge would have gone off right then, adding an explosive punch to the coilgun like impact. Its purpose is much more dangerous. With the loss of its shell the ammonite will be digging into the nearest object it can find, that being the titan it impacted, burning a hole into the hull with its acid and burrowing as deep as it can. When the timer runs out, the Explosive charge detonates going off under the titans armour and directly on its more vulnerable internals, even as the blood, brains, guts and most importantly the Acid of the Ammonite is splattered around the new inner compartment, creating further compounding damage.
One could call the shell smasher a triple punch, Consisting of the Coilgun like impact, The acid borrowing creature and the acidic detonation intended to bypass heavy armour, like those typically mounted by Cybersaurs.
To the Uninitiated, this two handed laser cannon looks like a massive turret weapon that was abandoned, overgrown and then ripped off its mount to use directly in combat. In truth however, the vegetation that grows from the casing of the weapon, covering it in a network of vines, moss, roots and flowers serve to both power the weapon and dissipate the heat created from firing the massive Anti-Titan grade weapon.
Much of the flora growing from the weapon are designed for recharging the hefty battery, which is drained almost completely from firing. This is accomplished through a combination of extremely powerful solar collecting plants and Atmospheric splitter roots, that break down the bonds between particles in the air and collect the energy released from these breaking bonds.
Working Together they manage to power the laser cannon on a variety of planets that otherwise would require a hefty generator or a direct attachment to an extra strength Titan generator.
After firing, the Vines Begin to leach the heat away from the body of the gun, towards the outer plant matter at which point the thermovoric moss covering the weapon takes the heat energy into itself even as its radiates to the surface by the Collant vines. The thermal energy is transformed back into usable power, Both ensuring the laser cannon does not overheat while at the same time supplementing the recharge of the primary capacity bank. Between the Solar collectors, The thormovoric moss and the Atmospheric splitter roots, the laser cannon should be able to operate even in environments lacking ideal circumstances, albeit with slowed firing rate due to a longer recharge.
The slab arms are an incredibly defensive piece of biogineer work. Mounting a set of Heavy Muscle fibers and bio-Hydrolic system right next to metallo-calcium bones. This is all so that the arms are capable of lifting and carrying the extremely large armoured plates that make up the forearms. Attached to what on a human would be the forearm, these massive slabs of metallo- bone, leather and heavy armour is capable of protecting from even the heaviest bombardments. Mounted on top of the Clawed lizard “hands” that end the forelimbs of the Slab arms are a pair of Heavy spikes. These are used both to dig into the amr to better stabilize when firing heavy back mounted weaponry and when weathering enemy fire without being knocked down.
In the event of close combat, Those heavy spikes are used like pile drivers, sending the momentous weight of the Slab’s shields and the muscle power straight into the enemy titan, concentrated on the point. Needless to say, such a Blow is enough to dent most armour fielded by the regional powers.
The Slabs are designed for the purpose of Protecting the vulnerable torso and head of the titan from heavy ranged fire, playing into the savagery of the Kingdoms Pre-historic Titans in close quarters combat.
The Defensive nature of these arms are part of why the design was requisitioned, in order to better protect important titan components during PMC operations, reducing the maintenance cost of non-expendable limbs.
Hammer hands were designed to bridge the gap between the majority of dinosaurs that are unable to wield hand based equipment and the standard titans of the universe. Many dinosaurs, Shockingly, lack hands. The hammer hands are an attempt to bridge this gap.
Constructed from flexible organic tissue on the insides along with a series of shock absorbing Bone and metal plates along the outside, the hammer hands are design to allow the titan to be a standard pair of arms, capable of being mounted on 4 limbed walkers just the same as 2 legged creatures, serving as both hand or leg as needed, sometimes both on the same mech switching from a 2 legged combat pose to a faster and more defensive and stable 4 legged form, presenting back mounted gunnery.
Aside from the obvious ability to land a devastating punch,, something rather expected from a Titan limb built out of Metal, bone and Mantis shrimp treated dino-muscular tissue and named the Hammer's hand. The hands were designed to be able to do anything from grapple, punch, Wield a melee weapon, shield, rifle all the way to acting as a leg for a 4 legged creature. The tip of every finger is covered in sharp talons, safely kept retracted within the fingers of the Hammer hand when not in use. While not the most deadly tool, and blunt force is usually many times more effective then the thinner talons, a cutting tool can come in handy during the strangest of times and every attempt to cut them from the design has constantly proven such.
This versatility allows the hammer hand to see use over almost every kingdom design that lacks need for more specialized limbery.
Created from heavily modified bee’s, the bee hive is a group of mechanically imbued mega insects, typically the size of a human palm and equipped with a small harvesting laser powered by their pitch black Chloro-wings.
The Bee drones are produced from the Hive module, breeding in the hive with the parts of their bodies that are not produced during maturation being added by worker drones from internal cache. This does limit the amount of drones that the hive can produce before rapiar.
The most obvious mechanical attachment to the supersized bee’s are the glowing red hybrid Cutting/Welding lasers mounted where a regular bee would mount their stinger.
The beehive acts similar to a normal bee hive, sending out drones to the surrounding of the titan to forage for materials, ranging from metal, Biomatter that can be reprocessed and electronics. After this material is collected, it is returned to the hive, where biomatter is turned into a Bio-organic rapidly hardening sealant, used to patch wounds during combat while the organic compounds use the nutrients inside of the past to rapidly undergo cell-division and heal.
Metals and electronics are used similarly, patchin up parts of the titan that require metallic compounds.
During combat, These repair drones work on a fix/kill system. During Fix, the hive will seek to rapidly repair damage that the Titan has sustained, patching up wounds in the hull. When switch to Kill by the pilot, the Repair drones will dedicate the whole of their limited existence to tearing apart attacking titan sized targets, cutting holes in the target with their metal tearing mandibles and the low powered lasers attached to their rear end.
Depending on the enemy the pilot will toggle Fix/Kill fairly regularly, having the drones fix up their mech with the parts of the enemy that they have cut off.
As a Kingdom, the Kingdom of Unrivalled Archaeologists shares many of the troubles and absurdities experienced by monarchies all over the galaxy, even with its absurd nature. One of these issues is that family members of ruling monarchs are claimants to the throne, and have this nasty tendency to press that claim from time to time, which has cursed the Kingdom with a few coups and civil wars over its history. As the Kingdom's lifespan went on and its Unrivalled monarchs started to actually develop a meaningful monarchic tradition (after all, a totally batshit dino-making archaeologist is not going to be the most adroit founder of a sociopolitical system), it started to find solutions to these issues -- solutions which became rather less direct after the murder that got rid of Unrivalled XXI led various branches of the Unrivalled House to pool power behind the judiciary with a clear message: we will not tolerate further murders of members of the royal family.
Unrivalled XVI has dealt with his siblings in such indirect ways, in what he'd thought to be a master stroke. His barely-younger brother had been goaded into taking a rebellion that was dealt with very handily, making taking him out of the picture easily justified, and his sister Rivalla was sent off to go play soldier in the deadliest conflicts of the Kingdom, where she would surely die... and then she didn't. The people around her in that company sure, did, officers and Titan pilots falling left and right to both unfortunate accidents and vicious direct combat, but Rivalla never quite did, even at age 10. Now, Princess Rivalla's Grand Biomechanical Retinue has been harrowed by conflict, winnowed down to a core of just a few officers, two active Pilots, and one Titan as a result of brutal conflict against an Arehan religious order, and it may be being practically banished out of the sector... but Rivalla's Retinue is very much not dead and gone, with the command frigate Unceasing Progress and its small formation of shuttles now inhabiting the Sommet Sector.
Notable personnel of Rivalla's Retinue:
Captain Lanre Adebayo: Executive Officer (but really Commander)
Lanre Adebayo is not the first man in Rivalla's Retinue to hold the rank of Captain and official position of Executive Officer, informal position of Commander -- he is in fact the third, the other two having met rather untimely demises. But he's the one to have held the position longest, for 35 months as compared to the 5 months and 14 months held by the first and second Executive Officers respectively. Lanre's success mostly comes from his willingness to put his foot down and take real authority of Rivalla's Retinue in ways that his predecessors struggled with; he's willing to directly countermand Rivalla when necessary, an arrangement she has since come to accept but which was a lot harder when she was a 12-year-old theoretically with the power of life and death. He's a tough but calm individual; while he frequently simply refuses to budge, he's rarely found exploding in anger or meting out harsh punishments. He simply lets his actions speak, and does what he needs to do without apologizing or blustering.
Lieutenant Marcellino Costa: Third-in-Command (but really Executive Officer)
Marcellino Costa is one of a very small number of personnel to have been with Rivalla's Retinue for the entirety of its existence, and the reasons he has survived this long are both a blessing and a curse. Marcellino Costa is a risk-averse individual (something that has helped him avoid some of the frankly ridiculous deaths of his compatriots), preferring to operate within clear bounds and within a context where he knows exactly what he's doing and why. This is something that makes him unsuitable for long-term command, which is why he's never been the one in charge for more than a month. But Marcellino operates very well within his bounds of comfort, and acting as the de facto second in command is a position that works well within those bounds, and he's excellent at making sure delegated tasks get done. When in overall command, he has however highly prioritized being out of overall command.
Lieutenant 2nd Class Batari Dewa: Chief Biogineer
Batari Dewa is pretty much exactly the kind of Biogineer you would expect from a mercenary force of the Kingdom of the Unrivalled Archaeologist -- brilliant, unhinged, and possessed of something of a god complex. She figures she can do just about anything, and she does indeed have a profound talent for biogineering, which has catapulted her to the top after the death of the previous Chief Biogineer (which... was under some rather suspicious circumstances). She doesn't seem entirely satisfied with her position (as happy as she is to be the one leading the organic work in Rivalla's Retinue), as she has to compete with the Chief Engineer, but the active efforts of almost everybody else on the ship have kept her largely confined in the lab and workshop shuttles rather than the command frigate.
Lieutenant 2nd Class Peers Hobbes: Chief Engineer
Whereas Batari is the Chief Biogineer, the leader of the organic portions of the Titan work for Rivalla's Retinue, Peers Hobbes is the Chief Engineer, leader of the mechanical portions of the retinue's Titan work. In contrast to Batari, he is extremely egotistical and extremely talented, his ambition kept in check by the diligent actions of much of the rest of the crew and tolerated only because of his expertise and experimentality. ...Peers is extremely similar to Batari, and serves as a counterbalance to her because of their similarity. The tension between the two is almost comical due to their similarity as people, but the end result is that their jockeying keeps each other in check, and keeps the both of them competing enough to keep the situation stable in the Titan department when they're played off of each other.
Corporal Mihail Andonov: Pilot
While Mihail hasn't been part of Rivalla's Retinue through its whole span, having been with it for two and a half of its around five years, he has become one of the most vital members of the retinue, on account of almost everyone dying around him. He's a fairly understated type, quiet and not prone to complaining about heavy workloads or difficult tasks -- he is something of a workhorse, willing to be what he needs to be and do what he needs to do in order to make sure things go right. This flexibility is part of what has kept him alive all this time as the only veteran pilot still able in Princess Rivalla's Grand Biomechanical Retinue, and is what allows him to work with the Princess directly without stepping on toes, but it's an attitude that has also been very much detrimental to his self-expression piloting his Titan -- something very important in the Kingdom. For his part, he is aware of this, and views the Sommet Sector and Rivalla's more active piloting role as an opportunity to finally pilot on his own terms, but he is willing to do whatever is needed of him.
Princess Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichtyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled: Commander (but really Pilot)
The official commander of her retinue, Princess Rivalla is a girl who has been forced to become pragmatic since her very, very young youth, and now that she is 15 years old, she is smart enough to consistently allow her talented officers to do their thing without her interference. But that is not to say that Rivalla is entirely free of the foibles of the Unrivalled family, because she is... not. Much like most members of her family, her estimation of her talent is quite high, and she can be found poking around in the Titan Operations shuttles, sometimes assisting in biogineering and engineering (where it's not likely to explode on her, at least), and recently demanding that she be allowed to pilot a Titan, as is the natural right of an Unrivalled -- a task she seems likely to take on with great enthusiasm and energy. She is a unique mixture of frustrating and endearing to the retinue -- while much more lenient than many of the more ruthless of her family, and while often energetic and adorable, she's still a princess of a very megalomaniacal family, and once she gets her mind set on something, at this point really only Lanre has the capacity to get in her way, and that's something he's only willing to do on his own terms.
Space is a premium on the Rapid-Pair Ship Sojourner, with only so much storage space and only so many docking points for ships. Princess Rivalla's Grand Biomechanical Retinue was forced only to bring the Unceasing Progress and a pair of landing craft/shuttles -- one for crew and storage primarily, the other holding a Titan. This Titan is a small and light one, an old Titan that has seen relatively few battles for the Retinue's standards, but which has had to be repaired a few times. Thankfully, the skills of Batari and Peers have it in ship-shape, but it's not even a dinosaur, it's kind of just a shitty cyborg humanoid-shaped Titan! A shameful state of affairs.
Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan
Description: The Barely-Rivalled is often rejected among the Kingdom for its rather mundane figure and its small size, but this belies its true functionality -- the Barely-Rivalled-class of Light Titans is a very capable and pragmatically-built cyborg titan, which sports surprisingly good durability for a Titan of its light tonnage and small and compact size. Although its mobility is somewhat poor and it lacks any gimmicks beyond its ability to fold into position for storage, it mounts a respectable amount of weaponry for its size and is generally built for slugouts with vehicles and other light Titans, and it has the capacity to carry Carryable Equipment. It looks like a skinless humanoid without a face (having instead a cockpit) riddled with mechanical pistons and steel struts, making it a little bit fucking terrifying to look at.
Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Leg
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Leg
Barely-Rivalled Torso: (Mech/Organic)
This is the core of the Barely-Rivalled Titan, and is the most durable part of the Titan, with a tough and flexible-to-physical-impact banded "ribcage" of bone and metal. It possesses a Medium Mount, connections for a Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg, and a Carryable Equipment hardpoint, but is otherwise largely unremarkable.
Barely-Rivalled Native Head: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable head, except that the cockpit right in where the face would be on the skinless head is pretty disturbing.
Barely-Rivalled Arm: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable arm, albeit more fragile than the torso of the Barely-Rivalled. Possesses a Small Mount. Has dexterous hands and thus can operate Carryable Equipment.
Barely-Rivalled Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable leg and the most underperforming part of the Barely-Rivalled. Less tough than the Torso, and neither particularly fast nor agile.
Biomechanical Medium Railgun: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this core of metal wound around by flesh uses organically derived energy to fire off ferrous projectiles at high speed. Operates at a long range, is relatively accurate, and does good though not overwhelming damage, but it takes a long time to recharge between shots.
Biomechanical Small Laser:
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser. Operates at a medium-short range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much.
Thankfully, you were at least able to bring a more unique piece of equipment from the retinue's history of service along... just what was that unique piece of equipment?
Design a single Blueprint (reference the rules for what a Blueprint is). The Equipment or Part you create will be the first Blueprint you have access to, and it will be present on your Titan from the start, replacing something on the Titan. (Designing an arm would replace both arms with the new arm, designing a medium shielding device or weapon would replace the railgun, etc.) Designing a Large piece of equipment will actually alter the mech, as it will remove one Small mount and change the Medium mount on the Torso to a Large one. Designing Carryable Equipment will remove the Medium weapon but keep its Mount. You can't design a Torso this phase. Utter Failures will be rerolled just this one time.
Month One -- Navigation Phase
Travel on a Rapid-Pair Ship is not, relatively speaking, a very fast process. In absolute terms, of course, it is blazingly fast, with Rapid-Pair Ships traveling spaces light-years wide in a mere couple of months, but to travellers used to the instant transportation between systems within sectors courtesy of Pair Stations, well, the wait can seem interminable indeed. After all, while a normal, fixed-orbit Pair-Station simply transfers objects around it to being somewhere around its partner, from one station to the other across star systems instantly, Rapid-Pair Ships take advantage of the limited relative movement involved there to essentially teleport each other (relatively) short distances a very, very, very large number of times, very rapidly. That's typically several million teleportations, in the longest cases billions, and no matter how blazingly fast Rapid-Pair Ships can make those jumps, that's going to take a while.
On the bright side, though, when you're on-board a Rapid-Pair Ship you live like a king, to a degree that is barely an exaggeration. Docking space on a Rapid-Pair Ship has a cost that even empires wince at, and this is the result of the cost of maintenance of the absurdly complex drives and the equally absurd reactors that power them. Therefore, amenities in the passenger parts of the ships like supremely comfortable accommodations, a bevy of unique, varied, and delicious foods, many forms of recreation, and immaculate service all are so cheap in comparison that commercial Rapid-Pair Ship providers find the cost-benefit analysis to be an easy one, and Exploratory Systems Incorporated is no exception.
It's just a shame that Princess Rivalla's Grand Biomechanical Retinue didn't get to enjoy it for more than around a week.
Lanre Adebayo was a career military man, as one tends to be hanging around within a retinue/mercenary company/dying unit for several long-haul deployments. This did not mean that Lanre was a career senior officer, because he hadn't been that by any means. No, Lanre had been a Sergeant when he entered the Princess' retinue, not some officer sitting around in a lounge with champagne and lobster bisque. It was only through both performance and attrition that Lanre had ended up in the position he was in now, at the age of 28.
...so, now that he had the chance to have champagne and lobster bisque and all sorts of nice foods, Lanre wasn't hesitating to take advantage of it. It wasn't something he talked about, being something of an imposingly stoic, private man, but aboard this ship Lanre looked forward to becoming something of a gourmand. The lobster they'd served two days ago had been a bit tougher than he'd imagined lobster to be, but he'd enjoyed the taste greatly. Then it had been this prime rib he'd had yesterday, and though it was a little fatty for his taste, it was still in objective terms a fantastic dish. Now it was these nachos, but with a spread of meat and condiments on top that he'd never seen before. Maybe it wasn't as high culture, but he had started eating and was ready to tuck into the whole dish.
"Laaaanreee!" He sighed, and slumped just a fraction of a degree. "Laaanreee!" Lanre started eating a bit faster. "It's a three on one! It's a three on one! Lanre, help me out!" Lanre glanced behind him and saw the Princess running away very quickly, being chased by three people... and Lanre recognized the emblem on their clothing. The symbol of the Knights Reliquar, the Arehan shock unit they'd faced on Gurney III. Fuck. Very quickly, Lanre turned his attention to his food and began shoveling it into his mouth as fast as he god damn could, demolishing the nachos (which were, incidentally, very good), and setting down the plate just in time to turn around in a slow and composed manner to look the approaching three Knights Reliquar right in the eye. Two of them were younger, one young dark-skinned man (younger than Lanre by a fair margin) with a clear naive fire in his eyes, a younger white-skinned girl with eyes that were rather disturbingly cold in comparison, and an older woman, with light blonde hair just starting to turn white, who seemed to have an energy that belied her relative age.
As Lanre stared quietly at the older woman (their commander, he guessed), she spoke up, raising a hand to silence her two subordinates as she did. "So... if the 'Unrivalled' Princess," Lanre could practically see the air quotes around that, "has run to you, I assume that means that you are an officer in her company?"
"I am. Commanding field operations. Captain Lanre Adebayo." A response without hesitation, Lanre not even blinking.
"Alright, then. I am Commandeur des Chevaliers Žaneta Vasiliauskas, leader of this detachment of the Knights Reliquar. I commanded when we fought you on Gurney -- and I cannot tolerate your presence here. But a wide brawl would be too destructive -- let us settle this for now one-on-one. I challenge you to a fistfight, right here, and right now. How do you respond to this challenge?"
Lanre looked around, and sighed. Rivalla was of course here (noisily so), and Mihail was elsewhere in the dining hall, so things could well devolve into a three-on-three if he said no... and one of the involved combatants would be a young teenager. Fantastic. "Mihail, please hold the Princess back." Lanre looked Žaneta dead in the eyes. "I accept. L--" Before he could finish his sentence, Žaneta was on him.
Fists rained down, a wild series of haymaker blows launched by Žaneta that seemed unfocused on being individually accurate. A punch to the arm, hammer blow to the shoulder, fist to the gut, backhand to the hip. It was a shockingly aggressive series of blows that Lanre had not expected in the slightest from a woman that seemed to be in her late 40s, and each blow hurt, with a surprising amount of strength behind it. At first, Lanre was taken entirely aback, but soon his stance shifted to a defensive one, bracing, weathering the assault. He waited for the moment when her aggression got the better of her, causing her to leave openings, for her to get too confident... and then when that moment came, he nailed her with a savage right hook to the jaw that spun her 20 degrees, nearly taking her off her feet. "You're stronger than I expected," he told her, "I'll give you that. But this won't be too easy."
The enemy commander looked at him... and then nodded. "Mmm." With that wordless acknowledgment, she came at him again, with every bit of the ceaseless aggression as before -- but when he sent a jab out to catch her on the approach, he discovered that her tactics had change significantly. She ducked to the side and sent a pair of blows at his extended arm. Then, when she came in, she clearly had her targets prioritized, blow after blow coming towards his arms, but with the woman possessed of a movement that prevented him from nailing another solid hit on her like that. She kept doing that grab, too, punishing whenever he tried to hit her back, so at first he stopped doing so, just taking the hits. Once Lanre decided he had to take action, though, he intentionally telegraphed his punch, and let her grab his arm again to deal another pair of blows to his elbow... except that this time he suddenly yanked inwards hard with it, sending her stumbling towards him. Head met head, hard, as he nailed her with his second blow of the fight, a vicious headbutt that left her reeling for a long moment.
She seemed to be rocked, now, almost stumbling, her gaze a bit glassy, although he could still see the determination in it beyond that haze, and in her advance. His arm hurt like hell, especially around the knot of flaring ache in his elbow. It didn't quite feel like it was broken... but it felt close. Still, he had her on the ropes. It'd be just one more hit and--
And that's when the ship's security hauled everyone involved away in front of a shocked crowd of onlookers, which earned the entirety of Rivalla's Retinue a ban from the interior of the Sojourner, leaving everyone stuck aboard the frigate and shuttles for a solid four months, growing impatient and frustrated. And it turned out that Lanre's right arm had in fact been broken, a small hairline fracture sure, but a fracture nonetheless, making him technically the first combat injury of the Retinue's mercenary career.
At least they still got the ship's food regularly delivered to them.
With the long wait, spirits among the crew were quite high when the Sojourner finally arrived in the system and released the Unceasing Progress, the backdrop of stars flashing back-and-forth seizure-inducingly quickly finally replaced by the more serene backdrop of a stationary system (well, as Peers insisted, relative to the ship). The system had five planets, but the inhabited one was quite easy indeed to pick out and navigate to -- two of the planets were gas giants, one was on the verge of being a dwarf planet very far out, one was a nearly molten rock right near the sun, and the sole remaining planet was a ball of mostly green and brown a mite closer to the sun-edge of the habitable zone than is typically considered comfortable. Once in orbit over the planet, closer inspection reveals the nature of the planet's, well, nature.
The central third or so of the planet is the most uniform, being mostly a band of wide, scorching desert that seems mostly uninhabitable, with only occasional mountain chains and their associated lakes and streams providing oases. Moving towards the mid-latitudes the terrain begins to vary, sahel terrain broken up by more green savannahs around rivers, in turn spawned and broken up by the mountains, plateaus, and highlands which the planet has in fair abundance. Oceans appear in these mid-latitude areas; small ones, which make up the minority of the planet's surface, but oceans nonetheless, and with them comes a bevy of more temperate terrain -- plains, forests, etcetera. In the north, the largest ocean exists along most of the northernmost latitudes of the planet, but still leaving a thick inlet of land to extend all the way north, transferring from jungles to forests to taiga to icy, mostly-bare land at the pole. In the south, there are a smattering of smaller oceans, which leave most of the southern hemisphere of the planet sahel/savannah and arid, except for the areas of green that branch out from the areas around the oceans, where you do see warm forests and occasionally jungles, but also much of the arable plains of the planet, especially around the freshwater lakes. A ring of taiga exists around a small ocean at the south pole, though most of that ocean's surface is taken up by the glaciers of the south pole, leaving only a small ring of water.
At night, the patterns of lights reveal the inhabitation of the planet -- quite sparse, with some small towns around the oases in the deserts, with larger cities near to the oceans. Most of the areas around the small southern oceans are largely rural, with one or two cities shining brightly and dominating these oceanic areas, lights thinly scattered beyond them. The two most densely populated areas are the northern inlet, which has several cities and town spread across its jungle and forests, and the largest of the southern oceans, which has an extra-large city shining brightly and a cluster of cities and towns around that city, in addition to the rural population seen around the other southern oceans. There are also a surprisingly large number of mobile settlements that appear to move a little day by day. These are all the steady white color and setup of electric lighting... but those electric lights almost completely vanish around the taiga. Around the pole are tightly clustered setups of a purple haze -- lighting that appears to be magical and ritual in nature, which appears almost nowhere else. Only a few, small, adventurous settlements of either technological or magical nature exist in the taiga, sometimes clearly intentionally set near each other.
Apparently this system is called the Chopta system, at least by most of the people for whom this was the destination who were overheard during the week inside the Sojourner system.
A conversation Lanre had with somebody delivering his meal revealed that the system has been ruled for several decades by the Sommet Empire known as the Empire of the Fifhurst Crown. Apparently, this Empire of the Fifhurst Crown, known more casually as the Fifhurst Empire, Fifhurst Crown, or "the Fifs", operates on a purely technological basis, and although it has been occupied by fighting on its homeworld known largely as "Metropole", it is nominally the largest of the Sommet Empires and maintains a now very limited presence here.
Despite the sparse population, there are apparently several different origins of the inhabitants, and a lot of fighting from factions seeking to establish themselves in the power vacuum.
You haven't been here long enough to establish yourselves in the system, yet.
With the Unceasing Progress freshly arrived from the Sojourner this month rather than moving from one system to another, there isn't a lot to do this Navigation Phase. However, your home empire at least gave you a relatively generous amount of scrap, partially filling the one of the 2 Titan shuttles that doesn't have a Titan in it. Choose five of the following ten pieces of scrap to have brought with you:
Destroyed Laser Weapon
Mech Right Arm Scrap
Mech Left Leg Scrap
Mech Scrap with Complicated Electronics
Mech Scrap with Advanced Metals
Destroyed Acid Weapon
Organic Left Arm Scrap
Organic Head Scrap
Organic Scrap with Regenerative Tissues
Organic Scrap with Intact Heart
Though the Unceasing Progress was not primarily a combat ship now, having been retrofitted for more longevity of travel and slightly more cargo capacity, it had in fact been one once, and the bridge was originally setup as a somewhat sleeker room allowing a central figure to maintain most of the command presence during combat, with a prominent seat at the front and rows of computers and cybernetic ports at the back allowing operation of the ship to continue without taking any space from the typically gigantic ego of the captain. Retrofitting the area as a meeting room was, then, simple, but rather awkward-looking: Lanre had simply pulled the captain's chair out of the floor himself, and bolted a cheap plastic-surface dining table to the floor where it had been. Peers had offered a fancier solution, but Lanre had turned the man down, sensing that it would become material for the eternal pissing contest between his chief engineer and his chief biogineer.
Lanre didn't really see a reason to mind, though. His little dining table was enough for the purposes of sitting in a circle with the other officers, and was more than enough for the purpose of looking through paperwork as his executive officer spoke -- especially because said executive officer had a tendency to pace. Marcellino Costa was a man that Lanre had learned through experience channeled quite a bit of nervous energy through his work, making sure every little thing was accounted for; at times, this was inconvenient, but it was often a lifesaver in allowing Lanre to keep his focus on the larger direction of the retinue. So it was that Lanre found himself paging through a summary of the company's overall situation that Marcellino had prepared for him, half-tuning the man out as he orally, and much more lengthily, related the details of his officers' rivalry. (As Lanre could confirm on the summary report, Marcellino was talking about how the lean towards organic scrap brought along by the retinue was the source of much bragging from Batari.) Lanre knew that Marcellino didn't mind his split attention: it was almost a ritual between the two of them, with Marcellino's drive for detail satisfied and with Lanre able to go through important points while Marcellino got the small stuff out of the way -- if anything was of note, Lanre usually just stopped for a moment and asked him about it, anyway.
In this case, though it was the transition to speaking about missions that caught Lanre's ear and caused him to set down the summary. "...which brings me to the situation with contracts here." A silent movement and a look at Marcellino signaled that he had the Captain's full attention now, something Marcellino acknowledged with a quick nod before he spoke. "To tell the truth, Captain Adebayo, the whole thing went much more smoothly than I had been expecting."
A quick 'hmm' let his Executive Officer know that this was something Lanre was contemplating and wanted to hear more about. "Get more than you thought you would?"
"Yessir." Marcellino pulled another set of papers, three of them, from his ever-present clipboard and handed it to Lanre, who scanned their headers as he listened to Marcellino continue. "I don't think you really have to read through those one hundred percent right now, I imagine the Princess is gonna demand a say in our mission anyway, but, uh-- well-- yeah, we've got three contract offers that I found suitable right out the gate. We got more than one, uh, 'well, normally we wouldn't really be willing to trust the likes of you since you don't appear to have been around here before and you say you're real small' sort of message, but, uh, haha... you know what they say. Right place, right time. The Chopta system appears to be in a uh... well, it's gone to shit, sir. The Fifhurst Empire which has been administrator here for a while now seems to have pulled up and left with eighty, eighty-five percent of their manpower, and everybody with a goal and a cannon out here is making a run for getting the former with the latter. In the circumstances, a lot of smaller clients really need some sudden muscle, even if it's new guys, and even larger players are willing to spend a little bit of scrap on having someone deal with their more outlying problems."
"Sounds like the mercenary company idea the King had was better than he thought. It'll be interesting seeing how we fare doing this sort of thing. Still, we lived through Gurney, we can live through this. What are we looking at, Costa?"
"You said it, sir. Plenty of opportunity here, and none of it is I figure a particularly existential issue. For now we've got this..."
Client: Overseer Ayzyzvnbat Ayzyzlki Ayzyztyron (Ayzyztyron Riteocracy)
Target: Northern Settlers' Alliance
Reward: 1 Magic Scrap, 1 Magic Scrap with Regenerative Ritual Patterns, 1 Magic Scrap with Heating Ritual Patterns
Description: The Ayzyzbn alien race has been fighting the humans in the Chopta System for pretty much as long as they've been around (this is a long time), but it has seen little serious progress. With the shakeup from the large-scale departure of the Fifhurst Empire, however, hostilities have increased. The Ayzyztyron Riteocracy would find it both risky in a mundane sense and disruptive in an odd magical sense that Marcellino couldn't make heads or tails of to move out en masse, so though they do have some raiding parties, they are also swallowing their pride and hiring humans, as long as they're NOT from the system, to help drive away some settlements founded so close to their territory as to be an essentially explicit challenge. In this case, a medium tank and two light combat vehicles have been sent out by settlers to lead a convoy to push a particular settlement's territory right up to the edge of Ayzyzbn space, and they seek to hire you to kill those vehicles and cause the convoy to turn around and leave. In return, cognizant of the scrap system used by mercenaries (mostly human), the Riteocracy offers some basic scrap, which is based on their ritual-heavy system.
Client: Captain Gregory McNabb (14th Bannogcreag Titaneer Battalion)
Target: (Maruška Sisters Company)
Reward: 2 Organic Scrap, Destroyed Spine Launcher
Description: Banditry is far from uncommon by any means on Chopta (the planet being the source of the system's name), and the Maruška Sisters Company is a case of this that is somewhat unfortunate. A mercenary company from elsewhere in the Sommet Sector, the Maruška Sisters had been hired to get involved in a battle between two different factions within the central third of the planet -- and not being a large company in the first place, were nearly entirely destroyed. The remaining members of the Company have halfway scattered, and a ragged and disorganized core now is terrorizing a section of the planet Chopta. You have been hired by Captain Gregory McNabb, leader of a rogue element of the Fifhurst military that refused to withdraw from Chopta when ordered to and is attempting to deal with bandits, but doesn't have the manpower to deal with such a vast area, to deal with one of these bandit mercenaries that seems to have separated off from the rest of the company, either permanently or temporarily, but which hasn't stopped the banditry. It is a light organic Titan which is fragile but high-speed and which formerly carried a carryable sniper-like spine launcher, but it seems to have ceased working, as it was abandoned. Though the Titan isn't otherwise heavily damaged, it seems not to have access to much of its offensive arsenal. The Battalion offers some scrap from battles they've previously had with the Maruška Sisters Company, as well as this spine launcher.
Client: Group Leader Rafaela Gallego The Gacela Band
Target: Middle Belt Republic
Reward: 2 Generic Mech Scrap, 1 Mech Scrap with High-Power Battery, 2 Mark 7 "Crown Sapphire" Hardlight Shotguns
Description: The Fifhurst has essentially entirely left the central third of the planet Chopta, focusing what few remaining forces it has here on bases in the northern and southern climes, around important population centers there. As a result, many bases in the area are abandoned, and while most Fifhurst assets have been taken with their owners, exceptionally messy parts of the logistics of the rush out of Chopta have resulted in some things getting left behind. In this case, a Fifhurst garrison ran out of transport space on the way out, and ended up leaving several mostly-intact and very valuable weapon systems. The Gacela Band, a small alliance of a few nomadic groups within the central third of Chopta that is seeking to establish itself as a new local power (local nomads often having been politically weak), is competing with the Middle Belt Republic, a group descended from native politicians which became part of the Fifhurst administration, to take advantage of this opportunity and become stronger.
Each has brought a heavy tank and a couple of lighter vehicles to help secure the area (the Gacela Band putting several rocket launchers on their tank, the Middle Belt Republic having several ballistic weapons built into theirs), but Group Leader Rafaela Gallego has heard that the Middle Belt Republic is also searching for mercenaries to hire, and cannot promise anything but an equal fight. In exchange, she is offering two of the weapons from the cache, a pair of Small Weapons that each put out powerful damage similar to that of your Medium Railgun, but operate at a relatively slow rate of fire and at a very close range.
Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan
Description: The Barely-Rivalled is often rejected among the Kingdom for its rather mundane figure and its small size, but this belies its true functionality -- the Barely-Rivalled-class of Light Titans is a very capable and pragmatically-built cyborg titan, which sports surprisingly good durability for a Titan of its light tonnage and small and compact size. Although its mobility is somewhat poor and it lacks any gimmicks beyond its ability to fold into position for storage, it mounts a respectable amount of weaponry for its size and is generally built for slugouts with vehicles and other light Titans, and it has the capacity to carry Carryable Equipment. It looks like a skinless humanoid without a face (having instead a cockpit) riddled with mechanical pistons and steel struts, making it a little bit fucking terrifying to look at.
Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Megaraptor Left Leg
Megaraptor Right Leg
[1] Barely-Rivalled Torso: (Mech/Organic)
This is the core of the Barely-Rivalled Titan, and is the most durable part of the Titan, with a tough and flexible-to-physical-impact banded "ribcage" of bone and metal. It possesses a Medium Mount, connections for a Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg, and a Carryable Equipment hardpoint, but is otherwise largely unremarkable.
[1] Barely-Rivalled Native Head: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable head, except that the cockpit right in where the face would be on the skinless head is pretty disturbing.
[2] Barely-Rivalled Arm: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable arm, albeit more fragile than the torso of the Barely-Rivalled. Possesses a Small Mount. Has dexterous hands and thus can operate Carryable Equipment.
[2] Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
[1] Biomechanical Medium Railgun: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this core of metal wound around by flesh uses organically derived energy to fire off ferrous projectiles at high speed. Operates at a long range, is relatively accurate, and does good though not overwhelming damage, but it takes a long time to recharge between shots.
[2] Biomechanical Small Laser: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser. Operates at a medium-short range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much.
Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
To manufacture 1 Megaraptor Leg requires: 1 Mech Scrap, 1 Organic Scrap, 2 Legs (Mech, Organic, or Mech/Organic)
Destroyed Acid Weapon
Organic Scrap with Regenerative Tissues
Organic Scrap with Intact Heart
Organic Head Scrap
Mech Scrap with Advanced Metals
Once again, Lanre Adebayo was in the bridge with Marcellino, sitting at a chair at his card table, one arm hung over the back to give off a "casual and in control" air. But this time, there were three major differences.
First, there was a screen up on the wall, which Lanre was facing, and on that screen was the face of a white guy who looked to be in his early 30s - just about Lanre's age, actually. The man had a stolid but fierce set to his face, something somewhat accentuated by his red hair, kept neat as it was. This was Captain Gregory McNabb, the client - just a junior officer like him, Lanre realized, but at least enough of an important guy to be a player on the local scene. Hell, though... that was about to be an apt descriptor for Lanre himself, wasn't it? It kind of blew his mind that he was actually going to be dealing on a peer basis with some of his clients even as it. He wasn't sure if that spoke well of him and the others running the Retinue, or poorly of Chopta... maybe both.
The second major difference was that there was an assault rifle sitting out on the table, something Lanre had put out to help bolster the image of the Retinue, to make them look like hardened fighters (which, to be fair, they were, or at least the survivors were), in a way that a blank fucking card table maybe, Lanre suddenly reflected, wouldn't.
The third major difference, completely ruining all of that image work, as half-assed as it was, was that there was a fifteen-year-old standing behind him, crossing her arms, looking imperious, and very clearly expecting to do much of the speaking, something that had Marcellino (just out of camera) with his face in his hands. "Hail. You stand in the presence of Princess Rivalla of the Kingdom of the Unrivalled Archaeologist! This is my retinue -in full, Princess Rivalla's Grand Biomechanical Retinue- and we have chosen to grace this sector with our presence, to provide a guiding hand in these times of trouble! We have elected to offer you our services for now - will you introduce yourself as befits a royal?"
For several seconds, a silence reigned in the bridge and on the other end of the communication, with Marcellino slowly beginning to tense up until he was trembling ever-so-slightly. Lanre, on the other hand, simply leaned forward, elbow on the table, and declared: "I'm Lanre Adebayo, executive officer." in a tone that emphasized that he was not in fact just the executive officer.
The man on the other screen sighed, and then pulled a flask from somewhere on his side of the screen. "Well, beggars can't be choosers, I suppose." (Lanre didn't so much as flinch, while Rivalla visibly curdled.) "Right, well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the situation." The red-haired man leaned one elbow against the side of his cockpit - it appeared he was transmitting from a (fully mechanical) Titan cockpit, something that was perhaps something of a primitive notion to any Titan pilot of the Kingdom. "My name is, of course, Captain Gregory McNabb. I'm Fifhurst by blood, and of course by true loyalty, but at the moment I'm afraid that I find myself technically a renegade. The Empire of the Crown felt the need to go back home once the fighting over there really ratcheted up, and sent almost all of us back to the homeworld to participate in the fighting there - it's my recommendation, by the way, that you not try your luck there until you're quite large. But the Empire is also the only thing that has been keeping this unfortunate world together. Chopta is full of factions and small bands that would like nothing more to tear each other apart, especially in this middle part of the planet. The Empire kept some order about the whole place, and when the others left, my boys and I could not stomach leaving this place in the lurch, since we knew it would descend into chaos."
McNabb let out another sigh, this one deeper and more regretful. "Unfortunately, we were right. Fighting has broken out all over this place, and even though we're doing our best to keep order in at least part of the central belt, there's only so much one battalion can do. That, of course, is where you come in -- and it's also where the foe you are going to be fighting comes in. We've been seeing a flood of mercenaries from all over the sector come in; Crown only knows where you come from, but there are a lot of fighters down here on Chopta, and we've accepted the fact that we will have to become clients in order to attempt to rein the violence in. It's better to have at least some mercenaries on contract than to be adrift among a sea of them without even a temporary raft, to speak in analogy."
Lanre finally took the opportunity to speak again. "I'm going to want more concrete information on our actual mission from you, Captain. Your motivations are one thing--"
(Marcellino here cut in with an "--and we can appreciate them, sure!--")
"--but if you are going to be hiring us to fight, I would at least like to have as much for us to go off of as possible. We saw some amount of information in your listing, but if you have more to tell us on our target, it would help us to properly prepare to take care of your job."
McNabb got just a little huffy: "Well, I was of course going to get to that, you know. The Maruška Sisters Company was an increasingly well-known company around here, bouncing between band to band and being fairly large in size, all told. But they ultimately made the mistake of sending their leadership off to go attack one of our bases -er, one of the Empire bases- that are actually still manned, in some suicidally ambitious group's mission, and when the Maruška Sisters themselves went and died, the company ended up scattering all over the place in little groups, who we've now been hunting down for some time. The Maruška Sisters tended to specialize their Titans to perform specific roles -- for the period of time that we managed to pursue the Titan that you will be dealing with, we ascertained that he appears to have been some sort of hit-and-run unit."
McNabb continued, "Our speculation is that he would have used his spine rifle to deal a devastating strike, and then dart off too fast to be hit, but obviously now that he's gone and lost that rifle, there's much less of that to deal with. He is still equipped with two small weapons, however - these are mounted on the Titan's torso, as the arms were pretty much entirely specialized for carrying weaponry. These appear to be small acid launchers, which can fire off to... I'd say a moderate range, from what we've experienced from similar Maruška hit and run Titans and don't do terribly much on their own in terms of raw devastation, but are capable of corroding armor and making a Titan more vulnerable where it's been struck, especially over time. The Titan is equipped with legs that aren't very tough, but emphasize speed and agility - I would wager that it would be hard to keep up unless you've heavily specialized, there. He's run off to a rocky area near a mountain that's just outside of where we've consolidated our patrol area now, but we've been there before. It's been hit with some sort of cataclysm in the past, and the area is littered with pieces of rock that are of a reasonable size for a Titan to throw - it's our guess that he's holed up there because he plans to use these boulders as his finishing weapon if he's forced into a fight."
Lanre made to reply... but Rivalla spoke up now, and Lanre sort of gave up: "Well, that is information that I suppose we can use. You should feel honored that we have come to deal with this for you - not only are we a royal retinue of the galaxy's premier experts on biotechnology, but we are experienced and hardened fighters in our own right! But yet we approach even tasks such as this with zeal, for our reach and our skills reach both high and low. We accept your mission - and you WILL find us successful. Leave no room in your heart for doubt - it would not do for you to be needlessly confused about our abilities." Rivalla stood up straight, and did her utmost to give an imperious look.
McNabb looked sort of bemused.
As previously stated in the OP for the game, in the Design and Revision Phase, you will have the opportunity to use two Design Actions and one Revision Action. Since I... don't really feel like repeating everything, I encourage you to look at the rules in the core for the phase. You have the choice of doing a Jury-Rig and a Blueprint, two Jury Rigs, or two Blueprints, in addition to a Revision that you can use either to alter a part you already have, or a blueprint you already have. You'll do these all at once. You can figure out your votebox here to your liking.
Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan
Description: The Barely-Rivalled is often rejected among the Kingdom for its rather mundane figure and its small size, but this belies its true functionality -- the Barely-Rivalled-class of Light Titans is a very capable and pragmatically-built cyborg titan, which sports surprisingly good durability for a Titan of its light tonnage and small and compact size. Although its mobility is somewhat poor and it lacks any gimmicks beyond its ability to fold into position for storage, it mounts a respectable amount of weaponry for its size and is generally built for slugouts with vehicles and other light Titans, and it has the capacity to carry Carryable Equipment. It looks like a skinless humanoid without a face (having instead a cockpit) riddled with mechanical pistons and steel struts, making it a little bit fucking terrifying to look at.
Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Megaraptor Left Leg
Megaraptor Right Leg
[1] Barely-Rivalled Torso: (Mech/Organic)
This is the core of the Barely-Rivalled Titan, and is the most durable part of the Titan, with a tough and flexible-to-physical-impact banded "ribcage" of bone and metal. It possesses a Medium Mount, connections for a Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg, and a Carryable Equipment hardpoint, but is otherwise largely unremarkable.
[1] Barely-Rivalled Native Head: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable head, except that the cockpit right in where the face would be on the skinless head is pretty disturbing.
[2] Barely-Rivalled Arm: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable arm, albeit more fragile than the torso of the Barely-Rivalled. Possesses a Small Mount. Has dexterous hands and thus can operate Carryable Equipment.
[2] Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
[1] Biomechanical Medium Railgun: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this core of metal wound around by flesh uses organically derived energy to fire off ferrous projectiles at high speed. Operates at a long range, is relatively accurate, and does good though not overwhelming damage, but it takes a long time to recharge between shots.
[2] Biomechanical Small Laser: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser. Operates at a medium-short range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much.
Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
To manufacture 1 Megaraptor Leg requires: 1 Mech Scrap, 1 Organic Scrap, 2 Legs (Mech, Organic, or Mech/Organic)
Destroyed Acid Weapon
Organic Scrap with Regenerative Tissues
Organic Scrap with Intact Heart
Organic Head Scrap
Mech Scrap with Advanced Metals
So, you've been exiled assigned to the Sommet sector, with nothing more than a Barely-Rivalled titan and a cargo hold of scrap. This ain't acceptable. No self-respecting group of Unrivalled Archaeologists would field nothing but a single Barely-Rivalled. It is time to build a proper titan.
Unfortunately, you don't have a fossilised megabeast to work off of, and you haven't been in the Sommet sector long enough to acquire suitable local fauna. You're going to have to do this from scratch. No problem; you have the greatest Biogineer ever born*, complemented by the greatest Engineer ever born*, both of whom have an intense desire to out-perform the other. This is going to be a piece of cake**.
The Sommetisaur is approximately a Megaraptor. Or maybe a Deinonizor. Sort of looks like a Dromaestroyer from the front. Anyway, it's a raptor-type light torso, designed to work with a variety of arms (x2), legs (x2), and heads (x1), but especially effective with raptor-type components. The torso leans forwards, balanced by the large prehensile tail, providing a lower profile without sacrificing mobility or capacity (compared to a more upright titan). The tail also aids in mobility, as a movable counterweight that enables tighter manoeuvres at high speeds. There is a medium mount in the chest, a small mount on each side and on the tip of the tail, and a carryable mount on the back.
Due to a lack of a creature to base it off of, the Sommetisaur is even more ramshackle than the average Unrivalled titan. The diagrams for the internals call for things like "something heart like roughly here", "maybe a liver??", "don't forget to replace this with a working nutrient processor", and "definitely movement-assisted pneumatic lung augmentation, unless we can't find it". Batari and Peers are quite certain that the basic structure is sound, and assure us that the internal modularity will make construction and repairs easier.
The Sommetisaur Torso is approximately as well armoured as the Barely-Rivalled torso, using similar technology to the Megaraptor Legs. However, it is more streamlined than the Barely-Rivalled, weighing slightly less, and better balanced for high-speed mobility.
Difficulty: Very Hard
Roll: (2+1)-2=1, Utter Failure!
While having a pair of bitterly-feuding, extremely arrogant geniuses in charge of your Titan work may be a stellar setup for a situational comedy broadcast show (something Lanre has actually imagined more than he'd ever admit), it turns out that under the wrong circumstances it can in fact be disastrous to having said geniuses do the work that they actually set out to do. This reality was immediately made apparent at the beginning of the month, as both Peers Hobbes and Batari Dewa were assigned to work on an ambitious project to create a proper dinosaur torso, the current state of affairs of course being totally unworkable.
At first, it seemed like the project was going quite smoothly, as despite their animosity, Batari and Peers had begun to start outlining a reasonable external hull for the torso, and had made a significant amount of progress on the tail of the Sommetisaur -- the most damning thing that the Barely-Rivalled lacks! However, when work on the project turned towards beginning the torso's internal makeup, Peers got a look at Batari's notes for the internals, featuring such gems as "maybe a liver??" and "something heart-like roughly here". And only four words can adequately describe that moment: "blood in the water".
By the time the more minor engineering staff figured out that the ensuing fight was more than just the standard level of bickering between the two and reported it to Marcellino, days had passed and been completely wasted, both Peers and Batari had essentially yelled entire dictionaries at each other, and Batari had slung a beaker of acid at Peers' head (he ducked). The whole sordid affair finally ended with the personal intervention of both Lanre and Marcellino - Lanre spoke only briefly, and then gave his most intimidating, disappointed stare at them for a solid, uninterrupted three minutes. After that, Marcellino launched into a much longer, much more frustrated rant with Lanre still standing there. They'd been put behind a week by this spat, dammit! As a result, and with other work to do, no usable blueprint was created. At least there was partial progress.
Utter Failure Experience: The next Torso blueprint created, so long as it is not drastically different, will be one difficulty easier.
Protection is serious business, and with a lack of carryable, it was decided to give our sole mech something to hopefully minimize the damage caused by its quarries acid weaponry. The shield is shaped like a Buckle, with a large spike in the middle that could act as a devastating weapon should the Light titan put it full weight during a jump unto that point. However the main point of the shield is its solid construction and the Various linings of Mucus producing tissue, taken from the Acid weapon's own storage glands, that leak a viscous mucus unto the surface of the shield. This mucus counteracts acid and makes any form of grappling with the surface of the shield a losing game. This allows the sole titan of the Retinue to protect itself from range weapon and protect its already weak armour from the dangers of acid weaponry, which combined with its speed makes the small titan a fairly durable prospect for any other light titan lacking heavy weaponry.
Difficulty: Easy
Roll: (6+5)+1=12, Unexpected Boon!!
On the bright side, it seems like Batari and Peers took the chewing-out to heart, because their next project turned out much, much better.
Admittedly, it would have been difficult to totally fuck up, in contrast to the previous design: despite being an entirely new piece of equipment cooked up on the spot from scrap, it basically only consisted of parts of a weapon repurposed for, of all things, a mucus layer, on top of a good piece of metal. The only real intricate work that was expected to go into the design was in pulling apart the defunct acid weapon that the group had been given upon their trip out to the sector, taking the mucous membranes and associated tissue-work and organs, and then reshaping it to the shield. And, to be sure, that was done competently by Batari, resulting in the surface of the shield being strongly resistant to acid and many other corrosive substances.
But the one who performed far, far above expectations was Peers. Though he looked around sixty, Peers was one hundred and seventeen years of age, his lifespan boosted through heavy cybernetic enhancement, and he had had a long, long career. And as it turned out, going back allll the way to the beginning of that career... Peers had actually primarily been a material scientist. The scrap chosen to provide the base for the shield turned out to be largely composed of Minarium, a rare alloy created with materials native to the Minarian Republic - capable of remarkable toughness with a remarkably small amount of material. Peers summoned his assistants, retired to his part of the Titan work zone for days, and when he came back out, he came out with something remarkable.
The base material of the shield is remarkably thin, for Titan scale, something that by no means looks like it should be withstanding more than one or two glancing blows from the kinds of weapons that are employed in Titan combat. Yet it is actually extremely sturdy, strongly unlikely to be damaged by anything short of more than one direct blast from a Large or Carryable weapon. Yet, it remains very light - it's not completely devoid of weight by any means, but it imposes much less of an issue with movement and agility than the typical piece of Carryable Equipment does, though of course when it use it does tend to block weapons in the Torso (its relatively small size should prevent it from blocking any others). Finally, Peers ditched the spike, deeming it to be an inefficient and likely not very effective way of using a shield in melee. Instead, he managed to have the shield's rim sharpened to something approaching a razor edge - not likely to go slicing boulders in half, but capable of dashing large gashes even into Titan armor - and beyond.
Anti-Acid Shield: This Carryable Shield is an excellent piece - extremely sturdy and light, especially for a piece of Carryable Equipment, capable of performing without major damage unless exposed to very heavy fire. It blocks Torso weaponry when in use, but thanks to its buckler-like design doesn't obstruct much more than that, although that relatively small size also means it only partially blocks weapons with large areas of effect. A mucus membrane on the shield makes it difficult to wrest away, and provides a strong resistance to acid damage for the shield. The edges of the shield are surprisingly well-sharpened, allowing the shield to be used as a vicious melee weapon.
"Peers? Have you seen my Holographirizer 9000? Someone said they saw you with it"
"Sorry, princess, I haven't seen it. I swear on my liver."
"Uh. Okay"
[...]
"Joke's on her, I had my liver removed years ago"
Using some non-essential electronics, Peers has improved the efficacy of our Biomechanical Lasers, boosting the range by a small but not insignificant amount.
Difficulty: Easy
Roll: (6+6)+1=13, Unexpected Boon!!!
Peers went on a fucking tear this month.
Coming fresh off of his resounding success, Peers flagrantly stole a "Holographirizer 9000" expensive civilian model hologram device from Rivalla (though he of course swears otherwise) and cannibalized some of its pieces to upgrade one of the Barely-Rivalled's lasers. While he wasn't ultimately able to revise both the separate pieces of equipment at once, that pales in comparison to what he did in fact manage.
First off, by combining the electronics he stole from Rivalla with some sample components he had in his lab, Peers was ultimately able to create a remarkably powerful improvement to the coherence of the laser beam the weapon projects, altering its range from a practical but not impressive medium-short range, to a medium-long range - and as a result, though the laser isn't quite able to compete with the railgun the Barely-Rivalled sports, it's able to maintain its damage at essentially any other range short of that. More impressively, though, Peers managed to turn a novelty color-flashing feature on the Holographirizer 9000 into a weaponized feature - by projecting a cone of rapidly-changing colors, the adjusted laser can blast enemy pilots with a non-damaging but very much dazzling spray of light, sure to confuse and obscure many eyes and optical sensors.
Bio-Mechanical Small Laserizer 9000: This weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser, although even that core has had high-grade consumer electronics interspersed in it. This sharply upgraded version of the Bio-Mechanical Small Laser operates at a medium-long range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much. It also has a secondary feature where it projects a very bright cone of light that rapidly changes color, dazzling enemy pilots, but due to the dispersal of the light, this feature is only really effective at short range.
Next up is your first Deployment phase, where you're going to specify what you're sending down, who you're sending down, and how they should fight! This phase should be pretty easy because there aren't exactly a ton of options around your Titan, though you'll still have to choose your pilot and your tactics. Please vote for this in "plan" style, because the structure of how this needs to be done is going to be essentially impossible to do option-by-option. Here's an example quote for how your deployment votes should look:
Pilot: Princess Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichtyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled
Tactics: One to two sentences describing what the Pilot should try to do during the mission.
Titan: Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan (you can give it a name, if you want)
Titan Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laserizer 9000
Megaraptor Left Leg
Megaraptor Right Leg
Carried: Anti-Acid Shield
Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan
Description: The Barely-Rivalled is often rejected among the Kingdom for its rather mundane figure and its small size, but this belies its true functionality -- the Barely-Rivalled-class of Light Titans is a very capable and pragmatically-built cyborg titan, which sports surprisingly good durability for a Titan of its light tonnage and small and compact size. Although its mobility is somewhat poor and it lacks any gimmicks beyond its ability to fold into position for storage, it mounts a respectable amount of weaponry for its size and is generally built for slugouts with vehicles and other light Titans, and it has the capacity to carry Carryable Equipment. It looks like a skinless humanoid without a face (having instead a cockpit) riddled with mechanical pistons and steel struts, making it a little bit fucking terrifying to look at.
Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Megaraptor Left Leg
Megaraptor Right Leg
[1] Barely-Rivalled Torso: (Mech/Organic)
This is the core of the Barely-Rivalled Titan, and is the most durable part of the Titan, with a tough and flexible-to-physical-impact banded "ribcage" of bone and metal. It possesses a Medium Mount, connections for a Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg, and a Carryable Equipment hardpoint, but is otherwise largely unremarkable.
[1] Barely-Rivalled Native Head: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable head, except that the cockpit right in where the face would be on the skinless head is pretty disturbing.
[2] Barely-Rivalled Arm: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable arm, albeit more fragile than the torso of the Barely-Rivalled. Possesses a Small Mount. Has dexterous hands and thus can operate Carryable Equipment.
[2] Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
[1] Biomechanical Medium Railgun: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this core of metal wound around by flesh uses organically derived energy to fire off ferrous projectiles at high speed. Operates at a long range, is relatively accurate, and does good though not overwhelming damage, but it takes a long time to recharge between shots.
[1] Biomechanical Small Laser: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser. Operates at a medium-short range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much.
[1] Bio-Mechanical Small Laserizer 9000: This weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser, although even that core has had high-grade consumer electronics interspersed in it. Operates at a medium-long range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much. It also can project a very bright cone of light that rapidly changes color at short-range, dazzling enemy pilots.
[1] Anti-Acid Shield: This Carryable Shield is extremely sturdy and light, capable of performing without major damage unless exposed to very heavy fire. It blocks Torso weaponry when in use, but no more, as it is somewhat small. A mucus membrane on the shield makes the shield acid-resistant and hard to grab. The shield is surprisingly sharp, allowing the shield to be used as a vicious melee weapon.
Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
To manufacture 1 Megaraptor Leg requires: 1 Mech Scrap, 1 Organic Scrap, 2 Legs (Mech, Organic, or Mech/Organic)
Organic Scrap with Regenerative Tissues
Organic Scrap with Intact Heart
Organic Head Scrap
Corporal Mihail Andonov (Level 0)
Traits: None
Princess Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichtyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled (Level 0)
Traits: None
The Central Belt in Chopta further exploded into violence over the last month, with several different would-be powers trying to establish claims over the area. One burgeoning power is the would-be democratic republic Middle Belt Republic, which seems to have gotten its hands on a significant quantity of Fifhurst weaponry and has been using it to start driving competitors out of what it considers to be its core territory. However, this is a slow process, as the fighting has been costly and brutal - around one former Fifhurst base, for example, scavengers are still picking small pieces of what are likely mercenary Titan out of the dirt.
Ironically, banditry has seen a downturn in some of the Central Belt as former mercenaries and other bandits have been picked off. It's speculated that former Fifhurst forces who refused to leave the planet are responsible for a lot of this, but one bandit Titan was found viciously hacked into bloody pieces, which does not fit the typical MO of the former Fifhurst forces, leading to speculation that there has been serious mercenary presence here, too.
There has been back and forth skirmishing between the human Northern Settlers' Alliance in the far north of the planet and the alien Ayzyztyron Riteocracy at the northern pole, but this has failed to seriously escalate beyond the bounds of the last few months, as each of these factions has failed to secure any additional territory.
Despite the weak state of the official Empire of the Fifhurst Crown presence on Chopta, the garrisons that are manned seem to have been able to hold off megafauna attacks on some of the more important cities in the south, although there's been only poor mercenary presence and the Fifhurst garrisons have evidently been forced to spend serious resources.
A ship in the system has been -rather profanely- advertising that there is mercenary opportunity in a linked system called Coeur-Maudit. There is evidently another empire on this planet, which the broadcaster has been referring to derogatorily as "Troubies" or "more like Troubled haha fuck you assholes eat shit", which is magic-based and has been trying not to lose effective control over the planet - rebellion is ongoing as a result, which the broadcaster claims the "Troubies" don't have the capacity to effectively fight.
A conversation heard over public mercenary chatter channels suggests that another linked system, Sassen, has seen the empire present there make a decision to consolidate their remaining control over one extremely key moon, and having had a lot of success doing so, while leaving most of the rest of the system in even more anarchy than Chopta. The name of the empire in question wasn't mentioned, as both participants in the conversation seem to have assumed everyone would know who they are, but it sounds like they're organic-based.
Conversation about the remaining linked system on public channels is actually very sparse - the types of mercenaries hanging around Chopta seem to view it in a very superstitious - whatever war the (mech-based) Fifhurst Empire is fighting has spilled over here, and enough lesser mercenaries have met their violent end here to give most of the ones around Chopta pause.
Upon exchanging scrap manifests with a merchant vessel representing civilian Fifhurst scientists unable to venture out from Metropole, the vessel (the CQS Pilgrim) has expressed interest in your foreign organic tech, and offers you A Mech Right Leg Scrap and a Mech Torso Scrap in exchange for your Organic Scrap with Intact Heart.
(https://i.imgur.com/MHU7KU9.png)
(Remain in) Chopta This system, mostly dominated by the planet of the same name, is a peripheral system of the Mech-based Empire of the Fifhurst Crown and has been undergoing some serious violence since the Empire uprooted the vast majority of its presence here-base to go fight in a war back home. The northern third of the planet and southern third of the planet have been in a holding pattern, due to chance mutual failures in the far north and due to likely unsustainable Fifhurst efforts in the south. The Central Belt is undergoing a burst of particularly intense and consequential violence, however - efforts to curb banditry the hard way are ongoing and warring between would-be powers in the Central Belt is starting to see some basic consolidation.
Coeur-Maudit The magic-based empire here (known by some as the "Troubies") has been trying to keep more strict control on Chopta, but hasn't really been succeeding, resulting in a large amount of rebellion and other conflict, though the "Troubies" evidently haven't actually been able to fight this well.
Sassen The organic-based empire here has retreated almost all of its control to a resource-heavy moon, and has made the decision to let the rest of the system descend into complete chaos exceeding even the chaos on Chopta and Coeur-Maudit.
? ? ? This Fifhurst system has become a spillover battleground for the war in the Metropole system, and has chewed several small (or large and mediocre) mercenary companies into scrap and tears.
Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan
Description: The Barely-Rivalled is often rejected among the Kingdom for its rather mundane figure and its small size, but this belies its true functionality -- the Barely-Rivalled-class of Light Titans is a very capable and pragmatically-built cyborg titan, which sports surprisingly good durability for a Titan of its light tonnage and small and compact size. Although its mobility is somewhat poor and it lacks any gimmicks beyond its ability to fold into position for storage, it mounts a respectable amount of weaponry for its size and is generally built for slugouts with vehicles and other light Titans, and it has the capacity to carry Carryable Equipment. It looks like a skinless humanoid without a face (having instead a cockpit) riddled with mechanical pistons and steel struts, making it a little bit fucking terrifying to look at.
Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laserizer 9000
Megaraptor Left Leg
Megaraptor Right Leg
Carried: Anti-Acid Shield
[1] Barely-Rivalled Torso: (Mech/Organic)
This is the core of the Barely-Rivalled Titan, and is the most durable part of the Titan, with a tough and flexible-to-physical-impact banded "ribcage" of bone and metal. It possesses a Medium Mount, connections for a Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg, and a Carryable Equipment hardpoint, but is otherwise largely unremarkable.
[1] Barely-Rivalled Native Head: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable head, except that the cockpit right in where the face would be on the skinless head is pretty disturbing.
[2] Barely-Rivalled Arm: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable arm, albeit more fragile than the torso of the Barely-Rivalled. Possesses a Small Mount. Has dexterous hands and thus can operate Carryable Equipment.
[2] Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
[1] Biomechanical Medium Railgun: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this core of metal wound around by flesh uses organically derived energy to fire off ferrous projectiles at high speed. Operates at a long range, is relatively accurate, and does good though not overwhelming damage, but it takes a long time to recharge between shots.
[1] Biomechanical Small Laser: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser. Operates at a medium-short range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much.
[1] Bio-Mechanical Small Laserizer 9000: This weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser, although even that core has had high-grade consumer electronics interspersed in it. Operates at a medium-long range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much. It also can project a very bright cone of light that rapidly changes color at short-range, dazzling enemy pilots.
[1] Anti-Acid Shield: This Carryable Shield is extremely sturdy and light, capable of performing without major damage unless exposed to very heavy fire. It blocks Torso weaponry when in use, but no more, as it is somewhat small. A mucus membrane on the shield makes the shield acid-resistant and hard to grab. The shield is surprisingly sharp, allowing the shield to be used as a vicious melee weapon.
Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
To manufacture 1 Megaraptor Leg requires: 1 Mech Scrap, 1 Organic Scrap, 2 Legs (Mech, Organic, or Mech/Organic)
Organic Torso Scrap
Organic Right Arm Scrap
Organic Left Leg Scrap
Organic Head Scrap
Organic Scrap with Regenerative Tissues
Organic Scrap with Intact Heart
Organic Scrap with Carryable Weapon Support Tube
Destroyed Spine Launcher
Corporal Mihail Andonov (Level 1)
Traits:
Snap ReflexesMissions until Level 2: 0/2
Princess Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichtyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled (Level 0)
Traits: None
Missions until Level 1: 0/1
Today, Lanre stood tall at the head of the table in the little bridge he and Costa normally worked at - and he stood with gravity to his posture. Today was a moment of import, which even Lanre could not deny. Today would mark a grand step forward in Princess Rivalla's Grand Biomechanical Retinue's path to greatness. Normally, Lanre didn't actually pay much heed to Rivalla when she talked in such terms, but he had been consulting with Marcellino about their contracts for the month, and he had come upon something so fortuitous that he could not find it in him to deny that ever-present spirit of ambition of hers, even if she hadn't even spoken yet. Lanre's eyes swept over the collection of individuals sitting at the table, three out of four of which had truly Titanic egos (Costa, ever reliable, being the exception) - but today his presence was such that all of them were quiet. Uncharacteristically dramatically, Lanre slapped the papers Costa had given him onto the table. "We have megafauna."
Two people immediately exploded at the declaration - Rivalla darted to her feet, the circlet that marked her royal status nearly flying from her head and hair bouncing with the force with which she stood. "Megafauna?!" She planted a foot atop the chair she had been sitting on (Marcellino had thoughtfully taken the time to arrange seats from around the bridge) and leaned towards Lanre's direction, unabashed interest and a bit of a cocky grin settling on her face. "Well, well, you will have to tell us more, you know. It is about time that we took proper hold of our heritage and showed these barbarians what a proper Unrivalled Princess can do!" She put a hand on her heart, adopting the expression of the cat who ate the canary. "Megafauna! Is it, perhaps... a dinosaur???"
Batari was soon to follow up on the princess's heels. "Dinosaur or no... ohhhhhh, I really do insist we take this mission, you know. Oh, the possibilities are all positively bone-tingling, what an opportunity! Is it perhaps a dinosaur, a beautiful specimen that we can turn into an unstoppable raptor of destruction and power? Is it some sort of other odd beast, from which we can harvest a great bounty of understanding and cement my- our status as rising stars within the field of biogineering???"
As for Peers... "You know, the Kingdom of the Unrivalled Archaeologist is about cyborg dinosaurs, not just dinosaurs. But does anybody ever care about the cyborg bit? Noooooooooooooooooooo, it's all about the normal, primitive dinosaurs, no respect for engineering, megafauna this, megafauna that-" Rivalla stared at him until he shut up.
Marcellino spoke up now, after clearing his throat primly. "Right, so there are certainly risks involved with the mission in question, but I have indeed found for us a contract involving megafauna! It involves working with the Fifhurst Crown directly, which could also be interesting from an information-gathering standpoint, but the real important bit is that we can get our hands on a component from it, in addition to our battlefield scrap! This would be an unparalleled opportunity to advance towards a proper dinosaur!" Having become a little excited, Marcellino coughed. "Oh, and, er, for the sake of completion, especially since the mission is difficult, I also found or was offered two other contracts, in case that's the way you want to go.
Client: Major Cornelia Tate, Sparkleshore Lake Garrison (Empire of the Fifhurst Crown)
Target: Choptan Megafauna
Reward: 1 Mech Right Leg Scrap, 1 Mech Left Arm Scrap, 1 Mech Scrap with Magnetic Components, Choice of Intact Component from Target
Description: Although the Empire of the Fifhurst Crown has been able to deal with megafauna attacks up until now by stretching its resources, a threat has arrived that they don't really have the ability to tackle on their own - a particularly large megafauna is stirring within the depths of Sparkleshore Lake, and has been spotted on a movement course towards the most major city around this lake, Diamond Bay. The target itself is likely to incorporate some form of diamond-based offense, which may lend it particular ability to punch through armor. It is also Medium sized, by Titan standards. However, the Titan sent won't be fighting alone - a Fifhurst Light Titan, or another mercenary if they can manage to find another suitable one, will be sent to aid in killing the megafauna before it can get off the beaches. While Major Tate doesn't have enough scrap to provide a hefty Mech reward, she does have skilled and resourced salvage teams and will offer you a choice of one of two intact components from the target, although she can't say right now what those are, obviously.
Client: Captain Gregory McNabb (14th Bannogcreag Titaneer Battalion)
Target: Cittŕ Stellata
Reward: 1 Mech Scrap with Advanced Sensor Components, 1 Destroyed Teslacoil Weapon
Description: McNabb has another contract - and he made sure to send a private invitation to the Retinue in addition to the typical semi-public advertisements, though the private invitation states that the 14th Bannogcreag Titaneer Battalion is aware that Princess Rivalla's Grand Biomechanical Retinue is a mercenary company and it will not be taken as a slight if they don't take the mission. As for the mission itself, it seems that one of the few cities of the Middle Belt, a city-state known as the Cittŕ Stellata, hasn't taken kindly to McNabb's men patrolling an area of oases they consider to be their territory, and has fired at them. McNabb would like a mercenary to teach the Cittŕ Stellata a bit of a lesson by taking apart one of the few Light Titans they've been sending out to try to catch out McNabb's men. It is stressed that this won't result in the destruction of the city, as McNabb has no interest in destroying rivals and simply wants to be able to keep the area relatively safe. As for the enemy Titan, it is expected to wield a pair of Medium, long-ranged weapons and be something of a sniper. This takes place on flat semi-savanna terrain.
Client: Duke Adebowale Olatunji (The Duchy of Adebowale)
Target: City of Ilu Adagun
Rewards: 1 Mech Torso Scrap, 1 Mech Head Scrap, 1 Mech Scrap with Ballistic Components
Description: Duke Adebowale Olatunji, Duke of the Duchy of Adebowale, is leader of a would-be polity that lies on a certain point of the large isthmus on the planet's northern hemisphere - the boundary between where the isthmus is heavily populated and where it instead makes up the sparse, alien-feuding settlements of the Northern Settlers' Alliance. Duke Adebowale wants to consolidate his power and take charge of what is of course his rightful territory, but his would-be capital city, Ilu Adagun, has stubbornly resisted takeover. Adebowale would like to hire a mercenary to finish the job of a barely-failed offensive and destroy both a damaged base, which does have some automatic defenses, albeit half-functional, and a damaged Titan. Adebowale estimates that the city has probably prioritized repairing the Titan's defensive components and the weaponry of the automatic defenses, which are in the form of a couple of turrets at the location Adebowale would have you attack.
Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan
Description: The Barely-Rivalled is often rejected among the Kingdom for its rather mundane figure and its small size, but this belies its true functionality -- the Barely-Rivalled-class of Light Titans is a very capable and pragmatically-built cyborg titan, which sports surprisingly good durability for a Titan of its light tonnage and small and compact size. Although its mobility is somewhat poor and it lacks any gimmicks beyond its ability to fold into position for storage, it mounts a respectable amount of weaponry for its size and is generally built for slugouts with vehicles and other light Titans, and it has the capacity to carry Carryable Equipment. It looks like a skinless humanoid without a face (having instead a cockpit) riddled with mechanical pistons and steel struts, making it a little bit fucking terrifying to look at.
Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laserizer 9000
Megaraptor Left Leg
Megaraptor Right Leg
Carried: Anti-Acid Shield
[1] Barely-Rivalled Torso: (Mech/Organic)
This is the core of the Barely-Rivalled Titan, and is the most durable part of the Titan, with a tough and flexible-to-physical-impact banded "ribcage" of bone and metal. It possesses a Medium Mount, connections for a Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg, and a Carryable Equipment hardpoint, but is otherwise largely unremarkable.
[1] Barely-Rivalled Native Head: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable head, except that the cockpit right in where the face would be on the skinless head is pretty disturbing.
[2] Barely-Rivalled Arm: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable arm, albeit more fragile than the torso of the Barely-Rivalled. Possesses a Small Mount. Has dexterous hands and thus can operate Carryable Equipment.
[2] Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
[1] Biomechanical Medium Railgun: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this core of metal wound around by flesh uses organically derived energy to fire off ferrous projectiles at high speed. Operates at a long range, is relatively accurate, and does good though not overwhelming damage, but it takes a long time to recharge between shots.
[1] Biomechanical Small Laser: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser. Operates at a medium-short range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much.
[1] Bio-Mechanical Small Laserizer 9000: This weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser, although even that core has had high-grade consumer electronics interspersed in it. Operates at a medium-long range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much. It also can project a very bright cone of light that rapidly changes color at short-range, dazzling enemy pilots.
[1] Anti-Acid Shield: This Carryable Shield is extremely sturdy and light, capable of performing without major damage unless exposed to very heavy fire. It blocks Torso weaponry when in use, but no more, as it is somewhat small. A mucus membrane on the shield makes the shield acid-resistant and hard to grab. The shield is surprisingly sharp, allowing the shield to be used as a vicious melee weapon.
Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
To manufacture 1 Megaraptor Leg requires: 1 Mech Scrap, 1 Organic Scrap, 2 Legs (Mech, Organic, or Mech/Organic)
Organic Torso Scrap
Organic Right Arm Scrap
Organic Left Leg Scrap
Organic Head Scrap
Organic Scrap with Regenerative Tissues
Organic Scrap with Intact Heart
Organic Scrap with Carryable Weapon Support Tube
Destroyed Spine Launcher
Corporal Mihail Andonov (Level 1)
Traits:
Snap ReflexesMissions until Level 2: 0/2
Princess Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichtyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled (Level 0)
Traits: None
Missions until Level 1: 0/1
Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichthyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled was excitable, sure. She was at times cocky, certainly - even aggressive and arrogant. But, let there be no mistake - and Rivalla indeed did not intend to let anyone get away with making it - Rivalla was not stupid. She was, in fact, stunningly self-aware for a teenager coming from a position of extreme privilege. She had to be. Rivalla knew what was going on, and she knew why she was here. She knew that she (a fifteen-year-old, then a ten-year-old) had been given a command post with the intent of making her un-alive. She knew that that same maneuver had worked on most of her siblings, and had worked for the past couple of generations. She knew that she was not some sort of incredible prodigy genius commander and that the only reason that she was alive was that the Retinue had been lucky with many of its actual commanders before she'd had the ability to interfere. So, most of the time, Rivalla let them do their thing. She made her presence known, of course, but did not actually upset the chain of command, even if it... meant that she was something of a mascot.
Most of the time.
But right now, with this mission? Right now was time for Princess Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichtyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled to make very well clear that she did have authority and regality as a Princess of the Kingdom of the Unrivalled Archaeologist - and, well, with a matter such as this, with megafauna at hand, nobody had felt like standing in the way of that for very long. She stood in the bridge in formal garb - not the completely out-there pomp and costume of an actual monarch (as if she was going to be allowed to go around like that) but a fine dress and gloves, mostly a bone white in color but for stripes of orange between various folds of fabric. She wore the most grand of the three circlets she had been able to bring with her upon leaving the planet years ago - a band of silver with rather nonstandard gems set in it - amber, zircon, and even what appeared to be spheres of gleamingly polished chrome. But what made this circlet actually stand out, of course, were the two fully formed and assembled small lizard fossils dangling from it, one on either side of her head.
And so it was that for the second time in a row, the screen set up on the wall blinked to life in a display of light and color, and the person on that screen was left to just goggle stunnedly at the fact that a fifteen-year-old-girl was standing with absolute, unyielding confidence in front of her view - a fifteen-year-old girl with bizarrely regal clothing, no less. (The person in question was a woman in a set of crisp officer's dress with a couple of ribbons who had for a split-second been wearing an expression between slight boredom and less-than-slight fatigue.) There was a moment of silence, which Rivalla let stretch on just long enough for her contact to begin a hesitant "Wh-" before she leapt in with dialogue - taking charge of the situation, she insisted! (Lanre had agreed not to interfere - it was pretty much her right to deal with megafauna, after all.)
"Hail! You stand in the presence of Princess Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichtyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled, and the company that you stand in the presence of is my Grand Biomechanical Retinue. We have graced this sector with our presence, and already we have found stunning success in our endeavors here, thoroughly performing our objective with no meaningful damage. Now, we, the unrivalled experts on megafauna, stand to find stunning success again - now, please, tell us more about your esteemed selves and this megafauna?"
The woman on the other end of the communication paused for an awkward moment - but, actually, found her footing surprisingly quickly, reverting to a well-practiced set of lines herself after... only a moment or two of hesitation. "Right... well... My name is Major Cornelia Tate, speaking on behalf of the Empire of the Fifhurst Crown, greatest of the Summit Sector - we are the suzerains of the planet, of course. Unfortunately, as matters at home have drawn our attention away to a degree, we have been forced, in what is simply a truly exceptional set of circumstances, to leave our garrisoning here lighter than is necessary to truly keep the order on Chopta. With this planet being as... difficult as it is, this does mean that there is room for the services of those such as yourselves. In the case of Sparkleshore Lake, which I garrison, we have a bit of a megafauna issue." Here, essentially everybody present on the bridge perked up.
"Not all of the strategic details are really something the hired help needs to know, I'm afraid, but the tactical situation, on the other hand, I am happy to inform you of. The lakes and oceans here on Chopta play host to megafauna with long life and gestation cycles which don't live in particularly large groups - what this means is that when attacks happen they're usually young that have hatched and are finding themselves disturbed in the process of attempting to secure new territory, or which have had their gestation cycles interrupted by industrial processes near the end. Usually, this means that they're more or less Light Titans - but diamond mining operations have recently disturbed a resting adult specimen here, and it's been coming to ravage the coastlines. Although we've been able to harass it some, we won't be able to manage a decisive engagement without your help, and it's on the path towards a major city. You and one of our Titans are going to be attacking it while it is surfaced and before it gets there - we are talking plains terrain, largely, here. We're going to choose a window for assault where it's relatively far away from the water, but as these beings are amphibious it will never be so far away that the lake will cease to be a factor. This creature seems to have been angered to an incredible degree, hence the issue, so it isn't likely to disengage entirely, but if it gets into the water, it will be much more difficult to deal with, even though it won't be fully submerged. Please lead it away or kill it beforehand."
Rivalla was feeling rather smug - she'd got through the greetings and much of the initial information, and Lanre hadn't even stepped in. Perhaps these Fifhurst Crown people simply knew how to deal with proper royalty, after all. But, naturally, there was another question to be answered - a very, very important question. "This is excellent information, and I provide my gratitude, of course. But naturally: I must know more about this wonderful creature that we are to slay. Ah, for we must know what we are to fight, yes?" Lanre had coached her on what to asked about, even if it seemed basic enough (and even, of course, if THIS question needed no coaching).
"Well... yes... of course." The Major looked at Rivalla a little strangely, and then continued. "This thing is essentially a Medium Titan, so it does have a size advantage, of course, and this means that it is going to be able to take a concerning amount of punishment from the weaponry we will be bringing to bear on it. This particular being is reptilian, and those scales will present further difficulty for ballistic weaponry - especially the types of ballistic weaponry Mech Titans usually use, as these beings have been around in the context of conflict with Mech Titans for a long, long time. However, we do at least have one advantage on our side here - this megafauna does appear to be specialized in the destruction of Medium or larger Titans, likely because we and previous garrisons have typically used these Titans. This is reflected in its weaponry - it uses a weapon which uses a spray of rocks, crude diamonds and diamond dust to do so at range, which does not have particularly lethal penetration, and a rather bizarrely diamond-saw-like weapon which should have trouble connecting with our Titans, but, well... which of course you do not want to. Otherwise, it does use a quicker and smaller bladed appendage and a spine launcher."
Satisfied, Rivalla actually didn't ask the next question Lanre needed her to for a moment, prompting him to start moving towards her a little before she remembered. "Ah, yes - what about your Titan? What can we expect of your assistance?"
"You can count on its assistance to be reliable. It is of our Harrier make, meaning that its movement is quick and reliable, so it should not be slowing you down, but the quality of its hull construction and armor are still both quite excellent and quite proprietary. It is equipped with two of our Crown Ruby Lasers, so it will be laying down fire with long uptimes, and excellent accuracy and penetration. These are Medium weapons - it has one on each arm - and it is finally equipped with a Crown Spessartite, which is a grenade launcher, Medium as well, on the torso. The rate of fire is slow to facilitate its range and power, and it is essentially a finishing weapon, so if you have any weaponry that weakens the creature's internal structure or armor, we will likely follow up on it with the Spessartite. In general, while we will look at the tactics you use and adjust accordingly, we are of course not under your command and will be attempting to strike a balance between safe range and damage with the beast."
Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan
Description: The Barely-Rivalled is often rejected among the Kingdom for its rather mundane figure and its small size, but this belies its true functionality -- the Barely-Rivalled-class of Light Titans is a very capable and pragmatically-built cyborg titan, which sports surprisingly good durability for a Titan of its light tonnage and small and compact size. Although its mobility is somewhat poor and it lacks any gimmicks beyond its ability to fold into position for storage, it mounts a respectable amount of weaponry for its size and is generally built for slugouts with vehicles and other light Titans, and it has the capacity to carry Carryable Equipment. It looks like a skinless humanoid without a face (having instead a cockpit) riddled with mechanical pistons and steel struts, making it a little bit fucking terrifying to look at.
Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laserizer 9000
Megaraptor Left Leg
Megaraptor Right Leg
Carried: Anti-Acid Shield
[1] Barely-Rivalled Torso: (Mech/Organic)
This is the core of the Barely-Rivalled Titan, and is the most durable part of the Titan, with a tough and flexible-to-physical-impact banded "ribcage" of bone and metal. It possesses a Medium Mount, connections for a Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg, and a Carryable Equipment hardpoint, but is otherwise largely unremarkable.
[1] Barely-Rivalled Native Head: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable head, except that the cockpit right in where the face would be on the skinless head is pretty disturbing.
[2] Barely-Rivalled Arm: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable arm, albeit more fragile than the torso of the Barely-Rivalled. Possesses a Small Mount. Has dexterous hands and thus can operate Carryable Equipment.
[2] Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
[1] Biomechanical Medium Railgun: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this core of metal wound around by flesh uses organically derived energy to fire off ferrous projectiles at high speed. Operates at a long range, is relatively accurate, and does good though not overwhelming damage, but it takes a long time to recharge between shots.
[1] Biomechanical Small Laser: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser. Operates at a medium-short range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much.
[1] Bio-Mechanical Small Laserizer 9000: This weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser, although even that core has had high-grade consumer electronics interspersed in it. Operates at a medium-long range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much. It also can project a very bright cone of light that rapidly changes color at short-range, dazzling enemy pilots.
[1] Anti-Acid Shield: This Carryable Shield is extremely sturdy and light, capable of performing without major damage unless exposed to very heavy fire. It blocks Torso weaponry when in use, but no more, as it is somewhat small. A mucus membrane on the shield makes the shield acid-resistant and hard to grab. The shield is surprisingly sharp, allowing the shield to be used as a vicious melee weapon.
Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
To manufacture 1 Megaraptor Leg requires: 1 Mech Scrap, 1 Organic Scrap, 2 Legs (Mech, Organic, or Mech/Organic)
Organic Torso Scrap
Organic Right Arm Scrap
Organic Left Leg Scrap
Organic Head Scrap
Organic Scrap with Regenerative Tissues
Organic Scrap with Intact Heart
Organic Scrap with Carryable Weapon Support Tube
Destroyed Spine Launcher
Corporal Mihail Andonov (Level 1)
Traits:
Snap ReflexesMissions until Level 2: 0/2
Princess Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichtyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled (Level 0)
Traits: None
Missions until Level 1: 0/1
Do not touch with bare skin.
Organic Titan parts are very versatile. All sorts of incredible weapons and devices can be crafted from the right combination of swollen muscles, pulsating organs, and flexible scales. Then you have Peers' suggestion that we melt the bones down to make glue. He seems somewhat annoyed.
On the other hand, it's not the worst idea ever. Impairing enemy mobility is a valuable trick for a Titan to have access to.
Let's do it. Some eccentric biogineering, and you can turn a Titan limb into a living glue factory. Combine that with the spine-launcher scrap from the Maruška Titan, and you got yourself a makeshift glue-launcher. It's not going to do much damage, but it can seriously hinder even beings of Titanic strength, leaving them vulnerable to attack.
The GLUE is a carryable weapon that launches spines filled with... glue... over medium-long range. On impact, the spines shatter, spraying the target with the sticky payload. Titans may find body parts sticking to other body parts (or the surroundings), joints articulating slower, or even have sensors mucked up by the adhesive goop. While the stickiness can be overcome, it should hinder mobility considerably for most targets.
GLUE spines may also be fired at the ground, to create makeshift gluetraps.
It also smells awful, for what it's worth. Might have some psychological impact on Titans with improperly sealed cockpits.
The glue will eventually degrade by itself, over the course of days/weeks.
Summary:
-Jury Rig project using:
-Organic Left Leg Scrap (converted to glue-production organ)
-Organic Scrap with Carryable Weapon Support Tube (weapon structure)
-Destroyed Spine Launcher (launching mechanism)
-Type: Carryable Weapon
-Range: medium-long
-Damage: negligible
-Effect: lowered mobility
Difficulty: Very Hard
Roll: (4+1)-2=3, Buggy Mess.
The GLUE is a project that attempted to make up for the relative ambition of its scope with the abundance of its scrap, and unfortunately did suffer some issues in the process. Whipping an entire Carryable Weapon in one go out of spare parts is normally a difficult project in its own right, but the Retinue did have the resources to make that in and of itself less of an issue, using the carryable components to make creating the weapon chassis easier and using the remains of the spine launcher in order to make achieving a long range on the weapon theoretically something of a non-issue in terms of development time, as Batari could simply cannibalize the weapon for much of the actual ballistic properties.
Creating the glue behind the eponymous GLUE, however, proved to be the most difficult aspect of the project. Creating a substance not only capable of significantly hindering an entire enemy Titan, but one that degrades so slowly upon exposure to the elements that it won't lose its effect at all during the reasonable timeframe of an engagement, is a significant feature to ask for. Bones were converted to a sort of glue factory to facilitate this, but this wasn't a natural fit and made the project difficult. Making the difficulty worse is that the project is a fully organic one, with only pieces of Organic scrap used in the construction of the weapon - meaning that it was an all-Batari project. For all her boasting, she hasn't had much experience doing that as of yet, and that made the project more difficult yet - and though she's gained experience in that now, she's also gained more mockery from Peers.
The end result is not a product devoid of anything useful, but it's something that likely can't be relied on as a centerpiece for a strategy, even suboptimally. Batari did create an entirely working and competent carryable weapon chassis, a structure of veins, muscles, and a light cage of bone capable of using a powerful peristaltic motion to launch spines at a moderately long distance and at a moderate rate of fire without any serious accuracy issues to speak of. The glue factory in the weapon is mounted in the middle of the gun, creating a notably prominent nodule. The real issues come in with the payload - the spines the gun fires are hollow and contain the glue substance, their shells as thin as possible to maximize the amount of glue that can be fit in the long and narrow projectiles. Combined with the peristaltic motion that the gun uses to fire its projectile, this means that there's a very significant chance that the projectile will break inside of the gun, sealing it up. This isn't a majority chance, but it's significant enough that deployment means likely having to deal with it once or twice. Furthermore, the glue in question is not at all as long-lasting as intended. Thankfully, the glue is at least powerful enough to have most of the effect we were looking for, but it has a tendency to harden after adhering, and will crumble away after a couple dozen seconds. This does at least mean that the jams inside the weapon clear up in a similar amount of time - once the glue hardens up and crumbles, the motion of the weapon is well capable of expelling it.
Incidentally, the glue actually has a sort of pleasant lavender smell. Somehow.
Goop Launcher of Unparalleled Encumbrance: (Organic)
This Carryable Weapon is a rifle designed to fire spines filled with encumbering glue over a moderately long distance at enemy Titans, shattering and covering joints and limbs. The gun is genuinely functional, firing with decent accuracy and moderate fate of fire at that moderately long range, but the ammunition is a total disaster. It's not likely to get more than a couple of shots without the thin-shelled spines breaking inside of the gun and jamming it, and although the glue is actually reasonably powerful, it only lasts for around twenty to thirty seconds total before hardening, growing brittle, and crumbling away.
Once upon a time, the Kingdom was about Archaeology (specifically of the Unrivalled variety). I mean, it still is. But... well, it's good to get back to your roots, you know?
The DIGGER is what happens when you give a raving mad brilliant scientist the blueprints to excavation equipment and tell them to build an automatic weapon. Put simply, it is a rapid-fire weapon that fires tiny drills at things. It is not, in fact, a gatling gun, as it only has the one barrel. Poetic license.
The gun part of the DIGGER is fairly simple. Drill-bullets are loaded from a magazine into the chamber, and fired using chemical propellants. The RoF is not excessive- a mere 120RPM.
The drill-bullets consist of a cartridge containing the chemical propellant, and a drill-shaped object with a small internal reservoir of propellant. The internal propellant is slowly spent as the drill flies through the air, directed out of vents at the back that both accelerate the projectile and make it spin. This gives the drills a slightly better range than might be expected, and the spinning part... well, it definitely gives them a more stable trajectory, improving accuracy, and according to Peers it also lets them penetrate armour better. I'm not sure it works that way, to be honest, but let's just give him this one.
Summary:
-Blueprint
-Type: Small Weapon | Mech
-Range: medium
-Damage: yes (normal)
-Other: More accurate than the average kinetic projectile. Allegedly superior AP.
Difficulty: Normal
Roll: 3+3=6, Average.
Although the DIGGER did suffer one of the difficulty issues that the GLUE project suffered - specifically, that Peers was left on his own for this project, with only Mech work involved in the DIGGER, it appears that Peers managed to adapt and survive to a much better degree than did Batari. (Batari insists that this is only because he had the luxury of sitting around and working on blueprints practically the entire month rather, rather than any real challenging work at hand, damn it). The nature of the project itself also helped significantly, of course - it's a lot easier at base to put together the blueprint for a smaller project than to jury-rig together a particularly massive one. Given the commitment to accuracy and armor-piercing, it could well have been possible for the possible to be harder than it was, but with the attempts to make the projectiles armor-piercing as explicitly half-assed as they were, that was just barely dodged.
The Diabolically Ingenious Gatling Gun of Extreme Ravaging itself is a sort of funny-looking little weapon - with half of the propulsion of the projectiles and most of the stabilization coming from the internal stores themselves, the barrel isn't terribly long, instead being sort of a wide and short little "chonky" thing in order to accommodate the fairly large projectiles. The weapons create a little bit of a raised surface, as the large magazine does need a bit of extra space. In terms of the weapon performance, as the specifications lay out, the range and rate of fire are nothing special but nothing terrible either. The weapon fires at moderate range, fires twice a second, and deals enough damage that it will significantly outpace the standard lasers at that rate of fire. In terms of accuracy, the DIGGER maintains solid accuracy, as both the direct accuracy and the projectile velocity of the weapon are significantly aided by the internal propulsion of the projectile. Although this might not theoretically be the case at very short range, it's also hard to imagine it mattering there.
In terms of armor-piercing... well, having a drill that is propelling itself with a spinning motion is still not quite the same thing as a drill that is being moved by an external mechanical force which is able to consistently force it past resistance. Although the drill-bit construction and spinning propulsion of the projectiles do actually allow the DIGGER a competent level of armor-piercing ability against "skin"-like thin armor, where it only takes that initial damage and initial carry-through to matter, the projectiles are not able to freely burrow through steel or equivalent materials, especially given that their fuel supplies aren't infinite and that they'll become rapidly stuck. For this reason, against most armor of reasonable thickness, the DIGGER has no particular armor-piercing ability.
Diabolical Ingenious Gatling Gun of Extreme Ravaging: (Mech)
A fat little automatic Small Mountable Weapon that fires tiny drills (but "tiny drills" is REALLY relative for giant behemoths of at minimum 20-25 feet). The weapon fires at a sedate 120 RPM but has a sustained damage rate that significantly outdoes a standard Biomechanical Small Laser. It fires at up to a moderate range with a high level of accuracy and projectile velocity due to the gas-based internal spinning propulsion of each little drill. Has moderately strong armor-piercing capabilities against very thin armors like "skins", but none against thicker armor.
To manufacture 2 DIGGERs requires: 3 Mech Scrap, or 1 Mech Scrap and 1 Destroyed Mech Weapon Scrap, or 1 Mech Scrap and 1 fuel-related Mech Scrap
“Hey Batari, have you seen my spare cybernetic eye? Someone said they saw you with it.”
“Sorry Peers, I haven’t seen it. I swear on my liver.”
“...you and I both know you have two livers.”
“And we both know that if someone told Rivalla who took her Holographirizer you’d be on footstool duty for a month.”
“...fine. But don’t think I’ll forget about this.”
Using some non-essential cybernetics, Batari has improved the efficacy of our other Biomechanical Laser, boosting the damage by a small but not insignificant amount.
Difficulty: Easy
Roll: (4+5)+1=10, Superior!
"...Lanre, Batari and Peers have been leaving eyes in each others' rooms."
"I... what?"
"..."
"..."
"..."
"...just let me know if it becomes a larger problem.
Despite the continuing escalation of relations between Batari and Peers, they actually came together to do really good work here. Through using some of the electronics from Peers' eye (and some of his spares) and through aping its structure and making tweaks to both the electronics involved and the biological power core to prevent this from frying the laser, much of the capacity of the laser's systems has been improved, ensuring that the energy of more photons can be packed into the laser and that its output is accordingly significantly stronger. The range of the weapon isn't increased - this upgrade is all about damage, and it's a competent damage upgrade indeed. While the output of the weapon doesn't measure up to that of a medium laser, and isn't quite close, the laser now does about as much damage as the DIGGER, or most small ballistic weaponry, will.
Biomechanical Small Lasereyeser: (Mech/Organic)
Almost as generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser. Operates at a medium-short range, does a medium-small amount of damage (comparable to the DIGGER), and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much.
Pilot:
Tactics: One to two sentences.
Titan: Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan - Ripoff Raptor (Shortened Callsign: Ripper)
Titan Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Lasereyeser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laserizer 9000
Megaraptor Left Leg
Megaraptor Right Leg
Carried: Anti-Acid Shield
Barely-Rivalled-class Light Titan
Description: The Barely-Rivalled is often rejected among the Kingdom for its rather mundane figure and its small size, but this belies its true functionality -- the Barely-Rivalled-class of Light Titans is a very capable and pragmatically-built cyborg titan, which sports surprisingly good durability for a Titan of its light tonnage and small and compact size. Although its mobility is somewhat poor and it lacks any gimmicks beyond its ability to fold into position for storage, it mounts a respectable amount of weaponry for its size and is generally built for slugouts with vehicles and other light Titans, and it has the capacity to carry Carryable Equipment. It looks like a skinless humanoid without a face (having instead a cockpit) riddled with mechanical pistons and steel struts, making it a little bit fucking terrifying to look at.
Parts: Barely-Rivalled Torso
-Mounted Equipment: Medium: Biomechanical Medium Railgun
Barely-Rivalled Native Head
Barely-Rivalled Native Left Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Lasereyeser
Barely-Rivalled Native Right Arm
-Mounted Equipment: Small: Biomechanical Small Laserizer 9000
Megaraptor Left Leg
Megaraptor Right Leg
Carried: Anti-Acid Shield
[1] Barely-Rivalled Torso: (Mech/Organic)
This is the core of the Barely-Rivalled Titan, and is the most durable part of the Titan, with a tough and flexible-to-physical-impact banded "ribcage" of bone and metal. It possesses a Medium Mount, connections for a Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg, and a Carryable Equipment hardpoint, but is otherwise largely unremarkable.
[1] Barely-Rivalled Native Head: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable head, except that the cockpit right in where the face would be on the skinless head is pretty disturbing.
[2] Barely-Rivalled Arm: (Mech/Organic)
A fairly unremarkable arm, albeit more fragile than the torso of the Barely-Rivalled. Possesses a Small Mount. Has dexterous hands and thus can operate Carryable Equipment.
[2] Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
[1] Biomechanical Medium Railgun: (Mech/Organic)
As generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this core of metal wound around by flesh uses organically derived energy to fire off ferrous projectiles at high speed. Operates at a long range, is relatively accurate, and does good though not overwhelming damage, but it takes a long time to recharge between shots.
[1] Biomechanical Small Lasereyeser: (Mech/Organic)
Almost as generic as weaponry gets in the Kingdom, this weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser. Operates at a medium-short range, does a medium-small amount of damage (comparable to the DIGGER), and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much.
[1] Bio-Mechanical Small Laserizer 9000: (Mech/Organic) This weapon looks almost entirely metallic but for the core of flesh in its innards that powers the laser, although even that core has had high-grade consumer electronics interspersed in it. Operates at a medium-long range, does small but not tiny damage, and is extremely accurate, but can overheat if used too much. It also can project a very bright cone of light that rapidly changes color at short-range, dazzling enemy pilots.
[1] Anti-Acid Shield: (Mech/Organic) This Carryable Shield is extremely sturdy and light, capable of performing without major damage unless exposed to very heavy fire. It blocks Torso weaponry when in use, but no more, as it is somewhat small. A mucus membrane on the shield makes the shield acid-resistant and hard to grab. The shield is surprisingly sharp, allowing the shield to be used as a vicious melee weapon.
[1] Goop Launcher of Unparalleled Encumbrance: (Organic)
This Carryable Weapon is a rifle designed to fire spines filled with encumbering glue over a moderately long distance at enemy Titans, shattering and covering joints and limbs. The gun is genuinely functional, firing with decent accuracy and moderate fate of fire at that moderately long range, but the ammunition is a total disaster. It's not likely to get more than a couple of shots without the thin-shelled spines breaking inside of the gun and jamming it, and although the glue is actually reasonably powerful, it only lasts for around twenty to thirty seconds total before hardening, growing brittle, and crumbling away.
Megaraptor Leg: (Mech/Organic)
A double-jointed raptor leg, the Megaraptor Leg offers decently high-speed and agile movement, enough toughness to take some firepower without losing functionality (although they are not highly armored and are vulnerable to heavy firepower), a small jumping capacity which is more effective the faster the Titan is running, and melee strikes that are somewhat risky and not effective vs. heavy armor, but are very much effective vs. light armor.
To manufacture 1 Megaraptor Leg requires: 1 Mech Scrap, 1 Organic Scrap, 2 Legs (Mech, Organic, or Mech/Organic)
Diabolical Ingenious Gatling Gun of Extreme Ravaging: (Mech)
A fat little automatic Small Mountable Weapon that fires tiny drills (but "tiny drills" is REALLY relative for giant behemoths of at minimum 20-25 feet). The weapon fires at a sedate 120 RPM but has a sustained damage rate that significantly outdoes a standard Biomechanical Small Laser. It fires at up to a moderate range with a high level of accuracy and projectile velocity due to the gas-based internal spinning propulsion of each little drill. Has moderately strong armor-piercing capabilities against very thin armors like "skins", but none against thicker armor.
To manufacture 2 DIGGERs requires: 3 Mech Scrap, or 1 Mech Scrap and 1 Destroyed Mech Weapon Scrap, or 1 Mech Scrap and 1 fuel-related Mech Scrap
Organic Torso Scrap
Organic Right Arm Scrap
Organic Head Scrap
Organic Scrap with Regenerative Tissues
Organic Scrap with Intact Heart
Corporal Mihail Andonov (Level 1)
Traits:
Snap ReflexesMissions until Level 2: 0/2
Princess Rivalla Pterodactyl Ichtyosaur Bastilodon the Unrivalled (Level 0)
Traits: None
Missions until Level 1: 0/1