Bay 12 Games Forum

The ChiTen Project (3): TricMagic, Kashyyk, NUKE9.13
Seeking the Sky (1): TCk
Chargers (1): Oakrose905
Cetric Wave Whalelocks ():
CW Pistol Mk. 12 "Lightbay" (1): TricMagic
Leviathan ():
Turtilus (4): Oakrose905, TCk, Kashyyk, NUKE9.13

Borgs and boats.

Currently, our cyborg tech is Wovenmen. That is, extremely expensive, not very effective. There's a lot of room to improve, and we have Toll's notes and Mutaxol to do it with. Also probably maybe hopefully a +1 for tying in eldritch forces? Even with all that, the last attempt at this was Impossible, so there might still be a penalty to the roll. But that's also a reason to do it now- better to front-load the hard stuff (since there are no pressing concerns at the moment, this is the time for radical innovation that we can build on once the fighting starts). We're almost certainly going to do something like this eventually either way, given the amount of precursor work we have.

As the more water-aligned faction, it would be downright shameful if we didn't show up to the fight with a fancy boat of some kind. More seriously, 5/9 regions overall, and 3/3 regions where the fighting starts, feature significant rivers, so riverine combat is going to be relevant. I'm not totally sold on the whole Entwined Ore thing, but I can't really think of an alternative right now.

As an alternative to the whale oil, may i suggest we do a telegraph? Jerick proposed a revision for it earlier as a revision of the Chains.

edit: improper attribution. Also, the original rev was both telegraph and voice but i think telegraph is a good start.

What features would it have to make it better than a regular telegraph? Or, you know, a phone. It's 1914.

Mutaxol:
The Twelvers ruled the northern half of the continent, but some of their citizens... began to question their allegiance to distant coastal cities. Of course, society was dependant upon whale-stuff imported from said coastal cities, so most people recognised that rocking the boat would do them no good. But those who didn't caused trouble, especially as increased industrialisation led to inland regions gaining greater prosperity- they began to argue that they could survive alone. Occasionally, they needed to be reminded of the benefits of cooperation. A bullet to the head served well to clear their thoughts.
Furthest south, the Twelve Bay Confederation did not take any risks. An uprising on the border could potentially be exploited by the southern barbarians to expand their territory, so forces were constantly stationed in the region to discourage disloyalty and quickly put down anyone who didn't get the message. Naturally, these permanent armies could only be led by Wovenmen. Which... was a problem.
The Wovenmen, pinnacles of the Protectors, felt the pressure of modernity just like everyone else. With thunderarms becoming more and more efficient, their status as Protectors became more and more symbolic- their crude augmentations no longer provided an unbeatable advantage on the battlefield. In the Twelve Bays themselves, this was harder to notice- not a lot of conflicts in which their inadequacy could be demonstrated. In the south, though, it became glaringly obvious.
So, after many centuries of making only incremental improvements to their implants, a council of Wovenmen finally permitted radical new research in the field.
MECHANICS
The scientific establishment was unleashed. They demystified the Wovenmen, isolating the substance that allowed their crude techniques to work at all. Dubbed Mutaxol, extracted from Whaleblood through alchemical processes, the substance enabled flesh to be shaped and bonded to other materials. This allowed for new, safer, more extensive, more powerful implants to be designed. These implants were developed in the border regions, both because that allowed them to quickly be tested, and because it kept them as far away from the existing Wovenmen as possible- though they had recognised the need for reform, they didn't like it.
Whaleblood tattoos made way for Orichalcum implants that gave far greater control over cetricity. Crude flesh-pockets were replaced by sterilised injection ports, where alchemical serums could be safely introduced to the body in controlled dosages. Some even created entire prosthetic limbs, connected directly to the nervous system, with full range of motion- and some extra hidden fun stuff, like built-in whalelocks, blades, or ichor truncheons. They even- at the insistence of the Wovenmen- designed improved self-destruction devices, both more reliable (harder to trigger accidentally) and more potent.

When the Wovenmen elders saw what science had wrought, they were forced to acknowledge its superiority. Future generations of Wovenmen would adopt more and more of these innovations, reclaiming their position as peak Protectors. 

MoP says that unless we define otherwise, the center of the map will be a stateless frontier. This bugs me, so I wrote a short thing defining that


Edit: Dropping this, since I appear to have misintepreted MoP's intentions.

Powder Miner was concerned that having a hybrid armoury of railguns and gunpowder could get messy, that our attention would get split, or more likely that we'd simply not do much with gunpowder. Thus, a version of the whalelock that phases out gunpowder weaponry:

Whalelock Rifle (supplant gunpowder edition)
Zappo-Tech. This is the name given to the many cetricity-utilising devices that were created by early-modern Twelve-Bay scientists.
For many, the biggest Zappo-Tech breakthrough was the Whalelock Rifle. Though termed a rifle at the time, due to its accuracy, it would later be referred to as a railgun. Two rails (made from treated whalebone) propelled an iron projectile to considerable speeds- greatly exceeding that of a musket-ball. Power was provided by a canister of Ichor. Though it could be carried by a single soldier, it was quite bulky, therefore was typically mounted on a bipod when in use.
Though contemporaneous with early gunpowder weaponry, it initially had its own niche- too expensive (and bulky) to arm every soldier with, but more accurate at long range. It is worth noting that, while impressive at the time, the first Whalelocks were very primitive, and 'more accurate at long range' meant 'could conceivably hit a target at 400 meters'.
Thus, armies of the Twelve Bay Republican Theocracy dabbled in gunpowder-armed troops, the technology having been introduced from abroad. However, as time went on and the Whalelock became more compact, muskets began to get phased out. Come the age of pike-and-shot, the 'shot' was almost éxclusively Whalelocks.

[See Whalelock Rifle for lore]

This post contains lore for entertainment purposes only. It is not required reading. Not that any lore is required reading, but this is extra not required.

I mention the Twelve Guarantees in the lore of the Whalelock Rifle post. The idea is that it was a Magna Carta-esque proto-constitution, with the first version having twelve clauses, hence the name (and, uh, in case it isn't obvious, it's a reference to the fact that we're guaranteed to roll a 12 this turn).
Anyway, I was thinking about what the actual contents would be. I've put together a list, although I haven't given it that much thought, so don't take this as set in stone or anything.

I reckon we should advance prosthetics in the revision (fixing the Wovenmen, essentially), and use our design to break into a new field.
Motors are a bit bland to my taste, not to mention MoP has all-but vetoed the Cetrical Revolution proposal as it is now.
Railguns are something we will want in the game proper, so laying the foundations now will be useful. I expect it to be difficult, but we have a guaranteed 12, so we definitely don't want something easier than Normal.

Tewwibwe cuwse (U)w(U):
medics ():
Implantation and Prosthesis: ():
The Cetrical Revolution (1): Doomblade
Whalelock Rifle: (3): Maxim, Jerick, NUKE9.13
Liesel limbs (1): TricMagic

Though, mind if I repurpose Mimatqui. Seems an inventor could fit mine too just as easily.

Everyone must use Mimatqui.