You are a mercenary at the apex of the mech pilot pyramid. You are a dog of the corporations, their hound against chaos. Your newest contract: defend half a planet from its revolutionary other half.
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Big Metal Hounds - Mecha Mercenary Quest
- Thread starter lelenoi
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1: Entry
- Location
- Spess
You are a Lynx.
You are a cyborg. You are a pilot. You are a war machine. You are the result of a twelve-year-long project to create the next generation of mech pilots by leapfrogging cybernetics and mech technology at the same time. You were adopted from an orphanage, parents lost to a brushfire conflict on the backwater world of Volta, and brought into the LINKS Program.
You were schooled. You were trained. More than half your brain has been scooped out and replaced by techno-organic filament. Your spine teems with nanomachines. You, and a lot of other kids like you, were made into the best mech pilots in the known galaxy.
You were given the best augmentations. The best equipment. The best mechs, devised by the greatest minds focused together on pushing forward mech technology to new heights. Your education, your equipment, your life was funded by a conglomerate of the most powerful defense companies in existence. An ecosystem of investments and output rendered you the most potent killing machines in the history of conventional warfare.
You are a product.
An expensive product made for an expensive job. War is eternal, and so is your job security. You have been on active duty for ten years. Your feet have touched the dry bones of eleven worlds. Your services are always in demand; few can say they've turned the fate of whole countries by pure slaughter.
That is what it means to be a Lynx.
You could leave. You always could. You've known Lynxes who did. You don't know them anymore—their contracts severed, their augmentations burned, their faces lost in the churn of the workforce. They are now nobodies.
Better to be a Lynx than nobody.
=v=
You approach your twelfth world.
Arendita. Sixty-eight percent water, thirty-two percent land, and fifty-one percent of it owned by revolutionary forces.
The ruling planetary concern opened up mercenary contracts fairly late. Your company was contracted only recently, and now you board an expedition to the planet at a point where the problem's grown too far to be controlled.
Whole continents are under revolutionary sway. The independence forces proclaim a new government, a new constitution, new ideals in defiance of mankind's commonality. Millions march to take what they can and burn the rest to ash.
Your contract is to stop them.
You and your team ready your mechs, board them. You march into drop pods and let the guidance of the warship hurl you all down into the atmosphere. You glimpse your next deployment—black and yellow surrounded by oceans of red, shrouded in dark hurricanes—and breathe calm in the communion of your mech. Just another deployment.
The drop pod's camera tilts up just in time to watch a spear of light harpoon your warship from bow to stern. Then the fire engulfs you.
=v=
There you are, cocooned in the dark after the cameras retracted for protection against reentry. The drop pod shakes hard, as if you were gripped by the hand of God and he was trying to make you burst like a soda can. Ionization kills comms and the only sensory data left is the computer in your mind's eye scrolling estimated telemetry data downward while you plummet like a meteor.
Rewind: the ship you were on is likely totaled. A direct hit from a planetary defense battery would've shredded it inside and out. For all you know, you're falling in a rain of debris and the dead getting a reentry cremation. No way to tell—can't even feel anything pinging off the pod's hull with the way it's shaking now—but there's one thing you can focus on.
You've been suckered.
The briefing had made it clear that this was supposed to be a fast insertion at the insistence of Arendita Planetary Concern; a rapid deployment of reinforcements to bolster the flagging frontlines. A doable mission, but one made infinitely more difficult by all the planetary defense batteries.
The briefing had been illustrative—little identified dots on a holographic globe, available lines of surface-to-space fire projected out of them. The enemy had put captured industry to good use and pumped out enough batteries to turn most of the sky into a shooting gallery. The Kessler storm of what used to be orbital yards and battleships attested to that pretty clearly.
Rapid insertion had called for the fleet to pop in via FTL right at the edge of the atmosphere, offload as many troops and cargo shuttles as they could while the batteries moved to intercept, and then jump out before too many ships were swatted.
A fine plan, were you not getting killed mere minutes after arrival.
Consequences: Command and control will be in disarray. The enemy has the initiative and, in your experience, they're probably already moving. You're going to have fewer friendlies than you'd like, and you'd bet a cat the dirtside situation is going to be very different from the original briefing.
In the dark of the drop pod, you fix your mind's eye on the ETA counting down and wait.
=v=
Mesosphere turns to stratosphere. Ionization levels off, heat dies, and all that's left cloying to your pod is whistling, thickening air.
You have a brief window where you should be all clear, so you try your radio. Switching to friendly lines yields only panic, confusion, and queries that die in static. Possibility you were heard is near zero, and you're not going to be able to talk anytime soon.
Worse, you can't raise anyone else in your team. They were meant to be on the same vector you were. Either they're far off course, they've hit dirt already…or they've already bought the farm.
You need to find them.
The pod's cameras turn on again and gracefully link their sight with yours.
Blackness. An expanse of thickening grey wisps spreads below you, a great quilted blanket laden with holes, rimmed by roiling winds gathering energy. Through them, you see the world below, a land covered in dirt and soil colored like basalt and pumice, carved into undulating dunes as tall as buildings, their peaks crested with the brief sparkling flashes of reactor detonations.
Along the horizon, bearing north-east-east, are the largest thunderheads you've ever seen in your life. They are cumulonimbus titans of darkness chaining along each other's shoulders to form a wall that swallows the skies. Great veins of lightning crawl along their flanks, and max magnification lets you see small things swirling in and out of them in currents—rocks, black as obsidian, flying around in great streams.
You plunge into the clouds below.
Turbulence batters your pod. J-particle counter ticks higher and higher by the second; you're plunging into a sea of electronic jamming. Camera view turns grey and it's like looking into fog. Those times when the clouds let up, you see flaring lights. Rocket thrusters? Mechs dancing in the sky? Too distant, visibility too low for proper visual, no way to tell.
Then the worst of it lets up, visibility expands, and you witness an aerial battlecruiser soaring through the clouds.
A cliff face of metal batters its way out of the grey like a whale emerging from murky depths. Row upon row of anti-air beam turrets along its dorsal and keel flash with life, casting bolts against a swarm of mechs buzzing around it like gnats. Its entire hull is painted orange and black in tiger stripes, gaudy and pompous colors were it not for the open flaming wounds gouged upon its exterior.
Recall: Arendita Concern had been clear that their forces would be friendly blue and red.
Assessment: Chance of success against an aerial battlecruiser without backup or support is low.
Conclusion: You need to find your teammates.
The pod's sensors scream a high-priority alert just in time for twin bolts to flash by you.
A near-miss, close enough that the pod shrieks warnings about temperature spikes and exterior hull damage; part of the pod's been slagged from the heat. You turn the camera towards the source, maximize magnification, and spot your assailant emerging from the clouds.
Mech. Small, lightweight, two beam guns trained on you, burning hard your way.
Orange and black in tiger stripes.
You tell the pod to open and it obliges. The whole bottom of the pod blooms wide like a flower and you drop out just in time for the bandit to find its mark and strike the pod dead-on. The pod explodes above you. Fire, molten metal, and pressure waves patter off the energetic scintillation of your shield like rain on an umbrella.
A burst of thrust from your arms and legs twists your whole body around. In an instant, you've aligned your nose to the target. Another instant, another thought, and the rest of your thrusters hit max acceleration, sending you rocketing at your opponent.
What kind of mech do you have? How are you going to use it to wipe them out?
[] Your Etzel is a monster of a mech, big enough to pack extra-powerful shields and thrusters. You'll barrel this fucker head on, take whatever hit comes your way and wipe them out.
[] Your Beom is a creature of speed and agility, lighter-framed but all the better for it. Their shots aren't worth a damn if they can't hit you.
[] Your Cazador is a tool of precision. You outrange them, you can just zap them like a laser against a fly.
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2: First Blood
- Location
- Spess
[X] Your Beom is a creature of speed and agility, lighter-framed but all the better for it. Their shots aren't worth a damn if they can't hit you.
You've seen it so many times you've lost count. You're soaring like a rocket, a straight beeline towards them and, instead of going evasive, they take the time to readjust their aim. It makes sense from their perspective; you're on a predictable vector, they trust their skill and fire control to lead them true. If you flew like them, you'd be blown out of the sky like a clay pigeon.
You don't fly like them.
The moment their beam guns flash, you've already boosted out of the way. There's nothing but many meters of cold air between you and blazing bolts. Before they can readjust, you've boosted again and their shots pass through where you were.
Again and again they try, burning precious seconds trying to nail you while the distance shrinks. It's the gut instinct of someone who hasn't quite cottoned on to what they're seeing, hasn't reached the part of their brain that remembers the word Lynx.
Then they swing their limbs out, thrusters pointed downwards, and start climbing.
Panic response–get distance, get altitude, regain the advantage.
Predictable.
You boost, twist, and follow their vector. You're both rockets, rising on fire and contrails, and they're raining down more bolts that you dodge with ease.
The maneuvers, the sudden and sharp vector changes you're pulling, have no finesse or grace to them; you're simply hurling yourself across air with bone-crushing force. You can't feel any of that, not when you're in communion.
But they can.
Then you get the moment you've been waiting for.
The bandit gives one last shot that goes wide before their limbs go limp. Attitude changes, trajectory adjusts from straight climb to an arc, and you're looking at their back like they're splayed out at the surface of a pool. The pilot has lost control, consciousness hammered to the floor by gravity.
A weakness you don't have.
It's a quick kill. You pop your energy blade from your arm, let the solid pillar of light and heat take form, and hold it out as you make a pass.
For an instant, their shield sparkles as a curving wall coalescing where your blade makes contact, trying to push it away. Then the shield cracks.
You cut the bandit across the waist. The followup reactor detonation is just pressure wave on your shields.
Splash one.
But if you know the enemy, there's always more than one. You sweep the skies with a spin just in time for high-priority warnings to scream.
More bandits burst from the clouds, inbound on you, one at your nine o'clock and two at your three.
You boost and dodge the initial hail of energy bolts coming your way–they zoom by close enough to singe your shields and the followup rain forces you to commit to more erratic dodging.
You know this tactic: close on you like two jaws, use their beam guns to limit your movement, then close in for the kill. Textbook.
Mid-spin, you draw your beam rifle from your back. It is long, sleek, and trades rate of fire for a good solid punch.
You're not going to be suppressing the enemy with it, but you don't need to.
The loner at your nine comes in faster than the pair at three. Its limbs are out, ready to jet it out of blade range and bank around you during its pass.
You don't let it.
You snap off a shot. The long beam rams home against its shield. As the shield bursts apart in a flash of particles, as the bandit's limb thrusters roar to life to start panic dodging, you boost towards them.
One pass, one slice, splash two.
Before the reactor detonation fully disperses, you've already twisted around, brought the beam rifle to bear against where you remember the pair at three were, and fired again.
The fire and smoke evaporate, and you find your shot missed. The pair had already begun banking away in opposite directions and your shot passed between them.
You finish the pair quickly. Separated as they are, held back by the need to bank around, they're too far to help each other when you fall on one of them. Their aim is no match for your quickness; a shot from your beam rifle breaks open their shields and your followup blade strike turns the pilot to fried meat.
You kick off the dead mech, let its corpse plummet to the earth, and rocket in the opposite direction to the final bandit.
Your cameras had kept track of their turn, trying to make a run against you. You snap off a shot with the beam rifle and it stops.
Stops in mid-air, seized by true panic. Its limbs spasm in all directions, trying to burn away from you, trying to arrest its imminent fall.
By the time it's steadied itself again to climb, you've passed your blade through its midsection, through its reactor.
Splash four.
You keep your cameras wide and scanning for any more inbound bandits. Meanwhile, you're assessing where your team could be. For all that they're likely scattered after reentry, you know your team. You know what they prefer. You know what they're likely doing, where they're likely going to be. You just need to start searching.
How will you look?
[] You need information. You need the bigger picture. Search for friendly locals and make contact. Maybe they know where Rhone and the others are. (Bigger Picture, 2d6. Risky. 2-segment clock)
[] Dive and search the ground. Missy likes getting herself entangled in furballs too much. If there's any place she'd be, it's with the ground pounders. (Speed is Armor, 3d6. Risky. 2-segment clock)
[] Climb and sweep the higher altitudes. Ganges always fell back on observation when things went sideways, you'll find him somewhere up there. (Standard Sensoria, 1d6. Safe. 2-segment clock)
So I bet you're wondering what the roll was for and what all these words in the choices mean. They're mechanics! Not mine though. For this quest, I'll be using a stripped-down version of CAT SRD (v5.5), a system created by Kingfisher over on the Fiction.live website, which itself is a heavily modified version of Blades in the Dark.
For this system, you roll a pool of d6 dice. You take the single highest roll of the dice (e.g. the 6 that was rolled above) as the result. The results for a 1-3 are failure (bad things happen, take damage and deal no damage), a 4-5 net you a mixed success (success with a complication, good and bad things happen, take damage and deal damage), and a 6 gives a straightforward success (only good things happen, deal damage but take no damage). If you have more than one 6, you get a critical success (something else good happens, deal more damage, or get some other advantage).
The main stats you'll be rolling are Proficiencies and Skills. The Proficiencies in this quest are Power, Agility, Tactics, and Awareness. Accompanying them are Skills, which are specific to each character.
Since you ride the Beom, your assigned Proficiencies and Skills look like this:
Power – 1
Each number, each point, represents how many d6 you will roll. The different points between the two are caused by Skills and Proficiencies existing at a 2:1 ratio. In the majority of cases, you will be rolling your Skills, but in cases where a Skill wouldn't apply, you will be rolling the associated Proficiency instead.
Skills and Proficiencies represent approaches to a decision. For example, if you wanted to be a decoy for anti-air fire, you would roll Speed is Armor. But if you wanted to push through the anti-air fire to eliminate the AA guns as quickly as possible, you would roll using Assault Rush.
Now, on to clocks. CAT SRD uses a lot of progress clocks, a way of counting down to some effect. Every clock is divided into between 2 and 8 segments that have to be completed to achieve their effect. Completing a segment requires achieving successes on dice rolls. The number of points in a Skill determines how many segments are completed on a success.
For example, defeating these four enemy mechs was a trivial task. I set a 2 segment clock for it. Since you have a 3 in Speed is Armor, a 3d6 roll was required. The highest result was 6, a straightforward success. Since the Skill had 3 points, the clock's 2 segments were completed instantly.
Now, on to positions. Every approach you take is associated with one of four positions: Safe, Risky, Desperate, and Lethal.
A Safe position means that if you fail, you might be able to try again or avoid dire consequences.
A Risky position means that if you get mixed results or fail, complications will ensue, and you will be put in a Desperate position until you try a different approach. You will also take Stress, and you might take a Wound, but I will explain those when they become relevant.
A Desperate position means that if you get mixed results or fail, serious complications ensue and you will be reduced to a Lethal position. You will also take several Wounds. A success means you improve your position to Risky.
A Lethal position means that if you get a failure, you will get a Wound, suffer multiple consequences, or simply die. A success means you claw back to a Desperate position.
Now you should be able to read the choices listed above. They are not an accurate reflection of what Skills you would use or how long the clocks should be–most of these rolls would just be Awareness and the clocks should have more segments–but for now, I'd rather keep pressing on and demonstrate variety. The full package of mission clocks and varying approaches will open up once you've gotten your team back.
There are other mechanics to introduce, like Toughness and Stress and negative progression clocks and Gear, but I'll explain them when they come.
Special thanks to @Mechasaurian for giving the post a lookover.
You've seen it so many times you've lost count. You're soaring like a rocket, a straight beeline towards them and, instead of going evasive, they take the time to readjust their aim. It makes sense from their perspective; you're on a predictable vector, they trust their skill and fire control to lead them true. If you flew like them, you'd be blown out of the sky like a clay pigeon.
You don't fly like them.
The moment their beam guns flash, you've already boosted out of the way. There's nothing but many meters of cold air between you and blazing bolts. Before they can readjust, you've boosted again and their shots pass through where you were.
Again and again they try, burning precious seconds trying to nail you while the distance shrinks. It's the gut instinct of someone who hasn't quite cottoned on to what they're seeing, hasn't reached the part of their brain that remembers the word Lynx.
Then they swing their limbs out, thrusters pointed downwards, and start climbing.
Panic response–get distance, get altitude, regain the advantage.
Predictable.
You boost, twist, and follow their vector. You're both rockets, rising on fire and contrails, and they're raining down more bolts that you dodge with ease.
The maneuvers, the sudden and sharp vector changes you're pulling, have no finesse or grace to them; you're simply hurling yourself across air with bone-crushing force. You can't feel any of that, not when you're in communion.
But they can.
Then you get the moment you've been waiting for.
The bandit gives one last shot that goes wide before their limbs go limp. Attitude changes, trajectory adjusts from straight climb to an arc, and you're looking at their back like they're splayed out at the surface of a pool. The pilot has lost control, consciousness hammered to the floor by gravity.
A weakness you don't have.
It's a quick kill. You pop your energy blade from your arm, let the solid pillar of light and heat take form, and hold it out as you make a pass.
For an instant, their shield sparkles as a curving wall coalescing where your blade makes contact, trying to push it away. Then the shield cracks.
You cut the bandit across the waist. The followup reactor detonation is just pressure wave on your shields.
Splash one.
But if you know the enemy, there's always more than one. You sweep the skies with a spin just in time for high-priority warnings to scream.
More bandits burst from the clouds, inbound on you, one at your nine o'clock and two at your three.
You boost and dodge the initial hail of energy bolts coming your way–they zoom by close enough to singe your shields and the followup rain forces you to commit to more erratic dodging.
You know this tactic: close on you like two jaws, use their beam guns to limit your movement, then close in for the kill. Textbook.
Mid-spin, you draw your beam rifle from your back. It is long, sleek, and trades rate of fire for a good solid punch.
You're not going to be suppressing the enemy with it, but you don't need to.
The loner at your nine comes in faster than the pair at three. Its limbs are out, ready to jet it out of blade range and bank around you during its pass.
You don't let it.
You snap off a shot. The long beam rams home against its shield. As the shield bursts apart in a flash of particles, as the bandit's limb thrusters roar to life to start panic dodging, you boost towards them.
One pass, one slice, splash two.
Before the reactor detonation fully disperses, you've already twisted around, brought the beam rifle to bear against where you remember the pair at three were, and fired again.
The fire and smoke evaporate, and you find your shot missed. The pair had already begun banking away in opposite directions and your shot passed between them.
You finish the pair quickly. Separated as they are, held back by the need to bank around, they're too far to help each other when you fall on one of them. Their aim is no match for your quickness; a shot from your beam rifle breaks open their shields and your followup blade strike turns the pilot to fried meat.
You kick off the dead mech, let its corpse plummet to the earth, and rocket in the opposite direction to the final bandit.
Your cameras had kept track of their turn, trying to make a run against you. You snap off a shot with the beam rifle and it stops.
Stops in mid-air, seized by true panic. Its limbs spasm in all directions, trying to burn away from you, trying to arrest its imminent fall.
By the time it's steadied itself again to climb, you've passed your blade through its midsection, through its reactor.
Splash four.
You keep your cameras wide and scanning for any more inbound bandits. Meanwhile, you're assessing where your team could be. For all that they're likely scattered after reentry, you know your team. You know what they prefer. You know what they're likely doing, where they're likely going to be. You just need to start searching.
How will you look?
[] You need information. You need the bigger picture. Search for friendly locals and make contact. Maybe they know where Rhone and the others are. (Bigger Picture, 2d6. Risky. 2-segment clock)
[] Dive and search the ground. Missy likes getting herself entangled in furballs too much. If there's any place she'd be, it's with the ground pounders. (Speed is Armor, 3d6. Risky. 2-segment clock)
[] Climb and sweep the higher altitudes. Ganges always fell back on observation when things went sideways, you'll find him somewhere up there. (Standard Sensoria, 1d6. Safe. 2-segment clock)
So I bet you're wondering what the roll was for and what all these words in the choices mean. They're mechanics! Not mine though. For this quest, I'll be using a stripped-down version of CAT SRD (v5.5), a system created by Kingfisher over on the Fiction.live website, which itself is a heavily modified version of Blades in the Dark.
For this system, you roll a pool of d6 dice. You take the single highest roll of the dice (e.g. the 6 that was rolled above) as the result. The results for a 1-3 are failure (bad things happen, take damage and deal no damage), a 4-5 net you a mixed success (success with a complication, good and bad things happen, take damage and deal damage), and a 6 gives a straightforward success (only good things happen, deal damage but take no damage). If you have more than one 6, you get a critical success (something else good happens, deal more damage, or get some other advantage).
The main stats you'll be rolling are Proficiencies and Skills. The Proficiencies in this quest are Power, Agility, Tactics, and Awareness. Accompanying them are Skills, which are specific to each character.
Since you ride the Beom, your assigned Proficiencies and Skills look like this:
Power – 1
Assault Rush – 2
Agility – 2Speed is Armor – 3
Tactics – 1Bigger Picture – 2
Awareness – 1Standard Sensoria – 1
Each number, each point, represents how many d6 you will roll. The different points between the two are caused by Skills and Proficiencies existing at a 2:1 ratio. In the majority of cases, you will be rolling your Skills, but in cases where a Skill wouldn't apply, you will be rolling the associated Proficiency instead.
Skills and Proficiencies represent approaches to a decision. For example, if you wanted to be a decoy for anti-air fire, you would roll Speed is Armor. But if you wanted to push through the anti-air fire to eliminate the AA guns as quickly as possible, you would roll using Assault Rush.
Now, on to clocks. CAT SRD uses a lot of progress clocks, a way of counting down to some effect. Every clock is divided into between 2 and 8 segments that have to be completed to achieve their effect. Completing a segment requires achieving successes on dice rolls. The number of points in a Skill determines how many segments are completed on a success.
For example, defeating these four enemy mechs was a trivial task. I set a 2 segment clock for it. Since you have a 3 in Speed is Armor, a 3d6 roll was required. The highest result was 6, a straightforward success. Since the Skill had 3 points, the clock's 2 segments were completed instantly.
Now, on to positions. Every approach you take is associated with one of four positions: Safe, Risky, Desperate, and Lethal.
A Safe position means that if you fail, you might be able to try again or avoid dire consequences.
A Risky position means that if you get mixed results or fail, complications will ensue, and you will be put in a Desperate position until you try a different approach. You will also take Stress, and you might take a Wound, but I will explain those when they become relevant.
A Desperate position means that if you get mixed results or fail, serious complications ensue and you will be reduced to a Lethal position. You will also take several Wounds. A success means you improve your position to Risky.
A Lethal position means that if you get a failure, you will get a Wound, suffer multiple consequences, or simply die. A success means you claw back to a Desperate position.
Now you should be able to read the choices listed above. They are not an accurate reflection of what Skills you would use or how long the clocks should be–most of these rolls would just be Awareness and the clocks should have more segments–but for now, I'd rather keep pressing on and demonstrate variety. The full package of mission clocks and varying approaches will open up once you've gotten your team back.
There are other mechanics to introduce, like Toughness and Stress and negative progression clocks and Gear, but I'll explain them when they come.
Special thanks to @Mechasaurian for giving the post a lookover.
Vote closed
3: Ack-Ack
New
- Location
- Spess
[X] Dive and search the ground. Missy likes getting herself entangled in furballs too much. If there's any place she'd be, it's with the ground pounders. (Speed is Armor, 3d6. Risky. 2-segment clock)
Rolls: 3, 3, 2
Result: Failure
Position reduced to Risky.
You take 1 Stress.
You twist your limbs, angle thrust downward, and descend. You keep scanning the skies as you pass through the clouds. Usually, you'd be coated in a fine sheet of condensation. Instead, micro-objects pelt your hull—local Arendita weather, you remember from the briefing. Their rain cycle is something different, afflicted by local atmospheric processes that cause minerals to condense alongside water. You're getting hit by hard rocks smaller than sand grains, and force-feedback makes them feel like a thousand little spiders gently tapping you with their legs.
You'd be bristling if you could move your body. In communion, you're stuck feeling them on your skin.
Altimeter plummets and J-particle count spikes as you plunge into the sea of jamming. You're in the depths of modern sensory warfare now, the realm of nothing but line-of-sight cameras and comms. No long-range detection except for what your cameras can provide, and if you want to squawk at someone you'll have to open a laser link; a bothersome thing when you're deep in high-speed maneuvers.
Less than a minute after beginning your descent, the spiders retreat. The cloud layer lets up.
At less than ten thousand feet up and lowering you have a good view of the landscape. Everywhere, from below you to the twilight horizon, is war.
Regiments of ground mechs roar across a land of ashen grey and gritty white. Their thrusters churn and burn the sand and soil to tornadoes of glowing glass, leaving whirling vortices in their wake that combine into expanding dust clouds. They're struck by fusillades of beam fire, give birth to new smoking craters when their reactors detonate. More come, always more, steel charging and burning on an earth carved like a stormy ocean frozen mid-time; the land is shaped in repeating waves, dunes of towering height and steepness, averaging a kilometer or more from crest to bottom.
They run these dunes with suicidal disregard. Companies charge over the top, take to the air with all the might their ground-rated thrusters will give them, only to become fireworks by beam fire rising from the dune's lee side.
But they come, always more. Heavier companies charge over the crests with heavy mechs in the lead. The heavies are monsters, even for mechs. Their profile is low and squat, as squat as you can make a six-legged steel beast as long as an apartment building. The fire of thrusters below them looks like a blast furnace. Atop their hulls, ranks of smaller turrets swivel with beam guns that rake the air ahead with a curtain of bolts. Mounted on their one main turret is something heavier: spread beam emitters, heavy rocket racks, even the immense yawning faces of block-destroying annihilators.
They charge over the dunes. Their shields flare into bonfires from the sheer volume of defensive fire hurled at them. But they hold, long enough to begin a controlled descent, long enough to begin firing back and lay waste to the defenders on the bottom. In the dark of the lee side, reactor detonations bloom.
Over all of it, the air is filled with enough beam fire to look like the galaxy's biggest rave.
An enemy offensive in motion. Burning steel and energetic death stretching as far as you can see.
In that distance, bearing north-east-east, the keel of an aerial battlecruiser dips below the clouds, a whale breaching the surface in reverse. It carries all the firepower needed to punch through every fortification in the way.
You're about to begin a rapid area tactical assessment to find Missy when you feel a hundred eyes on you.
Laser warning.
A hundred eyes rake over your skin, measuring your velocity, your vector, your allegiance by your paint colors.
At once, you see turrets turn upward, aiming toward you.
You hit afterburner and dive.
The storm of bolts misses you by narrow meters as you go evasive. Your vision rapidly fills with ground anti-air fire intensifies, and soon you drop into the shadow of a dune's lee side.
You change vector before you hit dirt, throwing up sand and dirt, and blaze lengthwise along the dune. To your right, the dune rises like a cliff, and the crest spits out men and beasts of steel. They rain around you, above you, adjusting their aim to try and strike you.
The storm of bolts does not let up. You dodge, deftly. You twist and blast those in your path. Those that try to strike you from above get their bellies sliced. One of those heavy mechs, gliding down the dune on burning thrusters, tries to turn its guns on you in mid-air and you pass your blade through its turret—but your blade slides along the coalescing light of its shields, burning furiously to keep you out, and you rocket away while its turret is still turning to track you.
You keep scanning, but the walls of the dunes to your right block your sight. Below and to your left, the floor is littered with craters and wrecks both friend and foe, intermingling with brutal defensive structures reduced to cooling slag. Despite the ongoing fire, more tiger colors are reaching the floor while Arendita mechs climb the opposite wall to your left, retreating to better defensive positions.
Friendlies in retreat. Enemy gaining the initiative. You could turn this around if you could find your team.
Something different comes into sight—up ahead, a group of Arendita mechs hold together inside a maze of fortifications that haven't yet been destroyed. Their guns splatter the enemy mechs raining down on them, and those that land are quickly dispatched by concentrated fire.
You rapidly count thirty of them, ground mechs in Arendita red-blue, but their shoulder plates have a different symbol painted on. Merc company? Too blurry at this distance. With everyone else retreating, they probably aren't holding the area out of bravery. Most likely fell out of contact, no idea what the bigger picture looks like.
Beyond them, the dune is dammed by a wall of metal covered in blasted and scratched red-blue. You eyeball the bits and pieces you can see from here, recognize the bigger picture: Chikogna-class aerial battlecruiser, a common vehicle used by corporate planetary forces.
Brought low by the enemy.
You could hide in the wreck, get a breather, and send up a Gorrion spotter drone. It's a 360-degree camera on a small rocket with a laser communicator, throw it up and it'll give you a snapshot of the surrounding area—right before it'll be spotted, destroyed, and your position traced by the smoke trail.
But the defender mechs might be useful. You could get a sitrep, get them on your side. Use them to help find Missy—they can fan out and search, or take enemy fire.
Or trust in your skill, your instinct. Keep flying. Missy has to be around here somewhere.
[] [ACTION] Keep dodging, keep searching. She has to be around here somewhere. (Try again. Speed is Armor, 3d6. Desperate. 2-segment clock)
[] [ACTION] Link up with the mech company down there. They can't keep up with you, and you'll have to slow down to stay in range, but if the enemy focuses on them instead, then that betters your chances of finding Missy. (Gain a Creature: Grunt Mech Squadron. Will roll alongside you to complete the mission clock. Speed is Armor, 3d6+0d6. Risky. 4-segment clock)
[] [ACTION] Link up with the mech company down there. Get them to spread out and help you find Missy. (Gain a Creature: Grunt Mech Squadron. Will roll alongside you to complete the mission clock. Bigger Picture, 2d6+1d6. Desperate. 2-segment clock)
[] [ACTION] Hide in the wreckage of the battlecruiser. Send up a spotter drone. It'll be seen and destroyed, but maybe it'll last long enough for you to get a good view. (Gain Gear: Scouting Equipment, T3. Standard Sensoria, 2d6. Risky. 2-segment clock)
[] [ACTION] Write-in
[] [BONUS] Push Self and add +1d6
[] [BONUS] Push Self and gain enhanced position
[] [BONUS] Push Self and gain +1 to effect
Now for more mechanics! Stress is an abstract measure of your character's ability to keep control under pressure and avoid giving in to their worst impulses. Every character can withstand up to 6 Stress before their Malus is triggered.
The Malus is a compulsion that they are afflicted with after reaching max Stress. The Malus can be anything; it can be Reckless (the character will charge heedlessly into battle, fight when they know they can't win, take risks against orders), Soft (the character relives past horrors and takes an action most appropriate to reliving it), or Anxiety (the character suffers a -1d6 penalty to rolls when forced to act alone).
Triggering a Malus can be expected to happen more than once; it is not an automatic game over. For one turn, you (or any other character) are compelled by your associated Malus, and on the next turn Stress is reset to 0. The end of a mission also resets Stress to 0, so you do not carry Stress between missions.
In addition, Stress can also be used as a resource. With any roll, you can also Push Yourself and get an advantage on the next turn in exchange for gaining 2 Stress.
In exchange for more Stress, you can get one of the three following effects:
Now, Creatures. A Creature is generally anything alive, but it can also be something that follows your leadership. A Creature that follows your leadership can contribute to completing a clock by assisting in a Group Action. In a Group Action, everyone rolls the relevant Proficiency or Skill for the task, and the highest result of all the rolls is taken. However, in return, the character that led the action (the one being assisted) takes 1 Stress for each failure rolled (i.e. every dice result between 1 and 3).
If you go for the mech squadron, their stats will look like this:
Power – 2
Agility – 0
Tactics – 1
Awareness – 1
Yes, it is possible to have a 0 in a stat. Having a 0 means that instead of rolling normally, they roll 2d6 but take the lowest result instead of the highest.
On to Gear. Gear refers to any item or piece of equipment. It can be a set of climbing equipment to scale a cliff, a belt of hand grenades, tools to repair a car, anything. The effect of Gear is more narrative than specific; rather than 'Gorrion spotter drone', you get Scouting Equipment to describe that you're currently carrying some extra sensory equipment meant for that.
Gear is meant to be broadly open to interpretation. If you had a piece of Gear called Anti-Submarine Warfare Equipment, you could argue it to include both depth charges and sonobuoys.
The caveat is that I will put a limit on what your Gear actually entails. Getting Heavy Ordnance as Gear does not mean you can pull an infinity of heavy weapons from another dimension.
Each piece of Gear also comes with a Tier. A Tier is a general rating of how well or rare it is, but mechanically it affects what you roll. When you use a piece of Gear with a Skill, you take the average of both your Skill and the Tier to create the Effective Tier, the actual number of dice you roll.
So if you decide to use Scouting Equipment, you average your 1 in Standard Sensoria and 3 in the Gear's Tier for an Effective Tier of 2. Thus, you roll 2d6.
Finally, I am opening up to write-ins. If you can think of a way to use your skills, post it.
And special thanks to @Mechasaurian for giving the update a lookover.
As a reminder, here is what your character sheet currently looks like:
Power – 1
Stress: 1/6
Rolls: 3, 3, 2
Result: Failure
Position reduced to Risky.
You take 1 Stress.
You twist your limbs, angle thrust downward, and descend. You keep scanning the skies as you pass through the clouds. Usually, you'd be coated in a fine sheet of condensation. Instead, micro-objects pelt your hull—local Arendita weather, you remember from the briefing. Their rain cycle is something different, afflicted by local atmospheric processes that cause minerals to condense alongside water. You're getting hit by hard rocks smaller than sand grains, and force-feedback makes them feel like a thousand little spiders gently tapping you with their legs.
You'd be bristling if you could move your body. In communion, you're stuck feeling them on your skin.
Altimeter plummets and J-particle count spikes as you plunge into the sea of jamming. You're in the depths of modern sensory warfare now, the realm of nothing but line-of-sight cameras and comms. No long-range detection except for what your cameras can provide, and if you want to squawk at someone you'll have to open a laser link; a bothersome thing when you're deep in high-speed maneuvers.
Less than a minute after beginning your descent, the spiders retreat. The cloud layer lets up.
At less than ten thousand feet up and lowering you have a good view of the landscape. Everywhere, from below you to the twilight horizon, is war.
Regiments of ground mechs roar across a land of ashen grey and gritty white. Their thrusters churn and burn the sand and soil to tornadoes of glowing glass, leaving whirling vortices in their wake that combine into expanding dust clouds. They're struck by fusillades of beam fire, give birth to new smoking craters when their reactors detonate. More come, always more, steel charging and burning on an earth carved like a stormy ocean frozen mid-time; the land is shaped in repeating waves, dunes of towering height and steepness, averaging a kilometer or more from crest to bottom.
They run these dunes with suicidal disregard. Companies charge over the top, take to the air with all the might their ground-rated thrusters will give them, only to become fireworks by beam fire rising from the dune's lee side.
But they come, always more. Heavier companies charge over the crests with heavy mechs in the lead. The heavies are monsters, even for mechs. Their profile is low and squat, as squat as you can make a six-legged steel beast as long as an apartment building. The fire of thrusters below them looks like a blast furnace. Atop their hulls, ranks of smaller turrets swivel with beam guns that rake the air ahead with a curtain of bolts. Mounted on their one main turret is something heavier: spread beam emitters, heavy rocket racks, even the immense yawning faces of block-destroying annihilators.
They charge over the dunes. Their shields flare into bonfires from the sheer volume of defensive fire hurled at them. But they hold, long enough to begin a controlled descent, long enough to begin firing back and lay waste to the defenders on the bottom. In the dark of the lee side, reactor detonations bloom.
Over all of it, the air is filled with enough beam fire to look like the galaxy's biggest rave.
An enemy offensive in motion. Burning steel and energetic death stretching as far as you can see.
In that distance, bearing north-east-east, the keel of an aerial battlecruiser dips below the clouds, a whale breaching the surface in reverse. It carries all the firepower needed to punch through every fortification in the way.
You're about to begin a rapid area tactical assessment to find Missy when you feel a hundred eyes on you.
Laser warning.
A hundred eyes rake over your skin, measuring your velocity, your vector, your allegiance by your paint colors.
At once, you see turrets turn upward, aiming toward you.
You hit afterburner and dive.
The storm of bolts misses you by narrow meters as you go evasive. Your vision rapidly fills with ground anti-air fire intensifies, and soon you drop into the shadow of a dune's lee side.
You change vector before you hit dirt, throwing up sand and dirt, and blaze lengthwise along the dune. To your right, the dune rises like a cliff, and the crest spits out men and beasts of steel. They rain around you, above you, adjusting their aim to try and strike you.
The storm of bolts does not let up. You dodge, deftly. You twist and blast those in your path. Those that try to strike you from above get their bellies sliced. One of those heavy mechs, gliding down the dune on burning thrusters, tries to turn its guns on you in mid-air and you pass your blade through its turret—but your blade slides along the coalescing light of its shields, burning furiously to keep you out, and you rocket away while its turret is still turning to track you.
You keep scanning, but the walls of the dunes to your right block your sight. Below and to your left, the floor is littered with craters and wrecks both friend and foe, intermingling with brutal defensive structures reduced to cooling slag. Despite the ongoing fire, more tiger colors are reaching the floor while Arendita mechs climb the opposite wall to your left, retreating to better defensive positions.
Friendlies in retreat. Enemy gaining the initiative. You could turn this around if you could find your team.
Something different comes into sight—up ahead, a group of Arendita mechs hold together inside a maze of fortifications that haven't yet been destroyed. Their guns splatter the enemy mechs raining down on them, and those that land are quickly dispatched by concentrated fire.
You rapidly count thirty of them, ground mechs in Arendita red-blue, but their shoulder plates have a different symbol painted on. Merc company? Too blurry at this distance. With everyone else retreating, they probably aren't holding the area out of bravery. Most likely fell out of contact, no idea what the bigger picture looks like.
Beyond them, the dune is dammed by a wall of metal covered in blasted and scratched red-blue. You eyeball the bits and pieces you can see from here, recognize the bigger picture: Chikogna-class aerial battlecruiser, a common vehicle used by corporate planetary forces.
Brought low by the enemy.
You could hide in the wreck, get a breather, and send up a Gorrion spotter drone. It's a 360-degree camera on a small rocket with a laser communicator, throw it up and it'll give you a snapshot of the surrounding area—right before it'll be spotted, destroyed, and your position traced by the smoke trail.
But the defender mechs might be useful. You could get a sitrep, get them on your side. Use them to help find Missy—they can fan out and search, or take enemy fire.
Or trust in your skill, your instinct. Keep flying. Missy has to be around here somewhere.
[] [ACTION] Keep dodging, keep searching. She has to be around here somewhere. (Try again. Speed is Armor, 3d6. Desperate. 2-segment clock)
[] [ACTION] Link up with the mech company down there. They can't keep up with you, and you'll have to slow down to stay in range, but if the enemy focuses on them instead, then that betters your chances of finding Missy. (Gain a Creature: Grunt Mech Squadron. Will roll alongside you to complete the mission clock. Speed is Armor, 3d6+0d6. Risky. 4-segment clock)
[] [ACTION] Link up with the mech company down there. Get them to spread out and help you find Missy. (Gain a Creature: Grunt Mech Squadron. Will roll alongside you to complete the mission clock. Bigger Picture, 2d6+1d6. Desperate. 2-segment clock)
[] [ACTION] Hide in the wreckage of the battlecruiser. Send up a spotter drone. It'll be seen and destroyed, but maybe it'll last long enough for you to get a good view. (Gain Gear: Scouting Equipment, T3. Standard Sensoria, 2d6. Risky. 2-segment clock)
[] [ACTION] Write-in
[] [BONUS] Push Self and add +1d6
[] [BONUS] Push Self and gain enhanced position
[] [BONUS] Push Self and gain +1 to effect
Now for more mechanics! Stress is an abstract measure of your character's ability to keep control under pressure and avoid giving in to their worst impulses. Every character can withstand up to 6 Stress before their Malus is triggered.
The Malus is a compulsion that they are afflicted with after reaching max Stress. The Malus can be anything; it can be Reckless (the character will charge heedlessly into battle, fight when they know they can't win, take risks against orders), Soft (the character relives past horrors and takes an action most appropriate to reliving it), or Anxiety (the character suffers a -1d6 penalty to rolls when forced to act alone).
Triggering a Malus can be expected to happen more than once; it is not an automatic game over. For one turn, you (or any other character) are compelled by your associated Malus, and on the next turn Stress is reset to 0. The end of a mission also resets Stress to 0, so you do not carry Stress between missions.
In addition, Stress can also be used as a resource. With any roll, you can also Push Yourself and get an advantage on the next turn in exchange for gaining 2 Stress.
In exchange for more Stress, you can get one of the three following effects:
- Add +1d6 to your next roll; or
- Gain enhanced position; or
- Gain +1 to effect on your next roll
Now, Creatures. A Creature is generally anything alive, but it can also be something that follows your leadership. A Creature that follows your leadership can contribute to completing a clock by assisting in a Group Action. In a Group Action, everyone rolls the relevant Proficiency or Skill for the task, and the highest result of all the rolls is taken. However, in return, the character that led the action (the one being assisted) takes 1 Stress for each failure rolled (i.e. every dice result between 1 and 3).
If you go for the mech squadron, their stats will look like this:
Power – 2
Agility – 0
Tactics – 1
Awareness – 1
Yes, it is possible to have a 0 in a stat. Having a 0 means that instead of rolling normally, they roll 2d6 but take the lowest result instead of the highest.
On to Gear. Gear refers to any item or piece of equipment. It can be a set of climbing equipment to scale a cliff, a belt of hand grenades, tools to repair a car, anything. The effect of Gear is more narrative than specific; rather than 'Gorrion spotter drone', you get Scouting Equipment to describe that you're currently carrying some extra sensory equipment meant for that.
Gear is meant to be broadly open to interpretation. If you had a piece of Gear called Anti-Submarine Warfare Equipment, you could argue it to include both depth charges and sonobuoys.
The caveat is that I will put a limit on what your Gear actually entails. Getting Heavy Ordnance as Gear does not mean you can pull an infinity of heavy weapons from another dimension.
Each piece of Gear also comes with a Tier. A Tier is a general rating of how well or rare it is, but mechanically it affects what you roll. When you use a piece of Gear with a Skill, you take the average of both your Skill and the Tier to create the Effective Tier, the actual number of dice you roll.
So if you decide to use Scouting Equipment, you average your 1 in Standard Sensoria and 3 in the Gear's Tier for an Effective Tier of 2. Thus, you roll 2d6.
Finally, I am opening up to write-ins. If you can think of a way to use your skills, post it.
And special thanks to @Mechasaurian for giving the update a lookover.
As a reminder, here is what your character sheet currently looks like:
Power – 1
Assault Rush – 2
Agility – 2Speed is Armor – 3
Tactics – 1Bigger Picture – 2
Awareness – 1Standard Sensoria – 1
Stress: 1/6
Last edited:
Vote closed
New
4: Connection
New
- Location
- Spess
Your rolls: 2, 1, 4, 6
Result: Success
Grunt Mech Squadron rolls: 4, 3
Result: Failure
Used Push Self, gained 2 Stress.
Failure from Grunt Mech Squadron, gained 1 Stress.
Current Stress: 4/6
You fly, close the distance, and your cameras manage to resolve details on the mech company. They're ground mechs have the standard profile you see out of any number of design factories: large torsos and small heads that give them an almost hunched profile, more space for shield generators and thrusters on a budget. Their head-mounted sensors are lesser, lacking the panoramic vision that you do, and their arms are thinner things with limited mobility.
While they're mostly red and blue and dusted in a layer of battlefield grime, their shoulder plates stand out—stylized flames.
Mercenaries then.
One mech has flames painted all around its head. Likely the leader.
You open a laser link to talk to them. Handshakes engage, you send over the authentication codes, and—
Authentication rejected.
What?
The rightmost wing of the formation—the one closest to you—starts turning in your direction, raising their guns, raking you with targeting lasers. You're going to be on them in seconds, well within range. You twist upward, aim toward the peak of the dune wall to get away from their fire—
—and fly straight into a different formation of falling mechs. Painted in the tiger stripes of the enemy.
At their lead is a heavy mech right on top of you. From this angle, all its firing thrusters look like staring into the sun.
You twist sideways and boost away—slicing an enemy mech in the process—and watch the hulk of the heavy mech plummet beside you with all the grace of a hippo. Its shields flare to life and form an incandescent ovoid shape as a blizzard of beam gun bolts hits their mark—the mech company, focusing fire on a far bigger threat than you.
You make short work of the falling enemy mechs. Lacking the aerobatic abilities of their flying brethren, the enemy ground mechs struggle to even aim at you. They gyrate in mid-air, spin too far, struggle to reconcile their aim with their thrust. Then become new scorch marks on the dune when your beam rifle blasts them.
When you finish the last ground mech—sent off balance by its turn, flailing when you slice it apart—you turn to the bottom of the dune. The heavy mech judders as it hits the ground, main turret blazing lines of light that blast one mech into pieces. The rest of its shot strikes part of the fortifications, melting holes of glowing slag. Then it charges, boring down on the company, intent on simply ramming through the fortifications.
The company responds with fluidity. From above, you can see them move with the professionalism of seasoned veterans, using the walls to minimize exposure time as they pour fire on the heavy. Even as the heavy makes contact with walls, using its legs to boost itself and wrench metal apart, the company pulls back its center and spreads its arms—two pincers moving to keep firing along the heavy's flanks, like a team wrangling a bull.
You dive on it.
By the time its defensive turrets snap up to target you, you're already plunging your blade in. Its shield snaps up and form, burning bright to keep you from penetrating, and just as the turrets start firing you've boosted up and away to come at a different angle.
Every single one of its turrets, defensive and main, swivel around to aim at you, its new priority threat. You know what happens next, these heavies always act on instinct in the moment—use their smaller weapons to suppress you while the main gun turns to target.
If you don't have the firepower, heavy shields are an attrition game. Every shield has an upper limit it can take before it pops and not even the output of its reactor can keep up with becoming the center of so much focus fire. That's why all these heavies come with smaller turrets for defense and why doctrine holds that every heavy needs lighter support—no one should operate alone.
You've already wiped out its support, and all that's left is to kill.
The heavy is caught in a spasm, stuck trying to prioritize either you or the ground mechs. Whenever its turrets turn to target the ground mechs, you dive and strike with your blade or rifle, diverting its attention back.
Until, finally, the shield pops.
You boost into a cloud of rapidly evaporating particles and lunge with your blade toward the space just below the main gun. Metal glows and melts instantly. Electronics and machinery in the main gun spark, smoke, pop off as your blade severs its vitals and punctures the pilot's pod.
The heavy dies like a man with his brains shot out. The turrets freeze, the legs tremble and stop, the thrusters cut out, and the whole thing drops, coming to a rest under the compulsion of an automatic emergency shutdown.
You scan the mech company. They cover your left, your right, and you're well within shooting range. None of them raise their guns. Instead, they disperse, moving to reform their formations.
A message pops up: a serial number ID and a request to connect with you over laser comms. You accept.
A rough male voice growls in your head. "This is Timber-Two-Actual, Firebreak Security. Identify yourself."
Mercenaries confirmed, then. You scan through the crowd and fix your head on the flame-headed mech, the one speaking to you. "This is Crimson-One, Guardian Force. Arrived as part of the First Relief Expeditionary Fleet. Deployment compromised, requesting sitrep."
You can imagine him taking a moment to be confused by your synthesized voice. It's something coming out of an R&D shop focused on designing the most neutral military voice possible; utterly flat in affect with just a hint of uncompromising enthusiasm for following orders. Obviously synthesized. It doesn't sound anything like you at all, but it came prepackaged with the mech, and you haven't gotten around to changing it yet.
"Crimson, Timber-Actual, sorry for the buddy spike. System auto-rejected your codes and we thought you were one of the skifosi."
You tilt your head slightly. "Timber, Crimson. I am wearing friendly colors."
"Means nothing, Crimson. Favorite move of theirs is to switch to friendly colors until contact. We're trusting nobody unless they have positive ID…But we've been here for three days now, so the codes must've been updated and we weren't told."
"Strong enemy offensive?"
"Primary. Storm season's coming and they want to get ground before the shaloks shut everything down. We've been holding them, but we're pulling back line by line and the situation's getting critical."
Shaloks: seasonal typhoons native to the planet. Shaloks are the endpoint of the planet's atmospheric mineral formation process. Every year, a whole group of atmospheric factors line up right enough to form typhoons over land. Add the rocks to this, and you have storms of titanic proportions blowing dust at 300 kph and raining rocks over entire regions. Some of the rocks would be no more than hail; most of them would be about the size of a mech or even larger. The largest ones hitting the ground are almost indistinguishable from meteorite strikes.
On the cusp of rockfall, shaloks-to-be look like thunderheads with belts of minerals orbiting over and through them.
Exactly like the distant clouds you saw during entry.
"Timber, Crimson. Had a visual on a hostile aerial battlecruiser in the sky. Can you confirm?"
"Affirmative, Crimson. Skifosi sent the Aemilia against us. Been punching its way through our defenses. Long-range arty blew a hole in it, and that kept it orbiting back, but it's probably going to come again any day now. Needs to stay ahead of the shaloks."
"I can destroy it."
A pause. Incredulity. "Because you're a Lynx?"
It's good to get recognition. "Affirmative."
"God be with you, Crimson, but we're in no shape to fight it."
You shake your head, and your mech obeys as best as it can by swiveling its head. "Not just me. Guardian Force has deployed a full Crisis Team for this operation."
"There's more of you?"
"Affirmative. Guardian Force friendlies are on the field. Requesting assistance in search and rejoin."
"...Crimson, Timber-Two is in no shape to slug it out."
"Copy, Timber, but the situation will continue deteriorating unless we turn it around. Guardian Force has deployed four Lynxes to conduct kinetic operations for the duration of this campaign. Our capabilities are more than enough, but I require assistance to rejoin and reconnect my team."
There's that little flicking of slime on the tongue when you turn to sales-speak, but you hope the bigger picture will get through to him. You'll keep pulling back unless you help me.
"...What are you looking for us to do, Crimson?"
You'd smile if you could. "Do you have positive ID on any other Lynxes?"
"Crimson, we'd tell you if we did, but you're the first one I've— Wait one, Crimson."
He returns a scant few seconds later. "Crimson, Timber, sending video to you now."
Footage pops up. Primary camera, looking up at the great ceiling of grey clouds, autotrack locked on to the distant silhouette of a descending mech. Lighting is bad, renders the mechs' colors in a wash of more grey, hard to read allegiance. Camera source has a laser locked on to the mech and a data feed scrolls beside the footage.
The mech is falling like a meteor. It is rocketing groundward, altitude and distance declining rapidly. The laser identifies the paint colors as friendly but fails to recognize the model as belonging to any friendly forces.
A storm of bolts rises to destroy it, and the mech begins boosting and juking around in ways no regular aeromech can achieve. Then it twists its body, its limbs, and burns downward off the camera's sight, behind the rise of the dune.
You play back the last few seconds. You watch the data as the laser tracks it before the lock-on is lost. Measure speed, distance, last known vector to extrapolate probable trajectory…
Got it.
"Video received. Data updated, probable area of interest is on the other side of that wreck."
Timber-Two-Actual scoffs. "How far?"
"Uncertain." You had an area, but that didn't account for where a Lynx could go in the meantime. "Will require assistance in searching along that route."
"Alright, copy. We'll ready to saddle up and pull back, go around the wreck—"
"Negative, Timber-Two-Actual," you say. "Heading is the other way." Up and out of the dune, straight into the oncoming teeth of the enemy.
You know Missy. You're not sure if something damaged her brain or if tactical lessons never properly took. 'Find your teammates' should have been the first instinct any Lynx would have resorted to in their training. Time and time again you've found her deep in furballs in the mud or in the sky, eyes locked on to only seeking the next enemy, the next target, the next thing to destroy. No awareness of anything but her immediate surroundings.
Which means, most likely, she's already out of the trenches and on the field somewhere.
"...Wilco, Crimson. We'll follow you up—Shut it, Kowalski!—follow your lead. We'll be counting on your support, Crimson, we're not going to last too long out there."
"Copy. Preparing to fly."
It's good that Timber-Two-Actual can see the bigger picture like you. In the modern age of ultra-jammed warfare, a good commander needs to keep the whole map in mind. Retreat and let the enemy break the defenses, or support a friendly in a task you know can change the tide? The best decision is obvious.
Firebreak will take the hits. You can do your job and focus on getting your Lynxes.
Another withering hail of beam gun fire shreds a Firebreak mech's shield, then the mech. Another reactor explosion. Again, you dive and rend apart the opposition, then boost away as another inbound enemy squadron targets you.
You boost up, popping over the safety canopy of staying dirtside to blast them with your beam rifle. One shot hits true, crumples the weak shield like paper, pierces the chest, and the resulting explosion sends the rest of the squadron reeling apart.
Below you, the mech company—a long column of twenty-one mechs burning across the land in loose formation. Nine dead to the enemy falling upon them like locusts after they cleared the top. Even at their most furious speed, enough to raise a long dust cloud, to you it feels like being chained to a grandfather.
You boost back down when targeting lasers start raking you again. Another hail of beam fire fills the air where you were moments before, tracks downwards following your path.
You boost backward, into the middle of the formation, just in time for the beam fire to find another Firebreak mech and shreds its shields, then its body. It tumbles over the land as smoking scrap, left behind in your dust.
Ten dead to the enemy.
"Crimson, Timber," Timber-Two-Actual cuts in, a hard edge of worry in his voice, "any visual yet?"
"Negative. Making another jump."
You boost up again. You twist and scan the horizon as quickly as you can, ignoring the lasers already on you—too long doing this, the enemy is zeroing in. You check for movement, mechs, thruster fires, anything that could mean combat—
Some distance away, illuminated in the shadow of a great cloud of sand by the glow of its thrusters, one mech plunges a lengthy blade of energy through another like a lance. No detonation, pilot kill, and the mech boosts away swinging the blade to bisect another through the legs.
Its shields light up as beam fire splashes it. The source of the beam fire, another tiger-stripe hostile, is already dead—the mech boosted, passed its blade through, and boosted away again from the detonation.
You zoom in. The blade isn't a simple handle and emitter, it's an entire extra-lengthy beam rifle. The blade is formed from emitters mounted along the top and bottom of the weapon, and the whole of it looks like a proper blade of light instead of a simple pillar.
DeGeers EG 30 heavy beam rifle. You'd know that weapon anywhere.
Timber-Two-Actual growls in your head again. "Crimson, Timber, do you have a visual on— Contact right! Evade!"
The formation breaks apart in time to avoid a solid train of light that blasts its way through the group—except for one mech, disintegrated by the sheer power of the shot. The light evaporates moments later, leaving behind a smoking trench of blackened earth.
You eye the source of the shot: heavy mech inbound, annihilator mounted on its main turret, great yawning gun barrel crudely carved into a predator's mouth.
"Engaging," you say, and dive.
The escort mechs flanking it blast at you and you adjust your dive into a wide swinging arc. You shoot them center mass—explosions wash over the dome shape of the heavy's shields—and come around the heavy's right side just in time to get in close with more enemy mechs.
Many more of them.
One enemy comes at you, energy blade in hand, sweeping in with a crude swing. You palm your own blade and boost aside in time for its swing to go wide and for you to slice through its gut—and you raise your rifle and shoot another center mass, boost away from the detonation, twist to slice another mech through the chest, boost again, adjust aim and fire, swing again—
And to your rear, in your cameras, the heavy's defensive turrets take aim at you—
And to your nine o'clock high, high speed aerial mech inbound—
At its front, the bright and large blade of energy emitting from a heavy beam rifle, pointed just away from you.
The mech spears an enemy straight through. It passes by, propelled by sheer momentum, and spears another mech with its blade. Thrusters along its arms and legs burst with fire and it changes bearing on a dime, rocketing to slice another mech, then another, and another.
In a single moment, you examine it with crystal clarity.
Red and blue. Alco-Hwong M-12 Beom. Non-standard limbs loaded with more shield emitters. Larger than average hands to optimally hold the heavy beam rifle. Panoramic sensory head, as inhuman as a snake. On the left side of its face, just under the optics, two white X marks painted over the mandatory friendly IFF colors.
You open a laser link and are immediately accepted. "Crimson-Four, Crimson-One. Status."
A voice—female, synthesized, calm as a blue summer day—answers, "Crimson-One, Crimson-Four. Having a fucking ball, over."
If you could move your body, you'd be grinning. "Copy that," you say, finishing another mech with your own blade. To your rear, Firebreak is engaging the heavy, moving loose and fast to avoid the defensive turrets and getting too close for the annihilator to be used.
"Crimson-Four, rejoin and clear the board. When you're done, engage the heavy. Acknowledge."
Missy tries chuckling, but to you, the synthesizer renders it as a small polite laugh. "Wilco, Crimson-One," she answers, grabbing an enemy by the head and crushing its sensors. "Continuing engagement."
You join her in engaging the enemy, and you do it with efficiency.
A lot of people had a lot to say about the supposed mysterious 'Lynx Connection', that your brains were all wired together such that you could communicate with thought alone. None of the program doctors had ever found anything about it, and no instruments had ever detected any mysterious signals emitted from your brains.
The rumors had never died, though. That was because every time you put two or more Lynxes together, they always fought as one.
The media likened it to two dancers who knew each other's steps. You never saw any kind of dance in it, but they were right when they said you know each other's steps.
You know, as you turn to engage one enemy and another one charges at your back, that Missy will eliminate it immediately.
She knows, as a squadron comes at her with beam guns blazing, that you will be there to wipe them all out before they can even strike her shields.
As you pass within scant centimeters of each other, close enough for both your shields to flicker with danger sense, you both know there will be no misstep. No mistake. You could both do endless aerobatics around each other without even the possibility of collision.
Chalk it up to extra-sensory perception. Chalk it up to intensive LINKS Program training. You both simply know that you can trust each other in the mech.
Within minutes, you both reduce the area to a scrapyard of metal carnage and smoking craters. You both break the heavy's shields quickly—Missy using her heavy beam rifle to pound its defenses apart like taking a chisel to an egg—and your blades rend apart the heavy's turrets, legs, annihilator, until you end it with a plunge of your blade into the pilot's pod.
"Beautiful kill, Crimson-One," Missy says.
"Copy that." You tilt your head up skyward, to the great ceiling of grey. "New priority, search and rejoin. Prepare for sweep pattern."
"Think Rhone and Ganges are up there?"
"Affirmative."
"Suggestion, Crimson."
"All ears."
Missy aims her beam rifle outward, towards the landscape, the horizon, the distant bulk of the aerial battlecruiser Aemilia maintaining an orbit around the battlefield. "Continue engagement and make some noise. Let them find us."
What do you do?
[] Search the sky for Rhone and Ganges. (Lose Grunt Mech Squadron. Group Action. Standard Sensoria + Immediate Surroundings, 1d6 + 1d6. Risky. 2-segment clock)
[] Follow Missy's idea, make some noise. (Group Action. Assault Rush + Direct Approach + Grunt Mech Squadron's Power, 2d6 + 4d6 + 2d6. Risky. 8-segment clock)
[] Write-in
Well this took longer than expected.
No long mechanics notes this time. Toughness is simply health. You can take as many Wounds as your Toughness before something serious happens.
I hope the cards are readable. If they need explanation, feel free to ask. And if you want to Push Self, you can write it in.
Result: Success
Grunt Mech Squadron rolls: 4, 3
Result: Failure
Used Push Self, gained 2 Stress.
Failure from Grunt Mech Squadron, gained 1 Stress.
Current Stress: 4/6
You fly, close the distance, and your cameras manage to resolve details on the mech company. They're ground mechs have the standard profile you see out of any number of design factories: large torsos and small heads that give them an almost hunched profile, more space for shield generators and thrusters on a budget. Their head-mounted sensors are lesser, lacking the panoramic vision that you do, and their arms are thinner things with limited mobility.
While they're mostly red and blue and dusted in a layer of battlefield grime, their shoulder plates stand out—stylized flames.
Mercenaries then.
One mech has flames painted all around its head. Likely the leader.
You open a laser link to talk to them. Handshakes engage, you send over the authentication codes, and—
Authentication rejected.
What?
The rightmost wing of the formation—the one closest to you—starts turning in your direction, raising their guns, raking you with targeting lasers. You're going to be on them in seconds, well within range. You twist upward, aim toward the peak of the dune wall to get away from their fire—
—and fly straight into a different formation of falling mechs. Painted in the tiger stripes of the enemy.
At their lead is a heavy mech right on top of you. From this angle, all its firing thrusters look like staring into the sun.
You twist sideways and boost away—slicing an enemy mech in the process—and watch the hulk of the heavy mech plummet beside you with all the grace of a hippo. Its shields flare to life and form an incandescent ovoid shape as a blizzard of beam gun bolts hits their mark—the mech company, focusing fire on a far bigger threat than you.
You make short work of the falling enemy mechs. Lacking the aerobatic abilities of their flying brethren, the enemy ground mechs struggle to even aim at you. They gyrate in mid-air, spin too far, struggle to reconcile their aim with their thrust. Then become new scorch marks on the dune when your beam rifle blasts them.
When you finish the last ground mech—sent off balance by its turn, flailing when you slice it apart—you turn to the bottom of the dune. The heavy mech judders as it hits the ground, main turret blazing lines of light that blast one mech into pieces. The rest of its shot strikes part of the fortifications, melting holes of glowing slag. Then it charges, boring down on the company, intent on simply ramming through the fortifications.
The company responds with fluidity. From above, you can see them move with the professionalism of seasoned veterans, using the walls to minimize exposure time as they pour fire on the heavy. Even as the heavy makes contact with walls, using its legs to boost itself and wrench metal apart, the company pulls back its center and spreads its arms—two pincers moving to keep firing along the heavy's flanks, like a team wrangling a bull.
You dive on it.
By the time its defensive turrets snap up to target you, you're already plunging your blade in. Its shield snaps up and form, burning bright to keep you from penetrating, and just as the turrets start firing you've boosted up and away to come at a different angle.
Every single one of its turrets, defensive and main, swivel around to aim at you, its new priority threat. You know what happens next, these heavies always act on instinct in the moment—use their smaller weapons to suppress you while the main gun turns to target.
If you don't have the firepower, heavy shields are an attrition game. Every shield has an upper limit it can take before it pops and not even the output of its reactor can keep up with becoming the center of so much focus fire. That's why all these heavies come with smaller turrets for defense and why doctrine holds that every heavy needs lighter support—no one should operate alone.
You've already wiped out its support, and all that's left is to kill.
The heavy is caught in a spasm, stuck trying to prioritize either you or the ground mechs. Whenever its turrets turn to target the ground mechs, you dive and strike with your blade or rifle, diverting its attention back.
Until, finally, the shield pops.
You boost into a cloud of rapidly evaporating particles and lunge with your blade toward the space just below the main gun. Metal glows and melts instantly. Electronics and machinery in the main gun spark, smoke, pop off as your blade severs its vitals and punctures the pilot's pod.
The heavy dies like a man with his brains shot out. The turrets freeze, the legs tremble and stop, the thrusters cut out, and the whole thing drops, coming to a rest under the compulsion of an automatic emergency shutdown.
You scan the mech company. They cover your left, your right, and you're well within shooting range. None of them raise their guns. Instead, they disperse, moving to reform their formations.
A message pops up: a serial number ID and a request to connect with you over laser comms. You accept.
A rough male voice growls in your head. "This is Timber-Two-Actual, Firebreak Security. Identify yourself."
Mercenaries confirmed, then. You scan through the crowd and fix your head on the flame-headed mech, the one speaking to you. "This is Crimson-One, Guardian Force. Arrived as part of the First Relief Expeditionary Fleet. Deployment compromised, requesting sitrep."
You can imagine him taking a moment to be confused by your synthesized voice. It's something coming out of an R&D shop focused on designing the most neutral military voice possible; utterly flat in affect with just a hint of uncompromising enthusiasm for following orders. Obviously synthesized. It doesn't sound anything like you at all, but it came prepackaged with the mech, and you haven't gotten around to changing it yet.
"Crimson, Timber-Actual, sorry for the buddy spike. System auto-rejected your codes and we thought you were one of the skifosi."
You tilt your head slightly. "Timber, Crimson. I am wearing friendly colors."
"Means nothing, Crimson. Favorite move of theirs is to switch to friendly colors until contact. We're trusting nobody unless they have positive ID…But we've been here for three days now, so the codes must've been updated and we weren't told."
"Strong enemy offensive?"
"Primary. Storm season's coming and they want to get ground before the shaloks shut everything down. We've been holding them, but we're pulling back line by line and the situation's getting critical."
Shaloks: seasonal typhoons native to the planet. Shaloks are the endpoint of the planet's atmospheric mineral formation process. Every year, a whole group of atmospheric factors line up right enough to form typhoons over land. Add the rocks to this, and you have storms of titanic proportions blowing dust at 300 kph and raining rocks over entire regions. Some of the rocks would be no more than hail; most of them would be about the size of a mech or even larger. The largest ones hitting the ground are almost indistinguishable from meteorite strikes.
On the cusp of rockfall, shaloks-to-be look like thunderheads with belts of minerals orbiting over and through them.
Exactly like the distant clouds you saw during entry.
"Timber, Crimson. Had a visual on a hostile aerial battlecruiser in the sky. Can you confirm?"
"Affirmative, Crimson. Skifosi sent the Aemilia against us. Been punching its way through our defenses. Long-range arty blew a hole in it, and that kept it orbiting back, but it's probably going to come again any day now. Needs to stay ahead of the shaloks."
"I can destroy it."
A pause. Incredulity. "Because you're a Lynx?"
It's good to get recognition. "Affirmative."
"God be with you, Crimson, but we're in no shape to fight it."
You shake your head, and your mech obeys as best as it can by swiveling its head. "Not just me. Guardian Force has deployed a full Crisis Team for this operation."
"There's more of you?"
"Affirmative. Guardian Force friendlies are on the field. Requesting assistance in search and rejoin."
"...Crimson, Timber-Two is in no shape to slug it out."
"Copy, Timber, but the situation will continue deteriorating unless we turn it around. Guardian Force has deployed four Lynxes to conduct kinetic operations for the duration of this campaign. Our capabilities are more than enough, but I require assistance to rejoin and reconnect my team."
There's that little flicking of slime on the tongue when you turn to sales-speak, but you hope the bigger picture will get through to him. You'll keep pulling back unless you help me.
"...What are you looking for us to do, Crimson?"
Obtained Grunt Mech Squadron!
Power – 2
Agility – 0
Tactics – 1
Awareness – 1
Power – 2
Agility – 0
Tactics – 1
Awareness – 1
You'd smile if you could. "Do you have positive ID on any other Lynxes?"
"Crimson, we'd tell you if we did, but you're the first one I've— Wait one, Crimson."
He returns a scant few seconds later. "Crimson, Timber, sending video to you now."
Footage pops up. Primary camera, looking up at the great ceiling of grey clouds, autotrack locked on to the distant silhouette of a descending mech. Lighting is bad, renders the mechs' colors in a wash of more grey, hard to read allegiance. Camera source has a laser locked on to the mech and a data feed scrolls beside the footage.
The mech is falling like a meteor. It is rocketing groundward, altitude and distance declining rapidly. The laser identifies the paint colors as friendly but fails to recognize the model as belonging to any friendly forces.
A storm of bolts rises to destroy it, and the mech begins boosting and juking around in ways no regular aeromech can achieve. Then it twists its body, its limbs, and burns downward off the camera's sight, behind the rise of the dune.
You play back the last few seconds. You watch the data as the laser tracks it before the lock-on is lost. Measure speed, distance, last known vector to extrapolate probable trajectory…
Got it.
"Video received. Data updated, probable area of interest is on the other side of that wreck."
Timber-Two-Actual scoffs. "How far?"
"Uncertain." You had an area, but that didn't account for where a Lynx could go in the meantime. "Will require assistance in searching along that route."
"Alright, copy. We'll ready to saddle up and pull back, go around the wreck—"
"Negative, Timber-Two-Actual," you say. "Heading is the other way." Up and out of the dune, straight into the oncoming teeth of the enemy.
You know Missy. You're not sure if something damaged her brain or if tactical lessons never properly took. 'Find your teammates' should have been the first instinct any Lynx would have resorted to in their training. Time and time again you've found her deep in furballs in the mud or in the sky, eyes locked on to only seeking the next enemy, the next target, the next thing to destroy. No awareness of anything but her immediate surroundings.
Which means, most likely, she's already out of the trenches and on the field somewhere.
"...Wilco, Crimson. We'll follow you up—Shut it, Kowalski!—follow your lead. We'll be counting on your support, Crimson, we're not going to last too long out there."
"Copy. Preparing to fly."
It's good that Timber-Two-Actual can see the bigger picture like you. In the modern age of ultra-jammed warfare, a good commander needs to keep the whole map in mind. Retreat and let the enemy break the defenses, or support a friendly in a task you know can change the tide? The best decision is obvious.
Firebreak will take the hits. You can do your job and focus on getting your Lynxes.
Another withering hail of beam gun fire shreds a Firebreak mech's shield, then the mech. Another reactor explosion. Again, you dive and rend apart the opposition, then boost away as another inbound enemy squadron targets you.
You boost up, popping over the safety canopy of staying dirtside to blast them with your beam rifle. One shot hits true, crumples the weak shield like paper, pierces the chest, and the resulting explosion sends the rest of the squadron reeling apart.
Below you, the mech company—a long column of twenty-one mechs burning across the land in loose formation. Nine dead to the enemy falling upon them like locusts after they cleared the top. Even at their most furious speed, enough to raise a long dust cloud, to you it feels like being chained to a grandfather.
You boost back down when targeting lasers start raking you again. Another hail of beam fire fills the air where you were moments before, tracks downwards following your path.
You boost backward, into the middle of the formation, just in time for the beam fire to find another Firebreak mech and shreds its shields, then its body. It tumbles over the land as smoking scrap, left behind in your dust.
Ten dead to the enemy.
"Crimson, Timber," Timber-Two-Actual cuts in, a hard edge of worry in his voice, "any visual yet?"
"Negative. Making another jump."
You boost up again. You twist and scan the horizon as quickly as you can, ignoring the lasers already on you—too long doing this, the enemy is zeroing in. You check for movement, mechs, thruster fires, anything that could mean combat—
Some distance away, illuminated in the shadow of a great cloud of sand by the glow of its thrusters, one mech plunges a lengthy blade of energy through another like a lance. No detonation, pilot kill, and the mech boosts away swinging the blade to bisect another through the legs.
Its shields light up as beam fire splashes it. The source of the beam fire, another tiger-stripe hostile, is already dead—the mech boosted, passed its blade through, and boosted away again from the detonation.
You zoom in. The blade isn't a simple handle and emitter, it's an entire extra-lengthy beam rifle. The blade is formed from emitters mounted along the top and bottom of the weapon, and the whole of it looks like a proper blade of light instead of a simple pillar.
DeGeers EG 30 heavy beam rifle. You'd know that weapon anywhere.
Timber-Two-Actual growls in your head again. "Crimson, Timber, do you have a visual on— Contact right! Evade!"
The formation breaks apart in time to avoid a solid train of light that blasts its way through the group—except for one mech, disintegrated by the sheer power of the shot. The light evaporates moments later, leaving behind a smoking trench of blackened earth.
You eye the source of the shot: heavy mech inbound, annihilator mounted on its main turret, great yawning gun barrel crudely carved into a predator's mouth.
"Engaging," you say, and dive.
The escort mechs flanking it blast at you and you adjust your dive into a wide swinging arc. You shoot them center mass—explosions wash over the dome shape of the heavy's shields—and come around the heavy's right side just in time to get in close with more enemy mechs.
Many more of them.
One enemy comes at you, energy blade in hand, sweeping in with a crude swing. You palm your own blade and boost aside in time for its swing to go wide and for you to slice through its gut—and you raise your rifle and shoot another center mass, boost away from the detonation, twist to slice another mech through the chest, boost again, adjust aim and fire, swing again—
And to your rear, in your cameras, the heavy's defensive turrets take aim at you—
And to your nine o'clock high, high speed aerial mech inbound—
At its front, the bright and large blade of energy emitting from a heavy beam rifle, pointed just away from you.
The mech spears an enemy straight through. It passes by, propelled by sheer momentum, and spears another mech with its blade. Thrusters along its arms and legs burst with fire and it changes bearing on a dime, rocketing to slice another mech, then another, and another.
In a single moment, you examine it with crystal clarity.
Red and blue. Alco-Hwong M-12 Beom. Non-standard limbs loaded with more shield emitters. Larger than average hands to optimally hold the heavy beam rifle. Panoramic sensory head, as inhuman as a snake. On the left side of its face, just under the optics, two white X marks painted over the mandatory friendly IFF colors.
Crimson-4, Mississippi, has joined you.
Stats:
Power – 2
Awareness – 1
Toughness: 4
Stats:
Power – 2
Direct Approach – 4
Agility – 1Fast Mover – 2
Tactics – 0Awareness – 1
Immediate Surroundings – 1
Malus: RecklessToughness: 4
You open a laser link and are immediately accepted. "Crimson-Four, Crimson-One. Status."
A voice—female, synthesized, calm as a blue summer day—answers, "Crimson-One, Crimson-Four. Having a fucking ball, over."
If you could move your body, you'd be grinning. "Copy that," you say, finishing another mech with your own blade. To your rear, Firebreak is engaging the heavy, moving loose and fast to avoid the defensive turrets and getting too close for the annihilator to be used.
"Crimson-Four, rejoin and clear the board. When you're done, engage the heavy. Acknowledge."
Missy tries chuckling, but to you, the synthesizer renders it as a small polite laugh. "Wilco, Crimson-One," she answers, grabbing an enemy by the head and crushing its sensors. "Continuing engagement."
You join her in engaging the enemy, and you do it with efficiency.
A lot of people had a lot to say about the supposed mysterious 'Lynx Connection', that your brains were all wired together such that you could communicate with thought alone. None of the program doctors had ever found anything about it, and no instruments had ever detected any mysterious signals emitted from your brains.
The rumors had never died, though. That was because every time you put two or more Lynxes together, they always fought as one.
The media likened it to two dancers who knew each other's steps. You never saw any kind of dance in it, but they were right when they said you know each other's steps.
You know, as you turn to engage one enemy and another one charges at your back, that Missy will eliminate it immediately.
She knows, as a squadron comes at her with beam guns blazing, that you will be there to wipe them all out before they can even strike her shields.
As you pass within scant centimeters of each other, close enough for both your shields to flicker with danger sense, you both know there will be no misstep. No mistake. You could both do endless aerobatics around each other without even the possibility of collision.
Chalk it up to extra-sensory perception. Chalk it up to intensive LINKS Program training. You both simply know that you can trust each other in the mech.
Lynx Connection has been activated.
Effects:
Scale+1 (+1 to effect on a clock)
Group Actions do not incur Stress from any Failure.
Other Lynxes can be commanded as Characters, adding their Skills and Proficiencies to completing tasks. They can also take Stress to Push Self.
Effects:
Scale+1 (+1 to effect on a clock)
Group Actions do not incur Stress from any Failure.
Other Lynxes can be commanded as Characters, adding their Skills and Proficiencies to completing tasks. They can also take Stress to Push Self.
Within minutes, you both reduce the area to a scrapyard of metal carnage and smoking craters. You both break the heavy's shields quickly—Missy using her heavy beam rifle to pound its defenses apart like taking a chisel to an egg—and your blades rend apart the heavy's turrets, legs, annihilator, until you end it with a plunge of your blade into the pilot's pod.
"Beautiful kill, Crimson-One," Missy says.
"Copy that." You tilt your head up skyward, to the great ceiling of grey. "New priority, search and rejoin. Prepare for sweep pattern."
"Think Rhone and Ganges are up there?"
"Affirmative."
"Suggestion, Crimson."
"All ears."
Missy aims her beam rifle outward, towards the landscape, the horizon, the distant bulk of the aerial battlecruiser Aemilia maintaining an orbit around the battlefield. "Continue engagement and make some noise. Let them find us."
What do you do?
[] Search the sky for Rhone and Ganges. (Lose Grunt Mech Squadron. Group Action. Standard Sensoria + Immediate Surroundings, 1d6 + 1d6. Risky. 2-segment clock)
[] Follow Missy's idea, make some noise. (Group Action. Assault Rush + Direct Approach + Grunt Mech Squadron's Power, 2d6 + 4d6 + 2d6. Risky. 8-segment clock)
[] Write-in
Well this took longer than expected.
No long mechanics notes this time. Toughness is simply health. You can take as many Wounds as your Toughness before something serious happens.
I hope the cards are readable. If they need explanation, feel free to ask. And if you want to Push Self, you can write it in.
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