Playtest – Mailanka's Musing

An Eldothic Tech Playtest

A relatively complete set of Eldothic Tech, barring infrastructural scale technology, spaceships, some more advanced forms of armor, and oddities, has been released.

This preview is available to all $3 (Fellow Traveller) backers. Patrons and Subscribers can pick it up here:

Some of my readers have asked for a non-recurring option to buy access to the latest material without paying a subscription. Non-subscribers can _buy_ all the current deep engine content here for $5. I intend to update the post as more content is added.

Deep Engine content: $5.

A Playtest

As part of this current draft of Eldothic personal technology, I wanted to know how this technology compared to TL 11 tech. Is it better enough to justify investing in Eldothic technology? How does it actually feel in gameplay?

The best way to know for sure is to playtest! Now, the idea today is not an exhaustive playtest, but to simulate a basic scenario that might play out in a tabletop session to see how things land, and to get a sense of scale. If things don’t pan out so well, I might adjust the tech, or adjust the scenario, or adjust my expectations.

This is a public post, of course, so if you’re following along without the benefit of the content, you may be a little confused. I’ll try to explain as I go along, but consider it a teaser of what’s in the content above, and if you like what you see, maybe check it out, and while you’re at it, support this project!

Backer Specials: Cabala Scan and Undercity Noir 2.0

Did you enjoy the 100 NPC Challenge posts? Well, I’m writing a worked example as Backer specials. These will available to all Dreamers and better ($1+). In the first post, I lay down the basics of what setting I’ll use as the basis for the 100 NPCs and introduce some basic ground work for it.

Undercity Noir: Mortimer and the Slug

This will be the second time I ran this particular playtest; the first time, I arranged it for a very awkward time slot as it was meant to include someone from New Zealand. Now, I’ll be running at a more reasonable time for most Americans and Europeans. The call is currently going out to Disciples and better ($7+), and preferably people who haven’t already played yet, but I’ll widen my net if I need more players.

You can get the details here. (There’s also a subscribestar link, but all of my Subscribestar players already participated, so I’ll skip it for now).

The Natives of Kronos: Poll Results (and one last poll)

Over the last week, my Companions got to vote on what the natives of Kronos would be like. They’ve made their voices heard, and the results are available for all Fellow Travelers ($3+) Patrons. I’ve also written several variant templates based on the poll results, and I’d like your opinion on which direction to go in, so there’s one last poll for Fellow Travelers as well as Companions.

As always, thanks for your support, and be sure to leave comments here or in the Discord channel!

Backer Poll: the Natives of Kronos

Long ago, the Eldoth conquered the natives of Kronos and burned out their homeworld to create the despair, death and tragedy necessary to fuel an installation of their Deep Engine. The world of Kronos became the center of their operations in the galactic center, and the rest of the galaxy moved on.

But what were the inhabitants of Kronos like? Were they dreadful and strange creatures, mysterious and aloof that none missed? Or were they beloved sages or scholars whose destruction shook the faith of the rest of the galaxy? What legacy did they leave? Why do we care what they were like today? Do tourists gawk at their monuments? Do archaeologists seek to piece together their secrets? Do the modern citizens of Kronos cower from their ghosts?

Our next playtest will probably take place on Kronos, in the galactic core. I’ve created a poll where you, my dear Companions, can decide what the inhabitants of Kronos were like, and even if some still exist! The poll is a Google Forms poll, and you can find the link on your appropriate backer site:

Thanks as always for backing me, and please, enjoy!

Brainstorming Cronus

I have an impending playtest wherein we will play a heist in Psi-Wars. This is intended to shake out the civilian/criminal/law enforcement elements of the game, and while I’d like to run it in the next couple of months, it might turn out to be more work than that.

As usual, when I decide to run a session, I turn my eye towards the setting. Grist got more detail with Tinker Titan Rebel Spy, and the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt gave attention to the Orochi belt. We have lots of places I could run a heist, so I ran a poll for the playtest group, and they tied between Samsara and Cronus, and it looks like we’ll be doing ~~Chronos~~ Cronus.

I thought I’d be a little more public about my thought-processes for what Cronus would look like, rather than hiding all of my work, as the point of this blog is to watch my process. And the first step when detailing a world is to stop and talk about “everything that you know” and figure out what questions you need to ask about it.

Everything that follows are just my musings as I noodle around as to what this world might look like in detail. If you want to discuss it, to complain about it, to argue against it, or to advocate for particular elements, feel free! This is a creative process, after all.

What Niche does Cronus Occupy?

So, we can have dozens of worlds that all look relatively similar. If we’re going to go in detail on a world, it needs to stand out. How does Cronus stand out?

When I conceived of the world, it was to resolve a question in my mind: where did the previous galactic Empires rule from? I could say “Sovereign,” sort of like how in Star Wars, Coruscant has always ruled the Galaxy, and there’s a plausible argument behind that: you want to rule from the center and galaxies have definitive centers, so the best place for the Eldoth is probably the best place for humanity. However, I liked the idea of a fundamental shift of the locus of power. In my head, you can split the galaxy in half. The “eastern” side has the Arkhaian Spiral and the Umbral Rim, which housed the Eldoth and the Ranathim, while the “Western” side have the Glorian Rim and the Sylvan Spiral, which are the seats of human power. When humanity conquered the galactic from the alien races that previously ruled it, it’s natural that they’d want to shift the central bureaucratic power closer to their side of the galaxy, hence a move to Sovereign. Thus, our alien empires would have ruled from some other world, one closer to their part of the galaxy, hence: Cronus.

So we know what Cronus was: the once-glorious capital of the various alien empires of the Galaxy. What is it today? This is a tricky question. The obvious answer is that it’s a place with lots of aliens, but I’ve made an effort to push aliens outside of the “core experience.” If you want to see a Ranathim bazaar or giant Eldothic ruins, you need to “go out” from familiar space and into the more exotic parts of the galaxy, much like an adventurer must leave “home” to go to the “place of wonder” and experience adventure. But if Cronus isn’t alien, then what is it?

Well, at this point, the Galactic Core is dominated by the Empire, and one of the defining traits of the Empire is xenophobia. They don’t like aliens. Cronus would be a constant reminder of alien glory, thus would be something the Empire would prefer to tear down. What it becomes, then, is the ghetto: a place with terrible conditions where aliens are barely tolerated because, technically, it’s their home. It’s also a place where humanity would impose its rule on the aliens. There are other places like this in the Galactic Core, like Jubilee Station and Covenant, but this would be the most populous one: this is the “alien ecumenopolis.”

So, our easiest answer for “what is it today” is likely an ancient world overgrown with construction and development dating back millennia that have fallen into disrepair, with a wide variety of alien enclaves, aliens of all sorts, scattered across the world, ruled by an uncaring Imperial elite that keeps their distance, and only ventures in to deal with extreme crimes, rebellion and objects of archeological interest. For practical purposes, the aliens are left to their own devices and have become balkanized across the city, with criminal gangs both protecting and extorting the populace and trying to avoid too much imperial attention. It’s a world of grandeur, oppression and misery, which makes for a great space-opera heist.

The History of Cronus

If we’re going to argue that Cronus is ancient, then we should talk about its history. So what do we know about its history?

The Eldothic Age

The first thing we know about it is that the Eldoth used it as their capital. If we look at their history at this point, we’re looking at a date of around “4400BD to 4000 BD), or about 6000-7000 years before the setting start-date. At this time, the Eldoth have completed the first part of their war against the “Adversary.” It’s probable that “Azrael” is associated with the “Adversary” that the Eldoth fought. This means they’d want a world near the galactic heart to keep an eye on it. The Trader Band was likely already a major thorough fare at this point (though perhaps not with the Traders), thus it makes sense if you wanted to control the galaxy, you’d position your world between the two. Such a world would almost certainly have been a “fortress world.” It would have been meant to fend off attacks by the Adversary, and to cement their control on traffic through the galactic core.

It would also have been a center for their “Deep Engine” nodes. A well-protected site positioned in a strategic way would be ideal for extending the techno-mystical power of that eldritch technology. But to do that, the Eldoth must first bathe the worlds in twisted psionic energy, and the easiest way to do that is to commit genocide, which the Eldoth typically did: the sacrifice of a billion souls to create the disrupted psychic energy necessary to power their eldritch engines. This implies they would pick a world with a native population, which implies Cronus had a native population. Of what? I’m not sure! Are they all dead now? I’m not sure!

As the Eldothic Empire continued on, pushing into the Umbral Rim, Cronus would have been a staging ground for invasions and then an administrative center, a natural, de-facto capital, perhaps even the formal capital. It would have been extensively engineered with Deep Engine sites and defensive and logistical technologies. They might have migrated some populations to the world, especially the Keleni as they started to conquer the Hydrus constellation.

The Ranathim Age

Then we move on to the Monolith War and the fall of the Eldothic Empire. Cronus would have changed hand after about a thousand years of Eldothic rule. The Ranathim would have inherited a ruined fortress world, with wrecked Deep Engine sites, but likely still some functioning. Its position would remain highly advantageous, and thus would have been kept as a major trade/administrative world. It would probably be the closest “major” Deep Engine site to the Ranathim, and thus likely housed a great deal of research and perhaps birthed the beginning of “Zathare sorcery,” which allowed the Ranathim to “steal” parts of the Deep Engine’s power.

This would likely go through several ups and downs over the era, but whomever held it would likely have been powerful, especially if they could marshal its Eldothic defenses. After about 1500 years, the Tyranny would have splintered into warring states. Cronus would likely be the center of one of those states.

We begin to move into the human era at this point. Trader Guildfleets and Shinjurai merchant-princes begin to proliferate across the core, consuming or trading with Ranathim remnants. The “Witch-king of Cronus” likely would have held onto his major seat of power, a singular, unbeatable world that regulated the trade of the Trader Band and between the Umbral Rim and the Arkhaian Spiral, using his mastery of the remnant Deep Engines and the culture of his ancient court to impress these new upstart factions. I can just picture such a court.

The Alexian Dynasty

All things must come to an end. The Alexian Dynasty conquered the Galactic Core between 1 AE and 400 AE. Cronus likely would have been quite a holdout, given its defenses and technologies, but House Tan-Shai and the Traders likely held out longer, so perhaps it was conquered after the death of Alexus Rex, but not deep into the Early Dynasty (perhaps 150-200 AE?). Given the preference of Sovereign over Cronus, the conquest of the world would be more about breaking the last stranglehold of a relic of the Ranathim tyranny. What happened to the Witch-King after that? I don’t know.

Once conquered, it might have been left to languish. Control of the trade route would still matter, but the Dynasty controlled both ends (with House Tan-Shai on one end, and House Elegans on the other), so Cronus would have been less vital. My guess is the Dynasty left it alone and let it languish. Alien cultures might have gathered there. Perhaps the Dynasty installed a House to over see it. If so, it’s not a House I’ve named (perhaps House Mistral?). Otherwise, they might have allowed the aliens a measure of self-rule, but I imagine the Akashic Order would have had opinions on this decaying, sorcery-haunted world. I think they would have wanted it controlled or cut off from the galactic community.

The Modern Era

The Languishing of Cronus would have gone on for about 1000 years, and then the Dynasty would collapse. Then we have the Interregnum and the War of the Houses. Given the fall out of relationships, control of Cronus might be interesting again. If a House existed that controlled it, it could control the trade routes. If no house existed, Tan-Shai would be highly motivated to seize it.

Once we reach the Galactic Federation, the more open and free policies of the era would be a boon for the aliens that previously languished there. Any sanctions placed on the world would likely expire, and aliens would be free to come and go. It might see an explosion of artwork and archaeology and prosperity as it reaps the benefits of its closeness to the trade routes. Corporations would likely take up residence there too, especially those that work closely with the various alien powers. But I suspect Cronus would become more like Venice: a once-great tourist destination that trades on its decaying grandeur for prosperity while the people slowly begin to relax into their new role in the galaxy.

The Empire would put a stop to all of that nonsense, of course. Cronus represents alien power, which the Empire stands against. The sanctions of the Dynasty would “snap back” and the aliens would find themselves persecuted. On the other hand, the Emperor secretly fosters Zathare practices and works closely with House Tan-Shai, and so would know the value of the world. It’s probable that we’d see imperial research teams digging into sacred spaces and ancient ruins to get at the secrets of those ancient ruins and temples.

The Elements of Cronus

So, what do we expect to find on Cronus?

Well, obviously, Cronus will have aliens. That’s it’s calling card: it’s where you find aliens in a region awash with humans. Which aliens? Well, Traders obviously, and Keleni and Ranathim, as we’ve already established, as we can add some Asrathi (they have some lore here). But what we start to see is a world that looks a lot like the Umbral Rim with Asrathi tossed in. Sure, it has Traders, but Traders are everywhere. What we really need to sell this are some aliens from the Arkhaian Spiral. After all, the point of this place is to be where these two disparate parts of the galaxy meet. We can’t use the Eldoth (I mean, we can, but they’ll be secretive and hidden). So we may need to come up with a few new aliens.

We also have the Empire. It’s heavy presence needs to weigh on the planet. This is not a bountiful, happy alien paradise, but the abject misery of Imperial oppression of aliens. The Empire needs to be visible, pushing aliens out of their way, glowering at their presence and muttering about how weird everything here is.

We need to see ancient relics. This is a region rife with Eldothic and Tyrannic artifacts. As an ecumenopolis, we can even build it in layers, like a tell, which each era building atop the previous era, thus requiring people to delve into the city-world to delve into the planet. However, it’s not a dead world like Sepulcher or Styx. We have more than just ancient things. The city has continued to thrive and build for centuries. The layers do not stop at the Ranathim, but build up further with Shinjurai merchant-princes, Trader outposts, Alexian fortresses, Federation tourism boards and corporations and now security camps. There should be this element of the clash of the ancient with the modern.

I also expect to see some conspiracies here. If we explore this idea of the “Witch King of Cronus,” we might expect to see Zathare cults, even with Imperials as secret members, trying to unlock the secrets of the Deep Engine, and perhaps members of House Tan-Shai and Imperial Knights scowling as they unravel secrets. We also have a nexus of multiple alien philosophies, and that too can create fodder for conspiracy, with hidden Keleni temples and secretive Ranathim cults.

I also expect to see crime. We’ve already established on Asrathi gang here. We might expect to see more from this clash of cultures, with each ethnic group running an ethnic mafia to keep its own safe from the rest. We might even expect the various races to self-separate in many ways, rather like in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, though I would presume with at least a little more mixing (as half the fun is seeing them all come together)

Corporations might also seek to exploit the starving and hungry aliens while the Empire carefully ignores what they’re doing. Though I’m not sure what such a corporation would produce. Manufactured goods, perhaps? I doubt there’s much left to mine and little room for farming (speaking of which, how do we keep everyone fed? Is starvation a perennial problem on the world?)

Finally, we might expect museums and tourist attractions. These are likely run-down at this point, but they exist and they’re probably struggling to keep people interested. Imperials want to see the court of the Witch-King or the tomb of the Eldoth, and it’s a good place to go if you want to experience alien culture, but you don’t want to stray too far from home.

What You Can Steal On Cronus

So, the point of this is a heist, right? What can we steal?

Museum artifacts or works of ancient art are probably the most obvious thing. We have ancient relics that Imperials would want to move off-world. There may also be works of priceless ancient art in various museums that the Empire might choose to raid. I’m not sure who would be a buyer for these, though. Your best bet would be people with deep pockets in the Umbral or Arkhaian, likely using a Trader to smuggle out the goods.

If there’s a big corporation, they probably have a lot of money, certainly more money than anyone else on the planet, barring perhaps the governor. Obviously, we could try to raid their stashes, but that money would be pretty secure. You’d need some moment where the money was out and available, with the characters able to access it and steal it, such a payroll, or making a big payment with some sort of physical currency.

Finally, I imagine theft in the world of crime would make a big difference to the various gangs that rule the Cronian underworld. Stealing a trophy, leaving a note on a rival’s highly secure desk so he always knows you can get to him, or stealing weapons to supply a particular gang, etc, could all be viable options.

After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt, Session 1

Part 1: Introductions

Our session starts with the Calico, Xerxes’ Tigershark-Class Assault Corvette. As Xerxes pilots it into Caliban, we get treated to a view of the mountainous planet below, the distant red sun, and the majestic and terrifying view of the Hammer of Caliban and the Orochi Liberation fleet docked with it. I introduce his crew:

Persia Purasinga, an Asrathi med student turned pirate (by accident!). She seems quite pleased to be moving away from piracy and towards “mercenary work,” especially against the Empire, who pushed her into piracy to begin with. She’s small and cute, with red, tabby fur and large green eyes with a pair of glasses.
Sylvar Ro, a terrifying and religiously fanatical Jagarathi assassin with “siberian tiger” markings and cold blue eyes. He argues that they shouldn’t get involved and “let humans kill one another.
Born Riksen, a native “Belter” to the Orochi Belt, heavy set and half-drunk, who loudly announces his excitement to be part of the liberation fleet, and reminds Persia that they won’t be engaged in piracy, but they might engage in the “legitimate salvage” of Imperial ships they defeat.
Winner Chau, a Denjuku native Shinjurai punk girl with a white face, black make-up, straight black hair, chunky boots and purple-and-black striped hose who rolls her eyes at everyone and gets back to work on the engine (with her kleptomaniacal robot, Ripper), while listening to tunes via her earphones.

Next, Walker Lee lands his Nomad-Class Modular Corvette, the Bad Penny, on the Heirophant, the flagship carrier of the liberation fleet. As he and his “Pilgrim” companion, a young man named Jethro Page, depart from the corvette, Walker gets tackle-hugged by Arietta Lee (No relation), one of mechanics of the liberation fleet, and daughter to the head mechanic, Callister Lee. They discuss his heroism in the resistance against the Empire in the Orochi Belt, and whether he’ll need any help maintaining his corvette. The Calico also lands, and Xerxes’ pirate crew interacts roughly with the group.

Then, aboard the Hammer of Caliban, Baron Mallus Grimshaw enjoys one last holo-call with his wife, princess Dani Shinjurai, who instructs him to wear a specific outfit to the gala aboard the Heirophant, cut after the style of the Shinjurai, but appropriate to a Maradonian noble like Mallus, with an orchid motiff.

As an ally, Dani has Fashion Sense, so this allows him to claim his bonus

In a dueling gym aboard the Hammer, Talos spars with Axton Kain, trying to teach him the basics of the Destructive Form, as Axton’s own Knightly Form is unsuited to dueling. Talos makes quick work of Axton, proving his point, when they are joined by Asura Kain, the white-haired, golden-armed daughter to the Archbaron, who complains about the coming party, and the Elegans brothers, Enzo and Arthus. Enzo is a space knight with a thick braid of dreadlocks and a quick and easy grin and Aspect with the Avatar of a lion, who immediately wins Axton over with his smile, and then joins in to perform a quick practice duel, wherein they fight to a standstill.

Then they are joined by the belle of the ball, Lady Thalia Sabine and her handmaiden, Lady Peony Pavonis; the latter, dark-eyed with long, curly hair and Mediterranean features, fetching but betraying a low blood purity, cannot stand to not be the center of attention and thus inserts herself right into the middle of the duel, announces her intention to participate, and then realizes how outclassed she is, and is saved by Thalia reminding everyone of the need to attend the gala.

The group leaves to go to the Gala, where they are joined by the Baron, and walk the promenade, the great ring constructed around the ancient artifact of the Hammer of Caliban. While walking, they encounter Kerin Kethim, a Ranathim mechanic. She crouches over her son, the toddler Caliban Kethim, as both gaze upon the world of Caliban through the window. Enzo Elegans approaches, and greets her in Lithian. After a brief exchange, she reveals she works under Callister Lee on the Heirophant and hopes that her service in the liberation fleet will earn her Alliance citizenship. Enzo invites her to attend the gala as his date, but she demures. Mallus is offended by Enzo inviting someone who is clearly not noble to a noble event and says so, to which Enzo retorts by questioning exactly how noble Mallus actually is, to which Mallus responds by drawing his force sword. Before Enzo can do the same, Arthus intervenes, notes that a formal challenge has been issued, and that the duel can be fought after the gala. All parties agree and move on.

Kerin is a bit of a relic from my original conception of the Tall Tales, where the players would be serving on a station in the Orochi Belt and have to deal with a sudden Imperial incursion. The mechanic Callister Lee had a reputation with the station’s… ladies of the night as employing only beautiful women (Kerin and Arietta) whom the women referred to as “Callister’s Whores.” All of this has had to go to the wayside, but I like the idea of an outsider alien trying to become an insider, and so she’s stuck around, as have Callister and Arietta, and the idea of an “all female mechanic crew” from the “Orochi” side of the mechanics team.

Note that Mallus has 2-4 points total in his force sword skill, while Enzo is a full-on space knight skilled in not one, but two force sword forms. Mallus’ player was playing his disadvantages, particularly Code of Honor (Gentleman) and Overconfidence. Should be an interesting, and quick, fight. But something for another session.

Finally, Viscontess Shay Sabine finds herself in a fighter simulator flying a Valiant against a Javelin. She quickly loses, as she’s more familiar with her own Devil-Pattern interceptor. The opposing pilot, an old veteran of the Alliance navy who stands ready to retire soon, Captain Quentin Scott, steps out of his simulator and explains the need to expand her flexibility into other fighters, because of the limitations of the Devil-Pattern Interceptor. Then they both notice the time and that she needs to attend the Gala. He says he won’t be going (“It’s by invite only,”) and that some of the mechanics and Orochi pilots are having a small get-together that he wants to attend, because he fears that the combination of Orochi pilots and Maradonian pilots in Harlequin squadron will cause friction and he wants to overcome it.

When it comes to introductions, I tend to let the characters and their background seep over me as I picture what their introduction might be like. Tyro Pavonis and Shay Sabine came quite late, so I didn’t have much time to introduce them. I had this idea for a generic “Fighter simulator” intro for SOME pilot, which I gave to Shay because Tyro is blind and thus can only fly a Devil-Patter interceptor. As a consequence of this, plus some unfortunate Will rolls later, Tyro got very little “screen time.”

The Gala

The Contessa Styliana Sabine, the Grand Dame, opened up the Gala for all the nobles, greeting each in turn as they entered. Major personalities included:

The Grand Dame herself, presiding over the gala.
High Priest Pad Palantir, who would manage an invite only Akashic Mystery Play for certain prized participants as well as reveal the presence of an Akashic Oracle on the Heirophant.
High Admiral Lowelin Cole, the hero of the Slaver War and a man well past his prime, now in command of the Orochi Liberatoin fleet. He is round of belly, his dark skin speckled with liver-spots, and his eyes have a rheumy, tired quality to them.
Senator Sawyer Septum, smiling and pumping hands, and his inhumanely attractive wife, Rayna Septum, who seems unaware of her plastic, fetish-model perfection.

Axton Kain enters early, and mostly focuses on Asura, his frenemy from house Kain, as she proceeds to get drunk and complain that nobody in the gala has the slightest idea of what war really means. They are interrupted by the Senator and his wife, who are making the rounds thanking nobles for joining their crusade. Then Rayna Septum spots Mallus Grimshaw, and begins to fangirl over the husband of the Shinjurai princess (clearly a fan of Shinjurai courtly melo-drama). She goes to approach him.

Meanwhile, Tyro Sabine makes his grand appearance and quickly gets monopolized by Sir Malachi Harrow, a “volunteer pilot” in the fleet. Malachi has pale features, piercing black eyes, coarse hair and shabby stubble where a beard should be. He presses Tyro on the relationship status of Peony (whom he used to date) while his natural psychic vampirism begans to drain and exhaust Tyro, who is unable to find a way to escape the wheedling man.

Peony Pavonis also arrives and makes a beeline for Mallus, whom she aggressively flirts with, both to avoid an awkward encounter with Malachi Harrow (a sacrifice she’s willing to allow Tyro to make) and to see if she can add an interesting notch to her belt. Mallus is very unimpressed with her offer and attempts to shoo her away when she spots something and then vanishes: Dani Shinjurai herself shows up, surrounded by a small swarm of hovercams and in the presence of a media consultant. She also wears a dress with an orchid motiff. She approaches her husband, who is suddenly the center of attention. Enzo and his brother both approach and mysteriously congratulate Mallus, while grinning at one another, their psychic senses picking up something about the couple. Tyro uses their presence to finally escape the malign influence of Malachi, and Asura takes the distraction as an opportunity to drunkenly escape, crashing only a few glasses in the meantime.

Mallus’ player had taken Dani as an Ally, but I couldn’t imagine the Ally being useful “off screen,” as there would be a lot of radio-silence over the campaign. So, naturally, I had to bring her in. She created a useful nexus whereby the players could more formally introduce themselves to one another, as Dani would obviously want to meet everyone (with a focus on the PCs, naturally).

The Viscontess Shay Sabine also arrived, and had a polite conversation with the Grand Dame, and then a second, secret conversation using the Sabine Caress discussing the Grand Dame’s political standing with House Sabine (not great), her purpose here (to help protect her fellow Sabines) and whether she would be willing to help and guide the rather underqualified Thalia Sabine with her first command (she agreed).

Then we advanced to the “rolling portion” of the Gala:

How well they comported themselves, which involved a summation of appropriate reaction modifiers and savoir-faire and dancing rolls as complementary modifiers; Shay managed to impress the High Admiral by dancing with him, and Axton ultimately won the contest.
A political sub-game, where people carefully tried to figure out where everyone stood and what was really going on in all those private conversations. This involved a Politics roll with some complementary rolls for things like Observation and Current Affairs. Everyone picked up a few secrets, but ultimately, Axton won this contest as well (he was rolling very well.).
Finally, Peony proposed a game of Inquisitor, a Courtly Game that involved swapping secrets (sort of a cross between a drinking game, truth or dare and Werewolf). Everyone swapped some secrets, and Axton, surprise surprise, won the night with this one too.

The Shindig

In the hangar of the Heirophant, the pilots and mechanics play a game of Belter’s Brag. These include:

Lynwood Vos, a roguish pilot who is obviously good enough at the game to be hustling the rest
Matua Manticora, a Jagarathi pilot with tiger-stripe marks and an aggressive attitude
Nadia “Viper” Morgan, a skinny and awkward looking pilot with a shaved, stubbly scalp. She exudes an aura of a viper, hence her name.
Arietta Lee, with her cloud of curly blond hair and her small, impish face, a mechanic on the ship, with her salvaged Hobnob-pattern robot, Nubbins.
“Echo,” a Shinjura android with a mannequin biomorphics who looks a great deal like his master, Tadashi “Prime.”

Xerxes also joins the game, while Walker Lee and Jethro Page focus on cooking up some “Rugger Steaks” and keeping everyone happy and drunk. Matua offers Lynwood a glass of “Asrathi Mint” liquor, which results in a rebuke from Sylvar Ro for Matua’s “desecration” of the “sacred drink.” The two argue until Walker intervenes with some folksy spacer anecdote and defuses the situation.

Two Alliance pilots, Captain Quentin Scott and Lieutenant Kobayashi Zero, join the game. Quentin allows himself to be dealt into the game, but seems less interested in winning than in learning about his fellow pilots and creating a sense of camaraderie. Lieutenant Zero remains quiet as she plays the game, with a carefully perfect “poker face” that makes her virtually unreadable. She’s beautiful, with a form-fitting pilot outfit, large, innocent eyes, a rosebud mouth, and a vibe of real trouble and danger that make the more experienced men a little nervous around her. Jethro, of course, is immediately smitten, and she does nothing to discourage his attention (though she doesn’t seem to return them either).

Nubbins is also in the midst of walking around to each ship, especially the Alliance ships (typical for an Alliance-built robot, he’s fascinated by ARC technology), calling out their names. He calls out “Ashen Dragon,” the ship of Baron Mallus Grimshaw, which causes Echo to exclaim that “Prime isn’t going to like that,” and indeed, his master suddenly starts cussing up a storm, talking about how Dani Shinjurai “deserves better,” revealing himself as a Denjuku native who, like Rayna Septum, has an opinion on the Baron’s marriage.

Finally, Rayna and Sawyer Septum arrive, having “co-opted” a lot of food from the Gala, and spread it out among the Orochi pilots and mechanics, while the Senator praises them as the real heroes of this effort (to which has had only the paltry contribution of getting it all started).

The game continues: Xerxes wins, thanks to his dangerous, Witchcat abilities, and everyone has a good time and gets to know one another better (with a Carousing contest, though Xerxes begins to get ill from all the alcohol).

The Prophecy

The session rounds out with the Mystery Play, in which the various nobles are ushered into a sacred Akashic Shrine and are given roles to play that emphasize Thalia Sabine’s role as conqueror-liberator of the Orochi Belt, when the Oracle behind a veil suddenly interrupted the play with a well-timed epileptic fit and speaks a prophecy:

Blood invites the storm.
The Hunter scatters three knights
While the thieves take flight;
And the crown loses its light
For Blood invites the storm.
Deep in the mountains, the queen makes a fortress her domain
In the fortress, a princess with hair of blood must break her chain
For the many-headed beast readies itself to destroy her reign
Because Blood invites the storm.
Blood invites the storm
Blood invites the storm
From the mountains they will swarm
The Emperor makes all conform
Blood invites the storm.

At the same moment, Xerxes has a monstrous, deathly vision of an eyeless man clad in strange, twisted, organic armor who is locked behind a great door. “Kill for me.” He instructs Xerxes who, between the vision and the alcohol, immediately vomits. Viper also suddenly begins screaming about a strange, eyeless man as though in sympathy with Xerxes’s vision.

The mechanics of the prophecy is that there’s now a Destiny in play: the players need to find a “fortress” and occupy it, and they need to avoid killing. Each (major) death will give me a “villain” impulse buy point. Except for Xerxes: he gets to make one kill and has a destiny that will help him, and must make that kill.

Thoughts

The Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt is very much an ensemble game. The point is that the players are part of a larger community of fighter pilots, soldiers and mechanics, and need to learn to work together, as well as to deal with bits of drama. Ideally, they’ll come together and when the war begins to pick of NPCs, it matters.

So my primary mission with this session was to introduce each PC, help them get to know the NPCs (at least a basic, whirlwind tour), hence the gala and the shindig, and then give them their basic prophecy to set the game in motion.

The NPC collection is pretty big, and I have an “NPC Directory” on our Roll20 site to help players navigate it. A real quick summary:

The Brass:

The Grand Dame, Styliana Sabine, controls the Hierophant and is the “patron” of the fleet. She’s not in command, but you can bet what she wants, happens.
High Admiral Lowelin Cole: Hero of the Slaver War and, like, 80 years old, he’s definitely past his prime and likely sees this mission as his opportunity to go out a hero. Ostensibly commands the fleet.
Lady Asura Kain: daughter of (but not heir to) Kento Kain, Archbaron of Caliban, she represents Kainian interests and commands Kusari’s Pride, a lancer.
Sir Arthus Elegans: the more terrifying of the Elegans brothers, he commands the Mother’s Touch, the Regal-Pattern Eleganian medical cruiser.
Senator Sawyer Septum: technically a civilian, this politician represents the legitimacy of the liberation fleet, as his invitation precipitated the mission.

The Pilots

The pilot PCs will need to pick one of these as their wingman. Shay has already chosen Thalia, and Tyro, as a wing commander, might have a few in his wing.

Lady Thalia Sabine: The squadron commander of Harlequin Squadron and grand-daughter to Styliana Sabine, and being set-up to rule over the Orochi Belt, if Styliana gets her way. She’s best friends with Peony Pavonis and more than a little out of her depth.
Lynwood Voss: An Orochi pilot and a master gambler. He hails from Rust City.
Nadia “Viper” Morgan: an Orochi pilot, she’s a native of the Botanical Asteroids, and has an aura of weirdness around her.
Matua Manticora: An Asrathi pilot native to Nekotara (near the Orochi Belt). He follows the Old Ways.
Captain Quentin Scott: an old veteran of the Galactic Civil War and nearing retirement, he acts as an advisor to Thalia and other high level command staff of Harlequin Squadron.
Lieutenant Kobayashi Zero: a femme fatale and a mystery who keeps to herself. Excellent wingman, but with an usual flying style for an Alliance pilot.
Sir Malachi Harwood: An “adventurer volunteer” who joined the fleet to prove himself to house Harrow and, perhaps, to get closer to his ex-girlfriend, Peony. He’s a psychic vampire who has a bad habit of getting his wingmen killed, but achieves good results.

The Mechanics

The pilots need their fighters maintained! Each pilot will need to choose one mechanic.

Callister Lee: the “head mechanic” of the Orochi fleet. He has a habit of picking up “strays” and tutoring them in how to be a good mechanic; these almost always tend to be attractive women, for some reason.
Arietta Lee: The daughter of Callister Lee; her and her salvaged Hobnob, Nubbins, are fairly innovative mechanics, but Nubbins has a bad habit of “acquiring” parts from other fighters.
Kerin Kethim: A Ranathim refugee and mother to a toddler, she’s trying to work her way into being allowed into the Alliance as a citizen. She hates robots and follows the strange superstitions of the Divine Masks, but is a fine mechanic. She works under Callister Lee
Chief Petty Officer Canto Cogsworth (Not featured in the session): The head of the Heirophant’s engineering team, Canto has a team of 3 hobnobs who work with precision to make sure every fighter under their care is in tip top shape. Quite stodgy, though, and demanding of pilots’ time, and requires everything to be “up to spec.”
Tadashi “Prime” and “Echo:” This shinjurai team-up represent Denjuku’s gift to the alliance; they come with quite a bit of prototype Syntech fighter parts and will spruce up your fighter, but they have opinions on what the best layout and operating systems are and tend to “beg forgiveness” rather than “ask permission” when it comes to modding a fighter.

Other NPCs:

Talos: Known teasingly as “the Weakest Knight,” Talos is a retainer to House Kain who has been extensively cybernetically modified after defeat after defeat. He has lost more battles than most alliance soldiers have even fought, making him a hardened veteran. He has an unrequited crush on Asura, and serves on her Lancer.
Sir Enzo Elegans: A space knight and commander of security aboard the Mother’s Touch. His empathy manifests as a deep understanding of others and an infectious charisma.
Lady Peony Pavonis: Handmaiden to Thalia Sabine and technically a space knight (though the other space knights question her qualifications), she mostly has her position thanks to her friendship with Thalia. She has a reputation for drama.
Rayna Septum: The “first lady” of the Orochi Belt and wife to the Senator, he rescued her from a pirate ship, though she has no memories from before that event. She’s extremely beautiful, but with “off-the-shelf” looks: candy-red hair, exaggerated secondary sexual traits and a certain naivety. Her pale skin is marked with a barcode tattoo betraying Shinjurai origins, and she has a deep love of the Shinjurai royal melo-drama.

The rest of the NPCs are tied primarily to the PCs (allies or crew, etc). There might be more, but these were the main and most important ones.

It was a pretty tightly packed 4 hours of game that I thought went by quickly, but it split down the middle between aristocracy and commoners, which meant that half the group was idling about half the time, which was unfortunate. That said, the commoners had opportunities to join the gala (Walker is a war hero and Sawyer would have invited him, and Xerxes is there by the invitation of the Archbaron of Caliban, and so could get into the Gala). Both said “Nope, so much nope,” and definitely enjoyed their game of Belter’s Brag and rugger steaks more.

I had planned about three times this much for the session, but I expected this would be as far as we got. I continue to struggle with a problem I had in Tinker Titan Rebel Spy, where I want to have mechanics (like fights and such), but they take up so much time and I want to move move move with the story, so I need to find a way to strike a balance between the two. This one could afford to be mostly story, but next session will almost certainly feature more mechanics as the players get their first real taste of space combat.

The Heroes of the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt

So, it’s been awhile since I talked about it, as I had to postpone it, but the Playtest for the Psi-Wars vehicular combat system, the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt, is go.

I had intended to give each PC their own post, but I didn’t get enough full background stories to do that, and I only have the art for a single character, so I’m going to give brief summaries so you at least have a solid idea of who’s who.

The Pilots

The whole point of this exercise is to playtest vehicles, and everyone but one person is focused on having a vehicle, but I was really hoping to work out the Fighter Ace a bit, thus I wanted a focus on them. The reason the session was post-poned was because we had no fighter aces. Now we have three.

Baron Mallus Grimshaw, Lord-Consort to Dani Shinjurai

The Baron grew up in the cold confines of the Grimshaw orbital fortress above Denjuku. The extreme political climate dulled his sense of empathy for others and honed his paranoia to a fine, political edge. This culminated in the political marriage between himself and the eldest Shinjurai princess, the one originally slated to bear the Shinjurai heir, Dani Shinjurai. As a “princess mother,” she was especially beloved by the people and represented to the traditions and family values of Denjuku. Thus, the Shinjurai people have strong opinions about her marriage to Mallus Grimshaw: some found their wedding the most beautiful they ever witnesses and see the marriage as strengthening bond between Maradon and Denjuku; other see it as tantamount to holding her as a political hostage and placing her in the unloving hands of a brute.

By all accounts, though, Dani and Mallus’ marriage is a loving one. He believes strongly in the ideals of the Alliance, and Dani seems to support him in that. He uses his piloting “hobby” as an escape from the intense political climate of his home, and has become truly exceptional at it. He flies the “Ashen Dragon,” a Valkyrie-pattern interceptor. He joined the Orochi liberation fleet of his own volition, as an “adventurer” in defiance of Bale Grimshaw’s late withdrawal of support.

Mallus Grimshaw is a Fighter Ace Aristocrat. He has Blood Potency 2, the Surge psychic power, and a modicum of training in the force sword and dueling (enough to teach commoner’s their place), the Ashen Dragon as a signature ship, and Dani Grimshaw as an ally.

Mallus’ player is the Gentleman Gamer, an old friend of mine and a veteran of my game, and a patron. I tapped him to round out the fighter aces, as a “spare” player, but despite joining late, he was the second player to turn in his character, and thus I had a lot of time to work out details, such as the nature of his relationship with his wife, what her stats were, etc. I feel like Mallus was built more like an Aristocrat who happens to be a fighter ace than the other way around, but that’s not surprising, given where the Gentleman Gamer’s interests lie (it’s right there in the name…). I also feel like I have a pretty good handle on his disadvantages, which tend to be obvious in play (Overconfidence, Paranoia, Code of Honor (Gentleman), etc)

Sir Tyro Pavonis

Tyro is an Alliance fighter ace born to the Pavonis family, an off-shoot of Sabine bloodline. Afflicted with the flaws of the Bloodline, Tyro is completely blind. This might seem to hamper his ability to fly, but fortunately, he operates an old, heirloom Devil-Pattern Interceptor, whose psychic interface and awareness module allow him to operate it without sight. He’s also a surprisingly gifted psychic, above what his blood purity might suggest, and being male, he is exceedingly precious to the bloodline. He joined the liberation fleet out of his duty to House Sabine and serves as one of the Wing Commanders of Harlequin Squadron.

Tyro is a Fighter Ace Aristocrat with Blood Purity 2, ESP talent, a signature ship (with +1 point for +1 psychotronic module, a request that I thought was interesting). He’s got Charisma +2, and Higher Purpose Wingman.

Tyro was the second of the pilots to be completed, a few days before the session began. Unlike Mallus, Tyro is very much a Fighter Ace, with Aristocracy tacked on because “Mmmm, aristocracy!” He’s played by Nemoricus, who I happen to know is a big fan of Wraith Squadron and thus came the closest to what I was angling for with fighter aces, having things like fighter techniques, rank and other abilities focused on being a fighter pilot. He’ll be interesting to test outside of combat, but I expect he’ll do well inside of combat. I don’t have nearly as much of a feel for him as I did for Mallus, though, which makes sense given his later arrival, but knowing Nemoricus, we’ll get a better sense of the character fairly quickly. I expect his role as Wing Commander will give him some interesting dynamics with some of the NPCs.

Lady Shay Sabine, Viscontess of Otranto

The Viscontess is a bit of a starlet in House Sabine. She bears Sabine beauty and grace in her carriage and physique and displays psychic talent rarely seen outside of older tales. Indeed, she is a skilled force swordsman (rated as Student of the Swift Form by the Threefold Order), and carries an ancient relic blade of surprising power. But like many great nobles, she bears a dead title and serves in the Alliance military directly as a pilot for House Sabine. The rest of her house watches her career with hope and trepidation and certainly noticed when she, of her own will, joined the Orochi Liberation Fleet as an adventurer, rather than under the auspices of House Sabine proper… many suspect that this is a cover, though, as certainly Nova Sabine would not allow someone as prestigious as the Viscontess to serve in such a dangerous role except as a quiet endorsement of that effort.

Shay Sabine is an Aristocratic Space Knight with some fighter pilot training as a power-up. She has a blood purity of 3(!), ESP Talent, a fifteen point signature resonance blade, a signature Devil-Pattern Interceptor, and a frightening knowledge (and collection) of the poisonous flowers of Persephone.

Shay was the last of the pilots added to the game, her character sheet coming out the night before. I’ve never played with her player, Shinanoki before, and with the character coming so late, I’ve not really had a chance to really get to know her that well, and given the similarity of Nemoricus’ concept and Shinanoki’s concept, I suspect he doesn’t know her that well yet either, as she went through a lot changes at the last moment. Shinanoki really enjoyed the “Dune” aesthetic of House Sabine and really wanted to explore that, so she’s a very baroque character, with strange, eyeless armor, a collection of poisons, the ability to communicate with other members of her house with but a touch (thus having conversations within conversations). By going with a Space Knight rather than a Fighter Ace, Shay has more room to explore being a member of a house, but by having fighter pilot training, she gives me the chance to see how characters who seek to branch out in this direction will fare. It’ll create an interesting contrast with the fighter aces: are they too good? Is it too easy for her to outshine them both on and off the space battlefield? We’ll have to see.

My thoughts

You may have, ah, noticed a theme: every single pilot is aristocratic. I expected the game to test the bounds of how flexible the fighter ace is, and they’re certainly doing that, but this is like running a D&D game where three of the six players all choose to play Elven Clerics, with two choosing the same God. That’s a really busy niche! I think by going with Space Knight, Shay’s player eased that a bit: Tyro will definitely be the better pilot, but Shay won’t be bad by any stretch (or so I hope).

I also found it interesting that everyone, literally every pilot, chose the Valkyrie. One commented that it was “obviously the PC ship,” which surprised me. The Valiant is meant to vaguely resemble the X-wing: it’s a multi-role fighter which can be dynamically reconfigured in battle for whatever role you need. The second really “PC” fighter would be the Wildcat, which is extremely customizable, and allows for very long trips if you want; it also has the firepower necessary to handle both fighters and capital ships. The Valkyrie, by contrast, is only really an anti-fighter fighter, a very quick ship that can keep up with Imperial Javelins, with pretty solid armor and a force screen, making it very durable, but lacking in firepower, and with a “neat trick” of a psychotronic module. It’s only really good at two things: taking down other fighters and keeping the pilot alive.

I think the real reason for its popularity is that the Maradonian aristocracy is very popular, and the Valkyrie is iconic for them. It emphasizes their strengths and their attitudes, and it feels like a romantic relic, like WW2 pilots who fly biplanes that have magic crystals in them that allow them to remain competitive: sure, they should update to the Valiant, but the Valkyrie was my father’s father’s fighter, etc. Given this reaction, I might need to explore the Valkyrie in more detail, perhaps finding a way to give it more flexibility (I’ve had one player ask for a hyperdrive sled, which basically makes the Valkryie even more like the Delta-7 than it already is; and perhaps I should find some way to squeeze a torpedo onto it.).

I worry a bit about the popularity of the aristocracy, not because I object to people wanting to play Space Knights and fighter-ace princesses, but because I want to make sure everything else is interesting too. In some ways, the Maradonian Aristocracy are one of the signatures of Psi-Wars, one of the ways you know you’re not “just” playing Star Wars. They also have a great deal of detail and a lot of internal tension (for example, they fight “for the people,” but don’t want to actually be around the smelly “people” that they fight for, and certainly wouldn’t marry them!). And I had a lot of fun watching them explore various aspects of different houses and bring up themes that, sometimes, I might have even forgotten. It was particularly interesting watching the Gentleman Gamer, because he is much less invested in the setting than the other two, so it was like watching him discover elements for the first time and then incorporate them into his character, which says a lot to me about the value of the wiki for introducing people to the setting.

But I want to make sure that people who want to play “commoners” have interesting elements to play with too. I think the problem there is that “common” characters tend to be attached to planets, and I haven’t gone into a lot of detail of planets yet, except for the Orochi Belt, and as we’ll see with Walker Lee below, that pays dividends in a similar way to the details of the aristocratic houses. The details given the alien races also help, as we’ll see with Xerxes.

The Non-Fighter Pilots

I could insist that everyone play fighter pilots, but I opposed this for two reasons. First, most Psi-Wars games won’t feature fighter aces and might not even have fighter aces. Second, most Psi-Wars gameplay won’t involve space combat and when it does, that space combat will be a sideshow for the main thing (like how in Return of the Jedi, the space battle is literally the background for Luke’s final confrontation with Vader).

This creates a difficult situation: to make a fighter ace fun, you have to create a situation specifically suited to their talents (space combat), which tends to isolate all the other characters. That is, during a space combat scene, the fighter aces have a ton of fun, but how much fun is the Diplomat having? And in non-space combat scenes, the Diplomat might be having fun, but how’s the fighter ace doing? This is ultimately true of every niche, of course, but it seems worse with the Fighter Ace, as they operate in a “different world” from the more common “planetary” play.

I could have run a strict, space combat scenario, but I chose not to, because I tend to do that on my own anyway, and because what I want a more holistic experience to create a broader view. What will Psi-Wars actually play like, and how will Fighter Ace’s experience that, and how will everyone else experience Fighter Ace gameplay?

So I requested that at least some of the players choose non-Fighter Aces. We have three.

Sir Axton Kain, Knight Protector

“Axton Kain is a young Space Knight, but he has seen battle as a regular in Caliban’s forces and proven himself brave to a fault, perhaps even heroic.

“A few months ago, Axton came to the rescue of an Akashic delegation’s yacht fleeing an Imperial Dominion-class Cruiser, the Valorian Authority. Against orders, Axton came to the rescue of the yacht, leading a Lancer on a
bloody mission to sieze the Valorian Authority. He succeeded, and even more surprisingly he survived. He has since been celebrated in Alliance propaganda and awarded the title of Knight Protector.
“Axton sees himself as following in the footsteps of his father, Anthor Kain. Anthor died when Axton was just a babe in arms, protecting the Contessa Styliana Sabine in the Last Stand of Delphinus. Axton was raised in the
household of his great uncle, Archbaron Kento Kain, on tales of his father’s heroism.

“In truth, the Akashic Order was aware of Axton long before he came to their aid. The oracles have foretold a complicated destiny for him with many branches into the future, some with Axton dying an honorable hero in
the mold of Kusari Kain, others where he becomes a rogue or great warlord. All end with Axton’s name being remembered, but House Kain ultimately weakened by his actions.

“Aware of these predictions, the Archbaron has attempted to steer Axton to a place where he has the opportunity to die a hero without completely breaking the strength of House Kain. When Axton lept at the chance to lend his sword to the same Lady Sabine that his father had died defending, the Archbaron saw it as the hand of destiny. He blessed Axton’s going, supplied him with a ship and attendants, and prepared for the grievous and joyous news.
“Axton is in his early twenties and stands 6’5” with a broad frame. His face is boyish and innocent of guile, framed by dark curly hair that he wears long and loose. His voice is a sweet, booming bass, amplified by his Silvertongue
implant. Unlike most members of House Kain he has no other visible cybernetics. Beneath his skin however, Axton’s skeleton and organs are the best House Kain’s foundries have to offer.

“His Crusader-pattern armor has been custom modified with a gauntlet on the right arm for protection in duels. The armor and his sword and shield were actually carried by Anthor Kain during his last stand, and later
ransomed by Axton at great cost. The Redjack pistol is his own nod to the needs of the modern battlefield. His most consistent companion is his Shieldmaiden robot Elara, who maintains the cybernetics that run throughout his body, as well as his armor and fashionable dress.”

Axton Kain is an Aristocratic Space Knight, with a Cybernetic Power-Up. He’s a Student of Knightly Force Swordsmanship, and he has a robot of the shield maiden pattern and a racanteur personality, Elara.

All of this material comes directly from the player himself. Axton was the first PC ready, the only one with a written background. Since he came so early, his player and I also had a lot of time to work on his character together. Because his robot is a storyteller, I wanted to figure out what stories she would tell, which resulted in the “Legendarium of Axton Kain,” a document we’ve been haggling over for awhile, which details the origins of his line and major moments of it, ie the sorts of stories his robot would tell. This intense scrutiny creates a self-perpetuating cycle detail creation (I would recommend to my other aristocratic players, if they have the time or interest, to at least contemplate their lineage and how they fit into the history of the setting; the Maradonian aristocracy is ripe for the sort of detailed family legends that we see in 40k or Vampire: the Masquerade, and it’s a lot of fun).

Axton is also the ideal way to test how someone who really, really isn’t a pilot will fair when space combat comes up.

The player also created the Orochi belt, so it’s interesting to see it through his eyes.

Walker Lee

Walker Lee is a war hero of the Orochi Belt. He served in the Alliance Navy as a petty officer before he grew disenchanted with all the politics and BS and mustered out and returned to his native Orochi Belt where he operated as a salvager until the Empire invaded, where his participation in the resistance earned him the “rank” of Commander in the resistance. With the loss of the Belt, he continued to work on the inside, occasionally slipping out along smuggler routes to resupply and to call for aid. He didn’t join the Orochi Liberation Fleet so much as it joined up with him and his Nomad-Class Corvette, the Bad Penny.

Walker Lee is a Scavenger Wanderer with some elements of the Officer skill set tossed on as power-ups. In addition to his courtesy rank, charisma, reputation and favors and other forms of accumulated favor, he has an Ally, Jethro Page, a farm-boy from St. Borlaug’s Star who has a knack for piloting, entrusted to Walker Lee to help him see the galaxy and grow up a bit.

Walker’s player has played an officer before, and I’ve enjoyed all of his characters. This one was a particular treat, though, because he dove pretty deep into the Orochi Belt and it’s culture. He quoted some names and concepts to me that I hadn’t realized anyone had bothered to read up on, which was quite a delight. As a scavenger, in principle, he’s a “ground” character, but his officer training makes him useful in space and, of course, his Nomad is built for speed and support, which means he’ll be useful in space combat, but in an unusual role.

Walker is a shepherdist (though I’m not sure how devout), so I might invest some time into exploring that faith in more detail.

Xerxes

Xerxes is an Asrathi Witchcat pirate. He commands the Calico, a Tigershark-Pattern Assault Frigate equipped with two Grappler-class boarding boats. He and his crew have a careful understanding with the Archbaron of Caliban to be allowed to operate in his realm of protection provided he hits nothing under the protection of House Kain. He prefers to hit soft Imperial targets, but sometimes hits civilian transports (those operating under the auspice of the Empire). He joined the Orochi Liberation Fleet as a mercenary, hired by the Archbaron himself.

Xerxes is a “Pirate,” a new template that’s so far Patron-only, not especially because it needs to remain secret, but because I’m not sure it should be a thing, and it may well need some work. Beyond that, he’s invested heavily into “Death Walking,” the Asrathi mystical art of Unconscious Communion along the Path of Death. He was the third character out, and he came out quite early. He asked about a crew for his ship, if he needed to make them allies and, of course, he didn’t: they can be hirelings, and so I went ahead and gave them some details anyway, as NPCs who posed potential problems to Xerxes and the rest of the crew (fitting for a pirate)

Sylvar Ro and his Reavers, a bloodthirsty Asrathi assassin with a fanatical devotion to the Asrathi old ways, and a belief that he alone knows best.
Born Risken and his Maurauders, a burly belter who drinks away his coin and loses his temper at the drop of a hat.
Winner Chau and Ripper, a Shinjurai mechanic with a chip on her should and a deep and abiding hatred of human traffickers. Ripper is her Crankshaft-Class robot.
Persia Purasinga, an Asrathi college student who got caught up in all of this by a big misunderstanding. She’s not actually a pirate, but to repay the crew of the Calico for rescuing her, she acts as their medic.

Xerxes’ player is not someone I’ve played with before, but his desire to play an Asrathi added some urgency to my desire to create a more codified version of Psi-Wars’ felinoids. I’ve really enjoyed exploring the race as a consequence of his addition, partly because the addition of some aliens adds to the Space Opera feel, but also because the small details I’ve added have had an outsized influence on how people see an interact with them. I also really enjoyed creating his crew.

Xerxes has a pretty strong focus on piloting his frigate, but his crew also gives him the ability to bring in ground support, making him pretty flexible and able to help in both areas. But what his player really wanted to explore was what sort of impact Communion would make on large scale battles, and his presence gives me the opportunity to explore that.

Thoughts

Generally, I’m pretty happy with the group. I’m happier with my non-pilots than I am with my pilots, but that stands to reason: when you open up character options, people have the opportunity to explore things, and as weird as it might be that all the fighter pilots are aristocrats who fly the same fighter, would an Imperial game actually be so different? I don’t think so. Thus that will make for an interesting experience. I think our two Sabines could use some additional attention, which they lack primarily because they came late in the game, but I’ve got another month to work out details with them. The problem isn’t that there isn’t room for interesting details and refinement, just that we haven’t had the time.

We’ve already had the first session, so expect a report on it soon.

Playtest: The Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt

I’ve wanted to explore the Action Vehicular combat rules for awhile, and there’s no better way to do that than to use the actual rules that we’ve built up and run a game with them. Furthermore, actually running a game helps me focus on what I actually need, and what actually matters. A great deal of material comes from run games. Finally, I’ve not put enough time into running games of late, as my family and work have been eating into what time I have, but with luck, I’ll manage to schedule enough time to do this.

The Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt will be a (roughly) episodic mini-campaign. I have three to five arcs planned, all episodic. They follow in an obvious sequence, more or less, but it should be relatively easy to have players drop in and out as necessary. The premise will be the liberation of a star system, the Orochi Belt, that features no planets to speak of, and thus all “space” action, ideal for testing out space combat rules.

The first session will be January 4th, and we already have 5 players. As I get more details (such as who the characters are, other than one Kainian Space Knight and one Asrathi Witch-Cat Pirate), I’ll tell more. In the meantime, enjoy this introductory snippet:

The Orochi Prelude

Lady Thalia Sabine, knight of the Three-Fold Order, raced through the halls of the Atrium Senate building. The heels of her fitted, thigh-high boots rang out on the marble floors. Her carefully selected, fashionable shoulder cape flapped artfully behind her. The elegant hilt of her dueling force saber bounced on her thigh. Ahead of her, shut behind a closed door, a man’s voice reached its angry crescendo, and then fell silent. She skidded to a halt, gulped air, and slammed the door controls with her hand. The door obediently opened with a quiet shuff.

Three figures occupied the center of the room, silhouetted a grand vista with the smog-swathed homeworld, Maradon in a great window. An old woman hunched on her chair. Long, silver-white hair hid her face and her tapered fingers tested on a cane. A silken white garment flowed over her body, which managed to retain enough of its curves to hint at what beauty she must have held in her youth. Behind her, a silver Nightingale-pattern medical robot fretted, its sculpted, metallic features doing their best to express manufactured concern. Before the old woman, with his back to the Lady Thalia, a gentleman stood with a stiff spine.

Thalia’s voice cut through the tense silence with a harsh whisper.

“Get away from my grandmother, Quietus.”

The gentleman turned, then, his cloak whirling. His face bore the tell-tale, rugged, Mediterranean features of House Korenno. His gloved hand paused dangerously close to his own force sword hilt, and the two members of the Three-Fold Order glared at one another as the threat of violence hung in the air.

Then Baron Quietus Korenno tugged his cape back into place, hiding the hilt of his dangerous weapon. He lifted his chin and stepped beside Thalia.

“I was just saying farewell to the Grand Dame before she goes into her exile.”

Then he left and the door closed behind him. The medical robot visibly de-escalated, its metallic shell contracting slightly as its parts fell into a more peaceful configuration with a quiet click.

“Greetings, Lady Thalia Sabine!” the robot cheerfully chirped. “Would you like a piece of candy? Or perhaps a cup of tea?”

Both humans in the room ignored the robot.

“What did he say to you?” Thalia whispered to her grandmother.

The Grand Dame lifted her head so that the curtain of pale hair fell away to reveal her face. Dark eyes looked up at her grand daughter from a surprisingly smooth face for a woman of her years, her features a grudging compromise beauty made with maturity. Then she rolled her eyes.

“Ever since House Korenno realized no Korenno blood flowed through your veins, they’ve held a grudge. They’ve finally succeeded in limiting my options, and he wanted to gloat. That’s all.”
Thalia paused and then blinked, processing the information. “Wait, grandma, a moment. Of course grandfather was of House Korenno. How can you say that…”

The Grand Dame fixed her granddaughter with a flat stare and, after enough time had passed that Thalia surely grasped her meaning, raised her aged hand. “Help me up. These old bones aren’t as spry as they once were. I need to take command of my… what did he call it? My exile in proper fashion. We need to make sure it’s useful and I’m late already.”

That snapped Thalia from her speculative reverie and she reached out to help her grandmother rise to her feet. After her grandmother collected herself, Thalia stole a moment to study at her reflection and pondered her features, from her silken locks the color of the night sky to her raven eyes. Her features bore all the beauty one might expect from a Sabine, but she reflected on all the times people had tried to incorrectly guess the other half of her lineage, or where her unusually pure genetics came from, and wondered how much she really knew of her own heritage.

“Thalia.” Her grandmother snapped, standing near the door. “The duchess, the senate, are waiting on us.”

“Yes, Dame.”

—

The great, vaulted chamber of the Atrium Senate chamber bustled with murmuring voices. Today’s proceedings risked controversy, and thus every member of the noble houses, plebian planets and wealthy corporations wanted front row seats when the fireworks began.

The booming voice of Archbaron Kento Kain cut through the speculative chatter. He stood from his seat in the forum, gleaming in full battle regalia, his white hair pulled back into a warriors queue. Proper senatorial procedure demanded that senatorial debates occur sequentially, and that only the person with the floor, standing at the podium, could speak, but nobody dared remind the Archbaron of protocol.

“How dare you suggest that the Alliance has failed in its obligations. We fight the war as hard as we can.”

Standing at the podium, his hands grasping the edges of the lectern, the Senator-in-Exile, Sawyer Septum, gave his patented, roguish grin and asked “Did I say the Alliance failed? I said the Alliance has an opportunity!”

He gestured dramatically, as though seizing a fleeting moment. “Hyperstorms have cut the imperial occupation forces in the Orochi belt from the 137^thImperial fleet!”

He paused, lifting a finger and glancing around the room. Thin and dressed in a brown suit and string-tie, he oozed the charisma of used starship salesman making an offer the Senate would be foolish to refuse. “With a cunningstrike from your knightly fleets, we could slip in unnoticed and seize the initiative, destroy their forces and liberatethe Orochi Belt from Imperial oppression. Why, imagine it! It’d be like that time when the united fleets of your augusthouses drove the Slaver fleets from the Hydrus Constellation! Oh, the celebrations, the feasts, the…”

“Enough, sycophant.” The Lord of Caliban growled, his hand tightening around the belted hilt of his force sword, as though he wished it was Sawyer Septum’s neck. “The warships we’d need to liberate it must remain in Caliban to prevent an attack from the 137^th. Your forces bungled the defenses of the Belt, and now you want us to sacrifice our ships to secure your seat of power.”

Thalia and her grandmother slipped quietly into their seats behind the podium, waiting their turn to speak and listening as the Orochi Senator did his best to convince the Senate of the pressing need for military aid for his beleaguered star system. When the Senator mentioned the Hydrus constellation, Thalia’s eyes darted to the Elegans delegation and she couldn’t help but find the words a calculated ploy to pique their interest.

Thalia then glanced at the other person with them waiting in the wings: the Senator’s wife, the First Lady of the Orochi Belt, Rayna Septum, and her eyes fairly popped out. The quiet, demure Rayna often appeared in holograms of Sawyer and Thalia had simply assumed they had been taken from the most flattering angle possible, but no, even in real life, Rayna had that exaggerated, sculpted perfection one rarely found outside of pornographic holograms soldiers often passed around. Her candy-red hair fell against porcelain white features and her every breath must have drawn the attention of every man in the room. She bore a bar-code tattoo on her cheek, readily identifying her as of Shinjurai lineage.

As they sat, Rayna politely leaned over and said “It’s good of you to lend support to the cause.” Her tone reminded Thalia of the manufactured politeness of her grandmother’s medical robot, and she simply smiled in response and then turned back to the Grand Dame.
“You don’t have to do this.” She murmured.

“Oh, I think I do.” Her grandmother rattled back quietly. “My position on Persphone grows more tenuous with every passing day. Soon, I shall become too controversial, too unpalatable for polite society to suffer my presence. Better to die a hero than to live as a scandal.”

“Die?” Thalia’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Oh, my blood is not as pure as yours, Thalia, but I still have dreams. I know I’ll die in the Orochi Belt.”

Before they could continue, the Speaker of the House, the Duchess Nova Sabine smartly rapped her gavel, ending the increasingly passionate discourse between Swayer Septum and the Archbaron. The Archbaron sat with a harrumph, and Senator Septum let his retort die on his lips, and flashed the Duchess an irreverent grin, and then exited the podium.

As he passed them, pulling out a holographic communicator attached to his vest by a gold chain, he gave his devoted wife a quick peck on the cheek and winked at Thalia “Hey, thanks for doin’ this. Every little bit helps the cause!”

Nova Sabine rose, her silken gown emphasizing the Sabine sway of her body. She lifted her chin and spoke in the crystal clear tones.

“The Senate recognized the honorable Styliana Sabine, Contessa of Delphinus, Grand Dame of House Sabine.”

The title, of course, rang hollow. House Sabine hadn’t ruled any world in the Galactic Core for a generation. Like many nobles in the Alliance, the Grand Dame bore a “dead” title, a fact that people didn’t discuss in polite society, but nonetheless hovered over her entire career like a black mark.
Lady Styliana Sabine patted her grand-daughters hand. “It will be worth it, I promise.”

She rose and approached the lectern. As she stood, setting aside her cane, she rose to her full height, and the years seemed to fall away from her, making Thalia yearn to find an old hologram and see what her grandmother must have looked like in her prime. She spoke, with the same clarity of tone that Nova Sabine had just spoken with.

“Honorable Senators of the GalacticAlliance, for too long have we hidden behind the durable shield of the Hammer of Caliban. We have surrendered initiative to the vile forces of the usurper. We allow him to rage across the galaxy and await our eventual demise. No more! No more. At last, we must bring the fight to the false Emperor. We must prove to those under our protection that membership to the Alliance means something. We must restore to the galaxy what the False Emperor took away from it: Hope.”

—

Thalia slammed the datapad to the table in frustration and then stalked to the window overlooking the hangar bay of the Heirophant, the Grand Dame’s personal carrier.

“Did another House withdraw support?” her grandmother asked quietly from where she sat while her medical robot scanned her carefully, to check for any deterioration of her health.

“Daijin.” Thalia muttered angrily.

“They had hoped to win you over to their marriage proposal. Once it was clear you intended to come with me, they withdrew.”

“And the rest?” Thalia demanded “Sabine?”

“House Korenno’s doing. They want to make sure my humiliation is as complete as theirs.”

“The Denjuku ships?”

“Where Grimshaw goes, so too goes Denjuku. They wanted to offer support to make sure the measure passed, and then claim some pressing matter to ensure they didn’t lose anything in an actual battle. Perhaps we should focus on what we have left.”

“An Elegans medical cruiser and three Kainian lancers.” She snorted.

“Ah, yes. Quite a commitment from House Elegans, but I suppose anything that gets them closer to retaking Zaine is worth any sacrifice. And Kain, of course, wants to make sure that this all isn’t a Sabine ploy to undermine their monopoly on traffic through the Maelstrom. We have some forces from the Orochi Belt as well, don’t we? Raiders, if I recall correctly, and a Kodiak?”

Thalia shifted then, her attention focused away from her grandmother and towards the hangar bay. A wildcat landed, and then another. Strange figures climbed out of craft decorated with a caricature of a female clown or jester whose face bore a striking resemblance to Thalia’s own. Thalia realized with a start that allthe fighters in front of her had the same iconography.

“What’s all this?” she asked.

“Hmm?” Her grandmother asked, and then struggled to her feet. Her cane tapped the ground as she approached her grand daughter to see what she saw, and then she smiled. “Oh yes, that.”

“Whose idea was this?”

“Mine, my dear. It’s your first command.”

Thalia’s long eyelashes fluttered. “My what?”

“We need to forge a bond between our Maradonian forces and those of the Orochi Belt. It’s a new Squadron, the Oh-Twenty-Second, Harlequin squadron. You’re going to be their squadron leader. Congratulations on the promotion! I understood you have quite some training as a pilot, and it’s about time you learned to lead in battle.”

Thalia’s mouth gaped and her eyes danced in excitement, but before she could respond, her grandmother added “Are you sure you want to join us on this fool crusade? Look at those pilots.” She pointed her twig-like finger towards the window. Thalia looked again, noticing how strange they looked: one drank what looked suspiciously like green beer while prepping a game of chance with another, younger, more gullible and idealistic partner, barely more than a kid, and… was that an Asrathi? The felinoid looked strange in a piloting jumpsuit.

“They’re desperate. Perhaps they are Orochi natives who hope to liberate their system. Or perhaps they’re members of the Alliance with something to prove. Many of them are going to die. I am going to die. You might die.”

Thalia shook her head “My fortunes are forever tied to yours. You are the last of my family.”

The Contessa Styliana Sabine fell silent for a moment and then murmured “I know.”

Wiki Showcase: the Fighter Ace

If you’re a Disciple or better on Patreon, you already know that I’ve announced the coming playtest for the Action Vehicular Rules: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt. I’ll detail more as we come closer to the first session. Naturally, to run this playtest, I need to work out the sorts of characters that would use all these fighters we’ve been builing, and that means working out the Fighter Ace and putting it on the Wiki.

This was actually the first of the new templates I revised for Iteration 7. I started working on it after I finished the Action Vehicular Rules, because it changed a lot of how they functioned, and I wanted to capture that. That said, it’s probably changed the least of the new templates; mostly, I just migrated the advantage/disadvantage choices based on who they worked for to lenses, and updated their techniques to use the new techniques. I’ve removed the “Maverick, Wingman, Bomber” distinctions of their techniques as I expect everyone to be adult enough to understand what to do with that, and I’ve discussed that in their customization notes (this could be expanded, though). I’ve integrated their “Power-ups” into the template rather than leave them as distinct, “Fighter Ace only” upgrades (this means they lose their “fighter gizmos,” but we can bring that back if people really miss them). I do intend to create a “cross-class” fighter ace specialization, so people who want to play as space knights who can also fly fighters can do so.

The Ridiculously Huge Action Vehicular Playtest Part II – The Battle

This is part two of an epic playtest for my GURPS Action Vehicular System for Psi-Wars (though you can borrow it for anything Action-inspired). See yesterday’s post for additional context!

Turn 1

Status:

The Alliance Fleet and the Imperial Fleet are Remote from one another.
The Alliance Carrier (The Blind Justice) is undamaged.
Tobin is undamaged and 8 missiles
Starlet is undamaged and 8 missiles
Shiana is undamaged
Dun’s Lancer is undamaged
5 Lancers remain
The Valorian Edict is undamaged
The Reign of Fire is undamaged
The Final Judgment is undamaged
Harkin Grave is undamaged

Dun Beltain rested in the crash harness in the nose section of the Lancer. He breathed slowly in the breather of his helmet, focusing on maintaining his calm focus. However, his thoughts continuously darted to the fact that he had never boarded a ship like this before, and that only a thin layer of carbide armor stood between himself and the void beyond.

Suddenly, the ship rocked. His armored fingers tightened in the harness and he turned to the ostentatiously armored Regular that sat beside him. The soldier pointed out the viewport. Blaster fire speared like crimson fire through the void. Imperial fighters zipped by so close, he felt like he could reach out and touch them.

“Imperial strike fighters.” His comms crackled.

Outside, in the void of space, Tobin’s hands tightened on his control yoke as his robot’s voice chirped in his comm system. Starlet’s voice repeated the same warning.

“I see them.” Tobin growled back, his eyes on his sensors which revealed a swarm imperial fighters racing towards the Lancers. “We need to fend them off. See if you can take out a few. We need to keep those Lancers alive!”

When it comes to handling large battles, I find it best to break it down into the pieces that matter.

First, at what range should we start? We could start at Remote, but that doesn’t matter. Obviously, the Lancers are going to Move towards the Final Judgment until they can board with it; being dead in the water, all it can do is shoot at them. Thus, they will eventually reach it. As no player character is in control of them, we won’t worry about their rolls (we would be rolling to roll; we can instead arbitrate). For Dun, there’s nothing he can do; he’s a sitting duck in his own ship. Thus, with nothing to do, he needs no mechanical focus. All Dun can do is wait in his ship until he boards. Were I genuinely running this game, I would not seriously threaten his Lancer. If any Lancer makes it, it will be his, so he can have the agency to decide his own fate. It’s dirty pool to say “Well, the NPCs flying your ship suck, so now you’re dead.” Thus, the pilot will make whatever rolls necessary to keep the ship alive, while the nameless NPCs in the attack craft will fail to do any serious, lasting harm to the ship.

However, for the sake of examining mechanics, let’s look at what the rolls might be. The Lancer has a Chase roll of +12, and a pilot typically has skill 12. The Final Judgment is Stopped, and thus provides a +5 to anyone chasing them. The result is that they’ll get the best possible result every time and can close 2 range bands per turn. If we go from Remote to Distant in one round, then Distant to Long in the next, and “Long” is collision range, given the Lancer’s move of 250. Therefore, it takes two turns to board the Final Judgment. Once there, the boarding equipment can cut through the side armor in 10 seconds, and so once they board, they really board.

More realistically, covering 100 miles would take Lancers about 10 minutes, which is sufficient time for the much faster Imperial fighters to get in range. Thus the real question is not “how long does it take the Lancers to reach the Final Judgment” but “How long until the Peltast’s can put torpedos on the lancer?”

This is the real meat of the fight: the Peltasts want to destroy the Lancers, the fighters need to stop them. We can take our “2 turns” number and say that the escorts must fend off the Peltasts for 2 turns. It’s several squadrons vs several squadrons, so we must again focus on just the player characters; instead of worrying about all the lancers and all the peltasts, we’ll worry about a few peltasts that are attacking a single lancer, the one our heroes have been assigned to protect. It won’t be Dun’s, because we want the real possibility of failure here, but it might be nice to give the people on it a sense of identity to give the players some urgency, but that falls beyond the scope of this playtest. Let’s say that a single squadron is attacking all five lancers, which means about 5 peltasts per lancer. If the players can fend off 5 peltasts, then they can protect “their” lancer; their success and failure will be a microcosm for their squadrons’ successes and failures.

Thus our real fight begins with the Peltasts, and we must determine our range for them. As is often the case in multi-chase fights, we’ll focus on the bit that matters to us, and in this bit, the Peltasts would start Beyond Visual, as a swarm of blips descending on the Lancers.

Tobin punched in some commands that shifted his wings in a back-swept position, then pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go and then thumbed the afterburners on. The pressure pushed him against his seat as he raced for the swarm of Peltasts that loomed in his screen. The other Valiants joined him, screaming forward, with the one exception of the dangerously beautiful Valkyrie that pressed ahead of them and opened fire on the Peltast swarm first. With a thump, two of his missiles launch, and he sees more missiles fired from the Valiants around him. As the Peltasts just become visible, fireballs bloom in view, and Tobin notes with some satisfaction that one of his has been hit and is careening out of control in a shower of sparks.

The dagger-shape of Shiana’s Valkyrie races ahead of them, lancing blaster fire at the distant Peltasts but her fire goes wide.

“Where’s Starlet?” Tobin mutters to himself, scanning the black skies.

Tobin, Starlet and Shiana make a Move and Attack. Tobin has a piloting of 18 and his Valiant has a Chase bonus of +17, giving him a 33 (35-2 because of Move and Attack). Starlet has a skill of 15 and the same Chase Bonus, giving her a 30. Shiana has a Piloting of 17 and her Valkyrie has a Chase bonus of +20, giving her a 35 (again, -2 from Move and Attack). The Peltasts have modest pilots with Skill 12, and they have a Chase Bonus of +18, giving them a total of 28. The Peltasts make a Move, as they’re trying to get into torpedo range with the Lancers.

Tobin rolls a 10. The Peltasts that he chases rolls an 11. Tobin wins by 6, which means he can close one range band to Distant. He fires his missile. Because he has Ace Pilot, he can gain Accuracy on a Move and Attack, and so fires a second missile. He’ll fire at two different targets (-3 for rapid strike). These are plasma burst missiles with +3 accuracy, +4 for burst, and -4 for Peltast ECM. They’re are SM +4 and they’re fast enough to apply a -6 to the attack, for a total of -2, or 14. He rolls twice and hits both times with a 5 (one shy of critical success!) and a 14. The Peltasts can dodge. Assuming Skill 12 and no combat reflexes, they have a dodge of 6 + 4 (handling) + 2 (ECM) -3 (Missiles) or 9 or less. One dodges with an 8. The other is hit.

Given that it’s a mook fighter, I wouldn’t even bother with its rolls, but for completeness, let’s check! A 160mm plasma burst missile deals 6d×15 damage. I rolled 16, so it’s 320 damage. The Peltast has 15 DR, dropping it to 305. It has 85 HP, which means its taken a bit more than 3× its HP in damage. According to our rules, this means that we’ve destroyed one system and the vehicle needs to roll HT to survive and if it survives, it must roll HT to remain functional. It has an HT of 10 and passes both rolls with a 10 and a 7. For the destroyed system, we roll a 16, which is “power systems.” The Peltast needs power to fire its weapons, but not its missiles or its engines, so in principle, if this was a “hero ship,” it would still be flying… barely. But it’s not, it’s a mook ship, so it’s dead.

Starlet rolls a 15 vs a 7. She actually loses the contest. She is unable to fire on the Peltasts. Perhaps she’s surprised?

Shiana rolls an 11 vs a 13. She succeeds by 24 vs their 15, which is almost a success by 10. She closes range to Distant and opens fire with her blasters (she has no missiles). She has skill 18, thanks to her Soul of the Machine, she has a target lock for +5, she cannot apply her accuracy (she’s not actually an Ace Pilot), her target is +4 SM, she has an ROF of 6 (+1) and the range penalty is -19. She needs a 9 or less to hit. She rolls an 11 and misses.

Dun hears the reports of the Lancers joining the fray with their corvette cannons, opening fire on the incoming Peltasts. Helpless and waiting, he grips his harness more tightly. With a glance outside of the porthole, he can see the swarm of approaching fighters in the distance as well as the streaks of blaster fire and the fireballs of explosions.

This is a classic three way chase. The Alliance fighters pursue the Imperial Strikecraft, and the Strikecraft pursue the Lancers. Again, I wouldn’t bother with this in the actual game, and would instead focus on the fighters, but we’re also here to see if things work, and players could be in Peltasts going after Lancers!

The Peltasts have a chase total of 28 or less. The Lancers, assuming a pilot skill of 12, the Lancers have a chase total of 24 or less. The Peltasts roll a 9 and succeed by 19, while the Lancers roll a 10 and succeed by 14. The Peltasts close to Distant.

The Lancers may fire back. They’re too big to easily hit fighters, thus suffer a -5 to attack. The fighters are at Distant (-19) and are SM +4. The Lancers are moving, so no accuracy bonus for the gunners, but they do have a target lock for +5. The total is -15, which means they cannot possibly hit.

Aboard his silvery Tempest-Class fighter, Harkin Grave adjusts his sensors as his craft rushes alongside the strikecraft. His sensors detect a familiar signature and his deep chuckle resonates within his dark flight helmet. He signals for the Javelins to break and give pursuit to the Valiants, to offer the Peltasts some cover.

Blaster fire erupts from the squadron as they rush down on the Valiants, who scatter before them. Harkin’s attention focuses on Starlet’s fighter as she struggles to evade. He acquires lock and fires, and then angles slightly and fires a second missile in anticipation of her dodge. Her Valiant agilely spin away from the missile after the tell-tale flash of light of a flare, and would have flown right into the second missile if she hadn’t suddenly extended her wings to slow, allowing it to overshoot. Harkin tilts his head.

“Uncanny.”

It’s never just one thing, is it? Obviously the Empire sent escort craft. Can they take down any of the Alliance fighters? Once again, let’s focus on the heroes and treat what happens to them as indicative of what happens to the rest of the Valiants.

Assuming a Javelin pilot has skill 12, their chase bonus of 20 gives them a skill of 32 (30 on a move and attack). A typical Valiant pilot, by the way, will have about a 29 or 30. Both sides roll a 7 (success by 23 for the Javelins), which means the Javelins can open fire on the Valiants in general. Tobin rolls an 11, which is success by 22, which means he has a Javelin attacking him; Starlet rolls a 9, which is success by 21, which means she has a Javelin attacking her; Shiana rolls a 12, which is success by 23, which means she barely has a Javelin pursuing her. Given that the fighters are in formation with the Peltasts, it’s fair to say that they’re all Distant without needing to close range.

The Javelins attack. With a skill of 12, targeting of +5, no accuracy, their targets are SM +5, and they have an ROF of 6 (+1). Their range penalty is -19. They need a 4 or less to hit. None do.

Harkin focuses on Starlet. He has a skill of 16 and his Tempest has a chase bonus of 22, giving him a 38 or less vs Starlet’s 32 or less. He rolls a 12 vs her 14, or success by 26 vs success by 18. He chooses to be Advantaged. He fires 2 missiles directly at her. With his skill of 18, her speed penalty of -7, her ECM penalty of -4, and his accuracy of 3, he needs a 10 or less to hit her. He rolls an 8, which is enough to hit with both missiles. Her ESM warns her and grants her a +2 to dodge, vs the -3 the missiles apply. She has a pilot skill of 15, combat reflexes and combat sense (on a 10 or less; she rolls a 6), and her handling is +3. She dodges on an 11 or less. She pops a flare and dodges both missiles with a 7. Whew!

“Battle is joined.” On the bridge of the Valorian Edict, Sub-Admiral Sin strokes his chin as he watches the flare of distant explosions.

He then turns to his sensor officers “Do we have a lock on their carrier?”

“Yes sir!” the man snaps a salute “We’re calculating a firing solution now.”

Again, not strictly necessary in this fight, I nonetheless want to see how well it handles capital-v-capital fights. One of the things I implemented was very remote bombardment, and the Imperator-Class Dreadnoughts have super-heavy turrets capable of remote combat. Let’s see what they can do to the carrier in the midst of all this. Of course, they have to take an Aimmaneuver to have a hope of hitting.

Turn 2

Status:

The Alliance Fleet and the Imperial Fleet are Remote from one another.
The Alliance Carrier is undamaged.
Tobin is undamaged and has 6 missiles left
Starlet is undamaged and has 8 missiles left
Shiana is undamaged
Dun’s Lancer is undamaged
5 Lancers remain
Our heroes must destroy 4 more Peltasts to avert the attack.
The Valorian Edict is undamaged and has Aimed at the Alliance Carrier
The Reign of Fire is undamaged and has Aimed at the Alliance Carrier
The Final Judgment is undamaged
Harkin Grave is undamaged and has 4 missiles left.

Tobin’s comms buzz with pilot chatter and his Tech-bot warns him with frantic warbles: Incoming Javelins. Blaster fire spears the darkness around him, but comes nowhere close.

“Stay on target.” He growls back into his comms. “Those Peltasts will destroy the Lancers if we’re not careful!”

Then Starlet’s voice chills her. “He’s here, Tobin, and he’s on my tail.”

Tobin shoots a glance out of his canopy in her direction, and sees the flash of the silvery fighter. Dammit. He grits his teeth, glacing between the Lancers racing towards the Final Judgment and the Silver Reaper, Harkin Grave, pulling closer and closer towards a frantically evading Starlet.

“You have to hold him off just a little longer, Starlet. Just a little longer.”

Tobin pulls his wings forward for greater agility and dives towards the Peltast-class strike fighters through the rain of blaster fire. With a flick of his wings, he suddenly dives out of the path of the Javelin pursuing him, who overshoots at far too high a speed and is forced to make a long, agonizingly slow turn to return.

The Javelins pursue the Valiants who pursue the Peltasts who pursue the Lancers.

The Javelins have their chase total of 32, vs Tobin’s 35, Starlet’s 32 and Lady Grimshaw’s 37. The Javelins roll a paltry 16 (success by 16) vs Tobin’s 13 (success by 25), Starlet’s 13 (success by 19) and Shiana’s 8 (success by 29). Tobin and Shiana pull out of range of their respective fighters.

Harkin has a 38 vs Starlet’s 32. He rolls a 10 (28) and she rolls a 12 (20). He succeeds and pulls to Extreme and opens fire. She’s at -16 range, he has accuracy as an Ace Pilot (+9), RoF 6 (+1), he has a target lock on her (+5) and she’s SM +5. With his skill of 18, he needs a 23 or less to hit. He rolls an 8, which means he hits with a margin of 15, which is enough to hit with all 6 shots.

Starlet succeeds at her Combat Sense roll of 10 or less, giving her a total defense of 11. She shifts to “Wings Forward” for extra agility, getting a 12 or less. She rolls a 10, which means she dodges 3 of the 6 shots. Assuming a standard roll of 100 damage per shot, her force screen can take the first two hits, and the last hit strikes her craft for Moderate damage. He rolls a 14, which is Cargo/Hangar Baywith no cascade. She technically has a cargo compartment, but it’s fundamentally part of her cockpit, so we can either declare no disabled system or roll again. We roll a 7, which is “equipment,” disabling one of her comms, ultrascanner or force screen. We choose force screen.

Harkin’s attention focuses on the defensive Starlet. Her wings shift forward, slowing her speed but granting her greater agility. Harkin presses the throttle closer and makes a quick pass, blaster fire raking across her force screens. She managed to slip past half of his fire, but a lucky shot burst through her screens and left an important part of her ship glowing red hot.

“Her force screens are down,” he mused, checking his scanners to be sure.

The Peltasts have their chase total of 30, vs Tobin’s 35 and Lady Grimshaw’s 37. The Peltats roll a nice 9 (success by 21) vs Tobin’s 8 (success by 27) and Shiana’s 10 (success by 27). Tobin and Shiana still have the Peltast’s in their sights and can close to Extreme.

Tobin opens fire on two Peltasts (Rapid Strike -3), spreading his ROF of 12 (+2) between the two of them (6 shots each). They’re Extreme (-15), he has targeting systems (+5), they’re SM +4, and he has skill 16 and he has his accuracy bonus of +9. He needs a 17 or less to hit. He rolls a 13 and a 12, hitting with 3 and 4 shots respectively. The two Peltasts have a dodge of 10; both fail with a 14 and an 11. Assuming the average of 100 damage, each is hit for crippling wound per attack (100 damage -3 DR after armor divisors vs 85 HP). If we use the simplified accumulated wounds, then the first must roll HT-3 (7 or less) while the second must roll HT-4 (6 or less) or suffer a Mortal wound. The simpler way to handle this is to declare both dead, which seems fair, as they’re mooks.

Lady Grimshaw opens fire on one Peltast, with ROF of 6 (+1). They’re Extreme (-15), she has targeting systems (+5), they’re SM +4, and he has skill 18. She needs a 13 or less. She rolls a 9 and hits with 3 of her 6 shots; the Peltast fails to dodge with an 11. Her results will be similar to Tobin’s: another dead Peltast.

Tobin lets his frustration loose on the Peltasts before him, which loom closer and closer to the Lancers even as the Valiant’s whittle their numbers down. He opens fire first on one and then another, his gatling blaster whirring beneath him as it rips through one and then another, while Lady Grimshaw’s slim fighter destroys a third and blasts through the wreckage.

Only a handful of Peltasts remain, and Tobin’s eyes widen as he sees one racing past the rest, straight for the Lancers.

The Peltasts have a chase total of 30 or less. The Lancers, assuming a pilot skill of 12, the Lancers have a chase total of 24 or less. The Peltasts roll an 11 and succeed by 19, while the Lancers roll a 12 and succeed by 12. The Peltasts close to Extreme. This is close enough to launch torpedoes!

Torpedoes use Gunnery rules rather than Missile rules. They’re at Extreme (-15) range, their target is SM +9, they have a +5 from targeting, and each has only 1 torpedo. We said that if our heroes defeated 5, the attack would be defeated, but they only defeated 4, so let’s handle one Peltast per turn until the heroes defeat the last one. We can treat that as a total, mass fire of RoF 5, or +1 to hit. Assuming skill 12, that’s a 12 or less. They roll a 6, which is enough to hit. The Lancers can dodge, and because Torpedoes are slow at this range, they gain a +1. Lancers have +0 handling and skill 12, so we’re looking at a dodge of 7, which they fail with a 10. The Isomeric Torpedo does an average of 10,000 damage, which is enough to instantly destroy a lancer.

Dun’s visor instantly reacts to bright, nuclear flash of a Lancer’s obliteration, darkening to protect his eyes. How many people just died in that flash? The wreckage of the vehicle slowly spreads outward in a cloud of debris and spinning fragments. Suddenly, the Lancer begins to rock. Dun glances at the Regular, who shakes his head.

“Not a blast wave. We’re close to our target. That’s flak fire we’re taking.”

The sky explodes with the brilliant fire of capital ships that rock the Lancers, and two suddenly cease communication, going dead and floating in absolute silence. Dun’s Lancer’s force screens flare brilliantly a direct hit, and then die, and the ship itself rocks with another powerful hit from the blasters of the Imperial Dreadnoughts, but it remains intact.

“Sturdy thing.” Dun mutters as he pats the hull.

The Lancers are close enough to the Capital Ships to start taking fire. We can assume they’re at Long range and will hit their target next turn. They can also open fire themselves, and as they are the “pursuers,” they get to go first.

They have spinal-mounted heavy EM disruptor cannons. Their target, the Final Judgment, is SM +13, their targeting system gives them a +5, their range penalty is -11, and the pilot’s skill is 12. They don’t benefit from Accuracy as they’re Moving and Attacking. They will hit on a 19 or less. All 4 fire (treat it as ROF 4, so +0). They roll an 8 so easily hit with all four shots. These “deal” 1500 damage each, which would each be a minor wound to the Executioner. However, it has 7500 DR in force screens first, so it soaks all four hits from the disruptor cannons. Shame.

The Capital ships open fire; the Flak cannons lack the damage to penetrate the armor of the Lancers, so we’ll ignore them for now. The Executioner has only Super-Heavy cannons aimed at the Alliance Carrier, so they don’t fire. The two Imperator-class Dreadnoughts, however, each have 10 capital-scale turrets with two cannons each. Altogether, that’s an ROF of 40! They fire at the Lancers (SM +9) which are at Long range (-11) with their highly accurate weapons (+9; this is an Attack; they don’t get an additional +4 because they weren’t Precision Aiming at the Lancers last turn), and an effective ROF of 20 for each ship (+4); the Reign of Fire will split their RoF up into 10 on each ship (-6 for multiple targets, +2 per ship for RoF), while Yamato focuses fire on a single target (+4). The Lancers are Corvettes (Albeit as big as a corvette can reasonably get) so the capital ships suffer an additional -5. Sub-Admiral Yamato Sin makes a Command and Coordination action, which allows him to replace his gunner’s skill with the lower of his Leadership or Gunnery, and this improves their Gunnery to 15. The Reign of Fire has only skill 12. Therefore the Valorian Edict has as a 21 or less, while the Reign of Fire has a 10 or less. The Valorian Edict rolls a 7, which means they succeed by 14, which is 8 hits on a single Lancer. The Reign of Fire hits with a 7 and misses with an 11. The 7 will hit with 2 shots.

The Lancers have a skill of 12, so dodge with a 6 or less. Both fail. The one hit by the Reign of Fire needs to survive two shots that deal an average 1500 damage each. Its has 1000 DR force screens, which absorb all but 500 of the first shot, and has a DR of 2500 on the front. This means it takes no damage from the first shot. The second shot deals 1000 damage, which is a crippling wound. All “Equipment” (Force screens, radar, comms, etc) are destroyed and the ship rolls HT to see if it can remain operation and succeeds with an 11. The one hit by the Valorian Edict needs to survive 8 hits. The screen and armor absorb the first one and the all the rest hit it for Crippling wounds, which accumulate. Its weaponry is destroyed, but it remains operational with a 10. Then we need to check to see if the wounds accumulate with an HT-8 roll. We fail with a 7, and rise to Mortal wounded level, which destroys another system (Power this time, which leaves it effectively dead in the water) and dies in a brilliant flash, failing it survival roll (barely) with a 13.

The Sub-Admiral’s eyes turn from the Lancers approaching the Executioner: three out of five remain, which speaks the quality of the Lancer escorts and the weakness of the Reign of Fire’s command. He makes a mental note to file that in his report to the Grand Admiral.

His tactical officer pips up. “We have a firing solution.”

The Sub-Admiral flicks his finger. “Transmit it to the other two vessels. Upon acknowledgment, you may fire when ready.”

The Dreadnoughts collectively have 16 super-heavy turrets capable of hitting the Alliance Carrier from this distance for a total ROF of 48! They’re attacking an SM +13 craft at Remote (-27) range. They have their targeting systems (+5) and their Accuracy of 9, plus they Precision Aimed. Their ROF of 48 grants a +5. They’ll fire together and use their skill of 12, giving them a total of 17 or less to hit. They roll an 11, success by 6, which means they hit with 4 shots.

The Alliance Carrier can dodge with a 5 or less and fails, of course. Each shot deals an average of 2500 damage. The Carrier has force screens with DR 10,000, which means it manages to successfully absorb all 4 shots. If one had hit, it would have dealt 2000 damage, which is a Minor wound: enough to rock the ship, but not enough to destroy it. They need to be closer, or more accurate, to really make an impact on the ship, and given enough time, they would. The Final Judgment’s main cannon would make a major difference, were it operational.

Tobin watches the Lancers fighting their way through the flak fire of the capital ships, and then watches the explosive fire of the primary batteries arc towards the Alliance Carrier.

“Damn!” He burst, “They’re in range!”

Turn 3

Status:

The Alliance Fleet and the Imperial Fleet are Remote from one another.
The Alliance Carrier is undamaged.
Tobin is undamaged and has 6 missiles left
Starlet is has moderate damage and has lost her force screen; she 8 missiles left
Shiana is undamaged.
Dun’s Lancer is cripplingly damaged, but remains operational despite its lack of electronics.
3 Lancers remain; they are in range of the Final Judgment this turn.
Our heroes must destroy 1 more Peltast to avert the attack.
The Valorian Edict is undamaged
The Reign of Fire is undamaged
The Final Judgment is undamaged
Harkin Grave is undamaged and has 4 missiles left.

The Lancer stops with a creaking thud, jostling all of the soldiers and Dun in their harnesses. A second later, a hum and a metallic thud resonate throughout the whole of the ship. The Regulars begin to unbuckle their harnesses as quickly as they can.

“We’re attached.”

A few moments later, Dun finds himself standing in an enormous air-lock large enough to hit him and a full squad of regulars. Before him, the buzz of a force lock obscures the armor of the ship that flares and sparks as plasma torches carve through the armor of the Final Judgment. Dun breathes heavily into his rebreather as tension mounts in the group. They adjust their weapons, and Dun flexes his fingers around his force sword. Suddenly, the armor falls forward, into the ship, and the force lock drops with a hiss as the pressure between the two ships equalize. Dun cannot afford to stand around marveling at the uniqueness. He races forward, blindly, into the darkness of the crippled imperial ship.

Blaster fire and his own visor provide him with what light he needs to see. Blaster fire arcs off of his force buckler as he continues to bullrush into the ship and slams his shield against the first imperial trooper he encounters, bouncing the poor soul off of a bulkhead. His psychic senses scream at him of impending attacks, and the world seems to slow around him as he bats away more blaster fire with his force sword. His eyes narrow and focus and his blade slashes through one, two, three soldiers.

Alliance Regulars, hiding in the lee of his assault, pour into the ship, their long blaster rifles laying down fire as they enter, and one, armed with a staff-like plasma pike, roasts the enemy with concentrated sunfire.

“Breach secure.” Dun finally pants into his comm system. He hears acknowledgments from the other Lancer crews, and one adds:

“Good to hear from you, Sir Beltain. We feared the worst when your comms went dead.”

Boarding the ship simply requires a control roll to hit the other this, like ramming, and then the time necessary to cut through the armor, which is ten seconds in this case. Given that the Final Judgement cannot move, we can simply move forward to the next piece. If we had wanted to role, it would have been a 12 vs a 6, which would have averaged Advantage, which means the Lancers could afford to reach the less armored parts of the ship.

In principle, we could handle this as an actual battle scene. We have a good minute of combat, which is plenty of time for a dramatic bit of combat. I’m not going to bother, though, because our focus is on the chase scene; we don’t need to playtest the combat rules here.

It will take 2 turns to move from the breach to the bridge to properly seize control.

Sub-Admiral Yamato Sin’s gloves creak as his fist tightens at the incompetence of the Reign of Fire’s gunnery crew and their failure to destroy anything at all. The Final Judgment was lost, it was only a matter of time.

Suddenly, a hologram sprung to life behind the Sub-Admiral, bearing an unwelcome and arrogant visage. “Sub-Admiral Sin.” The voice crackled “These were not your orders.”

Sin turned his chair to face the hologram. Admiral Talian Rand’s long cape disappeared off the hologram, and his chest gleamed with medals. The Sub-Admiral replied “We risk the Alliance capturing one of my… ourExecution-Class Cruisers, complete with some of the new modifications.”

“I need you to reinforce Cabala Scan, Sub-Admiral.” His voice hissed. “Make your jump. The Final Judgment will need to fend for itself. If you want to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, then destroy it.”

Admiral Rand’s hologram flickered out. The Sub-Admiral’s eyes narrowed over his interlaced fingers. He hated the idea of bloodying his hands with imperial casualties and noted, internally, that he’d made a political mistake: either he leaves the Final Judgment behind, which Rand could then blame him for, or Sin destroyed the Final Judgment, which opened him up to accusations of friendly fire from Rand. If he was to be damned either way, better to save imperial lives than take them.

“19, should we kill it?” He asks, leaning forward in his command seat.

She shrugged and whispered. “Its capture makes no difference.”

“So be it.” He had no stomach for killing imperials.

He taps the comm on the arm rest of his chair, “Gunnery crews, cease fire on the Lancers. Maintain fire on the Alliance Carrier and prepare to advance. Engineering crews, begin preparation for a hyperspace jump to the Cabala Scan system.” Then he swiveled his chair to the holoprojector behind him. Harkin Grave’s silver-faced piloting helmet bloomed in the flickering blue of the hologram.

“Orders?”

“We’re leaving. You have five minutes to finish up and then you need to be back in the Valorian Edict. They’ll be bringing in their strike craft, hoping to take one of our dreadnoughts out. I’ll be coordinating our response. Focus all fire on the Alliance Raptor squadrons.”

“Acknowledged.” Grave’s voice had a tinge of regret, the sound of a cat giving up on its mouse.

Yamato leaned close to the holographic display which showed his collection of capital ships circled by a cloud of red and blue dots, his own fighters and the enemy. He steepled his fingers, pondering his next move. There may yet be a way to deal some damage to the Alliance in the last, precious few moments he had here.

I don’t want this fight running for too long, so we need an excuse to wrap this up. If we can capture the Final Judgment, that strikes me as enough of a finale, but I’d still like to see what some bombers can do to a dreadnought, hence why we have the Reign of Fire. But whether we kill them or not, we now have a time limit of 5 additional turns and then we can wrap this up.

Yamato Sin will focus on Tactical Coordination. The Raptor squadron has no PCs in it, so we won’t worry about their tactics skill, but if it mattered, we could roll a Contest of Tactics, with Yamato gaining a +4 from “19’s” Prognostication. He has an effective Tactics of 22, and so handily succeeds. This grants his attack squadrons a +2 to hit the Raptors.

Tobin let out a breath when the remaining three Lancers board the Final Judgment.

“Raptor Squadron Alpha, focus fire on those Imperial Dreadnoughts. We have to keep them off of our carrier.”

Shiana’s voice came on the comm. “My squadron will guard their approach, Mr. Starlaw. You may attend to your friend.” She articulated.

“Thanks,” he sighed, relieved. He turned his fighter towards his old nemesis, swung his wings to their high speed position, and launched forward.

How far are the Raptors from the Dreadnoughts? I think it’s fair to say “Distant.” They can see them, but they need to move a bit to hit them. They’re NPCs so their actions are back-drops We’re mostly worried about how well the PCs protect them. But for the sake of playtesting, we can roll for their collective chase roll against the dreadnoughts.

Assuming a skill 12 Raptor pilot, with his afterburners, has a chase bonus of +16 for a total of 28. The Reign of Fire has skill 12 with a +5 to their total chase rolls, for a total of 17. The Raptors roll a completely unnecessary 4 and thus critically succeed while the Reign of Fire rolled a 10. It doesn’t matter: the Raptors get Victory by 10+, and thus are able to be Advantaged and close range by one degree to Extreme, which is not unexpected and a good firing range for torpedoes.

Meanwhile, we expect the imperial Javelins to make their run on the Raptors, once again giving us a three-way chase. The Javelins have a skill 12 and a total chase roll of +20, giving them a 32, and they roll an 11 vs the Raptor’s 10, so they have a margin of 3. The Javelins cannot close or be advantaged, but they can certainly attack.

None of this actually matters, though. What really matters is how well Shiana can fend off the Javelins, because she’s our focus not the overall fight, but it does give us a sense of how this might play out.

The Raptor squadrons scream towards the Reign of Fire, and explosions of flak begin to bloom in the void, rocking the fighters with shockwaves. Shiana listens to the chatter through her mental link with her Valkyrie, as though someone spoke to her directly.

“Stay on target.”

“Force screens holding.”

“They’re all over me!”

Her eyes snapped open and she out cockpit: lancing fire from dozens of Javelins speared through the night. Her eyes narrowed and she broke from her squadron without a word, bearing down on the Javelins in an attempt to divert as many as possible.

Her sliver of a fighter slices through the darkness of the void, but despite her skills, talents and close connection to her nimble vehicle, the cloud of fighters dodges and evades, like a school of silvery fish. Her blasters flash again and again, and maneuver by maneuver, she manages to fight her way closer to one when, suddenly, everything lines up, and she focuses all of her firepower on the single target, who slips and dodges and spins, but one shot manages to land, ripping its engine apart. Its spirals away and then explodes satisfyingly.

But three more seem to take its place, firing on the Raptors.

There are many Javelins. I would expect she needs to defeat at least three to make a reasonable dent in the attackers.

Shiana has, between skill and chase bonuses, a total of 37, vs the 32 of the Javelins. Both roll a very effective 7, which means she beats them by 5+. She can either advance or gain Advantage. She chooses to advance to Extreme range.

Lady Grimshaw opens fire on one Javelin, with ROF of 6 (+1). They’re Extreme (-15), she has targeting systems (+5), they’re SM +4, and she has skill 18. She needs a 13 or less. She rolls a 7 and hits with 4 of her 6 shots; the Javelin successfully dodges 3 with a dodge of 9. The last remaining hit deals 95 damage against an effective DR of 3, for 92 damage, which is more than the 80 HP of the craft. As a mook, we’ll call it destroyed.

But killing one Javelin just isn’t enough!

The Raptors rock under the flack of the Reign of Fire, whose main cannons have turned on the Blind Justice. Javelins dart in and out of the swift and dangerous attack craft, their blaster fire glancing off of the force screens of the Raptors, though one manages to damage the wing of a Raptor. Then, several Raptors unleash their payloads directly at the Dreadnought and several score direct hits. Fires visibly rage on the ship, and a secondary explosion creates plumes of smoke as hyperium erupts within the dreadnought.

And yet, the Reign of Fire continues, its engines burning hot as it forces its way closer to the retreating Blind Justice. A wave of Peltasts erupts from the Reign of Fire, rushing at the Alliance Carrier.

The Javelins remain at Distant range from the Raptors. A given Javelin has skill 12, have a total rof of 6 (+1), have locks on their targets (+5), a Raptor is SM +6, and their targets are Distant (-19); they have an additional +2 from tactical coordination. They have a 7 or less to hit. This means the vast majority will miss until they get closer (which will raise it to an 11 or less). If they had hit, they deal an average of 100 damage vs 300 ablative force screen DR, and 100 frontal DR (reduced to 20 after the armor penetration of the blasters). If the blasters can get through the force screens, they could really do some damage to the Raptors, but you’ll need several Javelins per raptor to get through those screens, though a good missile or flak fire could wipe out the screens pretty quickly, and the Raptors currently suffer from being hit by flak and we could include a couple of Tempests to really even things out.

The Reign of Fire can open fire with its flak cannons and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what sort of rules I had in place for these. I’ve double checked a blog post and done some of my own calculations, and they’ll get hit on a 7 or less at this range and need to roll a handling roll to get through the attack at -2. Most would avoid getting hit, and their roll to get through the flak is (skill 12 +2 handling -2 from the flak) would succeed most of the time. Targets that did get hit would take an average of 200 damage; they have 300 points of Ablative Force Screen DR, and their frontal armor is effectively 200 DR, so they can probably just tough out the flak fire.

In return, the Raptors can open fire. They have a skill of 12, are at Extreme (-15) range vs an SM +14 craft, with locks (+5) and ROF 3 for all three torpedoes (+0). They have skill 11 to hit at this range, and thus would hit on average with 2 torpedos. The Reign of Fire gets +1 to dodge, which means it would dodge on a 3 or less… so that’s not happening. Each torpedo does an average of 10,000 damage, and the Reign has 3000 DR behind its frontal armor, thus it takes 7000 damage while having a wound threshold of 9,000, thus it takes a major wound. I rolled and found that it lost half of its fuel, which really hurts its ability to shunt out of the system. We could say it could not. In principle, we could hit it with a total of about 50 torpedoes, but we’re being abstract here, so we can say it increases in wound level to crippling, rolls 9 vs HT to remain functional and its armor has been Destroyed, leaving a huge gap in the armor.

Again, this is all for a sense of how well the system works. I wouldn’t do this sort of thing unless a player was actually working out whether HIS Raptor damaged a target.

The Reign of Fire is able to Move against the Alliance Carrier. They have a Total Chase roll of 17 vs the Blind Justices 15. The Reign of Fire rolls a 10 vs the Blind Justice’s 13, for a total margin of +5, allowing it to close from Remote to Beyond Visual. We could do a Move and Attack, but that applies a -2 to chase rolls that I keep forgetting (and isn’t all that relevant to dogfights anyway, because everyone is moving and attacking) and we’re not likely to hit at this range anyway.

Incidentally, we should consider launching another wave of Peltasts vs the Carrier. I’m not going to do any rolling for it, other than to note that it’s realistic, and at this range, the Peltasts should be able to reach the Carrier and attack and return before the Reign of Fire manages to retreat, and if its disabled or destroyed in the fighting and it just left its bombers in the hangar bay, that would be a waste.

The Valorian Edict performs a Precision Aiming manveuver.

Starlet grits her teeth, her Combat Sense screaming her mortal peril at her. Then she spots an opportunity: the expanding cloud of debris of the destroyed Lancer. Extending her wings for greater agility, she dives into the cloud. She ducks past a spinning plate of armor and tries to ignore the body of a dead soldier as she tries to lose Harkin in the cloud. The Imperial Ace ramps up his acceleration and takes a blinding, headache-inducing turn around the cloud of debris, hoping to cut her off as he spins his craft mid flight. He grits his teeth and finds when he reaches his point of attack that he stares down not Starlet’s engines, but Tobin’s blasters.

With a quick bob and weave and a burst of afterburner, Harkin’s agile Tempest evades Tobin’s spray of blaster fire and, sensing the day is lost, turns his ship back toward the Valorian Edict.

Harkin chases Starlet; he’s Advantaged and at Extreme Range. He has to roll under a 38 vs her 32, as usual. She’s going to try for a Stunt Escape, and applies a -6 to her roll, meaning she needs a 13 or less. She passes with an 11, adding +3 to her roll. Harkin will follow her, apply a -6 to his roll, and make it High-G in addition for an additional +1 to his roll to catch up to her. He has an effective skill of 15 (16 + handling 5 – stunt 5) and succeeds with an 11. He needs to roll HT (assume 12) +3 (from his chair and suit) and passes with a 13. It’s now 39 vs 32. She rolls a 5 vs his 12, which means she succeeds by 27 and he succeeded by 27. I’ll give it to her, as that’s technically a critical success. He’s not able to fire on her, though she could fire on him if she wasn’t making a Stunt Escape.

Tobin chases Harkin as well, and will need to make the same degree of stunt, and also chooses for a High-G maneuver, and goes one better with a total of -8 rather than -6. In high agility formation, he has a +4 to handling, which means he’ll succeed on a 14 or less, and he’ll succeed at resisting Gs on a 13 or less. He succeeds at both with an 8 and a 12. So, now it’s Tobin’s 40 vs Harkin’s 42. Tobin rolls a 6 (critical success and success by 34) vs Harkin’s 14 (success by 28). That’s enough for Tobin to claim advantage or to close to, say, Extreme. He chooses the latter.

Only Tobin is able to open fire and does so with his blasters. He cannot claim an accuracy bonus, however (he made a Stunt maneuver, not a Move and Attack maneuver). His opponent is Extreme (-15), SM +4, Tobin has a Lock (+5) and RoF 12 (+2) and skill 16. He hits on a 12 or less, while Harkin, skill 16, dodges on a 14 or less. Tobin misses with a 12, but doubtless spooks Harkin.

Turn 4

Status:

The Alliance Fleet and the Valorian are Remote from one another. The Reign of Fire is Beyond Visual.
The Alliance Carrier is undamaged.
Tobin is undamaged and has 6 missiles left
Starlet is has major damage and has lost her force screen; she 8 missiles left
Shiana is undamaged.
Dun has boarded the Final Judgment and needs 1 more turn, after this one, to reach the bridge.
The Valorian Edict is undamaged
The Reign of Fire is Crippled and has lost its Armor and half of its fuel.
The Final Judgment is undamaged
The Imperial Dreadnoughts depart in 4 turns.
Harkin Grave is undamaged and has 4 missiles left. He is retreating to the Valorian Edict.

The Baroness staggers on her heels as another wave of fire rocks the Blind Justice. The super-heavy fire from the Final Judgment and the Valorian Edict strike home, and rip through its screens, rocking the ship with mostly superficial damage.

“All systems green.” One of the crewmen report. Then another wave of damage rocks the ship once more and the lights dim to the red of emergency back-ups with numerous blinking screens and a few sub-systems exploding dramatically.

“Turrets one through five no longer responding.” The High Captain shouts at the baroness after personally joining one of the lieutenants to look at her screens. “And we’re showing a wave of strike craft incoming. Launch another squadron of Valiants.”

He looks soulfully at her Ladyship. “Should we retreat.”

She closes her eyes, trying to search through her own psychic senses. None of this was supposed to happen. The Imperials had access to superior foresight and had managed to outmaneuver them psychically as well as strategically.

“Yes.” She replied.

“Prime the hyperdrive.” The High Captain commanded, “Chart a course for Caliban. Transmit all coordinates to the remaining squadrons. They should be able to follow us. Signal the boarding parties to retreat.”

“Wait! The Lancers can jump after us as well. Let’s be prepared to leave, but let’s see how the rest of the battle plays out. A lot can happen in 5 minutes.”

The Valorian Edict and the Final Judgment collectively have 12 super-heavy turrets for a total RoF of 36. They’re attacking an SM +13 craft at Remote (-27) range. They have their targeting systems (+5) and their Accuracy of 9, plus they Precision Aimed (+4). Their ROF of 36 grants a +5. They’ll fire together and use Sin’s skill of 15, giving them a total of 20 or less to hit. They roll a 9, success by 11, which means they hit with 6 shots.

The Alliance Carrier can dodge with a 5 or less and fails, of course. Each shot deals an average of 2500 damage. The Carrier has force screens with DR 10,000, which means it manages to successfully absorb 4 shots. The remaining two hits inflict 2000 damage each, which means the ship has a Minor wound and must roll HT once to see if the wound accumulates. She rolls a 13 and lucks out.

The Reign of Fire is closer and Attacks. It has 6 super-heavy turrets (total ROF of 18) and 14 heavy turrets (RoF of 28). It’s Attacking an SM +13 craft at Beyond Visual range (-23) with a target lock (+5) and accuracy +9 and an RoF of +3 and +5 respectively. They have a skill of 12 and must roll a 19 and a 21 to hit. They roll a 13 (success by 6, or 4 hits) and a 9 (success by 12, or 7 hits). With the force screens gone, all these hits count as minor hits, thus the Blind Justice needs to roll at -11 to avoid increasing its wound threshold. It fails, obvious, and has a Major wound, and disables half of the Carrier’s weapons for retaliating.

Realistically, the Peltasts would not yet reach the carrier, though they likely will next turn. Similar, we can expect another increase in wounding threshold or two for the Reign of Fire as the Raptors continue to swarm it. We also expect that the Javelins might get closer and start taking a few Raptors out, though it would be a race to see if the Javelins could take out the Raptors before the Raptors took out the Dreadnought. If we increase the threshold again, we need to check if it survives (it does with an 8), if it’s still operational (It is, with a 12), what is destroyed (Propulsion).

Tobin’s blood boiled as he watched Harkin attempt to flee back to the Valorian Edict, but Starlet’s grateful voice pulled him back into the real world.

“Thanks.” She said.

He opened the comm channel to respond when his tech-bot began to warble in panic: the Blind Justice was transmitting secured coordinates for a retreat. He swiveled his gaze in time to see another wave of huge blasts pummeling the armor of the carrier. He checked his sensors and noticed a wave of Peltasts descending on the Blind Justice.

“Shiana,” he said after punching her channel. “I need you to…”

“Afraid I can’t help you. I have my hands full keeping these Javelins away from my Raptors.” She chirped back.

“Listen, lady.” He growled back “If we don’t move, there will be no carrier to return to.”

“Oh,” she said, and after a moment “Oh yes, I see that. Shame about these Raptors, though.”

“They’ll handle it.”

He turned his Valiant towards the Blind Justice, swept his wings back, and punched into full throttle, racing to the rescue again. Starlet and his own Valiant wing joined him and, after a moment, the dagger shape of Shiana’s Valkyrie and her own Valiant support, joined in as well.

Together, they rush at the Peltasts, but the Imperial strike-fighter’s engines flare with afterburner, as they fight to eat the distance between themselves and the carrier. The Valiants, even with their wings swept back, struggle to even keep up, never mind make up the distance. Shiana’s Valkyrie noses closer and closer, firing in a narrowing cone around her target, who weaves and dodges with consummate agility through her fire, whilst she bites back an unladylike curse. Tobin manages to burn closer and wipe out two with a whoop, bursting through their exploding debris to try and defeat a few more.

Once again, we’re on the hunt. Tobin has a 35 or less on his chase roll, Starlet has 32 or less, and Lady Grimshaw has 38. They’re going to move and attack (-2 to their Chase roll). The Peltasts they chase have a skill total of 30. We’re going to treat Tobin and Shiana’s roll as independent, and Starlet’s as representative of the Valiants in their wing. Once again, we’re going to treat this little fight as representative of the larger whole: our heroes need to defeat five peltasts to blunt the attack.

How far away do they start? Well, this is tricky. The Peltasts launched at Beyond Visual, so we’ll just say it’ll take them two turns to hit Extreme range with the Blind Justice. Shiana was atthe Reign of Fire, though, so it’s reasonable that they’re pretty close. Let’s say Distant, because Extreme would be a touch too generous.

Tobin rolls 9 vs their 11, so beats them by 5. That’s enough for Advantage and closing to Extreme. Shiana rolls a 9 vs their 8, and beats them by 5, so she also gains Advantage and closes to Extreme. Starlet (terrible luck with her, lately) rolls a 15 vs their 10, and cannot open fire.

Tobin can attack with full accuracy (as he’s an Ace Pilot), so he has RoF 12 (+2) against a locked (+5) SM +4 target at Extreme (-15) range with his accuracy of +9. He chooses to split his RoF into 6 and 6 (+1 each, and -3 for a rapid attack). He’ll hit both on a 16 or less and hits with an 8 (5 hits) and an 11 (3 hits). The Peltasts have a dodge of 10; one dodges 3 shots with an 8 (and is hit twice) and the other fails outright to dodge with a 15. Both take an average of ~100 damage per shot, and they only have 85 HP, so that’s a crippling injury per shot. As mooks, they’re both dead.

Shiana has to make do with a mundane attack. She focuses all ROF 6 (+1) vs locked (+5) SM +4 targets at Extreme (-15) range, with her effective skill of 18. She hits on a 13 or less, and does so, barely, with a 13. However, the Peltast also just dodges with a 10.

Starlet and her Valiants cannot attack.

With a slash of blue energy, Dun Beltain rends the last imperial trooper, who crumples at his feet, and the room goes dark except for the glow of his blade and the pulsing red of emergency lights. The locked doors at the far end suddenly flare as the soldiers begin to torch through them.

Panting, Dun crouches by the his favorite regular, who rests his long rifle on the ground, waiting for the next fight.

“How many soldiers do we still have to go through?”

The Regular tilts his helmeted head. “Oh, an imperial cruiser isn’t as bad as a dreadnought. They probably don’t have more than 150 soldiers. Probably.”

Dun cursed under his breath. “This is taking too long. They’ve got security locked down tight. Though…”

He paused, lifting a finger. “We used to render down older models like this. There’s usually an engineering section that runs along the spinal cannon, which might get us from here to the bridge and bypass a lot of security, if my memory serves.”

“I’ll take that over CBQ through the entire length of this craft.” The regular agreed.

Dun continues his long trek to the bridge of the ship. The GM is free to throw whatever obstacles his way that he likes, and we’ve been avoiding additional detail, but as an example of something a player might do, Dun asks to roll Engineering (Starships) to see if he can figure out a “quicker” route. The GM won’t allow him to bypass time, but will let him bypass a lot of security or combat tasks, and asks for a roll at -4. He passes, and the GM allows them to get to the bridge with no additional challenges on the next turn.

Turn 5

Status:

The Alliance Fleet and the Valorian are Remote from one another. The Reign of Fire is Beyond Visual.
The Alliance Carrier (Blind Justice) has Major Damage and has lost half of her cannons..
The Blind Justice can depart in 4 turns (-8 on time modifiers).
Tobin is undamaged and has 6 missiles left
Starlet is has major damage and has lost her force screen; she 8 missiles left
Shiana is undamaged.
Dun has boarded the Final Judgment reaches the bridge this turn.
The Valorian Edict is undamaged
The Reign of Fire is Mortally Wounded and has lost its Armor, propulsion and half of its fuel.
The Final Judgment is undamaged
The Valorian Edict departs in 3 turns (-6 on time modified rolls).
Harkin Grave has retreated to the Valorian Edict.

Yamato Sin watches the holoprojections of the battle between the Reign of Fire and the Blind Justice. Raptors swarm around the Blind Justice, explosions ripping its hull to pieces. Even so, its cannons continue to fire, destroying the Blind Justice’s force screen as quickly as they attempt to regenerate. The super-heavy cannons land a devastating blow, and hyperium begins to visibly gush from the stricken carrier, who begins to slew sideways. At the same time, the Reign of Fire’s lights flicker and die. It gives up at last.

“A queen for a queen.” He murmurs, satisfied at the exchange.

“Sir?” Nineteen asks him.

“The Alliance Carrier can no longer jump. She’s stuck in this system until she can repair and refuel. Even if they capture the Final Judgment, they’re vulnerable to counter attack oh, for about a day I’d guess. That said,” he tapped on the screen where a wave of Raptors launched from the Blind Justice, “They still remain dangerous.”

Rather than work out the details for the exchange between the Blind Justice and the Reign of Fire, let’s simplify it to an increase to both of their wound severities. The Blind Justice is Crippled and its Fuel is destroyed (I checked to see if it would explode, and it did not). For its part, the next step after a Mortal Wound is Lethal Wound, so the Reign of Fire expires. Its soldiers might still be captured, and the ship salvaged.

The Valiants continue to pursue the Peltasts.

“They’re almost in firing range.” Tobin said through gritted teeth into the comm channel.

“I have a firing…” Began Shiana, and then suddenly cut off. Tobin glanced over to see her suddenly pulling up. A wave of Raptors had launched from the Blind Justice, and one clipped too close to Lady Grimshaw’s Valkyrie, forcing her to pull away. At her speed, that meant she lost a lot of ground quickly.

“I’m out.”

Tobin growled as he dove and wove through the Peltasts. They dodged and wove, diving through the flak fire. Tobin fired everything he had, but only managed to tag one. It exploded satisfactorily, but two more zipped past. A second exploded, and Starlet let out a whoop.

But it wasn’t enough. The last Peltast dove expertly through the exploding plasma flak and fired its torpedo. It raced towards the hangar bay and detonated, crashing debris onto the landing deck.

Tobin closed his eyes. Could this battle get any worse?

We need to defeat three more Peltasts. This looks doable! If we fail, then the Peltasts get to attack the carrier. Everyone in this case is making a Move and Attack roll, because the Peltasts intend to attack this turn. Tobin has a 35 or less on his chase roll (at Extreme and has Advantage), Starlet has 32 or less (Distant, no advantage), and Lady Grimshaw has 38 (Extreme and Advanatage). They’re going to move and attack (-2 to their Chase roll). The Peltasts they chase have a skill total of 30.

Tobin rolls 11 vs their 13, so beats them by 7. He can close to Long and Match Speed. Shiana rolls a 17 and automatically fails (they rolled a 5, which just rubs salt in the wound). She actually loses ground and returns to Distant. Starlet rolls an 8 vs their 8, and doesn’t close range, but is able to at least open fire.

So it’s pretty much entirely up to Tobin. Tobin can attack with full accuracy+1 (Matched Speed with an Ace Pilot); he’ll split his attack up three ways (RoF 4 each, or +0; with -6 for rapid attack) against a locked (+5) SM +4 target at Long (-11) range with his accuracy+1 of +10. He hits on a 14 or less. He hits the first with a 12 (2 hits), who dodges completely with a 6. He misses (!) the second with a 15, and hits the last with a 9 (3 hits), who fails to dodge with a 13. That last one is certainly dead at an average of three crippling hits.

Shiana cannot make an attack.

Starlet can make an attack. Her opponents are Distant (-19), she has skill 15, a lock (+5), RoF 12 (+2) and her opponent is SM+4. She hits on a 7 or less and, surprisingly, does so with a 5. That’s enough to hit twice, and her opponent dodges one of them with a 10. Alternately, we can call it a critical success and say she hits twice, but a single hit is enough to eliminate one Peltast.

That leaves one lone Peltast. It needs to push through the flak, which will hit it on a 9 or less against a Peltast and misses with a 10. It needs to roll Pilot (12) + handling (4) -2 for rough terrain. It gets through with a 12.

So, rather than roll to see if it hits, will just assume that it does. 10,000 damage vs 7000 hp is a Crippling Wound. It’s already crippled, so we just need to check to see if the wound accumulates! The Blind Justice rolls a 4, so it’s fine. Originally, I had allowed “additional wounds of this level” to destroy additional systems, but with some revisions I’ve made, that seems overly permissive. Instead, I’ll allow up to one additional system to be disabled per turn as an optional rule. If we allow that, the Hangar Bay is disabled (!).

The door clanged to the ground and, into the bridge of the Final Judgment, Alliance Regulars spilled forth. Dun Beltain strode before them, his force buckler gleaming in the dim light. He raised his force sword hilt and pointed it towards the captain, who had half-raised his blaster pistol, and triggered his weapon. The force screen coalesced into a blade pointed directly at the officer.

“You don’t want to die, hey?” He suggested.

The imperial officer let his weapon drop. “The ship is yours.”

The Alliance regulars scurried over the bridge, taking weapons, looking at readouts.

“How goes the battle?” Dun asked, removing his helmet to get a better look.

His favorite Regular pointed to the screen: “It’s bad. Looks like we’ve taken a dreadnought down, but the Blind Justice is venting Hyperium. We might be stuck in this system for awhile. And the other Dreadnought is still fully operational.”

“Say, do we have fire control here?”

“I think so, what are you thinking?”

“Well, we don’t have the main cannon, but we do have some guns, don’t we?” He tapped the Valerian Edict meaningfully.

Dun couldn’t see the Regular’s face through the faceplate, but sensed his gleeful grin.

Two turns later, we’re on the bridge! We could play out a fight, but let’s go for a surrender instead.

Can the players control the Super-heavy turrets of the Final Judgment from the bridge? Who knows. In this case, for the rule of cool, I say yes. I won’t fight you if you disallowed it in your game.

Turn 6

Status:

The Alliance Fleet and the Valorian Edict are Remote from one another.
The Alliance Carrier (Blind Justice) is Crippled, has no fuel, its hangar has been disabled, and has lost half of her cannons..
The Blind Justice can depart in 3 turns (-6 on time modifiers).
Tobin is undamaged and has 6 missiles left
Starlet is has major damage and has lost her force screen; she 8 missiles left
Shiana is undamaged.
Dun has control of the Final Judgment.
The Valorian Edict is undamaged
The Final Judgment is undamaged.
The Valorian Edict departs in 2 turns (-4 on time modified rolls).

Yamato Sin watched as the green dots representing the Reign of Fire’s peltasts vanished one by one, but one punched through the flak. He watched the results and grimaced, hoping for something more spectacular. He watched as the red dots, Raptors, raced towards his own dreadnought.

“Sir,” one of the bridge crew said, looking up at him “We’re being targeted.”

“By the carrier?”

“By the Final Judgment.”

He sighed. If the forces aboard the Judgment had fought a little better, if the pilots of the Alliance had been a little worse, they’d have killed an Alliance carrier today and rescued their cruiser. Still, an acceptable exchange: they lost an already lost cruiser and a dreadnought while crippling the primary Alliance carrier in the area, and the Empire could easily afford to replace the Reign of Fire.

“The last of the fighters are aboard?” he asked the officer, who mutely nodded.

“Then engage hyperdrive shunt.”

“The calculations…”

“Will be fine. Engage the hyperdrive.”

And then, the Valorian Edict vanished.

Imperial Dreadnoughts have a +2 to navigation rolls, and reasonably, the commanding officer can assist in anything, such as the mechanics roll for a quick jump, so a -4 isn’t so bad. He might even make it to Cabala Scan in one jump, or he might end up somewhere unexpected. The latter could be worse, as he might not get back to the this system quick enough to follow up on his victory.