The campaign looks like it's about to get started. As usual this discussion board is set up to take care of out of character Q&A and other story related banter. If everyone wants to go ahead and give out the two paragraph (or so) blurb on their characters it will greatly help both myself and whatever folks are reading along. It's looking to be a really good game. Also if anyone has yet to get me their character stats feel free to either get that off to me, or attach them to your character summary with a spoiler tag--it helps conserve space.
In the meantime, here's the campaign background--what people know so far:
It's late 2053. Diplomacy has utterly failed, with both sides digging their heels in over issues that aren't going to be persuaded away. The various Regional Governments on Earth are willing (desparate in fact) to negotiate rather than wage an unpopular war that most concede was started by them, but from region to region the requirements for a peace treaty are vastly different. Some refuse to remove their "peacekeeper" forces from the colonies but are open to renegotiations on trade. Others are sympathetic to the human rights violations the colonies suffer, but consider the forgiveness of repayment on "Colonization Debt"--manditory goods shipments to be a dealbreaker. Violence escalates. The diplomats are deadlocked. Various Colonies oust their Earth military garrisons into cold space without supplies. Elsewhere Earth forces declare martial law creating cantons wherein justice is dictated at the end of a gun as secret police and elite urban combat squads bust through houses abducting colonists seemingly at random and trying them in shadow proceedings as "war criminals".
Mecha have become the premire fighting vehicles, increasingly large and nimble and mounting ever more deadly arsenals of weaponry. While mecha have been in service in the crowded and war torn Earth forces for decades, the colonies have been largely without their own military--let alone the facilities to produce mecha or the military masterminds to design them. Within months the Earth has already mass-produced its first line of gargantuan mecha, the German-made Bismark. The Colony main line mecha is the much smaller, more lightly armored Silvereye--a line that finds itself quickly outperformed by the Templar-Zero, the Earth forces' equivalent model regular infantry mecha.
The Colonists have been forced to rely on training rather than hardware, producing some of the best mecha pilots from their well funded academies. Rather than fight Earth where they are strongest, the Colonies have designed a defense and counteroffensive that is decentralized where Earth is monolithic, and flexible where Earth is regimented. Being able to design their military fresh from original ideas, the Colonies have been able to design an entirely modern military without having to cling to outdated notions and institutions. A key example of this new way of thinking is the Colonist mecha Dimension Knight. Refitting an aging and ubiquitous large size mecha called the Saber into five unit teams, the Colonist designers have been able to create what is known as a metabot, a combined mecha created from a fusion of the five Sabers. Fused into their Dimension Knight configuration, the metabot is capable of taking on the largest Earth forces designs.
And so things have been accelerating. Both forces know approximately where the other will strike. Earth has set it's eye on the Martian Valles Marineris, the philosophical center of the Colonist cause as well as a strategic center from which to take all of Mars and cut the head off the Colonist rebellion in a single swift stroke. The Colonies have designated the orbital launch facilities in Madagascar within the Organization of African Unity hoping to cripple the supply lines of an already ill supplied military spread out across vast distances. Now everyone on both sides, military and civilian, hold their breath and wait for who will launch the first strike.
Excellent summary of current events Grimmy! I’ll be uploading my psych profile just as soon as I can hack it from ECD – lets hope the Grid’s not too slow today right? Oh, and I’m in transit from Europa from 1800 today, so I might be outta touch for a little while, green? Hopefully you’ll get your data package before then!
Ashura out.
Ashura Yami - Background
Ashura was born on Earth in 2035 to busy diplomat parents who really did not know what to do with a child. After continuously moving from place to place during her formative years, she was placed in an International boarding school when she was 8, and has had only sporadic contact with her parents since then. However, she was a smart, pretty and popular child, and made friends easily. She quickly developed an interest in Anime, computers and most of all the amazing Mechas which the Earth Force military was developing. She was soon excelling at all Mech related computer games (and racing, flight simulators, shoot-em-ups … but mainly Mecha) that she could get her hands on.
At the age of 14, during standard testing by the military, she was found to be in the 90th percentile for hand eye coordination and reflexes, and found to have an almost preternatural disposition towards piloting. Earth Force immediately petitioned her to join a new top secret training program for a new breed of young Mecha pilots. Ashura, of course, jumped at the chance, despite strong opposition from her parents and a number of friends.
Naturally, Ashura excelled in training, and managed to finish the four year program in just three years. However, although she did well in the technical aspects, the military life never really agreed with her. Fortunately her program and eventual unit had a lot more lee-way than was usual in regards to military protocols – Earth Force recognised that this new breed of Mecha pilots they were trying to train needed a lot more freedom and individuality. The years in the program also stunted Ashura’s social development somewhat, being cut off from friends her own age (apart from through the Grid and very rare visits). Being in close, constant proximity to a bunch of (mostly) older (mostly) men, who tended to either treat her like a little girl, or worse, a very cute young woman also didn’t help much.
The last part of Ashura’s units’ training was finished rapidly as Earth Force feared a break down in negotiations in the rising tensions between Earth and her colonies. It was very soon after the unit became active that Ashura and a number of her comrades defected to the Colonial forces – taking their multi-million dollar state of the art Bismark Mechas with them.
Description
Ashura is an 18 year old girl of Japanese heritage. She is an inch or two over 5 feet in height, and has a slim build – many of her friends would say she’s bordering on too skinny and should eat more! She is not very strong, and her physique would almost be described as frail. In any conventional military she would not meet the basic physical requirements for active duty, but actual strength doesn’t mean that much when you’re piloting a 30metre tall suit of flying powered armour bristling with plasma cannons and torpedo launchers. She has quite pale skin, although she tans darkly if she spends much time in the sun, and long black hair, currently died with coppery streaks. She has long, dextrous fingers, a heart-shaped face and quite large eyes. She tends to keep her makeup fairly subtle.
She likes to dress in an eye-catching manner, but didn’t manage to bring nearly as many outfits as she would have liked with her when she fled Earth – and the shopping in the Colonies is pretty abysmal really. Typical outfits include:
A white blouse with Peter Pan collar, paired with a pleated navy blue skirt, accessorised with white, knee high socks, black shoes, and her hair tied back into one or two pony tails tied with red hair ribbons. She tends to avoid this outfit outside the company of her girlfriends, as she is rather self conscious about the effect it seems to have on men – and they just so don’t get the Schoolgirl Chic come-back in the Colonies;
White t shirt printed with cute manga characters or mechs, blue denim mini-skirt, brown leather jacket and boots (or heels), stockings, with hair loose and styled or pulled back and fixed with clips or red lacquered chopsticks;
Yellow singlet-top with loose grey fatigue style pants and white sneakers, hair in a single pony tail or braid or;
Her tight fitting blue and black flight suit.
Ashura is supremely confident (perhaps over-confident) in the cockpit of her mech, behind the wheel of a hover-car or in front of a computer. In social situations she is a little out of her depth, but her natural charm makes up for this somewhat. In many ways she is still a niave school girl at heart and can become easily flustered, especially when subjected to the attention of a cute boy.
She is obsessed with Mechs, manga and anime, computer games and pop music. She dislikes violence and killing, although her military training has forced her to accept it, and she is able to divorce herself from the reality of it by treating it like a computer game, or getting lost in the adrenaline rush of piloting her Mech, or thinking of her enemies as faceless “bad guys”.
Love your character Mothman! Just got the specs for Valegrim too. If we get the rest of the stuff from the other two players in the next day or so we can get started--otherwise we might have to have them join in later. Anyway I was planning on giving it a day or two.
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No problem Grimcleaver, I think this week's a bit sporadic for some with Easter breaks, holidays etc. I don't mind waiting another few days, or till next week. Let me know if you needed anything further from me character-wise in the meantime.
Oh, I haven't stated up a mech for Valegrim's character, wasn't sure if I should leave that to you, or if you wanted to pass on the info for him to do that...
you can do the mech mothman if I need one as i dont know anything about it I trust your guidance.
can someone refresh me on what side we are fighting on as my character is a bit of on both sides?
The premise is that the characters are formerly earth forces types now working for the colonies. So, yeah most of the characters are a little on both sides.
I heartily and humbly apologize for my silence in this topic! I am loving what I have seen so far, and I now post the basics of my character for your perusal- just let me know where to send the stats for him and his mecha.
Chuck Wiseman was born on the outskirts of Melbourne, Austrailia to a family of meager means. He joined the Terran Space Forces straight out of high school to pay for university- he was apathetic when it came to off-world politics, and he was so preoccupied with being to the first member of his family to "make it", it never occured to him that war was on the horizon. His sober thinking, quick reflexes and high intellect were noticed by his superiors and he was hand picked the day of his graduation to join the Special Forces. A humble comm/field technician by MOS (his sub-par piloting scores ensured he wouldn't be saving the world any time soon) Chuck was surprised when he discovered that he was assigned to one of the elite mechanized "Peacekeeper" units- and off world, no less. He was sent into space for the first time since his elementary school field trip at the helm of a custom Bismark equipped with a state of the art combination Delphi Sensor/Safety Suite and Oracle Targeting System that would enhance his lackluster piloting skills as well as his already formidable reconaissance abilities. Life in space was boring, especially since his unit was simply backup to the local police. The gargantuan machines were potent tools of intimidation and they quelled riots before they began just by walking down the street. Still, the strongarm tactic didn't sit well with the good-hearted Chuck, and when the colony's legate declared martial law, he knew things were going downhill. When his sensors picked up the brutal beating of a "terrorist" who he recognized as the same woman who denied the advances of the arresting officer earlier that day, he knew it was time to get out. But how?
Chuck is in many ways the stereotypical geek- tall, thin and bespectabled, but with unruly blonde hair and slight accent that proves charming. The occasional twitches and bouts of nerves he suffers from overexposure to the Delphi system are starting to worry him, as does the fact that he has yet to see real mecha combat in space. Still, he is a gifted tinkerer, and has started to make subtle adjustments to his Bismark to compensate for it's lack of offensive power.
wow seven days; no update....
I'm still in. I think we're all reeling from the news- let's just give it some time, as Mothman said.
am still a bit curious about this mech; am i really going to have a mech? or just be able to drive one?
is there anyplace you know of online or whatnot that I can read up on some of this stuff; is it in any of the d&d books or what?
hehe np; thanks; know any sites i should visit to learn about some mech crusade stuff?
hmm any news?
Double hmm now; another week; any news?
Sorry, I'm thick into running two campaigns and playing in two others. I probably could have swung this one too if the ball had gotten rolling quicker. I think I'm just going to have to cut my losses and run the stuff I've got going already. I just don't have the time now that I had a few weeks ago. Sorry.
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Yeah ... I was looking forward to it, but then I don't need to devote the time to running it!! And one of the players has been a no-show since fairly early on. I'm ok with putting the game on hiatus until if and when a good time to play it occurs...
Sorry Valegrim, I was looking forward to, but at least you got Grimcleaver DMing your Hommlet game!
Yeah ... I was looking forward to it, but then I don't need to devote the time to running it!! And one of the players has been a no-show since fairly early on. I'm ok with putting the game on hiatus until if and when a good time to play it occurs...
Yeah. I'm a little bummed about it. For a while there when it seemed like I was the only one running play by posts I was a little more up for the herculean effort to run a huge number of games. Now that other folks have come forward to run games, it's a little less urgent that I do everything myself. I would like to run the Mecha Crusade game sometime, but likely it will be after I either get a bunch more free time of if something happens with my other games. Anyhow yeah...unfortunately that might be a while.
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Yeah. I'm a little bummed about it. For a while there when it seemed like I was the only one running play by posts I was a little more up for the herculean effort to run a huge number of games. Now that other folks have come forward to run games, it's a little less urgent that I do everything myself. I would like to run the Mecha Crusade game sometime, but likely it will be after I either get a bunch more free time of if something happens with my other games. Anyhow yeah...unfortunately that might be a while.Yeah ... I was looking forward to it, but then I don't need to devote the time to running it!! And one of the players has been a no-show since fairly early on. I'm ok with putting the game on hiatus until if and when a good time to play it occurs...
Totally understand Grim. Especially now that I'm running one of those PbP games, it does take a lot of time
Sigh, was just looking at my character sheet the other day; sigh...
did someone pull the plug on this?