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BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome: The Payload Gun

BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome: The Payload Gun

First off the cover art, “Ammo” is by Remi GND. Its literally perfect and I love it.

Second off, thanks as always to my Noble Patrons. You dudes are the wind beneath my wings. JOIN THEM!

Old Flames Die Hard

The cockpit was dimly lit, status indicators blinking in the sweltering gloom. On his screen a crimson box was super-imposed around his distant target. A kilometer away, Otto “Accursed” Von Strube, waited, his heavily modified Merlin known in the Bruiser Leagues as Ogun, God of Rum, God of Metal (or simply Ogun), stood between two dying buildings, burnished by the evening light.

The “Christmas Tree” glowed green: all systems nominal. The word “nominal” was an overstatement, and made him feel faintly queasy. Perhaps he was still hungover from the previous night’s bacchanalia. Then again, perhaps it was the knowledge that one of his “nominal” systems was a shadow of the lethally reliable LB-10X that normally sat on the throne of slag and shattered dreams in Bella’s right arm.

Perhaps indeed. But he’d be god-damned if he ever turned down a good bet, drunk or no. And besides, the new payload cannon promised to be fun, so long as he could get close enough to use the damn thing without being liquefied first.

Nabor breathed deeply, checking his tension, checking the rising tide of sound as the audience’s chants swelled with anticipation. He felt his heart, his nerves, singing sympathetically with them, stringed instruments bathing in the same ocean of music.

He waited and breathed.

He had no choice.

Fans across the world watched the countdown on electric screens, drumming hands on tables and chests, thrilling with the carnage to come. All, all, had a ritual, a personal contribution to the coming spectacular feast, a tiny morsel of themselves to warm the appetite of the Gods of Death. For some this was a dance, refined by countless performances into a terse, ten-second jubilation of reckless abandon or choreographed libido. Nine…eight... Others performed elaborate hand gestures, tracing ancient symbols in the air to channel the power of battle into the limbs of their chosen warrior. Seven…six... Others kept it simple…five... More direct…four... A shot of tequila and a fist pounding onto a worn wooded table…three…a line of hallucinogenic powder snorted up into the dark, membranous labyrinth between blood and brain and cosmos…two…

Waves of energy overlapping, aligning, harmonizing…

One…

Disparate and strange as the rituals were, they moved towards a single end, like a pack of wolves approaching and then splitting along the flanks of helpless prey, surrounding it, smelling it, watching its chest heave and its hot blood spilling from rents in its flesh. They turned, they crouched, thews loaded with explosive force.

Zero.

The many rituals converged into one: one ritual, one prayer, one voice, one single ululating, animal noise. From the gleaming, bone-white pleasure palaces at city center, to the lowliest favela, to the sprawling uranium mining camps buried deep beneath the Wastes, humanity called out, drunk and abandoned and voicing a cacophonous, feral howl.

When the sound broke from his audio feed and thrilled up his spine, Nabor threw his Bandersnatch into a dead run and pulled the trigger. His payload gun belched, discharging an ordinance-filled canister the size of a beer barrel, its clumsy shape arcing lazily forward.

Two tight beams of barely visible light cut the air to his left as the canister split open a hundred meters ahead, filling the air with a roiling cloud of dazzling pink glitter and buzzing metallic insects. The cloud would drain much of the punch out of the next volley of laser fire, reducing it to little more than a light show, but the glitter was heavy and would fall like sand. It would buy Nabor barely enough time to gain the cover of a nearby ferrocrete hulk. From there, it would be cat and mouse in the crumbling necropolis.

A knife fight in a phone booth.

Otto, the scheming Hun, had expected the move, had seen it light years away. He had likely strutted around his tactical bunker the night before, goose-stepping with a riding crop in hand, slapping his arena map and his lackeys with equal relish as he spat his foul, guttural language, every jagged syllable dripping with the disdain of a self-described “ubermensch”.

Naturally Otto had seen to infest these buildings with nests of venomous little scorpions, bristling with shoulder-fired SRMs and laden with demo charges. It was a good move, Nabor had to agree. He would have done the same.

Which is exactly why the canister painted as if constricted by a long, neon-feathered dragon lurked in the abyssal chamber of his payload gun.

He waited for the infantry ambush’s crescendo, watching his armor display wink and mellow from greens to yellows, before he let the dragon fly, right into the center of the incoming fire. He watched the huge charge break open twenty meters before impact, and watched a wave of liquid conflagration spill forth through the air, diving in through open windows, splattering against walls, rushing across the ground with such force that he saw one man swept off his feet and smashed up against a wall, like flotsam tossed against a wave break. In an instant the scene had been reduced to an ancient painting of hell, a lake of fire filled with the screaming damned.

As coiling serpents of flame and toxic smoke swallowed the concrete and steel structure to his right, the Gamblers concealed to his left, hidden in dilapidated cumuli of abandoned shacks, continued to pour out torrents of slugs and threads of collimated light.

“Run, you fucking morons!” Nabor shouted over his PA system as he sprayed their cover down with murderous gouts from his machine guns, sending plumes of dust and sheets of corrugated steel flying through the air.

They did not.

Ms. Penderghast’s 3rd grade class’ submission had been chosen as the decoration for his next canister. Nabor was a man of the people, after all. He had watched the children melt down over the video feed as he announced their victory, a horde of little creatures squealing in ecstasy as a picture of their artistic rendition of a beehive floated on screen, decorated with pastel flowers and a smiling little yellow sun and fat black hornets and a big golden lump of a hive. Where they had seen a hive, Nabor would never know, but they were proud of their work, and that made him happy.

He just hoped none of their fathers were in the Gambler unit he was about to feed their innocent little piece of art to.

The canister moved slowly, and seemed to be hovering over the squat buildings when it burst. It was bright and sharp, cheerful as a firework, and when it detonated he watched as sub-munitions, each the size of a melon, each packed with ten-thousand hardened steel darts, each dart the length of a man’s finger, were cast free to bounce and ricochet and smash through cover. Three seconds later and the spheres exploded. Nabor heard the darts tink harmlessly off of his armor like rain as the ramshackle buildings and their ramshackle inhabitants dissolved beneath a fury of killing projectiles.

Those poor bastards.

Bella broke cover at a run, barreling through a wide intersection as Ogun appeared several streets down, already charging towards him, weapons tracking as coldly as a dragonfly’s eyes.

In an instant the urban corridor was flooded with blinding, killing energy. Their weapons leapt to life and they drove deathrays and strings of killing kinetics into one another, armor splintering and peeling away as rot-softened flesh beneath the frenzied beaks of immense carrion birds.

Despite the withering barrage, Otto came ever onward, lasers punching and slashing even as shards and glowing gouts of molten metal fell from his plating. Owen backpedaled, his autocannon barking it’s glorious tune. He crushed the trigger to his payload cannon again and heard it’s hollow report. A grey-black canister emblazoned in silver kanji, ancient alchemical formulae, and words of power, spiraled towards the onrushing Ogun. 30 meters before impact he released his finger and the canister burst. The world between them became a void of swirling smoke and shadows that climbed the walls in spectral tongues.

His eyes flicked to his ammo display and he felt a pulse of grim eagerness in his belly as he saw the readout for the next round in his payload gun’s magazine. It was an obvious choice, and judging by the regal, jewelry-laden tiger that he had seen spraypainted on its side back at the stable, the boys back back home would agree. He suppressed his urge to loose the round the way one stifles a giggle in church.

Nabor continued backpedaling, slowly, stirring and teasing the cloud with his medium lasers.

Come on in, Otto, you fuck. The water’s nice and warm.

He jerked the trigger the moment he saw the bulk of the Ogun heave forth through the edge of the cloud, already firing its array of large and medium lasers into Bella’s arms and torsos.

Imagine Otto’s shock as he emerged from the smoke with a belly full of hate and a savage roar on his lips, only to see something as incongruous as a cartoon tiger decorating a huge orange barrel floating lazily towards his cockpit. His Prussian mind would no doubt deny it. Would seize up and glitch out. Full-on quadriplegic confusion.

And then the awful truth would click.

Like a firing pin.

Nabor released the two-stage trigger, and two-hundred pounds of high explosives vanished in a flash and a roar so loud it was inaudible.

The pressure wave warped reality around Otto and his ‘Mech, compressed it into a refractive bubble that spread out and then reflected back off of concrete walls that cracked and crumbled and collapsed in torrents of dust and debris. Bella rocked in the concussion, but she bore only the tiniest fraction of the awful wrath that had been delivered to Ogun’s face.

Nabor slowed his backpedaling and stopped, one foot resting atop the flattened shell of an abandoned ground car, watching the smoke and debris swirl and slowly settle.

In the gullet of his massive payload gun, his final round rested. He knew it intimately. By face. By touch. By smell. He knew it by the name of the woman painted across its shell. They had spent many a night together, lashed around one another like snakes, darkness illuminated by the throbbing light of pheromonal lust and whatever grade-A boutique drugs his corporate hook-up had delivered to his quarters.

Brianna.

God, what a lovely piece of work. A canister the size of a refrigerator, packed with enough aerosolized baccanaline to end the endless wars of the Inner Sphere many times over, awaited his command.

Nabor had wanted to save her for last, as a grand finale, as a show of thanks to the fans. Something to really win the hearts and minds of the ‘Drome. Mark the wind and let it carry her sweet scent into the crowded terraced sprawls, give the huddle masses a taste of the artisanal pleasure so ubiquitous in the gilded halls of the Sternenlicht. He wanted to kick off the endless night of celebratory debauchery by bathing the people in a warm pink haze. It was the least he could do.

The dust settled and all but a few gauzy tendrils of smoke clung to Ogun’s legs. The ‘Mech still stood, though swaying as if drunk. Its front armor was blackened, blistered, and a huge sheet of its armored face had been peeled back to show the mechanical gore of the raw superstructure beneath. Through magnification Nabor saw Otto, naked to the world in his brand-new open-air cockpit. He was working his controls slowly, dazed, running through command sequences as if sleep walking.

The heads-up display showed that the bout was still a go, that the judges hadn’t called it. The scum back in the control bunker wanted a clear victor. Very well.

“You still don’t deserve her, Otto”, he said, a hint of melancholy macerating his anger-hardened voice.

He pulled the trigger again, felt the gun’s recoil, watched the pink streak of the canister arc out towards his foe. It impacted Ogun, center mass, and he released the trigger. Ogun, Otto, disappeared behind a wall of colored smoke. Nabor watched the violet-pink gas swirl, an immense blossoming bush of scented flower petals. Somewhere in there, a MechWarrior was about to be very happy.

He watched from afar as the horrid greys of the rotting Sprawl were washed out in fading pinks and magentas. Even the bleak world couldn’t keep Brianna or her color confined. A slight breeze drew runners of the cotton candy gas towards him, like delicate, ghostly fingers.

“Ah, fuck it…” he chirped, as he stood up and opened the cockpit hatch, filling his lungs with a rarified tropical perfume that suffused his body. He felt Brianna, insubstantial, dance along the fibers of his nervous system, plucking and playing them like the strings of a harp.

His vision swam with points of light, and he slowly returned to his couch and sat, his legs liquefied. A soft smile crept across his face as sensory memories of wild nights and tender mornings flooded his nervous system and swept past his mind’s eye.

There was a bitter tinge to the waking dream, but that subtle flavor couldn’t mask the luminous sweetness of their past.

The Payload Gun

Classic BattleTech sports a wide variety of fun and interesting ammo types. Acid ammo, Inferno, illumination, tear gas, FASCAM, laser inhibiting smoke. Fun shit.

Problem is this: ammo typically only comes in full ton lots. Half ton at the least. And if you want to deploy toys of mayhem such as these, you’ll need to mount fluid guns, missile launchers, and a goddamned Arrow IV, along with no less than three tons of ammo if you’re looking for some tactical flexibility.

Problem: too many fun types of payload and no practical way to field them.

Solution: The Goddamned Payload Gun, motherfuckers.

Think of it as on-board artillery with shit range.

And a double-barreled version too, because its a Periphery gladiatorial setting full of drugs, corruption, and desperation, and also fuck not having a double-barreled version. Its fun. Deal with it.

groovy-evil.gif

QUESTIONS ON BALANCE:

  • How do we like the weight/crits?

    • My thinking is that reduced ammo count and multiple situation-dependent types in each ton will keep this piece of equipment slightly under powered.

    • Though I admit that the HE/Cluster/FAB-X rounds are likely to be exploited. We’ll talk more of this later.

  • If they weigh this little, should I reduce their range to 2/4/6 to make them more balanced?

Payload Gun Ammo

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. This is whats bringing all the boys to the yard. The whole POINT of the payload gun is…yarp…

PAYLOAD.

Now, here’s something annoying, and inconvenient, and maybe I’ll change it, but I suspect not any time soon.

See, I’m not going to overtly publish any of the rules from any BattleTech book. Those rules are copyright, and I don’t wish to traipse on the toes of Catalyst. Its their intellectual property and so its not mine to publish even if I’m using using the rules as integral components of BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome assets.

Also though, I don’t want to add a a bunch more home-brew rules to the game. Yes, there are some unique Electrodrome ammo types, such as nerve gas and glitter and depth charges and such. And there are a few more in the works (pleasure gas, hornet gas, hallucinogenic gas). But I don’t feel compelled to re-invent the wheel. The rules and ammunition already exist. Lets use them.

On with the show…

Canister Ammo - All.jpg

Here’s something I’d love: suggestions. Its easy to say “that’s stupid, I don’t like it” but its also useless noise that nobody cares to hear.

If you feel your guts twist up at any of these ammo types AND you’re able to form complete sentences, I’d love it if you could tell me how YOU would make them something you’d be more likely to use.

As always, I’m not just trying to make content. I want to make SUPERIOR content. And that requires input from the BattleTech gaming community at large.

Speaking of you helping me out, consider joining my brain trust and getting written into the BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome (the unofficial arena expansion) fiction. Head on over to the GODSPAR GAMES PATREON and chucking me a buck or two to help me out!

Keep on keepin’ on, you gorgeous thing, you.

-R

BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome - The True Kings of the Battlefield

BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome - The True Kings of the Battlefield

BattleTech: MORE Infantry Gear

BattleTech: MORE Infantry Gear

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