BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome - The True Kings of the Battlefield

First, thank you to Alex Figini for allowing me to use his piece Reaper Class Exo - Flamingo Type as the cover art for this post. Its goddamned gorgeous. Click those links, check out his stuff, and buy a print. It’ll make your world more beautiful.

Second, and I cannot state this enough, but thank you so much to my Patrons. Its been a dry couple of months what with work and life and holidays, and thank you so much for sticking it out with me. People like you keep my iron in the fire, my nose to the grindstone, my sails up and my rudder true. Thank you for all you do.

The True Kings

Let the "MechWarriors” call themselves what they will. “Kings of the Battlefield”. It is a joke in our drinking halls. We laugh so hard that the revelers hush and turn to witness our taut and scarred faces, shattered with jeering laughter.

Let their egos swell, balloon out with their self importance. It is when they are most…distended…that we rip them from their cockpits to stand atop their silent iron vessels and share their blood with the world. Let them scream as we pull them apart before their fans and our beloved worshippers, painting their towering pride with a river of crimson.

Let them come. Let them die. Let our perfection be made undeniable by their sacrifices.

We do not fear them. This is our power. It is the through-line, connecting our drug rituals, our meta-honey mead soaked floors, our endless baccanalian orgies, the joyous days spent encased in our other selves, leaping and sprinting and destroying the world one piece at a time with machine guns and lasers and armored claws.

Their name for us is silly. “Meshuggah”.

They think us crazy. One would have to be to wear battle armor in the Electrodrome, no?

They think us foolish. One would have to be to face a ‘Mech not as an equal, but with disdain, no?

They think without power. They think the way a man breathes without air, naked in the hard vacuum, drifting in the darkness.

Óhræddar hendur. Fearless Hands. This is our name, as we have chosen it.

To a man that must “pilot” his war machine, that must clamber inside of it as a worm slithers wetly in a cave, our way of life is terrifying. We do not wear our armor. We merge with it. We become it. And in becoming, we are freed.

Free to live the life that chose us as we chose it, like feral lovers. Free to live, suspended above the yawning chasm of death by an ever-fraying rope, with the hollow where fear normally lurks filled with blazing, joyous light.

We, Óhræddar hendur, Meshuggah, live and fight and die bathed in that light. It guides us home to our halls after battle, suffuses the heaving throngs of worshippers that flank our path and drives them to ecstasy. Our dead, carried home on garlanded, flower-strewn palanquins, radiate that piercing light as if their hearts are X-ray stars, and their glorious path is anointed with offerings of tears and alcohol and blood.

The Meshuggah

In a previous post I made mention of the Meshuggah, individual battle armor troopers that leap joyously into the combats of the Electrodrome, seeking glory and spectacular death. Rather than requisitioning booby traps or artillery or a horde of vicious velociraptors, why not summon a blood-thirsty one-man killing machine to turn enemy MechWarriors into sock puppets?

What makes ‘em so special? Well, THREE things make ‘em so special.

ATTITUDE: how they present themselves to the arena, its fans, and its participants. Arrogant Meshuggah are disliked by fans, who cram the stands to watch them die. Vicious Meshuggah inspire their team-mates to greater brutality in melee combat.

QUIRK: that special little something about the Meshuggah. Call it “je ne sais quoi”, if you will. Some Meshuggah pride themselves in their top-of-the-line gear while others are literally too angry to die.

GEAR: grants small, discrete buffs to the Meshuggah, improving weapon damage, anti-mech performance, and mobility.

To integrate the Meshuggah as I have intended them to be used, first consult the rules for Spectacle Phase and Spectacle Points, which is a core mechanic of the BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome unofficial arena expansion that I have been working on for the past few years. This will tell you how to generate Spectacle Points and how to spend them on the many “Spectacle Assets”, including the Meshuggah.

Then consult the tables below to create your VERY OWN, COMPLETELY UNIQUE, CRAZY-BASTARD MESHUGGAH, named…Cake Hammer, or…Giga Falcon, or…Liquid Priest?

If you have constructive commentary or feedback, I’d love to hear it. Always. I am not happy with simply making content: I want to perfect it. Otherwise I’m just another voice in the din.

So let me know what you think, how to make this all better.

Also, I will likely expand this Spectacle Asset, so if you have more names or quirks or gear or attitudes for the Meshuggah, send them my way and I’ll add them to the expanded V.2.

Go forth and kick ass, my dudes.

-Rob