The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

For 'verse proposals, random ideas, musings, and brainwaves.

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Malchus
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Malchus »

Those're awesome units, Orph. I especially like the Gasts and Revenants. Something about them being the result of strong emotions at death is pretty cool. And damned if that opening quote isn't awesome.
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

It is complete! I have finished the necromantic units and now I have done all 20 units.
Challenger defeated.
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Invictus »

Now that's what I'm talking about, Orpheus. I really hesitate to give you the big "CHALLENGE COMPLETED" stamp, just so you would do more of them. :mrgreen:

EDIT: And I think you've upped the ante as well...
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Ford Prefect »

Very impressive Orph. There's a good level of detail and it's all pretty interesting, as well. A lot of that stuff is particularly grabbing; the Artesian and Skindancer, for example, are particularly striking. In visuallisation it is depraved and evil and diverse. There's some very good ideas there, enough so that the fairly tired 'army of the dead' comes across as being rather exciting and fresh.
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Weeeeeell... I suppose I could make up an opponent unit list for them. Or I could go with my Arctic Animal Army, inspired by such awesome as Bear Cavalry, Penguin Infantry and Whales on Stilts.
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Invictus »

Terran Reclamation Force (TRF)

“It is true that we used to be a divided people, a divided world, even, as you call us. But this is no basis on which to judge us unfit of possessing the Akasha Stone, and we will not surrender it until it is pried from our cold dead fingers. We accept the neutrality of the Jovians only on the terms of passive observation and humanitarian assistance. It dos not grant you the right to make yourself arbitrators of the ongoing conflict in Terran space. If this is truly a game, sir, then it is a game that we aim to win, and we will not be informed of it having any rules.”

- Ambassador Sir Wendell Shirvaikar, Addressing the Jovian 3rd Tropic Liminal Porte


Gaian Peacekeepers (Civil Security Police Officers)
Against microscopic parasites and giant monsters, the gun-toting officers of the Gaian Peacekeepers would seem to be the least prominent branch of the Terran military machine. While the various armed forces under the umbrella of the Reclamation Mandate do look down on the Peacekeepers, it is not for this reason. With the menagerie of horrors that threaten to overwhelm the planet and its native lifeforms, mankind can ill afford any division. It is then often up to the Peacekeepers to pacify popular dissent and enforce the will of the TRF Joint Command upon disarmed but restive client states. The best that can be said about Peacekeeper equipment is it is perfectly adequate against human opponents, including a plethora of non-lethal devices as well as standard infantry firearms and mass-produced bioplas body armor. Supporting elements extend only to light rocket launchers, mortars and APCs so Peacekeeper companies will suffer against a well-armed resistance and are almost useless on the front line. Nevertheless, it is not the presence of the Peacekeepers but the threat of withdrawing TRF protection that keeps countries in line. Despite this, the poorly-funded Peacekeepers are both zealous and effective because many of them were former members of the evangelical Gaian Brotherhood sect, which the TRF found more useful to co-opt than to crush. Therefore, individual Peacekeepers tend to view their duties as a sacred mission and the Joint Command is often willing to overlook charges of their brutality and over-enthusiasm.

Plague Docs (Micrological Front Combat Teams)
It was tiny bacteria that opened the Martian Front across the Arctic latitudes, and it is Martian bacteria that pose the greatest current threat against Earth, infecting Terran lifeforms and transforming them into psychic minions dedicated to the cause of Mars. To halt the plague-like spread of Martian influence, an entirely new arena of warfare was developed with the assistance of superscientific insights gleaned from the Akasha Stone. The Plague Docs, under the TRF Health Directorate, move into battle against enemies they cannot see, burdened with bulky sterilization suits, packs of analytical equipment and polarized tanks of molecular acids. They are a paranoid and scarred lot, never certain whether any area behind the lines is clean, never sure whether anyone they meet is a Martian sleeper agent. There are unsavory rumors in the TRF that Plague Docs will turn on any teammates they suspect of infection without any hesitation, but unlike outsiders they have treaded deep enough into the Contamination Zone to see the advanced-stage Martian hosts, their bodies reshaped into horrific forms to better suit the alien consciousnesses they house. Their hand-held and vehicle-mounted sprayers are just as effective on human flesh as alien bacteria, but they are no match for the range and power of conventional firearms in the hands of Mars-subverted humans, not to mention the rudimentary products of their reconstructing technological base. Plague Docs operate well when assigned to clean up rear theaters and minor front leakages, but require armored support when operating inside Martian territory.

Science Marines (Xenozone Expeditionary Troopers)
The all-encompassing powered armor of the Science Marines is designed to function in any environment from the crushing heat of the Venerian Contamination Zones to the icy depths of the sea bottom. It can dispense combat drugs to enhance the wearer’s metabolism and even carries a reserve of battery orgone to heal his injuries. Commissioned under the direct supervision of the Babel Foundation, these suits are practically immune to all pre-Impact antipersonnel weaponry. They are also some of the most expensive pieces of infantry equipment even manufactured, and are only issued to a handpicked few around the world. However, the Science Marines were not created to fight conventional wars. Instead, they are tasked to carry out operations in the Contamination Zones such as sabotaging Martian facilities and tracking Venerian megafauna, recording scientific data all the time. Outside rare cases of derring-do, Science Marines on whole cannot stand up to Martian technology or rampaging Megaforms, for as inordinately well-armed as they are they remain infantry. The Joint Command tries to deploy them sparingly and conservatively, but the Babel Foundation constantly pushes them to bring back more results. As a result, Science Marines tend to be a brusque bunch who never stay long in one theater, and among the other military branches they are respected for their prowess but disliked for their golden boy status. Nevertheless, they constantly try to live up to their image, believing that the sacrifice of a few can indeed help them achieve great victories.

Parapsychic Cadre
The so-called Martian bacteria, lying dormant on the red planet until its infestation of Earth, have many properties which are poorly understood. Despite their small size they carry the collective legacy of the long-extinct Martian civilization, down to technical knowledge and individual personalities. The same process of rewriting the host’s brain also gives it strange psychic abilities, a power which all original Martians may have possessed. However, not all infestations are successful and there are many patients who retain not only their volitions but fragments of Martian knowledge and power. These accidental psychics inspired the creation of the first artificial parapsychics, whose powers are developed by controlled doses of the same Martian bacteria. The conversion remains an arduous process and personality instabilities crop up in even the latest generation of “stable” recruits. However, their massive contribution to the Terran war effort justifies their costly development and the occasional burnout. Their telepathy lets them act as unjammable radiomen in the soupy and radioactive environment of the Venerian Zones and as vital counter against Martian psychic warfare, especially of their mobile Master Brains. A few have even managed to take control of Venerian Megaforms, turning the rampaging monsters into temporary friends of humanity. Further research is already underway on the Martian bacteria’s bio-transmutative properties, which will enable parapsychics to have extra abilities like telekinesis and safe access to Martian memory. Nevertheless, the more power that these mutated humans are granted, the more paranoia they are treated with by the Joint Command.

Gaian Orgone Channelers
The Gaian Brotherhood was a vast messianic cult that sprung up in the first post-Impact days with the fevered purpose of uniting humanity against a coming spiritual apocalypse. It commanded such loyalty around the world that even the Terran Reclamation Force, which by then had already made a mockery of national sovereignty, chose not to confront the Brotherhood head on. Instead, it assimilated the organization in political deal with the cult’s power-hungry leaders. The Gaian Brotherhood no longer exists as a formal organization, but its doctrines and spiritual practices have found a wide following in the TRF’s rank and file. Joint Command does not curb this behavior because many Gaian beliefs support the TRF’s goals, especially regarding the existence and flow of orgone energy around the planet’s biosphere. The Babel Foundation treats the science of orgone as their exclusive domain and views the claims that Gaian calisthenics and meditation can manipulate orgone with disdain at best. But they have received increasingly disturbing reports of exceptionally “enlightened” practitioners who could channel the life energy of themselves and others to heal or slay. In the front lines such individuals don makeshift white cassocks over their combat armor, performing acts that the Foundation knows to be impossible without elaborate equipment or parapsychic treatment. With growing alarm, the Foundation has investigated deeply into the phenomenon and is encountering a deepening resistance from the Gaian ranks. Has there been some potential of the unmodified human body that they have missed?

Babel Foundation Agents
The top decision-making body of the TRF is the Joint Command, which has direct authority over all of the organization’s diverse and eclectic branches. Yet its strings are being pulled by a shadowy backer: the Babel Foundation, a secretive scientific organization dedicated to safeguarding and deciphering the Akasha Stone, the unearthing of which was the raison d’être of the entire war. Among the common ranks, the Foundation is viewed in almost a mythical light, both the keepers of the aliens’ ultimate objective and the source of all the superscience that enables the TRF to keep them in check. But the higher ranks know the Foundation as manipulative and self-absorbed, viewing soldiers as both pawns and guinea pigs for furthering their own understanding of the scientific Holy Grail that is the Akasha Stone. The Babel Foundation’s field agents are deployed to “advise” the ground troops, in truth ensuring that their patron’s secret objectives are fulfilled. Each agent is grown from the ground up to rigorous specifications, their mitochondria replaced with vastly more efficient Europan micro-bacteria and their bones and organs with Martian alloys and Beta-cultured counterparts. Their unparalleled fighting skill and technical knowledge are hypnotically implanted, the database refined in each generation of clones. Their faith in the Babel Foundation’s scientific prowess is absolute, for after all they owe their existences to the organization.

Type-999 Main Battle Tank
“The last hurrah of the Main Battle Tank”, as the Type-999 is often called, is the subject of much heated debate within the TRF camp. Joint Command argues that conventional tanks no long have a place on the battlefield with the complete paradigm shift in ground warfare. This view is met with widespread opposition from regional commanders, who find the Type-999 familiar to use and well worth its weight. The Type-999’s last-generation combustion engine can propel the tank at high speeds as well as providing the power for its hypersonic coilgun. It is defended by both electromagnetic armor and a microwave point-defense system, which doubles as an antipersonnel weapon. Its fire control system is highly adjustable, capable of integrating modular add-ons on the fly. Indeed, the vehicle is the ultimate expression of Pre-Impact armored doctrine, and it would have found no equal in the arsenals of any first-world military. But the time of conflict between nation-states is past, and so is the time for conventional human science. The loss rate of the Type-999s in the field never stops mounting despite the ingenious roles and modifications their commanders have figured out for them. All too often, all their valiant crews can do is to buy time before a Garuda or ACP can arrive on the scene. Nevertheless, they have one advantage – they are comparatively cheap and do not need the superscientific patronage of the Babel Foundation to manufacture, with all the strings and political obligations that result.

BF-12 “Vajra” Amphibious Missile System
When conventional weaponry proved insufficient to combat the alien Megaforms that boiled from the sea, the newly formed TRF responded by supersizing their weaponry. The Vajra missile system is based on a large and robust hovercraft chassis, mounting either enough multiple-tube launchers to eradicate a square mile of microbe infestation or one single massive missile to crack the armored hide of a Megaform. These anti-Megaform missiles merit special mention because they rival the size of IRBMs yet only have a tenth of the range, trading endurance for incredible acceleration and an even more devastating payload. They are among the only ways to guarantee a kill on an enemy Megaform, but even so each surviving generation grows more wily and tenacious with natural ECM, bio-magnetic forcefields and multiple redundant organs. As much as the commanders would like to break out the nuclear shaped-charge warheads, the energy released ultimately benefits the encroaching Venerian ecosystem, and Joint Command considers it safer to use hypervelocity kinetic warheads. Aiming these massive darts at a Megaform’s weak points is a fine art and experienced gunners are respected for their skill. Conversely, Vajra crews know they only have one shot: the launcher is virtually defenseless after it has expended its ammunition. The hovercraft locomotion allows an unloaded Vajra to escape at a good clip – enough to maintain their range advantage over most Megaforms’ attacks, but many crews are instead known to use this mobility to rush their target, making sure that their single shot doesn’t miss.

BF-33 “Little Moksha” Tactical Neuro Cannon
The Martian infestation is more than its subverted hosts, its reconstructed and highly advanced technology or even its bacterial vector. It is the psychic field rooted in all its physical manifestations, a diffuse and bottomless well of knowledge and desire. Martian thoughts and voices permeate the very air in the Martian Contamination Zones, a constant background noise that has driven many a Martian Front veteran insane. The TRF has long sought a way to attack this psychic gestalt directly, a more efficient solution than combing the earth for every carrier bacterium. Research on parapsychic experiments eventually led to the use of cultured brain matter to broadcast destructive psychic waves, disrupting the Martian consciousnesses. The first omnidirectional “Mindkiller” bombs evolved into the “Big Moksha” stationary installations broadcasting directed brainwaves and eventually to the “Little Moksha” mobile artillery, the most effective and least cumbersome counter-psychc platform. Its dish-like weapon is literally powered by a carefully shielded tank of brain matter, where intense disruptive thoughts are produced via “stimulation” and channeled into the firing dish. The resulting beam overloads all thought and scrambles all minds caught inside, leaving the atmosphere silent and the sentient beings vegetables. Even Martian facilities, constructed out of though-sensitive materials, can be reduced to horrific Pollockian sculptures by a sweep of this beam. The Little Moksha is also effective against Terran and Venerian life with complex enough thought patterns, but Martians are especially susceptible to these psychic beams, which are ironically generated by subverted Martian power.

“Retribution” Submarine Battleship
It is a known fact that most alien Megaforms begin their incubation on the ocean floor, protected and unseen until they emerge in their near-invulnerable maturity. The packs of immature Megaforms that infest the depths while they await this chance make sea travel doubly dangerous. The TRF has had little choice but to revamp naval warfare as they did to land warfare: the Retribution class is a large and highly advanced vessel, capable of fighting both above and below water with its superalloy hull and magnetodynamic propulsion. With a profile resembling the battleships of old, the Retribution forms the new centerpiece of the TRF navy and Joint Command expects it to be able to take the offensive against underwater centers of alien activity, which were previously inaccessible to naval forces. Its size and armament makes it one of the few vehicles capable of fighting Megaforms on an equal footing, before the arrival of the even more advanced ACPs. Bulbous turrets firing volleys of supercavitating gauss shells are supplemented with banks of blue-green lasers and sonic cannons designed to blast apart infant Megaforms and repel adult ones before they can reach land. Weapons range and mobility are the primary advantages the Retribution has over the average Megaform, some of which can be surprisingly adept in aquatic combat. Nevertheless, a particularly skilled or experienced captain can actually achieve multiple Megaform kills in his career, something few other individual combat units in the TRF can boast of.

BF-82 “Gale” Unmanned Interceptor
Engaging the first winged Megaforms and Martian flying machines left the air forces of the world with few intact fighters and even fewer living pilots. As with land warfare, the pre-Impact paradigm of aerial combat had been invalidated overnight. Conventional air-to-air missiles and cannon could not slow down the alien invaders, leading to some cases of pilots crashing their planes into their foes in desperation. The TRF once again had to seek the aid of the Babel Foundation, who saw the request as an opportunity to make inroads into artificial intelligence research. The scientists convinced Joint Command of the advantages of a robotic fighter: more expendable, more controllable, more able to capitalize on the old fighter jets’ exclusive asset – maneuverability. But the artificial intelligence they developed was not entirely artificial. It is an open secret that a dozen surviving ace pilots came forward and sacrificed their brains for the Babel Foundation’s research efforts, but the results were worth it. The Gale interceptor is the 3rd generation of unmanned fighters, a perfect combination of antediluvian superscience and human spirit. It carries hypersonic missiles and particle cannons that are perfectly capable of damaging, if not destroy outright, their Martian counterparts. The sheer bulk of flying Megaforms remain a problem, but they are what the Garuda is for. The Gale’s Orgonic Intelligence pilots are amalgamated and optimized gestalts, but it is said that their original human templates pilot still more advanced prototypes in an ace squadron called “the Apostles”.

BF-35 “Garuda” Theater Bomber
The war against the aliens was waged across the world. It was not a war of economics or ideology as we understood it but a struggle of basic biological supremacy, every insect and every blade of grass a combatant and a target. The Martians warped every living thing they touched into desolate reflections of their genetic memories, while the Venerians transformed the very land into the boiling, roiling hellscape that they were more familiar with. The destruction of enemy territory became synonymous with the destruction of enemy forces. The massive Garuda bomber was created to fulfill this purpose with gusto. It was built to fly at hypersonic speeds, evading Martian defenses and above the Venerian fog with its payload of fusion bombs and virus missiles, raining destruction upon alien occupied territory with impunity. However saner minds prevailed as the bomber was rolled out and the Garuda was reassigned to a less ambitious and more pressing duty – providing a knockout blow against the larger Megaforms which were emerging from the Contamination Zones. For this it had the speed to respond promptly to attack warnings despite being housed in rear-theater airfields, and its bay could hold enough firepower to not need a second bombing run. However, the Garuda was never designed to be a precision bomber. It relies on targeting data transmitted from the ground to fire effectively. Without this feed, Garuda crews are known to ‘play it safe’; causing soldiers to look up in trepidation whenever the bomber enters the warzone.

“Lokapala” Armed Orbital Monitor
While most of the TRF’s warmachines deal with what is on the ground, the Lokapalas keep an unblinking eye on the heavens. Each is a hundred tons of thinking steel brought into space at great expense by Jovian liftertugs, bristling with sensors and laser arrays. A growing network of these heavily armed satellites now patrol Earth’s orbit, reflecting Joint Command’s seeming determination to not let another alien organism touch down and take root on Earth soil. The Lokapalas are brilliantly suited to this task on paper, but many question the priority of their construction and deployment when the Martians, Venerians and other aliens have already slipped past the net and firmly established themselves. Others question the reliability of the autonomous intelligences that control each satellite, as the Babel Foundation has shown little sign of artificial mind research outside the mind-ripped personality templates used for the Gale fighters. Still, the Lokapala network reports regular successes with their synthesized voices – vaporizing suspicious objects on collision courses with the planet and “monitoring” the passage of neutral Jovian vessels. This news cheers the civilian populace, at least, but high-ranking administrators would find it more reassuring if the Lokapalas didn’t also have the capability to turn its lasers downward, striking any target on the ground not concealed by cloud or fog. The attenuated laser beams lack the punch of a bomberload of hypervelocity missiles, but their precision and fire rate is rather frightening.

Benign Mercurian Megaform
More than the Martians and the Venerians responded to the unveiling of the Akasha Stone. Aliens from the more distant planets also found their way on Earth, their presence overshadowed by the scale and ferocity of the main combatants. The Mercurians are a good example of this. Similar to the Venerians, their ancestors arrived from the first planet of the Solar System as micro-organisms, quickly evolving to gargantuan size with Earth’s plentiful orgone energy. However, the resulting Megaforms still have their intrinsic characteristics derived from the conditions of their homeworlds. Compared to Venerians, Mercurians are completely silicon-based and rely far more on solar energy, their simple physiologies reflecting the relative desolation of their homeworld. As a result, they tend to be more suggestible to psychic lures, and the Babel Foundation has been able to “tame” them with a diet of pure orgone and a long-term programming of their computer-like minds. It is said that simple friendships have even formed between some of these beasts and parapsychics. Tamed Mercurian Megaforms can carry out simple actions without prompting from their handlers, functioning as some of the earliest viable combatants against alien Megaforms and war machines. Mercurians are tough even by Megaform standards and incredibly resistant to heat, allowing them to soak up plasma breath and energy rays which would otherwise target more vulnerable units. However, they remain sluggish in action and ultimately less controllable than the new ACPs. It seems that the latter will soon relegate them to the status of curiosities.

XCT Engineering Hulk
Joint Command is well aware that the battle for Earth is an underlying battle for the control of the planet’s vital orgone energy. As more of it is channeled into the spreading alien ecosystems, there is less for Terran life to use. Physical destruction of Alien Contamination Zones only represents a no-win situation, as in the long run it destroys potential resources that humanity can use. Therefore, the Babel Foundation sought a way to directly convert the orgone in alien life for Terran use. The Xenological Counter-Terraforming Engineering Hulks are the largest tracked vehicles employed by the TRF, each an armored fortress containing monitoring stations, internal nurseries, vast banks of orgone battery-tissue and incredibly advanced and arcane processing systems that can directly extract the life-essence from the landscape. Crewed by dozens of scientists, their size is a necessity for housing their baroque equipment. Engineering Hulks trudge daily into Contamination Zones with heavy escort, rendering everything in their passage into sludge and ash and returning with bellies full of harvested orgone. They can return actuality to potentiality, unmaking the alien invaders while others merely destroy. While other units combat the more overt manifestations of alien infestation, Joint Command is convinced that XCT is the most fundamental solution to ending the war, capable of killing two birds with one stone. Others question the purpose to which the Babel Foundation places the harvested orgone, hardly much of which ever seems to be redistributed from their coffers.

BFX-02 Advanced Combat Platform “Asura”
When the first Walkers were sighted along the Martian Front, Joint Command had hoped that their Anti-Megaform strategy would work on these similar-sized warmachines. It quickly found out that these new foes were far more agile and intelligent than the Venerian beasts, invalidating the TRF’s usual bombardment tactics. Furthermore, they were also mounted with the cream of Martian energy weaponry, including ultra-accurate lasers and freeze rays which far outstripped the relatively crude Megaform attacks in threat, if not raw power. It was obvious that something new was required to go head-to-head against these new insectoid opponents, and the Babel Foundation was unusually enthusiastic about providing a technical solution. The first Advanced Combat Platforms were essentially copies of the Walkers, reversed-engineered from Martian technology interpreted through the Akasha Stone. They may be more human-shaped, but they retain the gangly limbs of superalloy that hardly look capable of supporting the towering figure. Would-be pilots of the Asura must receive a low-grade parapsychic treatment to synchronize with their machine’s artificial nervous system, and afterwards the two shares a fundamental psychic bond. The pilot of a totaled Asura can only form a new bond with a fresh mount, and only if he survives the feedback trauma. Yet the result is an unparalleled responsiveness between man and machine which when combined with the Asura’s formidable arsenal makes their effectiveness hard to argue against. Due to sheer size and logistics, Asuras have a tendency of becoming the centerpiece of whatever military theater it is deployed to.

BFX-03 Advanced Combat Platform “Arahan”
The Asuras are manufactured from relatively unmodified Martian science – they have a disturbing tendency to lose control and wear upon the psyches of their pilots. Also seemingly in response to these nevertheless highly effective units, the aliens have started deploying what are starting to be classified as “Gigaforms”, rare individuals which far exceed average capability. Rather than see the destruction of their precious force of Asuras, Joint Command implored the Babel Foundation to build something to match, to which the Foundation again seemed eager to comply. The Arahan is a more perfect hybrid of Martian engineering and Akashic superscience, its appearance more graceful and more humanoid than its predecessors. It compliments its oversized conventional armaments by harnessing the inherent psychic properties of all Martian constructs, yet in a far more forceful manner. Its control systems are almost sentient, requiring negotiation with any prospective pilot rather than crude psychic imprinting. But in return, veteran pilots almost seem remade by their machines, becoming potent “true” psychics whose powers are amplified exponentially in the cockpit, who in turn transform their mounts into truly awe-inspiring titans of destruction. Nevertheless, the Arahan is prohibitively expensive and requires large numbers of Foundation specialists to maintain. Only three models are known to be in service, all deployed in vital strategic locations around the headquarters of the Babel Foundation, where the Akasha Stone itself is kept. They are only ever activated in response to major breakthroughs, where Joint Command already has a measure of the enemy’s strength.

BFX-00 Experimental Decisive Combat Platform “Amidah”
While the Babel Foundation worked the Asura and the Arahan, it initiated a secret project which ran parallel to the development of material ACP technology. It was both breathtaking ambitious and at the same time unbearably indulgent - the creation of a “spiritual champion” that could harness humanity’s collective will and translate it to concrete power. This goal was not as outworldly as it sounded – researchers of the Foundation had long come close to uniting the theories behind planetary orgone fields and psychic phenomena, while pure knowledge derived from the Akasha Stone provided inklings of the means to achieve it. Data from the operation of the ACPs further supplemented their understanding until now they have a working prototype…or not. The physical components of the Amidah project currently include hundreds of canisters of extensively re-engineered Martian bacteria, several pieces of machinery resembling gigantic body parts, three supercomputers, a single volunteer, and the Akasha Stone itself. The bacteria must infest humans in a very large area (at least an entire country, the scientists agree) to create a sufficiently strong psycho-orgone field for the Amidah to receive. The components will absorb the energy, shaped by the calculations of the computers over the Akasha Stone and the will of the sole pilot. What then emerges cannot be predicted – perhaps a glowing giant, with power to reshape all of creation. But such is the unpredictability and risk of the untestable process that it is currently only considered as a weapon of last resort.

Jovian Merchant Dronemon
The Jovians take their professed neutrality seriously. Their transorbital spacecraft are not an uncommon sight, dropping off shipments of minerals and refined orgone to TRF facilities as “humanitarian assistance”. At the same time, it is suspected that they also supply the Venerians and Martians with similar war material – although there is little the TRF can do about it, as firstly it has developed a number of additional trade deals with the Jovians; secondly because it is unwilling to jeopardize relations with the ancient and unfathomably populous species; and thirdly because every Dronemon is guarded by a squadron of automated ACP-equivalents, each easily equal in capability to an Arahan. Due to the tremendous atmospheric pressure of the Jovian habitat and the prohibitive cost of containing it within a vacuum, all Jovian Dronemons are controlled by advanced orgonic intelligences instead of actual crew. They are massive, bulbous craft, with most of their volume dedicated to cargo space. Despite their seemingly untouchable power, Dronemons act evasively in diplomatic encounters and generally do not pursue combat. Even the Martians give them a wide berth, although the feral Venerian wildlife is another matter entirely. As a result, the Venerian Contamination Zones are where Science Marines go to observe Dronemons in reluctant action, so to further ascertain their capabilities. The Jovians respond by making their drop-offs even deeper inside Venerian territory. There is no question that the Jovians want the Akasha Stone as well, but they seem too cultured to simply seize it by force.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
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REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Invictus »

My proper entry of a unit list is done, 19 units in all.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Ford Prefect »

Where Orpheus has produced a set of very interesting units, I think you have managed to produce a, interesting world. There is a lot of hinted intruige and we're given a good picture of the foes which the TRF fights.
FEEL THESE GUNS ARCHWIND THESE ARE THE GUNS OF THE FLESHY MESSIAH THE TOOLS OF CREATION AND DESTRUCTION THAT WILL ENACT THE LAW OF MAN ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

That is some crazy pseudo-Evangeloenic shit! AWESOME! :D
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by NoXion »

Is it OK if the unit list is for a pre-existing universe, or does it have to be completely new? I was just thinking this challenge might be a good way of being able to expand on the other powers within the FFFverse, as currently it is very much centred around Transhumanity.
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Re: The Oldschool Worldbuilding Challenge

Post by Invictus »

NoXion wrote:Is it OK if the unit list is for a pre-existing universe, or does it have to be completely new? I was just thinking this challenge might be a good way of being able to expand on the other powers within the FFFverse, as currently it is very much centred around Transhumanity.
Nope, sorry. The point is to deliver a whole new setting this way.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
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REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
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