alt.War: Turning Anger into productiveness

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 11:52 pm

This is great stuff Frank, and I'm really enjoying reading all of this.

Where did the OP go?

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 2:33 pm

This is some really marvelous shit.

Still, what the others have said about every voice being the Frank Trollman voice is pretty true. You should get some ghost-writers in to adjust the tone of your language to something less instantly identifiable, if you're serious about the 'each passage is written by someone else in-character' trope.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:17 pm

Surgo wrote:Where did the OP go?

No idea. The link to the original project on Dumpshock doesn't work and I wasn't told of anything, so I guess they got shut down and gave up. I'll finish the project, but I can't realistically expect any help from anyone in writing it. I'll just plug away until it's done and then make a single book out of it.

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:Still, what the others have said about every voice being the Frank Trollman voice is pretty true. You should get some ghost-writers in to adjust the tone of your language to something less instantly identifiable, if you're serious about the 'each passage is written by someone else in-character' trope.

That would be fucking awesome. Unfortunately, even the person who was translating Hmong texts into Canadian English has vanished into the ether and is no longer discussing this topic. Realistically, no one else will write any sections.

So basically we got sections that are written in my voice, sections that are written in my voice with a speech impediment, and sections written in my voice where I'm playing devil's advocate and espousing views I don't share. It would be better if it was deeper than that, but this is pretty much a one-man show, so that's that.

Once this is finished, I won't even write any more fan musings on Shadowrun. This really is the last book. I should think my reasons would be obvious.

-Username17

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:19 pm

Anything I can do to help? I have some game writing experience, but nothing like yours.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:22 pm

We're still working on it Frank

The link to the subfolder is:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showforum=31

Honestly not sure what happened to Hermit, he seems to have vanished.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:30 pm

sabs wrote:We're still working on it Frank

The link to the subfolder is:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showforum=31

Honestly not sure what happened to Hermit, he seems to have vanished.

Huh. So you moved the entire project to a secret folder that can't be accessed by people who don't have a valid Dumpshock account? Wow, that's a giant fuck-you to me, isn't it? What with the fact that I do not, and cannot have a dumpshock account and seemingly the only change of moving it to that sub-folder is that people in exactly the situation I am in can't even read it.

So I'll reiterate my position: I'm going to finish the book. I'm about forty thousand words in, and I might as well see it through. But that's it. The dumpshock community has given me the middle finger too many times, and I'm not going to try to work with them ever again on anything.

-Username17

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 9:00 pm

Uh? wow. the folder is locked to people who don't have a valid dumpshock account? I honestly had no idea. I'll talk to grinder about opening it up. (not that he's been answering any of my pm's lately)

It's not a giant fuck-you to you at all(at least not from me). I honestly didn't know that's how the Dumpshock Admins set it up. We asked for a subfolder, and that's it. We didn't ask them to lock it or anything.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 10:13 pm

On the rules side of things:
``The weapons and armor sections are currently incomplete it seems. Weapons is clearly missing most of the heavier weapons, and armor is missing armor mods, armor stacking limits, armor requirements, and so on.
``Vehicles and drones still need their new section; probably including but probably not limited to: Impacts/crashing, signature scanning, computer guided weapons, sensor locks, and a table of expected values for body/armor if those have changed.

If you tell me how you want it all ordered up I can make another PDF of this stuff to, like the EotM pdf.

I'll still also be making the alt.shadowrun4 pdf at a later point, and I hope that you and others will provide feedback on that.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 2:50 am

FrankTrollman wrote:That would be fucking awesome. Unfortunately, even the person who was translating Hmong texts into Canadian English has vanished into the ether and is no longer discussing this topic. Realistically, no one else will write any sections.

Give me a sentence or two for a topic, and I'll write a couple in-character opinion paragraphs within 5 days.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 12:05 pm

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:Anything I can do to help? I have some game writing experience, but nothing like yours.

Lokathor wrote:On the rules side of things:
``The weapons and armor sections are currently incomplete it seems. Weapons is clearly missing most of the heavier weapons, and armor is missing armor mods, armor stacking limits, armor requirements, and so on.
``Vehicles and drones still need their new section; probably including but probably not limited to: Impacts/crashing, signature scanning, computer guided weapons, sensor locks, and a table of expected values for body/armor if those have changed.

If you tell me how you want it all ordered up I can make another PDF of this stuff to, like the EotM pdf.

Surgo wrote:Give me a sentence or two for a topic, and I'll write a couple in-character opinion paragraphs within 5 days.

Cool.

So I'll be fiddling with the order of stuff right until the end. Obviously the rules material comes at the end, with the story material up front. The rules material is going to be a new set of combat rules to fit with LMSI damage and also to go to the new Strength-based weapon and armor rules. The rules material is in a fairly sketchy state right now with a lot of paragraph trailing-off. The equipment lists similarly aren't done. Here is the state of the Armor charts, to give you an idea of what I mean:

Armors of the 2070s
“Clothes make the man.”


Armor Name	Armor Value	Capacity	Coverage	Availability	Cost
Clothing	0	1	2	-	20-100,000¥
Leather Jacket	2	2	1	-	200¥
Meta-Leather Jacket	4	2	1	-	2,500¥
Actioneer Business Suit	4	2	2	8	1,500¥
Armor Clothing	3	1	2	2	500¥
Armor Jacket	6	2	1	2	900¥
Full Body Suit	6	2	3	10	1,100¥
Stealth Suit	6	2	3	10R	8000¥
Lined Coat	6	4	2	2	1,000¥
Urban Explorer Jumpsuit	6	1	3	8	500¥
Form Fitting Armor	1/R	0	1/R	6	500¥/R
Obvious Armors
Chainmail	2[H]	1	2	8	900¥
Bunker Gear	6	4	4	6	3200¥
Containment Gear	4	4	4	12	5500¥
Hi/Lo Temperature Suit	2	3	4	8	7000¥
Riot Control Armor	8	3	3	10R	4000¥
SWAT Armor	4[H]	4	3	16R	9000¥
Battle Armor	5[H]	4	4	14R	15000¥
Assault Armor	6[H]	4	4	16R	24000¥
Power Armor	6[H]	4	4	18R	30000¥

Armor Mods
“Clothes make the man, but fire retardant treatment makes the clothes not catch on fire.”

For the armor mods, the capacity and coverage values represent the minimum levels of both that must be present in a suit of armor for the mod to be installed.


Mod	Capacity	Coverage	Availability	Cost
Auto-Injector	2	-	4	1500¥
Bio Monitor	1	2	2	350¥
Camouflage Coloration		3		¥
Chemical Protection		3		¥
Chemical Seal		4		¥
Chest Plate	2/R	1	6	1000¥/R
Fire Resistance		1/R		¥
Floatation System	1	4-Capacity		¥
Gel Packs	1/R	2		¥
Insulation	1/R	1/R		¥
Nonconductivity		1/R		¥
Faraday Cage	3	4	6	1200¥
Radiation Shielding	1/R	1/R	8	100¥/R
Ruthenium Coating	2	3	12R	7500¥
Shock Frills	1	1	6R	200¥
Thermal Damping	1/R	1/R	10F	500¥/R
Thermal Equalizer	4	4	12F	3000¥

Obviously, those numbers may change, and I haven't even put the Strength Minimums in there yet. Ugh. Rules similarly I haven't finished all of. I am not fully happy with anything I've wargamed for explosives. Th results tend to be broken or too complicated or both. I'll keep plugging away on it.

Anyway, the book is mostly about the story. It centers on the war between Nag Kampuchea and its neighbors Cambodia and Siam; and also on the war between the Montagnard Confederation and its neighbors Laos, Siam, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Thus, all six of those countries need to have a full writeup. I also decided to do a full writeup of Myanmar just because, bringing the total countries with a writeup in this book to 7. Each of those countries needs a timeline, of which all are pretty much done except Vietnam. Each of those need story sections. The Montagnard Confederation and Nag Kampuchea have both been posted, but I think both could use an extra essay. Nag Kampuchea probably wants a "Cracks in the Scales" essay about different Naga factions. The Montagnard Confederation needs some additional essay that either ties it into the Princess Mononoke lifestyle or gives you a "village blacksmiths making AKs" vibe or both. Cambodia, Burma, and Siam are basically straight finished. Vietnam and Laos very much are not. Here's the state they currently are in:

Laos

Laos: a Humanitarian Crisis
“The lower the stakes, the more vicious the conflict.”
Posted by: Immortal

Laos is an emergency. Laos has been an emergency for about 3 years, and it really wasn't doing that great before that. But that does not change the fact that it is an emergency now. Laotian people are dying of preventable communicable and noncommunicable disease at a rate that is completely unacceptable in the modern world.

How can a disease be noncommunicable? Germs spread, that's what they do.
VanHelsing
Not all diseases are caused by germs. Kwashiorkor, for example, is caused by nutritional deficiency of proteins. It causes the body to be unable to regulate its osmotic pressure, which is why you see those distended bellies on starving kids on the trid.
Heartfinder

The

The Khouang Combine
“Marx guaranteed a unity in ownership between capital and labor.”

Many people on both sides of the war will tell you that the Khouang Combine shares identity with the nation of Vietnam. Dai Lao partisans will tell you that the Vietnamese are strangling the country's economy with the Combine. Pathet Lao partisans will tell you that the unstoppable armies of the Vietnamese are backing the Combine – and by extension their side. The reality is a bit less exciting than that. The Combine is 100% owned by the nation of Vietnam. That part is true. That means that every single Nuyen that the Combine makes in profit goes to Vietnam. But the Combine also has executives and even non-executive workers who get “bonuses” when the company does well. What this means in essence is that the country only owns 80% of the company, as the profits are reduced by 20% every year to pay the bonuses of the people who work for it. Meanwhile, the call as to whether the Combine needs to call on big daddy Vietnam is made by the executives of the Laotian regional division – whose bonuses are on the line if the division has to kick back too much to the Vietnamese Army. So they have not – as yet – called for the country to come and bail them out in Laos.

The Combine is heavily influenced by Vietnamese Communist thought. They favor the hammer over the sickle, and focus on heavy industry wherever possible. Of their eight product identity divisions, one is devoted to agriculture and the other seven are industrial in nature. They issue new five year plans every year, so by corporate standards they think long term. Within Vietnam, the central planning hierarchy is fairly straight forward. There's a central committee of board members who represent the interests of the Vietnamese state, and there is a chain of command of executive decision making that runs parallel in Combine Motors and Combine Heavy Industry alike. In regional subdivisions, things get more complex, as there is an additional chain of command for the subdivision that is also giving orders.

What is wrong with our society that a corporation that thinks five years ahead is considered far sighted and wise? There are hominid skeletons in the region that date back 1.7 million years. And they want a medal for considering the implications of their actions for five?
Monkeywrencher

The eight product identity subdivisions within the Combine are Arms, Chemicals, Electronics, Farming, Heavy Industry, Manufacturing, Motors, and Oils. Needless to say there is heavy overlap between the mandates of these subdivisions, and the Combine is often in competition with itself. For example, KC Arms and KC Motors both produce an armored cavalry assault vehicle (the BT-4 and the KBXB-2 respectively). KC Chemicals, KC Heavy Industry, and KC Oils all have lines of paint. Originally this was some sort of deliberate strategy of the Vietnamese Central Committee to spark innovation, at this point it can't really stop because the different Combine divisions have decisions made for them by people whose bonuses are tied to the strength of the division rather than the company as a whole.

Vietnam

Vietnam: Power and Stability
“Winds come and go. The Mountain stays.”
Posted by: Hound Dog

Vietnam has been on a continuous war footing for over a hundred years. It has been at war with great powers near and far and it has never ever lost. Time and time again, the Vietnamese have proven that they are willing to take losses that are nothing short of catastrophic in order to achieve victory over foreign aggressors. Time ad time again, people have made the mistake of assuming that Vietnam had come out of their last war weaker than they went into it. Vietnam has triumphed over Japan twice, over Cambodia twice, seen the ends of China, Champa, and the Dega Alliance, they've had victory over France, Laos, and the Dayaks, but their victory with the most historical impact was their victory over The United States. Both because the US had previously gone a century and a half without losing a war, and also because it was the first war that the United States had fought where the man on the street didn't think they were the “good guys” (although it certainly wouldn't be the last). That war shattered the psyche of Americans and led directly to the downfall of the most powerful empire on Earth. And if you want to do things in Vietnam, I suggest using that.

Vietnam has strict visa requirements and gives wide powers to an extensive and efficient police force to track foreigners in the country. But they also have a thriving misery tourism industry for North Americans. They don't understand it, since for them the war with the US was just one of many, but they benefit from it and they even encourage it. So while you have to explain what you're doing and where you're going in pretty exhaustive detail to customs and the federal police, you can get away with some crazy shit if you preface it with some bizarre tie-in to the US-Vietnam war. If you come from (or claim to come from) any part of the former US or have ancestors who did, then requests to get into the country and wander around looking at battlefields from a hundred years ago is probably going to get a fast track approval.

What this means in practice is that if you have a mercenary contract on the Laotian border and you want to come in from the Vietnamese side for whatever reason, you actually ca do that, regardless of the presence of federal police with a hankering to nose into your business. You could come up with some elaborate lie and maybe get believed and maybe get detained, but if you just tell them that you intend to dress up in camouflage and wander around off grid on the Laotian border for a few weeks, “because your great grandfather fought in the Tet Offensive”, the authorities will roll their eyes and just let you do that. Guys running around in fatigues at the old battle sites is a big business for them, and they put up with it.

Dak Seang
“If the forest will fight us to the death, then we shall slay the forest.”

Dak Seang is a fortified city on the border with the Montagnard Confederation in Kon Tum province. A decade ago it was considered to be on the border with both Laos and Cambodia, with the regions over the border being effectively controlled by the Plig and their human tribal allies, but now that the Plig have annexed their controlled portion of Laos, it's all Montagnard Confederation over the border. There is a feeling of continuous siege in Dak Seang, in no small part because it is essentially under continuous siege. When the Plig began growing the forests and overrunning villages in 2014, Dak Seang was mostly known for being a minor town that served the then-regional capital of Polei Kan with its airport. However, with years of assault by the forests and the Plig, the region was forced to rely more and more on the airport for supplies.

Gradually, nearby towns and villages were destroyed one by one, and with a heavier and heavier military presence around Dak Seang, the displaced people went where the jobs were. Dak Seang's status as a gradual accumulation of a larger and larger defensive work is plainly visible in the city's layout today. Each expansion to the city was accompanied by the addition of new defensive works, and thus each neighborhood is cordoned off with walls and guard towers. With the entire area under continuous martial law, you'd think that it would be practically impossible to get in or out. But fortunately there was a battle of Dak Seang back in 1970 where a lot of helicopters can in and out to resupply the American forces while they were being sieged by the Vietnamese. If you claim to be descended from one of the green berets or helicopter medics, you can pretty much get the run of the place.

Son Doong Cave
“The interior of the Earth is surprisingly habitable.”

The largest cave in the world is in Quang Binh Province, near the Laotian border. It goes down dozens of kilometers, has layer after layer of actual jungle in it, it's own fast flowing river, and if you go down far enough in it you end up in another world because the damn thing sits on a metaplanar portal. It is part of the Ke Bang Forest Restricted Area, and there are numerous caves around it that go down dozens of kilometers and have hundreds of chambers that contain grottoes with underground foliage and flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world. It is important to stress the fact that these caves had underground forests in them well before 2012 rolled around, which sprouted around shafts of light that shone through cracks in the ceiling. But since then, the forests have gradually grown out into the permanent darkness. The Vietnamese government allows researchers and explorers into the caves, but only with approval from the central committee, and only with a military escort. And even then, no outsiders have been allowed to explore more than 8 kilometers into that thing since 2048.

The Draco Foundation has applied for a research permit every year since their founding, and been rebuffed every time.
Ringmaster
The Naga don't call this cave Son Doong, they call it “Patala” and they want it – bad. Of course, they'd have to get through 175 kilometers of Siam and another 175 kilometers of Laos just to get to the part Vietnam is willing to fight them over, but that doesn't mean they aren't considering it.
Heartfinder
The Montagnard Confederation lays claim to it as well, and when they draw their own borders they include the entirety of Ke Bang Forest. The word is that the Vietnamese army has one or more Plig chained up inside Son Doong, or maybe in one of the nearby caverns like Phong Nha. But the Vietnamese have held them cold at the Ho Chi Minh Trail for 69 years – all the Montagnard gains have been on the Laotian side of the border.
Bɨryekomo

Hạ Long Bay
Located in Northern Vietnam, Hạ Long Bay is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It's also a smuggling haven that ships contraband into and out of Vietnam. Rising out of the sea are literally thousands of limestone rocks whose tops are often as not covered with dense foliage. Many of these rocks have sea caves in them, and smugglers have set up miniature secret docks all over the area. Vietnam makes a token attempt to patrol the waters, but while they regularly sink smuggling vessels, it's not really much in light of the amount of small boat traffic that makes connections with Hainan, Guangxi, and the Canton Confederation.

Other than that, the story section wants a thing on regional religion (finished), a section rating world military strength (pretty much done except the giant fucking table with over a hundred and thirty countries on it), a section about being a mercenary in Southeast Asia by Simba (call that one half done or so), a section with some hacked intelligence reports from various sources to provide a set of he-said-she-said statements on how the war is progressing (not done), a section on how wars are fought in the 2070s (part of the magic section is done, also needs a thing on media management and a thing on modern technology), and of course a brief bit on the "other" countries in the region (minimally Karen, Chin, Shan, Pattani, Malaysia, Yunnan, and Hainan, but could include Guagxi, Sumatra, Java, and the Dayak Council pretty reasonably - in any case not done).

So yeah. That's what still needs to be done. My next plan is to dissipatedly shift between filling in the weapon table and writing out the rest of Vietnam. If someone wants to do one of the other essays, that would be fantastic. I'm doing development, editing, cartography, and primary writing. Even a typo-heavy manuscript would be fucking awesome.

-Username17

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 3:24 pm

I could reasonably handle the mercenary bit, and produce a usable draft that you could churn up for raw material.

Edit: In all sincerity it's been a long-ass time since I did anything seriously with Shadowrun 4e, so if you assign me something, the first draft will probably be laughably retarded in some ways and require either you to rewrite a chunk of it or redline the fuck out of it and send it back. That said, if you're up for amateur hour, you have my keyboard.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 3:38 pm

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:I could reasonably handle the mercenary bit, and produce a usable draft that you could churn up for raw material.

Edit: In all sincerity it's been a long-ass time since I did anything seriously with Shadowrun 4e, so if you assign me something, the first draft will probably be laughably retarded in some ways and require either you to rewrite a chunk of it or redline the fuck out of it and send it back. That said, if you're up for amateur hour, you have my keyboard.

Sure. Here's the section I have sitting on my hard drive:

Welcome To the Khmer Rouge
"Whenever people are angry enough to kill, they are desperate enough to pay."
Posted by: Simba

When you're packing your bags to take a mercenary contract in Indochina, you'll want to make sure to take a Khmer Rouge uniform. Black pants, black shirt, green hat, red and white checkered scarf. It's surprisingly comfortable, and isn't bad for the terrain. But you'll be packing one because no matter what faction you're actually working for, chances are pretty good that you'll be wearing one of these.

The Khmer Rouge was the big bad in Cambodia about a hundred years ago. They were led by this guy Pol Pot who decided that he was bored of being a Buddhist monk and wanted to try his hand at some good old fashioned genocide. They wiped out about an eighth of the population. The monuments to their atrocities are just these mountains of human bones – it's eerie. No one really understands why they did it either, apparently it just seemed like a good idea at the time. Khmer Rouge writings exist, but they don't make any sense. They got crushed by a Vietnamese invasion a bit over ninety years back, and after limping around as bandits in the forest for a few decades they pretty much went extinct in the early parts of this century. And that's why it's so popular to wear the uniform right now: no one ever knew what they stood for, they're scary as a barghest, and there aren't any real ones to get mad at you.

The tradition started right at the beginning, with the assassination of Vasuki. He was one powerful dude, so I don't know who or how anyone took him down with anything short of a nuclear bomb. But the real crowning achievement is that within seconds of the snake king hitting the dust, there were posts from Phnom Penh to Phucket to Ho Chi Minh claiming responsibility – signed by the Khmer Rouge. Now, I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the Khmer Rouge, because they don't actually exist anymore. Smart money is probably on shadowrunners hired by Esprit Industries. But I'm not sure who did it, and neither is anyone else. And what a great bogeyman that turned out to be. Most powerful naga that ever lived gets a bullet in all seven heads and the news feeds fill up with a thousand megapulses of arguments about whether the Khmer Rouge had reformed for real. That is some quality signal obscurement.

I'll say. Remember kids: playing on local fears and expectations can be far more effective than simple wet noise to cover your trail.
Green Ring

Turns out, that same strategy works for everyone else too. And now, everyone is using it. Back in the day, the real Khmer Rouge used to go on regular slave raids across the border into Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos, so memories of the Khmer Rouge horror run pretty deep in adjacent countries too. Any faction that wants to conduct military action without taking the rap for it just puts their troops in Khmer Rouge uniforms and sends them on their way. It's well established that Cambodian, Siamese, Kampuchean, Vietnamese, and Laotian soldiers have all donned checkered scarves at some point or another. And corp units have started getting in on the action too. So far, every interested party has maintained the fiction that they haven't sent any troops outside the areas they claim as their own – which is almost credible considering that The Republic of Cambodia claims land as far north as Suwannaphum and Nag Kampuchea claims lands all the way west to Assam.

Nevertheless, despite each country playing nice with the UN observers, there are a fair amount of military targets that simply are not in regions that those countries can make a vaguely plausible claim on. And most of the interested corporations don't have claimed territory in places they have military objectives. These days, ShinSiam and Esprit troops spend as much time in black pajamas as their own corporate uniforms.

What You'll Be Fighting For
“It's a one, two, three... what are we fighting for? Seriously, it's confusing.”

Most experts predict this war to be both protracted and bloody. And one of the main reasons for that is that most of the national participants have wholly incompatible objectives. Siam, The Republic of Cambodia, and the Montagnard Confederation all want the same thing: they want land. And worse, they pretty much want the same land: the historically Khmer region between Pursat and Suwannaphum. Vietnam pretty much just wants to contain the conflict outside their borders, but the Montagnard Confederation wants their eastern provinces and every faction seems to think that outflanking their enemies through other countries is brilliant tactics. Laos isn't sure what it wants, which is why it has largely descended into civil war between the pro-Siamese Dai Lao and the pro-Vietnamese Pathet Lao.

The Laotians are culturally and linguistically similar to the Thai, but have a shared colonial history under French rule with the Cambodians and Vietnamese. Laos kicked most of their Vietnamese occupiers out in 2067, but has been experiencing some buyer's remorse on that independence. Turns out that only people working for the Khouang Combine have jobs.
Hannibal

The corporate actors have rather more complicated goals, but more limited official mandates. Each corporation only has fully recognized military jurisdiction within their own extraterritorial property. However, it is within the purview of every corporation that owns property to want to acquire more property – so their military units are leaving their compounds all the time. They just have to do so in secret, under false flags (such as the ever popular Khmer Rouge uniforms), or as contractors working as security or advisors for some other agency that has a “legitimate” reason to be in any particular place. That last part is especially important, there are units of Cambodian Republican Guard that have more “advisors” from Esprit Industries than native born soldiers; there are units fighting for the Dai Lao that are almost entirely composed of ShinSiam security personnel who are nominally there as bodyguards for Laotian politicians.

It's about a thousand words. Probably it'll end up two or three thousand words when you add in the rest of the stuff. Probably add a "getting used to Asia" section where he gives advice on adapting to SEAsian conditions for people who have been mercenaries in other environments - like the Corporate Culture of ESPRIT section. So a few tips that serve as contrast with Desert Wars, Caracas, Congo, Bosnia, Poland, and Chinese Warring Successor States.

-Username17

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 3:43 pm

It's about a thousand words. Probably it'll end up two or three thousand words when you add in the rest of the stuff. Probably add a "getting used to Asia" section where he gives advice on adapting to SEAsian conditions for people who have been mercenaries in other environments - like the Corporate Culture of ESPRIT section. So a few tips that serve as contrast with Desert Wars, Caracas, Congo, Bosnia, Poland, and Chinese Warring Successor States.


Name	Description	From	Skills	Likes	Hates
Simba	Mercenary (Optimal Solutions Services)	Congo	Shooting People in the Face Jungle Survival Navigating Ethnic Tensions	History Black Ops	Magic Tutsis

Alright, I'll see what I can swing. I'll highlight everything I pulled out of my ass without sufficient research in bold font so you know to double-check to see if it crazy.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 5:08 pm

Surgo wrote:Give me a sentence or two for a topic, and I'll write a couple in-character opinion paragraphs within 5 days.

Same here, since more voices is probably better.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:20 pm

"Saloth Sar" is a great name for a super-villain; almost as good as "Cardinal Sin". He never should have changed it.

When was Pol Pot a monk?

FistFullOfEdgeDice · Post by **FistFullOfEdgeDice** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:41 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
That would be fucking awesome. Unfortunately, even the person who was translating Hmong texts into Canadian English has vanished into the ether and is no longer discussing this topic. Realistically, no one else will write any sections.
-Username17

I'm here! I'm totally here! Well actually, I haven't been, but people at /tg/ pointed me at this post. I've sorta had it on the shelf a couple months. I think I might be able to do stuff once grad school's out in May, but really it seemed like you had a handle on it and fairly specific ideas, so I figured I'd bow out at least for a while. Now I have a ton of back posts to read.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:34 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:"Saloth Sar" is a great name for a super-villain; almost as good as "Cardinal Sin". He never should have changed it.

When was Pol Pot a monk?

Pol Pot's backstory is fucking bizarre. His sister was one of the concubines of the king and he grew up in the royal palace and had almost no contact with the outside world. He got into the best schools because of family connections, and trained under French Catholic Priests, and Buddhist Monks. He got into the exclusive Lycée Sisowath in Cambodia when he was somewhere between 19 and 22 (exact dates of birth are not available for Pol Pot), where he failed his exams and got the boot. Then he went to France where he studied electrical engineering with a specialization in radio. He failed his exams again, but fell in love with the smartest woman in Cambodia (the first Cambodian to get a Bachelor's degree), and spent a lot of time hanging out with various other Southeast Asian Communists.

On his return to Cambodia (in disgrace from washing out of school), he worked for the Vietnamese resistance for a while and when the Prince's party outlawed communists in 1954 he became a highschool teacher. After a wave of repression by the King, Saloth Sar fled to the jungles, where he lived as a forest hermit for like seven fucking years. During that period he was part of a secret inner circle of Cambodian Communists that came up with new secret communist doctrine that was so secret that they didn't even tell the lower ranking members what it was (or even that they had changed their name to Kampucheans).

Exactly how many years he spent living with a shaved head in a Buddhist Monastery is unclear because he was born "sometime in the 1920s". Wikipedia says 1925, but that's literally just an average of the possible dates.

-Username17

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 9:56 am

This is all just stream of consciousness analysis I'm doing which I'm dumping here because that seems to be how we fuckin' roll.

Nag Kampuchea is going to be hiring up mercenaries because they have money (being the moneyed elite of a well established nation state based around hella enslavement and composed largely of more-intelligent-than-average snakes) and because, frankly, their military is kind of shit. Their army is magically powerful and up to date, but it has no meaningful air support and they're completely incompetent at coping with matrix work. Most of their soldiers are probably naked brains vulnerable to mass Arrowspam of all things, and I bet that Siam's top-tier matrix power means that they're going to be brainfucking Kampuchan soldiers hard and fast unless the Nag can throw up magical static. This seems... possible, as a Manipulation type spell, given that it's already possible to block visible light with the Shadow spell. Blocking radio frequency light or whatever with some other variant is probably at least a theoretical possibility, and if not they might just throw up huge static effects to dump signal in to the ground. I'm not sure, that's a question I need to ask you Frank.

The fact that they have essentially 70 independent decision-makers means that SOME of the 70 generals are going to be willing to overlook the fact that they're hiring casteless humans to be their minions, or at least couch that in terms that work to their own ideologies.

So I should definitely have a segment on the etiquette of working for the Nag, which perhaps should refer to the segment on working with the Nag in general. They're going to be more concerned with small 'eccentric' units, probably people who are either currently Shadowrunners or used to be Shadowrunners, than fullscale mercenary companies, due to their weird and lopsided command structure and their inability to really integrate foreign troops in to their armies.

Siam is coming off of a demilitarization binge, so they're going to be hiring up a lot of Vietnamese advisors/consultants to help modernize their armies, or any mercenary who can reasonably piggyback off of Vietnamese or Japanese reputation for military competence and excellence. Shadowrunner types are going to be much less popular than sober professional eastern military types. They're also going to be enthused about the military in general due to their militarization shift, so that'll probably affect the sort of fees that mercenaries can pull down.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 7:52 pm

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:This is all just stream of consciousness analysis I'm doing which I'm dumping here because that seems to be how we fuckin' roll.

Damn right it is!

Nag Kampuchea is going to be hiring up mercenaries because they have money (being the moneyed elite of a well established nation state based around hella enslavement and composed largely of more-intelligent-than-average snakes) and because, frankly, their military is kind of shit. Their army is magically powerful and up to date, but it has no meaningful air support and they're completely incompetent at coping with matrix work. Most of their soldiers are probably naked brains vulnerable to mass Arrowspam of all things, and I bet that Siam's top-tier matrix power means that they're going to be brainfucking Kampuchan soldiers hard and fast unless the Nag can throw up magical static. This seems... possible, as a Manipulation type spell, given that it's already possible to block visible light with the Shadow spell. Blocking radio frequency light or whatever with some other variant is probably at least a theoretical possibility, and if not they might just throw up huge static effects to dump signal in to the ground. I'm not sure, that's a question I need to ask you Frank.

There is indeed a spell that generates a sphere of jamming. It is pretty disappointingly small for battlefields, because as a spell its area is measured in meters.

But remember that a lot of the Naga themselves don't understand tech or why it is important. And also that spirits don't have brains at all and are immune to Arrowspam.

The fact that they have essentially 70 independent decision-makers means that SOME of the 70 generals are going to be willing to overlook the fact that they're hiring casteless humans to be their minions, or at least couch that in terms that work to their own ideologies.

Yeah. The harsh reality is that a lot of the stuff they need is stuff that requires thumbs to use and is only made outside their country. So if they want to win, they're going to need to hire infidel monkeys from scheduled castes. They have a lot of precious gems and some awesome and marketable biologicals, but it's not like they have a significant textiles industry or anything. They don't even have a port.

They are pretty much stuck trading high value merchandise like emeralds and drugs for mercenary work by people that they are ideologically disposed to not like.

An interesting note: Naga sorcery is crazy good at taking down planes - if those planes fly low and slow enough for the sorcerers to see them. Most sorcery goes out to line of sight and has a superluminal time of flight. But stealth, high altitudes, and high velocity bombers can do pretty much whatever they want in Naga territory.

So I should definitely have a segment on the etiquette of working for the Nag, which perhaps should refer to the segment on working with the Nag in general. They're going to be more concerned with small 'eccentric' units, probably people who are either currently Shadowrunners or used to be Shadowrunners, than fullscale mercenary companies, due to their weird and lopsided command structure and their inability to really integrate foreign troops in to their armies.

Sounds good.

Siam is coming off of a demilitarization binge, so they're going to be hiring up a lot of Vietnamese advisors/consultants to help modernize their armies, or any mercenary who can reasonably piggyback off of Vietnamese or Japanese reputation for military competence and excellence. Shadowrunner types are going to be much less popular than sober professional eastern military types. They're also going to be enthused about the military in general due to their militarization shift, so that'll probably affect the sort of fees that mercenaries can pull down.

A thing to note about Siam is that they are seriously considering going into a proxy war with Vietnam in Laos. So while yes, they probably need Vietnamese expertise to rebuild their military into something that isn't an international embarrassment, they don't necessarily like being in that situation. They might go to Japan for military insights as much as feasible, if not more so.

-Username17

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 8:26 pm

Aight, I'll have the Lying Down With Serpents section ready soon.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 6:06 am

PEOPLE WHO WILL PAY YOU TO PERFORM MILITARY ACTION


Organization	Personnel	Mechanization	Magic	Air	Naval	Space	Matrix	Modernization	Overall
Cambodia	D	C	E	C	C	C	B	B	D
Chin	F	E	D	E	F	F	D	D	E
Hainan	F	B	E	A	B	A	B	A	D
Karen	F	E	C	F	F	E	E	E	F
Laos	E	D	D	E	F	E	E	F	E
Malaysia	D	B	D	D	D	B	A	C	D
Montagnard Confederation	E	F	A	F	F	F	F	A	T
Myanmar	C	E	D	D	D	C	C	C	T
Nag Kampuchea	D	F	B	E	F	F	F	B	T
Pattani	F	E	E	E	E	C	C	D	T
Shan	E	D	D	D	F	E	E	E	T
Siam	C	C	E	D	C	B	A	C	C
Singapore	F	A	D	E	E	E	B	D	F
Vietnam	A	C	D	B	A	A	B	B	B
Yunnan	E	E	C	B	F	D	C	A	T


Employer	Needs:	Pays With:
Cambodia	Warm Bodies What Have Guns And Military Discipline	Cash Esprit Industries Wholesale Products
Laos	Whatever their faction backer wants	Whatever their faction backer can provide
Nag Kampuchea	People Who Put Up With Shit From Snakes Matrix consultants Naga-killing assassins Eccentric asymmetrical warfare specialists	Drugs, emeralds, magical bling - not cash
Siam	Sober military advisors Secondhand japanese military prestige	Money
ShinSiam	ShinSiam convoy security	ShinSiam Wholesale Products Money
Vietnam	Deniable Assets World-Class Prestige Mercenaries	Money Governmental Legitimacy
Everyone Else	Who cares	They can't afford you or won't pay

I'm certain I'm missing major factions here who could and would hire mercenaries, and I'm not entirely certain who they are. Crowdsource?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 1:28 pm

I would expand the table to something like this:


Employer	Looking to Hire:	For:	Pays With:
Cambodia	Warm Bodies Magical Specialists Counter Insurgency Specialists	Strikes on Nag Kampuchea Interception of Terrorist Attacks	Cash Esprit Industries Wholesale Products
Dai Lao	People with guns Terrorists Counter Terrorists	Undermining other faction Protecting infrastructure and people from terrorists	Whatever their faction backer can provide
Nag Kampuchea	People Who Put Up With Shit From Snakes Matrix consultants Naga-killing assassins Eccentric asymmetrical warfare specialists	Asymmetric warfare against Siam Asymmetric warfare against Cambodia Undermining rival factions in the Princes Council	Drugs, emeralds, magical bling - not cash
Siam	Sober military advisors Secondhand japanese military prestige Intelligence specialists	Organizing Siam's resources into a real army Fighting the insurgency they have on every border.	Money
ShinSiam	Security Soldiers	Convoy security Force projection	ShinSiam Wholesale Products Money
Vietnam	Deniable Assets World-Class Prestige Mercenaries	Undermining Montagnards Stability in Yunnan Regime change in Laos	Money Governmental Legitimacy
Everyone Else	Who cares	They can't afford you or won't pay

You might want to give the Khouang Combine its own line, because they care a lot more about regime change in Laos than the rest of Vietnam does. You might also want to do a thing about piracy in the Gulf of Siam, which is pretty much Shiawase, Siam, Malaysia, and Pattani going at it with privateers. I'm not really sure how many people want to do Black Lagoon.

-Username17

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 2:49 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:I would expand the table to something like this:

Employer Looking to Hire: For: Pays With:
Cambodia Warm Bodies
Magical Specialists
Counter Insurgency Specialists Strikes on Nag Kampuchea
Interception of Terrorist Attacks Cash
Esprit Industries Wholesale Products
Dai Lao People with guns
Terrorists
Counter Terrorists Undermining other faction
Protecting infrastructure and people from terrorists Whatever their faction backer can provide
Nag Kampuchea People Who Put Up With Shit From Snakes
Matrix consultants
Naga-killing assassins
Eccentric asymmetrical warfare specialists Asymmetric warfare against Siam
Asymmetric warfare against Cambodia
Undermining rival factions in the Princes Council Drugs, emeralds, magical bling - not cash
Siam Sober military advisors
Secondhand japanese military prestige
Intelligence specialists Organizing Siam's resources into a real army
Fighting the insurgency they have on every border. Money
ShinSiam Security
Soldiers Convoy security
Force projection ShinSiam Wholesale Products
Money
Vietnam Deniable Assets
World-Class Prestige Mercenaries Undermining Montagnards
Stability in Yunnan
Regime change in Laos Money
Governmental Legitimacy
Everyone Else Who cares Who cares They can't afford you or won't pay

You might want to give the Khouang Combine its own line, because they care a lot more about regime change in Laos than the rest of Vietnam does. You might also want to do a thing about piracy in the Gulf of Siam, which is pretty much Shiawase, Siam, Malaysia, and Pattani going at it with privateers. I'm not really sure how many people want to do Black Lagoon.

-Username17

Awesome. Alright, I'll do what I can.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 2:50 pm

Oh god, the tables D:

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:49 pm

I don't know a damn thing about the Khouang Combine, what should I read to pick up on it? I'll just leave it out of my first draft completely.