The Gaming Den

sabs wrote:This damage system feels familiar. Is it a revamp of the SR1/2 damage system?

It's a revamp of the SR2/SR3 damage system. SR1 gave weapons the ability to modify how many hits were needed to stage damage up or down, which was weird and pointless. The hardened armor bit is pretty much SR1 Armor though. Anyway, here's the whole Ammunition section:

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Ammunition
“Guns don't kill people, bullets do.”

As damage and armor have been changed, it is necessary to redo ammunition somewhat to conform to the new rules. In the meantime, this is also a good opportunity to adjust the ammunition types to be more “balanced”, because people complain about that constantly.

Ammunition	DV	AP	Special
Regular	-	-	-
Armor Piercing	-	-½ (max -5)	-
Explosive	+1	-	Explodes when Heated.
Flechette	+2	x2	Reduced Maximum Range
Less Lethal	+1	+½	Damage is N
Stick-n-Shock	-1	-½ (max -5)	Damage is N Target Electrocuted
Tracers	-	-	Bonus Accuracy with additional shots
Capsule Rounds	-2	-	Damage is N Target dosed with chemical
Subsonic	-	-	Reduced Noise. Allows Silencer
Low Tech	-	+2	-

Regular
“The ever popular: factory standard.”

Regular bullets in the 2070s are made from a variety of materials. Many of them are single pieces of plasteel or high-hardness alloys. Some of them are even steel or cupronickel coated lead. The standard composition of regular ammunition vary depending upon the weapon. When firing regular ammunition, the weapon's normal profile is used. Some special Regular ammunition on the market is:

• Steel Coat Many weapons have steel coated bullets standard, and in any case 3rd party ammunition manufacturers produce steel coated bullets in almost every caliber you could imagine, so its price is no different from any other. Steel coated bullets are the go-to weapon against Wendigos, Fairies, and other creatures with an iron allergy.
  
  Silver Bullets Silver is a perfectly decent material to make a bullet out of, but it is on the expensive side. Silver bullets are used for fighting many magical creatures, most notably shapeshifters. Silver bullets are considered regular ammo, but cost 25¥ a piece. Some armorers still make their own for cost reasons.

Armor Piercing
“It is my experience that anything worth armoring it worth destroying.”

Armor piercing ammunition works on many different principles, from super-dense uranium (DU) to mercury cores (Jackals) to discarding sabot (APDS) to shaped charges (HEAP). These bullets are expensive, but punch through armor fairly well. Choices of ammunition are usually based on what is available for a particular weapon caliber, but for common weapons or weapons frequently used in an anti-armor capacity, choices may depend on the kinds of evidence different ammunition leaves behind.

• Depleted Uranium (DU): DU rounds are not highly radioactive, as they are composed almost entirely out of relatively stable U238. However, they are almost as dense as pure gold and cannot pass through an x-ray or radar sensor undetected. The radiation levels are low, but unshielded they can be detected with a Geiger counter.
  
  Mercury Core (Jackals) Denser than lead and capable of flowing through ballistic weaves without appreciable slowing, mercury is a potent (if highly toxic) weapon. Mercury filled bullets are actually quite fragile, and deform when heated or handled roughly. Only a few weapons producers in Central Asia even make Jackals, and the source can be easily determined from the precise chemical makeup of the liquid metal they leave behind.
  
  Armor Piercing, Discarding Sabot (APDS) Having a dense core that discards the rest of the bullet during flight, an APDS round achieves super high velocity and great penetration at the target. The system necessarily involves the discarded casing being left somewhere along the flight path, making the scene of shooting hard to clean.
  
  High Explosive, Armor Piercing (HEAP) A HEAP round is made of a shaped plastique charge, often with a metal tip. On contact the explosive detonates, making a tremendous amount of force at a small point. HEAP rounds can be easily detected by chem sniffers and may suffer cook offs in the same manner as Explosive rounds can.

Explosive Ammunition
“Yo dawg! We put some bang bang in your bang bang, so you can shoot people while you're shooting people!”

Explosive ammunition has an explosive element inside that detonates when the bullet hits a target. This causes the bullet to transmit more energy to the target and be less likely to penetrate to the other side. This makes them a go-to ammunition type for people who want to kill their targets and people who don't want to kill people behind their target alike. Explosive rounds add one to the Damage Value of the weapon, and when they are fired at a barrier or a vehicle they are always resolved as an attack on that target and never as an attack on targets behind or inside. An attack with explosive rounds is resolved as a melee attack against vehicles and barriers. If explosive rounds get very hot, they can “cook off”. If someone with explosive rounds in a magazine or on their person is set on fire (either by a flame thrower or a fire ball, or whatever), then 10 rounds cook off per combat round, causing as much damage as if the character had been hit with whatever weapon the bullets had been chambered for. Bullets held together in a belt, magazine, or backpack will continue cooking off even if the original source of fire is removed.

• Ex-Ex Every explosive round will tell you that their version explodes the best. There are lots of systems, with some using thermolytic reactions and others using plastic explosives and either being metal jacketed or not. Game mechanically they are the same.
  
  Second Impact A second impact round is an explosive round that is designed to detonate on the second thing it hits. They are resolved as a low tech round against the first thing they hit, and an explosive round against the second. This allows them to shoot through glass or thin walls that they would otherwise be unable to penetrate. But they are rarely used because most people shoot at what they want to hit. Persistent rumors make the rounds of the underworld that you can get these to detonate inside people, but this is basically not true.
  
  C-12 Rounds The C-12 round is a heat-safe explosive, and it does not cook off when the user is on fire. It can be detonated by electrical current however, and C-12 rounds cook off while the user is being electrocuted.
  
  Incendiaries Most explosive ammunition flings penetrating metal shrapnel that cools very rapidly. Incendiary rounds send off fragments of polymer that maintain a high temperature for a longer time. This means that the fragments start fires in a few minutes if they are used anywhere that flammable substances like wood or upholstery are available.

Flechette Rounds
“Alright men, let's kill some people!”

The word “flechette” is French for “arrow” and refers in weaponry to a flight stabilized metal dart. In the early 20th century, some flechette rounds were actually rather similar to 2070s APDS rounds. Quite literally the high density core of an APDS bullet is a flechette. However, by the 2040s, that terminology was pretty much gone, because flechette mortar rounds have a lot of little metal darts and are used in an anti-infantry role. So in the 2070s, the word refers to the fact that the cartridge has a lot of pieces and is used against soft targets. Many “flechette” rounds don't actually have any metal darts in them. Flechette rounds are devastating against unarmored targets (+2 DV), but ineffective against armored targets (the armor value of the target is doubled). They are much prized in urban warfare precisely because they have virtually no capability to damage things behind walls. Because they are composed of low mass pieces, they do not fly well for long distances. A standard flechette cartridge can't have a range profile better than a heavy pistol no matter what it is fired out of.

• Frangible Rounds A frangible round holds together as a unit bullet until the point of impact, and then shatters into a lot of pieces. The DV bonus is only +1 instead of +2, but the bullet is able to use the standard range profile of the weapon.
  
  Salt Rounds Composed of compact salts that are common in a living metahuman, a salt round completely disintegrates in a human body. Its low mass means that it uses the ranges of a holdout pistol regardless of what weapon it is actually fired out of. Any bullet that hits and does damage to a living creature leaves virtually no trace for forensics.

Less Lethal
“Sometimes you really want to be able to say in court that you made every effort to not kill your target.”

There really isn't any kind of bullet you can shoot people with that can't kill them. A lot of force is going through those things, and they could easily stop a heart or concuss a brain or something. A lethal wound is still potentially lethal, even if it was delivered with normal damage. Less lethal ammunition is basically set up to deform on contact with the target, spreading the force out rather than penetrating it. Since they don't blast through, they actually deliver more of their force to the target than a regular bullet does – but since it is spread over a larger area it is “less lethal” and easier to stop with armor. The weapon's DV is increased by 1, but all damage is converted to normal damage and the target's armor is increased by 50% (round down). The most common form of Less Lethal ammunition is the “gel round”, but the same basic concept is employed by the “bean bag” and the “molly bolt”.

• Limited Engagement (LE) LE shells fire very low mass bags of deforming pellets. They don't go very far and cause little in the way of property damage. LE rounds are often used as a crowd control measure because they do not threaten people distant from the confrontation who might pay taxes. LE rounds only have the range of a holdout pistol.
  
  Stickies Sticky rounds are similar to gel rounds, save that they have an adhesive on the front and an RFID inside. Stickies can be cleaned off with alcohol or paint thinner. They are used to track and identify suspects by some law enforcement contractors.

Stick-n-Shock
“You would have crashed your stupid flying car anyway.”

Stick-n-Shock ammo is relatively new to the market, and was virtually unknown in the early sixties. It is an adhesive bullet that discharges a capacitor on impact. An injured target must make a Body + Willpower (3) test or be stunned for 1 round for each hit they were short by. Unshielded electronics hit by Stick-n-Shock short out. The capacitors are sometimes used for other things.

• Jammers The capacitors in jammer rounds release several seconds of high density radio noise. A 1 meter radius around the point of impact is impeded with a rating 6 jammer for 3 rounds.
  
  Designators The capacitors in designator rounds super charge an RFID, giving it a signal that can be read 40 kilometers away for 3 rounds after the point of impact. The RFID is programmable, and can be used to guide in missiles or send distress calls.

Tracers
“I like to see where I'm going and also where I am shooting.”

Tracers glow, leaving little light contrails in their path. This makes walking automatic fire into targets easier. If the target is more than 4 meters away, the user of tracer rounds gets +1 to their attack dicepool when firing in Burst Fire mode, and +2 to their dicepool when firing in Full Auto. Of course, tracers pretty much definitionally give away the attacker's position, since the little white lines can be followed both ways.

• Radio Tracer (RT) RT rounds do not emit visible light, but instead contain a coded RFID that communicates with a smartlink system. RT rounds do not give away the user's position except to hackers who can decode the system, but they only benefit attackers who are using smartlink systems.

Capsule Rounds
“It's full of gross.”

Capsule rounds are small shatter vials that are filed with some liquid substance and release that substance on whatever they impact. They do very little damage, and are often filled with paint for full armor training sessions. However, they are sometimes also filled with DMSO and nerve agents. Larger guns can be outfitted with capsule rounds that carry gas weapons.

Subsonic Rounds
“bang.”

Subsonic ammunition is a heavier, slower bullet. Because it travels well below the speed of sound, the bullet's flight is not particularly loud. This allows the weapon to be used with a silencer without the bullet itself rendering the entire contraption pointless. Many guns, especially heavier caliber pistols and shotguns, use subsonic bullets standardly.

Low Tech Ammunition
“For sooth! I have ye in my sights!”

Lead bullets, hand-made ammunition, old NATO cartridges, and many other relics of battlefields past may find themselves on the battlefields of the 2070s. In general, they are all lumped into “low tech” and are generally considered poor. They can still be used, they just provide the target a +2 bonus to their Armor.

• Wooden Bullets Originally used as a terror weapon, because the organic material would pulp in the wound and practically guaranty a hideous infection, in the modern era of micro-surgery and anti-biotics, regular wooden bullets are almost never used. However, since there are critters (such as Vampires) that have a wood allergy, they are still in demand by some hunters.

ShinSiam
“In 2073, Information Is King.”

ShinSiam is a second kingdom within and without Siam. With an estimated GDP of a half trillion Nuyen, ShinSiam is worth about a third of the entire country. And since they don't have to worry about all 74 million mouths, they have a lot freer hand and a lot more transferable power. Briefly owned by the Singapore Corporation, ShinSiam now pretty much owns the incorporated city state. They have their own royal Garuda emblem, awarded to them by the King almost 70 years ago, they can (and do) issue royal edicts without the consultation of the Siamese state.

Major players in construction, processed food, electronics, and banking, what ShinSiam is really known for is telecommunications. With the infrastructure requirements of 2065 coupled with the collapse of MandalayIcon in 2066, ShinSiam has been the provider of the fiberoptic backbone from Vietnam to Assam. Between their satellites and their routers, ShinSiam has been rolling in money for the last seven years.

• Not as much money as they'd like. ShinSiam Telecom got the contract to build the data road, but Shiawase Heavy Industries got the contract to build the Kra Canal in 2068. A lot of people saw that as a slap in the face of ShinSiam's Sino-Thai Engineering & Construction division.
• Kerrigan

What ShinSiam lacks is an effective corporate military presence. The Thai military government forbid them from holding substantial military assets (and charged them a good chunk of Nuyen to provide the protection they needed) until their collapse in the 2066 confidence riots. And while they've done some build-up since then, and they have always kept a modest merchant marine force in Singapore, it hasn't brought them up to the level of their other major regional corporate players. ESPRIT Industries, Shibata Construction and Engineering, and especially the Khouang Combine can field military forces that ShinSiam cannot compete with. Historically, ShinSiam has chosen to fight with wallets and patience rather than bullets and peons, but the fact is that their security forces are just plain out gunned by Combine forces whenever they meet up in Laos. As banditry and piracy increase in the Gulf of Siam and surrounding lands, they are losing more shipments of... just about everything.

• The civil war in Laos is going badly for ShinSiam's preferred side. The fact is that Vietnamese weapons are just very hard to compete with – especially when what you have is Vietnamese exports from 15 years ago. Those armaments were old when Vietnam gave them to Laos in the late fifties.
• Simba
• ShinSiam is getting desperate. They are recruiting Shan warbands and even Malaccan pirates to swell their ranks. They can't afford to lose too many more fights without getting downgraded to single-A status and getting ravaged by opportunists looking to poach materials and staff from a faltering giant.
• Kangean

Meanwhile, the gulf between the King of Siam and ShinSiam continues to widen. The King's ill-fated experiment with pacifism has left the already underarmed corporation in its present undefended position and the corporation's suggestions for the development of the country were shot down this year and last. While ShinSiam's political coalition was tight with the monarchists in 2070, in the 2074 election, most observers are expecting them to form a coalition with the more radical communist factions in parliament. Also of note is the fact that ShinSiam has its own Garudas – and while that hasn't mattered much so long as the King and th Corp are on the same nominal side, it could matter a whole lot real soon.

• If you're from Europe or North America, you're probably pretty used to corporations vilifying communism as the big bad bear that will take all your wealth away and give it to lazy orks with sixteen kids. Those aren't the battle lines in Southeast Asia. Here, the communists represent modernization and the rule of law as opposed to feudalism and military law – corporations can work with that, and they do.
• RageX
• Unless you're in Malaysia, the corps there are back to red baiting like they were in Poland. But yeah, corporate/communist alliances are standard in Siam, Vietnam, Myanmar, Shan, and pretty much all the former members of the Chinese Empire.
• Chun the Unavoidable

But if ShinSiam can get around the whole boots and guns problem, they have a good chance of taking the next AAA slot on the corporate court. The reality is that a lot of people watch trids on players made by Sanook Electronics. A lot of people eat mycoprotein out of pouches with the Charoen Phokphand seal of quality on them. Sino-Thai Engineering & Construction makes both fusion plants and tidal generation systems. And ShinSiam produces telecommunications and power transmission satellites that are at least as good as those of even their megacorporate opponents.

Gangs of Siam
“Rules go as far as force can reach.”

Siam is experiencing economic growth the likes of which have not been seen since the first years of the century. For the first time in decades, Bangkok's future is being discussed in seriousness by the movers and shakers of Europe and the Pacific Rim. And yet, banditry and piracy are on the rise. Not everyone is sharing in the bubble of prosperity, and a big chunk of the people left out in the rain are former members of the military. People who have a gun and the training to use it, and few if any other marketable skills. The demobilization payments kept a lot of former soldiers from going bandit through to the end of the sixties; but when those ran out, a lot of ex-soldiers still didn't have careers in the King's new Siam.

Violent crime being on the rise isn't a small issue in Siam. Prime Minister Sanitwong is the third elected Prime Minister in this century to actually complete a term without getting deposed. And it should be pointed out: no elected Prime Minister has ever completed a second term in Siam without getting overthrown by violent uprisings. Increased militancy of the criminal element is a thing that has happened before in these lands. So it pays to get a handle on who some of the criminal elements are.

• It's also good to know that criminal gangs in Siam are generally both mercenary and desperate enough that they will hire outside contractors even if their skin is the wrong color or their teeth are too big. If you have the rep or can demonstrate the skills that they need, there isn't a criminal group in Siam that will turn you away because of the vagaries of demographics.
• Kangean

Lord Zhang
“Lord” Zhang is a Shan warlord who got displaced during one of the wars with Myanmar to move his opium and gun running operations into what is now Siam. Having discovered that there is more money to be made in selling opium than in growing it, his people now work mostly on the smuggling end, and have blazed trails and bribed border guards all along the Shan and Myanmar borders. It is said that they can get anything into or out of Siam, and that's pretty close to true.

Thailand's Army
When the military junta was dismissed in 2066, a lot of military officers got the sack. Some went to trial on corruption charges, but in general the truth and reconciliation commission is kind of a toothless joke. However, some military officers simply refused to turn in their stars. Such it is with General Ma and his “Thailand's Army”. They have some military equipment that they drove off military bases in 2067, and operate as bandits, mostly in the Malay Peninsula. It's not super clear whether they have a political agenda or not.

Iwane-kai
The Iwane-kai are th largest yakuza in Siam, having been brought in when Bangkok was still called “Little Japan” back in the early sixties. The Oyabun, Iwane Matsui, is a violent drunkard who is more humored than listened to by his various lieutenants. The Iwane-kai still ships a substantial number of women to Tokyo, but also runs numerous brothels and opium dens right here in Bangkok. And while Iwane-san himself is rather feckless, the yakuza still is the biggest fish in the Siamese underworld, because they have access to Japanese technology. The fact is that the Iwane-kai can provide bunraku and other elaborate surgeries that bring in the moneyed clients.

Ngūh̄èā
Ngūh̄èā is a paramilitary mercenary terrorist organization with a similar structure to the Rắn Hổ Mang in Vietnam or the Yǎnjìngshé in Yunnan. Their commander wears a mask and is called simply “The Commander”. They employ specialists in a number of fields and have access to a substantial amount of bleeding edge weaponry. Most of their work helps to undermine the Siamese government. They employ a snake motif, leading many people to assume that they have ties to Nag Kampuchea, but that has never been proven.

S̄op̣heṇī S̄h̄p̣hāph
The S̄h̄p̣hāph is a gang of former and current prostitutes who have arranged a sex worker's guild under the leadership of Sarai the “Whore Queen”. She is wired all to hell and apparently used to be a bunraku at some point. Now she is a serial killer who has has supposedly killed more than a dozen pimps and added their stables to her kingdom. They also have a small legion of fatherless children who beg and steal things for them.

• You would think that the yaks in Bangkok would come to an understanding with Sarai, as both have independent pimps as their biggest enemy and Jaturun Law as enemy number two. But Iwane-san doesn't see it that way, so the groups are bumping heads more and more frequently.
• Mamasan

Hotel Moscow
Hotel Moscow is a branch of the vory who are based in Siam. The leadership are Red Army veterans from the war in Poland, and their base is in Roanapur. Their operations are basically tolerated by the government because they kick back some portion of their Russian military equipment to the Siamese army. While they are a criminal syndicate, their approach to expansion in the Kingdom of Siam seems like more of a methodical military campaign.

New Islamic Jihad
If you thought that Siam's problems with Islamic separatists were over just because the Siamese Muslims actually separated and formed their own country of Pattani, then you're in for a surprise. The reality is that the total number of Muslims who live in Siam are almost three times the population of Pattani. And under the leadership of the enigmatic Ibrahim, the New Islamic Jihad intends to carve out additional Islamic states from Siam wherever there happen to be Muslims. And also to convert the heathen Buddhists of Siam to Islam, and then make Islamic states there. They employ sporadic senseless violence as a primary tactic.

Nice writeup of ShinSiam, but maybe a sidebar detailing the corp structure a bit more would be helpful. FWIW, I'd love to see them take Horizon's seat.

As for the gangs, haha, Balalaika. That just had to be put in. Also, the Yakuza. Maybe mention Hotel Moscow and the Yakuza butted heads recently, or is this 1st season? Nice one. Also, does Ngūh̄èā employ Sara Palin?

You might want to write the Thai names phonetically though.

As for the rules: I need to work through these in more detail, but they look pretty fine to me. I always missed these elements - proportional damage, LMSD tracks - in SR4, and thought it a bad choice to essentially go into HP instead.

So here's a thing I am thinking of doing with city write ups: the inclusion of a few little paragraphs about various sites at the end. Like little plothooks or tourist attractions to give players a place to start in that location. Like this:

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Roanapur: Life is Cheap
“Just because it is a nest of scum and villainy doesn't mean it's without its charms.”

Roanapur is a crime infested hellhole that no one wanted, but now that war has come to Siam, everyone suddenly wants it. With a population of about 2 million, it is the second largest city in Siam. However, since over half the population is Khmer, it is the city with the largest ethnicaly Cambodian population – and that includes cities that are actually in Cambodia. Almost none of the people in the city are Thai or Lao (or Lanna, or other Thai-ethnic groups). The vast majority of the city's commerce is with foreigners, to the point that the rest of Siam is the city's third largest trading partner (after Cambodia and Malaysia). But it is also one of the better developed ports in the region, and both Cambodia and Nag Kampuchea have expressed interest in owning it.

• Much of the coast of Siam and Cambodia is mangrove forest. It's ecologically important, but the line of where the water ends and the land begins is not well defined. Roanapur is built out well past the land and over what is clearly the ocean, which means that the peninsula is now a pier which boats can dock at. As soon as the train line gets to Roanapur, it'll become a major shipping port.
• Monkeywrencher

By 2041 there were over a million Khmer refugees living in Thailand, despite the military government's harsh treatment of them. The government was running out of funds, and crime in the refugee camps was growing out of control. So the government decided to put all the Khmer people into one camp, or “concentration camp” if you will, to act as some kind of permanent solution to the Khmer minority. So all the Khmer in the various refugee camps were rounded up at gun point and taken to a new camp at the end of the peninsula at Ao Yai in Trat Province. A lot of people thought this was part of a plan to eventually massacre all the Khmer. And as it happens now that we have the benefit of hindsight and history, it seems that yes, yes it was.

The moment of truth came in 2042, when the government announced that rebels had taken refuge on the peninsula, and that steps were being taken to fight the insurgency. Those steps were to close off the land connection to Huang Nam Khao with soldiers and armored vehicles, and then send a flotilla of ships to shell the camp. When the ships arrived, they were met by the Cambodian monk and mage Sangha Dara, who used magical powers to raise giant stone Buddha statues out of the sea. The captains all refused to fire on religious grounds, and the whole affair ended with only a few dozen injured in scuffles at the land bridge. The whole thing was a major black eye for Central Command, and the idea of eliminating the Khmer refugees just sort of died. Within a year, the camp was incorporated as the city of Roanapur, and just eight years after that, it had a permanent sewer put in.

• Sangha Dara still is living in Roanapur, and he is looking exactly same. He is making elven stone toys for children.
• Solution

Roanapur's status as a municipality is still unclear, and it doesn't appear in all Siamese registries. Almost all of the population is either SINless or foreign nationals, and Roanapur dos not have representation in the Regional Assembly (despite having roughly ten times the population of the rest of Trat Province, which does). Roanapur's services are provided by interested corporations or gangs, and they are funded by whatever they can shake down from whoever they can catch. Historically, the closest thing to a mayor the place had was the leader of the 7 Leaf Triad, but as Hotel Moscow has recently taken over the all important waste management industry, the leadership hat may more properly belong to their commander.

Law enforcement is basically a joke, with the official Siamese police having only a token (and disinterested) force that might be suitable for a sparsely populated rural area. Actual keeping of the peace is handled on a “whoever wants to” basis, with people posting rewards against people who have wronged them (or just people they don't like), and bounty hunters taking those missions that pay enough to be worth the danger. Gangs and corporate security teams tend to lean on anyone they perceive as rocking the boat too much, whether a bounty has been posted or not.

• Libertarian anarchists like to talk up Roanapur as some sort of social experiment, but it can't last like this. If the Russians or Cambodians or Naga don't annex the place before it's worth too much money, the Siamese government will come in and create order.
• Simba
• Roanapur is like a Mecca for bounty hunters. So much bounty hunting work brings some of the best hunters. And a city with so many ace hunters in it gets preferential posting of every valuable bounty. You will hear about a big warrant just sitting in a bar in Roanapur faster than if you were sitting in INTERPOL's outreach hub waiting for them to update their authorizations in the Matrix.
• Hound Dog

Many corporations use Roanapur as a place to sell things to avoid taxation or regulations that would apply to commerce taking place in areas that some government genuinely controlled. Extraterritoriality is not really recognized in Roanapur as such, so corporate commerce has to be low scale enough or guarded by enough corporate security that it appears to not be “worth it” for any of the criminal groups to rob it. And while that cost is considerable, it's still less than the cost of not being allowed to sell BTL chips at all, which is the restriction that ShinSiam operates under in the parts of Siam that are controlled by the government. Pirates and criminal syndicates also come to Roanapur for sketchy business, and the city's black market rivals Yangon.

The Yellow Flag
The yellow flag is a maritime symbol of quarantine, and the bar that bears that banner certainly warrants it. The proprietor is from the Chicago Quarantine Zone, and tries to keep his watering hole relatively calm. He has a big cache of Ares weaponry from the early sixties, that he sells off slowly enough that the bar doesn't really need to turn a profit selling whiskey. Which makes it the cheapest source of rotgut in town.

• Stag never says what side he was on in the Battle of Chicago. I'll give you a hint: it wasn't Ares' side.
• Kerrigan

Roan Wat
Buddhism is very important to the people of Roanapur, both to the Khmer people (who are almost all raised Buddhists) and to the foreigners. The giant statues of Buddha literally saved the city, and that is well remembered. Roanapur has its own temple made of stone called “Roan Wat” by the locals. A group of Buddhist monks hang out there all the time and make statues. The monks rarely weigh in on politics or worldly affairs, but if they do make a pronouncement, that edict has the force of law.

the Sex time
The Sex time is a brothel that is actually older than Roanapur itself. Founded by a pair of aid workers when the peninsula was still a concentration camp for Khmer refugees, tSt has gone more upscale than when it was brokering personal belongings against extra rations to arrange sexual liaisons. Now it boasts nightly strip shows, themed fetish experiences, and affordable group rates. So far, tSt has remained independent of the various criminal syndicates, and

The Water Treatment Plant
The original water treatment plant went in in 2051, and with it came a tremendous reduction in the shittiness of peoples' lives (both literally and figuratively). The water treatment plant is a local symbol of progress and one of the few edifices that are absolutely off limits to have gun battles in or around. The initial designs were Yamatetsu ones, and a group of Chen gangsters kept it going as long as they could before getting squeezed out by Hotel Moscow. The vory were able to muscle in control more by having access to replacement parts from Russia than by actually shooting anyone.

'tSt' breaks off very abruptly (and ... what?).

And awww, the church is missing ...

O the Rip-Off Church: I already have gun running Christian missionaries in the Burmese enclaves in Cambodia, it seems like kind of overkill to include them in Siam as well. Anyway, here's the first draft of the complete Siam:

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Kingdom of Siam:
“The problem with a coup is that it implies that there could be another coup.”
Posted by: Surayud
Siamese History Timeline

1932: The Siamese king is deposed by a military coup, and the country becomes a constitutional monarchy.
1939: Facists in the Siamese parliament change the name of the country to Thailand to emphasize ethnic supremacy of the Thai people in Siam.
1942: Thailand annexes Shan, invades Malaysia.
1945: The Axis loses World War II, Thailand's military regime expelled and its conquests revoked. Civilian rule begins in Siam.
1951: Constitution abolished. Military dictatorship begins again, nation renamed again to Thailand.
1955: Elections declared.
1957: Unhappy with the election results, a military Junta overthrows the Prime Minister. Elections canceled.
1961: Thailand sides with the United States in the Vietnam War, invades Vietnam and Laos, ultimately unsuccessfully.
1973: Massive protests bring the country to a halt and the Thai military junta leaders flee that country. Civilian rule is established.
1976: A bloody coup crushes the civilian administration and returns the country to military rule.
1977: A second coup overthrows the military regime and installs a different military regime.
1979: Thailand allies itself with China and the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam and Laos, this war is eventually won by Vietnam.
1981: Another military coup attempts to take control of the country, but fails. The leader of the last successful coup teams up with the king and forms a “partially” democratic government.
1991: Angered at the favoritism that the military portion of the government showed to certain sections of the military, a different portion of the military overthrows the government. A new civilian-military partnership government is formed with more civilian oversight.
1997: Asian Financial Crisis hits Thailand hard, nation's economy remains depressed for years. Crime flourishes, and the country becomes an international code word for sex tourism.
2001: Fully free and fair elections held, major shareholder of ShinSiam corporation wins in an overwhelming landslide. Economy begins steady recovery.
2006: A military junta overthrows the elected government.
2008: The country is brought to its knees by street fighting between “yellow shirts” who support the monarchy and/or the military, and “red shirts” who support corporate interests and/or socialism.
2011: VITAS hits Thailand, political conflict ends as millions die of the disease.
2012: Crown prince Vajiralongkorn dies, and the king dies shortly after. With only daughters to ascend to the throne, the monarchy is abolished by a military junta.
2015: Another military junta overthrows the military government, promising to restore the monarchy, but a suitable king is never found.
2020: Thailand invades Myanmar and attempts to annex Shan, ultimately unsuccessfully. The military regime collapses, and elections are held.
2022: Roughly a million Cambodian refugees flee to Thailand, where they are ghettoized.
2029: The Crash happens, sending Thailand's economy into a tailspin. A military junta guns down the civilian government and launches an invasion of Burma, attempting to gain control of the Golden Triangle. Military government invades Cambodia and installs a cooperative regime.
2031: A different military faction overthrows the military regime, and pledges to restore the monarchy.
2033: A new king is crowned and installed by the military regime, the Thai army changes tactics, withdrawing from a newly independent Shan and successfully annexing Tanintharyi region.
2034: Emboldened by Vietnam being essentially cut off from southern Laos by the stalemate with the Plig and their Montagnard supporters, Thailand's military annexes parts of Champasak and Salavan in Laos, but their attempt to invade Vietnamese soil is thwarted by the same jungle that cut off Vietnamese resistance. The war is taxing enough that Thailand has to withdraw troops from Cambodia.
2038: New elections held, ranking military officers “win” all the top seats.
2043: With an influx of even more Khmer refugees, the government is no longer able to keep them contained in camps, and they found Roanapur – a city of ambiguous jurisdiction in Trat Province.
2047: Islamic resistance in the south overwhelms the police's ability to maintain order. The Islamic Republic of Pattani secedes, a new junta overthrows the government for its perceived weakness.
2052: Nippon Imperial Marines brought in to restore order following a failed coup. Shiawase breaks ground on an arcology in Surat Thani.
2063: Somdet Phra Ramathibodi comes to a pro-democracy rally with the apparent assistance of the sacred Garudas.
2065: Naga incursions seize several provinces along the Cambodian border, and Nag Kampuchea is formed.
2066: The Montagnard Confederation is recognized and seizes much of the territory that Thailand had seized from Laos. The military government collapses, and the king flees. Somdet Phra Ramathibodi V is crowned king and the country is renamed Siam. The military is vastly reduced in size and the new government promises to promote traditional Buddhist values.
2068: Kra Canal built under contract by Shiawase.
2069: Trollish Myanmar invades Siam and Shan, attempting to retake lost territory. Myanmar warlords are repulsed, but at tremendous cost of life and the institution of a draft.
2073: After the assassination of Vasuki, naga raids in Siam intensify, and the Siamese parliament declares war.

• Surayud is a former member of the Royal Army of Thailand who now works as a heavy for the Yakuza in Bangkok. He's one of the quarter million soldiers who lost their job after the demilitarization of Siam. He knows the military, he knows crime, and he knows Bangkok – so he's probably the man you want to listen to if you're going to the land of the Garuda.
• Orb Spider

Getting decommissioned from the Siamese army is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I now make more money and get more respect working with the yakuza than I ever did as a soldier. I'm not even convinced that the country is any less safe. Yes, our war with Myanmar went rather poorly, and the “victory” was that after a hundred thousand people died we ended up with a border that was in exactly the same place it was when we started. A lot of people regard that as a sign of weakness. But the thing to remember is: the wars of Siam (or Thailand as we have sometimes been known) have actually never gone that well. I grew up with the military junta singing songs about our past glorious victories the same as everyone else did, but the reality is that our armed forces have never covered themselves with glory.

During this century, successive military governments have demanded that people refrain from criticizing the military under any circumstances. Largely on the basis that such criticism would damage morale or shatter national unity. But what did that get us? It got us a military that was corrupt, cowardly, and incompetent. Complacent to use second rate equipment and military doctrines that had been discredited before the awakening. Let's be honest about ourselves, we invaded Myanmar when they had their pants completely down with a civil war with Shan, and that's our greatest victory? Annexing a province that wanted to secede anyway from a country having a five way civil war? Our next great endeavor was the invasion of Laos in 2034. They had 30,000 soldiers of their own, and we lost twice that many failing to take Vientiane, which is right across the river. Our glorious success was having conquered a patch of jungle down river that was so full of Plig that the Vietnamese wouldn't bother fighting us over it, and we lost another twenty thousand people doing that. And you know what? That's the best it has ever gotten. We tried to occupy Cambodia and were sent home in disgrace by criminals. Naga and Plig have pretty much taken whatever Siamese soil they decided they wanted.

The common complaint among the Yellows is that somehow the civilian government's lack of deference to the military is magically going to leave us vulnerable to attacks from other nations. But the reality is that Siam's defenses have been an international laughingstock since France kicked us out of Laos in the 19th century. You'd think that a country that had 74 million people in it, that produced the world's best satellite uplink and was the world leader in rice and mycoprotein exports would be taken seriously on the world stage. And you'd be wrong, because the military hasn't been forced to really modernize ever.

So we're now in our 7th year of civilian rule. And as a former soldier: it's never been better. If you hang out in Bangkok, you might not even know we were at war with Nag Kmpuchea or that Siamese soldiers were even now encroaching on Laos and the Montagnard Confederation. Heck, I genuinely don't know if our planes have violated Cambodian airspace, and I don't even really care. Because either way, business is still booming, the yakuza that I work for is growing, and it is virtually inconceivable that any of those conflicts will actually reach even the outskirts of Bangkok. Siam has enemies all around her, but they are distant from the power and wealth of the nation.

• That kind of flippant attitude is pretty common in Bangkok, but it may come to smack them in the ass. Yes, Nag Kampuchea and the Plig are unlikely to make much headway towards the official population centers, but if they keep poking Laos with a stick, Vietnam may take it away and beat them with it.
• Simba

ShinSiam
“In 2073, Information Is King.”

ShinSiam is a second kingdom within and without Siam. With an estimated GDP of a half trillion Nuyen, ShinSiam is worth about a third of the entire country. And since they don't have to worry about all 74 million mouths, they have a lot freer hand and a lot more transferable power. Briefly owned by the Singapore Corporation, ShinSiam now pretty much owns the incorporated city state. They have their own royal Garuda emblem, awarded to them by the King almost 70 years ago, they can (and do) issue royal edicts without the consultation of the Siamese state.

Major players in construction, processed food, electronics, and banking, what ShinSiam is really known for is telecommunications. With the infrastructure requirements of 2065 coupled with the collapse of MandalayIcon in 2066, ShinSiam has been the provider of the fiberoptic backbone from Vietnam to Assam. Between their satellites and their routers, ShinSiam has been rolling in money for the last seven years.

• Not as much money as they'd like. ShinSiam Telecom got the contract to build the data road, but Shiawase Heavy Industries got the contract to build the Kra Canal in 2068. A lot of people saw that as a slap in the face of ShinSiam's Sino-Thai Engineering & Construction division.
• Kerrigan

What ShinSiam lacks is an effective corporate military presence. The Thai military government forbid them from holding substantial military assets (and charged them a good chunk of Nuyen to provide the protection they needed) until their collapse in the 2066 confidence riots. And while they've done some build-up since then, and they have always kept a modest merchant marine force in Singapore, it hasn't brought them up to the level of their other major regional corporate players. ESPRIT Industries, Shibata Construction and Engineering, and especially the Khouang Combine can field military forces that ShinSiam cannot compete with. Historically, ShinSiam has chosen to fight with wallets and patience rather than bullets and peons, but the fact is that their security forces are just plain out gunned by Combine forces whenever they meet up in Laos. As banditry and piracy increase in the Gulf of Siam and surrounding lands, they are losing more shipments of... just about everything.

• The civil war in Laos is going badly for ShinSiam's preferred side. The fact is that Vietnamese weapons are just very hard to compete with – especially when what you have is Vietnamese exports from 15 years ago. Those armaments were old when Vietnam gave them to Laos in the late fifties.
• Simba
• ShinSiam is getting desperate. They are recruiting Shan warbands and even Malaccan pirates to swell their ranks. They can't afford to lose too many more fights without getting downgraded to single-A status and getting ravaged by opportunists looking to poach materials and staff from a faltering giant.
• Kangean

Meanwhile, the gulf between the King of Siam and ShinSiam continues to widen. The King's ill-fated experiment with pacifism has left the already underarmed corporation in its present undefended position and the corporation's suggestions for the development of the country were shot down this year and last. While ShinSiam's political coalition was tight with the monarchists in 2070, in the 2074 election, most observers are expecting them to form a coalition with the more radical communist factions in parliament. Also of note is the fact that ShinSiam has its own Garudas – and while that hasn't mattered much so long as the King and the Corp are on the same nominal side, it could matter a whole lot real soon.

• If you're from Europe or North America, you're probably pretty used to corporations vilifying communism as the big bad bear that will take all your wealth away and give it to lazy orks with sixteen kids. Those aren't the battle lines in Southeast Asia. Here, the communists represent modernization and the rule of law as opposed to feudalism and military law – corporations can work with that, and they do.
• RageX
• Unless you're in Malaysia, the corps there are back to red baiting like they were in Poland. But yeah, corporate/communist alliances are standard in Siam, Vietnam, Myanmar, Shan, and pretty much all the former members of the Chinese Empire.
• Chun the Unavoidable

But if ShinSiam can get around the whole boots and guns problem, they have a good chance of taking the next AAA slot on the corporate court. The reality is that a lot of people watch trids on players made by Sanook Electronics. A lot of people eat mycoprotein out of pouches with the Charoen Phokphand seal of quality on them. Sino-Thai Engineering & Construction makes both fusion plants and tidal generation systems. And ShinSiam produces telecommunications and power transmission satellites that are at least as good as those of even their megacorporate opponents.

All told, ShinSiam is responsible for the livelihoods of about 15 million Siamese people, and has weathered even quit hostile regimes time and time again. Military juntas have pursued poor economic policy in the past, but none of them have outright attempted to raise unemployment by 15% over night. Siam isn't Myanmar, after all.

Gangs of Siam
“Rules go as far as force can reach.”

Siam is experiencing economic growth the likes of which have not been seen since the first years of the century. For the first time in decades, Bangkok's future is being discussed in seriousness by the movers and shakers of Europe and the Pacific Rim. And yet, banditry and piracy are on the rise. Not everyone is sharing in the bubble of prosperity, and a big chunk of the people left out in the rain are former members of the military. People who have a gun and the training to use it, and few if any other marketable skills. The demobilization payments kept a lot of former soldiers from going bandit through to the end of the sixties; but when those ran out, a lot of ex-soldiers still didn't have careers in the King's new Siam.

Violent crime being on the rise isn't a small issue in Siam. Prime Minister Sanitwong is the third elected Prime Minister in this century to actually complete a term without getting deposed. And it should be pointed out: no elected Prime Minister has ever completed a second term in Siam without getting overthrown by violent uprisings. Increased militancy of the criminal element is a thing that has happened before in these lands. So it pays to get a handle on who some of the criminal elements are.

• It's also good to know that criminal gangs in Siam are generally both mercenary and desperate enough that they will hire outside contractors even if their skin is the wrong color or their teeth are too big. If you have the rep or can demonstrate the skills that they need, there isn't a criminal group in Siam that will turn you away because of the vagaries of demographics.
• Kangean

Lord Zhang
“Lord” Zhang is a Shan warlord who got displaced during one of the wars with Myanmar to move his opium and gun running operations into what is now Siam. Having discovered that there is more money to be made in selling opium than in growing it, his people now work mostly on the smuggling end, and have blazed trails and bribed border guards all along the Shan and Myanmar borders. It is said that they can get anything into or out of Siam, and that's pretty close to true.

Thailand's Army
When the military junta was dismissed in 2066, a lot of military officers got the sack. Some went to trial on corruption charges, but in general the truth and reconciliation commission is kind of a toothless joke. However, some military officers simply refused to turn in their stars. Such it is with General Ma and his “Thailand's Army”. They have some military equipment that they drove off military bases in 2067, and operate as bandits, mostly in the Malay Peninsula. It's not super clear whether they have a political agenda or not.

Iwane-kai
The Iwane-kai are the largest yakuza in Siam, having been brought in when Bangkok was still called “Little Japan” back in the early sixties. The Oyabun, Iwane Matsui, is a violent drunkard who is more humored than listened to by his various lieutenants. The Iwane-kai still ships a substantial number of women to Tokyo, but also runs numerous brothels and opium dens right here in Bangkok. And while Iwane-san himself is rather feckless, the yakuza still is the biggest fish in the Siamese underworld, because they have access to Japanese technology. The fact is that the Iwane-kai can provide bunraku and other elaborate surgeries that bring in the moneyed clients.

Ngūh̄èā
Ngūh̄èā is a paramilitary mercenary terrorist organization with a similar structure to the Rắn Hổ Mang in Vietnam or the Yǎnjìngshé in Yunnan. Their commander wears a mask and is called simply “The Commander”. They employ specialists in a number of fields and have access to a substantial amount of bleeding edge weaponry. Most of their work helps to undermine the Siamese government. They employ a snake motif, leading many people to assume that they have ties to Nag Kampuchea, but that has never been proven.

S̄op̣heṇī S̄h̄p̣hāph
The S̄h̄p̣hāph is a gang of former and current prostitutes who have arranged a sex worker's guild under the leadership of Sarai the “Whore Queen”. She is wired all to hell and apparently used to be a bunraku at some point. Now she is a serial killer who has supposedly killed more than a dozen pimps and added their stables to her kingdom. They also have a small legion of fatherless children who beg and steal things for them.

• You would think that the yaks in Bangkok would come to an understanding with Sarai, as both have independent pimps as their biggest enemy and Jaturun Law as enemy number two. But Iwane-san doesn't see it that way, so the groups are bumping heads more and more frequently.
• Mamasan

Hotel Moscow
Hotel Moscow is a branch of the vory who are based in Siam. The leadership are Red Army veterans from the war in Poland, and their base is in Roanapur. Their operations are basically tolerated by the government because they kick back some portion of their Russian military equipment to the Siamese army. While they are a criminal syndicate, their approach to expansion in the Kingdom of Siam seems like more of a methodical military campaign. Recently Hotel Moscow has been butting heads pretty hard with Iwane-kai, with a few dead on each side. It is expected to escalate in the near future.

New Islamic Jihad
If you thought that Siam's problems with Islamic separatists were over just because the Siamese Muslims actually separated and formed their own country of Pattani, then you're in for a surprise. The reality is that the total number of Muslims who live in Siam are almost three times the population of Pattani. And under the leadership of the enigmatic Ibrahim, the New Islamic Jihad intends to carve out additional Islamic states from Siam wherever there happen to be Muslims. And also to convert the heathen Buddhists of Siam to Islam, and then make Islamic states there. They employ sporadic senseless violence as a primary tactic.

7 Leaf Triad
The 7 Leaf Triad are the last of the Chen syndicates that ran Cambodia in the 30s while it was a Siamese vassal state. Some of them campaign to get their property returned to them by Vietnam, but most of them are content to run protection for/on Khmer and Chinese minorities in Siam. Now that Cambodia is worth owning again, a number of 15s in the 7 Leaf have been lobbying to move operations back to Phnom Penh, and the triad may break over it.

Ten Thousand Lions
Triads in different regions generally have little to do with one another. But sometimes they grow to dominate a large region, and sometimes they send out colonies to form semi-independent criminal agencies elsewhere. The 28 Cranes was like the first, having at one time stretched from Myanmar to Vietnam, but was wiped out root and branch by international law enforcement interests. The Ten Thousand Lions is the second, having sent Charlie, the nephew of their Shan Chu in Hong Kong to make an outpost of their Triad in Siam. They have a line on high fashion apparel from the Canton Confederation, and the much prized Hong Kong Residency Permits, and have been making lucrative sales in the marketplaces of Bangkok and Roanapur.

• Ten Thousand Lions is not your honored grandfather's triad. Their San Chu has nephews and brothers-in-law running rackets all over the Pacific – as far away as Seattle, San Francisco, and Mazatlan.
• Hound Dog

Bangkok: Little Tokyo
“Because 'Los Angeles' was taken.”

When your city is called Bangkok, English speakers just expect it to be a paradise of pornography. Phucket has the same problem. Bangkok's name literally translates to “city of angels” and the city fathers do their level best to emulate that city across the Pacific. This is where Siam gets its glamor, its prostitutes, its SimSense industry, and of course: its corporate headquarters. Bangkok is the center of every major power system in the country. ShinSiam's corporate headquarters are here in the Sathorn district. The King's Grand Palace is here in the Banglamphu district. The Parliament House holds the civilian government here in the Dusit district. And the Royal Armed Forces of Siam have their Central Command building in Samae Dam district. Even the shadier power bases are mostly in Bangkok. Iwane Matsuri lives in a quiet (and very well guarded) mansion in Kannayao District, and Serai the Whore Queen holds court in the Patpong Red Light District.

At about eight million residents, Bangkok is the largest city in the country by a sizable margin, and is actually more populous than Shan, Laos, Karen, Nag Kampuchea, the Montagnard Confederation, Yunnan, or Pattani. It has a higher GDP per capita than any of those places as well, and the city of Bangkok is seriously more valuable of a prize than any adjoining country except possibly Cambodia and Myanmar. The wealth and power concentration in Bangkok is enormous, and with only two exceptions, every time the country has been overthrown in the last two centuries has revolved around control of the city changing hands. And since the number of times the country has been overthrown is now up to 28 (or slightly more, depending on how you count these things), every ruler in Bangkok has felt slightly uneasy in their position for the last century (and justifiably so). The city has been outfitted with a number of defensive works that have been intended to make it harder for angry crowds of civilians or military juntas to take over. And while none of these defensive works have actually kept Siam from being overthrown as often as they swear in Senates in Rome, they have made it difficult to get around town.

• Most cities are designed with ease of navigation in mind. You may laugh when thinking about Delhi or Jakarta's famous traffic jams, but it's actually true. Bangkok isn't merely overpopulated for its infrastructure, it actually has canals, ponds, hills, and walls put up to make crossing town more difficult than it needs to be. My suggestion is to use aircraft or public tubes whenever possible.
• Hannibal

Of course, when people think about Bangkok, they mostly think of the glamor of the entertainment industry. After all, this is the city that has entertainment districts where the entire prefecture is geared towards the production of entertainment services. SimSense and trids produced in Bangkok are often of reasonably high quality, and are watched without irony throughout the world. Or at least, those parts of the world where people speak Japanese, Chinese, or English. Actual productions in Thai or Bahasa Malayu are generally much cruder, as they appeal to a poorer, more rural, and less refined demographic that doesn't really care about cinematography, acting, or writing as long as there are sex and violence scenes. And while everyone seems to want to work in the glamorous industries, there is perversely also a constant talent shortage in writing and production. Poaching between the major studios is commonplace, and talent searches really do prowl the minor theaters and cabaret shows looking for people to be made famous.

For much of its history, Bangkok has been internationally known as a cesspit filled with prostitutes and sin, where for a modest price you could get an underage transexual asura to give you a rusty venture. The truth is that Bangkok has mostly cleaned up its act as far as those things go. Nowadays if you want cheap access to metahuman misery you're better off going to Yangon. Or Roanapur or Phucket if you insist on getting your decadence on inside Siam. Cleaning up the city's image has proved to have been a good move for the economy, as well as a boon for the city's standing in cultural circles. For the last twenty years, Bangkok has been a net cultural exporter. While fashions still follow Neo-Tokyo and Hong Kong, it is not uncommon for trends to take off in Manila or Jakarta “because they are cool in Bangkok”.

• Prostitution is still a major industry in Bangkok, it's just mostly reasonably “safe” in that between the yaks and the S̄h̄p̣hāph there are agreed upon rates and a reasonable expectation of getting what you ask for. The days of getting a “Siamese Ladyboy” by mistake are long over, which is a relief. I give it three stars.
• HugMonster
• Siamese cybertechnology does not have the cachet of “Genuine Chiba” or even the “Vladivostok Special”, but it's actually pretty good. A number of pieces of ware come out in Bangkok cyber clinics before they hit the streets in more upscale locales. Sketchy street docs exist of course, but you can get the kinds of premium work you'd see in Pathein or Ho Chi Minh and Bangkok is a lot easier to get to than either.
• ToyBox

Political factions in Bangkok are pretty young, having gone through a grand total of two elections since the last military dictatorship. Many of the policlubs are basically indistinguishable from street gangs. Broadly speaking, they fit into several color coded coalitions that can (and do) bring hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets. You've got your Yellows, who advocate some form of authoritarianism and include garden variety fascists and also neo-technocrats and Buddhist separatists. You've got your Reds, who favor populism and prosperity oriented policy – they are a mixed bag of rural poor, communists, and corporate financiers. You have your Greens, who advocate for stability and include environmentalists, isolationists, and racial separatists. And you've got your Blues, who favor progressive social and economic policy and include groups that want to restructure society based on Imperial Japan, Korea, Vietnam, or just about any other system that seems to be “successful” by some rubric or another. Reasonably unpopular colors include the Whites (mostly Shan and other Northerners who want... whatever it is that Shan people want), Black (Islamic Separatists), Orange (Religious Pacifists), and Purple (some kind of multicultural tolerance thing). If you start a movement today, you will be stuck with a crappy team color, because all the primary and secondary colors are taken. Fights inside coalitions are pretty common, as once you get past some rather simplistic sloganeering there are a lot of differences in each coalition.

Monument to Democracy
There has been at least one protest at this monument every day for the past 28 years. The thing to understand is that the monument was erected by the country's first military junta to celebrate having ended fiat rule by a divine monarch. So it doesn't mean “democracy” as in “one metahuman, one vote” or even some kind of representation system. Democracy in Siam means that decisions are made by metahumans, it says nothing at all about how those metahumans are selected or who is or is not enfranchised. Supporters of civilian technocracy, military dictatorship, radical democracy, corporate plutocracy, Buddhist theocracy, monarchy, and many other economic and political ideologies clash here on a regular basis. And in all cases they shout for “democracy” – meaning that they want the decisions to be made by the people who they want making the decisions.

The Phasi Charoen Canals
Back in the late 2050s, the military junta spent a period being most afraid of civilian revolution marching on their Central Command complex in the southwest of the city. So they knocked down a bunch of the bridges on the canals in the western districts. These canals run mostly east-west, and the result is areas that are just ten meters apart but which one has to travel 10 kilometers to get between. Those numbers are not exaggerations, and various people have come up with creative ways of crossing the canals.

Wat Saket
Wat Saket is a golden temple in central Bangkok. It is built on an ancient artificial hill and literally plated with gold. It hosts some sacred Buddhist artifacts from Jharkhand. Long ago it was the place where cremations were performed as they were not otherwise allowed in the city. Sometimes that capacity has been seriously taxed, as in the early 19th century it handled the cremation of sixty thousand plague victims. It is operated as a major crematorium even today, and is apparently doing a good enough job of it that it has come under attack by shedim no less than 4 times since the Comet. So far, the monks in residence have held them off, but it has been touch and go a few times.

Nong Chok
On the outskirts of Bangkok to the north and east lies the district on Nong Chok. Founded by Muslim immigrants, it retains much of its character as an Islamic community. After the secession of Pattani, this area got stepped on by the military police hard. To this day the police here have a well deserved reputation for breaking out the Citymasters at the first sign of trouble. Much of the district is rural, including actual rice fields and mycoprotein ponds, with the commercial centers built sporadically throughout the district in anticipation of booms that never came. The local chapter for 10,000 Daggers is here, as are several mosques sympathetic to the New Islamic Jihad. The two Islamic military groups do not get along, and street clashes are not uncommon.

Roanapur: Life is Cheap
“Just because it is a nest of scum and villainy doesn't mean it's without its charms.”

Roanapur is a crime infested hellhole that no one wanted, but now that war has come to Siam, everyone suddenly wants it. With a population of about 2 million, it is the second largest city in Siam. However, since over half the population is Khmer, it is the city with the largest ethnicaly Cambodian population – and that includes cities that are actually in Cambodia. Almost none of the people in the city are Thai or Lao (or Lanna, or other Thai-ethnic groups). The vast majority of the city's commerce is with foreigners, to the point that the rest of Siam is the city's third largest trading partner (after Cambodia and Malaysia). But it is also one of the better developed ports in the region, and both Cambodia and Nag Kampuchea have expressed interest in owning it.

• Much of the coast of Siam and Cambodia is mangrove forest. It's ecologically important, but the line of where the water ends and the land begins is not well defined. Roanapur is built out well past the land and over what is clearly the ocean, which means that the peninsula is now a pier which boats can dock at. As soon as the train line gets to Roanapur, it'll become a major shipping port.
• Monkeywrencher

By 2041 there were over a million Khmer refugees living in Thailand, despite the military government's harsh treatment of them. The government was running out of funds, and crime in the refugee camps was growing out of control. So the government decided to put all the Khmer people into one camp, or “concentration camp” if you will, to act as some kind of permanent solution to the Khmer minority. So all the Khmer in the various refugee camps were rounded up at gun point and taken to a new camp at the end of the peninsula at Ao Yai in Trat Province. A lot of people thought this was part of a plan to eventually massacre all the Khmer. And as it happens now that we have the benefit of hindsight and history, it seems that yes, yes it was.

The moment of truth came in 2042, when the government announced that rebels had taken refuge on the peninsula, and that steps were being taken to fight the insurgency. Those steps were to close off the land connection to Huang Nam Khao with soldiers and armored vehicles, and then send a flotilla of ships to shell the camp. When the ships arrived, they were met by the Cambodian monk and mage Sangha Dara, who used magical powers to raise giant stone Buddha statues out of the sea. The captains all refused to fire on religious grounds, and the whole affair ended with only a few dozen injured in scuffles at the land bridge. The whole thing was a major black eye for Central Command, and the idea of eliminating the Khmer refugees just sort of died. Within a year, the camp was incorporated as the city of Roanapur, and just eight years after that, it had a permanent sewer put in.

• Sangha Dara still is living in Roanapur, and he is looking exactly same. He is making elven stone toys for children.
• Solution

Roanapur's status as a municipality is still unclear, and it doesn't appear in all Siamese registries. Almost all of the population is either SINless or foreign nationals, and Roanapur does not have representation in the Regional Assembly (despite having roughly ten times the population of the rest of Trat Province, which does). Roanapur's services are provided by interested corporations or gangs, and they are funded by whatever they can shake down from whoever they can catch. Historically, the closest thing to a mayor the place had was the leader of the 7 Leaf Triad, but as Hotel Moscow has recently taken over the all important waste management industry, the leadership hat may more properly belong to their commander.

Law enforcement is basically a joke, with the official Siamese police having only a token (and disinterested) force that might be suitable for a sparsely populated rural area. Actual keeping of the peace is handled on a “whoever wants to” basis, with people posting rewards against people who have wronged them (or just people they don't like), and bounty hunters taking those missions that pay enough to be worth the danger. Gangs and corporate security teams tend to lean on anyone they perceive as rocking the boat too much, whether a bounty has been posted or not.

• Libertarian anarchists like to talk up Roanapur as some sort of social experiment, but it can't last like this. If the Russians or Cambodians or Naga don't annex the place before it's worth too much money, the Siamese government will come in and create order.
• Simba
• Roanapur is like a Mecca for bounty hunters. So much bounty hunting work brings some of the best hunters. And a city with so many ace hunters in it gets preferential posting of every valuable bounty. You will hear about a big warrant just sitting in a bar in Roanapur faster than if you were sitting in INTERPOL's outreach hub waiting for them to update their authorizations in the Matrix.
• Hound Dog

Many corporations use Roanapur as a place to sell things to avoid taxation or regulations that would apply to commerce taking place in areas that some government genuinely controlled. Extraterritoriality is not really recognized in Roanapur as such, so corporate commerce has to be low scale enough or guarded by enough corporate security that it appears to not be “worth it” for any of the criminal groups to rob it. And while that cost is considerable, it's still less than the cost of not being allowed to sell BTL chips at all, which is the restriction that ShinSiam operates under in the parts of Siam that are controlled by the government. Pirates and criminal syndicates also come to Roanapur for sketchy business, and the city's black market rivals Yangon.

The Yellow Flag
The yellow flag is a maritime symbol of quarantine, and the bar that bears that banner certainly warrants it. The proprietor is from the Chicago Quarantine Zone, and tries to keep his watering hole relatively calm. He has a big cache of Ares weaponry from the early sixties, that he sells off slowly enough that the bar doesn't really need to turn a profit selling whiskey. Which makes it the cheapest source of rotgut in town.

• Stag never says what side he was on in the Battle of Chicago. I'll give you a hint: it wasn't Ares' side.
• Kerrigan

Roan Wat
Buddhism is very important to the people of Roanapur, both to the Khmer people (who are almost all raised Buddhists) and to the foreigners. The giant statues of Buddha literally saved the city, and that is well remembered. Roanapur has its own temple made of stone called “Roan Wat” by the locals. A group of Buddhist monks hang out there all the time and make statues. The monks rarely weigh in on politics or worldly affairs, but if they do make a pronouncement, that edict has the force of law.

the Sex time
The Sex time is a brothel that is actually older than Roanapur itself. Founded by a pair of aid workers when the peninsula was still a concentration camp for Khmer refugees, tSt has gone more upscale than when it was brokering personal belongings against extra rations to arrange sexual liaisons. Now it boasts nightly strip shows, themed fetish experiences, and affordable group rates. So far, tSt has remained independent of the various criminal syndicates, and continues to experience growth. Rumors persist that tSt is looking to franchise out to new locations.

The Water Treatment Plant
The original water treatment plant went in in 2051, and with it came a tremendous reduction in the shittiness of peoples' lives (both literally and figuratively). The water treatment plant is a local symbol of progress and one of the few edifices that are absolutely off limits to have gun battles in or around. The initial designs were Yamatetsu ones, and a group of Chen gangsters kept it going as long as they could before getting squeezed out by Hotel Moscow. The vory were able to muscle in control more by having access to replacement parts from Russia than by actually shooting anyone.

In Bangkok, "Siamese cybertechnology does not have he cache of 'Genuine Chiba'”

Should be "cachet".

Sir Neil wrote:In Bangkok, "Siamese cybertechnology does not have he cache of 'Genuine Chiba'”

Should be "cachet".

Thank you. Fixed.

-Username17

My knowledge of Hmong cultural stuff is pretty limited. So if Fist Full of Edge Dice (Megu) wanted to chip in a bit on the Montagnard Confederation cultural stuff, that would be great. Here's the tribes I am working with:

---

Know Your Tribes
“We are all children of the mountain. But those guys are like the retarded children of the mountain or something.”

The Montagnard Confederation is in fact a confederation of different tribes. That appellation isn't just for show, it's actually true. The different tribes are often very different one from another. Even the languages are quite distinct, with the main branches being Rhade, Yao, Mnong, and (most numerously) Hmong. However even within these groups, subtle differences in pronunciation can lead to words or phrases having embarrassing differences (asking for “cold water” in Ao Hmong sounds like “sex water” to Pangolin Hmong speakers). There are also numerous Montagnard tribes that have not joined the Confederation (such as the Khmer Loeu or the Viet-Rlem), or which are small enough in numbers that their opinions scarcely count in Montagnard Confederation deliberations (such as the Wolf Hmong or the Flowery Nong).

Rhade
The Rhade are a Chamic people, and have close ties with Cham people living in Cambodia and Vietnam. While they do not subscribe to Nagavenshi Hinduism, the tribe works closely with Naga forces. Many Rhade used to live in Southern Vietnam, especially Đắk Lắk, but after they threw themselves in with the Montagnard uprisings in the late 40s, the Vietnamese army cracked down on them extremely hard. By the 2060s, almost all of them had retreated to the Plig controlled jungles of Northeastern Cambodia. Rhade people have a special relationship with the numerous Boar Plig – great black beasts of the woods that fight to the death and demand that their followers do the same.

Degar
Degar is actually a Rhade word meaning “people of the mountains” and is essentially a synonym for Montagnard. During the last century, Montagnards who moved across the Pacific to the CAS formed a new confederation, and since the first settlers were Rhade, they used Rhade terminology. The Degar mostly moved to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in the 40s, where they agitated for secession from those countries. Their customs are a curious mix of various Chamic ad Hmong Tribal customs and Confederate social norms. They are the most likely to adopt Western dress, and the most likely to practice syncretic Christianity. The tribe has numerous contacts in the CAS and France, and smuggles in a lot of modern weaponry. Some of the Plig doubt the commitment of the Degar tribe because of their use of modern equipment and adoption of modern customs, so they have harder times getting the blessings of the forest.

Yao
The Yao tribe stands out as having used writing before the Europeans came. They have their own version of Chinese writing which is about as similar to Simplified Chinese as Japanese is. They have been somewhat successful at getting the confederation to adopt this writing scheme, because almost no one can read it. The tribe has a special relationship with one of the Great Plig, who is a massive water buffalo. Yao people do agriculture for food, but they also grow materials for alchemy and opium as cash crops.

Unconquered Mnong
The Mnong tribes are divided between the ones that used to live in Cambodia and the ones that used to live in Vietnam. The ones who fought against Cambodia (and won) are called the Unconquered, while the Mnong who fought in Vietnam (and lost) are called the Frog Mnong. Their versions of the Mnong language are almost mutually intelligible. The Unconquered use elephants both domestically and as weapons of war, using magical powers to make the elephants resistant to weaponry and letting the beast's inherent ability to pick up and throw a motorcycle stand on its own. Mnong culture is remarkably well preserved amongst the Unconquered and they have stone musical instruments and magical artifacts that are over five thousand years old. The Unconquered lay claim to being the leaders of the Confederation on the grounds that they are the only Montagnard people who have not been forced to migrate off their lands by the soldiers of adjoining nations.

Frog Mnong
The Mnong used to be slash and burn agriculturists, a farming technique which is severely frowned upon by the Plig. When they came to what is now Confederation lands as refugees, they were taken in by the Frog Plig. But the had to abandon almost all of their ways of life to do that, a bargain that they accepted. Now they live on a diet of what the jungle provides for them – which is mostly fruit and bugs. The flow of the Mekong is very important to them, and they have agitated for a more proactive war against Laos to destroy their dams. The greater Frog Mnong political agenda includes strikes at Siam, Shan, and Yunnan as well.

Tiger Hmong
The Tiger Hmong represent a fusion of the Red Hmong and Striped Hmong tribes, and have adopted a new name because they have been adopted by one of the Great Plig: a Tiger who is more than 15 meters long. Tiger Hmong tend to grow their hair very long so that they can tie braids around their arms like the black stripes on a tiger. Their way of life has been described as “very feral” and they eat a lot of raw meat. Only hunters and warriors have any social standing in the Tiger Hmong.

Ao Hmong
In different languages, the Ao Hmong are considered “Blue” or “Green”, so the Japanese color word “Ao” is used by preference because it includes both. They have adopted the lives of crocodiles, and occupy areas in and around rivers and lakes virtually exclusively. The Ao Hmong are regarded with fear and revulsion by Cambodian, Siamese, and Vietnamese soldiers, because they eat metahuman flesh. Politically, they can be depended upon to support pretty much anything the Pangolin Hmong are against and vice versa.

Pangolin Hmong
Pangolin Hmong make their dwellings underground. Many of them are gifted with the ability to move earth by the Plig, and they create huge tunnel systems as well as utilizing the vast cave networks that exist naturally in the area. They have an agricultural system based on harvesting roots from the roofs of caverns, and many Pangolin Hmong never go above ground. As a people they are much paler than other tribes, but this is because of a lack of sunlight – those Pangolin Hmong who go above ground frequently have the same range of skin tones as other Hmong.

More Montagnard Confederation stuff, including the precious Time Line:

---

The Montagnard Confederation: Blind Vengeance From Nature
“What can science offer that the jungle cannot?”
Posted by: Monkeywrencher
Montagard Confederation History Timeline

2014: The first Plig appear, bringing with them massive expansions of jungle into Northeastern Cambodia, Southern Laos, and
2028: Mnong uprisings in Cambodia and Vietnam begin with different fates. The Cambodian Mnong capture Stung Treng with Plig allies, and the Vietnamese Mnong are turned back fighting alone.
2034: Plig and Yao people repel an invasion of Thai soldiers into portions of Southern Laos that the Plig claim.
2048: Chamic uprising begins Vietnam, this goes poorly and the Vietnamese army crushes Rhade and Cham strongholds in the country.
2059: North American Degar sponsor a military uprising in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam based on the structure of the Sovereign Tribal Council in North America. This new entity bcomes known as the Dega Alliance.
2060: The Dega Alliance declares mutual aid with Naga, Shan, Karen, and Kashini independence movements.
2064: The Dega Alliance mounts a full assault on Dak Seang, in an effort to push through and cut Vietnam in half. The invasion is a disaster. Dak Seang holds, but the Dega Alliance collapses in acrimony.
2065: Diplomatic offensive begins with representatives from many tribes petitioning international bodies such as the United Nations and the Corporate Court for recognition as a combined Montagnard political entity.
2066: The Montagnard Confederation is declared and recognized as a state with their holdings in Siam, Laos, and Cambodia formally acknowledged to them. While some countries recognized Montagnard claims in Vietnam, most maps do not.
2068: The Montagnard Confederation enters a formal military alliance with Nag Kampuchea.
2070: The Montagnard Confederation and Laos sign a compact calling for trade and diplomatic normalization within 5 years. The first steps on the “Roadmap” are met on schedule, but the later portions are still unrealized.
2073: Vasuki is assassinated. The Confederation declares their support for Nag Kampuchea against Siamese and Cambodian aggression.

The Montagnard Confederation is a looming environmental catastrophe. Not on the scale of Khalistan or the Sacrifice Zones of Northern Europe, not even on the scale of adjoining countries such as Cambodia and Siam, but the places where jungles rule themselves are also driving themselves into a wall. The harsh reality is that contrary to most peoples' view of the awakened wilderness as a wild land in strange but perfect harmony with itself, it's actually a strange and wholly unsustainable overgrowth marred by imbalances between predators and prey and the strangulation of the region's biodiversity by the introduction of super predators and super growth of individual plant types. The delicate balances of nature took hundreds of millions of years to form, and the Awakening has disrupted that balance as much as the introduction of mono culture and mining.

• Typical European colonialism. Even with the Awakening upon us, Europeans are still trying to tell the traditional societies that they know better. And yet: it is demonstrable fact that the forests of Amazonia and the Montagnard Confederation grow, while the SOX continues to melt.
• Bɨryekomo
• Actually, Monkeywrencher has a point. Ecology is a science, not a magical discipline or a religion. Communing with the spirits can tell you what the spirits want, but that's not necessarily what's good for the jungle or even what's good for the spirits. People want stuff that's bad for them all the time, why should spirits be any different?
• ToyBox

What was taken by environmentalists as an unmitigated good in the early part of this century is actually a profoundly mixed bag: while the awakened wildernesses have massively increased biomass (good), and brought back numerous species from the brink of extinction (good), and reclaimed deserts both man-made and disaster-caused for more productive ecosystems (good), it is imperative that we come to grips with the fact many species are being crushed out of existence, that genetic diversity is going down as fast as it was in the 20th century. And that's very bad. What people are just starting to figure out is that many of the “new” species that biologists were so happy to discover in the teens are actually just metavariants of each other – of no more genetic difference than a human and an ork. While the jungles of Southeast Asia put on an impressive display of morphological difference, the genetic differences (and by extension the resistance to pathogens and extinction shocks) just isn't there. And as the Plig continue to push what parts of the jungle that they can to more and more growth, they are continuing to squeeze the genetic depth out of their forest homes. The Plig have the power to grow the jungle, but only if the correct geomantic conditions are available, and not all of the jungle grows at the same rate – when they push their growth powers too much, which they have been doing, the portions of the jungle that grow faster eat and destroy the portions that are growing slower. I would use an analogy to cancer if those weren't so overused in environmentalist literature.

The Montagnard Confederation is a two layer affair. Each of the tribes who have acquiesced to Plig leadership is on one layer, and the Plig leadership itself is on another. And it is important to understand that regardless of Montagnard propaganda on the subject, before the Plig came to power, the humans very much did not live in anything resembling harmony with nature. Slash and burn agriculture was the norm, and that is a process that destroys both biomass and biodiversity, and ultimately destroys the topsoil and leaves nothing but barren rock where lush and vibrant jungles once stood. Honestly, the only reason there were any jungles left to regrow when the Awakening came is that there historically haven't been that many Montagnards. The Plig themselves aren't that much better informed. Many of them don't know even what humans need to survive, and diseases and nutritional deficiencies among the more exacting followers of the Plig are fairly common.

Writing in Solution's voice is exhausting. Anyway, here's the first part of Magic and War:

---

Magic in War
“Breaking physical laws is merely force multiplier.”
Posted by: Solution

Everybody is hearing about First Battle of Redding when magic and war is topic of conversation. It is studied again and again by aspiring military commanders and picked over endlessly on Ancient Wisdom Channel. Invisible troops descending upon fortified but unprepared California Guard troopers to eviscerate them virtually without loss. Makes for dramatic retelling every time and is powerful lesson for how Awakened forces can embarrass archaic, pre-Awakening forces. But why does no one speak of Second Battle of Redding? Tir Tairngire does not own Redding now, and it seems that manner in which Awakened forces can be overwhelmed and driven back by combined arms tactics would be more relevant to modern commanders. Whether they are commander of Awakened forces or Modern ones.

It is important to know that militaries like living in past. So don't be surprised if you meet even admiral or general who thinks world is still in 2034 and magic makes underdogs win, well, magically. This is bullshit. Unless you're fighting religious zealots (and probably even then), every side has magic. One sided magical smackdowns are no more to be expected than one sided musket vs. spear engagements. World has moved on, and now question is only how your enemy uses magical power, not if. Endless rehashing of First Battle of Redding may make you sound smart on Matrix forum, but won't make you win battles in future.

Logistics and Dragons
“Armies are like dragons: they crawl on bellies.”

Logistics is breaking point for most armed forces. When soldiers run out of fresh water, bullets, food, clothing, medicine, anti-armor support, pornography, electrical power, or any other essential for their mission they must go home or surrender to enemies. Battlefields are not captured because everyone on them is dead, they are captured because one side or other cannot or will not fight over it anymore. Or because one side can get there and other side cannot.

Magic changes game of logistics in several ways. First and most obvious is fact that magic is one more thing that must be kept track of. If forces run out of magical observation power, then they must go home or surrender to enemy – just like they run out of food. Forces with no magic are like forces with no air support: given time they will be destroyed from afar. And men with boots on ground do know this – in most cases they will retreat or surrender precisely as if they had run out of water. But magic doesn't just make logistics harder by being extra thing on mind of general, also magic is making things easier. Goods can be transported more quickly, preserved longer, and hidden from enemies. Magic allows forces to be resupplied from other side of world in minutes. It is quite game changing.

In ages past, Britain had tremendous trouble feeding troops. Muslim troops would not eat pork, Hindu troops would not eat beef, Jain soldiers wouldn't eat meat at all, and so on. Keeping it all straight was logistical nightmare and failing to do so was one of main reasons for revolt of 1857. Modern armies are not filled merely with humans of different religious persuasions who want to eat different things, modern armies are composed of different creatures and machines who must consume different things. Drones that consume compressed methane cannot survive on petrochem or electrical power, and vice versa. Elves get violently ill without lots of vegetable matter, and naga need meat in quantity. Moving farther afield, shapeshifters are actual animals and have whatever dietary requirements are normal for non-awakened forms. Most difficult of all: infected troops have to eat actual metahumans. It may seem like edible metahumans would always be available in war zones, but they really aren't.

• There is a profound logistical and moral difference between Ghouls and the HMHVV-1 Vampires and their variants. Ghouls can eat clonal flesh, haul edible cadaver parts with them as supplies, and scavenge dead bodies of people who died by other means. Vampires, Wendigos, and the like literally have to eat live metahumans – even people they have shot and killed don't count, it has to be prisoners. And that's a whole different level of atrocity than merely having dietary requirements that violate others' codes of ethics.
• Chun The Unavoidable
• The Romanian Blood Guard has good claim on being the most elite combat unit in the world, but the costs in metahuman blood are intense. It takes about one metahuman life per vampire per day to keep them fighting fit. That's 150 executions per day for that one unit during wartime. To put that in perspective, the entire nation of Aztlan is considered a barbarous throwback by human rights groups because they execute about 800 people per year – which works out to a little more than 2 executions per day. The entire PRC used to execute about 5 people a day, and even the Khmer Rouge's famous Killing Fields clocked in at about 700 executions per day at their peak. Vampire soldiers are by definition a war crime.
• VanHelsing

But from logistical standpoint, worst thing about magic is that magicians usually have different capabilities. No two sorcerers can perform same tricks, meaning that in larger organizations their capabilities are almost always underutilized. While small cells can adapt tactics to their magician's ability to turn physical objects transparent or to solidify water or whatever, larger organizations can't readily adapt strategies to capabilities of one man. Corporations and armies and such make much better use of “common” magical abilities like astral perception, conjuration, and warding than of deeply personal abilities such as Totem endowments and spells.

• There has been a concerted effort to disseminate the more useful health spells. While “Heal” was virtually unknown in the 30s, today it's common enough that DocWagon can actually demand that applicants for certain positions have that spell (or a close analog). Still, most spells you see cast you will only ever see cast by one person.
• Immortal
• The need to adapt tactics to the specific abilities of sorcerers is a major driving force behind the “Cell Structure” adopted by Amazonia, Nag Kampuchea, Yakut, and other “Awakened” armies. Large scale planning is pretty much impossible when a large percentage of your army has access to unique spell power, and successful sorcery powered armed forces don't even try.
• Simba

Logistics and Spirit World
“If you can call your fire elemental to you through the spirit world from across the planet in 3 seconds, can we get you to do that with a hydrogen bomb or an aircraft carrier?”
-General Steven Runninghorse

Spirits do not eat or consume fuel, but their magical connections to their conjurers are so limiting that they are in most ways more limited than drones or soldiers. Spirits can traverse through metaplanes and arrive on different continents in blink of eye, but they can't carry physical objects while doing that and are generally not as good at transporting supplies as trucks. Such is paradox of spirits. Figuring out what magic is good for and what it is not good for has been front and center of all major magical research programs. And while you'd think it would be settled by now, it still is not. More remains to be discovered and so many people have faith in various stuff that even in face of hard evidence many generals refuse to believe that magic can do some things it can do, or refuse to believe it can't do things that it manifestly cannot. Such is paradox of magical research.

Magic has not replaced cars. And seemingly it won't. Magic has not created teleportation that humans can use... yet. But magic is important in transportation. Firstly with spirit movement assistance. Spirits ca reduce travel times of things by distorting space within their domain. Kinetic energy is not increased, so movement assisted bullets were a huge failure (and boy did governments pour a lot of Nuyen into that hole). But by “things” we literally mean any thing. A spirit can reduce travel time of walking man. Or of car full of men. Or of ferry full of cars full of men. There is no limit to “things” that I have seen. Even aircraft carriers count as things. And since it operates by proportional space compression, thing is accelerated proportionally to how fast it was moving. Again, I haven't seen any limit there. Walking man may be accelerated by 10 km/hour, but supersonic jet may be accelerated by several times speed of sound. There may be an upper limit where things become too big to fit into space compression or so fast that they escape space compression, but spirit systems work on fastest and largest vehicles I know of.

Magic has not replaced commlinks, and seemingly it won't. Light speed high density signal really is very good and magic can't really compete on that level. Most magical communication is about as fast as talking, which is incredibly pathetic by modern standards. However spirit and conjurer can “talk” regardless of distance without passing anything between them. This makes every magician with spirits into very limited but very reliable quantum entanglement communicator. And until quantum entanglement communicators get much cheaper than they are now, we can expect that EVO's Mars base will continue to use spirit relays for most talking. Mental linking is also very secure, since it can only be compromised at each end rather than intercepted at any point “in between”. So mindlinks will probably retain utility in secret communications for foreseeable future.

Magic does not work in space, and it will not ever replace fusion drives for space transports. But space industry still uses lots of magic for small package space launches. Magical levitation has pretty severe mass limits – you won't see Storm Spirits replacing cranes. But it takes same amount of magic to lift a package seven meters as it does to lift it seventy thousand meters. Only mass matters, not joules. That makes launching of small scale satellites incredibly economical. Which is why even bullshit countries like Central African Empire and Assam have their own satellites now.

Who is Solution? I really, *really* can't distinguish this from "Frank Trollman voice". This could be a section from the Economicon.

Clearly Solution comes from some lingual group that doesn't contain articles. I presume that's the exhausting part.

EDIT: You left an "a" in the first italicized section.

EDIT EDIT: According to the chart, Solution is a mercenary sniper from Moscow, and his article's phrasing seems to indicate he's ex-military. His voice might be more distinct on non-military topics, but he might not be bothered to write about those.

Everything after the vanhelsing comment takes on an air of movie-style russian. Stuff before that wasn't really different from normal frank (there were differences, but they seemed more like editing mistakes than like intentional placements).

Frank: Care to put up a tentative armor chart for metahumans? Doesn't have to be all the tanks and stuff, just the basics:
[*]business suit (for Mr Johnson and corp suits)
[*]trenchcoat (replacing the 8/6 jacket we all love)
[*]combat armor + helmet (for the high end guards)
etc.

I don't know about "movie style russian", but it does sound like the David Weber/Drake/ John Ringo and Co. ex-military writers, which is probably about right.

name_here wrote:Clearly Solution comes from some lingual group that doesn't contain articles. I presume that's the exhausting part.

EDIT: You left an "a" in the first italicized section.

Good point. My original idea was that the quotes weren't actually written in there by the character writing the article but by the admin. But you're right that's way too confusing. Yeah, Solution does not use articles. It's hard to write like that because I don't even notice when I'm using one. But if someone is from Eastern Europe, they probably avoid using them purposefully since using them wrong is even more incongruous than leaving them out.

Lokathor wrote:Care to put up a tentative armor chart for metahumans?

I'm doing a bit of wargaming with the bigger guns, I'll get back to you on that. One thing I can say is how the new armor mods are going to work. Things like Nonconductivity and Fire Retardant. Those are going to be available in three levels instead of 6, and provide a point of AP-resistant Hardened Armor for each level. So if you have Insulation 1, you simply reducing the DV of an incoming cold attack by 1. You don't have to fuck around with extra dice.

-Username17

Wow, I didn't even notice the missing articles. Mot sentences of course flow fine. A few are giveaways ("such is paradox of spirits") but I swear, my mind automatically put the articles back in as I was reading. It does't help that you missed some.

"Magic changes the game of logistics..."

from graph "magic has not replaced cars" "...they escape the space compression. but the system..."

from last graph "the launching of small scale satellites

Thank you. Fixed. Yeah, it's super hard to write like that, because I literally don't notice the word "the" while I am writing it.

-Username17

These are the reasons I think this post is actually an economicon excerpt.

--multiple uses of "changes game" or "game changer" and using "really" twice in the same sentence. These are classic Frank trollman verbal tips.

--the section header, "logisitics" is a frank trollman catchphrase that makes little to no sense in this context.

--The "logistics and spirit world" segment feels out of place. It doesn't talk directly about what it says it's going to talk about, it talks about the impact of magic on technological development, but often in apparently pseudocivilian contexts. (Space transports are probably built by a military but aren't obviously relevant to War!). You might want to consider repurposing that essay and finding a different way to deliver these bits of information.

Space agencies have civilian applications, but they are military agencies. Always have been. Buzz Aldrin is "Colonel Buzz Aldrin of the United States Air Force". Yuri Gagarin is "Colonel Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Air Forc". Phạm Tuân is "Lieutenant General Phạm Tuân of the Vietnamese Air Force".

Also, the micro-launches ties in to a bit about orbital bombardment elsewhere in the book.

-Username17

Frank,

I was aware of that. The thing is, while the segment discusses only technologies which are important in war--cars, communicators, and satellites--it doesn't discuss them as they are used in war at all. The concrete examples are things like talking to a mars base which I am assuming is a nonmilitary research station, since I can't imagine how anyone on mars could project force in a relevant way on earth.

Furthermore, your intro paragraph sets up a parallellism--magic is both less and more powerful than generals think. The neutral title of the segment also suggests ambivalence. But the actual article has a strictly negative structure, starting everywhere section with a "magic can't". Why not call the section "The limits of magic" or "A god is no substitute for an engineer"?

EDIT: Sorry, I meant "non-combatant" not "nonmilitary."

So here's where I am with the armors:

---

The New Armors
“Before selecting your weapon, you may wish to select pants.”

The first thing to note is that in Alt.War, we are not keeping track of Ballistic and Impact armor. The numbers just aren't different enough to worry about it. From now on you just have an armor rating, and if you're really luck – a hardened armor rating as well. Armor capacity is also handled differently in that the mods one can get for armor have a minimum capacity rating to be applied to an armor, but don't actually use any capacity up. Mods also have a coverage requirement, how much of the body has to be covered by the armor for the mod to do any good. Armor coverage also determines the difficulty of taking called shots to avoid the armor. Armor that covers more is harder to bypass with precise aiming, whether it is made of thick plates of plastisteel or a largely ceremonial ballistic weave.

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¥

Why do holdout pistols have such high Strength requirements? I understand if the point is to make them less accurate because of their short barrels and whatnot, but I don't think being bigger and stronger should fix that problem--maybe they should just have an inherent accuracy penalty or a fixed recoil penalty that has nothing to do with Strength?

It makes sense that you need a higher strength to keep them from jumping around and messing up your shot. Recoil penalties, IIRC, only come into play on multiple shots.