Hydra Hideout

Curious about the mech on the cover of Reactors & Romance?

The frame is called the Takahe. It's named after a flightless bird from New Zealand of the same name. Even though the mech's "tail feathers" are massive jump jets meant to get this thing soaring!

Lore wise, its a frame designed for mobility and exploration of both terrestrial and space environments. The cockpit is located in the chest, and has an expanded compartment to provide barebones living quarters for extended away missions. Since the pilot isn't located in the head, it's head packed with various sensors and long ranged coms. Perfect for surveying and keeping in contact with distant teammates. It might not have the versatility of arms to pick-up different weapons on the fly, but it's head mounted weapons have exceptional accuracy due to the dampeners in it's neck. These dampeners do have the unintended side effect of making the head bob like a pigeon or chicken when the frame is running pigeon

Like most of my mech designs this one originally started off as a Lego build of mine for the game Mobile Frame Zero. A table top wargame that uses Lego mechs as minis. It's a lot of fun by the way. You should check it out HERE (I think I still have some of my bird mechs featured on their website)

My Lego Takahe build is actually a larger version of my Kiwi mech. Which is very similar in design to the Takahe, just smaller and cuter. I love these little guys and have made so many of them over the years.

Like... sooooo many! I have a whole Pride collection of them with each one colored as a different pride flag.

Here is the first painting I did of the Takahe, which also inspired the color pallet for Reactors & Romance.

I also did some pixel art of the mech too. I was hoping to use for a Lancer game, but that didn't happened. I did get to include it as part of my NPC roster for a game of Celestial Bodies that I ran! The players did a great job completely obliterating my children 😂

I HAVE TRAVELED ACROSS THE MANY HEAVENS AND SAILED ITS ASTRAL RIVERS AND SPOKE WITH THE GODMINDS AND LEARNED THE SECRET DOCTRINES FROM PROCESSOR-TREES. I HAVE SURVIVED AGAINST PIRATES OF THE TRUE PRIMORDIAL DAO. I HAVE SLAIN DRAGONS WHOSE EDDIES FORMED GALAXIES. I HAVE CULTIVATED MY HEART UNTIL I HAVE BECOME A STAR. THROUGH IT ALL, I DID IT WITH MY FELLOWS IN TOW— AND WE DID ALL SEE NO GOD BUT THE PROLETARIAT.

10,000 SWORDS AGAINST HEAVEN is a Dark Science Fantasy Cultivation TTRPG set in the Thunderbolt Dialectical Materialist cosmos of THE TRICHILIOCOSM. Communist Martial Artists struggle alongside Kung Fu Wizards against the bloody grip of Capital upon a wasted world.

10k SWORDS eschews narrative-first, story-generating mechanics in favor of a call back to the traditional conceit, where Players play characters that live and breathe in a world, not chained to Narrative Trope or Story Mould.

In 10K SWORDS, you play as WANDERERS. Traveling vagabonds, disenfranchised laborers, hard-working salarymen who know a bit of kung fu on the side. As a Wanderer, you are nothing alone. But everything when you have become ORGANIZED into the SECTS.

SECTS grant you LICENSES which teach and allow you to wield TECHNICKS, MAGICKS, and GEAR to be able to hold your own against the magofascist onslaught of the Ruling Class. And even that is not enough: once you have this, you must CULTIVATE YOURSELF.

Only in your Cultivation of Self can you become great enough to support the Working Class and help usher in Humanity's next stage. You must become the very negation. You become part of the little quantities that contribute to the explosive qualitative step into Humanity's burst into the stars.

As a Cultivator, you wield the power of SIDHI—the mystic life force of the Trichiliocosm that binds us, powers us, interpenetrates us, and reminds us of our inseparability from the rest of the world. YOU ARE MORE THAN THIS. It is the strength of emotion, and responds to a Clear Mind and a Thunderbolt Will.

But Hingsajagra is filled with wanderers of all kinds. And they are beings of their own accord. It is up to them whether they will keep fidelity with the Revolution... or be an obstacle destroyed in its wake.

UNTIL ALL THE HELLS ARE EMPTY

UNTIL ALL BEINGS ARE FREE

UNTIL THE HUMAN IS HUMAN

UNTIL THE PROLETARIAT ARE CHAKRAVARTIN

SWORDS UP, WANDERERS

WHAT YOU GET

10,000 SWORDS AGAINST HEAVEN has the following mechanics:

A new weird setting inspired by the likes of PERDIDO STREET STATION, NEUROMANCER, BOOK OF THE NEW SUN, SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI, MARATHON, GHOST IN THE SHELL, and ARMORED CORE, skewered through by ESOTERIC BUDDHISM, FILIPINO FOLK ESOTERICISM, ESOTERIC RELIGIONS, GNOSTICISM, SOUTHEAST ASIAN LIVED EXPERIENCE, and SOCIAL REALIST LITERATURE.

A d6 dice pool system based on counting successes. Inspired by the simplicity of the Exalted 1e Quickstart and its ready-to-play nature, it also creates a robust enough scaffolding for resting fiction-first play upon, without being bogged down by too much sub-rules.

A combat system, LIQUID STEEL ULTIMAVIOLENCE, that is built into the world rather than attempting to be a combat minigame cut out from the world. It has in-world measurements and timings as much as possible. However, the world is built on kung-fu physics, and so the rules while adhering to the world also create moments of gritty martial arts. This is exemplified by the Interrupt system intermixed with the Attack Check.

Attack Checks are opposed rolls between an Attack Pool and a Defense Pool. Every 4+ on a Defense Pool roll cancels out a 4-5 on an Attack Pool. But 6s are CRITICAL STRIKES that cannot be defended against... unless the Defender rolled a 6 too, known as a PERFECT DEFENSE.

The combat system does not create an arbitary action list you must follow. As it is built out of the world, you can do actions as you would in the world. Liquid Steel Ultimaviolence then also allows you to INTERRUPT at any time, using your own Actions within that interrupt window to do whatever you would like, as long as you can do it.

Rules for Survival, for Resting, for Social Play (focused on finding Leverage and improving Disposition), and other World-focused details for running a game in the planet of Hingsajagra.

15 SECTS—think like Final Fantasy Jobs, but a bit more Marxist-Leninist and with more Social Organization, rather than just being combat roles—that you can gain Licenses from to learn Magicks, Technicks, and gain Gear, inspired by the Job System of Final Fantasy XII.

get it here

discord if u read allat

Now, unlike Michael Newton’s book of hope, I appreciate the clarity of this book’s title: Encyclopedia of Things that Never Where (1985). Stating that definitively really gets all that belief malarkey out of the way and lets us appreciate these things on their own imaginary terms (as Georgess McHargue encouraged us to do on Monday).

This book is more like a collection of several small topical encyclopedias, each discrete from the others and in their own alphabetical order. Nor do they necessarily make a perfect or intuitive sense all the way through. Things of the Cosmos is mostly gods of major mythologies, but also King Arthur and his knights. Things of the Ground and Underground collects faeries and tree spirits, but also the manticore, Minotaur and Sphinx. Things of Wonderland seems to imply things from literature, but really it collects all manner of fantastical places, from fiction, but also from legend. Things of Magic, Science and Invention could just as well have been called Things and left it at that; it collects notable items, from Thor’s hammer to Jekyll’s potion to the many unusual uses for nails. Things of Water, Sky and Air covers all the creatures not detailed in Earth chapter — Grendel is here, griffins, too, and all the sea serpents. Finally, Things of the Night details the undead and other creatures who hide from the sun, whether they go bump or not.

5 mech pilots go on a road trip to destroy a fascist and have so much fun!!!!!!!!!!!!! did you guys hear something

Convincing IPS-N execs to sign off on any Thunderhead collaborations was an uphill battle, magic and ephemeral concepts such as "friendship" have no place amongst the cold steel and brass of planetary shipping. It was only after rounds of preliminary tests that the "power of friendship" came up with a staggering 17% TTK decrease and a 32% higher survivability rate. With metrics like that Thunderhead was immediately welcomed in and initial production on the Rusla began in earnest. The Rusla was designed to be a rallying figure, leading the charge while keeping key personal protected at any cost. It is the figure that cultural critics scorn, the image of mankind writ large upon the world. A knight in shining armor, a bulwark against the darkness, gleaming as it cuts down swaths of swarming evil. It is the hero and woe to any wretched beasts that stand in its way. IPSN magical girl? who doesnt love the corporatization of friendship? The Rusla license as a whole provides a lot of defensive options, including the ability to set a BFF. Bffs benefit from your armor and grant you bonus damage against nearby targets. The Rusla excels at the front of the pack, side by side with its allies dishing out damage and keeping its friends safe in equal measure. Magical girl mechs and capitalism ! yay... Thunderhead is still in the works so if you wanna use it check out my thread on pilot.net also check out my mostly* finished project, the sixth voice on itch.io

The newest build includes community implementations of the Caliban, Zheng, SSC alt frames, Chomolungma & Sagarmatha, NPC Rebake grunts, and more:

The old reference i got for my most special and important character: Hibiscus Aroma She's from my webcomic project, The Rain Guard. She's a witch carrying out the job of controlling magic in the world after the magical apocalyse, while also defeating monsters called The Hatred.