Ross_Hollander

I cannot stop you from putting my posts in voice acting compilations or Reddit posts or whichever but please credit me and let me know if you do that.

I take asks, if there is anything people feel the need to ask me about.

The difference between '3151posting' and 'mechposting' on this blog is whether the subject matter at hand is relevant solely to the world or game of Battletech or to the mecha genre at large.

If something is presented as BattleTech lore but lacks a tag of same, you may safely assume I am making it up for funsies.

This blog contains mentions of death and violence.

If you are looking for more of or more comprehensive parts of my writing, consider my Itch account where I host:

Loot the Room!, a fantasy game of treasures and tribulations in the typical dungeon.

Impostor Syndrome, a game of trust, cooperation, and lack thereof.

Acceptable Casualties, Mork Borg engine for a post-apocalyptic modern warfare RPG.

Acceptable Casualties: Crossfire, a tabletop skirmish game originally built for toy soldiers.

Ride into Sunrise, a fairly rules-light RPG in quantum superposition between samurai film and spaghetti Western.

MEAT Grinder X, a passion project to create a mecha tabletop wargame actively hostile to players.

PUNX, a business-card-size cyberpunk RPG, light but serviceable in a pinch.

Mayhem in Hangar Nine, a game of office politics, petty arguments, and also giant death robots.

2703: Jonathan Cameron dreams of how "a Cameron child shall stand before a distant ruler and be beguiled by his rough country ways and the interests they share. I fear for the child because the distant ruler has cruel, dark thoughts."

2739: Lieutenant Saul Robstein of the 191st Royal BattleMech Division is struck of his senses. A vision of the one-year-dead Jonathan Cameron appears to him, telling him Jocasta Cameron will die in two and a half years. He then recovers.

2742: Jocasta Cameron dies.

2742: Private Sandra Ustus, Seventieth Infantry Division, is struck of her senses, receiving a vision of Jocasta Cameron, telling her that Simon Cameron will die at the hands of an "assassin's digging machine". She then recovers.

2751: Major Carolina Devalis, security chief to Simon Cameron, collapses after touching the Cameron Star on the bulkhead of SLS Ascendant. She experiences a vision of a Cameron Star gone supernova, leaving behind a screaming pulsar. She then recovers.

2751: Simon Cameron's tour of the Consolidated Titanium New Silesia Site and life are ended by a sabotaged mining 'mech charging the control booth he was standing in.

2751: Sergeant Heinz Mann of the 290th Mechanized Infantry Division falls into a coma. He beholds a vision of dozens of dead Camerons, awash in their own blood. He recovers after eight days.

2753: Stefan Amaris strikes up a 'friendship' with Richard Cameron II.

2766: Stefan Amaris executes all the House Cameron.

2784: The SLDF depart the Inner Sphere en masse, eventually to become the Clans (after serious whittling down on the road and through the Pentagon Wars).

2830-2930 (exact date unknown): The Goliath Scorpions begin synthesizing necrosia, a hallucinogenic drug brewed from their totem scorpion's venom. Its effects include inducing comas, and (canonically, mechanically, literally) receiving of visions- even ones of revelatory nature. It is noted that these visions often involve or somehow relate to the Star League.

3062: Zane Nova Cat perceives a vision of an ebony dragon somehow destroying a nova cat and garnet dragon. Zane, as a Nova Cat, is a member of the Second Star League at this time.

3062: Zane convinces his superiors to deploy the First Dragoncat against the Eleventh Alshain Avengers, tripping up the Black Dragon plan for war with Rasalhague at the first hurdle.

...territory that the Draconis Combine guards jealously, but their culture as well. Great works of theory have been written on the need for and effect of their unifying "pseudo-Edo" sort of milieu, but the practical upshot of it is that foreign influence of any kind is nanban nonsense and need not apply. The ISF spend significant time rooting it out.

Now, to layer over this seal and prevent young servants of the Dragon from straying after such foreign thoughts, the coup was once hit upon in the 3010s to sap the contraband trade (there's always a trade in anything made illegal) by creating official contraband. A shadow system of manufacturers began drip-feeding the market media, goods and novelties that were just foreign enough to pull in the average buyer but would have been recognized outside the Combine as clearly phony. While still just 'subversive' enough to provide the rush of getting one's hands on forbidden stuff, they were being vetted by the Five Pillars to ensure no actual rebellious sentiments were spread.

This was going swimmingly, but even so, there were a few sharp types who recognized this stuff- and the more common this "contraband" became, the more they could charge for their genuine smuggled stuff. The extra layer was thus conceived around the 3030s to create another, even more secret like of official contraband- skirting the very edge of the O5P's limits of acceptable media production -and put it out on the market to soak up those too clever for the first layer.

Somewhere else, Gangle is having the virtual time of her life doing the whole helicopter minigun sequence.

...that the light-headedness and mild nausea are just from velocity and the battle-thrill of waltzing along the edge of death's endless abyss of eyeblinding mindburning nothingness light in your multi-ton metal slippers at the killorbekilled ball. You're absolutely correct. Now, just step out of the cockpit, and- slowly but steadily- sip this biostabilizer fluid cocktail (water) and have a couple of these processed nutrient tablets (pretzels or another snack with a bit of salt to it).

...you can't be dating comrades-in-arms because there's all sorts of regulations against it. Happens anyway, but you can't actually do it. It's one of those things that officially doesn't happen. Anyways, in merc units it's a whole different ball of wax, and yet, you still can't do it.

Not because they'll use you as a meat-shield, not because there's going to be a dramatic betrayal (though sometimes there is, you know). It's because, for that coin toss' worth of the human race and whatever you classify Elementals as who are to whatever extent into the other side of said coin, you run the risk of being the only one in the unit without your gear at go-time because of the well-known phenomenon of your darling, overwatch, sweetheart, sugar, valkyrie, princess, war criminal, dearest, baby, honey, ragtime gal, etc., having stolen The Boyfriend Cooling-Vest once again.

...version of those spiky rails that people use to deter pigeons and such on top of a building to prevent local BattleMechs from roosting there. Yes, it may be "hostile to the wildlife", but they simply can't keep perching on top of there to take shots at enemy forces. It attracts enemy fire, and they often leave those giant shell casings all over the roof- and no prizes for guessing if they foot the bill for cleaning up.

...powerful the weaponry, no matter how advanced the tactical computer, no matter even the skill of the pilot, you must know: no 'mech would be anything without the little guys. Oh, I do not mean the hangar crew or the assembly workers, though they are important. I am speaking of these tiny dudes.

...metafictional cafes where people's blorbos run into each other (you know the ones):

Walter: "-latest is C4-621. 'Raven'. 4th-gen augment, and it shows. Average combat reaction time is .18 seconds. Any chassis, any loadout, they do it all. Perfect scores in the simulations, near perfect in the field. Doesn't talk much- at all, actually -but that's a bonus in my book. Even so, I've got the suspicion they enjoy their work. How's yours doing?"

The actual vehicle came out in 3025. This is a mere bullying campaign against a quite skilled pilot (anyone could be baffled facing a literally never-before-used craft) which has gone on for more than a century.

I have done a spot of research about this, looking at RATs and wiki pages and so on, while keeping in mind the niche of which you speak, and therefore I have come to two possibilities for an answer to this:

The most-produced 'mech, possibly- at least one of the most produced ones- is the Locust. Ever since she debuted, on the cusp of the 2500s, Locusts have been rolling off the assembly lines in assorted permutations. It is said that in some distant Periphery kingdoms, the respectable standard for a dowry or payment of tribute is considered to be a kiloliter of distilled water, a tonne of quillar meal, ten kilograms of gold, and if not a fully-armed Locust, at the very least the Bergan VII chassis used in them.

The other option, though, if we seek something like "not really a 'mech-of-the-line, but good enough", is doubtless the RFL-3N Rifleman. She is a very popular lady. No matter the when or where, you will basically never find RFL-3N in scarcity. Everybody knows her, and while you may not want her on the point of the spear, any footslogger would be more than happy to see her trotting out to back them up in a pinch- your quintessential second-stringer, endlessly reliable, but not a first pick by a longer shot than even she could make.

...from the community forums for popular 3110 noteputer game BattleLords Stars of Steel, a map-painting-type strategy game:

"Melissa has started writing books and will not stop."

"Implemented O5P Teachings of Tolerance, population somehow now more xenophobic than before?"

"Making Laborer abuse more efficient?"

"Possible bug? Invader clans not invading."

"Mathematically unlikely number of cults."

"Heir is refusing to marry arranged match of his age due to explicit cougar preference. Help."

"I have been poisoned 9 times in the last 24 hours."

"Stop propositioning me, you are on trial for war crimes."

"Economy crashed as Lyrans, everybody too rich."

"Can the FWL be saved?"

"ALL HAIL ILKHAN NICOLAI MALTHUS."

"This just feels like feeding heirs to the Liao assassins."

"Why can't people with PTSD just get over it?"

"State 1 lightyear wide and 400 long."

"Genetic legacy jungle juice is actual tech."

"Focht eaten by dinosaurs. Please advise."

"I have found the ONE person in my court who was NOT a Canopian spy. Executed them immediately."

"Lost run after literally dying of boredom at orchestra. Possible assassination method?"

"Word of Blake really nice guys for some reason."

...for a really speedy 'mech for your force, something real quick...

Yes, a 'mech with blinding speed, but with a real punch to it...

...very nimble but also respectably hard-hitting, and also able to have somebody snort in its direction without collapsing into a crumpled ball of tinfoil- then what you ought to look at is a Phantom C.

Built to the orders of Khan Phelan Ward, your baseline Phantom is the tougher but lighter-hitting little sister to the time-honored Fire Moth, although her closer relative is actually more the Ice Ferret. She comes to the party with six tons of ferro-fibrous and a 151km/h top speed.

However, when she slips into her C configuration, Phantom has more than utility for spotting and harrying. That loadout features a flamer, one ER medium laser, and eight ER small lasers, linked to a cutting-edge targeting computer. That's the type of damage that can peel the armor off of most mediums and a good chunk of heavies in one salvo, not to mention scrubbing lights from existence. For her own part, she packs armor beefy enough to take at least one shot off a heavyweight without disintegrating.

...the Nova Cats, and their cousins in the Spirit Cats, that there is essentially no superstition, tradition or arcana but they believe in it. They do in fact practice santeria, have crystal-balls (and scrying-bowls, and carved divination-bones, and nearly twenty different traditions of tarot), and partake in ancient American conscience-expansion, and the strains they use for it hit like an AC/10 burst from three paces. They have vodou, hoodoo and things they have not even tried. At least one Nova Cat Warrior was known to practice reconstructionist Roman augury to determine his 'mech's configuration for a battle ahead.

...martial epithets less dignified, but the story of how she ended up with that one is funny enough to tell. Lance leader in Colton's Screaming Demons, Esdee "Ostrich" Martin lost her Warhammer but, after the very same battle, salvaged, repaired and claimed for her own an enemy Penetrator. Some weeks of adjustment for the neuro-feedback later, she took it out to battle (against, at the time, a Draconian pillaging force), and was noted as taking the worst of it in most engagements.

On her return, while the mechtechs worked on patching up the damage, one of her team got to discussing with her why she seemed so intent on pushing the armor to the limits. Martin replied that she didn't see any other choice- it wasn't as though the Penetrator was really a maneuverable 'mech; you walked into combat and got stuck in, no ammo to count, just fire until the heat-sinks melt.

Other Clans are more reserved about customization, but for the Horses, a 'mech is incomplete without a personal touch.