No guesses? Ah well, here's the answer.
[11.] MYEDROLARIAN ARMOURED MAZE SKIMMER
Campaign Background NotesCraft: Heavily Modified Mirdall Jin Security PlusThis vehicle is found on the planet Myedrolar (AKA Gohlag 6). It is heavily modified to perform in a very particular environment – a truly massive (continental) maze of channels and crevices, created many years ago when very powerful sonic weapons were employed to great effect! Those weapons turned vast regions into mazes of deeply cracked rock, hundreds of large channels, with thousands of much narrower crevices. Two humanoid races, the Rourrh and the Grawdin
(for which I used 15mm Traveler miniatures of Vargyr and Aslan aliens), now fight an almost ritualistic ‘forever’ war within that zone.
In that region there is the 'maze top' (the original ground surface) and the 'maze bottom' (at the bottom of the crevices). Warfare of a bizarrely ritualistic kind occurs in both environments. This repulsor craft skims along the crevices at planetary-crust, surface level, one turret able to shoot above and one able to shoot down into the crevice. It looks like a boat floating down a river, but there is no water in the channel!
Like I mentioned before, the weirdly long legs extend so that the thing can land without crushing the bottom turret.
Here are some scans from my original scenario
(forgive their pen, pencil and electric typewriter nature, but that was the best I had at the time!), and two excerpts lifted from the text, one on the Forever War and one about the War Zones …
(This is the first page of a two page map, but hopefully you get the idea)
The Forever War (Excerpt from scenario notes)The war has raged for so long, and the cost been so great, that it has settled into a "pattern" of sorts. To outsiders it may seem to have become rather formal in nature - a very deadly sport. This is because both sides, though unwilling to cease fighting the enemy, are terrified of destroying this the last world their peoples possess. The weapons employed are restricted in size, the zones over which they fight are static and limited. They each hope to win by attrition, to fight on until the enemy can stand no more; to remain strong enough, long enough to gain an "edge", after which a final, real "push" will take place. Only then will the battle leave the traditional war zones, as piece by piece the enemy's lands are conquered, the enemy race enslaved and punished. Nothing less will satisfy the Myedrolarian peoples.
Both sides supplement their fighting forces with droids. These and all their war gear are brought in from off world (usually cheap, used equipment purchased in bulk from junk shippers) and modified for war in the zones. The Grawdin fight in warrior packs, the Rourrh in fighting clan sub units. Most Grawdin and Rourrh are obsessed with the struggle and their hatred of the enemy and have very little interest in the bigger galactic conflict. Those Grawdin who do tire of the conflict, and Rourrh of failing clans (neither being uncommon occurrences), usually take to the stars as space farers, merchants, hired guards and crew members. They rarely serve as soldiers or mercenaries: if a Grawdin pack's will to fight resurfaces it tends to return ‘home’ rather than fight anywhere else; while star faring Rourrh have accepted in leaving Myedrolar that the only honourable role left to them is to procure war gear.
Surprisingly, starfaring Myedrolarians avoid encounters with their old enemy, and if they do encounter each other then neither side tends to fight. Starfaring Grawdin do not want blood, the Rourrh no longer see fighting as their honourable role. To the rest of the galaxy's inhabitants, it is a strange sight indeed to watch star faring Rourrh and Grawdin bands exchanging awful yet formal curses and threats, then quietly, and without any of the apparently inevitable physical struggle, walking away from each other. Just as their war has become formalised and somewhat conventional, their manner of cursing has a long established pattern, in which both sides play their part then retire (if not on Gohlag 6).
Starfaring Myedrolarians do have obligations, however. Grawdin must pay the ‘War fifth’ - none are excepted – being a fifth of all profits made (in any manner) paid as a tax to provide funds for the war on Myedrolar. ‘Procurers’ travel the stars keeping a track of their wandering siblings, and to obtain the fifth. The procurers then purchase and ship equipment required for the war. Starfaring Rourrh, on the other hand, being much smaller in number, send all profits back home in the form of war supplies, excepting what profits they see fit to retain in order that they may grow richer, and thus ultimately able to send even more to Myedrolar.
The War Zones (Excerpt from scenario notes)Many years ago now, the Myedrolarian war settled itself upon specific regions of the planet, known as the War Zones. There, due to the centuries of incessant warfare, the landscape is rather different to the rest of Myedrolar. Great and small rifts and cracks criss cross the zones, forming a maze like mass of canyons.
This damage was done several centuries ago when war was being fought all over Myedrolar's surface. During a campaign in this region, earthquake weapons were employed, often coupled with very heavy sonic disruptor weapons. Both shattered and cracked buildings and vehicles, then the hills and the very land itself, as waves of disruption met enemy waves and magnified exponentially; as one earthquake, triggered by the Grawdin, was married to another begun by the Rourrh, and the world itself seemed to shake in its orbit!
Since that time, the war fixed itself in this most affected region the region becoming a reminder of the need to limit this war of attrition, or risk destroying Myedrolar just like the Rourrh and Grawdin did each to others’ home-worlds. Over the years, even though an upper limit on weapon size has been accepted, all sorts of weapons have been tried, leaving some regions radio active, and others saturated by persistent, irremovable chemicals. Little now grows there, apart from hardy (often weirdly mutated) weeds. Little fauna lives there, other than hard shelled bugs and deep burrowing worms and grubs.
A form of trench warfare rages there now, though a lot more mobile than normal trench warfare. It is known to the combatants as ‘maze warfare’ and involves war on two levels at once the maze rift bottoms and the ground surface. It is a war of ambush and hit and run. Land vehicles are of little use in such terrain, air cushion vehicles have great difficulty negotiating the steeply walled rifts. Both repulsorlift vehicles and aircraft are vulnerable to sudden attack from weapons hidden from their sensors within the shadows of the crevices beneath them. Smaller vehicles can make safer, if very much slower, progress through the crevices themselves, but are then vulnerable to surprise attacks from warriors hidden above them on the upper slopes and brims of the rifts and valleys.
Can you tell I had been reading a book about fractals at the time? I liked the idea of the players bringing up a map of the area on their console, then zooming in to find basically more of the same!Infantry thus form an important component of warfare. Vehicles (in numbers or alone) are often protected by a shield of foot scouts and droids, especially the cargo carrying supply vehicles. Some war vehicles are specially designed to travel along the very brims of the trenches, called ‘Maze-Skimmers’, scanning both the upper surface and the trench bottom simultaneously. These are relatively few in numbers because there is nothing manufactured (to the Myedrolarians’ knowledge) to perform such an unusual and specific role. Usually these specialised vehicles are created by heavily modifying generally available repulsorlift craft.
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