Bastard's Bastards

[Steerpike]

I could ask so many!  A few to start:

- Who are the principal employers of the Bastards, historically and currently?

- Do the Bastards engage in space-based ship-to-ship combat - dogfights, boarding actions, orbital assaults, space station warfare, etc?

- How does FTL work in the universe of the Bastards?

- Does nanotechnology exist in this setting?

[Rhamnousia]

Who are the principal employers of the Bastards, historically and currently?

I'll get back to you on this one! Generally, they find work with both local polities and rebel movements in need of outside expertise, Sphere-based macrocorporations, generals needing to pad out their numbers for lengthy campaigns, etc.

Do the Bastards engage in space-based ship-to-ship combat - dogfights, boarding actions, orbital assaults, space station warfare, etc?

The Bastards prefer to launch boarding actions whenever feasible, but that's mostly restricted to civilian vessels and the most lightly-armed of warships. Anything along the lines of a dedicated cruiser or dreadnought could blow them into space dust before the King could get close enough to return fire; similar rules apply when attacking space stations. Orbital assaults can be devastating, but only against targets without the capability to detect small, fast-moving landing craft, because all a defender needs is a few decently-aimed nuclear weapons or the like to wipe out the entire force while still in the atmosphere. Generally, the Bastards prefer to land their forces at standing areas well away from their targets and advance on foot from there, making them much, much harder to detect.

How does FTL work in the universe of the Bastards?

I'm still thinking about that, but I'm leaning most heavily towards a system of massive relays along the lines of the Warp Gates from Cowboy Bebop, with travel within systems still being a rather tedious affair.

Does nanotechnology exist in this setting?

It does, but it's concentrated almost exclusively to the Inner Spheres, with most Rim versions being far from reliable.

[Steerpike]

I'm still thinking about that, but I'm leaning most heavily towards a system of massive relays along the lines of the Warp Gates from Cowboy Bebop, with travel within systems still being a rather tedious affair.

This is cool, but it would have some very serious military implications - if a hostile faction were to seize control of a relay/gate and the Crimson King is as outclassed as you suggest in space-based engagements versus more powerful warships, the Bastards could have a lot of trouble jumping into hostile territory, right?  I get the feeling they're more offensive than defensive, so this might be a problem for them...?

Have you considered wormholes?  Some of the same concerns may apply, but there may be ways around them.

[Rhamnousia]

Wormholes might be a possibility: I suppose it might be plausible for the Crimson King and similar vessels to have Galactica-esque FTL drives capable of extremely short-ranged jumps between neighboring star systems, while still being reliant on the relay network for travel between more distant points. The biggest problem a fleet would face when it comes to blockading a section of the network is covering the entire range of the relay closely enough that an incoming vessel can't simply outmaneuver them long enough to jump to the next relay, while not straying so close that they risk falling victim to Rick Robinson's Law of Space Combat; that is, being struck by a vessel before it had time to properly decelerate, a point when impact damage is measured in equivalent weights of antimatter. Large warships (which are already uncommon on the Rim due to their cost and incredible upkeep requirements) would be much more effective within planetary systems, where the gravity wells force smaller ships into knife-fighting ranges and inhibit their ability to accelerate into them kamikaze-style, a favored tactic of the hopelessly-outmatched and one that the Bastards have used to bluff their way out of more than one standoff. Park a well-armed dreadnought in polar orbit and you can pretty reliably shoot down any large vessel attempting break atmo in that hemisphere.

[Rhamnousia]

Who are the principal employers of the Bastards, historically and currently?

I'm not going to make any further generalizations about planetary warfare on the Rim because I will absolutely end up contradicting myself down the line if I do, but it's not generally a short affair. In addition to their own conventional forces, warmasters often hire large numbers of mercenary outfits like the Bastards to lend their expertise to specific military operations, typically with a limited time frame unless they want to see their coffers rapidly drained. The Bastards don't even need to be formally approached; once word spreads that a campaign is underway, the system is often flooded with mercenaries trying to get in on the action at the expense of their competitors. If the campaign in question is a multi-system crusade (a more common occurrence than you might think, Rimworld tyrants being an ambitious lot), then the Crimson King can trail behind the main fleet like a whitetip shark for years at a time, making themselves known to the leadership whenever favorable work presents itself and picking up side jobs on neighboring worlds along the way. The Bastards can be contracted to fight in local bush wars, rebel uprisings, dynastic struggles, but unless one of the parties involved has some serious cash to flash (as was the case during the Pandissian Succession) or otherwise makes it worth their while, then these are not the sort of jobs that the regiment will go out of its way to pursue, preferring to seek out regions of large-scale conflict. Some Rim polities, and even the occasional Sphere macrocorporation, charter the Bastards as privateers, but the make a point to avoid the "corp wars" that occasionally spill out of the Inner Sphere.

Unless you were asking about specific factions who've hired them, in which case, you suggestions are as good as mine.

[SA]

I'm not going to make any further generalizations about planetary warfare on the Rim because I will absolutely end up contradicting myself down the line if I do

Retcons are the auteur's prerogative.

[Fortunato]

I've hit a couple snags in my creative process and I was hoping ya'll might be able to weigh in here;

As I've briefly mentioned, besides the everloving Waste Rat and its derivatives, the Bastards have a collection of other tracks, crawlers, and creepers that they deploy intermittently, as well as some not-insignificant air power; I'm getting hung-up on how much detail I should go into about their vehicles. I don't want to dwell too much on explaining archaic armored warfare terminology, and a lot of the descriptions I've tried writing up have devolved into "But the Bastards just as often replace Gun X with Guns Y and/or Z", but at the same time I feel like they at least deserve a mention? Even worse, I'm also at a loss for good, evocative nicknames (an absolute necessity given the WWII British influence).

Besides nuhus, prawns, hazhrat, and nicks (really need a better name), I want to add a couple more minor alien species but I also don't want them to smack too much of the classic "Planet of Hats" or "Rubber Forehead Aliens" stereotypes. A few of the basic concepts are the "tallboys" (radially-symmetric creatures shamelessly poached from the work of Simon Roy), the jackalbirds (gangling, awkward-looking corvine humanoids), the voon (essentially evil Vulcans driven by pure, ethnocentric logic and mortal enemies of Boudicca Bastard), and a fluid that becomes sentient under sufficiently-high pressure, but I also want some sort of plant/fungus-people and maybe another synthetic? Thoughts?

I have a very specific aesthetic vision in mind for the Bastards, but I'm having trouble communicating it without using out-of-character terminology: basically, I see them as a ramshackle mix of "used" retro science fiction, Anglo-centric dieselpunk, Wild West a la Firefly and Near East  a la Dune, and the punk and mod subcultures, with their vehicles influenced most by the Brass, Vintage, and Classic-era aesthetics. Hoping at least a little of that got through.

First off, very cool concepts happening here!  Swimming with flavor :)

If you still want more aliens, how about a sentient starfish looking thing that reanimates enemy corpses with the aim of maximizing battlefield chaos.  Imagine, an "enemy" unit infected by starfish infiltrating a base and the damage they could do before being discovered.  It could also have some very kinky, twisted ramifications for life on the Crimson King when you think about how flexible some Bastards are.

As for vehicles, how about single (or dual) occupant ultra lite gliders with active camouflage.  Silent nearly invisible squads used for stealth mission drops or demoralizing, out of nowhere, midnight bombing runs.

And now a question, cyber combat, is that the sole domain of SWITCHBOARD?

[Rhamnousia]

I like the idea of Bastards utilizing gliders, it not necessarily that exact design. It has a definite WWII British commando vibe to it, and the prefect name already comes to mind: the Night Witch.

And yes, electronic and cyberwarfare is pretty much the exclusive purview of SWITCHBOARD. I was originally batting around the idea that the Bastards would deploy some sort of field techies, but I decided that lots of miniaturized computers gave the Rim too modern a feel. Instead, the norm is for most networks to be run from a single massive and often self-aware mainframe, so you're not going to encounter any sort of "extranet" outside of the tech-lousy Inner Spheres. This sort of combat mostly takes the form of jamming or phreaking an enemy's communications, subverting wireless control and guidance systems, damaging sensors through killer pokes, etc. More Alan Turing than the Matrix.

[Rhamnousia]

I went with the War Witches first because I have the best idea about their sense of identity and they're honestly my favorite. Do people like that length-wise, or could you stand to hear more?

[SA]

You said manpower. That doesn't sound right.

[Rhamnousia]

I never should have discussed Bastard grammar with you.

[SA]

:wink: We all make mistakes.

[Xathan]

An act of thread necromancy for one of my favorite newer settings on here!

I was wondering if you were planning on elaborating on the various companies above? I'd especially love to know where any/all of them got their names. More questions to come, because I love this, but that was the first one that came to mind. :)

[Rhamnousia]

I am, but it's a daunting task. Any you were hoping to hear about first?

[Xathan]

I am, but it's a daunting task. Any you were hoping to hear about first?

Worm Soldiers, Blind Sphinxes, War Witches (especially their motto), Greyjacks (ditto), Hungry Ghosts, and Stoneburners all sound they have an interesting story behind them. :)

Also, is "Final Argument" an allusion to "The Last Argument of Kings,"/Reason from Snowcrash?