The Niops Irregulars (Fallout: Niops)

[Giovanni Blasini]

Niops Irregulars

The Niops Association could not be said to have weathered the time period of the Jihad well.  Between their own civil war, predation by their neighbors the Marian Hegemony, and a full invasion and nuking by the Word of Blake, the Niops Association was frankly a wreck by 3085, one that, by 3145, still has not completely recovered.

One symptom of the damage done to Niops is the "Irregular Militia", the name the local government and their official Niops Association Militia (or NAM) has given to the various paramilitary organizations that cropped up during the Jihad and its aftermath, which can still be found playing a role in 32nd century Niopian society.

Theoretically answerable to the government and NAM, the Irregulars are generally beholden only to themselves and their local communities. Because they are not part of the regular Militia, the various Irregulars instead arm themselves with whatever they can scrounge up, locally make, or whatever interested parties, be they Marian, Free Worlder, Canopian or even Capellan, can supply them with.

The end result is that, unlike the NAM, the various units of the Irregulars have no commonality of equipment, doctrine or training between each other or, often, internally.  Individual groups rarely get along, which is little surprise, given many of them were actively shooting at each other on a regular basis during Niops' civil war.

Once the Niops Association government was able to reform in the 3090s, the role of the Irregulars has diminished, but, much to the chagrin of the NAM, decommissioning the Irregulars’ military hardware has proven impossible.  Niops strategic doctrine and Militia chain of command, therefore, places the Irregulars ostensibly under the control of the Niops Association Militia, though in practice, this control generally is limited to telling a particular Irregular group to stay in a specific area, out of the way of NAM forces, and to not shoot at friendlies: while the small Irregular groups tend to have more combat experience than the much larger NAM, they tend not to play well with others.

As of 3145, violence between Irregular militia units has dropped off considerably, but is not unheard of.  The central government and Niops Association Militia have sought to channel this by proposing a Niops Olympiad, modeled on the ancient Martial Olympiad, current Solaris VII games and annual Noisiel Summer Games as an outlet for any remaining hostility and antipathy between the various Niopian factions.  Whether this will prove successful remains to be seen, and the increased bloodshed and loss of Republic of the Sphere support, despite the relative unpopularity of the Republic, does not make the likelihood promising.

(This is a little something Chanman and I have been bouncing around since the Jihad books indicated the Wobbies nuked Niops.  Each Irregulars group will have their own entry.  At some point, we'll probably do a full writeup of the setting. Maybe.)

[Giovanni Blasini]

Niops Postal Service

Perhaps the largest paramilitary unit in the Association is the Niops Postal Service.  A semi-private organization run jointly by the central government and Starlight Communications of Niops, the NPS offers physical mail and package delivery, as well as broadband communications on all three planets of the Niops Association.

Because their services often took them to some of the more rough and remote areas of the Niops Association, the NPS began arming their Postmen and Deliverators during the civil unrest in the 3070s. 

By the time of the Word of Blake invasion, it was not uncommon for the NPS to have supplemented their off-road segways and large-bore lever-action rifles with surplus Sloth quad battlesuits that had their pop-up mine systems removed for cargo storage.  This trend has continued into the 3140s.

In addition to the standard Postmen and Deliverators, the NPS makes use of larger vehicles like the Buster XV HaulerMech or Daedalus GTX2A CargoMech at their distribution centers.  During the worst of the Niops Civil War and Word of Blake invasion, the NPS turned to arming these units to protect their distribution centers and run blockades to assist the Niops Association Militia by maintaining their supplies.  Of all the Irregular groups, the NPS is the one that cooperates the most with the Association government and Niops Association Militia.

Common Forces:

Motorized Rifle Infantry Platoons
Foot Rifle Infantry Platoons
Sloth Battlesuits Squads
Buster XV HaulerMech
Buster XV-M HaulerMech MOD
Buster XV-M-B HaulerMech MOD
Daedalus GTX2 CargoMech
Daedalus GTX2 Militarized CargoMech


Deployment Strategy

Primary post offices tend cluster near ports, be they airports, seaports or spaceports.  These ports have, in addition to the Busters and Daedalus IndustrialMechs used for loading and hauling, security handled by a lance of armed IndustrialMechs.  The bulk of defensive forces consist of Postal Deliverators and their Sloth quad battlearmor “suits”, who, when Postal facilities are threatened, will circle the wagons and defend them.  Supplementing the armed IndustrialMechs and outdated Sloth battlearmor are postal personnel armed with heavy-caliber lever-action rifles, often using the segway electric vehicles Postmen use to make their rounds.  Because of the dispersed nature of their facilities, it is rare to see NPS paramilitary forces in large force concentrations.


Estimated Size

1 Company Sloth battlearmor, distributed across Niops V, VI and VII, with 16 Sloths per world
216 Segway-equipped Postal Carriers per planet, averaged (8 motorized rifle infantry platoons)
1 company armed IndustrialMechs per planet, with one lance assigned to each of the three major ports per planet
1 company armed IndustrialMech guarding the NPS Starlight Communications HPG Facility

Experience Level:  Green/Fanatical

[Giovanni Blasini]

Rust Riders: The Star League Museum Commemorative ‘Mech Force

During the initial civil unrest and brief Niops Civil War, the curators and staff of the Star League Museum of Niops took great pains to keep their exhibits, data cache and grounds intact against predation, both by the various paramilitary groups homegrown on Niops, and outside raiders, such as the Marian Hegemony.  To do so, they turned to some of their own exhibits: several primitive BattleMechs representing some of the earliest examples of ‘Mechs in the service of the Terran Hegemony.

While this worked well against most of the homegrown groups, and not completely awfully against the Marians, Blakist nuclear weapons tend to be more effective, and did significant damage to the Museum and the Commemorative ‘Mech Force that protected it, despite being on the outskirts of the blast.  After the final expulsion of the bulk of Word of Blake Militia forces from Niops VII during the Jihad, the Museum painstakingly decontaminated the site, repaired their remaining primitive BattleMechs, and set about preserving as much as they could from the wreckage of the various Niops Project Workshops.

At present, the Museum remains the only group of paramilitary Irregulars capable of salvaging and fielding BattleMechs on their own, without relying on outside sources.  Most of these ‘Mechs are from their own Museum warehouse collections, and continue to represent the most primitive of the breed, though the Museum also began salvaging more modern BattleMech wreckage from NAM and WoBM units destroyed during the Jihad, turning the usable components over to the government, and keeping the rest for their new museum wing.  Of the sixteen operational Nighthawk light powered armor suits still operational in the Niops Association, the Rust Riders possess four of them: this accounts for roughly 25% of the total number of Nighthawk suits estimated to still be in operation in the Inner Sphere or Periphery, as the suit type has long since fallen out of favor and production.  The Museum hopes to resume limited production of the Nighthawk series by 3150, though, which could cause a minor resurgence in the design’s fortunes.  The four suits, named the Nevermores, operate in conjunction with the Rust Rider’s Shadow Hawk LAM, another design not found outside of Niops space – the Riders possess the only known functional Shadow Hawk LAM.  The LAM, named “Fat Albert”, carries the Nevermores in its internal bomb bay, dropping the team at air shows across Niops.


Rust Riders Company

Command Lance: HEP-1H Helepolis, GRF-1A Griffin, RFL-1N Rifleman, KY2-D-01 Kyudo
Fire Lance: MSK-5S Mackie, BNC-1E Banshee, ARC-1A Archer, ON-1H Orion
Recon Lance:  WSP-1 Wasp, SHD-1R Shadow Hawk, SHD-X2 Shadow Hawk LAM, Nighthawk PA(L) squad

Experience/Reliability: Regular/Reliable

[Daryk]

I'm generally not a post-Clan invasion guy, but this is brilliant Gio!  O0

So tell me, do the weapon smugglers have an Irregular security force?

[Sharpnel]

Love it, so far. Especially the Rust Rider. Go Prim or Go Home.

[Tegyrius]

This is awesome.  Love the museum unit and the fact that they put on public demonstrations.

[Giovanni Blasini]

I'm generally not a post-Clan invasion guy, but this is brilliant Gio!  O0

So tell me, do the weapon smugglers have an Irregular security force?

I'm leaning towards full on Mad Max for them.

[Daryk]

I was thinking they'd mix in some of the top shelf gear, to advertise what's on offer...

[Giovanni Blasini]

After the Jihad, I'm not sure there is much top shelf gear on Niops. :D At that point, they're buying from the Marians, of all people, along with the various pieces of the FWL, and funded almost entirely by Interstellar Expeditions.

Y'now, that actually might be a side business there for the IE crowd, funding other groups and weapons sales to protect their germanium mining interests, given that the official government Militia is still rebuilding.  So, how about:

Wastelanders: Mad Max style with arena fights using Chanman's BubbaMech rules.

Syndicate:  Local "corporate security" and "freelancers" ala Shadowrun, supporting IE and other more local businesses against one another. Could be one of the reasons the NPS armed themselves in the first place.

Tir-Na-Niops Rangers: The armed groups of Niopian elves protecting their enclaves (with throwbacks to the FGC62 and BattleRun April Fool's product). All infantry and UrbanMechs.

Hmm...who else?

[Liam's Ghost]

The Brotherhood of Science. Protectors of the accumulated knowledge of Niops, armed to the teeth with heirloom power armor.

[Daryk]

What I was thinking for the smugglers was stuff like infantry with Mauser 1200 LSS that "fell off the back of a truck" somewhere a few decades ago, a crate of RL-10s that the Marians won't miss much, or the occasional piece of salvaged electronics.  Niops has never struck me as squeamish about high tech, even WoB stuff (unlike the whole IS, apparently).

[snakespinner]

Love the Postman delivering mail in Sloth battlesuits.
I'll never say anything bad to him again. :D
The Niopian elves sounds like a great idea.
Would they be a Canopian created species that escaped and fled to Niops.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Love the Postman delivering mail in Sloth battlesuits.
I'll never say anything bad to him again. :D
The Niopian elves sounds like a great idea.
Would they be a Canopian created species that escaped and fled to Niops.

The way we handled it once upon a time back in FGC 3062 was to make them a mix of homegrown and Terran in origins, using Belter gene mods as our basis.  Basically, they used an earlier version of the Belter longevity mods, with a side effect of their childhood physical development occurring at about half the normal rate, too, while mental development was essentially at their normal rate, meaning you had elves in their early 20s at universities looking like they were 10-12 years old, so any that wanted to actually pursue a military career wouldn't actually be able to do so until their late 30s to early 40s at least.

Rules-wise, though, treat 'em exactly like having access to the Belter mods.

[Giovanni Blasini]

What I was thinking for the smugglers was stuff like infantry with Mauser 1200 LSS that "fell off the back of a truck" somewhere a few decades ago, a crate of RL-10s that the Marians won't miss much, or the occasional piece of salvaged electronics.  Niops has never struck me as squeamish about high tech, even WoB stuff (unlike the whole IS, apparently).

You do have to be careful of that, though, especially when the Regulars are practically your neighbors.  You run the risk of them finishing off what the Wobble nukes started.

That said, a corporate group who pays top dollar for Wobbie salvage they try to reverse engineer, illegally, I might add?  I could totally see that, chummer.  >:D

The Brotherhood of Science. Protectors of the accumulated knowledge of Niops, armed to the teeth with heirloom power armor.

"We are the priests of the Temple of Syrinx.  Our great computers fill the hallowed halls!"

So, it turns out my reading of Field Manual 3145 was possibly in error, specifically my interpretation of a quote on page 199:

The one bright spot in an otherwise bleak recent history has been the formal addition of infantry forces to the NAM in both unarmored and battle armor alike. The NAM currently has four squads of the ancient Nighthawk Mk XXI power armor— representing all of the suits left in active service today. These assets are used exclusively to protect the government facilities on  Niops VII.

I had taken that to mean the Nighthawk was basically an extinct design, but the MUL lists a handful of factions as still fielding it as of the Dark Age.  It looks more like Niops is down to a mere sixteen Nighthawk suits, not that the Inner Sphere is.  That complicates the Rust Riders using them, or the Temple of Syrinx.

[Dragon Cat]

How did I miss this originally it's great