Thank you for taking the time to read my fiction. I have a little more time to devote to writing and I hope you continue to enjoy my contributions.
I’m starting this particular thread in order to prevent holding discussions between installments of my fiction. Please leave your comments and discussion here and go ahead and ask any questions you may have concerning my work.
My interest in Battletech started when members of my war game club, the UHOGS (University of Hawaii Organizational Group Studies) started playing a game about giant robots. At first, I declined; I was totally unfamiliar and uninterested in the genre, and some of the guys who played weren’t even wargamers, they played with giant robots and some unfathomable baseball simulator, where they would spend a whole weekend establishing a league and play (somewhat noisily) all Summer long.
I had first started war gaming in the 1960s, when a friend ordered a board game that simulated the Battle of Waterloo in the mail and we took turns slaughtering each other during the weekends. Once I found out that a local toy store carried games by Avalon Hill, my weekend schedules were pretty much booked.
Graduating from high school and starting college at the age of 16, (the laws at the time were written to accommodate rural students who would work at the farms and plantations, so all you needed was a certain number of credits to graduate, so taking Summer school would have allowed me to graduate even earlier) I discovered the UHOGS, who gamed Friday, Saturday and Sunday with access to UH classrooms.
Fast forward; I got cooking staff job at the Kona Hilton, got bored, then a did a 4-year stint in the US Army, mostly to do war game research, was hired by the FAA and after a couple of years at the NY TRACON, transferred back to Honolulu… To my delight, the UHOGS were still there in 1989…
Eventually, one of the BT players invited me to join in on a battle, where they needed more players on the OPFOR (Opposing Force or enemy) team, and in Hawaii, we are all very polite and rarely turn down an invitation, I assented. Mind you, I had no clue of the BT universe or any of the units, never even heard of Robotech (who needs television when your parents bought every set of Time/Life books from the 60s to the 80s?) and had only passing interest in sci-fi. Once I was briefed, I commanded a small lance and participated in a battle that the players weren’t ready for. The commanders heatedly argued and that ended the scenario, with a portion of their force leaving the field and the remainder forced to flee. The players then bitterly dissolved the mercenary unit and after more fighting, some of the players left the campaign (and the club) while the remaining players started over… One of the remaining players invited me to join his unit and gave me copies of the RPG manual and a horrid paperback about a whiny Clan Jade Falcon pilot, which almost made me refuse to have anything else to do with the game and its players, it was so bad. Since I enjoyed RPGs, I read the manual (MW1) from cover to cover and saw potential. At that time, I also discovered the computer games, which skewed my knowledge of the BT universe because I was soon familiar with all the Clan invasion omnis while the campaign was still in the 3030s…
At around the same time, one of my friends was hired by Microsoft and moved, leaving me a treasure trove of out of print FASA material and dozens of figures, including LAMs still in the blisters and a couple of ancient Battledroids figures. This gave me much more data for me to play (and roleplay) the game properly.
My prospective commander strongly suggested that I roll up an Azami character, which would be a first for the campaign (and give his unit access to Star League equipment, as he was metagaming…) but I noticed scant material on the Azami, save a few paragraphs, so the GM tasked me with fleshing out an entire sub-culture to give my character (and subsequent Azami players) more to work with. First, much the information in the sourcebooks was laughable; The Arkab legions weren’t a Japanese corruption on the word “Arab”; The Azami were primarily North Africans, not Arabs and Arkab was the name of a star, like Algedi, Altair, or Ra’s al Hawwa (Rasalhague). Secondly, some of the data was just wrong, such as the Azami contingent traveling to Luthien to offer a truce when the capitol of the Combine was still at Samarkand, or the Algedi Azami being afraid of the dark because their sun being so huge, the planet had no night, as if they never went indoors, ever…or slept. There were many other preposterous assumptions, such as the Azami at prayer in space standing on their heads to face Mecca but that just reflects a lack of understanding of Islam and the requirements of the invocation, such as touching the ground with forehead, palms, knees and toes during the prostrations. Islamic sources provide answers:
“All Muslims throughout the world should always face the general direction of the Ka‘bah during every Prayer. However, during a journey and when travelling, if one fails to determine the direction properly or when one is unable to face towards the Ka‘bah because of illness, for it is beyond one’s capacity to do so, then one is not obliged to face towards the Qiblah. Also, when on a journey, riding on a mount, train, boat or plane, one should say one’s Prayers facing in the same direction towards which one is moving, or indeed any convenient position will be acceptable.”
After a few years of playing BT, I had accumulated a large amount of data, in which to fill in the numerous blank spots in the source materials that I decided to share it, using the medium of fan fiction, which has been well received.
I started with “Travels with Uncle Ahmed” in 2004, which introduced the main characters of the bulk of my fiction, as well as daily life and the history of the Azami religious sect.
After my character’s unit fought on Luthien, I wrote “Footnote” and subsequently “The Compassionate, the Merciful”, also in 2004.
Limitations
Posting fiction on a family-oriented board has its usual limitations on language, as expected. Another limitation is the physical length of posts. While dedicated fiction sites have few limits on length, these boards have a solid limit of about nine pages of text, just in case you wonder why my installments are of a certain length. Before I made that discovery, I had to pare down some of my stories just to fit the text limit, often losing whole paragraphs of dialogue. Now, I do my best to write installments so that they will fit within the limits without losing content. It has been a learning experience, although I do have the original stories in pre-edited form.
Stray Dogs
About five years ago, I decided to retire from the FAA after about 35 years. During that time, I devoted myself to finishing a number of projects that I had suggested (In addition to my regular training and communications duties) but nobody acted upon, such as a full rewrite and update of several training manuals and SOP folders that were literally decades obsolete. I also had to deal with a feckless transfer employee in my section, who had copied my older material verbatim and submitted them under his own name, just to suck up to management without doing any work; Had he waited a couple of weeks, he would have gotten away with it, without me exposing him. My fan fiction was put on hold until I could retire and move to my current address in Kansas.
Stray Dogs was my finally getting around to stories I had either outlined or had bouncing around inside my head. As with regular role playing, my stories concern people and events that normally have absolutely no effect on the universe, or the course of history, they are just stuff that happen within the universe, often unseen.
The Bounty
This comedy was the result of a suggestion from a discussion on bounties that having a valuable “blood chit” would attract attacks on the people who had them, even by unqualified amateurs.
…The Compassionate, the Merciful
When my character’s unit was fighting on Luthien, the GM handed me a list of casualties he had randomly rolled and Sven Shamash, the main character’s cousin, was on that list. Unsatisfied that a member of the unit was simply crossed off the roles, I played out the scenario, using the sheets of Clan omnis damaged in the previous battles and in pursuit of retreating defenders. Shamash’s customized Crab was part of the reserves thrown into the gap to slow the pursuers.
The Call of Ancient Blood
While my friends in school were all following the 1970s Tolkein fad, I was reading the stories by Lovecraft. After somebody had asked about BT stories with supernatural content, I decided that the genre was long overdue and actually has a strong theme tied into my other stories, as you shall see.
Interviews
It is always interesting when gaming philosophies collide during and RPG session. In this case, a min/max gamer applied to a well-established player’s regiment and the min/maxer was sent away to look elsewhere. As a GM, I’ve allowed min/max players but I always warn them that they has better accept the results of being out of their mechs.
The Cat and the Mirror
Nearly every player in my group with a unit eventually wound up facing the Clans and players were expected to either command units for the Combine or the OPFOR in the larger battles. Clan Nova Cat soon became my favorite Clan to play as they weren’t so rigid in their rules and were just a lot of fun. From the Clan Nova Cat perspective, Clan Smoke Jaguar made a huge error in their attack on Luthien, as well as their proposed overall strategy. After weeks of playing out the scenarios with all the latest rules for vehicles, infantry, technology and artillery, I concluded that the Clans would never had gotten as far as they did under the same circumstances. The new rules were indeed game changers. The encounter with the Arkab Crab was only a part of the overall story as seen through the eyes of a rank and file mechwarrior.
