Shrapnel 15 - Double your fun!

[Sartris]

i need an alert system so i know when writers drag extinct unit off the scrap pile...

[Dubble_g]

Thanks for your interest in The Alexandria Job. My earlier pieces in Shrapnel have tended to tackle more serious subject matter, the morality of rule by military, the pitfalls of believing your own myths, and the complicated nature of wars among family members. This was a nice change to do something a bit more straightforward and light-hearted, with a heist story featuring BatteMechs. Anyway, as to your question, in a BattleTech Forums E X C L U S I V E I'm happy to reveal here the fates of all the characters from the story:

Chesterfield "Chuck" Stevenson: KIA on Alexandria. Buried with his beloved collection of cigars.

Lemmy "Lemmy" Lemmonson: Used his payback from House Marik to retire from mercenary life and bought a home on New Delos, where nothing bad ever happened to anybody ever again.

Onomatopoeia "Janis" Davidson: After becoming dispossessed, opened an artisanal bakery shop on Alexandria, and maintained an active hobby in collecting amusingly-shaped root vegetables that were regularly featured on the planetary newsnet.

Mithras Li: Dishonorably discharged from the militia following the incident, although he shortly thereafter came into a mysterious source of money which he used to build a palatial home on Alexandria and lived out the rest of his days in comfortable indulgence.

Faith Tam: Rose to become a Colonel in the planetary militia, and was widely viewed by her men to be steady, competent, and absolutely No Fun At All.

Lee "Patti" Patterson: Sadly died in a freak DropShip crash a few months later, in which her BattleMech was also destroyed. The only survivor of the crash was an orange tabby cat called "Jones." Jones was briefly held on suspicion of being a SAFE agent, before being released into the custody of Snord's Irregulars.   

[five_corparty]

While we're talking about our motivations for writing things, I wrote Raptor's Requiem solely to address a bit of errata. When I wrote the Spotlight On for the Crescent Hawks way back in like 2016, I created Jezebel Youngblood to be the new leader of the unit for the modern era. I wrote that every other Youngblood had been killed when the Jade Falcons invaded Arc-Royal in 3146, leaving her the last of her name. But...the print edition of TRO 3150 added a few new notable pilots that weren't in the PDFs, including one Jen Youngblood, working for the Kell Hounds and piloting a Hollander III. I missed this tidbit, and so did the fact checkers. Rather than errata the product, i thought I'd make a story out of it. So, seven years later...

But I'm most interested in how people react to the last scene of the story, which sets up the next part.

VERY COOL. I absolutely loved the story, I loved the fight and the honor and ALL of it.  Seeing this backstory, that it sort of started as an error that you then used as a nugget for this?  NICE.  Just, very, very cool. :-)

[five_corparty]

i need an alert system so i know when writers drag extinct unit off the scrap pile...

To be fair, I asked first. ;-) hahaha

(The choices were between a Galahad, a Hercules, and the Paladin, so I took the one with the coolest story hooks. ;-)

[BZArcher]

Peeks in

I hope people enjoyed Signing Bonus!

This was another story that got kickstarted (hah) by the announcement of the special Mercs issue during the last KS.

We see a lot of stories of Mercenaries in combat or starting / ending contracts, but I couldn't really think of any stories of a unit trying to get a new contract, and the headaches that might come up. I also wanted to dabble in a different time period since my first (and hopefully upcoming) stories for the magazine have been set in the DA / ilClan eras.

That period between the first and second Succession War is interesting to me because of the general exhaustion of the Successor States and how relatively quickly things flare up again. With so many facilites and resources lost, it made sense to me that mercenary units would be incredibly valuable to help fill out the ranks for defense and offense, and putting a tiny little nod in there towards Mark Hill's Paper Tiger was fun. :)

Hopefully people liked Mark and Iris. I think there's a chance I might revisit them sometime in the early days of the 2nd war, too.

-BZ / Jaymie

[Caesar Steiner for Archon]

- Unit Digest: Outer Reaches Disciples - Looking all the way back to the Outer Reaches Rebellion, I wanted to mine the lore (thanks, XTRO Primitives!) to show what an interstellar mercenary unit - perhaps even the first interstellar mercenary unit - could have looked like.

I've always felt like the post-Outer Reaches Rebellion, Protostate period had a sort of Red Dead Redemption feeling to it. When the colonies started to form actual governments, that was like the end of the Old West. The telegraph line goes up and the train comes through. Some mercenaries threw in with a state, but your guys kept going despite the prospects getting slimmer. Also, trying to stand up against the Terran Hegemony? Shows they had a real love for taking contracts with underdogs rather than safe bets. Having their colors get taken up by bandits was the last little tragic bit.

[Mendrugo]

I've always felt like the post-Outer Reaches Rebellion, Protostate period had a sort of Red Dead Redemption feeling to it. When the colonies started to form actual governments, that was like the end of the Old West. The telegraph line goes up and the train comes through. Some mercenaries threw in with a state, but your guys kept going despite the prospects getting slimmer. Also, trying to stand up against the Terran Hegemony? Shows they had a real love for taking contracts with underdogs rather than safe bets. Having their colors get taken up by bandits was the last little tragic bit.

They had kind of an ace in the hole by not having to rely exclusively on contract payments - they continued to get bankrolled by the Ryan Cartel, which maintained a strong antipathy for Terran authority.

[Dubble_g]

If you're interested in the Outer Reaches Rebellion, my story "Inverted" in Shrapnel #4 is set on Freedom during the rebellion.

[Jaim Magnus]

I love this issue. It's chock full of awesome. And I even got on the cover!?

With "Picking the Bones" I got to look at some of the immediate aftermath of what Republic troops were thinking. Where would they go? What would they do? Would they even remain as a unit? What did they manage to take with them, and what price would others pay for it?

It was fun to write and even more fun to explore a less straightforward fight.

Hope everyone enjoyed.

[Jal Phoenix]

VERY COOL. I absolutely loved the story, I loved the fight and the honor and ALL of it.  Seeing this backstory, that it sort of started as an error that you then used as a nugget for this?  NICE.  Just, very, very cool. :-)

Thank you! It's always a pleasure to write something for Shrapnel. This is one of the products that BattleTech needed, and I'm glad it's doing so well.

[Caesar Steiner for Archon]

Something I really appreciate about Shrapnel (besides that they once published something I wrote) is that they're willing to run stuff in the eras BT didn't typically focus on. Having multiple Age of War stories, when that had been something that nothing had ever really touched outside the House sourcebooks, is very cool.