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More art! Plus, some design stories.
🕑 Added 2023-08-18 13:12:57 +0000 UTCI've just updated the module with new art, which is a good opportunity to post an update about it, show that art off, and talk more about the campaign itself.
This is the official AMB-01 Trawler art. Originally, it was going to be a much more practical design. A grungy, industrial-style landship puffing out clouds of nanomachines while rolling over the terrain. We ended up with an evil train because that was one of the concept sketches, and it just looked too fun not to do it properly. While my more serious side does think that the old idea for the design would be more appropriate and realistic from the perspective of the engineers who made it not thinking they were creating a demonic machine, I don't regret going with land zakrello here because a little bit of silliness is expected in the genre and it lends itself to giving Technocracy characters an "Are we the baddies?" moment.
This is the official art of the Jellyflash, aka Mycofauna Macromedusae. I originally was going to make a large chunk of the campaign take place at sea, and you can still find traces of that in how two of the Operations take place at sea and one is set on a remote island. That was a good excuse to finally commission some aquatic enemies. I wrote the Jellyflash in the core book knowing that they were going to see use in this Anthology, seeding them in the lore to make them show up proper in a supplement. There were going to be other sea monsters, but the cutback to 6 Episodes barely left just enough room for the one Episode featuring these.
This is the offical art of the Flamerbot. The Flamerbot wasn't originally part of the anthology, and almost didn't appear in the supplement at all. The original plans for the Operation at Derg Island involved enemies in power armor trying to capture the goofy birbsneks and it was going to be a contest with the PCs trying to extract them before the Technocracy could take them away, with the harder option of just plain disabling the enemies also being present. The Episode was already long and complex enough without that unique special kind of fight thrown into the mix, and I wanted to do more with the Collateral Damage rules, so I went with that instead. In lieu of a wholly new kind of power armor, I figured might as well officially stat out the Flamerbots. Will the Laserbots get their turn one day? Only time will tell.
Last, but not least, is the official art of the Expurgator Custom Custom. The ECC was always planned to be the end boss of the anthology, but it and its pilot were going to have a radically different role in the story before the rewrite into standalone episodes. Archer Stermann started as an NPC ally, and was going to be leader of the defector team that kidnapped Elly. The rest of his team would be defeated as per Battle at Sea, but he would escape and get to have a greater arc as an antagonist. Obviously, all of that got canned in the rewrite, and almost none of his original self survived, save for his name and role as the final boss. I opted to leave a small sign of his original self in the ace symbol that his machine carries on the shoulder: The Sagittarius sign. He and his machine are Sagittarius-themed, as the foil to Elly's Gemini. (Named after Helen of Troy, from one of the two sets of twins that inspired the Gemini constellation.)
And that's all for now. The update is out there already over at both itch and DTRPG. There's one more update to go and we can call the Supplement finished.
Gimmick Out.
