"An Elegy for Sivar" - WCRPG Campaign Discussion Thread

capi3101

Admiral
Afternoon, gentlemen.

The proofreading of Enyo is well underway at this point and I figured it was high time to begin a discussion of Elegy. I've pretty well settled on the notion that this will be a campaign wherein the characters are Kilrathi, set in Epsilon Sector from mid 2680 to very very early 2681, and that it will be centered on the character of Krahtagh "Bloodeye" N’Ryllis and the Demon Eye Pack mentioned in Waypoint! (p. 76 of the Prophecy Gold documentation).

I've had a great many thoughts about how I might go about setting the story up. WCRPG's timeline incorporates some events that were going to be used in Privateer 3, but for the most part it follows Star*Soldier's interpretation of events - that "reservation worlds" were setup for the Kilrathi at the war's end, but by 2680 the number of reservation worlds had been reduced to three (from 50 in 2670). It's also mentioned that there were charges of neglect and cruel treatment...which is what lead me to think "what if the Bloodeye character was kind of like a cross between a ronin - say, Yamada Nagamasa - and a Native American figure such as Sitting Bull?". I mean, who is a pirate? It really matters who you ask...Captain Morgan was a privateer, an Admiral in the Royal British Navy; to his victims, he was a pirate...

So the way I see it, N’Ryllis is one of several warriors whose liege lord is killed in the Temblor Raid (or perhaps shortly thereafter), and for some reason he either can't or doesn't commit zu'kara (like Kirha) and winds up on one of those reservation worlds (if his master committed zu'kara on hearing of the surrender, it's conceivable that he was ordered not to prior to that happening - I may be going too Japanese here with what I know about the comparisons between Kilrathi culture and bushido and seppuku; just a thought). Seeing everybody around him being mistreated and starving to death, he makes the fateful decision to further disgrace himself for the good of those around him, and begin terrorizing the spacelanes in Epsilon Sector. Of course, we all know how the story ends thanks to Waypoint!, but I see his execution as part of a larger plan for this character to finally rectify his loss of honor (400 stay behind so that thousands might get away...).

The campaign is not going to end happily, let's put it that way.

Actually...it occurs to me -- what if the reservation world were being shut down, and for some reason N’Ryllis didn't want to leave for some reason, and there was some kind of incident?

I think my big problem with this story is going to be a tendency to think like a human instead of a Cat......

So, what do you guys think? Does this sound like it might make for an interesting story?

I've done Enyo and Vespus as minature campaigns; I'm thinking for the kind of story I want to tell and the scale on which I want to tell it, I'm going to have to go all out with Elegy...a full campaign setting with all the trimmings. The first place I can begin with that is maps. I'd like to create a full map of Epsilon Sector - doing it up Privateer style. That means I'll need a list of known major locales in Epsilon (Star*Soldier will be helpful here of course). We'll get to make up stuff on top of the known stuff (which equals fun in my book). I'm also going to want a list of potential factions - UBW is going to be the big one obviously, as will the Kilrathi Refugees, the Kilrathi Council (Melek's bunch; Pasqual is in Epsilon), Confederation, Lance stragglers perhaps, the Guilds, other pirate groups, the Retros perhaps...

Ships are another thing. Military that's no problem; we know what ships are being used at the start of Prophecy the next year and so we can just use them. Civvies are where we hit a bit of an unknown; it makes sense that there'd be the same bunch of ships you'd see in Gemini, plus Clarksons and Pelicans at this point - should there be more? I had thought about maybe kinda throwing in a few of the Star Citizen designs...

Well, this post is long enough, so let's discuss.
 
Spent part of the afternoon looking up known locales in Epsilon Sector, using WCPedia, Waypoint! and Star*Soldier as sources. Here's what I came up with:

Circe: Circe V, Circe VII - there's also an asteroid belt here.
Antares: Odell, Polaris Roads Naval Station
Trafalgar: Quarto - there's also an asteroid belt here.
Corsair: Chloe
Natanya: Natanya
Midgard: Sting/Midgard - "Baldr's Channel" is in this system
T'Kirsa: S'than - Anybody think the Bearpit has been established by 2680?
Charon: Ghorax Tha (Charon III, Cat Pleasure World) - asteroid field
Goddard: Goddard I/Goddard II/Steltka/Goddard Transfer Station
Masa: Masa III
Pasqual: Pasqual X, Pasqual Station
Valgard: Valgard Military Prison
Ayers : Ayer's Rock? (the asteroid itself would still be there, right?) - probably an asteroid field.
Locanda: Locanda IV
Logo: Logo VI
Orestes: Orestes IX
Bistangio: Bistangio X
Granita: Granita
Shariha: Shariha
Torgo: Epsilon Sector Command (Farragut Station? - probably not)

We also flew more than a couple of missions in the Sector throughout the history of the series. Aside from the ones listed above, there's...
Border Zone (SM1)
Lennox (WC4)
Silenos (WC4)
Vigrid (SM1)
Asgard (SM1)
Bifrost (SM1) - Kilrathi supply depot
Jotunheim (SM1)
Kabla Meth (WC2)
Canewdon (SO2)
Orsini (WC3)
Peleus (WC4)

I have in my notes something called "S'Thran-Pak"; can't recall what that was (if it's a system/planet or not). I also don't have an exact location for Farragut Naval Base - Torgo would make sense except for the fact that the Cats overran Torgo in the closing days of the War; I'd imagine Confed would've scuttled the base if they knew the Cats were coming (and the argument there is that it's not a given they'd know). Is it in Antares?

So does that cover it? Can anybody name any others off the top of their heads?
 
Here's a physical reference using the Prophecy era map.

You can see how there's a few unnamed systems as well so Kilrathi names for worlds and systems would be completely up to you. The crease on the left marks the "western border" and the purple line on the right signifies the "eastern".

Hope this helps.

If it's hard to read let me know and I'll upload a better shot.
 

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I hate to tell you, but CIC released a high-res image of the entire Prophecy map on their 13th birthday (along with a lot of other material that year). Thanks anyway.

I used the CIC maps for WCRPG and WCPedia seems to reference them more often than not. Here's the CIC version of Epsilon:

epsilon.png


They have a few more systems named; I'm pretty sure the names come from canonical sources but I don't know that for a fact. I'm inclined to just go with them. Less work that way.

System names aren't really my main concern with the map - it's more "what do we know is there already"? I want to avoid the situation where I forget to put something in and later (read: after it goes to print) somebody says something should've been somewhere that I left out and they throw a big fit over it.
 
In WC:Saga, the Epsilon Sector Command station (aka Torgo Command) is similar to the station orbiting Jupiter in WC4 and WC5. (And it also appears in the intro of WC3).
Also, Torgo is in the Deneb quadrant and according to WCPedia, Farragut Naval Base is in the Antares quadrant. So I don't think that Farragut is in Torgo.

Edit: Also, according to Prophecy's map, Torgo is part of the Union of Border Worlds in 2681.
 
Same by the CIC map - Torgo is definitely UBW. The UBW I see playing the role of the antagonist in the campaign as opposed to the Confederation, simply because they've got a lot more territory in the area.

I suppose Farragut wouldn't have been mentioned in Star*Soldier if it were in any other quadrant besides Antares...so it probably is in the Antares System. We'll go with that.

Now...if I were a pirate operating out of a base in this Sector, where would I want that base to be located?
 
I'm a little embarrassed this morning...in my effort to collect data on Epsilon Sector yesterday it never occurred to me that I'd already done that once; all that information is in Chapter 8.5 of WCRPG's Core Rules...

"S'Thran-Pak" is a system in Antares Quadrant - and its where the local pirates and mercenaries go to duel in 2700. That's probably why it caught my attention. Bolthole system - it only connects to Corsair.

Okay, so back to the question of bases. If we go with the Gemini Sector model, most pirate bases are going to be former mining bases, which means they're likely going to be located in asteroid fields. On my list above, there are four known fields: Circe, Trafalgar, Charon and Ayer's. Of those, only Charon is indicated as a Kilrathi system. It's a jump away from Corsair, Midgard and Vigrid, all of which have a significant number of in-sector jump points.

S'Thran-Pak might be another good choice - it's one jump from Corsair and a bolthole, like Pentonville in Gemini. Problem is that having only one way out of the systemt would decrease the logic of the penultimate mission I've got planned...

Silenos might be another choice; there is a nebula there.

Anybody else have any thoughts? I'm trying to decide where to base the Demon's Eye Pack, obviously. Meantime, I'm going to begin work on a Gunther projection (an Akwende without the out-Sector jumps) of the Sector and begin making nav maps using the rules in Chapter 10.2.2 to start seeing where I might put down a few more bases.
 
Gunther projection's complete - here we go:

epsilon_gunther.png

Went ahead and took out the systems that didn't connect to any others in the Sector. That meant losing Locanda, but I don't see that as a big loss necessarily. K'hotan is gone too; that's less of a whoop.

I can go ahead and start auto-generating jump point coordinates next. Probably easiest just to generate all the information and then go back and overlay the known data.

I'm wondering if I should write up a script that would auto-generate the nav maps. It's in the realm of possibilities but it would be a lot of work. Then again, so would having to create 60 nav maps from scratch...
 
Forgot how beefy those missions were in Enyo; makes Vespus look anemic. Going to be a pretty boring update come Monday...

On the other hand, I finished auto-generating nav data. Now I just need to overlay the known data over it.

Topic is craft selection: I figure a group of Kilrathi pirates would probably have access to the Dralthi-IV and Vaktoth (as they're still being flown by the Cats in 2681). What other fighters do we see them flying? And do y'all think would it be a situation like Privateer (where the ships could be customized) or would they be stuck with the hardware they were able to scavenge?
 
You know what just occurred to me? If the Firekkans are going to be a faction in Elegy (and they are), they're going to need ships. Who wants to take a crack at designing a few?
 
Awesome! Thanks for the links. Going to have to contact those guys for a) permission to include the designs and b) information on intended performance/defenses/weaponry if I get the go ahead.

Maps, maps and more maps. I've actually been able to use my nascent and growing skills with writing VASSAL mods to helping me translate that map data I generated into finalized maps. Slow process...the biggest issue has been generating the system names for the maps, but I can report that effort finished...

basic_alphabet.png
Built the suckers by hand; talk about a Byzantine way of doing things...going to see if I can figure out FontForge and actually turn that into something useable (somebody finally built a port for Windows). Looking forward to designing Greek and Hebrew glyphs in this same style...​
Kabla Meth's the only map that has been finalized so far; I'm still considering changes to Jakal and Valgard.​
 
Finally got to the point where I'm finishing four maps a day; with only 60 maps to do, you'd think that'd mean I'd be done in fifteen days. That'd probably be true were it not for the fact that at the moment I'm going through the relatively obscure systems...

Still trying to work out a system for determining planetary population that doesn't involve going through the whole world-building process. It may be worth my while to just bite the bullet on this one.

Also trying to work out a system for base demographics. How integrated are the populations of worlds going to be with one another at this point, a little over a decade after the end of the Terran-Kilrathi War? My guess is that there will be few Kilrathi on Terran worlds, but there may be a significant Terran population on Kilrathi worlds (businessmen, security forces, etc.). Would like some thoughts on that topic.

I'll eventually need to add information on the various factions in the Sector. Still thinking about how I'm going to format things in general.
 
I vaguely recall somebody saying something somewhere in SM2 about the Firekka system being dotted with in-system jump points. Anybody else remember that? Better yet, can anybody field me the specific quote?
I might be confusing Firekka for Enigma, but I could swear it was a common feature of both systems. Going to need to get this question answered before I can make a map of the system for the Elegy campaign.
 
Some useful information in that whole thing nonetheless.

Do you think it might be in Freedom Flight? Might be worth a quick skimthrough...
 
Found it - it was Freedom Flight, page 54, Halcyon giving the briefing right after they've detoxed Hunter.

I'll admit that so far in my mapping efforts I haven't been putting in in-system jumps. I might need to rectify that in some of the systems I have left. Firekka will obviously be one of them.
 
My four-year old, earlier this evening: "When the guy goes into space and the Kilrathis kill him, he gets to go into heaven."
 
Mapping's done. Wound up with no Pleasure Worlds in Epsilon (unless you count Ghorax Tha); given what we know about the Sector, though, I don't think that's a problem...

Finished cataloging all the bases that were generated just a while ago. After that it'll be number crunching time again.

EDIT: I guess it's unfair to say that no Pleasure Worlds were generated - the routine generated two. They just turned out to be Goddard and Quarto...

Speaking of Goddard, what's y'all's interpretation of events after KIS Sivar's attack? Do you think Confed would've tried to re-settle planet or not? My impression is that the attack still left the planet habitable (aside from the momentary jump in gravity) but there's no mention of a colony on Goddard after SM1. I ask because it is going to determine the nature of the sole base I have in the system - whether it's the planet or an orbital space station.
 
I imagine they would have reclaimed the world and salvaged as much of lives and materials as possible. I suspect that a system-national memorial is likely in place somewhere on world. I don't think much has been mentioned about Goddard past WC2's Colson going crazy. You can likely take some liberties with regards to another colony start-up.

The weapon used was a single shot weapon that left only mangled men and metal so I see no reason why they wouldn't have a planetary installation if not cities after the cleanup.
 
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