The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

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Jem
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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

The Juggernauts of Acheron

As technology advanced, one of the natural problems that denizens of the planes hoped to solve with it was the incessant worry of cube strikes on Acheron. A berk simply couldn't get a proper war on constantly worrying about whether a cube was going to crash into his camp -- or the battlefield -- any minute now.

The advance of materials science and the advent of crude rocketry made this a possibility. Armies with sufficient resources could attach engines to cubes and slow or even maneuver them relative to other cubes. With care, it was possible to pilot them close to each other and attach them, sometimes with struts (provides extra usable surface area that doesn't need to be hollowed out) or simply riveting two flat faces to each other (stronger joint).

The advantages of the setup were immediate. One no longer needed cubehopper spells to organize a multi-cube fiefdom, increasing warmaking ability. Moreover, a mass of cubes took less damage, proportionally, from strikes by lighter cubes. Maneuvering the cubes allowed one to move one's very fortress into enemy territory and launch a strike.

Size is advantage here; on Acheron, the bigger eats the smaller. If two cubestructs collide, the more massive is the safer, and will be likely to support more survivors to fight the ensuing battle. Outer cubes take the brunt of random cube impacts, leaving inner cubes sheltered and ready to carry on. The only advantage smaller cubestructs have is speed; engine emplacements can increase as the surface area of the cubestruct, while mass increases with volume, meaning an 8-cube assembly in 2x2x2 formation, for example, can project 4 cubesides worth of force to accelerate or decelerate (half its mass in cubesides), while a 3x3x3 cubestruct can project 9 cubesides of force which must move three times that many cubemasses. Naturally, incomplete cubes and amalgamations of different shapes have different structural and maneuvering advantages and disadvantages -- a planar arrangement of cubes has much less structural strength and no protected inside but can bring a 1-to-1 ratio of cubesides to masses in accelerating and decelerating.

Eventually, the great empires of the plane -- the orcs, the goblins, and a power or two that cared for such things -- have amassed enormous cubestructs. These enormous complexes flare with engines on the outside slowly propelling and maneuvering them, while the inner cubes sit in the protective shadow of the outer ones. Single cube-islands, faster and more maneuverable (though of course still enormous and clunky compared to personal vehicles), are sent out with raiding parties. The local space around them has been relatively cleared of random cubes, though there is a constant inflow from the (infinite) unconquered regions of the plane.

This strip-mining keeps the cubestructs safe, but it means that convenient building materials are now hard to find. Raw cubes must also be hollowed out and engines attached, a slow and expensive process. It's much easier, then... so to speak... to take over a large cubestruct fortress already arranged and outfitted. Thus, the wars rage on.

This idea is mostly for Avalas. Tentative ideas for the other layers:

Thuldanin: the stone to which visitors turn is now silicon, shot through with copper. They aren't dead, so they can't be resurrected, and they're not petrified, so they can't be unpretrified... They're trapped in the collective hivemind the plane became when too many computerized weapons came here, froze, and were twisted by the energies of the plane into a malevolent intelligence that could sense and operate its mechanical junk. The entire plane is now an entity with a single purpose: collect visitors long enough to assimilate them, and use its awareness of still-useful weapons to deal arms across the planes, fomenting wars to keep itself supplied and powerful.

Tintibulus: nothing at the moment.

Ocanthus: no ideas presently.

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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

In principle, I like this one, and even one layer (or, for that matter, a layer and a half) is a good start. The cube structure thing is a shade technical; it'd need streamlining to be playable, but it certainly works in theory.

And I think I'd probably like to see a bit more of where you're going with this (or others' ideas, for that matter) before going into more specifics or depth.

Jem
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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

The basic idea: Cubes and cubestructs are essentially intended to be used as military installations and vehicles in Acheron. Think starbases and starships, or carriers and destroyers. They've cleared out much of the airy void and only rarely add raw cubes to their empires; instead, they fight each other for space and materials. Cubes are valuable as shelter (carved onto the insides, which has to be done fresh with a new cube) and food and water (which comes from provender stones, which must be seeded onto a new cube).

On mechanics:

The cubes in Avalas are said in 2e to range from 'city-sized' to 'kingdom-sized.' In medieval terms, this means anywhere from a cube a mile on a side to one perhaps a hundred miles on a side or more. However, some are said to be worn down from centuries of collisions, while new ones do appear. It's the smaller ones that get used as battle-platforms. The idea here is that cubes are outfitted with arrays of weaponry, rocket thrusters or jet engines, barracks and supplies, and sent out manned with a massive force. More cubes means more manpower that can be brought to bear, but it's harder to maneuver them and the joints are subject to attack.

(The rocket engines, I'd say, come from Lei Kung. The lightning-and-thunder god who is master of the Firecracker Palace has become quite powerful from supplying areospace technology to the planes, Acheron in particular. Cubes are affixed as densely as is structurally possible with enormous, magical thrusters that supply motive force.)

Because they're small, we can assume that mobile cubestructs are made up of similar, small cubes, roughly a mile on a side. To streamline the math, we could simply describe a few basic versions:

Single cube: once fully outfitted with thunder engines, this cube takes an hour to lumber up to a full speed of 10 miles per hour. This is the maximum possible speed even with continuous thrust, due to wind resistance; differently-shaped polyhedra and rods from Tintibulus are occasionally outfitted and hauled up the planar layers to move faster. Applying reverse thrust will stop the cube in half an hour; simply stopping thrust will cause the cube to slow to an apparent stop (relative to nearby cubes) due to air resistance in about six hours. It's used as the basic unit of troop transport between battlefields. With the inside hollowed out but still with enough material to be structurally sound, it can bring, oh, 50,000 troops or so to a given point. (Handwaving this based on 6 square miles of surface area, quite a bit of digging, numerous base service areas and support structures.)

Foursquare: four cubes arranged in a square. This can carry 4 times as many troops and firepower mounted on the "front," and is often used as a roaming border fort or part of a heavy incursion. Fully outfitted with thunder engines, it can move and stop as fast as a single cube in its direction of travel, but is only half as capable of turning, so single cubes can flee them through good maneuvering. Usually the cubes are riveted together or welded almost completely on the inner surfaces, giving these cubestructs a significant mass advantage if they choose to ram single cubes.

Axis cube: a cube with six other cubes attached, one on each face. This shields the inner cube from direct impacts by random or offensive cubes. It only has a top speed of 7 miles per hour, and takes two hours to get up to speed and an hour to brake, with 8 hours to slow to a stop by drag. Naturally, it is even less maneuverable, though it can rotate fairly quickly if its pilot wants to present an undamaged face in a given direction. Sometimes used as a command center for a large invasion. Also a stationary town in some realms.

Triple Cube: the largest cubestruct much used in any mobile sense, this is a full 3x3x3 array of cubes, almost always held apart on forests of struts to allow use of surface area inside. (These struts make tempting targets, but many of them on all sides of a cube have to be destroyed to cut it off the larger cubestruct.) This juggernaut can be a small nation in itself, with sufficient housing and space to grow provender stones that cities can be supported. The innermost cube is fully sheltered -- though sometimes this space is left hollow and given extra struts, so that the inner faces of the shell can be used for cities, provender agriculture or massive equipment. The inside is always in deep, shadowy darkness with only shafts of light penetrating the outer shell. These cubes have a top speed of a mere 3 miles per hour, take 6 hours to get up to speed and 4 to brake, with as much as 2 days to drift to a stop. They are used as mobile forts to anchor acquisitions of territory.

Larger cubestructs are made out of the kingdom-sized cubes and smaller ones. The big ones, of course, anchor complicated cubestructs and are the heart of large empires -- orc, goblin, and hobgoblin, as well as the realms of powers. Other cubes are attached around them on rivets or frameworks of struts. These just don't move. Most probably stay near free-floating portals in stable orbits. They, and possibly the smaller ones, are probably thermally insulated against Acheron's standard cold temperatures, giving them the appearance of enormous space stations.

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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

That's very inventive. I like it. I'd sort of like to see what you want to do with the various planar locations. There's a lot of stuff on those cubes.

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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

Cubeships make me think of the Borg. :shock:

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Jem
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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

'Schloss Ritter' wrote:
Cubeships make me think of the Borg. :shock:

Me too. I'm really trying hard to avoid anything that smacks of collectives, which is darned tricky on a lawful-evil plane where you get turned into a faceless grunt in an enormous army... ^_^

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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

Though I could see orcs as being keen on cybernetic enhancements (as in Warhammer 40k). Then again, we'd better stick to PS Modern before we get to Future.

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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

Has anyone ever played an old DOS game called Scorched Earth? If you haven't, google Scorched 3d and download it's free sequel.

Anyways, the Acheron you're describing can be a bit like Scorched Earth. They used to be cubes... that's when the armies had swords and bows and petty fireballs. But Acheronians no longer fight with such petty weapons. The real combatants hide in bunkers deep inside the largest cubes armed with an array of ICBMs, nuclear weapons, airfields laden with precision bombers, and bunker-buster missiles. The object: find the enemy command center, blow a hole in it, then send a team of faceless commandos through to neutralize the enemy.

Meanwhile, the surfaces of these cubes are so pockmarked, entrenched, and burnt away with chemicals and acid that the majority of cubes only roughly adhere to such a shape. Across the cubes armies crawl from crater to ditch to remote minefields trying to find the strategic ground in which to make the assault on the enemy they've never met. None of these third-rate captains knows about the command centers under their feet, nor do those in the command centers care about any collateral death their wargames may cause.

War in Acheron is precise and overladen with technology, but above all, completely impersonal, to the point where commanders never have to see or know about the carnage that they cause. It's a sick parody of modern warfare.

The cubeships can be owned by particularly powerful armies, for example, Orcs. Orcs probably lack the subtlety to engage in a tense battle of cat-and-mouse. Warhammer 40k "Orks" is probably a good direction to take them in. WAAAGH!

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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

Scorched Earth!!!

Now that really gets me back to me kid days.

But, hm... I've always thought of modern Acheron as a sort of real-life FPS deathmatch... snipers, grenadiers, machine gunners, knifers, etc...

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The Juggernauts of Acheron -- couple of ideas

Hmmm... I don´t like the idea of Acheron´s cubes being manipulable.

I mean, didn´t those cubes represent the futility of the petitioners, squabbling throughout the plane, fighting each other, and if they didn´t kill themselves, greater things than them, matters out of their control by orders of orders of magnitude, would simply make them splat?

Still I like the entrenchments idea.

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