One of my books I am currently working on is basically a Genre Departure from the norm of my New Dawn books. It goes into a more militaristic fantasy hybrid bent, and I am both unfamiliar with military terms, and not really sure how to proceed with a few things, so I require some help.
It is a very unusual, fantastic scenario; the real villains of the last three books, the Gibbs Coven, have masterminded a situation when the Masquerade came down. A plague was created in Sanfield that seemed only to prey on people ages 25 and above.
They made it extremely contagious, agonizing, and slow killing, and used their money to lobby for a quarantine on the city, and brought in four PMC's who become The Heavy for the story in order to "cleanse Sanfield". They use the Gibbs Coven's vastly more advanced science, including the merciless Green Wall - a mechanical wall designed to basically demolish the city in a matter of weeks - and push the heroes against a figurative wall.
Matthew is forced to make an Enemy Mine with the equally evil archenemy of the Gibbs group, Ein Woe, who had previously caused a lot of trouble, in order to gain a specific artifact Ein Woe possessed.
The Psy-Synchronizer was basically thrown into Woe's hands a long time ago, its original owners basically condemning it as too dangerous. Of course, Woe did not sell this story to Matthew. Instead, he underestimated it and called it basically a Dangerous Forbidden Technique with a success rate of 19% of succeeding on the "First Subject".
Ein was actually completely incorrect on this part. It has a complete one hundred percent success rating, one of the reasons it was regarded poorly. He just assumed by the harsh whispers and warnings it was something like a Superweapon. Not even Ein himself really understood what he was doing.
Matthew, no recourse left and subtly manipulated by his deceptive new ally, uses it. What resulted was the erstwhile 317th, previously made up of a Rag Tag Group Of Misfits, becoming essentially a Badass Army. The Psy-Sync device basically gave them fighting instincts and training based on Matthew's, and they can finally use the Powered Armor and Magitech Weapons the Esper Organization gave them.
They even look shiny in their armor, looking the part of triumphant Knights In Shining Armor, go from gangly teenagers to bishonen in weeks, and heck, their armor's Mana Wings even make them look angelic. A completely intentional design choice on the part of the Organization.
It was worse, in retrospect, when it turns out its irreversible. And that giving these kids incredibly powerful magic and training also gave them a version of Matthew's Superpowered Evil Side, which manifests as The Fall - a state where one of these teenage soldiers, under enough pressure, basically go completely insane and start killing whatever is unfortunate enough to cross their paths. And given these are teenagers under a lot of pressure already, there really is no telling when this may happen.
And that some of them are starting to go Knight Templar besides, with a steadily rising paranoia, and the reality of what happens when you tell a teenager "these people are trying to kill your family, put this armor on and go kill them" starts sinking in on Matthew and others.
He never asked to be the Grand Commander of the 317th, and he's completely out of his depth, especially when he hears people swearing loyalty to him. How a lot of the sudden loyalty came about is a disturbing can of worms in and of itself.
And given how volatile and confused these young minds are, when people actually start volunteering to join the 317th and their numbers start increasing. That is when it gets really bad. The conflict starts escalating, Old World Demons start showing up with Mini-Mecha used by the PMC's increasingly...
This is where I need help. I need to show these kids basically trying to survive initial missions and "training-so-to-speak", and the confusion of some of them trying to find out how to behave around their old friends if they have a higher "rank". How certain people would acclimate, and who would Fall first.
The whole premise is also to show how deadly the magic side of the world I made is. And while at first the PMC's lose very badly, they do adapt with help from their own Magic Side allies.
I want to show things basically from a Badass Normal Marine tasked with observing the PMC's for any violations of the law, and how he and PMC soldiers see the 317th. I'd imagine people used to 21st century technology would be either astounded or frightened (perhaps both) to see these previously scared, barely competent resistance kids now flying around No Selling the most advanced military tech they had.
I'd also imagine there would be a huge effort to try to capture or create their own versions, as well as finding out just who gave these kids such a hazardous upgrade. How quickly would the PMC's and the Department of Defense / Army / Marines find out that these kids have a tendency to go berserk?
I would imagine there would be quite a few inquiries as to why child / teenage soldiers are cropping up, and who is sponsoring them. The disconnect between the Properly Paranoid and long-lived Esper Organization, which is used to such "desperate tactics for constantly desperate times", would be incomprehensible to the initial Unmasqued World.
I'd also think that the surviving parents would be caught in a difficult spot. Especially, in one character's case, since his dad is a veteran.
One of my books I am currently working on is basically a Genre Departure from the norm of my New Dawn books. It goes into a more militaristic fantasy hybrid bent, and I am both unfamiliar with military terms, and not really sure how to proceed with a few things, so I require some help.
It is a very unusual, fantastic scenario; the real villains of the last three books, the Gibbs Coven, have masterminded a situation when the Masquerade came down. A plague was created in Sanfield that seemed only to prey on people ages 25 and above.
They made it extremely contagious, agonizing, and slow killing, and used their money to lobby for a quarantine on the city, and brought in four PMC's who become The Heavy for the story in order to "cleanse Sanfield". They use the Gibbs Coven's vastly more advanced science, including the merciless Green Wall - a mechanical wall designed to basically demolish the city in a matter of weeks - and push the heroes against a figurative wall.
Matthew is forced to make an Enemy Mine with the equally evil archenemy of the Gibbs group, Ein Woe, who had previously caused a lot of trouble, in order to gain a specific artifact Ein Woe possessed.
The Psy-Synchronizer was basically thrown into Woe's hands a long time ago, its original owners basically condemning it as too dangerous. Of course, Woe did not sell this story to Matthew. Instead, he underestimated it and called it basically a Dangerous Forbidden Technique with a success rate of 19% of succeeding on the "First Subject".
Ein was actually completely incorrect on this part. It has a complete one hundred percent success rating, one of the reasons it was regarded poorly. He just assumed by the harsh whispers and warnings it was something like a Superweapon. Not even Ein himself really understood what he was doing.
Matthew, no recourse left and subtly manipulated by his deceptive new ally, uses it. What resulted was the erstwhile 317th, previously made up of a Rag Tag Group Of Misfits, becoming essentially a Badass Army. The Psy-Sync device basically gave them fighting instincts and training based on Matthew's, and they can finally use the Powered Armor and Magitech Weapons the Esper Organization gave them.
They even look shiny in their armor, looking the part of triumphant Knights In Shining Armor, go from gangly teenagers to bishonen in weeks, and heck, their armor's Mana Wings even make them look angelic. A completely intentional design choice on the part of the Organization.
The problem begins with how inherently stupid of an idea this turned out to be. I fully intend for this to basically deconstruct the whole "teenagers get superpowers / mechas, they fight crime", it also deconstructs the idea of giving a random guy or guys some sort of Super-Soldier serum. It was a bad idea to give these teenagers powers and Powered Armor.
It was worse, in retrospect, when it turns out its irreversible. And that giving these kids incredibly powerful magic and training also gave them a version of Matthew's Superpowered Evil Side, which manifests as The Fall - a state where one of these teenage soldiers, under enough pressure, basically go completely insane and start killing whatever is unfortunate enough to cross their paths. And given these are teenagers under a lot of pressure already, there really is no telling when this may happen.
And that some of them are starting to go Knight Templar besides, with a steadily rising paranoia, and the reality of what happens when you tell a teenager "these people are trying to kill your family, put this armor on and go kill them" starts sinking in on Matthew and others.
He never asked to be the Grand Commander of the 317th, and he's completely out of his depth, especially when he hears people swearing loyalty to him. How a lot of the sudden loyalty came about is a disturbing can of worms in and of itself.
And given how volatile and confused these young minds are, when people actually start volunteering to join the 317th and their numbers start increasing. That is when it gets really bad. The conflict starts escalating, Old World Demons start showing up with Mini-Mecha used by the PMC's increasingly...
This is where I need help. I need to show these kids basically trying to survive initial missions and "training-so-to-speak", and the confusion of some of them trying to find out how to behave around their old friends if they have a higher "rank". How certain people would acclimate, and who would Fall first.
The whole premise is also to show how deadly the magic side of the world I made is. And while at first the PMC's lose very badly, they do adapt with help from their own Magic Side allies.
I want to show things basically from a Badass Normal Marine tasked with observing the PMC's for any violations of the law, and how he and PMC soldiers see the 317th. I'd imagine people used to 21st century technology would be either astounded or frightened (perhaps both) to see these previously scared, barely competent resistance kids now flying around No Selling the most advanced military tech they had.
I'd also imagine there would be a huge effort to try to capture or create their own versions, as well as finding out just who gave these kids such a hazardous upgrade. How quickly would the PMC's and the Department of Defense / Army / Marines find out that these kids have a tendency to go berserk?
I would imagine there would be quite a few inquiries as to why child / teenage soldiers are cropping up, and who is sponsoring them. The disconnect between the Properly Paranoid and long-lived Esper Organization, which is used to such "desperate tactics for constantly desperate times", would be incomprehensible to the initial Unmasqued World.
I'd also think that the surviving parents would be caught in a difficult spot. Especially, in one character's case, since his dad is a veteran.
What kinds of Sanity Slippage and types of soldiers would this unorthodox Super-Soldier story create?
edited 18th Jun '13 2:31:23 PM by NickTheSwing