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The Killing Moon
An arena for Virtual Mekton
Note: Soundtrack for this level should include "The Killing Moon"
byEcho and the Bunnymen
Pack your spacesuits! This time the battle goes to outer space,
on a low gravity moon with several asteroids in orbit. The blue
world above you is beautiful, but don't get distracted...
The moon:
This is a complete sphere in game space, perhaps a mile/1.6 km
in diameter, with sand-dune size crater rimes, colored in a light
powder blue. A multitude of asteroids orbit around it, just big
enough to hide behind and just close enough together to make slalom
courses an intereting proposition. The gravity is light, doubling
the length of leaps but requiring a piloting roll to land properly,
or to move at more than 1/2 normal land MA. Flight is unrestricted,
with only 4 MA required for true flight, GES being able to get
two hexes off the ground. This is still a bit short of the asteroids,
unfortunately. There are small supply bunkers here and there,
with powerups and a good partial-cover firing location.
The Asteroids:
These orbit the moon in about ten minutes, at 3-5 hexes altitude.
They can be hidden behind, flown around, bounced off of each other
like billiards, and even destroyed if you do 30 kils to them.
They aren't very interesting, really, but powerups can be hidden
among them.
The world above:
Just a big texture map on the sky. It's about 25 hexes beyond
the asteroids.
Other notes:
Whether the units equipped with space environmental protection
get a +1 to their piloting rolls, but units without it take no
special penelties - everyone can play in the arena if they want
to.
The SuperCanard fires over the side of a supply depot, not noticing
a speeding asteroid about to land on it
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Art:
In game terms, what Jaired did in the sidebar was declare he was
trying for a double bank shot, pump Luck in, and get a natural
critical success on the dice. His initial plan was to just follow
the rocks down and then fight it straight, but it didn't quite
go that way... |
Arena created by CrystalDrogn |
Jaired dodged the Archon around another group of asteroids, skillfully
avoiding the weapons fire from the surface below.
He reversed course to come back out from behind them at the same
place he'd dodged behind, then paused as a better idea struck.
With a happy grin, he set up a very careful shot on one of the
closer asteroids, and fired. The targeted rock blasted foreward
and hit one of the asteriods in the front row, then bounced back
and off of a second rock to another of the front asteroids, then
back again and away, over five times as fast as the rest of the
belt until it vanished over the horizon.
Jaired flew between the two rocks he'd used as backstops and followed
the front two down, using first one and then the other as shields
against the SuperCanard in the supply depot below. Reaching ground
level, he transformed to Archon's humanoid mode, and took cover
behind a crater rim to trade fire with his opponent, neither one
scoring much damage.
118 seconds later, the asteroid he'd sent blasting around the
small moon slammed down from behind and crushed the SuperCanard.
"YOU WIN!", his screen exulted. "EXTRA STYLE BONUS: 20 POINTS!"
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