Song of Audacity
What defined them, more than any single quality wastheir ever-burning humanity. Strangers to fanaticism and despair, theContottieri, or ‘Sky Corsairs’ were engaged fully in every aspect of humanlife.
These were no bare-hulled mercenaries or joylessMalmukes, nor the more-human, but shaped and regulated, citizen-soldiers of ademocratic polity, who might carry sharp personal hearts, yet beneath serial-numbereduniform kit. Call them pirates if you will, and some were purely that, organgsters, of which; not a few. But they were poets, artists, creatures of business(all), technicians, explorers, adventurers, lovers, highly aggressive assaulttroops, brave as Lions, as neurotic as cats. Cunning mercenaries all and men ofArt.
Let none say they were not principled men! Only thattheir principals differed, even within themselves, and were always in directcontact with an immediate material world of staggering danger and opportunity.And how else may a principal be measured, questioned, sharpened or lived with,than through, and by, holding palm-to-palm, the mutable hand of Fate?” –Francis Malledini, ‘Wars of the Centaurus Arm; the Condottieri Stella.
Models, Painting and Aesthetic
The core idea that began this was; what if Mechwarriorwasn't fucking ugly?
The Mechs of Mechwarrior have a battered Ford-Factoryboxy midwestern aesthetic which; fine if you like that sort of thing but I havenever once fantasised about getting into one, any more than I have wonderedwhat it would be like to get into a bus.
Added to that was my recent experience with applyingdecals to miniatures, for the first time, using Microset and Microsol.
For those unfamiliar with the irregularly curved pauldronsof Space Marines - that is where the symbols go. For which; either git realgood at freehand or use decals. And if you do use decals, get ready to suffer,for the decal is small and wants to lie flat, and the surface it goes on to isirregular and curved. And small.
Various Mythradic mysteries attend this process - thesecret of making very fine and small cuts around the radial edge of the decal,avoiding the symbol in its centre, the careful applications of light varnishbeforehand, of clear paint solution afterwards to equalise the surface sheen,of very careful staining and weathering to help disguise seams and failures,(without also obscuring the symbol on the decal itself of course). Such labyrinthsof near-alchemical fury.
All, or most, of these were abraded, and in some cases,vanished, by careful applications of micro-set, (which prepares the surface andallows the decal to 'melt' onto it). and Micro-sol, (which does more forciblemutual adhering later). Suddenly my transfers were going on easy, and theylooked good!
This lead me to a thought; what if you designed, orbrought into being, a model line, specifically based around the use ofdecals. The models, and the background, would all be designed for transfersto be applied.
What transfers though?
My mind turned immediately to the High Middle Ages/earlyModern period. To the Italian Wars, and to the glories ofpattern-on-pattern-in-pattern heraldry. Of stripes and stars, heraldic beasts,coats of arms, cheques, dags, trinary hanging ballsacks and geese-rampant, andalso a little of the Formula-One ultra-capitalised high-speed racer, their carblazoned with signs and adverts, of that one boxer who took money from a sponsorto have their branding on the bottom of his shoes, so they would bephotographed if he was knocked out, and somewhat of Games Workshops post-futureheraldry where the iconography of trans-stellar hyper-corps and meta-statesmelts into a dream of symbols.
Above all I dreamed of actually-attractive mechs, thingsdesigned by Italians rather than by Midwesterners; absolutely slathered inbright, confident, blazing heraldry, of bobbaunce and a vision of outgoingprideful masculinity taken from before the Great Renunciation and thedemocratic business jacket.
These machines would be battered and weathered by war,but their flags and pennants would flutter proudly, even if they have to be madeof electrostatic material to make them fly when there is no wind, or no air.
The patterns, signs and symbols on a mechs chassis wouldbe the record of its actions, of allegiances so old the current pilot doesn'tknow them, of contracts taken, deeds done, of heroism and shame. As inheraldry, each sign or pattern would have some meaning, either obvious orhidden.
And all of this to be personal; no uniforms, noregulation, instead a culture of fantastic mercenaries, perhaps bandingtogether in 'Companies' long enough to wear similar heraldry, or at leastwearing the sign of their current company, but perhaps moving on from that,fighting alone or in loose associations of 'free lances'.
Mercenaries, but not without honour. That takes us backto the Condottieri Stella.
Tomy Zoids Zeeva Zevle battle vehicle ostrich type NIB 1992The ‘Cultures’
Don't call them 'Empires', they wouldn't like that. Thinkof them as tendencies, or smears of interstellar power. Each powerful enough,in its own way, to provide a sincere threat to the others, and each alsodesperately vulnerable.
The Cultures are what might be called transhuman. Atleast for any that once were human, they are no longer so. Others may be alien,though it’s hard to tell for all seem alien now. Cybernetic hive minds,thinking world-spanning biological substrate, carefully genetically engineeredBrave New World Climax Societies, perhaps mildly extra-causal semi-sublimedpolities, extradimensional half-gods, swarms.
None of the 'Cultures' are 'evil', at least in theWarhammer sense. At least no more evil than any other Empire. Sure they mighthave done a war crime here and there but that is in the past. Nor will theycompulsively eat your brain, or turn you into one of them. Though they may makesome strong arguments that you should join. They can negotiate. They pay well.
They have reason to fear each other for each Culture isso different that the magisterium of the others makes them a potential strong,strange and unpredictable threat. Probably the galaxy belongs to one of thembut none are eager to start the world-burning hyperwar that might complete that praxis. They are old. They are maybe abit too comfortable. They are willing to wait.
But the Centaurus Arm remains unclaimed, and it is hometo strange wonders, secret histories and relics of forgotten time, to theresidue of ancient climax-species and the mathematics of unknown philosophies,and the wild evolved residuum of their existence, not to mention all theextremely valuable basic resources that any 'Culture' needs; water,heavy metals, rare materials and so on.
Each Culture would quite like the Centaurus Arm.They each edge closer, unwilling to commit, fearing the apocalypse. Far fromhere, across arms of the galaxy, each faces the other, quietly, across ahundred thousand minor volumes. No-one wants it to all kick off. Even the bigcomputers can't predict how it might end.
Hence; proxies. Fractured tribes of tech-denying humansare moving through the Centaurus Arm at a glacially slow pace, aboard massivegeneration ships and hollowed out moons jammed with crude fusion drives. Theyare even fighting each other occasionally, and they have a particularritualised form of warfare which limits the long-term damage of theirconflicts. They don't use nukes, complex A.I. or bioweapons, let alone ontologicalor reality-scarring weaponry. It’s basically monkeys fistfighting each other incrude machines.
So use them, employ the humans to stake claims,gain resources, control paths and vectors. They are a deniable, (thougheveryone knows everyone else is doing it), cats-paw, and they respond well topayment in gold, (as well as other resources). You can buy them off with minortoys. They even set up complex social and economic organisations to arrangetheir own exploitation! You don't even need to send in agents to hire this orthat warband or kin group, instead they self-organise into 'Companies' and evenpitch for 'Contracts'! You can just pull them off the shelf.
From the perspective of the 'Cultures' this has only beengoing on for half a millennia, so early days yet. As the humans see it, theirwhole sprawling culture has adapted to one of mercenary service, and manyCompanies and Capitanos, have grown ridiculously wealthy doing it. Some haveeven become rulers of moons. This has shaped the whole of human culture intoone where the flaws and virtues of the crafty mercenary philosopher king arethe dominant ethos of the whole race. In a way they are all CondottieriStella now, for, though they don't always wield institutional power, these arethe heroes and leaders of Man.
Moebus I think
Humanity and Humanism
Neither bigots nor fanatics, but not necessarily 'good'.Who are they? They spend their money on libraries and art, on music and display;the culture of the Condottieri Stella is a savage high culture, not a milkydemocratic one. Pride anneals all, the pride of men and women ready to risktheir lives, and combined with this; a love of all that is human; of love,friendship, loyalty and affection, and of human culture and human lives.
I see them like Renaissance Princes, or at least, aimingto become such; gold gathered from the battlefield spent in the courts of man, ownersof libraries, sponsors of artists, of painters, sculptors, musicians, engineers,where the sponsorship of technical art and useful science, goes alongside withthat of the fine arts, where corporate power is unsteady, due to the chaos ofwar and vast distances involved, where the power of science and technology islikewise, potent, but shattered and hard to scale.
In part because the culture of the Condottieri Stellarefuses full submission to the machine, in other, the irregular supply ofstrange resources. In part because the Cultures, the likely-alienbackers of the Condottieri, for whom they fight their proxy wars, specificallydon't want them to progress past the singularity; that might transform theminto a possible competitor, such a powerful agent would require an equivalentresponse from an opposing 'Culture', which would quickly spiral the CentaurusArm into the destructive and unpredictable hyperwar the 'Cultures' were tryingto avoid.
So Humanity remains, retained as a useful and limitedtool by the Cultures, and by the deliberate refusal of the Condottieri, andtheir specific orientation of their own piratical high culture around theproducts of unaltered humanity.
Since the Condottieri Stella are the highest-statusfigures in their own societies, and since they are a source of irregularfunding, resources, and of martial interest, they shape the ethos of thosecultures.
That the Condottieri Stella have no single fanaticalgoal, or single grand opposition which justifies and unites them, does not meanthey do not have ideals, or dreams of past and future, or questionsabout the meaning of their lives.
They have lots of ideas, they throng with them, for aCondottieri Stella is also, as well as being a mercenary, a bandit, a captain,a C.E.O., a Patron of arts, a friend and ally to some and foe to others, isalso a philosopher, or at least they read philosophy. They may have writtenbooks, or at least hired others to do so.
While other wargames might dispose the profits of a successfulcampaign into materiél, or raw status, the Captain of a Condottieri StellaCompany, leaves behind them, a trail of books, paintings, sculptures,performances, music, films and poetry, a kind of living library which serves torepresent them, their company, and their ethos or philosophy.
True some Captains might be interested only in propaganda,in forms and stories sufficient to push up their payments and burnish theirreputations, but as others would point out, this also is an ethos, though itdoes not call itself such.
Others; many, have dreams; ideas about what humanity isor should be, of mans relation to the immensity of time, of the Cultures, ofthe Centaurus Arm, of God and sorrow. Some are tragic, some positive, someempirical, others abstract. Some tell their story in the blazing of pennants,others speak like funerals, guarding their poems and philosophy like grievingturtles.
What matters is that their ideas are human and that theyhave them, and that they matter. Fighters argue over these things, they mighteven come to blows. Friends might be divided by philosophy, or art, while long-timefoes might find themselves united by a common theme, a mutual appreciation ofthe meaning of a life, or by love for an aesthetic, though they must battlenone the less.
That these are battles of ideas does not mean they arebattles of extinction, but arguments via arms. Always the Man has the Idea, notthe other way round. Always there is consideration, mulling over of concepts orideals, thoughts of process and precedence, of final ends against currentmeans. Always questions of virtue and expediency, honour and survival. The verywrestling with these questions is the animating spirit of the game. TwoCapitano's might battle on the field of war, then agree in the opera house, twoco-philosophers could end a battle with a chess game, or a debate. You might beable to talk them out of it. A man might weep for his enemy and deride hisfriend.
What I describe here is an annealing of a culture of deephumanism with one of controlled and ritualised violence. The personal,political, religious and ideal interwoven through the core humanexperience sharpened and made vivid by the extremity of war, of life and death.
That such figures care about money is no confirmation of hypocrisy,for money is never, or rarely, all they care about. Always they balancethe needs of the day against those of the morrow, the passions of the idealagainst survival. A miser might fight to bitter ends if well-resourced andrightly motivated, while an honour-bound hero might retreat, thinking only ofthe survival of their company and soldiers, unwilling to expend their lives,this time, in too straight and narrow a combat.
The intermixing and continual balancing of complexmulti-layered motivations does not corrode the ideal or produce a scene ofgold-gathering hypocrites, but exposes and enlightens humanity by placingcontroversies of the ideal in the only place they ever really exist; in thehands and hearts of living souls, bound by material condition and limitedcircumstance.
In the world-view of this game, high ideals in the handsof those who have only such ideals, who are driven only and entirelyby the ideal, are worthless, and would be seen, (by the characters inthis game at least*), as a moronic bashing together of toys.
To risk a final glorious charge, in order to stand by aprincipal, or hold to ones honour, might be very glorious, but if that chargerisks the whole life and future of a company, where then does virtue lie? Instanding by principal, or taking a practical path, for the lives one wagerswith are not one’s own. Sane people may disagree on this, and even soulsdisagree within themselves, and that is the kind of choice and turmoil thatSong of Audacity is made to express, for the turning over of virtues and decidingof fates, not just once, but over time and long campaigns, and the interweavingof the wisdom of the moment with the wisdom of time, that whole process, is thehumanism I am talking about.
It's not interesting if they are shit people. They mightbe 'bad'; manipulative, acquisitive, back-stabbing, but such a character can be'good', to those they ride with; a provider of futures, a shaper of fates, anda magnificent patron of arts which may burn through time, (think the Borgias).Likewise a soul may be craven, calculating, willing to retreat, but shouldnever be a coward exactly, for in this careful weighing of the moment againstthe future, they preserve not only themselves but their Company, theircompanies families and futures, as well as the wishes of their patrons.
ELF 2 500 1984
The Game Itself
A 28mm wargame based around mechs, and maybe a handful oftroops. No more than 30 models per side. The high-status leaders are always inthe best mechs. These would be scaled at about the size of the ImperialSentinel, with some a little bigger and some a little smaller.
There are only humans in this game and they arealways fighting each other for money. This is explicitly a game of contractsand resources, and the contracts are dietetically directly *from* the Cultureswhich have hired each side in this battle to do particular things.
Mission objectives would be largely asymmetric and blind.Each side might be there to do a quite different particular thing, and wouldn'timmediately know what the other side was there to do. It might be possible forboth sides to win, or for both to *lose*, monetarily at least.
A Company can 'break contract', going off the books,perhaps to escape what they see as a losing situation, or even imbued with thespirit of Ares, swearing vendetta against a rival company, though that may nothave been in the contract.
To avoid a 3rd party playing DM, this would be mediatedthrough smartphone. You would have all your rules online, and a living list ofyour Company, with its current state and resources. Then you and the friend youwant to fight would go to the app, sign in and confirm some rough details ofthe battlefield, and the app would act as each of your 'contractors', sendingmission objectives to each players phone separately. At the end of each turnyou would update basic details of what objectives and damage you have taken,and confirm the other players losses and objectives. There may be 'turnarounds'where, in the middle of a battle, your 'Contractor' suddenly changes what theywant you to do, and why, perhaps offering increased payment for certain goals.
The record of your Company would be held online and ifpeople wanted to team up together in larger narrative battles, you could scaneach others phones to join an alliance for the day.
As in Necromunda and Mordheim, the presence of cashearned from battles, and of damage taken, troops lost, repairs made, alliancesbroken or stood by, disasters, successes, friends and enemies, would make the'Company' a character of its own.
The cash sponge that stops super-successful Companiesfrom running away with everything is the funding of arts, artists, libraries,philosophies, music, culture, technology, etc etc. Naturally as a Capitanobecomes more and more respected, they become more like a Prince, and as aPrince, they lead not just a warband but a collection of aesthetics and ideas,leaving their print on human culture across the Centaurus Arm. This 'CulturalVictory' effect is the true status symbol for Captain and Player alike; thosewho are most successful and leave the greatest mark are written into theofficial history of the game, their aesthetic and ideas becoming a strand ofhumanities great over-culture, which others may align with, copy or defy in thefuture.
Andrew Stewart Jamieson
The Modelling and Roleplaying
You would have to do this yourself, off the books, but asthe game manufacturer, False Machine would sell transfers and symbols forvarious Contractors, tendencies, alliances, battlefields, achievements, ideas,principals etc, and you would be able to apply these to your mechs to showwhere they have fought, what for and why.
Or you could just assemble your mechs and decal them withwhatever you think best, and base your Companies philosophy and history onthat.
The subtlety of owning and developing your philosophy islikely too complex for Wargame mechanics, we would have to rely on gamers tothink about them and roleplay them, (we could include it in the RPG). The gamecould provide potential reading lists for people beginning their philosophy.
Kallamity 135 scale HDM-07 BRIEGEL I master, 2005
Mech Design
Anything, just not ugly, and it must have wideflat surfaces for decals.
I dream of mechs influenced by, designers likeKallamity. (But not copying; Kallamaty’s designs are precisely arrangedfor the scale they are at), and also by early race cars, the more vibrant endof the Japanese robot market, mixed with the neo-industrial style of 40K,especially the Ad Mech, Imperial Guard and, Tau and of course, Knights.
No antigrav, and a healthy dose ofanthropomorphism.
Kitbashing would be fine and dandy I think. We could evenstart of selling 3d printed kits to alter or amend GW kits and other intosomething more ‘Song of Audacity’
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* I am not against this in other fictions but it isspecifically not what this one is about.
