Crack

[Webstral]

Twilight: 2000 is crack. I put aside Thunder Empire because I don’t have the time to give. Yesterday, though, my wife and I visited the Asian Art Museum. The feature gallery was “Samurai”. I was inspired to dust off an old idea and revamp it. Hours later, I had a revised concept for using a motorized Nipponized warlord in the expanses of the American West. I just can’t manage to stay away.

Working on my Japanese-themed warlord revealed another of my character quirks: I have a hard time not becoming attached to my work. As a consequence, my characters and organizations reflect my biases. Originally, my motorized warlord was supposed to be a Lord Humungous of the Wasteland (The Road Warrior) writ large and written into the American Southwest. The motorized marauders were supposed to be an army of bad guys for the 111th Brigade to crush in 2000. After a few hours of work, though, the marauders became something quite different: a Holnness-type (The Postman) of disciplined fighting force on wheels exerting loose control over most of Nevada. The Japanese influence is still there. In fact, powerful images, practices, and music are critical components of the unifying power of the force. However, the force is no longer a swarm of mechanized locusts destroying everything in its path. Instead, the marauders have taken on a more mixed aspect by exacting tribute (taxes) from the surviving communities and ruthlessly crushing all internal opposition, but at the same time protecting the area against incursion by outside marauders, protecting trade (which builds the tax base), and helping local law enforcement run down local criminals. This is what I would do with a large armed force, so this is what my characters end up doing after I work with them for a while. Sigh. Still, there’s plenty of room for these guys to be villains, I suppose.

Webstral