#ssc emperor

[lancersafetysigns]

[szkin-art]

An SSC Emperor outfitted for the Glass Fleet of the Baronic Navy, bearing the Coat-of-Arms of House McKenzie. It is equipped with the Marathon Arc Bow standard for the Emperor chassis, and a VALKYRIE-type Bolt Nexus Quiver.

The onboard VIDAR-class NHP is a standard Baronic combat support clone, seemingly modified through unsanctioned interfacing with the human pilot; the effects of this interfacing appear to have progressed both ways.

[well-wishing-for-a-life]

Bit of an unusual direction from me but I wanted to remake my SSC Emperor "Garage Jungle Heads" and I'm proud of how it turned out

[msmc-796-official]

Conversely, what about least favorite mechs

// You didn't specify whether to do them from all manufacturers or just one, so we're gonna interpret this as least favorite mech overall.

To answer that question for myself - the SSC Death's Head. RA almighty that thing is hideous. They took a perfectly good superheavy-mount sniper and ruined it. Look at it, it has those creepy-ass human feet and everything. Disgusting. What a waste of a good frame name; if the Death's Head had been literally anything else, it would have been cool.

+ easy answer here as well. can't fucking stand barbarossas. "ooh look at my giant apocalypse rail I'm gonna nuke you from orbit in four turns" shut the fuck up. we already know your dick is minuscule; you're male-bodied and pilot a HA frame, for RA's sake. bite my shiny metal ass and get jammed, you walking size 4 scrapheap

> My initial answer was going to be a HORUS frame of some variety. I do not like HORUS mechs. However, for reasons that I trust are entirely understandable to anyone remotely familiar with the events of the Fireman Saga, I am changing my answer to the HA Genghis. (The exact variant matters not; the only difference between the Mk. 1 "Worldkiller" and the Mk. 2 "Genghis" is the number of warcrimes its pilot wishes to commit against civilians at a given time.)

-- Angel, Slipshod, & Lockbreaker

[horsegirlwithnoname]

ALRIGHT YOU ASKED FOR IT, SSC MECHS AS DRIL TWEETS

BLACK WITCH

DEATH'S HEAD

DUSK WING

METALMARK

MONARCH

VICEROY

MOURNING CLOAK

SWALLOWTAIL

WHITE WITCH

EMPEROR

ATLAS

YOU WANT MORE HUH? HARRISON ARMORY HORUS IPS-N

(also I couldn't find the OG Mourning Cloak tweet but I do remember it and also using that particular account's repost of it is funny to me)

[draculancer-flow]

I promise to use the most ethically problematic one to cause ethical problems, as is my solemn duty as Dracula (and to make a Draculancer Flow build for it)

[positronzz]

My lancer mech is starting to manifest out of my brain. He's an LL2 SSC Emperor with a charged blade sidearm. The rifle here is meant to be a representation of the Marathon. Whole thing definitely still very raw but im having fun! Currently he's in the midst of trying to help the local catgirl rip and tear...

[faulty-heat-vents]

Honestly I’m way more scared of SCC than I am HORUS. Horus is a bunch of computer nerds in scattered basements, SCC is a mega corporation with no regard for ethics. Look at the Emperor! I don’t trust that shit

//CORRESPONDENCE: ASHTON-212

I won’t lie, I don’t trust SSC much either- especially after that last dream.

Which I’m still shaky on if it was actually a dream or a faded memory… but either way, someone definitely died inside of that Monarch. Whether it was a version of me or not is up in the air.

That being said, HORUS is the one sending me the nightmares and meat printcodes via fucked-up-and-evil airdrop, so who knows what to trust

More questions than answers. That’s kinda how life’s been going for me lately…

[gender-trash]

hi!

not to be abrupt or vaguely out of the blue, but do you have any fun recent book/music recs? you seem like you like cool stuff and my to read/ to listen list is looking sad. or film/tv recs anything goes.

yeah absolutely, i am basically always delighted to rec books/music!!

books (fiction):

the goblin emperor: i read this for the first time recently and was just completely charmed by it. recommended if you like plotty court intrigue fantasy with a good-sized pinch of conlang. me @ maia (the protagonist/pov character):

the scholomance trilogy: not exactly a deep cut, at least among tumblr users who read fantasy, but on the off chance you haven't read it: it's good.

a tale for the time being: okay so i don't normally into litfic but once in a blue moon i'll pick some up and it'll obliterate me. alternates between the pov of a japanese teenage girl's diary and the middle-aged author-insert character in british columbia who finds the diary after the girl tosses it into the pacific ocean; plays with time in a fun way. subtle magical realism my beloved.

(and there's no such thing as an easy job has a similar subtle magical realism vibe, but is overall much less of a tearjerker. highly recommend.)

several people are typing: a guy gets isekai'd into his work slack; the story is told entirely via slack messages. this is a super quick read, and very funny. especially if you have a job that involves using slack.

the machineries of empire series: aauauahahahahgggh i need one of those mspaint drawings of a stick figure covered in blood to describe my feelings on this one. fucked-up science fiction (you... COULD call it lesbian space atrocities, i suppose!) that drops you in on the deep end trying to figure out what all these words mean and then you slowly figure out that it's technical terminology describing the torment nexus that powers society. killer shit.

song for the basilisk: admittedly i did not read this particularly recently but i will take any opportunity to rec it. patricia a. mckillip writes really good high fantasy (check out how many times she shows up in the mythopoeic awards list!) and, of all the books of hers that i've read, this is my favorite.

danmei (chinese boys-love novels) in english translation is like half of what i've been reading lately -- my all time favorite is the scum villain's self-saving system, which has eaten my entire brain (it's good in itself; it's great for chewing on in the form of meta and fan activity), but i also recommend guardian (the third and final volume of the official english translation is the book i most recently finished reading) and devil venerable also wants to know (no official translation but this fan TL is quite decent; i bound myself a physical edition, so i also have a typeset PDF i'd be happy to DM you if you're interested.)

books (nonfiction):

(going to be briefer here, since you specifically asked for "fun" books and my nonfiction taste is a little unhinged.)

one of my current reads is michael szonyi's the art of being governed -- this is an academic monograph about how military families in the ming dynasty handled their obligations to the state. during the ming dynasty, it was possible for families to designate themselves "military families", which was a tax-advantaged status but obligated them to provide one (1) man to serve in the army at all times (so if he dies or deserts, eventually the family back home would have to cough up another one). (and, by "serve in the army", often what is meant is "you are employed by the military to farm, which is more or less what you would have done back home anyway.")

if you're the kind of guy who reads patio11's bits about money or enjoys ssc book reviews, you will likely also enjoy dan davies' the unaccountability machine, which is a brief exploration for a popular audience of the (dysfunctional) system dynamics of large institutions like corporations and governments. very accessible and nontechnical, but with pointers to the Deep Lore if you subsequently want to seek it out.

the world of the shining prince: this is a book about what it was like, culturally, to be an aristocrat in the heian period. since i have never in my life come within either 1,000 miles or 1,000 years of being a heian period aristocrat i find this deeply fascinating. however, my friends and family have started laughing at me whenever i bring up information about the heian period. read at your own risk.

sei shōnagon's pillow book: sei shōnagon was a heian period aristocrat! she seems to have enjoyed it, but it is something of a shame that she died approximately a thousand years too early to make a tumblr account, because otherwise i feel she would have LOVED blogging. i'm reading the penguin edition (trans. meredith mckinney) and it is, fortunately, quite thoroughly footnoted, but i haven't read any other translations so i don't know if there is a better one out there.

music:

today what i was listening to on loop was the chainsaw man ost, which is a mixture of, like, the usual sort of j-rock you find in a shōnen soundtrack and slow-paced atmospheric stuff, and somehow it works really well together. recently i've also been listening to this playlist a lot because it's the playlist i made for a fic i'm currently writing.

other songs i've been listening to this summer, in no particular order:

sungazer is music theory youtuber adam neely's jazz band; lately they've been experimenting with hypertuplets and i'm super into it.

sometimes i find electric six's vocalist really irritating and sometimes it's exactly the juice my brain needed, and i have no idea what controls this. possibly the phase of the moon.

spotify recommended me this song and i listened to it on loop for like an entire work day and then clicked on the artist name to learn more, which i didn't. googled the song just now while making this post and apparently it was in a video game? the more you know.

i've been listening to irontom a lot this summer (and, um, a lot of similar music that i eventually stuffed in a playlist entitled "music with blown-out audio channels"). it's just, you know, the vibe.

(if that's not enough, here's my "summer 2024" spotify playlist. go ham!)

film/tv:

somehow, "watching things" is a skill it is possible to be bad at, and baby i'm winning last place.

the one tv show i've managed to watch in i think the past four months is chainsaw man, mentioned above. personally i really like well-animated shōnen with a cool soundtrack and i don't care that much about its other qualities; however, the protagonist is a dipshit teenage boy whose greatest life ambition is to touch a boob, so if this frustrates you you probably won't enjoy it very much.

i really really wish more people would watch legend of hei, a chinese animated film in the same corner of concept-space as studio ghibli. it's cuteeeeeee <3333

maybe someday i'll finally finish watching oh my general, a cdrama (free on youtube!) about a female general (ye zhao) who for reasons gets in an arranged marriage with the emperor's dipshit nephew (zhao yujin). this is peak fucking content because ye zhao is constantly saying gay shit by accident and swanning about being cute/badass in probably-historically-dubious armor. also as with all cdramas the costuming is completely off the shits.

[kosmicznyhusarz-blog]

Aight, random thought here.

What if the Dokis from hit visual novel "Doki Doki Literature Club" were Lancers from hit ttrpg "Lancer"?

What mechs would they pilot? What would they name their frames? What callsigns would they have? So many questions with no answers yet.

I thought about it harder than I would like to admit and managed to at least find a team comp for them. (Bonus points for each having a different manufacturer)

So, obvious thing out of the way. Monika pilots a Pegasus. No other frame fits the "I know everything and fuck around with the fabric of reality itself" vibe quite as well. And every time someone asks her about it she just chuckles and says some cryptic shit like a true Horus pilot.

Next up, Sayori. For some reason I see her piloting a Blackbeard, grappling people and slicing them with chain axes to the point no one is sure if it's her or Sekhmet having fun. As the most energetic person in the club I feel the frontline role with extreme mobility would fit.

For Yuri I think the Emperor is a very good fit, even on vibes alone. Sleek and elegant SSC design that isn't in the spotlight, while supporting her teammates. Of course the added mystery of a bisected alien mind could be something that would draw her in to pilot that frame in particular, but still. (Between Yuri and Natsuki, the first one seems more fit for a support)

And last, but not least, Natsuki. The fiery temperament immediately screams Harrison Armory, that much is certain, but I'm not exactly sure on the frame. I'm torn between a Tokugawa and Genghis. It's tough for me to actually decide if her rage would make her burn (Tokugawa), or make everything else burn (Genghis).

The MC would pilot an Everest. Of course.

[stupidsexymecha]

SSC Emperor

“In Exotic Materials we don’t have problems: we have doors that are not yet open to us. A ‘problem’ presents endless branching paths. Doors are binary. Open and shut. ‘The tyranny of the problem lies in the impossible breadth of possibility.’ Smith said that. He went on to say that this is a useless framing for tinkerers and hobbyists whose ethics are defined by calcified, hand-wringing institutions. So! EXMAT is solutions-focused: there is no such thing as a problem, only a door, and the question: can we open it, or do we have to bash it down? Progress. Smith Shimano has always been about progress. Humanity has always been about progress. In service of progress, one must accept the necessity of teleological suspension. For the Emperor, after Hercynia, we had to bash the door down. Ugly process, but the riches beyond the door were more than worth it. Syncretic subjectivities, induced gestalt manifestation, H-NHP ontologic bridging, superpositional defensive lensing – look at what the battering ram gave us and tell me you’d rather puzzle out a problem then bash down the door and grab all the gold. What else is there to say? Long live the Emperor, for in its creation did we find the method by which to fling open every locked door. Wondrous things are coming. I’m glad that they’ll be under our control.” – Memo to personal records, Bala Shimano, CEO-1, Exotic Materials Group

[changelingrain]

The Color Of Magic, a SSC Emperor kitbashed with Retrograde Minis' sprites for an upcoming oneshot.

"I have learned to vanish, and so shall you."

[swishysword]

It's been a bit since I posted anything of my games, so here's a quick catch up on No Room for a Wallflower. Spoilers for Mission 5 below the cut:

M5 - Hitchhikers and Strays

Objectives

Primary Objective: Last until the end of Round 6.

Risk: If all players are defeated before Round 6, the squad is forced to withdraw and the Cassander remains operational.

Reward: Temporary access to the Cassander, a Short Rest. Secondary Objective: Defeat both the Squadron Nexus and [ BIRD HUNTER ]. (0/2)

Reward: x1 CORE battery

Environment

Upper Atmosphere: Treated as a Zero-G environment, characters without EVA Modules are permanently Slowed. Systems such as Flight and Jump Jet System may temporarily ignore Slowed while in use. Characters "forced to land" due to effects instead lose all of their current movement, but are otherwise unaffected.

Asteroids: At the start of every Round, players may place one Asteroid size 1 or size 2 of their choice in the Asteroid Lane along the bottom right border. Then the GM may place one Asteroid of size 1 or 2 in the Asteroid Lane along the same border. Asteroids move according to their size at the end of the round (10 space for size 1, 4 spaces for size 2). If they collide with a character or object while moving, they deal 10 Kinetic damage (Hull or Eng check for half, character's choice) and are then destroyed. Otherwise, they act as hard cover.

Contingency White's Support: 1/Round, Contingency White may Lock On to any target within 20 of the Sunset, and then may fire their Point Defense Cannon (Heavy Cannon, Inaccurate, +1 Attack, Range 8, 2d6+4 Kinetic Damage)

Cassander's Support: At the end of each Round, the Cassander may place a Blast 3 No Fly Zone, which lasts until the end of the next Round. Characters that move through the No Fly Zone are 1/Round targeted by a free reaction Overwatch with a Flak Cannon attack (Main Cannon, +2 Attack, +1 Accuracy, 5 Kinetic damage, On Critical Hit: A flying character must succeed on an Agility save or immediately land.)

The party freed several prisoners from Evergreen, but were forced to leave behind all they couldn't fight onto their transport behind.

The party has a heart-to-heart, before climbing about Contingency White's corvette and heading to Quiet Night, where they acquired and learned of SSC's involvement on Hercynia... and something involving Operation EMPEROR.

Before they could reach the Cassander, they hear a distress beacon from a Union ship... their ship, that brought them here. Upon investigating, they found the carrier gutted by an anti-cap ship weapon, and all signs of life gone. Save for the Captain's pet krait hound, still alive and unaware of its owner's death. The party brought the hound and captain's body aboard, intending to adopt the pet and put the captain to rest.

And then... on their way to the Cassander, they encountered the very force that killed the UNS Dandelion, and now brace themselves for combat.

Art assets: https://starlight-furnace.itch.io/ & https://www.retrogrademinis.com/

Virtual TableTop: https://foundryvtt.com/

[gildedframesofglass]

Greetings! I was just curious on the build of the frame you run

The pleasure is mine,

Well, I should preface this with the acknowledgement that One Everlasting Encore is built for show. It isn't the most ergonomic or professionally designed machine, but it is a beauty to behold.

And, Ra knows, it cost me a fortune.

-- SSC Emperor @ LL12 --

[ LICENSES ]

SSC Emperor 2, SSC Death’s Head 3, SSC Metalmark 3, SSC Swallowtail 3, SSC Atlas 1

[ CORE BONUSES ]

Full Subjectivity Sync, Ghostweave, Neurolink Targeting, Integrated Weapon

[ TALENTS ]

Tactician 3, Skirmisher 3, Infiltrator 3, Crack Shot 3, Brutal 3

[ STATS ]

HULL:4 AGI:6 SYS:2 ENGI:2

STRUCTURE:4 HP:10 ARMOR:0

STRESS:4 HEATCAP:7 REPAIR:4

TECH ATK:+3 LIMITED:+1

SPD:8 EVA:18 EDEF:10 SENSE:15 SAVE:17

[ WEAPONS ]

Integrated: Marathon Arc Bow

INTEGRATED WEAPON: Oracle LMG-I

MAIN MOUNT: Vulture DMR

[ SYSTEMS ]

ATHENA-Class NHP, Kinetic Compensator, High-Stress Mag Clamps, Markerlight, Shahnameh x4, Multi-Gear Maneuver System, Custom Paint Job

[gnusnoteunuchs]

How is Wallflower going for your group and what kind of mech does Castrati use?

the Wallflower campaign that i was in is on basically a permanent hiatus; some of our players got burned out, and we couldn't keep going. it's a shame, because it was a super fun campaign and we had an awesome GM, but it is what it is

Castrati was running a SSC Emperor for a while, but after it was destroyed in battle he did a homoerotic forging-a-new-weapon montage with the old warrior TERROR to switch to a frame variant of the Emperor that my fellow players homebrewed as a birthday present for me. I really enjoyed the Emperor's whole "ranged support" thing and their frame variant reimagined it as a shorter-ranged, tougher, less focused version that was meant to perform better for close quarters engagements.

I gotta admit, one of the things I miss about that game was that the Emperor was the very first anything i encountered in a TTRPG that genuinely felt like it was mechanically perfect for what I like to play.

anyways, this was the art i did of the Swan Song, Castrati's final mech. The remains of his Emperor have been fused with earthmoving equipment and cast-off shells of native Hercynian fauna to create this awful transformable bug samurai thing. my lovely girlfriend @heartfuldame also did an incredibly cool pixel art kitbash for the roll20 sprite that i hope she will post here

[the-rogue-that-goes-stab]

SSC Apatura

The SSC Apatura is a full license. The Apatura is the child of development hell, released by begrudgingly by a subsect of the Lux Iconic designers in hopes to get more field data.

The Apatura is the older sister frame to the recently released Mourning Cloak, it has been in development long before the advancements in singularity tech allowed for the finalization of the Cloak. Imagined as the armor cracker to the area denial and control of the Black Witch, the rapid defense of the still-in-concept White Witch, and the skirmishing Mourning Cloak, what came to be known as the Apatura had unexpected issues.

Designed for team-wide armor piercing to specifically benefit mourning cloak, the Apatura was to use corrosive weapons to melt the exterior hulls of hostiles for a quick finish. This did not come to be due to the difficulties in the invention and synthesis of a quality enough substance. Hundreds of chemical cocktails and many variations of said hundreds came and went with the development process. The worst part of this, aside from the stalling of working on additional frames to add to the line, was the fact that the development name was stolen by the Exotic Materials Group. The Apatura, originally called the Emperor, was to "strike fear into the hearts of its enemies, melting there defense before leading its knights clean up the stragglers".

Eventually the team found the right formula, the perfect substance to prolong the melting against hull fabrication. The only probelem was that it was too hard to synthesis on the field. In the end, the designers pivoted the roll of the Puddling Apatura to scavenge raw matter in the to cobble together through specialized internal printers. As a result the former emperor is now squandered to scavenge off of defeated mechs, its visage clouded by corrosive gas.

Mechanically, the Apatura is a Limited system and weapon user that spreads shredded through limited weapons. Equipped with a passive to scavenge wrecks (removing there ability to grant hard cover but not outright destroying them), it has incredible ability to stay stocked up. Immune to shredded and equipped with very good stats, it is easily enabled to be a front line fighter.

Rendered fragile to balance its sustainable high damage, its efficient core active allows it to give a character exposed instead of shredded as it injects a catalyze to the enhance the acidic reaction.

License:

(LL1) Injection Palm - a ap main melee weapon that forces the target to succeed on a hull save or become shredded.

(LL1) Disposable Mod - a mod that gives limited 5 to a weapon without limited. Also it gets +1d6 bonus damage.

(LL2) Frame

(LL2) Melter Array - a heavy limited cqb weapon that acts as a souped up shotgun that can attack another character, object or terrain within 3 spaces of original target (but half damage, no bonus damage, and doesn't expend a charge)

(LL2) Caustic Brew - acid grenade. Chuck does damage and shred, mine has a prolonged shred effect that is harder to save against while in the fog

(LL3) NEITH-CLASS NHP - originally one of my exotic NHP's, the NEITH has the ability to have its charges consumed instead of other limited systems as it produces components from nothing (at the cost of extreme power consumption that requires auxiliary batteries dedicated to the system).

(LL3) Corrosion Mortar - a limited system that allows you to fire a shell that makes an spot of dangerous terrain that is harder to save against if the target is shredded.