BESM - Palomino: Treasure of the Sierra Mecha 2

Our wandering heroes - Kate the gamber and terraformer, Jake the tinkerer and gunsmith, and Se-No-Wo-Te the displaced Native American - are dealing with unexpected miners on the outskirts of the town of Grace on the mining moon of Palomino....

Fochenflick then spoke with Kate, sharing impressions of Fleiss, then with Jake, who reported their attempted bribe and the jamming equipment on their mechs. He then checked with Se-No-Wote to see if there had been any activity in Travers Canyon, and suggested that the Indian stay away from the canyon edge for a few days. He also suggested that his three newest employees should come in for dinner that night; the miners could stay where they were for the time being. 

Jake worked his way to a better observation post. The mechs were busy building a bulwark. They were about 30 years old and in good condition. They had been repaired several times, but they were standard models, not like Jake's hand-built job. They had no unusual visible equipment, so the jammer might be elsewhere. He knew the model; they didn't have a lot of room inside. 

Se-No-Wote turned his attention to wandering cattle in the badlands. He found one with a broken leg, which took care of lunch. He found another stream that was apparently connected to the same tainted water source, and took the opportunity for a closer look. The water had a slight sheen. He took a sample. 

Mr. Fleiss got cleaned up (which didn't mean he could ride inside the mech) and Kate took him back to the mine. He invited her up for a drink to meet the other fellows and apologized for throwing a satchel charge at her; she assured him that it had been forgotten, and increased her speed a bit to cut down on the chatter. At the camp, she got a look at the new earthworks, laughed silently, and went off to find the other two for their meeting with Fochenflick.

On his way in, Se-No-Wote passed Jeb and Simon riding out into the badlands. Kate took advantage of the room and clothes Fochenflick had on offer. Jake reported about his work on the sensor arrays, that the fences were turned on but had no control center, and that the hardware seemed to have nothing wrong with it. Fochenflick wanted the fences tied into his own system. Jake suggested finding the person who sold Granger the gear, to see about upgrading. It emerged that Fochenflick had recommended the upgrade to the Granger systems and even given him a loan, which might have worked out well had Granger had more time to work out the bugs. Se-No-Wote reported on the tainted water. Fochenflick mentioned that some people had actually died due to the water problems. Filtration systems were a big business in town. Was it possible the mining operation had caused some spilloff?

Kate pulled out her maps of the watershed, interfering with the service of the soup course; it seemed unlikely that the small mine was causing the problem. Fochenflick decided to put more filtration systems in on the streams on his land. Jake suggested that the filters at the boarding house might be a rich information source. There was some conversation on Cassady's eccentricities, and his work taking in orphaned children (to whom Fochenflick had given some money). Fochenflick offered the other two rooms at his casa. Jake wanted to continue his work at the boarding house. 

Talk turned to what Se-No-Wote had seen in Travers Canyon. There was a gentlemen's agreement between Travers and some of the local ranchers after some disagreements over water rights, that there would be no mining outside the canyon. Jeb Granger must have been very worried about money to allow the mining he had. They were violating the gentlemen's agreement, but not the actual law. There was no evidence that Travers knew what was going on. The three miners had most likely... liberated... a few of his mechs. Kate wondered why Travers hadn't notified the law about the theft. Jake guessed correctly that Travers was his own law enforcement (and everything else), even though Sheriff Garner was theoretically in authority. And it was just possible that they actually had bought the mechs—they were old models, maybe he'd been replacing them. Where were they planning to sell the gold ore where Travers wouldn't hear about it? Run it via mecha to some other city? 

It was going to be hard to stop them; they were well dug in, and they did have the agreement with the Grangers, which trumped the gentlemen's agreement. Fochenflick had been Granger's partner. It would be a big legal mess if they pressed their claim, which might not work in Fochenflick's favor. On the other hand, there was no way the three were going to stay hidden for another six months. Jake proposed letting them haul off the tailings from Kate's earthmoving and sift it for ore wherever they wanted to. Jeb and Simon were out keeping an eye on the camp. 

Fochenflick wanted more information. Se-No-Wote would sneak in to the camp to find out more, and use his mech by remote control to distract their attention. He passed some less than friendly words with Jeb and Simon and headed up the cliff to the quasi-licit camp. 

The three miners were crouched behind their earthwork, watching the Indian's mech (and Jeb and Simon) as intended. They were working themselves into an even more nervous state, worried about the Granger killing and Se-No-Wote's presence (one of them decided that Se-No-Wote had killed the Grangers) and what Fochenflick might do and what might happen if they were forced to return to Travers and how they might flee with all of their gold in two mechs without being forced to split up and how they would fight if they had to. It appeared that they did not entirely trust each other. He rifled their tents quietly, found the jamming equipment but not the gold. Enough food and water to last them weeks. 

Back at the ranch, Kate went over her surveying with Fochenflick, gave him her estimates on how many explosives he would need and discussed which rivers he wanted to keep. It took a couple of hours. She returned to her hotel for the night, though, had a drink at the bar and picked up the day's gossip. The people she'd been playing with the other night had headed out. She gave a correct if sketchy version of the Granger murder and was surprised by a "working girl" who had been seeing Harris and seemed certain that Harris hadn't killed anyone because of Molly... the sheriff had shot Harris for no reason. Apparently Fochenflick hired a lot of twitchy people. 

Jake stopped by the mech repair shop looking for a water analysis kit and found one that might function again with some work and spare parts, then returned to his lodgings, where he had been dubbed Hammer Guy by the children. 

Se-No-Wote reported to Fochenflick, who didn't seem to want anyone killed, but did want the problem handled quietly, without Travers finding out. He did tell Se-No-Wote that they had checked the water on the Granger land and found nothing. Se-No-Wote did not receive an offer of a room.

To be Continued....

BESM - Palomino: Treasure of the Sierra Mecha 1

Our wandering heroes - Chance the gambler and terraformer, Jake the tinkerer and gunsmith, and Se-No-Wo-Te the displaced Native American - are settling into the town of Grace on the mining moon Palomino...

Chance spent a peaceful night at the Grand Salon in her well-appointed, sound-proof room. Between "Mama's" flashbacks, the wails of children, and the local hookers, Jake and Se-No-Wote's night at Mama Cassady's wasn't quite as quiet, but Se-No-Wote at least could sleep through the loudest thunderstorm or be awakened by the slightest rustle of a snake in the grass. 

A cock crowed, and a distant explosion signaled the start of day at Travers Canyon, and the three newcomers to Palomino got down to work. For Chance, this involved heading out on her own in Ladybird, surveying the territory she was going to be rearranging in the near future (with the aid of a giant robot and a lot of explosives). The extensive Granger land included a sizable amount of badlands and steep, rocky areas as well as already-usable grazing land. She went alone; Fochenflick had a number of range hands, household staff, and general do-this-guys (Jeb and Simon, who were out this morning cleaning up the Granger place), none of them likely to be useful. 

Jake started work on the staircase at Mama Cassady's, then headed out to the Granger place to start walking fences. The doctor's wagon was there to take away the bodies. Se-No-Wote ascertained that the Granger cattle had gotten out into the mecha landing field, some out into the canyon, and a few up into the badlands, then began using his mecha to round them up out of the landing zone. 

Chance had worked her way well up into the badlands when she picked up a seismic anomaly from higher up. From up here she could see the other two mecha far in the distance. Above, a glint of moving metal. Her radio wasn't working. Her mech climbed the side of the mesa to a shelf near the top and found a small camp there, and one man looking a little surprised to see her. A mine shaft descended into the mesa. Two drilling mechs the size of Se-No-Wote's were parked to one side. A man saw her, announced that Travers had found them! And one of the robots threw a satchel charge at her, causing her to slide back down the mountain to avoid it (they didn't detonate it).

The other two saw Chance in difficulty and headed in that direction. Jake discovered that the top of the mountain was being jammed electronically.

Chance & Se-No-Wote were on scene, Jake watching from a distance. The man (Lamont Fliess) claims he & the other two miners (Freddy and Eb, in the mecha) have an agreement with Granger. Chance gives him a ride on (not in) her mecha to Fochenflick's place. Se-No-Wote goes back to work, Jake maintains a distant surveillance, digs into Granger's records & found a Fred Dobbs noted as someone who'd come by ten weeks before with an "interesting proposition," no details. Kate wondered why the miner thought she was from Travers if he knew he was on Granger land. 

Se-No-Wote got all of the cattle out of the landing zone, alone but for the endlessly repeating signal from Lucky's shack. Meanwhile, Jake got the Granger fences working again at a minimal level and determined that the generator could be salvaged. The fences were fine, the computer had been the problem, and of course the computer was toast after yesterday's gunfight. It seemed that whatever the cause, things had begun going wrong about three months before. 

Se-No-Wote next turned his attention to the cattle that had wandered down into Travers Canyon (stealthily, since he wasn't supposed to be there). Mining was taking place on that wall of the canyon, about three klicks away; he could hear the drilling and explosions even at that distance. Outriders on horses stood watch on the walls. Se-No-Wote found four cattle quickly, climbed down from the mecha and coaxed them in the right direction. Back in the mecha, an indicator flashed that someone had done a sensor sweep of the area; not sure if he had been detected or not, he left the canyon. Keeping watch behind him, he saw something indistinct under a tarp being dragged in the direction from which he had come. Safe over the wall without being shot at, he still felt watched. There were probably more cattle down there; perhaps a night excursion would locate them.

Jake got a message from the two guys at the mining camp; they were curious about Fochenflick: what kind of man, how well he paid, whether he knew about the camp, how long Jake was planning to be in the area, whether he was planning to retire soon (not really). The attempted bribe fell flat; if they did have a deal with Granger, Jake saw no reason Fochenflick wouldn't uphold it, while it would be quite difficult at this point to pretend that the camp didn't exist.

Meanwhile, Chance had a similar conversation with Lamont, who asked her about Fochenflick, the Granger murder, and events in town. She was relieved when the house appeared on the horizon; the sparkling conversation was a bit much. She set Lamont on the porch. He was looking pretty rough. The housemaid asked him to stay on the porch while the boss was summoned. Drinks are served on the veranda while Chance explains the mining camp's layout and the initial encounter to Fochenflick. He guessed they stole the mining mechs from Travers. Chance elevated her estimation of their brass, and their stupidity. 

Lamont explained himself as well as he can—they were gold miners who had amassed about $130,000 worth so far, they had bought the mechs, they had an agreement with the Grangers that allowed them to keep working for three more months, and so forth—and presented his army discharge papers as identification. Kate offered the information Jake turned up as confirmation.

Fochenflick wanted to run the agreement past a lawyer, but was ambivalent about wanting to let the mining continue and hinted that he might want a substantial cut of what they had found. They should stop work until that had been determined. It was revealed that Granger had had debts he had been worried about.

To Be Continued....

BESM - Palomino: Falling into Grace 2

Our three wandering heroes - Chance the gambler, Se-No-Wo-Te the displaced indigene, and Jake the tinkering and gunsmith - have entered the town of Grace on the mining moon Palomino, and are setting in....

Jake talked to Mama, explained about the filters, had some oddly colored eggs pressed on him, saw the herd of children, and agreed to fix the upstairs cooling unit that evening. Then he went out to looking for work. There were the railyards, the shop near the mecha parking zone, and some places he could set up a shop of his own if he wanted to spend the time. He got some coffee, threw away the potentially bio-hazardous eggs, and started with the shop near the mecha lot.

The proprietor, Oliphilent Wilson – who, like Cassady, had the attenuated bone structure of one who grew up in low gravity only to be worn down by Palomino – informed him that the local sheriff wasn't big on independent mecha, seeing them as a potential threat to law & order. He directed Jake to Fochenflick, who had just acquired more land and needed some computer & mechanical work done on it, and of course there was Mr. Travers, who had a handful of mecha to keep in good repair. He also explained about the mecha lodging fee – free for six days, 500 for the seventh – designed to keep threats to law and order from sticking around too long. 

Kate saw Jake coming as the two Travers men who had been fleeced last night staggered out toward the train station. No sense, it seemed, taking money back into the canyon when everything was paid for. The newcomers had coffee and compared notes, agreeing that Fochenflick looked like a good prospect. Jake told her about the mech stabling fee, and they headed for the Fochenflick place. Kate dressed in a nice skirt and even unearthed a hat; Jake wore his usual jeans & flannel shirt with a cowboy hat. The house was a sumptuous three-story on the town’s outer ring. Out front was a big, four-armed mecha, with a pair of deputies lounging around it.

Inside were Fochenflick and Sheriff Bobbie Garner, who told them about the "lodging tax" which Fochenflick offered to cover if they worked for him. The rancher alluded to his scientific herd-handling practices, with the attendant need for level land and sensor towers. Hiring their mecha would be more efficient than Mr. Traver's fees. 

As the sheriff was leaving, one of Fochenflick's men, Harris, rode up to announce the Grangers murder by "some crazy redskin": the whole family shot several times. Jeb had been grabbed by the redskin, threatened, and hurled onto a rock. The deputies displayed a lack of critical thinking skills, Fochenflick announced that the Grangers were his partners and it was their land he was planning to modify, Kate & Jake collected their mecha, and all went to the Granger place, to which Se-No-Wo-Te had returned. Seeing his companion’s mechs, the Indian quietly summoned his own, making radio contact with Jake to explain recent events. 

Dwight & Mickey, the deputies in the mech, rescued Jeb, who was still languishing on top of his rock. Sheriff Garner & Harris went to the house. Jake shadowed them, noting the security – a proximity sensor doubtless designed to ignore anything cow-shaped. The system apparently had problems. A man, woman & two children were dead inside, face down.  Jake took the sheriff aside to relay Se-No-Wo-Te's version of the story, and that Jake had never seen the Indian carry a gun. 

Kate sat in her mech outside, surveying the area; Fochenflick's territory was enormous. She also chatted with the man himself, who had driven in his jeep (with only his oversized pistol as protection) and advised her to stay outside with him.

Garner left the house to call the suspect from his mecha, pulling Dwight from the mech to keep an eye on the range. Jake took a look at the house's computer/security system. It had been having trouble for a long time, though whether it was due to bad parts, incorrect installation, or just bad luck was indeterminate. Fuses went out all the time, the security system went down regularly, and the fences suffered. These were not cheap and it should work better than it had been.

Se-No-Wo-Te told Garner his story, and was convinced to come to the house to talk further, though he remained in his mecha. Fochenflick left what seemed like it might be a scene of violence, and suggested that Kate take a look at the property boundaries. She wandered off a bit to do so.

The sheriff & Se-No-Wo-Te faced off in their mechs, and then both climbed out to talk. Jake, alone in the house, sent the computer logs to his own mech for later analysis. Harris came into the house through the back door and tried to get Jake to leave. Harris seemed very twitchy. Meanwhile, Se-No-Wo-Te went over his story yet again, displaying his bullet graze while the sheriff took careful notes.

Harris called to the sheriff that "this crazy Injun's friend is messing with the bodies," much to Jake's astonishment. The sheriff left Dwight to watch the Indian and walked around the house. Kate, some distance away, could see him pulling out a radio once he was out of Se-No-Wo-Te’s sight. The police mecha, which unbeknownst to Se-No-Wo-Te was manned by Mickey, Garner's other deputy, who put its guns on line, took aim at Se-No-Wo-Te and proclaimed him under arrest. Se-No-Wo-Te jumped for the cover of the front porch and tried to break the door down, but it did not give way. 

Mickey’s itchy trigger finger disintegrated much of the front porch, but did not strike the agile Indian. The sheriff drew his gun and rounded the back of the house to see Harris draw on Jake, who dodged and, conscious of the sheriff’s nearness, did not draw his own gun. 

Mickey fired another chain gun onslaught, disintegrating more of the front of the house. Se-No-Wo-Te jumped onto the gun-arm, climbing the mech to stay out of range. Kate sprinted her mech back toward the scene and, trying not to make the situation any more complicated, brought the police mech to the ground with a tackle, fortunately not squishing Dwight or Se-No-Wo-Te. The Indian took cover in his mech.

Harris fired at Jake again, who rolled out of the way to better cover. Almost simultaneously, the sheriff fatally shot Harris, and then called off the deputies. With the situation suddenly dead calm, Kate let them up. Garner explained, much to Micky’s surprise, that Harris and the murdered Jeb Granger had a long-standing rivalry over Molly. Given Harris' behavior, he was willing to accept that Se-No-Wo-Te story, claimed no grudge against the Indian and arranged with Jake to have Harris' gun tested against the Granger’s wounds.

Kate went out to survey the land Fochenflick, as the Grangers' partner, probably now owned. A lot of their cattle seemed to have strayed, which might provide employment for Se-No-Wo-Te. A mesa-top view into Travers Canyon was available, revealing a model community: straight roads at right angles & prefab houses. Scaffolding on the canyon showed where the far side’s mines were  and Kate inferred similar structures beneath her. People moved around, loads were hauled, and the Granger land ran up to the canyon’s edge.

Survey finished, the trio went to see Fochenflick. He had a contract ready for Kate, suggesting an aggressive timetable. As project foreman she could hire staff, including the other mecha-equipped visitors. Fochenflick offered to cover their lodging on his lands; Kate decided to stay on at the Grand Salon, and Se-No-Wo-Te to get a room at Mama Cassady's.

There was a toast to the new business arrangement.

Quotes

Strap one very rapid-firing four-millimeter Gauss gun to the back of a bear, slave it to a control system, and suddenly they don't like you anymore. - Tom

Nothing separates people from their money quite like opera! - Tom

Man does not change the world by faith alone; sometimes it requires a big robot. - my idea for Kate's business card

Chatter chatter, drop name of major NPC. - Rebecca. Could you at least put some effort into it! - me 

BESM - Palomino: Falling Into Grace 1

The transport from NeoWyoming had been five days on its way. Towards the front lay luxury compartments, with their real showers, housekeeping services, rare beverages & fine cuisine. Then the coach compartments, tightly packed with those hoping for a brighter future on a new world; the compartments would be dropped in toto on their destination. Then the cargo & fuel compartments and finally, far from the pampered opulence of first-class, three drifters shared a space with an assortment of impecunious travelers & their livestock, their mecha lashed to the sides of the module.

Kate "Chance" Shaughnessy, demolitions expert & poker player, traveled in style when she could afford it, which was rarely. Now she practiced making scarves appear & disappear from her sleeves. Se-No-Wo-Te, displaced indigene, had done some dirty work back on NeoWyoming, been well-paid for it, and then proclaimed a thief, barely escaping onto the next transport leaving the planet. He brooded on the white man's perfidy and whittled a stick down into a smaller stick. Jake Walters, traveling tinker & gunsmith, spent most of the trip mentally taking apart other people's mecha. The three hadn't hit it off well with the other travelers, who distrusted Se-No-Wo-Te on sight, disliked Kate after she'd won what little money they had, and considered Jake's collection of gun-related reading material & paraphernalia alarming.

Nearby drop points: Arabia (a desert moon populated by ethnically based communities), Palomino (a booming mining colony), Stallion (breeding ground for transplantable bio-engineered livestock) and Mustang (a barely terraformed hell).

On Palomino were Grace, a mining/ranching community, Pinto City, home of the outbound launch pad, the rail towns of North & South Junctions, and Palomino City: the moon's nominal capital, it lost the launch pad race to Pinto City and then had Travers Canyon near Grace suck in all the money and manpower, leaving Palomino itself almost a ghost city.

All three thought Grace a likely destination. They packed their gear, boarded their mecha, and dropped toward Grace's landing area, a cratered swathe of desert outside town. The picked over remnants of a failed mecha landing lay like bleached metallic bones in the sun. A radio beacon came from a daringly (okay, foolishly) close shack (Lucky's—Lucky himself has two cyberlimbs), advertising repair services, food, & liquids. The Grace beacon was about five klicks away.

Se-No-Wo-Te parked his mecha in the wild and walked toward the high desert to hunt, with a notable lack of success. He did find water, but it didn't smell right. Drinking from it were two underweight branded cattle, no doubt escaped from someone's ranch. He decided to return them, tracking their trail. He passed electronic fence-posts, apparently out of order. There were signs of a sizable number of cattle having been here, not the best grazing land but obviously owned. It was deep night when he located the dark ranch house, tied off the cattle, and bedded down on the porch until morning.

Kate & Jake turned their mecha toward Grace. Nice houses ringed the town, their ranges extending in wedges outward. Two of them seem to belong to the lawkeepers; one with a mecha. Then another ring of decent places, a cluster of gambling dens, red-light districts & others catering to those who’ve been in space too long, and finally the solid, moneyed center of town. There was a mecha parking lot (empty), with a nearby blacksmith and parts store. It lacked an hour to sunset; Jake & Kate both had enough money for a couple of nights of high living, or a couple of weeks of low.

Jake chose Mama Cassady's Boarding House, a former bordello manned by a colorful burnout case (and his passel of children) with an egg fixation who let him stay in exchange for doing much-needed repairs. He fixed the water filtration system to pay for the night; it looked like Cassady had a hard time remembering which filters he’d already used. Jake found one clean filter in the stack, fixed a pump, and did some other minor work on the system before going to bed. The night was disturbed by crying babies, hookers with clients, and what sounded like someone on a bad trip.

Kate opted to take advantage of luxury while she could, in the form of a three-room suite at the Grand Salon. Looking out the window, she could see the ground train that ran from Grace to Travers Canyon and to the farming communities beyond. There were a couple more boarding houses, and two taverns in the least savory parts of town. If she ran out of money, she could always sleep in Ladybird. Downstairs the place had a nice saloon with ten tables, a chandelier, a player piano (turned off at the moment, as a woman performed an a cappella aria). There were a couple of obvious regulars, some tradesmen, a huckster, families coming to dinner, and serious drinkers. She had a drink and chatted with the barman, learning that the main employer was Travers Canyon. Travers was an egalitarian; he would even hire women miners. Free room, board, schooling, etc. People coming out of the canyon seemed to have money to spend... and then they went right back. You just had to live by his rules. There were also ranchers that needed land cleared, and some bear problems.

She took her drink and joined a card game: Two ranchers, two rubes passing through from the western farmland, and two men heading to Travers Canyon. One of the ranchers was obviously used to winning (and wearing a very obvious gun); the other seemed to be in it for fun. The farmers were sensible. The Travers Canyon guys might as well be lighting their cash on fire. Kate won enough to pay the night's lodging, but the rancher with the gun—David Fochenflick, as he introduced himself—won quite a bit more. He was a gracious victor, and gave her a card.

With the sun up and no sign of anyone stirring, Se-No-Wo-Te knocked. The house was unresponsive. He checked around the back, but before he could do more than look in the door he was shot at by three riflemen riding in from out-country. Summoning his mecha drastically changed the odds, and two of his attackers ran off. He captured one, who accused him of killing the house's residents - the Granger family - and of stealing cattle. Se-No-Wo-Te left him on top of a tall rock, hid his powered-down mecha in the badlands, and headed back in towards the building to keep watch. 

To Be Continued 

BESM - Palomino, a Mecha Space Western

Taking a break from the V&V Rules deep dive because I learned today that a 4th edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth, the anime role playing system, came out in 2020. I was a fan of the 2nd edition, which I felt hit the sweet spot for genre emulation and mechanical crunch (and since I own it I won't be picking up 4th edition), but it got me reminscing of games gone by. So here's the first of two proper Anime games, Palomino, my Mecha Space Western. There are four things you have to accept in the setting:

• First, there’s Micro-point Anti-Gravity: Its initial use eliminated joint stress and let versatile humanoid giant robots replace specialized industry & military vehicles. MPAG was found to be a viable space drive once out of a planet’s gravity well. This means that Mecha are common, can move around the system but can’t fly on worlds, relying on launching pad cities to get the ‘out of the well.’ A convenient way of making sure PCs can’t readily run away from a world’s problems. 
• Second, other star systems were vastly more likely to contain star-sized gas giants with Titan-sized moons than Earthlike planets, but expensive terraforming tech made these moons habitable. This lets me have lots of settled worlds in a system with some flimsy scientific justification, as well as some true Earthlike worlds that are just more valuable real estate. I don’t expect the current campaign to leave this planet, never mind this system – but I think it’s neat. 
• Third, the central governments terraform moons & seed suitable planets (no life has evolved off of Earth) and recoup the cost from generations of settlers via local governments. Worlds are too expensive for orbital bombardment or other WMD, so mecha are the prime military & industrial tools, everyone has an interest in order and pay lip service to human rights (bad records mean fewer settlers and less profit, so governments do step in if they notice). Settlers are lightly supplied: high tech industry costs money and is fragile. Most worlds have tech levels that mirror the late 19th century, with scattered high tech in the hands of the wealthy. Mecha are owned by law enforcement, heavy industry, and those lucky enough to own and maintain them. The current PCs all fall into the last group, having inherited, won or scavenged theirs. 
• Fourth, prior to Micro-point Anti-Gravity there were a few ships of minorities who left to seed & settle the Earthlike worlds. These enclaves were later overrun by settlers with mecha and relocated to poorly-terraformed reservation moons. This wasn’t part of my plan, but when I floated ‘Mecha Space Western’ Dave settled on ‘displaced native' before I finished my background. He accepted no aliens, but stuck to his guns on the genre archetype. His PC quote? “Once my people had a way of living that was in tune with nature, and provided all we would ever need. Then a Mormon was elected president: he outlawed gambling, and we were forced to take to stars.” This is a little sillier than I had intended. 

Similarly, I had designed the setting for federal mecha-marshals enforcing the law on the wild rim moons. With Dave’s native & Bec’s gambler, it changed to mecha-owning drifters looking to the next horizon. Tom provided a mech-smith/tinkerer and it’s now reminiscent of Silverado: folks meet on the road, become friends and later allies against a town’s ne’er-do-wells. I worried about hooks, but they quickly took jobs with the chief ne’er-do-well.

The moon is Palomino, with a mining industry that led to several boom towns (a term also applied to communities with area set aside for mecha landings, due to the noise generated when they hit; often linked as fast-growing settlements need all the mecha they can get). It also has just come off a rail war which had the effect of turning the nominal capital, Palomino City, into a virtual ghost town as the other launch pad city is now better situated to get goods across the moon for export. 

The boom town is Grace, a rail stop riding on the success closest of nearby mining town Travers Canyon. The Canyon is a company town for Ned Travers, who provides food, shelter & education to workers as long as they live by his rule. Grace is a ranching community, with the original stakes quickly being consolidated by a few land barons. It is a place people both pass through and live in as rangers, shopkeepers or, ahem, entertainers for those passing through. 

Our story opens with Seh-No-Wo-Te, Kate ‘Chance’ O’Shaunnesy, and Jake Walters in the mecha-car of the Rim Line space train (which indeed has a row of cars, which are dropped onto the planet when needed. The last car is reserved for either the poor moving with no amenities or riders who bunk inside their mecha, which are attached to the sides via airlocks). Drawn together over the trek since the others in the cab being either inbred bigoted idiots or a family of insular Chinese mecha-riders who don’t speak English, they decide to drop onto Palomino together. Never hurts to have a couple of friends on a new moon as you shake the dust of a world into your vacuum scourged boots....