Beaming, Jalabu the Fox, unable to place these two, but he had met so many in his travels, smiled and started to speak “We;; hello…” only to be cut off as yhey ignored them and started speaking to Farshad.

Farshad and the two had a social conversation of small talk and good wishes, and promises of deals to come, with frequent mentions of the name “Jalabu” directed at Farshad. Attempts by the `Fox to speak where hushed with and a word and a a wave from a smooth and confident Farshad, leaving Jalabu stunned and confused as he found his name being bandied around in connection with potential deals that would make his name known across the civilised world. As that name was attached to Farshad, that added to the Fox’s concerns by the time the merchants took their leave.

In reality this was true of the player also. Andy had been unable to make the last few sessions and wasn’t sure he’d make this one, so hadn’t read the last write-up. He had no idea what was going on and was speechless, and the whole situation did bring some hilarity to the players.

At the Palace, a rather grand name for some utilitarian buildings and accommodation, the group found themselves amidst a bustle of agents and scribes, but they were soon taken in to see the officer of the watch, who gave them some refreshments and heard their story from meeting the children, to the discovery of the faceless woman. The officer of the watch, Lutf, had a scribe take notes but, rather than assuming responsibility, asked the group to keep with it, for at least a couple of days, as the agents under their command were busy not only with security for the Epic at the Grand Theatre, normal criminal activity but also rumours of Zhuezhi activity at the border.

The group agreed. They were taken by accommodation by one of the scribes, who seemed to have been assigned as a guide, and they took an hour or two to freshen up. With regrets the group left armour behind, the city is not at war. Everything settled, they asked the scribe about perfumers, where might expensive and custom scents be found, They were taken back to the market, past less exclusive sellers of perfumes and scented resin and wood, to a more up-market area, an enclosed street guarded to keep out thieves and riff-raff.

However Utana’s dress sense, bearing and voice overawed the guards, and the group were ushered into the so called “Street of Scents”. Some more high handed dealings with merchants got them to The Red Bottle”, owned by Zuanada, the perfumer who made up the scent and, thanks to his own training with scents, though mostly in the field of detecting positions, Jalabu was able to home in on just the right scent. It was part of a group of scents made for an old family of the city, one from the previous rulers of these lands, before the coming of the Mada.

This exact scent was, however, created for Fernskundeh, a Priest of the Cold Ones who is famed for her beauty but. More importantly, her singing. It is she who plays the part of the god Mawet in the epic tonight celebrating the city. Hers is the role of the god Mawet, revered here as a feminine figure, and as patron of the city.

With this knowledge, they head back to the Temple. Finding the junior priest they had collared before, despite the nervous priests attempts to be unnoticed, give the horrific situation they landed the Temple with last time.  The group was able to seek another audience with the Librarian, They passed on the information regarding Fernskundeh, but were told that she would be at the Theatre. The Temple will send people down there to investigate, but please, the Agents should continue.

Fetnah was intrigued by the vision communicated to her by the spirit of Tanima

I saw a vision of the Place of Old Grief, a group of islands where memorial stones are placed. It is the largest of the islands, there is a plinth with nothing on it, the plinth are surrounded by statues in a ring, the statues all face the plinth, it is very distinctive. I do not know why it is significant.

And that was the next place visited by the group. Taking boats to the quiet area, a mix of neglected and tended, depending on the family devotion to their ancestors. This island, thought large, is sheltered by others, and the water sluggish and in places brackish.

It took a while, but a place matching the description was found though, instead of a bare plinth, a statue of a dog headed individual clad in painted robes was on it. The group were mystified by it, and threw rocks and stones in its general direction, even tried prodding it, until, despite all these inexpert interactions failing to make contact, the individual revealed itself as Eblan, a Rishalkibu, a reclusive type of mortal, often nomadic, some are of studious mind and settle as hermits, tending the spirits and often in a relationship of both servant and student,

Eblan has a tale to tell in answer to questioning by the group

This city has many secrets, and there are killers that will dispose of your enemies for money. One was here two nights ago, meeting a client. Both were hooded and cloaked, but he heard mention of the Epic of The Gods, and of Mawet, patron of Khanedarya, being held. The assassin seemed supremely confident.

With this information imparted, and no other specific details having been overheard, Eblan seemed disinclined to hang around those who had been throwing rocks at him, and so he went off. The group noticed that the island seemed quieter, empty, though they found close by the family memorials of Fernkunsdeh’s family, surely not a coincidence that this was close to the meetings place.

It wasn’t just other mourners who had quit the island, the boatmen had gone how were the group to get off the island>

That point may however be moot, as from the surround come some armed Zhuezhi, knives out, looking very unsympathically at the group.

And there we left it/

Tonight was one of those sessions where most could not attend. These things happen. However we decided to proceed as we were, I thought two or three could do something with the set-up I had prepared for tonight.

The night wore on, the watches were changed in the partly burned and ransacked farm in which the group were camped, until it was Utana and Juan José’s turn. False dawn was starting to give way to the real one, when a noise was heard. The two looked towards it, and Juan José saw a small figure run away. A child? A Shevam? Something or someone else?

Waking the others up, Utana and Juan José set off following the tracks made by small bare feet, leading north by north-west, soon joining a long disused path y that led up into the hills. After some six or so miles, the duo saw a tower in the distance, one not in the best shape, which became even more apparent as they got closer and saw the remnants of an earthwork that once formed a wall that the stone tower was once part of.

The other notable thing, near the top of the tower, was a weak blue light shining out from Thea window. The two approached the door warily, the placement to the south suggesting that the tower and wall guarded against the north, not the south.

The doorway was dark, but lead to an open space, with the only thing obvious dirt and the rubble of collapses stairs. Utana gave Juan José a boost up, but it took two goes, the first one ending in a slip by Juan José, leaving hum a bit winded and stunned.

On the first floor (second to Americans) Juan Jos#e found the ghost of a soldier. She was dressed in garb of somewhere between 800 and 1000 years ago, and held a sword in her hand, though not in a threatening manner.

There was a ladder up, that Juan José considered removing and using to help Utana up, but she blocked that way, saying

“Halt! I expect the northerners to attack us soon, only those under my command are allowed on the upper level!”

Confused, Juan José saw a rope tied to a beam, and used that to help Utana up. In the conversation, the ghost revealed herself to be Hurat, bound to the tower, and drawn back to wakefulness by the prescience of northern enemies.

Quizzed on this, as surely any enemy would be long dead, she revealed that the children of the devasted farm that the characters were camped at are here, on the second (third to US)
children were hidden, under her protection and command, the farm had been attacked by bandits from north of the ancient wall.

The children were persuaded to come down, dirty and hungry, so Utana fed them with his travel rations and watered wine. Hurat asked for aid, pointing the way to a wood across a small valley where the bandits were camped.

Feeling a duty, as Agents of Haraxa, to bring justice to criminals within the bounds of the realm, Utana and Juan José agreed to help, but they would need the help of the rest of their group, so they would go back and gather them.

And there we left it.

Space Marine

by A. Mark Ratner

FGU edition Cover by Jeff Dee, interior art by David Sutherland

Introduction

We know where the image of star-travelling troops aboard naval vessels, clad in armour comes from, the Valerian Marines in the “Lensman” Series and the CAP Drop Troopers of “Starship Troopers”. The Lensman troopers are strong enough not to need power assist, but the series does have examples of powered armour.

Then, in 1978, Games Workshop let gamers in the UK know about a new ser of SF war games rules, called “Space Marine”!. That’s right, for the low, low price of £2.95 including postage,  they were selling A. Mark Ratner’s rules as published by Fantac (later also in 1980 by Fantasy Games Unlimited)!  That is about £16 in Sept 2023 money.

You can tell these are early rules, as well as normal six-sided dice, there are occasions to use a d20 or d20s as percentile dice, but accepts that getting these might be hard, and gives the advice on picking numbered chits from a cup, as we did in those primitive days.

Intended as a game of Squad/Section combat. It offers two ground scales of combat, depending on how much table space you have, but also a skirmish scale, only back them skirmish meant two or three figures a side, the full Squad based battle is envisaged as only being between ten and twenty figures a side.

Fantac edition

There is a background for the universe. In the future of interstellar travel, the warring nations have developed a field that prevents nuclear detonations, rendering nuclear bombardment impossible, so interstellar war once again needs boots on the ground to achieve political objectives.

The Fantac edition was, to my knowledge, was self-published by A. Mark Ratner, who I did briefly communicate with back around 2000, however I only have the FGU edition, not the original Fantac edition, and one big difference that I understand the original has that the later does not is that it has rules for linking the wargame with D&D and Metamorphosis Alpha.

What are the rules like?

The game covers attacks on a planet from Orbital Bombardment, Air combat  to Ground actions, but only really ground combat has extensive rules. Fire from Orbit is treated as indirect fire to the ground, but anti-ship fire from the ground is left up to a referee.

Aircraft can be used for troop transport, recon of ground troops, air superiority or ground attack, but the author realises that the scale of action is too small for proper air to air combat, so air superiority is abstracted.

On the ground, it is assumed that troops will be using the benefit of train cover and stealth technology to not be seen, so recon aircraft, and troops trying to find their opponents, is part of the game.

The game can use simultaneous movement, with written orders, but the basic turn sequence is

1. Roll for first/second move
2. First side move
3. Second side move
4. Both sides cab perform covering fire, that is over watch fire on moving units. Non moving units can attempt to spot enemies.
5. Units can try to spot units and conduct normal fire
6. Indirect fire occurs
7. Melee combat
8. Back to 1

I have seen “Space Marine” referred to as the “Chainmail” of “Space Opera”, referring to Howe the original D&D was both developed from the “Chainmail” war games rules and still needed the original war games rules to make sense of the combat in the RPG. If you played Space Opera, the combat rules do look like a more constrained version of the Space Opera combat rules.

Hit chances are made using percentile dice (and the intro explains how that is done) with situational modifiers. Once you hit,you consult another tangle to cross-reference weapon vs armour to determine the chance of the hit penetrating defences. This is probably survivable when you have a max of two squads each on the table, but would be atrocious for Company sized actions, and you equate a hit with putting a figure out of action.

There are more detailed wound rules, but these look more designed for the skirmish game, as it would mean a lot of book keeping for the regular game.

There are a lot more to the rules,movement, unit cohesion (the faster you can move, the further apart you are allowed to be), electronic warfare, pinning and suppression, different types of weapons, robots vehicles for the various Star Nations and armour. If you have Space Opera and the Ground and Air Equipment book, a lot of this is going to be very familiar.

Build me an army worthy of the Terran Federation

The points system for armies is a little strange as it is not intended for buying your units in a single battle. In fact the text says that the only reason their is one is because Scott Bizar insisted on one.

Despite the fact that this is set up for small unit action, you buy army regiments and wings of aircraft and all equipment. You need to use the description of the army organisation of what a regiment looks like to see what that buys you, and you will send your troops out in their squads for actual games.

There is no balancing for troop experience and, despite the claims of the purchasing of regiments being for campaigns, there are no campaign rules. The impression I get is that the author wanted rules for more free form, possibly asymmetrical actions, in games created by art and judgement, not mechanically defined ideas of fairness.

E.g. You want to  field a force of a couple of Ranan infantry squads, twenty Ranai, with a Supporting Flame Crawler, trying to use the points cost for all that. Breaking down the over 1000 troops and 100 AFV

Presentation

The book is a very simple, two column format, the text is a little small for me now, but was fine at the time. The only differentiation in typeface are use of bold for item heads, and headings in a large font that I suspect might be intended to be neon tubes.

The tables are that FGU way of just headings with values in the columns. No lines, banding or aids to help you cross reference column as row.

The art is sparse, but exists only to break up text. There are absolutely no illustrative diagram to help explain the rules.

The rules need editing, reorganising and indexing. There are also areas that could use expanding. Even if there were not firm rules on army composition then at least there should be more info in running campaigns

Background and theme

The nations of this background formed the basis of the background in Ed Simbalist’s Space Opera SF RPG, I believe at the insistence of FGU’s owner Scott Bizar.  I do not believe that this was by the choice of either author.

This background is where the fascist Azuriachs, ursine Blarads and communist Galactic Peoples Republic of Space Opera come from, with varying levels of detail. As memory serves, only the Terran Union, Azuriachs and the Mercantile League get any extensive Star Atlas coverage, with minor mentions for the Raan, Blarads and Mekpurrs. The Korellians who feature in a Star Atlas are not in Space Marine,

Space Opera alluded to the various Star Nations, but did not give much detail. In Space Marine, the basics of each are given, making it handy for any Space Opera GM.

The background details are more concerned with uniform details, symbology tactical organisation and equipment used by the various Star Nations, but gives the basic notion of their governmental character.

Would I play these rules now?

At the time, I can see why people would have liked these. Judging by the standards of the time they were written, compared to other rules of the time I have read, they compare well.

Since then, expectations have changed. In some ways that is worse, popular rules tend to be more rigid and less free-form. I did consider breaking out some SF minis and pit a few squaddies against each other, but after reading decided not to. Too much table cross referencing and page flipping, though i guess I could have made unit cards with just the details for simplicity’s sake.

If I was still running Space Opera, I might splice these rules into it if there was a need for the characters to get involved in small unit combat, much as Traveller could do with Striker.

That is not to say that there are not fun ideas in here. Once you accept that the view of combat is dated. Aircraft fly nap of earth with no fear of RADAR that can reach the crowns, MANPADS or vehicles flinging vapourising volumes of lead into the air. It is an old view of the future, no drones. IEDs or mobile phones with cameras and geo-location, though there are some things that could be charitably considered to be IFVs.

Why the Terran Union has a Continental Siege Unit listed, basically a Bolo or Ogre in a small squad game, i dunno, but it is a sign of a game that could have used a bit more work developing it.

All that being said, if you wanted to use that 60s and 70s view of future warfare, but want to use your own simpler and more consistent system, the ideas here are worth stealing for a universe with a feel of the one of the Dorsai or the poor infantry not cool enough to support Hammers Slammers.

You can still buy the FGU edition rules in PDF form from DriveThruRPG