INCITE01

Hey kids, welcome to Incite! A few lonely bytes of pure salty bias in a
world that keeps telling you you’ve made the right choices while you
wallow in misery. I’m your host, Laani Chutoi, and I’m here to help
you find the dark little corners of your bright shiney worlds where
you might actually make a few credits and claw your way out of the
bracket someone you never met decided you need to exist in.

Lets start up with the news, huh? I like news, you like news. Been a lot of big news
lately. You hear all that already. Here’s something you haven’t heard though: A little
trinket, just for my subscribers. Check it out:

“Wassat Laani?” they ask me, mouths agape with awe.

“A new fall fashion? Fancy hood ornament? Tell us! Tell us!”
Well I’ll tell you, friends. It’s the winds of change.

What you’re looking at is a snap of a new line of MarsCo issue heavy armor.
Mechanically there’s nothing particularly special about it. Smoother joints, lighter on
the shoulders, you know, the usual array of simple upgrades. That’s not the part that
matters. It’s the shape.
 MarsCo iconography typically contains their trademark kit-
ty somewhere or other in it. She’s changed shape and size over
the years, color, species on occasion, and you don’t really see
many patterns when you look around because -all- the subsidies
like to use her. So you get different angles all over the place,
different styles, stuff like that. But if you look at MarsCo’s official
documentation, their actual from-the-top letterheads, there’s a
pattern.

During periods where MarsCo is passive you only see the

sphinx with one eye visible, or with both eyes closed. Profile
shots from the side, usually. That’s been their icon for over fifty
years now. But this new armor features the face with both eyes
open, and I’m telling you as someone with a permanent tin-foil
hat literally replacing her skull, that’s not by accident.
 This flight to Earth to beat the shit out of the big red thing has us all
curious in one way or another. It raises a lot of questions, like why go
now, or what’s to be gained, or who’s really orchestrating it all.
Personally I was uninterested at first, but the more I think about it the
more questions it brings up in me. Even simple stuff they don’t seem
willing to get into on the news reports, like what exactly they’re attacking with, or why
the whole fleet isn’t automated. It’s a mystery, and I do love me a mystery.
Anyway, we’ll get into all that in due time, but I bring it up because of the face on
the armor.

There are a lot of people who have said the success or failure of this venture hing-
es on MarsCo’s official involvement. TTI has publicly denounced the whole operation,
and there’s talk of them actively trying to sabotage it. ASR’s on the fence. There are
rumors of IRPF infighting between TTI contractors and Pulse or Progenitus contractors.
Mars is going to sway a lot and they haven’t officially weighed in one way or the other,
but unofficially, there’s this. If you ask me, they’ve picked a side. Which side remains to
be seen.

Interested in playing the HC SVNT DRACONES Tabletop Role

Playing Game?
Check out the Core Rulebook at
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270161/HC-SVNT-DRACON-
ES-Second-Edition

And keep up on Twitter at Hsd_Hq

This HSD supplement is funded through Patreon. If you’d

like to support the supplement and the game, check it out:
https://www.patreon.com/WGFproductions

Cover art for Incite by http://monad.me/

Portraits by https://maloking.carbonmade.com/
 SHOPTALK
Hey, so a couple of you have sent in requests for a breakdown on
MarsCo’s new popup blight on the landscape, the Popshop. You’ll
probably start to see these appearing in old parking lots and
mountainsides pretty soon.
The concept is pretty simple: It’s a unit that deploys into a
semi-permanent building. They’re usually intended to storefronts and
staging areas, but they make for good shelters too. The neat thing
about them is MarsCo’s delivery service. You can basically point to a
GPS point and say “put it here” and if MarsCo owns it they’ll give a cost
per day, week, month, whatever. Then it gets flown in and plopped down and folds out
of itself and prints whatever walls you want on the inside and boom! Nice cozy...some-
thing. Restaurant, or dispensary. Car dealership, brothel, whatever. When you’re done
you can relocate to the next spot or sell it back to marsco and it’ll reconfigure itself to
a little parking garage or something. A foundation for the next place. It’s a neat little
system for getting people to identify new markets and set them up on their own so the
roads and locations and infrastructure is already kinda mapped by the time MarsCo
comes in and eats it all. Or for replacing their old buildings, that sort of thing.

There’s a lot of potential for these things to be the intro-head-

quarters for budding organizations, yeah? The built-in wall
printer means you can tell the building to be whatever you
want it to be and it’ll set itself up for what you want. Stack a
few of them and you can build considerably high, so as you
get bigger so does the building. There’s nothing to them on
the inside you haven’t seen before, but lets hit up the deets
anyway, just in case you’re thinking of picking one up. Or
breaking into one. Whichever.

Security is standard: Mars’ Lockstock system. That’s a basic home security thing if you
haven’t dealt with it before. It guards doors and windows pretty well, makes a lot of noise
when it goes off, and alerts the local contracted security force. Entry is usually keyed to
a toggle or visual recognition off a front-door camera. So, good enough to stop you from
wandering in, but not too problematic to get around if they haven’t upgraded it after-
market. Fritz the front walk cam and the system will just assume it’s borked and go to
the toggle app backup. You can hack that, or try a vent or something. Long as you’re not
using the main access points you can probably find your way to the security pad inside
and disable it.
 Main Entry

They can have windows too, I bet they

reference local rules for frontage.

Interior details are up to the owner, but

there are templates in the printer.

MarsCo template public bathrooms may

not be stylish, but at least they think of
most people. Tauric compatable pots and
all that.

Back Entry (Even has the micro stall under the sink
for the acutely height-impared)
 Every popshop is going to have a different layout because they can
print their configurations as they’re deployed, but there are limitations.
The building will always have two entrances and enough plumbing on each
floor for either a bathroom or some other water-based system; about 6
drains worth. Want to build an indoor waterpark? I like your style. Attach
another building. You can plop it on top and remove its floor and give your-
self, I dunno, a vaulted ceiling or something. The top building will share its
license with the lower and allow you to stick another six drains down there.
I see a lot of these where they drop two next to each other and get a third in the
back and it’s sort of the kitchen and paired bathroom deal, with seating in front. Three’s
the magic number I think, but the single units are great if you want full ownership because
they can actually drive themselves around so you can use it as a mobile workplace. Each
building unit has a modest reservoir and recycler in it for waste and water reclamation
(they figure you’re going to drop these things kinda...everywhere) but you can hook it up
to mains too. Standard MarsCo coupler, easy. Whole thing’s easy, they’re good with that.

Interior walls are printed and can be derezzed. Exterior can too, except
for the extension rig arms. All in all a pretty low security rig. I wouldn’t
go sneaking into these expecting to find top secret documents or vaults,
the building just isn’t robust enough to be safe housing that sort of thing.

But hey! Who am I to tell you what to do. Leave that shit lying around!
Who are you afraid of, right? Surely not I. I’m your friend!