Executing the Operatives

Now, there's a certain art to writing player handouts, especially in-universe documents. BattleTech in general, and the Jihad Arc in particular, is exceptionally good at helping with these documents, as almost every sourcebook is presented as an in-game document. Their very form tells us a great deal about format and syntax for everything from internal reports to newspaper stories, and provides a template to build new materials. So let me talk a little bit about how I formulate these types of materials.

First, the date. My GMing style tends to focus on maintaining continuity, so I typically start any in-game event by fixing it on my timeline. I usually do this by reviewing the printed material in sourcebooks around the date I'm discussing, then reviewing my own custom material. In this case, there is fairly little written in sourcebooks regarding what was happening on Terra between 3068 and 3076, and I'm not a rabid enough GM to wade through the BattleCorps fiction to synchronize with that, so I'm pretty much down to my own written material and a few scraps from Jihad Hotspots Terra.

The three ComGuard personnel I'm referring to here were first introduced in an email from one police officer to another recovered during the Session 5 raid on a TerraSec facility. The correspondence was between an officer in Denver to another in West Haven, Connecticut. He referred to three captured ComGuard fugitives. Although he didn't give the date, it seems this was a current event on the date the email was sent (27 March 3068), so we can put their capture within about a week before that date.

The wheels of justice turn slowly, but we also have Precentor TerraSec Alsace turning up the heat on ComGuard after the death of his wife, daughter, and unborn child. We can presume he uses his considerable influence to expedite the trial and conviction of the three prisoners on, oh, I imagine any charge he sees fit. We can start with treason against Terra, as these people were ComStar and the Word has never seen the need to distinguish between ComStar and the Word of Blake when meting out justice to ComStar personnel. The current in-game date is 17 April. It is entirely reasonable that he is able to prosecute a trial and sentence all three to death within the 20-25 days he had.

While methods of capital punishment in the civil world vary throughout history and from location to location, the military has been pretty consistent; you were either hanged or beheaded/shot, depending on the availability of firearms. Hanging seem an appropriately vengeful manner of execution for a politician on a murderous quest for vengeance. By assembling these little tidbits, we've painted a picture of the document I need to create for my players.

I need a new article, dated around 17 April 3068, describing the execution by hanging of three ComGuard soldiers for several counts of premeditated murder, invading the homeworld, and anything similar that comes to me while I'm writing. Quickly typing up a conventional inverted pyramid story is good enough for a hand-out to communicate the mortal danger the players face if captured. All told, the entire exercise should take less time than it took to write this blog entry.