Vignette 046

“The first thing you notice on pre-fusion worlds is the smell. Whether it's the dung from riding and draft animals, the coal and wood smoke from steam-powered worlds or the sharper tang of burned petrochemicals from internal combustion systems, they all stink, and it takes a while to get used to it”.


(Author's note - This is just a handy piece of colour text the referee can drop in anywhere. We'd be horrified by how bad Victorian London smelled - even natives often were - and fusion-era natives would be horrified by the car-related pollution in modern LA)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Tracklink Article -  The Laird Centaur (This article first appeared in Issue 107 (Autumn 2020) of Tracklink, the magazine of the Tank Museum.  The photos used in the original article belong to the Tank Museum, so I have used public domain photos here) Half-tracks were popular as military vehicles during the Second World War, since they offered a good compromise between the low cost and low maintenance burden of a wheeled vehicle and the better cross country mobility of a fully tracked vehicle.  However, they generally disappeared in the post war years, as 4WD vehicles became increasingly capable. It was therefore something of a surprise when Laird Engineering of Anglesey launched a new half-track military vehicle in 1978, based on Landrover and CVR (T) Scorpion light tank components. The first 6 Centaur prototypes used the front half of a Series 3 109in LWB Landrover, with a new rear chassis incorporating a shortened set of rubber padded CVR (T) tracks and drive sprocket,...
Read more
Image
 Henrician Breach Loading Gun Being a trustee of the Royal Armouries has occasional odd perks. This is a breach-loading gun made for Henry VIII in 1537. The breach flips up for a pre-loaded chamber containing powder and ball to be inserted; it's potentially the first breach loading gun made in England, probably from initials on the weapon by William Hunt, Keeper of the King's Handguns. It was probably originally made as a wheel lock, but later converted to a matchlock. I got to handle it, but carefully - damaging royal treasures is frowned on, even if you are a trustee
Read more
Traveller Vignette 051 Four clusterbombs dropped free of my fighter, scattering anti-personnel submunitions, and the Saruthi field hospital disappeared in a crackling wave of explosions behind me. It'd been clearly marked with red crosses, showing how little the Saruthi understood what was coming. We'd all seen the pictures of Saruthi executing whole hospitals of our wounded during the invasion, to clear space for their own casualties. Besides, given that we planned to kill every Saruthi soldier on the planet, waiting for wounded ones to heal before executing them seemed both inefficient and hypocritical. I saw the flash of multiple SAM launches, as Saruthi launch controllers let their anger get the better of their judgement, and my threat warning receivers all went off together. I pointed the interface fighter straight up, hit the afterburners, and it climbed for altitude like a homesick angel. I couldn't outrun the missiles, but I didn't have to. The sky fli...
Read more