Sundog

"Sporting Purposes." What are they going to be hunting, Konigstigers?

See the curtains hangin' in the window, in the evenin' on a Friday night. A little light a-shinin' through the window, lets me know everything is alright. Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind. Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind. See the paper layin' in the sidewalk, a little music from the house next door. So I walked on up to the doorstep, through the screen and across the floor. Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind. Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind. Sweet days of summer, the jasmine's in bloom. July is dressed up and playing her tune. And I come home from a hard day's work, and you're waiting there, not a care in the world. See the smile a-waitin' in the kitchen, food cookin' and the plates for two. See the arms that reach out to hold me, in the evening when the day is through. Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind. Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind.

I'm not sure Russia acknowledges the SALT and START treaties, which were signed, after all, with the Soviet Union. The US is still bound by them.

Begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism.

You have made me very angry!

I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that.

For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts. [Points to sword] This you can trust.

Useful. That power level would be eminently doable as an accessory to an armoured spacesuit, making a gun modification for space quite workable. As to recoil, the main problem would be spin, rather than build up of velocity. I suspect that spin could be mitigated by training, i.e. always ensuring the weapon is at centre of your mass before firing. That would make aiming difficult with traditional sights, but a camera sight feeding to a head-up display in the visor should work.

Actually, even if you're in complete shadow a gun would overheat very quickly if used. Vacuum is the best insulator - the heat from each round would stay in the metal elements of the gun. It would take very little to get up to gang-fire temperatures, and after that all your gun would be good for is ballast. If it got that far. If you've allowed your weapon to cool to ambient space temperature without stellar radiation, you're talking about a massive thermal imbalance between the expanding gases and the metal...which has chilled to well below it's brittling point. Likeliest result would be the entire weapon shattering into shrapnel - in your hands. Your spacesuit covered hands...

Yup. As long as they fire from a sealed cartridge, they will fire. Firing more than a couple of times might be iffy, though. Heat build up would be a major problem.

Little Sophia Strange in ‘73 Her daddy's yelling tirades at the TV Hey man be cool!! Sweeping the screen - rebel freak with a twist A skinny genie come to grant her a wish Changes the rules He's a real pretty thing! But now she looks to the stars Oh with an ache in her heart For now the man who rocked the world Is going home She's reaching up for a song Oh but the music is gone For the man who rocked the world Is going home Big Johnny Butterfingers in ‘81 Searchin the discos for that special someone It gets so tough Feelin the pressure under laser lights But his feet go magic dancin' when the song is just right Yeah that's the stuff Let's dance, Johnny But now he looks to the stars Oh with an ache in his heart For now the man who rocked the world Is going home He's reaching up for a song Oh but the music is gone Because the man who rocked the world Is going home Spaceman blasting away into the big black sky tonight Smiling, riding a trail of stardust home Little Gangly Geeky strainin' through ‘95 Left on the outside flyin far from the hive He don't fit in Heart got a lesson from a stranger deranged Said it's ok man, it's cool to be strange Make a new spin Seems so far away And now I look to the stars Oh with an ache in my heart For now the man who rocked the world Is going home I wanna hear one more song Oh let the music live on For the man who rocked the world Is going home

Man, been there, done that! Of course, I actually told my fellow players what I was doing...

My current character, Fireflash, got her powers by being strapped to an experiment device by Argent, who had discovered that her genetic structure matched what they were looking for (she was actually interning at one of their front companies). When her powers manifested, she blasted out of the restraints and blasted every bad guy in sight - which fight was filmed by several bystanders on their mobile phones. The only aspect of this that was in any way tragic was that Argent had strapped her down buck naked. (3d6 unluck...) Now she fights crime because it's pretty much impossible for her to be out of the public eye, and it's the right thing to do.

It should be...

Fireflash would decorate her quarters with lots of soft cushions and overstuffed furniture, a top of the line computer and desk for studying and a lot of powerful refrigerated air conditioners to stay comfortable. Also a Knock First!!! on the door, given she tends to go nude in private.

Staff sling. Better range, more control.

Fireflash. Standard uniform is a sports-bra style top and shorts with ankle boots - all of which are connected and laced with cooling conduits, heat dissipation via the boot soles. Character generates far more heat than normal (body temperature 62 degrees celsius) and is severely uncomfortable wearing too much - before the cooling suit, she basically wore a bikini. Which did not prove overly robust...

We may not go to the stars. But if we don't, I strongly suspect a successor species to Homo Sapiens will.

According to some friends of mine who spent time in the Australian Army, including one who was there when they changed over to the AusSteyr (modded Steyr AUG), the difference is tangible, but easy to overcome with instruction and practice. That said, the one who was in at the changeover was unimpressed, especially with the trigger, which he described as "mushy".

Das Wall Street.

Except that we're seeing Cops pulling out their night sticks and laying the beatdown on the argumentative - or shooting them. Mr Policeman wants to give Mr. Loudmouth a piece of his mind? No problem. He wants to shoot Mr. Loudmouth? Major problem.

Not as big as I'd figured, but still deadly to anything not shielded by Kilometers of atmosphere. Still, if you possess the power to attain .25c, I doubt there's much stopping the attainment of significantly higher velocities.

Actually, I suspect that hitting atmosphere at that speed would be like hitting a brick wall. At any significant percentage of C, the entire object would flash to energy, primarily heat, virtually instantaneously. It would be like a nuke blast, but many orders of magnitude more intense. Anything in visual range of the impact point would burned off instantly, and the shockwave would cave in that side of the planet. Look at what happened in the Tunguska Event. The object never made it to earth - it probably exploded when it hit the lower atmosphere - but it devastated a huge region of Siberia.

I think that depends on what sort of effect you want. Stargates of some kind help restrict where people can be - you can't just grab a ship and go off into the uncharted reaches when the local mob or local law want your head. On the other hand, it also restricts some of the stories you can tell - unless your PCs are specialists in exploration employed to expand the network, you won't be able to run a "First Contact" scenario anywhere near as easily.