A Geek History of Time - Episode 13- Battletech and Yellow Peril (Part 1)

Episode Date: June 8, 2019

In this episode, Ed describes the Battletech universe, giving a sketch of the personality of each of the Great Houses and a rundown of the political history. Damian makes a set of intuitive leaps that act as spoilers for Part 2.

Like they they advertise one match when crashing a car into one of the wrestlers. Not a total victory of Russia, which now we're seeing. He goes on. He's a gigantic bag of flaccid dicks. Sorry, contidence. Which when you open them up, you find out that they're all cockroaches and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if anybody else is ever going to laugh this hard at anything we say.

Probably. We can actually both look out my window right now and see some very pretty yellow flowers that I'm going to be eradicating. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Nurtury to the real world. I'm Ed Blaylock. I'm a new father of a now 10 month old son. And I have been a geek since, as long as I can remember, one of my defining geek moments was probably

reading the fellowship of the ring in the back seat in my parents' car on a trip to Florida when I could not have been more than about six years old. I did not really comprehend very much of it, but what I was able to pick up had me spellbound. I'm Damien Harmony. I am a Latin teacher, a former social science teacher. I am a father of a nine-year-old almost. He's going to be nine and three days. Right, that's what, a hundred month old? Yeah, I don't math well. And also the father was six year old.

A hundred eight month old. Hundred eight month old, yeah. I'm also the father of a six year old, six and a half year old, who is 78 months old, who's super into D&D. Nice. He does it so that he can then play geeky games on my phone. She does it because she loves it. So I've been a geek for quite some time. I can remember geeking out over all the presidents.

Yeah, I had a book called the Big Book of US Presidents and it went from Washington to Reagan and it stopped there because he was the current president. And you can, I still have this book. And I used to take it up on the shed on my parents' farm when we lived in Florida. And that was my getaway. And one day the kids on the back of the bus, in Florida all the kids got on the bus and what have you and based on what grade you're in, you sit in certain sections of the bus. In Florida, all the kids get on the bus and what have you and based on what grader you sit in certain sections of the bus. They took my book and oh you're so smart

and then they started quizzing me on it and they asked me, there's a rural community so getting to school was a long drive. They asked me close to 100 questions and I missed only seven. Wow. And some I even answered before they finished asking. So this is the stuff of legend amongst them. Yeah. Yeah. How many of them were any good at reading? I'm sorry. Well, you know, many of them were. This is North Florida. Yeah, there's North Central Florida. The Taint of Florida. So it's yeah. It's a special part of the country right there.

My parents lived there for a couple of years, and Levy County. Oh, yeah, it's good stuff So yeah, I geeked out about that and then I spent a lot of time in that library reading a lot of books about like the Biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower. Oh, wow. So yeah, so that's the geek I am all right So I got a question for you. Yeah. What do you know about giant robots? Narrow the field for me because yeah What do you know about battle tech? So what I know about battle tech is gonna be like not cannon is gonna be like Diane cannon So okay, or it's gonna be part of part of Projectshaing in the canon.

Oh, well done. Thank you. I worked at a place called Virtual World in Walnut Creek. I wore a lab coat. I had a call sign. My call sign was shaft. Bitch and Camaroid. You damn right.

And I took people on missions in Battle Tech. Yes. So the things I know, like, you'll say words probably, and I'll be like, oh yeah, that was the color of the, the ankle. The thing there, yeah. Yeah. So that's what I know of Battle Tech.

We sold books. We sold Battle Tech books. Yeah. And there were a few people who were really into them. Yeah. But that's about as much I know. So it's going to be similar to, you to, what do you know about Star Wars? Oh, well, I played the Pod Racer game.

Nice. Yeah. You know, it'll be about that. Yeah. Which, yeah, OK. So are we doing a battle tech episode? We're doing a battle tech episode. Nice.

We are. We are in fact doing one. Cool. I can tell you the best kind of vehicles to run if you're in P-Soup fog or in the arena. Yeah, OK. All right. And we might talk a little about that at some point. I got pretty far in an internment once with a low key prime and people were just shocked

that I was able to use a low key prime that well. Well yeah, because it was kind of a... It was garbage, but I found the way to use it to make a spin. Yeah. It was good. So, the reason I ask that is, well now I got to ask the other question. How much do you know about the concept of yellow peril? Oh, fair amount.

I had a social science teacher in eighth grade who made us read a bunch of articles on how the Japanese were taking over economically. Early 90s. Yes, before here or here to die. Okay. So I know a I hated that. Okay. And so I know a fair amount from those readings. All right. Well, I actually would have had to be late 80s,

because here I hated a died in 89. Oh, we did, okay. I just got that confirmed. It was research actually did. Sure, sure. But anyway, so because the two are intertwined. And the background or what I'm gonna, what the thesis I'm working from here,

is that the background or four battle tech is the Cold War under Reagan, but focusing on yellow peril rather than the USSR. So first, let's kind of go into a primer about what Battle Tech was and what kind of stuff. So Battle Tech was first printed in 1984. Okay, the game was first released in you know Midway through Reagan. So it was a game before it was a book. The novels were released a little bit like almost almost simultaneously. Very, very, very falling very closely on the heels. But it started out, it's very first existence was as a tabletop

working. Okay. And this is Midway through Reagan. And just to kind of remind you about what we're talking about as far as the state of the world at that time. This is the LA Olympics is 84, which the Soviets boycotted because we had boycotted 80 because of Afghanistan, which at that time it was the Soviets who were invading and getting their asses kicked and realizing it was a massive war of attrition that they were never going to be able to win because nobody has ever been able to win because it's fucking Afghanistan. Yeah. Well, they felt left out.

They didn't have a Vietnam. They didn't need a Vietnam. And so they got one. So they invaded Afghanistan. They got the review at now. 84 is the year that the Libyan embassy in London was besieged because a police officer was shot during a demonstration outside

the Ethiopian famine Ethiopian pardon me famine was in full swing right cuz live aid came in the next year live aid band aid by Bob Geldoff was 84 live aid was the following year and on August 11th, I ran Contra was going on that year too. Yes, you know, yes, just throw that one in there. Yes, as a matter of fact. And just give you an idea of the level, the tone of the Cold War. One of my favorite moments of Cold War history happened during 1984. August 11th, Ronnie Reagan is going to hold a press conference. He's standing in front of the White House Press Corps

and he says to the assembled White House Press Corps. I have just signed legislation outlaw the Soviet Union bombing begins in five minutes. Now this was intended to be in all terms, you know, I hear I am the President of most powerful men in the world. The trouble was, he said it, he didn't realize it was a hot mic. Oh no. And it caused a hot mic. Oh no. And it caused a very, a very, very brief, but very intense level of massive panic across the entire Soviet block. Oh wow. Until they realized that, wait, nothing's actually been mobilized.

Right. But there were about three minutes during which they're hovering on the buttons. The neurology, the neural match has it where the Soviet defense system was firing everything off it. Trying to communicate about oh my god we got to move everything. What the hell we got to do. Oh. Oh the sun of a bitch telling a joke. So yeah, just just to, you know, so that's so that's where we were. Oh, wow, at that point in 84. So now to talk about battle tech, okay, it's it's this this is the world in which this then got printed. And This is the world in which this then got printed. And it is an immense sprawling universe

with this really long, very rich fictional history, which basically means it's complete crack for me. Right. You've heard me talk about this shit about other, but I'm just a little stuff with war. Yeah. This is like, oh my god, let me find a vein. How do I get into this? This doesn't have a sad ending.

Like, proud boys taking it over, does it? No. Good. No, thankfully, yeah. God, no. And yeah. Proud boys, stay away from this one. Yeah, well, you know what, you know what, you know what?

That commercial break was brought to you by my daughter. Yeah, so yeah, about the per boys thing in Battle Tech. Yeah, guys, stay away from it. It actually involves a great deal more math than Warhammer. So I think many of you might have more problems with this. Anyway. Yeah. It's also kind of a form of masturbation,

so they probably don't want to do it. They probably don't want it. Yeah. Yeah. It is so much I could say about that. So anyway, the original edition of the game was set in the 31st century, in which a couple of centuries of warfare had taken a high-tech interstellar society just shy of Star Trek. Okay.

Not quite Star Trek level of, you know, future looks like an iPod, but, you know, really, very, you know, everybody has a high standard of living thanks to, you know, technology. Like we'd hit Utopia. We'd all, well, or we're, it was just over the next day. It was a very realistic view.

I give them credit for politically and sociologically. It's a more realistic thing than a utopia, but it was generally a very high technological society. And a couple of centuries of this warfare, by the time the game opens up, has turned it into a weird kind of dark age where there are these vast gulls of technology, where you have wars being fought with these you know three story tall mech mech mech you know fighting against each other that are powered by fusion reactors and use particle protection cannons and stuff and

where ordinary people you know are having to hunt for food with spears if they live on the wrong kind of planet and they'll take what they've hunted and take it home and cook it in a microwave oven. You know, this weird, like, there's bizarre kind of gaps in how technology operates. And even between regions on the same planet, you'll have where the local ruler lives, he's going to live in what we would consider a modern kind of, you know,

home with modern conveniences and electricity running water, and, you know, fascinating high-tech gadgets, you know, beyond that. Whereas the ordinary people of his planet might live in a standard living or style of living largely comparable to the 17th century. Okay. Only, you know, they have large tractors that, tractors that they have to work to try to maintain, but otherwise, everything else that they work with is bare bones, lots of handmade kind of things. Kind of, that's an interest. I hadn't thought of that comparison, but yeah, that would kind of work. And so, feudalism is dominant. So we have these powerful houses that control these vast regions

of the galaxy, and we'll get to talking them more in a minute, but there are these successor states, sorry about why they're called that, in which these nobles control whole planets, why they're called that. In which these nobles control whole planets and the baron who controls a planet has to answer to a duke who controls a march who then has to answer to, you know, it's a feudal kind of system. And good question for you. Yeah. So post-apocalyptic is a genre, it's a popular genre. Very often, it seems to be a way to get to talk about futile systems. Okay.

Do you think, just, I mean, the fact that this is futilism, but now we've got robot tanks. Do you think the futilism thing is a trope that's just easy to grab at? Or are they trying to make a point about? I think the I think in this case any commentary that they wind up making was a Secondary result. Okay of what they were going for. I genuinely think the, and actually it's good that you ask a question because the next thing I've got in my notes has to be talking about the rationale

for feudalism and interstellar setting. A la foundation. Are you familiar, I presume you're familiar with at least the titles of the foundation books by Isaac Asimov? No. I have weird gaps in literature. Um, so I have known about the foundation series since I was 12 Okay, um, and that's because every other science fiction nerd that I've spoken to who was at all Literary Mm-hmm told me read as a mob right love of God fucking read as a And I put it off right and I put it because it's it's asthma

And you know I'm more of a hindline guy. I'm more a you know thrilling yarns, you know blaster guns space opera Right guy and everything I'd heard about asthma was that he was more intellectual Oh, and finally I decided okay. I got to eat my broccoli And I sat down and I read the first foundation book. And here's the deal, teaching Latin as you do, as we've mentioned before, that making you class-assist adjacent. Foundation is going to light you up like a Christmas tree.

Okay. Because, as Amov did his research, and foundation is about, is a science fiction template for the fall of the Roman Empire Okay, and the rebirth of Western civilization through feudalism the dominance of the church Okay, the trade and the middle class and into I mean he he he's holding up a mirror to our history Yes, and and psycho history

Mm-hmm, which at this point isn't aside from what I intended to talk about with us, but it's important to mention He he introduces the idea of psycho history as a study of look We know how people behave. Uh-huh. If we have powerful enough computers We can predict based on these patterns how people are going to behave Hundreds and thousands of years into the future, not on an individual scale, because in the model we're looking at, that would be like trying to predict how a quantum particle is going to.

Right, right. But we're looking at all of humanity, the large movements. The big picture we can predict. And so, the first psycho-historian essentially finds a way to trick everybody into giving him the funds and the resources to establish a place where knowledge is going to be protected when the empire falls.

Okay. And then that's the McGuffin and then everything goes from there. So now the reason I mentioned foundation is because foundation to you reading it today, having read all of the other interstellar empire stories that you have, Star Wars, yeah, Dune, not just stars.

Okay. So, but, but being all of the Star Wars, okay, yeah. Yeah. But, but being exposed to science fiction trips and seeing all this stuff in The idea of an interstellar empire and all stuff is I mean I saw the movie by was his face Oh Lord, what's his name the guy who directed doing?

Oh Lynch yeah, David Lynch. I was gonna say Daniel Lloyd Weber Oh, uh, Lynch. Yeah, David Lynch. I was gonna say Daniel Lloyd Weber. Very different. Very, very different. The Spice will control you. Oh, so by Lynch. Yeah, yeah, so I saw that. So that's just as good as reading books. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's full comprehensive. Sting was in it. I know. Yeah, I get it. I will kill him. Um, here's the deal's the deal. I'm gonna admit right now. I fucking love that movie. Yeah, no

I like it inspired me to watch Beetlejuice and works Nice so so but as as somebody who really loves the books I also really love that and normally though that's a golf that most Normally if you really love the books, you're like David Lynch needs to burn in hell. Right. You know, he's gibbeted, you know,

heresy against Herbert. Sure. I don't think so. I think it's a great movie. It captures all the main themes, you know. But that whole idea of an empire in space with a feudal structure or something that that As I'm of created okay, and his rationale for it

basically Condensed and spun out a little bit is that in order to maintain Administrative and military control across vast distances. The feudal structure of centralized individual, you know, giving large scale, this is what we're going to do orders and sending those orders out and having somebody who is in effect a local despot, then making those decisions and doing things locally,

and having that kind of the dispersed power structure involved in feudalism, according to Herbert and anybody who, not Herbert, Asimov, and then Herbert and anybody who decides to follow this particular model. Well, and the local PTA, I mean, that's how you get the phone calls out. Yeah, yeah, phone tree. The rationale is that over those vast distances, especially if you're dealing with a situation where there is any kind of time gap involved in space travel, that's the way to get that

stuff done. Okay. Okay. And, you know, if you're looking for a way to build a setting for a space opera Mm-hmm. That's a good enough rationale. Sure. I mean if you really want to get into sociological studies of you know What's the best way to do all this we can argue that forever? But for the purposes of these stories that's what they do sure and so to give you the shortest summary of the history of this universe that I can, humanity began expanding out from Earth in the Battle Tech universe,

and fits and starts out with from Earth, utilizing a jump drive starting in the early 22nd century. There was firstly Terran Alliance, which was ruled from Terra, but was all the planets that had been colonized or under that authority. Right. Then the Terran Hegemony exerted control over colonies and both of these powers exerted control over the colonies mostly for the benefit of Earth. Okay.

And then there was a long period of conflict between interstellar powers. So these individual colony worlds gradually formed their own little confederacies and their own little, you know, federations, my very own column. And those conflicts led to the formation of the Star League in the 26th century. It sounds an awful lot like the end of World War I League of Nations. A little bit. The Age of Empire. A little bit with an important caveat there. The Star League acted as a sort of a hybrid imperial authority and federal authority. So the individual states of the Star League had autonomy mostly within their own borders, but anytime there was a

conflict between them, they had to answer to the imperial authority of the Star League. So it's what the League of Nations meant to be? What the League of Nations meant to be, but the League of Nations never had its own army. Right, okay. And the Star League had, there was an enforcement. And it had an enforcement. And it had the military might to enforce it. And it had the military. And it had the military might to enforce it. And it had the military might to enforce. Okay, it had real, real army to got enforcement.

Okay. And it had the military might to enforce agreements between these subsidiary steaks. Okay. Okay. And the Starleague also oversaw the enforcement of the Aries Accords, which become important because they are the Battle Tech universe equivalent

of the Geneva conventions and Now during these very early conflicts between these how is aries spelled? ARES. Okay, so it's not the the RAM is it is the God of work. Okay And so during these conflicts this these conflicts that they describe in the history of the setting. Sure. Way back in the history of the setting, 500 years before or more, in the beginning of the actual game, were these powers fighting amongst each other and these were brutal

wars that involve the use of nuclear weapons, large-scale, you know, massive destruction. Planet killers. Yeah. And, or at least continent killers. And so the Aries Accords were put in place and then enforced by the Star League to say, no, no, that if you do that, you've gone beyond the pale, you're going to face everybody is now going to come after you. Okay. You know, and it was a way to limit, you know, what it was that combatants were going to do.

Okay. Okay. And under the Star League, there was real, to limit what it was that combatants were going to do. And under the Star League there was real no kidding enforcement power. So mutually assured destruction with a really strong referee? With a really strong referee. And so the first battle mech, according to this alternate history, was invented in the year 2439, under the Terran Hegemony, or Hegemony. I've

never figured out which syllable I needed to stress there. And for several centuries, the Hegemony and then the league held this technological edge. Now, the great houses got maxed, they managed to reverse engineer some of the technology, steal some of the rest of the technology. But the hegemon and the star leak were always like one generation ahead of the noble houses in the mecca that they were able to build, battle mix. And so that really enabled the league to act as that enforcer because if you broke one of the Accords where you decided, well, you know, they're not looking, we're going to go steal this planet from our neighbor that we agreed was gonna be,

or we're gonna do this other, Skullduggery underhanded thing. It was like, no, no, no, they're gonna come for you and they've got, you know, Gen 5 tech and you're on Gen 3 and a half. And so, no, you're not gonna get away with it. So they acted in enforcement. Okay.

And so that led to a period of comparative stability until, let me back you up to this. Yeah. What did the first mecha look like? Was it a mad cat? Was it? It was a semi-human, well, it was human away. And it had two arms, two legs. It didn't really have a head to see the illustration of the mac and question. It had a big dome where the head would be that didn't look really very head like.

But it was humanoid. It did not have hand actuators in head. Right, those were cannons. Yeah, it just had guns in its arms. Bird legs are human legs. Humanoid legs. Because it was squat squat looking I mean really square squat squareish. Okay, so like did it have a Cannon mounted on its shoulder no Missile Bayes mounted on it. No, there was there wouldn't anything there would anything that looked

Like any of the iconic max that we see in the artwork from the game from the game. Right, right. This, this is something the, the, the Mackie was the name of the battle Mack. Okay. It didn't actually, as far as I was able to figure out, the Mackie was not actually the rules for the first battle Mack. We're actually written up until several editions into the game. Oh, okay. This was just part of the history. Gotcha. So stop me if you've heard this before.

Sure. But a weak child emperor, the title that the leader of the Star League held was technically first Lord, but Emperor is the better historical parallel, became enthralled by an unscrupulous advisor in the mid-20th century. The family that had controlled the Starleaf was the Cameron family, it was the Cameron dynasty and the last Lord Ian Cameron fell under the sway of Stefan Amaris, who was an outworld ruler from fringes of known space, who managed to lure the emperor into his clutches and became a favorite of his and then started a civil war in which the

league's military overthrew the unscrupulous advisor. Sounds like Russia. A little bit. Sounds like Imperial Russia. A little. Sounds like Russia. A little bit. Sounds like Imperial Russia. A little bit Romanovs. A little bit like Imperial Russia. A little bit like Romanovs. And after 14 years of fighting all over the inner sphere, is when that finally happened.

But that was not before the unscrupulous advisor had himself murdered Ian Cameron and ended the Cameron dynasty. Okay. So the last legitimate ruler or the last legitimate claimant to the title of First Lord has now been murdered. And in the wake of the war, the leader of the army wanted to try to reestablish the Star League, but there was not, as I said, a surviving heir to the camera in dynasty, and the leaders of the great houses all started jockeying

to take the title for themselves. So the rulers of House Davian, House Curita, House Merrick, House Lau. OK, so here's where I remember colors. Yes. Curita was green, Merrick was black. Lau, actually Lau might have been green, Karita might have been red, but it was a rusty red, and this is all like

Sega Genesis style graphics, so the colors weren't all that great, but because I remember if you went Merrick black for your mech, you were kind of a dick, because Damien shows up as black, and so And so you're like, it's kind of a, yeah, kind of a kind of a prick move. Yeah. Yeah, so. I always went with white and lough. Yeah.

So I like the light color with the green. With the green. So yes, lough generally is associated with green. The heraldic colors rather than like you know that Carita is associated with red. Merrick is associated with purple in the board game Davian is red and gold is their heraldic colors

Carita is just straight-up blood red Steiner is blue. Very mentioned now. We had a blue, but I don't remember it being called Steiner, but I just might not remember it. So, in an event, those were the successor states. And the rulers of each of these individual vast noble houses all started jockeying to try to take the title of First Lord. The ruler of Kareeta in particular in the lore is characterized as having been convinced that you know

essentially by defined right he's the one who should take over that role. Now this is the still the the knockoff on Imperial Russia these are all vying for Imperial Russia. These these are all vying to take the role of I Think more of it like the Holy Roman Emperor. Okay To kind of give sure you know my own early modernist kind of you have my own early modernist comparison. But there's still within the context of what you were talking about, the child emperor who had duped in the murder.

Yeah, who got duped in the murder. And so all of the leaders of these houses immediately start squabbling, skirmishes start breaking out between them, and disgusted the commander of the army, sent a message out to all of the Royal Army forces, all of the Star League military forces. And all at once, they packed up all their dependents, they packed up all their gear, all their weaponry, all their machinery, and they left. They disappeared. The army. The army. Okay. And all of, and again, all of their dependence and everybody affiliated

with them, disappeared out into unexplored space with all that wonderful high-tech and all that political legitimacy. Okay. Just literally folded out into space, because that's technically how the jump drive works. They jumped away. Now it's important to note the army leader who made this decision and got all of his well not all but nearly all of his units to follow him had the last name Karenski. had the last name, Karenski. Now, if you know anything about the early Soviet Union, that's gonna ring some bells. A little bit.

So Karenski gathers the whole Starlie army up and says, peace out. And literally gone. They're gone. They disappear. And nobody knows where they've gone. Okay. And in the context of the universe

the the figure of Karenski For common ordinary people kind of takes on this king Arthur kind of You know return when we get it right? Yeah, you know, yeah kind of kind of context And so the great houses Who were squabbling over who was going to run the Star League then became the successor states. And because there was nobody there to enforce the Aries conventions, they blasted everybody

into a near, nearly into a new dark age. Before finally settling into a couple of centuries of constant low intensity skirmishing punctuated by occasional real wars. Okay. So on the borders between these different powers on a galactic scale There's always Chevowshez rating. There's always something going on Okay, but it's it's what we nowadays would refer to as low intensity conflict sure and it's once in a while

Or there's skirmish. Yeah, and once in a while somebody manages to get enough of a force together and get sneaky or smart or lucky enough to manage to actually say no I'm starting like a large-scale invasion and a new and a war actually breaks out. Right. Okay, and so that's where the original box set introduced us to the universe in the middle of the 31st century. So how much box text was that to know that universe? Was it the first third of a book? Was it eight paragraphs? What I just wad at you is spread out over a bunch of different sources.

So what you would get when you opened the box was an explanation that there used to be the Star League. The Star League fell apart because of corruption and people being shate. And now the great houses are all competing in the trade see who's going to become the star, the lord of a new Star League. But nobody has the resources to do it really. And here we are. It is an age of constant low intensity conflict. There we are.

And so now you have an excuse to take your little pieces of plastic and shoot at the other guys' little pieces of actually, in this case it was pewter. Oh wow. Because it was still the 80s and you could see the lead pewter. Thank you for fucking that up, Congress. But anyway, sorry, I have strong feelings about this. About getting to handle lead. Well, here's the deal.

Within the context of a 28 millimeter model, the amount of lead exposure you have is bubcus. Within the alloy of pewter that you're handling, the lead exposure to you as the guy working with it, unless you spent hours every day sanding miniatures without a mask on, like for 20 years. Okay. There was, I mean, handling one and painting it

and you know, cutting little bits off and doing stuff. There's no real, there's no exposure. Okay. I mean, handling one and painting it and cutting little bits off and doing stuff. There's no real, there's no exposure. But what happened was in around 89 or 90, I want to say it might have been later, there were new EPA regulations approved in regard to the use of lead that didn't actually have anything to do with the hobby industry. Okay. But we're written in such a way that miniatures now had to be made with lead-free pewter. Lead-free pewter means 10.

Oh, is pewter just lead-in-ten? Yeah, pewter is an alloy of lead-in-ten. It's mostly 10. There's not a lot of lead involved. But there's enough lead to make it bendable. So if you drop a model and it doesn't break, you can bend it back. Right. It's not going to snap off. Right.

Okay. Ten will snap. Ten, ten snaps all that God damn time. Well, as the miniature nut of the two of us let me tell you, getting the opportunity to work with a pre-led band miniature is something I look forward to because everything about doing it is so much easier. Okay, now I don't know much, I only know what I know from Rome's history. Yeah. And even then I don't have, like, I know plenty about Roman wine.

I've never had wine. So my, none of my knowledge is practical. Okay. I know that bronze is a soft metal. Yes. It is obviously not as soft as pewter. No. Would it crack and snap instead of bend?

Bronze? Yes. No. Generally speaking, no. It would just bend. Bronze would mostly bend. Well then why not make? It's a good question because it's tin and copper. Because it's tin and copper and copper is expensive enough. It was expensive enough. Right. That wasn't the hardness, the nature of the hardness, I don't know enough about the metallurgy, but basically it's just that bronze would be a very different, more difficult metal to work with.

Oh, okay. Bronze is great for casting stuff. Like casting bells and casting swords, right? Right. And actually I could go into a whole sword and do the thing about bronze age swords actually being good enough to shave with as far as the only. Oh incredibly sharp. Yeah yeah and easy to sharpen back up. You well yeah yeah if you if you wanted to or you could just you know melt up down a cast

a new one out of them. Which which we actually know and I have to say it because this is just kind of too awesome too. In Irish and Celtic, other Celtic, Saga's about heroes, we have these stories of these heroes carrying three and four and five swords into battle. And for a long time, everyone was like, why the hell would you do that? That's a waste of resources.

What on earth, what we figured out from people actually doing reenactment and recreating bronze weapons, is a bronze sword is really awesome for about the first three or four hits. Yes. Like it will cut like a razor for the first three or four hits. And then it's a cudgel. And it's close to being a cudgel.

Yeah. So, and what you can actually do is, you know, drop that one, pick up a new one, and the thing is, when the battle is over, you go drop that one pick up a new one and the thing is when the battle is over You go back you pick up all the old bronze weapons that everybody dropped you who melt them down and you recast And so okay, they probably did is kind of what we're talking about is you probably did see guys with the wealth to do it carrying three Right at least three and four swords into a battle to always have a sharp one Yeah, cuz I go back to the Romans and they mass-produced swords into a battle to always have a sharp one. Yeah, because I go back to the Romans and they mass produced swords and they made them

perfect for stabbing. They didn't go for slashing because slashing is way too much energy. Leaves you way too open. Stabbing you can do right next to a tower shield and just keep walking forward. And now you're literally the amount of muscular energy you're putting in, way less, way less at risk and it enables you to be that vast machine. And you don't have to really worry about it getting dull because you just keep stabbing. Yeah. Just keep stabbing, just keep stabbing. So now that we've had that

big long, right, at diamonds. So you have miniatures. We can shoot at each other. Have your miniatures that you can set on the table and have blast each other. Now it should be noted as you already pointed out this is a variation on post-apocalypse yeah you know the post-apocalyptic theme and in this case it's post-apocalypse mashed up with space opera to get this particular kind of stew and so back to stuff that we've talked about in previous episodes post-apocalypse stuff was a big deal during this time period because we were standing on the edge of a precipice where you know God knows we might be heading toward apocalypse yeah you know we might try to

outlaw the Soviet Union and begin bombing in five minutes, you know. And, you know, so. So when we did the episode on 40K, yeah. That was an outgrowth of faturism. Yes. Faturism starts in 79. Yeah.

This is 84. Clearly the Americans who made Battle Tech had played 40k. Or they knew of it, certainly. Right. I'm just, I'm thinking because now that's where again, that's where I'm in Reaganism or very close. They're really close. And you basically got this idea of guys in hyperd armor. Oh yeah. And so now it's just the next step. It's an Americanized version of the British. Yeah, well yeah, and the interesting thing is to kind of talk about that a little bit more, there is this used future from Star Wars kind of element

involved with the battle mechs that you're throwing at each other are gonna be for the pilots running in their family air loops. Okay, which is almost the mech was built, you know, 300 years ago. This is almost exactly the quote that you said about 40K. Yeah. Yeah.

And so that element is definitely there. Okay. But what's interesting to me is there was this much more buck Rogers adventurous kind of, you know, the, the, the rim. Oh my god, this is so horrible. We're ruled by a bunch of fascists, the sucks. You know, the universe is dark and awful and terrible. It's American fascism.

It's much more colorful. It's much more colorful. That boot could be mine. Yeah, yes. I could, in fact, be the noble in the big giant walking tank. Stamping the face and doing the same thing. Stamping the face and doing the same thing. Stamping the face and doing the same thing.

So real quick, book Rogers the TV show had come out by this point too. Yeah, and we're gonna talk about that. Okay, okay. That's part of what I'm talking about. Just call me Mr. Segway. Yeah, huh? So we have five successor houses.

Okay, successor states ruled by the great hands. Let's see if I remember. Merrick, Karita, Lau, Steiner ruled by the great. Let's see if I remember. Okay, Merrick. Yeah, Karita. Karita. Wow Steiner and hang on Davian Davian, there we go. All right, so I'm gonna start by talking about House Low. Okay, so House Low Rules the compelling Louse Kind of rules the compelling confederation Okay, and now when when we talk about the name of the state of each one of these, a couple of cases

they refer to the region, the stellar region of space that they're based around. And so House Laugh has its capital around the star of capella. So it's a capellan confederation. And this was designed to be a culture heavily built in imagery and concepts out of Imperial China. Okay. Song Tang Qing Dynasty. Okay. And Song Tang Qing is an important point that I'll get back to in a moment.

Now, so that's the cultural and aesthetic kind of look that they have for that house, but politically it's governed as a Stalinist, Maoist, authoritarian state with a Soviet style secret police called the Mascula of Ca. Constant intrusive surveillance, heavy, heavy, heavy-handed bureaucracy, and this is where we get back to you, Song Tang, Qing Dynasty. A little bit wrapped in this cloak of neo-confucianism from those dynasties in Chinese history. We'll oppress you with a serene smile. Yes, we'll oppress you with a serene smile, and we will impress upon you the importance of how you need

to do this, because you are a cog in the greater system. The celestial bureaucracy demands this. Yes. So that's an all right. So celestial bureaucracy demands this. Yeah. So that's an all right. So now I'm going to reiterate a couple of things here. Remember, Stalinist, Malist, Massive Secret Police, Constant surveillance, Constant Intrusive Government Control of Individual Rights.

Have we ever not, as a culture culture confessed by accusation. Yeah. But yeah. So but but based on perceptions of the day, that was that was right. The USSR. Oh sure. That was our dark mirror. The sinusovia alliance. Yeah. The sinusov alliance. Now, then we look at House Merrick, which was referred to the state that it ruled was the free world's league. And now what's interesting is the culture in House Merrick was a hodgepodge of Balkan European, Greek, Persian, and Turkish elements.

So Eastern Mediterranean? Eastern Eastern Mediterranean or Old Ottoman? Yeah, well Eastern Mediterranean and Ottoman and Rollum all. Right, well at one point the Ottoman was. Yeah, they just put the feet up and relax. Yeah, pretty much. Nice. Well done. Now, now that house ruled over a fractious and chaotic

confederation of smaller interstellar states, like the Balkans, with a very chaotic and fractious parliament. We're in the Greek Turkish. Within the setting, the free world's league, citizens of the free world's league were very proud of the fact that they had the oldest continuous interstellar

parliament and they pointed to themselves as being you know truly a representative democracy kind of thing. Now what's interesting about that of course is that they have this Catech-Fractches Parliament. And then over it, we have House Merrick, who runs the whole thing based on a state of emergency decree that gets renewed every couple of years by that fractious Parliament, or every so often they have a massive civil war until another Merrick manages to win and they have the state of emergency redeclared. Okay. So that's House America House Steiner. Steiner. Okay. They're the EU in space. Okay. They rule over the Lyron Commonwealth based around Lyra. Lyra. And Steiner is the wealthiest

of the successor states. Okay. They have all the money. They have all the merchants. They are the house that is the most business friendly and the most regulated, capitalistic house. And they have a massive, they were fortunate in those fractious wars, you know, that they survived with the largest surviving industrial base. Okay. And so they're heavily influenced by the Holy Roman Empire in early journey.

Sure. Okay. And so they're ruled over by essentially a figure who is much like the Holy Roman Emperor or Ampress. Right. Because they were the one house at the outside of the game. They were the one house that was ruled by a woman. Okay. Fred Rico the Great.

Yeah, Fred Rico the Great, Katrina Steyr. And then, you know, had fairly powerful nobles. Now within the fluff of the game, Steyr was seen as dangerous because they had the most heaviest mechs. So, you know, the joke was that you run into a lance of, you know, two atlases and two marar-2s, which for anybody who knows the game, those are two of the heaviest varieties of mech in the game, you're both, you know, 100 tonne jade. Okay. Beking with warm machines. The zangief, so yeah. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes.

Perfect. And you run into those four mechs, and, you know, you report back to your superiors, yeah, we ran into a recon lance from house Steiner. Is, you know, that was like all the heavy, all the heavyweight stuff, all the, they have just the biggest invest, no? The biggest, yeah.

And, and while they had the biggest and the best stuff, their generals got their positions because of their social rank, rather than knowing your stuff. So, the pressure. So, the pressure. Yeah. And then,

then we have house curita. Oh, okay. The draconis combine around the star draco. Just the name itself sounds Japanese. You're right on the money. All right. And their color was blood red, you said? Blood red.

Like a certain dot on a flag. On a flied. Yes, precisely. With a black dragon coiled within the red. I remember that. Yes. I remember that. One of the most iconic, I mean, if you've got to look at the aesthetics of the game It was like well those guys look badass right, you know

And so they are pre-war imperial Japan But the emperor is also the Shogun Okay, okay, they're they never they combined yeah, they never let go of samurai culture. Shampoo is the Shogun They still have you you know, fuel dyno, and they lift for house curina, they lifted everything straight out of feudal Japanese history. It was like Tokugawa updates.

Yeah, essentially, yeah. Or Sengokuji die, age of the country, war, you know, stuff, just picked up and. Okay, thanks. I have a loan, yeah, ad, ad, ad, add add gigantic walking robots now they also have secret police uh-huh but their secret police are ninja okay because ninja badass this is the 80s this is the 80s and we're gonna get into that to the point where there were three movies called ninja you're getting a big yes yes that's a big thing and And again, because we're talking about it being pre-war Japan, it is a fascist state.

It is explicitly private industry working hand in glove for our life. The government's hand is up the ass of private industry or vice versa, you're never really sure which. Answering to a very powerful central government in this case ruled by the coordinator of the dracones combine. Everybody for the good of the state. Yeah, and there is no pre-tensive democracy like at all. Well, and the fact that it's in the drako system, I mean dracones, draconian, it's yeah, pretty easy jump. Yeah, very easy. Okay.

So then finally, I'm saving, I don't know if the best is the right word, but I'll say these guys, my favorite, folks. House Davian, I'm gonna ask the Federated Sons. I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say this is America. Well, here's the thing. At first blush, they look like the British Empire in space. Okay. Because the founding family was explicitly stated to be descended from British or English and or British and French nobility.

Okay. And so those are the two main cultural influences. It's very, you know, primarily very English looking on the surface. Uh-huh. It has a stable and relatively liberal parliament. Okay. those of the two main cultural influences, it's very, you know, primarily very English looking on the surface. It has a stable and relatively liberal parliament. Okay. They have a free market, but regulated economy. And it is stated very clearly that they are, that the rulers of House Davian

have a stated guarantee in the Charter of the Foundation of the Federated Sons that guarantees citizen freedoms, despite it being in the end a military dominated state like charter of the foundation of the federated sons that guarantees citizen freedoms despite it being in the end a military dominated state like all of the others. So now the thing is all of the trappings look like great Britain in space. Sure. Brutuschenpach, right? Right. But if you think about it it becomes clear it is in fact actually the United States becomes clear. It is, in fact, actually, the United States. I mean, it's our... Postwar. Yeah, postwar. Standing Army.

Yeah. The IACOCA. Yeah. It's a pluralistic, diverse society. It's the strongest military power in the inner sphere. Uh-huh. Like combined arms. Yeah.

You know, it's explicitly stated that, you know, they have the largest, you the largest army in the setting. Let me guess, would I be accurate in saying that they have the second best of everything in the game, whereas other groups have heavier mechs over here, more stealthy mechs over here, but the Americans are kind of just that middle fighter, the guy of the street fighter game. Good comparison, not really. The designers of the game were a bit more circumspect in that. In that the technology base, the basic technology that everybody had access to was the same

across the board. So like those two next that I mentioned earlier, the marauder and the Atlas. The Adless and the Marauder too were available to everybody no matter what fact you decided to play. What would happen is, okay, well, the factories for building these two, you know, House Merrick has four factories and I'm just pulling these figures at this point out of my hind end, but I could look it up sure sure because again this setting is like catnet because they have all of the stuff written down But like Steiner has four factories that are able to build the Atlas whereas Davy and has one Uh-huh, Lowe doesn't have any

Torita might have two. Uh-huh. And so everybody has access to everything, but you can look at somebody's army when they put it on the table and say, oh, that looks very fill in the blank. Uh-huh. Because if somebody is a fluff guy, like, they're gonna look at, okay, well, I can tweak it if I want to,

or I can just say, no, I'm painting all Davia and army green, or Davia and whatever I don't care. Or, you know, I paint them bright red, you know, they're the third sort of light. Right. Yes, they're all recon mechs. I don't care. I like the way it's sort of like this for you. You know, and you could get away with that in in Canon. Sure. Because the designers of the game were smart enough to go, we're not going to make it so you can't do that. Right. Now, later on, there were particular models of Mac that were like, this is a loud only thing. This is a Kareeta only thing.

You know, but at the beginning, it was, no, these are, everybody gets everything. These are the facts. Pick what you want to do. Go blast each other. Right. And so, so there wasn't this kind of, you know, second best of everything. Okay. Slightly above average stats across the board.

Right. You know, they didn't quite do that. Okay. Now, you know, House Davian was characterized as being scientifically curious and advanced. Everybody else was in the semi-superstitious dark age. Mm-hmm. So if House Davian is the XB for the United States, hold on a sec, my notes, I have decided

to go wonky on me. I don't want to keep word. There we go. So if House Davian is the XB for the US, who do you think is the principal antagonist here? Well, before middle of the Cold War, we're about to start bombing in five minutes. Who would you immediately assume, based on the description I gave, is gonna be characterized as the primary heavy? The one that is the cut out for Imperial Russia.

That's what I would assume, but what you'd said earlier was that it's cold war all that, but focused on yellow peril. Yellow peril. So I'm gonna say credo. Yes, and you're right. Mm-hmm. The thing is, you would assume if you were a social historian,

looking back on all of this and somebody explained, OK, so these are who the five houses are, it would be, well, it's the cold war. So obviously, the cryptosovians are bad guys. No, no, it's not Cold War. So obviously the cryptosovians are bad guys. No, no, it's not LOW. It's CREATIVE. And the thing is, LOW comes across as the also ran antagonist in all of the early novels.

The rulers of LOW are characterized as being these mustache twirling villains who succeed in the short run by being cunning are characterized as being these mustache twirling villains who you know succeed in the short run by being cunning and you know backstabby and then always wind up getting triple crossed or you know they get foiled and and they wind up being a punching bag more often than a real threat. The real threat is Kareeta. The big bad is the coordinators of the Dracombs Combine, who has expansionist goals to conquer the rest of the inner sphere and by conquering everybody else, become First Lord.

Okay. And now we've got to take a look back to the real world at this point because why? Wait, wait, hold hold on so we're standing on the precipice of like us the Soviets literally blowing each other into atoms and and the and the and the heavy here is the Japanese and so when we start the next episode because you know we're getting close to the end of this one we're gonna look at what was going on as the Zitgeist at that time in order to explain why that was. Okay, so why are we, because I look at a map of the world, why are we focused left in this game instead of right? Yeah, you know, yeah, so okay Cool, so what are you taking away at this point now that we've now that I've laid the groundwork sure

I still think a Loki prime is a viable Mech About how you did that Because the thing is I was a vulture before guy. Oh, oh Missile fun guy. Oh, yeah, well, no a lot of people went for that a lot of people You're not not in the crowd. I ran with gotcha. Yeah, so because splash damage was wonderful So um, and you hit you know all those missiles on the right spot. Yeah, yeah But yeah, so I don't know I'm thinking

It feels almost like the people who came up with this game were also ran historians. Because I'm just seeing so many tropes of let's go feudal because it's easier to write fiction when you have five families. So you basically have only five personalities you have to deal with because of an effutal system. It's the personality and tells them how to do it. So any person that you take from that society can absolutely be a representation of the person at the top or whatever. You can write really easy palace intrigue in a feudal system. I also with the with the creative stuff that their fascist

again feels a little, science fiction-y lazy, because the biggest bad guys we've ever faced have been fascists. Yeah. And so, yeah. Well, here's the thing, if you don't take your full course of antibiotics, and you, and stronger, sadly.

Yeah, if you only take it until symptoms go away, this is what you get. But, you know, so it's a ready-made bad guy. Yeah. So, and I say that fully aware of all the sins that Star Wars commits to all of this. Oh, yeah. You know, you have a princess in space. But she's a badass. Oh, she's amazing. To me, she'll a princess in space. Um, but... And she's a badass. Oh, she's amazing.

But, you know, to me she'll always be a general. Yeah. But, uh, you have... So, I'm interested in how they just have this like really rich, wonderful idea and then they just kind of plug in these tropes. Yeah. And it's like, aww. Oh.

Okay. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah. it's like, oh, I see what you're saying. That's, that's, that's an interesting take. And it could be that's, let's get to that so that we can get to the blowing each other up on the board thing. I think, I think that's, that's, that's a big part. And that's very valid. And I think, and I think there's also something to be said, and I'm going to get into this in our next episode about, the Zitgeist of the moment. Yeah. I think I think personality is driven.

Where we were at that night in the state of the world. I think had a lot to do with with the mindset of the guys writing. I also, you know, I think back to Westerns. Yeah. And in the Westerns, you always have a shoot out in the middle of town. The amount of actual shootouts that actually happened in the Old West. We're remarkably small. Yeah, like because it's stupid,

because why would I give you a chance to kill me? Yeah. So, you know, it's much, much meaner. No, the shootout of the OK Corral is notable because it was the aberration from the norm rather than the norm. Right. That's the reason it's so famous.

Yeah, and so it like but cinematically It makes a lot of sense. Yeah, you focus on one guy you focus on the other guy We all get involved in the drama. We're drawn into those two personalities So it feels lazy in the same way that feels lazy It's not necessarily lazy. It's just tropey. Yeah, well, yeah. And that's okay. That's fine. I think I'm going to come around to tropes are not bad. All capitalized tropes are not bad.

Yeah, yeah. Or first letters capitalized, which is itself a trope. Everything is a trope. Yeah. How you've managed to stay away from TV tropes and not have it rot your brain, I don't know On the one hand, I want to congratulate you on the other hand you poor poor bastard Amazing

But yeah, I think I think it's it's Interesting to know where it was these guys were coming from my own precision my own perception at the time as a 12-year-old. Looking at, in 84 I was only nine, but by the time I was really looking at this stuff, were you at the age they were aimed at? I was a little younger. I'd say they were aiming for your high school college students. This was not a game for 12-year-olds. Okay.

You got to keep track of a lot of stuff. There's a lot of paperwork. It's not even today when they've kind of streamlined it. It is not a simple game. It's involved. It takes some time. Once you know what you're doing, then you're in it.

You can run the app. You can get very tactical. But when you're learning how to, it has a steep learning curve. You got to do a lot of, a lot of math on the fly. Keep track of stuff. So if that's the case and these guys are not novelists, that's the other thing I need to point out. I'm not. I'm not. Yeah. Right. Right. We're not. Okay. So there's a few things that feed into it and also as you just said, the culture at the time. So, well I look forward to next week or next episode rather than any previews to that or you just want to leave us with the mystery. I think I'll just leave you with the mystery a little bit.

I will say we're going to spend some time talking about Japanese reconstruction after World War II because it's important for this. Well hence the giant robots. Indeed. Yeah, cool. Alright, well for Geek History of Time, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm Ed Blaylock. And keep rolling those 20s.