Lieutenant John Webb

From Egs Mayhem

Revision as of 17:42, 12 October 2007

A character used by Teleros in the defence of EGS. Head of an elite Special Combat Operatives platoon, Webb is a quiet, softly spoken man. Don't let that fool you though - with over two hundred years in the military he has complete confidence in his ability to kill people - and in the tradition of all SCOs puts the mission before everything else, his own life included.

Character Information

• Name: Lieutenant John Webb
• Unit: 1st platoon, 1st company, 202nd Special Combat Operatives regiment
• Age: 244 (looks like he's in his early 30s though)
• Gender: Male
• Species: Human (genetically modified, see below)
• Height: 5ft 8"
• Hair: Very short, light brown
• Font Colour: Blue

Personality: He's a fairly quiet guy most of the time and rarely has to raise his voice. He's always got an eye on the welfare of the troops under his command. Don't mistake him for a softie though: he's spent over two hundred years in the ranks of the galaxy's elite special forces unit.

Equipment

Also used by the other SCOs.

• T41 Pulse Rifle: With a range limited only by the accuracy of its user (at least on a planetary scale), the T41 pulse rifle fires a beam of green energy in 0.1 second bursts. Each burst or shot can deliver ~8MJ of energy, enough to vaporise a kilo of solid iron (and do nasty things to people too). Also comes in a pistol version for sergeants & officers like Webb. The muzzle has the same sensors as the helmet (below) for when you can't aim with the scope (eg through a small hole) and links to the helmet directly.
• Pulse Sword: Think lightsabre. Although mainly ceremonial, these things can be used in combat by sergeants & officers.
• Bayonet: Also doubles up as a knife.
• Armour: Helmet with visor with infra-red, night vision, brain / telepathic activity, intelligent IFF systems, and lots more besides. Also a comlink to the rest of the SCOs. Backpack with supplies (below). Shielded armour plating on chest, upper & lower arms, shoulders, thighs, shins and boots (can stand up to 20MJ / 0.1 second shot, 1GJ / 0.1 second shot if EM radiation). Hermetically sealed against the environment (uses air filters & small air tanks when in space - 30 mins max supply). Camouflaged and with a small full-body EM shield to mask heat presence on enemy infra-red systems.
• Other: The backpack has a small stash of rations, medical supplies and replacement power cells. At its base is a tiny plasma drive that can act as a jumpjet (but be careful - jokes about scorched backsides are so last century). The comlink has a planet-wide range and is subspace-based, as well as being very heavily encrypted.
• TF Shield: From Jfan, this is worn by Lt Webb only, and works to keep him in his normal form.

1st Platoon

Five squads of ten SCOs, each lead by a sergeant & divided into two five-man fire teams lead by the sergeant and most senior corporal in the squad. All armed with the same pulse rifles as standard, although some members do go around with sniper rifles, missile launchers and other weapons (see below).

1st Platoon Vehicles & Special Weaponry

Weaponry

• Nebula APC: A large, heavily armoured APC, can carry 20 men but usually only 10 (admin error that became policy :lol: ). Turret at the front with an anti-personnel pulse cannon. In addition, the sides of the vehicle can swing out and a "skirt" drops down to ground level to create an impromptu firebase, and allow troops to exit from the back ramp safely.
• Raven Transport Copter: Looks rather like a modern copter, but with two cylindrical plasma drives on either side near the top for hypersonic speeds. Two small "wings" below the cockpit have Scythe pulse cannons on them for clearing out a landing zone. A full squad can use zip-lines to get down from the passenger compartment.
• Scythe AFV: This vehicle is combination of supply vehicle, anti-air and anti-personnel armoured fighting vehicle. The single turret mounts two Scythe Pulse Cannons (see below) with up to kiloton yields per barrel. The turret is incredibly accurate and can track rapidly, and is capable of hitting ships in space accurately. Not for nothing has this vehicle become the best known machine of its type in the galaxy.
• T41 Sniper Rifle: Not unlike a normal one, but it has various stands etc to stabilise it and allow for greater accuracy. Up to 100MJ a shot.
• Raven Missile Launcher: Fires 1ft-long missiles at hypersonic speeds and transcontinental ranges. Warheads vary, but as an example, the anti-light-tank ones have a focused blast equivalent to a 3MT nuke. Missiles accurate to within a millimetre thanks to onboard AI & sensors.
• Scythe Pulse Cannon: 4 barrels. 5,000rpm. Unlimited ammunition. Mounted under the arm or on a combat suit. Moveable barrels to focus on one point or form a cone of death. What's not to like :evilgrin: ?
• Combat Suit: A harness really, it fits onto the backpack and under the arms. Has two shoulder weapon mounts on highly mobile "arms", and one under each arm. Controlled by thoughts from the user & a built-in AI system.
• HECS: Hostile Environment Combat Suits are used when the environment is very, very dangerous. You know, the sun side of Mercury, or maybe Venus, Pluto etc. 7ft high, the soldier inside is fully enclosed in armour (a good analogy would be a Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine).

General Technology

• Pulse Energy: It looks like your traditional visible laser beam, only it's not: shields designed to block physical or electromagnetic energy don't block pulse energy. My technobabbly way of having visible beams without messing with real lasers in other words.
• Shields: A shield will only go down if enough energy hits it in one go: it doesn't weaken like Star Trek ones do for example. In addition, unless the shield generator is taken out by this shot, it will pop back up once the energy stops or lessens enough that the shield can block it again. This applies to physical and pulse weapon firepower.
• EM Shields: These absorb the energy from lasers, x-rays, radiowaves etc - ie electromagnetic radiation - and pump it back into the shield generator's power cells. Only when more electromagnetic radiation than the shield can handle is thrown at it does some get through.
• Power cells: These use a pocket dimension to supply an effectively unlimited amount of power to the device it's connected to. In other words, no need to change ammo or batteries in a battle - these things last forever (well, years of continual use). They're also very safe: the nature of the pocket dimension means that if the power cell is destroyed, the energy is lost - no explosions or anything.

Genetic Modifications

• Ageing: As seen with the Lieutenant's age, the human ageing process has been slowed considerably, and people can and do easily live for several centuries before needing a replacement body.
• Immune System: Since humans first expanded into space, genetic modification was used to make the immune system much tougher than it normally is. This is further enhanced for soldiers, so that the immune system will react strongly and quickly against even newly-encountered diseases, poisons and the like.
• Resistance to Radiation: Again, genetic modification has been used to copy the high levels of resistance present in some bacteria and other life forms, to allow people to survive thousands of times the radiation doses that would kill ordinary people, even without the highly advanced medical science of the Terran Alliance.

Look & Design

Basic Armour:

• Think of all those helmets with a visor, small comlink-thingy on one side, and no goggles.
• The rifle is meant to be a realistic-looking piece of kit, so think modern weapons - they even use iron sights just in case. Just remove any magazine and add a scope.
• The major difference between their uniforms and that of an SCO's is that the latter is hermetically sealed around the neck & boots etc, has gloves, and can have a sort of lower face mask that fits onto the neck seal & helmet - lots of enemies use NBC weapons back in his universe, and I wouldn't put it past the EOU to try similar. The material is also proof against bullets, knives, hard vacuum and the like.

Armour:

• Although it's not the best view, you can see the 40k Imperial Guardsman has shoulder plates & a breastplate: SCOs and other troops have similar, but underneath their camouflage (above). They also have elbow- / knee- pads, and plates on their upper / lower arms and legs (think shin guards). It's designed to provide good protection whilst not impeding mobility, and is no more than 1/2cm thick. In combat they'll be totally black (think 2D non-reflective black), due to the shielding (the armour plates literally conduct an energy shield that can survive entire-torso-vaporising shots or energy beams).

Errata

• Terran Alliance flag & SCO badge