Isma'ilis Deserve Better - Rewriting Mechnoir's Shiat al-Raj'a
Nizari village shrine in Porshnev, Gorno-Badakhshan, Tajikistan In what appears to be an inescapable pattern, I read through Mechnoir + its three transmissions as part of an attempt to learn more about the plot node maps that Technoir -derivatives employ and wound up with this. I might go back and form it into a proper transmission later, but I just wanted to get some ideas out for now. It's still too wordy for the typical TECH-ENV-SOC openers that transmissions employ, anyways. Mechnoir is gonzo in a pretty fun way: definitely soft on the ol' sci-fi Mohs hardness scale and the three major factions dueling over Mars are clone cult Jehovah's Witnesses, mechboxing-obsessed anarchocommunists, and a celebrity NRM in "Hashashin" cosplay (two out of three are cults based on real world religions - an interesting choice.) All are probably worth exploring a bit more, but I was drawn to the Shiat al-Raj'a for much the same reason that I was to Eclipse Phase 's Ma...