Eudaimonia Equipment

Overview

Technical Overview

Much of the technology in Eudaimonia is implausibly sophisticated and powerful, and often barely understood by those who use it. Those first humans who settled and terraformed the planet built technology that outlasted them and will likely outlast all successors on the planet, elegant in its simplicity and durability. Although few of their actual weapons survive to this day, many of their tools have thoroughly lethal applications. Their designs tended to be highly inclusive and versatile, featuring items with many modes, but tended to come in singular pieces and were not made for maintenance or retrofitting.

Contrasted, the devices of the True Human Empire and Mysterious Starfish Aliens make these devices seem plain. THE technology is sleek and ergonomic, and almost excessively modularized. The components of a suit of powered armor and the accompanying assault rifle can easily be prized into different systems on a whim, creating a lighter suit of armor and heavier cannon. Their materials science is slightly inferior to the first wave founders of the planet, in the sense that their weapons are actually destructible to anything less than catastrophic damage, but still amply durable and quite easy to repair. Expert systems called 'muses' often feature into devices larger than little pieces of jewelry and can give even a novice engineer critical step-by-step instructions at any point in a maintenance process.

Less is known about that of the MSA, save that it is substantially more fragile than either the works of the True Human Empire or founders, and seemingly made of biomimicking polymers and smart materials arranged in eerily organic-inspired shapes that lend them an almost living property. Like founder technology, they cannot actually be maintained, but generally heal themselves over time by drawing from ambient resources. Their most disturbing quality is their ability to repurpose themselves according to the will of their operator, quickly changing between multiple forms. Xenoarcheologists who've studied the design of MSA technology theorize that their devices are actually genuinely alive and endowed with subsapient, servile minds.

Natively made technology tends to be substantially poorer than the above, but tends to be easier to keep. Local gunsmithing techniques for example, have recently advanced to the stage of using recoiless rounds that burn a rhetorical smart liquid fuel which automatically adjusts combustion rates to hit implausible ranges and deliver high penetrative power at close ranges. These innovations tend to be inferior to those of non-native technology but their ease of acquisition and low cost makes them worth consideration.

Special Rules

When choosing a piece of equipment, a character must select the producer (i.e.: Founder, THE, MSA or Native). This has numerous in-game effects related to the type of equipment and changes their overall aesthetics.

Weapons

Melee

The presence of personal shields and a lack of standardized training regimens or enthusiasm for firearms on Eudaimonia means that melee weapons are ostensibly quite popular. There is substantial xenoarcheological evidence that points to the likelihood that the various other societies to visit the planet also enjoyed melee combat for some reason. Empire propaganda recovered from ships often shows handsome uniformed officers carrying dress sabers instead of the guns they made far more use of, for example.

• Founder: Founder melee weapons are always repurposed from tools and double as such. In addition to the standard indestructibility afforded to most Founder technology, all of their melee weapons actually function as an additional set of non-combat devices regardless of type, such as engineering multitools that reconfigure into swords, cooking apparatuses that work like vicious axes, etc.
• Empire: Empire melee weapons were rare things, and tended to be collapsible devices made of ceramics, fitted with sonic emitters to shear through the pliable armor of MSA drones and infantry. Empire melee weapons always have a conceal rating of P (fitting in a pocket), deal +2 Damage and can always be affixed to a gun as a bayonet.
• Starfish: Starfish weapons are universally made of handles protruding from blocks of greenish transparent polymerase, which buckles and flexes in response to attacks to defend the wearer. A melee weapon made by the MSA has a secondary weapon mode that can be activated reflexively and add +2 Protection versus melee attacks to the wearer. The most popular configuration is a knife that turns into a much larger and more dangerous weapon, to enjoy the benefits of power AND concealment.
• Native: Usually made of alloy or ceramics, Native weapons are cheap and plentiful. A character taking a melee weapon produced on Eudaimonia gets a second one free of charge.

Standard

• Knife Damage +2, AP 1, Conceal: P

Combat knives are essentially the most common of all melee weapons simply because they have purposes other than maiming people.

• Sword Damage +5, Conceal: O

Swords are especially popular among the catgirl pirates and Farnesian gentry, who use them to great effect in sword duels.

• Axe Damage +6, Accuracy -1, Conceal: O

Axes are harder to use effectively than swords due to the way the weight is balanced, but strike harder overall. Handaxes are useful tools, and are often used by loggers in the tropics to harvest bamboo and rosewood for handicrafts.

• Club Damage +4, AP 1, Conceal: O

Any sufficiently heavy object can double as a club, but well-made hammers, military picks and riot bludgeons are represented by this statline. They require less room to swing than swords and hit almost as hard, making them useful in cramped spaces.

• Staff Damage +4, Protection 1 (Melee), Reach, Conceal: N/A

Fighting staves are not used heavily on Eudaimonia, though the gondoliers in Farnese (especially young girls) swear by them. These weapons afford the user better protection against people with smaller, sharper weapons.

• Spear Damage +5, AP 1, Protection 1 (Melee), Reach, Conceal: N/A

Spears are mostly popular among fishermen and the catgirl pirates, who use them to wound crew before boarding. This statline also covers other polearms with modestly sized heads, such as pikes, halberds and billhooks. Thrown harpoons also use these statelines, although they're made as ranged attacks, obviously.

• Great Weapon Damage +8, AP 2, Accuracy -2, Reach, Conceal: N/A

Greatswords, great axes, scythes, warhammers and all manner of enormous and daft weapons popularized by video games and anime follow this statline.

Modifications

• Defensive: Defensive weapons run the gamut from main gauche swords to actual shields. A defensive weapon trades all Armor Penetration and half of its damage rating (round up) to Protection (Melee). Weapons with an extant Protection Rating such as spears and Starfish-made devices cannot be made Defensive.
• Oversized: Oversized weapons add +2 Damage and 1 AP, being designed for large (Size 3) humanoids. They can be wielded by smaller characters but subject 1 Accuracy in their hands. As a final warning, Great Weapons with this modification might not immediately fit through most doorways.
• Lightweight: Lightweight weapons are easy to use and nearly sing through the air when swung. They lose all AP values and take -1 Damage, but gain +3 Accuracy. Blunt weapons cannot be lightweight, for obvious reasons.
• Elemental Field: Crackling fields of electricity, flaming swords and whirring vibrational fields afford Elemental Weapons +2 Damage rating. On the other hand, don't botch. Empire melee weapons are already considered to have this mod, but do not have the botch penalty due to safety mechanisms.