CYBORGS AND SPECTRALS - OMNIFIGHTERS OF THE MANEI DOMINI
A Study in Angular Malevolence
I use that rather, erm,
dramatic sub-title because if the
Striga is any indication - though sadly, it's the *only* such indication I've obtained to date
- the Spectrals have a distinctive and very menacing design aesthetic in common, not only with each other but also with the MD's Celestial OmniMechs. Even sitting still on the tarmac, Precentor Vapula's creations have the sort of sleek, evil lines that put you in mind of predatory animals - the
Striga has the look of a hawk on its perch - and tell you that these war-machines take their design purpose
seriously. If these machines had voices but only one thing to say, they'd growl "
I'm here to rip your lungs out, Frail!"
Though the fluff to all three Spectrals to date says that this 'lean and hungry look' is a mere by-product of Precentor Vapula's "unique approach to high-powered vector-thrust design", I don't think the MD are complaining about it in-universe, and
out-of-universe I don't doubt that this is quite a conscious and deliberate choice. In-character, the Blakers are looking to remind the Inner Sphere that they are
NOT HAPPY about the dissolution of the Star League, and putting the hyper-elite Manei Domini Shadow Divisions and their unmistakeable Omnis front-and-centre in their efforts keeps that fact fixed firmly in the minds of their enemies. The Shadow Divisions and their cybernetically enhanced personnel have garnered a fierce reputation by now, which plays into a second aspect of that appearance: intimidation and psy-war. Like the
Atlas centuries before, the Celestials and Spectrals are built to scare the piss out of whoever they're pointed at; as the Blessed Blake (
) says, breaking an enemy's will to fight defeats him almost as surely as an HPPC, and moreover it saves you ammo and repair costs that can be used more fruitfully elsewhere. Out-of-universe, TPTB have been very careful to create a distinctive look for the Manei Domini and their hardware, partly as a marketing ploy and mostly as a story-telling hook; as
Maelwys'
recent, superb article points out, the Manei Domini seem to be not so much
part of the Word of Blake as
allies to the WoB. (The exact nature of the relationship remains obscure, though apparently it does tend towards the... complicated.
)
You'll have to forgive me for being fairly short on details and long on waffle in this discussion, since I'm both lacking the actual sources and trying to save the real 'meat' analysing the individual fighters until their respective articles.
Nonetheless, on we go.
To date, we've seen only three Spectral-range OmniFighters: first the heavy-class, heavy-hitting
Striga, then the fleet middle-weight
Rusulka, and most recently the deceptively light
Shade.
All three use a design feature new to aerospace fighters, the small cockpit; while mechanically I'm a little ambivalent about this measure, since it saves each bird only one ton of internal ordnance space and inflicts not-insignificant operational constraints on the types, MD training and combat cyberware mostly offsets those constraints, and the use of this new equipment lends yet one more touch of RP 'flavour' to these combat platforms. They share other hardware that is more familiar in nature, but unlike other IS designers, Precentor Vapula has had the time, money, resources and freedom to use them in a systematic and comprehensive fashion: XL fusion powerplants lend the Spectrals formidable warload mass-fractions, double heat-sinks give them the dissipation capacity to make good use of that cubage, and liberal use of ferro-aluminium armour makes these fighters startlingly survivable. (Remember how we all looked at the
Lancer and the
Shiva and wondered aloud about the apparent 'shortage' of ferro-aluminium armour in the Free Worlds League during their design & development? I think we just found out where it all went.
)
Many of their configurations make liberal use of systems blatantly stolen from the Inner Sphere powers, giving them capabilities and throw-weights that range from the quixotic to the near-obscene, and like their new design systems, they also have free access to new weapons apparently developed uniquely by the Blaker factions. (While the Thunderbolt missile-systems may have been swiped from the Solaris stables that developed them, I can find no such precedent for the variable-rate pulse-laser, and it suddenly occurs to me to wonder if the VSPL was developed by the Word of Blake... or the Manei Domini. After all, with three hundred years to fiddle with tech-bits on the Hidden Five, they would've had more than ample time to come up with some new wrinkles....)
You'll recall that I defined the 'ideal', 'complete' overall fighter force back in the
"Generic Fighters" Overview column; for those of you who don't want to take a side-trip just now
, the bare acceptable minimum for any force is one (or more) interceptors, a dogfighter and an attack bird - the other roles are the 'nice-to-have' spaceframes which act as force-multipliers.
FORCE ASSESSMENT: MANEI DOMINI OMNIFIGHTERS AS OF TRO3075S-HA-O Shade - FAST LIGHT OMNIFIGHTER
MASS MOVEMENT/SI/FUEL ARMOUR PROFILE H.SINKS
35 9/14/ 9/ 5 40/ 28/ 20 10(D)
ARMAMENT: 15.5t pod-spaceS-RSL-O Rusulka - FAST OMNIFIGHTER
MASS MOVEMENT/SI/FUEL ARMOUR PROFILE H.SINKS
65 7/11/ 7/ 5 70/ 50/ 45 11(D)
ARMAMENT: 33t pod-spaceS-STR-O Striga - HEAVY OMNIFIGHTER
MASS MOVEMENT/SI/FUEL ARMOUR PROFILE H.SINKS
85 6/ 9/ 8/ 5 100/ 76/ 70 13(D)
ARMAMENT: 43.5t pod-space In looking at this line-up, I don't see a fighter force that is 'complete' as a standalone entity. However, this is only because it lacks a 'true' interceptor; the
Shade is certainly fast and fearsome enough to fake it in the role, but in the end is simply too slow to qualify. On the other hand, through the wonders of freely-employed technology like XLFEs, FAA and omni-mounts, the
Striga is fleet enough and well-armed enough to be a multi-role dogfighter *and* an attack-bird - compensating in spades for the mediocrity that is the
Shiva; this suggests that if he was involved with that project, Precentor Vapula was only phoning it in on the Leaguers' behalf - and the
Rusulka is arguably more of the same, though it has speed enough not only to be a 'dogfighter' and workhorse medium fighter, but to propel it into the 'fast dogfighter' bracket.
Here's the thing, though: the lack of an 'interceptor' MD OmniFighter is not a handicap, because not only are the Spectrals not a complete fighter force in their own right, at this stage
they're not MEANT as one.
Leave aside the fact that the Spectrals have all been fielded *during* the Jihad, implying that their genesis was hasty and/or a work-in-progress (ISTR that we've seen *six* Celestial OmniMechs and *six* Demon battle-armours to date; more Spectrals are more than likely to be forthcoming, to 'complete the set', as time progresses in-universe). From what
Maelwys said some weeks ago, the WoB and/or Manei Domini have so thoroughly penetrated the Sphere's security and manufacturing apparatus that when a Shadow Division's player puts together a force, they're free to do so with *any* hardware manufactured in the Division's theatre of operations. Coupled with their elite-grade training, their cybernetic augmentations, and their bleeding-edge war-machines, this fact would suggest that Spectral units are used to 'fill in the blanks' in the Division's fighter arm and provide capabilities that their pilfered systems can't deliver. Considering that each realm produces (or is trying to produce) a 'complete' fighter force on its own, this means the Spectrals can drop into the 'nice to have' roles and flesh out the Blakers' OOB - or simply 'acquire' some of the local interceptors to provide the only capability they lack and cheerfully get to wreaking havoc in the name of Blake.
- Does this particular Shadow Division originate in the (former) FWL, which produces an able interceptor in the
Cheetah but is seriously hurting for equivalents to the
Eisensturm and
Dagger?
chanman is seriously trying to hang the
Striga with a tag like 'Eisensturmski' - though personally, I think 'Blakensturm' might be a little more faction-appropriate and euphonious
- and the
Rusulka seems to have been designed specifically to offset the Davions' new toy, as well as most other medium-weight dogfighters.
- Shadow Division starting out in the Lyran Alliance? If you're feeling hard-up for interceptors, half-inch a few dozen SYD-Z4
Seydlitz and get to work. Given the lack of canon XL-updates for the Lyran
Stingrays, S-RSL-Os should eat them for breakfast, and though the
Eisensturm is trying to become the one-size-smashes-all 'sledgehammer' to all the LAAF's aerospace 'walnuts', teams of 7/11
Rusulkas and 6/9
Strigas - especially in the hands of chromed-out MD pilots - will still make their lives very, very un-fun.
I could go on for each House in turn, but you get the idea.
This quite aside, I should imagine that the Spectrals also have two other roles within the Blaker order of battle. The first would be as mobile fire-brigades: if their 'conventional' WoB forces were becoming bogged down or even driven backwards, Manei Domini squadrons can drive into the middle of the crisis and turn it around in a matter of moments. As elite pilots in bleeding-edge weapons, their other tactical role is almost self-suggesting, if only the flip-side of that just described: mobile shock formations, breaking open enemy defences or exploiting breaches forced by their 'normal' Blaker fellows, hitting and flattening the heavily-protected targets that no lesser pilots would even *think* of assaulting. If you think of them as 'special-operations squadrons', like the original 617 Squadron, you're pretty close to the mark.
Just as a closing note: throughout this article my hind-brain has persisted in trying to render Precentor Vapula's name as "Precentor
Vulpa". Anyone who can place this name and identify why it may be just a little *too* appropriate for comfort may award themselves ten bonus geek-points.
COMING UP:
S-RSL-O Rusulka
S-HA-O Shade
S-STR-O Striga
TRO3075 - the "Royal" starfighter variants
By Your Command: an Examination of the Star League's 'Robot Fighters' (ISP2 spoilers)
Khar'toon Kapers: BSE-X2 Banshee
TFN-** Typhoon ('75 Update)
F-77 Deathstalker ('75 Update)