Crusader start rewrite

Shadowen

New member
Don't miss this very nice fan fiction, which is actualy an alternative Crusader: No Remorse Intro script. The author is Shadowen, here what he has to say:

So I was watching the opening movie the other day and realized...it was bad.  Oh, it got the point across--Silencers have sudden attack of conscience, WEC doesn't like this, Vittek and Zurovec have sudden attack of bullets-in-head, Captain gets mad, then decides to get even.

But a single Vetron taking down two Silencers?  More importantly, the Captain not scavenging weapons, equipment, and ammo from his dead superiors?  This would not do.

So...I rewrote it.  It's minimalist, because the setting and players largely have not changed.

You can read more by following this link to our forums - http://cyberionsystems.com/echosector/forum/index.php?topic=71.msg339#msg339
 
I splited the topic into two part, so i can post a news item for it. The text that goes below is written by shadowen, i just copy/pasted it into my post.




Crusader: No Remrose Alternative Intor Script
by Shadowen

So I was watching the opening movie the other day and realized...it was bad.  Oh, it got the point across--Silencers have sudden attack of conscience, WEC doesn't like this, Vittek and Zurovec have sudden attack of bullets-in-head, Captain gets mad, then decides to get even.

But a single Vetron taking down two Silencers?  More importantly, the Captain not scavenging weapons, equipment, and ammo from his dead superiors?  This would not do.

So...I rewrote it.  It's minimalist, because the setting and players largely have not changed.


----------


?What good will that do?? The voice was snide, bitter.  A sigh.  ?Should not have let them go.?

?Vittek??  This voice was patient.  ??shut up.?  Or not.  ?Civilians, not rebels.  Keep making noise, Command will nail us.?

The Silencer holding the rank of Captain, but still the junior officer in this unit, was not paying much attention to the argument; his thoughts were turned inward.  It was the same argument they?d been having for the past week.  A week with scavenged food, little sleep, and dirty water.  It made no difference to Silencers, but even they had their comfort zones.

A snort, accompanied by mechanical distortion.  ?Remember the ambush?  That wasn?t Rebels either.  Command set them on us after we let the scabs go!?

A pause.  ?Friendly fire.?

?Friendly fire?!?  A heavier sigh than before.  ?Done it now.  We?re fragged.?

There was a light up ahead.  Perhaps a place to rest.  Get his nose out of the damned sewers.  Or at least a place where he could get off his feet a moment.  Yes.  He wanted sleep, but a few minutes? sitting would do.

?No-one?s going down.  Keep in motion--?

?Can?t go home.  Remember Owens??

They entered a small room that may have been part of a tubeway system, years ago.  It was empty, ruined, sparsely lit.  ?We can.  Shut up.  Order.?

The Captain resolved to tread lightly.  Colonel Zurovec was usually more eloquent.  When he got as terse as the Captain, he was angry, and thinking hard.

A few moments? quiet, as Vittek checked his shotgun, Zurovec paced and thought, muttering to himself, and the Captain checked the room.  No booby traps, no surveillance that he could see.  Two ways in or out.  One led back where they?d come, the sewers; the other went up to the street.

?All right,? Zurovec finally said.  ?We didn?t find Rebels.  So we couldn?t have let Rebels go, right??

?Yeah, I know the story,? Vittek muttered.  ?I?have a bad feeling, is all.?  The Captain knew what that was like.  He couldn?t help but think he was missing something.  Something important?

?I outrank your feelings.  Let?s move.?

They went up the stairs to the street?and found a squad of Stormtroopers, lead by a few Elites and an Enforcer, fanned out and waiting.  The Silencer realized the flaw in his reasoning: he was tired, and had not been checking for sensors thoroughly until they made it to the room.  Just because he hadn't noticed any didn't mean that there weren't any sensors in the sewers.  In fact, where the always-paranoid WEC was concerned, he should have expected them.

?Or we could retreat,? Zurovec said.

The Stormtroopers apparently hadn?t been expecting them out so soon--they had obviously been expecting them in general--but the Enforcer commanding them recovered quickly.  The Silencer remembered that face; that Enforcer was the one who?d ordered them to kill the civilians.

?Fire!?

Unfortunately for him, the Silencers took it as an order, too--and no one the Captain had met could outdraw a Silencer.  Beating a hasty but controlled retreat back down the stairs, Zurovec firing a sustained burst on his rifle and Vittek blasting away indiscriminately (for a Silencer) with the shotgun.  The Captain only had a pistol, his heavier weaponry giving out in the initial firefight, days ago.

The Captain was almost a sniper with a pistol.

He?d fired seven shots by the time they had made it down the first flight; seven headshots, seven kills.  Even Enforcer helmets weren?t much good against a .40-caliber slug at close range.

?Sewers,? Zurovec bit out, bursting at a Stormtrooper who got too brave and tried to take the stairs.

?Not an option,? Vittek said, much too soft and calm.  The whine of hydraulics and the thud of piledrivers caught the Captain?s attention.  ?Vetrons!? the Major screamed, diving forward and blasting away.

Uselessly.  The buckshot deflected off heavy armor plating, and the three Vetrons gave no hint they had even noticed the attack, except for a brief salvo of rocket-powered grenades.  Vittek?s armor gave way with the first blast, and his body followed suit in the follow-up.

?Captain!? Zurovec said, "I'm preoccupied!  Keep them busy!?

Before he?d even spoken, the Captain?s pistol had found its mark, but bullets weren?t much better than buckshot.  Though they at least they dented the armor.

He almost felt their targeting software lock on him.  The best way to confuse low-level AI was to do what expected?except not.  So he dove forward.

Only he didn?t.  Keeping hairline control of his muscles, he jerked them back from their forward motion just before the point of no return, when he would have committed to the roll, and fell back, firing more precisely, damaging the targeting sensors of the lead two.  They spread out to cover him, exposing the third; he shot that one?s targeter out, too.  They could still fire their weapons, but not with their normal mathematically precise locking system.

When using explosives, though, you didn?t need pinpoint accuracy.

?Time to go,? he said to Zurovec, scrambling to his feet and running up the stairs past his Colonel.

?G?wan,? the Colonel mumbled.  ?Right b?hind y??cover y??? 

The moment he heard the slurred tone, he knew Zurovec was going to die, even assuming they defeated the WEC troops and their mechs.  A brief glance confirmed it: he was bleeding very badly, red smeared over the yellow of his badge, standing in a small puddle of blood that was at least mostly his own.  A few Stormtroopers had fallen down the stairs, lying dead at his feet.  More were piled at the top, but there didn?t seem to be any more waiting.

Even if there were, better troopers than Vetrons.

There were, in fact, a few wounded Stormtroopers waiting, and the Enforcer.  Only the Enforcer had anything resembling confidence left.  The Captain shot him first.

The Stormtroopers surrendered.  He killed them anyway.  They had been allies a week ago; they were the enemy now.  No remorse.

He heard the explosions from the stairway, knew Zurovec was dead.  But they?d run out of heavy ordnance days ago; how could he take on mechs??

They?d run out of heavy ordnance days ago.  The Stormtroopers, on the other hand?


The Vetrons had been specially fitted for this mission.  Standard Vetron units were flexible; some in the group would mount chainguns, others lasers, still others rockets or other explosives.  Meant to go after Silencers, these three only had grenade launchers.  It was the only way to be sure they could hit them and penetrate their defenses.

This was not a problem for shooting people.  Intercepting thrown objects was a challenge.  Half a dozen small black spheres, unidentifiable due to targeting system damage, arced down towards the mechs; a couple bounced off their chassis and spun into the bloody mess at their feet.

The Vetrons were not completely stupid, of course.  Their IFF computers were damaged, but their actual image recognition databases were fully functional.  With machinelike patience, they ran the objects through possible matches, thousands of similar objects per second.

The first one to finish had a dozen milliseconds? warning.

...Match - Explosive Device
-Proximity Warning
-Retreat!



The Captain staggered to his feet, blinking to rid his eyes of the spots.  He'd been a good fifteen meters back by the time the grenades had detonated.  The explosion had still knocked him off his feet.  Popping his joints and rubbing a sore spot where shrapnel had bounced off his thighplate, the Silencer searched what was left.  It wasn?t much.

When the Vetrons had been destroyed, their ammunition cases had detonated.  There was nothing remaining of Zurovec or Vittek; there was hardly anything of the Vetrons.  Or, for that matter, the nearest five meters of street.  The explosion had obliterated everything within that distance, and severely damaged anything within ten.  If any of the Stormtroopers had been clinging to life before, they weren?t after.  Perhaps more vexingly, none of their equipment was, either. 

The Captain took stock.

One (1) ringing in the ears, temporary.  One (1) pistol, BA-40, standard issue.  Ten (10) clips for said pistol.  One (1) suit of standard-issue Silencer armor (always the armor; he would have kept that over food) with one (1) each black light armor bodysuit, datalink and backpack included.  Two (2) days? iron rations, four (4) medpacks.  One (1) burning need to kill a lot (a lot of people), quickly passing as rational thought reasserted itself, but never quite going away, always simmering just below the surface...

Two dozen (24) elite WEC troops, dead, all equipment useless.  Three (3) Vetrons, destroyed.  Two (2) superior officers, atomized.

And one (1) Silencer?

??
 
read here mate, you can announce the topics too ;) - http://cyberionsystems.com/echosector/forum/index.php?topic=57.0
 
I'm not asking how it was put on the front page.  I'm asking why it rated the front page.

It's like seeing the Sun's page 3 girl on the front page.
 
Well i assumed it's a nice news item, that might be interesting to people. That's why i put it on the front page.
 
Hell yes you should.

I have the official script for Crusader 2, I'll upload it sometime.  :)
 
...do it.  Now.

Or I will go into genetics, spend years and billions to create a Silencer, and send him to kill you.
 
Well, as soon as I figure out how to upload files to the site, I will.  :)

Not only is it the Crusader 2 script, I have nearly every document that Origin and EA were using post-No Regret... I have the Crusader 2 script, the proposal for more Crusader games (No Pity, No Mercy, No Quarter, No Survivors), the No Survivors script, and tons of other technical stuff (AI, physics, etc.) It's really very very awesome stuff that I really need to integrate into the site sometime.

Of course all you fellow Crusader fans will be able to download it sometime, I guarantee you that.
 
That is so awesome :) All from Mark Vittek?

Btw, I liked the rewrite of the intro. I always thought it was kinda lame. I once actually wrote a short fanfic about it as well, but dealing with the events leading up to the Vetron ambush (kept that part intact). Not sure I still have that, I wanted to upload it to fanfic.net but somehow they kept refusing the category so I stopped bothering with it.

What I also always wanted to know (and write a fanficabout) is how the Captain managed to contact the Resistance and receive a Blast Pac. I'm sure he couldn't just walk into a Resistance recruitment office. He would have to know how to get a message to a Resistance informant in order for General Maxis to notice him.
 
Actually, I'm not sure who it is from. A friend of mine sent me the .zip file with tons of Crusader stuff in it, he said it was from an undisclosed source from EA.
 
The Silencer link said:
What I also always wanted to know (and write a fanficabout) is how the Captain managed to contact the Resistance and receive a Blast Pac. I'm sure he couldn't just walk into a Resistance recruitment office. He would have to know how to get a message to a Resistance informant in order for General Maxis to notice him.

Workin' on it.
 
I haven't fully read the script, but No Survivors is about the training of the Captain to become a Silencer. It was also supposed to be a multiplayer game.
 
As you noticed, I finished my No Mercy intro.  I think I might rework the No Regret one, too.  Just for completeness' sake.
 
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