Handful of ideas, M for F, Sci-Fi and Fantasy

[IrishWolf]

Send me a PM, if anything interests you.

30 Hours to Live
Forlorn Hope: a band of soldiers or other combatants chosen to take the lead part in a military operation, such as an assault on a defended position, where the risk of casualties is high. While it was likely that most members of the forlorn hope would be killed or wounded the intention was that some would survive long enough to seize a foothold that could be reinforced, or at least that a second wave with better prospects could be sent in while the defenders were reloading or engaged in mopping up the remnants of the first wave.

After humanity spread to the stars and met with enemies old and new, a term, once mostly forgotten, as returned to the military lexicon; Forlorn Hope. While entire worlds could be reduced to lifeless rocks by orbital bombardment, if an army wanted to take a planet and have it remain useable, they would have to land troops. While a very limited bombardment might launched before such a landing, in the hopes of destroying enemy fortifications and defenses, the leading elements of any such assault, suffer heavy losses. Concealed enemy positions, waiting enemy troops, automated defenses. The bombardments never got them all.

So what should soldiers do, when they learn their regiment, will be leading the assault? Make sure they don't have any regrets.

Perhaps a pair of veterans, who know their chances of coming out alive and prefer to spend the time they have left, enjoying themselves?

Or maybe the taboo of an officer and an enlisted soldier. A younger lieutenant, looking for a boost in confidence from her older sergeant? An enlisted soldier, who has a crush on her officer and this may be the last time she gets a chance to do anything about it?

Of course, they may yet survive the coming battle. Nor do they both have to be human.

Eyes Like Mine
So I’ve been reading some Humanity Fuck Yeah, stories on Reddit and listening to the audio books for the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell, which is pretty HFY itself but they both got me thinking.

So, the dominate sapient life forms in the universe, are herbivores. The beings that have reached space, believe that sapience comes from the need to use tools and intelligence to overcome predators. Now and then, they do come across intelligent predatory races but those are always destroyed before they can leave their birthworlds. Humanity has been lucky, they discovered alien life before they found us. Human probes caught the destruction of another race by an alliance of herbivores, allowing us to hide, keeping below the radar, while our technology and military grew.

Many years later, as humanity readies itself, their scouts find another predatory race, about to be destroyed. These aliens, barely about to launch their first satellites, suddenly suffer bombardment from space, aimed to level their key cities. The herbivores not only want them dead but they want their world, so they can’t launched nukes or virus bomb the planet. Just a few rocks dropped from orbit, to crater cities, before the ground troops land to mop up. Everything seems to be going to plan, when a human fleet appears from the black of space. As ships duel above the planet, transports begin to rain shuttles down, packed with troops, ready to aid their fellow predators.

I was thinking the aliens would look like this
https://clydecaldwell.com/gallery/strange-relations/

But if you have something else you would want play as, I’m all for it. For main characters, I was thinking human ground forces or marine officer and female alien resistance leader

Body Heat
The universe is vast, with uncounted stars and planets of every variation but even something as unfathomable, has some general rules. One such general rule, is where intelligent life, that which will create civilizations and reach for the stars, is found. Warm, mild weathered planets, tropical Edens in fact. As such, nearly all intelligent lifeforms are ectotherms, which is too say, they are cold blooded, relying on the environment for body heat.

Or at least that was the expected, universe truth, until Humanity and a collection of several alien races called the Coalition, bumped into one another. Humans took one look at their stellar neighbors and began giving them nicknames, based mostly on the reptiles from their homeworld, mostly because of their appearance. What took the Coalition off guard, were the conditions of Earth. Every member species would have considered the birthplace of Humanity a hardship world, if not a deathworld.

As the diplomatic niceties began between the Coalition and United Terran Nations, they began to exchange personal, to learn about one another. After a short time, if one is to believe the stories on the data net, Humans starting becomes very popular.  You see, very few spaceships and space stations could spare enough power to make the cold grasp of space, anything close to comfortable for the races of the Coalition. Most could only make the temperature survivable, which to humans, was only a few degrees below pleasant. Most of the stories tended be sultry, about seducing a warm blooded human, into sharing some of that wonderful body heat.

Crusade
As the early spring rains fade and the lands begins to dry, the season of war as come. Feudal army raise levies from the common folk, the planting ends and knights ride forth for glory and honors. All seems normal, until a monk from a remote monastery, high in the mountains, where a saint was interred upon their death, stumbles into the city of Lullin, barring grave news. The monastery has been put to siege by a ragged army of goblins and their lesser kin. Thankfully there are no orcs or trolls in their numbers but they are rallied about a small number of the highly militaristic hobgoblins. The walls are stout and the gate strong but the monks there are not warriors, nor are they provisioned to hold out for long. The Church must send relief and it must be soon.

However, there lies the problem. Nearly every order of knights, who answer to the Church, have already gone forth on either crusade or to fulfill promises of aid to mighty kings and lords. The only ones left, are a small order of female knights, all of whom are lesser daughters of the nobility, with unsuitable temperaments, either for marriage or nunneries. Few in number, barely a hundred and while trained and equipped as knights, none have ever seen combat. Indeed, they have rarely been used for anything but ceremonial guards for a handful of high officials. But the Church must lift the siege, so they must be sent.

But no hundred knights, even of the finest caliber, could defeat an army of goblins in the mountains.

So the Church must find more warriors, which means they are to hire mercenaries. Scum who fight for money, rather than a noble lord, honor or the Gods. But they will be skilled and veterans of many wars. Of course, they must act fast, least all the available free companies, be hired for the season. The Bishop of Lullin, seeing the danger, acts, hiring  the Lion Company, nearly a thousand men under Captain Wilhelm Campborn and instructs them to await the arrival of knights, at the town of Pinegrove, the closest settlement to the monastery.

Possible Female Knights

http://paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderChronicles/PZO9202-Iomedae.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/7b/e3/ff/7be3ffca702069daeb8cbb5505e77867.jpg
http://orig14.deviantart.net/9edd/f/2010/114/6/f/female_knight_by_aditya777.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f8/8e/54/f88e54dfaaa8bfef2153115f0c526c14.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/a0/f3/73/a0f373a53ddc044b136ab6b8a82c3c90.jpg