Starbright Illustrations (blog)

By The Illustrator 　http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/2009/04/28/xcavo-a-giant-mech-for-traveller-the-role-playing-game/

Xcavo

Xcavos are like the cargo robot from the core mongoose rules but with the addition of integrated weapons, these represent the excavation beams. They are often heavy lasers, but it depends on the type of planetary surface that has to be removed. This robot design for Sci-Fi RPGs also has all terrain caterpillar tracks as a main motile system.

One of the interesting things about the Xcavo, especially the Xcavo 8523BH2 pictured above, is its propensity to go postal. The artificial intelligence at the heart of these giant and dangerous machines is based on some open source architecture that was first developed for security droids. If the Xcavo’s threat detectors become active it can be very unpredictable, and surprisingly skilled and dangerous, in the way it reacts. This dodgy architecture is even capable of targeting the integrated weapons with surprising skill. This is of course great for game masters who want to spice up a role-playing encounter at a boring dig site with some unexpected enemies.

These useful droids are common throughout the Tarazet sector and more advanced mechs are only deployed if there is some problem that the Xcavo can’t handle, an exceptionally hostile environment for example, and even then it is often cheaper to just modify the old dependable, mostly, Xcavo.

There are armies of  Xcavos on Vane Tempest, a planetary mining colony science fiction role-playing game setting for the Tarazet sector and Traveller. There is also a strange and degenerate burrowing monster known by the Tempestians (the colonists on Vane Tempest) as the Megamole, and this creature has learned to trigger exactly the unpredictable thereat response of the Xcavo, using them to sabotage the excavation works on Vane Tempest.

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