This month we're going to look at some more inventory beauty renders and some of the lore that's been written for them.
Before we get to that, two things. The first is another Makeup and Vanity Set track. This one is called To The Ground and is heard in the introductory junkyard mission of the Garage Build that unlocks the first parking slot.
Another track will be posted at the end of next month to join the playlist of tracks from the Brigador Killers OST.
Second, behind the scenes there have been a few changes to the inventory UI that were originally teased in this post on social media.
This inventory has received a UI color change, and draw your attention to the second column of the player inventory on the left.
Unlike in the Garage Build, the second column now splits out whatever the player is carrying between weapons, items and ammo. This is because something we noticed from watching people play the Garage Build was having a general inventory space resulted in the player (particularly the loot goblins among you) being overburdened to the point that they couldn't pick up a firearm they wanted, or ammo they needed, or bandages they might need without having to drop something that they also wanted to keep. Now the on-foot player inventory is separated out so that you only have to sacrifice space for something of roughly the same type.
Also, as can be seen in the clip or on the backpack in the image above, an icon appears over whatever the player is currently interacting with, and there is also a highlight in the inventory over whatever item is being moused over.
Lastly, an interact button (default bind of F) brings up a lore entry for whatever the player is mousing over with alongside the beauty render of that thing, and this is what the rest of this post will focus on. Enjoy several words from MB.
Amerigo 177
It’s a weird little gun that I can’t help but love. .22 Long Rifle is a varmint caliber, a tiny little baby round for babies. The pan magazine holds an impressive 177 rounds, hence the model designation. The gun has no recoil and a high cyclic rate, very easy to do damage on unarmored targets. Not a bad gun to have in a pinch.
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Chobfob
A fine .22lr rifle for small game out in the woods or a little target practice at the range. Decidedly less fine for staying alive on Mar Nosso as a poor bastard Chobber. Makes me think of the Zweenie back in Solo Nobre. A lot of Chobbers lost their lives when accurate enough shots from this small caliber rifle were answered in a much higher caliber.
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.22LR
.22 Long rifle, short on hope. Designed as gentle bullets for target shooting, lagomorphs and the C-suite. Put it this way: you’re in serious trouble if you’re looking at this entry.
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Duiker Carbine
For the historical re-enactors with lethal intent. It’s the back half of a bolt action rifle, rechambered and rebarreled in .45 ACP. That’s already a big fat round under the speed of sound, so adding a suppressor works devastatingly well.
It’s bolt action, because that’s the rest of the gag: a semiauto action cycling can be louder than the shot itself if suppressed well enough. Cycle the bolt when there’s nobody left to hear it.
Just keep it to mid-range at most: this is still a pistol caliber weapon. Shoot at anyone too far away and they’re going to watch the bullet roll past their feet.
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Señor Graxa
Lipstick on a pig. Pigs are incredible animals, mind you: it’s the lipstick that’s a problem. Despite having fractional independence from War Council mandates, Nobrelite was possessed by the same manias. They loved lasers. Had to have them. Everyone who ever carried a Nobrelite will have some over-the-top story of the Señor’s reliability and chuggy cyclic rate, but bring up the overbuilt laser sight and they go quiet. Just like anyone on the bad side of Señor Graxa.
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.45 ACP
A lovely slow lethal tugboat of a round. The .45 is big enough that it’s normally already subsonic, making it an ideal candidate for suppression, like most old timers.
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Lodi
One of the most popular Kriel designs of all time. An old cowboy gun cut down and mated to a laser sight so big you’d swear you were back in Solo Nobre. High polish blued steel throwing a red dot dancing over someone’s heart in a saloon… and looks like Mar Nosso boardrooms now, too.
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LAW
The ol’ Brezno Toothpick. Single shot disposable rocket launcher. Old tech, but so long as there’s light armor around that needs giving a hard time, you’ll find these discarded launcher tubes on rooftops, in alleys, in the forests and jungles of warzones throughout the Outer Colonies.
There’s a story about how if you walk a shiftcycle dead north from Seven Ock on Volta, you’ll find a man who lives in a little house built entirely out of old LAW tubes. If anyone who’s fired that many rockets is still alive, they’ve earned their peace. I hope you earn yours.
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Rasmus Gun
Volta is an efficiency colony in the ass-end of space that has suffered some of the finest cruelties the Concerns have on offer. In return, the Voltans answered in kind with ingenious crudity and fighting spirit. The VMC enjoyed improvised explosives, punji traps, sabotaged machinery, assassinations, and even the resurrection of ancient firearms.
The Rasmus Gun is another contemporary of the Drobac and Mãe Dois that hasn’t worn as well as those designs, but is just as burly. How it got there, how Volta Kämpfer came to manufacture them is a mystery to be honest; how it came to Mar Nosso is not. The Voltans’ insurrections were quelled by force, with an assist from Clade Vocc to hear it told, and now their glorious battle arms are curios and scrap metal. But you can still feel the old war spirit in its steel. Time to feed it a few more Corporate bastards.
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7.92x57 (8mm)
For every Twelve Seven, there’s a band that doesn’t make it but deserves to just as much. 8mm is that outer-outer Colony version of 7.62 (.308). I hope that explains at least a little why Solo Nobre adopted it. Super colonial space colony still not making any sense to you? Maybe apocryphal tales about railroad gauges and invasions might clear it up.
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Rhino Stopper
That's the street name. An animal someone saw in a faded picture book. The design is similarly ancient, something the Seppos could improvise from the worn out barrels of crusty old AA guns.
Calling it a blunt instrument would be an insult to music. Like everything Volta Kämpfer sells it's ugly, heavy, and a pain in the ass. But you forget all that when you pull the trigger and the guy in front of you disappears.
It's a neat little magic trick.
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6 gauge buckshot
A psychotic, over the top standard for putting many perforations into many things in your field of view. I’d worry less about fighting against armor than unsafe toxins already present in your bloodstream.
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Tilo
The discerning shootist’s submachine gun. If you need an introduction, you might not be cut out for this whole “insurgency” thing.
Still, I love the exotic high contrast tiger stripe camo on this one. Couldn’t tell you what planet this might have come from, what unknown xenoflora these colors help hide the Tilo in. Drilling two shots of nine millimeter center mass and one in the head is something the Tilo can help you with on any planet, though.
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9mm
“If you want peace, prepare for war” is the funniest possible saying to attach to one of the longest-lived fighting cartridges. I would proffer “If you love war, enjoy the follow-through.”
9mm got a bad rap for lethality, but humanity course-corrected for powder charge and magazine capacity. 9mm will always be with us. Peace is an infection we can beat.
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Voltan Bog Rifle
Patience. Patience is how you throw off the yoke of your corporate colonial government that never held your life in higher esteem than profit. Patience is also crucial to using this rifle well.
You could dry fire the trigger once and walk away because admittedly it is lousy, even for a bullpup. Heavy as an auroch and the break is as mushy as grade-D ground auroch, too. Can’t see shit through that Starlight scope either, but patience wins out.
The Voltan Bog Rifle, on its integrated bipod from a blind outside the miles of pipeline, held steady in that infernal endless Voltan twilight—this rifle and patience claimed the lives of every VMC supervisor who intimidated and imprisoned Voltan workers. I’m sure this rifle will prove useful for you, too. Let’s just hope the Vocc don’t show up like they did on Volta.
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8mm Wildcat
Accuracy.
Consistency.
Safety.
Things that don’t matter when you’re handloading a spent 8mm hull as hot as you can make it, and then some. The sticker on the package isn’t just there to look good. It’s a hood version of the warning labels plastered on every Finvenko. Tells you not to load these things into anything that eats standard issue eight mill, unless you like picking bits of metal out of your eye socket.
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Zitha
A little spicier, rarer flavor of a law enforcement close quarters carbine. Real slick kit. When shooting people with The 18 doesn’t impress your friends anymore, basically.
Favored by guys in suits they’ve never worn without body armor under their Oxford shirts. Guys who talk about ingesting "creatine" too much, whatever that is. Guys who shoot this with one hand, while ducking the head of their client into the limousine with the other.
You pull one of these guns off one of those guys? Means they have failed their very high paying duty spectacularly.
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5.56x45mm
Turns out a bullet like a .22lr is a lot more effective if you make it a hell of a lot faster. That would be the shape of the middle future in small arms: trading weight and some penetration for lower mass and higher velocity.
People stop making fun of your gun for looking like a toy when A) you put enough attachments onto it to make it look meaner B) your toy gun is really good at killing the people making fun of it.
-MB