I'm still a bit old-fashioned in some areas; I learned drawing and design with pencil and paper; I'm currently banging my head against the comp in an attempt to learn Gimp. The tutorials here are great, but it'll take a while to get the hang of everything. Nevertheless, here's my first try.
The idea is what the title says: putting Vampires and Werewolves in the ClassicBattletech setting. I've run campaigns like this in the past, but this time I'm going to actually write things down. This is what I've got so far.
Background:
The world known as Arda is a terrestrial world of massive proportions. There is little that would be considered normal by terran standards. With a diameter of 31,900 km it is two and a half times as big as Terra. Despite having a bit over ninety percent of its surface covered with water the remaining land area is still more than double that of old Terra, and is divided into two continents and some islands. The center of attention is the southern continent which occupies more than two thirds of all land on the world. Just to give an idea of the scale, this single landmass has as much area as all land on Terra plus another Eurasian continent. Despite the gigantic proportions Arda is rather lightly built; a density of 3.4 g/ml (or slightly less than that of Mars) results in a surface gravity of 1.54G. Unpleasant, but liveable.
Situated at 1.42AU from a G1V star that is slightly larger, slightly brighter than Sol Arda only recieves 56% of the insolation that Terra gets. However, the world's thick, soupy atmosphere is five times as thick as Terra's and has a stronger greenhouse effect due to greater concentrations of CO˛ and less oxygen (about 60% Terran norm). Added to this is a planetary rotation that gives Arda 36 hour days; the practical upshot is that Arda is about 6°C warmer than Terra at sea level. Once again, unpleasant, but liveable.
History.
Arda is incredibly old, older in some respects than the Galaxy itself. The world is approximately 12.7 billion years old, or nearly three times the age of the Sol system. If the rocks could talk, they'd tell a story of tragedy, destruction, and rebirth.
Long ago, when the universe was still young, Arda came into being. At that tender age the universe still had produced very few planets, much less ones capable of supporting life. Nevertheless, it happened and Arda passed the first four billion or so years uneventfully in one of the outlying globular clusters.
Then tragedy struck as the system crossed paths with another solar system. This new star was bigger and possessed a strong enough gravity well to strip the old sun of its worlds. One was pulverised by collision with the new star's outer world, and resulted in an imposing asteroid field that strecthes nearly 20AU across. Arda itself survived this celestial kidnapping, and settled into orbit. In the process Arda hijacked one of the inner worlds, ripping the planet from its orbit and settling it as Arda's moon. Naturally, this had a catastrophic efffect on the biosphere of both worlds, but life survived in the black depths of the world ocean. Over the proceeding billions of years life has not only bloomed once more across the surface, it has gone in totally new directions.
Fast-foward several billions of years. It is now the early twenty-third century, and life on Terra is such that people are leaving in droves; some willingly, others at gunpoint. Arda is discovered and the Terran colonial government establishes the first settlement. One of the members of the first survey team, a literary fanatic, names the world Arda and Aman, a reference to the works of a twentieth century author. On Arda, the two continents are named Arnor and Gondor, after the fictional kingdoms, but it is Gondor, the mighty southern continent, that recieves the lion's share of the attention.
And with them they bring their undead masters to this primieval land...
This is what I have so far. Over the holidays I should be able to write some more of the background. I've also got a pair of images. They idea is somewhat like satelite maps (they will; they're little more than thumbnails right now). To get an idea of the scale, each degree on the first map represents 278.38km