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BATTLETECH ADVENTURES
Castle
Wulfensteiner
e from
e s cap
TM
A BATTLETECH APRIL FOOL’S DAY SPECIAL
BATTLETECH ADVENTURES
CASTLE
WULFENSTEINER
Under License From
®
ESCAPE FROM
TM
35APR24
©2021 The Topps Company Inc. All rights Reserved. Battletech Adventures: Escape from Castle Wulfensteiner, BattleTech,
BattleMech and ’Mech are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of The Topps Company, Inc. in the United States and/or
other countries. Catalyst Game Labs and the Catalyst Game Labs logo are trademarks of InMediaRes Production, LLC.
OFF THE GRID
The Suburbs (Training Site 404)
Rim Worlds Republic Outpost 25
Deep Periphery (Approx. 112 LY from Rypful)
16 December 2769
Roland Offenbach winced in pain as his
Warhammer
rocked
beneath a furious onslaught of golden laser fire and warhead
blasts. Alarms cried out for his attention, warning of armor
breaches and his imminent loss of balance as though he couldn’t
feel it for himself in the way the world kept swaying all around
him. Fighting his controls almost as much as he did the churning
of his stomach, he forced both his machine and his body to twist
back against the ruthless assault, to regain their stance before
they lost their tug of war with gravity.
With the muscle memory from countless hours of experience,
Offenbach made his
Warhammer
lurch a half-step back, placing
its wounded right leg to one side and angled out with enough
force to arrest its awkward stumble. Swiveling the torso toward
the right at the same time, the combined maneuver realigned
the seventy-ton BattleMech’s center of gravity, while keeping its
battery of lasers and particle cannons squarely locked onto the
olive drab, broad-shouldered form of his attacker.
Thin wisps of smoke from the
Guillotine’s
joints, and the illusion
of rippling air all across its silhouette, told Offenbach what his
thermal sensors already knew; the Terran machine was now
wallowing in its own infernal heat. Knowing exactly what its pilot
was about to do, Offenbach ground his teeth and triggered the
firing studs on both of his joysticks at once, and closed his eyes
as a flood of crimson and azure lights washed across his vision
to the sound of shrieking PPCs competing with humming laser
bolts. Moments later, his own cockpit became an instant sauna,
as a soft, feminine voice stated the patently obvious to him.
“Warning: Heat Level Severe!”
“No
scheiße,
Lady!” Offenbach hissed back, as he tentatively
peered out his canopy in search of his prey.
Unsurprisingly, all he saw was smoke, dust, and the
pockmarked facades of buildings beyond. Glancing to the left, he
caught the dark blur of something big slamming back down to
earth just behind the rooftop of a four-story residential. Black
smoke spilled upward from that same spot moments later.
Offenbach keyed his microphone even as he threw his ’Mech
into a creeping walk toward the structure. “You almost had
me there, Grossman!” he called out. Releasing his right-hand
controls, his fingers darted over a secondary panel, manipulating
data, pulling up a grid, and tapping at it quickly. A red beacon
flashed in the corner of his vision. “Falling back was a mistake.”
“And let you plug me again?” came a drawling reply as the
smoke behind the apartments moved further off, all but matching
Offenbach’s advance, with some extra distance. “Not today, sir!”
“You need to keep better tabs on your team, Major!” Offenbach
said with a feral grin. “They’re not going to be much help to
you now.”
“What do you—?” Grossman began, but froze as both of
their external mikes caught the whistling whoosh overhead.
“Aw,
fe—!”
The blasts rang out in rapid succession, thundering from just
a quarter of a kilometer further north. Clouds of black soot and
orange sands shot up higher than the nearest rooftops, as iron-
gray masonry, shattered glass, and ashen tiles scattered far and
wide. Text scrolled across the secondary monitor to Offenbach’s
left. One hundred,
two
hundred—no, two hundred and fifty—
points!
Very nice!
“Son of a Steiner
whore!”
Grossman’s voice spat in his ear.
“How the hell did you—”
“Two ’Mechs, down,” Offenbach said as he kept moving closer
to the battered tenement Grossman was still using for cover.
“And one crippled. The arty team really earned their shekels
today.”
“Terries wouldn’t shell their own, sir!” Grossman complained,
his tone finally shedding its incredulity in favor of indignation.
“Wouldn’t
we,
Major?” Offenbach asked. “Why assume your
enemy fights with bound hands?”
The heat was manageable now; he could feel it in his
Warhammer’s
smoother gait. He kept his eyes above the roof
line, watching the billowing smoke from Grossman’s
Guillotine
as it continued to match his movements. His targeting brackets
gave their best estimates of the major’s position, but the image
beamed to his HUD left little to the imagination. There, in living
color, he saw the blackened armor, the dangling left arm laser
cannon, and the slight limp that told him all he needed to know.
That last volley he gave the beast really did a number on it.
“But Kerensky,” Grossman went on. “He doesn’t have the
nads—”
“Don’t fool yourself, boy,” Offenbach snapped. “Kerensky isn’t
their whole army, and you aren’t
nearly
lucky enough to face his
likes at this stage of the game.”
With that, Offenbach thumbed his right trigger, unleashing a
single bolt of manmade lightning into the building between them.
Masonry crumbled and collapsed. Structural members gave way
and windows exploded. A second later, a quarter of the roof gave
out and collapsed inward. Another shot—two at most—and the
whole thing would probably cave in.
The scorecard subtracted 5 points from Offenbach’s tally, but
he barely spared it a glance.
A hundred meters to their south, another series of artillery
missiles crashed down, flattening buildings that had been behind
Offenbach just a minute ago.
“Christ!” Grossman yelped.
“Want to call it, Major?” Offenbach asked, allowing a cruel edge
into his voice. “Please say ‘no.’”
“Feck
it!”
came the reply. “You
asked
for this, General!”
The scream of jump jets launched Grossman’s
Guillotine
into
the sky, carrying it in an arc aimed toward the cracked grounds
1
behind Offenbach’s
Warhammer.
The tactic was as sensible, but
obvious, and so Offenbach was already pivoting left to meet
it, while simultaneously throwing his machine into a reverse
walk. Tilting his left PPC up, he let loose another bolt of charged
particles, only to miss the incoming ’Mech by mere centimeters.
It was enough to startle the pilot, however.
Grossman’s trajectory faltered mere moments
before hitting the sandy pavement. His ’Mech
came down hard on one leg—the leg with the
limp. Sparks flew and
plates of armor
popped free
around the
hip and knee.
To his credit
Grossman had enough presence of mind to thrust his working
arm forward and stab a few laser bolts into Offenbach’s flank,
but their damage was too little, too late. Seventy tons of Star
League technology crashed to the ground, kicking up a cloud of
sand and dust in the bargain.
General Roland Offenbach pushed his
Warhammer
forward
again, stopping just shy of the
Guillotine,
and floated the muzzle
of his right arm cannon over its peculiar, three-paned cockpit.
“Bang, Major,” he said into the mike. “You’re dead.”
“This is such raxx dung,” Grossman muttered. “I yield, sir!”
Offenbach snorted, but pulled his weapon back. Dialing a new
channel, he allowed his ’Mech to assume a resting stance and
stared blankly out at the barren landscape beyond the smoking
skyline around them. The air all around was hazy with dust, and
bits of sand lightly pelted his
Warhammer’s
canopy like a scouring
rain, but the visibility wasn’t the worst he’d seen since he’d come
to this rock in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it was almost
tranquil, given the thundering
battle he’d just finished.
“Alpha Wolf to Bunker
Hill,” he called into the
new channel. “Mark
Victory to OpFor and
send stand-down to all
remaining forces. Repeat:
Victory to OpFor. The Terries
won the Suburbs today. Stand down
and send in the wreckers.”
“Bunker Hill to Alpha Wolf,” came the cordial response from
the operations relay. “Victory for OpFor confirmed and logged.
Signaling stand-down now. Congratulations, general. Best of
luck next time, Alpha Shark.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Grossman interjected, his defeatist tone bringing
a small, guilty smile to Offenbach’s face. “Thanks, Bunker.”
Something clicked over the line, and Offenbach blinked as
he watched his communications console register a new signal
request on the secure channel. He keyed the channel open.
“Hill to Alpha Wolf,” the relay officer began, her voice now
lacking the mirth it held just seconds ago. “Just received a priority
for you from the Stone… It’s Omega-Ten.”
Despite the heat still lingering in his cockpit, Offenbach felt
a powerful chill run up his spine. Nothing good came from an
Omega-Ten alert. Ever. Though sweat still ran down his face, his
mouth was bone dry, his jaw locked up for an instant, and he
found himself having to consciously remind his lungs to get back
to work. An overwhelming dread slowly creeped across his mind
as morbid certainty took hold of him.
He knew what was coming. Somehow, he just
knew.
“Encrypt a line for me, Hill,” he said, struggling to hold the fear
from his tone. “And patch it through.”
“Sir!” the officer snapped.
As the message came in, General Offenbach’s heart sank.
It was everything he feared…
2
BATTLETECH ADVENTURES
B
attleTech Adventures: Escape from Castle Wulfensteiner
is a special game aid for use with
A Time of War: The BattleTech Role-Playing
Game,
the
A Time of War Companion,
and (if you
must!) Total Warfare.
Designed for experienced players familiar with the setting,
the rules and descriptions in this book presume the players are familiar with the terms and core role-playing systems presented in
A Time of War,
as well as the war game rules found in
Total Warfare, Tactical Operations,
and
Strategic Operations.
This adventure may run
several sessions, based on the players’ available time and resources.
Game masters should note that only some of the information in this book should be made available to the players, while the rest is
designed for the game master to reveal to the players only as they discover it. Information that will be readily available to the players
will be clearly identified, but should be made available only as the players’ characters actively pursue it. For example, all of the material
covered in the
World Guide
section will be open to the player characters with little to no research effort.
The general information contained here provides the tools needed for an adventure group to play out the events taking place in the
Deep Periphery beyond Lyran space around 3145-3151. At the peak of the Dark Age, widespread war and societal collapse run rampant
across the Inner Sphere, but for some it’s just business as usual. Interstellar Expeditions, an independent pseudo-corporate organization
beholden to no flag, House, or Clan, has continued in its aimless search for lost artifacts and worlds of humanity’s bygone days. This often
brings them well beyond the boundaries of the Sphere, where the interstellar roads are much less traveled. As this particular adventure
is a special, holiday-themed edition, it ventures well outside the ordinary, and so should game masters feel free to “weird it up” as they
go along.
The
World Guide
section presents a global view about the setting and the players’ mission at the start of the adventure. Included in
this section is a general overview of the world that will become the main focus of this adventure, as well as key elements of Interstellar
Expeditions’ activities around the year 3145. Additional news and documents pertaining to events current with the initial Track of the
adventure also appear in this chapter. After the first Track, gamemasters will find all further information in the Gamemaster’s Sourcebook.
The
Persons of Interest
section gives details on some of the key NPCs the players will (or may) interact with during this adventure,
and can be used by GMs who do not wish to create their own NPCs from scratch. This section also includes information on how to work
the players’ group into this adventure—to minimize the chance for spoilers, players should still not read this section.
The
Adventure Tracks
section presents a means to interact with several pivotal events that occur in this adventure, though they are
not the only ones. Please do not allow the players to read the GM ONLY sections, cover it with a sheet of paper (or the foot of an
Atlas)
while the players read their mission brief section.
The
Gamemaster’s Sourcebook
contains official character sheets for key personalities from the
Persons of Interest
section, as well
as record sheets and rules useful for running the more unique aspects of this adventure. Remember that it is not the function of this
product to micromanage your adventure; if a situation arises where the rules are in question, it’s up to the gamemaster and players to
work out a resolution suitable for their game table. The goal is to have fun, so don’t let the rules bog you down.
CASTLE
WULFENSTEINER
ESCAPE FROM
c r e d i ts
Project Development:
Herbert A. Beas II
BattleTech Line Developer:
Ray Arrastia
Writing:
Herbert A. Beas II
Editing:
See Above
Production Staff
Cover Design:
Ray Arrastia
Layout & Graphic Presentation:
David Kerber
Record Sheets:
Johannes Heidler
New Artwork:
Herbert A. Beas II, David Kerber,
Benjamin Parker, Tan Ho Sim
Factchecking/Playtesting:
Etienne C-W, Mike Miller, Eric
Salzman, Chris Wheeler
Special Thanks:
To the fine folks at id Software and
Apogee Software. Happy 30 years, id!
You know what you started…
STAR LEAGUE
SUCCESSION WARS
CLAN INVASION
CIVIL WAR
JIHAD
DARK AGE
ILCLAN
3

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