#Vehicles and Heavy Equipment (車輛·重裝備)

Contents

Authority. This document is a variant rule (Variant) — as with every variant of this volume, it is premised on GM permission, and fc cannot override the co canon (Canon). And one more thing is made explicit — every card of this document is GM-only. A vehicle cannot be a PC's starting drifted good (the one-knapsack principle of the Principles of Drift), and appears not as gear but only as a moving scenario. Only §Law 3 Operation is a Scene Tool. This book is not a book that makes the modern person strong — it is a book that gives the drama of a future being consumed. The place where that sentence is written in the largest letters is exactly this document.

---

#Scent — The Car of a Country with No Roads

#Opening Fragment — The Hunk of Iron at the Village Mouth

The sound came first. Thunder, but a thunder that did not cease.

At the end of the highway, splitting the morning mist, it came over the hill. A hunk of iron the size of a house — with no ox to draw it, no person to push it — was rolling of its own accord. Its wheels were broader than the road, and it came gnawing at the embankments on both sides of the road.

"An iron yoma!" someone shouted, and half the village fell flat, and half fled.

Only the village headman stayed in the middle of the road. He was too old to flee fast, and old enough to have seen much.

The hunk of iron stopped at the village mouth, at the place where the road narrowed to the width of two people. The thunder subsided, the flank opened, and a person stepped down. A man in strange clothes — one heard of only by rumor, a man taken by Kamikakushi.

"It is the first time I have seen a fortress move," the headman said.

"It is not a fortress. It is a cart," the man answered. "I came carrying rice. The road runs to the encampment (陣) beyond the pass — but the road."

The man looked long at the road that ran on past the village. A width by which two people bearing loads barely step aside and pass. The pass beyond it. From there on, the road becomes the thing of one person and that person's shadow.

"...This far, it seems."

The man stroked the flank of the hunk of iron once with his palm. It was the hand that strokes the neck of a horse. Then he borrowed backs from the village. The rice bales were divided among forty backs and crossed the pass.

The hunk of iron stayed at the village mouth. The man came once a fortnight to sound the thunder briefly once and went, but from some fortnight on the thunder no longer sounded. The man came even so, and stroked only the neck and went.

From the next year the village people built a small altar before it and offered rice cakes. To a traveler who asked the reason, the headman answered thus.

"Yoma or fortress, if it has settled at the village mouth — to enshrine it is the way of things."

#Scent — The Moving Scenario

A vehicle is the largest modern good of this volume, and so the rarest modern good. The Kamikakushi crosses over with only what is borne on the body — a truck does not load onto one person's back. A vehicle appearing in this era is a day on which not one but several were hidden together. A single encampment, a single construction site, a single bus carrying its passengers, whole and entire — only beside such an incident is a card of this document laid.

Therefore the design stance is set down at the head. A vehicle is not a PC's gear but a moving scenario. A rifle wears down in the PL's pocket, but a vehicle wears down in the middle of the table. A guest whose day to stop is fixed from the moment it appears — fuel, a natural timer, guarantees that end more surely than any GM's declaration. What this document gives the GM is not a performance table of conveyances but a blueprint of a temporary miracle.

And in this country there is almost no road for a car to run. The tale begins from that.

---

#Law 1 — The Two Clocks (Card Common Special)

#The Double Clock — The Sole Exception to the Standard

The standard of the Depletion System is a single [Depletion Clock]. The vehicle alone had been foretold as its exception, and here that exception is isolated and fixed as a card special. This double Clock applies only to vehicle cards — do not carry it into the standard frame.

Double Clock (二重時計) — vehicle-card-limited special
Fuel Clock: the card's [Depletion N·Clock]. Reduced by 1 each time a scene of running ends.
Degradation Clock: a per-card starting value — gasoline 3 / diesel 6.
     Reduced by 1 each time a month turns. Whether running or standing still.
Silence: the instant either one reaches 0, the vehicle falls silent.
Warning: when the Degradation Clock reaches its last 1, the fuel is in the midst of dying —
   thereafter every start becomes a breakdown trigger.

The fuel remaining is written on the remaining-count sheet — the PL counts the fuel, the GM counts the years. And the second Clock is the essence of these cards. A firearm stays as it is if not fired, but a vehicle dies merely from being left standing. The fuel of our era cannot cross more than a few seasons before it degrades — gasoline begins to die in three months, and diesel only holds out twice that.

Therefore the GM's design question is not "shall I give this car." This car stops anyway — when, where, shall I let it stop. That is the single question this whole document asks the GM.

#There Is No Resupply — Firmly

In this era there is no refined oil. Neither perilla oil, nor whale oil, nor the strongest shochu can feed an engine — even the byway by which black powder went into a rifle (Firearms) does not exist for a vehicle. To a PL who asks the road of an alternative fuel, the GM may answer in one sentence. There is none.

The single road is transfer. The fuel of another drifted vehicle or fuel can may be drawn out and combined — add to the Fuel Clock (the cap is the card's starting value), but the Degradation Clock follows the more-dying side. Dying fuel drags down living fuel. Transfer is not resupply but inheritance — a car that has stopped first bequeaths its remaining days to a car still running.

#What the Road Decides — Road Grade

The roads of this country scarcely know the cart. Loads go on the backs of people and the backs of horses, and the road is cut to fit the breadth of those backs — exactly as Roads and Travel sets down. The road grade of this document, too, borrows that book's reckoning just as it is.

The high-mobility vehicle / armored car and the helicopter lie outside this table — things less bound to the road, or that do not know the road at all. Each card sets down its own road separately (Law 2).

Atop that, three more things are laid on.

• Surface — it is earth. When it rains the road becomes a bowl of porridge. Driving after rain is all a "mire" trigger, and the GM may declare driving impossible outright.
• River — before bridgeless water, a vehicle's travel ends or takes a great detour. Forcing a ford is the GM's final say, and submersion is a harsh trigger.
• Barrier — to a person a barrier is a social obstacle, but to a car it is a wall. The gate does not know the breadth of the car.

The speed is this. While a Great Highway runs on, a vehicle goes within one koku the eight ri (里) that a light, quick foot spends a day to make — for a sense of ri and koku, see the Glossary and Weights and Measures. Only, the Great Highway does not run on. On the plain and the coast a vehicle is a miracle, and at the mouth of the pass it is a load. What sets a vehicle's cruising range in this country is not the fuel but the road — before the Fuel Clock runs all the way down, the road ends first.

#Steering and Breakdown

The skill list of this era has no "driving." The nearest hand is Riding (乗馬) — the skill of soothing what runs and choosing the place to stop. Every steering check of this document stands on this axis.

• Steering check: 2d10+Finesse+Riding >= Target Number — rolled only for rough handling (hard braking, narrow width, mire, run-through and breakthrough). The mild driving of the Great Highway has no check. Of the benefits of Riding mastery, those bound to the horse itself (the handover of the relay-station horse, and the like) do not apply.
• Who steers: only the Kamikakushi can handle it from the start. The person of this era is treated, by the same grammar as firearms, as non-skilled until they have spent one interlude under the Kamikakushi's teaching (irrespective of holding Riding).
• Breakdown check (vehicle form): 2d10+Finesse+Riding — rolled by the one steering at that moment. The trigger, Target Number, and the 1-time-per-scene limit are as in Law 2 of the Depletion System.
• Maintenance: as in Law 3 of the Depletion System (2d10+Wisdom+Disable, half a day + tools). If an Engineer is in the party, the vehicle's lifespan grows noticeably longer — see that set's technique.

#The Vehicle on the Battlefield — Zone Grammar

A vehicle is not a unit. It has no grade, no Cohesion, no Energy — the handling against a squad is all delegated to the grammar of the canonical unit grade, and the vehicle itself is handled only as a large object moving by the driver's maneuvers. Time is the round, distance is the zone — it does not stray from the grammar of Zone Tactics.

• Start — one breath. And in that instant, the noise begins (battlefield value, below).
• Steer [Kata] — Energy 2 (driver), 1 round: the vehicle and all riders move to one adjacent zone. They cannot enter the Core Zone — the only road in is breakthrough. No entry to high ground, underwater, or the exterior.
• Accelerate [Kata] — Energy 3 (driver), 1 round: only on the straightaway of a Great Highway or open field, move 2 zones in succession.
• Breakthrough [Kata] — Energy 3 (driver), 1 round: ram the vehicle into an adjacent zone. Just as the canon's cavalry charge shines only in the Front Zone (Zone Tactics), the vehicle's breakthrough too is permitted only in the Front Zone and open field. Steering check 2d10+Finesse+Riding >= 13 — on success, it enters and forces 1 to 3 casualties on the Minion or Mob squad of that zone (the hit-strength table) and a Cohesion check of -1. On failure it stops and stands in that zone — endurance reduced 1 Wounds + an "Overuse" trigger. Against an Elite-grade or Lord-grade individual unit, breakthrough cannot force damage — they step aside. What a vehicle pares down is the head count, not the name.
• Endurance is counted in Wounds. When it reaches 0, Silence on the spot. Arrow, spear, and blade cannot pare the body's endurance — they aim only at the wheels, the glass, and the riders (a hit aiming at the wheel is 1 time per scene, and raises a breakdown trigger). The teppo, modern firearms, fire attack, and the ozutsu pare it.
• Firing from atop the car — atop a running car, all firing is -2. The bed of a stopped truck is treated as the Rear Zone (the Rear Zone grammar of Zone Tactics — long range +1, maintenance technique Energy -1).

#Battlefield Value — Four Axes

A vehicle card bears, in addition to the standard seven fields, an eighth field, battlefield value — a field added only in this document. The four axes are summarized.

---

#Law 2 — The Data Cards

The cards follow the seven-field standard format of Law 4 of the Depletion System with the battlefield-value field added. It is made explicit again — all five are GM-only. They cannot be given as a starting drifted good, and appear only as an incident of the scenario. Of these, the latter two are a step deeper still — hoard them so that their touching a PC's hand is itself the peak of a campaign.

The fuel-economy figure is not in this volume. The size of the Clock is the fuel economy — a small body receives a large Clock.

#Motorcycle (自動二輪車)

#Passenger Car / SUV (乘用車)

#Truck (貨物自動車)

#GM-Only — The Upper Tier of Iron

The next two are a deep tier even among the GM-only. The grammar of their appearance is the same as the machine gun and sniper rifle of Firearms — as a nightmare in the hands of a hostile force, as cargo of an escort commission, as an incident for a single battle. If a PC has at last obtained it — give it. The double Clock will soon take it back.

#High-Mobility Vehicle / Armored Car (高機動車·裝甲車) — GM-Only

#Helicopter (回轉翼機) — GM-Only

The appearance itself is a scenario. This card is not a thing of "to give or not," but the decision of whether to float this in the sky of this campaign.

---

#Law 3 — Operation (Scene Tool)

Scene Tool. This section is not a rule but the GM's scene tool. A vehicle scenario is, in the end, one of three — a car still running, a car that ends if it stops, a car already stopped. The grain of this against the Depletion dial is handled in the GM Guide.

#Form 1 — The Flight Drama: A Pursuit Where the Fuel Wears Down

• Open the Clock. Place the Fuel Clock in the middle of the table, and let everyone see it pared scene by scene. A hidden Clock is anxiety, but a Clock in view is drama.
• The pursuer does not wear down. The horse is changed at the relay station — the road of this era is designed that way by nature. The car cannot be changed. The car is fast, the horse does not wear down — the tension of this pursuit comes not from the difference of speed but from that asymmetry.
• The road is the script. Mark beforehand on the map the places where the Great Highway breaks off — the river, the pass, the closed barrier. The place where the car stops is, in effect, the final battlefield. "Where to let it stop" is not a roll but a design.

#Form 2 — The Transport Escort: Stop and It Ends

• Give the load a name. Not "several dozen koku of rice" but "the winter of the village beyond the pass," "the thirty wounded of the main camp." The moment a single truck becomes the lifeline of a group drift, stopping becomes the defeat condition.
• The enemy is the road itself. Ahead of the host come the bridgeless river, the rain, and the barrier. Use the travel grammar of Roads and Travel just as it is — but that the price a person could pay (papers, money, time) the car cannot pay becomes the fork of the escort's road.
• Stopping is the basic form of the battle. Lay the stopped truck as the central zone of the battlefield — the bed is the Rear Zone, the shade of the body is the Front Zone, the cab is a handful of Core Zone. Design not a fight with the car at the back, but a fight where the car is the battlefield itself.

#Form 3 — Becoming a Ruin: The Already-Stopped Car

• Discovery is a dungeon. Lay the stopped car in a zone arrangement — around the body is the Flank Zone, the bed is the Rear Zone, the cab is the grammar of a narrow, dark Core Zone. Within is the trace of a Kamikakushi who came first — the remaining-count sheet, the map under the seat, the talisman hung on the rearview mirror. Draw out all the cargo as cards of the 03 series.
• The fuel is already dead. The Degradation Clock guarantees it — a found car almost certainly cannot run again. To wake a ruined car is not a maintenance check but a scenario-grade task (the revival from Silence of the Depletion System) — one whole journey to find another drifted good holding living fuel is required.
• Ask after the faith first. If a village is enshrining it, the work of waking it is not a technical question but an ethical one — the hook "The Iron Cart That Became a God" of the Engineer Set shows that fork as one piece.
• If the years have settled, hand it over. A hunk of iron that has endured a hundred years is no longer a card of this document — it is the domain of Drifted Relics. The tale of the day when something truly dwells in the iron shrine, that side takes up.

---

Every car has already stopped — only it has not yet chosen where to stop.