o/
On a whim, I picked up an old (mid-1990s) plastic Mad Cat off of ebay for a reasonable price a little ways back. Its an old sculpt and not the best cast, but unlike its metal counterpart, it stays together. Years ago a very frustrated Screech gave me a metal Mad Cat that he couldn't get to stay glued together. Awesome! I thought, only to later sell the pile of parts myself for the same reason, the damned thing wouldn't stay together!
As this is the only clan mech I have, I opted to use it as a captured Clan mech rather than buy a force to go around it. I have 4 inner sphere assault mechs and these 5 together will make for a fun little Marian Hegemony century (their version of a lance). However maintaining a clan mech is far beyond their technological ability. Indeed, even by the Jihad when the Hegemony first started producing their own mechs, they were on par with ancient, obsolete designs! Thus I modified (downgraded) the Mad Cat considerably, and wrote a bit of fluff to give it some background:
In 3067 whilst the Marian Hegemony’s III Legio was garrisoning Ballalaba, the planet was raided by a mixed trinary of Dark Caste bandits. Initially running amok, looting settlements of both supplies and slaves, the bandits were soon bogged down by the Legio defenders. Whilst the Legio vastly outnumbered the Bandits, the Clan mechs, pilots and elementals were far superior to anything the Hegemony defenders could throw at them and they inflicted heavy casualties. However a protracted fight is the last thing any raiding force wants and little more than a week after they first landed, the Dark Caste boosted off world with their loot and disappeared into the void.
Ignoring the extensive civilian losses, the III Legio itself suffered close to a full cohort’s worth of heavily damaged or destroyed mechs and tanks, and infantry losses were even higher. In return, they inflicted unknown damage on the clansmen and only managed to destroy a handful of cargo vehicles and a lone Mad Cat C.
The Mad Cat, already in a poor state or repair (by Clan standards) fought savagely when cornered, even fighting on (barely) after its ammo bins ran dry! It was finally taken down by none other than Prefect Talawar Marius, CO of the III Legio, piloting his 11-H model Cyclops. The kill shot was an AC20 round to the Mad Cat’s back which disabled the engine. The bandit pilot was dragged from his mech and executed on the spot, and Talawar claimed the machine as his own personal prize.
The damaged machine was well beyond the ability of the Legio astechs to repair, and extensive assistance was requested from their Word of Blake allies who practically rebuilt the mech for Talawar’s use. Word technicians downgraded the clan mech using weapons and technologies which were both within the realistic realm of maintenance and serviceability of the Hegemony forces. Indeed the mech’s operational capabilities were so greatly reduced, that jokingly (and privately) the Word’s engineers referred to it as the ‘Sad Cat’.
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Steel yourself Screech! This
is going to hurt to look at!
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First the mech was reskinned with standard armor plate, the Mad Cat was then refitted with a standard fusion engine and inner sphere standard double heat sinks (the latter a gift from the Word in exchange for the salvaged clan weaponry, none of which was operable but nonetheless held valuable potential).
Opting to go for the Marian equivalent of the original Mad Cat ‘C’ model’s weapons fit, the LRMs were replaced with a trio of Marian rocket launcher 15s in each side torso, the clan UAC-5 and ER medium laser were both replaced with Inner Sphere models, and the AMS was swapped for a small pulse laser. Lastly, in the right arm, in place of the two clan ER large Lasers (one of which wasn’t even fitted to the Mad Cat prior to the raid), the Word of Blake fitted a much shorter ranged but highly accurate large pulse laser.
Piloting the only Clan Omnimech (well visually, if no longer technologically) in the all of the Marian Legions appeals greatly to Prefect Talawar’s ego. As such Talawar’s Mad Cat approximate’s the III Legio’s ‘totem mech’ to steal something else from the Clans. However, were it to face 'real' clans mechs in battle, neither Talawar nor his Mad Cat will likely survive the encounter.
