Salting the Earth

Title: Salting the Earth
Series: Battletech/MechWarrior
Original Publication: May 2011, Classic Battletech Forums

The last in the Grand Theft Agro series, Salting the Earth is also the biggest of them. It's the accumulation of storylines and plot threads and concepts and ideas that had been coming together for some time. It was also a bit of a "bounce back" after the darker tones of Stacking the Deck, in not having a "villain-centric" piece. And yes, as allways, there's character introductions. I'm addicted to them or something.

Otherwise, it's full of everything else you expect from the series: Schemes, plots, personal agendas, betrayals, double-crosses, badly written romance, bacon, cars, giant robots blowing things up and so forth. There's a few experimental scenes which I'm not sure how well they worked out, as well as a deliberate attempt at non-linear storytelling.

Also, see if you can guess the fic's big reveal before you get to it. I dare you.

Trivia:

The theme titles are still in effect. At this point, it should be obvious if you know what to look for.

Likewise, the name and hair colour changes are also in effect, so be wary of artifacts.

There's a callback in here to the Mimetic Badarses fanfic series that I was writing in parallel, in so far as I out and use one of the Arc words. See if you can figure which.

Several of the Bannson's Raiders minor characters, such as Rosalie Carlotta, are ambiguously killed off or simply vanish without mention. As of yet, I haven't really decided how many of those are permanent, and the answer will likely change as I need it.

The Russian in the fic was done via Google Translate; its probably awful. Feel free to prod me with better translations, or tell me to never try writing in another language again. Sveta's 'Mech was inspired by a custom-painted mini I did as well as colourised TRO artwork. If you know me, you'll know why I chose that scheme.

Speaking of which, have some crappy colourised art of Allen's Black Knight