Wednesday, July 17, 2013

WAR MACHINE: Zodanga, Predator City!

"Zodanga, the predator city. Moving, devouring, draining Barsoom of energy and life." --Tars Tarkas
The city of Zodanga as portrayed in the film John Carter makes for one hella huge war machine! The John Carter wiki calls it a "walking refinery" which is a good start if you want to make a carnivorous metal monster.
 
In the movie, the city moves in an undulating, centipedal fashion atop dozens of enormous fingered-foot gear. Every mile, it's stirring up a dust cloud as it claws its way across Mars' arid landscape. With the Martian surface being marred with craters, canyons, and canals, the city's tapdancing spine could also act as a land bridge, allowing it virtually limitless passage. I imagine anything that lies in it's path is summarily rendered to rubble--including enemy settlements.

"Nothing speaks more powerfully than pictures and to see a city moving across the landscape, leaving a scar in its wake--it's ugly, and nothing says 'bad guy' faster than that."
--Andrew Stanton (Director, John Carter)
While the city doesn't seem to have any sort of (giant) primary weapon (unless you count it's feet, which is more like force of nature!) but it does carry a formidable complement of airships atop it's launch deck.
John Carter: "That doesn't look like a fair fight."
Tars Tarkas: "Zodanga never fights fair."
Airships are armed with a variety of short-range radium cannons for ship-to-ship, broadsides-style combat. According to the film there's also a fairly healthy number of soldiers (air marines?) aboard for when things get dicey and they need to overtake a captured vessel.

I'd wager there's probablly plenty of radium cannons (short-and long-range) mounted to the city itself, turning it into a mobile fortress of sorts.

Funny thing--after seeing Zodanga on the big screen last year, I was instantly reminded of the cover of Epsilon Cyborgs:


Though that looks a little like an evil cruise ship with giant tank treads, it's still pretty badass! For a Gamma World or Mutant Future campaign, Zodanga would make one awesome hideout for an evil sorcerer or a formidable clan of wasteland thugs.

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