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Old 02-13-2019, 10:51 AM   #251
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Default Re: Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

You might get some tanners or brewers who are useful with chemical processing.
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Old 02-13-2019, 11:13 AM   #252
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Default Re: Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

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You might get some tanners or brewers who are useful with chemical processing.
Yes, indeed. Not to mention that regardless of their political persuasion, some 50,000 transplanted Germans are going to want a lot of beer. It seems a waste of Earth-born labour to brew it themselves, not if they can teach TL2-3 natives to do most of the work and still produce brews that are acceptable to the (numerous) connoissuers among the ASN settlers .

No one is brewing beers at the medieval TL3 level, distinguished by the use of hops in a process which can replace home brewing with specialized breweries. The ASNs will aim to change that, obviously, especially as the requisite mastery of brewing and herb lore seems to be present, but the locals just don't seem to have happened upon the right mix yet. It might also be because alternative methods for storing beverages exist, with master brewers sometimes having magical knacks that allow them to brew ale and beer that retain their freshness for weeks and months even without the addition of hops, especially if treated with the appropriate reverance.

As with nearly anything else (other than fighting, at which they are quite good), the local Germanic natives at early TL2 make beer that is much inferior to the beer and ale available in the richer cultures of mature TL2 and TL3 that exist in the world. There are pseudo-Celtic societies within the ASN settlement areas that make exceptional beverages of various natures, often flavoring their ale, beer and wine with various herbs, honey or other additives. Mead is also highly favored by nearly all societies the ASNs have encountered, with the native Germanic tribes prizing it highly, especially mead made by various TL2^ or TL3^ craftsmen with magical gifts.
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Old 02-13-2019, 11:30 AM   #253
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Default Re: REALLY Heavy Rifle for Antarctic Space Nazis

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
Depending on how hard it is to make SAPHE rounds, the Antarctic Space Nazis might want an anti-monster rifle in 13x64mm (chambering for the MG 131 machine gun), 15x96mm (original chambering of the MG 151 autocannon) or 20mm, one of 20x80mm, 20x105mm or 20x138mm.
The MG 131 and MG 151 aren't actually easier to make ammunition for than the 20mm rounds. They use canon-type projectiles, made of steel with copper driving bands. When you go to canon, use something based on the MG FF in 20x80mm, it's good enough for the expected threats and the gun is light, which really pays in airships.
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Old 02-13-2019, 11:33 AM   #254
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Default Re: ASN Settlement Patterns, Their Gates and Cultures to Interact With

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In a world before or more likely without Hellenes or Romans and if we concentrate on what we might call Greater Central Europe and environs, where would the ASNs be able to find large numbers of brick-makers and masons?
I think that's "nowhere in the area." Somebody will want to send out expeditions to Mesopotamia and Egypt to see what's going on there and if there are trade possibilities.
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Old 02-13-2019, 12:19 PM   #255
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Default Re: ASN Settlement Patterns, Their Gates and Cultures to Interact With

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I think that's "nowhere in the area."
As regards bricks, I haven't found anything suggesting the ASNs would have any luck. Well, maybe some craftsmen were making kilns, furnaces or other works necessary for materials and metalworking, as plenty of peoples in Central Europe have been Iron Age for centuries and before that, many had sophisticated Bronze Age socieities. Well, to be fair, it's not as if bronze has disappeared entirely, and, indeed in many cultures exists alongside iron and steel artifacts and may even be preferred.

There are even cultures that the ASNs have encountered that are every bit as socially advanced and have otherwise similar material cultures to many Iron Age societies, but who seem to strongly prefer bronze, copper and other metals over iron, which is the subject of various religious taboos or superstitions. Indeed, while iron and steel weapons are well known among some of the cultures that the ASNs have skirmished with in the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Aegean, around where Magna Graecia should be, elites often scorn iron and steel objects and are armed with bronze arms of exceptional quality.

Metalworking is fairly advanced among some of the pseudo-Celts and similar cultures, if only done on a personal scale, often by craftsmen who are viewed as close to the gods and may indeed have some magical gifts. So, no industrial scale blast furnaces, but plenty of well-made and well cared for TL2 and TL3 smithies where weapons and other things are made from high quality bronze or good steel by master smiths using semi-mystical craft secrets.

As for masons and stone-working in general, what about any culture building stone monuments, tombs or religious structures of some sort? Dolmen, stone circles, cairns, menhirs and the like?

Granted, that's pretty primitive, but who is to say some culture in the ASN areas might not have developed tombs and monuments of more elaborately worked stone from an earlier megalithic tradition?

Or that there might not be some utility in people with the skills to make TL0 and TL1 megaprojects from stone?

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Somebody will want to send out expeditions to Mesopotamia and Egypt to see what's going on there and if there are trade possibilities.
In what year of settlement would you place such an expedition?

A complicating factor is that the first major ASN exploration that reached the Mediterranean and interacted in any major way with civilizations there... eh, went about as you'd expect. The ASN Corsican-Sardinian intervention and subsequent racially-driven attacks on ships, ports and trading outposts operated by any of the Semitic-speaking polities they could reach (the first ASN use of armed LTA craft in anything worth the name 'warfare') ended up knocking the Semitic-speakers out as any kind of power on or near the northern shores of the Med analogue. This war resulted in several cities and towns in the Levant that regard the ASNs as anathema.

I haven't dated it precisely yet, but it would have been not long after the early ASN airships developed into more sophisticated designs, something that could reach Sardinia and be operated from bases established with the help of local allies at war with the Semitic-speakers. I don't know if that's plausible with anything they could make before Year 15 or so, but I could be talked into anything from Year 5 to Year 25 with good arguments based on the likely timescale for airship infrastructure and industry.

So, by the time the ASNs can realistically mount any kind of expedition that's more than a disguised party on horseback or perhaps a group of ASN Argonauts rowing a captured galley, they'd also have a number of pretty hostile city states in the way. Pretty much any route they take could be risky.

Not to mention that the ASNs are not exactly universally loved in the lands of the Thraco-Dacians, the various peoples of Anatolia or the Scythians, at least not among any of the societies in these lands where the pseudo-Minoan or quasi-Pelasgian influence is strong. There seems to be an established educated and/or religious class, consisting mostly of females, with a great deal of contact between different cultures over a wide range of area around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Within the influence zone of that occult elite class of priestesses and witches, several religions, magical societies or mystery cults seem to have declared Nazis double-plus-ungood.
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Old 02-13-2019, 12:44 PM   #256
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Default Re: REALLY Heavy Rifle for Antarctic Space Nazis

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
The MG 131 and MG 151 aren't actually easier to make ammunition for than the 20mm rounds. They use canon-type projectiles, made of steel with copper driving bands. When you go to canon, use something based on the MG FF in 20x80mm, it's good enough for the expected threats and the gun is light, which really pays in airships.
Ok, thanks.

Might not very long range become a consideration, for situations where you want to be well out of the range of any mystical coungermeasure? For example, in other worlds with higher mana, where a magician might summon and control something Lovecraftian?

I had the encountered ASNs in a zeppelin fire 20x138mm rounds at the PCs from extreme range, though as it turned out, even from height, firing in indirect fire, the ASNs still couldn't reach them or the Sky Pirate schooner they rescued by controlling the wind (magic is easy in the Dreamlands). Though this wasn't automatic fire, merely single shots, likely from an AT rifle and might well have been manually reloaded ammunition for one of the few vintage WWII specimens of these very heavy 20mm rifles they have left.

I note from a metagaming point of view that the PCs couldn't tell exactly what the weapon was, but that any big AT rifle chambering with less velocity than the 20x138mm probably couldn't have reached as far and any smaller round than 20mm probably wouldn't have had enough of a HE payload for the ASNs even to bother trying to improvise its use in an indirect role. One PC determined from guessing the range that even a .50 BMG would be useless at that range (which they didn't have anyway), so in the absence of guided missiles or artillery, the Nazi zeppelin would be within its maximum range within only half a minute or less, but the PCs would still be many kilometers short of the range to shoot back. Of course, that was partly the altitude difference.

So from the mere fact that the ASNs tried establishing shots at such extreme range and reached the general neighbourhood, we can establish that at least the kind of ASNs who might be encountered in a version of H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands apparently have access to single-shot weapons in 20x138mm or something with extremely close performance, but they had nothing with longer range than this and no automatic weaponry chambered for anything they regarded as useful at 5-10 km ranges, firing from altitude at a grounded ship. Though as the PCs managed to get the schooner airborne and moving faster than the zeppelin using powerful magic, before the ASNs actually got any closer than about 6-7 km, maybe they escaped just before a lower velocity autocannon like the MG FF in 20x80mm started firing, hoping that some shots would reach because of the altitude.
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Old 02-13-2019, 05:00 PM   #257
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Default The Founding Wars of 'Germania Hyperborea'

When thinking about how much the Antartic Space Nazis ought to know about their adopted world of Germania Hyperborea, something occurred to me. The three cultural spheres* that the ASNs have had contact with which probably have the best knowledge about the wider world are mostly relentlessly hostile to the ASNs.

This hostility is for understandable and good reasons, in that the ASNs displayed about the same level of diplomacy and cultural sensitivity toward these peoples as their predecessors did when they invaded Russia and the Ukraine, where the armies of Nazi Germany miraculously managed in a few short weeks to come across as the clearly worse option than the Stalinist regime that was busily cleansing their marches of any unpopular ethnicities.

When you can't even get Ruthenians/Rusyn to prefer you over Stalin while he's trying to destroy their very culture and way of life, you've officially achieved somewhat of a nadir of diplomatic performance in human history. And the ASNs did their best to surpass their namesakes in making friends and influencing people, especially in the orgy of slave raiding and massacres that followed their settlement in Germania Hyperborea, mostly carried out by Kadaversgehorsam stormtroopers.

All the same, an outside observer might perhaps note that the opposition of the quasi-Pelasgian or pseudo-Minoan influenced elites in the world of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea to the ASNs is perhaps excessive, if only because the ASNs hadn't even managed to offend the vast majority of these societies individually. Many of them hadn't even encountered the ASNs before, but greeted them with almost fanatical hostility upon first contact. Granted, the ASNs had perhaps planned to raid them for slaves, but it seemed odd to be ambushed in some new part of the world before they'd even learned there were any locals to raid.

Sure, the ASNs had previously raided a few outlying villages and towns belonging to people with religious beliefs that correspond to the influence of these Pelasgian or Minoan elites, using the gate at the mouth of the Danube, but the distances involved meant that the raids were comparatively tiny. Rationally, over fifty years of ASN history, the ASNs have probably not killed or enslaved any more of the people of this super-cultural sphere than many individual societies within it have done to other societies within it during the half-century before the arrival of the ASNs.

And there was not a chance that the ASNs had matched the the losses which these cultures must have suffered in the past and kept right on suffering in wars against various Getae, Thraco-Dacian, Illyrian and Scythian tribes that were not aligned with their nebulous cultural sphere, not to mention the innumerable Peloponnese, Aeolian, Epirote, and Macedonia and Anatolian tribes and polities with different religions or other cultural differences.

The peoples influenced by the pseudo-Minoans or Pelasgians represent an elite among many tribes of these peoples, but they are not the rulers of vast lands and many people of similar ethnic stock to those who make up their allied tribes do not hesitate to war on them. Even those who do war on the tribes under the influence of the religious elites, however, often have a superstitious reverence for priestess, witches and even some of the males who occupy some sort of magico-religious role, and will rarely harm them personally, even if they defeat the tribe among whom they live.

The ASNs have managed to piece together that it is this elite class which is at the root of the hostility with which they are met almost everywhere among all the many peoples who seem to be influenced by these mysteries cults. They do not know, however, exactly why the elites preach against them, as it seems rather extreme to base fifty years of religious opposition on some violent encounters between an ASN scouting team and the priestesses of some snake cult on the shores of the Black Sea.

Less of a mystery is the fear and hatred with which the ASNs are held in by many of the free and independent pseudo-Celt tribes and polities of Europe. This is due to the fact that most of the lands that now belong to the ASNs were either the undisputed parts of the tribal lands of some Celtic tribe or other polity or they were at least lands that had belonged to them, until pseudo-Germanics from the north arrived comparatively recently, and were in the main still contested between these cultures.

The vast majority of the warfare in the first years of ASN settlement of Germania Hyperborea occurred in areas within Greater Germany back on Earth. By far the fiercest battles took place in the Rhinelands and Westphalia, with later campaigns occurring in Saxony, the Black Forest and various other areas of Germany within marching distance of these locations. Another significant theater of war, as well as a staging area for decades of slaving raids, was in the area that is Kłodzko Land on the Czech border of Silesia (the part that belongs to Poland these days).

The foe in these early campaigns was nearly always some kind of pseudo-Celt or at least people who fit somewhere in the Hallstatt-esque and La Tené like cultural sphere, whether they spoke languages related to any known Celtic language or not. And these wars, from the start, were wars of extermination, at least of those peoples who lived where the ASNs wanted to settle. The natives who lived where the ASNs set up settlements and routes between their settlements were ground into the dust and lived only as slaves or fugitives.

The ASNs did fight the Germanic-speaking peoples in the same areas, but also made serious attempts to negotiate with them and make them a part of their settlements. People with religious beliefs that the Nazis couldn't somehow fit into their völkisch fantasies, however, were required to give up their beliefs and cultural identifiers in order to have any chance of assimilating. Which the pseudo-Celts, at least during the first few years of warfare, were completely unwilling to do.

The third culture, that of the Semitic-speaking traders of the Mediterranean, was the opponent in the first 'Foreign War' fought by the ASNs, using the first generation of airships capable of reaching the Mediterranean and carrying enough payload to have marksmen sink TL3 ships and set ports on fire. I haven't dated that war yet, I'm looking for suggestions for when the airship industry would have reached that level.

*Pseudo-Celts in the widest possible sense (inc. all Hallstatt-esque and La Tené like peoples of Central Europe), the Semitic-speaking trading peoples of the Mediterranean and the various island and coastal cultures of the central to eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea that seem to share a substrate influence from a pseudo-Minoan or quasi-Pelasgian culture.
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Old 02-13-2019, 05:25 PM   #258
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Default Re: REALLY Heavy Rifle for Antarctic Space Nazis

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
The MG 131 and MG 151 aren't actually easier to make ammunition for than the 20mm rounds. They use canon-type projectiles, made of steel with copper driving bands. When you go to canon, use something based on the MG FF in 20x80mm, it's good enough for the expected threats and the gun is light, which really pays in airships.
If you want more firepower than a machinegun, I'd say go right up to the MK 108 autocannon. For a 30mm cannon it's light, and while the shells are fairly low-velocity they packed in a lot of explosive. For their all-up weight they give a lot more bang than any of the 20mm cannons. Also, having to use more primitive (and thus larger) fuses cuts into the payload size less, and the larger payload (HE filler) means using less than ideal explosives, losing space to a liner to keep picric acid off the shell wall, and so on also reduce the effectiveness less.

Note - I'm assuming the primary use for such guns will be shooting up ground targets - as a defence against aircraft you'd need weapons with much higher muzzle velocities, and that means that they'd be either heavy machineguns (that lack throw-weight), or heavy, powerful, long-barrelled cannons (that weigh a lot and have heavy ammo). However, it doesn't sound like air defence is a major requirement for the Zeppelins.

EDIT: Reading on, I see you referring to the 20x138mmB, which means either the big Solothurn anti-tank rifles (or the Lahti guns, which might be easier to get hold of), or the ground and naval 20mm AA and tank cannons (powerful and heavy things). While I could see bringing some of the cannons along (they were readily available after all), the rifles would be rather rare by the late war (as far as I know only the Soviets were still using anti-tank rifles in any quantity by then).
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Old 02-13-2019, 05:42 PM   #259
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Default Names for the Macro-cultures or Cultural Spheres

As I noted earlier, I'm proposing that three macro-cultures or broad cultural spheres have been important foes of the Antarctic Space Nazi in the fifty year history of their settlement of Germania Hyperborea.

I'm looking for names to apply to them. Ideally, I'd like to have at least three names per macro-culture.

One would be something they might call themselves, if it occurred to them that while everyone in the world other than their fellow clansmen, tribe-members or citizens were obviously foreigners, some foreigners had customs and perhaps even languages that were less foreign. Whether this was a shared language group or perhaps just a shared cultural influence that resulted in broadly similar technology, social organisation and religions that had some common touchstones.

An analogy might be the way that an Irishman, Frenchman, Greek and a Finn might all agree that they are Europeans, though perhaps the analogy should not be stretched to far. These native supra-cultures should at most recognize shared cultural touchstones, but that identification would be without any connotation of supra-regional government and absolutely without a connotation of any formal supra-polity like the EU.

On the other hand, at least for that smaller segment of the broader Hallstatt-esque and La Téne like cultural complex that does share some kind of Celtic language family, as well as for the numerous city-states of Semitic-speakers around the Mediterranean, perhaps it could sometimes approach being analogous to the way that that an Englishman, Scot, Irishman, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, South Afrikaner, Jamaican and others might agree that they share some cultural touchstones as part of a loosely defined 'Anglosphere'.

Second, I'd like to know what they are commonly called by others that do not belong to that culture or any related one. I consider it likely that all three of these would have acquired exonyms among neighbours and trading partners and some of them might be used as loan-words in many languages and are thus likely to eventually come to the attention of ASN ethnographers and philologists.

The pseudo-Celts will likely be called something by the Germanic-speakers they live next to, fight wars with, but also trade and intermarry with. And the Semitic-speakers, even if they are technically many polities of many different nationalities and even speak native languages that are not all mutually intelligible (though traders who travel are generally multi-lingual), are likely all folded into one exonym by the Celts and Germanics who live this far away from any of their cities.

As for the third macro-culture, it may be that there is not precisely an exonym for all these tribes as a nationality or ethnicity, but rather a collective term for their apparently related religious and mystical practices. Something analogous to the use of 'People of the Book' in real-world religion, except, of course, these peoples do not share sacred writings, but rather apparently the teachings of a priestly class and educated elite showing clear signs of a common cultural influence.

Third, I'd like to know what name the Antarctic Space Nazis adopt for these cultures. All three cultures will have one or more ASN assigned exonyms, both referring to the whole macro-culture and any sub-groups the ASNs recognise.

The three macro-cultures may be loosely defined thusly:

1) Pseudo-Celts
The Hallstatt-esque and La Téne like material culture that covers much of Central Europe and extends into Iberia and many other neighboring areas. Consists of many speakers of related Celtic-esque languages, but also includes people speaking languages that are nowhere near mutually intelligible with those and which may or may not have any familial relationship with Celtic languages that survive to the modern day.

Depending on definition, may also include peoples that speak languages that are clearly not related to any Celtic language, at least not closely enough to justify classifying it with Celtic languages instead of other Indo-European languages, but have similar customs, some religious similarities and substantially similar material culture. Also might be extended to include many tribes who are speakers of languages that do not seem to be Indo-European at all, but who appear ethnically fairly similar to the pseudo-Celts and who often speak a Celtic language as a second language.

2) Not-Phoenicans
The Mediterranean of Germania Hyperborea was and is home to several city-states and colonies of Semitic-speaking sailors and traders, apparently originally from the Levant. Their languages have not been conclusively classified by the ASNs, but none of them are believed to be Punic or Phoenician. There is no evidence that any city-state or colony heavily involved in Mediterranean shipping speaks a language closely related to Hebrew or Arabic and indeed none of the languages which the ASNs have managed to studied adequately seem to be closely related to any surviving Semitic language known to ASN philologists.

There is some dispute on within ASN Semitic and philological studies whether any of these languages should be classified as Canaanite languages at all, but a consensus is at least building that they seem mostly to be Northwest Semitic, albeit very distant from any preserved language in that group. There is a possibility that the languages are not all closely genetically related, but represent a Sprachbund and that some of the languages might belong to a new branch of Central Semitic languages and at least one of them has been theorized to be an East Semitic language that diverged from Akkadian/Assyrian a long time ago.

3) The Peoples Influenced by Minoans or Pelasgians
This is a bit of a catch-all group, in that it includes a wide variety of Aegean, Cycladic, Etocretan, Peloponnese, Aeolian, Epirote, Macedonian, Anatolian, Illyrian, Thraco-Dacian and Scythian tribes that do not all speak the same languages or even languages that are remotely related. There are even some pseudo-Celtic peoples living near shores of the Mediterranean who have been influenced and may be classified as part of both this macro-culture and the pseudo-Celt one.

What they all share is cultural influence from elites that seem to live among these tribes, but in addition to speaking their common languages, seem to preserve one or more archaic languages, as well as being the keepers of various knowledge, religious practices, mystery cults, magical traditions and the like. These elites seem to derive this knowledge from a common source and even as the tribes fight among themselves, powerful taboos protect any priestess, witch, prophet or other similar people from harm.

From various artistic, cultural and religious clues, the Antarctic Space Nazis have concluded that the most plausible explanation for these elites is a previous civilization that spanned the Aegean, especially the Cyclades Islands and the area around Crete, and set up colonies in many locations around there, including a strong substrata around the Black Sea. This makes these educated elites and priestly class the heirs of the Minoans, most likely, although an alternate theory is that they are Pelasgians.
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Old 02-13-2019, 06:24 PM   #260
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Default Re: REALLY Heavy Rifle for Antarctic Space Nazis

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If you want more firepower than a machinegun, I'd say go right up to the MK 108 autocannon. For a 30mm cannon it's light, and while the shells are fairly low-velocity they packed in a lot of explosive. For their all-up weight they give a lot more bang than any of the 20mm cannons. Also, having to use more primitive (and thus larger) fuses cuts into the payload size less, and the larger payload (HE filler) means using less than ideal explosives, losing space to a liner to keep picric acid off the shell wall, and so on also reduce the effectiveness less.
If it's meant against ground targets, can't you just use bombs?

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Note - I'm assuming the primary use for such guns will be shooting up ground targets - as a defence against aircraft you'd need weapons with much higher muzzle velocities, and that means that they'd be either heavy machineguns (that lack throw-weight), or heavy, powerful, long-barrelled cannons (that weigh a lot and have heavy ammo). However, it doesn't sound like air defence is a major requirement for the Zeppelins.
There are legends of flying monsters in Germania Hyperborea and the world is Low Mana, but so far, any supernatural beings that the ASNs have run into in that world have not been a threat to zeppelins armed with ordinary rifles, let alone more. In fact, in fifty years of history, I don't imagine that there have been more than a handful of encounters with actual flying monsters, worthy of the name, on Germania Hyperborea, and that would have occurred somewhere analogous to where Greece is on Earth.

The case is very different for scout airships exploring worlds with higher mana than this, where you might indeed run into dragons, shantaks and other monstrous flying creatures that care not a whit for the square-cube law or, indeed, ordinary decency. There you might easily have to fight flying monsters which can take dozens of 7.92x57mm rounds and still pose a threat to at least the crew of an airship, and in the worst case, you might encounter something which can throw fireballs or call lightning strikes.

Those exploring ships and their crews are regarded much as Americans regarded the astronauts of the Appollo missions and while such airships tend to be fairly small, they mount the best weapons that the ASNs can fit on them. Mind you, that has historically usually been an AT rifle either using a bipod or a mount of some sort, combined with a couple of mounted machine guns, as well as perhaps an experienced Untierejäger or two with rifles chambered in a monster-killing caliber and special bullets holding something that such critters really did not appreciate (especially if they were fey creatures or something else which was known to have a weakness).

Only recently in their history have the ASNs constructed scouting zeppelins that carry actual autocannon, and this may coincide with their industry being at a high enough level to make it possible to make small amounts of ammunition for something more powerful than an AT rifle.

Mind you, zeppelins that never have to fly through a gate or navigate the confusing non-space around the World Tree do not have the same size constraints and so can have been made considerably bigger than typical world-scouting airships. That is largely a question of how many years forumites feel are plausible for the TL7 engineers and technicians to build up local industry enough to go from their earliest tiny scout blimps and semi-rigid airships using enchanted wood to actual zeppelins that somewhat resemble WWI designs.

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EDIT: Reading on, I see you referring to the 20x138mmB, which means either the big Solothurn anti-tank rifles (or the Lahti guns, which might be easier to get hold of), or the ground and naval 20mm AA and tank cannons (powerful and heavy things). While I could see bringing some of the cannons along (they were readily available after all), the rifles would be rather rare by the late war (as far as I know only the Soviets were still using anti-tank rifles in any quantity by then).
I had in mind that they were using a Solothurn S-18/1000 on AA mount, one of a few such rifles the ASN still have in service. This particular rifle was classified as a 2cm Panzerabwehrbüchse 785 (h) in Germany service after they acquired it from Hungary and, indeed, was not in front-line service when a senior member of the conspiracy that became the Antarctic Space Nazis acquired it from a Waffen-SS armory in early 1944 in order to transport it to Jötunheim, where it would be used for base security for the research outpost there against the local fauna.

While the ASNs looted basically everything they could from Germany during the last several months before leaving for good, becoming increasingly unsubtle as the end of the war approached, during the first year of preparations, they often appropriated equipment that they had access to due to their senior positions and which they knew was unlikely to be missed.

Their 'anti-monster' armament consists of an eclectic selection of weapons that individual planners had access to and considered useful against the supernatural monsters encountered on Jötunheim and projected to exist on other worlds accessible through the World Tree. Because their equipment had to be carried out over the World Tree, the heavier items by massively strong servitor beasts, but still had to be carried, for most of the period of their preparations, the ASNs not take any individual load more than about 400 lbs.

They could take hundreds of loads each day, however, and especially in the early days, enthusiastically had their servitors lug over all sorts of weapons they figured would be useful and valuable, as at first, the ability to acquire weaponry without causing any questions to be asked was a bigger bottleneck than the ability to transport it.

In any case, while the ASN ended up taking quite a lot of weapons and ammunition, even massive numbers of small arms and ammunition were not a significant part of the 30,000 shot tons they eventually transported over, most of which was tools and other high-tech stuff to help them bootstrap their industry. Even if they had managed to take 100,000 rifles, 100 million rounds of ammunition and an assortment of machine guns and heavy rifles, that still wouldn't reach 10% of their total cargo.

In the event, they only managed about 20,000 K98k (or the equivalent) military rifles, but got plenty of KKW training rifles in .22 LR and a wide range of sporting rifles, outdated rifles in storage and parts to make it easier to make new rifles in their new homes to partially make up for it. And some machine guns, AT rifles and the like, but very, very few autocannon or other heavy stuff, as that's mostly heavier than their weight limit per trip.

They did lug a few 2 cm Gebirgsflak 38 guns over, but I honestly mean 'a few'. Less than ten.
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Last edited by Icelander; 02-13-2019 at 07:04 PM.
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antarctic space nazis, bootstrap, industry, ken hite, national socialists, nazis, space nazis, suppressed transmission, weird war ii

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