[WIP] Kataphract: Embers of Fate [28K] [Mecha, Post-Apocalyptic, Cold War]

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Kataphract: Embers of Fate

Play as a young salvager whose life is about to be turned upside down after discovering an ancient Kataphract in forgotten ruins. Navigate Cold War-style politics and engage in aerial combat with airships, missile contrails, and supersonic mecha.

  • Pilot Kataphracts, or KAT for short. (Inspired heavily by TSFs from Muv-luv)
  • Explore a fictional world inspired by Highfleet, the Cold War, and Five Star Stories.
  • Be male or female.
  • Get embroiled in a three-way (maybe four-way) conflict between a capitalist bloc, a socialist bloc, and good ol’ post-apocalyptic feudalism.
  • Pick stats according to your preferred way of piloting.
  • Learn about the Old World, and you may find answers to questions you haven’t asked yourself yet.
  • Become friends or lovers with your fellow pilots, engineers, or even rivals, all while engaging in geopolitical shenanigans to decide the fate of your homeland.
Setting Synopsis

The Year is 1503 A.T. After the Day the Sky burned, humanity was decimated, and much of the world’s technology was lost or destroyed. Now, almost millennia later, humanity has once more taken to being the masters of the surface and skies, though the Old World lives on. From the nuclear engines of airships to the microelectronics inside the guidance systems of missiles, all that the Old World left is reused for commercial or military purposes without discrimination.

In this world, Kataphracts are the pinnacle of modern warfare, bipedal mechs capable of immense destruction and tactical flexibility. They come in a wide array of types, from mass-produced models to true marvels of engineering.

The world is divided into two major factions: SATO (The San Alto Treaty Organization), a military and economic alliance of democratic, capitalist nations, and VECA (The Vizzon Economic Cooperation Accord), a communist, socialist bloc led by the Vizzon Republic.

In between them is the League of Andalusian Monarchies. They are a collection of princedoms and kingdoms, governed by those with the genetic heritage of the old world. Their princes pilot powerful KATs with pristine Old World technology; this once gave them an edge to maintain their independence and not be bothered by the outside world. However, the attrition of inter-aristocratic conflict and the rise of the two world superpowers have relegated them to the backseat in geopolitics. Now their lands are prized for being rich in methane deposits that fuel the massive warships of both blocs and the many Old World relics that are yet to be discovered.

Initially, our protagonist is an orphan from the Duchy of Fortuna, a small but powerful princedom that is not technically part of any of the larger alliance blocs in Andalusia.

Inspiration

There are several games and series that have inspired this test run of a mecha game in ChoiceScript.

  • HighFleet: There is just something about Dune-punk that always attracts the mind, and what better way to combine it than with dieselpunk. So you end up with massive airships that guzzle methane like hungry beasts and whose engines spit out endless flame. Airships are basically always lovely to have in any punk setting, so why not include them here? Also, the aesthetics of massive artillery guns, CIWS guns, missiles, and Cold War interfaces are always fun to include.

  • Muv-Luv: This is here mostly for the geopolitical and Cold War themes, while nothing is completely hashed out yet, the involvement of a sort of grounded political theme that is familiar and yet complex adds to the imagination of piloting giant mecha. As for the mecha itself, Kataphracts are heavily inspired by TSFs from Muv-Luv. They are fast, agile; however, they also have plenty of armor and make use of missiles (because who doesn’t want some Macross missile massacre)

  • Five-Star Stories: For Old World fashion, kataphracts and some other themes (curse you Mamoru Nagano).

ROs

Crew of the Crawler
Name: Vera [F]
Callsign: “Mikala”
Age: Early 20s
Appearance: Stands at 5’7 (170 cm); her frame is athletic, born out of the constant exertion from working as a salvager. She has neck-length black hair, styled with two small buns at the back. She has pale skin that’s, by this point, tanned into an olive Mediterranean hue.
Biography: She was born in a small Andalusian town. Her mother was part of the original salvager crew and left her a single diary of her expeditions. With no one else to take care of her, a nun took her to an orphanage, where she met Cal. Our protagonist. Due to the oppressive conditions of the nun-run orphanage, you both orchestrated an escape from the institution. Subsequently, you managed your existence through various means on the unforgiving streets of the capital of the Duchy of Fortuna…That was until you both tried to steal from Captain Alfonze, who, upon recognizing Vera, decided to take you both into his crew.

Since then, she has worked on the crew of the Crawler as a salvager, initially just on her own two feet, until one of the Mini-KATs pilots of the crew went AWOL and left an empty seat in the cockpit that Captain Alfonze was convinced, after serious discussion, to let her pilot. Her skills with a Mini-KAT have been above average, almost to the point of talent.

Her relationship with Cal remains that of very close friends and comrades who have done a lot to survive in the Andalusian desert. She is typically extroverted, likes to tease, and also has a penchant for finding Old World technology.

Name: Hannek [M]
Age: Late 20s
Appearance: He is 6’1" (185 cm), and has a strong, well-toned body, a product of the years he has spent as a mechanic and pilot. His skin is olive in tone, with a hint of a tan. His short black hair is always messy and unkempt, and his eyes are a piercing amber. His jaw is square and firm, and a few days’ worth of stubble adorns his face. He wears a dark blue jumpsuit that has seen better days, the knees and elbows stained with oil.
Biography: Hannek hails from the Vizzonian Republic, the massive communist territory that occupies the north. The place of his birth and the details of his upbringing remain a mystery, as he does not talk about his past. All that is known is that he has always been good with his hands, fixing machines and tinkering with engines from a young age. This affinity with mechanics landed him on the Crawler’s salvage team. He is often in charge of maintaining the various machines, and he may have also been a pilot in the past. He is not the most sociable person, preferring to keep to himself. He is direct and no-nonsense and prefers to avoid too much talking.

Name: Larissa Faramount [F]
Age: Early-20s
Appearance: She is 5’2" (155 cm) with pale skin and wavy orange hair. She has hazel eyes and is often seen wearing round glasses, which she is always adjusting. She prefers a professional look and wears a white blouse, black skirt, and a black blazer.
Biography: Larissa hails from the Kingdom of Gallia, the other major Kingdom of the Andalusian League. Her presence in the Crawler is anything but expected, considering her upbringing as a noble in the heartland of Gallia. However, as an intellectual, she was drawn to the study of Kataphracts and other forms of Old World tech. And to get more of that… she may have struck a deal with Count Gaufrid…or maybe her family was in on it; she has never really divulged all of that information. But as a result, she’s now the personal aide to Captain Alfonze and in charge of the scientific side of the salvaging crew.

Larissa’s life in the Wastes has been quite different from what she is used to; it is a bit more brutal than she expected. Nevertheless, she has taken the role in stride and has become a valuable asset to the crew with her expertise and calm demeanor. She tends to be reserved, polite, and well-spoken. Though sometimes easily flustered and clumsy in her mannerisms.

Name: Arianta [F]
Age: Unknown

Name: Maire Luis De Los Rios [M]
Age: Early 20s
Callsign: “Diablo”
Appearance: A young man with Mediterranean features and an air of royalty about him, Maire Luis is short, barely reaching 5’3" (160 cm), with a somewhat feminine appearance. His eyes are emerald green, and his hair is long and brown. He always dresses elegantly and sports a very confident grin; a pair of golden epaulettes is his trademark. He is well-groomed, as expected of a high-born.

Biography: Born to the minor noble house of De Los Rios, Maire Luis has been groomed from an early age to become a knight of Sucre and eventually to join its most prestigious order of knights. This goal was achieved at the tender age of fifteen, when he first set foot inside the cockpit of his very own Kataphract, an heirloom passed down by his maternal aunt. The Kataphract’s name is “Espíritu” an Old World machine that had served for generations in the House of Astrunia and was now given to him to pilot and safeguard.

Since that day, Maire Luis has taken part in various duels, military operations, and campaigns for Sucre. As an ace and a count, he holds significant influence within the Kingdom and often acts as the public face of the Crown in various engagements. However, despite his prestigious position and status as a royal knight, he is known for his laid-back attitude and love of revelry and luxury. He is considered to be amongst the best KAT pilots of his generation.

Update Log

15/07/2026: Chapter 0.5 (28k Words)
19/07/2026 - Chapter 0.75 (38k Words USL Path)

AN: I’ve been wanting to try and make a game in ChoiceScript for quite a while now. So I finally went and took the chance to write something that I have long been planning to do, but never did. This is still mostly a test run. I am pretty sure my code is all spaghetti, and there are some design concepts that I haven’t grasped, but still, better to try than not try. Chapter 1 is not finished, as it ends right before the test run of your KAT, but it should have enough to give a clear idea of the setting and the overall themes.

Demo

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Well written and liked the world very much. I would have preferred to have the opportunity to determine my personality though. Also would have liked a greater elaboration on the difference between a mini Kat and a Kat, particularly on how a mini Kat looks if I presume that a Kat resembles a Gundam. I am stressing on it because you mention the protagonist’s mini Kat being destroyed owing to stepping on a mine but there is no indication that it hurt the PC in any way. All in all, I look forward to it.

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July 2026 Writer Support Thread
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A mecha game please don’t give me hope, i been let down so much with discontinued wip. Stay healthy

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Thanks for reading. The idea for the Mini-KAT was kind of a crutch that I will develop more on (I wanted the protagonist to have experience in something previous to the story). But they are basically 4 meters tall versions of the Exo-frame from OBSOLETE, with the backpack-like cockpit behind it. It has plenty of protection, and it’s quite useful for salvage operations. It comes with thrusters attached to the back (which brings the question of how it fits, let’s say “very carefully”).

KAT reassembles not a Gundam but a TSF. The Old World KAT, however, looks way different than a standard TSF, rather they follow a mix of ornate baroque futurism. They are called Mortarheadds but also gothicmades (the author changed the names)

Old World Kat - Mortarheadds.

Typical KAT deployed by Great Powers

Mini-KATs (Basicaly OBSOLETE (The Series) Exo-frames)

The part about the personality, I made it so that everyone can pick all the options. There are three archetypes currently: baron, silent, and grunt. I made it so all respective options can be picked regardless of the personality archetype quantity, but the counter keeps going up as options are picked.

Initially, I was going to just add a lot of *ifs that checked on what you picked initially, but I thought that was a bit limiting.

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Your game really need codex for the world and it history. I can say you done really long research for this and you are really big mecha fan’s. Also if you can insert pictures about object, map and especially the mecha schematic inside the codex for people to look at i can assure you people gonna love jt because i honestly have my imagination full speed when reading this as mecha fan’s.

Stay healthy, don’t be overambitious and overworked so you not lose motivation on this wip. See you on next update :+1:t2:

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I look forward to how this goes

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Ok, some thoughts…

Once you step out into the corridor, the smell of oil and smoke hits your nose, bringing you back to the present. You hear the usual rumble of the ground crawler’s engine. It’s a deep and powerful sound that has become a comfort to you. You head through the corridor that leads out onto the main deck of the crawler. It is an ugly thing to look at, an elongated metal beast on twelve rusty treads that’s a cross between a tugboat and a locomotive engine. Its paint is chipped, its edges worn, and its single exhaust stack blows out black fumes as the crawler’s enormous engines propel it over the sand of the Sanusian Wastes. As far as you can see, the terrain is filled with dunes, the odd rock or cactus sticking out here and there.

What does it run on? If it’s nuclear power, it won’t produce black smoke. Nuclear power is pretty clean as far as emissions go.

Your finger pulls the trigger, and your rifle spits out rounds at the enemy. Vera does the same, both of you trying to overwhelm the enemy with a hail of bullets. They impact on the Lucienian KAT’s armor, some bouncing off, others sinking into the metal… But not enough to cause any real damage.

I know you’re supposed to be doomed to lose if you fight it, but if you know that you’re fighting a stronger enemy, you should still attempt to apply some strategy. Like splitting up from Vera to attack from different directions, and trying to find a weak spot, rather than just pounding it with brute force.

Another note: CoGdemos has a back button, but you might want to code in a ‘try again’ option at that point, since the back button won’t be available on an official HG release.

“Good to go?” Vera

Typo?

Good luck

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I may need a Codex. But the initial idea is to have very efficient (almost impossibly so) nuclear thermal engines that make use of liquid methane as coolant. Most of the coolant is just burnt off rather than being kept in a closed-loop system, after all, methane is 'abundant ', but when you are lifting thousands of tons off the ground within the atmosphere, its consumption can pile up quite a lot.

Most of the components of the nuclear thermal engines are siphoned off from Old World technology, with the level of power of said engines determined by the quality of said components. However, the Great Powers are slowly trying to reduce their reliance on them.

EDIT: Checking on Methane, it wouldn’t make black smog either; it’s closer to pure combustion. So yeah, going to have to change it.

EDIT: Lmao, I thought this was for the airships. No, the crawler does not make use of nuclear engines, just normal combustion ones. My bad for not reading the spoiler.

You can actually win the fight, but it’s the one case where I think the way to achieve it’s contrived. You have to pick three specific skills out of the four during the initial phase. I may change it tbh.

Sounds feasible. It may give me a chance to display more of the pilot skills of the protagonist that were accrued during the pre-game life.

Noted.

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I absolutely love the mechs in OBSOLETE, I feel like more mech series should be based more off of the what I say is semi realistic mechs in the anime, basically more mechanical and compact rather then just giant metal man, something you would see actually modern militaries would use

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Not too bad, always love a mecha story and the influences you mentioned are pretty obvious in the overall tone and writing as well as the way the characters act. Personally, I don’t love how well Vera and the MC take the situation (especially how willing she is to just fight and kill soldiers after previously showing surprise at you doing so), but that’s not necessarily a writing issue, since we haven’t seen their actual past. I prefer non-animesque writing in anime-style stories since I think it doesn’t play out as well in pure text, but nothing has actually stood out as over the top, so that’s not really a complaint. Anyways, keep up the good work and don’t take any complaints from me or other people to heart, a lot of them just come from a love for the genre since our community is relatively small, I’ll be keeping an eye on this. Good luck!

Noticed a couple of issues, but not as many as most demos.

“Are we sure we want to risk it, Captain”

It should have a question mark at the end, it does on the page when you actually say it, but the option to do so is missing it.

When encountering the orb in the cargo hold and then choosing what the name reminds you of, the brawl option does not affect the brawl variable/stat; the only one that works is the strategy one; the others do not.

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The plus 3 bonuses in the cargo hold don’t aply and the brawl bonus on the bridge gives 2 not 1, otherwise the writing and everything else is great.

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I wonder if I may not have transmitted it correctly in the battle scene in the caverns, but Vera is worried about two things:

-You are fighting a military-grade KAT with a mini-KAT. That’s like using a car to race a sports car; you can do it, but you are 90% guaranteed to lose. Though I recently added a bit of them having previously fought some pirate KATs and mini-KATs in the past.

-You are fighting a military-grade KAT that belongs to a superpower, which can mean a lot of trouble for you and the entire crew of the Crawler, not to mention the Duchy.

Noted and fixed, I’ve already been uploading some fixes on the low, but I will contain myself until I get the chonkier update up.

While I normally play things relatively straight, I did intend some characters to have a bit more of an animesque personality. Cue Larissa’s (Previously Laila) infodump death narrations.

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Her feelings on the first fight weren’t ambiguous or anything; I totally understood the frame of mind you were going for with her. It was right at the end of the demo that had me just kind of go “?” when she seemed insanely excited to fight people who haven’t actually done anything wrong at this point(unless I skimmed past something by accident). Like I said, though, we haven’t actually seen or heard too much about their backstories, save for how they grew up together and escaped, so mix that with general excitement from piloting an actual KAT, and it’s not really an issue.

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Good start, Dear Author! Keep it going!

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This has a really strong premise. The mix of Cold War politics, airships, and mecha immediately grabbed my attention, and the inspirations (Highfleet, Muv-Luv, and Five Star Stories) come through without feeling like a direct copy.

I also like that you’re focusing on more than just combat. The political factions, lore of the Old World, and relationship system make it sound like player choices will matter beyond the battlefield.

My only suggestion from reading the synopsis is to introduce the setting and the different factions gradually. There’s a lot of interesting worldbuilding, but it could be overwhelming if too much is presented too early. Let the player discover the world naturally as the story unfolds.

Overall, this looks like a promising start, and I’d definitely be interested in seeing how Chapter 1 develops.

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Always a fan political mecha stories. I will watch this closely.

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Finally got a mech story. Been a long time.

Can you give a list of the Kat ranks? Makes it easy to understand the danger levels. How old is mc? I get the feeling early 20s.

Will the the stat page get a update soon? The personality stats are kinda confusing to me. What does baron do? What does runt do? Will they alter the way Mc will think and act and how everyone will see them? Basically what do the personality stats do for the story and skills?

Will we get the option to change callsign? Can we add some customization to our mech like paint jobs and a dragon claw like the Code Geas mech? Who are the Ros? Is there a poly route and can get indicators for the flirt options?

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For sure, it will also help round the stuff. Two categories: Mini-KATs & Kataphracts (KATs)
Ranks:
-1st Generation KATs (Original designs made up from salvaged materials and reactors, they were severely sub-sonic, and were best for ground operations rather than flying around.)
-2nd Generation KATs (Bulky designs with sub-sonic speeds, usually used by pirates or third-rate militaries)
-3rd Generation KATs (‘Mass-produced’ by super-powers, these are your KATs of conventional militaries and high power, supersonic speeds, better guidance systems, and alike)
-4th Generation KATs (New models coming off the research & salvage laboratories of the Superpowers, they come with increased speed, ECM capabilities, and of course, BVR (Beyond Visual Range) capabilities.)

-Old World KATs (A term that encompasses KATs that make use of the best components of the Old World, be it engines, weapons, armor, or thrusters. They are usually very rare, mostly found under the possession of the Andalusian aristocracy )

Early 20s is correct, not a set age for now. No current set age, but 23 is what I am leaning on.

I will try, but it’s not my priority right now. However, personality stats aren’t set in their impact. I was thinking they would impact first meetings with other characters and, of course, how romance develops.

Yes, after the first chapter. Customization is also planned, most likely no dragon claw, but there will be a component and loadout system.

There are currently 7 ROs planned. I haven’t gotten around to adding them to the description just yet.

-Vera (F): Childhood Friend / Fellow salvager
-Larissa (F): Sorta a noble out of place in the crew, but she loves knowledge especially about KATs.
-Hannek (M): The robust and tall engineer of the Crawler.
-Arianta (F): The Mercy of the Old World Kataphract and someone with ties to ‘you’.
-Maire (M): Short, femenine ace pilot of the kingdom of Sucre.

+2 Ace Pilots, one of SATO and another of VECA, whom I haven’t gotten around to hashing out yet.

Now, I can’t make promises that the RO list will remain intact upon contact with the story, or how important romance will be to the plot. Nonetheless, those are the goals. As for poly route, nothing is confirmed, but if there is, there will be at most just the one. For indicators, possibly, I do like it when choices do tell you what they are really about.

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Excited to see more old kats

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A Mecha IF is always welcome. I hope to god you pull through with this one, its very promising.

I have to say though, the very premise reminds me a lot of the Lancer Tabletop game. I wonder if you will go into detail about the various types and subtypes of KATs.

6 Likes