Emissary Track

**Key Features** | »» Talon Steel single-arm torsion catapult»» Steam-powered tracked chassis»» Clockwork draw/load system»» Mustard gas censers»» Gas masks for crew (insufficient spares for passengers)

*"Infidels, your request for a negotiator has been granted. May this battle finally come to an end."*

- Emissary commander, preparing to launch Lady Maria into a Cult stronghold.
## Tactical Analysis

* **Chemical Warfare:** Although originally designed to launch rotting carcasses as plague agents, Emissary Tracks now launch carefully prepared censers filled with mustard gas to poison and demoralize enemy infantry near the point of impact. However, most modern vehicles and structures are sealed against poison gas, resulting in immunity to the gas's effects. And a secondary ammunition filled with extremely sticky tar let’s them trap anyone struck, and makes them extremely flammable.

* **Still Cleaner Than a New York Taxi:** Emissary Tracks can carry a single infantry passenger at the time in a sealed compartment separate from the ammunition bay. However...

* **Watch The Birdie!:** The only way out of an Emissary Track for the passenger, however, is the catapult mounted on top, enabling the Emissary to insert infantry over long distances into otherwise unreachable areas. However, even with the Order's best padding and safety helmets, said passengers are inevitably knocked senseless when they land, stunning them and inflicting light damage until the birdies go away.

* **Torsion Power**: Some Emissaries have been outfitted with upgrades, such as deadlier chemical agents that can kill garrisoned and transported infantry, crash safety helmets, crash landing pods that have a tendency to stun and damage anyone too near to the point of impact, and even shock absorbers and expanded room that allows three infantry to crash into the infidels and begin the slaughter.

## Background

**Jerusalem team does it again, wins catapult competition for twelfth year running.**

- By Claire Verwaerde, Allied Nations Childrens' Science Digest
March is an exciting time of year for high school students across the Allied Nations as the International Science Fair commences and the best and brightest children of today, the great thinkers and inventors of tomorrow, gather together to show off what they've learned and can do. Students compete in a wide range of independent and team competitions and displays, ranging from environmental awareness and improvement project displays to testing home-made high-energy projectors against captured Soviet Hammer Tanks. One of the most popular of these competitions has been a fixture since the first International Science Fair: the catapult competition, where teams of high school students and adult supervisors are challenged to build a catapult according to medieval principles and test it by launching watermelons at a series of targets. Catapult teams are judged on range, accuracy, rate of fire, and visual design of the catapult itself.

The 1969 International Science Fair was held outside Toulon in France, but though the scenery may change, one fact of the catapult competition has stayed a constant for twelve years running now. Jerusalem Central High School, from the British colony in the Middle East, has proven once again that living in a barren desert gives young men and women a lot of time to build and test catapults when normal students watch films and have fun. For twelve years in a row, Jerusalem Central has brought what its builders call the **Emissary**. Students from other schools have a wide range of considerably less polite names for it. A single-arm torsion catapult of similar design to the medieval mangonel, the Emissary is constructed of steel with an ingenious system of gears and levers to quickly load and fire the catapult with considerable accuracy at very long ranges. In something of an International Science Fair tradition, the Emissary quickly dismissed all of its competition to take the gold medal for Jerusalem Central.

Curiously, all attempts by other schools to duplicate Jerusalem Central's design have failed, and for a variety of reasons. Sabotage by other schools is common, and even uninterrupted attempts to duplicate the Emissary have met with unprecedented materials failure. Some claim that steel is simply not capable of withstanding the stresses that the Emissary produces, and that Jerusalem Central has actually built their machine of some other metal or alloy unknown or unavailable to the finest educational institutes of the civilized world. This is of course preposterous, and according to Matthew Deaderick, the vice principal of Jersualem Central and primary supervisor of his school's team, the Emissary's success is simply due to his students' dedication to the project and attention to detail.

## Behind the Scenes

* The unit is an accepted suggestion from Endless Twilight.