Grab them and step into the fight
This demo rulebook contains the core mechanics, printables, and lore to immerse yourself in.
about the project
Sounds of War is a post-apocalyptic mech skirmish game. The communist utopia has collapsed, eroded by a mysterious plague and horrors it has unleashed. The survivors are now trapped in an underground city. Your ARM, a trusty mech, is your best bet in a brutal struggle for resources.
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story
A communist utopia is no more. In the mega-city called Mravinjak, the familiar hum of machinery was drowned out by explosions, gunshots, crying of children and wails of the dying. A sound no one heard for centuries – the sound of war.
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Remnants of society, fractured by isolation in the wake of the new plague, are at each other’s throats over the resources they extract from the Union’s ruins. The country retreated underground long ago, but a bunker fortress behind an impenetrable reinforced concrete barrier has turned into a prison.
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Sounds of War is a game where you are one of Mravinjak’s survivors, still kicking (so far). A lucky find has tipped the odds in your favor. You pilot an ARM – a combat vehicle capable of fighting back against the horrors that lurk outside shelters.
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The choices are few. Some wander endlessly across labyrinthian utility areas, looking for another way out. Some struggle to contain things that want to break out of this steel-barred cemetery. Some have given up and resigned themselves to their fate.
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Like many, you try to delay the inevitable.
FACTION
A mobile extermination unit targeting anomalies, created to purge the infected. Now considered traitors to the Motherland. Men of Division 102 call them “five-hundredths” behind their backs, “deserters” in military jargon. Khrushchev – a veteran who personally eliminated the most Shalnoys – did not return to the shelter with his men in defiance of self-proclaimed government’s orders. Mgla continues to eradicate the plague and prevent Knyazhna from capturing infected objects, destroying them before she can reach them.
PERSON
Armed with SM-97 “Spruce” and wearing HFS (High-Frequency Suppression) helmets that neutralise Rantipoles’ influence.
After being branded as traitors, they established their HQ in a frozen-through agrarian block and started wearing warm sheep wool coats to traverse it. When the block became a battlefield and its thermostats broke down as a result, the Sovmode housing units suspended from the ceiling were plunged in permafrost and grew clusters of icicles. Some Sovmodes even came crashing down. A thick snow-covered forest surrounds the units where green pastures used to be.
MECH / ARM
A lightweight and maneuverable ARM from the “Oprichnik” range. Ideal for rapid response teams as its high speed allows for instant repositioning. Two such ARMs can force a Shalnoy into a defensive stance, circling and pummeling it with fire while the kill team closes in. During the initial quarantine, due to the communications breakdown, these ARMs were also used as couriers to deliver messages of utmost importance.
FACTION
Division 102 is loyal to a zealous Communist ideologue, Olga Mikhailovna, better known by her callsign “Knyazhna”. A step away from becoming a personal army, the division staged a coup on her orders and overthrew the party leaders who were then charged with high treason. Now she is trying to recruit the surviving units scattered across various blocks. She believes that building the new order in Mravinjak or the Union at large is impossible without capturing and studying the Distortions – for the good of the nation.
PERSON
Like all soldiers of the regular army, members of Division 102 wear a standard uniform outfitted with an air filtration system and an EVP (Enhanced Visual Perception) helmet. They carry AK-607 rifles.
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Division 102 frequents the archives in the wake an incident at the lower levels. OI (Organoid Intelligence) began disgorging tons of new information, including events that were yet to come, or could happen. ARC and APC (Autonomous Repair/Packing Construct) units ceased operating correctly and started rearranging the documentation repositories and endlessly expanding them – often on top of homes and administrative buildings.⠀
Men of Division 102 clip their papers to the uniforms as protective charms and keep the most precious ones in bakelite identification cases.MECH / ARM
A multi-purpose medium “Oprichnik”-range ARM that combines speed, defensive capabilities and ease of use. Every division has access to at least a hundred of these in Union’s service. In peacetime they were used to guard military, manufacturing and research facilities, as well as checkpoints and public office buildings – seats of the party’s highest echelons.
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After the epidemic started and the quarantine was declared, they were attached to military patrols in different blocks.
FACTION
A motley crowd of dissidents and enemies of the state in the Union’s harshest correctional labor camp. The renegades found their new leader – an idol at the bottom of the prison well. The most fervent followers seek to imitate and appease it by wearing SPT suits adorned with wires and scavenged scraps.
PERSON
In order to work in mantinum mines below the cities, prisoners would receive SPT (Self-contained Protective Thermoregulation) gear. They were ready to do anything for a chance to go back to factories at higher levels after a few shifts in hellish conditions.
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Many guards were redistributed to facilities of greater importance following the quarantine, and rioting convicts were able to break free. The cult formed shortly afterwards. An idol that came from the sky brought its teachings to the broken and the lost. In turn, they started converting the others.⠀
All cultists wear prison robes and SPT helmets. The initiated are allowed to wear full suits, decorated in the image of their messiah⠀
Division 102 frequents the archives in the wake an incident at the lower levels. OI (Organoid Intelligence) began disgorging tons of new information, including events that were yet to come, or could happen. ARC and APC (Autonomous Repair/Packing Construct) units ceased operating correctly and started rearranging the documentation repositories and endlessly expanding them – often on top of homes and administrative buildings.⠀
Men of Division 102 clip their papers to the uniforms as protective charms and keep the most precious ones in bakelite identification cases.MECH / ARM
Decommissioned heavy “Oprichnik” ARMs that fell out of use. They used to fill the hangars, unpainted and dust-covered, only to be occasionally activated for weapon tests and target practice.
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Now they serve the cult, purging infidels and protecting the idol from harm. Their thick armor and immense firepower erode the unbelievers’ morale and suppress resistance with their presence alone.