Colonial Marine Raiders

[Yellowjacket]

The Colonial Marine Raiders: A History & Timeline

by William T. Pace ‘Yellowjacket’ - Service Number: A03/TQ1.0.02153E1


PROLOGUE or a Rambling Preamble

. . .


Scene: A dingy, after hours classroom in a neighborhood rec center. Several middle-aged men sit about drinking coffee and eating plates of cornbread. A grizzled, white-bearded fellow wearing an old army parka (dyed brown) rises to his feet and makes his introductions.

. . .


“Hello, my name is William, and I’ve been a fan since first seeing Aliens at the ripe old age of 11. That’s right...I saw Aliens first.

It was at a Boy Scout winter retreat in February of 1982 and it was -20 degrees outside. 80+ scouts huddled into a huge, army surplus quonset hut at Camp Wapati and watched the crew of the Sulaco battle it out for survival. While the wind howled outside, we cheered every time an alien died...popcorn flying...whether a marine got killed or not.

I was hooked.

A few year later I saw Alien for the first time. I was all alone at one in the morning, curled up in a blanket, screaming “What the Hell...WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” over and over.

Yeah, still hooked.

I saw Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection in the theater and then quietly shelved the hobby and moved on to other things, thinking I had beat it. Thinking it was over and I could move on.

Then...on February 14th of 2010, after running a ‘Firefly’ themed, table top role-playing scenario (for a game I helped write and illustrate called ‘Universe’) I was approached by several players. We had just completed a no-win scenario...typical of the games I ran at Dundracon every year...when they asked me if I’d consider running an ‘Aliens’ game using the ‘Universe’ system.

There it was. My old obsession come back to tempt me.

I paused, quietly considered this wonderful, albeit lunatic request, and asked, “You want me to take xenomorphs...and pair them with the deadly combat rules of...Universe?”

The three fellows nodded with a kind of zealous, fever-born glee. I admit, I felt the fever too.

Still, I asked a second time, offering a warning. “You’ll get annihilated.”

“Yeah,’ they all said together, with that same fanatical smile of expectation.

I nodded and agreed. Next time at Dundracon.

The Colonial Marine Raiders were born.

Over the course of the next year I created art, history, new weapon variants, maps, and handcrafted chaos to throw into the mix. Never one to borrow too much from ‘one lane’, I leaned into early sketches and concepts from the Aliens film.

Just prior to Dundracon, I pitched an idea to my brother Drew, and enlisted his modeling talents. I thought it was high time someone modeled Ron Cobb’s original APC concept, which would give the players something new, but with a familiar vein, and Drew was just the person to make that happen. We carefully poured over every image we could find of the then unnamed APC, and it quickly came to life.

When Drew completed it, I knew ‘APC’ was too small a name for such a design. It just wouldn’t do. I gave it the military designation M579-D10 and the nickname ‘Razorback’. Little could I know then that both designations would become part of the fandom vernacular from that moment forward. Indeed, Drew’s model was so well received, that it was ‘borrowed’, copied and outright stolen, with dozens of modelers copying directly off his interpretation...but I’ve already talked about that elsewhere.

Once it was named and numbered, we built schematics, printouts and weapon stats, which were added to the pile of growing materials used at the convention in February.

Yeah, February again. February comes up a lot. Ironically, the ‘Marine Raiders’ (a special operations force originally established by the United States Marine Corps during World War II) were officially activated in February of 1942. I used their name and emblem as an homage when creating the Colonial Marine Raiders.

And...long story later...on February 19, 2011, the first Colonial Marine Raiders faced off against xenomorphs. I’m happy to report, they did good service and no one was left behind.”