Skulkin’ A Sea Fox with Author Jason Hansa

One of the Clans we’re going to see a lot more of in the ilClan era is Clan Sea Fox. These industrious spacefarers have seemingly taken over the Inner Sphere, replacing ComStar as the de-facto communications web thanks to their numerous interstellar dealings and have even replaced the telecommunications company’s common currency.

That said, we still don’t know a lot about Clan Sea Fox or how it operates. That’s set to change with some of the new stories coming out in the ilClan era, including the recently released A Skulk of Foxes by Jason Hansa. I had a chance to sit down with Jason and discuss what it was like bringing the Sea Foxes into the fore and why the Tiburon has thus far cemented itself as the quintessential Sea Fox ‘Mech.

Sean (Sarna): Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for Sarna and also specifically regarding your latest work, A Skulk of Foxes, which gives us a unique insight into Clan Sea Fox. They’re not entirely a new faction, but a faction that is growing significantly in influence in the ilClan era. 

It’s very interesting to see what they’re up to and how that’s going to change the Inner Sphere for better or for worse. So thank you very much. 

Jason Hansa: Well, thank you for having me, and thank you for everything you do on Sarna. You know, I read your articles and your interviews every month. I was very happy and honored to be offered the invite. 

Sean: Let’s start off with your BattleTech bonafides! What got you into BattleTech and how’d you get writing for Catalyst?

Jason: So, I started playing back in the fall of 1987 when my best friends introduced me to the game. I’m originally from Chicago, so there was a large player base there at the time. I played all through high school with some close friends, and then a little bit in the Army. I played a little bit in college with my brother and his friends, and then, when I re-entered the Army in 2001, I really didn’t play for a long time. It wasn’t until I moved to Virginia as my last duty station that I found a regular group and have been playing at least monthly for the past ten years or so.

I started writing while deployed in Afghanistan back in 2005, mailing stories into BattleCorps from the Bagram post office. It wasn’t until 2008-ish that my first story was accepted, and I’ve been writing since. I’ve written stories that have been accepted in Korea, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan (my second deployment there) and finally, from here in the US. I’m not sure if that’s a record among freelancers, but it has to be up there.

Sean: It sure sounds like a record! What kind of games do you play? And what BattleTech games do you play? 

Jason: I’ve played a lot of video games over the years, but I’ve eased off since 2010-ish or so as I kept deploying. My favorites, of course, were classics like Zelda, GoldenEye, X-Wing on PC, and Rogue Squadron on Nintendo. Back in Korea when I was a private, we used to play golf on Sega on Saturday nights listening to Meatloaf—good times! What I play mostly now is World of Warships, MechWarrior, and Overwatch on Xbox One; games I can play for a little bit before or after work. I just don’t have the time to play long campaign games, unfortunately. 

I played MechWarrior 1 way back in the day, but none up until MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. I loved the MechCommander games, and I will not lie, I really enjoyed MechAssault and MechAssault 2 on Xbox. My kids actually love MechAssault 2 as well, it and the cartoon really introduced them to the lore.

Sean: Man, I always hear about MechAssault fans, it’s a shame they don’t bring that series back.

Jason: Totally agree. It fills a fun, arcade niche that no other game really covers. “No think, just shoot!” Hahaha!

Sean: And of course, the all-important question: what’s your favorite ‘Mech?

Jason:  What’s funny about the ‘favorite ‘Mech’ question is I really don’t have one? I do like the Jackal because it was so important in a story, and it’s fun on the table. I do have a love for oddball mediums, like the Calliope and Komodo. But, at my local table, I’m known for just bringing whatever catches my eye in a PDF. I’ve played a lot of the ilKhan XTRO ‘Mechs, and in general, they are a ball to play. I just really like bringing stuff that doesn’t get a lot of time on tables; I took an Ishtar to an Alpha Strike tournament, for example. I will point out that I get tabled a lot, because when your opponents bring well-thought-out lists and you bring Scyllas and Lightrays… Well, just be realistic about the outcomes is all I’m saying!

Sean: Now that I’ve played some Alpha Strike, I do agree that there’s a bit of a meta for straight-up combat. I think I need to play more scenario stuff where all those letters in the special column actually matter more.

Jason: Totally agree. There have been some interesting experiments by tournament runners to make them matter to help shake up metas. I’m not nearly as good at Alpha Strike as Classic, and I don’t play competitively often. Mostly just throwing dice for fun.

Sean: Now for some questions about A Skulk of Foxes, your latest work, starting with the Tiburon. If I had a nickel for every time a Sea Fox protagonist piloted a Tiburon, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. So, why the Tiburon for your protagonist in A Skulk of Foxes? 

Jason: Well, two reasons. One is the obvious: because it’s a very classic Sea Fox ‘Mech. Number two, though, it’s one of half a dozen ‘Mechs I’ve actually designed. I guess this is probably for TRO 3145. 

Anyway, this is way back, probably like 2012. They asked writers if they would want to try their hand at designing ‘Mechs and vehicles. They had a whole list, and I pitched for the Tiburon. They had information about the ‘Mech, the things that were on the MechWarrior: Dark Age card, but other than that, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted with it.

One of the reasons why I put the Tiburon in there is because, yeah, I designed it. I haven’t designed many, not many at all, but that one is mine. I actually designed it while in Afghanistan with a pencil and paper looking at the TechManual PDF. I think that is why it has kind of an old-school feel to it where it runs a little cool.

It’s got full armor—it’s just a sturdy little beast. It doesn’t feel very Clan-like, and that’s because I was building it by hand with a pencil, not a lot of fancy tech on it, you know? 

Sean: I mean, it’s got some fancy tech. It’s got the Watchdog CEWS and a Targeting Computer.

Jason: It does, it does, because I could only put so many tons worth of weapons on it just because of the visual indicators. I’m like, well, what else can I stuff in here that takes tonnage? 

Sean: Fair. It also makes it really expensive for a light ‘Mech, which is very Sea Foxy. It’s different from every other Clan ‘Mech. Why don’t you walk us through the process of creating the Tiburon? 

Jason: As I said, the description of its speed was in the description that was part of the MWDA card list or whatever. And I believe the four lasers on the arms were mentioned and it had missile ports, which you could do anything you wanted from there.

And so I just kept kind of tinkering with it. If I were rebuilding it today, I’d probably knock off a heat sink or two and turn the missile launchers into Streaks just to give it the opportunity to do a little bit more damage for the trade-off on heat. But at that point, I hadn’t played a physical game of BattleTech in probably about a decade because of all the deployments and stuff. So, that’s why it’s a very cool-running ‘Mech. 

Now that I’ve had a lot of experience playing different ‘Mechs on the table, yeah, that’s probably a tweak I would do if I ever went back to it. 

Sean: Now we have the Tiburon. I think the only way we can get a Tiburon mini is through Iron Wind Metals right now, but hopefully, they bring that one back. 

Jason: I have a copy of the metal one. I haven’t built it because I’ve heard it’s a beast. Like, you’re building every finger and toe individually from what people told me—it’s sharp. There should be a new plastic Tiburon in a ForcePack in 2026 sometime. 

Sean: We just gotta be patient, as with everything. But we’ll move on to the next question I have here for you. Why the Screaming Eagles specifically for A Skulk of Foxes? What makes this merc unit special enough in order to be updated for the ilClan era? And same question for Simonson’s Cutthroats, which used to be McGee’s Cutthroats.

Jason: And they’re back to McGee’s.

Sean: Right! They are!

Jason: Yep! Colonel Emma-Clair McGee was the daughter of Edward McGee, the descendant of the unit’s original commanding officer. So yep, they’re back. 

Sean: Well then, we need to get this updated ’cause Sarna is out of date. Anyway, same question for McGee’s Cutthroats. Why bring these two mercenary units back in to duke it out a bit for Skulk of Foxes? 

Jason: McGee’s cutthroats are a little bit easier. I believe they were mentioned in something. I was asked to bring them in and to change it from Simonson’s Cutthroats back to McGee’s to kind of go back to its classic roots.

So for the Screaming Eagles. I’ve been playing since the eighties, which meant that the Fourth Succession War was kind of my introduction to the lore. I’d gotten TRO: 3025, the Merc Handbook, and then Cranston Snord’s Irregulars, and then straight into the Fourth Succession War, and I always thought what happened to the Screaming Eagles was interesting. It just kind of sticks in your brain what happened to them way back then with the other war crimes. And so fast forwarding to today when I was making the pitch for A Skulk of Foxes—which wasn’t named that yet—it was the Screaming Eagles story. It was to sit there and show their rise back to where they were. 

A lot of people are doing wonderful things with small units, and I’m not as good with that. You kind of got to play to your strengths; I’m very much a battalion-and-larger-size guy. A lot of my stuff is about the Light Horse—just battalions crashing into each other. A lot of people have done these units where they’ve either restarted or they’re rising up; the Gray Death Legion is a great example and pretty much anything Michael Stackpole writes, and then of course a lot of stuff that Bryan Young is writing. 

But this was different. This is a unit that’s been around forever, but it’s disgraced. How can they rise back up to prominence? A comeback story! Everyone loves a good comeback story.

That was kind of how I pitched it; they’re still alive, they’re still out there, and it would be interesting to show a unit that’s barely clinging on after centuries of warfare. Trying to make their name good again.

Sean: I believe Colonel Hokala gets a King Crab in the story pretty early on as a sort of signing bonus for taking on the Clan Sea Fox contract. Why the King Crab for Colonel Hokala? 

Jason: Because I messed up.

Sean: Oh, okay? 

Jason: I was sitting there going through Sarna and the various books and saw that King Crabs were made on Son Hoa by StarCorps, but then it turned out that the King Crab line had moved. Originally it made a lot of sense because they’re produced there, but the story was already nearly written when I found out, so I’m like, you know what? It’s still awesome. I’m gonna keep it. 

I’d also already suggested it for the cover. I think it’s a great cover image. 

Sean: I think so. I was wondering if it was also maybe a MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries reference. Or maybe you just like King Crabs?

Jason: Well, I do love King Crabs on the table—they are solid little beasts! But no, in this case, it made sense at the time. I try to make all my stories make sense, both canonically and to not give Fact Check heartaches.

Sean: Alright next up, we’re going to talk a little bit about how Clan Sea Fox operates. You introduce a position for Janelle, the main character, called Merchant Commander. It really blurs the line between the warrior caste and the merchant caste, which Clan Sea Fox has done a lot, but it also kind of makes it a little confusing to see where a Merchant Commander would actually fit. So, how exactly does Merchant Commander fit into the traditional Clan military hierarchy?

Jason: They are below warriors, above merchants. So they’re in between, like a warrant officer. Like in a military, you’ve got your officers, you’ve got your NCOs, and you’ve got these warrant officers—they’re kind of like their own weird creatures. They’re above NCOs but they still have to salute officers. 

It’s pretty distinct, and I tried to make sure that it was clear in the story. Technically Aiden does outrank Janelle because even though he’s an intelligence agent, he is still a warrior and she’s a Merchant Commander sliding in underneath them.

Sean: Although in the story, Aiden does seem to take orders from Janelle, that could just be the convenience of the situation.

Jason: And his experience—they both need each other to do their jobs. 

I did not create Merchant Commanders. That was created in a TRO or a sourcebook or something. I’m not sure exactly where it came from, but I was allowed to flesh it out. I was given a very basic idea of what they were and then told, “Run with it.”

I think they’re really neat. I think it gives an interesting and unique aspect to Clan Sea Fox that none of the other Clans have at this point. A lot of this book is oriented towards showing player characters what life could be like for their own tables and being a merchant that can also jump into a ‘Mech.

Sean: Let’s move on to an interesting economic topic. Bearer bonds are mentioned in A Skulk of Foxes, which I thought was funny. First of all, it’s a bit of a Die Hard reference, but it’s also interesting in that it gets at how commerce is performed in the ilClan era in the absence of a functioning HPG network.

In our current reality, bearer bonds are illegal because they are too easily used for illegal activity (sort of like how Bitcoin is used today). Instead, banks were legally required to check and verify sources, but you can only do that when there’s a working communications network.

Is there a better way of transferring funds in the year 3150? Or are bearer bonds really the best way to take the money and run, as it were?

Jason: I think there are probably better ways. This was actually a discussion that me, a couple of writers, and Fact Check were having; how do you transport or manage large amounts of money? When the HPGs are gone, how do you convince another bank to accept your money? “Please accept this credit card,” you know? 

This is kind of good for the story and it establishes something for player characters without completely defining the banking system of the ilClan era which I didn’t really want to go deep into—whether they are using verified credit cards or data chips or crystals etched with money, I don’t know. But bearer bonds work because it makes sense; you have a couple of bearer bonds for a couple of million Sea Bills or 10 million Sea Bills, or whatever it happens to be, and if you’re going between bank branches that have a working relationship and recognize Clan bearer bonds… It seemed to be the right compromise between possible and sensible since she was trying to take the money and run.

It’s a fascinating question: how does a mercenary unit get paid when the banks are down? And how do they take that money if they get a new employer? That’s also why I showed the rare earth jewelry. Because diamonds are relatively common in the universe, so what do you use as jewelry to show wealth? What do you use as a precious stone? A bag full of diamonds might be worth something on some planets, but certainly not all.

I was trying to also introduce to players what to look for if they’re going to knock off a bank. 

Sean: It is an excellent question about how mercenaries get paid. Galatea is the main mercenary hub in the ilClan era, but a lot of those mercenaries have taken off to the Hinterlands. How do they go from Galatea to the Hinterlands and still have the cheques clear?

Jason: There you go. This is a solution. Fox Credits may be accepted Inner Sphere-wide now, but it’s a solution if you are running maybe on the shadier side of business.

Sean: And Sea Foxes are just fine with the shady side of business too.

Jason: I do want to mention that this was fact-checked and approved. I did bounce it off a couple of people and the editor has read my story.

Sean: There’s no question that this was approved. I just felt that bearer bonds were somewhat anachronistic, but they work here because of the HPG blackout.

Jason: Well, BattleTech is future ‘80s. 

Sean: Speaking of that future ‘80s, there are huge cyberpunk references in A Skulk of Foxes! There are corporations hiring mercenaries, shadow operatives doing clandestine operations, and at least one woman who seems completely chromed-out from top to bottom. Do you think of BattleTech as a cyberpunk setting? Should there always be at least one super-chromed-out character per novel?

Jason: I think there’s definitely an undercurrent of cyberpunk in BattleTech. I mean, it’s more cassette punk, but there’s a lot of noir and stuff like that. I definitely see a hard line between BattleTech and Shadowrun. 

Shadowrun is hardcore cyberpunk, but I see there’s a middle ground in there. Mika was built using the A Time of War Companion rules. So everything about Mika is legal. I’m kind of pushing it to the absolute edge of what is possible, but she cost about two and a half million C-bills to build. So no, not every novel should have a Mika. 

I really wanted to show a lot of intelligence stuff because it’s 80 years past the Jihad. Every spy agency took apart every Word of Blake sleeper agent they found to see how they worked. So I was really trying to show readers and players that tech is out there now.

Besides the fact I really enjoyed writing this part, I wanted to show players what life is like if you have to deal with intelligence agencies in the ilClan era because there hasn’t been an intelligence sourcebook written in a while. And the vibe you should get is that if an intelligence agency has its eyes set on you, you’ll probably die. You need to run. You are way out of your league. They’re using every trick in the book.

I mean, even SAFE gets a win in this book! They are all playing at levels above what we’ve seen in the past. And if your player characters run into one, you’re in trouble. You’re in over your head. 

Sean: Yeah, a two-million C-bill murder machine that can also play off as literally anyone is pretty sketched.

Jason: That is also for the players. On your table, you can 100 percent now have BattleTech Secret Wars.

Sean: I mean, we’re kind of heading into that sort of territory in our current reality. I guess that’s kind of good to touch on in our fiction, too.

Jason: It’s different than Word of Blake stuff where they had sleeper agents. Now you can literally have anybody pretending to be anybody else, provided they have a couple of million C-Bills to spare. The key line of that scene is, “I’ve had a kit built to duplicate you since you first landed.” That’s the part that readers and players characters should be like, “Oh my God, this is terrifying.”

Sean: Alright, so we had a Die Hard reference with the bearer bonds, we have a bunch of cyberpunk themes, what other references did I miss in the story?

Jason: There’s the Lyran academy and weaning process, that comes out of the Field Manual: Lyran Alliance. Spoilers ahead for anybody who hasn’t read the book, but I was really happy with the twist involving ilKhan Ward—you know, what does he have to do with it? I was doing a lot of research and found out there actually was a Retrotech plant in the Confederation on the planet Ward during the Jihad. They shut down in 3090 or something, so canonically, this little red herring really worked. 

That’s about it. I think the bad guy was a character from the first original Kickstarter. They wanted to be a business magnate and they wanted to be a villain if they could and it’s okay to kill them. And I’m like, “Another satisfied customer.”

Sean: Yeah, that was a pretty repugnant character. Definitely got their money’s worth.

Jason: I hope they’re happy. I was really happy to find that. I’m like, “Oh my God, I have to use this guy.”

Sean: That’s it for A Skulk of Foxes, so now we’re moving on to some general questions.

Your works have spanned every era of BattleTech, from the Star League to the ilClan era with some pit stops in the Succession Wars, Clan Invasion, and Jihad. Which era do you think is the most fun or exciting to write in? 

Jason: I am having a lot of fun right now. A Skulk of Foxes was tricky in some ways because the sourcebooks are, you know, you’re building the plane in flight, but there’s nothing ahead of me. A lot of times I have to make sure my stories fit into established limits and it’s exciting to kind of play without a net, you know, to be the first one into new territories, like in The Martian where he’s like, “No one’s ever stepped on this mountain before.” I’m writing about worlds and units and stuff like that, this is all unexplored space.

It’s easier to write in other eras that are time-locked, like the Dark Age. Now that there’s kind of an end to it, with the dates and times and worlds and battles being established, it gets easier to write those eras.

I have a lot of fun playing wherever. So I’m not really sure if there’s any particular era that I like more than most. But the now is exciting. 

Sean: You mentioned when we were talking about the Tiburon that you designed a couple of other ‘Mechs. What other ‘Mechs have you designed and do you have a personal favorite? 

Jason: Well, I was allowed to create the Jinggau variants. It came out in Shrapnel 12 and I’m super excited about it. I really love it when people use the Jinggau in MegaMek and are like, “Oh my god, this thing’s a monster.”

How I started writing for BattleTech was BattleCorps ran a unique ‘Mech contest where they took in submissions for about 10 or 12 different ‘Mechs and everybody wrote in variants. You were limited to how much you could customize them, writing custom variants with about 500 words a story, and the judges picked the best five or so entries, put them up on BattleCorps and the members of BattleCorps would vote. I won three of them, which was ridiculous. I’m super proud of those.

The Daikyu Tabitha and a Hercules Walker are both just really unique ‘Mechs that also play nice on the table. I’m really happy about that. I think that’s about it that I created. I didn’t write the Tiburon up, but I wrote other ones, and of them, my favorite is the Phalanx tank, you know, because I turned this terrible piece of junk into a city buster that actually works really well. You’re shooting at buildings with a minus-four to hit; it tears them apart. It’s an amazing city killer/bunker buster. So that’s one of my favorite write-ups.

I didn’t design the Calliope, but I did the write-up for it, and I love taking that on the table. It’s not good against fighting ‘Mechs, but against vehicles and infantry, it’s a stone-cold killer. I love it. 

Sean: I think I remember the Calliope. That’s a Magistracy ‘Mech, yeah? 

Jason: It’s a Magistracy ‘Mech with an MML-9 and a Plasma Rifle, yeah.

Sean: Kind of seems like an overgrown Valkyrie, but I dig it. I will definitely get one when I get my Magistracy of Canopus unit going. 

We got a couple of questions from our Discord folks. First one I have here; given that Innocent, and Defenseless ended on a kind of cliffhanger in the Mercenary Tales series, is there any chance of a sequel? 

Jason: Absolutely. I would love to get back to that. I had a lot more I had planned to write because I thought it was going to be a novella. I was sketching out my outline for the novella and they’re like, “No, 10,000 words tops.” I kind of knocked off the beginning and the end, and to make it, I took the middle part—the most exciting part—and then kind of fleshed that out from one small scene to an entire battle. 

But yes, when I have a moment to finish the rest of the Wars of Reaving novel, I would love to get back to that because I know exactly who did it and why.

Sean: All right, we’ll circle back to that War of Reaving novel too. You’ve written about a lot of mercenary units. We’ve already discussed McGee’s Cutthroats and the Screaming Eagles. You’ve done a lot on the Eridani Light Horse. Do you have a particular favorite mercenary unit? 

Jason: I definitely liked the Light Horse. Like I said, one of my first books was Cranston Snord’s Irregulars, so I have a sweet spot in my heart for that old 3025-era Snord’s where their ‘Mechs are still broken down or listening to Elvis. And obviously the Light Horse, I’ve written about three of the four regiments and I really want to write a 19th story.

Lindon’s Battalion—company, battalion, regiment, back down to battalion—one of my characters was part of Lindon’s Battalion in the unique mix, and that was always one of my favorite units. I just thought they were a really neat and interesting group.

I’m just kind of into non-traditional merc units. I really love the Illician Lancers and the Lexington Combat Group, just like these multi-regimental forces that just were holding the line back in the 3025 to 3030 years. 

Sean: Here’s another one from the Discord: what is the secret to writing a good Clanner? 

Jason: Just because they don’t use contractions doesn’t mean you can’t express tone. They don’t have to necessarily sound like a robot. They don’t have to sound like they’re translating into English as a second language. You can get across a lot of language, tone, and meaning in Clan characters.

Number one is to get the dialogue, right. Number two is to remember that they have a completely alien outlook on life and sometimes that aligns with the Inner Sphere morals and values and a lot of times it doesn’t. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Clan characters are good or bad or somewhere in between, it just means that they’re characters—that they’re people.

Keeping their background in mind when writing them will help hone them and shape them into characters that people and readers will really care about. 

Sean: That’s very good. 

Jason: That was a tough one.  I took a moment to think about it.

Sean: Alright, next was a question regarding your short story, Three Points of Pride, which I actually have referenced on a t-shirt. 

Jason: I have that same shirt!

Sean: For those unaware, the story recounts the Trial of Possession Clan Ghost Bear fought against the defenders of the Rasalhague planet Sheliak. However, the Sheliak forces didn’t have an actual garrison, so they challenged the Bears to a game of American football. They were crushed because they didn’t know about Elementals.

What was it like to play so far outside of BattleTech‘s usual genre and write a story about a football game? 

Jason: It was fun. It was absolutely a ball because I had to make it plausible.

I try to write all my stories so that none of my characters are dumb. They might be out of their league, they might make mistakes, but they’re not stupid. They’re very good at whatever they’re doing, whether they’re military officers or, in this case, professional football players. They know they’re getting crushed, but they’re not bad players—they’re just totally outclassed. 

I researched a lot of trick plays to find what would actually work. Cause I’m like, how did they get those three points? I’m really incredibly proud of the idea that the Clanners are winning because they’re just incredible athletes and are decent players, and that if the professionals were just a little bit stronger and faster, the professionals would have torn through them. Or if they’d been playing against the AeroSpace pilots or something, they 100 percent would have won the game. 

It was just fun. I can’t believe that Jason Schmetzer accepted it. And I want to say he published it the same day of that year’s Rose Bowl. BattleTech needs stories like that every so often.

That’s what I really love about Shrapnel; it’ll be like story, story, story, story, then, “What the heck is this?” And then story, story, story, story. Phil is doing a great job of curating for readers, and writers are doing a great job of sending those one-offs in. They don’t always work, but I think BattleTech is big enough for all sorts of stories. It’s big enough for espionage novels, it’s big enough for Craig Reed‘s Shadow of a Dragon, which is very much like a detective noir story. It’s big enough for football stories too. That’s one of the great things about writing in this universe.

Sean: Now let’s get back to that Wars of Reaving novel you mentioned. Is that your next project? 

Jason: It is. As part of the Kickstarter, three Wars of Reaving novels were commissioned. It’s a trilogy that has some overlap, but they’re three very unique books. Theoretically, you wouldn’t even have to read them in order. You probably should, but Craig’s is up first, I’ve got the middle piece, and then Phil Lee has got the ending. We’ve been posting them on a shared drive so each of us can see each other’s work and cross-talk, sitting there saying, “Can you tweak this planet to this planet ‘cause it feeds better into my story?” Stuff like that. And their stories are great. I think the readers are going to really enjoy this trilogy. 

Obviously, we can’t cover it all; any one page of the sourcebook could be a novel’s worth of story. It’s just the sourcebook for Wars of Reaving is so dense and there’s so much going on and so traumatic. So, yeah, the guys are absolutely at the top of their game. I’m trying to make sure I clear the bar that they’re setting.

Sean: And when do you think we could look forward to seeing one of these books? 

Jason: I believe they’re supposed to come out next year, but don’t hold me to that because there’s just so much stuff going on. 

Sean: Fair enough. Now let’s get to my favorite part of the interview, where I get to ask a truly absurd question. You’re tasked with creating a species of alien that could be the Sea Fox equivalent of a pirate’s parrot. What does the species look like, and can it talk? 

Jason: So a Sea Fox equivalent of a pirate’s parrot? 

Sean: Yep. 

Jason: I had an idea way back for a book I was writing where they had a sea otter on board because when the ship was in zero-G, it could sit there and just kick off the walls because zero gravity is very much like the ocean currents. So I think it would be some sort of small otter-like creature that would be sitting on your shoulder. And I think it would just be funny if it could mimic like a parrot, but probably mostly sits there and whistles and chirps and makes cute little otter noises and smashes things on his belly.

An otter or some other sort of aquatic mammal would do really well in zero gravity, which is where most Sea Foxes really live. 

Sean: I actually went to the zoo recently, so I got to see how river otters just constantly zoom around underwater. 

Jason: If you imagine a sea otter or a river otter just going up the passageways of a ship, just kicking off, flying around the bridge, and then curling up on their favorite person’s lap or something like that. I think visually it works, but I guess you could genetically modify some porpoises to do the same thing.

Sean: That’d be fun. 

Jason: And they would have to talk. 

Sean: Absolutely. And talk loudly and possibly directly into your brain. 

Jason: Exactly. And they would be annoying. Like otters would be cute. I think porpoises would just be really like, cute. 

Sean: Alright, well, that’s all the questions I had. Is there anything else you want to talk about? Or is there anything else that’s coming up that you wanted to get the word out on? 

Jason: I don’t think so. A Skulk of Foxes is out and I’m working on the Wars of Reaving novel.

After that, I’d like to write some Shrapnel stuff again. In the questions you asked earlier, I mentioned I play with a local group every other Saturday, and it’s just a fun time to be both a player and a writer. But I also don’t know what’s going on with the sourcebooks—I don’t get preview copies or anything like that—so when they drop, I’m sitting on my couch with a cold beer curled up with a book just like everybody else. It’s a super exciting time to be involved in the game.

A lot of people have been kind of discovering my stories and anthologies, and so it’s been really great talking on Discord and meeting new fans, you know? They’re like, “Oh my god, you’re Hansa!” and I’m like, yeah. Everyone confuses my stuff with Jason Schmetzer and Jason Hardy. A lot of Jasons around here.

So to everybody who’s recently come across my stuff and to all my longtime fans—all three of you—thank you. Thank you to all the fans and readers. 

Sean: And thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for Sarna. Looking forward to hearing more about the Wars of Reaving novels! 

Jason: Thanks for having me. 

Look for Jason Hansa to return in the upcoming Wars of Reaving novels, and you can find him under JHansa on Discord.

And as always, MechWarriors: Stay Syrupy.