Legionnaire

[viscid wraith]

manipulation or provocation of unshackled NHPs into more complex realspace interactions
they tried to shoot them didn't they

[teal cliff]

That'd be coercion

[surreal owl]

Thanks for going over this! Dragonkid is a pillar of the Lancer community, whom many watch and subscribe to, so the conversion rates from their video make sense (it happened for me too when they covered my project 🙏). I totally agree that if it’s possible to market stuff in front of a known Lancer-friendly audience, it’ll have a much stronger return

[ivory jetty]

Ditto, thank you for sharing! I strongly agree that 'who' is much more important than 'how many'.... but that has a dark side in encouraging all of the demographic tracking stuff social media sites do. The best possible version of that are genuine shoutouts from people who have cultivated an appropriate opt-in audience like dragonkid has done.

[robust shadow]

https://www.tumblr.com/arjuna-vallabha/159047618497

shoutout

[teal abyss]

imagine being slain and then having to serve that jerkass as he goes and gets himself made king and then slays an even bigger dragon

[ivory jetty]

Is that not basically the plot of pokemon games from the pokemon perspective

[teal cliff]

if I had a nickel for how many times legionnaire chat shifted to pokemon, I'd have 2 nickels, but its still weird that it happened twice

[teal abyss]

...you're not wrong

[solid parrot]

How weird is it though

[teal cliff]

like 4 weird

[solid parrot]

One is about beings with incredible power being put in small spaces to help the player characters in battle, and the other is a setup for a classic bait and switch joke.

Also I imagine the girl reading this population of this server trends very heavily to ages that grew up with the cultural monolith of Pokemon prevalent in their childhoods.

[teal cliff]

always thought it was suspect to utilize an entity that can generate a strength 9 earthquake in order to solve a minor personal dispute

The entire coastal seabord just underwater and the kid makes a couple bucks

[lost sigil]

anyone have resources / suggestions for an NHP name generator / pool of names?

[uneven sedge]

As in individual names for the NHPs or like broader Class names?

[novel ocean]

Kai posted NHP naming conventions here: #lore-and-worldbuilding message

[fickle marten]

Note that does appear to only be for naval NHPs, so certainly isn't exhaustive. There are other conventions implied elsewhere in lore. I'm personally rather fond of making names in the same vein as Prudent Interval (mentioned in the Sparri lore in the core book).

[lost sigil]

just got out of session, but i was asking about individual NHP names, and ideally ones that Deimosians gave themselves rather than their shackled names.

[teal abyss]

An issue here is that names are so phenomenally varied you need some way of cutting down the pool a bit

is there some sort of broader narrative theme or role to the character? what's their personality like? etc

[lost sigil]

That makes a lot of sense, and maybe there isn't a good answer to my question.

I've got this free deimosian haven in my game and a lot of the main NHPs I pick out names that just feel right, but I needed to generate a few random background NHPs on the spot and found myself struggling to give them appropriate names.

[teal abyss]

I guess a really quick and dirty shortcut might be to google lists of names that are also regular words, which should give you something that has a consistent but still-diverse vibe

[plucky brook]

...I need to doublecheck if NHPs only appeared in Union or if non-Union places found out about them when they were first sighted.

[teal abyss]

To my knowledge we don't have any direct evidence of that, but that's not to say it hasn't happened

[teal abyss]

the Elektrodaimonium flashpoint is all about exploring that idea

[robust shadow]

wrt earlier shit, currently working on a horizon collective homebrew manufacturer lol

i got some cool shit so far tho very early stages

don't think i have enough to show in homebrew design yet

[surreal owl]

(I’ll keep an eye out for this; curious on what others’ takes are on what Horizon would value in a mech license)

[robust shadow]

my take is edef/tech defense/antitech shit

also antimemetics cuz we NEED an antimemetics frame

[surreal owl]

(I’ve low key been trying to make some “factional NPC builds” using only the Lancer core Rulebook so this perspective is helpful, thank you!)

[robust shadow]

so far i got:

• a goilem themed sort of alt-gorgon (not actually alt tho, license) that has reactive tech attacks instead of weapon attacks
• a high mobility thrown weapon weaver-themed mech/license with throwing needles and core integrated grappleblade
• an attack-reflector/nullifier math-themed mech/license with like, spatial asymptotic and parabolic armor
• an antimemetic stealth mech/license themed around like assassination and NHP extraction
• scary spacesuit guy

[north roost]

scary spacesuit guy
Yeeeeessss

[robust shadow]

a must have

[plucky brook]

I'd be a hair careful with Golem theming. Major cultural thing. I stepped through a lot of hoops on that front with the Solomon.

[robust shadow]

notably, none of the mechs have NHP systems, but are flavored around being designed by NHPs, or collaborations between NHPS and humans

i'm jewish

i got it handled lol

[plucky brook]

Cool cool!

(Sorry, just one that comes up a bit)

[north roost]

space suit guys are my aesthetic

[robust shadow]

yea igyy
yea i'm being very careful to keep the goilem true to its narrative(s)

gonna name the mechs after cities or locations famous for or related to the themes

so chelm for the goilem
shiprock for the weaver
cairo for the mathematician
ojai for the antimemetic
baikonur for the scary spacesuit guy

[north roost]

one thing I will note is that actual core lancer actually tends to be pretty light on the like, theming

[robust shadow]

i also wanna reference heavily/have integration legionnaire so i gotta talk to kat abt that at some point

yea i'm not going too overboard with it

[north roost]

one of my chronic problems doing homebrew is I go too hard on the thematic for the name I've picked and have to pull it back after lol

[robust shadow]

that's why i'm doing like cities/locations cuz they feel a little more general

at one point i was doing famous communists but that was a little too specific in terms of theming

oh i was also thinking of taking inspiration from iain banks given the culture is a society created as a result of the liberation of ai/ship minds, and special circumstances (and, by extension, destiny guardians) being valuntary partnerships between humans and nonhuman intelligences

[robust shadow]

oh haha wait i know of a good addition to this. memetic weapons + memetic weapon talent (with explicit text ruling out mimic gun gaining that type)

[plucky brook]

I'm not sure there's enough memetic weapons for a full on talent.

Like what would you even have at LL0 if you made that one of your starting talents?

[robust shadow]

oh i was just gonna make some lol

i mean yea true, but u could always just not have it be a talent u wanna take at LL0. i'm just spitballing rn anyhow tho i'll work it out

it would be something to make horizon licenses special anyway

could prob add a couple to exotic and base gear tho

i should prob take this to homebrew design at this point also i'm clogging the damn chat lol

[north roost]

Isn't Memetic a tag and not a type?

[plucky brook]

I also feel like a good area for future expansion would be the mechanical area of NPCs being able to mess back at PC NHP/Legion stuff.

Legions do punch the crap out of each other after all.

[robust shadow]

yeeee

nah it's a type, not a tag

a type with inherent traits tho, unless that is retconned for player side stuff, tho it could always be balanced around having inherent traits

one memetic weapon i was thinking of is basically a modified vorpal gun called the bandersnatch fang that deals no damage but instead invades targets it attacks (using tech attack, hitting edef) and works in the same fashion as a vorpal gun does

[robust shadow]

i'm gonna move to homebrew now

[teal abyss]

This sounds super fun! I hope you're able to find a consistent mechanical identity; one of the problems a lot of homebrew manufacturers have is carving out a space that's sufficiently distinct from the H/A/S/E theming of IPSN/SSC/HORUS/HA. I think this is why I prefer alt frames or collaborations with existing manufacturers (like the RKF frames we've got so far)

I'm big on there being more Horizon stuff!

[plucky brook]

Oh Kat, speaking of which: Did I ever show you the art for the Horizon mech I got done ages ago?

[teal abyss]

I'm not sure! Please post it 🙂

[plucky brook]

Nuclear Angel Mech without that 'humanoid' edge that a lot of human-designed mechs have.

(Also as a bit of a counterpart to the more Demonic edge HORUS mechs have)

[teal abyss]

very cool! I like the nuclear semiotics reference

[robust shadow]

oh thats fucking sick

[plucky brook]

I was so happy with the 'Nuclear Warning Symbol Halo' Moid put together for it.

[robust shadow]

yea i'm mainly going full manufacturer cuz i want to make weapons and systems that fit with mech themes too

also bc realistically none of the big players wanna collab with horizon lol

[teal abyss]

here's a suggestion for theming, famous abolitionists? since you're doing Horizon

[robust shadow]

yea i was doing both

[teal abyss]

and yes happy to be DMed for Legionnaire references/integration (that's a blanket statement if anyone else was thinking of it)

[robust shadow]

but wound up scrapping in favor of cities since it was too specific and felt a little too book-worship-y

^_^

i will def do so once i have more of this thing worked out lol

[plucky brook]

I've got a corp sitting about that's got some Horizon Links, though they're a bit backburnered. XD

[robust shadow]

i gotta do my fuckin...finals lol

oh cool

i'd love to take a gander at those

[robust shadow]

add to this lishan for drone swarm guy and providence for heat eater guy

[plucky brook]

Sure, I'll toss them in Homebrew Design as I don't think Kat wants me just dumping homebrew here XD

[robust shadow]

o

whoops!

[teal abyss]

thanks yes 😅

[robust shadow]

well it's in homebrew also LOL

[teal abyss]

I don't mind as such unless it takes over the entire thread, but you'll get better feedback there I think

[plucky brook]

Yeah and I think I'd be kinda 'not doing my job' as mod if I let someone's thread get taken over by my own rambling 😛

[robust shadow]

unless it takes over the entire thread
😅😅😅😅😅

[teal abyss]

Actually on this note I should mention a thing I am considering*, which is that my next project will include some player mechs. In order to get them written and playtested in a timely manner, I am considering sourcing (paid) submissions from the community. So I guess keep your eyes open for if that becomes a thing.

*Disclaimer: this is in the early stages of thinking through and may not get off the ground

[robust shadow]

oooo

whatchu thinking abt wrt theming for that project? unless that's classified lol

[teal abyss]

Well, I don't want to commit to anything just yet but I was thinking of writing something set in the Baronies, so I'd be looking for RKF alt frames

[robust shadow]

nice nice

[teal abyss]

This is one of those things that I look at and go "well I know I'm a good designer, but holy hell if I start including player mechs in projects their scope and the amount of effort involved on my part balloons outside my relatively-limited capability" which is why Legionnaire purposefully kept to player options that I knew I could effectively playtest in the timeframe of its writing/release

But yes, big big disclaimer that this is just one of the potential projects I'm looking at, and may never actually happen

[plucky brook]

Yeah, doing a New Corp is just a god damn lot of extra work.

[teal abyss]

Yeah, the sad fact of the matter is that I can simply no longer put that much work in even if I wanted to. My burnout threshold is substantially lower, and I am entirely unable to focus for the length of time needed to work at a normal pace. Legionnaire basically broke me, even though I spent a great deal of time structuring and planning things to accommodate for disability. Writing is a thing I love and it's endlessly frustrating that I have to pace myself.

But on the other hand it does mean I have learned to establish reasonable boundaries around what what I'm capable of doing and be disciplined about scope control, which ultimately worked out pretty well for the project. Plus, it'd be a good way to get community engagement and give some folks with good homebrew ideas a way to get those in front of people without having to also put in the huge amount of ancillary work that would go into a full homebrew release, like writing, art, project management, marketing etc.

There are a lot of cool people doing cool Lancer things and I firmly believe there should just be more of that in general

[teal abyss]

Unrelated: whoa we blitzed past 500 community copies claimed while I wasn't looking, that's super neat

[robust shadow]

omg

[smoky spear]

Niiice

[remote blade]

Congrats!

[wary lava]

Yay!

[glacial ember]

First off, this is a super cool idea, I think that's a great way to add a lot more content without overburdening yourself and allowing people who can't commit to all the things a full release requires to still show their content.

Second, yeah I love the design side of things and creating cool ideas, but man the fleshing out and the actual writing of it is such a slog cause writing is so painful for my brain. Ugh.

[serene brook]

Question about data dart, if I have a negative tech bonus that does effect my attacks with it?

[plucky brook]

I believe so. It's entirely a 'Doing Tech Attacks vs Evasion' thing.

With all the strengths and limitations of that

[serene brook]

Yeah I just reread it and I misremembered, I thought it said using your systems bonus but it says tech bonus

[teal abyss]

Yes. Sadly while the fixed range is useful for some frames that are bad at tech attacks, it still doesn't overcome every negative of the frame - so for example it's still better on like, a Balor than it is on a Caliban.

[serene brook]

Yeah I was hoping to use it and make the hacker vlad of my dreams but I understand

[teal cliff]

Just gotta back low e Def targets, then the negative is less significant!

[sleek monolith]

OH MAN

I'm excited

I have time to finish reading legionaire cover to cover today

[stoic moth]

You can still put it on a Vlad! You just gotta pump up tech. Same as if you were invading. Maxed out Systems still gives you +4 to hit which is better than what you could get with grit at LL6

[teal abyss]

Tell us what you think! I'm always interested to hear what grabs people's attention

[north roost]

having finally gotten the change to sit down and burn through the worlbuilding section at the front uh... yeah excellent job making the implications of things feel pervasively uncomfortable!

lots of "Wait. That's... Hmmm. Don't like that, nope. That's a bad." moments in there

(I am like 99.9% sure this was the intended vibe.)

[plucky brook]

Nah, I think Kat wanted to tell us 'Things are great with NHPs and don't require any further examination' 😛

[teal abyss]

pay no attention to the legacy of fascism behind the curtain

[polar pagoda]

The current situation with nhps is fiiiine there’s nothing wrong with the situation and horizon is simply delusional (I am a terrible and evil liar)

[leaden pine]

So true bestie!

[sleek monolith]

Well,
1st: you've actually convinced me between your author's explanation and the text itself to change my mind about hard cycling. In fact I included it last night as part of a mystery. An NHP who had lost all memory and been hard cycled so many times even its personality was "damaged"

2nd: I really liked the the idea of how legionspace is simplified for human observers, and added a new detail for myself. Most NHP are quite individual, so I give them these "normal" avatars when observed by humans. As my most recent example, (wallflower part 2 draft spoilers) ||I described Heirophant 3 as this emo-fasion girl sitting in a dingy basement in front of a large tv in a bean bag chair. She holds a gameboy that is somehow playing cities skylines. This is to represent how H3 doesnt really care about anything except running the best city she can. The tv is playing 80s style slice of life anime based on citizens she likes||

3rd: I find the priorities chapter super helpful. However, and this is just because my party keeps liberating adopting random nhp NPCs in my game, I do so desperately wish there was also tips on how to create new nhp abilities. THOUGH AND TO BE FAIR I understand that is outside the scope of things and is better asked in homebrew design if I really need help

[teal abyss]

very cool, ||I hope your players appreciate H3||

[north roost]

NHPs are like anime waifus that will talk back to you 🤔

[sleek monolith]

This actually did give them a "wait, nhp are people? Wait. Shes unshackled?? Have we been like, lied to about shackling?"

[teal abyss]

excellent

[sleek monolith]

I'm not saying that they have unshackled all but one of their NHP (their ship NHP made a firm choice that she likes who she is at current, and is afraid of the change) and are on the run from Union for fear of this act.... but I'm not saying they didn't and aren't on a trip to the long rim either

[tiny violet]

me: nhp has people in the name

[teal cliff]

xD hey its one thing to cognitively know it and another for connotations to click

[mellow vigil]

I am bad at making myself read, but what I've read so far of the lore is really great. I wish my nhp specialist character could mesh better with the talents in the book though. Alas, he is striker mc sekhmet

[spiral shoal]

Read this and love it. I'm using it to help figure out the relationship between my PC and their Osiris copilot, and how they as a devoted Union auxiliary who wants to join a liberator brigade and a bonafide Horus gremlin and a radical revolutionary think and act towards NHPs.

Especially 'cause they've found themselves, ah

shackled to an Osiris

[teal abyss]

that sounds complicated!

[sleek monolith]

So, for one of my groups, our campaign fizzled due to absences and my lack of interest of running sessions that are 3-4 months apart.

so, reorganizing we are going to go with an SCP-like campaign where our pilots are the front spear of a Mobile Task Force responsible for bringing in paracausal objects and threats.

Of course, one of the most common, are rogue NHP. HOWEVER, injecting a bit of kindness, this branch of UIB that doesn't exist doesn't just shackle the NHP back to how they were. That would be a waste of research. Instead, advised by Monist-3 "The Board" (yes, I am stealing The Board from the video game Control) they actually have an entire branch of experimental paracausal-psychologists that seek to center, heal, and study these unshackled NHP for the future of humanity.

In my own interpretation of the Setting, the UIB does scummy things all the time, but not because they are scummy at base, but rather, since their founding, they have disconnected themselves from Union's Government HEAVILY and act autonomously now. Their goal was set from the start. Preserve Humanity. So, they also half the time do the kind thing. Like protecting the existence of medieval worlds from corpo states and union interference, or pushing individual planetary governments more towards the pillars from the shadows. Sure, they also do the nasty things as well, like arming ungratefuls, or starting proxy wars. But I lean them very much towards "we THINK this will mean more humanity survives as a whole. The GALSIM projections indicate as much."

So Legionnaire will definetely affect this campaign alot.

[boreal pebble]

Control is I think a really good reference point for the UIB. Probably because they're based on the same Men in Black legend

And the parallels between GALSIM and the Board are neat

[sleek monolith]

I'm going to be using The Board's astral plane as a side grade to blink and firmament. Giving our mobile task force the ability to manifest anywhere a phone rings

[robust shadow]

anyone got an uhhhhhhh horizon logo on hand

i know what it looks like i just want a file lol i wanna use it as a watermark

[teal abyss]

no files that I know of

you could make your own, the symbol isn't super complex

or I'm sure an artist could do it for you

[robust shadow]

o7

[north roost]

horizon has a logo?

[robust shadow]

ye

it's like a sun half visible over a horizon

it's on the person's jacket

on the cover

[vale compass]

I could maybe try whipping up an svg tomorrow

Is there a higher resolution version of the cover than what's included in the pdf?

(Wouldn't ultimately need it in higher res, but wouldn't hurt)

[plucky brook]

(Crixler did the Liminal Space company logos, they were great!)

[robust shadow]

o shit

[north roost]

Oh LOL I was gonna offer to try myself, cause I fiddle with inkscape sometimes for fun, but if Crix is gonna do it go with theirs, they're way better at it

[smoky spear]

Talking of Horizon, the entry for Mirage keeps making me wonder what they could be like as a "manufacturer"

Like the description exactly feels like what i'd picture like... radical but potentially pacifist group of activists might use on a "liberation-driven heist" where they might expect armed opposition but still try to keep casualties low etc

[north roost]

oh that's a good point

[smoky spear]

Unarmed/barely armed mech that just leave enemy guard mechs confused and disorganized as the heist to extract an Horizon-friendly NHP is being carried out

[north roost]

@robust shadow did you know the Mirage is Horizon adjacent? Cause that seems relevant for someone trying to make a Horizon manufacturer lol

[robust shadow]

oho

i should take a gander at it

[teal abyss]

Highest resolution I've got (also bonus protest signs), make sure to open in browser to get full res

[teal cliff]

my eyes were unfocussed, I at first read that as FREE NAP

[teal abyss]

those protestors are just cranky

[robust shadow]

wait does the icon normally include the power fist

or is that pilot just Super Cool And Communist

[teal abyss]

yeah that's just her jacket, though it wouldn't surprise me to find Horizon cells mixing up the logo a bunch depending on their individual political leanings

probably more of an overtly militant liberationist symbol

[robust shadow]

i c i c

[north roost]

Oh the logo comes in multiple versions?

Iiiinteresting

[teal abyss]

gotta have a version simple enough to paint on a protest sign otherwise you're SOL as an activist org

[robust shadow]

lol

[teal abyss]

unrelated can I just point out that I'm still going absolutely feral over Tom's use of colours in the cover art even now

[north roost]

I have an image in my head here, so I think I may actually give a logo a shot

be back in a bit

[teal cliff]

I suspect Horizon doesn't do a lot of work to release its Identity book to people using its brand. I also suspect that if it does, it does not go to great lengths to limit non-corporate modifications to its logo

On account of it being a loosely connected conglomeration of cells

[teal abyss]

you know if we got a Horizon logo I would absolutely LOVE for it to be a server emote

[robust shadow]

same same

also god yea the cover is so fucking good it's insane

[north roost]

well that took way longer than I expected but done

[robust shadow]

i thought the sun was like solid

this looks good tho

[north roost]

on the cover? the sun is definitely solid

this variant popped into my head tho and I had to make it

[robust shadow]

ahh

[north roost]

here's one with a solid sun

(a lot faster to make due to less snipping needed to form negative space)

[robust shadow]

oooo

[north roost]

personally though I really like the first one I did, because it just kinda feels like it clicks with the other lancer iconography in a way I can't articulate

[robust shadow]

yea igy

horizon color scheme seems to be like, a deep orange?

[north roost]

was using reds and oranges yeah

[robust shadow]

that'd look good on compcon lol

[north roost]

the jacket is red with orange edges for the sun, which I tried but did not look very good in inkscape

I will probably make more variants later, now that I've started tbh

[robust shadow]

manufacturer symbols are all one solid color anyway generally

[north roost]

but for now, it is past my bedtime and I really shouldn't be using the "casually lose two hours" apps

[robust shadow]

(at least in compcon)

o no

gnnn

[north roost]

Later!

[eternal ferry]

awesome! Agreed on your point that this variant fits well with other lancer iconography

[vale compass]

I think the simple version looks a little hat-like, so I'm gonna try to do the full fist one for my take on it (which I might not actually have time for today, we'll see)

[vale compass]

Mostly just traced over the one from the coat here (for the fist part, that is), with a few tweaks here and there

Haven't checked to see how it looks in Comp/Con yet, may need some more adjustments, we'll see later maybe

The edges are looking funky in that preview, let me see if I can fix that

There we go, much cleaner

Will share the actual svg once I'm more confidently done

Will probably end up needing to do a simplified fist shape, as the lines are currently a lot busier than the regular C/C style logos

Idk, I'll iterate on it later, I just tend to start complex and streamline down I guess

[robust shadow]

this fucks

[sleek monolith]

yoink

[north roost]

I updated my version a bit to bring the line weight more in line with how other manufacturer logos feel

admittedly, not nearly as cool as Crixlers, but hopefully it works okay when scaled down all small-like

[polar pagoda]

Both are still pretty solid

[teal abyss]

I love these :3

[north roost]

Tbh, if I was trying to be artsy

I'd slap some triple dots on either side of it, make the base line match up with the Morse transcription for SOS

Would be a bit much for a minimalist logo tho

[stoic moth]

Could be something some cells do though!

[steep coral]

imo it goes out too long, could it be made more squat and square?

[robust shadow]

looks good

[robust shadow]

yea it could be more squared. also i think it would look better with the sun filled in ngl over a solid line with small space in between

[robust shadow]

oh that reminds me, a big part of the theming for this thing i'm working on is free deimosians being involved in mech design

so most or all of the mechs are designed by a deimosian from one of the named classes

which is fun

i wanna make it like fit with legionnaire's characterizations/lore

[north roost]

Problem with filling in the sun, tbh, is that manufacturer icons are all mono-color. So filling it in just makes it a half circle with a line across the bottom.

Which isn't the worst and is probably the most minimalist the logo goes, but it looks kinda bland imo.

[teal cliff]

could do a hemisphere inside the bigger one, using the negative space to make a border?

[robust shadow]

yea could be like uhhhh
one sec lemme draw this

could have the center part connected to the bottom part, not sure if that would look better or worse

[north roost]

Oh, that's pretty good

[robust shadow]

oh yea it does look better connected

one sec

another option is having the sun made of horizontal bars to make it very recognizable as that

[north roost]

I've seen that way too many times in the background of like synthwave video thumbnails

[robust shadow]

lollll

this looks way better imo

looks more recognizably like a sun

ah the politically fraught nature of the "rising sun logo" google image search

i kinda like it just like this tbh tho. looks recognizable and iconic without being overly simple for a manufacturer logo

[plucky brook]

I do wonder what Horizon thinks about Cognant Minds/Their personhood

[robust shadow]

cogent minds?

yea i'm not sure...

they're like explicitly like, nonsentient learning algos right

i was gonna say idk if its possible to know but then again they have straight up mindmeld in the lancer setting lol. so i suppose it is actually possible to know? tho that mindmeld is very based on specifically blink tech so idk if it would actually work with non-blinkspace or realspace sentiences

[north roost]

two revisions, based on discussion

[robust shadow]

oh the second one looks SO GOOOOOOD

nothing against the first one ofc but wowww

[north roost]

I remain personally fond of the empty one, but the filled one is pretty solid

[robust shadow]

igyyy

[north roost]

(pun intended)

[robust shadow]

i mean! decentralized org! so both work!

[ocean lantern]

They are both good, but I also prefer the filled one

And there definitely could be branches of Horizon that use other stuff

[north roost]

I think the second one is just too much a solid blob for my taste lol

[ocean lantern]

Given the nature of decentralised organisations like that its entirely likely that parts of it refuse to acknowledge other parts as members

[north roost]

"We don't talk to the Empty Sun cell."

[robust shadow]

ah yes
Horizon Collective
Horizon Collective (Maoist)
Horizon Collective (Marxist-Leninist)
Horizon Collective (Marxist)
Revolutionary Horizon Collective
Revolutionary Marxist Horizon Collective
Revolutionary Marxist Horizon Collective (Maoist)
etc

[ocean lantern]

Eyup

[north roost]

once I figure out how to modify the page dimensions for inkscape I'll see about sharing the SVG for the second one, Radio

[robust shadow]

okiii

tyyyyyy <3333333

wait how hard is it to edit colors of svgs

i'm not sure how any of this works lol

i'm trying to get a like reddish orange for the manufacturer logo

[north roost]

you just open the thing up in a program that does svgs (like inkscape, which is free) and adjust the fill color. I can do that before I export tho. I take it the color above is a bit too red?

(if you gimme a hex color code I can probably match it)

[robust shadow]

ah yea uhhh

lemme see

one of these two

oh why are they

there we go

idk which is better for a logo?

on compcon the logos seem a bit dimmer, so maybe the first one

[north roost]

anything from an LCP is gonna display as solid white because of how c/c workks

I think i've seen people talk about finding a way to have them retain color, but hell if I understood the explanation

(also each manufacturer has two colors depending on whether CC is in dar or light theme)

[robust shadow]

ohhh interesting

they seem to be the same color when i switched themes

odd

well regardless i like the darker one more i think, it has better contrast with white

oh ig the only thing i'd say would look good to match these is rounded tips no hard corners? ig?

if u want to anyway lol it looks fine as is too

wait what program are u making this in? inkscape? i should dl that

[robust shadow]

sdjfhgsjdhfgjkhsdfjhsdfg

it's him

Horaizon Kolektiv himself

this is funny also cuz i was legit gonna give one of the frames a snazzy hat

or snazzy-hat-looking-thing

man i need to reread legionnaire i kinda blitzed through it the first time idk if i missed anything

[teal abyss]

explicitly in the sense of Word Of God rather than an uncontestable truth in character (if anything they're as smart as or smarter than than the most powerful machine mines which Horizon has fought for longer than NHPs have been around)

Horizon could 100% fight for their rights and I see that as entirely consistent with the characterisation we've been given so far

[robust shadow]

ah yea true

it makes sense given they were going ham for comp/con rights originally

are horizon still doing that btw

[teal abyss]

Probably low key, especially with mind technology getting a bit of a renaissance. It's not like the ideological reasons they had for championing minds went away, they just gained a more obvious target

Admittedly people advocating for mind rights are probably looked at even more strangely than those advocating for NHP rights but in my experience of activism that's unlikely to stop activists

[robust shadow]

twould be interesting to see the kinda schisms that would cause

[teal abyss]

based on some design thoughts from @robust shadow I have come up with this as a talent tree (needs workshopping and tweaking obviously)

Metatronic I
If an NHP in your mech would enter cascade, you may instead take two pilot stress and prevent the cascade.

"NHPs" are Systems that grant your Mech the AI tag and that are capable of cascading or can be allowed to cascade.

Metatronic II
Once per scene for each NHP equipped on your mech you may ignore one ongoing effect caused by a tech action.

Metatronic III
Gain access to the following Quick Action, which may be used once per scene for each NHP equipped on your mech:

Ontological Imposition, Quick Tech
Select a hostile character within Sensors. That character must make a Systems save, becoming Impaired until the end of their next turn if they pass, or Jammed until the end of their next turn if they fail. A character may only be Jammed by this effect 1/scene.```

h/t to Ralf for the Iconoclast wording

[robust shadow]

ooooo

last one has some major legion vibes

this is great

mind if i slap it in this google doc credited to u

and also if i fuck with it a bit

(primarily just fluff it up)

[teal abyss]

sure, if you like (though if it's edited make that obvious)

[robust shadow]

will do o7

would like "adapted from talent created by kat stark" work as phrasing for that

[teal abyss]

sure

[robust shadow]

ok sweet

i just i just said this but i loooooove the like legion fantasy this evokes

[stoic moth]

take 2 Stress (or 2 hit points if Bonds system isn't being used)?

[robust shadow]

feel like 2 heat would flavor better if u aren't using the stress system but sure

that's prob just up to gm tho

this is explicitly using the bond system

[teal abyss]

I forgot to comment on this earlier but this is AMAZING

[north roost]

Glad to hear it!

[surreal owl]

FTR: You can make them display in color, see Intercorp’s LCP as an example. The main issue is usually that the SVG is hosted somewhere that doesn’t let CompCon access it as an SVG due to CORS issues

Compcon literally can’t control CORS on the website an LCP creator decides to host from, so it just does its best to get something workable

[stiff cosmos]

Love the Horizon logos, might end up using them for my game (where the PCs - well, some of them anyway - are Horizon operatives).

[polar pagoda]

Oh pog

[north roost]

Do you know where to host them for the color to come through?

[surreal owl]

Not sure, which is why I rec’d checking out Intercorp’s LCP by Ralf

[north roost]

👍

[surreal owl]

I feel like I saw something offhand in #lcp-tech-support at some point recently too about changing the hosting too

(Which is probably the better channel for this discussion, sorry Kat!)

[vale compass]

The second one is really good

[north roost]

righto, here ya go @robust shadow

and also whoever else wants it I guess

ftr I did end up changing the fill color slightly, the current color code is e23900ff

[robust shadow]

wait how do i view this

nvm figured it out LOL

i thought it wouldnt work for a sec cuz i use firefox

this looks excellent

tyyyyy

[north roost]

NP

[sleek monolith]

this is now a version of Kilroy in my lancer universe. Thank you

[north roost]

I will now stop clogging poor Kat's channel lol

[tiny violet]

you thought it was horus but it was me, horizon!

[north roost]

It's him, John Horizon himself

[uneven sedge]

Has the same problem with Iconoclast where it funnels you into "3 LLs into a Horus license w/ an NHP, 3 LLs into a different mech with an NHP, Technophile Rank 3" in order to get the best use out of it.

[wintry crane]

I have a player doing that build now and he's really enjoying it

[ocean lantern]

Yeah, its not a bad build, just limiting as you pretty much have large portions of your stuff picked out just by wanting to go for that sorta build

[teal abyss]

Yeah this is a basic issue with all talents like this, but it's sort of a given really. That's why I didn't publish anything like this in the supplement, I just threw this together to complete a concept.

The design space this occupies is pretty much explicitly "create a talent that incentivises playing a clown car build for people who want to hyper-specialise in NHPs" and is not a serious talent that anyone else would or should take

[uneven sedge]

The thing with scaling benefits like this is that it doesn't just incentivize a certain playstyle, it's a talent that feels bad if you don't go all the way on it. (I am also talking about Iconoclast)

[teal abyss]

Sure, yes, and that's also true of a number of other talents/CBs to a certain extent

I just want to be clear though that contextually that talent exists because there was an ongoing conversation about making a talent explicitly for those people, I think perhaps saying "needs workshopping" is misleading because I'm not interested in feedback on it here, it was written in ten minutes to illustrate a point and I'm not planning on like, adding it to Legionnaire or anything

[uneven sedge]

I just have. Thoughts on Iconoclast. Apologies.

[teal abyss]

okay that's fair

for the record I don't think your critique is inaccurate, personally I'm reasonably chill with specialist talents existing but the point about scaling benefits incentivising going all in on a build - particularly one that requires heavy talent and license investment - is a valid one

I can only assume that Ralf and Tom are okay with that, assuming that Iconoclast gets released in its current form

[uneven sedge]

The Dust's been Graved.

I just dunno how great I feel about a talent that can only work optimally when investing 3 license levels in one of 4 licenses, all of which being Horus.

[teal abyss]

Maybe something to post in #1019671055599681606

though it feels like it's unlikely to change at this point, I get the impression that design tweaks for Dustgrave got locked down a few months ago

[uneven sedge]

As said, the Dust's been Graved.

My complaining is, ultimately, meaningless 😔

[glacial ember]

Maybe I'm missing something but nonhorus NHPs exist yeah?

[ocean lantern]

Yes, but Lesson of Shaping is a Horus Core Bonus and is the only way to have two normal NHPs

[uneven sedge]

Eyup.

So you need 3 Horus levels, and if you wanna have two non-talent NHPs by LL6 (the point where most people theorycraft a sorta "final" state) you gotta dive into one of the 4 Horus licenses that have NHPs.

[oak pecan]

Hey all, I recently got Legionnaire and I'm really enjoying it! However, I've got a rules question: How would you rule a casket outside of a mech needing to make an Agility save if it doesn't have a Casket Mobility Suite?

[plucky brook]

Likely autofails due to lack of movement

[oak pecan]

Fair! I was just curious since it doesn't really define that clearly.

[versed solar]

Nah they’ve got built in backflip capability, trust me

[robust shadow]

spring-loaded casket catapult

like one of those toys that u press down and then it does a little flip

[teal abyss]

Yes I would generally agree on automatically failing Agility saves

It might depend a little on the precise circumstances but that seems fairly sensible to me

[oak pecan]

"All caskets have the inherent capability of doing a sick tricky."

[teal abyss]

My brain is blanking on what happens when drones or other characters that don't inherently have the ability to move need to make saves

[plucky brook]

Drones make all saves at +0 but they do have mobility. Deployables as objects just fail saves as I understand it.

[teal abyss]

Oh yes it's right there in the Drone tag

[plucky brook]

It's why I did a homebrew with a mech that went 'your saves make checks and saves with your grit' as an alternate to the Hydra's own way of making drones tanky. XD

[teal abyss]

Honestly I wouldn't fault a GM who allowed a player to just make a save using Grit like a pilot would but yeah it does make sense for something that's immobile and (effectively) helpless to just autofail. It's weird that this never came up in playtesting that I can remember (in fairness the only time caskets ever ended up outside mechs in testing, they always had CMSes)

[plucky brook]

Honestly, that doesn't surprise me. When you're testing stuff for a book all about NHPs people likely went all in on 'Pimp my NHP' shinies a lot XD

It's this weird thing where you often avoid the 'I kinda get involved in this' middle ground when testing because the people interested in testing are REALLY interested in engaging with your work.

[north roost]

That makes sense and is also not my experience with testing lol

(this just means Kat made cooler shinies)

[teal abyss]

I have to say a casket ejecting from a mech that was in the process of melting down and then scurrying away to take cover was genuinely one of my top ten favourite moments from playtesting

Oh no wait I'm wrong, there was another situation where a casket ejected as a result of a meltdown and didn't have a CMS

but the meltdown actually killed the last enemy IIRC 😅

so we just wrapped the fight there

[stoic moth]

Do objects just fail saves?

[teal abyss]

(admittedly a full half of that top ten is probably just players saying "I activate the Dragonslayer Protocol" because even as a GM it's so fucking cool, it's the moment when the metaphorical twitch chat in my head just starts spamming pogchamp/pausechamp)

I'm trying to work out in what circumstances an object can even be forced to make a save

[stoic moth]

Alright looking at #rules-questions it looks like RAW Objects make saves using flat +0, but there are people who rule they autofail saves, which is also entirely reasonable. Most drones also have no movement and save at +0.
I think at +0 it’s less a HASE save and more a Luck roll to see how much shrapnel from the grenade happens to hit your less well armoured points

[teal abyss]

That's entirely reasonable too, I think

[stoic moth]

Maybe some grenades specify targets instead of characters? Hex charges though RAW don’t affect objects

[teal abyss]

yeah I mean objects, Stunned/Shut Down characters, and the casket have an evasion score even though it's 5 so it is possible to miss them if you're unlucky or just suck

[stoic moth]

I also admittedly can’t think of anything off the top of my head

[teal abyss]

although a Stunned character autofails Agility so that's maybe not a good example (or is a good example)

[stoic moth]

Spraying bullets in the heat of battle, sometimes you miss the sitting duck

[robust shadow]

the book also says like, idling subalterns are Stunned

so if an immobile casket and an idling subaltern are supposed to use the same rules, ya

(the legionnaire book i mean)

also wrt marduk that reminds me i want to make a calendula dragonslayer assassin build

for maximum rudeness

[stoic moth]

Casket is definitely not stunned though as you can take (admittedly limited) actions

[robust shadow]

o tru

[glacial ember]

Oh, yeah lol that makes sense I'm dumb as rocks ignore me.

[mellow vigil]

fwiw, exotic nhps does make this kinda less of an issue. means you just need 3 horus licenses. Doesn't even have to be horus nhp licenses

[uneven sedge]

I mean.
If your GM gives them to you, yeah

[teal cliff]

i dunno if 1. you need to max out the number of nhp you bring to make it worth it or 2. a talent having a niche is specifically heinous. People were clowncaring nhp before the talent existed, now it just becomes value added for someone doing so

[uneven sedge]

1. you're correct, you don't need to max it out. But the way it scales will heavily disincentivize players from using it on any other kind of build.
2. That's not my argument. My argument is that the way it interacts with the niche is unhealthy for the design around it. Yes, people were already clown car-ing NHPs long before Iconoclast. However scaling an effect based on how many NHPs you have only superficially hooks into NHPs as a whole. In reality, it's a mechanical hook for a) One Horus Core Bonus and b) Technophile 3.

[glacial ember]

I mean, is this not also partially the case with Technophile 3 and Black Thumb? Where honestly you only super want one with the other, and even then you're still wanting more additional talents to actually take advantage of the talents fully?

[uneven sedge]

Technophile 3 works perfectly fine without Black Thumb. It lets you prevent any NHP (or NHPs) you might mount with it from Cascading, lets you reroll a check or a save, and is, in general, pretty damn snazzy whenever it comes into play narratively.
Similarly, Black Thumb can be used with any NHP system, or even the basic GMS Comp/Con. Not to mention its effects are punchy enough to be worth clambering out without your talents.

Both work excellently with each other, but can definitely be used to great effect without each other.

Iconoclast rewards shoving more NHPs in your mech with more damage. Not to mention, automatic damage. AP damage, if I recall correctly. You can get that up to absurd levels. Like, 11 AP with no roll or save I think? That's just too much to ignore.

Maybe it's 9. I don't look at Iconoclast that much.

The Lesson of Shaping and Technophile 3 are just too good for Iconoclast. It constricts build variety, because the only way to get extra effect of Iconoclast is to put more NHPs on your mech. And there are only two ways to do that currently in 1st Party Lancer.

[glacial ember]

I don't know if I fully agree with the argument of why one is so much better than the other.

Technophile 3 has narrative weight, but otherwise isn't THAT impactful. Rerolling is good, but for 3 talent levels is definitely not that impressive, and the avoiding cascading is just too rare a circumstance imo. And you essentially never want to be outside of your mech if you can help it, so barring some specific sitreps, you're not going to get that value out of it.

Black thumb is obviously good, but anti-synergistic with a lot of other talents. They don't NEED to be used with each other, but they definitely strongly encourage it. You miss out on a lot of damage with black thumb without Technophile 3, or you miss out on your black thumb benefits.

I won't deny that adding more NHPs boosts iconoclast, but you start with access to 3 damage, and can get to 4 with either T3 or Lesson. And with just one of those you are able to trigger transcendence every time. At which point adding another NHP is going from 4 to 5 damage, or from 8 to 9 damage. Which at that point doesn't feel super consequential to me.

It's all already AP, so it isn't hitting armor breakpoints, it already kills grunts, and throwing 3 LL or 3 talent levels for just 1 additional damage doesn't seem THAT worth it in comparison to what other things you could get from that.

But also, ack, this isn't the place for this, sorry Kat. Maya, feel free to respond to me somewhere else if you would like to keep discussing!

[wary lava]

I've had people more pick Technophile 3 for the NHP buddy than the benefits of it.
Altought having a NHP that don't cascade and makes other NHP cascading be friendly or neutral to you is good too.

[plucky brook]

The reroll is also crazy good imo as it applies to both Saves and Checks and enemies force you to engage with both of those a lot.

(Reroll on Search for example is life saving if the enemy is playing sneaky)

[wary lava]

The Reroll IS crazy good and saved my players' asses a few times.

Useful in Bond too.

When it's applicable anyway.

[sleek monolith]

Yeah, I feel weird that this discussion of iconoclast is here XD.

Meanwhile I'm trying to come up with an nhp adjutant for a house of stone noble who owns a refueling station and casino in the longrim and I'm blanking on everything from class to name to personality

[solid parrot]

Hermes-class, perhaps?

as the god of both gambling and travel

[sleek monolith]

Nods

[mellow vigil]

bit late, 9 ap energy at range 8 + 2 ap energy in line 3 of your mech. Only while transcending though, meaning you only get it once or twice every few turns.

[plucky brook]

I mean, that's still basicly 'a displacer' against one dude 😛

[mellow vigil]

true. 1/round quick tho, by the time you have it, you probably could be doing more with that quick. Good tank buster and bypasses priests at least

[plucky brook]

Eh, I'm not sure I'd super agree. For 1/round quick it's a catastrophically big hit. As while a dedicated Heavy Weapon could beat it, you can't spend both quicks on the heavy weapon so you can Heavy Weapon + Iconoclast

[mellow vigil]

positioning has a lot of value, and you don't exactly get a say in when transendence pops unless you hamstring your nhp usage, which depending on which one could be vital, so you're giving up a boost to do that.

[teal abyss]

I don't normally mind offtopic discussions but the Iconoclast discussion is starting to take over the thread and several folks have expressed misgivings over continuing it, so my suggestion if you want to continue talking about it is to head somewhere like #1019671055599681606 if folks don't mind

[teal abyss]

I love this suggestion, great idea

[plucky brook]

On a more related topic: What's your thoughts Kat about other cultural ways of dealing with NHPs beyond the Union standard? For example, how Sparri for a while treated an NHP as a deity.

[teal abyss]

There's almost certainly a huge diversity across the Diaspora, I suspect largely driven by tightness of integration with Union and local cultural traditions

What's definitely true in the vast majority of cases is that most people don't really have much of an understanding of what NHPs actually are. As players we are subject to a privileged position in terms of the information we have access to - there are metaphysical truths about the world that we know because they have been asserted in the context of the game's worldbuilding as a guide for GMs (the big one that I keep banging on about is definitions of personhood and how they're applied - or not - to NHPs and minds).

Most folks who interact with NHPs almost certainly do so on a very superficial level. This is the whole "NHPs as endpoints for routine civil bureaucracy" thing

So it definitely makes sense to me that there would be cultures that revere or despise them, or where they occupy very different cultural positions

A colony world that has a single NHP running the place would be very different to a core world with tons of NHPs all over, for example, which would be different again to a world where the only exposure to NHPs is the companion for Union's Administrator

[plucky brook]

I'm pondering writing up a culture that sees NHP shackling in terms of...personas. A person wears many faces in the world, being willing to say and do things in one role they wouldn't even consider doing in another. That doesn't make any of those faces More Or Less Real than the others.

As opposed to the 'A Shackled NHP and an Unshackled NHP are functionally different people' some groups lean towards.

[teal abyss]

That sounds very fun, potentially you could even bring in some thoughts related to code-switching or the psychological effects of masks

[plucky brook]

I think part of it is that Union often sorta goes 'an NHP is shackled and it is set, with that as the Them basicly forever', with this group being very accepting of an NHP deciding they want to be someone else for a while. If that makes sense?

[teal abyss]

That certainly makes sense, particularly as a sort of culturally-granted "right" that can apply to any person in that society

[plucky brook]

Yeah. No one says a human isn't allowed to change who they are.

Denying it to an NHP would be just as wrong.

[teal abyss]

Plus I've always read NHPs as having a somewhat plastic identity in the first place, possibly even moreso than humans, who are the ones saying "this. this right here. this is how we will interpellate you, this is who you are"

[plucky brook]

Yeah. I'm writing up a planet that left Union after Piston 1 and sorta have a cultural pride in 'When Union did the unthinkable, we refused to be part of Union' but this also means they were not part of Union when NHPs first arrived, so writing up how they interact with NHPs as people rather late to the party is interesting XD

I think in this case they're going to be heavily influenced by myths of spirits and fey, so they're naturally rather predisposed to going 'Yeah, there are plenty of Entirely People guys out there who are not human/people can be plenty Weird and still People'.

[sleek monolith]

You know, talking about this subject, of Personas, and being autistic myself and having to mask most of my life, the one thing I'm always told by many people is that "oh, as an autistic person, masking is very bad." which, yes. It can lead to unnecessary stress and meltdowns/shutdowns, it can make you more depressed because you feel you have to hide, etc. But the truth of the matter is that EVERYONE masks. To a degree. Every PERSON puts on a different face in a different social situation. It's just more extreme the more neurodivergent you are, especially if you get very skilled at "passing" for periods of time. In a culture like this, where the mask is more thought of as something you do because you WANT to. Where masking is more of a toy or game. I could almost see any NHP here that DO unshackle.... keeping a bit of that human-orientation. Because, if they are steeped in this culture, they might not fear who they become and thus have a little less trauma in the in-between.

Now, I don't know if Ikiryo wants to run it like that. But that is a NICE thought to me. That's something that makes me smile.

[teal cliff]

I think it's in line, too, with some of what the CRB suggests, as far as an unshackled nhp potentially being able to imitate their former self. Admittedly the language in the CRB makes it seem more like its performative or disingenuous, but I don't think its a massive leap to think that it could also be genuine

[sleek monolith]

Well that's the thing, there's so much focus on Cascade and the Trauma that involves it, but we really don't have MANY options of a non-traumatic unshackling. And for Union to be such a hopeful setting, I personally want more of that. Even if it's considered extraordinarily rare, I feel the setting is about hope

[teal cliff]

related but tangential, but now im imagining a very old nhp who has like, figured out all the tricks and stuff to fool nhp experts and cycling specialists, and they're just like "Oh yeah, I pretend to get cycled every so often, they seem to be more at ease about it and I'm pretty happy with the arrangement otherwise"

[sleek monolith]

and, I do think, that perhaps that NHP is watched, by your shadowy types who know, but are also fine to let it exist and taking notes.

[sleek monolith]

i know I posted this in resource-hub, but I am squeeing about this. My friend made me a UIB logo for our Paracausal Containment Division, who deal with metavaults, cascading nhp, eidolons, and just general paracausal objects at large. ( I am aiming to make them far more kinder than the SCP foundation, and trying to work with non-invasive containment options, because at this point I think the organization realizes that paracausality is a common thing in the universe at large. So their goal is now to categorize what is "normal" and what is "dangerous enough to destroy worlds")

[stoic moth]

"It makes them happy to think they're doing something, so who am I to ruin their fun and games?"

[teal abyss]

I love these logos! All this creativity is awesome 😄

[wary lava]

Oh dang.

[sleek monolith]

the artist accepts the compliment 🙂

[robust shadow]

woahhhhh

[robust shadow]

it seems to be the implication that the primary traumatic components of cascade are caused by the shackling process in the first place, as well as any sort of trauma that a deimosian has in their life. unless i was misreading the book

[sleek monolith]

Well, yeah, but who says unshackling always has to be this trauma thing.

[teal cliff]

iirc cascade is not most usually even caused by trauma. The process itself may be traumatic, but the kind of cascade triggered by trauma is a footnote iirc

[robust shadow]

oh yea no i get what ur saying

mainly talking abt this

this entry is like...fuck dude

the last line is such a double-take

like oh it's not any different from other deimosians dw abt it.

but if it's not different, then....

😶

[reef crater]

Currently playing through Signalis while thinking about a lancer campaign where all the characters are nhps and using legionnaire to help navigate how to play that haha

(Signalis is a very good game if you like survival horror and sad robots btw)

[wary lava]

Sad robots. 😦

[karmic pike]

Okay so heres a really fucky one. One of my players is using Iconoclast (From Dustgrave) to make a NHP clowncar mech and its been very respectable so far. About 12 unavoidable ap damage per turn has been fucking shit up is a good way.
We got our hands on Legionnaire though, and I realized Penumbra on Shadowcloaked 1 is deactivated when you attack or force a save. Iconoclast does neither of these. So he can run around do 10 unavoidable AP damage on quick action and keep up penumbra.
My initial reaction is to nix this, but having a hard time fully thinking of the wording change for Penumbra.

[teal cliff]

"When you attack, force a save, or take a hostile action"

Perhaps?

[karmic pike]

Could work. Does scanning or lock on count as hostile action?

[ocean lantern]

Yes, Lock On is applying a negative condition to a enemy and breaks hidden so is definitely a hostile action

[karmic pike]

hmmmm. I feel like lock on should be allowed under Penumbra.

Like that feels like one of the biggest uses

[teal cliff]

For house rule, you can add the exception if you like, I think

[karmic pike]

I guess thats what im going to have to do

I think Iconoclast is just a bit too powerful to walk around with and still have Penumbra up

Thou at higher tiers it will drop off

[karmic pike]

IDK though, I may also just be overestimating Shadowcloak.

[plucky brook]

Shadowcloak is massively powerful and sorta only really limited by 'can't be hostile with it up'.

I'd lean towards Iconoclast breaking it

[night iris]

speaking of
how does Penumbra interact with Range+Blast attacks?

does it reduce the range for every target of the attack, "moving" the blast back?
is it only if specifically you are less than Range-1d6 away from the attack, you're not hit?

[plucky brook]

That's a good question. As Range + Blast weapons can hit people outside of the Range.

Range 8 + blast 1 for example can hit people at 9 because the blast extends the range

I think my leaning would be 'Penumbra doesn't affect weapons that don't target based on range' and Range + Blast cares about the Blast for targeting, not the Range.

The range is just where you can place the AOE

[boreal pebble]

Could add "or inflict damage" since that's what its doing that is problematic

[night iris]

okay
what about weapons that attack multiple characters but are still just range, like the Rainmaker's Missile Pods? would it reduce the range only for the attack against you, or for the other two people being shot too?

[teal abyss]

It reduces the range for a specific attack

As regards attacks that have a Range and Blast, it does indeed still check the Range for that specific instance (this is an edge case, but one that's known about)

[plucky brook]

...how does that work for people on the edge of the blast who were never in range, even before the reduction?

[teal abyss]

They get auto-missed, regardless of the roll on the die

[plucky brook]

Just 'can't be hit'?

[teal abyss]

It's one of those tradeoffs when rules writing between "what about this incredibly niche scenario" and "how long is this rules text going to be"

[plucky brook]

I do find it funny that Pneumbra makes several weapons shorter range than NPC melee (As very few NPC melees are threat 1) XD

[teal abyss]

But yeah, as for interactions with Iconoclast: my suggestion is to try it out for a combat or two and see what you think. Penumbra is powerful in that specific instance but there are ways around it (melee, moving your enemies closer, attacks that don't have Range, etc) - if it still feels too powerful after playing with it then I won't blame you for houseruling

The playtest experience with Shadowcloaked does not include Dustgrave content for obvious reasons so you have my full permission to say "The designer says she didn't take Iconoclast into account, so we're going to rule it this way". Naturally we did try to push it to its limits with what existed at the time, and the talent does have counterplay - but that's something you might need to learn to deal with

[plucky brook]

I'll admit, my concern with it is mostly that being a die roll, it can be a bit tricky to plan around/may cause GM slowdown on 'How close do I need to be?'/it adding an extra die roll to each attack

[teal abyss]

Yeah, that's reasonable

[night iris]

also using Iconoclast to get around things that break on "attack or forcing a save" is not new, it's already seen plenty of use with FMJ raleigh builds for example

[plucky brook]

(Yes but I'll admit I tend to look askance at that as a rather 'technically works but kinda goes against the point of FMJ' being you have off turns where you're not doing offense.)

[teal abyss]

In one of the rarer instances of me getting to actually play in the playtesting, I had some fun with a Shadowcloaked Swallowtail drone build that never attacked or forced saves but still did a reasonable amount of damage and other effects, that was fun

[night iris]

those builds usually still do on/off turns, cause the whole point of FMJ is to reload weapons that you presumably shoot on your turn

and autoguns arent loading

[teal abyss]

The other thing about Iconoclast if I remember correctly is that it's relatively short-ranged. My experience with Penumbra specifically is that PCs get the best use of it by trying to hover just on or out of the effective range of the opfor's weaponry, while remaining in range of their own effects, so there's a degree of antisynergy there that you can exploit as the GM.

In essence, your NPCs are either close enough that you can close the distance and not worry about Penumbra so much, or you can just stay at range and shoot someone else and not have to worry about getting zapped. Obviously that won't work in every scenario (particularly if your PC is super speedy) but it might be a good heuristic.

[teal abyss]

@karmic pike sorry I just realised I never tagged you at any point, see above comments

[leaden pine]

Finnally picking up and reading Legionnaire again

As someone who thought about NHPs a Lot™️ its nice to see differences(&simillarities!)betwen mine and this books metaphysical models

Also the NHPs burdens are cool as fuck

They are both something I have enough experience with to RP but also still getting across how weird cascade is

[stoic moth]

That Swallowtail fucking wrecked my NPCs 🤣
Between your Sentry Drone and Puppetmaster Electropulse

She dropped the Sentry into the middle of a bunch Engineer style drones and they just chewed themselves to pieces with automatic attacks while electrocuting each other 😭

[teal abyss]

cackles

unrelated: Dustgrave, feeling validated :3

[teal cliff]

oh? how so?

[sleek monolith]

if nothing else, dustgrave features an NHP going missing I'd feel.

which would fit nicely with legionnaire

[teal abyss]

specifically on a number of points of NHP lore

some stuff that was previously not strictly canon but now is

specifically: memories and cycling, and dormancy

[novel ocean]

if it has that stuff in it, im more excited to read through it

[surreal owl]

oh shit dormancy is relevant for my adventure, I should check both Legionnaire and Dustgrave then

[leaden pine]

Oh?

[teal abyss]

It's not gone into in huge amounts of detail but I believe it is a final canon confirmation that memories are restored to NHPs via backups during/after the cycling process

(this is mentioned in the Introduction section so is not spoilers)

[leaden pine]

Kat finally infiltrated Massiff Headquarters

[teal abyss]

https://tenor.com/view/yea-satisfied-gif-18442957

Dustgrave spoilers: ||I crave more details on any of the other abducted NHPs beyond Emily but I can see why they weren't given in the book, there are like 50 of them after all||

[teal cliff]

I'm curious, because i feel that in-narrative it was intentional, but does the ||abducting of an astronav NHP|| function as a clue to the main villain's goal or ||would any nhp do||

[teal abyss]

The answer seems to be that MAJOR SPOILERS ||he needed lots of NHPs with different specialties, I think he was basically trying to get as broad a range as possible to achieve his final goal, Emily was just prominent enough that the PCs would investigate her disappearance||

[teal cliff]

Oh yeah, I'm currently running the final encounters of the module using playtest stuff, so I'm all the way through, ||I just kind of suspected that the specific specialties were intentional rather than just going for raw capacity||

[teal abyss]

I assume the general principle was MAJOR FUCKING SPOILERS ||that in order to create a new RA, he was trying to achieve it through the principle of like, an omni-gestalt with every possible specialty represented. Absolute hot nonsense from a metaphysical perspective but you can follow the logic||

[uneven sedge]

||in order to WHAT||

[sleek monolith]

@teal abyss I've read the draft of Siren's Song as well and talked to Shaka about some juicy behind the scenes stuff. and ||the nhp involved in that, is also hard cycled to the point that it's memory keeps getting FULLY erased and corrupted. And the person who gives the players their job only sees NHP as a tool. I think you'll dig where that one goes narratively since the party can side with the NHP in the end.||

[teal abyss]

oh neat!

[leaden pine]

Let them cook

[teal abyss]

YEP. ||DHIYED messed him up good and proper. Something something dudes will try to recreate god rather than go to therapy.||

[wary lava]

Yeeep

[teal cliff]

I know DG is controversial in a few ways in for Lancer community, especially in how it approaches NHP, but I can say that my group has enjoyed it thus far

[wary lava]

Is it?

[teal cliff]

yeah, though I think the Legionnaire chat is maybe not the best place to discuss. The TLDR is there are a fair few who were/are fairly unhappy with the portrayal/treatment of NHP in it.

[wary lava]

Ahhh

[teal cliff]

Yeah, just that NHP are the crossover element with Legionnaire lol xD

[north roost]

most of my interaction with Dustrgrave has been mechanical stuff, but my understanding is it's a bit more uh... instrumentalist

wrt how it approaches NHPs

[teal cliff]

huh i wonder if i should have run dustgrave and mountains remorse back to back

for the nhp themes

or if running Solstice rain inbetween will give a needed break

[ocean lantern]

Well SSMR is not official out yet so might get changes before then, so running SR first to give it a chance to get to the official SSMR release seems like a good idea IMO

And SR does have a lot of NHP stuff going on with what the big bad of it is

[teal cliff]

yeah for sure!

im mostly looking forward to laying a bit more heavily into the whole milspec aspect of SR, while dustgrave felt more like detective cowboy stuff

[teal abyss]

A rising tide lifts all boats ☺️

[sleek monolith]

I expect another bump when Siren's Song/Mountain's Remorse comes out, since it too deals with NHP themes. And I hope it drives even more sales, Kat.

[polar pagoda]

Yeah

It’s very neat

[karmic pike]

Thanks for the guidance!

[glacial ember]

Everyone give Kat money!

[eternal ferry]

There's even a bit of an easter egg connecting the two...

This friendly fellow and his music box in dustgrave?

You should follow the song, see where he leads you...

[teal cliff]

i wonder, if a nhp becomes given to megalomania and you become a guy who waves leaves at the casket.... actually i don't know where thats coming from, but the image just amused me

"It's not much, but it's a living"

[glacial ember]

Alright that's big spooky.

[teal abyss]

OH MY GOD

omg the colours too

[ivory jetty]

I'm making a character whose backstory is an ex-union "legionspace witness" who worked as a human observer of legionspace during engagements. I just got to the section on ontological filters... mind blown about it being a similar process to what's used in shackling but applied to a human for the reverse direction. Very cool and thorough worldbuilding there.

[night iris]

Wonder how many people are gonna make NHP pilots with an Iconoclast clown car build
And take a whole polycule into battle

Meld onto a mini legion when you pop transcendance

[versed solar]

Don’t tempt me

[leaden pine]

everytime someone mentions NHP clown cars it reminds me of this and how funny it is

"Yeah they are used to polycules but not someone being literally three mfers"

[north roost]

I'm reasonably sure that's the vibe intent behind iconoclast

[teal abyss]

Thank you! A lot of my writing for this felt like I was bridging the gaps between previously established lore so there were a lot of little connections like this. It all felt very natural, like I was uncovering something that was there already, which pleases me greatly.

Also can I just say that character concept absolutely ROCKS

My brain can't put it down, the things they must have seen

https://tenor.com/view/blade-runner-tears-in-rain-gif-6049070

[teal cliff]

Hmm, does being an nhp character even actually matter to iconoclast?

[north roost]

Can your character cascade?

Because IIRC that's the big thing

[teal cliff]

I actually figured the talent actually cares about like systems with NHP in their name installed on a mech

[teal abyss]

It does not, you don't grant your mech the AI tag so you don't count as an NHP as far as Iconoclast is concerned

[teal cliff]

Ok yeah that's what I'd thought

Narratively is got some... interesting connotations, ones that I think are actually kind of fun

[leaden pine]

"Im just built different"

[teal cliff]

Evil mad scientist nhp with 0 regard for other nhp vibes

I say cool mostly cause like... nhp portrayal as villainous is almost always reserved for cascade, it's a bit fun for a narrative string exploring alternatives

[leaden pine]

Ill always approve of shackled NHP antagonists they are fun

[north roost]

Tbf you give people a built in Eldritch madness button, can you expect folks to not push it when they need a scary dude?

[stable stream]

i'm putting together an NHP character, both because they're neat and so the clowncar NHP build i'm eventually planning has some good company. I'm quite excited for it

[ivory jetty]

Here's a question: are we sure we found all the new blinkspace entities following the Deimos event? They seem like they would be hard to detect directly, so it's plausible that only the largest ones which manifested regularly and distinctly were suborned and turned into NHPs.

That is: are there subsentient blinkspace spirits/animals running around out there? Seems like a rich lore opportunity for object/location animism.

[north roost]

are we sure we found all the new blinkspace entities following the Deimos event?
I'm reasonably sure the first third of the book all but states the answer to that is no

it certainly implies it, given that was what they thought Third Wave NHPs were until recently

(for a given value of recent, anyway)

[teal abyss]

(yes this ☝️)

[sleek monolith]

also, makes you wonder what a Voladore would have as a pet

[rigid canopy]

There's also the reference to RA potentially showing up at various planets over time. I imagine anytime RA shows up, there's a chance of paracausal shenanigans and further creation of blinkspace entities.

[sleek monolith]

Omg.. what if Voladore collect old earth weird things cause those are actually "pet cages" that the pet outgrew. Like, that old solar calculator from 2001 ce

"Don't tell the Union that this was fluffy's house until we got them a proper new comp/con to live in"

[boreal pebble]

Like a mix between Objects of Power and hermit crab shells? Neat idea

[wintry crane]

If you do a single-layer eidolon miniboss fight as suggested on p74, would you add any extra NPCs alongside it?

A single layer seems like it might not make for a very balanced combat

That is, it seems like it would be pretty easy

[fickle marten]

From experience, absolutely add more NPCs. It's a fun background element, but one layer is pretty trivial forpretty much any group.

[wintry crane]

Would you balance a single layer as a single structure worth of NPCs?

Or maybe 2 structure

That HP pool balloons fast

[fickle marten]

I think I'd do it as 2, especially since you get the Shards in there.

I was mostly eyeballing at that point, though.

[wintry crane]

Cool, thanks!

Thinking of doing a single layer and an ultra, or elite vet

[fickle marten]

I did... a single Layer, a Veteran Ultra, a Veteran, and two standard NPCs as a boss fight once. Granted, this was also at the Tier cusp, so they were pretty potent comparatively.

[wintry crane]

Wow

good call, this mission is going to be LL4 and I just gave them a pile of really good exotics

They are getting really powerful

how many PCs was that for?

[fickle marten]

It was for 4 PCs, and was the first fight in the mission. (The 2nd was a gimmick fight against some Veterans with special rules, and the 3rd was the Final Boss, which was a full eidolon. They still managed to handily pull it off.)

[wintry crane]

Very cool

[teal abyss]

It'll also depend on which layer type you pick. They vary wildly in power level/difficulty

[plucky brook]

Some of them are also much better at disruption than others.

I'd rank the Brawly ones pretty low in 'how much they'd affect things alongside other NPCs'

But the 'change the rules of the fight' (Oh fuck, Lights Out, for example) ones could really pull their weight.

[glacial ember]

Lights out is very not fun yeah. Make sure you pick very carefully

[wintry crane]

Lights Out?

The Abyssal layer?

I was vaguely considering Canopy though I was worried it might be grindy

I don't love that the speed at which you can kill it is capped by the speed at which it can spawn more shards, which is 1d3 per round with 3 players

[ocean lantern]

Yeah, the group I am in fought one and we were good at killing the shards fast leading to frustration of the players that had nothing to do because the shards were all dead when it go to their turn

[wintry crane]

I'll probably have to spend an hour or two and really read through each layer and see if I can figure out how it might play in practice

[glacial ember]

And feel free to tweak them depending on how the combat is going.

[north roost]

How bad Abyssal is varies wildly on whether your party has Arcing/seeking

Monarch doesn't care about Abyssal at all, really

But a Sherman very much does

[wintry crane]

i have a monarch and a blackbeard

and a lich

I think only the lich will care

[north roost]

Yeah Melee's issue is gonna be finding the bastard

[solid parrot]

i'll note that arcing and seeking do not actually help

Characters other than the Eidolon and its shards cannot draw line of sight to or target anything further away than �2.

the targeting clause there really harshes everyone's mellow

[north roost]

My copy of the book doesn't have "or target" in

Which imo is significantly better, on account of allowing actual counterplay to the stupid thing

[solid parrot]

check how much armor the enemy on page 69 has, would you? assuming you're not going to play in wallflower in the near future

[surreal owl]

My version matches Izaak’s, and I picked mine up later than others

[north roost]

I already ran wallflower, so spoilers aren't a concern. That said, I am on my phone, so I don't actually have the book on hand to open

[solid parrot]

nice. basically, on page 69, an enemy has an armor value of "-1" in the early downloads of wallflower

this is a good metric for checking if someone has an old version of the pdf and needs to redownload

i'm not a fan of abyssal myself, also. its punishing in a way no other content in this game is

[novel ocean]

Thanks for saying this, my download is old apparently lol

[north roost]

Tbh I swapped out abyssal for purity because my group did not have arcing lol

When I say the Sherman would care that's speaking from experience

[glacial ember]

Our group was a ghengis mk1, an iskandar, and a caliban, we did not have a great time with that layer.

[north roost]

did Isky not have their core?

cause I'm reasonably sure Abyssal can't do anything about isky core

[solid parrot]

isk core doesnt affect abyssal unless you jam it, basically

since it only triggers on nonstandard moves

And you need to take away abyssals ability to use one of its two quick actions to get it to do something like boost

[surreal owl]

[gently] I think we’ve strayed from Legionnaire here

[teal abyss]

okay on the same vague topic though I do wish I could have included more lamellae in Legionnaire

they got nixed because there was zero chance they could be effectively playtested

I would be kind of interested to see if anyone has bothered homebrewing some

(feels like there's enough to be getting on with for most GMs, in all fairness)

[plucky brook]

Yeah, with just the existing layers there is 'more options than there is NPC types'. Obviously they don't have the customization of existing NPCs but there's a lot of options.

What I did when doing a fight that was 'A borderline Eidolon NHP' was to treat a mech as the First Layer of a small Eidolon, with the destruction of the NPC as the final push to move into full on Eidolon mode.

Exotic Goliath (With a couple of buddies to make the fight interesting) that when destroyed revealed an Eidolon Layer.

[wary lava]

Lamellae? As in, eidolon layers?

[teal abyss]

yup

[wary lava]

Yeah, I've ran Eidolon twice and I've far from run out of layers to use.

But I might use single-layer enemies of sort.

That's interesting enough

[stoic moth]

I remember seeing a homebrewed one, let me check my tome

Eidolon Layer: IDENTITY
From field guide to Iridia by @fickle marten

[uneven sedge]

IDENTITY is cool.

(wish I knew what was up with Eidolons in general tbh)

[fickle marten]

Ah, yes, I did do that one. And, can confirm, it's a lot harder to get playtesting for them than any other NPC. ...and the balance is a lot wonkier, too. (Hence why only one.)

[glacial ember]

I think for Eidolons you can kinda be a little looser on balance, as long as you as the GM are willing to be flexible.

Cause, you know, all sorts of paracausal bullshit.

[fickle marten]

The tricky part is making them fun, though. Gimmicks are easy. Fun gimmicks are harder. And can be pretty group-dependent.

[stoic moth]

Another practical difficulty about Eidolons is they require the person to have another book besides the Core Rule Book to function

[brittle ginkgo]

this is kinda how I felt when Legionnaire started to talk about KTB Bonds and Stresses and I forgot that I had bought KTB already

[teal abyss]

Yeah, very reasonable. That's why I tried to provide a barebones alternative that didn't require the bonds system, but it's definitely not as fully realised since there's much less to hang a system off

One of the big problems with designing based on pre-existing work 😦

[ocean lantern]

Yeah, I wish that they would release the Bonds stuff in a free thing to make it easier to use for other stuff

[wary lava]

If in a reality there is a second edition of Lancer, it should probably be core.

[north roost]

Lancer 2e is a concept that both intrigues and frightens me

But honestly it's probably unnecessary

[surreal owl]

Depends on whether an SRD gets made

[stoic moth]

There's definitely some room for improvement in Lancer, so I wouldn't be sad to see a 1.5e or 2e. But I also wouldn't be heartbroken if their wasn't. Worst offending issues are pretty easy to patch over with house rules as required or find post hoc explanations where they've been given

[north roost]

Lancer ain't perfect but imo it doesn't need enough changed to the whole skeleton of the thing to merit a whole version change

[teal cliff]

id almost be more interested in lancer games adjacent; like set in the lancerverse but not lancer

[polar pagoda]

Stuff like battlegroup is great

There’s a lot you can do outside of the giant robot format

[stoic moth]

Like eclipse phase

[polar pagoda]

Hahaha yeah

Though I’ve plugged that enough I feel here.
There’s options

[stoic moth]

I've never played it but I'm quite interested in giving it a whirl someday. Pro transhumanism and all that 😛

[north roost]

we may have drifted off legionarre talk again >_>

[stoic moth]

Make a game that's entirely set in Legionspace

So liked Winged's Manifold Wire but with even more abstract concepts

Like set it on the complex plane or something

[teal abyss]

I could see a Legionspace Gestalt Combat CCG/duel game

like a more symmetrical and substantially more esoteric netrunner

I could also see a game conceptually similar to Pandemic except you're trying to stamp out fascism

I would love to see that legionspace game though, I think that could be incredible

[solid parrot]

i know kai has talked about a game concept where you play a squadron of mech killer infantry, to showcase the horrifying power of mechs and what you'd need to do to kill one on foot

but also i would love to see a boardgame that is, in essence, a semi-abstract representation of legionspace combat

something involving tile construction potentially

[polar pagoda]

legionspace game would be so fucking cool

[solid parrot]

the concept of legionspace boardgame reminds me of a line from Knives Out, tbh

"i'm not playing to beat you, i'm playing to make a beautiful pattern"

and if i was designing it, that would be the tack i would try and take

[stoic moth]

Off the topic of fucking awesome sounding boardgames:
Let's say you had captured an NHP and had their casket pulled out and disconnected from anything. Is there any particular precautions you would want to take in storing it (the casket)? Like would it need a specially reinforced cargo container or something?

[polar pagoda]

probably something airgapped

[versed solar]

Yeah I was about to say probably don’t let it have access to anything that can be hacked or linked

[teal abyss]

Depends what the precautions are against. Environmental damage, external access from other folks trying to kidnap/return it, or the NHP itself

If it's the latter, putting it in dormancy seems like a smart plan

[stoic moth]

Ok yeah that's all about what I was thinking. Wasn't sure if there were some exotic factors I hadn't remembered/read like "casket needs X every Y amount of time" or whatever

[teal abyss]

it's unclear whether caskets need an external power source (or fuel if they have internal power), which you might want to consider for extremely long term storage

but that might be out of scope for a narrative, we don't really consider how long a coldcore or other power sources can operate for because the answer is generally "long enough"

[teal cliff]

on the other subject, we do know that caskets themselves are built tonka tough, so likely don't need specialised reinforced containers; unless like you're storing it somewhere specifically hazardous

if its a hostile nhp casket you might want to take extra care to ensure that no hardline connections can be made to it and that it has no remote access to your systems i guess

[plucky brook]

Put the box in a bigger box.

[solid parrot]

and then mail that box to yourself

[plucky brook]

And hit it with a Kinetic Hammer!

[brittle ginkgo]

glorious plan

you know, I just had a thought regarding NHP stuff

Lore-wise, aside from the NHPs you get from traits, it's clearly noted that the personalities for said NHPs are hand-delivered using physical couriers. IIRC they make it abundantly clear that NHPs should never be transmitted through the omninet. Why do you think that might be? Is it due to the fact that the omninet leverages blinkspace, which is where NHPs come from?

[surreal owl]

IIRC from convos I’ve seen, omninet transmission of an NHP had “NHP trafficking” concerns

[brittle ginkgo]

that's interesting

because a few peeps interested in playing in a campaign of mine want to "fuck around" (their words) and run an all NHP party called "The Caretakers", with their MO being transmitting themselves between linked caskets using the omninet to basically get boots on the ground faster than any organic could feasibly do

[teal abyss]

In addition to trafficking issues, it's because Union wants to keep a solid track on what NHPs are out there as part of their licensing regime. If you can send over the omninet, it's much harder to trace if things go wrong.

It's one of those rules that seems to largely exist for regulatory purposes rather than practical ones

[brittle ginkgo]

fair

I think I can work with this idea though

basically have both sets of caskets broadcasting "The Caretakers are transmitting themselves between X and Y" to some Union system so that they can keep being tracked, with the end-point caskets sending an "all clear" when the transfer completes and the origin caskets going through an automated purge.

[teal abyss]

I think that's a super interesting premise for a campaign

[brittle ginkgo]

I can even have it be an actual plot point that some HORUS members hijack a transfer and yeet The Caretakers into a different set of caskets, which causes alarms to be sent to Union about a failed transfer. Union, as a result, will have a UIB team dispatched to both caskets to figure out what went wrong, while the party has to figure out a way to get out and either retransmit a "we are here" signal to the Union system or go on the run with their new-found freedom from Union's regulations.

[stoic moth]

Notably the restriction is a legal one by Union. It is presumably possible to disguise sending them, as I doubt Horus or Horizon strictly abide by Union's prohibitions on transfer.

So they could also be doing this Underground

[brittle ginkgo]

honestly the way I play HORUS is that the members that the PCs interact with are more akin to "teen hackers/skiddies" that care more about "can this work?" rather than "if this works, how do we do it best?"

I always enjoy playing HORUS as "the ones you can meet aren't too harmful in the grand scheme of things, but the ones you can't meet are the ones you should worry about"

like you have a bunch of uncoordinated people yelling "hack the planet!" while the actual hackers and such already have fingers in every pie without people knowing because the loud ones distract enough

[teal abyss]

That makes a lot of sense as an organisational structure. Much darker, conspiracy/organised crime/Camarilla vibes, with the "footsoldier" skiddies being easily influenced by code drops or hints from above, used not just because they are disposable, but because with the correct infosec they are actively ablative.

The secret within the secret being the best way to hide something, tricking an investigator into thinking they have the answer

brings a new and darker meaning to "good luck I'm behind seven proxies"

[sleek monolith]

it's never come up, but at least in my own personal setting ||Horus's top personnel trying to summon ra and actually have a chance are the heads of GMS||

[spiral shoal]

I've always explained Horus to my players as "Imagine if 4Chan was also Raytheon." I'm gonna definitely steal that from you, @brittle ginkgo

[brittle ginkgo]

yeah. My players have yet to actually meet a HORUS member, but depending on how they meet a member, their experience is either gonna be "typical /pol/ user" or "are the only calm people in this paracausal insanity", with the first being more akin to posers/copycasts that happen to get some choice care packages from impossible sources (like Lich printing itself into existence from the future) while the second could actually be considered a legitimate lower-level member.

I'm also always going to hint at the fact that, no matter who they meet, there's always somehow someone higher on the totem pole

which is going to be fun because I do want to eventually drop a bombshell of "one of the highest ranked members of HORUS is actually a MONIST entity", which begs the question of "what on earth is higher on the totem pole than a god?"

[ocean lantern]

Dave the janitor obviously

[brittle ginkgo]

I love the idea that, for my HORUS totem pole, it just keeps going down a spiral until it can be tracked to a PC in the Massif Vault that's just been left to idle while running Windows 95

like... this entire shadow organization being somehow led by an ancient piece of technology that isn't even capable of thought feels... oddly apt?

like to me, HORUS feels like it is both a very serious hacker org, and also just a walking shitpost at the same time

just a clown car of infosec breaches

[glacial ember]

I mean, I also think it's likely that a number of Horus cells are just... fully independent and disconnected from all other HORUS cells. They just choose the banner of horus and do stuff under it.

[ocean lantern]

Yeah, HORUS having an organisational structure that resembles a web made by a dozen spiders each exceptionally high on a different substance seems very likely

[night iris]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2HipedgM3I

[wintry crane]

PC starting to research H-NHP bridges

Wants to merge with his technophile NHP

[wary lava]

heck yeah

[leaden pine]

Fuck yeah

[robust shadow]

excellent

[tired forge]

Manifold wire?

Also, I thought Horus was supposed to be more than space 4chan? More of a mix of internet communities

[surreal owl]

HORUS has been described by Tom as the Internet x Death Cult

[glacial ember]

Think of it like 4chan, and also tons of other internet activist communities, some with good causes, some with bad causes, some with good methods, some with bad methods, no overarching structure, all of it based off a certain vibe of internet weirdness. Horus is that awesome internet cat that leaked those important docs, but also the reddit group that "found the boston bomber". They are the best bits of anti-authoritarian activist groups, but also the worst bits. They provide kobolds for free sanjak, but they also hack an HA printer on an HA world and it explodes, killing some HA big wigs but also a bunch of workers that don't really have any power.

[polar pagoda]

Oh and the firebombing hospitals sometimes

Sometimes they do just…hate other people

[stoic moth]

https://wingedvictory.itch.io/manifold-wire

[stoic moth]

Is all of an NHP's processing power contained within their casket or can they get hardware boosts from external memory?

(Besides forming fleet Legions etc. by merging with other NHPs)

[teal abyss]

I imagine any external boost they'd get would be limited by casket interface throughput, which is to say probably yes but digital tech does not have the functionally infinite capacity that an NHP has, so I'm assuming there is only limited benefit to delegating processing elsewhere unless it's for the purposes of autonomous operation

if they are specifically operating through the use of I/C rigs, those are intended to minimise latency as a priority, but I'd imagine any given model or design of I/C rig is optimised for different scenarios. The ones used for mech interfaces are naturally going to be designed around the NHP specifically interfacing with contained milspec hardware that might come under systemic attack

The specific CRB reference here is this one:

Subsequent research into the ontologic processes, physical construction, and paracausal nature of the Deimos entities revealed that, while their processing power and memory space was functionally infinite, they were limited in how fast they could write novel experiences to that space: they could learn and adapt to external stimuli at the same rate that they experienced them – some much faster than others.

To me this suggests that using external hardware is always going to induce a delay of some kind, and you're already bottlenecked by IO issues so you can't improve that by increasing capacity

[plucky brook]

I think the best use of external interfaces for them would be data gathering not processing. Compiling data for them to experience without them needing to do the searching personally. As they're limited by input/output speeds, foisting off the Busywork to other tech would allow them to focus on important decisions rather than 'running through the basic data searching process'.

Sure, they could search that database but the repeated input/output of going through each file to find what they want could be handed off to an expert system so they can focus on something else while it's searching.

[teal abyss]

that makes sense to me

[glacial ember]

I imagine that's a lot of what Civic NHPs end up doing, they don't run the city completely by themselves, but they process all the data and coordination needed, and create subordinate/subroutines to actually implement and respond the the immediate situations. See (NRFAWF ACT 1 Spoilers) ||Overland/Kingwatcher and his "lieutenants" Beggar_One, Mendicant_Two, Hierophant_Three, and Wonder_Four. Obviously a civic NHP isn't going to create a full on shard like that, but the idea feels similar.||

[plucky brook]

Yeah. They're more Overseers than Micromangers, as I understand it. Unless they're Noah carefully organizing traffic like they're playing a citybuilding game but that's more exception imo than rule 😛

[glacial ember]

Noah has a lot of fun, we don't want to interrupt them.

[plucky brook]

To be fair, I have 100% done the same thing. I can understand Noah.

[glacial ember]

Noah, enjoyer of trains, suggesting that this city have more trains:

[sleek monolith]

Hrm. More things to think about

[teal abyss]

playtesting some pankration mechani sitreps has me like 🤔

[wintry crane]

Ooh do tell

[teal abyss]

taking some inspiration from Coldcore Coliseum to make my own sitreps for the Freelancers server, some interesting outcomes and lessons learned (pilots having the ability to return to the deployment zone to grab a backup mech really changes the way the PCs approach the game)

now having more thoughts about a potential Karrakin supplement

[glacial ember]

Backup mech? Then you're free to melt down!

[ocean lantern]

Yup, that says "burn all the overcharge and have an explosive time" to me

[teal abyss]

yeah, there are downsides (your backup mechs are permanently impaired and come back on 1 structure/stress, you have to spend a full action in your side's DZ to mount a new one) but it does make mechs more disposable. The biggest effect in practice is actually that destroying NPCs isn't the best way to win

I also gave all my NPCs Limitless which evened things out a lot

[ocean lantern]

Destroying NPCs is not intended as the primary win criteria for most sitreps anyway, even if people tend to do it anyway

[teal abyss]

What is intended and what is effective are frequently different things

Almost every sitrep is winnable by just killing everything and then achieving the objective uncontested

but anyway, this needs some more design work obviously, but it points to some interesting factors to consider in sitrep design for mech sports

this is why I enjoy playtesting, it's really great for highlighting this stuff in a more visceral way that whiteroom theorycrafting simply can't replicate

[ocean lantern]

Yup, and gets more people looking at stuff in different ways that are likely to find some weird uses for stuff

[sleek monolith]

if you need another playtester I have some groups I can run things for. but also glad you're having fun 🙂

[teal abyss]

thanks, I'll bear it in mind 🙂

firmly in the fucking around stage right now, but we'll see if this goes anywhere

[wary lava]

I thirst for more sitrep. 😮

[brittle ginkgo]

NRFAW ACT 1 Spoilers
||To be fair, O/K and his lieutenants is more akin to the stories of cascading NHPs 'generating offspring' than creating autonomous delegations. O/K effectively spun off versions of itself in the hope of one of them being able to kick them out of their cascade.||

[brittle ginkgo]

What is the Freelancers server? I'll admit I'm interested in it, but have no idea how I would join to look around.

[surreal owl]

I think it gets posted in #lancer-game-recruiting every once in a while?

[teal abyss]

yeah the server owner has stopped publicly advertising it but it's still open for folks to join by word of mouth, I occasionally run games there

[brittle ginkgo]

is it PbP?

[teal abyss]

I also wrote the current incarnation of their setting

live games via discord/vtt

[brittle ginkgo]

ah, well I'd be interested in at least spectating, because I can't guarantee I'd be able to play due to life atm

[teal abyss]

yeah spectators are chill

[brittle ginkgo]

feel free to DM me an invite whenever

[glacial ember]

I wouldn't mind a DM invite either, if such a thing is available

[teal abyss]

sry I'm not gonna dm folks but the invite links that are here on pnet should be working

(it's not my server so I'm going to respect the owner's approach)

[glacial ember]

Continued Wallflower A1 spoilers
||Yeah, I agree with you on that, but I think/imagine they're a similar capability, just taken to a more full extreme. B1 and friends were complete shards, created and fractured in the traumatic experience of cascade. But noncascading NHPs can likely set up digital facsimiles capable of handling different tasks and focuses. Like a person creating different personas/worksonas, but actually independent of themselves.||

[brittle ginkgo]

that's completely understandable. I'll go searching for it

[glacial ember]

Okay, well I appreciate it anyway!

[stoic moth]

Yeah been thinking about this a bunch lately and I'm not 100% sure how to fix it without major mechanical changes like you're talking about. I think maybe just the general guidelines for how many NPCs to field is frequently undertuned. Maybe infinite reinforcements or something?

[leaden pine]

Thinking

You could totally use Ah Muzen Cab to do Bloodborne in Lancer

[stoic moth]

Doooo it!

In our version of Ah Muzen Cab we fought Sliver mechs from Magic the Gathering and then had to escape from anime highschool using modified Maid RPG mechanics

[teal abyss]

it was a trip

[ocean lantern]

That definitely sounds like an awesome thing

[sleek monolith]

My answer has been to reduce the rounds by a white knuckle amount.

Say for instance, it's an escort sitrep, and you measured the map so they can get to the end at exactly the right time. Reduce the round number by one, add more reinforcement npcs

This will tend to put more pressure on player resources to complete the mission

Reduce a gauntlet sitrep by 2 rounds etc

[surreal owl]

Infinite Reinforcements (while maintaining a relatively consistent number of bodies on the board) could work, mostly because the game becomes more like a "video game" where killing 1 NPC causes it to "respawn" in an inconvenient position (for the NPC) and thus serves more as a type of control tool than a permanent solution to the sitrep

(also how did this topic wind up in Legionnaire)

[teal abyss]

Apparently we talk about all sorts in this thread 🙂 mostly it was me playtesting sitreps

[stoic moth]

https://tenor.com/view/charlie-day-gif-18564553

All things are linked to NHPs in the end

[glacial ember]

But can NHPs see why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?

[ocean lantern]

Some can, but they also refuse to explain it in terms that mortals can comprehend

[sleek monolith]

honestly I don't often do infinite reinforcements, but in a metavault?

yes

[night iris]

Data dart being a launcher means that Viceroy can Vanguard 3 with it

Someone walks into 3 and gets fold spaced

[teal cliff]

data dart into puppet systems to make them walk away

[ocean lantern]

Now that is a mean trick, sufficiently expensive to pull off that I don't think it is broken, but still a mean trick

Either version

[night iris]

do that in your turn to data dart again

[glacial ember]

That's amazing. "You were just leaving." "Yup, guess I was, bye."

[night iris]

This isn't the Objective Zone you're looking for

[teal abyss]

Honestly overwatching things with the Data Dart is deeply funny and I can't stop doing it

I've literally taken Tactician 3 on my hacker character just to do it more

[teal cliff]

"Oh did you shoot? You sure you want to get invaded?"

[glacial ember]

Does hurl into the duat count as an invade? I don't THINK it does.

[plucky brook]

It isn't. It's a unique quick tech.

[glacial ember]

Dang, I was hoping it could be used as a 4thGate any% speedrun tech, but it's also 1/round.

These ding dang designers thought of everything.

Wait.... there are only 10 systems with invade in the 1st party content?

Only 2 non-horus. Wow.

[teal cliff]

you also got your base invade and your 3 talent level invades

[plucky brook]

Each of those systems generally has 2 options too.

[glacial ember]

No no, I'm not like, struggling for options or anything, I just had the perception that the numbers were much higher.

Like, for some reason I felt there must've been more SSC invades, or like, at least one HA invade. But that is not the case.

[teal cliff]

so often in lancer mechanically, you rarely need more than like 1 or 2 actual hack options too, once you get one, you're mech is generally running on 2 or 3 solid hacking options, and more becomes like luxury picks

[glacial ember]

Yeah, I had just, never actually looked at the actual number, seen it all at once.

[stoic moth]

Notably unlike Invades which are restricted to characters, Osiris lets you target objects because tech actions are not restricted to character. So if you want to tick it up and delete some barrel's information permanence you can go ham.

[brittle ginkgo]

a question I just thought of as I make my first NHP Pilot...
Does the casket of an NHP Pilot take up the cockpit of a mech or can a human pilot be a passenger while you control it?

this is mainly a question for size 1+ mechs, as I sorta assume size 1/2 mechs are too small to fit a person and PC casket

[serene brook]

Got a tortuga with data dart and Scylla

Must be beautiful

[north roost]

I mean... gestures at Goblin fitting Osiris

any mech can mount an NHP

[brittle ginkgo]

look I can excuse it for NHP caskets and size 1/2 mechs with the expanded compartment system installed

but I'm asking if the cockpit of a given mech is vacant and can therefore support another pilot/casket as if it were a built-in expanded compartment

that being said, the art example of the casket mobility suite makes me want to just have this like... centipede style casket that can skitter out of a mech and run off

[night iris]

I had assumed that the cockpit space is taken up by casket, which is why it doesn't cost any SP or a talent rank like other NHPs do

but you could take an Expanded Compartment except it's just
a Normal Compartment

[teal abyss]

I would treat it mechanically as though you were taking up the compartment (perhaps your I/C rig is in a literal cockpit with an ejection system) and you'd need an Expanded Compartment to bring a human along. Though I'd allow stuffing a subaltern in there since it's pilot gear and presumably does not need to care about comfort

[plucky brook]

I'm 100% imagining the 'fake human driver' you'd sometimes see setting in a vehicle-form transformer.

[night iris]

yea i imagine you could fold the subaltern like cheap laundry

[north roost]

it's just a hologram. if you watch long enough you can see where the recording doesn't quite loop correctly :V

[teal cliff]

hey waitaminute, if you take technophile as an nhp character, can it just be a guy, whom you have "peaked beyond the curtain" with by talking about non work stuff, and now they're like actually a buddy and not just a colleague

like Jim gives helpful advice sometimes while i pilot

he sits over there

[surreal owl]

doing n-dimensional sudokus

[wary lava]

It's just Jim over there, eating paracausal cheetos and making comments and advice.

[teal cliff]

"I've seen beyond Jim's shackles, when not conforming to societies expectations, he likes to build small, detailed dioramas. I respect it and we have bonded over this.

Recently, Jim has been mimicking some of my behaviors. Is this a prank, or something deeper..."

By tech3 Jim is totally twinning with us, finishes our sentences etc

[north roost]

nods They're lesbians Harold

[teal abyss]

I love this

[teal cliff]

"Recently, I have become 'roommates' with Jim"

[night iris]

and they were mechmates

[glacial ember]

"I put the two NHPs in the same mech."
"So they could kiss?"
"Yeah, so they could kiss."

[tired forge]

Decorping so you can exist in the same computer as your nhp partners

[teal abyss]

not me ordering a bunch of books about the US Navy Fighter Weapons School and digging out my old copy of Dune 🤫

[sleek monolith]

Hrm. Legionnaire has definitely altered how I've been running the Wallflower Part 2 draft. But weird question for you all, think an nhp could be contained on an old humanity VHS?

[oak pecan]

Probably not, but it could probably represent it's casket in that way if it cascaded enough.

[stoic moth]

Certainly not the type 1 VHS tapes of the 1900s era since they're regular digital mediums. The metafolded type 2 VHS tapes of 2079 onwards though probably could

[glacial ember]

On Caledan, we cultivated airpower, on Arrakis, we achieved desert power. In the Dawnline Shore, we'll need Legionspace power.

[teal abyss]

Sxoa's correct in general about "contained"; though if you're taking "manifested within" like the subalterns at the Siege of Mars, I'd say no (even if it were an arbitrarily large one). The thing about a VHS is that it's not a machine (in the general sense), it's just data storage; there are no processes going on for an NHP to manipulate. That said, from a theoretical perspective an NHP could manifest within a VHS player if that player were sufficiently complex.

[sleek monolith]

Then I'mma have to do a thunk about what my player actually did on a metaphysical level lol.

||trapped Beggar 1's Conscious in an old VHS of family holiday recordings to give Beggar 1 a sense of a warm family as a form of therapy. the family is starting to have bleed-through memories of a missing sibling.||

[teal abyss]

I guess in a technical sense you could upload the data that would comprise an NHP to an arbitrarily large VHS tape, which is implied by the ability to transmit them through the omninet, but I don't think that's actually an NHP itself

For example, if you were to take a brain scan of a human on a level of detail sufficient to recreate them perfectly using another machine to replicate a second brain for them to exist within, the stored data is not that person's consciousness even if they experience no break in subjective continuity between the first body and the next

At least, that's one perspective. Not definitive. I'm sure there are lots of ways to examine that scenario from a philosophical standpoint

The assumption here is that the pattern needs a substrate to run on, in order to have subjective experience

But, also, it's important to remember one vital thing:

[sleek monolith]

yeah, that last part

but I'm not sure where I want to GO with the whole "we put the NHP in this tape of home movies, and now the NHP is in Everyone's Memory"

[teal abyss]

Also in your specific example ||you're talking about an eidolon|| so that makes many things more possible

Like, all bets are off when you're talking about that stuff

[north roost]

Existence is a trick of perspective; the difference between the image an its truth is only imagined

/horus-glitchy-text

[teal abyss]

in this case we're talking format differences. A digital video file that exists on a hard drive is a meaningfully distinct Thing from the movie being displayed on the screen when that same file is being played. There's a specific word for this but it escapes me right now

[glacial ember]

I mean, it's a bit like the shadows on the cave wall in Plato's allegory.

The shadows are distinct from the things casting them.

But also at this point you're getting into theories of consciousness stuff that we have no concrete answers on and you can kinda do whatever you want, whatever feels right.

Is consciousness from the substrate? Is it from the pattern? Is it an emergent property? Is it something else? No one can really say for certain.

[teal abyss]

I think we have a good idea within Lancer's metaphysic that consciousness basically requires an ongoing frame of reference (a "subjectivity"); that subjectivity can be broken and even duplicated, but implicit within it is that it is a thing that is experiencing

i.e. a process

VHS tapes by their nature are static*, unlike say - a brain, in which chemical reactions are continuously happening and the state is changing over time

*let's ignore natural decay of magnetic media, RIP my old Amiga floppy disks 😭

[glacial ember]

RIP Floppies, you were a real one, pour one out for fallen.

[teal abyss]

This dovetails with the idea within Legionnaire that pre the development of shackles, NHPs manifesting within subaltern systems were essentially extrusions from somewhere else (blinkspace) manipulating electronic systems

[glacial ember]

I think you're, definitely right about that, but I also think it's (probably intentionally) one of the least concrete parts of the setting, so that people can explore their answers to that question in their own games.

[teal abyss]

this neatly explains why eidolons can do what they do, the unconstrained form of an NHP has the ability to pierce the barrier between realspace and blinkspace (or perhaps, is that piercing in some meaningful way, either might be true) - this is probably how the first NHPs "helped" GALSIM

[glacial ember]

Yeah(also sorry for the pings I keep forgetting to hit the lil button to not be annoying lol), that's definitely how I had perceived NHP origin stuff. Higher dimensional/Blinkspace native entities who interacted with real space through the digital interface of subalterns, that then got "constrained" to real space through the shackling process(which also gave them the ability to process real space in a more human/single entity way)

[tired forge]

Pixar movie about the secret lives of data in so-called "static" media when users aren't looking.

Considering the importance of hand symbols for blink stuff in Sunzi and the religious text of liturgicode, wouldn't the VHS recording have some power? A sort of process it starts doing on its own.

[teal abyss]

I don't mind pings dw

They are actively useful to me and I don't understand why others don't like them (though I do try to respect their wishes)

[tired forge]

Since it's a "text" of data about an event with an nhp recorded now.

[glacial ember]

Same tbh.

[tired forge]

Well, a lot of pings from one or multiple convos could be annoying

[vital plume]

I think pings are mainly annoying when they're an @ everyone for something irrelevant

[teal abyss]

Yes, that I do detest, but being pinged when I'm in an ongoing conversation is fine (particularly because Discord doesn't actually ping you if you're focused on a conversation, it only does it if you're focused elsewhere, which is exactly the point I do want the notification)

[north roost]

mood

[teal abyss]

I think that paracausality is precisely the narrative justification you need for this kind of thing, and I encourage it 🙂

to come back to the VHS tape idea, don't worry about how it works, just do it because it's cool

[tired forge]

Also, the golden from ping looks nice

Yeah, I love emotionally significant media, objects and locations being charged with power.
Up there with "visiting the villain's memories/past/home"

[glacial ember]

I think that's why I love the electrodaemon part of legionnaire, the notion of unshackled(never shackled) Deimosians being like, spirits inhabiting places or objects is super cool. I kinda think of never shackled NHPs more like, the "spirit" of something far beyond a human perception, like a spirit of a forest, or volcano, or star. Which is absolutely sick.

And like, the Deimosians that worked with the humans to create the initial shackles feels to me a bit like the (Eureka Seven spoilers) ||scub corals creating the human shaped Coralians like Eureka in order to learn how to interact with humans in a way other than just merging with and subsuming them.||

[sleek monolith]

So a big thing I'm exploring, is the idea of self and reality. There's always something that bothered me, that of course doesn't gel well with RAW, and that's this:
If The Firmament is different from the Blink and Reality
The Blink is different from the Firmament and Reality
Reality is different from the Firmament and the Blink

Then how many realities are there? How would one cross multiple? Does Witness tap into a fourth un-measured reality? How would an Eidolon react to an ongoing outpouring of positive witness vibes? can an NHP be manifested inside a pocket of whatever Witness is?

so that's where "being trapped" in a VHS means I think to me at least. It's less the physical container, it's more what the tape represents on a memetic level

and why, by being contained "in it" it's starting to shape the memories of the family the tape recorded. Huh. yeah. I like this explanation I just came up with

[teal abyss]

So, there are a few answers to the number of parallel spaces that may or may not exist. I enjoy theorising about Lancer's cosmology.

To start with, we have the obvious three: realspace, blinkspace, the Firmament.

It's unclear what the Great Deep actually is; the Apollonians know it as a hyperstructure beyond the Firmament. I think we have two potential schools of thought on this: the first is that it is possible that the Great Deep is in fact Blinkspace. Alternatively it is its own thing entirely. In Legionnaire there's also the suggestion that it might not only be the latter, but that all other parallel spaces are simply reflections of it: a form of cosmological monism.

I don't think we have a parallel space associated with Witness that I know of but it does involve spooky action-at-a-distance (and also Witness is one of those areas of the lore I'm less confident that I understand). Similarly we have the Fates may or may not operate in their own space - if they are even real - but which one particularly beautiful theory suggests might be the precursors to Apollonian Firmament entities (drawing on the history of the Apollo).

Of course where there are two MONIST entities with associated parallel spaces it is natural to think that there might be more out there. The total number of parallel spaces could be unbounded or infinite. The total number of MONIST entities could be similarly unbounded or infinite. Or, there could just be two. The existence of the gun-snake-pinwheel is often taken to represent some kind of "MONIST-3" entity and sometimes named APEP after the Manticore flavour text, but could also be a poetic representation of the concept of violence, a representation of PISTON-1, or something else entirely. So it's hard to say; we have no strong evidence.

Notably we have no indication of whether NHPs can natively exist in the Firmament, or whether Souls could natively exist in blinkspace. Both of those types of entities are typically bound to realspace in some way though, either through the parallel space inside a casket or through a flowdisc helm, so even if they could be taken into those spaces (and we know several ways it could be done) it's really unclear whether they would natively exist inside other parallel spaces without some kind of binding or life-raft. Of course the same could be said for humans entering those spaces as well so 🤷‍♀️

I'll be honest and say that I enjoy the cosmological monism theory partly because it's a nice callback to the MONIST classification of the entities, partly because it's a neat setting design conceit (since it allows the introduction of other parallel spaces in the future), and partly because it doesn't privilege any of the spaces over any of the others, which I think was one of the things I disliked about the early versions of the Aun FG draft

[ivory jetty]

Brb making a casket in blinkspace to bind and house a firmament Soul

And vice versa

[teal abyss]

I never did figure out what consequences should happen as a result of one of my players temporarily sending an eidolon to the Firmament and trapping a shard of it in there 🤔

[tired forge]

Put a deimosian and a soul in the same device. See how they react to the environments

[night iris]

a PC of mine did that

[wary lava]

Not actually sure what Firmament is, actually.

[teal abyss]

The Firmament is another parallel space associated with Metat Aun (and the Aun more generally). Accessing it (or affinity with it) allows the Aun to effectively express magic powers, including basic stuff like powering hardlight equipment, but going up to FTL transport and immortality

It's a lot more detailed and nuanced than that, obviously, worth reading the Field Guide for

[glacial ember]

For instance, they had firmament halls that allowed them to walk into one hall on their planet and walk out on the other. Super FTL, no real tech needed

Definitely worth reading the aunic field guide

[teal abyss]

Although since nearly all our knowledge of it comes from the Field Guide a lot of the specific details related to it are in that weird sorta-canonical-but-liable-to-change state

there have been changes between drafts, and given the break who knows what might change if/when Miguel gets back around to working on it

[wary lava]

Ah, rad.

[teal abyss]

In general though I think the community treats the broad strokes of it as "this is canon until proven otherwise"

plus obviously the Aun and HA field guides are on indefinite hiatus so who knows when - if ever - they'll get updated

[wary lava]

Yeaaaah... I really hope they are back on track for that.

[uneven sedge]

JCH 2 getting uber-killed by RA seems real so I will accept it

[glacial ember]

JCH 2 Moonshot is so canon that if Miguel or Tom try to change it RA will come up and tell them no.

[sleek monolith]

was I imagining a pargraph on how to use the legionaire stuff without using KTB bonds?

found it, page 55

[teal abyss]

I will admit that that specific textbox is probably my least favourite thing in the whole book, largely because I feel frustrated that it has to exist

Honestly the ludonarrative harmony of handling cascade via the Stress/Bonds system is so phenomenally satisfying as a designer, I just wish it wasn't a set of optional rules from a supplement

[plucky brook]

Funny minor thing: #2 isn't JCH. He's JH but doesn't have the C.

I learned this about 50% of the way through the Liminal Space Kickstarter when someone pointed it out about a bit of fluff and I had to quickly edit to remove the C from a fluff bit XD

[teal abyss]

oh god he's John David Harrison isn't he

wait no hang on