Iphigenia at Midnight

[halcyon eagle]

though we can never go wrong with 500 blocks of era

[swift thicket]

speaking of tokens... the CDF says their identifying colors are deep sea green and accompanying camo. is that bolts of green over, say, grey camo? or is that deep sea green camo?

i'm just using plain old retrograde NPC tokens with a grey/grey-blue camo scheme and pink glows, then custom making the bosses and such

[wheat ferry]

The cover is their "dress uniform," as it were - otherwise, it's going to be theater camo plus green-gold stripes like on LC Arnold's sleeve in the NPC art

Coalition identifier is blue (ThirdComm) + green (Choral) as seen in the Mission 2 splash art

[pale pelican]

Right now im using a Dark blue with blue accents with the retrograde tokens

[swift thicket]

sweet. i'm just trying to figure out what i'm gonna do for my players' tokens :p

[pale pelican]

Trying to keep them away from being too dark so they look good in the map

[pale pelican]

Usually i either make a custom token with their mech. or just use default colored of their mech

Depends on how much time i have

[ashen pine]

So fun fact; I was taking the Classics Club from my school on a trip, along with my co-worker who is a Classics teacher last week.

On campus, we saw a statue titled "Iphigenia", and so I pointed it out, and my co-worker recognised it.
Which is how I found out it's pronounced "Iff-ih-jeh-NIGH-ah"

I had been saying iff-ih-JEH-nee-ah

[hearty mica]

i originally pronounced it iff-if-jeh-NEE-ah, but then i watched the 1977 film (which is free on youtube btw), which has an all greek cast, and they pronounced it iff-ih-JEH-nee-ah

[woven wharf]

i didn't realize people had other pronounciations for it

[wheat ferry]

(also highly recommend the 1977 Iphigenia for insight into the Myth™ if you don't want to read the play)

[idle copper]

i pronounced it "if-ih-gee-nee-uh" til corrected

[sweet blaze]

While we're on this, I really appreciate how in the HA sidequest we learn that warship NHPs get named after various mythical war gods

i never heard of most of them before

[wheat ferry]

🙏 indeed, I was running with the concept of NHP classes getting named after divine figures and went "okay, Union draws on every part of culture, let's get freaky with it"

iirc the other canon warship NHP name we have is the Thalassa-class, Rio

Jiutian is probably my favorite of the lesser-known deities named there (at least in the West!)

[solid jewel]

For union naval NHPs, my personal guideline is oceanic deities specifically

Suldan (third-party, unofficial) also has an ARUNA-class

[ashen pine]

Cassandra would definitely be a good alternative for Sisyphus

[idle copper]

Rio my pookie chess buddy <3

[carmine umbra]

damn it, hate to say it Ash, you cooked extremely hard with this, it fucks

[wheat ferry]

🙏 thank y'kindly

[carmine umbra]

still hate the Swordgrass for the record and I'll be banning it in all my games that aren't this

but I love literally everything else about this

finally, a mission worthy of John Lancaster's full rep cap power

[idle copper]

why so?

I personally am not a fan either because looking at it it feels like a Revenant Rogue from D&D standing alongside 3 depressed, PTSD having veterans of World War 4

[carmine umbra]

the cat girl should not be further rewarded for eating the opfor

in a more cohesive answer, the core power means that when a Swordgrass SEKHMET pops its core it has two states

completely fine

and structured

and because strikers invest hull

[barren kraken]

swordgrass sekhmet sounds disgusting

[carmine umbra]

you can fairly confidently map out NPC damages to figure out when you need to got and effectively full heal with benefits

and, you have a built in counter to your counter

precog lets you just take like, 6 damage to duck a sniper mark sniper shot

vibes wise, extremely cool
I will never trust it to my strikers

[wheat ferry]

fwiw this is absolutely intentional, the frame fluff talks about how proud SSC was for managing to make what's effectively a hypermodernized Enkidu that beats the shit out of its pilots' mental state look pretty

it's a statement art piece that also is overwhelmingly immediate physical violence

[carmine umbra]

like I said, bro cooked

[wheat ferry]

(f'ex: this isn't in the license fluff, but each pilot has a personalized, representative death-mask. why? because it's SSC and everything they make is tailored to you, from birth - DOLOROSA - to death - your chassis's face)

more broadly you can think of the frames as approaches to atrocity - to distance yourself from it, to approach it by euphemism, to stand against it, and to simply commit it baldly

[idle copper]

yeah it's sick in concept but it feels too magic/fantasy vibes for me personally
I think I'd like it more if it vibed kinda like ooo one sec

[carmine umbra]

that is kinda just HORUS' vibe tbh

[idle copper]

I couldnt find it in gifs

[carmine umbra]

it can seep out into other manufacts

as a treat

[idle copper]

but im imagining the like Romantic Statuesque vibes of the creatures that Viktor in Arcane makes

[carmine umbra]

the transbian hacker polycule will lose its monopoly in magic girl mechs

[wheat ferry]

a swordgrass in that style would absolutely fuck

also, on the mechanic notes: as someone who's GMed for a couple swordgrasses, apply lurker to forehead. they hate that shit

alternatively, breacher+witch

[carmine umbra]

also, quick rules question sorry if it's been asked before does the Changling round up?

[wheat ferry]

(you may notice these pop up in the opfor and Yep, That's Why, among other reasons)

[wheat ferry]

yep, explicitly says round up

[carmine umbra]

I'm blind

a million suplications for my inability to read

[wheat ferry]

lol you're good

[carmine umbra]

one last thing that occured to me as I was reading

God I think Iphi and MERLIN meeting would be interesting

although, quite impossible

they'd kill each other long before they sat down for tea

[wheat ferry]

correct

[carmine umbra]

my depressed NHP would totally beat your depressed NHP /s

although... If it wasn't completely out of the spirit of the module I would absolutely have MERLIN join this on The Worst Shore Leave Ever™

[stuck bison]

anything good at grappling are also very nice at eating the swordgrass too. speaking as someone who shut down my wife's swordgrass in my most recent sitrep, suldan ogre? quite good at kidnapping and pinning down a lone swordgrass.

similarly, I could see a cataphract being a very nice way to kidnap a lone size half

[wheat ferry]

indeed

one of the reasons I bring up lurkers specifically is that not only do they have a pull in their kit, but the invis and "swarms only go away on tech attack" is a mess for something that has a sensors of "none" and a TA of "lol"

[stuck bison]

true true true

[wheat ferry]

any way of applying Slowed is also a huge pain for nanowire sabre enjoyers

[stuck bison]

making note of this for future Lorelia bullying

[wheat ferry]

good. hit her with more graviton lances and grenades

[stuck bison]

rebake barricades are fucking mean, I was very pleased with how well it countered the swordgrass

[wheat ferry]

more broadly in terms of design intent and how it's evolved over playtesting, the swordgrass is a frame that can go maximum aggro very hard, very quickly but in the process is extremely vulnerable to sources of CC

shut down its reactions, shut down its movement, and it's a half-HP frame in an open field

(thus, Grappling)

[carmine umbra]

I give mine the D/D288

[stuck bison]

yeah I'm not worried about the perpetual violence engine because I can just slap a big, bulky guy or a witch from down range on it and make it's life hell

[carmine umbra]

fish fear me

they cannot slow what is already slowed

[wheat ferry]

ah yes, the Maximal Gambling approach

[carmine umbra]

Ash you know me

I do not bring rerolls, I do not play it safe

I will shoot them with big damage

and if I miss, I will die

I'm the fucking "I always play scissors" meme but with gambling

(and yes the other half of that meme where I meet a rock player (a mirage) is also true)

my first mech was Vlad heaven drill

[wheat ferry]

if there's anything I wish I could've changed about IaM post-open playtesting it's that nanocomp cheeses confined environments, but there's nothing I can do about that, really

Otherwise, I think the opfors are good guides on things you can do to kick the shit out of players

[carmine umbra]

yes, was very nice to find a module that doesn't make me do homework on making actually hard missions

now for the bit I curse you for Ash

you gave me brainworms I'll never be able to feeeeeeed

to ever do this module I know that I'd have to run it, such is my curse :(

not that I truely mind, it's peak either way but still

[wheat ferry]

many people are saying this. my evil is unspeakable

[carmine umbra]

surely I will find someone else to gm it for me after I run it for others right?

[dull escarp]

https://tenor.com/view/shrek-shrek-meme-shrek-staring-shrek-smiling-gif-14430015749099037012

[swift thicket]

has anyone made visual maps for this module yet? i am setting things up in foundry rn and wondering

also my pilots are going to be a Dusk Wing with Minotaur parts, a Genghis with Vlad parts, and a Caliban with Tortuga parts. I'm excited to crush them

[wheat ferry]

Visual map?

[swift thicket]

like.. decorated, i guess is what i mean

like inkarnate battlemaps

[wheat ferry]

ah - no, I don't think so

[solid jewel]

as someone involved somewhat in several projects that have involved illustrated battlemaps: that shit's expensive as hell

[fluid salmon]

hm I see taking notes

[solid jewel]

Nine times out of ten, "how do I make this striker-brained striker miserable" is always going to be that you need to be using more hard CC

[halcyon eagle]

how much did it take for solstice rain and winter scar?

[stuck bison]

swordgrass heavily mislikes having a big hand slammed on it's forehead

[wheat ferry]

for the record: fully-illustrated battlemaps were a stretch goal for the IaM Kickstarter and reaching it would've been a few thousand dollars above asking price

this is fair since it's effectively commissioning ~11 illustrations

(normally I would've stated explicitly what costs what in the stretch goals, but being nebulous was, I felt, necessary since I didn't know how much over the goal I'd make and thus what I could afford; end of the day I totted up what I got after the fact + revenue as a result of dk11's preview video and then put all of that towards the stretch goals, which ended up being a lot of really cool additional art)

[dapper crypt]

I was unfortunately unemployed at the time, so I'm a latecomer

[wheat ferry]

Haha, don't worry about it - there are things I'd have liked to have, end of the day, but I'm very happy with how IaM came out

[dapper crypt]

I picked up Dungeondraft recently, pivoting from RPG Map Maker 2, but I still need to get all the sci-fi assets in order

I've also never made hex maps, I used to play on Roll20 which hates hexes

There's probably a way to import the existing maps into the program as a backdrop, but every time I messed with layers the last time I used the program, stuff messed up, lol

For as basic as Map Maker 2 is, I'll miss the lighting, you could do fun stuff with it; this one was an underwater geothermal power plant

Though a decent percentage of my UIB campaign was set in inscrutable megastructures, which aren't hard to illustrate, lol

[solid jewel]

And honestly, for 11 illustrated maps a few thousand would have been a bargain

A lot of map illustrators charge cover art prices per piece

[wheat ferry]

100%

[wheat ferry]

To be fair, the inside of a SecComm warship is also a kind of inscrutable megastructure

[dapper crypt]

Also, something I noticed in the PDF, the Spectre's Needle and Thread doesn't have the Shield tag; I had to check the LCP after I thought "this feels like it should have the shield tag"

[dapper crypt]

None of the IaM maps got into "Well, its a planet-sized sterilization engine, I can have a room full of giant pillars"

[hearty mica]

choosing to believe that getting tsutomu nihei to draw the inside of the diana was a hidden stretch goal

[wheat ferry]

god, if only

[last horizon]

How many tables/GMs have ended up using the optional difficulty tweaks, I wonder?

[wheat ferry]

Most of 'em I've heard of, which makes sense for people dedicated enough to playtest a draft and report back in detail

[wheat ferry]

speaking of: all set, they're now properly in the book instead of stuck in the side text document!

[azure bridge]

Holy heck the Iphigenia chat!

[halcyon eagle]

who up iphigeniaing it at midnight?

[azure bridge]

Unnamed team next Monday!

[granite crane]

I ended up calling the squad Spearhead,

Felt appropriate given their role in the operation

[modern terrace]

hey ya folks ! i'm intrested in buying Ophigenia at Midnight, and i'm wondering wha tare your guys thoughts on the adventure over all

and has anyone started doing facction tokens ?

[idle copper]

Idk about actual faction but I know if you trawl this channel you'll find a lot of minis.
I personally have not played it yet, I'm... 3 missions away? I don't remember my GM's exact plans right now

quite excited to blast through whoever we're fighting with Ra's most dangerous Railgun

[dapper crypt]

One of the reasons I came out of reading through IaM really liking it is that it focuses on themes that Wallflower brought up, but without a lot of the other baggage that Wallflower has, and with much better mechanical implementation

[modern terrace]

taking notes

[dapper crypt]

I love NRfaW, but despite it being LL0-2 I would only want to run it for people familiar enough with Lancer's universe

[modern terrace]

yhea its something i took from it as well, i think my great fear is:

a adventure starting at ll6

and my own brain going "we must make custom tokens, we must make tokens !"

[dapper crypt]

Despite being harder and LL6-8, Iphigenia at Midnight is a great introduction to how fucked up SecComm was

[idle copper]

My group is (mostly) new people, we started at LL0 with OSR, did an in between mission designed by our lovely GM, and are now starting Winter Scar, and I think we have one more in between mission designed by them to go in the timeskip that Winter Scar apparently has.
I think it's a great strategy for leading into Iphigenia, but obviously it's a massive time commitment, and you do have to actually make it there.

[fluid salmon]

Iphi’s combats do expect system familiarity, but once your group has played enough to get a handle on the game (like, say, up to LL3 or 4 or something) I feel like you could jump to it alright.

[modern terrace]

this already helps a ton, i'll buy the adventure, but likely put it on the backlog, mostly becuse i know i'll want to play this on isometric with custom tokens

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/watching-you-observe-seeing-i-saw-you-gif-5740825

[subtle tide]

Just picked up the module on itch and I am hyped to dig into it ahead of sorting out my own playgroup.

Obviously I can figure this out on my own, but are there any recommended pages/sections that can be handed over to players wholesale to read through so they can familiarize themselves with where this story takes place? Otherwise I'll try and throw together my own little hand-out.

[wheat ferry]

The intro/background stuff in the start of the book up to the Dead 628th section should be good to just hand players so they know what's up.

Choral Worlds history, the main allied NPCs, so on.

[subtle tide]

Oh awesome, thank you!

[wheat ferry]

pgs. 7-17 should be good to just give them (depending on how much you want everyone to know about the allied NPCs), then pgs. 21-28 they play through in the Prologue

from there it's all GM-side

[subtle tide]

Thank you!

[modern terrace]

sneezes

[wheat ferry]

oh hell yeah

[modern terrace]

@halcyon eagle you see this madman Ash, he told me "make a full facction" and i'm like ok !

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/shy-bashful-flirt-smile-smirk-gif-13064653

[modern terrace]

tho your thoughts, you said they have "multi purpose" chassies, looking at these other two's does that fit your vision ?

[wheat ferry]

ayup!

[halcyon eagle]

i mean two stones with one rock since youre also gonna run IaM

[modern terrace]

perfect

[wheat ferry]

you can see some of the "grunts" on Peyton's art for Mission 2 - I generally think that, with how large SecComm was and the necessary emphasis on interoperable systems and interchangeable parts, you'd have most chassis looking surprisingly similar within a given set of combat roles

[halcyon eagle]

i did note that there are some uniquer chassises, like the enkidu (berserker) and worldkiller (pyros) not sharing a relatively common chassis as the others

or interchangeable more like

[modern terrace]

i do wish there was a "full body" with colours so i could have had a easier reference 😛

the closest to that is the poor grunt getting BLASTED by the sherman

half of it is melted and we are seeing his back

[wheat ferry]

for example, on the modular systems note

[halcyon eagle]

oh yeah

or that one t-34 with two mig engines on it

[modern terrace]

whould you belive me i thought of the sherman tank, and its variants

[wheat ferry]

all based off the M60 hull, all doing different things - with how SecComm was building chassis pretty much right off the backs of tank design experience, I imagine them following AFV design laws as well where they can

[halcyon eagle]

alright alright

[wheat ferry]

so you'd have ten Genghis variants, ten Haber variants, all the various other dudes who don't get a name, so on

(please don't actually make ten Genghis variants lmao)

[modern terrace]

for the pyro, i do think we could make a cool lil custom token thats its "in spirit" of the world killer

[halcyon eagle]

thanks for clarifying because matheus was about to suffer

[halcyon eagle]

in spirit how so/

[modern terrace]

he wanted me to make colours for the diferent facctions

i told him no

the WK vannila token is bit...old, and short

[halcyon eagle]

cant be helped, thats how it is

old and short like seccom

[modern terrace]

oh but it can

[wheat ferry]

nasty

[modern terrace]

just giing him some leg and shoulder extensions

[halcyon eagle]

i have no quarrel so long as the main chassis is there

[wheat ferry]

very much looking forward to seeing your take on the pilebunker-flamethrower Worldkiller miniboss

[modern terrace]

i'm not doing the bosses XD

[wheat ferry]

ah lmao

[modern terrace]

i'm doing the grunts and the minions

the bosses and vehicles are other mad lads

[halcyon eagle]

only one person would do vehicles

[wheat ferry]

Gotcha, makes sense

[modern terrace]

i wish them luck to do the multiple ships but with diferent classes

[halcyon eagle]

well they have the ref for the bomber in the first art

other two is gonna be very massive interpretations

and the tank ash already provided a plethora of refs

all i need to do is hope the artist plays warthunder

[halcyon eagle]

also is this the ||hallway encounters - 3 ||...?

[wheat ferry]

nope, ||MSgt. O'Rourke in 3-1||

named characters are minibosses or bosses

[halcyon eagle]

i thought ||O'Rourke was a LCDR in 1-2? the emplaced sniper?||

||3-1 is the tank and SgtMaj. "not loaded question" Welch||

[wheat ferry]

you're right! I mixed up my own characters' names

[halcyon eagle]

youre telling me that ||welch is based off a worldkiller??!!||

[wheat ferry]

this is what multitasking does to you kids

[wheat ferry]

||yep, flamethrower and big bear hug and all||

Large Lad

[halcyon eagle]

OH SHIT I DIDNT SEE THE SWAP

[wheat ferry]

He's got the Ace Custom

[halcyon eagle]

did we really expect any less from a unit called ||firewalkers||

[modern terrace]

achoow

[subtle tide]

I'm reading through the book a bit now; is it known widely that Iphigenia || is an NHP? Obviously it outlines that the Dead Fleet are simulacrums and homunculi and that's revealed when it becomes clear, but does everyone else think Iphigenia is human? ||

[wheat ferry]

Nope, she introduced herself as Iphigenia Prime and it's generally pretty clear despite the lifelike nature of her projection that it is a trick of the light

whether or not she's based on anyone is more unclear, from the player perspective, ||but no, her and her lieutenants are Deimosians and just Like That||

[subtle tide]

🙏

Also; I may be stupid... but where do I find the maps the book mentions?

[halcyon eagle]

check the zip files

should come along with your itch.io downloads

[subtle tide]

I only see a PDF and NPC lcp 😭

[halcyon eagle]

23 dollars!

you might need to pay 5 bucks more for the maps then not too sure

i paid 23 and got the map files

[subtle tide]

Ohhhhh I didn't see that

Is there a way to "upgrade" my purchase I don't know how itch works...

[wheat ferry]

yup, there's the separate maps listing for just the $5 upgrade fee

[modern terrace]

another size 2 mech done, mr spite

[sharp siren]

Pure evil of an NPC. I love it.

[modern terrace]

final one of the size 2's is good ol support

[modern terrace]

so i gotta say, the music sellection sold me

seeing wasteland 3 battle hym of the republic was a "absolute cinema"

but i gotta ask, no metal gear rising music makes me sad ;-;

[wheat ferry]

Pffha, I tried to limit myself to only one instance of really FUCK IT WE BALL fighting music given the Themes and Such

that said, Hot Wind Blowing and A Stranger I Remain are your look-ins here

[modern terrace]

hot wind blowing i'm looking at the final boss and going

yhea

thats it

[wheat ferry]

https://bsky.app/profile/grahamtg.bsky.social/post/3miz4guoxcc2j

for the Mitscher Fans in the audience

GrahamTG (@grahamtg.bsky.social)

Dropships 😊 One of my favourite sci-fi tropes. If you haven't read them give Marko Kloos "Frontlines" series of novels a go - plenty of dropship and sci-fi military hardware great fun. #Lightwave3d render of Stéphane Chasseloup's model. #Scifi #ScifiArt

Bluesky · Apr 8, 2026, 8:18 PM

[subtle tide]

I've been talking to my wife (who will be playing in the campaign, but we won't be playing until mid may) about a character idea and she's floated the idea of being a defector from Iphigenia's fleet following the destruction of Patrae, and I'm considering doing a SOMA-style "you don't know you're a machine" type thing maybe, as she has no idea that everyone in the fleet is dead.

[wheat ferry]

oh boy

[subtle tide]

I think it could be pretty sauced up!!

[wheat ferry]

I think it could work! "Waking up" in the middle of a station block you just cleaned out, flamethrower still leaking oxidizer into zero-g, and it all crashing down at once - finding a way to pretend you're not operable so you can try to make it out with the defenders' evacuation, trying to convince people who just saw everyone else like you massacre their friends and families that you can be trusted... There's a lot of serious narrative juice there

of course, also the little problem that the further you get from the 628th the less you're able to really think or have manual dexterity, or not being able to take off your helmet...

[subtle tide]

Yeah!! The other option I was considering: Swapping identities with a dead Choral chassis pilot, killed in the orbital clash above Patrae.

Taking their name, hardsuit, and licenses.

[wheat ferry]

Could work! It's a rough plotline but it also sounds really cool

[subtle tide]

Of course her character would have like, subjectivity blockers preventing her from becoming aware of the fact that she's a subaltern etc etc.

[modern terrace]

Thats a amazing characther concept

[wheat ferry]

oh yeah, absolutely, if you're a homunculus your capacity to really respond to novel stimuli is... lacking, never mind realizing things like this isn't my body

[subtle tide]

And so only after clashing with Iphigenia's forces would the party (and she) become aware that all of the machines are either hollow or being piloted by subalterns, and that the ships are ghost ships.

"But no, this isn't right! Your head spins, your blood roars, your heart rattles against the bars of your ribs like it's trying to break it's way free... but you can't remember the last time you slept, or ate, or saw a sunrise. You can't remember the faces of your parents..."

[wheat ferry]

||You can even give her some of the narrative encounters on the Gallipoli that explicitly point towards the civil conflict that doomed the fleet, as well - it doesn't seem right that these people are dead, she remembers them! ... Doesn't she?||

||up to you which side she was on :)||

[subtle tide]

Yesssssss. You see the vision, you smell what I'm cooking.

[fluid salmon]

Big question will be handling stuff that gives the game away immediately, like assuming you can just take your helmet off because you are a person. Which might be a level of stuff to deal with that you might wanna collude with her a lil bit

[subtle tide]

Definitely. Subjective blinders mean she sees herself "normally".

But I've already stressed that her character is gripped by a manic fear of being discovered or otherwise found-out, so she should never remove her armor or helmet in the presence of others.

Which makes sense! She's stolen someone's identity, after all. She's hundreds of years out-of-time, there's no way to know who would recognize her, or which automated systems might point out the discrepancy.

[wheat ferry]

actually

hear me out

||She thinks she looks like the person whose identity she took, so at least it might not be immediately obvious if everything's bad and she's wounded, which, you know, is one of the reasons why it was a good idea!

The 628th was an ad-hoc group thrown together out of a variety of sources and broken units, and it was relatively proximal to the Choral Worlds, thus why they were the first target on its one-way slash and burn mission.
There's no one saying that she didn't take her great-great-great-xth granddaughter's identity.||

[subtle tide]

Oooohhhh, true.

📝

She herself will likely find out fairly quickly that she isn't human. It'll be hard to ignore unless she's really putting her head in the sand once they make it aboard the Gallipoli. (I suppose that depends on heavily we wanna lead into the subjective blinders aspect...) But how will the party find out? How will they react? The juice...

[wheat ferry]

exactly

also fun:
||

• hey wait the cockpit's empty/there's just a skeleton or an empty suit in it
• the hell are you talking about, the guy's still bleeding everywhere, someone grab his holdout weapon||

[subtle tide]

Oh TRUE

📝

I hadn't even considered the angle of her not only seeing herself as normal, but the other 'members' of the fleet as well.

[wheat ferry]

Everyone's normal! Everyone's Alive!

[subtle tide]

I also cannot wait to dig into her relationship with Iphigenia, because the Shipmistress of course knows exactly who she is.

[wheat ferry]

except, of course, for the last living holdouts, but isn't it natural for the Crowsworn to look at them like that...? Lady Iphigenia's very own defenders have such a heavy weight on their shoulders

On and on goes Iphigenia's pageant ||(until it all breaks down and she's forced to come to terms with the truth to herself near the bottom of her eidolon layers)||

[subtle tide]

🙏

I'll have to decide if Iphigenia can mess with her in special and exotic ways...

After all! The enemies of the Second Committee are all deserving of scorn... but a traitor? A turncoat?

[wheat ferry]

||local girl about to get hit with [TENDER AS SLEEP.] so hard if she survives long enough||

[subtle tide]

exaaaaaaactly

[subtle tide]

At some point soon I'm going to try and start whipping up some more detailed maps for IaM with dungeondraft, using the hex maps provided via itch as references.

I can't promise they'll be anything particularly impressive, I'm hardly a master with the software, but I'll be happy to share anything I slap together.

[modern terrace]

and with this the size 2's are done : D

[wheat ferry]

straight fire, excellent work
if you all ever publish a collection of these I'd be happy to link to it on the main page as well

[modern terrace]

honestly you have to thank XII, first for commissioning me, second because he also commission folks that have more talent to do the villainous four, vehicles and ,|| miss death is a girl herself||

[wheat ferry]

this is true! definitely giving back in an incredible way to the community on his part

[modern terrace]

also ash ! do you have a description for ||the eidolon forms|| or were to find it in the book

[wheat ferry]

The most that's an explicit "depiction" would be in the read-alouds ||for each layer||

[modern terrace]

copy, i had a wild idea

||i have to check yet but for one of the forms, the imagine of the liberty leading the people and kinda corrupting that imagery||

[halcyon eagle]

a question about ||3-1, if i read right, besides old smoke theres three other tanks?||

[wheat ferry]

||There's a lot of tanks, but not all of them are functional, have ammunition, aren't bolted down for transport, or get in the fight before the PCs either lose or win||

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/oh-no-future-drake-life-is-good-high-off-life-gif-18160700

i was wonderin what they was doin

[wheat ferry]

Ayup

||it's a transport train, they would've been loaded off from the bow armory once transported through the ship and then deployed; it'd be a rare case where an armored vehicle would actually have ammunition since you don't use tanks to fight boarders - thus, only one paranoiac MBT driver and the various security and escorts assigned||

[sharp siren]

Those size 2 tokens are amazing Matheus just want to say.

[modern terrace]

the size 3 is coming over

even tho there is only....||one goliath in the missions ?||

[wheat ferry]

ayup, ||generally too difficult to move around a lot of size 3s inside a ship||

||so you see him with the conventional Marines Armored division||

[modern terrace]

i think this shows well the idea that this is more of hotpotch unit, the worldkiller visor ting it up

[subtle tide]

oh these are awesome. Are you/have you also done the Size 1's? (I took a cursory look but mobile discord is pain)

[modern terrace]

not yet, the size 1's are likely going to be hard since a great number of them are a bit unique

[subtle tide]

🙂‍↕️

Completely understandable!!!

[modern terrace]

likely i'll attempt to make them so they share some common parts, but the size 2's are all sargamatha so that helps

[modern terrace]

goliath ready

[wheat ferry]

brother rocking those Air Anthrochauvinism 1s

[modern terrace]

it is states in the holy book of the purity of the human form, that mech shall have SHOES

not feet ! or paws or tri pods

it is crucial to the Anthrochauvinism doctrine

[woven wharf]

can't be a bootlicker if the mech ain't wearing boots

[modern terrace]

now for the size one mechs, and thats what i'm worried about

[swift thicket]

absolutely unimportant question but ... what kinds of native fauna live on Lebaea? I know the manta ray critters are mentioned on Patrae, but are there any local alien critters on the capital world? (I have a player who wrote that they enjoy spending time near the oceans on Lebaea and have an interest in marine life)

[wheat ferry]

fish are huge - I mention fishing boats briefly, but there's a thriving marine industry on the planet, has been ever since first landing

rabbit and deer are also common, as well as boar

in terms of proper Alien Fauna™ I think it's mostly birds - large-winged gliders that live in the windy canyons that cross across the world and give them the choral name, primarily bug-eating + birds of prey with uncanny sound mimicking and minor echolocation since they prefer to hunt at night

[modern terrace]

the size 1 template is slowly starting to take shape

[halcyon eagle]

do you think the legs dont have enough bulk to them or is that good enough?

[granite crane]

I know you probably mean fish are huge as in fish are plentiful

But im choosing to believe that lebaeans send out full on whaling ships to take in 1 enormous tuna per trip

[wheat ferry]

Big Tuna Doesn't Want You To Know This

[quartz cipher]

As an aside - I think putting a native species on Patrae was one of those quietly, probably unintentionally brilliant moments fror bringing the consequences of failure home. I got to describe the rays skipping through the atmosphere as the breach team approached the fleet, one of those general asides as the hab-modules orbited along and everybody was just having a day.

Pretty sure the players remembered that when they saw the TBK process starting and the skies turning green with bioweaponry. Because I usually don't get responses like theirs to mass casualty events, that whole "one death is a tragedy, a million is a footnote" effect.

||Until it's a million peaceful sky puppies. Then you have a party trying to take the place of a million John Wicks.||

Wouldn't work in every group, but if they've already had to deal with biological enemies before, it's probably safe(r)..

[dapper crypt]

The Spectre's text also references the magnitude of extinction brought about by TBK weaponry

[quartz cipher]

Oh, definitely. The scale of TBK weapons is definitely something they want to avoid having happen. But I don't get that quiet "oh fuck" moment out of players often, and thought I should commend the author for. 🙂

[wheat ferry]

I appreciate it! I'm glad when the little setting details I add can really bring verisimilitude home.

[modern terrace]

the size 1 base is more or less semi done

[modern terrace]

achoow oh no, a bastard

[swift thicket]

HORUS Spectre // Inevitable Mourning

one of my players' mechs. figured you guys'd like to see it

it's a Spectre and a White Witch, with the ferrofluid stuff flavored as data constructs

credit to Memetarion on Retrograde for making it for me :p

[modern terrace]

they look ready to kill some nerds

[swift thicket]

I'll post a full pilot lineup soon. We start playing on Monday!! I'm excited to run this one

[modern terrace]

oh ! do you have a hangar bay ready ?

[wheat ferry]

hell yeah, Flowers (Real)

[swift thicket]

I'm waiting for one more commissioned frame, the team's genghis

[modern terrace]

but do you have the template ?]

this !

[swift thicket]

ohhhh

no i don't! i'm using the figma landing page

[modern terrace]

send screenshot!

[swift thicket]

It's nothing special, it's just a slightly edited version of the one figma one

[modern terrace]

OH i tried that once and could not get it to work XD

[idle copper]

i gotta hear about the leviathan class nhp

[swift thicket]

Tell me more about how this went! I am trying to figure out how to set that moment up better for my players

[modern terrace]

gentlemen, Dakka

[swift thicket]

I'll post some here when they've written more about their character haha

[idle copper]

rad

[swift thicket]

what we have now is an NHP with a knack for hacking and an interest in marine life

[idle copper]

neat

[quartz cipher]

So, for reference: The crew had just finished 'A Wake Writ in Void," which basically involves saving space Moby Dick from Ahab. So that may have had some impact.

I shifted the team into a one-off prologue, playing the HA Breach Team entering one of the frigates. They fought their way through, and actually managed to beat the Iphigenia that I threw at them, mostly because there were dueling burn immunities going on. Of course, also her first time dealing with modern tech, so that's my excuse for her losing (also, that was T2 Iphigenia. They'll be up against T3 in the finale.)

I did read them the Patrae info on the way in, as part of "hey, here's the setting info you should have as semi-locals!" Basics like what type of world, details about what they do there, its role in the system, and ecological details, particularly the sky rays, mass shoals of them skimming through the clouds to escape a few small hunting skiffs.

My big focus was on making it clear to them that they were watching the cold blooded murder of a planet. That Patrae wasn't a loss of resources, it was a living, unique world, could have had an entire campaign down there that ends like this!

||Hab modules being blown out of the sky, killing thousands with each shot. Orbital defenses, knocked out like they're tinfoil, never built to go against this type of threat - and then I described a Blacktree module going in, dropping bunker-buster nukes along with its core reactor to blow up everything with yields measured in gigatonnes, but that not measuring up to what happens as the frame vaporized, dispersing the bioweapon cocktail the Habers had used against them and turning the blue sky into a swirling, toxic green. Then the screen whites out with blinding light, and when they can see again, there's a fire burning deep in the planet, a continent-sized wildfire burning billions of cubic feet of the planet into nothing, and more shots are fired at locations further away, and the little specks of flame spread and spread, visible through a hundred kilometers or more of dense gasses slowly being transformed into something toxic to all known lifeforms. (This, i codentally, is when I got a few muttered "oh fuck"/"holy shit" responses). Mentioned that any one of these steps could have wiped out the people on the planet, but it would have meant the planet itself could be recovered in two, three, four hundred years. Like this, the air would kill you until the planet and its atmosphere burned out, and even then the ashen rock remaining at the center would be a radiation hazard for another ten thousand years or more, a footnote on navigational maps warning to avoid the sector. In the meantime, dropships begin deploying to land squads of Habers and Worldkillers to cross the entire planet, meter by meter, and wipe out anything that survived the initial bombardment. Just to make sure.||

And then the mech chassis at the console turns around to face them, all of this still going on behind her, and just says, as calmly, politely, and matter of factly as possible, "Welcome aboard my ship. Who was it you said sent you again?"

Of course, after they beat her chassis at the time, Iphi proceeded to blow up the shio, but I gave the players credit an advance on the disabling clock so that they wouldn't have to think to turn the Gallipoli against its sister ship, since the breach team had "succeeded" at destroying the ship themselves. The only irreparable loss the enemy fleet had suffered thus far.

[halcyon eagle]

is there a downloadable backdrop for praetorian's rest?

[wheat ferry]

https://bsky.app/profile/zhjake.bsky.social/post/3mi5mq2ojfs2m

zhjake (@zhjake.bsky.social)

My contribution to the Iphigenia at Midnight Lancer supplement. ⬇️

Likes

127

Bluesky · Mar 28, 2026, 9:55 PM

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/gem-finding-gem-gem-alert-jasswa-looking-for-gem-gif-4573895384736430461

[modern terrace]

ban ban another one bites the dust

[sharp siren]

Archer!

[swift thicket]

I'm gonna run the Pub Crawl encounter as my nighttime one. Anyone got any stories the MSMC might share with the players?

Also, I'm making some portraits for NPCs that the players will spend time talking to to put in their "contacts" journal. Here's the first one

[wheat ferry]

heartwarming: this they has not slept for like 72 hours

fantastic work

[dapper crypt]

"Hang in there!"

[hearty mica]

Protect Ahlberg at all costs

Even if it means plunging into the depths of a SecComm TBK fleet

[idle copper]

rad art
love the style

[wheat ferry]

Also, art trade:

One of the lifers laughs as the group (however unsteadily) rounds a corner; a hand rises to point out the street sign above, strangely un-verdigrised in the company of its aged fellows.
"It's about the /souvenirs/, you know - every world I've always tried to come back with something, yeah? Fuck, uh -"
A compatriot somehow managing to both prop them up and lean on them helpfully fills in. "The dragon scale. Needed Pine with the cutting torch to pry it off."

"Yeah! Got someone on a station run to make it into a coffee table for my officer's quarters."
There's something sing-song to the remark - the sly nudge that, to those familiar, nothing aboard a retasked IPS-N bulk freighter could be called officer's quarters of any description. But Mirrorsmoke made do, as always.

"- Anyway. Took that sign last time we came down here. Just booted the pirates off Coroneia and I figured I wanted somethin' to remember it by, so..."

"They share a last name." A third mercenary - less helpful, more the amused weariness of someone who's heard this story a thousand times before.

"And /you/ shared my kill on the big fucker trying to drop a full crate of CCU frames out the airlock, but you don't see me -"

On it goes.

[swift thicket]

this is wonderful ash, thank you 🙏

[swift thicket]

one more for now. sorta rushed it but she's only gonna appear once or twice anyhow,, so.

[fluid salmon]

Ooooh that’s COOKING

[wheat ferry]

@stuck bison specifically

[stuck bison]

fuck yessssssss

[swift thicket]

Since I have a mechanic in my party, I have a feeling that Cecily is going to become a recurring character and I'm preparing for that rn. I know her Everest says "No Truce with the Furies--"is that the name of the mech or just a decoration on it? If not, what's her mech's name and her callsign? :o

Here's my interpretation of her, btw. sorry if i'm flooding the chat with these today lol

[wheat ferry]

Believe it or not, that's actually the person I just pinged's backer character!

That's the mech name, @stuck bison can fill you in on the rest

[swift thicket]

noooo waayyyy LMAO

[stuck bison]

oh shit!

yes

[wheat ferry]

(and yeah that's the mech's name)

Most of where the backer characters ended up is in the prologue for Flavor, but there's one or two in the side missions as well, iirc

[swift thicket]

if you wanna just dump a bunch of info, yea I plan to have her show up a couple times :p

(and let me know if the portrait is accurate!!)

[stuck bison]

yeah alright so Cecily Madeiras (she/her) is a fully un-augmented union pilot. she's an ace's ace, piloting an everest fully manual, no assists. she's a veteran of operation solstice rain and winter scar, and was awarded the order of leander among a number of other union medals that she is loathe to ever wear. one of her eyes is dead from trench combat during a struggle in operation winter scar, a Vestan soldier rendered her blind with a trench knife during a struggle and only ever smokes when she's working on No Truce. the name was coined by one of her squadmates when she pointedly disregarded the offers of betrayals by the Vestan Sovereignty spec ops aces (squad name "The Furies") who tried to sway her to their side.

she's accompanied by a Asura-class NHP by the name of Surya (she/it, pronuncition: soo-rye-ah) who is very reluctant to ever operate a subaltern outside of the chassis. she has an outlook that she's a weapon first and foremost; very subdued, standoffish, somewhat rude even to Cecily, though Cecily has a good attitude towards the ribbing and chiding that Surya gives her way. Surya is somewhat shy, and will only speak to other pilots with a direct introduction and insistence from Cecily for it to speak to them.

calling back to the general reluctance to wearing her medals and dress uniform, she's very much of the persuasion that she's 'just lucky' given how many soldiers from the Leandric States and Union forces died in the effort to stop the Vestan Sovereignty

very humble and down-to-earth woman when she isn't in the zone

[woven wharf]

oh wait cecily is in this?

[idle copper]

@swift thicket Your art is so fucking cool!!!!!
Your style is awesome!!!!!
do you do commissions???

[stuck bison]

i paid some monies for a description of her carrying out some maintenance in one of the sections of the book!

lemme go grab it

[swift thicket]

I haven't before, no, besides I don't even know where I'd start to post regarding that! certainly not here, lolol. Rn I'm just drawing portraits for my IaM game and sharing them in case anyone else wants to use em :3

[idle copper]

lmk if you ever start takin em i may be very interested

[stuck bison]

oh! also Cecily's callsign is Redeye cos of the Vestan Sovereignty's generalization towards Union frames outfited with Asura-classes being called "Redeye"

[swift thicket]

Ah! It's not the other, more embarrassing one she got after trying to show off? 😭

[stuck bison]

oh, right. she doesn't like that other one, so she tries to tell ppll it's redeye. but the reality is it's still DASH despite her protestations 😭

[halcyon eagle]

as in any ol merc stories or pertaining to the module?

[swift thicket]

i was thinking the former, just looking for little stories to pepper into the session between my players' characters getting sloshed with the mercs

[halcyon eagle]

i could throw in one that my group had after doing dustgrave (spoilers ofc)

oh geez how do i even format it

i got the story in mind but no vessel to sail it

[swift thicket]

hey ash, working on my landing page right now. does the Choral Coalition have a particular logo? I was just going to slap a union navy logo on the bottom of it but i figure if there's an emblem for the coalition it would be more fitting

[wheat ferry]

It's very ad-hoc, given it's the product of a couple days of everyone who was formerly in a tense three-way mutual suspicion standoff around contested political referendums going "oh shit we're all gonna die"

but inasmuch as they have one, it'd be the Union blue/Choral green shield in Peyton's art along with the identification stripes

one of the few things everyone was able to agree on was standardizing a "these people are your friends, don't shoot at them" marking set

(given how the 628th is putting out some serious e-war and that messes with IFF too)

[swift thicket]

got it .. and am I mistaken in thinking the triangle emblem seen on the back of the frame on the cover is an emblem for the CDF?

[wheat ferry]

Ayup

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys

[swift thicket]

It's a little rough around the edges but i threw something together. Is this good?

[wheat ferry]

extremely cool

y'all have been spoiling me lately, I'm collecting all the art and storing it in my secret lich realm

[swift thicket]

I'll continue to post NPC portraits as i make them... I think I have all the ones I'll need for tomorrow rn!

For the first session or two I'm just going to let them explore Praetorian's Rest and get acquainted with a few characters and places. I'm starting the game two days before they go up

-# Plus, I really like the prologue encounters you made and I want to run more than one of each

By the way, do you have any advice for how the players should meet Cpt Delgado and/or L-C Lucas? I have a Union Navy Captain as a player in my party and I'm wondering if you have any guidance on how that meeting could go

[wheat ferry]

Oh, huh - that's pretty high-ranking, all considered. What's their background (short sketch-wise)?

In general people get briefings and updates from their faction + Ahlberg back in orbit through the mission, communicate with them through the side missions, and so on - the NPCs are good for touchstones in that regard - but in prologue terms outside of the big group briefing, then you're going to have PCs potentially sitting down with their "faction leaders" to speak more directly on the import of the conflict, plans going forward, and their faction's goals for the conflict (outside of the basic stuff like "try to not die, kill Iphigenia or something")

[woven wharf]

Army-captain or Navy-captain?

[wheat ferry]

yeah, it's kind of "is Captain Delgado sitting this person down and going I know this sucks and you probably wish you had your crew with you, but let me walk you through how I'm going to handle this and thanks for suiting up or is this a you're Marines, we're assigning you as an officer to this ad-hoc detachment, good luck and good shooting"

[modern terrace]

yoink using this later

[swift thicket]

This is the little pilot bio they came up with

[swift thicket]

This is specifically to fit stylistically with the landing page and COMP/CON theme I use, but maybe you'll find this useful as well

[wheat ferry]

Gotcha - so navy mech pilot line, kind of the fighter jock equivalent who'd be used to chassis mounts and ship-to-ship engagements, not Marines. Yeah, I think in that case he's definitely going to end up pulled into a one-on-one with Captain Delgado and walked through the situation report, but less in a "we're peers" sense and more "you're a senior officer in the Okhotsk's mech wing, here's your marching orders and some background"

If you want to give the players a chance to meet L-C Arnold, I think it stands to reason they could see him either talking with Ahlberg around the briefing or down on the ground in some of the Choral prologue encounters depending on which one you run

[fluid salmon]

I’m whipping up a token for a pilot working with the CDF rn, do you might if I use and/or possibly lightly edit this for my own purposes?

[swift thicket]

my plans rn are day 1: meet Cecily and Abigale (teacher's group, maintenance duty, and pub crawl), then day 2: meet Cpt. Delgado (residential cleanup, carrier pilots, then finishing with stargazing immediately before Ahlberg's briefing)

[swift thicket]

please do, by all means

[wheat ferry]

Gotcha, sounds great!

I think you'd probably find the Lance-Colonel speaking with his head briefing officer before the PCs if you want to introduce him as well, then

[fluid salmon]

Gotcha, thanks!

I figure the pilot I have in mind would have Reasons™ not to wear the Harrison triangle, but I wouldn't want to chop and screw at your own artistic work to swap that out without go-ahead 😌

(not that it's gonna be visible on a token anyways, tbh)

[modern terrace]

if fucking love the artstyle so damm much !

[idle copper]

THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYIN!

[swift thicket]

do the "hydrogen-breathing, pressure-habituated animals somewhat like manta rays" have a name :>

[granite crane]

I like Skimmers

For them

[wheat ferry]

Truth be told, I'd never come up with a name! "Sky rays" is the closest I recall saying.

[torpid sleet]

As someone else writing up a module any advice @wheat ferry ?

Cause this is incredible

And sorry I'm late to the party, saw the announcement but brain no did good

[wheat ferry]

Thank you!

I think my biggest piece of advice would be to know the story you want to tell before you start writing the mechanics. If you write mechanics first, you can end up getting bogged down in the question of where to fit the story around them - but if you have your outline of the story first, you can write your mechanics naturally in the places the story needs them.

Otherwise - put in the work. Writing a module is really, really hard, and takes both a keen knowledge of the mechanics of the game and knowledge of developing a compelling narrative to bring to fulfillment. For example, I started IaM with the story, but after I'd already filled in the mechanics I realized that I had left too little space for the stories people wanted to tell in the setting themselves and grounded them in the stakes (thus why the prologue exists!). That's a lot of hours, and at the end of the day you're going to have to be ready to just sit down every week and put words on the page - even if you don't especially like them, they're there and they're workable, and a blank page is your biggest obstacle to a finished book.

Similarly, on that note: look at what other people have done. I tried to not read narratives whilst working on IaM so I could maintain my own ideas without unwittingly adopting others', but creation in a genre is dialogue with those who've come in the genre before you, and that's especially relevant in terms of drawing on other people's mechanics in order to inspire and elevate your own design. For example, Valk's Nov Elysia point crawl revision of OSR was coming out when I was working on early stages of combat-to-combat structure, and I thought it was so cool that I ripped out my early concepts for a linear Gallipoli fight and instead made it so players could tackle it how they saw fit.

I hope this helps!

[torpid sleet]

🫡 Just remembering all of your work in the GameJams

Cool af

[torpid sleet]

Having that day job and finding time to write is hard for sure

[modern terrace]

another two down for the count

[modern terrace]

and thats 11 npc classes so far

[halcyon eagle]

question about the commissars, are they usually the veterans in the module? ||(ex: the veterans in 1-3 with ajax)||

if not that, what units would be represented as such in the module?

[wheat ferry]

There are no explicitly represented Council of Military Commissars frames in the module - were one to appear, they'd probably be red-name miniboss tier. That said, if I had to pick anyone, it'd be ||the Veteran Mercenary Assassin in 2-2, since he explicitly has an entourage and is working closely with proscribed munitions chassis like the Lurkers||

[modern terrace]

so folks, wich one is bether, camo assault, or non camo

[halcyon eagle]

or a little bit of both

[idle copper]

I'd agree with a little of both

[modern terrace]

i'm of the mind, that we only use camo in mechs that have it

[idle copper]

camo feels a little too dreary and feels like it might blend hard with certain maps
non camo feels so bright but also a little bland

[idle copper]

based

[modern terrace]

such as the sniper, specter, assasins, etc

[idle copper]

oooooooooooo

[halcyon eagle]

i was more with the camo since thats how the design guide describes many chassises in the module

sniper is just fire theres no contest hands down

[wheat ferry]

The trick with visual design is that camo is great for blending in in these environments, as is its intent

blending into the environment is maybe not the best for a token

[modern terrace]

my problem with camo is one of visibility on the map, and also basing on petryons art

[modern terrace]

exactly

speaking off, here is mister sniper

[wheat ferry]

it's the same deal with the art too, I imagine - pure camouflage would also just meld them together

[halcyon eagle]

well thats why i was thinking of a best of both worlds type thing

[modern terrace]

specific grey camo on grey painted mechs

[halcyon eagle]

have a bit of camo here and there but not 100% cover it all

[modern terrace]

Possible solution ?

[halcyon eagle]

oh yeah man

[modern terrace]

avoid the camo on the blues keep it on the grey

[halcyon eagle]

what were to happen if you left some parts grey and other parts camo grey

would it look like an amalgam?

[modern terrace]

i really wish i could place it on VTT

and yhea it ends up getting messy

[halcyon eagle]

ahh alright

[fluid salmon]

Could get away with it by formatting all the tokens with size appropriate backgrounds, like the token resources you can download with the Lancer core book, iirc

But

[modern terrace]

i done that on the joints

[fluid salmon]

Then you’d have to do that extra work for everyone

[wheat ferry]

and even then you can tell A Guy Is There but they'd probably still melt into the industrial machinery backdrop

It is kind of funny that my visual design guide is like "yeah these guys are on that GREY CAMO beat" and my artists keep coming back to me like "please understand that 5000 guys in grey camo is an Undifferentiated Wall"

military sensibilities collide with looking good...

[halcyon eagle]

do we have no choice but to drop the camos for the rule of cool…

[modern terrace]

i point to battletech and its napoleonic era color schemes

[fluid salmon]

The problem with camo is that it works 🙂‍↕️

[modern terrace]

i feel like this ! is not a bad mix

[wheat ferry]

It looks good to me!

[halcyon eagle]

mfw

[modern terrace]

it just cant be FULL camo

[halcyon eagle]

now to redo all the 11 other already made tokens!

[modern terrace]

https://tenor.com/view/meme-american-psycho-business-card-gif-25561759

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-tongue-out-flight-flight-reacts-cat-tongue-gif-5336416477717479720

[solid jewel]

yeah there's some stuff in the military aesthetic locker that just doesn't actually work super well when you're going for art like that

[wheat ferry]

There are two wolves in me

One understands the strictures of visual design

The other is developing doctrine

in all seriousness I really am incredibly happy with all the art, I hardly mind some extra blue panels to make them stand out.

[modern terrace]

npcs reworked to have camo

[quartz cipher]

Was "Nix Last Ride of the Greek" the general consensus on handling Achilles?

[wheat ferry]

I'm not sure what you mean?
I've never had a complaint about the ability.

[dapper crypt]

Yeah, the only reference to it to can find in the channel is making sure it doesn't show up on scan

[quartz cipher]

Okay. It looked like there was some discussion of it in messages that came up while I was looking for a token of him, I'll leave it on for now..

The Ferrous Lash that one of my pilots has been using all campaign is gonna get a workout again.

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/pink-panther-lasso-rope-roping-cattle-in-the-pink-cowboy-hat-gif-18127245

[modern terrace]

mr berserker done

[sharp siren]

Oh my gawd ...

[dapper crypt]

Are you planning on putting everything in a faction pack on Retrograde?

[modern terrace]

thats the idea @halcyon eagle commisioned me for this, but i know he also ask others to do the more extoci/bosses

[halcyon eagle]

by the end of this ill defo have to get everything into a zip file or something

[modern terrace]

thankfully retrograde allows you to have a X faction made by (names of multiple folks)

[quartz cipher]

Achilles has fallen - at T3, even my squad of LL10s had the fear of God put into them by three attacks per skirmish, including the Balor who usually laughs off anything under double digits because of his regen. The fact the team got there pretty beaten up to start with didn't help, but I did let them know that this was the end of the mission for their mechs since I'd already stretched it out a bit. Next week they secure the train.

But all in all, Achilles held up pretty well... until the Gamma Flooding Toku got a round off to blast him. Which also meant he only cleared his environmental burn at 1/2 speed, keeping him from getting his resistances back for the rest of the battle as he ate 33 damage one round, then another 2-3 at 17 (3/1 environmental) before he went down.

They had a well tuned team for him, of course. Going to have tk see how Mission 3 goes soon!

[wheat ferry]

hell yeah

Sounds like a great time, funny interaction as well with the castor and pollux talent (iirc?)

"brought to the absolute limit and just pulling through" is exactly the vibe I was targeting for the combat

[quartz cipher]

The start of it was particularly frustrating for them since 6 armor plus immune to shredded and resistant to everything is pretty hard to penetrate.

I almost laughed at the start though.

"So, what are those terrain pieces?"

"Oh, those are TBK caches. The shells inside all have this long acronym on them for [CBRNN]. If you bust them open, they drop a patch of hazardous terrain that does 3 burn."

"Okay! So guys, stay away from those!"

Meanwhile, I'm just thinking "they are your only chance."

Fortunately, they scanned Achilles, and I mentioned that the TBK caches would deal damage as an environmental source. Which I'm assuming was the reason for them to exist at all.

[wheat ferry]

Yup, ACHILLES is a "level mechanic fight"

which is also why there are so many of them

(equally: all the weird cross-classing on the minibosses and the mechanics on the bosses are intended to make players want to "waste" action econ on scan a lot more often in the module, which they usually don't because of Applying Damage)

[dapper crypt]

Oh yeah, Wasteborn

[dapper crypt]

Wasteborn in general is thematic for facing Habers

As another contrast to my corner of the setting and the Choral Worlds, I love the Passing Handcart encounter, and I have a pilot I played from one of the worlds featured in my campaign that would have an interesting interaction

"Teeth" Shen has had extensive reconstruction due to his parents being exposed to toxins while he was in the womb, including prosthetics for every limb save his left arm

I want him to grasp her by the shoulders, look her in the eyes, and tell her that her work is necessary and appreciated, and that she's making a difference

(he's also the militant Union pilot I mentioned previously)

[modern terrace]

sending these two idiots here

[dapper crypt]

Cursed SecComm glitter aesthetic for the latter

[halcyon eagle]

lurkers be lurking

[halcyon eagle]

question about 1-1's vehicles: what is the ||veteran ship hive's role? is it like an AWACS? EW?||

[wheat ferry]

Special munitions/drone carrier

[halcyon eagle]

question for the tank since the artist is finally free, based on what the book says, are they just a dull grey with no other camos/color scheme?

[wheat ferry]

Dull grey was for illustrative purposes, mostly - you can also give them identification stripes, insignia, and grey-shade camouflage to some extent

whatever the artist feels works best for the composition/to create visual interest

[halcyon eagle]

im so praying they've played warthunder

but i think it'll give them a lot of creative freedom in regards to that

[solid jewel]

Strictly speaking, and Ash might know a bit more here, armored vehicles in general have a different relationship with camouglage patterns than, say, infantry does

this kind of loops back to earlier discussions regarding chassis paint schemes, but I honestly think it's fairly likely that outside of specialized roles like forward observers, recon units, etc, you probably don't see a lot of camo paint schemes on mechs for the same reason you don't see people giving attack helicopters camo paint

[wheat ferry]

Yeah, your goal is going to be to break up their appearance on a ridgeline or to observers rather than to dedicated peer systems

also relevant vs. electro-optical systems, in concert with infrared and thermal baffling to make your tank column less likely to show up to a drone overhead, etc

[halcyon eagle]

ahh ok ok

[solid jewel]

and there's the classic camo netting for when you just want to be less discernable from, like, aerial recon or satellites maybe

[wheat ferry]

frankly, one of the reasons I go "yeah, SecComm uses urban grey camo" is because of the Revolution-era setting that's drawing from as well: if you're mostly massacring partisans and revolutionaries which aren't using peer technologies, your concern is primarily being able to confuse the mk.1 eyeball or the FPV drone as opposed to the Naval Air Arm equivalent of a Global Hawk

[solid jewel]

I think part of it is mechs are inherently (for the most part) anthropomorphized and so people project a lot of infantry qualities onto them

infantry wears camo? well mechs would have camo, obviously

Also, urban camo does serve as a pretty effective shorthand for "where are these being deployed"

They aren't fighting the great Europan Ice War

[wheat ferry]

there's actually an alt example in the Haber art - that's Hercynia camouflage

where you see the Haber mimicking rain-mist and foliage (it's tall enough to pretend to reach tree height!), as well as using camouflage netting (which is rotting off of it) to break up its silhouette

if the netting was fully intact it'd also be using some of the properties of the anti-thermal stuff you're seeing applied to AFVs in the current era too, but the corrosives the thing's spewing mean most solutions don't last long

[dapper crypt]

When using Retrograde, I would generally use the "urban camo" angular type, along with corpro signifiers

[wheat ferry]

more broadly: I wish I could have more things to draw on about the effectiveness of camouflage techniques on AFVs, but a lot of that stuff that's not a company hawking its goods is still classified

[solid jewel]

I feel like these days the stuff you probably care most about is either thermal baffling, anything to break up signature for FPV drones, or like active ECM

[wheat ferry]

2005 😔

[wheat ferry]

the nefarious and evil e-defense stat:

[swift thicket]

Not entirely happy with this one but I just want to be done fucking around with it 😭😭 Captain Gabriel Delgado

[wheat ferry]

nice

earrings are an excellent touch

[swift thicket]

session 1 went well btw

the characters spent most of the day hanging around the maintenance bay with Cecily and talking about mechs. Our party's mechanic (caliban pilot) rolled a natural 20 on her first Fix or Repair roll to help gear a few of the mechs up and get them ready for chassis mounts, got into a small argument with a Harrison Armory mechanic about why she wouldn't rather pilot a Kutuzov, then they ended the night at the bonfire telling stories and getting ready for their last day before they go up

oh, and the teacher's group encounter was fun too. There was a kid who showed our Genghis pilot his toy Tokugawa (i narrated him pressing a button on its back and making the chestplates pop open, orange LEDs lighting up and a crappy engine whir noise coming out of a speaker), and at the bonfire let another kid wear his captain's hat while he was telling stories

his player messaged after the session "oh ulysses look at these adooorable children wont you feel bad if they die" 😭

[fluid salmon]

Toy tokugawa is a cute* touch when we know where that frame draws from ngl

[swift thicket]

i wanted to make the HA influence over Lebaea feel pretty palpable. Lots of people talking about how joining the Purview is a good thing, lots of HA propaganda, the coolest mechs around are Tokugawas and Kutuzovs so naturally the kids thought the Genghis pilot was the coolest, most of the mechs they saw in the maintenance bay were Shermans, etc.

[wheat ferry]

This is exactly my intent, to be fair, I am shameless in setting up Chekhov's puppy in front of the ominous kicking machine

If I get one prologue to make the stakes personal I will be making them personal

[stuck bison]

[swift thicket]

yea everyone thought she was cool as shit, called it

[stuck bison]

fuck yes

[dapper crypt]

I see you also watch Fully Ramblomatic

[woven wharf]

very important to make the players feel something in their hearts about the mission

[dapper crypt]

Found a good example for my different camos used by the enemy faction in my campaign, though increasing skill is also a factor; players were on the desert world first, then later visited an ocean world; the last version is the Research Division variant that eschews the faction's normal head identification for just white

These were on roll20, so I had to create token backgrounds for them

[swift thicket]

Party's gonna meet Abigale next session. It says she's "only begrudgingly taken to the field again," and that she'd "rather take the detachment elsewhere instead of fight war-as-suicide." I take this to mean she is going up with everyone else to fight the TBK fleet, though she's not happy about it, yes?

(she's gonna be with the MSMC pub crawl group, so I'm trying to work on that scene)

[wheat ferry]

Correct

it's a "she's not going to let the people she's served with for 10+ years get themselves killed" situation

[swift thicket]

got it! yeah, i plan for her to be very protective of the MSMC mercs (and Rafe, despite how much shit she talks), less so of Lebaea itself. Also, if she ends up being on-screen in her mech, I imagine her as a Raleigh/Störtebeker pilot. Does that track?

[wheat ferry]

hold on, I actually had an answer for this awhile back, I think

[swift thicket]

ooo. i was gonna ask if she has a mech name or callsign 👀

[wheat ferry]

it is proving surprisingly difficult to find (though I did find Warrant Officer Jolan Ahlberg in my notes, so there's a full name and rank)

[swift thicket]

(I'm playing with the difficulty a little higher, so I'm being liberal with giving the party Reinforcements as Reserves. Plus, it helps them remember the NPCs!)

[wheat ferry]

oh my god I legitimately can't find it.

I swear I had this down somewhere. That said, I'm 90% sure she was a Raleigh pilot, yeah.

[hearty mica]

It might've been in one of the older drafts because I also remember this somehow

[wheat ferry]

Extremely weird. Oh well.

general thoughts:

• Rafe "House" Campagna: IPS-N Blackbeard, At My Level, With Experience
• Abigale "Rockefeller" Lothar: IPS-N Raleigh, Missed Calling
• Arnold "Greyhound" Lucas: CCU Lucerne (over-the-horizon artillery and conventional (non-systemic) electronic warfare mech), Third Bell To Sunrise
• Gabriel Delgado: N/A
• Akemi Hirayama: N/A
• Conall "Shillelagh" Hawthorn: HA Gilgamesh, Trackless Waste

[swift thicket]

[wheat ferry]

hoooold on

okay that should be finished

[swift thicket]

https://tenor.com/view/thats-why-hes-the-goat-the-goat-bigfellerjake-skippe-space-i-think-gif-26908844

[swift thicket]

and with that, here's the token I just whipped up for Missed Calling

[wheat ferry]

excellent

[austere frost]

Has the exotic gear from the book been added to the LCPs? If it has I may just be blind

[granite crane]

The ol classic have u enabled exotic gear in compcon

[quartz cipher]

Yeah - my players started out the campaign scanning a lot, then got out of the habit and needing a few prods to remember that option when it's really helpful.

The exotic gear was in there when I looked last time. Should probably check for other items before next time, JIC.

[granite crane]

🫡 not trying to condescend, it's happened to me before so i thought i'd ask

[late apex]

Yo @wheat ferry! I'm the artist @halcyon eagle was mentioning, and I was wondering if the sleek thin no-nonsense hi-tech look of those jets is the aesthetic you were thinking of for all of the vehicles? Also, I like the look of the double barrel engines so was thinking of making that the core shared feature of all the aerial craft

Also rough tactical bomber sketch, lifted straight from the artwork

[wheat ferry]

Yup, pretty much! Second Committee Naval Air Arm assets are broadly heavy, armored, and self-redundant - designed for massive payloads and resilience to incoming fire. They might have some concessions to limited atmospheric flight, but are not designed for atmospheric takeoff or landing - the NAA expects to be flying from naval assets in SecComm's unimaginably vast fleet arm, and so they're all purpose-built for space operations with reaction control systems, nuclear-electric or plasma engines, radiators for heat exchange, et cetera.

You can see some other examples of the sleek-but-purpose-forward aesthetic (albeit those versions are "modernized" in the timescale of the setting) in the IPS-N Steichen and Mitscher art in the licenses, albeit these are atmospheric craft.

[late apex]

Cool cool 👍

[austere frost]

That was exactly it im a fool, im usually the dm so never had to look at player facing stuff really until now tyyyyyy

[wheat ferry]

Here's some references from the refs folder on the spaceships/aircraft, by the by

for the General Mood™

[dapper crypt]

What about the Kilauea bombers from Wallflower?

These guys

[wheat ferry]

Also a good pull! You can see a similar thing in the Forever Winter flying wing.

[halcyon eagle]

was thinking about the tank and how it has a leclerc turret

is this freaky enough

i have NO idea what they did to it

[wheat ferry]

Probably fits in the right vein. In general with Lancer tech - as Kai referred to the other day, albeit in the context of mechs - you're going to want a fairly robust ECM / anti-drone / APS suite, which means a bunch of stuff whacked onto the turret

It's also going to have a bit of an odd profile because optional unmanned is good (and also more practical with Lancer tech)

[halcyon eagle]

yeah it'll be busy up there

[halcyon eagle]

well not including the wacky 4 tracks side by side

seccoms..

wait is it side by side like the obj. 279 (evenly spaced) or is there a proper gap in the middle for people to crawl under

[wheat ferry]

up to the artist tbh

I just like the idea of the wacky Obj. 279 track layout designed for the Nuclear Battlefield since, well, TBK doctrine

[halcyon eagle]

made me think it was meatgrindmaxxing

[granite crane]

Yessss

[solid jewel]

One of my (at least I think it is) funnier ideas is that a non-zero number of vehicles in lancer consider subalterns to be essentially a form of "automated system" which can then be substituted for an actual person if need be

for example, it mentions in Winter Scar that the Vestan Sovereignty's main battle tank has a crew of four, or three if you use a subaltern as an autoloader

[wheat ferry]

pfft

I mean, technically speaking, it is a computer-driven mechanical system of a kind

[solid jewel]

yeah basically

it's sort of a plug-and-play type deal as well, as anything that you can build for a person to use, you can fit a subaltern in there as well

[modern terrace]

very homeworld

also i'm getting this vibe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjJmTeBSEzU

[wheat ferry]

||In a sense, that's a lot like the module in general!||

[modern terrace]

||the skeleton pilot reminded me of the sulbaltern art of the squad||

[west trench]

okay so what am i supposed to do narratively after the Decksweepers encounter?

i'd like to give them a break from combat

[wheat ferry]

if you want a break from combat, at pretty much any time you can just pop a campfire during the short rest

they're repairing their mechs anyway between combats, so give them a narrative encounter, let them call home and get an update, talk with each other while tinkering, so on

you can generally assume there's an hour or so between these things, I figure, plus travel time (given a full repair being accomplishable in eight hours given the core rulebook)

[wheat ferry]

to elaborate a bit: to bring home the narrative impact of stuff like taking down the Sakharov or the degrees of success on shutting down the Gallipoli, I definitely endorse taking narrative moments for the team when repairing even if not explicitly stated. It's a good way to keep people in the character's headspace and make them feel like their actions are making a difference

[swift thicket]

bit of an ugly wip for Third Bell To Sunrise, what other standard CDF decorations might be painted on/placed on this mech?

[wheat ferry]

That's probably going to be mostly it for a frontline combat vehicle

there'd be the insignia of the Colonel's unit somewhere, which we can safely say is on the other side so you don't have to draw it

Bigger Gun, some transmission dishes and the like, that sort of thing

[swift thicket]

funny you say bigger gun lol I had this one on there before but i figured it looked too ridiculously large lmao

[wheat ferry]

pfftha, a little too much for something meant to be fairly modern, yeah

I'd think something like a large howitzer where the autocannon is right now - the Lucerne is an indirect-fire chassis, so either something that's very much an artillery instead of AT weapon or a large missile launcher of some kind

[swift thicket]

I'll look around and see what I can find

I looked for reference images on the CCU Lucerne online and .. found nothing, by the way. There doesn't exist any images of it, no?

maybe this karrakin lance cannon thing? it'd require a bit of repixeling buuut

[wheat ferry]

I have just straight-up made up all of the CCU mechs, they have no art

and yup, that'd be about the scale here

[swift thicket]

ah. got it

Is this about what you had in mind for a Lucerne, then?

[wheat ferry]

(they're background fluff, so I didn't feel the need to commission art of them when there'd be no corresponding license; by and large a lot of them can be roughly analogized to things that can be built out of existing license material, quite intentionally so - so that a CDF pilot in the module could be like "oh, I pilot a Ranseur" and their mechanical licenses are Death's head)

[wheat ferry]

sure, looks good to me

[swift thicket]

Generic chauv portrait 1, for use in comms barks when enemy mechs/ships fire off big attacks

(doing so to make the fleet feel more alive, especially before they actually get aboard and start experiencing all the weird shit going on)

[wheat ferry]

Everyone's Still Here 🙂 is an excellent way to twist that, I approve

[swift thicket]

They'll see faces on comms and on screens, be talked to and taunted, but never see a single life signature or living body. It'll be fun

I have this macro on standby for the first time a player structures in 1-1, for example

[wheat ferry]

beautiful

Yeah, when I ran IaM myself (and as I plan to again, if I can put together the time), that sort of thing is exactly the sort of bark that's ideal - something's wrong about it, they're subtly out of place, but it's not wrong enough to trip warning bells until you start to put the pieces together from other sources

[swift thicket]

I plan for the "ghosts" of the dead fleet to genuinely believe the players to be revolutionaries who are in the process of overthrowing what they percieve to still be Union

Working on a couple lines of dialogue for ajax that are going to be something to the tune of "You think you can do better than Union? Wait until you've put down your first hundred rebellions. Wait until you lose your first system to the chaos of "revolution." Then, you'll understand why things like this need to happen."

I'm not great at writing monologues but as soon as the players start pressing him about the doctrine, I want him to start talking about how revolution is like a cancer, and the only way to keep it from spreading and killing the rest of the body is to annihilate it entirely, down to the last cell

[wheat ferry]

Makes sense, and sounds good

[wheat ferry]

The war is not "over". The war cannot be "over". You are still fighting it today. We are still fighting it today. Wherever we so co-exist, we will fight each other - because you will not surrender to us, and we require your surrender. More: we require you to serve as lesson in surrender; that the act of rebellion in the first place is an inevitable road to annihilation, that there is no place in the universe for any path but ours. It is better this way. Cleaner. Better us, better knowing that we are doing this to you, than spending another thousand years dying slowly because your ancestors made the wrong decision. I bear this burden gladly.

[modern terrace]

suggestion, maybe some sort of helmet to hide his face ? ||considering spoilers later down the line ofc||

[wheat ferry]

nah

||the point is that this is the "ID picture," this is how they see themselves
it's through the computers||

[swift thicket]

||They'll be talking with faces that look very much alive, and react as if they are, too. They'll hear cries of pain and promises of retaliation for killed allies. But when the cockpits open up, there's nothing.||

[modern terrace]

||spooky||

[modern terrace]

shocked realization omg middle age crisis has done a number on poor jerid

[wheat ferry]

I mean

are we really arguing the Titans aren't anthrochauvs to some extent

:^)

[modern terrace]

I mean its a very similar colour scheme mister ash.

Very similar indeed

And yhea the titans are very much pro earth, when i did some proto seccom mechs a few years ago, they follow their color scheme

[fluid salmon]

How many fridged girlfriends do you think he's up to

Titans are a real good touchstone for SecComm though yeah, especially with how they play the role as both special forces soldiers and unchecked policing force

[tacit cloud]

The Titans are basically what I imagine the movement to be like just before they seized power tbh

(And spiritually very similiar to the ideology in general)

Good touchstone

[dusty portal]

anthrochauvinism with newtype characteristics

[swift thicket]

Here's the trio for the pub crawl. Mishka and Roland are all scarred up since I plan to play the 383rd as reckless, rough and tumble pilots and want the visual language to reflect that. Roland's big-ass head scar, he'll explain, is from his most recent wreck while fighting pirates--one that could have been prevented if he didn't overcharge his mech again to get that last round of Gandivas off

[frozen urchin]

hey guys

decksweepers demolisher states goliath optionals, is that just crossclassed or intended to be a goliath entirely?

[wheat ferry]

Crossclassed

whenever you see "X optionals" that isn't in the Template Template Guy line, it's a deliberate crossclassing

(I do this a lot to both mix things up + add synergy and uniqueness + force players to start Scanning again)

[frozen urchin]

copy that, its about what i assumed but wanted to make sure since this was the first instance of only having one optional from a completely different class

say, do you have any sort of visual guide for the look of iphigenia's opfors?

things like 1-4 berserkers and ajax have visual descriptions attached but i was moreso wondering about all the other mechs

oh, and is every frame in 1-1 a massive chassis mount? it seems so, but i wanna make sure

[wheat ferry]

pretty much (which'll tell you just how big the actual strike craft are!)

the grunts are regular-ass mechs which'd be 1 structure basics anywhere else

[wheat ferry]

Second Committee Identifiers in the book + a bunch of community people are working on a token pack

[frozen urchin]

well

add me to that list of people

i wanted to tackle a smaller pack before starting on igf tokens but fucking hell IAM has a lot of NPCs

near as many NPCs in mission 1 alone as in the entirety of shadow of the wolf

to be entirely fair 34 (iam mission 1) doesnt quite shake up to 51 (sotw entirety) but iam compensates with the first two combats of mission 2 already

[wheat ferry]

Woe, enemy variety be upon you

(natural consequence of later-LL module)

[frozen urchin]

yeah

i am thus far quite intrigued though

this is gonna be interesting

to nobody's surprise i really wanna bash the crowsworn cause they have very striking designs, alas i must proceed chronologically

[wheat ferry]

sky absolutely crushed it with the crowsworn, fantastic work

[frozen urchin]

pasting the opfor for combat 3.1 is taking up over 2 pages in my doc holy shit

[wheat ferry]

3.1 is me going sicko mode to make up for the ||following gauntlet of boss fights||

venture into my spaceship

[frozen urchin]

yeah no shit

just finished putting the last combat into my doc

81 total tokens, not considering ||iphigenia needing 5 tokens for obvious reasons||

[wheat ferry]

Good luck brave soldier

[frozen urchin]

sorry, six

didnt consider the main npc

[frozen urchin]

oh my god you included a palette this makes things so much easier

obviously its just the flag but having colours for the arm stripes is so convenient

[wheat ferry]

I gotchu

Yeah, I envision the big difference between the Union Blue of SecComm and ThirdComm to be shade/hue - one's the blue shading into the black of the space they hold dominion over at the edge of the atmosphere, the other is the blue of a free and open sky

[frozen urchin]

alright

let's get to fucking work.

[frozen urchin]

Gallipoli H1-H5 finished

these are going to be far and above the worst part of my compendium because i fucking hate doing ships and retrograde doesnt exactly have lots of good parts for them, but they still feel sufficiently bulky and shiplike

further updates will be posted in #1495707487163387904

unless i get a big milestone done or do a token i really like, then i might still post it here

[granite crane]

Fireeee

[frozen urchin]

i ahve arrived at my first stilistic impassé, which is the colour for the glows on all deadfleet mechs

the sample isnt perfect because these are big and overwhelming glows compared to what other glows tokens are gonna have but we work with what we have

the purple was an attempt to emulate the purple glow of the enkidu claws in peyton's art, while the red was my own idea since i know it meshes nicely with dark and blue

uhhhhhh let me know what you think! bashing five ships in a day was enough for me and i am going to bed

[modern terrace]

slaming my head ah the pain of some npcs being easier in one pack, harder in others

[wheat ferry]

Looks great! I'm honestly tempted to go with the purple on first glance, but they're both good.

[frozen urchin]

Thats two votes for purple so far

I'll ask around some more

[modern terrace]

before we start paitning it, thoughts folks ?

[wheat ferry]

that recessed head is killer, very SecComm imo

[modern terrace]

glad you like it ! the spear tip on the other hand is making me go "hmmm"

[wheat ferry]

true...

I like it, but I can also see a version without the prongs

[dapper crypt]

"Necks are signs of deviancy from the Cradelian standard"

[wheat ferry]

MORE ARMOR! MORE

[modern terrace]

ENERGY SPEAR !

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/kylo-kylo-ren-more-star-wars-the-last-jedi-gif-24584001

[sharp siren]

This Cataphract is so damn good. Also cata happens to be my fav npc. Just badass looking.

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/nodding-crossed-arms-pikachu-eyes-closed-pokemon-gif-15194868

[modern terrace]

Katyusha set out on the banks
On the steep and lofty bank
Katyusha set out on the banks
On the steep and lofty bank
She was walking, singing a song
About a grey steppe eagle
About her true love
Whose letters she was keeping
About her true love

[modern terrace]

lil hornet is done

[frozen urchin]

aaaaaaaaaand thats all deadfleet strikecraft done

quality of tokens is gonna skyrocket from here because i actually get to make mechs again

still, the palette and the camo have done really good work so far

[dapper crypt]

Question for the high-mortality rules; how is "severely injured" and "critically injured" represented? I'd like to use the rules alongside the Bond rules, would they immediately get a Burden, or lose pilot HP?

[wheat ferry]

"Severely injured" would be a Burden, "critically injured" would be "your pilot is out of the campaign, roll a new one"

Difference between losing a limb and "your guts are mostly out of your body, immediately call a medevac to try and save your life"

[halcyon eagle]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1486441779816435944/1496189058626359417/FINISHED.png?ex=69e8fa25&is=69e7a8a5&hm=0ce681679eca1a4790bddecb2d9beb710047955387452c10e40eddb56c94d182& AJAX (credit to @rustic abyss)

[rustic abyss]

gulps loudly

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/me-and-bro-celebrating-best-friends-squid-game-2-my-guy-gif-8389215730122450876

[wheat ferry]

HELL YEAH

[rustic abyss]

Next up will be the Achilles

[modern terrace]

Aegis is done

[idle copper]

oooooooo
this might be my favorite

lowkey ive been kinda trying to tune it out because I'll be playing iphigenia soonish and want to have the surprise
but wow this one just grabs me

every facet is so cool

[wheat ferry]

Freaky Big Sal Ancestor hits a lot of the right notes

[modern terrace]

currently we are missing still

||The tech trio, the backline menace specter and assasin, the infantry, and the proto napoleon||

[dapper crypt]

Remember that before Big Sal was the Fearkiller

(though it's still after this, chronologically)

[modern terrace]

a lot of these are and feel like prototypes, the concept in the form of gear before the chassis was materialized

stuff being placed inside everests and sagarmathas, to see what worked and what din't

[wheat ferry]

as is right and proper

canonically we see that in stuff like HA's mechs starting as Worldkiller variants

[modern terrace]

wich if you wana be specific is the grandftaher to the sagarmata, (weird that pyro isnt a size 2 but ok :P) diferent systems being test out, some work others don't ||you see this with the enkidu tokens with the berserker being the mass production type, and the lurker the prototype|| with a few quad mechs in betwheen that really want to be tanks more then mechs

[quartz cipher]

That's actually the one objection I've seen so far - basically, "how is this fleet, which is at least 600 years or so out of date, giving so much trouble to modern technology?" That, admittedly, is something I've had a bit of trouble explaining. Generally chalked it up to "this was bleeding edge tech for SecComm, and what you've got out here in Choral isn't top of the line, fleet flagship type stuff."

[wheat ferry]

pretty much + you're fighting on their turf

all the advantages of 450 years in combat technology mean very little when a SecComm guy is jumping you out of a blind corner with a shotgun

(this is touched on very briefly in some sections of the narrative, such as where a clock goes "these systems are so heavily secured you'll have an incredibly hard time doing anything without specialized hacking tools, but if you do have those, well, that's one of the categories technology really has meaningfully advanced and now this becomes much easier")

[quartz cipher]

Which they're hitting tonight - I'm basically going to give the guy from HORUS who does most of the tech attacks the benefit on that.

It was something that came up along with the "so, why can't we force shutdown the ship and take over" questions, which are more easily explained as "because NHP development isn't linear, it's a loop-de-loop pulling a barrel roll and Iphigenia's half a step shy of being Monist-3."

[wheat ferry]

yep

"why can't we shut the ship down"

"do you want to be the first to engage in a digital slapfight with SHODAN running on ~twenty straight-line kilometers of fleetwide computational architecture"

if this was a straight fleet-on-fleet fight a lot of the technological deficiencies start manifesting, but the fleet assets in-system are totally outnumbered and outgunned; that they're even thinking they can give defending Coroneia a shot with two capital ships against three with more tonnage and assets is a sign of that

[quartz cipher]

That helps to know too. Wasn't certain what scale3 which ships were at.

[modern terrace]

there is also the fact that the union fleet, at least battleship wise, hasnt gotten a update, so.....these are still packing a punch

[wheat ferry]

yep, Battlegroup mentions that modernized Thoreau-classes are still kicking

[modern terrace]

they are still a big number of capital ships for union navy fleets, its so much firepower

[quartz cipher]

Handy to know. Basiclaly, we've got a pair of cruisers up against that many plus the entire support fleet and the battleship they'd usually be supporting.

[modern terrace]

.... @wheat ferry battlegroup module for IAM when ?

[wheat ferry]

yup, the force disposition at the start of the module covers that - you have the Okhotsk (modern frigate) and the Enyo (modern armed/independent carrier) vs. the Coroneia detachment of the 628th, which is itself a heavy carrier and two frigates

above Lebaea it's ah. that's a battleship, a battleship-tonnage supercarrier, and a frigate. let's not just get ourselves killed

the Coalition capital ships pulling back to Coroneia is a kind of bitterly pragmatic move

[modern terrace]

the frigate is there to be cute, a battleship, a super heavy carrier are enought to send most fleet elements to back off

[quartz cipher]

And none of us know that much about ships, so that was something I stumbled with. Will know better if I run it again.

[modern terrace]

lancer ship fights are titanic in schale

i'm sure kai can smack us with actual facts and logic about it, since they wrote battlegroup

[quartz cipher]

Oh, I didn't doubt that it would have been accurate to say that the locals would only be a delaying measure at best, and that's after letting the fleet blow another planet's worth of ordnance on Lebaea. I just didn't have the words for why yet, this helps.

[wheat ferry]

that's actually something I considered as a kind of alt-hist situation where Union did have proper fleet assets in-system, but in working it out the average BG player fleet just has so many ships that it didn't fit the stakes

[quartz cipher]

Question re: 3-2

What should I do if the answer is "All we need to do is break through? Boy, I'm glad I brought the LINAC!" and slag the door without really dealing with the two Crowsworn? My gut says "congratulations, you just won two boss battles at once."

Obviously I can just have it not work, but I believe in letting the players ask for more rope if they really want to.

[modern terrace]

maybe in this alt history the 628th is a full time battlegroup, a full armada

packing more then one battleship and carriers and multiple cruisers and the like 😛

[wheat ferry]

Yep, you'd have to scale up both sides - it's a whole thing

[modern terrace]

i feel like the cover art does make me feel like "oh shit this is a big fleet"

the vibes certainly fit

[wheat ferry]

Mech-scale ordnance, even really upscale mech ordnance like a LinAc, isn't going to break through a bulkhead blast door designed to keep out kinetic penetrator warheads going through the battleship's hull

that said, if they fail the combat, expending their core power by using the LinAc is a stated fail-forward option, but it's less "blasting through it" and more "I'm using God's biggest blowtorch while my team desperately holds the Crowsworn off me"

[quartz cipher]

Gotcha. That was where I was wondering, since it was a stated fail-forward measure. "What if they try it at the start of the fight instead." I'll probably let them try, with a heck of a clock, but tell them it's going to take a while at best. Anywho, that's p;robably next week at the very soonest anyways.

[wheat ferry]

Yup, if they want to try it at the start of the fight they can feel free, but they're going to have to get right up to the door and be protected from the Crowsworn for long enough to pull it off - it'd basically be an alt sitrep

[solid jewel]

yeah, I don't like to shorchange players who bring things like linacs or apocalypse rails from living out the fantasy, but I also think it's important to preserve the fact that a battleship is a Big Fucking Deal, lancer isn't gundam where an ace pilot can single-handedly shoot down five capital ships with a big bazooka

[wheat ferry]

yeah, for stuff like the Bombard NPC-side or the Apoc Rail my thought both as a lore writer and the GM tend to be "you can't do that, the guys hooked up to a seven-hundred-manna battery and capacitor complex can do that"

"if you could get ahold of that and enough time you could do that, though (this is a different mission but doesn't remove the mission)"

[wheat ferry]

hm. speaking about battlegroup has also reminded me of my ancient pdf for Boundary Garden NPCs I should write a story for and push out the door sometime. we shall see

OTH was all PC-side stuff, Boundary Garden was my NPCs for Battlegroup - Baronic deniable-operations solid-state convoy raiders cutting Aunic supply lines in deep space

[halcyon eagle]

there isnt enough aunic presence.. will you also be tackling schtuff like the distal wars?

[wheat ferry]

Probably not since that'd really be making stuff up from whole cloth in a way I've already done enough for SecComm, my next Lancer projects I'll try to find something with a little more canon grounding

[frozen urchin]

chassis mount barricade from combat 1

we're SO balling now.

[wheat ferry]

this man WILL drag down you for a nefarious reason

[frozen urchin]

@wheat ferry i have a serious bone to pick with you about putting the hardest tokens of the entire module into the first combat /lh

ships AND chassis mounts??

[frozen urchin]

i am free.

[modern terrace]

.>

<.<

I feel like they are a bit too dark to read

[wheat ferry]

this, too, is metaphorical.

it's the Great Filter

[frozen urchin]

sob

[frozen urchin]

cataphract got a bit too dark but im happy with the other ones, still wiggling with perfect camo settings

all of the tokens are posted are getting additional corrections after posting them here, whether thats adjusting glow colour on the ships i exported earlier (doing this rn), deleting dead pixels like on the mirage (did this 10 mins ago) or adjusting lightness/darkness

[modern terrace]

Hmmm how are you doing the camo ?

[frozen urchin]

overlay

same as you i believe

[fluid salmon]

How do you tend to approach coloring actually? Is it just overlays and multiplys or

[frozen urchin]

yep

[fluid salmon]

Gotcha gotcha 📝 just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a secret third thing I’d not heard about

[modern terrace]

Did you colour the came afther with a palet ?

[frozen urchin]

wym

[modern terrace]

Uno momento

SO your right that i do use overlay

but as a extra to avoid the camo looking so dark, i apply a coloruing via maping, Colour -> Maping -> Maping via palet

the palet in question is a light grey urban camo palet

https://www.schemecolor.com/urban-camouflage.php

this is it without the maping

[frozen urchin]

ill be honest im not seeing a difference between these two

i slam the camo over all parts of the mech

[modern terrace]

you can see it on the area arround the head bether, that lighter tone helps the grey to pop, and keeping the blues without camo also helps with visibility

[modern terrace]

its a conversation we had on this chat about camo and using them on a VTT, i think its valid to look and see.

aka camo doing its job to well 😛

[frozen urchin]

oh yeah whats why im giving them coloured highlights and leave weapons without camo

i have something really fun planned for the twin berserkers in fistful of arrows

[frozen urchin]

COMBAT 1-1 FINISHED

all tokens in #1495707487163387904

finally back to the world of normal sized mechs

[halcyon eagle]

looks like comp/com updated,

just a warning!!

[wheat ferry]

yup, everything should work just fine still

if after a week there's still bugs, let me know (a lot of stuff will presumably be v3-based bugfixing I can't do anything about on my end)

[modern terrace]

ONWARD MINIONS !

[wheat ferry]

THE SQUAD

[halcyon eagle]

the goons...

the goon squad...

[tacit cloud]

oh of course a SecComm grunt would put that on a helmet

wonderful tokens btw

[fluid salmon]

Always get a kick out of the banner every time I see it. These bitches think that they’re in 40k 😌

Glad to see that translated

[wheat ferry]

cael got me with the this is a space marine squad with sgt and special weapon, isn't it and I went yeah

[wheat ferry]

I saw a music video once where one of the lyrics was written on a Vietnam GI-style helmet - God is an American - and it just Stuck With Me for years

wholeheartedly appropriated image

[tacit cloud]

I think the music video that's stuck with me the most when writing my recent stuff is the one for Do The Evolution

[modern terrace]

and what song is the artist liscening while workjing on them ? why its easy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Mzmgs9eg4

[tacit cloud]

but yeah, immaculate pull

[modern terrace]

holy thats a old one

[wheat ferry]

Well he sat me down, said to me:
"I'm trying to decide how I want to spend eternity
I'm saving all my sins up for a deathbed confession
But I did not know, that your god was American"

Now, say to me, what you see
You believed, the grass was green
They have been, safe and clean
It won't mean they'll save you

Say to me, what you see, you believed

What did you think of the food from the table?
Did you have to eat so that you would be able?
To spit out your sins, be sanctified
Now you call all you follow to lay down and die```
themes™

[tacit cloud]

gotta love themes™

[modern terrace]

hmmmm

[fluid salmon]

Also let’s be real, I feel like “yeah you’re here to kill the shit out of space marine squad with sgt and special weapon” is a nice distillation of the module and, to a degree, Lancer itself

[halcyon eagle]

what does it fully say? it looks like part of it is chipped off

god is a union what

[tacit cloud]

god is a unionite

[halcyon eagle]

yeah that very fitting

[modern terrace]

gentleman

do you feel the hot wind blowing ?

[halcyon eagle]

SLAVA SLAVA SLAVA

[plucky dune]

The good old Metal Slug Rebel Shield.

Oh yeah.

[queen obsidian]

Best money I've spent on a Third-Party so far.

[quartz cipher]

So, as my crew preps for Act 3, I don't think they can possibly not have a successful run with the Blood clock under 4 - they haven't even ticked it yet, which I'll admit leaves me unsure if I'm using it right, but they also haven't failed a mission yet.

Though, question: In the Hardsuit Combats, are they supposed to finish all the clocks, 2/3, depends on the mission?

Finishing out Act 2 included a huge amount of going through the results of the side missions (note to self: separate to just hand them to the players doing each), and when Ynneval (the cascading NHP they rescued and kinda snuck into a different casket rather than giving her back to Union) gave them the upshot of what her info was providing, the response to learning the nature of the Dead Fleet put a goodly amount of fear into them when they realized the implications.

||That they were currently dealing with fragments of fragments of Iphigenia's attention and power - and on their way to get it all drawn straight to them, her literally undivided attention.||

||Or, as Ynneval put it: "If you're going to give her any sort of peace, you need to trigger a cascade before she can even comprehend not doing what she was programmed to... and then do about ten years of therapy in ten seconds so she realizes that she doesn't want to."

Moment of silence.

"So, I can't increase my NHP Psychology trigger above +6 during this level up, right?"

"Right."

"Dammit."||

Also, at least to date, this is the module that I think has done the most to help me figure out the structure beyond "three missions of three scenes and a couple narrative interludes," figuring out bits of the pacing, ways to manipulate the system, et al. So very definitely worth the money for a GM.

[wheat ferry]

If they haven't failed a mission, then yeah, they're not going to tick the clock that much - the clock is both a narrative way to go "how you're treated depends on how you're doing" and a mechanical way to provide an out-valve for players that've been getting kicked around a lot to ||not have to do a whole extra fight at the back of the module||

Hardsuit combats as written in the module's example versions are all clocks, but you can set up different structures.

[quartz cipher]

Okay, good to know.

Running everything cranked up a tier, they haven't had any failures, but they've still gone througb the wringer for sure. Good to know that there's basically no way for them to avoid the true ending.

Those poor souls. XD

[modern terrace]

adding war pigs to the IAM playlist

[quartz cipher]

I'll admit, I'm half considering digging up an instrumental Veterans of the Psychic Wars for the final battle.

[dusty portal]

i think if i ran IaM i'd be bringing up a lot of the Zeroranger soundtrack, at least for combat music

would need to think on tracks for specific beats

[fluid salmon]

Been cooking up a fun lil Spectre token for an upcoming IaM game 😌

(Technically a Dolorosa Spectre, but I just couldn't envision a way to cram in a visual hint without making the token just too busy)

[modern terrace]

impresive how you did the badge by the way

[fluid salmon]

Thank you!!! 😊 really all the credit goes to @swift thicket, since theyre the one the made the badge in the first place - I just edited it to fit an SSC pilot, then did a bunch of scrunching and warping to line up on the mech

[swift thicket]

https://tenor.com/view/orange-cat-smile-cat-smile-orenge-cat-smiling-gif-23133369

[fluid salmon]

The version on the Spectre has the SSC symbol instead of HA, and reads "For Crown and Commune, For Union, For All of Mankind", though on reflection I'm not sure the pilot would have that strong a reason to change it, so it's to my benefit that it's not legible lol

[frozen urchin]

combat 2 aegis!

ominous floating prism as a stand-in for hardlight cover system

[frozen urchin]

emplaced sniper, combat 2

[frozen urchin]

archer, sentinel and demolisher from combat 2

[wheat ferry]

every day I'm amazed by the stuff people are doing for IaM

[quartz cipher]

God damn these tokens are great. Gonna have to pick them up before running the module again!

[fluid salmon]

Did some polishing and updates because only when you post it do the flaws become apparent 😤
SPECTRE-PATTERN/DrC-82:3-4; [THROUGH THE STORM, WE WILL FIND A WAY]

[wheat ferry]

https://bsky.app/profile/pushfreight.bsky.social/post/3mkay5dnlm22j

CDF SSTO interceptor inspiration for folks

pushfreight/tyeagg (@pushfreight.bsky.social)

Titanian freight shuttles retooled for orbital intercept sends out their ASAT's, 2375
"The Earthers entered this war under the naive delusion that they were going to bomb with impunity once orbital supremacy was achieved"

Bluesky · Apr 24, 2026, 4:47 PM

I also now realize that they do, in fact, have CDF colors

[frozen urchin]

I'm posting all of them one by one in #1495707487163387904

[quartz cipher]

Doing Godbot's work.

[cedar kestrel]

so good, thank you

[clever yoke]

Thank you for this!

[queen obsidian]

The Mitscher has me wanting to do a Mechatank adapting MBT mechanics as player mechanics lmao.

[wheat ferry]

I have also released a few tanks, funnily enough

[queen obsidian]

Core power would be the integrated cannon. Just need to find a good hook for it.

[swift thicket]

is there a token you're using for the breach ram in 1-1?

[frozen urchin]

No I forgot about it 🔥 🔥🔥🔥

Should be quick and easy though

I'll do it later with the rest of 1.2 NPCs

[wheat ferry]

the secret is that you can doodle a bare steel rectangle with hazard stripes on the head and grab handles

that's it

[modern terrace]

there are a few others done by me if you scroll above ! if you dont mind using mixed tokens

[modern terrace]

oh wait ! nvm wrong token i think

[wheat ferry]

yeah, breach ram, not breacher

they meant the objective in scene 1

[modern terrace]

frack !

also ash i got a question.

how.....easy whould it be to make the maps isometric

[dapper crypt]

That sounds like a question for someone who uses isometric maps

[wheat ferry]

yeah, I've never touched isometric maps, sadly

[modern terrace]

whaaatt noooo me ? isometric maps ?

coufs never~~

but yhea, a fools erant for my own game, conver the maps into isometric mode

[halcyon eagle]

matheus, you on v12 or v11?

iirc grapejuice makes really good isometric modules

[modern terrace]

V11

and yeha i'm using it

[halcyon eagle]

that’d do it

id keep using v11 for the free grapejuice iso, but we’ve recently begun running a new system that works so much more fluidly (credit to lasossis) which was v12 exclusive

let me get a snippet

[modern terrace]

thank you ^^

[halcyon eagle]

ok this was NOT a snippet but here

[halcyon eagle]

@modern terrace

[modern terrace]

nice, the issue is me being lazy to update XD

[frozen urchin]

the pinnacle of choral breaching technology: big fucking brick of metal

@swift thicket your chariot awaits

coloured version is going into the #1495707487163387904 in like ten minutes

[swift thicket]

you are lovely

[frozen urchin]

probably finishing combat 2 later this afternoon, only 4 tokens remain

[swift thicket]

ooo!!! i was thinking about doing a similar thing. i did iso maps for my osr game

[dapper crypt]

I like the mech handles on the side

[swift thicket]

prepping combat 1 rn for monday's session. do the mechs that they're fighting have callsigns as the ships do? (h-1, h-3, etc.) wondering if i should do that since i'm using ada's combat banner and as it is now they just display like "spacer cataphract" when they start their turn lmao

[wheat ferry]

Nah, the callsigns are specifically based off of a side mention in Battlegroup

[swift thicket]

aha. so just like a generic whatever name works for them?

[swift thicket]

oohhhhhh no i misunderstood. ok this is helpful

[wheat ferry]

Scene 1 is fighting most of the Gallipoli's H-group squadron

[swift thicket]

the H stand for anything?

[wheat ferry]

Nope, just alphanumeric

[swift thicket]

🫡

[frozen urchin]

It stands for Huge because they're size 4

[frozen urchin]

need a take for the 1-2 bastion

do i colour the explosive jet glow orange or do i make it purple like the rest of the iam glows

[queen obsidian]

You know, this narrative feels like it could fit as the climax of an extended Union Auxiliary campaign starting from Operation Solstice Rain, lol.

[frozen urchin]

Combat 2 finished!

single tokens are being posted in #1495707487163387904!

[frozen urchin]

i still need to make him a bunch more intimidating but for some fooling around this turned out quite well!

the tuga body is really old so i think ill just widen it up, slam it onto some other bigger body

[modern terrace]

i feel like the straps he has on the shield should work out

[frozen urchin]

comm suite is also too flashy

[frozen urchin]

oh yeah im adding those by hand later

[modern terrace]

yhea the tuga body is sadly old

i do like the bell of lost souls feet, but yhea

[frozen urchin]

theyre giving this ajax a very strong pose yeah

[modern terrace]

maybe....loza torso ?

[frozen urchin]

considered that when i used the loza shield, but i wanna add some additional greebles to the wide torso and loza doesnt have a lot of space on it

probably gonna try the sagarmatha ipsn body

[dapper crypt]

For hardsuit combat, (for 1-5 specifically) it's noted that while the area can still be maneuvered by size 1/2 mechs, there are some dangers associated with it; if someone is using a Caliban or a Kutuzov and argues that their mech is explicitly designed for such a scenario, is there anything you could do to account for that? In the past when I've done similar engagements, I've allowed mechs to give accuracy on certain checks (extra accuracy for an appropriate situation, like a Swallowtail using Athena to support and a Caliban in enclosed, target-rich environments) but always caused a good deal of collateral damage.

[wheat ferry]

Personally, I'd go with auto-succeed all checks to attack with shooting etc as an approach in that case, but give them a separate clock.

They're using a breaching mech in an engineering stack. On a roll after every auto-success, target number up to you, they fill up the new Collateral Damage clock some amount - and if it fills, they auto-fail.

[plucky dune]

What are the modules you have installed?

I wish my foundry looked just as good as yours

[halcyon eagle]

are you on v12?

if you are then go tooo….

this forum

https://discord.com/channels/426286410496999425/1436087781666455642

gonna have to configure some doohickeys and gizmos yourself but its relatively straightforward!

[plucky dune]

Yep

[frozen urchin]

major glowup

[queen obsidian]

I never got the hang of that site.

[granite crane]

Oh that absolutely rocks

I can't wait to run this module again oml

[frozen urchin]

there he is.

[halcyon eagle]

the flowers!!!

https://tenor.com/view/te-amo-love-i-love-you-flowers-for-you-heart-gif-15564759

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/laptop-hacking-hacker-cat-gif-5423768830271062600

[wheat ferry]

The Broadcast

The Cooler Broadcast

[dusty portal]

the broadercast

[modern terrace]

and to support, priest, second to last one today, will try and do mr mirage