Iphigenia at Midnight

[modern terrace]

honestly, exited to see the full squad together

[wheat ferry]

absolutely

[frozen urchin]

FUCK you're right I forgot them

I Specifically had something I wanted to use for the petals and then forgot completely

[swift thicket]

just finished half of combat 1 😭 The bombard had its gun blown up and became a joke despite me expecting it to be the scariest enemy on the field, while the archer has proven to be the scariest enemy despite me expecting it to be a joke

oh, and here's the party's genghis which has been kicking ass. structured the Rainmaker with a single attack and set it up to be blown up by the Spectre. MVP

[wheat ferry]

god bless

[wheat ferry]

never underestimate the archer's power to go yeah man you want to use action economy? yeah right

[granite crane]

That speed 2 is pain

[sleek jungle]

Lancer, at its core, is pretty anime-flavored, but this is the most aime the Genghis has ever looked. Not a criticism. It's an incredibly slick look. Who designed it?

[frozen urchin]

solace/@horribull. on the retrograde server

[dapper crypt]

When I ran my Mercs campaign, the first arc had a HORUS fighter attacking the station the game took place on, it was an Exotic Ultra Ship Archer; the meanest thing I've ever done in Lancer was target a player with the short-cycle lance, then use Impending Threat when they tried to stabilize to heal from 1 HP

[late apex]

Yo! I've come back to draw some spaceships after taking a Tarrasque-shaped detour, and I have a very specific question: What look / scale should the cockpits on the ships be? The pictured Tactical Bombers have a fighter jet body plan and canopy-esque bump, but these beasts are size 4, so I'm assuming that is not implying a mech sized pilot in there.

It'll be super simple to just have a slit-window or just smooth/greebled surface, but I was wondering if there was any specific appearance or inspiration in mind

[wheat ferry]

I personally envision that bump in the middle of the ship being a radome and anti-missile intercept laser, and the little elevated bit at the front being where you have your pilot and bombardier embedded in a COFFIN-like interface.

[plucky dune]

For a second, I was going to say "Project Wingman"

But no, it's Ace Combat

[late apex]

For sure for sure

Still shaping it up, but it's shaping up nicely

Bottom-mounted cannon and side/back missile rows are gonna make the rainmaker/bombard, and potentially nexus's in the 'wings' for the hive

[wheat ferry]

excellent - yeah, that'd be right on

I figure you'd have a version with a centerline coilgun for the bombard, centerline bomb bay and side missile racks for the rainmaker, centerline heavy laser for the scourer, and drone hives on the side for the hive

[halcyon eagle]

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

[modern terrace]

mirage token ready to be painted

[fluid salmon]

Oooooh

I recognize it is in part a "scaling pixel art is in fact impossible" thing but I think the smaller-scale arms are both funny and pretty fitting for the class 🙂‍↕️

[modern terrace]

these arms are from another mech and yhea tiny trex hands XD

[modern terrace]

Mirage done

[idle copper]

wohg

woahg

[crimson zodiac]

Holy shit

[late apex]

A bit more progress. The base ship is close to done, just the work on the back / engines and then it's weapons time

[wheat ferry]

excellent

[halcyon eagle]

matheus is going crazy on the commisar

quick question about the ||veteran merc assassin in 2-2||, do commissars have anything unique to them besides the decor added on for veterancy and the grey stripe cutting across their identifiers?

[wheat ferry]

nah, not unless they're looking to get preferentially targeted

blue cloth, service studs, etc is the usual

[modern terrace]

*slaps it at @wheat ferry *

[wheat ferry]

nice

[halcyon eagle]

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

[modern terrace]

also how do i fucking do service studs in this pixel rating, thats my panic mode

[halcyon eagle]

maybe we can find a reference?

[wheat ferry]

haha, you can always just skip them

they're just an example of things people can do in art/description

oh, hold on

[modern terrace]

i know what they are, i played space marine 2, its just that in this schale, it might as well be a single golden dot on the mech

[wheat ferry]

Mars, Luna, Cradle - the baselines of the anthrochauvinist model. The sword they hold.

This particular one is circled with embroidered laurels of gold to support it - not gold-colored thread, but actual, pure gold woven through the fabric.
It is the patch not just of a military commissar, a true scion of the People's Progress Party, but one with decades of dedicated and unimpeachably devoted service.```

dug up the party commissar service patch from a couple years ago

[halcyon eagle]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

patches might be a bit iffy at the pixel scale as well

hmm...

[modern terrace]

its more in general.

this madman that hire me, wants me to do veteran versions of the opfor, cloth is one thing, some medal sure, but at pixel art schale, things loose themselfs

[halcyon eagle]

well let me see

about the studs

since im sure theres some good examples some where

[wheat ferry]

oh my god

good luck brother

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-on-fire-sitting-edited-on-fire-fire-gif-17645117

[modern terrace]

looking at the hammer dude in the back, wishing, begging, that the description of veterans was red armor parts

[wheat ferry]

it can be... it also helps with readability in the tabletop context...

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/zhukov-gif-20082782

this mf…

[modern terrace]

the reality of the VTT demands it

even super zoomed it its hard to see it

[halcyon eagle]

nah i see it

https://tenor.com/view/jerma-gif-14663292704966997212

[late apex]

Spameshimp

[modern terrace]

mr specter still a wip

[wheat ferry]

oh that's straight heat

[dapper crypt]

Love how it's actually bulky

SecComm mechs hitting the gym

[modern terrace]

wanted to use the sieze one base here for this as the specter is something more common acording to lore

[frozen urchin]

ajax finally has his flowers!!

[halcyon eagle]

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

[modern terrace]

shine or no shine folks

[halcyon eagle]

im on team no shine

[fluid salmon]

I like the shine. Makes the token more readable from distance

[halcyon eagle]

ok we've reached a consensus

needs lines

[idle copper]

i agree with latest iteration

[swift thicket]

I figure you guys'll enjoy seeing these ... here's how i have the battlemaps set up for my game :)

And my favorite one, 2-3 ||Salt the Earth, where the map will get darker as it's filled with smoke and embers as the fight goes on longer and more TBK weapons caches are broken|| >:)

[wheat ferry]

goddamn.

[swift thicket]

I was meaning to ask, so i can label them, what are the hazardous terrain spots supposed to represent in ||Temple Gates?||

since your maps are super dynamic and interactive, I have little tooltips pop up when the players mouse over interactive objects or hazards on the map, like so

[wheat ferry]

Debris, shattered hull fragments, the occasional landmine...

Effectively, if you run over one of those and fail your save you're probably tripping into a deck spar or something else unwholesome from the fighting

[swift thicket]

Got it. Thank you for elucidating me

Oh, and I had another question, actually! One of my players (who i believe you've interacted with before lol, MeowButton here on pnet) is piloting a Caliban. I think there's prooobably a way to run Scene 1-5 ||Terminal Burn to allow her to stay inside of the mech narratively, but I'm not sure how. In my mind, the frame that is designed to "entering a ship and neutralize its personnel" and "kill human beings very, very quickly" has the perfect opportunity to do so aboard the Gallipoli.|| Do you have any advice or thoughts on the matter?

[wheat ferry]

ding

[swift thicket]

bookmarking it

thank you 🙇

[wheat ferry]

• if they want to be careful about it they can roll like they were in a regular hardsuit and not have to run the risk of collateral-damaging something vital

(narratively, pulling shots, being slow with their fighting, so on)

[swift thicket]

Oh there's no chance she's piloting her cali like that. She's the doom slayer. Juggernaut and jackhammer rounds. collateral damage is the point

i was talking to her about the tooltips since she was helping me set up foundry stuff and she said, in regards to the doors: "those doors will be immediately destroyed by me. 10 hp ain't shit to me"

it's been a lot of fun so far we're all really enjoying the module

[wheat ferry]

the secret about enclosed environments is that terrain means a lot of blowing clear through walls

I'm glad to hear it!

[late apex]

Bombs? Missiles? They're yours my friend!

Also @wheat ferry, got any preference for how the heavy laser / coilgun looks?

[wheat ferry]

Nah, feel free to shoot for whatever

[west trench]

question about the release maps

[wheat ferry]

shoot

[west trench]

specifically for 1-3, what are the blue lines exactly?

[wheat ferry]

Doors!

[west trench]

oh gotcha. Can they be opened or are they purely destructible

[wheat ferry]

Standard Bulkhead Doors, yup

[west trench]

gotcha

[abstract egret]

Gonna play IaM soon, wont linger here much to avoid spoilers, but i wanna say that the lore blurbs for each of the frames is great

I fw them

[wheat ferry]

Thank you!

[last horizon]

As I'm reading over this to make more detailed session notes, I have to say that I'm a sucker for diegetic slang and battle cries

"For Crown and Commune" is really, really good

[wheat ferry]

It hit me like a bolt from the blue when I was writing the early Choral Worlds culture outlines

love my weird monarchocommunists

[granite crane]

'yeah we're pretty self governing but we keep the queen around 'cause we think she's neat!'

[west trench]

God we just got to ||Ajax|| last night and the entire scene with him was incredible

[wheat ferry]

excellent

[west trench]

the players went crazy with the dialogue

[modern terrace]

OHHHH SNA

[scarlet flax]

Minor question re: npc-

Is ||Iphigenia supposed to be size 1 or 2||?

[wheat ferry]

I... am not sure why that line exists in the text, I should've caught that. Size 2.

[scarlet flax]

Also, after reading the module, I think amongst the more thought provoking things for me is Appendix D, specifically on the idea of restraint and the shadow of the past that serves as a reminder of why it exists. It IS a valid reason as to why overt action is not taken, yet at the same time-

How does one even begin to explain to the person currently labouring 18 hours a day in the most mental of jobs (albeit necessary as dictated by whatever overlord, be they corpo or some independent polity) to ensure he has enough money to make rent or be evicted- to tell him that progress is definitely being made to ensure his life is being bettered? Where people in the same community have burnt themselves to a pale shadow for the right to not live like an animal? He hears about the mythical and noble Union who will bring about an age of peace and plenty, and he sees the fruit of their bounty everyday he shines the shoes of his paymasters in their office, but where is that bounty? Why is it his lot in life to watch? Where is the justice in his situation? Is it fair that he has to suffer when someone with enough power just needs to act to make things better.

That man dies, and perhaps his child grieves. Things go on, status quo, with the questions left forever answered.

We move on to yet another person, a human being with their own hopes and dreams.

[scarlet flax]

On another planet out there in the same system. Vital trade partner to the one in the first, albeit currently experiencing a economic collapse as the result of prolonged warfare by the un-unified nationstates that have coalesced into alliances. The war certainly isn't ending anytime soon, what with corporations lending clandestine support to one faction or another. After all, they were going to kill each other anyway, weren't they? Why not help them out, and make good manna in the process?

Perhaps a girl this time, she grows up in the mountains. A small homestead in the mountains, father working in coal mines, a stay at home mother, some other sisters. Just isolated enough from the rest of the world for the family to ride through the collapse mostly fine. A big garden they have to grow crops to feed themselves, and seeing as the girl of the story is a good child, she has one of her own too. Grew the worst tomatoes one could imagine, but it brought her joy and it was HERS. If there was one character flaw she possessed, its that she's a bit greedy, but she has a good heart and wants to help her family.

Now, having read a few books, she figures that signing up to become a soldier would help out their socio-economic status. Times are lean, the armed forces promise good pay and better benefits, so she signs up in her late teens.

She comes back a changed woman, and to a home that wasn't there anymore.

Her father is now an indentured augmented laborer, his contract bought out by an IPSN affiliated subsidiary to help meet quotas of exotic minerals and shipped offworld once the coal mines ran dry. Her Mother? Dead, a corpse, buried in the backyard. Killed by the roof collapsing on her due to the shockwave of a stray guided bomb. Sisters
Her other sisters were dead or prostitutes, having nothing left to their name.

The garden that she was so proud of- nothing but dust and ash, taken out by an SSC bioweapon designed to destroy fertile arable land- it would raise demand for more resilient strains, and besides, SSC didn't pull the trigger, it was a neighbouring country!

The girl is furious, angry. Unlike the son from before, she wants revenge. Who does she blame?

The neighbouring country, for unleashing the bioweapon? SSC, for providing it in the first place. IPSN, for essentially enslaving her father and leaving the family defenseless and penniless? Her country, for extending the war with it's call for more soldiers in the name of a salient push? Whatever political dirtbags that started the war in some bombed out country half the globe away over things as inane as dogmatic disagreements?

Who does she need to kill?

Her realisation is all of them. Every, single, one of them. She has to, so that others may never suffer like her again; never have to go home and see everything ripped to shreds. It's an imperative so gripping that she's ready to devote the rest of her life to doing so. For the betterment of people. But she's just one girl. She can't kill a nationstate like this. So the girl goes into politics, and over decades, manages to become a member of the Third Committee. Her first act is to lend her voting power to the New Humanity Front, calling for greater action to rein in and 'punish' the Corpo States; backed by the might of Union Fleets and military force.

But, if ever asked, how does one tell her what she did wasn't justified?
And thus the cycle goes full circle, the shadow of Anthrochauvinism rearing it's head.

Restraint is necessary to avoid the mistakes of the past, but how does one explain the 'how' and 'why' to the people who have to suffer in the meantime?

[wheat ferry]

I'm glad that the appendix had that much of an impact on you, and I'm quite happy as well that it made you think about one of the big political problems I think underpin the setting.

[scarlet flax]

Truth be told

I started playing, then gming Lancer because I wanted to explore socio-economic and political ludonarrative

Since rarely do people do things for the hell of it, there is always a reason 'why'

[wheat ferry]

100%

[subtle tide]

Very slowly starting the process of recreating the IaM grid maps using Dungeondraft. I'm no artist, but I'll do my best

Starting with, of course, 1-1. (I have no idea how I'm going to represent the hull of the Gallipoli (I'll probably just have it conveniently out-of-frame to the right))

I'm not sold on the blue void background but a monochrome black starscape is impossible to work with

[subtle tide]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/940052127118671953/1500323383408332901/image.png?ex=69f80489&is=69f6b309&hm=2e21a11db193f0003bb5ab2238597196032e00c8eb24d53763259fe4ad4b9348&

I think this is a lot better

[wheat ferry]

looking good

[frozen urchin]

quick update for the iphigeniaheads

work on the npc compendium is going into a quick break while i work through my comm queue

[subtle tide]

OK that's mostly 1-1 finished.

Map files and the alignment data for Foundry.

I'm not super happy with how this map came out. I really struggled like, aesthetically, when it came to attempting to differentiate wrecked ships, asteroids, and the background. But I don't have an artistic bone in my body so I can't create new assets, which leaves me working with what I've got.

The other thing I really struggled with here is the background. At this map-scale in Dungeondraft, it's very obvious that the background loops, and it looks really bad, so I scattered a lot of little debris and asteroids around, but I worry that makes the map look too cluttered.

It's my first time making a space map, though, and I did my best with what I've got.

[wheat ferry]

It's a rough go! Hard compared to the recognizable sections of ship hull and interior. Good work.

[subtle tide]

Update: if I drop the opacity on the Foundry grid I think it looks a lot better.

[modern terrace]

its the start of the week wich means ! IAM bashes

[modern terrace]

since the striders are veterans, desides to test the size 1 veteran kit

[late apex]

Got my glow on

[late apex]

What is the consensus on proper wings? I'll be drawing them as an option regardless, but it's the balance of making the silhouette more interesting compared to a spacecrafts need for wings in space

This question is specifically for when I colour the sprites btw

[wheat ferry]

I tend to prefer wingless for purpose-built blacksky strike craft - to an extent, even in the upper levels of the atmosphere, you can in thrust we trust + lifting body your way through

[plucky dune]

I like the wings, but i can see a little bit of the upscale

[late apex]

Diagram is for illustrative purposes only

[plucky dune]

Oh, oka 👍

Like I say, I like the wings, but there Ash and Gold said it, wingless.

[late apex]

The wings will be there with the final thing, I'm drawing all options modular and interchangeable and will make the parts freely available, its just what should be on the final painted sprites

Oh yeah btw @wheat ferry, would you want / be fine with me approaching Retrograde about having this put up on the site as an aircraft in Combined-Arms?

[halcyon eagle]

i guess makin em an option for the folks who want em is the way to go

[wheat ferry]

Sure, I'm down

[modern terrace]

now ! for my part i need to wrap up the morozov 9wich i'm honestly thinking kutuzov or tuka as a base) and making the veterans/elites

[wheat ferry]

hell yeah, been extremely cool to see this project go on

kutuzov, tuka, or napo are all fairly close to my internal vision

[modern terrace]

question, dome shaped head ?

or no dome shaped head ?

whats the desing idea that links it with napoleon ?

[wheat ferry]

Multiple redundant sensors, armored and insulated, fairly small (to fit in tight spaces)

I can see dome or no dome

[modern terrace]

hmmmm

kutuzov might be the option here

[wheat ferry]

right on

[modern terrace]

@wheat ferry BOOM.

[halcyon eagle]

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

[wheat ferry]

oh that's sick as fuck
shaping up to be my favorite of the set

[modern terrace]

should have a full team pic of all the unique bashes, as the rest are just the same with extra fancy stuff trow in

[plucky dune]

Wow, Looks pretty good

[hearty mica]

ewar greebles my beloved

[modern terrace]

here they are

[wheat ferry]

Legendary work

[modern terrace]

there are still some veterans to put in and make themselfs useful

Here is le beta for those that wish to use it, its missing the elites and veterans but it should not be a problem

[hearty mica]

holy shit! it's the most evil people you know

[wheat ferry]

Bad Vibes Convention

for folks who're working on asset packs, let me know when you have a definitive version and I'll get a mod to pin them

when all of them are done I'll do a roundup post on the itch.io

[fluid salmon]

Shoutout to the squad trooper standing real close to the Genghis flamer

[halcyon eagle]

iirc as of currently we’ve got matheus, dan, ripcurl, and toast

[frozen urchin]

Does look pretty glow-y

[frozen urchin]

Mat, dan and ripcurl are your crew, I'm solo and @swift thicket also did bashes of the crowsworn

[swift thicket]

Hey, just finished 1-1, and the players won! I was wondering, ||since they pretty quickly and unilaterally decided to enter at point 7, what the benefit is supposed to be of entering at point 9 and skipping straight to scene 1-3?||

also ||4 size 4 ships at once was rough 😭||

[halcyon eagle]

its a community effort regardless!!

[halcyon eagle]

i dont think there really is one

[swift thicket]

there were points that this was sorta hard to understand what we were looking at (granted the isometric perspective didn't help) but ||the zero G and size of the opfor made for a messy map lolol||

[halcyon eagle]

its really just one less combat to worry about, but they’re gonna get hurt bad

[wheat ferry]

yep

[swift thicket]

||Decksweepers is next! And they've called Abigale in as reinforcements. We're all excited for it||

[wheat ferry]

theoretically, ||if you don't want to do a lot of stuff on the Gallipoli, you can hit the bridge first and if you win there and successfully knock out AJAX you can get over halfway to crippling the ship in a single go. technically Mission 1 is completable in two combats if you really believe in yourself as long as you win doubled 1-3||

[halcyon eagle]

the power in believing…

[wheat ferry]

so it's at once (a) technically a tactical choice you can make if you think you're King Shit of Death Mountain, and (b) a trap for players who think they're King Shit of Death Mountain and can totally just take the bridge

kind of a riff on the jrpg thing where ||you can attack the final boss early but it's a Pretty Much Unwinnable Fight||

[frozen urchin]

oh wow the ships look fucking incredible in isometric

[halcyon eagle]

did you not intend on it

[frozen urchin]

i cant really comment on my intent with tokens since i dont think about that stuff very much but its my first time actually seeing them at size 4 scale

shadowed tokens look good in both normal maps and isometric so its not a choice i made specifically for iso

[halcyon eagle]

well, ball is ball!!!

[frozen urchin]

oorah

[swift thicket]

||here's what it'll look like in 2-1!! much better here if you ask me||

[wheat ferry]

||2-1 makes it easier because there's less ships total, that's a guy who's heavily crippled and kind of just chilling among the mechs||

||1-1 there's a brick wall of Artwork||

[frozen urchin]

1-1 is just the magic card of Eight Fucking Bears

[modern terrace]

XD

your not wrong !

[late apex]

Okay, here's the idea for the Hive

[modern terrace]

working on the veterans

[late apex]

All da options (And razor swarm)

I believe that's everything drawn for the three strike craft variants, onto colouring

[modern terrace]

you doing colouring in gimp or asersprite ?

[late apex]

Ase

[modern terrace]

Me: "Oh i should have the veterans done in a bit they are just a reskin, i dont need to rush this

Me looking at the tokens mostly done

WELP

flops down tired that should be all from me for now folks, enjoy it ! send screenshots !

[wheat ferry]

Fantastic work! It's been a pleasure to see it come to fruition

[granite crane]

These are brilliant honestly, great work!

[clever yoke]

Those are amazing! Very nice work!

[late apex]

Updated the bodyplan slightly, and colouring has begun

[dapper crypt]

This is something that's bothered me for a while, the nose ventral fin, due to shading or perspective, to me still looks like it's jutting out sideways, not down.

[late apex]

It is sideways! The fins are on both sides, angled slightly down like wings

[dapper crypt]

Oh that's what that nub is

I thought it was some sort of sensor cone

[late apex]

It's meant to be as close to these as possible, which is clearer on the right hand one

Perspective and such

[dapper crypt]

I didn't notice the right one, so I thought it was going straight down, lol

[late apex]

I've stared too much at those blurry little ships trying to translate them to pixels

Will likely add a stripe of paint to possibly help show the stabilizers are a pair

[wheat ferry]

yep, I imagine the stabilizers both help with turbulence in atmosphere-skimming in extremis and, in space operations, host sensors and rangefinding equipment

[golden forum]

Is there any terrain artwork available anywhere for the maps? I bought the map pack on itch and its awesome but id love to have some visuals to go with the grid. If not, would it be acceptable to make my own and possibly share them?

[halcyon eagle]

there arent any available maps like there are in solstice rain or winter scar, that'd be extremely costly

i think ash would love that you made your own though, but id ask him directly

[wheat ferry]

yeah, you're good to make your own art off of Eld's blocking

(though because the maps are paid content I would strongly prefer that you not share it beyond your playgroup, at least in playable form)

[austere frost]

Finished running the game for the first of two groups of my friends, everyone really enjoyed the campaign, there was 4 death rolls in total, and everytime they made it, the beat ajax with a single mech standing at the end of it, act 1 was the one they struggled with the most by far, but once they found their footing they did great,

[especially when tuecer got exposed from a overheat by a hacker player then was hit for 54 damage by big drill, he got absoloutely bodied]

group 2 will be ran in like a month with the fancy tokens that have been made here instead of my bootleg ones lol

[granite crane]

Teucer has a bad habit of exploding yeah

[wheat ferry]

Glad to hear it! Bless, no dead PCs

[last horizon]

The current party setup for my game (we have yet to start for IRL troubles) features an Oracle LMG spammer, a Calendula, a Saladin, and a Hecaton. I'm not expecting Hardlight to be a big trouble on the Sal in the first mission up until the end of it when the maps contract in size but we'll see

[wheat ferry]

Worst comes to worst, 2-2'll put a stop to that

[hearty mica]

Before I leave for a trip and forget to ask, Ash how would you represent a Spectre as an NPC (third-party NPCs are cool)

I was going through my notes for my home game and remembered that my Spectre player might have a clone of herself on ice being held by her family in case she doesn't do what they ask

[wheat ferry]

Avenger with custom system, Camus's Razor from WW

That should pretty much get it

You can also have the custom system be the actual Spectre trait but you'd need to whack a recharge on it to balance it for NPCs

[hearty mica]

Yeah that makes sense

Thanks

[late apex]

I'm at the point where I'm ready to hop software to do lighting and such, but before that I have a few questions, some for general public and some for @wheat ferry specifically: Where would an insignia be best placed and what insignia, Does the paintjob look good in general, Does an underside missile rack or dropping bombs suit the rainmaker better, Do the loadouts look good in general, and would you want a camo pattern on the ships

[wheat ferry]

Paintjob looks good! "Canonical" NAA colors would just blend into the background of the space maps.

I do prefer bombs for the Rainmaker, but that's me. For insignia, I'd imagine the SecComm phoenix on that circle on the outboard engine and a tiny Tricolor (probably too small to see) next to the fore cockpit

[late apex]

Bombs is an easy switch. I could go fishing, but do you have the insignias to hand?

[wheat ferry]

I do, but I'm not at my PC at the moment! If you wait until later (probably much later) tonight, I could get you them

The Tricolor is pinned in #lore-and-worldbuilding , however, and I imagine the Phoenix is thereabouts too

[late apex]

Found it, thanks!

I have hit the limit of accuracy at this resolution

I love drawing little painted details like this

[plucky dune]

10/10, Cinema and God

[modern terrace]

10/10

[halcyon eagle]

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

[late apex]

How about a warm sunrise lit with the pristine blue of the skies far below?

[wheat ferry]

Damn that looks good

[scarlet flax]

How big is a strike craft actually

Size 4 is size 4 on the battle map, but is it "this is a drop ship" sized or

"This is the length of the entire street and it's coming right at ya"

[wheat ferry]

Each one of those strike craft is about the size of a B-52 plus some

a B-52 flying low over a road was explicitly one of my inspirations for the SecComm aircraft for just raw sense of scale,

something that swallows up the sky in Grey

[dapper crypt]

Kai showed some examples of strike craft scale for Battlegroup

[solid jewel]

My take on the Ship Template is it's representing fighters, bombers, and like personnel shuttles

an actual "can transport mechs" dropship would likely be bigger, given Size 1 mechs are like 20 feet tall

Naval strike craft are big next to mechs but not, like, insanely big. To give an example of what comes next, a corvette is around 100 meters long or so

so when you're fighting a Ship you aren't fighting a cruiser or battleship or something, you're fighting much smaller types of ship, it's just that when it comes to space stuff the floor starts at Size 4

[late apex]

Yo @wheat ferry, I've finalised things with the strike craft colouring so the only thing left is asking where you want them put. It's 9 sprites total, lit and unlit for each of the 4 variants + the hive drone

[wheat ferry]

Toss 'em here, in #1211729728226988042 , wherever! I've got no qualms, so long as I can tag your link when you're done to show people

[late apex]

I shall drop them here then!

Also, what would I refer to these ships as a blanket name, 'Strike Craft' with another adjective or two

[wheat ferry]

SecComm Naval Strike Craft, probably

[late apex]

SecComm Naval Strike Craft

[wheat ferry]

@plush cloak can I snag a pin?

and absolutely fantastic work, rip, you killed it

[plush cloak]

:3

[halcyon eagle]

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

[celest ledge]

These are so good. Gonna be running this soon so I'll probably swipe them

[celest ledge]

The ships are great too. Just scrolling down

[wheat ferry]

Also: when you're formally finished, put all the tokens in one place so I can get 'em pinned up for people as well!

[wheat ferry]

The fanart people have been putting out is unbelievable, my first post-release run of IaM is going to be killer

[celest ledge]

Given the whole fascism/villain deal and their large association with fire and the phoenix symbol, I was amazed to learn that Red/Orange weren't part of SecComm's main colors

[wheat ferry]

Seemed a bit on the nose, plus I'm generally a fan of SecComm being aggressively utilitarian

iirc we have no canon colors for SecComm outside of the Worldkiller art, since all the Wallflower stuff is decayed and the Enkidu is (iirc) depicted with HA insignia?

[celest ledge]

Oh, interesting. I'd thought you were drawing on Canon materials somewhere and not coming up with your own aesthetic.

[golden forum]

I vaguely recall seeing a SecComm flag with an eagle-like icon that was in golds and reds, but that was just the icon. And given that I haven't been able to find what the hell I'm on about I might have just made it up in my mech-addled brain

[tacit cloud]

You might be thinking of the thoreau's paint scheme

[celest ledge]

That's also where we get their Canon emblem from, right?

[dapper crypt]

I believe so, I was surprised to recognize it when I was paging through Battlegroup

[wheat ferry]

Yup, that's it

[golden forum]

Silly question: Is it pronounced "If-i-gen-ai-uh" or "If-i-gen-ee-uh"?

[wheat ferry]

I believe someone mentioned a bit ago that the correct pronunciation was the former!

ah, here's the bit

[golden forum]

cool! Thanks

[golden forum]

I tried to use this map with the provided foundry dimensions and it didn't quite line up correctly

[subtle tide]

Oh odd. I can double check them when I get home.

[golden forum]

these are awesome! I think you forgot the Archer tho?

[abstract egret]

dodging spoilers

Im assuming that Specter is a pun on a certain book's opening lines regarding a haunting in Europe?

[celest ledge]

Which of the internal artists did the ||black and white portrait of Iphigenia before her eidolon fight||?

If you and they don't mind me asking

[halcyon eagle]

that'd be @strange sandal (SORRY FOR THE PING!!!)

[halcyon eagle]

its in the works!!!

this was just the first batch

oh nvm wait

it wasnt sky crime i realized

[celest ledge]

Thanks! And no problem on the ping

[halcyon eagle]

pinged them for nothing wooops

im not sure who it is, i might need to look into it

we'll just wait on ash to get back to you on that, soz

[wheat ferry]

not Sky, yeah (he did the Crowsworn and the hardsuit handler+subaltern squad) - the tarot card was done by @wary scarab !

[wheat ferry]

Ayup, and also a D&D monster to fit the HORUS theming

[celest ledge]

Thanks

[wary scarab]

that was me!

hi, i'm not active here very much (despite pilotnet being where i met my wife)

[celest ledge]

It looks very good. Do you happen to have a pricing sheet or anything? I didn't see any links in your bio to go on.

[modern terrace]

younger cousin brought this to my attention

[wheat ferry]

pfftha

[modern terrace]

laughted so hard, ceruledge seccom sympatizer

[woven wharf]

😭

the art-style really does make it look like a digimon,

[wheat ferry]

new second committee emergency recruitment drive program just dropped

[fluid salmon]

Just hearing this, supported Ceruledge for its dangerous sweeper ability but didn’t know its politics. Will be removing it from the team immediately

[rain plover]

Hey, I might be crazy, but I was going through all the SecComm tokens made by Matheus and Toaster. Firstly, amazing freakin' work!

I did notice there's a few NPC archetypes still missing though after going through the OPFORs for each combat. I couldn't find:

• Clademaster
• Engineer
• MBT
• Operator
• Scout
• Strider

Did I miss a post somewhere?

[halcyon eagle]

you havent!

it seems we mightve missed a few, but the strider is amongst the veterans that matheus posted

we might need to go back and do the engineer, but as for the scout and operator we're going to do those alongside the ranger variants

[rain plover]

The set of vets in this post? I see Witch, Pyro, Spite, Breacher, Archer, Support, Lurker, Hive, and Assassin.

NVM! I am blind, I found the strider 🤣

[modern terrace]

huhb i swear i thought we did scout

[halcyon eagle]

nah we didnt

i imagine everything with the spec ops tag is ranger so i skipped it

the engineer however i totally slipped

[swift thicket]

which one is the morozko??

[halcyon eagle]

however i think it can be interchangeably be used with the support

[halcyon eagle]

i coulda sworn it was here chat...

[halcyon eagle]

here

clademaster is going to be a custom sprite from dan since its based off the haber

the mbt will be done by ripcurl after he does the drop ships

as for the spec ops stuff, dan will do the operator and matheus will sorta mesh a slick doctrine along side it

iirc the spec ops is just the beserker, operator, scout, hornet?

[swift thicket]

im still following along with toaster's tokens since i started the campaign using them lolol

i may use my own crowsworn but the only ones i could get looking sorta how i wanted them to were TEUCER and DIOMEDES lol

[halcyon eagle]

what did you use as subs for your ajax and achilles?

[rain plover]

Oh yeah, Toaster does beautiful work. I'm running SOTW with his tokens every other sunday.

[swift thicket]

Nothin yet. I have Toaster's AJAX loaded into my Foundry rn but i'm just about to start 1-2 on Monday lmao. Nowhere close to ACHILLES showing up

[rain plover]

Yeah, I punked your TEUCER and DIOMEDES for my collection, and also have Toaster's AJAX. I've got AK_Sushi's token for ACHILLES. As for the girlboss herself, I just snipped the art from the book and removed the background.

[modern terrace]

we dint do scout

[modern terrace]

thats marezov ?

morozka

[halcyon eagle]

yeah, they asked for where the morozko was

[modern terrace]

and the scout ?

[halcyon eagle]

we havent done scout since the only one was the ranger var

thats why i said you'll see me again...

https://tenor.com/view/storm-lightning-thunder-and-gif-14505668

i always come back...

[swift thicket]

Ah! I actually made one for her. Let me find it ... I know it's on the chop shop

[halcyon eagle]

oh yeah wait i remember forwarding it here

[swift thicket]

yup

there she is

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/fullmetal-alchemist-roy-mustang-finger-heart-finger-heart-emoji-sparkle-heart-gif-5782981053049242476

i remember seeing it in the pixel smithy and was like "wait a second..."

[swift thicket]

there are parts where it's obvious i was getting lazy/don't do this for a living but hey it's not bad if i do say so myself

[halcyon eagle]

you translated it over pretty darn good

[swift thicket]

Lancer has been an adjustment for me for sure, in every way imaginable. For my entire time playing TTRPGs i've been running fantasy games where I draw the tokens, and now i'm playing a sci fi game where the tokens are pixel art lolol

[rain plover]

She looks great to me! ||I like that you got the smoke/glitch around her knife. I had to clean that up with an eraser because the magic wand select got confused. ||

[halcyon eagle]

its the little details that make it so much cooler

because the ||knife|| is probably one of the most iconic things about her fit

[rain plover]

||Looks like an AUX, fits in a MAIN, hits like a HEAVY||

[swift thicket]

i've always loved characters whose ||signature weapon was a knife. it could be a huge, imposing sword. it could be a massive hammer that casts a shadow on the party. it could be a big, scary gun that nearly deafens everyone every time it's fired. but it's not, it's something that kills with such surgical precision that you may not even know what weapon it is before it's prying open your mech's cockpit||

there's something more intimidating about ||being so subtle rather than being big and imposing||

trying to put that feeling into words: ||"i don't need to convince you i'm capable of killing you, i can just do it"||

[rain plover]

||A knife as a signature weapon just makes me think of the Tonberries from Final Fantasy. Although, considering that Iphigenia also has that [TENDER AS SLEEP] hack as a big finale, that seems very Tonberry coded||

[dapper crypt]

||Every time I see that sprite, my mind wants to see the projection of Iphigenia on the mech’s shoulder||

[swift thicket]

i tried adding it but i was never happy with the way it turned out

i draw, not pixel. when you get into details that are that small it becomes most evident lmao

[halcyon eagle]

unfortunately the only way to go around that is to add even more pixels, but it gets to a point where you might as well just draw

[golden forum]

Are there any reference images somewhere I could use for || The Diana? Is it just the biggest ship on the cover art? Wasn't able to find any info about the Von Humboldt-class battleships anywhere ||

|| The two-hulls description of the Galipoli had me questioning whether the ship on the cover was the Diana or the Galipoli ||

[wheat ferry]

Cover is the Gallipoli. There's no depiction of the Diana yet

[subtle tide]

Working on 1-2

(I'm very slow. And I decided not to follow the existing hex-map exactly)

[subtle tide]

Yeah I took a second look at this map and I'm not sure what to tell you, this is 100% the correct grid information.

[golden forum]

No idea, but I got it to work so it's fine ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[subtle tide]

Odd! Well, I'm glad you got some use out of it!

[subtle tide]

Yeah, I'm fairly happy with this!

[subtle tide]

I wish I had more SecComm-y assets but folks will just have to use their imagination.

[swift thicket]

i'm running 1-2 tomorrow. i wanna make sure i'm understanding the room correctly

it is just open space on the top right, yes? if so, how is the room not zero-g?

also, what does the inside look like? of the main flight deck, and of the flight control room? are the controls and interfaces within it mech-sized?

[wheat ferry]

Open space on the top right, yeah, but you can assume that's behind a set of hangar doors or etc - it's not actually part of the map

[celest ledge]

Not until you explosively depressurize the battlefield that is.

[subtle tide]

It's fun, it's easy, and it's free

No one can stop you

[celest ledge]

Well, the dead fleet is kinda trying to stop you

[subtle tide]

They don't get a say

[celest ledge]

They don't have plot armor though

[swift thicket]

i assume also that the ||massive hole the players have blown in the wall with the breach ram|| is not affecting the gravity and pressure situation?

[celest ledge]

Don't worry about it

[wheat ferry]

Automatically sealed with safety measures (also happens in 1-3!)

The controls and such are not mech-sized!

In general terms, the flight deck and control tower are straight out of a modern aircraft carrier, but fancier - holographic displays, a lot of chunky cassette futurism ALIEN-style keypads with metal keys and wireframes, that sort of thing

[celest ledge]

I was picturing those emergency airlocks in Dead Space 2 when you shoot out a window so neat to hear we had similar solutions

[swift thicket]

the reason i ask is because i'm using Valk's Prototype Pattern Groups modular sitreps and i'm considering turning 1-2 from a straight up gauntlet into a gauntlet+wreck mission where victory is determined by how much damage they can cause to the controls and the craft in the bay

so i'm wondering if the control panels were gonna be big as hell or not lol

[wheat ferry]

ahhh

I mean, yeah, you can stack some stuff up along the walls and in the middle of the ATC tower to represent machinery

If you want to mechanize them smashing it in the sitrep rather than doing it narratively after they win the combat

[swift thicket]

gotcha! and another question while i'm thinking about it. ||after Decksweepers, they enter the point crawl, correct? I went from 1-1 directly into 1-2, but 1-3 and 1-4 are based on which locations in the ship they head to?||

[wheat ferry]

Correct

You can take either of those or the hardsuit combat in any order

(but going out of order will result in more attrition! well, maybe.)

[subtle tide]

Do we think this is enough cover for 1 - 2

[wheat ferry]

Prrrrrrobably.

[subtle tide]

🙂‍↕️

[swift thicket]

I think I may be stupid and/or reading the book incorrectly. What is the intended combat flow of 1-3? The PCs start close enough to the ||objective zone that I don't see why they'd even engage with the entire left half of the map with the hallways and doors. What is preventing them from just running to the CZ and brute forcing it, waiting for the enemies in the ingress zones to walk through the hallways towards them?||

[wheat ferry]

Melee players, mostly.

The other thing is ||that if they try camping the objective, the Clademaster solves that problem very quickly||

[subtle tide]

Starting on 1-3

[halcyon eagle]

i cant use all my speed! 34 hexagon tiles

[subtle tide]

the last map was mega gigormbus we can't punish the slower mechs in every sitrep!!!

[halcyon eagle]

tell them to pick up the PACE

https://tenor.com/view/gauss-warframe-prime-speed-run-gif-5262691005362441267

[subtle tide]

if they really wanted to be involved in the sitrep they'd have a blackbeard in the party to carry them 😤

[halcyon eagle]

waste ALL your action economy on PURELY BOOSTING

OVERCHARGE AND BOOST AGAIN

[subtle tide]

I did decide to make it a little wider though

it didn't look right after I started blocking things out so I made it a bit looonger

[subtle tide]

Slowly working on blocking things out

I might move the pillars nearer the command console around.

I also decided to add some chassis-sized chairs for || AJAX || and friends.

[halcyon eagle]

@rustic abyss

[halcyon eagle]

anthrochauvinist tea party

[rustic abyss]

gulp

[subtle tide]

I doubt their legs get tired but it's about the sentiment

[rustic abyss]

Finished the Achilles token commissioned by XII!!

[subtle tide]

YOOOOO

[rustic abyss]

That makes two...

[halcyon eagle]

i think now we should probably do either the haber/clademaster or the operator

get the other two bosses done afterwards

[dapper crypt]

"Skip the monologue. I've heard too many today."

[wheat ferry]

goddamn

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/feels-the-aura-aura-meme-aura-farming-feels-the-aura-meme-gif-8288143849566529885

[rustic abyss]

I hope these are living up to the vision, it's been a real blast working on them alongside my client

two more to go to complete the quartet!

[wheat ferry]

It absolutely does! You've done a fantastic job

[strange sandal]

The cloak goes hard

[celest ledge]

Hornet-running-animation-looking-ass (affectionate)

[halcyon eagle]

sha...

[rustic abyss]

GUARANÁ!! 🗣️

[late apex]

Yo Ash, for the dropship is there any specific image or point of reference you were thinking of? I'm envisioning something similar to the strike craft but more brick shaped, with some form of high rate-of-fire guns attached

[wheat ferry]

Absolutely - one of the major touchstones I had for it was Destiny's Cabal Dropship

Somewhere between the Cabal Dropship, the strike craft, and the Mitscher is a good shout

[late apex]

Cool cool 👍

[halcyon eagle]

destiny reference

https://tenor.com/view/destiny2-fortnite-griddy-zavala-destiny-gif-26547077

[modern terrace]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eid8O9jATeA

another music to add to the bad guys~~

[halcyon eagle]

totally forgot that destiny is literally a treasure grove of music

[modern terrace]

Bungie stuff is legit really good

the villan music legit made my skin crawl that the book recomends so yhea

[bleak seal]

(Ignore the green blob)
Been awhile since I did this so I just felt like sharing. Currently going through all the maps and slowly Iso'ing them, I've gotten both 1 and 2, and am currently working on redoing 3 and 4 though the hex grids sometimes give me a headache I wont lie I think once I'm done I might make it all a map pack and share it? not really sure

[halcyon eagle]

ever since seeing kierens maps i was wondering howd it look in iso

[bleak seal]

I personally like it alot, its just a lot of finicky work with small items and making it all match up for the effect I want

[golden forum]

I noticed that the initial briefing happens || after the prologue in the city, so I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on how much information the party should have prior to this briefing? Should they be at least partially in the dark to make the burning of one Choral world more impactful? ||

[celest ledge]

I think people would be well aware of the stakes at least, if not the specifics of the plan

[modern terrace]

huh i see zakus

[wheat ferry]

The Burning of Patrae happens before the module, that's the inciting incident, so everybody knows about it.

[modern terrace]

hmm any chance we get a free lil adventure set on it

[wheat ferry]

Haha, not one the average PC would survive. Even among Lancers it was a "roll 3d6 after winning, if all of them come up 6s you manage to survive the first evacuation"

It's deliberately left unplayable to sell the extent of the tragedy - it's unwinnable, unaffectable.

[modern terrace]

ash, lancer has halo as a inspiration

https://tenor.com/view/noble-6-death-gif-11058367706712076567

[wheat ferry]

True!

[modern terrace]

maybe the mission is helping that first evacatuation, a last stand and well, death

[hearty mica]

I've convinced my group to do a playthrough of IaM following our SotW game and after a break from Lancer doing small run through of other things, so I've been planning a small mission that goes through the Burning

And all it really will be is "how many TBK chassis can you stop on this one hab-station to save some people"

All the while they see other stations getting blown up in the distance

[wheat ferry]

real

I think people can absolutely do that and have it come out fantastically, to be clear - I believe Juno did as well - but I doubt I'll be providing official support for it

[hearty mica]

Yeah that makes sense

[rustic abyss]

https://tenor.com/view/armor-lock-russianbadger-gif-24125161

Nelson

[dapper crypt]

It's a compelling idea for a standalone prequel

[subtle tide]

Oh man that looks sick 🙏

[swift thicket]

Hey Ash, I'm gonna be running 1-3 a little differently than written because A. I'm using Rebake NPCs and 2. I am a PPG modular sitrep enjoyer. Do I have the author's approval for my redesigned 1-3 map and objective?

[wheat ferry]

Sure, looks good!

[swift thicket]

after running 1-2 last night, and maybe it's just because my party isn't the fastest mechs, but the map is huge and the bottom ingress zone is quite far away from the objective

when the ||elite spite|| showed up it was more or less ignored because of how far away it is from the objective. the genghis ||flew over to it to get rid of imprison,|| and then after it was out of LOS it just didn't exist anymore

[wheat ferry]

Fair enough.
While I do appreciate the feedback, I will say that IaM is in its full release state and I'm unlikely to make any changes going forwards.

[quartz cipher]

Diomedes thoroughly annoyed everybody with Umbral Shift last night. However, that kept him from butchering the party while Teucer's machine gun was practically spamming crits and their usual cover tactics were useless. Luckily, they'd taken Ajax down before, so only the two of them - which went poorly enough, courtesy of those spammed crits. +3d6 on practically every hit hurts.

Thanks to an ill-timed session skip, next week they'll be going in after Iphi with several of thw team running at about halvsies, and the Toku will be at full power... but is a Toku up against Iphi, which we've already seen is an unfortunate build.

I do think I'm going to count 3-3/3-4 as a single scene. It makes no sense that they'd get a repair between them, and that's a smidge more forgiving in terms of scene abilities.

[wheat ferry]

Yep, that's the way I've run it multiple times as well. It's not listed by default as no-repair because I felt that'd be a bit harsh.

[dapper crypt]

Generally when two combat scenes happen one right after the other I let players take a Stabilize action or two

[dapper crypt]

Though when Kai had a patreon, I did commission him for an NPC template that provided a way for ||an NPC to transform into an Eidolon||

[golden forum]

very excited to share with the group that I'll be having session zero for this campaign next week! The party comp looks pretty gnarly too which should be awesome. Any tips, tricks, or advice for running the campaign before we get started?

[halcyon eagle]

something one of my players mentioned to me is that as a gm, we need a facilitate a compelling story for the players, and as a gm you should generally be rooting for them

we dont HAVE to play it like chess, if anything id like to play hostile characters like each one has personality

maybe one likes targetting one more than the other (until lets say their boss says to focus fire on a bigger threat)

i know in SoTW when i was using ||argo laurent, i made them target the weakest of the group (goblin) and spinning kicked her like 20 times while everyone else was held down by praya||

its fitting for his character

idk if that makes sense

[golden forum]

It totally does! This is actually my usual approach to GMing in any game and it's pretty good general advice. In a game as mechanics-heavy as lancer it can be easy to let that slip during combat but the story is always the most interesting part for me

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/buddha-gif-23893013

[quartz cipher]

It's one of the reasons my enemies rarely do the logical thing of "focus fire and take that jagoff out!"

It's much more commonly "what is the biggest, scariest MFer on the board, or who's the twit that just spanked me with a charged blade?" Scariest, or most irritating, then tactics.

Because if they do focus fire... that gets ugly real fast.

[fluid salmon]

Yeah PCs deserve to eat shit and lancer’s design ethos softly encourages a fail-forward approach, but ya still gotta gauge just how much you should actually be Targeting The Wizard so to speak before the Wizard’s player wants to cry and/or kill you

This is true with all things, though I suppose you can argue running the higher-difficulty versions of Ash’s narrative demand having this in mind more than, say, Wallflower might

[wheat ferry]

everyone thinks they're hot shit until they [kill a guy near Ajax and get triple focused | kidnapped into the Lurker's shroud | get force moved by the Hive into the Berserker moshpit | get grappled and set on fire by Iphi]

[quartz cipher]

Make sure they get what they're fighting against, and for. I think the biggest part of making IaM have impact is making it clear that even established elite pilots like the PCs going into this do not expect to come home afterwards. The fact they were sent out in disposable frames meant to let them fly planetary distances in a timely manner says everything. They're being sent out on a holding maneuver, not a counterstrike - they aren't expected to do anything except distract the ships, maybe slow them down a little. A best-case scenario is managing to destroy a ship and probably blowing up along with it.

But at the same time, the stakes are high enough that the flipside of the conversation is that for each of the hundreds of pilots being thrown at the Dead Fleet like bees swarming a bear, there are a thousand or more innocent people fleeing everything they know and hoping they'll eventually figure out where they're fleeing to.

A planet has already died by the time the PCs are there, and all anybody thinks they can do is make sure the next two that are going to die don't have as many people on them. Those are the stakes. Going into each stage, the players know their characters are probably just racking up a higher price tag for their own lives.

But they're going to keep going to the next one, and the next one, and the one after that. Because damned if they're going down cheap.

That's the impact you want to get on them, but also that such a grim fate is worth it.

[quartz cipher]

Really, the first time Iphi gives the Drake a funny look and makes them open fire on a glass cannon teammate with the Leviathan, it should convince them that Shit Be Real, Yo.

[scarlet flax]

wait, doesnt that violate the "superheavies can only be fired with a barrage" rule, in the same way minotaur can't predator/prey a superheavy or a witch can't predlogic a superheavy?

[fluid salmon]

depends on if there’s an explicit rule allowing it in Iphi’s mechanics, though I wouldn’t know for sure myself because I try to engage in this channel yet keep some scrap of this module blind to me :)

[wheat ferry]

there is one very specific funny out-clause for that in my intent with the writing

||if Iphi consumes a Sacrificial Mark on her target, she can pick any size of mount. this includes Superheavy Mounting. kill||

[scarlet flax]

Wait, that's odd

i can't seem to download the optional difficulty notation txt file even though it's been paid for already

nvm, i'm illiterate, it's already on page 6

[wheat ferry]

yep, the text file was just there for a couple days as errata before the book could be fixed

[dapper crypt]

Huh, I checked and I thought there was an explicit thing about Superheavies not being able to be fired as a reaction; I think I was crossing wires with Ordnance

[wheat ferry]

there is, iirc, but my intent was specifically to have a Funny Thing that can be done with the added consumable resource and players greeding for Superheavy Mounting

[scarlet flax]

cyclone pulse rifle enjoyers stay winning

[swift thicket]

I'm gearing up for next week's combat, the second half of 1-2. The party has called Abigale in to help them on this combat, and i want to have a little scene after combat while they catch their breath and she talks to them about this exact thing. i'm not sure exactly how she'd go about it and what she'd say, but being like "you guys can die for this planet, but i'm gonna keep it real, i don't want to. the 383rd has more to live for and i can't promise the next time you call me in that we won't have already left" feels mostly in character and also shows how dismal of a situation they're all in

she'e developed a sort of friendship with one of the pilots and i even think being like "hey. i found another sponsor. this blockade's going to be closed soon. you're cool, and a good pilot, and i like you. fuck this suicide mission, join the 383rd. don't waste yourself here" to her might be a good moment to have during a downtime

[wheat ferry]

excellent

I'm really pleased to see your group's taken to her and you've given her a lot of great development, in playtesting she fell a bit by the wayside for many groups

One of the biggest benefits as a writer for a full-scale release is that you can see everyone using all your characters

[swift thicket]

her, cecily, and delgado are the ones everyone has engaged with most. delgado because the union captain was like "damn he doesn't trust me! we're supposed to be equals" and sort of talked back to him when he asked him to retrieve the diana's black box and patch him the information, saying "ehh, how about i just send it directly to union command?" to which delgado replied "that is what you'll be doing."

it wasn't intentional, but there's a bit of tension between them as a young and recently promoted captain trying to prove himself being told to get in a mech by an older, more experienced captain who already feels like he's losing control of the situation he's supposed to be in charge of

cecily is very much a "she's cool but she's definitely not letting something on. she's got some terrible secret or something" situation lol. the caliban pilot is convinced she secretly pilots a lycan

[swift thicket]

wf act 2 light spoiler: ||the callsign "redeye" has made my wf GM think there is definitely something dark in her past|| 😭

[wheat ferry]

lmfao

Homeboy That's War Trauma. It's Not Really That Cool

[wheat ferry]

this is also excellent

we're supposed to be equals
the my service history is longer than your lifespan stare:

[golden forum]

Ttrpg characters/players when they find out trauma doesn't make someone cool

[celest ledge]

When interpreting rules, specific trumps general

[dapper crypt]

... I am aware.

Anyway

[dapper crypt]

Reminds me of an NPC from my UIB campaign, she was a marine on Hercynia that made it off and ended up testifying against SecComm

[celest ledge]

Sorry, didn't meant to come off as condescending with that. Tone over text and all

Veterans of the rebellion that have been in nearlight since are very interesting in general

[dapper crypt]

She ended up taking long haul assignments and between the time dilation Cosmopolitans face, stasis, and cybernetics, she's still fighting in narrative present

She was recruited by UIB and was one of the assets deployed along with the PCs in the campaign to different worlds

[celest ledge]

I haven't done anything with it yet but I've got a plot cooking where the 5V are under threat. One of the people helping the attackers is a prominent resistance figure who found out about the UIB and is very paranoid about any government having the massive prediction engine that probably set the effort back by quite a bit and led to lots of his friends dying.

Not doing anythign with that campaign for quite a while though

[swift thicket]

oh no they think she's cool because she's cool. they like her mech and how she's actually genuinely nice to people and want surya to open up, but they think she's keeping secrets from them is all 😭

i played her when they met as someone who was like, taking a real interest in their mechs and asking about their histories and all that. much more care than they received from literally anyone else in the repair bay, especially the HA mechanics who were looking down their noses at them the entire time

[wheat ferry]

oh lord you gave them the Superior By Design treatment

[swift thicket]

My Praetorian's Rest was a city that obviously had its own culture and history, one that was being shouted over by people talking about the purview and how great HA is and how good HA mechs are and how JCH himself might as well be going up to fight the fleet

[celest ledge]

Who's Cecily again? I just did a brief once-over of the notable NPCs again and didn't see the name

[swift thicket]

i want the players to already think they're dicks so that when ||its revealed that it's sorta their fault this whole thing is happening the way it is, that hits a little more effectively||

[swift thicket]

She's mentioned in the prologue encounter in the repair bay

I simply gave her a more center-stage role in my game because i like her lmao

[wheat ferry]

subjecting everyone here to the mental image of iphigenia amv set to Look What You've Done by The Megas

(The future needs us!)
Your answer’s death?
(You end us, bleed us!)

(I’ve made a promise to them
I will not let victory fall through my hands…)

And how quick you had him dispatch his brothers!
You called this murderer a savior?

Can you not feel
(That we could have a life forged in steel)
I only ask that you see what I see
This is the answer -
Why won’t you believe me?```

[idle copper]

misread first time and thought it was "What have they done to us" from arcane

i have kept my knowledge on iphigenia low so idk if it applies

[wheat ferry]

I don't think there's any point she emphasizes quite that much with the PCs, but I can see a read where it can be used somewhere in the module

[celest ledge]

Has anyone had problems managing complexity as a GM and if so, have any tips for dealing with that? Seems like there are a lot of fights that have 7+ different NPC types which seems like it could potentially be overwhelming.

Not sure if that ends up being the case in practice though.

[swift thicket]

I have found that if you do your research beforehand and sort of "dissect" the combat, you'll know what to do with each NPC when the time comes to do it. As an example, say, when you know that the Berserkers are there to apply Shredded and the Operator is there to shoot them afterwards, it just becomes a matter of getting them in the position to do that

[granite crane]

^ that kind of pre-planning is the most effective way to reduce your overhead.

[swift thicket]

Maybe this is just me but running Lancer is much more straightforward than other ttrpgs from the GM side. The NPCs don't have a ton of tools that are supposed to react to the PCs, the NPCs are the Problem and the PCs are the ones with the tools to react

Lancer NPCs typically just do one thing really well

[granite crane]

Consult the tactics section of each sitrep to get a head start on what the mission designer intended for the NPC's roles to be

[swift thicket]

You drop a Demo in a hallway, the problem for the players is now "how are we going to push through that thing? I don't want to approach it!" then you put a Hive in there behind them to keep them close to it. the players are the ones who have to do all the thinking, you already know what situation you're gonna put em in. Lancer combat is about putting the characters in situations

[granite crane]

It might also help to keep in mind that NPCs, in-character, wouldn't have perfect information.

I made this mistake early on, spending a lot of brainpower trying to take into account every reaction and system my players had access to in order to find actions my NPCs could take without being disrupted

But a) in most cases, your NPCs wouldn't actually know what your PCs are capable of

And b) its more fun for your players to have the opportunity to do that disruption

Tortuga players have fun overwatching silly NPCs that try to run, Goblins have fun ejecting power cores on NPCs huddling together for cover

Pick a line of action it would make sense for an NPC to choose to do in that moment, and let it ride, if your players have a Gotcha, that's successful enabling of their fun

[swift thicket]

-# I actually just finished entirely changing combat 2-1 (sorry ash) to include some new NPCs from Valk's PPG book, namely the Knight and the Capacitor. I don't know if it's helpful, but I think it's a good opportunity to highlight how I've personally been managing the more complex combats in this module so far. Here's the new map I made/tweaked the og one into: it's now a Control sitrep, meaning I was going to need to change the NPCs to better suit the goal of holding objectives from the players. See that big bastard with the shield? He's really good at standing in one spot, and since he has the Marine template and Deck Anchors, he's even better at it now. Therefore, I don't even need to think about what the players are going to do, or how I should react, or what might be the best course of action: it's get him onto that objective as fast as possible and make sure he doesn't leave! That's why I picked him! The players are the ones who are now going to have to figure out a way to handle that. Is the Caliban going to brute force it and try to push him anyways? Will they realize his tiny heat cap is his weakness and send the Dusk Wing to heatgun it? Maybe the Spectre will engage it in a 1-on-1 kaiju battle in the central obj zone. Good thing I don't have to figure that out beforehand, because I know that I'm going to stand in one spot because that's what a Knight does. In summary, once you know why an NPC is even being fielded in the first place (how it supports the sitrep, how it supports other NPCs, the situation it's there to cause), their course of action becomes immediately evident.

[late apex]

I have begun plotting on the dropship. This is the rough body plan, definitely going to stretch it a bit, but the main question is what form should the gun take? Could be double on the front, the sides, underneath, or whatever, but it'll be good to know so I can draw the ship around them

[wheat ferry]

The traditional helicopter-style chaingun turret is something I'm fond of

[solid jewel]

There are some Halo pelican designs that have a chin gun and it's very funny because the pelican is massive but the gun itself is sized normally so it looks super tiny by comparison

[wheat ferry]

Yup, I had an ancient Halo gunship lego kit and it was kind of funny to compare the nose gun to the gigantic side gun pods

[solid jewel]

Something that I had thoughts about but never really went into a TON of detail on when I was discussing stuff with EM Fields for Solstice Rain's art is what dropships meant for deploying mechs would actually look like and the logistics thereof

You have something that, from a human scale, has to be massive enough to transport multiple 20-foot 30-something-ton mechs through the air

[wheat ferry]

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I liked the Cabal Dropship so much

Those huge slab sides and the "comparatively small," high-up cockpit lend itself really well to a mech dropship imo

(the small cockpit means it's more in scale with how big the rest of it has to be to hold 2-4 chassis you shove out the back when it's time for them to come in, and gives enough room for maintenance, pilots, etc to move around beneath there in the mech bay)

[solid jewel]

Yeah, I think it's likely that mech-scale dropships aren't like a "pilot and co-pilot only" deal but have an actual (small) crew

A couple of pilots, additional WSOs, maybe an engineer, etc

[wheat ferry]

The other option is Thunderhawk Transporter-style "just sling the mech under the more normally sized vehicle," but imo you can't really do that in contested airspace

[solid jewel]

The Armored Core style "just hook it to a couple of helicopters" approach

[late apex]

Or the Pacific Rim style "A lot of helicopters" approach, which is my mental image of moving something like a Barbarossa around

But yeah, nose turret is very cool

[modern terrace]

hang in there : D

that or something like this to carry up to 3 mechs, but these are just overall ideas

[hearty mica]

Feels like a good opportunity to post one of my favorite Lancer artworks which is an unused one for Wallflower (by Ross Taylor)

The Toku hanging out is such a vibe

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/pelican-angry-bite-gif-25461149

[halcyon eagle]

this is just so tough

[hearty mica]

Tip of the Spear from Halo Reach starts playing

[dapper crypt]

I was thinking about this one when people were talking about drop ships, love that you can see the scale well

[swift thicket]

hey .. just curious for writing purposes, what were the ||crowsworn doing for the last 500 years? were they conscious, or did they just wake up now and decide "yea lets just go with this?" i guess, i want to expand their interactions with the party, and I'm wondering how I should approach that best. wondering what they know, what they've been experiencing lately, etc.||

[wheat ferry]

||They've been around! pg. 30, about halfway down
Each of them has their own reasons for playing along, for continuing despite the absurdity of it all - they weren't awake the whole time like any other crew member might've been, but they've been assisting in various tasks across the Fleet, playing along with (or trying to avoid) Iphigenia's whims, helping in maintenance and repair, so on
It's been... pretty dreary, and also pretty sad interacting with people who don't actually exist||

[swift thicket]

||aha. i was under the impression that until the HA team "woke them up," they were all dormant/powered off. that's not the case?||

||i can't imagine living on a ghost ship for 5 centuries does the mind any good. how are their mental states not ... totally shattered?||

[wheat ferry]

Not everyone, not for the whole time!

She was asleep for the whole time

also: routine, ideology, etc

ship crew are cycled on-up, to elaborate further, even outside of torpor states or just not wanting to be awake anymore

that's Standard Routine

[sleek jungle]

I thought so, too. It's kind of a trip hearing that ||the rest of the gang was up and about.||

[wheat ferry]

||if they weren't the ships would've functionally fell apart in the interrim||

[swift thicket]

||i figured maintenance was handled by the subalterns||

[wheat ferry]

||mix of both - my point is, without getting too into the weeds, not everyone was totally asleep the whole time for a variety of reasons, both practically and because I liked the idea of the Crowsworn and their ilk having to come to terms with there really being nothing left to lead them to where they are today||

[sleek jungle]

It does wind up reinforcing the theme of ||marching on orders that have lost all meaning.||

[swift thicket]

i have decided to expand Achilles' interactions with the party, and I'm not sure how i want to deliver this to them (dialogue, found notes a la Resident Evil, etc). ||"They named me Achilles, and yet denied me my Patroclus! Where were my companions? My equals? The only people I have ever known were called enemies on my sensors. I was birthed from an angry god and put into a body made for killing -- what choice was I ever given as to who I would become?"|| Something to that effect.

[wheat ferry]

I think you could do that a couple ways:
||- as he's dying, Metal Gear Revengeance "the boss talks to you as the last of their cybernetic systems run down" sort of deal; knowing him he's probably still going for a weapon, it's all a little bit pathetic

• finding his quarters (such as they are; realistically, it'd be more of a mech support bay - unlike, say, Ajax, whose subaltern does show up in one of the in-the-past narrative bits, Achilles prefers to remain in that form of monstrous and terrible power) during one of the downtimes while searching for various side mission things or narrative pieces
• finding them skimmed off from his private writing by the Commissariat detachment on the 628th and stored in Iphigenia's file system to be "followed up on later" (which they naturally never got to)||

[swift thicket]

maybe it's the invincible reread/watch in my brain but i feel like ||Achilles could be Conquest's "I am so lonely" or Battle Beast's "I want my life to end! That is the only way I will know peace and not succumb to the fire inside me"||

||and maybe Ajax has a little S1 Omni-Man. "Look what you made me do!"||

[wheat ferry]

||I think I can see S1 nolan for ajax, BB for achilles, and possibly some thragg for iphigenia, definitely||

[swift thicket]

||How I plan to run the party's first "encounter" with Ajax is more or less him coming to them and saying "i do not enjoy hurting people, especially people who haven't done anything wrong. you are simply following orders given to you." offer to escort them back down to Lebaea and protect them from their superiors, who he theorizes might kill the players for desertion, etc. but as soon as they refuse, it's "you don't know what you're saying ... and I can't let you interfere."||

i plan for the Union Captain PC to have a little ||"what a waste. If not for your treachery, you'd have made a great soldier for Union."|| thrown at him by Ajax

[wheat ferry]

||You don't understand the wisdom in our decision - in My Lady's judgement. This is natural. How can you expect to be held accountable for the actions of those generations past from you? But the State always remembers. The State survives because it *does* remember. Because it *does* keep a ledger of all slights, all misdemeanors, all sins against the face of Humanity - and because no one should ever think that, no matter how many years pass, they might escape the fair share of the State's infinite and just wrath accorded them. If they die before the sentence is passed, then it will be passed to their children, and their children's children, and their world. I do not *need* you to understand. I need you to obey. And, in doing, I need you to die.||

[swift thicket]

what about ||teucer and diomedes?|| are there characters you have in mind from fiction that should inform how i run them?

also--wait--||ajax's subaltern shows up?? how'd i miss that :O||

[wheat ferry]

Tough ask - that said, to me they reflect the banal side of the four meditations on complicity the Crowsworm embody, to discuss broader strokes. ||Teucer's withdrawing into "I'm just striking military targets, I'm not going to respond to you, I'm not going to acknowledge you, I am outside of this" can be drawn as a line to both the comfortability of those far from conflict zones and the reflexive whitewashing of people who haven't explicitly committed crimes against the laws of war. Both Teucer and Ajax, being brothers, are in a sense takes on the good soldier - but Ajax is the good officer, Teucer is the good soldier. No ideology, just the trigger finger. Different expectations levied on them by society.
Diomedes, by contrast, is the general writing his memoirs after the war to excuse himself of any wrongdoing, or the one making the last stand in the Fuhrerbunker because he knows prosecution after the war will treat him worse (in his eyes) than a bullet: he pared away his own soul, as it were, bit by bit on the altar of social mobility and power under SecComm, and in a way I think that five centuries of isolation hit him the hardest. No power except over shades, the authority's gone with the revolution, and all the while the acute realization that he's going to be in prison forever or catch a round to the back of the casket sinks deeper and deeper. He gave everything to be "one of the good ones," to be "on the winning side," and that side... lost.||

[wheat ferry]

He's a ||blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference in the Ritornello sidebar!||

||The subaltern in Marines camo mentioned there as Iphigenia's attendant has the same emblem as his mech does||

[swift thicket]

i love that last sentence. man. i might even just spell that out verbatim to the players at some point

i feel like i oughta be paying you for writing these notes lmfao

[wheat ferry]

There's only so much I could put into the book! I'm glad to have this stuff out there

[swift thicket]

||Diomedes really did lose .. pretty much everything, huh||

[wheat ferry]

yep.

||and deep down, realistically, it comes not just from greed or desire, but also from fear. Diomedes is the oldest of all of them. He was there in those first centuries after the first NHPs were born into SecComm by way of RA and whether they'd be a permanent underclass was kind of still an open question, never mind fear of the unknown even as it was made into acceptable tools by the regime||

||the power was to protect himself before he realized he liked having it for its own sake too. and now here he is, and unlike the others - who are here because it was all they knew, or because they believe, or because they had no other choice, or they enjoy it - he was here for material reasons, and the material no longer exists! He's screwed!||

||there were a lot of other guys like Diomedes, lord knows, and very few of them managed to be in the right place to actually get out of there with the bag||

similarly to how the choral worlds as a setting are "a perfectly good slow-burn political thriller campaign the rest of the narrative completely ruins," the crowsworn to me are "people who could've been villains of their own mission series... and aren't because people like that just got chewed up and spit out by the machinery of apocalyptic death like everyone else did"

[celest ledge]

I'm trying to think of how someone would even develop a potential follow-up to this campaign. Hard to raise the stakes from "genocide of an entire star system"

[halcyon eagle]

genocide of many star systems?

[celest ledge]

Yeah, but hard to make an excuse for that happening unles you lost ||and Iphigenia becomes a Monist entity||

[halcyon eagle]

so are you saying follow up as in after the pcs win?

[celest ledge]

In case the GM and players liked their characters and want to continue in tier 3

That kind of thing

[halcyon eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/the-rock-hmm-think-thinks-thinking-gif-12573421

[wheat ferry]

honestly, the hooks I laced in the narrative go down in stakes: ||sticking around in the choral worlds to supervise the referendum and help rebuild, venturing out to the graveyard where Iphigenia was "born," so on||

[halcyon eagle]

ooh

[wheat ferry]

take a breather and start laying plot threads for the buildup to the next climax

[celest ledge]

Oh, I haven't read far enough to get to the hooks. Didn't know those were in there.

[wheat ferry]

more hinted at than explicit, really

[celest ledge]

I'm about to run session zero/prologue/maybe the first combat tomorrow

I really need to do a full, thorough read-through soon since it's just been the prologue and then skimming the rest so far

[swift thicket]

i actually was thinking of a hypothetical follow-up... ||maybe one that sees a bid for Choral independence made against HA forces who are trying to cover up what really happened with the fleet? something with a little Iron Blooded Orphans dna in it. who knows though?||

||once the players return, there are already HA forces trying to strengthen their grip on the system, "this wouldn't have happened had you joined the purview sooner," etc... maybe give Innocence II a central role?||

[quartz cipher]

I did kind of cheat in that my campaign went into this at LL8/9, running everything at T3 instead of T2, so I had a full half campaign before Iphigenia was even online, but mine is going to be hitting LL12 after Iphi, assuming they survive, and then taking whatever artifacts they've collected, along with relics from two other major paracausal incidents, and going off to deal with an entity that's basically trying to quantify the universe as a type of anti-Ra. But that's the advantage of really only having space for one last mission - you get to escalate from "this is what SecComm really did" to "okay guys, time to stop the erasure of the universe as we know it!"

With more space, yeah, I think that the slowdown is best for a job or two.

Then you go ahead and bring in the anti-Observer!

[modern terrace]

"see, your a problem, but the scary death lady with a big ass fleet is a bigger one"

[modern terrace]

Ash everytime you post stuff like this the more i vibe with IAM, reading it while the hot wind blowing is playing on the background

[swift thicket]

totally superfluous: are there canon classes for the crowsworn? from my initial read:
||AJAX: NOAH
TEUCER: ATHENA (?)
ACHILLES: AGNI
DIOMEDES: DIDYMOS||

[wheat ferry]

Nope, nothing canon! A couple of them you can assume are weird ancient classes otherwise defunct by modern standards

[swift thicket]

oo got it

thinking on how AJAX and TEUCER's relationship is outside of what's in the book. do you think it would be out of character for AJAX ||to ask the players to spare TEUCER as his dying words to them? i know the whole "dying for something bigger than yourself" thing runs deep with seccomm, but much like season 1 nolan, i do almost see AJAX as saying the things he does partially to convince the party and partially to convince *himself--*reinforce his indoctrination and reassure himself that what's happening was simply unavoidable.|| but that could be totally wrong and antithetical to the story being told. i just want a way to reinforce the fact that AJAX does genuinely love his sibling and that evil people aren't incapable of love.

||I see AJAX as filling the role he does to protect TEUCER from having to deal with what comes with it. what you said last night about them being the "good officer" and "good soldier" made me think of a protective older sibling who grows up faster than they should have to protect their younger sibling from the circumstances they're in (those circumstances being , well, iphigenia). adjacent to this, do DIOMEDES and TEUCER get along? i feel like TEUCER would likely be a little afraid of him. He certainly feels like the one "in charge" between the two in 3-2.||

[wheat ferry]

||Diomedes is the senior party man between the two, and that's the kind of cachet that carries with it some serious weight. You can't really get too close to the Party Man because he's the Party Man and you're always policing your behavior and words around them - kind of like a more mild version of "nobody's really friends with the Council commissar". That said, I don't think Diomedes is unkind to Teucer or the rest of the Crowsworn, there's just always that kind of separation.

When it comes to Ajax and Teucer - I'm a fan of that interpretation, but I don't think he'd ever ask them to spare his sibling. The line that came to mind if you want to do that relationship + foreshadow the sibling is something along the line of I hope they finish what I couldn't.||

[swift thicket]

||i like it ... going down with a feeling of having failed them/put them in danger by not being able to kill the players, would you say?||

[wheat ferry]

I think "having failed" is the big one, yeah. His Lady, his ideology, so on.

[celest ledge]

Do you think ||Teucer reacts noticaeably at all if Ajax dies first when the two are fighting together? Obviously they're not going to talk, but maybe they have another reaction in combat. Or maybe they do speak for the first time and that's the extent of it.||

As far as the "they", I don't have the book on me this second

[wheat ferry]

||I think the reaction is dropping everything to try to kill specifically the person who dealt the killing blow, yeah - that goes for both brothers. I'm not a huge fan of during-combat big reactions, it doesn't feel natural to me||

[swift thicket]

||^ i agree. unless it's a single action, it feels very clunky in my experience. something like achilles' last ride of the greek wouldn't be out of place, though.||

[celest ledge]

Yeah, I was mainly talking mechanical reactions, not dialogue. I've seen a bit of talk about how you can express NPC personalities through them not being 100% efficient wargamers. ||But all of the crowsworn and Iphigenia seem like they'd be on their a-game. And a break from that to settle a grudge probably does enough.||

[swift thicket]

One of my players is missing next week's session, and I usually run a side story when that happens. Anyone got any ideas for a one-shot that might be happening during the main story? Maybe one revolving around ongoing evacuation efforts on Lebaea?

[wheat ferry]

Do you want a combat or narrative?

[golden forum]

What about a narrative combat? Hardsuit combat for instance?

Related to that: The campaign book specifically recommends against using Bonds for hardsuit combat but doesn't seem to go into any detail about why. Can anyone share some of the reasoning there? My table usually uses Bonds but I'm open to dropping them if it makes the campaign flow better

[wheat ferry]

I didn't want to have to adjudicate what Tear Throat or any other number of bond powers do in a hardsuit combat, honestly

f'ex, the john wick wolf capstone - is that just a "press button win combat" button? should it be? What about the less overtly combat-focused bond powers - how would you adjudicate if they even apply? It's a mess

[golden forum]

That's definitely fair. I could see certain tables managing that fine with their GM adjudicating that, as long as it's discussed properly in a session zero, but I definitely get not wanting to have an "official" ruling in a published work

and a lot of the social bonds like Builder might not even have a valid use case in a module like this

[swift thicket]

narrative, since the players just got out of 1-1 and 1-2 back to back and finally have time to catch their breath lol

maybe involving a hardsuit combat scene, if anything

[wheat ferry]

could be cool to try to capture and hold one of the AA batteries on the Gallipoli's hull and use it to help the evacuation by keeping the SecComm interceptors off their back, then

[swift thicket]

hm, any idea what the structure for that might look like as a one-shot? maybe begin with them dropping out of a coalition dropship, then make a few clocks as they advance along the hull? something like that?

or maybe something down on lebaea itself? i've got a week to figure it out anyhow lolol

[fluid salmon]

I wonder if there could be a way to go with, say, escorts for the evacuees diverted for a Dangerous Mission

[wheat ferry]

they're already inside the ship after 1-2, so I'd probably do them locating a less-defended part of the warship and then trying to seize and hold it

[fluid salmon]

because then you'd get a sense of the plight of the attacks on the evacuation

[wheat ferry]

leaving the ship is something I'm leery about, though if you're doing a one-shot side-story you might be able to just... switch PoVs

[swift thicket]

oh they'd be playing as temp characters

[wheat ferry]

oh there you go then lol

[swift thicket]

i was thinking the pov would shift from the PCs and take place during them catching their breath and making quick repairs on their mechs in the flight deck

[wheat ferry]

yeah, in that case things open up a lot! helping directly with the evacuation on the ground sounds good

since this is a narrative

collect people, hear their woes and the like through the narrative, take them to their evacuation point, big climactic moment where you get jumped by a handful of chassis or infantry on the planet and have to protect the civilians

that sort of thing

[swift thicket]

i like the idea of the hardsuit combat segment being a desperate last stand against a worldkiller that survives having its dropshop be shot out of the air

[fluid salmon]

Ooh yeah, that's spicy

You could even do, like

Give them a bit of light combat meat beforehand by giving them some portable anti-air weaponry they use to try and stop strafing aircraft or something while running from location to location or something

[swift thicket]

also the imagery of a big scary mech like that climbing out of a flaming wreck to challenge them on foot is pretty sick

[fluid salmon]

Not a true combat situation beyond a skill check because it's a strafing plane not an intense knifefight or room clear, but it gets a small exchange of fire in that could build up to The Real Shit

or even a squad of subalterns that got dropped, honestly

Give them what feels like a somewhat climactic lil push through, then hit them with the real finale just when they think they are out

[wheat ferry]

yeah, all of this is Fake Narrative Combat (if you will), but fortunately HC provides a framework for that

[swift thicket]

i think this is also nice to reinforce the idea of how desperate the situation is. the players feel pretty good about their performance in the first two combats (even though they took 5 structures and 2 stress total, and popped two of their core powers), so it'll be good to remind them what they're fighting against

[wheat ferry]

If they saw stuff like the convoys of infantry going to support the evacuation efforts in the prologue, too, this'd be a direct callback to that

Mechs can into space, tanks and conscript/non-professional infantry (who aren't trained to operate in space or be useful, really, in a contested boarding scenario) are by and large on the ground

which also means that they have possibly the most unenviable job, since it's a spectrum from "do nothing while everybody else fights" to "prepare to be orbitally bombarded and fight tooth and nail for what's left of your planet against the mechs finishing the job"

something like this is the midpoint where it's moments of terror interspersing the boredom where you're being randomly strafed and bombed by strike craft or having to deal with enemy mechs surviving crash-landing from the orbital fight

[fluid salmon]

You could probably do a lot with, say, City Navigation™ as a thing here as well, depending on how bad the damage to the area is

Even if it's a situation where there are established and protected evac routes, the group might still have to reach them first, or they might need to take detours and such because these routes have been targeted, creating obstructions or dangers that make certain points in the route no longer safe

[wheat ferry]

Surprising Nobody, The Second Committee Is Largely Uninterested In Military Targets When They Just Assume They'll Win Anyway, Incentivizing Them To Attack Civilian Targets To Maximize Casualties

good insight into the thought process to have people on the ground going they aren't even targeting military assets, just roads and bridges and railways

[quartz cipher]

"Why are they hammering the civilian airbase while military ships are taking off right down the block?"

"Because the military ships won't run away if they don't hit them fast enough. Civvies will."

[subtle tide]

Is there anywhere I can a full version of the image used in the "Prologue" section of the book without the text on it? Looking to use it as a splash screen for that section.

[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

139

Bluesky · Mar 28, 2026, 9:55 PM

[subtle tide]

Bless! Thank you!

[plucky dune]

That drawing is tremendous,

[wheat ferry]

Jake did a superb job with it, I was really thrilled with some of his previous architectural/building work for other supplements like IGF and he knocked it out of the park for IaM as well

[subtle tide]

Yeah, it's stellar.

The artists who worked on IaM really delivered insane work across the board.

[plucky dune]

IGF?

[wheat ferry]

In Golden Flame

[subtle tide]

In Golden Flame, presumably.

[plucky dune]

Oh, sorry, I'm still a little new with these Campaign's, I don't even have the official ones, I usually DM'ing campaigns of my own.

[subtle tide]

Of course! I didn't mean to come across as rude, apologies if that was the case.

IGF is another unofficial campaign that's fairly popular.

[plucky dune]

It wasn't rude, just a I don't know the acronyms of many things.

[hearty mica]

Is the Sal using the tower it's standing on to amplify the hardlight shield?

[wheat ferry]

Ayup (and generally you can see a lot of HA equipment scattered around - the AA guns, the Sherman on the left, the Agrippa doing construction work on the right...)

that said Everyone's Here mech faction-wise

in terms of what it depicts, this is the Government District plus part of the historic downtown across the river

(so you have the monumentalist architecture of SecComm, all hard lines and soaring skyscrapers and the like, and then it starts to transition into the more neoclassical style of the post-secession royalist aesthetic)

[solid jewel]

oh my god, there IS an agrippa there

[golden forum]

Is there any iconography for the CDF? Like a flag or a symbol? one of my players wanted to put it on their mech's shield

[halcyon eagle]

should be a shield or something with a white border and green and blue

iirc someone made a bash with it

let me find it

yeah, lovesick made a bash here

[swift thicket]

i also made an emblem for them .. one sec

right here :)

[quartz cipher]

So... the players actually did shockingly well against Iphi, due largely to one big mistake - I really should have had her run over for the Pyro/Aegis escort before taking on the party.

And the Toku pilot, knowing she's immune to Burn, mapped out his order of operations exquisitely to avoid having all his bonus damage go to Burn, so he runs in and unloads everything into her right after the LINAC hits her - and then, after she stuns herself with a tech attack, he does it again by Stressing and knocking himself out of the Danger Zone.

Basically, the goldilocks of crits to go through her mech in a flash.

However, they loved the scene before that where she rants at them about not having the right to be so dangerous successful.

[wheat ferry]

Excellent, glad to hear it went well!

[quartz cipher]

And next week, I have Dancing Mad queued up for 3-4. 😈

[swift thicket]

as i'm putting narration together for next week, i had a question. what do you imagine TBK processes to look like from the planet's perspective? are they broadcasting instructions down to the planet, announcements, etc.? i loved the flyers from the prologue and i was wondering what Lebaea would look and feel like as of this point in the story

[wheat ferry]

"Frantic" is the single word that comes to mind - if you look up you can see parts of the orbital battle going on, if you use a telescope you can probably pick out individual capital ships. Right now (early Mission 1) they're still mostly driving towards the planet and setting up, but you've got long-range strike craft doing opportunistic strafing and bombing runs on the planet to disrupt the evacuation, the Gallipoli is sending out combat interceptor patrols and early warning craft to find and eliminate civilian evacuation ships (which means short, sharp battles in space as the few remaining Choral subline ships and fightercraft - which aren't trying to buy the orbital defenses more time - keep the SecComm forces off the evacuation's back), and the first ranging shots are hitting the defenses in orbit around Lebaea.

Into the next day of the fighting, so Mission 2, and that's going to transition into the evacuation's fate being mostly decided one way or the other, because at that point the 628th is going to be posted up in planetary orbit shooting the last of the defenses apart so they can move to their staging points to be able to put the TBK into action properly (which is also part of where you'd see the effects of things like forcing the Sakharov out of formation or crippling/destroying it - two ships instead of three, especially after damage to the Gallipoli etc, is going to mean Iphigenia is going to be making compromises on munition distribution and bombardment time)

The general idea is that everyone's very aware they have less than twenty-four hours before any chance to get offworld is over and done with, because anyone else trying to get out of orbit in a non-military craft isn't going to survive long enough inside the 628th's tertiary weapons range to make it past the low-orbit regime

meanwhile the 628th itself is largely busy outside of a few casual (to them) gestures to sow terror in the planet's population and slow evacuation efforts: the announcements were made well ahead of time

part of why Mission 3's failure conditions are like yeah, someone could probably get here after you, but that's not going to mean anything is because at that stage there's really a question of a handful of hours at best before Iphigenia's finally wrapped matters up in orbit and can start bombardment procedures

she's not really aiming at the planet until then, though it doesn't really matter because there's sections of the orbital defense platforms, debris from warships and strike craft, overpenetrating or missed shots, etc hitting the planet anyway as a consequence of the battle

(the general assumption by all reasonable standards on the Coalition's part is that when she actually does start hitting the planet in earnest, most of it's going to be lifeless in less than a day - which the SecComm-era "highlight reel" players can find in downtime 1 also shows)

[scarlet flax]

Question regarding Iphigenia.

Let's say, there's a pc who has been able to mostly piece together Iphigenia's story, and in the talking before the confrontation of 3-3 speaks out (blood of aulis under 4).

Of the way she was abused/conditioned into being what can only be described as an exemplar of the State; of the way that she is so endlessly fragmented in her mind and actively deluding herself on the nature of her mission and purpose, and other such observations into the nature of iphigenia as a character, spells it out verbatim.

Then finishes it with: And it is because I understand you to this degree, that I sincerely believe you have to die and there is no room for compromise.

How would she react? Contempt? Disdain?

Basically trying to map out Iphigenia and how she reacts, to better characterise her and her more subtle quirks (how someone reacts to an accusation can spell a lot about who they are/what they are like).

There's a Gundam fan i talk to quite a bit who loves to quote Zeta gundam to me and this phrase came to mind, which led to the question above.

"People say that becoming newtypes allows people to understand each other completely and thus avert conflict, but I believe that understanding some people only makes them want to kill each other more because they know co-existence is impossible (the other person has to die), and that there is no other fallback to mentally justify any ambiguity,"

[wheat ferry]

Honestly? Agreement.

That's part of the anthrochauvinist case for TBK, in reverse. She's saying to them this whole time that, because of the actions of their ancestors and their attempts at "self-defense" (counterrevolutionary, treasonous, taking up arms against a justified punishment), there is no room for compromise and their deaths are the price she not only intends to exact, but is completely within her rights in doing so.

Good. Then we operate on the same playing field. No more bandying about faux concern or attempting to appeal to my pity. This is how it should be.

[scarlet flax]

Would she be more panicked during the transition to her 3-4 form when the pc 'calmly states' "like you said, this is how it should be?"

Because there has been clear communication of the threat beforehand, and now it seems like it's going to be carried out

[wheat ferry]

I think in my vision for the character, she doesn't ever really go into panic or lose her conviction that she's in control except in one specific case (the "false end" where there's the moment of rudderless disbelief and shock at what her own nation, in effect, is doing to her). The idea that she just has to keep pushing farther, that there's always a way to win, that she has to keep going is a core component of her self-concept, and I see (as she puts it, "claiming her birthright") her choice to drop the facade and drop out of holding onto reality as part of that too.

Answering death with death is part of how she was brought up, how her personality was shaped, and part of the belief system she's already operating under (the assumption that the PCs / the wider Coalition would gladly kill her and everyone under her command, f'ex). In a way, it being stated back to her, going onto that levelled playing field, answers a lot of the more difficult contradictions or concerns inherent to the anthrochauvinist mindset in contact with the reality of TBK procedures that might crop up.

Anthrochauvinism, ideologically as it comes out of the Great Traumas, is kind of predicated at least in part on "if you don't get them first, they'll get you" (the preoccupation with the Great Filter, the idea that there's their moral obligation to "educate" (subjugate) others before they get themselves killed, the reflexive use of force against any potential peer opponent), so in a way a PC stating that back at her is very... oh, we're thinking the same way now
no more having to brush off people going "why are you killing billions of people for something their ancestors did five centuries ago, that's objectively wrong"

hopefully that makes sense

[scarlet flax]

this should be interesting to see play out then, considering the gundam fan is the guy who's the most willing to dig into history/lore and thus qualify for the one being targeted for ||tender sleep|| or find the fragment waiting for them in the end.

i would bet good money that they just smash the fragment outright tbh, as disrespectful to the dead as that is.

i might be surprised though if someone steps up to the occasion

[wheat ferry]

Ayup, we'll see (and in the end, you can always just give the fragment to someone else who was nicer to her, or nobody at all)

[scarlet flax]

it's weird to think of the idea of being 'nice' to Iphigenia, because as much as she deserve's sympathy she's currently doing her best to depopulate two planets after she had just depopulated one.

and the only rational response to murder from the pc's perspectives (committed or in the process of attempting) on such a large scale would be 'what the fuck we need to stop this now.'

[wheat ferry]

Yeah, not the best word to pick, but I think you get what I'm getting at (most understanding of her perspective, someone who recognized her struggle, so on without transitioning it into "and that's why we're going to kill you even harder")

perfectly justified response, really a quite reasonable one under the circumstances, not likely to get a fragment of soul-shard in the backpack

[celest ledge]

I'm of the pretty firm belief that on a large enough timescale, everyone deserves a second chance, but nobody has infinity and some of the crimes are just too big to do anything but stop them as soon as possible by any means necessary. Once Iphigenia's been defanged and she's not actively attempting genocide, who knows? Something could maybe happen there.

(Spoilers for a very popular late 2010s show) ||The Good Place|| had a pretty big impact on me.

[wheat ferry]

yeah, to be clear, I'm not an "iphigenia should be redeemed" person, that wasn't my intent with writing her and the possible endings she gets are pretty firm on "no, the bleak part is that she isn't getting redeemed no matter how much you understand her or get why she's in this position, you just Have To Do It"
but what comes after might be a chance at something else, someone new. that's the most I feel reasonable in gesturing at the possibility

[swift thicket]

i see the best reasonable ending for her being somewhere between acceptance of a destined failing and some kind of "you've proven my point" from her, as if to say that by killing her she is justified in having tried to kill them

"where we coexist, we will try to kill each other. it is our natures," or something

[celest ledge]

I was thinking that Ash's first answer about her agreeing seemed like a perfect setup for a "we're not so different, you and I" moment.

Fascists do love whataboutism.

[swift thicket]

"tell me, why is it wrong for me to kill for my state, yet you come here to do the very same to me?"
"you're killing entire planets!"
"and if there were an entire planet where everyone were just like me, your state would abide it? ... do you see?"

[fluid salmon]

Now I can't stop picturing Iphigenia saying some shit like "you attack me for extinguishing entire cultures, and yet you seem to have no problem extinguishing the entire culture of my fleet. Curious."

[hearty mica]

-- Turning Point 628th Expeditionary Fleet

[celest ledge]

Local Lancers destroy the left wing of the Diana

Wait, these ships don't have wings. You get the idea though

[swift thicket]

something something "the reason we survived this long is because our one culture was bigger and stronger than your myriad cultures" something something

[wheat ferry]

for what it's worth, ||she says something like this before 3-3 if the players win 3-2||

[west trench]

||Ajax survived the fight in 1-3, with the final attack of the fight breaking his shield from a structure check||

[wheat ferry]

Poetic

[west trench]

I wonder what i should do with him now that he's alive

[wheat ferry]

||3-2 now gets even more Fun and Exciting|| 🙂

||he has to retreat in that fight, but he joins up with his sibling and Diomedes to stop the players one last time in front of Iphigenia's sanctum||

[west trench]

OH

OH HOLY SHIT ITS PEAK

[quartz cipher]

And those Avenger abilities will get really ugly when they're protecting the Lurker who's busy shredding the party.

Incidentally, it was probably a good idea to have the Lurkers earlier in the module too. It meant the party was annoyed by Diomedes' abilities, but they knew how important it was to spam the nexus attacks to drop shroud zones instead of to hit Dio.

[quartz cipher]

Didn't end up happening, but I wonder if, being aware of everything, if ||Diomedes might at least be considering if making a break for it is plausible.|| By the time they got there, especially as the face of the team, the party wasn't especially interested in giving him that chance, but it does seem like ||he might be the type who'd bail if he thought he had a way out - only fighting like he is because he believes he's guaranteed functional execution or eternal imprisonment if captured, and no escape from that fate is possible to him. Makes me wonder if a HORUS sympathizer might be able to offer him a way out.||

Also, what would actually happen if any of the Crowsworn went cascade? ||Iphi, I figure she'd do the same thing thanks to her other conditioning, but not sure about them.||

[late apex]

Back at it with the dropship, now with chaingun (currently placed off-centre) and thicker body. I'll probably make it even taller, to imply a mech-sized cargo bay

[wheat ferry]

He'd ||have to end up with a nearlight-capable ship and a way of getting out without Union hunting him down - which is what I personally like to call "a future antagonist hook" in my book||

For cascading, ||off my notes with Achilles you get pure Sekhmet-style indiscriminate carnage, while Teucer ends up drawing a very specific region or zone on the map and only shooting people who cross into it or fire back, not doing any other actions otherwise

For Diomedes I had down delusions of grandeur and personal power, self-aggrandizement, dueling, while for Ajax I had that he'd end up getting incredibly overprotective of everyone else, including bodily grabbing other SecComm mechs and lifting them out of the way of the fighting - that sort of thing

Never happened, but still!||

[golden forum]

Is there someplace I can find the rest of the chapter art in a format like this? Did some searching on this bsky account and wasn't able to find what I was looking for

frankly amazing artist either way tho holy crap

nevermind, was able to find what I needed. I need to improve my google fu

[golden forum]

question re: combat 1-1. If NPCs start the combat being transported by one of the ships, would the players be aware of their presence before they depart the ship?

the "Transport" ability on the ship template is pretty vague so I'm looking for some guidance on how you guys would use it for this combat

[wheat ferry]

I've run it as "nope"

nobody knows what's in the transport before they start debarking or are forced to emergency disembark when it gets exploded

[golden forum]

this campaign is gonna be a trip for my group. They've never done anything above LL4

[quartz cipher]

I run it a lot like @wheat ferry, with the added mention that "a scan would pick up life signs... if anything on board was alive." They'd just pick up that the cargo bay is fully loaded here.

[robust sparrow]

Hey, would this be the place to get some advice/opinions on builds for the mechs or more focused around design? I've been poking at making the most of the Dolorosa on a Swordgrass and was curious how others might’ve done it

[wheat ferry]

Sure, it's homebrew so you're more likely to get answers here than mech hangar

As the designer - Dolorosa is intended to work best for "dodge tank" Swordgrass, so really going into the middle of a bunch of enemies and daring them to hit you

as a result, auto-miss effects, invis, forced targeting, that sort of thing all work well for getting as many dolorosa procs as possible with minimum self risk

[robust sparrow]

Ah, appreciate it! I've been looking at being more evasive with Flickerfield and Precog dodge, as well as Resistance from Blademaster and Flash Parry. Glad to know I'm on the right track there. Do you find the Swordgrass has a hard time hovering at that half HP spot for its damage trait, if it really wants to linger there, that is?

[wheat ferry]

Depends on the NPCs! If they've got a lot of Reliable or Smart, you're in for a hard one

[robust sparrow]

Ah, that makes a lot of sense, yeah. Thank you! I'm looking at playing one pretty soon, been excited for it since I read over the description text, it's so sick

[main ferry]

Read over the Mitscher again and had the brainwave of finally making the aerospace fighter pilot -> chassis pilot build I'd been debating for a bit

[ LICENSES ]
  IPS-N MITSCHER 3, SSC Monarch 2, SSC Metalmark 1
[ CORE BONUSES ]
  Full Subjectivity Sync, Reinforced Frame
[ TALENTS ]
  Skirmisher 3, Tactician 3, Ace 2, Stormbringer 1
[ STATS ]
  HULL:0 AGI:6 SYS:0 ENGI:2
  STRUCTURE:4 HP:18 ARMOR:1
  STRESS:4 HEATCAP:7 REPAIR:5
  TECH ATK:-1 LIMITED:+1
  SPD:7 EVA:16 EDEF:8 SENSE:10 SAVE:13
[ WEAPONS ]
  Heavy Mount: Gandiva Missiles
  Flex Mount: Rapid-Cycling Missile Racks
  Main Mount: Sharanga Missiles
[ SYSTEMS ]
  Reactive Weave, Personalizations, Tattletale VALD x4, Spearfish LFCM x2```

such a cool license

[wheat ferry]

the mitscher is one of my favorites across my work, it just kind of does Exactly What It Says On The Tin (damage) but it has support options too

[golden forum]

I have a question that might be kinda fun. My games usually have music playing in the background for combats or important scenes. For people who have run this campaign before, what music would you recommend for this purpose? Especially for things like boss encounters

[celest ledge]

There's a whole recommended list in the back

in inspirations

[wheat ferry]

There's some instrumental stuff in the music recommendations that could work for playing in session - namely, the stuff from Killers of the Flower Moon, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Disco Elysium listed don't have vocals/lyrics

I haven't yet played music during session myself since I ran my own playtests on Roll20 (god preserve my soul), but that's what stands out at a glance

[golden forum]

Exactly what I was thinking. All great musical inspirations but not necessarily all good for playing mid-session

[golden forum]

you have the patience of a saint

[wheat ferry]

My post-release run group finally persuaded me to reinvest something from the release in buying a Foundry license and it's such a leap up

[celest ledge]

It's SOOO good

[golden forum]

big fan of foundry in general and the community support for Lancer on it is fantastic

[celest ledge]

I was blown away with how useful it is for the one-time price. Probably my most efficient $50 ever

[wheat ferry]

outside of the musical inspiration, if you want stuff with a similar theme to keep adding I can also recommend the soundtrack for 1917

between those four OSTs you should probably be set for good picks

[golden forum]

1917, Killers of the Flower Moon, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Disco Elysium. Got it

real cheery combination of media there lol

[celest ledge]

Makes sense. This is the least cheery Lancer module I've seen, first party or no

This may have the largest stakes of any campaign I've looked at

[golden forum]

Absolutely. Big part of why I'm excited to run it!

the choice to include "With Heart's Aligned" in the musical inspiration list is based AF

[celest ledge]

I'm also going to go ahead and throw this one I'm going to be using for combat into the ring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS-TwLP5v8k

[golden forum]

GOD and now Outer Wilds?? Fuck you people are awesome

[fluid salmon]

When in doubt, Krenel, Downwell, Somatosensor and Precinct 41 Major Crime Unit. No game's tone is ever wrong for Krenel, Downwell, Somatosensor and Precinct 41 Major Crime Unit 😌

[celest ledge]

The Echoes of the Eye one IMO works kind of great because of that bit about the musical rocks on Lebaea which I'd imagine would have that kind of high-pitched keening noise similar to ||the residents of the ringworld||

[golden forum]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-patrick-star-noted-notes-gif-26231953

[golden forum]

dude this playing in the background while describing the players || initial launch into orbit to assault the Gallipoli? The moment of silent peace floating in empty space before it's interrupted by the rage of battle? FUCK that's cool ||

[celest ledge]

That's exactly where I'll be using it

Wait, I didn't even clock this when I initially recommended it but (spoilers for both IAM and Outer Wilds) ||the music was even written for very thematically similar stories, which is helpful. Both Echoes of the eye and IAM take place on a long-dead ship from a past area whose inhabitants are pale shadows of their former selves simply carrying on as they were because it's all they can do||

I think Elegy for the Rings and Eternal Halls could be great atmospheric pieces too

[golden forum]

I think it's pretty clear that || Iphi's theme song is "Death is a Girl" ||, but if the Crowguard have themesongs, what would each of theirs be?

[fluid salmon]

I kinda wonder if Darktide's ost might have something. It's got that tense outnumbered, outgunned energy, after all

[golden forum]

Ooooh I hadn't even considered that... I thought some of the choral energy might not work but then I realized WE'RE IN THE DAMN CHORAL SYSTEM LETS GO

[celest ledge]

As much as I love Disposal team, the Imperium mix version probably doesn't fit here.

[fluid salmon]

Yeah, how well it blends with the rest of the music is always a thing to watch out for too (I spent a bunch of typing earlier thinking through like five different things that probably wouldnt xD)

[wheat ferry]

The question is also how high-energy do you want to go for Lancer combat when it takes like three hours to resolve, too

[celest ledge]

The Only Thing I know for Real probably works very well thematically for Teucer if it wasn't for revengeance being... like that compared to this story.

[modern terrace]

a bit late but i'll recomend cabal stomp from destiny, as a general "bad guy music", a lot of COD 3, and WAW music can fit so nicely

[fluid salmon]

(Wolfenstein ost? Fucking rad, pretty narratively topical. Probably way too pulse-pounding and electronic to slot in great next to 1917 Soundtrack....)

[wheat ferry]

I couldn't resist my one moment of Being Cringe, not with the Endsinger as prominently in Iphi's inspirations as she is

[golden forum]

Nah extremely based

alternatively: We are cringe but we are free

[celest ledge]

If you want combat music that easily loops and works well for hours of listening, my big recommendation is Tactical Breach Wizards.

That OST is so good

[wheat ferry]

Ajax is Why We Build The Wall, Diomedes is Eat Your Young, Teucer is Black Mamba, and Achilles is Spite - for the record!

all their theme songs are actually in the list

[golden forum]

Sick!

[fluid salmon]

I think video game music is also just good to look for in general since it's usually composed with looping in mind, even if the soundtrack edits themselves might not be

though, man. It's so satisfying when a show or film soundtrack works great at the table

[celest ledge]

Yeah, they can be really good

Tactical Breach Wizards is nice in particular because it's first and foremost a puzzle game disguised as an Xcom-like. So most of the tracks are very understated and intended to be listened to for hours on that one train level I spent an entire afternoon on

[wheat ferry]

(I'm particularly pleased with Black Mamba because it actually also is the origin for one of the appellations I use for Union Marines on Hercynia - ash-coats

Teucer served a tour on Hercynia in my secret little non-book notes)

[modern terrace]

speaking of it, i do gotta comment on the uhhh "black sheep" of them

[wheat ferry]

Oh?

[wheat ferry]

There’s a forest fire Burnin’ in the north If I dwell on it too long I fear I’ll find out what it’s worth We wear ash coats, white as snow Swallows up the land I know Shape shifting shadow snakes The ghosts of my own mistakes

[golden forum]

Headcanon: Ajax's voice is the lead singer for Why We Build The Wall

[modern terrace]

see, i went on to search for one of your recomendations, and this one caught my attention

overall it fited....too well

just.....ew, also ABSOLUTE W for grabing the songs from wasteland 3

[golden forum]

I mean... they mention it's relation to Anthrochauvanism which is itself extremely 'ew'

[modern terrace]

i went for more....."generic military".

also also, i'll like to add the music "pick a side" from warframe to the music selection !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjaBIz94zK4

very grunge, very fitting

You never really met a man until you met his gun
Those who are equipped with blessings of clean hands
Forget they have yet to make amends
Discover the making of a new age with no order
I’m checking the lines you cross bringing nothing but horror 
Manipulate the narrative, it becomes imperative
One mistake and you make me declarative

I think they’re power tripping. I think their grip is slipping 
I think they want us to become a simple smile and listen 
Lies after lies full of hateful deceit
How many do you believe?

Now pick a side 
Come on```

[wheat ferry]

oh, you mean the music choices! Yeah, I went all over for stuff that fit well from my various writing playlists, and that album definitely had a big influence in the way it described the trajectory of Italian fascism

from the triumph of the March on Rome / D'Annunzio at Fiume at the start of the album, to the way fascism inevitably betrayed and let down its supporters at the end

[modern terrace]

i think the one that got me at "bad vibe", was the west knows best

and we ofc had this conversation before ! but the red wind blowing for our lady Iphigenia is extremely fitting

[hearty mica]

one of the artists i plan to use a bit of whenever i get around to running this is Weyes Blood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMAK05tpoI4

this shit is so ThirdComm revolution coded

[swift thicket]

Specifically music I've used in game? Well tonight's session had the players ||travel along the transitway towards the gunnery bridge, encountering a pair of seccomm skeletons, and helping the survivor of an Enkidu attack survive (before he came to, immediately started panicking and telling them to run away before "it" comes back). I had the original|| Resident Evil 2 soundtrack ||playing for most of the session.|| The Marshalling Yard ||was playing during the scene with the wrecked chassis. One of my players was convinced that the ship is haunted and their character now believes in ghosts. As they took the creaky lift up to the gunnery bridge, I put on|| Building Suspense ||and described how the lights dimmed and flickered as the lift went up, as if turning the thing on was drawing power from everything in the vicinity, and described how it felt like it could plummet back down to the bottom at any moment if they made any sudden movements. It reached the top, and as they opened the doors and the lights went down, i stopped the music entirely. The doors slammed shut behind them, and I let them walk around for a bit before one of them said they wanted to run a scan of the room. as soon as they did, i played|| The Shadow is Gone ||and described her sensors failing to lock on to the thing moving on the far side of the hall, something whose silhouette was illuminated by flashes of bright pink from meter-long talons as soon as it noticed her.||

||i'm trying to play up how scary it is to be stuck on this thing on a suicide mission, and how dismal the situation is. early on in the session, i described how impossibly loud the Gallipoli's weapons are as they fire and how the lights went down afterwards for a few seconds, moments before they received a report from Delgado that a single volley from the battleship just caused 12 pilot casualties as it obliterated an approaching dropship. They were able to save the pilot in the wreck's life, but none of them had an expanded compartment so they decided to put down a beacon for a search and rescue team. i kept telling them "there aren't any search and rescue teams right now. if someone happens upon the wreck and is in the position to save him, sure, but... any combat-capable mech right now is doing the same thing you guys are. you've done all you can." and i think it hit them that they're not expected to come back.||

||and as for the wrecked team, i described how it looked like the lancaster before them, legs splayed out like a buck shot by a hunter, didn't even have a cockpit to check anymore. something tore the cockpit open, and something shot a hot enough plasma weapon directly inside of it to reduce the inside of the mech to molten slag. a tokugawa with Myrkvidr markings, all four of its arms torn off from the main chassis and thrown aside like childrens' toys. when they pulled the mech's systems recorder out and reviewed the last moments, they realized that the whole incident only lasted about 8 seconds, and whatever it was that did this had absolutely no regard for the integrity of the ship--a bulkhead door blasted off the wall, hissing, smashed machinery and shredded segments of wall and floor. it was like a rabid animal came through.||

[fluid salmon]

Ooh yeah, pulling from horror soundtracks is really smart for this module too

[wheat ferry]

straight fire, you've been doing fantastic work june

genuinely brightens up my day like you wouldn't believe to see people Doing Stuff with the book

[solid jewel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCpP_ESgzHA&list=PLVFu5mCs8PVgojCGCHX-y9Dv_mCLmhs5A&index=1

[fluid salmon]

TRUE

[quartz cipher]

I don't suppose there's any full-body art of Iphigenia, is there? Token-able image of more than just her face?

[wheat ferry]

The Mission 3 opening art is her from behind, so you could probably clip that!

||there's also the tarot but that's very much spoilers||

[quartz cipher]

That'll do! I just needed something ||for the Reflection token||

[golden forum]

thinking of using something like this for the city in the prologue. Very somber in a tired, "calm before the storm" kinda way
https://youtu.be/MSlQ9RYrM4Q?si=VJOGFUuMLXogaHmc

[halcyon eagle]

extremely late but ive been using project wingman and frontline 59 for boss music

kings for one

[golden forum]

Played our first session today. @wheat ferry my player wanted me to ask you "When can I buy the novelization of this campaign?"

[wheat ferry]

Haha, maybe one day! I won't lie and say I haven't considered it

Glad to hear you and yours are off to a great start

[golden forum]

I would be genuinely fascinated to see what kinds of Lancers you would write as foils to Iphi and the Crows

[sleek jungle]

I imagine there must be a "canon" lineup, based on how often I see things like that blue-and-green Raleigh in the artwork.

[granite crane]

Damn now i want a copy

Did y'alls players ever end up getting a squad name?

Mine ended up taking the moniker of Spearhead, which felt very fitting

[golden forum]

awesome name! My groups tend to not name their group overall, but now that you mention it I probably should have them try to come up with a name

[celest ledge]

Our IGF group are the Vent Crabs

[wheat ferry]

The playtest groups for IaM were Coalition Provisional Chassis Detachments

f'ex I think 91 "Minutes to Midnight" gets an offhand mention?

[golden forum]

one of my players had a fun thought. With how many clear inspirations and themes taken from the Iliad, it made them imagine what the narration for this campaign would sound like if delivered by the VA for Homer from the Hades game series

[golden forum]

question regarding how best to approach the conversation with Ajax: || The description in the book describes him as an honorable man with great conviction but in service to a terrible cause. His mentality is always described as "for the greater good", but what response could he have to the obvious fact that his "greater good" is gone because SecComm no longer exists? ||

[granite crane]

Damn it now i have to practice my impression for future runs

[wheat ferry]

History is cyclic, if you remove SecComm - to an anthrochauvinist - you create the conditions that will inevitably make another SecComm in the future, and as an anthrochauvinist you are morally obligated to shorten that transition period as much as possible

[granite crane]

Oh my god of course

Circular argument for a circular head

[wheat ferry]

thirdcomm isn't going to make another seccomm

haha ok buddy. how's the second aunic war going

[golden forum]

I'd love to answer that - once they finish the book >>

tho personally I don't think ThirdComm will become SecComm, I think the various other factions and interests in the galaxy are what'll make that happen. But that's a conversation for another time

[celest ledge]

I think a chauvie would argue that Thirdcomm's weakness is what leads to the conditions that allow the other entities to do their thing.

Weak men make hard times yadda yadda

[fluid salmon]

“No, MY ideology is the inevitable conclusion that will rise from the ashes!”

[solid jewel]

"you mean the one you guys started?"

[wheat ferry]

oh yeah but they don't care about it, it's just a Political Knowledge Check Gotcha before they shoot you with the mech revolver

[modern terrace]

"strawman ? never heard of it"

[wheat ferry]

out of context problem for the Dead Fleet but the sort of thing you might find Ajax referencing as wow, looks like someone's still at war with the aun, huh. wild

[modern terrace]

"fact checking ? that sounds like something those thirdcomm want you to think"

[solid jewel]

Depicting ajax as a soyjak

[wheat ferry]

can't even google what he's talking about because of the jamming 😔

[wheat ferry]

you'd be valid to, guy's the stereotypical Guy With Sense Of Honor And Pride but guess what he's in the SecComm Marine Corps you can analogize to a lot of Hard Men Making Hard Choices military media

turns out that the hard guy doesn't need to make the hard choices and he's kind of an ass if you think about it

[solid jewel]

Offering him a ripped fuel and a pack of crayons to fuck off

[dapper crypt]

One of the major NPCs in my UIB campaign was a SecComm era marine; she served in the Hercynian Crisis and ended up defecting and testifying, and but afterwards she ended up taking long-patrol missions and basically staying in Cosmopolitan limbo to atone until she was recruited by UIB

She was very much a "boots on the ground" type, but deeply regretful

I've mentioned before how things got heated when a player went Genghis

[golden forum]

Heated
Genghis
Heh

[modern terrace]

"Do you feel like a hero yet ?"

inflict 4d6 emotional damage to ajax

[hearty mica]

Anthrochauvinist guilt is a really interesting concept

[golden forum]

Ash can correct me if I'm wrong but my read is that || Iphi and the Crows all have it to varying degrees and are coping with it (poorly) in their own individual ways, as described in the book how each represents a different mentality to abetting genocide. Iphi is a little less defined but my read on it is that deep down she understands that what she's doing is awful but she's buried it under so many layers of cultural indoctrination and even a layer or two of NHP Subjectivity Fragmentation that short of a life-shattering experience she can't even acknowledge it, and attempting to reconcile it literally either kills her or turns her into an eidolon ||

[hearty mica]

That's my read on it as well. I guess I just meant more from a non-Deimosian perspective

[golden forum]

the idea of a character who's kind of a 'survivor' of that indoctrination and is trying to un-learn the chauv mentality would be a fascinating character study

[dapper crypt]

The main thrust is that she felt lied to about Hercynia, but lucky enough to be able to get out and aid the nascent ThirdComm. She carries guilt about what she did, what she witnessed, and survivors guilt over being one of the few to make it out; when she came out the other side, she decided to go into self-imposed exile by taking the longest-run missions she could find

[hearty mica]

There's a group starting hook in Wallflower that sets the PCs as recently thawed Crisis-era pilots waking up in the present, which I always found really interesting but also really difficult to explore

[hearty mica]

Running from your problems by letting time dilation separate you from your actions through the sheer gulf of time passed, but still being recent from your timeframe is really cool

[dapper crypt]

It also lets me have her able to say she's done just about everything

One of the story notes was that she was also on Dawn Throne and trained Ecumenicals

[hearty mica]

Oh that's juiced

Being on the other side of basically the inciting flashpoint for SecComm

[dapper crypt]

||In the campaign, her story ends by finally "retiring" by taking a final mission to escort some recovered Egregorians back to Hercynia; they want to be able to die in a place they can call home, and she can't think of a better way to end it||

[fluid salmon]

It's a really fun lens to play with, especially with this module 🙂‍↕️

It's such a tiny interaction in the grand scheme of the module, but I remember a time during initial playtests when Tear Throat's 1/session limit kicked in after my pilot used it on a SecComm marine because they fought way too similarly to her Anthrochauvinist mentor. One of those moments in play that I'm always chewing on even years later

[hearty mica]

We love lashing out due to deep seated and unresolved trauma, don't we folks

[celest ledge]

Funny enough, our Wallflower group was doing the ||HUC negotiation and one of the players did one of the biggest unintentional social ball-fumbles I've seen in a TTRPG. They showed the Egs how safe they'd be because of the player's shiny new Genghis Mk. I they salvaged.||

They meant to show it off in a "Look how capable I am as an engineer since I rebuilt this whole thing from scraps" kind of deal, but oof

[granite crane]

Hate it when they do that

[dapper crypt]

I was rewatching a Rimmy operation and now I want to play a Crazy Ivan-style Mitscher pilot

[dapper crypt]

(ie a jovial but laughably shoestring logistics/air support pilot)

[wheat ferry]

Excellent archetype

[dapper crypt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCB2YcrFv8g

Mitcher/Haber pilot: "My Cressidian cousin has got me a special little weapon, that, um, I think he stole it off an old SecComm destroyer or something; its just hanging out here if you want me to drop it."

[stiff badge]

Just picked this module up and am reading through it as best I can!

One part that I am not sure I am reading correctly, though, Is Iphigenia her(?)self.

I'm only on page 30, and... well, I should ask before I go any further: is this channel okay for spoilers?

[wheat ferry]

Yep, just spoiler tag anything that's serious or opfor-related

[stiff badge]

Actually

I just realized where my question/confusion came from, because (And I suppose I'll spoil this)

||I did not consciously recognize that Iphigenia was the NHP, because the book hyphenates it as IPHI-GENIA because of the text box, and my brain just did not compute that correctly||

[wheat ferry]

oh, lol

I'm not quite sure what hyphenation you mean but if that's clarified we're all good

[wheat ferry]

ah!

gotcha, just one place it happens to do that.

[stiff badge]

Yea, but now I am all good, and can resume reading through ❤️

[stiff badge]

I also need to offer hella praise for the slice of life scenes in the prologue. 10/10 so fucking good.

[wheat ferry]

Thank you!

[stiff badge]

Sitrep question:

||Scene 1-2 Decksweepers. The provided maps have the ingress zones in the back, near the objective zone, but the Details and Tactics state that reinforcements should enter behind the PCs. Should I treat the PC deployment zone as an ingress zone after a few rounds, or just try to position the NPCs to flank?||

[wheat ferry]

position to flank

you want to ||pin them between the NPCs and the sniper position||

[stiff badge]

So, I am a little confused about the ordering of Mission 1.

||1-1 is straightforward and needs no clarification. it's where you start. If you succeed, you have, effectively, a choice between combat 1-2 (entering at point 7) or combat 1-3 (Entering at point 9 and with doulb ereinforcements)

However, victory in 1-3 mentions what to do in the event that 1-4 is already completed but... maybe I've just missed it, but when do you have the opportunity to do 1-4 before 1-3?||

Edit: I really need to do my re-reading before I ask questions. I see where it is now.

[subtle tide]

In this art piece, are these characters supposed to represent particular people or just a general vibe?

[wheat ferry]

Left to right - Lance-Colonel Arnold Lucas, Captain Gabriel Delgado, Group Captain Akemi Hirayama, and Detachment-Leader Rafe Campagna

(similarly, it's also the example of a CDF officer uniform!)

[modern terrace]

light green and yellow is a nice vibe

[late apex]

The dropship is nearing completion, is there any specific features that are missing or could use editing? I'm going to redo those front top vent things to look like the fronts of the engines, and obviously the tail still needs drawn, but other than that

[late apex]

Those little dots had been bugging me for a week

[wheat ferry]

real

No, this looks terrific!

[late apex]

Nice nice

[frozen urchin]

Mildly self-indulgent post, but the commission rush that locked me down for most of last month is starting to die down with the attached tokens being some of the mechs I made during that time

Work on the compendium will resume soon!