Calmaxys

Wanted by British Gas

  • he/him

20, compsci student, Polish expat in UK.


I kinda thought it'd be neat if I gave a short outline of what happened, mostly to document for myself but I figure maybe some people would like to see it too! The mini-campaign I am in the process of running focuses around the work of the MRRT (Mechanized Response and Rescue Team), more specifically their PHOENIX Squadron (the player team). The squadron consists of:

Wildfire (Cross) - an ex-vigilante from a group called Inferno. Joined the MRRT to do some good on the right side of the law for once. Hated by most of his vigilante friends, but hasn't had the chance to see them again yet. Pilots a custom Everest, "Amdusias".

Event Horizon (Ashley Cage) - an ex-Harrison Armory engineer experienced with working in hostile environments from the time she spent in a dangerous system. She just wanted to help make the galaxy better, has no beef with her previous employers. Pilots a custom Everest, "RP-1".

Aegis (Carina) - An Albatross trainee whose first mission went terribly, seeing her entire squad eliminated bar her. Her superiors didn't see it as a big deal, she saw it differently and stowed away on a passing trade ship to leave her Makteba and join up with the MRRT. Nervous and cowardly, but puts on the facade of a hero by taking hits for her entire team. Pilots a custom Sagarmatha, "Athena".

Enceladus (Brynn Lunas) - An ex-Mirrorsmoke Mercenary Company soldier. Part of 281st Batallion, "Murder of Crows". Had a mission go terribly, with her squad being killed by a rogue cell of HORUS militants. Took the NHP Casket from her friend Cain's mech and inserted it into her own. Quiet, somewhat reserved, deeply bitter about her incident - it left her with a prosthetic arm, leg and eye. Pilots a custom Chomolungma, "Goodbye World".

Repose (Apollo Callahan) - Another ex-Mirrorsmoke mercenary. Part of 634th Division, "Wolf Dogs". His squad was wiped out by space pirates and he saw it as his calling to see nobody else dies on his watch again. Somewhat of a tsundere - he'll heal people and then berate them for getting themselves in danger to begin with. Pilots a custom Sagarmatha, "Curtain Call".

The squad awoke a day after their introductory mission. Having achieved LL1 after the first mission, Carina and Ashley had new messages on their dataslates. Carina was messaged by a Karrakin Trade Baron, telling her that they were "trying this whole charity thing" and they "needed to give some of their possessions to those less fortunate than themselves". They clarified that Carina "clearly needed all the help she could get" and attached a license for the Black Witch's equipment. The omninet communication ended with the Baron asking if Carina recognized their boundless generosity and beneficence.

Ashley checked her messages as well, and found communication from Harrison Armory. Alongside the Genghis equipment license, she found attached some legal paperwork - which talked about "post-escalation environmental testing", whatever that meant.

Brynn awoke with slightly worse sleep than everyone else, having spent part of the night with an ally she met the day before to modify her mech, adding an Autopod and the H0R_OS System Upgrade I.

After waking up, the group went straight to breakfast, chatting a little among themselves while they ate - mostly sharing whatever they were comfortable with about their pasts with each other. Cross attempted to listen in on other conversations around the cafeteria, but didn't learn anything of note. After breakfast, Cross and Apollo were notified that some people were in the hangar asking to see them, so that's where the group made their way next.

Apollo was accosted by a representative of IPS-N. "Ahoy there, stellar sailor!" was how the figure begun the interaction. The man in front of Apollo, without introducing himself, told him about the tales Apollo's "friends at IPS-N" heard about his exploits in Neo Seattle (during the introductory mission). They offered him help by providing him with a license for Lancaster equipment, with a small caveat. Quote: "By accepting this IPS-N single-user print license, you agree to enter into a binding contract with the IPS-N Marketing and Sponsorship Department as a Field Product Representative. Nautical speech affectation semi-non-optional." After giving him little to no time to ponder the deal, the man practically forced the license into Apollo's hands and left the scene, avoiding the pilot's questions as best as he could.

Cross, on the other hand, was simply approached by a freighter operator. The man explained that his shipping manifest said he was here to drop off a license for Cross and told him to sign on the dataslate, which the pilot did without a fuss. Afterwards, the freighter pilot left and Cross was left with a Raleigh equipment license, which he later noticed had his name spelt wrong on it.

After this fiasco, the squad spoke to their Coordinator of Operations - Manuel "Manny" Ruiz. Manny explained that the R&D folks were still trying to learn as much as they could about the egg the players retrieved from Neo Seattle. In the meantime, he had a different assignment for them. A group of miners on a nearby planet was attempting to incite a rebellion in order to overthrow their cruel masters - the workers were forced to accept payment in scrip, which meant they could only realistically purchase things from company stores, and even then were barely given enough to scrape by with the equipment they had. They wanted to incite a rebellion planetwide, and to that effect hijacked a radio mast set up for the different labor colonies on the planet to communicate with each other. They requested the MRRT's help, however, as they knew that if they simply turned the mast on as is, they'd be crushed by the Ungrateful Suppression Forces on standby to stamp out rebels and the broadcast would be swiftly shut down. In the process, he offered them reserves.

Cross asked for a fire support beacon in order to be allowed to call down an orbital strike, Apollo requested a rental of SSC's Gandiva missile platform, Ashley requested intel on the chassis the USF were fielding and Brynn asked for a CORE Battery.

Agreeing to the task, the Squadron boarded the Dawnbreaker, a rather massive transport ship capable of both orbital and atmospheric flight, and set off. Landing on the planet after a couple hours of Near Light Speed travel, the group touched down on a landing pad and disembarked their mechs to meet with the mining colony's head.

The head was rather cordial with the pilots, and simply reiterated the colony's request for help. He showed them to the site, which was a relatively lightly fortified radio mast with several log walls set up to act as a mix of Size 1 and 2 cover. After the pilots took their defensive positions, the head activated the broadcast and all of the miners took shelter in various places around the colony.

Soon after, the Ungrateful Suppression Forces arrived. The first wave consisted of a pair of "Scarlet" variant chassis, mechanically being the Conscript class from the Field Guide to Suldan supplement with the Security template, a few "Raijuu" variant chassis, which were Ronin without any special templates, a couple of "Hakurei" variants, which were Archers with the Grunt template and a "Sparkmaster" variant, a normal Sorceress from the Liminal Space supplement.

The players dealt with this wave surprisingly swiftly - the Sparkmaster didn't have too much chance to harm them as it was killed on the first round after a lucky Anti-Materiel Rifle hit from Cross. Repose managed to keep a Raijuu at bay single-handedly by constantly using Stormbringer to prone it and force it to give up its standard move. The Hakurei were dealt with, as expected, really quickly, but the Scarlets gave them a surprising amount of trouble - their ability to deal damage in a Cone 5 area really messed with them and they were quickly attacked from two fronts by the Scarlet variants, with Repose taking a structure point.

This wave lasted about 2-3 rounds, after which the second appeared and things became a tad more serious. Another Sparkmaster joined the fray, alongside even more Raijuus, two more Hakureis, and a pair of Assaults ready to bring the pain. This Sparkmaster, due to Cross not having reloaded his AMR, was able to increase its Arsenal Die to 4 and start placing a lot of pressure on the team to take it out as quickly as they could with its Spark Charger. Whatever plans the players hard, however, were interrupted, by the arrival of the mission's big enemy.

USF Colonel Atkins, piloting his custom "Momoyo" Type chassis entered the fray. He ordered the Lancers to stand down immediately and retreat, otherwise the USF will be authorised to bring down their entire might on the group.

That, dear reader, was the moment I learned one important lesson about GMing Lancer.

If you're going to make a boss, give them a higher heat cap.

While make no mistake, Atkins was menacing - there was an "Eiki" type chassis (a normal Mirage) there to support him by granting him invisibility and teleportation, Brynn would proceed to (intially having missed this barrage on him during a previous round) single-handedly overheat Atkins and force him to roll an overheating check. Having come out to a 1, this meant Atkins' chassis was suffering a catastrophic meltdown and would explode at the end of the next round. The Lancers kept the hurt on, though, determined to keep him as far away from them as possible, and it paid off as Atkins would not get close after the Eiki was destroyed.

Needless to say, even if he had ejected, PHOENIX Squadron would have shown no mercy and so, Atkins went with his chassis. Left as a smoldering pile of slag on the ground, his reinforcements scattered, not wanting to end up the same. The group received a thank you from the colony and after contacting Manny found out that the Dawnbreaker would not be by to collect them until tomorrow morning - it had to pick up a different squadron and refuel, so the Lancers were encouraged to stay the night in some spare lodgings the mining colony happened to have vacant. To unwind, they went to a small bar present on the colony and shared a drink on the house - as a thank you for their help. The head explained the USF wouldn't be back for a while if at all, as losing Atkins would hit morale hard and the damage inflicted on the forces would not justify reclaiming a relatively small labour planet.

Cross listened out in the bar for any interesting conversations and overheard a couple of traders who were just passing through the colony talking about something happening on Titan, in relation to a group calling themselves, quote one of the traders, "something like Firestorm". The two traders commented that the group just seemed like a few kids way out of their depth, and moved onto topics that didn't interest Cross in the slightest.

Afterwards, the Lancers all retreated to the quarters provided for them to rest for the night and took a well deserved rest. Who knows what their next assignment will bring, and the players have been given a second License Level to spend.

Brynn's player has decided to invest it into the second level of the Goblin license, unlocking the frame.

Apollo's player has decided to continue investing into the Lancaster license and has unlocked its second level.

Ashley's player has invested their license into the second level of the Genghis license, deciding to unlock the WORLDKILLER Mk. I Genghis.

Cross' player has unlocked the second level of the Raleigh license, however since we're not using Dustgrave they could only choose the Raleigh.

Carina's player has invested into the Black Witch license again - electing to unlock the Orchis rather than the Black Witch.

...Like I said, I'm mostly going to write these for myself, but is this something any one of my mysterious followers would like to see more of? I'd appreciate comments if that's the case - I like to know someone out there is reading my ramblings.

Also, yes, all of the enemy names were Touhou references in one way or another.

"Raijuu" Type - This one's a bit obscure, but Mukou is a Raijuu that appears in a manga called Wild and Horned Hermit.

"Scarlet" Type - Obviously a reference to Remilia and Flandre, named after the sisters because Conscripts deploy in pairs and act one after another.

"Sparkmaster" Type - Named after Master Spark, one of Marisa's moves.

"Hakurei" Type - Named after Reimu, obviously.

"Momoyo" Type - Named after Momoyo Himemushi.

"Eiki" Type - Named after Shiki Eiki.


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in reply to @Calmaxys's post:

Would love to have you whenever I do a full LL0-LL12 campaign! It's a shame our schedules happened to conflict this time... Hopefully that might change by the time this mini-campaign's done though!