So! I started my Lancer/Thirsty Sword Lesbians campaign yesterday! I was asked to post about it and I think it would be fun so I will. Will try to post regularish updates and do a bit of a campaign journal. I've tried to write this in a way where you don't need to be super into Lancer's lore to understand it but we'll see.
The starting pitch, is that this is a game taking place in a mech school (The Cavalry College) within a specific bit of space owned by the federal monarchy known as The Karrakin Trade Baronies. The KTB has a long and storied past which includes an enormous amount of infighting, bloodshed, and injustice between the nobility and the ignobility (as you may expect from a space monarchy). The player characters, one way or another, are from the newest Major House (think of it like a state, with a representative in the wider government and its own land and such). The House of Promise represents a turning point for the Baronies, a fulcrum swinging away from the aged and failing traditions of the past and towards a brighter and more equitable future.
Our player characters are...
Principe Lucia Montague The Chosen.
Calluna of House Montague The Devoted.
Lucio Seyren The Seeker.
Hunter and Poet, The Ensemble
Winona Parish, The Trickster
I'll go over their mechs in the next post since we didn't get into tactical combat this session.
We began with me reading out a scene from a play I made up called "The Last Argument of Kings", based on one of many near apocalypses in the Baronies' long history.
The shuttle that had brought them on a 6 month long trip through space had finally brought them to the crowning jewel of the KTB itself, its capital world Karrakis. They had a few moments to watch the touchdown, and then they exited immediately being bombarded by a crowd who had gathered to see the new arrivals. Getting to see the newest potential pilots is an exciting thing, when these pilots won't just be treated as soldiers but as cultural icons and heroes.
Lucio, being a playboy with an obvious knack for being in the spotlight, takes to the crowd like a moth to flame. They're prodded with questions, some of them with very personal questions about their families. The two from House Montague are asked about why they're here with The House of Promise instead of The House of Glass where they came from, and how they escaped the night of their families assassination. Winona steps up and starts to distract, giving the two time to get away from the crowd.
They get to the stage and the Dean of the school gives a short speech welcoming them all, preparing them for a year that will test their capabilities in and out of a mech. Before any of that though, a welcoming banquet! They have time to feast and mingle with students from the other Major Houses. Hunter and Poet are approached by a student from The House of Water, another fairly progressive Major House. Our ensemble is a pair of people sharing one body, a human and an NHP (Non Human Person, who is essentially an eldritch AI). They've taken the identity of Velvet Velour, the child of a famous Kavliere who helped establish The House of Promise. As they talk they realize that there's an earnest to her excitement at approaching the duo in disguise, even if there is an underlying goal to try and make allies at the school.
Across the room, Lucia and Calluna recognize a student from the family they most suspect as being the ones who sent assassins after them and their family. They desperately try to avoid her to no avail, as Letetzia crosses over to give her condolences and speak to the only (known) survivor of House Montague. Lucia tries to get a read on her intentions but gets snake eyes. I give her the choice to mark a condition or give up some info, she chooses to mark afraid as this whole gathering starts to feel much too similar to the night her family was massacred. Calluna,
Lucia's loyal bodyguard, steps in seeing this discomfort attempting to insult the scheming noble and get her to back on. Snake eyes again! Truly an awful pair of rolls. Calluna not only has to mark a Condition for defying the tenants of their devotion (insulting one of their "betters") but also loses an opportunity, as Letetzia snaps back and reveals she has info she was going to give about Lucia's family. She leaves them both slightly reeling from the encounter.
Winona gets information from her contacts in The Ungratefuls, a revolutionary group within the Baronies looking to seed discord among the most powerful of the nobility. She gets her target, a noble named Massimo-Ludra, looking to make amends for the past sins of his family deciding to work with the Ungratefuls. Winona is to befriend and find any sort of vital information about him. She does this at the cost of her own reputation, as she stands up for him and makes an enemy of a very important student from one of the most conservative houses in the KTB.
Finally, Lucio approaches a gloomy student observing art in the banquet hall. They have a philosophical back and forth which ends with Lucio wrapping an arm around him and getting close. A successful Entice! The only student from The House of Dust, a major house whose world is slowly getting eaten by nanomachines, says he's interested and would like to get to know him better. Meanwhile, Hunter and Poet see this, and Poet has to stop Hunter from marching over and doing something drastic. It turns out Hunter has some history with this mysterious student from The House of Dust...
The banquet ends, and its revealed that it was a test! All of them had notes taken about their etiquette. They move out into a massive hanger bay for printing out mechs known as The Stables. Shortly after their mechs are printed... some of them begin to fall apart! The printers were intentionally sabotaged as a part of another test. Find out whats wrong with your mechs in 15 minutes, or have to fight in the combat exam with a malfunctioning machine! We left off the session there.
Really happy with how this session went even though we were on a bit of a time limit with one of the players having to leave early. So I had been planning to run this game back around September? maybe earlier? last year. Since then, the playtest for an official Lancer module taking place at the Cavalry College called Shadow of The Wolf was revealed to the public! So what I've basically done is take some of the fun setting stuff that Shadow of The Wolf introduces (the idea of the Three Syllabi the college teaches is fucking fantastic, and the general layout of the college is really neat) while running with my own plot, characters, and vibes.
Typically I prep my games on an arc by arc or session by session basis, and while I'm still doing that I also did a lot of work on specifically npc's and their motivations ahead of time. Having their personalities and goals fresh in my mind really helped my characterization of them (which is something I've definitely struggled with in the past). The players at least said all of the npc's felt really distinct which is exactly what I wanted!!!
I'm a little nervous about the narrative bit of next session. Even though I like the challenge I put forward, I actually didn't realize until the first session that Thirsty Sword Lesbians doesn't actually have a dedicated move for gathering information. The only one is Calling on a Toxic Power, and while I can see how it could come up for some of the characters, I'm afraid the narrative bit before the combat is going to consist of a lot of Defy Danger rolls (Defy Danger being the sort of catchall move).
That being said!! Super hyped for the first combat. I think I've prepped a fun one, and I'm excited to break it down in the next post.
I wasn't expecting this to be quite so long but if you made it to the end thanks for reading! I shouldn't have to break down the setting as much in future posts which will probably make them a bit shorter. I'd actually love to talk about this game with other TSL or Lancer gm's if anybody would like to chat about things in the comments.
