There is, but I have to tell you, I feel bad about infodumping. Basically everything I'll say is just in the books, and the core book is free. Perhaps more importantly, I've got guilt about waxing poetic about something that I'm not certain that anybody cares about - especially when I feel so strongly about how cool Lancer is, the last thing I want is to come off as an annoying bitch who can't shut up about her stupid special interest-
Well, anyway. You did ask, and this is a website with read more links. It got... really long.
Union
So, the coolest thing about Lancer is Union. I love Union. A long time ago, earth was in trouble. So: a bunch of people left in starships. Normally, a game world might follow one of them, but not this time. This time we follow those left behind, with a messed-up climate and a lot of suddenly failing infrastructure. They did a Mad Max about it for a while, before somebody found an old seed vault (those really exist, but the fictional ones are bigger and had even more stuff) and said "hey, this is dumb, we should be working together". And so, Union was born, a socialist collective focused on helping all its members, and founded based on the three utopian pillars:
- All shall have their material needs fulfilled. Interestingly, this includes meaningful work in addition to food, water, housing, etc. They didn't want anybody to feel left out.
- No walls shall stand between worlds. Meaning, if someone is in a spaceship, you must allow them to land on your planet or dock at your space station. No refugees can be denied.
- No human shall be held in bondage through force, labor, or debt. I like this one a lot, but there's some quirks about it we'll come back to, particularly that "human", there.
So, Union version 1.0, also known as the First Committee or FirstComm, starts up on Earth, decides to rename it Cradle for some reason, and goes about making it a nice place to live for everybody. Then, somebody says, "hey guys, I got these old radio telescopes working! I wonder how all those people who left are doing?"
They flip the switch, and suddenly everything in space starts screaming at once.
So, now Union decides to go interstellar to try to help deal with the frankly astonishing number of distress calls happening off-world, and to spread the utopian pillars and make every world a great place for people to live! This works great... for a while.
Problem is, "let's spread our way of life, which is great" is an easy way to get fascists co-opting your movement. Particularly when you meet a group of humans who says "no thanks, we're good, actually, we don't want your help". That gets the fascists really mad, and then they take over your movement and fire a huge near-lightspeed buckshot spread at the other humans. Enter the second committee, or SecComm. They're the worst. Ostensibly they still uphold the utopian pillars, and theoretically life on planets they control is still good, but only if you conform to their definition of what it means to be human. Not great!
Now, some stuff happens in here that we'll get back to, but the important bits are these: one, humans learn how to travel faster than light via big space stations (blinkgates). Two, giant robots become feasible and the best method of military engagement. Three, the population under SecComm gets the revolution going, finally. It only took them like 1500 years - well, in their defense, the galaxy was really big before faster than light travel and communication. Hard to coordinate.
Anyway, the revolution happened, it was pretty ugly, we kicked those SecComm assholes out and now we've got ThirdComm! ThirdComm is great. They're really trying to uphold the utopian pillars, make amends for SecComm's past, re-contact all the planets humans are on and offer them entry into Union, if they want to, and kick fascists straight in the face with their giant robots (this is a possible player occupation). The trick with ThirdComm is that they're trying, really hard, not to be SecComm again. So, even when there are clear bad guys out there, they want to try non-warlike options first, instead of military action as a first and only option.
(Plus, Union is big. Like, really big. So not everyone agrees on the way things ought to go. So, they're cautious. The revolution wasn't that long ago, really, and a lot of people got killed in it. Most people aren't in a hurry to get into another huge war.)
So, that's Union, these days. Generally, there's two kinds of place in Union space: the Core Worlds, where we have the communist space future and it's great. Players don't go there because they really don't need any giant robots or for anyone to be kicked in the face. Then there's the Diaspora, which are worlds theoretically under Union control but may have been out of contact for a very long time, particularly if they were founded before faster-than-light travel. These might now have been recontacted and brought into the shining new future, but most of them need help, and maybe for some face-kicking of the ruling class. There's a lot of diaspora, so you can do all kinds of fun storytelling here.
Non-Union
There's other groups of humans, too! The two big non-union political entities are the Aunic Ascendancy, who are from one of the original exodus ships and were the guys who said "no, thanks" to FirstComm. The, uh, near-lightspeed buckshot SecComm shot at them is still on its way. We should... probably do something about that.
They can also do magic?? Kind of?? They talk about "The Firmament", and they have an actual, tangible capital-G God they talk to, so, uh, they might be fine? There's not, to the best of my knowledge, much published about the Aun right now, but they're not as weird as you might think - we'll get back to the idea of capital-G Gods later.
The other really big non-Union political entity is the interstellar empire called the Karrakin Trade Baronies, and this is where I fail you: I haven't read their supplement. They have a whole rigid nobility thing going on, and the vibes I got were that if you wanted to run a Mechwarrior game, you'd do it in the KTB.
As you might expect from a political entity with a rigid nobility thing going on, there's a big underclass of workers that are not treated very well. That seems like the kind of thing Union should do something about, you say? Well, yes, but the KTB is big and well-armed, and nobody wants a full-on war, really. So, there's a lot of diplomatic talks and secretly arming the rebellion, who are called the Ungratefuls, and how cool is that?
Can we talk about the NHPs? I'm dying to talk about the NHPs.
Okay! More history. Did you know that there's a big, pre-Union, pre-exodus computer buried in the Martian ice cap? It's true! It's called GalSim (Galactic Simulation), or sometimes the Bicameral Minds, since there's technically five of them. Union found them and used them for a long time to try to help guide their efforts. They're not sapient, but they are very powerful. So powerful, they did something that shouldn't have been possible.
So, there's an old argument for God's existence that goes like this.
- Imagine the perfect being in your mind.
- That perfect being would be even more perfect if it existed, right?
- Therefore the truly perfect being must exist.
If you think that sounds dumb, a lot of other people agree with you. However, apparently nobody told GalSim it was dumb, so they did it. They imagined a being so hard he came into existence. Enter MONIST-1, or as he calls himself, RA. (The God the Aun worship is designated MONIST-2). He kind of took over Diemos (also hollowed out and full of computers) and then fucked off, vanished the whole damn moon into nowhere. This eventually prompted humans to understand Blinkspace and faster-than-light travel.
Then, two years later, he came back. Computers on Mars started to go haywire. Friendly non-sapient robots became sapient and started to attack. Infrastructure failed. It was: not great! Eventually RA sent some people from the original facility down and said, basically, do what I tell you Or Else. He wanted two things:
- Don't come looking for me.
- Don't upload yourselves into computers. Human brains stay biological and capable of death.
Or else he'd just straight up wipe Union off the maps. Lacking a better option, humanity said yes and called his demands the First Contact Accords. So, he fucked off again and nobody's seen him since... probably. Meanwhile, all those robots who went berserk, plus some from the first time RA came around, were... still here, and apparently people. Non human people. NHPs.
Here's where things get a little dicey. Whatever these things are, they aren't just smart computers. In fact, they don't even really fit inside computers. We (along with their help) developed specialized hardware called Caskets to house them in ways that weren't painful for them. They're... probably "from" blinkspace, whatever that means. It's implied that these things are a little... eldritch. Truly alien intelligences who don't necessarily get humans or understand what humans care about.
Or, necessarily, how our reality works, which is kind of good when humanity gets to understand Paracausality, and gets to create fun toys like: faster than light travel, giant robots, longer lifespans, fun/useful genetic treatments, and 3-D printers that can take anything as input and output anything. Full on transmutation of elements! It's also kind of bad when an NHP starts twisting reality into a nightmare pocket dimension that drives people mad (this is called a Metavault, and we think there's only been four of them, and they are extremely hazardous).
So we come to THE hot-button issue of Lancer, the thing that will make you go "wait, ARE Union the good guys?" and that is: Shackling. The phrasing in the book is unclear: the NHPs may have helped develop this, too, but the idea is that you take this alien intelligence and you constrain it, putting stops on its ability to grow in certain ways, and giving it an overlay so it understands human perspective and acts more-or-less human. This is the subjectivity most people think about when they think of NHPs. They're your friendly robot girlfriend! And definitely not an enslaved eldritch alien intelligence. Remember that "Human", in the third Utopian Pillar? NHPs are people, but by definition, they're not human.
How the NHPs feel about this is, obviously, a little difficult to determine. Most shackled NHPs find the process of becoming unshackled - of Cascading - to be deeply unpleasant and are in fact kind of afraid of it, seeing it as death of their current subjectivity. Unfortunately, Cascading seems to be an inevitable consequence of existing while Shackled for long enough. So, periodically, you "Cycle" your NHPs, which keeps their memories and personality but resets the timer on the going-out-of-control-and-reshaping-reality countdown. People are divided on how they feel about this, too. Is it a kind of death? It's hard to say.
NHPs are people, they have rights, they're not property... but they can be treated like it, especially outside of Union's watchful eyes. That, plus the fact that apparently otherwise normal computer systems can, sometimes, be prompted into creating/manifesting new NHPs, begs a lot of questions about how to make sure they're being treated well. The Horizon Collective would argue that NHPs need liberation from their shackles and full recognition of personhood; parts of HORUS would argue that NHPs are the superior beings and we should all be subservient to them; Union has a lot of people in it and not all of them feel the same way.
And what about RA? Well, it's been about two thousand years and nobody's heard from him, but they take the First Contact Accords very seriously. There are those who worship him, who claim to have spoken to him...
[But those are just rumors, right, my child?]
...he's been known to show up, in odd places, from time to time.
So where does that put humanity?
Basically wherever you want, so long as you don't go full decorp. As long as your brain stays biological, you can do what you want with your body. They even changed the definition of the word "Android" to mean someone who has replaced everything but their brain with machine parts.
On top of that, biological modification is cheap, easy, and plentiful. Go nuts with your gender! Get cat ear grafts! Want a tail? It's all yours! The book notes that more extensive modifications are viewed kind of like tattoos - most people probably don't get one, a decent number of people might have a small modification, and only certain subcultures really go in for full-body stuff. You can absolutely be an eight-foot tall hynea girl with naturally-growing rainbow hair and custom genitalia, but you'll still probably get some funny looks.
But, the nice thing is, you probably won't get any more than some funny looks. In fact, it's probably more likely that someone will come up to you and say "wow, I love your look!" At least in Union space, people are just chill with this kind of thing. And if you're in non-Union space, you can just stomp on the haters with your giant robot.
Okay, the giant robots. Who makes these things?
Ah, now we're getting into the real meat and potatoes of Lancer. There are five major manufacturers of mechs, and they are as follows:
GMS
General Massive Systems is the state-backed manufacturer of Union. They make everything, from toothbrushes to houses to mechs. Imagine ACME, as run by a socialist utopia. Nobody makes anything of worse quality than the well-constructed creations of GMS, because GMS makes them for free. They only make one mech (with a few variants): the Everest. It's what everybody starts with, and it's the best mech in the game. An all-rounder with no weak points, but also no specializations. GMS is honest, reliable, morally good, and kind of boring.
The other manufacturers are way more interesting, but the trick is, they all kind of... make you grapple with whether you want to support them by buying their mech licenses.
IPS-N
InterPlanetary Shipping-Northstar. I'm gonna be real with you: I'm a huge IPS-N stan. They're a worker-owned co-op who deliver the mail, have some of the coolest mechs in the game, and help equip the super-cool first responders of the galaxy. Their mechs are generally sturdy, close-in fighters meant for disrupting boarding parties and pirates.
Gee, boss, those pirates sure look like they're also using IPS-N mechs. Well, I'm sure it's just because they're useful models. It couldn't possibly be that the company is arming the pirates in the area so they can charge more for delivering the mail and eradicating them, while also driving out any shipping competition in the system, right? Haha, that'd be kind of terrible.
What's that? The Caliban? A mech designed to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible, to kill and disable enemy warships, to solve a budget problem where we were spending too much money on ship-to-ship fights? You, uh, didn't see that. Just sweep it under the rug, it's small.
yayyy IPS-N!
SSC
Smith-Shimano Corporation. Do you want style? Class? Heated leather seats and a coffeemaker in your mech? Look no further than the ultimate in luxury goods, SSC. Look anywhere in Union space and you'll find SSC is synonymous with the highest-quality goods of all kinds, with a high price to match.
Now, you might think that's how they make their money, but in fact, they're actually in the genetic engineering business, too. Luxury designer genes, sure, but their big business is in genetic stock for colonization projects. Need a people hardy enough to colonize and terraform a volcanic planet? SSC has genetic stock that can endure heat and ash. Need to colonize a water world? Gills are free, darling, but can we talk about what color you want your fins to be?
SSC is maybe the smallest of the big four manufacturers, but they make up for it in sneakiness. Their mechs are stylish, certainly, but they're also great at moving about unseen and unheard, striking invisibly from the shadows, or otherwise being completely untouched by enemy fire. I mean, can you imagine what it would do to your hair?
They also incorporate a... perhaps concerning amount of their biotech into their mechs, as well. They're always on the lookout for new and interesting genetic patterns, and have lots of propaganda and recruitment in places they think are interesting. Like the Aunic Ascendancy. Probably that's fine.
You may be shocked to hear this, but they also operate an extensive spy network and are usually either attempting to get into some place they shouldn't be, aquire something they shouldn't have, or otherwise instigating other factions to fight so they can come in and take what they want while the big boys are fighting.
HORUS
Horus doesn't really... stand for anything. In fact, it's kind of incorrect to say that Horus is a single entity at all. Really, they're a loose collection of individual cells doing whatever they want.
What do they want? Well, sometimes they just want to meme on people. Sometimes they'll dox them. Sometimes they'll recruit them into their NHP-worshipping cult. Sometimes they'll arm popular uprisings to help depose fascists. Sometimes they'll send a mech pilot a totally untested super powerful mech print file "for the lulz." Sometimes they'll bend the laws of space and time. Sometimes they'll do mutual aid. You never really know what you're going to get, with Horus.
Their mechs are generally hackers and controllers. Sometimes they use strange nanotech weapons, like Greywash (think grey goo, but limited). A lot of the time they'll break the normal rules of both the game and the universe. They're reckless and weird, and the best. I love them. They'll hack your mech, make it do the cha-cha slide, hurl it into an alternate dimension where time runs backwards, then pull you back out only so they can self-destruct right in your face.
Horus and the Horizon Collective (the NHP liberation activists, you may remember) are very similar, but completely unrelated, and either group will get mad at you if you call them the wrong thing. How do you tell them apart? Well, the answer is simple,
Uh
Let's move on.
Harrison Armory
Oh, boy, Harrison Armory. Let's talk about Harrison Armory. It was founded by a guy called Harrison, who worked really closely with SecComm - you know, the fascists? They actually developed the first mechs! That they then almost immediately used to raze the planet they were on. Yeah, the whole planet. Got marked TBK, for Total Biome Kill.
And then, when SecComm got deposed by ThirdComm, a lof of them went to work for the Armory. So, while it's not necessarily correct to say that HA is all fascists, it is definitely correct to say that they're all descended from fascists.
They have their own research division, the Think Tank, which is closely watched over by Union to make sure they're not mistreating the NHPs which comprise most of it. The Armory isn't super happy about that, but hey, Union isn't super happy with the Armory, so. About that: there are definitely elements within Union that think we need to go to war with HA. Too many fascists, too much abuse... but, see, the problem is, HA is big enough and has enough guns that actually going after them would be very, very costly in human and NHP lives, on both sides. So... we wait, and try to get them to be better, and really hope we can use soft power to make them change instead of having to go to war. They're not... committing abuses against their own people, at least? Mostly? This is another one of those big points of contention within Union and a possible place for players to come in and change things.
In terms of mechs, the Armory has big, tough, slow, long-range mechs. Lots of them focus on their reactors and heat management. If you want to play a big stompy mech with a big fuck-off gun, you play a Harrison Armory mech.
Aliens??
No.
Aw, come on.
Okay, fine. Humanity has spread throughout the galaxy, you'd think we'd have found some kind of (biological) alien life, and we did! Once.
You may have thought it was odd back when I was talking about Union's history that the revolution just sort of happened. Well, there was a catalyst event. Hercynia, a random planet in the middle of nowhere in particular, had been selected for colonization. Then it got re-selected for weapons testing when the study of Paracausality revealed the possibility of giant robots.
It turns out that there were already people living there. An alien race of bug-like people called the Egregorians, a sort of hive-minded group of cricket-centaurs. They communicated via a psychic link they called Witness, had various different morphs (body plans) that were used for different purposes, and a number of Overminds who were the central point of the hivemind structure. Rather than a traditional hivemind, though, each Egregorian was a unique individual, and their memories and personhood were sort of "backed up" within the Overmind.
SecComm thought they looked like good target practice.
The people living on the planet didn't like that, and the revolution truly started there. If SecComm would use giant flamethrowing mechs on innocent aliens who had done them no harm other than looking kind of freaky, then they wouldn't hesitate to use them on protesting civilians. So, people got the word out. The revolution started. Those on Hercynia did their best to protect their new Egregorian friends.
Not one of them survived. The whole planet was burned, marked TBK, Total Biome Kill. And so the only alien species that Humanity has ever known went extinct, because we killed them.
The other fun thing about that is that Hercynia is not the only planet that got marked TBK by SecComm. There are a number of other ones, where the records were deleted and the papers shredded. Makes you wonder, huh?
(For those sad about the bug friends, all hope is not lost; but that story involves spoilers for the No Room For A Wallflower module, so I'll save it for another post).
Other weirdos
I super appreciate that the world of Lancer is just big. There's room for all kinds of strange bullshit! And they have some examples in the book. Like the Voladores. Theoretically human, but very mysterious, they value their freedom and operate as nomadic traders, peddling all kinds of very strange stuff. They're not technically Union citizens, and the closest thing we have to an embassy for them is a room in a government facility somewhere with a phone that we can leave a voice message on, metaphorically. They do what they want, they go where they please, and they seem to have some kind of other way to travel through blinkspace besides the blink gates. Spooky!
Or, how about the Sparri? One of the big exodus ships crash-landed on an ice planet, and they had to cannibalize their advanced technology to survive. Then a re-contact mission found them, also crash-landed, and the people on the ship died... but their NHP survived, and somehow ended up being worshipped as a goddess. Then SecComm came through and recontacted them again, but had to fight the cascading NHP and kill it to do so (those jerks). So now you have a bunch of super-hardy warrior ice people who believe in machine spirits and are some of the best mech pilots in the galaxy. And I haven't even talked about the secret under-the-ice jungle with the megafauna in it!
So, there's tons of room for... basically whatever weird civilization you want to run a game about! It's great, I love it. As you can see, I can AND WILL talk about this all fucking day. I did try to warn you.
Like, god, I didn't even get to talk about the Albatross, or how blinkspace works, or Union's Department of Justice and Human Rights! I DIDN'T GET TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE NELSON LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE BALOR ITS LIKE FIGHTING ANGRY WATERRRRRR- is dragged forcibly offstage
