The Shining Spears [OOC]

[BelGareth]

The Shining Spears

https://cannibalhalflinggaming.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/lancer2.png?w=597&h=477

I am wanting to run a higher game of Lancer to get a better grasp of combat, etc. I'm still quite new to Lancer, but I'm absolutely loving it, and I'm 100% obsessed with it since reading the books. I ran a small combat sim for my current game which is at LL0 about to move to LL1, but I've been jonesing to run more combat at a higher level.

Enter this game.


Amidst the endless expanse of the cosmos, a distant planet glimmers like a beacon of hope in the darkness. Welcome to Orthos Secundus, a world on the precipice of upheaval and rebellion. For years, the planet's surface has been scorched by the flames of dissent, as various factions and insurrectionists rise against the established order. Orthos Secundus's once-thriving cities now stand as battlegrounds, and its lush landscapes are marred by the scars of conflict.

As the conflict escalates, Union - a formidable coalition of advanced civilizations - has decided that the time has come to intervene decisively. Dispatching the "Shining Spears", an Elite kill unit, Union aims to quell the rebellion and restore stability to Orthos Secundus. This squadron of battle-hardened mech pilots are no ordinary soldiers; they are the tip of the spear, the embodiment of Union's determination to bring peace to a world torn by strife.

The Shining Spears' mission is clear: to drop into the heart of the conflict, from the Union's formidable warship, the Celestial Vanguard, a massive vessel brimming with cutting-edge technology and a diverse crew, orbits Orthos Secundus like a sentinel of order in a chaotic universe.

Led by Commander Kaela Orin, a seasoned and stoic leader who has seen more battles than most care to imagine, the Shining Spears are a diverse group, each bringing their unique skills and experiences to the forefront.

As the Shining Spears prepare for their descent, anticipation and tension permeate the air. The chaos of Orthos Secundus awaits them - a mix of urban warfare, guerrilla tactics, and entrenched rebellion. But the Shining Spears are undeterred, fueled by their loyalty to Union and their unwavering commitment to restoring order to a world on the brink...fame, glory, and even more access to licenses.


Character creation: LL6
Limits:Any of the officially released books, if unsure, ask
Character sheets: Compcon (compcon.app/) makes everything easier, but if you do a text 'sheet', please provide a Compcon share-code as well.

Links

The Core rulebook is free (https://massif-press.itch.io/corebook-pdf-free)
Recruitment thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658649-The-Shining-Spears-LANCER-LL6-seeking-players)
The-Shining-Spears-IC (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658986-The-Shining-Spears-IC)





Player
Pilot
Callsign
Background
Mech
Frame
Role
CompCon


Volthawk
Tobias Blackwood (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25843719&postcount=17)
Spearhead
Mercenary
Avalanche
Blackbeard
Striker/Controller
S7YWZK


Llyarden
Rio Callaghan (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25843887&postcount=18)
Flare
TBD
Black Star
Genghis Mk I
Striker
P769UP


Rakaydos
Setsuna Yui (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25844361&postcount=21)
Big Dog
Soldier
It's a Gundam!
Everest
Striker
KD8O2N


watupwithdat
Alfonso Batel (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25844796&postcount=25)
Roach
Mercenary
Testament
Viceroy
CQB Striker/Skirmisher
ZC2C9O


Gaiyamato
Dammon (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25844815&postcount=26)
Fiddles
Hacker
Storm
Barbarossa
Artillery
YQXKG4

[BelGareth]

I've created an OOC chat on my discord, Llyarden I don't think you are on there, if you join let me know and I'll add you.

[Volthawk]

Spearhead
Share Code: MQSJDR


Tobias Blackwood / Spearhead (Mercenary, LL6)
Grit: 3
Mech Skills: Hull 6, Agility 2, Systems 0, Engineering 0
Licences: Blackbeard 3, Vlad 3
Talents: Brawler I, Duelist III, Executioner III, Pankrati II
Core Bonuses: Gyges Frame, Titanomachy Mesh

Skill Triggers
Apply Fists to Faces (+4), Assault (+2), Threaten (+4), Get a Hold of Something (+4), Pull Rank (+2), Word on the Street (+4)

Equipment
Weapons: Heavy A/C, Light Signature
Armour: Heavy Hardsuit
Gear: Dataplating, Mag-Clamps, Tertiary Arm

Avalanche (IPS-N Blackbeard)
Statistics:
Structure: 4/4, HP: 25/25
Stress: 4/4, Heat: 0/6
Repairs: 7/7
Armour: 1, Evasion: 10, E-Defence: 6
Save Target: 13, Tech Attack: -2, Sensor Range: 5
Speed: 6

Weapons:
Superheavy Mount: Combat Drill
Main Mount: <Superheavy weapon bracing>
Flex Mount: Chain Axe

Systems (8/8 SP):
Arnament Redundancy, Personalisations, Sekhmet-Class NHP, Synthetic Muscle Netting, Webjaw Snare



Tobias grew up in a military environment of sorts - or more accurately, a mercenary one, living among the MSMC 482nd detachmanet, more commonly referred to as the Blackwood Company after the number of commanding board officers with that surname, Tobias' family having strong roots in the company (every so often, someone else takes command, but the family's got enough influence in Mirrorsmoke that they can try to bring the detachment back under control sooner or later). The detachment's speciality has always been the murkier greyspace contracts that MSMC takes on, employing a simple doctrine of direct overwhelming force and aggression that quite suits that kind of work. The third child of the current board officer, Tobias was expected to work for the family in some regard - whether that be on the corporate side of Mirrorsmoke, working their way into one of the organisation's legal teams, or in the detachment itself. For Tobias, it soon became clear that the last option was the one for him, and that guided his childhood, spending a lot of time among the mercenaries, trying out and picking up skills from them - he wasn't a child soldier, though, kept out of the actual battles the mercenaries fought even if he wasn't shielded from the details of what they did out there, At sixteen, he was deemed ready to start being used in the field, and after a few years he was in the thick of it in the detachment's operations, adopting the callsign Spearhead in reference to his constant presence at the frontline.

He first came across the Shining Spears in his early twenties, on the battlefield. The 482nd's latest greyspace contract had objectives that were apparently contrary to to the wishes of the powers that be in Union, so they found themself fighting against the Spears, a confrontation that forced the detachment to retreat. This wounded Tobias' pride, of course, but also got his interest, and while most of the detachment handled pulling out (and ensuring they had things handled contractually and legally to avoid getting penalised for it) he went on the offensive again with a few like-minded allies, seeking to make up for the previous failures and take some trophies. Over several engagements, and a fair bit of back and forth, Tobias came out the loser once again, and this time he wasn't able to escape, leading to his first encounter with Kaela Orin.

After some time with the Spears, and several more talks with Orin, Tobias was cut loose and returned to the Blackwood Company, but something was...off. It took a few months to figure out what it was, and a few more to make the necessary arrangements (albeit not in the cleanest way) to leave the 482nd with his frame. He eventually caught up with the Shining Spears, helping them with a monster hunt on some frozen world. Luckily for Tobias, the Spears took his intervention fairly well, and Orin was willing to take him on. A few years (subjective time, of course) have passed since then, and Tobias has settled into his new life quite well. Exposure to the more varied backgrounds and fighting styles of the Spears has broadened his skills a little, and the fighting they've gone through have sharpened them, and outside of fighting...this just feels better to him, in a way he can't quite put his finger on.


Tobias' personality comes from a mixture of influences, his upbringing and early adulthood with the Blackwood Company mixed with the more recent influence of Kaela Orin and his attempts to emulate her stoic professionalism, leading to a kind of restrained aggression - the first instinct of taking a direct, forceful approach tempered by an effort to slow himself down and think it through first, and if it turns out that the first instinct was correct, he tries not to take it too far (like he used to). Outside of that, Tobias is very comfortable around military types - the kind of people the Spears tend to work with aren't the same as the kind of people he grew up with, sure, but soldiers are soldiers and he's comfortable with that. This has led to him getting quite good at working the official and unofficial channels around those kinds of organisations, which partly manifests as a talent for procurement of various useful items and making related deals. When it comes to the other Spears...the odd bunch that make up the Shining Spears are not like the people he used to know, and so there's also quite a lot of curiosity about his peers - the places they've been, the lives they've led, what they did before joining, and so on.


Unsurprisingly given its combat role, fighting style and the fact it's almost entirely sourced from IPS-N designs, Avalanche is a solid, resilient mech, bulky for its size. Cabling covers the mech's frame, different sets (it's a little unclear which are which at a glance, but it makes sense to Tobias and any technicians that have worked with the Spears for a while), serving as mounts for trophies, semi-improvised weapon holsters, grappling aides and, more recently, as an attempt to deal with the frame's heat issues.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Avalanche is the trophies that adorn it. They're not entirely consistent, battles sometimes leading to some being destroyed or otherwise unusable (although a few of the trophies definitely look like they've taken a hit or two) while the logistics around printing meaning that sometimes bringing old trophies of significant size along is impractical, but if Tobias has his way there's always something, a sign of what he and his mech have done, and an advertisement to any potential foes that this is a mech that has seen action and won. It's a bit of a holdover from his old life, but one that he believes serves several purposes - the one he talks about is how intimidation has a value of its own, and those of a more opportunistic bent may be dissuaded by a sufficiently mean-looking mech, but the purpose he doesn't talk about so much is...a kind of showing respect and recognising the past, if he had to put words to it. Those the Spears have fought against in the past, that may have died in the battle, they were worthy fighters in their own right (even if a difference in skill and/or mech specs, or just bad luck, meant they lost), fighting for their own reasons, and by taking trophies Tobias feels like he's giving respect to their own strength and worth in some way. He's not sure if that's exactly it, he can never quite find the right words for it, but he's pretty sure it's something like that.

Beyond the trophies,the other contender for being the most striking thing about the mech is, naturally, the drill itself. While it's typically attached to the back-mounted catalyst pack when not in use, cabling connecting it to the pack and to the mech itself (the latter ensuring it remains close enough for use in the chaos of battle, allowing the mech to quickly drop it to grab a foe or use the chainaxe without losing the weapon), it's still visible from the front, given the size of the thing. Its chainaxe, by comparison, simply sits on the mech's chest, secured by more cables when not in use and pulled back by them when not in use.

[Gaiyamato]

Dammon.
Callsign: "Fiddles".
Role: Artillery/Engineer

Compcon sheet code
NFEM7R


https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1139740486823846010/1139857808133722142/drultralux_a_young_male_mechanic_mecha_engineer_fr om_a_post_apo_c71d4fa0-0936-4ced-8a80-92f270e2dcbe.png

Born on a small remote moon that was colonised by humanity early in the expansion into space, Dammon was thrust from an early age into a society ripped apart by brutal civil war and in rapid decline.
Working first as a child soldier, then as an engineer who earned recognition for his ability to scrape together equipment from scraps, Dammon found himself as a mecha engineer by his early teens.
Designing and building his first mechs from the parts left littered in the ruins of his home town, he became a mech pilot by the time he turned 16, allowing him to find work as a mercenary and engineer. His took the first chance off his homeworld and joined the diaspora of humanity across the stars, earning a name for his missile barrages on the battlefield, and his ability to find/make almost anything off the battlefield. His endless tinkering and research work earning him the nickname "Fiddles".



Though still a young man in his early 20s, Dammon sports a large number of scars from past injuries and had both forearms and both hands fully replaced with cybernetic limbs, and both eyes have had to be replaced with synethic replicas. Dammon being the fiddler he is though has managed to make these into tools that assist him with his engineering, using them as part of his subjectivity-enhancement suite. He is average height and slight build with short black hair without mousey brown streaks, and tends to wear casual civilian clothing as much as he can as he likes to get out of military gear as much as possible.



Even with an early life of hardship, bloodhsed and rough survival, Dammon maintains a confident and happy-go-lucky exterior personality and still managed to hold onto his empathy and humanity in the face of constant warfare. Though much of this is a mental shield to protect himself from his own trauma, he interacts in a genuinely friendly manner with others. Willing to help maintain the mechs of his workmates for the pure joy of it, Dammon truly enjoys creating and working on machinery and electronics to the point where he has little interest in much else in his life. In contrast when on the battlefield he takes the job very seriously, dropping the jokes once deployed. He finds killing a solemn task and will attempt to disable enemy mechs before outright destroying them if he can.



» Dammon // FIDDLES «
Hacker, LL6
[ SKILL TRIGGERS ]
Act Unseen or Unheard (+2), Assault (+2),
Get a Hold of Something (+2), Hack or Fix (+6),
Invent or Create (+6), Investigate (+2)
[ GEAR ]
Assault Hardsuit, Medium Signature,
Light A/C, Dataplating,
Subjectivity-Enhancement Suite, Tertiary Arm
[ BOND ]
THE BUILDER
Powers: BILINGUAL, RIGGER,
WEB OF CREATION
***
[ TALENTS ]
Nuclear Cavalier 3, Heavy Gunner 2,
Stormbringer 2, Walking Armory 2
[ LICENSES ]
HA Barbarossa 2, SSC Monarch 2,
HA Genghis 2
[ CORE BONUSES ]
Overpower Caliber, Superior by Design
[ MECH ]
« STORM »
HA Barbarossa
H:6 A:0 S:0 E:2 SIZE:3
STRUCTURE:4/4 HP:25/25 ARMOR:2
STRESS:4/4 HEAT:0/12 REPAIR:7/7
ATK BONUS:3 TECH ATK:-2 LTD BONUS:1
SPD:2 EVA:6 EDEF:6 SENS:10 SAVE:13
[ WEAPONS ]
INTEGRATED MOUNT: Apocalypse Rail
INTEGRATED MOUNT: Fuel Rod Gun
MAIN MOUNT: Rocket-Propelled Grenade (Stabilizer Mod)
MAIN MOUNT: Sharanga Missiles
HEAVY MOUNT: Gandiva Missiles (Stabilizer Mod) // Overpower Caliber
[ SYSTEMS ]
Ammo Case II, Auto-Cooler,
Siege Stabilizers

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1139740486823846010/1139844432812834826/mecha_coloured_darker.png



Storm began as a personalised Everest mech. Most of the parts being scavenged were from HA-Barbarossa mechs though and over time his form began to morph as pieces of Barbarossa and Monarch mechs were bolted together over the old Everest frame. Eventually upon obtaining legal licenses for these mechs Storm underwent several major overhauls of his internal frame and systems. Now more or less a Barbarossa mech with external hard plating from several other mech designs and mostly equipped with Monarch mech weaponry and Dammon's custom made fuel rod discharge gun and a heavily modified salvaged apocalypse rail taken from a warship and not from the original Barbarossa mech specs. Many pilots would be hard to guess which style of mech us underneath all of the scavenged and custom made gear at this point as it resembles very few mechs found on the field. The mech forgoes the normal mech manipulators in place of using fixed weaponry in the arms in order to improve stability and aim, and allow better internal heat management. With the heavy rocket payloads, it features custom made stabiliser and deployable siege stabilisers to prevent tilting when firing full barrage salvos. Designed to apply long range battlefield support to front line mechs, and act as a heavy hitter against larger more heavy armoured mechs.

[BelGareth]

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658986-The-Shining-Spears-IC

[BelGareth]

Killing this game due to lack of activity.