The infantry squad Glen borrowed for the hostage rescue operation is sprawled across the small briefing room’s back two rows. The usual grunt bullshitting is doing a poor job of masking a bit of unease about why they’re here. Glen closes the door, using a bit more force than is strictly necessary. The sound is a guillotine for the conversations. All eyes turn to him.

The successful assault on the spaceport concludes the first story arc. With that, Glen and Ilias reach License Level 1. Glen picks up Metalmark 1 (going for Amber Phantom), while Ilias finds himself awarded Pegasus 1.

My notes for this session aren’t the greatest, so this will be even more fragmentary than usual. In my defense, it’s partially because we had a really good RP and meta discussion and I was too engaged to log much.

The enemy combatants are sequestered and interrogated. They were recruited primarily from co-op mining crews based in Wake (but it seems they were recruited individually – there’s no evidence of whole crews being brought into Ashfall en masse). Most seemingly self-selected, as they were already echoing anti-Union propaganda. They got a crash course in sim combat training over the local net before the spaceport op.

Some of the frames used in the attack were not printed on site. Rather, they were smuggled into the port on ore haulers. Back-tracing those reveals they shipped through Stockland Station. This may have been a matter of convenience, though, as Stockland is the Virex Belt’s primary industrial hub. While it was a transshipment point, the mechs’ point of origin is likely elsewhere in the Belt.

The attackers coordinated via the system’s civilian comm networks that predate Union presence. It’s a heavily decentralized system, but based on existing co-op arrangements (so the local social structure naturally enables cell structures).

Most of the prisoners indicate that they expected Union to engage in protracted negotiation before sending in troops. Our immediate engagement seems to have pre-empted their plans to build up defenses.

While the recon team deployed to the spaceport did report paracausal effects, that information seems to have been lost from the official reports. Ilias does some digging. The documentation was prepared by Rael, the NHP responsible for mission coordination and oversight.

The recovered Union printer techs and soldiers have been moved to the hostage rescue operation’s staging area, where they’re receiving medical care and a first round of debriefings.

And in one of Wake’s more industrialized areas, the impeccably-groomed Diamond Matthews, spokesperson for Ashfall, hurls her datapad at one of her assistants as Union’s counterpropaganda begins turning the tide of public opinion.

And in a richly-appointed office, Arnoldo Carno, the elected coordinator of the Tu’rosan Cooperative Network, icily flays an unseen person at the other end of a vidcall link regarding the ongoing insurgent action. “While you’re preaching about turning their technology into weapons,” he hisses, “Union is turning their technology into schools. Hospitals. Opportunities. You think they’re weak, that they’re here to take our livelihoods? Do you know how many printers they have? If they wanted, they could flood our streets with munitions. What you see as weakness is them showing restraint.”

And on the edge of the inland sea against which Lake nestles, two Everest-class frames, unseen by misdirected observers and hacked sensors, disappear under the water.

(Lost? Find campaign startup notes and PC profiles here.)

[ I’m going to attempt the writing convention of referring to our PCs by their given names during narrative play and their callsigns while mounted. Let’s see how well that works. ]

Glen and Ilias find themselves back in their usual morning routines, still reeling from the effects of the fight they just experienced. There’s little time for recovery and investigation, though – their dataplates’ comm systems are lighting up with a priority alert from Ambassador Storch, the chief of the Union diplomatic mission on Tu’rosa.

One of Union’s initiatives was to establish a Schedule II printing station in Wake, the capital city. Tu’rosans want more control over Union tech that’s being brought on-world, and that was not a thing that was going to happen immediately, but Storch wanted to start some uplift work here. This project had numerous security concerns for obvious reasons.

Glen and Ilias were involved in the process of security evaluations for the installation site. The timeline was supposed to be six months out. From the briefing’s context, and supported by other indications like time/date stamps on files, the present day is now a month after the install. The PCs realize they’ve slipped seven to eight months in objective time. No one else seems to notice this, or the timeline was edited out from under them.

The immediate problem, though, is direct action by parties unknown. Three days ago, the printing station went online at Wake’s spaceport. It was under local administrative control, but a small Union presence remained on site to handle operations, maintenance, scheduling, and ongoing infrastructure build-out. A small security detail from the 501st Exploratory Guards was also stationed there.

One hour ago, unknown attackers (potentially Ashfall, the primary decentralized political movement opposing Union membership, or Ax, the collective pseudonym used by organizers of Ashfall’s militant arm) hit the site. They were using highly effective weapons, not obviously of local manufacture, alongside previously-unseen EW capabilities.

The spaceport is on a high activity cycle due to the operational tempo of industrial traffic from the system’s belt. This is complicating any attempt to establish orbital surveillance or top cover. Hostile frames have secured areas of the spaceport; they bear significant similarities to the PCs’ recent (subjective time) opponents, though not as advanced (Mk. I vs. Mk. VI, relatively speaking). They’re smaller, less sophisticated, without signs of radiation or spacetime distortions or annihilation engine power plants.

Something is now operating the printer. Union techs are not cooperating and no locals should have access to license files. From remote telemetry and data leakage, some of the items being fabbed are armament and frames that shouldn’t even be possible.

A local propagandist is livestreaming this incident. They’re claiming that the heads of several cooperatives – the key unit of social cohesion on Tu’rosa – have banded together to appropriate Union technology for the betterment of the community.

There is video confirming several friendly KIAs. The surviving Union personnel have been relocated into the city. One of the techs, Ikke Zek, managed to position his NHP partner to punch out some recordings which provided the prisoners’ current location. The spaceport is on the western edge of Wake next to an inland sea, while the hostages are being held on the eastern edge of town in the residential sprawl. Local buildings tend to be fairly low, but reinforced – the city is heavily industrialized.

Ambassador Storch’s top priority is the recovery of Union personnel. One of his key deputies, Envoy Su Yan, is advocating for neutralization of the hostile forces at the spaceport. We spend a little bit of time deliberating, but at the end of the day, we’re going with the boss’ priorities first.

(Lost? Find campaign startup notes and PC profiles here.)

reactor online

Glen comes back into his head with a screaming headache. Thousands of echoes of his own voice are bouncing around inside his skull. His awareness resolves – he’s in Dyrnwyn’s cockpit, rising up out of a sandy wasteland. The damage control board is showing severe damage, with everything but his basic config wrecked. The surrounding battlefield is littered with burnt-out wrecks of combat equipment, all bearing the green-and-white shield of the 501st Exploratory Guards.

sensors online

Dyrnwyn tags three frames as sensor contacts. One is Echo’s Mobius; the other two are hostiles. The nearer one is of similar size to the Everests. It’s sprinting toward Dyrnwyn and Mobius, clutching a mech-scale sledgehammer. The other is farther out, an enormous Size 3 quadruped mounting a fuckoff-huge rifle. Its vents are open; it’s glowing white-hot on thermal, and Dyrnwyn is painting it with radiation warnings. Both hostile contacts also read as heavily damaged – though the EW environment is so saturated it’s impossible to be sure of anything.

weapons online