Fortune Squadron 0 - Setting Up The Campaign

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm going to start up a solo campaign of Nordic Weasel Games' WeaselTech. I'm doing this for two reasons:

1. I have largely replaced my gastrointestinal functions with the purchasing and painting of miniature mechs; they sustain me, body and soul, in a way mere food cannot.
2. Global fucking pandemic. I am so tired.

The first step is contextualizing the campaign. With a lot of Nordic Weasel games, the context is very nearly presumptive; in Gang Warfare you are a gang engaging in warfare, in Salvage Crew you are a crew of salvagers, you get the idea.

But the devil is always in the details.

For this campaign I'm borrowing liberally from a Lancer mini-campaign I ran; that Lancer is also deeply invested in mechs and inspired by some anime means it shouldn't be hard to smush them together.

Welcome to Golgos Prime

(This unnecessary amount of detail to contextualize shoveling resin miniatures at one another is brought to you by Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator)

Some time ago, the Golgos World Administration--a global administrative organization which originally united the planet's various work syndicates and mining collectives--met a slow and unseemly end. A rising tide of anthrochauvinism (take the worst tenets and practices of nationalism, writ large on the galactic scale) would eventually see an internal coup. The GWA was dissolved.

In its place, the Prime Ascendency asserted planetary control. Because all tyranny breeds its own end, the Ascendency's violent push for global hegemony eventually blossomed on one of the continents in the form of the Free Golgos Confederation. Local militias and revolutionaries managed to pool their efforts, along with a sizable defection of Ascendency military.

I'll probably write more about the planet and its history of problems, but that certainly seems enough for now.

WeaselTech helpfully includes some random tables for broad context; I rolled "an uprising against an oppressive power or regime" and "located at a military instillation on the frontiers". That meant to me that this campaign would not take place in the front lines of contested territory (the diagonally-hatched zones on the above map) but in one of the brushfire revolts on the Ascendency's mainland (the red zones).

For the flavor of the squadron, I rolled "volunteers eager to do their part" which actually didn't initially point me anywhere. But I did notice one of the red zones snaking towards the heart of the Prime Ascendency-- towards the planetary capital of Golgos Prime, High Haven.

That led me to the "13th Havenite Volunteers"; a regiment of mech-pilots drawn exclusively from those who had either defected or been driven from High Haven. Young recruits--maybe from High Haven's war college--eager to test their mettle against the anthrochauvinists.

Meet "Fortune Squadron"

Now WeaselTech includes, as I mentioned, a whole sub-system for the soap opera melodrama of young pilots butting heads; I wanted Fortune Squadron to be particularly involved with one another from the outset. The dice were happy to oblige.

Ingvar Ragnarsson and Farquhar Ascenso were Rivals, as were Eftichios Tolotis and Nora Davies. The outliers were Ceredig Clough and Fatimah al-Hassan, who ended up as Friends. I liked the idea that they were the youngest and oldest pilots in the squadron-- not having been in the same war college class, they had very little friction with their fellows.

The pilot tokens were made using RetroGrade Minis, which I've leaned on heavily for my Lancer RPG campaign. I cannot stress enough how useful and thorough the digital support for Lancer is-- from its free rulebook, active Discord, and excellent liveplays to the Comp/Con character generator/character sheet and RetroGrade's Lancer-oriented pixel tokens.

Mission 1: Assault on Riccorluvio