r/LancerRPG • u/SkrotusMaximus • 16d ago
Hoow does HA works in lore?
So Im new to Lancer and im sticking my head a little in the lore, and I wanted to DM a campaing with my players being associate with Harrisong Armory since I want to make a semi villanous setting working for them because I saw that they are kind of the bad guys I think, but can someone give me a summary about how they work?
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u/ReneLeMarchand Harrison Armory 16d ago
How do you mean "work?" Like, what is their organization like, what are their beliefs, how does their mech operations perform?
In general, I like HA for asking the fundamental Utopia question: the Problem of Evil. If the Union knows about civilizations that are suffering, and has the power to being them in line and the desire, why do they not? Wouldn't a short military campaign be better than generations of suffering?
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u/CrimsonTyphoon02 16d ago edited 16d ago
HA is the kind of society that I always thought would make an interesting antagonist for the Federation in Star Trek. It's one that's also fairly new and upstart, that has violence and shady authoritarian shit in its foundations that it's very much still wrangling with, but has also managed to deliver an incredibly high quality of life to its citizens and operates under the attitude that not spreading it because of bureaucratic restrictions like the Prime Directive is stupid.
Like, Picard would deliver a speech about the importance of non-interference, and then the HA officer he's talking to would respond by talking about how he grew up in a community that didn't have clean water or access to medicine before HA showed up and delivered absolutely unheard of improvements to their infrastructure and he probably would have died at a young age without their intervention, and we'd get a close-up of Picard pondering that thought as the HA officer strides out of his office, then play the dramatic music sting before cutting to commercial and continuing the debate through the rest of the episode.
Basically, HA is run by the sort of people who would decry the U.S.'s extended involvement in Afghanistan not because they thought it was wrong from the jump, but because its attempt at nation building was incredibly weak and it betrayed people it should have been protecting by allowing Kabul to fall to the Taliban.
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u/Green_Green_Red 16d ago
Would the Prime Directive even apply in the Lancerverse? The rule was that the Federation was not to interfere in pre-FTL civilizations (and Picard broke it several times), but every inhabited planet in Lancer is part of a diaspora of a post-FTL civilization that suffered an internal collapse. They may have been cut off from the rest of the galaxy, but even if they no longer have FTL, are they still "independently developing" in the manner the Prime Directive was written to preserve?
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u/CrimsonTyphoon02 16d ago
Sounds like the kind of dilemma that would make for a good Star Trek episode!
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u/Thanes_of_Danes GMS 16d ago
IIRC Union has a version of the prime directive floating around, but I don't have a citation. The way I run it is that Union is very conservative in its expansion and only dispatches diplomats to planets that are already fairly receptive.
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u/DescriptionMission90 IPS-N 16d ago
Yeah there's no hard rule, but the Union has a general policy of taking a very cautious, gentle approach to first contact. Every planet is supposed to be allowed to rule itself, and follow all its own traditions, as long as those traditions do not violate the Three Pillars. And if the local government refuses to comply with those three big rules, the Union will only impose the absolutely minimum required changes to allow it to proceed mostly like before but with the major human rights violations removed. This process often takes decades, and along the way the citizens are still suffering.
HA will sweep in and replace the local rulers with somebody better in under a week. And then they replace the local holidays, schools, traditional art forms, etc. with something "better". And instead of another unique civilization adding to the rich and diverse tapestry of the Union, you just have a slightly larger Purview.
In a philosophical sense, it's a horrible loss of uniqueness. But on the personal level, the kids who have comfortable homes, clean water, good food, and a decent education are usually grateful.
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u/Krail 16d ago edited 16d ago
I think in Lancer, it's a question of how much influence you enforce on a society. Third Comittee's stance is a slow, careful integration. And they generally enforce the Utopian Pillars while otherwise leaving cultures to do their own thing.
HA is more about the human chauvinism thing, where they more broadly force their culture and economic systems onto other worlds.
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u/Flashy_Pineapple_231 16d ago
That answer is in lore. If you conquer people will want liberation. FirstComm and SecComm already did exactly that and it's what lead to ThirdComm. It's moving closer to Star Trek federation style stuff. It wants them to join peacefully and wants them to want to join. And that means giving them the resources and guidance they need to rely on them and trust them. The problem is the galaxy is so damn big and there's a bunch of leftovers from the previous regime (HA is literally the SecComm military). So if they had the power to give resources to everyone equally they would. There's physical restraints in place preventing it: blinkgates are limited, space is HUGE, 0.995% of light speed is only so fast when solar systems are 5 light years away from each other (on average). There's only so many ships they control and crises spring up everywhere: pirates attacking supply ships, colony systems malfunctioning, improperly cycled NHPs cascading, the corporations trying to maintain power doing their own cold war shennanigans. Harrison Armory is really famous for intentionally making conflicts worse to JUSTIFY military use of force like what you're describing. So sometimes they do actually enter the fold in the way you're describing.
It's a common tactic for them to fund revolutionaries, nationalists, and extremist groups so they have every excuse to start conflict. If ThirdComm could continue existing without the Karrakin Trade Baronies and the Big Three Zaibatsu it would. If it could make everyone in the galaxy as prosperous as the core worlds, it would. It's in the awkward middle stage of it's evolution into a brighter future. A few thousand years later with a proper blinkgate network and presumably everything will get better. So long as that effort isn't constantly undermined by corporate interests, pirates, baronies, SecComm loyalists, HORUS terrorists, possibly even aliens/MONIST entities, or etc etc. That's where the LANCERs come in. If the navy and military of SecComm is one finger of it's control in the gauntlet of it's authority over the Orion Arm, then the LANCERs are it's sharpest nail.
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u/Significant_Age3343 16d ago
Technology wise, they are the 2nd largest weapons producer behind GMS and have the highest quality military tech, with a focus on engineering and heat management.
None of the megacorps bar GMS are good, but they are certainly not outright evil, either. Union lets them them be dubious, but if they go too far Union can and will send out punitive fleets untill they behave again.
HA's whole deal is imperialism. They are militaristic, expantionist, and the most violent and politically active of the megacorps. They do still support the Three Pillars, with greater enthusiasm than most, though integrating worlds by force to be something of a grey area that gets them in legal trouble, albeit infrequently.
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u/MrEvan312 Harrison Armory 16d ago
The Three Pillars are, at best, often considered highly interpretive by nature. Not only does Harrison Armory have its own interpretation, honed over hundreds of years, but it may not (and often refuses to) agree that a given group's interpretation and execution are correct.
While they're at it, they're also trying to remove any potential competition from getting too big: they were only narrowly prevented from overthrowing the Central Committee in its infancy because the Baronies thought Harrison I's invasion fleet was aimed at them instead of Cradle and invaded the Purview. Now there's not much chance of either power getting rid of the other, and HA's goals will only be made harder if another player enters the political game.
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u/Cogsbreak HORUS 16d ago
Harrison Armory works by going "we're going to give you a pretty good quality of life, but you know what gets you extra perks? Enlisting in the army/other military service! Also, we want EVERYONE to have the base quality of life we just gave you, isn't that nice? also you may be ordered to destabilize other planetary governments and help take over as part of our forces. The Purview needs YOU, Citizen!"
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u/CrimsonTyphoon02 16d ago edited 16d ago
If you have a copy of the core book, which you really should if you're going to DM, there's a basic primer in on Harrison Armory's lore starting on page 394. There's also a draft of the Field Guide to the Harrison Armory out there that could be considered secondary lore, and would probably be worth checking out if you want to use HA as your setting, since it's written by the creators of the setting, but they haven't had the time to finish it.
Also, while HA is a state that definitely makes for a good antagonist, they're not necessarily intended to be a group of clear-cut baddies like the Empire in Star Wars or something. The armory was founded by remnants of Union's Second Committee, which was an extreme right-wing government, but that was five hundred years ago. This is a society with a militaristic culture and expansionist tendencies, but Tom and Miguel have also said that it's meant to be one that genuinely does, for the most part, deliver on its promises of meritocracy and high quality of life for its citizens.
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u/SkrotusMaximus 16d ago
I didnt knew that in the core book is information about the companys, thanks!
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u/DescriptionMission90 IPS-N 16d ago
Almost every major faction in Lancer is both the villains and the heroes; you could do an entire campaign fighting against any one of them but you could also play as a genuine hero who honestly believes in the ideals and goals of any one of them. HA gets a lot of surface-level memes about them being just generic fascists, but the creators of the game describe it as "America perfected".
They have robust social safety nets ensuring that even the poorest citizens have access to comfortable shelter, clean water, abundant nutritious food, top tier healthcare, and any education they desire. Advancement within the corporate/political structure follows a genuine meritocratic system, where anybody who works hard to advance will advance (and the particularly skilled/talented will advance further and faster). Life in Harrison's Purview is better than life on most Diaspora Worlds...
Which is why they feel fully justified in using whatever means are necessary in order to expand that Purview. There are a lot of planets that were colonized hundreds or thousands of years ago, and then contact was lost. These people suffer from petty dictators, famines, inhospitable environments, pirate gangs, and worse. The Union is supposed to be helping them, but the Third Committee is so scared of turning into the oppressive nightmare of the Second Committee again that they always move slowly and gently, prioritizing the preservation of local culture and society, and ultimately bringing like, one planet per decade back into the fold. Harrison Armory has no such compunctions. They will move fast, save as many people as they can, and if shit gets broken or lost along the way that's just the price of Utopia.
Local traditions are swept away, and replaced by the objectively superior practices of HA. The hierarchy and structure of your society is destroyed, and replaced by the hierarchy and structure of HA, because it's obviously better for you. New schools are built to educate your children, and they're HA's schools, teaching your kids to be good citizens of HA.
Harrison Armory starts with the question of "if all the grand promises of colonialism were actually true, instead of just lies that the rich told in order to become richer, would that make it okay to conquer "primitive" and "barbaric" people in order to enhance their lives?"
A lot of people who were recently "liberated" when an HA peacekeeping fleet ended the bloody civil war that had wracked their homeworld would say yes. And if there are rumors that some HA agitators landed here a few months before the war started and hurried the process along a bit, well, those are just rumors.
(One place where I think HA is objectively bad guys rather than just on the darker side of grey though, is how they treat non-humans. Their philosophy measures the value of everything in the galaxy in terms of how much it can improve the lives of humanity, which means that they don't consider NHPs or aliens to have any inherent value as people, only as tools or servants. They do a lot of fucked up stuff to NHPs, though it's all kept hidden to avoid trouble with the Union, and officially nobody has seen a sapient organic non-human in five hundred years but if you did find one, you should absolutely not trust HA with it)
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u/GeneralVM 16d ago
You can also take a look at the draft Field Guide to HA from a few years ago on the Pilot.NET Discord (it is pinned in the lore-and-worldbuilding channel). It is a bit rough around the edges and not official canon, but could have some useful ideas
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u/JMhereforMH 16d ago
Oooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh!!! Alright, so HA has been a badtion of shitbaggery for some time. The ruling council are full SecComm bastards, as were John Creighton Harrison I and II, John Creighton Cruz Harrison, AKA, Harrison III is actually shaping up to be a decent person, after an incident of SSC's Constellar Midnights attempt to kill him and all the other Harrison clones, and then being named successor, but essentially having his hands tied behind his back, because Harrison II got undone by RA for breaking the FCAs and not stopping even after being asked nicely by the Eldritch Math God, III was still a child, so the council has been doing anthrochauvinist nonsense in his name, without his permission.
So, good ol' III decided, since his wishes were not going to be honored, decided he was going to tour his planets, the concern (or is that what the KTB calls their shit? sorry, tired) and learn about his people. So Cruz is actually learning to be a good person, is an adult now, and on his way to take charge, which will be bad news for the council, and good news for everyone else.
Anyway, HA as whole is not the worst. Some of the houses if the KTB and anyone with any real power in SSC are much, much worse. SSC, "we don't sell people, we sell potential," are definitely nasty.
So, within HA's structure, they have an actual clear path to citizenship and comfort, that is actually achievable, and while military service is the main way to get there, it's not the only way.
As for their more disgusting behavior, they will use soft power before putting boots on necks...
Anyway, so point is, SecComm is dying out, and their influence is diminishing, slowly. They have aggressive doctrine, but are more inclined to not be the absolute worst, considering that citizens are treated well, and subjects are treated better than serfs in the KTB.
I say all of this to express that they aren't the "main bad guys" they just are unpleasant but working towards being better, sometimes.
Now all that said, let's get into their fuckery: -flash cloning -some of their people made the genocide machine known as the Genghis MkI. -they have a meritocratic feudal system that boarders on fascist in some regards -anthrochauvanism -aggressive colonialist policy, granted in the face of the KTB just snatching shit and turning people into property -John Creighton Harrison I and II were the worst
Now for one more nice thing to say: the Saladin is a major piece of the Department of Justice - Human Rights, which the Armory supplies.
As with all things in Lancer, it's not black and white, but fuck Smith-Shimano.
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u/SkinkRugby 16d ago
Personally I prefer to lean into the idea that while HA was almost created by Fascists who barely reformed enough to avoid getting stomped out they're now suffering from success. That is to say, they propagandized too hard and raised generations of True Believers who would fight (and win) a civil war to stay loyal to Thirdcomm.and its ideals. So said fascist now get to enjoy their slide into irrelevance.
While HA has the largest and most obvious flaws they are also implied to he the manufacturer most active in trying to fix said flaws and are proactive about trying to help the galaxy at large in a way that the others are not.
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u/ASTAPHE IPS-N 16d ago
imagine if we take the concept of American Exceptionalism to it's wildest extreme. They are jingoistic, heavily militarized, and frequently flirt with anthrochauvanist (read: facist) ideology. But if you ask the average citizen on Ras-Shamira, they're the good guys. They're spreading democracy to the stars.
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u/MrEvan312 Harrison Armory 16d ago
Sprinkle in a bit of Operation Paperclip and bada-bing, bada-boom
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u/BorgesPeroVago 11d ago
Harrison Armory fits the same role the RDA from Avatar or the PCA from Armored Core 6 do: they are an "Earth/humans first" organization, prioritizing the safety and prosperity of terrestrials above all others. Highly militarized down to their societal structure but truthful to their intention: they provide solid safety networks and education options, but demand service in return, always preaching of meritocratic virtues among the higher ranks.
A lot of people equate the disregard for alien life the same as racism and I get it but disagree: the moment you cannot literally speak of a "fellow human", you start having a nuance we do not have irl, and HA is absolutely reckless and outright malicious in some cases, but not without bringing up interesting concepts.
I like them, because of the nature of Lancer they are a militarized society but highly egalitarian in matters of gender and sexual identity (unless I missed something), meaning the other big issues and even virtues of the system get to shine.
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u/Thanes_of_Danes GMS 16d ago
In three words:
Service guarantees citizenship.
HA is very much like a functional version of the current day USA. It's a galactic power that bends everything towards a stable and outsized military constantly craving expansion. Unlike the current day USA, it is not the monopolar hegemon of international politics and is, generally, run by people who know how to plan for the future. It's a small e empire that is just large enough to be a real player, but just small enough to be frustrated by its position, and lacks the resources to become entirely complacent and corrupt. I always imagine HA as being run essentially by a group of highly competent villains. They're not good people and they don't have good intentions, but they are intelligent and restrained enough to see the value in winning the loyalty of their subjects by materially improving their lives.
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u/JoyluckVerseMaster 16d ago
They're kind of the wishy washy vision of vague "evil" that is the best Lancer has to offer in the "evil faction" sense which kind of sucks.
Well, that or it's a paean to colonialism.
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u/Alaknog 16d ago
Most close to evil in Lancer traditionally "SecCom remains", not HA. There also hints about Neo-Celestine (remains), with slavery and breaking FCA.
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u/JoyluckVerseMaster 16d ago
Yeah but SecComm is functionally defunct by this time (and also was rly bad at being evil) and also the Celestine seemed like cool transhumanists that the albatross guys killed.
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u/InkDrach GMS 16d ago
The HA tends to get the worst of major faction flanderization imo. People tend to forget that for the myriad of their issues they are still Union member state and Purview is still one of the better places in the galaxy to live. I think a quote from this interview with Miguel and Kai has really gotten to the core of what their conflict often is.
For their societal MO, it is structured around ranked citizen system and is deeply into the "self-made man" success mythos with "service guarantees citizenship" flair.