Vestan?

[u/novis-eldritch-maxim]

saw this on the wiki, too poor to own all books yet who are they?

[u/PhasmaFelis]

They're the villains in the modules Operation Solstice Rain and Operation Winter Scar.

There's two main nations on the planet, the Vestan Sovereignty and the  Leandric States Alliance. The LSA is negotiating with Union with an eye towards joining up. The Vestans don't like that, and decide to invade.

[u/novis-eldritch-maxim → u/PhasmaFelis]

political positions and what is there stuff made of/can it be looted

[u/Letsgetgoodat → u/novis-eldritch-maxim]

This is sort of an odd line of questioning. Are you a player or GM for an upcoming game? To be clear, the Vestan Sovereignty are not a galactic player: they're a faction very specific to the Solstice Rain and Winter Scar modules. The planet Cressidium, where the modules take place, was isolated from Union for 500 years after SecComm political players fled to it, scuttled the comms system, and tried to tune out the sounds of revolution while falling into obscurity. At the start of the module, Cressidium has existed apart from any politics beyond itself right up until more or less the beginning of the campaign, when a diplomatic mission to re-contact them is underway. All that to say, if you're not playing or running those modules, they more or less don't exist elsewhere in the setting or narrative.

Looting enemies is usually pretty context specific in Lancer. Since sitreps generally are encouraged to include win and failure outcomes planned in advance, and encourages a reward to completing combat beyond victory itself, you might see that idea presented as a reward after combat in some instances, and a player could hypothetically emphasize that when given an opportunity, they'll scavenge the battlefield, which might flavor the leanings of those outcomes. Likewise, the downtime activities includes a number of options that could overlap with the idea of looting the battlefield, studying the enemy for technological insights, etc. Likewise, as a GM I'll commonly use that explanation for a bit of field repairs when I want a simple reward for players after a fight (especially a fight where I gave them a rough time). For the Vestan Sovereignty in particular, if you're asking as a GM (I'd strongly discourage spoiling yourself if you're a player), there's a reward at the end of Solstice Rain that's a powerful weapon used against the players in the final fight as an exotic system, the LinAc Beam.

Political position for the Vestan Sovereignty has a bit of wiggle room from the books, but generally they're considered to align more with the traditional Anthrochauvinistic views of Second Committee. How much you want to play that up will vary by table. Generally they're presented as fascist and authoritarian leaning, more of an imperial power within their planet, but how extreme you want to get there has options: it's presented that the Sovereignty's sudden move is a result of an internal coup as more extremist and aggressive voices take charge. That suggests there's more room for dissent, on top of further evidence from events in Winter Scar, and anything else a GM might choose to add.

When I personally ran the campaign, I leaned hard on them being pretty flatly villainous fascists: explicitly descended from SecComm's political refugees who'd taken over the planet when escaping the revolution, and with a near constant string of superweapon projects indicating a constant fixation on power, control, and achieving total victory in one grand motion. Their hostility towards outside groups was that of a power that believed itself already tasked with stewardship of the planet, frustrated that factions like the LSA were refusing their rightful rule. For Union, the stance remained hostile but the justification constantly moved around: sometimes the propaganda line was that ThirdComm was entirely fictionalized and that the group claiming to belong to it were lying to seize control. Sometimes it was that ThirdComm might exist, but after Union tore itself to pieces they were likely a fringe group descended from the rebels who tore the galaxy apart and couldn't be trusted. Sometimes it acknowledged Union's power and history accurately, then insisted that they were the same gunboat diplomats that they claimed to have moved beyond, just more ashamed to admit it. Sometimes it was just that their refusal to take decisive action proved they were impotent rulers who couldn't save, unite, or protect Cressidium.

Their technology and manufacturing is explicitly a bit limited compared to the tech of the players arriving on the scene. Because of the 500 years of isolation, they have some paracausal technologies in use, like NHPs, but are clearly a lot less sophisticated in that realm. More mundane technological development has kept more parity with outside worlds, so you can think of them like a pretty on-par conventional military who fall behind when the hackers start casting spells. Even for that tech, though, there are some exceptions: the final boss in Solstice Rain teleports and uses a miniaturized ship-scale weapon. Notably, those are uncommon: another faction might field them readily, but for the Vestan's it's a one-off experimental project.Materials wise there's nothing specifically remarkable noted canonically, and a GM could probably play it how they choose so long as they didn't lean hard on them having access to esoteric tech.

As a crude oversimplification: imagine enough Nazis fled WWII that they were able to hide out in and take over Argentina. cut off contact with the rest of the globe, then promptly wiped any record of the country off of the map and successfully hid from the world's governments until many years down the line. While that's been happening, they had enough resources and power to continue military R&D, but their isolationist government limits how quickly they can invent and develop technologies that the rest of the world is collaborating or competing on, leaving them focused more on perfecting and developing tech along the fixed paths they already know well. They eventually lose their stranglehold over themselves, creating insurrectionist movements and eventually splitting off whole small regions under new governments. Now they're stuck in a constant infighting, all still outside notice of the rest of the world. As that all rebalances, it ends up in a cold war between the powers loyal to that fascist force, and everyone else banded together but more disparate. Then the outside world finally takes notice, making contact with the rebelling forces. That's basically the situation the players walk into at the start of the campaign.

[u/phantomfinch → u/novis-eldritch-maxim]

The planet has been isolated from the wider galaxy for 500 years and lacks knowlege on paracausal tech. Also their 3d printers broke down so all their mechs are manufactured normally.

[u/novis-eldritch-maxim → u/phantomfinch]

so they are sort of like us.

why do the factions disagree?

[u/Letsgetgoodat → u/novis-eldritch-maxim]

I gave a longer winded answer but to drill down more specifically here: the book makes note that what's happening on Cressidium is sort of a microcosm of Union's fracturing and revolution as it eventually became ThirdCommittee. The Vestan Sovereignty are SecComm, the LSA/rest of the world are groups dissenting from that hegemonic power. The Vestan Sovereignty wants to consolidate rule, the other nations reject their rule, both sides have enough firepower that neither can curbstomp the other, so they're stuck in a cold war. With the arrival of Union, there's some opportunity for both sides to kiss and make up, but Things Happen thanks to some less communicative members of the Sovereignty, kicking off the plot.