Pre-Game Information

Operation Solstice Rain: A Lancer side game

Setting

The events of Operation Solstice Rain take place on Cressidium, a planet that was settled by Union’s anthrochauvinistic Second Committee just before it was overthrown by the coalition that would eventually become the current-day Third Committee. As revolution swept throughout Union space, sparked by mounting oppression and atrocities, many SecComm bureaucrats and military commanders fled their homeworlds looking for a safe haven to ride out the storm. Among the places they fled—bringing their friends, families, and politically connected allies with them—was Cressidium, a recently charted and newly colonised world that boasted suitable Cradle-like conditions for habitation and an abundance of natural resources. Information on Cressidium’s location and its colonisation was purged by those who fled there in an attempt to cover their tracks. This included scuttling the world’s omninet infrastructure to prevent detection, and in the aftermath of the revolution the world was lost from official record.

Now, 500 years later (5016u by Union's calendar), Cressidium is a developed world home to a number of major nations and alliances that have formed in the half-millennium since. The world’s SecComm history lies in its distant past, but echoes of it can be seen among its more authoritarian politics. Many of its nations, however, have cast off the anthrochauvinistic attitudes of their forebears and adopted more egalitarian policies in line with those of the Third Committee. For centuries Cressidium has been isolated from the wider galaxy, cut off from Union and the omninet and left to develop on its own, but recently a ThirdComm colonial survey team charting distant worlds made contact. The survey team was surprised to discover a highly developed Diasporan world interested in rejoining the galactic community after centuries of isolation. An ambassadorial delegation was quickly dispatched to Cressidium to begin the process of negotiating its admittance into Union once more.

Operation Solstice Rain begins amidst this ongoing diplomatic process, during Union’s third visit to Cressidium. These trips have been largely uneventful thus far, with most of the delegation group’s time spent shuttling diplomats and scientists to and from the planet, loading and unloading cargo, and running various drills. The action has been taking place behind closed doors on Cressidium’s surface with Union Ambassador Nilan Bannerjee engaging in delicate negotiations between two of the planet’s major nations, the Leandric States Alliance and the Vestan Sovereignty.

These powers have been locked in a cold war for decades, and the continued presence of Union at the LSA’s request has exacerbated tensions between them. The LSA, first to make contact with the colonial survey team, has been very receptive to the possibility of becoming a Union member state once more, while the Sovereignty is much more distrustful. A series of diplomatic summits have been held at the metropolitan LSA port city of Nov Elysia, of which this one is the latest. During the course of these summits, a great deal of Ambassador Bannerjee’s time has been spent trying to find a compromise acceptable to all parties. Accompanying the ambassadorial delegation is a Union Navy ship, the UNS-CV Rio Grande, under the command of Captain Brigid Farris. The Rio Grande is an Ebro-class light carrier, a vessel well-suited for both independent patrols and escort duties like the one she’s currently performing as part of the diplomatic mission. Smaller than a mainline naval carrier, the Rio Grande is nonetheless readily capable of ferrying personnel and materiel both on- and offworld, and she carries a complement of strike craft in reserve in case of unexpected hostilities.

Player Characters