Field Guide: 

Harrison Armory, Pt 1 (3135u-5014u)  

Supplemental Information for ​Lancer​ v 1.8  
Written by Miguel Lopez 
 
 
 
 
 
“What good is it to mourn the dead without celebration in equal? And in this I do include 
the great works, torn down by those without the courage to face what must be done. 
What do tears mean to them? 
 
I say to you, beloved all, there is no need for grief in isolation. To have died in this great 
service is to rise as a martyr and carry on the crimson banner of progress. I envy those 
honored dead, who see now all things, who now possess the wisdom hidden to us -- the 
living guard -- despite the wonders we command.  
 
Moreover, I envy their repose: to mark the wonders of the present is to make known the 
wonders left unbuilt, the wonders yet-to-come, and the wonders denied to us.  
 
We living have the great task before us: to turn our helm to the wind, and make known 
our intent. 
 
The stars may be held by others, but we know that the soul of humanity is held by us. 
Our dream is that which beats in the breast of all: let us shape the stars, and bring about 
a day where we have no more need for martyrs.  
 
No howling masses ever overcame the might of hope. 
 
Onward, that crimson banner! Onward, humanity!” 
 
- Excerpt of F ​ oundation Day​ speech, 4515, John Creighton Harrison I, 
Director-General of Harrison Armory.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
“If any in the workshop mourn us, say 
We died because the shift kept holiday.” 
- Epitaphs of The War, ​Rudyard Kipling (circ. -6600Us) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1
 
 
Overview
The Purview

History
Landfall Commune
A Plague on All Houses
The Temperate Silence
The Guns of Ras Shamra
Fearkiller

Peace, and What Comes Next

A Life In The Purview
The Old Country
Temperance, Patience, and Empire
A Galactic Legion
Divisions
 
 

2
Overview  
 
Harrison Armory​ -- colloquially, “The Armory” or “The Purview” -- is the galaxy’s largest 
non-Union supplier of arms, armor, heavy machinery, and rugged consumer goods. Next to 
Union’s baseline-tier pan-industrial manufacturer, General Massive Systems (GMS), no other 
corpo-state holds as much command over the manna market.  
 
Harrison Armory commands a massive swath of populated territory, citizenry, and colonial 
holdings. While Union holds hegemonic sway over the populated galaxy, Harrison Armory is 
the largest ​direct​ administrator of territory in the galaxy, followed closely by the Karrakin Trade 
Barons. Where Union now emphasizes a soft power diplomatic approach to managing its client 
states, the Armory has proven a refuge for many of the old Anthrochauvinist, Second 
Committee party members and their ideological adherents. The Armory is a present and direct 
ruler, and its subjects — core or colony — know who rules them.  
 
The Armory’s capital worlds radiate out from their homeworld, Ras Shamra. The most 
developed Armory worlds, their capitals, are built around the Ras Shamran Blink Cluster, a 
group of blink gates in close proximity to a clutch of Gaia worlds owned and developed by the 
Armory.  
 
Owing to the proximity of the Armory’s capital worlds to the Ras Shamran Blink Cluster, the 
Armory has rapid (relatively speaking), stable access to the whole of the galaxy. Transit 
between capital worlds is common among capitol Armory subjects, as is limited-biway transfer 
to and from their colonial reach; goods and materiel can easily be shipped ​in​ to the Armory 
capital, and Armory ordinance/deployments can be easily shipped ​out​ to the reach.  
 
The totality of Armory space is called the ​Armory Purview​ or simply the ​Purview​. To an Armory 
logistician or colonial missionary, accessing the colonial reach from the capital is a simple 
process; to a colonial subject, the gate can be seen, but accessing it might as well be 
impossible.  
 
 
The Purview  
 
The totality of Armory space is called the Purview or Armory Purview. This term encompasses 
all worlds, stations, and populations directly controlled, administered, managed, or otherwise 
under the umbrella of Harrison Armory.  
 
Harrison Armory’s capitol world is Ras Shamra, located in the Rocky Mountain Line (second 
ring) of Union space. The Armory controls five other Union-defined “Core” worlds in close 

3
astronomic proximity, two of them (in addition to Ras Shamra) are formerly GMS Special 
Project worlds, all cultivated space devoted to fabricating the material goods of the Armory.  
 
Around the six Core worlds — Ras Shamra, Ugarit, Whiteharbor, Sheridan, Amurru, and 
Eber-Nari — Ras Shamran local space is a fortress line of close-proximity habitable worlds and 
moons thick with orbital and free-hanging installations, second only to Cradle in its density of 
defenses and hardvac habitations.  
 
The geographically contiguous Purview projects out from the Rocky Mountain Line into the 
Sierra Madre Line, encompassing another hundred or so habitats from settled subcore worlds 
to free-floating stations.  
 
The non-contiguous Purview sites most of its mass in the tenth and eleventh rings of Union 
space, in a pair of proximal colonial zones. One, the Annam Slope, is largely peaceful, an 
Armory colonial project well under way with little internal resistance. The other, the Dawnline 
Shore, is a far more contentious project with multiple active parties vying for control of the 
populated worlds there.  
 
The Armory considers all of the above mentioned worlds and zones to be in its Purview.  
 
 

History 
 
Landfall Commune 
 
Ras Shamra is a severe world. The second body in orbit around Ptah’s Star, it is an unlikely 
home to a major political and economic player in the galaxy. Its people take a fierce pride in 
their world’s severity, a pride that has translated across the galaxy; “Proven on Ras Shamra” is 
a sought-after stamp of quality, a reassurance to pilots, scientists, soldiers, and Cosmopolitans 
the galaxy over that the equipment they’re using was developed, tested, and proven to work in 
the harshest conditions.  
 
Stillborn, with a thin atmosphere and stable geology, rich in metals and crystalline structures, 
Ras Shamra was no one’s first choice as a priority colonization target. After trading hands as a 
bottom-tier mining property, valuable as a long-term investment but prohibitivly distant from 
Cradle space, Ras Shamra was filed as a “dead” prospect. One that, while technically the 
property of its title holder, was too remote or otherwise inaccessible to be worth anything. 
 
First colony rights to Ras Shamra were sold to a filial mining commune during the second 
expansion period, around 3135U. The mining commune was a large collective of seventy 

4
Cosmopolitan mining families and their partners, a population of numbering around five 
thousand in total with a variety bank to reduce viral susceptibility.  
 
The commune that left Cradle did so without the help of the Blink, as the first gates were still 
under construction, and stable channeling had not yet been established. In the early 3100’s U, 
paracausality as a field was not yet defined, and while the Blink would eventually find Ras 
Shamra, like other early colonies it would develop a strong internal culture separate from Union 
well before the hegemon made second contact.  
 
The commune arrived in the Ptah system a mere five generations after departure: by then, 
commune’s political and cultural integrity was strong, and colonization “homecoming” 
narratives had animated the landfall generation into an eager corps. By landfall, the commune 
families had fractured and mixed, separating into three distinct filial-political alignments 
organized into a power-sharing triumvirate. One lead representative from each family, voted on 
from within, would act as Speaker for their group; together, the three would lead the commune 
by consensus.  
 
The world they arrived on was far from paradise. Terrestrial though it was, Ras Shamra was 
cold and unforgiving, frozen in-synch with its own transit around Ptah’s star. Drone transit of 
Ras Shamra revealed the only habitable ground to be the comparatively thin border between 
day and night; the world’s sun side was baked to boiling, a heiloscape marked by great towers 
of glass, lakes of raw lava, and massive geometries of natural metal.  
 
Undaunted, the landfall generation made their first homes inside the temperate zone, the 
terminator line between night and day. A slice of land 6,000km wide at its most broad, even the 
(comparatively) small temperate zone was a tremendous upgrade over the generation ship’s 
biome decks. Bordered by glass and metal mountains on the day side and glacial peaks on the 
night side, the temperate band was a warm valley rich with atmosphere, flowing meltwater, and 
indigenous life. 
 
The first settlement on Ras Shamra was established in this temperate valley, nestled in a 
riparian-costal isthmus that today is preserved as monument to Harrison Armory’s pioneer 
generation.  
 
 
A Plague on All Houses 
 
Harrison Armory was not always so monolithic or centralized. Its past is marked by a bloody 
history of intra-family violence, court politics, assassinations, and short periods of open war. It 
would take a combination of internal destabilization and external pressure to form the dynastic 
corpro-monarchy that is Harrison Armory today. 
 

5
After initial landfall, settlement, and state coalescence under the Shamran Triumvirate, a long 
period of peace and exploration built a clearer map of the world and its natural satellites. 
Colonial expeditions departed monthly for new sites ID’d along the circumglobal river-sea, 
populating the world as Ras Shamra’s initial settlement grew exponentially. Uplift teams 
scouted locations on the day and night side of the world to begin work on a spaceport. 
Meanwhile, grounded science teams and surveyors struck out to the harsh edges of the world 
to set up monitoring stations, observatories, long-range communication stations, and other 
necessary global/local system command installations. 
 
Animated by colonial fervor, Ras Shamra was explored, settled, and exploited. The world found 
its viability point as its population expanded to the millions. Long-range/long-delay 
communications sent to Cradle were finally returned, a century after settlement.  
 
Ras Shamra seemed a sure thing: a stable and promising colony on a resource-rich world, with 
a healthy and growing population, nascent local industry, and nearby viable worlds in orbit 
around the same star.  
 
This stability would not last: the plague years were just ahead.  
 
In the second century of colonial occupation, around 3350U, an agricultural installation in the 
equatorial band reported a rash of illness burning through their laborers. Within days, the 
illness had reached Ras Shamra’s largest city; some combination of population density, 
infection vectors, and limited habitable land all contributed to the growth of the pandemic.  
 
The pandemic hit its peak, burning through the towns outside the capital. Following an 
established protocol, one of the three Triums — chosen by drawing straws — fled to a 
contingency settlement along with a slow but steady stream of citizens not afflicted by the 
plague.  
 
The other two remained in the capital to coordinate the response to pandemic and the 
mounting unrest; they both succumbed to the illness, but managed to buy enough time for the 
evacuation to complete.  
 
The capital on Ras Shamra fell silent. The equatorial band fell silent. The remaining Trium 
ordered a hard quarantine of the Equator and fired an aid request packet to Cradle. 
 
Equatorial survivors attempting to escape via shuttle were shot down by automated systems. 
Checkpoints set up at mountain passes interdicted the rest, killing them before they could 
escape. The crackdown was absolute and unforgiving; there was not yet a cure.  
 
A decade passed. The capital was moved to a large day-side contingency habitat where 
hundreds of thousands of the immune lived and work in exile. By the second decade of exile, 

6
the survivors began to overtax the contingency habitat, and the new Triumvirate came to a 
decision: retake the habitable zone.  
 
A small expedition was dispatched into the equatorial band in order to gather samples and 
report back. The journey took around a year, and their findings were grim: the dead choked the 
city, and the plague lingered dormant on every surface.  
 
Acting on orders from the Triumvirate, the expedition triggered the capital’s nuclear reactors, 
melting down block by block the infected city. Large sections of the habitable band — roughly 
40% of the surface area — was lost, irradiated to kill the pandemic.  
 
The surviving Ras Shamrans began a new project: survive, and in time, rebuild.  
 
 
The Temperate Silence 
 
In the wake of the plague years, the remaining communes unified once more around the 
day-side contingency settlement. Regular expeditions ventured back into the habitable zone, 
testing along the band for areas free of the plague or radiation.  
 
Finding none, work continued on expanding the contingency settlement and its waystations 
that allowed for safe transit across the day side of the world.  
 
This pre-Armory period of Ras Shamra’s history is marked by a quiet expansion of habitats on 
the day side of the world, expeditions into the equator, and building out a landing site for the 
relief nearlighter en-route to the world.  
 
At this time in Union’s history —the 3500’s— the Second Committee was at the peak of its 
power, and would stand for another thousand years (realtime) before its overthrow by the Third 
Committee in the 4500’s. When their relief ships arrived in orbit above Ras Shamra, they 
brought an entire colonial mission with them, outnumbering the planetary population down 
below.  
 
The Trium, seeing no real option, ceded control of the world to Union, who landed and began 
work to convert the equatorial band into a controlled system — an arcology, a combination of 
natural and built environments that act in concert with one another to make a perfect, 
self-contained system. 
 
The Second Committee also deemed Ras Shamra an ideal site for a GMS special facility: a 
massive installation to convert the world into one of GMS’s global foundries, one of only a 
handful of such production facilities across the galaxy. 
 

7
What followed was another long period of development, as the far field team sent by the Union 
Science Bureau quickly developed a vaccine for the Ras Shamran Plague that allowed for 
people to head back into non-irradiated areas of the equator free of cumbersome environment 
suits. Construction of the arcology became the work of generations; construction of the 
foundries and mines likewise.  
 
The reconstruction era concluded with the completion of the first foundary’s initial test run: a 
proof order of hardened environment suits made for GMS’s new line of long-range, all-theater 
exploration equipment. Distributed as a flagship product by GMS — the GMS Hardsuit RS 1 — 
these suits quickly became popular across the galaxy, and Ras Shamra’s engineers, foundries, 
and designers were soon overwhelmed by requests for products, designs, and particular 
adaptations.  
 
The foundry bosses and colonial governor could see the writing on the wall: Ras Shamra’s 
destiny was set. Once a loose collection of communes content to make a modest living in a 
temperate band, the new Ras Shamra -- under the guidance of the Second Committee -- 
would be armorer to the galaxy.  
 
 
 
The Guns of Ras Shamra 
 
Out from the irradiated, plague years of the first half of the 3rd Union millennium, Ras Shamra 
entered the 4the Union millennium a world united under the banner of industry. Great factories 
and fabricators churned out more and more models of the Hardsuit, lines of weapons for 
Union’s ships, flyers, and armored vehicles, weapons and armor for soldiers the galaxy over.  
 
The day and night side of Ras Shamra grew thick with facilities and installations, research and 
development campuses, uplift ports — the processing plants that drove the global arms 
industry in accordance with the Second Committee’s planning.  
 
GMS’s Special Facility by this point had grown to encompass roughly 60% of Ras Shamra’s 
habitable band, slowly converting the temperate equatorial strip into a single unified arcology. 
The irradiated zones they built around, containing them behind massive walls of thick concrete 
and lead, themselves isolated from the rest of the arcology by cold moats of circulating water.  
 
The Armories of Ras Shamra alone supplied fully 30% of all infantry, terrestrial armored vehicle, 
aerial, and orbital weaponry used by the Second Committee’s Union Navy — following their 
prescripts and planning, the GMS officers and governors in charge of the world had converted 
it over the course of fifteen hundred years from a dying plague world to the galaxy’s single 
largest supplier.  
 

8
And yet, they were not done. Despite the ubiquity of their mark — their stamp, “Proven on Ras 
Shamra” was hammered into every hard good made (or designed) on the planet (or on one of 
its satellites) — Ras Shamra’s notoriety as Union’s armorer had not yet been marked. That 
would come with the introduction of the mechanized chassis; specifically, with the introduction 
of the ​Genghis​, and the colonial world, Hercynia.  
 
Hercynia was a rich colonial prospect: carbon based flora, a stable and healthy atmosphere, 
40% terrestrial with the rest given over to temperate saltwater oceans thick with life, it was as 
perfect a candidate for colonization as one could ask for.  
 
Save for a revelation that would shock the Second Committee: Hercynia was home to sapient, 
sentient alien life. A communal race of sentient aviarthropodal beings, quickly coded as 
Egregorians by the Union Science Bureau due to their unique hive-mind-esq 
co-consciousness, spanned the world at a pre-industrial development level.  
 
Humanity was not alone; despite what our fictions and dramas told us, we would not be 
encountered by a fantastic, magical alien race. ​We​ were the ones to come down from on high 
in glittering ships, to show off our wonders, and to begin the work of uplift. Work that would 
prove unsustainable and, within a century, collapse under the weight of Egregorian politics and 
human hubris.  
 
The project on Hercynia failed. Union’s Second Committee, acting on counsel from IPS-N 
logisticians and Ras Shamran strategists, to send in the marines and begin a campaign of 
escalating war on the world. To supply the war effort, they drew from all of GMS’s Special 
Project worlds — to ​end​ the war, they tapped Ras Shamra’s top engineers to design them a 
weapon based off of their Hardsuit RS series, which by then was the premier powered armor 
platform in the galaxy.  
 
Codenamed GENGHIS, the project developed the first mass-designed military-role armored 
mechanized chassis — the first mech — and began testing it in Ras Shamra’s day/night 
proving grounds. The chassis, after a number of iterations, cleared the proving grounds within 
optimal parameters and was shipped in bulk orders to the front.  
 
The GENGHIS, due both to leaked combat footage and sanitized Second Committee 
propaganda broadcasts, became both the face of the Hercynian Crisis and the face of Ras 
Shamra. The mechanized chassis displayed its incredible combat power and competing firms, 
GMS Special Projects, and fabricators began working on their own models, their own variants.   
 
At the conclusion of the Hercynian Crisis and the beginning of the backlash on Cradle, Ras 
Shamra continued its war posture, churning out chassis for the Second Committee’s home 
guard. However, by the time the first non-prototype run of GENGHIS chassis and their variants 
was completed and en-route to Cradle, the Second Committee had been dissolved, the 
majority of their senior party members arrested and on trial for crimes against humanity and 

9
nature. The shipment was re-routed and intercepted by a contingent of fleeing Second 
Committee loyalists, and returned to Ras Shamra.  
 
To fanfare and counter revolutionary fervor, the anthrochauvanists made landfall on Ras 
Shamra, a world that remained loyal to the Second Committee through the length of the short 
revolution. At their head was a party majordomo, John Creighton Harrison -- at the time the 
most senior member of the Second Committee not in the nascent Third Committee’s custody. 
Harrison was welcomed by Ras Shamra as the de-facto leader of a new resistance, and in a 
ceremony at the base of his shuttle’s gangway was anointed Director-General of the Ras 
Shamran Special Facility.  
 
In the following days, Harrison declared Ras Shamra the true and legitimate seat of Union, 
opened the world to any and all loyal party members seeking refuge, and forced out all 
high-profile counter-chauv adherents and activists. Street violence erupted across the arcology 
and throughout R&D facilities on the day and night side of the world as loyalists named names 
and rooted out the revolutionaries among them.  
 
Over the tumult, John Creighton Harrison announced that the Ras Shamran Special Facility 
would no longer be managed by GMS. Instead, all facilities aimed at the production of any 
good, service, product, or resource was to be organized under a single charter, under a single 
name: Harrison Armory.  
 
To solidify his absolute control over the newly named state, he took a new name: John 
Creighton Harrison I, Director-General of Harrison Armory. He named himself, his loyal 
followers from Cradle, and his most fervent supporters on Ras Shamra to the noble class of 
Harrison Armory, and recruited from the pilots, soldiers, and police of Ras Shamra a corps of 
royal guard, all mounted in the final production line of GENGHIS chassis.  
 
Ras Shamra became a beacon for all anthrochauvanist and Second Committee loyalists, who 
flocked to the world as the newly formed Third Committee struggled to secure control of 
Cradle and all of Union’s bureaus. For years, a steady stream of loyalists arrived in Ras 
Shamra, crowding its arcology and uplift ports as the Armory’s new bureaucrats worked to 
process them into best-fit roles. The Armory’s armed forces, the Royal Legion, grew 
exponentially, and the world’s fabricators burned night and day with the heat of production.  
 
A mere handful of years after its establishment, the Armory’s legions prepared to retake Cradle 
with Harrison I himself at their head. However, before the Armory fleet could launch, elements 
of the Third Committee’s UIB that infiltrated Ras Shamra were able to get warning to Cradle. 
Informed ahead of the attack, the Third Committee killed Ras Shamra’s local gate, isolating the 
world and preventing anything but conventional relativistic travel. Unwilling to abandon his new 
world so soon for the void of interstellar space, Harrison I called off the attack.  
 

10
Instead, Harrison I turned back, to return once more to Ras Shamra, where in his absence his 
nobility had begun working to fully unify the nominally unified world. Under their guidance, the 
Home Legions put their GENGHIS chassis to work. All resistance was stamped out within the 
decade.  
 
Isolated from the rest of the galaxy by conventional travel, but connected via loyalists 
everywhere, Harrison Armory sought its next great project.  
 
It found it right next door, in a proximal colonial development system: the Interest.  
 
The Interest was a hub of GMS Special Project world-factories and claim-stake colonial 
settlements, eleven worlds of varying development level with a total population in the hundreds 
of thousands. There were considered off-limits to annexation under the laws of the Second 
Committee, officially properties under the protection of the Union Colonial Mission. No other 
nation could make overtures to the Interest until they were judged of significant development 
level by the UCM.  
 
However, the Armory was not alone in their desire to annex the Interest. Another galactic 
power had its finger to the wind, and picked this moment to make its move.  
 
The Karrakin Trade Baronies, long hemmed in by the First and Second Committees, turned 
their pendulous, ancient federation and its massed clone armies to the Interest. Here they saw 
their prize: three fat GMS Special Project worlds, and eight fine worlds besides with all the 
labor and potential value they could desire.  
 
With great fanfare the Baronies launched their fleets, ignoring the pleadings of the newly 
empowered Third Committee. What could the upstart revolutionaries do to them, with the 
Union Navy in open civil war, the Colonial Mission dissolved, and blink gates going dark from 
the outside in?  
 
Ras Shamra stood alone before the old crown, numerically outmatched.  
 
But they had something the Karrakins had yet to encounter: the mechanized chassis, and the 
last of the GENGHIS-1 world-killers.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

11
Fearkiller 
 
The years of political turmoil and revolution in Cradle did not go unnoticed by the rest of the 
galaxy. While most states and worlds could only observe and hold for a final decision, one 
state had the will and power to attempt to affect a significant shift in galactic political polarity.  
 
Some of the Karrakin Trade Barons saw in the fall of the Second Committee and the unification 
struggles of the Third a chance to unify and claim sovereignty over their ancestral stellar 
holdings — and maybe scoop up some new holdings in the process.  
 
Under the rule of their then-leader, Prime Baron Degarrote Bem Karraka, the Baronies 
collected their nobility and devised a plan: while making an overt diplomatic appeal to the Third 
Committee, the Royal Navies would strike deep into the Interest, gathering up as many worlds 
as they could before the Third Committee could stop them. 
 
This would assure them a twofold victory: First, their diplomatic overtures would secure them 
political favor and continued economic dominance under the Third Committee, while leaving 
them free of the headache of administering the galaxy at large.  
 
Second, the Interest had long been off-limits to the Baronies under treaties they signed with 
the Second Committee. Taking the Interest would be, arguably, within their rights as the 
Second Committee had been dissolved, and would be difficult-to-impossible for the Third to 
contest materially — all the Baronies had to worry about was the loyalist remnants of the 
Second Committee on Ras Shamra, a world inside the Interest.  
 
So the Baronies gathered up their fleets, their infantry, and their armor, and began the long 
burn out towards the Interest. Their first target was formerly a Ras Shamran contingency world, 
now an early Harrison Armory holding: Creighton, a colony renamed after the Director General, 
where Second Committee Cosmopolitans and refugee nobles came to retire.  
 
Creighton was a small, verdant moon, the largest of a few dozen that orbited a massive gas 
giant in the stellar neighborhood of Ptah’s Star — a ripe target for the Baronies to take and 
hold as a beachhead into Interest space.  
 
The Third Committee made diplomatic moves to try and stop the attack, but with their navy at 
reduced strength and ground forces committed across Cradle, they could not make any 
physical imposition beyond peacekeeping and, in time, refugee resettlement. Furthermore, the 
Interest was close enough to the Baronies that the federation made no use of the Blink: all 
exploitation could be managed with sublight travel.  
 
Creighton fell with little resistance, as the ground forces didn’t amount to more than a militia 
tasked with operating anti-aircraft guns and anti-orbital missile installations. After a six-hour 

12
assault, the Baronic Warhost had its beachhead. From Creighton, they could rearm and 
resupply their Warhost and begin their annexation campaign in earnest.  
 
And begin that campaign they did. Within the first year, the Baronic Warhost had taken five of 
the eleven populated worlds in the Interest. By this time, their Warhost was spread thin, so they 
halted their advance and dug in: new levies and clones were needed, warships were in need of 
resupply, and tribute already taken needed to be shipped back.  
 
Ras Shamra remained a rock against which the Baronic Warhost broke: their attacks were 
light, just scout ships skimming the world’s atmosphere and dropping small kinetics into the 
ocean or the empty day or night side of the world, but it allowed both sides to test the other’s 
ability.  
 
Ras Shamra only needed to hold for Harrison I and his fleet to return. He did so in a thunderous 
way, attacking not the outlying Baronic garrisons but their main beachhead at Creighton. 
 
Abandoning his light and medium draft ships, Harrison I converted them instead into missiles, 
driving them directly at the main corps of the Baronic fleet at near-​c s​ peeds, their reactors 
timed to complete their catastrophic meltdown in the middle of the Warhost.  
 
Behind, Harrison I and a hundred thousand pilots in field-modified mechanized chassis — early 
Saladin models — and GENGHIS-1 platforms rode RAMROD kinetic clusters into the rest of 
the fleet, leaping off at the last moment to move in and board any Baronic ship that remained. 
Behind all this, Harrison I’s capital ships drove petajoule kinetic after petajoule kinetic into 
Creighton’s surface, shattering the moon under massive impact and tectonic destruction.  
 
The entirety of the Baronic Warhost’s senior command, including the Prime Baron Degarrote 
Ben Karraka and his first heir, were killed in the attack. Three other major houses were 
beheaded in the attack: the houses of Stone, Glass, and Smoke.  
 
Harrison I sacrificed his namesake world to save his new throne. The rest of the Interest War 
played out quickly, with the surviving Baronic forces surrendering to Harrison’s legions. Most 
took Harrison’s offer of conversion, swearing to uphold his throne and crown — to them, he 
was simply another ruler.  
 
After suffering such a dramatic defeat, the Baronic Warhost surrendered, and the Interest War 
concluded.  
 
Once more, and for the final time, Harrison I returned to Ras Shamra. This time he descended 
from his shuttle armored in his own Saladin, to a capital untouched by war, a population of 
millions thronging the main concourse of the arcology as Harrison I, his captured Barons, and 
his victorious legions marched on parade. The population chanted his name, the call sign 
painted on the side of his Saladin, the hero’s title broadcast throughout the Interest worlds:  

13
 
Fearkiller.  
 
The defeat of the Baronic Warhost would go unchallenged. Harrison I, Fearkiller, 
Director-General of Harrison Armory, claimed dominion-by-victory over the entirety of the 
Interest, renaming it the Purview, and began an aggressive colonial mission to secure his claim 
over the worlds therein.  
 
The Baronies retreated to lick their wounds and choose a new Prime Baron. 
 
The Third Committee finally secured its hold on Cradle, tamped down the counterrevolutionary 
elements within the Union Navy, and began an aggressive buildup of its new Department of 
Human Right and Justice.  
 
The galaxy, balanced on a knife edge, leveled out. The Third Committee held the three pillars: 
the Omninet, the Blink, and Manna. Once more under their control was the might of the Union 
Navy, even if its officers were new and its enlisted contingency inexperienced. The Baronies, 
terribly wounded, were cowed. Harrison Armory, resurgent, was still under the administration of 
one person and stretched ​far​ too thin.  
 
Peace would need to be negotiated, lest the galaxy tumble into a conflict more deadly than any 
it had seen. Detente stretched for decades as all sides grew comfortable in their holdings.  
 
Forty years after the conclusion of the Interest Wars, the Third Committee reached out to both 
the Baronies and Harrison Armory and offered something neither party expected: a meeting, on 
Cradle, to discuss peace and what comes next.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

14
Peace, and What Comes Next 
 
The summit on Cradle was held in a small retreat in the cedar forests near Dharamshala, a city 
that largely survived the Fall and, as a result, became a cultural center for the new humanity. 
Dharamshala was one of the few relatively stable areas throughout the duration of the dark 
ages; Under Union, it became an archive city, a repository for all manner of artifacts and the 
physical architecture that stored hardened backups of all human knowledge.  
 
Despite the momentous occasion, the diplomatic parties arriving in Dharamshala were small, 
and the program was short. A public walk across the red-carpeted tarmac of Dharamshala’s 
uplift port, statements before the press, and then two days of scheduled meetings to hash out 
a peace agreement.  
 
At the head of the Baronic party was the third son of the late Prime Baron, Julian Bem Karraka, 
only thirteen at the time, and his handful of retainers. They can be seen hurrying across the 
tarmac, bundled in fine Karrakin robes to avoid the light rain. It is uninteresting footage, even 
for those who study the Baronies.  
 
The interesting footage is the arrival of Fearkiller.  
 
John Creighton Harrison I, Fearkiller, Director-General of Harrison Armory, arrived on Cradle 
with his son, John David Harrison (later, Harrison II), setting foot on his homeworld for the first 
time in nearly half a century (realtime) after his departure. The archival footage shows Harrison 
I, then an old man moving with the assistance of a slim HA-make exoskeleton, falling to his 
knees, overcome by tears. His son moves to help him, but Harrison I waves him away. 
 
No one approaches the old man, the anthrochauvanist majordomo-in-exile turned regent. For 
two long minutes he weeps on his knees, head down, palms out before him and turned to the 
sky. The rain is steady and light. His son continues on, greets a pair of Union administrators, 
shakes hands with the CentComm and NavComm representatives. The Baronic 
representatives are stiff, but polite. They all wait for Harrison I.  
 
An older legionnaire, helm faceplate up, stands with Harrison I. Crouches beside him, a hand 
on his Director-General’s shoulder, and whispers in his ear. After a few moments, the 
legionnaire helps him up, and the two continue on towards the summit.  
 
That footage is officially suppressed materiel in the Purview today, but still appears on 
occasion on the Armory’s internal social media networks.  
 
The peace talks lasted for a day over their initially booked itinerary, with some tense moments 
of deliberation delaying the summit as the Baronic representatives made a show of heading to 
their shuttles on more than one occasion.  

15
 
In the end, the peace talks were conclusive, and a new galactic order was established:  
 
The Third Committee, with its unilateral control over the Blink, Omninet, and manna, convinced 
the Baronies and Harrison Armory of its place as hegemon. It would continue to manage the 
affairs of the galaxy at large. Union, as envisioned by its founders, would continue, proving 
itself resilient to even the most pressing challenge.  
 
The Karrakin Trade Baronies would be granted one of the former GMS Special Project worlds, 
and their flash-cloning program would be shut down without investigation or persecution by 
Union’s DoJ/HR. They would be able to walk away without punishment, but must operate their 
worlds under the watchful eye of Union regulators for the next two centuries.  
 
As for the Armory, the Third Committee was forced to swallow a bitter pill. While Union 
controlled the blink, omninet, and manna access that allowed the Armory to survive and 
perpetuate itself, they did not have the hard power to take the Armory down by force. At most, 
they could sustain the current blockade, both sides committing forces and resources that 
neither wanted to commit.  
 
A compromise was worked out on the final day. 
 
Harrison I was wanted for crimes against humanity. Despite his loyalty to the Second 
Committee, he was a willing negotiator, eager to see his son and dynasty secure in their power 
in their new holdings. To ensure that end, he was willing to abdicate his throne, name his son 
heir, and stand trial on Cradle if it meant Union recognition of the Armory as a legitimate 
Corpro-State. 
 
The blockaide would end, and both sides could set about making peace -- or, as a cynic would 
interpret it, healing their wounds and gathering strength to strike each other once more.  
 
In the end, Harrison Armory would be allowed to keep its territorial gains, the two new GMS 
Special Project worlds it captured, and enter once more into the galactic licensure 
marketplace. In exchange, they would open their worlds to Third Committee bureaus, 
regulators, and travel.  
 
Harrison I was tried on Cradle, found guilty of anthrochauvanist crimes, and executed by 
hanging -- a death that would ensure his martyrdom and deification in Armory lore.   
 
Harrison II stepped into his role as Director-General and steered the Armory towards its 
present form. He focused on developing the Purview and putting the Armory’s three Special 
Projects — Arcologies, as the Armory calls them — to work churning out new chassis designs, 
including an updated, non-TBK Genghis line.  
 

16
Following Harrison II’s death, the Armory is ruled in the narrative present by Harrison III.  
 
 
A Life In The Purview 
 
What does it mean to be a citizen of the Armory? ​Why​ would someone be happy being a 
citizen of the Armory? Why would people seek them out and pledge to them?  
 
To put it simply, the Armory champions itself as the standard-bearer for Humanity’s raw 
galactic ambition. All citizens and colonial subjects under their Purview are ​theirs.​ To be a 
citizen of the Armory is to be an acknowledged member of an easy hierarchy, with clear and 
attainable ranks — some through great effort, but attainable nonetheless — and a singular 
mission: ensure the perpetuation of the human race in its most mighty form. Bend the galaxy to 
their will, and claim the stars as their birthright.  
 
Armory citizens enjoy rafts of privilege over colonial subjects and non-citizens. A guarantee of 
protection by the Armory Legion. Free travel on and between all armory worlds. A guarantee of 
work, wherever it may be needed. Protection from outside threats under Armory law. A 
guarantee of local cultural perpetuation, so long as you pledge your percent manna — the 
Armory will never dictate who you may worship, so long as you venerate the Temperate Throne 
in addition, and pay your taxes besides.  
 
Armory propaganda highlights countless rags-to-riches stories that motivate new and old 
citizens alike: the colonial subject, once a starving and beaten peon under a brutal war-tyrant, 
now a hale and eager local volunteer for in an Armory Legion, fighting to liberate his world from 
that same war-tyrant. The citizen, loyal subject, who worked diligently for a decade to ensure 
the product her line shipped was of perfect quality, rewarded with a land grant and minor title, 
and lifting her whole family from the citizenry to the nobility in perpetuity. The noble, whose 
power and purview allows them to hear distant cries for help on an oppressed world, who 
organizes an expedition to the planet and liberates it, blessing all who live upon it with the 
chance to begin their own story.  
 
The Armory from the outside might seem a monolithic monarchy, a dealer in weapons and 
worlds with an insatiable appetite. To those raised under its banners, the Armory is a stern 
patriarch — to act in its interest ensures it will protect you, to act against it ensures it will crush 
you. 
 
The Armory, second only to Union itself, is a massive galactic administration, and its works 
encompass every possible interpretation of empire. For every story of successful 
worldbuilding, of infrastructure creation and climate maintenance, of a colonial subject rising 
from the backwaters of their homeworld to the monolithic halls of Ras Shamra, there is another 

17
story — often suppressed, little-known, or unreported — written in the blood of those who 
resisted the Armory’s inexorable advance.  
 
The Armory prides itself on its social ranking system, the Social. A single, unified scheduling of 
all persons under its Purview, the Social is a metric that tracks a given citizen’s social progress 
through the Armory’s hierarchy and rewards them with more privileges as they advance.  
 
Advancing one’s Social class is done through service, speech, action, and betterment. One’s 
scores are rated, ranked, and tracked by the Armory’s massive Social Ministry. Part 
automated, part curated by Social planners and ministers, a given citizen’s Social determines 
their social class, buying power, rights, privileges, available schools, work, and so on. Anyone 
who is a citizen or subject of the Armory has a Social class, which can be increased; one’s 
Social class can be decreased through anti-Purview actions or thought.  
 
Director-General  
The ruler of Harrison Armory, the title of the chief executive. Inherited by the 
chosen child of the current Director-General. Their seat of power is on Ras 
Shamra, in the Temperate Throne estate. 
 
The Director General’s line is managed under special contract with SSC’s 
Exclusive Genomics division.  
 
High Nobility, Planetary Governors 
Planetary Governors, Arcology Administrators, Fleet Masters, Global Architects, 
and Legion Commanders. The final attainable rank via the Armory’s Social.  
  
Nobility 
The nobility of all Harrison Armory worlds, broken into the following sub-ranks 
for civilian/service nobility:  
● State Director 
● County Commissioner  
● Metro Councilmember  
● District Manager 
● Precinct Manager  
● Block Leader 
 
Military nobility retain their commissioned legion rank in addition to any civilian 
rank they may reach after service; they are usually referred to as their rank rather 
than civilian title.  
 
 
 
 

18
 Nobility, Provisional  
The first step into the noble classes. Attainable by any and all citizens of the 
Armory who break into the Nobility tier of Social through works and service — 
typically after exemplary military service augmented by civic engagement.  
 
Citizenry, Able Rank  
To be an Able Citizen is to have a record of service, either civic or military, that 
places a citizen in the top echelon of the citizenry. Most retired or termed-out 
legionnaires and civic workers are of Able Rank.  
 
Citizenry, Purview Standard  
The standard rank of citizen in the Armory. The vast majority of all citizens in the 
Armory Purview are some degree of Purview Standard.  
 
Citizenry, Provisional  
A temporary but common rank, awarded to colonial subjects making their first 
forays into citizenship with the Armory 
 
Colonial Subject 
A broad category, encompassing all colonial subjects of the Armory. Not a 
terminal category.  
 
Non-Purview (“Guests”) 
Travelers, allies, diplomats, and populations on the move through the Purview 
for any long length of time are considered guests of the Armory. If they seek to 
settle in the Armory, they’ll need to meet with a Social minister and set up a 
ranking profile.  
 
 
The Old Country 
 
Seen from Cradle, Ras Shamra is a tiger held close by the tail.  
 
Home to the ideological descendants -- and literal descendants -- of the Second Committee’s 
party leadership, Ras Shamra remains a beacon for those who seek a more aggressive path to 
ensure humanity populates the stars. The Armory’s narrative is simple and appealing: the 
galaxy is a lawless place of scattered worlds in need of taming, and human strength shall win 
the stars. Old, familiar slogans -- ​Ad astra per aspera​, ​Invictus!​, and others --​ ​are frequent 
exhortations of Armory propagandists.  
 
Furthermore, along with Ras Shamra itself, the Armory controls two other former GMS Special 
Project worlds, Ugarit and Whiteharbor. The three together produce a ​titanic​ amount of 

19
weaponry for a broad portfolio of states under Union’s hegemony; their production rates have 
matched GMS’s, and the Armory’s line mech, the Sherman, is second only to the Everest in 
galactic ubiquity. 
 
No other power can back up their imperial ambitions with as much firepower as the Armory. 
The Baronies, while larger in size than the Armory, have only a limited number of current 
generation chassis to field, and few ships of the line with which to contest interstellar territory. 
The Voladores are too decentralized and outwardly pacifist. The Sparri, while known for strong 
individual pilots, have no fleet to speak of, nor anything approaching a standing army of size 
enough to counter the Armory’s legion. The Aun, too distant, and too embroiled in their own 
conflict.  
 
The only check on the Armory’s expansion is Union, whose position is more precarious than 
they let on.  
 
The Third Committee knows that they have a PR problem, and has taken an aggressive stance 
to counter the perception that they do not have a strong vision for galactic peace and 
expansion. Hence the creation of the Union Auxiliary program and the Union DoJ/HR Liberation 
Teams, and their recognition of the Albatross as a nomadic state, rather than the Second 
Committee’s declaration of them being a terrorist organization.  
 
At the time of their revolution their counter-chauvinist ideology was only a plurality stance in 
Union, one that relied heavily on the support of social liberals and moderates who, in the early 
days of the resistance, were uncomfortable with scenes of street violence and harsh rhetoric. 
Following the successful revolution and dissolution of the Second Committee, the Third has 
been forced into a balancing their revolutionary fervor with the tenacious roadblocks of 
holdover moderates who maintain their bureau postings as compensation for helping the 
revolution.   
 
To achieve this goal, the Third Committee must carefully balance diplomatic negotiations with 
proxy conflicts -- sometimes both options meeting a natural meeting point in DoJ/HR liberation 
missions targeting Interest worlds and proactive DoJ/HR investigations out in the Dawnline 
Shore.   
 
Meanwhile, Harrison Armory equipment, machinery, and consumer goods are in high demand 
across the galaxy. As part of an early effort to build diplomatic/soft power connections 
between the Third Committee and Harrison Armory, Union agreed to a standing 20% 
guarantee contract -- an unprecedented unique agreement -- that ensured Harrison Armory 
would, in perpetuity, arm and outfit fully 20% of the Union Navy.  
 
Seen from Cradle, the modern Armory is a distasteful entity. Most grumble and acquiesce to 
current diplomatic and trade agreements, preferring to distance themselves in personal 
politics. Few, though not an insignificant number, decide that the Armory represents the worst 

20
of humanity, and take up arms against the old anthrochauvinist bastion -- either in an official 
capacity as a member of an DoJ/HR liberation team, or by volunteering to join one of the many 
Cosmopolitan brigades that fight insurgent campaigns in the Armory’s colonial holdings.  
 
 
Temperance, Patience, and Empire 
Many hundred years after the Hercynian Crisis and the fall of the Second Committee, Harrison 
Armory remains a bastion of anthrochauvanist thought and praxis. Under Union’s Third 
Committee, many of their more overt anthrochauv policies have become more restrained, if 
their rhetoric has not moderated.  
 
That being said, the Armory, like any other state -- even the more monolithic states -- is a 
nation that contains many cultures and ideologies, from the hardline anthrochauv to the 
moderate, to progressive factions of the Purview.  
 
The majority of the Armory Purview fall into a relatively moderate anthrochauvinist position, an 
ideology largely unexamined as they live in a level of comfort that doesn’t demand they 
question the status quo. For the majority of Standard and Able Citizens, the Armory has a 
founding legend to be proud of -- Fearkiller liberating the Purview worlds from a distant, greedy 
monarchical power -- and nothing but a rosy future of expansion, growth, and access to the 
wealth of empire.  
 
As a Standard or Able Citizen, they are a valued member of the galaxy’s finest armorer and 
manufacturer, one with a history traceable to Cradle and a future of new legends to carve from 
the wild stars. Few know of flash-cloned legions, the massacre on Creighton, or have ever 
heard of Hercynia -- when faced with evidence of the Armory’s crimes, it is easy enough to 
explain it as an astro-political reality that weaker nations, or a people with less resolve, moral 
clarity, or right, would shy away from. There is a reason that the Armory is one of the galactic 
Triumvirate, after all, a position they enjoy through their strength and the good work that they 
do to shape the galaxy not only for the Purview, but for the betterment of all humanity.  
 
To your average Standard or Able Citizen, social progress in the Purview is fair and attainable 
-- through service to one’s municipality or in the legion -- and while there might be need for 
belt-tightening every now and then, they can be assured that the nobility above them is fair and 
rules with the best intentions. Furthermore, they know that if life ever gets boring or feels too 
static, they can always pick up and move out to the “exotic” frontier -- after all, there is always 
opportunity in the colonies.  
 
For the nobility of the Armory, there has never been a better time to live than today and 
tomorrow. The noble classes of the Armory enjoy access to vast swaths of the galaxy, manage 
grand projects of human ingenuity and import, command regiments of the finest footsoldiers 
and line mechs on any world, minister to the most grand civic spaces on any planet, and enter 

21
their family names on records of stone. They make manna through guaranteed revenue sharing 
structures commensurate to their ranking, are celebrated for their work in uplifting and 
expanding the purview -- once your family has advanced from Able Citizen, through the gentry 
ranks and into the nobility, it is quite possible for distant colonial worlds to bear your name.  
 
With rare exception, there is little dissent among the ranks of the nobility. While some might be 
moderate in their anthrochauvinist leanings owing to their exposure to the galaxy at-large -- 
and specifically their common professional interaction with diplomats, agents, ministers, and 
other counterparts from other states, corpro-states, and Union -- many of the most hardline 
anthrochauv partisans can be found with titles before their names. After all, many of the oldest 
and most powerful noble families are descendants from the Second Committee loyalists that 
fled to Ras Shamra at the height of the revolution.  
 
Colonial subjects and the Provisional citizenry are a study in contrast. Generally speaking, a 
colonial subject would not carry the same optimism about their future under the Purview -- to a 
subject, Harrison Armory is represented in the sturdy geometry of their war chassis and 
cuirassed legionnaires. The Armory is a land that encroaches upon the subjects’ homes -- a 
line marked by sandbags, barbed wire, land mines, and k-barriers, that marches forward as 
their independence movements and protests are ground under a literal or figurative advance.  
 
The colonial subjects that choose to cooperate with the Armory, who voluntarily renounce their 
old titles and claims and become a member of the Provisional citizenry, are some of the more 
passionate and ardent supporters of the Armory’s mission of centralization. These are the 
wide-eyed, crisply uniformed colonial subjects shown in homefront dispatches, cheering on the 
Armory and pledging allegiance to the Temperate Throne in their native tongue. They have 
chosen their side, and know that the only way to prove their loyalty is to show it daily in life and 
work.  
 
Taken together, the people of the Armory are largely a moderate body that lives comfortably, 
doesn’t bother much with questioning the political and territorial aims and strategies of the 
Throne, and are largely concerned with bettering their own station and enjoying their own lives.  
 
Competitive leisure culture is highly developed in the Armory: physical and omnisports enjoy 
widespread popularity from the municipal to the planetary level, and have exported their 
fandom across all sectors of space. Purview space is known for its mass appeal media and 
quality of consumer goods -- indeed, some of the most popular omnicasts, streams, drinks, 
and candies on Core worlds across the galaxy are produced in (or under license from) the 
Purview.  
 
The Purview is not known for its literature or high art, though its current architectural 
movement(s) and schools of urban planning, terraforming, and global engineering is widely 
studied across galactic academies. Most museums in the Purview focus in on their own 
histories, though the Harrison Collection on Ras Shamra does display many original works 

22
taken from Cradle during the Second Committee’s flight: negotiations around their return have 
been ongoing for decades.   
 
The Armory features some of the premier training facilities for soldiers, chassis pilots, and tank 
commanders the galaxy over. Many PMCs contract with Armory specialist schools and send 
their operators to Ras Shamra in order to learn from the best -- and the very manufacturers and 
designers who made their equipment -- how to pilot their chassis, armor, or hardsuits.   
 
 
A Galactic Legion 
 
Harrison Armory’s vast military administration is heavily integrated into Armory and 
Anthrochauv culture. Any citizen or subject of the Armory can enlist in the legion and expect to 
gain standing; any noble can purchase a commission (or, if they feel so inclined, enlist) and 
advance their career and title.  
 
Divisions 
Purview Oversight 
The high command body of the Armory’s military forces. The day-to-day work of running the 
Armory’s military administration is performed by Purview Command; The Director-General has 
ultimate decision-making power.  
 
Logistics 
The naval arm of the Armory’s military. Their task is twofold: supply and transport the legions, 
and ensure orbital superiority. The bulk of the Armory’s naval strength is based off a special 
contract with IPSN, to the point that IPSN’s ​Delaware ​hull silhouette is commonly thought to be 
a Harrison Armory hull pattern.   
 
Legion Command 
Legion Command, operating similar to Purview Command, runs the day-to-day business and 
specific operations of the Armory’s Legions. Their strategic envelope encompasses all legion 
operations, from terraforming operations to Acquisitions and Management.   
 
 
 
 
 

23