L A N C E R

Harrison Armory

A Lancer Supplement
Ver 1.8.5
Miguel Lopez
Massif Press
Field Guide:

Harrison Armory, 3135u-5016u

Supplemental Information for ​Lancer​ v 1.8.5
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 ​Foundation 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)

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 Harrison Armory Timeline

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

The Think Tank

Foresight
Manifestation

The Concern of The Throne

Harrison III
The Steward Council
The Dawnline Shore
Harrison Armory At-A-Glance

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Harrison Armory Timeline
3135u​ - Ras Shamra colonial rights granted to commune families

3199u​ - Ras Shamra settled

3350u ​-​ 3360u​ - Ras Shamran Pandemic

3360u​ - ​3500u​ - First Temperate Period following the plague years

3500u​ - ​3600u​ - Ras Shamran Trium cedes control to Union (Second Committee). GMS
Special Project site surveyed and established.

3600u​ - ​4500u​ - Second Temperate Period

4500u​ - ​4600u​ - Hercynian Crisis and the fall of the Second Committee. Third Committee
established. Harrison Armory established.

4600u​ - Harrison I remands himself to Union custody. Executed by hanging.

4600u​ - Harrison II ascends to the Temperate Throne.

4600u​ - ​4815u​ - Third Temperate Period

4815u​ - Harrison II dies.

4828u​ - Harrison III ascends to throne. Begins the Ageless Survey of the Purview. Stewards
rule in his stead.

4828u​ - ​5016u​ - Fourth Temperate Period, ongoing.

5017u​ - Harrison III expected return to Ras Shamra.

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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

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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

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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.