Field Guide: The Short Rim

The Short Rim is a setting expansion guide for the game Lancer by Miguel Lopez and Tom Parkinson Morgan.

Most official maps and documents, if they acknowledge the Long Rim at all, mark it as beginning at Rao Co Station. Popular perceptions of the blinkgate and the Long Rim mirror this understanding, depicting the blink station as the last stop before years of empty space. Those who live in the area, though, know better: between the blink station and the beginning of the uninhabitable stretch of space that defines the Long Rim lies a single star system containing five settled bodies designated AR-RC-12 through AR-RC-16. Although these planets and moons have official local names—Thune’s Rest, Brissen, Augrel, Thuwei, and Merle—the fact that those names are seldom used outside of the area is indicative of the general galactic status of the system. These settlements, along with a few nearby stations, form the flippantly named Short Rim, the last bits of habitable rock before the start of the Long Rim proper.

From a galactic perspective, the Short Rim is a place of small, unimportant people, with small, unimportant problems. The people living there, however, know that it’s just the opposite: their lives are as rich and complex as any Metropolitan’s, and their problems are often quite literally ones of life and death. Inter-settlement disputes over borders or mining rights, rampaging wildlife and bandits, and even simple shortages can quickly spiral out of control in the absence of resources to address them.

Campaigns in the Short Rim likely won't have any grand stakes behind them: there is no threat to the galaxy at large, major powers seldom take more than a passing interest in the Short Rim, and battles are fought out of greed or necessity more often than ideology. Playing in the Short Rim means telling stories of a simple, daily struggle for survival: there is room for heroism, yes--perhaps even greater heroism than elsewhere--but there will not be public commendations or handsome rewards. 

To be a Lancer in the Short Rim is to be a hero where no-one is watching, a warrior among those who would avoid war, a shield against the most mundane threats of greed and nature. The Short Rim is not a place of glory, but it is a place of need. It is a place for Lancers.