Beneath the Static: A LANCER Narrative

A Call from the Void

Your squad mounts and begins their warm-up procedures, causing vibrations throughout the room. Mech cores ignite one after another, their sequential reverberations sending creaks through the hull. The ship, ill-suited to support such titanic engines, gives a reluctant shudder as the lights flicker and the propulsion stutters.

Minutes later, a soft thump and muffled hiss inform you that you’re entering the atmosphere, the Parnassus sundering the air above Caduceus. Remy's voice crackles over the squad net, "Stand by... Compensating controls established, on approach vector. Prepare for landing."

The approach smooths out momentarily before violently veering to the side. Howling winds force their way through the opening bay doors, nearly eclipsing the din of distant munitions. As you watch the grass blur by beneath you, Captain Fairhaven shouts over the radio.

"It's too hot, you'll need to jump! We'll hold it steady as long as we can!"

***

Beneath the Static is a third-party structured mission module for the Lancer RPG system. With a full-length mission and 6-8 hour run time, Beneath the Static functions as a standalone story arc or as a supplement to be incorporated into an ongoing campaign. This module follows three to five LL2 characters as they respond to a distress signal from a terrestrial colony, though the pilots will soon discover not all is as it first appears.

Flexible by nature and extensively playtested, Beneath the Static is specifically crafted to empower the GM running it. Alongside a paid copy of Lancer, this module contains everything you need to run a mission without constraining the creativity of the GM nor their players. Swap NPCs, settings, and plot hooks without requiring extensive narrative rewrites.

This module contains:

• One full-length Lancer mission featuring both narrative and combat beats.
• Detailed setting info, including a ship, crew, and enemy faction, any of which can be easily swapped to better fit ongoing campaigns.
• An optional clock-based mechanic to complement an investigative narrative beat.
• Tactical and narrative advice for two combat encounters.
• Two full-color battlemaps with square, hex, and gridless variants.
• Formatted and structured via the excellent Lancer RPG Template (by Michael Prijatlej).

A Note on Player Safety:

A portion of this module relies on extensive gaslighting to facilitate an investigative scene. While accommodations and considerations are discussed in the module, always ensure that player safety is taken into account before choosing to running Beneath the Static.

***

Licensing & Additional Information:

This module requires information for NPCs and sitreps from the full, paid version of the Lancer Core Book. It can also serve as a jumping-off point for the Dustgrave narrative by Massif Press, though Dustgrave is not a requisite to run this module.

The module was formatted utilizing the Lancer RPG Template by Michael Prijatelj, used under CC BY 4.0.

The battle maps were made in Dungeondraft using assets from:

• 2-Minute Tabletop, used under their General Licensing and Attribution
• White Fox Works, used under CAL-BY-NCR
• Zero-G, used under CAL-BY-NCR
• Asset Emporium, used under CAL-BY-NCR

Beneath the Static is not an official Lancer product; it is a third party work, and is not affiliated with Massif Press. Beneath the Static is published via the Lancer Third Party License.

Lancer is copyright Massif Press.