Synchronicity. Coincidence? Malicious sabotage? A desperate bid for survival? Raw competitiveness? All of these, and more, have coincided to unleash a ground shaking crescendo of insanity onto the previously sleepy planetoids of HuEOS 289, LuY 911 and 1777 Du-ε.

“As you land on 1777 Du-ε… welcome to Phyre Festival! FZX brings you the hottest festival in the coldest corner of the human sphere! Music, with our headliner Diamond Hands! Gladiators! Actual living Dragons! Scantily clad sensadoc influencers! You won’t believe the titillating luxury and exclusive adrenaline pumping excitement that FZX has put together for your entertainment!”

The hastily put together Phyre festival is a spectacular and desperate cash-burning gambit designed to boost FZX’s profile across the human sphere, catch the eye of new investors and make the company too big for angry stake-holders to shut it down. Fans of financial prodigies Samantha Ether Moneylady-Harbourg and Cynthia Edgeworth are on edge, hoping they will both manage to escape the sniper rifle sights of shadowy assassins and the tightening noose of the ISS dark-money investigation long enough to reach their imagined “escape velocity”. Let’s keep our fingers crossed everyone that everyone with BitCreds in FZX gets a chance to withdraw them!

A more cautious debarkation from your shuttle is warranted on Lu-Y as a monstrous Stoorworm is wreaking havoc, burrowing through rock and tearing through critical Ammonia mining plant machinery. How it got there remains a mystery, but the Rocaworks and Sterling Forge refineries are badly damaged and this places the entire economy of the planetoid cluster at risk. Desperate Whole Protein executives finally see eye to eye with AWU union reps, both of them united in the need to find a Beast Hunter that can save their shared livelihood (not to mention Jones, the Rocaworks cat).

Not to be outdone by mere humans, Morat forces have released a starving Gurlanak in the Averroes Hospital Parking lot. Frustrated by Haqqislam medical bureaucracy, O-12 parking regulations and their stubborn refusal to pay the 312 citations for illegal animal abandonment, the Morats seem determined to have the last word. Whether it’s a practical joke or an attempt to make sure that the Combined Army isn’t outshone by the multiple megabeasts suddenly making the news, one thing is for sure: an unattended Gurlanak has potential to do a lot of damage if nobody figures out a way to slow that big guy down.

The finale of Operation Edgelord: Phase 1 is upon us in November. Choose your Megabeast mission and one of the bonus Classified Objectives below. Figure out what your faction, and your heart, tells you should happen! Will SMH survive or be arrested? Will Tohaa bio-engineers manage to protect the habitats of the enigmatic cave-ducks? Will the hexahedron make sure all debts are paid? Will the ISS agents capture enough FZX employees to trace black money payments? Will the Ammonia mining economy of the planetoid cluster become nothing more than worm food?

Get out there, play some fun games to see N4 out. Our lore team will draw on your contributions, reports and battle scores to write a satisfying finale to this first chapter of Operation Edgelord. We will take a short hiatus to digest the N5 lore, wind our Infinity clock forwards 5 years, and see what’s left of the human edge on the other side. Everything that has happened so far will be drawn into the updated setting when we restart the campaign.

November 2024 Missions

Players may choose any of the following missions to play this month:

Clever Girl	Looks like Officer Terrance stumbled upon a Morat big game hunting ring…
Head Hunter	Samantha Ether Moneylady-Harboil will stop at nothing to keep FZX in the public eye. Anything, including a big Roman Colosseum style showdown with a MegaBeast is on the (literal Infinity) table!
Wormsign	Uh oh… looks like the reason for all the maintenance crew complaints has become clear… now to determine how the problem started…

If you have a mission that fits your narrative better, feel free to play it instead (I included an “Other”) option in the submission form.

Bonus Mission Points

If you’d like to try and guess what the bonus point mission is, have a look at John’s story and if you like what you see, buy his book!

Reminders

It’s worth pointing out that these missions have some mechanics that are perhaps unfamiliar to you especially if you’ve been playing predominantly ITS missions only. Here’s a few things to keep a look out for to make sure you’re playing the mission as intended:

• End of Turn Scoring – Instead of scoring at the end the game round, i.e. after both players have had a turn, we score at the end of every player turn. This gives us the ability to help balance first/second player turn advantages/disadvantages. This mechanic has been explored by many mission designers, and we use it here!
• Entire Order (Long Skill) Objective Interactions – Instead of short skill + WIP, many objective interactions have been changed to require base contact (as before) but now are a long skill without a WIP roll. This prevents the non-interaction where a specialist just dies on the objective to make an unopposed WIP roll and also addresses the “well I would have won that game but my WIP 15 specialist rolled 17, 18, 18, 19, 17 on the objective over five orders” problem. This mechanic comes from BlessedBe and the IGL team. Huge thank you to them!
• Specialist Bonus is now Short Skill + WIP – In the missions where the objective interaction is a long skill, typically we’ve changed the specialist bonus from +3 WIP and +1 Burst to being able to do the objective interaction skill as a short skill, with the return of the WIP check. For example, this would represent a Hacker being able to “cut corners” when hacking an objective but maybe failing under pressure. In contrast, an Engineer will follow the full procedure and have a guaranteed success, but it will inherently take longer. Thanks to TheDiceAbide for this idea.
• Dominate and Subjugate – Dominate is more points in a zone, Subjugate is be the only one with models (not markers) in a zone. Subjugate is a Corvus Belli invention and comes from Resilience Ops, we just borrowed the mechanic.

Remember, the above mechanics are just reminders that some of the missions have these mechanics. They are not overriding rules for missions. Whatever the missions say takes precedence.

November 2024 Faction Lore and Objectives

Choose one of the two following objectives:

That Mini is Phyre

Use a painted megabeast (both players score if the game photos include one) to help save SMH, raise her profile and stop FZX from failing. If Disasteroid! ratings hit a new high, maybe you can even stop the “random” series of tunnel detonations wreaking havoc in the fragile ecosystem of the cave-ducks. Megabeast battles on Lu-Y may decide the fate of the mining operations there, or open it up for hostile takeover.

Extraordinary Rendition

Throw a bag over the head of an FZX employee and “convince” them to come with you. If your faction scores well here, you might even capture SMH herself. You might steal bitcred crypto millions, be able to make sure your favorite corporate stakeholders get what they deserve, or unearth a scandal that will shake the human sphere.

To accomplish this, add a single neutral HVT to the game table, deployed on the centerline. If you end with the HVT in your deployment zone in a CivEvac state, you score!

NA-2 Employment Permits

We will be changing this once N5 lands.

If you’re playing a Non-Aligned Army (NA-2), you can play a game as any of the major factions above, assuming you have an authorized permit (green check mark). Some NA-2 factions simply won’t work for particular major factions or major factions won’t hire particular mercenary companies, so it’s not a free-for-all of playing whatever you like for whatever faction you like. There have to be some rules.

The Japanese Secessionist Army (JSA) is a little different in that it’s technically not a mercenary faction, but it’s still subject to influence and coercion by some major factions to align military goals. We model this as “working with/for” those factions here.

We’re closing the Ducktail Bill Board for now to re-work it for the next phase of the campaign!