The Vestan Sovereignty as Villains

Now that I have made personal adjustments to Solstice Rain’s combat encounters, it seems like an excellent time for addressing the primary villains of Operation Solstice Rain: The Vestan Sovereignty Armed Forces (VSAF). Specifically, I plan to zero in on Colonel Sorvan Kiros using Nicholas Johnson‘s RATS method (Relatable, Antagonistic, Threatening, and Special) for writing compelling villains. This method comes from a lesson Johnson wrote for the Summer 2022 Write Your First Adventure workshop. Thankfully, Solstice Rain already provides most of this information; instead, the intent of this exercise is to:

Review and understand Kiros and the VSAF so I can later foreshadow their motivations and capabilities with clues.
Flesh out any perceived gaps in the RATS method to solidify Kiros’s presence in the minds of the players.

Solstice Rain is a module about urban warfare and civilian trauma, and the VSAF is behind most of it. Therefore, I would like to issue a content warning for discussions of: warfare, political radicalism, and militaristic terrorism. For a TL;DR, I summarize the results of this exercise in “The Villain in a Nutshell” at the bottom of the post.

Relatable: Why is Kiros a Villain?

Why is Kiros launching a military attack on Nov Elysia? His motivations, once revealed, should be understandable to the players. To be clear, they don’t have to agree with him, just understand why he’s leading this assault. Solstice Rain leaves Kiros’s motivations purposefully vague, so GMs can (and should) pick a reason for his aggression. To this end, the rest of this section is my interpretation of Kiros and the VSAF.

From what I know of Kiros, he’s a high-ranking member of the VSAF. Additionally, the Vestan Sovereignty themselves is an authoritarian state experiencing a reactionary surge of nationalistic values and warmongering. Solstice Rain establishes that the existing Vestan government, while frosty towards Union (the PCs’ faction), is not actively seeking open war. Nonetheless, the module heavily implies that there is dissension in the ranks, since the VSAF instigates Solstice Rain’s conflict. For that reason, I decide that Kiros and the VSAF are radicals staging a military coup d’etat. That their leaders debate the Union diplomats instead of condemn them simply outrages the VSAF. To Kiros, this is not the mighty Union of his ancestors, but toothless dogs using lies and deals to conquer planets instead of righteous strength. Fueled by indignation, he leads his comrades to:

Execute the Vestan representatives for perceived treason.
Occupy and terrorize Nov Elysia, a city controlled by their longstanding enemies, the Leandric States Alliance (LSA).
Capture the LSA and Union representatives to spirit them away to TARTARUS, a military prison.
Destroy the PCs’ dropship to demonstrate that the best pilots Union has to offer are nothing compared to the Vestan Sovereignty.

Now that I have established why Kiros and the VSAF are instigating my version of the events of Solstice Rain, I can focus on how this brings them into conflict with the PCs.

Antagonistic: How Does Kiros Oppose the PCs?

How does Kiros get in the PCs’ way or directly interfere with their goals? Solstice Rain lays plenty of this groundwork already: He’s trying to capture Captain Farris and Ambassador Bannerjee, the PCs’ allies. He personally shoots down the PCs’ dropship with his devastating LinAc Beam Cannon. The Vestan forces under his command vex the PCs, their allies, and the local population through anti-air emplacements, communication jammers, and straight-up hostile occupation. Since I already have plenty of examples of the colonel’s antagonism, my primary goal is to signal to the PCs that Kiros caused all this strife (directly or indirectly). I can do this through an assortment of clues:

The civilians in Beat 1/Combat 2 claim that they never thought a “Kiros Incident” would happen in Nov Elysia, implying a history of the colonel’s suspected covert activity.
The VSAF Anti-aircraft team in Combat 3’s trainyard mentions offhand how they wish they had a beam cannon “like the colonel used to shoot those Unionites [the PCs] out of the sky.”
Comms signals extracted in the aftermath of Combat 4 indicate that Kiros’s Vestan Special Operations Unit 33 has been capturing diplomats — including Ambassador Bannerjee — around the Hall of Consuls.
Captain Farris, if rescued during Combat 5, definitively conveys that Sorvan Kiros orchestrated this conflict. She knows the LSA has long suspected him and his black ops team of executing sabotage and terror attacks against the LSA.

I can foreshadow an upcoming fight with Kiros by dropping the colonel’s name in relation to these acts of antagonism. Thanks to this notoriety, the battle will hopefully feel much more personal to the PCs. But can Kiros actually obstruct the PCs, or will he be a speed bump to their victory?

Threatening: What Resources Does Kiros Have?

What resources does Kiros possess that can meaningfully threaten the PCs’ goals? Obviously, he commands the Vestan forces sowing chaos in Nov Elysia, but he also has his own black ops team, Vestan Special Operations Unit 33. In addition, since I decided to use every NPC class in the Lancer Core Book, Kiros’s forces sport a diverse range of loadouts. To briefly cover what Solstice Rain already presents, Kiros has the following assets at his disposal:

Devoted soldiers piloting a wide variety of mechanized chassis engaging the PCs throughout the city.
An anti-air team in a defensible location, actively shooting down reinforcements from the PCs’ home ship, the Rio Grande.
A team with high-tech e-warfare and invisibility suites jamming the PCs’ communications.
At least one stealth submarine and supporting vehicles necessary to execute a surprise amphibious assault on Nov Elysia’s ports.
A black ops team capable of herding and capturing political prisoners, like Captain Farris and Ambassador Bannerjee.
An experimental chassis (his EX-101 Nemesis) loaded with munitions, a teleportation drive, and laser weapon that destroyed the PCs’ dropship.

As shown, Kiros commands a multitude of impactful threats to the PCs’ goals, without needing any modifications from me. The last asset in this list is actually one of the most important, as Kiros’s custom mech is the key to crafting a memorable boss fight.

Special: What Makes Kiros Unique?

How is Colonel Kiros remarkable? What characteristics or mannerisms can I highlight while running Solstice Rain? From the motivations I established in the “Relatable” section, Kiros feels like a diehard zealot and maverick. This actually perfectly fits his choice of mech, given the features I previously established: His Operator mech is menacing and bleeding-edge (at-will teleportation, huge laser beams, incredibly deadly), but risky for his personal health (Telefrag deals self-damage, and the mech explodes and kills him upon destruction). In battle, I can portray him as making calculated risks in attempts to “one-up” the PCs. I can present the players with art for his distinctive mech and depict his disdain towards Nov Elysia with his wanton use of the Short-Cycle Lance. By melding Kiros’s motivations I outlined above with his actions and equipment prescribed by Solstice Rain, I can create a memorable expression of Kiros for a satisfying boss fight.

The Villain in a Nutshell

To sum up, using the RATS method, I can create an at-a-glance reference card for Sorvan Kiros:

Two-Sentence Summary	Zealot and maverick colonel of the VSAF. Expert in sabotage and military terrorism, both overt and covert.
Relatable	Thinks Union is weak and that any deal to join them will end in ruin. To prevent this, he helps stage a coup d’etat to take control of the Vestan Sovereignty and launch a war against Union and the LSA.
Antagonistic	Shoots down the PCs’ dropship. Captures the PCs’ allies, Captain Farris and Ambassador Bannerjee. Directs his forces to disrupt the Rio Grande’s efforts to rescue their people and Nov Elysia.
Threatening	Commands a broad range of infantry, amphibious vehicles, and mechanized chassis. Personally leads an elite black ops unit. Leverages high-tech equipment, both through his tech specialists and his prototype mech.
Special	Plays high risk/high reward. Willing to enter risky situations and cause collateral damage if it achieves his goals. Pilots a bleeding-edge mech with high power and a low safety rating.

Following this reference, I can seed my remix with clues grounded in the villain’s actions, motivations, and capabilities. Which is important, since my next objective is to create a revelation list of clues to reorganize Solstice Rain’s scenes into a node-based, urban point crawl.