  Welcome to the world of Lunar Mecha! It's been a long road but I think I'm finally at the end of it; strange that I have to get to the end of a long road just to begin, but I guess that's not so unusual.
If you're wondering what all this 'Lunar' stuff is and don't feel like reading through a wiki, Lunar: The Silver Star is a game that came out for the Sega CD here in America made by Game Arts, translated from Japanese by a company called Working Designs that has just recently disbanded. Both the game series and the company had a sort of cult following, mostly due to the company's eccentric view on localization. While many people hated the way Working Designs did things they had many brutally loyal fans. I was one of them. In fact, this game is more than just 3 years too late but almost 10 years too late-- By the time Lunar: Silver Star Story came out for the playstation in 1998 or 1999 my branch of the fandom had started to get worn out and we ran out of numbers for our Lunar IRC RPGs. When I thought of this game, it was already to late to run a normal game. In a way, Lunar Mecha is a tribute to not only the Lunar Series, but to the IRC fandom on the whole. So naturally, I figured I'd blow up the world and start over.
The World of Lunar Mecha "There is also no concept of any other planets, any great arc to a new world, no myth of a brilliant goddess with hair like the sea and sky who blessed the world with beauty and magic. All they know is, in most every religon on the planet, the story begins with a flood."
 Fig 1: The planet of Lunar suffers a terrible fate: Being drawn by me.
 Fig 2: Dinosaur destroys triangle houses. The second death brought terrible monsters 20 feet high, of which many could fly. They didn't act like normal animals or even normal monsters. The first recorded people called them and affflictions related to them Neiva, but modern people may just call them Beasts. Unlike normal animals, these Beasts were actively violent. They trampled settlements and attacked humans for seemingly no reason. Unlike normal monsters, they seemed able to live off of nothing and, if someone was lucky enough to kill one, they would disintegrate into dust. It wasn't until the ruins of Zuria, a fallen oasis from the monsers, that humanity was able to do much more than run and hide. The source of the oasis's protection was an ancient white tower from the forgotten age. To even try to read the ancient, jumbled words carved on it would cause someone to get sick enough to die. It was thought by the Warriors of the Zurian Ruins that Zurian reign tempted fate and, through their careless living, they brought this on themselves. To try and enter the tower was considered dangerous and blaphemous, and no one attempted for a very long time. They beat back the Whearings and the Skreecries into the Black Mountains by the lead of a supernaturally skilled warrior, Starla Drakken.
 Fig 3: Starla Drakken in all her splendor. When confronted with the tower, she felt it was superstition that no one dared to challenge it, and that their way of life was one of fact and strength, not wishes and fears. So Starla entered the tower alone. No one heard from her for a while, and then the forbidden letters glowed with a stange blue light. Blossoming outward were several magical circles that eventually became the roads and boundries of the city of Drakken, named after Starla. Drakken developed as a practical, social-minded city focused only on making humanity's last stand against these Beasts that roam the land. They developed large suits of body armor called Mecha, run using both mechanics and magic, to rough the dangerous terrain that the beasts are able to live on and to kill any monsters they could. With the tower reactivated, it was able to protect them enough to create these Mecha, and with them they were able to find several other strong settlements that were able to exist in a dangerous world. Drakken's name has become synonomous with its Military Shell, a large section of the city dedicated solely to manufacturing Mechas, pilots, and people to plan their next moves. Everyone dreams of becoming a mecha pilot, but only few pass the test. It takes great mental dexterity, reflexes and luck to control one of these great golems, not to mention a whole bunch of other cliché heroic skills. Once they suceed at the entrance program in Laritta they have to attend 6 years of hard training, 7 days a week, until they can call themselves pilots. Our story starts with a group of students just about to start their 3rd year at the annex school, across the ocean from Drakken, on a little island called Vane. Needless to say, their school year is about to be cut short.
The Tone In the original FAQ I put up on my Livejournal, I talk pretenciously for a very long time about 'tone' without saying much of anything useful. It's really not as complex as I seem to think it is. The game most resembles the original Lunar: Eternal Blue for the Sega CD, only you have to flood the planet, then make large patches of it unlivable with hot pink grass and lemon cream skies, then have a mecha shaped like a bipedal tiger wrestling with a half-melted Godzilla. Then make it serious. Add drugs, sex, and desperation. Got me so far? The last step is the hardest: Remove angst. You have Lunar Mecha. Well, maybe it is a little complex. I'm a big fan of Eva, Magic Knight Rayearth, and the webcomic Girl Genius. I'm not a big fan of steampunk though, and I'm not a very skilled mecha otaku. This game isn't really about mecha, the future, or technology. I mean, it is. These things are in my game, but they don't take center stage. I think this is what I wanted to get across the first time I talked about tone, that I care more about why your character almost flunked that class in 1st year, who his second crush was and how it felt different from the first. This game is about the mundane vs the fantastic, also death vs life, and man vs Everything. This will come naturally, though, once you know what kind of a world you're in. The world is hopeless but the people are not. Everywhere but Drakken knows they could die tomarrow, half of Drakken is in the military and half of them probably will die before their military time is up, and even the people safe at home in Drakken think every day about the horrible things just outside the walls. Still, they get by, like people do. The world doesn't have the sort of creature comforts you're used to in the real world but has the technology level you might be used to in the fantasy world. The military may have giant mecha with viewing screens, an array of buttons and radio communication but even some sectors in Drakken may be lucky to have an old-fashioned printing press. Like Lunar: Eternal Blue and Lunar: The Silver Star, magic takes the center stage. All scientific and technological advancements are closely linked with magic. Mecha have mechanical parts (as their name imply) but run on batteries charged with magic. Many minor functions in the world do as well, and this technomagical sense of building things may be extended to toasters or boats. Don't get too carried away imagining the possibilities, though-- this world is a poor wasteland, short on resources and people. When imagining Lunar Mecha, imagine small tribes of people hunting, a broken down fishing village with 7 houses, endless deserts peppered with small bits of people learning how to live on cactus juice and sand sharks. Imagine a world that just barely has had a chance to grow after thousands of years of beatings just 100 years ago, for some parts of the world even less than that. Then you'll understand the world that your character lives in.
Now What? I reccomend checking out getting started and then the character application. There is also the Livejournal.
Good Luck!
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Who am I? Why, I'm Mia Ausa, long time member of the 