On the workbench: Spectre Miniatures’ Russian Juggernaut (a Salute 2016 convention limited run, snagged from a Spectre “covert pack”). Figured I’d post this one for all my friends who are celebrating Pride Month:
33 colors of paint on this one. Mostly Army Painter Speedpaints, with a bit of conventional stuff for detailing.
#BorisTheRussianLoveHammer #LoveComesInShortControlledBursts #LGBTCQB #RainbowSix #BeltFedLoveMachine #Russia’sGreatestLoveMachine
This was a roleplaying-only session, so not a lot of dice were rolled. I also failed to capture good notes on the conversation because my players were entertaining the hell out of me. This will, therefore, be a little more fragmented than the usual posts.
After making their way back to Ponikla and crashing in their own beds for some much-needed rest, the team gathers over breakfast to discuss recent events and to plan their next moves. Magda takes charge of the kitchen again and is soon churning out eggs, bacon, and donuts filled with cherry and plum jam. Red and Miko are both eating one-handed, each with an arm in a sling.
Ellis spent the trip back interviewing the four rescued soldiers (well, three soldiers and an airman). Not without some discomfort, he leads them through a recap for the rest of the team:
Task Force Cobalt was a scratch force drawn from U.S. XI Corps’ remaining special operations assets: survivors of 10th Special Forces Group, a couple of SEALs who somehow weren’t on the Baltic coast, a handful of AFSOC personnel, and two squads from the 4th Ranger Battalion. They were joined by a small contingent of Air Force and Navy technical specialists. Their mission was to enter Lodz, using the U.S. 5th Infantry Division’s operations in the area as a diversion, and conduct a raid on the Politechnika Łódzka. Their targets were four researchers and a large amount of laboratory records and material.
(Arkadi is nodding a lot at this point. He was part of the intelligence support operation that set up safe houses and escape routes for TF Cobalt; this aligns with what he knew.)
Mission preparation was heavy on two unusual items. First, the team was well-equipped with radiological monitoring: a Geiger counter on each vehicle and a dosimeter for every person, with the tech team having additional specialized gear. Second, psychological monitoring was a priority, with the team specifically instructed to self-monitor and monitor their colleagues for signs of dissociation, hallucination, or psychosis.
The raid was partially successful. TF Cobalt made it out with two of the researchers and most of their material. The planned link-up with the 5th ID was impossible, though, so the team headed south to try to get clear of the Warsaw Pact force concentration in the region. This, too, was unsuccessful – as the 5th ID fragmented, stragglers broke out in every direction and Soviet forces pursued, resulting in a countryside crawling with innumerable small units.
Over the following weeks, TF Cobalt lost half its original personnel. It replenished its numbers, if not their hard-earned skills, through linking up with a few groups 5th ID survivors. In late August, their communications specialists finally established radio contact with XI Corps headquarters and learned of a planned extraction by helicopter (albeit with the prisoners and their material taking priority). On the prearranged night, they headed for the planned primary LZ, only to hear their ride shot down. Rushing to the rescue, they ran into a marauder ambush. Only the two rearmost vehicles made it out, and they were separated in the subsequent pursuit.
The other vehicle (a LAV-25 with a mixed USMC, Canadian, and Norwegian recon team) is still unaccounted for, as are three of the aircrew.
“As the paradigm shifts, people are losing touch with the world that was,” Ellis observes. He suggests that the team ask the White Eagles and Bracia Wilkow to keep an eye out for more POW convoys. He also suspects that the marauders who hit TF Cobalt may try to unload their loot or prisoners in Tomaszow.
So, Tomaszow. Ellis spent a good long while there and he has a lot of information to share with the team, starting with his and Miko’s sabotage escapade…
[The sabotage sequence was played out in a Discord text channel visible to all my players, but I hadn’t blogged it until now. Bad referee, no MRE cookie.]
The TL;DR is that the marauders in Tomaszow represent a significant danger if the team wants to move west. They have significant riverine power projection capability, including several armed boats (former fishing and pleasure vessels) and what looks a lot like an ex-USMC combat hovercraft (the T2k-fictional evolution of the real-world Vietnam-era PACV). With a solid agricultural and aquacultural base, a decent amount of industrial wreckage that can be exploited, and a commanding position of local transportation, they appear to be setting themselves up to be a post-nuclear Tortuga: a “pirate haven” for other marauder bands in the region.
A recap of Ellis’ briefing notes:
While looking through his notes, Ellis comes to an uncomfortable realization. On a couple of occasions, he was apparently in some kind of fugue state or loop. He recorded the exact same observations for several days in a row, interrupted when he met with Miko or Fryderyka’s partians…
Ellis also has some intel on events west of Tomaszow that he’s pieced together from interviewing the various 5th ID survivors. The division did take down two Soviet motor rifle divisions during that fight. A couple of Polish formations appear to have stopped taking Soviet orders and have settled in for local defense.
The Soviet forces remaining in the Lodz-Kalisz area don’t appear eager to have any more attention from Lublin. Ellis infers that they may have lost interest in taking orders from whatever’s left of Moscow.
So, about Krakow…
Ellis looks at Pettimore. “So after you dealt with Florian, you stashed the painting…”
Pettimore leans in, squints, decides to put it out in the open. “You mean the Black Madonna?”
“Y’all stashed it in a copper mine, right?”
“Near as I can recall.”
“And what did you do with Florian?”
Pettimore infodumps: Dr. Wright was deprogramming Florian from whatever had gotten its hooks into him before the team met him. He eventually came on-side for monster hunting.
“Okay, just wanted to verify.” What Ellis is hearing from Pettimore matches up with what he received in The [REDACTED] Dossier… which Ellis now infodumps.
[Seriously, just go read it now if you haven’t already. There’s a lot of context in there…]
Ellis has… theories. The more he sees, the more he read in his fellow agent’s writing, the more he’s convinced that an unseen third hand is consciously acting to prevent reconstruction or recovery across Poland, if not farther. Neofuedalism, declining populations, systematic destruction of recorded knowledge… it’s starting to look like a pattern.
Pettimore: “Keep ’em poor, keep ’em stupid, keep the lights off, and keep ’em docile?”
Zenobia: “Pol Pot as a hostile alien?”
Ellis: “Well, yeah, he kind of was.”
Ellis states that there seems to be some indication that the memory/perception issues that the team has encountered – where people are confronted with papers or maps that their minds can’t recognize – are happening in Krakow, which is not a small city. And then there’s the evidence of cult activity…
Pettimore snaps. “He’s not talkin’ about the stuff we really need to know. This shit’s real, man. Do you know what happened in that field that caught fire? Do you know what I shot? I shot a goddamn demon, Red. A flesh and blood demon made out of fire. I wasn’t the only one.” He pushes his way out of the hostel, ashen and shaking.
Red sighs and looks at Minka. “Bring me a joint and the antispychotics. And one of the Cokes.”
Zenobia observes that the weirdness is taking advantage of the world’s current condition. “The world is closer to the way it used to be – the way they liked it – and they’re taking it back.” She doesn’t specify who “they” is. She doesn’t really need to.
Magda’s one-eyed, one-eared black-and-white kitchen mouser wanders into the conversation. The cat, who normally hates everyone but Magda and Tamara, walks up to Pettimore and rubs on him. This brings Pettimore somewhat out of his downward spiral. The cat then looks at Miko, bristles, and hisses.
Pettimore inquires about getting more silver… and bullet molds.
The conversation turns to next steps. With the Radom ZOMO receiving support from Lublin and pressing north toward Von Bahr, that’s the most immediate threat on the team’s radar. The consensus is that Tomaszow will keep… losing the hydroelectric power plant will be a major strategic setback, even if Von Bahr is an ally of questionable motives.
Ellis, Magda, Zenobia, and Pettimore begin preparing for a reconnaissance mission on the Soviet QRF base. Their intention is to gather intel for a possible raid, taking the QRF out of play. Red, Minka, and Erick (the chaplain’s assistant, newly-adopted as the backup PC of Leks’ player) will head to Opoczno and make contact with the White Eagles for some diplomacy, including enlisting their aid with the planned raid…
Flashback, adapted from the original playthrough in Discord chat:
Via Fryderyka’s ex-militia partisans, Ellis sends word back to Ponikla that he has need of Miko’s assistance with some recon and sabotage work. Miko happily loads up a quantity of demolitions that he has only a minimal idea how to use and sets off for the rendezvous on one of the motorcycles.
Ellis he wants to take a look at the airfield north of Tomaszow, which was struck by a NATO tactical nuke during the war. The locals are avoiding it because of radiation fears, but the marauders seem to be visiting it regularly with a work crew, a horsedrawn wagon, and a fuel bladder.
The early August weather is hot and sunny with clear skies. The moon is a waxing crescent. The airfield sits on mostly flat ground with abandoned farms to the north and west, forest to the east, and a low hill to the southeast (partially blocking view from Tomaszow).
The duo moves in quietly, slowly, and carefully, watching for observers (or snipers). Ellis’ main focus is on finding their source of fuel so he can gauge how much is left. He thinks he can estimate how much the marauders need for a [REDACTED SPOILER] he’s previously observed and, if it makes sense, sabotage that supply. Preliminary reconnaissance at long range gives them the general layout of the facility:
Ellis’ training and experience suggest the base was hit with a cruise missile. Yield would’ve been 150kt, more or less. It was an airburst, so the “crater” label is a misnomer, but there is a permanently glazed spot north of the runway. Not a direct hit, but close enough to put the place out of business:
Miko and Ellis wait for sundown to move in closer. The crescent moon is casting minimal illumination conducive to a stealthy approach. Upon closer inspection, the base admin facilities are toast – no salvage to be had. The hangars are in slightly better condition and it might be possible to pick up some salvageable bits here and there. The Su-25s do not appear to have been stripped, probably because of radiation immediately after the blast (or because there was no one with enough knowledge of aviation to figure out what to pull off of them). None of them are ever going to fly again, though.
(Judging from the stuff on the surviving interior walls, it looks like the Su-25s weren’t an original tenant unit at this facility. This appears to have been home to an Mi-8 transport squadron. The Su-25s must have been staging out of here for CAS.)
The high-security area is also a total loss, thanks to catastrophic fires. It’s evident the marauders aren’t getting their fuel – or anything else – from there.
The team heads to the tower. It’s leaning in a way that suggests major structural damage, but if it hasn’t fallen by now, it’s probably settled into a somewhat-stable alignment. The stairs creak alarmingly as Miko goes up… but they hold.
From the elevated vantage point, no activity beyond normal wildlife movement is visible. They can see that the rail line terminates over by the base admin area. There’s a single warehouse over there (the rectangular building with the metal roof by the parking lot), which burned in the fires that consumed the base housing area. However, there’s a larger cargo handling facility (at the “Rail Station” label,) with a cluster of eight warehouses built so that a rail spur actually runs through them (not reflected on the photo, but I’m improvising here). Those are scorched blast-damaged but still standing, and there appear to be a few rail cars parked inside them.
Ellis and Miko spend about an hour poking around the base, looking for signs of foot and wagon traffic. All indicators point to the rail freight depot. The marauders may have scouted the rest of the airbase, but that’s pretty clearly where they’ve been focusing their efforts.
They head in, checking for mines, tripwires, and other nastiness along the way. Miko does spot the wires of two directional mines across the service road leading into the depot. They’re affixed to the skeletal poles of scorched road signs – easy landmarks and reminders for a crew that probably disengages and resets them each visit.
The depot contains a short string of railcars. All of them bear signs of damage from the nuke and a couple are derailed; one boxcar is completely on its side:
Ellis and Miko back off and discuss. Neither of them is a demolitions specialist, but Miko brought along a good quantity of plastic explosive. How hard could a shaped charge be?
[I roll. Miko’s stupid luck comes through again: 3 successes on a pushed Tech roll.]
Miko scrounges around in the ruins. Finds a couple of flowerpots to use as a mold for the plastic explosive. Packs it in, braces it in place with rubble, plugs in three detonators. Wires it up. Backs way the hell up, to the very limit of the 100m wire spool he brought.
Miko and Ellis are behind the hardest cover they can find, so they don’t actually see the explosion. And it’s inside the rail depot anyway. But there’s a sound like the world’s largest soda can being crushed under a giant’s foot. And then the fire starts.
They probably heard the blast, and can see the glow, in Tomaszow.
The whole rail depot is on fire. Gonna make it hard to find any evidence.
They should probably leave now.
The response arrives in about fifteen minutes. Twelve guys on horses, backed up by a BRDM-2 Ellis hadn’t seen before – the marauders probably were keeping it in a restricted section of the power plant that’s their primary base.
The BRDM stays on overwatch while the riders dismount and search the area in trios. There’s not much for them to find, though, and they’re certainly not getting close enough to the fire to see any evidence there.
They stay on site until dawn, when a similarly-sized force comes out to relieve them. The relief force is led by the marauders’ warlord, Anatoliy Utkin. The flames have died down by then and the ashes are cool enough for him to approach. He goes in with a couple of dudes – not bodyguards, from the body language and equipment. They’re possibly his technical experts. They poke around for about half an hour, focused on the tank car.
From a few hundred meters away, Ellis can’t tell what conclusions they come to, but when Utkin comes out, he pulls in the sentries and they ride back to Tomaszow. It looks like, at least for the short term, he’s writing this off – there’s nothing left here for him to exploit.
Back in 2002, when the OGL was young and full of promise, Alderac Entertainment Group released Spycraft, a d20 action/espionage RPG. My local gaming group immediately fell in love with it. I started a campaign, which fell apart after three (excellent) sessions due to a lack of GM focus, planning, and follow-through. My campaign setup document, however, was the writing sample that got me onto the Spycraft design team for the rest of the first edition’s run and the Stargate SG-1 license. I started this blog as a repository for my various older and unpublished pieces (among other things), so this seems as good a place as any to post it. Because of length, this is the first of a four-part series.
This material is 21 years old and not representative of my current writing or design skills, but I’m not sufficiently motivated to clean it up. There’s plenty of my newer material out there if someone wants to assess my capabilities as they stand today.
At the time, this stuff was posted on an older web page of mine that’s long since lost to the bitbucket. Hilariously, though, about a year after I started freelancing for AEG, some toolbag out there decided to apply as an AEG freelancer… and plagiarized this piece to use as “his” “writing sample.” You can guess how that went…
“Tuatamen Lego Eruditio (Defense through Knowledge)” (official motto)
“Alone, Unknown, and Unloved” (highly unofficial motto)
The SDRA setting is an attempt to tweak the Spycraft rules for a game with a higher level of supernatural involvement than the default setting allows. PCs are agents of the Special Defense Research Agency, a black organization within the United States government dedicated to maintaining national security against paranormal threats. History and current events are much the same in the world of the SDRA as they are in our world, with one key exception: the supernatural is publicly acknowledged as existing. It is, however, extremely rare, about on the level of bank robberies: events get news coverage on the local level, but rarely make the national reports unless they’re particularly spectacular. Very few people are involved in them, but everyone seems to have a friend of a friend who once saw something happen. The government maintains a high level of denial in an effort to protect the public from Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.
The SDRA operates under a thick veil of secrecy. It’s about as well-known as the NSA in the early 1980s, or perhaps the NRO in the present day. The average man on the street has not heard of it, though those who indulge in espionage and supernatural genre entertainment have heard of it and may know a little bit about what it does. Most SDRA operations are never acknowledged as having been performed by the Agency – other, more public, organizations take the credit. Most SDRA agents are forbidden to reveal their actual employer, instead maintaining a set of cover identities in the military or other federal agencies.
Primary inspirations for this setting include Pagan Publishing’s Delta Green, Eden Studios’ Conspiracy X, the Men in Black comic/film/RPG property, and Microprose’s X-Com game series, as well as the friendly government Web sites of the CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, and State Department.
The setting is intended to be significantly grittier than four-color James Bond-style espionage. Death, dismemberment, and madness are constant risks for SDRA agents in the field. The SDRA and its sibling organizations in other nations are a very thin shield between mankind and the Things Out There. Minimum film rating for this game would be PG-13, with frequent slips into R for graphic violence. OTOH, this is a highly heroic game – the PCs are the best there is at what they do, even if what they do isn’t very pretty.
The Special Defense Research Agency was founded in 1951 to manage federal law enforcement and national security issues as they were affected by paranormal activity. SDRA (more commonly referred to as “DRA,” with the “Special” dropped for casual conversation) was formed by a merger of four existing agencies: the Treasury Department’s Special Enforcement Service, the CIA’s Directorate of Unconventional Studies, the State Department’s Special Research Office, and the Pentagon’s Joint Services Global Meteorological Survey Office.
DRA’s existence has always been public, but its exact mission specifications are classified. Its existence appears in no official government documents outside of its formation in the First Amendment of the National Security Act (itself classified until 1982). DRA derives its budget from various “black project” appropriations and covert licensing of advanced technology through “cutout” corporations.
The government was forced to acknowledge DRA’s existence and mission after the Medicine Bow Incident. In the spring of 1958, DRA agents operating out of the Colorado Springs Field Office became aware of a high level of extraterrestrial activity on the Colorado-Wyoming border. The investigation uncovered a large-scale “harvesting” operation being conducted by Greys. The aliens’ advance base, located in Medicine Bow National Forest, was pinpointed after the entire population of Casper was abducted in a single night. Two civilians escaped and contacted military authorities, who in turn alerted the DRA. On the night of August 18, DRA agents led local law enforcement authorities and an infantry company of the Wyoming National Guard in an assault on the base. During the engagement, an antimatter power source’s containment catastrophically failed, resulting in an estimated 3.5-megaton explosion.
A cover-up was impossible, given the magnitude of the blast and its secondary EMP effects. On August 20, President Eisenhower revealed to the world the history of American conflict with extraterrestrials since the 1947 shoot-down of a Grey reconnaissance craft at Roswell. Eisenhower’s speech marked the beginning of the world’s mass admission of supernatural activity: within a week, over half the nations on the planet had at least tentatively addressed the issues of magic, psychic powers, nonhuman intelligence, or alien visitors in a public forum. Contrary to the expectations of many sociologists, upheaval was surprisingly mild: these revelations merely legitimized beliefs that millions of people had previously been ashamed to hold.
Today, DRA is one of the world’s foremost government organizations dedicated to protecting humanity from paranormal threats. The Agency is headquartered in Kansas City, MO, with 10 additional field offices and several hidden facilities in the United States. The State Department also hosts DRA liaison offices in over 20 nations. DRA employs an estimated 1,800 Special Agents, plus over 11,000 other personnel in various clerical, maintenance, scientific, medical, investigative, logistical, and security roles. Exact details of the Agency’s personnel roster are classified for the protection of its agents.
DRA is officially limited to operations within the United States. However, the Agency has reciprocity agreements with the governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Africa, which allow DRA agents to operate in those nations with the supervision of local counterpart agencies. Hong Kong was a partner until the end of local British rule, but its status is currently under negotiation with the Chinese government. DRA personnel have also been seconded to the United Nations and NATO for various operations.
Although the DRA’s existence is known to the world at large, it does not maintain a public face (with the exception of a handful of public affairs agents from the Administrative Directorate). DRA agents and employees are usually drawn from other federal or state agencies, and officially maintain their previous positions. If such a cover would compromise an employee’s identity, or if he has no previous government service from which to draw a cover, he is issued a government ID for another agency with facilities in his cities of residence. DRA facilities are not marked as such and are guarded by personnel in private security uniforms. An entire subset of conspiracy theory has sprung up around identifying DRA personnel and offices, despite the fact that knowingly breaching a DRA agent’s cover carries a federal charge of obstruction of justice.
Readers may recall a conversation between Pettimore and Ellis in which Ellis received an encrypted dossier from this campaign’s previous iteration. I’ll bet you were wondering what was in it, weren’t you?
Well, Ellis’ player decided to share some of it with you (and the rest of the party). Enjoy…
Yes, some of this will look familiar to readers of Later Days. I credit my sources – and I try to steal from the best.
Something that’s always bugged me about Twilight: 2000’s vehicle combat is the relative lack of anything meaningful for the person in the vehicle commander’s seat to do. Sure, many of them have their own pintle-mounted MGs, but there’s no command function. This recently came up in a Kaserne on the Borderlands session and my table had a brief discussion about it. Here’s what we came up with:
Vehicle Command: As a slow action, the vehicle commander may coordinate the actions of his vehicle's crew. Make a Command check. With success, this counts as help (Player's Guide, p. 46) for each other crew member's actions this turn.
Timing wasn’t an issue because of our house rules on initiative. The table agreed that the commander should act first to determine success or failure on granting the bonus.
In the interest of balance, we restricted the benefit to actual crew positions, not passengers. There was some debate about whether human cargo using firing ports should benefit, but I felt that was excessive. If you want an in-game rationale, assume that only the actual crew seats have jacks for the vehicle’s intercom.
This seemed to work well as implemented. The commander’s player felt his XP investment in Command was being rewarded, and the gunner appreciated the extra +1 to offset penalties. The driver was a NPC, so he didn’t have opinions, but the bonus was there when needed.
On the workbench: Spectre Miniatures Task Force Operators SMG Charlie:
Still working with Army Painter Speedpaints, with the exception of tiny dots of Vallejo metallics for the weapon optic and tac light. This guy was a test job for a squad I want to do for [redacted]. The Girl suggested the mixed greens (so to speak) for the armor, helmet, and nylon gear, and I’m quite pleased with the result.
Miko is running through the woods. It’s a moonless night. Glancing over his shoulder, he can see his pursuers’ torches drawing closer. With his night vision briefly spiked by the firelight, he fails to see the massive tree trunk in his path. He hits the ground hard. Rough hands seize and bind him and force him along a hidden path.
At the path’s end is a clearing. A single massive stump, planed into a flat surface, sits in the clearing’s center. Figures clad only in fur and hide await. Miko is forced to his knees and bent backwards onto the stump – the altar. As a blade descends, a massive horned head looms over him.
Miko wakes up. It’s midmorning at the helicopter crash site. Magda and Leks are still crashed out, sleeping off their own overnight watches. The rest of the team is awake and breaking camp.
Once everyone is up and more-or-less functional, the team heads north, back to the highway. They’ve just reached the scarred pavement when they catch the sound of a large wheeled vehicle approaching from the east. There’s a quick scramble for defensive positions and antitank ordnance before Zenobia recognizes the oncoming BTR. She should – she and Arkadi and Minka put enough hours into getting the damned thing back into service.
Ellis pops out of the commander’s hatch and waves. Bell is in the back on the radio; two more of the recently-rescued POWs, the MP in the driver’s seat and the infantrywoman crewing the turret, round out his crew. He dismounts and briefs his colleagues on his conversation of a few hours ago. From his prior deep-cover work in Tomaszow, he also knows the team is heading into an area saturated with small marauder bands that spun out of the Soviet 9th Tank Division’s disintegration. He’s been checking in with Gunstar Two-Two, who has reported two marauder patrols in his vicinity – troops on foot backed by technicals.
The team does a quick shuffle, putting Leks into the BTR-70K’s turret. Ellis stays in the commander’s seat. Red and Pettimore pile into the remaining troop seats. Miko takes point on horseback, with Magda, Minka, and Zenobia, also mounted, trailing him by about 50 meters.
The bridge across the Pilica at Przedbórz is mostly intact. The deck is cratered in places and the guardrails show evidence of a large and heavy vehicle punching through them for a high dive, but it’s passable. The highway skirts south of the town here. There are signs of habitation, both in Przedbórz and in some of the outlying farms, but no one comes out to greet the team.
About half a kilometer west of Przedbórz’s southern ruins, Miko spots two vehicles on the road. He reins in and raises his binoculars. They resolve into a clearly-destroyed BRDM-2 that appears to have been rear-ended by a GAZ-66. There’s no sign of movement – other than the corvids and vultures picking over some corpses.
The point team moves in cautiously, checking for snipers, antitank mines, and every other problem they’ve encountered on roads to date. There’s no immediate threat here, though. They wave in the BTR.
As the full team looks over the scene, a picture emerges. The BRDM appears to have been the point vehicle of a good-sized convoy. It was hit with two RPGs fired from the woods to the north, disabling it and killing its crew. The GAZ-66 behind it attempted to push it out of the road so the rest of the convoy could push through, but its driver and front-seat passenger were killed by autocannon fire – apparently from the now-burned-out BMP-2 to the north. A couple of discarded LAW tubes tell the story of how the ambushers’ IFV was taken out.
The Ural-375 halted off the road to the north [at marker 2] seems to have attempted to flee while the crews of the deuce-and-a-half and the UAZ-469 bailed out and took cover in the woods. The Ural was disabled by machine gun fire, while the M35 and UAZ took massive damage from light autocannon fire coming from the east. Marks and empty casings on the ground [at marker 1] show where some sort of tracked vehicle left the pavement and opened fire with a 23mm autocannon.
All in all, including the crews in the vehicles, the convoy took 23 casualties. Five of those are farther to the west, where they were captured, gathered together, and executed. Two more wheeled vehicles seem to have reversed out of the ambush and escaped back to the west. The ambushers paid for their victory, though. It looks like they lost 14, though it’s hard to get a definite count of the bodies in the BMP.
Red and Ellis check the bodies. The convoy was Americans – they’re still in uniform. About a third were 5th Infantry Division personnel. The rest are in sanitized BDUs, but tattoos and faces tell a story: one SEAL, a couple of Rangers, two guys Pettimore recognizes from his time working alongside 10th Special Forces Group. The ambushers fit the marauder profile: piecemeal Soviet uniforms, a few still bearing 9th Tank Division insignia.
All of the vehicles, except the burned-out armor, have been thoroughly stripped, as have the bodies. Scattered around the Ural, though, are a half-dozen smashed wooden crates. Some are still half-full of paper, and more documents are strewn around the area and blowing in the wind. It’s all written or typed in Polish, scientific notes and circuit diagrams. [Old school Twilight: 2000 fans should have some idea where this is going.] Magda is the first to take a close look.
Magda: “This is bullshit. It doesn’t make any sense and now I have a headache.”
Zenobia: “Let me see that.”
(pause)
Zenobia: “This is bullshit and now I have a headache. Some of this goes back to 1937 and they’re writing about generating electricity from zero point energy.”
Red: “What?”
Zenobia: “Imagine an infinite source of power that isn’t supposed to exist.”
Red: “Wait, what?”
[This scene was made even more hilarious by the fact that Zenobia’s player works in the energy sector and has an excellent idea of the level of bullshit involved here, so Zenobia’s incredulous-offended tone was 100% authentic.]
The discussion derails when Bell pops out of the BTR. “Mister Ellis! We gotta go! We gotta go now!”
Ellis gets the spare headset settled onto his ears in time to hear, “Ops, Gunstar Two-Two, they’ve found us. Our position is compromised. We’re abandoning our vehicle and moving east on foot.” A moment later, everyone hears the sound of distant gunfire from the west.
Moving to the sound of the guns, the team finds itself approaching a fenced farm set among a patch of woods. [A lot of their fights seem to happen in woods because battlemaps without cover or concealment are not very interesting.] Ellis orders the BTR to head straight down the road, drawing attention and fire, while the cavalry element circles south to flank. As the team splits up, they can see four figures in American woodland camo running/staggering toward the farm. Pursuing them are two small groups of aggressors and a GAZ-66.
Pettimore bails out of the BTR and heads north on foot with his bow readied, looking to flank the northern group of marauders. Minka, Zenobia, and Magda move toward the farm’s southern edge, intending to use the barn down there as cover. Miko, predictably, splits off from the group and drives toward the GAZ-66. The BTR, under Ellis’ command, slews across the road and opens up with a full broadside. Red and the unnamed infantrywoman successfully suppress the southern marauder trio, though Red’s M4A1 jams [as reliably happens every session that the player pushes an attack]. Leks puts a warning shot from the KPV into the GAZ’s bow, splattering the driver all over the cab. The three gunners in the bed bail out, leaving their own KPV and PKs unmanned.
Down south, Minka displays her equestrienne skills by vaulting from her mount’s saddle onto the roof of the barn. Zenobia follows in much less acrobatic fashion, drops prone, and prepares to engage the marauders. Magda opts to stay at ground level, dashing along the barn’s northern wall to the northwest corner, which looks like solid cover.
The fireteam to the north realizes that they have no interest in tangling with a BTR-70. They pop smoke and find cover. This exposes their flank to Pettimore, who promptly rewards their inattention with an arrow. The BTR crew and passengers ignore them in favor of suppressing the GAZ-66 gun truck’s crew so they don’t get any bright ideas about re-mounting their ride.
Miko continues riding toward the gun truck. He has a vague idea of doing something to it with a grenade. This plan meets abrupt disruption when two more marauder fireteams emerge from the treeline to the west. A moment later, their support arrives.
The BTR is in the worst possible place: stationary, broadside across the road, waiting for the survivors to board. The first burst of 23mm goes high, somehow missing the APC, but it also suppresses the people the team is here to save. They’re pinned down, unable or unwilling to move. Leks’ return fire also misses, a rare and untimely error for the Estonian.
Miko’s one-man charge out of the woods ends when one of the newly-arrived fireteams volleys into him. He turns his horse around with his one working arm; arterial blood is spurting from the other, which he can’t seem to use any more. [3 points of damage and a severed artery crit.]
Minka’s first war shot from her recently-acquired GP-25 pins the southern fireteam. Their injuries are minor [as UBGLs suck for actually inflicting personnel damage in 4th edition] but they’re more interested in staying in cover than in returning fire. Magda and Zenobia add to their misery.
Pettimore continues stalking the northern fireteam, putting another arrow into the already-injured member. His buddies abandon him, repositioning a bit south and screening their movement with more smoke.
One of the newcomer groups advances alongside the ZSU-23-4. The other pursues Miko. They briefly surround him, attempting to capture a prisoner [or hostage], but he manages to break free.
Leks and the ZSU gunner trade volleys again. The ZSU misses again thanks to its lack of stabilization. The team only had a single 40-round belt of 14.5mm and Leks now burns the last of it. As his KPV clatters empty, there’s a spurt of black smoke from the ZSU’s engine compartment. It falters – but then continues advancing.
Red, still fighting to unjam his M4A1, forsakes it in favor of sticking his arm out a hatch and waving a Glock 18 in the general direction of the northern fireteam. Dumping half a magazine is enough to suppress them again.
Two of the survivors manage to reach the BTR and haul themselves into it. The other two are so close, but still pinned by the fire hose of 23mm rounds.
Leks scrambles out of the vehicle, prepping his RPG-22 as he goes. Red follows him a moment later.
The gun truck crewmen take advantage of the PCs’ inattention by re-boarding their vehicle. One shoves his former comrade’s remains out of the driver’s seat and begins trying to crank the ignition. The others take up positions on the KPV and the starboard PK. The KPV gunner opens up on the BTR but continues the marauders’ streak of poor heavy weapons marksmanship. The guy on the PK sees Magda and walks fire into her. It’s not a serious wound, but she’s not in a good place. Zenobia takes note of this and pumps a half-dozen rounds from her M21 into the offending gunner. His partner reconsiders his recent life choices and drops below the lip of the bed’s improvised armor.
Bell and the infantrywoman jump out of the BTR and drag the last two survivors aboard. Ellis orders the driver to pull forward into the smoke, screening the APC from the ZSU.
The ZSU maneuvers for another shot on the BTR but its crew can’t reacquire the target through the smoke. Leks comes to one knee, aims, breathes, and fires. The RPG-22 warhead strikes squarely on the SPAAA’s turret. The gunner’s hatch belches flame and a severed arm. The quad 23s fall silent.
A blood-covered Miko gallops past Minka, Magda, and Zenobia. Having exterminated the southern fireteam and, from their vantage point, having seen the survivors board the BTR, the women decide it’s time to withdraw. They abandon their firing positions and begin heading for their horses. The second fireteam hesitates – they can’t catch Miko on foot, they don’t want to run into an ambush if their opponents are feigning retreat, and they don’t want to walk through the gunfight between the vehicles.
Pettimore abandons his skirmish with the northern groups, runs into the smoke, and hauls himself aboard the BTR. With every seat occupied, he pulls himself onto the roof and settles in to provide desantnik-style suppressive fire.
The fireteam that was escorting the ZSU draws ahead of it and opens up on Red and Leks. Leks takes a hit and is suppressed. Red attempts to drag him to the BTR but doesn’t have the muscle necessary to haul the machinegunner and his golf bag of weapons. The men drop prone in the middle of the road, exposed. Red takes a round through the arm and topples, spraying blood [from the night’s second severed artery crit].
Ellis, head out the commander’s hatch with his sidearm raised, sees this happen. “Driver! Reverse, slow! Easy left! Halt now!” The BTR hisses to a stop, shielding Red and Leks from the bulk of the enemy fire. The two men painfully climb aboard, Leks and Pettimore holding Red, who can’t quite cling to the hull with his one good arm.
Five minutes of aggressive flight gets the team out of range. Everyone not engaged in tactical medicine fans out into a threadbare defensive perimeter while Minka and Leks frantically work to stabilize Red and Miko. Miko’s wounds are relatively easy to get to the point that his little geometrically-regular friends can start their work. It’s touch-and-go for Red, but eventually he, too, is relatively safe. With that, the team cautiously crosses the bridge and begins the long trek back to Ponikla.
This was one of those fights where the team didn’t hold the field at the end. They came away with a net loss of supplies and four injuries – two of them critical. However, they did accomplish their mission with more success than I anticipated. I probably made the withdrawal a little easier than it should have been, but we were past midnight at that point and everyone was dragging. OTOH, the opposition had just lost both of their fire support platforms, so they probably weren’t too eager to press the issue, even with the motivations they had to finish the job.
This one is probably going to result in some hard conversations about tactics, both in and out of character. Especially around Miko.
The ZSU was an absolute monster, but like most SPAAA, it was a glass cannon, vulnerable to heavy machine gun fire. The fight likely would have gone much worse if Leks hadn’t made that RPG-22 shot, though.
The team is now out of 14.5mm ammo, leaving both their APCs without significant offensive capacity. Their remaining anti-armor assets are one LAW, two RPG-22s, and one HEAT rifle grenade. They also burned through about half of their trauma medicine supplies to save Red, Miko, and two of the rescuees. While they’re in no danger of running out of small arms ammo, they’re at a point where they need to approach enemy vehicles very carefully – and the Radom situation is not cooling off…
It’s an hour before dawn. Ellis’ face is lit by the glow of the BTR-70K’s remaining radio set. He occasionally blinks. Otherwise, his only movement is a turn of the wrist to adjust a dial.
He’s about to scan away from the frequency that, in the decrypted dossier from Broadstreet, was labeled “DIA liaison,” when:
“Any unit on this net, this is Gunstar Two-Two requesting assistance.”
It’s a male voice with a New England American English accent. Ellis blinks, frowns, adjusts his mic. “Go ahead, Gunstar Two Two.”
“Gunstar Two-Two to last unit, please identify. Over.”
“Gunstar Two-Two, this is Ops. Verify you are aware this is an unsecured transmission.”
“Ops, Gunstar Two-Two is aware I am transmitting in the clear. My crypto is down. I am requesting any available assistance, over.” The voice sounds exhausted.
“Gunstar Two-Two, Ops copies. Stand by for response.” Ellis removes his headset and strides the twelve meters to where Bell is sleeping. “Bell. I need your ears.”
The SIGINT linguist rolls awake, reaching for something before he processes his surroundings. “What? Yeah. Ugh. Gimme a second.” But he throws back his blanket, shoves his feet into his boots, and follows Ellis back to the BTR.
Ellis re-dons the headset and hands the spare set to Bell. “”Gunstar Two-Two, Ops. State your situation and location.”
There’s a distinct pause before the other guy keys up again. “Ops, Gunstar Two-Two is west of the Pilica River and south of the reservoir. No grid reference available. This unit has four personnel, all wounded, two trauma red. Our vehicle is disabled. We’re separated from our parent unit and have been unable to re-establish contact. Be advised, there is a heavy hostile presence in this area, presumed Soviet deserters. How copy, over.”
Ellis and Bell confer quickly. The speaker mispronounced “Pilica” the way a native English speaker would who’s seen the name written but not heard it spoken by a Pole. Speech and diction are giving both men the impression that this guy is either a legitimate Anglophone or as good a linguist as they are, and is also proficient with radio comms. Bell thinks he’s probably from Vermont or New Hampshire. It’s seeming less likely that this is a Soviet or Pole playing games.
“Gunstar Two-Two, Ops copies all. Hold it together. Help is on the way.”
“Ops, Gunstar Two-Two copies. Be aware, I have limited battery. Please advise time for next check-in, over.”
Ellis checks his watch, does some mental math. “Two-Two, Ops copies. Keep your heads down and your powder dry. Talk to you in an hour. Ops out.”
“Two-Two out.”
Ellis looks at Bell. “I’m going to need you on the radio. Get your stuff. Wake up that MP and the infantry chick. They’re going to be driving and gunning. We’re rolling out in thirty.”
One of the many background elements I track on the logistics spreadsheet for my Kaserne on the Borderlands campaign is weather. The Twilight: 2000 4th Edition rules as written are pretty simple: it’s either fair, cloudy, or precipitation, with a 1d6 roll moving along that sliding scale. I wanted a bit more detail, as I do appreciate me some fine-grained worldbuilding. While looking around my bookmarks, I was reminded of hex flowers.
As that linked post says (you really should RTWT):
Basically you arrange your 19 possible outcomes into the 19 hexes of the Hex Flower i.e. you populate the Hex Flower. The (general) idea is to group the 19 outcomes in a way that makes sense. Often this means grouping similar things together. In play, you roll dice and the rules of the Hex Flower dictate which Hex you move to next. That is, you move from the current hex to one of the 6 adjacent hexes. In that way the last outcome limits the next outcome … a sort of ‘memory’ of a kind.
Goblin’s Henchman blog
So far, my only implementation of this has been a direct port (theft) of the weather table, which is totally system-independent:
And there you go.