Category Archives: Campaign Log – Kaserne on the Borderlands

The First Mission (21 June 2000)

The PCs have been in Ponikla about a month. They’ve recovered from the wounds they were carrying when they arrived, they’ve tended to their gear, and they’ve decided that this is, at least for the foreseeable future, home.

As this is a West Marches game, the world map is unexplored outside their home hex. They know they’re on the south bank of the Pilica, but little else [there are, in fact, reasons they can’t just look at a topographical or highway map and go from there]. So the first order of business is reconnaissance.

They launch their first recon mission the morning after the village’s summer solstice celebrations. Magda, Ellis, Red, Leks, and Minka set out on foot to explore to the southeast. The terrain here is gentle, mostly forested with occasional cleared patches where small family farms were hacked out of the woods. They’re abandoned now, mostly in ruins.

Late in the morning, they come upon something different: new ruins. It’s another small cottage, this one with a now-empty sheep pen next to its sprawling vegetable garden. The fire that claimed it must have been recent – the smell of smoke still hangs in the air. The PCs recover a few items (hand tools, a spinning wheel, some spun and hand-dyed yarn) from the ruins. Leks finds tracks where three people and about a dozen sheep headed south. Figuring those folks can’t have gotten too far, the team follows them.

The tracks lead them through an otherwise-trackless forest to a ruined village. This place appears to have been the scene of some heavy fighting a couple of years ago, with most of its buildings burned or toppled. But at the western side of this forest clearing is a light industrial structure, apparently intact, with a small flock of sheep grazing amidst a plum orchard.

Meeting the Neighbors

The PCs approach cautiously, with Magda and Ellis on point and trying to appear non-threatening. They’re met by a very cautious one-armed man in his twenties who’s carrying a submachine gun. He’s wearing local civilian attire but his Polish, Ellis notes, has a distinct Russian accent. He’s being backed up by a woman about his age with a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. They’re initially suspicious but quickly warm to the power of Ellis’ persuasive tongue.

The squatters are Miroslav and Kaja (and Kaja’s mother, Marika). They’re rather nonspecific about their prewar history – especially Miroslav – but they’ve been staying out of the way of, well, everyone in the family cottage. That is, until Marika’s cat triggered a cooking accident that burned the place down. They knew the village was here, so they salvaged their remaining belongings and brought the flock here for shelter. Miroslav wants to rebuild eventually, but this is “home” for now.

(Miroslav and Kaja also mention that they heard what sounded like a windstorm the previous night. There was a great howling noise and rush of air north of their location. This croggles the PCs a bit because the weather has been clear to partly cloudy – certainly no storms in Ponikla, less than 10km away…)

The PCs confer. The trio apparently has some skill if they’re surviving out here on their own, and the sheep would be a welcome addition to Ponikla’s herds. Recruitment is easy enough. The NPCs gather their things and prepare to return to Ponikla with the PCs.

While Ellis and Doc are making the recruiting pitch, Minka and Magda check out the building in which the NPCs are sheltering. It’s a small cannery! Judging from the boxes of pre-printed labels, this village’s main business was plum preserves. The machinery looks like it’s still usable if someone could restore power, and there’s a good stock of empty jars. It would be a bit of a commute but when harvest season comes, Ponikla could use this place…

Starter Gunfight

The PCs, now with NPCs and sheep in tow, retrace their steps. They’re a bit croggled when they cross a dirt road that none of them remember from their trip into the village. About a hundred meters away, they spot two vehicles: a burned-out BTR-60 sitting beside the road and an intact UAZ-469 parked in the middle of the road with its doors open.

There’s a small metallic click from behind the party, like the sound of a weapon coming off safe. Miroslav has, unasked, moved Kaja and Marika into cover and taken a position to cover the party’s back-trail. Ellis and Leks exchange a look – clearly, Miroslav has seen some shit, and there may be future questions about just where he went to school. But for now, there’s a more immediate issue. Leaving the NPCs and the sheep, the party moves up to investigate.

There’s a large dent in the UAZ-469’s front bumper and hood. Its doors are open and there are several large puddles and sprays of blood in the dirt and grass around it. Ellis reconstructs the scene: the vehicle hit something organic, the crew got out, and something tore their shit up. A few expended casings indicate that someone got off a burst from an AKM but there are no bodies. The vehicle does contain a few useful items; nothing earthshattering. It’s out of fuel, apparently having been left idling in place until it ran dry.

While the PCs are checking out the scene, they come under attack from a half-dozen armed men. There’s a brief (introductory) firefight in which the PCs drop three of the attackers and drive off the remaining three. Available intelligence is limited, but Ellis does note that all of the fallen are in piecemeal Soviet uniforms with the insignia of the 124th Motor Rifle Division. The PCs recover the usable personal gear and weapons (two SKSes and an AKM) and return to Ponikla.

This was an intro session with some exploration, a bit of NPC interaction, and some combat. I also threw in an initial indication that the world has gotten a little bit strange…

Meet the Survivors

A West Marches-style campaign accommodates a large number of PCs. I have eight players, so one PC per player should be sufficient for now (I may open up a second PC slot if the campaign goes on long enough or if PCs start getting dropped with long-healing-time critical hits). Let’s take a look at the survivors whose exploits I’ll be chronicling here:

Dr. William “Red” Greyson (Lieutenant, U.S. Navy)

“Red” was doing his residency when the war began. Drafted and direct-commissioned as a Navy trauma surgeon, he was attached to an infantry battalion in 2nd Marine Division. With the collapse of anything resembling international law and treaty enforcement, he’s picked up a rifle to defend his patients… and himself… and, really, anyone else who needs it.

Medical Aid B; Combat Medic, Load Carrier, Trader

M4A1, Browning Hi-Power, medical gear

Ellis (CIA)

A veteran CIA case officer, the man who calls himself Ellis began operating in Poland several years before the war went hot. His main line of work was countering Soviet influence and encouraging Polish pro-democracy movements. His last major op involved obtaining an unspecified item from the Soviet Reserve Front HQ and Polish puppet government capital at Lublin.

Persuasion B; Interrogator, Investigator, Tactician

AK-74, Makarov, a few different disguises

John Lee Pettimore (Staff Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps)

Pettimore grew up in a trailer in rural eastern Kentucky with two younger brothers and an alcoholic mother. He supported the family through hunting, both for subsistence and as a guide for out-of-town rich folk, and eventually parleyed that skill set into a job with the Corps. He spent the first half of the war with the 2nd Marine Division’s 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion. After the main event in Norway was over, he shifted south to the Baltic. In the churn of combat replacements and reshuffled recon assets, he eventually wound up attached to the Army’s 5th Infantry Division before its ill-fated end run into central Poland. He survived the breakout and linked up with a small group of other survivors who made their way to Krakow. He’s somewhat evasive on what happened between now and then… especially as he’s realized that his personal timeline doesn’t line up with anyone else’s…

(Pettimore is a character from a previous campaign who’s been ported from my house-ruled v2.2 into this v4 version.)

Ranged Combat B; Hunter, Scout, Sniper

Thoughts and Prayers (Dragunov), M45 MEU(SOC), compound bow, Bible

Leksik “Leks” Müürikivi (Corporal, Free Estonian Defense Force)

One of a number of Estonians who defected to NATO as soon as it became survivable, Leks is the party’s beatstick. He’s Ellis’ right-hand goon – the two of them have been through a number of escapades prior to the events that led them to Ponikla.

Survival B; Forager, Killer, Machinegunner

MG3, pump-action shotgun, Zippo engraved with “Fuck Communism”

Magda Szymanska (Polish Home Army partisan)

Magda would much rather be baking, but this is what she’s stuck with. A few years before the war started, she joined the Strzelec territorial defense volunteer organization – partly out of patriotism, partly because most of her friends were doing it. When the war broke out, she chose the side of getting her country out from under Moscow’s boot.

Recon B; Cook, Rifleman, Scout

wz.88 Tantal

Mikolaj Krol (Polish civilian)

Mikolaj was a teenager when things went sideways. He came of age in Warsaw – and then in Warsaw’s irradiated ruins. He’s the party’s scrounger and always has one eye on the exit.

Survival B; Runner, Scout, Scrounger

PM-84, machete

Minka (Polish civilian)

Before the war, Minka was a blacksmith and farrier with just enough veterinary knowledge to be dangerous. She was a skilled practitioner of a dying trade. As literal horsepower became a critical resource again, she found her skills in high demand. She’s looking for her mobile forge and her trusty horse, both of which were stolen by Soviet cavalry troops a few months ago, but until she finds those particular Russians, she’s happy to take out her frustrations on any Russians.

Medical Aid B; Blacksmith, Rider, Veterinarian

AKM, sledgehammer

Zenobia Slusarski (Polish civilian)

Zenobia is a native of Ponikla, though she moved away long before the war and only returned a month before the campaign began. A mechanic, tinker, and locksmith, she trusts and appreciates machinery more than people.

Tech B; Infiltrator, Locksmith, Scrounger

Sako L61R in .30-06, Glock 17, toolkit

Building a Slightly-Damaged World

Because Twilight: 2000 is set in our alternate history, I decided to use Free League’s travel map of central Poland for this campaign’s world map. Obviously, this dictates geography, but the framework from the setting’s history also strongly implies some of the major factions out there, their rough areas of control/influence, and what they’ll be doing over the coming in-game months.

Because my players may read this blog, I will not be discussing those in detail… until they encounter them.

I decided to start my PCs in a small farming community near the south bank of the Pilica River (which, in-setting, is larger than it is in real life, and is navigable as far upriver as Tomaszow Mazowiecki). It’s near the center of the map, giving them ample room to explore in any direction. It’s June 20, 2000 – the summer solstice. They’ve been in the village about a month, having arrived here after evading pursuit by a large number of Soviet troops. Since then, they’ve been laying low and healing up, but as the village is becoming their semi-permanent home, it’s time to start seeing what threats and opportunities are out there. Thus, in West Marches style, they start off with visibility only in their home hex, and they’ve gotta go hexbash to clear out that fog of war.

(While I haven’t been specific about character histories and none of my players are Twilight: 2000 canon purists, I’m assuming that the 2000 NATO offensive occurred a few months earlier than in canon. Thus, PCs for whom it’s appropriate may have been involved in the Kalisz encirclement.)

After some collaborative world-building, we’ve decided that the village currently has 52 residents, not including the PCs. Its population was dwindling even before the war due to urbanization. Wealthier Poles from nearby cities were buying up vacant farms and converting them to hobby farms or vacation homes, so by the early ’90s, about half of the village’s remaining residents were involved in providing various services for these absentee landlords. Nowadays, the population is split evenly between prewar residents and refugees from the cities, which means there’s a shortage of the skilled farmers necessary for salvage-economy subsistence agriculture. There’s also a general lack of skilled trades, so finding and recruiting people with those skill sets will be an ongoing objective for the PCs.

One of the world-building assignments I handed out was “tell me three problems the village has.” The skilled trades issue was one. A second was a lack of potable water – water from the Pilica can cause illness and hallucinations. An additional catch here is that some hallucinations accurately predict future events, but those are accompanied by more incapacitating illness.

Did I mention that my players are mostly from my college-era World of Darkness group and they near-unanimously asked for supernatural elements in their post-nuclear apocalypse?

This ties into the village’s third initial problem, which is that something is taking the children. So far, it’s also returning them, but they have no memory of what happened to them while they were gone…