Category Archives: Campaign and Session Logs

The Tale of Vandal 6-1

A few days ago, someone in the Twilight: 2000 subreddit asked about campaign starts. Here’s my contribution:

I’ve been playing since 1st edition and my preference remains the classic Escape from Kalisz campaign seed. Having said that… a few years ago, I introduced T2k v2.2 to a group who’d (with one exception) never heard of it. I started the campaign on 06 July 2000, about a week and a half before the Kalisz breakout. The PCs were the 7th Combat Engineer Battalion’s engineering recon team. This meant they were the guys who got sent to assess the maneuver brigades’ requests for engineer support and determine what was feasible and what resources were needed. In practice, this let me give them a series of assignments that had them present at or near most of the major story beats in the run-up to the 5th Infantry Division’s last stand.

This enabled me to start them off with a good supply situation and strong support – available fuel, sufficient medical supplies, occasional mortars on call. Then I ramped up the pressure with each major contact, adding additional hostile unit markers to the world map as the encirclement took shape. They got to watch the 5th ID crumble from the inside.

It took about twelve sessions to get to the breakout. For that, we shifted focus off the PCs. Every player got one or two combat vehicles, most of whom were already low on ammo and carrying some non-disabling damage. This gave us a chance to use the vehicle combat rules to their fullest as the players fought their way through the Soviet encirclement. To raise the stakes, they were escorting five trucks, which the Soviets were trying to kill. Each truck that made it off the map added to the resources (fuel, ammo, food, attached NPCs) that the PCs had after the breakout.

I’ve always wanted to raise the stakes on this by finding an appropriate wargaming system (something tuned for micro armor, perhaps) and actually playing out part of the 5th ID’s last stand. Battalion, perhaps even brigade, level. The Soviets’ objective would be to kill American units. The Americans’ objective would be to get as many units as possible off the map. This would all be the setup for a subsequent RPG campaign whose starting parameters would be determined by the American players’ success in the battle.

[Convergence 01.00a] Task Group Brigand

The infantry squad Glen borrowed for the hostage rescue operation is sprawled across the small briefing room’s back two rows. The usual grunt bullshitting is doing a poor job of masking a bit of unease about why they’re here. Glen closes the door, using a bit more force than is strictly necessary. The sound is a guillotine for the conversations. All eyes turn to him.

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[Convergence 01.00] Downtime

The successful assault on the spaceport concludes the first story arc. With that, Glen and Ilias reach License Level 1. Glen picks up Metalmark 1 (going for Amber Phantom), while Ilias finds himself awarded Pegasus 1.

My notes for this session aren’t the greatest, so this will be even more fragmentary than usual. In my defense, it’s partially because we had a really good RP and meta discussion and I was too engaged to log much.

The enemy combatants are sequestered and interrogated. They were recruited primarily from co-op mining crews based in Wake (but it seems they were recruited individually – there’s no evidence of whole crews being brought into Ashfall en masse). Most seemingly self-selected, as they were already echoing anti-Union propaganda. They got a crash course in sim combat training over the local net before the spaceport op.

Some of the frames used in the attack were not printed on site. Rather, they were smuggled into the port on ore haulers. Back-tracing those reveals they shipped through Stockland Station. This may have been a matter of convenience, though, as Stockland is the Virex Belt’s primary industrial hub. While it was a transshipment point, the mechs’ point of origin is likely elsewhere in the Belt.

The attackers coordinated via the system’s civilian comm networks that predate Union presence. It’s a heavily decentralized system, but based on existing co-op arrangements (so the local social structure naturally enables cell structures).

Most of the prisoners indicate that they expected Union to engage in protracted negotiation before sending in troops. Our immediate engagement seems to have pre-empted their plans to build up defenses.

While the recon team deployed to the spaceport did report paracausal effects, that information seems to have been lost from the official reports. Ilias does some digging. The documentation was prepared by Rael, the NHP responsible for mission coordination and oversight.

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[Convergence 00.03] Port Authority

The recovered Union printer techs and soldiers have been moved to the hostage rescue operation’s staging area, where they’re receiving medical care and a first round of debriefings.

And in one of Wake’s more industrialized areas, the impeccably-groomed Diamond Matthews, spokesperson for Ashfall, hurls her datapad at one of her assistants as Union’s counterpropaganda begins turning the tide of public opinion.

And in a richly-appointed office, Arnoldo Carno, the elected coordinator of the Tu’rosan Cooperative Network, icily flays an unseen person at the other end of a vidcall link regarding the ongoing insurgent action. “While you’re preaching about turning their technology into weapons,” he hisses, “Union is turning their technology into schools. Hospitals. Opportunities. You think they’re weak, that they’re here to take our livelihoods? Do you know how many printers they have? If they wanted, they could flood our streets with munitions. What you see as weakness is them showing restraint.”

And on the edge of the inland sea against which Lake nestles, two Everest-class frames, unseen by misdirected observers and hacked sensors, disappear under the water.

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Janek Wakes Up Again (sometime after 19 October 2000)

Janek doesn’t awaken so much bob to the surface of unconsciousness. The ceiling is unfamiliar, as are the walls and the bed. On the plus side, there’s a ceiling, walls, and a bed.

“Welcome back.” The voice is speaking Polish, but with an accent that it takes Janek a moment to place. The name is more elusive until the associated face appears.

“Doctor Red.”

“Ah. Good.” Red looks at something outside Janek’s field of vision. There’s a scrape of wood on wood as he pulls up a chair. A clink of earthenware. A cool, smooth curve pressed into Janek’s hand. “Water?”

Janek is suddenly, maddeningly thirsty. And hungry. Red seems to anticipate this. “Food is next, if you satisfy me you can handle it.” His diagnostic battery is thorough but swift. When he’s done, he stands and opens the door. “Jacob? Would you see if Magda can make something for our guest?” A muffled reply and withdrawing footsteps indicate an affirmative.

“How bad? How long was I…?” Janek isn’t certain how to finish, or even what questions to ask.

“A few days. Less than it would take in normal circumstances.” Red hesitates. “You may have some short-term memory loss, it seems minor. There are some other factors, which we’ll discuss later. But you’re doing remarkably well for someone who underwent emergency head surgery.”

Janek’s head throbs at that. A memory surfaces: a blank face over a threadbare uniform, a swollen-looking Kalashnikov rising —

Red nods sympathetically. “I assure you, this isn’t how we normally welcome new arrivals to Ponikla.”

At least the room is in a place with a name. But — “Surgery?” Janek’s skin prickles and bile churns in an empty stomach. Surgery usually involves…

Again, Red is ahead of the game. “Your name wasn’t always Janek, was it?”

Janek pauses, weighing Red’s tone. Mild. Accepting. Maybe even understanding. “It’s still not. But it’s a safer name than Joanna.”

Red nods. “We’re in Ponikla now. If you’d rather be Joanna, no one will bother you here.”

“Thank you… but Janek is good for now. At least until more places are safe than just one village.”

Table Flipping (19 October 2000)

Picking up where we left off, with the Ponikla PCs in Opoczno…

It’s midafternoon when the team wraps up their negotiations with Opoczno’s mayor and town council. They still have a few other pieces of business to transact, and at least one more item has arisen during their visit.

Alexei’s PC is out for this session, so the East German teenager slides offscreen with Ludwig. The radiologist allegedly knows the location of a cache of vinyl records.

Minka and Zenobia have heard there’s a machinist in town who’s selling higher-end tools in addition to his fabrication services. It’s not hard to get directions, and within twenty minutes, the team is standing in front of a former laundromat. A 10kw portable generator is emplaced on cinder blocks around the back of the building, plumbed to run off a 200-liter drum of methanol. Zenobia nods approvingly at the heavy-duty muffler that’s been fabricated for what would otherwise be a cacophonous small engine.

The interior of the place has been stripped down to the studs, except for one restroom and a tiny office cubicle with attached service counter. The front half of the space is full of display shelves and pegboard. It’s mostly hand tools and spare parts, with one shelving unit containing basic power tools. Little is factory new, but everything is clean, freshly sharpened or tightened, and otherwise in good condition.

The building’s back half is, as advertised, a machine shop. It’s a little better equipped than what Minka’s been able to piece together, though it lacks her smithy and a couple of other items. In the middle of the floor, an immense heavily-tattooed, red-bearded man sits in the center of an oil-spotted bedsheet, surrounded by the stripped parts of a drill press. He’s painstakingly cleaning and examining each small part. At Minka’s greeting, he holds up a finger, finishes the operation in his hands, and returns the part to its place on the sheet before hoisting himself up. As he stands, it becomes apparent that he’s missing one leg below the knee. He carefully removes his bifocal safety glasses and tucks them into a shirt pocket before extending a hand in greeting.

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Let’s Go Shopping (19 October 2000)

Everyone is finally healed – physically, at least – after the Battle of Horse Eater Hill. Some of the team members have gotten out of town for various errands, but everyone has been going in separate directions for most of the past week. Red and Alexei confer with Wilhelm, Léonard, the Jaroses, Magda, and a few other key village leaders and come away with a solid list of needs and wants. They collect Minka, Miko, Zenobia, and Leks and pile into the Hilux technical and the deuce-and-a-half for a shopping run to Opoczno.

Since early September, when the Battle of Radom cut the Soviet line of communication between Lódz and Lublin, Opoczno has been hard at work to position itself as a regional trade center. There’s still a fair amount of concern about threats from marauders to the west, and a lot of the city’s limited military efforts have been designed to guard against the former Soviet airborne troops occupying Tomaszów Mazowiecki. Those guys have been oddly quiet since a reported large explosion and fire in August, though. The less organized marauders to the southwest, mostly splinters of the 9th Tank Division, have also been going dark over the past couple of months.

The local area’s travel map. Several unresolved plot hooks are still hanging around here.
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Janek Wakes Up (sometime before 19 October 2000)

Janek Woźniak has been on the run for… a while. Things have been a bit muddled since the ambush outside Warsaw that claimed the rest of his uncle’s merchant convoy. The Polish teenager isn’t really thinking of much beyond his next meal and a safe place to sleep when he stumbles across a bridge and into a small town on the south bank of a big river.

The place is under the protection of foreign soldiers. It takes Janek a day or two to parse that it really is protection, not “protection.” The troops are East Germans, and enough of them speak functional Polish to smooth their integration into the local population.

It’s Janek’s third or fourth day in the town when something clouding his brain burns away. He’s sitting in the one local roadhouse, enjoying the sensations of being clean, well-fed, and warm. There’s an excited stir as people start crowding into the dining room. Then four of the East Germans push their way in, carrying a couple of car batteries, a couple of rolls of wire, and a few prewar electronic devices of some sort. There’s a flurry of setup activity. One of the soldiers looks at something strapped to his wrist, then kneels almost reverently before the central contraption and does some things to it.

From everywhere in the room, there’s a crackle. A hiss. The crowd stills expectantly.

Then – music.

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Broth, Bread, and Apple Cake

Another in-setting fiction piece from the player behind Magda (and Betsy), in which Magda shares a decision.

Magda’s sling lies on a table in the hostel’s common room, discarded in favor of mobility.

Her left arm is wrapped in bandages from her wrist to her elbow, but she can still hold an apple steady and work the knife with the other hand. Or hold a slice steady while she pierces it with the blunt needle and pulls the twine through.

She drapes the string of slices across a pan, picks up the knife again, and reaches for another apple.

Under the bandages, her arm twinges oddly. Part pain, part electricity, part heat. She drops the apple on the cutting board with a muttered “kurwa mać.”

From behind her, Red’s voice says, “You know, the point of the sling is to keep that from happening.”

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[Convergence 00.02] Takedown

(Lost? Find campaign startup notes and PC profiles here.)

[ I’m going to attempt the writing convention of referring to our PCs by their given names during narrative play and their callsigns while mounted. Let’s see how well that works. ]

Glen and Ilias find themselves back in their usual morning routines, still reeling from the effects of the fight they just experienced. There’s little time for recovery and investigation, though – their dataplates’ comm systems are lighting up with a priority alert from Ambassador Storch, the chief of the Union diplomatic mission on Tu’rosa.

One of Union’s initiatives was to establish a Schedule II printing station in Wake, the capital city. Tu’rosans want more control over Union tech that’s being brought on-world, and that was not a thing that was going to happen immediately, but Storch wanted to start some uplift work here. This project had numerous security concerns for obvious reasons.

Glen and Ilias were involved in the process of security evaluations for the installation site. The timeline was supposed to be six months out. From the briefing’s context, and supported by other indications like time/date stamps on files, the present day is now a month after the install. The PCs realize they’ve slipped seven to eight months in objective time. No one else seems to notice this, or the timeline was edited out from under them.

The immediate problem, though, is direct action by parties unknown. Three days ago, the printing station went online at Wake’s spaceport. It was under local administrative control, but a small Union presence remained on site to handle operations, maintenance, scheduling, and ongoing infrastructure build-out. A small security detail from the 501st Exploratory Guards was also stationed there.

One hour ago, unknown attackers (potentially Ashfall, the primary decentralized political movement opposing Union membership, or Ax, the collective pseudonym used by organizers of Ashfall’s militant arm) hit the site. They were using highly effective weapons, not obviously of local manufacture, alongside previously-unseen EW capabilities.

The spaceport is on a high activity cycle due to the operational tempo of industrial traffic from the system’s belt. This is complicating any attempt to establish orbital surveillance or top cover. Hostile frames have secured areas of the spaceport; they bear significant similarities to the PCs’ recent (subjective time) opponents, though not as advanced (Mk. I vs. Mk. VI, relatively speaking). They’re smaller, less sophisticated, without signs of radiation or spacetime distortions or annihilation engine power plants.

Something is now operating the printer. Union techs are not cooperating and no locals should have access to license files. From remote telemetry and data leakage, some of the items being fabbed are armament and frames that shouldn’t even be possible.

A local propagandist is livestreaming this incident. They’re claiming that the heads of several cooperatives – the key unit of social cohesion on Tu’rosa – have banded together to appropriate Union technology for the betterment of the community.

There is video confirming several friendly KIAs. The surviving Union personnel have been relocated into the city. One of the techs, Ikke Zek, managed to position his NHP partner to punch out some recordings which provided the prisoners’ current location. The spaceport is on the western edge of Wake next to an inland sea, while the hostages are being held on the eastern edge of town in the residential sprawl. Local buildings tend to be fairly low, but reinforced – the city is heavily industrialized.

Ambassador Storch’s top priority is the recovery of Union personnel. One of his key deputies, Envoy Su Yan, is advocating for neutralization of the hostile forces at the spaceport. We spend a little bit of time deliberating, but at the end of the day, we’re going with the boss’ priorities first.

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