{"id":934,"date":"2024-07-21T09:11:55","date_gmt":"2024-07-21T14:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/?p=934"},"modified":"2025-09-11T07:09:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:09:20","slug":"raid-on-radomsko-part-one-07-october-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/?p=934","title":{"rendered":"Raid on Radomsko, Part One (07 October 2000)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This series of posts spans one session of planning, two and a half sessions of gameplay, and some asynchronous private chat conversations, all focused on concluding one story arc. In play, both groups were active simultaneously, with focus shifting between the two every 15 to 30 minutes of realtime or every one to three rounds of combat. For narrative purposes, Parts One through Four of this series will alternate focus somewhat asynchronously.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A cold, heavy, steady rain is falling as the team moves to their jumping-off point on Radomsko’s east side. The weather is all they could have asked for, shrouding even the decidedly unstealthy bulk of the PTS-M carrying the infiltration element. The ambush element – Cowboy, Betsy, Octavia, Comrade, and Ortiz – is almost relieved to split off. Almost, because once the infiltrators dismount, the ambushers’ newly-upgunned UAZ-469 is now the largest and loudest target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Radomsko’s streets are dark and and the pavement is rain-slick where it’s not choked with debris. Ortiz navigates carefully to the chosen location and backs the UAZ into the lee of a derelict two-story building that formerly housed a restaurant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cowboy pulls on her rain gear and climbs into the gun ring. She unlatches the travel locks on the weapon mount and swings the recoilless rifle through its full range of motion. “Loader, HEAT,” she murmurs. Octavia eases a 73mm shell into the breech and slaps the other woman’s leg to indicate that the weapon is loaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Betsy dismounts, enters the building, and climbs the stairs. She finds a spot with the ideal combination of rubble for cover and a section of floor that’s unlikely to further collapse. Setting her HK23<\/a> aside in a dry place, she unspools a length of wire, then tosses the rest of the coil down to ground level. She moves back downstairs, sets up a small curved plastic box on folding legs, and carefully connects two wires. Then she returns to her firing position and settles in to wait with her light machine gun propped on its bipod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The ambush element has been in position for ten or fifteen minutes when Ortiz, waiting in the driver’s seat, hisses. Above the rooftops to the east, a red flare is rising into the sky from the general vicinity of the museum. Octavia climbs out and gives Betsy a low whistle, alerting her that contact is imminent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The headlights appear first. It’s a single vehicle, but silhouettes cast by the lights indicate that an infantry screen is advancing in front of it. The lights also make a fine aiming point, so Cowboy takes her time lining up on the space between them. She tracks the target, waiting for Betsy to initiate the ambush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Betsy has the detonator in her hand. When the leading pair of marauders is thirty meters from her position, she clacks off the MON-50<\/a>. The directional mine shreds <\/em>the point men. The three pairs following them go down with varying degrees of injury – and universal shock at a totally unexpected attack in the streets of a city they’ve come to think of as theirs<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cowboy fires. The rocket-assisted HEAT round is still accelerating when it strikes the gun truck ninety meters away. The detonation is anticlimactic compared to the recoilless rifle’s firing signature, let alone the blast and carnage of the mine, but the shaped charge cores the truck’s engine block [5 penetrating damage]<\/em>. The converted fire engine shudders to a halt in the middle of the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all of the marauders are suppressed, and they’re swiftly recovering from their initial surprise. Cowboy calls for a HE round and Octavia slams one into the SPG-9. Still aiming at the now-darkened bulk of the truck, the former MLRS artillerist puts her follow-up shot within half a meter of the first. The truck shudders again as something in its suspension gives out. The blast rips through the nearest marauders, still proned out on the asphalt. The gun truck’s crew loses their resolve at this and bails out, abandoning the dual RPD<\/a> mount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Betsy flips her HK23 off safe and starts sending bursts downrange, concentrating on the closest groups. Return fire starts coming in but the initial volleys go high or into her cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cowboy fires three more HE rounds, going for the groups clustered around the disabled truck. The truck’s crew is bleeding heavily from blast and shrapnel wounds before they manage to drag themselves into the shelter of an alley and break line of sight. The marauders are still persistently refusing to give up, and are even advancing through buildings, moving with the eerie voiceless synchronicity that the team has observed before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the back of the pack, a machine gun team gets itself sorted out and lays its PKM over the trunk of a derelict car. 7.62x54mm rounds start pinging off the UAZ’s add-on armor. One ricochets from Cowboy’s gun shield and clips the radio antenna. A rifle team makes it to a rooftop near Betsy’s position and forces her back with entirely-too-accurate fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With half the marauders down and their major firepower out of action, Cowboy decides it’s time to break off this engagement. Ortiz pulls around the building that the ambush element has been using for shelter. Betsy executes her pre-planned withdrawal option, bailing out an east-facing window. Her boots hit the roof of a dumpster with a hollow boom<\/em>, and Cowboy and Octavia pull her into the UAZ. Ortiz peels out, heading for a second ambush site at the edge of an abandoned construction zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This part of the mission was wildly successful. The PCs inflicted about 33% casualties on the marauders, wounded a majority of the rest, and got a mobility kill on the gun truck. In return, they took minor vehicle damage and a couple of points of stress from suppression.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Incidentally, this was an all-female mission with the technical exception of Comrade.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This series of posts spans one session of planning, two and a half sessions of gameplay, and some asynchronous private chat conversations, all focused on concluding one story arc. In play, both groups were active simultaneously, with focus shifting between the two every 15 to 30 minutes of realtime or every one to three rounds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kaserne-on-the-borderlands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1361,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions\/1361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}