Situation Foxtrot (SAO/Foxhole) [COMPLETE]

Sitting down at the radio terminal, you took a copy of the radio frequency book that the kids in 65 Signals had put out, and tabbed over to the interhex radio frequencies, dialing in carefully. The War Bureau had everything from 10,600 to 12,000 Hz pegged out as theirs, and operated a 24/7 "bus station" for incoming calls on 11,650 for anyone that needed to put a call through. Since most everyone else was out in the field working on putting in what your fortification book referred to as "L'Albatros", you had all the time in the world to make this call. Picking up the vintage-styled bakelite telephone, you breathed deeply. Nerves, go away please!

"This is 15 Uhlans Regiment to War Bureau, come in War Bureau."

A moment of crackling silence, before a whirring click-click came through the airwaves and a brief burst of static. "Wazzat? Who the hell's on the bus frequency?"

"This is 15 Uhlans Regiment to War Bureau, come in War Bureau."

"Right shitfuck this is a real person, argh!" the voice said, beating on something in the background. "Sorry, sorry, we're having some trouble securing this frequency, we're repeating for 45 Infantry to 52 Sustainment right now and it's mucking up the upper bands. 15 Uhlans, move to channel frequency 10,800 Hz for call."

"Wilco, changing frequency." you said, hanging up the phone's headset and spinning the control dial down. As the red needle settled over the right frequency, you breathed in, and braced yourself again. "This is 15 Uhlans, come in War Bureau."

"This is 46 Sustainment out of Viper Pit, we read you five by five," a different voice said, crisper and much more professional. "We're with the War Bureau. What do you need?"

"I heard from leadership in 46 Sustainment that you guys need more members, and well, we're not doing too great," you said, letting the weight off your chest. "I'm the 15's colonel after our last one ditched us, and things aren't looking too great right now. We're lost."

"I'd have to get you online with the Colonel, but we've heard of you," the man from the 46 said. "11 Infantry and the rest of the French remember when you cut the lines that time."

"That was one time," you groused.

"That's one more time than the rest of the so-called regiments. Cuttail Station has sixty assorted 'infantry' regiments guarding it, and most of them never leave their bunker bases. If the Colonials ever got parachutists, our backline would fold up faster than laundry."

"Either way," you said, a little flustered by the compliments. "Either way. My bonafides aside, I want in for me and mine."

"Right, now I definitely have to get the colonel. Please hold?"

"Alright."

It was a quarter of a minute before a new voice came on, a pleasant lilt to their voice that the radio tried its damndest to eat alive. "This is Colonel Brava speaking."

"Colonel Brava, I'm Colonel Orr Melanie. I'm interested in my regiment joining the War Bureau."

"Really? Wonderful! We'll need you to come to Kirknel to get you 'on the books' so to speak, and up to speed on the current war plans."

"Would later this week work?"

"Certainly. Just put in a call on this frequency, and stop by our buner base before you get to Kirknell. We're just south of Moltworth, I'll have the staff car warmed up."

///

Thanks to the power of "throw more bodies at a problem", you managed to get your base upgrades with not one, but two Albatross patterns, and most of the upgrades in (you were still a few days off of AT tech) to boot. This finally, finally let you put in a dedicated water closet, an actual bath, and most importantly beds for everyone.

Well, okay, enough beds to go down to two shifts per bed. Still a good upgrade, as far as you were concerned. Additionally, now that it was done and you could organize everything by shift and get all the rotations worked out, a lot of moods cleared up and 'dead time' on a lot of things like meals suddenly nosedived- as well as the amount of times people had to move the heavy weatherproof curtain that helped keep the persistent cold out of the bunker base.

With that all done, though, you could finally sit down with Bathroy, and start working out the shift system, pushing through the dozens of headaches you'd been having. Getting better cooks, better drivers, more reliable rotations and less work for the people willing to go outside the wire, getting more work for people to actually emplace the concertina that had been delivered for you- it all added up, quickly. The best part, though, was the fact you could finally institute an NCO system.

NCOs, alias non-commissioned officers, alias Sergeants or Warrant Officers, had a very important job: they kept people from being dipshits. This might sound like a joke, but in reality it was a critical bit of work: people would forget things without blinking in order to do silly things, and the information falling out of their head was usually quite important. In addition, NCOs also managed a more critical effort of keeping morale up, and fixing the little problems that plagued life in a crowded bunker base that wasn't meant for long-term habitation.

Still, the end of the week came, and with it getting Coatl into the passenger seat of your Drummond and heading off. It was only an hour drive, and the dogleg to avoid the unprotected section of Viper Pit wasn't a difficult one to take. Pulling up, you saw 46 Sustainment already had their own Drummond out- not a proto, you noted- and soon enough you were off and following them.

The meetingplace of the War Bureau was Fort Viper, an imposing stone-and-bunker riddled isle across a near-perpetually frozen lake that sometimes shared water with the Austriaca River that lanced through the hex. As you moved under the guns of nearly a dozen anti-tank bunkers, you suppressed a shiver.

If anything wanted to break Fort Viper, they'd need to bring nuclear weapons, or a siege they'd tell legends of for ages.

As you parked next to Brava's staff car, you blinked. She was tall, broad-shouldered and with a chest you'd swear was padded if you didn't know this was an illusion of the mind. Still, her bold smile was almost enough to warm you as she grabbed your hand and shook it.

"Thanks for coming!" she said, looking over at her own passenger. "Otto, take her man out, get him some garrison supplies from the stockpile. Make sure they're not coming back empty-handed, alright?"

"Certainly."

"We normally get our supplies from the King, but alright," you said, muttering. "Thank you for the generosity."

"Don't thank me, thank the game for making garrison supplies better rations."

"Wait, what?"

Brava's smile turned pointed as she pulled out a cigarette, lighting it off a flint match as she led you towards the relic base in the keep. "Garrison supplies are better food. More vegetables, less cabbage, different meats, better vanity products. Bunker supplies, well, I'm sure you've gotten the whole menu on that."

"Tinned bread does get a little old after a while, yes."

"Exactly. Garrison supplies are better, and more importantly tend to spawn better food in your pantry."

You smiled at Brava as she got the door to the Relic for you. "You know a lot about this."

"I'm the colonel of a Sustainment regiment, babe. This is what I do."

Trying not to flush, you went up to the long table, taking a look over it. The whole thing was covered with maps, but an officer's dirk stood proud in the front of the table, a Warden angel on the pommel. Pulling it out in curiosity, you blinked when it gave you a stat window.

[A Caoivish Reminder]

Well, that was grim. Sliding it into your belt, where a sheathe materialized for it where a bayonet frog would normally go, you settled down at the table- and then, out of the corners of the room, you saw the rest of the occupants start to emerge.

The rest of the governing body of the War Bureau were a spottled, motley bunch. Unit insignia speckled their horizon-blue coats, and as they all settled down with you it was easy to tell who was what- from the black trim with white lace on the Colonel of the Research Regiment, or the plain red piping on Brava and the other Sustainment colonel's rank patches, or the other fellow with the lance-and-pennant in navy-and-silver that shared the designation of 'Uhlan' with you.

Sitting at the front of the table was a proud-looking man, American, and with Infantry tabs. "Alright, welcome everyone. First order of business, I'd like everyone to meet our newest member, Col. Orr Melanie, of the 15 Uhlans. Miss Orr, I'm Colonel Hooker, leader of 1 Infantry."

"Charmed," you said, bowing slightly. "I hope to do the Bureau proud."

"Well, you can't do worse than the mercenaries I've been fishing for," someone said, face pinched. "The Navy did not take the transition to virtual reality kindly: there's three Naval Infantry regiments right now. I secured the services of two of them."

"I take it they're like sailors everywhere?"

"Indeed. Drunk, disorderly, and needing extreme handholding to reach their objectives," the man said, before looking to you. "I would be Colonel Tepes, 45 Infantry, by the way. Still, the Naval Infantry won't be liable to cause issues: Mentha has resumed operational control until Von Claes recovers from his latest injury."

"Drunkenness on the clock?" an unknown asked.

"No, near-terminal lag. I suspect whomever was in charge of transporting him to the long-term care facilities our bodies are in was hit by a semi truck."

"It would be him, wouldn't it?"

"Indeed."

"Either way, we have an operation to plan," Hooker said, tapping the topmost map- a cell of the Morgen's Crossing hex. "Sustainment Units, what's our status on operational supplies?"

"Two hundred crates of 7.62 ammo stored, eighty crates of Loughcasters, mostly pre-stock; forty crates of Sampos, sixty crates of Blakerows. About three hundred crates of Mammons for all fronts, and plenty of vehicles in crates ready to go," Brava said.

"Seconding Brava's counts, my teams have the water logistics side of the operation ready to go. Say the word, and we can get the Naval Infantry what they need."

"Good. Infantry, how are you looking? I know my boys are chomping at the bit."

Two generic "affirmatives" sounded out.

"Finally, we get to you, Colonel Orr."

You smiled a little. "Good, because I am, in a word, lost."

Brava just facepalmed. "Damnit, Hooker."

"Sorry, sorry," he said, waving his hand. "Alright, then: from the top. We're the War Bureau, and we're gonna land the biggest fucking sucker punch in this war, while the Goblins are handling the zerg rush in the west."

Well, glad to see they had just as low of an opinion of the current Logistics Union Push as you did.

"Currently, the plan is as follows," he continued, getting out the map. "There are two major entry paths into Morgen's Crossing. Recon says they've only got them lightly covered at the border, and deeper in there's three main forts: labeled on this map as Alpha, Echo, and India. If we crack these forts, we can move into Quietus. Take Quietus, set up a player port into a bunker base there, and then push through to Bastard's Block and break them there. Once we break Bastard's Block, we can siege down Allsight."

Brava continued. "To do this, we're taking four attack vectors in. The 13 Marin and 27 Marine- excuse me, Naval Infantry- will execute a landing east of Quietus and set up a defensive line to prevent reinforcement from Lividus, and engage Fort Oscar at their convenience. We can't reliably cut Fort Yankee or Fort Uniform, so there's still an excellent chance of enemy reinforcements, though."

Here, Tepes spoke up. "Ideally, my attack on Fort India will be enough to keep reinforcements from Allsight occupied. Best case, we take Eversus and can interdict the road upstream of Fort Yankee, but we plan for the worst here."

"46 Sustainment and 99 Engineering are going to be operating resupply for us on the south flank, and 45 Infantry are getting their logistics through 163 Uhlans," Hooker said, smirking. "If you can, I'd like you to work with 1 Infantry to play sheep-herder. We're relying on auxiliaries to move supplies for our flank of the push, and every truck helps."

"I'll talk to my officers about it," you deflected. "When do we start?"

"When the Logistics Union decides to let the balloon go up." Tepes said, grim. "We're the best in the game, but we need the orcs to be redeploying so they can't shuffle in more bodies across the border."

"In which case, I know those idiots. They may well decide to jump tomorrow," you said, nodding. After that, you smiled. "So, any other big problems to talk about."

"Nah," Tepes grunted, pulling out a flask. "Now that we covered the big stuff, it's time to booze and bitch. Anyone smelled what's coming out of the 27 Naval Infantry barracks lately?"

And with that, it was time to bullshit like your career depended on it.

///
Quest Mechanic: Planning Bonus

In order to simulate the vast, messy world of warfare, planning helps ease the struggles of the world. As such, each turn where War Planning is taken as an action grants +1 to Operational Rolls for the unit or organization for the named operation.

Note: Nonstandard vote this turn to integrate with the War Bureau and because there's a dice roll for the start of the Logistics Union Offensive.


///
VOTE
(Plan vote still plzkthx)

Liveries Addition
(Current unit crest: On blank field, bend sinister in argent with sheathed saber dexter in escutcheon. In compartment, "15" in standard serif script)
[] Dirk, sheathed, in chief
[] Warden Angel Device in field
[] Warden Colors (Argent and Azule, changing field to azule and bend sinister to argent)
[] Lance with pennant in estuchon, crossed with present emblem.
[] Change font of all lettering and numbering to Fraktur font
[] Change font of all lettering and numbering to sans-serif font
[] Write-in (must include item, color, and position)

Offensive Positioning
[] Operate on the South Front: Your trucks can serve as armed logistics, and your non-combat troops can help with engineering tasks. There's going to be a lot of bunker bases that need building, and it'll be a very safe position since they don't have artillery.
[] Operate on the Center Front: You don't trust your people to have the ability to stand a long, grisly war of attrition- even from the back, where the danger is least. A short, sharp deployment will be easier for them to handle.
[] Operate on the North Front: Your people are new, mostly untested, and mostly wanting to stay untested. A little gentle dunk in the war should be enough to get them hardened up; not like most will be doing more than engineering anyway.
[] Operate with the Naval Infantry
(AN: You are not water operations rated, nor water logistics rated.)

Personal Preparation
[] Try and drill your greener recruits up a little so they don't fall to pieces in the inevitable fighting. You might loose a few, but you need guns, not cowards.
[] Build up a good personal equipment stockpile in case of emergency. A shot in the arm of shirts could turn the offensive.
[] Take some time to build up coordination with your front leader. Good planning saves lives and material- and in this game, the two are the same thing.