Situation Foxtrot (SAO/Foxhole) [COMPLETE]

-Weapons
-- No.2 Loughcaster Rifle
-- Ahti Model 2 Pistol
-- A3 Harpa Fragmentation Grenade
-- Mammon 91-b High Explosive Grenade
-- Anti-Tank Sticky Grenade
--Blakerow 871 Carbine
--Sampo Auto-Rifle
--Cometa T2-9
--Green Ash Chemical Weapon Greande
--12.7mm Anti-Infantry Flak Gun
--The Osprey Rifle-Grenade Launcher
--Brasa Shotgun
--Fiddler SMG model 868
--Malone Ratcatcher Mk.1
--White Ash Grenade
--Clancy Cinder M3
--Cutler Foebreaker
--20 Neville Anti-Tank Rifle
-Utility
--Outpost Building
--Machine Gun Pillbox
--Listening Kit
--Bunker Supplies
--Garrison Supplies
--Shirts
--Bandages
--Blood Plasma
--Trauma Kit
--First Aide Kit
--Soldier Supplies ("Shirts")
--Shovel
--Hammer
--Wall
--Gate
--Gas Mask
--Gas Mask Filter
--Concrete Mixer
--Balor 99-c Entrenching Charge
--Sledgehammer
-Construction Materials
--Sandbags
--Barbed Wire
--Concrete Materials
-Uniforms
--Physician's Jacket
--Caovish Parka
--Outrider's Mantle
--Officer's Uniform
--Heavy Ammo Uniform
-Utility Vehicles
--Dunne Transport
--Dunne Fuelrunner 2d
--BMS Packmule Flatbed
--BMS Universal Assembly Vehicle ("CV")
--BMS Class 2 Auto-Crane
--Dunne Loadlugger 3c
--Drummond 100a Light Utility Vehicle
--Dunne Caravanner 2f
--Dunne Responder 3e (Ambulance)
--Drummond Loscann 55c (Amphibious)
--Kivela Power Wheel 80-1
-Artillery
--Light Artillery
---Balfour Wolfhound 40mm Field Gun
---Swallowtail 988/127-2 Field Machine Gun
---Cerami 60mm Mortar
--Heavy Artillery
---Huber Lariat 120mm
-Combat Vehicles
--Tanks
---Devitt Mark III
---King Spire Mk-I Scout Tank
--APCs/Halftracks
---Niska Mk. 1 Gun Motor Carriage
--Technicals
--Armored Cars
---O'Brien V.110 Armored Car
---O'Brien V.101 Freeman Armored Car
---O'Brien V.121 Highlander
---O'Brien V.113 Gravekeeper
-Ships
--BMS Grouper Motorboat
--BMS Ironship
--BMS Aquatipper
--74b-1 Ronan Gunship
--White Whale Landing Ship
-Trains
--BMS Black Bolt Locomotive Engine
--BMS Standard Gauge Boxcar
--BMS Standard Gauge Flatcar

CURRENT RESEARCH ITEMS

Weapons Tree

-Willow's Bane Model 845 Flamethrower
Or
-Clancy-Raca M4
Auto-unlocks
-Malone Mk.2
-Building Materials
--Materials Pallets
--Ammunition Pallets
--Fuel Pallets
--Fluid Pipelines

Vehicles Tree
-Balfour Falconer Field Mortar
Or
-74-c2 Metora Gunship
Auto-unlocks
-Niska Mk.2 Blinder
-Mulloy Landing APC
-Rycker 4/3-F Wasp Nest

Some things were routine. The sun rose, people panicked over "only have a thousand g-sups", and Theresa called you at inopportune times. Since you still did line duty as a watch-standing officer, mostly so you could teach whatever new kid you had shanghai'd into officer-hood how to do it, it meant your sleep schedule bounced around like a kid on meth. Sometimes you were on day shift, sometimes evening shift, sometimes night shift, and no matter which shift you were on the phone call would come halfway through you sleeping, passed out in a bunk somewhere.

Today you'd been asleep in the town hall though, so it wasn't too bad. Fumbling your way down the stairs, you glared at the radio, then at the truck driver with the forms. "What?" you snapped, glaring at them as you finished pulling on your overcoat.

"Ma'am General, uh, I just needed to call in-" the driver, some pimple-faced kid said, before Silica interrupted him from her seat at the radio.

"Theresa says its 41205," Silica said, tapping her set. "Orr, Theresa's on the line. New tech just dropped- and oh. That's Takamachi. She wants to know if you want any Balfour Falconers, some sort of- no, Colonel, I'm not putting her on, she's not caffeinated yet- bigass field mortar for demo work. She thinks you'll want some- yes I'm telling her right now- and the other tech options are a flamethrower versus a sniper rifle. No, Colonel, I don't think she needs either, but- yeah miss Takamachi, she's my boss, of course I'm going to- ma'am please-"

"It is…" you muttered, checking the clock on the mantle of the fireplace at the end of the town hall that was puffing away merrily. "...ten thirty five. If you can handle those two yelling at clouds for a half hour you're promoted to lieutenant."

"Deal!"

Stumbling off, you went to get a cup of coffee while trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Unfortunately, nobody had cooked up standing breakfast again, so it was a cold sardines-and-tomato sandwich. Forty-odd minutes later, Silica had managed to beat off your brigade-mates, and you just opened up your Brigade Ledger to upgrade her status from "sergeant" to "lieutenant" without really managing to think about it.

Once that was done, you groaned and tried to think about how you'd formally get Silica trained up, before realizing she'd been with you for months now and stood most of your watches with you anyway. You wouldn't call her fully trained- had to teach her about using the Regimental Books- but other than that, she was about as good as Landry when it came to doing paperwork.

///

As 120mm shells poured into your supply- something from Theresa about making sure you were well-supplied when it was time to pop off the guns- made you feel better, if only slightly, about how the week was turning out. Specifically, the fact you'd had to get everyone out to the fort to man the defenses, because the Colonials were feeling pokey. It wasn't a lot of poke, to be sure, but you were having to bat off more and more frequent raids from the enemy Dragoons, and worse were the Janissaries. They'd teched up rocket launchers at some point, and now it wasn't a night you could get a full sleep before some 0200 rocket attacks slammed into a section of the base. The things didn't outrange you, and to be fair everyone put their back out trying to return fire, but it wasn't working.

The problem was threefold. Fold one, your gunners had issues making hits out at long range. The rocket vehicles doing the work- some technical-ass rail rack in the bed of a standard truck- liked to park out at two hundred, two hundred fifty meters at a minimum, and you thought you'd seen them launching as far as five or six hundred meters. That wasn't a huge target, and it wasn't one that was visible for long. A lot of times, gunners would end up beating bushes that hadn't even had a truck in them to start with. Fold two, they were mostly night attacks: your first warning was the sight of rockets lighting off in the distance. That meant you had about a minute and a half for people to man the guns to counterbattery: not a behavior conductive to accurate shooting. Fold three, and the worst one, was that the goblins liked mixing in incendiary rockets into their volleys, forcing you to have a bucket brigade on standby. Soon enough you had as many water tankers as fuel ones to serve as quick-fill firefighting vehicles, because nobody could man a burning gun or service weapons in an enflamed trench.

You did have to keep the assorted Emplaced Machine Guns and Ratcatchers armed up, too- it wasn't unusual for the damned rocketeers to be backed up by armored car sallys, the rockets slamming into your fortifications long enough to down the players, before smoke blinded gunports and waves of mammons slammed into the breach.

You lost two medium patterns, and half your light patterns to that bullshit! This wasn't even them trying, either- you saw, the few times you looked out over Wrath's Gate with binos, a horde of engineers piecing together some ghetto artillery site. Every so often one of your gun crews would use it as a practice target to teach new gunners how to aim, but it was so far out you couldn't reliably interdict their construction. Soon enough, they had pallets of shit hiding in trenches and revetments, low sandbag walls zig-zagging across the area to protect whatever precious things they couldn't get underground. You'd need large-caliber guns to reliably reach out and touch them for this, unfortunately.

In response, you decided it was time to start venting your ire on Rime. Two gun batteries, Asuna, and your less seasoned troops would be plenty to start the attack, and Kazoo was eager to start pushing into the city proper- he'd been getting rocketed too, although less intensely than your forces. Things started well at least- the narrow terrain meant it was impossible for the guns to get flanked, and Asuna's familiarity with Kazoo's officers made it easy for her to lead the charge up the line.

Unfortunately, the minute things got past the clear fields of fire from the open plains into the remains of the first tier of bunkers around Rime that formed an effective no-man's-land, not even Asuna could figure out a way around this shit. If her guns downed a building, then the rubble would be filled with enemy Marines throwing gas out at her moments later. If her guns didn't down a building, then the infantry couldn't advance to counter the Marines.

It was nasty, snarly, house-to-house and alley-to-alley bayonet and submachine gun fighting, a prolonged meat grinder operation not helped by enemy rocket artillery camped out in Fort Hotel that shelled any attempt to get palletized ammunition out to Asuna. That said- Kazoo's position was tenable, and Asuna could keep her guns and her girls fresh.

That was good. That was very good- because you wanted to move on Frostmarch. Fundamentally, Tepes' band of troops (who had stopped really responding to direct control as material conditions degraded their capabilities) needed to advance so they could control The Stand, which was the majority of the border zone against Viper Pit. The additional roads for supplies, and more importantly the secured flanks against raiding, would allow them to start stockpiling the tools to resume pushing.

To that end, you sent in the very best you could scrape up: Calico with a mortar battery, and one of Zairman's platoons that wanted to test the Devitt and a backing infantry section to guard the repair van. It wasn't a ton of force, but the 64e wasn't reconstituted yet in totality. The results were, well, lackluster. Your mortars did good work, according to reports, but the fact of the matter was a single tank platoon wasn't enough to generate the fires needed to be immune to Colonial bullshit- especially when the fucks still kept rocketing anything that sat still within five hundred meters of their damn launcher battalion.

For all that you couldn't pin down and properly deliver a kicking to the cheating cheater of cheats, you could pin down numbers. By dint of your massive IQ- and getting Klasse to bring you entire pots of coffee- you managed to figure out they only had, at most, two batteries of the launch vehicles, which took about a half-hour to an hour to load between salvoes at their rearmament points in Crow's Nest and Wraith's Gate respectively. Likewise, they preferred to concentrate their launchers, but would and did seem to be willing to split them up if your forces had a good day.

Still, the Devitts worked, and Calico was finally getting into the swing of commanding a mortar battery. It'd take time- and hopefully more guns- to break Frostmarch, though.

Until you did, though, you needed to plan out the operation of your Brigade more- and more importantly, snatch up your train operators in the 142 Locomotive.

///

For once, you actually had a comfortable meeting with another regiment: the head of the 142e, Colonel Scorpion, was perfectly willing to come on down to the Weathering Halls and visit you. Asuna had delegated command of her branch of the offensive forces to one of Kazoo's boys for the day in preparation, and she'd outdone herself making tea and trying to relax as you smoked a cigarette by an open window, thinking unregimented thoughts.

Scorpion himself turned out to be a gentle older fellow, quite at odds with his name. Slightly round, with a barrel chest and long white beard, he screamed 'engineer' in the tone of voice that spoke of setting jacks and laying tracks, or paying a nickel for every inch the spike went in. Dark and dusty, he took the time to wipe the coal-?- dust off his boots and dropped his gloves by the door.

"So, you lovely ladies wanted to talk to an old steam-driver like me?" he asked, grinning. "Why, I do believe I'm even being wined and dined!"

"Not quite, Colonel Scorpion," you said with a smirk, putting out your light to walk offer your hand. He shook it gently, the game not bothering to simulate the layer of coal on your hands- but it definitely ticked your Filth meter up a few kicks. "We do have dinner, though, since it's getting late."

"Ah hell, don't call me colonel now, I ain't frying you a chicken," Scorpion said, chuckling. "Call me Scipio."

"Then I'd be Melanie."

"Charmed, Madame General."

That earned a snort, and things settled down to dinner shortly after. Somehow, you actually had a nice wine to go with the salmon steaks Asuna had prepped, and once dinner was done you could safely get out the Brigade Ledger and thunk it oppen.

"So," you said, looking at the page. "Let's talk brass tacks. I need an Engineering regiment for my Brigade, but you're a Locomotive regiment in high demand. What do you want out of this business arrangement?"

"A fellow can't ask for unlimited R-mats and no oversight?"

"Sadly, no."

Scipio looked over Asuna and you, before nodding. "Alright. What I've got is R-mats, sledgies, and kids who want to get out of the scroop fields. I do mean kids, by the way- just because they're not young enough to go into the radio regiment, doesn't mean they don't need people taking care of 'em. I need basing, though: the new industrial stuff they're planning in Basin Sionnach and Cuttail is eating up land, and its pushing people out. I need new basing."

"I've got room that'll be cleared out soon," you mentioned, thinking back to your Clanshead base. "It's not good, but there's some concrete."

"It'll work. Where do you want rails, and how much metal on them?" Scipio asked. "I've got my first three Black Bolts ready to roll."

"We need to get as much rail as far south as possible. The plan," you said, stressing the word 'plan' carefully "is to get a rail link to Foxcatcher. To do this, though, we need artillery, which means shells."

"I can do that," Scipio said, signing his name in the book. "When do you want me to interconnect to the Reaching Trail line?"

"Don't rush it, but we'll need it before we can realistically push past Foxcatcher."

"Got it. You'll be waiting on the fancy new Building Materials that'll come in next tier, but we'll get it done. Building a rail bridge is gonna be messy."

"I don't care about messy," you said, grinning. "I just need to get my troops enough beans and bombs to break this hex wide open."

"Oh, trust me. Once we get this trunk line widened up right, you'll get your bombs in spades."

///

It was the next day you finally broke down and decided to get to work on the question of Brigade Officers. To do it, you had to first get an officer of a distinguishment, and then transfer them over to your Brigade Staff. Once they were on the Brigade Staff and co-signed the transfer, they'd be released from their original regiment, and then would become staff to you.

The problem was 'distinguishment', since you weren't sure what would distinguish an officer. Was there some metric, tracking the 'honor' and acts you'd done? What did your file say, if you looked into it?

General Orr Melanie, CO: 15e High King's Own Flying Artillery. Brigit's Medal with Gold Wings, White Angel with Oak Leaves x3, Order of Light, Morgen's Crossing Campaign Badge with Honors, Weathered Expanse Campaign Badge, Northern Cross 3rc, White Lotus

Thank you computer, but what did that mean?

• Brigit's Medal: Captured a Victory Point as a Regimental Officer
  • Gold Wings: Dead at time of Victory Point capture
• White Angel: Captured a city
  • Oak Leaves: One awarded per city
• Order of Light: Complete 4/4 conditionals to receive Brigade Command
• Morgen's Crossing Campaign Badge: Fight in Morgen's Crossing
  • With Honors: Be involved in the capture of the Victory Point
• Weathered Expanse Campaign Badge: Fight in Weathered Expanse
• Northern Cross: Visit all Warden-held hexes.
  • 3rc: Third Class, visited VPs only.
• White Lotus: Command a King's Own Regiment

You blinked in horror at the depths of the system assist, as you blindly looked down on the pages of the book your hands had taken you to without thinking. Oh. Distinguished would probably be… uh… anyone really. Asuna had been with you for most of that. Hell, Silica had been with you for most of that! Actually, could you-? There was a Signals Officer position.

Writing her name down, you blinked. The book accepted it- and then, moments later, a ghostly signature in English and katakana appeared next to it. Huh. You didn't think this game had an auto-sign function. Going downstairs, you blinked as you noticed Silica in an officer uniform, checking out her epaulets. Like you, she now had the right-side rainbow-and-wheat, and if you focused faintly you could see the row of medals that should be there, but weren't.

"Hey, Orr!" she said, grinning as she came up to give you a hug. "Thanks for the promotion!"

"You earned it-" you said, before reading the tabs on her collar, and the fact they now said major, in the bright language of hawthorn leaves under the eight-pointed star that signaled her new rank. "-major?"

As you felt Asuna's targeting laser gaze try to find you, you prayed for an interruption.

[SYSTEM NOTICE: BUCKLER SOUND CAPTURED BY WARDENS: BAND OF THE RED HAND]

thank you for that god

As everyone started breaking out the party poppers, you breathed a sigh of relief as your regimental XO stopped looking like she wanted to string you up by the toenails. "Alright, everyone, let's get down to business," you said, reigning it in. "I have no idea who those guys are, and let's get that fixed-"

"-incoming message," Silica and the comms clerk said, the telegraph starting to bang away. Ceeding way to the girl on the key, Silica let her keep talking. "It's from… General Mat Cauthon. He's putting out an invitation for a celebration ball in a few weeks. Anyone involved in frontline fighting is invited- and he mentioned you by name, General."

"Well shit, now I gotta go," you muttered. "When is it?"

"Three weeks out, in Stonecradle. It specifies 'full mess dress', whatever that is, and if you don't have one you can pick it up at the town hall of the Reaching Trail or Basin Sionnach VPs. You're allowed to bring a plus one, by the way."

"Thank you. Please wire back my heartfelt acceptance," you said, "and Silica, new job as my Brigade Comms Officer time."

"Yes?"

"Dig up literally everything you can about this Mat Cauthon fellow, and get it to my desk. I'll need something to read while I go get the dry cleaning, apparently."

"On it!"

///

Brigade Officer Mechanics: You may acquire Brigade Officers by recruiting an officer from a component regiment to the Brigade Staff, whom must have 3+X decorations, with X being the number of presently serving brigade officers. This officer is then attached to the Brigade, under the authority of the Brigadier General. On dismissal, they return to their component regiment, with no loss of time in grade or other demerit.

///

Votes

BUNKER
(Choose One Two)
[] Expand your bunker base with additional infrastructure to sustain larger troop numbers.
[] Expand your bunker base with Defensive Patterns (Requires techniques, vote to begin development)
-[] With small patterns (x28 to go to New Base Completion)
-[] With medium patterns (x16 to go to New Base Completion)
-[] With heavy patterns (x4 to go to New Base Completion)
-[] With artillery firing positions
-[] With infantry fighting positions
-[] With Modernist patterns (x4 to go to New Base Completion)
[] Begin developing Concrete (Write-in base to begin concrete development on)
[] Develop a new bunker base in a better location
-[] Write in hex and town/Relic, as well as distance to front line or intended purpose.
[] Get your builders to stop expanding the base for now.
[] Gift, Assign, or Abandon a bunker base.
-[] Write-in base by location.
[] Begin design for a new, planned base.(Architect is busy!)
[] You don't need to build right now: put that time and manpower into the Brigade functions! (Grants one Brigade action)


PERSONNEL
(Choose One Two)
[] Go and recruit more personnel
-[] Mass recruitment: whatever you can get, get more of it! (Recruits 4d10+4 White personnel)
-[] Selective recruitment: Look for people who aren't clueless. The Logistics Union has a lot of folks. (Recruits 3d10+3 Green personnel)
-[] Picky recruitment: Get people who are at least as skilled as you are! (Recruits 2d10+2 Yellow personnel)
-[] Frontline recruitment: Go to the front and snag some blueberries! (Recruits 1d10+1 Orange personnel)
-[] Elite recruitment: Go find a group of lunatics, and shanghai them. (Recruits 1d10 Red personnel)
(You cannot recruit units of higher rating than yourself.)
[] Commit training!
-[] Vehicle training: Teach everyone drive good. Car goes on right hand side of road, revolutionary concept. Might as well also learn to drive a flatbed, or your Drummond if you're feeling nice.
-[] Rifle training: Everyone will spend time practicing the fine art of "bullet go plink"
-[] Administration Training: Basic delegation has been mastered, but the more officers you have the more the parts move. Therefore, figuring out how to grease the gears is important.
-[] Infantry Training: You've spent some time on the front, it sucks. Get better so it sucks less.
-[] Mobile Warfare Training: You know how to fight out of a truck bed. Now it's time to get good at that.
-[] Artillery Training: It is time to actually learn what the limitations of these guns are. It'll be expensive, but you need to know to keep mistakes from happening.
-[] Combat Vehicle Training: Your people know how to drive trucks and push guns, but the sort of work and operations needed to utilize an armored car or tank is completely outside your wheelhouse. Get some domestic tankers ready- you'll need them if you ever use armored contingents or self-propelled guns.
[] Extra work shifts
-[] More Scroop: Get everyone to do more rounds of scrooping at the scrap fields. You do your part, and more importantly, can use the B-mats to get useful stuff like more trucks or dedicated equipment.
-[] More Mines: Get everyone to do more rounds on the component mines and oil wells. Components mean R-mats, R-mats mean flatbeds, and more importantly: trains
-[] More Building: Put everyone to work on getting your bunker upgrades planned. If you don't have some planned, the bunker will get what the troops think it needs.
-[] Frontline Support: Put your people in the trenches on secondary duties: terminal logistics, machine guns, fortification, and other 'mostly safe' jobs to stiffen them up.
[] Begin operational planning for Something Big
-[] Write-in Something Big.
[] Begin Operation Planning (+1 to all rolls when the next operation starts)
[] You have enough spare brain cells in this department: put some time and manpower into the Brigade functions! (Grants one Brigade action)


UPGRADES
(Choose One Two!)
[] Go out and get yourself a lieutenant! (You may have one per twenty Regiment members, minimum one)
-[] Teach them the way of the builder, as much as you know how that works. (Adds one action to Bunker)
-[] Teach them the way of the talker, so you don't have to do that crap! (Adds one action to Personnel)
-[] Teach them the way of the organizer, so you have more time to put out more fires (Adds one action to Upgrades)
[] Find a, uh, techmaid, and get some prototype kits by hook or by crook.
-[] Willow's Bane Model 845 Flamethrower: A backpack mounted engineering and pyrotechnical weapon. It brings fire and death, and more importantly prevents building repair.
-[] Clancy-Raca M4: A sniper rifle with a potent optic and no theoretical maximum range. Takes 7.62mm rounds.
-[] Balfour Falconer Field Mortar: A very heavy demoltion charge deploying 250mm mortar, and the gun most responsable for letting infantry tear up concrete.
-[] 74-c2 Metora Gunship: It's like a Ronan except its got 2x 120mm instead of 1x. That's about it.
[] Requisition Material
-[] Logistics Support: Flatbeds, Fuel, and other niceties.
-[] Artillery Systems: 40mm guns, 120mm guns, mortars, and 'soft' upgrades.
-[] Base Support: More concrete, more faster.
[] Get in touch with another regiment that does something you need (Discovers and improves relations with one random regiment inside the search group)
-[] Logistics
-[] Production
-[] Frontline Combat
-[] QRF
-[] Water Logistics
-[] Techmaids
-[] Partisans
-[] War Bureau
-[] Great Warden Railroad (GWRR)
-[] 58e Intelligence
-[] 26e Commando
-[] 14e Medical
-[] 22 Chemical Warfare
[] Find a way to get your guys some quality of life upgrades so things suck less out here.
[] Go talk to someone specific/Meet a Specific Regiment
-[] Bug Kirito, the leader of your commandos for rent
-[] Go talk to Zairman before you end up with his regiment living out of your base,
-[] Write in named character or regiment number (this includes in-regiment characters)
[] You have enough spare equipment and kit: put some time and manpower into the Brigade functions! (Grants one Brigade action)


BRIGADE
(Choose One!)
[] Begin preparing for a gradual push
-[] Slowly, the noose tightens on Port of Rime. Get in, and do a little daily walking fire to keep them on their toes.
-[] Huntsfort taunts you, and you can get some scab garrison troops to hold things down while you reach out and take a nibble
-[] Invest and secure Crow's Nest: You want to eat it.
-[] Begin piling on to Frostmarch, so you can let Zairman raid the backline and begin isolating Fortress Foxcatcher.
-[] Avenge the Navy, and put the boots to Wightwalk so you can have a hole of naval resupply.
-[] Time to go for the big one: Invest Foxcatcher, and begin the siege on a refinery town. (Locked, must take 2/4 approaches to the area first)
[] Search for more regiments to add to the Brigade: you have to catch them all!
-[] Write-in Regiment Number, CO, or name.
[] Promote an officer to Brigade Staff
-[] Scout from another Regiment in the Brigade
-[] Write-in Officer Name.

////

GM Note: Yes, I did in fact just shuffle that new officer you literally just made into the Brigade. That's how it works when I'm sleepy and need to finish update or the night demons won't let me sleep. Keep making more officers, they're important, and also you're nearly out of warm bodies because mmmm 24x bodies to man a 40mm battery. Have fun.