The Team:
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Thomas Tennyson, Team Leader:
Upper-class Englishman par excellence, the team leader could almost be a caricature if not for the irreverence and occasional slip of the tongue. Degree from Cambridge, peacetime service in the Navy, attachment to MI6. All the right clubs and all the right contacts, but not enough influence to outmuscle a Sinclair - so he's saddled with the misfits.
Skills:
Marksmanship: Skilled -> All shooting rolls are 2d20
CQC: Skilled -> All close-combat rolls are 2d20
Explosives: Skilled -> All demolition rolls are 2d20
Tactics: Skilled -> All planning and tactics checks are 2d20
Persuasion: Skilled* -> All persuasion rolls are 2d20
Infiltration: Skilled* -> All infiltration rolls are 2d20
Stealth (Mundane): Skilled -> All stealth rolls are 2d20
Devices (Anomalous): Skilled -> All anomalous device use/repair rolls are 2d20
* -> Tagged skill
Perks:
Languages: English, German
Device: Thaumic Hunter: A simple compass that points at anomalous energy, and that isolates sources. Allows you to look for what the SS are doing without having to actually get in too close, but it's utterly useless for combat. No DC to use, will allow tracking of magical emissions and activity at long range - essentially allows a 2d20 to be made for tracking magical emissions however stealthed they are, variable DC.
Anomalous Human: One of those that's somehow born with an affinity to whatever cracks in reality the adepts manipulate, you're immensely valuable to the Government. Two hundred years ago you'd have been burned as a witch, now it's conscription into government service and potentially burned by Germans as a soldier. All casting/spell resistance rolls are Bo2.
Overall Wounds: 3
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Klaus Hjalmar, Sniper:
Former Norwegian Army and escaped with the British from Narvik, Klaus came to Q Division's attention during a SBS raid on the Norwegian coast. There are barrows there, and of the unit he was with, he was the only one uninjured on the way back.
Skills:
Marksmanship: Adept -> All shooting rolls are 3d20
CQC: Skilled -> All close-combat rolls are 2d20
Explosives: Skilled -> All demolition rolls are 2d20
Tactics: Adept -> All planning and tactics checks are 3d20
Stealth (Mundane): Skilled -> All stealth rolls for infiltrating areas unseen are 2d20.
Perks:
Languages: Norwegian, German, English
Frost-Touched: This man has seen the barrows of the frozen north and returned untouched. For all that he's skilled, there are rumors of the touch of the unsleeping and the gifts they bring...???
Overall Wounds: 3
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Matthew Connor, Engineer:
Compared to the exotic backgrounds of the others, Sergeant Connor is practically pedestrian. The only reason Q Division got him instead of some other Royal Engineers lifer was luck of the draw - but bear in mind his skill is still considerable. The casual treatment he gives to explosives is still rather disconcerting though.
Skills:
Marksmanship: Skilled -> All shooting rolls are 2d20
CQC: Skilled -> All close-combat rolls are 2d20
Explosives: Skilled -> All demolitions/traps rolls are 3d20
Communications (Mundane): Skilled -> All radio/crypto/comms rolls are 3d20
Perks:
Languages: English
Long-Service Veteran: Twenty years in uniform has given this man more experience than one would think at first sight, even if true mastery is lacking. There is a honed instinct for things that go boom here. All Explosives rolls get +3 overall.
Overall Wounds: 3
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Benjamin Halévy: Adept
French resistance out of sheer necessity, this man has had a checkered life. Service in the French Army in the last war, joining the Croix de Feu, and then finally running with de Gaulle when the Nazis effectively took over. He's far more fascist than a normal Brit, but he's a Jew - there's little chance of betrayal here. As for his...abilities...they're unfortunately more limited than his regular skills.
Skills:
Marksmanship: Skilled -> All shooting rolls are 2d20
CQC: Skilled -> All close-combat rolls are 2d20
Explosives: Skilled -> All demolitions/traps rolls are 3d20
Adept: Frost: Skilled -> May attempt to freeze an enemy, throw an icebolt, or call on a frost/ice-based Entity for aid in combat at 2d20. Casting DC is situational and varies. Abilities are limited to the above three anomalous skills. Entity aid has been observed to take the form of ice-based armor and weapons of resilience akin to a light tank's plate.
Perks:
Languages: English, French, Yiddish
Old Soldier: Four years in the last war gives you a great deal of experience, even if the raw skills have decayed in twenty years' peace. You know what to do in most situations, despite little formal training or refresher courses. +1 to all Tactics, Marksmanship, Explosives and CQC checks overall.
Aging: You're no spring chicken, even those younger degenerates that run around in the maquis are more useful than you are in direct combat - when one discounts experience, that is. -1 Wound.
Overall Wounds: 2
Note: On Wounds: This is similar to most dice rollers and simulates player damage. A headshot is an insta-kill unless otherwise specified, and powerful enough spells ditto. Humans are fragile.
But gut wounds, laceration, stabbings, shrapnel and so on? That's where wounds come in. The first mission will be a little easier in order to let us all get used to the system.
You sit back in the rather uncomfortable chair and wince at the folder in front of you, raising eyes to the rather grotty portrait of the King that seems to hang in these older offices.
"I have in order, a cursed Norwegian, a mad Irish Unionist of an engineer and a French Fascist Jew as a strike team, and I'm supposed to lead them into German Europe. Bloody hell, I ought to've stayed in Cambridge with Blunt and his lot, would've been easier than
this."
His Royal Georgeness on the wall doesn't deign to answer you, and you instead do what any Englishman with too much work and too little sleep does at times like this: You make tea and you quietly hope that the whole thing's not as it seems.
Unfortunately the whole thing seems to be a bit like Dunkirk - from the happy, benign smile on F's face to the stony silence of the personnel officers, it appears that your Team is an inconvenient fact that requires addressing.
That means preparation, so you decide that the best thing to do is to get some sleep in barracks. The place is practically deserted and dirty after the last bunch of Yugoslav commandos went through - but you're out of money for a hotel at this point. And the officers' quarters are still repairing the damage from the last bunch of commissioned sorcerers.
"This bunk taken?"
Gesturing to one of the beds gets the graying sergeant on the bottom bunk to look up at you, eyes widening a little at the sight of a dark suit, rather rumpled. "Sir. No, not taken. Fancy a bit of sleep?"
"Indeed, the BOQ's full and damaged, I'll snag this one for now." You step up and settle in with little ceremony, too tired to do more than twitch a little at the man replying something about
roommates and
nobody liking his luggage.
You wake up the next morning more alert, with the sergeant out of the room and a half-open case of hand grenades on the other top bunk.
Ah. That's what the man meant by 'luggage', then. Lovely.
You back out of the room
carefully and head to breakfast, and from there to the room and lair of
F, to find out where the old bastard wants to get you killed. He's in a good mood today, something bad's happened to someone. Perhaps Bomber Harris, from the way that F goes on and on about Bomber Command.
"Ah, Thomas, my boy. Come in, we have a task for you." Positively avuncular, the folder he's throwing at you is probably a raid on Berlin.
Reading the file and bearing the rant that F throws at you over the mission's importance calms you a little, clearly you aren't being handed a difficult one. A quick milk run to get the team in shape, and then the 'real work' begins according to the high command.
Where is the mission?
[X]Brittany: Reconnaissance: The Germans maintain radar and HF/DF stations here, and a massive logistics base for the U-boat pens in Lorient and St. Nazaire. The command wants to know what they're doing with wiring patterns and water invocations, some runes are not meant to see the light of day...
Act as recon elements for a later strike, objective is intelligence-gathering and potentially taking a live prisoner back.
[X]Walcheren: Grove Burning: There are groves in the Low Countries that were sacred to the Saxons before the days of Charlemagne and the Vicar of Rome. Groves that the SS have been taking an interest in...shame if the trees were to burn down, eh?
Purpose: Target-marking for bomber raids. Placement of dye-markers, flares and radio beacons for RAF Bomber Command.
[X]Bygdøy : Burglary: There's an old Viking ship here, and grave goods aboard that aren't anomalous in and of themselves. The information they contain though...that may be of interest. The Germans don't appear to know about it, and what they don't know about can safely be made to vanish.
Purpose: Steal runic manuscripts from a Viking burial ship, in conjunction with the Norwegian Resistance.
The grapevine later brings the news that the Stirling squadrons are transferred from Bomber Command to Coastal Command, Bomber won't be happy about that one.
That explains F's good mood though.
Now then, where to go? You whistle a little, the fine Scotch that you've borrowed from Sinclair's cupboard going down quite nicely....
Votes are open, and I'd be much obliged if someone could tell me how to set the tabs to center justification?
