- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How many things can we train?
World On Fire: Shadow Ops [a Fantasy WWII Quest]
- Thread starter Zoosmell
- Start date
- Mature Fantasy Alt. History
Zoosmell
Blind Idiot Arcana
- Location
- Kansas
Imma go with 2 for this one.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
That is an impressive count.
Whoa, I can just feel the barely restrained anger.
So we're pretty much building it from the ground up.
[X] Train in...
-[X] Shooting
--[X]Machine Gun
--[X] In air
-[X] Magecraft
--[X] Wind magic
---[X] Defensive
BAR is our most common weapon, so we should train with that, and improving our magic is always good.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Train in... (It will be assumed that you've been training in this in your free time since Malta)
- [X] Shooting
-- [X] Machine Guns
-- [X] Both (2 rolls, result is the average)
- [X] Magecraft
-- [X] Wind magic
--- [X] Defensive
- [X] Shooting
-- [X] Machine Guns
-- [X] Both (2 rolls, result is the average)
- [X] Magecraft
-- [X] Wind magic
--- [X] Defensive
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Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
You need to choose the weapon type to train with. If you want Automatic weapons, you need to choose between MGs and SMGs
You can choose two things to train in. This is just one.
- Location
- Dethklok
thank you
New vote:
[X] Train in... (It will be assumed that you've been training in this in your free time since Malta)
- [X] Shooting
-- [X] Machine Gun
-- [X] Both (2 rolls, result is the average)
-[X] Magecraft
--[X] Wind magic
---[X] Defensive
- Location
- Internet
[X] Train in... (It will be assumed that you've been training in this in your free time since Malta)
- [X] Shooting
-- [X] Machine Gun
-- [X] Both (2 rolls, result is the average)
-[X] Magecraft
--[X] Wind magic
---[X] Defensive
- [X] Shooting
-- [X] Machine Gun
-- [X] Both (2 rolls, result is the average)
-[X] Magecraft
--[X] Wind magic
---[X] Defensive
- Location
- Pittsburgh PA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Train in... (It will be assumed that you've been training in this in your free time since Malta)
- [X] Shooting
-- [X] Machine Gun
-- [X] Both (2 rolls, result is the average)
-[X] Magecraft
--[X] Wind magic
---[X] Defensive
- [X] Shooting
-- [X] Machine Gun
-- [X] Both (2 rolls, result is the average)
-[X] Magecraft
--[X] Wind magic
---[X] Defensive
Vote closed
All Guns Blazing pt. IV
Zoosmell
Blind Idiot Arcana
- Location
- Kansas
WARNING: The following update contains racial slurs.
[><] Machine Guns, Defensive Wind
After the dismissal, you are informed you are essentially free, barring the Germans coming at England like they did in 1940 again, to do as you will. The only thing you must do, besides report on time, is pack what you can carry with you - essentially, your footlocker at RAF Debden's barracks - and bring it to the ley room. Your other possessions in England will be shipped by, well, ship, to Calcutta. By the time it gets there, it is expected that the Army Air Corps (or the Navy, or the USMC) will have decided where to reassign and base you, though there's a very good chance it won't officially be anywhere near Calcutta. As part of your transfer halfway around the world, you have been given enough money to buy a new apartment there, which considering hazard pay and what little you know about housing in India might be enough to buy a proper house.
It may very well end up as much of a glorified storage shed as your current flat in Cambridge, but still. It'll be yours, and nothing short of the Imperial Japanese military flattening it would ever change that.
You have one last dinner with your squadmates here in England at a favored pub in Debden itself, and they all toast to your success in Asia. You are even allowed alcohol - a little - a single glass of rum, really - but not enough to get you more than tipsy for more than a few minutes. Even if you didn't, you go to bed scandalously early by the standards of an aviation officer with a day off. You do have to be up so early the day after tomorrow it's late, after all.
The second of June, 1942, passes you by in an almost-blur of packing, eating, and training. Being an officer you have both a footlocker and a vertical locker, and you try - desperately, but ultimately in vain - to pack the entirety of the latter into the former. Nothing to it. You'll have to hope that you can either buy new heavy jackets in Melbourne, or that they will be provided for you in Calcutta. You highly doubt you'll have any need of them in southern Australia.
You focus your training on the things you've been working on more-or-less since you returned from Malta. Mostly, shooting with your BAR and defensive uses of wind magic.
(3+12)/2)=7.5 | Minimum roll of 12.5 for perk in ground, aerial, or both MG training!
Your gun training goes... okay. Some of the thirty aught six you used must've been bum rounds today, because you're certain after all this time training with a BAR it could've - should have - gone better, but it doesn't. Still, you think you're making progress. You make respectable patterns in the targets you set up. The range master won't let you fly more than a few meters off the ground using your broom, even as far from the airstrips as the range is, but at least he lets you use your broom at all.
19 | Any roll bar a 1 in Defensive Wind Magic training will result in a perk!
Your training with magic, however, goes significantly better. As you have done for the past few weeks, you recruit a few boys in town playing cricket. The "game" is simple. They throw the cricket balls at you, and you deflect them with magic, using either your hands or your trusty sequoia wand. Staffs are alright for defense, but mostly against other spells, or things you really don't want to expose yourself to in training. Wands are fine for training, and cricket balls hurt enough from experience to give your body ample incentive to protect itself. Which is why you're wearing a helmet, shin guards, and have a pair of pillows wrapped around your torso.
This time, not a single cricket ball hits you, and you use your wand as much as you deflect with your hands. Both are equally effective, if only deflecting cricket balls is considered, but you only need to move your wrist (and rarely your forearm) to do so with your wand. Using your hands requires your whole body and looks rather like those Chinese martial artists you saw in San Francisco on occasion. Not only does it take a lot of physical energy you'd rather use on anything else, there's just no way to do those kinds of motions properly with a broom between your legs.
You feel you're on the verge of some breakthrough, and without having to consult any covens in the area for assistance, when it comes time for the boys to go. You have an early dinner, then take another train to London where you try and will yourself to sleep on the way. It doesn't really work. You are dreadfully tired by the time you check in to the tiny hotel you've selected. It's not the nearest, the most discrete, or cheapest, but it's the cheapest discrete one that's within walking distance. You try and will yourself to sleep again, on a bed a bit more than a little more comfortable than your cot, and are much more successful despite the noise of the city.
. . . . . . . . . .
You arrive at HQ in good spirits. The [><] tea is hot and (very) strong, no one in HQ has given you any strange looks, and you were only stopped once by curfew enforcers. You were approached a few times, but all but one group saw your uniform and left you alone. The group that did stop you merely asked why you were dragging around such a large and clearly heavy piece of luggage.
The base is almost deserted, and you head straight to the elevator to the ley room, not stopping for the armory. You probably won't need anything until you get to Calcutta, you think, and if you do, Melbourne has plenty of weapons. The elevator is massive, large enough to hold a few cars should it be necessary. It goes down, down, all the way to the bottom level of the base, below even the subway system. The door opens, revealing a cave-like interior, with various glowing red and golden runic patterns carved on its rocky walls. The cavern is circular, with geometrical forms decorating the floor in rich Greek meanders, Celtic designs and occasional Eyes of Horus. Most importantly, an elaborate five-pointed star or pentagram is carved in the center of the room, pointing north, with a Freemasonic Eye of the Providence in the dead center of it, and the signs of the Four Elements and of Aether carved at each point. Five cloaked figures clad in elaborate robes stand at each point, humming a low Latin tone.
A man stands off to one side, in a completely unmarked British Army uniform. No unit markings, no medals, no rank, nothing. Besides the pencil-thin mustache and round glasses, he is entirely unremarkable, if on the handsome side. He reminds you a bit of Agent Zigzag but with a squarer head and smaller nose.
"Miss Saitou, I presume?" he asks, staring at a clipboard.
"Yes..."
"Oh, don't mind me, ma'am, I'm enlisted," he says with a light smile. "Off to Melbourne, is it?"
You nod.
He nods in turn, with a smile, then turns to the cloaked figures. "Open the portal."
One of them whips out a wand of their own, this one made of lacquered hawthorn wrapped around something you couldn't afford with a year's salary. They make a highly complex motion with it then point it at the Eye of Providence with a shout of "CREO PORTAM!"
A blast of prana hits the pentagram, and it changes to the basement of what looks like an office building, with enough boxes to be considered "filled" but not enough to hinder navigation. Light is provided by a few electric bulbs.
"In you go, then," the man says. "Best brace yourself, though - it's a long way, and you may end up a ways off-course on the way. But you will most assuredly end up in GHQ Melbourne."
You nod, bracing yourself indeed, and step through the portal.
It's not any easier than the first time you used a ley portal.
Bronze-age Britons do battle against an army equipped with cannon
You feel yourself rocket off the coast of England then plunge down into the Channel, only to be kicked back up over Europe. Only experience lets you realize that, as you pass through in seconds.
Men and men-at-arms under a seven-star American flag stand alongside Swedish troops against the armies of Wallenstein
The vast plains of Eastern Europe pass by in less than an eyeblink, and you're plunging into a body of water yet again, but you are already in unknown territory. You don't know where or what you're seeing, besides that you're probably well outside of Europe now.
Armies of reptilian men push against the Red Army in central Asia, even as they take savage losses
Asia greets you in a torrent of noise and images. Not that different from your infancy, really, only know you can describe it. You've crossed the Alps this way once. That pales in comparison to what you think must be the Himalayas, as gravity and inertia strain to crush you into a two-dimensional smear in the earth like a bug on a train rail. Passing them is almost worse, as you fear that you'll be thrown into the black void above the heavens.
Miles upon miles of trenches crisscross central China as Arabic and Asian forces stand locked in a titanic struggle for world domination
You realize your mistake an instant later. What you passed must have been the Tian Shan mountains of southern Russia. This is the true Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas. You struggle to breathe, even though you know the air pressure has not changed. You shiver like you must freeze to death, though the air is comfortably warm. As you fly past the peaks of Nepal, you are certain that you won't end up a splat on the Earth. You'll end up a splat on the Moon.
A naval battle rages between two fleets of sailing-ships and steamers - one of massive CSS Virginia-like ironclads, and the other of fat carriers with little blue seaplanes
The jungles of British Asia pass in a blur of up-down-up-down as you descend to the floodplains of the Ganges, then the Bay of Bengal, then up over the Malay Peninsula and back down into the South China Sea. Your only indication of the East Indies is the up-and-down motion growing worse, and the sensation that you are about to empty your stomach. Enormous... things beneath the ocean pass your eye and you are glad they pass too swiftly to be remembered. At last, you crest the continental shelf of Australia and pass over the vast, empty wasteland that occupy most of the commonwealth. Soon they change to the prairies, then forests, of Victoria, and Melbourne reaches you like a slap in the face.
The portal closes behind you with the sizzle and pop of an egg in an iron skillet. You land on your feet with something approaching a dancer's grace. Your footlocker lands behind you with something approaching a hundred decibels.
Double wooden doors at the far end of the room burst open. At once, you are approached by an American colonel in an Army uniform and a WAC secretary, who also outranks you. The colonel has the look of the dashing but malevolent antagonist of a John Ford western. His expression is of annoyance at anything and everything in the room, including (especially) you. The aviators would be out of place in 19th-century Arizona, but he makes them work. His secretary looks vaguely Eastern European and completely indifferent to her surroundings.
You come to attention, and your arm moves to salute for a fraction of a second before you remember you're indoors.
"You the Jap officer?" he asks with an annoyed (and Midwestern) tone. Your left eye twitches involuntarily, but you otherwise don't react to the slight.
"Yes sir. First Lieutenant Saitou-" He interrupts you with a wave of his hand and turns smartly around.
"No time. We'll walk and talk."
Confused for a moment, you shrug it off and follow him.
"My name for you isn't important right now. If we're all lucky, and you stay as loyal to Uncle Sam as you were for the Limeys, you probably won't see me again for a long time. I was going to be the one to evaluate you, and the only one, but something's come up, and Admiral Nimitz has decided on a more... practical way of judging your loyalty," he says, in a way that makes it clear he disagrees with the admiral.
"You're headed to Midway, ASAP. You can eat breakfast here or lunch there, you can arm up here or there, I don't give a damn so long as you get there within the next three hours."
He stops and turns to you, eyeing you coldly. "You will fly out to the Enterprise at 0400 on the 4th, at which point you'll belong to her captain, and the admiral. You'll stay there until they're ready for you in Calcutta. Till then? You stay on base, and do whatever Lieutenant Colonel Sweeney wants you to."
He pauses, as if for effect. "I will be going with you, to assist in your evaluation. Now I ain't no Kard-Karrying Klansman, but I'm no Japanophile, either. I lost a lot of friends at Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines, at Batann..."
He leans towards you, slightly. "If I so much as think you're helping the enemy, either through action or inaction, I'll have your ass shipped to Topaz before you can say 'Banzai'."
He turns back around on his heel. "You're dismissed. Be at the ley room in three hours minimum or I'll fly you to the States myself."
[ ] Select loadout (Limit - British and American equipment, plus anything captured in the last mission)
[ ] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
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Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
[X] Coffee
[X] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
As a stylistic choice we've been voting American equipment only -anyway-, so this is not actually a hardship. We also didn't capture anything that jumps out at me that I think would be worth bringing.
The only reason to pick something now is if we think that we'll have to scramble with no equipment or someone at Midway is going to be a fucker and deny reasonable equipment requests and picking a generic loadout blind is better than risking that.
[X] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
As a stylistic choice we've been voting American equipment only -anyway-, so this is not actually a hardship. We also didn't capture anything that jumps out at me that I think would be worth bringing.
The only reason to pick something now is if we think that we'll have to scramble with no equipment or someone at Midway is going to be a fucker and deny reasonable equipment requests and picking a generic loadout blind is better than risking that.
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- Location
- USA
[x] Tea
[x] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
Do ley portals work like this every time? Invisi-text included?
[x] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
Do ley portals work like this every time? Invisi-text included?
- Location
- Pittsburgh PA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x] Tea
[x] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
[x] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
- Location
- United States
[X] Coffee
[X] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
[X] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Missing a comma.
Training went rather well.
Honestly, that sounds kinda fun.
Wonder how bad elevator music is there.
Those are some wacky alternate universes we saw glimpses of.
Moving on!
Oh boy.
Whoa, that change of orders came from high.
And we're being put on an important ship.
[x] Tea
[x] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
Never say no to good, British tea.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Tea
[X] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
We're Japanese and in the UK of course it's Tea. American equipment should be fine.
[X] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
We're Japanese and in the UK of course it's Tea. American equipment should be fine.
- Location
- Internet
[x] Tea
[x] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
[x] Wait until you get to Midway to select a loadout (Limit: American equipment)
Vote closed