World On Fire: Shadow Ops [a Fantasy WWII Quest]
- Thread starter Zoosmell
- Start date
- Mature Fantasy Alt. History
Something Wicked This Way Comes pt IV
Zoosmell
Blind Idiot Arcana
- Location
- Kansas
[><] Plan Countering Techbane
Obviously, your magic katana is coming along with you. For one thing, it's your main close-in weapon at this point, and for another, if there is some sort of techbane - probably some mages on the German side, and judging by what they've been reported saying, some pretty damn crazy ones - you don't want to be caught with only a jammed gun between you and them.
For guns, you realize you aren't that familiar with Soviet firearms, at least not as familiar as you probably should be. True, the NKVD is about as unhelpful as it can be while being part of an ally's government, and true, this is genuinely the first time you've been in the country for a mission - and you still find it odd that the Soviets waited until the Stalingrad campaign was well underway before asking for any SHADOCOM help - but that's hardly an excuse in your opinion. You will have to ask Marian at some point.
In the meantime, you take a TT-33 pistol and a PPSh-41 submachine gun, the latter of which Ethel also takes after noting how much lighter they are than her usual Thompsons. Her enthusiasm is promptly dampened when Simon points out they also use a much smaller bullet than the Thompson does.
You take a few phials of the nerve agent antidote provided, and order everyone else to do the same - even Simon, who being undead is theoretically immune to it. His arguments on that topic are ended when you point out that since his brain obviously still works, while gas won't kill him it will still do whatever it's otherwise designed to do.
Your own uniform is a bit too green for night and winter operations in Russia, so you end up borrowing a Soviet one and, with a small application of magic, dye it a deep navy blue. As you finish putting on the heavy coat, you call out to the others.
"Remember, we're landing at night. Wear dark clothes or dark camo, but pack those white camo jumpsuits as well in case this mission lasts till morning. And bring something to hit someone with! We don't know how these Krauts are knocking out tech, but you don't want to be on the wrong end of it without something too simple to fuck up!"
After a few more minutes, you and your team are finally armed up, and you are piled onto a group of Studebaker trucks - Abigail grumbling all the while at yet again being denied a chance to display her skill in a tank - to an airfield, where you find...
A bomber, towing a glider.
"An Ilyushin IL-4 and a Gribovsky G-11 glider," Marian says. You pinch the bridge of your nose. A glider. You can think of nothing so inglorious to ride into battle. You take a deep breath in, tilting your head back as you hold it in for a moment, then let it go as your head and hand both drop.
"And who," you ask as the IL-4's engines spool up, "is supposed to fly the glider?"
"Well... you are, ma'am," Marian says weakly. "Once Comrade Alexei learned you were trained as a pilot, he figured he could just go without hiring a glider pilot..."
Your hand meets its old friend, your forehead. Lovely. You haven't flown a glider in years, certainly not a transport glider. You push your head back, your fingers pressing into your eyebrows as you squeeze your eyes shut in thought. It's fine, you say mentally. At least you're the one in control of where you're going, still - letting someone else fly sometimes make you a bit nervous, especially over enemy territory. A witch's aerial instinct, your family called it.
As you walk around your... craft, staying clear of the bomber so its crew could do the same, Marian talks about it to you. It can carry up to eleven people counting the pilot, but the Soviets have mostly been using it to transport supplies, of which it can carry 2600 pounds, give or take. It had a descent rate of about 430 feet per minute, which was about normal for a transport glider. Like all gliders, it was dreadfully slow and totally at the mercy of the four winds. Which would have been fine - if you were allowed to go outside it to help steer. But you weren't, because the Soviets didn't want the Germans knowing they had SHADOCOM help on their own front yet, or any Allied magical help at all for that matter. In Alexei's ideal vision of the mission, they wouldn't find out at all until they got the corpses back.
The sun eventually begins to set. Soon, it will be time to take off. The glider can only carry 11 people, so at least 2 will have to experience the joys of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.
This is two votes and two Overcome rolls, both with the Careful bonus - one will be for flying the glider (Difficulty of 2), and the other for landing it (Difficulty of 3).
[ ] Who rides in the bomber? (Pick 2)
[ ] Land as close to the warehouse as you dare, speed is essential here
[ ] Land a ways away, landing farther away may keep the Germans' guard down
LTO updated, will be updated again after this.
Obviously, your magic katana is coming along with you. For one thing, it's your main close-in weapon at this point, and for another, if there is some sort of techbane - probably some mages on the German side, and judging by what they've been reported saying, some pretty damn crazy ones - you don't want to be caught with only a jammed gun between you and them.
For guns, you realize you aren't that familiar with Soviet firearms, at least not as familiar as you probably should be. True, the NKVD is about as unhelpful as it can be while being part of an ally's government, and true, this is genuinely the first time you've been in the country for a mission - and you still find it odd that the Soviets waited until the Stalingrad campaign was well underway before asking for any SHADOCOM help - but that's hardly an excuse in your opinion. You will have to ask Marian at some point.
In the meantime, you take a TT-33 pistol and a PPSh-41 submachine gun, the latter of which Ethel also takes after noting how much lighter they are than her usual Thompsons. Her enthusiasm is promptly dampened when Simon points out they also use a much smaller bullet than the Thompson does.
You take a few phials of the nerve agent antidote provided, and order everyone else to do the same - even Simon, who being undead is theoretically immune to it. His arguments on that topic are ended when you point out that since his brain obviously still works, while gas won't kill him it will still do whatever it's otherwise designed to do.
Your own uniform is a bit too green for night and winter operations in Russia, so you end up borrowing a Soviet one and, with a small application of magic, dye it a deep navy blue. As you finish putting on the heavy coat, you call out to the others.
"Remember, we're landing at night. Wear dark clothes or dark camo, but pack those white camo jumpsuits as well in case this mission lasts till morning. And bring something to hit someone with! We don't know how these Krauts are knocking out tech, but you don't want to be on the wrong end of it without something too simple to fuck up!"
After a few more minutes, you and your team are finally armed up, and you are piled onto a group of Studebaker trucks - Abigail grumbling all the while at yet again being denied a chance to display her skill in a tank - to an airfield, where you find...
A bomber, towing a glider.
"An Ilyushin IL-4 and a Gribovsky G-11 glider," Marian says. You pinch the bridge of your nose. A glider. You can think of nothing so inglorious to ride into battle. You take a deep breath in, tilting your head back as you hold it in for a moment, then let it go as your head and hand both drop.
"And who," you ask as the IL-4's engines spool up, "is supposed to fly the glider?"
"Well... you are, ma'am," Marian says weakly. "Once Comrade Alexei learned you were trained as a pilot, he figured he could just go without hiring a glider pilot..."
Your hand meets its old friend, your forehead. Lovely. You haven't flown a glider in years, certainly not a transport glider. You push your head back, your fingers pressing into your eyebrows as you squeeze your eyes shut in thought. It's fine, you say mentally. At least you're the one in control of where you're going, still - letting someone else fly sometimes make you a bit nervous, especially over enemy territory. A witch's aerial instinct, your family called it.
As you walk around your... craft, staying clear of the bomber so its crew could do the same, Marian talks about it to you. It can carry up to eleven people counting the pilot, but the Soviets have mostly been using it to transport supplies, of which it can carry 2600 pounds, give or take. It had a descent rate of about 430 feet per minute, which was about normal for a transport glider. Like all gliders, it was dreadfully slow and totally at the mercy of the four winds. Which would have been fine - if you were allowed to go outside it to help steer. But you weren't, because the Soviets didn't want the Germans knowing they had SHADOCOM help on their own front yet, or any Allied magical help at all for that matter. In Alexei's ideal vision of the mission, they wouldn't find out at all until they got the corpses back.
The sun eventually begins to set. Soon, it will be time to take off. The glider can only carry 11 people, so at least 2 will have to experience the joys of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.
This is two votes and two Overcome rolls, both with the Careful bonus - one will be for flying the glider (Difficulty of 2), and the other for landing it (Difficulty of 3).
[ ] Who rides in the bomber? (Pick 2)
[ ] Land as close to the warehouse as you dare, speed is essential here
[ ] Land a ways away, landing farther away may keep the Germans' guard down
LTO updated, will be updated again after this.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Yeah, best not to test that.
Real
Well, at least it will be quiet.
What a dick.
[X] Who rides in the bomber? (Pick 2)
-[X] Doris Tremblay
-[X] Weronika Kumiega
[X] Land as close to the warehouse as you dare, speed is essential here
Both Doris and Weronika are air force witches, so they should have the most skills with parachuting.
Edit.
So, if I understood the system correctly, the final of this roll is 2.
Last edited:
- Location
- United States
[X] Who rides in the bomber? (Pick 2)
-[X] Doris Tremblay
-[X] Weronika Kumiega
[X] Land a ways away, landing farther away may keep the Germans' guard down
-[X] Doris Tremblay
-[X] Weronika Kumiega
[X] Land a ways away, landing farther away may keep the Germans' guard down
- Location
- Newer England
[X] Who rides in the bomber? (Pick 2)
-[X] Doris Tremblay
-[X] Weronika Kumiega
[X] Land as close to the warehouse as you dare, speed is essential here
Isn't the point of the airdrop to get on top of the target ASAP? If we wanted to approach on foot we could've brought a tank.
-[X] Doris Tremblay
-[X] Weronika Kumiega
[X] Land as close to the warehouse as you dare, speed is essential here
Isn't the point of the airdrop to get on top of the target ASAP? If we wanted to approach on foot we could've brought a tank.
- Location
- USA
[x] Who rides in the bomber? (Pick 2)
-[x] Doris Tremblay
-[x] Weronika Kumiega
[x] Land as close to the warehouse as you dare, speed is essential here
-[x] Doris Tremblay
-[x] Weronika Kumiega
[x] Land as close to the warehouse as you dare, speed is essential here
- Location
- Internet
[x] Who rides in the bomber? (Pick 2)
-[x] Doris Tremblay
-[x] Weronika Kumiega
[x] Land as close to the warehouse as you dare, speed is essential here
-[x] Doris Tremblay
-[x] Weronika Kumiega
[x] Land as close to the warehouse as you dare, speed is essential here
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Reminder that we still need the landing roll:
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
I see no problem with that.
- Location
- Pittsburgh PA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Who rides in the bomber? (Pick 2)
-[X] Doris Tremblay
-[X] Weronika Kumiega
[X] Land a ways away, landing farther away may keep the Germans' guard down
-[X] Doris Tremblay
-[X] Weronika Kumiega
[X] Land a ways away, landing farther away may keep the Germans' guard down
Vote closed
Something Wicked This Way Comes pt V
Zoosmell
Blind Idiot Arcana
- Location
- Kansas
[><] 2,3 vs 2,3 (Success at cost 2x)
"Tremblay, Kumiega!" you call out. "You'll be taking the bomber. I'd rather limit people on my team jumping out of planes to those I know can safely make it to the ground if something goes wrong with their chutes."
Takeoff goes smoothly, not that you have any control of that. Your mind sourly reminds you that you'll have very little to actually do until your cable is cut. Eventually it is, and you discover something truly unpleasant - the Gribovsky design bureau clearly put a bit too much importance on the notion that gliders were often single-use aircraft.
It shakes, rattles, and rolls across the air as the bomber pulls it along, with the German sending a few perfunctory anti-air defenses up at you. A too-thin witch approaches from Stalingrad proper, but never gets close enough to do much of anything - clearly after bigger prey than a cargo glider going nowhere near the frontlines. The biggest shock of your flight comes later, as the Volga properly comes into view - a flak shell explodes dangerously close to the glider, and you can hear as well as fear it tear a chunk out of the fuselage. You hear Arthur roar out in pain over the sound of the engines.
"Y'all right?" you shout out through the open door between the cabin and the 'passenger' bay. You dare not turn your eyes away from the instruments. It'd be hard enough to fly an aircraft you're so unfamiliar with in the daytime, let alone at night with people shooting at you. You take his vaguely-positive-sounding grunt as affirmation, and sail on through the night as the bomber cuts you loose.
The flight continues uneventfully until it finally comes time to land. It all goes well... until you touch down, and learn with violent forcefulness that the flak gun that blew a hole in your fuselage. The glider bounces once, already off-level and you can tell something's wrong. The snow cushions the fall some, but the G-11 wallows onto the ground and goes sideways and down on a wing, carving a big, long, and unfortunately noisy arc on the ground before coming to a stop.
You slide open the G-11's massive door, and everyone piles out of it in a very literal sense.
Nobody's hurt badly, though everyone's a bit banged up, Arthur the most so. All the equipment made it in one piece, however, most importantly the antidotes and the gas masks.
Brown is dirt, light brown lines are dirt/gravel roads and grey lines are paved roads. The greyish-brown lines are railroad track, the nearest one to your glider (in blue, not to scale) currently sits unoccupied, with no signs of any trains or train cars nearby. There are four building areas on this map:
The two to the southeast are both shattered, shelled-out husks of single-story warehouses, though there are signs of both at one point storing building materials, which was what the entire network was originally built for by the Soviets - bricks, concrete, wood, etc, and still some of it in both buried among the rubble, though there are also signs of them being dug out or the bags emptied out by clawed hands and teeth, on the small side for werewolves.
The one in the lower middle is a fenced-in compound, also a single-story warehouse, but there are no lights on, nor are there any windows at ground level. There is, however, a guardhouse in front of it, and Simon informs you that it is presently occupied by a single, mundane human, but cannot tell their uniform without getting closer. You do not know what's inside it - Comrade Alexei's intel was pretty old, but he thinks it was extra storage for the warehouses, and probably still is.
The northmost area, of course, is where the chemical weapons are.
Everything on the ground, unless otherwise specifically noted, is covered in snow.
Blue here are car hulks, red are guardhouses or watchtowers, white is the fence, and green are buildings. The purple rectangles are where you think the anti-tank guns are. Darker colors mean either taller structures, structures with second floors, or overhangs. The middle building to the left is probably a refueling station judging by the shape.
[ ] Plan
"Tremblay, Kumiega!" you call out. "You'll be taking the bomber. I'd rather limit people on my team jumping out of planes to those I know can safely make it to the ground if something goes wrong with their chutes."
Takeoff goes smoothly, not that you have any control of that. Your mind sourly reminds you that you'll have very little to actually do until your cable is cut. Eventually it is, and you discover something truly unpleasant - the Gribovsky design bureau clearly put a bit too much importance on the notion that gliders were often single-use aircraft.
It shakes, rattles, and rolls across the air as the bomber pulls it along, with the German sending a few perfunctory anti-air defenses up at you. A too-thin witch approaches from Stalingrad proper, but never gets close enough to do much of anything - clearly after bigger prey than a cargo glider going nowhere near the frontlines. The biggest shock of your flight comes later, as the Volga properly comes into view - a flak shell explodes dangerously close to the glider, and you can hear as well as fear it tear a chunk out of the fuselage. You hear Arthur roar out in pain over the sound of the engines.
"Y'all right?" you shout out through the open door between the cabin and the 'passenger' bay. You dare not turn your eyes away from the instruments. It'd be hard enough to fly an aircraft you're so unfamiliar with in the daytime, let alone at night with people shooting at you. You take his vaguely-positive-sounding grunt as affirmation, and sail on through the night as the bomber cuts you loose.
The flight continues uneventfully until it finally comes time to land. It all goes well... until you touch down, and learn with violent forcefulness that the flak gun that blew a hole in your fuselage. The glider bounces once, already off-level and you can tell something's wrong. The snow cushions the fall some, but the G-11 wallows onto the ground and goes sideways and down on a wing, carving a big, long, and unfortunately noisy arc on the ground before coming to a stop.
You slide open the G-11's massive door, and everyone piles out of it in a very literal sense.
Nobody's hurt badly, though everyone's a bit banged up, Arthur the most so. All the equipment made it in one piece, however, most importantly the antidotes and the gas masks.
Brown is dirt, light brown lines are dirt/gravel roads and grey lines are paved roads. The greyish-brown lines are railroad track, the nearest one to your glider (in blue, not to scale) currently sits unoccupied, with no signs of any trains or train cars nearby. There are four building areas on this map:
The two to the southeast are both shattered, shelled-out husks of single-story warehouses, though there are signs of both at one point storing building materials, which was what the entire network was originally built for by the Soviets - bricks, concrete, wood, etc, and still some of it in both buried among the rubble, though there are also signs of them being dug out or the bags emptied out by clawed hands and teeth, on the small side for werewolves.
The one in the lower middle is a fenced-in compound, also a single-story warehouse, but there are no lights on, nor are there any windows at ground level. There is, however, a guardhouse in front of it, and Simon informs you that it is presently occupied by a single, mundane human, but cannot tell their uniform without getting closer. You do not know what's inside it - Comrade Alexei's intel was pretty old, but he thinks it was extra storage for the warehouses, and probably still is.
The northmost area, of course, is where the chemical weapons are.
Everything on the ground, unless otherwise specifically noted, is covered in snow.
Blue here are car hulks, red are guardhouses or watchtowers, white is the fence, and green are buildings. The purple rectangles are where you think the anti-tank guns are. Darker colors mean either taller structures, structures with second floors, or overhangs. The middle building to the left is probably a refueling station judging by the shape.
[ ] Plan
Last edited:
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
So the Germans at Stalingrad have witches among their ranks.
Good thing he is a werewolf.
Shit.
[X] Plan: Taking the Long Route
-[X] First, check Arthur's condition and regroup with Doris and Weronika. Then, grab your gear and start first heading towards the shelled out warehouses in the southeast, making it look like that is your team's target since your rough landing was most likely noticed, so search parties are most likely on their way. Move in two or three lines to obfuscate your numbers and after making it look like southeast is your direction, make a turn and start heading towards the fenced-in compound while doing your best to hide your tracks. Best to check out what is in there first, and the single individual there that Simon sensed could be interrogated for information.
I don't like the fact that that fenced area seems mostly abandoned. Very worrying.
- Location
- Internet
[X] Plan: Taking the Long Route
-[X] First, check Arthur's condition and regroup with Doris and Weronika. Then, grab your gear and start first heading towards the shelled out warehouses in the southeast, making it look like that is your team's target since your rough landing was most likely noticed, so search parties are most likely on their way. Move in two or three lines to obfuscate your numbers and after making it look like southeast is your direction, make a turn and start heading towards the fenced-in compound while doing your best to hide your tracks. Best to check out what is in there first, and the single individual there that Simon sensed could be interrogated for information.
-[X] First, check Arthur's condition and regroup with Doris and Weronika. Then, grab your gear and start first heading towards the shelled out warehouses in the southeast, making it look like that is your team's target since your rough landing was most likely noticed, so search parties are most likely on their way. Move in two or three lines to obfuscate your numbers and after making it look like southeast is your direction, make a turn and start heading towards the fenced-in compound while doing your best to hide your tracks. Best to check out what is in there first, and the single individual there that Simon sensed could be interrogated for information.
- Location
- California
[X] Plan: Taking the Long Route
Vote closed
Shizuko Satou-Williams (Commissioned Art)
Zoosmell
Blind Idiot Arcana
- Location
- Kansas
An Shizuko I commissioned drawn by Eltonel. There are *ahem* alternate versions of it, of course, but in the words of some famous Anon, this is a blue board, and I shan't post them.
Next Quest post would have been started on yesterday, but I ended up having to cover a coworker's shift because his other job had a clusterfuck day.
Last edited:
Thebigpieman
I've got this, I think.
- Location
- United States
It's good fucking art.