Region: Viral Jungle
Jorg 'Bass Line' Jorgenson
Deployment Zone: Viral Jungle
Chip Folder,
- Stunbolt [1]
- Recovery 10 [1]
- MinionCall A [1]
- BlueFiend.mon [4]
- DramaticSpotlight [ 0 ]
- InvokeSoundtrack [ 0 ]
Hacker: DJ King Cabaret
Region: Viral Jungle
Duel Disk[7]: ADI - Vivi_Paltest.dat (4), Atk+10 (1), Squad Summon S (1)x2, CallChiptune (0)
Other: The bombastic DJ challenges a fortified foe in the Viral Jungle! Will he crown himself the DJ King of the Jungle, or will Sonata's forces prove the apex predator?
In the Viral Jungle, the drums beat without rest. The drawdown in conflict was never complete here, as Firmament and Stagehands alike skirmished in the jungle paths and the Warriors of Symbion execute slashing raids from their deep jungle hives. But there is combat and there is
combat, and as the drums beat louder the light skirmishes intensify, both sides seeking weak points in the enemy lines to take advantage of when the clash truly begins once more. Neither side proves dominate in the early strife however, as both possess their own advantages.
The Firmament possesses the advantage in raw scouting, as the aptly named Scout.exe proves a more specialized tool then any the enemy possesses, finding and reporting where the Stagehands travel. As well, it is shown over the clashes taking place that their CarbineMinion.exe programs are superior the the pistol welding Minion.exe constructs still in use by the Stagehands, while packs of Chamelee.mon conduct vicious ambushes as swarms of Wyrm.exe flock through the sky, the normal limits on their self replication non-applicable to fire and forget operations in the jungle. As well, FirstMate.exe programs remain superior in C&C to the Officers used by the Stagehands, allowing the Firmament to conduct operations with less oversight.
For a short while, the Firmament hopes to win purely by way of the perceived advantage in Minion.exe quality, but these hopes are soon dashed.
While the base Stagehand Minion.exe programs have not been upgraded as the Firmament's have been, this is not because no work has been done with the minion line. The superior firepower of the CarbineMinion.exe troops find themselves matched by the shields of the Defender.exe, who might have no more then the basic pistol but possess a large tower shield constructed of a dense lattice of active denial firewall coding allowing them to survive far more damage then their foes can, as well as the Templar.exe programs with possess the same shield but replace their pistol with a sword copied from the less common shield-less SwordyMinion.exe programs.
If that was all the Stagehands had, it would not be enough, but they do have more. The Mobile Assault Stage v2 is something the Firmament has no direct match to, combining air transport capacity with two missile based fire support systems to allow the Stagehands to airdrop fireteams on hotspots as needed. (Wyrm constructs do not counter this, even through they too fly, because they're too stupid to operate independently.) And behind the march of the shield wall all to often stands the Lesser Lasard.Mon, an electronically charged dinosaur that functions as an artillery weapon for the Stagehands, as well as clusters of the new Idoloid MDL 01 - Sakura.ISQ which stands as the first battlefield use of the music element. While the giant syringe they weld for defense can fire only pistol strength shots it serves as a more potent pole weapon (though the Idoloids have only minimal skill at proper polearm use), and besides that combat isn't their main purpose anyway. Instead, they serve as command and support units, able to command just as well as an officer and possessing a healing aura that combines will with the superior defenses of the shielded minion types.
Despite that, and despite the Wyrm.exe programs hacked down under the swords of the SwordyMinion.exe constructs, despite the Chamelee.mon packs cut down by defending Defender.exe minions, the advantage of actually having a dedicated scout construct pays off for the Firmament, and as the greater armies muster the advantage goes to the Firmament as they gain just that extra edge in knowledge of where their enemies are and where they are going, of the jungle paths being fought over.
If, granted, not as much as the Spiderfliers grant the Symbion Hives, being a flying unit smart enough to report home and who has the home ground advantage in these jungles.
Nonetheless, as the skirmishes pause, this is not a time of peace. It is when armies make the jungle run black and white with bleeding code.
For the drums have stopped, for none can hear them over the sound of the guns.
The battle begins as the DJ King rams an assault column into the weakest point in the enemy lines that the scouts have found, the skies darkened with the tremendous swarms of Wyrm.exe flies, their complete lack of brains no hindrance for operation 'fly that way and murder everything you see' allowing them to be deployed for once at there theoretically simple construct levels of deployment. Behind them a vast horde of CarbineMinion.exe march under the command of the FirstMate.exe programs, cutlasses waving in the air, and before them hunt packs of Chamelee.mon killers, the mantis-raptors stalking their prey through the jungle shadows.
Against them Jörgenson musters his soldiers, forming vast and interlocking defensive lines built from the shields his minions possess, centered around hardpoints full of Lesser Lasard.Mon monsters serving as artillery support and clusters of Idoloids for dedicated healing, allowing him to cycle damaged troops in and out as the battle progresses. In this stage of the battle the Mobile Assault Stages are held back to prevent them from being swarmed over by the teeth with wings, but they still provide fire support to the front lines.
And in the center of both the assault column and the defensive lines walks each side's champion.
BlueFiend.mon and Vivi_Paltest.dat heading directly towards each other for a rematch.
The clash begins, and the first defensive line is soon overrun. The second follows as the DJ King throws the second and third assault columns at weak points created in it by Jörgenson's need for reinforcements where the first force is hitting. The third falls as well,
BlueFiend.mon literally being punched through the shieldwall, but it falls slower. By the time the fourth wall is met, the DJ King's forces are finding themselves overstretched, while Jörgenson's mastery of defensive operations and territory control has resulted in force preservation, aided by access to healers, resulting in more territory lost then troops derezed. And here the DJ King's lack of experience as a hacker shows, as Jörgenson welds his battlechips with more skill, deploying reinforcements where needed, using his recovery chip to aid in troop sustainability, and using the Stunbolt to support
BlueFiend.mon in his duel, thus allowing Vivi a critical advantage in the two champion's duel as time goes on.
Which isn't to say that the reinforcement and attacking boosting chips the DJ King has are doing nothing, but he definitely is using them with less skill then his foe. While not the only issue facing his assault, it is another weak point as his shock and awe tactics meet a defensive specialist who allows them to play out while maintaining his forces for a later counterattack. A counterattack which, by the way, just started. Vivi finds her duel being interupted as she is swarmed by SwordyMinions, allowing
BlueFiend.mon to punch a hole in the enemy column that is followed by Assault Stages dropping fireteams behind the enemy lines, the skies cleared of the initial Wyrm swarms through attrition and anti-air fire by the Lessar Lasard. mon creatures as the defensive lines re-orient and move to crush the bubbles the invading Firmament forces have created in their push.
This is the end of the line for the Firmament.
...Or so you would think.
For the DJ King knows well the value of a hidden dagger disguised by the shock and awe of his normal tactics, and one design has been husbanded until this point, carefully concealed from the enemy scouts.
And now, just as his attack forces are being crushed, he plays his final card.
The first Jörgenson knows of the incoming disaster is when a firebase behind the lines of combat falls silent. He assumes that it is another Symbion attack, which is reasonable as they've been making attacks from their deep hives this entire time. This is in fact one reason he was on the defensive at first, for he had enemies on both flanks. But this base is far beyond the normal reach of a Symbion strike force large enough to bring down a base, much less bring down a base without time for a message to be sent, so he sends an internal security team to clear it out.
The second thing Jörgenson knows of the incoming disaster is the sound of wings and a cascading chorus of alarms as a multitude of bases behind the main combat come under attack, just as the DJ King unleashes his carefully hoarded fourth and final attack force.
Alarmed, Jörgenson re-orients his view towards his backlines, and sees the skies darkened with Wyrms. The reason the skies over the front line had been cleared out was because the DJ King had refrained from reinforcing those swarms beyond a mere trickle, allowing Jörgenson to believe them safety destroyed. Instead, the DJ waited for the admittedly buggy Tunneler.exe programs to finish their work. While the tunnels they created would not last the week, mere hours were more then enough to unleash the Wyrms in their vast sky darkening numbers into Jörgenson's undefended underbelly. Behind them followed Chamelee.mon hunter packs, stripped from the final attack force to support this gambit, as well as CarbineMinion.exe and FirstMate.exe programs to exploit this bypass.
And as the bases go down, Jörgenson finds he is increasingly being faced with the choice of commanding his army, now out of place on the front lines through still needed to hold back the final attack column, or coordinating his rear line's defense assets against the tunnel force. To command the army will be to lose the bases, and to command the bases will be to lose the army. Neither choice is acceptable.
So Jörgenson attacks the Symbion Hives instead, sending them boiling from their strongholds in masse to counter what they think is another overwhelming attack force. But as their swarms of Spiderfliers and Terrantulas reach where Jörgenson's bases would be, they find but self destructing scrap left behind. Meanwhile, Jörgenson's army reorients itself as
BlueFiend.mon punches a hole in the weak flanks of the enemy attack force and make a charge for the sea under the thundering fire of the Lesser Lasard.Mon programs bombarding the main attack force as a distraction. Taken by surprise, the DJ King's attack forces find themselves attacking bases already abandoned by the former defenders as Jörgenson reaches the shore and begins evacuating into the Sea of Recycling as Mobile Assault Stage units from both the army and the installations in the sea begin airdropping the remains of the army to safety.
And then, as the DJ King tries to turn his forces around, he finds that this time he is the one taking a surprise attack to the flank as the Spiderfliers rip Wyrm.exe's from the sky, leaving them only as fading data or web-trapped tubes crashing to the ground below as the Tunneler.exe's tunnels find themselves under surprise interdiction attacks by the also burrowing Terrantulas. Now it is his turn to be facing war on two fronts as the remains of Jörgenson's army break his bases on the shoreline and the Symbion Hives react to the sudden lack of presence of the force originally holding the middle of the jungle by moving to claim it themselves. While still inferior to either of the major faction's forces, the DJ King's army has just come out of a war of its own, and still has the Firmament attempting to set fire to their established strongholds. It is all the DJ King can do to hold, but hold he does as the last of the Firmament's army is air lifted from the shores with one last fly by missile strike on his bases there and as the Symbion Hives find their forces no longer facing a distracted and unsuspecting enemy, but one now fighting on their own turf as Wyrms bring down Spiderfliers through strength of numbers and Vivi_Paltest.dat hunts the Terrantulas in their own tunnels.
An uneasy peace has once more come to the jungle as the two remaining sides find themselves unable to successfully terminate their rivals... for now.
+1 Control in the Viral Jungle for the Symbion Hives (Independents).The Firmament now has dominance over 1/5 Sectors.The Public Cluster
- Academic Complex
- F/I/S - 0/2/0
- Maze of Utilities
- F/I/S - 0/2/0
- Public Forums
- F/I/S - 0/2/0
The Undernet
- Sea of Recycling
- F/I/S - 0/1/2
- Archival Sediment
- F/I/S - 2/1/0
- Viral Jungle
- F/I/S - 1/2/0
The Commercial Cluster
- Amazon Commerce Forest
- F/I/S - 2/1/0
- BitMines
- F/I/S - 0/3/0
- Application City
- F/I/S - 2/1/0
The Governmental Cluster
- World Data Police HQ
- F/I/S - 0/3/1
- Petrified Paperwork Caves
- F/I/S - 0/4/0
- Mountain of Public Relations
- F/I/S - 0/3/1
The Milspec Cluster
- [CLASSIFIED] Dunes
- F/I/S - 0/5/0
- [REDACTED] Peninsula
- F/I/S - 0/5/0
- [EXPUNGED] Mesa
- F/I/S - 0/5/0