Hacker: CF_Dogcatcher
Region: Amazon Commerce Forest
Duel Disk[6]: MinionCall A (1), Squad Summon S (1), Squad Summon S (1), Squad Summon S (1), Recovery 10 (1), Atk+10 (1), CallChiptune (0)
Other:
Other:A deadly new threat appears in the Commerce Forest- swarms of flying viri that viciously attack any who interfere with their devious agenda. Be warned- not all the vines criss-crossing the canopy are benign!
Transferring forces from the Firmament's foothold in Application City to the Amazon Commerce Forest is both complicated and simple at the same time. It is simple because there are already many connections between the two zones, born from the need for customers to visit both. It is complicated because one can not merely march an army of viruses through the public streets and through the public subway trains. That's why Bailey builds her own subway line. Starting from one of the many empty basements of the hollow skyscrapers found in Application City, Bailey extends her own private upload link from the city into the forest. Making a connection in the internal tunnels of the Forest, where goods are transported to storefronts, Bailey soon has forces sneaking through the forest's branches and termite tunnels.
Of course, when moving through the passages chewed through the trees, one must avoid the worker-mites that carry the goods and the soldier-mites that guard them. It is lucky, therefor, that the Chamelee.mon viruses are so stealthy. With their self preservation set to the most greatest rating possible, CF_Dogcatcher sends packs of these stealthy killers out to explore the forest. Of course, maximum self preservation doesn't mean they don't eat any of the termites, but they don't get caught and that's the important bit. Areas less traveled through are found, and temporary link amplifiers are smuggled and concealed there, allowing for deployment of additional Chamelee.mon viruses through the use of the Squad Summon S chip.
Eventually, they find what Bailey is looking for. For while stores grow and thrive, others fail to survive. Dead businesses, businesses that aren't profitable enough to avoid being downsized, businesses that have dwindled from former heights... all of them leave areas of deadwood behind. Tunnels no longer in use by the hive, chambers left to grow dusty and old, blocked off from the rest of the nest for lack of use. It is to one of these empty caverns that CF_Dogcatcher extends her subpassage to, and it is in one of those caverns that she begins setting up infrastructure.
From here, the Firmament has a clawhold into the forest. They'll have to be careful still, and having access to an asset that could burrow on its own would be highly useful, but from this single starting base they'll be able to extend their hold and presence across the forest. Eventually, at least, and with sustained effort, and assuming nothing new and unexpected gets in their way, which isn't a safe assumption at all. But still, a start is a start.
Now to make the most of said start.
+1 Control in Amazon Commerce Forest for the Firmament.Hacker: DJ King Cabaret
Region: Archival Sediment
Duel Disk[6]: ADI - Vivi_Paltest.dat (4), Atk+10 (1), Recovery 10 (1), CallChiptune (0)
Other:
Other:The slamming concert in the Archival Depths shows no signs of stopping. Who is the mysterious naga, and what is her purpose?
With a firm foundation set, the Firmament forces settle into consolidating and expanding their hold over the caverns, spreading both downwards into the deep tunnels and upwards into the shallow tunnels, where water leaks through the roof and stray mega-virus monsters and the cyborg samurai squads that hunt them both conflict with Firmament viruses. Well, until Vivi shows up and proceeds to use one mega-virus monster as a blunt weapon upon everything that dares mess up her collectable dress. That puts a stop to that resistance with finality.
Deeper, though, things go less smoothly. The pale cyclopean giants of the original expansion sphere seem to have been only outcasts from deeper, more stronger tribes, who do not desire new neighbors. Despite their resistance, the still relatively weak tribes on the edges of their influence can do little to stop Vivi from crushing them, guided by scout deployments that map out the twisting tunnels they use as defensive terrain and escorted by packs of Chamelee.mon viruses that harass the tribes without end, picking off any giant that strays too far from the main group. Howling swarms of Wyrm.exe programs are unleashed where the enemy warriors gather, and neither giants nor albino battletoad mounts can withstand the teeth with wings.
But as Vivi goes deeper, resistance stiffens. Giant chiefs welding blades of burning gold unleash refractive eye laser blasts that burn whole flights of Wyrms from the air in instants, and elite warriors in clockwork steam powered armor contest Vivi with halberds forged from black alabaster and outdated military ice as one eyed shamans attempt to force the DJ King from the datasphere. They fail of course, but it forecasts the increasingly difficulties the advance faces as it extends into the deeps.
More tribes are being found, each stronger, larger, and more advanced then the next, and they are becoming actively alarmed at this intrusion into what is normally uncontested territory. The tribes are banding together, and each one falls less easily then the last. Eventually, Cabaret calls the continued push forwards off, fortifying what major caverns he has claimed from the tribes in the face of continually larger enemy forces. To force them from their homes will take a major, and directed, deployment of Firmament forces.
Higher up things are simpler, with little to no worthwhile lasting resistance. However the higher the Scouts drive, the fewer and fewer worthwhile caverns they find, stable and large enough to be put to useful use. Soon they are finding cavern mouths that lead to the surface instead of more tunnels, a thousand or more scattered and minor openings into the Viral Jungle or to the oft flooding isles of the Sea of Recycling. The DJ King is sure that there are yet more openings unfound, and it is highly unlikely an effective blockade can be forged to either prevent units from rising to the surface or enemies from plunging into the tunnels.
+1 Control in the Archival Sediment for the Firmament. To take the third point in the Archival Sediment will require a head on confrontation with the great Agathian tribes of the deep caves, who will have to be defeated to claim full control over this zone. Note that, with the majority of the tunnels, surface and middle deeps, taken by Firmament forces, it is likely that if the Stagehands attack they will be engaging the Firmament not the Independents.
One Zone in the The Undernet is Dominated by the Firmament. Two zones must be dominated to dominate the sector and begin tracing the Stagehand's home area.Hackers
CF_Dogcatcher
Ophilia Bailey is a hacker specialized in the obscure and weird forms of viri which she finds most interesting, but is also very familiar with standard corporate security fixed defense programming, as her last 'real job' was as a corporate data-security officer. Tactically, CF_Dogcatcher is specialized to figuring out the enemy's cunning plans and ruining them, but she can suffer when she tries to figure out the cunning plan of a hacker whom is not using cunning schemes and just has a metaphorical, or more literal, hammer.
DJ King Cabaret
A man once sued for reasons of 'we have more money then you', DJ King Cabaret has a well working understanding of shock and awe tactics, and his experience running a pirate radio station has also given him a well honed sense of trickery and deception from the need to befuddle and avoid the Net Police. Despite this preference for attention getting, in battle the real threat with him is a hidden dagger. However, his actual skills as a hacker are somewhat lacking, which can hinder him in a variety of ways including his ability to properly deploy battle chips into conflicted codespheres. As well, his mixed feelings about an AI songtress such as Sonata may sometimes cause him to be less then rational in direct engagements with her Stagehands.
Viri
Minion.exe
These roughly humanoid programs are neither very sophisticated (intelligence and coding wise) or very strong, but they are mass producible and smart enough to obey orders without continual direct supervision. Which isn't always something you can take for granted with generic digital constructs, as a lot of them are dumber then rocks. They're not coded with anything more powerful then a basic energy pulse pistol, but they can still defeat the average civilian whom thinks too much of themselves. Just avoid putting them up against Data Police Agents. (Simple) (Obsolete)
CarbineMinion.exe
Roughly humanoid digital constructs with just enough brains to obey commands without needing continual direct and personal supervision. They've been upgraded over the original Minion.exe programs with a somewhat more advanced Pulse Carbine weapon that includes a charged shot function and slightly greater firing rate and normal shot damage, but have very limited programming on when to use their charged shot. However, ADI or a supervising hacker can use a command call to order local CarbineMinions and Officers to fire a charged shot at a target if needed.
(Simple)
Wyrm.exe
Mindlessly aggressive flying snakes with plenty of teeth, the Wyrm.exe is an utterly expendable melee virus used as often as ablative distractions for other viruses as anything else. Being even stupider then a Minion, Wyrms are entirely dependent on outside authority for things such as 'targeting priority' and 'not giving away an ambush' and 'knowing when to retreat', and require very strong hard-coded friend foe identification coding to prevent friendly fire. And even then they still tend to kill each other off. They've got some swarm programming, mainly enough to keep them from getting in each other's way too much, and despite being theoretically a Simple virus their dependency on outside control limits the amount that can be safely deployed.
They've been updated with superior swarm programming, allowing for increased teamwork, less fratricide, and a cloud computing/bit torrent based memory system that allows them to remember longer and more complicated orders.
(Simple - Theoretically)
Officer.exe
Based on the generally available in the Undernet Minion programs, Officer.exe constructs aren't much stronger then their lesser kin, still only coded with a basic energy pulse pistol, though officers also come with basic melee coding. But the big difference between and Officer and a Minion is that Officers are coded with noticeably more advanced bit-brains and have a basic tactical library integrated in their knowledge banks, allowing them to lead teams of Minions on operations without needing constant hand holding.
They've been upgraded to use more advanced Pulse Carbines with slightly greater firing rate and damage, as well as a charging function, and now are programmed to know how to both use the charging function personally and how to command the CarbineMinion.exe programs to properly use their own as well. Instead of firing a charged shot, they can alternatively use it for a short term moderate-minor boost to their speed or toughness. (Complicated)
FirstMate.exe
An unfinished attempt at coding a superior Officer, the FirstMate.exe exists but has a woefully incomplete tactical library and a 'special ability' when to use library and function that no one can understand enough to tell it which special abilities actually exist. It also has a blunt sword and seventy-five alternate uniform skins.
Scout.exe
A three wheeled trike with a turret mounted pulse pistol stolen from a Minion.exe, a flare launcher and a powerfield ramming prow that prevents the pistol from firing while active. Recent updates have made it noticeably more intelligent then the baseline Minions who's brain-coding the Scouts used to share, and it is now far more able to actually scout or harass enemies without dying pointlessly and without a report. They are noticeably better at teamwork then a baseline minion for scouting or combat by way of using swarm coding meant for real life drones. (Complicated)
Chamelee.mon
A feathered dinosaur raptor virus with mantis like bladed hands and, Chamelee.mon viruses are not anywhere near being properly self aware but still possess a high quality and flexible tactical library for teamwork based hunting and skirmishing tactics even if said library is almost solely focused on those subjects. They are near invisible while still, and less so but still hard to accurately pinpoint when in motion making them hard targets to land a shot on even though, if shot, they are not much if any tougher then a minion. They can be manually assigned a high priority target though how they go after said target is still up to them, and have a slider for effecting how highly they rate their own self preservation. Officers can use these, but are not programmed to except for setting the self preservation slider to max when they decide it's time for all forces to retreat. (Complex)
Autonomous Digital Intelligence
Vivi_Paltest.dat
A gelatinous and gluttonous naga with a collection of strange and interesting code shards and a habit of eating things she finds interesting to add them to her collection, Vivianaja Palladian is the Firmament's first ADI champion, and serves it well with her variable armaments and defenses pulled out from her collection as she remembers them as well as her own noticeable personal toughness and ability to patch herself up with loose data. Worryingly, her collection includes what seems to be coding of military origin, though Vivi denies ever visiting the military owned sectors of the Cyberworld before this conflict started. (Memory 4)
Battle Chips
Recovery 10
This tactical battle chip is designed to mend damaged and corrupted code, healing the individual it is applied to by a minor amount. (Simple, Memory 1)
Atk+10
This tactical battle chip pre-allocates resources to empower the next program used, improving the targets ability to deal damage for a short while. (Simple, Memory 1)
MinionCall A
This strategic battle chip creates temporary replicas of the commonly known ‘Minion.exe’ program, causing a short term burst of reinforcements in the targeted zone. (Simple, Memory 1)
SquadSummon S
This strategic battle chip is an upgraded, though more complex, version of MinionCall A that can summon a (smaller) squad of minions and officers of variable, if pre-set before the mission, type, It may only summon one version of minions and one version of officers, and can not be adjusted in the field. (Complicated, Memory 1)
CallChiptune
'CallChiptune' is a Battlechip that uses the Firmament's vast archives of abandonware soundtracks to summon appropriate music for any occasion. It's ability to figure out what music is appropriate can be a little off at times though, but who doesn't like a cheery 8-bit soundtrack going on in the middle of a desperate battle to keep viruses from deleting your homework? (Simple, Memory 0)
Author
Topic: The Firmament - Great Flame War Arms Race (Read 20957 times)