Part I: Sealed OrdersTurn 2
Garrick StormeTake action 8. Get those who need care into the infirmary. G1 option C.
[Sciences: (4,3) Fail]After several hours of discrete instructions to your own men, observation of their conduct, gentle reinforcement of good behavior, and growing despair, you’ve come to the conclusion that it would be easier to teach goats how to write cursive. The problem isn’t you, or the first generation instruction, it’s the fact that the infantry are still terrible gossips that play telephone with instructions worse than any schoolchild. It takes almost no time before the original guidelines for how to modify their weaponry without impeding efficacy are distorted to uselessness, and the largest outstanding effect is that the soldiers are now cognizant enough to hide the bulk of their modifications from inspection.
You could still try again later, or just beat it through their heads that if they can’t do this right then they’re not going to be allowed to do it at all.
In the meantime you set about making sure the wounded actually end up in the infirmary. Being cut-off, and the fear of being useless in such a situation, means that this requires direct orders and no small amount of staring down the rank and file to get them to actually go get treated. At least the rising sun has the men eager to get inside lest the warmist suddenly clear, and you can be certain that a mixture of good training and honest fear and respect of the open sky will keep them in there long enough to get treated.
Unfortunately, the infirmary situation seems increasingly grim the more people you personally inspect from your sergeant's report and force into rest and treatment. Without a minor miracle, you’re not going to have any ability to reconstitute, much less actively reinforce, squads if you suffer further casualties. Furthermore, aside from the eight squads you and your three peers command, the remaining units will likely be understrength for the next engagement.
The worst of it is a sergeant from a squad directly under the company captain. He was, during your inspection, limping. When one of the medics managed to get his boot off, you discovered he was only able to stand because he’d shoved braces down both sides of his boots and belted them together underneath his service breeches. The leg had been shredded from the ankle down and has rotted into the boot, with most everything down from the knee a livid mixture of black and green and angry red fingers of blood infection reaching up the soldier’s thigh. Remarkably, despite the crippling injury, he still seems relatively calm and lucid - though you’re not sure if he’ll make the day.
The original nature of the injury itself is lost due to the rot, but there are thousands of tiny yellow eggs in and around the wound - similar to those of equine bot flies. There’s absolutely no chance he’ll keep the leg, and his odds of recovery are slim even with an amputation. Trying to save him will test your limited medical supplies for very little gain, but would at least demonstrate to the rest of the men that you’re willing to treat them even if there’s no chance they’ll be effective again.
ChangesInfirmary now working
80 Combat Capable Soldiers
12 Exhausted [Much less likely to recover due to provision status]
16 Wounded [Much Less likely to recover, more likely to degrade, and can only recover to exhausted due to provision status]
1 Critically Injured [Cannot recover without direct intervention due to provision status]
Opportunity Actions Found14. Amputate Critically Injured Sergeant: Difficulty 1 Sciences. Minor Failure Penalty, cannot be retried.
Andrew Gallagher and Matilda RavenDo the thing with the thing at the thing!
Opportunity action: Assist Matilda Raven in 13
[উদ্দেশ্যৰ অসম্ভৱতা: (5, 5, 3, 2 | 2, 5, 4, 2) Great Success]Andrew and Matilda make a strange pairing as the latter leads the former back through the trenches they’ve explored. The two trade notes of what they’ve seen and the current state of affairs while Christopher and the Purifier exchange similar notes on the best method of setting things on fire, fougasse vs pressurized spray dispersion, whether or not electricity will ever be used as a flamethrower igniter, and if the eggheads will ever figure out how to make an electricity thrower.
On arrival at the crater the purifier makes a hand motion for Christopher to maybe stay back a minute here. Christopher, having roughly the level of common sense God gave lemmings, ignores the warning and keeps going into the crater with both Andrew and Matilda - though he does lag a few steps behind. Whether that’s out of respect for, or just to stay out of smacking range of, his boss is not apparent.
Matilda does not appear certain what to do at the start, approaching the still and muddy pool at the bottom of the crater with a cocked head. She’s certain there is something to do here, as much as anything because her head pounds and screams that there’s nothing to do. The moss is still gone from the crater, and there remains tension to the air. An expectation. A man knelt in prayer, looking to the horizon with wide eyes, desperately waiting for something, anything, worth waiting for - all mixed up with that bitter anger she felt before.
For Andrew there’s an odd sense of almost familiarity to this crater. Not in its appearance, though he’s seen far too many of such craters in his time, but in the expectant charge that permeates the air. It feels oddly like that sudden, heavy, and uniquely shameful silence when a green soldier has
massively fucked something up in front of the squad.
Without a better option in mind, Matilda bends over the muddy pool once more. She doesn’t graze her fingers across the surface this time, but instead pushes her hand down through the water and into the mud below. The mud seems to press back as her fingertips quest down, resisting the intrusion until her fingers hit something hard.
It shouldn’t have made a sound down there in the mud, but it rings like a struck greatbell. Christopher recoils backwards, flamethrower coming to bear.
“WHAT -” he begins to yell, but is cut off as he seems to freeze in time and grow unnaturally pale.
Pain splits both Andrew and Matilda's skulls as the puddle explodes outward a flurry of droplets. Agony like slime covered nails punching through the back of their eyeballs and climbing deeper toward the center of their minds. A voice that sounds like their own repeats constantly that this is not happening, it tells them that this cannot ever logically happen to anyone. It points out that Christopher and the Purifier seem to not be moving, it points out their ashen faces and midnight black veins, it pointedly reminds them both that this is not real and that they’re having a nervous breakdown. A breakdown they can’t afford, and their mission won’t tolerate.
The water droplets from the detonated pool halt at the edges of the crater, curving up in the air to form a sparkling dome of twinkling lights that mirrors the curves of the blasted earth. The warmist is gone, as is the sun, as is the blue of the sky or the glitter of the familiar stars. A single massive sphere now dominates the sky, outlined with burning light like the annulus of an eclipse. It ripples faintly, churning with hidden movement of great submerged shapes and half-seen light from distant and gratefully unseen sources.
The mud at the crater’s base seethes as it did when Matilda touched it prior, but this time it does not cease. The muck roils upwards, forming a dozen mounds of mottled earth that sloppily spatter and rise to forms approximating that of humans. Flecks of white rise to the surface of the mud, tiny pieces of shattered and forgotten bone fighting to find something resembling their proper place in the abominable masses.
Matilda’s hand is thrown free of its place at the bottom of the crater as the intact skull her fingers first brushed heaves upward, accompanied by a grotesque neck of filth and half-shattered vertebra. The thirteenth form rises to tower over Matilda, the too-clean skull perched atop its unstable form. It peers down toward her, the burnished skull staring into her with newly disturbed worms leaking out of its empty sockets.
“Not me,” it gurgles, its voice wet and barely intelligible.
“Not me.” The other mounds chorus in a horrendous susurrus.
The mass of mud and bone that rose in front of Matilda leaves her there beneath the sparkling dome, beneath the dark and rippling orb that dominates what should be the heavens. It moves, half stepping and half flowing in a sloppy parody of walking, toward Andrew. It bends close, as it did to Matilda.
There’s a sudden wobble within the mud, and a pseudopod flecked with arm bones and tipped with the remnants of phalanges slaps against the mass' own skull, though still leaving the white bone unstained.
“Sir!” “Sir…” The other mounds chorus, though with less vigor and clarity in their bubbling near-voices.
Despite the salute, the shambling thing finally flows over to Christopher. The young man and the purifier both are strangely colorless, their veins a stark obsidian that seem far too visible beneath their dirtied skin. Christopher’s features move impossibly slowly, the very beginnings of surprise forming on his face, his eyes partway through a blink that seems as though it will take minutes to complete as the muddy almost-figure approaches him.
A shudder runs through the thing suddenly, a very perturbed looking mole flopping out from between the its ribs as the mud ripples.
“Me,” it says, the voice suddenly all too human.
“Me.”“Us.”The frozen dome of water droplets tinkles like glass chimes as a deep hum flows throughout the crater. The grotesque humanoid forms of mud and bone suddenly sharpen, bones snapping into mostly the correct positions and the earth sculpting into passable, if indistinct, human features. The thirteenth, the one leaning over Christopher, does not remain indistinct. In a moment his features are as clear as any wax sculpture, mud flowing over bone to give the facsimile of tissue.
He was tall, overtopping six feet easily, an axehandle across the shoulders, and built with the solidity that only a life of manual labor and good eating can give. More than that, both Matilda and Andrew could
feel him burning with pride. He was a young man who’d dreamed grand dreams of being a soldier, who had genuinely wanted to fight for the most noble and naive of reasons. He turns back to Andrew, begging silently with his muddy eyes. He knew he was dead. He’d died instantly from the shell, torn apart by incomprehensible amounts of force against which his passion and bravery had never stood the slimmest chance. The trench had been abandoned, his bones left where they had fallen, and everything he’d ever been had come to nothing. He stayed, he kept the others here even as they faded and forgot themselves, all because he needed something, anything, to matter.
He needed to be of use.
Andrew, half crippled by the pain and the screaming sound of his own voice in his head railing at him to pull himself together, reached out to touch the young man on the shoulder. The voices in his head screamed at him that he was touching nothing, giving in to delusions that even a green recruit sauced out of their mind wouldn’t entertain.
~To touch something is to make it real, and to become real to it in turn~ A whisper of memory, flickering out from behind that screaming voice that ranted and railed that this was all a hallucination.
Andrew’s fingers touch the cold mud of the dead boy’s shoulder. There’s a chime, a brief feeling of connection, of understanding, and then the gelid moment of time breaks.
“- THE FUCK!?” Christopher finishes, completing the sentence he started so long ago, sliding backward and losing balance as he jerks backwards. His ass hits the mud with a squelch as thirteen piles of mud and bone suddenly lose cohesion and collapse around the crater, the previously suspended water droplets coming down in a brief patter of rain afterward.
Matilda and Andrew share a glance in the once more calm crater. Neither has any real answer to Christopher’s question. They did what they came here to do, whatever that was, and hopefully gained something more out of it than just a ringing headache.
Shared Abilities Gained for Next CombatGained 3 ᛥ Charges
(CP 1, ᛥ Charges 1)Morbid Mire: Targets an enemy squad within distance 10 of any commanded squad. Target squad loses the ability to move this round. If it would have moved this round, it loses the benefits of cover and concealment as well.
(CP 2, ᛥ Charges 3) Dead Reckoning: Targets an enemy squad within distance 10 of any commanded squad. Target squad loses the ability to move this round. If it would have moved this round, it loses the benefits of cover and concealment as well. Target squad is attacked with an ability with ATK X, STR 5, AP 1, DMG 1, and Torrent, where X is the number of units in the target squad.
Matilda RavenAlso, complete exploration, assuming that I haven't been gibbed by the above action.
Some time after the… events with Andrew Gallagher, you resume exploring the relevant sections of trenches around the command post the captain has claimed. You no longer feel the strange and tugging guidance that you did around the artillery crater, but you realize that you could point to the command post completely blind. It’s more than just a good sense of direction, more than simply memorizing traverses and cross connections between lines as the front curves away. It’s like a candle in a dark room, able to be seen even with eyes closed.
Regardless, there doesn’t seem to be much else of grand interest further from the command post. There’s a collapsed deep dugout in the reserve trench that looks like it may have fallen in before the retreat and could be worth digging out to see what’s inside, but it otherwise seems quite mundane. Curiously, the further you go from the command post the wilder the vegetation within the trenches gets, as though the natural sway has been rebuffed in some manner by the old bunker that the captain’s sealed orders have focused on.
It’s not unheard of, particularly around
লোকক বুজাব লা, but the fact that this trench network was connected well before
ককবুজা makes it peculiar. Still, it might give Gallagher’s idea for hunts some merit, if those he takes with are brave and adventurous, both in character and appetite.
With the sun now visible as a dull ball of light well above the horizon and the warmist traitorously roiling with the threat of exposure, you turn back towards that distant light of the command center and head to camp.
ChangesLocal Trench System Explored
Opportunity Actions Found15. Excavate collapsed reserve dugout: Difficulty 1 Guts AND Intuition. No Failure Penalty. Can be retried after success 2 times.
Andrew GallagherPersonal action: Scout around the trenches for some place to forage/hunt food from?
“Sir, so, uh, is what happened something that we’re going to talk about, sir? Sir?” For now, you growl lightly in response. A little time away from the crater has quelled the throbbing in your head and helped you forget that ringing feeling within your spine. That feeling is not a sound but it dwells within you like the bass undershocks of distant artillery, and it feels… familiar. It dwells warmly in your chest, as ready and alert as a hunting dog answering to a bugle it had long forgotten.
Your head twinges threateningly the longer you dwell on the feeling, and you set it aside for the moment lest you invite a repeat of the burning nails the events with Raven sent shattering through your skull. Instead you focus on finding any potential source of food with which to stretch the meager ration situation. The stunned mole that fell out of the muddy figure under the
বুজাকবু already hangs from your belt. It’s proof that there’s edible life out here, and where there’s one there will be more.
The further you get from the command post the captain has claimed, the more the land seems to have reclaimed the trenches. The plants are still off-color from the too-thin light of the misted sun, and that useless yellow flowered moss is far too dominant, but there are tells of animal life taking some hold in the outer reaches. You don’t expect anything as large as a deer to have survived the things that lurk above, but you’d be surprised if a hunting team couldn’t snag some small game in the further trenches with snares. Most of the boys probably aren’t too good with silent tools like slings and thrown weapons, but even a quiet hunting expedition to give them something to do is likely to perk them up. You’ll probably have to boil the meat instead of cook it properly, just to avoid having the smell attract much worse predators, but you’ve not met a soldier yet who’d turn down a hot meal.
The mist thins with the growing light and you turn to head back to camp, satisfied with the findings.
Opportunity Actions Found16. Mount ‘hunting’ trip: Difficulty 1 Intuition or Savvy. No Failure Penalty. Can be retried after success.
Arnaldo Kafka"No food? That's all well and good! I takes an adult nearly a month to really starve to death, after all. Most of you'd be lucky to survive that long food or no. More importantly, they have explosives here! Just gotta give 'em a little touch up and they'll be good as new. Maybe you should stand back, though. Haha!"
Global: A (Reveal shortage)
Opportunity: 11 (Repair grenades)
[Sciences: (6, 5, 4) Superior Success]It doesn’t take much time before you’re essentially alone at the old armorer’s post, a box of grenades in front of you, and two of your braver men with you to assist with repairs. Others are stationed outside to report your death and maybe recover your body should someone’s hand slip. Definitely one of your assistants, not yours. Definitely. Probably.
The obvious issues with the grenades are those of age and neglect- the Bickford fuses are decent at best at combating moisture when new and well kept. These are neither, but the armorer’s note on the box indicates issues well beyond that. Initial disassembly shows nothing impressively wrong internally. Expected levels of corrosion from poor storage, but you’d still expect them to explode more often than not.
Experimentally you pull the pin and let the lever fall free from a grenade.
After unscrewing and removing the base plug and firing cap. Obviously. You’re not sure why one of your assistants is making that sound. He knows you’re careful.
Disappointingly, the striker fails to fall at all, binding in its socket without releasing the spring. Not an uncommon issue that leaves a thrown grenade live, but with a completely unpredictable detonation time. You’ve heard stories of men picking up such grenades as souvenirs, calling them ‘lucky ones’ and then learning the hard way that they stop being lucky the minute you drop them.
Fixing them is a time consuming, but relatively simple, fix - likely why the armorer had them set aside. If you already have plenty of grenades there’s very little reason to waste time on these ahead of more pressing issues. Your company, however, has already spent nearly everything that explodes on… on other issues.
You set to work disarming, filing, lubricating, resplicing fuses, checking explosives, and re-arming the grenades. While you can’t restore all of them, you’re able to restore the majority of the grenades by cannibalizing the others. All in all you’re left with twenty fragmentation grenades in workable condition. Not a lot by company standards, but twenty more than you had before.
The sun has grown worryingly high by the time you’re finished working on the grenades, and you head back to more central territory with your newmade box of explosives.
ChangesAdded grenades (frag) x20
| RNG | ATK | ACC | STR | AP | DMG | SPC |
| Grenade (Frag) | 10 | 1d3 | 4+ | 4 | 0 | 1 | [Blast][Charges X/4] |
All[G1 Vote Hung. No action this round]
It isn’t long after the four of you return to the trenches surrounding the command post, looking for places to shelter for the day and rest, that a running from the captain comes to find you. It seems he needs a word with his officers now that you’ve gotten the camp half settled and he’s unsealed the rest of the orders that brought you here.
The command post itself is on the reserve line, and is one of the only places in the trenchline with actual metal revetments, though they’re rusted through more often than not. The structure itself is a modest dugout, but reinforced heavily with timber and concrete blocks to help it weather even unexpectedly deep artillery fire. The soldiers here seem even more tired than most of the men, and not without cause. Glimmers of memory of the prior attacks hint that they, and the captain himself, always seemed to somehow be targets. Keeping himself was a job with a high body count, and one that rewarded those who could function in spite of exhaustion.
Inside, the command post is well lit with oil lanterns to banish shadows. The thinning warmist of the day flinches away from the fire light as it tries to follow the four of you inside. While there was a time the captain would have stood on propriety and not allowed soldiers to simply sleep in his command post, you’re pleased to see that beds have been made up here in every available space in order to allow soldiers to use this fortified space to get what little rest they can.
The soldier who summoned you leads you deeper in, not up into the concrete box at the top of the bunker, but rather down into what would have been storage. There you find the captain set behind a salvaged desk, surrounded by racks that had been emptied years prior and refilled now with what limited supplies remain to the company.
“Your continued distinction of service is noted,” he begins, standing from the desk but motioning towards the mismatched chairs in front for you to sit as you wish.
“I’m told that our men have places to weather the day, and that many have been convinced to let their injuries be treated.” You note the marked lack of him addressing the situation of supplies.
“I commend your diligence in ensuring the safety of the area, and I’ve organized watches for the daylight hours.” He sits again, lowering his damaged hand to brush across the unfurled paper across his desk.
“Those watches have strict orders not to fire unless fired on, and I trust you will see to the enforcement of those orders.” The captain grimaces, lamplight playing shadows across his weathered face.
“What follows is not to be discussed with your commands, not even to the most trusted. A trusted individual has managed to steal something very precious to the central powers, our purpose here is to wait for him and provide him with any assistance he requires.” The captain looks down at the paper again, as if to make one last check for additional information.
“He will arrive with the dawn, but our orders do not specify a date or specific time. It could be tomorrow, it could be ten weeks from now. However long it takes, our purpose is to make good his escape with the item he carries. Is that understood?”
Current Global and Opportunity actions are collated in the Camp Status.
The sun is high, and some actions will be impossible during this time. However, during this time you have 2 personal and 2 opportunity actions you can take before dusk makes it safe to move freely again.
You can spend 1 or 2 actions of either type to rest during this period. If you spend 2 actions you will be well rested. If you spend 1, there is a 50% chance you’ll be fatigued. If you do not spend any actions you will be fatigued by dusk.
Being fatigued in non-combat will cause you to re-roll your best die during a skill check. Being fatigued in combat will cause you to re-roll your first successful check each round and causes you to start with 1 less CP.
Situation SpecificLocal trench area fully explored
Minimal Troop accommodations secured, with firewood and spartan amenity (+Morale)
Shared Abilities Gained for Next CombatStart with 3 ᛥ Charges
(CP 1, ᛥ Charges 1)Morbid Mire: Targets an enemy squad within distance 10 of any commanded squad. Target squad loses the ability to move this round. If it would have moved this round, it loses the benefits of cover and concealment as well.
(CP 2, ᛥ Charges 3) Dead Reckoning: Targets an enemy squad within distance 10 of any commanded squad. Target squad loses the ability to move this round. If it would have moved this round, it loses the benefits of cover and concealment as well. Target squad is attacked with an ability with ATK X, STR 5, AP 1, DMG 1, and Torrent, where X is the number of units in the target squad.
Situation Quirks: -Modified Flamer Fuel: Flamers have at least one additional unknown special tag.
-Modified Machine Guns: Machine guns have at least one additional unknown special tag.
Opportunity Actions1. Clear Trench Traverses: Difficulty 1 Leadership OR Guts. No failure penalty. Mutually exclusive with Turn Oxbow Traverses Into Quarters.
2. Turn Oxbow Traverses Into Quarters: Difficulty 1 Leadership OR Savvy. No failure penalty. Mutually exclusive with Clear Trench Traverses.
3. Disarm and Open Forward Supply Depot: Difficulty 1 Savvy OR Intuition. Moderate failure penalties, cannot be retried.
4. Investigate Flamer Modifications: Difficulty 1
ধাৰণা No failure penalty.
5. Investigate Machine Gun Modifications: Difficulty 1 Sciences. No failure penalty.
6. Revert Machine Gun Modifications: Guaranteed Success. Removes opportunity action 5.
7. Reprimand soldiers for weapon 'charms' and enforce standard care. Difficulty 1 Leadership OR Guts. Minor Failure Penalty. Mutually exclusive with 8. Discretely allow unobtrusive gris-gris modifications.
8. Discretely instruct unobtrusive gris-gris modifications. Difficulty 1 Sciences. Minor Failure Penalty. Mutually exclusive with 7. Reprimand soldiers for weapon 'charms' and enforce standard care.
9. Repair LMGs: Difficulty 2 Sciences. Cannot be retried.
10. Cannibalize one LMG to repair another: Difficulty 1 Sciences. Removes opportunity action 9. No failure penalty.
12. Ensure (momentary) secrecy of ration shortage: Difficulty 1 Guts. Cannot be retried, mild failure penalties.
14. Amputate Critically Injured Sergeant: Difficulty 1 Sciences. Minor Failure Penalty, cannot be retried.
15. Excavate collapsed reserve dugout: Difficulty 1 Guts AND Intuition. No Failure Penalty. Can be retried after success 2 times.
16. Mount ‘hunting’ trip: Difficulty 1 Intuition or Savvy. No Failure Penalty. Can be retried after success.
Supply Status: Cut-OffMateriel: Marginal; items with [Charges: X] do not regain charges per combat. Special weapons have a chance to be damaged after combat. Injury recovery is less likely at all tiers. Provisions: Dire (Hidden); If no action is taken, company will begin starving within a week. Company is currently unaware of issue. Morale: Grim+Special Items:- 20 Frag grenades to apportion
InfirmaryFilthy Dugout
80 Combat Capable Soldiers
12 Exhausted [Much less likely to recover due to provision status]
16 Wounded [Much Less likely to recover, more likely to degrade, and can only recover to exhausted due to provision status]
1 Critically Injured [Cannot recover without direct intervention due to provision status]
Player SquadsArnaldo KafkaGreen Squadron7/7 Riflemen, 1/1 Marksman, 1/1 MG Crew
Blue Squadron7/7 Riflemen, 1/1 Marksman, 1/1 AT Crew
Andrew GallagherThe Bloody Fools9/9 Trenchfighters, 1/1 Shotgunner
The Firebugs9/9 Trenchfighters, 1/1 Flamer
Matilda RavenA Squad7/7 Riflemen, 1/1 Flamer, 1/1 MG Crew
Another Squad7/7 Riflemen, 1/1 Flamer, 1/1 Mortar Crew
Garrick StormeFire Breathing Rubber Duckies9/9 Trenchfighters, 1/1 Shotgunner
Mighty Morphin’ Flower Arrangers9/9 Trenchfighters, 1/1 Shotgunner
Author
Topic: Entrenched | 4/4ish | Sealed Orders (Read 2725 times)