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De Oppresso Liber
Somewhere on Corfu, an elite strike team of absolute badasses (who have been stuck on this miserable backwater waiting for hostilities to kick off) is briefed on an emergency mission: deep within Vargr territory, a civilian named Lorain Messandi is being held by agents of the suspected crimeboss, Eneri Kalamanaru. Operatives on the ground report that Messandi is an expert in archaeology and Kalamanaru is forcing her to locate a specific trove of possible Ancient technology suspected to be at the recently excavated dig site. The Team’s mission is to insert into the target site, then locate and extract Messandi. Several potential complications are present: in addition to a nearby garrison of Vargr militia, a team of private mercenaries are also on-site and appear to be solely interested in extracting Messandi; this team appears to have been contracted by her family and, while not considered hostile, could be a potential threat.
To deal with the multiple layer threat, the Team leader – Master Sergeant Apome – splits his strike force into two groups, with one, led by Corporal Ricks, to hit the nearby motor pool to disable any vehicles and prevent escape of surviving forces before moving to a supported to position in order to suppress an Vargr reinforcements, while the second group, led by Apome himself, will breach the mercenary compound where Messandi is believed to be held, reduce the defenders, and retrieve the precious cargo. Both teams will deploy via a high-altitude, low-opening parajump with a planned breach time of zero two-thirty local. Rules of engagement are the usual loose ‘aggressive defense’ that special operators of their caliber utilize which the Team members all take to mean “kill any and everyone you feel to be a threat.”
Almost from the point of deployment, the Team recognizes that Intelligence has dropped the ball once more: there is already a convoy of vehicles being prepped to depart! Unfortunately, by this point, they’re already engaged, so Apome gives the go-signal. His team bounds to the wall and prepares to go over it; the designated marksman, Private Snow, has Private Hanson boost him up into place which allows Snow to engage and reduce a sentry with his railgun.
Using this as a signal, MSG Apome and Corporal Blake go over the wall – thanks to their battle dress, it requires only a short hop to get over. Blake, being the heavy gunner, immediately begins engaging hostiles with his gauss machine gun and every target he shoots goes down hard. Under cover his fire, Hanson and Snow spring over the wall themselves and start seeking targets of opportunity; at the same time, Apome hugs cover – he’s getting too old for this crap – to direct his Team before engaging hostiles himself.
Naturally, as soon as gunfire erupts, alarms start to sound and reinforcements rush out into the open, though more often than not, they’re cut down by Blake’s stream of fire or Snow’s precision shots. Apome takes an unexpected shot that penetrates his armor and badly injures him, but his armor’s automed features instantly stabilize him and allows him to return the favor; he seeks cover and creeps along slowly, engaging only when appropriate.
Over the comm, the Team can hear Corporal Ricks reporting that the vehicle convoy they observed upon landing is deploying ahead of schedule. He also announces that they are engaging the Vargr reinforcements. Everyone present is thinking the same thing: this op has just gone to hell in a rocket-sled.
As Blake advances, a pair of hostiles exit a garage atop a wheeled utility, complete with pintle-mounted machine gun at the back. Unfortunately for them, they enter Apome’s line of sight and he fires a trio of grenades at the vehicle, one of which tears apart the gunner in the back. The vehicle is now on fire – at least one of the tires has been destroyed thanks to Apome’s grenades – and the driver is forced to ditch as he loses control of it and the entire thing begins to roll. Blake steps toward the driving and gives him a battlesuit-enhanced kick that kills the man instantly.
At the same time, Snow is playing cat and mouse with a hostile heavy gunner who, upon seeing a buddy of his reduced by the marksman’s railgun, has dove for cover. With no visible target, Snow instructs Hanson to use his grenade launcher to try and flush the man out of hiding; unfortunately, the shots only serve to drive the man into deeper cover.
And then, a hostile armed with a rocket launcher steps into view and fires his payload. Although he’s targeting Blake (who is using a parked vehicle as cover), the rocket punches through the first vehicle with relative ease and then streaks toward a second one … which is loaded with fuel cells and generators and explosives intended for excavation..
The resulting explosion flattens the entire compound.
Player Notes:
- With two mission critical players out, CommJunkee didn’t want to progress the PC-specific aspects of the campaign, so we sort of did a one-off set within the constraints of the actual game and it turned out to be quite fun.
- To no one’s surprise, this basically turned into one long firefight, which was probably the GM’s plan all along. Rather than go round by round, I’ve sort of just narratively told the story which makes the recap itself seem a bit shorter than it was.
- And honestly, nobody was surprised to see the Colonial Marines from Aliens show up as our avatars.
- As stated above, we’ve started livestreaming our games. We play on Saturdays at 6:00PM Eastern and the live stream can be found at Ronnke’s Twitch channel. He’s also setup a YouTube Channel. Bear with us, please. This is still in it’s infancy. We have discovered that Twitch keeps the recordings only for two weeks, so it’s a good thing that he published to YouTube. With that in mind, I’ve removed the Twitch link for the “LiveStream” bit at the top.
