Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

A View From the Ice 7

Podporucznik Nina Kościuszko had her helmet under her arm as she walked into the hanger breathing in the heady scents of grease, burning metal from the welding torches and the general smells of an active hanger. She sighed contentedly as she walked over to her Winged Hussar which she called Tur.

She waved to the techs she passed as she approached her own tech, Plutonowy Adam.

"Hey Adam," Nina said, "How's Tur today?"

"Your steed ma'am is all ready to go," Adam said with a grin, "just finished repairing the leg actuator."

"Good!" she said smiling back, "You're a lifesaver."

"It's what I do ma'am," He said with a shrug.

She climbed into the cockpit and began booting up the mech as Adam does the external checks on the exterior of the Hussar.

"Ok, your all good out here," Adam said into his com.

"Good in here as well," Nina said, "Heading out now."

"Ok Ma'am, see you in in a few hours," Adam said as he backed off.

She walked Tur into the centre then boost off using the hover system and headed out into the snow. She loved this thing she had always loved watching the old PZL P13 airbreather take off when she was in the Academy on Nowa Warszawa and hoped she could fly one. However, the invasion had ruined those dreams and the Dracs, after her capture in a failed ambush among other things, had made other dreams medically impossible.

But skimming over the ice and snow in Tur was amazing. Seeing everything streak past over the majestic white desert as she went over the snow. She sped over to Nav Point Alfa and settled into her usual routine of scanning the horizon and enjoying the thrill of speeding over the snowscape as she made her way out on her patrol.


Michal watched from the window as the Winged Hussar moved off on patrol. It had been an inspired idea by their unit's command and he knew a lot of them made the most of it.

He heard the door open and looked over to see Major Park coming in.

"Park," he said moving around the desk to shake his friend's hand, "how are you doing today? Did the interviews go well with intelligence?"

"Too well I think. Most of them are legitimately scared of Jakub now," Park said shaking his head, "After your debrief with them and speaking to Rowecki among others they said your guys gave them a good brief on the Dracs ground side capabilities and responses. Though Jakub sacred the hell out of them with some of the stuff he said. Hell I think I saw a few of them taking notes."

"He has that effect on people," Michal said.

"I can see that," Park said with a sigh, "Though given the tricks Rowecki and Jakub taught my troops in hand to hands I'm looking forward to some of my guys going against some of the other infantry companies in hand to hand competitions."

"Those two are some of the best-unarmed fighters we have," Michal said, "Hell Park I told you Jakub was one of the Cichociemni."

"True," Park said, "Anyway looks like everything is going well. No major explosions and the Queen taking the side of the Senate was a good thing."

"Aye," Michal said, "Misha was telling me that because of the Queen's actions along with all the support, the Winged Hussars and along with all the infrastructure that has been built has gone a long way to supporting the integration faction of the Sejm."

"That's good," Park said, "that will help a put lot of people's mind at ease well aside from the chamber of delegates."

They both laugh at that, "Anyway," Michal said, "how is your wife?"

"She is doing well," Park said, "In fact...."


Old Leopold smiled as he spoke to one of his allies in the Sejm. Things were going well. The Pro-Integration faction was making headway and given the autonomy, they were being given under the Imperial Government was really helping his case.

It was also setting a lot of their people's minds at ease, he said his goodbyes and left heading toward his son's house. He had proposed to his Grif girlfriend and they were looking at planning there wedding.

He whistled as he walked through the snow towards their house. He was looking forward to the wedding as it would be nice to see his family grow.


Note: Thanks again to sunhawk for the Beta

Turn 32 - Hey Kids, Shake It Loose Together

You get a call in early January from Janet. A bunch of teenagers had evidently decided to, well, be teenagers and snuck past the checkpoints guarding the old ruins. This wasn’t all that uncommon, and rescues had to happen at least once a month as the ruins were quite dangerous.

This particular bunch had managed to fall through the floor in the building they had decided to have a party in and found themselves in an old server room. Luckily there were only broken bones, bruised egos, and one extremely embarrassed couple who’d been in flagrante delicto in the room next door when the floor collapsed and had gotten stuck there until rescue services picked them up.

The rescue party managed to extract a couple mostly intact data drives from the wreckage. If the room had been found in a properly equipped exploration there would have been far more found. But there is just enough data to piece together the very rudiments of orbital shipbuilding. There are also fragments of code and a few surviving actuators that came from an enhanced targeting system which have the researchers quite excited indeed.

Normally entering the ruins without a permit is a misdemeanor offense, a small fine, and a stern talking to by a judge. But considering the amount of damage done the prosecutors are pressing more serious charges. It’s a complicated situation made even more so by the fact that the building in question was the ‘ordinary’ hangout for teenagers sneaking into the ruins for centuries as it was deep enough in to be ‘private’ while close enough to the edge that help was a quick call away if somebody got hurt.

Hell, as a teenager you’d spent a night in that very building on a dare, although you’d not held a party in it. You’d not been caught, though.

You’d normally keep out of such things, however the pair of teenagers who’d been… amorously engaged… when the accident happened just happened to be related to two of your few full-throated supporters in the Chamber of Delegates. The parents have not contacted you for any favors and, although they are paying for a full defense, appear to be quite annoyed with their offspring's conduct, at least judging by the rather public dressing down the two had gotten.

It would be a pretty minor thing for you to have Jane whisper in the prosecutor's ear that the Crown would appreciate a bit of leniency for the pair, sticking with the more common misdemeanor prosecution rather than full felony charges.

[] Do it, the teens will still be punished in the same way that every other teenager who’s snuck in to do the same thing has been in the past. +1 support in the Chamber of Delegates

[] Let the prosecutor have his head on this and let the courts do their thing

[] Perhaps it is time for a major effort to fully survey and clear out the ruins and make the area completely safe. Will open up actions for Interior, Research, and Justice to fully sweep and secure the area, will remove the Expedition action. +1 support in the Chamber of Delegates.

Alita is pregnant again, which leads to much joy in the family. Grandbabies! More grandbabies! Your unmarried sons and daughters are looking positively hunted by mom’s grandbaby fever.

Good, might encourage them to settle down, get married, and start providing you with more grandbabies to spoil.

The new racing season is only 2 races in, and Smirky has been wrecked in both races and is furious in interviews. Race officials have so far suspended one of the drivers for a flagrant hit, but the other was ruled a ‘racing incident’. Smirky himself was fined heavily after getting into a fight with one of the driver’s who wrecked him right on the track.

Neither of the twins were involved in either wreck, but in post-race interviews Quan earned a small fine for unsportsmanlike conduct for pretending to play the world’s smallest violin when asked to comment on the situation.

Thanh is top of her class and appears set to graduate Summa Cum Laude as class Valedictorian. She still hasn’t introduced you to whoever she’s dating, and unless you want to force the issue you’ll just have to be patient.

[] Force the issue
[] Wait her out

Sarah is now double majoring in History and Philosophy and is actually in advance of her putative year in terms of credit hours. She’s actually already taking graduate level history courses.

Your astronomers have detected some rather spectacular ion storms around Griffin VI. There are records of a planetary storm cycle on Griffin VI, about once a century the upper atmospheric storms on the supergiant become even more intense and spectacular, with massive electric arcs forming between the innermost moons and the ring system. There’s no actual threat, but the imagery is amazing.

Sarah postulates that these storms may be the reason for the failure of her sensor platforms around Griffin VI.

The planetary government on Griffin’s Roost has been working on industrial infrastructure which has improved economic growth and, thanks to the better transportation links, increased food availability.

On Nowy Gdansk a full-sized fusion power station is now in service, meaning that the Buccaneer is no longer required for power generation and is available for study in situ. Engineers do not believe that the dropship can be made space worthy due to extensive stress fractures in the spaceframe.

Turn 32 - We’ll Kill The Fatted Calf Tonight

The astronomers are really enjoying all the lovely data gathered from the storm on Griffin VI. A few have been bugging you to have USS Enterprise break off her survey of Griffin IV to get a real up close look at the storms, however Sarah advises strongly against it. A full up Warship would be able to survive in that environment, anything less would very likely wind up dead in space.

Jeremy and the Trooper company he is XO of is deployed to Nowy Gdansk for training exercises with the Home Army. The main focus of the exercise series is to develop anti-mech tactics for foot infantry as well as counters to the same for Mech forces. Quite a bit is learned, primarily that foot infantry require heavier support weapons than SRMs if they are going to be expected to deal with Mechs.

One of the proposals to solve this is to develop and field carriage-mounted autocannons that can be operated by foot infantry. Doing so would significantly increase the cost of fielding and maintaining foot infantry forces, but would boost their firepower very nicely indeed. The current concept is for field-carriage mounted AC/5 cannons taken from old stocks.

General Potter is opposed to the idea, on the grounds that it will make Foot Infantry even more cumbersome logistics wise and that in actual combat Foot Infantry formations are meant to operate from fixed fortifications, rendering the carriage mounted ACs superfluous to the artillery of the defensive lines.

[] Agree - Increases Defense value of Foot and Motorized Infantry by +1. Increases cost by +50 per unit.
[] Disagree - Foot infantry isn’t meant to fight outside of fortifications with substantial fixed defenses already.

Parliament is debating a proposal to open up the inner Asteroid Field to private exploration and exploitation, with any space mining operations staging out of Nowy Gdansk. The Sejm has come out cautiously in favor of the plan, with the Integrationists being especially enthusiastic but even the more reticent members seeming to be willing to give it a try. The plan would obligate the Empire to build a series of 5 space stations orbiting major asteroids and planetoids in the field to provide security and rescue services, but would permit the building of a potentially extremely lucrative economic sector that would help grow not only Nowy Gdansk but Griffin’s Roost as well.

Critics of the plan argue that the asteroid belt hasn’t been fully surveyed yet by the Empire, and as such there may be hidden threats within it. Therefore they urge caution and restraint, raising specters of hidden Kuritan forces lurking within the Asteroid Belt just waiting to swarm.

[] Support - Within 5 turns 5 space stations will need to be built and provided with ASF complements within the Inner Asteroid Belt. +25 Economic Rating Nowy Gdansk, +10 Economic Rating Griffin’s Roost, +2 Economy Events, Unlocks 5 station building slots within the Inner Asteroid Belt for Space Station and Orbital Factories. Unlocks Inner Asteroid Field as a colonized zone, with initial population of 1000, GDP of 100,000, Economic and Health rating of 65, Rating Change of 60. There will be NO POP growth unless DoME projects are completed. +5 Support Chamber of Delegates, +5 Support Senate, +1 Influence Chamber of Delegates.

[] Oppose - No effect

It is quite nice to see Parliament actually doing their jobs for a change and not being a bunch of petulant power-hungry jerks. Who knew that was even possible?

Thanh has graduated, Summa Cum Laude and Valedictorian as expected. She’s still keeping any romantic relationship under wraps, although you are quite certain she’s having one considering her reactions whenever you bring up the topic. You’ll wait her out, she has a habit of trying to be secretive sometimes when she really doesn’t need to be.

The racing season continues, and so far Smirky has yet to successfully finish a single race. He’s been wrecked, when he hasn’t been wrecked he’s suffered mechanical failures that forced a DNF, and he then got DQed from a race when, in a rage, he deliberately rammed another racer off the track during a caution period.

The twins still haven’t been directly involved in a single one of the incidents. There’s a great deal of laughter when they piously declare that ‘Mom would be very disappointed in us’ as their reason for not getting involved. Smirky, of course, has been blaming them for every single bit of misfortune and has been cooking up some wild conspiracy theory about being targeted by the Empress.

You find that absolutely hilarious, as you’d not done a single thing of the sort. If Smirky had an ounce of brains he’d realize who his nemesis was. After all, Tyler had to do SOMETHING to get back in your good graces and be permitted to visit his great-great-grandkids!

Then Janet, Michelle and Jane come to your office and thoroughly wreck your good mood.

There’s a new player in the organized crime community, one which is violent, very well organized, and extremely good at the critical skill of not getting caught. None of the existing groups know anything useful about this new group, only that all of them have taken severe losses to them both from defections of street level thugs to a series of still unsolved homicides targeting more senior members.

These people have even targeted law enforcement directly, two police officers have so far been murdered by a sniper. A single Grifftiger from the Mounted Police has also been killed by a stolen infantry SRM. And there are precious few leads. The underworld is in a state of terror from this group.

The local authorities are working with the garrison to form a task force to hunt these people down, and have asked for support from the Special Branch.

[] Agree - starts event chain
[] Disagree - starts event chain

QM NOTE - The main quest google spreadsheet is located HERE. You will find links in the Rules (which are a little outdated, I need to work on that) to the Unit Record Sheets and Technical Readout.