Turn 54 - The Sun Was Spitting Fire
You get the first reports back from Calliope, specifically from the expedition to the Steam Age settlement on Calliope IV. When
Enterprise landed the locals fled to obviously prepared bunkers and military forces had assembled, making use of pretty sophisticated tactics for their deployment and showing a propensity to use a great deal of, sadly primitive, artillery, as if they knew in advance they would be outmatched in a fight.
Fortunately peaceful contact is made as your envoy took an enormous risk, disembarked alone and unarmed, and permitted himself to be taken prisoner by the locals. Fortunately they spoke somewhat accented English, making communication easy enough, and once it became clear that you weren’t pirates the locals relaxed a great deal.
According to the report, the locals were descendents of another Inner Sphere refugee colony, this time from the Sarna Pact, which had fled in the early days of the Age of War and wound up out here. They’d more or less lived peacefully until pirates started raiding the place and stealing anything technological that they could, along with taking numerous slaves.
The locals had resisted as best they could, but were thoroughly outmatched by the pirates, who by the descriptions given appear to be the same sorts of pirate bands that plague the NRI. About two hundred years ago, they altered their approach, the entire settlement hid in the forests and mountains, abandoning their technology. The pirates raided once more, again stole everything, then left. They waited a decade, and while passive sensors picked up the pirates returning a few times there were no attacks. Eventually the pirates stopped showing up, as there was nothing here any longer to interest them, at which point the locals deliberately rebuilt at a lower tech level, using steam and such for everything rather than electricity, since hopefully the pirates wouldn’t be able to detect steam in use from the jump points.
Then you showed up and utterly terrified them. Lovely. But by the same token, when shown imagery of HMS Renown utterly obliterating a pirate flotilla, along with recordings from the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost and the Defense of Castor, the locals become quite cheerful. After all, seeing that these new folks, who profess to want to be friends and trading partners rather than conquerors or pirates, are quite able to stomp their enemies asses? Make them quite willing to be your friends and trading partners in hope that you’ll protect them from said enemies.
The ambassador relays a request for defensive support, and indicates that given time doing so may well incline the locals to join the Empire on their own initiative. It would significantly slow down doing anything with Calliope III while transporting such assets, and a reasonable argument could be made that those assets are needed at home, but sometimes risks need to be taken in order to gain rewards, and there are over 10 million people on this planet, according to the locals there are plenty of resources, and the ambassador sends along some samples of local food stuffs… including some of the finest beer you’ve ever had the distinct pleasure of tasting.
Admiral Benjamin informs you that it shouldn’t be a serious issue, as they can deploy the
Warrior class dropships to form a defensive squadron for Calliope IV without significantly impacting your own defenses, especially considering just how many
Royal Sovereigns you now have in service and the upcoming
Majestics. In fact, he believes it may be useful to send both the
Warriors and the
Devastations there, to give the defenses some serious punch and keep everybody else
out.
Jeremy, meanwhile, proposes sending the 2nd Rapid Reaction Force out to provide a ground based cadre, noting that the terrain on Nowy Gdansk, where they are currently deployed, is less than ideal for their purposes. Plus General Gabinski, the CO of 2nd RRF, has evidently heard about the possibility and has declared that it is is solemn and sworn duty as a son of the Nowa Warszawa Home Guard, to bring the wonders of proper Polish vodka to the beer swilling heathens of Calliope IV.
Apparently Gabinski got even more excited when he found out that the inhabitants of Calliope IV had two recipes for alcohol that Nowy Gdansk had lost, Goldwasser and Krupnik. Oh, they had approximations, but evidently the folks on Calliope IV had the real thing. Within minutes of finding this out, you start getting besieged with emails and messages begging you to get those recipes from just about every Polish descended dignitary in the Empire.
| [] | Send the desired forces |
- The following military forces will be dispatched
- The following Dropships will form the Calliope Defense Squadron
- Warrior Class (10 units)
- HMS Warrior
- HMS Black Prince
- HMS Defense
- HMS Resistance
- HMS Hector
- HMS Achilles
- HMS Minotaur
- HMS Agincourt
- HMS Royal Oak
- HMS Prince Consort
- Devastation Class (8 Units)
- HMS Inflexible
- HMS Northumberland
- HMS Caledonia
- HMS Ocean
- HMS Favorite
- HMS Zealous
- HMS Lord Clyde
- HMS Pallas
- The following unit will form the ground based Calliope IV Garrison
- Opinion of Calliope IV towards the Griffon Empire significantly improved
- +1 Trade Route
|
| [] | We need them at home | |
Meanwhile you agree to discuss including the Rasalhaguians in the next Olympiad with the NRI. The representatives from the NRI are generally amenable and will send the proposal back with the next courier.
In the Olympics themselves, the NRI men scored decisive wins in swimming, thoroughly trouncing what should have been a top flight team, as they were one of the few non-racing teams not affected at all by the battle. As it stands, they manage to look terrible, giving the Romans 9 out of 10 medals in all men’s swimming events.
The Griffon women, on the other hand, redeem the men’s poor performance and are dominant across the board, managing complete sweeps in all but one event. The star of the women’s team is a 21 year old swimmer from Griffsport that you realize you recognize, as you’d seen her at the palace… with your eldest grandson… the brat of a grandchild had never mentioned… and there he is, kissing her on system wide HD… he’s got a girlfriend he’s not told you about! This must not… Jeremy puts the brakes on incipient ba freakout by diverting it to himself, he’s known about his son's girlfriend for a few years and never saw fit to expose the poor kids to your most likely reactions. You give him the glare of ba, and insist on meeting the girl.
Willis then completely ruins it by cutting in with a ‘when it’s convenient to the two of them.’, revealing that the treacherous cad also knew and hadn’t seen fit to inform you of this vital family intelligence.
OK, perhaps they all have a point and you’d likely have scared the girl off, but the principle of the thing!
The two decathlon competitions are remarkably close, but the Griffon team manages to earn hard-fought victories in both the men’s and women’s competitions, the men bringing home a gold medal, the women managing gold and bronze. For both the standings came down to the very last event, making for some gripping action.
In the shooting events the NRI manages a pair of impressive wins. Granted several of your best shooter’s aren’t able to compete in the pure shooting contests due to their entry in the later Modern Military Pentathlon events, but the competition is still fierce and quite impressive.
Speaking of which, the Military Pentathlon events are a near mirror image of the pure shooting contests, with your teams coming out ahead after some hard fought contests of skill and endurance. You do notice that the NRI ambassador is a bit glum over the results, and over a few beers manage to get out of him that the NRI team was made up of the top people from their Praetorian Guard, and your teams came from the
militia. You manage not to gloat. In public.
There is some debate over how to reform the Imperial Guard. Some are arguing that the old setup as an assault-weight conventional vehicle unit with about a battalion’s worth of infantry was good enough, even if the unit got wiped out in the defense of Castor. Others are proposing organizing it with 3 Assault Regiments. Since you are both the nominal CO and the Empress, the decision is yours.
| [] | Current Imperial Guard Regiment |
- Maintain the same conventional Imperial Guard Regiment as seen in unit record sheet
|
| [] | Assault Regiment |
- Retire the current Imperial Guard Regiment
- Use Assault Regiments to fill out unit
|
