Turn 33 -
All Around Me Are Familiar Faces
Despite all the garbage going on with the Bratva, some things can still make you smile.
Like Thanh thinking she got one over on you by waiting until after she married her girlfriend in a civil ceremony in a small town on Pollux to tell you she had found somebody. She really thought she’d gotten out of having a proper big wedding.
Poor dear.
You let her keep that illusion for precisely 24 hours, then demonstrated to your darling tomboy of a daughter that old age and treachery beats youth and enthusiasm every time.
She tried to deploy Pout, it utterly failed. You deployed Mom Face, it was Super Effective.
Petra had, evidently, warned Thanh that there was no way they were getting away without a big wedding. Smart girl, you’d already felt quite approving of her, and that just solidified the sense that she had, well, sense.
So now there was a proper wedding on the horizon and Thanh was looking suitably chastened. It’s good to be Mom. And with Iron Wombs you won’t be deprived of grandbabies either.
Jeremy has been placed in command of his own rump company of
Trooper Mechs. AFGE command wants to set the unit up as a combined company, rather than an all
Trooper unit, with a lance of
Ambush II and a lance of
Shortbow mechs. To do so, you will need to procure a lance each of those mech types, together they will form a Light Fire Company. You would need to either build a
Shortbow factory or convert an existing factory.
| [] | Agree | would create a syncretic unit named ‘Light Fire Company’ consisting of 1 Lance Trooper, 1 Lance Ambush II and 1 Lance Shortbow with HP = 176, A/D = 139 and a +3 bonus to Initiative |
| [] | Disagree | No change |
To that end, the population and infrastructure on Nowy Gdansk is now sufficient to support the production of armored fighting vehicles, although not yet sufficient to build more advanced factories for ASFs, Battlemechs, or Dropships.
Neither of the twins won the championship last year, although it was close. Smirky had missed the Chase completely and is still very salty about it. However he is getting a bit of sympathy this year as his younger brother was killed in the line of duty during a Bratva bank robbery. His reaction upon learning of this was caught on camera during an interview.
Needless to say, he might still be seen as a ‘black hat’ racer, but him breaking down and having to cut short an interview resonated strongly. He actually managed to win the first race after this, surprisingly cleanly for him.
The twins are still bouncing from relationship to relationship and do not seem all that inclined to settle down anytime soon. They seem to be following the ‘Aunt Janet’ school of relationships, with all the drama that entails.
Sarah has rather shyly introduced you to her boyfriend from Griffin’s Roost University, a fellow History major who specializes in pre-space military history focusing on the late Middle Ages and Renaissance period. Now you know how she was inspired to come up with that silly Holy Griffin Empress business.
You’ve had a background check discretely run on young Mr Bartalozzi, as he’s so very Italian it makes you taste pasta just being in his vicinity. But he very much seems to be on the up and up.
The Free Folk jumpship appears again rather ahead of schedule with concerning news, evidently the Kuritans have taken over another planet two jumps out from Griffin’s Roost. The jumpship appears to be rather more battered than it had before, according to
Sarah. That is indirectly confirmed when they ask if you have any standard aerospace armor plating available in specific sizes for patch work, as well as if you would be willing to sell any ASFs to replace their losses.
You have 6 flights of the old
Falcon ASFs still in use by the AeroTraining Wing, they would need to be replaced with newer birds but it would enable you to make the sale and strengthen relations with these wandering folk.
| [] | Make the Sale | Lose 1 flight of Falcon ASFs from AeroTraining Wing, gain 2 rolls on the Trade Goods table with a bonus. |
| [] | Decline | Gain 1 roll on the Trade Goods table with a penalty |
On that note, Lee Aerospace and the Royal Griffin AeroSpaceWerk have approached the Crown with some proposals.
From Lee Aerospace a replacement for the venerable
Falcon. Avoiding the use of advanced technology, apart from the drive itself, the
Falcon II shares the same name and armament layout as the older ASF, but literally nothing else is even remotely the same. It is significantly faster and has twice the fuel load of the older bird, making it a quite capable combatant in its own light.
| [] | Name | Cost | Speed | HP | A/D | Specials |
| [] | Falcon II Training ASF | 805.6 | 18 | 28 | 7 | Swift |
| [] | Reject Proposal | | | | | |
Meanwhile the Royal Griffin AeroSpaceWerk has completed initial testing of a massive upgrade package for the Roc dubbed the Roc II. This package takes everything that was terrifying about the original Roc and somehow manages to make it scarier. Building upon work carried out at the Aerie the new platform introduces the rather frightening Artemis IV system to help improve the guidance of the LRM-20 rack in the nose, replaces the conventional 185mm autocannon with a longer-barreled LB-20X version, swaps the 8cm lasers for a pair of Enhanced Extended-Range PPCs, and even upgrades the tail 5cm lasers to pulse variants. A half ton more fuel is just a rather small cherry on top of a very sweet cake indeed. The only fly in the ointment is that this upgrade is going to be
expensive considering just how many
Rocs are in service.
Brace yourself… The upgrade is going to cost 26,460.
| [] | Name | Cost | Speed | HP | A/D | Materials | Specials |
| [] | Roc II | 3950 | 8 | 156 | 29 | FA, DHS | Armored, Armor-Piercing |
| [] | No | | | | | | |
Then the elephant in the room… the situation with the Bratva.
There has been an enormous amount of progress already this year. The newly reinforced Special Branch in conjunction with aerial overwatch from the SH-1B battalion, the seconded units from Nowy Gdansk, and very aggressive policing has reaped a terrifying toll on the thugs who make up the ‘street’ level of the Bratva.
You’ve only taken down a small number of the lower level ‘thief in law’ types, but they are being interrogated extremely vigorously.
There are still regular attacks, with police and first responders being targeted by snipers and patrols being ambushed with heavy weapons, but the intensity is down significantly as you’ve managed to take a serious portion of their forces down… hard.
The Eldest has come to you requesting permission to lead the Great Hunters on a Grand Hunt against the Bratva. This would be seriously terrifying for the organization, but would place the Eldest and the Great Hunters at serious risk from the heavy weapons that the Bratva have been deploying against tigers.
| [] | Cry Havoc! And Let Slip The Tigers Of War! | +2d20 Progress, risk of death of Eldest |
| [] | War is a Young Tiger’s Game | +1d10 Progress |
