“Blake’s Raiders”
North of West Days, Mississippi
North of West Days, Mississippi
Friday, 19 July, 2030
An uneventful night saw us up at our regular time. We started the day by scouting eastward along Church Road toward I-55.
We stopped briefly to check out an industrial building. It turned out to be the site of "Brentwood Originals", a company that made foam pillows, chair pads, etc. before the war. A small group of hunters was occupying the offices in the front of the building.
Initially, they decided our mounted scouts were 'soft' targets and tried to ambush them. Fortunately, they changed their mind and showed themselves, just as SGTs Whitehead and Rodriguez were about to begin shooting.
[Encounter roll 3, "armed". Second roll in "other" territory, 3, hunters. I judge an 90% chance that they will be friendly. Roll is 92, so no. (Dammit). C'est la vie.]
[There are 1d6 hunters, roll of 6. On a roll of 1-4, they are on foot; 5-6, they are mounted. Roll is 5, so they have horses. They apparently want to kill the scouts to take their horses... Per the rules, three are armed with shotguns, and three with sporting rifles. I judge a 50/50 chance of the sporting rifles being 30-30 or 30-06. Roll is 6, so they are armed with 30-06 rifles (ROF: 1, Mag: 2 (internal); Rage: 60; DMG: 4; Armor Modifier: -) Being armed with powerful 30-06 rifles also explains why they are willing to take on the scouts...]
[I judge they are veteran NPCs - skills: 50, coolness: 2, hits (2d10x2)=10 (really)]
[The scouts have a DIF:RCN:75, (-6) to spot the hunters. Roll of 26, final result of 20, so success. The hunters have an AVG:RCN:50 to spot the scouts. Roll of 42, also success, but the scouts have the advantage, rolling 17 under their number (37) versus the hunters that rolled only 8 under their number (50).]
[Initial range (clear) is 1d10 x 300 meters, roll of 3, so 900 meters. The scouts pull up 400 meters short of the building, picket their horses, and radio their contact report in. The HumVee also pulls up to within 400 meters of the building (MK-19 Medium range) as the scouts begin their stalk.]
[At this point, I judge a 75% chance that the hunters will fold and show themselves. Roll of 80, so no. (dammit)]
[The advantage is now with the scouts. I judge every 100 meters, they need to roll AVG:RCN:75 against DIF:RCN:50. First rolls are 24 for the scouts (success) and 44 for the hunters (failure). The scouts are now 300 meters from the front of the building. Second rolls are 39 for the scouts (success) and 62 for the hunters (failure). The scouts are now 200 meters from the front of the building and they decide to set up their shots at medium range. They check in with Captain Blake and agree to initially limit the combat to sniper rifle fire unless the scouts radio in a request for support or pop a smoke grenade, at which point the HumVee will open with five rounds from the MK-19 while Captain Blake and SSGT Ruiz dismount and move in to support the snipers. SPEC McCarthy will wait five minutes and fire five more MK-19 rounds unless ordered otherwise.]
[At this point, I judge only a 25% chance that the hunters will fold. Roll of 17, so the hunters decide to surrender at the last minute.]
Just as the SGTs are taking their final sights, a young boy came of the front door, wildly waving a dirty, but still mostly white, t-shirt in his hands.
SGT Whitehead stood up and moved toward the building, staying out of SGT Rodriguez's (and the HumVee's) line of fire. After a short conversation, she radioed the "all clear" signal, and we moved up to the front of the building.
[I judge a 50/50 chance that the factory was not looted, since the production machinery isn't obviously usable and it is in a pretty remote location. Roll of 32, so yes, the factory is intact.]
We spent the rest of the morning talking to the hunters about the situation. They agreed to garrison the factory until someone from the 197th shows up. Unfortunately, the factory foreman passed away over the winter, but I assured them that the 197th is expanding their security perimeter this way and will want to get the factory up and running again if at all possible. Being able to supply foam mattresses will be a big morale boost! We left them with two days worth of food and grain for their horses as a goodwill gesture and continued east down Church Road toward I-55.
[Next encounter roll is 5, Military Convoy. There is no reason for a military convoy to be moving around this area, so I judge it to be "no encounter".]
We spent the afternoon scouting through the town of Horn Lake. We thought we hit the jackpot when we got to the High School. From the outside, the building looked untouched, but vacant. Unfortunately, it had been completely stripped of anything of value [I judged a 10% of finding school books, roll of 100, so not just no, but no to ANYTHING being left at the school.] Having found the High School, we started looking in earnest for other schools.
It took an hour or so, but we finally found the former Shadow Oaks elementary school to the north, except it was clear from the outside that it had been ransacked. [roll of 99 this time...] Same story at the nearby Horn Lake Middle School [roll of 78]. We didn't have any luck finding textbooks at the last school we found, Horn Lake Elementary [roll of 11], but Specialist McCarthy [DIF:SCR:50, roll of 11] spotted what looked the remains of a business sign in front of a house down the street from the school. He suggested we check it out, since the building seemed mostly intact. Turned out it the house had been turned into a used book store, and we were able to gather some books that hadn't been ruined by mold or weather [d%, roll of 43]. We carefully packed them up for turn in at the end of our mission.
The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully. We scouted through Horn Lake, finally reaching I-55 early in the evening.
[Encounter roll 3, armed. Second roll in "other" territory is 6, no encounter]
A gas station / garage on the east side of the I-55/Church Road intersection had gone bankrupt long before the start of the Twilight War and the building was largely intact. The garage doors didn't work, but it didn't take long to put up the camouflage netting. The overpass was an ideal spot for a lookout. At least we didn't have to worry about putting up the radio antenna that night...
Not that we got much rest. Just after 2:00 a.m., SGT Rodriguez radioed in that she had spotted a small group working their way up I-55 and that they appeared armed and armored, but were on foot and she was pretty sure they had spotted her. Once the rest of the team was in place, she was going to shift position to the far side of the overpass, where we had already established a secondary guard post position.
[To be continued...]
We stopped briefly to check out an industrial building. It turned out to be the site of "Brentwood Originals", a company that made foam pillows, chair pads, etc. before the war. A small group of hunters was occupying the offices in the front of the building.
Initially, they decided our mounted scouts were 'soft' targets and tried to ambush them. Fortunately, they changed their mind and showed themselves, just as SGTs Whitehead and Rodriguez were about to begin shooting.
[Encounter roll 3, "armed". Second roll in "other" territory, 3, hunters. I judge an 90% chance that they will be friendly. Roll is 92, so no. (Dammit). C'est la vie.]
[There are 1d6 hunters, roll of 6. On a roll of 1-4, they are on foot; 5-6, they are mounted. Roll is 5, so they have horses. They apparently want to kill the scouts to take their horses... Per the rules, three are armed with shotguns, and three with sporting rifles. I judge a 50/50 chance of the sporting rifles being 30-30 or 30-06. Roll is 6, so they are armed with 30-06 rifles (ROF: 1, Mag: 2 (internal); Rage: 60; DMG: 4; Armor Modifier: -) Being armed with powerful 30-06 rifles also explains why they are willing to take on the scouts...]
[I judge they are veteran NPCs - skills: 50, coolness: 2, hits (2d10x2)=10 (really)]
[The scouts have a DIF:RCN:75, (-6) to spot the hunters. Roll of 26, final result of 20, so success. The hunters have an AVG:RCN:50 to spot the scouts. Roll of 42, also success, but the scouts have the advantage, rolling 17 under their number (37) versus the hunters that rolled only 8 under their number (50).]
[Initial range (clear) is 1d10 x 300 meters, roll of 3, so 900 meters. The scouts pull up 400 meters short of the building, picket their horses, and radio their contact report in. The HumVee also pulls up to within 400 meters of the building (MK-19 Medium range) as the scouts begin their stalk.]
[At this point, I judge a 75% chance that the hunters will fold and show themselves. Roll of 80, so no. (dammit)]
[The advantage is now with the scouts. I judge every 100 meters, they need to roll AVG:RCN:75 against DIF:RCN:50. First rolls are 24 for the scouts (success) and 44 for the hunters (failure). The scouts are now 300 meters from the front of the building. Second rolls are 39 for the scouts (success) and 62 for the hunters (failure). The scouts are now 200 meters from the front of the building and they decide to set up their shots at medium range. They check in with Captain Blake and agree to initially limit the combat to sniper rifle fire unless the scouts radio in a request for support or pop a smoke grenade, at which point the HumVee will open with five rounds from the MK-19 while Captain Blake and SSGT Ruiz dismount and move in to support the snipers. SPEC McCarthy will wait five minutes and fire five more MK-19 rounds unless ordered otherwise.]
[At this point, I judge only a 25% chance that the hunters will fold. Roll of 17, so the hunters decide to surrender at the last minute.]
Just as the SGTs are taking their final sights, a young boy came of the front door, wildly waving a dirty, but still mostly white, t-shirt in his hands.
SGT Whitehead stood up and moved toward the building, staying out of SGT Rodriguez's (and the HumVee's) line of fire. After a short conversation, she radioed the "all clear" signal, and we moved up to the front of the building.
[I judge a 50/50 chance that the factory was not looted, since the production machinery isn't obviously usable and it is in a pretty remote location. Roll of 32, so yes, the factory is intact.]
We spent the rest of the morning talking to the hunters about the situation. They agreed to garrison the factory until someone from the 197th shows up. Unfortunately, the factory foreman passed away over the winter, but I assured them that the 197th is expanding their security perimeter this way and will want to get the factory up and running again if at all possible. Being able to supply foam mattresses will be a big morale boost! We left them with two days worth of food and grain for their horses as a goodwill gesture and continued east down Church Road toward I-55.
[Next encounter roll is 5, Military Convoy. There is no reason for a military convoy to be moving around this area, so I judge it to be "no encounter".]
We spent the afternoon scouting through the town of Horn Lake. We thought we hit the jackpot when we got to the High School. From the outside, the building looked untouched, but vacant. Unfortunately, it had been completely stripped of anything of value [I judged a 10% of finding school books, roll of 100, so not just no, but no to ANYTHING being left at the school.] Having found the High School, we started looking in earnest for other schools.
It took an hour or so, but we finally found the former Shadow Oaks elementary school to the north, except it was clear from the outside that it had been ransacked. [roll of 99 this time...] Same story at the nearby Horn Lake Middle School [roll of 78]. We didn't have any luck finding textbooks at the last school we found, Horn Lake Elementary [roll of 11], but Specialist McCarthy [DIF:SCR:50, roll of 11] spotted what looked the remains of a business sign in front of a house down the street from the school. He suggested we check it out, since the building seemed mostly intact. Turned out it the house had been turned into a used book store, and we were able to gather some books that hadn't been ruined by mold or weather [d%, roll of 43]. We carefully packed them up for turn in at the end of our mission.
The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully. We scouted through Horn Lake, finally reaching I-55 early in the evening.
[Encounter roll 3, armed. Second roll in "other" territory is 6, no encounter]
A gas station / garage on the east side of the I-55/Church Road intersection had gone bankrupt long before the start of the Twilight War and the building was largely intact. The garage doors didn't work, but it didn't take long to put up the camouflage netting. The overpass was an ideal spot for a lookout. At least we didn't have to worry about putting up the radio antenna that night...
Not that we got much rest. Just after 2:00 a.m., SGT Rodriguez radioed in that she had spotted a small group working their way up I-55 and that they appeared armed and armored, but were on foot and she was pretty sure they had spotted her. Once the rest of the team was in place, she was going to shift position to the far side of the overpass, where we had already established a secondary guard post position.
[To be continued...]
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