Wing and Sword: a d20 Modern military campaign [METAGAME]
- Thread starter The Shaman
- Start date
Bobitron
Explorer
Email me at bobitron@att.net and I'll get it to you.
The Shaman
First Post
Sorry to have "gone quiet" there for a few days - I've just been stupid busy the last week or so. :\
I wanted to make sure that everyone took a moment to meet Legionnaire Barzini, who will be joining us as...pretty soon, from the looks of things...
(Hope you're still with us, shibata!)
I wanted to make sure that everyone took a moment to meet Legionnaire Barzini, who will be joining us as...pretty soon, from the looks of things...
(Hope you're still with us, shibata!)
shadowbloodmoon
First Post
Hey Shaman, I got together finally and wrote out a "history" of how Pyotr came to be in the Legion. I hope you like it. I spent a few hours writing it.. lol. As far as his future goes, I thought I had seen a Sniper advanced class somewhere, I just can't seem to find it... I want him to completely focus on that aspect, especially boosting his Stealth skills and Sense skills. He is driven (thus the Dedicated class) and stays focused on his goals.
Anyway, I put this in spoilers so it wouldn't hog the thread. The rest of you guys are free to read it, though much of it Pyotr keeps under his kepi.
[sblock]
The war was over. At least as far as the Americans were concerned, it was. Even most of Europe, as it were, believed the war was over. The Second Great War, they called it. The Germans, or more specifically, the Nazi Germans, had decided that they needed more space, something Russia had plenty of. Yet, they were beaten back. Just like all of Russia’s invaders. Mother Bear protected her children, or at least that what we were taught in school.
I spent a lot of time in the war. I wanted to help push the Germans out too. My countrymen needed my help and I was there. Papa was proud and Mama was afraid for me, but I felt called. So I went. I didn’t go into the Army though. Had to be Soviet to do that. No, I joined a group of rebels from my own land, the Ukraine. I spent much of my time scouting through burned villages, rooting out the Nazis wherever I may find them. It felt like a childhood game, but with deadly consequences.
My Captain, one Rega Morin, was Ukrainian. He taught me a lot of what I know today. About war, about fighting, about ignoring the things we’re told and focusing on what we see. My first kill pounded that home all too soon.
It was the winter of 1943. The Germans had made a large advance into Russian territory. Tanks, aircraft and men. Lots of men. Their numbers never seemed to end. Earlier in the summer, Kursk had been attacked and the Red Army beat the Germans back. Rather harshly as I was told. However, upon arriving, the truth came into my eyes.
We went in to survey the damage, look for any remaining Nazis that may try to gain another foothold. I had just been ordered to take a watch position in a burned out church so I could keep an eye on the rest of my unit. My rifle, the one I still carry today, had been especially modified for my role. I had a new scope put on her and everything. She was a beauty and had only been fired in practice, until that day.
I was watching the platoon move in groups and as I watched, I counted the bodies they stepped over. Many of them were Red Army, but many more were civilian. It had been a while since I thought about home, but I did just then. I had to move on when I realized I wasn’t there. I was here, keeping my friends safe. When my thought finished, I saw movement among one of the darkened buildings.
I had been taught to identify and then fire, but unfortunately my human reflexes kicked in and I panicked. I fired the first shot, saw that it went wide and quickly worked the bolt to load the next round. The second shot did not miss.
My Captain quickly ran over to the fallen body to check it out and when I saw him shake his head, I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but my curiosity wouldn’t leave me alone. Did I hit one of our guys? The reality of it didn’t hit me until days later, since the shock was so great.
As we finished up our sweep, I made my way over to where the body laid, my first kill of the war. I saw the boots first, the now famous jackboots of the Nazi Regime. It gave me a temporary sense of relief in knowing that it was an enemy I had shot. The feeling quickly faded as my eyes rose up the body. I had shot a child.
I was barely thirteen summers myself, but this child had to be barely ten. I knew that in this war, young men had been drafted into fighting to defend their countries, but this, it left a sick feeling in my stomach for days. Not only had it been a child, it was a girl. I still see her trimmed blonde hair and empty blue eyes sometimes when I sleep.
I found myself staring at the wound I had given her. It was a perfect shot, straight through the chest, shattering the sternum, penetrating the heart. I was awoken by Morin’s voice. “It only gets easier my friend.”
I wasn’t quite sure what he had meant by that until much later in the war. Captain Morin had been right. Each kill I tallied on the stock of Ekaterina became a simple number, nothing more. I had slowly become jaded by war and the shock of death had numbed my senses. What most would have considered atrocities, I simply shrugged at. It didn’t matter anymore to me. I had a mission to accomplish.
When the war finally ended a few long years later, the men in my unit didn’t lose the fight in them. They wanted to keep fighting, but not with the Germans. No, in the time the war lasted, I had learned that the group I had been a part of was also a movement to free the Ukraine from the Soviet’s grasp. I told Captain Morin that I didn’t want to fight anymore. I just wanted to go home and see my parents. He understood and I went. As a parting gift, he made sure I was allowed to keep Ekaterina. Then he reminded me, “It only gets easier.”
I reached home a few days after we had heard that the United States had forced Japan to surrender. I guess there was another part of the war we had missed. I didn’t even know where Japan was, let alone they were in the war with us. After I got off the bus in Lutsk, I had to take a second glance at what had used to be my home. Instead of Grogorin’s Meatshop, there was a broken and shattered frame of a building. Instead of a city hall, we had a burned out shell. Passersby informed me that there was a raid on Lutsk not too long after I had left. Why did no one mention this to me?
I went to the road upon which my father’s mill was. I wanted to run home, but since it was midday, I knew he would be working. When I arrived, I received strange looks and shaken heads. I didn’t want to believe my gut telling me why this was so. I didn’t want to believe what the foreman was apologizing for. It was all I could do to get out of his grip and run home.
I ran to a home that wasn’t there. Bits of cindered lumber and blackened dirt were all that was left of where I grew up. Where my father taught me to shoot straight, which got me into the position I was in. Nothing I had done to defend my country mattered to me then. No matter how many Nazis I killed, it wasn’t enough. One of them had gotten through.
It didn’t occur to me to ask exactly what happened, but as time went on, I found myself working in the same place my father once did to pass time and pay for the hovel I was attempting to live in. It wasn’t much of an existence, but it kept me from reminding myself of the past. I grew to forget some of the things, as long as I didn’t think too hard or have one of the guys at work ask me about my war stories.
I grew bored quickly however, and as much as I wanted to forget war, it was all that called to me. I was a natural at it and it called like a siren on the wind. Ekaterina had been hidden away in my closet. Taking her out would have meant remembering what she was used for. As the years passed, my thoughts eventually dwelled to the one of the last things Morin had said to me. “If you ever grow tired of the home life, we can always use you here.”
Though I didn’t hate the Soviets, I didn’t much like them either. They had turned my home into a target for the Germans during the war and as much as they prized it, they failed to protect it, to protect my family.
Bitter was a harsh word and I refused to use it when asked about it, but I guess one could say, I was bitter. I contacted Captain Morin. He set me up with some people who continued my training and I started helping them fight. It wasn’t a straight up fight though. We would hit outposts and depots, steal equipment, and bomb government offices. I felt like a terrorist. I was a terrorist. I hated it, but at the same time I longed for it.
Lutsk never felt like home to me anymore, just a place I existed. As much the feeling hurt me, I couldn’t fight Russians anymore. It just didn’t feel right. It was fortunate then that Captain Morin had come into Lutsk one evening before I was planning to leave the ‘organization.’
“Listen,” he said. “I know what you’re feeling, I can see it on your face.” He was right. The last few years had numbed me more than the war did. I was a mess. “I know a place we can go that might help. A few friends of mine gave me some contacts that will help us get out of here and start over, away from all this.”
“All of what?” I asked.
“This,” he said indicating the world around me with a flourish of his arm. “I know you’re not happy here.”
“This is my home, Captain.”
“No, it isn’t. Home is here.” He pointed to my heart.
He was right of course. My home truly no longer existed. All I had left were broken memories of growing up with my Papa and Mama and of a home that no longer stood. I would never be happy here. I would probably not be happy anywhere.
“Where are we going?”
“Algeria.”
“Africa? What could possibly be there for us?”
“The French Foreign Legion. They can tra…”
“Back up a moment Captain. The French? You want me to join the French Army?”
“You hold on soldier. Not the French Army, the French Foreign Legion. The best mercenary unit in the world.”
“Mercenaries?” I didn’t much like mercenaries. I had met a few in my time in the war and they weren’t nice people.
“Well, kind of. See, we go and fight for them and they give us a home and eventually, we become French citizens.”
“I don’t speak French.”
“They’ll teach us. Listen, it’s either that or you stay here and rot away the rest of your life working and fighting against something you’ll never beat. It’s your choice. I’ll give you until morning to decide. My guys can’t wait any longer. As you know, the Soviets have closed the borders.”
“Isn’t crossing those illegal?”
“Since when do you care?”
“Oh, yeah.”
I spent the next year or two being moved around the expanse that was the Ukraine. Time was difficult to tell when you were being shipped around like so much freight, sometimes literally. Hiding in safe houses and skimming guard posts, it was all stuff I had done before, only this time the mission was me.
The border crossing itself actually went rather smoothly, surprisingly. Apparently enough rubles could smooth any transaction. I said one last goodbye to my old home, the Ukraine and it wasn’t long until I reached the Black Sea. I spent a few weeks on a freighter that was headed to Africa. I was both elated and concerned. It had been a long time since I had shot anyone and I wasn’t sure I could still shoot as straight as I used to. I still had Ekaterina though, Captain Morin made sure of that.
I was met at the docks by a group of Frenchmen who quickly ordered me into a truck. It had been nearly a decade since any one person ordered me to do anything, but the training was still there and I complied as quickly and efficiently as I could. Then for some reason, Morin’s advice came to me. “It will only get easier.” I shuddered it off and looked ahead towards my future.
[/sblock]
Anyway, I put this in spoilers so it wouldn't hog the thread. The rest of you guys are free to read it, though much of it Pyotr keeps under his kepi.
[sblock]
The war was over. At least as far as the Americans were concerned, it was. Even most of Europe, as it were, believed the war was over. The Second Great War, they called it. The Germans, or more specifically, the Nazi Germans, had decided that they needed more space, something Russia had plenty of. Yet, they were beaten back. Just like all of Russia’s invaders. Mother Bear protected her children, or at least that what we were taught in school.
I spent a lot of time in the war. I wanted to help push the Germans out too. My countrymen needed my help and I was there. Papa was proud and Mama was afraid for me, but I felt called. So I went. I didn’t go into the Army though. Had to be Soviet to do that. No, I joined a group of rebels from my own land, the Ukraine. I spent much of my time scouting through burned villages, rooting out the Nazis wherever I may find them. It felt like a childhood game, but with deadly consequences.
My Captain, one Rega Morin, was Ukrainian. He taught me a lot of what I know today. About war, about fighting, about ignoring the things we’re told and focusing on what we see. My first kill pounded that home all too soon.
It was the winter of 1943. The Germans had made a large advance into Russian territory. Tanks, aircraft and men. Lots of men. Their numbers never seemed to end. Earlier in the summer, Kursk had been attacked and the Red Army beat the Germans back. Rather harshly as I was told. However, upon arriving, the truth came into my eyes.
We went in to survey the damage, look for any remaining Nazis that may try to gain another foothold. I had just been ordered to take a watch position in a burned out church so I could keep an eye on the rest of my unit. My rifle, the one I still carry today, had been especially modified for my role. I had a new scope put on her and everything. She was a beauty and had only been fired in practice, until that day.
I was watching the platoon move in groups and as I watched, I counted the bodies they stepped over. Many of them were Red Army, but many more were civilian. It had been a while since I thought about home, but I did just then. I had to move on when I realized I wasn’t there. I was here, keeping my friends safe. When my thought finished, I saw movement among one of the darkened buildings.
I had been taught to identify and then fire, but unfortunately my human reflexes kicked in and I panicked. I fired the first shot, saw that it went wide and quickly worked the bolt to load the next round. The second shot did not miss.
My Captain quickly ran over to the fallen body to check it out and when I saw him shake his head, I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but my curiosity wouldn’t leave me alone. Did I hit one of our guys? The reality of it didn’t hit me until days later, since the shock was so great.
As we finished up our sweep, I made my way over to where the body laid, my first kill of the war. I saw the boots first, the now famous jackboots of the Nazi Regime. It gave me a temporary sense of relief in knowing that it was an enemy I had shot. The feeling quickly faded as my eyes rose up the body. I had shot a child.
I was barely thirteen summers myself, but this child had to be barely ten. I knew that in this war, young men had been drafted into fighting to defend their countries, but this, it left a sick feeling in my stomach for days. Not only had it been a child, it was a girl. I still see her trimmed blonde hair and empty blue eyes sometimes when I sleep.
I found myself staring at the wound I had given her. It was a perfect shot, straight through the chest, shattering the sternum, penetrating the heart. I was awoken by Morin’s voice. “It only gets easier my friend.”
I wasn’t quite sure what he had meant by that until much later in the war. Captain Morin had been right. Each kill I tallied on the stock of Ekaterina became a simple number, nothing more. I had slowly become jaded by war and the shock of death had numbed my senses. What most would have considered atrocities, I simply shrugged at. It didn’t matter anymore to me. I had a mission to accomplish.
When the war finally ended a few long years later, the men in my unit didn’t lose the fight in them. They wanted to keep fighting, but not with the Germans. No, in the time the war lasted, I had learned that the group I had been a part of was also a movement to free the Ukraine from the Soviet’s grasp. I told Captain Morin that I didn’t want to fight anymore. I just wanted to go home and see my parents. He understood and I went. As a parting gift, he made sure I was allowed to keep Ekaterina. Then he reminded me, “It only gets easier.”
I reached home a few days after we had heard that the United States had forced Japan to surrender. I guess there was another part of the war we had missed. I didn’t even know where Japan was, let alone they were in the war with us. After I got off the bus in Lutsk, I had to take a second glance at what had used to be my home. Instead of Grogorin’s Meatshop, there was a broken and shattered frame of a building. Instead of a city hall, we had a burned out shell. Passersby informed me that there was a raid on Lutsk not too long after I had left. Why did no one mention this to me?
I went to the road upon which my father’s mill was. I wanted to run home, but since it was midday, I knew he would be working. When I arrived, I received strange looks and shaken heads. I didn’t want to believe my gut telling me why this was so. I didn’t want to believe what the foreman was apologizing for. It was all I could do to get out of his grip and run home.
I ran to a home that wasn’t there. Bits of cindered lumber and blackened dirt were all that was left of where I grew up. Where my father taught me to shoot straight, which got me into the position I was in. Nothing I had done to defend my country mattered to me then. No matter how many Nazis I killed, it wasn’t enough. One of them had gotten through.
It didn’t occur to me to ask exactly what happened, but as time went on, I found myself working in the same place my father once did to pass time and pay for the hovel I was attempting to live in. It wasn’t much of an existence, but it kept me from reminding myself of the past. I grew to forget some of the things, as long as I didn’t think too hard or have one of the guys at work ask me about my war stories.
I grew bored quickly however, and as much as I wanted to forget war, it was all that called to me. I was a natural at it and it called like a siren on the wind. Ekaterina had been hidden away in my closet. Taking her out would have meant remembering what she was used for. As the years passed, my thoughts eventually dwelled to the one of the last things Morin had said to me. “If you ever grow tired of the home life, we can always use you here.”
Though I didn’t hate the Soviets, I didn’t much like them either. They had turned my home into a target for the Germans during the war and as much as they prized it, they failed to protect it, to protect my family.
Bitter was a harsh word and I refused to use it when asked about it, but I guess one could say, I was bitter. I contacted Captain Morin. He set me up with some people who continued my training and I started helping them fight. It wasn’t a straight up fight though. We would hit outposts and depots, steal equipment, and bomb government offices. I felt like a terrorist. I was a terrorist. I hated it, but at the same time I longed for it.
Lutsk never felt like home to me anymore, just a place I existed. As much the feeling hurt me, I couldn’t fight Russians anymore. It just didn’t feel right. It was fortunate then that Captain Morin had come into Lutsk one evening before I was planning to leave the ‘organization.’
“Listen,” he said. “I know what you’re feeling, I can see it on your face.” He was right. The last few years had numbed me more than the war did. I was a mess. “I know a place we can go that might help. A few friends of mine gave me some contacts that will help us get out of here and start over, away from all this.”
“All of what?” I asked.
“This,” he said indicating the world around me with a flourish of his arm. “I know you’re not happy here.”
“This is my home, Captain.”
“No, it isn’t. Home is here.” He pointed to my heart.
He was right of course. My home truly no longer existed. All I had left were broken memories of growing up with my Papa and Mama and of a home that no longer stood. I would never be happy here. I would probably not be happy anywhere.
“Where are we going?”
“Algeria.”
“Africa? What could possibly be there for us?”
“The French Foreign Legion. They can tra…”
“Back up a moment Captain. The French? You want me to join the French Army?”
“You hold on soldier. Not the French Army, the French Foreign Legion. The best mercenary unit in the world.”
“Mercenaries?” I didn’t much like mercenaries. I had met a few in my time in the war and they weren’t nice people.
“Well, kind of. See, we go and fight for them and they give us a home and eventually, we become French citizens.”
“I don’t speak French.”
“They’ll teach us. Listen, it’s either that or you stay here and rot away the rest of your life working and fighting against something you’ll never beat. It’s your choice. I’ll give you until morning to decide. My guys can’t wait any longer. As you know, the Soviets have closed the borders.”
“Isn’t crossing those illegal?”
“Since when do you care?”
“Oh, yeah.”
I spent the next year or two being moved around the expanse that was the Ukraine. Time was difficult to tell when you were being shipped around like so much freight, sometimes literally. Hiding in safe houses and skimming guard posts, it was all stuff I had done before, only this time the mission was me.
The border crossing itself actually went rather smoothly, surprisingly. Apparently enough rubles could smooth any transaction. I said one last goodbye to my old home, the Ukraine and it wasn’t long until I reached the Black Sea. I spent a few weeks on a freighter that was headed to Africa. I was both elated and concerned. It had been a long time since I had shot anyone and I wasn’t sure I could still shoot as straight as I used to. I still had Ekaterina though, Captain Morin made sure of that.
I was met at the docks by a group of Frenchmen who quickly ordered me into a truck. It had been nearly a decade since any one person ordered me to do anything, but the training was still there and I complied as quickly and efficiently as I could. Then for some reason, Morin’s advice came to me. “It will only get easier.” I shuddered it off and looked ahead towards my future.
[/sblock]
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