You're the British military. Defend Avalon from my PCs.

[DreadPirateMurphy]

The real trick, I think, would be detection of the PCs before they get close. I would use stationary lookouts along likely approaches and roving patrols to cover the rest. The patrols should have dogs, and everybody should have passive IR and night vision. Remote sensors could also be deployed at random -- things like microphones or even chemical sensors.

With area denial, remember that you're not trying to make the place impenetrable so much as channel intruders along guarded approaches. Barbed wire and trenches are pretty quick for trained soldiers to deploy. Booby traps are another option, including antipersonnel mines, punji stakes, etc. You could even deploy surface mines with cluster munitions.

The approaches to the spring should be heavily guarded...sandbags with machine guns and anti-armor rockets, supported by snipers and mortars. Don't forget mortars!

There should be a mechanized element ready to move to intercept when contact is made. The best option is troops mounted in IFVs like the Warrior (http://www.army.mod.uk/equipment/av/av_war.htm).

The bad guys should put out a notice to the public in the area that a terrorist attack is imminent, and that ANY suspiscious activity should be reported to the army! That way the PCs can't afford to be seen by anybody.

 

[Agback]

brigade / 3000–5000 soldiers / 2+ regiments or 3–6 battalions
regiment / 2000–3000 / 3–4 battalions
battalion / 300–1000 / 2–6 companies or squadrons

The British army is not organised like that.

There is one type of British regiment that is a group of units with historical links shared traditions, varying in size from a 'regiment' like the 9th Lancers with shares a regiment (battalion-sized group) with another regiment (the 12th Lancers), to a regiment that consists of sixteen regiments (the Royal Regiment of Artillery). Those are just confusing, and they aren't operational units anyway, so we'll ignore them. The other sort of British regiment, the one that is an operation unit, is the cavalry or artillery equivalent of an infantry battalion.

A British brigade consists of five battalions/regiments (one artillery, the rest a balance of armour, armoured infantry, mechanised infantry, and light infantry depending on task), plus about nine squadrons/companies/detachments/workshops of special-purpose troops (engineers, MPs, etc.) Total is upwards of 4,500 men. On an operation, its combat troops would function as four battlegroups of mixed infantry/armour and a regiment of artillery. It is commanded by a brigadier.

A British battalion is an infantry unit of about 550-700 men, organised into three rifle companies, a fire-support company, and a headquarters company (including recce troops). It is commanded by a lieutenant-colonel. A British regiment is the unit of battalion size in the armour, artillery, army aviation etc..

A British company is an infantry unit of about 100 men, commanded by a major. The corresponding unit in the armour is the squadron, and in the artillery is the battery.

A British platoon is an infantry unit of thirty men, commanded by a lieutenant or second lieutenant. It consists of three rifle sections, each lead by a corporal, plus a 'headquarters' consisting of a sergeant, a radio operator, and a mortar team. The corresponding unit in the armour is a troop, which generally consists of three tanks.

 

[Agback]

Glastonbury Tor, in sort of a parallel reality.

Glastonbury is in Dorset, which is in the territorial responsibility of 3(UK) Division, the 'Iron' Division. Divisional HQ is at Bulford, Wiltshire. So you are certainly going to need to control the divisional CO, Major-General Graham Lamb, and the divisional headquarters. Now by a bit of a coincidence, the Iron Division is the only battle-ready division in the UK, with three brigades in various army camps around the Salisbury Plain, plus divisional troops. You ought to have everything you need, from light-role infantry to main battle tanks and 155mm field howitzers.

[*]A guy who is fragile, but a fast talker. He's the one with access to the spell that will let them get into Avalon.

He's the soft spot. Do they need him to speak the spell?

[*]A woman who is an incredible, almost superheroic brawler.

Infantry with rifles, machineguns, and mortars ought to deal with her.

[*]A gunslinger who has great defenses so bullets can barely harm him.

Are his defences good enough to deal with heavy machinegun fire? The sides of Glastonbury Tor are steep and open: I'll make sure that the whole area is in interlocking fields of fire from heavy machineguns as well as the atillery.

[*]A woman with powers similar to Magneto's, but weaker. She's practically impervious to metal attacks, but she can't stop hundreds of bullets or crush cars or anything.

Eh. I have thousands of bullets. She's toast.

[*]An assassin with great speed and stealth, who supposedly can be killed in a single hit if you strike him with an unhallowed cross.

The stealth is the difficult part. My biggest worry is that he will leave the others behind, sneak into the garden with the Well and get some water without being seen or heard, waltz up the Tor invisibly, and pull the whole thing off without being spotted. Precautions #1 against him is to fill the Chalice Well with large boulders, pour a concrete cap on top of it, etc. Precaution #2 is to mine St Michael's Tower on top of the Tor.

[*]A psychic who can scry, see the future, and meddle with memories.

Bad. Can she be jammed or distracted by any known means?

[*]A D&D-style wizard, with a wide variety of spells.

Some of those can be bad. I wouldn't mind if he wasted his efforts on combat spells, because he doesn't have enough firepower or survivability to cope with the mechanised infantry I can dispose against him. What worries me is Improved Invisibility. Boulders in the well, concrete on top of it. Command detonated claymore mines in the Well Garden.

How do you make sure that, for three days at least, these people do not get into Avalon? I have until Saturday to plan this.

I evacuate the town of Glastonbury on some pretext. I issue a terrorism alert for the area within, say, twenty miles, set up roadblocks with my armoured infantry, issue descriptions to the police and locals.

I send three battalions of light/mechanised infantry to patrol the levels. That is enough to let me keep sixty or seventy eight-man sections patrolling a wide area. Their camps ought to be outside Glastonbury itself.

I send a regiment of Royal Engineers to fill the Chalice Well with boulders and set a twenty-tonne reinforce concrete cap over the top of it. While they are at that they can mine St Michael's Tower with a tonne of explosives, and REME can set up a lot of remote surveillance gear on the Well and the Tor.

I send a battalion or two of armoured infantry to fortify a belt around the bottom of the Tor: rifle pits, machine-gun pits, and mortar pits. Barbed wire entanglements. Some heavy machineguns will be dug in to concealed locations, with orders to fire only on targets that attempt to climbe the Tor. The Tor itself is not to be occupied, and everyone is to have cover from shell fragments. Heavy mortars are to be manned in shifts, ready to fire missions called by the light infantry patrols.

I place my FH 70 howitzers, AS 90 self-propelled guns, and MLRS rocket-launchers 30-40 kilometres away, registered on the Tor, and protected by infantry. After either my infantry reports being infiltrated or something tells me that the well has been dipped, I issue a ready order to the artillery. Then, if anyone steps out onto the Tor, I tell my infantry to hit the dirt and slather the hill with 155mm high-explosive shells and mines and bomblets from the MLRS.

Army aviation is on call for flying targets or ground strikes, and I'll have anti-aircraft missiles: Swingfire and what-have you.

If the worst comes to the worst, I blow the top off the Tor.

 

[Agback]

Ordinary soldiers would have the following type of organization:

Platoon
One lieutenant (uses Plan or Inspiration)
Three sergeants (one is the highest level NPC)
Fouteen regular soldiers (three use heavy machine guns)

Not in the British Army.

Platoon:

Lieutenant or Second Lieutenant.
Sergeant.
Radio operator.

Mortar #1 (lance-corporal)
Mortar #2 (private)

3 corporals, each leading a rifle section and a fireteam.
3 lance-corporals, each leading a fire team.
6 light squad weapon gunners (one per fire-team).
12 riflemen.

 

[Agback]

You, uh, read the Wiki article, right? The Chalice well is a everflowing spring. It puts out 25 THOUSAND gallons per day.

Not at high pressure though. It is basically sub-artesian.

 

[Agback]

I should nip some of these ideas in the bud. They've only had about a day to set up.

Then concrete bunkers are probably out of the question, as you say. But if you whack a bunch of infantry in a location and order them to set up field fortifications they ought all to have foxholes within twenty minutes, and rifle pits, mortar pits, shelter trenches etc. within two hours.

Armies used to have vehicles thatt drove along about as fast as a tractor drawing a plough, that left a minefield behind them as they went. And they used to have air-deployable and artillery-deployable minefields. But i think that stuff has all be outlawed now, and it would take time to de-mothball it.

I like the sniper idea. The police almost certainly would not be involved, though the PCs might actually be able to use the police as a method of gaining entry, since the cops might have a problem with a military occupation of their jurisdiction.

The British are pretty used to the Army being used for counter-terrorist stuff: remember that they have been having trouble with terrorists letting off bombs in their cities etc. for over thirty years. Provided that the right orders come from Whitehall or from the Chief Constable of the county the police won't resist.

I don't know how the demeanor of the British regarding the military coming into your town differs from that in America.

I don't know either. But one thing that you have to take into account is that Britain is not empty enough to stick army camps in the remote sorts of places that the Americans and we Australians do. It seems to me when I was being driven around Salisbury that the army camps were in, or at least right next to, towns anyway.

The British do have laws and traditions restricting the use of the Army in domestic affairs. I'm not sure what the formalities are now, but it used to be that the chief constable or the lord lieutenant of the county had to appeal to the Home Secretary before Whitehall could send in troops, and the magistrates had to read the Riot Act etc. What they don't have is the jigsaw-puzzle of rival jurisdictions and independent, democratically-elected county and state officials with law-enforcement powers and jealous dispositions. If you have the clout to invoke the formalities at all, doing so is comparatively straightforward.

 

[Agback]

The SAS are used to performing secret deniable missions, so a word by the right sort of chap in the government who played rugger (rugby) at Eton (very expensive private school attended by the social elite) with the CO could conceivably get them deployed on the QT for a secret "training" mission with live ammo.

Another thing about Eton: not only is it the most socially exclusive of the Britsh 'public' schools, but it provides a huge proportion of officers to the SAS.

 

[nerfherder]

Glastonbury is in Dorset,

Minor nit-pick - it's actually in Somerset. Dorset is the next county. Everything else looks good, though, and there's certainly no reason for an army unit to only operate in the county it's currently based in.

Cheers,
Liam

 

[nerfherder]

IIRC Britain doesn't do mines these days. The helos would be Apaches. Fixed-wing aircraft would not be a lot of help here - unless a Typhoon just happenned to crash in the right place. And the military do not have to get permission from the Chief Constable - the Lord Lieutenant or his deputy can call them out in their capacities as proxies for the Monarch.

Yes, no mines these days, I believe.

I'll take your word for the Chief Constable not needing to give permission, but the police would certainly need to be given some plausible excuse, otherwise they would raise merry hell. Military deployment in the UK is very much done with the cooperation of the police - even in Northern Ireland.

Deploying regular army against a "terrorist threat", and then having heavy artillery/MRLS going off would provoke huge press and parliamentary debate. Last year (or the year before) Scorpion reconnaisance vehicles were deployed at Heathrow Airport, and there was a huge amount of reporting on that (including questions about how army vehicles could stop terrorists).

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing how your game goes RW.

Cheers,
Liam

 

[Agback]

The second layer is a defensive perimiter that features fixed positions in a ring around the hill and the well with a view of the approaches to the perimiter AND which can see up the hill and fire upon anyone who has gotten past it.

The problem with this is the town of Glastonbury, which occupies a ridge extending to the south-east (I think, I get disoriented in the northern hemisphere) of the Tor. You get clear lines of sight and fire over the Levels in every other direction, but an approach through the town has good cover.