Con-031 Mortimer's Cross 3

Background introduction:
This was to be my third and final in character, as Captain (Dr.) Ash, game mission offworld during this weekend game. This game was played on our alternative piece of woodland, which made for a more interesting game, as some of us had not been there before, and those who had couldn't fully remember the layout of the site.

This was a pick up the pieces left after "Operation Clean Sweep" scenario for the players. Given it was British Summer Time, it wasn't pitch black when we went out, but it rapidly became darker as the evening progress, especially given the tree cover that blocked the starlight that can help one see at night.

CON-031- MC3

Mission: Go to planet, designation CO55A (Colony Offworld 55 at gate site A). Our gate out was going at 21.08 hundred hours and our return gate would be at 23.14 hundred hours.

Orders:

Our orders were again do not to initiate hostile actions. Science was represented by all three on base members, as MID felt that medical and technical support might be needed.

AAR:

After entering the playing area the first thing we found was a disused building, which added tension to the game of exploring the site as no one remembered seeing it before. M.Sgt. Vosloo, led the mission and we did the whole "Forrest Gump in Vietnam thing" until we came to a spot in the woods where we stopped. During our pause we noticed a light in the distance from behind us, so we set up an ambush to wait for the unknown force to arrive, as we didn't want a repeat of last time when we bumped into "Them".

Turned out to be a single man who made no attempt to move stealthily and we even heard him whistling a tune. As he came close Dr. Stokes, our medic, arose from the undergrowth and greeted him, which surprised him. However, he acted as if he were expecting to meet a group in woods. Dr. Stokes took the bag from the stranger, playing along and then subdued him as he turned to leave (I can't remember if that was a shot in the back, or coshing the NPC, but was a typical Dr. Stokes trademark move).

Myself and another player, Dr. Carter, examined the contents of a white cooler bag that had two six packs of Coca-Cola in it, each with a message attached.

Msgt. Vosloo ordered that we move out, but just as did we made another contact with an unknown force. Dr. Carter, braver than I, bushwhacked one of them by lighting him up with her tac-torch and a small exchange of fire ensued. after this Dr. Carter dragged a captive back to join me. During the firefight we had become separated from the rest of the team we decided to make our way back to the gate as best we could.

We made it to the gate where Dr. Stokes had brought the captured courier and his bag with him. We sat and waited, as there was some considerable time left to kill. The remaining elements of our team arrived in due course and spread out forming a defensive line.

What was really eerie was that for some reason I could sense the presence of the enemy team across the clearing from us. anyway, just before our gate was due to open the captured prisoner kicked off, I shot him and a ricochet hit the other prisoner in the head killing him. However, we managed to manhandle our dead captives through the gate while under fire, which was a bit hairy.

Summary:

The final firefight seemed to be the equivalent of saying "get out of Dodge" as no serious assault on our teams exit was made, but there again we might have outnumbered them.

The messages with the Coke cans were written in Japanese, a combination of katakana and kanji, and I was able to recognise a couple of symbols. The Coca-Cola cans turned out to have been laced with ABC, and from the translated message it was clearly meant to be delivered to a spy, who would then use the Coke to contaminate someone.

I didn't make any notes about the rest of the scenarios, as I played an NPC for the rest of the weekend. However, I left the game feeling really energised and wanting to know more, with more questions than you could shake a stick at to ask.

Con-031 Mortimer's Cross 2

Background introduction:

This was the second mission of the game weekend that I went out as Captain (Dr.) Ash, a name chosen as people often call me by this diminutive, but I will say that I do not recommend that one does this, because it can be very confusing. For instance when my name was being called is the person referring to me or my character? I found this quite difficult to cope with, probably because I can best be described as an episodic role-player.

A device that had been left on a previous visit to the planet that would record and map the stars in the sky at night, so that we could figure out where we were travelling to when the teams went through the stargate.

The back story was that this planet use to be a Philips Corporation colony world, which was lost as a result of what was called "Operation Clean Sweep" by the T1 OPFOR. The enemy were former UNSGC personnel that had become compromised by contamination with a substance called, imaginatively enough, Alien Biological Contaminant 1 (ABC1), which made them hostile to former colleagues and act against the UNSGC program.

CON-031- MC2

Mission:

Go through the stargate to a planet designated as C213A and try to recover the United Nations Science Corps (UNSC) Stargazer 1 unit and its data. Our gate out was at 14.14 hundred hours and our return gate would be at 16.25 hundred hours.

Orders:

Our orders were donot to initiate hostile actions. Command of the mission would be shared between myself as head of the UNSC, Dr. Well representing the Military Intelligence Divison (MID), and overall command would revert to M.Sgt. Vosloo Peace Keeper Division (PKD), if hostile forces were met.

AAR:

Another verdant green woodland, and it was a very hot day too.M.Sgt. Vosloo led us in the general direction of where colonists had been previously found when he had last visited the planet. We walked into the woods and it was at this point that we heard sounds, which on hindsight were voices. M.Sgt. Vosloo thought that obvious route to the sounds looked too much like a trap set to ensnare us, and led the team around a small lake to reach where the sounds were coming from.

On reaching the other side of the lake and sneaking up on the enemy, we saw three figures standing in the woods. M.Sgt. Vosloo and Dr. Well were in front, so I was called up to try and initiate contact, which resulted in both myself and my bodyguard, Cpl. Vorsfelde, being wounded.

During the exchange of fire it became apparent that the enemy were "Them", as after being hit and falling over they would reanimate and get up again. M.Sgt. Vosloo ordered a tactical withdrawal, as our team was strung out in a column, while the enemy were in a line and therefore able to bring more effective fire on us.

We staged a fighting retreat back to a dried up river gully near to our original starting position at the stargate. During the firefight I was acting as a medic to the team, but then M.Sgt. Vosloo took a hit to the head rendering him unconscious, and command of the team fell apart.

The next few minutes were ones of absolute confusion and mayhem, but I was able to revive M.Sgt. Vosloo, but it was around this point that we noticed two more people walking through the woods towards. We opened fire on the enemy reinforcements, but our shots had no effect upon them whatsoever. However, by this time our team had been overwhelmed, as all of us were wounded an unconscious as a result of the wounds.

However, sometime later some men speaking German injected something into me that revived me, and had done the same to the rest of the team. we were all pretty banged up and had been left to fend for ourselves. The remaining time was spent ferrying the immobile team members to the gate, where we found the Stargazer unit left for us to take away.

Summary:

It's dangerous out there. Confirmation of another hostile force that were labeled Type 2s, who appear to be fighting the T1s, and it would seem that we just got caught in the middle of it. We had to have a refresher from the Base commander on the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for securing uncooperative hostiles, and how to use said SOPs to contain and isolate the T2 threat.

Con-031 Mortimer's Cross 1

Background introduction:

This was the 31st game/operation from The Fight School Contact!, and my second time at the site. The first being a bootcamp where Dean ran all the players through a basic training schedule so that we would not muzzle sweep people, how to set up an all round defence, and basic patrolling and response to enemy contact drills.

We play out of a former secret nuclear bunker, which was built in the middle of farmland that has extensive woodland areas. Most of or games are therefore set in a woodland setting, with various degrees of undergrowth according to the time of year and how much use from a paintball site has trampled said undergrowth.

At this point in the game's campaign the structure of the chain-of-command was still evolving. Originally, the game had been less military and more corporation orientated, but the outcome of this was that the games had become very paranoid, and missions described as being a bit like the lawless wild West. In short the plot wasn't really advancing.

As a result there was a complicated chain-of-command that was conditional on the enemies response to us. I would be in command if they were friendly, but if a firefight broke out then the military characters would take over. I was playing a civilian character by the name of Dr. Ash, with a nominal non-line rank of Captain.

CON-031- MC1

Mission:

Our task was for United Nation Stargate Gate Command (UNSGC) team to make recon patrol of the planet. This was a morning mission and we started at 10.14 hundred hours, with our return scheduled for 11.01 hundred hours.

Orders:

Do not to initiate hostile actions, and see if we can make a friendly contact.

AAR:

The scenario involved going through the Contact! version of a stargate to a planet that that had been imaginatively titled P298, which meant it had been the the 298th planet discovered by the Contact! stargate program.

We did a recon patrol of the woods, which basically took us around in a large circle to see what we could find, or meet. As we were coming back to the stargate entry point we met a Non-Player Character (NPC), and after some faffing over who should be in command (was it a firefight scenario?), I ended up taking control of the situation. The military characters in our game were just itching for a fight and a bit twitchy around the NPC.

The NPC was played by one of the plot team minions, and he was pretty good at presenting a very panicked individual, being the sole survivor of another team that were hostile to his side. He described the hostiles as "Them", but saw us as part of the problem, not the solution, because as far as he was concerned we were just as bad as we were killing his people too. Not only that we would take them back to Earth, never to be seen again.

Anyway, "Them" were hostiles who were worse than us, because they appeared to be unstoppable killing machines. I decided that it would be useful to let him go, as it might serve as the basis for building up mutual trust with our offworld opponents.

Summary:

Our offworld opponents, code name Type One's (T1) were now embroiled with another hostile offworld faction who were clearly a dangerous force to be reckoned with.