Unstoppable Vong vs. Immovable Empire [IC]

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Prologue
Primeday, Day 173 of 44 AFE/25 ABY, 17:30 GST

The door to the captain's meditation chamber on the Eclipse VI hisses open, permitting you all to enter, and your escort leaves after throwing you a sharp salute. "Enter," calls a smooth, deep voice, coming from the legendary Grand Admiral Thrawn where he sits surrounded by floating holos, which along with the Grand Admiral's glowing red eyes are the only source of light in the chamber. As you step inside and your eyes adjust you can make out the subject of the holos: blurry images and short looping clips of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, starfighters, and ordnance.

One of the major priorities in the first battle against these Yuuzhan Vong was to obtain as many images of anything that might vaguely resemble their art and collate them for Thrawn's perusal. His unique powers of observation, deduction, and insight became famous after his swift and decisive defeat of the Rebel military in 28 AFE, to the point that all Imperial academies immediately instituted a new graduation requirement of 16 credit-hours of art and the social sciences in the hopes of finding another strategic savant like him. So far none have arisen, but that's fine for now, since as any officer will tell you (or else) one Thrawn is more than a match for any number of Yuuzhan Vong tacticians (they hope).

The Chiss looks up from the display as you enter, his lip curling in distaste. "So...utilitarian," he pronounces with a gesture at the holos, a word as full of vitriol coming from him as any string of invectives from a Navy officer. He waves a hand over a control panel and the holos shift to give him an unobstructed view of you. "Welcome, agents. You all come well-recommended by Imperial Intelligence and the Fleet, an impressive résumé to be sure. Let's hope that you prove more effective against the Yuuzhan Vong than the Fourteenth Fleet, and I of course have no doubt that you will."

Another wave of his hand replaces the existing holos with a collection of half a dozen Outer Rim planets flanked by sculptures and paintings, and he taps one planet to enlarge it. "Sernpidal, and its moons Dovado and Dobido," he explains, "are among the planets on which the Yuuzhan Vong have currently established a presence. We were able to prevent any occupations in the first wave of their assault, but their current offensive consists of a much larger force and restricting them to these six systems for now is the best the Fleet can do. The Sernpidal militia were unable to prevent a small enemy force from landing and have so far been unsuccessful in ousting them or preventing reinforcements from landing--as is to be expected," he adds with a nod to one of the paintings, as if that explains everything about the Sernpidalian strategy, which perhaps to him it does.

"We have little data on the Yuuzhan Vong activities there, and they are acting unlike the other invasion forces we have observed so far, so Sernpidal is evacuating its citizens from the planet to allow for a more...forceful response by the Fleet. Your mission is to travel to Sernpidal, interfere with whatever the Yuuzhan Vong are planning, capture as much of their technology and as many of them as possible, and aid the Sernpidalians in evacuating the volume, in whatever manner and order you deem best. You will be provided with a freighter heavily modified for defense to get you to the planet and assist with the evacuation. The freighter is in docking bay 17, and you leave at 1800 hours. Dismissed, and good luck."



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OPENING CRAWL (http://www.starwars.com/play/online-activities/crawl-creator/index.jsp?cs=vdcja385hw)
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Present
Primeday, Day 174 of 44 AFE/25 ABY, 09:00 GST

The starlines snap back to points as your freighter exits hyperspace, and almost immediately the ship shudders as a massive chunk of rock ricochets off your reinforced shields. You've emerged just behind Imperial lines, and the space ahead of you is full of the bright green of Imperial turbolasers and the yellowish-orange of some unknown type of energy weapon. TIE Interceptors and Chiss Clawcraft swarm around alien starfighters in a massive dogfight while a full squadron of Imperial II-class Star Destroyers trade missile barrages with two massive spiral-shaped capital ships roughly the size of the Empire's Death Star-class battlestations.

You've been provided with a pilot and a squad of stormtroopers to help with the evacuation efforts while you're on the ground, and as soon as you revert to realspace the pilot transmits identification codes and your mission details to the nearest Star Destroyer. A grainy half-size holo of a female Zabrak comm officer appears a minute later, looking quite frazzled. "Oh, thank the Force you're here," she says, "we've already lost almost three full squadrons trying to get some shuttles or bombers near the Vong landing zone, this battle group is much str--" the holo decoheres momentarily as the image shakes from a missile hit "--augh, much stronger than usual here for some reason. Our communications back to HQ have been garbled by some sort of gravitic phenomenon, so you probably haven't been briefed on the local conditions; I'll answer any questions I can before you move in."

This is the IC thread for the alternate-timeline SWSE Empire vs. Vong game; the OOC thread is here.

[Imbasel]

Varon had remained quiet during the hyperspace jump. He remained cross legged on his seat contemplating the Force and the nature of war. He thought to himself War is the nature of the force. These creatures are.... absent from it... so strange that something could be removed from the force. How can this be?

Varon's thoughts stopped abruptly as the ship emerged into realspace. The shudders of combat shook him and the holo caught his attention. It was strange that the gravitic phenomenon was occuring. Stepping forward he stands next to the holo and says "Officer what are the conditions of this gravitic source? Where does it seem the strongest and is there any indication on where it is coming from? How many squadrons remain?

Varon looks at the battle outside of his ship and muses as to what can be done to help tip the battle in their favor.

[Jallorn]

Velin reseals Spotter's casing just as the ship emerges from hyperspace. The droid didn't really need any heavy maintenance, but it was good to be sure, and it passed the time while they were in transit. But now, his attention was focused on the task at hand, rather than on the little black droid.

Not to bombard you with questions, Velin's mettalic voice sounded off second, artificially amplifying his whisper of a voice, But how much area does the enemy cover, where are their supply lines, their key targets? Conventional warfare is far easier when you remove the support structure.

[RandomLunatic]

Thanas, who had spent most of the trip pouring over what intel was available, especially on the enemy's biotechnology, was nonetheless ready for war when the freighter reverted to realspace, in full battle gear.

"What's the situation on the ground? How's the evacuation proceeding?"

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The comm officer taps a few keys in response to Varon's questions, looks at her screen, and reads off "The capital ships and the starfighters are all surrounded by gravitic signatures, the capital ships much more strongly than the starfighters, so obviously their ships all have the same signal jammers, but those same jammers are preventing us from determining where the generators are. The fact that all their ships look like they're made of hollowed-out asteroids doesn't help--we can't get any interior readings on any of their technology, probably due to a high nickel-cobalt content in the asteroids they're using. We're also reading a major gravitic signature where the Vong troops landed, though that fluctuates erratically. We've tried frequency-hopping and the usual jamming countermeasures, but it's the actual signal that's getting mangled, not just the contents; once you're planetside, you'll probably be cut off from all transmissions."

She taps a few more keys and suppresses a wince. "All of our corvettes are gone, and we're down to 46 Defenders, 416 Interceptors, 28 assault shuttles, and 7 blastboats..." which works out to just under half the original starfighter complement. She flashes a hopeful smile and continues, "...which isn't too bad, really, considering we're facing two capital ships when we only expected to find one here and our starfighters are outnumbered by about five to one. But dedicating two Destroyers to helping out the starfighters means that--" the image shakes and jitters again "--quite a few enemy missiles have been getting through the screen.

"We don't know what their space-bound supply lines look like. Their first wave was self-contained, and no fleet has been able to get past this new wave to find out. On the ground, they've landed at least nine transports that we detected and are probably doing fine for troops and supplies. As for area and targets...here, it'll make more sense with a visual." The officer's image is replaced by a wire-frame diagram of the battle and surroundings. A large sphere off to the right is labeled Sernpidal, with two smaller spheres above it for Dovado and Dobido. Twelve large wedges and some tiny dots float in Imperial blue slightly down and to the left of the planet, while two huge spheres and more dots in Vong red are clustered up and to the left, near the moon; a fuzzy purple cloud between them is the dogfight. An irregular reddish blob lies on the surface of Sernpidal, located right "below" Dobido such that a line drawn from the center of the planet to the center of the moon would pass through the center of the blob.

"As you can see," the comm officer's voice explains, "the Vong ground forces are almost on the other side of the planet from us, with their fleet between us and them. Trying to send ships directly there past their capital ships is suicidal, we learned that early on--the range on their tractor beams is ridiculous. Sending fighters wide around the planet gets us there undetected, but they must have top-notch sensors and tacticians because their reactions times are also ridiculous and all of our ships were met by their starfighters before they should have been able to respond. Each of their starfighters is roughly a match for one of our Defenders, so you'd probably have to land out of their range and take ground craft in close."

The holo of the battle (still being updated in real time) shrinks and moves aside as the comm officer's image returns. Both images are breaking up around the edges and show all the signs of high-power transmissions barely breaking through interference. "The evacuation is going more slowly than we'd like, since ships in their fleet's shadow have to hug the surface and get to our side before they can head for space. The capital city and most of the surroundings are completely evac'd, the majority of major cities on our side are evacuated, and the rest are scattered, so we have almost two-thirds of the population safe; the rest are the ones closest to the Vong and are taking a lot longer. Fleet Command is sending a Death Star to help us, but it won't be here for another seven hours at least and the remaining three million citizens might not survive that long."

Another few taps on the comm board adds some green dots to the battle map, representing Sernpidal's air and ground forces and the civilian ships. The air forces are escorting ships to space on the other side of the planet and the ground forces are clumped around the cities nearest the Vong force, holding a defensive line rather than doing anything about the Vong. The portion of the planet under the Vong fleet is almost solid green, with tiny dots trickling away from the mass extremely slowly, and you can see why the comm officer is feeling pessimistic.

[Jallorn]

Who's in charge of this fight? It doesn't look like the enemy ground troops are all that interested in the cities, so we could probably divert some of the soldiers protecting them to make counterstrikes.

[Iron Victory]

Jotun detaches a large power cable from his chest and rumbles to life. As his systems boot up, he approaches the hologram. In a booming, synthesized voice he addresses the rest of the squad, “What are we waiting for? Imperials are dieing.” The large droid grumbles, obviously impatient to engage the enemy.

[AvianMalkavian]

Wren approaches the gathering around the hologram of the Comm Officer, trying to squeeze in so that she can see the current situation, "How effective is the Vong weaponry? What sort of defenses do they have? How much resistance will we meet? We need some idea of what to expect when we attempt to land."

She eyes the droid as it speaks, before simply dismissing it from her thoughts and returning attention to the hologram.

[RandomLunatic]

"Well, if they aren't moving against the cities, then what are they doing down there?" Thanas wondered out loud, examining the map in an effort to answer his own question. "Have there been any more transports after the first 9?"

((Knowledge (Tactics) to try and work out what they are up to: [roll0]))

[Battleship789]

Alstair, who had been looking over the situation on his helmet HUD, turned his helmet speakers on and spoke to the comm officer: "Are the gravitic signatures of the enemy similar to the Fleet's Interdiction cruisers? How long has it been since the transports landed planetside and have they left the planet? With those two huge spiral space stations in system, I seriously doubt that the enemy fleet has only 9 transports. If they intended to take the planet a much larger ground force would be required, especially to create a planetside staging ground. Perhaps, after the initial landing, the enemy decided to let the civilians evacuate and then take the planet with very little resistance, since they don't seem to be actively going after population centers at the moment. Still, that doesn't explain why the initial landing wasn't much larger and makes even less sense as they aren't allowing the civilian population to be evacuated..."

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The comm officer looks distracted as she rapidly attempts to pull up information. "Um, let's see, one of Sernpidal's major generals is coordinating their forces, apparently; I haven't been in communication with them. They're not under our direct control, but I can get their comm frequency for you." Your ship's comm station chirps as a comm frequency appears on the screen. "You can ask them if they detected any more transports since the nine transports I told you about landed, the last one about two hours ago, but only nine showed up on our sensors and I highly doubt they have better equipment than we do." A note of pride enters her voice at that, but she quickly returns to business.

"The Vong weapons appear to be plasma-based, but they use unfamiliar projection technology. They also appear to be very good at penetrating shields, so it's a good thing your ship has heavy armor. They don't have any shields that we can detect, just very good point-defense repulsors of some sort. Like I said, their starfighters are on par with our Defenders, so a squadron of them can give you a hard time, but we haven't seen them go out of their way to attack apparent civilian vessels.

"Their capital ships do share similar gravitic signatures with our Interdictors," she continues with a note of frustration in her voice, "but how they could possibly keep their generators running constantly I don't know. I know I'm no engineer, but...." She shakes her head, and adds "I'm not military either. I don't know what they're up to on the ground, I just hope you can do something about it." A tinny beeping sound comes through the transmission, and the officer looks off-camera for a moment. "I'm sorry, they're diverting all comm towers to try to get a message back to HQ, I have to let you go. Contact the ground forces and see what you can get out of them, and if you need more data from us you can try another transmission in a little while. Avenger out." The channel closes with a soft click, and your pilot turns to face you, awaiting your orders.

[Battleship789]

As the transmission ends, Alstair begins a final check on his equipment and prepares for reentry. After finishing his check, he looks towards the rest of the squad: "Should we attempt to contact the Sernpidal general, then?"

[RandomLunatic]

[Poke thread]

This was new ground for Thanas-he was used to the plans being made above his pay grade and simply carrying them out while bitching about them. Still, the silence in the shuttle was becoming a bit awkward. "We may have to get closer to get through the jamming," he said. "From what he said, trying to approach by space or air is suicide, so we should make planetfall in under the fleet's guns. From there, we can contact the local commander for a update, and head up to the front with the evac ships."

[AvianMalkavian]

Wren moved to check her weapons and equipment briefly before getting everything on and getting ready for their landing. Moving towards the front, she spoke to the pilot, "We need to land as soon as possible. Fly us in under the fleet's guns. See if you can't get us anywhere near where the Sernpidal general is located."

[PairO'Dice Lost]

"Yes, ma'am," the pilot acknowledges. "You'll want to get back in your crash webbing, everyone; this could be a bumpy ride." As soon as everyone is settled into their seats, the pilot turns the ship towards Sernpidal, accelerates up to top speed in the space of a few seconds, and then cuts the engines. The pilot keeps you updated over the intercom.

"We'll reach atmo in two minutes, hopefully unseen. I'm dimming the cabin lights to help against visual sensors."

...

"Everyone hold on, two of the enemy fighters broke off and are heading our way, we might need to go evasive."

...

"Negative on evasive maneuvers, the enemy fighters got torped. Thanks, Scimitar Five."

...

"We're mostly through the thermosphere now. They'll see us anyway from heat compression, so I'm bringing the cabin lights back up. Look out for turbulence."

...

"We should be safe now. Engaging repulsors. You can come back up to the cockpit now, if you'd like; I'm going to try to make contact with the ground forces."

Those of you who head back to the cockpit see a very staticky, vaguely-humanoid figure floating in hologram-blue over the dashboard. "...ZZe didnZZ...ZZtch that, caZZ...KHK...ZZpeat last trZZ...ZZself toZZ..." is the very scratchy message that comes through the speakers. "Say again, this is the Imperial freighter Star Chaser, carrying Imperial Special Forces Agents," the pilot says loudly and patiently with one hand on the frequency controls and one on the power dial. "They wish to contact your commander and help with the situation on the ground." This repeats a few more times as your freighter slowly skims along the surface in terrain-following mode in the direction of the Vong landing zone, until finally you're close enough to get a good transmission.

"Welcome, Star--...--presence here i--...--ppreciated. General--...--at the front near--...--titude 48.074, longitude 73.--...--him you're coming," says the much cleared hologram. The pilot responds, "Understood, Control. Star Chaser out," and cuts the comm. Turning to you, he asks, "Should I take you there directly, sirs, ma'am, or do you want me to let you down at a starport so you can take a skimmer? The Chaser looks like an evac freighter so no one's given her any trouble yet, but I don't know how long that'll last."

[RandomLunatic]

"Fly casual?" Thanas suggested.

[AvianMalkavian]

Wren sits quietly, breathing slowly, keeping calm. She had seen young soldiers panic as they sat helpless, not knowing if they would make it into atmo or not. Admittedly, it was a stressful experience, but she had learned long ago to trust in the pilot. Finally, they got clear of some of the danger, the Lieutenant getting up and moving to the cockpit, "We don't have time to waste. I say we head directly for the General."

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The pilot smiles at Thanas' comment and nods to Wren. "Sounds like a plan. Direct shot it is." He sets the freighter to a speed that would be urgent but not engine-damaging for an unmodified freighter, something a bit clunky and a few years out of date like the Sernpidalians would be likely to have, and plots a course that will take you near enough to several different cities that it should look to sensors in orbit that the Star Chaser is picking up refugees. He's no starfighter ace, but Imperial Intelligence is no slouch when it comes to training covert-ops pilots.

Even an obsolete freighter wouldn't take too long to travel the planetary quarter-rotation between you and the ground forces, and within ten minutes you're hailed by a comm officer and directed to a landing platform. "Landing platform" is giving it too much credit, really; it's nothing more than a section of a huge cleared-out plaza, situated near the edge of the city currently occupied by the ground forces. It was the first city within shooting range of the Vong that they were able to evacuate, so the military moved in to take advantage of the infrastructure present there. The plaza is bordered on one side by a used-speeder retailer and some large parking lots (now full of military skimmers), on another side by a row of restaurants (now used for equipment storage), and on a third size by a row of office buildings (now converted into a medstation and comm center). There are five other transports in the eastern side of the plaza with the Chaser, and the western half is occupied by a makeshift command center.

A protocol droid is waiting at the foot of your boarding ramp when you land, and after introducing itself as TD-752, Sernpidalian/cyborg relations, it leads you through the command center to the man in charge. He has the excellent posture and chiseled features that Imperial military recruiters love, but the image is marred by his looks (the usual Sernpidalian pale skin, white hair, and reddish eyes that make his species look like sickly albinos) and from his pudgy build it looks like he's held a desk job for the past few years. He's currently snapping out orders into a hand comm: "I don't care what they're throwing at you, we need intel on whatever--...I know it's dangerous! We've already lost two teams, that's why you're there!...What do you mean, snakes? I--...You have medpacks, dammit, you'll be fine....No, and don't comm back until you have results!" He clicks the comm off and takes a few deep breaths; TD-752 quickly steps up and introduces you before he can start on something else.

"Ah! So you're the Spec Ops people! Good!" he says with a wave of his hands, relief in his voice. "I was thinking we'd never get help in here. We're doing what we can with what we have, but those bastards are jamming our sensors something fierce, and the readings we can get aren't making any kriffing sense!" You're not quite sure if his overly-excitable manner is due to irritation, frustration, or something else, but it's hard to blame him in this situation. "I've sent in recon teams to take a look, but they've all been killed before they can get close enough to find out anything useful. It's a damn good thing those bastards have been staying on the defensive, 'cause if they attack we're not in a great position, and we're far too spread out to mount a good defense of any one city." He stops with the wild gestures and massages his temples with both hands. "Please tell me you agents have a plan?"

[Jallorn]

Still gathering intel. A wise commander gets all he can before he's forced to commit. Speaking of which, they don't seem to be interested in the cities, and it's not because of the troops stationed in them. You could probably divert more troops to a counterpush. Velin immediately begins to size up the commander, and he's not impressed by what he sees at first glance. He certainly seems well trained, but a pudgy desk commander is an out of practice commander who doesn't expect any real action. Still, looks can be deceiving, We need everything you know about the enemy, however slim. What have you noticed about their tactics? What do you know about their technology? Everything.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

"That's just the thing," the general--Brigadier General Darrael Aluth, going by his name tag and rank insignia--says with an exasperated grimace. "We're not getting good information, and the information we are getting doesn't make any sense! The holos we have of their soldiers show them using melee weapons! Not lightsabers like Sith Disciples, those would make sense, just...sticks! Sticks with sharp or heavy bits on the end! Some of them have a sort of dart launcher with some kind of nerve agent, and some have grenades, but there's no sign of blasters anywhere!

"We can't get anything better than grainy, long-range, poor-resolution holos, since our probe droids are getting smashed and our transmissions are being jammed. I think they're not familiar with probe droids, since they smashed those up far past the point they needed to if they wanted to stop the transmissions, but I don't see how that can really help us. Our scans aren't picking up any technology, either, not even a single trace of durasteel, so either they use sensor-transparent materials in their technology--and personally, I think that's unlikely, something would have to show up--or they just have very good jammers." He waves one hand in a This is all incredibly frustrating gesture and pinches the bridge of his nose with the other hand. "As for tactics, like I said, they use melee weapons, so they love to get up close, but they don't seem to be very well trained; it usually takes them five or six hits to kill one of our troops, so our soldiers can still fight back while they're lying there. Not that it really helps, since most of the time that soldier is in agonizing pain and couldn't hit the broad side of a gundark, but it's something."

Aluth asks a nearby comm officer to pass him a datapad, and he flicks through a few images on it before getting to one in particular and passing the pad around. The image looks somewhat like a jet-black suit of stormtrooper armor, but there are spines and blades attached to it at many of the joints and it looks to be a good eight feet tall compared to the Sernpidalian soldier also in the image. The armored figure carries what looks like a muddy brown quarterstaff with a club on one end, which is currently being used to smash the brains out of said Sernpidalian soldier. "Their armor is very blaster-resistant, to both normal and stun bolts. Not blaster-deflective, like Imperial stormtrooper armor, but flat-out resistant--one of our boys shot one of them right in the face and he just kept going!" Taking the datapad back once everyone's had a look, he continues, "We know they have some non-armored civilians with them from scout transmissions before they were found and killed, and I ordered them to try to capture one, but our forces couldn't get close enough or even get a holo of one."

The general shakes his head. "I don't know what to think of such haphazard technology. Who knows what they could be up to over those hills? Nothing makes any sense about this."

[Jallorn]

Has ayone tried ion? It's not as dangerous to living things, but it might be more effective at getting through their armor. Despite adding a second question, Velin is largely focused on swallowing the information he has received. They don't like range, that's good, Velin does, but how effective is his blaster really going to be? Still, the team's got some meleers, ones who should be able to dish out a lot of pain to the enemy.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

General Aluth shakes his head. "Not really. We tried ion grenades, but that didn't appear to be any more effective, and we don't have any antipersonnel ion cannons to work with."

[RandomLunatic]

"Are any medical facilities close by? I'd like to see some of the casualties. Time permitting, of course," Thanas said.

Switching to his internal comm so only the other agents could hear, he observed, "Sounds like the enemy has real good sensors. Pure stealth may not do the trick. We may need a diversionary raid of some kind from the Militia to distract them from our entrance."

[Iron Victory]

Jotun replies to Thanas over the closed channel. "Diversions...." the large droid points to his bandolier of thermal detonators, "I can do diversions. Just point me in the direction of those 'Vong bastards."

[PairO'Dice Lost]

"The medcenter is over there," the General says, waving a hand at the converted office buildings, "though there aren't many casualties to examine. Most of our KIA troops couldn't be retrieved--to do that, we'd have to send more soldiers into melee range of the Vong, and our scouts have had enough trouble escaping after being wounded as it is. If you think it'll help you figure out how to take out the Vong, though, I can tell the medics to expect you; they've had too many wounded to deal with to try to research anything or run many tests."

[RandomLunatic]

Thanas chuckled over the comms. "I had something a bit... larger scale in mind.

"Doesn't sound like the General knows much. I'll go look at the wounded while you officer types can figure out how to pull this off."

Then he switched to the external loudspeaker. "I would appreciate that."

[Jallorn]

Realizing no plan or strategy was forthcoming from the more Imperial of the team after a moment or two, Velin took charge, Thanas, right? Go see what you can learn and let us know how long you think it would take to get useful information. In the meantime, we can start planning an assault. I want to see all the data you have on their initial assault, I'm going to see what I can learn about their strategy, since their tactics are still out of reach. Lieutenant Wren, I'd love your help with that, Alstair and Apprentice Varon, you two should look over what forces the General is willing to commit to a distraction. Preferably a full assault team at least. While the rest of you draw their attention, without overextending yourselves, I'll sneak in with a couple of the General's best scouts and see if we can withdraw any valuable information. With any luck, we'll get some info and do some damage at the same time.

[RandomLunatic]

Not being in the chain of command, Velin just got a nod and a curt "Right," before Thanas about-faced and headed for the medical center.

[Battleship789]

Still thinking about the armor that was shown in the hologram, Alstair glances over at Velin after the communication, then shrugs his shoulders: "Sounds good enough to me. That plan fits our mission parameters. What do you think, Apprentice?"

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Main Group

The General's shoulders sag with relief when one of the legendarily-skilled Imperial Special Forces agents takes charge of the situation. You have to give him credit for holding out this long, really--an Outer Rim world in the safe, protective Empire usually has nothing worse to deal with than a few pirates and smugglers, and the Yuuzhan Vong are far out of the league of any officer on Sernpidal. "Yes, yes, that would work marvelously. I'll put all of our forces at your disposal. We have almost two hundred militia at this base, a squad of AT-STs, and two squadrons of airspeeders."

General Aluth waves a hand in annoyance at the limited numbers. "We have about the same complement in each of the other five temporary bases. We started with a good four hundred militia, two AT-ST squads, and four air squadrons, plus a handful of obsolete AT-TEs we've kept in working order since the Jedi Rebellion, but the Vong took most of that out in the first assault and we've had to be more conservative since then. All of our modern equipment and vehicles were stationed half a planet away to defend the capital in the event of a Vong invasion, and now that the Vong have invaded and we're evacuating, there aren't enough people left to get it all out here. They just had to land out here in the middle of nowhere, didn't they?"

He hands his datapad over to a technician to connect to a nearby holoprojector and waves you over to it. "What is it exactly that you'd like to know about the first assault?" he asks. "I can just play you the holorecording of the battle stitched together from a series of helmet cams, but if you're looking for something specific we can narrow that down some."

To answer Battlefield's question in the OOC, a squad of ground forces is a group of 9 and a squadron of air forces is a group of 12, so they have 200 troops, 18 AT-STs, and 48 airspeeders at each base (1200/108/288 total, with some travel time involved) and you brought 9 stormtroopers with you.

Thanas

The doors hiss open as you enter the makeshift "medcenter." One of the aides, notified of your visit in advance, welcomes you in and shows you to the area where the wounded are being treated. As the General said, the wounded lying on cots or floating in bacta tanks are few compared to the number of casualties; for every wounded soldier carried from the cots to the tanks for a quick dip, two or three die from their injuries while they wait. Those soldiers that you can see have discolored blotches on their skin, bits of greyish material that sort of resemble shrapnel lodged in their skin, and other unusual injuries you haven't really seen before.

One of the 2-1B medical droids approaches you and introduces itself in its calm vocabulated voice: "Good afternoon, Agent Thanas. I am 2-1B-A18, currently specialized in triage, diagnosis, battlefield surgery, projectile extraction, and limb replacement. I have been instructed to share with you any and all data you wish to view about our patients and their conditions, at any level of detail with which you are comfortable. What is it that you would like to know?"

[Jallorn]

Primarily, I would like to see how their individual soldiers function in their squads, and how their entire army operates as a whole strategic unit. These qualities will tell me the most about the enemy in the shortest amount of time.

[RandomLunatic]

Thanas spared a quick glance at whatever medical equipment was running, and not liking most of the readings.

"What's the story with all these skin discolorations?" he asked the twoonebee, moving over to take a closer look at a patient exhibiting one of the more extreme examples. "Some kind of NBC attack? And are you keeping charts?"

((The Bioscanner's description indicates diagnosing ailments is Know(Life Sciences), so that is what I will take 10 on for 28.))

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Main Group

"Right away, Agent," the general says with a nod to one of the technicians, who taps on her datapad and brings up a static holo on the projector. It takes some effort to make out the details in the holo, given that it comes from a monochrome portable holocam, but the scene appears to be that of an attack at twilight in mountainous terrain, with Human and Sernpidalian soldiers hiding behind trees near the holocam operator and some fuzzy humanoid figures a short distance away. "This is from two days ago, the day after they landed, right after dawn--we hoped to try to surprise and capture some of them by going on the offensive then, but...well...you'll see."

He presses a button and the holo jitters into motion. The soldiers nearby flash hand signals to coordinate themselves, then with a shout they launch their ambush. A salvo of crimson blaster bolts flies from the tree line towards the fuzzy figures, who are revealed by the harsh light of the bolts to be Yuuzhan Vong warriors clad in the black armor you saw before. The warriors are quick to duck for cover, and what few blaster bolts connect seem to be mostly absorbed by the black armor. One of the Humans yells something indistinct about powered armor--the audio on this holo is as poor-quality as the video--and several troopers lob ion grenades, which explode in a crackling blue shower of energy to no apparent effect.

The volley of grenades is answered by a volley of projectiles from the Vong. A dozen soldiers drop in an instant as what appear to be spears and throwing knives punch through their plasteel armor from over twenty paces away, and more are killed as the Vong warriors rush in to attack in melee. Only two of the warriors are killed in the rush, neither of which cry out in pain or otherwise react, and the rest quickly reach the ten or so surviving soldiers and commence slaughtering them. All the warriors are scarred or deformed somehow on their faces and hands, the only anatomy visible beneath the armor, and this scarring would appear to correspond to rank or skill somehow: the two warriors who died had fairly smooth faces, while the warrior with the fastest movements and most casualties inflicted looks like he got into a fistfight with a nexu and won.

The holo ends with the holocam operator turning away from the battle and frantically running away; he or she was the only survivor. The last image of the Vong visible before the General freezes it again is what on a Human would signify a triumphant, exhilarated smile.

As far as you can tell, the Yuuzhan Vong small-squad tactics consist of some combination of "run heedlessly at enemy forces and trust to their armor to protect them" and "do what they can to scare the poodoo out of enemies." There was very little evidence of maneuvering, advanced tactics, or even self-preservation in the rush, though they were obviously competent with their weapons. From what you've seen here, you guess that the General's earlier observation that the warriors were poorly-trained was incorrect, and due more to a disdain for "primitive" melee weapons than to a good tactical assessment; the Vong warriors do take several hits to kill each soldier in the holo, but those attacks follow a pattern of limb strike, limb strike, gut strike, neck strike (or some small variation on that) and are accomplished in just a few seconds--the attack pattern of a warrior who wants to cripple his enemies physically and psychologically and let him slowly and painfully bleed to death, and who is toying with his foes rather than taking them seriously.

"That's the best-quality holo we have, other engagements are just more of the same. We don't have anything on their army as a whole, since we've only ever engaged them at the squad level...the, ah, the troops tend to die before they get to larger groups." He shuts down the holoprojector with a bit of an embarrassed throat-clearing cough. "Against these Yuuzhan Vong, it looks like we're in the position of the old Rebel Alliance: out-gunned, out-skilled, disorganized, completely in the dark, and destined to lose. Unless the Empire has some sort of double-agent in the Vong ranks, Skywalker-style, then...well, I'm mixing up my metaphors, there, but essentially you're our only hope here."

Thanas

"As it seems you are familiar with medical terminology, I will explain the results in beginner-intermediate detail. Please tell me if you would like me to increase or decrease the level of precision in my explanations," says 2-1B-A18 in his near-monotone. "The dermal discoloration is indeed the result of a biochemical agent, specifically a neurotoxin which appears similar in composition and effects to that of the Latrodectus liagrekae spider of Dantooine, but significantly more potent. The primary symptoms are blindness, occurring within seconds after exposure, followed by excruciating pain in the victim."

The medical readouts bear out the droid's explanation. The closest patient's display shows that the patient is blind, has been suffering from pain and muscle spasms for nearly seventeen hours, exhibits signs of low blood pressure and low blood oxygen content, and extensive nerve damage. "This patent," A18 continues, noticing your interest in the patient's readouts, "is currently second in line for bacta treatments. His suffering is quite unfortunate, but there are more severely injured patients ahead of him in the queue, as the seventeen patients exposed to the toxin thus far who were not able to be treated in time have survived an average of nineteen decimal eight zero hours and my estimate is that there is a ninety-six decimal four three percent chance of complete recovery as long as treatment is initiated before the eighteen hour mark. Now, please observe the next patent, Agent Thanas."

The droid points to another patient lying in an adjacent bed. Looking closely, you notice that the discoloration is slightly different in this one--darker, more patchy, less irregular--and that this one isn't twitching like the other one. "This patient was exposed to a very similar toxin, definitely derived from an animal of the same genus if not the same species." The patient is completely paralyzed, not even moving his eyes to look at you, and his chest is barely moving. He is hooked up to a dialysis machine which is attempting to filter a numbing agent from his bloodstream while he waits for bacta treatment, with little success. "This variation on the toxin induces severe acute numbness rather than blindness, but after that it proceeds to eventual lung paralysis, brain damage, and death as the first variation does. Where the first variation is delivered topically and later absorbed," A18 explains as he points out pairs of puncture wounds covering the patient's arms and neck, "this variation is delivered directly to the bloodstream via sharp-force trauma."

A18 reaches over to a nearby table and retrieves a datapad. "The records for all patients, including those cured, those in treatment, those waiting, and those deceased, are contained in this datapad, organized by your choice of type of injury, species, rank, and time and date of admittance. You may access the data as you wish while you are here, or download it all if you wish to share it with the other agents. Analyses are currently in progress on the medical mainframe, however if you have any particular queries regarding the data those regressions can be inserted into the queue at a higher priority."

[Jallorn]

I'm not sure who you underestimate worse, us or the Rebellion, Velin doesn't mention how close the Empire actually came to losing its dominance in the galaxy, most people aren't supposed to even suspect that fact. Instead, he jumps back into tactics, They are confident in their defenses, but they aren't invulnerable. We should be able to use that. trick them, draw them into ambushes and use their own courage against them. Shoot them enough and they will die. Droids would make a good forward force as well, since the more localized trauma of physical projectiles tend to be somewhat less effective on them. It would also remove a lot of the fear and panic that seems an integral part of the enemy's strategy.

[Battleship789]

"I agree." Alstair says through his armor speakers, "They seem far too reliant on that armor, charging in like that after only one exchange with ranged weaponry. Based on their tactics, luring them into traps and ambushes should be very easy and effective, at least until their commander changes tactics. Focusing fire with blasters on a single enemy troop at a time might be necessary because of the armor but grenades and anti-personnel mines would probably work well due to the nature of personal body armor. How many grenades and mines do you currently have, General?"

[PairO'Dice Lost]

All but Thanas

"Mines? Not many," the General answers, "but we have plenty of ion and stun grenades at the local police station; they stock up on disabling grenades for riot control, but this area is so peaceful that they're never really used." He waves a hand at one of the converted buildings. "We have some fragmentation and cryoban grenades in the armory, but not nearly as many as the other types.

"As for droids..." He pauses, pondering. "We don't have any military droids that we could outfit with the usual gear; the only humanoid droids we have that we can spare are protocol droids, and we can't really add armor and weapons to our probe droids. But your plans for ambushes are good ones; we tried an ambush, but like you said, fear was a major problem--our troops broke and ran when the warriors who escaped the trap started getting the upper hand and they let the Vong troops recover and regroup. If you Agents want to modify some droids and take them out there to ambush some Vong, that would probably be a lot better and faster than trying to train our troops up to a passable level."

[Jallorn]

We can't win this war on our lonesome. We'll do our part, but you should plan to have your men adapt their strategies. I advise digging pit traps and treating them as minefields. I could do some work on some of your protocol droids, but that does keep me out of the fight while I'm working, and the sooner we get that intel the better.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

"They can do that," Aluth nods. "Do you people want to go infiltrate the Vong first and do your Special Forces thing while the troops train up? It could take a while, and if you get the intel you need now that can help you with preparations for the actual assault later. At this point every minute counts; the Vong could launch an all-out attack at any time."

[RandomLunatic]

"I see, Thanas said, finally turning away from the cot after a long moment. This was not helping. Focus. "Better give me the advanced version of what's going on. I suppose it's too much to hope for a stock of antidote for creature who's natural habit is a hundred-something parsecs away, isn't it? Have you tried anything besides bacta and dialysis?"

Then he spent a moment going over the data on his pad, taking a look at what results lab testing had dug up so far, and asking 2-1B-A18 for clarification or explanation as needed.

So basically, I am going to try and delve into the poison. Not sure what rolls are involved, but I will take 10 on 'em.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Thanas

"Certainly, Agent Thanas. We have attempted treatment with both bacta and kolto, in the hopes that the latter substance would prove more effective where the former had failed. Dialysis was ineffective, as was osmotic extraction, though chemical neutralization proved somewhat effective, given that...."

2-1B-A18 goes on to explain in exacting detail precisely what treatments were applied, what tests were run and what the results were, lethality and impairment statistics, and all the other information they have on the neurotoxins.

A 28 Treat Injury and 26 Knowledge (Life Sciences) will get you plenty of info.

The two toxins (which as I'm sure you've guessed OOC are amphistaff venoms) both have fairly similar characteristics. They attack at +4 vs. Fort, deal one die of ongoing damage, and move targets -1 or more persistent steps on the condition track. The paralytic neurotoxin renders a poisoned target flat-footed until cured, while the debilitating neurotoxin renders a poisoned target blinded and slowed until cured.

Everyone Else

No sooner has the general mentioned a possible Yuuzhan Vong assault than an aide runs up to your group, datapad in hand and commlink pressed to one ear. You can hear dim shouting and static coming through the earpiece, the sounds of a pitched battle. "Sir, Patrol Four says we have incoming," he says grimly. "Their speeders were shot down and the survivors are all wounded. The incoming force consists of..." he listens hard, concentrating on the transmission "ten, at least ten--no, twenty, at least twenty soldiers and some sort of large armored beast. And--what? Say again, Patrol Four?"

The aide flinches as one last loud bang comes through the comm before the channel fills with static. "So much for Patrol Four," says the aide, resigned. "If we keep losing soldiers at this rate...." His voice trails off as he hands General Aluth the datapad, salutes, and returns to his station. "This isn't good, not at all," says the general after studying the datapad intensely for a few moments. "Patrol Four is our closest one. If they were taken out, that means the Vong are just under half an hour away--and that's if they don't have any sort of technology to move their soldiers here faster. If they have some sort of creature with them that we haven't seen before, who knows what else those primitives might have up their sleeves? Even without that, they've gotten far too close for comfort. Condition one, everyone, battle stations!"

The general's expression is tense as every glowpanel in sight turns from white to red and Signal Zerek-Osk, the standard Imperial warning signal for imminent enemy contact, appears on datapads and terminals throughout the camp. Troops hoist their weapons and begin congregating into squads and technicians start moving delicate equipment inside buildings and erecting barriers. "Anything you can do to help..." asks Aluth nervously, looking like he expects the legendary Imperial Intelligence Agents with him to win the upcoming battle single-handedly.

[Jallorn]

Velin nods, Research is all well and good, but at some point, battle must be entered. Now is as good a time as many others.

[Battleship789]

As the aid runs up to the General, Alstair turns on his sensor pack and starts watching for signs of the enemy on his HUD. "General, is there any terrain nearby that will facilitate an ambush? If we can crush this force, it will go a long way towards boosting morale, along with gaining vital intel."

[PairO'Dice Lost]

"There are several areas that could help. The Vong are off that way," General Aluth replies, pointing northeast, "and there's a forest between us and them that's fairly dense. Over that way," he points north-northeast, "there's a ridge overlooking the most direct route here that the Vong would probably take. Both are fairly defensible, it's just a question of whether you want to be far away or up close. And of course this area is full of hills if you want to bury mines and such."