[OW] The Mountainbreakers (Data/Characters)

[Mojake]

 C Company - 5^th Platoon - 2^nd Squad 

THE MOUNTAINBREAKERS

-  8^th Miradoran Pioneer Regiment "Mirador Rooks" of the Imperial Guard  -

 

 

"Sacrifice is the nature of service to the God-Emperor:

Labourers offer up their toil, Priests pledge of their faith, Guardsmen give their lives."

- Scrivener Cellivar Gehan.

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Dramatis Personae

 

C-5-2 Squad Members:

• Sergeant Tekolotl "Tek" Cervantes [@Necronaut]
• (Acting) Corporal Stormtrooper Conrad "Blackjack" Thorne [@Mazer Rackham]
• Trooper Cal Molina [@Lysimachus]
  • Trooper Roland [Comrade]
• Trooper Pridbor "Por" [@Trokair]
  • Trooper Jarrow [Imaginary Comrade]
• Trooper Max Rockatansky [@A.T.]
• Trooper Maks [@Machine God]
• Trooper Althus "Doc" Culvain [@Lord_Ikka]
  • Trooper Cutter [Comrade]
• Trooper [@BadgersinHills]

Squad Logistics Rating: 10

 

Other Characters:

• Regiment Command
  • Colonel Matric "Landslide" Salazar
  • Adjutant Lucas Garnica
• C Company Command
  • Major Hanna Alvarez
• 5th Platoon
  • Lieutenant Aric Saavedra; 5^th platoon CO, C-5-1 command squad leader
  • Sergeant Eduard Ixcara; C-5-3 squad leader 
  • Sergeant Hektor "Two-Toes" Vidal; C-5-4 squad leader

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Honoured Dead

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Mirabor III

 

Home World: Mirador III

System: Mirador

Sub-Sector: Josian Reach

Sector: Calixis

Segmentum: Obscurus

Population: 25,000,000
Capital: Ladanta
Founded: 303.762M.40
Class: Mu, (μ-class) Frontier (Originally Feral, re-classified after Compliance)

Tithe Grade: Solutio Particular
Tithe Aestimare: C600, mainly agricultural, but production value low, as population sparse.
Topography: Highly diverse; featuring rugged mountains, active volcanoes, fertile valleys, extensive lowlands, cooler highlands retreating from the equatorial band, and low temperatures approaching the central highland peaks
Produce:  Maize, vari-beans, tomato, vanilla, a unique comestible called xzhocolatal - a mild stimulant and sweet alternative to recaf beans or leaves
Natives:

• Prohibited mutants (Homo sapiens variatus) hunted to near-extinction by Imperial settlers
• Jungle-dwelling sanctioned mutants (Homo sapiens minimus) conscripted to serve as hunters and guides
• Unsophisticated agricultural city-states of sanctioned mutants (Homo sapiens gigantus) built similarly to the Petén style of ancient Terra with a reliance on ouslite and volcanic glass, conscripted for labour

Notable Fauna: Primarily Sauropoda 
Notable Flora: Continent-spanning plains of pampas grass 
 

Imperial Guard Regiments:

• 2nd Brontian Longknives (original settlers)
• 1st Miradoran Pioneer Regiment
• 2nd Miradoran Pioneer Regiment
• 3rd Miradoran Pioneer Regiment
• 4th Miradoran Pioneer Regiment
• 5th Miradoran Pioneer Regiment
• 6th Miradoran Pioneer Regiment
• 7th Miradoran Pioneer Regiment
• 8th Miradoran Pioneer Regiment

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Rules & Expectations

 

Spoiler

1. GM posting frequency of 2-3 days. I would expect players to do a narrative-progressing post every 48 hours. If 48 hours has passed and I'm writing up a post, I'll assume your character is acting in line with their latest action. If we're in combat and 48 hours have passed without you posting, other PCs can jump ahead of non-posters' initiatives.
2. RAW as per OW, HotE and SoH sourcebooks and the OW errata unless agreed otherwise with the GM.
3. Please track your own ammunition and sustenance, drama also comes from running out of resources!
4. Once a roll is made and the scene has moved on, it can't be changed, even if something has been forgotten.
5. PVP can only happen with agreement from all parties involved.
6. Players can make a call (in the OOC thread) for other players to receive small XP rewards for exceptional roleplaying - awarded with GM alignment.
7. Trust-based dice rolling will be used, unless specified otherwise.
8. Logistics tests are made for the whole squad at once and can't be repeated unless some circumstance is altered.

 

Regiment Rules & Equipment

Spoiler

Commanding Officer: Phlegmatic
Regiment Type: Line Infantry
Doctrines:

• Die Hards
• Hardened Fighters
• Sappers
• Snipers

Drawbacks: The Few

Main Weapon:

• Longlas

Favoured Weapons:

• Meltagun
• M34 Autocannon

Universal Standard Kit:

• One uniform
• One set of poor weather gear
• One M36 lasgun and four charge packs
• One mono-knife or one Common melee weapon
• One suit of Imperial Guard flak armour
• One rucksack or sling bag
• One set of basic tools
• One mess kit and one water canteen
• One blanket and one sleep bag
• One rechargeable lamp pack
• One grooming kit
• One set of cognomen tags or equivalent identification
• One primer or instructional handbook
• Combat sustenance rations, two weeks’ supply
• Two frag grenades and two krak grenades
• One lascutter

Addtional Equipment:

• Common Armour upgraded to Best Flak Armour
• Microbead
• Chrono
• Laspistol Sidearm
• Drop Harness

Edited 5 hours ago by Mojake

[Machine God]

Maks

 

Before he had set out on the annual 'Journey to the High-Castle' he had heard a word spoken by Maria. He'd heard it before but the it was strongest this year. Maria spoke the word whenever she moved the trees, she said 'Piners' so he had asked and asked the Elders of the Ffolk if he could make the Journey.

 

They could see that Maks had purpose, that he'd received a calling from on high and they weren't going to try and persuade him away. His clan was burgeoning and they could bear to send him away.

 

It was an annual pilgrimage of the Ffolk, in the high summer the elders and strong of the Ffolk went to the High-Castle. A tall ziggurat of stones stood high above the eastern plains no one could remember why they did it other than it was Tradition and the Ffolk were pious in the teachings.

 

He'd been told about the place by elders and what to expect. There was a door in the stone, but the inside was dark. The head Elder presented his Tags, he laid them on a smooth flat rock next to the door and spoke ancient words to the door.

 

 

Then a loud voice boomed out from within...

 

 

[Lysimachus]

Name Calvin ‘Cal’ Molina
Specialty: Weapons Specialist
Demeanour: Lateral Thinker

 

Appearance: Early twenties, tanned skin, dark eyes and long hair, light stubble, fit and healthy if a little lean. Wears mountain camo fatigues, flak armour, and a leather duster, all faded and slightly scruffy. Carries long-las across his back.

 

Comrade: Private Roland Romero 

Demeanour: Sarcastic 

 

Appearance: Early forties, bald, sour faced.

 

 

***

 

From: Sgt Hektor Vidal
To: Major Hanna Alvarez
CC: Lt. Aric Saavedra
Re: Corporal Calvin Molina

 

***

 

Ma’am, Sir,

 

As requested, here are my thoughts about Corporal Molina… if my words give any offence, please forgive it as an old soldier's lack of graces?

 

Calvin, ‘Cal’ to most of us, is a decent Guardsman… I believe with the potential to be a lot more. He came down from his great-grandaddy's cabin up in the high hills when last recruiting time came around - wearing the old man's flak under his duster, and carrying his old long-las. Cal did good in basic training, and since too. Not the biggest bruiser, but he's quick, solid under fire, and a much better than average shot.

 

Cal's a quiet lad, but he's still got a… confidence… to him? Keeps to himself, mostly, and seems pretty happy with things that way. Gets on well enough with the rest of the boys, though, and doesn't cause any fuss, but he's a loner at heart.

 

He might have made a good scout? He can live off the land as well as any of us, and he's usually got a better than fair sense of where he is… but in truth I don't like the idea of leaving him to his own devices for that long? 

 

…and coming from skirmishers like us Miradorans, that's saying something!

 

The trouble is, Cal tends to make his own decisions, without thinking about wider squad or Company tactics. He calls it ‘initiative’, but it's pretty out of the box stuff…? But his little plans seem to have mostly worked out ok for him. One or two have been solid wins - remember that ambush business on patrol with Ixcara's mob on Ravalo VII?

 

Right or lucky, it's helped him avoid much in the way of punishment for not following his orders more closely… but I don't know how long that can last? If some Commissar comes in and sees him going his own way…?

 

Cal's target practice scores are plenty good enough to earn him the position of Gunner, but that's not the main reason I'm putting him up for the melta gun spot in Tek's squad. I'm hoping that carrying the heater for them will force him to work with his teammates rather than off to do his own thing - to learn to fight with them rather than just alongside them.

 

If he can do that, he'll be an asset to the ‘breakers and to the 8th. If he doesn't… he might get them all killed.

 

Poor Tek. Still… if he can wrangle two Ogryns and that stunty thief, maybe Cal's in the right place?

 

 

 

Addendum:

From: Lt. Aric Saavedra

To: Major Hanna Alvarez

 

Ma'am,

 

As you know, Hektor's a little rough around the edges, but he's no fool. I fully agree with his assessment of Molina.

 

With your approval, I'm assigning Private Romero from C-5-3 to act as his 'buddy'. Roland is another half decent soldier once the shooting starts, but tends to spend his time in-between snarking about whatever orders he gets given. I'm hoping that he'll pick holes in whatever bright ideas Molina comes up with, maybe make him think for a minute or two longer before he jumps in?

 

It's worth a try, right?

 

Aric

 

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Lysimachus

[Mazer Rackham]

Conrad ‘Blackjack’ Thorne

Soldier. Hero. Example. Those were the Schola's terms.

 

Murderer. Imposter. Rejected. That's what he said.

 

Antares IV was where he was forged, but not made. He had dim and distant memories of slender hands, and a lullaby, but that is all he could remember from before. Drill Abbott Yeager, he was the nursemaid and nemesis alike. Stuck for doing right, struck for doing wrong, Conrad learned the discipline of indifference to will, and the favour only of obedience.

 

‘Survival is not required, stupid boy! Only completion!’ Corporal punishment was then administered for his slowness on the uptake.

 

Completion. Sometimes that meant having a bag pulled over his head and being dragged from his bunk in the middle of the night, to be lashed to a chair and soaked with cold water to discover information about his Classmates. Yeager had drilled the Emperor and the need for vigilance into his brain with wicked, screw-hooks, but the streak required for Praefectus didn’t exist.

 

The Drill Abbott hadn’t liked that; brusquely beat him, and told him he was useless.

 

On his tenth birthday, Conrad proved him wrong, and killed another child in mock combat.

 

He didn’t even realise he’d done it. The boy just became a block of wood, eyes glazed, unmoving, and then he fell over. Conrad knew the lad was dead, just knew – and it was done by his hand, in a way he’d never been taught. For the first time, he pleased Yeager. It would not be the last time, because that night one of the children tried to escape, and Conrad’s job was to chase the reprobate through the halls in a bid to frighten and flush her out for catching and braining.

 

He found her. She was out on one of the parapets, the same one he had dallied using to get away the first time Yeager struck him without cause. The Academy was built into a rocky island thrust up from the middle of a lake. The planning needed to escape was nothing short of extraordinary – but the training and rigour placed it into their hands.

 

Drill Abbot Yeager was burly, strong, but he was also ageing, despite the rejuvenat treatments. He swung his mighty great-hammer at the girl readying her escape rope, and for the briefest second, he was unbalanced in the tight confines of the blunt stone parapet, and so, Conrad pushed.

 

The Abbot looked at Conrad in shock, and then admiration, before plummeting one-hundred and thirty yards to the frozen lake below. Silence, stillness of winter. They heard the crack of his fat body slamming down into crunching wetness.

 

The girl, maybe thirteen, gazed at him with something approaching gratitude, stepped out onto the wall in her bare feet, gently shuffling. She nodded once, smiled faintly, and then jumped after the tormentor, the rope lashed around her neck.

 

Another sharp crack graced the night. She had escaped.

 

He didn’t even pull her body up. She'd completed on her own terms. He respected that.

 

More route marches, heavier weights, more combat training. Hand-to-hand, firearms. Classes in linguistics, tactics, navigation - dropped off in the wilderness and forced to march over hill and dale and make the time or be executed for incompetence.

 

The Ordo Tempestus took an interest in him then – for the attributes noted by his masters, and the emotionless report of the absolute truth. His unorthodox fighting style in the rings and servitor contests had demonstrated his skill and aggression. They couldn’t know that each person he destroyed, and each servitor he wrecked bore Yeager’s face, etched there by Conrad’s own deep, smooth hatred.

 

At fifteen, he was subjected to the Trials in the Tempestus Apothecarion. Mind-altering composites, brain scrubbing to remove anything that had come before, anything but the Emperor. They couldn’t remove her, couldn’t remove all of it. He threw himself into his duties, where he learned not only how to survive, but to fight to Completion.

 

Killing. Anyone, anything. The Emperor commands it. The Emperor was his only father, and the Ordo was mother. His siblings were his Classmates, and yet all were expendable. Each crack of the lasgun was a snap of rope. Nineteen, and he was deployed in his first training operation. Heretics held hostages, and the Scions killed them all. Completion.

 

An Ork stronghold, complete with human slave labour. All dead. Completion.

 

Dark Eldar transport – nearly died on that one – full of prisoners bound for Commoragh. The Emperor answered their prayers and sent him. None reached the slave-pits, the ship sent tumbling down onto an inhabited planet, with the survivors of the hated xenos hunted to extermination. Completion.

 

Twenty-one years old, sixteen operations to his name, he gained induction to the 21st Antares Stormtrooper Cadre: The Blackjacks.

 

Neither favoured, nor scorned, but not of the Ordo – a Grenadier Regiment that needed replacements for an ongoing war, one of the Emperor’s many, and the small Ordo unit was badly in need of replacements itself. A new Class was inducted, and Conrad’s were rotated out. More trials, more training. Of the one-hundred and sixty-seven candidates, only twenty-eight filled his platoon. Conrad was the twenty-first; they described him as a lucky man, born for it.

 

Three years with that Stormtrooper Regiment; seventeen operations, in some bloody theatre or other, everything going well until Operation: Grim Jester. A combined ground and air assault, designed to crack open the nut of a rebel keep, the hardened shell, and the poisoned fruit within, in a war seven years old. The final kill was theirs.

 

Completion – or at least it would have been, only, the heretics were waiting, informed by a mole in the Crusade force that the Blackjacks and all their comrades were coming. The Operation faltered; the joke on the Imperials. Conrad's Valkyrie carrier was shot down almost at once, in a lethal crossfire of captured Hydra batteries, and the flight he was with suffered the same fate.

 

For six gruelling hours, the survivors of the 21^st Antares fought in the depths of a ravine blocked at one end by rocks, and at the other by an armoured spearhead. One after another, in almost rapid-fire succession, the others went down to lasfire, plasma blasts, even bloody great rocks, each landing with a dull, drill-abbot crunch.

 

Until…there were only five left; one of them their senior living officer – a lieutenant – and the last surviving pilot.

 

Conrad fought in the hull of the Valkyrie, sheltering from all the grenades, bullets and lasfire the enemy threw. He ran from position to position, firing, ducking, moving, firing, to trick the enemy into thinking there were more of the Blackjacks inside.

 

It's easy enough to pull the trigger on a dead-man's lasgun if the crater occupying his face didn’t bother you. Well, the soldier can't really be expected to aim it, can he?

 

At the last minute, as the final charge gathered to wipe out the survivors, he threw every grenade he could lay his hands on. Out of ammunition, he threw ration tins, bits of debris, bottles. He shouted, he swore, he prayed, he tired, but he didn't stop. In the end, a blast knocked him unconscious until dawn.

 

Completion. At last?

 

When he rose, he was greeted by the sight of broken enemies and friends alike. The Officer had died in the night, but the pilot lived, and would not shut up about how Conrad saved him. It was revealed he was the son of someone important in the Navy. They gave him a gallantry medal. He even shook the presenting General's hand. That ravine didn't even have a name, just another map code for a topographical feature of low importance. Another anonymous graveyard to the Imperium's wars.

 

People called him a hero, and his exploits preceded him, but he wished they did not.

 

How he wished, still.

 

Maybe the new Regiment, the Miradoran 8^th, would be better. He wasn’t flawed. That’s what they said. He just needed to be refreshed in purpose – couldn’t execute somebody’s favourite war hero just like that. No, better to shelve him somewhere, let him wither on the vine, and maybe produce an orphan the Schola could replace him with.

 

Maybe improve the model.

 

The Emperor was Father, the Ordo was Mother. Now he’d been abandoned – orphaned – again. He was just about ready to kill someone.

Sat in the transit lounge awaiting his redeployment, Conrad stroked the carapace helmet’s scuffed and scraped dome, fingers finding the embossed shapes of the etched cards, the unofficial sigil of the Regiment. The ten of clubs – the weapons of war, and the ace of spades, the ditch tool of the soldier.

 

Aces high.

 

Blackjack! Blackjack! Ready to attack!

 

Blackjack! Blackjack! Never turn our back!

 

Blackjack! Blackjack –

 

‘All dead in rubber sacks,’ he said aloud, blunt. It wasn’t part of the mantra, just a post-script. Post-mortem, now, perhaps. The call came that his transport was delayed, and cheered him up not a jot. He ignored the eyes of the greenhorns as they stared at his sable dress uniform and noticed the stressed kitbag, initial dismissal of a preening idiot suddenly gone to wariness by his scars, beaten kit, and steady manner. Then they saw the medal, and soon the process would start all over again.

 

Thank you for your service, Trooper. Let me get the door for you, Trooper.

 

Not their fault.

 

Not even when his smile of thanks was hollow – not even when all he could hear were the thunder of guns, the burning Valkyrie, and the snap of broken bones and split rocks. The irritating bloody peeping of ‘low battery’ from the lasguns…screaming the rallying call from hoarse, defiant, terrified throats…

 

Blackjack! Blackjack! BLACKJACK!

 

He started awake with an almighty jerk, right elbow thundering into the empty seat beside him. Breathing hard, he looked around, finding the soft brown eyes of a Sororitas Hospitaller. He looked down to see she had wisely kicked the only part of him not liable to lash out and kill her. Never wake a sleeping soldier by the shoulder. Stand back – and kick his boots.

 

'My apologies, Sister,' he managed. He felt cold air, smelled wet granite, heard the tense stretch of mouldy sisal. Conrad fought it off.

 

‘You were far away, I think. Are you with us now?’ she asked; or at least her mouth formed the words.

 

‘I don’t...I don't know.’ Desperately, he tried to sit up.

 

‘I think your bad dream…is over now? Recaf to help?’

 

He checked his chrono. He had an hour. With a nod, the last Blackjack joined her, if nothing else to keep the darkness away a little longer.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Mazer Rackham

[Trokair]

Pridbor  ‘Por’

 

Growing up in one of the specially fortified settlements that the Little Men provide for the great Ogryn Clans Pridbor had a happy childhood. Roaming the streets with cousins and other of his clan, engaging in friendly brawls with the youths of other clans, and unlike some of his peer group he even attended the weekly gathering when the Faith Speaker came down from the metal mountain of the Little Men, mostly for the stories admittedly, rather than the prayers. Wanting to impress the Faith Speaker Por spent many months trying to learn to read and write, an effort that came just a little too late as the Priest died of old age.

 

The younger Faith Speaker that came thereafter was too fervent for Por, no more stories of Him on Terra and the Deeds of Valour of the Saints, just prayers and sermons. However the bombastic bellowing that the younger Preacher favoured for his sermons carried favour with many of the other Ogryns.

 

When the call went out that the Little Men were raising Regiments from those living in the metal mountain to serve amongst the stars, Por along with others from the settlement Volunteered to go with them, forming an Auxiliary Cohort of 37 Ogryns, The Scathian XX Auxillia.

 

Por was disappointed to discover after all the difficult months of training and travelling in the great metal landers that they had been attached to a different Regiment and not the one that the Little Men of the metal mountain had raised. Nevertheless he did his Duty, followed Orders and fought the enemies of Him on Terra alongside these new people. Again and again.  

 

Some years later, long after he was the last Ogryn standing from the initial Cohort, after being transferred to yet another regiment, Por found that while they from a different place these new comrades had some cultural tenants in common. Por got on much better with them than any of the Little Men he had served with before. In particular an older Trooper, who, like that long ago Faith Speaker, was a good story teller. Filling and easing the long weeks aboard the great metal landers that flew between the places that the enemies where to be fought. Por stuck with Jarrow and his unit whenever he could, looking out for his friends. Through thick and thin.

 

Now he and Jarrow had been assigned to a new regiment and unit.  

 

 

---

 

They had been trudging through the camp for a while since disembarking from the great metal landers. An Officer with a clipboard had handed them an assignment slip and barked some directions. Directions that where entirely useless as far as Por could tell, they had stopped to ask for direction several times, but too little avail. He had to trust that Jarrow made more sense of the replies.

 

Por had been in many staging grounds before, but in this one the landers ferried the troops to a flat grassland plain, and then the camp was spread across several slopes into the mountains. It thus was some hours since they disembarked when they arrived at C Company Fifth Platoon second Squad’s Tent.

 

“Looking for a Sergeant Cer-van-tes,” Por sounded out the name with care, “Trooper Pridbor and Jarrow ...” Por trailed off looking to his right and left, then stepped back a bit so he could look back the way they had just come.

 

Turning back to Little Men that were gathered in front of second squad’s tent, Por restarted.  

 

“Trooper Por reporting for Duty, Trooper Jarrow will be here in a moment, maybe he has gone to find the quartermaster.”