SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread II

[Kartr_Kana]

Gone for the weekend will post more when I get back.

[Zor]

Those Space Mongols sound something like the Barbarians from the Barbarian Wars in the Commonwealth's backstory.

Zor

[Steve]

Anyone in the invasion, feel free to post tidbits as you please on the Fall of Pendleton.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh right, that would be around 4000 years in the past, yeah. For a second I thought we were still in the 3000s.

Around 2800-3000 it is, then!

Uh... that would be 400 to 600 years in the past; we are in the year 3400.

I mistakenly put another zero.

Is there a reason that general is wearing the Imperial Eagle on his crotch?

...

It's on his jacket you dimwitted blind little...

Fin, that eagle on his jacket is over his dick.

Anyone in the invasion, feel free to post tidbits as you please on the Fall of Pendleton.

Except Shep and I, I take it?

Right, we're on our way home. I guess we can celebrate on our way back.

Those Space Mongols sound something like the Barbarians from the Barbarian Wars in the Commonwealth's backstory.

Zor

What're they like?

[Simon_Jester]

Anyone in the invasion, feel free to post tidbits as you please on the Fall of Pendleton.

*Ahem*

You just did it too, Steve:

By the stroke of midnight, 26 January 2400 General Standard Time, the organized fighting on Pendleton ceased. The invasion was done; Pendleton was lost, at the mercy of her invaders. The war, such as it was, had ended.

Anyway. We really need to get Akhlut in here. The T-Rex Marines are just too good an opportunity to pass up.

I have my own ideas for such a piece, but I can't do anything about it till Sunday at the earliest.

[Shroom Man 777]

Unit-7 will be back.

[RogueIce]

You just did it too, Steve:

By the stroke of midnight, 26 January 2400 General Standard Time, the organized fighting on Pendleton ceased. The invasion was done; Pendleton was lost, at the mercy of her invaders. The war, such as it was, had ended.

I think he meant 2400 as in midnight.

[MKSheppard]

So I can't wait for PENDLETONRAQ to start.

By your own admission steve; this has happened six to nine times before; with the Pendeltonians falling back on dispersed resistance.

So I wonder how much of the pendletonian military inventory can actually be counted.

Granted, a lot of heavy stuff was destroyed in the initial strikes; but there's going to be a huge discrepancy between the stuff known/estimated to be destroyed, and what the Anglicians will end up counting as left in military depots -- entire battalion equipment loads falling off a truck and disappearing to hidden hides etc.

[Shroom Man 777]

COINing an entire planet is going to be fucking hard, I think. Unless you do the Solarian Sovereignty, Byzantine Imperium, or Imperial Bragulan-approved methods. Or the Shepistani ones.

[Lonestar]

Dominionite ones.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh shit. Now that's how you do it.

[Lonestar]

I'm thinking that if the annexation goes through, the Grand Dominion may send "Humanitarian Convoys" to Pendleton.

[Shroom Man 777]

Having the Pendletonians believe in deranged religious prophecies regarding the Coming of the Shep may resolve some of these issues though.

After all, slavers are a superstitious cowardly lot!

[Steve]

It was a typo.

And the crux of Pendletonian resistance has always been more along the lines of how the South resisted Reconstruction; armed gangs (and BOSS operatives operating as assassins and guerrillas) murdering freed slaves, "carpetbaggers", or collaborators that cooperated with the Anglians and encouraging (and intimidating) everyone to vote for anti-Anglian, pro-slavery candidates in municipal elections, thus denying the Anglian occupational authorities political and democratic legitimacy and forcing them to either accept "the will of the people" or to dissolve the aforementioned municipal governments and having to take up their duties, increasing the work load and costs of the occupation. Much easier to kill an unarmored civilian in his home or in the street than it is to kill a power-armored soldier walking along on his routine.

Not that the Pendletonians never attempted killings of Anglian occupation troops, they just try to do such in situations where they can be guaranteed kills for the risks: at their most spectacular Pendletonian insurgents have committed bombings of locales used for off-duty recreation by occupation authorities. It's just that Pendleton could always rely on the Gap to be the real motivator for Anglian withdrawal (the logistical issues involved excaberated, as Jester posted earlier IC, by Pendletonian vessels operating as pirates and fomenting other pirates into activity as well), so all they had to do was concentrate their energies at undermining and blocking Anglian attempts at reforms on the planetary society and low-level governance, wait for the government in Westminster to get tired of the relatively high costs associated with occupying a single planet of insignificant strategic or economic value, then have things set up so that as soon as the Anglians withdrew they could bring the planetary government back and slowly restore their peculiar institution (slowly to prevent immediate re-discovery).

Then the cycle would begin anew; slavery gets re-established, the Pendletonians begin to see a need for more slave labor to assist economic growth/regrowth (since every Anglian occupation does result in liberated slaves moving away), they start reconnecting to the black market and its sentient trafficking network, and eventually the Anglians discover it and the entire suppression process renews itself.

We'll see how things differ this time. Because this time, the governor won't be some reluctant Tory administrator or ideologically-motivated crusader; it shall be Sir William Tarkington. And fear will bring the local communities in line......

Of course, Pendletonian insurgency may also shift tracks too, and begin becoming more violent and bold than they usually have. Though on the same token abolitionists and ex-slaves may be more bold as well, instead of easily cowed into submission by an aggressive terror campaign. Shep may have been more accurate with "PENDLETONRAQ" than he initially thought.

[MKSheppard]

Much easier to kill an unarmored civilian in his home or in the street than it is to kill a power-armored soldier walking along on his routine.

Not really. This is the future as well. The same SUPER SPACE RPG that can be fired into a abolitionist's house to blow out the first floor; can also be used to blow up a power armored soldier and wound/damage his comrades.

[Steve]

Much easier to kill an unarmored civilian in his home or in the street than it is to kill a power-armored soldier walking along on his routine.

Not really. This is the future as well. The same SUPER SPACE RPG that can be fired into a abolitionist's house to blow out the first floor; can also be used to blow up a power armored soldier and wound/damage his comrades.

And if Pendleton had those in easy quantity it would be a threat, indeed.

[Steve]

Uh, Shep? I announced Anglian plans to annex Pendleton back before the Coalition even began to form.

I guess the thought of getting to kill Astarians again made your people so light-headed they forgot to read the rest of the reports?

Anyway, this is half the fun, since A-Wing indicated the ESR would possibly attempt to block Anglian plans for annexation. The diplomatic exchanges to come shall be interesting.

[MKSheppard]

And if Pendleton had those in easy quantity it would be a threat, indeed.

Come the fuck on -- RPGs were so prevalent in Somalia and Iraq that they were fucking used as antiaircraft weapons in simple volley fire.

To get a brand new RPG-7, it costs $500, and to buy a brand new RPG round it costs $300 bucks. And this doesn't even take into account the fact that there would have been trillions produced of the earlier model RPG grenades that would be cheap and easy surplus for only $75-100.

[Shroom Man 777]

Your COIN operations will be easier if the Astarians, being a superstitious cowardly lot, believe that the return of the Shepistanis will coincide with the coming of biblical plagues - just like how in their holy books, the Shepistanis of old brought with them horrible plagues that ravaged old Astaria. Thus, fearing for their lives and not wishing to die of agonizing shroompox outbreaks, they start killing themselves en masse and stuff. Put bags over their heads and huff carbon monoxide.

Don't tell them the Shepistanis have left orbit.

[Darkevilme]

I think Shep's idea is that the Pendletons planned ahead and stockpiled these weapons for the fight against the anglicans, which happens every other generation it seems. It's doubtful they could of gotten them in during the lead up to the battle with the gap blockaded, at least not in significant numbers. But with things like the Chamarrans having previously not been very picky about buyers when selling surplus armaments and the pendletons having enough cash to afford what for a shithole is quite a significant anti orbit/ anti air defence grid...yeah, i predict pain and suffering and i'm glad i'm not annexing the place.

[Shroom Man 777]

Bragulan mil-spec gear is also readily available in Wild Space markets. We are, after all, like Space Soviets. A Bragulan equivalent of the AK-47 is a B-11 K-bolter, its rounds are high-velocity armor-piercing railgun slugs that can pierce through power armor (Solarian Marine armor) and are coated in a highly corrosive toxic molecular acid called K-residue that makes xenomorph blood from Aliens look like nail polish remover.

[Darkevilme]

The chamarran's just needed to fund their rapid expansion and build up of their nation somehow, terraforming doesnt come cheap. So we sold guns, lots of guns. Chamarran beam rifles are probably available to the Pendletons and like the bragulan b11 they were designed to kill a man in power armour.

[MKSheppard]

A Bragulan equivalent of the AK-47 is a B-11 K-bolter, its rounds are high-velocity armor-piercing railgun slugs that can pierce through power armor (Solarian Marine armor) and are coated in a highly corrosive toxic molecular acid called K-residue that makes xenomorph blood from Aliens look like nail polish remover.

You can get around the "designed for bragulan" problem by simply mounting them on wheeled carriages like SOVIET MACHINE GUNS; and I'm sure that the Pendletonians knowing that they'd be using untrained conscipts, spent a little extra to buy the ammunition that had 1 out of every 3 rounds be GUIDED HOMING ROUNDS that would automatically home in on a preset threat.

Imagine a B-11 K-Bolter firing a guided shell that automatically recognized Anglician power armor; then aimed itself towards the armor's faceplate; scoring a HEAD SHOT, and then deploying it's K-Residue acid.

[PeZook]

I figured Pendletonians, slow learners that they are, would do the incredibly obvious thing and stockpile munitions in hidden depots for decades, using sources such as amoral arms manufacturers and Bragulan FREEDOM FIVE YEAR PLANS to gather an obscene amount of heavy weapons.

Probably why their resistance during stand-up fighting was so light. All the good stuff was hidden away well before the invasion even became an issue, and the entire army would be organized as a guerilla force.

Poland has a similar, though less extreme system in place. All military units are trained in guerilla warfare and have procedures established for continuing a war well after major operations have ceased. The only thing we lack are pre-positioned ammo stockpiles, but there are enough unused AKs in army warehouses to arms a whole lot of insurgents

[Shroom Man 777]

The B-11 has been in service for centuries, so it's probably so ubiquitous that there are human-portable versions around. Like, K-bolter carbines for baby Bragulan cubs could be popular since they're light enough for humans to wield.