This is the final battle with the Sathar.  As this is difficult to run online without all the counters, I will be making modifications as we go.  Please make sure your characters are returned to full health and decide what primary weapons will be used and ready.  A quick review of the inventory may be worthwhile.  Please make any character updates too.


You return to the Eorna, report that all races are cooperating, and the Eorna are pleased.  And just in time!


All that can be done has been done to prepare the planet for defense against the hideous worms. The initial reports arriving at the Eorna complex beneath the ruins of Volkos are good; the Eorna planetary defense batteries have kept the Sathar fleet at bay, and many of the Sathar shuttles have been destroyed attempting to land ground troops on the planet.

The successful landing of a large Sathar army has been detected. After scanning the planet, the Sathar advanced in the direction of Vokos. They should arrive in full battle array sometime tomorrow morning. They number at least 30,000 plus robots and other weapons!

Knowing the terrain better than anyone else, the Eorna determined that the best place to stop the Sathar drive is along the ancient abandoned road which runs along the east side of the dry canal toward Volkos. It is clear that if the Sathar penetrate the Eorna complex below Volkos, Volturnus is doomed.

The following are the Volturnus forces. They are brave but poorly armed.


Yourselves, with such weapons as you have gathered on Volturnus.

150 Eorna, armed with laser rifles, to be used as an elite skirmishing force. They also have some cybernetically controlled megasauruses.

4,000 Ul-Mor cavalry mounted on lopers and eager for battle.

12,000 Edestekai armed with pikes and spears.

6,000 Kurabanda armed with hang gliders. They are hidden in the ruins overlooking the battlefield. They are armed with bows and arrows and also with four fragmentation grenades each. The grenades were discovered by the Eorna in an old, long abandoned armory.

1,000 Mechanon combat robots.

You have no choice except to fight, as the Sathar are totally merciless and do not negotiate. You are outnumbered by an enemy better armed than yourselves.
The morning will decide the fate of a world, and probably your own destinies as well.

Some things to keep in consideration throughout the battles:


1) The battle will be four separate encounters.

2) At the beginning of any turn during any encounter except encounter number 4,
the player characters may call for a charge by their Ul-Mor reserves. The number of Ul-Mor available to charge will vary from 4 to 8, according to the Ul-Mor Charge Table:

Dice Roll   Number Of Ul-Mor Available
01-20        4
21-40        5
41-60        6
61-80        7
81-00        8

Note that this option may be used only once. If this option is used, deduct the number of Ul-Mor who charge during use of the option from the number available to charge in encounter number 4.

3) THE KURABANDA AIR ATTACK OPTION:
This option may be used only if the Volturnus forces succeed in destroying or capturing the automatic cannon in encounter number 1.

To use this option, the player characters may, at the beginning of any turn during any encounter except encounter number 1, call for the Kurabanda air attack. The Kurabanda will launch themselves from the tops of the ruins overlooking the battlefield and attempt to glide over enemy units, drop- ping hand grenades as they fly over. They will attempt to land behind the enemy units
and then open fire with their bows and arrows. Gliding Kurabanda will arrive over the encounter map 3 turns after being called for. They will move 50 meters on the map that turn, and land at the end of the move. They may drop their hand grenades over any one enemy counter their own counter passes over during their flight.

The turn after they land, the Kurabanda will be quite helpless, as they must remove their hang gliders and prepare their bows and arrows. A total of 8 Kurabanda will come when this option is used. These Kurabanda all have second level weapons skill with bows and thrown weapons.

Note that dropped grenades have the usual chances for scatter. Each Kurabanda drops four grenades all at once from a special pack. These are fragmentation grenades which will explode on impact.

4) The final outcome will be determined by using an algorithm and percentile roll based on the outcome of the 4 encounters.

As morning dawns, your forces are drawn up for the grand battle. Your left flank, anchored by a tiny oasis, is held by the Mechanon forces. The center is defended by the masses of Edestekai pike. On the right, strung out over a long front, is the all-too-thin skirmish line of the Eorna.

Supporting the Eorna are a small group of Megasaurus; the Eorna have captured some of these beasts during your absence and implanted control devices in their brains, turning them into at least partially controllable fighting
cybots.

The Ul-Mor cavalry, evenly distributed along the line of battle, are in reserve. The hidden Kurabanda are ready to leap from the ruins above to soar over the enemy forces, dropping hand grenades on them. The Kurabanda will then land and pour archery fire into the rear of enemy units.

You, also, have been requested to stand by in reserve, ready to provide crucial help as the battle develops. You can sense the tension rising in your allies as they wait for the attack. In distance to your far left and over a small ridge, a brilliant flash of sunlight reveals the gleaming body of a Sathar warbot! The Battle of Volturnus has started. Your first request for help comes in from the
Mechanons on the left flank. There is just enough time to get to the Mechanons before the warbots hit them.

Here is the battle strategy map:


The first encounter is the bottom of this strategic map (marked "1").

As you arrive at the left flank, the Mechanon forces are about to be heavily attacked all along the line. A strange new Sathar automatic cannon is wreaking horrible damage among the Mechanons. This gun must be destroyed, or the Kurabanda air troops will never be able to join the battle; the cannon would massacre them in the air!

To take out the cannons, you take a small force of mechanons with you.  The terrain is desert, with the occasional cactus and rock.  You get within 200 meters and have the advantage of height looking down.

Your forces are:
4 security robots
4 maintenance robots
1 recoilless rifle
1 heavy laser
(You might remember recovering these last two when saving Slave City One)

The Sathar guarding the cannon are:
2 warbots
4 combat robotss
2 cybots
1 robot brain
2 Sathar
1 Automatic Cannon (both anti-air and ground attacks)

Your options are to kill all the enemies or destroy the cannon they guard, thus forcing a retreat.


For the sake of keeping this moving, I'm going to give you the statistics regarding their forces:


SATHAR FORCES
· 2 warbots
(MV 120m; IM/RS 8/80; STA 500; ATT 80; DM 5 heavy
laser shots for 20-200 per shot, 10 machine gun bursts
for 10-100 per burst)

· 4 combat robots
(MV 120m; IM/RS 7/70; STA 100; ATT 70; DM 20 laser
rifle shots at 4-40 per shot)

· 2 cybots
(MV 90m; IM/RS 8/80; STA 100; ATT 80; DM 10 gyrojet
rifle shots at 3-30 per shot)

· 1 automatic cannon
(MV 60m, treat as light vehicle with 60 structure points, manned by 2 Sathar crewmen; ATT 70, fires once per turn; DM 24d10 in square hit, characters in adjacent squares must make STA check or be stunned for 1-10 turns, Robots are never stunned)

The automatic cannon may not move and fire in the same turn. The Sathar crew must be present to fire the automatic cannon. The crewmen are slightly exposed, and should be treated as a hard cover target. The crewmen are also armed with laser rifles with one full clip each.

· 2 Sathar

YOUR FORCES

· 8 robots/combots:  (MV 120m; IM/RS 7/70; STA 100; ATT 70; DM 20 laser
rifle shots for 4-40 each)

At least one player character must man the heavy laser and the recoilless rifle if they are being used.

Discuss a battle strategy.  The outcropping of rocks will allow about 3-4 people at a time to move from cover to cover up to the front of the lines where the cannon is.

OOC: Okay, now that you know your general strategy, let's take this one round at a time.

First, figure out what your individual character will do (move, move 1/2 rate and fire, or just fire).  If moving, you can find shelter behind a cactus or rock about every 50 meters for cover.  So make sure you know how much you can move each round (and halve that if firing too).

Second, keep in mind the ranges.  You are currently at 200 meters away from the Sathar force you are attacking.  That will affect your shooting ability and be affected by the range of your weapons.

Third, if attacking, make sure to identify which of the targets you are attacking.

Fourth, if you are doing or saying anything else, include that as well.

Anything else?


You have initiative first round (as a surprise attack).
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:33, Wed 03 Dec 2008.

Frisky will fire the heavy laser at the automatic cannon!

 Maintaining as much cover as possible Professor Kri'lik will give support to the heavy weapons crews as they will most likely be under heavy fire once the battle begins. As he is somewhat skilled in beam weapons technology the Vrusk stays closer to the heavy laser crew than the recoiless rifle.

S'Krllk is armed only with the crossbow-blowgun spear-like weapon from the Edestekai. As it is basically worthless against the mechanized forces, he will attempt to skirt the battle and move around the right flank to get close enough to fire upon the Sathar operating the cannon.
At the same time, the combat robot and maintenance robot under his control will be with the central assault force, attempting to keep the defenders focussed away from the flanks by firing at whatever they can while advancing slowly.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:41, Thu 04 Dec 2008.

OOC: Okay, in an effort to get this easiest to follow, please see the following tactical map.

THERE ARE 8 OF YOU AND 8 ROBOTS!  That's a perfect match.  You each control 1 maintenance robot and 1 security robot in addition to your own character.  So each move tell me where your robots and character will go, and what they will do.

(I made 1 error, in that I stated maintenance robot and combat robot.  In actuality, they are all combat robots, but apparently there weren't enough counters in the game, so they said to substitute Maintenance Robot counters.  In any case, we'll still call them that so we can identify them as they go across to battle.)

Each of the blocks marked for cover is 50 meters away from the previous one.  Remember that up to 4 people can take cover behind any of the cover areas at any given time.  The rest will have to go without cover or wait until the cover is opened up.

I'M MOVING THE BELOW (AND MORE!) TO THE RULES REFRESHER THREAD TO HELP EASE THIS BATTLE.  I CAN POST MORE AS NEEDED

Some rules quotes:

Heavy Laser. A heavy laser is about the size of a machine gun. It must be mounted on a tripod or a swival mount to be fired. It has longer range than a laser rifle, and a minimum SEU setting of 5. Otherwise it operates the same as the laser rifle.

Recoilless Rifle. A recoilless rifle is a heavy weapon that must be mounted on a tripod or a swival mount to fire. It fires an exploding shell that causes 12d10 points of damage if it hits. Only one shell can be fired per turn, and loading another shell takes one turn. Inertia screens and skeinsuits halve the damage.



Shock and Unconsciousness. Whenever the roll to hit in combat is 01-02, the target is immediately knocked unconscious for d100 turns. Stimdose can awaken the character sooner.

Variable Power Settings. Laser pistols, Iaser rifles and heavy lasers can be adjusted to fire shots that cause from 1 to 200 points of damage. Players can change the setting at the beginning of every turn. More information on variable power settings is included in the descriptions of laser weapons in the Equipment section.

Any other rules you want posted, just let me know.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:10, Thu 04 Dec 2008.

I believe that the RR and Me (S) should be with Ba, who is acting as gunner.

Bartja will fire the recoilless rifle at the security warbot in the front lines to the farthest south (the closest one).

Just for clarity, we are currently concentrating on the firing cannon only?  WE're spread out and near those nasty Sathar Warbots...

So Frisky will fire at the cannon with the heavy laser, since it will do the most damage and can handle the range.  One of Frisky's combots will remain to assist and fire at anything firing at the heavy laser area.

The other of Frisky's combots will move forward to the first embankment and duck behind it for cover.

Desiraye will run to the first cover she can get to dodging and weaving as she goes.

Make sure you each tell me what your two robots will be doing too.

Right now I have Frisky's combot and Desiray going to the first embankment.  (There's room for 4 total.)

sorry, 4+ robots

Bartja has one of his combots stationed with him to defend, and the other he puts into Desiraye's control at the front lines.

Kri'lik sends his two droids to the front lines as well where they can be of good use in the assault. Command authorization is also given to Desiraye. Meanwhile the professor will hang back near the heavy laser providing support fire as needed. As soon as someone is hit however, that individual will become his main objective to administer medical treatment.

My two combat robots will move towards the second line of cover, the intention being once they arrive to keep down behind the cover but to fire at the flanks and rear of any enemy passing the cover on either side.  (I'm hoping here for shots as lessor armour and/or surprise)

After careful reflection, I find I had suggested S'Krllk was going to the right flank when I meant the left. As this is far from cover, he will be trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible (please enjoy with me the image of a large humanoid grasshopper with forelimbs in his pockets whistling as he meanders away from the fray).
His combots will be slowly advancing to the middle cover and firing upon whatever targets of opportunity present themselves.