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Barrayar ⚔ Cetaganda ⚔ The Invasion

Have you read the FAQ?

The Village ⚔ The Barrayaran Camp ⚔ The Cetagandan Base ⚔ The Fight

You've been on Barrayar for a while now, and you're finally starting to adjust. Or maybe you're not. Maybe this is all still too much for you – the attacks, the constant raids, living in the middle of a war zone by no choice of your own. But if you want to live long enough to make it back home one day, you might as well do what you can to help the war effort. Besides, where else are you going to go?

The fierce Barrayaran winter rages even to the southern end of the continent, and it's been none too kind to Vorkosigan's District. Temperatures at sea level are well below freezing, and up in the mountains, it's even colder. Several inches of snow already blanket most of the mountains all the way down to the Cetagandan base, and the storm that's just started up is only bringing more down. Visibility is low in the flurries, wind swirling snow everywhere, and God help you if you get lost on your own out in the storm. Nights are cold, these days.

A recent attack on the Cetagandan base has left half their facilities damaged and in disarray. Raid parties snuck in by night, planting bombs in previously scouted locations for maximum effect. Damage to the base's water treatment plant and organic grow labs have considerably impacted the Cetagandans' food and water supply, and in the chaos caused by the explosions, the Barrayaran guerrillas raided their medbay and made off with a considerable bounty of medical supplies. One man's bane is another man's boon, and while the Cetagandans have reserve supplies to sustain them for now, some of the damage is extensive and the repairs will take time. But in the meantime, the Barrayarans have scored a precious victory as well as equally precious resources.

the village
The Riverfall villagers are used to the harsh winters of the Dendarii mountains, and though they don't have much themselves, they are happy to offer what they can in terms of cold-weather clothing and extra blankets to those allied with the guerrillas. Despite the cold, the hill children are going wild in the snow, and they may try to lure you into their play by sneakily pelting you with snowballs.

Cetagandan allies, however, may not be met so warmly, and at the first sight of ghem soldiers, any children out playing in the snow will be immediately ushered into their homes. Unaccompanied outsiders from the Cetagandan base might have an easier time talking to the hillfolk, but any attempt at digging information about the guerrillas out of them will get you stonewalled fast. A sneaky hill child or two may steal away from their home to approach one of the "bad guy" outsiders to sate their curiosity.

the barrayaran camp
Morale is higher than it has been in a while after their recent victory, and the guerrillas are in high spirits. And do they ever love their spirits – as night falls, most of the Barrayarans gathered around the campfires are enjoying the deceptively named, dangerously alcoholic moonshine they call maple mead. It might start out sweet, but it burns all the way down, and a few glasses of that stuff will tank even the heaviest Barrayaran soldier.

But the storm rages on despite their celebration, and preparations must be made. Clearing as much snow off the tents as possible will help ensure that no tents collapse overnight, the horses need to be tended to, and the officers are always running training drills. Food is in real supply now, but the guerrillas need help foraging and hunting nonetheless. And when night falls, you'll have to find a way to keep yourself warm – it's a good thing there are a cozy ten of you to a tent.

the cetagandan base
The Cetagandans outnumber their guerrilla enemies almost seventy-to-one, so their base has not been completely devastated, but it hardly looks to be the work of a few raiding parties. Nothing is beyond repair, but the water treatment plant has been taken offline, which means that all water is now locally sourced and must be treated by hand with purification tablets. No one in the base will starve, but fresh food is mostly unavailable until they get the grow labs back online, which means that meals are mostly comprised of ration bars and MREs. Morale isn't exactly at an all-time low, but none of the ghem officers seem to be in a good mood.

They won't hesitate to put you to work, either. They need all the engineers and laborers they can get for the grow labs and the treatment plant, and the medbay's inventory needs to be thoroughly audited before they can send a request for more supplies. But if you need a break, it's not too hard to slip away for a little quiet downtime. Some of the lower-ranked ghem ladies might let you participate in some more artistic activities, or maybe some of the enlisted soldiers who are a little more used to you by now might invite you into one of their Cetagandan games of strategy. Or, since the treatment plant only affected potable water, you could appreciate your comfortable surroundings and take a nice hot soak in the bathroom while everyone else is working.

the fight
PVP
You're in the midst of a skirmish with the other side -- maybe you signed up for the battle, maybe you just got caught up in the fight -- but at least it's easy to tell who's on what side. Only one side is wielding swords, and the other guns.

But then you come across someone who doesn't look like they're either -- not one of the rugged Barrayarans or the face-painted Cetagandans, but an outsider, an exotic like you. They must be. So do you fight?

RECON
Maybe you're not on the front lines, but there's plenty more to winning the war than just fighting. You're partnered with another outsider on recon; the ground is cold, and you try not to let your shoes crunch too loudly on snow as you scout, scanning for patrols or supply lines.

Or maybe you're with the Cetagandans, hiking it thorugh the mountains with one of your fellow exotics in an attempt to locate the enemy camp. Except it's damned cold, and there's hidden ice everywhere, and everything is starting to really look the same.

--

Feel free to write prompts for your character on either side -- you don't have to choose just one for the TDM! Just label it clearly so folks know. GO WILD, MY FRIENDS

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[ A. Barrayaran Camp - Festivities ]

Relaxing isn't something Carolina is good at but the energy of victory has her willing to try and loosen up a little. And the effort lasts right up until she gets her first taste of maple mead. She takes one sip and stares at it for a moment like maybe someone is playing a prank on her. But looking at the natives drinking it happily she realizes that this is supposed to be a reward. She makes another attempt at drinking it before she gives up entirely and passes it off to the nearest drunk who seems like they want to poison themselves with enthusiasm.

"I'll pass on poisoning myself, thanks." She says if anyone asks why she isn't joining, lips quirked as someone brings out another cask of the maple flavored jet fuel. "Someone needs to stay sober." Just in case.

[ B. Barrayaran Camp - Training ]

Keeping busy is the best way to avoid thoughts of home. Or as close to a home as she'd come to having since leaving Project Freelancer. Carolina is a soldier through and through and she refuses to be unprepared just because she's in yet another war she didn't sign up for. She was trained on the best weapons the UNSC had to offer. Unfortunately this isn't the UNSC and she never bothered with serious sword combat because that was never her focus. She's working on remedying that.

She's got a sword from the quartermaster and she's working her way through a series of moves adapted from her shock-baton training. The day is cold enough to make most people want to bundle up but she's been at this for a while and her thick woolen coat has been abandoned on a nearby bench. She's worked up a decent sweat as she keeps up the exercise, her bright red hair plastered to her forehead. The only reason she finally stops is because when she goes through one more repetition the blade of her sword gets caught in the body of the practice dummy she's been brutalizing. Once she frees it from the wood she walks over to the bench and starts pulling on the greatcoat again. To whoever is nearby for whatever reason she nods.

"I'd kill for a decent gun," She says as she sheathes the blade. She pauses for a moment as she looks at the uniforms the Barrayaran soldiers are wearing and adds for good measure, "Or proper combat armor."

[C. PVP ]

Fighting. Fighting is something Carolina is good at. Once she gets up close it's easier to make blades an effective weapon against the enemy ranks with their much more advanced guns. In fact she's been doing some decent damage to the Cetagandan forces they're fighting against. She throws one of the enemy combatants and turns, sword drawn on the next nearest person who... definitely doesn't look like a ceta. She pauses in the attack and stares the other person down.

"I'll give you one chance to walk away. This isn't your fight." Not that it was hers either, but she didn't relish hurting another person dragged into this unwillingly.

[ D. Wildcard ]

Carolina can be found around the Barrayaran Camp and Riverfall Village going about her business. She frequents the training grounds and can sometimes be seen clashing with some of the officers in the native forces who think that a woman shouldn't be fighting so much. She'll even offer to help others who want to train in combat, though she won't always be the nicest about it.

"Yeah, and the devil wants an air conditioner. Work with what you got, sister."

Daryl hasn't been training, not really. He's been sitting off to the side, slowly skinning one of the tiny furred rodents he caught on a recent hunt. His forearms are filthy with it, but he's mostly keeping to himself. Way to make friends and influence people, right?

"Looks like you got the training."

Charming. Carolina looks over the scene of rodent carnage without any reaction. Food is food and she recognizes the importance of what he's doing. Though a part of her hopes he washes up after.

"I do." She agrees. "But it feels like moving backwards. I'm used to having..." More than is available to anyone on Barrayar's side.

"What about you? Any training or are you just here to terrorize the squirrels?"

Daryl isn't the conversational type. He's more prone to gruffly making his point and wandering off. He squints over at the girl and her arsenal, stares back at his lunch in front of him. He picks up the squirrel corpse and gently shakes it, careful not to make a mess.

"Yeah, I terrorize the squirrels."

Try again, Carolina, maybe you'll get a real answer out of him.

Lakshmi looks across the soldiers as she's spoken too, close to the woman when she trained - and she didn't seem utterly hopeless as far as some she had seen. Their uniforms are not so different to what she knows, truth be told - or, rather, what she grew up with, an age ago. What her father told her that the Rajputs and Mughals wore, an era ago before that. Granted, in her time, armour has changed again. Guns had changed combat, she saw how it had.

She looks back at the woman and nods her head the once. "Look to speed, rather than weaponry. Seems you have ability enough if you train at it, you'll be as quick as you need." She's trying to be... helpful, hopeful even. It comes second nature even if she's pragmatic about it, no tremendous battle speeches, just a firm word or two when she thinks it's useful.

Granted, she has no business really sticking her nose in other people's thoughts but - well, being a Queen left one with some bad habits. That and at least in this kind of fight, she has experience to spare. Wets her lips against the cold and feels the sting of it on the wet skin, humming on a thought and how to put it. "Guns have their place, but bullets run out, and are always loud. Wasteful too, in close combat." She'd always, always take a sword or a blade, and only mostly out of nostalgia.

Carolina listens to Lakshmi as she tends to the sword she has. The General had made a point of impressing on her the value of every weapon the Barrayaran camp had and the consequences for neglecting it. Not that she'd do something so foolish after finally making some headway against their backwards ideas about women in combat.

"It depends on gun, I think. Mostly it's a matter of familiarity." A rifle would be reassuring. Epsilon saying something snarky in her ear would be even moreso. It was funny how much she took his constant commentary for granted until she had to go without it.

"I'll make do, but this isn't the type of war I'm used to."

"How so?" She is curious, these people are nothing like her own - and in the way, she's always curious to learn, to get the tactical advantage when and if she can.

She has her own war, before and hopefully after this place. "I must admit, this is familiar to me, if not these people or terrain. I grew up in a time before guns became commonly used in all battles. Cavalry had its place."

Edited 2016-11-26 09:48 (UTC)

How do you explain Project Freelancer to someone? She resheathes her sword once she's sure the blade hasn't been nicked. General Piotr would probably give her several kinds of hell if she damaged the weapon he'd entrusted her with. One hand rubs her the back of her neck absently, the metal AI port at the base of her skull gets colder than the rest of her skin and aches at times.

"Where I come from... we have weapons that these Barrayarans have never even dreamed of. The scale is... well, we've had wars that spanned several planets with alien species." And against other humans as well. Some things don't change no matter what.

it is nothing she had ever dreamed of, let alone could imagine - or well, she could, if she tried, she just isn't sure she wants to. She had spent her life fighting an Empire, global in nature, the best that the English could muster, and then some. Knights, Lycans and Vampires. It had taken her across continents. It had cost her everything, and to know that it continued on to perhaps a bigger scale?

Just what had this woman seen then? Her mouths pulls, eyebrows up - a mild expression of surprise, perhaps sympathy, if never pity. "Then I shall count myself grateful for you company, and glad that they do not have what you speak." Faint, a smile, she jokes where she shouldn't. Amused in the worst sort of way. "That or envious, that you know of such things, but is is my first time... off my own planet, I suppose that's natural."

What an odd thing to say. It shows, a frown like she can't quite believe those words just came out of her mouth.

She's unarmed, but certainly not out of her depth. Babd, arms covered in blood, red hair completely out of control, claws extended, doesn't immediately fly at the woman suggesting she stand down. After a moment--

"Truly noble, slaughtering your way through the field to deliver your bullshit missive of pacifism. We presume you have the same choice as Mistress Morrigan, and yet here you stand bearing the blood of the side I was placed on and claiming this is not my fight.

"This is not yours either, so who are you to talk?"

Well that certainly isn't normal. Morrigan's transformation is jarring but Carolina doesn't loosen her grip on the sword in her hands, doesn't look away from the ageless woman in front of her.

"This isn't pacifism, it's a warning. These people just want to defend their home." The fact of the matter is that she couldn't walk away from these people if she tried. They needed help and Carolina has a weakness for the underdogs.

"I'm in this because there are children, families who are at risk because of an unnecessary invasion."

Badb's face twists in obvious distaste for the case this woman is presenting, and then she's gone again.

The Empress is back, obviously touched by the mention of children and families. She can only remember Minerva, and how she'd been caught up in plot and treachery and nearly hadn't made it out alive because no one could get to her in time.

“The wars mankind fought and will fight have never held my attention, and yet they are baked into my very bones as well. Civilizations were built on invasion, on defense of homestead and family-- who is Mistress Morrigan to put her hand on one side of the scale and weigh the odds?

“...I wish to return to whence I came from. I do not have much time, like many of my kin. We must prepare for our end, and while these two squabble I will be a kept god.”

That... is not any less strange watching the change happen in reverse. Whoever or... whatever this woman is, she's not like anyone Carolina has encountered before in her life. Maybe that's for the best. The fact that she's talking like an old period drama makes it all the more confusing.

"Killing each other isn't going to make this war end any sooner," She says, well aware of the irony of saying that in the middle of a battle. "I'd rather not fight you if I have to."

Kaidan is halfway through a series of warm-ups as Carolina turns up at the bench, but he obligingly shuffles further down it to continue his calf stretches without getting in her space. Another one of the displaced who's from a fully-integrated military, he's one more person whose first reaction to that statement isn't to stare like she's grown another head. Instead "I hear you on the armour," he agrees, a corner of his mouth quirking wryly. "Decent guns, or at least more familiar ones, I have a feeling we can 'liberate' from the Cetagandans if we get lucky, but I'd feel a lot happier with a couple inches of space-rated plate between me and the world while stealing them."

Finally, someone with sense.

Carolina nods in agreement. They've been thrown back centuries and she doesn't appreciate it. She wants her rifle, she wants her armor with all of its enhancements. Most of all she wants Epsilon back where he belongs, though she's pretty sure telling any of the natives about the concept of an AI fragment would just make them think she was possessed.

"Good to know I'm not the only one who knows what we're really missing out on here." She says. "An active camouflage system would be even better. It's amazing the locals have held out this long." Even Chorus had the advantage of weapons even if they didn't have the experience necessary.

"I'm Carolina," She adds, almost as an afterthought, holding out a hand to Kaiden.

"Admittedly," says Kaidan, switching to working out his other calf now that the first one's no longer complaining about the winter chill, "Modern military tech's worse than useless if you don't have the support infrastructure for it. You pay a higher cost in up-front training time and in attrition with what they have here, but they can get by with a blacksmith's forge, if they have to. Hard to do that with a tac cloak."

For all his philosophising, he's still acutely aware that, shorn of his armour, his tech and his biotics, he's much more likely to land in the 'attrition' category. There's a bit of fatalism lurking in his eyes even when he smiles and takes the offered hand. "Kaidan," he introduces himself. "And despite what I just said, I still really miss my sidearm."

She'd pegged him as a soldier before he started talking logistics but after that she's sure of her assessment. It gives her a little hope that not everyone brought in is a complete amateur. At the very least she knows who she wants on her side if they're sent into a real fight at any point.

Carolina keeps the handshake firm, but friendly. No need to try and be macho. Not yet anyways. "You have the right of it. These people aren't experienced and training them to a level where they could match the Cetagandans..." She shakes her head. It would be a disaster.

"What branch of the military do you come from in your home universe?" She asks, curiosity getting the better of her. He doesn't seem like standard UNSC. Overall they ended up being a little dull until you got into the private teams.

Kaidan likewise declines to turn a greeting into a pissing match, and the answer of "SpecOps," may have something to do with it. Even with the 'Biotic' prefix dropped, out of deference to the fact that his amp's offline and the locals already keep making hex signs at the more unusual outsiders, it's enough of an explanation for why he carries himself like a man with a wider view on things than who's more macho than whom. (The whole 'second human Spectre' thing on top of that is just too complicated to sum up.)

"I think training them to a modern military program would be a waste of their native skills anyway," is his opinion. "I don't know if you've been out on a patrol with some of these guys yet, but you stick them in all this alien underbrush and they vanish without a tac cloak involved... and I'm guessing you're some branch of ground specialist too, since you're missing your gear as much as I am."

"For a people caught in a war, they are sorely lacking both," Zarya says, nodding in agreement. At least she still has her heavy armour she donned while using the particle cannon. Better than arriving naked, she supposes.

Zarya herself has a big sword in each hand, entirely unbothered by the weight. Like Carolina, she is trying to find a way to fight and defend herself and others using a weapon she'd never so much as considered fighting with before.

"Or perhaps just a better training regime. I have not been able to get advice beyond swing as hard as you can and hope for the best."

"Okay, so the armor I'll give you." Because Tucker could relate on a level most folks around here couldn't; the sudden lack of heavy weighte familiar armor wasn't nearly as freeing as one could hope. But while a gun would be totally appreciative, Tucker wasn't completely put out by the lack of a sword. Some people were just lucky enough to have a "natural inclination" towards that shit.

Chosen One. Boom. Mic drop.

But having a sword didn't mean he was formally trained in it; everything he had learned was self taught from way too many old movies when he was a kid. The fact that he survived the desert was a miracle; the shit he pulled on Chorus was thanks in part to Wash, but most of it was just unpolished instinct.

It didn't stop his ego from acting like he was goddamn Highlander, however.

"But come on, the swords are fun." For him. Only for him, probably. His eyebrows arched, a cocky little smirk crossing his lips. "Want me to teach you a thing or two?" Yeah. Right. But hey, he was serious.

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test drive meme

Agent Carolina | Red vs. Blue

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all these bees

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