Jump Wars Game

[fitzgerald]

Jump#25

Part 3: Dropship Massacre T~30

We're winning the battle of Isstvan V and doing so by a fairly big margin, at this point what's keeping Horus's Legions in the game and not fleeing in defeat can be pretty much described as Mortarion and Fulgrim holding the lines while Horus attempts to rally some sort of command centre and more of his other forces. Forces Drakensis keeps smacking from Orbit.

Having been rendered combat ineffective by this point in time Susan and Akira have returned their Evangelions to storage, swapping them out for power armor (in Susan's case) and Akira going full Tomb Spyder along with my full 100 Necron Warriors. Ferrus is a might perturbed as is Vulkan, Ferrus more so because she offered to upgrade his other limbs. Susan raised a few eyebrows as well, she's very distinctly related to the Primarchs and has Lion themed armor.

With a surge of troops, the Necron Warriors taking point and a number of cloned troopers assisting the World Eaters get completely gutted as to a man the furious warriors get baited into a charge by the Ravens and promptly wiped out in a cross fire. From there things go even worse for Horus as Fulgrim leaps in to save the flank from completely collapsing only to run into a rested Vulkan.

That epic duel gets cut short when I completely shut the traitor down with a full score of cartridge assisted binds (Vulkan rolled a 63 for a victory, I rolled a 85 to assist) that stopped Fulgrim just long enough for Vulkan to pulp his head with one overwhelming strike.

Naturally at this point Horus finally pulls the trigger on the ambush, as the four fresh Traitor Legions take to the battlefield in an attempt to save the Warmasters bacon. Having convinced the Loyalists that treachery was looming earlier this isn't a surprise ambush at all, instead Ferrus gleefully leads his troops to finally gut the Son's of Horus and claim the top of the hill and the remains of the fortifications. With only Mortarion's flank in somewhat cohesive condition as they retreated post haste to lick their wounds and reload, backed by the on target Eternity Gate still emptying the cargo holds of the Light of Terra of war material the Loyalists held a strong position.

With all sides fresh out of Titan's, Ferrus has been having me sit carefully undetected to pull of a bit of surprise, in this case a Surprise Titan sally as I lead my Evangelion out in a impressive strike that blunts the initial probing attempt viciously. Logar in a fit no doubt inspired by loyalty to the Chaos gods and to prove himself to Horus sallied forth as well, only for Corax to swoop in and absolutely wreck his face.

Konrad Cruze's personal intervention only held Corax as I dropped the Cosmic Fire of the C'tan on Logar as I worked on decaying his soul at the same time. Scratch a third traitor Primarch off the list, four left to go (or five with that bugger Alpharius and so twin).

The retreat off planet got a bit hairy as a good deal of men and material were lost, mostly Imperial Units whose lines of communications were gutted and snarled, but the majority of all three Legions managed to retreat in good order. A battle of high cost but one judged a relative success as three traitor Primarchs were dead, four of his Legions gutted of men and two traitor Legio's destroyed.

 

[drakensis]

Jump#25
Part 3: Dropship Massacre T~30

I make a return to the battlefield as the second wave commence their drops - and by return I mean the Battlestar Macedonia jumps into the atmosphere with its primary gun arc directed towards the descending Legions. The Alpha Legion take the brunt of this with some forty companies eradicated before they hit the ground. The Macedonia jumps out again before it crashes. Adama would be proud.

The battle in space is going better than it would in canon, which still isn't the best of news. Fully a third of the loyal ships are destroyed in the initial moments - but at least they haven't been taken by surprise and most die firing into the revealed traitors. The situation turns around as the Death Guard, Emperor's Children, Sons of Horus and World Eaters fleets rush in to join their allies - just as predicted, which runs them directly into a hastily laid minefield and every space fighter that could be scraped up. More than sixty percent of the fleet are crippled or destroyed, while a scraped together reserve of Astartes who hadn't - for whatever reason - been landed on Istvaan V boarded the Vengeful Spirit itself.

While Arthur dropped out of the Macedonia while it was freefalling to join the battle in his Evangelion, the rest of us had tooled up and joined this attack. The fighting is brutal but twenty-percent of the Astartes survive with us to secure the key areas of the Vengeful Spirit, which is a treasure trove of data on Horus' plans and past actions. It's also a ship the Traitor Legions are rather reluctant to fire on and it therefore functions as keystone of the incredibly hard-fought final stages of the space battle - recovering the evacuating Legions - as shuttles evacuating crews from crippled loyalist ships flood aboard and are rushed to take over and ride herd over the existing crew.

The vast majority of the Raven Guard and Salamander ships are lost either to enemy fire or to ramming attacks but they open a window for the Vengeful Spirit and a handful of other capital ships - packed to the bulkheads with loyal Astartes and troops - to make their way to a warp point and escape. Of course, the fleets available to Horus are almost as gutted as the Legions available to him - and as a final fuck-you, we salvo some virus bombs down onto Istvaan V before we depart. Some how I doubt all the traitors had bunkers to take shelter in...

 

[fitzgerald]

Jump #25
Terra

With the warp forcibly calmed very good time has been made to Terra to report on the battle of Isstvan V and the general state of Horus's forces (rather gutted) and on the actions that can be made to not only secure Terra but the rest of the Empire against his rebellion. Corax is most deliberately not gloating about both Horus's betrayal and dismal success thus far, really he's stressing this point in many conversations with others.

Vulkan's more than little suspicious about the Light of Terra, my allies and technology and has been asking some probing questions, digging deep into the fact that some of it is xeno's gear. Xeno gear that predates the Eldar technically as I end spilling a bit more of the truth of the Necrons than I intended, he takes it remarkably well altogether by well I mean seriously pondering just what else he can squeeze out of me.

Frankly its only Coraxs intervention of "Vulkan the young lady won't want to join you in bed if you keep looming!" that distracts the Salamanders Primarch from interrogating me more, and instead gets drawn off into discussing tactics with his brothers.

All three Primarchs together manage to start rallying Terra's defenses in preparation for Horus's strike, depleted as his forces are now he has only two choices either flee into the Eye of Terror or attack Terra in one last gamble. While not exactly chuffed at the death of three of his sons, even if they rebelled against him the Emperor can't exactly shrug me off but does quickly shunt me off to the side for the planning process.

Instead I'm assisting Corax's work in the formerly empty labs to prepare new additional troops to fill out the ranks of the Space Marine' Loyalist Legions. "They'll be needed after all this mess!" Fortunately however with my skills in cloning and the Emperor's notebooks silly plans such as growth accelerating toddlers into full grown space marines gets avoided, his Legion and others wouldn't be left devoid of fresh troops in the years to come. Still even as I get left to watch the clone vats (and protect them from Alpha Legion shenanigans) Corax sets off to screw up the supply lines.

Aided by the fact the Eternity Gate can actually get people across the Galaxy instantly the Emperor has it drafted (and me along with it) into service guarding Terra and generally sending Custodes out as trusted messengers. Or more specifically the Big E has me running around in the cloning labs being kept an eye on while Lord Manus has the Light of Terra as his staging ground for the eventual attack.

 

[drakensis]

Rules for Jump-Chain: Ratings Game edition (v0.1)
these rules are subject to later discussion and predominantly a compilation of discussion so far.

The chain shall be 16 jumps long. Not 17 jumps and 18 jumps is right out. Nor shall it be 15 jumps, saveth that you then proceed to 16.

The sixteenth jump shall be High School DxD.

Possible rule: The first jump shall be Sekirei. (I'm not sure making this a requirement is particularly necessary.)

You may take companions as permitted by jumps. If this allows you to take more than the typical 8 companions, so be it. However, for the purposes of the Rating Game, you will be limited to the jumper and no more than 15 companions.

Since the High School DxD jump isn't entirely reflective of the universe in some respects, certain restrictions or at least good judgement may be required.
(i.e. Angels don't have Evil Pieces and their equivalents only enabling 12 companions not 15, Fallen Angels not having an equivalent. And what about not being part of a Faction at all - is King a requirement?)

The Rating Game is subject to certain rules and restrictions in what may be used. e.g. Due to the size of the playing area, only low altitude flight is practical. Vehicles and armour larger than a subcompact car are banned from use.

The Rating Game playing area is represented as having 10 locations. Each side has a base area (representing the 16 squares on a chessboard where pieces start) and there are 8 contested territories (each representing a 2x2 square of the chessboard between starting areas). Pieces may move from a base area to a contested territory and from a contested territory to any location but not from base area to base area.

During the first phase of the Rating Game, each player allocates their pieces to either their base area or to one of the contested territories. It isn't required to place pieces to all of these locations. This should be decided in advance, before declaration. If pieces from both players are in a contested territory, the conflict for possession is resolved.

Conflicts are resolved by one player declaring the means of conflict and the perks and items of the pieces present being used for the conflict. The points value of these perks and items is added to a 1d1000 roll. The other player then declare which perks and items of their pieces are applied to the conflict and adds their value to a 1d1000 roll. The highest roll wins. The pieces being used by the losing player in the conflict are retired from the Rating Game.

Once all conflicts in the first phase are resolved, players take turns moving a piece. If moving a piece leads to more than one piece in a location there is a conflict which should be resolved as above. Once a piece is moved it cannot be moved again until the player has moved all their other pieces.

If a pawn piece is moved in to the enemy base area and wins any resulting conflict, the pawn receives a 100point bonus to the value of all their perks for subsequent conflicts.

Victory is determined by elimination of a king/jumper piece.