003: Empasse

Steve and I discussing our opening moves.

Jimmy's Diary
5th of September, 2000

First impressions mean a lot, and we're in a bit of a disagreement as to what ours should be. Personally, I want us to go after Walt Williams and his henchmen:

We start slow, with acts of sabotage, harassment and petty vandalism. This will give us some idea of how they react to opposition. We ramp up our attacks, working our way up to ambushes, bombings and assassinations.

Steve doesn't like this idea. He says that we're not ready for a protracted struggle, and we need to be better armed before trying it. Besides, a bold assault against enemy assets would gain us far more credibility than juvenile shenanigans. He wants to hit the trains:


Tons of military supplies ranging from pistols to artillery roll up and down Rails Valley each day, and it wouldn't be hard for us to find some help and relieve the UN of some of that stuff. Properly armed, we'd have far more choices as to what our subsequent actions could be, and it would give us more anonymity (as the perpetrators a train heist could be either partisans or criminals who may or may not be from Pincher County, whereas only Pincher County partisans would have anything against Pincher County deputies.)

I disputed him on that last point, and also pointed out that hitting a train would almost certainly require the help of a third party (Doug Henderson and his people, probably) who may or may not be trustworthy. Also, where attacks on local cops may bring outside attention, attacks on UN soldiers almost certainly will. He brings up Ethan Allen at Fort Ticonderoga, but I'm more reminded of Daniel Shays at the Springfield Armory.

Either way, Caleb and I are going to be busy in the next few days with our home workshop/munitions plant. I told him he could use the M-1 Carbine if he can convert it to full-auto, and we're thinking of suppressing our pistols and maybe some of the other weapons, just in case we ever need silent death with more reach than our bayonets. We're going to vote on our course of action tomorrow, and if they choose to hit the rails we'll need to work on grenades too.

[GM note: seems we're going with the train heist. Fair enough; it may be more risky, but it's also more thematic and probably more exciting than my War of the Flea strategy]

Gameplay notes: Pincher County in depth

The remote valleys and desolate ridges of what is now Pincher County seem to have received little human visitation before white settlement, though there is evidence of Catawba settlement along the Jackson River Valley. The first trails were blazed in the 1750's and the area became known for its rich iron ore deposits. The iron industry was the primary income until shortly after the First Civil War, and the ruins of old foundries can still be seen to this day.

Agriculture and timber became the principle means of support until the Second Wold War, when this too became exhausted. The sawmills began shutting down, two of the three railroads were abandoned, and the people started leaving. In 1935, the population of the county peaked at 16,000 citizens, most in Aintry and the county seat of Pincherville. The population began declining throughout the mid and late twentieth century, and by 1990 it was down to some 6,000, the majority living in Pincherville.

The story of Pincher County was the story much of rural America in general and rural Appalachia in particular. Those who haven't gone elsewhere tend to be old and poor, and the UN doesn't expect much trouble from them. Drugs are crime are a big problem among the younger remnant, much of the population lives off the gruel passed out in the food lines and would rather not see their welfare cut off. For any would-be revolutionary, convincing the locals to bite the hand that feeds them is going to be very tough job indeed.

But, that's your job.

Geography

Coffee Stains=Family Seal

Pincher county had a total area of about 375 square miles and a population density of 16 persons per square mile. It is roughly divided into six valleys moving roughly from north-northeast to south-southwest. Most of the valleys have one or more large streams or rivers flowing through them, as their names will attest. The lowest elevation in the county is 1480 feet, and the highest point is 4050 feet.

Adjacent counties are Pocohantas County to the northwest, Greenbrier County to the west, Alleghany County to the south, Rockbridge County to the east, and Bath County to the north.

Populated Places

Incorporated towns:
-Pincherville, Three Creeks Valley: Population 3,500. County seat sitting on the state highway. The rail station was long ago boarded up, but there was still enough trucks coming through for the local cops to stay in the black writing tickets.

-Aintry, Jackson River Valley: Population 1,000. Little town in a big, deep river gorge that would have become a lake in 1978 were it not for an environmentalist's bomb. Some of the lowest-lying buildings still show signs of the high water mark.

Unincorporated towns:
-Dunnet, Jackson River Valley: population 137. Former junction now marked with a Civil War monument in severe disrepair. There was a gas station here, but it burned during the war.

-Piker's Forge, Jackson River Valley: population 125. Site of some rather impressive ruins in the woods, but there's nothing much else to say about the area.

-Hill Springs, Flats Creek Valley: population 208. A cafe and gas station on the road from Dunnet to Pincherville, once known for multiple resorts, now abandoned.

-Low Springs, Flats Creek Valley: population 180. Same as above. Replace "cafe and gas station" with bait shop and camping store, as well as various shops that once served tourists coming from the resorts and nearby airport. This is one of the only places in the county where you can legally buy ammunition and maybe even a gun (though your ID had better be good, you'll require the approval of the sheriff's office, and don't expect anything more advanced than a muzzleloading squirrel gun).

-Blockerville, North Fork Valley: population 120. Former lumber town, now an isolated farming community with an abandoned warehouse district nearby.

-Thorne's Quarry, North Fork Valley: population 140. An oddity. This location was (and still is) known for it's limestone production. The abandoned mines and open pits are said to be quite impressive.

-Townes Hollow, Iron Valley: population 70. Another iron town, known for being surrounded by rather scenic cliffs on three sides. Iron Valley is one of the wilder, more overlooked portions of the county.

-Linseed, Rails Valley: no population. Rail town on the only extant rail in the county. Citizens removed to gulags by the UN after nearby attacks on the freight trains.

-Freeman's Forge, Rails Valley: population 150. One of the last Foundry Towns founded in the area, this community is one of the most isolated in the county, unreachable by car until the 1980's and not easy to reach to this day. It is home to almost all of Pincher County's black population, descended from freed slaves who moved deep into the hills after the civil war. The folks who live here are survivors; they live off the land and generally keep to themselves. Anyone who could ingratiate himself into the community—and that would be quite a task—would find the very kind of guerrilla force that John Brown had wanted.

Other settlements
There's a refugee camp on the grounds of the airport with a large, transient population. Local authorities keep an eye on them, but they're largely dismissed as useless eaters (which, for the most part, they are).

Any time I use the phrase "abandoned", it can be assumed that the location in question is anything but. Pincher County is full of vagrants, outcasts and outlaws. As mentioned before, the ruins and forests are filled with people who, for whatever reason, can't live a normal life. Some have lost their minds from the trauma of war and returned to a pre-civilized existence. Some are returning veterans who fear arrest and oppression at the hands of the UN authorities. There are even reports of some who won't accept defeat and have taken to the hills as partisans. *wink*

Organizations

-Pincher County Sheriff's Office, United States Garrison Force: a common joke is that when the UN came in they emptied the drunk tanks of all the local jails and put the inhabitants in uniform. That ain't quite true, but it's close enough. Walt Williams is a former con-man and general ne'er-do-well with no prior qualifications for the job, who nonetheless seems to be quite good at it. His second-in-command is a former college professor, dedicated socialist and Pol Pot fan eager to to reeducate the people of Pincher County. There is some debate as to who is really in charge.

They have 39 deputies in total, plus 4 advisers from Brazilian police agencies. They have two EE-11 armored cars to supplement their pickup trucks and cruisers and are generally armed with an even mix of M-16s, shotguns, and tear-gas or flashbang grenades. Heavier weapons will be rare. Overall, they're good at dealing with old people and the odd lunatic with a hunting rifle, but it remains to be seen if they could fight it out with a dedicated team of trained marksmen.

-The Henderson Family. Doug Henderson is a long-time rival of Walt's momma's people (who generally didn't like Walt and seldom let him in on their more profitable wrongdoings) and was the more powerful of the county's criminal kingpin's before the invasion. The UN used that old colonialist trick of smashing the biggest tribe, taking the second strongest one and letting them administrate for them.

Doug only has a few trustworthy members left in his gang. He can call upon about a dozen minions for footwork at any given time, but these are mostly low-lifes who get their drugs from him or otherwise owe him favors. His true remaining strength is his human intelligence assets. It ain't quite like the old days where he knew of and usually had a hand in every dark deed that occurred in the county, but he's still probably only second to the Devil.

-Railroad Police: I've allready mentioned these and will try not to repeat myself. They'll number about 12 to a bunker or troop car (variable number per train) and will be very well equipped: with assault rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, and possibly light cannons. However, they only operate in Rails Gorge and on the trains themselves and won't be a danger unless provoked.

-Virginia Department of Education: there are two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school in Pincher County, with 831 students enrolled. The public schools, here and everywhere, focus mostly on socialist indoctrination and are known for their tyrannical and abusive atmosphere. Only a third of the children in the county are thought to regularly attend classes in spite of draconian truancy laws. Enforcement of those laws is the duty of the Sheriff's Office, who at the moment are preoccupied with more pressing concerns. If that ever changes, or if the state ever sends state truancy/child safety officers into the county, it will not go over well with the citizens.

02: Pincher County, USSA

Jimmy's Diary
2nd of September, 2000

Finally on the move, And this time we have some idea of where we're going! That does make riding in the smuggling compartment of a manure trailer a lot more bearable.

Has it really been two months? I actually thought our "probationary period" had been longer; they've been keeping us in so many different safehouses, only letting us see daylight for short periods of time, that it's hard to keep track of just how many days or weeks have passed. It infuriated us at first, but in hindset such precautions are neccessary if we don't want the resistance movement overrun with informers.

[GM note: our confinement wasn't a complete waste; we spent much of it studying the art of war and each character will receive a one-level increase in Military Science {upon the success and survival of your first combat mission, just to make sure that all the book-learning actually took}]

Seems we passed the smell test, and now Donner has a job for us. We're more or less a ready-made guerrilla cell, so he wants us to get a resistance movement going in Pincherville. It's a small place near the West Virginia border: in the third-smallest, third most sparsely-populated and third-poorest county in the state. No one on either side has taken much notice in the region; there's just a few Quislings led by a local ex-con, so it shouldn't be too hard.

The region we're travelling through is called the Hills and Valleys, and although we can't see much from inside our hidey-hole, we get the feeling that it's well named. Riding down here is like a slow, stinky roller coaster with constant military checkpoints.

[Steve: so, not like a rollercoaster at all then?]
[Caleb: or, a really, really lame rollercoaster?]
[Kate: has Jimmy ever even been on a rollercoaster before?]
[Jimmy: no, actually.]

4th of September, 2000

Spent all day yesterday and most of today bringing the Rebel HQ into a habitable condition. It's an old hunters' shack in the back of a steep hollow, plus an outbuilding that seems to have once been a bear's den. It'll be a little cramped with all five of us in it, but it's warm and homey.

The late owner's widow and their grandchildren [Maria: or at least we think it's her grandchildren; we don't know that much about the family and it's better for everyone that we don't] are taking care of our horses and serving as our primary local intelligence.

We keep direct interaction with the family to a minimum. Near our cabin there's some ruins from a pre-Civil War iron forge, and in those ruins we have a dropbox that we use for almost all contact. Anything that can't be carried to the dropbox is "stolen" from their barn or some other outbuilding at night. When we meet face-to-face, it's always for brief periods of time and a fair distance from where we're staying. If anyone asks, she had no idea that there were squatters in the old cabin and we didn't know who the owner is.

[Steve: Not sure how she explains our horses in her pasture. Belonging to family who can't feed them no more, I reckon.]

She says that we need to keep our heads down as much as we can; local authorities consider almost anyone of military age to be a partisan until proven otherwise and even our new fake IDs may not keep us from being picked up. There's fifty or so deputies in the county, stretched thin outside Pincherville and Aintry but Sheriff Walt Williams is adding more by the week and would very much like to turn the county into his own personal gulag. Roscoe P Coltrain he ain't, and from what we've heard it seems his small army of jailbirds-turned-jailers are about as good at what they do as professional Jack-Booted Thugs.

And what of the Bluehelmets? There's two major forces nearby: a German mechanized brigade in Beckley, WV and a Chinese tank brigade in Lynchburg, VA. Word is that both are going stir-crazy from guard duty and would love an excuse to come climbing over the mountains to actually attack something (Why? For the same reason why an armoured knight wouldn't want to spend his time directing traffic; heavy-hitter have always hated asymmetrical warfare and it ain't the best use of their skills in any event). Closer to home is the Railroad Police: Kenyans guarding blockhouses near the rails and Russians guarding the trains themselves. They, on the other hand, are mostly second-rate forces: quite happy directing traffic and unlikely to go looking for trouble.

And what of the Resistance? Well, there's us. Supply and shelter's taken care of, but we could do some work in the weapons department. We have small arms only: mostly shotguns and hunting rifles. Explosives and heavy weapons will have to be procured locally and the Virginia Militia has said that they can't provide us with any material support at the moment. Indeed, they've asked for no further contact at all except in cases of absolute necessity.

[Caleb: "Don't call us, we'll call you"?]
[Kate: Starting to wonder if they only sent us here to get rid of us.]

There's various outlaws and outcasts in the hills and near the airport. In the bars and the parking lot behind the local flea market one can find various unsavory sorts who decided they didn't want to wear blue for whatever reason. There's said to be a cult squatting in the abandoned resorts near Low Springs. Any of these could potentially be persuaded to join or assist in fighting against the existing establishment.

Then there's the people of Pincher County. Ultimately, we have to gain their sympathy and at least some outright support. But how? Most of the ones who would have joined us are already dead or in hiding. The rest of the population are too scared of Williams and his army of psychopaths on leashes, and he leaves them with enough that they wouldn't want to rock the boat even if they did think he could be beaten.

The way I see it, our first job is to show the impotence of the local rulers by attacking those who enforce his tyranny. Williams will spread out to try and consolidate his rule, and if he's a real idiot he'll let the psychopaths off their leashes, attacking the people and thereby driving them into our arms. We'll keep hitting his weak spots until he crumbles. It'll take time for outside forces to be brought in, and hopefully we'll have a sturdy base of operations so that we can effectively resist or evade, whichever's more expedient.

We can do this. The communists used the same formula in countless revolutions, and we're better off than Ho Chi Minh or Fidel Castro when they started. Our biggest problem is going to be figuring out what our first strike should be, and seeing that we survive it.

01: To the Hills

Rebel APC destroyed outside Mananas, Virginia

From the bright sunny south to the war, I was sent,
E'er the days of my boyhood, I scarcely had spent.
From it's cool shady forests and deep flowing streams,
Ever fond in my mem'ry and sweet in my dreams.

Kate:
Technically I was a designated platoon marksman, not a true sniper. At least that's what the Israeli and Rhodesian advisers used to say.

Never saw much difference myself. I find a place to hide, pick out important targets and eliminate them. When most girls were worried about soccer practice and the cute boy in homeroom, I was worried about setting up enfilade fire and where my egress points were going to be.

I was good at it too. My age was really the only thing keeping me from becoming a fully qualified sniper and even that didn't stop them from sending me to Washington DC when the militias in Georgia and Alabama started sending volunteers for what they thought would be the final offensive against the government.


I learned more history on the ride from Chattanooga to Manassas than I ever could in school. It seemed that someone would find minie-balls or buttons every time we dug in for the night. Most of the journey followed the same routes as Stonewall Jackson and his "Horse Infantry" from 1862.

At times it felt more like a field trip than a war. Sometimes the Garrison Forces would throw together some kind of resistance to try and slow us down, but we usually swept them aside easily. Our Vietnam Vets kept talking about Frequent Wind and the Saigon Embassy, but I didn't really understand much of that. Probably should have listened to those old guys a little more.

Things started getting a little harder once we left the Shenandoah Valley. They really bloodied our noses at Linden, with a counterattack led by what we thought at the time were foreign mercenaries. We overcame some troublesome defenses at Marshall and in the Bull Run Mountains, as well as facing some of the first Federal airstrikes that any of us remember in over a year.

Our company was advancing about a mile northeast of the Manassas National Battlefield when the order came to get out and take up defenses. A heavy force of armor and mechanized infantry was heading our way, supported by heavy air assets. So we dug in and got ready for the coming battle.

Steve:
Have you ever seen what a 30mm chain gun can do to a pickup truck or those M-113 Battle Taxis? It ain't pretty, and what's even worse is seeing what it'll do to the passengers. I rode through one patch of woods covered with the wreckage of various APCs, at least a company's worth. The terrain had burned over despite the rain, several acres of timber had been clear-cut in what was probably a matter of seconds.

Rumor has it that the Blue Helmets are bombing us from our own aircraft carriers. If so, maybe I should have tried to scuttle the USS George Washington before I jumped ship.

I could have, too. It wouldn't have been hard for me to buy or steal some munitions off the planes and set them off in the lower deck as a going away present. Most of the sailors on the ship were either down on opiates or high on speed, or both. We all expected we'd be dragooned into the Garrison Forces or an admiral would mutiny in some neutral port and we'd all be locked up in a Eurotrash internment camp.

Me and some of my crewmates went AWOL near Corpus Cristie and in no time flat were the terror of government forces in that area. There was one time in Brownsville where I lured four goons into a back alley, armed only with a baseball bat. No one but me came out of that alley alive.

[GM's Note: if accounts of heroics are a dime a dozen in this world, then a penny a dozen would be those accounts of heroics that no one else can corroborate.]

Eventually, we decided to head west with the Washington offensive. I hired myself out as a sort of free-lance scout, which is what put me at Manassas on the 16th of April. Sure am glad I was on an ATV instead of some glorified box on wheels.

Maria:
In admittedly-weak defense of the M-113, it's not like the boxes-on-wheels they keep stuffing us into were any safer. If you don't like what gunships do to your APCs, just remember that landmines are no kinder to ours.

The problem is that Americans do such stupid things to their vehicles. Most APCs or trucks I've seen have a missile launcher or recoilless rifle of some kind strapped to it. Good for hit-and-run attack maybe, but the crews seem to get this idea that they're driving tanks and wind up getting themselves killed.

Though there are plenty of things to recommend in this country: lots of guns, lots of people who can use them, and lots of places to hide. That last part is something we sorely lack in Latvia. Some bogs and forests, but not good defensive terrain overall. Russians can forget to check the brakes on their tanks at night and by morning they've invaded us again.

There wasn't much we could do when they started reconsolidating their "near abroad". Some tried to resist, we had done that before and did a pretty good job of it. I, however, thought I'd have better odds taking the Latvian Resistance out of Latvia. So I joined the New Red Army, using fake ID and trying not to talk too much.

I figured they'd show me which end of a Kalashnikov the bullets come out of before sending me off to Ukraine or Chechnya. Yes, training was about as bad as I expected, and I was more than a little surprised to find myself in Virginia, but that didn't really change the plans. I frag my officer one night, set the barracks on fire, escape in the confusion, and eventually joined up with renegade sailor and his family.

Caleb:
I was lucky in that battle. I was manning the Ma Deuce on one of the technicals, but my transport unit got to stay in the back and guard the artillery. Mortars mostly, and a few old pack howitzers taken from who knows where. Italian-designed, Chinese-made. The crews don't seem to think much of them but they beat what they were previously using: blackpowder cannons.

I spent most of the battle rolling from one firing position to another, trying to avoid counter-battery fire while taking potshots at all the aircraft which seemed to fill the skies. Didn't seem to do a lot of good.

Our position was overrun near sunset, and it was only by luck that I escaped with my life. Bunch of Humvees infiltrated our rear and came charging out of the treeline, machine guns and grenade launchers blazing.

A 40mm grenade can do some pretty terrifying damage and has a decent blast radius. Fortunately, a 105mm shell can do even better. They managed to fight off the first wave but knew they couldn't repeat their success against Bradleys. As for me, I knew good and well that I wasn't in a tank, and our decision to bug out was pretty-much unanimous.

Our last transmission from Division HQ was thus: "Message to all members of the Unified American Resistance: Operation Early cancelled. You're on your own now. Good luck."

Jimmy:
Bull Run is flowing red with American blood again; we counted our chickens before they hatched, and now we're paying the price. History is full of rebels that tried conventional warfare too early and were destroyed because of it, and I hope that doesn't happened to us.

My epilepsy kept me off the front lines for the most part. I worked Military Intelligence, and was hearing nervous rumblings long before the Blue Helmets showed up. The Feds were too confident; they didn't seem overly concerned by the fact that they only maintained control in the Rust Belt, Atlantic Northeast and a few large cities that they were losing by the day.

We had considered the possibility of foreign intervention, but our biggest fear was that they were about to pull the nuclear card and annihilate our strongholds in the South and West. For all I know, that may have happened. There's all kinds of rumours going around and who knows what's really going on in, say, California when it would take two and a half months to get there?

I don't know if it was Providence or the luck of Brownian Motion that brought so much of our family to Northern Virginia. We gathered together after the upset at Linden and set up a rendezvous point in the event of more undesirable surprises. Five of us eventually made our way back—we waited as long as we could for the rest, and then we moved on. We sought out the remnants of the Shenandoah Rangers and their semi-mythical leader, Colonel Robert Donner.

Robert:
I like family acts, and I was a little amused by their high opinion of me. People are cooking up all kinds of heroic folks tales and twisted horror stories about us, depending upon their personal allegiances. Apparently, a popular moniker for our cells is "Donner Parties"... I'm not sure how I feel about that...

I wasn't sure how I felt about this family when they first stumbled across one of our patrols saying they wanted to become a Donner Party. A ready-made cell, familiar with the area, seemingly-competent, and ready for action? Spetnaz infiltration team if there ever was one!

We held them for a few weeks and ran some background checks, enough to learn that they probably weren't Russians (not even the European turncoat, who seemed angered by the very idea). We didn't shoot them, but we didn't quite welcome into our HQ with open arms either. These days, I follow something called the Grandma's Biscuit Rule: if you don't know me well enough to know her cooking style, I'd rather you not know where I'm staying.

I have a typist, 20 year old former soldier for the Florida Militia. Got off the boat just in time to shoot it out with the Feds when they tried kidnapping one of her fellow refugees. Left almost completely blind by an experimental NASA laser in the Siege of Orlando, she may not seem like the best choice for a military formation even in a rear-echelon role.

I consider her an excellent choice; she's my niece. Most of my closest associates are family or might as well be. It's nepotism, but in this environment it's necessary. Better to have one squad of trusted members than a company with an informer.

As for the new arrivals, I sent them to meet a contact in Pincher County and begin organizing resistance in that area. It's a rural, isolated county right along the West Virginia border that's been overlooked by us and our enemy alike thus far, and it'll be very interesting to see what they can do there.