The session began with an envoy from House Ezharian summoning the ruler of the House, Lady Jin-Mei, to a conclave of the House Major on Erif IV. After some judicious gossip with friends in other the other Houses on Cheruf, Soren found out that all the House heads had been summoned.
After Jin-Mei’s departure Kirsten found a letter from her laying out Jin-Mei’s concern that she and her twin brother would not return to Cheruf and appointing Kirsten as Regent to the younger brother until he came of age.
My players were now in full paranoia mode and proceeded to try and persuade the other Houses on Cheruf to prepare for the worst.
Which was realised when the next Heighliner arriving disgorged a Ecaz Frigate and numerous troop transports. Whilst small for an invasion fleet, none of the Houses on Cheruf had a navy so clearly Ecaz was relying on control of space giving them an unbeatable advantage…
At this point I unrolled the A3 map of Cheruf and handed out House SIndri’s defenses.
Kirsten spoke with Captain Phillip Del Rio, leading the Ecaz invasion force, and refused his recommendation of surrender. He advised that she should have taken their proposal, Kirsten advised that not only would they lose their troops, but she would sue them in the Landsraad for any damages.
As the troop transports and their Ornithopter escorts began to descend Soren came up the crazy plan of triggering several of the Volcanos to throw an ash cloud across much of Sindri territory. As House Sindri does actively mine the volcanoes for rare earths I accepted it was plausible. One of the 'thopter squadrons was forced to withdraw due to the chocking ash and a troop transport had a hard landing outside the capital, Irkalla.
Now the Warfare began in earnest. In the South at Alnor Bay, the fighting was bloody with some of the Elite Ecaz troops being caught in a pyroclastic flow (Complictions on the very first dice roll!) and then a counter attack by the fresh recruits finished them off. The fresh recruits themselves were soon wiped out, but the now weakened Ecaz troops were not able to resist the remaining Sindri forces in the area.
The Battle at Irkalla was largely a stalemate with neither side being able to gain advantage, while at Bakallis in the west Lucille Kovaks outnumbered forces were slowly being pushed back.
The players then sneakily created a new asset of ‘the Complicated’ (think a semi-autonomous CIA) behind them and targeted the troop transports they had come in on, successfully storming one and taking it over. Several Move rolls later they had loaded it with much of the explosives they had taken the previous session and it was headed for orbit ‘evacuating Ecaz wounded’…
While this had been going on the Ecaz Frigate had been making passes and bombarding the Sindri troops on the ground. A task made more difficult by the presence of the ash cloud over much of the territory. Secure in it’s dominance of orbit the players were able to sneak their unknown Frigate onto a ballistic intercept course.
The sudden close detonation of one of their own troop transports and the ambush from the Sindri Frigate was sufficient to bring the Ecaz Frigate down in one blow (Seriously, they rolled 6 successes!).
Now they had the High ground they could return the bombardment favour.
It came too late for Lucille Kovaks forces at Bakallis however, as the Ecaz forces secured the Western regions.
As the turns had ticked along I had being added the occasional spice bloom explosion counter onto other Houses territories. Demonstrating that Ecaz forces were slowly succeeding at their battles there.
Focus now turned to the battle around Irkalla. Iago suddenly returned to his Regiment, leading them against Ecaz troops attempting to breach the city. The bloody fight wiped out most of the forces, but Iago’s newly formed troops successfully prevented the city from being stormed. Living up to the Kinnard reputation of Holding the Line at all costs.
An attempt to reinforce the Ecaz forces at Irkalla from Bakallis was foiled by the Rapid Response Force that Natha had held in reserve. A running joke that she had been training her husbands troops in ash waste survival suddenly came into play with my allowing her use her Waste Walker (Desert Walker, but for Cheruf ash wastes) talent on them.
Cut off and under bombardment the remaining Ecaz forces in Sindri territory agreed to Kirsten’s demand to surrender. Captain Del Rio was found badly wounded near Alnor Bay, having been amongst the first casualties of the invasion.
With the only Frigate in orbit ,House Sindri was able to support the other Houses in defeating their invaders.
- House Hallas had suffered the most in the invasion with much of the ruling House wiped out.
- Houses Karasu & Tethys were both badly damaged, but had been able to receive reinforcements before matters got too bad.
- House Dahl had simply been ignored, due it being too small for anyone to particularly care about it.
Final position
Now that they had secured their Homeworld and were the undisputed leaders of the forces present, their attention turned to what was happening on Erif IV. This had clearly been only a small detached force meaning the bulk of the Ecaz forces must be elsewhere…
Next time on the Sindri Chronicles: Can the Complicated rescue Jin-Mei & Antonio Sindri during the chaos of major invasion?
)
Which may have given the game away to my players at the start of the session.
Not going to be acted upon, but this is what I have to contend with!)
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