Arabian Nights OOC

[1400 hours – 1410 hours]

“Tango One, do you read?”

“Roger, Command.”

“Change of plans. An APC is en route to your position for pick-up.”

“We’re in the middle of patrol, Command.”

“Understood, Sergeant, but this matter is of greater importance than walking around and chatting with the locals.”

”And what matter might this be?”

”Simple recon mission at a village about 40 clicks off. The rest is on a need-to-know basis.”

“Roger, Command. What’s the ETA on that APC?”

“Five minutes. Hold your position until it arrives.”

“Roger that, Command. Will report after a basic sweep.”

**************

[1500 hours – 1507 hours]

“Command, do you copy?!”

“Roger, Tango One. Report.”

“We need a med evac at the village on the double!”

“What happened, Tango One. What happened in that village?”

“We got ambushed! We need that evac now!”

“Ambushed by what, Sergeant?”

“The Sergeant is dead, Command! We’ve got one more dead and several more that are wounded! Get us that chopper now!"

• We are Task Force: VALKYRIE, not MiB.

• You do not get one of those little memory wiper things: What you use is nicknamed Brain-O and comes in a syringe.

• You do not exist.

Etheric Rounds (Renewable):

Produced in top-secret, experimental laboratories around the country, these bullets have been bombarded with a cocktail of exotic, high-energy particles that infuse peculiar pseudophysical properties into the lead. Etheric Rounds are delivered to field operatives in clear, plastic magazines (Task Force: VALKYRIE manufactures versions in every caliber and magazine style currently on the market) and emit a faint blue light from their tips. When fi red, this light becomes as bright as a tracer round, making concealment all but impossible. The bullet is actually consumed by this light, which converts the metal into a pseudo-etheric state that VALKYRIE scientists believe to be a heretofore undiscovered “fifth state” of matter.

Function:
Etheric Rounds allow the hunter to inflict normal firearm damage against manifested ghosts, spirits and other incorporeal entities. Can be used on corporeal entities as well.

Witch Buster

Many of the creatures Task Force: VALKYRIE hunts display an unusual degree of sensitivity to psychic phenomena. Witches seem to be the most adept at this sort of thing, displaying an uncanny knack for poking their noses into supernatural affairs that should be invisible to mere mortals. As witches are also among the most diffi cult antagonists to identify, VALKYRIE scientists developed a sort of psychic booby
trap to identify potential hostiles. Official rules of engagement state that the “witch buster” is to be used to flush out known quarry that has gone to ground, but field teams often engage in a game variously referred to as “wizard baiting,” or “fishing for Potters,” in which a witch buster is set up in a public but discreet location and anyone who drops by to have a look is tagged and monitored. Ever since a Glaswegian cell went a little off the reservation back in ’98 and just started killing everyone that poked around the witch buster, this tactic is expressly forbidden by VALKYRIE doctrine.

Function:
The witch buster is roughly the size and shape of a hockey puck, with a sticky adhesive backing that allows it to be mounted on walls or ceilings. Powered by an ordinary lithium-ion battery, the kind that can be purchased at any cell phone store, the witch buster slowly but persistently leaks a small amount of etheric energy — theoretically, not enough to be harmful (although quite a few fi eld agents swear otherwise), but enough to register on a witch’s psychic radar.

Etheric Goggles:

Ghosts, demons, and witches all have the ability to pass unseen by mortal senses. Even vampires, according to some stories, have the ability to send their minds out of their cold, dead bodies and explore the world in secret. With etheric goggles, Task Force: VALKYRIE can bring the fight to them. Etheric goggles operate on the same principle as the etheric tracker, utilizing chemically treated lenses to detect entities in Twilight. Until recently, they were standard kit for field agents, but since a rash of psychosis among agents who used them extensively in the early 2000s, top brass has restricted their use.

Function:
Etheric goggles look like slightly bulkier, more complicated versions of the night-vision goggles employed by the United States Armed Forces. In fact, etheric goggles serve as perfectly functional night-vision goggles, allowing the wearer to see perfectly — albeit in monochrome — in pitch darkness. Their primary use comes into play when the hunter flips a pair of oddly purplish lenses down over the infrared light source on the goggles’ brow, allowing the wearer to see objects in Twilight as clearly as if they were manifested physically. The process required to treat the lenses to render Twilight visible
creates weird distortions of the physical world.

The Bleeder:
Resembling nothing so much as a jackhammer with a small satellite dish in place of the drill bit, the Bleeder is one of Task Force: VALKYRIE’s newest developments. The Bleeder is the latest in what VALKYRIE’s scientists refer to as “crowd-safe” weaponry, designed to target and eliminate supernatural threats, specifi cally vampires and their servants, while presenting little threat to potential victims or bystanders. Only recently moved out of the laboratory, the Bleeder has begun fi eld-testing with a number of field ops teams around the globe.

The Bleeder fires a focused microburst of energy in a tightly constrained beam. Through processes not fully understood even by the scientists who discovered them, this energy reacts violently with the quasi-biological functions of the vampire’s blood, with the net result that it evacuates the creature’s body, usually in a violent manner. Laboratory tests have recorded results ranging from a minor leakage of the tear ducts to vomiting. In some test cases, the blood actually shot out of the subject’s pores in a fi ne red mist. While not entirely eliminated, the weapon presents a minimal threat level to humans and natural animals, as they lack the critical metabiology of vampire blood.

Equalizer Grenade (Renewable):

The old phrase “monsters in human skin” has its element of truth, but there are things out there in the dark that hide behind only the thinnest veneer of humanity. Sometimes, when a Task Force: VALKYRIE strike
team storms some unholy nightmare’s den, what looks like a few hillbillies and drifters turns into a wall of fur and muscle and savage sharp teeth. The Equalizer grenade helps to level the playing field. Studies performed on captured monsters of various classifications have revealed a commonality amongst many: When a living creature changes its shape, no matter the method behind it, a surge of erratic brain activity buried deep in the sensory cortex immediately precedes the change. VALKYRIE scientists
have speculated that this is the brain trying to process the sensory overload of radical body morphism, but the truth is countless vivisections have been unable to give any conclusive answers. Nevertheless, VALKYRIE munitions experts were able to engineer the equalizer grenade from the test data.

Function:
Operating on the same principles that cause certain patterns of brightly fl ashing lights to induce epileptic seizures, the equalizer grenade pulses in a pattern that causes focused microseizures in that portion of the brain that seems to govern shapeshifting. The grenade is harmless to humans, and in fact to anything not attempting to alter its form, but the microseizures fl ood neural channels with “white noise” that effectively blocks shapeshifting.

Gungnir Multi-Function Targeting System:

The Gungnir System, named for Odin’s never-missing spear, is the boon and the curse of many Task Force: VALKYRIE field teams. Integrated directly into the latest generation of standard armament, the Gungnir System is VALKYRIE top brass’ new initiative for the future of the agency, in one fell swoop improving target identification and all but eliminating collateral damage. The truth, according to cynical agents who have field tested the device, is that target identification and guy who’s about to kill me identification aren’t necessarily the same thing, and the only way the Gungnir System is going to prevent
collateral damage is by ensuring that bystanders are only accidentally killed by the bad guys.

Function:
The integrated scope built into a weapon outfitted with the Gungnir System is a marvelous thing. A combination night vision scope, thermal imager, and Kirlian camera, it allows a soldier to engage targets in pitch blackness and easily distinguishes most monsters from humans: vampires, of course, are well below human body temperature, while werewolves and their ilk run hot as a byproduct of their increased metabolism. Witches, psychics and the possessed demonstrate an unusual Kirlian aura that identifies them as extra-normal. An LED overlay tags any known supernatural entity with its Task Force: VALKYRIE designation.

VDSB:

Ever since Murnau’s Nosferatu, the knowledge that vampires are destroyed by the light of the sun has entered the pop culture lexicon, along with wooden stakes, crosses and garlic (never mind that, as far as Task Force: VALKYRIE has been able to determine, two of those are complete nonsense). While VALKYRIE’s scientists have not yet found the key component of sunlight that causes such deleterious effects on the bloodsuckers, they have developed the next best thing.

Function:
The VDSB (Victim-Detonated Sun Bomb) is an explosive device that is rigged to trigger via an infrared
sensor and thermal imager; when an object with a core temperature of less than 94ºF breaks the infrared beam, the device is triggered. Instead of an explosion, the VDSB (which looks like a generic satchel charge but contains far more complex innards) uses a combination of full-spectrum phosphorescent lights and focusing mirrors to create a blinding flash that is, from an electromagnetic standpoint, identical to sunlight. While the light doesn’t actually harm vampires, it can cause a
surge of panic that overwhelms their rational mind and leads them to make tactical errors.

Etheric Tracker:

Monsters, whatever their stripe, tend to be elusive. Whether it’s a vampire’s ability to cloud men’s minds, a witch’s teleportation spell, or a werewolf’s really damn disconcerting way of just disappearing sometimes, if Task Force: VALKYRIE can’t fi nd it, they can’t very well tag it or kill it. The etheric tracker is one step toward nullifying that advantage. By marking a target with a small “tag” that has been bombarded with exotic, high-energy particles similar to those underlying the creation of etheric rounds, Task Force: VALKYRIE can track its quarry even through realms beyond mortal ken.

Function:
The etheric tracker consists of two parts: the main unit is roughly the size and shape of a large pistol, which uses precisely aligned electromagnets to fi re a tracking pellet at considerable velocity, embedding it below the target’s skin. The pellets themselves are roughly the size of a grain of sand. If it is noticed, the sensation is comparable to the bite of a small insect. A handheld scanner, the second part of the tracker, picks up the pseudo-etheric radiation given off by the pellet and displays a location on an LCD screen. Earlier models only showed approximate distance and direction; current field models integrate a GPS locator and street maps of the area, allowing the team to pinpoint the precise location of its quarry.

Munin Serum (Renewable):

No matter how black the black ops or how covert the covert strike team, on occasion, witnesses to Task Force: VALKYRIE operations survive the initial fracas. Sometimes it’s a bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes it’s the newly freed victim of a possessing entity or the liberated thrall of a warlock. Sometimes, those witnesses start to ask awkward questions. Since secrecy is one of the organization’s paramount directives, the silence of these witnesses must be guaranteed. In the old days, that meant a couple of ounces of lead in the back of the head; nowadays, VALKYRIE operatives prefer to use less messy alternatives.

Munin serum — or, as it’s more colloquially known, “memory cleanser” or “Brain-O” — is a cocktail of narcotics, psychedelics and memory-inhibitor drugs that can completely suppress the last six hours of a subject’s memory. Extensive application of the drug can lead to addiction, illness and even death. New VALKYRIE recruits are frightened with campfire tales of agents who injected themselves with Munin serum to forget the horrific things they’d seen, only to end up wasted, cancer-ravaged addicts desperately jonesing for a taste of the high they can never quite remember.

Function:
Munin serum must be administered by injection directly into the spinal column just below the cervical vertebrae. The process is excruciatingly painful and subjects are usually sedated before being treated. If an agent wishes to administer Munin serum to an aware and unwilling target, he must first successfully grapple his target.

Mjolnir Cannon:

When facing off against the unnamed horrors of the night, Task Force: VALKYRIE agents find it comforting to know they are armed with such stalwarts of high technology as “ray guns.” The Mjolnir Cannon may not be quite on par with Hollywood’s offerings, but it packs a wallop that can put down rioting humans and fanged monstrosities with equal ease. This weapon, which resembles an exceptionally bulky assault
rifle), operates by firing an intense, high-frequency laser beam that ionizes the air, creating a channel of extremely conductive plasma. The gun then sends an electrical charge into this channel, and the ionized air carries the charge to its target and delivers a long-range, high-impact shock.

LOAD-OUT

• PRIMARY WEAPON - (This is modern day, so pick a weapon that fits the bill. Your primary weapon come loaded with one magazine of etheric rounds and you can choose six extra magazines altogether from the following)
  
  GUNGNIR EPQUIPPED - (Yes or no.)
  
  ETHERIC MAGAZINES -
  SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES -
  ORDINARY MAGAZINES -

• SECONDARY WEAPON - (Can include shotguns and pistols. Comes loaded with one magazine, and four more are available for load-out)
  
  ETHERIC MAGAZINES -
  SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES -
  ORDINARY MAGAZINES -

• EQUALIZER GRENADES - (Two are available for load-out)

• LETHAL GRENADES - (Frag or Symtex. Please specify. Two are available for load-out)

• TACTICAL GREANADES - (Flash, concussion, smoke, etc. Please specify. Three are available for load-out)

• EQUIPMENT - (VDSB, claymore, C-4. One is available for load-out)

• MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT - (Make it believable. Etheric trackers ALSO go here.)

LOAD-OUT

* PRIMARY WEAPON - M4 w/ M203 Launcher attatched

GUNGNIR EPQUIPPED - No.

ETHERIC MAGAZINES - 1
SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES - 2
ORDINARY MAGAZINES - 3



* SECONDARY WEAPON - Desert Eagle XIX .44

ETHERIC MAGAZINES - 1
SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES - 2
ORDINARY MAGAZINES - 1



* EQUALIZER GRENADES - 1



* LETHAL GRENADES - 2 Frag.



* TACTICAL GREANADES - 2 Flash.



* EQUIPMENT - 1 Claymore.



* MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT - Etheric Tracker, Etheric goggles, Witch buster, 2x vials of Serum, and a pack of cigarettes and a worn zippo lighter with the Mad Hatter's hat designed in the corner.

LOAD-OUT

• PRIMARY WEAPON - PSG-1 w/ variable power scope
  
  GUNGNIR EPQUIPPED - Yes
  
  ETHERIC MAGAZINES - 3
  SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES - 3
  ORDINARY MAGAZINES - 0

• SECONDARY WEAPON - P90 w/ scope
  
  ETHERIC MAGAZINES - 1
  SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES - 1
  ORDINARY MAGAZINES - 2

• EQUALIZER GRENADES - Two

• LETHAL GRENADES - Two Frags

• TACTICAL GRENADES - Three Smoke

• EQUIPMENT - C4

• MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT - Silencers for his PSG-1 and P90, Munin serum, and a tactical knife treated with silver nitrate "just in case". Non-military equipment would be a deck of playing cards, a flashlight, and some rope.

LOAD-OUT

• PRIMARY WEAPON - KAC Stoner 96 LMG
  
  GUNGNIR EPQUIPPED - No
  
  ETHERIC BELTS - 3
  SILVER NITRATE BELTS - 3
  ORDINARY BELTS - 0

• SECONDARY WEAPON - SPAS-12
  
  ETHERIC MAGAZINES - 2
  SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES - 1
  ORDINARY MAGAZINES - 1

• EQUALIZER GRENADES - 2

• LETHAL GRENADES - Symtex (2)

• TACTICAL GREANADES - Flash (1), Smoke (1)

• EQUIPMENT - VDSB

• MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT -
  - Munin Serum (4 syringes)
  - Etheric Tracker
  - Witch Buster
  - Etheric Goggles
  - Bleeder
  - Mjlonir Cannon
  - Cuban Cigars (4)
  - Zippo Lighter

LOAD-OUT

[list][*]PRIMARY WEAPON – Felix uses the improved M4 that is customized to use both the 5.56 x45mm standard NATO rounds, or .45 caliber rounds with a switch out of the basic firing systems and barrel between the two. The M203 is capable to be attached to either set-up, and usually is. He usually keeps it loaded with normal rounds in the initial magazine.

GUNGNIR EPQUIPPED – No, the standard assault scope is attached instead.

ETHERIC MAGAZINES - 3
SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES -2
ORDINARY MAGAZINES – 1, hollowpoint

[list][*]SECONDARY WEAPON – AA-12, Atchisson Assault Shotgun.

ETHERIC MAGAZINES - 1
SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES - 1
ORDINARY MAGAZINES -2, 1 Frag-12, 1 Slug

• EQUALIZER GRENADES -1

• LETHAL GRENADES – 2, frag

• TACTICAL GREANADES – 2 concussion, 1 smoke, red

• EQUIPMENT – C-4, subdivided into 6 mostly precut segments

• MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT –
  -2 K-Bar knives, one hundred foot climbing rope
  -4 carabiners attached to the small of the back, one set of fingerless firing gloves, studded
  -1 pair of broken in steel toed combat boots
  -1 etheric tracker
  -6 syringes of munin syrum
  -1 small, foldable cloth sun hat
  -1 liter canteen, 1 half liter rollable camel back style canteen
  -1 gallon's worth of gatorade powder
  -1 small bottle of iodine, three pairs of cheap durable sunglasses
  -1 roll of high tensile fishing twine
  -7 rolled up ziplock bags with 3 rubber bands keeping them together
  - 1 folded up roll of toilet paper
  -one old and broken in desert pattern backpack
  - one leatherman
  -1 roll of rigging tape
  -1 quarter, and 1 deck of worn bicycle cards.
  -If the combat op is in the forest, 1 ghillie suit replaces the hat.

Elric Vhaan wrote:If this is a squad, that is two fire teams typically, right? Also, a sniper only carries a sniper's equipment, which is their own force multiplier. Plus those rifles are quite heavy. Heavy weapons guy should probably have one though.

Digital Muse wrote:Just a request, guys. I know RP-ing, but don't know a damned thing about proper military tactics. I hope you don't mind helping me along with the finer points.

LOAD-OUT

• PRIMARY WEAPON - M4
  
  GUNGNIR EPQUIPPED - No. Its a piece of shit and he doesn't need a bitching Betty system to tell him what the fuck he can and can't shoot.
  
  ETHERIC MAGAZINES - 3... Though Sinclair thinks they're pretty colors are for fags.
  SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES - 0... Those are for pussies.
  ORDINARY MAGAZINES - 3 Holopoint, 30 round magazines... for that extra thrill of the kill.

• SECONDARY WEAPON - H&K .45 Pistol
  
  ETHERIC MAGAZINES - 1
  SILVER NITRATE MAGAZINES -
  ORDINARY MAGAZINES - 2 Holopoint Match .45 clips of 20 rounds; and 1 clip of Match fletche rounds... for ripping the shit out things.

• EQUALIZER GRENADES - 2

• LETHAL GRENADES - 2 Frag... He likes to cook them; watch out.

• TACTICAL GREANADES - None. Too much extra weight and they don't do a damn thing in the desert. Its the desert; it ain't fucking urban warfare god damn it. A flash grenade in the desert? Please, if you want to blind them just knock them on their ass and make them stare at the sun.

• EQUIPMENT - C-4... Boom.

• MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT - A cell phone to tell his wife he's fine (and stop complaining about over-cooking the damn turkey) and to surf the web on the go... He loves Facebook.

The Ghost Writer wrote:In response to the recent comment about this conversation being "pointless"; I actually find it quite point-full. The more you know about joint warfare, the more efficiently you can write about it.