Battle Quest

Battle Quest by LonelyWorld, Jukashi and TestPattern
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Astranians and Scellor fight over a planet with a powerful, ancient artifact guarded by a small squad of Tozols.

Cast

Astranians

See: Astranian

Commander-Ritualist Ekia

Psychic space bat.

Tactica Command

Artificial Intelligence.

Scellor

See: Scellor

Commander Radde San-Onnka

Radical dude.

Piyerra San-Onnka

Tiny diplomat.

Tozols

See: Tozol

Lt. Vaejra

Lt. Vaejra is equipped with a cybernetic computer interface, a rarity these days, and specializes in information warfare. He has a broad skillset, however, and is over a century old.

Sgt Ota Karsti

Sgt Ota Karsti is not much younger, and has the stories to prove it. She knows fieldcraft, mines, traps, explosives, and every manner of entrenchment. She takes care of the squad, doing whatever she can to keep them in working order, physically and mentally.

Trooper Rinis Ayen

Trooper Rinis Ayen is a tinkerer, an engineer, and an aggressive and capable warrior. Though much younger than the old hands of the squad, she's fought aliens on five worlds. This will be her sixth.

Trooper Reya Oriat

Trooper Reya Oriat is the only other member of the squad with a cybernetic uplink, and serves as backup infowar and technician. She loves to read, claiming it gives her a xenopsychological edge.

Trooper Anak Utaza

Trooper Anak Utaza is the best rifleman on the squad, and carries the best rifle. All tozols are marksmen by design, and infantry by nature, but Anak has struggled to master small unit combat, often at the expense of the technical work that's dominated the squad's life for the past two decades Despite this, he's friends with everyone in the squad.

Trooper Thaen Sinh

Trooper Thaen Sinh is not native to Valatan, as the others are, and likes to tell wildly exaggerated stories of his early life on a nomad starship. He's a good mechanic, is responsible for running the base's fabricator, and the best pilot on the team.

Trooper Baj Oriat

Trooper Baj Oriat was born on this planet, the son of Reya and Anak, and is less than half as old as anyone else. To him, Valatan and tozol civilization are just one of many things he reads about, and he displays a worrying fascination with alien cultures as a result. Nevertheless, he's trusted to fight and kill.

Specialist Kaselir Vrin

Specialist Kaselir Vrin was deployed to this planet in a hibernation cocoon packed inside her tank destroyer, part of a rushed package to let the squad dig in for the long haul. Not being part of the original unit of pathfinders, she considers herself something of an outsider, even after all these years.

The Objective

Map of the surrounding area

On this isolated, sun-baked planet, an ancient tower reaches high into the sky, somehow draining ambient energy into itself in defiance of the laws of nature. None know what the purpose of this may be, but it is surely related to the seemingly bottomless shaft over which the tower hangs. The intense cold it generates about itself has created not only the frozen lake from which it rises but a tight ring of gradated climates wedged tight against each other, populated with alien flora and fauna.

This article contains spoilers! You were warned.

Forces

Scellor

Full details are in the thread.^[ref]

Ships

Four landers

Modified mining ships with heavy armour and shields. Can fly in the atmosphere but with massive fuel drain. Armed with defense turrets and torpedo launchers. Each had a shuttle attached, but there are only two left.

One praal Ghostship

War command vessel. Light weapons and a thin crew. Houses the command squad.

Infantry

Heavy weapon niiar squad five of them, armoured.

Scout niiar squad five of them, snipers.

Ten formations of niiar each of one sentient and 19 drones, with orthan and otrhe medic. Breaks down into:

Three light infantry outfitted for mobility, all-niiar.

Two with five drones replaced with praal, with a hovertruck each.

Two heavy all-niiar, heavier weapons and armour.

Two engineering mostly praaly with five niiar, with a hovertruck.

One with mobile emplacements half-niiar, half-praal, with a hovertruck.

Three ayaar teleporting scouts

Armour

Two vertical mobility armoured cars

Tozols

Lots and lots of preparation time