The Praedian Records

J.G. Phoenix

Current Projects

Riaz Royals

Yamato 90%
Yorktown 80%
Essex 50%
Cleveland 90%
Blücher 95%
Prinz Eugen 50%
Seydlitz (Redux) 40%
Lützow 80%
Type 34 Destroyer 99%
Type 36 Destroyer (Redux) 50%

Fleeing Victory Chapter Two Part Three

“Back up! Hurry!”

Casey was shaken out of his daydream when Alice hit the brakes on their scouting vehicle. She hadn’t been the one calling out on the battalion’s primary channel just now, though.

Casey knew the voice; it was the gunner for the front-most scout. As soon as he caught sight of them, a flash of yellow dove down onto the vehicle, causing it to bounce on the spot. A plume of fire and smoke erupted from the impact, and for brief, terrifying moment, Casey feared the worst.

“Automated gun!” The next report came over the airwaves–from that same insanely lucky pair up front, no less.

“Get out of there,” Casey called out to them as the two leaped from the flaming wreck and ran like mad. They were practically tripping over themselves–and getting perilously close to the corrupted crystal mounds along the path–to reach the relative safety of the 203rd’s light tanks.

By the time they were clear of the immediate danger, another shot struck their vehicle and blew it up. The explosion sent thick, hot air racing past Casey and far down the line of vehicles in the tunnel.

Just when Casey was about to ask the lieutenant for his orders, the man himself instructed the units at the front. “This is Intrepid 1 to the van. Intrepid 21, standby to take point. Intrepid 7, move up and take out that gun. Acknowledge.”

“Intrepid 21 scout vehicle, acknowledged,” Alice sent back, “Holding here. Over and out.” While Ricard was the leader of Intrepid 21, they were now divided into two independent crews, one in the light tank, Chaser, and the other in a scout car.

Intrepid 7 was another matter. Theirs was one of a handful of tanker teams that hadn’t been reconstituted after the attack on Munica’s colossus weapon. Matteo, Luca, and their swift, brawler of a light tank named Daring were the original Intrepid 7 from the start of the war. Casey and Alice both knew what kind of shenanigans to expect from them.

“Intrepid 7 acknowledges. Over and out.”

Daring pulled ahead of them in the long line of vehicles and deployed its long mechanical arms for the coming exchange. The arms had the tank’s skirt armor attached to them, so they hung like small shields off the side of each arm. Once they were close enough, Daring grabbed onto the smoldering wreck and moved it out of the way. Next, the arms folded over the turret, leaving just the gun barrel exposed to return fire.

“Intrepid 7 to Intrepid 21. Give us one minute and we’ll have the way clear for you~ Over.” Matteo said. He was talking to–flirting with Alice in particular. No one in Intrepid 21 had any doubts about that.

Daring suddenly moved up into nearly the exact spot the scout vehicle was when it had first been hit. Its gun elevated to line up whatever was waiting at the top of the incline, but the tank quickly reversed and pulled back out of the line of fire. It wasn’t a moment too soon, as a shot came down and struck the ground, sending up rock and loose parts from the first wreck. Without wasting any time, Daring pulled forward again, this time ready to fire back. As soon as Intrepid 7’s light tank came to a halt, its gun fired. Then, just as the smoke from the muzzle was beginning to disperse, Daring quickly backed up again, narrowly avoiding another shot from the automated gun.

“That’s definitely a 37mil,” Luca informed the rest of the 203rd.

Casey shrugged, seeing as Daring had already secured itself and its crew against that caliber of gun emplacement. While Munica’s anti-tank guns could punch through a light tank’s armor with relative ease, it was extremely unlikely that they would be able to make it through two separate sets of armor spaced as far apart as the skirt armor on the tank’s mechanical arms and the hull armor at the front of the vehicle. Even so, not getting hit at all had proven to be the best tactic for this fight.

Daring jerked forward again and fired another shot, then quickly retreated in the brief window it had, completely avoiding the return shot. If the weapon they were facing had been manned, they might have had the good sense to hold their fire and bait Daring out into the open before firing. Instead, the automated gun fired the moment it was reloaded, creating perfect three second intervals for Daring to weave its attacks into. This was a weakness of automatons that the Cordaeans had centuries of experience with. Using their own predictable behavior against them was enough to turn a stalwart defender into little more than a bump in the road.

Daring quickly moved back to the foot of the inclined and fired up at the gun emplacement, scoring a hit on the gun barrel itself. The light tank didn’t back off this time, and there was no return fire.

“Target neutralized. Moving to the top of the hill to check for additional guns. Over.”

“Copy that, Intrepid 7,” Lieutenant Rog replied, “Give 21 some space to get by after you clear the area. Over.”

“Hey, is everything alright up there?”

Casey laughed hearing Ricard chime in. He wasn’t sure if his friend was worried about the actual enemies in the tunnels with them, or Matteo making moves on Alice while he was half a dozen vehicles behind them. He had his suspicions, though. “Oh yeah, we’re fine, man. We’ll be out of these tunnels in no time if that’s the best they’ve got for us.”

“Clear comms,” Lieutenant Rog said warningly.

“Intrepid 7 to Intrepid 1: We’ll make sure the road is good and clear, sir. Over and out.”

Someone was beginning to sigh into the channel before realizing their mistake and cutting the transmission.

“Heh.” Casey felt the same. He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, “Well get to it then ya showoffs!”

Clan Battles 3/13

This one started an hour late which threw my schedule off. It also wasn’t with the competitive divs (the W-P-O divs). Lastly, there was some connectivity problem on the backend of P.R. which kept me from writing this post even longer. Despite all of that, things went reasonably well. I even got some game footage I can record this coming week when I find the time.

The Highlights

  • Preussen: Still fun
  • Yamato: Still King

There’s other news but I’m going to be trying to keep posts limited to one or two topics max going forward and just make more posts. I noticed while doing category searches that there’s way too much overlap with how I tend to group updates together. Better if things are kept fully separate as often as possible.

I may still do the occasional ‘news’ post, but once a week tops.

M.A.S.S. Builder: Upgrade Quark Enemies Production

It’s Saturday so Vermillion posted another news update; it’s a short one but they’ve stuck to the weekly reports just like the community asked. That alone has done wonders for this game.

I’m sure it helps the team stay extremely focused on what they’re doing, too.

Anyway this is the progress on one of the concept art monsters from a couple of weeks ago.

WIP: Upgrade Quark Enemies Production

Dimensional Wind Tunnel Quark Guy

This fell creature is going to be interesting to fight. He’s definitely got ranged vibes, but even so I bet he can gap close pretty well, too. Those fists have to be good for more than just throwing small continents at the player.

As always, looking forward to the quark chaos.

New WoWs Clip: Kongo

It took me way too long to finish this tiny video, but Premier doesn’t run as smoothly on my PC as I’d like. And let’s not forget the final boss, Naming the video (or the sub-boss, making the thumbnail for the video).

Fleeing Victory Chapter Two Part Two

One by one the 203rd’s vehicles challenged steep inclines and narrow passages, each crew hoping in turn that their luck would get them through to the other side of the tunnel system. Ricard’s ease was just beginning to return to him at the top of another incline when he heard something shatter overhead.

Nicholas’ gaze shot back to him. He had no answer for the young tanker.

“I’ll take a look,” Ricard said, pulling his scarf up to cover his mouth. He didn’t know for certain, but the only materials around here that would make that sort of high pitched splitting noise were the corrupted crystals. The rest was all rock and metal, neither of which even came close.

“Be careful,” Nicholas said as Ricard reached over to his side and picked up a helmet.

“I’ll be fine, but have Chaser stop for a second.” They should still have a minute before the next tank in the column reached the crest of the incline. That was time enough to poke his head outside and see what fell on top of them.

Just for good measure, Ricard pulled down the goggles affixed to his helmet before lifting himself up through the commander’s hatch.

“Oh no …” Ricard winced at the glowing red shards strewn across his tank’s hull. He spied a few crystal growths above them, poking out from the roof of the tunnel. Some must be coming loose after the tremors. That was especially dangerous for the scout vehicles, whose gunner stations offered no verticle protection whatsoever.

Purportedly, contact with bare skin would leave a soldier down for the count, so it wasn’t worth the risk trying to get rid of the shards himself. Ricard didn’t like the idea of being outside of the hatch, but these shards had to go one way or another.

“Chaser, go manual.”

Ricard steadied himself with his left hand while holding out his right. The tank began to shake, its right manipulator arm coming loose and stretching out to match his movements. Slowly–carefully, Ricard made gentle sweeping motions, minding the position of Chaser’s mechanical arm, and with a few swipes, the shards were sprinkled onto the side of the path. A few tiny fragments were left behind, but nothing as large and cumbersome as a tank’s manipulators could deal with those. They would have to spray Chaser down thoroughly back at the base to get rid of those.

“That’s the best we can do,” Ricard sighed, slapping the roof of the turret a couple of times.

Chaser’s arm stowed itself back alongside the suspension system, the mechanical hand attaching itself to the sprocket hub for support. There was a loud metal clamping noise that let Ricard know the arm was secure, and that the sprocket’s ‘backup’ drive was in place again.

Ricard climbed back down into the hatch and pulled down his scarf, letting Nicholas see his relieved smile for himself.

“All good?”

“Almost, but we should be fine for now. Onward we go.”

Just Like the Old Days

“It’ll be alright, Han. You, me, and Luke together again–It’ll be just like the old days.”

~Leia Organa Solo

Yeah. This is what we were looking forward to. Before the dark times. Before Disney.

I could rant about Disney Star Wars for hours, but I’d rather focus on my own material. Every hour I spent writing about what I don’t like is an hour I can’t spend creating something I do like, so the commentary on things like this will be few and far between.

That quote from Leia in Heir to the Empire just hit me pretty hard today. It makes me wonder about certain legacies and how to protect them from people who just want to use them for their own ends or destroy them altogether.

Clan Battles (3/9)

While I may personally be having a ‘bad day,’ Clan Battles actually went exceptionally well tonight. I think across all our matches, probably around twelve or so (? I rotated out for three games, so I don’t remember our total matches or win/loss ratio) we only lost four. I think; I don’t no the exact numbers.

Still, a good Clan Battles, even if the rest of my day has been less than stellar.

I played the Smolensk for a couple of games because we were getting silly toward the end. First game went way too well and the second game was an uphill battle and a loss.

That’s about it for the personal highlights. I don’t think I got any new video materials either, sadly.

Here’s hoping things are more interesting on Sunday.

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