Keystone Gray

It was dark and cold. I was crouched in the mud, deep behind enemy territory. My Thanatos had crash landed. I had survived, but my co-pilot was dead. She didn't have a chance; her pod was smashed, and she was grinded to a fine paste 40 meters back. It was raining. Knowing that the guerillas would come investigate for survivors, I knew I had to hoof it to anywhere, but couldn't stay there. The rain was my best friend and my worst enemy; it would mask my scent... and make it easier to hide. But if they brought an experienced tracker, I would have been easy to follow. Footprints in the mud are good indicators. Looking through the jungle, I could spot beams of light. Good, I thought. They're inexperienced. I knew I had to act quickly, and I bolted into the brush. A few shouts were sounded, but none in my direction. They came from the crashed craft, and were muffled from the pouring rain. I looked back. Binoculars out. I hooded the front lenses so the rain would not obstruct my view, and peered through the jungle foliage. The lights were gracing the once beautiful craft's wings, the owners of those beams a mere meter away from their demise. I spoke my late co-pilot's name under my breath alongside a brief apology, and reached for a detonator on my belt. There were four hostiles surrounding the Thanatos. A good catch. The craft exploded. I turned and ran quickly, dodging branches. I could suddenly hear the shouts behind me, getting closer and closer. One of them had spotted me. How, I didn't know, but it did not matter. I was on the run, deep behind enemy lines, with the enemy closing in. I reached for my belt again, and grasped my only grenade. The flipswitch on the top was set to incendiary. A bad choice in the rain. I flipped it to fragmentary, pulled the pin, held the spooned grenade tightly in one hand and kept the pin on the finger of my other. It was my own personal Alamo in a can. The rain slowed, but didn't stop. This was bad. The mud would not be obstructed, and thus it was easier to track me. I kept my hold on the grenade, kept running, could still hear the voices behind me. I told myself to not look back, said it under my breath quite a few times. My radio was smashed in the crash; there would be no calling for backup this time, no calling for an evac, no ability to rally at a LZ because there was none. I was on my own, MIA, presumed KIA. The only person I could rely on was myself. Suddenly the voices got quieter. Endless jungle surrounded me in each direction, and even though the Guerilla Rebels owned this territory, I knew they couldn't possibly keep up with me. I had not been fighting in the field for the past few days. I had them beat on stamina, and I used this to my advantage. I found a river. The current was strong, and it was apparently three times higher than its normal saturation. I wouldn't dare wade through it. It was relatively quiet now, I could rest myself a bit before continuing. I panted strongly, regained my breath. My tongue brushed the water from the fur around my lips. I hunched over. I looked down at the pinless grenade, sighed, fitted the pin back in, and then tossed it upstream. It didn't explode, and so I went to retrieve it. It was still in working condition. A good thing, because I needed every bit of munitions I could get my hands on. The rain picked up again, which implored me to move faster. A brief check of my fluorescent wrist watch showed me that it was 2 AM. I sat in the mud, rain dripping over my uniform and soaking me. No doubt I'll contract some malicious bacteria from this, I thought. Or a virus of some sort. I needed to get myself out before the effects of such a thing could happen. I knew this was damned near impossible; the enemy owned this territory for a hundred miles in every direction. I was downed, alone, issued with a single submachine-gun, a sidearm, and no more than 90 rounds. A quick inventory of all equipment I had on me revealed that I actually had the submachine-gun, no sidearm, no sidearm mags, and only a single magazine for the MP9. I also had my combat knife. I had foolishly forgotten to scavenge Duplicarius Rawley's body for extra munitions, and what's more is that I lost a lot of gear as the jungle tore at my equipment during the run. I looked down the muddy river, from upstream to down. Sat on my rear, wrapped my arms around my knees, and flicked my ears free of water to listen. Not a pindrop, spare the rain. I was almost quite literally up shit creek without a paddle. I didn't sleep, as much as I needed it. Too often through that night, I was reliving the moments before the crash in my mind, wondering if there was anything I could do to avoid it. The missiles came too fast. I probably couldn't have dodged them if I tried. What was supposed to be a quick air raid and a snatch-and-grab of a VIP became a hell for me. The mission was a success. Julia Rawley and I had become casualties. Minor deaths for the greater good. We knew what we had signed up for. The only difference is that Rawley wasn't getting the chance I got. At the moment, I was glad she didn't; she was pretty lucky to not have to experience what I'm experiencing. She was a good trooper. Passed her training with lukewarm results, but did alright, and eventually improved. She was always eager to get herself up in the air for real experience, and she was always in the combat simulator. She loved the guns. Jules could peg a tank to the ground using nothing but a scope, thermals, and a rotary cannon from half a mile away. All of her training, her experience, her talent and ambition were thrown away hastily to a single missile. She had extensive survival training. She didn't need it. We were providing covering support for a special ops team. Intel from the brass had come in and gave us the location of a defector, a VIP who had a lot to answer for. Who it was and why was not important to us. We went in low and silent, using the valleys for cover, with two support craft (NE-087 and TH-102) in front of and behind the dropship. In the span of four seconds, we flew upwards over the plateau that hosted a small enemy compound, the dropship spurted out six drop pods, and we swung back down into the valley. For the next few minutes we artfully dodged and evaded enemy aircraft. Pickup time. The Invictus team reported mission successful and requested an evac. We provided a quick sweep of remaining ground targets - Rawley performed as expected - and the dropship reported cargo collected. And then we were off, NE-087 providing proper air cover support. Our craft gained altitude and dropped speed, coming up above and behind the recently-scrambled enemy fighters. They were eager to take us down. Rawley opened up, her cannon spinning, and the enemy aircraft sputtered explosive shards before falling down to earth. We cheered, and the dropship quickly picked up speed, preparing to exit the atmosphere with NE-087. Suddenly and without warning, we were targetted and shot down. We did not see our attacker. I'm assuming it was a SAM. I still don't think it matters. We completed our mission. My debrief ended up being a hot-foot through intense jungle with no hope for survival. Rawley's debrief, a dirtnap. I missed the kid... but there was nothing I could do for her. She gave her life for duty, and an improvised funeral pyre was the least I could do for her... and at least she took a few of the bastards with her. She died with the craft she loved best, doing what she enjoyed most. Rest in peace, girl... and wish me luck. --- To be continued. ---

I agree with Kristian; the problem with having people having different rounds is that it will be difficult to determine who is who on the battlefield. We generally fight unorganized enemies with very little effort put into the creation of their weapons. Their bullets are bright, edgy, badly textured, badly made. You may not notice it, but you are able to determine the team designation of a hostile just by the rounds they fire. Now consider putting a radical into the mix of extra round colors. Consider the enemy is using a bright yellow bullet (as most are apt to do). One person with a bright yellow round in one of our weapons is going to confuse our teams. I'm all for individuality in armor designs and pretty much anything else if properly cleared, but if it diminishes our raid teams' abilities to define targets, I'm against it. Also, please don't cite the Terra HUD, not everyone has one, and even still, it's probably the most unreliable piece of equipment in laggy situations. EDIT: I'm not against customizable gun colors; my point is that bullets should be standardized.

He once muted me for being in Ordo, and he used to be a friend of mine. He hates Ordo. But just be polite to him and his mannerisms may change, his hate is unfounded; he decided to mute me when I questioned him on why he hates Ordo so much, meaning he is unsure where his spite comes from. No doubt it's been planted in his head by Dark Svenska and the rest of the Chaos goons. If we're polite, he may shape up.

This update is total and utter shit. Valve decided to make being killed by any of the new unlocks to be as very little satisfying as possible. They gave the Scout a portable ubercharge with no chargeup time, only a recharge. They could have just as well made the Scout THROW the ball from the Sandman, because it goes straight and gets launched instantaneously. It can be used at extremely close ranges in conjunction with the new shotgun to make it impossible to fight back against an attacker. Outside the realm of the Scout, the Spy update introduced fixes that are -great- on paper but broke the gameplay of the class as a whole. Yeah, they removed facestabs, I can live with that and I'm glad they fixed the bug. But they broke backstabs, forcing the player to use the ultra-close range stab as compared to the swiping backstab. This basically means that, although the flipstab is instant (AKA the knife twirling to face downward before the stab), you need to be very close, and this update made it impossible to swipestab (horizontal slash) from a proper distance. So you basically have to be humping your target, making you an obvious Spy. In addition, the backstabs don't even register half the time (in other words, failure backstabs are 20 times more common) even if you get a proper hit. Seriously, does Valve QA test their games anymore? This is sad and depressing. They used to be the shining star of the gaming market, and openly cared for balance in gameplay. Seems they've gone the route of EA Games and all those other big-brand publishers and started caring more about aesthetics and eye candy than actual worth in gameplay. Did they fix any glaring bugs that they foolishly introduced with patching, like rocketparticle pistols? Fuck no. Did they beta test with people from outside of Valve before releasing it? Most likely not. On top of this, they did nothing to prevent the massive flood of people playing Scout. They didn't give any bonus incentive to play any other class, causing a torrent of everyone playing a single class, with new weapons that had no teamplay potential when used in such a massive clusterfuck. In addition, their lack of a new Meet The Team video and their deceptive chronogram timeline on teamfortress.com was a massive disappointment. This game was perfectly balanced when it came out, because Valve actually took their time. They worked long and hard, gave this game a good ten years to find out what worked and what didn't. Back then, their company focused on gameplay and stability. Now, Valve offers no ability for server owners to choose whether they wanted to update their servers or not, forcing us to endure new, confusing gameplay. I'd rather be playing CoD4. At least it's perfectly balanced.

Video of the Sandman in action.

Nintendo: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Nintendo Gameboy Nintendo Gameboy Advance* Nintendo Gameboy SP Nintendo DS* Nintendo 64 Nintendo Gamecube Nintendo Wii Sony: Playstation 2 Microsoft: X-Box X-Box 360 And then naturally, two PCs, and a laptop. One PC is down (Hard drive is kaput), the laptop has a battery that's eight and a half years old and thus dies after ten minute on a full charge. The PC I'm on now is a killer. \o/

For #5, I've seen a company solve this problem by making their MMO free, but offering special items for sale on their website in exchange for real money and continuously creating more content for the marketplace.

Going to the bank today after sunrise just for you, Krow.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-2355 Please vote. If you're a merchant, you've realized the impact the name change from SL Exchange to xStreet SL had by the drop in sales the moment they renamed. Let's petition to retroname it.

Uberbump. Not everyone is registered, data is falling behind. I recommend we get Schola graduates to register as soon as they hit E-1 and make sure we make it a point to tell them to keep it updated.

MIND MELD, QUICK! I had this same idea. O.o

I rofl'd, Lilium.

This would be acceptable....... In a furry club.

Noted.

Sera, I've always been fascinated with how much effort you put into your Second Life, and I admire you for it. Not only that, but your contributions to Ordo are extremely appreciated. I wouldn't change a thing if I were you... oh, except, you always seem sad. Fix that. You're doing fine. :D

http://www.mantaengie.com/2009/01/25/johnn...tank-soundpack/ I rofl'd. Yes, the background music is the music that plays when the tank shows up.

Excellent initiative, Diablos. Let's keep in mind that they're a starting military; I'd not go as far as to say all Brazilian groups are like this, but rather that all new non-English-speaking groups are. The reason for this is that the language barrier prevents constructive criticism from falling home. Every charter military - AN, and Mercz, for instance - began on the basis of having gear and regulations that were quite lax. Over time, as both attackers provided input and internal issues arose, more rules were put in place and things became regulatory, as it is impossible to sustain a military for very long when equipment and activity is ragtag. I admire Diablos's outreach to them, as this is one of the first steps required towards helping them shape up. EDIT: I would also like to extend the very same kudos to the developers stepping forth to help CATI as well; namely Ethan, Sera, and Hokusai. I too would have no problem helping contribute to them once my hand gets back to perfect condition.

I'm relieved... the doctor said tendonitis, not CTS, so it's not permanent. On anti-inflammatory meds for ten days. Should be back then, if it gets better. I'l be on for the meeting but won't do much.

... I'm left handed. This is my right wrist.

Hey everyone. Not sure exactly how long of a break I'm taking. A week or so ago my right wrist has begun to ache, I ignored it up until recently. In fear of it becoming something more serious, I've decided to be light on it for a while and see if that fixes anything. "A while" meaning however long it takes. All my build projects are on hold until then, and again, my sincere apologies go out to Navis. I'll be back when I can. I just hope it's just some irritation and not something more permanent. Thank you.

Huh? ... ... ... It's just a box.