Albertinius Thadolphus

Appearance:

A tall, thin, Anglo-Saxon youth with a pretentious and aggressive posture, coming from noble or possibly royal blood. Well educated and well spoken, but brash and arrogant, highly disdainful of common folk, and disparaging of anyone not a Mechwarrior. Within the ranks of mech jocks, the pecking order is not determined by skill, experience, or combat kills, but by the weight of the mech being piloted.

Background:

A scion of a moderately powerful Lyran Commonwealth family, Thadolphus has been raised in the rarified company of the elite and the powerful. Part of the family obligations include military service. To this end, Thadolphus has attended a prestigious military academy, scored well on exams and tests, and was competent enough to be placed as a mechwarrior mostly on his own merit. He is not popular among his own men, as his nature leads him to make poor tactical decisions, and his demeanor often sees him isolated on the battlefield, as his men will only perform to the bare minimum in following his orders and supporting his actions. They mostly see him as a spoiled man-child who only has a seat and a command because of his family name and blood.

This is mostly true.

First Appearance:

Mission Objective: Objective Raid/Rescue

The mech/squad is tasked with reaching a rescue beacon, finding the lone mechwarrior and providing military aid and or rescue. Mission briefing is that Stallion Squad deployed to the Vasanola plains with the objective of disrupting enemy activity, locate several sites of interest, and engage and destroy enemy mechs, armor, and other forces. Of the four mechs deployed, only one is still functional, Thadolphus's Shadow Hawk (SHD-2H 3025 standard variant). His machine has taken 35 damage (scatter as per LRM fire, reduce all ammo by 50%)

Enemies: 5

2 WSP-1A Wasp light mechs (start in melee range of Thadolphus's Shadow Hawk)

1 BJ-1 Blackjack

1 VL-2T Vulcan

1 Patton heavy tank

Special - Before combat is declared, the attacking/rescuing player may choose one of two options, Destroy the Vasanola Raiders, or Rescue Albertinius. If the player chooses Destroy, the player automatically gains the initiative in the battle. In this case, upon detecting the rescue force, Albertinius will disengage from combat and attempt to reach safety behind the allies. He will fight and shoot, but will be more interested in being rescued than winning the fight. If the player chooses Rescue, Albertinius will engage his attackers with gusto, the cavalry is here, after all. The player may or may not win the initiative in the battle, that would be up to the dice.

Aftermath - Following the battle, should Albertinius survive, he will join the player as a 'guest' and serve in their squad for a short time. They will not count towards or against tonnage/BV/or other limitations. If 'killed', he will be rescued from the wreckage of his machine and will spend a good deal of time in medical recovery, and the Player's squad will have some negative modifiers to social interaction. If the Shadow Hawk survives, it will be repaired before the next battle. If it is destroyed but Albertinius survive unscathed, he will have a replacement machine sent to him. Depending on how well he performed in the battle determines what he is sent. 1 kill means a standard replacement SHD-2H Shadow Hawk. 2 Kills is an upgraded Shadow Hawk (unofficial upgrade, but a couple of pieces of gear are improved, like adding an Extended Range Medium Laser to replace the regular laser, or upgrading the AC-5 to an Ultra AC-5. If he scores 3+ kills, his Shadow Hawk will be replaced with a standard model TDR-5S Thunderbolt (moving him from a 55-ton medium mech to a 65-ton heavy mech)

If Albertinius scores no kills and his mech is destroyed, aka demonstrates what a tool he is, he still gets a replacement mech. Instead of a Shadow Hawk he will be equipped with a 40-ton Hermes II heavy scout. It has less firepower, and less armor, but is faster so that he can escape combat rather than get killed.

Combat Service

Albertinius will remain with the player for a while, serving in several engagements. While a competent pilot and gunner, he isn't a good planner so in most battles, he will do what he wants, typically a charge up the middle with the Player's squad trying to support or protect the idiot. So long as the player can keep Albertinius alive, his mech will be maintained by his own support force, and replaced as need be. Success garners success, so he can see regular improvements to his machine. This can grate with the player and their squad, as they do not have Noble support for the campaign.

He refers to his mech as the Sandalphon, with a numerator following the name counting how many mechs he's lost out from under him. The machine is maintained in a matte orange paint scheme with numbers and badges tricked out in royal blue, including the Thadolphus family crest, a white rampant lion on a blue shield, on the shoulder.

The Battle at Fort Ravensfall

Through the course of the campaign, events will lead toward Fort Ravensfall. The enemy will have since been revealed to not be a raider faction, but a planetary organization called the Corpse Battalion. After the 4th victory in the player campaign, the commander of the Corpse Battaltion, General Carlton Leighton, and his second, Major Veronica Barlow successfully raid a government facility and abduct a number of VIPs as hostages, including people important to either one of the Guest members of the party, or the player's character.

General Leighton has the lead hostage in the cockpit with him in his Battlemaster assault mech (ammo expended, 65 damage scattered across the machine) and demands that the player and their forces stand down or the hostages will be executed. Supporting forces for Leighton, representing what remains of the Corpse Battalion in it's last desperate stand. 

RFL-3N Rifleman (2nd in command), -50% ammo, 40 dmg scattered across mech

QKD-4G Quickdraw - -50% ammo, 30 dmg scattered across mech

GHR-5H Grasshopper - 20 dmg scattered across mech

TBT-5N Trebuchet - -50% ammo, 35 dmg scattered

CPLT-1T Catapult - -50% ammo, 35 dmg scattered

First Blood: after the challenge is issued by Leighton, he gets an immediate answer. Thadolphus lines up a shot and fires on the damaged Battlemaster (fudge some dice rolls for critical effect), with his main weapon striking the machine in the head. (even more effective if the Battlemaster is down 5 points of head armor). The hostage is critically wounded, potentially even killed, and Leighton is seriously injured. He pulls back into the protection of the fortress while the surviving Corpse Battalion backed into a corner, attacks. The mechwarriors will fight with heroic resolve, because for them this is a fight to the death, and there is no quarter.

The Turn: Thadolphus has a different set of orders, and with Leighton severely wounded, he will fall back and leave the fighting to the squad. This is a very dangerous moment, as there is an as yet unwritten guest who will also be with the party who will turn their guns on Thadolphus because of the actions he's taken, aka the hostage in the damaged assault mech was related to them.

Thadolphus will retreat towards a fortified location on the map, and the other guest pilot is going to pursue them, engaging each other, and if there are and Corpse Battalion mecha that try to interfere, they will be quickly destroyed by these two, by this point, ace pilots.

Option: Neat and Tidy - the player's mech force remains under their control, and the battle progresses as per usual rules.

Option: Messy - the player's mech force has divided loyalty, some of their mechs and mech jocks side with Thadolphus and following First Blood, they take their machines and follow off after Thadolphus. Initially they will support Thadolphus, and engage the Corpse Battalion remnants, and the other guest. If the player engages them, it will turn into a full on scrum where everyone is shooting at everyone.

The Prestige: Leighton isn't dead, but he knows he will be soon, and he refuses to go out like a coward, and will not surrender for a dog and pony show trial, he has another plan. After five or six rounds of combat, or if Thadolphus's mech goes down, the entire Fort goes up in a flash. He's had the entire place set to detonate, using the stored munitions, and the power core for the fort as a massive bomb. This is a fusion explosion in the low megaton range. Everything in or near the fort vanishes in thermonuclear fire, the funeral pyre of the Corpse Battalion. The mission wraps after artillery damage is assigned, and given the size of the explosion (I would consider a fire factor of 200 damage for the central hex of the facility, and the damage is halved in the next ring of hexes around it, and continue outwards until there is no damage left, 200, 100, 50, 25, 12, 6. This creates a blast template 11 hexes wide, and several units should take moderate damage, and if any are near the facility, they could be destroyed, their pilots killed.