In today’s post, we’ll have a look at some stats the show all of the shard’s progress towards the goals, an analysis of intel around the resistance target and a story in from Dublin of a team traveling over 1900 kms!
Statistics Update
Shards #9, 15, 18, 23 – Recap: Resistance place their 4th shard
Shards #6, 8 – Story (Res): A Game of Shards: A yoink of shart from Orks
If you would like to join the team of reporters to write recaps of any of the shards, let us know. Otherwise, if you’d just like to submit a sitrep of your teams awesome work, you can submit it here: http://fevgames.net/wpgforms/shonin-shard-stories
Statistics Update (as of 1201 hrs UTC)
In the past 24 hours, the shards have traveled 20,998 kms, collectively moving 912 kms away from the Enlightened Target and 13,288 kms closer to the Resistance target. The lighter shade highlights progress towards the respective targets in the last 24 hours.
There are 8 shards within 1,000 kms of the Enlightened target and only 3 shards within that range of the Resistance Target. There are 19 shards closer to the Enlightened target and 8 shards closer to the Resistance target, excluding the 4 that are already on there.
By Thomas Sounness
Resistance place their 4th shard
The Resistance has placed their 4th shard to their destination of the Washington Monument. In this case, shard #9 took a jump of 50 kilometres and the Resistance further increases it’s leadership in the race to place shards at their destination portals. The Enlightened has yet to dock a shard at their destination. The pathway in appears relatively clean 7 hours after the event – as this screencapture shows.
Shards #15 & #23 arrived after a jump of 118km and shard #18 arrived after 19.7km. Pathways in were from the north east, north west and south. It’s quite beautiful in a way, the pathways in holding such symmetry. I am wondering if the intention is to have a star of entries into the portal similar to the star of blue the Resistance made in New York recently.
By Martin List-Petersen
A Game of Shards: A yoink of shart from Orks
Prologue:
It was a mild Spring day in blissful Dublin, with no one aware of what madness was about to ensue shortly.
At just after 6 local time, a shard, a part of Devra Bogdanovich, manifested itself on the idyllic campus of UCD, a local Enlightened farming spot.
From here, everything went a little bit mad with many agents developing an acute case of sharditis, a medical condition whose symptoms include but are not limited to temporary loss of sanity, sleep deprivation and wanderlust.
#8 took its time leaving the country, visiting a number of portals along the way, including Poolbeg Lighthouse and the top of Howth (Both the sites of major battles between the 2 factions), before finally heading on its merry way to a small inaccessible island off Scotland called Ailsa Craig.
And that was the end of the shards for Ireland, or so we thought.
Chapter 1: The Aftermath
Despite all the valiant efforts of the Resistance in Ireland on the island as a whole (Agents from as far South as Cork city and as far North as Belfast and Donegal were involved both hands on and intel), #8 was gone from these fair shores and in a perceived Enlightened stronghold, an island off Scotland very difficult to get to due to bad weather and poor sea conditions.
Having spent days eating, sleeping and breathing shard talk, some agents were in the grip of the dreaded ailment sharditis and were spouting all sorts of crazy talk. Surprisingly, from all of this crazy talk a coherent plan was born to steal 3 shards from the Enlightened on Orkney. It had been accepted that #8 was beyond our reach but surprisingly this was not the last we would see of it, but that is a tale for another telling.
Chapter 2: The Plan
With 3 shards present on Orkney, a daring plan was devised for a small team of dedicated Resistance agents to stealthily infiltrate the Enlightened stronghold and steal away the enemy held shards. As a secondary goal, the team was to eliminate a blocking link which prevented other Resistance held shards in Europe being exfiltrated to the US for final movement to the target portal in Washington.
The problem with this plan was getting agents with the time and resources to carry out the theft. Enter 1 Agent from the Midlands team, the appropriately named @MadMarlow and 3 from the South Ireland team,@Avallyn, @hjundaj&@NovoC. It was decided these agents would meet up in Dublin, the site of such recent and hard fought battles over #8, to begin their epic voyage to complete their heroic tasks.
Chapter 3: The Gathering
It was Friday, the 13th, in March. With the agents travelling from a number of different locations, it was necessary to have a central jumping off point for the beginning of the journey. The point chosen was the home of one of the recent veterans of many battles involving #8.
As with any operation of this magnitude, strict scanner silence was maintained with no attacking, capturing, or deploying outside of normal areas. As a result, the team assembled for last minute briefing and updates in secrecy and unbeknownst to the Enlightened.
In the intervening time frame, two of the 3 shards had been successfully retrieved from Orkney to the Netherlands but the last shard had random jumped and was
on a portal where it could not be moved from due to lack of agents to make the portal L7. Despite the absence of 2 of the intended shards, there was still the potential of stealing the third, #6, and also the real requirement of removing the blocker which prevented safe passage of European shards to America so the decision was made to go ahead with the journey.
While the overall trip was well over 1900 km (over 1200 miles), the distance traveled between home and the initial meeting point also needs to be acknowledged and at 1000 km combined (approx 625 miles) between the 4 agents, thats a pretty big acknowledge.
Chapter 4: The Journey
It is said that a journey of 1900 km starts with the first step and that is definitely true in this instance. Our first step was to walk to our trusted chariot for the next few days, the Battlebus. An 8 seater 4*4 beast of a machine, it served us well over the coming days on our adventures and was truly a noble steed in our adventures.
Leaving Dublin, we made good time to Belfast and got a late ferry across the water to Scotland to the next leg of our trip.
At this point, a small detour became a literal one due to roadworks closing the most direct road. It was, however, a fortuitous detour as it allowed us to drop off keys which facilitated the rescue of our old friend #8 from Ailsa Craig to Donegal and on to Iceland. Yes, it seems another team of agents suffering from sharditis concocted and executed a plan to rescue #8 from the Enlightened controlled island of Ailsa Craig.
Following this detour, we then drove through the night to reach the North coast and our next ferry to Orkney itself. We saw some stunning scenery along the way once the sun rose but unfortunately we didn’t manage to get a picture of the “Caution Otters” sign we spotted. Apart from a few stops to fuel and refresh ourselves and the Battlebus, we had a pretty uneventful journey North. We did have one minor hiccup with a dead battery but were able to jump start with a spare battery we had with us.
After a short ferry crossing, we had arrived at Orkney and could start implementing our plan.
Chapter 5: The Battle
The first thing to do was scout out the portals. We discovered very early that reception was poor in many areas on the islands. Despite having sims on multiple networks, both roaming and local, some portals just could not be captured, hacked or destroyed due to lack of signal. Having done the initial recon, it was necessary to leave one player at a remote portal far from the portal occupied by the shard. Wrapped up in many layers against the cold, this agent had instructions to kill the portal with its blocking links shortly before the 6 o’clock jump window to allow a link to be established to evacuate #6. The remainder of the team then proceeded into town to the shard portal and were in position in plenty of time for the 6 o’clock jump. Again, strict comm silence was maintained until the last minute.In precise coordination, the remote portal was taken out, then the shard portal was taken out and built up to allow a link to be sent off. Unfortunately, in the confusion, a local Enlightened player was able to throw up a few last minute links, one of which blocked the exfiltration link. As a result it was back to the drawing board for the midnight link.
Due to time and logistics constraints, it was decided to jump the shard to a different portal on the island and then send it from there to its next stop. A 6 hour window should have been sufficient time to prepare but unfortunately due to a no show by a B&B owner, a number of hours were wasted in trying to secure alternative accommodation. After eventually finding somewhere else to stay, two suitable portals were identified as local destination jump points and prepped. Time was running short to inoculate the shard portal and unfortunately the local Enlightened inoculated it first. At this point a decision was made not to contest the midnight checkpoint as many agents were extremely sleep deprived, some only having a handful of hours sleep in 40+ hours. This was believed to be the best tactical decision as to date the Enlightened had relied on virus flip flop to get portals to L7.
After resting for a few hours and having further problems with accommodation, it seems the booking company had transferred the original booking to the wrong hotel and had to be contacted in the middle of the night to fix it, the team set out in their trusty Battlebus, ready to finally send the shard on its way. Despite the earlier failures in moving #6, the team was buoyed by the knowledge that #8 had been successfully evacuated from Ailsa Craig to Donegal and on to Iceland.
The extraction was pretty much a textbook operation from here, with the shard portal inoculated slightly early and all green portals smashed. Then it was merely a case of waiting for the jump window.The shard portal was again inoculated and built up to L7 in anticipation of the link being formed. There was a minor scare when one agent believed the shard left early due to scanner malfunction but a minute later, the shard was shown as gone and confirmed at its target destination. The local Enlightened agents were either in bed or had given up on hopes of defending as there was no sign of them for this jump window.
With all of its objectives achieved, the team was ready for the long journey home.
Chapter 6: The Way Home
Arriving back at the hotel, the booking company had finally sorted the booking and we were able to check out and head for the ferry. We popped over to the nearby John O Groats, thinking we might get some big fields for one of our newer players but decided not to as it might block the progress of other shards and decided to try for a few across the Irish sea instead. The journey home was a lot more fun than the one up because of the victories we’d achieved and the fact we could see what we were driving through as it was daylight for most of the trip. With the gorgeous weather and stunning scenery to keep us company, we made good time and smashed a few green fields and links along the way. Unfortunately our plans to field across the Irish sea did not happen due to a 50km+ detour still being in place and getting caught behind some slow moving tour buses on the detour road. Checking the times, it was realised that not only would we not manage fields, we would also be very close to the ferry check in time so one of our drivers stepped in to display his rally driving skills which had been used to such good effect in previous ops such as U16 and Event Horizon. With skills to put Mäkinen or Loeb to shame, our driver tore along backroads to deliver us to the ferry only a few minutes late for check-in and still in time for sailing.
Settling in for well deserved rest on the ferry to Belfast, one of our number was called upon to provide first aid and paramedic expertise for someone having a minor fit. Finally reaching Belfast, we set out on our last leg of the journey together.
Chapter 7: The parting of ways
Almost 30 hours after departing, our team finally arrived at our initial jumping off point in Dublin, a shard stolen, a blocker taken out and another team helped in evacuating an Enlightened controlled shard. Tired but triumphant, we said our goodbyes and set out on our final journeys home, another few hours before we would see our beds, some well deserved rest and a possible cure for sharditis. And while this was a goodbye of sorts, it was more a farewell or a see you later, for we are the Resistance and we will not give up!
Credits and thanks:
To name everyone who was involved in this and thank them all would take almost as long as the telling. People running intel, people coordinating with other teams throughout Europe and globally, people who donated small things like a cup of tea or local knowledge or even some money to help fund it, words of advice and encouragement, congratulatory comm bombs, all of these people played a part.
The one thing everyone from this story has in common though, we are all Resistance and we are a team so thank you one and all you wonderful blue smurfs 🙂
A special thanks to Kelvin Killeen aka @NovoC for putting the text for this SitRep together and Filip Blaszczyk aka @hjundaj, Sandra P aka @Avallyn and obviously also Kelvin for great company and community spirit on this trip.
If you would like your report added to tomorrow’s update, submit it here: http://fevgames.net/wpgforms/shonin-shard-stories
Thanks to Thrakazog for the Shard tracking map and Marwan Sbitani for collecting the data for the map.