Archive: Titanfall

Official Egocrasher Document
Operation Titanfall
Mission Briefing

Consent to Secrecy
By opening the rest of this document, your ego – and any forks of said ego created after this point – are consenting to never mention the Egocrashers in relation to your visit to the TQZ to any not already aware of our involvement, especially to anyone who would make our involvement public. You are also not to mention the contents of what was retrieved and given to us to any not in the know. Should you, or any forks, fail to adhere to this agreement, you will be found and taken care of.

Mission Summary
Operation Titanfall is a two-pronged artifact retrieval mission. Two teams of five agents will enter the Martian TITAN Quarantine Zone (TQZ) at different points, and will converge on Kronos Keep to retrieve two sets of artifacts before returning home by different routes to avoid detection. Teams are also encouraged to take any other items of value they can find, and collectively will be able to keep 50% of any additional items found.

Each team will be provided with two unarmed cargo buggies, each one connected to the other three via QE comm radios. Each team will also be provided with two copies of the ego-key needed to access the Keep, and Taskforce SHIELD will also be provided with a protected download canister. All agents will also have rental access to a choice of morphs from Egocrasher storage, as well as to the armoury.

Each adequately-contributing agent will be rewarded with either credits, rep, or gearIn terms of mechanics, this will be a Rez Point bonus award at the end of the mission.. Should an agent's performance be passable, they will be granted access to the Egocrasher jobs server, and can take assignments to earn esteem without the group. If an agent earns enough esteem, they may be offered a permanent space as a full-time Egocrasher operative.

The two taskforces are as follows. See the attached appendix for more information on your equipment and tasks.

Taskforce SWORD (Stealthy Weapon and Ordinance Retrieval without Destruction)
This taskforce will be retrieving maglev Munitions Crates 007, 014, and 052 from the Armory in the Lower Keep, as well as anything else of interest that can fit in the buggies. 

This team's members are Elijah Evans, Alison LeMieux, Ryfte, Scrooge, and Vassili Roschin.

Taskforce SHIELD (Secretive & Hazardous Infiltration and Extraction of Download)
This taskforce will be accessing Kronos Keep's archives in the Upper Keep, and downloading the ENDYMION data file onto a provided download canister.

This team's members are Edgar Asterfield, Soma Michio, Mei, Penny, and Cachée.

Theatre of Operation
The object of the mission is to break into Kronos Keep in the southern reach of the Martian Titan Quarantine Zone (TQZ). The TQZ is a remnant of the Fall, a decade-old battlefield littered with now-autonomous TITAN weapons. Exsurgents, exhumans, nanswarms, warbots, sandstorms, rangers, and other zone stalkers.

If you are not already briefed on the TQZ, see Appendix A for a crash course on the TQZ.

Perimeter Breakthrough
After the distribution of equipment, all Egocrasher involvement in the mission vanishes. This means agents are responsible for crossing the perimeter of the TQZ on their own, with the resources provided. There are two targeted sites for breakthrough on the perimeter, about one hundred kilometers apart. Both are in Green Zones, meaning that security, while not absent, is somewhat lax. After being resleeved and equipped, each taskforce will take their buggies to the designated breakthrough sites.

While there are no physical walls marking the perimeter, they are monitored by surveillance equipment that will call rangers should a breach be detected. Agents have two options: disable or fool local surveillance at the breakthrough points, or attempt to outrun pursuing rangers. Teams that alert rangers to their presence will find it difficult to return to civilization at that same point, and may have to take a detour to return.

There are three main ways teams can bypass surveillance equipment: through the creation of a backdoor in the sector's security mesh allowing for the temporary disabling of sensor operations, through convincing a Ranger remote monitor to look the other way, or through physically disabling sensory equipment.

In perimeter zones, teams should keep an eye out for other Zone Stalkers seeking to ambush their rivals and steal their findings.

The TQZ Proper
Rangers rarely pursue stalkers more than 5 kilometers onto the TQZ. After breaking through the perimeter, the buggies will be able to navigate using preprogrammed maps to Kronos Keep. Taskforce SWORD will be taking a more direct route over more difficult terrain, while Taskforce SHIELD will take a longer route over less dangerous terrain. The reason for this is to divide Ranger resources and attention and to increase the likelihood of at least one taskforce successfully returning.

Kronos Keep is located in the southern reach of the TQZ, about 200 kilometers in. This region of the TQZ is noted for its rough terrain. Recent intelligence from zone stalkers indicates that several bands of waste walkers and at least one TITAN nanoswarm have been active in the region in the last two months. There has also been an unusually high number of killer sandstorms for the area in the last two weeks. They also report that a large group of Yazidis seems to have taken up residence near SHIELD's route. SWORD's route ends in a canyon populated by exsurgent bots, some harmless and other lethal.

Temporary Egocrasher agents are responsible for dealing with any TITAN – or other – threats on their own en route to Kronos Keep.

Kronos Keep
Kronos Keep is a self-enclosed habitat built over the course of decades, located about 200 kilometers inside the TQZ, perched atop a small mountain. Initially, Kronos Keep was Kronos Prime Research Laboratory, a key terraforming center on Mars famous for its novel approaches to the development of swamp and wetlands. During a short-lived insurrection, the habitat was taken over by Barsoomian separatists for its prime location atop Machus Canyon and its presence above the Neo-Promethean plains. The separatists expanded the laboratory, turning it into a fortress that took in refugees, launched guerilla raids, and continued terraforming. It was they who named it Kronos Keep.

After the Barsoomians were ousted, the fortress was taken over by a private military firm commonly known as the Razorskin Brigade, who ended the majority of the Keep's terraforming project and instead transformed it into a weapons research and development lab, as well as a training camp for its soldiers. When the TITANs unleashed their attack, the commander of Kronos Keep, the infamous Olivier Hawthorne, turned it into a center of anti-TITAN research. The Keep and its defenders briefly abandoned their mercenary ways to fight transhumanity's  greatest threat, and their research and steadfast defense proved instrumental in delaying the TITAN takeover, allowing many refugees to escape Mars. Unfortunately, Kronos Keep fell during the Fall, its defenders all cut to ribbons in the space of a single day by an unknown TITAN exsurgent. This exsurgent type has been tentatively named a Shrike.

Kronos Keep is divided in two halves. The Upper Keep consists of most of the terraforming research laboratories, as well as its barracks and command center. This part of the Keep commands an excellent view of the surrounding environs, and particularly over the Neo-Promethean plains to the north. These plains were once the site of the lab's famous swamps, but they have since mostly returned to red stone and dust, though some isolated pockets of moisture and mold remain. The Upper Keep is accessed through one of three gates, accessible by the egoscan of anyone ranked Major of higher in the Razorskin Brigade. The Egocrashers have acquired one such scan, and have copied it into the ego-keys given to each Taskforce. One of the Upper Keep gates was reportedly breached during the Keep's fall.

The Lower Keep consists primarily of the armory, weapons development labs, training sim-zones for soldiers, and the hastily-constructed anti-TITAN research facilities. The majority of it is underground. It is accessible by stair or elevator from the Upper Keep, or by a special door at the bottom of the Machus canyon, which dominates the landscape to the south of the Keep, reaching southward 20 kilometers. The canyon's southernmost edge has a steep, yet navigable, slope down to its floor, which leads directly to the door – again accessible via the provided ego-keys. This canyon is likely infested with exsurgents.

Floorplans of the Keep will be provided to agents by the buggy ALI while en route. They may be outdated depending on TITAN damage.

Retrieval
Once all requested itemsCrates 007, 014, and 052 for Team SWORD, and the ENDYMION file for Team SHIELD. and any additional artifacts have been stowed away on board the buggies, teams are responsible for making their way back to civilization and their designated rendezvous point with Egocrasher operatives. If undiscovered by Rangers, going back the same route will be safest. If not, taking an alternative route back may be wiser.

After the requested items have been handed over, payment and rewards will be distributed, and agents will be free to go on their way, potentially having gained access to the Egocrasher job board.