19 Jan 2001 1200H. USS Bigelow, Chesapeake Bay.
On his return to USS Bigelow, Moss briefed Resper from the radio shack. They had a pretty good idea of the cache’s location, but the New America group got away, perhaps with the location also.
Or the locations… plural.
Moss had been going over the documents and photos recovered in the DC raid on the assault boat back down the Potomac to the Bigelow.
Moss had the Strategic Reserve Stockpile narrowed down to three (3) mountain tunnels near Somerset, PA. But later documents keep calling the cache “SRS-17374-2b” … with that annoying “b” appended to the end. Moss saw 2 memos regarding a dispute between the renegade Congressman Fitzpatrick and a third Congressman referring to a SRS-17374-2a cache.
It seems there are two stockpiles! And New America has the lead on one… or both!
Moss had no clue the location of the other cache. Resper told his to stay put and await orders.
First rule in government spending: Why build one when you can have two at twice the price? Only, this one can be kept secret.
S.R. Hadden (Contact)
This is our campaign’s entry into the Twilight 2000 adventure module Allegheny Uprising. Party is sent into Pennsylvania to retrieve a cache. The region is seething with zero-sum strife among a score of factions.
Moss will have to gear-up the Fire Knights from limited options in the area.
My alterations to the module include the addition of New America as yet another faction. Plus there are now two (2) caches to locate and recover.
Time Is Of The Essence
The caches must be located and secured.
Resper has arranged a meet with Roger Caldwell at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. The Bigelow can easily insert the group at the Academy. Caldwell is Deputy Governor of the III Military Region – Maryland… CIVGOV!
Officially, the Fire Knights are “off the books”. Will be operating as part of a CivGov Joint Task Force as a private military company.
”Caldwell has been a solid contact, and has his eye on the bigger picture. But he does work for Civgov. So no sharing military secrets. Nor any of your activities since you arrived in America. Stick to defeating the New America recovery team, and secure the cache. My regard of Caldwell does not extend to anybody else in their chain of command.”
Annapolis
Annapolis was mostly deserted, just a few Civgov personnel. The Naval Academy got an uncomfortable full view of the Fort Meade nuke 20 kilometers distant. And the other nukes at DC and Andrews AFB. They’d been too distant to do more than light damage.
Moss meets four people at Annapolis.
ROGER CALDWELL
Deputy Governor of the III Military Region, a position he holds as a civilian under the commander of the 228th Infantry Brigade. He is also a senior member of the Maryland State Emergency Council.
Caldwell will be acting as director of JTFX. He places Moss in command of JTFX expedition.
CHESTER T. CONSTABLE
Constable is a former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and a high-ranking member of the Maryland State Emergency Council.
Constable objected to Fire Knights being sent on op. “Mercenaries”. Caldwell overruled him, however, pointing to team’s experience operating in wild country.
Caldwell did assign Constable to JTFX expedition as observer.
HARRISON OFFUT
Offut is a former hardware store owner from Akron, Ohio. He fled with his family to western Pennsylvania in the first nuclear scare of ’97. He was present when the White Death took over his refugee cantonment.
Offut tells of the White Death’s grip on the teeming refugee city of Pittsburgh. All look with hungry eyes toward the supposed stockpiles of food in the mountains. Militias in the mountains resist intrusion. Pennsylvania still has a few small gas and oil wells in operation, and vehicles are more plentiful.
Offut will not be going on the expedition.
CAPTAIN HOWARD KIRTCHNER
Kirtchner has been assigned by the Maryland SEC to accompany the Allegheny expedition to determine the logistical requirements of transporting the supply cache back to 228th HQ.
Also, two elite NPCs would be joining under Moss’s command: Jackson and Harris.
Joint Task Force X-Ray
The mission was to secure both caches, and secure them, and radio in for transport back to Civgov in Columbia Maryland. Failing that, they were to destroy the caches and disrupt New America activities if possible.
Caldwell connected Moss with Civgov logistics to gear up. Which was less than what they were accustomed to with Milgov.
They could pick either a) two standard – not up-armored – Humvees. Or b) two executive protection 1995 Suburbans. Moss chose the SUVs.
My brother rolled for available heavy weapons, which were sparse. A couple of LAW rocket launchers, M79 grenade launchers, and rifle grenades.
Moss asked for, and got, cases of trade goods. CivGov had access to lots of office supplies from all the administration buildings in the DC region. So the trade goods were high quality stationery, leatherbound blank journals, pens, glue, and the like.
Caldwell cautioned Moss that the Pennsylvania State Government was not being informed of the expedition.
Harrisburg is under considerable strain simply maintaining control of the central Pennsylvanian region, however, and has no interest in the problems of either western Pennsylvania or Maryland at the moment. It is not known what the Pennsylvania government’s reaction to a Civgov expedition into Pennsylvania would be, and the Maryland SEC has decided to avoid finding out. Harrisburg is not to be notified of the Allegheny Expedition.
It has been pointed out that securing control of Pittsburgh and the Ohio Valley is of far greater potential importance to the civilian government than are friendly relations with Harrisburg.
Control of Pittsburgh will, in time, lead directly to Civgov control of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania anyway by putting Maryland in a favorable position as western trade and commerce begins again. Maryland can afford to leave Harrisburg out of their planning for now.
This relates to my pervious article:
From Poland to America: Our Classic Twilight 2000 RPG Campaign 
Hey Wayne,
I was recently cleaning some junk out of my x-wife’s basement and found a nearly complete collection of 1st edition Twilight 2000. I hadn’t looked at them since the 90’s, but flipping through them sparked enough interest to lead me to your blog here; which in turn has me itching to try and scrape together a few players to start a Polish campaign of my own. Maybe with the new 4th Edition rules.
I was thinking about approaching it as an OSR style sandbox hex-crawl, in the sense that the story would mostly emerge from random encounter tables, but with few deeper hooks that the party may or not find scattered around the map. And those hooks could point the party at multiple other hooks that they are free (and possibly wise) to ignore. The early chapter’s of this blog are a great resource for highlighting the hooks provided in the European modules. (I assume that’s true for the American modules too, but I haven’t gotten that far yet).
Having worked through the European modules, have you developed a mental map of all the ways different parts of the published material and Challenge articles can link into each other? Could you share a flow chart? That would be amazing!
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Heya. Wonderful, the Poland campaign is a blast!
My suggested flow chart would be like my early Poland write-ups. Assuming your group starts out in Kalisz, if they head due south they’ll almost immediately end up in the region covered by Black Madonna (Silesia). East out of Silesia is Krakow. Krakow links directly to Pirates of the Vistula, which itself links to Ruins of Warsaw. From there, you drop the bread crumbs to Going Home when you think the group is ready.
Now, Twilight 2000 player groups are famous for going their own way, on their own schedule. Perhaps they do Krakow first, then Black Madonna (which is the actual order those modules were written). Or they skip a module altogether. No worries, that’s the whole point of a sandbox, player agency.
The America modules are not at all connected. I write about them here:
https://polandcampaign.com/2021/03/01/northeast-usa-in-the-twilight-2000-america-campaign/
Happy Gaming,
-Wayne
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Loving all of the posts, can’t believe that I caught up I look forward to any future developments.
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Wonderful! Thank you. New posts will continue at a trickle, but my brother and I are nowhere near completion.
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