RRF/Malton Herald & Sun/Text/Text031508right
From The Urban Dead Wiki
Contents |
Giddings: Dia De Los Muertos
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
So! Giddings.
The Minions arrived first, crushing the NT dead south of the mall. We took a little longer to get in since we tend to stream into these affairs, rather than arriving as a consolidated fist.
It was really a great feeling, as horde after horde threw in, ferals declared that they were on the way. Giddings had been the graveyard of the Many (depending on who's version of the September battle you take.) and really, it was our Rome to take.
The threads were hopping, not quite as fast as the Caiger threads or the strike threads, but still the rate of growth was incredible, page after page coming in of enthusiasm for the fight that was coming up.
Now, in the midst of this I get about a half dozen PMs warning me that good old Sgt. Whiskey Swiper is planning a cunning scheme to take Perryn, issue a challenge and see if he could lure any of the attackers away. At the time, I really didn't know Swiper from Adam, but I wasn't too concerned. Forts had fallen time and again, and it was starting to be understood finally that forts were largely indefensible. So other than sending a quick PM out here or there, I just let him do his thing. Swiper made his challenge thread (We're at Perryn! Come and get us!) to the excitement of exactly no one. There was much yawning all around as he declared that Operation Black Ice II would somehow awe everyone and change the game forever or somesuch.
He totally didn't understand that Giddings was a crusade, and would have to be beaten at the doors of the mall or not at all.
After the Minions crushed the NT, the Groups piled in together at the SW quad, if I recall correctly. What followed was two days of grueling fighting, clearing the bottom two quads. It was the largest horde in the field that had ever been assembled to date, and all day long the breaches were continual. There was some sparring with PARA as Sonny mentioned, when one of their members admitted to zerging with two characters inside the mall and one doing harassment ZKing outside. However, Kevar got on top of the issue and kicked him out, allowing the festivities to resume with a reasonable lack of inter-board flaming. I was free all day long, and every time I'd get a few AP, I'd stand up, wait for the barricades to come down, and then post target data for the thread at Desen until I was booted out again.
(This was the first period where my contact list info started getting circulated widely, and one of the best laughs I had was Sonny declaring 'YEAH! Get Petro!') So I tended to soak a lot of ammo, which was fine with me.
It was Grim who broke things open. We'd been planning on APing up for a surge in the morning (American time), but in the middle of the night (American time), Grim was charged and declared 'I'm bored. Who wants to go in with me?' The resulting surge cleared the southern quads and started the tide into the northern quads. By November 1st, when I logged out in the NW quad, went to bed and woke up with it empty, and me still standing, I knew we'd won.
As Sonny said, the failings for the Giddings defenders were numbers, and also again, tactics. There were still too many trenchcoats who would shoot before barricading, allowing us to get inside and shift the AP ratios over to us.
And god, the aftermath. Everyone spread out in different directions, with the RRF taking the south and west and killing everything in sight. I don't think there's been a four-suburb killing spree like that since then, with the three major hordes, over seven hundred zombies, just moving out and killing everyone. It got around quickly that November 1st was Dia De Los Muertos in Mexico, and we had our highest moment.
(Though in my mind, our finest hour was yet to come. But that story is a bit down the road.)
A little-known zombie called Jorm joins the horde
- Taken from an account by Jorm
My favorite part of Dia de los Muertos was a post by Arcibi on the PA forums saying that he had 1 HP, 1 AP, and was infected. I believe the quote was "You cannot believe how helpless I feel."
That made my day.
I joined the horde at Hildebrande.
I had a survivor in the area (named, oddly, 'Jorm') who used the mall as a resupply and saw all sorts of warnings. However, I wasn't stupid, so jorm hotfooted it out of there like a bat out of hell.
Given that, I brought up satanbaby, my feral zombie, and joined the assault (Satanbaby was my RRF zombie until just before Caiger, when I threw jorm out a window, spent his banked XP, and switched them. Satanbaby is now my GoB survivor).
Hildebrande was a blur. The timers . . . I tried to follow them, but couldn't figure out the GMT offset. I know at least once I attacked with Joe Bailum - he said "RAM BARGGAGZ!" and so I did but it was dismal: I think we got three people inside. I AP'd out, and by the time I logged in again everyone was dead.
It wasn't until Dia de los Muertos that I got truly bloody. There, I killed and killed and killed and killed... it was a mass of chaos and gore and death rattle. I maxed out at Giddings.
On War, Peace and Infected Survivors at 1HP
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
Yeah, the sad saga of Arcibi was truly a sight to behold. He ran into a building full of zombies, then APed out in the street trying to get away, and when he logged back in, he was down to 1 HP and infected. Then he edited the message several times, asking somebody to come heal him so he could get going on, as zombies moved all around him. Finally, one of them had a bit of mercy and finished him off.
Giddings was our most thorough massacre ever. I don't think there was a single safe spot for four suburbs, and high danger around those due to feral concentrations. It was really something.
The Horde looks West
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
Now for the hard part of the story, the winter of our discontent, and many other metaphors.
Riding high off of the Dia De Los Muertos Massacre, we felt pretty damned invincible. The prevalent theory is that survivors could not win, anywhere, in fixed position fights, simply because Ankle Grab made it moot point to kill us. They knock us down, rebarricade, we stand up, they have to knock us down again.
Arrogantly enough, our concern at the time was that the next time we hit a mall with the three hordes, they'd run instead of standing, because the unbreachable fortress of Giddings had fallen.
As such, we began to put together the war plan for the first siege of Caiger. This was a lot more intricate and involved than anything we'd done previously. We wanted a massacre to exceed Giddings in both size and legend.
Well.
We got our wish, just not the way we wanted...
