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Barhah History Month
Editor's Note: This issue covers the formation of the Ridleybank Resistance Front, its groups, and its first assault on Nichols Mall
The Formation of the Ridleybank Resistance Front
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
It started back in September, early in the month. Petrosjko, still in shuddering recovery from the horrid time when a filthy Revive-pusher had shot him full of liquid poison, came to Ridleybank to recover his zombie soul. Filled with shame for his time as a nasty harman, when he'd engaged in the sort of disgusting packrat behavior of that species and even raised arms against his fellow zambahs, he sought redemption in battle.
The glorious history of Barhah! in Malton.
At Moggridge Place PD, he found his challenge. Alongside noble Gordarmes and the occasional passing ferals, he waged an endless war against the diseased occupants who had laid claim to the building. Every day, he and Gordarmes would rise up, or move from their factory hiding place, and strike, bringing the barricades down and attacking in a never-ending effort to wrest control of the building from the harman scum.
After a week of furious battle, Petrosjko, Gordarmes, and their allies had cleansed the building of their foemen, leading to much merriment and celebration. Nine zombies stood inside where before two dozen harmanz had held dominion over the graceful, sweeping lines of Moggridge. So sweeping was the victory that Petrosjko and Gordarmes moved onward, tailing the Undying Scourge and participating in a few of their attacks as feral spectators.
Having had their fill of battle and brains, Petrosjko and Gordarmes returned to Moggridge, only to find that it had been... reinfested. Worse yet, there were even more slimy, foul breathers in the building than before. After being gunned down in the streets once more in front of the building they had come to regard as their own, enough was enough, and Petrosjko issued the call to arms, to put an end to the harman occupation of Moggridge, and ultimately Ridleybank itself.
Little did he know what this would lead to...
The First Recruit
- Again, taken from the accounts of Papa Petro
On the day Infectious Bite was implemented, I was to make my most fateful recruiting move. I had the banked XP to buy it right off, and we were all very curious about how it worked in play. Littlelisa had answered the call to arms saying she would join me in this most sacred task of liberating Ridleybank from the breathers, and had moved Serina Darkrose down to watch the show. However, she was planning on moving Serina out and bringing in another character that she intended to zombify...
I wasn't aware of that fact, and she -had- expressed some curiosity about Infectious Bite, so I zipped into Moggridge, gave her a Bite of Greeting, then hopped over to my factory hideout. Lisa... lost her cool just a tad. So she ran out the door, and started shooting at the zombies outside in an effort to get me.
Fortunately for her, she APed out in the street, and was quickly embraced into the BARHAH of the horde, as our very very first recruit.
The Horde Grows
- Taken from the accounts of Barbeque
My journey began in the slums of Dulston, growing up in an era when the 'burb appeared truly post-apocalyptic, with open doors and level one survivors abounding. I played a deadly game of hide and seek with the harmanz, sleeping in open buildings by night, hunting down unprotected harmanz by day.
It was a glorious time, but eventually the easy meals grew less prevalent, and the headshots more. So, with a growing sense of adventure, I headed south through devastation left by hordes of old.
I shambled happily along, discovering new abilities I never knew I had, until I reached Tolman Power Station Dentonside. It was there that I first heard of a new horde being formed in the central suburb of Ridleybank.
Although I was far from the others, I immediately declared my allegiance to the new RRF, and began the long trek to meet up with them. The news out of Ridleybank was so astounding, I was worried there would be no more brains left when I finally got there.
To add to this dismay, I found myself wandering through some of the worst neighborhoods in the city. In all of Pegton, I saw not one fellow zombie, and I can tell you it made me nervous.
My fears were validated when I was brutally murdered in the street and left to rot, but this only reinforced my burning desire to join with the horde and strike back at the harman criminals.
I moved on into Peppardville, and was excited at the prospect of touring Historic Old Fort Creedy, but I found the visitor center boarded up, with harmanz yelling at me to "Get lst joo zeddo!!1!" I can tell you that I was very disappointed at this.
No matter, I continued my trek, finally arriving in the Homeland. After greeting the local harman population, I joined the horde in assaulting the Blackmore building. As I said at the time, the flood had started...
Resistance in Ridleybank
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
Well, there's a bit of ground to cover before we get to Nichols. Who could forget the glorious pub raid?
Shortly after Lisa joins us, we're engaged in a fierce, pitched battle with the local breathers, something like thirty of us have congregated outside of Moggridge, against a similar number of survivors inside. I log out that night, figuring that with some luck we'll have dropped the number inside by about half. I wake up, check the shiny thread we have for the fight, and... well... Lisa is asking why everyone is at the pub, and somebody says something like 'We got thirsty?' So I log in to check, and I'm laying dead outside Moggridge, with two standing zombies, and twenty-odd zombies standing outside the Whalen Arms next door. It was the first example of what would become the long-standing RRF tradition of having running this horde be like herding cats, because sure as hell, somebody sees something sparkly and heads yonder, and half the horde follows along figuring that guy knows where he's going.
So we get everyone back together, hitting Moggridge again. By this point, I think we're up to around fifty or sixty, and the horde is blossoming into something far larger than I was expecting. Serina gets combat revived and ducks back into Moggridge to fight us, starting another RRF tradition on the spot.
The actual tale of the conquest was kind of anticlimatic, as these things often are. We hit them and crunched the barricades until we killed them all, and... voila, empty building.
Editor's Note: Continued in the right-column
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Editor's Note: Continued from the left-column
In the meantime, we'd started getting some notice over at Desensitized. Jacquie, our oldest and most beloved opponent, started a thread concerning the situation in Ridleybank. She had been strafing into Moggridge to fight us, but realized that we were a bit more than the typical spontaneous microhorde. Her 'Situation in Ridleybank' thread would go on to become one of the most useful survivor threads ever, as she expanded it into a continually updated intelligence thread for the downtown area.
This also started one of the more famous relationships in the game, as Grim's character Gorbonzo developed a deep and sincere affection for Jacquie's character Maggie, leading to page after page of chatter between the two of them, as he tried to woo her away from her nasty harman friends.
Back to Ridleybank, one of our early running jokes was that survivors should join us because we had a book club, a singles dating service, and SQUARE DANCING. Well, the first-ever meeting of the book club came after the fall of Moggridge. I picked the Caswill Lane School for the meeting, and sixty to seventy zombies descended on the school, tearing down the barricades and devouring the one unfortunate survivor inside.
This kicked off a general bloodbath, as we began systematically debarricading and crushing all the targets in the suburb. First we took resource buildings, then we took everything else. Finally, we had cleansed Ridleybank of all the smelly, unwashed harmanz, and we needed a new objective.
That objective was Nichols Mall...
A raid across the borders
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
Nichols was funny because we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Very few of us had ever had anything to do with a mall siege, and we didn't know siegecraft the way we do now. We just went rumbling on down, hitting Nichols like a tidal wave, taking down the barricades as AP allowed, charging in singly, in twos and threes, etc. The defenders had no concept either, and would leave the doors open, bodies uncleared, etc., as they gunned down whoever came inside.
Nichols was also where we started using propaganda. Obviously, it was a staging point for attacks on Ridleybank, but we never bothered coming up with any evidence of that. We just declared it a terrorist outpost, essentially, and slammed into it.
Nichols Mall Continued
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
We had no intention of hitting the mall, but the defenders had thrown up Operation Nichols Shield, and we loved poking the occasional stick into that anthill. The best part was the complete lack of understanding of Brigade standard MO, fade instead of being shot, which resulted in several bodies being left on the floor that the defenders assumed belonged to the zombies making the breach instead of the kills they'd made. (If the Nichols Shield wiki page is still around, it was reported as a 'no casualties for survivors' affair.)
Another one we pulled with Nichols was when both Grim and I would wander around outside there, catching XP headshots that did nothing to us, just to mess with their heads. There was more than one report on Desens about how 'Petro is at Nichols! The horde is coming!'
(This was how Grim also jumped from solidly behind me in the death standings to heavily ahead, since he was engaged in legitimate scouting operations in the area. Legitimate scouting operations that just so happened to involve him getting gunned down constantly...)
The Formation of the RRF Groups: Petro
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
Alright!
I shall end much speculation now, as we chart our course for the newly liberated suburb of Ridleybank, which has been largely purged of the unlawful human elements that have plagued our more perfect society.
First, everyone pat yourselves on the back. Those temporarily without arms, seek a friend to pat you on the back, because the Horde takes care of its own.
We have not only broken the back of human resistance in Ridleybank, but we cleaned out a nest of aggressors in the nearby mall, who were assaulting our innocent citizens as they proceeded about their day.
Now, how does one organize chaos, you ask?
And I answer!
With simple math skills!
We will subdivide the horde into two groups.
These two groups will be named, oddly enough, Group One and... oh, get this... wait for it... Group TWO.
Every poster shall alternate in this fashion...
I... am Group One.
The next poster will be in... Group Two.
The next poster after that will be... (you're smart people, you no doubt have discerned the pattern) Group One.
Grim will then organize and list the Groups.
At any given time, one group will be busy patrolling Ridleybank, tearing down barricades, and attacking any armed human trespassers, while the second group will be assaulting the bases and stronghouses of our militant neighbors. Every three or four days, the groups rotate, so we defend our home and act proactively against those who would harm us.
And... Group 1 will be defending this time around, Group 2 continues the cleansing of Stanbury.
Commence!
The Formation of the RRF Groups: Barbecue
- Taken from an account by Group 2 Leader, Barbecue
I of course quickly declared my allegiance to Group 2, to take the fight to the harmanz.
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Barbecue wrote:I shall join the valorous Group 2, and lead the jihad against the human oppressers!
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Things just sort of formed out of chaos, and we quickly gained a sense of order. Joining the Groups was switched to a voluntary system, with a special thread in the Recruitment section of the forum; although most people ignored it and joined in the Group threads, causing Grim no end of frustration :P
We decided to keep our orders and plans and such completely open, as Petro put so eloquently:
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Petrosjko wrote:We maintain our cheerful utter lack of security and arrogant displays of power.
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And as our ranks continued to swell at dizzying speed, the Ridleybank Resistance Front swept forth amongst the harmanz and began to forge the grand reputation that is ours today.
The Formation of the RRF Groups: Petro II
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
Yeah, Barbecue and Fima started the original group coordination threads at Desensitized, and so they were tabbed for leadership for taking the initiative.
We formed the groups precisely because Nichols folded like an accordion, and the concern was that we would steamroll everything we hit so easily that we'd lose challenge in the game. There were a lot of people who felt we were dluting our power and 'oh shit effect' from breaking down into two sixty-zombie groups, but we were still recruiting like mad and eventually each group would, for a while, both be larger by themselves than any other horde besides the Scourge.
So we'd taken our first real steps outside of Ridleybank, and still the rolling ball of chaos, destruction, and squaredancing continued unstoppably onward. Our first real hiccup would come at Hildebrand Mall, in what was to become known as the 'Timer fiasco'.
Oopsie.
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