The Road to Victory
Commander’s Note:
War of the Chosen review here.
Let’s play part 1 here.
May 2035
It has been a tense month for XCOM. We’ve been trying to claw back from our losses, and the previous deaths have been weighing hard on my mind. We have gotten some significant victories, but not without cost.
We sorely needed a big win after last month’s shitstorm, and the thankfully the Skirmishers were able to give us a lead on a blacksite that the ADVENT was running tests in. Jack and Tat were roped in (we promised them more big game to hunt) and Pratal Mox wanted to come in to see personally where his people had been born in.
Should’ve known that the Chosen Blademaster would’ve turned up. We’ve seen her around a few times and this was a big prize on her turf. We managed to drive her off but not without her doing a number on our guys. We had enough trained medics on hand (learnt from last month’s fiasco), but Mox’s wounds were too serious to totally staunch during battle. The team made the decision to press on; the intel was too good to just up and leave. And the amount of security around that place meant it was definitely a place that was important to the ADVENT.
Unfortunately the amount of security also meant something else. Pratal Mox gave himself for the cause in that mission. Stepped in front of a muton grenade meant for Jack. A Xenos saved a human’s life. Will the wonders never cease.
The rest of the mission was by the book. Tat even earned his namesake when an ADVENT purifier trained a flamethrower on him and he managed to duck UNDER the flame. He’s going to be getting a lot of mileage on that story.
But the damage is done. We’ve still lost one of us today. One small wonder though. Before we leveled the place we had sufficient time for Jack to run back and grab Mox’s body. He said it’d be wrong for a Skirmisher to die in the exact same place that they were born in and trying to get away from. Mox was buried, and the troopers all toasted his name when before they got properly shitfaced at the bar. Elena even turned up. Pratal Mox might be a born a grey, but he lived and died as man, and it’s only right that he was celebrated as such.
Our resistance network is slowly coming together. As word spread from the New Arctic Haven, we’ve been slowly getting contact from across Asia. We’re not strong enough to topple ADVENT yet, but one day we might be.
June 2035
Hahaha! They’re afraid of us! The gorram aliens are afraid of us!
Jack’s been saying that the aliens are doomed ever since he started wearing Mox’s helmet, but I don’t think that’s the reason. Still, it’s been a month of pretty significant gains. We’ve been hitting ADVENT were they hurt, and they know it. We’re tightening the noose, and they’re lashing out. They’ve been pulling out all the stops. Non-stop retaliations. Multiple Chosen sightings. They even decided to load a gorram train with faceless to try to stop us. That’s right. We were trying to hack an ADVENT train and all (ALL) the guards were actually faceless. Bloody oozed out of their ADVENT armor. Didn’t even know they could do that. Thank god we had our new allies with us though.
Yeah. We managed to find the Templar just a week or so back. And they man they sent was a godsend. He and Krasus managed to down most of them together. It’s almost as if they were trying to outdo each other. Thank god they didn’t compromise the mission. We still haven’t learnt his name yet. He’s about as quiet as Russ. Too bad Russ is hanging around with the Reaper Wil right now; I think he’d like this new Templar Psiblade (or whatever they’re called).
The closest call we got was when one of the damn UFOs shot us out of the sky. We had been hearing increased chatter on non-secure bands about there being more UFO sightings, and Bradford made the decision to do some defensive flying. We kept them off our backs for about a week, but unfortunately it wasn’t good enough. They knocked us out of the sky with an EMP and tethered us to the ground. It was do or die out there.
But we did it, and no one died. Oh, we limped along for the next few missions, but no one died, and that’s the important thing. Tygan and Shen really came through for us this time. Tygan had just finished research on his own version of the ADVENT armor and Shen had literally had the first batch of the armors off the line when we were knocked out of the sky. We sent out ten men because that’s we had equipment for. Thank god that was enough.
Ever since then, the atmosphere’s been different. The troopers have been optimistic, even cocky. I’ll need to have Bradford talk to them; it’s liable to get them all killed. Maybe later though. The skirmishers are calling again. They’ve found out clues about where that Chosen Assassin is operating from.
