NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: All stand for the Heretic Anthem.

IC:

"We stand by our brothers living under the flag of Czechoslovakia. Neither Czechs nor Slovaks nor any natural member of that nation, they are Ansurian. They wish for the good governance already present in their homeland, and they yearn for the liberation we will bring!" - Chancellor Mardos Duran Surel, speaking in Berlin prior to the annexation of the Sudetenland.

Steel ground against steel as the Ansurian armoured column rumbled down the dusty roadways of Czechoslovakia. Developed under the guise of military tractors, the very existence of these vehicles was grounds for war from more than nine nations. Overhead, the buzzing engines of Arado Ar 64 biplanes crossed the line of march, escorting and defending against the possibility of early Czech air attacks against the vulnerable force.

Light tanks choked the road, their khaki hulls and turrets hot to the touch under the midday sun. On both sides, men of the Imperial Ansurian Army marched with full packs and loaded rifles. Tensions were high, every man knowing the truth of what he did.

By the end of the day, they would be liberators... or dead.

OOC: E35 begins here, Czech resistance will be roleplayed by GrimWolf. This will be his first RP on NS, so let's all give some support. Metaphorical support. Not actual... military assistance or anything.

Numbers:

412 Beskaryc Akaanir'sen IA Light Tanks (1932, 2 .303 MMGs)
237 Beskaryc Akaanir'sen IIA Light Tanks (1934, 37mm main gun, 3 .303 MMGs)
322 Arado Ar 64 Fighters
Approx 35,000 infantrymen, 65,000 support personnel.

OOC: Good luck on the military campaign. Don't get too caught up by the defenses of the mighty Czech peoples ;) .

The Truth Is Out

Several leather chairs studded the dark room like beaten diamonds on a rusted crown, time had tried to break this room, and while the portraits which lined the wooden walls might be faded, the antique carpet before a roaring fire frayed and the ornate table dotted among the seats had a rather nasty crack running up one aged leg, the room still retained a certain grand vitality. The room was still alive, and even if only for a short while longer, was a place where things were decided. The catalysts of hours of earnest debate lay in an ivory ash-tray and in the last drops of an opaque decanter.

Several aged Gentlemen, garbed in very expensive suits sat in the comfortable chairs, idly smoking with brows furrowed in concentraition, or nervously talking in low whispers to one another, some intently scouring fresh documentation.

After some time had passed, a brass-bound door creaked open, light streaming into the dark room in dazzling shafts around a somewhat fastidious character, who gave a half-hearted attempt at a grin before moving, with graceful posture and refined manner towards a vacant seat, so casual that had his face not been so grim none of those present would have realised anything was amiss.

The silence was deafening, seeming to be perfused with an intoxicating tension, making the very air taut with anticipation. He was drowned in a sea of eyes, and as he floundered in the presence of so much expectation he whispered something, so low that it was barely audible.

"It's confirmed."

Nobody heard him, but it wouldn't matter, because several minutes later he would say it again, louder, forcefully, his mouth spitting out the words like they were distasteful to him. As if he could inhale his dying countrymen through his flaring nostrils, his eyes glinting like moon-lit daggers as he his lips twisted in contempt.





Riots In Carlsbad

The man's eyes were like steel, remorseless, cold, unfractured. Unbelievable he could keep such composure under pressure. Nicholai envied him for that. Was jealous of his dedication, managing to gun down several soldiers with some World War One pistol and set the flag alight, the symbol of the Government turned to ashes in one swirling mass of flame. Some jubilant shouting in German, and a swift rifle-butt was brought down upon his startled head.

Now, in the square at the center of town, arms secured rigidly behind his back he watched with his metallic eyes as a soldier fumbled with his rifle, after a moment he heard a click, loud in the windswept silence which ruffled unkempt hair, and blew the man's golden locks from his countenance, revealing those eyes...

The rifle was raised in hands, shaking imperceptibly from the task appointed, aimed carefully at his heart, then a defiant bark in German and he crumpled amid a crimson stain. Nicholai watched his eyes fade and couldn't suppress one single glint moistening his own.

He was just one among several who were executed that day for being Unpatriotic.





You Can Always Count On The Czech'n Boys

The mood in the barracks was hushed, several tried to clean-up their uniforms, others clean their weaponry. All were sombre, not a single smile, these were the hard-core zealots of Czechoslovakia, or those too afraid to leave when the offer had been made, the glory-seekers also resided here.

Half the city had been abandoned, the other half was being fortified, some buildings occupied, others smashed for defense. A number of the Czechoslovakian military had arrived and plans were underway to try and hold the Southern side of the city.

But plans took time, and that's were Nicholai, and a small group of soldiers like him fitted in, expendable but effective, the men were preparing to leave, holding up the enemy long enough, giving the Czechoslovakian army time to deploy and gain information on the enemy force. At least, that was their intention. It would explain why things were so bleak, the endless wait before they were called out, a skirmish force against the German war-machine. Hopelessly out-gunned, nobody had any illusions. The final moments before they were called out to face the storm...


OoC: I apologise firstly for not stating exact figures, I'll probably ask you about it to an irritating degree and then, obviosuly, let you know well before the battle begins.

Secondly, it's not a V. good post, hopefully I'll improve with time.

Any advice/criticism is appreciated.

^^

OoC: I apologise firstly for not stating exact figures, I'll probably ask you about it to an irritating degree and then, obviosuly, let you know well before the battle begins.

Secondly, it's not a V. good post, hopefully I'll improve with time.

Any advice/criticism is appreciated.

^^

OOC: Looks damn good to me. Just keep it up.

OOC: Looks damn good to me. Just keep it up.

OOC: I very much agree with you. Very good and I hope to see more like this in the future.

OOC: I very much agree with you. Very good and I hope to see more like this in the future.

OOC: I think the same. Carry on writing stuff like this, it's better than I could do. :D

OOC: My post got eaten. Damn. Gist of it was, that my government is giving Ansu 48 hours to remove the tanks and aircraft from the operational theatre and come to the negotiating table.
A secret offer has been made to renegotiate Versailles on more favourable terms, basically only retaining the demilitarised zones in the Rhineland and Low Countries, if Ansu will stop combat operations in Czechoslovakia while negotiations are ongoing.

Basically, entirely on the quiet, I'm offering to sell out the Sudetenland as long as Ansu shows he'll negotiate with me, and that he'll live by a new, fairer Versailles treaty.

In case this doesn't happen, my forces in the regions closest to my Ansurian border are mobilising, and some of my reserves are getting called up.

Choking dust swirled across the road. Men, dismissed and weary from a day's marching, slept where they lay as fresh infantry continued the advance. The heavy, yellow summer sun beat upon the marching men, and they exchanged their steel helmets for lighter cloth forage caps.

First Lieutenant Durame rested with his hands either side of the open, juddering commander's hatch of his tank as it rumbled it's way along. He had enlisted in the notoriously selective Ansurian Army in 1933, just in time to be whisked away for a secret military project. It had culminated in a comission in an armoured regiment, the most fervent secret of the Army. Now he would repay the chances the Army had given him, with glad service in his nation's forces.

Karlsbad was the first major city due to be liberated from the Czechs, who had inherited the Sudetenland in 1918 at the end of the First World War. It had been part of the Empire for more than a century, and the Sudeten-Ansurian population had writhed with polite fury at being forcibly seperated from their Fatherland.

---

The crack of a rifle split the dull silence of the march like an obcenity in a nunnery. Lieutenant Durame felt his head tug to the left, and a warm, soft liquid dribbling down his neck.

"COVER!" bellowed the sergeants.

Men sprang from half-wakefulness fear-fuelled activity in the blink of an eye. The infantry fell from the road, tumbling down the grass banks into ditches and bushes, more than one howling as his fall was broken by gorse. They huddled behind the armoured hulls of the column's tanks, clustering in nervous groups.

Durame's hand came back red. He blanched as he realised that the bright blood staining his fingers was his own, and ducked down into his vehicle. More rifles fired, and Durame's gunner was snapping questions at him. Muffled scream sounded from outside the tank as bullets bit deep into flesh, the luckiest passing straight through but some ricocheting from bone and causing death in moments.

The city was barely half a kilometre distant, easy range for the main guns of the Ansurian tanks, and the reply gutted half a dozen buildings. The rattling vehicles spread from the road into a firing line, tearing mud and turf and spraying it into the air as they passed. 37mm guns firing high-explosive shells attempted to halt the unseen rifle fire from the town, and after a few minutes of sustained firing, it had succeeded.

The order to advance echoed from vehicle to vehicle as the march turned into an attack. This was not how it was supposed to happen, thought Lieutenant Durame as his vehicle lurched forward. There were supposed to be parades and flowers and things.

"Parades," he whispered, the bloody scrap of his right ear dripping thick red blood onto the oiled leather of his commander's seat.

OOC: Minor casualties sustained from a few pot-shots. Let's get this show on the road.

BAGHDAD, CAPITAL DISTRICT, UNITED ARAB SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

Foreign Minister Sadiq al-Basri, General Ghassan Mukhtar, and President Shahira al-Tikriti sat in chairs around a table, in a dimly lit conference room right next to Premier Idris al-Asadi's office. Funny that the guest of honor, the premier, wasn't there.
A report about the first fighting on the Ansurian-Czechoslovakian border laid in front of Mukhtar. The Chief of General Staff must have read through it four or five times, in the Premier's absence.
Finally, the door opened. A lanky Arab man walked through the door, sitting down, a rather well-endowed, scantily-clad woman on his arm. The premier let the woman go, said something about "government shit," and waved bye. The woman left, perhaps a bit dejected.
The premier turned some angry eyes on al-Basri, who had called him in at this hour. Which wasn't unreasonable, 12:30, but he had apparently been busy with the woman who had just left.
"You're gonna tear me away from that tight, sugary ****?" al-Asadi said, the frustration apparent in this voice.
General Mukhtar didn't respond, just slid the report across the table to him.
"Ansuria invades Czechoslovakia..." al-Asadi said, "Okay, so dirty imperialist scumbags invade. Really, is it that hard? You know the drill, condemnation letter, oil embargo..."
"It's not that simple," Mukhtar interrupted, "And I don't care how tight or sugary that woman's **** was, but you need to sit here and talk with us."
"It's inhabited by Ansurians," al-Tikriti said. The woman may have been a puppet, but she knew her stuff.
"Dammit," al-Asadi said, closing the report, "That's completely different."
The premier stood up, and paced for a bit. Everything was silent for a while. Then, that silence was broken by the loud sipping of coffee. Then, it was silent again. Finally, the Premier sat down and started to speak again.
"Irredentism is a shitty casus belli," he said, "Still, it's a casus belli. So, their 'liberation mission' probably looks a bit more noble to the world."
"Still, we can't let them go unpunished," he finished, "This report says that they've used lots of armor. Don't issue any condemnations yet. But, tell all of our ships with oil bound to Ansuria to turn back, if we've got any. Got it?"
"Yes, Premier," Mukhtar said.
"Now, if you three will excuse me," al-Asadi said, opening the door, "I have a **** to hit."

OoC: Thanks for all the encouragement I recieved.
It was ace.

IC:

5 Minutes Ago

Nicholai boldly stood atop a section of broken wall, his feet carefully planted in the nuances of rubble, while his eyes made inquisitory passes of the plain beyond. A rise of dust, spiralling in a violent manner betrayed his foe's location, but he couldn't shake an eerie feeling which seemed to course through his veins like ice, causing him to shake in the mild breeze.

All across the labyrinth of streets and buildings, often hiding silently in doorways and crouching behind whatever defense they could find, the men waited for the inevitable attack. Armed with machine-guns, rifles and the occasional variant sniper, they awaited their doom.

As he saw the glint of some kind of vehicle appoaching in the distance but moving ominously fast, he swiftly pulled up his weapon and discharged it's contents to the winds and fate, hoping it would find a target. As if his shots, ringing in the clear air had been some signal several more gunmen began to fire wild-shots at the advancing enemy, the joy of something, anything, after the long wait proving to be a jubilation beyond resistance.

After the caucophany had finally ended, Nicholai was surprised to find himself panting, sweat dripping from his face and mixing with the grey dust to give him a grimy appearance, like the very rocks he stood on.

He was about to climb down from his position when there was an almighty shuddering, the spatter of enemy fire first scarring and then destroying several buildings, sending up debris and clogging, choking dust into the sreets. He could hear several screams cut short and then, with a mighty whailing which seemed to reach inside him and tear out his breath a screech caused his precarious position to buckle, nimbly leaping he toppled among the debris.





OoC: Moderate losses, a reasonable number of buildings destroyed, rubble litters the streets.

Vansic Jerris Mecker was twenty years old. He had been twenty years old for seventeen hours and forty-four minutes. He ran as fast as his exhausted, terrified body could run, carrying rifle, pack and stahlhelm as he went. The shattered outlying buildings that formed the northern limits of the city of Karlsbad loomed tall over his head. Brick and mortar had broken in places, smashed aside by the unnatural force of the Ansurian guns.

Rifles cracked, and orders were yelled. Covering fire, they ordered, and men obeyed. They fired at dark windows, at doorways and at a piano standing in the middle of the road. The street was strewn with clothes, tins and belongings, evidence of the urgent abandonment of the town by it's Czech minority. A strangled scream caught Mecker's ear, and he yelled a challenge as a running man carrying a rifle appeared from behind the piano.

He didn't stop. Mecker knew what to do. He raised his rifle, aiming high on the runner's back, and fired. The pin slammed forward, the priming flamed, and the rifle belched it's murderous child into life in a thundering roar, kicking back into Mecker's shoulder with brutal force. He saw the runner leap forward, flailing like a rag doll, before falling to the ground in a boneless heap.

The Ansurians pressed forward, men running on either side of the road, close to buildings. They supressed the windows, cracking spats of brickwork from the walls like drunken sculptors. Fear made them alert, and the slightest hint of movement was rewarded with a flurry of shots. An unarmed man who shouted from a building was bullied into silence by the soldiers' wordless reply.

The man he had shot was within kicking distance, and Mecker looked at his work. The bullet had exited through the sternum, spraying red-stained splinters of bone, jagged lumps of gristle and bloody, dying meat over the cobbled street. It takes a lot to kill a human being, and the man still drew short, desperate breaths, his eyes open and afraid. He saw his killer, the man in field-grey, and did not hate. He thought only one thing.

"Mami," he whispered, spluttering through the blood welling in his mouth. As he spoke, he spat, and the red fluid flecked his chest. "Mami...?"

He was a man no longer, his brave young patriotism and the swagger which had set the girl on his street giggling gone in one tiny movement of another man's index finger. All that he was or had been or ever could have been was dribbling onto the road through a hole on his chest six inches wide.

Mecker stood still, his unblinking eyes locked with the young Czech's, and fought the urge to vomit. The straw dummies never stared back at you, nor lain coughing in pools of their own lifeblood after marksmanship practice. Vansic Jerris Mecker was twenty years old, and was by his own judgement, a murderer. He couldn't look away from the young man's face.

Jiri Svobodnik bled to death on the cobbled streets of Karlsbad, looking into the blue eyes of the man who had killed him. He was twenty years old. He had been twenty years old for seventeen hours and forty-seven minutes. Mecker hid his face in shame, and wept.

OOC: Vanguard forces advancing into north Karlsbad. Approx 3,000 infantry, 45/23 of both kinds tanks.

The flashes erupted in the city like dazzling strokes of God, the city burgeoning with crackling fire, licking at the buildings as it raced down the streets, consuming fragile structures and darkening the few statues which dotted the city. Occasionally a wailing shell would pierce the ash-laden sky and for a brief moment blaze gold in the burning sun before plunging in deady arcs to plow into the city, leaving a streak of rubble and dust behind.

Gunfire broke the silence, the death-rattle of spitting machine-guns and the steady clack of rifle-fire mingled with the screams of the dying, horrendous like Banshees they called their final breaths, make it last, oh make it last they seemed to dirge then fell into silence, often amid the grinding of the tanks which conquered the city. Iron monstrosities amid the ruin who were out of place, mechanisms of pain, their presence was profanity in the streets of mortality.

Small groups crashed through, introductions were a hail of bullets before they fled into the fractured shell of their homes. Endless sea of foes pushed through, shields of bravery made ragged by infinity of power. Disheartened, isolated, the defenders surrounded by sea of death make a plea, then charge into the day, glinting in forever, then split and falling, eyes lifeless.

Nicholai arose amid the confusion, watching as glass smeared the earth like snow, fresh and crisp his boots crunched his bedraggled way to his disgarded weapon, stooping awkwardly he lifted it to his breast, clutching it close amid his daze. Spitting out a slick sea of blood, watching with facination as it mingled with the current which passed by him. He stopped and stared, uncomprehending as his fluid joined a stream.

Leaving the macabre testimony to their sins he crept into the madness, firing madly in swift bursts before he limped to another position, his uniform battered, his jaw cracked and his body swollen he deftly reloaded with several flicks of his working fingers. One among many in the final throes of the city, he continued automatically, loyalty, not to anything in particular, just a general sense of duty to whatever it was he was fighting for... He'd forgotten amid the burning of his land and destruction of his dreams, but he was certain it was important, and that it must remain unforgotten.

Far behind his position the Czech. forces watched in dismay as the Ansurian invasion headed ever onwards, unstoppable. Many prayed, several were executed for cowardice. Whatever betold, they would be met, regardless of outcome. The time for mourning their Country was not yet at hand, and while cool air still filled their lungs, they would fight.