Persei-Aries War Resumes
Darkstar Returns (It's baaaaack ...)
It’s true, it’s true … after eight months (I think) since our last game, and I think about a year since the official end of the Third Hercules War, we’ve dusted off the Darkstar rules and played another game! It takes place vaguely in the Third Hercules War timeline (we don’t really have a full campaign going yet), but of course that war is already over and decided so this won’t affect the conclusion of that war in the Darkstar timeline.
The basic background of this engagement has to have the two forces CLOSE, because both players wanted to try out a battleship, and such star-dreadnaughts don’t exactly lend themselves to fast, long-range strikes … especially when under-escorted (as they will be here). Also, both sides have to make MAJOR operational and strategic assets nearby and under threat, or else a battleship wouldn’t be committed to combat in its defense.
So I used the old “Redemption” star system (99 Herculis), a UN Mandate along the Hercules Rim where several regional naval powers have colonies and installations orbiting terrestrial worlds or gas giant moons. We can imagine the US Navy (despite their loss to the British Navy earlier in the war’s timeline, scraped out a new lease here in Redemption thanks to another campaign against the Spanish, French, and Italians of the New Roman Alliance) setting up their new base on one of the dozen or so moons of an outer ice giant’s moon, only to find the Japanese have a moon here as well (Farukon Kosuto, or “Falcon’s Coast”). As so often happens here in the colonial world of Darkstar, misunderstanding compounds distance-delayed communication compounds old grudges compounds corporate greed compounds, compounds, compounds …
Long story short, an American destroyer-frigate battlegroup strayed too close to Faukon Kosuto, Japanese corvettes slung out a salvo of torpedoes. The Americans turned hard about and withdrew, vowing a response to this “militant act of war, blatantly violating the guarantees of (insert half a dozen out-of-date treaties here). Perhaps flush with overconfidence after their recent thrashing of the New Romans, the US Navy sends out a full battleship with heavy cruiser escort. There’s no hiding such a deployment, so the Japanese have plenty of time to respond in kind … and the match is on!
Great game and great to see Darkstar back in action.
Thanks very much, @gremlin . Yeah, Darkstar fades into the background for a while now and again … but always returns strong! 😀