September 1942
Seine-Inférieure, German-occupied France
German troop train

  Autumn was coming to France, and the countryside outside was a green-grey wash of colours as the troop train slowly rolled westward. An earlier rainstorm had passed them in a rumble of wetness and noise and petrichor, heading in the same direction as their lumbering locomotive, and the farmland outside was a green gleam behind windows that held back stray raindrops and cool air alike. A pale sky held dominion overhead, wan sunlight tracing out high-altitude contrails from aircraft above and to the north - American bomber squadrons heading eastwards in thick streams, curlicues of escort fighters woven in faintly among them - and even though midday had barely passed, the light felt thin, almost faded as it scattered across the French countryside that the train was slowly wending its way through.

  Inside the double handful of train cars, German soldiers lounged in a variety of positions, some sitting with cards, others sleeping on shoulders of friends, and others yet merely sitting and watching the view outside scroll past. Most of them were from the Heer - the German Army's ground forces - and from Training Replacement Battalion 332 specifically, but there was a scattering of Luftwaffe blue too in the one car, as well as soldiers from other units. The air smelled of men and leather and wool, and the thick tang of leather-fat that only new, fresh equipment had. The men of the replacement battalion were all young, drawn from training schools and home barracks units across a number of regions in Germany, and their posting here, to France, was a simple rotation to replace other, earlier cohorts of troops that had been drawn off to make up for losses on the Eastern front. Trained soldiers were pulled from existing units and sent to fronts where they were needed, while new soldiers - the "greens" - filled their positions in their old units. It was a simple system, in practice, and helped to get the greens on their feet faster. The time of being sent straight to the front, was not yet upon them.

  Training Replacement Battalion 332 was linked to the 332nd Infantry Division, and was stationed in Germany itself. As the greens finished their basic training in the replacement battalion, they would be sent out by train - as replacements - to the sub-units that made up the 332nd Infantry Division, which had been tasked with guarding the French coastlines since 1941. There were three infantry regiments - the 676th, 677th and 678th - as well as smaller artillery, medical, tank destroyer, logistics, and other divisional units in their area, with the bulk of the replacement troops usually going to the infantry regiments; these regiments were usually the ones who saw the most frequent depletion to fill other battered units from the Eastern front, and thus saw a commensurate higher inflow of replacement greens too.

  These three infantry regiments of the 332nd division were scattered along the length of coastline from Le Havre in the west to Dieppe in the east, and the troop train was scheduled to drop groups of soldiers along a long, crooked circuit that looped from just north of Le Havre to just east of Dieppe. The French railway lines rarely ran straight for any length of time in these parts, and the trip had been a slow progression of small towns, small railway stations, rattling bridges, and the constant threat of resistance attacks (although the latter was apparently rather rare in the 332nd division's occupation zone, or so the greens had heard). The greens had been issued with rifles and light marching loads of ammunition - a Mauser rifle and 30 rounds of ammunition each, for most of them - but the rifles were racked at the front and rear of the various compartments, and only the machinegun nests on the coal carriage, exposed and wet behind the locomotive, showed any sign of vigilance.

  Scattered between the greens, with silvered stripes proudly displayed on their upper arms, or embossed around the edges of their epaulettes, more senior soldiers and junior non-commissioned officers kept a watchful eye over their flock of greens. Some of them had service years behind them, usually the corporals and younger sergeants, while the senior privates generally knew less of combat, but had been around for just as long. In the one troop car, number seven, a lean Obergefreiter sitting against the back bulkhead checked his wristwatch, and frowned...

OOC: okay folks, this is the intro scene to our adventure. You are one of the replacement soldiers being sent to the 332nd division - specifically, you have been assigned to the 677th regiment, which is stationed somewhere on the coast.

You can start preparing yourself mentally for who your character is and where he comes from, how he experienced his time at the training school in Germany, who his friends are/ does he know any of the other player characters, and such.

We'll commence with in-character posting once our full batch of players is on board (pun not intended).

13:17
They were running behind schedule.

  Obergefreiter Ritterbach frowned at his wristwatch for another moment, then dropped his hand and picked up the newspaper again. He had long since read through the entire thing - more a pamphlet than anything substantial, to be accurate - but keeping it raised and pretending to read allowed him to study the replacement soldiers around him without them noticing his gaze.

  They were still greens, after all.
  Very green.

  In the back of his mind, he mulled over his orders again while his eyes skimmed over newspaper letters and young faces alike. He was in charge of the detachment for the 677th, and was meant to take them off at the Honséure station and make sure they got to their unit without hitch.

13:18
They were running behind schedule.

  Ritterbach rubbed a hand along the bristles of his scalp, hair shorn as short as ever, and let his gaze drift out through the windows on the starboard side of the carriage.
  Starboard.
  He wasn't in the Luftwaffe any more - it was the right side of the carriage, the side that faced north.
  Starboard.
  Old habits die hard, unlike greens who die quickly.
  The thought brough Ritterbach none of the youth-calloused mirth it might once have, and his eyes saw trees and farmed fields slide by while his thoughts slid back into memory. Gregor, eyes wet, as the water and mud engulfed him on the river banks. Konrad, the Dusseldorf boy, who went grey and cold and stopped talking when darkness fell on that cold, cold Russian night. Reislin - stupid, stupid Reislin - who talked and gabbed non-stop like a girl, and got himself shot in the face in Poland before he could even grow his beard out. The new leutnant, barely older than any of them, who went to talk to the peasants at that little crossroad town, and disappeared with them when the mortars came down. Meckels, who stepped on a mine and then screamed for three days beyond their trenches, beyond help and mercy and silence - until silence fell, and it felt worse than his screaming. Frieda, the nursing girl that he watched and smiled at when he had a chance, until she disappeared one day and was found naked in the woods with her throat slit.

13:39
They were running behind schedule.

  Ritterbach's thoughts resurfaced, slowly, and he found that he had been stiff and still the whole time, the newspaper forgotten on his lap, his memories still churning.
  Hopefully France would be better.
  Hopefully this new place, this village on the coast - Sains-Grieu - would be better.
  Hopefully.

OOC: example of an in-character post, this particular one from an NPC. NPC posts will sometimes be used instead of Narrator ones, to smooth along conversations and encounters.

OOC:

Okay, let's get this started then! Anthony, you can start off with your first in-character post. Just a brief setup of who you are, where you are in the carriage, and what you are doing. If you have 2-3 mates with you, you can mention them by name too - I'll create NPCs for them, to fill in slots for players.

Sometime after noon

  The train trundled along, the ever present noise of the engine, tracks and wheels lulling Albrech's senses. The moving green scenery of France was not interesting enough to warrant his attention.

  The only things really keeping Albrech from dozing off was the possible ire of the Obergefreiter catching him sleeping upon arrival, and imagining the inner workings of the machine pulling the train cars.

  Albrech's interest in machinery was one of the main things that kept the cool darkness of sleep at bay. Since he was a child, he was interested in machines.

  But that was not the way things went. He may have been apprenticed to a motor mechanic, but the fatherland required his service. He tried to get into the Wehrmacht motor pool, but they had enough mechanics and not enough soldiers.

  Albrech needed a distraction form the droning, but found his friends to be occupied.

  Across from Albrech sat Heinrich Steiner. A man one year his younger, but was very proficient in languages. It was a surprise he wasn't the unit interpreter. He was busy fiddling with some wooden contraption he got form his younger brother before being deployed.

  Next to Heinrich was Mark Hinderfeldt. He was roughly the same age as Albrech, but his interests were in the academics. He was a college student before being conscripted. He was studying religion, or was it politics? Or was it a combination of the two? Albrech couldn't rightly remember. Mark was reading a book. A rather popular book, it was called 'Mein Kampf'. He was really engrossed, so Albrech decided not to bother him.

  ALbrech sighed and went back to his musings over the workings of mechanical things, glancing at the Obergefreiter to make sure he was still happily reading his newspaper. And without realising it, darkness became his close friend.

Ludwig remembers the tear-stained cheeks of his dear Mama and the almost vacant, yet sorrowful gaze of his Opa as they watched him depart to finally do his duty the Fatherland. The weeks of training passed him by in a wink of an eye, and before he knew it they shoved a rifle in his arms and put him on this god forsaken train en route to Sains-Grieu.

As Ludwig's eyes focuses back on the present, they land on the Obergefreiter who seems to be  reading the newspaper for the past eternity. They are the same age apparently. Perhaps Ludwig would have also been an Obergefreiter instead of a greeny by now if he hadn't used his studies as an excuse to evade conscription. Alas, his studies eventually came to an end and he could no longer hide behind the safety of his textbook towers.

"Shoot first and don't bloody miss", are his Opa's last words to him that now echoes in Ludwig's mind. If he doesn't miss, that ought to keep him alive. Right?

An ominous feeling creeps up Ludwig's spine, but he quickly shakes it off and decides to focus instead on the soldiers next to him playing cards and chattering jovially, as if they are not on a train ride to what could possibly be the last they will ever take.

"Shoot first and don't bloody miss".

"Shoot first and don't bloody miss".

The words rolls around in Ludwig's mind as the deceptively peaceful green countryside rolls by.

"Shoot first and don't bloody miss".

"Shoot first and don't bloody miss".

"Shoot first...".

  Midday turned into afternoon, and the troop cars started to fill up with empty seats and shadows alike as various small stations along the way took their toll on the complement of soldiers. The stops were short and without fanfare, as sergeants called out section numbers, and boots clattered from the cars onto small, countryside stations that were sometimes not even as long as a single car. An hour before sunset, the rain returned as well, and the cars became gloomy and cool, filled with flickering buttery light from the dim electric lights in the ceiling. Blackout curtains were pulled across the windows, and the countryside outside disappeared aside from the occasional staccato clacking as they rumbled across a bridge.

  Shortly after 18:10, as the train pulled into yet another small station, the forward door to train car number seven opened, and a senior private with a map case on his belt stepped in. He had been going up and down the length of the train all day, calling out the station names as they were reached, and this time it was the call for Honséure station that roused Obergefreiter Ritterbach into action. As section leader, it was his responsibility to get the relevant group marshaled in Honséure, and with a few crisp commands he had the group on their feet and scrambling for their packs and rifles. Ritterbach led the way with the disembarkation, opening one of the rear doors on the port side of the carriage and clambering out with brisk speed into the darkness outside.

  The Honséure station was a damp and miserable affair. The raised platform that flanked the railway line was malnourished wood, warped and shifting underfoot, and the only benefit the station offered the disembarking troops was a thin, battered timber roof overhead that served to keep some of the drizzle at bay. The darkness gleamed wetly around them, shifting and rolling as the two small gas lamps at opposite ends of the platform hissed and popped, and there seemed to be more shadow than light around them despite the meager attempts of the lamps. Rain streamed from a broken gutter on the street side of the platform, creating a thin waterfall between the troops and the rest of the street, and as Ritterbach pushed his way through the assembling troops, he could see that the street was quite empty - the transport wagon was nowhere in sight. Hunched houses clumped around the other side of the cobbled street, gloomy and cowering as if in fear from the soldiers, and the blackout curtains which framed every window did not even twitch with the usual curious faces which the Germans had come to expect from every French town they passed through.

  Ritterbach swore under his breath. This was exactly what they needed: being left at an empty station, in the rain, with another 15 kilometers still to cover before reaching the Sains-Grieu garrison.
  Fuck France.

  In the distance, a faint rumble of thunder crawled from horizon to horizon, followed by a blast of steam from the locomotive some distance further along the track. Wheels groaned and squealed into motion, and with more coughs of steam and the piercing one-two-three shriek of the steam whistle, the troop train began to pull out of the station again. Somehow, the night - as early as it still was - seemed to close in around them as the train moved off, and for the double handful of young men left on the platform the air seemed to pull close around them and take on a cold edge as the last troop carriage rolled past them and slid away into the rain-cloaked distance.

"Section! Helmets on, rifles at the ready!" Ritterbach barked at the men waiting on the platform, and there was a scramble and clank of kit as caps were doffed, helmets donned, and clips of Mauser ammunition loaded into their rifles. The obergefreiter wanted to take no chances.
  "Kessler, Jodl, with me." Ritterbach beckoned two of the greens closer to join him. Time to go find that station master, somewhere, and see if the Frenchman knew what had happened to their transport. "Schreiber - take two men, and see what is happening in that tavern."
  Across from the station and at the corner of a side street that led deeper into the village, a two-storey brick structure, half-covered in peeling white paint and with a creaking sign above its double entrance doors loomed in the rain. A scattering of wooden benches and flower pots flanked the doors, which appeared to leak a bit of yellow light from underneath them when the soldiers squinted. A tavern, probably, as the obergefreiter had asserted - but filled with what?

OOC:

First actions: what do you do now?

 - Screiber: you have to pick 2x soldiers to join you, and then decide on how you want to execute Ritterbach's order
 - your dialogue colour is Yellow, using the Styled Text: yellow
 - Koenig: if you get picked, you go along; if not, what do you do while waiting for Ritterbach to return?
 - your dialogue colour is Blue, using the Styled Text: blue

Also: I will need 1x Perception and 1x Luck roll from each of you

 - Luck roll: just a plain 1d10, no modifiers
 - Perception roll: roll 1d10, and then add the following:
 1) if you describe your Perception action well, you can be awarded a +1 or +2 bonus by the GM
 2) if you feel one of your existing Skills might give you a bonus, work that into your post and it might earn you a bonus as well

Good luck...

As Ludwig disembarked from the train, he took a moment to take in his surroundings as the other troops gathered on the platform around him. Empty, cold, and wet. What a miserable place. And a little unsettling too one might add. Ludwig sighed and noticed the mist of his own hot breath in the cool air.

Ludwig traded his cap for his helmet and readied his rifle at the Obergefreither's command. He  then heard the second command barked at him to take two men with him to investigate the tavern and straightened himself immediately, "Jawhol!" Ludwig proceeded to point at the two men closest to him, Albrech and Heinrich Steiner. "You two, follow me!" Without waiting for their reply, Ludwig turned towards the tavern and made his way, along with the other two men, down the small side street leading towards the seemingly innocent looking brick structure.

Ludwig occasionally heard the sloshing of water as their boots hit puddles all along the cobbled street. He started to feel the chill of the evening air and shivered as they steadily approached the supposed tavern in silence. He gripped his rifle tighter.

OOC:

- Perception roll was 7. Ludwig has the sixth sense ability. Might be applicable to the investigation
- Luck roll was a 3.

Ludwig remained alert, occasionally glancing sideways and behind them, squinting to notice any dangers that might be concealed in the looming darkness surrounding them. Before they reached the entrance of the building, Ludwig motioned for the men accompanying him to stop. He tries to make out any sounds coming from inside the building: chatter, the clanking of glasses, music, anything that will indicate signs of life.

"Koenig, Steiner, see if you can make out movement from the windows and if you can hear any sounds coming from inside. Also, keep your eyes out for movement from the surrounding buildings and further down the street," Ludwig whispered to them.

Albrech stepped off the train with a sense of dread. The station he disembarked at was dark, cold and damp. Rain was pattering away on the roof, not too harshly, but enough to be irritating. Albrech looked to his fellow soldiers seeing equal looks of dread and foreboding. It was gonna be a miserable night.

Obergefreiter Ritterbach's order to put helmets on and ready rifle's didn't help. Who was going to give us trouble in this piss poor weather? Albrech thought to himself as he switched out his field cap for his helmet,then checked his rifle over.

Suddenly with a dark look the Obergefreiter gave Ludwig the order to pick two soldiers to go and investigate the nearby building. Albrech hoped against all hope he was not going to be one of the unlucky bastards to go running about in the rain. But of course that was a fruitless thought. Ludwig pointed at him and Heinrich. What a miserable evening indeed. ALbrech clicked his heels together in acknowledgment and begrudgingly stepped out into the wet evening.

OOC:

Perception roll was a 10. Albrech has the Stalker and Camoflauge attributes, which might play into his knowledge of looking for things.
Luck roll was a 1.

Albrech scanned the dark carefully as he followed Ludwig, keeping his head on a swivel while ensuring to be as quiet as possible. The patter of rain against his helmet was quickly blocked out and only the splashing of boots in water can be heard as they approached the building, which now seemed to resemble a tavern, as the Obergefreiter had correctly called it. Once they had reached the tavern, Ludwig called for a halt with an upraised fist. We carefully stopped and began to listen carefully. It became easier to start blocking out unnecessary noises like rain and gutters pouring streams of water out onto the street.

  Crossing the street at a quick trot, the trio of soldiers - Albrech on the left, Ludwig in the center, Heinrich on the right - saw the figure lurking down the side street alongside the alley just as they reached the front of the tavern and its scattering of wet tables. Across the road from the tavern, to their left, a wet block of stone and crumbling bricks leaned precariously into the road, a feature - or survivor? - of medieval architecture and crumbling neglect. In the shadows that clustered thickly along its base, a scattering of crates and boxes plunked and thonked as fat raindrops beat into them - the remnants of a loading yard, it seemed, open and abandoned to the weather - and it was between this detritus, pressed right up against the wall, that the figure stood. Lurked was perhaps a more apt word.

  Albrech, being the closest, got an impression of shoulders hunched up under a slick poncho, head covered by a water-battered slouch cap, and legs that grew curiously fatter as they got closer to the wet ground. Squinting against the rain, realization dawned on him a moment later: the figure was actually squatting on a crate, with its back pressed against the wall. Rain ran off the figure in thin streamlets, pattering around it and blending seamlessly with the surrounding puddles and spatter, and its arms were hidden from sight, presumably beneath the dark poncho that covered it.

  It had silver eyes.


  Then, in a wet flash of the gleaming poncho, the figure spun off the crate and was gone. Albrech, still the closest, heard a faint patter of feet heading deeper into the village, away from the tavern, but the rain drowned it out within a moment or two. Thunder boomed somewhere behind them, closer this time, and the realization that barely a second or two had passed since they had reached the front of the tavern washed over both men. Heinrich, on their far side, was facing the other way, and could not possibly have seen what they just experienced.

  This close to the tavern, the sound of voices carried out, muted and dull against the rain and the thick walls of the structure, and Ludwig could make out enough to identify it as French. No more than a handful of talkers, at best. Other than that, the structure seemed to soak up sound in like some bloated sponge, and aside from the rain and a faint whistle far down the railway line behind them, there was little to make out. This close to the structure, they could make out a side door some distance to the right of the main doors, suggesting that there was an internal courtyard, or perhaps kitchen entrance, that could offer alternative access to the tavern.

OOC: Decisions, decisions... Try to chase down the lurker? Stick with orders and investigate the tavern further? (enter it, circle around the back, etc) Maybe even... split up?

Albrech couldn't shake the image of the strange figure in the poncho from his mind. Those silver eyes did not seem right at all, as though they belonged to something... not human? But the figure was gone now, but the shivering cold down Albrech's spine didn't want to go away. ALbrech shook his head quickly to get his nerves back, clutching his rifle a little more tightly. Albrech wanted to focus on the objective at hand. That's right, orders. We had orders. Investigate this tavern. Albrech mentally reminded himself. He looked to Ludwig, nodding as to what to do next. Ludwig was in charge now, surely he would follow orders.