• Mission in Siberia

Posted: **Sun Jul 22, 2007 1:53 am**

Throughout the former Soviet Union (FSU) there are a number of secret cities and complexes that were used for many different purposes. If you can conceive of it, there is likely a complex built to study it. Such an abandoned complex is located near a place that has something I needed very much. We had to insert by helicopter as there are no roads for hundreds and hundreds of miles of this place.

This mission took place recently.

I brought along the standard crew--Sasha, Lyosha, Roma, Natasha, Vlad, and Vanya--and a couple old comrades from the olds days, neither of whom anyone in Lazlo has met. There is Oleg and Ilya, the nature of whom is still classified although I can say mage.

We got the navy to insert us by helicopter in the old complex, which would be our base of operations. We just needed something to keep us out of the elements. The actual objective was a relatively short cross country ski track away. The mission was to reach the objective, get what I needed, ski back to base, and wait for the helos to come back and pick us up.

However, as if the climate of that region was not bad enough, the area is littered with some Frost Demons, big ugly nasty things, and Snow Witches, little ugly nasty things (they are acutally fae) . . . .

Posted: **Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:37 am**

Well sounds like you were having fun. :roll:

Posted: **Sun Jul 22, 2007 12:04 pm**

It was my kind of gig, actually.

Posted: **Sun Jul 22, 2007 12:27 pm**

We moved into our new home. It was almost as cold inside as it was outside, but there was no biting wind. The power grid was disabled and had no power source anyway; besides it had not been used in decades. Natasha went to work setting up some booby traps and alarms internally and externally, just in case something had moved in the area, although scans did not indicate as much. There was not much by way of underground, being frozen. We settled in for a long cold night. We would head out on skis in the morning to our objective area.

About half way through the ski we stopped for a 30 minute break. It was not long into the break when Lyosha sensed we were not alone. "Snezhnaya koldunya," he said. It is a good thing that Snow Witches hate their own kind more than any other. One is extremely difficult to deal with. Two or more would be an utter nightmare (I win the Master of the Understatement award hands down).

We knew it was a snow witch because of its erratic and rapidly changing location. These little monsters can travel through snow like light through fiber opitc cables, and almost as fast. You got about one second between the time they pop up out of the snow and disappear back into it. Napalm works well though. Otherwise, you got quite a fight on your hands.

Indeed, we did.

Fortunately we were wearing our snowshoes during the break to make moving around the little camp easier than the big long skis. But basically we exchanged long, thin clown shoes for broad ones. It was quite like Michelle Kwan trying to kick the shit out of Tony Twist on ice skates.

The witch popped up in the middle of us and sent out a concentric shock wave, knocking us all over. She popped up right in front of Sasha and like an old cartoon character that blows up his fist through his thumb, her hand turned into giant sledge hammer than she brought down; he moved out of the the way as best he could laying on his back in deep snow. She managed to tag his shoulder and we heard an eloquent string of explicatives over the radio.

"Koldunya!" Ilya shouted, his voice bellowing. She turned her attention to him and dropped into the snow and shot over to him. As she popped up he hit her with a quick fiery spell that sent her reeling backwards. She screetched in pain and then Lyosha sent a round from his Dragunov through her shoulder ripping off her arm. She dropped into the snow and sped off before we could take any advantage of her weakened condition.

Not so bad, right? Unfortunately, no. Within an hour she would be fully regenerated, arm and all. You got to hit them hard and hit them fast because they are many times tougher than their size suggest, and can escape with utter ease.

"We cannot move on. She will return and she will not stop until we are dead or go back the way we came," Oleg explained. "I figure we have 15 minutes, max."

I nodded. One two-foot tall bitch brought our adventure to a grinding halt. "Let's work out a strategy while we have the time for it. It will at least take our minds off of the cold."

Soon, the snow witch would again be upon us . . . .

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:33 am**

The wards Natasha had brought along were limited, not necessarily by her choices, but by the fact that these little bitches are immune to a lot things, but they really, really hate fire. They are scared to death of it. But not just a little bitch flame or even a torch. It has to be a big nasty fire. And they are especially burned by it - as I alluded to earlier.

"They are immune to sleep, charm, slow, and so forth. Don't even bother with anything but fire, actually," Oleg explained.

Natasha set up some alarms that would give her pinpoint knowledge of the witch's location if it popped up in front of any of us. That's the only way a witch can really do damage, is extremely close range. They have absolutely no ranged attacks, but they can escape so quick that it works out for them, but it also means there is some degree of safety in numbers - our tribe was just about big enough to cope, but small enough to be easily picked apart if we were not careful.

Coupled with the alarms Natasha set up were some wards she described as burning pain, "the same ones I used against the dybbuk in Pittsburg with DK." These alone would not destroy the koldunya, but they would zap it long enough that Ilya could bring the fury of Perun down upon the little monster.

As Sasha's old sig line said there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. Put another way (the kind with a shell on its back), in warfare the plan is the first casualty.

We had a good plan. With any luck it would hold up . . . .

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:52 pm**

Most critters seem to obey the rule of opposites - hit them wiht the opposite of their nature and they drop.

Posted: **Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:05 am**

"Here she comes," Lyosha warned.

At that moment she triggered the alarm near Roma. "Roma!" Natasha said over the radio.

The koldunya popped up right in front of Roma and hit him with a shockwave. As he tried to get his snowshoed feet under him while stumbling backwards a column of whirling ice shards went up around the witch. He brought up his gun that shoots fire and squeezed off a round that was absorbed by the shards. A giant icicle popped out from the shards like a blade on a switchblade knife and she leaped with blinding speed on Roma's chest bringing the icicle down into his shoulder. He shouted from the pain of the magic icicle poked through his armour and found his shoulder socket.

"Keep that bitch out of the snow!" Oleg shouted over the radio.

A spiraling stream of fire erupted out of Ilya's hand drilling through the ice shards although they absorbed much of the damage, although they were destroyed, her defenses had been destroyed. The force of the blast knocked her off of Roma's chest. She tumbled about a meter slightly smoldering, and Roma rolled and he grabbed her by the ankle with his good arm, we could hear the pain in the groan that came over the radio. Her leg melted in his hand and she shot up in the air like a rocket.

And she came speeding back to the ground with a huge cone of ice in front of her like a missile, but impossible to see against the white sky.

"Sasha!" Natasha said as the koldunya breached that ward's area of effect. But he could not react in time. At the time he picked her up it was too late; the cone slammed into his torso driving him hard into the snow. The koldunya tumbled several meters and shot off in the snow before Ilya could get a clean shot.

Roma was injured. Sasha was unconscious. And the koldunya got to lick her wounds a hell of a lot faster than we could. Her guerrilla hit and run tactics were taking us apart by nickels and dimes.

"I got the bleeding stopped, but I lost a lot of blood. I feel really cold," Roma came over the radio. His voice was shivering violently.

"I can help him," Ilya said.

"Vlad. See what you can do for him. Ilya. Save your magic for the koldunya," I said over the radio, trying to mask the discomfort of knowing that Roma could die as a result of my order. "If you run out of magic, we're all dead," I said . . . .

Posted: **Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:11 pm**

"On my way," Vlad said. He knelt next to Roma and reported that Roma had stopped shivering, which means hypothermia had a firm grip on Roma's life. Vlad helped him to fight off further effects of the cold but a lot of damage was already done. Roma's condition was severely critical. Vlad could patch up the wounds but Roma needed more medical attention than Vlad could provide.

We moved in a little closer together since we had two guys down. Here's the problem with getting too close. They have some very powerful magic that spreads out in a concentric circles to about 5 meters or so. It is sort of like walking in a bunch and having a mortar round land right in the middle of the group. The problem with staying further apart is that it makes it easier for her to wage guerrilla war on you. Small groups bundled close together die very fast at the hands of one of these monsters, however, when spread out your chances of dying quickly diminish dramatically.

"Did anyone see Natasha's ward fire when that bitch Roma?" Oleg asked.

"Happened too fast, I did not see a thing," Vlad responded.

"Natasha you have any left?" I asked.

"Three."

"Set them up around Roma and Vlad. We gotta kill her this time round. Hang in there Romchik," I said. Then I called into the secure channel, "Cosmonaft this is Putnik 6. Copy?"

"I copy. Go ahead."

"Requesting medevac for one severely hypothermic casualty. Another casualty is currently unconscious and showing signs of hypothermia. Copy?"

"I copy. Standby Putnik 6." Almost a minute passed. "Medevac helo inbound, Putnik 6. ETA 15 minutes. Call sign is Gryphon 3-4. Copy?"

"I copy." Gryphon 3-4 is one of the best helo pilots around. He can make a helicopter dance in any conditions, including white out, of which there was plenty.

"Just in time to pick more of us up," Oleg quipped, providing the battlefield humour since Sasha was down for the 10 count.

"Indeed, here she comes," Lyosha warned.

Sure enough she popped up right in front of Roma where Vlad had completed wrapping Roma up in a blanket. Natasha's wards had a visible effect this time. The crackle of fire could be hear and the little bitch let a scream that made me think of Solovei-Razboinik. She was stumbling backwards in the snow from the pain and damage that Natasha's wards were causing. I lined her up in my ACOG scope and pulled the trigger. My AN-94 spit two rounds out but I lead her too much and they missed their mark. But Lyosha's round found center mass and she was thrown backwards several meters by the shot, blood spraying out her chest.

Ilya raised his hand and a fiery lightining bolt came crashing down on top of the witch as sparks and embers splashed out as if a small fireball had just hit the ground. She was stunned as Ilya then fired the spiraling fire of death spell and it drilled into her chest churning her insides. She exploded into a spray of embers and sparks.

"The end," Lyosha said over the radio.

"Ilya, see what you can do for Vlad," I said.

"I can boil some water for him," Ilya said, "but then I have to rest." He fished a pot out of his pack and dropped some snow in and dug in the snow to the ground where he sparked a magical fire and put the pot in the fire. Fairly soon after the water had just started to boil when he reached down and grabbed the pot with his hands and poured the near boiling water into a couple Nalgene bottles. By this time Sasha (begining to regain consciousness) had been wrapped up with Roma and Natasha and Lyosha were laying in the blanket on top of and under Roma trying to warm him up. Ilya placed the two bottles on Roma's torso and Natasha put her coat liner over the bottles and laid on them.

"Putnik 6 this is Gryphon 3-4. Copy?"

"I copy. Go ahead."

"See you in 2 minutes. Copy."

"I copy."

"He better be here. We are running out of heat...and daylight," Vlad said . . . .

Posted: **Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:33 pm**

By this time Sash had regained full consciousness. "Gah, it hurts to breathe," he complained, holding is side. "I must have broken a rib or two," he groaned through clenched teeth.

"I'll be with you as soon as Roma's medevac'd," Vlad explained.

"Did we kill the koldunya?" he asked.

"Yes, we did, and shut your mouth up," I said. Gryphon 3-4 arrived a few minutes late but he arrived, so I was not complaining. The crew loaded Roma up and started working on him immediately.

"You had one unconscious?" the crew chief asked me.

"He's good now," I shouted back as the noise of the rotors drowned out our voices.

"Very well," he responded and returned to the helo. It slowly lifted off the ground and Vlad went to work on fixing up Sasha's ribs. Ilya was deep in a trance. I and the others had been busy preparing for us a snow shelter to settle into for the short night and reenergise before heading on to the objective area. It was going to take us several hours of work at the objective area to get what we had came for. Then we would haul ass back to base before it got dark. That was the plan anyway.

Obviously I would have preferred to have been inserted by helo directly at the objective area, but certain obstacles were in the way that would not hinder a team moving on skis. Besides, sometimes helos cannot fly in conditions fairly common to the area. I wanted to make sure we had a place to fall back to just in case we had to spend several days out there.

After Vlad finished with Sasha we all piled into our little snow shelter, huddling in close with each other. We put two people on guard duty for 1 hour shifts to watch for opposition as much as keeping an eye on each other, looking for signs of dehydration and hypothermia - and to keep the spooks and boredom somewhere out there in the darkness. After four hours of the brief rest, we head out for the objective site. We had another long day ahead of us.

I cannot reveal the details of what we were after, but it came from space and was moved by glaciers a long time ago. We needed samples of this, and getting them required a sort of miniature mining operation. With breaks to ensure nutrition and hydration we worked into the early afternoon getting samples out of this thing that were appropriate for the uses I had in mind for them.

If nothing stood in our way, we would be back at base by dark and picked up by helos in the morning. So I called a 30 minute break to relax and eat some warm food before skiing back. But we were still pretty tired and hungry. Roma was on all of our minds, none more than mine . . . .

Posted: **Sat Jul 28, 2007 4:27 pm**

On our way back to base I called it in and the helos were on standby. Unfortunately we could not bring the proper equipment to do the best job of extracting this material, so we had a big chunck of it on a sled tethered to my waist. It was far more massive than I had anticipated and going was much slower than I thought it would be.

"Um, guys," Natasha said.

This cannot be good, I thought.

"My alarms just went off," she said. "Something just breeched the outer perimeter," she clarified.

I untethered the sled and ordered us to move in. "Lyosha, keep your eyes opened."

As we approached the base Lyosh informed us that he was only picking up a single presence and nothing particularly evil or supernatural. I asked Natasha which location had been breeched. "North side," she replied. So we moved around to the south and headed into the complex and put on our snowshoes. There were several small buildings we had to move around and between to move north. "Lyosh, anything?"

"Nothing new really, but we are getting closer," he responded.

And then I caught a whiff of an odour that seemed awfully strange. It smelled like wet dog. "Halt," I said as I continued to investigate the scent. "I smell something like a wet dog."

"Mencheny," Oleg responded, his voice sounding excited.

"What?" I responded.

"Cryptid with no solid evidence that it actually exists," Natasha chimed in.

"Yea, just some eyewitness reports," Oleg elaborated.

"Marked hominid, it's a class of cryptid," Natasha went on. She and Oleg continued to finish each other's sentences. Including pointing out the two cryptozoological camps of whether or not a specimen should be collected or not in order to prove existance and whatnot. I was not overly interested in the chatter but they were on a roll.

I interrupted, "alright, save it for later. Let's find out exactly what we are dealing with and get the fuck out of here." I called in to command that were delayed somewhat.

"We're really close now," Lyosha said.

We moved up to the next building and the smell was strong and I could hear snow crunching underfoot. I peeked around the corner and caught a glimpse of a bipedal dark thing disappear behind a building. I made some hand signals and we started to move up to the next building after looking around. Nothing else was in the area.

"It just triggered the alarm outside our door," Natasha said. Now we had a definite location for this thing. As we moved up I saw that it either had very broad feet or was also walking on snowshoes . . . .

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:48 am**

"Snowshoes? Well, they have been reported to trade with villagers," Natasha explained.

I shrugged. No villages for 100s of miles here. They must have quite a range. Running it down proved impossible. Movement in the snow seemed to come quite easily for the thing (he states the obvious). I could hear the helocopters coming. "Time to go," I said. I retrieved that which I had come for.

We loaded up on the helicopters as they touched down, and quickly were headed back out to sea.

Unfortuantely for Oleg and Natasha, a fleeting glimpse of Mencheny was all that was in the cards for them. Although I got a really powerful whiff of its characteristic wet dog smell.

The scientists went to work on that the we brought back for them. Hopefully the results will be positive. I would hate for Roma and the rest of us to have gone through all that for nothing.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 7:27 pm**

A lot more of my hunts end up like that too - nothing sold. Usually don't have enough worth to post.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:25 pm**

I almost rather had fought a frost demon rather than that snow witch.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:43 pm**

Why are they more dangerous?

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:47 pm**

A snow witch can pick you apart before you ever pull the trigger. You can at least get a shot off before the frost demon is ripping your arms off.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:52 pm**

Oh. So you would rather take care of the light work huh? :lol:

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:55 pm**

In many ways, yes.

The frost demon is lighter work.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:56 pm**

Everyone gets a shot at the frost demon.

Also the snow witch has a wickedly fast regeneration rates.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 10:01 pm**

Hi Miss Natasha. Mr. Sasha says you sing real pretty.

Is there some kind of damage that they have more trouble healing the others? I know that some monsters can't heal damage from certain types of weapons just wondering if it held true to the snow witches.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 10:07 pm**

Hi Sophoroto. Sasha loves it when I sing.

He said that he enjoyed his time there on the estate, by the way.

The trick against snow witches is to damage them faster than they can heal, but they are not targetable for long time because they can sort of Snow Meld pretty much on will (have to get them off the snow and they cannot do it of course). They are especially damaged by fire, but they heal from it as fast as any other type of damage.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 10:38 pm**

Most types of Fae can't stand Cold-iron either.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:06 pm**

Thank you Miss Natashaand Mr. GhostSpider, I knew about fae being susceptible to cold iron have had a few of them visit from time to time but they don't come around anymore. Kinda miss them they were fun to play with at least the seely were.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:08 pm**

Seely? Able to be seen?

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:12 pm**

You say that like it is a strange thing Kolya?

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:48 pm**

Yes I could see them when I first came to live here with Mr. Greydawn but they left about three months before I blew up the boat house they said that they were no longer safe here and they had to go home then I had the run in with the thing I accidently let in from the astral or where ever the gate went. Still haven't figured that one out and was told not to while I am alone.

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:51 pm**

I just did not know seely was a word.

Posted: **Wed Aug 08, 2007 2:08 am**

It's actually seelie, and they are the spring and summer fae. I'd say that they are good, but by fairy standards. We would judge them differently, more than likely.

Posted: **Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:29 am**

Here's an idea about the snow witch - what if you can get a helicopter ta blow the snow away from around them.

I also understand you guys still use an equvalent to napalm . . .

Oh what I wouldn't do for soem air support some days.

Posted: **Wed Aug 08, 2007 10:45 am**

Napalm is effective as I mentioned, but you never know where these little monsters are. You can rule out where they are by napalming a route. Many of the routes are frozen lakes and rivers though with snow cover, so you do not want to do that.

Initially I hoped to use snowmobiles for speed but it did not work out. Besides, the snow witch can travel faster and easily overturn them. Only a part of the route could have been napalmed given the terrain and nature of the objective; we would have encountered her one way or another on this particular mission. It really was just a question of where.

Posted: **Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:14 pm**

Sometimes I wonder if cases like these show the upside for global warming.