UNSTABLE SIGNALS // SECOND SET

‹ UNSTABLE SIGNALS // ALL REPORTS

PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK

FILED_FROM: EURASIAN STEPPE // GRID 4-GOLF
FILING_DATE: 2026-07-26
RESULT: SPECIMEN DOWN // T5 // RIG RECOVERED

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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-07-26

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OPERATOR TACTICS // BIG GAME HUNTS // RECONSTRUCTED SECOND
SET CONTRACT 451-C // THE OTHER TRACK // SABLE CISTERN

BIG GAME // CONTRACT 451-C SABLE CISTERN // KILL ORDER SPECIMEN DOWN // T5 OPERATOR // 1 FW LEFT

// READ THE DEN // COUNT THE TRACKS // ASK WHO ELSE READ IT // FILE THE REPORT //

// OPERATOR TACTICS // BIG GAME HUNTS

The second set of prints Grouse logged off the record in June came back this month as a full-grown boar testing a dry water station. She went alone again, killed it again, and found the thing she went looking for was already sitting under a live-capture cage somebody else had baited for it.

SECOND SET

BY RIO SOLVENG

GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // BIG GAME HUNTS
FILED: EURASIAN STEPPE // GRID 4-GOLF // 2026-07-26
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.

// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE

Kose here. Back in June we filed Grouse walking a den after a kill and finding two sets of juvenile prints where the paperwork promised one, only one of them accounted for. She logged the second set privately and we let it sit. It did not sit. It grew up, walked to a dry cistern a valley over, and it was not the only thing that had been reading that den. I keep this one because it is the first time one of our hunts closed its own loop and opened a colder one in the same breath.

// DEPLOYMENT

GAMEOperator Tactics // Big Game Hunts (solo hunt)

SCENARIOHunt: Second Set. BAFO Contract 451-C, follow-on to 447-F. Eurasian contested zone, grid 4-Golf, Sable Cistern (a decommissioned EO water station).

OPERATOREske Lund, callsign Grouse. Gene-forged veteran contractor, solo, no Medic. Handler Kestrel, remote.

SPECIMENVepr Ferox, Veteran tier, den-sibling of the 447-F alpha. AR 2, Armored Charge, Adaptive Hide, plus Trap-Wise (will not charge open ground, counter-charges from cover). Old snare scarring on both forelegs.

TABLEFive zones, insertion to extraction. A dry cistern basin, ferrite moss on the spillway, a live-capture drop-cage baited with cut meat and a scent lure, a stale EO gun-platform on the ridge line.

OBJECTIVEConfirmed kill of the boar and a recovered tusk-plate as proof, then reach the vehicle. Live-capture rig not on the brief.

WIN CONDITIONSpecimen Out of Action with proof secured. Loss on operator down or exfil without a kill.

TURN CAPClimax fires at Threat Phase 7 at the latest.

The brief said one boar, testing the fences of a dead water station, probably the missing juvenile off the 447-F den. Kestrel confirmed the print signature matched the second set Grouse had walked past in June and never put on a closure report. That was the whole tasking. Go finish the litter.

She did not trust the word probably and she was right not to. This animal was not the one she killed at Relay Six. That one grew up angry at fences. This one grew up around people, and the difference is the entire report.

Sable Cistern is a mid-century EO water station, drained and abandoned when the aquifer under it turned. A concrete basin the size of a rail yard, a cracked spillway furred with ferrite moss, a gun-platform up on the rim still walking a patrol arc for a garrison that left in the fifties. Grouse read it the way she reads everything, slow, from the moss edge, before her optics went blind in the metal dust. She found the boar's lay-up in the shadow of the intake tower. Then she found the cage.

Someone had built a drop-cage in the basin. Steel drum frame, drop gate on a pressure plate, cut meat wired to the trigger, and a scent lure canister keyed to exactly the den signature Kestrel had pulled off the June prints. It was not BAFO gear. It was patient, and it was made to take the animal alive.

SOMEBODY READ THIS DEN BEFORE I DID.

The scarring told the rest. Both forelegs carried old snare marks, healed crooked, the kind an animal gets when it is caught, worked, and let go, or gets loose on its own before whoever set the snare comes back. This boar had been in a rig before. It had learned. It would not take open ground and it would not charge a standing target, which are the two behaviors Grouse's whole 447-F read was built to exploit. Her anatomy map still held. Her tactics were half stale before she settled the gun.

She tried the Iron Grass move anyway, because it was the move that worked, and the boar refused the invitation. It sat in the intake shadow and made her come to it, and when she moved to a firing line it broke sideways along the spillway instead of at her, using the cistern wall to keep armor between itself and the muzzle. Trap-Wise on the card, and it played exactly like a thing that had already survived one bad afternoon with humans. The first two rounds she spent chasing an angle it would not give her, and the platform on the rim started tracking her movement across the open basin.

Round three she stopped hunting it like a boar and started hunting it like a prisoner, which is what it was. She gave up the clean line, let it counter-charge off the wall the way it wanted to, planted in the spillway throat where the ferrite would blind its lunge as badly as it blinded her, and took the collision on purpose. The gore opened her ribs. The soft line opened under her muzzle at contact range where Trap-Wise stops mattering because there is no cover left to use.

Even then it did not die clean. The kill shot came up short, the way they do, and she was one favor and one health box from a very bad ending with a stale gun-platform now firing into the basin. She spent the token Kestrel slipped her, asked the dice to look again, and they opened the boar into the spillway. She cut the proof, walked the cage, and photographed the tag riveted to the drum frame before she called the ride. She logged the rig to BAFO. She did not log the tag. That one went where the June prints went, which is into her own pocket.

// THE TAPE

PREThe Read 5, 6 (solo DC 3+), anatomy carried over from 447-F holds. Behavioral read 2, failed: she reads the den for aggression, not for Trap-Wise, and misses the snare scarring until she's already in the basin. Approach obstacles 4 / 5, clean. Banked 1 Tempo. Discovered the drop-cage on a passive spot check 6.

T1Won priority. Moved to a firing line on the intake shadow. Boar declines the lane: Trap-Wise lets it hold cover instead of orienting. Shot at the plate seam 4, eaten by Adaptive Hide (round's first hit). No second angle. Platform on the rim rolls to acquire 2, needs 5+, no lock yet.

T2Grouse repositions across the open basin to force an angle. Boar slides the spillway wall, armor kept to the gun. Vital-organ attempt nat 1, wide. Platform acquire 5, soft lock on her movement, one warning burst, no wound. Grouse GUTS 5, holds. Banked Tempo still in reserve.

T3Plan change. She stops forcing the angle and baits the counter-charge into the spillway throat. Boar takes it (Trap-Wise permits a charge from cover): Vepr FIGHT 5 connects, gore for 1 FW, Grouse to her last box. She eats it to close range. Throwaway shot 6 crit, hide absorbs. Vital organ at contact 4 hits for 2 FW: boar to 1 FW plus its MW.

T4Kill shot at contact 2, short by one. Spent last Tempo to reroll: 6, hit, 2 FW. Boar Out of Action in the spillway throat. Ferrite bloom cost the platform its lock (LOS 1), no follow-up burst.

T5Buran-Complex check 5, no storm. Cut the tusk-plate. Cleared and photographed the drop-cage, lifted the lure canister, recorded the frame tag. Crossed to the vehicle quiet on TACT 4. Extracted with proof, rig logged, tag pocketed.

// WORKBENCH

// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED

Adair here. Iron Grass was a hunt where a clean read did everything except pull the trigger. This one is the inverse: the read was clean and half of it was aimed at an animal that no longer existed. Grouse walked in with 447-F's anatomy map still valid and 447-F's behavioral playbook already dead, because Trap-Wise turns the two moves that killed the first boar, stand-and-trade and let-it-charge-the-target, into ways to waste rounds while a gun-platform gets its lock. The whole game is her figuring out, live, which half of her intel to throw away.

The turn it swung: round three, when she stopped hunting a boar and started hunting a prisoner. Baiting the counter-charge into the ferrite throat is the only line that beats Trap-Wise, because it puts the fight at contact range where cover stops existing. She took a wound she did not have to take to get there. On her last box, that is a real bet, and it is the correct one.
Trap-Wise as a trait: we ran it as "will not orient on a standing target in the open, and may charge only from cover it already holds." It made a Veteran boar play like a boss two tiers up without touching its stat line. Recommend it as a modifier for any specimen with prior human contact. It is a cheap way to make a returning animal feel like it learned something.
The rig nobody scored: Big Game Hunts has no rules for a third party's live-capture apparatus on the table. The drop-cage was baited with a lure keyed to the same specimen, which means it could have taken the boar, taken Grouse, or become a thing worth recovering. We treated it as inert terrain plus a recoverable objective and moved on, but that is a dodge, not a rule.
Proposal — the Third-Party Rig token: a live-capture cage placed on the table before deployment, with a trigger radius. Any Large specimen or operator that ends movement inside the radius rolls to avoid the gate. If it takes the specimen, the hunt converts to a recovery. If it takes the operator, that is a problem the operator built for themselves. Recovering the rig intact scores separately from the kill, the same way we floated a Recovered Consignment token for HVT last week. The hunt should not have to pretend the cage is scenery.
Kit and terrain aside: the gun-platform on the rim is the quiet MVP of the loss column that never happened. It never fired for damage, but its soft lock is the reason she could not spend four rounds circling for a clean shot, which is exactly the pressure that forced the correct, ugly, contact-range line. Good hazard design: it changed her decisions without ever rolling to wound.

Rulings this run, all to the backlog. Trap-Wise is not a printed trait and we invented the wording, so it needs one. The passive spot check that found the drop-cage has no fixed DC in the reference. Whether a specimen with prior human contact should carry a permanent behavioral modifier is a design question, not a ruling, and it is the interesting one. Three gaps, none fatal, all the kind a second edition fixes in a sentence each.

// DISPOSITION

RESULTConfirmed kill. Contract 451-C cleared on Threat Phase 5. The 447-F litter is now fully accounted for: both juveniles dead, den closed.

CASUALTIES // OPERATORGrouse took 2 FW, survived on her last flesh-wound box. No mortal wounds. No Medic on the contract, by her choice again.

CASUALTIES // SPECIMEN SIDEVepr Ferox killed via Vital Organ at contact range. EO gun-platform never scored a wound; storm never came.

RECOVEREDTusk-plate (proof). Drop-cage logged to BAFO as third-party interference. Scent-lure canister keyed to the den signature. One rivet tag off the drum frame, hand-stamped, not logged.

MVPThe decision to throw away half a good read. The animal that lived taught this one nothing about boars and everything about people, and Grouse adjusted inside three rounds.

RUN IT YOURSELF: OT BIG GAME HUNTS // FOLLOW-ON: SECOND SET. The contract pays for the kill. It does not pay for the question of who baited the ground first.

SHE CLOSED THE LITTER. SOMEBODY ELSE OPENED IT.