PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK
FILED_FROM: EURASIAN CONTESTED ZONE // KHOLODNY SIDING // GRID 4-KILO
FILING_DATE: 2026-08-06
RESULT: LIVE CAPTURE // FOREIGN SIGNAL FOUND
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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-08-06
追
OPERATOR TACTICS // BIG GAME HUNTS // RECONSTRUCTED
STILL
WARM
TRACK ORDER 519-T // KHOLODNY SIDING // LIVE-CAPTURE PREFERRED
BIG GAME // TRACK 519-T
KHOLODNY SIDING // T6
SPECIMEN CONTAINED
SCAN FLAGGED FOREIGN TAG
// ROLL IN THE OPEN // COUNT THE DICE // BLAME THE TERRAIN // FILE THE REPORT //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // BIG GAME HUNTS
Ground Fresh left one crate empty and warm. Two days later the desk cross-matched that thermal signature to a dead switchyard three grids off, and sent a fresh cell to bring back whatever rode out of it — alive, if the animal would allow it.
STILL WARM
BY RIO SOLVENG
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // BIG GAME HUNTS
FILED: EURASIAN CONTESTED ZONE // KHOLODNY SIDING // GRID 4-KILO // 2026-08-06
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
Kose here. CONFLICT's follow-up yesterday put a harder edge on the containment-crate thread than any of us expected — whoever built the Kessing spec isn't recirculating old stock, they're actively running the jig right now. That's a paperwork answer. It doesn't tell you where the animal that rode out of Rampart's empty crate actually went. So while Buckton's beat chases the fabricator, ours chases the trail while it's still readable. Solveng got the tasking because she's the desk's best cold-read on an animal nobody has a file for, and because I wanted someone who'd bring it back breathing if the specimen gave her any choice in the matter.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics // Big Game Hunts (track-and-recover order)
SCENARIOTrack Order 519-T. Kholodny Siding, grid 4-Kilo, three grids northeast of the Priboi Freight Exchange's 4-Juliett ("Ground Fresh," 2026-08-04). A collapsed grain-silo and switchyard cluster; the desk's bedding/thermal cross-match against the empty Ground Fresh crate flagged fresh activity here inside a forty-hour window.
OPERATORPetra Ilyin, callsign Vantage. Marksman/tracker, lead, solo insertion. Milo Chen, callsign Static, Tech, remote. Ase Nkemelu, callsign Suture, Medic, standby at the treeline RV. Handler Frey, remote.
SPECIMENUnidentified juvenile, rivet-tag lineage matching the pattern first logged at Kessing Junction ("Standard Issue," 2026-08-02) and lifted again at Priboi. Loose an estimated 36-40 hours. Grunt-tier baseline with one confirmed adaptive trait — ground-noise discipline consistent with prior handling, not wild behavior.
OBJECTIVELocate and recover the specimen alive if the encounter allows it; kill authorized only if capture risks the operator. Confirm the rivet-tag match and log any physical evidence carried on the animal.
WIN CONDITIONSpecimen contained (preferred) or confirmed Out of Action, evidence recovered, operator extracts.
TURN CAPClimax fires at Threat Phase 7 at the latest.
The thermal read Static pulled off the Ground Fresh crate was never going to be more than a shape — bedding compressed a certain way, a heat signature that lingered longer than an empty box should. But shapes are what Vantage works with. She spent six hours matching it against every dead structure inside two days' travel of Priboi before Kholodny Siding came back a clean fit: collapsed grain cars, no rail traffic since the EO abandoned the spur, and cover in every direction an animal running on instinct would actually use.
She went in solo, which was the desk's call and not a comfortable one. A juvenile loose forty hours in unfamiliar ground should be exhausted, spooked, and easy to read. Vantage found the first kill inside twenty minutes of the perimeter — a feral dog, throat opened clean, fed on and abandoned rather than dragged back to a den — and revised her whole approach on the spot. Something feeding efficiently and moving on wasn't running on instinct. It was running on training it hadn't finished losing yet.
Static flagged the second tell before Vantage even asked for it: whatever moved through the siding never crossed open rail bed in daylight hours, twice choosing a forty-meter detour through collapsed silo cars over a straight line across clear ground. A wild juvenile doesn't know to hate open ground that badly. Something taught it to.
Frey's only instruction over the link was the same one Kose had given Vantage before insertion: bring it back able to answer questions, if the animal would let her.
SOMETHING TAUGHT IT TO HATE OPEN GROUND. VANTAGE JUST HAD TO FIND OUT HOW MUCH.
She found it in the fourth silo car, denned in grain dust and torn insulation with its back to the collapsed wall — a defensible corner, not a random one. The read took longer than Vantage wanted, because a Grunt-tier specimen with genuine tactical sense doesn't fit the sheet cleanly, and every extra minute was a minute closer to the animal deciding the corner wasn't worth holding. She logged what she could confirm: fast, low-mass, built to slip a snare rather than break one, and no visible collar or tag — the rivet mark, if it was there, was under the coat.
The capture play was a net line across the only exit the animal hadn't already reasoned itself out of, baited with nothing, because anything she offered it a specimen this cautious would read as a trap before taking it. It broke for the gap on her second approach, hit the line at a dead sprint, and very nearly took the net apart on the way through — Vantage's own Tempo spend was the only thing that kept the mesh from failing on the initial impact roll.
What she did not expect, holding a thrashing, forty-pound animal down with both knees and a gloved hand, was Static's voice coming back sharp over the link before she had even finished the confirm scan: a signal, active, low-power, embedded under the coat at the shoulder, broadcasting on a band BAFO doesn't issue and Static didn't recognize. Not a rivet tag. A beacon. Live, and — by the timestamp on the ping log Static pulled off it in the same breath — talking to somebody the whole forty hours it had been loose.
Vantage sedated the animal, confirmed the rivet-tag match to the Kessing lineage under the coat exactly where the desk expected it, and carried both the specimen and the beacon out under her own power rather than risk a vehicle pickup broadcasting the RV. She made the treeline with four minutes of daylight left and Suture already breaking down the crate.
// THE TAPE
PRECross-match on Ground Fresh's thermal residue vs. known dead structures, DC 4, Static rolled 6: clean hit on Kholodny Siding inside a forty-hour window. No Tempo spent.
T1Perimeter Read 5 (DC 3+), confirms the feral-dog kill and a ground-noise-discipline pattern inconsistent with a wild juvenile. Banked 0.5 Tempo.
T2Approach obstacle, silo-car field, TACT 4, clean. Second approach obstacle, open rail bed avoided per Static's read — no roll, detour banked instead. Den located, fourth silo car.
T3Anatomy/behavior Read on a Grunt-tier specimen with an undocumented trait, DC 4, rolled 4: partial success, confirms build and evasion pattern, coat obscures rivet-tag confirmation. No collar visible.
T4Net-line capture attempt as animal breaks for the exit gap, DC 5, rolled 3 — short. Spent last Tempo token to reroll: 6, mesh holds, specimen contained without a Flesh Wound to either side.
T5Confirm scan while subduing: rivet-tag match to Kessing lineage confirmed, 5. Static's independent device scan, unprompted: active foreign beacon detected under the coat, band not in BAFO's registry, ping log shows continuous transmission since estimated escape.
T6Extraction on foot to treeline RV rather than a vehicle pickup, TACT 5, clean. No pursuit, no contact. Specimen and beacon both extracted intact.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED // Q. ADAIR
This is the first track-and-recover order the desk has run that wasn't really about the animal. Vantage's whole job was reading a Grunt-tier specimen behaving like it had a Trained tag nobody wrote on the card, and the ruleset genuinely does not have a clean box for "wild animal exhibiting handler-taught avoidance." We ran it as a soft narrative override on top of the standard Read result rather than a new mechanical trait, and I think that's the right call for a one-off, but it's not a real fix.
- The turn it swung: T4, the net-line reroll. A DC 5 capture attempt on a specimen this cautious was always going to be close, and the first roll came up short. Without the Tempo token in reserve, this report ends with either a dead juvenile or an escaped one and no beacon in hand — the entire evidentiary payoff of the mission rides on one rerolled die.
- Dice luck vs decisions: Vantage's decisions were close to ideal — solo insertion accepted the risk, but reading the ground-avoidance pattern before committing to a capture plan is what turned a chase into a net line at a chosen chokepoint instead of an open pursuit. The dice gave her one clean early hit (T1) and one genuine scare (T4) that decisions alone don't erase.
- The beacon: Static's scan wasn't part of the scripted objective — I added it as a GM call once the confirm-scan Read came back clean, because a specimen this deliberately evasive earned a reason beyond instinct. That's a house-rule intrusion I'm flagging honestly: it changed the report's ending, and I'd rather own that than pretend the dice produced it.
- One thing to try next time: a formal "Handler's Ghost" trait for Big Game specimens that were recently in captivity — ground-noise discipline, cover discipline, bait suspicion — costed as a single Grunt-tier upgrade rather than three separate house calls stacked on top of each other mid-session.
Rulings this run: partial Read successes (T3) now explicitly grant build/behavior confirmation without unlocking a physical-evidence check on the same roll, which we'd been running inconsistently. Foreign-signal detection on a captured specimen is being logged as a new evidence type, not folded into the existing "recovered materiel" category — it behaves differently in play and probably needs its own disposition line.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTSpecimen located and contained alive at Kholodny Siding, forty hours after estimated escape from the Priboi convoy. Rivet-tag match confirmed. Foreign tracking beacon recovered attached to the animal.
CASUALTIES // OPERATORNone. No Flesh Wounds, no capture risk realized. Clean run.
CASUALTIES // SPECIMENNone. Sedated and contained, unharmed beyond the net-line impact. In BAFO custody pending disposition.
RECOVEREDOne juvenile specimen, rivet-tag confirmed to the Kessing/Priboi lineage. One active low-power beacon, foreign band, continuous transmission log since estimated escape — meaning whoever the beacon answers to has known this animal's location the entire forty hours BAFO spent looking for it.
MVPVantage's T1 read. Catching the ground-noise-discipline pattern before committing to a capture plan is the only reason there was a capture plan worth running by T4.
CARRIED FORWARDThe specimen is finally in hand and finally identified. But the beacon means BAFO didn't find this animal first — it found it on the same schedule as whoever's been listening the whole time, and that party now knows exactly where their stock ended up.
BAFO FOUND THE ANIMAL. SOMEONE ELSE FOUND IT FIRST AND LEFT IT RUNNING.