Howdy, folks! Hardly a new idea, here, but I’m curious since I haven’t seen a thread while lurking on it— what are your favorite memories from CM13? Doesn’t have to be recent or even particularly notable, but I’ll start.
I spawned in as I/O one round after a lot of really good, coordinated Charlie rounds under Lisa A.W. Quarterstaff, who was all too happy to have me as a Fireteam Leader and for three rounds in a row would give me a team with my own choice picks and some randoms that has been my only true experience in Fireteam-Squad coordination so far. It was beautiful, with flanks and camaraderie at an all time high, but it’s not the focal point of our story.
Instead, that’s Aldrik Wynters, who played the Corpsman for those rounds in a row and whom I chose for my team in the latter half of the rounds because he was dependable and chatty. Something I value highly in anyone in my Fireteam, and overall a really cool guy.
This round in particular, he was a Quartermaster. I’d gotten all I needed from a CT earlier, but he put out the call for a crate of MRE’s in exchange for a no-questions-asked priority in the Reqline. Nobody else stepped up, so while the line churned along, I gathered scattered empty weapon cases to turn into a plastic crate. After a mad dash for ten of the damn things to make the crate happen, I triumphantly pulled up and called across the Reqline.
He was grateful, asking me to take the crate in via the northern door- and thus, I learned about the fact that I/O has Req access. Good to know for the future, but didn’t mean much here. When I got inside, he handed me some sort of fucked up Access Tuner and told me to fiddle with his ASRS console in the corner. My TG knowledge saved me here, as the steps to deconstruct and hack the board were thankfully exactly the same as they are there. Bingo.
A little circuit on the board itself, tucked between a few other unassuming golden lines, was a plate labelled in pen or permanent marker “B.M.” I figured out the meaning almost instantly, but my character, Mary, took a minute longer— fiddling with the board until a green light turned an ominous red, and slotting it back in. I asked Aldrik about the board after asking he close the shutters on the empty Reqline. It was time to make business happen.
He explained with charming ease about the Black Market, and Mary’s eyes light up. The roleplayer inside of me was loving just about ALL of this, and I was excited to finally get to show off a character quirk that not many people really see a lot of.
You see, Mary has issues. Nothing that’d get her taken off-duty, and certainly nothing that’d show on a psych eval if she was prepped for it, but she had a highly addictive personality. From her first shot of Oxycodone during an Operation far before CM13 takes place, she was irrevocably hooked.
Once before, I’d shown up at the Reqline with 10,000cr I’d scrounged ground side and shuffled onto the counter. I’d expected one of two things, maybe three— the Techie across from me might chide me for what was so obviously ill-gotten gains and a foolish request so put in the open. They might take the money and smugly send me on my way— what are you gonna do, Strauss? Report me to the MP’s? Third, and what I hoped would happen, would be that there’d be a money-grubbing Techie like back home on TG that’d salivate at the prospect of that much cash, and do whatever the hell they needed to to get it.
In this case, Oxycodone. Something that’s untraceable if it’s Req asking for it, ostensibly for a frontline drop, and then somehow gets “lost” along the way. A solid front to roleplay out, right? A tale as old as time, of corruption in the logistics departments in pursuit of someone’s big bucks. The guy simply told me “go to Medical for that, we don’t really have stuff like that here.” In my opinion, LAME!!!
Aldrik wasn’t like that. He Got it. His eyes lit up like mine when I mentioned the favors that I’d done, and implied more favors down the line. I never got the Oxycodone that round, since I asked him to “have it delivered to the Charlie bunks in a nondescript crate,” but to my loving surprise, when I came to him the next round, I said something that he rolled with.
I said, “same place, same time, same stuff? I’ve already wired the creds.” Flowery roleplay bullshit. All of it nothing that’d approached happening ingame, but the type of hook people of our ilk really enjoy. And enjoy it he did— responding in affirmative, saying it’d come “like last time.” That shit gets my mind racing on what else can transpire in CM and despite my fragger’s Grindset, is the real high that I’ve been chasing since.
I love it when people play along. It makes it feel more real, more “like the movies!” It makes me feel grounded, and accentuates the wonderful care and character folks put into these collections of sprites on the screen. I hope I see more like it, even if it’s a rather boring shipside interaction that nobody but me is fangirling super hard about.
What about you?