But wait! There's more!
Mediterranean Cruise also features a Romanian stop on the
Corpus Christi's itinerary! This and the preceding Turkish visit also give us a bit more specificity - namely, that the NATO membership acceptance came between the Soviet invasion on 20 December 1996 and the Turkish invasion of Bulgaria on 24 December. While these aren't immediately relevant, I do like a nice clean timeline.
The same Romanian section of the sourcebook also definitively establishes the Ploesti complex as the source of the oil that fueled the U.S. 5th Infantry Division's funeral pyre:
Quote:
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With the strategic exchanges of late 1997, the Ploesti oil fields of Romania were the subject of some nuclear strikes, but for reasons not completely understood, the refineries and oil production facilities were not completely destroyed and were beginning to become operational again by mid-2000. By the fall, these fields had produced enough petroleum to fuel a last Soviet counteroffensive in Europe (the one referred to in the basic game which destroyed the U.S. 5th Mechanized Infantry Division), which brought the active phase of the war to a messy conclusion.
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This section also gives us a cursory 1e TO&E for Soviet forces in Romania, which are also noted as "the last units in Europe still loyal to Moscow." I haven't checked to see how well this lines up with the
Soviet Vehicle Guide's divisional phone book.
Notably, the Romania stop on the mission is the ostensible purpose of the entire cruise: extracting a DIA operative in exchange for arms, equipment, and official (Mil)governmental recognition of a Romanian partisan leader as Romania's legitimate head of state. It's also where the PCs and their bubblehead retinue learn that they're in the second module of a trilogy.
This material is still skeletal and fragmentary, but it's possible to draw some inferences from it with regards to the current status of Romania - and what remaining American/NATO forces there might be up to. It's also an opportunity to provide a much better reason for the Joint Chiefs to hazard their only remaining fast attack boat than retrieving one lone DIA asset. (This is, by the way, a prime example of what I mean by
finding a rational, internally-consistent explanation for an aspect of canon that makes no sense on its face.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
And don't forget the vampires...  |
As you well know, I
never forget the vampires.
- C.