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Posted by: FuelDrop Jul 23 2013, 02:45 AM

I’m starting this diary on a hunch that it’ll help me connect some dots in the near future. I’m not sure why I think that will be necessary, but provided no-one finds this thing then no harm done.

17/10/2070. First entry: Hostage rescue at McHughs.
I’ll be honest I’ve had a bit of a stingy run of jobs lately, with Knight Errant taking over the Seattle contract and actually being competent. Hopefully that won’t last too long. So when I got a call from Last Chance telling me that one of his fellow street-docs was in a bit of a bind I figured “Why not? It’ll help pay the rent… right?”
The client’s name was George Hampton, a Shaman who’d fallen behind on his protection payments. The local muscle had taken his daughter as a hostage, and he couldn’t afford the ransom. To be honest, if it hadn’t been for the young girl’s life hanging in the balance I’d have walked out right then and there. I’m not a charity, after all!
This was also when I got to meet my partner for this job, a dwarf with more muscle than brains who went by the name of Elas. A quick description: Short, Bearded, Reeking, and packing a sawnoff shotgun under his armoured jacket. I seemed to recall something about this guy being trouble, but with the fast turnover of rookie runners in this city I couldn’t be certain it was this guy the rumors spoke of. Best to assume it was, just to be on the safe side.

So we take the job, despite Elas’s suspicions that our employer wasn’t going to pay up. Seriously, if the meet takes place in the guy’s place of business, and the purpose of the job relates to his inability to pay protection, what kind of moron would he have to be to then try and stiff the runners their payment? We literally know where he lives! Our first lead is a guy named Vic, who tends to hang out at the local McHughs. Normally I’d ask my rigger buddy Yagar to stake the place out for me with a couple of discreet drones, but considering the shoestring budget we were working for I’d probably have ended up losing money. Anyway, time was of the essence.

So we park our vehicles a bit up from the McHughs and walk the rest of the way. Elas has a roadmaster which I swear he lives out of, explaining his lack of basic hygiene.
Note to self: Never set foot in that vehicle. Ever.
The entrance to the McHughs contains our first obstacle. A metal detector. Now I tend to travel fairly light, with a streetline special and a silenced Colt America in a shielded holster being my default loadout. Elas, on the other hand, was packing a sawnoff shotgun and more likely than not some heavy duty combat ‘ware.
Luckily, sabotage is one of my many talents.
I pretended to trip as we reached the metal detector and snagged a few important-looking wires as I stood back up. It worked, and we got into the place without setting anything off. Our target was sitting at a corner table, wearing a fairly nice suit and eating a burger. Kind of a pity he’d let so much grease dribble down his chin, as it ruined the whole ‘professional mobster’ look he had going. We ordered to avoid suspicion, Elas grabbing the biggest and greasiest Beast burger on the menu while I elected for a slightly less stomach-churning salad. In retrospect I doubt that anything on that menu wouldn’t give you a bad case of every food-related ailment known to medical science.
I begin my approach on the target, casually asking if there was anyone sitting with him and would he mind if I joined him. Most guys wouldn’t complain about an attractive young lady showing an interest in them, but tonight my charms fell completely flat and I was rudely dismissed. I did notice that every member of the McHughs staff showed an unusual amount of interest in the exchange, and several reached for concealed weapons before I backed off. Not a complete loss, then.

As Elas and I sat down and began plotting over our comms for a new angle of attack one of the other patrons walked up and pulled a gun on our target. He barely managed to get a shot off before Elas dropped him with a blast from his sawn-off… so that when the staff looked up all they saw was a dwarf with a shotgun and their buddy (I found out later that about ¾ of the staff here are related. I should have realized, half of them looked imbred) clutching his chest where he’d been shot.
There was no way this was ending well for us.
The fight that followed was mercifully brief. Elas may look like he can’t count above ten but that dwarf knows how to mess things up. The only survivors were the civilians (a father, his daughter, and a student, all of whom had the good sense to hide beneath their tables with their arms around their heads and wait for the noise to go away), the security guard, and Vic himself, and the latter two only made it because I was loaded out with stick-and-shock. One quick interrogation later and Vic had told me everything, from the girl’s location to his family’s antics about the local businesses. Some cunning redirection made it look like we’d been hired by the guy who started the fight (Vic was too shocked at being shot to remember exactly how things had played out, and considering the mess Elas made of the rest of the staff no-one was still breathing to contradict us), and to play the role up to the hilt we left with the girl (Moxie) as a hostage rather than a rescued victim.

Our client was very happy that we got his little girl back, and most appreciative that we’d managed to divert suspicion away from him in the process. I managed to wrangle some extra cash out of him for the information about his woes being more malign than a mere run of bad luck, and we parted on good terms. It may take a bit of digging, but I’m sure I can find someone who’ll pay good money for the rest of the information Vic graciously provided.

Final memo: Find new brand of temporary hair dye.

Posted by: FuelDrop Jul 24 2013, 11:52 AM

19/10/2070. Had a chat with a potential employer. Hopefully this leads somewhere.

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 5 2013, 02:50 AM

23/10/2070. New job. Johnson wants the head of a drug lab extracted for questioning, with a bonus if we can sabotage the lab on our way out. Zero evidence is preferred. She's put together an interesting team for the job.

Nitro: An elf male who's some kind of ninja-type, favors a katana over something from this millennium. We'll see if he's anywhere near as good as his boasting claims. I didn't see any signs of augmentation, so possibly an adept.

Jade Falcon: A troll male who specializes in beating the crap out of people with sharp objects. He got brought in as a consultant expert on drugs, apparently he's a dealer himself. I just hope that doesn't make him unreliable. Also, it's weird calling a three-meter-tall slab of walking muscle 'Jade'. Again, no signs of augmentation so either a juicer or an adept... or just a troll who hits things, that works too.

Shadow: Another male elf, and another combat monster. At least this one seems to know about, you know, guns. He looks like some kind of ex-military type, and from what I can see he shows signs of regular stress on his body that might indicate regular use of combat drugs. Also... 'Shadow'? Well, at least it's not as dumb as calling a troll Jade. Some minor signs of augmentation.

Carter: A third elf male for our merry band. If it wasn't for Jade, it'd look like we worked for the Ancients or something. Anyway, this guy's supposed to be our mojo-slinger for the run. Of the four he looks the most civilized.

Our employer wasn't able to give us the exact location of our target's workplace, but she was able to provide the names of a few dealers who work with him. We're going to start by approaching them as potential new sources, see if we can get them to set us up with a meeting.

24/10/2070. It looks like our resident troll believes he has acting talent, as he volunteered to try and talk to our first dealer. As a backup, I slipped in while he was distracting our orcish dealer and planted a stealth tag on his car.

Long story short, it looks like burning your brain out on bliss doesn't make you an unstoppable lie detector. Who'd have thought it? Our troll sets up a meeting for him and his 'supplier' with the orc's supplier. Considering that Jade decided to pose as an agent for the cartel muscling in on the market, the odds of this being a trap are staggeringly high. I'm just glad he had the brains to insist on a meeting in neutral territory, rather than the initial suggestion of the dealer's home turf.

After checking that the meeting's location wasn't simply rigged to blow, Jade and I went in posing as dealer and supplier on the off chance this was legit while everyone else concealed themselves around the building to ambush any hostiles.

As expected, our 'meeting' was a gang hit squad rocking up in case we were stupid enough to show. It looks like I was wrong about shadow, as he left his silenced Ares Alpha behind and instead waded into the fight with a combat axe while high on something. On the bright side Nitro seems to be as good as he boasted, and between our three combat monsters the six gangers were minced before they could so much as blink. I managed to hit their leader with stick-and-shock so we could interrogate him, and through some difficult negotiations I've convinced the rest of the team that wiping his mind and letting him go after we're done is more favorable than killing him. No need to let him know that yet, though.

I have to add at this point that I do like having Jade, Shadow and Nitro in a fight. People shoot at the drugged-up crazies charging at them with combat axes far more than the chick with a light pistol lurking behind cover taking pot-shots. The problem is that they don't seem to get the whole non-lethal thing, which may be an issue if we ever get hired to act against a corp.
In any case, why kill people if you're not getting paid for it? Chances are that you could find someone to pay you to take them out, and you're giving them free work.

Interesting observation: Jade is lousy at threatening people. He's three meters tall, practically built of muscle, and has an unnatural love of edged weapons, but he lacks any of the finesse that you need to be truly terrifying. Luckily, I'm a bit better at that aspect of interpersonal interaction than he is, and I managed to convince our captive gang lieutenant to spill the beans.

After disguising the team as members of the hit squad, we've entered Cutter territory to stake out some possible labs. Unlike the others, I've opted to loiter in the guise of a street bum and am writing this in the lee of a decrepit building. Yay Seattle weather!

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 12 2013, 01:22 AM

25/10/2070.
We've tracked the target back to his apartment in Bellevue, and to my surprise the group agreed unanimously that attempting anything there would be too dangerous. After retiring to a hotel for the night we've come up with a plan to nab the guy: pretend to be plain-clothes detectives, pull him over, then sedate him and escape to the barrens while the other half of the team grabs his car and follows us. I had to pull an all-nighter organizing fake IDs, getting the car and finding a Decker to manipulate gridguide for us, but by this evening we were able to get him as he came home from work. The others have sent me to dispose of the vehicles while they do a final hit on the guy's lab, so hopefully that goes well.

26/10/2070.
Apparently last night was a complete success, and even better the Johnson payed up in full. All in all, a good day.


OOC: Is anyone actually reading this and enjoying it, or am I wasting everyone's time here?

Posted by: DWC Aug 12 2013, 03:23 AM

I, for one, am highly amused.

Posted by: Grak Aug 12 2013, 04:14 AM

You have a my resounding approval.

Those chummers sound like fuel to a fire. I can't wait.

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 12 2013, 04:43 AM

Want me to post Bios ect when they get written?

Posted by: DamHawke Aug 12 2013, 07:26 AM

I'd say do it. I'm enjoying this thus far.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Aug 12 2013, 01:21 PM

This was amusing, quite amusing, FD.


Wish I was in a game I could write a journal for.

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 12 2013, 01:29 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Aug 12 2013, 09:21 PM)

This was amusing, quite amusing, FD.


Wish I was in a game I could write a journal for.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Aug 12 2013, 03:14 PM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Aug 12 2013, 09:29 AM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 13 2013, 12:53 AM

drat. It won't be the same without you.

Oh well, at least I can let you know how it goes with another diary entry

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Aug 13 2013, 01:35 AM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Aug 12 2013, 08:53 PM)

drat. It won't be the same without you.

Oh well, at least I can let you know how it goes with another diary entry

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 13 2013, 01:39 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Aug 13 2013, 09:35 AM)

Posted by: Grak Aug 13 2013, 03:03 AM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Aug 12 2013, 01:29 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 13 2013, 03:18 AM

QUOTE (Grak @ Aug 13 2013, 11:03 AM)

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Aug 13 2013, 05:00 AM

Your GM's being a dick, then, telling you you can't play magical characters because they should be rarer. Especially given the shafting that tech characters got in 5e.

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 13 2013, 05:03 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Aug 13 2013, 01:00 PM)

Posted by: Grak Aug 13 2013, 05:16 AM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Aug 13 2013, 03:18 AM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 13 2013, 05:21 AM

Oh, it gets better. he mentioned something about having tech start to fail in 1-10 months in game time due to nanotech going on the fritz. (remember we're behind the official timeline)

I told him to forget it.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Aug 13 2013, 05:57 AM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Aug 13 2013, 12:21 AM)

Posted by: Grak Aug 13 2013, 06:01 AM

Provided the PC's are playing through Clutch/Storm Front, that would be excellent. There could be some really exciting moments where disruptive nanites begin tearing down a bridge the PC's are on or have an NPC they know freak on em when the nano-hive breaks down.

Of course if your PC's have that stuff in them, that's a different ball game.

Posted by: Grak Aug 13 2013, 06:04 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Aug 13 2013, 05:57 AM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 18 2013, 01:07 PM

03/11/2070. New job, same Johnson. Whoever's employing this lady has a grudge against the Vory, and possibly a death wish. She wants us to hit a Vory weapons shipment when the smugglers transfer it from their boat to their ground transport. Hard enough, but since our mage and troll mincing machine have decided to demonstrate a disappearing act it looks like we're going to have to hire in some new hands.
Meet Sarah, our new troll rigger. I met her when I was selling the deck I picked up off that fry chef, looks like she's a bit of a decker on the side. I asked her along to the meet and it turns out she's quite the negotiator... for a troll. Nothing against trolls, but so many sell themselves as just dumb muscle that even those of us who live in the shadows can be lulled into complacency. Anyway, between us we've managed to up the payout on this mission from 20% of the take to 26%.
No replacement mage on such short notice, so hopefully the Vory's magical assets are just as stretched.
One final part of the job is to kill the rigger in charge of the whole operation with extreme prejudice and render his cyberware unrecoverable. Now Miss Johnson did say that stealing the body for dissection is A okay, but with 'ware that hot I'm not going to be able to do my normal search for buyers. My street-doc Last Chance should be able to take him off our hands but At best we're looking at a pittance. Still, the Johnson is offering an extra 10 grand each to get this done, so he must have pissed someone important off.

We did a basic recon on the target, and it looks like Sarah's very good at what she does. Unfortunately my own lockpicking skills have gone unpracticed for several months and it showed, taking me a full fifteen seconds just to get the keypad open to override the maglock, and almost damaging said case in the process. I need to practice more often.

04/11/2070. After considering all the options, it looks like we'll be entering the compound via the waterfront. Finding unmarked diving gear is hard enough, but doing so without risking the Vory finding out is doubly so. Sarah also asked me to find her a rotor drone and sniper rifle so she can provide some fire support for the mission. Normally not a problem but, well, Vory. I'm still acclimatizing to Seattle, so cutting off a big hunk of the black market is hardly helpful. Anyway, I think I have a lead on that drone.

05/11/2070. One ex-lone-star rotordrone, one carpet ruined. The new car smell in my beautiful new new GMC Bulldog is gone forever, the carpet has to be thrown out due to an oil leak, and one of the rotors cut the cover on a seat. On top of all that, Sarah can't actually afford the damned thing so I'm loaning her the money until we get payed for this job. She better pay up. Oh well, at least I can get a replacement carpet easily enough.

06/11/2070. I hate riggers. The new carpet is history. See, turns out the drone didn't have the right kind of weapon mount for a sniper rifle, so Sarah decides to mod it in the back of my van. Whoever used to own the drone had skimped out on maintenance, so when she takes the mount apart it drops enough stale lubricant to fill a bucket. And she thinks she can wash it out?!?
Anyway, the boys swam out to the target compound a few hours before the drop was supposed to take place and decided to conceal themselves in the boatshed. Luckily I've spent the last two nights staying up late reading up on the art of bypassing maglocks, so when they called in for assistance opening the door I was able to walk them through the process step by step. They then tied themselves to the ceiling and began the long wait for the Vory to turn up.
Sarah and I got pizza and watched a bit of Chase: Knight Errant.
The Vory turned up a few hours early to secure the area. ten guys, four drones, five dogs and the troll leading the whole shebang. All the foot-soldiers look to be orcs, which will make them very hard to kill. They start their patrols by poking around to make sure no-ones lying in wait for them, but a bit of good luck has them miss our boys by a whisker. Still two hours to go before the shipment arrives.
Checked out that new show on the Truman Distribution Network. Sadness, Cubed. Not bad.
Well, the shipment arrived on schedule and the Vory began loading it into our new Roadmasters for us. Very kind of them. Nitro and Shadow decided to try and lure a patrolling guard into the boathouse, thin their numbers one at a time. Would have worked, too, if not for that dog. Of course, Sally decided that our best bet was to divert their attention away from our chummers with some high-velocity tungsten through Vory skulls. It turned out that dead guards attracts more attention than a couple of stray barks, allowing the dynamic duo to sneak to the main building. Of course this is our luck, so it runs out right as they reach the doors along with our sniper support's ammo. Remember those drones I mentioned earlier? Well in all the excitement, neither did we. Sheer luck and some black-market SWAT armour saved Shadow's skin, while some amazing gymnastics did the same for Nitro. I'm in their ears cheerleading over the comms, and for once I'm entirely fine conforming to gender stereotypes. Beats getting shot at, at least. Then the doors open and the other five guys open up. Thank whoever's up there that everyone decided to go with suppressed weapons for this fight or the Knights would be on their way with the heavy stuff by now. So what do our guys do upon seeing a room full of people trying to shoot them?
They charge.
Nitro gets their first and cuts one guy down, then turns to the second before something catches his blade. One of those dueling bots from Ares was lurking in the next room, so the two of them square off while Shadow takes on the remaining four guys, braining one with a combat axe.

To be continued...

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Aug 18 2013, 05:34 PM

Awh, c'mon! To be continued?!

Did your group end the game in the middle of the action or something? I'm on the edge of my seat here.

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 18 2013, 10:51 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Aug 19 2013, 01:34 AM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 25 2013, 12:51 PM

06/11/2070. Continued.
Anyway, one of the guards on the perimeter wasn't as dead as we'd thought and tried to start up one of the roadmasters. Rather than letting him drive away with half our paycheck Sarah quickly hacked in and brained him with an airbag. Not fatal, but in his condition it was a knock-out blow.
Note to self: Disable remote activation of airbags in the van.
Back inside the fight took a bit of a turn for the worse. The Duelist went down to some more of Nitro's fancy sword-work, and Shadow ran past to try and hack up one of the orcs taking cover behind the upturned desk in the corner. Wisely, this fellow decided that discretion was the better part of valor and dived out of the way in time to avoid the axe-wielding maniac. There was a moment of calm as Shadow ripped his axe from where he'd embedded it in the desk. The surviving dobermans had flanked around to the door and were drawing a bead on Shadow, while the orcs were abandoning their guns and drawing knives.
Then a massive red-furred bear appeared from out of nowhere behind Shadow, and things started going downhill.
As always, the first one to react was Nitro. He decided to solve the problem the way he solves all his problems: he charges it with a katana. He makes the thing bleed, but the hit isn't exactly a killing blow... merely enough to attract the brute's wrath. The drones opened up on Shadow. If he hadn't been wearing his armour he'd have been shredded, but fortunately it was up to the task and he stayed standing.
I have to commend Lone Star's armour contractor. They do not mess around when making armour for their HTRUs, as three orcs wielding knives proceeded to thoroughly prove. Through it all, bleeding from a half-dozen bullet wounds and a couple of stabs for good measure, Shadow didn't even flinch. Whatever 'Ware he's got or drugs he's on to let him completely ignore his injuries like this, I hope I never have to face anyone with it in battle. Especially a troll.
Sarah logs into Shadow's medkit to stem the worst of the bleeding and he does either the ballsiest or stupidest thing I have ever seen. He pulls a flash bang and lobs it into the corner, then tries to somersault out of there. The giant bear spirit catches him in midair and throws him to the ground just as the grenade goes off, and fortunately Nitro was smart enough to hit the dirt with his hands over his ears as well. Flash bangs are loud enough under normal circumstances, but in a confined space like this the blast goes beyond disorienting and into "Oh drek! My brains are pouring out my ears while my eyes bleed!" territory.
Obviously, the fight all but ended then and there. One of the dobermans had strayed too close to the blast and must have had its sensors fried, as it stopped contributing to the fight and just stood there.
Honestly, the bear spirit is the one I really feel sorry for. It gets summoned from its native realm against its will, forced into service by some self-important mage, then it gets hit with sharp bits of metal before finally someone goes and flash-bangs the drek out of it. When you've only had physical senses for a few seconds, flash-bangs are just cruel.

Anyway, after that it was pretty much a matter of killing the guy, cleaning up any evidence that pointed back to us, and getting out of there before the cops showed up. Miss Johnson payed up in full, including letting Sarah keep one of the roadmasters, which is my favorite way for a run to end.
Speaking of which, my van suffered one final indignity. Since part of the job was making sure their rigger's expensive 'ware wasn't available for retrieval we decided to do a little light organlegging on the side and resell it. Naturally, the body got thrown into the back of my van for transport.
Now to his credit Nitro put some effort into wrapping up the body so that blood didn't get spilled everywhere. Unfortunately we also retrieved the drone that got flash-banged for re purposing, and at some point it ended up on top of the headless troll corpse. Naturally, this meant that blood went EVERYWHERE.

I really need to find a discreet vehicle cleaners.

07/11/2070.

I asked the others out for a post-run drink tonight, but only Sarah took me up on the offer. Nitro said something about sitting around meditating, while Shadow was quite clear that he doesn't socialize. Ever. So, girls night out.
After a few drinks we get talking and I get to hear about her vendetta against the Humanis Policlub. Personally, I tend to simply hold all those elitist groups in contempt, but I can understand why you might get worked up over them. She didn't tell me exactly why she hates them so much, but there was a gleam in her eye when she told me all this that makes me think I haven't heard the last of it by a long shot.
Oh, and she payed me back in full. Provided she starts using her own vehicles instead of repeatedly ruining my ride, I think I'm beginning to like her.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Aug 25 2013, 10:40 PM

Sounds like you had a good ride. The players in my Star Wars game had a hell of a ride, too. I threw a really huge boss droid at them and they killed it over the course of a marathon seven-hour session.

Posted by: FuelDrop Aug 26 2013, 12:44 AM

Well, for all those playing at home here's a chance to join in: help me make Walker's backstory!

I have the basics: one of her parents was a runner (if anyone's 3rd edition characters want to make a cameo...), who taught her the basics of her current skill set. Since her late teens she's been doing Assassinations/Corporate espionage (generally something along the lines of impersonate someone close to the target, sneak in like that, then do the job and get out), with the 'official' job on both her real (national) SIN and her fake SIN saying she's an actor (She actually has several minor roles in a couple of low-budget trids). She grew up around Manhattan, but has recently moved to Seattle for some as yet undefined reason (fleeing, vengeance, something like that).

Normally I'd make something awesome up myself but since I'm also the GM on this one I'm a bit more focused on making the runs fun for everyone rather than putting the limelight on my own character, hence the plea for help. (Protip for GMs who for whatever reason have to add a GMPC and make it work: Leadership. They can guard the car/be ready to act as cavalry/be the exit strategy/guard the rigger's body + give the players really nice bonuses over the comms. No plot armour required, they're contributing without overshadowing the PCs, all sorts of nice stuff like that. YMMV.)

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 1 2013, 03:46 PM

12/11/2070.
I hate freebies.
Some context. Sarah called. There's been a murder up the block from where she lives, and she's not happy with how Knight Errant is handling the investigation. So she did the only logical thing and contacted a bunch of her runner friends. I'm a fekking career criminal, not a CSI detective! (That said, I did play one in a trid once...)
So we meet up and head out to the crime scene. For those keeping count, that's myself, a professional murderer who specializes in impersonating someone close to the target. Nitro, a ninja who's primary skill is cutting people into small chunks. Shadow, an ex-soldier who appears to have no skills or knowledge beyond ending people. Finally, we have Sarah herself, a Decker and Rigger with solid skills in both.
Note that no-one there have any skills in any form of criminal investigation. I foresee a disaster.
Also, she wants us to do it for free. If it was either of the other layabouts I'd have told them where they could shove this, but I actually like Sarah so I'm going to do it. For free. That is unnatural.

Afternoon.
Our first course of action was, naturally enough, to go to the crime scene and have a look around. Of course, Knight Errant had sealed the area off with their impenetrable police tape, along with a bored officer. This guy was barely enough to slow me down. A couple of words about how we were attached to a private investigator firm and he let us in... I get the distinct impression that his shift was almost over and he just didn't care any more. The victim was an orc teen who was killed while taking out the trash for his folks. Poor kid. The cops had removed the body, naturally, but Shadow said he could tell the type of weapon used based on the bullet holes near the site. An assault rifle. I don't doubt that it's possible to tell the weapon size based on the bullet holes it leaves behind, but Shadow's judgement still feels a bit suspect to me.
Anyway, we poked around for a bit and found that there was some kind of large vehicle had been parked on a nearby verge. It looks like our killer came here from elsewhere, then shot this unfortunate teen, then high-tailed it out of here. Naturally a nice neighborhood like this has cameras everywhere, and we have a Decker. No problem, right? Yeah, whoever we're after also has a Decker covering their tracks. Sarah does her stuff and works out where this Decker was when he wiped the cameras. He was down in Puyallup, in Ancients territory. I have a bad feeling about this.

Evening.
We rocked up at the location and sure enough there's an Ancient hangout. Instead of doing the smart thing, IE sending someone in to talk to them and see if they have anything to do with the murder. I might just be spitballing here, but if I were the Ancients I wouldn't have my Decker working from within my territory if they could plausibly be traced.
Anyway, take a look at the skillsets of my compatriots. Notice something in common? Violence. So, they decide to sneak in, knock someone out, then interrogate them elsewhere. Drone recon gives us a decent idea of how many people we're looking at, plus we find an entrance that's hard to reach but almost unguarded. In through the roof.
We sneak to the building around the back and climb up without being noticed. Then when we're in position Shadow takes out an Endoscope, slips it under the hidden trap-door... and face-plants straight through it to the floor below. I still don't know what he slipped on.
It gets better. The room he landed in? That would be the barracks just above the common room. REAL stealthy there.
At this point things progress pretty much as expected. Nitro and Shadow pummel some guys on the upper floor (Nitro is incredible at dodging. Half a dozen people opened up on him from the lower floor with long bursts and none of them so much as touched him. The floor got torn up pretty good, though.) , run into a bit of resistance on the lower floor, then Shadow panics and starts throwing flash-bangs.
Good news: The flash-bangs take out the majority of the Ancients with merely crippling damage to the dynamic duo.
Bad news: The flash-bangs attract the attention of the Knight Errant team watching the place. You know, where they'd tracked the Decker who wiped the footage from the murder they were investigating? Yeah, saw that one coming.
At this point we split up. Sarah picks up the others in the Roadmaster along with their prisoner, while I slip into the apartment building next door and hide among the squatters. That way if Sarah gets caught, I can bail them out and visa versa.

What follows is a car chase that makes the news as Sarah rams through the road block the cops are setting up (running a Knight over in the process. That's going to come back to bite us, I'm sure of it.) and bolts for Redmond. She manages to evade police interceptors 3 times by performing a series of increasingly desperate stunts culminating in DRIVING OFF AN OVERPASS. Once she hits the barrens and buys herself some breathing room I call around and find her a no-questions-asked chop-shop where she can do some repairs and repainting. Turns out Assault Cannon rounds do really nasty things to body-work. Who knew? I put the distraction of the car chase to good use and managed to slip past the police cordon through a couple of joined cellars. A quick trip home, a change of outfit, and a call to one of my contacts on the force was enough to get a copy of some data they found in the Ancient hideout. Meanwhile, the others set up a fake prisoner gambit and managed to confirm that the Ancients had nothing to do with the killing.

Finally, Sally did some follow-up on the data I got. It's info on a Decker that the Ancients noticed loitering on their patch around the time of the murder. Matrix searches turned up a single hit, an old Lone Star file. Naturally, it was corrupted. A Decker who covers his tracks on the matrix? Shocking. Anyway, Sarah reckons that there'll be a backup of the file on one of the Lone Star servers in the city, but we'll need to go on-site to retrieve it.
So, a run against Lone Star looks to be in the works.
For free.

When did I become a charity again?

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 1 2013, 06:55 PM

"Sticking it to the Man" is not quite as much fun as "Sticking the Man to the Grill," even if the latter does tend to come back to haunt you worse.


Anyway, this is amusing. I should probably stay out of your character's backstory, though. The last time I got involved, I dared my group to play an Amnesia 25-pt character in SR4.

They got a neotenous elf stuck forever in the awkward place between thirteen and fourteen.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 1 2013, 11:55 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 2 2013, 02:55 AM)

"Sticking it to the Man" is not quite as much fun as "Sticking the Man to the Grill," even if the latter does tend to come back to haunt you worse.


Anyway, this is amusing. I should probably stay out of your character's backstory, though. The last time I got involved, I dared my group to play an Amnesia 25-pt character in SR4.

They got a neotenous elf stuck forever in the awkward place between thirteen and fourteen.

Posted by: Angelone Sep 2 2013, 02:07 AM

In the States we had a show called Walker Texas Ranger. Walker solved most of his problems with roundhouse kicks. I started reading expecting that and was pleasantly surprised.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 2 2013, 02:12 AM

QUOTE (Angelone @ Sep 2 2013, 10:07 AM)

Posted by: Grak Sep 3 2013, 09:12 AM

This run has an echo of the old Shadowrun novels. Walker will do well to keep an ear to the ground and a predator on hand.

I don't think you've told us what Walker looks like, a description and stat block would be interesting to read.

Keep on posting Fuel, I like your story.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 3 2013, 11:14 PM

Walker's Stat line:

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 4 2013, 09:14 AM

Continued. Sorry, had to go to work.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 4 2013, 10:29 PM

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 4 2013, 10:34 PM

Never did play those games. I hear they're good, but I've just never had time.
You know how it is.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 4 2013, 10:40 PM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Sep 4 2013, 06:34 PM)

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Sep 5 2013, 12:08 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 4 2013, 03:40 PM)

Not really, though I wish I did. I have nothing but time.

Start with II, then play Brotherhood and Revelations. Don't bother with I - too much fuck to go along with the good, stuff they ironed out in making II. Things like galloping on your horse alerting every Crusader between the Holy Land and Constantinople to your presence and bringing them at a dead run to come beat your ass, yet them not giving a fuck if you trot past just slightly slower.

[e]I'm mid-way through Revelations right now. They improved on a lot of stuff from II and Brotherhood, but they also managed to fuck up some stuff that makes me gonk, too. Revelations is set entirely in Constantinople, with no countryside in the walls, unlike Rome in Brotherhood, yet despite all the work that went into letting horses into the city in Brotherhood, there's nary a horse to be seen in all of Istanbul. And the Den Defense minigame... Ugh. How did they fuck up tower defense, huh? Worse, how did they fuck it up so badly that most people find it simpler and more expedient to go full-on with Tau tactics and abandon the damn towers, let the Templars reclaim them, and reclaim them back from the Templars.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 5 2013, 05:46 AM

QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ Sep 4 2013, 08:08 PM)

Sounds... Frustrating...

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Sep 5 2013, 02:08 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 4 2013, 10:46 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 6 2013, 11:42 AM

Okay. Finally got a description hammered out, complements to my girlfriend for helping me get the details right.

Walker is an attractive female elf. She's about 1.7 meters tall, has long red hair which reaches down just past her shoulder blades and a fairly pale complexion. Her cybereyes can change colour on a whim, a common feature but very useful for a face. She has to get her hair cut and regrown occasionally due to heavy use of dyes, but she considers this to be a cost of doing business.

Um... I'm really not good at this. Any other details people want?

This is really embarrassing. If there's one thing I'm REALLY bad at writing, it's character descriptions.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 6 2013, 12:02 PM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Sep 6 2013, 06:42 AM)

Okay. Finally got a description hammered out, complements to my girlfriend for helping me get the details right.

Walker is an attractive female elf. She's about 1.7 meters tall, has long red hair which reaches down just past her shoulder blades and a fairly pale complexion. Her cybereyes can change colour on a whim, a common feature but very useful for a face. She has to get her hair cut and regrown occasionally due to heavy use of dyes, but she considers this to be a cost of doing business.

Um... I'm really not good at this. Any other details people want?

This is really embarrassing. If there's one thing I'm REALLY bad at writing, it's character descriptions.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 6 2013, 12:11 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 6 2013, 08:02 PM)

Ah hell, why not.

Try this on for size.
Walker, the Elf Face
Standing just under five and a half feet tall, this elf is a very pretty girl, but not the kind of bombshell which permanently sears herself in the mind's eye of everyone who comes into contact with her. When not disguised as anyone specific or as any given archetype, she has the look of the hometown girl, the girl-next-door, with a lightly freckled face, long red hair which is unfortunately frequently subjected to the abuse of the scissors and dye, and an easy sexuality about her that might suggest a strong Irish ancestry. Elven supermodels would consider her practically obese, orc girls would think she needs a few cheeseburgers but has a moderately satisfactory amount of meat on her bones. Passing her on the street, you wouldn't glance at her twice - just a pretty face in the crowd, something that you might smile and think fondly on, but nothing too dramatic. Her breasts are a nice handful without being memorable, her hips are pleasantly curved without being booty. She was just a girl, you saw her; you'd have liked to have kissed her at the time, but thinking back on it, you can't really remember. Did she have green eyes, blue? Freckles, none? Long hair... Maybe. Was it red, or auburn, or blonde? Sorry, officer. She was just a pretty face, one in a sea of them.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v323/ShadowDragon8685/Jennifer-1.jpg is the image I used as inspiration. Assuming a minor illusion to make her ears all rounded and a recent cut-and-dye job, hell, it could actually be her.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 6 2013, 12:20 PM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Sep 6 2013, 08:11 AM)

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Sep 6 2013, 04:30 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 6 2013, 05:02 AM)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v323/ShadowDragon8685/Jennifer-1.jpg is the image I used as inspiration. Assuming a minor illusion to make her ears all rounded and a recent cut-and-dye job, hell, it could actually be her.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 6 2013, 05:06 PM

QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ Sep 6 2013, 11:30 AM)

Awesome Pic, ShadowDragon8685... Good Find... Good description too.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Sep 6 2013, 05:24 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 6 2013, 10:06 AM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 8 2013, 02:07 PM

13/11/2070.
Sarah was taking her sweet time doing the number crunching for her charity run, working out which Lone Star server we'd have to hit to ID the Decker. So when Shadow called and told us that he'd been contacted by a Johnson for a quick run on the side, I figured 'sure, why not?'
The meet was at a high-class bar downtown. Amazingly, Nitro looked quite snappy in a suit and tie, while unsurprisingly Shadow looked completely out of place in his lined duster. I have no idea why his fixer decided to call him first when the Johnson contacted him... maybe everyone else was booked or something. Anyway, he wants us to switch out a book owned by some magical cabal with a fake, and bring the real one to him. Apparently these guys are pretty well connected as they're renting a floor in a high-security skyscraper complex known as the Galaxy Tower. How high security? Well the building is owned and run by Lone Star, who then rent out space to interested parties. Most of the high-end clients have left in the months since they lost the security contract for Seattle as the place now lies in Knight Errant jurisdiction and they quite reasonably feel that the old promise of top priority police response no longer carries weight. Since then the Star has reduced the security at the 45 story skyscraper to a skeleton crew and the former high-rollers have been replaced by more mundane businesses seeking showrooms that would otherwise be above their means, and the place has basically been transformed into a vertical shopping mall with an illusion of great security.

So, we head out to do some basic recon, minus our rigger/hacker. The first thing we notice is that while they're running a skeleton crew for security these days, all the infrastructure from the Galaxy's glory days is still in place. That basically translates into tons of motion sensors and cameras strategically placed to prevent people from covertly scaling the building, a complex lockdown system designed to strategically trap or channel intruders and gas them with nausea gas, and plenty of other fun surprises that make a frontal assault completely suicidal.

Hopefully I can convince the others to do this run smart.

Our target is on the 30th floor, between a weapon shop on the 29th and a security floor on the 31st. After a bit of back and fourth we decide we need to get a bit more intel on the security there, so we call up Sarah. After a while she manages to get the floor plans for the 30th, which have both RFID and key-codes on the doors. The easiest way to get both of those would be to kidnap a member of the cabal and interrogate them, though to be fair kidnapping a mage is never exactly going to be safe. Problem: we can't exactly tell who's a member of this cabal at a glance, which makes kidnapping the right person a bit difficult. Nitro of all people suggests the solution: we each head to a different floor, browse a shop or two, and keep an eye on the elevator. once one stops at the 30th then hopefully we've got our man.
Yeah, the plan's not perfect by any stretch. The elevator could stop at the 30th to deliver a member of the cabal, rather than to pick him up. There could be too many witnesses in the elevator when we get on, preventing us from kidnapping or planting a tracker on the guy. Someone could have made a mistake and ordered the elevator to the wrong floor. However, it's getting late so we're giving it a shot, and if it doesn't work we can try for a plan B in the morning. In the mean time Nitro gets to be geeky about his silly swords (it's a length of sharp metal you use to stab things with. Pistols are more elegant weapons from this civilized age. Luddite.), Shadow will spend his time at a pet store on the 23rd floor (I had a cat once. The company's nice, but I'm not certain the mess and maintenance are really worth it.) while I do the sensible thing and go shoe shopping down on the 15th floor. What? I need the right shoes for the scene in order to do my job. Don't judge me!

10 pm (1 hour later). Note: I need to start keeping better time stamps on these things.
It worked like a charm. Seriously, I'm beginning to think that Nitro is some kind of luck mage and hasn't told us about it. Not ten minutes after we started he not only had a new katana (some kind of titanium steel that he was very excited about. Hand made too, which is good if the rumours about nanites are true.) but also managed to bag a member of the Cabal, alone in the elevator. I got in on the 15th floor (Shadow got distracted by a puppy or something) and struck up a conversation while Nitro applied the Narcojet patch. We breezed past security with some line about him not being able to hold his drink, found his car and told it to take him home. A bit of fast-talking got us in (after all, who really expects two people in suits helping a resident of the apartment building get home [he was coincidentally also wearing a similar suit. The luck of Nitro strikes again] to be up to no good?) and we got into his apartment without much trouble. Shadow and
Sarah soon joined us (Shadow was wearing a military gas mask in public again. What is your damage, man? just go get a respirator like everyone else!), and for some reason Nitro decided to start slipping laxatives into random pieces of the guy (Ian)'s food. After a brief but revealing conversation I wasn't sure which I should be worried about more: Nitro following the a trickster mentor spirit he called the Raven, or the fact that he keeps a bottle of fast-dissolving laxatives with him AT ALL TIMES!
Memo: Never eat or drink anything with Nitro around. Ever.
I switch out the guy's RFID chip for the Cabal and put it in my wrist. It was going to be Nitro's, but he chickened out at the last minute. I had the whole operation over and done with in about a minute and a half, and I can only hope putting it back afterwards goes half as smoothly.
Anyway, our wait for the sedative to wear off was interrupted by a pair of shady types abseiling down onto the balcony, sliding open the door, and throwing in a flash bang grenade. Just another night in Seattle, I guess. Sarah panics and flees, Nitro takes cover, Shadow Hulks out and I'm just clinging to consciousness after that, not helped at all by the small size of the room, but I do manage to keep enough of my wits about me to pull out a tazer and cover the door. Sure enough it opens and some badass chick steps in, ducks my shot, catches Shadow's punch and almost lays him down with one of her own. Nitro leaps out of the kitchen, sword in hand, and takes the other guy's suppressed full auto burst to the chest. Luckily the gun was loaded with Gel rounds and through sheer dumb luck Nitro manages to shake off the hit like it was nothing, then hacks the girl in the spine with his new sword. Unsurprisingly she goes down, and Shadow heads off to take on the gunman and is soon joined by Nitro. The guy never stood a chance, but over the sound of the fight I hear heavy footsteps coming from the way Sarah ran. I decided that the boys had the gunman handled and spun around to cover the door just in time to see a troll chick with a fricking riot shield drawing a bead on Nitro. I yell a warning and shoot her.

I like my Tazer. It brings people down good, and as an added bonus it's perfectly legal and normal to carry it around. It's reliable, I take good care of it, and it has never let me down. Until today.
This is the first time I've ever seen someone no-sell a body shot like that. She barely seemed to notice the hit. I got off a second shot in the span of about half a second, right in the same place, and... nothing. Luckily Nitro heard my warning and took cover as she tried to pull the same trick on him. Then, in a display of speed that would impress the Olympic sprint team Nitro crossed the room in the space of about a second, clearing several obstacles including ME, and smote the troll mightily.
As far as I can tell, she barely noticed. I'm so disappointed that I couldn't see Nitro's expression when she just took a hit that would fell most people without any display of concern, just switched her tazer to contacts and began trying to zap him.
Now Nitro is one of those people who subscribe to the belief that when all you have is a sword, everything is just begging to be stabbed. So he starts trying to carve up this troll lady, who keeps catching him on her shield in an almost insultingly casual manner. Given how ineffective my tazer was last time I decided not to bother and started putting all my effort into encouraging Nitro. This worked in the sense that he fought more vigorously than ever... however, at best he was dealing scratch damage to this monster.
It's at this point that Shadow finds the gunman's grenade belt and hurls a flash bang into the fray. Unsurprisingly given the confined space, this ends the fight by bringing down Nitro and, after a few heart-stoppingly uncertain moments, also the troll. I grab the apartment's first aid kit and go to revive Nitro only to hear Shadow crash to the floor as whatever he was on wore off. I manage to get Nitro back to his feet... and building security show up. I spin a tale about how we'd all gathered in our good friend Ian's apartment for a few quiet drinks when these thugs had attacked out of no-where, and how I was so frightened, blah blah blah. I manage to spin the whole thing enough to convince them that we were the victims, and by the time the cops showed up we'd been bundled up and given something to calm our nerves. Not bad work for someone still deaf in one ear.

10:50 pm
Nitro and I get carted off to the cop shop to fill out paperwork and answer questions. They give our SINs a cursory once-over, listen to our sob-story, then send us on our way. We head out to the hospital, and on a sudden inspiration head out to see Ian first. He's understandably shell-shocked, waking up in a hospital and all, and we use that to our advantage by spinning a tale of how we met up in that elevator and he'd invited us out for a drink, seemingly a spur-of-the-moment thing. We use as much truth as possible in our story so that he can verify it later, but at the end of our elegant fabrication he's convinced that not only are we good friends of his but he literally owes us his life. We pick up the others, convince Ian that it's getting late but we'll meet up with him again soon, then headed out.

14/11/2070.
Guess where the data server we're after is? Yep. Galaxy Tower. 21st floor to be exact. I go to meet up with Ian while the others start bouncing around ideas (I love having a neural commlink), and a joking suggestion by Shadow gives me an idea. Shadow suggested that Nitro gets a job at the Starbucks in the tower to get intel on the guards, and it occurs to me that it might be a workable plan with some modification.
Specifically, Shadow Sarah and Nitro put some uniforms together, paint up the roadmaster (they are not coming anywhere near my van!), then approach the tower as part of a cafe chain trying out some new flavors of soycaf. That way they can sedate a whole bunch of the security guards in one fell swoop, all without attracting any suspicion. I make a few calls and source a Soycaf wholesaler, we work out how much the gig is going to cost us and how much we'd need to charge per cup to come out even, then while they set to work on that I started charming the pass-codes I needed from Ian.

15/11/2070.
Now my section of the run turned out to be a bit of a walk-through. I got the impersonation of Ian down perfectly, had all the security details I needed to do the job without arousing suspicion, and got through it without anyone any the wiser. Most of what follows is second-hand. Complements to Sarah for spinning the tale.

'Well, we got off to a decent start. Everyone was tired of the overpriced Starbucks soycaf and even the least adventurous individuals were willing to try something new. I mean, it's soycaf. You're not exactly taking your life in your hands trying a new soycaf, right? Well it turns out that Shadow makes epic-level bad soycaf. I still don't know how he managed it, he had the same tools as the rest of us. Nitro, on the other hand? Complete natural. Whatever that guy does just seems to come up roses. I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but I make a pretty mean soycaf myself... but I digress. We laced the security guards drinks with slow-acting sedatives which we estimated would kick in over the next hour or so. Outside of our target floor we just added enough to make them a bit sluggish and apathetic, but on the 21st we really went the whole hog and gave them enough to knock them out. I can't prove this, but I think I saw Nitro slip some of those laxatives into a couple of the cups as well. I don't envy the poor souls who ended up with those cups.
Anyway, we kept going until we hit the 45th, then on our way back down slipped into the 21st. I worked my usual magic with the cameras, then we got to work. The backup server required a direct physical connection to access, but outside of that and a basic login system the security was nonexistent. I guess that they figured deckers wouldn't be much of an issue if they couldn't reach the damned thing to connect to it, which is true... until someone sedates all your guards and waltzes in. Shadow managed to convincingly play the part of the guy on desk duty for the routine check in, and we were out before anyone knew we were there. Piece of cake.'

You know the funniest part of all this? Ian, the guy we kidnapped, performed unwilling surgery on (twice, I had to put the chip back), impersonated, lied to and generally abused? He still thinks we're his best friends in the world. Seriously, I'm almost at the point of feeling bad about all the stuff we put the guy through, and I don't usually feel guilty about any of this stuff! Well, he's volunteered his services should we ever need a talasmonger, so maybe I'll get a chance to make it up to him or something. Nothing overt, obviously, or he might work out that something's wrong.

Anyway, we got the intel on the decker. He's been seen hanging out with a human supremacist gang in Snohomish, so that's our next stop on the search for answers.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 8 2013, 07:22 PM

Hahahahaaaaaah.

Fast-dissolving laxative tablets... What an arsehole.


That one had me laughing the whole way through.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 8 2013, 11:36 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 9 2013, 03:22 AM)

Hahahahaaaaaah.

Fast-dissolving laxative tablets... What an arsehole.


That one had me laughing the whole way through.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 15 2013, 11:17 AM

16/11/2070. (sunday)
Well, today started out interesting and didn't let up from then on. Sarah decided to look into the cop who last updated the target Decker's file... by parking a few hundred meters up from Lone Star HQ in her unregistered roadmaster and hacking in. I think this idea seemed good BEFORE she had her soycaf for the morning. Anyway, that went about as well as could be predicted and she was arrested. I think she overestimated her roadmaster's ability to get her out of trouble, as she didn't surrender easily. The cops parked an armoured up patrol car at either end of the 25m long alley she'd hidden in and she couldn't get up enough speed to bulldoze her way through.
Also, protip: Roadmaster vs AV missile, Roadmaster loses.

So Shadow drives in from his new place about an hour out of Seattle to meet up with me and plot a way to get her out. We go through a list of options to get her out, all of which have low probability of success and virtual certainty of disaster. Then, after another hour or so we got a call from Sarah. She managed to get herself out and even managed to get some new cyberware out of the whole thing: a nice, shiny... cranial bomb. Yeah, this cannot end well. Also, special thanks to Nitro for having his commlink off. Not being able to contact you in an emergency is so convenient.

So now we're doing a freebie for Lone Star. Specifically, we're kidnapping a high-ranking Knight Errant Lieutenant on zero budget and one week, with the price of failure being troll brains everywhere. Today just keeps getting better and better.

There is one piece of good news. Sarah's new best friend is fine with her leaving Seattle after the job is done, though none of us believe that this will be the last we hear from him. I hear Neo-Tokyo is nice this time of year.

17/11/2070. (Monday)
Tickets have been taken care of, packing is done, passport is ready. Whether we succeed or fail, I am out of here come Monday afternoon. We did some computer research on the target, and managed to find out that he's spending the weekend at his bosses mansion out in the country. Odds on this is the best chance we're going to have to grab him. Shadow wants to go in guns blazing, leave no living witnesses, that whole murderous rampage thing. Sarah and I don't like the idea, and we try to work out a plan that doesn't involve mass murder. He then started to suggest kidnapping the guy's wife and using her as leverage. One of the great thinkers of our time, ladies and gentlemen! Sarah suggests that we biosculpt some shmuck to look like the guy, add a personafix to make him think he's the guy, and try a simple switch. I pointed out that the plan was better, but would be difficult and expensive to implement. Also, considering the heat we we're going to be bringing down with kidnapping one of the highest ranking cops in the city we couldn't really afford to leave anyone to put two and two together with that nice big reward for information just lying out there.

In the end we decided that a body of about the right height and weight, plus a latex mask and the target's clothes, might be enough to confuse when the target was actually kidnapped. At the very least it would confuse investigators for a little while, hopefully long enough for us to leave the country. So that's part... 3? 4? I don't know, one of the later stages taken care of. Sarah put in a couple of hours of VR research and turned up the fact that our target's boss likes hunting. A lot. Odds on that our target would be dragged out on a hunting trip during his weekend.
Perfect. He'll be away from the security of the mansion. We'll hit him then. That is to say, Sarah will hit him. I like Sarah, I really do, but there is no way I'm going out into the woods to kidnap a top KE detective for her without at least getting paid. Shadow's much the same: We'll help in the setup, we'll do research and buy gear, but Sarah is going to need to deal with her own mess on this one.

Speaking of setup, Sarah wants to do the whole thing by remote. I don't blame her.

18/11/2070. (Tuesday)
Drone shopping. Sarah wants to get a smokecloud drone to act as a distraction while her manservant switches the unconscious cop with the corpse double. We've sent Shadow off to round up either a body or a suitable hobo, Sarah's stealing a car, and I'm using my black market contacts to find her drones.

Did I mention she's still broke, so these are coming out of my money? She owes me so big for this.

19/11/2070. (Wednesday)
Shadow sucks at finding people. He managed to piss the crap out of the Crimson Crush and had to make a retreat from the barrens under gunfire. I've taken over for him.

Found our guy. Right size, right shape, even still breathing. Got him on a drip and high on slab so the time of death can be as close as possible. Normally I don't like civilians getting caught in the crossfire but this chiphead's brain is so badly fried that it's a mercy killing.

20/11/2070 (Thursday)
Sarah is doing preliminary recon on the forests near out target's mansion. She says she thinks she knows where he'll be hunting. Also, every drone going on the mission is getting rigged with explosives to reduce evidence.

22/11/2070 (Saturday)
The op went as well as can be expected. Every drone that went along is a writeoff, totaling over ten grand in assets. We managed to pull the switch, just, but given the circumstances I can't be sure they bought it. The dropoff went well enough, the location Sarah did her broadcast from got hit by so many SWAT officers you'd think it was a doughnut shop (she was long gone by then), and the reward for information regarding the run is growing by the hour. I'm fairly sure that nothing leads back to me, and Sarah says she thinks she's in the clear. Shadow might be in a bit of trouble with the Crimson Crush, but as far as I know nothing links him back to the kidnapping.

So, Neo-Tokyo. Everyone else is coming along too, though sooner or later we're going to need to find a way to beat Sarah's cranial bomb or it's just going to keep coming back to haunt us.

Oh, and everyone is broke by this point. Next week will be interesting.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 16 2013, 11:05 AM

Wow. That sounds like a complete and total Foxtrot. Charlie's leading the orchestra, and your girl Sarah's wearing the dress.


On the topic of folks being compelled by circumstances or force (circumstances, in my case) to work with folks they'd just as soon see dead than work with... In my Sunday Star Wars game, my players are working with The Empire.

They're all Jedi. And it's 23 ABY, so it's not quite as bad as it could have been. Plus, they're colluding with an Imperial high-level law enforcement officer to gather evidence needed to prevent a war, so it's not all bad.

Yours sounds like it was probably cooler, though.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 16 2013, 11:42 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 16 2013, 07:05 PM)

Posted by: Grak Sep 17 2013, 04:31 AM

Those last two stories have been very slick, thanks FuelDrop.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 17 2013, 04:53 AM

QUOTE (Grak @ Sep 17 2013, 12:31 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 22 2013, 09:25 AM

22/11/2070.
Evening.
Got a message from Miss Johnson, asking for a meet at Teiko Ikemoto's concert. I personally find most pop music a bit shallow for my tastes, and Teiko's offerings are no exception. I will admit that she has a captivating voice, credit where it's due, but it's no more natural than my own vocal implants.
Maybe it's my performing arts degree speaking. Or jealousy: I'd love to be able to play a crowd like that. It'd make my job so much easier.
Anyway, the ticket is worth a couple of grand so I kind of feel compelled to go and tell Miss Johnson that I'll be out of town in person. It's more polite than just messaging her.

Later.
I'm not certain if this is coincidence or conspiracy. Miss Johnson is recruiting us for a long-term job in Neo-Tokyo, with transport and accommodation payed for by Horizon. We've just got to prove ourselves by putting some graffiti on a bar called Lost Wages without being spotted, preferably making the news at the same time. We finished recon about half an hour ago and now we've met up to talk about what we're going to do next. The synthetic hot chocolate in the dive we've picked isn't completely undrinkable, though it's pretty close. Shadow seems to be handling his soycaf just fine, so maybe living the high life is making me soft. Then again, it is Shadow. I don't doubt he'd be able to stomach paint thinner if nessessary.
Oh, I almost forgot. Miss Johnson foisted a new kid onto us for the mission. Elf, 19, Blue hair, sword. Cute, but a bit too young for me. Goes by the name of Seth.
Because if there's one thing this group needed it's more muscle. Speaking of which, Nitro left his commlink off again. I can understand going dark, but generally a reason is required before going to ground.

Later still.
We've thrown some ideas around about how to pull the job off without getting caught. Shadow suggested use gas grenades full of Warp or CS, but I'm pretty sure he was joking. There's no way he's dumb enough to suggest a stunt like that seriously. The new kid suggested disposable drones, but our budget isn't really big enough to cover that kind of cost after the last fortnight's expenses. Another suggestion that came up was a sniper rifle full of paint rounds, but everyone agreed that was plan G: It's quick and dirty, but it'll get the job done if everything else fails.
Sarah then pointed out that we didn't need to use physical paint: AR would do just as well. We just needed to pick up some tags, reprogram them, paint them to match the building's exterior, then stick and run. Expanding on that, I suggested that we put tags on every exterior wall and the roof as well. After all, we wanted to be noticed!
We're refining the specifics as I write this, but it's looking like we'll be able to go overboard on this one and get payed too.

23/11/2070.
4 am.
Most of the tags are in place. Sarah set them up with a 16 hour delay so that they wouldn't trace back to us and should light up at about 8 pm, when plenty of people are there to see. She says she's set it up for a rather overwhelming AR sensory bombardment that should be all but impossible to ignore.
Slipping the tags onto the walls without anyone noticing isn't exactly hard, and Sarah has a fly drone putting one on the roof. Shadow's in the van keeping an eye on things. This might just be flawless... Uh oh, Shadow's spotted something.

Ok, crisis averted. Someone spotted Seth and recognized him, how I'm not sure. Anyway, the orc intercepted him, but with a bit of prompting Seth was able to logic bomb the thug and slip away while he tried to work out what was going on. Everything is proceeding as planned.

8:30 pm.
We leave tomorrow. Miss Johnson was most impressed with how we handled the situation. Turns out she had some hired thugs keeping a lookout for us so she could see how we react to unexpected complications. The one who spotted Seth apparently managed to see through his disguise, but he was fine with letting us go as he thought we were still putting in recon rather than doing the job. We got 5 grand apiece for lighting up the bar without getting caught, but more importantly we passed the entrance exam for Horizon's little mission. One 20-page contract later and we're good to go.
Now I just need to sell off my boat ticket. I think I know where to look for a buyer...

24/11/2070.
Ok, this plane is pimped out. Sauna, cinema, bar, private chef... Horizon hasn't skimped out on this one. Good thing we're freelancers, I doubt most of their citizens will ever even dream of flying on something this nice.

25/11/2070.
4 penthouse apartments, company transport while we wait for our vehicles to arrive... this might be a rather nice year. The food they stocked the place with is almost as good as what I usually buy, though Japan's gun laws are already irking me. I like my pistols, and I don't appreciate having to hide them.
Anyway, we've received our first job. Get a gene sample from the pop star Teiko Ikemoto, clone baby.

Easy.

Our new handler, Mr Johnson (come on, can't you be even a little creative?) has put us on to a stalker who might be able to tell us when our target will be vulnerable. Sarah has e-mailed him, we should be hearing back tomorrow.

26/11/2070.
It should surprise no-one that stalker boy is a bit creepy. He's given us the intel we need, but wants a lock of her hair in return. Since she'll be at the world mall Monday at 8 I can spend the week brushing up on my Japanese and trying to get a handle on the culture.

2/12/2070.
Part 1 accomplished. We found her at a clothing store, looking at sweaters. 10 security guys were with her, 4 obvious bodyguards and 6 more hanging out in reserve. So, we go in for a distraction. First is Seth and I, playing the part of a pair of bickering tourists. As anticipate, the moment we wander close to Teiko her bodyguards come to shut us down. I'm impressed with their self-control at not punching Seth, he was playing the role well enough that I wanted to punch him. As we got into an argument with them Sarah came wandering up the isle, distracting the other obvious bodyguards. While everyone was busy dealing with dumb tourists Shadow slipped out of the clothing rack he'd hidden in and cut a hair sample off Miss Ikemoto so cleanly she didn't even notice. After a few seconds one of the bodyguards glanced over and spotted something was wrong, leaving us as they escorted their pop queen to safety. The 'hidden' guards continued to keep tabs on us for the next hour or so, necessitating a shopping spree on Horizon's Nuyen to stay in character. What a shame.
Anyway, now we just need to find a cloning lab to make us a baby.

3/12/2070.
Sarah is good. Seriously, on an unfamiliar grid she managed to find a black market cloning bank in about an hour. We've now finished getting everything organized, given Creepy Mcstalkerface his lock of hair, and get to enjoy the fruits of our labor for a few weeks until next job gets out of prison. I'm going to spend some time making connections, as a couple of assets who know the score around here are bound to be useful in the near future.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 22 2013, 02:06 PM

Wow. Somehow, you manage to make "everything went smooth and more or less according to plan" into a captivating story.


Between working for Horizon, being in Japan and being on the run from the law, though, you guys are pretty screwed if you have to light anything up. Then again, I suspect you have set this situation up to make the muscle branch out into new skill sets that don't involve some variation of hurting things or breaking people.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 23 2013, 12:30 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 22 2013, 10:06 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 23 2013, 01:21 AM

Reposted with permission: Seth's background.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 23 2013, 06:26 AM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Sep 22 2013, 08:30 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 29 2013, 01:47 AM

First draft on Walker's background. I could use suggestions on what to add, anything you guys want me to expand on, that sort of thing.

So, my history. Let’s start at the beginning. My full name is Jill Kara Bonds, daughter of Tara Parker and James Bonds. I was born on the 25th of February, 2044, in the UCAS city of New York. My mother was a human who worked as an accountant for Cerebrotech (an Ares subsidiary that deals in cybernetics and optics). Nothing interesting yet, right? Let’s spice things up a bit. My father is an old-school shadowrunner. He married my mother as part of his cover identity… yeah, you can already tell this isn’t going to work out, can’t you? Well they managed to stay together for a good eight years, 2043-2051, before his work drove them apart. Ironically, as far as I can tell mum never found out about dad’s real job, it’s just that he kept having to leave town for extended periods with little to no warning. She may have suspected an affair towards the end… which was absolutely correct. I have the younger half-brother to prove it.

My childhood was pretty much corp standard while my parents were together, but once they split up it began getting a bit less production line standard. See, while I was with mum I was getting the hunky-dory corporate education from Ares, the All American Corp™. When I was with my dad on the other hand, I was learning crime. Now dad was a confidence man, and he ran with a pretty standard team. Decker, Rigger, Muscle, Face. No magic, but there were less mages back then so that wasn’t exactly uncommon. Initially I was basically the mascot, sitting in the van and watching the others work. After a while I started getting more important jobs, such as keeping an eye on the monitors in case something unexpected happens. I got a fairly well-rounded education here, everything from hitting people to basic computer skills and demolitions. My real talent was fairly obvious, I was following in my dad’s footsteps.

Then, at 11, the crash 2.0 happened. I was with my dad at the time, and we were out of town on a job. In our hotel room, planning the next step, we hear a car crash outside. Then another one. And another. All the auto-pilot systems had simultaneously failed, leading to total anarchy. Our Decker tried to log in and find out what was going on, but… yeah, let’s just say we ditched the mission at that point. Given the chaos following the crash it took almost a week for us to get home. I hadn’t been able to contact mum in that time but, well, the crash. I don’t know what I was expecting when I arrived at mum’s place, but… she’d been in VR when it happened. Logged in, then never logged out. I kind of… freaked out. What? I was 11, and my world had just been turned upside down! Like you would have handled it better.
Anyway. My corporate SIN was gone, but dad suggested that I sign up for a national SIN. Being an actual person has its perks. After that, dad got a LOT more protective of me. Sent me off to boarding school for a while, and a good one at that. He spent a lot of money getting me a top-notch education, and I can even remember some of it. I’ll be honest I wasn’t really that good a student, not that you can tell by looking at my straight A grades. See, with the crash rich people were less than thrilled with their kids spending most of their time in VR. That meant actual teachers, who are as vulnerable to being manipulated as everyone else. One area where my scores were legit was performing arts. I love acting, and I’m a fairly solid singer as well. Oh, and if you can name the instrument then odds on I at least know how to hold it… except Harmonicas. Those things and I have a history.

I was good enough to get a scholarship into collage, where once again I focused on acting. Also did some debating, which was fun. Half the time my opposition was totally out of their league because they were limited to using actual evidence to support their arguments. I can think of at least two occasions where I managed to convince them that their research was wrong and whatever BS I was spinning was actually the truth. Now it’s not exactly uncommon for students in collage to have a side job to help make ends meet. I know one girl who was working at a strip joint, and another who sidelined as a building consultant. It takes all sorts, I guess. My sideline was killing people and stealing stuff. I may have put it a bit bluntly, but it’s the truth. I’d use my skills as an actress to get in, then take what I need or kill my target. Just small jobs, I wasn’t ready for the big leagues at that point, but it was enough to get by on comfortably.

After collage I started a double life. Officially I’m a small-time actress, and I’m legitimately part of the industry. You can find my name hidden in the credits of several B-grade Trids, I’m even the leading lady in a couple. Directors like it when their actors do their own stunts, it saves them needing a stunt double and makes editing that little bit easier. Most of my ‘ware is registered as ‘work related’ because of that. I tend to favor Science Fiction works that allow me to play the green-skinned alien chick. Makeup is hell, but it means I don’t have to worry about someone recognizing me on my other job: corporate espionage agent. Running the shadows makes more money in a night than most acting jobs make in a month, letting me live the high life. I like the high life.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 29 2013, 12:01 PM

05/12/2070.
Meet Mr Brax. He's a Fixer. Why a Londonite is one of the best-connected Fixers in Neo-Tokyo is anyone's guess, but that's the word on the street.
Mr Brax is well out of the league we used to work with in Seattle, so we might be stepping up in the world. Of course, the higher we climb the further we have to fall. He knows this better than we do, so naturally we get a test run to see if we're up to snuff. I seem to be saying that a lot lately.

The mission in brief: We have to make sure a meeting between the heads of some A-level corporations follows a script. Another team is handling one side of the conversation, so we need to make sure that Mayumi Akio follows his lines. Now fortunately, over the last few years he's started spending more time with his family and less at the office, allowing us to have a good shot at slipping in an impersonator.

Naturally, it's not just a matter of walking in and saying "I'm the boss, let's sell the company!". We need a couple of things before we can pull the con off convincingly. First and foremost we need his security access pass. Easy enough to copy, but we need to get our hands on the original first. Next, we need either his commlink, or some quality time with it to copy his comm codes and schedule. Finally, we're going to need a thumb print and retinal scan in case they have biometric sensors. Quite the laundry list of stuff, but we have a plan.

Firstly, we're going to need to get him somewhere we can pick his pocket to swipe his commlink, then slip it back to him after we're finished. That means somewhere that his Commlink going bye-bye won't take down his PAN.
GameNation is having a big miracle shooter event in two days. They hand out PAN enablers and require that people switch off their Commlinks while inside to prevent hackers from cheating. Mr Mayumi is big on his electronic entertainment (his corp makes parts for knock-off commlinks, so he's already in the industry), so if we can get him tickets from a legit source then there's good odds that he'll make it a family day out. This also gets us his thumbprint.

Meanwhile, the rest of our team will hit his apartment. He's converted 4 floors into a super-penthouse (The building is pretty compact, so I can't exactly blame him. I'd do exactly the same thing if I owned an apartment complex.), take the scans to copy the card, then get out nice and quiet. If they trip an alarm once they're inside, the cops will call Mr Mayumi's Commlink and we'll tell them it's alright, just a glitch in the system.

While I get the gear we need to copy the card, Sarah is organizing the tickets. Now last time Sarah tried to pull something like this she screwed up so badly she ended up with a cranial bomb. She learned from that experience, and from what she told me Ares marketing division never stood a chance. So now that Mayumi is on their promotional free ticket list, all we have to do is wait for our chance.

07/12/2070.
06:00 PM.
I'd forgotten how much fun picking pockets could be. One quick jostle, one commlink. Sarah is on fire once again and blasts through that thing's firewall like it wasn't even there, in spite of the fact that it's a top-of-the-line piece of hardware. While she's on that, I dust for fingerprints. After about a minute we have everything we could ever need from it, and in another minute it's back in its owners pocket without him being any the wiser. We retire to the car and begin screening his calls in case the others screw up.

EDIT: Little did we know...

06:30 PM.
They made the news. Cops, security company thugs, the whole lot. Pure luck is the only reason those two aren't rotting in prison right now. Okay, here's what happened as far as I can piece things together.

First, they get in. Shadow tells me that he just pretended to be on the comm while one of the residents was entering and got them to hold the door for him, after which he let Seth in. All in front of a security guard, but lets face it: running security is boring enough without being stuck on the front desk of some nothing apartment building. So then they head to the elevator and Seth presses all the buttons. I swear it's just to annoy Shadow... so, good cause. The elevator doesn't open on any of the penthouse floors, but does open on the roof. Now they go back down to the sub-levels, checking them out. I will never know what security thought they were doing, but whatever. Then Seth goes over to one of the security people and tries to talk to them, but immediately runs into a problem: He doesn't know Japanese. We're going to be working in the country for a year, and he hasn't bothered to start learning the language yet.

Well he leaves the bemused security guy behind and walks up the stairs to the roof, clambers up on top of the elevator housing and starts playing air guitar. A few seconds later security rock up. I can only assume that by now they're watching these guys on the cameras. They start telling him to get down in broken English. Meanwhile, Shadow is busy taking down the guy at the desk and a final guard who's talking to him, then grabs one and drags him into the elevator to use his authorization to open the penthouse door. Doesn't work. Meanwhile Seth has pissed his guys off enough that they draw tazers and threaten him. He still doesn't co-operate, so they taze the shit out of him. That gets him to do what they say for a moment. He gets down. Then Shadow's elevator dings open, with one of their security guys slumped unconscious inside. He tried to bluff his way out of the situation and fails epicly. So one of them calls the cops while the other tries to shoot him full of darts.

It pretty much went down hill from there. Only interesting fact that came to light during their escape was that Seth is a mage. Yeah, he didn't bother to mention that. Anyway, they get out in one piece though the entire thing is on Mytube with close to a thousand hits before they've even left the building.

Now Seth is 19. Just a kid. He did something stupid, sure, but he's a teenager. It's built in. Shadow is 40, AKA OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER! He should have reined in Seth before things got too far.

Anyway, now I have to find a way to salvage this situation.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 29 2013, 12:11 PM

08/12/2070.

Okay, we have a plan. Cops are all over the place and security are under the spotlight. Fortunately nothing was stolen, no-one was killed, and the only real property damage was some damage to a chain-link fence in the carpark, so the cops aren't really putting that much effort into this case. We can use this.

The security contractor is Parashield. Sarah is hacking their systems right now. Plan is to use the incident as an excuse to send a couple of inspectors in to assess the building's security setup. With luck, we will be those inspectors.

09/12/2070.

It took an hour, but we've got the card. We are good to go.

10/12/2070.

We're done. In spite of some rocky patches we completed the mission, we've been payed, and Mr Brax seems to be happy with our work. All in all, a good day.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 29 2013, 02:44 PM

Don't you just love it when your teamies decide to go pink mohawk while you're counting on them to be blackhat and mirrorshades?


Good work on salvaging a Charlie Foxtrot, though. I think these guys really would prefer full pink mohawkery, though.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 30 2013, 05:47 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Sep 29 2013, 10:44 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Oct 6 2013, 03:39 PM

11/12/2070.
Big pay day yesterday. First priority: new shoes. I've decided to try going native with fashion, starting with the feet and working my way up. After seeing some of the more... extreme designs originating around here I've decided to start conservatively. I mean, http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/users16/lipglossgrrrl/default/japanese-shoe-fashions-5--large-msg-120569257093.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wEai2kFHwxo/SNmKYZSLvLI/AAAAAAAACFE/ZjURBDgRwUA/s400/japan6.jpg
Naturally I bought some anyway in case they're needed for some social occasion or other, but I'm mainly looking for practical designs for day-to-day wear. As for the rest... well, let's just say Japanese fashion is too vast a subject for me to get more than the smallest sampling of it in my time here so far. Of course it doesn't help that I limit myself to ballistic resistant cloth and hesitate to wear anything that doesn't cover my vital organs, but that still leaves me with a vast selection to choose from.

I suppose I should also look into getting some new cyberware too. Once I finish my clothes shopping.

12/12/2070.
One thing I dislike about Japan is the inability to accessorize properly. I feel naked without a pistol by my side, and a tazer just isn't the same. I'm considering picking up a sword since they seem to be all the rage around here, but it's impossible to find one that goes with all my outfits. That means either I need to get several swords, one for each outfit, or simply go with a concealable weapon chosen purely for practicality.

I'm going with option two for now. My trusty combat knife will suffice for now, and it's not like I plan on getting into close combat if I can avoid it.

Also, I've managed to find a good street doc and get some new 'ware. I've replaced my reaction enhancers with a name brand version, and added some decent cyberears to boot. I made sure to get a dampener, considering Shadow's inordinate fondness for flash-bang grenades.

13/12/2070.
Found a great sushi restaurant a few blocks up from our apartment. Never been a fan of sushi before, but the stuff they serve here is really nice.

15/12/2070.
I met an arms dealer today. He had a beautiful Ruger Warhawk in stock, and it was calling to me. I mean, I know it can't be silenced. I know it can only fire six shots before I need to reload it. I know it's horrifically illegal to own here in Japan... but none of that matters. I absolutely had to have it.

18/12/2070.
Got a job today. Some pirates pissed off the wrong person, and we've been hired to take them down. It's one of the simplest runs I've been involved in: Go in, kill everyone, sail their boat in for the fixer to resell.
As part of this we've made a new friend. Dr Wu the alchemist was kind enough to supply us with the preparations we need for the operation, though to be honest I'm not really that comfortable relying on magic like this. I'm not that comfortable being honest like this, either.
Insertion is by air. We're currently flying to our target, and once we reach them we'll bail out and activate these spells. I really hope they work as advertised. Also, Shadow bought his mutt along. Five Nuyen says it won't jump out of the plane.

Voyage home.
Well, as they say in the industry: never work with children or animals. We landed safely and stealthily, complements of some preparations that made us invisible. Seth used a spell to give the two guys who might spot us sea sickness, then Shadow landed on one axe-first and Seth tipped the other one over the side. So far, so good. Unfortunately, once Shadow's hound caught the scent of blood it abandoned stealth for an altogether less subtle attack: It set the nearest pirate on fire. It's a hell hound, so that kind of thing is expected.

Anyway, one long battle full of more magic than I care to remember (seriously, I think about 5 spirits got involved at various times. Having two Shamans face off is not something you want to get in the middle of!) we managed to get out of it all in more or less one piece. The puppy got its ass handed to it by a spirit, but fortunately it doesn't look fatal. Seth's last spirit seemed to like him and he said something or other about a binding. All I know is that when we pulled into dock and I went down to the shamanic sanctum to check on him he was out cold. I suppose that spirits tend to get a bit irked when you try to enslave them, not that I can blame them in the slightest. I'm not sure Seth views it that way, of course.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Oct 6 2013, 06:21 PM

Wow. Sounds like you had a blast. Seriously, though, how did Seth get a hellhound to agree to a paradrop?



My game didn't go off. More than half were no-shows, and I have a huge battle lined up for my players, since the last four or five games running have been nothing but straight roleplay.

Posted by: FuelDrop Oct 7 2013, 01:34 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Oct 7 2013, 02:21 AM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Oct 9 2013, 10:01 PM

Looks like Sarah's player will be GMing the next session. should be interesting

Posted by: FuelDrop Oct 13 2013, 12:39 PM

23/12/2070.
Two days till Christmas. All my gift shopping is done, but my attempts to find some top-end augmentation for myself continue to be thwarted. Probably because of the sheer number of shoppers making a proper search all but impossible.
Anyway, I've gotten Shadow a new collar for Fido, some new shoes for Sarah, and a nice jacket for Seth. Synthleather. Anyway, I have no idea where he's gotten to at this point, as I've just gotten a call from Sarah. She wanted everyone to meet up for a job. I suggested the sushi place down the block.

8:00 am.
So, our Horizon Johnson got a family member kidnapped, payed the ransom, and got them back. Now he's sending us after the ransom money and a bit of revenge on the side. The credstick was bugged so we have a general location, though they jammed it before we could get a lead to their base. That gives us a ten mile radius area of sub-tokyo to search. The gang calls themselves the Sewer Rats and according to Sarah they're infamous for chemical weapons and booby traps.

Hours upon hours of searching through booby-trapped sewers? Yeah, no thanks. Shadow said he'd check out the subway while I talked to some people, maybe find out a bit more about our targets. Sarah can deal with the christmas customers stocking up on supplies for the expedition.

8:30 am.
Shadow went to the abandoned subway and spotted a bum buying drugs. The bum spotted him, so he pummeled him with full auto gel from his assault rifle. I feel sorry for that bum. Then he tracked down the drug dealer. I get called in to interrogate and, to no-one's surprise, he doesn't know anything we need. Amazing, some random picked up from a shady deal doesn't know anything about a gang that happens to operate somewhere in a nearby district. I am shocked.

10:00 am.
after a morning of making friends and being my normal awesome self I've run across Michael Garrot. He's a kid dwarf who fancies himself a shadowrunner, but more importantly he's been hired by a rival gang to take down the sewer rats. I tell him to meet us for dinner, we'll discuss working together.

7:30 pm.
Michael scrubs up nice. Still no idea why he's picked a western name since as far as I can tell he's a local, but whatever. Maybe it's to cause confusion for people trying to track him down. Anyway, we work out a plan and basically set it up so that we'll cut him in on our payday if he'll cut us in on his. Why is he worth that much as an ally? Well, he's managed to wrangle his way into the gang we're trying to take down and can give us an exact rundown of their forces, their current location, and its defenses pretty much earn him that paycheck in my book. Admit it, I did better than Shadow managed skulking around in the sewers all day. The man has had two showers so far and he still reeks. In other words, nothing new.

Ok, I retract that. The showers are a new development.

Posted by: FuelDrop Oct 13 2013, 01:22 PM

24/12/2070.
Bit more recon. The gang has apparently holed up under a dive bar, and there are some hints that the sewer rats leader is hanging out there. According to Michael he's not really the type to spend his time chilling with his chummers in the gang. Or maybe he can't stand the smell. Can't blame him on that one. Anyway, despite my best efforts I can't talk my way past the bouncer (A dive bar with a bouncer? That's new.), but Sarah was able to walk in without difficulty. Then again, who's going to stop a troll? She gets line of sight to the target and we begin phase 2, a classic half-pincer movement.

AKA, a frontal assault. Who the heck trained Shadow?

Fortunately we'd set up a distraction attack on one of their strongest defenses: a smoke grenade, a disposable jammer, and a cap gun. All set up to go off remotely, of course. Plan was to activate that then hit them from one of their weak points. We'd go in, slit the guards throats, then hit their defenses from a flank. All that? out the window. Why? Well one of the guards spots us and tries to gas us. Both Shadow and I are wearing sealed suits (because A: we know these guys love their gas and B: We're in the sewers, you damn well bet I'm wearing a sealed suit.), so the initial effects are negligible. I chase down the second guard and taze him while Shadow deals with the first guy.
Note: Tazer + wet environment + me in a sealed, rubberized suit = bad news for the target.
Anyway, I've barely turned the corner when I hear a massive explosion behind me. Turns out Seth had pulled out a lighter and the gas from the grenade was flammable. I am so glad I got that dampener ear-ware.

At that point our initial tactic was pretty much blown. Michael contacted us and informed us that the gang was heading for their fallback position, so we put plan B into operation.

Long story short, this gang was full of nutcases far too grenade happy for their own good. Past tense. They managed to blow themselves up during the fight and would have taken us with them if it hadn't turned out that Michael was a mage.
A fact he had neglected to mention to us up till now.

What, do I have some weird 'teenage protege mage runner who hides his true power' magnet hidden somewhere? I've found 2 over the past two months.

Anyway, with all that out of the way it's Christmas eve. I've disinfected and bandaged all of my wounds, taken two showers and a bath, and now I am going to go outside and celebrate.

Merry Christmas to all. Hopefully I'm flush enough on karma that Santa won't give me coal this year.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Oct 13 2013, 03:53 PM

That was awesome, FD.

Posted by: FuelDrop Oct 20 2013, 01:23 PM

25/12/2070.
Yay! Christmas!
The day where I prefer not to kill anyone. I mean, normally killing people is distasteful but it's something that I'll do for pay. On Christmas... well, I actually hate working Christmas if I can avoid it.

This year it looks like I can't avoid it. One of Sarah's online friends has gotten themselves in a bit of a jam, and has come to us for help. He's a decker who goes by the handle of NetBlaze, and his sister has been kidnapped. He can't afford to pay us (Seriously? If my job routinely risked me getting my brain fried I'd hold out for as much cash as I could), but he says he'll work it off with us. Normally that wouldn't fly with me but, well, Christmas.

Also, He barely speaks English. Not a problem, except that Seth barely speaks Japanese. Oh, and the kid spent most of the meet listening to music from his headphones rather than paying attention so NetBlaze hacked them and started changing up his playlist a bit.

So we all go and start gathering intel. Sarah gets a photo of the kidnapping. NB gets a line on a Yak stronghold where we might find more info. I talk to some people and discover that she's not the only person who's gone missing in the last few days. Seth's spirit finds a bunch of magical defenses mucking up the trail. Shadow gets a bite from Fido and has to get rushed to hospital. Brush your abomination against nature's teeth more often and not only would you not have to worry about infection when it bites you but WE won't have to deal with the thing's horrible breath!

So the logical course of action is to sneak in and drain the Yak server, pinpointing our target and readying us for the next stage of the plan.

It starts off so well. NB hacks the external cameras, brings up blueprints, the usual Decker stuff. Everyone decides that the fire escape is the best way in, so we climb up there under the concealment of one of Seth's pet spirits. Things start to go wrong when we hit our first obstacle: a closed door. No handle on the outside (Gee, who'd have thought that someone might make it impossible to get IN through the fire escape while at the same time making it easy to get OUT? Fire safety that isn't a massive hole in security? who'd have thought it possible?!?), so NB decides to trip a fire alarm to unlock the fire escapes without, you know, actually sounding the alarm. I wouldn't think that sort of thing is possible, but I'm not a Decker so what would I know?

It turns out that NB isn't as hot as he likes to think he is and he trips an alarm. Everything from then on went down hill, but that's a long story. Cutting to the chase: NB in hospital in critical condition. Building destroyed inside by grenades. Big hole in outside where someone drove in an Ares Roadmaster. Run has to be scrubbed due to lack of leads.

Is it just me, or has every charity-style run we've been on recently ended in a complete disaster? Oh well, at least we tried to do the right thing for once. I dunno, maybe we're just out of practice or something.

Posted by: Cobalt Blue Oct 20 2013, 03:09 PM

Wildly entertaining, thanks for writing it

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Oct 20 2013, 03:11 PM

FD: For future reference, you may want to bear in mind that det cord and a silence spell are sometimes more subtle than hacking.

Or a silence spell and a circular saw. Most security set-ups that aren't AAA mega wouldn't think to monitor the whole door for damage, just to see whether it's open or not. Funny thing, a door which has had a human-sized hole cut in the middle of it still registers as a shut door on most security systems.

Posted by: Erik Baird Oct 20 2013, 04:52 PM

Sounds like Seth needs a chipjack and a Linguasoft.

Posted by: FuelDrop Oct 27 2013, 01:57 PM

Due to real life interfering there will be no update to the diary this week. sorry all.

Posted by: Grak Oct 31 2013, 05:07 AM

Dang it Fuel. Don't your players know they are letting down a captive audience?

Hanging out for the next one. Your posts usually make my Monday.

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 3 2013, 01:32 PM

01/01/2071.

A new year, a new mission. Our Horizon Johnson contacted us and told us we needed to get a confession from some street trash by the name of Kiyoshi Takahashi to doing something nasty with Ikemoto as his partner in crime. The main challenge, if you can call it that, is finding the guy.

We do a bit of research and find out that young Takahashi has been a VERY naughty boy. Sarah also finds the address of his elderly mother. Not bad for sitting around the table eating lunch. So Shadow goes off to set up some cameras for surveillance on the old lady's house and we start kicking around ideas, Shadow keeping in touch over comms. He makes the first suggestion: Drive Sarah's road master through the house, killing the mother then nabbing her son at the funeral.

I have an objection to killing anyone I'm not being paid to at the best of times, and offing a defenseless old woman to get to her deadbeat son is morally repugnant to me. However, making the target come to us has possibilities...

Next idea, after some group input: acquire a body at the morgue, kidnap mom Kiyoshi, leave body in her place, burn house down (making it look like an accident), have Sarah switch dental records, nab son at funeral. Seth jokingly suggested skipping steps 1 through 3 and just burning the place down with mom in it. He's just lucky I knew he was joking.

So now there's the question of the best way to get a defenseless old lady to open the door to strangers. My first suggestion was that Sarah and I go to the door: Sarah is the girl Takahashi knocked up, I'm her lawyer there to serve a paternity suit. Sarah seemed a bit less than thrilled with that, so I said that it'd work just as well with me pregnant and her as my lawyer. Eventually we decide to go in as delivery people, using a large crate to get the body in and kidnapped mom out without raising suspicions.

So I'm off to the morgue to pick up a body while the guys go and pick up a crate big enough to hold a body.

03/01/2071.

Plan has gone off without a hitch so far. It took me about a day to find both a body that fitted our needs and a mortician willing to look the other way. We talked our way in easily enough, took our target's mom out with a single shot from my tazer, then set it up so the fire would start after about an hour. Sarah pulled out all the stops and it'll look like the gas was left on when some wiring shorted out, starting the blaze. She's set up mom with a drip and enough slab on slow tap to keep her out of it until we're done, and she says there'll be no permanent damage. She assures me she knows what she's talking about, she once dated a physician! Very comforting.

05/01/2071.

Job done. We approached our target as representatives of his mother's estate and convinced him that he needed to come with us to our offices to clear up a few minor matters for his considerable inheritance. He was suspicious, hardly surprising considering how his mother was living, but we convinced him that most of the money was due to her taking out a life insurance policy while he was in prison. This guy had been cooking his brain with something the night before so he wasn't exactly sharp, and with Seth providing the distraction we managed to get him to sign a confession to helping Ikemoto burn down his mother's house in revenge for kicking him out without reading it first. Then, we got him to make us a voice key by making him answer some 'routine questions', giving Sarah all she needed to get a verbal confession to... well, pretty much anything we wanted.

The finale? We told him that there was a final, minor hurdle which he would need to discuss with our associate and dropped him off with directions to the room where his mother had woken up about 5 minutes ago. The reaction shot when he got up there would be on PPV if we didn't need to keep this whole thing low key.

Mr Johnson was very happy with the results and gave us the next mission right away: install a program on a secure, hard-wire only server surrounded by elite SWAT-type security forces in a crowded train station.

06/01/2071.

Sarah has given herself a position in the Mitsuhama payroll and accounting office across town, worked a shift, and found the chief admin for the target system. Now all we need to do is get to his commlink and upload an agent with the program. It'll hide, then covertly install the package next time our admin jacks in to work. He'll be tough to get to, but it'll be easier than cracking station security.

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 3 2013, 01:35 PM

Did you know I only buy adventures for the initial pitch and conclusion, because my players manage to bypass pretty much all of the premade adventure more often than not?

I didn't either. Seriously, I don't think I need a spoiler warning after all as they don't actually do any of the stuff the module expects them to!

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Nov 3 2013, 04:19 PM

Setting up the street trash like that - hilarious. I just hope the insurance on Mom Takahashi's doss will cover it. Rendering an old woman destitute to fuck with her son is only slightly less abominable than straight-up geeking her.

FD: My players have been that way, too. They managed to tick most of the locations for "On the Run," but usually at different times, and definitely in different ways.

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 3 2013, 11:05 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Nov 4 2013, 12:19 AM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 10 2013, 02:48 PM

07/01/2071.

Okay. Our target is male, single, and likes cruising for chicks at exclusive clubs. I've got this.
Sarah put an agent and the program on a data chip, and assures me that all I have to do is plug it into his commlink and next time he logs in for work the virus gets uploaded and we get paid.
Simple. We even know where he's likely to go tonight after work. I'll be going in alone, get him talking, pick his pocket and slip the chip into his commlink.

Later.

No one is hearing of this. Ever.
First things first. Getting into an exclusive club wasn't any problem, a smile and a wink was all I needed to convince the bouncer I belonged. It was actually rather nice to be able to wear my new outfits to work. I was a little out of practice with my high heels, but I got back in the swing of things fairly quickly. It didn't take long for me to find my target, and getting a guy who's looking for a quick hook-up to talk to a beautiful woman isn't exactly hard. I think the tailored pheromones were just overkill. Anyway, before I tried to pick his pocket I noticed that he had a datajack hidden at the nape of his neck. The signal scanner in my handbag confirmed it: Internal Commlink.

I had a few drinks with him as I tried to work out how to get past this sudden hurdle... which was a bad idea in retrospect. Alcohol goes to right my head and he'd been biosculped to be pretty cute. I'm not going to go into specifics but I'll confirm that he had been augmented down there as well. It took a while to tire him out, but eventually he fell asleep and I managed to upload the program. I just hope no-one notices that I'm a bit off kilter tomorrow.

08/01/2071.

Now I've heard everything. Seth got contacted by one of his friends on the other side last night, an american spirit who goes by Runs-Like-Wind. It was acting as an agent for the NAN who wanted him to recover an artifact that was recently stolen from Seattle museum before it could be returned to them. So the group decided to pull the job without me.

They spent a lot of time brainstorming and Sarah says they went through about a dozen plans before finally coming up with one they thought would work. Now apparently there wasn't much intel to gather, as the target was in the middle of an AAA area and any major intelligence work was too risky.
Remember that.
The information that they did get included a basic layout of the grounds, along with a hint that there were hellhounds on site and that Renraku was providing security.

So the plan was for an earth elemental to create a small cave beneath the basement and ferry the group into it (Bringing their own air supply with them), then have Seth cast a silence spell to cover the sound of Sarah's jackhammer. This worked well enough and they found themselves climbing up into the security center for the main house. Luckily, the only person there was jacked in and thus hadn't noticed the silent jackhammer... okay, that is something I never expected to say. A bit of slab and Sarah was free to replace her. It was at this point they find out that "Renraku security" means Red Fricking Samurai.

Well, they manage to get to the target, deal with the security, and grab it. At that point 2 Red Sammies came up on a routine patrol. Seth turned invisible and Shadow hid in the... shadows. Huh. However, the theft was noticed and one Red Sam went to help check the perimeter while the other stayed behind to investigate.

Long story short they quickly twigged that Sarah wasn't the real admin and a spirit spotted Seth, forcing a fight. 2 on 1, our guys striking with surprise... Seth almost died and Shadow was heavily wounded before they managed to knock the guy out. They bailed and managed to get out alive... just.

What I had to do last night might have been a bit degrading, but I suppose that getting nearly killed by Red Sams was probably worse.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Nov 10 2013, 10:56 PM

Ha-hahahahaaaaaaah!

Bloody hilarious, that is. Keep up the good work!

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 10 2013, 11:00 PM

Last session they bypassed my plans, to the point where I had to call the session early so I could spend the week rewriting the run to fit in with their new tactics.
First thing they did this week? Find a way to completely avoid the run I had set up.

That's a derailment within a derailment. I didn't even know that was possible. The entire session was thus improvised, and was possibly the best session I've ever GMed.

Also, those red sammies are badass.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Nov 10 2013, 11:58 PM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Nov 10 2013, 06:00 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 11 2013, 12:31 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Nov 11 2013, 07:58 AM)

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Nov 11 2013, 02:24 AM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Nov 10 2013, 07:31 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 11 2013, 02:38 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Nov 11 2013, 10:24 AM)

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Nov 11 2013, 03:12 AM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Nov 10 2013, 09:38 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 11 2013, 04:54 AM

I think we have a contender if we go for a hormonal balance issue being a factor: At the same time as she got the Cerebral booster she got a sleep regulator. I think that's the most likely implant to screw with your body chemistry short of something like an adrenal booster.

Also, would her damage compensators (which she's had for a while) have an effect on her decision making, particularly in regards to risk assessment?

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Nov 11 2013, 05:28 AM

FuelDrop: It's whatever you want it to be.

It could be any of those. It could be none of them. It could be them being a convenient scapegoat for her to let loose and do the things she wants to do but didn't previously.

Posted by: DWC Nov 11 2013, 04:54 PM

It's also possible that a massive increase in cognitive power would lead to a surge of dispassionate hyper-rational thought processes. In time, I could see the mind finding a new balance between the new hyper-streamlined thought processes and the older ones. While it doesn't mean the person is temporarily crazy, it might look that way to plenty of onlookers.

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 17 2013, 06:15 AM

15/01/2071.
Busy week. I've managed to spend most of the money I've been saving up on some new augmentation, specifically the Mnemonic Enhancer I've been chasing for the last month and a half. Stupid Christmas rush.
Anyway, the other big news is that Sarah has finally managed to get her hands on the Steel Lynx she's been chasing. She's asked me if I can get my hands on a Panther XXL Assault Cannon fitted for drone mounting and some ammunition to go with it. That fight with the Red Sammies shook her up something fierce, hence the push for new hardware.

20/01/2071.
I am good. Despite the fact that ALL guns are illegal around here I've still managed to locate a supplier who can get one in, slightly used but otherwise in good condition. Apparently the previous owner died from a bad case of nanite failure, poor sod.

There was a funny smell of fish coming from the crate that hung around after I dropped it off. Sarah was good enough to spring for a new air freshener.

(OOC: Half the group were no-shows so we did some housekeeping and called the session early. )

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Nov 18 2013, 03:10 PM

Ouch. Sorry to hear that, FD.

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 24 2013, 07:19 AM

21/02/2071.

10 AM.

Someone's posted a bounty on the head of a gang shifting drugs and beetles in downtown Neo-Tokyo. Probably not the Yaks as they deal with this sort of thing in house, so might be a rival gang or some private citizen trying to clean up the streets. Whatever. The bounty is 50K and specifies that the death has to send a message, so based on my research into gang politics around here I'm going to guess that there are two organizations trying to shift product in the area, the Yaks have come along and said "One of you now works for us, the other is gone. Decide among yourselves which is which."
Or not. What matters is that Sarah and Shadow reckon it's a way to make a quick buck and want me in on it. Seth's busy doing some magic meditation or something so can't be with us on this one, but I suppose that shamans must need extra downtime to appease the spirits or something.
I almost decided to sit this one out, as Sarah and Shadow seem dead set on using explosives to make sure the message is heard. In the end I agreed to come along just to prevent any collateral damage.

1 PM.

Sarah's spent the last 3 hours searching the matrix for details on our target, and has found 3 leads. Each of us is suiting up to stake out one location, see if we can get a positive ID on where the target lives ect. The three possibilities are all apartments, with the first adjacent to a shopping mall, the second next to a girls collage and the third on the outskirts of the area, up near a courier depot. Sarah says she can handle the first one, and Shadow suggested that he could dress up as a Japanese school girl to infiltrate the second one. After the mental image of that scarred me for life and left me wondering why in the world I got these mnemonic enhancers I told him no, just no, and sent him to keep an eye on the third location while I handled the second one.

3 PM.

Sarah managed to get herself arrested again. She was careless with her hacking or something and apparently GOD backtraced her. I didn't even realize she was religious. Anyway, her Lone Star contact got her to drive to where they had jurisdiction rather than the real cops and then arrested her with much fanfare. Luckily, that area is Horizon property so our Johnson should be able to bail her out for a favor owed and a new SIN (her old one will be hanging out in the system padding out LS's arrest numbers for this quarter). I don't think she's getting paid for our next run for that guy.
Shadow's managed to tail his target's girlfriend to the mall and is looking into kidnapping her for interrogation. I have my doubts that this is going to work...
I've managed to talk my way inside my target's apartment, have a chat with him (it turns out he's a lieutenant for the gang we're after, not the boss) and convinced him to set up a meeting with his boss for a large transaction of novacoke, 5k worth with payment in corp script for tomorrow. Provided no-one else screws up we should be able to pull this off then. I love a clean assassination.

3:30 PM.

Shadow's plan worked about as well as you can expect doping someone with slab in a changing room and whisking them away in a wheelchair through a crowded mall to work: not at all. He didn't get the target, got shot up by some police rotor drones, got his SIN tagged, and generally had a bad time of it. He ended up getting away but he's had to burn that ID and he's got some nasty bruises from the experience. He should just be glad that the drones were packing gel.

Considering the setbacks the others are considering holding off until we've got better intel and less heat but some of my contacts have let me know that there are other teams going after this bounty too, and they're rookies who don't care about civilians getting caught in the line of fire. We have to get this done, and get it done ASAP to prevent innocents from becoming collateral.

22/01/2071.

Mission accomplished. One briefcase with a false bottom, one kg high-end explosives hermetically sealed and hidden inside said false bottom, 5 grand in corpscript notes, and one hell of a lot of sweet talking to convince the boss that I was, in fact, on the level. eventually he bought it and we traded suitcases, then when he reached the car Sarah hit the button. The car was one of those armoured Rovers that riggers love so much, and it contained the explosion fairly well. Well enough to ensure that no-one outside it got hurt, anyway. It was still pretty impressive to watch and netted us the full bounty plus a bonus, so all's well that ends well, right?

Now all that's left is to work out what to do with 500 doses of Novacoke...

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Nov 24 2013, 07:39 AM

Sounds like you had fun.


I have not been having fun.

I've been locking horns with my Shadowrun GM over information technologies for three fucking hours now.

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 24 2013, 07:42 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Nov 24 2013, 03:39 PM)

Sounds like you had fun.


I have not been having fun.

I've been locking horns with my Shadowrun GM over information technologies for three fucking hours now.

Posted by: Grak Nov 25 2013, 03:28 AM

Hey Fuel,

How did the cranial bomb assist Miss Sarah? I'm fuzzy on why she chose to get arrested and drove herself to lone star, could the girl have slipped into friendly horizon territory avoiding police jurisdiction or simply hidden in a bolt-hole?

Tell me you showed Shadow the picture "old fat guy in a sailor moon outfit". It's a perfect example of how badly he was about to fuck up the schoolgirl mission.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Nov 25 2013, 05:38 AM

Well, my Sunday Star Wars game concluded today. Today was a battle day, and the first space combat of this incarnation of Knights of the New Republic. My players were stretched thin in a bunch of stolen pace transports with a stolen Q-Ship, and launched from a pirate port ahead of the angry pirates who weren't happy that they took the ships without paying... Or that they blew up the rest of the pirate shipworks.

I threw three space transports at them - a YT-2000 with modifications, a KR-TB Doomtreader modified to be as tough as possible, and a Firespray-31 with no modifications, just a missile launcher and its cannons. It took them a while to hammer those down, long enough for an incoming hostile: an Imperial Customs Corvette and its two TIE fighters and TIE bombers. I thought they were going to lose their Gozanti cruiser (a Q-ship corvette, powerful and well-gunned, but the very definition of SLOOOOOOW,) to the bombers and enemy corvette.

They took out the bombers, with the Gozanti at sufficiently low hit points that I gave it even odds of surviving one more full salvo from the enemy corvette. The player's primary space transport, the one they had begun this mission aboard, was being piloted by a 15-year-old NPC (under the control of a PC at the time,) and I figured I'd give them some more rope to hang themselves with, so I had her turn to the player character of the player controlling her and say "That thing has landing bays, right?"

One incredible piloting roll at a stupidly high penalty later (and one hilariously botched piloting roll on the part of the corvette's pilot,) and the player's transport was upside-down inside the hostile corvette, having punched a proton torpedo set to remote detonation mode through the back wall of the hangar into the ordnance magazine, and were holding the corvette hostage with the threat of blowing them all to living hell. Following that up with an incredible Persuasion check to demand their surrender... And they captured the hostile corvette.

I'm afraid to put my players in the same battle map as a Star Destroyer. I legitimately fear they will attempt to take the motherfucker over. And succeed.

Posted by: FuelDrop Nov 25 2013, 05:53 AM

QUOTE (Grak @ Nov 25 2013, 11:28 AM)

Posted by: Grak Nov 27 2013, 03:40 AM

You'd be well in the clear saying no respectable Japanese business stocks clothing fit for a creature from the land of the dead.


Wait a minute... Shadow has one essence?
Wouldn't there be psychological issues cropping up around that? The story about the 2nd hand cyber junkie in spells and chrome comes to mind.

Posted by: DWC Nov 27 2013, 04:26 AM

With the Emperor rolling back some of the anti-metahuman policies, isn't it possible that there are some clothing stores starting to cater to elves and possibly even orks, opening the way to clothing on the rack for 2 meter tall individuals?

Posted by: Grak Nov 27 2013, 08:49 AM

Yeah, There would likely be specialty stores or sympathetic corps with a full range in regular shops but the Japanacorps? those that that buy into the Yamato-Damashii decree. They ain't budging.

Here's my reasoning.
Unfortunately Japan has a long history of discrimination in this regard and while they have made some efforts through lawful mitigation the heart of the problem persists in the mentality of the populace. These are the people that shipped off their loved ones to an island of monsters, it's going to take time to accept not only how wrong such an action was but also to accept the blow to their honour as well.

Even today there are Japanese businesses and housing complexes that refuse foreigners, how do you think they are going to feel about the warped kin who are no longer Japanese? How will they react to the shame of having their mythological demons return to the family? If it follows the modern example the pure Japanese will manifest a polite rejection. Clothing lines will not cater to Metas, vehicles and utilities will be set to Japanese human standards, tariffs will be higher on Metas and certain stores will outright refuse them entry... Then again, this is Shadowrun. Maybe it's much worse.

Posted by: FuelDrop Dec 1 2013, 09:45 AM

29/01/2071.

Well here's a blast from the past! Guess who called up with a job for us today? Nitro!
Yes, I'm as surprised as you are... This is a diary, in theory I'm the only one who's going to read this. Wow, this just got very meta.
Anyway, we met up with Nitro and got picked up by a Mitsubishi Nightsky with our client inside.

The job is simple. We're to assault a Renraku Aqualogy developing new weapons for Terracotta Armaments, then set it up to look like Ares was responsible. The pay is a little light (I managed to talk Mr Lee up to 155k, with 50 grand upfront), particularly for a job that looks like it'll involve going up against the Red Samurai, but with luck we'll be able to make away with some prototype weapons which'll pick up a decent price.

Night.

Part one of the plan is being able to frame Ares. Since we're going to need some toys for the job anyway it's time to go shopping... by which I mean stealing. Sarah managed to find a shipment of goods from Ares which includes several cases of commercial grade explosives and a whole bundle of armored diving suits. I'm sure they won't miss a couple. We aced sneaking in with Sarah running matrix overwatch and got out again before anyone realized we were there (That lockpicking practice payed off again! No padlock is safe from me!!!).

30/01/2071.

That... could have gone better.

From the beginning: We loaded up with gear and swum out to the target, keeping to the ocean floor and hiding in the seaweed to prevent anyone noticing our approach. Unfortunately... it didn't. We got ambushed by 4 red sammies about 300m from the target. Sarah got cut up pretty bad and we had to abort.
(NOTE: When you need a sword adept AND a cyborg universal soldier to gang up on EACH enemy one at a time to defeat them, you are out of your league. Run away.)
I managed to kite two of them with my Warhawk (Semi-automatic guns jam after 1 shot if used underwater. Not an issue with my revolver, but the effective range of 3-4 meters didn't help in the slightest.) and Shadow managed to get a good hit with his harpoon gun... unfortunately, it was on ME! I'm just lucky we got armored diving gear rather than standard stuff.
End result: A nasty sword wound to the calf, a bruise where my teammate almost harpooned me, and the Red Samurai after our blood. Nitro managed to kill 1 of the four, while the rest were merely knocked out. Since all our gear was Ares the false flag part of the operation was technically a success so we got to keep the down payment. I'm currently sitting outside a street doc's operating room waiting to see if Sarah's going to pull through. Apparently it's very touch and go right now.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Dec 1 2013, 10:52 AM

Wow.

That's the sort of job where traditionally you tell Mr. Johnson "Thank you, but no thank you. You're not offering us enough to commit suicide. Come back when you have an order of magnitude more nuyen on hand."

Posted by: FuelDrop Dec 1 2013, 11:07 AM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Dec 1 2013, 06:52 PM)

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Dec 1 2013, 11:31 AM

QUOTE (FuelDrop @ Dec 1 2013, 06:07 AM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Dec 1 2013, 11:47 AM

Most of my sessions are improv. It means that less of my planning time is wasted when things go off the rails...
Or like tonight, when my plan got scrapped due to an unexpected player rocking up. Well, it keeps life interesting

I didn't even get to use the bounty hunters I have gunning for shadow. next time, next time...

PS if anyone has pregened characters for use as bounty hunters, would be happy to use them.

Posted by: FuelDrop Dec 3 2013, 04:38 AM

Due to the general busyness around this time of year, the game is going to be somewhat intermittent over the next month or so. sorry guys.

Posted by: FuelDrop Dec 29 2013, 09:23 AM

06/02/2071.

I'm trying not to panic here.
Get a grip, from the beginning.
Okay, I just got home from a shopping trip. Sweet set of new guns came in from my local black market dealer recently so I was thrilled. Now I'm home and everyone's vanished. We live fairly private lives normally and each have our own apartments, sure, but this is different. I've tried calling around to see if something's come up but no-one's answering, we've got three 'town' vehicles missing, and according to the apartment registry they all left hours ago.

I mean for normal people this isn't a big deal. For shadowrunners...

Anyway, I've got a sensor tag on Shadow's bike. Nothing special, I just don't really trust Shadow. He's a mercenary, and I want some warning when he decides to cash in on the group's bounty. It was being jammed but I followed its last known location to a warehouse in the docks district. Not being a complete moron I payed a homeless guy a couple of nuyen to go in and check it out for me. Since the place didn't explode I figured it was probably alright to poke around, so I put on a gas mask and went inside.

Nothing.

So I looked around outside. Sure enough, tire prints that match the three missing vehicles. This was looking suspicious, so I put in a few calls and found myself a private investigator. He came around and I told him that I was the owner of this warehouse and some people had broken in. He's poking around right now, I should have some answers by tomorrow.

07/02/2071.

Results came back from my PI. Looks like there was a trace residue of neurostun left on the inside of the building. I thanked him for his time and payed him, then started hitting up my contacts to find out what had happened.
Some hacked street cameras revealed that whoever was behind this had already thought of that angle as the relevant files were deleted. The Warehouse belongs to Ares, but is currently not in use (It was being used to house some kind of new assault rifle, the Excalibur or something, but apparently the project was a bust and the weapons got carted away to be recycled).
Luckily for me one of my smuggler contacts keeps a couple of blimp drones in the area and they pinged the black vans of the kidnappers. Another decker friend did some work and turned up that they belong to a shell company. He couldn't follow the trail beyond that, but a shell company means either organized crime or a mega doing dirtywork (well, dirtier work).
I'm hitting the streets to see if I can find another lead.

08/02/2071.

Project Lotus Eater. Even the name sounds ominous. I'm not sure who is bankrolling these guys or what their end-game is, but my new friend T3RRAtrax! tells me his team has gotten some good payouts recently picking up homeless people and shipping them off to these guys. The contract was supposed to be confidential and they only know who they were working for because they did some pretty hefty research into their employers before taking the job, but I'm good at convincing people to tell me things and after a couple of spiked drinks he wasn't really in any condition to resist my questioning. I called in yet more favors which I am not looking forwards to paying back, but hopefully it was worth it because as I write this I've replaced a new security guard who's being shipped out tonight for this mysterious project.

09/02/2071.

I'm on an island somewhere. The whole place is covered by a smart jamming field so no GPS or unauthorized communications are coming in or out. There's only one console which has access to the normal matrix, and the local grid is insanely powerful. It has to be, they're running a massive VR city for the hundreds of thousands of people they've kidnapped. I'm guessing here but I think they're mainly SINless and it looks like they're from a bunch of different cities. Still working on why these guys would take runners instead of more bums for whatever they're doing. It's going to take me forever to find the rest of the team, so I'll try and work out what the hell this whole thing is about while I'm at it.

10/02/2071.

I've got a hint on who's running this place. The bright red Samurai armour is pretty distinctive. Yes, we've managed to get involved with the red sammies AGAIN! This is insane, we can't have luck this bad! Anyway, that means there's good odds Renraku has their hand in this somewhere. Still no clue what's actually going on.

13/02/2071.

I've found them! That's the good news. The bad news is that I can't get a workable plan to actually get them out of here. So I'm going with plan B: wake them up and improvise from there. I've managed to send a message to Sarah's implanted link so she knows she's in VR, and I'm about to dump them out right now. I just hope this works.

Posted by: FuelDrop Jan 5 2014, 10:35 AM

13/02/2071.

We're away. I got everyone out of status and we slipped past security easily enough. Sarah managed to get the elevator working despite the security diagnostic, and we got to the surface safely. Sarah then managed to get herself spotted in spite of Seth's invisibility spell so we had a fight with the guards then bailed in one of the four-wheel-drives before reinforcements showed up.

At this point things started going badly. See, it turns out that the forest on this island is both awakened and extremely pissed at whatever's going on here so it's been tearing up the roads as fast as they can be laid down. So Sarah takes us off road and in spite of the thickness of the forest we get a good way before something rips the undercarriage a new one and brings us to a very definite stop. So we're stranded, it's getting close on night fall, and our only supplies are vendor wear, flack vests, a couple of pistols and whatever was in the car.
Quick inventory looks like some defoliant grenades, a flamethrower with a few cans of fuel, a survival kit with enough food to last us for the day tops, a medkit with enough supplies for two more uses, and a big drum of water. I wish I'd planned this out better.

Posted by: Grak Jan 9 2014, 09:03 AM

Hey Fuel, enjoy the break?

Man I hope next session opens with "Welcome to the Jungle. We've got fun 'n' games."
All aside, is there something in the jungle to facilitate an escape? I can't see runners staying in an awakened jungle for long without a way off that rock.

I wonder if they'll collect some magic sticks, could be some nuyen in it.

Posted by: FuelDrop Jan 9 2014, 09:57 AM

QUOTE (Grak @ Jan 9 2014, 05:03 PM)

Hey Fuel, enjoy the break?

Man I hope next session opens with "Welcome to the Jungle. We've got fun 'n' games."
All aside, is there something in the jungle to facilitate an escape? I can't see runners staying in an awakened jungle for long without a way off that rock.

I wonder if they'll collect some magic sticks, could be some nuyen in it.

Posted by: FuelDrop Jan 14 2014, 12:33 AM

13/02/2071.

Just survived an encounter with a nest of army ants and a pissed-off tree spirit. Down to one defoliant grenade and about half a tank of fuel for the flamethrower. We've stumbled on some random who was lost in the forest and Seth has vanished in the confusion. I believe the current plan is interrogate this guy then head to the coast.

Posted by: Grak Jan 14 2014, 03:04 AM

How are the batteries holding up? Always a concern in a survival situation.

Posted by: FuelDrop Jan 14 2014, 03:30 AM

QUOTE (Grak @ Jan 14 2014, 11:04 AM)

Posted by: Grak Jan 14 2014, 05:43 AM

Yeah, I got that feeling from the very short post.

Care to elaborate on what went screwy?

Posted by: FuelDrop Jan 14 2014, 08:07 AM

QUOTE (Grak @ Jan 14 2014, 01:43 PM)

Posted by: DMiller Jan 14 2014, 08:43 AM

FuelDrop, I had actually been avoiding this thread due to the thread title... Boy was that a mistake! This is awesome! Keep id going (as time and the group permits), it's a great read and you are a very good short story writer.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jan 14 2014, 09:14 AM

Glad your game survived the Holiday Clusterfuck, mate. My Star Wars game didn't. It's shelved.


OTOH, I am starting up an Eclipse Phase game.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Jan 14 2014, 02:51 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Jan 14 2014, 02:14 AM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Jan 15 2014, 02:47 AM

QUOTE (DMiller @ Jan 14 2014, 04:43 PM)

FuelDrop, I had actually been avoiding this thread due to the thread title... Boy was that a mistake! This is awesome! Keep id going (as time and the group permits), it's a great read and you are a very good short story writer.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jan 15 2014, 03:05 AM

QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ Jan 14 2014, 09:51 AM)

Emmmmmmm. Eclipse Phase...

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Jan 15 2014, 02:10 PM

QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Jan 14 2014, 08:05 PM)

Posted by: FuelDrop Jan 23 2014, 01:30 PM

Hey guys, sorry to do this but due to a rather impressive epic fail at GMing on my behalf combined with two new players entering the group Walker's campaign has come to an end.

However, a new campaign should be starting this weekend and I intend to log that in a similar fashion. The PC is likely going to be a weapon generalist (like a weapon specialist, but with every weapon ever invented) from bug city who's battling cancer thanks to the nuke (Already has 4 cyberlimbs due to having to replace infected arms and legs) and has managed to smuggle her brother out in order to get him proper medical attention. Am yet to do up the character in full so am flexible if someone posts another suggestion, but at this point am having trouble with coming up with a good name. I'm toying with the handle "Dead on arrival", but I think it lacks a certain zing.

Hopefully the new diary will be as good as this one, thank you all for reading it's been a wonderful ride.

Posted by: Sendaz Jan 23 2014, 01:37 PM

Duchess Nukem?

Posted by: FuelDrop Jan 23 2014, 01:40 PM

QUOTE (Sendaz @ Jan 23 2014, 09:37 PM)

Duchess Nukem?

Posted by: DWC Jan 23 2014, 05:38 PM

What happened? Accidentally kill all the PCs?

Posted by: FuelDrop Jan 23 2014, 08:59 PM

They feel there's no realistic way off the island, and even if there was the whole thing is too big for them to get away for long.