Life in the Barrens AAR, How did it come to pass? Options

[Yoan]

[FriendoftheDork]

[Yoan]

Off the top of my head, SR2 6 = SR4 5... but it gets iffy. ;)

[fumble]

10 in Firearms was awfully good in 2nd edition.
The maximum at character creation was 6, and that was the number of dice you were rolling (no attribute). You could use a "Combat Pool" to add dice to that, but no more than your skill index (so you could only double the number of dice you rolled, which would then leave you in rather bad a position to soak this damage).

Of course, what was awesome with Dumont (appart from his Michael Biehn in Abyss description), was the fact that he had 4 init passes per round (+3D6+6 to his init, in 2nd edition lingo).

The thing you want to keep in mind is that he didn't just have Wired Reflexes 3, he had Wired Reflexes 3 at a time when it was the ultimate State Of The Art 'ware, that cost half a million nuyens.
Similarly, all his 'ware was of a high enough quality to allow him to keep 0.1 Essence, even though his effective Essence index should be negative - back in the day, the concept of Alpha or Betaware was not so widespread as it is in 2070.

I suppose what I'm getting at is : Dumont should be awesome and a tremendously powerful Sam (most of the Elven Fire NPCs are tremendously powerful, actually...), with Synaptic Booster 3 (which is the current SOTA), Pistols 7 and the other combat active skills 6, and an insane amount of Cyber and Bio ware (with maxed out agility), with the Cyber-Psychosis quality from Augmentation.

Also, you might want to make a Mystic Adept of Green Lucifer (he's displayed Adept Powers in the recent low-quality novels). Mystic Adepts didn't exist at the time of Elven Fire...

Have fun, and keep us posted on Life in the Barrens.
Fumble.

[FriendoftheDork]

[Fortune]

[FriendoftheDork]

[FriendoftheDork]

Previously on: "Life in the Barrens"

Trog, as usual hanging around the Vatos turf knew that the gang planned to take on the Blackrocks soon. He talked to El Rey about it (the gang leader), who revealed that he planned to attack real soon but that he had some problems that kept them from it. First of all, The Rusted Stilettos, the Glow City mutant gang were friendly with the Blackrock Orks. Although they are not strong enough at this time to take on the Vatos head on, they're likely to take advantage of the opening if Vatos were to attack the Blackrock.

Secondly, Blackrocks still have greater numbers (despite Trog and Uzz having killed dozens of them), and not they got even better guns and armor than before from their mysterious supplier. A direct attack will definetivly lead to huge Vatos casualties.

And at the last, because some wackos have been attacking them lately (yeah Trog and Uzz testing their grenade launchers), they've mostly fortified themselves within their headquarters - two apartment blocks connected by a walkway. El Rey has ordered some explosives from Mr. Singh, but he's not sure how to get the explosives inside the building undetected in order to blow it up.

Hmm, perhaps some friends could help them out? Trog was happy to help of course, and agreed to get the others as well. Uzz and Jimmy agreed to help out, both to help Trog and to learn about the myserious benefactor supplying them. Simon was not enthusiastic about taking on a gang without pay, but agreed to in return for later favor from the Vatos.

At first Trog sent his blimp (drone) to spy on the Blackrocks, learning pretty much that most of them was entrenched with some strong patrols going around. In the HQ the Blackrocks has 2 spotters on the roof, and two machinegunners in the windows on guard. Simon checked out the place astrally, and learned there was no guarding spirits or even wards, and got the exact numbers of people in the buildings as well as where they were concentrated. The team was rather astonished when he woke up a short while after projecting without bleeding from both ears as he usually does!

Then it was time to deal with the Stilettos. They went into Glow City (south of the Vatos turf) and searched out the general area of the gang. They encountered first a lonely mutant catching a rat, which they ignored (red herring), then met 3 Stilettos going about their business. They approached them with open hands, and although the mutants drew their guns and challenged them, they hesitated to fire since the party seemed unafraid and still took no hostile actions.

Uzz and Trog talked to them, saying they wanted to negotiate with their leader about a business deal. The gangers were suspicious, racially opposed elves, and took risks bringing them to their boss, but then again it was Uzz talking. With his street cred and smooth tongue they quickly set up a meet. One of the Stilettos used his suprisingly new commlink to phone his boss and tell him about the runners. Jimmy used his Sniffer program to eavesdrop on the conversation, but failed to finish his trace to locate the commlink on the other end (the Stiletto leader has a fairly good stealth program, and often runs redirect trace. Still, he learned that the leader (called Furnace) agreed to the meet and didn't just setup a trap to shoot them all.

They met with the leader at a prearanged destination, and he had about 20 gangers for backup. The leader itself was a trog called Furnace - and the most fugly troll they'd ever seen as his flesh was horribly burned and pus leaking out of open sores on his face and arms. At first Uzz attempted to persuade the leader that it would be in their interest to sit on the fence while the gangs were fighting each other, to swoop in after the danger was over. Furnace didn't accept at once, but invited Uzz inside a telephone booth... (no not for THAT you dirty pigs!) Furnace led him down a stair to a cellar. The negotations continued. Uzz attempted to con Furnace into believing he was working for a corp that would be very appriciative of the Stilettos if they didn't attack any gang in a month or so. Furnace didn't buy it though. He wasn't born yesterday, and saw through the deception. Still, he was willing to do what Uzz asked for a service. If Uzz and the runners took down a certain aspiring young troll within the Stiletto ranks, he would do as he asked.

Uzz got a picture and told the rest about the deal, who didn't mind a bit of wetwork, especially not against a mutant troll of a potentially rival gang.
Jimmy worked his magic now. He had already hacked himself user access to another Stiletto's commlink, and gotten himself a phone list with the commcode of their target on (Current). With the help of that, he scanned for his signal and found it easily, then ran a trace - this time, time was not an issue and the unsupecting target had no redirect trace anyway, and was easily found.

The party approached the signal, and Trog used his blimp to get trideo of their target. In the beginning he had about 8 others with him, but after awhile they were down to only 3. Uzz and Trog set up an ambush at 50 meters, Uzz using his trusty Predator and Trog an Alpha, both using APDS. They were both excelent at stealth and neither was spotted before the bullets were on their way. Current and his 3 friends were of course suprised, and after the first initiative pass they were all taking cover from the barrage, Current barely escaping death with the help of Edge. But to no avail. Even if Current got total cover, Uzz and Trog started hitting his location with airburst grenades and he was soon dead, Simon verified his death from astral space.

Time for phase 2. They wanted to take on the Blackrock HQ, to enable the Vatos to roll in and clean up while the Orks were still disorganized. They made several plans. One was to buy some old tech heavy artillery, such as a howitzer, Katushya rocket launcher etc. I told them they could ask around, but it would be very hard to get a hold of, even if it was outdated. They'd settle for any kind of artillery really (except basic AT missile launchers), but again such militairy hardware is simply not easy to get hold of. They even planned to attack militairy convoys carrying weapons to be destructed etc, using a militairy contact.

Sure, if they spent enough time and money on it they could have pulled it off, but that would be a session in itself and simply not be worth it just to rid themselves of a single gang. And that saved me from having to make up heavy weapons rules, well heavier than missile launchers which for silly reason are not any more dangerous than a rocket launcher. As if a LAW was as powerful as a TOW 2b missile! Silly rules...

Anyway, a second plan was to take to building close by and start sniping, forcing them out. Uzz and Trog alone could take on a bunch of them (switching from rifles to grenade launchers if necessary). This plan could potentially have worked, but wasn't as fun or safe as the last one.

A third plan was simply to rig a few vehicles with explosives or incendiaries of some kind, and ram them into the buildings using autopilot.. the problem was that Jimmy doubted it would cause enough damage to the buildings and the ones inside. Still elements of this was used.

The last plan came from Simon, who wanted to test some new spells: Influence and Control Thoughts. Time for that Manipulation specialty to pay off! The party was enthusiastic about this newfound power, finding alot of new possibilities, but were also eying Simon differently know. What if he could do that to THEM?

The first test was against a hapless machinegunner. They took up position in an abandoned ruin about 300meters away, Simon bringing alot a couple of old-fashioned optical binoculars. He used Control Thoughts, and since the ork only had willpower 2 he was affected despite a poor roll from Simon. Cast at force 5 it would take that many turns until the control could be resisted again. The ork was controlled to dismount the machinegun (1 round), run downstairs (3 rounds), and then open fire on his gangmembers. havoc ensued, and it took a couple of round before his totally suprised friends could answer the gunfire.He even failed his second resistance roll, and continued firing until he was cut down by his fellow gangers. I guess those lonely machinegun posts can turn people into wannabe Rambos. ;)

The party was happy with the success, and came up with a plan to cause maximum damage over time. Too many nuts blasting off would make the Orks suspicious, so instead they went for a more subtle touch. Simon used Influence on the Orks, one at a time. First the ones on the roof, then the new machinegunner, then those patrols sent out of the building. Over the cause of the day about 20 orks had the same basic idea: In order to protect themselves against the Vatos, they should get alot of fuel stationed around the building (close to the stairs for easy access), in order to make improvised molotov coctails. And well, when they started talking amongst themselves they seemed to be thinking the same thing more or less, and great minds thinks alike, right?

So the next day, they sent off a lorry to fetch fuel, getting almost a barrel of fuel per floor.

Jimmy hacked himself two old wreck of trucks, and planted explosives on both of them. He programmed both of them to run as fast as it could into each building, and disabled their anti-crash function. Simon sent a force 1 fire elemental to lit some of the fuel on fire, and then they sent the cars. The machinegunners failed to stop the trucks before they hit the building, and with a fire already present the bombs and the fuel all blew up destroying large sections of the buldings and causing the surviving Blackrocks to fall into disarray. The Vatos came later, and wiped the floor with them, while Uzz and Trog pumped the Blackrock leader full of lead and his closest guard. In the following hours the Vatos mopped up whatever remaining Blackrock orks they could find in their turf, and pretty much declared it a victory. Now they've pretty much doubled their turf and sent a clear message to neighbouring clans - don't mess with the Vatos. The party wanted to remain somewhat inconspicous about their actions, but the Vatos won't go silent about it and people will hear, if not the details (such as the use of mind control!).

Ah... another job well done. Next week I plan for Food Fight 4.0.... Trog gets hungry and insists they all go to a stuffer shack to grab some stuffers!

[D Minor]

Again FOD thanks for the laughs I look forward to ur updates.

[cx2]

[FriendoftheDork]

[FriendoftheDork]

Here's another update on Life in the Barrens. I must admit I have forgotten to do this until now, sorry about that. Well, last time wasn't much of a session anyway, just a short Food Fight 4.0. Since it is a quasi-official module I'll post it in spoiler block as before.

[ Spoiler ]

Well the premise for this very short introductionary game is that the party are hungry in the middle of the night and has to go to the Stuffer Shack to get something to bite on. In my game, I had to modify it a bit since the party seldom goes out shopping groceries or snacking together.

So they were all on a small-time run doing some detective work for some guy thinking his wife's cheating on him, but dropped it when they realized the amateurish Johnson couldn't pay up much. Still, as they are Downtown at 4am, Trog is getting hungry and demands that they go to the nearest Stuffer Shack to get food and beer. Since the others are hungry as well, there is no argument and the game begins. They start out by deciding what to get - they get to see the map of the SS, and learn what kinds of foodstuffs there are around, and get the amusing description of the bored and careless clerk, the yapping and shallow girlfriend, the punks stealing cat food while making out, and the loser franticly searching the icecream booth.
Then when everyone is positioned (by choise of food rather than tactical position), a medium hot elf chick with a wailing toddler enters, and the world goes boom!

Alot of the SS is blown away, and the PCs have to resist damage from fragmentation (how much depending on distance). Uzz resisted all the damage and managed his composure check flawlessly, and basically just brushed himself and asked "where's the wine?" The rest suffered from minor injuries, mostly just stun but the less armored ones took physical damage. All the NPCs in the SS are either knocked down by the blast or by the shock of it.

Then enters the perpetrators. These were moderate thugs - tougher than basic gangers but not nearly as tough as shadowrunners. I had to mod them a bit to give them a semblence of chance, as well as double the amount of thugs, but even so they dropped like flies.
Anyway, they enter shouting to people to stay out of it, waving their guns around. Uzz wins initative, quickdraws his gun and delays his action while starting to initmidate the perps. He doesen't have the time to say more than a word though as Trog draws his IngramX and let's loose. No one blows a building in Trogs' face - and LIVES! Uzz starts to shoot as well, and the 3 punks get severely damaged if not outright dead. Still, by using edge on pretty much every roll they manage to avoid being completely eliminated, and manage to return som shots on Uzz and Trog (who dodges most of it and soakes the rest.
However the rest of the perps enter (4 more somewhat akin to the previous ones) enters and starts blaze away on Uzz and Trog. Their defenses goes steadily down, and for a while Uzz starts taking some serious damage (only stun because of armor). They even have a mage that tries to Confuse Trog,. who manages to resist. Jimmy runs for the back door to check if there are any more of them there, and Simon summons a fire elemental (did I mention he likes those?).
In the second pass, Uzz continues shooring and Trog enters melee with his spurs. They drop most of the enemies, but because of hard use of edge (yeah I gave them individual edge) a few manages to stay conscious, and those with wired reflexes shoots back, but fails to incapacitate Uzz nor Trog. At this point the surviving perps should just have ran away, but they didn't have time to think about it. In the 3rd phase Uzz and Trog finishes them, and the combat is over in exactly 3 seconds.

Uzz starts to search for the elf chica and her child, while the rest mops up. Jimmy hacks the SS, checks the cameras, deletes logs, and makes sure no LS show up too soon. After clearing the area and recovering the mom and child buried under a shelf, they take her away and talk to her, learning that she suspects the hit was against her and her child.

Turns out she was blackmailing a V.P in a small corp for money for the illegitemate child (she described it as he refusing to aknowledge the child and support them though), and that he probably hired these amateurs to kill them both. Uzz takes interest in the story and tells her that he can help. After getting the number he calls the suit and leaves a blackmail message himself. Simon and Trog pretty much stays out of this and goes home (with the looted commlinks and guns), while Uzz and Jimmy tracks down this corp guy, and goes to meet him face to face. They go into his office building, and get's detected by the MAD scanner in the opening. When accosted by the security, Uzz shows his rating 4 fake SIN and his fake licences for his guns. The guards doesen't recognise him though, so keeps them in the lobby until he can check with the V.P. At first they are turned away by the receptionist, buy after the elf woman calls up to the V.P again he agrees to meet them all (he doesen't want her or them to reveal his secret).

They are taken to a meeting room with a white noise generator, and meets the Vice President. He's not happy to see them, and even less so when Uzz tells him they killed his assassins. Although he denies it at first, Uzz is persuasive and Jimmy even finds some evidence by hacking the V.Ps commlink, so he agrees to their "proposal": He has to pay a few months of salary to them and the woman to keep their silence and prevent them from taking lethal action, as well as keep suppying her and her child with medium lifestyle for the rest of her life (also assuring him that if that life suddenly is over so is his). Although he's clearly unhappy about losing so much money (having to reduce his lifestyle), he still accepts as he wants to keep his own life, and realizes that these are pro shadowrunners he's dealing with, and his corp is very small and his resources limited.

Uzz and Jimmy even gives a share to Simon and Trog afterwards. Well that's all for tonight, hopefully I can update this next weekend. I hope I can finish preparing Elven Fire until then.

[MaxHunter]

Ha! welcome back to your thread fotD! I love Food Fight! I have even ran a FFight 4beta version because it hadn't come up when I thought of it.

It was more similar to the one in the previous edition. In my game the runners finished the opposition (with some hard work and a runner taking heavy damage, mind you) and after that they locked the SS, went into the maintenance room and handed mops and buckets to the NPCs and had everybody clean up the evidence, (leadership and intimidation rolls to "forget" the event) and then a couple more bodies went down Puget Sound!

[ Spoiler ]

I also ran this scenario prior to Elven Fire and used it as another example of "Gang violence"... had one of the NPCs say something like "I don't know what's happening to gangs these days...etc, etc" I also had ran "Drive by shooting" the session before, so when I got to Elven Fire everyone was "ready" for it. Tip: never mind having -Everything- ready for it, it will probably take a couple sessions so I would say that you just wing it and go straight for the fun.

Cheers and keep up the good gaming!

Max

[FriendoftheDork]

Thanks Max, will do. But I at least have to read through the whole thing and get the order of events right. Problem is, since it's a nonlinear module it seems I must read up on most sections.

I'm also planning to stat out Green Lucifer, although that is probably unnecessary.

[FriendoftheDork]

Here's the update on "Life in the Barrens." We had to cancel last friday because I had to babysit my nephew, but we managed to play monday so not to miss too much play as I have to cancel next weekend as well.

Now, I wasn't sure if everyone could, so instead of finish preparing Elven Fire I wanted to make a short adventure. Jimmy's player wasn't sure if he could play, so I tried to make something the team might accomplish without a hacker: Extraction. The premise is simple: The same part of Renraku America (Renraku biotech?) that was behind the Project Hope medical experimentation needs some new assets as they lost alot of medical data as well as skilled researchers. However their Intelligence has become aware that a subsidiary of Shiawase Biotech called Versalife (shamelessly stealing names again) are doing research on Genetech and even Biodrones. The lead scientist of the Versalife research hospital in Downtown Seattle, Jonathan Garner, is currently working on the biodrone project, and quite frankly Renraku wants him, both to delay the Shiwase efforts and to accelerate their own. Since they're not sure he'd be willing to betray his corp, they hired the team to extract him, forcefully if they have to, but preferably without pissing him off too much.

Ironically, the Johnson they hired to get a team called Uzz, which means the same team responsible for sabotaging the Renraku project is now working for Renraku, and neither side nor the Mr. J has a clue!

The Johnson, pretty much an anonymous type with actioneer business clothing, dark sunglasses, dark short-cropper hair and a voice modulator, met the team after contacting Uzz directly. He didn't say much at first, only that it was an extraction job and that it would be worth their time. After checking with the party, Uzz agreed to come to the meet, 8pm in a Downtown zoo by the gorilla cage. Uzz, Trog and Simon met with the Johnson while Jimmy stayed near but out of site, scanning for nodes and looking for "black-clad ninjas ready to flip in, flip out, and kill them all."

Their employer had with him two chromed troll body guards, and a mage in the astral whom Simon noticed. Then the game started, Mr. J briefing about the mission, trying to give as little intel as possible but still give enough that the team would accept the job. When the Q&A was done, and Uzz had more than doubled the initial offering (110k nuyen for the team - 25k in advance), the Johnson told them about the details. They learned that the job was against Versalife, a Shiawase Biotech subsidiary, where it was located, that the target was project leader Jonathan Garner etc. They asked alot of questions as usual, and got the necessary photos of the target and the facility .

After the deal was conducted, the team met up with Jimmy and started planning the legwork. During that part, Simon checked the astral again and found the same mage hanging around, although he split right away after being discovered. They went to their bikes to get to work, but before they arrived something happened:

2 old ford americars drove past them at full acceleration, a punk in each car hanging out one window and another out the other over the roof pointing mp5-TXs at them. Before they managed to fire though, Uzz activated his reflexes and shot the driver in the first car. Since they were downtown, he wasn't using APDS (no licence for those), so the driver needed both shots to be taken out. Jimmy activated a hologram depiction of a wall in front of himself and a few bystanders, leaving the rest of the team behind the "wall," then threw himself down. Then it was the punks, some of whom also had spent edge to "go first." The two opened full auto suppressive fire on the team. Trog, suprised and unable to react simply took the rounds on the chest, without flinching. Uzz dodged the hail of bullets with his matrix-style Combat Sense and good edge. Jimmy was on the ground and thus out of the hail, but Simon, as well as the innocent bystanders were not so lucky. Only because of his armor vest and armor spell did Simon manage to avoid death, although the second burst knocked him down. The rest... well they were pretty much smeared against the wall, either dead or in critical condition.

Then it was time to act for those that didn't spend edge. Trog was still trying to find out what was happening, and pulled out his Ingram X to return fire, as well as activating his reflexes. Simon, although hurt, cast a force 7 stunball on the cars. Despite the force it lacked power though, and only 2 of the punks took damage (and not enough to knock them out). Then it was the remaining punks. The 2nd pair hanging out the windows started to fire short bursts on Uzz and Simon. Uzz had aldready fired back, and everyone noticed the stunball originating from Simon by the feeling of power, ripples in the air between Simon and the point of the stunball, and smell of ozone - so they were the obvious targets. However, the speed of the moving car made accuracy difficult, so Uzz remained unscathed. Simon though was already down and had a hard time moving so he got hit pretty badly. The first car had a dead driver though, so he crashed into the side of the building opposite the team in the intersection. This was enough to knock out their occupants and kill the injured ones.

In the second pass, only the punks (high on Cram) and Simon (Increase Reflexes spell) could act since the wired ones couldn't turn them on before the combat. Simon had already spent his pass dodging though, so 1 punks spent his pass by ejecting and jamming a fresh magazine into his SMG, while the remaining one fired at Simon again, whom despite dodging again failed miserably and got passed out (good armor). The remaining car drove about 30 meters down the street, and the driver had no intention about making a second pass, but Uzz and Trog opened a can of whupass on it, killing the driver and the rest of the punks.

As things calmed down, Uzz and Trog checked up on the punks first, finding only one alive in the first crash. They started hearing the 'Star coming, so they checked Simon, who had mostly blunt thrauma, and agreed to meet up at Trog's by the Vatos. Trog stabilized the live punk (yeah he's got some skill after assisting Simon before), and wanted to bring them both on his bike. Sure, the huge bike is large enough for 3, but it's not a good position for a barely stabilized person. He put the punk down at the bottom and Simon on top, to which the player said "It warms my heart that they think more highly of me than some random street punk," to which Jimmy's player replied "But he doesen't matter, does he?" :D

After Jimmy hacked the ubiquitous Lone Star drone to forget them, they split up. Barrens was a bit away though, and as Trog was riding home he noticed his punk was getting large dark spots beneath the skin. He stopped in an alley and started stabilizing again. It became clear than he couldn't transport a "patient" that way and expect him to survive, so he called on the rest and told them.

Well, that's pretty much were we stopped. Uzz thinks Mr. J has something to do with the driveby, especially since his mage was spying on them just before they got attacked, but for once his paranoid suspicions are wrong. It was really just a random driveby, a sign og the crime and violence increasing in the city. They'd heard about it on the news before and by street rumor about gangs going to war, but this time they felt it on their own bodies (well some of them at least.) The tragedy of the innocent bystanders was lost on them though, and after checking if anyone was a famous simstar or someone VIP, Trog left them there. Well, he's a child of the mean streets so perhaps there is good reason for this callous behaviour.
The driveby encounter was from the Elven Fire module though - a taste of things to come, but not related to this mission really.

Well, until 2 weeks, next friday I'm working night shift so no game then.

[FriendoftheDork]

Sorry about the late update, have been short on time lately.
Here's the long awaited update on "Life in the Barrens" (I hope):

Trog got on his bike and transported the unconscious Simon to his trusted street doc called "maddoc." Yup, that’s the somewhat unstable cyberdoctor working in the Redmond "Chop Shop" street hospital. Although the vest and armor spell had caught most of the barrage in the drive by, he had suffered so much blunt trauma that he was bleeding internally and needed some time hospitalized to get back on his feet.

Meanwhile, Jimmy kept a watch over the unconscious punk back in the alley. Now, usually someone could have taken amiss seeing a bloodied man lying in an alley somewhere all lifeless, but then again with all the violence downtown nowadays no one really cared. After an hour, Trog came back and picked up the punk, but when he got back to Maddoc with him he was already dead. Perhaps next time they'll get a proper vehicle to drive dying people.

Anyways, while Simon was recuperating the rest of the team checked out the target. The Versalife complex had 4 buildings: Guard booth, research hospital, garage/storage and residential. The compound had about 10 meters of clear space before hitting the cheap apartment blocks that covered the site from 3 out of 4 sides. The buildings were fairly low though, only 3 stories tall thus 10-12 meters tall, while the blocks around had 5 stories (16 meters tall).

They’d learned from Mr. J that the facility had at least a spirit of some kind on standby, so Simon didn’t do the astral scouting thing this time. Hacking worked though. Jimmy used slow hack to hack through the gateway and found a bunch (about 9) nodes. The senior management node was offline, but he could hack the node with employee records, and even the security node was online (it wasn’t supposed to be, but they forgot to disconnect it after last update). Through these nodes he learned where the target was located, what security systems existed etc. He also learned that Mr. Garner lived with a fellow scientist of the female persuasion – and that they were together. Thus they realized it might be better to extract them both to possibly get a bonus from Mr. J.

He also hacked a couple of cars so that they’d have one ready for the mission. Afterwards Jimmy edited the logs to disguise his presence, but kept the back door into the system for when they were ready.

They spent a long time discussing how to do the plan. The problem was the spirit. If it was attacked and/or disrupted the master WOULD know, and the alarm would probably go off. Astral tracking would not work either has Simon would have to go pretty close to the spirit to track the connection all the way back to its’ controlling mage.

In the end they got the solution: Control thoughts on the spirit and order it to go home to attack its master. The alarm would go off eventually, but that should leave the mage occupied and busy. Then over the fence from an apartment in one of the blocks, climb/levitate up to the window, blow it open with APDS rounds (armor glass), get in, get geek, get out. Simple. The security would be down from hacking, and since there were no patrolling guards or guards outside out all they’d probably not even hear it before it was too late.

By the time they got to it something had changed however. The site’s security hacker had done his check up, noticed that the security node was connected to the matrix, as well as noticing backdoors in several nodes, including the security node. Now, Jimmy had covered his tracks so the Spider wasn’t sure there had really been an attempted intrusion, but he fixed the security holes anyway and turned the security node offline as it should be (from the matrix, not off entirely!).

Jimmy didn’t notice he was locked out until the extraction was just about to begin. Additionally, because of Trog had been joking about Euphoria, Uzz had turned his commlink off turning the party a cold shoulder (he was close to tasing Trog right there). Uzz did show up though around 1am ready for the mission.

Since they were on a schedule, Jimmy tried to brute-force himself into the gateway node… but this time the node’s analyze program found him, triggered the alarm (including one to the Spider, who was standing by and suspecting foul already), and the system disconnected Jimmy. Now hacking in was even harder too, and the Spider logged on almost right away, trying to find the intruder. Jimmy started hacking in again, using edge for what he was worth. Meanwhile, I was doing matrix perception tests between Jimmy and the Spider against their respective Stealth programs (both 6). For several passes no-one found one another, and when the system detected the intruder yet again trying to get in a black IC was dispatched. The spider managed to find Jimmy’s icon before that, and was running a trace on him. However, as he critically glitched the trace, he was tracing the wrong icon. As soon as the IC (who didn’t have stealth) was spotted by Jimmy, he used Edge to go first in cybercombat, and logged off right away, turning his commlink off right after.

Jimmy met up with the rest of the team, including Simon who had recuperating under the excellent treatment of Maddoc. They considered aborting the entire mission because of Jimmy’s failure to hack it (literally). However, they made a backup plan on the spot – simply brute forcing themselves past the security. They entered an apartment in 1st floor of the adjacent tenement, tasered the family living there. A baby was crying, and Uzz was about to tase it as well, but Simon got him off it by using Influence spell on it and tell it not to cry. Poor thing critically glitched the willpower test and will be tearless for the rest of its life.

Trog got up on the roof of the tenement building, ready with his gear, grappling hook, guns and a ski mask. Uzz broke the glass of the apartment facing the facility and Simon used Control Thoughts on the patrolling spirit of man, ordering it to go to its master and kill him. Despite using edge to resist, it failed (Simon used it as well) and was compelled to obey. So it did it. I played out the fight, and since the mage was initially sleeping and not much in melee combat, the spirit of man (force 6) beat the crap outta him
easily.

Uzz used his sniper rifle with ADPS to shoot out the cameras and even Automated Firing Platforms hidden inside the compound.

Then Trog made a great jump, from the roof of the tenement (15 meters in the air) to the roof of the building inside the compound where the target lived, 12 meters high, about 13 meters from the tenement building. He barely made it, having to grab the ledge and pull himself up. When Uzz shot the armored glass windows of Garner’s apartment, Trog rappelled down and jumped into the window. He tried to persuade Garner and his girlfriend Jennifer to come along without resistance, but they were panicking. Thus he had to physically force them out the window, where Simon was using levitate to get them down, not as easy as it sounds against nonwilling targets. He got some of their clothes as well.
However, the alarm had been tripped the moment Uzz shot the cameras, so in the few moments that had passed in levitating, the guards had responded. 2 of them ran into the apartment and looked out the window with guns ready. The remaining 3 at standby was also on their way, but couldn’t get there in just a few turns. Uzz was ready for this though, and had jammed in some gel rounds into his sniper rifle, and as soon as one of the guards was seen in the window, he got a gel round to his head. The next guard wisely stood back, waiting for backup and probably popping his emergency cram dosage. The team and the targets got into the waiting getaway vehicle, and Uzz was already in the process of bullshiting them and making them calm with his silver tongue. Then they got away. Or did they?

A few minutes later, as they were driving towards the meeting place in Redmond, Uzz noticed 2 drones which bore the single star tailing them high in the sky. Further back and up was even a ‘star chopper. Jimmy tried to spoof the drones, but they were rigged and Jimmy’s command were ignored almost as soon as they were given, superseded by rigger control. So Uzz blew them out of the sky anyway. Simon used a summoned spirit to Accident the chopper, which crashed onto a roof, not destroying it but taking it out of the fight basically. Jimmy tried to figure out why they were being found again and again, but only in the end did he realize the targets had security tags beneath their skin. So she drove like the devil and got into the dead zone of Redmond, shaking them off eventually.

The run wasn’t a 100% success, but they got the target and delivered it to Mr. J (who had with him a team of disguised Red Samurai). None of the PCs noticed this though, or that they had worked for Renraku all along, and Jimmy didn’t even participate in the meet. Oh well.

Since this report is overdue, we’ve already played the beginning of the module “Elven Fire� that I have been preparing for some time now. I’ll delay that report though since all they did was meet Mr. J and data searching. I should be able to update in a week. Until then!

[MaxHunter]

Good report! I am quietly waiting for elven fire tales....

Cheers,

Max

[fumble]

Good work FOD.

(We are all awaiting for a report of Even Fired Adventures...)


Cheers,
Fumble.

[FriendoftheDork]

Patience Grasshopper! :)

No really, I appreciate that you still request for updates; they sometimes get a bit tiresome, when no one comments afterwards. So keep up the feedback please, I’m feeling more motivated already! :D

In fact I wouldn’t mind a few pointers on the style you would like to read, if you want focus on the story, legwork, dialogue, rules applications or the actual mission. Do you want to have a background for the run, to know the “real deal� right away or stay in the dark like the players do until they learn something through play? And how long or detailed do you want? Although I like to have this as a reminder of what has happened in my game, I admit this is mostly for you guys, otherwise I’d just write a few lines each mission on what happened rather than describing a scene in detail.

Right now, I think I’ll drop the background of the Elven Fire module, except from what the PCs learned through their encounter with the Mr. J.




So without further ado: “Life in the Barrens.�

[ Spoiler ]

In the last months and on previous missions the PCs, especially Uzz has noticed an increase in crime in the city, at least in the non-Barrens parts. They even experienced some of this firsthand last mission, when punks did a drive by on them and the rest of the innocent bystanders. Prior to the adventure the Matrix headlines and trideo channels had a main story about 20 more killed in gang-related violence today, and that William Loudon, Chief of Lone Star Security Seattle, called the situation warfare, and that dealing with such is not part of their contract with the Seattle Metroplex. Governor Strouthers even plan to call in the Metroplex Guard unless the situation calms down rapidly, saying; “It’s time to take the city back.�

Although there is no official explanation for this escalating violence, it has become clear that the elven Ancients, the largest gang in Seattle, is in conflict with several other gangs and criminal elements. An Ancients member claims that “We are not to blame for the conflict, but if it’s a fight they want they’ll get it!�

For once Simon got a call with a job offer. It was Joe, a street urchin and son of Rajiv Singh, the same one who contacted and recruited the team back in the days (less than half a year ago I think) when they worked for 50 nuyen a day ;)

This time he wanted the team to meet with a father William Roe, a man running a center for homeless children in Touristville. He also promised pay worth their while, so the team showed up.

They met father Roe briefly, who explained about the dire situation for the children. Why don’t someone think of the children! Strangely enough Uzz and Trog sympathized, although Simon had adopted a more mercenary attitude. Then entered Koren Thark, Lone Star, Gangs Unit. The old Troll made no attempt to conceal his identity, and gave them the story directly and without any bullshit. Violence taking over, Ancients gang targeted for revenge by lots of gangs and even the Yakuza. All has something to do with Elven Fire, possibly a faction within or connected to the Ancients hitting many targets. The Ancients claim that they are not Elven Fire, but that is not enough to soothe their enemies.

The most important info is that last night, a runner called St. John, his girlfriend Lucinda Tangier and some Whispering Nights Yakuza members were shot down at a meeting at a nightclub called “The Witches Circle.� Only Tangier survived and got away, the rest were killed. The killer was an elf dressed in Ancients colors, who moved at lightning speed (we’re talking MBW here!), and an extremely good shot. He then proceeds to plant a card saying “Even those the authorities fear are not spared the heat of the Elven Fire�

Thark even has a video of the shooting, and Lone Star analysists have concluded there is only 20% chance that the shooter was a real elf, and his extreme speed made Thark think something’s up.

Well, the mission is to prevent the Metroplex Guard making Seattle into a series of DMZ-Downtown Militarized Zones, hopefully by exposing the real culprits behind the provoking hits and assassinations that has caused this and other gang wars to explode. The war between the Ancients and other major gangs has caused a lot of others to start their own wars of opportunity. “If the Guard rolls out it’ll be like Manila, Austin, Port Elizabeth, Beirut or even Iraq back when, and I don’t want to see that happen.� (ok I admit I added Iraq).

They runners were paid an ok sum: 22k per person upfront, and 22k more if they produce sufficient evidence of a conspiracy, or someone outside the Ancient orchestrating events, something that can prevent turning Seattle into a warzone. They have limited time though – perhaps just 48 hours before the Guard rolls out, and Thark wants updates every 6 hours.

After meeting Mr. Johnson (Thark), the runners spent some time data searching and checking with contacts. They didn’t really learn much other than that Elven Fire could be a fraction inside the Ancients, that someone there was buying a lot of weapons locally instead of getting them from Tir sources as usual, and that some people thought it weird that Ancients were hitting so many targets, including Yakuza.

They decided they had to go to the scene of the crime, the Witches Circle, and try to find Lucinda Tangier the only survivor from the hit. But before that they tried to find out more about the arms dealings, and through paying Mr. Singh 1200 nuyen they got a name and place in Touristville (Redmond): Gordon.

At first getting in touch with Gordon was difficult. They found out his place was in the cellar of a local night club called Yasmine, and that the Mafia was a prime customer. They couldn’t find a doorbell on the door, so Simon tried to knock. When that produced little results Trog tried to knock on the door using Simon’s head! However before he managed to do so Simon cast Control Thoughts (force 3) on Trog and ordered him to put him down, then released the spell. Fortunately no one noticed him casting the spell, or things might have turned out ugly.

They managed to get someone’s attention and a microphone was revealed in the armored door, but Gordon (the armsdealer) didn’t recognize them or their street names (despite their street cred). After some time it became clear that he wouldn’t open or listen to them. The considered forcing themselves through, but instead they went into the night club upstairs, where they met 8 armed Mafiosi sent to defend Gordon (they openly planned busting the door and the mike was still on). They entered past them. Uzz started flirting with the cute elf girl barkeep; Simon sat in a dark corner and recast his spells he had to dismiss since he thought they were going in past a ward, and Trog got himself drunk. After awhile, Uzz said goodbye to the chick and walked over to the Mafiosi and sat down without an invitation. Although they were offended, Uzz managed to talk them into setting up a meet with Gordon, and Trog was sent down carrying no weapons (other than his spurs) and with 4 guards.

Trog had a nice chat with Gordon, a red-bearded somewhat maniacal dwarf totally obsessed with guns, ammo etc. Once the lack of pleasantries was concluded, Trog considered buying an Assault Cannon right there, but it was a tad too expensive. He also tried to buy information about who inside Ancients was buying a lot of weapons from him, but he refused to give information about his clients... unless paid enough. Then he offered to sell the panther for 15k nuyen (hinting he’d give the info also), but Trog declined. Still, he left the shop with some XX ammo and a potential new contact, as they chatted a lot about guns and stuff (Trog has a lot of knowledge skills on the subject).

Well that seemed a dead end, so the team went to the Witches Circle at last. As they arrived, they found a long line outside the club. Flashing his best “mess-with-me-and-you’ll-be-famous-too� smile, Uzz went past the tourists and easily got by the Halloween-shadowrunner ork bouncer.

Inside they met with the hostess, a Goth chick witch who showed them a table to sit around. Simon astrally perceived everyone in the room (sigh) and found out the hostess was the only awakened there. From one table though a bad aura lingered, not surprisingly the place where St. John and the Whispering Nights Yakuza had been gunned down. This had turned the place into a tourist attraction, something the manager was savvy enough to exploit.

Simon and Uzz spoke to the hostess, but aside from finding out she had a macabre fascination with death and seemed almost sorry someone survived it, they didn’t learn anything new. However, the manager, Simon Johnson, noticed their inquiry and sent the hostess to invite them to a meeting. She told the runners Mr. Johnson wanted to speak to them. Simon did a data search on the name, but botched and only found thousands of references to Mr. Js from various Shadowrunner trideos.

The Whispering Nights Yakuza had planted a bug there, but since Jimmy wasn’t around no one noticed it. Uzz did the talking as usual, and left the impression he wanted to protect Lucinda and was sent from her father. This convinced Johnson, and he agreed to take them to her hiding place.

They arrived at Johnson’s warehouse a few moments later, and met Lucinda. She was suspicious at first, but when Johnson told her they could trust them, she opened up easily and told her tale. She had several points to tell, and being rather airheaded she constantly needed questions and reminders to keep her on track. Nonetheless, she told the runners that St. John had needed to go into hiding 2.5 months ago, and before that he had dealings with an elven official working with the local government. Strangely enough they didn’t ask about the killer himself, or notice that she called him a man and not an elf.

When they were almost done talking, a bunch of gangers entered the warehouse from several doors. They had tiger eyes, tattoos and sculpted claws (cosmetic mods) – they were the Tigers that the team had heard about being allied to the Whispering Nights Yakuza. Although they moved slowly, they carried melee weapons in their hands – nunchaku, sais, hand razors, bo sticks and even katanas. They also had guns, but holstered.

Then comes the big boss (huh! hah!), lean and mean, walking in a cat-like manner and the only one not holding a weapon. Their mission is clear: Get the girl, so their leader offers the runners a chance to leave – after all its 13 vs 3…. But the team wants to know what’s going to happen to her, and seems almost willing to get a deal and work together. Although Uzz loses his negotiation test (what are the odds of THAT?), the Tiger leader comes with a deal – to go to the Whispering Nights clan and talk with their lord. But before he can finish the group starts taunting him for calling Lucinda he instead of she (typical foreigner mistake) and disrespects them. He can’t take that, so combat ensues.

The leader is first, and flying kicks Trog right in the chest… using edge he gets an insane 12 hits! Trog manages to block good though, so he “only� does 14 DV… of which Trog takes a single box of damage. Simon fires off a Stunball, but only 2 of the lucky gangers go down from stun damage. Then Uzz starts blasting APDS against the leader, who manages to dodge the first but not the second bullet, and falls down. Then Uzz runs his spurs into his neck and lifts him like a chicken with a BBQ fork through the neck.

The gangers go nuts when they see this. If their leader, an adept no less, can’t even hurt the fighting machine that is Trog, then their normal weapons won’t do much good. Instead they quickdraw guns (2 shotguns, some shotgun-pistols, some SMGs) and start firing at Trog. Now flechette ammo isn’t the best choice against a heavily armored Troll, but they start firing and keep doing so when they realize he’s not going down right away. Still many drops make an ocean, and even taking 1 stun per attack is too much. In the end every last one of them fired all they could at Trog, and only the last shot just got him knocked down and out.

That’s just the first pass of the combat. In the next two, Uzz and Simon shoots and stunballs the rest of them, and a fire spirit is called to fight as well. A few gangers try to get away, but they are followed and either stunballed or shot with Uzz’s tasers.

They pull the bodies back inside the warehouse, and Uzz tells Johnson not to speak of them at all. As they leave with Lucinda, the manager calls Lone Star to report gunfire in his warehouse, but acts like he doesn’t know what has happened.

Well that’s where we left off; I hope this report was entertaining. Until next week I think.

[Warmaster Lah]

Man I love these. Trog is still my favorite so far.

Man that Uzz lives a charmed live though, well besides having bug parts...

I can't beleive they trusted that SK though, not paranoid enough if you as me. I wonder what they will do with the Ultraviolet system, could come in handy. Might find a tribe of netcreatures squatting on the place if they left it connected.

[Whipstitch]

Uzz has a charmed life? What about Trog! Even if he's got an armored jacket, helmet, Dermal Plating/Orthoskin 3, Titanium Bone Lacing, Platelet factories and Toughness, it's still rather hard soak 14 DV down to a single box without a shield and some Edge. Big dice pool or not, the Dice Gods smile upon him.

[FriendoftheDork]

[Jaid]

[FriendoftheDork]

[MaxHunter]

all in all sounds like fun, and it's good to hear the description of those cool tiger gangers... :smile:

-I didn't get the "Archon" comment- Did I miss anything?

keep it up! and send my regards to your players....

Cheers,

Max