OOC- Shadow's Dawn: Diving into the past Options

[Seth]

OK the IC thread is up and running.

The game is starting in the middle of a run. Timeline so far:

• You had about 12 hours notice to get to the council, which was in Tir Tainglire
• The council meeting lasted about 10 mins, in which the overview of the mission was given
• Ambrose is given a magic ring that enables magical tunneling. You thought this type of magic couldn't work at this level of magic: well you learn something every day.
• You were taken straight from the meeting with the council to Aztlan, by a Nape of the Earth helicopter, in which you were given a more detailed briefing
• You had 6 hours to get arrested
• 24 hours after being arrested you were in the train on the way to Tzetlan camp 23
• You arrived at dawn
• During the day three bus loads of 20 prisoners each were taken to the research facility. The prisoners were selected at random it seemed. The prisoners didn't come back. If that's blood magic involved...its a lot of power.
• Lights out at 8pm
• You started digging at 10 mins to midnight
• You finished digging at midnight

Right now you are under the concrete wall of the reactor. The tunneling device can be operated by Ambrose to penetrate the reactor floor.

I recommend you initially post flashbacks in which you do info gathering, and optionally grumble about being blackmailed / force-ably recruited by the Council of Princes. This gives anyone who needs it enough time to finish character creation. Once we have had a few of those, we can move into the pyramid itself!

[Seth]

Pre recruitment thread
Recruitment thread
IC Thread
In the past interesting posts:
Overview of Earthdawn mods
Questions about Earthdawn mods
The Earthdawn Spreadsheet
The Storm Swift

Rules on dream manipulation

PCs
Sabs --Marduk of Throal /Marduk The Mad Scholar/ Mark "Mad Professor" Vladisnov-- Dwarven Wizard / Mystic Adept -- Magical expert -- Tradition:
Aria -- Kirylle (Ryl) deBathayre /eTher --Human Drake Adept -- Hacker
pbangarth -- Mandala -- Free spirit -- Scout / Buff bot / Blaster -- Tradition: Buddhism
Sephiroth -- Fearghas -- Immortal Elf . Tradition: Path of the Wheel
Alyena -- Alyena -- Immortal Elf Nethermancer -- Kills magical threats. -- Tradition: Nethermancy (possession)
Big Fella -- Bjorn -- Bear Shifter / ex-Horror construct -- Tank -- Tradition: Way of the warrior
Edana - Angel - Rescuee and Technomancer
Polite man - Immortal Li - Oriental Magician
E-do - Boris - Ex-physical adept on his way to Cyberzombie status
Zardaine - Dannrhil - Martial Artist drake

Used to be PCs
Ol'Scratch -- Ambrose -- Troll (Fomori) Mystic Adept Alchemist -- Magical Expert + Creator of all things magical & mundane -- Tradition: Akashic (possession)
Halinn -- Aren -- Windling Adept -- Infiltration / Social Skills
Ghost In The System - Lean'drea- Bard

Reservists
Red-ROM

[Seth]

Here are the summaries of what has happened
Start of 3
Start of 5
Start of 7
Start of 9
Start of 11
Start of 13
Start of 15
Start of 17
Start of 18
Start of 20

Most recent map

EarthDawn Initial Briefing
Who will be guarding the various areas

The 10th hour starts IC and OOC

[Seth]

Communications with a horror

I have aggregated together the scenes in which the horror has communicated with the party

Fearghas's dream
End of Feargash's dream
Boris's Groundhog day
Immortal Li's dream

[pbangarth]

I can't access the map we are given in the helicopter. Says page doesn't exist.

[Seth]

I can't access the map we are given in the helicopter. Says page doesn't exist.

OK I got the same result when not logged in to google. I have changed it to use image shack. Should work now, and you can admire my artistic talents

[pbangarth]

Got it now.

[Seth]

@Pbangarth: As you wing your way back from the Buddhist heaven to Tir, you feel yourself enter a magical trap. A web of energies corruscates around you, as you are pulled to a different destination to the one you wants. Can you make me a force roll to resist this please (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)

[pbangarth]

Oh cool! I get to play first! I get to play first!

Hmmm... Shadow's Dawn for the campaign on Invisible Castle? I'll use that for now, and change if the name is different.

Force 9 = 9 dice ==> 3 HITS

[pbangarth]

Oh, sorry about the sig in my IC post. I will work on that.

[Ol' Scratch]

You can just edit the post and uncheck the checkbox at the bottom.

[pbangarth]

Excellent! Thanks.

[pbangarth]

Nice touch, Ol' Scratch, with the song link. You might want to have a look at THIS as a Shadowrun cover of that song. Stay till the end, it feels a little like what a Horror might do.

Your flashback is cool. Among others here, you demand a step-up in my game. So be it.

[Seth]

Thank you everyone for modifying your posts.

Can you post in this OOC thread any data searching / contact chatting you might want to do. Include a bundle of rolls from invisible castle please. Remember that you are together for a fair while during this time, so you can ask each other questions, or ask them to use their skills on you, if you feel the need. We'll post the answers in the IC thread when everyone's finished their first post

We should be able to do some legwork before Mar 7th, On Mar 7th that concrete roof will be sorted, and you get all the fun of going into the reactor.

For your viewing pleasure the reactor looks a little like this, although its a little smaller. The circular area is around the main reactor core, and the room to the west holds all the steam pipes and stuff. You will of course be pleased to know that the reactor is cooled by liquid sodium at 510 degrees centigrade, although it is not pressurized, and that the secondary circulation system will hold super heated steam at around 180 atmospheres / 450 degrees C or so. Even more fun is the fact that a steam leak is invisible and acts a bit like a mono filament whip. (As a side note I have used slightly higher pressure water to cut through 6 inches of work hardened steel...so its good at armour penetration too).

The generator is of course cooled by hydrogen (also at high pressure), and the generator if it gets damaged is likely to make loads of sparks.

The transformer is cooled by Sodium Hexaflouride, which has the nice properties that it is an asphyxiant in high concentrations, no odour warning. (In other words you die without realising it, and respirators don't help)

The open copper bus bars are only at 11000 volts (think 5 times the electric chair, but a lot more current).

Not that I think you need to worry about this sort of stuff, but I thought it might reassure you to realise that the radiation is by no means the worst hazard, and that there is a lot of stuff in the reactor room that you probably don't want to damage.

[Ol' Scratch]

Can you post in this OOC thread any data searching / contact chatting you might want to do.

These are the actions that immediately jump out at me. I may add a bit more depending on how things evolve during the course of the planning stage.

[ Spoiler ]

Regarding packing for the meeting:

• Knowing that sneaking a firearm into the queen's court would be futile, Ambrose decides to leave his Desperado at home. He does throw on his Steampunk Line clothing and fills his smuggling compartment with the following, however: A flask of Irish whiskey (topped off before leaving), his lockpick and microtronic tools, a mechanical pencil and small notepad, a cigarette lighter, and some Aspirin. When he's done, he inflates the small air sacks therein to make sure everything is secure. He also double checks to make sure his auto-injectors are properlly loaded, then seals his arm shut so that it looks as smooth and harmless as possible. Before entering the palace, he also deactivates and places his Power Focus in the compartment until he leaves, too. He doesn't want any of those blasted elves taking that away from him.
• Before leaving, he will take a good long look at the wards he has placed around his home (Luxury Security) in an attempt to try and figure out how Trias entered undetected.

Regarding contacts:

• Ambrose will get in touch with his liaison for Transys Neuronet, alerting them that he will be on holiday for an indeterminable amount of time, with the addenum "the Queen has requested my presence."

Regarding the nuclear reactor:

• When he has the time to focus on doing so, Ambrose will use his Enlightening ability to access the Industrial Mechanics (Rating 6) active skill and the Nuclear Physics (Rating 3) and Nuclear Reactor Design & Schematics (Rating 7) knowledge skills. The rolls used Magic + Arcana + Power Focus, plus a complimentary skill for the last two as noted in the roll results. EDIT: I just realized that I left out his initiate grade on the rolls, but I figure the above are good enough anyway so I'm just going to stick with them for now. If any negative modifiers exist, please let me know so I can try to counter one or two of them with the missing dice.
• Using this knowledge, Ambrose will take a critical look at the information we were given to try and figure out any way to shut the reactor down or otherwise make it less likely to kill us on the spot. Rolling once for each skill. Please let me know if more are needed. Industrial Mechanics (5 hits), Nuclear Physics(7 hits), and Nuclear Reactor Design & Schematics (7 hits) I'm assuming I wasn't at my lab when making these rolls, so I left out the Home Ground quality, but I did include the Analytical Mind quality. If necessary I can throw in a Techno-Jargon roll, too. If Analytical Mind doesn't apply to any of those rolls, please strike out the last two dice.

[Seth]

When he finished, he held the sketchbook at arms length and gave it a critical eye. "Well, at least I'm not fragging Marked..."

I have some bad news for you "Well at least I'm not fragging possessed" is slightly more accurate. Mind you ... you could have forgotten that as its 10,000 years ago or so. Nice post I enjoyed it

I'm not sure that its easy to check for horror marking (I am AFB at the moment): If you roll 10 assensing rolls (You could even get help if you want) I'll tell you if you see anything (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)

[Ol' Scratch]

lolwut? <pauses for a moment as it sinks in> Oh that ain't right!

Okay, let's see here. That ominous revelation he made upon seeing the apparently uninspired (since I'm assuming that's what you meant with your response) "portrait" will certainly crank his paranoia up a bit. I'll edit the specific post once we've ironed this out. The actions he'll perform are in the following spoiler tag. Warning: It's a bit of a doozy.

[ Spoiler ]

• First, he'll summon a Force 5 Guidance Spirit to assist him in this endeavor. (Summoning Test, Spirit's Opposed Test, Drain Resistance Test: Result is a Force 5 spirit with 5 Services and No Drain. Optional Power is, hmm, Fear.)
  EDIT: I accidentally rolled Forcex2 instead of just Force for the Opposed Test, so I went back and ignored the last five dice on that roll.
• Next, he will spend a service to request the spirit's aid in helping him assense his aura. I'm assuming this is all just one service. If not, let's just assume it only helped with the first roll (it shouldn't change the outcome much as the rolls were really good anyway). The results are:
  Spirit's Teamwork Rolls: Intuition + Assensing - +3, +2, +5, +4, +5, +4, +2, +2, +5, and +5 dice on Ambrose's Psychometry Tests.
  Ambrose's Psychometry Tests: +2 Teamwork Dice, +3 Teamwork Dice, +4 Teamwork Dice, +5 Teamwork Dice.
  Final Results of Psychometry Tests: 12 hits, 6 hits, 10 hits, 10 hits, 8 hits, 10 hits, 8 hits, 7 hits, 9 hits, and 7 hits.
  Note that I didn't include any of the modifiers on the Psychometry table (SM p. 58), though the only ones I saw that applied were bonus dice, and even a few negatives wouldn't impact the results much. But feel free to adjust them as you see fit, of course.

[*] Finally, Ambrose will expend another service to ask the spirit to use Divination on his behalf to see what his encounter with Thais means for him.

Divination Test: 2 hits.

[*] Remaining Services: 3. Ambrose will thank the spirit for its assistance and ask if it would please stay around just in case he needs its help again.[/list]Phew. Please let me know if I did anything wrong or you want adjustments made. It's really late and I'm pretty tired, so it wouldn't surprise me if I made any other blunders.

Blargh, I can't even figure out why this list isn't formatting properly. I'm going to bed! <stomps off>

[sabs]

It's not that the Portrait is uninspired. It's that the reason people in Earthdawn all have artisan skills, is because Horror POSSESSED people cannot do anything creative. Horrors cannot create beauty, so anyone they possess cannot either.

Horror marks are nigh impossible to see. In order to see a Horror Mark you had to make a Astral Sense test with a target number = Spell Defense of the Horror.

So, to translate that into shadowrun.
You need to make an assensing test with a Difficulty of Horrors Magic Rating+Counter Spelling score.
Conservatively for THAT Horror. Magic Rating of 14, Counter Spelling 6 so a TN of 20 is not unreasonable, and it might even be higher than that.

[Seth]

You and your spirit think that maybe there is a dark mark in your aura, around the area of your liver. You are not sure: it could have been there before, because your rarely look that hard. You probably find yourself scratching that area now, and its a bit itchy


Your divination: I hope this helps
"The Sun and Moon align each 3 decades, dark of moon, longest sun. The songbird does not sing. A tower is built. Blood fights blood. One seeks to gain by giving, the other seeks to gain themselves. You are the spanner".

To disable the reactor:
Get a crowbar (ideally a really big one). Throw it on the bus-bars (from at least 30 feet, preferably further away). Step back to avoid the vaporised remains of the crowbar. The safety systems will shut down the reactor
or
Throw a grenade (or equivalent) at the low pressure turbines (the biggest ones). This will fill the room with 120 degrees celsius of fairly low pressure steam.
or
Identify the gamma alarm, and trigger it (you would need to look around, and this might take 10 seconds, it could take 10 minutes)
or
Go to the observation area and press the "trip" button.
or
Open a load of panels, see what's in there, and work out how to trigger an alarm (probably only needs 10 successes on Electronics + Logic with a threshold of 1 combat turn)
or
Open a load of panels, and rip out a load of electronics and hope you damage something important

Sadly you suspect there is no off button in the reactor itself.

[Aria]

Was there any consensus on where our gear will be? I suspect we will be arrested with nothing worthwhile on us and have to aquire it during the mission?!?

A

[Seth]

Was there any consensus on where our gear will be? I suspect we will be arrested with nothing worthwhile on us and have to aquire it during the mission?!?

Basically anything with a decent concealment rating you can have. Aren's stealth skills are awesome, and he is the only one that wasn't arrest (although I haven't made that clear yet) and I am happy for you to load anything you can onto him, he can carry stuff to you as you are being shipped into Tzetlan camp 23 in cattle trucks. Alyena has a smuggling compartment in her arm, which I think currently carries very little.

So in a nutshell:

• Holdout pistols, small tool kits, small bits of jewellery are OK. Respirator OK
• Ambrose knows how he is carrying his potions around
• Commlinks can be smuggled in
• Foci I am assuming are sufficiently small that you can hide them, as long as they were disabled, or you had advanced masking
• Fearghas's spear/sickle thing I have sorted out for him: he's carrying it, but no one seems to notice it.
• Armour will be replaced by prison fatigues (Ballistic 0 / Impact 0 / Style very negative)
• You might want to invest in a geiger counter...

I'm mostly blurring over the details and not worrying about them too much

If I've missed anything let me know, and I'll give a yes or no..

I think you can be confident that there will be many weapons and ammunition inside the pyramid. Most armour worn by the guards will probably be in the nature of quick to put on flak jackets etc that can be worn by anyone.

On a second note I am assuming that your group name is now Ouroborus also known as in other tongues as Jörmungandr. Of course should we get to the end of the world it is prophesied that Jörmungandr will come out of the ocean and poison the sky ... I'll have to see if I can work that in...


@Ol'scratch: Tiny change I would like you to make. Elven queen name is Alachia not Alicia

[pbangarth]

I'm in between meetings, so I can't regurgitate everything rushing around in my head, so more will come:

[ Spoiler ]

- Mandala will collect basics from his stash in the Tir -- commlink I think will be the only thing not taken from him as per your list of things that can be hidden while under arrest.

- Ouroboros (note the last vowel is an 'o', not a 'u') will remember I'm sure, but Mandala can be charged up with energy by Absorbing a spell cast at him, after which he can use that energy to reduce drain during his own casting. Once he knows we are going into a reactor, he will let folks know (in IC I hope to remember) that he can protect the team from radiation, since he has been working in L.A., but needs help to beef up his Drain resistance. This will be just before we enter the reactor. I know we probably don't need it, but he has been working in L.A.

- speaking of which, if he has time he will have to message his trideo exec buddy that something has come up, and can he delay the shooting of the deodorant commercial by a few days.

- again if there is time between being bitch slapped and getting arrested, Mandala will try to contact the Draco Foundation, and Aina in particular, to see if she knows anything about a box of Ysrthgrathe, and why the bitch would want it.

[Ol' Scratch]

Sorry, I'm terrible with names.

And is it really possessed individuals that lose their creativity? I could have sworn it was the marked. Thanks for letting me know! It's an easy enough change to make in the post. But I do believe this revelation means one thing and one thing only: I need to play Earthdawn more. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[sabs]

It is... That being said, our Nethermancer should have a better shot at recognizing Horror marks. Except of course, she's probably forgotten most of that stuff. I know my Wizard has forgotten more about Magic than he remembers.

I dmed Earthdawn for 10 years (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It's by far my favorite world/system. Even more so than Shadowrun. (except I can't find anyone to play it with me) So this game fills a happy niche for me.

I also love how we're all so respectful of Queen Alachia (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[sabs]

Stuff Marduk would do/have with him.

Items:
His 2 foci, and his Commlink. They're pretty small.

Marduk doesn't believe in guns. That's what Crushing Will is for.

As for research. Marduk is going to spend some time doing internal memory searches to try and remember everything he's forgotten about Ys and that last fight they had.

I have 1 problem, I don't have access to a hosted dice rolling system from work. I usually just use random.org/dice and enter the dice rolls in posts? Is that okay?

Memory Test: Logic + Willpower 8+7=15 6 2 5 2 1 4 5 3 6 1 6 5 5 1 1 (7) hits