Emo Samurai's Dedicated Campaign Thread, The Next Generation Options

[Grinder]

[emo samurai]

Well, he's learned to project onto the metaplane of the shedim; no one else knows how. That might be part of what has made him insane. And he doesn't have access to dragons or immortal elves; maybe if they put him next to the DC warp, he would.

I'm sure most dragons would hate him; that's kind of out of the question for him. But he has learned to drain essence out of animals, so he can fit into society... sort of.

[Grinder]

So he is magically active?

[emo samurai]

Who is? The Master? Magically active? More than pretty much everybody, yes. He won't even talk to people half the time; he'll just kind of wander around and go where G's character tells him to.

[Grinder]

G's character. The one you mentioned some posts earlier.

My brain hurts. :D

[emo samurai]

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention him on this thread.

G's character will be a chaos hermetic who speaks to voices in his head. His parents were back-to-nature hippies who lived in a sustainable cabin in New Mexico; they died in a flood one day, he didn't. He woke up mysteriously in a freaky stone wizard's tower type thing in the demilitarized zone between Tir and the California Free State. It'll be like a D&D wizard's tower, except more twisted and Lovecraftian. The wizard there will be known as the Master and he performs horrible experiments on the Awakened critters around the tower. There have been raids, all of which have been driven back by the Master's magic and twisted freaks of supernature.

I'm making a new kind of spirits for this player called Chaos spirits, which I have yet to make up stats for. He shadowruns because he's devoted to chaos as a principle, in a way that diverges from the Master, who's more devoted to the scientific aspects of chaos.

[emo samurai]

I got my first run completed today; G's character managed to bind a force 6 fire spirit while burning a point of edge, getting 5 services out of it. K and Fangirl managed to take out a force 6 beetle spirit, a force 6 mantis spirit, with K using a machine pistol and Fangirl using Dobermans. The mantis spirit was wasted almost immediately, and the beetle spirit had most of its stomach opened up with autofire, failed to hit K with a melee attack that would have devastated him, and was then disrupted as well. All this with about 20 rounds of looted ammo. I suppose Fangirl will post more details later.

[Dranem]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall reading in the core book (BBB) that elementals and spirits are immune to normal weapons....

[James McMurray]

In the core book (SR4 ;) ) they are not immune, they just have hardened armor equal to double their rating. If you can do enough modified damage to breach it (including hits from the attack roll but not icnreases from burst fire) then you are ok. I'd have to double check, but I'm pretty sure armor piercing helps against it. High force spirits are a lot more vulnerable than they look at first glance.

[Grinder]

Where are the weird ideas, events, characters? Yor description sounds like a more or less normal run, emo.

:D

[Dranem]

He's still warming up. ;) I assume we'll see some of his 'awesome' ideas come into play much at his players demise. (But they won't die cause that wouldn't be cool in Emo's world)

[Kremlin KOA]

dude it was a bug hunt
that is a normal 'canon' run that fits Emo's style perfectly

[emo samurai]

Okay; here's what happened. This took place in the corporate-run Crime Mall that has recently opened. The whole thing is a rectangle, with entrances at its four corners. Its entire north quadrant is taken up by an Ares store; it sells Ares weaponry and random consumer goods that the SINless usually have a hard time getting. They take certified cred, like all the other stores in the mall. There are also three drone heavy machine guns over the door, which would normally be more for showing off than anything, if there weren't horrible bug spirits and everything.

There was an MCT store in the south quadrant, large, but not taking up the whole quadrant like Ares, that is completely drone-run; anyone seen to be tampering with its drones and comlinks would be gunned down by one of 50 remote guns placed throughout the store. They were hard-wired to a central rating 6 server that Fangirl hacked in order to make off with the drones. The rest of the quadrant was taken up by an Evo desk that allows the SINless to set up appointments with random CrashCart facilities throughout the city, a McHughes, a Cinnabon, and a bathroom.

The eastern quadrant was taken up by a NeoNet shop and an S-K magic store guarded by a force 9 ward and grade 3 initiate; all transactions were automated and handled by comlink. Behind the store is a grade 9 mana lodge that is accessible only by a Shape Earth spell cast on the wall. The NeoNet shop was basically an Apple store, except there was a large server with Deep Resonance radiating from it that I forgot to mention. All programs were distributed through this server; hackers were unspokenly encouraged to try and hack it just so they could be beaten down by the nonlethal, resonant IC and shown just how awesome NeoNet programming is.

The western quadrant is a warehouse manned by hulking robo-arms; I'm hoping Fangirl will hack those and use them as muscle for when they take on the insec shamans.

In the center is a large 8mx8m platform that is used so that Ares can ship in show models and other smaller vendors can set up large kiosks without going in the customer doors.

The run starts with the characters attending the grand opening of the store; all the shops are manned, but none of the stores are open yet. The Ares representative is giving the big speech and representatives from all the other corps are basically sitting back and clapping, since Ares has the most visible and perhaps important presence there. At the end of the speech, when he announces the grand opening and the platform rises at its preprogrammed time to bring forth the festivities, they find instead that it is swarmed with insect men, one of whom is still gnawing on the face of a maintenance worker.

There are four insect shamans on the platform; a gnome, a human, a troll, and an elf. The human is an ant shaman and the elf is a fly shaman. The gnome is the only initiate in the group, grade 3, and he's a Mantis shaman. The troll is a beetle shaman, and he prefers to transform into a giant beetle and throw shit around himself. The troll got his shit totally ruined and ended up almost dead; the human got burnt by G's fireball just as he was pressing the "go back down" button. The elf got hit by both a lightning bolt and the fireball; he's almost dead, too. The gnome tried to kill Greg with a manaball and almost succeeded, matching G's will save after accounting for the S-K security mage's ward and counterspelling. He went down in flames, but is probably not dead. The insect shamans managed to stun and cull about 80% of the crowd, making up their losses nicely. They have all gained 2 points of potency. They will gain more after investing their live bodies.

They tried to send their first true forms to retrieve vats of sugar from the Cinnabon stand; they failed after K blew it up with a grenade, whose explosion they materialized in the midst of. Between Fangirl's two Steel Lynxes and K's insane super-sammy bioware and machine pistol, both spirits were decimated utterly.

Knight Errant arrived on the scene after about 15 minutes, airdropping ultra-durable speakers normally reserved for morale-destroying propaganda in war zones to start communication with the players. They agreed to pay them :nuyen: 20,000 along with permission to walk out with whatever they can carry. G didn't have such a luxury, since S-K was guarded by a really powerful mage, so they agreed to wire over :nuyen: 40,000 to pay for his force 1 power focus and binding materials for three Force 6 spirits. Use of the lodge was free, and he managed to bind a force 6 fire spirit with 4 services after using edge. The spirit got 2 successes, so G absorbed all the drain easily. I'm allowing him to bargain for some orihalcum to bond the focus with, since he doesn't have any Karma and it would suck for him not to be able to use his cool toys for the entirety of this run. It'll cost :nuyen: 1,000 per gram, and they'll drop in 1 unit for free.

In the future, all four shamans will initiate with their newly found Potency. Ares will send in a female Mantid agent to help the runners, and true forms will swarm the mall after the next session, leaving the S-K shop as the only really safe spot in the entire mall. The Troll Shaman will learn Channeling, making himself much more powerful with his beetle form. The gnome will be revealed to have been the mantid's shaman in the past; he'll have this whole backstory in which the only female mantis spirit he summoned was her because he had a serial-killer's obsession with her host and worshipped her as a goddess after he made her. If Fangirl hacks the cameras, she'll see the troll shaman confronting the gnome, yelling about how the gnome hasn't really done anything but boss them around and give them crappy advice.

Later, the gnome will confront her alone and she'll walk out of the barrier. He'll talk to her, and when he tries to touch her cheek, she'll impale him with her pincer, thinking he's trying to bind her again. He'll give a little serial-killer speech about how this whole plan, leading three weaker insect shamans to their doom in a corporate mall, was only put in place so that he could see her again. He is, after all, an insect shaman who worshipped her as a goddess; this is a logical way for things to happen. She'll be REALLY conflicted after this and may be very withdrawn if the players don't manage to talk her out of it.

Knight Errant has already given them huge flamethrowers loaded with Raid; they'll also release a virus that eats only chiton and quicken a spell on the mantid that makes her immune to it.

[emo samurai]

Is my campaign not insane enough or something? Where are the dumbass naysayers?

[Backgammon]

Actually, this sounds incredibly cool and I WILL be stealing some ideas from this. (i didn't read the rest of this thread btw).

The only problem I have is that there is NO WAY any of the megacorps would actually be upfront about the fact they have stores there. While I don't disagree they would be interesting in setting up a Crime Mall and would have outlets for their goods to fall directly into criminals' hands, all the stores would be untraceable to their parent corp.

[emo samurai]

But the megacorps control the media, and the Star doesn't have enough pull to get the city to act against them.

After this campaign, the corps will all run a large sale to get the customers back. Which won't be entirely necessary, since people will crowd it just out of morbid curiosity.

[James McMurray]

Who owns the worldwide media? All it takes is one corp that isn't a part of it to splatter the story.

[Backgammon]

[Big D]

Plus there's the little issue that an arms bazaar run by the corps for the benefit of shadowrunners is just asking for all customers to be discreetly scanned, tagged, tracked, traced, and researched.

Thus, I'm not sure why any runners would trust the corps--or the dozens of organizations that could be spying on the parking lot--enough to set foot in the place. A black market matrix arms bazaar in DDH that works through fixers or deaddrops would make more sense, and if corps want to eke a little extra profit out of the shadows doing that, fine.

Also, I'm not sure why the mage bothered to bind the spirit. Just summoning it would have been good enough, considering that this isn't going to last past sundown.

However, what's done is done, so roll with it. I'd recommend that the PCs grab MGLs and plenty of minis, along with alot of exex for the guns. Also, they should grab the best glasses and commlinks that they can find. Drones take point, any contact leads to lots of HE or stun minis to prosecute along with the drones. Mage reserves drain for emergencies, and keeps counterspelling up at all times. Move slow, move quiet, and unleash heck on anything that looks like a bug.

[Dranem]

Backgammon,
A few of us have already tried your line of reasoning with Emo, and well, in Emo's world the corps seem to be able to do anything they want without worrying about public image. After all, he even has competing Insect totems working together on whatever plot he has planed.

Note: In SR4 the Deep Resonance isn't as big of a deal to Technomancers as it was to Otaku. The Deep Resonance was also a Matrix presence, and not necessarily a particular system or host, usually a secret place in between. Now if NeoNet had an Software Knowbot or AI in their host as a challenge, that would be more plausible. (For some, AI's are seen as the gods of the Matrix)

[emo samurai]

I was planning on having the server be part of an AI they're currently reconstructing. I know that.

The insect shamans are feeling less of a connection to their totems than ever; they have, like, 20 fleshforms each and no potency. The gnome's initiation comes from his own karma rather than his potency, and as mantis shamans go, he was always weird, anyway. You see, in his mind, his manifests itself as "mother," and to him, mother always provides. She provides him with power, and she gave him this woman to transform into a freak of nature. It isn't the insect spirit plane that he worships, or even Mantis; it's his own personal fiefdom of madness and worship that he works with. That's why he's able to boss around weaker shamans, shamans who have little connection to their totems at present. Once they gain potency, they'll rebel a lot more, but not now.

MCT can always say it was selling "consumer electronics." That makes up about 80% of the store, anyway. The Ares superstore can be seen as a way to sell consumer goods to the poor and SINless. Never mind the weapons in the back. That's for self defense, something people need in the Barrens. Evo has only a registration desk for clinics elsewhere; they could also go the altruism route. NeoNet is selling "educational software." S-K, well, nobody fucks with S-K.

I don't think the McHughes and the Cinnabon really have to justify their presences; it's a fucking mall.

See? Instant media spin.

[Kremlin KOA]

Yeah, that would be silly, it would be like some kind of Secret Hive organisation which would never happen

Oh wait, General Franklin Yeats was part of a multi Bug type conspiracy in '57

Or it would require multiple bug types to be in the same hive area and that would never happen

Oh wait, Universal Brotherhood, Chicago hive, and god knows how many other canon examples

[emo samurai]

Bug shamans are a persecuted bunch; they have to band together if they're to infest this world.

Dranem, do you just shoot my ideas down out of habit? I don't get it; I made the shamans work together because of all those examples of shamans working together despite being of different totems.

The mantis shaman isn't really into eating insect spirits; he's into "mother" and the lone female mantid he summoned. He can boss around the other shamans without feeling the need to carve them up and eat their flesh. The other shamans aren't feeling the love from their totems, what with their failing and everything.

[emo samurai]

I have a new idea for a run; it'll involve a RL bridge that people use for suicides in Seattle. Once, a man jumped off the bridge through the roof of a house; the owner of the house has since painted a smiley face on the roof to dissuade people from jumping on it. What's the bridge's name, for all the Seattle residents on the forums?

The reason I ask this is because in my game, the house has since been bought and turned into a bar called the Happy Jumper. Every night, the mage proprietor has a patron, usually one who tips the best, jump off the bridge with sustained Increase Body and Armor spells cast on him and a Levitate spell prepared for after he crashes through the roof. The person is usually more or less unharmed and there have been no fatalities. There have been a few maimings, but the owner can heal those people and they just add to the buzz around the bar.

The house itself is completely off-limits until the jump at midnight; until then, everyone hangs out in the finished basement that was added to the house after it was bought to be made into a bar.

Shiawase, or rather a dumbass executive's son, wants to buy the bar. The man has been making not-so-subtle threats to ruin his business if he doesn't sell. The owner of the bar wants you to kill him and make it look like someone not hired by him killed the son.

To make this convenient, the boy wants to jump off the bridge to christen the buy. There will be multiple ways of killing him; the runners could ninja the corp boy's mage while he jumps, since he doesn't trust the owner enough to have him cast protection spells on him. They could snipe him in midair; this could be difficult, since the Armor spell is really, really good. What do you think?

[Dranem]

Interesting new thrill sport Emo. Seeing as there are no deaths, as long as the mage keeps from getting sued sounds like he's cornered a new market.

(yes I actually like one of your ideas, off the wall as it is...)

I do have one last note though: Most corps don't care about the SINless as they don't pay taxes. Though if the crimemall is some sort of publicity stunt to make the corps look like they care for the underpriveledged, then I can see your angle on that.

Maybe have the crimemall run a contest: the #th customer or spend # :nuyen: and the customer can be entered into a draw to gain a clean SIN - drawn monthly. (which of course hasn't happened yet.)