Seattle Knights, Info Thread Options

[ShadowDragon8685]

This will be the Info thread for my Seattle Knights game. That means this is a thread for OOC discussion (unless you'd really rather I made a new thread for that, in which case I will,) as well information like session summaries and anything useful or interesting or completely inane and irrelevant you find in the news.

I'll be keeping a link-list of useful posts in the OP.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Session... 1, I guess.

We'll call it 1 since I haven't been keeping formal recaps until now. (Also I probably should've done this on Monday, but hey.)

In any event, last game, we concluded the first run by narrating it out. Said narration can be found here. Then we proceeded to meet some new people; a Texan ex-pat with a heavily-armored hovertruck and a horse, and a Pueblo hacker who arrived with a flatbed's worth of drones and, most likely, some kind of past that will be catching up to her in the future. Everybody got to meet each other, and Angelrat got to meet an exceptionally large and strong pony. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)


Everyone also earned 2 Karma, except for those who earned more by making the GM laugh so hard he temporarily lost the power of breathing.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Session 2: In which Misters Johnson are negotiated with.

(almost_human did not appear for this session, and earns no Karma for it.)

This game began when the group ventured to Club Infinity, downtown, to meet the Mr. Johnson that Elrohir had told them about the day previously. After acquiring clubware, they ventured in, Bom having to bribe his way in because he chose to wear Hipster clothes rather than clubware, and they enjoyed the club for a bit, including the live band, an all-female group of Night One metavariant elves who rock out in the nude, even live.

The group then met Mr. Johnson, a flamboyant troll in purple, who treated those of them who wished to partake to some fine wine, and outlined the business at hand: stripping away the stuff that's likely to be lies, damned lies or misinformation, he wants them to recover an old-style optical data disk that's recently been offered for sale, and the data on that disk, and they are authorized to use any means necessary, including simply buying it, but the Johnson doesn't want any bidding war shenanigans going on.

Not much to go on, but the initially-offered fee was 20,000:nuyen: with a quarter up-front, which got haggled up to 27,000:nuyen: with no additional up-front. The group took the job, and headed out, when they were called by Elrohir: he had another Johnson who was calling for them by name, for immediate meeting in cold sim VR on a node in low earth orbit.

They met, and the second Mr. Johnson outlined the job: he wants them to discretely and securely watch a property he has come into possession of, keep it nice and in good repair, deal with any local flavor that happens, and stay vigilant for any of his potential enemies. The group deliberated for a while, and ultimately decided (since he was, evidently, tight with Elrohir,) to take the job. They didn't haggle up his starting price of 750:nuyen: a week, but instead took trade in kind: fake SINs for all.




XP Awards:
Everyone who attended gains 3 Karma for the start of an adventure.
Cascade gains 1 additional Karma for the first time playing up her Reality Impaired flaw.
Alexander gains 1 additional Karma for Darkone making a joke in #Exalted relevant to both Exalted and Shadowrun that both left me in stitches, and was mocked by a humorless meanie.

Loot: Everyone (that includes Long Johnson, unless for some reason almost_normal wants him to decline the offer,) gets a Rating 4 Fake SIN, details of which to be determined by you, the players, to fit in with your Johnson's tale to the HOA that he's a freelance information technologies consultant who travels a lot for his work. You also gain access to 221B Baker Street. Blimey Estates, Renton, a lifestyle that belongs to Mr. Johnson.

And finally, the 5,000:nuyen: up-front payment from the troll Mr. Johnson.


It is Thursday, March 17, 2072. Your meeting with Mr. Johnson was at midnight, and then Mr. Johnson (the electronic one) was met at around 1 AM.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Session 3: In which we get a taste of Local Flavor and the group enacts Maxim 38. Everyone got 2 XP, except for Kotaru, who made the GM snort marinara sauce out his nose, and got 3.

(almost_human did not appear for this session, and earns no Karma for it.)

Friday began with a mousy little woman turning up to officiously deliver a notice that the home would be forfeited if it were not occupied before the HOA meeting. When she found that it was, in fact, occupied, evidently by several people, she was flustered and left, and simply left an invitation to the town council/HOA meeting at the town courthouse.

The group did their legwork on Darius St. Johnson's case, and attended the meeting. Their presence swayed one vote which could have gone inconveniently for them had the measure passed. These were the main measures on the vote:
1: Should a bylaw be passed allowing for financial penalty to be applied to persons, vehicles or properties which do not keep with the neighborhood aesthetic? (Vote: No, with the vote of 221B Baker being the deciding vote.)
2: Should a bylaw be passed requiring every home and business to maintain at least one ornament on their lawn? (Vote passed overwhelmingly on just the voice count alone.)
3: Should a bylaw be passed allowing for a stricter curfew to be enforced by financial penalty? (Voted down overwhelmingly on the voice count.)

From there, the searchbots found their lead: a handsome orc in Underworld 92 talking about the email to his friends, then deleting it. Angelrat called up Mara Barret, the teenaged music aficionado and orc who lives on the FV Maureena Gale, and learned that this handsome Orc is named Nabo, an up-and-coming Goblin Rocker who was setting up for his farewell concert in Redmond tomorrow before flying off to begin his world tour.

Thanks to the GM opening his big mouth, the players hatched an insane scheme to steal Nabo's commlink without ever disembarking from their vehicles. Bom loaded up a truck with two crates of rats, one of which was marked "For Metahuman Consumption," and one small metal cage with a Demon Rat, and had Cascade forge a Shangri-La Productions Purchase Order for the rats to the tune of 1,800:nuyen:. All of this is because Nabo's commlink is having connection issues, and full-sim VR hacking it would be not only impossible, but dangerous.

The plan was as simple as it was nuts: The Runners in the truck would lure Nabo out into the open with their bizzare delivery of live rats, then the Ninja, wearing his Ruthenum stealth suit, with invisibility cast on him and his bike, would roar past through the scene while Alex, in the form of Mindrape McFieldMouse (posing as Bom's pet mouse) would use Suggestion to make Nabo ignore the motorcycle sounds.

It... Worked perfectly, thanks to an amazing set of rolls on the part of Kotaru, Ninja Thief, then (thanks to another suggestion on Nabo to trust Bom,) Nabo not only ordered his men to unload the rats (suspecting them to be part of a prank being played on him by a man called Ari, whom he signed the deal with,) but he paid for the theft of Bom's disposable commlink as well (again, suspecting it to be a prank played on him.)

Bom also had pen and paper on him, and Nabo signed a couple of hastily-rewritten generic invoices, to replace the "purchase order" which was on the stolen commlink. These have been earmarked for Mara and Angelrat as sou-ven-wairs.


So, the group has acquired Nabo's commlink, offloaded dangerous live paracritter cargo to a place where nothing bad could possibly come as a result of it, never in all of imagination, and you're ready to get hackin'!


You retrieve the email from Nabo's commlink - it was deleted, but anything deleted can be recovered, you know that. It's been anonymized, dropped from a throwaway email account that is almost certainly not the real email address of whomever sent the emails. Hacking to figure out who that mysterious person is will have to wait for next Sunday.

You also retrieve some paydata: though it's not likely you're interested in Nabo's porn collection, since none of it appears to be anything you could remotely blackmail him with, you do find lyrics-in-progress on several songs he was tweaking, his itinerary for the upcoming tour, and contact information on several other famous people and various actors in the music biz. What you do with it is up to you.


And lastly, here is a collection of people that were recorded at the Blimey Estates HOA meeting and were interesting enough to do a Matrix search upon. It should be pointed out that there is no elected Town Council in Blimey; the only elected office is that of Mayor, with administrative posts filled by appointees, though a vote of no-confidence in any given appointed official (or the elected official, for that matter,) can be called at any time by the presentation of a demand for such signed by a resident of 20% of occupied households. The "Council," then, consists of "everyone who bothers to show up in person." Each household is given one vote. Households which cannot agree within itself on a topic forfeit their vote on that topic.

As the mayor and official of the meeting, he was unable to vote.

Martin Short, the Mayor of Blimey. On the short end of average height with a full head of boring brown hair and a reasonably cheap twill suit, Mayor Short might as well be a middle school mathematics teacher. The state of his dress seems to make the case that being Mayor of Blimey is like getting the Keys to the City; mostly ceremonial and people tend to ignore it. He's been reelected as Mayor of Blimey every election since 2052, largely by virtue of the fact that he's been opposed only thrice in that time. (Elections are held every two years.) He seems to be a thoroughly boring person, cultivating no distinct accent whatsoever and not possessing any deep or powerful voice.

Gavin O'Toole, the CEO of Peelers, Inc, effectively Blimey's chief of police. That is his real name, by the way, given to him by his parents in 2036. He is, in fact, First-Generation Irish-American, given that he was born to an authentic Irishman and Woman who fled to the UCAS from the creation of Tir na nOg, he inherited control of Peelers, Inc, in 2070 from his retiring father, who founded the company on the basis of the fact that he was once, in fact, an authentic policeman from Ireland. Gavin himself has inherited most of his father's bad traits, but it cannot be said that he's not diligent, because he goes out in his extra-shiny, extra-custom uniform and walks a patrol five days a week like every enforcement officer in the company. Typically he doesn't speak with an accent, but when angry or excited, he develops one, indicating that he actively suppresses a genuine accent rather than intentionally using a fake.

As an appointed official of the Estates, Gavin was unable to vote.


Seamus O'Toole, former CEO of Peelers, Inc. If any man could ever be said to be a living throwback stereotype, it would be Seamus. He speaks full-time with a quick Connacht brogue and moves with the vigor of a man half of his age. Born in December 2002 in Galway, his 70th birthday is still a ways off, but he has successfully retired from a lifetime of police service, first fifteen years in the service of the Republic of Ireland, then to Lone Star Security Services when he and his late wife arrived in Seattle in 2035, and since 2041 as the chief executive officer of Peelers, Inc. He still wears his uniform Ulysses jacket, with shining gold buttons just like his son's, and he goes everywhere with a long, shining black walking stick shod in copper with a shiny, polished knob on the top.

Seamus voted yes on every ordinance.


Margaret Mayfield owns the Sixes and Sevens Pub at the intersection of Stalwart Avenue and Coronation Street. In public she speaks with a broad variety of accents from all over the United Kingdom, changing roughly on a weekly basis, indicating that she is probably a highly talented vocalist. There wasn't much information on the Matrix about her; whether that indicates that she's hiding something, or that aside from her ownership of a pub and an impressive range of accents she's a tremendously boring person, is hard to say.

Margaret voted no to the first two ordinances and yes to the third.

Brett Williams owns the Stuffer Shack franchise located just outside the gates of the Estates and lives just inside. Although his shop technically sits just outside the Estates, he's privately contracted Peelers, Inc, to provide on-site security, and he recently went the extra mile to renovate his Stuffer Shack to appear to be what he imagines a Stuffer Shack would have looked like in the mid-1950s UK. He's an especially vocal member of the community, who took the opportunity to passionately debate on all of the measures.

He voted yes on the first measure, and no on the second two.

Matthew Tomas owns Wanker's Grocery on Regicide Avenue, the nearest shop. Reputed to have the worst accent in the Estates, his stubborn attempts to put on a Cockney accent are so terrible he's often forced to drop it when conducting business. The name of his store comes from the fact that he often attempts to be exceptionally rude using only slang terms native to the UK, and the people of the estates took to calling him 'The Wanker' as a result.

He voted no on all three ordinances.

Kerwin Loomis moved into the Estates in 2069, taking possession of O'Malley's Pub when O'Malley died and left it to him for some inexplicable reason, and promptly renamed it O'Loomis's Pub. That was basically the extent of his concessions to fitting in to the Estates, he makes no attempt whatsoever to hide his Downtown accent. His father, the late Clarence "K-Spot" Loomis, died recently, possibly explaining the fact that he appeared to be quite distracted.

Loomis attended the meeting, but abstained from voting on any ordinances.

Beatrice Mallory owns the Honking Good Cafe on Coronation Street. The elderly Beatrice looks and sounds like somebody's grandmother, probably because she is the grandmother to several somebodies. She has a reputation for being the biggest gossip in the Estates by far, and quite possibly in all of Seattle, her goals in life seems to be nothing more than to run her cafe, serving the best tea, omlettes, paninis and quiche in all of Seattle, and to amass enough garden gnomes to march them to war. Her cafe proudly advertises the fact that all ingredients in her foods are organically grown locally, and all teas are imported from the United Kingdom. Her cafe has made several guidebooks and lists of the best places to eat in Seattle for twenty years running, and she singlehandedly brings in 40% of the outside commerce into Blimey. She speaks with a warm, grandmotherly English country accent, and has been doing so for so long it appears to have supplanted her native Seattlite accent.

Beatrice (call me Bea, dear, like the actress,) voted no on the first and third ordinance, and yes on the second, for which she authored and submitted the petition.


Nigel Smith is a man with Caucasian features and skin the color of tea heavily adulterated by cream. It's an open secret in the neighborhood that he's called "Knock-Off Nigel," both behind and to his face, and that he's a Fixer of sorts, with a specialization in acquiring counterfeit goods. His notable difference from everyone else in Seattle who peddles such goods is full transparency - even if the Predator-clone he's selling you has Ares Macrotechnology's logo on it, he will tell you that it is, in fact, a Chinese knock-off, and give you a reliable appraisal of just how shoddy the craftsmanship really is. He can acquire goods which are "just as good as the real thing," to "I'll sell it to you cheap if you want it, but that thing's half-likely to blow up in your hand." Virtually everyone in the Estates has bought something from him, including nearly all of the police, so he's the closest thing a black marketeer gets to legitimacy.

Nigel listened to all of the arguments and spoke up on all of them, but abstained from casting his vote on any of them.


It is Friday, March 18, 2072 as of the conclusion of the session, so it'll be Saturday the 19th when the next session picks up.Fri

[ShadowDragon8685]

Session 4 was a short session, everybody received 1 Karma.


Having possession of Nabo's commlink, the group decided not to wait at all, but to strike while the iron was hot, and to track down the sender of the email.

Cascade, with support from Angelrat, did just that, tracking the sender to a delightful bar in Tacoma called the Cathode Glow, which is full of computerized gear from as late as the very last days of the cyberdeck to extremely early amber-text dinosaur terminals. Aside from the alcohol, the science-fiction surroundings (including drones who are dressed up to look like famous and obscure sci-fi robots of ages past,) and the open lesbians who frequent the back, the main attraction is the video games and the nerd-friendly atmosphere.

Bom (surprisingly enough) got the group a warm entry into the Cathode Glow when he correctly identified, without taking time to look it up on the trix, the door-greeter drone as being made to strongly resemble the TT-8L/Y7 Gatekeeper Droid from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, and responded to it appropriately. Once inside, the group enjoyed the atmosphere a bit, then asked about the name they had found: Zipper. Casey, the bartender, pointed them to the butch dwarf in the back, but warned them not to start trouble or try to strongarm his customers in his bar.



Zipper was at first reluctant to talk to the group, and Alexander's early attempts to be nice were read (rightly or wrongly,) as veiled intimidation, but when the promise of an appropriate bribe came up, Zipper quickly became chatty, even resuming the game of footsie she was playing with the other dwarf woman at the table. She named her asking price at 1,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) which Alexander promptly paid without haggling from the money the group had conned out of Nabo.

Zipper spilled the beans as fast as she could open the cans: The jackass who got her to send out emails is Kerwin "K-Spot2" Loomis, son of the late Clarence "K-Spot" Loomis, a musical impresario who was at the top of the world back in the 2040s. K-Spot2 was much less well-off than his pop was, having owned a dive-bar in Redmond called the Coda until it burned down "mysteriously" in 2069, at which point he somehow took over O'Malley's pub in Blimey Estates and renamed it O'Loomis's pub. (Zipper offered her opinion that this was an example of K-Spot arranging some largesse for his only son in his dotage, but offered no details nor evidence to back it up; the only remaining facts known are that K-Spot2 was somehow named as sole beneficiary in O'Malley's will.)


She also explained the origin of the disk to a limited degree: it was left to Kerwin when K-Spot croaked, and now Kerwin wants to offload it for nuyen and move up in the world.

Zipper's role in all of this was simple: she had a massive bar debt owed to K-Spot2, though probably not as much as she claimed, and Loomis is the kind of guy not to forget a debt he's owed. However, rather than nagging her for money, he promised to forgive the debt entirely if she sent out the emails, and to cut her in for 2% of anything he got from the disk itself.


Needless to say, this came as a bit of a blow to the head for the group, some members of whom had laid their eyes on Kerwin Loomis that very morning, at the Blimey Estates town council meeting. Is it Karma or serendipity that their secondary job would take them so close to the target of their first? For all you know, he may have had the disk upon his person at the time.

The question now is... What now? We'll pick up in the morning (well, after the sun rises, anyway,) on Saturday, March 19th, 2072.


Also, to show no hard feelings, Angelrat gave Zipper her contact information, effectively making herself a Contact for Zipper. In response, the mollified dwarf returned her own contact information, so Angelrat gets Zipper as a Connections 2, Loyalty 1 Contact. It never hurts to make friends... Or at least get the numbers of people who can be bribed to do stuff for you.

(PS, sorry for the truncated session. I woke up too early and couldn't go back to sleep.)

In closing, the group stops of at the edge of Renton; Cascade is sent back to 221B Baker Street to sit the house, while the rest of the group went home. When you get there, however, you find that Long John's hover-van is missing. In the kitchen, you all find dinner waiting for you in the stove; he baked you a casserole, and left a note on the table.

The note reads as follows:

I am very sorry to have to do this, y'all seem like nice people. I've enjoyed my stay here, and I wish it could've been longer. Unfortunately, my damn cousin has gone and gotten himself and his woman into trouble with some troublesome folk and called me to come and bail him out. Fair's fair, and he's kin, so I can't exactly say no.

I'm taking my truck and I'm gonna get my cousin and his woman and we're heading off into the woods to go camp until this all blows over. I don't know when, if ever, that I'll be back. I'm glad for that you took me in on such short notice, and I don't feel that y'all owe me anything for any of my work done for y'all. I owe you, and probably more than what I can do on such short notice is worth; if I get a chance, I'll see to it something comes your way by way of repaying your hospitality to me. Sadly, I've got to take Nixie, as we'll need her in the sticks. She really liked Angelrat, and I'm afraid this is probably gonna break her heart as much as it will yours, girl.

Before I left, I had my friends go over that big rig y'all have gotten, and they've identified all the RFID tags, including the stealth tags and the Security tag. I've left a chip on the driver's seat with instructions on how you can reprogram all those chips to say what you want and make it look like a new truck; you'll have to replace the Secure tag, though, those are hardwired, not even my friends can change them.

There's also a chip in the Kotaru's bunk. It'll only work in his datajack, and has information which is private to him. What he chooses to share of that is up to him.


Kotaru, when you slot the chip, you find a message from Long John.

My friends looked around in your head, and this is what they found out, cyber-man: You've got a bomb in your head, this you already know. What you most likely didn't know is that it was fancy; it had a kink mode and a kill mode. My friends were able to tamper with it so even if someone tries to activate the kill mode, it'll only kink you. The good news is that the kink mode is only designed to destroy your headware commlink. The bad news is what else is inside that headware commlink of yours: Some son-of-a-bitch squirreled in a data filter and a headsafe. It's rather clever, actually; what my little friends tell me, it bypasses the usual problems of using a data filter by using the headsafe as additional loong-term storage, with the data filter writing to it instead of to your gray matter, then when the system's shut down again, the headsafe closes up and you forget what you just did.

Maybe with a lot more time, my little friends and I could have tampered with it and gotten into it, disabled the remote activation system or opened up the headsafe itself. Unfortunately, this is not the case, so it's all I can do to warn you about it. I can tell you that there is nothing - nothing cybernetic, anyway - in your head that will force your behavior when the system goes on, but I don't reckon that's going to be more than a little bit of comfort.

I was, however, able to tamper with the remote activation system so its diagnostic mode will start up when it's switched on. If you see a red-and-white checkered board appear in the lower-right of your vision, that means that someone has activated it and it's about to start up. I think I diddled it so it'll dump its diagnostic stuff to a text file in your main commlink memory instead of the datasafe, but there's no way to test it. You may want to take this opportunity to activate some kind of recording device not linked to your augmentations in any way, shape, or form.

That's all I can tell you. It ain't good news, but it could be worse. I wish you luck in your struggles, friend; you're gonna need 'em.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Um... Just out of curiosity...

I know you guys are reading this thread. Does nobody have any comments, anything to say about the game?

[UltraFennec]

I CAN REPLY TO THINGS NOW!

I'm reading along, but I don't have any particular questions. You've been very thorough keeping all this up, and that helps because I'm that player that tends to forget details between sessions when I don't take notes...and your notes are way better than mine! Thanks for the repository! XD

[ShadowDragon8685]

You're welcome. Um... Can you post for the others exactly what you had to do to get to be able to post? I joined so long ago, I didn't have to go through this nonsense.

[UltraFennec]

LINK

That was the link with directions that actually WORKED. Basically, send "forums@dumpshock.com" an e-mail from the one you used to register, make sure to include your username, and request activation. One of the admins will get around to it in a timely manner, and you should then be fully activated.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Session 5 was another short session, another 1 Karma.

Cascade thoroughly violated the sanctity of Kerwin Loomis' home and business, getting into his systems and pwning the crap out of them undetected,and discovered that Loomis is a greedy/paranoid person who slurps all the money that comes into his hands off onto credsticks the moment it comes to him. This seems to be a "Loomis" thing, as there is no evidence that can be seen that he's being squeezed by anyone. She also discovered that he's either been unable or unwilling to copy the data off the disk, and has made no mention of it in any correspondences, save those cryptic ones with Zipper.

The group then cased O'Loomis' Pub, where they learned that the local authentic Irishman (not Tir citizen, Irishman, thank ye kindly,) Seamus O'Toole, was having words with Loomis over the running of his pub. While Loomis was serving reasonably suspicious food-like product under the guise of an English breakfast to Bom and Kotaru, Angelrat called with a voicechanger on, and talked with him, hearing his asking price of 500,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) . She ominously advised him to come down, and called Mister Johnson to relay his asking price.

Mister Johnson called back in the late evening of that day, talking a bit. He said that he would be willing to pay 20,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) sight-unseen, sound-unheard, for the disk. Upon hearing that it supposedly contained lost songs by JetBlack, however, he grew grave, and told the team that they were not to risk destroying the disk under any circumstances, and that he wanted this to be done cleanly if at all possible, telling them to authenticate the disk. He instructed the team to tell Loomis that if (only if, mind you,) it's authenticity were verified, then six figures was a guarantee, and the exact disposition of those figures could be negotiated once more was known about the contents - the number of tracks, when they were from in his career, and how good they are.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Session 6!
We had a proper length session for a change! Everyone gets two Karma! (Yay.) Bom gets an additional Karma for making the GM break into giggles. [1] (Yay.)

The game began late on Sunday, with the group meeting Kerwin Loomis at O'Loomis's pub. They met him, confirmed that the physical disk was real, and left to get a device that could read it. They found it at the Cathode Glow, which they rented the use of for 500 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) (with a 2,500 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) security deposit.)

Fun Facts: The disk itself was a media that was never terrible popular back in the day; it had a fantastically huge capacity, the sort of thing owned by audiophiles and simphiles and tridophiles, or used for the recording of studio master files, because it could hold a hell of a lot of uncompressed data, but was deliberately only writable once. It was also used as a media for storing vast quantities of research data in portable form.

They went back to O'Loomis's on Monday, but the group had company - tough guys with an invisibility spell up, that didn't fool the cameras. The group owned them despite the toughs making the first move, stunning them all down without taking any hurt whatsoever in return. Loomis was shocked (and needed a smoke, since they caught him with some Orgy collateral damage,) but unharmed; the toughs were taken to the chilled, insulated keg cellar and their belongings were searched, while Loomis deflected concern about the gunshots that Kotaru had fired by faking evidence they were merely firecrackers. He still got fleeced to the tune of 400 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) though.

Angelrat and Cascade then collaborated and conspired to crack the encryption, only to run afoul of some cryptologist genius's devilish handiwork: the encryption is dual-layer, and decrypting one layer hashes the second layer to the point that it becomes absolutely unsolvable, resulting in a file which is recognizable, but not viable. It's not a good idea for small important things (like battle plans) because enough will get through as to compromise the plan, but it can render huge files (uncompressed simsense, vast swathes of raw data) unusable commercially (or unreliable, scientifically,) through the introduction of vast, systemic errors and massive quality degradation. It's brilliant, and one might wonder why it hasn't caught on.

Regardless, they were able to tell that the voice on the recording is unquestionably JetBlack, and the seven tracks on the disk are definitely not in the established discography. Music labels would quite literally kill for this, so you should take it as a kindness that so far, they've been sticking with SnS. With any luck, they'll continue to do so as long as you do the same!


With the disk's existance compromised to more parties and the revelation that others are seeking the disk, the group parted with Loomis, who is presumably going to put the disk in a safe-deposit box for now, and the group has gone to call Mr. Johnson about the disk. They left a message for him about the disk's authenticity.

When gameplay ended, it was the wee hours of Tuesday, March 22nd, 2072. Go to one of your homes, get some shuteye!


[1] Because it was requested, this is why Bom earned an extra Karma.

Context: Kerwin "K-Spot2" "O'"Loomis (that makes sense in context of its own) wants to sell a disk containing 7 lost recordings by legendary dead rocket JetBlack.

<ShadowDragon8685> Loomis produces the disk, and carefully sets it in the machine...
<ShadowDragon8685> For a few seconds you hear nothing, then your ears are ASSAULTED (with intent) by a cacophonous mix of pops, crackles, and squeals, punctuated by the occasional loud blast of guitar chord or a snippet of voice for just a few seconds at late-19th-century levels of fidelity. The musicality is obvious, but it's heavily encrypted.
* Angelrat winces, and turns the thing down.
<ShadowDragon8685> Loomis looks pained by the sound, and he plugs his ears, wincing.
<Bom> "Oh, I didn't realize he went into electronic music. Huh. Can't say I really care for it, not much of a beat."

[UltraFennec]

I immediately thought of Skrillex when I saw that line, lol.

I have no questions or concerns before next session. Everything seems remarkably clear, which in this game I'm thinking means it's about to get very, very muddy and/or violent.


...OK, lied. One concern: Get some sleep so we can keep having normal sessions! XD

[ShadowDragon8685]

...OK, lied. One concern: Get some sleep so we can keep having normal sessions! XD

I'm trying to. My brain often commits mutiny by staying up late on Saturdays and/or going "lol early wake up."

I'm trying to beat it into shape.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2072, and Session 7 opened with the group awakening and proceeding with the plan to track down a way to unlock the disk's secrets fully. After they returned the disk-reader to the Cathode Glow and got their 2,500 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) deposit back, they proceeded to the site of Healey Productions, formerly Apogee Records Redmond, formerly Carrion Studios.

There, they met a man with a rather contented outlook on like, an older African-American Orc named Stanley Laskey, the maintenance man/janitor, who used to be a sound tech for Apogee Records Redmond, who used to be a junior sound tech for Carrion Studios. He had some amazing tales to tell them about the history of the studio, and had even laid his own hands on a (different) copy of the Carrion Sessions '48, a long time ago.

Stanley told about the history of the studio: Carrion was the place to record back in the day, all the megahot stars were in and out of the place in the 40s, and the place peaked even later than that, during his day. But the peak was also the time of the greatest excess; pretty much everyone more senior than him was heavily invested in some kinds of vice, and skimming from the company coffers to feed their habit. Though they were often recording 24/7, and the big name music stars loved them, the financial situation was swirling the drain faster and faster, until the company shopped around for a bail-out. They found it when the record label Apogee bought them out, and promptly sacked everyone who was embezzling.


This turned out to be a miscalculation on the part of Apogee; the stars immediately mutinied, because they'd fired K-Spot and Delphia the amazing sound engineer, breaking their contracts as a bloc and telling Apogee to get stuffed. Literally overnight, the same record studio that had been recording Maria Mercurial the night before was reduced to recording second-string acts, and Stanley was charged with cleaning everything of the old guard out. He found the disk in Clarence Loomis's office safe, and duly turned it over to Apogee Records, where it was (at cost of great expense and time) brute-force decrypted sometime between 2059 and 2064.

Apogee always played the long-game, they were planning to release it as part of a huge JetBlack retrospective in 2068, on the 20th anniversary of his death. They were ultra-secure about it, storing it all offline in their offices, where only a handful of people (Stanley among them because, in his own words, he 'kept his ears to the ground,') even knew they existed, and where they were insulated from theft by deckers or matrix glitch.


Unfortunately, they weren't insulated against fire, or the subsequent physical collapse of their main headquarters, that occurred in the aftermath of the Crash 2.0. It was all destroyed, and Apogee sold itself to Horizon, who folded the personnel (the only thing worth keeping) into Shangri-La Productions. Yes, those guys, the ones who manage Nabo, the ones who went after the disk. The subsidaries were sold off for a song and a dance; Mr. Healey, the guy who was managing Apogee Records Redmond, bought the studio. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have any charismatic attractors on his staff the way K-Spot 2 or Delphia used to be, and his talent fled him to better record labels and better studios.

Now the place supports itself by giving studio time to any jackass with a garage band who can meet their 150 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) an hour studio fee while overworked, underskilled, unappreciated sound techs try to make them sound competent.


Stanley then told the group that if they wanted to know the story of those nigh-mythical sessions, they'd need to dig out the records. Fortunately, he archived them in 2061, before the Crash but after the advent of the commonly-used optical chip specification. The catch was that said chips were in the back of the back room, which had become a devil rat nest. He explained that he had been going to try to clean it out himself, but that he had come to the realization that he preferred Mr. Healey's displeasure to the possibility of getting his body eaten by Devil Rats, and had never taken the shotgun he'd brought in and used it on the rats. He gave the shotgun and shotshell to Kotaru, and gave them a maglock key to the room, which had a second door that opened into the alleyway.

What followed was nothing short of a pitched battle; six devil rats inside, and, once they opened the door, five devil rats outside, and one Demon Rat. Angelrat took some hurt early on, but later the group was mowing the damn things down. At the end, the Demon Rat let out a howl that was returned from all around, in the sewers, in the upstairs of all the wrecked buildings around them, but the group captured it with levitate, shoved it in Bom's critter cage on the truck, and Angelrat and Cascade drove off with it, leading the swarm away, hopefully.


The group then cleaned up the back room, finding 350 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) in antique paper currency in one of the desk drawers, and the records they were after. Stanley told them they could cart off anything they wanted, and the group promised to do just that later. He also gave them his number (Stanley is a Connections 2, Loyalty 2 Contact for everyone he met, which is everyone except Cascade,) and found the record they were looking for; March 2nd, 2048, the entry made at 2:58 AM. It lists JetBlack as having recorded it with his backup band, and most of the expected sound techs were absent, with only the chief tech, a woman named Delphia, and Marli Bremmerton, known to have been a close confidante of JetBlack's, manning the sound booth.

(Stanley explained that when he knew her, Marli was a big of a technical wizzer with talent, his own equal on the sound-boards.)


He didn't know where to find Marli, but knew that if anyone knew, it would be Delphia, who was always one of Marli's closest confidantes. Dee has fallen from grace hard, with the beetles, and is now believed to be a street-level pusher. Stanley guesstimated that thanks to Knight Errant's new campaign, she would have been pushed to somewhere she could flee into the lawless parts of Redmond, and that meant she was probably in the area, as it was one of the slightly-lawful parts of Redmond, and her old stomping grounds from her golden years. He suggested they speak with Mary, the dwarf teenager on the desk, as her sister was a chiphead.

Mary confirmed that her sister's dealer was supposed to look like Stanley's description of Delphia, and gave them her address in exchange for a promise they would either try to talk her into cutting her sister off altogether, or score something from her so heinous and terrible that she could scare her sister off the Beetles with it.


So!

The group has acquired the following:


3 Karma (Kotaru got 4, for a Three-Die Stunt with his shotgun.)
A break-action over/under 12-ga shotgun with a red dot sight above the barrel and a tactical flashlight below it. (It came with 12 shotshells. Kotaru blew through six.)
350 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) in old-school bills.
The data they were looking for regarding the Carrion sessions.
A new lead on Marli Bremmerton: in the form of Delphia.
A contact, Stan Laskey, 2/2, with his ears to the ground in the music biz, janitorial and maintenance skills, and electronics and music mixing skills.
And a Devil Rat Gamma. (The one with Regeneration.)

[ShadowDragon8685]

Sorry I've been tardy about writing this. I've been busy making the Old Republic a safer place. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)


Ahem...


Session 8 proceeded immediately from the one prior to it. After spending a short few minutes engaged in a terrific gunbattle with a bunch of rats; regular, devil, and even demon, the group had acquired the information they needed regarding the next lead in their investigation. The more they dig, the more of a picture they paint of what happened back in the day.

The group tracks down their mysterious cryptologist recording engineer, Delphia. Only two blocks removed, geographically, from the site of her glory days, she's become a sad sight; giving teenagers barely more than kids guns to guard her little pushing operation and keeping them wired up and happy with low-level simsense stimulation, Delphia herself is somehow, amazingly, still in control of all of her faculties. The woman must have an absolutely incredible amount of willpower, because she isn't walking the path of the burnout so much as bombing along it at top speed, yet she is lucid enough to continue dealing.


The group managed to snap her out of her jonesing, incredibly, by mentioning her old days, and subsequently got her to talking. Yes, she knows where Marli Bremmerton is, and yes, she did encrypt the file they're looking for. She very nearly came close to cutting out the next step of the investigation when they asked her for the encryption key, but after she pulled out her old friend - an extremely customized Cyberdeck which began life as a Fairlight Durandal and lives on in the case of a Fairlight Excalibur - and started sorting through all the old keys, they told her what they wanted her to unencode; which turns out to have been the one key she actually deleted, because her best friend - only friend - Marli Bremmerton had asked her to.

She would have given them the code just to get them out of her squat, but asking her to betray the last person in the world who had ever been nice to her was another matter. She cursed herself for it, but agreed that she would do it for a price - 10,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) - or services she considered equivalent. In this case, retrieval of a datachip containing something which is most likely to be another BTL recording. She sent one of her customers, an orc girl, to go get it, but the girl evidently slotted it, then ran into the Underground to a doctor named Sally.

Delphia's not vengeful. She doesn't want the girl roughed up or anything; she just told them to get back what was hers and return it to her, and that would be the end of it, and she'd give them the information on Marli Bremmerton. But first, the group needed to get into the Underground; not an easy task at the best of times, for a group without a single pointy tooth or horn amongst them. The first plan to be circulated was that Bom would call his organlegger and ask for a hollowed-out husk of an Ork or Troll that he could have a spirit animate, but One-Eyed Willy had just sold all of his by-products off as ghoul chow.

Plan B was to call Elrohir. Calling an elf fixer to find an orc or a troll seems weird, but Elrohir has friends everywhere. He knew an old Runner, a troll, who was still alive and notionally retired, and gave her a call. She responded by sending her boy, Brick, to help out.


Brick showed up at Elrohir's warehouse as promised, and after he called his doctor - the very same doctor the girl had allegedly run to, in a remarkable coincidence, hemmed and hawwed and determined in the end that going through the Rhino was probably the best and fastest way to get down into the Underground, even if it meant they were likely to get their faces on holo by Humanis. A little magical disguise took care of that, but when the group arrived, it seemed that things were getting more and more tense, by the way that all the orcs and trogs were scrupulously polite; lots of hairy eyeballs, not an unkind word. When they got to the underground itself, the streets had almost become a second crime mall, with people hawking everything from guns - openly - to body armor, gas masks, and more.

The Underground is clearly concerned about an invasion from above, and who could really blame them, what with notorious racist and Humanis man Kenneth Brackhaven in office, and promising that the "Underground Question" will be being "looked into very thoroughly." Someone in the Underground has thumped it into all of the residents that they desperately need not to be the side that throws the first punch or fires the first shot... But it almost seems like every orc and his mother down there is well-armed and prepared to fire the second, third, fourth, and fifth shots.


It's not really your problem, but it's something that could well lead to employment in the future. Strife begets opportunity, after all.


The group found the doctor - Sally Hayes, M.D., a Caucasian Orc with a medical degree to prove she's a real doctor, that's about four-fifths likely to be genuine, in a clinic set up in the old basements. It never hurts to know a good street doc. When she found out what they were there for, she became briefly enraged, telling how the poor young woman who had slotted it had run to her, crying like a little girl, begging her to do something, anything, to kill her memory. The doctor couldn't get any straight answers out of her, so she did the stupid and slotted it herself, thankfully in low-gain mode.

Then she took on an almost malevolant sense of cold, medical detachment, when a member of the group (Kotaru) jokingly asked if it was a snuff BTL, and explained that it was the last forty-two minutes and seven seconds of life of a teenaged girl who appeared to be pacific islander, and no larger than Angelrat. (Which would put her around 13-15.) The doctor was not done; she went on to explain, in thankfully brief detail, that the girl had been beaten badly by three adult men, then raped, simultaneously. Offhandedly, she adds that the girl had been a virgin. The girl was then beaten more, until she ceased to cry; then a horse was brought in, and the doctor made it clear without specifying that the horse had been made to rape the girl as well.

The snuffchip ended, she explained, when one of the men forced himself into her throat and choked the life out of her while using her. This, the doctor estimated, might actually have been some small measure of mercy, given that in her medical opinion, it spared the girl about thirty minutes of death by bleeding from internal trauma.


The doctor then invited the group - just the couriers - to take the damn chip, and let the woman who ordered it be damned. Bom promised to pass along the message of damnation to Delphia and took the chip, even after the doctor stated that she had made a copy and sent it to Interpol.


A brief discussion on the punishment for inhuman crimes ensued, with the doctor stating that she felt they should be hanged; death by firing squad being too swift and merciful for the men responsible, but death by lethal injection being too slow and inhumane; and decapitation, too messy. Alexander expressed his view that someone should get medieval on them (a woodchipper was involved in his suggestion,) but Bom sided with the doctor.

Cascade copied the chip, though for what reason is unknown. There was also talk of tampering with it, sabotaging it somehow so that it laid down a P-Fix compulsion to break the habit of BTLs, but none of the group had the skills to do that, and with Delphia being the electronic wizzer she is, and likely to find out if her chip has been tampered with, would be furious. If the group denied culpability, then the only reasonable conclusion she could draw was that the doctor did it.


The game ended before the group could return to Delphia, largely due to electromagnetic activity in the skies over the GM's home. Sorry about that. But the group did decide to keep Brick around, deciding that having some trog muscle would be a good idea, and make them look a little less like a smoothskin/pointy-ear alliance conspiracy. (The GM may have added that last bit, but it does. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) )


The group gained a new member: Brick, a trog heavy! Bom is working on working off his prejudices as well.

The group also got take-out from the Big Rhino to-go; hope you like barbeque. You retrieved Delphia's chip, and everyone who attended - yes, including brick - earns three Karma. Bom and Brick both earn an additional Karma, for making jokes that robbed the GM of the power of breath.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Much, yet so little, yet so much, was accomplished, in Session 9.

The group found Delphia again, and gave her the chip she wanted, and a lecture. Sarcastically, she threw another snuff BTL at Angelrat, explaining that it was an Aztlaner torture 'interrogation" session that depicts the final hour of several Yucatan dissident's lives, and that she doesn't get anything out of it anymore. She also gave you Marli's address.


Marli Bremmerton lives in Belvue, in a haunted mansion. No, no joke, no euphemisms. It's a haunted mansion in every sense. You got one of the resident ghosts to introduce you to Marli, which should clue you in that Marli can Astrally Percieve, since ghosts can't Materialize. Upon learning you have a copy of the disk's contents - and name-dropping JetBlack - you were invited in. Marli was cold at first, but as she was using her recording studio to clean up the music to more bearable scrambled song, she talked and rambled a lot, about a lot of things. She told about her break with Delphia, and dropped an unsubtle reference to them having been lovers, as well as that she blew her top at Delphia after the Year of the Comet changed her, losing her temper and accusing Delphia of lying to her.

A ferocious thunderstorm kicked up while the group were in the recording studio, and it was so bad Marli didn't want to send them back out in it, so she had the drones prepare dinner. Unfortunately for Alex, the chicken was glazed with a soy-based sauce, kicking in his allergies, so he's not having the bestest night ever. Maybe he would've been better off calling up Cynthia and asking her to do wild and kinky things to him.


Then a lightningstrike nearby put Angel flat on her back, and caused a mains power surge which killed the mansion's CHN. The backup generator didn't kick in automatically, and the group scrambled to find Marli, believing that she might have been on life support. Brick thankfully found a way down a secret hatch in the wine cellar, to her second cellar bunker, where the group found her; Dumpshocked, but not in need of life support. She broke into tears when they first saw her, but when the group failed to reacted in horror to the mean way in which SURGE treated her - creating dermal deposits and bony protrusions, much like those of Trolls - she perked up, even though Bom's fumbling attempts to administer medicinal and magical help were little more than placebos.


In the end, the group has made a contact, a friendly one. Marli was once a rock-star, now she spends most of her time in the Matri. She's not as good an e-wizzer as Delphia was, but she is, in fact, a passable Rigger and Hacker, and she still has her connections. Bom wants to encourage her to get out more and reclaim her stardom, but even if she can pass the self-esteem hurdle, Marli hasn't aged as well as Delphia, largely due to a sedentary lifestyle and brutally minimal caloric intake brought about by the way moving causes her severe pain. Still, there are ways around that, and if anyone can afford the full treatment, it's got to be Marli Bremmerton.

The group also encouraged her to reach out to Delphia. Perhaps she will.


Everyone receives 2 Karma, and Marli Bremmerton as a Connections 4, Loyalty 3 Contact. You really touched her when you jumped into action out of fear for her safety, and failed to react in horror to her appearance.


And we have news - bad news. Bom has to quit the game, owing to a real life group occupying this time-slot. Bummer. But, on the other hand, now we can recruit again. Yaaay.

This run should be wrapped up in a few more sessions, and I'll start recruiting when it's closer.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Session 10. Wow. Has it been that long?

Session 10 wraps up your first real, proper Shadowrun, and what a crazy ride it's been! 10 was a marathon, 10-hour session, and everyone reaps the just rewards for that: 5 Karma for sticking it out.

Now, it's time to go down the Karma awards.

Situation Awards:

• You got the data from Nabo's commlink - hell, you took the commlink right out of his hand! 1 Karma.
• You tracked down Kerwin Loomis, and though you didn't steal the disk from his person when you had the chance, you ultimately got it to your employer on satisfactory (if expensive!) terms. 1 Karma.
• You found Marli Bremmerton, and dealt with her without killing her or injuring her seriously. 1 Karma.
  
  • In addition, when Marli Bremmerton became injured due to events outside your control, the team leapt into action, at no obvious gain to themselves, to provide aid to her, and emotional support at seeing her true face. 1 Karma.
• You found Delphia, and dealt with her without killing her or injuring her seriously. 1 Karma.
  
  • In addition, despite your disgust at how far along the road in a hell of her own making she is, you still tried to help her, by providing her contact information to her old friend and once-lover, Marli Bremmerton, and to someone who can provide her with employment, Darius St. George. 1 Karma.
• You delivered the disk to Mr. Johnson exclusively, despite stiff and trained opposition, including company men, Shadowrunners, and a team of goths with machine guns, led by a Street Samurai, a Mage, and whatever the hell Risa was, probably an Adept or Magician, and unquestionably a Vampire. 1 Karma.

Additionally, everyone survived, and earns 1 additional Karma.
Brick has been doing fantastic roleplaying since he arrived, and earns 2 Karma on that front. Angel and Cascade are often quieter than I'd like, but when you do decide to pipe in, you've always got something good to say, and everyone else has been on-the-ball with roleplaying as well. The rest of you get 1 Karma.

Brick and Alex displayed guts (and stupidity, but guts) in walking into an obvious trap, baited with nothing but air, out of sheer curiosity. You get a Karma for bravery.

Humor awards are awarded per-game. In Session 10, Alex left me in stitches at one point, so he gets the humor award for this session as well. 1 Karma to Alex for that.


By the way, you just missed out on getting a pacifist run award by shooting down the street samurai in the last session. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)




Session 10 opened with the group awakening on Wednesday, March 23nd 2072, finding that someone was approaching their long-term Johnson's house in Blimey Estates. She was evidently a teenaged punk trying to tag the place, and Alexander decided to magically fuck with her. He attempted to maintain the pretense that it wasn't him, but she wasn't fooled. the Peelers showed up to investigate, but took no other action other than filing a statement. They've got their eyes on you, though. This is probably not what Mr. Johnson meant when he asked you to keep things low-key.

The group reported to Mr. Johnson of their efforts to find the decryption key, and how they had fruitlessly exhausted every imaginable lead short of digging up JetBlack's lost copy of the key, the location to which remains a complete and utter mystery. Johnson called the group in to return and deliver.


Kerwin Loomis had gone to ground in the stupidest place possible; across the street from the wreckage of his old bar in Redmond, the Coda. He did not have the disk on him, but when the group got there, they were being pursued by another team. Runners. Attacking from lightly-armored vehicles with light machine guns and rotor-drones, they were no match for the armor on the CityMaster, and after the driver of one car was put into physical overflow and the car crashed, they yielded the fight and the group left.


The group then drove to Renton to offload the gun (which wouldn't have passed inspection downtown) in a box a Elrohir's facillity, and drove towards the meet. But as they were leaving, they got a call from a woman who identified herself as Risa, the executor of JetBlack's estate, with an offer to double the number they had in-hand for the disk. When they sounded skeptical, Risa claimed to have Kerwin Loomis hostage, which came as something of a surprise, given that the group had Kerwin Loomis in their possession.

Curiosity more than anything else led to Brick and Alexander being offloaded to meet Risa, with Angelrat and Cascade flying matrix and drone overwatch. This turned out to be a good thing; predictably it was a trap, but things got hairy when half the team from before; the Dwarf, Samurai, and Rigger - attacked in the good car, with the two drones. That battle was decisively ended very swiftly (in under two combat passes!) with the Samurai dead at the guns of a drone commanded by Cascade (actually Kotaru, since Cascade had been forced to retire for the night, and Kotaru had nothing else to do,) Risa's mage and sammie 'retired' by the guns on the two rotor-drones the other Runner's team brought, and the Dwarf shot up nearly to full stun (he's a TOUGH bastard!) by a full narrow burst through the driver's windshield on his truck.


With Risa shot to full stun by Brick, and one of her goons knocked out; five Goons both Suppressed and Orgied, the driver nearly unconscious, and a Force 5 Air Spirit materialized in their truck, the dwarf signaled his team's unconditional surrender, knowing that you probably weren't going to accept a second yield in as many hours. You let them walk away with the clothes on their backs and their dead friend, and even administered magical and mundane first aid to the dwarf, which is a hell of a lot more than they could have expected from a lot of denizens of the sprawl. The ork's pissed, but the dwarf seems to have him under control. You may not have made a friend, but you didn't make an enemy, either. They also explained that, though it probably looked like an attack on everyone, it actually wasn't. They were under the belief you sent the truck away as a decoy while you made the real meet, and their plan was to opportunistically jump your Johnson (Risa) after you'd left. When they saw Risa's goons holding you at gunpoint, they figured you were in for a doublecross, and they could jump in, gun down Risa's goons, you could take your money, they could take the disk, and you all walked away happy.


Angelrat and Kotaru met with Mr. Johsnon, with Kerwin Loomis in tow. They negotiated their deal for an undisclosed, but certainly massive, sum of nuyen, and then Mr. Johnson called you in. He received your report about the other players in the game, and was duly impressed. He hired a no-name team and got Prime Runner results.

Mr. Johnson paid you, and paid you a substantial bonus. Additionally, Loomis promised you a rich sum to deliver him to the meet, then to Sea-Tac airport, intact, which happened. You're all going to bed well-fed and happy tonight.


Now, the total take for this session is substantial; you emerged victorious in a huge battle. You stripped them of their stuff, but left the payment Risa's team brought to tempt you away from Mr. Johnson, thereby avoiding the wrath of her employer.
Mr. Johnson paid you the rest of your free agreed upon when the Run began; 22,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) . He additionally paid you a sum of 10,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) as a bonus for a job well done, and Kerwin Loomis paid you an additional 5,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) to ensure his safe departure from Seattle.

From Risa's group, you took the following:

• Guns
  
  • Ares Predator IV x1
  • Ceska Black Scorpion (Smartlinked) x7
  • Colt Manhunter x1
  • HK 227X x7
  • Thermal Smoke Grenades x2
  • Yamaha Sakura Fubuki x1
• Ammo
  
  • Ares Predator Magazines (15x 10mm Caseless) x3
  • Colt Manhunter Magazines (16x .357 Magnum) x3
  • HE Grenades x2
  • HK 227X Magazines (28x 9x19mm Parabellum) x21
  • Yamaha Sakura Fubuki ammo (40x 5.7x16mm Cherry Blossom)
• Other Weapons
  
  • Monofilament Sword x1
• Armor
  
  • Armor Jacket x1
  • Lined Coat (Nonconductivity 4) (Risa's)
  • Lined Coat x1
  • Camouflage Suit (Urban Night/Day reversible) x7
• Commlinks
  
  • Erika Elite (Risa'a) [3, 4, 3, 3]
  • Hermes Ikon (Sammy's) [4, 3, 4, 4]
  • Sony Emperor (Mage's) [2, 3, 2, 2]
  • Renraku Sensei x7 (Flunkies) [2, 4, 2, 2]

You got a fantastic haul from the Runners you beat up. They left with little more than their dignity and the clothes on their backs, but it's not likely they'll seek revenge, since they crossed you twice in as many hours and you let them live. Whether Ari Tarkasian, their Johnson, will be so kind, is a matter for the future to resolve.

• Vehicles & Drones
  
  • GMC MPUV*
  • Hawker-Siddley Mixcoatl x2**
  • LoneStar iBall x2 (Flash Pak/Smoke Grenade)
• Guns
  
  • AK-97 w/underbarrel Smartgun System (Samurai's)
  • Ares Viper Slivergun x1 (Dwarf's)
  • Mossberg AM-CMDT x1 (Dwarf's)
• Other Weapons
  
  • Phalanx Systems Großwildjäger X Missile Launcher ***
• Ammo
  
  • AK-94 Magazines (38x 7.62mm Soviet) x3
  • Anti-Vehicle Missiles x2
  • Ares Viper Magazines (30x Viperfang Slivers) x2
  • HE Grenade x1
  • Frag Grenade x1
  • Fragmentation Missiles x2
  • Mossberg Magazines (10x 12ga Buckshot) x2
  • Smoke Grenades x3
• Other Gear
  
  • Concealed Arm Slide Holster (Dwarf's) x1
  • Handheld Radio Signal Scanner (Rating 3) x1
  • Smartlink Goggles x1
• Commlinks
  
  • Hermes Ikon (Dwarf's)
  • Hermes Ikon (Samurai's)
  • Hermes Ikon (Rigger's)

*GMC MPUV (Runner's Black Book/MilSpecTech)

Surprisingly gutless for a military vehicle, the GMC MPUV is pretty much the bare minimum vehicle you want to drive around Redmond Barrens. It's been around for twenty years, and except for the people signing the procurement bills, everyone agrees that it's the worst main-line military “jeep”-role vehicle to come along since the actual jeep from the 1940s, a situation which is only exacerbated by the fact that military units still try to use it in roles that larger, better-armored and more off-road-capable vehicles filled, to very mixed results.

Still, it is actually armored, and soldiers who have to take it into combat have taken to nicknaming it the “combat hatchback” based on the visual profile of the standard model, even though it does not, in fact, have a hatch-back door. The latest factory models have actually addressed some of the issues soldiers have had with them, such as undercarriage armor, a stronger Signal rating, and even a better engine. Unfortunately for you, this is not a late model.

This one has an infrared spotlight mounted to the top, a winch, the standard multi-fuel engine and offroad suspension. It's had the hatch and pintle-mount added as a factory modification, and has seats for five; six, if one of them doesn't mind standing at the gun-post the whole trip.

Handling: -1; Acceleration: 15/30; Speed: 120; Pilot: 1; Body: 14; Armor: 6; Sensor: 1; Availability: 8; Cost: 16,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

This vehicle has an Ares MP-LMG (Arsenal) built into the pintle mount, feeding from a 100-round belt.
Damage: 6P, AP: -1; Mode: BF/FA; RC 2(3) (irrelevant); Ammo: Belt; Availability 12F; Cost 1,500 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
There are two spare boxes of ammo, each containing a whole belt, in the truck.


**Hawker-Siddley Mixcoatl (Runner's Black Book/MilSpecTech)
If you feel bad about using Aztechnology gear, you should simply mollify yourself with the fact that you can always use this thing to blow a few Azzies away. The Mixcoatl resembles nothing so much as a miniature helicopter the size (in total) of a medium-length sedan. It is marketed and used as a perimeter defense drone, primarily for support of armored columns on the move and supply camps in dense jungles, such as Bogota. For a medium drone, it has a surprisingly large sensor suite, it comes with a weapon mount by default, and it has six articulated legs that, while incapable of providing locomotion on their own, allow the Mixcoatl to confidently land on and take off from broken terrain. It has an exceptionally long duration mission profile thanks to SunCell technology incorporated into its outer plating, though the SunCell system makes any modifications to the hull a royal bitch.

As a rotordrone, it is obviously capable of vertical landing and lift-off, it has improved sensors, a Suncell system, and an external, flexible, remote weapons mount.

Handling: +1; Acceleration: 10/20; Speed: 90; Pilot: 3; Body: 3; Armor: 6; Sensor: 3; Availability: 9R; Cost: 17,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

These particular Mixcoatl have been armed with a pair of Ingram SuperMach 100s. (Arsenal)

Ingram SuperMach 100:
Damage: 4P; AP -; Mode: SA/FA; RC 3(4) (irrelevant); Ammo: 60©; Availability: 9F; Cost: 975 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)


*** Phalanx Systems Vogeljäger II Missile Launcher?
This is a – wait, what? It appears to be a Phalanx Systems Vogeljäger II, but someone has scratched out the Vogeljäger II logo, and painted below it, in wild red letters, is the name Großwildjäger X. A quick Matrix search shows this to be a German word for someone who hunts exotic, dangerous large game, such as lions or paracritters. The weapon's computer has a user manual on it, that reads as follows:

“Hi. If you're reading this then you, like me, got pissed off at the utter lack of a good, single-shot launcher for ground-to-ground missiles that wasn't a tripod, and one that had a good sensor outfit in it. Or, you killed someone who bought it from me, in which case, good for you. Or, you stole it from me, in which case I'm gonna hunt you down, rip your cock off with my fingernails and shove it up your ass when I disembowel you. Don't bother trying to return it to me, it's too late for that. If you want forgiveness, you'd better return it and pay the cost of it, whatever number I feel like quoting, without so much as a word of complaint.

So! The Großwildjäger X. I have no idea how to pronounce that, and I don't care. It's a big-game hunter, whatever the game in your turf might be, whether it's a bunch of unruly trogs or your unfriendly local Knight Errant or Lone Star patrol in their Ares Citymasters. Or maybe you're on the other side of that tracks – see also “killed someone who bought it from me,” and you've just realized that what you have here will annihilate the ballsacks of those pesky riggers and their barrens tanks made out of bulldog panel vans. I don't care; here's how it works.

I modified the standard sensor package and upgraded it. It used to be that this beast was a dedicated SAM launcher and was worth balls against ground contacts; not any more. It retains its advanced targeting lock-on characteristics against aircraft, but now it locks onto ground targets just as well as a Great Dragon ATGM. Most of the work is done by the launcher anyway, so the missiles are plug and play – grab any missile with the right interface, jam it down the tube nice and hard until it arms, then point it at what you want to go boom and pull the trigger! Through the magic of rocketry, a big old payload will be conveyed downrange, hopefully directly into whatever son-of-a-bitch pissed you off this morning, and whatever it hits will go bye-bye.

Note: I haven't touched the launch mechanism or the tube, so if anything untoward happens, up to and including this fucker blowing up next to your head, direct any complaints you may have to Phalanx Systems. If you complain to me about a defect in their launcher, on a good day I'll shoot at you. On a bad day, I won't stop until you're dead. Now frag off and kill something. Oh, and everything I've done to this thing violated the warranties worse than I violate a joygirl in a bunraku parlor, so don't even try getting it replaced if that happens, Phalanx will laugh you off the comm.”

So, it seems that what you have here is a highly-customized single-shot reusable rocket launcher. You might want to hang on to this... Or you might decide it's way the hell too hot to handle and try to offload it as expeditiously as metahumanly possible.

It has a ridiculous Availability rating, raising questions you may not want to know the answers to, about just how in holy hell your “friends” got hold of the damn thing, and features am imaging scope with built-in low-light and thermographic vision enhancements, and plenty of room for more mods. Its sensor unit provides a +1 dice pool modifier against aerial targets, and no penalty on launches against ground targets.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Everyone, do note: my sleep schedule has become completely dewhacked, and I have been unable to unfuck it, and it's unlikely I'll be able to do so by the scheduled game time.

So, I may be on, but probably not at 10:30 AM. Also, I'm not even gonna try and cobble a Run together in the time I have remaining. (Damn you, TOR, why are you so addictive? Oh yeah, Twi'leks.)


However, we can still meet, there are some things worth thinking about, such as whether we'd like to go to d10s or not. Also, since Odd_Canuck never did, I need to work out the stats of the Junkyard and how much it costs in rent and all.


Also, you guys have gotten a lot of loot, especially vehicular loot, and all of it needs fixing, or at least RFID scrubbing. You guys need to go over the stuff you've got and decide what you want to do with it. (It would be hilarious if you got the tractor-trailer troll-modified.)

[ShadowDragon8685]

Don't get your hopes too high, but I've just woken up from a nice long half-sleep, with a nap in the middle of the day earlier. Sol Invictus willing, I'll manage to pull something similar tomorrow, and I may be on-time.

[AngelRat]

I know Angel's not interested in much of the loot (aside from maybe Risa's shiny anti-electric coat), but does want to spend some downtime taking care of old business; making sure the Jungle's node is still secure, and applying Hardening to Marli's residence where needed. Also wanted to get started on coding some software, and seeing about acquiring some TacNet software for the team (Unwired, pg 122; I wasn't aware it's not something you can't do off the cuff.)

[ShadowDragon8685]

I know Angel's not interested in much of the loot (aside from maybe Risa's shiny anti-electric coat), but does want to spend some downtime taking care of old business; making sure the Jungle's node is still secure, and applying Hardening to Marli's residence where needed. Also wanted to get started on coding some software, and seeing about acquiring some TacNet software for the team (Unwired, pg 122; I wasn't aware it's not something you can't do off the cuff.)

You know it would be reasonably simple to get your own coat and/or jumpsuit modified with nonconductivity, right?

[AngelRat]

Well yes...but this way, I'd have *two*. Gotta pad out that closet somehow.

[Halinn]

SOLD:

Weapons:
1x Ares Predator IV
7x Ceska Black Scorpion (smartlinked)
1x Colt Manhunter
7x HK 227X
1x Yamaha Sakura Fubuki
1x AK-97, underbarrel smartgun
1x Ares Viper Slivergun
1x Mossberg AM-CMDT
1x Monofilament Sword
Accompanying ammo

Armor:
7x Camouflage Suit
1x Armor Jacket
1x Lined Coat

Commlinks:
1x Erika Elite
4x Hermes Ikon
1x Sony Emperor
7x Renraku Sensei

Misc:
1x Arm Slide Holster
1x R3 Radio Signal Scanner
1x Smartlink Goggles

------------------------------------
KEPT:

Grenades: (Brick)
2x Thermal Smoke Grenades
3x HE Grenades
3x Smoke Grenades
1x Frag Grenade

Vehicles/Drones:
1x GMC MPUV (Group)
2x Hawker-Siddley Mixcoatl (Cascade/Group)
2x LoneStar iBall (Cascade/Group)

Awesome:
1x Phalanx Systems Großwildjäger X Missile Launcher (Group)
2x Fragmentation Missiles

------------------------------------
The sold items netted a total of 17k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) , which went to buy a R2 Tactical Network, and fixing the Ares Roadmaster obtained in a previous run.

------------------------------------
Brick spent 700 for the last bit of money needed for Roadmaster fixing, and modding it will a troll-sized metahuman adaptation
Brick spent 14 karma to improve Automatics from 2->4
Brick burned 2 street cred to go down to 0 notoriety.

[UltraFennec]

Kotaru has spent 4 Karma to get Gunnery rank 1.

Also a total of 8 Karma exchanged to Nuyen as per the exchange rule, which was spent on:
2 points of Strength enhancement, spread across limbs as per SD's really generous cyber rulings.
2 points of Body enhancement, ditto.
One Cyber-Holster
One Cyber-Gyromount
One Ares Predator because I forgot to grab the one in the pile before we sold it. So maybe the Fixer gave it back to me lol.

Also going to ask the Fix to keep an ear to the ground for me regarding interesting bike parts, mods, and upgrades now that I could actually afford one or two. Don't have time to do anything with it yet, but I'd like to keep a line on stuff for it if possible since I should actually use it and all.

[Halinn]

Posting for Darkone
5 karma + 500Y for Increase Charisma.
4000Y -> 2 Karma.
Any days not spent on learning spell spent doing work - Wards, whatever.
Increase Logic on Cascade while she works on the truck.
2 Cred burnt letting people know that not only did I not know they were rescuing us, but I even healed them.