The diary of Walker, Elven Face, Spoilers for fast food fight. Options

[FuelDrop]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final memo: Find new brand of temporary hair dye.

[FuelDrop]

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

[FuelDrop]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[FuelDrop]

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

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


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

[DWC]

I, for one, am highly amused.

[Grak]

You have a my resounding approval.

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

[FuelDrop]

Want me to post Bios ect when they get written?

[DamHawke]

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

[ShadowDragon8685]

This was amusing, quite amusing, FD.


Wish I was in a game I could write a journal for. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[FuelDrop]

This was amusing, quite amusing, FD.


Wish I was in a game I could write a journal for. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Next session is on sunday. Location is G cubed, Denning road Bunbury, Western Australia. We start at 11 am local time. 5th edition characters, the other GM disapproves of the number of awakened PCs that go through the group so going tech will make him happy. Standard priorities. No houserules of note, using hot patch missions errata.

PM me if you want to discuss your concept.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Next session is on sunday. Location is G cubed, Denning road Bunbury, Western Australia. We start at 11 am local time. 5th edition characters, the other GM disapproves of the number of awakened PCs that go through the group so going tech will make him happy. Standard priorities. No houserules of note, using hot patch missions errata.

PM me if you want to discuss your concept.

I'm in New Jersey, The Eastern Seaboard of the United States of America, so that would be quite a drive, and I won't touch 5th ed. Sorry.

Pity, I like tech characters... But even if I were going to play 5th Ed, I sure as shit wouldn't play a tech character with how hard they get shafted.

[FuelDrop]

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

Oh well, at least I can let you know how it goes with another diary entry (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

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

Oh well, at least I can let you know how it goes with another diary entry (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Your elf girl, is she a Face, by any chance?

If you go full pornomancer with her, you oughta pull a Savonarola and convince someone wealthy and powerful to go hardcore aescetic, enforcing it top-down on all his minions.

Just for the evulz.

[FuelDrop]

Your elf girl, is she a Face, by any chance?

If you go full pornomancer with her, you oughta pull a Savonarola and convince someone wealthy and powerful to go hardcore aescetic, enforcing it top-down on all his minions.

Just for the evulz.

That's a little while away, as I'm trying to keep all my core skills at about the same level. since that's two skill groups plus intimidate and disguise and possibly pistols, getting to ridiculous dice pools is going to take a while.

Of course, I'll be saving up for some rating 3 tailored pheromones ASAP, so that'll be a bit of a boost.

other than that, good idea. It'll just take a while to put into practice.

[Grak]

Next session is on sunday. Location is G cubed, Denning road Bunbury, Western Australia. We start at 11 am local time. 5th edition characters, the other GM disapproves of the number of awakened PCs that go through the group so going tech will make him happy. Standard priorities. No houserules of note, using hot patch missions errata.

PM me if you want to discuss your concept.

Nice to see another West Aussie round these parts!

Does your other GM grumble about magic because it's overpowered? Or is he the sort that loves the gutter punk feeling you get from running the barrens? Personally I'm fond of how much drek you can throw at a magical group and if they succeed they may even get a full team of light-bringers which would be way too cool.

[FuelDrop]

Nice to see another West Aussie round these parts!

Does your other GM grumble about magic because it's overpowered? Or is he the sort that loves the gutter punk feeling you get from running the barrens? Personally I'm fond of how much drek you can throw at a magical group and if they succeed they may even get a full team of light-bringers which would be way too cool.

He just feels that since only 1% of the population is magical then having tons of magic characters makes no sense in universe. house rule is that you get 1 magical character in 10... which was brought in after several other players had a bunch of magic characters while I've had a grand total of 1.

[ShadowDragon8685]

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

[FuelDrop]

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

I have mentioned this. We'll see where it goes.
Personally, I'm fine playing a mundane and showing up the mages.

[Grak]

He just feels that since only 1% of the population is magical then having tons of magic characters makes no sense in universe. house rule is that you get 1 magical character in 10... which was brought in after several other players had a bunch of magic characters while I've had a grand total of 1.

An interesting rule, but not one I would want to put into play.

The 1% awakened stat is one of my few concessions of Fluff versus Fun. No-one likes being gimped and while the group has an even mix of magic and chrome right now, the magic players are clearly better.

[FuelDrop]

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

I told him to forget it.

[ShadowDragon8685]

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

I told him to forget it.

I'd remind him that I know the damage values for a flung or wielded core rulebook...

[Grak]

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

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

[Grak]

I'd remind him that I know the damage values for a flung or wielded core rulebook...

You sound like a delight to play with. I mean that genuinely. Often my group utilise dice as projectiles, especially when the Ork decides to "Mark his Territory".

[FuelDrop]

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued...

[ShadowDragon8685]

Awh, c'mon! To be continued?!

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