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

[FuelDrop]

Sounds like you had fun.


I have not been having fun.

I've been locking horns with my Shadowrun GM over information technologies for three fucking hours now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Damn, that sucks. Hope you manage to sort it out to both of your satisfactions soon enough.

I never would have thought that Sarah's cranial bomb would ever come in handy for her, but Lone Star managed to make things work well for everyone.

Also, 100 posts! yay!

[Grak]

Hey Fuel,

How did the cranial bomb assist Miss Sarah? I'm fuzzy on why she chose to get arrested and drove herself to lone star, could the girl have slipped into friendly horizon territory avoiding police jurisdiction or simply hidden in a bolt-hole?

Tell me you showed Shadow the picture "old fat guy in a sailor moon outfit". It's a perfect example of how badly he was about to fuck up the schoolgirl mission.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Well, my Sunday Star Wars game concluded today. Today was a battle day, and the first space combat of this incarnation of Knights of the New Republic. My players were stretched thin in a bunch of stolen pace transports with a stolen Q-Ship, and launched from a pirate port ahead of the angry pirates who weren't happy that they took the ships without paying... Or that they blew up the rest of the pirate shipworks.

I threw three space transports at them - a YT-2000 with modifications, a KR-TB Doomtreader modified to be as tough as possible, and a Firespray-31 with no modifications, just a missile launcher and its cannons. It took them a while to hammer those down, long enough for an incoming hostile: an Imperial Customs Corvette and its two TIE fighters and TIE bombers. I thought they were going to lose their Gozanti cruiser (a Q-ship corvette, powerful and well-gunned, but the very definition of SLOOOOOOW,) to the bombers and enemy corvette.

They took out the bombers, with the Gozanti at sufficiently low hit points that I gave it even odds of surviving one more full salvo from the enemy corvette. The player's primary space transport, the one they had begun this mission aboard, was being piloted by a 15-year-old NPC (under the control of a PC at the time,) and I figured I'd give them some more rope to hang themselves with, so I had her turn to the player character of the player controlling her and say "That thing has landing bays, right?"

One incredible piloting roll at a stupidly high penalty later (and one hilariously botched piloting roll on the part of the corvette's pilot,) and the player's transport was upside-down inside the hostile corvette, having punched a proton torpedo set to remote detonation mode through the back wall of the hangar into the ordnance magazine, and were holding the corvette hostage with the threat of blowing them all to living hell. Following that up with an incredible Persuasion check to demand their surrender... And they captured the hostile corvette.

I'm afraid to put my players in the same battle map as a Star Destroyer. I legitimately fear they will attempt to take the motherfucker over. And succeed.

[FuelDrop]

Hey Fuel,

How did the cranial bomb assist Miss Sarah? I'm fuzzy on why she chose to get arrested and drove herself to lone star, could the girl have slipped into friendly horizon territory avoiding police jurisdiction or simply hidden in a bolt-hole?

She didn't 'choose' to get arrested per say, more got a call saying 'Congratulations, you've made the news. Come here and we'll arrest you very publicly, or else.'
Since Lone Star have the Horizon security contract in my Neo-Tokyo it was a simple matter for our Johnson to arrange a bailout in exchange for a favor to be specified later, while her now-burned SIN stays in circulation in LS's system and continues to earn them money as another criminal they're keeping locked up, minus the expense of actually having to feed her ect. Out of game it was a convenient excuse to let the character get away with a slap on the wrist rather than screw the player over some seriously unlucky dice rolls.

Tell me you showed Shadow the picture "old fat guy in a sailor moon outfit". It's a perfect example of how badly he was about to fuck up the schoolgirl mission.

I'm fairly sure that's what he had in mind and was just suggesting the whole thing to tease us. He's a 1-essence steroid-abusing 2-meter-tall street sam, so there was no way I was going to let him pass as a Japanese schoolgirl no matter how many hits he got on disguise. That whole 2-meter-tall thing actually came back to bite him later in the session as well, as he needed a disguise and slipped into a clothing store only to find that they didn't have anything off-the-shelf to fit him. I mean, this may sound racist but I don't actually know many people from Japan who're two meters tall and built like a certain governor of the state of California, so I ruled that they didn't have anything in that size just lying around in the first clothes store he walked into.

I suppose in retrospect that they might have had some orc fashions that might have fitted him, but then again Japan has always been portrayed as very much anti-meta so I don't think that's really a massive plot hole... I hope.

[Grak]

You'd be well in the clear saying no respectable Japanese business stocks clothing fit for a creature from the land of the dead.


Wait a minute... Shadow has one essence?
Wouldn't there be psychological issues cropping up around that? The story about the 2nd hand cyber junkie in spells and chrome comes to mind.

[DWC]

With the Emperor rolling back some of the anti-metahuman policies, isn't it possible that there are some clothing stores starting to cater to elves and possibly even orks, opening the way to clothing on the rack for 2 meter tall individuals?

[Grak]

Yeah, There would likely be specialty stores or sympathetic corps with a full range in regular shops but the Japanacorps? those that that buy into the Yamato-Damashii decree. They ain't budging.

Here's my reasoning.
Unfortunately Japan has a long history of discrimination in this regard and while they have made some efforts through lawful mitigation the heart of the problem persists in the mentality of the populace. These are the people that shipped off their loved ones to an island of monsters, it's going to take time to accept not only how wrong such an action was but also to accept the blow to their honour as well.

Even today there are Japanese businesses and housing complexes that refuse foreigners, how do you think they are going to feel about the warped kin who are no longer Japanese? How will they react to the shame of having their mythological demons return to the family? If it follows the modern example the pure Japanese will manifest a polite rejection. Clothing lines will not cater to Metas, vehicles and utilities will be set to Japanese human standards, tariffs will be higher on Metas and certain stores will outright refuse them entry... Then again, this is Shadowrun. Maybe it's much worse.

[FuelDrop]

29/01/2071.

Well here's a blast from the past! Guess who called up with a job for us today? Nitro!
Yes, I'm as surprised as you are... This is a diary, in theory I'm the only one who's going to read this. Wow, this just got very meta.
Anyway, we met up with Nitro and got picked up by a Mitsubishi Nightsky with our client inside.

The job is simple. We're to assault a Renraku Aqualogy developing new weapons for Terracotta Armaments, then set it up to look like Ares was responsible. The pay is a little light (I managed to talk Mr Lee up to 155k, with 50 grand upfront), particularly for a job that looks like it'll involve going up against the Red Samurai, but with luck we'll be able to make away with some prototype weapons which'll pick up a decent price.

Night.

Part one of the plan is being able to frame Ares. Since we're going to need some toys for the job anyway it's time to go shopping... by which I mean stealing. Sarah managed to find a shipment of goods from Ares which includes several cases of commercial grade explosives and a whole bundle of armored diving suits. I'm sure they won't miss a couple. We aced sneaking in with Sarah running matrix overwatch and got out again before anyone realized we were there (That lockpicking practice payed off again! No padlock is safe from me!!!).

30/01/2071.

That... could have gone better.

From the beginning: We loaded up with gear and swum out to the target, keeping to the ocean floor and hiding in the seaweed to prevent anyone noticing our approach. Unfortunately... it didn't. We got ambushed by 4 red sammies about 300m from the target. Sarah got cut up pretty bad and we had to abort.
(NOTE: When you need a sword adept AND a cyborg universal soldier to gang up on EACH enemy one at a time to defeat them, you are out of your league. Run away.)
I managed to kite two of them with my Warhawk (Semi-automatic guns jam after 1 shot if used underwater. Not an issue with my revolver, but the effective range of 3-4 meters didn't help in the slightest.) and Shadow managed to get a good hit with his harpoon gun... unfortunately, it was on ME! I'm just lucky we got armored diving gear rather than standard stuff.
End result: A nasty sword wound to the calf, a bruise where my teammate almost harpooned me, and the Red Samurai after our blood. Nitro managed to kill 1 of the four, while the rest were merely knocked out. Since all our gear was Ares the false flag part of the operation was technically a success so we got to keep the down payment. I'm currently sitting outside a street doc's operating room waiting to see if Sarah's going to pull through. Apparently it's very touch and go right now.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Wow.

That's the sort of job where traditionally you tell Mr. Johnson "Thank you, but no thank you. You're not offering us enough to commit suicide. Come back when you have an order of magnitude more nuyen on hand."

[FuelDrop]

Wow.

That's the sort of job where traditionally you tell Mr. Johnson "Thank you, but no thank you. You're not offering us enough to commit suicide. Come back when you have an order of magnitude more nuyen on hand."

Well, Nitro's player was back for one session and I had to throw something together on the fly, and he was really disappointed about not getting to fight the red sammies last time they showed up so I designed something for him on the fly. I lowballed the cash on the assumption that 'it's an experimental weapons lab, there will be lots of shiny stuff for people to grab'.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Well, Nitro's player was back for one session and I had to throw something together on the fly, and he was really disappointed about not getting to fight the red sammies last time they showed up so I designed something for him on the fly. I lowballed the cash on the assumption that 'it's an experimental weapons lab, there will be lots of shiny stuff for people to grab'.

Ahhh, improv. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[FuelDrop]

Most of my sessions are improv. It means that less of my planning time is wasted when things go off the rails...
Or like tonight, when my plan got scrapped due to an unexpected player rocking up. Well, it keeps life interesting (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I didn't even get to use the bounty hunters I have gunning for shadow. next time, next time...

PS if anyone has pregened characters for use as bounty hunters, would be happy to use them.

[FuelDrop]

Due to the general busyness around this time of year, the game is going to be somewhat intermittent over the next month or so. sorry guys.

[FuelDrop]

06/02/2071.

I'm trying not to panic here.
Get a grip, from the beginning.
Okay, I just got home from a shopping trip. Sweet set of new guns came in from my local black market dealer recently so I was thrilled. Now I'm home and everyone's vanished. We live fairly private lives normally and each have our own apartments, sure, but this is different. I've tried calling around to see if something's come up but no-one's answering, we've got three 'town' vehicles missing, and according to the apartment registry they all left hours ago.

I mean for normal people this isn't a big deal. For shadowrunners...

Anyway, I've got a sensor tag on Shadow's bike. Nothing special, I just don't really trust Shadow. He's a mercenary, and I want some warning when he decides to cash in on the group's bounty. It was being jammed but I followed its last known location to a warehouse in the docks district. Not being a complete moron I payed a homeless guy a couple of nuyen to go in and check it out for me. Since the place didn't explode I figured it was probably alright to poke around, so I put on a gas mask and went inside.

Nothing.

So I looked around outside. Sure enough, tire prints that match the three missing vehicles. This was looking suspicious, so I put in a few calls and found myself a private investigator. He came around and I told him that I was the owner of this warehouse and some people had broken in. He's poking around right now, I should have some answers by tomorrow.

07/02/2071.

Results came back from my PI. Looks like there was a trace residue of neurostun left on the inside of the building. I thanked him for his time and payed him, then started hitting up my contacts to find out what had happened.
Some hacked street cameras revealed that whoever was behind this had already thought of that angle as the relevant files were deleted. The Warehouse belongs to Ares, but is currently not in use (It was being used to house some kind of new assault rifle, the Excalibur or something, but apparently the project was a bust and the weapons got carted away to be recycled).
Luckily for me one of my smuggler contacts keeps a couple of blimp drones in the area and they pinged the black vans of the kidnappers. Another decker friend did some work and turned up that they belong to a shell company. He couldn't follow the trail beyond that, but a shell company means either organized crime or a mega doing dirtywork (well, dirtier work).
I'm hitting the streets to see if I can find another lead.

08/02/2071.

Project Lotus Eater. Even the name sounds ominous. I'm not sure who is bankrolling these guys or what their end-game is, but my new friend T3RRAtrax! tells me his team has gotten some good payouts recently picking up homeless people and shipping them off to these guys. The contract was supposed to be confidential and they only know who they were working for because they did some pretty hefty research into their employers before taking the job, but I'm good at convincing people to tell me things and after a couple of spiked drinks he wasn't really in any condition to resist my questioning. I called in yet more favors which I am not looking forwards to paying back, but hopefully it was worth it because as I write this I've replaced a new security guard who's being shipped out tonight for this mysterious project.

09/02/2071.

I'm on an island somewhere. The whole place is covered by a smart jamming field so no GPS or unauthorized communications are coming in or out. There's only one console which has access to the normal matrix, and the local grid is insanely powerful. It has to be, they're running a massive VR city for the hundreds of thousands of people they've kidnapped. I'm guessing here but I think they're mainly SINless and it looks like they're from a bunch of different cities. Still working on why these guys would take runners instead of more bums for whatever they're doing. It's going to take me forever to find the rest of the team, so I'll try and work out what the hell this whole thing is about while I'm at it.

10/02/2071.

I've got a hint on who's running this place. The bright red Samurai armour is pretty distinctive. Yes, we've managed to get involved with the red sammies AGAIN! This is insane, we can't have luck this bad! Anyway, that means there's good odds Renraku has their hand in this somewhere. Still no clue what's actually going on.

13/02/2071.

I've found them! That's the good news. The bad news is that I can't get a workable plan to actually get them out of here. So I'm going with plan B: wake them up and improvise from there. I've managed to send a message to Sarah's implanted link so she knows she's in VR, and I'm about to dump them out right now. I just hope this works.

[FuelDrop]

13/02/2071.

We're away. I got everyone out of status and we slipped past security easily enough. Sarah managed to get the elevator working despite the security diagnostic, and we got to the surface safely. Sarah then managed to get herself spotted in spite of Seth's invisibility spell so we had a fight with the guards then bailed in one of the four-wheel-drives before reinforcements showed up.

At this point things started going badly. See, it turns out that the forest on this island is both awakened and extremely pissed at whatever's going on here so it's been tearing up the roads as fast as they can be laid down. So Sarah takes us off road and in spite of the thickness of the forest we get a good way before something rips the undercarriage a new one and brings us to a very definite stop. So we're stranded, it's getting close on night fall, and our only supplies are vendor wear, flack vests, a couple of pistols and whatever was in the car.
Quick inventory looks like some defoliant grenades, a flamethrower with a few cans of fuel, a survival kit with enough food to last us for the day tops, a medkit with enough supplies for two more uses, and a big drum of water. I wish I'd planned this out better.

[Grak]

Hey Fuel, enjoy the break?

Man I hope next session opens with "Welcome to the Jungle. We've got fun 'n' games."
All aside, is there something in the jungle to facilitate an escape? I can't see runners staying in an awakened jungle for long without a way off that rock.

I wonder if they'll collect some magic sticks, could be some nuyen in it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[FuelDrop]

Hey Fuel, enjoy the break?

Man I hope next session opens with "Welcome to the Jungle. We've got fun 'n' games."
All aside, is there something in the jungle to facilitate an escape? I can't see runners staying in an awakened jungle for long without a way off that rock.

I wonder if they'll collect some magic sticks, could be some nuyen in it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

The Island has an airfield and a dock, but both are very heavily guarded so they're going to need to be creative in getting to them and jacking a ride out. at the very least they'll need to take out the AA/AS missiles that defend the island.

I'm modelling it on the description of Tasmania in the 6th world almanac, and thus it's going to be very actively trying to get rid of them initially. Seth, as a shaman with multiple spirit empathies, may be able to get the forest on-side by doing some runs against the corp (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

As for enjoying the break... it was fine, but 'running is way better (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[FuelDrop]

13/02/2071.

Just survived an encounter with a nest of army ants and a pissed-off tree spirit. Down to one defoliant grenade and about half a tank of fuel for the flamethrower. We've stumbled on some random who was lost in the forest and Seth has vanished in the confusion. I believe the current plan is interrogate this guy then head to the coast.

[Grak]

How are the batteries holding up? Always a concern in a survival situation.

[FuelDrop]

How are the batteries holding up? Always a concern in a survival situation.

Haven't had that come up yet, we're still only about an hour in game since breaking out. Last session could have gone a lot better.

[Grak]

Yeah, I got that feeling from the very short post.

Care to elaborate on what went screwy?

[FuelDrop]

Yeah, I got that feeling from the very short post.

Care to elaborate on what went screwy?

Mainly conflicting schedules. Oh, and I got a new guy dropped on me at 0 notice. never helps.

[DMiller]

FuelDrop, I had actually been avoiding this thread due to the thread title... Boy was that a mistake! This is awesome! Keep id going (as time and the group permits), it's a great read and you are a very good short story writer.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

Glad your game survived the Holiday Clusterfuck, mate. My Star Wars game didn't. It's shelved.


OTOH, I am starting up an Eclipse Phase game.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Glad your game survived the Holiday Clusterfuck, mate. My Star Wars game didn't. It's shelved.


OTOH, I am starting up an Eclipse Phase game.

Emmmmmmm. Eclipse Phase... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)