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

[FuelDrop]

25/12/2070.
Yay! Christmas!
The day where I prefer not to kill anyone. I mean, normally killing people is distasteful but it's something that I'll do for pay. On Christmas... well, I actually hate working Christmas if I can avoid it.

This year it looks like I can't avoid it. One of Sarah's online friends has gotten themselves in a bit of a jam, and has come to us for help. He's a decker who goes by the handle of NetBlaze, and his sister has been kidnapped. He can't afford to pay us (Seriously? If my job routinely risked me getting my brain fried I'd hold out for as much cash as I could), but he says he'll work it off with us. Normally that wouldn't fly with me but, well, Christmas.

Also, He barely speaks English. Not a problem, except that Seth barely speaks Japanese. Oh, and the kid spent most of the meet listening to music from his headphones rather than paying attention so NetBlaze hacked them and started changing up his playlist a bit.

So we all go and start gathering intel. Sarah gets a photo of the kidnapping. NB gets a line on a Yak stronghold where we might find more info. I talk to some people and discover that she's not the only person who's gone missing in the last few days. Seth's spirit finds a bunch of magical defenses mucking up the trail. Shadow gets a bite from Fido and has to get rushed to hospital. Brush your abomination against nature's teeth more often and not only would you not have to worry about infection when it bites you but WE won't have to deal with the thing's horrible breath!

So the logical course of action is to sneak in and drain the Yak server, pinpointing our target and readying us for the next stage of the plan.

It starts off so well. NB hacks the external cameras, brings up blueprints, the usual Decker stuff. Everyone decides that the fire escape is the best way in, so we climb up there under the concealment of one of Seth's pet spirits. Things start to go wrong when we hit our first obstacle: a closed door. No handle on the outside (Gee, who'd have thought that someone might make it impossible to get IN through the fire escape while at the same time making it easy to get OUT? Fire safety that isn't a massive hole in security? who'd have thought it possible?!?), so NB decides to trip a fire alarm to unlock the fire escapes without, you know, actually sounding the alarm. I wouldn't think that sort of thing is possible, but I'm not a Decker so what would I know?

It turns out that NB isn't as hot as he likes to think he is and he trips an alarm. Everything from then on went down hill, but that's a long story. Cutting to the chase: NB in hospital in critical condition. Building destroyed inside by grenades. Big hole in outside where someone drove in an Ares Roadmaster. Run has to be scrubbed due to lack of leads.

Is it just me, or has every charity-style run we've been on recently ended in a complete disaster? Oh well, at least we tried to do the right thing for once. I dunno, maybe we're just out of practice or something.

[Cobalt Blue]

Wildly entertaining, thanks for writing it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

FD: For future reference, you may want to bear in mind that det cord and a silence spell are sometimes more subtle than hacking.

Or a silence spell and a circular saw. Most security set-ups that aren't AAA mega wouldn't think to monitor the whole door for damage, just to see whether it's open or not. Funny thing, a door which has had a human-sized hole cut in the middle of it still registers as a shut door on most security systems.

[Erik Baird]

Sounds like Seth needs a chipjack and a Linguasoft.

[FuelDrop]

Due to real life interfering there will be no update to the diary this week. sorry all.

[Grak]

Dang it Fuel. Don't your players know they are letting down a captive audience?

Hanging out for the next one. Your posts usually make my Monday.

[FuelDrop]

01/01/2071.

A new year, a new mission. Our Horizon Johnson contacted us and told us we needed to get a confession from some street trash by the name of Kiyoshi Takahashi to doing something nasty with Ikemoto as his partner in crime. The main challenge, if you can call it that, is finding the guy.

We do a bit of research and find out that young Takahashi has been a VERY naughty boy. Sarah also finds the address of his elderly mother. Not bad for sitting around the table eating lunch. So Shadow goes off to set up some cameras for surveillance on the old lady's house and we start kicking around ideas, Shadow keeping in touch over comms. He makes the first suggestion: Drive Sarah's road master through the house, killing the mother then nabbing her son at the funeral.

I have an objection to killing anyone I'm not being paid to at the best of times, and offing a defenseless old woman to get to her deadbeat son is morally repugnant to me. However, making the target come to us has possibilities...

Next idea, after some group input: acquire a body at the morgue, kidnap mom Kiyoshi, leave body in her place, burn house down (making it look like an accident), have Sarah switch dental records, nab son at funeral. Seth jokingly suggested skipping steps 1 through 3 and just burning the place down with mom in it. He's just lucky I knew he was joking.

So now there's the question of the best way to get a defenseless old lady to open the door to strangers. My first suggestion was that Sarah and I go to the door: Sarah is the girl Takahashi knocked up, I'm her lawyer there to serve a paternity suit. Sarah seemed a bit less than thrilled with that, so I said that it'd work just as well with me pregnant and her as my lawyer. Eventually we decide to go in as delivery people, using a large crate to get the body in and kidnapped mom out without raising suspicions.

So I'm off to the morgue to pick up a body while the guys go and pick up a crate big enough to hold a body.

03/01/2071.

Plan has gone off without a hitch so far. It took me about a day to find both a body that fitted our needs and a mortician willing to look the other way. We talked our way in easily enough, took our target's mom out with a single shot from my tazer, then set it up so the fire would start after about an hour. Sarah pulled out all the stops and it'll look like the gas was left on when some wiring shorted out, starting the blaze. She's set up mom with a drip and enough slab on slow tap to keep her out of it until we're done, and she says there'll be no permanent damage. She assures me she knows what she's talking about, she once dated a physician! Very comforting.

05/01/2071.

Job done. We approached our target as representatives of his mother's estate and convinced him that he needed to come with us to our offices to clear up a few minor matters for his considerable inheritance. He was suspicious, hardly surprising considering how his mother was living, but we convinced him that most of the money was due to her taking out a life insurance policy while he was in prison. This guy had been cooking his brain with something the night before so he wasn't exactly sharp, and with Seth providing the distraction we managed to get him to sign a confession to helping Ikemoto burn down his mother's house in revenge for kicking him out without reading it first. Then, we got him to make us a voice key by making him answer some 'routine questions', giving Sarah all she needed to get a verbal confession to... well, pretty much anything we wanted.

The finale? We told him that there was a final, minor hurdle which he would need to discuss with our associate and dropped him off with directions to the room where his mother had woken up about 5 minutes ago. The reaction shot when he got up there would be on PPV if we didn't need to keep this whole thing low key.

Mr Johnson was very happy with the results and gave us the next mission right away: install a program on a secure, hard-wire only server surrounded by elite SWAT-type security forces in a crowded train station.

06/01/2071.

Sarah has given herself a position in the Mitsuhama payroll and accounting office across town, worked a shift, and found the chief admin for the target system. Now all we need to do is get to his commlink and upload an agent with the program. It'll hide, then covertly install the package next time our admin jacks in to work. He'll be tough to get to, but it'll be easier than cracking station security.

[FuelDrop]

Did you know I only buy adventures for the initial pitch and conclusion, because my players manage to bypass pretty much all of the premade adventure more often than not?

I didn't either. Seriously, I don't think I need a spoiler warning after all as they don't actually do any of the stuff the module expects them to!

[ShadowDragon8685]

Setting up the street trash like that - hilarious. I just hope the insurance on Mom Takahashi's doss will cover it. Rendering an old woman destitute to fuck with her son is only slightly less abominable than straight-up geeking her.

FD: My players have been that way, too. They managed to tick most of the locations for "On the Run," but usually at different times, and definitely in different ways.

[FuelDrop]

Setting up the street trash like that - hilarious. I just hope the insurance on Mom Takahashi's doss will cover it. Rendering an old woman destitute to fuck with her son is only slightly less abominable than straight-up geeking her.

FD: My players have been that way, too. They managed to tick most of the locations for "On the Run," but usually at different times, and definitely in different ways.

Don't worry, we checked that it was sufficient to cover it. I gave more karma than the difficulty of the mission probably warranted simply because of the innovative solution to the problem that they came up with.

[FuelDrop]

07/01/2071.

Okay. Our target is male, single, and likes cruising for chicks at exclusive clubs. I've got this.
Sarah put an agent and the program on a data chip, and assures me that all I have to do is plug it into his commlink and next time he logs in for work the virus gets uploaded and we get paid.
Simple. We even know where he's likely to go tonight after work. I'll be going in alone, get him talking, pick his pocket and slip the chip into his commlink.

Later.

No one is hearing of this. Ever.
First things first. Getting into an exclusive club wasn't any problem, a smile and a wink was all I needed to convince the bouncer I belonged. It was actually rather nice to be able to wear my new outfits to work. I was a little out of practice with my high heels, but I got back in the swing of things fairly quickly. It didn't take long for me to find my target, and getting a guy who's looking for a quick hook-up to talk to a beautiful woman isn't exactly hard. I think the tailored pheromones were just overkill. Anyway, before I tried to pick his pocket I noticed that he had a datajack hidden at the nape of his neck. The signal scanner in my handbag confirmed it: Internal Commlink.

I had a few drinks with him as I tried to work out how to get past this sudden hurdle... which was a bad idea in retrospect. Alcohol goes to right my head and he'd been biosculped to be pretty cute. I'm not going to go into specifics but I'll confirm that he had been augmented down there as well. It took a while to tire him out, but eventually he fell asleep and I managed to upload the program. I just hope no-one notices that I'm a bit off kilter tomorrow.

08/01/2071.

Now I've heard everything. Seth got contacted by one of his friends on the other side last night, an american spirit who goes by Runs-Like-Wind. It was acting as an agent for the NAN who wanted him to recover an artifact that was recently stolen from Seattle museum before it could be returned to them. So the group decided to pull the job without me.

They spent a lot of time brainstorming and Sarah says they went through about a dozen plans before finally coming up with one they thought would work. Now apparently there wasn't much intel to gather, as the target was in the middle of an AAA area and any major intelligence work was too risky.
Remember that.
The information that they did get included a basic layout of the grounds, along with a hint that there were hellhounds on site and that Renraku was providing security.

So the plan was for an earth elemental to create a small cave beneath the basement and ferry the group into it (Bringing their own air supply with them), then have Seth cast a silence spell to cover the sound of Sarah's jackhammer. This worked well enough and they found themselves climbing up into the security center for the main house. Luckily, the only person there was jacked in and thus hadn't noticed the silent jackhammer... okay, that is something I never expected to say. A bit of slab and Sarah was free to replace her. It was at this point they find out that "Renraku security" means Red Fricking Samurai.

Well, they manage to get to the target, deal with the security, and grab it. At that point 2 Red Sammies came up on a routine patrol. Seth turned invisible and Shadow hid in the... shadows. Huh. However, the theft was noticed and one Red Sam went to help check the perimeter while the other stayed behind to investigate.

Long story short they quickly twigged that Sarah wasn't the real admin and a spirit spotted Seth, forcing a fight. 2 on 1, our guys striking with surprise... Seth almost died and Shadow was heavily wounded before they managed to knock the guy out. They bailed and managed to get out alive... just.

What I had to do last night might have been a bit degrading, but I suppose that getting nearly killed by Red Sams was probably worse.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Ha-hahahahaaaaaaah!

Bloody hilarious, that is. Keep up the good work!

[FuelDrop]

Last session they bypassed my plans, to the point where I had to call the session early so I could spend the week rewriting the run to fit in with their new tactics.
First thing they did this week? Find a way to completely avoid the run I had set up.

That's a derailment within a derailment. I didn't even know that was possible. The entire session was thus improvised, and was possibly the best session I've ever GMed.

Also, those red sammies are badass.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Last session they bypassed my plans, to the point where I had to call the session early so I could spend the week rewriting the run to fit in with their new tactics.
First thing they did this week? Find a way to completely avoid the run I had set up.

That's a derailment within a derailment. I didn't even know that was possible. The entire session was thus improvised, and was possibly the best session I've ever GMed.

Also, those red sammies are badass.

That happened to me on the first run I set up. I wound up with three derailments.


The Plastic Jungles hired my players to help them arm themselves and set-up their defenses. To do this they chose to go to the Ancients to acquire guns. Rather than negotiating a trade (using the Jungles' own resources,) they took a secondary Run from the Ancients to hijack an AK-97 nanoforge from the Vory. Rather than hijacking the Vory's truck, they decided to rig the boat so it offloaded the Vory's goods onto their own truck. Then the hacker AI managed to fuck everything up by fucking with what she oughtn't have fucked with and had no reason to fuck with, and the container got dumped into the sea. So then they had to fly down to CalFree and hire a boat to sail up the coast, find the container, and bring it back.

All to get a shitload of cheap assault rifles for a bunch of farmers.

[FuelDrop]

That happened to me on the first run I set up. I wound up with three derailments.


The Plastic Jungles hired my players to help them arm themselves and set-up their defenses. To do this they chose to go to the Ancients to acquire guns. Rather than negotiating a trade (using the Jungles' own resources,) they took a secondary Run from the Ancients to hijack an AK-97 nanoforge from the Vory. Rather than hijacking the Vory's truck, they decided to rig the boat so it offloaded the Vory's goods onto their own truck. Then the hacker AI managed to fuck everything up by fucking with what she oughtn't have fucked with and had no reason to fuck with, and the container got dumped into the sea. So then they had to fly down to CalFree and hire a boat to sail up the coast, find the container, and bring it back.

All to get a shitload of cheap assault rifles for a bunch of farmers.

I seem to remember that story from some other thread. Didn't the AI pick a fight that was completely unnecessary solely for the purpose of flexing his digital muscles and being an a$$hole? (I seem to remember him attacking a spider who had nothing to do with the run simply because he could, thus giving the game away and getting a big beating to boot.)

Now I'm actually looking for a bit of advice on how Walker should develop from here. She's broken one of her cardinal rules as a Face: don't sleep with the target.
Now there are several reasons that she's always held to that. Firstly, she's always held that she's too skilled at persuasion to need to resort to carnal acts to achieve her ends. Secondly, in her youth she got knocked up by her then-boyfriend, and got an abortion. Ever since then she's wondered if she made the right choice and as a result has been very hesitant with her sexuality as she sees her ability to create new life to be a great responsibility that should not be taken lightly.

Now, after ten years of this, she's slept with someone she didn't even know in order to do a job. From her point of view this makes her feel like a very high priced prostitute, as in the long view she was sleeping with the guy for money.

So now I need advice. Should she be distraught about this moment of weakness? Should she see this as a failure of her skills despite the fact that the mission was technically a success? Should she try and rationalize it with herself by telling herself that he was attractive and she probably would have been willing to sleep with him anyway if circumstances had been different (Which is an obvious lie, even internally)? Or should she go the other way and realize that she's been keeping herself repressed all these years and thus denying herself the pleasures of the flesh for no good reason? The other extreme, where she follows a bit of a slippery slope along the lines of 'Well I slept with one guy for money, the damage is done now, I might as well make this a standard part of my arsenal'? Even further, combining the above reasoning with enjoying the act to the point where it becomes her preferred method of operation?

I'm honestly not sure how to have her react to this. The last session was a bit of a life-changing event for her psychologically, so any suggestions as to how I should handle it and have the character grow are welcome.

One thing is for certain: She's getting a toxin extractor implanted so that whatever she chooses from now on it's her choice rather than the alcohol's. As far as I know there isn't any published 'ware available that protects against unwanted pregnancy or STDs, so if she went one of the later paths I might have to mock something up.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that just before this run she had a rating 2 cerebral booster implanted, upping her logic from 3 to 5. This probably didn't help with the whole 'psychological stability' side of things, and could justifiably lead to an extreme change of viewpoint on the issue if that's what everyone thinks is the way to go.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I seem to remember that story from some other thread. Didn't the AI pick a fight that was completely unnecessary solely for the purpose of flexing his digital muscles and being an a$$hole? (I seem to remember him attacking a spider who had nothing to do with the run simply because he could, thus giving the game away and getting a big beating to boot.)

That's exactly what happened. She got into the ship's systems and altered the manifest without the IC seeing her at all. Then she decided to flex her digital penis by reverting the spider's hacked admin account to a security account. That set off the data bomb, alerting the Spider, who jacked in to fight her.

The AI took very little hurt and was escalating to the point of killing the security spider with Black Hammer despite said spider having Firewall 7 and Biofeedback Filter 7, so the security spider cut the transmitter's power and dumped the AI. Then they dumped the cargo.

Now I'm actually looking for a bit of advice on how Walker should develop from here. She's broken one of her cardinal rules as a Face: don't sleep with the target.
Now there are several reasons that she's always held to that. Firstly, she's always held that she's too skilled at persuasion to need to resort to carnal acts to achieve her ends. Secondly, in her youth she got knocked up by her then-boyfriend, and got an abortion. Ever since then she's wondered if she made the right choice and as a result has been very hesitant with her sexuality as she sees her ability to create new life to be a great responsibility that should not be taken lightly.

Now, after ten years of this, she's slept with someone she didn't even know in order to do a job. From her point of view this makes her feel like a very high priced prostitute, as in the long view she was sleeping with the guy for money.

So now I need advice. Should she be distraught about this moment of weakness? Should she see this as a failure of her skills despite the fact that the mission was technically a success? Should she try and rationalize it with herself by telling herself that he was attractive and she probably would have been willing to sleep with him anyway if circumstances had been different (Which is an obvious lie, even internally)? Or should she go the other way and realize that she's been keeping herself repressed all these years and thus denying herself the pleasures of the flesh for no good reason? The other extreme, where she follows a bit of a slippery slope along the lines of 'Well I slept with one guy for money, the damage is done now, I might as well make this a standard part of my arsenal'? Even further, combining the above reasoning with enjoying the act to the point where it becomes her preferred method of operation?

I would say, go the "Hell, it felt good and I got paid. Why shouldn't I do this when I want to?"

I'm honestly not sure how to have her react to this. The last session was a bit of a life-changing event for her psychologically, so any suggestions as to how I should handle it and have the character grow are welcome.

One thing is for certain: She's getting a toxin extractor implanted so that whatever she chooses from now on it's her choice rather than the alcohol's. As far as I know there isn't any published 'ware available that protects against unwanted pregnancy or STDs, so if she went one of the later paths I might have to mock something up.

I don't think you need 'ware to prevent pregnancies. Intra-uterine devices are old tech by the time of Shadowrun 4 (or do you play 5? Hell, that statement applies true if you play SR1!) and by the time of Shadowrun, are probably orders of magnitude more reliable and safe. Alternatively, she could probably have her ovaries extracted and cryo-frozen. I imagine that's what high-class, augmentation-minded folk would do - it prevents the monthly curse and all chance of pregnancy (by default!) and makes motherhood a much cleaner (and safer!) affair.

As for protecting against diseases, I'd say that a nanite hive and some kind of nannies are your best bet for disease protection. The right tool for the right job - if you need to beat someone up, you don't get nanites to power your fleshy muscles, you get a cyberarm. But when you need bodyguards in your bloodstream and your whole body, nanites are the way to go. Alternatively, bioware might do the job, but diseases keep mutating - it's easier to update a nanite colony's targeting paramaters than to get a new bioware immune system every five years or so.

(Though if you play SR5 with the stupid nano-retcon, that may not be a viable option.)

EDIT: I forgot to mention that just before this run she had a rating 2 cerebral booster implanted, upping her logic from 3 to 5. This probably didn't help with the whole 'psychological stability' side of things, and could justifiably lead to an extreme change of viewpoint on the issue if that's what everyone thinks is the way to go.

Eh... Getting your grayware augmented is always a good reason for a change in psychology. I'd recommend visiting a shrink and getting some PAB work done so she's fine with her new outlook and moving on.

[FuelDrop]

I would say, go the "Hell, it felt good and I got paid. Why shouldn't I do this when I want to?"

Interesting. How far do you think I should go with that? How much internal conflict should this new outlook have with her old one? How would you play this change in outlook if it were your character?

I don't think you need 'ware to prevent pregnancies. Intra-uterine devices are old tech by the time of Shadowrun 4 (or do you play 5? Hell, that statement applies true if you play SR1!) and by the time of Shadowrun, are probably orders of magnitude more reliable and safe. Alternatively, she could probably have her ovaries extracted and cryo-frozen. I imagine that's what high-class, augmentation-minded folk would do - it prevents the monthly curse and all chance of pregnancy (by default!) and makes motherhood a much cleaner (and safer!) affair.

As for protecting against diseases, I'd say that a nanite hive and some kind of nannies are your best bet for disease protection. The right tool for the right job - if you need to beat someone up, you don't get nanites to power your fleshy muscles, you get a cyberarm. But when you need bodyguards in your bloodstream and your whole body, nanites are the way to go. Alternatively, bioware might do the job, but diseases keep mutating - it's easier to update a nanite colony's targeting paramaters than to get a new bioware immune system every five years or so.

(Though if you play SR5 with the stupid nano-retcon, that may not be a viable option.)

I'm afraid I am playing shadowrun 5th, and I agree that the nano-retcon is dumb. When the new Augmentation book comes out it might have something I can work with, but otherwise I'll think of something.

Eh... Getting your grayware augmented is always a good reason for a change in psychology. I'd recommend visiting a shrink and getting some PAB work done so she's fine with her new outlook and moving on.

Which actually brings us to a few interesting philosophical points:

1) Would you notice that something is wrong with your own mind? Can you feel yourself going crazy, so to speak?

2) If a change in opinion on a subject were to come after an augmentation that is supposed to make you 'smarter', and you realized that your opinion on the subject has changed, would there be a risk that you'd assume that the new outlook is the correct one because you're quantifiable smarter now?

Also, would a cerebral booster implant muck up your hormones in the short term? The long term? Cross a wire in your brain during surgery by accident? Should any change in attitude or behavior be attributed to any of the above?

EDIT: How many shadow-shrinks are out there? more importantly, she's only been in Neo-Tokyo for a few months so it's not likely she'd already know a local shrink she trusts and most of her local contacts that could hook her up are either very mercenary or belong to a corporation infamous in the shadows for rumors of brainwashing people...

[ShadowDragon8685]

Interesting. How far do you think I should go with that? How much internal conflict should this new outlook have with her old one? How would you play this change in outlook if it were your character?

Zoé would probably be too guileless to use sex to manipulate and distract people. She wouldn't feel bad about sleeping with someone to get information or something, but she wouldn't be able to bring herself to do it with someone she didn't want to have sex with.

Shades is older. Like, way older. She'd do it if she felt it was the safest, best way, and if she thought she could have fun with it.

Neither of them would particularly care to sleep with someone they're planning to fuck over, though, although Zoé might not consider the ramifications of her actions.

I'm afraid I am playing shadowrun 5th, and I agree that the nano-retcon is dumb. When the new Augmentation book comes out it might have something I can work with, but otherwise I'll think of something.

6th World medical care is probably up to the challenge of nuking viruses without nanites. If nothing else, you can go see your friendly local kanmiko.

Which actually brings us to a few interesting philosophical points:

1) Would you notice that something is wrong with your own mind? Can you feel yourself going crazy, so to speak?

Depends on whether or not you're going actual crazy, or if you're noticing changes to your outlook that don't sit well with your old outlook. If you're going actually, factually 'round-the-bend nuts, then no. You wouldn't notice it, because you're neurologically unwell. If you're just evolving as a person in ways you didn't think you would and which scare you, then you would, yes.

2) If a change in opinion on a subject were to come after an augmentation that is supposed to make you 'smarter', and you realized that your opinion on the subject has changed, would there be a risk that you'd assume that the new outlook is the correct one because you're quantifiable smarter now?

Entirely possible. Or you might assume that the augment fucked with your head in some manner that it wasn't supposed to. Or, it's entirely possible it's just a coincidence.

Also, would a cerebral booster implant muck up your hormones in the short term? The long term? Cross a wire in your brain during surgery by accident? Should any change in attitude or behavior be attributed to any of the above?

A change in your behavior could be attributed to any or all of those, or none. It's basically up to you as regards how you want your character to go with this.

EDIT: How many shadow-shrinks are out there? more importantly, she's only been in Neo-Tokyo for a few months so it's not likely she'd already know a local shrink she trusts and most of her local contacts that could hook her up are either very mercenary or belong to a corporation infamous in the shadows for rumors of brainwashing people...

No idea. They're probably pretty rare, but if Shadow Stock Brokers exist, Shadow Shrinks likely do as well. As regards Horizon, well...

It seems to me that after the Corporate Portfolio came out, CCG launched an immediate shitboating campaign to make the otherwise nice-looking AAA mega into a monster. Personally, in the Shadows, I'd assume that so much dirt coming out at once was more likely the result of a smear campaign by Aztechnology than anything else. Remember, Shadowrun is entirely Unreliable Narrator territory.

[FuelDrop]

I think we have a contender if we go for a hormonal balance issue being a factor: At the same time as she got the Cerebral booster she got a sleep regulator. I think that's the most likely implant to screw with your body chemistry short of something like an adrenal booster.

Also, would her damage compensators (which she's had for a while) have an effect on her decision making, particularly in regards to risk assessment?

[ShadowDragon8685]

FuelDrop: It's whatever you want it to be.

It could be any of those. It could be none of them. It could be them being a convenient scapegoat for her to let loose and do the things she wants to do but didn't previously.

[DWC]

It's also possible that a massive increase in cognitive power would lead to a surge of dispassionate hyper-rational thought processes. In time, I could see the mind finding a new balance between the new hyper-streamlined thought processes and the older ones. While it doesn't mean the person is temporarily crazy, it might look that way to plenty of onlookers.

[FuelDrop]

15/01/2071.
Busy week. I've managed to spend most of the money I've been saving up on some new augmentation, specifically the Mnemonic Enhancer I've been chasing for the last month and a half. Stupid Christmas rush.
Anyway, the other big news is that Sarah has finally managed to get her hands on the Steel Lynx she's been chasing. She's asked me if I can get my hands on a Panther XXL Assault Cannon fitted for drone mounting and some ammunition to go with it. That fight with the Red Sammies shook her up something fierce, hence the push for new hardware.

20/01/2071.
I am good. Despite the fact that ALL guns are illegal around here I've still managed to locate a supplier who can get one in, slightly used but otherwise in good condition. Apparently the previous owner died from a bad case of nanite failure, poor sod.

There was a funny smell of fish coming from the crate that hung around after I dropped it off. Sarah was good enough to spring for a new air freshener.

(OOC: Half the group were no-shows so we did some housekeeping and called the session early. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) )

[ShadowDragon8685]

Ouch. Sorry to hear that, FD.

[FuelDrop]

21/02/2071.

10 AM.

Someone's posted a bounty on the head of a gang shifting drugs and beetles in downtown Neo-Tokyo. Probably not the Yaks as they deal with this sort of thing in house, so might be a rival gang or some private citizen trying to clean up the streets. Whatever. The bounty is 50K and specifies that the death has to send a message, so based on my research into gang politics around here I'm going to guess that there are two organizations trying to shift product in the area, the Yaks have come along and said "One of you now works for us, the other is gone. Decide among yourselves which is which."
Or not. What matters is that Sarah and Shadow reckon it's a way to make a quick buck and want me in on it. Seth's busy doing some magic meditation or something so can't be with us on this one, but I suppose that shamans must need extra downtime to appease the spirits or something.
I almost decided to sit this one out, as Sarah and Shadow seem dead set on using explosives to make sure the message is heard. In the end I agreed to come along just to prevent any collateral damage.

1 PM.

Sarah's spent the last 3 hours searching the matrix for details on our target, and has found 3 leads. Each of us is suiting up to stake out one location, see if we can get a positive ID on where the target lives ect. The three possibilities are all apartments, with the first adjacent to a shopping mall, the second next to a girls collage and the third on the outskirts of the area, up near a courier depot. Sarah says she can handle the first one, and Shadow suggested that he could dress up as a Japanese school girl to infiltrate the second one. After the mental image of that scarred me for life and left me wondering why in the world I got these mnemonic enhancers I told him no, just no, and sent him to keep an eye on the third location while I handled the second one.

3 PM.

Sarah managed to get herself arrested again. She was careless with her hacking or something and apparently GOD backtraced her. I didn't even realize she was religious. Anyway, her Lone Star contact got her to drive to where they had jurisdiction rather than the real cops and then arrested her with much fanfare. Luckily, that area is Horizon property so our Johnson should be able to bail her out for a favor owed and a new SIN (her old one will be hanging out in the system padding out LS's arrest numbers for this quarter). I don't think she's getting paid for our next run for that guy.
Shadow's managed to tail his target's girlfriend to the mall and is looking into kidnapping her for interrogation. I have my doubts that this is going to work...
I've managed to talk my way inside my target's apartment, have a chat with him (it turns out he's a lieutenant for the gang we're after, not the boss) and convinced him to set up a meeting with his boss for a large transaction of novacoke, 5k worth with payment in corp script for tomorrow. Provided no-one else screws up we should be able to pull this off then. I love a clean assassination.

3:30 PM.

Shadow's plan worked about as well as you can expect doping someone with slab in a changing room and whisking them away in a wheelchair through a crowded mall to work: not at all. He didn't get the target, got shot up by some police rotor drones, got his SIN tagged, and generally had a bad time of it. He ended up getting away but he's had to burn that ID and he's got some nasty bruises from the experience. He should just be glad that the drones were packing gel.

Considering the setbacks the others are considering holding off until we've got better intel and less heat but some of my contacts have let me know that there are other teams going after this bounty too, and they're rookies who don't care about civilians getting caught in the line of fire. We have to get this done, and get it done ASAP to prevent innocents from becoming collateral.

22/01/2071.

Mission accomplished. One briefcase with a false bottom, one kg high-end explosives hermetically sealed and hidden inside said false bottom, 5 grand in corpscript notes, and one hell of a lot of sweet talking to convince the boss that I was, in fact, on the level. eventually he bought it and we traded suitcases, then when he reached the car Sarah hit the button. The car was one of those armoured Rovers that riggers love so much, and it contained the explosion fairly well. Well enough to ensure that no-one outside it got hurt, anyway. It was still pretty impressive to watch and netted us the full bounty plus a bonus, so all's well that ends well, right?

Now all that's left is to work out what to do with 500 doses of Novacoke...

[ShadowDragon8685]

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)