Salted Wounds [IC], a Deep Black Sea game Options

[Gilga]

Anna sighs, observing the mess in the room - it was over really over. She says to Wraith "We'll have plenty of time to identify the foci, and see what they are worth."

She says to Nova "It was really fun Nova, who would believe the adventures. I mean, the last normal thing I did was getting bnc out of her house. Then anything happened so fast, and now it feels a bit sudden that it all ended. " She pauses, and then asks What are you going to do next? "

[Luckace]

bnc's sudden emotionality puzzled Wraith, and he squeezed her hand lightly. "Right. She's tough as nails, she'll recover. Don't worry."

He smiled warmly at Nova's report, thankful that - unlike himself and most of the team - she had stayed professional and stood guard. He was quite impressed how she could keep herself calm all the time. It's almost creepy how everything leaves her cold. Almost like an actual robot.


"Right. ", he agrees with Anna's mention of the foci. "We gotta look through the loot. Let's get to the good parr before we get to the gold-bye-part.", and he attempted a motivates smile.

Oh, and I imagine Nyan wants to go home. Someone should see her safely across the border and to an airport outside of Austria, when we leave."

[Volker]

bnc nods. "Yeah ... Nyan, where are you going to go now?"

[Jack_Spade]

Nyan shrugged: "Now that I have some decent clothes, I'd like to go back to my family. But for safety I'll probably go first to my uncle California. From there I can plan my next steps. So if you could spare the expenses to get me a ticket there, I'd be very much obliged."

[Gilga]

Anna says happily "Common Wraith, let's do some research." She'll follow Wraith and study the foci.

[Volker]

Nyan shrugged: "Now that I have some decent clothes, I'd like to go back to my family. But for safety I'll probably go first to my uncle California. From there I can plan my next steps. So if you could spare the expenses to get me a ticket there, I'd be very much obliged."

"I could, and I will. And some pocket money, too, for the trouble you had, and to buy you some decent clothes. Will some two thousand do?"

[Jack_Spade]

"I might need help getting a fake ID too, but otherwise yes, that would be plenty. If necessary my uncle could sponsor my airfare too."
She replied

[Luckace]

Anna says happily "Common Wraith, let's do some research." She'll follow Wraith and study the foci.

Wraith put the foci on a table so Anna and he could take a good look at them. From his expression, it was obvious that he had never owned such a powerful talisman.
"So... What can you put to use? You use health magic, right?"
He tried his best to suppress his anger from their fight earlier and stay professional, although Anna might likely notice that deep down, he's still sore.

[Gilga]

Anna shows Wraith a macho golden ring which is clearly not her style, and she keeps in her purse rather than on her finger. "I already have a powerful sustaining focus for health magic, I took it for bnc initially but she is... well you know what she is like. She is not easy to care for.

After a short pause, she asks "Did I make you angry?" she fires out of context, and in a complete discontinuity of the conversation.

[SquirrelDude]

Sharkboy rudely intrudes into the conversation.

“You make everyone angry, Anna.”

“Now, who can explain what all this stuff does, if this guy hypothetically only knew that magic makes me hit stuff harder.”

[Gilga]

Anna rolls her eyes and shrugs "Fair enough, body armor makes you fight better with kicks and fists. Rest of the stuff is prime quality mage stuff... Powerful, and dangerous."

[Luckace]

Anna's powerful - and unused - Sustaining Focus caused Wraith to raise an eyebrow in surprise. Whether at the seeming idleness or the fact that she had apparently designated a Sustaining Focus just for bnc was hard to tell.

"Did you make me angry? Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.", he replied, obviously feeling like the question was redundant. A grin appeared on his face at Sharkboy's nonchalant remark.

He took the lead of switching to an unemotional toppic and further explained the Foci: "Those two can help keep a spell sustained - like when you need a friend petrified, I hear that tends to happen. That one helps a magician endure all that power he catalyzes when casting magic. And that beauty...", and he whistled at the Power Focus, "...To a mage, that's like putting a Suzuki engine in a Dodge Scoot.

The armor is a Weapon Focus on its own. Meaning it can easily harm spirits, which ususally are quite resistant to worldly punches."

For a split-second, his look turned sour. Perhaps the thought of harming spirits displeased him, or maybe he just recalled how the mercenary in Linz had disrupted his bonded spirit with such a Weapon Focus.

[Gilga]

Anna replies "You made me angry because I expected you of all people to see him as a person. Why are you angry with me?"

She eyes the power focus, with a complex emotion of desire and revulsion and then looks away from it pushes it aside.

[Luckace]

Wraith hesitated for a moment - seemingly reluctant to dive into their quarrel again. He answered brusquely:
"Because you put your self-righteousness above people's safety. Now by insisting we send a killer that could rat us all out to the corp that wants us all dead, and before by interfering with testing Kerstin's medicine.

I respect having a moral code, but from someone who suggests we test the drug on uninvolved civilians that are too poor to refuse, that's just flat-out hypochrisy. And hypochrisy makes me angry."

[Gilga]

Anna replies "You judge me to harshly, while I do have a moral code, and I first asked Nacl to respect it as a personal favor.
However, I also think that experimenting or executing Assault is the wrong thing to do from a pragmatic perspective. I am perfectly aware that testing on desperate people is also morally wrong in my book. However, my arguments are entirely practical.

You see, Assault is not as dangerous as you portray him. He is a working man that supports his mother, and we saved his life when the natural thing was to kill him. Somehow I do not see him going rouge from MCT to murder us all. He has a moral code of his own as you determined, and I doubt that he has the resources and connections to track a group of shadowrunners without the support of MCT.

On the other hand, MCT is one of the most influential organizations of our time. They have offices everywhere in the world, so it is going to be very difficult to avoid them entirely, and I do not want to spend my life looking over my back. Since MCT is the real danger, we want to minimize our risk from them. They are a profit driven organization, and going after us is expensive. The most compelling argument to make such an investment is to get the research back. However, we happily give them a copy for free, leaving no financial gain in going after us.

The second argument for handling us is as retribution for killing their citizens, but we return Assault alive, which is a token of goodwill and saves them a lot of money. I think that it reduces the probability of them going after us. Though, I would personally feel a lot better if we left a shorter trail of dead bodies. We did the sensible thing under the circumstances.

[SquirrelDude]

“Yeah, well, this conversation is stupid. I’m going to take the armor suit.

“You two really overthink this stuff.” Sharkboy takes the FBA and heads over to his bag.

[Thanee]

"I wouldn't call it stupid, but it clearly isn't going anywhere, so why don't you let it rest?" Nova proposed.

She also figured, there was another topic, they could talk about instead. "We should probably figure out how we wanna do this. The foci, I mean. These things are seriously expensive, right? Like, this stuff here is worth hundreds of K? Do you want to keep them all? Do we sell some? Seems right to factor those in in some fashion, when we divide the money and all that. What do you think?"

[Gilga]

Anna replies "Fairest thing would be for the person that takes one to pay some percentage of their market cost. That way Nova should get more money than the rest since she does not take a focus. Perhaps Abdecker can fence the unclaimed foci for us, which would also help us decide how much one should pay to acquire one."

[SquirrelDude]

Sharkboy is laying down, resting his head on his bag, watching something on his commlink. He lowers it for a moment to comment.

"No.

"Just give Nova a bigger chunk of the cred sticks."

[Luckace]

Wraith grit his teeth at Anna's monologue - it was clear that he didn't agree with her.
"All right, all right.", he gave in to Sharkboy's and Nova's interruptions before he could reply.

Although the toppic clearly wasn't out of his mind - in fact, Anna was quite certain he was still thinking of ways to make Assault less of a threat - he shifted his attention back to the Foci. "No, no, we can't keep them all. Those things are dangerous, if you overdue them."
He pondered for a moment. He knew of mages that got so hooked up on their Foci, they could barely cast magic without them - and he knew he didn't want to end up like them.
"Let me think... I'd love to get my hands on a Centering Focus - although that one might be a tic too potent for my taste. Better the one Buchner had with him, that one seemed more humane.
Anna, what would you like to claim?

More of the credsticks for Nova and bnc is fine with me, there's plenty for all. Let's also not forget about the Vault of Ages that we sold to my talismonger-friend in Linz - that was another 20k for sharing.

I guess we'll contact Abdecker, then, see if he's in the market for Foci and ask him for a SIN for Nyan, right? We owe that girl smooth travels home, after what she's been through.
If Abdecker won't take the Foci, I'm sure my talismonger will oblige."

[Gilga]

Anna sighs "I can do wonders with the counterspell focus that I took earlier, but finding a power focus of this class is difficult to pass up. I don't mind not taking it if you want it - but we are not fencing it. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity."

[Volker]

bnc walks out of the room. She never was in for the money, nor does she gave a damn about it right now. Thus, she climbs down the flight of stairs to the basement, hoping that Assault would be in coma again, so that bnc can have a few moments of silence, with a crippled sister-statue as company.

[Luckace]

Wraith shot the Power Focus a tempted look. Lead me not into Temptation. He had mixed feelings towards it. An incredible opportunity, for sure, but none he felt comfortable with. He saw his magic as a gift from god, after all. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. My powers are at his will, who would I be to force him?
"I don't think I want it. Well, I do, but I don't think it would be wise. With that much power, I'd play god. You can have it.
I'd rather not pass on that Sustaining Focus, though."

He reached out for the Sustaining Focus for Manipulation Spells and inspected it closely, seeing if it would fit on his finger.

[Jack_Spade]

bnc found Nacl there, sitting in a chair. He smiled at her and said: "Are they still dividing up the loot? You should make sure you get your share also. Always remember, the difference between an amateur and a pro is that the pro is getting paid."

[Gilga]

Anna picks up the power focus and places it on her finger. She grins widely and moves her fingers across showing off the ring.
She takes it off, and nimbly plays with it with her fingers "My precious" she says in her best Smeagol imitation.

Though, she is still not full with that decision - she already has a weapon focus, and a counterspell focus, and the sustaining focus and now the power focus and it is only safe to use one of them at a time. "How did Rozenberg use so many of these? You think he was addicted?"