Has anyone been able to reach Vegas recently? I've tried to get in touch with her for a few weeks now, and no news at all

Nope, me neither :-/

Sorry, sorry sorry! I've been in one of my "slumps" lately and just otherwise really busy. Wasn't getting notifications from DSF either for a while there, but I think that's straightened out now.

Where are we again and what are we trying to do?

YAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!!
I believe everyone is doing something constructive, except the twins who are house hunting

sorry, been less active then I intended to, lately. I still have the rest of the IC in my head, but lacked the time and energy to put it together, so far. Just wanted you all to know, that I´m still interested and checking every day! This game may be on hold for some time, but as far as I´m concerned, it´s not over

@MK--I'm checking every day too.

@Team--I think the slow patch has more to do with adamu than with us. Let's just give him some breathing room and see how his life progresses. He's had a lot of stuff piled on his plate recently and I am sure that he is going to get himself organized and get back to our shadowy madness.

@ Vegas
So, who writes for the house hunting?

I've got to be honest, I'm really posting just to get our sorry butts off of page 2.

Now that Jack has determined who does security for the building he'll try to find out as much about that company as he possibly can.



Hurrrrm, good thing we have Krait on our side.

And another lunch break draws to a close.

(sorry again for disappearing.... ugh)

Well.... depends. Seems to make sense the Conall would broach the subject since he's all gung-ho about getting Etain "out of the gutter" and whatnot. If you want to wrap this up in one single post, lets PM back and forth and put it together and then post it. If you want some back and forth RP start us off and I'll jump in appropriately

@Vegas
Well, I've sorta started the RP If you want to add something go right ahead. I'm just trying to get the ball rolling.
My best guess was that the twins would check out the local listing for place up for rent, and just go from there.

In case it matters, Conall's plan is to find a new place for the twins, set up the lodge, learn his spells... and thats it

Alright, this is just me thinking outloud.

The goal: Rescue Esmeralda
Steps in doing so: find out where she is.
Who would know that: the Johnson he set up the kidnapping, a japanese man named Kenichi.
Current Plan: extract the information out of Kenichi.

So, our goal is to grab Kenichi. This means we need intel, which I believe Krait is currently gathering.
Unless I'm mistaken, and please correct me if I am wrong, but we know that Kenichi hangs out at two locations (lets call them A and B). He also uses many different routes to travel from A to B, and seems to do so in no particular pattern.

At the very core, an extraction is just a fancy way of saying kidnapping. The only way to kidnap someone, unless you do it out of a spontaneous urge, is to set up a certain kind of “ambush�. So, lets break it down. This is, of course, takes into account that we CANNOT just have a sit down with Kenichi and ask him straight out.

So, Kenichi's extraction!
It can be done while he is “stationnary� (inside) or “on the move� (outside). Depending on the kind of security Kenichi has, we only have to advantage: Surprise and Initiative, which means that we are the one who decided where and when to strike. Depending on the size and skills of his security detail, we might out number them, or “out skill� them.

To get the job done, we first need to decide if we will strike at Kenichi when he is on the move or stationary. Both have their ups and down.

Striking when he is stationary
-will be “easier� because we somewhat already know where he is.

-Striking when he is on the move
-will be more complex, because we do not know what route he will use. This means that to ambush him while he is on the move, we need to tail him from a point, overtake them, and set up ahead of him.

Personally, I only see two ways of going about this:
-Extremely violent and fast vehicular ambush.
-Quiet and stealthy physical ambush at one of the 2 locations.

@MJ: First off, I really enjoyed your IC post. That was a great calm in the storm moment and you caught it very well.

Second, I think the vehicle grab is the way to go. Just because Kenichi uses multiple routes to cut through between the two sites doesn't mean he gets to use them on the day we strike. With a lot of up front planning we can manage to block off routes and funnel him into our ambush zone. Consider the Movie Ronin. Also, he'll be protected wherever he is but he'll most likely have less protection on the move than at a physical location with all sorts of monitoring equipment and pre-set booby traps.

I'll be interested to hear what the others think.

Altought, keep in mind that in Ronin, they knew his route in and out, and had a way to track him by cellphone.
So, they knew where he was going to be, and when... a luxury we unfortunately don't have.

Oh yea; they also had a rocket launcher

I've just realized that in about 2 months or so, Hitting Bottom will be celebrating its 3rd year.

We. Are. Insane.

Well, we will know ...

(actually as of the time IC, we don´t know, yet, cuz at that time I just started the tracking and it will take at least a few hours -maybe days- to see the pattern Adamu already provided us with)

...that he travles from Magnolia Bluff to Downtown frequently (IIRC to different Locations in these parts of town actually, but I´ll have to check). What we do know (or will learn), is that all his different routs pass through a narrow area along the coast, south of the Elven District, which conects MB & DT. We are also abled to track him whithin 50m. So we won´t know his exact location without additional sorces of intel, but we can at least tell which road he´s taking most of the time. Thus it´s probably even easyer to pinpoint his location as long as he´s moving in a car, then it will be once he leaves it and/or enters a building.

P.S. I never doubted the impaired mental sanity of anyone perticipating in this game since after the 1st year

Well, that does make our lives a little easier.
If we go with a vehicule ambush, there are a few things we need to keep in mind and figure out.

Since this is, for all intent and purposes, a kidnapping, we need to "damage" our target as little as possible. After all, Kenichi isn't much good to us if he's dead. This means we cannot his his vehicule with overwhelming firepower, because we might kill him. And so, in my opinion, we've already crossed out everything that is heavy weapons or explosives (which, after all, doesn't matter much since we don't have any!).

We we'll have to do is either immobilize or disable Kenichi's vehicule.
So, let us look at those two options.
To immobilize; we either need to box in the vehicule with our own, or to prevent it from moving by magical means.
To disable; we either need to take the driver out, or to mechanically disable the vehicule.

A few things we should "assume" (most of my assumptions are based on the fact that our target is a professional Johnson):
-The car will be armored to a certain extent.
-The driver will be a trained professional.
-The car will have an alternate source of power (other than Seattle's grid)
-The car will be running on Run-flat tires.

To my knowledge, the heaviest firearm we have at our disposition is Jack's AK98, (@JACK: What ammo do you have for the AK?) which might be able to punch through armored glass, and take out whoever is driving. I mean no offense to Jack, but I doubt he could disable the car by getting a round through the engine Thats the sort of stuff Delta Force snipers do, not bodyguards BUT, if Jack feels confident enough it is a shot he might be able to make, that would give us a great way of stopping the car.

Vehicule wise, we currently have at our disposal the van we just acquired, and Conall's racing bike. This, I believe, is enough to rule out the possibility of simply immobilizing the target's vehicule. We might be able to borrow again the gangers van, but I personally feel it would stand out WAY too much in the area we'll hit our target.

Considering we won't able able to use our target's car to spirit him away, we have to take for granted that Kenichi will be taken in our van. This means we cannot run the risk of having our van disable, by lets say ramming the target's vehicule.

So, beside shooting the driver, the engine, or maybe the tires, we can also disable the vehicule magically; either with spells or with spirits.
Going with spirits we can:
-Have a spirit use the Accident power to make the vehicule crash
-Have a spirit use the Confusion power on the driver to have him crash
-Have a spirit use the Binding power to prevent the vehicule from moving
-Have a spirit physically manifest INSIDE the car
-Have a spirit manifest outside the car and physically "attack" it (ex: an Earth Spirit knocking the car on its side)

Going with spells we can (and here, I speak for Conall):
-Use a Powerball to cripple the car
-Use a Shatter spell to cripple the car (which, honestly, is sort of insane because its a touch range spell, but it WOULD be awesome to have Conall just "tackle" a car off the road )
As to the efficiency of said spells, simply take under account that Conall can cast the Shatter spell and easily deal out as much damage as a AV Rocket if needs be. Same goes for the Powerball... but since its an area spell, the drain's a bitch, and a high force Powerball WILL damage the surrounding area a great deal.

In my opinion, we should plan on using two methods. If one fail, then, we can rely on the other. For exemple: if we have Jack try to shoot the driver, and he misses, well, we can then Powerball the crap out of it

As for what I would pick: have a powerful spirit use the Accident power.

BUT, if by some miracle the car isn't really armored, and Jack believes he can "snipe out" the driver, I would say:
-We block the target's car at a light (either with the van, or by having Conall "fake" an accident between his bike and the target's car)
-Jack takes the driver out, and then is in position to cover Conall.
-We have one, or many, spirits manifest inside the car to subdue/kill whatever security detail Kenichi has.
-We take the target out of the car, bag him, and put him in the van.
-We get the hell out of Dodge.

I'll get some answers regarding Jack's capabilities either tonight after work or tomorrow before work.

Knowing the route is along the coast is just an added bonus for us, especially if we can push him onto Aurora/Hwy 99 south and catch him on the lower deck. Vehicle movement there will be extremely limited, with many sniper opportunities at the driver side of the vehicle.

Shooting the driver will be an incredibly difficult shot, as adamu has black tinted windows as standard equipment on all modern vehicles. Basically whoever takes the shot will have to take a shooting blind penalty on top of punching through what will likely be ballistic glass.

At any rate, I'll get some answers and post again soon.

All righty kids. Jack's AK-97 is off the shelf plain jane with no upgrades and 1 full clip of regular ammo. Bummer, eh?

I don't think sniping is the way to go on this extraction. Jack will do much better to be right next to the vehicle. Once we get the vehicle stopped, Jack rushes forward to the driver's window, shoots it out, then caps the driver and other guards. If nobody else has neutralized Kenichi, Jack can switch to his machine pistol and flatten a lot of rubber bullets against his chest or more likely back. If someone has some sort of stun grenade for Jack to toss into the vehicle so much the better.

Once the drek hits the fan we'll need our crew close to the vehicle to contain the occupants, especially our target. Kidnapping victims do have the nasty habit of trying to run away, or worse calling for help.

I'm going to run a few progressively difficult scenarios for Jack's part of the fun using different weapons, vehicles, guards, etc. I'll let ya'll know how that goes on my next post.

There are sure some expanded options with a bit of matrix preparation, licke hacked cars to herd the target vehicle or box it in - maybe even to escape. Any prolonged shootout in this area will cas major problems and even a short exchange will likely get a lot of heat down on us. I have one silenced MP, which could keep our profile a bit lower, but for everything that dosn´t have to penetrate a vehicle, we can also use Tasers and stuff - they are silent and even legal to carry around by everyone.

Also keep in mind, that I still have an unused admin access to Kenichi´s personal comlink (access will likely trigger an alert, though). I also could use Spoof to send fake commands to the driver and stuff.

I think we should definitly keep the Bike+Ramspell option at hand as a last try in case the target vehicle escapes. It´ll sure look cool (so much so, that I´m almost hoping we are forced to use it )

Without giving much thought and w/o additional intel, I´d sugest the following scenario - boxing in the target w hacked vehicles, then draw up with our escape ride at it´s side, shoot out the driver´s & Kenichi´s sidewindows w full auto or spells and then stun/grab/run. (we might even be abled to ignore driver/security in the fron, if we are fast enough, to grab him out of the back.

Given more info and processing time, I might change my mind about the best way to go.

If we get our hands on some fireworks (or fake it w illusions), we might even be abled to con K into giving up - i.e. blow up something on the rout and tell him, the bomb in his car goes up next, unless he talks to us...

Well, looks like no one has been idle while I've been putting my affairs in order.

I am still planning to return to twice-weekly posting from June - no guarantees about last week of May.

But have time for a bump now.

Jack - complementary skills, if I haven't already answered this, is basically the idea of adding half the rating of a knowledge skill to your roll on an active skill roll.
You basically did the same thing recently when you computed your dice pool for a test.

So if you have a First Aid skill of 4 and you have a 2 in Poisonous Snakes, then if you are treating a snake bite you will get 5 skill dice.

MK - as you have noted, our OOC resolution has gotten ahead of the IC. Once you get the IC caught up with what we have resolved, we can talk about what you find. On format - obviously I do not have time to detail all the stuff you find on Kenichi's service - in addition to his movements, you can ask me questions on details you'd like to know, and I'll tell you if the information is findable in all that content you have accessed.

MJ and Vegas - again, as you know, the things we have agreed to by PM are still ahead of the IC progress.

So basically the state of things now is that for two major projects the IC has not caught up to the resolution, so the ball is mostly in y'all's court.

And of course Jack and Carla are free to do whatever they want while the others are busy.

If I have missed any queries, don't be shy, let me know.

I will admit I am not fully refreshed on all the various details of what your characters have been up to. With a game that has gone on this long, it is even more vital for individual characters to be up on your own personal situations - if I am hazy I will trust you. I, of course, will concentrate on the whole rest of the universe.

See you all again soon, first week of June at latest.

@Adamu & Vegas
A three story brown stone, with a small garage and a small green house on the roof.
How does that sound?

Sounds right in line with the stats and price you submitted by PM.
That's all the input you need from me.
You still have a green light for IC realization.

Well here it is 2 June and I am hereby back (I very much hope) to twice a week.

MK - nice IC posts - looks like you are nearly done with the parts we have resolved. Once that is done you can start asking questions regarding Ken based on his files.

Twins still have green light to IC their house hunting. Don't be intimidated - one paragraph saying you found a place and briefly what and where it is should suffice!

And BlueRondo - haven't heard much from you lately. Understandable since I have been on break, but give a shout out - the thought of losing you over my hiatus keeps me up at night.

Well - here I am for my second bump this week.
But no one has posted, so nothing to bump.
May take some time for me to reestablish enough posting credibility to get people posting again.
Hope I haven't returned too late!

Sorry! As far as I am concerned it´s not your fault. I just had a couple of bad weeks lately and find it hard to motivate myself to finish this stretch of IC. I´m trying to fix this, but there is little anyone else can do about it, I guess

Happy you are back to be certain - I can use any distraction at the moment!

Post's up. Sorry it took 2 weeks UGH!

Didn't wrap it up neatly with a bow or anything, in case MJ wants to add anything, but it can easily be summed up in 1-2 more posts and voila! the twins will have a new place to live that's more up to their liking, or at least be that much closer to closing a deal on it.

Honestly I couldn't remember all the PM's that have gone back and forth about what the Twins are up to (or if I had been privvy to everything as well honestly), so I kinda winged it not wanting to overassume or overdeliver

Basically, from what I recall, we'd just settled on something like this.
Comforts: 4
Entertainment: 3
Necessities: 4
Neighborhood: 4
Security: 3
Quiet Neighborhood: 1
that would make it 19 points, which is 9 000/month

Yup, that's what I have in the PM I saved - the fluff you sent involved a brownstone with a rooftop garden.

Ball remains in y'all's court vis a vis both action and fluff.
Thanks to all the elves for posting.
I am sure Jack's still with us cuz around end-May he was e-mailing me saying he hoped I'd be back on schedule. So I reckon he's just busy.
BR I AM worried about - without the fearless leader it will take some trickery to keep things moving forward. I will see if I can make contact and see if the good doctor is still in the house....
In any case, given my hiatus, no one to blame but myself if this takes a couple of weeks to get rolling again.

Sorry for my silence! I've been pulling crazy hours at work, and my sideline freelancing has also picked up a lot. All in all, I sleep very little, work a whole lot, and am brain dead!
My aim is to try to get home early tomorrow, giving me time to write a nice post!

Next week will be insanely crazy-whacko-birthday-week, so I´m quiet bussy prepairing a party and acquireing some presents. Still I´ll try to find time to catch my IC up with the OOC resolution on the weekend.

Hey all - Internet down for last week, but looks like I am still waiting on IC completion of house and hack scenes.
Also hoping to hear from Jack and BR. Reaching out to both by off-board means...

MK - is it YOUR b-day? If so - felicitations.

Hey all. Back from vacation. No big whoop. A lot of house projects, day trips, way too much eating out, and my first piano recital. I'm not sure what the kids thought of me, being the only performer old enough to be one of their parents

I'll be getting back to my research about shooting out tinted windows and post accordingly.

great to have you back, Jack (though condolences, of course, for your vacation ending).

Didn't even know you were getting into the piano. Very cool.

It was my b-day last week, among others, thanks

Still have to wrap up some presents for the others´, but should get the time to finaly get back to posting, soon.

Wellcome back, PianoMan!!!

I'm just breezing by REAL quick to say that I am STILL in the game and STILL alive I've just been CRAZY busy these past few weeks. Work is killing me, and I'm moving to a new place soon. Good thing is, I've got three full weeks off, starting on the 1st. The cable company is supposed to hook the internet back on the 3rd or 4th, so I might be off the grid until then. No matter, I'll have a post up before then, and I should be able to check my mail SOMEWHERE So, that covers that.

Second part of my quick rant (for I must go to sleep... I'm getting up in 5 hours, and tomorrow is Quebec's brithday ): I want to state one thing. You guys are the best. This game is the best. Quite frankly, I had never imagined we'd still be here after such a long time. I do admit my interest in the game, and especially my character, had sorta diminished in the past few months.... but it has regained I've decided I will not stop writing until Conall gets his glorious last fight

And at last, I wanted to share something real quick with you.
Hopefully, in the near future, we'll have a big ass confrontation with "the evil people". Whatever the fight might be, I'm sure Adamu will make it worth our while
So, my sharing is the epic song, which I will loop while writing my next combat post

Very cool song MJ. Listened to several by them once I was at the YouTube link.

Anyway, I keep saying we are waiting on final IC posts from MK and the twins. And Jack's new plan additions.

But I will confess that what I am really waiting for is to hear from BR. I have tried to make contact off the boards, and hopefully will hear something either way. As I have said, given my hiatus, I am inclined to give everyone the benefit of the doubt as to getting back into the game.

So you guys still try to get your end taken care of, and if I don't hear from BR by a certain point, I may have to contrive something to keep the game moving forward - which it will not without someone in the driver's seat.

I am watching the boards almost every day now, so anything posted requiring a GM response will hopefully be attended to in a timely manner.

Adamu
How far ahead time wise can I jump the twins?
I was thinking about mid day, Sunday. So, roughly, 24 hours.

I've been dabbling for years, but I've decided to take it to the next level, since more and more of my performance work is incorporating music.

MJ - that'll be fine. Right now you are at the same time as Krait's hack, and he says it will take 24 from then to get a good pattern on Kenichi's movements anyway.

MK - just a reminder, once you IC the hack, let me know what info you want to try to get from the data on Kenichi you steal.

Sure, hopefully get this done tomorrow

I'll likely advance Jack the same amount of time. I'll post and IC on that Monday latest.

@adamu

As I mentioned in one of my PMs, Jack plans to walk home from the gang hideout. His route will be west out of the Barrio, paralleling 200th street until he reaches the Normandy Park neighborhood. He will then turn due northwest until he strikes Sylvester Road then follow that to 10th Ave SW until he reaches his apartment on the corner of 10th and 160th street. That should take about an hour for a fine physical speciman like Jack. During the walk Jack will make perception tests every 5 minutes to see if he is being followed.



Let me know if anything happens during the walk. Otherwise I have written an IC post that will take him to around 12:00 on Sunday.

Jack - your perception tests show that the Los Locos are definitely keeping an eye on your movements as you leave the barrio, but once out of their territory, they do not seem to follow. After that you perceive nothing.

Non-RAW ruling alert.

Under current rules (well, haven't read 4A yet), when destroying barriers, a shot from a Streetline Special is as effective as one from a Panther Assault Cannon. I don't want to go too far from RAW, but in a bid to assuage the stupidity somewhat, the base DV per bullet is 3 (not 2) for shotguns and heavy weapons.

Just to let you all know that on the Wednesday (the 1^st), I'm moving to a new place. I'm supposed to have the Internet hooked back on the 4^th, but with these things.... you never really know.

As Jack would expect. I'll post a slightly edited version of my IC, momentarily.

At exactly 12:15 p.m. Sunday afternoon, Jack will initiate a call to the Slav and request to purchase the following gear:



He will then use public transportation to travel to Tacoma and buy some legal gear at an outdoor supply store. List in my next posting.

So, there's my post!
Unto the OOC stuff now.

The way I see it, the twins would probably be busy with the house hunting stuff for the rest of Saturday. So, all that time would be taken by finding a place and settling in (as well as getting the rental car that comes with the lifestyle )

So, as for Sunday, Conall would use what free time he has to learn his new spells.
Just out of curiosity, how long would it take him to learn one spell?

My stripped down vision of the Kenichi ambush goes something like this:

His vehicle gets boxed in somewhere. Jack runs up to the driver side window and shoots it out. I ran some quick simulations on this and Jack should be able to shoot it out in less than one combat turn, even if it is armored glass. The team then gets to work on disabling the guards and Kenichi. We pack the target into our van and head for our safe interrogation location.

Sounds easy enough, eh? It will take a lot of legwork to set up but even with Jack bumbling in on the scene, you managed to snag Vanity and get some useful information out of her. I figure we can make this happen if we try hard enough.