@ Magus

Call it a temp-ruling based on what has been published previously, rather than all the things that might or might not be published in future.

@ Crusher Bob

The scenario is a bunker-style door built into a hillside, leading to what the runners believe to be a tunnel which in turn should lead to a central room.

I really can't see the runners having been able to acquire a map of the lair, not when it's one of the dragon's major tactical advantages. Even if they had an old map of the area, it would have been changed. I'm saying outright that I'm keeping it extremely simple for the purpose of this challenge, but even that is technically metagame knowledge.

@ Critias

Alas, such structures (bomb resistance bunkers) are really only made by a rather short list of specialist construction firms. They'd have to move a significant quantity of earth, pour the concrete, etc. Finding out which firm did the work and then running for the plans, engineers, and workers who were involved in the construction will give you plenty of info about what is inside. While they might not be able to tell you everything they can give you a lot. So, while you might not be able to find out exactly what/where everything if, you'd find out stuff like how many rooms, how many entrances, where the electrical conduits, air shafts, etc are.

Of course, such firms take the privacy of their clients seriously, but the runner team is skilled enough to beat them.

Adapting an old facility or natural formation is possible, but the anti-blast doors would have to be modern (not to mention require periodic maintenance).

The blast doors are traceable -- albeit messily, through a few layers of misdirection. That's how you found out about the inside tunnel and suspect the interior pair of rooms

You also know that there's no other external blast doors ordered for this location.

... I have to break for a few hours. I'll be back later.

Time to see if there is someone in 2070 that offers commercial space based ground=penetrating radar surveys... (or borrowing a drone equiped for same) The tech will be over 80 years old in 2070, so it's possible. Of course, there's ways to reduce the effectiveness and accuracy GPR surveys (mostly by adding in certain kinds of dirt) but that also requires plenty of earth moving. I guess it really depends on how tech savvy the dragon is (and how common such techniques have become).

Surely the lair has some ventilation shafts. Have these been found, or alternatively, are they findable?

High gain thermographic observation from the air should give you a map of any ventilation holes. Depending on how well designed the complex is, it may give you a map of any/all entrances as well. If the place is made and maintained by a modern (bunker building) construction firm, then you aren't likely to spot things. If it is and old or adapted natural site, the camouflage are not likely to be as good. Of course, illusion spells could be used to hide from technological sensors, but (high altitude/off angle) astral observation would spot those easily enough.

What is a fortress?

A tomb when confronted with a superior enemy.


By refusing to attempt to flee the Shadowrunners, or to face them in a straight fight, the Dragon has admitted that it is easily killable. Therefor, it has elected to hide, and this lair is, as has been said, unwired.

The Runners throw up wards of their own, bing badda boom, job done. No watchers can get out, the Dragon dosen't know if it's under siege or not, it's unwilling to come out and risk getting shot at, and it's not wired to send a distress call.

The dragon is effectively neutralized. The mages on the team bind several very high-level spirits to attack anything that pops a ward. If the dragon comes out, the spirits tie the dragon down (and hopefully hurt it), while the mages come running - they finish the dragon off in astral combat. If he dosen't pop the ward, he's as good as dead, since he can't communicate with the outside and get someone else to break his siege, and he refuses to break the siege himself.


Dead or not, the dragon is neutralized.

On the other hand, if the Runners need the dragon dead, dead and dead, and don't particularly care to loot the lair for themselves, they simply use the twelve million nuyen to bribe an air-wing commander to conduct live-fire "drills" in the area using bunker-buster bombs.

It should be possible to completely seal the bunker and used quickened spells to renew the O2, so it might not need ventilation shafts at all. Of course, this probably introduces it's own slew of weaknesses...

Is there actually a spell in SR4 that can do that?

If they reprinted oxygenate, it can do it for single targets. I'd assume you could make AOE versions of the spell to do the same thing.

Hmm, how's this for a revised lair design. It seems to get around some of the technical measures to find out about it's exact layout.

Design goal:
The lair must be bomb resistant. It is basically impossible to make the lair proof against modern (2070) bunker defeating munitions (magic is not currently up to the job and building a bunker that might survive against them is cost prohibitive). However, the lair must resist more 'casual' bombing such as truck bombs, hijacked airliners, and similar threats. This will require (pulling numbers out of my butt here) a thickness of at least 10 feet or re-enforced concrete or 30 feet of hard natural stone.

Commentary:
The number of construction firms who are capable of building such a bunker are relatively few in number, and construction of such a bunker cannot be kept secret. Thus any interested parties are likely to obtain the exact design specifications of such a construction.
So, ideally, the bunker should be created by elementals using the shape earth power, so as to conceal the exact size, shape, and nature of the lair. As we doubt shape earth allows for shaping steel and concrete, our best bet is to place the lair in a tough natural rock formation. Of course, technological objects such as the blast doors, etc needed for the bunker will need to be purchased, but thankfully they can be bought and installed without revealing too much about what is behind them.

Proposed design:

The dragon consulted with several world-renowned experts on bunker design (skill 6) and bought some of the skill himself (skill 2 or 3), but the actual design and construction of the lair was carried out by elementals under the dragon's control.

The lair is in a convenient pluton. It has two obvious entrances. The first one the face of the pluton from which the dragon typically enters and exits the lair (by flight), it is protected by a large blast door a short way into the entrance tunnel. The second is on the other side of the pluton and is at ground level, is is also large enough to accommodate the dragon. This second entrance is where food and other mundane items are delivered. It is also protected by a blast door. The second entrance immediately feeds into a large elevator which goes up to the other parts of the lair.

The interior of the lair is protected from GPR and similar technological means of investigation by a quickened variant of the insibility spell.

If ventilation shafts are needed, the exterior of the pluton has been reshaped to make access to them more difficult .

Regarding using missiles and Earthquake powers: It's a hillside bunker so it's bomb proof and therefore earthquake proof. Unless you can get a bunker busting nuke, I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to button-click their way through this assignment.

Regarding fiber optics: Even if the dragon is using fiber optics to target intruders remotely, this might not be a problem and may even be an advantage. A Detect Fiber Optics version of the "Detect <Object>" spell would let you find all the peepholes and let you either spray paint over them or use them yourself to cast spells right in the dragon's face (fiber optics work both ways).

Regarding a map of the complex: Even if there are no air vents to send drones/runners through, spirits should be able to push their way through the earth to get to the complex and from there scout the place out. But there would have to be wards around every wall, so unless you wanted to risk alerting the dragon you're coming so he can call his army, you won't get anything more than an outline of the complex.

Divining metamagic should be your best friend here because it should get you a lot more information with no way for the dragon to block you. A Great Dragon might have some sort of anti-divination dragon-fu, but a regular dragon probably wouldn't have those kinds of metagame powers. Using Divining and with enough questions, you should be able to get a good idea of the dragon's defenses as well as a good map with room descriptions.

As I said:

The same way SAIM did. It isn't spectacularly difficult. A six man team can take control of a small silo with trivial ease(particularly the type that only has space for the operators) and a decent hacker can activate the warhead and supply the missile with a target without challenge. Then, you only need to turn the keys. This, however, does not guarantee that it will actually detonate.

However, as Crusher Bob point out, conventional ordinance works just as well and is more reliable. It is also slightly more difficult to obtain physical access to, unfortunately, but it shouldn't be too difficult to hack a cruise missile over the Matrix.

Would you allow an NPC to ask the same question of a PC group? and eventually receive a "yes" answer?

Rule of thumb: if your proposal can't be applied to the PCs instead of the dragon solely on a "the GM's not being fair!" basis, it's not allowable.

More in a few hours.

Yeah, that one made me laugh loud enough to annoy my office mate.

This reminds me of a great Onion article:

Report: World's Nuclear Arsenal 'Pretty Much' Accounted For
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29474

Again divinging is for events, and it is always cryptic. It is not useful for winning the lotto.

It also does not "fix" the future. For example if your character asks "will I die today" and they get what they think is a "no" answer they have not entered into some Disney romcom where miraculously anything they do that should kill them somehow manages to leave them happy and healthy, and then they develop a British accent and get the girl.

All it would mean is that the GM wasn't particularily planning on railroading a TPK today.

Let's see:

@ Crusher Bob:

Rationalize it however you feel most comfortable. It doesn't change that a creature with a logic of at least 8 will be able to easily figure out the basics of AR, and a creature with the resources you've given this dragon will be able to adequately protect his internal networks via metahuman resources (hired, cajoled, or whatever).

Sigh. From p.108:

Dragons are not unaware, they simply have no ranks.

not that i think dragons should all be complete noobs, but the phrase "or someone born before the Computer Age" really does strongly imply that dragons are unaware.

not that it matters. being unaware doesn't prevent you from hiring a tech specialist.

The critter list doesn't have qualities on it, only powers. The "uneducated" quality is appropriate for creatures which grew up in primitive societies - which certainly includes anyone who grew up during the fourth age. Any dragon who hasn't "bought off" the uneducated flaw presumably has it.

Now that being said, if anything is powered in the dragon's cave it is a point of potential attack. If nothing is wired up, that's a point of vulnerability as well. Shadowrun always favors the attacker, that's why player characters survive at all.

-Frank

I think what Talia is saying is that we've got a ludite dragon on our hands. And a reclusive one at that. It is possible. Especially among the non greats. Just because it could learn to use electronics doesn't mean it wouldn't rather spend it's time searching for the perfect cherry blossom and contemplating upon the imperfections of the ones it finds. Or some such.

Actually if this thing generally avoids tech(so no magesight fibres, no massive subteranian explosive charges designed to drop tons of rock on the team, no bacteria of doom) you might just be able to make a single grade 4 initiate, copy them six times, and have them muscle their way through along with a swarm of high power spirits taking point.

Actually does anyone know a reason why it would be bad to have the initiates and spirits come in astrally? The dragon is dual after all. This would circument physical traps. The only trick I can think of is if you have constricting wards of some kinda that can force a projecting character to risk being disrupted. Something like warded walls ceiling and a far ward. And then have a warded vehicle, that takes up the whole of the corridor, ram the far ward. Meaning any astral forms inside get squished.

Of course that's hard to do if the group systematically clears all wards as they move along.

Absolutely last one for a while:

"Generally" does not imply "always. The uneducated quality is not needed to be unaware of a technical skill. (I'd question whether dragons are "uneducated", per quality interpretation, in any case.)

If the authors meant that Electronics 0 is the same thing as no rating in Electronics, why did they go out of their way to specify the distinction? Since they did specify it: why didn't they explicitly write Electronics 0 in the description of the dragon's skills?

Remember though: this is a straight-out-of-the-book dragon, which is why I'm sticking to what's strictly in the book wrt Active skills, attributes, and powers. (I am giving it Knowledge skills, up to the standard chargen level.) Since repeating dragons are to be treated as Prime Runners, they'd get karma to raise or open whatever skill they liked.

dragons are not listed as having 0 electronics skill, but they were also all born before the computer edge--which is specifically listed as being an example of someone who would be unaware in technical skills. some dragons may have bought that off, in the seventy years since they woke up, but not all of them will have--and maybe not even most of them.

but, like i said, it's not like they can't get a trusted lackey to do it for them.

Just for the record, I'm not disagreeing that some dragons may be incompetent with technology. I'm disagreeing that the canon makes them automatically incompetent. It gives an example, which is not the same as a blanket statement.

Mage with the shape (earth/concrete/etc) spell. And pile all your nuyens worth of explosive on that. Shape it down to where the dragon is (Use Detect Dragon), and remote control boom.

Welcome, Prae! Very nice catch.

Voice recognition -- anyone catch Conan O'Brien and the SotA telephone system last week?

(Damn you guys. I've got too much to do not to be working, here!)