If it helps, they did kill a sentient Awakened creature during a struggle over whether or not they should imprison it or set it free. I'll bet the snake doesn't think they're innocent!

That snake might've been the life of the party! Should've let it go back to being the cool kid at school.

April 2071 - In the market for a new team, Papa Smurf hooked for one run with Argent, Dzan, an odd little gnome and a South American Druid. The run was to track down the source of some actually radioactive material being dumped in a lacuna. Papa figured that would give his PITO channel a bit of a ratings boost and was he right. At the site, they discovered a toxic shaman with a considerable number of mutated creatures and spirits. After whacking the freak show reject, the group managed to track the source of the actually contamination. A little selective editing before uploading and run actually became about the shaman. As in all of his PITO feeds, the features of the team were obscured and Papa appeared to be a large blue smurf with a white cap and beard.

October 2071 - After working the summer and fall with a regular team comprised of Long Tooth, Katana and Wires, they hit a bad run. They were supposed to slip in, extract an executive VP from the Mathes Production Company and deliver him to Pixar-MSNBC. Problem is, their fixer was on the take and sold them out. Wires network got invaded by a pair of black IC assassins just as Long Tooth was enveloped by a fire elemental. Wires was dead in seconds; His drones taken over and actively being used against the team. Long Tooth was able to call in several spirits to aid him, but he suffered horrible burns. A pair of samurai gunned down Katana, who was on point. Papa was able to toss grenade into the middle of the pair, taking down the first and beating the second in hand-to-hand. The team retreated, two dead, one critical and one limping. A week later, the fixer Cowboy-Bob was featured in a nasty little video with the younger sister of a local gang lieutenant called Ripper who didn't even question the video till after he'd gutted Cowboy-Bob.

November 2071 - Papa hooked back up with the team from April for a recon run to find out what was going on at a new highly secretive facility on the outskirts of LA. Once there, they discovered that the University of California had shifted its Awakened Fauna research out to the facility and that the researchers were currently poking and prodding at a tiger shifter they'd gotten a hold of in the wake of some incident at the local zoo. When Argent found out what was going on, he lost it, charging into the facility. Several members of the group, especially Argent, had gotten beat pretty badly as the researchers were using silver batons and the like. The team was able to rescue the tiger shifter and escape. The run had been contracted by a fixer called Niaomi who was not happy it went sideways. Papa nearly bailed, but the team was able to convince him to stay.

June 2072 - The team had spent half a year together and Papa's PITO rating had done well due to some very successful runs. On a recent run it took a little hit. A local school mascot, a 15' long boa, had been abducted from a high school. Since the school had a high profile sports department, it had been worth someone's time to pay the group to retrieve it. Two human street sams, Zed and Shotgun, were added to the team to deal with expected resistance. The group tracked down the snake to a boat off shore where it was being held by a rival school. Once there, the group realized that the boa was awakened and sentient. Dzan and Argent again blew the run, planning on freeing the creature and smuggling it back to it's habitat. Zed and Shotgun disagreed, wanting to get paid and not tarnish their reputation. During the scuffle, before Papa could make it to the team, the snake was killed. Dzan lost it, blaming the sams. He fried both of them and tossed their bodies overboard before Papa could intervene. Argent stood beside him against any criticism alienating Papa and perhaps some others of the team.

I agree with Uetz. From Papa's perspective, D'zan's blown two runs. This will definitely make for some intra-party drama.

Err, you mean Argent? I think Dzan's only 'blew-it' was the last one?

And I guess I've sort of written myself into a corner. It looks like both Dzan and Argent have blown runs, so what's keeping the group together at this point?

Uh...rent is a bitch in LA? Might make sense to add in another run.

January, 2072
Uetz received a frantic call from his friend, Etain, concerning the abduction of one her best friends---a flower power eco-shaman girl who ran with the handle Dandelion. All she could tell him was that the door to Dandelion's home was forced, and the place reeked of astral discharge. Asking for help from his current team, Uetz, Etain and anyone else who cared to follow searched high and low for Dandelion. Quauhtli, Uetz's animal spirit twin, helped set them on Dandelion's trail which led them down into LA's storm drain system. They found a trail of blood oozing from what looked to be an abandoned maintenance station. There, the team found the remains of Dandelion---her corpse callously tossed to the side and her heart removed. Etain freaked out, and Uetz's face blanched at the sight. The team did what they could for Dandelion, notifying the police of the murder and arranging for the poor girl's burial. When later asked about the disaster, the only thing Uetz would say about it was, "Looks like the work of Chimalli---bad hombres. Let's leave it at that, though, lest the devils hear us talking about them." While more or less a freeloading loafer, Etain has the ears and hearts of a large circle of friends and managed spread word about the team's good deed, giving them a positive reputation among LA's pro-environment crowd.

Anyways, I didn't think that D'zan would be too angry at being left out of our (Uetz's, Etain's and Rene's) dirty hippie deepweed circle for a day or two out of Uetz's fear of the pixie frying one or more of his friends.

Six months worth of tight history on runs buys a guy some latitude. I think we are starting with the team on shaky ground and will need to begin role playing the repair of their esprit de corps. The team dynamics will definitely be interesting.

I think a little tension in the team isn't a bad thing. I hate seeing shadowrun character after character (as a GM) that are perfect - they never make mistakes, ever decision a wise and informed one. I need a little humanity and some flaws in my characters to really enjoy the the game. I think the botched runs will add to the game and as long as we mostly trust each other it should be fine.

Yea, I can see Papa's immersion into PITO being an issue for some.

It'll be fine, besides, it makes sense to post the runs that don't go well. Our characters all have faults. Uetz is a pacifist, so he's always going to have problems firing first or walking away when people are hurting. Plus, his friends are hippies (since that's about 100 years in the past, does that make them "flower punk"? )

At least Papa and Argent will have something to talk about, even if they do it via PITO messaging despite physically being in the same room (maybe even sitting right next to each other!).

I'm just waiting on a few last stragglers then we can get rolling. Fenris and MrAres, if you sent me your sheets either remind me so I can go find them, or re-send them please.

Thanks

I pestered MrAres on Sunday and he was going to try to get it in - someone at work is gone and his life is now WORK WORK WORK until they fill the position again. Fenris will get his in today (because I will not let him have a moment of peace till he does) after work.

McQuillan - Sent July 10th to your firstname.lastname@gmail.com account, with attachment. I'll re-send now though, since it's no effort.

Right. So just realized the entire char-gen spreadsheet is like, 3.5M, so prolly doesn't email well. I re-sent just the PDF of the character sheet, should go through this time.

Bumping to keep this alive. How are we looking?

Going to give MrAres through the weekend, then we can get started. We'll start up and hope that he can get his sheet ready before he needs to roll dice.

Cool, thanks for the update! ^_^

I have a character built - anyone I get my claws on had better have their affairs in order. Still need gear, knowledges, a finished background... here's what I have so far:

Awesome great to be able to play with you again Sparky.

Wow, nice background hun. Really interested to see the character.

Thanks! I'm looking forward to it too. The background doesn't have the bit where she actually shifts for the first time. Nor the bit where she is carted off to the Lab for poking and prodding from which the team rescues her. NOR the bit where she does some runs with the team.

Her grasp of English will be awkward, learning everything basically. And her grasp of the niceties of civilized existence is tenuous as well. She is fiercely loyal to the group, but needs supervision to accomplish even simple tasks.

Her world views are shaped by her predatory nature and more recently, by the team as they teach her how to get along in the topsy turvy Shadowrun world. God help us all.

It should be fun. My character would definitely be protective, and would happily take her under his wing to teach her all about Reputation, and Street Cred, and Social Networking...

Just bumping to keep this alive and see if there is anything else you need from us, Bishop.

We are alive...I was waiting for that slacker MrAres. But I'm pushing forward, hopefully he will catch up once he gets out of the bar.

Hey guys--

Since your history posts, pushed through June of 2072, I am moving the in-game date to July 2072. Intro post is up. Everyone please give a post just for what you are doing and give a feel for a normal "day in the life," then we will get rolling.

Awesome, thanks again for running!

Haha, I keep thinking that Etain will be the more annoying of the pair, but I forgot about Rene banging on trash cans.

Post up and thanks JxJxA for giving me an entrance point for the post. I will pester Fenris to post tonight and by the way JxJxA his character name is Argent I think you used his posting handle.

That is all.

PS Are we doing the one karma a week thing and did any of us get anything sexy from our backgrounds (contacts, karma, etc)? I realize we might get a late reply since the GM is heading to GenCon soon.

Oops, I will fix that right now. x_x

Alright, so with GenCon it looks to have hiccuped. Let's get this puppy moving again. Anyone who hasn't posted yet, get in there and give me your "day in the life" post as the sign that you are in the game. We'll keep moving with the people that we have until other signs of life pop back in.

Yes, you get 1 karma per week for every week that you post.

Cool, Uetz is going downstairs to answer the door. I picked names for each type of spirit that I could summon, so Tlacelel is just the name for the guardian spirit. ^_^

Arrghhh. Failure. Back from Gen Con and no post yet... Ok. Today is the day!

To add more detail. I see Papa Smurf maintaining a place elsewhere. His father lives with him and he is the odd man out on this team of magicals and shapshifters as the cybered/bio'ed troll hacker. I also assume they've ran together long enough that he maintains everyone's coms. If my assumptions are bad, let me know.

Heh, just read your post. I'm trying to decide whether or not my high Nahualli would think to answer his phone.

Hahaha.. That is really perfect and right along the lines that I was thinking. For Papa Smurf, his com is a part of him. He is always online, so there is no 'answer' the phone. For him it is more of engage the incoming message interactively like a phone call or treat it more of a text and deal with it later. I had envisioned all the others in the house seeing their com as something of a 'phone'. Awesome!

Hehe, well, it's all contextual with your particular poison. Uetzcayotl still doesn't understand how other people get around without a spirit animal twin giving them an immediate second opinion on situations.

Let's kick this game in gear

This

Agreed! Sorry about the late responses, I have to remember that the email notifications don't work AT ALL!

D'zan & Leo will be putting counterspelling on the group. Leo will be using Concealment on himself and D'zan will be doing the same.

Uetz is delaying to see if he should summon a guardian spirit (Tlacelel).

Just as an FYI, here's some pics of what I imagine a nahualli guardian spirit to look like:

Guardian spirit
Aztec Warrior

Example of his weapon of choice-macuahuitl
Macuahuitl

Cool pics by the way.

Bishop is away camping FYI so you all know. Hopefully when he gets back in a few days we can get the thread rolling again.

Thanks! ^_^

JxJxA--Did you mean the hunchback or the woman?

OOPS, obvious reading fail on my part. I meant the hunchback.

ok rolling Troll Market knowledge skill to see if I know this person:

5,2,6,6,3,6,3,1,5 (5 hits)

Buddha--D'zan knows of an old gnome fortune teller with a hunchback companion, called Mama Fortuna--though none of the stories have ever mentioned the hunchback as being leprous. The language is a goblin tongue used by the Sluagh.

Is there a roll Uetz could make to recognize what happened to the gnome when she got hurt?

JxJxA--Magic Theory, Astral Phenomena, Sixth World Threats would all be possibilities--if you have something else that may apply toss it out there. Throw me some knowledge skills, or Assensing for the dual-natured folks.

Cool, I'll do Assensing+Intuition: 5 dice(6, 5, 5, 3, 1) for 3 hits.