I'm going to give them swords and laser axes in a second.

Dexter could use a vibro sword.... Just saying.

Or a Gauss Rifle.
Again, just saying....

@Abschalten
I forgot to ask; what info is on the chip "semi" exactly? As in, how detailed / long is the list of target and list of black ops agents?
Does it contain any additional info on Arthur's kidnapping?

As for Arthur's kidnapping, it says little, but does mention that a freelancer paid by Aztechnology abducted him with the help of a small team. The mall's cameras were backhacked and footage edited so as to make it seem as though he just vanished. The file does mention the operatives were not officially Aztech or Aztlan operatives, more like shadowrunners for hire. They were paid out of a shadow account, but it also mentions that some leverage was used to coerce this specific team to do the job. Carrots and sticks all around.

The list of targets is... substantial. The Azzie black ops are going to have their hands full with these targets. Most of them are Olaya Cartel-affiliated -- either suppliers within the Cartel or help they get (La Alianza has alot of targets on the list.) But there are names on there that aren't affiliated with any group. There's scant biographical details on them, but it would seem the common thread is that in the past they somehow crossed Aztlan or Aztechnology, and they're using this opportunity to settle as many scores in town as they can. After all, it wouldn't do to have enemies of the state already in place when Aztlan takes over, now would it?

What about info on the black ops team themselves?

Let me do this one when I get home tonight, I don't want to write stuff up without my sourcebooks handy. I'd like to get names and terminology right.

Sorry; I know I'm asking a lot of questions
It's mainly because, well, once he's settled in, Dexter will probably go through the chip pretty thoroughly.
It's mainly to help me write a longer and cohesive post, more than anything. So yea, sorry for all the extra trouble

Dude, it's totally fine. I wouldn't have given you a plot dev--erm, an "infochip" if I wasn't ready to give you a bunch of data. I just need to get my materials handy so I can give you the right information. If I make stuff like that up on the fly then I'll write myself into a corner that I can't easily get out of.

@Mister Juan
Alright, the black ops teams consist of both Otontin (The Brave Ones) and the Cuachicqueh (The Shorn Ones). Usually the Otontin are solo operatives, and they specialize infiltration and stealth, with a focus on assassinations or kidnappings behind enemy lines. The Cuachicqueh are sorta corporate military terrorists, and they are the bad, bad guys who will blow up a building full of innocent people to kill one target of opportunity. The file indicates that the two groups are working in concert and (mostly) trying to keep a low profile, since it wouldn't do to have Azzie involvement in the area known before they proceed with, what the file says, are inevitable military advances on the region. Aztlan and Aztechnology are preparing for a big push into Caracas.

The Otontin are being Forward and Recon teams, basically scoping out areas, but doing the occasional assassination. They're making it easy for the Cuachicqueh to do their jobs by opening doors and such for them. The Cuachicqueh are doing the bulk of the heavy lifting, doing the most assassinations and killing targets of opportunity.

Both groups are a mixture of well-cybered individuals and initiated adepts. There are some magicians in town but they're mostly Otontin and providing assistance in the form of spells and spirits. The file does indicate that magician and adept involvement is hindered due to the area's notorious background count, so the ones who ARE in town tend to be initiated and rigorously trained to compensate.

And the hunt begins
I'll write a post tomorow. Any part of town Dexter should find his motel in?

There's a nice one right across from the Cat's Paw. But seriously, any part of town is fine. I don't think I've subjected anybody to my version of La Rinconada yet. If you want a serious hell-hole, and a dangerous one at that, there's always that part of town. But that's more akin to my version of the Redmond Barrens or Kowloon Walled City, here in Caracas. In my version of Caracas that area is the worst of the worst.

Otherwise you can settle in one of the more civilized areas. Doesn't matter to me where. I'll work with it no matter what.

If you want some ideas you can also go to Google Maps and type in "Caracas" and you can see the layout of the town. I'm not forcing people to use it since I am taking liberties with the geography and travel times, but I'm referring to it now and again. You can see the La Guaira port area to the north, for example, and see the long, winding road it takes to get there out of the mountains.

The company's great, but the club across the street is full of assholes.

@Abschalten: Sonora's going to attempt to call Smiley or Sam if they have their commlinks accessible, if not she's going to try and get some images (if her own commlink will let her) and see if she can track the two down. I think trying to get them to stay in the Casa de Caracas is a bad idea considering what they just pulled.

Depending on where you plan on taking the game, it would be sort of a nice idea to have Dexter actually move into that hotel. But that's up to you I guess

Plan? Who said anything about a plan?

Seriously, I have an End Run in mind, but that's down the road. Everything in between is sorta improvised based on what you guys are writing. I'm really sorta bouncing off of the players here and (right now) slowly bringing you together.

I don't want to take up a whole IC post for one sentence, so I'll just say Coatl nods to Sonora and goes back to the bed to sleep.

I am back! Let me know what you need from my guy and we'll get Stephen back in the game. Thanks for being so patient; I never thought Stephen was going to get out of that hotel alive anyways

Alright. Had a busy weekend but I'm sorta resurfacing now. I apologize for the lack of updates, but we were sorta winding down this section anyhow, since I was going to bump up the timeline, which I'm doing right now.

I'm going to make a overall post to get us to the next day. The post will be dated around noon, but you guys can jump into the timeline anytime between noon and 2pm local time. So when you do your write-up, just choose a time anywhere in that two hour window and we'll go from there. It would make sense that, if any of you want to get together after the update that you make your times roughly around the same time as each other, otherwise we won't be able to sync you up. If somebody walks into a building at 12:30 but then another person goes into the same building at 1:00, they'll miss each other unless the first person was waiting around for them.

If you haven't already written up a post checking into a hotel or getting to a safehouse or whatever, you can just explain how you got where you are currently in your post. You guys are allowed to coordinate your actions in this thread or in PMs if you'd like. This thread ain't all about me talking to you, after all.

Again, all Stun damage will be handwaved away. If you have Physical damage, make a Body x 2 roll here, so we can see how much damage is healed. The book says the test interval is 1 day, but I'm going to say overnight rest counts.

@Combat Mage
Make sure you take your pills

Also, I have another houserule, which is really just an Optional rule in one of the books that I've decided to adopt. This will impact Rystefn and Doc Chase: I'm allowing adepts, upon initiation, to get another PP of points instead of a metamagic if they'd like, since the list of available metamagics to adepts is a pretty short and crappy list. That means they can have a number of powers equal to their Magic rating + "metamagic" PPs, potentially.

Healing roll:

10d6.hits(5) → [3,5,4,5,1,4,1,6,3,1] = (3)

Got 4P damage so 1P left after sleeping. And I'm taking my pills of course.

Won't be able to write anything in the IC before I get a lot of sleep, it's 3:30 AM and I'm really drunk.

Body x 2 = 8 dice.
8d6.hits(5) → [4,1,4,6,1,3,5,6] = (3) hits. Stephen needs a drink, but he's not physically injured anymore. Also, he's crashed at his apartment. I'm not using his medkit for his wounds because I'm too lazy to look up the rules this time

Doesn't matter, you aced it anyway.

I forgot one thing: Everyone is at 9 karma now. I'm awarding 6 karma all around for all the good stories, scenes, and writing. Since nobody has spent any yet, everyone should be at the same level.

It may seem like a bunch but we've been playing almost a month now, and 9 karma in one month isn't crazy at all.

If you want to use it to improve things now you can, or you can hoard it for bigger investments. Just write here what you are spending the karma on and edit your charsheet post at the beginning of this thread.

@ Abs
Sweet! Thanks, Abs. And this has been a real thrill ride of an adventure so far. And now that we're gaining some karma I'd like to ask if you'd allow an optional rule from Unwired, page 145. It allows a submerged technomancer to learn a number of echoes equal to that character's Resonance + submersion grade at 15 karma an echo. Also, could Chaske try and register the sprite he made earlier before he goes to bed? (would require 3 hours, though)



@Combat Mage and Rastus
Perhaps Chaske and Mono could end up at the same motel as your characters, and Chaske could come across your comm chatter with Sonora and then offer his expertise as a Matrix Specialist to either track her down and do some background research on her or whatever else might be needed.

You could do that, but don't expect Smiley to be overly trusting of either of you. Definately not at first. I mean, all these people in the slums that know how to use the matrix showing up at once? He'd damn near take that as a sign of the apocolypse.

Edit:
@Abschalten: Oh yeah, I think I'll spend 4 karma to get a 'Heavy Pistols' specialization for Pistols and 'Shotgun' specialization for Longarms. Going to need to shoot gooder in order to keep up with this merry bunch of misfits.

Fair enough, right now I'm just looking to meet up with the rest of the gang. If anyone else wants to meet up in a more 'trusting' atmospher (whatever that means to shadowrunners) let me know!

I'll spend 6 Karma on specializations in Pistols (Heavy Pistols), Automatics (Assault Rifles) and Blades (Cyber-Implants).

Hmm. In order for you to learn a new echo you need to go about it in one of three ways, none of which I think you have time for in terms of the storyline.

HOWEVER, you also don't have enough karma. Tell you what. You hang onto that karma and I'll make sure the next timeline jump will be enough time for you to buy your echo.

Also, give me a Registering+Resonance roll on that registering (+2 for hot sim). Then follow it up with a Fading roll. I'll let you know how many services you get. Any Fading you get will be slept off overnight (unless it's physical).

Everyone here has been putting out some great writing but I just want to take a moment to point out Doc Chase in particular. It is some beautiful stuff. I've gotten into the habit of sitting back and letting Doc take the first post in scenes just because he can create such great environments. I mean look at that taqueria description--I wouldn't have done it justice and it's filled with great details that just sell it.
I've been real pleased that events led to the two of us being paired together; it's been a pleasure, sir. I'll, uh, back away and stop kissing your ass, now.

Don't worry - I'm making Rastus and CM buy your lunch.

I hate to say it, I find I do a better job world-building than roleplaying half the time. But thanks for the kudos - I can't wait to see Coatl jump back into the action with well-placed one liners.

Hey, good point, they're the ones that knocked over a fuckin' brothel...

Sorry I haven't posted yet! Turns out I had a ridiculously busy weekend I should have time to write something tonight tho.
And thx for the karma

You're welcome. Use it to kill Azzies!

@Abschalten
A few questions:
-Did Dexter get any "non regular" ammo off the two guys at his place?
-I take it his injuries were only minor since you didn't mention any damage, stun or physical?
-Having spent the last five years in Caracas, does Dexter know of any groups that would actively oppose the Azzies? Any pro Amazonian gangs in town? Especially big underdogs or really small fishes? Yes.... he's planning on trying to arm/train a tiny militia
-Come to think of it, what were the guns Dexter picked up?

The call to Morris is to:
-Tell him what happened
-Send over the pictures of the two dead guys
-Tell him he's got two commlinks for him to pull intel out of, if he wants

Dexter plans to go out, get some grub, get some booze in his system and start going shopping for allies. He's going to grab the Azzie target list, and set off looking for the unaffiliated ones.

As for the gear he's taking with him, he'll use the same setup as before (meet with Morris). He'll leave his carbine and combat vest inside the van, just in case, as well as his longcoat and sawed off shotgun.

Ex-Explosive ammo in the guns and in the two extra clips a piece.


That's my bad. You had 3S damage, which you slept off. You're bruised but uninjured.

Citywide sentiment towards Aztlan (and other regional neighbors) gets split a few different ways, and it's an on-going topic of polital debate that the pundits wrassle over endlessly. For a small majority of caraqueños, the desire is to keep Aztlan OUT of Caracas. Despite the city being more or less a hellhole, there are many who prefer to be an independent, autonomous city-state. Some would rather sell out to Aztlan and Aztechnology corporate masters to the north with the belief that they would pick the city out of the current funk its in and take part in some redevelopment. But then the other group thinks that Amazonia would be better masters, even though Amazonia seems to have almost no desire to incorporate Caracas into its territory, since it's keeping undesirable elements out of its nation.

Pro-Azzie groups are few and far between, and most actually operate openly as political think tanks and the like (though if you go back far enough more than a few are secretly on the payroll of various Aztechnology PR groups). Anti-Aztlan/Aztech groups are the Olaya Cartel (and by extension La Alianza), Bolivar '49, the majority of corps who operate facilities in Chacao. La Alianza suffer no rival cartels or their masters gladly, but Bolivar '49 are the more rabidly anti-Aztlan group, shockingly enough. They are known to employ terror tactics that give even the Shorn Ones pause. Even the rumor that a building might be hiding Azzie agents is cause enough for them to level the whole thing to the ground without a second thought.


I totally forgot to stat this out for you. I want to spend time giving you actual numbers because it's "better" than a typical gun in Arsenal or the BBB, and El Mono has one of the same guns, so give me until tonight and I'll give you the numbers.


I'll type up a response for you later on.



Alrighty.

Also, if Dexter has cause to become associated with Coatl, Sonora, Smiley, and Sam, by all means go for it. Don't wait on me if he's got the opportunity and the reason to.

@Everyone
I know currently four of you are about to meet, so I want to let that play out. I'm not going to throw gangers or ninjas or blood spirits in the mix until the four of you can get together and get to know each other. So I'm taking a hands off there for now.

Stephen is making a call to his fixer, and I plan on responding to that.

I haven't heard back from Rystefn and Lamhslea. I want to hear from them before I decide where I'm going to go with that writing.

So so far I have to respond to Dexter and Stephen's actions. The rest of you mingle and schmooze until I decide what to do with you all.

I was just asking for future reference, so I would know if I could save up toward it. Right now I want to spend some karma on acquiring Perception.

So 4 karma for Perception, if I could. Defaulting on that has been getting Chaske way too close to death for his liking!


And here's the Registering.
Registering Courier Sprite: 4 Registering + 5 Resonance + 2 Hot Sim vs 6 dice (2 x R3) (11d6.hits(5)=3, 6d6.hits(5)=2)
3 hits vs 2 hits

Resisting 2S
Resist 2S Fading: 5 Resonance + 5 Intuition (10d6.hits(5)=4)
Resisted all damage

Oh good, because I just did my own timeskip so we could get on with the thing already. Sorry if you planned on something extravegant on the way out of the hostel, CM.

Edit: So uh, anyone else find it funny that Juan's location basically means he was sleeping in front of the Cat's Paw? "You know you've hit rock bottom when..."

Cuachicqueh Assault Rifle
Modified Colt M23
6P Damage, -1 AP, SA/BF/FA, 40(clip)
Mods: Integral Smartlink, Internal Silencer, Electronic Firing, Shock Pad, Autoadjusting Weight, Sling
Note: Cannot be further modified

This is for Mister Juan and Rystefn, who've found copies of this weapon.

For their sidearms, just use the stats for the Ares Predator IV.

Stephen is going to investigate the noise in the kitchen; I can put up a post if you want, but I figure it's just that damn dog again I'm also considering spending my karma, but I think I'm just going to save it to get my magic up to 6. These background counts are brutal!

-DrZ

I have a few ways I could take the karma I'm saving up. I just have to see if there's anything additional I want for Initiation.

Admittedly there's not a whole bunch of options for adepts in terms of Metmagics, which is why I'm allowing that optional rule where you can get PPs with initiation. Adept Centering would do much for you. Cognition would help you, maybe, but then there's that crippling drain afterwards. Masking is a good standby, but that's about it. They seriously need more and better options for adepts than just the handful of crap they've got.

I don't recall if there's a Melanin Control power or not, but Centering makes the most IC sense right now. Right now I'm leaning towards that, taking increases in Leadership, or going for an increase to Body. Really leaning towards Centering.

Adept Centering only helps on Combat and Physical tests. Which is why I was saying it wouldn't be all that great for you. You could negate Perception test penalties with Centering, but Social skill tests? Not so much.

And yes, there's a Melanin Control power.

SOLD I was thinking about that today. A Bene Gesserit/Tleilaxu Face Dancer hybrid. Frank Herbert, he is spinning.

Edit: Abs, I misread what you typed (or you mistyped what I read). =P You did say it would be a bonus.

I would almost, almost use Centering as a bonus for resistance due to the Borrowed Time flaw - save that I'm intending on that to be a million-nuyen fix.

It scares me that I knew what you were talking about.

It scares me that the Bene Gesserit angle was unintentional until I actually used Commanding Voice once.

I now know where much of my karma is going.

Stoopid double post.

Aww, Coatl already dislikes Smiley, and he hasn't even suffered through Smiley's driving and flying! Sure got a Bad Attitude. Oh and Chase? Yeah, Smiley is neither lying nor exageratting about any one thing he says and Sonora will easily be able to tell that.

OK, so it looks like a bit happened while I was on vacation. Trying to catch up and consider the next move. Given that Mono has no idea he's magically active, I think saving up for initiations and such would be a bit much. The Magic 6 is already pushing it to the edge of believability. Learning a bit about a new gun under fire isn't terribly unreasonable, though, I think. So I'll be grabbing the Automatics skill at 1 with a specialization in Assault rifles, for a total of 6 Karma. He now has about half the training with his weapon as a soldier fresh out of basic, after all. (Yeah, I exaggerate a bit, I know. Hyperbole is a legitimate literary technique.)

Moving on... After being found so quickly, I can see Mono not wanting to go home just yet. Lacking the need to sleep tonight would make him a lot more likely to hole up somewhere with Chaske, and he might use the opportunity to see if he can't get some info out of him and figure out who he is in the process. What do you think, Lamhslea? Stick it out together for a bit and see if we can't work out something to link up with the rest of the group? Seems like splitting up now would just be more work later trying to get back together, right? (Picking up my own wheels at some point sop Mono doesn't have to ride bitch on your bike all the time, of course.)

@Rystefn: Sounds like a plan! I'm going to be contacted by a Fixer soon to help out someone else in the 'party' which will be a decent enough lead-in to meet the rest of the gang. Having some muscle, however twitchy, would be in Chaske's interest when he goes to meet with whoever he gets sent to meet. In the meantime I'd totally be down for some interaction and trust-building.

Cool. Mono considers himself a second-story man, but he's not above scowling and gesturing at/near/with a weapon if it pays... and he's certainly not above a bit of violence if things get hairy.