Ghoul: simple action, sprint (29m)
Free action, growl

heh. I wasn't sure if he could see Oz through the building and all.

Okay, I'll shoot him.

Since both our actions were delayed, that means we're considered to go at the same time. I don't know how that works with the running bonus to defense or the usual tiebreaker (I know I've got more edge than he does.)

Anyway, here comes the shot.
Free action to call shot for +4 damage.
Simple action to shoot Agl 9 +5 skill +2 spec +2 smartgun -2 partial light -2 night blindness -4 called shot = 10d6.hits(5) → [4,5,4,1,5,1,6,4,3,6] = (4) + Edge reroll = 6d6.hits(5) → [2,2,4,4,5,6] = (2) Total of 6 hits.
Damage should be 9P + net hits.

The ghoul came out of a building to the east, south enough to see you guys. He's running for the south room where Oswald is sitting by the door. I think the ghoul held his action until he got shot, and you held your action until he started running. I'm giving him the running bonus, not that it will save him.
Reaction+edge: 2 hits
13P (-half impact):4 hits, -9P

for those playing along at home, that's -14 total, and he's down

edited last post to include the laser blast

edit: Acme is up, and we are tentatively out of combat rounds, so you can post at will

Composure check for seeing the Ghoul

6d6.hits(5) → [2,2,4,5,2,2] = (1)


Yeah, I'm doomed.

@ Warlord: yea, this is going to be a rough night for you, but don't worry, when its over, you have to get this stuff o a boat. So you can concentrate on that allergy to sea water instead

@ Notso : Are you just using the Public account? let me know what you're up to/ looking for.

Public account initially. Still sniffing around to get a feel of the system.

Computer 4 + Analyze 3 + Hotsim 2 = 9d6.hits(5)=2

If that turns out to be a dead end, then he will go back to the main menu and try to hack a user account.

Hacking 4 + Exploit 3 + Hotsim 2 = 9d6.hits(5)=3, 9d6.hits(5)=1

Takes 2 attempts to get in, so system gets two shots to detect naughty goings on (Analyze + Firewall vs threshold of 3) - I really need a better Stealth program!

What I posted is what you got with public access, and your analyze program, You're on 3 nodes right now, The gas station, the "Main" node, and the Bistro. The main node is a gateway to every other node. So far, all 3 nodes have a public account that is not harrassed by security, but is very limited.

It could be worse.....


BTW-Zo is off reliving the past for the next two minutes. So once it hit 10:40 he snaps out of it.

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2948854/
1d6 → [2] = (2)

Please don't kill me, I'll have a post up shortly.

Yea, I was going to mention that.

@ all: the paralyzing howl should start to wear off sin a minute or two (not that it was a big hindrance)

Analyisis rolls for ruins, lake and big fiery bird: Computer 4 + Analyze 3 + Hotsim 2 = 9d6.hits(5)=4, 9d6.hits(5)=3, 9d6.hits(5)=6 - sometimes Invisible Castle like me. However, like my dice I fully expect it to glitch on me when I really need a good roll.

Quick question to all: Only way in here might be to probe for a weakness which could take several hours of game time. Are you okay with that approach?

All of us are pretty much on over watch waiting for you. Even then would the great and glorious GM mind(does flattery make the run easier Red-Rom?. BTW-probably a good approach. Though if it is on alert already, you may just want to brute force it. Depends on if your PC's capabilities..

I guess I'd be ok with that. In the meantime, some things we could do while waiting for Ferret are:

1. Scout out the rest of the area, and try to map out the locations of some of BDLL's hidden traps.
2. Acme could send a spirit to lead Jovan and his elemental to Jonathan. I imagine a ghoul would be a bit more inclined to give some straight answers to a fellow Infected, and an Infected type with a nasty reputation at that, as opposed to a member of his main food group.
3. We could spend the hours calling our contacts and getting a bit more outside assistance and intel.
4. Figure out where those ghouls are all headed, since all three of them seem to have been walking north.

If you trigger an alert by hacking on the fly, you can just log out, spoof a new ID and brute your way in again if needed. But really, triggering an alert isn't that big of a deal. If you hack for an admin account, then once you're in, take an action to roll hacking + exploit vs the system + firewall to do whatever action you like, from disabling the alert to dropping my agent in the system as a distraction. Or, maybe we send the agent in first to keep the IC busy while you disable the alert.

There are ways to make a brute hack work, especially when there's no sec forces to respond.

@ Notso: Saint made some good points, You guys can do what you think is best. It might make posting difficult for less active players (time to work on that dialogue). Seph has got some good ideas too. The team could definately come up with stuff to do while Ferret is busy

@ Notso: The ruins are representative of the whole network. most buildings correlate to a node of some type. Some have public accounts , others don't. The lake represents Security access. Regular users can't access it. The Phoenix is actually two IC. The bird is a standard attack dog running analyse and attack, and the Fiery tale is an IC Running no program. You have a suspicion that it's there to reload the other one (like a Singularity Encore IC)

Any way Oz could juryrig his way into this system? or would he have to connect to it though Ferret's link?

Ach, I just realized I didn't post that I was going to be gone this weekend, it looks like things are still ok with Acme though...

If Oswald has some hardware tools, he could open up the terminal and tap into the line. He might even be able to scrounge for tools in the garage. It may take a minute or two, and a glitch could dump Ferret out of the system.

I got a little slack this weekend. There didn't seem to be a whole lot happening. I'll try to get back in the saddle here tonight.

@ Jovan: Are you trying not to be seen? Everything you and your spirit are following are dual natured, so I wondered If you were trying to be sneaky.

@ Acme: 1 day buddy!

Okay, digital setup. Going to be running the Agent off the link, so it will be using system 3 and response 4 etc. and attached to Oz's Matrix ID. So, they move together, are discovered together and so forth. For now, the drone will be on autopilot with orders to alert Oz in case of attack or hostile action.

Dumping all programs and going bare bones.
[Running programs: Stealth 3(e), Analyze 6(e), Encrypt 6(e), Agent 3 {Attack 3, Exploit 3}]

So, that's 3 programs including the agent and the two running progs in its load. That should drop the link's Response from 4 to 3 until exploit gets dumped.

Let's see how she hacks for a user account.
6d6.hits(5) → [3,5,3,6,2,4] = (2)
6d6.hits(5) → [3,1,2,4,5,3] = (1)
6d6.hits(5) → [5,1,1,3,4,1] = (1) Awww yeah. glitchin. Let me know if I should keep going...

What's the scale of the Cross site image? it would help to know so we can figure out which buildings are likely. Yes, I know the bigger the better, but still. Red-ROM, if you could give us the dimensions of one building, say one of the two east-west oriented buildings in the south of the complex, that would help a lot. Also for determining range of weapons and fields of fire.

The irregular green blobs are rubble, right? If so, that limits the number of buildings that are functional for BDLL to hide some trucks.

Also--which of those buildings have entrances to an underground garage.


Not tryin to be difficult.

Does this include the -1 to response for converting everything to the old matrix?
The glitch buys you a restricted alert , but your connection isn't killed yet. are you piggy backed through Ferret's com?

ok, the map isn't perfectly to scale. I threw it together for a general overview, I'm not a city planner, or an architecht, so nailing down numbers might get messy. The two south buildings are huge condominiums. I'd say 100 meters long at least. There are two towers in the middle that are the largest buildings (one is collapsed) They both have underground levels (one can assume) but you only have arial footage, so theres no actual way to know which buildings do or do not go underground without some recon.

My read on the ghoul virus, since it's bound to come up. I see contact vector as bodily fluid contact, biting, ingesting blood. Open wounds. something like that. Maybe a crow kicks a drop of ghoul blood in your eye. Anyway, contact isn't going to mean "TAG! Your a Ghoul!"

Well, we can disregard that, I suppose, because I totally missed this.





Don't need to hack for an account to see the birdy, yeah? I was just assuming that the main node was an authorized personnel only thing.

As to the response loss, that's not to base response, right? So, stuff like dodging and initiative are effected, but not system rating?

Anyway, if Oz doesn't need to hack into the main node, I'd say drop the Exploit program from the start and just run attack.
That should leave out the response loss form program load.

Oh, as to the connection, I figured it was just a regular wi-fi matrix thing. The old ad-hoc network in action. If me routing through his connection is going to cause problems for him, I'd rather just do the juryrig thing. The whole point of me being there was to attract attention away from him.




god damn i wish they'd just make a matrix book with rules... defined rules... applicable to every game and any situation..

yea, the Matrix rules are slipery as a greased pig. If you use a legal. public account to attack, the node can automatically dump you from the system. the nodes you are accessing don't have wifi. so you would be going on Ferret's node and then into the terminal from there. I don't think it's too detrimental to Ferret, but it's your call. As for the response, I'll double check, its the same response loss mentioned in the reality filter test. thats where I got the idea. I think it just says -1 response, I don't think there was a deliniation as to where it applied

Yeah, as far as I can tell, nothing affects base response now that Grey IC is out of the picture.

I forgot all the old PLTG rules as such. So, do I need security access or is public access different than user access?
Also, if the hack triggers a restricted alert, would Oz be able to tell? While the bot works, he's got basically nothing to do but run analyze on things.

Welp. Hacking continues then. I'll load spoof, get a new ID (R5 spoof prog gives the agent enough dice to buy the needed 2 hits for this) and try again from the top. If you're against this, I'll continue at firewall +4, which adds as much to the threshold as it would take to start over.

Either way, here's some more hack rolls.
6d6.hits(5) → [3,5,3,3,2,5] = (2)
6d6.hits(5) → [2,6,4,5,4,2] = (2) <this should be enough.
6d6.hits(5) → [4,5,4,4,3,4] = (1)

Ferret's commlink:
Response 4(3), Signal 3, Firewall 6, System 4
Programs running: Stealth, Analyze, Exploit, Armor, Biofeedback filter, Browse, Attack

Attempting to get a security account without getting spotted by the system. I am assuming that Ferret is not affected by the restricted alert yet so 'only' needs 7 hits (firewall 4 + security account 3).

Phase 1: Hacking 4 + Exploit 3 + Hotsim 2 = 9d6.hits(5)=6 - oh yeah! Critical success? Hey look at the agent trying to hack in over there.
Phase 2: Hacking 4 + Exploit 3 + Hotsim 2 = 9d6.hits(5)=1 - bah, me and my big mouth! Scraping in as long as the system doesn't see me. Here's hoping!

@ Saint: The public account is a user account, but its legitiment access granted and logged by the node, therefore can be terminated without a test by administration. Spoofing and starting over is fine. It takes a little extra time, but not enough to matter I guess. Also, your blimp is on auto pilot, but what's it doing? What were the standing orders as it were.

@ Ferret: Security Access granted! critical success buys a pass on the stealth check.

@ Pban: you're down to one day!

@ Acme: I think Zo asked you (and Professor) a question. You might have missed it since your last post didn't reflect it. thought I'd mention it just in case.

@ Seph: I was waiting for an answer about stealth before moving on with the ghouls and such.

Am I missing anything?

Damn, time flies when your kid is getting married.

I'll get back up to speed.

Hey congrats man!

My son is 2 , so I can't even imagine.

Sorry. Been pretty busy with schoolwork lately.


Apparently not very well, at only 1 hit. It doesn't really matter to Jovan whether he follows them or talks to them, though, so whatever works.

EDIT: Apparently I was supposed to use Shadowing for that, not Infiltration. Int 6 + Shadowing 1 = 7d6 = 2 hits, still not great.

By the way, assensing the ghouls' auras to check on their health and try to ascertain whether they're sapient or feral or in-between: Intuition 6 + Assensing 2 = 8d6 = 2 hits :/ Maybe you'll have better luck with the air elemental's assensing roll.

1) Do not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) Obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) Protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Since there's no other human beings around besides Oswald, basically, the third one is the only applicable one.

j/k

Standing orders are to monitor for movement using its radar and try to capture any moving objects on trideo for it's broadcast back to the rest of the group. Also, protect its own existence.

Ferret's commlink:
Response 4(3), Signal 3, Firewall 6, System 4
Programs running: Stealth, Analyze, Exploit, Armor, Biofeedback filter, Browse, Attack

List of things Ferret wants to do.

1. Cancel alert on gas station node
2. Deactivate IC
3. Setup user or security account for Oswald
4. Check out other 'hot' locations reason for being on alert, and if possible check cameras in that area.
5. Overlay hot locations on map of location and send to team.

Not sure if or what I need to roll for each of these actions.
1. I guess this should be automatic with security access, just requiring a 'Deactivate alert' complex action.
2. I guess this should be automatic with security access, just requiring a 'Deactivate program' complex action.

3. Edit action to create a new user? Might be limited to user/security accounts by system settings?

Computer 4 + Edit 3 (replacing Attack with Edit first) + Hotsim 2 = 9d6.hits(5)=3

4. Following order: Phoenix Mall, The CATco Tower East, Annex 3. Computer 4 + Browse/Analyze 3 + Hotsim 2 = 9d6.hits(5)=5, 9d6.hits(5)=2, 9d6.hits(5)=4

5. Computer 4 + Edit 3 + Hotsim 2 = 9d6.hits(5)=3

<glitch>

going to a friends bachelor party tomorrow, out of town. sorry to leave you guys hanging. I hope to post Saturday.

No probs. Gives us a chance to think things through.

Professor applies his prodigious memory (every possible magical and Quality aid available, he has) and commensurate analytical skills (ditto for aids here) to try to find a pattern or clue in what we have learned so far.

Memory test:

LOG 5 + INT 4 + Analytical Mind 2 + Analytics (2) 2 = 13 dice ==> 6 HITS

Dude! That's thinkin'!

And then Professor remembered...EVERYTHING.

I'm not sure if anyone missed it in that long post of mine earlier, but Jovan does have a watcher manifesting inside the gas station that he's using as an astral commlink. Absolutely no one's reacted to it IC, so I wasn't sure whether I was clear about it in my earlier post.


I was wondering when you were going to start using those puzzle skills.

Ferret is in the matrix, which is good becaue floating eyeballs in the real world would really freak him out!

Puzzling, wasn't it?

ok, crazy weekend, I'm gona try to get caught up here

He's alive!

Assensing the dog: Int 6 + Assensing 2 = 8d6 = 3 hits

I did not include astral visibility bonuses/modifiers in that. What are the astral visibility conditions right now? We're not actually in the background count quite yet, are we?

@ Pban: A memory has stuck out in Professor's mind as slightly distracting. Amber had recieved a call before geting out of the van, and she had left her comlink on the seat. (here)
while his doesn't answer many questions, it did seem like a loose end. and possibly a security risk.