I was saying its force 9 Its effectively a force 4.

I'm assuming we are all Masked, as is Mandala/Norbert.

I might have asked a question like this already, Seth. Sorry if I have. Would the Aura Masking on Mandala and whatever Extended Maskings might exist on the rest of the team cover the Mindnet that exists among the team, the one Mandala set up earlier in the morning? If not, then the spirit probably will notice the mental linkup among us.

This could be a problem.

@Pbangarth
Extended masking works like this I think: Anyone who has extended masking is hiding spells that affect them. So if there are three people with a mind net, 2 with extended masking, the other one will still have a visible spell on them.

It is hard to see magic in here: the background count is subtracted from assensing, so its unlikely the spirit will see much.

@everyone
I'll wait another day in case anyone wants to post about entering the room, then we'll move to Hitler greeting you.

I haven't forgotten about that post I promised. It's just that registration deadlines and renewing my FAFSA and a large workload in general have given me approximately 0 free time these past few days. =( I will get it up as soon as I can.

@Sephiroth
NP. Hope the exams went well, and good luck with FAFSA.

Whoever needs or wants more details to work with from von Tresckow, since he was the person who drafted the plan for this assassination in the first place and was one of the key leaders of the German resistance against Hitler, please tell me and I will find more details to add in to help our plan. It is almost 3:00 am, and my mind is no doubt missing things.

I have split the medal giving into two posts: I've posted the first. You have been in Hitler's room for a few minutes. Giving the medals took 2..3 minutes. Towards the end of this week, I will post a closing speech, and you being escorted out of the room.

In the room there is Hitler, his aide, 8 senior staff (including von Trescow) split into a group of 5 and a group of 3, 2 secretaries, and a couple of SS storm troopers at the back. The senior staff members all have Lugers, the SS storm troopers have Schmeissers.

Outside the room there are two more storm troopers guarding the door. The corridor is lined with rooms: senior staff, secretaries, telephone rooms and joins onto a main trunk tunnel. There are two more guards at the main trunk tunnel. Room 27a is along the same tunnel that you are on further away from the main trunk tunnel, round a corner.


On a seperate note, Aria is travelling on a boat for a few days so will be able to post until the end of the week

It's gonna be great but lacks reliable internet access

Hello all

If we don't have a better plan Bjorn can just hit Hitler!!

That can just start a big fight but that will give us the cover to do something about the briefcase

I like my plan

Hi,

Bjorn's plan may be a bit drastic but could work.

I have mob mind so can hopefully control the troops etc who are not on our side. The spirit will be a problem but we have several people who can deal with it. If it manifests the troops can be controlled to shoot it!

The briefcase bomb can then be used to cover up the evidence.

Any thoughts, or can we come up with something a little more subtle?

I would recommend something more subtle. Historically speaking, if one of us tried to physically assault Hitler, the Gestapo would hunt us to the ends of the earth and have us executed. Possibly by gas chamber. And that is to say nothing of how Alachia might react to our murdering her 'lover.' We may be very old and very powerful, but even Bjeorn can easily be killed. Seeing as how we're all immortal, very experienced, and overall quite intelligent (including Bjeorn), we should be able to do something to assassinate Hitler without Alachia realizing that other immortals were behind the assassination (at least not for a good few years).

IRL, after Colonel von Stauffenburg (who should also be in the room with us, if we need some extra assistance) placed the briefcase bomb on the floor nearby Hitler's seat and left the room, one of Hitler's aids moved the briefcase farther away so he could look at a map better (which is why the bomb failed to kill Hitler). What we could do is something like this- place the briefcase bomb semi-close to Hitler's briefcase, then with either mundane or magical influencing somehow get one of the Germans to move Hitler's briefcase farther away, mistakenly believing that it's actually OUR briefcase he's moving out of the way. Stauffenburg can then grab the briefcase and leave the room (to get out of the Wolf's Den before the explosion) and meet with Fearghas or another one of us in the halls to hand over the briefcase on his way out. No one will be the wiser.

Seth, there is no difference between the briefcases in terms of their astral shadows, is there? So the spirit would be hard pressed to notice this kind of subtle swap?

Alyena has mind control which could be used on one of the aids to achieve this.

@ Seth. Not sure if a mundane would realise something was up if I failed an attempt due to background minus. Can I just keep trying (drain allowing) 'til I succeed?

@Sephiroth
These is no difference between the briefcases that you can tell (you can see both now). There is a lot of astral static (the low background count), so it would be very hard for the spirit to spot it anyway.

@Alyena
You can keep recasting until it works. Don't forget that you have edge and that might well help. Each time you cast, there is a chance that they will notice you are casting: they need a number of successes equal to (IIRC 6- force of the spell). If they are not familiar with magic, they will just see that you are concentrating hard on something.

Mandala has the Psychokinesis spirit power. I believe spirit powers are not subject to the 'notice magic' rules that apply to casting spells.

@Pbangarth
I think you are correct.

Maybe we should have Hitler do part of the next half of his speech. We seem to be stagnating. Also I think we may have lost sabs.

You are right Sephiroth. I think that there are a few reasons for the stagnation, but probably the main one is that I am working away from home, and have very limited internet access. That stops in another week.

I think this flashback idea was an interesting but failed experiment. So lets get though it quickly then we can go back to the main game. I will post Hitler's speech tomorrow. Just grab the briefcase, we'll have a fight and exit the flashback.

I wouldn't give up on the flashback idea just yet. We may have to iron things out, but the idea seems cool to me. Particularly the part about weaving in thousands of years of life experience. Our PCs really are different from the standard Shadowrun gang.

EDIT: I've been a bit out of touch in a couple of games myself.

Have you considered implementing the Post or Die rules? You mentioned in one of your beginning posts that you would be using them, but we haven't really been following them. We have essentially lost three members already, so fresh blood (including Red-ROM from the reserve list, although he seems to be a bit overwhelmed with RL right now) could help us a lot. You will probably have to open a couple new recruitment threads occasionally, and may have to work rather hard at times to keep things interesting and unpredictable, but I can tell you confidently that Post or Die hasn't reached nearly 50 pages and gone almost a year just because that particular game got lucky and didn't die out like most do. Red-ROM's determination to keeping it running has done wonders for it (although we all know the story is starting to suffer with all the team members dying )






(Of course, the core group of devoted players (pbangarth, Sithney, Notso, myself, and formerly Acme) has done a lot too, but that's beside the point )

I think thats a good idea Sephiroth. I'll think about it, and consider implementing it when I get back home.

well, it's difficult cause we're a group pattern bringing in new ancient people.. is weird.

How have we lost 3? I only know of 2(Aren and Ambrose), and we didn't lose them so much as never had them. Neither one made it to the first post.

Aria is on holiday until the end of rhe month, that's not really losing.

I was counting you as well, because I've seen you a lot on the main forums lately and you haven't posted in here for two weeks. Glad to see I was mistaken.

Thats' not true there's just been nothing to post.

OK I have hopefully got a scene together that will allow you to swap briefcases.

Hitler is using the adept power "Enthralling Performance" on you, and is very very good at it. You are all entranced for a while, but being high level adepts can break free of it by the time he is half way through the speech.

You can try and work out what the ritual he is proposing is actually trying to accomplish, and what it involves with logic + arcana if you want to. You suspect that he really doesn't know that you are immortals, as his Jack and John introduction to magic is firstly wrong, and secondly at a very rudimentary level.

If you want to do things to the briefcase now is the time to do it.

Logic+arcana+analytics(3): 12d6: 5 5 1 5 5 3 4 2 3 6 5 5 (7) hits

I think I might know what hes' trying to do. (I do love playing knowledge characters)

Its a nice little spell called "Great ghost dance", except its a European version of that. Many of the participants will give their life force powering up military magical might.

Wow.. uh.. I'm going to want to figure out a way to sabotage this thing

Or is stealing the Bird of Hope good enough?

So do we have alternates in place? That still want to play? If so, then I'd be okay with doing some magic and having a reality warp that replaces Arlen with who ever someone makes. Ambrose is tougher to replace, but he also basically never played, so if we have a 2nd player wanting to join.. we could do some magic and do a regex search and replace

Mandala switching the briefcases using Psychokinesis

Enable the power: (no point using EDG, as his current Force limits his AGI to 5)

Magic 5 + WIL 7 = 12 dice ==> 5 HITS

OK, AGI and STR are both at the current maximum of 5.

Move fake briefcase into place: (Hmmm.... probably Palming would be the Skill here. Mandala doesn't have it, and I didn't do the Skill switch earlier. It seems unfair to do it now!)

AGI 5 -1 (default from Palming) -2 (using Psychokinesis) + 5 EDG (no kidding!) = 7 dice, exploding 6s
==> 2 HITS

Well, it's a good thing the bad guys are also under Hitler's Enthralling Performance effect, huh?

Move Hitler's briefcase to our location: (use EDG here too)

7 dice, exploding 6s ==> 1 HIT

Are we having fun, yet?

You're supposed to be this amazingly Spirit thing. And yet, he gains!

Have I mentioned that your JOB is on the line? Do you want me to put you back where I found you. Alone, Friendless, Unemployed, in GREENLAND.

The bird of hope is a key component. If you remember your (history??) when the great ghost dance began it was started in what was basically a concentration camp. The government had decided to execute them all. That is a very similar position to the Jews in WWII, which is a good place to find the bird of hope (which can only be found by one that has lost all hope).

This is of course not Canon, but I thought it was consistent, and ties in well with this story

I am currently working 6000 miles from home, and doing crazy hours. I'll be back Sunday evening, so I will start a new round of recruits then (For recruiting you need to be able to respond multiple times a day I think). I have a plan for the reality warp...a nasty evil plan...so don't worry about that.


Good news for you: Hitler got 6 successes, and it affected the spirit too...so anyone looking for the briefcase will need at least 7 successes....

Do we know what the magical abilities/functions of the Bird of Hope are (mechanically), so that we can do a little more with it at the appropriate time than just remove it to cripple the Great European Ghost Dance?

The bird of hope has at least four main functions.

• Those who possess it (or find it) can never loose hope again (congratulations Marduk).
• In can be used as the focus for the great ghost dance (you are reading instructions on how to do that now)
• Its song is so beautiful that evil cannot bear to be in its presence (whatever that means).
• It can be used to find the Holy Grail, which is a direct telephone to higher powers

!!!
This bird is not in our possession at the time of the pyramid infiltration, is it? The pyramid with a nasty Horror thing in it somewhere.

And even if it isn't with us, this rings a bell. Isn't music somehow anathema to the Horrors? Forgive my ignorance of all things Earthdawn. I'm just brainstorming for a character who has a fair to middling Artisan Skill.

The bird of hope cannot be constrained, and you will have possession of it only for a short while. This means that you won't have it in the pyramid. It can only be found by one that has lost all hope (so Marduk won't be able to find it again).

You suspect (strongly) that most music is anathema to horrors, and that the song of this bird would be particularly unpleasant to them.

I see what you did there, Seth. We as Immortals wouldn't happen to have heard of a certain Thayla before, would we?

...curses...found out...

The bird of hope isn't Theyla's voice. But for all you know it would have the same effect. For the uninitiated, sometime around 2050 (I think) Harlequin undertook a crazy hard astral quest to acquire a song bird that he leaves in the astral metaplanes to scare the horrors away. Dunkelzahn was not impressed (Theyla failed to keep the horrors away in the past), so basically committed suicide to do a better job of keeping the horrors away (that's a two sentence summary of a complex plot).

I'm kind of back now...will try and catch up and post towards the beginning of next week (my game too... )

As a thought on the flashbacks...if we aren't going to run them concurrently with the pyramid thread then could we make it a single thread from now on? It's very satisfying to have a long thread going

I've also just bought the adept mini rules thing from DriveThru...are we too late for that respec now Seth (not that I've really got time for that and everything else I need to catch up on after no internet for a week )

Cheers

A

I am traveling for the next 36 hours. I haven't bought the rules yet so give me a week to read them. See you all in a couple of days

No problem...I've looked them over and I don't think it will change Ryl in any way for the moment...

...I had a thought about our 'past' experiences...are we assuming (from my dimly remembered Earthdawn lore) that at various times in our looooong lives we have 'rewritten' our personal patterns to change our skills? That would explain why I'm now a hacker with relevant powers that wouldn't have existed in the past...?!? I guess in that case I'd like to use the new adept rules to create past versions of Ryl when she was a troubadour/spy of sorts...I don't think they are vastly overpowered.

Until I sort this in my mind I'm not really sure what Fraulein Klien can actually do, other than perhaps resist the enthralling performance from Mr Hitler

Well I am back from lots of travelling now, so I can devote more time to this story. (That's not actually true, I am still travelling but at least I don't have to work 15 hour days ).

For all of you that are crowded round Mr Hitler and listening to the briefing, I will remind you that there is a tick tock tick tock bomb about to arrive moment. The bomb is a chemical fuse of 10 minute +/- 1 minute. You have somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes before the bomb goes bang.

I'll wait a couple of days for you lot to decide if you want to do anything then its ba ba boom time.

Can we assume, then, that Mandala's briefcase switch went off unnoticed?

No one seems to have responded.... I should have made that clear before

Hi All,

Sorry that I haven't been posting, things have been very hectic here. My niece had a fire in her flat and has been staying with me for last 10 days or so, with all the chaos of insurance claims and finding somewhere new!

Glad to see that Mandala has managed to swap the briefcases.
Now all we have to do is get out of the room, get the key, figure out how to open the door, get the Bird of Hope and get out of the building, all before the bomb goes off. Simple!

Step 1: Get out of room.
I can mob mind someone in the room to interrupt, full of apologies, saying that a message has come in. The top line has been decoded as a flash priority, his eyes only, from the front. As soon as the rest is decoded it will be rushed to him. They could suggest that perhaps it would be a good idea to continue our briefing later? Hitler looks a bit distracted, so may not notice that the 'messenger' has been in the room all along.
Hopefully this will get us dismissed and buy us a few minutes before anyone goes looking for the rest of the urgent message.

A less subtle idea would be to mob mind everyone else to hold Hitler down while we leave. One of many downsides to this is that 'Queenie' will realise that magic was done and come asking awkward questions.

Well my plan is simple add on to Alyena's idea:

• Alyena does the mind control
• I smack anyone who is not affected
• and Hitler as well just because...
• We exit the room stage left
• Loot the treasure
• Pick up lots of bling.
• The room goes bang.
• We all live happily ever after.

How about we mind control everyone, pop a cap in his head, and move on.

Though I suspect, we can't really kill Hitler

I think it'd be safer not to use any spells or violence if we can help it. With mob mind, it'll only last for a few seconds, unless it's at a high force, in which case it will still only last for around 20 seconds and everyone in the room (including the spirit, and we still don't know whether that spirit is summoned or free - and if summoned, who summoned it) and their grandma will notice it. Noticing spellcasting has a threshold of 6-the Force of the spell, remember. The kind of Force we'd need to use for mob mind would be about as difficult to notice as a neon sign stapled to your eyeball.

I think smooth-talking would be the safest and best way out of the room. I like Alyena's idea, it looks like we could adapt it to make it work without mindraping someone. I think that as a high-ranking general, Henning von Tresckow might be able to put forward some suggestions to get him to send us out of the room (although, regrettably, Fearghas doesn't have the 12 Charisma he usually has because of the mana ebb ). I'll give it some thought in the next day or two..

Go for it Sephiroth.

If you can Charisma + Ettiquette :
2 successes: Rearrange where people are in the room...explain that the current layout is not quite optimal, and if you were all positioned differently the training would go better
3 successes: Arrange for a private one on one with Hitler (and his guards), everyone else waiting outside

You can aim for anything else. The reason the numbers are low is that Hitler is very happy with you all, and is dreaming of his glorious future.

how would enthralling performance and con work in this situation? Marduk is a fast talker, and can lecture with the best of them. Though I think the idea is to get out, not to enthrall everyone into staring at him. Mmmm...