You examine it carefully. The rules are amplifying its link to anyone that possessed it. "Once together always together" type of magic. Effectively someone has used their skills with Sympathetic Magic, to make this into a magical link^TM with a creature that possessed the skull in the past. This is fairly cutting edge magic: the kind you would expect to see in a thaumaturgical R&D facility.

Instead of sympathetic magic being a minus on a ritual spell casting roll, this would be around +3 die. It could be used for things other than ritual magic: anything that needs a magical link.

As an example its such a strong link that astral tracking would only take 1 min per roll, instead of 1 hour.

I think the heavy form is to ensure that the mark recipient is truly grateful, and pays lots for it.


Umm...well...Its a fair cop...you found me out.

To be fair to your employers, you were fully capable of doing the task that they set you on. If the outer ward had collapsed when you defeated Warder, it would be all over now. However from a point of personal survival, if you don't deal with the outer ward I think your choices are now "join the horrors" or "go down fighting". Now if you look at the map a little more carefully (and a fine piece of art it is too), the ward is around the whole lair (did I say lair...oops). You have tunneling capabilities and don't need to go up through the front entrance. The blood pump is in one of the four outer areas. The one with the Dn in it is the stairs to the level below.

The timing was quite clear: you have 15 minutes or its very bad. However you still have quite a lot of time left, and the bottom of the pyramid is now free of the Horror's minions.

Gotcha.


Yup. How many times have I heard the words "unforseen circumstances" cross Mr. Johnson's lips?

The map pyramidstartround17 shows the pump room being where the stairs down are. Should we ignore that and go with the SE room, which I believe is opposite to that room?

Wherever it is, Mandala can move with Angel, once she is ambulatory, to wherever we need to be. The tunneling ring will probably drill to the ward and then halt. Mandala can Shatter the ward there and the ring can continue drilling again. With a little luck, we could remove the floor right under the pump, and gravity will do the work for us after that.

Thank you for spotting that. We will go with the map. I'll edit the old post.

Ol'scratch has the ring...he is in room 27a
Bjeorn is a ring...he is in the barracks.

A thought occurs given Seth's last post. As we have 2 means of tunneling...... why not use both. Create some sort of diversion in another part of the temple, while feeding the pump a cocktail of chemicals. My understanding of the ward is that it will come down a lot quicker if the blood is 'tainted' in some way rather than waiting for it to drain out of the systam.
If we want to do that, should we try to regroup and co-ordinate efforts.
We could tunnel then sleaze/mask through the ward leaving it intact to keep rampaging rage spirits at bay while we work? We can then cause an even bigger diversion letting them in while we head up to the next floor and the last pump

@Marduk
As you have been studying the dagger etc can you tell why the rage spirits aren't attacking each other? Could we mask to look like them in order to move around more safely?

Seth? Can I?

You look at the spirits and realize that they all have a very similar aura: the same aura as the dagger, you can try masking if you want.

Ooooohhhh... someone has Aura Masking with a shitload of dice! I'll get on this later today.

Well, it was someone else's idea, so I'll wait till Mandala is clued in by someone before he tries. Should that happen, his roll would be:

Aura Masking: INT 8 + Magic 6 + Edge 6 (Hmmph ... probably would be worse outside of Angel's aura, though) = 20 dice

==> 8 HITS

@Seth:

Seem to have made a bit of a booboo (not sure if it's a copy paste error or I simply forgot/ran out of points at the time)... Ryl doesn't seem to have an unarmed skill so unless she's going to rely on defaulting is going to be bugger all use against non manifest spirits I don't suppose we've earnt 4 karma by now so I can at least get a skill of 1?!?

I assume that her fire breath only works on the meat world not in the astral?!?

I forget what's the rolll for aura masking?

Masking is: Intuition + Magic + initiate grade.

Masking

Well then 16d6: 4 1 6 5 2 4 6 4 3 2 2 2 1 6 6 2 (5) hits

18D nets Ryl a pitiful 3 successes I guess I could edge that if it looks like not enough...damn sight easier than fighting them all!

I just realised I missed an earlier question about unarmed.

There is a general question, then the specific.
General: I don't think elemental breath works on astral spirits.
Specific: All the spirits have manifest or possessed something, so fire breath will work just fine.

I do think unarmed is a good skill for you to have, so feel free to shuffle some skill points around.

I'm not going to distribute karma until the end of this scenario (Its pretty much on track for 2..3 months finishing I think). Its only been a couple of minutes of "real time", although fairly seriously intense real time. If there are enough people telling me "no no we want karma now", I'll give in..

Oooo...quick everyone

It's been 5 minutes
I'm more than okay to wait on karma.

We are at awkward phase in Shadow's Dawn: you are scattered around the Pyramid, the spirit Apocalypse_TM has been unleashed and everythings chaotic. With the cunning masking plan, you should be mostly unaffected by the horde of spirits There are two people that want to join, and now is an excellent time to do so: the horde of spirits will be freeing all the prisoners below the temple area...admittedly freeing them to kill them...but hey.

I'm going to move out of combat rounds as a control mechanism, and ask all of you "roughly what are you doing". If you could answer OOC I will sort out some IC posts, and at the end of it you should be roughly where you want to be. At least one of the prisoners that you come across will have some valuable data (shall we call it a plot-hook) that will be encouraging you to go back in time to a few years before the end of the 4th age.

If you are Earthdawn fans, can you tell me what type of character you were back then. If not, ask the others.

Based on the last experiment (The trip to see the Bird of Hope), I have made some adjustments

Over the next couple of weeks I will get some equipment, and a few extra cool powers based on the answers. The ritual requires at least some people to have ritual spell casting. Great Ritual helps (a lot) as well. Everyone will make a ritual spellcasting (default of -1 if you have no skill is fine) roll. Anyone with great ritual will give everyone extra die to roll equal to their successes (including themselves). The successes will count as edge during the flashback (and these will be the only edge you can spend). You can also use them to slightly influence how things go on an adhoc basic. The ritual only takes a few combat rounds to cast.

To summarize:

• Please remind me what type of adept you were, and if you can tell me how many points you spent on resources that will help me
• Please let me know "roughly what you are doing" in the OOC post, so that I can do some IC shuffling you all around, and meeting up with new players

Marduk: Wizard, I spent 50BP on resources.
I have Great Ritual, cause I'm that kind of jerk.

Since we are out of combat time.
Marduk is doing the following:
1) Trying to figure out if he can activate the dagger to call the spirits back in.
2) He has a link to Ysgarth, he has a dagger of I hate Ysgarth.. there should be some synergy.
3) where is the Box what's her bucket gave me?
4) Making sure Ambrose keeps the damn door shut.
5) Oh Hey, I'm invisible to obnoxious Horror (or so I think I might be) Use the TacNet to go exploring the temple area.
6) Speaking of TacNets, I want to link us to it, so we're getting the benefits. Mark us as friendlies, see what else the damn thing does.

Hi All (again)!

Seth--regarding my BP allocation for resources, I had to re-vamp the character sheet to reflect the fact that Boris was once a drek-hot adept (as opposed to the 2071 drek-hot quasi-burnout version). When I'm done, should I also post it to the recruitment thread? Either way, his resources would probably not exceed 40-ish. Regarding his Earthdawn-day discipline, I'd say Swordmaster, with a few circles of Scout and Warrior thrown in for good measure.

"Roughly what you are doing wise"--I'm waiting for the IC post to see what exactly you've got in store.

I am currently an artisan adept (or an aproximation of one as the Way hadn't been released when I made Ryl)...but the thinking was that I was probably an invisible adept in the past (can't remember what that translates to in ED terms...scout perhaps?). I spent 50BPs on resources!

Roughly I will follow the plan regarding the floating spirits and regroup...I don't think I have an agenda other than the mission parameters now that Angel is safe (ish)...so I guess we need to face a horror and nuke a blood ward

@Aria
How about if you were a Thief? Lots of fun: everyone trusts a thief.
Scout is doable also: finding things out is important
Air Sailor: Cutting edge of tech, lots of freedom

@E-do

Just post in the recruitment thread.

Actually Air Sailor sounds lots of fun! Given that my master's lair was in Wales any actions in Barsaive would take a bloody long time to get to and the chances are that Ryl would have picked up some skills on that line...

Frail little girly along with huge trolls - just as well she can turn into a mini dragon

Although there are other sailor groups than trolls aren't there? Seems unlikely that she'd hang with crystal raiders all that much?!?

Trolls are Sky Raiders.
There are Human/Elf/Etc Air Sailors.

The lizard folk air sail quite a lot. Whole fleets of galleons and cogs. Merchants are pirates

The dwarfs have their flying stone castles. Looks a lot like this, but made of stone (In real life this could have been 15 meters in height and 66 meters long... truth is stranger than fiction sometimes).

But you are right the Crystal Skyraiders are famous for being trolls

Well first off, howdy everybody. Looking forward to playing with you guys.

I'm looking for a little advice. I have a little spirit problem at the moment and I'm thinking a little F4 Mana Static might be perfect for keeping these spirits off my back while I get oriented.

Unfortunately, I haven't really played a magic user before, so I have two questions.
#1 How does Mana Static work in an aspected zone?
#2 How does the drain work with a background count? I'm presuming a F4 Mana Static would have (4(Spell Force)+4(background count))/2 +4 drain, which is bad but ok.

Mana Static over rides aspected zones. You're creating a pain in the ass aspect
Background count is a double whammy.

So: F4 Mana static would be : ((4+bc)/2)+4... but remember the effect is going to be F4-BC.
If you want a Force 4 effect, you need to cat F4+BC, so your drain would look like ((4+2BC)/2)+4
And probably be physical.

What you really want of course is Filtering...mu ha ha. Not too late to change

I like using Mana static in areas where there is a background count: it puts it back to a level playing field. And spirits really really hate it (ask Madala)

I have very little knowledge of Earthdawn, so I have no idea what form my Free Spirit Mandala would take in that time period. Suggestions are most welcome.

Seth, later I will pmail you about an idea for rejigging Mandala in his modern form just a bit, before we run out of time for the stats being set.

Seth--some questions, before we dive into what I imagine will be initiative rolls.

(a) How many spirits, give or take, are in the room?

(b) Is there a door to this? if so, are the spirits standing in the way? Would it be plausible to try and get the hell out of there?

© What method are we using for dice rolls?

Seth: I'll send you a PM about some background stuff and a couple questions I had. For now though, Angel's going to do a damage assessment on the orderly drone, attempt to create herself an admin account, and disable the wireless and all other accounts on it. Let me know if there are any specific rolls you want me to make for that. (Most of those should be relatively trivial even with the dumpshock penalty, unless the drone has some special security on it.)

pbangarth: I have to fix up my posted char sheet, but I assumed Mandala is speaking a language Angel actually understands, though it looks like his Spanish is pretty bad, so maybe we'll both be suffering through using non-native languages to communicate (maybe English?).

Mandala speaks modern Nahuatl, which is the Aztlan language. I should have noted that correspondence in my character sheet.

EDIT: his English is better, though.

And, although I thought of it, I don't know that Mandala would be knowledgeable enough of the Matrix to ask if Angel can shut down the pumps via that route.

Two things:
#1 I think I will take Filtering, swapping out Geomancy to take it. I love geomancy, it's superfluffy for this guy, but with a casting time of months I don't think it's ever going to get used.
#2 Just want to make sure I have this "Aspected domain" thing down. The Azzie 4 space I'm in now
-It reduces my magic attribute by 4.
-It increases the force of my spell for drain purposes by 4
-It wrecks wards, foci, etc but oddly it doesn't seem to affect permanent spells.

Edit for post:
Ok, updated my character sheet, first IC post. Quick rundown of what I'm doing.
This turn:
-Sent agent off to hack into local grid, see if anybody else is here.
-Filtering the local mana (also not sure what to use for roles)
-Tried to start a conversation.

Next turn:
-Mana static
-Hopefully make some new friends.

@E-do

Spirits in room: 20
Doorway: trashed and destroyed, but plenty of stuff that could be slide into place. More spirits in the corridor
Dice are invisible castle.

@Polite man
Just to make sure that you are aware:

• The angry rage spirits are about to attack you
• However you are martial artist of some reknown and can carry on a conversation about the weather, or drink tea without spilling it while engaging multiple opponents (perhaps you use this as a training technique...)
• Background count reduces the force of foci and sustained spells (including quickened spells).
• I have a house rule that quickened spells are not disrupted, and will kick back in when the background count changes suitably.
• The background count adds to the force of spells or spirits for purposes of drain.
• When you are filtering, your foci, and "range self" spells are affected by your filtering.

@E-do and Politeman
We will have 1 round of combat from you before Angel appears and the spirits change from an Army of unstoppable killing things, to a Mischief of small but painful pests.
Initiative from you both please.

• In initiative 14, the spirits will go.
• There are 5 attacking E-do (something about your aura makes them hate you more), and only 3 attacking Politeman
• IP1 attacks from the spirits on Immortal Li: 3, 4 and 2
• IP2 attacks from the spirits on Immortal Li: 2, 3, and 6
• IP1 attacks from the spirits on Boris: 4, 4 and 7
• IP2 attacks from the spirits on Boris: 4, 4, and 3
• The spirits only have 2 IPs
• We'll adjudicate the results when you have rolled your attacks/defences, as there may be fewer of them / wound penalties.

@Edana
The orderly is tough, and currently undamaged. It looks as though it is a special model designed to restrain very strong un-cooperating 'guests'. You slice through the security as though it wasn't there (its a rating 4 device, no need for rolls, takes 1 combat turn max), although see the IC post...
MR CHIPS first aid's you 7 successes


@Mandala
You are a free spirit in 2070... yes you thought of it. Sadly it is clear that the blood pumps use old tech. No matrix stuff at all. Simple robust agricultural equipment has been used.

Ok, I think I got this aspected thing down. Being stuck at 1 IP kinda hurts.

Fortunately somebody is walking by. Lets see how that works down.

Yeah I hear you. As an evil GM I am going mu ha ha, but I have been there and its really painful: when do you cast Increased reflexes? Its a whole action...

Note that I edited my previous post: the details of the spirits attacking you has been added. They only do base 3S damage, but there are a lot of them...

If only there was a large scary cyberzombie to protect me.

*I badly needs a puppy-dog eyes smilie*

lol

Alright!

Initiative Roll, 6 hits

Initiative Score (Initiative 11 + hits): 17

IP 1: Ready Weapon (Cyberblade), and Full Parry Defense (as an Interrupt Action, takes 1 IP off)

Full Parry: Blades (8)x2 + Reaction (7) + Reakt (+2) = 25d6, 7 hits
Full Parry: Blades (8)x2 + Reaction (7) + Reakt (+2) = 25d6, 6 hits
Full Parry: Blades (8)x2 + Reaction (7) + Reakt (+2) = 25d6, 6 hits

IP 2: Full Parry Defense

Full Parry: Blades (8)x2 + Reaction (7) + Reakt (+2) = 25d6, 7 hits
Full Parry: Blades (8)x2 + Reaction (7) + Reakt (+2) = 25d6, 6 hits
Full Parry: Blades (8)x2 + Reaction (7) + Reakt (+2) = 25d6, 11 hits

IP 3: Attack 1 spirit with Cyberblade

Blades ( + Agility (9) = 17d6, 7 hits

IP 4: Negated due to interrupt action during IP 1

Thanks for the post e-do. Two bits of minor bad news: You are being attacked by 5 not 3. ...curses I forgot about the friends bonus, but I will sort that out next time. Secondly every defense after the first is at -1
So just roll me two more defenses starting at 22.
You got hit once in IP 1 for 4S. I'm sure that won't trouble you much...curse forgetting that friends bonus.

Oh! Thanks for the heads up. Though, judging from that last post of yours, I was under the impression that the first two didn't land any hits. Maybe you forgot to roll those attacks? *wink*

Full Parry: Blades (8)x2 + Reaction (7) + Reakt (+2) = 22d6 (ignore those last 3 rolls) 6 hits
Full Parry: Blades (8)x2 + Reaction (7) + Reakt (+2) = 21d6 (ignore those last 4 rolls)6 hits

Soaking the damage from that 1 hit-- Body (9) + Armor (2) = 11d6, 3 hits
Receives 1S damage, but this is negated by the Trauma Damper.

Base damage from his Cyberblade, by the way, is 6P.

Do we post IC per IP, or per round?

Harumph...
Fortunately that means I get to include the friends modifier...woo hoo
IP 1: 4 and 4
IP 2: 6 and 5

Sadly the trauma damper doesn't soak the die: you take a minimum of 1 damage. so for example if you were hit for 5 damage, you would only take 4.

Post IC at suitable levels as you feel fit. I would do the round, as it was quite a simple one. They hit and scratched you, you hit back but were repelled by their immunity to normal weapons (5 dodges against you).

This fight is going to end only one way...
Oh but wait...here come people to help you. Lesser people perhaps. Not in the Queens good books maybe. But maybe they know whats going on, and once that beautiful aura kicks in the spirits fade away to a mere nuisance.

Parrying those last IP 2 attacks: 8 hits, and 10 hits. Dang!

Well, Full Defense seems to be the way to go here. I'll go ahead and interrupt my filtering to get it off.

Initiative: 2 hits (6+2)=8 Initiative Score


Full Parry: Unarmed (3x2) + Reaction (3) + Spec (2) + Tai Chi (1) =12 die
IP 1:
2 hits
3 hits
3 hits
Soaking: Body (4) + Armor (4)
1 hits
-1 die
3 hits
4S, ouch

IP 2: (-2 die)
2 hits
4 hits
1 hit Ouch, gonna Edge that so I don't get knocked out off the bat 2 more hits
Soaking: 7 die against 6S
4 hits There we go
4S+2S=6S total.

Hey, an orderly! You weren't planning on using that for anything, were you?
Edit: Yes, it's safe to say I'm running.

@PoliteMan

Pain agony ouch. The rage spirits are seriously unpleasant, and I overestimate their effects on you. Sorry. I wouldn't feel bad if I had signposted them and you had walked in anyway, but here I just started you in an awkward position.


I laughed...kind of a guilty laugh...but I still laughed

@General
I'm obviously trying to orchestrate people to meet up again (don't care where: but the basement is now free of Rage Spirits thanks to the screams from the ones munched by the door).
I think its clear (?) from the IC posts that the horror is trying to work out if you know his true name. The dream that Boris was having again and again was the one in which you stole the item the Therans were using to keep the mana levels high. The horror wanted to know whether or not you had studied his box long enough to work out his true name, but Harliquin has obviously undergone an Astral Quest to hide the details.
So I'd like you all to go back and redo that mission...

If everyone is happy with that rough plan, can you do some IC posts moving your characters, talking about it, asking Boris any questions you want to.

I will start work on the brief for the Astral Quest and kitting people out with equipment. If you have any particular desires, just post them in this thread.

Where is the regeneration room located on the map?

Hey, I've got radar in my leg. Can I pick up any people, or any place that seems safer than here.

Also, my agent XiaoMei is hacking the drone. Someone say hi to the panda.

Edit: Whoops, didn't realize Angel and Mandala were with the drone. Rewriting accordingly.

@e-do
The regen room on the latest map http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/684/p...rtround17a.png/ is on the "First floor: all research labs". It is the room just to the south of the stairs down that is marked with a blue ward, and doesn't have any red in it. (Just south of where the Cadarvermen were when the map was made).

@Polite-man
Radar is stopped most thoroughly by the concrete and steel of the pyramid construction. You can penetrate about 12" of concrete if you turn the power level up to "dangerous". The internal walls are about 1 foot of concrete so you can just get through one wall, but the details of whats on the other side is hazy

However the area has become relatively safe with the introduction of Angel and Mandala.

Gotcha. Judging by the IC posts of the other team members, I guess the spirits in our room are also neutralized?