OK the IC thread is up and running.

The game is starting in the middle of a run. Timeline so far:

• You had about 12 hours notice to get to the council, which was in Tir Tainglire
• The council meeting lasted about 10 mins, in which the overview of the mission was given
• Ambrose is given a magic ring that enables magical tunneling. You thought this type of magic couldn't work at this level of magic: well you learn something every day.
• You were taken straight from the meeting with the council to Aztlan, by a Nape of the Earth helicopter, in which you were given a more detailed briefing
• You had 6 hours to get arrested
• 24 hours after being arrested you were in the train on the way to Tzetlan camp 23
• You arrived at dawn
• During the day three bus loads of 20 prisoners each were taken to the research facility. The prisoners were selected at random it seemed. The prisoners didn't come back. If that's blood magic involved...its a lot of power.
• Lights out at 8pm
• You started digging at 10 mins to midnight
• You finished digging at midnight

Right now you are under the concrete wall of the reactor. The tunneling device can be operated by Ambrose to penetrate the reactor floor.

I recommend you initially post flashbacks in which you do info gathering, and optionally grumble about being blackmailed / force-ably recruited by the Council of Princes. This gives anyone who needs it enough time to finish character creation. Once we have had a few of those, we can move into the pyramid itself!

Pre recruitment thread
Recruitment thread
IC Thread
In the past interesting posts:
Overview of Earthdawn mods
Questions about Earthdawn mods
The Earthdawn Spreadsheet
The Storm Swift

QUOTE

Rules on dream manipulation

PCs
Sabs --Marduk of Throal /Marduk The Mad Scholar/ Mark "Mad Professor" Vladisnov-- Dwarven Wizard / Mystic Adept -- Magical expert -- Tradition:
Aria -- Kirylle (Ryl) deBathayre /eTher --Human Drake Adept -- Hacker
pbangarth -- Mandala -- Free spirit -- Scout / Buff bot / Blaster -- Tradition: Buddhism
Sephiroth -- Fearghas -- Immortal Elf . Tradition: Path of the Wheel
Alyena -- Alyena -- Immortal Elf Nethermancer -- Kills magical threats. -- Tradition: Nethermancy (possession)
Big Fella -- Bjorn -- Bear Shifter / ex-Horror construct -- Tank -- Tradition: Way of the warrior
Edana - Angel - Rescuee and Technomancer
Polite man - Immortal Li - Oriental Magician
E-do - Boris - Ex-physical adept on his way to Cyberzombie status
Zardaine - Dannrhil - Martial Artist drake

Used to be PCs
Ol'Scratch -- Ambrose -- Troll (Fomori) Mystic Adept Alchemist -- Magical Expert + Creator of all things magical & mundane -- Tradition: Akashic (possession)
Halinn -- Aren -- Windling Adept -- Infiltration / Social Skills
Ghost In The System - Lean'drea- Bard

Reservists
Red-ROM

Here are the summaries of what has happened
Start of 3
Start of 5
Start of 7
Start of 9
Start of 11
Start of 13
Start of 15
Start of 17
Start of 18
Start of 20

Most recent map

EarthDawn Initial Briefing
Who will be guarding the various areas

The 10th hour starts IC and OOC

Communications with a horror

I have aggregated together the scenes in which the horror has communicated with the party

Fearghas's dream
End of Feargash's dream
Boris's Groundhog day
Immortal Li's dream

I can't access the map we are given in the helicopter. Says page doesn't exist.

OK I got the same result when not logged in to google. I have changed it to use image shack. Should work now, and you can admire my artistic talents

Got it now.

@Pbangarth: As you wing your way back from the Buddhist heaven to Tir, you feel yourself enter a magical trap. A web of energies corruscates around you, as you are pulled to a different destination to the one you wants. Can you make me a force roll to resist this please

Oh cool! I get to play first! I get to play first!

Hmmm... Shadow's Dawn for the campaign on Invisible Castle? I'll use that for now, and change if the name is different.

Force 9 = 9 dice ==> 3 HITS

Oh, sorry about the sig in my IC post. I will work on that.

You can just edit the post and uncheck the checkbox at the bottom.

Excellent! Thanks.

Nice touch, Ol' Scratch, with the song link. You might want to have a look at THIS as a Shadowrun cover of that song. Stay till the end, it feels a little like what a Horror might do.

Your flashback is cool. Among others here, you demand a step-up in my game. So be it.

Thank you everyone for modifying your posts.

Can you post in this OOC thread any data searching / contact chatting you might want to do. Include a bundle of rolls from invisible castle please. Remember that you are together for a fair while during this time, so you can ask each other questions, or ask them to use their skills on you, if you feel the need. We'll post the answers in the IC thread when everyone's finished their first post

We should be able to do some legwork before Mar 7th, On Mar 7th that concrete roof will be sorted, and you get all the fun of going into the reactor.

For your viewing pleasure the reactor looks a little like this, although its a little smaller. The circular area is around the main reactor core, and the room to the west holds all the steam pipes and stuff. You will of course be pleased to know that the reactor is cooled by liquid sodium at 510 degrees centigrade, although it is not pressurized, and that the secondary circulation system will hold super heated steam at around 180 atmospheres / 450 degrees C or so. Even more fun is the fact that a steam leak is invisible and acts a bit like a mono filament whip. (As a side note I have used slightly higher pressure water to cut through 6 inches of work hardened steel...so its good at armour penetration too).

The generator is of course cooled by hydrogen (also at high pressure), and the generator if it gets damaged is likely to make loads of sparks.

The transformer is cooled by Sodium Hexaflouride, which has the nice properties that it is an asphyxiant in high concentrations, no odour warning. (In other words you die without realising it, and respirators don't help)

The open copper bus bars are only at 11000 volts (think 5 times the electric chair, but a lot more current).

Not that I think you need to worry about this sort of stuff, but I thought it might reassure you to realise that the radiation is by no means the worst hazard, and that there is a lot of stuff in the reactor room that you probably don't want to damage.

These are the actions that immediately jump out at me. I may add a bit more depending on how things evolve during the course of the planning stage.

I have some bad news for you "Well at least I'm not fragging possessed" is slightly more accurate. Mind you ... you could have forgotten that as its 10,000 years ago or so. Nice post I enjoyed it

I'm not sure that its easy to check for horror marking (I am AFB at the moment): If you roll 10 assensing rolls (You could even get help if you want) I'll tell you if you see anything

lolwut? <pauses for a moment as it sinks in> Oh that ain't right!

Okay, let's see here. That ominous revelation he made upon seeing the apparently uninspired (since I'm assuming that's what you meant with your response) "portrait" will certainly crank his paranoia up a bit. I'll edit the specific post once we've ironed this out. The actions he'll perform are in the following spoiler tag. Warning: It's a bit of a doozy.

It's not that the Portrait is uninspired. It's that the reason people in Earthdawn all have artisan skills, is because Horror POSSESSED people cannot do anything creative. Horrors cannot create beauty, so anyone they possess cannot either.

Horror marks are nigh impossible to see. In order to see a Horror Mark you had to make a Astral Sense test with a target number = Spell Defense of the Horror.

So, to translate that into shadowrun.
You need to make an assensing test with a Difficulty of Horrors Magic Rating+Counter Spelling score.
Conservatively for THAT Horror. Magic Rating of 14, Counter Spelling 6 so a TN of 20 is not unreasonable, and it might even be higher than that.

You and your spirit think that maybe there is a dark mark in your aura, around the area of your liver. You are not sure: it could have been there before, because your rarely look that hard. You probably find yourself scratching that area now, and its a bit itchy


Your divination: I hope this helps
"The Sun and Moon align each 3 decades, dark of moon, longest sun. The songbird does not sing. A tower is built. Blood fights blood. One seeks to gain by giving, the other seeks to gain themselves. You are the spanner".

To disable the reactor:
Get a crowbar (ideally a really big one). Throw it on the bus-bars (from at least 30 feet, preferably further away). Step back to avoid the vaporised remains of the crowbar. The safety systems will shut down the reactor
or
Throw a grenade (or equivalent) at the low pressure turbines (the biggest ones). This will fill the room with 120 degrees celsius of fairly low pressure steam.
or
Identify the gamma alarm, and trigger it (you would need to look around, and this might take 10 seconds, it could take 10 minutes)
or
Go to the observation area and press the "trip" button.
or
Open a load of panels, see what's in there, and work out how to trigger an alarm (probably only needs 10 successes on Electronics + Logic with a threshold of 1 combat turn)
or
Open a load of panels, and rip out a load of electronics and hope you damage something important

Sadly you suspect there is no off button in the reactor itself.

Was there any consensus on where our gear will be? I suspect we will be arrested with nothing worthwhile on us and have to aquire it during the mission?!?

A

Basically anything with a decent concealment rating you can have. Aren's stealth skills are awesome, and he is the only one that wasn't arrest (although I haven't made that clear yet) and I am happy for you to load anything you can onto him, he can carry stuff to you as you are being shipped into Tzetlan camp 23 in cattle trucks. Alyena has a smuggling compartment in her arm, which I think currently carries very little.

So in a nutshell:

• Holdout pistols, small tool kits, small bits of jewellery are OK. Respirator OK
• Ambrose knows how he is carrying his potions around
• Commlinks can be smuggled in
• Foci I am assuming are sufficiently small that you can hide them, as long as they were disabled, or you had advanced masking
• Fearghas's spear/sickle thing I have sorted out for him: he's carrying it, but no one seems to notice it.
• Armour will be replaced by prison fatigues (Ballistic 0 / Impact 0 / Style very negative)
• You might want to invest in a geiger counter...

I'm mostly blurring over the details and not worrying about them too much

If I've missed anything let me know, and I'll give a yes or no..

I think you can be confident that there will be many weapons and ammunition inside the pyramid. Most armour worn by the guards will probably be in the nature of quick to put on flak jackets etc that can be worn by anyone.

On a second note I am assuming that your group name is now Ouroborus also known as in other tongues as Jörmungandr. Of course should we get to the end of the world it is prophesied that Jörmungandr will come out of the ocean and poison the sky ... I'll have to see if I can work that in...


@Ol'scratch: Tiny change I would like you to make. Elven queen name is Alachia not Alicia

I'm in between meetings, so I can't regurgitate everything rushing around in my head, so more will come:

Sorry, I'm terrible with names.

And is it really possessed individuals that lose their creativity? I could have sworn it was the marked. Thanks for letting me know! It's an easy enough change to make in the post. But I do believe this revelation means one thing and one thing only: I need to play Earthdawn more.

It is... That being said, our Nethermancer should have a better shot at recognizing Horror marks. Except of course, she's probably forgotten most of that stuff. I know my Wizard has forgotten more about Magic than he remembers.

I dmed Earthdawn for 10 years It's by far my favorite world/system. Even more so than Shadowrun. (except I can't find anyone to play it with me) So this game fills a happy niche for me.

I also love how we're all so respectful of Queen Alachia

Stuff Marduk would do/have with him.

Items:
His 2 foci, and his Commlink. They're pretty small.

Marduk doesn't believe in guns. That's what Crushing Will is for.

As for research. Marduk is going to spend some time doing internal memory searches to try and remember everything he's forgotten about Ys and that last fight they had.

I have 1 problem, I don't have access to a hosted dice rolling system from work. I usually just use random.org/dice and enter the dice rolls in posts? Is that okay?

Memory Test: Logic + Willpower 8+7=15 6 2 5 2 1 4 5 3 6 1 6 5 5 1 1 (7) hits

^ On that note, I did include a similar roll in my first IC post (I just failed to declare it properly). The results of the roll and which skill I used are in the "revelation" link in said post.

Yes I like Earthdawn. We played Earthdawn for a couple of years, mostly from the point at which the Kaers opened and early expansion of the cities. We used variant rules but the setting is nice. Mostly I like that its about hope: the bad times are over and its time to create a whole new world.

I'll need your help to keep me canon (when I pnp GM I never worry about canon as none of the players ever read the books)

Back to the horror mark. IIRC to spot one you use your astral sense vs the spell defence of the horror. I'm not sure of Ol'scratche's diagnostics were the correct route, but the result of his and his helpers assensing is that you decide that the mark over Ol'scratch's liver is indeed a horror mark. The mark is a snake curled around the liver with its fangs deep inside the large bloodvessels.

All of you remember this stuff. Roughly put

• The main way to get horror marked is to use raw magic (like you do with the spellcasting skill) in astral space tainted by the horror
• The horror mark allows the horror to use its powers, and communicate with the target. The closer you are the more unpleasant the effects that it can use
• After a year and a day, the horror can choose (at no cost) to renew the power
• It is possible to break the link with enough range...maybe.
• The Horror can probably use your edge, or give you edge.

Its easy to get rid of the Mark: Kill the horror, or persuade it to remove the mark.

It is of course possible to use the Mark to astrally track back to the horror. This is a astrally powerful group, so you could go and visit it if you want.

I should say that while I am being very cavelier with you all and giving many of you unpleasant experiences, I am just doing this to set the scene, and I may do it at the start of memory sequences as well. When we move to the game, if I want to (say) capture you alive, the bad guys will have to roll die, and do it properly!

Don't feel bad about it at all! I, personally, enjoy being a GM's chew toy. Makes things interesting.

(And did it really have to be his liver? I guess that makes sense giving his drinking problem though.)

The horror can also.. cast spells through the horror marked person. Not just /at/ the Horror Marked person, but using the Horror Marked Person's senses to obtain LOS. Freaking Horrors. Most Horrors that are worthy of the name have the following powers:
Increase Karma Die - this would probably look like increasing your 'edge score' for the purpose of rolling. SO lets say you decide to use Edge, and your Edge Score is a 4. You might get 5 dice or 6 dice extra instead of 4. Doing this though, increases the hold the Horror has on you.
Karma Drain - Horror can just eat up your Edge dice
Karma Block - Horror stops you from being able to use edge
Twist Fate - They can force a reroll of your dice, especially edge dice.
Horror Mark
Skin Shift.. actually I'm /positive/ that Marduk has burned that memory from his mind.

Just to name a few fun ones.

OK answering questions:

@Pbangarth: roll me some charisma + ettiquette (10 will do ), and I'll tell you what happens with Aina.

@sabs: Its ok to do the die rolling like that. If I need a really important one, I'll ask for a hosted service, but I don't think thats going to be very often (if ever). 7 successes is good. You have heard of Ysrthgrathe being spoken about. Its fairly common knowledge that it and Aina Dupree had a child called Thais. You can look up any thing you want on Google, and its likely close to the truth. You yourself (as far as you know) have never met Ysrthgrathe (for which you are grateful). You vaguely remember seeing a box like that, and it being important, but you are sure it was back in the 4th age, and you have a vague vision of the box sprouting thorns and bleeding... But then again with Queen Alachia around, its hard to avoid that imagery.

@Ol'scratch. I missed the 9 successes on recognising/percepting Thais. You recognised him from his description, seeing straight through his (quite seriously powerful) illusion. With that many successes you saw that he was tired and worried: emotions that you don't normally associated with the horrors.

You say I've never met Ysgarthe, but Bjorn was created by Ysgarthe. So, did we run into him in a Kaer abandoned by Ysgarthe?
Okay Knowledge of Ysgarthe scrubbed from memory

As far as you know Bjorn has created by some horror that you defeated shortly after the kaers opened. You vaguely remember a skyship, a ravaged windling kaer, and a horror that was doing some hideous ritual that you interrupted. The ritual imploded and the horror was either banished or defeated. I'll ask Bjorn to correct his character sheet.

Contacting Aina: CHA 8 + Etiquette 1 = 9 dice

10 rolls:

Hmph ==> 24 HITS

Ryl will do her hacker thing while we are in the air and check the commlink security of the team...making sure everyone is running upgraded Firewalls and Encryption (can I copy my programs onto their comms - including tacnet?). Is there a benefit in slaving their comms to mine?

I assume that when I'm in drake form my comm still works, just that I can't access it...?!?

I will also download some Spannish linguasofts for anyone who needs them

If you want you can have the commlink on an elastic bracelet, so its still there when you you are in drake form. I'm not too sure how drakes can interact with AR/VR..does anyone know

They can't! They can't even use trodes! I went for the implant because it seemed reasonable at the time but I won't if it means it stops working when I shift...can't have the tacnet go down for everyone else even if I can't use it at the time...

...although there is stuff in Big D's will for companies working on the matrix problem for drakes and I know Transys is working on it...

Well, the tacnet can also switch to running on one of our commlinks, if necessary.

Just a note for the tacnet (I am all for the tacnet if you can pull it off): You all need to have lots of sensors to make it work. IIRC its 2 sensors per level of the tacnet.

Assuming you are going for a tacnet 4 (which you have enough numbers to support), you will need to have 8 sensors.

I have yet to buy gear for Mandala. If he needs tacnet software/hardware, let me know. I should warn you though, he goes astral a lot. He also has the Mindnet spell, for linking the team under conditions that may disallow commlinks.

@Pbangarth. Sadly you cannot benefit from tacnet as you are a spirit and cannot use AR/VR. Plus it will be really hard for you to have a commlink (or in fact any physical object) as you will be constantly moving between the astral world and the mundane world.

I think the friends pact is awesome for things like this. Gives you communications at a range of 10*magic metres (admittedly they can only talk to you) but my free spirit has found it awesome in infiltration scenarios. The downside of loosing force if some one dies is unlikely to be much of a problem in this game: immortals by their nature don't die very often. Bad things can happen to them, and they might want to die, but they are really hard to kill.

Was going to go for a lvl 1 for just a minor boost but means more of the team will be able to use it because of the sensors issue...

well, we should put together a quick list of 'sensors' that most of us could be carrying.
Seth, can we talk quickly about Group Pattern and the kind of threads we might have had a long time ago that would be resurfacing as the magic level goes up?

You think that the mana levels are now strong enough to reaffirm,your group pattern. Your group pattern required an annual ritual to empower it, and you haven't done that for a few thousand years. In fact you cannot really remember how to perform it: but that's ok all you need to do is go back and reenact creating it the first time.

I suspect that with the time constraints I have given, you won't have the option to re-empower the pattern before breaking into the reactor. (Mostly I have the scenario for the pyramid sorted out, and am keen to play it).

I am hoping that we conclude "Shadow's Dawn" in a reasonable amount of time (a few months) and can continue into the next scenario. If we do that, I suggest that we spend some time in Earthdawn remembering how to re-empower your group pattern.

Yes, I foresaw the communication/gear issue when I chose the Mindnet spell. It being Extended, the range can be amazing.

My other Free Spirit has the Friendship Pact, but her situation puts her in much more danger of losing Force. It has made me a little gun shy of that Pact. Again, Mindnet makes up for it to some degree, and Power Pact has its own fun aspects. Given that you are allowing us to gain Karma normally anyway, I would rather not use Friendship Pact.

I'm pretty sure that they can use 'trodes in their metahuman form, just like dragons. It's the drake form that cannot benefit from them.


It won't necessarily go down for everyone else, it'll just become less effective since it'll lose access to your data.


<coughs>

Anyway, regarding connectivity, my character (Ambrose) is somewhat paranoid. He has a secure commlink dedicated to his PAN, but he keeps it completely wireless and never uses it for communication, which also means he won't be able (or more correctly, won't be willing) to share the data from the few sensors he has in his monocle and the like. Instead, he has a cheap CMT Clip that's probably full of adware, trojans, and virii that he basically just uses as a cellphone. So you probably don't want that connected to a network. I do have enough cash to buy a Micro-Transciever, and I can probably throw a couple sensors into that as a dedicated system, but he'll be operating it manually and only when absolutely necessary.

Think that'll work? (And hey, this gives me an idea for a new alchemical potion... will have to work on it once we get some down time...)

OK Guys its the 3rd today, and we kick off the game proper on the 7th.

Are there anymore things people want to do? As examples:

• There are quite a few missing pieces in the security briefings that you might want to find about
• There is the encrypted stuff and a node address you might want to go to
• You all have other contacts and relationships that you can chase for information.

Marduk would have liked to speak with Hestaby before leaving. If that was.. possible. Though he might have been seriously worried about The Thornies, and distracted by that.

I'm a little slow..."The Thornies"?


Can you give me around 10 charisma + etiquette rolls, what sort of questions are you asking?

Alachia and her children :)
Really, it's what he calls all the Blood Wood Elves, in the modern age. He's kinda hoping that the magic level will get high enough that the Ritual of Thorns will reactivate and make their lives a living hell for a couple thousand years again. :-)


Going to be asking, What wasn't in this lovely briefing. Why would Jenna have a Box made from Ysgarthe. Basically just trying to get more information out of Hestaby (hoping our Relationship of 5 will make him open up a bit more)

10 Rolls Charisma 4 + Etiquette 2
1) 1 3 1 6 1 6 (glitch)
2) 4 3 4 2 2 1 (0)
3) 3 6 1 2 6 3 (2)
4) 3 1 3 4 4 4 (0)
5) 3 5 3 1 3 3 (1)
6) 4 1 3 3 5 5 (2)
7) 4 5 2 6 5 3 (3)
8) 6 3 4 6 5 3 (3)
9) 1 3 1 4 2 3 (0)
10) 2 3 5 1 1 4 (1)

I am the mighty mighty roller of etiquette. I should have taken a specialty in Dragons :)

Don't you get to add any Loyalty rating as bonus dice to get your contacts to reveal the information they know? Then again I don't know how that'll work with the Relationships bit.

Anyway, I didn't realize we had quite this much time before things went down. I thought it was much more of a rushed scenario. If possible, I think Ambrose may request a video conference with Celedyr, politely asking for his assistance in learning more about what is going on (particularly with the Matrix stuff) as well as asking for his counsel on the matter as a whole. After a moment, he will also hesitantly tell him about his encounter with Trais, praying that 10,000 years of friendship doesn't get wiped away by an 'accidental' Thor Shot.