But didn't know that Mr. White wasn't a mage. Plus thought the spirit earlier was there to "test his defenses", which I'm still not sure why the spirit got disrupted. Hopefully it's because Jack overreacted and sent that Fire Spirit after it (and thus it couldn't get away or something), and not because we're missing something...

he is definitely losing touch, so like I said before, we need to hurry...

I think I have an idea, but I might be missing something. I have a couple of spirits bound that can use Concealment, at the very least it should get us up to the door without being noticed by the Watchers. We might be able to circle around the building, and try to get in through the back entrance without being noticed that way...

Do we still have our Infiltrator? we might need him to at least get in through the back door, it might be locked. Or if people prefer, we can head back through the front door, but I imagine it locks too. Did Mr. White and/or TundraWolf notice a click when the Orks were opening it up?

I'd bet a shiny credstick that both of those doors lock. Even if its just a simple lever or bar lock.

Either entrance will be a little tough to penetrate, unless we can get them to open it for us ("Pizza delivery!")

Wish we had some stun gas that we could put into that upstairs office area through the windows.

More than likely at least one of the doors locks by way of something that is bypassable (maglock being the most likely). Which I'm hoping Quixote has some skill for bypassing?

And like I said, hopefully a bit of Concealment will mean we can sneak up without too much trouble...

btw, just in case, I am Counterspelling everyone in the team, I can mantain it as long as I keep line of sight.

Unfortunately, Quixote is one of the people we haven't heard from for a couple weeks now. I'm sending him a PM in the hope that we can get him involved again.

As far as locks go, the backdoor is a heavy steel security door with a maglock (so is the security door at the top of the stairs leading to Jack's living area). The front door is a large wooden sliding door that Mr.White did see had a latching mechanism and i'll say he also spotted a heavy wooden bar leaning against the wall that he guesses would be used to further bar the door.

Metagaming I'll go ahead and tell you that as written Jack had more defenses than I'm throwing at you guys. It's not that you are missing something I've just had to cut out a few things considering we seem to have lost a couple players.

Sounds cool, I appreciate the flexibility. One of the nice things about "tabletop" games (even when they're played away from a table) is that it is flexible and able to change on the fly.

Meta-gaming aside. From the way things sounded, Gardner suspects that Jack has some serious magical help, but isn't awakened himself. Still not sure if that magic is on site, and would definitely rather not rock the boat any more before we're ready to run in.

Just to confirm before we try to use something and it doesn't work the way I expect, if I bring in my Bound Plant Spirit (the one that I used in the altercation with the Reality Hackers and the Skraacha) and have it use it's Concealment power on us (-5 dice on Perception), that should pretty much guarantee that the Watchers (only 1-2 dice on tests) can't spot us. I know that if anyone is looking out a window, they'll have a chance to see us without issue, but at least the annoyance of the Watchers going in and warning them is gone.

Also to clarify, before we head in, I will be dropping my Increase Reflexes spell and deactivating my Sustaining Focus, the Ward being Astral only, will mean I can pass through unphased and then recast my spell(s), right?

Yep. You've got all of that right. Though you would either need to deactivate the spirits concealment powebefore passing through or you would be rolling to force your way through possibly disruptigng the power and or your spirit.
Do you guys want to wait to see if we hear from Quixote? Or just start planning your assault with just the three of you?

Yikes. I'm of incredibly little value in a hot assault.

You could try convincing some locals that jack solesome of their goods or something soooo they would harass him at the front while the rest try to sneak in the back.

We could also set his boat on fire and see if he sends anyone to go see what's happening.

Hey guys, I apologize for the lack of me, and what I envision being a continued lack of me. I just do not have the time between work, class and family to be posting on a regular basis. So, to that end, I'm going to have to withdraw from the game. Wish all of you the best of luck, and have fun confounding Slacker.

I think his boat might be a bit too far away for this to be a plausible distraction.


But this might be an option.
I can also try using those Watchers I summoned up to do something. They can't run up and interact with the building, but they can manifest and make lots of noise.



So no real way for us to sneak our way through a lock... Anyone else have a way to get past a maglock? Otherwise we have to hope they are full of themselves enough to leave that front door unlocked...


As far as the concealment goes, I was sort of assuming it would only work up to the door. On the other hand, if we get some goons to make a distraction for us, and I have my Watchers do a fly-by or something to confuse the Watcher's that Jack has, we might not need the Concealment. Then I could call up my spirits inside the barrier and go from there. Looks like it's just the three of us at this point, so what do y'all think?

As far as a fight goes, once we're inside I can cast Increase Reflexes on Mr. White so he can act at Chipped speeds. Past that, I'm not sure what kind of firepower you might have.

White has a pistol, and is a fair shot.

I'm inclined to say that we wait to see if anyone goes out for food or sundries. Course we still have to figure out how to get in the door. If it weren't for the watcher spirits we could bang on the door and have someone do their best 'injured ork' impression, and see if they'd think one of their mates had come back or some such nonsense.

Yeah...

I still don't think we should delay any...

Did that front door have a peep hole? If not, we could walk up concealed and knock. Then move in while (more than likely) not all of them notice us.

Or, and I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier. We could go up to the side of the warehouse and I could lift up Tundra Wolf and/or Mr. White and they get in through the window.

So, just to be sure, how far up is the second floor?

How heavy is Tundra Wolf, with gear? an approximation is fine, I just want to know how hard a test it'll take for me to lift him up like that over my head. Gardner is big, but not very strong... (for a Troll)

Quite understandable. Thanks for letting us know what the situation is.

Don't log in for a day and I miss all the fun. I was thinking yesterday that the boat would probably be the best leverage, actually. Send him a message saying "the girl, the stone, and no trouble delivered to [location], or we put your boat in the bottom of the lagoon." Though how we send that message with no hacker anymore is beyond me. We're kinda gimped with both of our techie players not in the game anymore.

A hot assault with one mercenary backed up by a face with a pistol and a pacifist mage vs. a MMG-toting drone, multiple armed orks, and some guaranteed magical support from somewhere (still think it's Jack) is almost the book definition of suicide, guys. There's got to be a better solution.

To answer your weight question, with gear he's roughly 130-135 kilos. Not a small dude.

The warehouse floor is about 12 feet on the inside, give it another 2-3 feet for the flooring and such to have the bottom edge of the window at 15 feet or so.

What's the temperature down here? Is it hot? Are there external air conditioning units? See where I'm going with this?

We're talking Seattle, Washington in an dang underground cove. Definitely on the chillier side of things so no A/C unit.

This could be an idea. It is getting on toward dinner time about now. Though Jack could also be paranoid enough knowing there are runners after Fiona and the stone in the area that he orders the orks to stay in house for the night. You'd have to sit around waiting to see what that will happen with that.

If you guys want to do this, I'll say Quixote was able to hack enough of Jack's commlink to tell you guys what his number is at the very least.
Then Quixote suddenly got a call from a close contact begging for his help. He apologizes to all of you, but he has to bow out of the job and leave immediately.

My proposed plan:

We wait and observe. If we get lucky and they send one or two guys out for food or such, we wait a bit, then we go bang on the door. Someone does their best ork impression and yells that they got ambushed, and "let us in!" I don't think there was a peephole on the door. They open the door and we light them up.

Correct. There was no peephole.

I'm still very hesitant to wait, but with our reduced forces our options dwindle.

If the others think waiting is better, I'm willing to go along. It doesn't do us any good to not be working together.

Let me know what you'd like me to do to help out. I have plenty of abilities that I can use to help out. Just remember that the barrier means that I can use them outside OR inside, but not travel between.

Possibilities: Watcher spirits as distraction. 3 ready to go...
Spirits: Concealment, Silence, etc.; I have 3 spirits bound (F5 Air 2 services, F3 Earth 2 services, F5 Plant 1 service) and can summon up another one
Spells: Extra Initiative/IP's (doesn't stack with Wired)

If there are still watcher spirits keeping an eye out around the place, we need to deal with them or otherwise mask ourselves in order to pull off my ruse.

Beyond that, my plan is that get inside the building pretty quickly, once that door is opened.

So far we have a few proposals.

First up: Do you guys wait to see if they send somebody out for food or move forward with plans immediately.

Second Question:
1) Frontal Assault - with/without concealment and with/without attempts at distracting the watcher spirits
2) Stealth assault trying to get in through one of the windows (2 on front of building and 1 in back)
3) Call Jack and threaten to blow up his boat if he doesn't bring the girl and the stone to you

Considering we only have 3 players, any two votes will start moving this forward. I think Mr. White is in favor of waiting, while Gardner is in favor of immdeiate action though willing to wait.

Btw, I assume you guys are trying to keep an eye on the building while you discuss this. So where are you at? Everybody together, and so watching only one entrance? Or divided up so you can watch both? Or are is Gardner just having his already summoned watcher spirits keep an eye on things.

Oh and keep in mind the watchers only have 2 hours of service, so waiting may pop them and then Gardner will have to resummon them.

As he said, my vote is to move forward sooner rather than later. I also vote that we try to be stealthier and move for a Frontal Assault if that doesn't work.

While we are discussing this, I will put two of my Watchers to keep an eye on whichever door ends up not being in our line of sight (most likely the back door). If I had been thinking about it, I probably would have done this back when the Watchers were mildly occupied with noticing Mr. White and Tundra Wolf approach the first time. In either case, I will try and maneuver them so they don't cause Jack's Watchers to ping... I'm assuming they are watching for intruders so having them a sufficient distance away should do it.

And just so I have a bit more intelligent controller (and so we might have something else to help out in a pinch), I'm going to summon a F3 Water Spirit (Water is my Detection). The idea here is I'm getting a small spirit to help out outside with the intention of letting it go and summoning another (probably a higher force one) once we go through the barrier. I'm going for one with Elemental Attack (just in case).

3 Hits on the summoning test.
2 Hits on the drain test.

When I have the spirit, I will use a service to have it receive any alerts from the Watchers and then report to me by going around. Basically, for this I am making sure my Watchers don't "notice" something, and then go running past Jack's Watchers (alerting him) to tell me that a Rat just left the building. A F3 Spirit has average human intelligence, is sapient, and can understand complex tasks. So his first task is to keep an eye out (with the Watchers, more eyes on target just to be sure) and report back to me by going around the warehouse (rather than over). Does that make sense?
I'm probably over-thinking things, but yay paranoia!

Makes sense and the Spirit only scored one hit so it owed you 2 services.

And I will probably be using the second service to have it use Concealment on the 3 of us when we are approaching. Thus making us still unnoticable to the opposing Watchers, but risking possible notice from anyone else looking our way.

So, thoughts from Tundra Wolf?

The stealth approach. Unless one of us can reliably imitate a known ork voice to his compatriots to get them to open the door, we're better served going in under any concealment we can get. Though that's gonna be tricky with no explosives and no hacker. TW has some infiltration ability, so if the spirit can keep the arcane eyes off of him, he should be able to get there unseen. After that? Dunno.

This is the Pirate's Cove. Typically the smugglers here take their goods up top to the Crime Mall for sales, but I bet Mr. White could probably talk his way into some explosives at one of the local taverns if that's the way you wanted to go.

Alternatively, Gardner could likely lift you up to the edge of one of the windows though it might be tricky pulling yourself up the rest of the way and then trying to get the window open, especially if you were trying to do it quietly.

And if we're going to sneak up or blow our way in, then there's really no reason to wait for them to leave, yes?

Other than reducing the number of enemies, this is true.

That's TW's job. He just does it on a permanent basis.

Perhaps a combination of the "sneaky-sneaky" plan and the "sink the boat" plan? Perhaps Mr. White could convince another smuggler than our target has something of his in the warehouse and he could get some "compensation" by fucking with Turner's boat? That might draw off some of the oppfor...

so I guess the question is, do you want to go looking for some supplies.

I have some rope to aid climbing if we can get somebody up to the second floor window. But I don't have any explosives handy if we're going to try busting our way in. (I don't particularly want to do that anyway though)

White could go talk to Red Horn and tell him that apparently Jack has turned informant and his boat has been wired up as an observation platform for Knight Errant. I bet that boat goes up faster than a match in a bonfire.

All in all, we may be able to bring Jack out and hand him to Knight Errant after all. If he lives through the next few hours anyway.

Boat might also be a good way to get Jack out into KE jurisdiction too, though.

Knock him out, tie him up and drive out into the water.

Can anyone drive a boat?

The explosives plan would be last resort, as one of you two would have to do it (TW has Incompetence: Demolitions). And I like the informant angle.

Nope, just ground vehicles. Hard to drive a boat in Siberia.

Person with Highest Reaction?

I can make sure the boat doesn't explode or something (Spirit with Guard Power)

How about this - let's steal a vehicle- preferably something heavy, big SUV, loading truck, something like that. Then we drive it through he side wall of the warehouse and come out shooting.

Not very sneaky. But its a quick entry, I'll give you that. My only worry would be accidentally collapsing the second floor. And both our targets (and maybe us) along with it...

People accidentally drive vehicles into buildings all day long, and they don't collapse I suppose it depends on our GMs feelings with regard to vehicles punching holes in walls.

Drive through the cargo door, that way we don't hit any structural beams. Well, at least going through the door.

Oooh, Conceal the truck. The look on their faces as a truck they can't see suddenly blasts into the warehouse. I know it doesn't work that way. But it's a funny visual anyways.

Looking at the picture Slacker gave us for the warehouse, it might be difficult to get up enough speed (assuming they have a big enough vehicle around, not saying they don't, just need to find one). And it's probably impossible to get it in anywhere but the front of the building.

As for sneaking, I would say the window in the back, its in an alleyway so out of the way, and it isn't right next to the security door so probably nobody inside that might hear us doing something outside.

As long as its not an elevated loading dock, this would be perfect.

Doors are probably reinforced. And we had this discussion about Concealment on the Drone earlier. It would only reduce the Concealability penalty for a large vehicle. I like to imagine it as: "oh, there's a truck there, I hadn't--Why is there a truck inside the warehouse!"

If its not reinforced, I figure a vehicles could plow right through it.

If it is reinforced, I'd bet we could still either knock it askew, or perhaps even get the nose of the vehicle through it.

Either way it gives us some surprise and a way in.

For added points, one of us could bang on the door yell a lot, wait until someone on the other side of the door yells "Who's there?" and then ram it.