Sorry folks.

Mr. White has been dazed by the rigors of rappelling down the side of a building while being shot at. Not his usual cup of tea.

His thoughts:

Splitting up is the worst possible idea. "Let's all go and get separately ambushed!" he suggests.

If we desperately need gear, then we desperately need gear. That's understandable, but we can't really drive all over town to each runner's pad and pick up stuff. Who's got lots of nice gear and is willing to share?

White may be able to help out on the safehouse front, I'll come back to that.

Regarding Acson, I think we need to maintain the guise of having been there to extract him (before they did something bad to him). If we can keep that going for as long as possible, then it makes him more compliant, and less likely to try to bolt, or cause us grief. White will certainly talk to him to calm him down if necessary. Slacker, say so and I'll roll some dice. Con? Etiquette?

What was the end-game plan here? I don't recall anything other than "extract this guy, right now!" What do we do with him now? Are we waiting for a phone call?

White has some contacts that he can use, might help with the safehouse, might even help getting an alternative vehicle if we wanted to go that route.

Yeah. The Scion said he would call you guys once you get Acson to a safe place.

I'm not going to make you roll at all since you already did a good enough job back in the banquet hall. Acson seems to be really confused when you talk to him about them planning awful things for him, though for whatever reason he's willing to go along with your explanation without asking questions about what exactly they were planning to do to him.

I think I've weighed in on most, but I'll reiterate so that we have it all in one spot nice and neat.

I don't have any opinion on where exactly to go. Needle's home base is as good as any. Assuming we aren't followed...

How long will it take for us to get there?

I don't think it's a great idea to split up, particularly for one person to go off alone. If we can do it quickly/inconspicously I'd be ok with swinging by somewhere. Not sure if it will come up, but if/when Eclipse comments again about how he thought it was just an interview Gardner will probably pipe up with a comment of "who goes to an interview with a Johnson you don't know anything about without anything to back you up?" He says this with a slightly aggravated tone, but with the overall feeling of a dissapointed teacher or parent. You get the feeling that he isn't trying to be mean, but the two giant bullet holes might be messing with his mood...

I'll mention calling up Mac, but if TW comments that he would prefer I didn't, I won't. If we exhaust our other contacts, then I'll revisit the option.

I would still prefer to get the healing started while we're on route, particularly if someone else can take the wheel (at least to keep an eye on the road ahead) while Needle handles things. At the very least it would help keep Tundra Wolf from slipping back into unconsciousness (depending on how long it takes to get where we're going).

Right now I have a pretty bad penalty on most actions. So while I would normally offer to help with things, I pretty much can't be anything but dead weight until I get healed.

reserved for rolls : posting IC

**EDIT**

Slacker let me know what to roll and if Danny can find us a "Half way House" that we can run into, make some plans and then break for Redmond or go somewhere else

cheers

Only thing TW will say is that most of the group is running dangerously low on ammunition (while looking at the boxes of wrong caliber ammunition stored under the seats with a look of consternation) and heading for a place that violence is the first, second, and possible third answer to any question. And yeah, he'll shake his head when Gardner brings up Mac. Not rudely or anything, just mention that he's not sure that it might lower our odds of a continued good relationship with him if we call the first time we get in deep water.

He's still pacing, and there's a sheen of sweat starting to show on his brow.

Ok, let's clear something up, shall we?

We are NOT dumping the bus. Why? It's Needle's home. That's right - she lives in the bus. Which is why she had it outfitted with Medium Lifestyle Amenities. She never thought it would get nearly destroyed when she drove it to the meet.

As far as getting to her home base? It's in Redmond, near the old correctional facility. That's where she normally parks the bus and stays, providing medical services to the locals for chump change and food and sometimes protection. It's not perfect, but it's her life.

So no dumping of the bus. You guys can get out and walk, but she ain't leaving her home behind.

Going directly to Redmond from here would require crossing the one main bridge across Pontiac Bay, the Evergreen Floating Bridge (well technically there's also the option of the 90 Express bridge, but I was assuming you guys wouldn't want to deal with the border gates and such for Council Island that is in the middle of the Bay). This direct route would take around 30 minutes depending on traffic.

If you take a more circuitous route using less obvious/heavily observed routes through Renton it would take you closer to an hour.

Agreed, no ditching the bus.

My vote would be to take the longer route. Particularly if it takes us through areas that are less observed where we can see if we're being followed. It'll also give Needle time to make sure we don't have anything trying to track us in the Matrix or whatever.

Someone else could grab the wheel while Needle does her thing (both Matrix and Healing), and we're all set even before we get to the "safehouse".

EDIT: No ditching the bus, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't find a replacement ride so that we can deposit Needle's home safely somewhere and take another means of transportation so that we don't risk it getting shot up even more...

Btw, where is Eclipse's place? Can't remember if it was ever mentioned and I don't see it listed on the character sheet.

Eclipse's place is... some unspecified low-rent, anonymous housing. Unlikely to be the barrens ('cause who wants to deal with ghouls every day?) but possibly close... he's definitely on the "gang protected" side of things over "law enforcement response"

I think going to the Barrens is just fine. We've still got some ammo for the LMG (presumably!) which, worst case scenario, we can use to take more weapons from the assorted lowlife.
Next order of business: Patch everyone up* and lay low, waiting for the call. I agree we shouldn't ditch the bus... not that it's even my call to make. But! I do think we should transfer Ascon to a different vehicle before going to the meet, even if we have to steal a little Honda Spirit and stuff him in the back.


As for Gardner: "I had enough t' deal with the Johnson if it went that way... not a frontal assault on corp holdin's."

*I'm at 11 dice currently before medkit, so I will be assisting Needle.

Well, there are 12 districts of Seattle, so roll me 2d6 and I'll base where your home is that way since you hadn't specified one earlier.

The LMG has about 30 rounds left I believe (if I remember correctly, it fired 6 at the bus, 6 at Silas, and then you would have fired 6 at the drone to destroy it and it had a 50 round clip).

www.random.org says... I live in the [1,1] district

Is it possible to critically glitch your living location?

LMAO... I guess that puts you nextdoor to the entire Ghoul population and in the apartment above the Halloweeners

First off, Silas has obtained an address of a safehouse where you guys could stash the bus safely. It's in Renton and only 5-10 minutes out of the way. Is Needle willing to store her bus there while you all make your way elsewhere to your own safehouse? The bus should be safe in the warehouse, Dannyboy would stake his reputation on it.


Hmm....well in this case I was just going to add up the dice rolls to count against the list of districts in the Seattle 2072 book. With a total of 2, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that it wouldn't be too far out of the way to swing by your place along the way to Redmond. The bad news is that your place is in the Bellevue district which is overly protective of its calm serene image (meaning lots of security drones and a heavily watched border with the Redmond Barrens to ensure no riffraff gets into their cultured suburban society).

If Needle is willing to go along with Silas's plan to store the bus temporarily in his contact's safehouse, it would avoid being an obliquely obvious eyesore in Bellevue. But you'll still want to be cleaned up and not bleeding all over each other if you want to avoid attention.

Swinging by your place would add 10-15 minutes to the drive time. Alternatively, trying to go to it after the team has reached Needle's idea for a safehouse would take 25-30 minutes.

No, he just has a nosy neighbor who doesn't like Eclipse very much and is just itching to call Knight Errant about him.
The neighbor may or may not also work for Horizon....

You guys have to remember that the bus isn't just Needle's ride, it's also her home. If we drop the bus somewhere - and I am ok with leaving it in the warehouse for the moment - she has nowhere to hide out unless someone wants to take responsibility for making sure she can follow you to a safe resting spot.

Although, once at the warehouse, she can fire up the Valkyries and start doing some much needed triage.

I think I may have mentioned this previously ... but you are one EVIL sunnuva !!

Wow, isn't Bellevue like a High or Luxury Neighborhood? Can you even think you can find a "Low" Lifestyle there... I don't claim to know Seattle neighborhoods either current or Shadowrun canon, but I've definitely heard that like you said, Bellevue is "exclusive"


Before that, I definitely think we should work on patching up our team before we try going through any major districts. If Needle is ok with dropping off the bus at a safehouse, I say we stop and gather our wits before we leave it. Make some plans and what-not. Even if we decide to move to a different safehouse for a more "permanent" solution, we should at least have a plan.

I'm ok with us going out quickly to find a suitable replacement car for the time-being. Go get a rental Van or something. You know, for us to use to get around for now.

Housing that buts up against the plasticrete walls topped with razorwire that marks Bellevue's border with the Redmond Barrens can be low lifestyle. The HOA does require the exterior of all buildings maintain a clean facade, but this close to the Barrens, the tenants don't have the extra expenses to keep the interior of the home very well.

The apartment building Eclipse stays in is 50-60 years old. It has fairly well kept shrubs out front and a fresh coat of paint on the outside walls. Inside though, the elevator hasn't worked in over a decade, floor boards have rotten through in many of the apartments and water stains are about as close to art as these walls ever get. But the tenants are still proud to be able to say they live in Bellevue. And I'm sure you know its those type of people who struggle so hard to maintain an image that most get upset by those around them who don't fit in or threaten their illusion of prosperity with little things like blood trails and other signs of violence.

Nice. That would definitely work, and you just gave O'Ryan some great flavor for his Lifestyle, lol

I do try.

Btw kiir, did you get my PMs? I need a little bit more info to fill out the debrief log for the Back in Business mission if you're planning to use Gardner at a con this weekend.

I think Kiir has the right of it.

I love all the flavour. That is awesome Slacker - I'll get off my lazy butt soon and open up Runner's Companion to fully flesh it out with what you've provided. (Which will be a shame since there's a better than nil chance I'm dumping it after this run.. D:)


"Hey uh... when we get that rental van, mind swingin' by Bellevue? Not that far outa the way, I have guns 'n medical supplies..."

For the time being, you guys aren't being followed. So you may be safe in keeping it after this run. We'll see how the rest of it goes.

I'm glad you like the flavor. I'm trying to make up for the lack of IC posts during all that combat.

Yep, we should definitely get TW patched up here first before he falls unconscious again. You get to choose between healing Stun or Physical with First Aid, for TW, I would say healing Stun is the better idea.

The Stim Patch puts us in a kind of strange situation. When it expires, he'll take a point of Stun. If we wait, that Stun will be converted to Physical (Which is technically healable with my Magic). If we heal him first, it'll take effect after the First Aid, putting him closer to being unconscious again. Although now that I think about it, it would technically be treatable with First Aid since it's a "new set of wounds".

Once I know how much healing has been dished out by Needle, I'll roll my Spellcasting to wrap up the Physical damage.

Slacker, that IC post of yours just made my fraggin' Day

Silas is itching though, through the excitement I'm worried that something we bought with us may be tracked here, and while I doubt anything in this location ties to my contact directly. I'd hate for it to suddenly be crawling with Horizon Security..

can we do something en-route or as we arrive to clear our tracks from Acsons Comm OR our own Comms ? etc. I'm no hacker, but I don't need to be to be paranoid about what we just did over Horizon !

trying not to Meta game again, as I know you mentioned to Needle that there was activity in her head ... is that something she has spoken about ? or is worried about ?

Gardner went over everything with a scanner and tag eraser, right?
...which is to say Ascon, his comlink, the pilfered Warhawk, and our brand new spiffy LMG.

I believe it was Gardner who said he was sweeping everything that was taken from Horizon with RFID Tag Eraser. Gardner also tossed the Maitre D's commlink while you were still at the building. So there shouldn't be anything for them to track.

I never heard exactly what was being done with Parker Acson's commlink. It is already turned off, so there shouldn't be any signals coming from it. Gardner mentioned wanting to take the battery out, though that is going to take a Hardware Skill Test from somebody because it has a non-replaceable battery. Alternatively, you can just smash it to bits as the Scion had said to.

Needle had mentioned looking for any tracking online which is where I was coming from with the IC post for her. She'd be confident that the Tag Eraser should have handled anything on the weapons that you guys grabbed and not even Horizon is paranoid/rich enough to put tags in their standard ammunition.

Groovy, I did see that, didn't want to presume it had been "done" though



I'm happy to hardware it rather than destroy what could be valuable leverage.
7E5 => 3 | die: D6, ones: 1
that includes stun modifiers and a pocket electronics kit.

when we arrive at base I want to have a quiet word with Needle though, just to see if this thing is useful .. either if it contains data or if we can access it for contact details etc. This will be out of Acsons notice though... let's see what he's been up to lately.

Interesting....I was just reading up on Tag Eraser and RFID Tags. It's a good thing Acson hadn't officially started working for Horizon yet or he'd have already been implanted with a hardened security tag that that can't be erased with a tag eraser. Also, interesting is that the eraser has to get within 1cm of an RFID to erase it. I wonder how thorough Gardner was in sweeping over Acson. Did you make him strip down for it and do a full scan of every exposed part?

(Mostly, I'm just wondering for IC reference. My intention is that there aren't any active tags left and Needle could do a scan to double check if needed)

I also have a Radio Signal Scanner to check for things. I would have been polite, and with Acson probably did a scan with the Signal Scanner first before I started just probing him with a Tag Eraser.

Oh, before I forget (again).

When Acson made that face (at the mention of the Scion) I got 1 hit on a Perception test, despite all of my penalties. Assuming that is enough to get a roll, I got 2 hits on a Judge Intentions roll (still with those penalties) to maybe figure out what he might be hiding/reacting about.

LOL. Fair enough. Roll me the Radio Scanner's rating (if you happen to have Electronic Warfare or I'd even allow Hardware you could add the skill points to the roll).

Btw. You really need to get around to sending me your updated character sheet, because the one I have doesn't list a Tag Eraser or Radio Signal Scanner.

Are you actually interrupting Mr. White's spiel about how lucky Acson is that you guys came swooping in to the rescue to interact with him? Or are you passively observing while Mr. White talks to him?

Don't have Electronic Warfare or Hardware, I bought the scanner based off the description of the sensor. It says that it can detect wireless signals and pinpoint location. But if I roll the Device Rating as its dice pool, I get 1 hit.... and a glitch... This is going to be interesting.

I'll be making sure my Chummer is up to date and everything today, so I can send you the update when I get that done. As far as the stuff I've gotten, I haven't had much to spend money on, so I've been dumping most of it into tech stuff. Improving my commlink, getting sensors and such so I can run a TacNet, that sort of thing.

For the Acson interaction: I am just passively observing. I was using the Judge Intentions roll as a sort of "Deciphering" that strange look he gave us.

Is that the Non-Linear Junction Detector?
"This handhold device emits blah blah blah [Paraphrase!]...commonly used to scan for RFID tags... 2 meter range... to determine if NLJD detects a device, make a success test using its device rating x2. The threshold to detect a device is 2 for non-optical electronics, and 3 for optical. Increase the threshold by 1 if the device is off. If hardened, subtract the rating from the pool."

At dirt cheap for max rating (600 !) it gets 12 dice which, if allowed, is enough to buy the successes needed.

Edit: If that's not it, there's a possibility Mr White can run over to that stuffer shack and pull it off the shelf... he may have to bluff his way past the whole "no licence" thing. If, y'know, we wanna be super paranoid - I'll even wholly pay for it, if I get to keep it after.

So....am I performing triage on anyone or not?

Yes please. I've commented on how we can go about doing the healing several times now. Go ahead and roll it, I'm pretty sure you're rolling 20 dice for everybody, so it's pretty straight-forward.

And I think I can speak for Chrome Zephyr when I say that you can use First Aid on him first.

Triage is done! We just need to do the actual healing. Triage results, in order:

Tundra Wolf - 5P, 10S, .8 essence remaining (-2 dice pool)
Gardner - 9P, 3S, Awakened (-2 dice pool)
Silus - 0P, 8S, 0.3 essence (-2 dice pool)
Eclipse - 0P, 5S, 3.9 essence (-1 dice pool) (It hurts! Oh the pain!)

Plus modifiers. (Average conditions [IE, "indoors"], r6 medkit, 2 people helping [only one helping on Gardner or myself]) should be an additional modifier of +6/7, bringing the total to:

+5 for not Gardner
+4 for Gardner

Edit x2: Had Silus' damage wrong. Who wears 13 points of armor!? (Well played!)

Actually, Slacker said that it's a -3 on TW and Silus, so it's just a flat +4 for everybody.

And we never got a response about how much Mr. White is hurt.

And I'm guessing Eclipse managed to skate out of there without taking any damage?

Oh.

I ninja'd you. I didn't get shot (somehow), but Eclipse did manage to bounce his face off the building a couple times for a chunk of stun damage.

I don't think I remember taking any physical, armour converted it all to stun, but I might be wrong
so just some headache meds please ... and a Sammich ... in fact .. a med pill Sammich ... and a Soda

Drek it .. just make me a Med, Sammich Slushie to go

Oh right, plus Gardner cast Increase Logic on Needle, upping her Logic to 9 instead of 5 For another +4

Like I mentioned before, pretty sure Needle hits the Dice Pool Cap of 20.

I dunno, I would think in-universe you guys would be more worried about Gardner. He's rather seriously injured after taking sniper fire, TW just looks scorched and increasingly dazed. Yeah, TW will take the extra point of Physical after he passes out again, but 6P vs 9P is still leaning towards you, Kiir.

However you guys want to handle it I'm fine with.

That's actually part of Gardner as a person. Particularly since you are up only from a Stim Patch, Gardner will stop Needle and ask her to see to Tundra Wolf. Something along the lines of:

"Please, you should see to Tundra Wolf before he collapses on his feet."

I Think Needle's gonna get all angry on your asses in a minute and yell at you both to siddown and take your meds !


I think, with the very few words spoken to each other in the last 45 minutes start to finish, I'm not even sure Silas has noticed you HAVE an accent

but we now have time to breathe a bit and poke holes in your behaviour like good little psychologists

I love stepping away from the computer for my lunch break and coming back to find a bunch of posts while I was away.

Regarding the Radio Signal Scanner:
The Sniffer Program uses Electronics Warfare Skill has how you are interpreting the data the program is providing. I'd be willing to let Gardner use Hardware or pretty much any electronics oriented skill for this considering he's using a hand held scanner device.
With the 1 hit you detect an RF signal embedded in the Horizon logo on Acson's lapel. With a glitch you also 'detect' 30 or 40 other 'signals on or around Acson and the stolen gear. Gardner does his best to sweep all of them, he's even pretty sure he got all the genuine signals. But after repeated tries on a couple dozen of them that just keep showing up on the scanner Gardner gets frustrated and assumes the damn thing is on the fritz and just showing him false positives. Either that or Gardner needs to strip Acson and toss out all his clothes. (though really, if Horizon were still tracking you by him, it's safe to assume you'd all already know about it with the arrival of t-birds and such)

For Gardner's judge intentions, there's no telling what exactly Parker Acson is hiding/reacting too. The more Gardner watches him though, the more his lack of questions about the things Horizon supposedly had planned for him seems peculiar.

Regarding healing, my file i kept with the notes got corrupted and so I lost it all. But that looks about right and I don't believe Mr. White took any damage. If he did. It would surely be taken care of with the 20 dice Needle has to roll on everybody. Needle can go ahead and roll First Aid with her max of 20 dice 5 times in whatever order she cares too. I would say that Gardner certainly has the most blood loss. Though if you take the time to heal him first, TundraWolf may pass out while he waits his turn.

Yeah, Needle hits the dice cap. I've got 14 in First Aid and/or Medicine, and with an R4 medkit and the bonuses I max out. So here goes nothing. And Invisible Castle is still down, so I'm still using the dice roller on my phone.

TW: 20d6.hits(5) = 8 hits
Silas: 20d6.hits(5) = 6 hits
Gardner: 20d6.hits(5) = 4 hits
Eclipse: 20d6.hits(5) = 11 hits

Sorry, Gardner. My iPhone doesn't like rolling dice for you.