If we fail to get money from the foundations, I think our best bet is surgery to remove the deltaware, and then sell Ascon as an awakened slave to some research lab.. he's probably worth more if some, say, construction site has him using telekinetic powers to move shit instead of using machines, even if they have to pay some guy minimum wage to hold a gun to the back of his head. Then there's the deltaware... but we shouldn't need to do any of that, because Mr Ascon sounds like a reasonable, but inexperienced guy who genuinely wants to get us gobs of money and give us favours later from his new position, right?

<<should we put bag over his head?? i saw on Kombat Mage one time he got captured so he stunballed the van while it was driving...>>

An Awakened subject, with at least an internal commlink that is undetectable?

Wait a moment - anybody have a cyberware scanner on them? Or, Mr. GM, do the Auto-Docs have one on them?

Acson is a researcher, not a combat mage. He doesn't have any kind of stun spells.

That doesn't mean he's not dangerous! Why, on this very forum I had a theoretical research mage who, in his course of reagent studies, could turn a van full of kidnappers into solid gold!

Considering the number of hits you would need to detect deltaware, the sensors that might be in an auto-doc don't have a chance of detecting anything. If not for the temporary wireless signal, Needle would never have noticed it. But then that is part of why i had him send the quick message:-)

I think we've intimidated the guy enough... And i haven't. Even smiled at him yet

So lets gt TW sorted and arrange a meet, did we get a home address for atlantean guy or just an office?

Can we daw him out for a lucrative deal on the comm without him blowing our amazing cover again ?

Mr. White has a business card on him with a name Laurent Nazaire, an address, and an LTG number. He is worried about calling him after the warning from his contact MarcusB though. And nobody has bothered looking up the address yet though it's obviously a downtown address somewhere.

BTW, invisiblecastle appears to be back online again.

Now that we're all geared up, Eclipse is gunna head on down to the docks and scout it out, since a single guy on a bike (who might transform into a sneaking guy in a chameleon suit) are a lot less conspicuous than a rapist van. Unless there're any objections, of course!

Don't go too far ahead. Worst case scenario you want us within a few turns away...
I thnk we should be ok. Just keep your eyes open.

How far ahead of everybody else are you trying to get there? And what are you planning to do once you're there?

Like Kiirnodel said I don't want to get too far. A couple minutes, maybe? Enough time for me to look around for a potential trap and report back my findings.

Ok, as Eclipse rides up to the address provided frowns at the large crowd of people that appear do be waiting outside the restaurant. At first, he thinks it might be some sort of ambush, but on closer inspections there appear to be mostly families and couples. This place just has that large a cue to get a table. From the location, he guess it's at least partly because of the amazing view of the bay, but perhaps those random rumors he heard about this place might be true....could they really serve a few truly natural items like apple pie with cinnamon sauce and real coffee? The crowd seems to say they serve something amazing.

It's hard to tell much of anything about an ambush. He'd have to struggle his way past the crowd to get a look at who's inside. There aren't any obvious signs of an ambush. Sure there are a few lightly armored vehicles in the parking lot, but that's nothing new in the harsh city of Seattle. Nothing blazonly marked with the Horizon logo, no heavy transport vehicles, or Northrop Wasps in the air.

Hrm... is there a secluded enough building nearby for me to grapnel to the top of? Like, within 80m of the front door?

<<dont see nething yet. crowd, lots of collateral dmg if prsnt, bad pr. will keep updated>>

It's out on a pier, hence the address of Pier 60. No other buildings close to it. Parking lot is on the shore and you walk out onto the pier to enter the actual restaurant.

Ah, gotcha! I knew it was on the pier, but for some reason I assumed a kind of strip mall configuration. Fair enough! The text message stands, and Eclipse will wait in the parking lot until the team shows up. How are the people in the line outside dressed?

Attire varies to some degree. It is a downtown restaurant, but doesn't appear to have any strict dress code other than it's general locale would designate. You see some people in jeans and t-shirts though most of the crowd seems to be dressed on the nicer side of things. Nobody appears to be in gang leathers or anything like that.

The closest building would be the Seattle Aquarium that's on the next pier over, just south of Pier 60. then there doesn't appear to be anything north along the bay until pier 63 which seems to just be used for temporary docking of larger ships (currently none are there). A smalll marina is just north of that.

Other than that buildings along the shore are set back a little ways on the otherside of a good sized road, a set of railroad tracks, and a bike/running trail to prevent any damage from flooding.

*facepalm* That'll teach me to make assumptions about locations. I was thinking of the docks, not like Fisherman's Wharf. Dammit.

edit: Well, I suppose I could go in as White's bodyguard. It wouldn't be too out of place, I suppose.

I guess that's why as like so many things in Shadowrun, you guys could have done legwork to find out information on it.

Legwork schmegwork

We're dressed to impress kiddies entertainment...

Grab a family and tell 'em they won a prize for little johnnys birthday, FREE CLOWN PARTY! !!
we all clown up and get in there the only way we know how! In disguise...

What can possibly go wrong?

You can't make me laugh that hard while I'm at work. People are giving me weird looks now.

I think it's safe to assume the Moreau is not waiting inline with the rest of the pleabs. He has connections to the ex-Atzlan exec that owns this restaurant and likely already has a table reserved for himself.

Regarding legwork: I had no idea where we were even headed. So I was unable to hit the Matrix for any information on the potential meeting spot. Sorry, but you guys kept me in the dark on this one.

My posting rate is also pretty bad early in the mornings, which is when everyone else seems to post in rapid succession. So it's possible that I missed where you guys told me, but I never got the chance to do anything with that information (if it was put out there) due to my inability to post prior to 9 am PDT M-F (and you can all thank work for that).

It's not that big a deal. It was mentioned originally 2 days ago in the IC thread Pier 60, You Should Not Eat So much is the location given by Moreau. Pier 60 was also mention a couple times in the OOC thread.

I don't think White actually stated it to the rest of the team. Either way, not a big deal. Probably my bad for having to read so much to catch up every morning and missing it.

Right, because clowns totally have cybernetic arms and move with preternatural agility like half the team does. What could possibly go wrong? Slacker, don't answer that.

The dragon certainly complicates things. Hopefully our choices are more than sell the information or get it taken from us anyways....

So... we deal with a dragon, or piss one off? :'(

Hmmmm, "was it never trust a hungry Ork, Deal wiv an Elf and never piss off a Dragon?" My Uncle told me summat like dat ... I fink.

So, we sending Talky Man into happy fun land all alones again .. or we gots a plan now? cause I don'ts work so well in only fifteen minutes, or on a empty tummy !


it's a plan wiv no draw backs .... we gets to dress as a clown, and watch Talky Mans back AND we get SAMMICHES !

This ^

Getting that quoted just slapped me across the face with how bad it reads. Fixed in post for my own wounded pride.

Dak, did White get any sense of which dragon's attention we've gotten? If we have any luck it's only an adult dragon and not a great. Otherwise it's "Some Horizon knob walked with one of their spellbooks and want to sell it. Please don't eat me."

is this the normal thing for you guys ? ... cause I'm contemplating a nice safe career in .... well .. in anything that's not here right now !

Dragons !! FFS ! ...where did that come from ?...

/rant over, yeah I'm ready

Mach, I don't care how much Silas wheedles, TW is not putting on clown gear. Nuh-uh.

I get ya, it was just an amusing way to get close without .. lol .. drawing attention to ourselves, I never expected to get IN to the place

.. but at least be outside with Gardner doing magic, and the rest of us juggling or generally being clowns, handing balloons to kids etc. (trying not to scare the crap outta them)

thus we are within yards of the shit hitting the fan while Mister white does his thang.. rather than being at the end of the pier.

also, there is still the Gorilla suit OR Giant Banana ! .. if you have a Clown phobia

D: Do we find out what the dragon wants, or proceed? ...I don't see this going well in any way, though if we could trust a dragon to honor a favour it owes...

*wipes tears from eyes* That's the funniest thing I've read in ages, O'Ryan.

Holy fuck, just read the IC. LUNG??? Well, nice knowing you guys.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm way behind on shadowrun fiction and meta story. I know - on general principle - that one should be wary when dealing with an Ancient and Incredibly Powerful Creature the Size of a House, but shadowrun takes it a step further ("Never deal with a dragon"). Now, from an in-game perspective, people must deal with dragons in some fashion, even if it is by proxy. Dragon's are probably very physically powerful, but they're also politically/influentially powerful, I assume, and you don't become powerful in that fashion by always screwing the people that you make deals with.

No problem! We send in Mr White to deal with things and pretend he's a translator for Gardner (because of the aura, which we can say is so weak because of masking), who's actually a dragon himself. Let's say.... Hualpa, since he's weird and schemey like that. Lung goes "Oshit I was just going to play with chumps, here's some money don't send Sirrurg after me," we all retire and get extensive gene therapy to make us hidden from magic and tech searches.

Easy peasy!

Lemme explain...no, that would take too long. Lemme sum up: Lung is a Great, and (allegedly) holds a good chunk of the Triad's leashes. Why he/it would contact a team of 'runners him/itself is a little...no, a lot strange. I almost wonder if we're being played.

to quote my muse, Skank : "I feel like a little worm on a big fuckin' hook"

as soon as we mention what we have, we are toast

and to quote some one else "For you are Crunchy, and taste nice with ketchup!"

Nice knowing you too TW let's get this over with and hear the scaly bastard out ?

If you don't like my "Pretend to be a great dragon ourselves" idea, I think we can see if we're getting played. We track down Red Dragon Triads and say "Hey, we're here for our meeting with Lung's representative. If he didn't want to meet us, here's the commlink number for a guy pretending to be him." We either meet the dragon that we really can't escape from, or remove in a terrible way somebody trying to jerk us around. ...and then probably sell the cordex to Lung anyway by virtue of him asking "politely"

Forgive me, gang, but Shadowrun is so tricky, because its sometimes practically Paranoia. DON'T TRUST ANYONE! DON'T TRUST ANYONE! Wait - except this guy, he wants to hire you for a job, he'll screw you over later. Oh, and this one kid who wants to guide you through the Ork Underground. He's trustworthy.

So a dragon wants something from us. Dragons are powerful. He can simply take it from us and either destroy us, or kindly send us on our way. Or, he could compensate us in some fashion. Nuyen. Favors. That sort of thing.

Every organization that we deal with has the same set of options. Next time we have something that Ares wants, they can decide to just rub us out, or to pay us and be done. I'd almost take my chances with a dragon over a megacorp, but I'm kinda green, I suppose.

OOC thoughts.

The big thing to remember, Dak, is that corps (in Shadowrun, at least) are purely profit-margin driven. Shadowruns against them are a part of the 'biz and they can't make a habit of wiping out every team that hits them without both a)spending so much time and money that it hurts their bottom line and b)making it so no runners want to deal with them, knowing their rep. So long as you didn't steal Damien Knight's personal studded vibrator, Ares isn't going to be horribly interested in killing you outside of the 'run.

Dragons, on the other hand, take this shit personally. It may be a super long game to them, but when the game pieces tell them to fuck themselves they get a little testy.

And honestly, we're not big enough for a dragon to personally contact us. It's just silly. Maybe if we were 3-500 karma prime runners, maybe. Now? No way. I'm even more convinced this is bullshit.

fun isn't it .. we haven't even spoken to any of them and we are second guessing ourselves ( I MISS Paranoia )

anyways, so Best case scenario is we get paid, stay alive and get favours from a dragon or a contact of our choosing ?

worst case we get smooshed ! ...
I vote for the first option,

I get the impression the whole fegging world knows what we have, so let's play the nice game and sell this annoying fool and his book to some one
just to add ... I don't think it matters at this point who ... cause someone is gonna get pissed at us, we just need to move fast.

Yeah, and moving fast caused us not to do the proper legwork, according to Slacker. We might want to ease up a second. Maybe Needle can try and run a trace on where that call came from?

sorry, I mean more haste and less speed... get our options in front of us,

That said, we are already here and have a potential buyer waiting ... he may not hang around all night.

just sayin'

To clarify. It was somebody with a known reputation for representing Lung that conatactex Mr White asking why the Foundations are interested in Acson. From Mr. White's demeener in his IC post I think he would be up front in telling you guys that he was offered money for info. That's it.

From that its safe to assume Lung has interests in what's going on between the Foundations. If Lung or his proxy already knew about the Thaljun Cordex and wanted it, the conversation would have been about buying a book. Not buying info about why the Foundations are interested in Acson.

We're heading to a meeting with Moreau, a Fixer that Gardner knows. We don't need to do any sort of funny business, we already have the meet set up and planned. Not sure why people are gearing up like we need to sneak in to meet with one of Gardner's (and Mr. White's and Tundra Wolf's) contacts...

It seems like people got turned around thinking we are going to meet with a dragon or something...




Apparently, before even getting to the meeting, people are already asking about why we are going to the meeting... How they bloody well know that we are even going to the meeting I don't care to find out. Based on the fact that Acson was orchestrating his own extraction and the fact that the corps didn't know about it ahead of time tells me that the corps don't know about whatever it is that Acson has that's so damn important. Again, why Lung is already somehow in the know and seems to think that Draco is super interested (when Moreau's response was less than enthusiastic), is beyond me.

It would be very easy for Mr. White to simply reply "I don't know why the Foundations are interested in Acson." Because based on my conversation with Moreau, they weren't particularly interested... Even if he were to reply "I'll let you know after we talk to them, because they haven't told us yet". But for now I say we keep information as close as possible...


Is there anything I missed?

Gardner, the others have rightly taken the warnings of Mr. White's contact about Horizon watching all forms of communication. With how Moreau seemed to go out of his way to talk plainly by specifically mentioning what he suspected you were trying to be covert about, they believe there is a good chance Horizon was able to catch wind of the meeting. Thus the gearing up for a possible ambush.

No doubt. But that definitely doesn't mean literally drawing attention to ourselves by claiming to be something outlandish. Even trying to be a clown troupe or something is going to draw attention and then when people realize you aren't any good at doing anything entertaining like a clown would be able to do, you're just left with "suspicious"...

Plus it's a lot harder to track direct communication than some might think. It requires the party involved to already be catching and monitoring the traffic through an LTG which is already an encrypted network. I could see mass data-searches being easier to catch and track, but no major run in the history of Shadowrun would have a chance of succeeding if simply saying something over a commlink could get caught with a single mention the first time every time. I'm still basically calling bullshit that a representative of Lung would be calling us up after that one phone call and outright telling us that a Dragon is interested in something. It doesn't make any sense.

EDIT: to clarify, by doesn't make any sense, I mean: Dragons and their agents are usually more subtle than outright telling people what they are interested in.