GAWD DAMMIT !!
composure to not abandon Needle and dash for food.
defended once -1
GM temptation modifier -1
(3d6.hits(5) =1)

LoL

Hey, you guys are welcome to come up and join us...

Ok, I've finally caught up on the two dozen different projects at work that I absolutely had to get done before I go on vacation. I'm sure something will come up before the vacation, but for the moment I have time to again look at the forum. I'll post up something IC shortly.

BTW, I just realized i forgot to mention that the whole suite was covered in a ward. It's not really pertinent to anything going on, but I thought you guys would at least like to know that the conversation is at least covered from prying magical eyes.

Ok, so I'll have to recast my spells. Good to know. I don't think I would have pushed through it, so it rips my spells off as we walk through.

That's fine, you hadn't mentioned using astral sight at all, but you would definitely have felt it's presence if you tried passing through with spells active. It's a much lower strength than the one at the Splendor building, but its still enough to keep out unwanted magics.

That's intended to be a subtle cue to Nazaire that we'd like him to put his very best offer on the table. Want me to roll negotiate?

Roll Negotiations.

9d6.hits(5) → [5,2,4,2,1,4,5,1,1] = (2)

Amusing side note here.

Typically we try to coax more money out of a source because that's our pay. We'd of course like to get paid more.

In this case though, it is simply a bidding war. If Nazaire rolls better than me and doesn't want to cough up more money, he's not hurting us. He's hurting himself.

You're assuming that the offers of employment for Acson or equal. Acson could decide Laurent's employment is more desirable than anybody else's and refuse to take any other offers. Some of the offers you might receive during this would be with the assumption that Acson is a willing hire. It's one thing to hire an employee out from another company when they are willing to work with you, it's another thing entirely to steal somebody who already proved himself extremely resourceful and have to constantly worry about if he's going to sabotage your company or at the very least keep him under heavy surveillance/confinement.

And there's the moral question of if you are willing to sell somebody into forced service like a slave.

As it turns out he got 5 hits on his roll. You guys are not getting any more compensation out of him.

That is kind of amusing.

On a separate note. If he and Acson are going to be going to another room to discuss something, I will summon up a Watcher to keep an eye on Acson (make sure nothing happens to him). Before I do, I will Astrally Perceive to make sure someone isn't going to flip out when I do it. I don't remember mention of all that many people around us, so I'm not sure if any of them would be awakened and/or astrally perceiving to keep an eye out for something.

If I think that is a bad idea, I will instead silently message Mr. White about keeping an eye on our investment. While I appreciate their interest in privacy, we should at least be able to keep an eye on them so we know something bad isn't going to happen...

That would be a significant breach of Laurent trust and hospitality. Should it be discovered, you can expect to he and the Atlantean Foundation would be extremely unlikely to ever work with you again.

However, you have not notice anybody looking particularly magical. Thus far you've only seen various servants and his secretary that greeted you at the door.

All excellent points, and I was considering them myself.

From my character's perspective, the team was hired to extract someone, but they were deceived. That's one hit. White would probably balk at selling a container full of refugees, selling Acson to the highest bidder does not bother him. Consider it with a different chronology. Three people approach the team, each asking them to extract a target. The team takes the highest offer. We're just doing it in a different order.

I was considering whether we'd possibly end up in a bind of someone wanting to buy the book, but not Acson.

True, don't know if it would help, but I would only be asking the watcher to alert me if Acson is threatened. I'm not interested in listening in, only keeping an eye on Acson for his own safety...

The Watcher was just my fastest, easiest, idea. If there is a better way that I'm not thinking of, let me know...

Also, yes, as Kiirnodel suggested, we will politely suggest that we continue to help represent Acson. Nazaire has been doing this long enough to know that Shadowrunner's don't trust corporations to play fair. It's no slight to him, it's just how the game is played.

I thought more about it.

We are selling him to the highest bidder. I don't want Acson to think that he's calling the shots here. Frankly, and I'll sort this out with him IC if necessary, he is not choosing where he goes- that decision is up to us.

Or, he needs to negotiate with you for a personal improvement in finances if he has a preferred offer of employment ...

damn, man. You've got some big brass ones, huh?

Not that I'm complaining, I like it

Gardner, however, is probably sitting stock-still, waiting for a response. Worried as hell that something is about to go very wrong...

Like, I said, you can to it. But summoning a spirit regardless of the reasoning when somebody has offered you hospitality in their warded "home" is bad manners.

So, tell me if you are doing it or not.

Don't sweat it .. a guy like Nazaire ain't gona flip his lid over a rejected first negotiation.

But, Remy would absolutely be doing the same at this point, currently though he is wrestling with an invisible barrier of pure will that surrounds PIE ..

Actually watching the Hotel front doors for any "newer" arrivals etc.

What is being sold to the highest bidder is Acson future services and the book he's stolen. What Laurent and Moreau are offering you guys is a finders fee. You're services are not what is actually being sold here. They are being nice to offer you any kind of compensation at all.

I don't think we're on the same page here. Mr. White has suggested that they're looking for a finders fee because its more polite than saying "We are selling this guy. You want in?" But that's the truth of it. Acson got a group of shadowrunners to bust him out of a secure facility with a very valuable item, and then shrugged his shoulders and showed us his empty pockets. The only reason we didn't give him back to Horizon is because we are greedy shadowrunners who want to get paid. Earlier, I/White suggested selling him off as a test subject if we couldn't get an interested bidder. I was serious.

Acson deceived us and put us in a great deal of danger. If he's a fool enough to think that these shadowrunners will be like "Hey man, that was great! LOL! Sure we'll drop you off at Ares for your job interview. Good luck!" then he's got a surprise coming. I don't want trouble with Nazaire, I'd like to have a good working relationship with him, so I'm trying to convey to him the nature of our relationship with Acson. He is meat, and we're selling him.

Of course, speak up if I'm wrong here, gang

Nope, I agree! In fact, if the difference is small (say a couple hundred nuyen) I'd be willing to take the lower offer just to spite Ascon, that jerk.

Moreau has offered 10,500 each for Acson. Nazaire has only offered 8,000. I think that we may have at least one more offer available.

That's a difference of 2,500. If Acson wants to take a job with Nazaire, that's fine, but he'll be responsible for making up the difference in price.

You could just tell Acson that.

Currently the secretary is holding back for everything to settle back down. She's not rude enough to interrupt business meetings.

Acson has already shown himself to be a thief and a liar. White is not eager to let him out of his sight while he owes us money.

Agreed. There is no way Acson should be allowed out of our sight until this whole thing is over. There is no guarantee that he won't just up and take off, leaving us in the lurch. Which would force us to have to hunt him down, and do we really want to have to charge him for that?

I like the way you think!

Right now, Acson is hiring a fixer to get a group of shadowrunners to meet on the roof of a nearby building, where they'll meet an egyptian fellow who has a job for them, that begins in 15 minutes...

ROFL, if you give Slacker anymore ideas like that, I'm gunna ... imagine something painful I can do from 2000 miles away, and grin ! ... Evilly !

If he has the money for a fixer, he can just pay us!

I think that was Dak's point, he doesn't.

and wouldn't see a problem hiring a new bunch of mooks for a "Hostile Extraction" for an up and coming MIT grad. from the 28th floor of the Nikko hotel

the irony is amazing, where the frag is needle scanning the airwaves (yes I know on vacation) but still... getting paranoid yet ?

I truly doubt we need to worry about Acson magically having another runner team setting up. Horizon tracking us down? yes, Acson trying to run away after Mr. White makes it clear we don't care about his actual well-being? maybe, him actually setting up another team? doubtful.

At this point Gardner is kind of conflicted. On the one hand, he feels bad treating this guy basically like an object. But on the other, he's done a very good job getting himself into this situation because of how poorly he thought through his "plan to hire runners to get him out". Not to mention the fact that he seems to be shouting his ace in the hole out to anyone that has ears...

For now, Gardner is waiting to see what happens. (In character and Out) I don't really know what I could say to help this particular situation, so I'm staying out of it and I'll move in to help if and when I figure out a way that I can...

Oof, sorry about the radio silence guys. Work has been an absolute nightmare this week, and I'm fighting some of the worst allergies I've had in years on top of it.

TW's jaw is clenching harder and harder by the minute, but so far he's managed to keep his mouth shut and just be the muscle in the room. Though he's definitely considering hanging Ascon off of the balcony and reminding him who exactly he's trying to boss around.

I thought this was hilarious, and I'm sharing it here, mostly because my character, Mr. White, is based on this character from the movie Pulp Fiction.

If you have kids, you might get a kick out of this.

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uc34l/

Eclipse kicks in the door and shoots e'rrybody. Muahahahahahahaha!

...no but seriously. It's been a couple days so I thought I'd recall attention! What's next?

Slacker warned us he was going to be unavailable for this week. And I think Severus is also out of town. So I think we are probably waiting for people to be back before we can move on. Kind of scary considering we are at a sort of tense place in our "negotiations".


As far as what we are going to do in game, it looks like we are waiting to figure out how Acson is going to act here... I think it's probably going to take some talking down to get him to come along for now.

Personally, I don't think that it helps that we've done next to nothing but threaten him now that we've gotten him... This guy is basically our meal ticket, so we might want to give him a better reason not to try and skip out on us entirely. Not that it's a good idea, but he's already proven that he doesn't think things through and we don't need to give him a reason to try to leave...

Wait, why would we even think about being civil, let alone friendly, to this little twat? He hired people who shoot other people in the face for money with money he didn't have and gave them 15 minutes to get him out. Those people now have to burn some decent IDs so Horizon doesn't KOS them, and are now on a frickin' escort mission and still haven't seen a dime yet. Being new to the 'running game is no excuse, if you act as stupid as this guy you should be thankful they don't simply shoot you in the head, sell your corpse to Tanamous, and hope their rep doesn't take too bad a hit for being dumb enough to accept a blind job like this in the first place.

On a meta level, the only way this Mission works is because it's exactly that. If I'm playing a home game and the Johnson drops that 15 minute timeframe, I tell him to find another team and good fraggin' luck, I don't do suicide missions. You're probably not doing that at a convention, unless you've got other things you can do whilst at the con for a few hours until your next game or panel. Not taking a shot at you Slacker, just kvetching.

I didn't say we had to mean it... it's a lot easier to butcher a cow when it's happy.

On a meta level, yes this mission seems a little contrived expecting a group of runners to basically jump off a building at the word go... It's particularly frustrating since about half of us were contacted by trusted contacts to get up there.

Although, I will ask, why do you think we need to burn some ID's?

At some point earlier in the thread Slacker mentioned that the Horizon spider had multiple combat turns of unimpeded time in our 'links. Really, we should have all slaved our 'links to Needle's before we jumped off, but c'est la vie. So, the target AAA now knows the IDs of at least one of the people who just made them work some serious damage control to keep the news of one of their skyscrapers being hit in mid-gala from the general populace. They're not going to be happy, which to me means you frag that ID and get a new one. I'm not thrilled about having to spend what looks like the entire amount we'll get for this 'run on a new 'link, but it's looking more and more like that's the case. I shouldn't have brought my good 'link, anyways, so I'm just chalking this up to a expensive learning experience in 4th ed (I played 2nd and 3rd where this sort of thing was purely the deckers concern).

And as for not meaning it...well, TW's not the "play nice" kinda guy, neh? There's a reason he's a merc, and it's not because he wanted to see all sorts of interesting locales.

Slacker also said that he was directly commanding the drones, so I'm not sure what exactly was happening. Either way, don't know about you, but I was running in Hidden Mode, and I have a Firewall and Analyze program, so at the very least it would have taken him a Combat Turn or more to get in, and even then, probably not unnoticed. Not to mention I don't generally keep much private information on my runner comm, probably still have my address listed as my place back in Cal Free

If you're worried about your comm's security, I'd recommend an upgrade anyway... You don't necessarily have to ditch the whole thing, depending on the quality you have you might be able to just upgrade your Firewall and make sure you get a nice Analyze program, maybe some IC if you want to be particularly paranoid.

Regarding Acson and his treatment, I'm not sure that being nice will get us far- because I don't think he cares a whit about us. We're just a method of transportation to him. Convincing him to go along with us and not make too much trouble relies either on intimidating him into it, or him being simply willing to do so. Mr. White is a fast talker, and I suppose a dice roll and a hand wave could perhaps see him be more compliant with us, I don't have any idea what we'd say to him that'd motivate him to stick with us. Aside perhaps from fear of getting nabbed by Horizon again. We're still protecting him, nominally. So even if White tells him "Look, you got two choices. Us or the street. The street might seem enticing, but Horizon is looking for, and if some unscrupulous lowlifes got their hands on you before you found safety, you'd be in a lot worse shape." Even so, we're still threatening him. But maybe it'd scare him into compliance.

It's got Firewall 5 and Stealth 3, which at the time I thought was fine...until Needle blew through that sniper's like it wasn't there. I assume the same level of competence for a high-level spider like the Horizon building would have. I'm going to need to get an Agent if I want something running Analyze, TW's skillset doesn't run towards the Matrix. I'd not known that when I made this character. I guess we'll see later when Slacker gets back, but at this point TW's already assumed that his 'link's security is compromised, which is why he's using his "low-level" 'link right now and is planning on burning it as well.

Edit: It's not so much the data that's on there that's the issue, really. It's the ID that's fragged, and the potential for the 'link itself to still tell Horizon who this is even after the fake ID is replaced that's got TW up in arms. Plus, he'll need to change the security protocols in the Smartgun and the Viper (if he just doesn't throw that away and buy an actual useful concealable gun ) since they aren't skinlinked like Mishka and the Predator III are. All in all, this is a huge clusterfuck.

why are you running Stealth? that's for staying undetected while in another node... in any case, in character, why would TW think his comm has been compromised? Plus, you shouldn't need to just throw it away. It isn't hard to shut off the 'link and have Needle work her magic to give you a nice new Access ID before you reboot it...

Isn't Stealth also added to the opposed roll for a hacker searching for Hidden wireless as well? I thought I had read that when I was making the character...

As for why he's assuming it's compromised, TW is Russian so he just assumes the worst to begin with. Since everything went very bad very quickly in a run against a mega that specializes in PR and communication, it's not a big leap for him to think his 'link is compromised. It's currently powered off and in his apartment to be dealt with later.

Eh, either way you don't have to junk it, it's a Hardware + Logic test (threshold 2) to change the access ID, which would break any attempt at tracking it... Your current solution works just fine too.

Hope everyone is enjoying their time away, congrats again to Slacker et al

see you soon

K, I'm back from vacation and ready to start whooping some ass...digitally speaking, of course.