Needle

Can I see where everyone is...relatively speaking? I want to try and time their landing with my pulling up in front if the building. Back open (extra entry points are nice), them jumping in as I use the "rolling stop" method.

Currently, the biggest theat to the team is that drone firing at us. So the plant spirit will likely be trying to target it. It will attempt to hit the drone with its Engulf Power, causing it to become entangled and fall. That is, assuming that the drone hasn't already gone so far down that it can't see it...

Let me know if I have to come up with something else it is doing...


The Air spirit is supposedly landing with the unconscious sniper at this point. It will lay him down on the floor of the balcony. With a sort of 'huff' of frustration (at how heavy that guy was to even slow his descent) it will leave him there for now and move to get confirmation from me that I really want it to bring me everything it catches. While it is doing so, it will bring me the sniper rifle that it caught on its way to catch the sniper. So, Silas, you said you wanted a gun?

Of course, on Gardner's turn, he will inform the air spirit that leaving the body on the balcony is fine, but continue looking out for other falling objects. The goal of this service (in addition to saving the sniper's life) was to recover anything we might drop while we are climbing down...

I don't remember giving you a number for the Air Spirit's Initiative, I rolled 3 hits for it, so it has an initiative of 17 while materialized. I apologize if all the spirits are complicating things. At this point, with Gardner's injuries, he pretty much needs to work by proxy, I just wish I could summon more than one spirit at a time and didn't have to use all of my bound spirits...

Right ... ummm ... okay then ... umm .. that will be a longshot and a half LOL

-1 for stun -2 for moving -2 for hanging on a rope -2 for having Acson attached as well, AND .. defaulting .. leaves me 1 Dice .. it either works or it goes badly lol
there's always a smartlink .. I hope it's got one

Probably, but you're not subscribed to it... this is the wireless world, it isn't a touch pad anymore
Not a big deal, that thing would have worked had you been trained in longarms. I have that revolver too, it's just going to take me an action to get it out.

do it anyway, you don't know I have one shot ! and if I pull it off .. then yay

Speaking of which, how far is Eclipse from the drone? It occurs to me I might be in a position to steal more kills.

Sure, you can see where everybody is coming down. It's about 20 meters to the left of the front entrance to the building.

Please remember what I said previously regarding the spirit trying to catch both the gun and the sniper:

Your air spirit did not catch the sniper rifle. I had already told you that you had to choose either saving the gun or saving the sniper.

The spirit is arriving at the balcony in the first pass of this combat turn, but the sniper rifle will be hitting the ground far below before it would be able to catch up to it.

Eclipse has gone done the rope roughly 80m and the drone is about 10m above that.

Oh and Engulf is a Touch power. The drone is flying outside the edge of the balcony so it can shoot at the people climbing down. You spirit might be able to run and leap for it to touch it with the power, but that would provoke an attack from the Air Spirit currently in melee with it as well leaving it nowhere to go but a long way down.

So, yes. Please come up with something else for the plant spirit to do.

Yeah, as I stated I want to try and time pulling up alongside where they are coming down at with them actually hitting the ground. At some point before I get over there I'm also going to open the rear entrance/exit so they can just jump in the back of the bus as they hit the ground.

Do you want me to roll anything to do this?

Nope. You can time it out OK. Are you timing it for when the first of them arrive on the ground, the last one, or what?

The first, preferrably. Maybe the second. I'd like to try and use a rolling stop approach here. Not fully stopping, but moving slow enough that everyone can get in quickly while I'm still moving AND I can then punch it to get away. I don't want to lose too much momentum slowing down, but I won't leave anyone behind either.

Perfect! I'm not sure whose turn it is right now, other than we're starting a new CT... but, since I've already rolled for my rappelling (putting me at -1 for stun track, for future initiatives), I may as well finish the turn out, right?!

Eclipse declares his vendetta against drones by putting a couple bursts into its face.

Short, wide burst. AGI 8 + Skill 6 + Smartlink 2 - Wound 1 - Rappelling 2 - Range 1
12d6.hits(5)=6 (5P, AP -)

Long, Narrow burst. Same as before, -3 recoil
9d6.hits(5)=5 (10P, AP -)

2 bullets remaining.


...this is assuming the rappelling test counts as a movement action. If it's a simple action then we'll go with just the long burst, since the short is there only to eat up its dodge dice.

I'm planning on doing my next IC post once we've hit the ground.

Eclipse is likely to reach the ground the third pass of the current combat turn, while Gardner isn't likely to reach the ground until the second or third IP of the following combat turn. So, you aren't really going to be able to do a rolling stop unless you time it out towards Gardner's arrival and let the others wait around for a pass or two.

Climbing is a Simple Action. So you can only do the long narrow burst. The drone only gets 1 hit on its dodge test. And so it is utterly obliterated.

Currently waiting on clarification of Plant Spirit's actions because the Engulf power Gardner wanted to use is a touch only power.

Following that, I'll post up actions for Horizon's Air Spirit.

That will be followed by, Eclipse's destruction of the drone....speaking of that though. Firing on your turn would does mean you were suffering a -2 on your climb check as well. Be sure to keep that in mind in the future. For that particular roll the last two dice included your only hit. So you were very close to a critical glitch there.

There was some confusion with Silas's turn because Gardner thought his air spirit had caught the sniper rifle as well as the sniper, but I've previously said that wasn't the case. So is Silas doing something else?

newp, if Mr. White increases speed then I'll attempt to match it, otherwise .. praying to whatever small gods are listening to hit solid ground soon (By soon I mean slowly and comfortably / NOT at terminal velocity) thanks

I'll time it for Gardner's arrival. Sorry, but Eclipse is just going to have to wait it out a moment or two.

Sounds good.

That'll give him time to get my limp self off of the line anyways. Though you'll probably need Gardner to sack-o-potatoes me into the van.

It's a bus, not a van.

Sorry, but that Uncouth thing is rearing it's ugly head.

Uh oh! All out of edge, too. D: Do you want me to take more stun damage as I bounce my face off concrete? I imagine that kind of like when you're driving and hit the rumble strips...



But he'll get bored! By the time you pick us up, Tundra Wolf will just be one giant tourniquet with a tube sticking out of his chest and the rest of him slathered in aloe.

I debated having you not be able to fire your gun this pass, but decided not to take away your excellent roll. No additional damage this pass, but you've lost control of your descent again and your next climb check will still be one that can hurt you if you fail it instead of just adding to your speed.

Kinky.

While we continue to wait on Gardner to have a chance to post up responses, I guess I will go ahead and move the rest of us along.

Horizon's Air Spirit isn't liking all the other spirits around here. It's going to use it's Fear power on the Earth Spirit, getting 5 hits.

Randy Jones will let the the spirit deal with spirit things as he runs to the balcony's edge and fires down at Gardner. "Where do you think you're going ?"

Shot 1: 2 hits; Shot 2: 2 hits 6S(e)

The guard's turn is followed by Needle who is still trying to time her arrival with the bus. Doing anything in the meantime? There are still three drones in the air (one that isn't firing and two that are about to arrive).

Then it's Gardner's turn.

I thought about trying to provide some matrix support while I was driving over to pick the guys up, but I can't do both at the same time. I know I could give the pilot program the instruction to do so, but I've already got it waiting on the final command to head for Redmond (see my previous post for the exact location). I could stack the commands, I guess.

Not sure if I'll actually be of any use. By the time I drop into VR (Simple Action), load up programs (Scan, Analyze, Exploit, Command - 4 simple actions or 2 IPs), hack on the fly to get an admin account (complex action, going to take at least 2 IPs) and then give ONE of the drones a command....yeah, everyone is already starting to get into the bus. It's just going to take far too long to do that.

Ok. That's cool, just wanted to make sure you weren't feeling as left out of things as TundraWolf who's completely out of luck right now being unconscious.

Crap nearly glitched my acceleration

Climbing - Accelerate Rapelling -1 stun -2 passenger
(11d6.hits(5)=3)

*shrug* That's the nature of SnS rounds (and why I'd make them shotgun-only in games I run). After this you're going to have a hard time convincing TW to wear anything other than his armor jacket, though. He'd very likely still be standing with that on.

If I start complaining about not being of use at the moment, especially after TW has been unconscious through the whole scenario, then I don't deserve to play.

It's all cool. I know I'm waiting on them, and I can't do much about it. Just get TW into the bus and I can help him out.

the next stage of your transformation to being a rigger ?

"TW Come out of the VAN !" ... TW replies with "NOPE NOPE NOPE !! ... Rigger stays IN the VAN!"

LOL.

"Dude, you're not the rigger. Those are lengths of bailing wire and a bottle cap taped to your forehead. You can barely put it in first gear without running over a fire hydrant!"

"Am rigger, just rusty. No more shock bullets for Nikolai."

You know, if you wouldn't have tried to stop those SnS rounds with your body, you might still be standing!

Still, waiting on posts from Gardner, but I guess Mr. White can post up his climb check for this Combat Turn.

In between their turns, the third set of drones is still getting closer to the team, And seem to be accelerating.

Hey there, sorry about the delay in posting. Spent the weekend without the computer and haven't had much of a chance to sit down with it 'till today. Didn't want to try and make a big post with my phone



I responded to this statement when you mentioned it. I don't particularly feel like going back to find it, but I pointed out that the Air Spirit could very easily grab one and then the other. To extrapolate: The Air Spirit materializes below the falling sniper and his rifle. The objects are falling, so this only makes sense as materializing above or right next to them would be counter-productive. The rifle falls faster, because it has less surface area than a limp, falling human body. All objects fall at the same rate, modified by wind-resistance. The air spirit flies up to meet the falling objects, spends a simple action to grab the gun, then its second simple action to grab hold of the sniper. As was pointed out, it can really only slow the sniper’s fall, the gun wouldn’t be enough weight to change this. The air spirit spends its further actions slowing the descent and gets to the balcony some time later…

All of this is not particularly important, getting the gun isn’t so important that I really care, but I posted the way I did because I thought I had argued my case and it wasn’t disputed at the time.





Wasn’t sure how far out the drone had gotten. If the drone is out of reach, it would have attacked the Air Spirit again, I guess. It got 4 hits on the attack.








Needle should probably pull up for when the first few people get down. That will give them a chance to get in while you wait for Gardner to get all the way down. Why make everyone queue up to get in? Particularly since we have a few people who are either unconscious or nearly so (yay confusion). Spending more time sitting still early will let us leave faster later.





The Earth spirit fails its willpower test, even spending edge ahead of time it only gets 2 hits. So it will be afraid for 3 turns. It will spend its turn running away from the ‘scary air elemental’.

I’m a little surprised the guard was able to get all the way out to the edge of the balcony without going past my Plant spirit or having any trouble shooting down at me. But whatever, I got 7 hits on one of the resistance tests, and 8 on the other. So that’s 1 Stun between the two shots. And I got plenty of hits on the test to avoid the incapacitation of the shock (8 & 9 hits).

For Gardner’s turn, I have two options (correct me if I’m wrong), descend (and not have much action for something else), or attack. With the additional penalty from the electricity, I’m not liking my chances to make a controlled descent, so I want to wait until everyone below me is further away so I don’t pile into them… I’m assuming they aren’t that far away, so I guess I’ll shoot a stunbolt up at the guard, Force 5, 3 hits on the spellcasting test.


It’s a lot to catch up on, did I miss anything?

It is a moot point at this point, but I specifically said your spirit was only able to catch the falling sniper and slow down his descent. It would take Complex action for something like that and in lieu of you specifically commanding your spirit to go after the gun first, I would say it would go with your previously stated idea that the spirit's Gardner uses are life loving and therefore go after the falling life before going after the rifle.

The air elemental received 9 hits for defense. So no effect.
Considering there is very little space it can run on the balcony, do you think it would flee into Astral space or risk running into the warded building?
If you looked at the guards previous actions you will have noticed that he used his security access to open one of the other glass doors. He's 25-30meters away from where your plant spirit would be. And he was suffering a -2 penalty to shoot over the edge of the balcony at you. Keep in mind, this is electrical damage so you are now suffering a -2 on all actions. I'm not going to bother having you make the roll to resist falling unconscious, because I'm sure you'll be able to make it.
Climbing is a Simple Action. So if you were to climb you would still have a simple action to shoot with a gun, though not a Complex Action that is required for spellcasting. Oh and because you started 1 pass after everybody else, you are currently over 25 meters or so above the closest person (I can't remember right now exactly how many extra meters Silas got from his last climb check its 20m+extra hits each pass that everybody is rappelling).

Anyway, if you do stick with casting the stunbolt. Randy fails to roll a single hit and furthermore critically glitches. So, he finally succumbs to the trauma of his lifelong friend's death and all the injuries he's suffered so far. He collapses on the balcony where he was standing.
Seems like you got everything. You might as well post up the Plant Spirit's actions for IP2 now though because we are just waiting on Mr. White's climb check to finish out IP1.

The Earth spirit will probably go ahead and flee to the Astral. I went ahead and rolled a Composure test for it, got 3 hiits. So it doesn't have any trouble keeping its head and continue to sustain the Guards.


I took the penalty from electricity into account when I rolled my spell. and I'll go ahead and keep the spell and wait until next pass to continue moving down. I forgot to roll for Drain before, I got 5 hits so I don't have any trouble resisting the spell.


I suppose the Plant Spirit will continue to distract the Air Spirit at the beginning of the next pass, I guess it will use the Noxious Breath Power again. Running out of ideas here, regular attacks don't seem to be working...

Climb check.

Another point of Edge.

8d6.hitsopen(5,6) → [[6, 4],4,4,[6, 4],5,5,[6, 6, 4],5] = (7)

"WOOHOOOO ... GO Whitey ! GO .!"

Even using Edge, the Air Spirit only managed to get 5 hits to resist the damage. So it takes a couple more boxes of stun damage.

You are putting the trained climbers to shame with the ease of your descent down. It may not be a conventional technique, but you are speeding along quite handedly.

Horizon's Air Spirit will attack the plant Spirit with a basic melee attack getting 5 hits.


Everybody can post up their actions for IP2 and I guess IP3 also since the only other action from Horizon will be the newest pair of drones getting closer (they will be in range to fire IP1 of the new combat turn, CT7).

Needle continues to get into position to allow everyone quick and easy access to the bus.

Yep, and TundraWolf continues to have feverish nightmares of falling down a very bumpy mountainside while he is unconscious.

My Plant Spirit got 5 hits on its defense. So it narrowly avoids the attack.

On Gardner's next action he risks the action to descend, despite his head swimming. 2 Hits again, barely making it.

Can Gardner see the two drones descending from his position? I might have an idea, but I'll need to know if I see the drones as they are dropping...

Sure. Why not. You can see them.

Rolls!

8d6.hits(5)=2, 8d6.hits(5)=2

Gross. IP2 gets me back under control at least, and IP3 is a little faster... Mr White is putting me so far to shame it's not even funny.

IP3 also has you arriving on the ground!

That's one runner safely down.

Update time:
Currently I'm looking for actions from everybody other than Eclipse for IP2 and 3 of CT6.
Eclipse has made it to the ground and can see that the front entrance to the building is about 20m away. It looks like the guards that were outside the entrance earlier have temporarily been pulled inside, but you can see movement through the glass doors of the building.

Order on the rappelling line is, Mr. White possibly arriving on the ground IP1 of CT7 (defintely arrving by IP2), Silas with Parker Acson in tow likely to arrive IP2 or 3 of CT7, and who knows when Gardner will get down. So far he's only climbed down 20 meters and he didn't even start until the pass after everybody else did. If he starts moving again and just climbs he will arrive on the ground IP1 or 2 of CT8. Though that's going to mean 4-5 passes with two new drones firing on him the whole way down.