Hey all, been a while since I last posted.
Our group has recently returned to Seattle and are taking a couple of low-end runs in order to get a feel for how the city has changed while we were away. A couple of our players have decided to pick up some new characters for a few runs to have some fun with different skills, so only a couple of our group members are regulars.

Anyway, our first mission is to kidnap a high-end smuggler for interrogation. The smuggler is here for two weeks, and is staying in a secure compound up in Everett. The compound is about a kilometer square, has a brick-and-razor-wire outer wall, a large mansion in the middle and pretty but not-very-good-for-cover gardens covering most of the grounds. Defenses include doberman patrols, Rail drones on the mansion, and at least two 5 man elite goon squad who are likely to have some decent 'ware. there is only one main entrance which has both automated defenses and a garrison of one of the squads. buildings have force 5 wards.

Our original plan was to do further recon, look for security weak points (EG guards who could be threatened or bribed into aiding us, taking out the caterers and replacing them, that sort of thing) and get in and out without anyone noticing. That plan is no longer an option as one of the new characters dumped Charisma, Intuition AND Logic... then took the unlucky trait. This guy was a stealth guy so he was tasked with shadowing anyone who left the compound and finding out what he could about them. Directly after the meet he charged off to the place without telling anyone and started lurking around. He was spotted, and when the security goons rocked up he decided to try to A) outfight elite team with his elephant gun and, when that didn't go well (surprised?) B) outrun the enemy... who were in a rover. while he was on foot. And all this after the GM gave him an out by throwing down his arms and leaving.

Anyway, long story short he gets either captured or killed (Only the GM knows for sure) and the first thing the group knows about it is when we get contacted by his commlink telling us that he's found a way in and we should meet up with him in location X. We work out very quickly that something is wrong (a simple decoy message of "this isn't like last time, is it?" when we've never met before. The answer was "No" rather than "WTF do you mean last time?!?" which seems to indicate that he is dead.) and sure enough, a bit of investigation determined that the meet was a trap.

We have no way of being certain how much, if any, information he revealed. To be on the safe side we need to assume that all the plans he was in on are compromised, which basically means that our initial infiltration ideas are blown and likely the goons will be on high alert.

As a result we have skipped to what I am generously calling a backup plan: A rapid, full blown assault where we go in, grab the target and get out.

Now our recon has located a weakness in their defenses: their drones are set with insanely trigger-happy targetting parameters, to the point that even pigeons that fly into the airspace get shot up. As a result our plan now runs something like this:
1) Capture a bunch of pigeons with poisoned bird seed.
2) Using improved invisibility, have our demolitions guy prep breaching packages at multiple places along their perimeter. In this instance a breaching package consists of a breaching charge, a smoke grenade, a holo-projector, and a micro speaker set to play sounds of gunfire and explosions... plus an invisible cage of pigeons that we can open remotely.
3) Detonate all packages at once, causing absolute anarchy as every motion sensor in the place goes haywire, on every side walls are being breached and gunfire/explosions are being heard, radar and ultrasound sensors are likewise flooded with contacts, every drone in the place opens fire until the riggers get them under control (potentially emptying clips or even belts if we can keep them busy enough). At this point the odds are that the goons will have to at least send some guys to check it out.
4) Our strike team goes in under improved invisibility, using the chaos around them as a cover to get them to the house. past that point we can't rely on the spells surviving contact with the wards so it becomes an exercise in breaching tactics, with the added complication that we have to use non-lethal weapons so we don't risk damaging the package.
5) Our exit strategy is for our mage to blow the main gate down with magic and drive an armoured Rover up to the front of the house, then have everyone hustle out straight into it and drive out.

Can I get some suggestions on how to refine it? Response in the area is estimated at 15 minutes and is likely to be criminals rather than cops.

Also, how many pigeons per day could we reasonably capture?

A quick wikipedia search brings up some interesting bits of information. Apparently, pigeons in cities just aren't as numerous as you'd think. That said, depending on how effective your trapping/collecting is, a typical city population could provide plenty of birds... it's just a question of whether it's feasible or not.

Personally, I think birds aren't the way to go. Pigeons are somewhat large birds, and somewhat wary, and collecting enough of them to produce the sort of effect you want would be time consuming and probably even be noticeable by the general public. The manpower and resources involved in collecting and storing and transporting hundreds of pigeons in a short period of time would be substantial. There's also the problem that, once released, the individual pigeons will either get blown away or they'll manage to fly away, and both outcomes result in fewer available targets.

It sounds like you just want lots of small airborne targets to saturate the region for as long as possible. Since you'll have explosions and whatnot going on, I assume you aren't using the birds to make it seem like just a natural disturbance caused by a stray flock of birds. Overall, it doesn't sound like there's any real need to use pigeons, per se, so I have an alternate suggestion.

Bouncy balls.

Disperse them however you like: pressurized air, springs, microexplosives, rotordrones with buckets of them hovering a mile up, it doesn't matter so long as the balls aren't destroyed via launch. They'll quickly fill the region, bouncing all over and drawing fire. Unlike birds, struck balls won't just flop dead to the ground, and also unlike birds the balls won't flee the area and fly as far away as possible. They'll just keep bouncing for a couple minutes, in every direction, and even when struck by bullets will likely ricochet or just keep on bouncing even will holes through them.

The best part is they're cheap, easy to transport, universally considered benign, and you can get them shipped in bulk from Hong Kong or somewhere rapidly with no questions asked.

~Umi

Bouncy balls works.

added bonus bouncy balls under foot are hazardous as well.

Also, they're ever so colorful! *claps hands and prances excitedly*

~Umi

one flaw: Bouncy balls have no heat signature, and keeping them at human body temperature until deployment is not very practical.

Also, can I get suggestions on the best way to deploy them en mass? (I'm thinking air drop via disposable drone)
Possibly a blend of Pigeons and bouncy balls... AND remote detonated explosives in small quantities to help add to the chaos.

A few dozen electric blankets and an over-night stay should impart enough heat... Make them a little warmer than body temp, they will cool pretty quickly.

Disposable drones and air cannons are your most likely delivery methods. A make-shift air cannon can be built in a couple of hours using a compressed gas canister, quick release valve and a large (heavy) plastic or metal tube. A vehicle drive-by with the cannons pointing out the side (through a window as to not be seen easily) should work for them.

Also get the larger bouncy balls (the ones in the video are the small ones), you can find them in sizes up to about a baseball size.

BTW Umi, I loved the bouncy ball idea, I'll have to use that sometime in my game.

If your plan is compromised, why would your target stay at the compound?

Now that they know you're coming, wouldn't they have some guards/snipers around the perimeter to ensure that nobody does things like plant explosives?

Whoever created those wards will be alerted when spells cross into them, so unless you end the improved invisibility spells before crossing one, they will know which building you are in. That magician will probably be lurking somewhere, so breeching the front gate could get some counterspell opposition.

If your mile-high drone can drop rubber balls, why not grenades on the rail drones. If you must draw their fire, how about something big and warm and somewhat bulletproof being levitated in front of them?

Have you considered making your assault time coincide with the meetup time so that those people who intend to trap you are not at the compound?

We can't assure that will happen, but if the target moves then we'll see that and either track his movements or hit him on the road.

They're either expecting us to try and infiltrate via social manipulation (the only plans that the captive individual knows about) or only know that someone was hanging around the compound and shot at them. I'm expecting them to up the security somewhat, but I'm hoping their focus will be on the wrong aspects.

I've got a spirit lurking around under concealment, under instructions to alert me when any of their mages (or active spells or foci) become visible in the compound. after that I can use flexible signature to bypass the wards. Plan A, however, is to just accept that we're going to lose spells to the wards. We're expecting that someone might have noticed that they're under attack by now, and the invisibility is primarily to get from the wall to the house across the open expanse of grounds with good lines of fire from the rail drones.

If the drones are out of ammo they're effectively disabled, so the far cheaper bouncy balls will do the same damage AND will screw with all of the sensors that might see through the invisibility (Radar and ultrasound are the primary problems here). Plus once a grenade explodes it's gone while bouncy balls will keep causing chaos for far longer, giving us a better window. Also, grenades would need a far more accurate delivery system than just throwing a bunch of targets and watching them run out of ammo.

Big and warm and bulletproof things are vulnerable to a LAW or a single "Ignore this target" command.

Meetup time has come and gone. Meetup was rigged to blow, rather than an ambush. We spotted the bombs and escaped unharmed.


Keep it up, these are the things that need to be considered.

Flexible Signature does not allow you to bypass wards, Fuel Drop. You need Masking for that one.

Prancing Umidori? *Shakes Head in Bemusement*

Well now we know what to get him for Christmas

Too True...

New plan:
Step 1. Summon powerful spirit in the form of a man made of a metallic fluid.
Step 2. Send in spirit to wreck up the place and fight guards.
Step 3. Send in closest team member to cyborg e.g street sam with much cyber (bonus points for actual cyborg).
Step 4. Have "cyborg" say to target "come with me if you want to live"
Step 5. Profit.

I don't know if we've moved entirely past the pigeon idea in favor of bouncy balls, but just in case anyone else has nefarious plans involving birds I wanted to answer the original question.

Being from Seattle I can report that the pigeons are largely concentrated in urban areas but are relatively rare elsewhere. Depending on where the compound is located in Everett, pigeons are probably uncommon. What are far more abundant, especially near the water (like Everett) are seagulls. If you show up at the waterfront with a basket of French fries (are these chips in Australia? whatever: greasy potatoes) you'll quickly find yourself surrounded by a few dozen of your newest avian friends. Nobody would much mind if you drugged and carted them off, except for some impressionable children. You could probably earn a bounty from local business owners. I don't know if there are any seagull shamen that would object. Probably about the same number as Pigeon shamen.

Crows seem to be the most common bird in this region. The bastards have attacked me more than once. If only I could mana dart.

Do Seagull shamans use the stats for Rat shamans?

~Umi

I'd let that fly...

I think that bouncy balls would settle down in a few seconds. Who knows if they would trigger the drones?

How about a levitated electric blanket? Or a levitated bomb? I love that spell. Or see if you can hack the drones to get them to unload their ammo.

Won't the mage still know if their ward is breeched by a spell, even if it has a different signature, even that of whoever cast it? I didn't know that even masking would stop the notification. Systematically take out the wards or knock out the people that made them. Unless they're badasses your people are probably better.

If you mask your aura with one that is allowed to cross it unhindered (and then sleaze through the ward), then the ward will not notify the "caster."

Fortunately I have both. and surely you mean extended masking? (which I also have)
That said, I thought flexible signature was supposed to let you bypass wards by pretending to be someone authorized to go through said wards.

Thanks. We have both french fries and chips in Australia, and seagulls are the airborne vermin of choice near my home so I know how the two interact pretty well . thanks for the tip off, I'll be sure to switch to seagulls if we decide to go with birds as well as bouncy balls (Capturing them in bulk is hardly difficult, just buy some chips and coat them in sedatives. I think my character's new van is going to need a clean after this!)

EDIT: Ok, seagulls should trigger drones and bouncy balls will screw with their motion sensors ultrasound, thermal and radar. That pretty much means that they HAVE to deploy some guys to check out the big holes in the walls, right? I'm thinking of adding a couple of smoke bombs to the bouncy balls to add to the confusion, plus thermal smoke and holograms at the breaches should be a decent attraction. I seem to remember a decoy drone of some description that might also help, but I'm away from my books at the moment so I can't go and look it up.

The same 3 my current Mystic Adept has. I call it the Holy Triumvirate.
Masking is what you use to fool wards, Flexible Signature is what you use to set a False Signature, and Extended Masking lets you cover active foci, spells, etc with your Masking.

Unfortunately, Flexible Signature does not have the functionality of Masking for penetrating wards, though you COULD make an argument for it....

And Yes, You will definitely need to clean your van afterwards...

Just looked it up and you're quite right. since I'm going to be hanging out in a car outside of the fight zone and maintaining a bunch of buff spells (I'm the extraction plan) it looks like it'll be my spells pitted against their wards. Hence, extended masking is going to be what counts after all.

I have to ask: How high on most people's list of priorities are the Holy Triumvirate over other options like Centering and Shielding?

EDIT: Does anyone know a decent car cleaning firm in Seattle that doesn't ask inconvenient questions like "Dude WTF? Were you keeping a flock of seagulls in here or something?!?"

Depends upon the character.

My current Character has just those 3 (Grade 3 Initiate).
My Ninja has Adept Centering and Masking, with Flexible Signature my next purchase (with 4 Power Points instead of Metamagic (Grade 4 Initiate), Purchased the Metamagics separately).

I would say that Masking is generally pretty high on my list, regardless of character concept, with Flexible Signature purchased when other core Metamagic Requirements have been met. It is generally all about the concept for me. I generally play an Awakened about 50% of the time.

What about a few lonestar iballs (smoke / flashpak versions) with atomizers filled with heating chemicals / nanosmoke? (the cigarette stuff that forms shapes) Or coating the bouncy balls with carcerands containing the same heating chemicals?

Ref; AR82, Chemical Heater, 4 nuyen a pop.

sounds great, though with a few thousand balls it'll get expensive very quickly.

Seagulls and starlings are both really common around here. Crows too, but they're also a little smarter than most people give them credit for; that might throw a monkey wrench in your plan if you swap to crow.

Regularly dropping 20 pound loads of french fries on top of the target building in the days leading up to the run would probably result in the area being saturated with birds. No need to trap or do anything else high-end, just keep setting off the gun system with moving objects until they take the motion tracking offline entirely.

I actually rather like this suggestion, but it may tip them off to our plan a bit early. Also, the entire point is that we want chaos, with drones emptying belts of ammo everywhere and guards running around trying to cover multiple security breaches simultaneously. Merely forcing them to take down their motion tracking probably won't have the same effect.


On the other hand, it is just the kind of awesome craziness that would leave the guards going "WTF?!?"

Guard 1: (Deadpan) "Huh. That's something you don't see every day."
Guard 2: "What?"
Guard 1: (Deadpan) "It's raining chips again."
Guard 2: "I had heard that it's always raining in Seattle, but this is ridiculous!"
Guard 1: (Deadpan) "Yup. Five nuyen says it's to do with that guy who we caught snooping around."

How many combat rounds can balls bounce? And you should test to see if it actually works like medium-sized birds in faking out the drones.

Edit: Just thought of something.

Can Trid displays and illusion spells create light and images in other wavelengths than visible light of humans? For instance, thermographic holograms for dwarves and trolls? Try to find a targeting system from one of your contacts and experiment with that.

Does this also mean your spells don't need to roll to pass through?

As far as I remember, We have always covered that with the Masking Roll (Since Extended Masking allows you to cover your spells and foci to a point). If you succeed, then your spells make it through unhindered. If you fail the Masking Test, well, then your spells/foci likely go down too (since they immediately test agianst the ward individually and pop if they lose the contest), alerting the caster in the process, of course.

So... if my spells are going in but I'm not, are only the spells I cover with extended masking going to be undetected by the ward?

I have to say that this thread subtitle always makes me grin every time I see it

You cannot cover spells independent of your Aura. So no... Your spells cast through the ward will set it off.

250000 bouncy balls.



-k

So your airtight surveillance didn't spot your late and unlamented teammate's little escapade, but it will catch the difference between a van making a run for groceries and taking the target out?

Good luck. You'll need it.

He ran off before we had the chance to put anything in place. He literally sped straight from the meet to the target.