I’m starting this diary on a hunch that it’ll help me connect some dots in the near future. I’m not sure why I think that will be necessary, but provided no-one finds this thing then no harm done.

17/10/2070. First entry: Hostage rescue at McHughs.
I’ll be honest I’ve had a bit of a stingy run of jobs lately, with Knight Errant taking over the Seattle contract and actually being competent. Hopefully that won’t last too long. So when I got a call from Last Chance telling me that one of his fellow street-docs was in a bit of a bind I figured “Why not? It’ll help pay the rent… right?”
The client’s name was George Hampton, a Shaman who’d fallen behind on his protection payments. The local muscle had taken his daughter as a hostage, and he couldn’t afford the ransom. To be honest, if it hadn’t been for the young girl’s life hanging in the balance I’d have walked out right then and there. I’m not a charity, after all!
This was also when I got to meet my partner for this job, a dwarf with more muscle than brains who went by the name of Elas. A quick description: Short, Bearded, Reeking, and packing a sawnoff shotgun under his armoured jacket. I seemed to recall something about this guy being trouble, but with the fast turnover of rookie runners in this city I couldn’t be certain it was this guy the rumors spoke of. Best to assume it was, just to be on the safe side.

So we take the job, despite Elas’s suspicions that our employer wasn’t going to pay up. Seriously, if the meet takes place in the guy’s place of business, and the purpose of the job relates to his inability to pay protection, what kind of moron would he have to be to then try and stiff the runners their payment? We literally know where he lives! Our first lead is a guy named Vic, who tends to hang out at the local McHughs. Normally I’d ask my rigger buddy Yagar to stake the place out for me with a couple of discreet drones, but considering the shoestring budget we were working for I’d probably have ended up losing money. Anyway, time was of the essence.

So we park our vehicles a bit up from the McHughs and walk the rest of the way. Elas has a roadmaster which I swear he lives out of, explaining his lack of basic hygiene.
Note to self: Never set foot in that vehicle. Ever.
The entrance to the McHughs contains our first obstacle. A metal detector. Now I tend to travel fairly light, with a streetline special and a silenced Colt America in a shielded holster being my default loadout. Elas, on the other hand, was packing a sawnoff shotgun and more likely than not some heavy duty combat ‘ware.
Luckily, sabotage is one of my many talents.
I pretended to trip as we reached the metal detector and snagged a few important-looking wires as I stood back up. It worked, and we got into the place without setting anything off. Our target was sitting at a corner table, wearing a fairly nice suit and eating a burger. Kind of a pity he’d let so much grease dribble down his chin, as it ruined the whole ‘professional mobster’ look he had going. We ordered to avoid suspicion, Elas grabbing the biggest and greasiest Beast burger on the menu while I elected for a slightly less stomach-churning salad. In retrospect I doubt that anything on that menu wouldn’t give you a bad case of every food-related ailment known to medical science.
I begin my approach on the target, casually asking if there was anyone sitting with him and would he mind if I joined him. Most guys wouldn’t complain about an attractive young lady showing an interest in them, but tonight my charms fell completely flat and I was rudely dismissed. I did notice that every member of the McHughs staff showed an unusual amount of interest in the exchange, and several reached for concealed weapons before I backed off. Not a complete loss, then.

As Elas and I sat down and began plotting over our comms for a new angle of attack one of the other patrons walked up and pulled a gun on our target. He barely managed to get a shot off before Elas dropped him with a blast from his sawn-off… so that when the staff looked up all they saw was a dwarf with a shotgun and their buddy (I found out later that about ¾ of the staff here are related. I should have realized, half of them looked imbred) clutching his chest where he’d been shot.
There was no way this was ending well for us.
The fight that followed was mercifully brief. Elas may look like he can’t count above ten but that dwarf knows how to mess things up. The only survivors were the civilians (a father, his daughter, and a student, all of whom had the good sense to hide beneath their tables with their arms around their heads and wait for the noise to go away), the security guard, and Vic himself, and the latter two only made it because I was loaded out with stick-and-shock. One quick interrogation later and Vic had told me everything, from the girl’s location to his family’s antics about the local businesses. Some cunning redirection made it look like we’d been hired by the guy who started the fight (Vic was too shocked at being shot to remember exactly how things had played out, and considering the mess Elas made of the rest of the staff no-one was still breathing to contradict us), and to play the role up to the hilt we left with the girl (Moxie) as a hostage rather than a rescued victim.

Our client was very happy that we got his little girl back, and most appreciative that we’d managed to divert suspicion away from him in the process. I managed to wrangle some extra cash out of him for the information about his woes being more malign than a mere run of bad luck, and we parted on good terms. It may take a bit of digging, but I’m sure I can find someone who’ll pay good money for the rest of the information Vic graciously provided.

Final memo: Find new brand of temporary hair dye.

19/10/2070. Had a chat with a potential employer. Hopefully this leads somewhere.

23/10/2070. New job. Johnson wants the head of a drug lab extracted for questioning, with a bonus if we can sabotage the lab on our way out. Zero evidence is preferred. She's put together an interesting team for the job.

Nitro: An elf male who's some kind of ninja-type, favors a katana over something from this millennium. We'll see if he's anywhere near as good as his boasting claims. I didn't see any signs of augmentation, so possibly an adept.

Jade Falcon: A troll male who specializes in beating the crap out of people with sharp objects. He got brought in as a consultant expert on drugs, apparently he's a dealer himself. I just hope that doesn't make him unreliable. Also, it's weird calling a three-meter-tall slab of walking muscle 'Jade'. Again, no signs of augmentation so either a juicer or an adept... or just a troll who hits things, that works too.

Shadow: Another male elf, and another combat monster. At least this one seems to know about, you know, guns. He looks like some kind of ex-military type, and from what I can see he shows signs of regular stress on his body that might indicate regular use of combat drugs. Also... 'Shadow'? Well, at least it's not as dumb as calling a troll Jade. Some minor signs of augmentation.

Carter: A third elf male for our merry band. If it wasn't for Jade, it'd look like we worked for the Ancients or something. Anyway, this guy's supposed to be our mojo-slinger for the run. Of the four he looks the most civilized.

Our employer wasn't able to give us the exact location of our target's workplace, but she was able to provide the names of a few dealers who work with him. We're going to start by approaching them as potential new sources, see if we can get them to set us up with a meeting.

24/10/2070. It looks like our resident troll believes he has acting talent, as he volunteered to try and talk to our first dealer. As a backup, I slipped in while he was distracting our orcish dealer and planted a stealth tag on his car.

Long story short, it looks like burning your brain out on bliss doesn't make you an unstoppable lie detector. Who'd have thought it? Our troll sets up a meeting for him and his 'supplier' with the orc's supplier. Considering that Jade decided to pose as an agent for the cartel muscling in on the market, the odds of this being a trap are staggeringly high. I'm just glad he had the brains to insist on a meeting in neutral territory, rather than the initial suggestion of the dealer's home turf.

After checking that the meeting's location wasn't simply rigged to blow, Jade and I went in posing as dealer and supplier on the off chance this was legit while everyone else concealed themselves around the building to ambush any hostiles.

As expected, our 'meeting' was a gang hit squad rocking up in case we were stupid enough to show. It looks like I was wrong about shadow, as he left his silenced Ares Alpha behind and instead waded into the fight with a combat axe while high on something. On the bright side Nitro seems to be as good as he boasted, and between our three combat monsters the six gangers were minced before they could so much as blink. I managed to hit their leader with stick-and-shock so we could interrogate him, and through some difficult negotiations I've convinced the rest of the team that wiping his mind and letting him go after we're done is more favorable than killing him. No need to let him know that yet, though.

I have to add at this point that I do like having Jade, Shadow and Nitro in a fight. People shoot at the drugged-up crazies charging at them with combat axes far more than the chick with a light pistol lurking behind cover taking pot-shots. The problem is that they don't seem to get the whole non-lethal thing, which may be an issue if we ever get hired to act against a corp.
In any case, why kill people if you're not getting paid for it? Chances are that you could find someone to pay you to take them out, and you're giving them free work.

Interesting observation: Jade is lousy at threatening people. He's three meters tall, practically built of muscle, and has an unnatural love of edged weapons, but he lacks any of the finesse that you need to be truly terrifying. Luckily, I'm a bit better at that aspect of interpersonal interaction than he is, and I managed to convince our captive gang lieutenant to spill the beans.

After disguising the team as members of the hit squad, we've entered Cutter territory to stake out some possible labs. Unlike the others, I've opted to loiter in the guise of a street bum and am writing this in the lee of a decrepit building. Yay Seattle weather!

25/10/2070.
We've tracked the target back to his apartment in Bellevue, and to my surprise the group agreed unanimously that attempting anything there would be too dangerous. After retiring to a hotel for the night we've come up with a plan to nab the guy: pretend to be plain-clothes detectives, pull him over, then sedate him and escape to the barrens while the other half of the team grabs his car and follows us. I had to pull an all-nighter organizing fake IDs, getting the car and finding a Decker to manipulate gridguide for us, but by this evening we were able to get him as he came home from work. The others have sent me to dispose of the vehicles while they do a final hit on the guy's lab, so hopefully that goes well.

26/10/2070.
Apparently last night was a complete success, and even better the Johnson payed up in full. All in all, a good day.


OOC: Is anyone actually reading this and enjoying it, or am I wasting everyone's time here?

I, for one, am highly amused.

You have a my resounding approval.

Those chummers sound like fuel to a fire. I can't wait.

Want me to post Bios ect when they get written?

I'd say do it. I'm enjoying this thus far.

This was amusing, quite amusing, FD.


Wish I was in a game I could write a journal for.

Next session is on sunday. Location is G cubed, Denning road Bunbury, Western Australia. We start at 11 am local time. 5th edition characters, the other GM disapproves of the number of awakened PCs that go through the group so going tech will make him happy. Standard priorities. No houserules of note, using hot patch missions errata.

PM me if you want to discuss your concept.

I'm in New Jersey, The Eastern Seaboard of the United States of America, so that would be quite a drive, and I won't touch 5th ed. Sorry.

Pity, I like tech characters... But even if I were going to play 5th Ed, I sure as shit wouldn't play a tech character with how hard they get shafted.

drat. It won't be the same without you.

Oh well, at least I can let you know how it goes with another diary entry

Your elf girl, is she a Face, by any chance?

If you go full pornomancer with her, you oughta pull a Savonarola and convince someone wealthy and powerful to go hardcore aescetic, enforcing it top-down on all his minions.

Just for the evulz.

That's a little while away, as I'm trying to keep all my core skills at about the same level. since that's two skill groups plus intimidate and disguise and possibly pistols, getting to ridiculous dice pools is going to take a while.

Of course, I'll be saving up for some rating 3 tailored pheromones ASAP, so that'll be a bit of a boost.

other than that, good idea. It'll just take a while to put into practice.

Nice to see another West Aussie round these parts!

Does your other GM grumble about magic because it's overpowered? Or is he the sort that loves the gutter punk feeling you get from running the barrens? Personally I'm fond of how much drek you can throw at a magical group and if they succeed they may even get a full team of light-bringers which would be way too cool.

He just feels that since only 1% of the population is magical then having tons of magic characters makes no sense in universe. house rule is that you get 1 magical character in 10... which was brought in after several other players had a bunch of magic characters while I've had a grand total of 1.

Your GM's being a dick, then, telling you you can't play magical characters because they should be rarer. Especially given the shafting that tech characters got in 5e.

I have mentioned this. We'll see where it goes.
Personally, I'm fine playing a mundane and showing up the mages.

An interesting rule, but not one I would want to put into play.

The 1% awakened stat is one of my few concessions of Fluff versus Fun. No-one likes being gimped and while the group has an even mix of magic and chrome right now, the magic players are clearly better.

Oh, it gets better. he mentioned something about having tech start to fail in 1-10 months in game time due to nanotech going on the fritz. (remember we're behind the official timeline)

I told him to forget it.

I'd remind him that I know the damage values for a flung or wielded core rulebook...

Provided the PC's are playing through Clutch/Storm Front, that would be excellent. There could be some really exciting moments where disruptive nanites begin tearing down a bridge the PC's are on or have an NPC they know freak on em when the nano-hive breaks down.

Of course if your PC's have that stuff in them, that's a different ball game.

You sound like a delight to play with. I mean that genuinely. Often my group utilise dice as projectiles, especially when the Ork decides to "Mark his Territory".

03/11/2070. New job, same Johnson. Whoever's employing this lady has a grudge against the Vory, and possibly a death wish. She wants us to hit a Vory weapons shipment when the smugglers transfer it from their boat to their ground transport. Hard enough, but since our mage and troll mincing machine have decided to demonstrate a disappearing act it looks like we're going to have to hire in some new hands.
Meet Sarah, our new troll rigger. I met her when I was selling the deck I picked up off that fry chef, looks like she's a bit of a decker on the side. I asked her along to the meet and it turns out she's quite the negotiator... for a troll. Nothing against trolls, but so many sell themselves as just dumb muscle that even those of us who live in the shadows can be lulled into complacency. Anyway, between us we've managed to up the payout on this mission from 20% of the take to 26%.
No replacement mage on such short notice, so hopefully the Vory's magical assets are just as stretched.
One final part of the job is to kill the rigger in charge of the whole operation with extreme prejudice and render his cyberware unrecoverable. Now Miss Johnson did say that stealing the body for dissection is A okay, but with 'ware that hot I'm not going to be able to do my normal search for buyers. My street-doc Last Chance should be able to take him off our hands but At best we're looking at a pittance. Still, the Johnson is offering an extra 10 grand each to get this done, so he must have pissed someone important off.

We did a basic recon on the target, and it looks like Sarah's very good at what she does. Unfortunately my own lockpicking skills have gone unpracticed for several months and it showed, taking me a full fifteen seconds just to get the keypad open to override the maglock, and almost damaging said case in the process. I need to practice more often.

04/11/2070. After considering all the options, it looks like we'll be entering the compound via the waterfront. Finding unmarked diving gear is hard enough, but doing so without risking the Vory finding out is doubly so. Sarah also asked me to find her a rotor drone and sniper rifle so she can provide some fire support for the mission. Normally not a problem but, well, Vory. I'm still acclimatizing to Seattle, so cutting off a big hunk of the black market is hardly helpful. Anyway, I think I have a lead on that drone.

05/11/2070. One ex-lone-star rotordrone, one carpet ruined. The new car smell in my beautiful new new GMC Bulldog is gone forever, the carpet has to be thrown out due to an oil leak, and one of the rotors cut the cover on a seat. On top of all that, Sarah can't actually afford the damned thing so I'm loaning her the money until we get payed for this job. She better pay up. Oh well, at least I can get a replacement carpet easily enough.

06/11/2070. I hate riggers. The new carpet is history. See, turns out the drone didn't have the right kind of weapon mount for a sniper rifle, so Sarah decides to mod it in the back of my van. Whoever used to own the drone had skimped out on maintenance, so when she takes the mount apart it drops enough stale lubricant to fill a bucket. And she thinks she can wash it out?!?
Anyway, the boys swam out to the target compound a few hours before the drop was supposed to take place and decided to conceal themselves in the boatshed. Luckily I've spent the last two nights staying up late reading up on the art of bypassing maglocks, so when they called in for assistance opening the door I was able to walk them through the process step by step. They then tied themselves to the ceiling and began the long wait for the Vory to turn up.
Sarah and I got pizza and watched a bit of Chase: Knight Errant.
The Vory turned up a few hours early to secure the area. ten guys, four drones, five dogs and the troll leading the whole shebang. All the foot-soldiers look to be orcs, which will make them very hard to kill. They start their patrols by poking around to make sure no-ones lying in wait for them, but a bit of good luck has them miss our boys by a whisker. Still two hours to go before the shipment arrives.
Checked out that new show on the Truman Distribution Network. Sadness, Cubed. Not bad.
Well, the shipment arrived on schedule and the Vory began loading it into our new Roadmasters for us. Very kind of them. Nitro and Shadow decided to try and lure a patrolling guard into the boathouse, thin their numbers one at a time. Would have worked, too, if not for that dog. Of course, Sally decided that our best bet was to divert their attention away from our chummers with some high-velocity tungsten through Vory skulls. It turned out that dead guards attracts more attention than a couple of stray barks, allowing the dynamic duo to sneak to the main building. Of course this is our luck, so it runs out right as they reach the doors along with our sniper support's ammo. Remember those drones I mentioned earlier? Well in all the excitement, neither did we. Sheer luck and some black-market SWAT armour saved Shadow's skin, while some amazing gymnastics did the same for Nitro. I'm in their ears cheerleading over the comms, and for once I'm entirely fine conforming to gender stereotypes. Beats getting shot at, at least. Then the doors open and the other five guys open up. Thank whoever's up there that everyone decided to go with suppressed weapons for this fight or the Knights would be on their way with the heavy stuff by now. So what do our guys do upon seeing a room full of people trying to shoot them?
They charge.
Nitro gets their first and cuts one guy down, then turns to the second before something catches his blade. One of those dueling bots from Ares was lurking in the next room, so the two of them square off while Shadow takes on the remaining four guys, braining one with a combat axe.

To be continued...

Awh, c'mon! To be continued?!

Did your group end the game in the middle of the action or something? I'm on the edge of my seat here.

Yup. One guy had to go and pick up his wife, and another was hitching a lift with him. Those were the players of Shadow and Nitro, respectively.

06/11/2070. Continued.
Anyway, one of the guards on the perimeter wasn't as dead as we'd thought and tried to start up one of the roadmasters. Rather than letting him drive away with half our paycheck Sarah quickly hacked in and brained him with an airbag. Not fatal, but in his condition it was a knock-out blow.
Note to self: Disable remote activation of airbags in the van.
Back inside the fight took a bit of a turn for the worse. The Duelist went down to some more of Nitro's fancy sword-work, and Shadow ran past to try and hack up one of the orcs taking cover behind the upturned desk in the corner. Wisely, this fellow decided that discretion was the better part of valor and dived out of the way in time to avoid the axe-wielding maniac. There was a moment of calm as Shadow ripped his axe from where he'd embedded it in the desk. The surviving dobermans had flanked around to the door and were drawing a bead on Shadow, while the orcs were abandoning their guns and drawing knives.
Then a massive red-furred bear appeared from out of nowhere behind Shadow, and things started going downhill.
As always, the first one to react was Nitro. He decided to solve the problem the way he solves all his problems: he charges it with a katana. He makes the thing bleed, but the hit isn't exactly a killing blow... merely enough to attract the brute's wrath. The drones opened up on Shadow. If he hadn't been wearing his armour he'd have been shredded, but fortunately it was up to the task and he stayed standing.
I have to commend Lone Star's armour contractor. They do not mess around when making armour for their HTRUs, as three orcs wielding knives proceeded to thoroughly prove. Through it all, bleeding from a half-dozen bullet wounds and a couple of stabs for good measure, Shadow didn't even flinch. Whatever 'Ware he's got or drugs he's on to let him completely ignore his injuries like this, I hope I never have to face anyone with it in battle. Especially a troll.
Sarah logs into Shadow's medkit to stem the worst of the bleeding and he does either the ballsiest or stupidest thing I have ever seen. He pulls a flash bang and lobs it into the corner, then tries to somersault out of there. The giant bear spirit catches him in midair and throws him to the ground just as the grenade goes off, and fortunately Nitro was smart enough to hit the dirt with his hands over his ears as well. Flash bangs are loud enough under normal circumstances, but in a confined space like this the blast goes beyond disorienting and into "Oh drek! My brains are pouring out my ears while my eyes bleed!" territory.
Obviously, the fight all but ended then and there. One of the dobermans had strayed too close to the blast and must have had its sensors fried, as it stopped contributing to the fight and just stood there.
Honestly, the bear spirit is the one I really feel sorry for. It gets summoned from its native realm against its will, forced into service by some self-important mage, then it gets hit with sharp bits of metal before finally someone goes and flash-bangs the drek out of it. When you've only had physical senses for a few seconds, flash-bangs are just cruel.

Anyway, after that it was pretty much a matter of killing the guy, cleaning up any evidence that pointed back to us, and getting out of there before the cops showed up. Miss Johnson payed up in full, including letting Sarah keep one of the roadmasters, which is my favorite way for a run to end.
Speaking of which, my van suffered one final indignity. Since part of the job was making sure their rigger's expensive 'ware wasn't available for retrieval we decided to do a little light organlegging on the side and resell it. Naturally, the body got thrown into the back of my van for transport.
Now to his credit Nitro put some effort into wrapping up the body so that blood didn't get spilled everywhere. Unfortunately we also retrieved the drone that got flash-banged for re purposing, and at some point it ended up on top of the headless troll corpse. Naturally, this meant that blood went EVERYWHERE.

I really need to find a discreet vehicle cleaners.

07/11/2070.

I asked the others out for a post-run drink tonight, but only Sarah took me up on the offer. Nitro said something about sitting around meditating, while Shadow was quite clear that he doesn't socialize. Ever. So, girls night out.
After a few drinks we get talking and I get to hear about her vendetta against the Humanis Policlub. Personally, I tend to simply hold all those elitist groups in contempt, but I can understand why you might get worked up over them. She didn't tell me exactly why she hates them so much, but there was a gleam in her eye when she told me all this that makes me think I haven't heard the last of it by a long shot.
Oh, and she payed me back in full. Provided she starts using her own vehicles instead of repeatedly ruining my ride, I think I'm beginning to like her.

Sounds like you had a good ride. The players in my Star Wars game had a hell of a ride, too. I threw a really huge boss droid at them and they killed it over the course of a marathon seven-hour session.

Well, for all those playing at home here's a chance to join in: help me make Walker's backstory!

I have the basics: one of her parents was a runner (if anyone's 3rd edition characters want to make a cameo...), who taught her the basics of her current skill set. Since her late teens she's been doing Assassinations/Corporate espionage (generally something along the lines of impersonate someone close to the target, sneak in like that, then do the job and get out), with the 'official' job on both her real (national) SIN and her fake SIN saying she's an actor (She actually has several minor roles in a couple of low-budget trids). She grew up around Manhattan, but has recently moved to Seattle for some as yet undefined reason (fleeing, vengeance, something like that).

Normally I'd make something awesome up myself but since I'm also the GM on this one I'm a bit more focused on making the runs fun for everyone rather than putting the limelight on my own character, hence the plea for help. (Protip for GMs who for whatever reason have to add a GMPC and make it work: Leadership. They can guard the car/be ready to act as cavalry/be the exit strategy/guard the rigger's body + give the players really nice bonuses over the comms. No plot armour required, they're contributing without overshadowing the PCs, all sorts of nice stuff like that. YMMV.)

12/11/2070.
I hate freebies.
Some context. Sarah called. There's been a murder up the block from where she lives, and she's not happy with how Knight Errant is handling the investigation. So she did the only logical thing and contacted a bunch of her runner friends. I'm a fekking career criminal, not a CSI detective! (That said, I did play one in a trid once...)
So we meet up and head out to the crime scene. For those keeping count, that's myself, a professional murderer who specializes in impersonating someone close to the target. Nitro, a ninja who's primary skill is cutting people into small chunks. Shadow, an ex-soldier who appears to have no skills or knowledge beyond ending people. Finally, we have Sarah herself, a Decker and Rigger with solid skills in both.
Note that no-one there have any skills in any form of criminal investigation. I foresee a disaster.
Also, she wants us to do it for free. If it was either of the other layabouts I'd have told them where they could shove this, but I actually like Sarah so I'm going to do it. For free. That is unnatural.

Afternoon.
Our first course of action was, naturally enough, to go to the crime scene and have a look around. Of course, Knight Errant had sealed the area off with their impenetrable police tape, along with a bored officer. This guy was barely enough to slow me down. A couple of words about how we were attached to a private investigator firm and he let us in... I get the distinct impression that his shift was almost over and he just didn't care any more. The victim was an orc teen who was killed while taking out the trash for his folks. Poor kid. The cops had removed the body, naturally, but Shadow said he could tell the type of weapon used based on the bullet holes near the site. An assault rifle. I don't doubt that it's possible to tell the weapon size based on the bullet holes it leaves behind, but Shadow's judgement still feels a bit suspect to me.
Anyway, we poked around for a bit and found that there was some kind of large vehicle had been parked on a nearby verge. It looks like our killer came here from elsewhere, then shot this unfortunate teen, then high-tailed it out of here. Naturally a nice neighborhood like this has cameras everywhere, and we have a Decker. No problem, right? Yeah, whoever we're after also has a Decker covering their tracks. Sarah does her stuff and works out where this Decker was when he wiped the cameras. He was down in Puyallup, in Ancients territory. I have a bad feeling about this.

Evening.
We rocked up at the location and sure enough there's an Ancient hangout. Instead of doing the smart thing, IE sending someone in to talk to them and see if they have anything to do with the murder. I might just be spitballing here, but if I were the Ancients I wouldn't have my Decker working from within my territory if they could plausibly be traced.
Anyway, take a look at the skillsets of my compatriots. Notice something in common? Violence. So, they decide to sneak in, knock someone out, then interrogate them elsewhere. Drone recon gives us a decent idea of how many people we're looking at, plus we find an entrance that's hard to reach but almost unguarded. In through the roof.
We sneak to the building around the back and climb up without being noticed. Then when we're in position Shadow takes out an Endoscope, slips it under the hidden trap-door... and face-plants straight through it to the floor below. I still don't know what he slipped on.
It gets better. The room he landed in? That would be the barracks just above the common room. REAL stealthy there.
At this point things progress pretty much as expected. Nitro and Shadow pummel some guys on the upper floor (Nitro is incredible at dodging. Half a dozen people opened up on him from the lower floor with long bursts and none of them so much as touched him. The floor got torn up pretty good, though.) , run into a bit of resistance on the lower floor, then Shadow panics and starts throwing flash-bangs.
Good news: The flash-bangs take out the majority of the Ancients with merely crippling damage to the dynamic duo.
Bad news: The flash-bangs attract the attention of the Knight Errant team watching the place. You know, where they'd tracked the Decker who wiped the footage from the murder they were investigating? Yeah, saw that one coming.
At this point we split up. Sarah picks up the others in the Roadmaster along with their prisoner, while I slip into the apartment building next door and hide among the squatters. That way if Sarah gets caught, I can bail them out and visa versa.

What follows is a car chase that makes the news as Sarah rams through the road block the cops are setting up (running a Knight over in the process. That's going to come back to bite us, I'm sure of it.) and bolts for Redmond. She manages to evade police interceptors 3 times by performing a series of increasingly desperate stunts culminating in DRIVING OFF AN OVERPASS. Once she hits the barrens and buys herself some breathing room I call around and find her a no-questions-asked chop-shop where she can do some repairs and repainting. Turns out Assault Cannon rounds do really nasty things to body-work. Who knew? I put the distraction of the car chase to good use and managed to slip past the police cordon through a couple of joined cellars. A quick trip home, a change of outfit, and a call to one of my contacts on the force was enough to get a copy of some data they found in the Ancient hideout. Meanwhile, the others set up a fake prisoner gambit and managed to confirm that the Ancients had nothing to do with the killing.

Finally, Sally did some follow-up on the data I got. It's info on a Decker that the Ancients noticed loitering on their patch around the time of the murder. Matrix searches turned up a single hit, an old Lone Star file. Naturally, it was corrupted. A Decker who covers his tracks on the matrix? Shocking. Anyway, Sarah reckons that there'll be a backup of the file on one of the Lone Star servers in the city, but we'll need to go on-site to retrieve it.
So, a run against Lone Star looks to be in the works.
For free.

When did I become a charity again?

"Sticking it to the Man" is not quite as much fun as "Sticking the Man to the Grill," even if the latter does tend to come back to haunt you worse.


Anyway, this is amusing. I should probably stay out of your character's backstory, though. The last time I got involved, I dared my group to play an Amnesia 25-pt character in SR4.

They got a neotenous elf stuck forever in the awkward place between thirteen and fourteen.

Feel free to throw suggestions. I'm not obliged to use them if I don't think they work, after all

In the States we had a show called Walker Texas Ranger. Walker solved most of his problems with roundhouse kicks. I started reading expecting that and was pleasantly surprised.

I think that would be the diary of Walker: Troll Face!

Anyway, glad to entertain.

This run has an echo of the old Shadowrun novels. Walker will do well to keep an ear to the ground and a predator on hand.

I don't think you've told us what Walker looks like, a description and stat block would be interesting to read.

Keep on posting Fuel, I like your story.

Walker's Stat line:

Continued. Sorry, had to go to work.

See why I need that van?

Alas I haven't really had much time to pin down Walker's physical appearance (It'd be a lot easier if I didn't have to write runs every week!) so if you, dear reader, wish to submit a description or vote on an existing description, the floor is all yours

EDIT: Just realized I forgot to clarify: I've been getting away with no description because in our group it's pretty much taken for granted that if you're out on business you're wearing a disguise, provided you have the skill.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted?



In that case, I'd say what she looks like is a free-runner wearing heavy white robes to show off like a boss.
She doesn't really have the stats to back that up, though. Not nearly enough physical skill and gymnastics, or blades, and no specialization in spurs or those not-spurs you strap to your forearm.

Never did play those games. I hear they're good, but I've just never had time.
You know how it is.

Not really, though I wish I did. I have nothing but time.

Start with II, then play Brotherhood and Revelations. Don't bother with I - too much fuck to go along with the good, stuff they ironed out in making II. Things like galloping on your horse alerting every Crusader between the Holy Land and Constantinople to your presence and bringing them at a dead run to come beat your ass, yet them not giving a fuck if you trot past just slightly slower.

[e]I'm mid-way through Revelations right now. They improved on a lot of stuff from II and Brotherhood, but they also managed to fuck up some stuff that makes me gonk, too. Revelations is set entirely in Constantinople, with no countryside in the walls, unlike Rome in Brotherhood, yet despite all the work that went into letting horses into the city in Brotherhood, there's nary a horse to be seen in all of Istanbul. And the Den Defense minigame... Ugh. How did they fuck up tower defense, huh? Worse, how did they fuck it up so badly that most people find it simpler and more expedient to go full-on with Tau tactics and abandon the damn towers, let the Templars reclaim them, and reclaim them back from the Templars.

Sounds... Frustrating...

Eh, not so much. The Meddeterranian Defense minigame can be frustrating, though. For instance, it continues to tick over - you lose Control on cities you have control over - even during times (such as all of Chapter 7) when you have no access to mail posts, let alone dens (because Ezio's not in Constantinople,) so you come back to find the minigame in disarray with half your cities under siege by the Templars.

I guess that is one of the reasons I don't play those kinds of games. I would be very frustrated.

Okay. Finally got a description hammered out, complements to my girlfriend for helping me get the details right.

Walker is an attractive female elf. She's about 1.7 meters tall, has long red hair which reaches down just past her shoulder blades and a fairly pale complexion. Her cybereyes can change colour on a whim, a common feature but very useful for a face. She has to get her hair cut and regrown occasionally due to heavy use of dyes, but she considers this to be a cost of doing business.

Um... I'm really not good at this. Any other details people want?

This is really embarrassing. If there's one thing I'm REALLY bad at writing, it's character descriptions.

Ah hell, why not.

Try this on for size.
Walker, the Elf Face
Standing just under five and a half feet tall, this elf is a very pretty girl, but not the kind of bombshell which permanently sears herself in the mind's eye of everyone who comes into contact with her. When not disguised as anyone specific or as any given archetype, she has the look of the hometown girl, the girl-next-door, with a lightly freckled face, long red hair which is unfortunately frequently subjected to the abuse of the scissors and dye, and an easy sexuality about her that might suggest a strong Irish ancestry. Elven supermodels would consider her practically obese, orc girls would think she needs a few cheeseburgers but has a moderately satisfactory amount of meat on her bones. Passing her on the street, you wouldn't glance at her twice - just a pretty face in the crowd, something that you might smile and think fondly on, but nothing too dramatic. Her breasts are a nice handful without being memorable, her hips are pleasantly curved without being booty. She was just a girl, you saw her; you'd have liked to have kissed her at the time, but thinking back on it, you can't really remember. Did she have green eyes, blue? Freckles, none? Long hair... Maybe. Was it red, or auburn, or blonde? Sorry, officer. She was just a pretty face, one in a sea of them.

This is the image I used as inspiration. Assuming a minor illusion to make her ears all rounded and a recent cut-and-dye job, hell, it could actually be her.

You, my friend, are awesome. That is now my official description for Walker.

You have won yourself one internet.

Woots!

*Electric guitar riff*

Awesome Pic, ShadowDragon8685... Good Find... Good description too.

I didn't find it, in all honesty. A friend of mine sent her to me. This is the one I found, and used as an alien space miner. The woman in lingerie was a foil for her.

It's all good.
Entertaining Miner too.