I just think it's a good thing Grease has a street doc/organlegger contact. My suggestion was going to be dumping the fresh body in ghoul territory.

I knew he'd come in handy!

"I create the bodies! I don't erase the bodies!"

I need to remember to take a Walter White contact in the future or just make a guy with a ton of levels in Chemistry to get rid of bodies.

Or get to know someone who keeps a pig farm.

Cool idea.

GM: "So what exactly is the point of having a pig farmer cousin living 50 miles away as a shadowrunning contact?"

hehe

I don't know if anyone has really relayed to Jack what Ramirez texted the group about the warrant. Overkill told him about the Harvey Brown signature on the warrant, but not that it was a corporate warrant. In Jack's mind, it would seem odd for someone at the head of the conspiracy to be putting their name on anything conspiracy related, but that's just him.

Let's just assume your character knows this by now as it doesn't really matter how he ended up being told.

I agree with you about not getting too close to it if he were the head of the conspiracy. But I would counter that it's possible that he's part of it but not the head, just being controlled by a third party like a gang or a syndicate somehow.

I'm fine with that. At the same time, following up on the lead with Maurice could reveal a completely different member of the conspiracy. We don't know which Lone Star person it is, so I don't think knowledge of Browne precludes following up the other point.

ETA: Assuming corporate warrants work like regular warrants, its also possible Browne could be being manipulated. Typically to get a warrant, an investigator needs to bring enough evidence to a judge to provide some kind of probable cause to enact the warrant. Someone could have proffered false evidence to get Browne to sign off on it. Then again, I have no clue how Corporate Warrants work though.

I find it most interesting (and have no clue how to follow up on this), that a regular Lone Star guy showed up with probably fake Lone Star guys to enact this warrant. I mean, the warrant even only specified one person (the probably innocent guy), rather than a squad of three + drones. How did that happen?

Yeah I agree with you. We need to follow up on this. Amy says stuff IC, it's not all perfect (she's not the smartest) and I try to intentionally RP it that with.

About the guys that did show up, I also tend to think we let go someone who was not a policeman, like Lynx or some such, but that shows that the guy who died wasn't really clean or he was really tricked into doing something stupid. There was a false police car too, most likely. But you keep mentioning three men... there's really no evidence of that. A rigger was involved, but there's no certainty that he was in the cars at all, he probably wasn't actually. There were only 2 men there as far as we can tell (unless I'm forgetting something).

I think from an OOC perspective, we could infer there was a rigger nearby, probably in the car, based on how the matrix works in SR5. That said, it's possible (though unlikely) he was controlling them from a significantly remote location. The probably becomes that even with a good RCC, that's hard to do at a distance.

-DrZ

Wait, did I say three men in IC? My apologies if I did, I was basing the numbers off what Lobo told us in OOC. I would consider a remote rigger to be a "close proximity" adversary.

ETA: Looking through the IC thread, y'all may have come to conclusion that a rigger was likely in the car. The cop that got away entered the passenger side door and the car switched to wireless off at some point shortly thereafter, which would require someone to be behind the wheel under most rules interpretations. It's possible that the cop inside could have slid over into the driver's side, but I think the simplest answer is that someone else was in that car in the driver's side.

EATA: I updated the Expense Report with Grease's pay & covering Murphy's tab.

Has Drave searched the dead Lone Star's commlink yet? I don't recall if we did that already.

I thought we frisked him, but not much else.

DrZ

Great posts guys

Happy you were all able to get that much done while I was gone.

@Grease - love the Snatch reference

So - w/ regards to the dead body Jacoby took off your hands, I'm angling for Jacoby getting rid of the body as a favor to you, rather than you scoring a bunch of money off of it. I feel that way for 2 reasons:

1) He is pretty sure the guy is a cop, because of the uniform and the news - which means that people are going to be looking for this guy, which makes it dangerous for him to try and move the body parts.

2) I really don't want the game to turn into an organ-legging operation where people start dragging off bodies for cash

Does this sound reasonable to you?

@Overkill,

Based on what you did IC, as Grease said, you frisked him and brought him to Jacoby's and that's it. Strictly speaking, the commlink is still at Jacoby's, as you didn't bring it with you to meet Murphy, nor did Grease pick it up when he made the arrangements with Jacoby - however I don't have a problem with Grease grabbing it on his way out the door after discussing the disposal of the body.

Is there anything questions I need to answer, or any posts I need to put up? If so, just let me know, otherwise please continue the RP, its very fun to read.

I agree on the body disposal, lets not teach the crew that it is a fun and profitable way to go.

I will have Grease grab that link from Jacoby's, there could be some intel Drave can recover from it. Do you want me to mention it in my next IC, either asking him for it, or telling him we need to get it from Jacoby's?

Also, Warrens United sounds like a group that Drave would probably have tried working with before, but he would have left upon learning that the group doesn't sweat collateral damage inflicted on civilians.

I'd be very, very careful with that commlink...

Wait, didn't I brick this one's link? It was the one who got away whose Icons I could never find.

It should be nonfunctioning, so I wouldn't worry about any traces or other tracking devices. I could try to rip some of the information off of it's hard drive though, depending on the state Lobo deems the link is in.

That's true. Although, if it is bricked, I would think that by all rights, the memory would be fried. Can't have it both ways, IMO. Then again, files are supposed to be stored throughout all kinds of devices, so who knows? I've never been a fan of that method of file storage in more recent SR versions.

OK, so we want to head back to Nic's, have a pow-wow, then everyone can head back to their respective locations?

I would just assume you have it. Now, you can't do anything with it until you fix it - and there is a possibility that the memory was wiped by the bricking.

You are going to need a toolkit, an hour of work, and a Hardware
+ Logic [Mental] test. Every hit you get can be used
to either remove one box of Matrix damage or cut the
time required in half; the first die spent toward time reduces
the time to half an hour, the second to 15 minutes,
and so on, to a minimum of one Combat Turn (3
seconds). Bricked or not, the device is off-line and unusable
during the repair process.

Questions:
Don't you use net hits to reduce the time rather than withholding dice from the pool? I.E. Overkill rolls 13 dice, gets 5 hits. He can use 3 hits to reduce damage and two hits to reduce time. At least that's how I understood it.

Give how matrix damage works, wouldn't you only need to restore one box of damage to get it functional?

Edited my previous post in light of Jack's - I though you had to allocate dice rather than hits - my bad.

Yes - you only need one hit to restore it to functionality - the example I had given was to fully repair it (which, in retrospect, is sort of silly, in that I really don't think you want to keep this commlink)

Gonna go gone for most of the day, but should be checking in tonight.

Me as well.

@lobo: that's fine. My idea with an organ legger contact is to get rid of problems, not profit.

DrZ

It seems that Amy suffers from a serious lack of paranoia when it comes to herself.

Happy Easter

I will be visiting with my parents today should be home late and able to post if necessary, otherwise it is back to the grind tomorrow as normal.

If you need anything don't hesitate to ask - seems like you have a few more things to hash out IC before we move the scene anywhere though

And Happy Easter to you too.

I have plans to take my family over my grandparents this afternoon as well, but will check in when I get back.

Happy Easter everyone.

Ok;

Do we know what we want to do next? My recommendation is either track down the pimp, or try to set this trap.

-DrZ

From a metagame perspective, the fact that none of you have any Edge left makes me a little worried about going into anything that might risk combat. Is Amy still wounded? Maybe we should rest first before picking up the trail?

Amy at this point has 5 boxes of physical damage and 3 boxes of stun.

From an equally metagame perspective, Grease is high on novacoke and raring to go!

From an IC perspective, I think we need to push forward; I don't think resting is going to end well for us (i.e. we're going to end up being the ones getting ambushed). They're tracking us somehow, and I'm pretty sure it isn't either of us. So there's some other factor at play her we can't see that's keeping us a step behind.

Now that it's nighttime, we could also break into that apartment across the street from the diner and see what was smelling up the place.

-DrZ

I am leaning towards the pimp as well. He is a more solid lead, and I would like us to be better prepared when we set the trap for Lynx and his crew. Because whoever we don't get in the ambush will be coming for us hard when they realize the our sights are now on them.

Absolutely agree.


IMO, I think pushing forward when you know someone has your number is likely to put you more firmly into a bad situation, especially if they know where it is that you are probably going to be going since they are the ones who did whatever it is you're investigating. For instance, if they can track us in real time (which I doubt, as I figure they would have ambushed us already) and see that we're headed toward, say, the apartment where the one cop was killed by a spell which we still haven't looked into, they have a really good shot of guessing what we're doing and could probably easily set up an ambush.

I really think going to ground and going dark, at least for a night, might be the best bet. Amy can heal her Stun and some of her Physical damage and we can hopefully avoid getting shot up more. We probably should have Overkill run the bug scanner over everyone, just in case.


I feel like that's somewhat of a dead end, personally. I guess it's possible that there could be electronics that saw something, but I figure they are pretty good about finding stuff like that, given the camera they already hacked (I still want to know who their hacker asset is, we've yet to hear of one). Can you Mind Probe a cat? Oh never mind, Amy doesn't have that spell.

Maybe the cat is a polymorphed mage, who was a key eyewitness! I agree it's probably a dead end, but it doesn't do much harm to check, and it's possible there's more clues there than we realized.

-DrZ

It's possible. I'm just of the opinion that doing anything else at the moment is a bad idea until we heal up a bit more.

I still don't know if we addressed the B&E issue in any event. How do we get inside? I think Lobo said it was a standard key lock, so Overkill can't really do much there. We could kick it down, which is noisy. Amy doesn't have a Hush or Silence spell. The quickest way I could see to do it would be me buying a R1 Locksmith skillsoft and an Autopicker, but I am pretty sure we wouldn't have enough even if we pooled all of our money.

That or talking to the Super of the building, knocking him out, and taking the key. But that seems like it 1) has its own set of problems and 2) would probably be unlikely as we inch deeper into the evening.

What a sorry set of shadowrunners we are, can't even get past a deadbolt!

If we could get one of my drones inside, it's possible it could manipulate the locking mechanism enough to open it up.

-DrZ

B&E does seem to be one of our big weaknesses, LOL.

Lol - I didn't realize that the deadbolt would be such a potent obstacle

Whatever you do decide to do, just let me know

As an aside, the B&E guy in my PnP game went whole hog - Autopicker, Maglock Passkey, Sequencer, Lock Pick set - about the only thing he didn't buy was the Monofilament Chainsaw

But then again, you don't really have a B&E specialist, so it is understandable that no one spent that amount of cash on it in char gen.

Yeah, the B&E chick I built did too. She didn't take a monofilament chainsaw, but does have a whip in her finger for cutting through stuff if needed.

When I built Jack, I had considered getting Locksmith as a Skillsoft, but didn't think that it fit the "basic solider" load out of skillsoft. I had thought it would be as simple as picking up an autopicker, but when I looked into it after we started, I realized you still needed the Locksmith skill to use it.

We're pretty well equipped to break things, and then enter.

Anyway, Amy probably needs an hour of rest and then she'd be good to go (she can likely heal herself to nearly full).

If we decide to stay on the move that night, it doesn't mean we can make an ambush. The thing about ambushing is that we need to wait. Tracking down Maurice seems doable, even though that might be an ambush for us.

An initial play could just be for Overkill to find/fix Maurice's commlink. He may have texts between him and Renata and/or her client that would help us zero in on them. Not sure...

In game, by the time we get somewhere for Amy to rest and she takes an hour to heal, it's going to be close to midnight or so. Our options would be to go do something somewhat clandestine, as most of our other options aren't going to be available until daytime or to grab some sleep so everyone can regenerate Edge and heal (if needed, I think everyone but Amy is healed up).

ETA: Our late night track record is kind of spotty, LOL.

Wow, a lot to read; I will run my bug scanner, just to be sure(I think we are clean), and I think it would be better for us to find somewhere safe to rest up; anyone got any ideas as to where to bunk down?

Wherever that is, we should probably be keeping a watch rotation.

I rolled for Overkill's use of the bug scanner, as far as he is concerned, you are not bugged.

I think just a coffin hotel where we pay cash would meet our needs right now. The number 1 being anonymity.

I'm not sure about where we can lay up... I mean, we could probably find a coffin motel out in the hinterlands, but that's going to prevent us from really effectively keeping watch (our safety would be really dependent on whether they can actually track us in real time or not). Our real estate contact is unlikely to take our call this late and I'm not entirely sure what she could/would do for us since she doesn't know we're runners. Or, we could just try to find an abandoned building somewhere in the Warrens that hopefully hasn't become a home for ghouls.

There's a possibility that Amy knows of such a place. She has the kind of background and the right knowledge skills for that (Sprawl Life, Area Knowledge: Warrens). Lobo?

+1

Checking Amy's Knowledge Skill yields a house on S Flanders Ct near E. Laselle Place.

The previous occupants were killed in a crossfire between the Fronts and the Godz.

Sounds like a good choice.

I am going to be gone at work for a few hours. Will check back in later this afternoon.