Sand, late comment but just glancing over the Bug City sourcebook people on the matrix comment about gangs lynching fleshforms and hanging them by lamp posts for display in well populated parts of the city well before our attack. Besides this there are other accounts of spirits all over the area near Cermak and farther north and south just a bit after the wall went up. While it isn't an armed camp, there were spirits crawling around the place before we arrived; the bomb wasn't the only thing that spread them. Besides, I doubt every one of us were willing, no matter how loyal to KE we may be, to plant a Tac Nuke in the middle of Chicago without some knowledge, including first hand observation, that the city had gone to shit.

It may not be a absolute hell yet, but there is violence and bug spirits around the city even before we set off the fireworks.

Sphynx might I enquire as to the house rules you use for medkits?

No you may not (as they may not always apply, sometimes I do things out of generosity, other times for the story, other times for my own bizarre reasons. Unless they are horribly off and hurt the character or game grossly, you should not question my "house rules").

I was not questioning them so much as asking what they were... I was curious.
I like to know what house rules are out there, for 2 main reasons.
1: so I know vaguely how the universe works and
2: so I can decide who to ask for permission to steal house rules.

variable medkit rules? then I will keep in mind that medical tech is somewhat unreliable outside of a clinic. This should make things interesting

I just wanted to make sure she got below Serious wounded, since the first encounter is suppose to be to give you a feel, not put you out of the game.

fair enough, FYI canon would have had her at moderate with those rolls, but as I said, your game your house rules. and unreliable medtech is more realistic anyway.

So are we out of the manawarp yet? Or would we have to check to see...

The awakened are able to sense manawarps from my understanding of MITS, I'd need to know if we are in or out to figure out my actions.

Mana Warp was only the immediate vicinity of the blast. You are not in the mana warp now. You do detect that there's some Background Count around you, but it doesn't appear to be nearly as strong as where the warp was.

Sphynx

Dammit Frost! Your breasts were so distracting we got ambushed like kindergardeners on a field trip!

, not Frost's fault you have no manner's. Most athletic women are not very well endowed, and I haven't heard that elves are particularly voluptuous either.

I saw the picture from the link; she definitely has assets for a girl her size.

Also, Tony needs to know if Kan'gi and Leslie have some sort of relationship. Kan'gi can't seem to keep his hands off of the girl; it could jeopardize the team.

Sphynx, we need another hit!

All of Chicago has a background count of 3 or greater. You sense that the Background Count here is around that rating, maybe a bit stronger, not sure.

Sphynx

Oh, cool. I was actually just kidding around, but that is interesting.

yo GM, we all be stealthing outta there, bring on the posting!

Can't, only half the team posted, and one poster asked a question (about BG Count) so he could decide if he's casting a spell or not. I can't just assume someone's gonna cast a spell. Players, bring on the posting already!

Playing catch up right now. I'm gunna go ahead and attempt the Casting, using 4 Spell Pool in both Sorcery and Drain.

Sand, that's all good if you want to be recon. The reason I tend not to think it's that useful is mainly due to game system reasons, like if you get ambushed by people we can't see but they can see you again, then in a matter of seconds you could be badly injured and in game we've run about 6 meters to help you.

Second, if people are going to be seeing us but we can't see them as we discovered in our last encounter then they may just let one person go by and stop the large group of us, making the recon pretty pointless, or they may just decide to grease the one guy while, again, we are trying to run and play catch up.

I am also more worried about bugs than people in game, and since they are melee it would be better to be in a group when we spot eachother, as bugs aren't likely to be laying an ambush for us, and being able to concentrate fire on them is superior to the chance that one scout stumbles on some melee-ers and gets diced before the rest of the team can assist. If our large group stumbles on a group of melee bugs at least we can help eachother stay alive.

One last point: if you want recon maybe we should send someone else besides you, because I think your stealth is the lowest of almost our entire group, no insult intended.

In real life the forward recon is good, but in SR it's too easy for it to go wrong. Still, that's just my justification for my reasoning, feel free to scout, that's totally cool.

What's stealth? *defaults to quickness*

Its that spell you have called Invisibility. But depending on how my casting of Ghost goes, I may cast it on you too, cause you are all messed up and stuff.

I can't believe I actually created a char without invisibility...that's usually a spell that all my magically active chars are required to have.

Ecclesiastes, what does Ghost do? having a hard time finding it for some reason.

You won't find it, I created it myself. Basicly its the same as Improved Invisibility, but multi sensory, so that I can't be heard or smelled either.

what's the drain for that little creation?

Give me a karma reroll on the drain please, I want to try to ditch it all. I also tie the spell to its Sustaining Focus so I don't have to maintain it myself.

Hamster: Adding multi-sensory to Improved Invisibility adds 1 to the Damage Level, giving the spell +1S for a drain code.

hmm...casting spells = more spirits, even away from ground zero...so much for my char's combat ability.

Yeah, but the spirits aren't infinite. When we get to a "homebase" we are going to cast a lot of spells to rat the biznitches out and then waste 'em to clean house. You will be very important to the team in time if I have anything to say about it. Just throw spells around anytime anyway; we can take just about anything barring the loss of all ammo.

How many do you think they are if KE thought a tac nuke was needed to clean them out?

Oh, there are thousands, but spread out over something like 200 square miles the density can't be that high.

Sphynx, quick question. If you're astrally percieving, do you use Charisma or Strength to determine the power of your attacks?

edit: also, what's our character's karma pool?

Cthulu I like the way you think

Perceiving uses Strength (Charisma is only in Astral Form).
Karma Pools = 1.

Cthulhu, don't expect everything to be according to Canon.

Sphynx

nah that trick uses willpower and you can do it through a weapon, but only reach bonus counts

Nah, I'm not even going by any sort of canon numbers, I just did some quick math for my own estimation. Even with 100k bugs running around that's only a population density of 500 per square mile if the wall only encompasses 200 square miles when it actually encloses more. With lower, more realistic estimations of total bugs things just look better and better. Even if that guess is way off I was just basically telling Whiz to go to town so that he doesn't feel useless.

the GM wants to pooooooooooooost ::does scary hypnotic hand gestures::

...dammit, can't believe none of our mages picked up influence.


Also, Whizbang, do you have a pistol or anything or would you like us to scrounge you up something?

Don't post the IC on the weekends. I'll have Mondays' post up in about 12 hours.

Sphynx

I have a decent pistol...could use something to supplement my armor spell, though...

guns, knew I forgot to bring something

Where in Chicago are we? Street or landmark wise?

Somewhere near the water front. Big warehouse off in the distance where the big explosion happened. Currently heading up some industrial zone which has buildings close enough to the streets for there to be alleys.

What street have we gotten to though, how far north? Where is the nearest Dan Ryan on-ramp? What about El stops?

Leslie, aren't you really hurting after that last hit? I thought you still had a moderate +2.

You see no street signs, and I see no AreaKnowledge:Chicago. You know what I've told you.

True enough, when we get out of combat I will check my NavDat to pinpoint our location. What do I remember from the last time I glanced at it location wise?

Who knew that we were going to have to hoof it through Chicago anyway? I hope that the UCAS atlas in my pocket secratary is up to date, although I don't think I'll stop and check it out now.

As for doing recon, I forget how brief combat rounds are, although I wasn't talking about far recon. Just someone ahead of the group with his eyes peeled, who can say, 'Hrm, there's a barricade or a bunch of dancing bugs, or underwear gnomes up ahead.' I do suppose that he is the least sneaky of the group so it might be easier for everyone to just walk softly, and he'll carry the big stick.

I did already have Moderate +2...so that likely put me up to serious, if not worse. *still learning how the damage chart runs, like everything else*

I'm starting to feel like a yo-yo...down, up, down, up...

If I ever get up to enough functionality to cast again...I might want to toss up an astral and a physical barrier so we can have some time to regroup and heal without worrying about bugs...