The clouds lazily spin overhead, the haze from the panic and desperation going on in the city below only adding to the fuel. Moisture draws from the cool water, hitting the air and making an oppressive blanket of fog on the waterfront; a cloak of anonymity to hide the nefarious goings-on around the pier. Gentle winds blow the cover inland from the water, choking criminal and citizen alike, pervasive and insidious. They say it's difficult for a gas to become a solid, yet that's how this fog feels, invading every bite of food, every sip of water, every whisper as pedestrians skulk from shadow to shadow. It is enough to conceal predator...and prey.

It's warm, enough that a jacket is a bad idea, but the lack of armor a worse one. Those who prefer their hides intact sweat out the night, fanning themselves and telling their fellows how much beer they will drink once their work is done. Those more optomistic about their chances of survival open their armor jackets to let some sort of air in, or remove their vests to hang them off the back of chairs, off the side of doors or fences, close enough at hand to be donned at a moment's notice...but in the evening fog? A moment may be too late.

Despite the noise, bustle and terror of the city further inland, here in La Guaira there is a hush of expectant silence. The clouds sit and wait; the angels look down on the city of the damned and convene to decide whether or not their tears would grace the earth and wash away the puddles of blood spilling into the cracked streets. The wind guides the blanket of quiet into the area, to hide the crimes of metahumanity from the heavens and one another. When the fog lifts, only the consequences remain.

I know I said I was going to make a post tonight, but time constraints are putting a damper on that. Tomorrow night, however, I will make a post, a fairly detailed one setting the scene. I'll fast forward it to a moment before the meet so that intel has time to come in and be digested, and I can answer questions and give people information IC.

I think this upcoming scene at Dock 40 is going to be... interesting.

It'll be a bit quicker if I handle some of this recon here in the OOC thread.



Pier 40 is a rough place. Some of the shadier dealings go on there, stuff involving massive amounts of drugs, smuggled goods, weapons dealers, etc. Officially La Guaira only has 30 piers, but "Pier 40" as it's known is at the end of the row, and more or less assembled piecemeal by those with an interest in keepings things off the books. It's known of by the bean counters and bureaucrats but the matraca bribes keep things running smoothly.

"Pier 40" is a bit of a misnomer, however. It's not one Pier, but a whole area where ruffians and criminals can tie off their ships and do business. A whole mini-bazaar of illicit goods and services can be found there. It's a hotspot for the shadow economy. Some nights it's dead, but some nights it's a bustling hub of activity. Tonight it's expected to be moderately busy to dead, due to current events. People don't want to be in town when the shit goes down. Ironically it's also really easy to get into port and bypass the officials since things are hectic right now.

Etiquette: bring a gun, two or more if possible. The only way to keep people honest in Pier 40 is to make them afraid of the consequences of screwing you over. It's not a black market: it's a red market. Violence and fear of violence keeps things running smoothly. If you screw over somebody, make sure you have the muscle to get away with it.



It should be easy to find a place to tie off, and DevilBwoy, due to his *ahem* contact knows more or less the area that the Leviathan is going to tie off in. He's narrowed it down for you to a reasonable area.



The Leviathan is a yacht - not a luxury yacht by any means, just a smallish boat that holds a small crew of maybe up to a dozen with room for some cargo. Some recon dug up from previous dockings shows that it's got a mounted minigun on the front as a deterrent against hijackings and as a line of defense. That's all that is known of, however. The crew, however many there should be, will more than likely be armed, though DevilBwoy insists there's probably only going to be three of the surviving five Drowners there.

On site legwork will be attended to in IC time.

Don't you just love the name of the PMC Smiley decided to pose as? Well anyways, I'm ready to move ahead to the docks if everyone else is.

And Doc? That Oaxaca in Smiley's canteen was totally swiped from the bottle Sonora brought into the garage.

I'm going to be out of town until sometime Sunday. So y'all know.

She's going to have to swipe another bottle. Everyone wants her mescal!

Since there's going to be fog, do we still want to use a sniper for overwatch?

Leaning towards no. The LEBD has suppression capability, so we may as well bring everyone to take the ship. I have a feeling that the fog's going to lift about the time we sneak onboard.

Well, even if it turns out there's heavy fog, the worst Dexter would be at is -2.

Also, how are Coalt ex gang members not going to recognize him the second we come into view?

Whether or not you want to do sniper overwatch is up to you, I don't care either way as we'll still have an extra gun. Bring some rope in case you do play sniper, you'll need it to fastrope to the ground quicker when we all decide to hop aboard the boat and get the hell out of dodge.

As for how Coatl's not going to get noticed, that's simple: Wearing something on his face and covering up any tattoo's. One balaclava and jacket is all it takes. Probably keep him from talking too.

f he does go overwatch, if he's far enough, he might just as well take another route of espace using the van.

I'm back, so y'all know.

Hooray! GO POST.

Poooong. Everyone still alive?

I am, just incredibly busy. Been checking the threads but I haven't even seen much to respond to. I can't drag people to the Pier.

Blagh.

I was under the impression that Alex was just milling about and loading shit until the scene advanced to the Pier. It seemed like the prep work was done and we were just waiting for plot advancement; unless I missed something. Which is perfectly possible.

Well if everyone still around wants to move on with things, we gotta make it more obvious. Maybe we need a system such as putting a spoiler at the bottom of our IC posts with a nice !Ready inside it. Just don't everyone start putting them in every one of their posts.

She put on the three-piece suit, did her makeup, did her hair - how is Sonora not ready?

I actually want to get a roll-call here. Everyone who's still active/alive, gimme a post. I want to see what the status of all our players is. I can make a couple of assumptions (Rystefn and Martin are busy little bees last I heard) but if you CAN post an update or a "Present," I would appreciate it.

As usual, I'm always here. Always watching.



Always.

As always, I am here. Logging in from my phone like a fanboy.

I'm around... on and off. To be honest, I have ridiculously busy weeks, and I'm usually so burnt out by the weekend, the last thing I want to do is go in front of a computer (since that's about 95% of my job...). So yea. Consider that I can post about 3 to 4 times a week, tops. If for some reason that isn't enough... well, that sucks but you'd have to consider me out.

I'm not counting anybody out right yet, I'm just seeing what general statuses are.

Present.

Present.

Well Abs, you may not be able to drag players to wherever, but I don't remember being under that standard myself.

To the rest of you that are active enough to update every other day or whatever, I think we oughta at least finish this one last caper before playing Taps and letting it all die. Unless you all have objections to me forcefully shoving things along without properly asking people again and again if they'd rather move on.

I salute your dedication, soldier. Maybe you'll get the ball rolling again.

I'll post in the morning - just got back from my flight. Not much yet for me to do.

I really don't think the game was in danger of dying, we just seemed to sort of hit an impasse where we would've benefited from a flat advancement to the next scene. (Strictly my opinion, not a criticism) Anyways, I am still here and interested in pushing forth with Alex.

See Doc, Grimm thinks my !Ready vote system is a good idea.

Uh, is that what I said? Sure why not.

Sorry... had slightly less time than I thought I would here lately. Three tests in one day takes up a lot of prep time. I'll something tonight, one way or another.

@Rystefn: It's alright, dude. I've been mad busy myself. This has been a brutal semester for me. I'm physically, emotionally, and psychologically drained. Working a job I hate also complicates things.

I won't post tonight, but since folks are stirring again, I will definitely post something tomorrow, once I have a (somewhat) relaxed day and I can concentrate.

Just FYI: Until this semester ends, consider that me posting during the week is... well... not IMPOSSIBLE, but improbable. I typically begin to have time to post on Thursday nights, and through the weekend up to Sunday night. It's difficult at best for me to post when I'm running off a handful of hours of sleep, trying to keep my homework done, and getting ready to go to work.

I apologize for my own absense lately. I didn't quite realize how awful this semester was going to be for me, but I'm not quite ready to call it quits on this campaign.

...or alternately, my math teacher will give us some extra work, and it will have to wait until the weekend. Luckily, I'll be sitting at the computer writing an English paper anyway, so when I need to take a break from that, I'll pop over and update... I hope.

Well, it felt good to stretch my IC legs again.

Just a note about Pier 40: It's separated from the official piers, and for good reason. It's a pretty bad place. It's not a black market so much as it's a red market: the only rule of law is to be stronger and more dangerous than everyone else in the area. If you get fucked on a deal, you have no recourse unless you're able to back it up with violence. Nobody will think twice about you getting shot to death because the dealer didn't like the way you haggled. On the other hand, if you can kill a dealer (and his lackeys) to take his product, well, everyone will just assume they had it coming.

If you don't have the strength and the courage to survive, the appearance of having it will probably take you pretty far.

Updated a bit. Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes by just kind of making up my place in the plan. Someone had said something earlier about needing some stealth action, so I just sort of ran with that. I figured Sonora sweet-talking him into going along with everything so smoothly that he had no idea what was happening until it was far too late (and maybe she didn't realize she was doing it either) was more or less the most likely course of action anyway. If there's any issues, I'm not too good to do a rewrite to bring it more in line.

Don't worry too much about all the complaints there. It's supposed to be noir-style, so I figured if the characters aren't miserable, something REALLY bad is going down.

Sonuvabitch, you are not disguised as a corporate soldier! You are disguised as a PMC contractor, a legitimate mercenary, whole world of difference! Damn your characters lack of understanding! *shakes fist*











Just kidding, it's all cool.

*shrugs* It's good enough for government work.

Alright, the responses to the scene have trickled in, and while I don't have everyone, I do believe I'm still going to push forward with the scene - when I have the time to make an update.

Since posting for a handful has tapered off, I think I'm going to work in some IC developments that push some people to the background -- not necessarily killing anybody off, just getting them off the main stage until they start posting again.

What'll happen is I'll initiate some sort of IC plot development where those who are still active and available can continue posting, but it'll give justification for those who've got less time to not be in the forefront of the action. Those who have *ahem* moved on can just fade out as permanently as they want to.

It may be that I start up another recruitment drive if our numbers start to dwindle too much. I'd like to keep the active players up around six to eight, about where we were at to begin with.

I'm worried about Combat Mage. He just up and vanished completely about a month ago. Has anybody heard from him? Usually dropping out of a game is preceded by a lack of activity, but he went from posting to absent in the blink of an eye.

In any case, I'm not willing to let the game die yet. If we're limping along, I'll do what I can to give it the kick in the ass needed to keep going. So long as I have a handful of dedicated players, I'll at least get the campaign to a reasonable conclusion instead of letting it fade away like so many other PnP games.

Aye, sorry about my lack of attention. Been a bad couple of weeks for me with medication and what not. I'm still very much in.

On a side note, I was running for Combat Mage in my game and noticed the same complete drop off. He might have had some irl troubles or whatever; I just sidelined him in my story for the time being.

Yeah, last post was 28 September. Wonder if he had university thing.

Combat Mage flat out disappeared in the other PbP the two of us were in at about the same time.

Since it looks like my other PbP is dying, I'd be interested in joining this one if you guys have the need for more players.

Been a while since I updated, but I figured I'd at least push the plot ahead a few minutes.

Say hi to AStarshipForAnts -- He's slapping a character together and he'll be joining you guys. I already have a good idea where he's going to jump into the story, and I don't think it'll be hard to work his character in.

This semester is almost over, and to be quite honest the workload is starting to drop off rather quickly. I have some exams and tests coming up, but I'm not anticipating that they'll be difficult. It may be I start finding a little more time to update. I am thankful for your collective understanding at my infrequent posting and the fact I've been so ridiculously busy. You all can ask Rastus about what my schedule is like. It's pretty ridiculous.

Mmmyes, mmmyes.

Doing a general Perception roll to grab everything in, start Observing in Detail while we walk. Take off what you need to for the fog and such!

Perception - 14d6.hits(5) → [1,5,6,1,1,4,5,5,2,6,3,6,3,5] = (7)

See through time, etc. etc.

And she really can see through time now.

Oh god she can
OH GOD

Look at what you've done, Doc.

I want to, and with 7 successes I should be able to!

Ooh, that gives me an idea.