I know I'm far too impulsive to speak for the group.

It's really not a big deal; I just don't usually see people using my whole nick and it seems odd.

this gets my vote

If it doesn't currently, it will shortly.

Sorry -- I know there were about 5-6 posts lost to this thread, day before yesterday. Anyone who raised anything they want me to address, please repost?

Any of the characters smoke?

Well, maybe we should be stopping down the street or something first, to give her slightly better conditions than a moving vehicle to work in. How long does first aid take again?

The call to Lone Star should be going out at this point; make it an anonymous tip that there's some sort of gang war going on near X location and let them pick up the gangs.

Yeah, her name is Galina, and she was a friend of the target and is supposed to be meeting us at the lodge to assist in that department.

Also, how about an update on Trogdor's situation. Does he seem to be making progress "tunneling" his way out of the basement area.

Agreed.

Ditto

The three girls (Ghost, Solitaire, Juliana) manage this between them. At the point of initially hauling him into the van, just after he's inside, Juliana suddenly drops him and herself crumples to the floor with a small strangled shriek; and at the same moment everyone in the van gets a taste of what washed over Ghost and Trogdor back on p.16.

It's happening, now -- if not exactly voluntarily. Ghost just went unconscious. At least she's inside the van at the time, and so is Diamond (now); and Solitaire had gotten the back doors closed first, before the van lurched sideways. (If she hadn't, Diamond, Juliana, and Ghost would all have had a chance of tumbling out.) You don't know whether whatever it was affected Diamond or not: he's unconscious in any case, and there isn't anyone conscious who can check the astral.

That leaves Solitaire with the medkit, an unconscious Ghost, a downward-spiralling Diamond, and a convulsing Juliana. And yes: it did affect Advent harshly (S stun: based on BD 3, WL 4); which is why the van lurched. Solitaire's temporarily collapsed too with the S stun (BD 4, WL 4), but at least she's still conscious; and as before the effect's slowly going away after a few seconds of sheer agony.

Since Solitaire is intelligent and an experienced shadowrunner, I'm assuming that she can think through the pain, that she realises what this must be from when it happened as well as what bioreadings you did get off Ghost and Juliana earlier, and seeing some of the aftereffects on camera later (even if she doesn't understand the specifics). That means that she can still put 2 and 2 together well enough to triage effectively and she has actual Biotech skill in addition to the medkit. However, she's got a total +6 now to using it (+4 if she waits long enough for the vehicle to stabilise), but I assume she's willing to karma-reroll in order to succeed?

I believe you have stim patches among the equipment? should you wish to make use of them?

Similarly, Advent can continue to drive through it, and without any immediate consequences (after that initial lurch). This means you get clear of the immediate area and on your way to safehouse. A couple of gangers take potshots at the warwagon (along with just about every other target in the area); the vehicle handles them readily.

A pleasant surprise upon arrival: since you're more or less on time per original schedule, Galina is ready and waiting for you as expected (that was at the safehouse? or was it a different location?), but I don't think anyone thought to mention to her that decontamination would be needed? Since the usual fallout from these types of runs is physical injury and occasionally antidotes, it's rather unlikely the safehouse would be set up for it. However, Galina can do some on-the-spot magical sterilisation and/or a physical barrier if you want, and call in other resources.

I think that's about as far as I can take the list, considering the sharp change in circumstances ... and especially wrt the last two.

(Eyeless Blond: there's a certain familiar character out there who's doing even more interestingly than you are at the "tries to be good at everything but succeeds at being good at nothing" ... from the mostly non-specialised approach, interestingly enough.)

Solitaire might, don't know about Advent though. Those things really don't last very long--2d6 minutes isn't going to drive you very far, but it might help with getting Diamond stabalized. Thoughts everyone?

What's really bothering me right now is how those "pulses" from Juliana, whatever they are, are coming awfully close to each other. It's only been, what, fifteen minutes? since the last one down in the basement. We probably should've kept her away from everyone else, in the Nightglider, but that's a bit hard to justify to her isn't it? In particular I'm noticing the observed facts that: 1) She's stronger than Ghost, 2) She's *faster* than Ghost, 3) She's obviously magical in some way (managed to eat through her chains/smell of ashes in her cell) 4) She's got some sort of super-Charisma powers, or something. I doubt we'd be able to "force" or even "convince" her of anything, would we?

Re: decontamination: well not necessarily. Hell, the fact that Ghost and Juliana are in the van right now instead of somewhere else (either the Westwind or the Nightglider) tells me we've pretty much dropped most of the thoughts of decontamination being necessary. I mean, if we thought they needed to be decontaminated, why would we be putting them in the van with the two unharmed people anyway?

Mostly we're on-plan, I think, though we need to get Juliana behind a ward relative to everyone else quick, before the whole team ends up taking an unscheduled nap. I gotta admit I'm *real* curious what the drek that is that's knocking everyone out. Once we do that, we get Galina to check out Diamond, as he needs medical attention right away, then we have her figure out what's up with Juliana, or at least 1) What's with the seizures and assorted nastiness, 2) The "thing" she needs gotten off of her, and 3) The thing or things she wanted to get back. Juliana should be happy to see Galina (we hope), and will be a little more forthcoming with her than she was with us.

Heh, well that's really the way to do it, right? When you overspecialize, particularly in lots of low-rank skills, you end up making it hideously expensive karma-wise to actually improve the character to make it *not* suck. Diamond's problem IC is he's got so many specializations that he's not a real, playable character so much as a sheet written up for a one-shot, and that's a problem if we're going to be doing more of these than just the one.

all for one and one for all. shared fates and what not? I'll agree it's not number one, but decon should still be on the radar.

as for what the Package wanted to retrieve, at least we know the lay of the land, maybe we'll be offered a deal we can't refuse, to pick it/them up.

I would guess (though no character other than Ghost is in the position to notice this pattern, and she's a hair unconcious right now) that the pulse is triggered by Juliana's attempt to cast a spell.

For example

implies IMHO that she is hurling a spell -- likely a stunbolt to disrupt Trogdor into submission -- and was subsequently cut down.

In the van she may have attempted to cast a healing spell, possibly subconsciously, while helping Solitaire with triage.

Decontamination

A moot point now. If this is some sort of virus or contagious in any way then everyone was exposed in the last pulse. Based on the extreme localization of Ghost's emotional response I would assume the problem was tied to the background count more than to any spreadable effect.

The best solution is to keep every astral eye peeled and assense each other until they are blue in the face.

Diamond...

...Is still a mage. I wouldn't worry too much about the rest of his skills as long as he can torch folks with his brain.

The bottom line is that we get Galina to do her thing and ask every question we can think of.

Is Juliana still awake?

How do you attribute quotes?

I think you might be right on about spells, and it might be to our advantage to drag our heels clearing that up.


To credit quotes where it says: [ Quote ] add "=" and the name with no spaces.

it would look like [ Quote = ShanshuFreeman ] except without the spaces.

I can't believe we've been at this that long! That's awesome. I think I've been with you guys about as long as I've been with my gf. I don't know if I should be overjoyed or depressed about that.

I think he is referring to the fact that you can't have the specialization equal to or less than the base skill, so you have to increase both the base skill and the specialization.
Personally, I have never had much of a problem with that though.

Maybe she has some crazy way of making other people take the drain for her and that's what the pulses are.

Well consider that she never actually casts a spell, only (it would seem) tries to, before the effect kicks in.

Interesting idea on the anima thing. I think the idea was brought up once before that she's a free spirit or something; it certainly seems possible.

Speculation aside though, any thoughts on the current situation and how to deal with it? The end is sooo close...

one way or another

Our (revised, revised again) link doesn't work (again, again), same server issues as before. However, I'd printed out the old thread when I revived this one. The first post was dated Jul 21, 2003 1:42 PM, and had 161 replies. So not quite two years yet, but almost within statistical significance [/preparing birthday candles, defrosting cake]

I can do one quick stop-in tomorrow, and after that I'm probably off-line until next Friday.

Welcome to the thread, pragma

If Galina doesn't go straight to the most critically injured person in our party, I would make some subtle , (but friendly/joking/still kinda don't mess around with us/but still being respectful) comment about following triage protocol.




thinking out loud, out of curiousity, should we keep Galina just out of reach of the Package? I'm worried maybe we trusted her too much or too far.