RE: Shadowrun (was: Now that Helen and Atilla have moved back to our area...)
05-12-2019, 08:36 PM (This post was last modified: 05-13-2019, 08:21 AM by Bob Schroeck.)
05-12-2019, 08:36 PM (This post was last modified: 05-13-2019, 08:21 AM by Bob Schroeck.)
Now I do. <grin>
Okay, before I get started on this, let me add a couple things I found in my notes yesterday. Herr Erdblut's first name turns out to be Kristian. The custom weapons Attila mentioned in one of his posts above were pistols for Yoruichi. And I missed a quote from the last session:
"We're not on an op! We're going to the mall!"
Anyway, because Helen had a work-related function to attend in the evening yesterday, we had a session that was a few hours shorter than usual, but we still got a fair bit done. Let's see...
At the very start I was handed a sheet of graph paper with the outline of the warehouse we bought on it, and told to start laying out the interior. Helen gave me the impression this was going to be important later in the session, so I got right to work on it, and kept at it for about half the session.
As I started on this, Bikavèr (with Yoruichi as driver) took Ylva to get started on her new bioware. With his contact Katarina acting as intermediary (and a short-term loan from Yoruichi), she paid for cultured Tailored Pheromones/2 and had the initial genetic samples taken for the culturing.
Meanwhile, Lukas is at the warehouse starting to set up his enchanting shop and the group medicine lodge when Gunther the guard tells him there are guys in suits wanting to talk to "the boss", and mentions they've been around before. Realizing that they must be one of the local groups like the Yakuza who run protection schemes, but not sure what what to do about them, he sends Gunther out to stall them and calls Bikavèr and the rest for advice and a consensus on what to do.
Bikavèr fortunately knows something about the groups operating in the area where we have our warehouse. There are two he says are actually okay to pay off, because they aren't (entirely) extortion schemes but actually do protect their "customers" in extreme circumstances. One is a Yakuza group called the Kesagiri; the other is an elven gang called the Ancients. If either of those approach us, I learn, we deal with them. If one of the smaller and less reputable gangs tries to strong-arm us, I'm to say we're already "protected" by one of them and then sign up with them ASAP. Bikavèr also tells him to leave the phone on and he'll offer advice based on what he hears.
Lukas asks Wolfgang to take point in his "corp human" form and they troop out to the little "lobby" they left in place behind the front doors of the warehouse, and step outside. There six elves there, dressed in tailored suits -- the Ancients. I can't remember all the discussion, but it quickly becomes obvious that at least some of the elves are magically active and have caught on to the fact that Wolfgang is a spirit and the real "boss" is Lukas. The leader of the group (a Mr. Andovar) seems to be privately amused that the "new business" that seemed to be establishing itself on their turf is in fact a rather more extreme case of a gang of kids building a fort, albeit some fairly capable kids who have grown-up employees.
We get down to negotiations, and before they're done with, Bikavèr, Ylva and Yoruichi get back from their errand and join in. We settle on 3000 nuyen a month for genuine protection -- which means Ancient reinforcements if we're actually attacked on their turf -- plus a pledge to help out if they call on us for aid (in which case they'll waive the monthly "fee" whole or in part that month, depending on how much we did for them). We're appointed a regular contact with the Ancients -- Mr. Tristan, who is one of the six Ancients present. He stays behind when the others leave to take the first payment and to thrash out the details of the agreements. This he does with Bikavèr and Yoruichi... Lukas is a bit too impulsive to allow easy access to group money, after all.
Once Mr. Tristan departs, the need for more money has become obvious to all of us. I was distracted, working on the warehouse floorplan again, so I missed the details, but by the time I look up, we've apparently heard about a "need a team now" call that just went out -- a small swarm of wyrd mantises (apparently escaped from a facility that had been illegally breeding them) had attacked a farm to the east of the Ruhr metroplex. The local security forces are unable to deal with them so they need "specialists". We take the job, pile into the the van, and take off.
When we get there, Yoruichi makes the initial contact with the forces on-site while Bikavèr, Ylva and Lukas wait in the van. The locals agree to our terms, and the rest of us pile out of the van. The looks on their faces when they realize that the 16-year-old they just negotiated with is the oldest member of the team is priceless. "Kids?" one says.
"Hobbits!" Lukas shouts back over his shoulder.
"Should've told them you were dwarves," Yoruichi mutters.
Anyway, Bikavèr scouts around the edges of the farm and determines that there had to have been eight or nine mantises, and they split in five different directions when they finished with the farm. Having studied our Scooby-doo thoroughly, we naturally split the party. Bikavèr followed a pair heading toward a nearby town. Ylva and Lukas went after a single bug, and Yoruichi and Valentine did the same.
So. Bikavèr catches up to the two, and the subsequent combat is monotonously like every other Bikavèr combat: spy opposition, punch opposition, gather opposition's corpse for bounty. Yoruichi is surprised by the one she and Valentine are pursuing -- it drops out of a tree on her. It tries to bite her and inject its venom but fails. Yoruichi and it exchange blows, and then Valentine shoots it dead.
Before he and Ylva follow their target, Lukas summons a F4 storm spirit and gets enough services for him to instruct it to follow and conceal them, and to zap anything that attacks them a couple times. He, Ylva and the spirit track down their target, which because everyone's been rolling really well on tracking and perception they notice trying to use its camouflage abilities to hide in a bush. Ylva perforates it neatly with her rifle. They bag it and head off to back up Bikavèr, who's found and punched to death another by the time they reach him.
Valentine and Yoruichi find another mantis and Yoruichi blows it away neatly.
On their way to back up Bikavèr, Lukas and Ylva spot another in a tree, ready to play drop bear. Lukas wins the initiative this time and gets off a stun missile that leaves the bug reeling just before Ylva gently nudges it off its branch with a rifle bullet.
And before we actually catch up to him Bikavèr encounters the largest of the mantises and kills it with boring ease.
So we drag all the mantis bodies back to the local cops to register our bounties. The cops are like, "You just went into the woods ten minutes ago!" I remember that one of us (not me) made some kind of smug one-liner in response, but I didn't write it down and I can't remember what it was. But it did prompt a little discussion about snappy dialogue where I noted that Lukas did not put points into "Bond One-Liner".
Anyway, we then began trying to backtrack the mantises to wherever they came from. In an amusing bit, all of us with tracking made successful rolls, and as Helen put it, as one raised our arms, pointed, and said in unison, "That way."
So we went that way.
Some minutes from the farm we find a point where the group we just took out and another group of mantises split off from each other. We decide to follow the other group, and not much farther in we find three mantises disassembling some deer. Valentine, Yoruichi and Lukas leave these three in the capable hands of Bikavèr and Ylva, and return to the original trail to continue tracking the mantises back to their origin.
Between them, Bikavèr and Ylva easily deal with the mantises; he takes the three bodies back to the local cops for more bounty, while Ylva hurries to catch up with the rest of us.
The rest of us, it so happens, stumbles upon a wild minotaur, which spots them and charges. Yoruichi pulls a fancy acrobatic stunt to pull an oblivious Valentine out of the way (she was intent on her smartphone, checking on her "boss"/owner), and gets both of them well to one side.
Meanwhile, Lukas is apparently frozen, staring at the minotaur as it charges, but at the last moment actually vaults over the beast, turning a handstand on its muzzle and landing lightly behind it.
Yoruichi golfclaps, and yells, "Don't do that again!" Unfortunately this gets the creature's attention and it charges the two of them. Amazingly, it misses, and Yoruichi gets an attack of opportunity as it passes. She lashes out with an unarmed attack that, incredibly, inflicts serious stun on it, then draws one of her new pistols and fires a three-round burst at it from behind as it tries to check its momentum and turn around. She rolls well, it doesn't, and she inflicts 15D(eadly) damage on it, killing it.
Its body plows to a halt in the underbrush practically at Ylva's feet as she catches up to us.
Wild minotaurs are man-eaters and have a big bounty on them, so we're still discussing how to get it back to the local cops to cash in when Bikavèr finally rejoins us.
And that was the end of the session.
Okay, before I get started on this, let me add a couple things I found in my notes yesterday. Herr Erdblut's first name turns out to be Kristian. The custom weapons Attila mentioned in one of his posts above were pistols for Yoruichi. And I missed a quote from the last session:
"We're not on an op! We're going to the mall!"
Anyway, because Helen had a work-related function to attend in the evening yesterday, we had a session that was a few hours shorter than usual, but we still got a fair bit done. Let's see...
At the very start I was handed a sheet of graph paper with the outline of the warehouse we bought on it, and told to start laying out the interior. Helen gave me the impression this was going to be important later in the session, so I got right to work on it, and kept at it for about half the session.
As I started on this, Bikavèr (with Yoruichi as driver) took Ylva to get started on her new bioware. With his contact Katarina acting as intermediary (and a short-term loan from Yoruichi), she paid for cultured Tailored Pheromones/2 and had the initial genetic samples taken for the culturing.
Meanwhile, Lukas is at the warehouse starting to set up his enchanting shop and the group medicine lodge when Gunther the guard tells him there are guys in suits wanting to talk to "the boss", and mentions they've been around before. Realizing that they must be one of the local groups like the Yakuza who run protection schemes, but not sure what what to do about them, he sends Gunther out to stall them and calls Bikavèr and the rest for advice and a consensus on what to do.
Bikavèr fortunately knows something about the groups operating in the area where we have our warehouse. There are two he says are actually okay to pay off, because they aren't (entirely) extortion schemes but actually do protect their "customers" in extreme circumstances. One is a Yakuza group called the Kesagiri; the other is an elven gang called the Ancients. If either of those approach us, I learn, we deal with them. If one of the smaller and less reputable gangs tries to strong-arm us, I'm to say we're already "protected" by one of them and then sign up with them ASAP. Bikavèr also tells him to leave the phone on and he'll offer advice based on what he hears.
Lukas asks Wolfgang to take point in his "corp human" form and they troop out to the little "lobby" they left in place behind the front doors of the warehouse, and step outside. There six elves there, dressed in tailored suits -- the Ancients. I can't remember all the discussion, but it quickly becomes obvious that at least some of the elves are magically active and have caught on to the fact that Wolfgang is a spirit and the real "boss" is Lukas. The leader of the group (a Mr. Andovar) seems to be privately amused that the "new business" that seemed to be establishing itself on their turf is in fact a rather more extreme case of a gang of kids building a fort, albeit some fairly capable kids who have grown-up employees.
We get down to negotiations, and before they're done with, Bikavèr, Ylva and Yoruichi get back from their errand and join in. We settle on 3000 nuyen a month for genuine protection -- which means Ancient reinforcements if we're actually attacked on their turf -- plus a pledge to help out if they call on us for aid (in which case they'll waive the monthly "fee" whole or in part that month, depending on how much we did for them). We're appointed a regular contact with the Ancients -- Mr. Tristan, who is one of the six Ancients present. He stays behind when the others leave to take the first payment and to thrash out the details of the agreements. This he does with Bikavèr and Yoruichi... Lukas is a bit too impulsive to allow easy access to group money, after all.
Once Mr. Tristan departs, the need for more money has become obvious to all of us. I was distracted, working on the warehouse floorplan again, so I missed the details, but by the time I look up, we've apparently heard about a "need a team now" call that just went out -- a small swarm of wyrd mantises (apparently escaped from a facility that had been illegally breeding them) had attacked a farm to the east of the Ruhr metroplex. The local security forces are unable to deal with them so they need "specialists". We take the job, pile into the the van, and take off.
When we get there, Yoruichi makes the initial contact with the forces on-site while Bikavèr, Ylva and Lukas wait in the van. The locals agree to our terms, and the rest of us pile out of the van. The looks on their faces when they realize that the 16-year-old they just negotiated with is the oldest member of the team is priceless. "Kids?" one says.
"Hobbits!" Lukas shouts back over his shoulder.
"Should've told them you were dwarves," Yoruichi mutters.
Anyway, Bikavèr scouts around the edges of the farm and determines that there had to have been eight or nine mantises, and they split in five different directions when they finished with the farm. Having studied our Scooby-doo thoroughly, we naturally split the party. Bikavèr followed a pair heading toward a nearby town. Ylva and Lukas went after a single bug, and Yoruichi and Valentine did the same.
So. Bikavèr catches up to the two, and the subsequent combat is monotonously like every other Bikavèr combat: spy opposition, punch opposition, gather opposition's corpse for bounty. Yoruichi is surprised by the one she and Valentine are pursuing -- it drops out of a tree on her. It tries to bite her and inject its venom but fails. Yoruichi and it exchange blows, and then Valentine shoots it dead.
Before he and Ylva follow their target, Lukas summons a F4 storm spirit and gets enough services for him to instruct it to follow and conceal them, and to zap anything that attacks them a couple times. He, Ylva and the spirit track down their target, which because everyone's been rolling really well on tracking and perception they notice trying to use its camouflage abilities to hide in a bush. Ylva perforates it neatly with her rifle. They bag it and head off to back up Bikavèr, who's found and punched to death another by the time they reach him.
Valentine and Yoruichi find another mantis and Yoruichi blows it away neatly.
On their way to back up Bikavèr, Lukas and Ylva spot another in a tree, ready to play drop bear. Lukas wins the initiative this time and gets off a stun missile that leaves the bug reeling just before Ylva gently nudges it off its branch with a rifle bullet.
And before we actually catch up to him Bikavèr encounters the largest of the mantises and kills it with boring ease.
So we drag all the mantis bodies back to the local cops to register our bounties. The cops are like, "You just went into the woods ten minutes ago!" I remember that one of us (not me) made some kind of smug one-liner in response, but I didn't write it down and I can't remember what it was. But it did prompt a little discussion about snappy dialogue where I noted that Lukas did not put points into "Bond One-Liner".
Anyway, we then began trying to backtrack the mantises to wherever they came from. In an amusing bit, all of us with tracking made successful rolls, and as Helen put it, as one raised our arms, pointed, and said in unison, "That way."
So we went that way.
Some minutes from the farm we find a point where the group we just took out and another group of mantises split off from each other. We decide to follow the other group, and not much farther in we find three mantises disassembling some deer. Valentine, Yoruichi and Lukas leave these three in the capable hands of Bikavèr and Ylva, and return to the original trail to continue tracking the mantises back to their origin.
Between them, Bikavèr and Ylva easily deal with the mantises; he takes the three bodies back to the local cops for more bounty, while Ylva hurries to catch up with the rest of us.
The rest of us, it so happens, stumbles upon a wild minotaur, which spots them and charges. Yoruichi pulls a fancy acrobatic stunt to pull an oblivious Valentine out of the way (she was intent on her smartphone, checking on her "boss"/owner), and gets both of them well to one side.
Meanwhile, Lukas is apparently frozen, staring at the minotaur as it charges, but at the last moment actually vaults over the beast, turning a handstand on its muzzle and landing lightly behind it.
Yoruichi golfclaps, and yells, "Don't do that again!" Unfortunately this gets the creature's attention and it charges the two of them. Amazingly, it misses, and Yoruichi gets an attack of opportunity as it passes. She lashes out with an unarmed attack that, incredibly, inflicts serious stun on it, then draws one of her new pistols and fires a three-round burst at it from behind as it tries to check its momentum and turn around. She rolls well, it doesn't, and she inflicts 15D(eadly) damage on it, killing it.
Its body plows to a halt in the underbrush practically at Ylva's feet as she catches up to us.
Wild minotaurs are man-eaters and have a big bounty on them, so we're still discussing how to get it back to the local cops to cash in when Bikavèr finally rejoins us.
And that was the end of the session.
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....