RE: Shadowrun (was: Now that Helen and Atilla have moved back to our area...)
09-26-2019, 09:00 AM
09-26-2019, 09:00 AM
Once again it took me too long to type all this up. My apologies.
Before I begin, a correction: the Yakuza group is the "Takogumi", not the "Takogami" as I posted last time. I apparently misread my tiny pencil scrawl or something. Oh, and for some reason we all apparently thought former-kidnapper and now-temporary-ally Volpe was male, but Helen corrected us; Volpe is female.
Anyway, in a disturbing change from the usual routine, everyone arrived on time for this session, and we actually got started before 2PM. Play started when Helen gave us a map of the airstrip and we be began planning.
Turns out the airstrip is actually an isolated section of a larger airport, set aside for private flights. It's a separate runway with a set of three hangars and a small office building off to one side of it; the Takogumi are in one of the hangars, whose big doors are about halfway open. Inside we can just make out a couple of small private jets, a maintenance area, and an area with several tables to one side. Fortunately for us, things are laid out such that at least part of the interior is visible from all three other buildings' roofs.
Valentine hacks into the airport's security systems and spots signs of the Takogumi's decker in the system. She tries to slip past them and use the airstrip's sensors without being noticed and succeeds. She reports that the Yaks have a rigger who has deployed four combat drones in the area -- two trunk-sized, tanklike Doberman crawlers on the ground and two Wandjina flyers (that look like current UAVs) which are circling over head and are being used for surveillance. She then takes control of the hangar's interior cameras and microphones. She doesn't activate them -- doing so would alert the Takogumi's decker -- but she'll turn them on when Yuroichi is brought in and gives the signal (saying "bakayarou"). She spends much of the next few minutes dodging them and hiding from them in various parts of the system -- almost any time Valentine isn't actually cited as doing something below, Helen was rolling for her ability to evade detection.
Meanwhile the rest of us are discussing their magical defenses. Assensing reveals several spirits -- at least two, and powerful from what we can tell -- patrolling the hangar. It also reveals no obvious mages, which while it really means there has to at least one mage with an initiation grade higher than Bikavèr's grade 4 (whose Masking he can't overpower), prompts a comment that the alternative is the Yakuza are stupid -- leading Tiffany to coin the catchphrase of the session, "Yaku-duh".
After we finish assensing and mocking the Yakuza, Volpe summons an air elemental while her two shamans call up a pair of storm spirits. Lukas conjures a Force 6 storm spirit of his own and gets two services from it; first he instructs it to Conceal Ylva on her way to and while she's on her sniper perch on the water tower atop the little office building, and second, when he gives the signal, Confuse the Takogumi in the hangar.
That done, we deploy. Everyone gets into place without the Yaks' rigger spotting us through his drones' sensors; Ylva in particular is covered in an urban ghillie suit and Concealed by the storm spirit, making her pretty much impossible to spot. Oh, wait, almost everyone gets into place without being noticed: a spirit in the form of a ninja which we hadn't spotted earlier comes upon Lukas as he tries to get on top of a lower roof of the same building Ylva's on. The ninja-spirit, curious about a child wandering about the airstrip after midnight, reaches for Lukas' neck -- and panicked, Lukas attempts to banish it. Since he failed to banish the fire elemental some weeks earlier (which had been about the same strength), he wasn't actually expecting much, but in the time since then Lukas has gained a Force 3 focus and another level of initiation -- he doesn't so much banish the ninja-spirit as shred it into primal energies in an eyeblink, and he's briefly surprised by both his level of success and how easy it was.
Fortunately, the rigger didn't spot this either, despite it happening pretty much in the open. Lukas scampers to his perch and finally we're all in position.
Volpe and some of her team drive up to the hangar in their van with Yoruichi (arms unfortunately but necessarily re-dislocated) apparently "packaged" for delivery. Valentine reports that the rigger's drones and the decker all spot the van. From her perch, Ylva sees activity within the hangar and notes that a Barrier spell suddenly goes up around several tables to one side of the hangar floor.
They drive in, and after Volpe talks to some of the Yaks (four footsoldiers with machineguns), they hand off Yoruichi and drive back out. The Yak soldiers march Yoruichi up to the oni and a woman dressed as a miko, who are both sitting at one of the tables.
"Hello, Yoruichi," the oni says. "Why didn't you come back?"
"I wasn't given orders to come back," she replies.
"That's a facile answer," the oni says. "You knew you were supposed to return."
They continue sparring verbally for several minutes, ending with the oni getting pissed with her and declaring "We own you!" He then moves to inject Yoruichi with something in a hypodermic, and she gives the signal by calling him "bakayarou".
In the grand tradition, everything then happens at once.
The spirits all have their instructions -- as noted Lukas's storm spirit will cause Confusion in the hangar, for one -- but they act so slowly compared to the meat people, paradoxically, that they won't be able to act until things are halfway over. And speaking of those meat-people...
Bikavèr hits the hangar wall by a side door with a Ranged Killing Hands attack. The wall was hardened, but the door there was considerably weaker and blows out.
Valentine grabs control of one of the Wandjina drones and gives us the camera and mike feeds for the hangar security systems. We finally get a full idea of what we're facing -- twelve Yak soldiers, two mikos, the oni and three spiris (two "samurai" and one "ninja" -- Helen informs us this the way mikos manifest shamanic Spirits of Man). The two Doberman drones are also out and about.
The combined effect is a surprise attack, but then everyone has to roll initiative. (Pause several minutes as Helen tallies up NPC rolls and their action phases, then gets ours.)
Bikavèr, as always, acts first and attacks the Barrier spell with another Ranged Killing Hands. He blows a hole through it, and throws a second RKH through the hole at one of the mikos. She drops, along with the Barrier. He then lobs a third at the Oni (viciously exploiting a rule for multiple attacks). Although it hits, the oni is not visibly affected. He turns and faces Bikavèr. "Let our friend go," Bikavèr demands.
"I don't give up what I own," the oni sneers.
"Then I will eat you!" Bikavèr bellows.
One of Volpe's snipers blows the head off of one of the Yak footsolders. Taking advantage of the moment, the oni vanishes. Bikavèr immediate assenses to try to locate him. "Pussy!" he yells. "Go ahead, run away. We destroy you!" He easily spots the oni, who has merely gone invisible.
Ylva snipes a Yak at the back of the hangar, near the second miko, and blows off his head. Volpe's second sniper takes out a soldier near the door.
Suddenly deprived of her bodyguard, the miko casts Control Thoughts on Yoruichi and turns her into a new bodyguard (although how much good she'll be with a pair of dislocated arms is up for grabs).
Seeing as things are getting serious, Bikavèr unlimbers his guns for the first time in the campaign. These are a pair of custom-made handcannons designed for his grip size, which fire knockout microgrenades. He lets off an autofire attack; two of the three shots are all that's necessary to drop the oni, who is completely and thoroughly unconscious. Bikavèr fires the third shot into the miko before Yoruichi can react and block it; she drops, too.
Bikavèr steps over to the oni, lifts it by the neck and (employing his Intimidation skill) demands that the surviving Takogumi surrender. As the ninja-spirit buggers off (having realized that with the miko knocked out it is now free), one of the Yaks lets loose with a submachinegun at Yoruichi rather than surrender. All three of his autofire shots hit, doing two moderate and one serious wound to her. Yoruichi drops, bleeding out, and her DocWagon monitor bracelet fires off.
Lukas realizes that the Yakuza spirits are now free and immediately seizes control of the one samurai-spirit he can see through the doorway of the hangar.
Another Yak footsoldier fails to resist the Intimidation and tries to flee the hangar.
Outside, the Takogumi rigger has directed his remaining Wandjina to unload its machine gun into one of Volpe's snipers, who is basically toast. Inside, another footsolder resists the Intimidation and unloads his SMG into Bikavèr. Bikavèr mostly tanks the shots and comes out with only a light wound. The next Yak in the initiative order fails his morale and tries to run for it; as he does so, the first fleeing Yak is mysteriously squished by a piece of airplane engine previously hanging on a chain. Helen strongly hints this was an action by one of the last free spirit, unhappy about how it was used by the Takogumi.
Valentine then augers the drone she's controlling into the hangar door, firing its machine gun wildly. It crashes, killing two more footsolders.
Finally, Volpe's air elemental attacks and flips a Doberman over.
Another Yak breaks and runs, while the next one fires an AK-97 full-auto at Bikavèr and misses pitifully.
Lukas instructs his brand-new samurai spirit to also cause Confusion, and launches a stun grenade with his launcher at the Yaks nearest Yoruichi, near the back of the hangar. He hits right on target and knocks them all out.
Ylva perforates the Yak who tried to machine gun Bikavèr. The surviving ally sniper holds their action as there are no targets visible to them, between the partially-open hangar doors and the airplane within.
Bikavèr shoots a escaping Yak with his handgun and drops him, then drops another.
Two of the escaping Yaks finally get outside, only for the ally sniper to kill one as Lukas hits the other with a stun bolt.
The combat is basically over at this point. The team kill all the surviving Takogumi save for the oni while Valentine hunts down their rigger and decker. Lukas runs inside to help Yoruichi as Valentine reports she's found the rigger sitting in an airport lounge surround by civilians. After ensuring the oni is neither waking soon nor able to do anything even if he did, Bikavèr heads out to deal with the rigger while Valentine continues the search for the decker.
Lukas slaps a trauma patch on Yoruichi, then casts Treat on her. She's got three levels of Magic Resistance, but he manages to power through it, although he has to maintain the spell for a full 20 rounds in order to stabilize her and give her 5 boxes of healing. He also turns off the DocWagon and cancels the team coming for her.
Bikavèr finds the rigger, and kills him from stealth with Ranged Killing Hands before beating feet out of there, apparently undiscovered by airport security.
Valentine gives us the unwelcome news that the Takogumi decker is nowhere nearby -- in fact, he's in Westphalia.
After making sure Yoruichi is okay, Lukas then runs up to where the one ally sniper was, and confirms she's way too dead to be helped. We let Volpe know so she can handle things from there. Yoruichi decides to organleg the Yaks, most of whom have suffered nothing more damaging than a slit throat.
And we begin to loot the hangar, for which Helen is unprepared, so we end the session there.
Before I begin, a correction: the Yakuza group is the "Takogumi", not the "Takogami" as I posted last time. I apparently misread my tiny pencil scrawl or something. Oh, and for some reason we all apparently thought former-kidnapper and now-temporary-ally Volpe was male, but Helen corrected us; Volpe is female.
Anyway, in a disturbing change from the usual routine, everyone arrived on time for this session, and we actually got started before 2PM. Play started when Helen gave us a map of the airstrip and we be began planning.
Turns out the airstrip is actually an isolated section of a larger airport, set aside for private flights. It's a separate runway with a set of three hangars and a small office building off to one side of it; the Takogumi are in one of the hangars, whose big doors are about halfway open. Inside we can just make out a couple of small private jets, a maintenance area, and an area with several tables to one side. Fortunately for us, things are laid out such that at least part of the interior is visible from all three other buildings' roofs.
Valentine hacks into the airport's security systems and spots signs of the Takogumi's decker in the system. She tries to slip past them and use the airstrip's sensors without being noticed and succeeds. She reports that the Yaks have a rigger who has deployed four combat drones in the area -- two trunk-sized, tanklike Doberman crawlers on the ground and two Wandjina flyers (that look like current UAVs) which are circling over head and are being used for surveillance. She then takes control of the hangar's interior cameras and microphones. She doesn't activate them -- doing so would alert the Takogumi's decker -- but she'll turn them on when Yuroichi is brought in and gives the signal (saying "bakayarou"). She spends much of the next few minutes dodging them and hiding from them in various parts of the system -- almost any time Valentine isn't actually cited as doing something below, Helen was rolling for her ability to evade detection.
Meanwhile the rest of us are discussing their magical defenses. Assensing reveals several spirits -- at least two, and powerful from what we can tell -- patrolling the hangar. It also reveals no obvious mages, which while it really means there has to at least one mage with an initiation grade higher than Bikavèr's grade 4 (whose Masking he can't overpower), prompts a comment that the alternative is the Yakuza are stupid -- leading Tiffany to coin the catchphrase of the session, "Yaku-duh".
After we finish assensing and mocking the Yakuza, Volpe summons an air elemental while her two shamans call up a pair of storm spirits. Lukas conjures a Force 6 storm spirit of his own and gets two services from it; first he instructs it to Conceal Ylva on her way to and while she's on her sniper perch on the water tower atop the little office building, and second, when he gives the signal, Confuse the Takogumi in the hangar.
That done, we deploy. Everyone gets into place without the Yaks' rigger spotting us through his drones' sensors; Ylva in particular is covered in an urban ghillie suit and Concealed by the storm spirit, making her pretty much impossible to spot. Oh, wait, almost everyone gets into place without being noticed: a spirit in the form of a ninja which we hadn't spotted earlier comes upon Lukas as he tries to get on top of a lower roof of the same building Ylva's on. The ninja-spirit, curious about a child wandering about the airstrip after midnight, reaches for Lukas' neck -- and panicked, Lukas attempts to banish it. Since he failed to banish the fire elemental some weeks earlier (which had been about the same strength), he wasn't actually expecting much, but in the time since then Lukas has gained a Force 3 focus and another level of initiation -- he doesn't so much banish the ninja-spirit as shred it into primal energies in an eyeblink, and he's briefly surprised by both his level of success and how easy it was.
Fortunately, the rigger didn't spot this either, despite it happening pretty much in the open. Lukas scampers to his perch and finally we're all in position.
Volpe and some of her team drive up to the hangar in their van with Yoruichi (arms unfortunately but necessarily re-dislocated) apparently "packaged" for delivery. Valentine reports that the rigger's drones and the decker all spot the van. From her perch, Ylva sees activity within the hangar and notes that a Barrier spell suddenly goes up around several tables to one side of the hangar floor.
They drive in, and after Volpe talks to some of the Yaks (four footsoldiers with machineguns), they hand off Yoruichi and drive back out. The Yak soldiers march Yoruichi up to the oni and a woman dressed as a miko, who are both sitting at one of the tables.
"Hello, Yoruichi," the oni says. "Why didn't you come back?"
"I wasn't given orders to come back," she replies.
"That's a facile answer," the oni says. "You knew you were supposed to return."
They continue sparring verbally for several minutes, ending with the oni getting pissed with her and declaring "We own you!" He then moves to inject Yoruichi with something in a hypodermic, and she gives the signal by calling him "bakayarou".
In the grand tradition, everything then happens at once.
The spirits all have their instructions -- as noted Lukas's storm spirit will cause Confusion in the hangar, for one -- but they act so slowly compared to the meat people, paradoxically, that they won't be able to act until things are halfway over. And speaking of those meat-people...
Bikavèr hits the hangar wall by a side door with a Ranged Killing Hands attack. The wall was hardened, but the door there was considerably weaker and blows out.
Valentine grabs control of one of the Wandjina drones and gives us the camera and mike feeds for the hangar security systems. We finally get a full idea of what we're facing -- twelve Yak soldiers, two mikos, the oni and three spiris (two "samurai" and one "ninja" -- Helen informs us this the way mikos manifest shamanic Spirits of Man). The two Doberman drones are also out and about.
The combined effect is a surprise attack, but then everyone has to roll initiative. (Pause several minutes as Helen tallies up NPC rolls and their action phases, then gets ours.)
Bikavèr, as always, acts first and attacks the Barrier spell with another Ranged Killing Hands. He blows a hole through it, and throws a second RKH through the hole at one of the mikos. She drops, along with the Barrier. He then lobs a third at the Oni (viciously exploiting a rule for multiple attacks). Although it hits, the oni is not visibly affected. He turns and faces Bikavèr. "Let our friend go," Bikavèr demands.
"I don't give up what I own," the oni sneers.
"Then I will eat you!" Bikavèr bellows.
One of Volpe's snipers blows the head off of one of the Yak footsolders. Taking advantage of the moment, the oni vanishes. Bikavèr immediate assenses to try to locate him. "Pussy!" he yells. "Go ahead, run away. We destroy you!" He easily spots the oni, who has merely gone invisible.
Ylva snipes a Yak at the back of the hangar, near the second miko, and blows off his head. Volpe's second sniper takes out a soldier near the door.
Suddenly deprived of her bodyguard, the miko casts Control Thoughts on Yoruichi and turns her into a new bodyguard (although how much good she'll be with a pair of dislocated arms is up for grabs).
Seeing as things are getting serious, Bikavèr unlimbers his guns for the first time in the campaign. These are a pair of custom-made handcannons designed for his grip size, which fire knockout microgrenades. He lets off an autofire attack; two of the three shots are all that's necessary to drop the oni, who is completely and thoroughly unconscious. Bikavèr fires the third shot into the miko before Yoruichi can react and block it; she drops, too.
Bikavèr steps over to the oni, lifts it by the neck and (employing his Intimidation skill) demands that the surviving Takogumi surrender. As the ninja-spirit buggers off (having realized that with the miko knocked out it is now free), one of the Yaks lets loose with a submachinegun at Yoruichi rather than surrender. All three of his autofire shots hit, doing two moderate and one serious wound to her. Yoruichi drops, bleeding out, and her DocWagon monitor bracelet fires off.
Lukas realizes that the Yakuza spirits are now free and immediately seizes control of the one samurai-spirit he can see through the doorway of the hangar.
Another Yak footsoldier fails to resist the Intimidation and tries to flee the hangar.
Outside, the Takogumi rigger has directed his remaining Wandjina to unload its machine gun into one of Volpe's snipers, who is basically toast. Inside, another footsolder resists the Intimidation and unloads his SMG into Bikavèr. Bikavèr mostly tanks the shots and comes out with only a light wound. The next Yak in the initiative order fails his morale and tries to run for it; as he does so, the first fleeing Yak is mysteriously squished by a piece of airplane engine previously hanging on a chain. Helen strongly hints this was an action by one of the last free spirit, unhappy about how it was used by the Takogumi.
Valentine then augers the drone she's controlling into the hangar door, firing its machine gun wildly. It crashes, killing two more footsolders.
Finally, Volpe's air elemental attacks and flips a Doberman over.
Another Yak breaks and runs, while the next one fires an AK-97 full-auto at Bikavèr and misses pitifully.
Lukas instructs his brand-new samurai spirit to also cause Confusion, and launches a stun grenade with his launcher at the Yaks nearest Yoruichi, near the back of the hangar. He hits right on target and knocks them all out.
Ylva perforates the Yak who tried to machine gun Bikavèr. The surviving ally sniper holds their action as there are no targets visible to them, between the partially-open hangar doors and the airplane within.
Bikavèr shoots a escaping Yak with his handgun and drops him, then drops another.
Two of the escaping Yaks finally get outside, only for the ally sniper to kill one as Lukas hits the other with a stun bolt.
The combat is basically over at this point. The team kill all the surviving Takogumi save for the oni while Valentine hunts down their rigger and decker. Lukas runs inside to help Yoruichi as Valentine reports she's found the rigger sitting in an airport lounge surround by civilians. After ensuring the oni is neither waking soon nor able to do anything even if he did, Bikavèr heads out to deal with the rigger while Valentine continues the search for the decker.
Lukas slaps a trauma patch on Yoruichi, then casts Treat on her. She's got three levels of Magic Resistance, but he manages to power through it, although he has to maintain the spell for a full 20 rounds in order to stabilize her and give her 5 boxes of healing. He also turns off the DocWagon and cancels the team coming for her.
Bikavèr finds the rigger, and kills him from stealth with Ranged Killing Hands before beating feet out of there, apparently undiscovered by airport security.
Valentine gives us the unwelcome news that the Takogumi decker is nowhere nearby -- in fact, he's in Westphalia.
After making sure Yoruichi is okay, Lukas then runs up to where the one ally sniper was, and confirms she's way too dead to be helped. We let Volpe know so she can handle things from there. Yoruichi decides to organleg the Yaks, most of whom have suffered nothing more damaging than a slit throat.
And we begin to loot the hangar, for which Helen is unprepared, so we end the session there.
-- 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....