I'm puzzled about what to do next. I stated what Faith would do if we think the place is largely devoid of staff, which is take out the guard and search the interior.
Also I'm going to be unable to post on Monday and maybe Tuesday.
Y'all can certainly initiate combat should you desire. FWIW, you see no sign of either obvious or concealed weapons on the man outside.
Faith engages the comms and softly suggests, "Maybe one of us can approach and initiate a conversation with cover from the rest. I'm willing, if no one else wants to."
I will not generally be able to post on Tuesday or Thursday of this week. To be frank, I'll probably need a day to think about the situation and what Faith's response will be. She is not inclined to deliver a child into the hands of such people, however, so the decision is whether to indicate that up front or pretend to be willing to make the trade to give us time to plan a response.
I doubt anyone is willing to make that trade, lol.
To this guy? No. There's no profit in it for us. Also 'use her as a vessel' sounds pretty bad.
But telling the corp about pre-identified psionic individuals who might be valuable for some kind of experimentation or recruitment? Stringer might be down for that. If he knows someone he trusts to reward him (family, maybe?) he might give them the info this guy wants.
Salvo is a man of action, and He puts down monsters for a living. As far as he is concerned this guy qualifies as one.
What we'll want to suss out, however, is whether he is ready to try to kill us where we are in that restaurant. It does not appear he has back-up, assuming we observed the usual staff leave, but there could be muscle in reserve. He does not sound worried that we'll refuse his offer and attempt to kill him where he stands, so he likely has a plan for that eventuality. Maybe he and Jao Carlo are more Bada$$ than they appear.
If anyone has any questions or actions they want to do before things get shooty. You should post now. Salvo's next post will kick things off. They are probably powerful, mechanically or mysticly boosted likely. Hope suprise first strike gives us an edge.
I will probably post Sunday morning.
Considering the imminent violence, I went ahead and setup a new map page!
Faith was considering faking like she agreed to his plan to learn what he would suggest, and maybe try to wheedle some information about the organization responsible. Not likely to give us much, but it might put them on the back foot when shooting starts.
Faith has heard enough. Fire when ready.
Lead us off, Salvo!
He did, it's you and Hibo next. Sorry, I was trying a new thing I saw for combats where individual inits might matter, it might have been a confusing shift, lol.
Sorry, been fighting a cold that won't go away, will post tonight or tomorrow, stay healthy out there everyone!
Unless magic items from Urban Arcana are available through our new employer, Faith is okay with equipment. If such items are available, is there any indication of what types of magic might help against Fritz and his gang? Do they summon demons or devils, control undead, etc.?
They do not have any unusual FX/magic/psionic gear available. That might change down the line, but forget I said that ;)
There really isn't a lot of hard information about the sort of magic the cult uses, best to expect anything.
I got off-track with the holidays on that timeline. I'll try and get it up sometime this coming week just to make sure everyone is on the same page, but it's a busy time of year for me...
Hope everyone's having a great holiday season!
I retired a few weeks ago, so I'm cool chillin' until things pick up again.
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Here is a very brief timeline of the most important plot points up to this moment! I'll have a GP post coming in the next couple of days.
Also note: The corporate credit card has it's own +25 wealth bonus.
Timeline of Events
~1000 years ago - A woman with powerful psychic abilities rises to power and is beaten back by a "wizard" who manages to send her mind to a protodimension using an opal called The Heart of Darkness while her body ages tremendously slowly on Earth.
July 9 - The Heart of Darkness is stolen from an Australian museum.
July 12 - A presumed terrorist bombing occurs in Brazil. Scores are killed and dozens are kidnapped.
July 14 - A band of kidnap victims from the mall bombing manage to escape from their captors and go into hiding while they learn what happened.
July 17 - The former victims, now turned investigators, have an encounter with Klaus and his cyborg bodyguard. After the fight, they discover Klaus had been delaying them long enough to re-kidnap another victim of the July 12 mall bombing.
July 18 - In the early morning hours, the investigators are given a deep briefing on the entire situation by Doug "Tanomoshi" Campbell, manager of a special projects division of Oyama Corporation. They're offered a job to dig deeper into the events surrounding the Heart of Darkness
July 22 - The crew departs for Sydney.
I think we may want to discuss some stuff OOC.
First off, I'm assuming all 3 of these guys can be found in Sydney, so we need accommodations in Sydney but we might also want to check out that first mine in the Outback? Anyway, re: accommodations would we want to AirBnB a house or use a hotel? There's benefits and drawbacks to both.
Second, we probably want at least 2 cars so we can split up if we need to, maybe 1 city-type car and 1 outback-type car.
Are we going after Smythe first?
I'm not sure how we approach Smythe- we could try to pose as business people (or shady criminals) and set up a meeting? If that's the case we might want to try to set up fake credentials to make him take us more seriously (or even just to get him to agree to meet with us in the first place).
Or we could find his offices and residence and stake them out? That will take some research online and/or with local people on the ground.
Other ideas?
We need to rent the vehicles.
And a safehouse.
The Credentials are also a good idea.
I have GNN reporter credits. That could be a way in.
See Salvo’s post.
Faith has a lead in the Gameplay thread now, so she will report that and a group of us can try to locate this guard who had the unusual polygraph test.
Regarding cars, Faith has a Drive +12 skill, so maybe get a muscle car that can perform well if we get into a chase.
With the +25 temporary bonus Stringer should be able to arrange virtually anything. Let's do 3 cars, then, one fast one for Faith, one super boring one for stake outs (preferably with a big engine under the hood in case they need to chase somebody?), and one rugged one for the outback.
Let's do a safehouse with all the bells and whistles and a backup that's not tied to anybody's current IDs, just in case everything goes to hell.
And another set of quality IDs for everybody.
But seriously, he has a 48 Wealth with that +25. If somebody wants something Stringer will get it.
To clarify, the card has it's own wealth bonus, I didn't explain myself well. It can be used per the normal wealth rules as though it was a character (purchaser can roll if rolling is required).
DM, could you tell us a little about the tech level of this setting? I was thinking it was modern or better but it seems like network storage and remote hacking (movie style, not real life) isn't a thing?
I just want to calibrate my idea of what Stringer can do on the computer. For instance, could he attempt to hack the cameras from off site? Or would he need to be on site? Or is that just not a possibility?
Thanks!
The main issue here is just that it's a museum, so the security systems aren't likely to be connected to a public access node like the internet. It seems more probable that personnel files could be hacked remotely, but you'd have to give it a try to be sure.
Using Snoop or another device to make a connection to either short-ranged wireless or a physical port would be effective in getting to the security stuff, provided the security guards don't spot it.
Movie-hacking is pretty much the standard, but TBH, I wanted to encourage an in-person visit to the scene of the crime. This chapter might not be the best place for you to shine (and eventually, you'll all end up in Hong Kong down the road, and that will be a huge place for Stringer to be the star), but there are work-arounds and it might be useful to attempt remote access or get Faith to plant a device/sneak Snoop inside somehow.