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"No questions, sir. Well, other than if we've got time for a medic to take a look at my leg." Aaron hobbles over and leans on a patch of rubble, the blood still running freely from the wound. "One of them gave me a shot, and it's feeling pretty good for the time being, but I have a feeling by the time that's worn off it'll be a little late to help with the bullet stuck in there. Other than that, I'm ready to get moving."
I swear I posted here. I'll get something up later today..
I think I would prefer to recruit some new people, honestly. My main reasoning is that we've lost our party doctor for the Rippers game; not only does that mean we can't heal, but we also lose our access to Rippertech. At least one person who might be able to fill in for that would be nice, but if you find more than that who you like as characters I'd be fine with getting back up to 6. Maybe ask around other SW games before going into an open recruitment? That may be easier when looking for a brand new person.
Invigorated by his previous success, Aaron forgoes his careful aiming and trusts his gut. With one possible officer down Aaron shoots at the next most important target he can find, then flip-cocks the rifle before bringing it up to his eye and blowing his target away.
"Damn right!" Aaron ducks back behind cover for a second before leaning out again, lining up a shot now on any German he can get a bead on. He hesitates to fire, hoping that perhaps before he has to take another life the reinforcements will take them from behind and force a surrender. If not, though, he still lines up the iron sights on the chest of the nearest German.
Aaron curses when he misses his last shot, and pops up again. He's more careful this time, and aims for whichever German looks like they might be in charge here. Once he finds them amid the confusion of them being trapped, he pulls a trigger to put them down and induce panic in their ranks if possible.
Everyone still around? I don't know if other people missed that everyone's up or if we've lost some people.
Feeling some of the pain wash away with the morphine shot, Aaron is invigorated and pops up over the barrier again and fires a shot into another German's chest.
You don't take a wound penalty from wounds you're trying to soak. If you had already taken a Wound and now have a -1 you take that penalty to soak further wounds, but you wouldn't have a penalty when trying to soak the original Wound.
Aaron grits his teeth against the pain when the bullet hits his leg. He pulls his leg in and struggles to stay conscious. "I need a medic!" he hollers, all the while propping himself up on a pile of debris; he hauls himself and keeps himself steady while he aims down his iron sights at the nearest German. He struggles to keep himself up with his injured leg and yells over his shoulder again, oblivious to Kristophe in the heat of the moment. "I said I need a f*ckin' medic!"
"He's down! Thin out their lines, hold them back!" Aaron keeps his weapon at the ready and stays hunkered down behind cover. "Hold them here and we hold the church!"
"Keep firing! He's not going down!" Aaron moves back away from the flames toward the ladder, hoping to keep more distance between himself and the flame trooper. Once he's gotten farther back behind cover, he pops up only for a second and fires off a shot. "Make sure you're behind cover and aim for the fuel tank! We'll blow his ass and get out of here!"
"Sh*t, take down the flame trooper! He'll burn us out of here. Does anyone have a grenade?"
Just as a head's up, you don't take a -2 on the additional when you roll on an exploding die. You only take the penalty once. That still leaves you one short of a raise, but it's good to know for the future. They continue to add up although for things like attack rolls there's no mechanical benefit to raising more than once. However, contested rolls such as Persuasion may have a target number higher than 4 so getting as high a roll as possible is useful.
Sean, you've got an ace to re-roll on your Wild die.
Aaron coughs when more smoke gets into his lungs, but ratchets his rifle and loads another bullet into the chamber. He raises the iron sights to his eyes again and draws a bead on one of the Germans rushing toward him; he lines up the iron slivers on the man's heart and pulls the trigger. "We need to finish them off fast in case that canister blows," Aaron says, trying to keep close to their way back up.
"The cellar? We've gotta--" Aaron's voice is cut off as the gunfire continues, and he glances over as Dancer takes a bullet to the gut. "I can't help him here, sir! It'll take too much time, we've got to deal with them before I can do anything for him." He gives Dancer a look of sympathy, before ducking toward the cellar door behind Sean. "Dancer, don't die before I get back, you hear me? I'll patch you up as soon as I can, so you better not f*ckin' bleed out in the mean time." Aaron drops down behind Sean and cocked the lever of his rifle again as he came down the ladder, ducking into the first patch of cover he can find. When he sees an enemy he'll take the first shot he's got before plastering himself to the ground as much as possible.
Aaron hunkers down behind cover and reaches for the strange mechanical device strapped to his belt; with a flick of a switch his body is quickly surrounded by a shimmering field of light. With his force field in place, Aaron cocks his rifle and rises up to take a shot, but his bullet goes wide as the tremors for the mortar shots rock the church around him. "I'm with Sean, Captain. Once the mortars stop we ought to bury this place with the Krauts inside and make a break for it." After his shot misses he ducks back down, hugging the cover to make a harder target for the advancing Germans.
Yeah, I was waiting to see my equipment especially, just to be safe. I think I'm probably going to go with either Armor or Deflection for the moment as Aaron has no real desire to fight and would rather use his mechanical skills to protect himself than use them to fight enemies. Provided he survives long enough I'll probably pick up some stuff like Smite or Burst/Blast to deal more damage, but for the moment he has no other concern than trying to get home alive (of course, its pretty much guaranteed he's going to fail eventually). Also, I've got my Rippers stats up on the other profile, I'll post in with him as well so you can take a look.
Here's Aaron Nikhols Sr. reporting for duty in the Great War, the poor bastard. I don't have Deadlands Noir so I'm unsure how different Patent Scientists are, but I'm assuming I still need the Weird Science skill to activate my gadgets. I obviously left gear unfilled for the time being, and I haven't done the full backstory write-up but the story is already written up pretty simply previously in this thread.
What is it about this Master Sergeant's disappearance that has you still looking? Surely if it was a more normal case your superiors would have assigned you to something different. What do you do in your free time when not working on that case, though? Aaron was assigned to Fort Triton about a month or two before the Master Sergeant disappeared, and had known the man on a someone personal basis, so he requested to be assigned to the team investigating the case. Aaron was certain something was amiss almost immediately; more than a dozen people claimed seeing the Master Sergeant around the base after he'd departed that night--he'd swiped his I.D. to leave the base at around 6:15 PM, but at least two people reported seeing him at the mess hall around 8:30 PM--and the sergeant's car hadn't left the base while the soldier on duty saw him driving when he left. None of his personal effects had been taken with him either, so he wasn't suspected of being a deserter. While a random killing was possible, he had checked out both a handgun and hunting rifle from the base's armory, and had told the clerk he intended to go hunting; it felt unlikely that the man would have been captured or killed. Moreover, a week later a man matching his description sold both a handgun and hunting rifle to a pawn shop two states away, with matching serial numbers for the sergeant's weapons. While the case if officially cold--meaning Aaron is assigned to other active cases--he has continued to look into it in his spare time with his CO's approval. When Ricky disappeared, Aaron was on-scene with local law enforcement to help track him down; Ricky was the last person to report seeing the sergeant off-base--he said he'd seen the man refueling his truck at a gas station the evening he disappeared--and Aaron was certain the two cases were connected. Both of the cases had the same general feel of weirdness about them, that something wasn't quite right, and Aaron remains convinced their disappearances are connected and that the two of them are still alive. He's remained in contact with local LEOs over the past few years when they got possible tips, and has forged a tenuous relationship with Ricky's parents as well. As for what he does when not looking into that cold case, Aaron mostly works on-base dealing with various issues he's assigned by his COs. He recently dealt with a small drug trade between a staff sergeant and several students at Romney State, and so has been around the campus more recently. In addition, he works part-time with the school's criminology lab as part of a partnership with Army CID. Students interested in military service can sign on with CID in exchange for free tuition and assignments across the country or in active combat zones. I was picturing Aaron as being around 25 or 26.
Ignore what's actually in this alias, I'm re-purposing it for this game. Aaron is the only son and eldest child of former Baltimore Police Commissioner Marcus Nikhols and his wife, Jillian. While his younger twin sisters took more after their mother, Aaron was nearly attached to his father at the hip. He was enthralled with his father's work on the police force, especially considering the changing tides of Baltimore's criminal underworld. At one point and time, Marcus intended to join the police force in Baltimore, but as he grew older he realized how emotionally taxing the job could be; a few people he had known (although not necessarily 'friends of his') were arrested while he was in high school, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to do the job as it should be. Instead, Aaron branched out into military service after college. He was sent to Afghanistan as a Private in Army CID, and served for five months before being sent home. An insurgent attack killed most members of Aaron's squadron, and he himself was left mentally traumatized by the event. Rather than discharge him, he was assigned to Fort Triton, a small military base just outside of Romney, New Hampshire. Having now been there for a few years, Aaron is still working a case on a missing Master Sergeant who disappeared a few weeks before Ricky Thompson. Aspirations: Aaron wants to find Ricky, believing that he might have been involved in the disappearance of Master Sergeant Hughes, whether as a suspect or (more likely) a witness. Still, he has other goals; he's smitten with a girl working at the local pizzeria, and would like to find the courage to finally ask her on a date. Worst Thing I've Ever Done:
"When I was just a kid, y'know, in Baltimore, I had a friend named Glenn. Glenn was this rich-ass white kid, grew up in a different part of town. Baltimore's always had a bit of a racial divide, but at the time it was pretty bad. We were an odd pair, but I'd know him since I was five; my father had enough money to send me to a decent school." Aaron pauses, taking a small sip of the soda in his hand. He breathes deeply, his dark nostrils flaring as he shakes his head. "Still, as we got older... Glenn and I got different. I took more after my father, and he just... didn't take after anyone. His parents were worried, but he did well enough in school and just kept to himself. I found out when we were seventeen that he'd fallen in with a bad crowd, and had developed a codeine habit. He begged me not to tell my father--who certainly would have arrested him and done everything in his power to get him shipped off to rehab--and I listened, against my better judgment. I talked to him for the last time, I think, at our graduation." Aaron sits on one of the stools of the bar, cracking his neck as he sets the glass on the bar top. "My sophomore year of college, I heard he robbed a pharmacy, killed two people, and eventually died in a stand-off with police. I couldn't get home to attend his funeral, but... it wasn't much to speak of. His dad brushed it under the rug. Every time I think back on that, I just... I know if I'd told my father, if he'd gotten help... things would've been different. Worst Thing I Can Imagine Doing:
"When I was overseas, I remember my CO telling me about a guy who shot a kid when he ran out in front of an armed convoy. We'd received word about suicide bombers being active in the area, and this kid had something strapped to his chest, it was hard to see... and he shot him, right in the middle of the street. It turns out he was deaf, hadn't heard the convoy coming... and he was carrying a metal lunchbox. The guy tried to give him medical attention when he realized the mistake, but it was too late. They didn't discharge him for it, but he was a bit screwed up in the head after that. A screw-up like that, I... don't know what I'd do, truthfully." Worst Thing He Can Imagine Someone Else Doing: Aaron doesn't have to imagine the worst thing someone else has done, as far as he's concerned. When his father was still on the police force, he remembers when they tracked down a serial killer operating near the harbor. The man had cut off the fingers, toes, and lips of his victims, all women, before shaving their heads bald and beating them to death with a hammer while they were chained to the ceiling. His father never brought his work home with him, but Aaron heard plenty about it on the news when they finally found the guy's lair; there were four women still there, with only one of them still alive. What He Has Forgotten:While Aaron's unit really was attacked while he was overseas, it wasn't normal insurgents that assaulted them. Militant mages assaulted his caravan and caused their APC to explode, killing almost all the men inside. His own vehicle took the brunt of explosion, but his head slammed into the side of the car and knocked him out. Neither he nor any of the other survivors remember it as anything other than a normal terrorist attack. Most Traumatic Thing That Has Ever Happened: Aaron views the death of his friend Glenn, or more specifically his failure to help him, as the worst thing that's ever happened to him. He views it as his worst personal failing. How Does He Know Ricky Thompson: Aaron only knows Ricky through his possible association with a case involving a missing Master Sergeant. Ricky disappeared under similar circumstances about two months after the sergeant, and Aaron has been working the case in his off-time ever since Ricky disappeared. He's heard news of his family wanting to declare Ricky dead, but something tells Aaron that both he and the sergeant are both still alive.
Should someone hit up Jane and make sure she knows it's her turn?
Like I said, I'll murder the hell out of a raider while that guy makes his way downstairs. Also, I'm back in the states now and getting settled in, and the trip was a blast.
Aaron, watching Zeke kill yet another raider as he cut through their ranks, swivels his turret instead towards the leader of the group. Taking a second to steady his aim, he unloads another three-round burst, this time aimed for the junker's chest. Aaron grins from the gunner's seat as his shot hits home, putting a few holes in the raider leader. Rolls:
As the car slams into the wall and collapses it, Aaron searches for a target before unloading another burst of gunfire in their direction. He watches Zeke go after the gunman that attacked Nilus, and he decides instead to target the remaining raiders in the building. He watches them for a moment to see who is still stunned by Nilus's spell, and then tries to gun down one of the men that recovered in order to provide Zeke some cover. Rolls:
So, is everyone else still here? We haven't gotten any posts at all in a few weeks.
Hey guys, I'm posting this in all my active games so everyone is aware of it; I'll be traveling abroad to Iceland for about three weeks through my university starting on Thursday. I should have reasonable access to internet while I'm there since we're primarily staying in its two larger cities, but I don't know how often I'll have the time to post since I'm on a trip through school and not traveling by myself. I imagine I'll be able to post on a semi-regular basis, but I want everyone to know I probably won't be posting once a day for the next three weeks or so. Some days I'll probably post fairly regularly, and others I might not be here for a few days. I'll try to keep you guys updated on when I'll be around and when I won't, but the truth is I don't exactly know. If I'm gone for a few days, feel free to take control of my character if we need to move on or if there's something specifically relating to me needing to post, as I can't guarantee I'd be able to answer it in a timely fashion. Anyway, I'll still be here for the next few days, and if I'm not around for a while, have fun gaming!
As the raiders pop up from the windows to fire on the jeep, Aaron swivels the gun's turret towards one of them and fires a small burst before he has time to duck back behind cover. "Jane, we're sitting ducks out here if we're standing still! Either drive, or plow us into the building so we can flush them out!"
"Come out quietly, and drop your weapons!" Aaron bellows from atop the jeep, the turret of the machine gun pointed towards the door of the service station. "We killed your leader and the rest of your friends, and I don't have any problems with doing the same to you, unless you cooperate!" Aaron pauses for a second, giving them a moment to respond. "You have ten seconds, or I'll light this place up, understand me?"
I've mentioned this in some of the games I'm in, but I was recently in a pretty serious car accient (my car is totaled, and I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance), so I'm still a little shaken up and trying to get my life back in order. I'm catching up on Paizo slowly but surely, just saying if you don't hear from me that's probably why.
"I agree with Max, actually. As much as I'd rather just open fire, it'd be wrong not to give them a chance to surrender. Perhaps seeing us manning the vehicles they used to attack the town will persuade some of them to give up without a fight." Aaron leans back in the seat up towards the turret, but he keeps the large, shrouded barrel on target towards the building. "We ought to get a little closer, though, and be ready for a fight. Just because it'd be smart to throw down their arms doesn't mean they will; raiders aren't renowned for their intelligence, after all."
After double-checking that the weapon is ready to fire, Aaron calls down to Jane in the driver's seat. "I'm good to go up here, let's get moving."
"Let's get a move on, then... Jane, can you take the wheel? I have a feeling we won't have a chance to switch positions once we're there, and it'd be a shame to let that gun up there go to waste if you ask me." Assuming she agrees, Aaron climbs into the turret on top of the car, making sure it's ready to fire.
"Yeah, fair enough. Who's riding with me, then?" Aaron waves Jane towards the vehicle, motioning for her to climb in the passenger seat. "It's time to get this show on the road, I think."
Aaron watches the other get their rides moving, and he moves to the driver's seat of the car, grinning as he starts it up. He nods to McCullock, gesturing to the front passenger seat of the car. "You should join us, you know. We made a good team, and... I'd like to hear more about the War. You know, if you don't mind." Aaron shifts gears, and the vehicle hums to life beneath him. "And more about yourself, for that matter. It's not often I meet people that were anything like my father."
"Yeah, that's... that's what he told me, too. I heard about it from some of the Green hats in the Combine, but they didn't know I was a Syker, so I never got to try it. But if any of them have it, seems prudent I try to do the same." Aaron watches with curiosity as he watches Max down a can of oil, and while he doesn't ask the question is written on his face. "We can probably leave, I suspect the car can handle it. Let's track those bastards down, see how they managed to get their hands on it?"
"I've... never tried it either, actually. Normally I wouldn't bother, but, well, I figure I need every edge I can get." Aaron gestures to the hat, then the rifle at his side. "The Combine doesn't take kindly to defectors, especially considering how few of us manage to do it; if this stuff'll make it easier for me to give them the slip, or fight them off, I figured it was worth a shot." Aaron turns back to Max and the local mechanic for a moment. "I'd agree, as much of a pain as it might be, I'd rather fix it up right." After a second, he turns again to McCullock. "His name was Sergeant Marcus Nikhols, I don't know if that'd ring a bell or not. I remember him telling me about that, though. I was young when the bombs dropped but... well, I wasn't so young I don't remember what it was like before."
"51st Infantry Division of the Special Syker Corps, if I remember correctly." Aaron shakes the man's hand, before unslinging his rifle from his neck. "I used to live in a small town, maybe three or four days from here... we helped protect it. He was killed, and I was... conscripted." Aaron's face forms into a scowl, before he sighs. "What brings you here, then? I know the place produces a lot of Red, but... well, I didn't expect to find someone like you here."
Hopefully I won't be... I'm doing my best to get out of working Memorial Day weekend. It's the first wave of tourism for the summer, and I would much rather be kicking back and, to be honest, not dealing with that.
"Syker Corps? Really?" Aaron's head perks up, turning towards the other psychic. "My father fought with them before the bombs fell... he died a few years ago. I don't know that I've ever met anyone else who worked with them, other than him." Aaron stands up from vehicle, extending a hand towards the other man. "I'm Private Aaron... well, I guess it's just Aaron Nikhols, now."
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