In what's going to be a disappointment to many, this recording of one of our sessions began with a minor retcon to the previous events. After a minor discussion with the GM and realising that Poultry's cybereyes could likely pick us up in spite of invisibility, he allowed Killbo to warp space time. Using his edge and a few odd tests, he was able to shut the painting over the safe just before the troll looked his way. Sorry for the cop-out.
Despite being out of immediate danger, this did result in Poultry walking up to within inches of Killbo, opening the painting and trying to enter the safe. Cue "breathing loudly" tests to see if he picked us up. Just barely avoiding being heard, the dwarf listened to the sounds of the troll turning the dial and recorded everything he could from the troll nearby. Sounds, sights, everything his enhancements could pick up. Grabbing something from the safe and slamming it shut, the troll stomped off out of the room leaving the duo to sigh with relief.
Now, on the one hand we had some useful info. Killbo's recordings showed that the dial had to be turned twenty-seven times and had a very rough estimate of what number they were stopping at. On the other, we didn't know which direction each one was going in or a specific way to bypass the security systems besides it. Sending the data to Amoral briefly for analysis, the dwarf found himself stumped.
Amoral wasn't having too much fun himself. Managing to analyse the data easy enough, his first foray against Hedge's computer's defenses was disastrous. Forced to bug out after things went wrong, Amoral had an extremely near miss almost both being detected and suffering damage as a result. Stopping with his efforts for the moment, the technomancer joined Killbo in trying to crack open the safe.
After a long period of checking what was what, locksmith tests and all, the dwarf eventually had a halfway decent idea of what the combination was. Setting to work on the electronic lock, keypad and eye scanner, Amoral began metaphorically taking them to bits one by one. Also threading the recordings from Killbo's cyberears he managed to break past damn near everything. This just left Killbo to figure out the safe's basic design, a miniturised version of something he'd seen in bank vaults and break the code. Something even he couldn't screw up with all the bonuses he now had.
As the door swung open it was immediately obvious that something large had been taken from within. The few wrapped items left were placed in positions which left a specific space for something else, so we'd already lost out. Not by much however. Unwrapping the objects within we found the safe contained a number of dragon's claws. Pillaging promptly followed. As did framing, with Amoral getting Killbo to burn "WILSON SENDS HIS REGARDS" into the safe's rear.
Locking it again, and being healed from the fading damage thanks to the medi-kit, Amoral returned to the server. He'd been denied once. This, of course, was all the prompting he needed to bring out the big guns. Wading in again, the technomancer broke out multiple spites, a number of which were rating eight, and proceeded to give the machine the thrashing of its lifetime.
Almost the second he tried to proceed though, Amoral ended up facing down a much more compitent BlackHammer program in the form of a fire-breathing wolf. A gigantic black mallet rose from the program's back, attempting to beat him into the ground as they entered AR combat, Amoral flipping over the hammer and unleashing his sprites into battle. Taking off a full third of its boxes, the program reeled back and tried to jam his connection port. Amoral being a technomancer, this did nothing and just allowed him to promptly beat until the BlackHammer went offline.
Despite the server screwing with him and the node scuplting trying to kill him (causing the ground to fall away as he entered a fantasy style castle) he managed to find a decent amount of data worthy of taking. Consisting of more than they could possibly carry, Amoral broadcast as much as he could to Killbo's com-link before pushing on. A few more scans found nothing of interest, but some eventual through searching uncovered a very suspicious hidden node.
Sculpted like a dungeon, said hidden node seemed to be empty besides a single door. Or rather, a portal to the resonance realms, but something above his level of technomancy unfortunately. The fact it was scrupled in the shape of a dragon was enough to make him realise leaving it alone was likely a good idea.
Making a few edit checks to hide his presence, Amoral left the terminal but spotted something of interest on his way out. A brief glimpse of an image - Hedges standing before a very familiar looking building with men in white coats. If you've been reading up to now, you can guess what was he involved in.
Our limited capacity for professionalism spent, the two proceeded to openly try to dick with Hedges. Killbo broke out araldite from somewhere and immediately opted to make life difficult for whoever entered next. Passing it to Amoral, he squirted some big globules over the draw allowing access to the terminal before very carefully closing it.
Unfortunately (perhaps thankfully) before Killbo could get to work sticking various bits of furniture to the ceiling, Poultry re-appeared for some mysterious reason and approached the safe. The same one we'd spent so long screwing with it was going to immediately reject him. Booking it as the alarms went off we managed to just remain in earshot long enough to hear the following from the troll "Sir! Intruders have infiltrated the upper floors, they've... the hell!?" a loud smashing noise followed "Sir, they've broken your desk!" Sprinting through the crowds of people as sirens screamed and Poultry appeared out of the office, part of a desk and a terminal stuck to one hand, we
With the guards second behind us, Killbo was forced to grab a falling Amoral almost as soon as his feet touched the ground, one guard firing blindly down the shaft. This clipped the unfortunate dwarf, and the guards followed up with grenades just as Killbo blew open the door into the basement with explosive foam. With the weapons detonating behind them, the two sprinted for the stairway leading to the upper building. Amoral's drones still stationed there bought us some time, shooting up the entrance to the bottom level and then heading out through the sewers. Something to at least make it initially look like we were trying to escape via ghoul alley.
As the guards didn't have the foresight to post a sentry, escaping proved to be relatively easy. Less easy proved to be sneaking through the building with security on High-But-Not-So-High-The-Guests-Will-Notice-Alert and find Leona. Finding her, we discovered the good ans bad news. The good news was that she had tracked down our second to last target, Beaumont. The bad news is thanks to her, he was unconscious and tied to a bed in her room.
This was going to make negotiations difficult.
----
Shadowrun and all related characters and media are owned by FASA Corporation, Fantasy Productions and Catalyst Games Labs.
Source of cyber combat image is located here.
No comments:
Post a Comment