death tribble

A warrior for an underwater race, and one of their submersibles...
 

From the World War II webcomic The Specialists, here is one of the enemy Ubermenschen--Der Arier, or in English, The Aryan---
 

 
Did you ever have the feeling that somehow, it's not going to be your day?

Take that Taliban !
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34016407

The Mystery Machine is now on my shelf, next to the Ecto-1.
 

I have just told the water, gas, electricity, the council and the local doctor I will be leaving the area shortly.
Found I was missing one of my memory keys/flash keys and then found it. The packing continues.

If you see me hit someone with a cat o nine tails and then I turn into a horse and exclaim twice does that mean you have watched me whip and watched me neigh, neigh ?

Black Crusade : The Ace of Adepts, Inverted
 
Where the party have successfully framed major law enforcement officers as dabblers in Warpcraft, and intend to continue their pose of sanctioned investigators, infiltrate the Tricorn Tower in Sibellus Hive, and run off with books that really should have burned and the ashes dropped into a black hole.

Digna: I can't believe I'm still getting away with this.

Getting through Customs at Scintilla.

Eniek: We don't actually have much in the holds.
GM: Apart from all those orphans.
Daniels: Oh yes.
Digna: You leave my orphans alone.

If there's anything guaranteed to make Imperial Customs suspicious, it's a starship turning up with nothing they can confiscate.

Skerrit: Well, if they must find something they can alway find my suitcase of xenos pornography.

And of course if they scan the heretics thoroughly they'll spot all those mutations. Digna attempts to cow them.

Digna: Lord-captain Daniels has seen fit to ferry me to.. where are we again?
Eniek: Scintilla.
Digna: To continue my investigations - I am commencing them now.

Daniels: I could try and smuggle in a crate of booze as a decoy.
GM: That could work - there's no such thing as duty-free in the Imperium.

Distracting Customs by showing them the Archeotech starship engines.

GM: He calls in all his friends to go OOOOOH. And meanwhile, in the background, Daniels and Skerrit are running around with the crates of stuff they actually want to smuggle to the surface.
Digna: This give you a chance to run the Thousand Swords gambit.
Daniels: ?
Digna: You're supposed to have 1000 swords. But most of them are 'out for polishing', and all you actually have is 50 and a lot of empty crates. Keep the inspectors distracted and you can keep moving the full crate back to the front.
Customs Tech-priest: I really need to check your cargo manifest.
Digna: Very well - come with me to the bridge. The Bridge of Antiquity.
Customs: OOOOOH.

Digna: Adsecularii are part of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but they're the lowest rank of the AdMech. They're not privy to the Mysteries. They're just there to lift things.

Customs Tech-priest: Can we come back later and examine your engine specifications?
Digna: Buy me dinner first.

Daniels: Can I get the Melodium to play the Benny Hill theme?
Digna: Less Yakety Sax, more....
GM: The Sgt. Bilko theme.

Eniek: I'll connect to the local datasphere.
Digna: An actual noosphere!
Daniels: 'Give me half an hour, I need to meditate'.
GM: Is that what you call it. 'Excuse me, I'll be in my bunk'

Studying the Tricorn Tower, and the underhive beneath it. Especially which gangs are most prominent in that area. There's a few that are particularly notable - the Resplendent Droogs, Crypt Boys, and the Saboteurs.

Eniek attempts to figure out what military forces the Inquisition have in the Tricorn Tower, by digging through any purchase records he can find. Skerrit stealths his way into a neighbouring spire to study the defences and access points (climbing down the outside of the building after) and casts an augury to see what the future might hold.

GM: Those who to the tower go, Must choose above, between, below 

It's not looking hopeful - the only entrance visible on the outside of the tower is the Ominous Gate, the tower has its own power supply, they have at least a platoon of storm troopers in there, and there's a rumour they have a teleportarium. On the other hand, there's also a story that a renegade Inquisitor, called to account for his use of alien mercenaries, escaped into the Sibellus catacombs. If the heretics can track him down, he could prove very useful indeed. The auguries certainly suggest that finding him won't be that difficult, but also warn that 'every villain considers himself the hero'. They also warn that at least two of the party are being hunted themselves.

There are indeed tales of Kroot lurking in certain sections of the underhive.



Skerrit's Player: Google Search, you've done it again.
Digna: ?
GM: There's Kroot Porn.
Daniels: ... of COURSE there is.
Skerrit: It's not porn!
GM: Alright, it's a tasteful Kroot nude.

Digna will not be going on this expedition - she'll be busy interpreting a clue the Daemon of the Mirror gave her about the whereabouts of the Silica Anima. To whit, to 'make the choice that your colleagues illustrious ancestor did not'. 

Digna: Now that they're not around to fucking distract me...

She figures out that this means the choice that lead Daniels' forebear to Hersilia, and places the Silica Anima somewhere in the coreward half of a remote star cluster. And heading into the Catacombs gives the party's cartomancer a chance to show off his Magnificent Horns again.

Skerrit: If we're going into the underhive can I take off this fucking wig?
GM: The Inquisition has eyes everywhere.

GM: So basically the only way you can hide these things is with a giant Princess Leia hairdo. 
Skerrit: Pretty much.
GM: Or a clown wig.

Tracking down the renegade proves relatively straightforward. It's a little surprising the Inquisition failed to do so.

GM: If you're on the run from the cops, don't hide in their basement.
Digna: actually.....

She has a point - we're reminded to a spectacularly inept case of race fixing here in Australia, where the ringleader went on the run, and slipped the horse in question into the Mounted Police paddock. It took them weeks to notice.

The compact - get the Liber ex Mortis etc.

Digna: Secondary objective - Get out alive
GM: Well, the gods do approve of suicide runs under certain circumstances.

Digna has sent her combat servitor Mr Bubbles along in her stead.

Digna: Well his primary programming is offline - he doesn't have a Little Sister to protect.
Daniels: Oh.
Digna: But I do have all those orphans.

Digna's player is also using sound effects from Bioshock to reinforce how creepy the servitor is. Mr Bubbles soundboard starts playing 1930s Swing

Daniels: Mr Bubbles? Are you OK?

They find the Kroot, who seem amused anybody wants to talk to the Grade-A Whackaloon the renegade has become.

Eniek: We'll see how funny they think I am when I pull out their organs.

The renegade inquisitor, after ranting for a while about 'the traveller returns', the Ordo Chronos, and how he'll 'show them all!' agrees to show them how to get into the Tricorn Tower, and where the Liber ex Mortis is probably concealed. Things are looking up.

The carnage at Castle Cragmaw continues, but since the PCs claimed the moral high ground nobody gets to complain. One curious thing - the goblins are using coal for fuel. Despite the ruins standing in a forest. Is the Lost Mine of Phandalin a coal mine?

There were plenty of quotes from the session, and nearly every damn one of them was lost thanks to cloud storage failure. I will never use it again. 

Thorn's player: You know, in 25 years of roleplaying, this is the first time I've actually encountered an owlbear. Never get between an owlbear and its cub. Or possibly fledgling.
Kerak: Chick?

Kerak: Are there more bad guys coming in the side doors?
GM: No.
Kerak: Thank Christ for that.
Thorn: *corrects the dwarf's mythology* Thank the Red Knight for that.
Urlon: Does the Red Knight even exist?
Kerak: I should bop you with this warhammer for that.


We do eventually find a nearly-dead dwarf being held hostage by a dark elf woman. We can't let her kill the dwarf - or let her get away.

Elethandiel: You know what will happen if she gets away.
Thorn: Yes, we'll have another recurring villain.

Drow: Leave now or the earthworm dies.
Thorn: *snarls* You labour under a misapprehension, elf - the only way you're getting out of here alive is if you earn our good will. And there is no way you're leaving here unless you put the dwarf down NOW.
King Gurnt: *snorts* Then we play a waiting game - we wait until my minions return, and then we will see who eats whose bones.
Kerak: What minions would those be? The dead ones in the castle? 
King Gurnt: Only the strong go on patrol. 
Thorn: Ah, like the ones with that wanted poster for the dragonborn. 
Kerak: They're dead too. Face it, you're alone.
King Gurnt: And a green dragon might fly down and kill everybody.
Thorn: Oh, you've met him too?

Of course, the biggest problem is that the dwarf is near death and can't defend himself. That, however, can be changed.

Thorn: *holding up clerical symbol* In the name of the god Helm I swear to let you leave alive if you release yo- HEALING SURGE

The drow is now struggling with a fully healed hostage, and we storm the room. All that follows is surprise reveals of who the drow actually is, the whereabouts of the other missing dwarfs, and clues about the various conspiracies. For example, the dwarf that we just rescued - and the one we were originally hired by all those weeks ago - sent his brothers to Wave Echo Cave. And somebody named the Black Spider organised the kidnapping. We take our leave. Unfortunately, King Gurnt wasn't kidding about his patrols... and there's 30-odd hobgoblins waiting for us outside the ruins.They throw an elf's head at us by way of intimidation.

Kavorog: Seriously? *throws the changeling's head at them, shows off the dire wolf skin he collected earlier, and throws down the owlbear paws the halfling wants to make into epaulettes.

The new hobgoblin leader chooses to interpret this as a tribute.

Kavorog: Nevermind, we can kill him later.
Thorn: Or the dragon will.

GM: The sun sets, your mission is complete, and big dark shadows are cast across the land.*flying a dragon toy across the table*

The next session, which included getting Kavorog's totemic animal on side, the return of Lamech the Gnome, and plothooks for Temple of Elemental Evil.

GM: Well, now you know why lions were hanging out near the road – it’s dangerous out there in the wilderness, even for lions.

Kavorog: Is there anywhere I can get my axe Turned into +2?
Thorn: Yes – you can go ask the Red Wizard of Thay to do it.
Kavorog: … let’s not.

On top of all the other stuff we’ve been putting off, there’s that door to the shadow realms under the ruined mansion we probably should investigate. And bored fairy dragons to entertain. But there is still the dwarf’s brothers we need to locate and rescue.

Thorn: We don’t even know they’re in trouble – they could be hacking away at a huge pile of gold and lost track of time.

Of course, not all the PCs are coming with us – their mothers complained.

Urlon: When something goes wrong I want you to be in the rescue party.

Lamech meanwhile, has been making a tour of the Sea of Monsters, Sea of Holes, etc.

Lamech: It’s probably concussion speaking.

He gets rescued by birdlike beings.

Lamech: At least it’s not machine elves.

They recruit him to prevent an evil elemental takeover of the world. Lamech takes the opportunity to drop a bundle of stuff on Kavorog’s head through the Aarokocra’s viewing portal.

Lamech: Wait for it, wait for it…. Bombs away!

GM: The blazing portal appears in the sky, and winged figures emerge playing trumpets, and Lamech is borne to earth by
Lamech: Shining winged figures
GM: … who look exactly like Aarakocra covered in glitterdust.



Local cleric: We’re sure this is blasphemous – he’s passing himself off as a divine being – but I’ll buy into this for now.

Lamech: I bring word from the airy realms, word that must be given to the greatest fighters of the age, lest the world fall to chaos! That’s you, you, and you.
Kavorog: *looks around* Elminster must be around here somewhere, laughing his arse off.

Lamech: The dark elemental forces are going to make a move on Faerun, and we’re in the right place to stop it. And I get to be an Emissary!
Kavorog: That has to be the strongest stuff you’ve ever taken – where can we get some more?

GM: You’re still got your set of dark common clothes.
Lamech: Actually it’s covered in glitterdust at the moment, but that’ll wear off.

The druid tells Kavorog about the Emerald Enclave, an association of barbarians, rangers, druids and other treehuggers.

Druid: If you tell anyone about this I will be forced to kill you.
Kavorog: Well, you could try.

Druid: Do you want to join?Druid:
Kavorog: That was sudden. I’ll just need to pop back to camp, and get the oil for my initiation. *gleefully oils himself up*

Druid: Your initiation name will be ‘Late-for-Dinner’

Lamech: Kavorog might not be good, but he does a convincing impersonation. At least when there’s anybody around to watch.

Lamech: While I certain appreciate the products of nature, I’m not sure I’m the kind of person your group is after.
Druid: You’re a nefarious hippie drug-user who can string two words together and bluffed a dragon. You were born to be either a Harper or a member of the Emerald Enclave.
Lamech: … that’s fair enough.

Lamech: Do I get an initiation name too?
Druid: *sigh*
Kavorog: I’ll go get more oil.
Druid: Fine, you’re Ergot.

A warning – this session includes scenes of actual human trafficking and sexual slavery, unlike my jokes about the last one. Spoilers for a published adventure 'Hiding in the Dark', even if we did manage to come up with a better plot to salvage things for the GM.

Oracle: I should tell you what I have planned, and not leave it hanging in front of everybody like a dick…. I just realised what I said. Sorry.

What Oracle has planned is combining existing tech into contagious mind-control nanites. But he’s not going to show us the prototypes until he’s perfected the antidote.

Shell: Oh good, so I don’t have to kill you.

GM: Why would Shadowrunners even take this job?
Oracle: Ethics, money, personal interest
Poe: Boredom.
GM: But working for the DA?
Ripper K: It’s legitimate money. We have to put SOMETHING on our tax returns. We’ll just put a few extra zeros in somewhere.

Ripper K: So is there any fallout from extracting the flying laptop? Do we get a phone call from Boots asking us what the f**k did we just do?
Shell: Probably not – we didn’t kill anybody in a way that made it obvious it was US.

GM: You hand Dr Carroll over to the Draco Foundation and they are very pleased and give you lots and lots of money.
Shell: Yay!
Ripper K: Will you be burnishing your nipples with this money too?
Shell: Only if you ask nicely.

Astronauta’s Player: How much is Cash for Karma?
Ripper K: *deliberately mishearing it as ‘Cash for camera’* Depends what kind of performance you want me to do.

GM: A chill rain soaks you to your bones.
Shell: That’s what the sensors on my bodyshell tell me.
Ripper K: And apparently I’m webcam whoring for Astronauta.
Ocelot: I’m picturing it as perfectly legitimate work on polishing Astronauta’s promotional videos.

We DO get a phone call from Boots, but it’s a job offer.

Boots: We need somebody with your skill sets.
Oracle: Given some of the projects I have on the backburner, that’s actually pretty alarming.

We approach the faux-adobe exterior of Reno’s, where frat-boys try to look tough in combat biker gear and cute little racing crotch-rockets, no doubt bought by their rich fathers trying to buy their love.

Oracle: I do a Reverse Visa ad – fake leather jacket, 400 nuyen, Victory cargo pants, 25 nuyen…
Ripper K: Public humiliation, priceless.
Oracle: Failing to impress me, priceless.
Ocelot: Oh, don’t be mean.

Boots: Sorry about the surroundings, but I didn’t feel like ice cream again.
Oracle: I LIKE ice cream.
Boots: Well, I don’t. I don’t like mass destruction either. You know what I mean?
Oracle: …. I can’t say I’ve heard of any MASS destruction lately.
Ripper K: I was visiting my granny.
Boots: Oh? You didn’t hear about that ARES chopper that got shot out of the air downtown?
Oracle: Well, maybe if they’d used their own model of chopper they wouldn’t have had so many problems.
Boots: YES! FINALLY! Someone who f***ing AGREES with me when I point this kind of thing out! ‘But nobody uses ground-to-air missiles downtown’ Like F**K they don’t! Even if it was just medium calibre assault rifle rounds they fished out of the wreckage of the helicarrier! Er, troop carrier.
Ripper K: It would be pretty impressive to take out a helicarrier with a rifle.
Ocelot: Although Hawkeye nearly managed it with a bow and arrow.

Boots is here to set up an Augmented Reality meet with the Assistant District Attorney, who we’ve avoiding working for in the past.

Oracle: Well, that explains why Boots called us – if the ADA had tried we wouldn’t have picked up the phone.

ADA: I dislike turning to those outside of the law. However, I find myself yet again using those of your kind.
Poe: Well, now we’ve walked off that conversational cliff…
Ocelot: Starting out strong.
Boots: Ma’am, may I suggest that if we are going to work with criminal scum, we at least exercise a modicum of tact?
Oracle: I object to being called criminal scum – I’ve never been convicted of anything. We’re just scum.
Ocelot: Well, I got that traffic ticket once.

The Assistant DA wants us to collect evidence to convict various organised criminals involved in the Seattle drug war – especially one ‘Junior’. A number of her best undercover agents are already dead or missing. We all get to bountyhunters for a week! Yay!

ADA: Only for a week though.
Oracle: *closing a computer menu* Aw.
Ripper K: ‘Seattle’s Most Wanted’?
Oracle: Yup.

GM: The pay will be 15000 nuyen per runner.
Ocelot: Works out to that for the runners in the party, anyway. Otherwise we’re calling every shadowrunner we know and given them high-fives. And then march in a line from one end of Seattle to the other.
Oracle: ‘How did the budget for this operation end up in the billions????’ Well, we imported more shadowrunners from out of town. And a whole bunch of mercs from Bogota.

The larger bounty depends on bringing Junior in alive. Half that is available if he turns up dead.

Oracle: That’s still a lot of nuyen for one bullet.

Junior has never been caught by surveillance.

Ripper K: Electronic or Mk I Eyeball?
ADA: Electronic.
Ripper K: Hey, Poe, you’re our expert on things Mage-ical. Is Junior magical?
Poe: *frowns* More likely technomancer.
Ripper K: Good point.

Junior also runs restaurants and brothels.

Astronauta Peligroso: I don’t mind going to the brothels – I’d like that part.

GM: A drunken man stumbles up and winks at you with his piercing blue eyes.
Shell: McGINTY????

It’s Joe Martin, a TRiD news anchor, who apparently has figured out who we are, who we were meeting with, and wants contacts in the Running community.

Oracle: If he doesn’t succeed on his Judge Intentions check he’s a dead man, because I’m going to lure him into an alley and kill him.
GM: He has Charisma 7 (and a bunch of other diplomancer enhancements)
Oracle: F**k. I actually like the guy.

Oracle: *Over the team’s TacNet* Does anybody know where I find a mulcher?
Shell: I do! And he lives just down the tracks from me! ‘Hey Joe! Got something special for you!’ ‘Grraarrgghhh - This one doesn’t have any Humanis tattoos’ ‘I know! It’s special!’ ‘ Grraachhhhchomp - Tastes like pure douche.’

Oracle’s Player:: I played in a Shadowrun group that retired when we realised we could make more money making movies than doing runs.
Ocelot’s player: Van and I did that in Cthulhupunk.

Oracle: Mr Martin, you need to work on your approach – while we’ve been talking here I’ve sourced a mulching machine and a WiFi deadspot where I can kill you.
Mr Martin: Oh dear. Well, here’s my card.

And then we get another phone call, from Athena Tatopoulos, the Editor-in-Chief at KSAF

Oracle and Shell: IS THERE ANYONE IN SEATTLE THAT DOES NOT KNOW THIS RUN IS HAPPENING????

Athena makes an even less favourable impression on us than Martin. He, at least, approached us in person, and not as a recorded message.

Poe: I like the balls on the other guy.
Ocelot: Whatever floats your boat.

This job will require old-fashioned legwork.

Oracle: Can we start at the restaurants?
Ocelot: Let’s do the brothel.
Oracle: Aw, I was hungry.
GM: Well, one of the brothels is under a deli.
Astronauta Peligroso: I’M THERE.
Shell: And instantly everything turns into innuendo.
Ripper K: ‘Who ordered two kilos of Italian Sausage?’

Shell makes the mistake of going in with Astronauta – forgetting his phobia of nudity. Worse, all the working girls are Bunraku – biochipped with a range of personalities from Shy Housewife to Dominatrix. Which is just creepy. Especially since it’s such a cheap brothel the blank-faced girls are rented out to Seattle’s addicts and chip-heads for less than 40 nuyen an hour.

There is also screaming from behind one of the walls. Shell, who is not coping well already, kicks through the wall, and finds an operating theatre where a 12-year-old girl is being operated on for biochip implantation.

Shell: *drawing his memory metal claymore* Hello Doctor. I’m ready to make the incision.
Astronauta Peligroso: Don’t kill the doc, we need him to put the girl back together.
Shell: I beg to differ.

Ripper K: You know, with your distinctive appearance it’ll be pretty easy to track you down after trashing the place.
Astronauta Peligroso: Not a problem – I’ll get Oracle to wipe all the footage.
Ocelot: Not from eyewitnesses.
Shell: OK – we’re killing everybody in the room.
Oracle: Don’t look at me – Ocelot and I are researching Combat Drugs and delivery systems, so we can dose Junior up in a public place and get him arrested for going berserk. Where can I get a collapsible bow and a dose of Woad?

How very useful is Shell’s cybernetic nature – especially when he can call a surgeon friend of his, and use his own body as a tele-operated waldo for remote emergency surgery on the girl.

Shell: And suddenly my personality and body language is that of an 70-year-old Japanese man.
Astronauta Peligroso: What?
Oracle: Don’t worry, you’re not high, that actually happened.

We then call Boots and get Knight Errant to come down on the brothel with both boots. Ripper also suggests we pass suitably edited footage on to Martin and Tatopoulos, since both networks will milk the story of illegal neuroplug surgery on 12-year-old runaways for weeks. The doc, who survives Shell’s rampage, confesses everything to the DA – he was approached by Junior’s thugs, who demanded a cut of his profits in return for certain support in his ‘research’.

The second location is a battered apartment block that looks like it survived WWI, II, AND III. It’s a Better-than-life Den. One Drekhead claims he witnessed the murder of the undercover cop sent here.

Ripper K: You know, you can make more money telling your story on the networks…
Shell: Well THAT didn’t go the way I expected.
Ripper K: But before you do that you have to prove you have something to show off.
Shell: It’s like you start every sentence with a double entendre and yank it back at the last minute!

He has the cop’s commlink.

Drekhead: I’ll give you a thousand nuyen for it!
Ripper K: … I think you mean you’ll give it to us for thousand nuyen.
Astronauta Peligroso: That’s not what he said!

The third locale is an active drug den in another apartment block. Oracle pretends an interest in the motorbikes of the Trolls acting as security.

Spike: You here to see Little Bill?
Oracle: ….. yes!
Ripper K: ‘I am indeed here to see Diminutive William’

Little Bill is a dwarf, who has somehow become the boss of troll gang. He has a rap sheet a mile long.

Shell: Which includes dwarf-tossing.
Ocelot: Is that what they call it these days?

Little Bill: Whatchoo you want? You don’t look like the usual clientèle.
Oracle: Um, can you score me some Woad?
Little: Well, I can, but not today – I usually carry BTLS, Novacoke, that kinda thing. But I can get you some if you come back tomorrow.
Ripper K: *over the TacNet* Well, he just confessed on microcamera that he deals in drugs. Ask him whether Junior won’t be here tomorrow.
Oracle: OK, I’ll come back tomorrow… wait, your boss won’t be here, will he?
Little Bill: *narrow eyes* What boss?
Oracle: Tusker? Name of Junior? That I never want to run into?
Little Bill: Well… I don’t see him often. He has a schedule.
Ripper K: Bingo XD

The runners drive up to the next location Junior is known to frequent, an old Irish pub called “Murphy’s Law”, but the place is swarming with Knight Errant patrol cars, ambulances, and bodies riddled with bullets. Boots leads them behind the bar to one of the secret entrances to the Ork Underground. Apparently two of the crime families – Yakuza and the Finnegans - had a shoot-out, and there were a lot of innocent bystanders, including a 7-year-old girl. Oracle gets to work with his sensor drones. The trail leads to an ork standing over the body of a Japanese man.

Shell OoC: Hey there! You gonna eat that?

This would have especially offensive, since the Ork is a member of the Yakuza as well. He’s already extremely pissed off, since the shoot out happened when the Yaks got a tip-off that Junior was going to be at the bar, the Irish crooks spotted the guns, and panicked.

Oracle: How much do you want to bet that Junior sent them the tip?

More PTSD for Shell – the Yakusa Ork takes us to a strip joint. To meet an Italian Ork mobster. It looks like everybody is joining forces to take Junior down.

‘Legitimate Italian-American Businessman’: I love the Ork Underground. I’m a silent partner in half of the businesses down here. Since the fire a few months ago I’ve been heavily involved in the reconstruction.
Ocelot: ?
Oracle: We didn’t do it – that’s why we didn’t hear about it.

LI-AB: I have a lot of information on Junior. I just need you to do a small favour for me.
Oracle: Goodbye.
Ocelot: It had better be a bloody small favour – we’re already trying to take Junior down.

He just wants us to escort some building supplies.

Ripper K: What, he’s running short on concrete boots?

Shell: I respectfully insist we do this one job for you, then go deal with our mutual problem.

Oracle: I’m coming around on the escort thing.
Astronauta Peligroso: ?
Oracle: I have six kilos of C12. WE can guarantee the building supplies arrive safe. They won’t STAY safe…

Shell: This is like babysitting a team of marines that are bored and already don’t like you.

Topside Construction is actually a legitimate business.

Oracle: Actually I won’t blow this up – if Junior has been attacking legitimate businesses, that’s just dirty pool.

This actually appears to be a simple, straightforward, and innocent job, escorting and unloading building supplies down into the Ork Underground. And the other two jobs would have been to a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen.

Oracle Ooc: Nice curveball from the writers there.
Ocelot OoC: It just means we didn’t see what went wrong.

Back to the nightclub – where all the lights are off.

Ripper K: Oh god.
GM: You go in.
Oracle: Oh no we don’t.
Ocelot: Drone goes in first.

LI-AB: I suppose I should hold up my end of our bargain. I told you I could help you find Junior, and I can. I’m him.
Oracle: Dammit. Ocelot, I owe you twenty nuyen.

Junior explains how he’s spent years building up the Ork Underground’s legitimate economy, despite the opposition from Humanis, xenophobes, organised crime, etc. If it wasn’t for the 50-odd innocent people killed in the escalating gangwar after he got the Finnegans involved, we’d actually be sympathetic. He makes a counter-offer – tell the ADA we failed, and he can wind up the Junior persona over the next few months.

Shell: Earlier tonight we raided a Bunraku parlour. You have anything to do with that?
Junior: Bunraku? No, I hate those things. I’ve got some brothels though.
Oracle: Then you’ve got a problem – someone has suborned the Junior identity.

Shell: Counter-offer – stop ALL your illegal activities and we hand over a Junior.
Ripper K: After all, we still get paid if he’s dead.
Oracle: But only half.

This seems a good compromise – the real Junior fingers a suitable fake, provides evidence to incriminate him, and we take him down and present him to the ADA as the real deal. Junior will have to pay us the difference, though. Mystery Ork X, who has a counterpart in the Yakuza, and who figured out what was really going on and found a way to make money on the side, turns out to be the manager of the Gravity Bar, a legitimate Manhattan-style singles bar up on the surface.

GM: ‘Try our range of speciality martinis!’
Shell: ‘We call this one the Slippery Nipple’

Unfortunately, X’s Matrix security is ridiculously good for a nightclub.

Ocelot: Jesus! He’s got corp-level security!
Ripper K: Well, he is trying to not get himself killed by the Yakuza AND Junior.

Alarms go off all over the place, and we just have to storm the place.

Shell: Hey. Wake up. Do you have anything to do with that Bunraku parlour?
X: Which one?
Ripper K: Ouch.
Astronauta Peligroso: Wrong answer.
Shell: *pops X’s head off*

True, his friend in the Yakuza will get away, but at least we’ve got a body to pass off as Junior, a very messy van to clean, and a deranged cyborg to hose off.

Ocelot: A decapitated corpse is really difficult to pass off as an accidental death. If you’d left him I could have passed it off as an accidental overdose of slap-patches. Now we’re going to get so much shit from the DA… did he have a motorbike?
Oracle: Hey Shell, how many Bunraku-parlour owners are you willing to decapitate?
Shell: How many Bunraku parlours are there in Seattle?
Oracle: Problem solved – the rumours will start by themselves, after Shell pops the heads off some more.
Shell: Excuse me while I go for a very enthusiastic walk.
Ocelot: Let’s get our story straight. ‘We found him like this’
Ripper K: We got there while the alarms were still sounding. Which is true XD
Ocelot: Actually, let’s blame it on a drone malfunction. ‘I haven’t finished tweaking my extraction drone’
Shell: I don’t know whether I’m pleased or annoyed that you’re covering for me.
Ripper K: But you’re still going around decapitating Bunraku parlour owners?
Shell: Eh, I’ll stop after the fourth. ‘1, 2, 3, 4, bored now. See you next year!

Shadowrun, where the goof troop are currently infiltrating what is probably a Skunkworks. (I gather this plot was lifted from a Shadowrun computer game)

Oracle OoC: There were metagaming reasons to do it this way - I switched off half my brain so the combat characters will have something to do.

Shell’s Player: Nibble Nobby’s Nuts
Oracle’s Player: Before he nibbles yours.
Shell’s Player: Eh, I’m an equal opportunity nibbler.

Shell prepares his melee weapons, just in case.

Ripper K: A memory metal claymore?
Shell: Hell yes.

The mission promptly goes to hell.

Shell: *steps out of elevator and cuts guard in half* I am that OTHER shadowrunner tonight.
Ripper K: D:

We won’t be able to cover up our presence here, either.

Oracle: What do mean, you don’t have Sterilize???
Poe: I had other priorities, OK???
Streetrat: I thought we were going in quiet! Oh, fuck - I forgot to bring the silencers.

Ripper K OoC: Oracle, are you sure you only switched off HALF your brain for this mission???

At least there’s no cameras down here.

Ripper K: Um?
Streetrat: Makes sense - there are things that can escape through cameras.
Poe: Input /output node.
Ripper K: So, are we modifying the odds that Dr Carroll is an AI?
Poe: No bet.

There’s no signs either.

Ripper K: We wake up in a maze of twisty corridors, all alike.
GM: Pretty much.

There’s a guard station between sections - millimeter-band radar is so useful.

Ocelot: Stun weapons? You got a stun weapon? Ripper, you got - never mind, you’re a walking stun weapon.
Ripper K: I know - I could just walk in naked.

Shell: LEROOOOOY JENKINSSSSSSS!
Ocelot: Quietly enjoying their donuts and then the security barrier explodes and a cyborg jumps through.
Ripper K: We’re going to have to move in a hurry, aren’t we?
Ocelot: We were already going to.

Shell: *humming something under his breath*
Ocelot: Are you singing ‘Rule of Nature’? (Metal Gear: Revengeance)
Shell: Yes >
Oracle: *starts playing it over the TacNet*
Poe: Can anybody else hear that?

Ripper somersaults through the gap, snatching a guard out of his chair while still in mid-air, slams him onto the table and tasers him in the throat.

Shell: Show-off.

Ripper K: *starts securing the guards back to back*
Shell: Good idea! Hey, buddy, are you awake? Let’s GET ON WITH THIS.
Ocelot: It’s going to be at least an hour before they even wake up.
Ripper K: Fair point - if we’re still here in an hour we’ve got bigger problems.

Streetrat: If they don’t know we’re down here yet they deserve whatever happens next.
GM: There’s a laser security grid.
Poe: Pass me another grenade.
GM: *headdesk*

It’s still dead quiet down here. The rest of the building above, not so much. Alarms are going off everywhere.

Oracle: And there they go.

At least the four-legged heavily armed drone Streetrat is piloting, and the sword waving street samurai, are encouraging everybody to keep their heads down.

Shell: Hi there! Where’s Dr. Carroll?
Researcher: He’s out the back!
Shell: Great! You can show me the way!
Researcher: I can’t go in there! I’ll die!
Oracle: Oh, right, that radiation source…
Shell: I pat Streetrat’s drone and head on through.
Ripper K: And while they’re all staring at this maniac, I quietly spray the supervisor’s workstation with Screen Capture Spray.

Shell doesn’t even bother turning off the radiation source - it can’t hurt him in his cyborg chassis, and he’s got a rad suit for the Doctor. Which proves completely pointless, since the only thing in the far room is a large nexus node.

Shell: Dr Carroll? Are you hiding behind the desk? ARE YOU HIDING BEHIND THE DESK?
Dr. Carroll: Is it safe to come out?
Shell: For a given measure of safe.
Dr. Carroll: Very well then.

A small flying drone drone carrying something that looks like a laptop emerges from a concealed panel on the node.

Oracle: A good nano-tattoo would hold more data than that thing.
Ripper K: He’s probably just using whatever tech he could get his manipulators on.

Dr. Carroll: Very professionally done, but there’s no time to waste. We must leave immediately!

Not least because the reinforcements are arriving in helicopters.

Oracle: Great, I’ve already wanted to try skeet suiting.

GM: Of course, they didn’t notice a big van backed up to the wall.
Oracle: Well it didn’t register as a threat.
GM: Until now.
Shell: The van was as much of a threat as a dead wombat.
Ripper K’s player: Saw three wombats on my trip east.
Shell’s player: Really? Were they dead?
Ripper’s Player: Yup.
Shell’s Player: What the hell hit them?
Ripper’s Player: Dunno. There weren’t any wrecked cars by the road, but they might have been carted off. The wombats were probably too heavy to move.

Streetrat switches control to his aerial drone, so he can have some fun with the reinforcements too.

Ocelot: You know, each one of those choppers we shoot down will cost ARES close on a million nuyen.
Streetrat: More. That’s High Threat Response - more like 2 million in personnel.
Shell: I’ve got a new song ‘It’s Raining Men!’

Boots, former PC now working for ARES and Knight Errant, is probably listening to the reports with growing apprehension.

Boots: This sounds familiar - what kind of van are they driving? No reason.

We get back to the lifts - to find the DataDyne security have used the lift shaft to move in and barricade our escape route. They have armour and a chain gun.

Guards: Throw down your weapons!
Shell: Well, I COULD, but I’m currently carrying your Doctor, so feel free to shoot me.
Ocelot: Actually, they probably have orders to shoot if the AI does try to escape.
Shell: Good point.

Oracle blows the ground floor wall - and finds more guards, gathered to head down the lift shaft to the basement labs.

Oracle: Oh. F***. Hi?

Unfortunately for the guards in the basement, we have more grenades. And it’s a narrow corridor. And we still have that maniac with the memory metal claymore. Ripper K is getting a bit upset at this carnage.

Ripper K: I don’t want to be a murderer! I mean, can you think of any porn star murderers? I can’t!
Dr. Carroll: Don’t worry, you’re not a murderer. You’re an accessory to murder.
Ripper K: Well, assuming we even survive to get to trial, I’m fine!

At least we all get out alive. With the target, no less. But we are SO going to be on the run now…

Shell: If you really want, Ripper, we can stop at a Stuffer Shack and you can go in and buy a change of underwear.
Poe: Besides, it’s alright - there were no cameras down there. Of course, nothing will stop you remembering it - nothing short of Persona Editing anyway.

Apparently Dr. Carroll was a DataDyne invention, but his creators got nervous when it started questioning the direction of DataDyne’s research.

Oracle: Yeah, that kind of thing always makes people nervous.
Dr. Carroll: So, if you can just give me Matrix access…
All: *Exchange worried glances*

Streetrat’s dad Labrat tells us to take Dr Carroll to the Draco Foundation.

Shell: We just did a high profile run and they want us to take the target straight there. Straight there. Not to a safe house. STRAIGHT THERE.
Ripper K: I bet the client doesn’t even work there - they’ll be somebody waiting for us in the foyer and the moment we leave again they’ll be straight out the side door.

The Screen Capture Spray collects some interesting data from the workstation. On such things as Neutron Grenades, personal force fields, and some really advanced smart links. One of which Ocelot snaffled on our way out - ripping out the software should be very useful. Oracle sells this info to The Company, for more than we are already being paid for extracting Dr. Carroll.

Oracle’s Player:: I can’t wait until Drhoz hears what I’m going to do - he has a wonderfully expressive face when it comes to horror and disgust.

More overdue quotes, starting with some mostly out of context:
 
Honey Badger:  The Banana Splits had a great theme song.  Don't f*** with it.
 
Maker (discussing what kind of car someone is driving):  A Lexus Luthor
 
Honey Badger:  I break things, therefore I am.
 
The news recap of their fight with Deathstroke included the following quote from the reporter:
 
Nadine Acer:  "The heroes used some unusual tactics, but they seemed to work.  For example, Honey Badger grabbed Scatterbrain and carried her away from the battle, putting himself at great personal risk to keep the mentalist from messing with the other heroes.
Circe:  Great personal risk?!  She was trying to boff him in the stairwell!
 
The heroes finally settle on a team name.
 
Honey Badger:  I want "Just Cause."  That way, when people ask why we're doing this, we say, "Just 'cause."
 
The team pays a visit to the offices of BEST (Boston Elite Super Team) to have words with T.J. O'Rourke. Circe establishes Telepathy with TJ in case he's thinking of screwing them over.
 
Honey Badger:  I'll walk in, put my hands on his desk, and growl at him.  Say, does he have anything on his desk that I can bite?
GM:  What, like a sandwich?
HB:  No, something non-edible.  Like a stapler.
GM:  Sure, there's a stapler on the desk.
HB:  As I'm glaring at him, I take a big bite out of the stapler.
O'Rourke:  (pouts)  That was my good stapler.  It never jammed...
 
O'Rourke:  Listen, I'm not doing anything technically illegal!  I never claim that I'm actually affiliated with your team.  If people want to assume that, well, that's their business.  And even though I never say that donations would go toward your team, I do send you some cash.  Well, a little cash.  But if you really want me to close up shop...
HB:  We never said that.  We want you to work for us.
Circe:  What does he think about that?
O'Rourke:  (thought bubble)  What, like legit?  Have I ever worked legit?  There was that one time in Tampa... naw, that's right, I completely conned that guy out of his car...
 
Shortly after, TJ passes along a call from a local high-end Italian store / caterer (Salumeria Italiana), that they have a pre-paid food order and some "very fine wine" for the heroes.
Maker:  Is this from Dr. Draconis, thanking us for taking down Deathstroke?  (It was)
 
The heroes go to pick up the food and find that it's accompanied by a 1.5L magnum of Chatueau Lafite-Rothschild 1978. 
 
Pops:  (Does a quick web search)  Holy s***!  A magnum of that stuff goes for over $1,600!
Gaetano Martignetti (owner of Salumeria Italiana):  I told you it was a very fine wine.
 
The heroes are investigating a series of demonic hound attacks (which was the gist of the adventure).  One demon hound killed a man in Boston, and another killed a retired couple in nearby Arkham.  In each case, the dogs bit off one of the hands for each person after mauling them to death.
 
Pops:  Which hands were bitten off?
GM:  For the professor, Dr. McPool, the demon hound bit off his right hand.  With the elderly couple... it bit off the woman's right hand, and the man's left. 
Pops:  Was the guy left handed?
GM:  Nope, sorry.
HB:  Maybe he just wanted a matched set.
 
(More to follow)

Black Crusade : The Fifteenth Arcana
Having successfully acquired all the fragments of Haarlock's daemonic mirror, and ensured that everybody will blame Marshall Skarman and Enforcer Khan for the string of murders and riots currently rocking Sinophia, all that's left is window dressing, and deciding what to do with the daemon in question.

Eniek: We need to splash some more blood around.
GM: Well, you've got that telepath.
Digna: I've got all those Dark Adsecularii too. I won't suffer too much of a leadership problem if I kill, say, 30 of them.

The daemon itself seems agreeable to bargaining, and knows quite a lot about the PCs. This is never a good sign.

The Daemon of the Mirror: Prefect Digna, who has replaced her entire body with plastic and steel, and seeks the Silica Anima, the forbidden artificial intelligence. The perfect mind for the perfect body?
Digna: Well, THAT should be news to everyone here. And Eniek is going 'Are you insane? Wait, of course you are.'

The Daemon: Magos Eniek, who seeks to push human biology past all limits of the unaltered flesh, and explores realms your hypocrite colleagues would call blasphemous.
Eniek: Yes, yes, you know all about us and state the obvious. Can we get on with this?

The Daemon of the Mirror: And you, little noble? Perhaps I can recommend a good bar.
Digna OoC: It's called the Floating Vagabond

The Daemon: After all, if you are so dissatisfied with reality as it is that you must gaze at it through the bottom of a glass, it's little wonder the Ruinous Powers could tempt you with the means to remake reality to match your drunken hallucinations. Or perhaps you simply drink to forget the fate that awaits you and all mortal flesh? I can see your desire, little noble. Speak it. Or wait. But do not wait TOO long...

The Daemon: And your little pet wyrdling there, who despite his new armour, and his allies, and his power, still refuses to face certain issues from his past.
Skerrit: I DO NOT HAVE ANY ISSUES

Methinks he doth protest too much.

Skerrit: I'm the weirdest psyker ever – I can see the future, see everything that's going to happen. AND I DON'T CARE
GM: Black Crusade is tricky to prepare for - the players might decide to do anything. Declare war on Holy Terra in one ship, for example.
Eniek: Nah, not Earth. Only one ship has ever got that close.
GM: Indeed. And it took the Time Cannons on Luna to stop it.
Eniek: Yeah. Declaring war on the Inquisition, on the other hand...
GM: *headdesk*

Eniek has heard whispers of a certain Liber Ex Incarnis, so his question to the daemon is as to where the Calixian Inquisitors keep such artefacts. The daemon answers instantly - the Tricorn Tower, in the middle of the ruling hive on Scintilla, the sector capitol.

GM: I'm sure the daemon will be amused if you blow up the Tricorn Tower and go through the rubble for the book.
Digna: Other way round – get the book, THEN blow up the tower. Remember – Pillage, THEN burn.

Digna makes a bargain - in return for one of the daemon's names, she and the other PCs will free the entity from its confinement in the mirror. The daemon even offers to teach them a ritual that will move the mirror somewhere where they can question it at leisure. Not being complete fools, they decline this offer, and release it where it stands - the Ritual of Unmaking being suitably spectacular, although the eldritch shrieking form that burns up into the stormy skies over the burning city might take some explaining.

Digna: Not bad for a ritual originally used against the Polish Remover of N'all, and the Staff of Q'tip.

Still, blaming it all on some warp-based technology Skarman and Khan unearthed during their smuggling enterprise isn't too difficult - they just have to provide the Inquisition with a believable bodycount. The PCs head downstairs, and Digna hands her assistants a large packet of high explosive.

Digna: Hold this satchel. And stay here.

Skarman's Adjutant Fihad Constantine would quite like to know what was going on upstairs.

Digna: Just dealing with more of your previous superior's mess. hits detonator

The ritual also seems to have screwed up all the holo-screens and computers down here.

Digna: Have you attempt the Cant of Power Cycling? It's a basic prayer for restoring recalcitrant machine spirits.
GM: 'Have you tried switching it off and on again?'
Eniek: Recite the tech-litany and castrate the unbelievers.
Daniels: Stop everything, we need to requisition some more unbelievers.

The Inquistorial Acolytes and the Governor finally arrive. Time to present their evidence, and ensure the Governor never, ever tries to eliminate the party to cover his own role in this debacle.

Digna: And it's an unsubtle reminder that no matter where he goes we can get at him. So he'd better play ball.

The Governor is not a good actor.

Governor: What might have happened if my GOOD FRIEND Digna here had not uncovered this nest of vipers in my very midst!
Digna: Would you like a sedative, Governor?
GM: Qualuudes. 'Luuudes, Man. 'Nyquil, Nyquil, Nyquil -'
Digna: '- you giant fucking Q'
GM: In the original Green Death flavour.

Time to get off Sinophia before the Inquisition smells a rat. How to profit from the rioting, carpet-bombing, lynch-mobs etc? Looting, of course.

GM: I've got all this valuable artwork to sell. They fell off the back of a truck. Ignore the burn marks.
Daniels: Plasma burns. They're ancient.
GM: It adds to the patina.

Digna has other ideas.

Digna: I shall relieve the burden on the Administratum by taking it upon myself.
GM: ?
Digna: Orphans.
GM: You evil bastards.
Digna: And the public considers us philanthropists. Right – the older orphans, just hitting puberty – line them up for my steroid trials.
GM: Actually by 40K standards this is a minor evil.
Daniels: Nevermind, we'll get better.

GM: So you've got your adorable orphans going 'Please sir, may I have some more Human Growth Hormone?'

Technical manuals of the 40th Millennium.

Digna: At least it isn't one of the Codices of St. Jane.

Digna wants to make a daemon weapon from the iron in the blood of a thousand victims. She'll need something that will burn off the non-ferrous elements almost as fast is it drains the target.

GM: Call it the El Chupacabra – can exsanguinate a cow at 200m.

Routes to Scintilla - do they travel via the wretched mining world of Sepheris Secundus, or the treacherous politics of Malfi, where the nobility genetically engineered themselves to be better at Machiavellian intrigue? Queen Lachryma III of Sepheris Secundus is pretty noteworthy herself.



(have I ever mentioned how much I love John Blanche's art? If anything could be said to typify Warhammer and Warhammer 40K, it's his designs and illustrations)



Skerrit: She has a big hat.
GM: Well, of course, she's queen.
Skerrit: Which is why the God-Emperor's head is welded to the Golden Throne.
Daniels: 'I wear the Imperial Palace as a hat'

Skerrit is looking up certain psychic weapons. He is NOT going to get the trademark device of the Culexus Assassins.

GM: No you can't have a Animus Speculum. For one thing, you're not a psychic Pariah. A social pariah, maybe...

Digna makes some improvements to the ship, en route.

Digna: We now have a best-quality Resolution Arena.
GM: Let me guess – you'll be exsanguinating everyone who loses.
Digna: Yup XD

She also further alters her own appearance, to better influence her targets, and conceal the more obvious mutations. And gifts the party with a matching set of power swords.

Daniels: I'm a bit worried about Digna – first she gets a boob job and then she gives me a sword.

Daniels: Good lord – I see you went with the LARGE Etheric Beam Locators.
GM: They need Double-D batteries.
Digna: 'they're all synthetic, boys!'

Of course, getting a chaos tainted ship from place to place is not as straightforward as the bizarrely baroque efforts of the Navigator Guilds. The 'navigator' on the Obsidian Resolve usually selects a crewman, gets stoned out of his mind, flogs the crewman to death, and reads the auguries for the next trip from the blood splatter.

Daniels: We've got passengers for that!
GM: Eh – they're not really part of the ship.

Digna decides this is inefficient, and acquires a wildly illegal technology that allows her to substitute herself. This is a profoundly unsettling experience, not least because it allows her to perceive the Astronomicon - the psychic beacon of the God-Emperor's might, broadcast from Terra and fuelled by the deaths of a thousand psykers a day. And it's LOOKING at her. Side-effects of the trip include disturbing whispers from just behind everybody's left shoulder.

Daniels: That's not so bad – I'll just turn up the Melodium for a few days.

Arrival at Scintilla is delayed by some ship called the Rose Tattoo screaming ahead and taking their parking spot. But at least they have a plan for a heist against the Tricorn Tower - Hive Sibellus is built upon the mausoleums of its past, and a popular pastime for the nobility is paying for expeditions into the underhive to find the tombs of their forebears. Some describe this as the fortune of the city being built on the works of their illustrious ancestors. The more cynical describe it as being built on the bones of the dead.

Either way, it should be fairly simple for Lord-Captain Daniels to stage one such expedition into the catacombs, and seek out whatever secret entrances the inquisitors have into the Tricorn Tower. Now, where can they get some nukes?
 

Plans to take down King Gurnt and Castle Cragmaw.

Thorn: CragM-A-W? Oh, I thought it was Cragmoor. Well, it's not like I've ever seen it written down.

Thorn: What we do is, is find the Floating Vagabond pub -
GM: No.
Thorn: - find a space marine -
GM: No.
Thorn: - get him drunk and borrow the keys to his siege tank.
GM: No. Besides, you can't get Space Marines drunk.
Thorn: Ah, but we'll be buying him Dwarf Beer.
GM: F**k off.

Thorn: OK, how about we take the remnants of an exhausted army up to the main concentration of the enemy forces and stand out in the open, while two essentially helpless PCs try to sneak in through the back door and get to Mount Doom?

GM: You could always turn up with the dragonborn as a prisoner.
Thorn OoC: Yesssss... and scare the rectangular Roombas. And when they ask what's going on down there we tell them we have a reactor leak.

Kavorog: The halfling might be a bit slow.
Thorn: If we have to we'll strap to the back of one of the dragonborn.
Urlon: I'm not speeding up the dragonborn – I have trouble keeping up with them as it is.
Thorn: I don't see the problem. Sure, if we're running away at the time....

Thorn: What happens if we actually find the missing dwarves that started all this?
Urlon: We give them a weapon and ask them if they want some revenge. And tell them they have to pay us for rescuing them.
Thorn: I which case I expect they'll say 'F**k that, we'll rescue ourselves.' You are asking a dwarf to give you some gold, after all.

GM: If you leave now you should get there by twilight.
Thorn: Full Twilight? Naval Twilight? Nipple Twilight? Bad Paranormal Romance Twilight?
Kavorog: Oh god...
Thorn: Sparkle Twilight.

Castle Cragmaw is seven ruinous towers built on a platform well above the ground. It's a full-sized defensive fort, surrounded by loose slopes of debris, with at least three possible entrances.

Thorn: Being PCs, I suggest we find a fourth.

Elethandiel studies the ruins, and suggests sneaking in via the wreckage of an old sally port might be best, especially if the Orcs think that entrance is already secure.

Thorn: Exactly how many orcs are we expecting to be in there?
GM: Not thousands.
Urlon: That's scary. You didn't say 'not hundreds'
Thorn: So there could be 999.

Thorn: So what's the alarm if you see any patrols coming? Who knows how to hoot like an owl?
Kavorog: Scream and run.
Urlon: Towards them.

Happily, one of the NPCs hears the goblins squabbling behind the arrow slits before we blunder into them. Kavorog casts Mend on the door so it opens smoothly and silently.

Thorn: Is it time to scream the Ultramarine battlecry? F**K! THEM! UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!

Kavorog: I open the side door.
GM: grins evilly Have you seen the movie Tremors?

Luckily the dragonborn escapes being eaten by the tentacled murderworm. The hordes of goblins and hobgoblins on this level aren't so lucky, and get eaten alive by the wave of berserk PCs.

In which Ripper K, changeling porn star, branches out into human trafficking - to whit, auctioning off that arcanoarcheologist who commissioned us to kidnap him and then couldn't pay. True, he's willing to go along with this, but he'd better pray the data in his brain chips is actually worth what he says it is. Or we will be quite cross.

Oracle: I mean we COULD just rip the data out of his head...

Shell: I should do something about the phobia of nudity I have – it never comes up.
GM: Excuse me?! Look who's sitting next to you.
Ripper K: looks innocent

Shell: I'm living in an abandoned railyard. Sure, it's a very advanced rail yard, but -
Ripper K: sings Monorail, Monorail, Monorail, Monorail

Since the orca is the best at bargaining, he gets Poe to disguise him with a Physical Mask spell.

Ripper K: I'll ARESearch 'random elf' – make me look like him.
Poe: Any competent mage will see through the spell.
Shell: Any competent mage who can see through the spell will be peeing a little.

That raven shapechanger still wants to be part of the team. Poor, poor fool.

Ripper K: Can we call you Quoth? Or Nevermore?
Poe: Please don't.
Streetrat: Birdman.
Ripper K: Harvey XD

The groups coming to the auction include the Draco Foundation, the Atlantean Foundation, and Wuxing, a new megacorp.

Shell: Oh joy, a bidding war.
Ripper K: Well, that is the idea of an auction.
Shell: I didn't say it was a bad thing.

The Draco rep is the one that hired the team to recover that obsidian artefact a few weeks back. The Atlantean rep is the prick that wanted the artefact and didn't care about the woman who'd been carrying it. The Wuxing rep is new to us. If it wasn't for Astronauta Peligroso's distinctive appearance (and musical accompaniment) there's no chance the Atlantean rep, one Mr Nazir, would even recognise us as the same team. Still, it does give us opportunity to play the rival corps off each other and drive the bids higher.


Ripper K: I'll mention 'in passing' that Draco has a good reputation for employee care XD

(Actually, that's not quite true. The Draco Foundation would have drained the arcanoarcheologist's brain and shot him in the head the moment they find out what he knew. Just as well we never knew ourselves.)

Streetrat: If only we could put a magical compulsion on them 'I MUST WIN'

The shampagne is being poured when the assassins strike. Wisely for them, they're using long range weapons so they didn't have to try and penetrate our sensor net. Luckily for us, we spotted it just in time and could step in the way of the shot. Unluckily for us, it's an anti-tank rifle. As the SPLATANG echoes around the abandoned hotel and Shell's entirely metal and ceramic body proves its worth, we scramble to get the arcanoarcheologist, the corporate reps, and ourselves to safety. Not that the sniper was a threat for long, but you never know what their Plan B was. Still, we got paid.

Shell: ooooh, yeah. I rub those nuyen on my synthetic nipples.

The TacNet Oracle set up is proving pretty damn useful too.

Ocelot: I'll be sure to say 'thankyou, Overlord' when we're done.
Oracle: Have to be nice to the potential nascent AI.

Of course, Oracle is going to have to take the nexus down for upgrading. And keep himself awake for the entire time with designer drugs.

Oracle: 'Estimated time to completion... one month'
Ocelot: The f**k????
Ripper K: Well, I had some movies to film...

Oracle: I'll finish the nexus upgrade first – THEN I'll work on Project Usurper.
Ripper K: That's not ominous at all.

Ripper K: So after a month of sleep deprivation you're going to be working on something called Project Usurper.
Oracle: Actually I'll need to do Project Thousand Monkeys first.
Ripper K: ….. right.
Oracle: I need to get 30 Buster Moves. So I can make a distributed network to run the agents on. 30 animatronic toys wired together.
Poe: That's amazingly twisted.
Oracle OoC: I need to commission a picture of this...

Shell and Astronauta Peligroso knock down a building while wrestling.

Ocelot: Remind me, electricity does bad things to drones, right?
GM OoC: Yup – Shell's chassis becomes sentient and ejects his CNS. XD
Ripper K OoC: His brain pops out the top like toast from a toaster XD

Shell: Make yourself comfortable. There's some body bags in the back room.
Ocelot: So.. you heard about sleeping bags at some point but didn't get the memo?
Shell: These were cheaper.
Ripper K: And they come with toe tags so you won't forget who you are?

Poe: You creep me out a bit.
Shell: That's all right, ravens are symbols of death, you're inherently creepy too.
Poe: I do look like Severus Snape.
Shell: I get the feeling I shouldn't trust you with children. But then nobody would trust me with children either.
Poe: Well, we do tend to eat our young, it's OK.
Streetrat: I'm starting to feel I shouldn't trust either of you.

Shell: I've always wanted to be a shadowrunner – I've always felt bad when I've had to kill them.
All: ….
Shell: One of them managed to cut me in half.
All: …
Shell: They got away but I did get a commendation for shooting one of them in the arse. And afterwards I thought 'I want to be that guy'.
Poe: The one you shot in the arse?
Shell: The one that cut me in half. And today I think I was that guy that got shot in the arse.

Streetrat gets a call from his dad

Labrat: *singsong* Hellluooooooooo
All: cackles
Streetrat: That is so not Labrat.
Ocelot: Unless he's been out on the town with Inkubus and got into something really interesting.
Oracle: 'I have something to tell you'
Ripper K: 'I'm actually your mother'
Oracle: 'And your father – it's amazing what they can do with genetic engineering these days'

One Dr Caroll, an expert on AI, wants to be extracted from the Matrix company Datadyne. No doubt people have been hearing about our extraction of the arcanoarcheologist. Odd things about the client – nobody has seen them. Or even knows if they're male or female. Maybe they're an AI themselves?

Oracle: So an AI is researching AIs?
Shell: Not outside the realm of possibility.
Oracle: I know - the quest to understand oneself is as old as humanity.

We get to work researching the building Caroll is in – particularly ways in from underneath. No point repeating our zipline stunt from last time. The public plans probably can't be trusted – Ocelot suggests rigging a Centipede Search-and-Rescue drone with millimeter radar, send it into the sewers, and map the entire building from the sewerage system. The drone – which Oracle names Shitkicker - produces a full 3D map of the building and reveals some very odd sources of EM interference. Nothing pointing us towards Caroll, but the basement labs are only accessible from secure elevators. Not that secure, however. We could, for example, smash through a wall and go down the lift shaft.

Shell: Assuming we do go with Operation Kool-aid Man, getting out again in a hurry might be a problem.

Although possibly not, given all those useful winches and autorappels we can order by the crate, and the 2070 equivalent of card skimmers. And our Rigger, Streetrat, piloting Shell's cyborg body. Plus of course going in disguised as couriers to get better info on their security, and plant the dissolving card skimmers. Maglock scramblers to slow pursuit will also help. Ideas like these cheer us up. On the other hand, we also have the increasing suspicion that one of those basement labs is highly radioactive. Awkward. Just as well Shell is mostly artificial.

Oracle: And if we take some lead-lined Thermoses we can bring some that stuff out with us. Actually no. Let's not start dealing in radioisotopes.
GM: You'd have very angry Iranian terrorists after you. And very happy toxic shamans.

So the plan is – half of us use a stealth ultralight to get to the roof, and use the executive elevator to get into the basement labs. Poe will fly up himself. Shell will just have to get used to the fact Poe has to arrive naked.

Astronauta: I replaced his underwear with a g-string XD
Ocelot: I thought about it, but I was too mature to actually do it.

Oracle, Astronauta, and Streetrat will wait at ground level in the van with shaped explosives for the Mr Kool-aid Extraction.

Oracle: POWERPUNC- sorry. I'm stepping on your schtick.
Astronauta Peligroso: shrug
Oracle: I'll make up to you – I'll buy the tower plate of nachos.

Security Guard at the Heli-pad: We weren't expecting any arrivals. Are you guys supposed to be here?
Ripper K: Actually, yes leaning forward with electroshock hand
Security Guard: Just let me call this i- ZORCH

Oracle hurriedly hacks the guard's security equipment, before the biomonitors can report the guy's condition to the security desk.

Oracle, as the guard: Sorry guys, I tased myself.
Security Desk: Again? For fuck's sake, Charlie...
Ripper K: 'That's the third time this week'
Ocelot: 'Save it for the bedroom'

Ocelot: If you see any important-looking workstations, can you spray this on it? It's Screen-capture Spray – 3 days from now I'll send Shitkicker back in XD

First problem – the executive elevator already has the CEO in it.

CEO: Who are you?
Shell: Escorts ma'am
Ocelot: hisses to Ripper It's your job to poke her now!
Ripper K: ….
Shell: Oh, come on, we give you a straight line like that?
Ripper K: Nice to meet you *leans forward with electroshock hand*
CEO: *drawing pistol* – ZORCH

Her own security pass will be useful.

Ocelot: I'll put her on the couch, so she won't be quite so apocalyptically pissed when she wakes up.
Oracle: You did just steal a pistol worth three grand.
 

Part 2 of Stroke of Death:
 
I forgot to say that, in the Heronet Herald article about "Dr. Draconis" breaking Requiem out of Stronghold, mention was made that a few weeks before, Dr. Draconis had been in a battle with the "Virginia Alliance for Global Intervention and National Aid," during which his armor had gotten badly damaged.
 
Pops:  Is that superhero team actually called VAGINA?
GM:  They're a loose group of heroes who refused to give their team a name.  So the Heronet Herald editor gave them one.
Malarky:  It's the GM's way of saying it's time for us to pick a team name.
 
In response to TJ O'Rourke and BEST, Malarky and Maker set up a website and an email address for the team, even though they still haven't picked a name.
 
A freak earthquake levels a deserted town in Pennsylvania at 12:02 pm, after which the major networks reveal that they had each received CDs that morning with video files of Requiem demanding the US government abdicate in favor of Deathstroke ruling the country, and threatening to destroy whole cities until that happens.  He said that as a demonstration, they would level Curtin Village, Pennsylvania at noon.
 
Honey Badger:  A CD?  Really?  How 1990s.
GM:  Well, he has been in prison for over a decade.
 
Shortly after that, the team begins getting repeated emails from two local reporters (Nadine Acer at the local CBS affiliate and Joshua Petersen from the local Fox station) and Tommy Dugan (son of Jimmy "Gyro Jim" Dugan), all requesting interviews with the hero team about Deathstroke.
 
Honey Badger:  What makes them think we know anything about it?  We've never even fought them before.
 
Honey Badger gets a call from TJ O'Rourke, saying that he received a CD with a video file he thinks the heroes need to see.  From a completely different angle (up above and to the side) it shows Requiem filming his demands (requiring three takes), and then walking over to a table to go over maps and diagrams with Stinger and Death Commando.  The CD also contains diagrams and notes about a device that projects earthquake-like resonant vibrations at a distant location.
 
Maker:  So can I make a gadget that will detect that device?
GM:  Sure... the next time it's used.  Do you want to wait until then?
 
The notes on the CD include computations of the frequency and amplitude waves showing that Curtin Village, PA is approximately 590 km from the quake device. 
 
Malarky:  We'll draw a circle on the map and start checking out towns along the line.
GM:  Like, Boston?  Because the line passes right through your hometown.
 
The heroes look up info on the members of Deathstroke.
 
GM:  ... and the strawberry blonde there is Scatterbrain, the team's mentalist.
Circe:  Strawberry blonde?  Does she look familiar to me?
GM:  As a matter of fact, she does kinda resemble the girl in the bar who whammied Pop Tart.
 
The heroes take a multi-prong approach:  Shadowboxer and Maker begin researching and checking out disused underground spaces (old subway stations, etc.) in town, while Circe tries to Mind Scan for Scatterbrain.  Eventually Circe get a few bearings, narrowing the search area for Shadowboxer and Maker, and they locate an unusual space under a disused storage building -- a sizable section of abandoned subway tunnel has been blocked off with concrete.  In the storage building above, Shadowboxer spies on a group of heavily-armed hired thugs, so the heroes block off the door leading to the staircase and get ready to force open the armored door leading into the main part of the underground base.
 
Pops:  Remember, take out the mentalist.  They're evil.  Every last one.
Circe:  One of these days, I'm going to find myself about a mile up in the air, falling to my death, aren't I?
GM:  Right next to the monsignor.
Circe:  (looks to his right)  Oh, hey, Monsignor Vasquez.  How's it going?
 
Inside, they find Nadine Acer holding a camcorder, interviewing Requiem while the other members of Deathstroke and a squad of agents are scattered around the room, some checking on the Quake device while others are killing time.  The battle is joined, with Honey Badger going straight for Death Commando.  The villain hits the hero, doing basically no damage past his defenses.
Honey Badger:  What was that?  You hitting me with a feather?
Draconic:  (to Death Commando)  What's wrong, old man?  Having a little trouble there?
 
Scatterbrain decides to have some fun with Honey Badger and hits him with a Mental Illusion making her look like Pop Tart. 
 
Scatterbrain:  Why don't you and I go somewhere and have a little fun?
Honey Badger:  Oh, no, she's doing it again.  I'd better call Twizzler again.
GM:  Sorry, no cell phone reception in the bunker.
 
Nexus blasts Draconic, drawing his attention.  So he does a flying tackle, taking her down to the ground.
 
Draconic:  Woo, hoo!  Hey, babe, ain't this fun?
Nexus:  (OOC)  He's going to get grabby, isn't he?
GM:  Worse than that.  He's going to motorboat Nexus' breasts.
Honey Badger:  He's going to regret that he's wearing a full helmet.
Nexus:  This guy's an a**hole.
GM:  Yeah, basically, that's what I've been trying for.
Nexus:  (to Malarky)  Can't you do something about this guy?
Malarky:  (hits Draconic with a Flash vs. all senses)  At least he can't enjoy himself now.
 
Malarky had trapped Death Commando and the agents in a thorny AoE Entangle, and Death Commando had just broken free.
 
Nexus:  (to Death Commando)  A little help here?
Death Commando:  (looks down at Draconic, then to Malarky)  Temporary truce?
Malarky:  (shrugs)  Sure, what the heck?
Death Commando:  Be right back.  (climbs back into the thorny mass and comes back out with one of the agents' laser pistols)  D**kweed here doesn't realize that Draconis's armor is vulnerable to lasers.  Do you, D**kweed?  (blasts Draconic with the laser, stunning him and doing 4 BODY past defenses.)  Not bad for an 'old man', is it, D**kweed?
Malarky:  The worst part is, Draconic is blind and deaf and doesn't know what just happened.
GM:  Actually, he has some Flash Defense.  He regained the ability to see and hear just before Death Commando took the shot.
 
The heroes have most of Deathstroke on the ropes.
 
Death Commando:  Well, I'm out of here.  Take it easy.
Malarky:  I'll fist-bump him as he goes past.
 
Pops is standing near an alcove where the concealed exit is, and where Death Commando is heading.
 
Death Commando:  Yaaaaaa! 
GM:  It looks like he tries a Move Through, but he barely misses Pops by... (holds hands about three feet apart) ... this much.
 
Honey Badger:  You know, Nadine got the whole fight on film.
Malarky:  Too bad that camera's going to have a little accident.  (Holds one of his magical foci)  Probably due to Chiller's little blizzard.  Too much cold isn't good for electronics, y'know?

From my wife, while firing her energy bolts at a mook beating a fallen police man.
Wife - "I'm not going to take a chance on this one getting away. (rolls a successful hit, then rolls all the dice for her attack)"
Me - "He missed the roll for his armor.  What did you roll for damage?"
Wife - makes concerned face "Oh.  Oops. I may have killed him.  The three other cops are watching me, aren't they."
 
During another session with the 14 y/o boy.
Me - "Do you have Unluck as a disadvantage?'
Son - "No.  I bought that off."  Looks at sheet.  "Um.  Maybe I didn't."
Me - "Go ahead and roll for it."
Son - (rolls) "Um, what number is bad again..."  .

Photos of this year's Perseid shower
 
http://www.universetoday.com/121863/gallery-2015-perseids-are-putting-on-a-show/
 
Unfortunately, it's overcast in my area.

via twitter (https://twitter.com/puddinstrip/status/631499533881487360)