SDMB Shadowrun campaign Chapter 3 - Prey To The Dark: Players only!

The Game Room
181

Nightshade shakes her head to clear it. “I think we have what we came for, then. The faster we get out of here, the happier I’ll be.” She walks quickly to the doorway, pulling out her SMG as she goes. “I’ve got a feeling that stealth time is almost over. Up the stairs to ground level, lady and gentleman. No offense,” the gives a ghost of a grin to Nail. She found his wisecracks annoying until they stopped coming, but now she finds she misses them badly–maybe a little dig will open the tap again. Anything to get some kind of smile in this hole. She opens the team channel on her comm again. “Goethe, 4509–we have the package in hand and we’re heading home. If you can, let us know which exits are most clear.”

Turning back to her companions, she says, “I want to relock this door–no reason to make it easy for them to figure out what we were looking for, if they don’t already know–so let’s move out. I’ll be right behind you.”

182

4509’s sniper rifle makes a mighty roar as the explosive chemicals propel the bullet to unimaginable speed. The cyborg watches the mage’s cloak billow forward, a Newtonian reaction to the incredible force slamming into the body of the man wearing it.

As the bullet strikes the man, the spell in progress finishes almost simultaneously. The mage’s body staggers backward from the impact, and only pure spellcasting momentum allows the spell to finish casting. Smoky tendrils of power wrap around the falling man, engulfing him like demonic fingers. The body disappears within the darkness, and a small, dark, flying animal emerges from the energy. Impossibly, the creature is still alive, and in full retreat.

The cyborg’s hostage makes a terrified shout, and impulsively runs to the door. 4509 reckons the entire block would have heard the bang from his rifle, and the restaurant employees will surely know something’s up now. 4509 can prevent his hostage from escaping by using a complex melee action next initiative pass, which will test his strength and unarmed combat.

If 4509 doesn’t care about the hostage’s fate, he can use his rifle again next initiative pass. However, the mage is attempting to escape, and will be much more difficult to hit in his current form.

Goethe hears an echoing CRACK from above and ahead of him. The powerful sound seems to come from everywhere at once, and panic nearly forces Goethe’s heart into his throat, until he realizes the source of the attack.

You miserable toaster, I could kiss you!

Goethe sprints toward his bike, glancing behind him. The two thugs are spooked, but respond professionally. They scatter and flee toward cover. They certainly won’t chase Goethe into the open with an enemy sniper nearby. The mage is nowhere to be seen.

One of the thugs shouts into a comlink, loudly enough for Goethe to hear as he runs. “Shots fired from the needle tower! Clear it out!” Goethe doesn’t like the sound of that.

Goethe will reach his motorcycle next combat round. If he has changed his mind about fleeing, he can stay on the ground and spot targets for 4509, and scout the exits for Nightshade’s crew, from relative safety. This will challenge his perception skill.

Nightshade locks the door to the observation office and Seneth’s former cell, and leads the others back to the stairwell. “The faster we get out of here, the happier I’ll be.” The others couldn’t agree more.

The group reaches the stairwell entrance, where Nightshade’s resin goop has done it’s job preventing the latch from engaging. The group heads up the stairwell, but it’s only a single flight before sounds of footsteps descending from above can be heard. The group needs to decide whether to confront the person or people coming down the stairwell, or avoid them by ducking out into the hallway of another floor. There are still multiple floor levels separating the group from the ground level.

183

4509 sours at the employee’s break for safety but continues tracking the fleeing mage. “Vampire,” he broadcasts to the others via commlink, reticule dancing across his vision as he follows the creature through the rifle’s scope.

He fires again in every initiative pass remaining this turn, burning Edge each time.

184

While still spooky as all hell, things are remarkably calmer where Nail is.

Waiting for the others, Nail responds to Goethe’s last transmission. “You’re probably right, but if he does follow you, can you deal with that on your conscience?” It’s amazing how similarly they think at times.

Soon after, Sinthia announces that they’re leaving. It couldn’t come soon enough. After saying, “No offense,” to Nail, Nail smiles slightly back a bit and merely replies. “None taken. Now let’s blow this party. It’s pretty dead.”

His poor choice of words does little to help alleviate the creepiness and tension.

185

Goethe reaches his bike and takes one last look behind him, he sees the two thugs dash for cover and smiles. But where’s the mage? It doesn’t pay for Goethe to leave the scene if the mage doesn’t give pursuit. The thugs aren’t much of a threat. Without the mage, Goethe will better serve the mission and his team by staying around. Hopping on his bike he starts it up and starts looking around for the mage, as he does so he goes over the commlink to the group:

"The mage seems to have disappeared. I don’t know if he’s dead, but he doesn’t seem to be concerned with me anymore. So it looks as if I’ll stick around a bit longer. Cyborg, the mage’s mooks have zeroed in on your position. One of them radioed in somewhere. So you should be expecting company shortly. I have a good vantage point of the entire scene from here, so I can help spot for you and the rest of the team as well as provide combat support provided the mage doesn’t show his ugly mug. The rest of you make haste to get out of there. We took them by surprise, but it won’t be long before this place is crawling with backup.

“Oh, and cyborg, I owe you one.”

186

Nightshade freezes at the sound of footsteps, and signals the others to do the same.

Whoever it is will almost certainly hear if we open a door and bug out. Then, they’ll be chasing us through unknown terrain, with no exit scouted out. Question is, can we take them down faster than they can report a problem?

She whispers to Sinthia, “Can you tell who or what is coming? And do you have an illusion that can hide us, at least until they get right on top of us?”

She turns toward Nail, and locks eyes with him. “Fast and quiet,” she mouths silently, as the footsteps continue to approach.

187

Sinthia will use any ability she has to learn what is coming, including seeing through the floors/walls.

“Hiding is risky. I can create just about anything, even a fake wall for us to hide behind. It will be only an illusion, though, and will provide no protection. Get armed, get ready. Honestly, even a fake wall may look obvious. I think I can distract them better than hide us. Suggestions for distractions?”

188

There is no time for further conversation before the footsteps arrive. If Sinthia is going to distract or trick the guards, she must make her move now!

189

Is there anything on the ceiling that Nail could potentially hang onto to get the drop on the potential baddies? If there isn’t, then I’d be interested in the distance in the corridor from the room to any potential bends or nooks. Depending on the layout, Nail might just go into the room and pray that Sinthia will cook something good up.

190

The stairway looks like this.There is a support beam above you, on the under side of the stairwell. Attempting to cling to it in order to get the jump on the guards will test infiltration ability (a stealth skill).

191

“Upsy-Daisy,” Nail says under his breath, and jumps up to cling onto the support beam.

192

Nightshade activates her wired reflexes and backs silently down the stairs while extending one cyberspur. Hope the sorceress comes up with something good. As Nail leaps for the support beam, she nods silently. Just crazy enough to work.

193

I’ll give Mahaloth a bit more time to submit an action before making the next update. The next update post will be at or near 12:00 pm PST, approximately 12 hours from now.

194

Sinthia creates an illusion of 20 4509-cyber-soldiers and places them in whatever position it seems most likely for the guards to come from. If it looks like multiple phases of guards are coming(from different spots), she will place a few of these illusion-soldiers in each entry point.

Sinthia positions herself in whatever area she can find the most cover while still having an eye-line to cast her spells.

195

“Vampire,” 4509 says into the comlink. His voice is stone cold and matter-of-fact, but he knows that he’s the most vulnerable person in the crew. The bat is fluttering away, heading toward the loading and trash docks of the Psycare building. 4509 only has a split second to adjust his aim and fire another shot before the vampire’s flight takes him out of 4509’s line of sight.

“The mooks have zeroed in on your position,” Goethe says to him. Good thing this won’t take long.

CRACK! The rifle kicks again, echoing loudly across the neighborhood. The bat seems to explode as the bullet strikes it, transferring so much kinetic energy into the creature that hardly anything is left of the animal but small chunks of gore. Won’t be coming back from that. A vampire mage for a busboy hostage; not a bad trade at all.

Goethe hears 4509’s second shot, and glances toward the loading dock just in time to see chunks of the shapeshifted mage falling to the ground. Splat.

I am not at all sure I could have made that shot, Goethe muses. *The mage, sure. But a friggin’ bat in flight? *He looks up to the tower, where he knows 4509 to be sniping from. Too bad there’s nothing left of him to identify.

As he glances back down to the Psycare building, he sees a multitude of dark shapes fluttering up toward the tower. He hears the screeching of bats a second later. There are dozens of them, swarming in flight as they make their way to the tower where 4509 is sniping. Goethe can’t hope to hit them with his AK, except through sheer luck. I sure hope some of those are just illusions…

4509 probably hasn’t seen the swarm, since he hasn’t commented on the bats and they’re coming from an angle he could not have seen if he was looking down the scope at the transformed mage.

Nail leaps to the rail supporting the under side of the stairs above him. Nightshade backs down the stairway enough that she won’t be seen unless the footsteps come down another landing. Sinthia gets to work with magic. She only has a few seconds to cast her illusions of the cyborg 4509. Each illusion is a separate spell, requiring more focus and drain. The effort doesn’t bother her much, but the sheer time required limits her to only three illusions, and the third illusion is not particularly convincing. It has an extra arm, which is holding a guitar…

Sinthia has taken only 1 point of stun damage due to drain from her casting efforts. Two reasonably convincing illusions of the cyborg stand before her, and one that just looks like a cartoon.

The footsteps reach the landing, underneath Nail. He hasn’t been spotted. Nightshade is out of sight, and only Sinthia and her illusions are visible to the three figures on the landing. The men react immediately to the visions of the cyborg, all drawing submachine guns and firing at them. Sinthia doesn’t seem to be a priority for them, as they unload full bursts into the illusions.

The three guards are tricked for now, but the illusions wont fool them after this initiative pass. Nail has a surprise attack against the group, while Sinthia and Nightshade can fight normally. If Sinthia maintains the illusions, she will suffer a distraction penalty to her actions, due to the effort of maintaining the illusions. She can end the illusions and fight normally, if she wishes.

196

Sinthia will drop her illusions and cast Fireball at the guards.

“Die in fire!” she yells.

She will spend one point of Edge to do so and will seek cover immediately after her fire spell is cast.

197

Nail is about to become a runner marshmallow, then?

198

Hey, not my fault you forgot to wear your flame retardant underwear. :slight_smile:

199

Let’s hope Sinthia can aim the fire somewhat to avoid Nail as much as possible. She has no other spell that attacks multiple foes, alas. It is an area effect spell, though.

200

I think we’ve all learned by now that killing allies is acceptable if you take some baddies with you. Don’t live and regret, ese.