I’ll update the Nail/Sinthia/Nightshade side-adventure soon as Sinthia has a chance to respond to Nightshade’s latest post.
Goethe will discretely and nonchalantly enter the door to the balcony, trying to avoid notice but at the same time projecting an air of doing something he’s well within his position to do. The pretension won’t help against any staff who might see and will obviously know he shouldn’t be there, but if any patrons happen to observe him, they’re less apt to alert any staff members if he looks like he belongs there. Being stealthy doesn’t mean you have to be unseen, it just means you have to go unnoticed.
The cyborg doesn’t react visibly to Rescigno’s “betrayal” and he ignores his taunting. “No residual damage?” he asks the Butcher, attempting to run system diagnostics to monitor the progress of his repairs. “My left eye is returning errors, might be junk data.”
Sinthia catches this and blurts out angrily, “Do you have something you wish to say, my child?”
"Yes, I could make an illusion of you arriving to see what happens. Also, I have another idea. If your apartment can be seen from the exterior, I might be able to help. I can see through walls quite easily and should be able to see inside and find out whether anyone is there or not.
Rescigno’s eyes stay steady on 4509 for several moments, searching for any sign of hostility. He turns away from the cyborg, and mutters to Butcher, “I want him at 100% efficiency by tonight.”
Butcher ignores Rescigno, betraying his complete lack of respect or subservience. Instead, he says to 4509 “It seems to be an uplink failure related to a processor involved with infrared reception. Activate your infrared sensors and tell me what you see.”
Rescigno walks away from the pair, ignoring their technical back and forth. Something is deeply unsettling him about 4509’s response. Rescigno shakes his head in a gesture of defeat. 4509 doesn’t have to read thoughts to know exactly what’s on Rescigno’s mind. That didn’t go as planned.
4509 is making extraordinarily fast progress with system recovery under Butcher. His systems will be operating at 100% before the rest of the crew arrives back from their side missions. Butcher has isolated the source of all the damage; a virus long since defeated by 4509’s digital defense system, but which had vomited streams of fault code into all of his systems before being destroyed. Butcher is simply cleaning up the mess left behind.
Goethe casually slips out on to the balcony overlooking the Psycare access panel. The view is even more perfect than he imagined. From here, he can also see the back loading docks, where delivery trucks, trash haulers, and patients are moved. The security here is much less intense than in the front of the building. There are two men standing next to a rolling door. The men have a list of expected deliveries, and are matching arrivals to names on the list. There is no bio-scan or identification card required to pass this checkpoint.
There must be more security measures past the first door, Goethe reasons.
Then again, these men are checking arrivals, not departures. Maybe the facility doesn’t screen arriving cargo as thoroughly as departing?
Goethe checks out the access panel. It’s exactly as Rescigno described. There’s a rail perfect for a grappling anchor, but just below is a lightly traveled walkway. Goethe supposes it would be possible to get an angle for a grappling line from the street level, but it would be very risky considering the possibility of people seeing it.
A more interesting idea is the possibility of using a grappling line fired from the balcony of the museum. It’s the perfect angle, out of sight, and people below would almost certainly not look at the precise angle required to see it. The crew would have to break into the museum after hours to do so, but from the looks of things it’d be nothing more difficult than deactivating a silent alarm and picking a mechanical lock.
Goethe departs the building and retrieves his weapon from the scowling dwarf woman on the way. He zips off in his motorcycle, ready to make his report to Nightshade.
As Goethe retrieves his pistol, he says to the woman:
“Hey, I think there’s a scratch on it! Next time I come in here, my admission better be discounted.”
He then winks at her and leaves.
His mission successful, he gets on his bike and rides back to the hideout, taking a different route from the one he used to get here, and taking long enough to be able to notice if anyone is following him.
I’ll be out of town at GenCon starting tomorrow night, through the weekend so I probably won’t be participating much until early next week. I figure with the whole Nightshade’s house thing, not much will probably happen that needs Goethe’s attention for the immediate future of this thread anyway. When the whole crew is reassembled at the hideout, Goethe will tell them everything he discovered about the museum, including that it’d be a great place to infiltrate from.
The cyborg cooperates throughout the entirety of the repairs. When the troll is finished 4509 runs a final diagnostic to confirm that he is fully operational. Satisfied, he retracts his armblades.
Nightshade, Nail, and Sinthia pull up to a vantage point a block away from the apartment parking lot. Sinthia gestures casually from the back seat of the sedan, and a wispy cloud of colored smoke begins to materialize and take shape outside of the car. The magical energy coalesces into a convincing image of Nightshade riding her motorcycle.
The illusion is powerful enough to cause a moment of vertigo for Nightshade. It will certainly convince anyone who sees it. However, the illusion isn’t real, and can’t interact physically with its environment. The illusion appears to ride up to the security checkpoint at the lot, where it is unable to enter the correct code granting access to the lot.
For a moment, Nightshade is convinced the ruse will be a failure. Then, she sees the illusion revving the engine of the motorcycle. A moment later, the cycle surges forward, appearing to smash through the flimsy wood of the checkpoint arm.
Nightshade is aghast at the damage. “You twit, the security camera will show me doing that!”
“Another illusion,” Sinthia mutters, too distracted by the concentration of maintaining two illusions to say more.
The illusion Nightshade stops the cycle and walks toward the apartment. For a moment, nothing is amiss.
Then, paydirt! A thin, but wiry muscular figure dressed in black emerges from another vehicle. He walks to the motorcycle and attempts to place an electronic tracer under the frame. Of course, the device simply falls to the ground, unable to stick to the mirage Mirage.
“Poor guy’s about to have the worst evening of his life,” Nail says almost gleefully.
The man is confused, unable to figure out why his device appeared to fall through solid matter. It won’t take him long to realize he’s been duped. If the group wants to follow this lead, they’ll have to act fast before the man makes scarce!
Nightshade lets a rare smile cross her face as she pulls the car up to the exit gate, blocking vehicular egress. “We’ll probably get a parking ticket if we don’t move pretty soon. Wouldn’t that be a shame?” She turns to Nail and Sinthia. “Let’s go have a chat with this fellow, shall we? Stay sharp, he probably has friends.” She hesitates only slightly before sliding the prototype gun under the seat. “No point in attracting more attention than we have to. I’ll probably have to move after this anyway. A shame–this is a nice neighborhood.” She loosens her hidden machine pistols in their holsters. “Ready?”
“Ready. Let’s talk to this gentleman and see what we can find out.”
Now we’re talkin’. No plan, just some simple fun, Nail thinks.
“Alright. Let’s have a chat.” Nail says. He has no plan beyond approaching the guy. If no violence erupts before he gets to within melee range, he’ll say, “Nice bike. Where’d ya get it?”
Sinthia will cast armor on herself if she senses any danger.
Nail is the first to exit the vehicle, and begins walking toward the figure. As he gets closer, Nail can see it is an elf man. Sinthia and Nightshade move to flank the figure to the right and left as Nail approaches him.
The elf looks up, and seeing the trio moving toward him, immediately starts walking back to the vehicle he got out of. Nail picks up the pace, saying a bit too loudly, “Hey! Nice bike!”
In response, the elf man breaks into a full sprint toward his vehicle. He opens the driver side door and reaches inside…
Why can’t it ever be simple?
…and emerges holding a conspicuous, high caliber machine gun.
Begin Combat round 1, initiative pass 1.
If the group wants to take this man alive, they should carefully consider the tactics they use against him! The lot is filled with vehicles that are good for hiding behind, but won’t stop a bullet from that nasty looking machine gun (counts medium cover).
Sinthia uses her first initiative pass to cast armor on herself. She is rash and overconfident, but her cockiness was born from competence. She’s quite sure even that machine gun wouldn’t have an easy time punching through this armor spell. The bike illusion is gone; the ruse is over and Sinthia reckons there’s no use maintaining the image now.
“Nice toy,” Nail quips, drawing his gun. While making a called shot at the thug’s weapon, he will say immediately before firing “Too bad it’s been recalled.”
Nail will use edge if it seems like a difficult shot.
Nightshade fires one burst from the pistol in her forearm holster while running for the nearest cluster of cars, then dives behind them, rolling to try to get farther than her assailant may be aware of. Once out of sight, she will try to sneak quietly to better cover, or at least away from where the opponent lost sight of her. This shot won’t do more than make him keep his head down. I need to make sure the next one really counts, unless Nail can drop him fast.
To aim for the weapon is indeed a very difficult shot, especially due to intervening terrain (the vehicles in the lot) and moderate distance involved. Nail will use his initiative pass to (free) call a shot, (simple) draw his pistol, and (simple) fire at the machine gun.
Nail will have 1 used Edge after this initiative pass.
Nightshade fires as she runs to cover. The elf man ducks in response, even though the burst is wide. The covering fire might have saved her life, as the elf man’s flinch causes the slightest hesitation in his response. He turns the machine gun on Nightshade and opens fire.
The elf begins firing a long burst from the machine gun, attempting to track Nightshade’s movement with the burst pattern. He comes close to hitting her, but she’s moving too quickly for him to compensate. Just as the rain of bullets catches up to her, she leaps and rolls to safety behind a parked vehicle.
“Nice toy! Too bad it’s been recalled,” Nail says, as his shot smashes into the elf’s machine gun.
(Nail was successful hitting the machine gun. The man will roll a STR+AGI test against the damage value of Nail’s gun. If he fails, the gun is knocked away.)
The elf is put off balance by the shot, but his grip is strong and true. He turns toward this new threat, and prepared to open fire on Nail.
End initiative pass 1.
Right now, Nightshade does not have line of sight on the elf, but can spend a complex action moving into position behind him. This will test her infiltration skill against the elf man; if she succeeds he will not realize she has maneuvered behind him, but if she fails he will spot her and have a chance to shoot at her. Alternatively, she can exit cover using a simple action, if she wants to shoot at him.
Nail has line of sight on the elf man. He can do an old-west style shootout with him, or try to get to cover.
Sinthia also has line of sight on him. He apparently doesn’t recognize her as a serious threat yet.
Sinthia casts Lighting Bolt, trying if possible to aim it at his legs. If not, she’ll still let it go towards him anyway.
Nail fires true with his gun, but the bullet does nothing but merely knock the elf back a pace. The elf man starts lining up his shot, and Nail weighs his options. We need this guy alive, he thinks.
He has no time to even think of a witty one-liner; he merely runs like hell for some cover.
“We need him alive Sinthia!” Nail yells when he sees Sinthia start firing up her magic.