[Kontact]

Chicago is meant to be a very dangerous place with death waiting around every corner.  You definitely don't have to kiss ass every second to survive, but if you're going to try and muscle the people you meet, you've got to be very subtle about it.  This is not a city where a bunch of 350bp guys can go at their problems head on.  Sent, you did a great job trying to get leverage in these situations, and I'm glad you were trying, but there were a whole lot of threats coming from a fuzzy little hindi tech support guy who scavs the zone for thrills.  You dare enough zoners to kill you, and they will.

[Xzylvador]

...
Wow

Okay, lemme start by apologizing to you all for falling from the face of the earth... It wasn't planned and I hadn't given a heads-up, just got lots of RL things going on that's taking up lots of time. A sick wife's one of them, but since it's the morning-sickness kind, I consider it a good thing!

@Kontact: Are you serious that there's a way out of here alive? :p
@Sent: Sorry to see this happen...

As for Devoted: I seriously have no idea what to do here and would like input. I just can't get the feeling of the character.
He's a 17-year-old kid who grew up in a temple devoted to Norse gods, so fierce in his loyalty to sacrifice his own hand and believes he's sent into the world by his Gods to hunt down 'relics'.
And somehow he ended up in the place where he is now and even he can't be stupid enough not to realize that he might've been a bit foolish in his beliefs...
I've been trying to show his loss of faith in himself a bit, but this situation...

He sacrificed his right hand to the God of Justice and War, who (thanks to Mentor Spirit) demands him to act honorably at all times and punishes those who don't. And now he sees one of his own team shoot another in the back...
And hears them allying themselves to an AI that wants to keep bug spirits around because they keep people away.

I really don't know what to do.   Any ideas are welcome...

Oh, Kontact, there was a guardian spirit summoned with the orders to protect the group, how does it react to all this?
-- Its reaction can (probably will) serve as guidance for Devoted's actions... He considers them to be aspects of his deity, right?

[Kontact]

Oh yeah the guardian spirit.  I remember the question came up before if it would be able to recognize technological threats since they lacked intent.  Shots fired are no longer intent though.  I suppose the Guardian must get involved unless you tell it otherwise.

As far as honorable actions go, Code was trying to pick a fight at a severe disadvantage, for the sake of ego.

[inca1980]

Well I think it's pretty clear what we do from here...we need to talk to the AI, but for real this time.  We've made a deal with him and sealed it with Code's blood.  The AI said he'd help us with finding the wine...he probably knows exactly where it is so we just have to go collect and then figure a way to get Holland out of here and split.  Machete shouldn't be doing the talking cuz he's uncouth....but if you want i'll talk to him.  I'll post a little IC request but our best face should do the smooth talking cuz this sapient program gets butt-hurt real easily. 

I think sometimes with PbP, since it goes on over the course of weeks and months, people miss a few details and then we feel a little lost, but I'm feeling pretty on track for what's going on right now.  That being said, just to make sure I have a concrete mental model of the situation here, I'd just like to ask a few questions.  Thanks for your patience Kontact.

1. As far as I can tell, Gardner got stunned, he's not dead.  Where is he lying right now?  I assume near the stairwell. 

2.  The other elf dude who was climbing the building with Gardner...Jack...he's AWOL right?

3.  So I think I understand the whole Holland scene after I've read it over a few times now.  If we go back to the set-room where he's at it would be the same situation right?  With him holding the bugs inside of a mana barrier so that they don't mess with us.  We're gonna have to devise a plan to get him out. 


Now it seem to me that after Holland "retired" in '58, there was someone out there impersonating him.  However is impersonating him would not want this coming....in any case there's money to be made here. 

[Xzylvador]

Now it seem to me that after Holland "retired" in '58, there was someone out there impersonating him.  However is impersonating him would not want this coming....in any case there's money to be made here. 

Easiest explanation here is that a bug spirit is doing the impersonating, using Holland's reputation to get to and 'convert' other people in high-society. We really want to be dealing with that?

And two problems with getting Holland out: Holland is all that's keeping the bugs from dying. And the AI doesn't want them gone... Other problem is that we have no clue how to deal with all those bugs.

[inca1980]

In the worst case scenario, we just need some evidence that the real Holland exists.  If we could get a tissue sample, even a symbolic link and then some good trid feed. 

To get him out, he doesn't need to maintain LOS with the center of the Sanitize spell in order to maintain it and it's on a focus anyways.  The reason he can't leave is cuz the hive is not letting him and they wanted to possess him.  If we save him from the hive, the sanitize spell can still be up on the focus.  We can explain this to the AI and I'm sure he'd help us.  If we can just get him outside that mana barrier that has all the bugs trapped in it, then they'd stay trapped in it and he'd be on the other side of it.  We'd only deal with maybe a few stragglers who got out before he lifted the barrier.  We could use the hazmat suit of Code or someone else who bit the dust and give it to Holland so the FAB III doesn't mess with him.  Devoted can serve as a distraction cuz Melissa the queen wants him. 
As soon as we're out Holland drops the mana barrier and everything is as it was minus Holland at the center of the shit storm.

So the trick is gonna be figuring out the diversion so that Holland can give them the slip. 
 

[Sentinemodo]

...
Wow

Okay, lemme start by apologizing to you all for falling from the face of the earth... It wasn't planned and I hadn't given a heads-up, just got lots of RL things going on that's taking up lots of time. A sick wife's one of them, but since it's the morning-sickness kind, I consider it a good thing!

welcome to the club chummer!

my wife told me two weeks ago the same news and we are heading toward our eight week

[Sentinemodo]

Oh yeah the guardian spirit.  I remember the question came up before if it would be able to recognize technological threats since they lacked intent.  Shots fired are no longer intent though.  I suppose the Guardian must get involved unless you tell it otherwise.

As far as honorable actions go, Code was trying to pick a fight at a severe disadvantage, for the sake of ego.

to be honest I wasn't calculating backstab into disadvantages. entire team, plus my drone against twenty year old secretary bot armed with shotgun. a single edge burned to go first would be enough to cripple it so my dodge would be succesful and my shot to finish it off.

and inca one more thing I dont think comparison of taking out missing players witb gameplay is good comparison, this ai however advanced (15 dices is really good) is still having twenty year old junk to command. we could have beaten it.

[Sentinemodo]

Well I think it's pretty clear what we do from here...we need to talk to the AI, but for real this time.  We've made a deal with him and sealed it with Code's blood.   The AI said he'd help us with finding the wine...

i think you've earned AntiJesus nickname in the shadow. you've turned blood into wine.

[Xzylvador]

welcome to the club chummer!

my wife told me two weeks ago the same news and we are heading toward our eight week

Congratulations!
(I was already in the club, this is the second pregnancy... She wasn't sick the first time, damnit!)

As far as honorable actions go, Code was trying to pick a fight at a severe disadvantage, for the sake of ego.

Well... I'm going to have to ask you to make the spirit do one thing or the other... maybe a Mentor Spirit guidance or something if I'm allowed to ask that? I know it's probably lame of me, but it's the only way I can see Devo getting out of this dilemma.
Even if you're right about how suicidal and for what wrong reasons that fight would've been, there's simply no justification for shooting an ally in the back. While I get the reasoning behind Machete's action, to an idealist like Devoted dying honorably in battle next to your allies is a lot more preferable than doing what Machete did. The only thing holding Devoted back and making him doubt his reaction is that Machete's also been a good ally up until that point too and that 'defending' Code isn't an option since he's dead already.
-- for now IC I guess that means Devoted's in some kind of shock, just standing there trembling, looking at the robot, Machete and Code's body --

[Kontact]

Oh yeah the guardian spirit.  I remember the question came up before if it would be able to recognize technological threats since they lacked intent.  Shots fired are no longer intent though.  I suppose the Guardian must get involved unless you tell it otherwise.

As far as honorable actions go, Code was trying to pick a fight at a severe disadvantage, for the sake of ego.

to be honest I wasn't calculating backstab into disadvantages. entire team, plus my drone against twenty year old secretary bot armed with shotgun. a single edge burned to go first would be enough to cripple it so my dodge would be succesful and my shot to finish it off.

and inca one more thing I dont think comparison of taking out missing players witb gameplay is good comparison, this ai however advanced (15 dices is really good) is still having twenty year old junk to command. we could have beaten it.

As a scavenger in an high security area in a former AAA megacorp building that's 5 km deep into the most dangerous place on the planet, picking a fight is complete madness.  The whole of Chicago wants to kill you.  You can't just shoot your way out of the zone.  If you had survived the building security, which you have no idea how extensive it is, and then tried to flee the tower without anything to barter for your passage except for data, the local Union boys would tear into you. 

This is a whole different game than Seattle or anywhere else in the 6th world.

I'm going to roll an intuition check for the spirit to see how it jumps.
3d6.hits(5) → [1,2,5] = (1) one hit, no glitch.  I'll say that it materializes and waits to see how Devo reacts.  From the astral, I'd imagine a pretty complicated emotional picture of what's happened.  Tensions rise, come to a head and then one of the group gets shot by another and no one steps in or reacts violently.  The spirit should know enough to know that what happened is more complicated than it can understand.

[Crossbow]

First off, congrats on the offspring one and all.

Part of why I haven't been posting is waiting for Devoted's reaction, I really couldn't see it being good and knew Digger would have a decision to make based on which way it played.

As to what Devoted would do?  I am not going there, having enough problems figuring out what the dwarf is going to do.
 

[Xzylvador]

It still might not be good really, lol.

Bah, wrote like half a page of text in response to Machete, then realized that Devo's probably not that well spoken and erased it. Maybe if I could hunt down some literary quotes... -that- he knows.
Man, Devo's an idiot :p

Edit: Bah, fine. It's a fantasy world, I'll just make up books and authors :p

[Xzylvador]

If you're waiting for me, Devo's ignoring the robot. He'll stick with the rest because, let's face it, he doesn't really have any other options and still wants to help out, but he's not really on a job any longer.

[Xzylvador]

Is there a way to take Ruckus v2.0 with us? Do we all have access to the drone's controls?