[Tecumseh]

Let's get a Negotiation roll from James for talking with the airboat proprietor.

Sunset at this latitude at this time of year is almost exactly 20:00. I didn't memorize the exact sequence of the morning events, but we'll say that Illeana's surplus Magic rating will expire around 23:00. She'll suggest setting the meet between those two times. After summoning and doing a few preparations, she might have an hour or two to rest to recover drain.

What do you plan on wearing/bringing to the meet?

[rednblack]

Yeah, I was out the door as soon as I got that last IC posted.  For Negotiation I have: CHA (4) + Negotiation (4) = 8 dice.
Negotiation: 8d6t5 4
Pretty good, but I forgot Tailored Pheromones.  Let's see if those help.
Tailored Pheromones: 2d6t5 0
Nope.  Still 4 hits.

For the meet, James is going heavy.  His load out is:

Ares Globetrotter Jacket
-- 1 Rating 6 Stim Patch in Auto-injector
-- 1 Trauma Patch in Auto-injector
Ballistic Mask
Rating 3 Medkit
Defiance Ex Shocker in Concealed Holster
Ares Lite Fire 75 in Arm Slide, loaded with narcojet+DMSO rounds
Ares Alpha loaded with APDS and a spare clip of the same
-- Grenade launcher loaded with HE mini-grenades
Ares Crusader II in Concealed Quick-draw Holster, loaded with APDS, spare clip with EX-Explosive
Ares Redline in skin flap, and recharged
Area Jammer
Renraku Sensei
Metalink
All gear, with the exception of the commlinks, will be slaved to James' internal commlink and set to run Silent.  Wireless functionality will be turned Off.
The Renraku Sensei and Metalink will run Wireless On and running silent.

I need to update my char sheet, to reflect the new gear, and bullets fired -- I don't think I've adjusted for ammo since we began the game.  I'll assume Edge has not refreshed.  Has James had the time to heal up the 2 Stun he suffered from swimming?  Also, anything special on the Ares Alpha her purloined, or is it stock?

ETA: Char sheet updated.  I've spent 10 APDS rounds on the Desert Strike and 6 APDS rounds on the Alpha.  I added the additional Alpha at stock, and kept 20 rounds of Explosive Ammo, and a full clip of HE mini-grenades.  Let me know if I should edit that.  I added the other 6 HE Minigrenades from Holly to the primary Alpha.  Nuyen has been edited to reflect the commlink purchases but not anything else -- like the boat rental. 

[Tecumseh]

Proprietor Negotiation: Charisma + Negotiation: 6d6t5 3 hits, one net hit to James. I'll put that into an IC post but it might not be soon.

We'll refresh one point of Edge, so James will be 2/5. James' 2 stun is rested off as well.

What's the rule for how many devices can be slaved to a commlink? Is it devices = device rating? Will you double-check the number of devices you are slaving to James' internal commlink? At a glance, I'm not sure which pieces of James' gear have wireless functionality to know whether he's over the limit or not.

The Ares Alpha is stock. It had a sling that wasn't stock but James cut it.

Illeana may buy some reagents, since they are zero availability. She doesn't have a ton of time but she might be able to summon and bind a second spirit - perhaps an F3 water spirit - as backup. If things go sideways, the plan is the same as before: jump in the swamp and swim away under the spirit's power. She needs F3 * 25 reagents * ¥20/reagent = ¥1,500 in reagents. Binding adds up.

Illeana summoning: Magic 12 + Summoning 4: 16d6t5 3 hits
Spirit resist: Force 3: 3d6t5 3 hits

Well how about that. Magic 12 Illeana just got rejected by an F3 water nymph.

Soaking 6 drain: Intuition 10 + Willpower 6 + Centering 7 + Centering Focus 4: 27d6t5 6 hits, barely!

Trying again:
Illeana summoning: Magic 12 + Summoning 4: 16d6t5 2 hits, hmm!
Spirit resist: Force 3: 3d6t5 1 hit, glitch!

The spirit will not incur any drain due to its glitch, mostly because I'm not going to roll 27 dice against 2 drain, regardless of how poor the above rolls are.

Illeana binding: Magic 12 + Binding 4: 16d6t5 6 hits
Spirit resist: Force 3 + Force 3: 6d6t5 1 hit

Again, not going to roll 27 dice against 2 drain.

That adds 5 services for a net total of 6 services. She referred to the F6 water spirit as Bayou Billy so this F3 version will be "Billy the Kid". Optional power is Guard.

James has all the spending money since Illeana invested all of hers to cover your lifestyle expenses. Please deduct ¥1,500 from your sheet for her reagents, plus ¥150 in airboat rental fees.

She'll also do some preparations. I don't want to roll drain for all these so I'll just buy hits. She has Intuition 10 + Willpower 6 + Centering 7 + Centering Focus 4 = 27 dice. That's enough to buy 6 hits of drain soaking, so we'll do that. Given the time constraints, I'm only going to give her an hour to do preparations. (She can't do them too far in advance because they'll expire within a few hours, plus she'll be busy binding.)

Illeana's load out
Lined Coat
Ballistic Mask
Highland Forge Claymore weapon focus
11 throwing knives (used to be 12 but I think she blew one up throwing a fireball at the behemoth)
- 1x Fireball (command) @ F5
- 1x Knockout (command) @ F10
- 1x Euphoria (command) @ F7

Other preparations (lynchpins up to you)
She does two of each of these, one for her and one for James.
- 2x Physical Camouflage (touch) @ F5 - tap this if we need to slip away
- 2x Physical Barrier (touch) @ F6
- 2x Heal (command) @ F8

Where Force = minutes, that should all add up to an hour.

After sunset, she'll summon her big spirit. Let's try... an F8 fire spirit. That should be reasonably terrifying. Hopefully it doesn't detonate any pockets of swamp gas.

Illeana summoning: Magic 12 + Summoning 4: 16d6t5 5 hits
Fire spirit resist: Force 8: 8d6t5 4 hits

One service on this bad boy. Illeana needs to soak 8 drain. Intuition 10 + Willpower 6 + Centering 7 + Centering Focus 4: 27d6t5 11 hits, done

Optional powers are Fear and Noxious Breath. It will be very wary of the swamp, given its severe allergy to water.

I think that's everything. Let me know if I missed anything.

[rednblack]

Nuyen updated.

James can slave 21 icons to his implanted commlink at a time, as per page 233.I don't think it's an issue, but let's see what we have:
1. Cyber Eyes
2. Hydraulic Jacks
3. Internal Air Tank
4. Smuggling Compartment
5. Ballistic Mask
6. Biomonitor
7. Globetrotter Jacket (no benefit in this environment, but we'll count it)
8. Defiance Ex-Shocker
9. Concealed Quick-draw holster for same
10. Ares Light-Fire 75
11. Arm-Slide for same
12. Ares Alpha
13. Ares Crusader II (which I am adding to my loadout)
14. Concealed Quick-draw holster for same
15. Rating 3 Medkit
16. Area Jammer

GM Interpretation: 17. Auto-injector (nothing is said about it in the books.  It's iffy if it would function otherwise, but also iffy if one would need to take up 2 slots for the bio-monitor/auto-injector duo.)

I may be missing something, but I think that's it.  The section on cyber weapons say that they can run Wireless or by neural impulse. 

[Tecumseh]

Indeed, devices * 3. Looks like you're well covered.

GM ruling: yes, auto-injector needs its own wireless slot.

[rednblack]

The Mitsubishi Waveskipper is in Rigger 5.  Cost is ¥18,000, with the following stats:

Handling: 6, Speed: 3, Acceleration: 2, Body: 10, Armor: 4, Seats: 2, with no Availability. 

It's a two-seater jet ski.  I figure an extra vehicle may come in handy as an escape plan if things go sideways. 

Let me know if you'd like an additional Negotiation test.

[Tecumseh]

Negotiation for James: Charisma 4 + Negotiation 4 + Tailored 2 - Suspicious 1 - Annoying 1: 8d6t5 3 hits

Negotiation for proprietor: Charisma + Negotiation: ?d6t5 3 hits

The proprietor will decline your offer, citing the fact that he is not covered by insurance if he does not have an official rental agreement. Given the fate of his airboat, he doesn't want to risk the Waveskipper without insurance.

Going rate for the Waveskipperis ¥60/hour or ¥199/day.

If James declines, you will keep the behemoth skin and the proprietor will file for insurance. This will be a SIN check (James doesn't know how rigorous) against a Threshold of 3 for James R3 SIN. (Note, this is a threshold test, not an Opposed test as the book describes. This makes SINs more robust, in general, which balances the higher prices of the higher-rating SINs.)

[rednblack]

Well, I guess I could try for the Intimidation route, but I'm not sure the benefit outweighs the cost in this case.  James will probably swallow his pride, and pay the daily rate, as having an additional vehicle could be a game changer.

[Tecumseh]

IC is up. Go ahead and deduct the nuyen from your sheet.

For this next portion, you have enough time to set up how you want things. If you want to find a small island, you can do that. If you want to wait on the airboat, you can do that. James can be sitting on the boat, or on land, or in a tree, or on the Waveskipper, or whatever you feel he would do. James is the face and will need to do the talking, so he can't set up in ambush. (Or, more accurately, he could, but he'd be leaving Illeana stranded alone, which might be irresistible to the other party.)

[rednblack]

Char sheet updated.

I'd like to post the Waveskipper 100 meters to the south of the meet.  They'll most likely be approaching from the north, west, or east, so that should give them a good egress route. 

I'd like to roll something for picking the spot.  Maybe Small Unit Tactics?  The point is to find a location with multiple ways out to the south, and only one or two ways in from the north.  With Illeana's Detect Enemies going, more woody is better than more open, as I'm not too worried about folks sneaking up on us, but having cover available will be wiz.  I'm sure it will need to somewhat open for us to be spotted to begin with, though.  For SUT I have: INT (9) + SUT (5) = 14 dice.
Small Unit Tactics: 14d6t5 2
Pretty poor roll.  I seem to be hitting another clump of those. 

Other than that, I'm sure a Perception test is in order.  I'll roll a general, then vision spec + vision enhancement, and then audio enhancement.  James will run Wireless On to see/hear what there is to see/hear, and then turn Wireless Off unless something really catches his eyes/ears.  I have: INT (9) + Perception (6) = 15 dice.
Perception: 15d6t5 4
Vision Spec (2) + Vision Enhancement Rating 2 (2) = 4 dice.
Vision Spec + Vision Enhancement: 4d6t5 3
Audio Enhancement (2) = 2 dice.
Audion Enhancement: 2d6t5 2
So that's 4 hits on regular Perception, 7 hits on vision, and 6 hits on audio.  Those are pretty good, but I didn't take Glare into account.  It's probably Moderate Glare (-3) staged down to Weak Glare (-1) with James' Flare Comp.
Glare Mod: 1d6t5 1
So 6 hits on Vision, and maybe 3 regular, 5 audio depending on how you cut it.

[Tecumseh]

Waveskipper is posted 100 meters to the south.

James' small unit training evidently did not spend a significant amount of time on nighttime swamp scenarios. He finds a position that he isn't happy with but which isn't completely suicidal. Normally it would be a nightmare of vulnerability to snipers but Illeana's magic helps defray some of those worries. There's always the possibility of someone sniping from 250+ meters, but the swamp foliage is dense enough that James isn't terribly concerned about that.

His Perception rolls are solid; he has a good grasp of what's going on.

Illeana has an Internal Air Tank in her ballistic mask and knows the Oxygenate spell. Between the two, she can last for a long time underwater. Her point is more that she can't move very quickly. I think her lack of buoyancy from being a vampire incurs a -4 penalty to Swimming tests. At some point she's probably better off just walking along the bottom of the swamp.

The new arrivals are coming from the west. I'll write up an IC but I have a big deadline tomorrow so it probably won't be soon.

[rednblack]

That all sounds good.  No worries on the timeline.  Hope the deadline goes smoothly.

[Tecumseh]

It's late on Thursday and I'm just now wrapping up what I needed to get done. I'm supposed to be up early in the morning so I don't have time to do a proper IC post at the moment. I'll get the broad strokes of the situation up for you OOCly so that you can contemplate the situation until I write the IC, which will likely be on Sunday.

1. Guests are arriving from the west.
2. There are seven of them. Four are on Waveskimmers (one each to a vehicle) and three are on a mini-barge/float that looks more like a party boat than a performance vehicle.
3. Illeana will announce that they are all possessed by spirits. By appearance, they are almost certainly Voudon. You can roll to see what James knows about Voudou, base attribute is Logic. Illeana rolled two hits.
4. Being possessed will make them potent adversaries, but they are not currently displaying any hostilities.
5. Illeana will say that the spirit possession makes it hard to pick out which ones might be Awakened naturally.
6. There is, however, a central leader/priest/houngan who is sitting imperiously on a throne on the mini-barge.
7. Illeana says that he is possessed by a spirit that's as large as the fire spirit she summoned.
8. Illeana concludes that they might have sufficient magical skill to counterspell her Detect Enemies spell. They may, in fact, be quite hostile, but they are talking first, not attacking.

[rednblack]

Gulp.

Ok, let's see what James knows.  Assuming Magic Traditions fits better than Magical Threats.  I have LOG (4) + Magic Traditions (2) = 6 dice.
hoodoo voodoo: 6d6t5 1
There is a tradition.  It's called Vodou. 

So, here's a question on what my measly 1 hit would let James know.  Does he know that possessed vessels can only use the spirit's skills?  OOCly this means that they're not set up to Negotiate. Even Defaulting with 8 CHA doesn't seem smart if they came to talk price.  Similarly, James would want to stay out of melee, as none of the spirits will have Firearms skills, though Elemental Attack can be nasty (MAG X 2 P - MAG AP). 

Will Illeana know if her spell(s) is(are) being Counterspelled?

Through Assensing, can Illeana tell what type of spirits are possessing the buyers?  This should also go a long way toward letting us know what their intentions are, depending on IC knowledge of the tradition -- Illeana will need to fill James in in this case.

[Tecumseh]

IC post is up. Questions should be answered there but I'll give explicit answers here too. James doesn't know a ton but he knows enough to ask the right questions.

1. James does know that possessed vessels can only use the spirit's skills.

2. This does suggest that they are not set up to negotiate.

3. The guardian spirits may have Firearms skills. They are all armed, but it could be habit, or for show, or decoration.

4. OOCly - and Illeana will explain this if you survive - she would know if her Detect Enemies spell had been dispelled, but not counterspelled. Per SR5, p. 285: "Counterspelling may be used to defend against active detection spells, even if the target is unaware of them being cast (for example, if they walk within range of an active Detect Enemies spell)."

5. Illeana knows that they are a mix of task spirits and guardian spirits.