Pete's third shadowrun adventure:Welcome to Fortune

[Joose]

Do you add any other modifier to Knowledge rolls?

Yep. Depends on what kind of knowledge skill it is, but as those are both academic type skills, you want to add your logic on to them.

Also:

The unusual drone behaviour I am here to investigate may be related to the unidentified biological activity. It is likely my presence here is undetected by the local inhabitants. It may be useful to maintain this. One of you should ask about them.

The BaM, still peeking out over Smiths bag, points at a bit of innards.

What does that bit do? Why is it that colour? Should it be on the outside like that? It looks inefficient. Does it smell? What does it smell like? Will you be eating it, or is it not food meat? Do you have one of those in you? It seems to be falling off.

[Roman Totale]

I'll redo my Knowledge skill rolls then:

Biology (4) + Logic (8) = 12

2,2,2,3,3,4,6,2,5,3,6,1 = 3 hits

Chemistry (4) + Logic (8) = 12

2,1,6,5,4,4,2,6,1,5,1,5 = 5 hits!

Spiffing

Ah, the glorious machine of organic life. Crude, vulgar and prone to breakdowns, disease and entropy. Yet in spite of all that, this...sack of guts and slime is capable of feats and ideas wondrous and horrifying to behold.

However, I must confess that the...inefficiencies and limitations are somewhat irksome. Perhaps though you are familiar with Bioware? If not I would gladly share my knowledge on the subject. Well, a portion of it at least. I would be interested on the perspective of, ahem, someone such as yourself.

Also Pete, I should have had +1 to Logic for all my previous rolls for that thing I PMd you about, but I only just realised. However, having rolled 1 die for all the previous rolls, none of them hit. Bums.

[Dog Pants]

Chopper he ain't.

[Joose]

I am always open to fresh data!

As we seem to be in "poking about" mode, I'm going to have a look at thier interwebs.

First off I will jump on to their public access for the camera feed. I'm then going to try and hack myself into a security account, see what I can see:

That's my hacking+exploit against their firewall +1 (because computers trust me). Just noticed as I double checked that that I have been playing it as firewall+system, but it should just be firewall. You learn something new every day.

Anyway, that's 9 dice for me:

First roll: 2 hits
Second roll: 5 hits
Third roll: 3 hits

That should do it. So, assuming I've got in without them noticing me (they can roll for each roll it took me to get in, rolling their analyse + firewall against my stealth of 6) I'm going to anal-eyes the node, see what/who is connected to it and if there are any tasty looking data stores. I'll decide what to do with this information after.

Computer + analyse +3 = 12 dice, 4 hits.

[HereComesPete]

Once again a complete lack of update notification.

Lab -

The two heavily clothed buys who spirited nervous guy away have dumped him and more recently a pile of body parts on a gurney and the floor respectively in the doctors surgery a few doors along from the saloon/bar.

It looks like a rickety wooden shack thing from the front but as with the other parts of town once you get in it's got plenty of lighting, drones scrubbing the floors and spraying disinfectant etc. The equipment available is of a high quality, tabletop centrifuges, extensive invasive cutlery and various microscopes, vortex mixers and incubators/fridges.

Smith's extensive research -

The bodies look to have been cloned and horse grown. At a cellular level you can see it's imperfect, high levels of neoplasia have caused the lumpen appearance. It looks as though the cells all bear the same genetic markers that suggests a singular source of original material. The cells are deteriorating at a massively accelerated rate, even as they died from the guns tearing them apart they managed to mutate.

The bloodwork shows massive amounts of kamikaze and nitro along with other stabilizing chemicals designed to partially mitigate the effects of the cellular degeneration.

Delving into the craniums of the few intact heads dumped show extensive genetic manipulation, these creatures are most likely constantly hungry, filled with blind rage and fiercely protective and territorial. The plus side is their bodies are walking a tightrope between highly efficient killer and biological bomb, even small amounts of damage could be enough to shut them down or kill them.

Only a few have cyber, showing less drugs and more advanced reasoning development in their brains. It looks as though a few are bred or raised above the others to act as leaders, capable of an animal cunning and knowing when to retreat etc. The cyber is crude, hacked in and obvious. Eyes, ears and remote function monitors.

Still lab -

Ingress - there is no reaction to your snooping/account creation, the cameras around the site all link to the public feed. Each gate/lookout tower/outpost of the town has a series of feeds and guns controlled at source, currently it's showing fifteen separate log ons, fourteen are user and one is admin. They all link together through a rather weak system that you can see as very easy to take over and control from any location. The data stores consist of the usual targeting software, kill counts, critter types etc. There's more information on the drone attacks too.

There's nothing else on this network, but it does point to an on/off connection with another network that runs parallel with it.

Also, you've re-acquired the signal of the extremely hardcore pan you bumped into earlier. It's in the room.

[Roman Totale]

Is the cyber salvageable? If so I'd quite like to try and sell it.

I have made some progress in my pathology work in the morgue. Some interesting results.

If I am correct, I believe at some point you may be attempting to stem the flow of these...specimens, at source. I would be willing to accompany you and provide medical assistance where needed.

For a cut, of course.

[Roman Totale]

Maybe the reception is bad in the morgue. I'll head over to the bar and table my offer there.

[HereComesPete]

The cyber is pretty crappy. It's a bulk purchase kind of quality, reusable but not really worth anything. You can salvage three eyes, two ears and a remote scanning unit from the remains of the slightly different creatures.

As you step out into the street a warning siren blares out across the town. An unseen tannoy announces swarms of drones are inbound and for everyone to get into cover.

[Roman Totale]

Clutching my bag of ears and eyes, I shall run a bit faster to get to the bar.

[deject]

I'll look for where everyone else is running and follow.

[Roman Totale]

I'll look for where everyone else is running and follow.

Good point. If people are fleeing the bar, I'll just follow them.

[HereComesPete]

People are not fleeing the bar, a few residents on the street are running in there in fact.

Inside the bar the tall black dude slugs back his drink and hurries behind the bar itself, running a silvery cable to the side of his head and a small interface set in the bar that lights up as he approaches.

Can't a guy grab a gargle without shit attacking!

About thirty seconds later...

He unplugs again, looking rather bewildered

Huh, well that was weird, all the drones just fell over. Never seen that Happen before.

[Roman Totale]

I assume the attack is over then? Seems like you have a guardian angel...

So gentlemen, have you considered my offer?

[Joose]

Ingress5 goes very quiet for a moment as he fucks about on tinternets. Here is the transcript of what happened from the xfire conversation with pete.

The large gaps in time are mostly due to us flailing about through rulebooks trying to remember how to do things. I've edited out the text of that to make us look less stupid.

[21:06] [5punk]HereComesPete: at this moment in time the public feed is showing you some groups of harrying tactic drones skirting the edges of the defenders, past tactics show this to be quite usual prior to attempted multi-point incursions
[21:06] [5punk]HereComesPete: it's tactics you yourself have used many a time prior to awakening
[21:08] [5punk] Joose: righto, lets see what I can get out of them. first off, I'll scan for their wireless signal. Im presuming they are at least running hidden, yeah?
[21:15] [5punk]HereComesPete: right, i think i'm ready, whats the plan
[21:15] [5punk] Joose: k, i'll give you an overview of what I want to do before i start shouting numbers at you:
[21:16] [5punk] Joose: 1) find the wireless signal of the drones.
[21:18] [5punk] Joose: bugger.
[21:18] [5punk]HereComesPete: ?
[21:19] [5punk] Joose: just realised that my cunning sneaky plan relied on a program that I havent got yet. Its top on my "to get" list. ah well, slightly less sneaky tiem.
[21:20] [5punk] Joose: I was going to have 2) sniff for the controlling users ID so I can trace it. But I dont have a sniffer. So instead:
[21:21] [5punk] Joose: 2) on the fly hack myself a security account on one of the drones.
[21:22] [5punk] Joose: 3) analyse the node to find the icon of the user controlling it
[21:22] [5punk] Joose: 4) trace that icons connection, which should tell me rough physical location and the matrix ID of the user.
[21:24] [5punk] Joose: 5) spoof the users ID to take over all the drones connections, shut them down one by one, and turn off their wireless so they cant be turned back on remotely
[21:24] [5punk] Joose: 6)...
[21:24] [5punk] Joose: 7) profit!
[21:24] [5punk]HereComesPete: right, xfire window enbiggened
[21:24] [5punk] Joose: sound like a horribly complicated plan with lots of points of potential failure to you? It does to me, and thats why I like it.
[21:25] [5punk]HereComesPete: it does indeed
[21:26] [5punk]HereComesPete: you know, i just thought about how you would be attack with black ic as a lot of it is designed to overload the meat at the other end
[21:26] [5punk]HereComesPete: *attacked
[21:26] [5punk] Joose: heh, its got to see me first
[21:26] [5punk]HereComesPete: yeah, you are ninja
[21:27] [5punk]HereComesPete: god damn you and your hackings! At least you didn't go technomancer
[21:28] [5punk] Joose: and im back!
[21:28] [5punk] Joose: right then, so, step one: scanning for the signal.
[21:33] [5punk] Joose: Character rolled 10 dice, scoring 4 Hits!
Rolls: 2 6 5 2 2 5 3 3 4 5
[21:33] [5punk] Joose: christ, that was close. Would have been embarrassing to fall at the first hurdle.
[21:33] [5punk]HereComesPete: yes that, as you've got a good idea of where they all are from the cam/tacnet feeds
[21:34] [5punk]HereComesPete: okay 2 now your target is 5, 6 for security, 9 for admin
[21:34] [5punk]HereComesPete: thats with your 'authority' taken into account
[21:34] [5punk] Joose: right, I'll go for security.
[21:35] [5punk] Joose: you want me to just spam out the extended test rolls, then you can do the appropriate amount of detection rolls, or do you want to do it the traditional "I go, you go, I go, you go" way?
[21:36] [5punk]HereComesPete: gimme rolls until you hit your target and i'll do mine then
[21:36] [5punk]HereComesPete: unless you want the igougo
[21:37] [5punk]HereComesPete: sounds like a russian car
[21:37] [5punk]HereComesPete: -y
[21:37] [5punk] Joose: nah, doing it all at once is the way I normally do it too. less faffing about.
[21:37] [5punk] Joose: roll 1: 1,3,6,4,2,4,3,2,1
[21:38] [5punk] Joose: roll 2: 2,6,6,6,5,3,2,5,1
[21:38] [5punk] Joose: shitty first roll, saved by an awesome second roll. Get in.
[21:38] [5punk]HereComesPete: you're not detected
[21:39] [5punk] Joose: sweet. right, analyse on the node, see what is in here with me:
[21:39] [5punk] Joose: 2,3,1,6,4,5,6,3,3,3,6,3 = 4 hits, pretty good
[21:43] [5punk]HereComesPete: 4 hits for them
[21:44] [5punk] Joose: curses. Hmm. I'll try again, I guess. we using the "each repeated attempt is a -1 modifier" rule, yeah?
[21:45] [5punk]HereComesPete: yes
[21:46] [5punk] Joose: also, I'll be uncharacteristically fair, and point out that the user could have his analyse program running all the time to try and detect other users (like, for example, me). I totally would, if I was remoting some drones in combat.
[21:47] [5punk]HereComesPete: well as it happens i was about to ask you to roll stealth + hacking as there's some IC checking you out as a new account
[21:47] [5punk] Joose: haha, okeydoke:
[21:49] [5punk] Joose: thats 10 dice total:
2,2,5,4,1,2,3,4,1,2: one hit. Fucknuts. hmm, do i use my one and only edge to reroll that....
[21:49] [5punk] Joose: nah
[21:49] [5punk] Joose: "Hello IC, im totally supposed to be here, honest, not hacking your shit or anything like that, not me. Ahem."
[21:50] [5punk]HereComesPete: yeah, it raises an alarm as it decides you're not really a security account
[21:51] [5punk] Joose: ah, shitums.
[21:51] [5punk]HereComesPete: bad ic starts loading, you can attempt to circumvent it by unloading it by rolling hacking + exploit
[21:52] [5punk] Joose: 1,6,6,1,5,5,4,6,3 = 5 hits, woo!
[21:52] [5punk]HereComesPete: ooh, lucky! 4 hits for the node sees the bad ic wander off wondering why the greeter ic woke it up in the first place
[21:53] [5punk] Joose: phew! Right, another analyze whilst things are quiet then:
[21:53] [5punk]HereComesPete: the user steps in at this point...
[21:53] [5punk] Joose: ah
[21:54] [5punk] Joose: well, at least I don't need to search for him any more.
[21:54] [5punk] Joose: /positive thinking
[21:55] [5punk]HereComesPete: so initiative
[21:55] [5punk] Joose: righto:
[21:55] [5punk]HereComesPete: 4 for user
[21:55] [5punk]HereComesPete: hits that is, 14 overall
[21:56] [5punk] Joose: im saved by my insane stat then, as the dice roll was wanky.
[21:56] [5punk] Joose: 2,3,1,6,5,2,1,3,4,1,4,4,1,5 = 3 hits. but thats still an init of 17 :D
[21:56] [5punk] Joose: oh, no wait...
[21:57] [5punk] Joose: fucknuts, forgot I wasn't hacking from home. Im in the calaban, and ive forgotten the response on that. One sec.
[21:58] [5punk]HereComesPete: caliban?
[21:58] [5punk]HereComesPete: -i +a
[21:58] [5punk]HereComesPete: ah comlink
[21:58] [5punk] Joose: heh, yep. thats the one.
[21:59] [5punk] Joose: boo, response 4. rubbish. ok, reroll for considerably lower stat:
[21:59] [5punk] Joose: hahahahahaha
[21:59] [5punk] Joose: 5,5,3,5,5,5,5,5,2,4
[21:59] [5punk]HereComesPete: hehe
[21:59] [5punk] Joose: thats a lot of fives.
[22:00] [5punk] Joose: and gives me the exact same initiative XD
[22:00] [5punk]HereComesPete: well you're up first then
[22:00] [5punk] Joose: right...lemme think a sec
[22:02] [5punk] Joose: right, im going to take a free action of transmitting a phrase to the others, then a complex of...
[22:03] [5punk] Joose: gah, I cant decide whether to trace him and risk getting kicked in, or kick him and lose the chance to trace. Im going to go for the trace, I think. Risky!
[22:04] [5punk] Joose: so, the phrase, to the rest of the team: "Attempted multi-point incursions imminent!"
[22:05] [5punk] Joose: and then the trace is going to take a few combat turns im guessing. You got the page reference for it?
[22:05] [5punk] Joose: its on 232 if you haven't
[22:05] [5punk]HereComesPete: yup
[22:06] [5punk]HereComesPete: stealth running -5 to your dice pool
[22:06] [5punk] Joose: jesus tittyfucking christ, that puts me on 2 dice. Ah well, here goes go number one:
[22:07] [5punk] Joose: 3,4, no hits. Fail.
[22:07] [5punk] Joose: your go, I guess :0
[22:09] [5punk]HereComesPete: right, ic is launched
[22:13] [5punk]HereComesPete: the IC launched looks like lots of teeny drones buzzing around
[22:14] [5punk] Joose: lovely
[22:14] [5punk] Joose: Next IP then? I have three :D
[22:15] [5punk]HereComesPete: yes
[22:15] [5punk] Joose: im going to abandon the trace as something doomed to failure (and mentally note to upgrade the shit out of it asap)
[22:17] [5punk] Joose: and instead, im going to try and kick the other guy in the electro-shins. ATTACK!
[22:18] [5punk] Joose: cybercombat+attack is 8 dice, and its against his response+firewall:
6,5,3,6,1,1,1,3 = 3 hits
[22:19] [5punk]HereComesPete: 5 hits, swing and a miss
[22:19] [5punk] Joose: boo. that's me for this IP then
[22:23] [5punk]HereComesPete: right, user ATTACK!
[22:23] [5punk] Joose: oh noes!
[22:24] [5punk]HereComesPete: response + firewall lz
[22:24] [5punk]HereComesPete: plz even
[22:24] [5punk]HereComesPete: guy gets 5 hits
[22:25] [5punk] Joose: 2,6,3,3,4,2,4,5,2,3. shitums, that's 3 net hits for you
[22:25] [5punk] Joose: how much damage?
[22:25] [5punk]HereComesPete: 7
[22:25] [5punk] Joose: gogo armour program:
[22:26] [5punk] Joose: 1,1,5,4,6,5,5,2,2, not too bad
[22:26] [5punk] Joose: so that's 3 damage to me
[22:27] [5punk]HereComesPete: your go
[22:27] [5punk] Joose: one sec, just looking to see how dumpshock works for AI
[22:32] [5punk] Joose: ah! found something, sort of!
[22:34] [5punk] Joose: right, im thinking of crashing the node that controls the drone. This would have the fun effect of taking down the drone, booting the other guy, and giving him a dose of dumpshock (will probably just piss him off a bit, but it will make me feel better). page 167 of unwired says AI can move out of nodes that are crashing before they go down, as long as they are not trapped there for whatever reason. So I think I should be ok. Make sense to you?
[22:35] [5punk] Joose: its a bit of a cowardly move, but I get the feeling im not going to be able to go toe to toe with this guy from a crappy backup comlink.
[22:35] [5punk]HereComesPete: it does make sense yes
[22:36] [5punk] Joose: groovy. Crashing time.
[22:37] [5punk]HereComesPete: hacking + exploit
[22:39] [5punk]HereComesPete: sorry 9
[22:39] [5punk]HereComesPete: the +4 restricted alert thingy
[22:39] [5punk] Joose: ah, gawd, yeah forgot about that.
[22:50] [5punk] Joose: right, crashing the node, hacking + exploit is 9 dice:
1,1,2,5,5,6,6,5,2 = 5, not a bad start, more of that please
[22:50] [5punk] Joose: that was my 3rd IP by the way
[22:51] [5punk]HereComesPete: cool, your stealth is 6 yes?
[22:51] [5punk] Joose: yep
[22:52] [5punk]HereComesPete: the user is trying to trace you back
[22:52] [5punk]HereComesPete: and just like you fails miserably
[22:52] [5punk] Joose: hehehe
[22:52] [5punk]HereComesPete: okies, round 2 ding ding!
[22:53] [5punk] Joose: initititatitives!
[22:53] [5punk]HereComesPete: yes
[22:54] [5punk] Joose: response+intuition = 10 dice - 1 for being a bit beat up:
5,6,5,3,3,6,5,1,6
[22:54] [5punk]HereComesPete: ic is sloooow and gets 9, user gets the same as last time, 14
[22:54] [5punk]HereComesPete: ugo!
[22:54] [5punk] Joose: yay!
[22:54] [5punk] Joose: right, round two of crashingtiem:
[22:55] [5punk] Joose: 5,2,1,5,1,2,6,4,2 = 3 hits, 8 total. almost!
[22:56] [5punk]HereComesPete: jebus, adobe had a spazz then, too many things open
[22:57] [5punk]HereComesPete: right, user ATTACK!
[22:57] [5punk] Joose: D:
[22:58] [5punk]HereComesPete: 4 hits
[22:58] [5punk] Joose: response+firewall-1: 9 dice
[22:58] [5punk] Joose: 1,1,5,4,5,5,3,4,5 = 4 hits! phew
[22:59] [5punk]HereComesPete: oof! swing and a miss for user!
[23:00] [5punk]HereComesPete: IC attacks with black hammer!
[23:00] [5punk] Joose: zomg! glad I don't have a physical damage track then!
[23:00] [5punk] Joose:
[23:00] [5punk]HereComesPete: 2 hits
[23:01] [5punk] Joose: 3,3,6,2,4,1,5,4,4 = 2 hits. scraping through!
[23:03] [5punk]HereComesPete: right, your turn, only the one hit needed
[23:04] [5punk] Joose: don't jinx me!
[23:04] [5punk] Joose: 5,2,5,3,1,2,2,3,2 = 1 hit! Fucking hell!
[23:04] [5punk] Joose: im playing by the skin of my damn teeth here
[23:04] [5punk]HereComesPete: hehe
[23:04] [5punk] Joose: wait, im blind. 2 hits.
[23:05] [5punk] Joose: less close :D
[23:05] [5punk]HereComesPete: right, roll system + response
[23:06] [5punk] Joose: 5,6,6,3,1,2,3,5,4,1
[23:07] [5punk]HereComesPete: oof, skin of your teeth again, i got 4 hits to stop you, you slip free of the circuit board streets styled landscape as the node crashes
[23:08] [5punk] Joose: wee, well that was interesting. And painful.
[23:08] [5punk]HereComesPete: the other radar blips on the cam feed/tacnet go dark
[23:08] [5punk]HereComesPete: there are now no active drones except your tower near the town
[23:09] [5punk] Joose: that's a point, how close is the tower now?
[23:09] [5punk] Joose: can I get it into the town reasonably quickly?
[23:10] [5punk]HereComesPete: it made its way fine and parked itself in an unobtrusive area just outside town, getting it to float towards the town would be quick, but not necessarily painless given the alert about drones
[23:10] [5punk] Joose: ah, true that. in that case, I'll leave it where it is for the moment
[23:11] [5punk]HereComesPete: well, in terms of getting it in to town it's just a case of marking it friendly in the gun/cam systems
[23:12] [5punk]HereComesPete: as they're covered in the paperest thin security you can do that if you want
[23:12] [5punk]HereComesPete: I'll not ask for another roll
[23:12] [5punk] Joose: yeah, I'll do that then. Groovy.


The TL:DR version is:

I hacked in to the drone to try and trace its user back to find out where he is. Instead, he started kicking the shit out of me, so I crashed the drones node. This dumped the fucker out, so he is probably holed up somewhere with a bit of a headache and Really Pissed Off. On the plus side, all his drones dropped out of the sky due to him not pushing their buttons any more. I predict this wont last long.

[Roman Totale]

Dear Christ that looks complicated.

[deject]

Dear Christ that looks complicated.

What the...

Alvrin looks around slightly bewildered for a moment. After seeing nothing out of the ordinary (well, ordinary for the short time we've been here) he turns to the guy at the bar

What usually happens?

[The Shutting Downs]

This is why I don't often post what N-zo is doing, it takes chuffing ages to hack anything, even with IP's per turn.

[fabyak]

Jon draws his mace, runs outside and makes an ice hockey style swing at the nearest drone (how big are these things out of interest?)

[HereComesPete]

Unfortunately Fab the nearest drone at best guess is quite a few kilometres away. They all fell out the air quite some distance from Fortune.

Usually? They'll swarm us and get a few inside the town limits that take a bit of chasing down but we generally hold them back for no loss to us and very few losses to the drones. Whoever is running them is good but very cautious and they haven't pressed hard yet.

Good job really as a lot of the systems here are pretty weak against a serious attempt to infiltrate the systems and these guys are real slow on listening to me and understanding the dangers this presents.

I'm pretty savvy with the old cyber fightin but I'm more of a pilots and sensors kinda guy. A serious black hat could cut their way into us with half their brain busy slotting a high def grot beetle.

[Roman Totale]

Any of you fuckers going to respond to my offer then?