5punk

I shall drop the Clean Air spell and re-cast Detect Enemies horse 3 (obviously, to be placed on the focus.

Detect Enemies 3 (DV: 2)
Magic + Spellcasting (12 dice): 3 hits
Drain Resist (9 dice): 4 hits

Leland wrote:On you Chopper.

Chopper will carry on creeping forward. I'll also do another infil/agil roll:

3,3,1,3,6,5,6,1, = 3 hits

you head down the stairs. It smells a bit funny down here, not gag inducingly nasty like upstairs, more musty and old, like...well, like a long abandoned cellar.
At the bottom of the stairs is another door, like the one at the top. However, this one is open. Its properly dark down here: the only light is from you guys.
Through the door is another corridor, shorter than upstairs. There's four doors down the sides, two each side, and one at the end. Through the end one you can see another door, then a room. All of the doors but the one to the stairs are big metal security doors, but they are also all open.

Looking back at the building plan, the Air Filtration and Server Rooms are on the left, and the Power and Water/Heating are on the right with the central support column dead ahead.

Personally I reckon we check the rooms are all clear down here, then head back and form some sort of barricade at the door we just kicked down. Then we flick the lights back on and see what happens (probably something exciting).

Chopper wrote:Leland, anything down here with us?

Sounds good.

Frank wrote:Okay, so far so good. If or when the lights go up I think we can expect activity of an unfriendly nature. Lets sweep it and then see if we can get a barricade up like Chopper suggests.

We may have to fight our way out, if I'd known it was going to be this quiet on the first run I would have brought the device down. Still, hindsight and all that.

Lets sweep, Chopper you take the left, I'll take the right. Leland if you move up behind us to give cover firepower and Al, can you move up with him, watching the stairs as we go, this is a good place to ambush and eyes on the only way in would be useful.

Leland wrote:Whatever you say boss. Just call out if you need someone blasted.

Frank wrote:I'm not trying to be bossy, sorry if it seemed that way. I just like getting things done. If I start running my mouth then tell me.

I think a quick butt and I'll be ready.

Leland wrote:Hey you're the military guy. Bar fights are more my speed. Sometimes a troll or two just don't know when to quit you know?

Al wrote:Yeah, you warry types call as many shots as you like in situations like this.

I'll continue doing as I'm told.

Before I start with the sweep, Lelands spell is quiet as a mouse.

Ok, may as well cover all the rooms in one post, so prepare yourself for wall-o-text. I shall try my best to break it into easily digestible chunks.

First room on the left, labeled as "Air filtration" on the map: dusty and dark, with a crapload of complex pipes and mysterious machinery. As far as you can tell, everything is present and correct, but none of you are really experts in such things. Nothing hugely exciting in here though.

First room on the right, labeled as "Power". Theres a bunch of really heavy duty cabling coming up out of a sort of duct thing on the opposite wall, splitting out into various junction boxes and stuff. However, complex as it all looks, there is on the first large box it all runs through a large breaker switch that is currently in the "off" position. Theres a bunch of other circuit breakers and the like, but all of the rest of it appears to be in the "on" position. Which is good, because its all quite cryptically labeled. Probably made sense to the electrician.

Second room on the left, labeled as "Server Room". The setup in here is not a million miles away from todays server rooms, with what is essentially rack mounted kit. Its just that in this server room, the kit is smaller, and does more. Theres quite a lot of obvious gaps where things used to be, with dangling cabling, but theres still some systems in place. The boxes still in are labeled "Sec1", "Sec5", "Db2", "Inf1" and "AF1", but theres no indication anywhere as to what any of that means. Theres no external controls on these things either, but thats not unusual: it'll all be controlled using AR or VR.

Second room on the right, labeled as "Water and Heating". Pretty similar looking to the "Air Filtration" room, but with different kinds of pipes and machinery. You do notice that the water is still on.

The fifth room is not exactly what you were expecting. Theres two big metal doors between it and the stairs, spaced about 6 feet from each other, creating a kind of airlock effect. The room itself is more of a square corridor, but bloody cramped. The central column is more complex than just a big support: Its a kind of honeycomb effort. Very strong and supporting, but when it blows its going to disappear into a much smaller space. The shape of the room around it is less access and more a kind of tamping system. Frank: this shit is *amazing*. You understand how its all set up and it shouldn't give you any problems or significantly change how you are going to set the charge, but still. This is a work of art. When you blow the charge in here, you have no doubt that all these basement levels will be well and truly pwned.
Thats the good news.
The bad news is the space around the column is no more than a couple of foot wide and high, so you are going to have to crawl around it, caving-style. Also, you remember the guy said that there had been an explosive in the column initially, and you would need to put your explosive where the old one was? Yeah, thats around the back. Its not a huge distance, but its going to take a good minute to wriggle your way to the back, and another minute to wriggle back out after.

Leland wrote:Well guys, what do you think, should we flip the switch?

Frank wrote:getting the device in place may take me a few minutes, but the architecture is brilliant, this place will go down like a house of cards.

The upstairs may even survive without me taking down the lift shaft, there's a lot of earth between the facility and the clinic, and the clinic has seperate foundations from what I can tell. Regardless, no point in taking a chance with that, it's worth a lot of money intact.

More immediately we're going to have to see what shit storm arrives when we start up the gennies.

Those servers still in there, I don't know much but basic security and containment services look intact. I'm hoping there's no automated defence guns to cut us into shreds, a tech head would have been useful.

As it is I think if we get Al to flip the switch with Chopper, Leland and me up at the door ready for fighting, we may get out of this with nothing more than interesting scars and a good tale to tell over a few cold brews.

Chopper wrote:Sounds good to me. C'mon Al, let's go flip that switch like a mother.

As soon as it goes on I'm going to have a quick look around here, just to make sure there's nothing different with the lights on, then I'm heading up to that door with you two to see if I can lend a hand. You never know, those 'nades might be handy yet.

Al wrote:Aye aye, skip

Chopper and Al make their way back into the power room, and Al takes hold of the switch. A bit of a wiggle is required to make it start to move, but it quickly shifts into position. At first, nothing happens, but just as you start to worry, there is a distant hum of things turning back on. After a few seconds, the lights flicker back into life.

At about this point, it all goes a bit mental.

First, there is a godawful screeching from upstairs. You cant really tell much from it, apart from its from multiple things, and they sound upset.

At about the same time, Lelands detect enemies spell goes wild. It quickly goes from dead quiet to a mass of readings. They are all above you, between this floor and the surface, and theres a lot of them. As they seem to be quite close together, and theres some kind of interference about, you cant tell exact numbers, but theres upwards of a couple of dozen, possibly much more. You don't get a clear image of what they all are, either, but theres definitely some ghoul in there. Theres a lot of movement, but as yet not in any clear direction.

You hear the air filtration kick in, and feel a breeze almost immediately. Shortly after, the air starts to lose some of its staleness.

You can hear from the server room lots of buzzing and clicking. Sounds like all the remaining systems are working away at getting online.

A split second after all that, theres a series of "thunk!" noises. Loud and metallic. The screeching noises from upstairs kick up a notch.

Finally, theres a horribly metallic noise from upstairs. It goes for about 3-4 seconds, then stops, just as suddenly.

Al wrote:Oh shit

Whoops.

Chopper wrote:I'll join you at the barricade then, bow at the ready.

Plan: Leland, you get the bigger mobs with whatever area blasting magic stuff you can do, me and Frank can target stragglers.

As soon as it gets to close quarter combat, Leland falls back with Al. Al, can you poke around in these other rooms see if there's anything at all that can help us - security monitors, door control, anything.

I've got flashbangs too - they'll either make the ghouls crazy, blind, or cause them to hesitate just long enough for someon to get another shot in.

Let's fucking have it!

I'll get to it, pronto. I've Electronics (general) at 2, so hopefully I can pick out a few bits and bobs.

Leland wrote:Shit! I think that was probably the security doors automatically closing in. We really stirred up the pot this time. Let me scout out and see what I can see. Please don't let any ghouls start nom noming on my body please.

Go go astral projection! I am guessing the majority of the ghouls are in that big central area on the floor above us. Since the ghouls are dual natured and could potentially spot me zooming 'round, I will avoid zooming up the stairs from where we are and instead try to go around and come in through the side.

I've been reading through again, re-familiarising myself with the plans, and I noticed we made very little of the awful smell, or of the fact that the security room door was ajar and that it was moving as if something had just knocked into it. Ah well, too late now!

Frank wrote:Well, that was kinda expected. Time to have another smoke.

I'm thinking we may need Leland to tackle that ghost thing upstairs, if you can avoid stunning yourself by not nuking the ghouls unless we're desperate, me and chopper should have this with his nades and my shotty. Just wish I'd packed some hi-ex rounds!

We're too exposed here, they could come through the labs or down the stairs, the curve of the corridor lets them build speed and hit us hard. We can hold them, but I'm thinking we may be better pushing forward towards the stairwell and making them bunch instead of us, those grenades would do even more damage there.

5punk

The Second Forumised Shadowrun Adventure