Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The Eyes of a Child - 28 Feb

With three of us in attendance and a late start it seemed like a short turn around was best. We played Shadowrun and used example characters from the rulebook. We had about two hours of play time. Surely all of these time saving measures would allow that to stretch an amazing span of game time! Surely.

(Spoiler: 5 minutes and 6 seconds - mostly game setting and rule review)

Cast


  • Emmy as Beanna - a tough-as-nails Mercenary who's even bigger than her gun! (But just so)
  • Triften as "Quicksilver" - a combat mage who would prefer not to give a name.


Mission



As a favor to Chandra, Quicksilver gets the team to talk to an unfamiliar Mr. Johnson. The Johnson lays out a simple pickup job. The daughter of a corporate exec has gone missing. Corp intel places her in a warehouse in the ghoul slum south of town. Current information points to a Mage of some kind holed up with the shambling horde for unknown reasons. It is presumed that the young girl is going to play some kind of role in ritual sorcery targeting the exec. Mr. Johnson's employers would prefer that not happen.

Given that the slum is best left off the mind of the public, Mr. Johnson would prefer you keep things quiet. Just get in, grab the girl and return her safely to the pick up spot. You can recognize her by her naturally purple eyes. You have until the end of the weekend to get her into the woman's bathroom at the Monstrous Bean coffee shop on 23rd and Rol'lh Ave.

Gameplay



The team starts on the side of the Rt 69 Expressway - the only way from the city to the southern DMZ and on to Tulsa. Traffic is low this evening, but what there is is fast. Beanna opens the way to a decrepit access ladder spanning the 200 or so feet to the slums below. In preparation for the uglies, Quicksilver starts sustaining an Armor spell on his shiel^M^M^M^M^Mpartner. Beanna moves quickly and quietly down. Quicksilver ends up taking just under 5 minutes to make his way down. As he went he managed to cause part of it to crash into the slum below. These are professionals people.

One the ground, the team took stock of things. Lots of rubble. Check. Giant rats. Check. Large cinder block and steel building with windows too high up for the dwarf? Perfect. Quicksilver failed at detecting enemies in the area, but did manage to give himself a splitting headache.

At least partially in response to Beanna "wondering" if she could climb on the mage without interrupting his spell casting too much, Quicksilver checked out the building through the windows. The whole place was abandoned. It looked like a one-time assembly line of some kind, but after a dose of fire bombing. Being adventurers our heroes guess that this shell of a building must contain Interesting Secrets (tm).

At the decision to continue, Beanna whips out her better half (by mass) and charges "gung-ho" around the building. Ever the team player, Quicksilver moves "with trepidation" slightly behind her. As Beanna rounds the corner, Quicksilver's Mission Manager Metrics clock passes 05:00 minutes. This brings us to that other 6 seconds I spoiled above.

--Scene Change (this part wasn't in the game)--

After a long six hours in the service line Fred was more than ready for break time. It didn't even matter that the rations had run out. Sure, he was hungry. But after toiling for this long, even a shambling mound of endurance will settle for a smoke break. Charles wouldn't even mind lending him one of his Green Goon flesh flavored cloves.

The last year had been rough for Charles. After the change his wife Jenna had been supportive. She would joke that they could set up a new diet fad. But then she started going to that church. Suddenly he was an abomination. His urges, even if he didn't act on them, were a violation of the natural order. His children couldn't be safe around him. And he knew he had to leave.

Things were rough in the slum. "Real" eats were hard to come by. The graveyard near by helped, but Charles didn't like jerky back when he ate the kind made out of beef. It was moments with new friends, like smoking with Fred, that made things seem bearable.

"So she asks me if the dress makes her look fat. 'I can't see bitch! Ghoul, remember?' fuck man."

Both men laugh and begin to light their cigarettes. When ghouls laugh, what slim lips they have disappear and their large jaws and misshapen teeth become all that is visible. They look kind of like flesh eating zombies. Which, to be fair, is not that far off. If you don't know any ghouls it can be scary - and surprising.

Just then Fred saw the second dwarf in his life. He thought this was very odd, given that the first one was earlier the same day. Also odd was that this one was aiming a large assault rifle at him and practically humping it.

-- Scene Change (back to the game) --

Our heroes turn the corner to find two ghouls, whom we will refer to as "Fred" and "Charles" even though the players have no knowledge of this. Fred and Charles are surprised by our shadowrunners. Quicksilver is surprised by Fred. Beanna saw all of this coming.

As our first 3 second turn begins, the cigarette falls from Charles's mouth. Fred manages to begin mouthing "...the fuc-" before completely unsuppressed gun fire begins. Quicksilver draws his sub-machine gun and fires a burst that splatters into Charles's chest. The burst fire from Beanna's assault rifle lights up the block and turns Fred's head into something resembling an explosive melon filled with teeth just in time to keep our entry at one f-bomb. As pieces of the building next to him fly through the air, Charles screams in surprise and horror.

Can anyone foresee how the next 3 seconds are going to go?

Beanna decides that she will give Charles the same treatment his smoking buddy got. Before she could pull the trigger, Quicksilver let loose with a Mana Bolt. Charles had never seen magic first hand. Unfortunately for Charles, having the raw energy of the Astral Plane ground into your body is not ranked high on the list good first magic experiences - although it is a nice visual effect for those not being rent apart. With a very loud, and very wet, sound Charles collapses against the wall of the building. His arm looks wrong - even for a ghoul. His rib cage does not have a uniform volume. His breathing is clearly labored. On the plus side, this has stopped that horrible screaming. As Charles hits the ground, Beanna evens out the shape of his chest the only way she knows how.

Quicksilver and Beanna stop to consider how anyone could think that "do it quietly" was a reasonable line item for a work order.

As his consciousness fades, Charles reflects on how this is his second worse day ever. The only salvageable bit is that Jenna won't have to worry about talking to him in front of the children anymore.

2 comments:

Noah said...

Who's Simon?

busbeytheelder said...

Damn it. Fixed.