House Rules
1) Assault Rifles are -2 at Near ranges. This is to provide a use-case for SMGs and machine pistols.
2) An individual piece of bioware and cyberware will never cost more than its base Essence, even if you upgrade it. Cyberarms will never cost more than 1 Essence, for example, no matter what their shadow amp level is. This is to provide mundane characters an equal opportunity to advance as Awakekend characters without being limited by Essence.
3) Spirits in the book are basically Prime Runners in terms of dice pools. They are now "Greater Spirits". Regular spirits will be the posted spirits with -2 to all attributes. Lesser spirits will be the posted spirits with -4 to all attributes. Everything else - armor, powers, etc. - will remain the same. Lesser spirits will resist summoning with 4 dice. Regular spirits will resist with 8 dice. Greater spirits will resist with 12 dice.

Posting expectations: I will check the thread every weekday. The hope is that you do the same. You do not have to post every weekday, especially if the action is on someone else, but ideally you will be checking in daily.

If the IC action is specifically to you, you have 24 hours (again, weekends and holidays don't count) to either post ICly or asking clarifying questions OOCly. After that, you get another 24 hours. If you still haven't posted, we will move on and your character will pick his or her nose until you catch up.

If you go a week without posting (ICly or OOCly) and without telling me, you'll get a warning. If you go a second week without posting and without telling me, then your character will die ignominiously. "But TecGM," I hear you saying, "What if I go on vacation? Or get deployed?" That's 100% fine, as long as you tell the group. Nothing rankles a PbP GM as unexplained disappearances. If you can't hack it, that's fine. Just announce your withdrawal and we'll figure out a heroic way for you to die, or to transition into your non-Wildcat life.

Karma
Posts are the lifeblood of play-by-post. You will earn karma (or a fraction of a point, at least) with every single IC post. You earn additional karma through roleplaying, acting in character, using your cues, making people laugh, advancing the plot, etc.

Things to expect from me
1) Pretentious literary allusions;
2) Dry wit; and,
3) I will not try to kill your character, but nor am I trying to save you.

Things not to expect from me
A) Realistic knowledge of the military;
B) Realistic knowledge of Midwestern geography, other than what I learn on Google Maps; and,
C) Realistic knowledge about Sioux culture.

These are my preferred text formats, but I am not dogmatic about it as long as it's clear what you're trying to do:
"This is verbal speech."
This is my internal monologue.
<<This is Matrix or DNI communication.>>
This is astral communication.
"This is subvocal."
This is Plains Sign Language.

In reply to TecGM (msg # 1):

I'm on vacation so I'm a little out of pocket and posting on phone so I'm gonna be quick.

Lost ICs: that's awful. Tec's obviously took a long time to put together, and was a really good read. I didn't get a chance to see any others.

Plan from here: in the short term I think we're in a pretty rough spot. Jamming signals and leaving a long crash site is probably our best bet of survival. Longer term, I'd be interested in heading to St. Louis by way of the CAS. Keep the UCAS boys and girls off our back and north Texas and Oklahoma should leave plenty of space to remain relatively invisible in

We are game on, yes?

MDMann has been granted access so we're all here now. IC and OOC posting should begin immediately.

We still need character sheets for Shiriki and Dan-Dan in the appropriate thread.

In reply to TecGM (msg # 4):

I should be able to get my char sheet posted this afternoon or tomorrow.

Any thoughts on the avenue of escape from the rest of the team?

In reply to Shiriki (msg # 5):

Yes. Let's cross a nearby border. It doesn't much matter which one. It complicates matters for the ucas. A massive emp would also be useful with side effects. Dan will suggest as much when he gets chance. Work is mad. I should have time from Friday.

Your border options:

North - Sioux Nation, 1-2 kilometers
West - Sioux Nation, maybe 18 kilometers
South - Sioux Nation, maybe 90 kilometers
East - UCAS and more UCAS until you get to the Atlantic Ocean in, I don't know, 2,400km or so

Here's a map of your location. I think I uploaded this correctly:

http://imgur.com/a/Jkmip

The Algonkian-Manitou Council is about 1,100km north. The CAS is about 350km south.

Long story short, you're very close to home and very far away from safety.

Per my last IC post, the team might be surprised by the next waves of opposition. For the moment, you are more likely to encounter local law enforcement and "patriots" (i.e. militias) then you are military forces. These good ol' boys have orders to capture, not kill, but who's to say if they will follow orders or if they decide that the best way to capture you is to shoot your arms and legs off, Robocop-style, rather than putting one in your head.

That said, you'll also feel the UCAS Army breathing down your neck. The greater fire spirit trailing you is at 10P and can probably be dispatched by a healthy spirit from Chante, but you'll still have a halo of watchers that are keeping tabs on you from a healthy distance.

Let's bang out this spirit battle. Anarchy doesn't have rules about spirits on the astral - just materialized spirits - so I'm going wing things a bit.

The greater fire spirit is effectively F6; the earth spirit is effectively F4. Following the SR5 approach of spirits being equal to their Force on the astral, their base astral combat dice pools will be 12 and 8 respectively.

My last post mistakenly said that the fire elemental was at 10P. This was a mistake; Chante's previous attack didn't bypass armor but rather sent the fire elemental straight to the astral. The fire elemental is at 2P.

Also, I'm not up for copying-and-pasting every roll. You'll just have to trust GM on this.

Fire elemental initiative: 3 hits
Earth spirit initiative: 2 hits

Fire elemental goes first.

Round #1
Fire attack: 4 hits
Earth defend: 4 hits, but ties go to attacker

Anarchy doesn't say what damage code to use. I'll use Force to keep it straightforward.

Immunity to Normal Weapons doesn't apply, but should armor? I'll say that "natural armor" applies even on the astral, but again this is up for discussion. The earth spirit takes 6 boxes and now has 6 of 12 armor remaining.

Earth attack: 3 hits
Fire defend: 2 hits

Earth does 4P as base damage, staged up to 5P with a net hit. The fire spirit is now at 7P and a -2 modifier.

Round #2
Fire attack: 3 hits
Earth defend: 3 hits

That's another six boxes of damage, which wipes out the Earth spirit's armor.

Earth attack: 3 hits
Fire defend: 4 hits

Earth spirit misses.

Round #3
Fire attack: 4 hits
Earth defend: 3 hits

The fire spirit connects and the Earth Spirit is now at 7P.

The earth spirit follows Chante's instructions and retires before it can be disrupted.

Alright, really want to throw this fire spirit from our trail, so summoning another greater spirit, using Edge.

Summon Fire Spirit: Conj 3 + Will 6 + Edge 6: 15d6t4 6 Hits http://orokos.com/roll/536934

Fire Spirit Resist : Greater Resist 12: 12d6t5 2 Hits
http://orokos.com/roll/536937

Speaking of Edge, do we have a refresh, as we're moving to an additional chapter, or will
Edge be refreshed more in line with 5e?

Shiriki is going to try to push the Dragon to its limits, distance-wise.  I'm spending a Plot Point on a Glitch die to see if he gets any help from the wind one way or the other.

[url=http://orokos.com/roll/536971]Drone Piloting: AGI (8) + Pilot (5) + Control Rig (2) + Combat Pilot (2) + VR (1) = 18 dice.[/url]: 18d6t5 7 1d6 3
No help or hindrance, but a pretty decent Piloting roll.

I'm also going to roll Stealth to see if we can lose the UCAS military on radar.  That still leaves the Watcher spirits, but hopefully Chante's Fire Spirit can dispatch them after the other spirit, and double-hopefully it will be able to do so before any more can be summoned via Ritual magic.

[url=http://orokos.com/roll/536972]Drone Stealth: AGI (8) + Stealth (3) + Control Rig (2) + Combat Pilot (2) + VR (1) = 16 dice.[/url]: 16d6t5 8
That's about 44% Hits on my last two rolls.

Any other strategies for how to deal with the Watcher spirits from anyone?

Edge refreshed at the beginning of Chapter 2. The next scheduled refresh will be between Chapters 2 and 3, although I may award points of refresh here and there.

Chante has cooked up a big fire spirit. Jayde, did you want to roll out the confrontation?

Shiriki has a strong piloting roll. Let's see how hard the storm pushes back:

http://orokos.com/roll/537012 Piloting difficulty: 12d6t5 3 hits

Shiriki finds a good tailwind and makes the most of the Dragon's remaining fuel.

You have to fly southeast to avoid crossing into Sioux territory that's directly south. We'll say that you can get to the vicinity of Colby, KS and I-70. Here's the map:

https://goo.gl/maps/Cw1fdQnLACr

You can follow I-70 all the way east to St. Louis, or you can make a run for the CAS border. I believe it's where the northern border of the Texas panhandle runs along Oklahoma. We'll say Liberal, KS is the border town.

In reply to TecGM (msg # 11):

Ok, so the CAS actually lost the panhandle of Oklahoma, and everything along that same parallel -- roughly 36.5 N, I believe -- in the Treaty of Richmond in 2034.  I'm sure this was a major win for the UCAS, and I bet the CAS boys are still smarting over the loss of such a bustling and culturally rich area /s.  For our purposes, this means that the CAS border is an additional 55 KM away, and the last "good-sized" border town is most likely Guymon before we hit the CAS.  Coincidentally, this is actually a step up from Liberal.

For those who don't know, I live in Oklahoma irl, and I'm actually kinda pumped about visiting it in a universe where Tulsa is a border "city," and both the Texas and Oklahoma pandhandles have turned into critter haunts.  I'd suggest that we try to hit up Optimo State Park, but it currently looks more like something out of Fallout than the SR universe.

Anyway, Colby seems as good a spot as any to try to find some new modes of transpo, assuming we can ditch our astral surveillance.  We may need to split up so that someone can keep Ite alive, or we'll need to double-back for him once we find wheels.

I'll let Chante see about obliterating those spirits, and then I'll take us to landing in my next IC.

rednblack is completely correct. I know full well that the panhandle of Oklahoma is in the UCAS but my brain lost the plot somewhere between "the northern border of the Texas panhandle runs along Oklahoma" (which is correct) and "Liberal, KS" (which is clearly not).

I'll offer a note, which may be obvious, but your target location in St. Louis is on the UCAS side of the border. Dropping into the CAS first will require two border crossings (one into the CAS, one back into the UCAS) to get to the safehouse.

But, on the other hand, the 5E e-book Coyotes lists the UCAS/CAS border as "easy" and suggests that coyote costs to cross would only be half as much as a normal border.

We need orders from Chante, as well as spirit combat.

We need an IC post from MDMann.

Glorious can post at his convenience.

Jayde hasn't been logging on, so he's probably dead or in jail, maybe both. Guess I'm rolling out this fire spirit duel.

Elemental initiative: 2 hits
Spirit initiative: 3 hits

Round #1
Spirit attack: 4 hits
Elemental defend: 3 hits

Chante's spirit connects, which delivers 7P, bringing the elemental to 14P and promptly wiping it out.

Well that was easy.

The fire spirit is off your tail. It can chase around the watchers, but only one at a time. There will be a steady stream of low-level spirits and watchers that pop up to replace any that get burst. If you want to shake your astral tails, you'll have to figure out another way to lose them.

Watcher Spirits are still summoned via Ritual, correct?  Assuming multiple actions per Combat Turn (Narration, or whatever), and assuming Chante's Spirit connects even 2/3 of the time, I would think that Chante's Spirit could render the astral threats nil unless they take more drastic measures.

If that's not possible, anyone have any other ideas?  I don't see us getting to the CAS border, and especially through the UCAS with Watchers sending out the militias to our position every step of the way.

You're dealing with the full weight of the UCAS military, which - at the moment - is displeased with you. The question the characters should be asking ICly is, "Why didn't they wipe us off the face of the earth with those gunships? or with a whole platoon of spirits?"

OOCly we know the answer to that is that the President wants to string this out a bit. That's buying you some time to get creative and figure out how you're going to slip through a formidable dragnet. The storm, the dark, and the fact that you're Wildcats will help in the physical world, but on the astral you'll need a creative plan to ditch the astral surveillance. Take it as GM fiat that whack-a-mole (or whack-a-watcher) won't work.

For what it's worth, I PM'd a clue to Jayde based off Chante's knowledge skills. Hopefully he re-emerges to use it.

In reply to TecGM (msg # 17):

Wiz.  Shiriki has definitely been asking just that question to himself.  I made mention ICly, but it will also be something that continues to plague him as we move forward.

I can think of a water to shake off those watchers. Trying to decide if Dan would know it though.

Raise the background count or aspect the local astral space and the watchers will struggle. Stronger spirits less so, but that's not the issue. We could aspect it to the Sioux or NAN or to one of the mentor spirits. I'd suggest cat for stealth (agility too but hey). Dan could assist the ritual but Chante would need to perform it. It just so happens we collected a lot of Ritual ingredients when counting coup, with all those trophies and scalps Dan gathered. Mogwai could donate some further and drops of blood perhaps, as could Dan.

In reply to Dan-Dan (msg # 19):

I have no problem with Dan-Dan bringing that up ICly. Sioux Wildcats are highly-trained operatives, after all, and Dan-Dan is Awakened.

Chante's knowledge skill is in Astral Topography, so I had made the suggestion to Jayde that raising the background count could help lose the watchers. If MDMann doesn't think Dan-Dan would think of this then he could have Chante say it instead. That said, Dan-Dan is Logic 6 so he's a bright guy.

As an aside, I believe the writers give too much handwave "but you can always be seen on the astral" credit to well...everything magical. The theory is that it works on "life force". This being a world where you have a definable soul in essence, sure, let's run with it.

Can you see people through walls on the astral? How thick? Do they render any opacity at all? If not, how could you ever identify a man made object or anything other than living objects?

Given the answer is you can tell buildings etc, the implication is that you can, with the appropriate thickness of material, mute out your "astral life force glow". Presumably not only would puffy jackets - thicker than many doors - be sufficient to camouflage you, cars, walls, ditches, etc would all work just as well as concealement from astral surveillance in terms of blocking sight as in the near world.

Let's add on that all life signs apparently throw out a signature. If "life glow" is so overwhelming beacon like as to point you out with a searchlight, something as simple as being in a forest should be the equivalent of pointing stadium lighting directly into the spirit's eyes. The same as you would flood night vision with a flashlight. Hell, even walking through a field of crops - all living- should be more than enough.

------

That aside, I vote for putting down near a bunch of cows. Big life glow things that can be stampeded.

The fluff is pretty specific that you cannot see through walls on astral. Nor can you see through simple, fragile barriers such as glass. If you're projecting then you can simply fly through them to see what's on the other side, buy if you're just assensing then you're stuck.

I've always taken someone's aura to be the astral equivalent of their metahuman microbiota, which is to say the halo of life that exists in, on, and around everyone. Given that clothes are very much within that halo, I don't see that they would impede assensing much.

For the purposes of this discussion I am willing to entertain the implication that someone walking around in an entirely self-contained outfit - a spacesuit, for example - would then be reduced to being a silhouette on the astral plane. Being a silhouette is far different from being invisible though, as someone could track you by your absence as much as by your presence.

Anarchy intentionally doesn't go into all the details of your armor configuration. For our mutual understanding, I will say that you are all wearing full body armor and that you even have chemical seals. However, your armor's air supply with the seal active only lasts for an hour at a time. These could potentially contribute to giving the watchers the slip, but won't suffice on their own without an additional distraction or some astral maneuvering, like through a background count.

I agree with GloriousRuse's interpretation that being in a forest would could potentially be overwhelming for an astral being. In fact, for the first play-by-post game I ever GM'd I made the assensing characters take an assensing penalty while in forest due to glare/brightness. "Stadium lighting in the eyes" might be a bit of a stretch. A better parallel might be trying to visually track someone through a busy stadium crowd. Not impossible, but not easy.

Normally I would agree that walking through a cornfield could potentially be an effective approach. Alas, it's January, so there are no fields of corn. Similarly, there are no cows lingering outside in the middle of a blizzard.

Watchers are not defined in Anarchy. Consider them F1 spirits, with the intelligence of a well-meaning but dumb dog. None of your border collies here. A quick Google search suggests that bloodhounds are widely considered to be a rather dull breed (mentally), which is a convenient comparison since that's basically the function that these watchers are providing at the moment.

Dan-Dan rolls to put Ite into an induced coma to buy him some time.

[url=http://orokos.com/roll/538567]Medicine 9  + logic 6 + gifted healer[/url]: 15d6t5 4

4 hits + 2 hits from gifted healer. 6 net hits, not bad. Not quite suspended animation but as close as you'll see anytime soon.

In reply to Dan-Dan (msg # 23):

"Gifted Healer" isn't defined by Anarchy but I took it to be +2 to healing tests. There aren't any qualities that offer automatic hits on tests. Let's roll those extra two dice.

http://orokos.com/roll/538731 Gifted Healer 2: 2d6t5 0 hits

Dan-Dan has 4 hits.

Like all things in Anarchy, this will be an opposed roll based on the conditions. Given the bumpy ride and the less-than-ideal conditions, we'll call it Hard.

http://orokos.com/roll/538732 Hard 12: 12d6t5 6 hits

Dan-Dan does not succeed in putting Ité in suspended animation. You can try again if you get to better facilities. ("Any hospital, clinic or street doc will do. Heck, a veterinary or pharmacy will do. A vets could be best, looking at him.")

I'm going to touch base with Jayde to see if I can rouse him.

In reply to TecGM (msg # 24):

I've edited my IC post to reflect this.