The scorpion should have eyes into the building, so not sure you'll need to use clarvoyance.

Fully understand your reticence to tackle the chip dude when he's at full capacity.

I figure with grenades, we should aim to plant one flash-bang a ways away from the manhole cover and then a couple of near-by gas grenades and one thermal smoke.  The flashbang going off should get everyone's ears ringing well enough they won't be able to hear the hissing gas until it's too late.  The smoke should keep the bodyguards who are far away from seeing too much of what's going on.  With the simultaneous chaos going on outside, I doubt we'll have more than a few charge through.  Hopefully none are dumb enough to blind-fire when the leader's on our side of the smoke, but probably best to keep low anyhow.  My guess is WD will take care of anyone who presents a threat while you head for the chip.

We can also have Noruas firing through the roof of the warehouse on the far side of the building where the bodyguards are.  That's likely to keep them pretty distracted - and keep the leaders focused on getting to cover and less on what you two are up to.  In theory, you guys could be out in two combat turns.  One for you to dash and pop the chip, one for you to dash back.  WD's enhanced reflexes should let him hold action to take out anyone who gets in your way.  My scorpion's going to head for the manhole cover as soon as it can safely do so after injecting the target as its sensors aren't going to be a whole lot of use with the thermal smoke and it only has one attack.  If one of you can grab it as you go, that'd be good.

If you guys want some extra backup,  you could bring the briefcase.  That'd let me narcojet targets that WD can't get if we end up with more targets coming our direction than might be ideal.  It does mean there's something else to bring with you when you leave.  On the other hand, if you carry it over your head on the way down, it'll give you extra armor.


Papa - what will I be rolling for my scorpion attack?  Is it gunnery?  Driving?  Do I get to use combat pool or handling pool?  Can I "aim"?  How close can I get to him and still have cover?

Lols, it suddenly seems like I'm a hybrid rigger/decker.  While I appreciate the vote of confidence from the team, but can I really operate all the things you guys are expecting me to do?  Why do I feel like its not going to be that simple?

You can't do things as well as I can.  You have no rigging control pool.  You can't "jump into" any of the vehicles.  This isn't your core skillset, but it's something you can do that the other two awakened characters can't.  It'd be sort of the same as you going into the matrix without a cyberdeck.  You still have the advantage of being able to jack in, but no speed boosts or other capabilities other than your raw computer score.

Seeing as all we're really needing you to do is cause a distraction - literally hitting the broad side of a barn - your limited rigging capabilities should be fine.  (If you want to boost your gunnery as your character evolves, that might be useful as you can take advantage of that both when you're borrowing my toys as well as when you're hacking a building's security if they have any automated defense systems.)

The only other option I can think of is having you go along in the sewer.  As best I can tell, matrix access doesn't look like it's going to help much here.  If you think there's a role you're better suited for, feel free to shout out what you'd like to do.

If the scorpion is doing that stuff after Caduceus arrives, I was planning to have him give it concealment too once he gets a Hearth Spirit conjured.  Most likely Force 3 (It is very easy to avoid drain with force 3 spirits)

I was planning on doing that prior to your arrival - so that if something goes wrong, we can activate the bracelet immediately and so that my tail is free if I need to use it.  I also wanted to be ready to start delivering grenades as soon as you come through the hole as the longer we hang out, the greater the risk of being noticed.

I should be ok.  The base TN to detect the scorpion is 12 before my roll and I should have a positive modifier or two from my time studying the environment and the nature of the warehouse (cover, etc.).  The aid from the spirit will be more useful when I have to run fast and over open ground to make my attack.

Do you guys want to take the briefcase as an added support in the warehouse?

I would love to bring the briefcase, but I'm afraid it might slow them down too much.  I'll let White Duck decide since he is the one with all the physical skills.

Hey guys, sorry I've been inert lately. I'm fully back now though. Sorta had to sort some RL issues out. I'm good to go now though!

RL can suck sometimes, but I suppose it's better than getting shot at and crawling through sewers...

Welcome back :)

If there's anything you want to do before heading up the access tunnel, this is probably the time to do it...

So I believe at this point we're going to try to stealthily plant a few grenades.  We want to accomplish the following:
- two gas grenades - one for the body guards and one for the table - enough to get our target, but ideally not us initially.
- thermal smoke grenade or two with the objective of obscuring the table and our ingress/egress point
- concussion grenade that we can set off far enough that we won't be impacted but most of those at the table - and perhaps the bodyguards will.  Idea being to direct everyone's attention to the noise, not the front.
- HE grenade set for a different radio signal to stash amongst the warheads.

We should presume there's at least one magically active guard as well as a spirit or two keeping watch, so we need to be really careful about placing stuff.  My leaning is to leverage the drone to position most of them.  It's the least likely to be picked up by spirits.  With my low signature + the benefits of the spirit's concealment, TN to notice me is a minimum of 15, and I can better that with a stealth roll.  And it's probably even higher on the astral given I'm pure artificial, so no astral signature.  On the other hand both of you will show up pretty well on the astral, plus you're a lot larger and more noticeable.

With his aerial position, radar and clear line of sight, Noruas should detect anything within ~30km.  Presuming that we know the typical Docwagon launch points and we can figure out pretty easily whether there's an aircraft making a rapid beeline straight towards us, I figure we'll have at least a 1 minute advantage of knowing when DocWagon will arrive before the outer sentries get on their radios.

So I'll start placing grenades, focusing on the ones furthest out.  (You guys will have to load them onto me.)  Once we get to the one minute point, I'll finish placing whatever grenade I'm carrying, then move to "ready to run and inject position" while the two of you plant the rest of them. (You can always toss the last couple when it's "go time".)

When it's go-time (i.e. when the coms start burning with reports of inbound aircraft), Copperhead will advance to inject while everyone's semi-distracted and looking anywhere but down at the floor.  Noruas will be watching me on his screen and as he sees the tail lashing out to strike, he triggers the grenades and the grenade launchers from the van (make sure you turn off anything we don't get a chance to plant :)).  That way the detonations should occur near simultaneously with the concussion and smoke grenade.  That should all happen in the "surprise" round.d  I'll plan to zip away in the *opposite* direction of where you two are to draw Khan's attention away from where the two of you are.  (With the idea of looping around and coming back once my distraction isn't needed anymore.)

At that point, Noruas can start shooting through the roof at the far end of the warehouse where the bodyguards are keeping them distracted/pinned.  The two of you can then act as you see fit, with the objective of grabbing the chip as quickly as you can, allowing the gas to take effect if necessary.

Papa - still need a ruling from you on whether I'm using driving or gunnery for my injection (and whether I'm using combat pool or control pool to boost my roll).

As soon as the two of you are down and sufficiently out from under the footprint of the building, I'll flick off the jammer momentarily and trigger the grenade.  Then we get my aerial drone the heck out of dodge and get the van over to pick you guys up out of the sewer and vacate the vicinity.

If you are using an arm to deploy, I'd argue gunnery. If you're ramming, it's driving. (i.e., you can rig it ahead of time for whatever works best for you.)

I really should push a hard ruling one way or the other--the gunnery (Combat Pool)/driving (control pool) gives riggers a huge advantage. But I don't care to rewrite the rules right this moment :)

Actually, now that I think about it, control pool is for gunnery or for driving.  Given that my stats for driving and gunnery are the same, I guess it doesn't matter.  The tail is semi-mobile.  My action will be to skitter as fast as I can up to the leg, then vault up onto my front as I uncurl my tail for a nice clean injection into the back of the calf - unless there's some other less armored target that's easily reachable - I'm assuming he's unlikely to be wearing sandels...

Thank you.

Back of the calf will work!

I took the briefcase with us.

So, how's everyone doing? Are we requiring any pending actions from me/am I missing my cue here?

I think we're waiting on Papa to confirm the grenades are successfully placed, what Caduceus's spirit learned about astral threats and whether Noruas has detected inbound DocWagon by the time the grenades are placed.  If DocWagon is inbound, we'll probably wait until they've been detected and the leaders and other gangers at the table are reacting to that.  If not, then we'll coordinate and just initiate ourselves.


I'll wait until someone at the opposite end of the table is talking - so heads are turned away from Khan.  Then I skitter up as quickly as I can.  Noruas will be watching the feed.  As my needle enters Khans leg, Noruas will trigger all of the grenades (except the warhead one - that's on a separate radio channel) and the van's grenade launchers.

At the start of the next round, Noruas will start firing EX rounds through the roof of the building on the far side while I climb a table leg.  Noruas and I can yell "Raid!" or "It's the Star!" on one of the broken channels.  Caduceus & White Duck can hold action, quietly taking down anyone who clears the smoke at our end of the table.  Caduceus can maybe sneak a quick peak on the astral to see if there are spirits or other threats and scan Khan to figure out where his chip jack likely is.

At the tail end of the round, one of you can push the briefcase out into the open once there's enough smoke no-one should notice that.  The gas will also kick in on everyone around the table and I'll turn on the van's jammer.  The following round, I'll have the scorpion's autopilot start moving it towards the manhole while keeping watch with the briefcase.  Noruas can send more blind fire through the roof and start moving the van.  Caduceus makes a run for the chip while White Duck deals with any opposition that gets in the way.

The good news is that all of our opposition will have at least +2 to their TNs from the stun grenade.  And most will be +4.  (And that'll apply to them being able to get any gas masks they have on and in place before the gas kicks in at the end of the round.)  That should push most of them to +5 to TNs, assuming it doesn't knock them out entirely.  There will also be target modifiers from the smoke for those in it (+4 to +8 depending on vision).  And the spirit's confusion will affect some too.  As well, you guys can start up a flashpack too if you like.  That should make it *really* hard for any of the opponents to hit you with ranged and pretty hard for them to be effective with melee.  However, you're going to have trouble hitting anyone inside the smoke - so it may be most effective for the two of you to run up and grab Khan and drag him out of the cloud.

So long as White Duck attacks from outside the gas, he should have a significant advantage.  Our biggest threat will be spirits.  So long as Caduceus keeps out of astral after his initial scan, the spirits will have to manifest to have an impact.  Hopefully WD's killing hands together with Caduceus's spells and spirit can manage that threat.

In terms of the aerial drone, I'm going to have it at around 900 meters, moving at 90m/CT (about 110km/hr) away from the warehouse when this starts.  That'll put it just shy of 1km when Noruas opens fire and give him 3 more CTs to fire before its out of range.  4 CTs of distraction should be lots.  If anyone returns fire, they can only hit it with medium or heavy machine guns or similar heavy weapons and it'll be extreme range with a +5 modifier.  The jamming should keep anyone from getting sensor lock on it.  If anyone does start firing at it with anything that could be effective, I'll take over flying and Noruas can man the briefcase.

At least that's the theory until we see what actually happens :)

Sounds good.  I don't suppose Caduceus has had enough time to recover from his drain stun while waiting in the tunnel?  I mean, is it even possible to recover stun in this situation even if he does have enough time, or would the tenseness of the situation negate sufficient relaxation?

I'd say resting would be difficult except perhaps going back to the van and lounging.  Once you're through the hole, you have to be on your guard and react at a moment's notice.  Besides, we're getting close to the point where they're going to be done their meeting.

That's what I was thinking too.

I'm getting a bad feeling again, Copperhead....  I am not liking this.  TMI, man.

Sorry Noruas.  I'll try to dial it back.

No worries.  It's just that when you plan it to such detail, it doesn't leave much room for the rest of us to be flexible in doing our parts.

If only there was a person whose skillset was getting data where it needs to be by subverting the existing infrastructure...

So, we're playing 2050 - no wireless matrix access.  So we'd have to drive Noruas to a location where he could try to hack into a Telco (no easy feat) and get cell towers in the area to prioritize the signal we wanted.  Also not a super-easy feat.  Doing so would probably involve him lying in a back alley in the Barrens so we'd need to watch his body while doing it.  That would take the van out of firing position and a ways away from being able to provide backup.  And we've got two people inside and vulnerable with a meeting that's likely to be ending soon and grenades that are as well concealed as a mini-drone can make them while dropping them on the floor - i.e. not very.

(We've really got to get a higher rating wireless tap for Noruas that he can use properly with his deck - that'd make it much easier for him to do his decking from the comfort of the van and with a degree of mobility.)

Maybe this is more straight-forward than I'm imagining.  Noruas would presumably know roughly how hard this would be and how long it would take.  Copperhead should have a sense based on the number of topics outstanding from the leaders' discussion how long we likely have and how likely the grenades are to be discovered by someone walking in with a message or going to take a piss break.  Unless Papa indicates that chances of anyone discovering anything are quite low, my current upper-bound comfort level isn't much longer than 10 minutes from the time everyone came through the hole.

Another possibility rather than decking would be to use the jammer creatively to temporarly spoof some of the phones to stop trying to check for new calls for a bit - without people figuring out they were jammed - so just something that temporariliy messes with cell signals and not radios or anything else.  Is that within Noruas's skillset?  I know Copperhead might be able to pull it off, but that would mean someone else would be responsible for delivering the grenades which increases risk there.

Ah, I forgot no wireless :P the downside of jumping between multiple settings, including retrofuturist ones. I was trying to pull in our decker a little more, but given this is a GM fail, I will handwave the disruptions I inserted that you cannot reasonably resolve.