Unscientific Experiments | Blog

Intro OR: Yet Another Blog

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I feel like there are currently a lot of blogs popping up.
Maybe I am just more sensitive to blogs at the moment, since I became more interested in it myself.
Or maybe I am learning more about different blogs, now that I have found a creative community that is interested in blogging and therefore present their own blogs?

While I do keep a journal (an honest, old-fashioned notebook made out of dead trees, and I use a fountain pen to write in it), somehow a blog does seem to provide a different kind of outlet. And there are some of my thoughts, that I do not mind to share. While they might not be gems of philosophy or nuggets of useful wisdom, maybe someone does appreciate them.
And if not - it still is mainly for myself. To gather my thoughts. To shut them out into the world, so that my brain is free for new thoughts, now that there is an outlet for the old ones.
The urge for my own blog also grew, because my wife is currently quite active on hers - https://www.kdw.life, and seems to be quite happy with it.
Another source of inspiration is Mastodon, or to be more precise, some of the people there that I follow.

Since I decided to host my own Mastodon instance, it also made sense for me, to have complete control over the Blog as well. There are a few options out there, but it made sense to me, to not only have it on my own domain, with just my own writing, but also to be independent from some website provider. My wife’s blog is on Squarespace, which works quite well for her, and is also rather convenient. But for myself, I wanted a bit more direct control.
Inspired by another blog, I learnt about on Mastodon (https://elizabethtai.netlify.app/posts/why-astro/) I decided to go with Astro (not immediately - I also took a good look at Hugo, since it was kind of recommended by one of my favourite podcasts - http://www.bitsundso.de). Since the articles themself are just markdown, migrating to another system should not be too complicated, I think.
One big downside, that I can see is the design. Since I have no experience with styling, it might look rather… well, lets call it “creative” for some time. Or for ever. Maybe just implementing one of the templates will do the trick. I am very much still learning.

Since this is the first entry, I think I should also talk about, what to expect from this blog.
I guess a lot of rambling. Walls of text like this one to various topics. My interests tend to shift quite often, and then I need an outlet for the current obsession. I guess I might introduce categories at some point, to make it a bit easier to navigate. If the blog exists long enough for that. As I mentioned, my interests shift, and I might loose interest in blogging again, so this would end up on the long list of abandoned projects of mine.

For now I leave it at that, but I think, I will make another post in the future about the worth of a creative outlet, and the benefits of owning the content you create.

Buying a hat

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

This is actually a topic, that I am a bit nervous about.
You may wonder about that statement. You also may wonder, why I write about buying a hat. What is this category style? In the introduction it was not mentioned that Peter is actually a fashion influencer!
And here we arrived at my conundrum. I do not like fashion. I never was a fashionable person, nor ever aspired to be one. And I most certainly am not an influencer of any kind. For me clothes always were purely utilitarian. Yes, you needed them, of course. But spending serious money on clothing? This was something I never even really considered. As far as I remember, my choice of clothes was always practical and conservative. I also did not want to stand out too much. Maybe stand out as boring.
To be frank, I always though that people that carefully consider their clothes are a bit vain, which might be the reason why I am nervous about this post.
Now, a hat - especially the type of hat I am considering - can be considered superfluous and is also not subtle. So I will stand out, and I am willing to spend quite a bit of money for that. This does not seem to match up, does it? Well, I guess, I need to go a bit further afield to explain that.

Far afield

Because of my current job, and the location of said occupation, I need to wear a suit to work. Or at least be similarly smartly dressed. With time and frequent wear, some of the suits started to wear out, and needed to be replaced. And this caused my first drift in my clothing habit. I of course tried to find something that fits me and the various cheap suit stores around Tokyo, but was not able to find anything my size. The largest sizes I found were for people more than 5cm shorter than me. The next trip back to Austria was not planned at that time, but I needed a suit that fit me. The one choice I felt I had, was to buy a made to measure suit. So I did. Actually, because of a bundle price, I bought 2 at the same time. This was definitely a luxury that I was not used to, and cost more money than I had ever spent on any type of clothing before. But when I got the suits, I learned, that they fit me better. Were more comfortable. And it turned out, that they also lasted longer. Overall I learned a bit about the importance of construction and materials.
This was my first step in the direction of high quality clothing since I needed to buy my own.
The next step was shoes. I always values quality footwear, but the type of robust shoes that I liked to wear in principle, simply did not work with a suit. And as it turns out, dress shoes can be a pain. Not caring to much, I simply had followed the recommendation of the shoe store staff, bought some shoes and then wore them very frequently. And after some time, the sole came off. And the same with the next pair. You can see were this is going.
This actually was kind of an awakening for me. I was simply annoyed that I needed to throw away another pair of shoes because of shoddy construction practices.
One of my colleagues at work has clothing as one of his hobbies. Something that I never understood. But because he seemed knowledgeable in that area, I finally asked him for advice. And he explained a bit about construction methods of shoes and various high quality brands. After some time as well as some research on my own, I bought shoes from one of the “entry level” brands - Carmina. And I was surprised. The shoes felt so much more solid on my feet. And after a short break in period, they also became quite comfortable. Even more importantly - those are dress shoes I will have, until the sole wears out. And then the sole can be replaced. So, if I take care of them, they have the potential to outlast me.
I was intrigued.
While I for a long time followed the saying “how buys cheap, buys expensive” (the saying works better in German), I somehow had assumed that clothing was an exception, and you simply payed for the brand name. While this is still true in many cases, there are also rather stark differences in quality to be found.
Since I am getting more concerned about environmental issues, buying things that last is even more appealing.
Ideal would be something made locally, by an actual artisan. By a person I can talk to, not someone being exploited in a factory somewhere.

Now, let’s return to hats.

My natural sun protection is running a bit thin. So, during summer, I need something to keep the sun of my head, and in winter a bit of additional insulation also would not go amiss. When I am out in my free time, I like to wear a flat cap (not liking the look of baseball caps - in my youth the “cool kids” wore those, and I never wanted to be a “cool kid”. Or be mistaken for wanting to be cool. But I am digressing), but once again, this does not work with my work attire of a suit (or nowadays maybe trousers and a sports jacket). However, a hat might fit nicely.
With my recent obsession with quality, also in clothing, I studied a bit about hat materials, how to keep cool, etc. In principle, the result was: some type of straw should be ideal. However, straw hats are known for breaking apart rather quickly, if they are worn frequently. The straw dries out and becomes brittle. Or, if it is too wet, they might become mouldy. However, Panama hats seem to be a little more robust. One of the famous transportation methods is to roll them up, and stuff them into a tube. If it can withstand that, then it must be robust? I talked with my local milliner about it, and different to regular cloth, a panama hat actually becomes more robust the finer it is woven. This is because the most common damage, also for those hats, is cracking along the creases. And the finer the strands are, the smaller is the bend radius it can handle, before it strains too much.
Now, really high end panama hats are expensive. Prohibitively expensive. At least far out of my budget, especially since hats are not the only thing I am interested in. But, lucky for me, she had a cone left (I don’t think its called cone for panama hats, but it is called cone for felt hats, so I am using that term), that she had bought before the recent inflation and that also was reasonably fine. It lacks some of the finesse of the high end brands as Monte Cristi, or Espinal, but it is the best I can currently afford, and if I take care of it, I should have it for many years.
Of course, I do not know the details about the manufacturing of the cone, but at least the shaping of the hat is done by a person I can talk to - and the price is actually similar to of the rack hats, that would satisfy my current quality wants.

Long story short

I am going to order a hat today at my local milliner. And that is fine.

My Problems with Epic Scale

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I recently read through the science fiction novels of Andy Weir. I really liked all of them. And, for some reason, I preferred them in the order of release. So, I enjoyed “The Martian” the most, followed by “Artemis” and liked “Project Hail Mary” the least. (Although liking it least, still means that I thoroughly enjoyed it. He is a excellent writer, in my opinion) One of the reasons for this was of course, the humour. I like to be amused when reading, and “The Martian” frequently had me burst out laughing. The main character was designed to be quite humorous, and this was very well executed. The main characters of the following books took themself a bit more seriously. So the humour is one of the reasons. But the other reason, is drumroll please the scale of the main problem. What does epic scale of the main problem mean, in this case?

Scale in stories

Especially in fantasy and science fiction stories, there is usually a threat. Something that threatens either the protagonist, or the world they live in. This is to keep the reader invested. And one often used tool to increase the tension is to simply increase the scale of the threat. Now not only the the protagonist is threatened, but his whole village! Oh no, not only the village is threatened, but the whole country! Oh no, not only the country is threatened, but the whole world! Now some minor spoilers ahead (although nothing that does not appear in the blurb on the back of the books): In “The Martian” in is only the protagonist that is threatened - it is a kind of survival novel, so this makes sense. In “Artemis” it is also mainly the protagonist that is threatened for most of the book, but it then turns out, that the whole colony is threatened as well. In “Project Hail Mary” the whole human species is threatened right from the start.

So, does the increased threat level increase the suspense and the readers engagement? Not necessarily. Once the scale becomes to big, it is no longer comprehensible on an emotional level. I can feel afraid for Matt Watney in “The Martian” or for Jazz Bashara in “Artemis”. Caring for a village, and seeing the threat for that is also easy to grasp. But once it becomes too big, it usually does not register in the same way. I can go on, but Overly Sarcastic productions made a video, that explains the concept better than I think I ever could.

Personal preferences

Now that I have clarified what the different scales of threat mean, I can outlay my opinion in a bit more detail. I think it was already quite clear, that I prefer a more localised threat. More specific. Something concerning the protagonist and his personal sphere of interest. Humans are not made to care for much more than themself and those immediately around them. I think this is also the reason why climate change still is so widely ignored, even by those that acknowledge it exists. It is not yet clear to them, how it affects them and their immediate surroundings. But before I go down a completely different rabbit hole, lets try to stay on topic: Since people care most about their immediate surroundings, it also makes sense, that this is also what the protagonist cares about. (Actually, this is something that was very well executed in “Project Hail Mary ” as well, especially towards the end. But I give no details here, because that would be a spoiler). As a reader, we empathise with a well written character. So we care about what they care as well. And it is easier to believe, that they care about their own survival, or their neighbours or George their childhood friend, than about something so abstract as the end of the world. Smaller communities are also much easier to threaten. And if the threat is smaller, it is also easier to find a matching solution to that threat, that is not just “hand-wave” magic. But those smaller threats, that only threaten the protagonists immediate “world” instead of the whole world cause at least the same amount of suspense, in my opinion. So, if it is easier to have a believable small threat, with a believable solution that cause the same amount tension, why is it so common to threaten the whole world? To be honest, I do not know. And to be frank, I do not like it. Maybe it looks better on the back cover blurb, maybe it is the need to “one up” the danger of other stories. Whatever it is, I think it creates less interest. I like the “small” stories. I need less suspense of disbelieve for those. A good example of this type of “small” stories would be the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. It is a historical novel, but the tension is not built upon how a war ends, who gets dominance over Europe, etc. but built on the fate of the two protagonists. For long stretches there is no antagonist, and often no natural disaster or other hurdle to overcome. Just human nature and interaction and the compelling stories that grow from that. And with that Patrick O’Brian managed to craft an epic series, that might be my favourite, even beating Lord of the Rings.

I could go on with examples, like “Firefly” vs. “Serenity”, but I think I made myself clear. Stories with issues on a smaller scale simply are more relatable and therefore compelling for me.

What to do about it

For my part? Nothing really. If I ever write a fulfil my childhood dream and become an author, or just write a homebrew ttrpg campaign, I would keep this in mind and try to build something compelling on a smaller scale. Other than that, I can only try to find stories to read that I enjoy.

TTRPG Design - Power Progression Basics

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I have been fiddling with my own ttrpg system for a while, but still need to decide a few basic points. (Ok, to be honest, I have not decided anything really, so far.)
Since I recently was part of a long running campaign using Fantasy Flight Games “Genesys” system, I started to think again about some things that did not work so well for me in that system.
One thing in particular was the power progression. It seems like a lot of fun for short adventures, but once the game runs for quite some time the balance simply broke down. Also, I had the feeling of being boxed in, and that I could not develop the character further in a way that I liked.
This got me thinking: how does one design a good power progression, so that players can enjoy not only the role playing itself, but also how their characters develop over time.

Basic considerations

The first big difficulty is how to define the power level. It is something that can be easily noticed in play, but is not necessarily easy to define in a formulaic way. For simplicity, I will assume for the rest of the discussion, that the power level can be condensed to a single number. At a later point I will try to expand a bit more about how this can be implemented in practice.
When looking at power progression there are three very basic considerations that need to be made:

What is the starting point
What basic shape should the power progression curve have
How steep should it be
There are other ways to look at this problem , so you could also use shape and end point instead, but this would be a different view onto the same design. The starting point is rather clear in my opinion, so I will not elaborate it further, but the curve shape might need a bit of explanation:

Power progression curve shape

While there are basically endless possibilities for the right shape, there are a few basic options:

accelerating progression
constant progression
decelerating progression

For simplicity’s sake, I will use systems with levels as an example, even though I personally do not like levels as a design choice.
I will also assume that the levels are spaced out equally. So, that it takes roughly the same game time to get from level 2 to level 3 as from level 1 to level 2.
Using those assumptions the 3 progressions can be exemplified in the following way:
Accelerating:

Level	Power
1	1
2	2
3	4
4	8

Constant:

Level	Power
1	1
2	2
3	3
4	4

Decelerating:

Level	Power
1	1
2	2
3	2.5
4	2.75

Of course the shape can be a bit more refined, or maybe less refined depending on the point of view with e.g.: one of the basic shapes described above up to a certain cut of point.
Before going into different advantages and disadvantages, I also want to quickly explain the steepness of the power progression:

Steepness of the power progression

The steepness of power progression seems to be a bit easier to understand than the shape at the first glance, but it has some rather interesting implications. Especially combined with the starting point it can drastically change how the game feels. Do the PCs slowly progress from competent to exceptional beings? Do they start as incompetent fools that quickly rise to a power that equals divine beings?
I think the steepness of the progression is one of the things that separate a system that feels grounded in realism with one that is more high fantasy. There is nothing wrong with either approach, but I personally feel more inclined towards systems that remain grounded in realism, the reasons for which I explained in my blog post about scale in stories. (Alright I admit, I just rambled on about it, and did not really explain.)

Ramblings about advantages and disadvantages

Now that the basic building blocks of the power progression are defined, the next step would be to think about the advantages and disadvantages of the various combinations and than later on how to achieve the desired result.
In all successful TTRPGs that I know, there is at least some power progression. The PC learn new things and get more competent. The often vastly different approaches can not necessarily be divided into better or worse, but often simply serve very different design goals.

Accelerating power progression

When the power progression is accelerating, any challenges for the players quickly become irrelevant. It facilitates campaigns of epic proportions, where the PCs leave normal human limits behind to challenge the gods, especially if it is a steep progression as well. For such an epic campaign the acceleration might be necessary, to overcome the vast power difference between normal humanoids and the most powerful beings of that world.
However, because of the accelerating nature, at some point there almost needs to be a cut off point, even if it just the end of the campaign.
It also means that the campaign can only be grounded in realism in the beginning, which is quickly left behind. And it also needs some explanation on how the society works in a world where humanoids can ascend like this - or an explanation on how the PCs are different.
Another benefit would be, that new players can slowly learn the ropes of the system, before the options and possibilities of the PCs start to explode.
Since such systems need to be rather restrictive in the beginning, since the power will only explode from there, I think that this is not really suited for short campaigns, since you might never reach a point where the potential of the PCs get realised. On the other hand, the upper limit of possible power also provides a natural end point of any campaign, since the PCs keep accelerating towards that goal.
In my opinion it also requires a supernatural element such as magic to explain such a progression, and non-magic characters might be either left behind or run the risk of breaking the verisimilitude.

Constant power progression

Constant power progression might be the easiest to grasp and handle, since it is rather predictable. depending on the steepness, the epicness can be adjusted quite easily. There is still a need for scaling the threats accordingly to the current level of the players and you also still might run into the wall of maximum power, which enforces an end point to campaigns. Or at least strongly suggests and end point.
While it still has basically the same problems with regards to high power as the accelerating progression, those are far less pronounced, since the explosive growth does not happen in the same way. This however also means, that it is less suited for reality-changing campaigns.
Because of the linear nature, I think it is also particularly well suited for short campaigns, as well as starting at a higher level. Everything is a bit more controlled and manageable.

Decelerating power progression

The decelerating power progression puts a focus on the beginning of campaigns. Especially in the beginning the PCs quickly become more competent, and start to surpass the NPCs in their surrounding. However, since the power increase becomes slower and slower, it also becomes rather difficult to completely shift the scale. While the very early threats loose relevance rather quickly, once the curve begins to flatten, the threats stay relevant for much longer.
This means that in my opinion this type of power progression is particularly well suited for long, open-ended campaigns. With opponents returning again much later, and still being a challenge. Because of the quick progression in the beginning, it also might be well suited for short, exploratory campaigns.
Many games that do not use character levels / character classes seem to fall into this category, since quite often buying a new level of a certain skill or attribute is more expensive than the level below.

Personal preferences

I think it showed clear through my descriptions so far, that I prefer “down to earth” scenarios. It is much easier to have a consistent, believable world that way, and for me verisimilitude certainly is a factor in my ability to enjoy things. And this is more easily achieved with a decelerating curve.
Another important factor is, that the characters should be at least somewhat competent in what they do from the beginning, which also means that I lean towards flatter progression.

For me it also seems better, if there is no hard limit in how far a character can grow. A soft limit, enforced by available experience points is usually more than enough.

I think this blog article has run long enough for now, and specific mechanisms on how I would like the power progression to work (and what bothered me about Genesys, which is the reason for the whole article) need to wait for a separate post.

Philosophy - Yolo

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I never understood the philosophy of “yolo” in the short time it seemed to be popular. Yes, you only live once. So maybe don’t wreck your body or your life?
But for some time now I have been interested in stoicism. And for almost as long, I have sat on a (at least to me) funny observation. The stoics also follow yolo.
Well kind of.
Similar inspiration at least, but rather different conclusions.
One very common stoic meditation is “memento mori” - “remember death”. The common interpretation of this idea seems to be, that you should keep in mind, that your life is short and that you might die tomorrow.
However, the conclusion is not, that you should try out everything and not care too much. But rather the opposite. If you die tomorrow, can you look back on a live well lived? Can you be proud of you principles and how you chose to live them? Or did you put off your principles until a later point in time that never came?
Memento Mori forces you to truly consider what you want from your life. What really is important to you, and how you want to be remembered. And who should remember you. This is not about fame, but about who you are. And how to be the version of yourself that you truly want to be.

It s a rather difficult philosophy to follow, because it is so practical. You do not just study stoicism, but you live it. And you do not have time to put this off. If you want to be a stoic, you better start now, because there might not be a tomorrow. Memento Mori.
It seems morbid at first, but the more you think about it, the more it puts things into perspective. What is truly important to you. This as it turns out is often surprisingly hard to answer. Often people try to answer this with what they assume they should want, which is just a shortcut that is far less likely to yield the best result in the long run.

In contrast, yolo seems to have only one real goal: to have as many experiences as possible. Which, on its own is fine, but in comparison seems bit shallow.

I for my part try to follow the stoic “Memento Mori”, but I am very much at the beginning of grasping what this truly means.

Somehow I would like to expand upon how being “stoic” in the colloquial use is something quite different from being a stoic (or trying to be one), but I think this really no longer fits my chosen title of “Philosophy - Yolo”, so it has to wait for further exploration of philosophies and their principles.

TTRPG Design - Power Progression Basics 2

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I already took a short look at the basics of power progression in my last blog post to this general topic. Now I want to take a bit of a closer look into various ways how power progression works.
But once again, I need to start with a few definitions.

Classes

Many TTRPGs use classes to define what a character can do. Others do not. Those systems that do not use classes, I would call classless systems. Those that use classes can be once again split into two categories: hard classes and soft classes. Hard classes are the DnD approach: You choose a class, and when the character improves, he improves along the strict lines that are given by his class. With soft classes, the class only defines a starting situation, and maybe a few restrictions, but leave the improvement open in principle.
The lines are of course not that hard, and the whole thing is more of a continuum than hard borders. But it helps to define some points on this continuum to make it easier to talk about it.
A small titbit, that I find quite interesting: even systems that are mostly classless, often make a distinction for magic. So everything can be learned by everybody, with the exception of magic. For magic somehow there needs to be an inherent talent, that is reserved for “special people”. Of course there are always exceptions, and one notable exception that comes to mind is the German TTRPG “Splittermond” where magic can be learned by everyone, but it is not necessarily easier/more powerful than the mundane alternative to do the task.
Before I digress further: In principle class based systems are more predictable, but also seem more artificial to me. Classless systems are much freer for the player to simply choose what they want to have. For class based systems to have the same amount of choice, the character creation and power progression instructions would need to get rather bloated.
Class based systems also impose roles, which might be desirable. However, classless systems can also have roles that need to be filled. An example for that would be “Shadowrun”. At least in the 4th edition, there are roles and archetypes, but other than magic (and technomagic, äh, technomancy of course) everything can be learned by everyone. In theory. In praxis the various roles get filled by specialists, sometimes with a narrower focus than most classes would provide.

If it has not been clear by now: I have a strong preference to classless systems. Or at least to systems with softer classes.

Levelling

I wrote levelling, even though it actually is just one of the options for power progression. The other is a kind of “point buy” system, where individual skills and attributes can get upgraded one by one.
Classic levelling basically demands a class based system. A system where you receive a pre-bundled package of advantages and power-ups at once. Since this is quite restrictive, there are often options for each level, or the option to multi-class, etc. which demands a large amount of rather detailed descriptions in the rulebooks.
Point buy systems on the other hand are rather flexible because of the pick and choose method of upgrading. In most point buy systems each new skill level is more expensive than the last, which encourages building wide characters instead of narrow, highly specialised ones.
A interesting variation is done by “Lex Arcana”, where experience to upgrade is earned separately for each skill/attribute based on an allocation that is set up individually for each character. This system would seem to make the PCs more specialised with time, while the less prioritised skills still get upgraded automatically with time. Unfortunately I was not able to observe this in practice so far, since we only played the quick-starter as a one-off.

A closer look at Point Buy

For point buy, there are again separations in what can be upgraded.
And now we come to the point that startet the whole topic for me:
In some systems, such as “Genesys” you can not upgrade the attributes of a character after creation, only the skills. This seems to be the same for the “Year Zero Engine” games from Free League Publishing. And it is something that I do not particularly like.
Such a practice does limit the ways in which a character can progress und it does seem a bit artificial to me. I understand that in such systems the attributes are quite powerful, and since the level of those attributes is rather low, each additional point is worth a lot. Allowing those attributes to increase during play, would severely impact the balance. Additionally it is a ways of restricting characters more to their starting role, since they are limited in how they can develop in areas, where the do not have adequate attributes from the beginning.
Another observation I have made with “Genesys” was, that since not only the attributes were fixed, but also the skills had a rather low maximum level, there was a rather close ceiling that could be reached for the main area of expertise. The large pool of additional talents that could be bought mitigated the problem somewhat, but I personally felt rather limited. Frequently I struggled with what to save up for next, because none of the available options seemed particularly appealing to me.
For comparison, in the German TTRPG “Das Schwarze Auge”, I always have too many things that I want to buy for my characters so that I am always excited for further progression that lets me improve another part.

Granularity

I already mentioned in the last section, that the limited possible increases for the skills was a problem for me. I think this is alright for short campaigns, where other considerations (ease of the basic test / roll, interesting mechanics that would become bothersome with a higher skill, etc.) trump the power progression, but for long campaigns it does feel… off.
I think the reason for this is, that the progression curve for each skill is necessarily rather steep, if there are only a small number of steps available. And as discussed in the last article, steep progression curves with a hard limit, seem not ideal for longer campaigns.
With higher average skill values, each increase has far less impact, but much more increases are possible. This would facilitate a flat progression curve. If the increases get prohibitively expensive, then not even a hard limit would be necessary and the power progression would taper off on its own.
Additionally there is the granularity of what activities are covered by each skill. Basically how many skills exisit. This is more often termed granularity, but this type of granularity is not the topic of this blog post.

Preferences

I am not sure, if it really makes sense to write down my preferences again, since I was not very objective during most of the article, but to summarise:

I like flat, decelerating power progressions.
I prefer classless systems over classed systems.
Point buy over levelling.
I like to improve all areas of my character, and not be hampered by an arbitrary rule, that this part or that part can nor be changed after creation.
And I prefer when the power increases are incremental, facilitated by granular skills.

A struggle with digital

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

It has not been long, since I started this blog. And I really enjoyed it so far. But from the very beginning there was a small struggle for me. Something that did not properly add up.
On the positive side, the blog pushes me to create stuff and present my ramblings to the whole world to see. The slight discomfort of putting my writing up for public scrutiny, the drive to continue to write and not give up again are just two of the effects, that certainly will help me grow and expand my comfort zone.
But: I spend my professional live in front of a screen, and a lot of my personal time as well. In principle I would like to get away from screens as much as possible, and cultivate hobbies that allow me to do that. The blog does the exact opposite. Writing a blog post forces me to spend more time in front of a screen. More time typing, even though I am struggling with a repetitive stress in my wrists anyways.
I could focus more on other hobbies. I would like to make another notebook cover, in this case for my coffee notes. I want to write more, using tools that I enjoy: fountain pen and nice paper. I like to cook and to ferment stuff. Reading in proper books. Preparing in more detail for ttrpg sessions, also using the physical rule and source books. But this would kind of mean giving up on the blog. Which is something that I don’t want to do.

The problem is of course exacerbated by my use of Mastodon. I do not post much, but I read it. And, because of how my mind works, I read it fully. So, all posts of people I follow will get at least skimmed. I try to curate my feed, to only focus on the stuff that is actually interesting for me, but this still means, that there are hundreds of posts to scroll through each day. On the one hand, this is nice, since those posts are what inspire me to do a lot of stuff, such as this blog. Or getting more into various ttrpg systems again. On the other hand, it is more time that I spend glued to a screen.

And the whole problem goes deeper. Taking my phone, or sitting in front of my computer are kind of my default go-tos for many things. I want to research something? Looking through the web, on my computer. Looking for recipes for lunch? Computer. Bored? Computer, Phone, or Youtube over the TV. The book series I am currently reading, I only have as e-book and therefore: I also read on my phone. Most of my time is spent in front of screens.
While I do not think, that the digital world is inherently bad and needs to be avoided, everything becomes bad once it is done excessively. There is a german saying: “Die Dosis macht das Gift” - “the dose makes the poison”. And for me, the time I spend in front of various screens is too much.

I know, that I am not alone in this struggle. It seems, like this is one of the basic struggles in the modern world - one of the more minor, inconsequential ones to be sure, but still one that effects most of the first world.

Do I have a solution for that? No, I do not. Not really. I will try to engage in more non-digital activities. Maybe write a few blog posts first on paper? Then I will have a second read of them before posting, which might increase the quality a bit. Also, I can try to not use my phone as default distraction. Maybe get bored a bit? Being bored is supposed to be healthy anyways.
It is especially difficult, because I enjoy my digital live. I like engaging with people on Mastodon, or just reading their stories. I like writing those blog posts. And I really like researching random stuff online.

If anyone has some tips and ideas, please comment, but I think this struggle is something that I simply have to live with.

Hanami

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

While the cherry blossoms here in Japan are a good excuse to get back into photography, they might not be such good excuse to switch the camera to black and white.
I am not entirely sure what the real reason for becoming more interested in photography again is, but it probably has something to do with the fact, that some people in my immediate vicinity showed more interest as well. You might call it following the herd, or you might call it getting inspired. But however you look at it, I quite happy about it. Photography is a nice hobby with the added benefit that you gather a extensive collection of memories (well, of pictures that can trigger memories. But lets not split hairs here.).
It is also a good excuse to learn how to embedd images into this blog using Astro. Something I have not done so far, because I was a bit worried about automatic resizing, etc.

Since I already mentioned black and white, I think I should also explain the reason for it. A general tip for learning photography is to limit oneself, to be forced to think a bit more creatively. One of the most common tools is to use prime lenses instead of zoom lenses. Having just one focal length available limits the possible compositions. But by being forced to work harder for a good composition, one learns about it and also probably finds interesting perspectives, that one would miss with the luxury of just zooming (so the theory).
Another restriction that I had heard about a few years ago was to take pictures just in black and white. Without colour it is necessary to focus more on contrast. And, following this tip, I had switched my camera to black and white for one or two months, and it really was quite helpful for me. Not only did I learn to look for contrast in my compositions, I also got some pictures with their own flair, that I rather like.
Since it has been a few years since I tried this, I thought that it might be time to reenforce those lessons before I forget them completely. It also pushed me into a more creative mindset, and I took some pictures that I probably would not have taken otherwise. Which would have been a shame, since I am rather pleased with them.
As an additional wake up, I decided to mainly use my 85mm prime lens, since I had become rather comfortable with sticking to the 40mm prime.

I will put those pictures at the end of this article, but first a short disclaimer: I quite like photography, but I am not a professional. I feel like I am still just learning the basics (well, maybe photography 102, not 101). One rather important facet of photography that I have not even begun to learn is post processing. Maybe I get interested in post processing at some point as well (there is a decent chance, since my wife is currently learning about it), but alas, so far I have not mastered it. So those pictures are straight out of camera, without even adjusting the exposure. They were taken using the B+W creative mode of my Sony. (Although I am cheating slightly, because I am shooting RAW+jpg, so I would have the option for post processing and colour, in case an image demands it).
I downscaled the pictures a bit to reduce loading time. Maybe I will find a better solution in the future, but for now, they are a bit smaller.
Constructive critisism is of course welcome.

Beginnings of a Forbidden Lands Campaign

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Background ramblings

I recently managed to gather enough potentially interested people to form another table top role playing group. Two of the players are completely new to ttrpgs, one has some experience, and one plays more or less regularly for over five years.
At the first meeting, not yet with the full complement, the choice of system fell on Forbidden Lands.
This suits me just fine, since, while interested, I never had the chance of trying it out so far. The setting is a bit darker than what I usually run, and I am also used to using prepared adventures. The randomized approach of Forbidden Lands does look intriguing, though a bit daunting as well.

Yesterday evening we met for session 0, including generating the characters. We decided to use the alternative option from the “Legends & Adventeurers” booklet, because it provides some basic backstory automatically. With all of us being new to the setting, this seemed like a good idea. It was interesting to see the various approaches of generating with those tables - from simply rolling everything to carefully weighing and choosing each option.
The inspiration provided by those random tables also made sure that we ended up with a rather colourful group. My plan is to log the (mis-)adventures here, inspired by the way my last GM does it on his Blog.
So, without further ado, those are the results of our session 0:

The characters

Hröd

The orc grew up as a brigand in the Arina forest. However hard this life was, Hröd was kissed by a muse and could not help becoming a minstrel. But also his life as minstrel was not without conflict. One of his most formative experiences was, when he had to duel a rival. After loosing the duel Hröd decided to leave the forest and finding his luck elsewhere.

Percival the Short One

The halfling was born in the Moldena plains. But he did not see much of it, since he spent almost his entire childhood in the kitchen. However, when the time came to stand on his own feet, he felt that beeing a peddler was a more efficient way to get to other people’s money than to cook for them. And so he decided to join a caravan to get filthy rich.

Solga

The goblin grew up as a wanderer in the Shroud. Never having a fixed place to live and her life of travelling caused her to form a deeper bond with her mount, a wolf called Groms, than most and she became a rider. But even after her childhood the lands called, and she continued to travel the land on her own.

Vivirva the Rat

Growing up as a acrobat on the edges of the Arina forest trained the half-elf Viverva to become nimble and agile. Having a devious streak they decided that property is more of a fluid concept, and they became a rogue. However, at one time they stole from the wrong person, and so they had to flee their home.

How the group found each other

When Viviva fled from the repercussions of her thefts, she joined the same caravan as Hröd who had just decided to lick his wounds after the lost duel. During the travel the unlikely pair became friends.
The caravan travelled through the Moldena plains, where they encountered Percival. The halfling made some snide comments about the singing of Hröd, while the orc moked Percival for his pittiful appearance. The only way they saw fit to settle the conflict was by trial of combat. Both fought bravely and were wounded. And somehow during the fight they gained each others respect.
A short while later, the small group captured Solga sneaking around, looking for food. However, having not enough to eat themself at the time, they did find her understanding of herbs and other plants useful. In the end Percival convinced Vivirva and Hröd to set the goblin free and to travel the lands together.

Now the group somehow finds themselfs on the north eastern end of the island of Maidenholm, sceptical of what the future holds for them and hoping to just survive.

A rainy day in LA - Playing Blade Runner

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

In my regular in-person group we recently finished a long running campaign. So, for some variation and to give our GM some time to breath, I am taking over the GM hat for one “case file”. The Blade Runner RPG does not only have stunning artwork, it also has a plethora of handouts that come with the starter box - to be used with the included adventure: The case file “Electric Dreams”.
I wanted to try out the running Blade Runner based on reviews praising this case file, and so here we are.
We decided to create our own characters, since we have the option, and not just go with the default ones in the starter box. This would be especially relevant, if Fria Ligan comes out with the follow ups to this introduction in time for us to still be interested.

Be advised, the blog entry contains spoilers for the Case File „Electric Dreams“ of the Blade Runner RPG.

The Investigators:

Jake „The Muss“, seasoned human Enforcer
JS5-9.76 “Jay”, rookie replicant Enforcer
Marilyn D, seasoned human Cityspeaker
Sol, rookie replicant Doxie
Willem Novak, old timer human Inspector

The Plot:

Deputy Chief Holden called the Team in for a case. He sent Sol to fetch Willem Novak, the most experienced of the team, who was currently on leave. Sol and the others found Novak eating noodles at a street vendor. Not caring about the toxic rain that not only drenched him but also watered down the bowl of noodles he intently studying a news paper. Not that eating was particularly easy while smoking at the same time. And Novak also had a little trick to get the taste of the rain out of his food again: dosing it with a generous amount of whisky.
After some discussion Marilyn D. found the arguments to get Novak to come in, however he left her with the bill as a little payback.
Once everyone was finally assembled in Chief Deputy Holdens office, old iron lungs told them of a disturbing situation: there had been a shooting in “The Snake Pit” on Night Club Row. Two of the new Nexus-9 Blade Runners were there: LH3-7.93 “Leah” and SN9-1.48 “Sandor”. Sandor is dead and in the morgue, Leah is missing. So far not much is know, other than there were human supremacists on the scene and that the two were investigating suspected N-8 activity.
After pressing the importance of this specific case to him and the whole department, Holden also informed them that Wallace Corp has taken an active interest as well and their PR manager wants to talk to them as well.

And so the clock startet ticking.

Day 1, Morning Shift

The team quickly decided that it would be the most efficient to split up - Willem Novak and JS5-9.767 should visit the RIT crime lab and take a look at the body while Marilyn and Sol should take a look at the Esper Wall and the Mainframe for footage and information. In the mean time Jake wanted to visit the gym for a bit of training and to find out what was known about the two in the station.

In the RIT crime lab

In the morgue the chief coroner examiner Coco welcomed them and showed them the body. Novak told Jay to take a look, while he instead decided that the kibble for the office cat Biscuits looked tasty and he wanted to try it. Biscuits was not amused about the food theft.
Jay proved her investigative insights and medical expertise by finding a look big hole in the chest of Sandor and identifying it as “Might have been made with a bullet?“. Coco, used to being the smartest person in the room, confirmed the observation and added that the bullet was of a larger caliber and fired at close range. It went right through Sandor and was not recovered, therefore he can not determine the precise weapon.
Jay decided to put her PK-D blaster up to the whole, and while this did not really proof anything, Coco once again confirmed that the wound might have been inflicted with such a weapon, or at least a similar one.
While leaving the lab, Novak wanted to steal a bit more kibble, but Biscuits defended her bowl, scratching him. Unsettled by being bested by a cat, Novak needed a cigarette to calm down again.

LAPD Mainframe and Esper Wall

Marilyn and Sol went to the Esper Wall to look at footage of “The Snake Pit”. While there was no footage of inside the night club, they found images of Leah leaving it and getting into a Metrokab. Sol successfully enhanced the image and Marilyn was able to identify the Cab company and knew where to look for the dispatcher.
They also looked around for more information on Sandor and Leah. While Sandor seemed to be a model officer, they found some reports of Leah failing baseline tests and being recalibrated just 2 months ago. After some more digging Sol was able to find out that Sandor had reported Leah for excessive force on several occasions, which was one of the triggers for the Baseline test.

On the training grounds

In the meantime Jake tried to gather some gossip. His spotter confirmed that she know Leah, and that she had been rather erratic end of last year and beginning of this year. But that she had seemed better after the recalibration. But you never know with those skin jobs, do you?

Day 1, Afternoon Shift

Having found the first pieces of evidence, and already being convinced that Leah shot Sandor and is now on the run, they decided to report to Wallace Corp. But since the clock is ticking, only Jake and Sol are following this request, while Jay, Marilyn and Novak went to take a look at the Metrokab company to find out where Leah was going.
While they were on route, all of them got a message from an impatient Quell, asking why nobody deemed it necessary to follow the polite request of Wallace so far, reminding them, that LAPD and Wallace are cooperating on that particular investigation.

At Wallace Corp HQ

Flying their spinner in to the cavernous garage of this huge building, already towering over the rest of LA, even though construction is still ongoing, Jake and Sol can not help but feel a bit small and insignificant - no doubt as intended by the architect. After being greeted by a hairless clerk, they are shown through to Quell’s office. Walking through the eerily empty hallways, they hear only their own footsteps echoing back to them. The pale golden light illuminating their way, shadows of water at the along the paths, they get to the austere but immaculately decorated office and are greeted by the thoroughly professional Quell. Sol is greeted rather friendly, while Jake is treated politely, but coldly. As it turns out, Quell is only interested in a status report and in the plans on how the investigation should proceed, and did not intend to share any information. When the investigators openly discuss the current status, she does however confirm the recalibration of LH3-7.93, although she does not deem it relevant for the investigation. She points out, that so far the presence of human supremacists had been completely ignored in the investigation.
When Jake starts to lay out that they strongly suspect Leah and begins to insinuate that Wallace Corp actually has something to do with the murder, talking about faulty and untrustworthy replicants she grows increasingly cold. Therefore it did not come as a surprise to the investigators that when they asked about the memory design of Leah, Quell no longer was open with her information, but informed them that this is privileged information and that the interview is now over.

At the Metrokab Dispatch

Marilyn, being familiar with everyone in the neighbourhood, starts to chat rather friendly with the otherwise gruff and grumpy dispatcher Irmgard. Novak, staying outside, in the mean time checks the Metrokabs in the Lot to see if the one from last night was currently present - which it was not.
With her friendly demeanour Marylin did manage to get Irmgard to check the route of the Metrokab, telling them that the passenger was dropped of in Animoid Row. She even called the driver, if he remembered anything about the night. While the there was not much new information, Earl the driver did remember this specific fare, since the young woman was not only clearly upset but also was carrying a gun. He did not stick around after she had payed, left the cab and had vanished into the crowd. Because of the gun he though it smarter to pick up his next fair elsewhere.

Day 1, Evening Shift

Having gained some new information, the investigators decided that it was finally time to visit the crime scene. Time being of the essence however, they split up again. Only Jake and Novak going to the Snake Pit, while Jay and Marylin should check out Leah’s apartment. In the meantime Sol should check the Esper wall again for video footage of Leah in Animoid Row. Maybe they can figure out where she went that way?

LAPD Mainframe and Esper Wall

After a quick search Sol was able to find the footage. It shows LH3-7.93 getting out of the cab, going first to the Aurelian and then to Bullet Bob’s. After that she went into a small side street not covered by Esper cameras. Looking around a bit more, Sol found an angle the showed the street from the other side, but he did not see Leah emerge again.

Leah’s apartment

Jay and Marilyn went to the apartment complex that contains Leah’s apartment. Since the elevator is out of order, they needed to climb the dirty stairs, covered in graffiti, up the the 13th floor. Marilyn quickly decided that the climb was not for her, and somehow managed to convince Jay to carry her piggyback. Something about being good exercise. Jay without grumbling carried her up, pushing through other residents, some of them clearly living on those stairs and not in the apartments.
Reaching the right floor, it did not take them long to identify the right apartment - it was the one with “Skin Job” smeared across it. This dashed their tentative theory that Leah might not have known that she was a replicant after the recalibration.
Walking up to it, they were interrupted by a clearly drunk, burly man who wanted to know, if they were friends of the skin job. Talking himself more into a rage, he convinced himself that the two were skin jobs themself. Marilyn convinced him that it was not a good idea to attack them by shoving her badge into his face and threatening him with uncomfortable consequences, if he does not cooperate. While this did dissuade him from attacking her, he decided to leave and wanted to push past Jay to get away. But by that time the two had decided that they wanted all the information this goon had to offer. Jay quickly subdued him in a painful restraining hold, giving Marilyn the edge for further investigation. He did not have much information to offer, however some of it was useful. Living across the hall he always was pissed that a skin job got an apartment this close to his, ever since she moved in a year earlier. He had not seen her coming back the night before, but he had been asleep, so that did not mean much. In any case he had not seen her in 2 days, so certainly not since the shooting.
More or less satisfied they let him go.
While Marilyn was fussing about on how to open the door discreetly, Jay simply kicked it in and strut inside. They quickly investigated the rather barren apartment, and found a few clues:

On a small table next to the sofa there was a butterfly jar, once again pointing to some connection to the Aurelian’s shop
A bedside photo showing a young girl. Looking at the background, they thought it looked like colonial architecture. Wondering why a replicant, without a childhood, has a picture of a girl, they started to theorise that Leah has a secret child in the colonies. On the back of the picture the discovered a stamp with the name “Doc Badger”. Marilyn recognised the name as a belonging to a pawnshop owner in Sector 5. So maybe Leah just bought an old picture? But why?
An open book with some poems.
Quite a lot of empty bottles (mostly vodka) in the kitchen, but not a lot of food.

Wrap up and comments

Unfortunately we did not manage to play the scene at the Snake Pit, since one of the players had a hard time limit. But over all they already got a lot further than I anticipated. The character creation was fast and easy (Based on my experience with other systems I had expected that this will already take up the whole afternoon), and the progress through the investigation was smooth and fairly quick. I tried to follow the guidelines in the core book to wrap up scenes once all the clues are gathered. This is a rather new thing for me, since I usually let the player bumble around for however long they want. As such the progress in most of my games is rather slow.

Over all there are some interesting concepts in the game, and I did enjoy having this huge amount of handouts for the players. Since the handouts seem to be rather integral to the game, it does discourage home-brewing cases a bit. At least compared to Forbidden Lands where the whole setup invites to just create your own map and just relying on the random tables.

It was a rather fun first session, and I expect that they will be able to close this case the next time we manage a solid afternoon of gaming. At the moment I am so happy with the system and the quality of the case file, that I am intrigued by the further parts of the campaign. Since I expected the system to be only suited for one-shots, this is a rather pleasant surprise for me.

Waking up in Maidenholm - Playing Forbidden Lands

Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

In the new group we started to play for earnest. Since it was the first session, I decided to start with a rather basic, stereotypical plot, that also feels familiar to people more used to computer games.
But first a few details needed to be clarified. Some of the players wanted to do a bit of shopping with their starting money before we start. And I wanted an explanation on how they ended up on the island.
After rejecting the idea that they arrived with their own galley laden with gold, they pieced together a story:
The were hired by a coastal trader that Percival knew, as protection and help on the travels. But when they had helped unloading at Maidenholm, the trader decided, that it was cheaper to get them drunk and leave them behind, than to pay them.

The Group

Hröd, Orc Minstrel
Percival the Short One, Halfling Peddler
Solga, Goblin Rider
Vivirva the Rat. Half-Elf Rogue

The Plot

All of them woke up severely hung over on the mud-crusted paths in Maidenholm, a small hamlet on the island of the same name, on Stillday, the 32nd of Springrise in the year 1165 AS. Severely dehydrated from the heavy consumption of alcohol the night all of them immediately decided to drink from their water rations, with Hröd and Vivirva completely depleting it, and Percival and Solga also getting down to the dregs.
Looking to refill their water skins, they were hoping to find a well. However, Maidenholm is built on stilts over brackish marshes. The ground below coloured by the blood-red algae brought in by the tides. The houses connected with wooden walkways, there was no well to be found.
The inhabitants of the small hamlet lazily came out of their homes, enjoying some respite from the hard work on the Stillday (other than regular household chores of course).
Asking one of the elfs passing by, Percival found out that the elfs and half-elfs living here mostly drink ale brewed by the publican Bleinalla. She probably gets the water from the burn feeding into the marshlands from the west.
The vague direction was not enough for the group, so they decided to ask directly at the source.

In “The Silver Goblet”

Entering the Tavern, they were greeted with a friendly “Good Morni…”, cut short when the Bleinalla spotted the Orc, the Goblin and the Wolf the Goblin was bringing into her establishment. Therefore the friendly greeting turned into a reprimand, that no animals are allowed in this tavern. Grumbling Solga took her riding wolf Groms out, but decided to stay out with him. She did not have a lot of social inclination and not money to spend anyways.
Hröd ignored that the publican had meant him as well, and strut in confidently.
Percival took over the talking and found out that Bleinalla usually gets her water from the Spring in the old ruins. However, she stopped doing so because she is afraid of the Monster that has started to haunt the area. The village elder would have a bit more information. Percival already was a bit ashamed for pushing the publican, but he decided to seize the opportunity for some coin, and offered to fetch some water for a price.
Bleinalla agreed to offer 1 silver for each barrel of water returned full, 3 barrels being currently empty in her brewing operation.
Hröd quickly convinced the others, that 3 silver is a perfect amount to split between them - Solga being outside and not knowing about the deal.

The Village Elder

They quickly found the village elder, a young looking woman that could have been considered beautiful, had it not been for the extremely sour expression on her face. She was sitting on a small bench in front of the nicest house in the village, overgrown with blooming vines, and spring flowers growing below the windowsills. She frowned at the group getting closer to them, but also seemed disapproving of the small group of children nearby.
While she was clearly unhappy that “this sort of kind” was soiling her village, she confirmed that the temple ruins no longer were deemed safe. A creature, like a furred walking bird, the size of a human with claws instead of wings started to nest nearby. She had put out an award of 10 silver for whoever manages to kill the beast. Since the cleanest source of water was at the ruins, she grudgingly extended the same award also to the outsiders.
Percival, quick to seize any opportunity to press out a bit more money of people in need, haggled the reward up to 15 silver, as long as they bring proof of the deed and make sure that there are no other creatures of the same kind around.
By now the morning was over and they decided to use the height of the day to travel to the ruins.

In the Wilderness

Out in nature, Solga clearly was more in her element and quickly took the lead, finding the best path to take through the bog. The land quickly became more solid, and they were able to follow the burn feeding the bog and gurgling down from the hills.
After a few hours of travel, they reached ruins of what was once a beautiful temple, or maybe a mansion, set picturesque between the hills. While the buildings had crumbled by know, it was still easy to see, how well it harmonised with the surroundings. Some now ancient trees seemingly once being an integral part in the architecture. They have found the spring, being set into an exquisitely crafted stone basin. Percival was already preparing to fill the first barrel, but luckily Hröd still was vigilant and noticed a creature sneaking up on them just before it was able to strike. Shouting a warning all of them quickly sprung into action.

The Acid-fur-emu

Percival, quick in mind and body, jumped closer and successfully put the barrel over the monsters head, effectively restraining it.
Vivirva managed to throw one of her knives into the agile body, and Hröd struck it with his sword, before the beast managed to free itself.
Solga thrust at it with her spear so powerfully, that the weapon shattered in her hand. The creature only managed a single attack, before succumbing to the onslaught. It screeched and doused the whole group into a rain of acid mucus, burning through their skin.
Vivirva succumbed to the burning sensation and collapsed screaming onto the ground.

Making Camp

Hröd quickly started to patch up the half-elf. Since it was already evening, and therefore getting dark, they decided to make camp in the ruins. Solga, as the only one with real wilderness experience quickly started to work on it, while the others started to take apart the bird. Only being used to caring just for herself and Groms, Solga continued to fuss around, not sure how comfortable the others needed it to be. She pushed herself so hard, that by the end she was a nervous wreck. The camp was nice and cosy, but Solga really needed to be jeered up by Vivirvas acrobatics, before she could be of any use for anyone again.
Nobody being able to prepare proper food, they diced to just quickly grill pieces of the acid spitting bird over the camp fire and eat those to spare their rations. Unfortunately they had to find out, that the monster was also poisonous. The meal completely paralysed Hröd and Percival, while Solga and Vivirva only felt a bit stiff afterwards. Since night was upon them anyways, they decided to simply sleep it of, Vivirva keeping watch.

Leaving Maidenholm - Playing Forbidden Lands

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

For this session I was rather tired and I did have far less time to prepare before the session than I had hoped. But, I think it was still fun, even though not a lot had happened. I tend to let players mill around even in linear adventures, so this game matched my GM style rather well. Even though I am still not used to having basically no thread to follow.
Before we started we had a bit of housekeeping to do:

Rules clarification

Last time for the ranged weapons we had a few unclear points with regards to ammunition etc. I tried to look it up between the sessions, but it seems that it is not cleanly defined in the rules. Therefore I gathered a few suggestions from forums, and clarified with the group which option they like. This is the result:

Slings

The ammunition for slings are just stones that can be gathered. Since an infinite amount of ammunition does not seem fitting, slings also use resource dice like bows and arrows. However, the stones for slings can be gathered by foraging for stones (same rules as foraging for food).

Thrown weapons

Since the whole weapon is thrown, there is no resource die. To balance out the expense and weight of these weapons, they can be picked up again - during the fight if the character reaches the place where the weapon had landed, and after the fight automatically, unless there are special circumstances. The weapon con not be picked up if it went over a cliff, or if the PC need to flee / leave quickly without a chance to rummage around the fighting area.

The Group

Hröd, Orc Minstrel
Percival the Short One, Halfling Peddler
Solga, Goblin Rider
Vivirva the Rat. Half-Elf Rogue

The Plot

In the ruins

After most of them awoke rested - with the exception of Vivirva, who was sleepy from keeping watch, they decided to fill not only the water barrels, but also their own water supplies from the well. Having learned from their mistake the night before, they ate from their food rations and left the remaining meat on the carcase of the beast. However, after some discussion that they promised to bring proof of their deed back to the village elder, they cut of the head of the monster. And, being at it, they also skinned it for pelts.
Feeling that slaying one beast certainly was enough, and not wanting to encounter another one, they started to make their way back to the village. They argued that it not really was necessary to investigate the area for other beasts, since they can just keep their eyes open on the way back. If they did not encounter another monster, it was basically proof that they had completely eliminated the threat to the village, right? Right?
Certainly they had earned the bonus for making the island safe again.

In the village

After spending the height of the day on the road, they first visited Vorovillia the village elder. She trusted their story and payed them the agreed sum of 15 silver. Which immediately started a debate about how to split their spoils. Somehow Solgas suggestion that everyone should get 3 silver: 3 for Hröd, 3 for Percival, 3 for Solga, 3 for Vivirva and 3 for Groms was not accepted by the others. While they discussed this issue, they made their way to “The Big Goblet” to deliver the water casks. Leaving Solga out with the animals again, the other 3 got their rewards, which was easy to split: 3 barrels meant 3 silver, one for each of the 3.
Vivirva immediately asked if Bleinalla, the proprietor and brewer was not so thankful for the water to give them a free round of ale and food.
Being a business woman, the Tavern owner pointed out that they had been paid a high sum for just delivering the water, so they will have to pay for her products as well. Not seeing the fairness of the argument, Vivirva then proofed the quickness of her fingers, by steeling from Bleinallas purse. To be more discreet she only stole some coins, and not the whole thing.
After that they went to “The Old Boar”, the Inn of Maidenholm for a straw mattress in the dormitory.

Old Ves

Early in the morning they decided to go to the docks, which turned out to be a single jetty strutting out a bit further into the see than the whole village on its stilts in the brackish mire. Instead of boats they encountered a single old man with his fishing rod.
Not having caught anything so far, the old man turned out to be quite talkative and quite hostile towards “outsiders” and “scum from the main land”. He however seemed to not realise, that the group belonged to this “scum”. Maybe his eyesight was too bad (the cloudiness might indicate this), or he was lonely enough to not care. In any case, he was waiting for “Young Ves”, who was out on the only real fisher boat of the village. Probably not being very successful, being out so late. This would never have happened when he was young! Back then everything was better. Even the village elder Vorovillia was older and more strict back then.
Being asked about the history of the village, he was able to tell 2 legends to the group.

The cunning sorcerer:
During the Alder Wars, there was a cunning sorcerer who sought a monster because of hid prophetic dreams and travelled to a grave a few days off in some hills south west. As the legend goes he was never seen again but at the grave there is a powerful artefact protected by hunting goblins.

The second legend was the one about Clay’s Rosary, which I will not copy here for spoiler and for copy-write reasons.

Getting of Maidenholm

Finally, around noon, a fisher boar appeared and docked on the jetty. On board were a middle aged man and a teenage boy - young Ves and small Ves, as they seemed to be called. Young Ves sent small Ves to the market with todays catch and made some time to chat with the odd group. He agreed to take them to the main land, for the small fee of 5 silver - to cover his costs. Old Ves wanted to join as well, but was reminded by young Ves that he had fallen into the sea the last time he was out, and had needed to be rescued.
Since the trip would take quite some time, young Ves would like to leave at daybreak the next morning.
The group decided that, in sight of the upcoming costs, the 2 copper per person for a place in the dormitory were to expensive. So instead, they walked out of the village, Solga set up a small camp and the ate from their rations. Solga kept watch during the uneventful night and therefore was sleepy when they boarded the boat the next morning. At first the trip seemed pleasant until dark clouds gathered over the sea of Anger Bay and they heard thunder in the distance.

And this friendly note ended the session.

Following the trail - Playing Blade Runner

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Be advised, the blog entry contains spoilers for the Case File „Electric Dreams“ of the Blade Runner RPG.

The Runners:

Jake „The Muss“, seasoned human Enforcer
JS5-9.76 “Jay”, rookie replicant Enforcer
Marilyn D, seasoned human Cityspeaker
Sol, rookie replicant Doxie
Willem Novak, old timer human Inspector

The Plot:

Since the session stopped in the middle of the shift, we picked up right where we left off.

Day 1, Evening Shift

While Sol was checking the mainframe and the Esper Wall for more information around “Animoid Row”, since the cab had dropped Leah off there and JS5-9-76 and Marilyn D checked out Leah’s apartment, Jake “The Muss” and Willem Novak went to the crime scene for the first time.

At the Snake Pit

Outside the club there was a crowd craning their necks, trying to get a glimpse of the actual crime scene. Uniforms were keeping the people safely behind the police tape and greeted Jake and Willem when they arrived. The two investigators did not pay the crowd any mind, and only asked the officers on site about the crime scene and potential witnesses inside.
Apparently the proprietor - Taffey Lewis was could be found in the club.

As soon as they were inside, Jake started to put pressure on Mr. Lewis, trying to get information out of him. Lewis seemed to just be bothered that the investigation took so long, since he wanted to open up again - expecting the incident to draw a curious or morbid crowd and boosting his bottom line - if he could capitalise on it in time.
In the meantime Willem Novak took a look around and noticed not only the large blood stain on the floor, but also the broken mirror on the wall. He managed to get a bullet out of the wall behind it. While not really using professional methods, he drew a line from the bullet through the bullet hole and estimated that this bullet might have been responsible for the blood on the floor - at least it probably came from that direction. Additionally he bagged a sample of the blood and observed the broken bottles and tables lying around, concluding that there might have been a scuffle.

Jakes questions turned up a similar story. Apparently things got rowdy, especially since a few human supremacists jeered the N-9 dancer that was performing that night. Among the supremacists Taffey Lewis remembered seeing Jelle Schylar, the publisher of KILL magazine. After some pale tall guy confronted them it got a bit chaotic. The shot that rang out soon after made people flee the club, and Lewis called the police.
Because of Jakes continued pressing, Lewis pointed them to the dressing room, where they could find the dancer, in case she saw more.

Iris - the dancer - basically told the same story, including the tall pale guy.
She also described the bang from the shot as “really, really loud”, which points to a blaster being fired.

The Runners already wanted to pack up and go home, when one of the uniforms told them, that they had a person claiming to have seen the whole thing.
This witness turned out to be a tall pale guy names Styles, who had already tried to get their attention when they were walking in. He also told the story of the human supremacists jeering the dancer. In his version they started to push around people and were probably also responsible for the shot. He identified Jelle Schylar as being among the supremacists as well.
After some direct questions from the investigators, he admitted to confronting the supremacists at the beginning of the scuffle.
He then agreed to give them a phone number as well as an address, where they could find him.

Day 1, Night

Getting exhausted by the investigations this far, the Investigators decided to take a shift off to unwind.

Jake “The Muss”

Jake knows how to unwind, and so he put on some music at home and once again looked at the old, crumpled photograph with a glass of rum to drown his worries. After this, he was stress free and ready for the next shift.

JS5-9-76 “Jay”

Jay had a more eventful night. She met up with her roommate Nami, who surprisingly had time for her. The night was passionate, but afterwards Jay once again did not feel like she had managed to connect with Nami. And while the sweat dried on her skin and she slowly drifted away to sleep, she could not help but feel used.

Sol

Sol decided to spend his shift letting off steam in the streets. Turning a corner, he suddenly saw his parents. At least someone who looked like his parents, which did not make sense, since he had been grown in a tank. This chance encounter shook him up more than he would dare to admit and in the end he felt more stressed out in the morning than he had felt in the evening.

Willem Novak

Ever since Marilyn D convinced him to come in and too leave his noodles in the rain, Willem craved the aromatic and tart taste of cheap ramen, seasoned a hint of acid rain. On his way to the noodle shop, he saw an advertisement for a lifetime subscription of instant noodles, delivered to his doorstep without fail. He simply had to have them. He ended up spending quite a bit of his hard earned Chinyen to get this subscription, otherwise he would not have been able to get them out of his head.

Marilyn D

Marilyn D probably had the most interesting night. She just wanted to unwind at home, when she got a surprise call from Taffey Lewis, who somehow had found out that she was working the same case as “The crazy bully of a cop” who visited him a few hours before. For the promise of letting him open up the club the next day, he had a bit more information for her, than he had told Jake “The Muss”.
He had seen Leah and the tall pale guy together in the past. He had noticed them at the club a few times for the last few weeks, and they seemed to have known each other. Maybe they were friends?

Day 2, Morning Shift

The Morning brought bad news. KILL magazine had published an article about the shooting, claiming that one N-9 Blade Runner hat shot another. Inspector Holden was furious and texted the Runners for an explanation, on who leaked information to the press. He only got a rather short reply from them (that they were headed tot the magazine now), which did little to calm him down. The Runners decided to stick together for a bit and visit KILL magazine together - with the exception of Sol, who should bring the evidence from the crime scene to the forensics lab and try to confirm their suspicions.

At the Forensics Lab

Sol did not play around much. Instead of trying to analyse the evidence himself, he simply let Coco do his thing. After only a short time, he heard back that the blood was indeed Sandor’s and the bullet a case-less .44 caliber. The same kind of ammunition as in the standard issue Blade Runner Blaster. This kind of ammunition is rather uncommon outside of the REPD department.

At the KILL Magazine head office

The rest of the investigators headed to KILL-magazine, intent on squeezing everything out of Jelle Schylar.
What they had heard of him so far did not endear him to them, and that he had made their life more difficult with the article that morning had not increased their mood.
He nevertheless greeted them more or less friendly, hoping to get information out of them himself.
The Runners were annoyed and not willing to trade information and decided to take more drastic measures after their thinly veiled threats were meat with more open threats of “press freedom” and “interested readers”.
They took him to a small room to the side, one of them standing guard. They quickly fabricated a pretence of him attacking Jay, and proceeded to advanced interrogation techniques. Under duress he told them that he indeed was at the Snake Pit at the night of the shooting, drinking and watching “that useless skin-job on stage”. He remembered the brawl with the albino named Styles, and that two Blade Runners intervened. He claims that the female Runner had pulled her gun out of nowhere and shot her partner as he went to arrest Styles, before running outside and getting a Metrokab.
Being satisfied with the info, they put him under arrest for attacking an officer, and promised him a release once a retraction of this mornings article was published.

Day 2, Afternoon Shift

Visiting Styles’ Address

When visiting the address that Styles had given them, they found out that it was inhabited by a friendly old lady, offering them tea and biscuits. She had never heard of Styles, so they wasted their shift on this trip. When walking out of the building, they suddenly were attacked by a team of 4 guys in identical black outfits, flying a unmarked black spinner.

Combing the Streets

Marilyn D. was combing the streets of L.A. listening for gossip, but before she was able to find out anything useful, she was attacked by a guy clad in black riding in on a unmarked black spinner cycle.

Attack of the Strike Team(s)

Even though the investigators were split up they were attacked at the same time, and I therefore let them draw initiative at the same time and handled the combat simultaneously. Jake with his fast reflexes did not wait until someone shot at him, but used his speed to immediately shoot one of the attackers in head. The others were not as lucky / efficient, but the attackers hit even less. Maybe they were shocked a bit by the quick reduction of their numbers. With the noteable exception of the one attacking Marilyn D, who was quite efficient in inflicting pain and sorrow.
Over all the fight was short and brutal. The last of the attackers at “Styles home address” fled into the spinner and finally did some serious damage with a tactical missile at close range. He was taken out before he could fire the second missile, but the first one had already brought pain to the Runners, especially to Jake who had taken the brunt of the explosion and had been thrown around like a rag doll.
Marilyn D. had done her best closing in on her assailant, but he managed to break her before he took off - sirens closing in on their location.

Wrap up and comments

The Team had found out quite a bit this session, but they still do not know where to find Leah. Some of them are quite banged up after the attack of the Strike team, but they now also know that they are not the only ones putting thins in motion. The attack is the reason they need rest, but it also shows clearly that they should not waste any more time and get to the bottom of this quickly. How will they proceed?

Comments

Over all the round was quite successful, and once again I had a lot of fun. I continue to be impressed by the quality of the material provided in the starter box. So far I had very little improvising to do, since almost every possible path is laid out rather clearly including consequences and how everything connects. The only real critique I have for the box is the quality of the binding of the Case File booklet itself. I use it quite a bit and leafing through it not only during preparation, but also during the session, finding the relevant pages. And it is falling apart. By now the cover is no longer attached to the pages inside. Since I am over all very careful with all my books, etc. this surprises my quite a bit. It might just be, that I had gotten a bad copy (and so far I don’t have issues with other Free League stuff), but is still irks me.

Oh, and of course the combat. Not a critique: It was fun. I was just surprised how deadly it was. They had luck, and therefore landed some nasty critical injuries on their opponents, but it very easily could have been the other way around. And taking cover is very important. Which is nice to see as well.

Electric Dreams - Playing Blade Runner

Sun, 25 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Be advised, the blog entry contains spoilers for the Case File „Electric Dreams“ of the Blade Runner RPG.

The Runners:

Jake „The Muss“, seasoned human Enforcer
JS5-9.76 “Jay”, rookie replicant Enforcer
Marilyn D, seasoned human Cityspeaker
Sol, rookie replicant Doxie
Willem Novak, old timer human Inspector

The Plot:

Day 2, Evening Shift

Since some of them were still quite banged up from the fight in the afternoon, it was decided that they split up once again.
While Jake, Marilyn and Sol were resting and getting medical attention, Jay and Willem should continue with the investigation. And since they had their suspicions about the assailants (to be precise: that they are from the replicant underground), they wanted to be at full strength when following the leads that pointed in that direction. Therefore they followed another, almost forgotten lead: The picture from Leah’s apartment.

At Doc Badgers Pawn Shop

Jay and Willem entered the small and fully stuffed Pawn Shop, where they were greeted by Doc Badger himself.
First Doc Badger was reluctant to reveal anything about his customers, and Willem’s threads did not persuade him. However Jay’s more gentle and understanding approach led him to soften up and to reveal that he remembered Leah coming by a few weeks earlier. She had wanted to review her memory implant using a Stelline scan - something for which he happened to have the equipment. And after reviewing the memories, she wanted a hardcopy of one of the memory slices - the picture of the girl that the Runners had found in her apartment. He did not see the memories himself, so there was nothing else that he could tell the investigators.

Day 2, Night Shift

Knowing about the trouble Leah went through to get the picture, and in general starting to think that the memory was important, they decided that Jake, Marilyn and Sol should visit the place where they thought of having the best chance of finding out more about those memories - Lilith Memory Labs. They had seen the advertisement in the papers and thought it worth a shot. In the mean time Jay and Willem should get some rest so that all of them could go after the replicant underground the next morning.

At the Memory Lab

They arrived in the middle of the night, but still were immediately buzzed in by the receptionist Terry. After flashing their badges, he told them that Lilith Tyrell herself could be found in the main lab and pointed them in the right direction.
They walked in on a scene of children playing and drawing something on the floor. Before they got frustrated with Terry, that he had pointed them at the wrong place, the scene flickered and fell apart and a woman stepped out of the shadows. Lilith Tyrell. Once again they explained that they were here on police business, investigating a N-9 replicant who went AWOL.
Ms. Tyrell confirmed that she had designed the memory from which the picture came from, but insisted that it should have worked perfectly fine for the replicant she designed it for. The Runners did not give up and insisted on learning more about that specific memory, while Tyrell remained evasive and talked about trade secrets. Before the situation could escalate, they heard a shot from the entrance.

A Surprise Addition to the Party

Jake immediately called Jay and Novak to skip the rest and get down to the Lab.
Leah seemed unstable, but not necessarily aggressive. She pleaded that the Runners should let her kill Lilith Tyrell, and explained that she was sorry for what had happened to Sandor. Jake proofed to be surprisingly gentle and sensitive when he needed to be and continued to calmly ask her questions and to deescalate the situation.
With his careful probing he found out that she had killed Sandor because he would have killed Styles - and she could not have let that happen. With some reluctance she slowly revealed that Styles was helping her to leave the LAPD and to get off planet. She also explained that she did not think it possible that Styles was responsible for the strike team that had attacked the Investigators. During the questioning Jake slowly took Leah to the entrance area while Marilyn and Sol kept Lilith and Sarah Tyrell save at the main Lab. Jake made Leah help him give first aid to Terry and this helped build a bridge of reason and trust.
Leah pleaded again that they should let her kill Tyrell. As reason why she told them that Tyrell should show them her memory, then they would certainly understand.
Jake kept Leah around the entrance while Marylin and Sol convinced Tyrell to show them the memory. And what they saw made them question the sanity and motives their host and furthered their understanding of Leahs desires. It took them a bit to understand that Leah did understand that her daughter - Diane - in the memory was not real, never had been, and she therefore did not truly blame Lilith Tyrell for her death. But she did blame her for the pain of feeling the loss. In the mean time Jay and Willem showed up.
They continued the questioning of Tyrell and her motives, who explained to them that the trauma only was there to keep the tools in line. Nobody wanted a blaster that disobeyed, and to her replicants were nothing more than more complicated versions of that. The Investigators got more upset with Tyrell, but before they could do anything rash Willem heard sounds from outside - a Spinner was getting close fast. He and Jay sprinted out of the entrance area while Jake and Leah took cover behind the robust receptionists counter.

Strike Team Part 2

Shortly after everyone had taken cover a tactical missile blasted open the entrance doors.
The Blade Runners went into defensive positions waiting for the members of the strike team to enter the building, so that they could take them into a cross-fire.
Leah joined their defensive formation, while Marilyn took the two Tyrells further back to keep them safe.
The fight was once again rather brutal, with the Runners proofing their marksmanship by rather quickly landing a few crippling critical hits, including a few headshots.
Willem retreated further back into the right wing of the building. Leah, while shooting at the attackers (and hitting them, proofing that she was not in league with them), also moved back - towards the Tyrells. Marylin got suspicious and retreated further, up the stairs into the second floor. There she laid waiting, ready to shoot anyone that comes up, be it a member of the strike team or Leah.
In the meantime it got clearer that the Investigators had the upper hand, taking out more and more members of the strike team. Willem retreated out the side entrance, while the strike team decided to retreat, killing their fallen comrades on the way out.
In an heroic effort to find out more about their assailants, Willem quickly snuck up to the getaway spinner and managed to remain unseen by the driver and the retreating fighters. It helped that the Runners kept shooting at them, even taking out another one, so that only one managed to get into the spinner. Willem affixed his KIA to the chassis before hiding again, just before they took off - sending another ballistic missile into the entrance area as a fare well present. Not only wounding the defenders but also making sure that the bodies they left behind did not yield any forensic value.
When the Runners regrouped, they found out that Leah was missing. Apparently she had escaped via another side entrance instead of going after Tyrell.

Aftermath

Leah was gone, and by the time the Investigators found out where she went, she was already off world, out of their reach. Not that they minded to much, after what they had learned. The strike team retreated to Wallace Corp. While they now had some hard evidence against them, they did not put anything in official writing, but instead asked Inspector Holden how to handle it. He told them to do nothing, and that he will take care of it. A short time later Willem got his KIA back - apparently Quell had brought it to Holden and blatantly told him that they had found it in one of their vehicles and that the Blade Runners should be more careful with their equipment to not loose it again.
They followed up with Styles and found out that the Aurelian was a hub for the replicant underworld - helping them hide and flee. They did not charge them, but instead offered their help, in case they required it in the future. In exchange they asked that they could send some replicants to the underground on occations where they prefered not to retire them.
With the disappearance of Leah off world, the case was now considered closed. Not the most glamorous ending, but one that they could live with. Nothing to further their career, but something that let them keep their humanity. And that they were able to save Lilith and Sarah Tyrell was at least something to be proud about.

Wrap up

This concludes the case file. Overall, as I already had mentioned, the material provided by Free League was brilliant. I never before worked with this amount of hand outs and I think the players enjoyed it as well.
That the booklet itself fell apart is a bit unfortunate, but for now I just think that this was a bad batch and not hold it too much against them.
The rules… well, overall they seemed rather intuitve to me and facilitate a fluid game. The only real trouble we had was when the strike team attacked the memory lab. We did not really found any good option in the rules to allow the players to hold their fire and cover the entrance until the strike team came in.
Even though the fight officially already had started, we improvised based on the ambush rules for that, but somehow it feels like this should be a rather basic action in a cyberpunk setting, and I am a bit disappointed did it was not clearly covered. Other than that: light and deadly.
The Players continued to had a lot of luck with the dice, and I am not one for fudging them to make it more exciting. So the threat from the strike team probably felt a bit less than it should have - the attackers where actually better combatants on average than the PC. At least on paper…
Still, we had fun and decided to keep the characters - so that we can continue to play once the next case file in the series comes out.
I do not want to design adventures for this system myself, however. It seems to live with the wealth of hand outs and materials, and it would take too much time for me to prepare something that can convey at least a similar level of immersion.

Coastal Paradise - Playing Forbidden Lands

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

The Group

Hröd, Orc Minstrel
Percival the Short One, Halfling Peddler
Solga, Goblin Rider
Vivirva the Rat, Half-Elf Rogue

The Plot

At Sea

At the beginning of the last session, a storm was brewing. The Group was on the fishing boat of young Ves, who kindly was transporting them to a small coastal village to the south, for a small fee, of course. When the storm hit them, all of them opted to use ropes to tie themself to the boat to not get washed away. Which worked for all of them, with the exception of young Ves who went overboard at one of the later squalls.
The group was debating among themselves for a bit, if it was fate and they now where the proud owners of a, well, not new but functional, fishing boat. However, since they knew almost nothing about sailing, and the target of their voyage was still a bit of sailing away, they were not sure if they could manage without their guide.
In the end, Solga decided to not wait for a conclusion of the discussion and instead just threw a rope to Ves. They pulled him back on board together. As thanks, young Ves told them about the legend of the village - and asked them if this was really the place they wanted to get to:

Nameless Coastal Village:
On the coast there is a small village. It is said, that it is inhabited only by beautiful women, that welcome every traveler. And many men who got close spent wonderful nights there. But only few of those return…

While the not returning of people visiting the village did bother them a bit, they quickly found a logical explanation: If the village was full of beautiful women, which man in his right mind would want to leave again?
That the male population seemed to not grow over time, was noticed as a flaw in their reasoning, but they did not bother to think of another explanation, with this one being so convenient.

They soon reached the coast and they found a small boat pulled up onto a small crescent shaped pebble beach with an earthen cliff sloping up behind it. They saw smoke rising above the cliff. Young Ves let them out there and as additional thanks for his rescue he forwent the payment.

The Village

They spent the rest of the day on the beach, eating a small meal and drinking their share. Once the sun started to set, they climbed up the path, which was winding up the 4-5m to the edge. Carefully peaking above they saw a rather idyllic scene. The village was beautiful, the small houses being decorated with flowers and interspersed with small flower beds. The village was surrounded with vegetable patches and a small sheep pasture inland. Happily chatting women of all ages seemed to be on their way home after a hard days work. Most of them were attractive, and there truly seemed to be no men around. They decided to approach two stragglers and talk with them about the village.

The two young women immediately seemed worried about their presence and quickly ushered them back to their house, claiming that it was dangerous to be out in the open for the adventurers.
The group gladly obliged and followed them to a small cottage at the edge of the settlement, which, looking at the furniture, the two women seemed to share with a third, who showed up only a bit later.

The women remained friendly and offered food and drink. They also explained their worries: Apparently a powerful druid named Hardar lived in the village and captured all men. Those men were given to the Rust Brothers as tribute. Only women were allowed to live here. And no one was allowed to leave, once Hardar knew about them.

After this revelation they decided to take advantage of the hospitality and rest for the evening. Only Hröd kept watch, not only concerned by threats from outside, but also worried about possible duplicity by the ladies of the house.

When evening turned to night, Hröd went to sleep and the rest of them woke up. Vivirva and Percival were not content with just sitting and waiting and wanted to explore the village. Solga, as the only one being able to see at night agreed to be their guide.

Walking around the small hamlet, they noticed a slightly larger house in the centre of the village. Getting closer, Solga noticed dogs lounging around that house. She warned the others, that the dogs seemed to have become curious about what was going on, and then retreated back towards their cottage. However, Vivirva was convinced that nobody could catch her anyways, and Percival that he would be able to talk himself out of anything - even if his counterpart was a trained animal. And so they approached. Unsurprisingly the dogs gave alarm.

The Druid

Only a short time later the door crashed open and an angry old man stumbled out in his night gown. He was followed by another 3 dogs, bringing the total up to 6. Spotting the intruders, the man barked a command at the dogs who immediately started to charge them.
Solga, a bit further away saw what was happening and decided to get Hröd.
Vivirva immediately started to run away. Percival on the other hand prefered to smooth talk the dogs. He showed a remarkable skill in animal handling and managed to stop the attack of 5 of the 6 dogs, the last one continuing to follow Vivirva.
Surprisingly enough Vivirva actually manages to shake the dog following her, but she now struggles with the darkness and manages to hit a building. The dog somehow could not sniff her out, while she was lying behind some bushes in full fragrant bloom.
The dogs between Hardar and Percival got more and more confused with both men yelling commands. They were torn between their old master, and this new person who seemed like the natural leader of their pack. Even with magic the druid could only make them surge forward and not effectively attack the halfling.
By then Vivirva had returned to Percival and Hröd had arrived as well. No longer relying on his dogs alone Hardar also sent two swarms of rats under his control to attack the adventurers.
Vivirva managed to hit Hardar with a throwing knife, and Percival convinced the dogs to turn on their old master, one of them even biting the druid.
With the adventurers slowly killing the rats, Hardar still had another trick up his sleeve. Using his powerful druidic magic, he turned himself into a bear. The dogs decided that this is too powerful an enemy, and started to flee. Percival tried to use his skill in animal handling on the bear, not realising, that the beast still had the mind of the druid.
While the group managed to kill of the swarm of rats attacking Percival, the bear attacked. He stormed at Percival and sent him to the ground bleeding with a single swipe of his mighty claws. Percival’s torn off ear flew through the air, and the poor peddler will not be able to get up on his own again any time soon.

End of session

At this point we had to interrupt the session because of a personal emergency of one of the players. The bear might be their most powerful foe yet, and one of the swarms of rats is still very much alive.
I am looking forward to the continuation of the adventures of our group of misfit rogues.

Photo Walk

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

It has been a while since I have posted about photography.
I recently joined a photo walk in Roppongi. My wife had done this before and usually came home with some rather nice images and so we planned this as a group activity. For me this was the first time working with models, and the first time joining a photography event in general. And as it turned out, it was a lot of fun.
The organiser was… disorganised and ran off with one of the models, but the rest of us still had a blast.
While focusing manually was a bit of a challenge in this dynamic situation, I still got a few rather nice shots. However, I can not claim that they are the product of my brilliance. The models where over all quite professional and knew how to present themself, and the other photographers that had joined had some interesting ideas with regards to posing and backgrounds. So it is more thanks to the other members, that I got those results.
If you are wondering if joining a photo walk is worth it, I would now highly recommend it.
All of the pictures were taken with my Sony A7 II and the Zeiss Loxia 85mm F2.4. The pictures are more or less unedited.

Analog Adventures

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Recently my parents visited us in Tokyo, and my father brought me his old camera. A Canon A-1, which had gathered dust over the last 30 years. Well, it did not actually gather dust. My father had always taken good care of his cameras, and so it had been well protected in its case. Therefore not literally gathering dust, just figuratively.
In any case, since I had mentioned my blossoming interest in film photography, he immediately said that I could have his old A-1. Of course I was quite enthusiastic about the opportunity. At our visit to Austria this summer, I forgot to pack it (which might have been a good thing, since our luggage was near bursting), but when my parents came this November they managed to make room for it in their baggage allowance.
Quite happily I dragged them to Yodobashi in Shinjuku to buy my first roll of film. Uncharacteristically, I did basically no research at all and bought a roll of Ilford Delta 100. Since I expected to travel with them and therefore shoot some pictures in bright daylight, I thought ISO 100 should be fine.
I had not realised at that point that I had a small stack of ND filters that would have fit on the lens. But the ISO 100 worked out mostly anyways.
So I kept shooting away (sparingly, having the limitation of just 36 pictures in mind) finally finishing the roll on December 19th. I handed the rolls to a lab on December 20th and on December 23rd I got the scans.

And, as expected, there were some troubles with the images.
A few had some parts of it remain black, for a reason unknown to me. (I thought maybe a light leak, but then it should be white, not black?):

On others I simply missed focus, still learning to use the focusing screen. For some I did not adjust the exposure to highlight the important parts, and on others I simply shook the camera too much because of the shutter speed (ISO 100, and no stabilisation):

But, there were also some pictures, that I am actually happy with. Mostly towards the end of the roll:

The Canon A-1 was a joy to use, the operation becoming smoother with usage. And since at least some of the pictures turned out well, I am looking forward to continue to use it.
Looking the camera over, the light seals seem to have dried out quite a bit, so I intend to change them before I load the next roll of film. Still, my enthusiasm for analog photography definitely brightened by the experience so far.
I also want to start developing film on my own (again enabled by my parents, from whom I am getting a Paterson/Ilford starter kit for Christmas). And then, lets see where this journey is taking me.
Tokyo is full of used camera stores with a wealth of vintage lenses. And I am inclined to also try out a fully mechanical camera at some point, since the Canon A-1 is already quite feature rich. To my knowledge, it is the first camera having all the modern shooting modes: PASM.
In total, I am excited to see where those analog adventures are taking me.

Analog Adventures 2 - A visit to Rockbar Bauhaus

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Recently me and Katharina went to the Rockbar Bauhaus in Roppongi. https://rockbarbauhaus.com
And while it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, this is of course not why I am writing.
But still, first a view words about that place: Bauhaus is a music venue and a bar. Or a bar that is a music venue at the same time. I am not sure where to place the focus.
In any case, we arrived basically at opening time, and therefore got a prime table directly in front of the stage. We ordered some drinks and some food and got talking. The place was already quite nice. The atmosphere was good and the music they had running was to our taste as well. The drinks were alright, and the food was surprisingly good for bar food.

But after a while the brilliance of the place was revealed. Some of the bar staff went on stage, and after a few minutes of setting up, they started rocking for the better part of an hour. The singer changed after almost every song, and they played rock. From some of the classics to a few of the better modern options.
They allowed to hand in a wish list from their “song menu” as well.
Every full hour they started a new set, giving a proper rock show each time.
We stayed for only 3 sets, simply because we usually go to bed quite early. Still, the ride home was not enough to get us tired, since we were quite wound up by all the energy in Bauhaus.

However, as already should be clear from the description, I took an analog camera with me with the full intent of snapping a few pictures. I had already gotten comfortable with the Pentax ME, that I got as an “always with me” camera.
However, I did not stop at a few pictures. Instead I shot almost a whole film roll. And if I would have had another roll with me, I would have shot even more.
Of course not all of the pictures turned out well, but overall I am very happy with the results.
The grainy black and white images from the HP5+ film create a mood that matches rock music very well, at least in my opinion.
I also developed the pictures myself using the Ilford Simplicity Starter Kit, that I had gotten from my parents for Christmas. And the process of developing and scanning the pictures myself was also quite enjoyable. I still have a lot to learn in this regard, but it is a fun experience already.

But enough talking, it is time for a small selection of the pictures:

Dark Elf Studio Shoot

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I think I have not mentioned so far, that my wife started a career as a professional photographer.
She is currently focusing on creative studio shoots, with recently our living room being used as studio.
And the most elaborate of the shoots was on a Sunday, which allowed me to sneakily join in.

The shoot was planned by my talented wife (just as a reminder, you can find her far more impressive pictures on her website kdw.photo).
She planned the shoot together with @csphotography. However, the first to arrive was the makeup artists@antiphong, shortly followed by the model @sako.pics. For the next 3 hours @antiphong transformed @sako.pics from a good looking japanese woman into a dark elf, while the rest of us talked and set up the studio. The final touch were outfits that were supplied by @ephemeralenchantment.
My plan had been to just snap a few pictures, and then call it a day. Or do some work on my computer, which is placed in a way that I would still be able to observe the shoot.
However, I got swept away in the excitement and shot almost 4 rolls.
The lighting was quite challenging for me, since it was rather dark overall. I therefore struggled to see the focusing patch clearly. Luckily I was reasonably well aquainted with the Pentax ME at that point, and I managed to get a few decent images after all.
So without further ado, here is the selection of my favorites:

Tokyo Pride Parade 2024

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This year I visited the Tokyo pride parade together with my wife. She has been visiting each year for a few years now, being herself a member of the LGBTQ+ community, but it was the first time for me to accompany her. Since her cousin was visiting us, we squeezed it into the regular sight seeing program.

I took the opportunity try out colour film, which was a new experience for me. I had a few images left of Kodak Gold 200, and then switched to a roll of Harman Phoenix.
The Kodak Gold behaved beautifully, I would say. The colours are nice and the dynamic range is decent.
The Harman Phoenix is… a different kind of beast. It is definitely a look. And it needs a bit more care in its usage with its limited dynamic range and unique rendering.
While I do think that it has its uses, I would not call it an everyday film.

But enough babbling, here are the images:

Childhood Dreams

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I am an avid listener of the PenAddict podcast. And recently they pitched a new podcast hosted via the same platform relay.fm.
And this new podcast is Paper Places. It is about a young author working on her fist book, interviewing other, already published, authors about writing and the reality of publishing. Even though it is only in the first few episodes, it is already a surprisingly polished production and not only entertaining but genuinely interesting.
And it once again reminded me of my childhood dream. Yes, when I was small, I wanted to become an author. This earn me a bit of laughter in elementary school, but mainly, because I used the fancy word for it. To explain: When the teacher asked, I truthfully answered that I wanted to become an “Autor” (german for author) when I grew up. The other kids laughed about me wanting to become an “Auto” (german for car), until the teacher explained to them what an “Autor” was.
But, as it so often happens, things change with time. In junior high school I struggled with languages quite a bit and I always was close to failing the English and Latin classes. (It was a language focussed junior high school) So, when the time came to decide on my further education, I chose an engineering high school instead, since I really did not fancy adding another language to the mix. And math and engineering came easy for me.
So I learned about electronics, and a bit of programming and later went on to study theoretical physics at university.
Now I work as an engineer in the R&D department of a company selling railway maintenance machines.
But deep down the dream of becoming an author never really left me. It just got pushed back again and again. No time, or simply not the best use of my time.
I am also a realist. I would not expect myself to produce bestsellers, and even if I did, authorship is not known for being the best financial choice. My current job allows me to lead a rather comfortable life, but it also consumes quite a bit of my time and mental capacity.

Still, the podcast inspired my to maybe try writing again. At least to try to hone the craft.
There is a lot to train and learn. And who knows? Maybe I stay inspired and motivated for long enough to actually write a book.

Vintage Studio Shoot with Cailee Oliver

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

For my 33rd birthday my wife gifted me a old camera. Probably around twice my age. A lovely old twin lens reflex camera from Zeiss Ikon: The Ikoflex iia.
I took it to a short trip to Osaka, and shot a single roll of 120 film, and the results were… alright, I guess.
For a while I really wanted to use the camera, try it out more, but somehow I did not find the time. After a few months I asked my wonderful wife, if she would know a model that would be willing to put up with me testing out the camera.
And since it was a old camera, I also thought about trying out some older type of film at the same time. I wondered how orthochromatic film would look and feel compared to the more “modern” panchromatic black and white film.

And so the idea for a vintage photo shoot took form.

Katharina took care of the whole organisation, and planned to shoot herself as well. She also quickly had a model in mind that she had worked with before and who would match her vision of vintage vibes quite well.
She also got various props, such as 2 nice vintage chairs (2 because one was a bit smaller than we had expected…)

The model herself (the talented Cailee Oliver also seemed quite on board with the whole idea, she even got 2 different outfits that would match the idea. When the time for the shoot came on April 21st 2025, she also brought an additional third outfit (in a more modern, completely different style), in case we had enough time.

As usual, the more impressive pictures were taken by my wife, with a few being displayed on her website kdw.photo).
But I am quite satisfied with the selection I got as well.
I also used my trusty Pentax MEs as well, and I did get more shots in focus with that. But somehow the images from the Ikoflex do have their own distinct flair, that I quite like.
Over all this meant that I got a rather large selection of images, and a lot of different combinations of camera and film to compare.

Over all, I have to say, that it was a great shoot. Not only was I able to test the camera and film, I also got quite a few shots that I genuinely like. And the soot itself was a lot of fun. Cailee Oliver was great to work with. Not only did she know how to pose, but she brought a lot of fun ideas as well and was very willing to try out goofy poses/ideas as well.
I have to admit, that I was not only surprised by her third outfit, it also did take me a moment to get comfortable with it, since it was the first time for me to shoot someone in lingerie. It somehow still ended up to be the part of the shoot with the highest keeper rate.

Image from Pentax ME, with Kodak Gold:

Images from Pentax ME, with Ilford OrthoPlus:

Images from Pentax ME, with Ilford FP4:

Images from Ikoflex, with Ilford OrthoPlus:

Images from Ikoflex, with Ilford FP4:

Images from Ikoflex, with Ilford HP5+:

And as a small bonus, here is one picture that illustrates the possible pitfalls of using such a camera. Since the lighting was a bit low, I had missed the “1” indicator in the little red window, and wound up a bit too far. And so the last image on one if the FP4 rolls did not fully fit on the film and was therefore cut in half.
However, this rather obvious imperfection meant that Cailee Oliver and quite a few of her followers found this image especially intriguing.

Nature\skin - First tests

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

As I dabble in using Pixelfed I stumbled upon a user called “Ben F.” or “@Sammael99@imaginair.es” (unfortunately his server went down not so long after I discovered his work). He posted some interesting pictures of people overlayed with natural textures. And since those images looked so intriguing, I decided that I wanted to try to create something similar as well.

There were 3 main styles:

Textures such as stones, leaves or complete upside down trees overlaid onto the skin of a model, the surrounding of the model completely white
Treetops etc. photographed sideways overlaid with side portraits to cut off the back of the model.
Leaves on a white background, with the portrait inside the leaf.

I was more drawn to the first 2 options, with a preference to the first, and so those are what I focused on. The third one I completely ignored for now, maybe to try out at some point in the future.
I also, of course, wanted to achieve the effect entirely in camera, with only the scanning options such as white point and adjusting the exposure curves options to manipulate the image. (And of course cropping, if necessary)

Lucky for me, my wonderful wife agreed to model for this project. Since she is a great photographer herself, she thought that some experience on the other side of the lens might be valuable for her as well.

And so we did our first test in the middle of May. As a first test I shot with my trusty Pentax ME and, to have enough exposure leeway, with Ilford HP5 Plus at ISO 400.

First shoot with Pentax ME:

While I do like some of the images, over all the burning out of the backdrop to complete white did not work as well as I had hoped. I did use a white backdrop and pointed the lights mostly towards the backdrop and only let the spill fall onto my model, but this seemed to be not entirely enough:

Even though the treetop images where shot with the leaves against the bright sky, the contrast was not high enough to burn out the dark hair completely in the sky area:

Still, the results did encourage me to tweak a bit and try again. Especially since my wife took to a digital workflow and removed the background on some of the images she liked. And the results were quite respectable. Since I did not use the automatic exposure for the studio shots in any case, I decided that this would also be a nice opportunity to use the Ikoflex.

Second shoot with Ikoflex iia:

Here the results were already noticeably closer to what I had envisioned. And trying to match the poses to the structures photographed earlier also proofed to be a rather fun challenge.

While the next image did not work as I had hoped, I do quite like the result:
This time I had only tried a single treetop image, but I got quite lucky with it. I really like how the one maple leave frames the eye:

After those 2 shoots, I continue to be fascinated with the effect, and so those will not remain the the only photos where I try to overlay textures from nature over human skin. I even think that this might become my first larger photography project: Nature\Skin.

Nature\skin with Cailee Oliver

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

As I mentioned in my last post, the images of “Ben F.” or “@Sammael99@imaginair.es” had me hooked. Exploring it however did pose a small challenge. My favourite motives were the various structured overlaid on the back, but this would mean that I would need to find a model that would be comfortable posing topless, possibly nude (although the final images would be more modest).
Because Cailee Oliver suggested the lingerie in the last shoot herself, I hoped that she might be comfortable with this proposal as well. And, as can be deducted by me writing this blog entry, she agreed.
I still was worried about her feeling comfortable with it and about making sure that it was a safe environment for her. She did not take me up on the proposal to bring a chaperone of her own, but was happy with just my wife being there as well (for photographing a second part of the shoot with images proposed by Cailee).

I prepared two rolls of Ilford HP5+, one 35mm and one 120. For each of the images that I shot, I also took a picture of the same frame and the image counter on the camera with my phone. I hoped to be able to better match the poses with the structures/backgrounds because of this.

First part with Pentax ME:

At first we went through the 36 images of the 35mm film. Before each of the pictures we shortly discussed which pose would match that structure best. Same as with my first shoot with her, Cailee did bring ideas of her own in this regard, but quickly followed my lead if I had a specific request. So once again she was a joy to work with.

So without further ado, here is the not so small selection of images that I like from that roll:

Since the following pose worked so well with Katharina, we tried it as well:

I really liked the criss-cross texture of this bark, and so we tried to create similar angles with the arms to match it. I think it worked reasonably well:
In this next one I really like how the structure and shape of the tree follows the shape of Cailee’s spine as well as how the bark and the hair melt together:

In this next image I once again particularly like how the tree comes through in the hair, and that it so much more subtle on the skin:
I only took a single treetop picture, and cutting out the head worked well enough with it:

Second part with the Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex IIa:

Since the 36 pictures of the first part had taken a lot longer to shoot than expected, we did the 12 images of the Ikoflex in much quicker succession. This might be one reason why I have fewer keepers here. Or that some of the backgrounds simply did not work as I had hoped.
In the first one I however do quite like how subtle it turned out. How you almost do not notice the mossy bark, with the exception of in the hair, were the larger leaf-pairs almost seem like a planned adornment.
As the shoot went on, we also started to try out more experimental poses. Which turned out to give some of the most interesting results:

Third part with unrelated images

Lastly I want to present some images from the final part of the shoot. Cailee had brought some ideas with her, that she wanted to shoot with my wife, but they kindly let me join again as well.
I had planned to shoot this part in colour, with Kodak Gold to be specific, even though I can not develop it myself, but have to send it to a lab. But then I spontaneously grabbed Harman Phoenix instead. Shot at box speed, which squashes the dynamic range a bit. So the results are a bit more funky, but I still like them. Maybe even more because of it.

Warehouse heist - Playing Shadowrun

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Team

Discord, Ork Adept
Jace, Elf Streetsam
Romeo, Elf Face/Decker
Hunt0rKill0r69, Decker/Rigger Support (NPC)

The Plot

Towards the late afternoon on Saturday, September 3rd 2072 Discord got a message from Harvey, informing him about a short notice job oppurtunity. Apparently an unknown Johnson was hiring and had set up an open meet table in “The Broken Neck” around 8pm the same day. When Discord inquired about the Johnson, Harvey could not help out further. Other than the meet, he knew nothing of this particular contact.
Discord tells Jace, whom he already knew about this, and they hopped into a bus to be there on time. “The Broken Neck” turned out to be a seedy, run down place of a bar somewhere between the Redmond Barrens and Puyallup. There was an old Fender Telecaster with a broken neck nailed above the entrance, probably giving the place its name. It might have been a reasonably nice diner at some point in time, however if this ever were the case those days have long passed.
Romeo on the other hand heard about the same meet and went there in his small Honda Spirit. When he arrived there he just saw an Ork and an Elf enter the place together. Both were wearing functional armored jackets, the sleek elf carrying a medieval sword on his back, the burley Ork casually tapping the walls and the ground with something that could only described as the cobbled together unholy offspring of a mace and a tuning fork with a shotgun strapped to it for good measure.
Romeo got the slight feeling that he might not be dressed apropriately for this occasion, since his own cloths clearly were of much better quality than anything found around here. But, alas it was simply one of his normal outfits. He did not even have an idea where to find things. Definitly not in the stores he frequented.
Inside the bar, the environment was not much better. A few scruffy looking creatures were nursing their drinks quitly in various corners, occupied either with quiet conversation or with just being inconspicuous and not attracting the attention of anyone dangerous. With one noteable exception: In one booth a middle aged lean human was sitting upright, watching the entrence. He clearly seemed to be waiting for someone. This, and the two muscly bodyguards in armored jackets flanking the booth were indications that this might be the Johnson for todays job.
The 3 runners took a seat on chairs opposite of the Johnson. After the first short introductions, all of them heard heavy steps and even heavier breathing as another person entered the room. Some chairs creaked as they were pushed to the side by the bulky form who, even though he turned himself sideways, did not quite manage to fit through the space. This rather obeese individual reached the booth and plopped down on one side of the U shaped bench, asking “You the Johnson?”, ignoring the others for now. Only then they noticed the pointed ears under the oily brown hair and the high cheekbones hidden under wobbly acne stained cheeks marking him as the probably fattest elf any of them have ever seen in the flesh.
The actual meet was quite short: The Johnson offered them a total of 20000 Nuyen (5k each) for getting a crate from a warehouse close to the docks. He had the adress, the floor plan and new that the package should be there from 23:45 to 00:15 that day. Although it might be picked up sooner, so he recommended to act rather quickly. He also provided a detailed description of how the crate was marked, so that the team could identify it. The contents were not their concern.
They decided to take Hunt0rKill0r69s GMC Bulldog Stepvan, since, other that the 2 seated Honda Spirit from Romeo, it was the only vehicle they owned. And, if they wanted to keep to the speed limit and drive unsuspiciously, they also had to leave almost immediately to get there in time.

On the way they tried to find out about the warehouse what they could. Discord asked Harvey, but he said that it will take him a day to find out who the warehouse belonged to. Jace sent a message to Miri, his connection in the Mafia, but did not get a reply before they arrived.

The warehouse turned out to be a reasonably busy place. Two lories were being loaded in the exit bay even this late at night, but the entry bay was empty. Discord snuck around to the other side of the building, ready to create a diversion. The best plan they were able to come up with in such a short time was that they would wait until the lory with the crate arrives. While it was being unloaded Jace and Romeo watch carefully for the crate. Once they spot it, Discord should create the diversion, luring the workers away while Jace and Romeo grab the crate.
It went reasonbaly smooth. The lorry arrived, and they started unloading. Here was the first little snag: the goods were prepacked onto paletts. So getting the crate out would be a bit more difficult than planned. So they quickly adjusted their plans to steal the whole lorry, drive of to a quiet site and get out the crate with a bit more peace and quite. Still being fast enough to leave before the cops could decend on the grid signal of the stolen vehicle.
Just when they were getting ready to up the distraction by spoofing the conveour belt inside, they heard Hunt0rKill0r69 vie the comm: “Guys? Who of you triggered the alarm?“. And this is when things went sideways.

Four armed guards came rushing out of the break/office area of the warehouse. Discord immediately banged his “Silencer” to pull them to his location and initiate the diversion. Romeo rushed around the lorry to get in next to the driver while Jace stood bz ready. Three of the four guards decided to follow the noise, while one ran towards the unloading bay. Spotting Romeo who just got into the lorry, he immidiately fired, but missed. Jace responded, and thanks to his sznaptic booster he took down the guard before he was able to act again.
In the meantime discord threw a glowstick as a further diversion, and managed to distract two of the remaining three guards. The third he rushed in melee combat. Which also did not take too long.
Romeo started to convince the driver that it might be a smart idea to leave the truck and value his own safty more than following protocol. Because of the burst fire all around (some of which made some holes into the lorry door threw which Romeo came in), the driver did not take too much convincing and left the sprinting over the parking lot.
Jace had in the meantime climbed into the back of the lorry. The two guards by now had noticed Discord, but taken into the crossfire by Jace, they did not stand too much of a chance.
The breather after elimintating this immediate threat was only short lived though, since Discord already heared additional guard running for support. And then an explosion going off 2 or 3 blocks away. Therefore they quickly skidaddled, Hunt0rKill0r69 picking up Discord and meeting the others at a empty parking lot not too far away. The crate was then found rather quickly and so they managed to drop it off back at “The broken Neck” at around 03:00, the time the Johnson asked them to.
Quite happy with the success of their first run, they split up and went to their respective homes for some well earned rest, only to awake to a summons to an italian restaurnt in a slightly nicer area of town.

When they arrived around lunch time, they were shown in. They noticed quite a few burly looking men in suits around. However they were ushered to an ancient looking man of questionable health eating a steak. He gestured them to take a seat and order something for themself.
“Good day gentlemen. I hear that yesterday you were quite successful in stealing something from us.”
In that moment jace finally got an answer via text from Miri: “One of ours”.

Notes

They got 2 Karma and 5k Nuyen each.

Thoughts

It is nice to play Shadowrun again. We decided to go with 4th edtion, with some houserules that need to be properly hammered out.
Of the players one is new, and one played DnD in the past, while my wife has already played quite a bit of Shadowrun with me in the past.
It is also I think my first try to completely design the campaign by myself. While I had run self designed adventures or freely strung various bought adventures together to a kind of campaign, this is the first time, that I plan to actually design the complete campaign with all (or at least most) of the runs in it. This will be an interesting challange, especially since I am also more busy than I had been when I run Shadowrun in the past. However, I am looking forward to it. Everyone seems to be quite motivated, and so I can’t wait to continue.

Syndicate playballs - Playing Shadowrun

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Team

Discord, Ork Adept
Jace, Elf Streetsam
Romeo, Elf Face/Decker
Hunt0rKill0r69, Decker/Rigger Support (NPC)

The Plot

Just as the friendly old gentlman opposite of them says “Good day gentlemen. I hear that yesterday you were quite successful in stealing something from us.”, they realize that they are dealing with the Mob. Jace, with a bit more insight into this specific syndicate knows that the person sitting opposite of them is none other than Al Cavalieri himself, consigliere of the Donna O’Malley, maybe the most feared man in the Seattle Mafia.
Calmly Al Cavalieri cut another bite of his steak and chewed it slowly and considered while watching them. Hard as they tried they were not able to read the man. Too many soldati around to try anything, or even to just get away.
This kind of environment however seemed to be exactly what Romeo was born for. Suits around him, and a powerful man opposite of him, he started into empty pleasantries and sincere apologies about this unhappy misunderstanding. Nobody’s fault of course. Will never happen again. Just like Romeo had seen his parents do at some informal business dinners with unhappy clients.
And even though they still could not read the man, Al Cavaliere seemed to accept it. Changing from just polite to almost friendly [1].
“Yes, of course. Misunderstandings happen.” Gesturing with another piece of steak already on the fork, “I heard that you did try to do your due diligence, but were a bit too late and could not wait for the confirmation. Such a pity. Well, no harm, no foul, eh? The crate was neither particularly important nor valuable. But now I assume, we do have a common enemy, don’t we?”
Looking at the confusion of the team he continued while slowly and carefully halving one of the brussel sprouts on his plate. “Didn’t you know that we were tipped of about your attempt? It is admirable how successful you were despite the fact that you were just the distraction. Of course it helped that the other team with the real target acted prematurely, so that the extra security did not get to you in time.”
“Ah, that was the explosion nearby.” Discord and Jace shot each other a quick glance. Being hired as distraction is fine, if you know about it and can plan accordingly. But being used like that? Even though they did get the payment, it did not sit right.
“So, if we get back the shipment to you, we can forget about our little misunderstanding?” Romeo was still all smooth talk and damage control.
“I would certainly see it that way, yes.” “How about the other runner team? Should they receive a message?” Mr. Cavalieri thoughtfully and carefully chewed and swallowed, before answering: “No, they did intentionally steal from us. They require a more… ah.. personal approach. We will take care of them ourself.” “And if we just happen to run into them? Should we at least deliver them to you?” “Hm, yes, I think a delivery - alive and mostly unharmed, mind you - could be accepted as appropriate. Now. About what you should get back: To our knowledge the same Johnson that hired you hired the other group as well. And he seems to be operating out of northern Puyalup. Belonging to our less friendly rivals out of Russia, you see? While the other team did not aquire there whole target, because of their rushed approach, they did get a crate full of high quality cyberdecks.”
“Wait, what? Cyberdecks?” Carefully cutting the next bite from the medium rare steak: “Yes, cyberdecks. 40 pieces. And especially the Vory do not need better matrix gear. They are annoying enough as it is. It would rather be time that we ourself started to increase our presence in this area. But I digress. Do you have any further questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, you could have a table, enjoy your meal and make plans. The food is on the house.”
Thus released the team let themselves be guided to a table in a different corner and started planning the run. It was clear to them - especially to Jace - that success was crucial. And so they started gathering what they knew. It seemed to them, that the best place to start would be to look into the other warehouse that had been attacked and try to retrace the steps of the other team. So they sent Romeo over to the consingliere once more, with the request to access that place and have a look around.
“Of course, I would have thought that you would look into your Johnson, since I would expect, that the merchandise had been handed over by now. But you did manage to get the crate of weapons, even though you were betrayed, so you seem to know what you are doing.” “Ah, so this is why they were on to us so quickly! I was wondering about that!” Romeo exclaimed. It seemed that while he was a rather smooth talker, he was not the quickest in the uptake, oblivious as he was. Cavalieri signed one of the people around to hand him some paper and took out a nice looking fountain pen from the inside of his jacket. He jotted down a few lines, before signing for an envelope as well. While he was sealing it in, Discord remarked about the nice sounding fountain pen. While the consingleri was slightly confused by this unusual compliment, he still acknowledged it and handed the envelope over to Romeo: “Here, give this to the men at the warehouse. This should avoid any misunderstandings and insure cooperation.”
Such equipped the team finished their meals, with Discord receiving the meat from Jace who had, not realizing that the steak here was real, ordered the same as the consingleri had, and then headed off.

On the way to the warehouse Discord contacted Harvey again. Because of the mess caused by the Johnson he [[connected]], he promised to expedite the research into this Johnson now. With the additional information the team got from the Mafia, the results should not keep them waiting too long.
In the mean time Jace asked Miri to meet in the evening, and even though he saw that she started to type an answer nothing came. The 3 bouncing dots appeared several times, before finally vanishing for good. Might have something to do with the fact that Jace still needed to square things with her Family first. And since it already was slightly after noon, it seemed rather unlikely, that that would be possible before that evening. And, to be completely frank, she also was rather surprised that he was in a condition to ask something like that. The meeting between the team and “Uncle” Al Cavalieri had gone much better than anyone would have expected.
Arriving at the warehouse, one of the first things they noticed, was the hole in one of the walls, and people busily running around already patching things up and making sure everything was alright with the inventory. Getting closer, they were quickly intercepted by one of the people there. Worker or Security was hard to tell. At a closer look this seemed the case for many of the people around. Apparently they were currently not taking any chances.
Producing the letter however, caused the suspicious man to quickly run into the building. Out came a rather burly human - size and muscle mass somewhere between your average orc and troll, and definitely not on the typical side for humans. He already had the letter unfolded and was all friendly and helpful, in a gruff sort of way.
When questioned he willingly described the incident. The team had spiked the security system, rolled up, blasted the way in, and were repelled fairly quickly, since security was just geared up and about to leave to respond to an incident a flew blocks away.
Next he took them to see the spider, a wiry dwarf who still complained about a splitting headache because of the system spike. But he pulled up the footage of the team fleeing, since he had had everything back up and running by then.

Hunt0rKill0r69 was just explaining how difficult it was to track a vehicle in such a case, when Discord heard back from Harvey. He had found out that the Johnson was called Kristoff Willczeck and even had the adress of the bar in northern Puyalup that he used as a base. Although bar might not be the right word for it, since nobody who was not Vory went there without getting into trouble. The area around was run down and dangerous as well.
Not wasting any time, they sped up and arrived outside the place in the early evening. Harvey had not been kidding. Most of the Windows of the surrounding buildings were either broken or boarded up, and the streets were deserted, with the exception of some derelict cars with everything usable stripped out.
The notable exception was the place they were here to find. Here the opaque windows showed lights behind, and some vehicles around seemed to be in usable condition. Hunt0rKill0r69 informed the rest of the team, that there were few signals in the matrix around, but absolutely nothing from the bar. A wireless dead zone. One more reason for him to NOT leave the car here.
Romeo took out a fly-spy to investigate, and when two people stepped out to smoke, they had the chance to send it in with them. However, as soon as the door closed behind them, they lost the signal to the little drone. Only when the next pair of goons stepped out, they got a glimpse of the internal layout. At least of the areas that the drone had been able to access. And one of the things they found, was a backdoor in a narrow side alley.
They got close to it and Romeo was able to open the mag-lock and then cracking it after establishing a physical connection. He also forced it to lock again while to door was open, to keep it slightly ajar for continued communication with Hunt0rKill0r69 and to ensure the possibility of a rapid exit. One of the things the flyspy had observed were a group of 8 people - all armed - in the main room of the bar. So the possibility for a rapid exit did seem useful.
One person the fly-spy was not able to find in the group though was Kristoff Wilczeck. They were hoping to either find him or the merchandise directly in one of the rooms the drone was not able to access.
The first door they came across seemed rather robust and featured fake wooden paneling. Still, rather nice for this place. Once again Romeo did his thing with the mag-lock, but the actual opening they left up to Discord, who probably could do it the most silently. Only a small crack though, to send in the fly-spy first.
The plan was sound, but on the image transmitted by the fly-spy they saw Wilczeck grabbing something from below his desk and ducking into cover behind it. Since the desk had been facing the door all the silence had not helped. The opening simply had been seen. Instead of waiting until the reinforcements arrived from the bar area, they decided to rush in and to try to silence him - ideally before he was able to call for help, if it was not already too late.
Discored rushed in and tried to silence him with, well, the Silencer. In the last moment Wilczeck was able to duck to the side and the monstrous tuning fork only grazed him and hit the ground. In response he got a long burst that did hit. And even for a tough orc like him this did hurt. Jace covered from the door and now also tried take out Wilczek with a short burst, and even though he did hit, the human seemed to be completely unaffected by the bullets hitting him.
With all the noise keeping a low profile was out of the question, so Romeo threw a smoke grenade to the hallway leading to the bar and covered that approach from cover behind a corner.
Firing up the synaptic booster, Jace took another shot at Wilcek. This time luck was with him, and the 6 bullets from the burst perforated Wilczecks body. Being even tougher than he looked, Wilczeck did not go down yet. Discord sped up by the magic coursing through his veins took another swing, but once again Wilczeck was able to dodge. Wilczeck with active wired reflexes as well, decided that his only hope to get out of this was to change the math and get to his friends. He took off and shot a full burst at Jace on the way, wounding him slightly. He managed to get down the corridor and through the smoke towards the bar area.

Luck was with them this time, because the box with the cyberdecks was stored in this office. Apparently Wilczeck had wanted to keep an eye on it, or just assumed that this room would have been the safest.
They quickly checked, saw that only one deck was missing. 39 out of 40 seemed good enough. And as a bonus they grabbed the data pad that Wilczeck had been working on before they interrupted him and then they got out of there as fast as possible.

They went straight back to Al Cavalieri, handing over the cyberdecks. Happy with the quick delivery, and very happy with the addition of the datapad the consingleri did not just formally forgive them the infraction at the warehouse, but decided to even compensate them as well. So he gave Romeo one of the cyberdecks, and the 5k Nuyen to everybody else. [2]

# Notes [1] Romeo managed a really good roll here - against a rather bad one from Al Cavaliere. I mean Really good.
[2] I had mentioned before, that Romeo had been very successful in smooching up to him, hadn't I?

They also got 2 Karma each, to a total of 4 now.

Thoughts

It was once again a rather fun session. I like that they tried to get around the violence, and would have preferred to just knock out their main antagonist rather than go in already guns blazing. Although this was partly because they thought they still needed him to find out where he took the crate, and partly because they were worried about the goons in the bar area.
It is also nice to see the new players getting to grips with the system and starting to learn how to optimize the characters a bit. While Discord might seem to have accomplished not so much, this was only because I used the prime runner’s edge rather freely in defense, since I think one hit with the silencer probably would have silenced him quite effectively and ended that confrontation there. I hope this did not hamper the enjoyment of this player too much, but I am sure that he will have enough chance to use the Silencer effectively in the next sessions. It is now October, and I plan to try to lean into the spooky factor a bit.
I used a map from Miscellanea maps on patreon for the Vory bar, cut up, so that they could only see what they had discovered so far. This got rather good feedback, so I will try to do that in the future as well. For now, I did not post the map here as well as a reference, although I might reconsider that, after rereading the copyright stuff on their page.
Since Romeo’s player gravitates more towards hacking, it is about time for me to write up the homebrew hacking rules that I intend to use. So far it was no problem, because Hunt0rKill0r69’s skills ebb and flow with the need of drama. So he will recede to being just a rigger, once Romeo takes over as decker.
I intend the rules to be a mash-up of 4th and 5th edition. No limits, since those are the reason that we decided to use 4th edition. I think using Attribute+skill as in 5th edition would be better than leaving out the attribute as in 4th edition. A check then can only be accomplished with the appropriate program for it installed. The programs also should give some bonus dice based on their rating. And then I would think that the rating of the program is caped by the attributes of the cyberdeck.

Also my wife (the player of Jace) has started to blog about the campaign as well. She writes from the perspective of Jace, and I think her writing is more enjoyable to read than mine. Has more literary flair. The post for this run can be found here.

Time to chill out - Playing Shadowrun

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Team

Discord, Ork Adept
Jace, Elf Streetsam
Romeo, Elf Face/Decker
Hunt0rKill0r69, Decker/Rigger Support (NPC)

The Plot

After successful averting the displeasure of the Seattle Mafia the team had a bit of time to enjoy some well earned rest. Rest being relative in this case. Jace immediately went out even before his wounds were starting to heal, while Discord quickly looked into acquiring some drugs.
After just enough rest to let the wounds from the previous run heal, Discord and Jace decided to visit the VASRL site were Discord had his awakening and had found an old school book of Jace’s (Yes, a physical book. Jace’s mother was a bit weird in this regard).

The site still looked the same. Like an old abandoned residential building, decrepit and uninviting. Stepping through the broken doorway they saw a few rats scurrying away. Down the broad stairway into the cellar, which was also the path for them to take. Getting down they saw more rats rustling about in the wide hallways. But to them, those rats seemed… slightly more organized? They continued on, the rats now, although keeping their distance, surrounding them. And Discord noticed that there was a flow to their squeaks. It seemed like, when one of rats closest to them squeaked, the squeak got repeated further away, and then again even further away. An shortly after a different series of squeaks flowed back.
By now they had reached the heart of the former black site. The “echo chamber”, how Discord liked to call it. Standing in the centre of the large dome structure, the rats in loose circles around them, just 2 to 4 metres away.
The rat situation started to freak them out a bit, and so they decided to better head out again. However, the rats seemed a bit reluctant to make room for them on the way back. Being in the echo chamber, Discord thought that banging the Silencer on the floor (only lightly as to not injure Jace) was a good idea. And the rats jumped back and scuttled away at first. But then a series of more angry squeaks came, and the rats flowed back. Now the rats started to circle them, and more rats flowed out of the holes in the darkness, joining the stream of fur, teeth and angry squeaks around them. And from the depths Discord heard even more rats coming. Some of them quite a bit larger and heavier then the rest.
The stream of rats by now too thick to just walk through without stepping on them, they jump over them and start to run. And the rats gave chase. Only when Jace and Discord stepped out into the rare afternoon sun of the usually rainy Seattle, the rats stopped in the shadows. Their beady eyes closely watching them. And 4 large, hairless rat creatures joined the swarm, their eyes seemingly glowing red out of the shadows.
Even though they did not actually touch any of the creatures, both had the desire to take a long and thorough shower. On the way home, Jace did a quick matrix search and found out, that rat poison should help also against the devil rats (what they assumed, those larger rat-like animals were). He even found a poison spray can, that was completely harmless for meta-humans, but according to his research should do wonders to get rid of the devil rat infestation, for when they return to the VASRL black site.[1]

To distract themselves a bit, the contacted Romeo and decided to hit one of his regular clubs: Club 42.
At first Discord unsuccessfully tried to get the attention from a group of women in there, so Romeo moved in. With his nonchalant, bored attitude, he quickly gathered the interest of a group of four friends: Two rather attractive young women, and there rather less attractive friends. As one of the attractive ones was an Orc, Discord was even more motivated and finally managed to entice her to leave the party with him. Jace sought distraction with the other attractive woman, a human. Since Romeo was quite content in chatting with the two friends before heading back home alone (to the disappointment of the 2 young ladies), this worked out to the satisfaction of everyone. With the notable exception of the two hopeful young ladies who were bewildered that Romeo did not get into the taxi with them, after he so gallantly ordered it for them, but rather sent them off home alone, while he got into a different one.

But it was probably a good thing, that the night ended reasonably early for him, since in the morning he got a call by his family lawyer. However, for once, it was not that Romeo was in trouble, but rather that Chris van Sar had a use for Romeo’s less legal talents. Or rather he had a different client who could make use of Romeo or his contacts.
This was not explained via the phone though, since van Sar did not want to leave a possible digital trace of being involved in anything that is not acceptable by the bar. But when meeting for a coffee, he elaborated also that the client was a gentleman from over seas going by the name of Andrea DeSantis.
Quickly Romeo agreed to meet this gentleman at the earliest convenience, which in this case would be at that evening. He shared the news with Discord and Jace, who were happy to have another job lined up.

The meeting took place in a nice cafe in Downtown. Discord and Jace were for a moment confused by the the graying gentleman with a bit of a gathering bulk around the midriff who greeted Romeo as family. But once they were showed in and were introduced to Andrea deSantis, things became a bit clearer. Chris van Sar quickly left the group alone with deSantis, if only to keep the option of plausible deniability.
Andrea deSantis turned out to be a fit human man, with the mediterranean flair that only the Italians seem to be able to truly master. The top buttons of his shirt were open, and below one could glimpse the golden chain of some sort of necklace. His temples were starting to gray, and the first wrinkles that were starting to form in his face told of a man who liked to smile. Even though the clothing was of a certain style and flair, it was deceptively simple.
He told them in a thick Italian accent that he came to Seattle because he wanted to acquire a rare, old book, but the seller was in a rather unsavory part of town so that he did not want to go there alone. After them agreeing to the job, he laid out the details: He found an online advertisement of someone selling a particularly old copy of the sixth book of Moses, from somewhere between 1500 and 1600. However, when he had tried to contact the person selling it, he had not been able to reach anyone. So now he planned to visit the address in the hope to acquire the book.
The offer of a total of 8000 Nuyen was not too much, but Romeo managed to haggle him up to pay 4000 up front, and to double the price in case there are troubles. “Hazard Pay”. Andrea deSantis also was willing to pay them the sales price of the book, in case the seller was not willing to sell, for an… alternative acquiring process.
Since it was already getting rather late that day and the address was in a part of the Redmond Barrens that Knight Errant usually does not visit, they suggested to go the next day, to be there at a more civilized, afternoon hour.
Discord also contacted his old Gang leader and asked about the area. It was not gang controlled though, since it was under the protection of a group of Rastafarians.
Because of the location, the team had to bring Hunt0rKill0r69 once again. Or rather they asked him to bring them, since they still had no car among them. And for an equal share of the payment he gladly agreed.

And so they met again on September 8th, late morning, as to arrive at the sellers place during the early afternoon. The drive was rather uneventfull, even though the Barrens were rather desolate. It clearly was not an area where one should leave their car parked unprotected, and where life was hard an often unnaturally short. The address turned out to be a bar called “Marley’s Hut”, and the area around it, while desolate, was a bit nicer than a lot of what they had driven through to get there.
Stepping out of the vehicle (Hunt0rKill0r69 stayed in the car, Andrea deSantis however joined them), they immediately noticed a distinct, sweet smell hanging in the air. Stepping through the doors of the bar, the smell intensified significantly and they were bathed into rhythmic reggae music. Inside, four pool tables were standing around in a haphazard way. Around the edges of the room a few tables with benches were placed, although a few sported stools instead.
Only the table next to the bar had three patrons, all of them chatting away with each other and the barkeeper.
Quite unusual for this kind of area, nobody seemed to take particular notice of the reasonably well armed group coming in. Only when Discord ordered a joint for himself, the barkeeper seemed to take notice, and very willingly supplied one. After letting Romeo have a hit as well, Discord joined the group at the table and started to chat with them. Either he was rather good in blending in, or the deepweed already took effect. Even though he did not have dreadlocks, and was of a lighter complexion, he quite neatly slotted in. Romeo, not the quickest at the best of times, was standing around and was completely focused on the experiences provided by this new drug.
Finally Jace had enough. When the Face of the group got high instead of doing his job, then it was up to the street sam to talk as well. So he straight up asked the barkeeper - who introduced himself as Jahkai - about the book. At first he did not remember any books, but when Jace showed him the advertisement, his memory came back. “Sold it weeks ago. No longer have it. But Fam, it was an evil book. Evil. Not a true sixth book of Moses, no. Not a holy book. Evil. By the devil. You don’t want to have that book, Fam, no. I am glad, that I no longer have that evil book under my roof.” However, as fascinating the stoned ramblings about the evil book were, he had no idea who the buyers were. And while he was happy to let them look at the security footage in theory, in practice he had forgotten the password to the system.
So, Romeo, stoned as he was, tried to hack the system and reset the password for the nice, dreadlocked gentleman, while Discord had started to loose a round of pool against Ini, the human female of the patrons. The hack was relatively easy, and in the footage two weeks back, a black sedan with “TFS” and some logo on the side did visit the premises. Out got 3 humans in well fitting black suits, and shortly later got back into the car with the book. A short matrix search revealed, that the logo belonged to Taurus Future Solutions, a consulting firm. Since this probably was part of his expertise as lawyer, Romeo asked van Sar about that company. Apparently they are consulting company focused on consulting about astral security. And they are also known to buy up some artifacts, when they can. They are however not known for selling or otherwise getting rid of those artifacts again.
Jahkai was quite thankful to have access to his security system again, even though choosing a new login for him proofed another small challenge. Not wanting to be in the barrens when the sun went down, the Team soon left again for downtown, where the offices of TFS were located as well and started to discuss plans on how to acquire the Book now. Maybe some shopping was in order.

Notes

[1] Jace spectacularly failed his matrix search roll. With just one die he rolled a single 1. I am looking forward to where this leads.
BTW.: The player knows that he fumbled that roll, but separating player and character knowledge is no problem in this case. So Jace will walk in proudly with a can of poison spray at the next encounter with devil rats. I am looking forward to that. The player also already is looking forward to it. Or maybe rather dreading it?
No Karma this time, since the run is still ongoing.

Thoughts

This run was quite relaxed. Even though it was the first part of the Halloween run. Not too creepy yet. I did like how the group took to roleplay this time again, and how they interacted with the world. Unfortunately I did not find time to do the write up in time, so I really was not able to do the evening justice. Especially the time in Marley’s Hut was quite fun. How Discord and Romeo “blended in”, and how Jace started to get frustrated with them was quite nice to watch. Also the inter character play felt like it started to get a bit deeper than in the first session. I also liked that when they noticed that the plot was not (yet) coming to them, Jace and Discord quickly decided to do their own investigations. And apparently it’s worrisome when rats are slightly more organized than usual?
Once again, my wife made a brilliant write up from the point of view of Jace, which can be found here.

Inside TFS - Playing Shadowrun

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Team

Discord, Ork Adept
Jace, Elf Streetsam
Romeo, Elf Face/Decker
Hunt0rKill0r69, Decker/Rigger Support (NPC)

The Plot

Since the target now was a high profile company, in a respectable part of town, the team decided to smart up a bit. Jace bought himself a nice suit and ordered some form fitting body armor as well that could go under it. Discord, on the more budget conscious side thought that just playing the bodyguard should be fine. So his armored jacket should be enough.
Based on the information that Taurus Future Solutions was specialized in consulting about astral security, they also felt that it was prudent to equip themselves to better counter astral threat. Who knows what would be in store for them.
However, without a mage in the group their options were limited, and the only thing they got in the end were a few cans of FAB I spay. Acquired over 2 different connections, since on such short notice, nobody really had enough stock. And since spirits are notorious for being difficult to deal with without a mage, they also bought some ex-ex ammunition. The logic being, that if normal ammo might not be enough, explosive ammo would be better. And extra explosive ammo even more so.
To get access to the book, they thought that it might help to have an arcane tomb themselves to peak TFS’s interest. Jace went to a flea market close to his apartment while Romeo looked into his families library. While Jace acquired a cloth bound book with unreadable script (White Nights by Dostoevsky in the original Russian), Romeo was even more successful. Much to his surprise, they had a small section of grimoires, one of them a printed 1880 edition of The sixth and seventh books of Moses, which, while of course much newer than the book they planned to acquire, definitely should fit the bill. Borrowing it was just a matter of convincing his father that he finally took some interest in literature, and might consider a career in this field. Overjoyed that the wayward son finally had a interest in something that with enough squinting could be seen as a respectable career, this valuable tomb was Romeo’s. For a while. Of course, it should be returned back to the families library, as soon as it was no longer needed.
Calling ahead, Romeo was able to schedule a meeting the next day, via a most helpful agent. First annoyed not getting a real metahuman on the line, it soon proofed to be good luck, since the scheduling could only be described as bumpy at best. Even a slightly higher quality agent program would have become suspicious by the whispering in the background and the rather unprofessional “Yes, yes, of course. A consultiation is what we want, since those are the services you offer, ahem” and so on. But as it were, they got an appointment on Saturday, September 10th at 9 a.m.. To the dismay of Jace, who was of the strong opinion that people ought to be sleeping at that time of day. If they already had returned home, that is.

Arriving at the location, they found a modern 7 story building, all gleaming glass in the gray, rainy weather. Driving past the full employee parking lots to the designated guest parking, right next to executive parking and the entrance. They seemed to be the only visitors, which, to some members of the team was understandable enough, considering the hour of the day and the day of the week.
When they stepped to the corporate double glass doors to enter, they found it locked. Also the 3-4 person reception counter was unmanned, and ringing the doorbell did nothing. Calling again, they reached the same friendly agent program who reconfirmed their appointment, and was happy, that they apparently were right on time. The reception is always manned, so they should be let in as soon as they arrive.
Seeing that something was off, they decided to change their approach. Signore deSantis should wait in the car with Hunt0rKill0r69, Jace changed his suit jacket for his normal armored jacket and Romeo borrowed Discords body armor bag and slipped it over his head. He kept the book though, since by now he found it quite interesting and continued to flick through the pages whenever there was a moment to do so.

Getting to the door again, Romeo quickly hacked it and let them in. Inside it was quiet, with the exception of the soft hum of the electronics and the continuous pitter-patter of the rain against the glass front. The reception was open and airy, and if the sun were out it also would be bright and friendly. With the constant rain and gloomy weather, the inside also seemed rather subdued as well. There were panels with moss on the walls, and lillies planted in pots all around. Discord, reactivating his focus and Adept powers (He had suppressed both while entering in case of a ward), found that the mana level seemed to be lower in here, and that he was not able to access the full range of his powers. And when he swung the silencer to close to one of the moss panels, the moss seemed to faintly glow in response to it.
Exploring the first floor, the did not find a trace of a single soul. Going to the elevators, they checked out the available floors, and found that in addition to the 7 floors above ground, the was a single basement. Not sure if valuable artifacts are more likely to be stored in the top floor with the executive suit, or in the basement in some safe, they decided to go down first.
The basement was less polished than the first floor and seemed to be containing mostly storage and the server rooms. They still made a full sweep, but came up empty. However, Discord did notice, that down here there seemed to be no mana ebb.
They went to the top floor next. On the way up in the elevator, the mana levels went down the further they went up. Reaching the top floor, Discord was only able to access half of his magical abilities.
Not that it was necessary, because this floor was completely deserted as well. The even more ubiquitous lilies seemed to be planted in all areas that could be reserved for decorations [1]. At first they also could find nothing strange here - other than the eerie silence. But then they notice that one of the secretary desks in front of one of the executive offices was left less orderly. The interface devices had been pulled off the desk and were dangling down on their wired connection, as if someone had tried to keep a hold of something. The chair was slightly turned an pushed back as well. Inspecting it closer, they found a pattern of very fine dark spots on the upper half of the chair. From a thin spray or almost mist of some liquid.
Getting tenser they continue to investigate the floor, everyone keeping their weapons ready. Except for Romeo who still keeps reading into the book whenever he does not need to focus on following the others.
Checking out the toilets, they found that someone had left a shoe behind in a cubicle, and a similar spray of fine dark droplets decorated the inside. Here on the while background the reddish brown colour was easier to identify.
Finally they went to the service corridor including the service elevator - tucked away, so that valued customers and the upper echelon did not have to ride the same elevator as cleaning stuff. Strangely this elevator was locked and required authorization to be called. Spoofing it proofed to be not a big difficulty for Romeo though, and soon the elevator arrived. The inside however did let them pause.

The floor and the walls were covered in smears of blood. Hands seemed to have tried to grasp something, anything to hold on, only resulting in leaving another bloody trace on the slippery surfaces. Nobody wanted to get in the elevator. But the panel with the floor selection included, in addition to B1-F7 as the others, the options for B6 and B7. A hidden basement might be the best place to hide an artifact, even if they really were not keen on finding out what else might be hidden down there.

Riding down directly to B7, the doors open to a sterile, wide, white-ish hallway, two doors with small windows on eye level on either side, and one larger double door on the far end. The cold fluorescent lighting increasing the contrast of the bloody drag-marks down the center of the hallway.
While the mana levels here were at the normal high, the astral space did not feel right. Somehow sticky, and hindering Discord. [2]
Checking through the windows of the doors on the side the found that each of those doors led down another short hallway with four similar doors on each side, keypads visible. Wanting to spend as little time down here as possible, they followed the blood on the floor down the central path.
Carefully moving forward, they assumed a triangle formation with Discord at the point. He carefully opened the door, when Romeo and Jace were hit in the back with short burst of automatic fire.
Behind them two automated turrets with SMGs had popped out of the ceiling and opened fire. They quickly stepped through the door and closed it behind them, leaving the turrets for the way back. Behind the door was another, featureless hallway stretching out for 20 metres, with a similar door on the end.
Reaching the next door, Romeo tried to scan for further automated defenses but found nothing. However, when they opened the door, they did activate some security mechanism again. In the centre of the 10m hallway ahead, and in the centre of the hallway they had just walked throught hidden doors slid up and allowed armored drones to roll in. From behind two lighter Nissan Doberman, in the front two heavy Steel Lynx. All armed with SMGs. Deciding to divide and conquer, they closed the door again and took care of the Dobermans first. One one disabled with 2 controlled short bursts by Jace, the other smashed to pieces with a single blow from Discords silencer.
Now knowing what to look for, Romeo tried to find the Steel Lynx on the other side, and managed to detect them this time. He managed to spoof commands to power both of them down.
Opening the door again and continuing forward, they noticed that the next double door was different. It was made out of heavy, raw steel, etched with arcane symbols on the whole surface. Getting close to it, the quality of the astral space got more sticky and slippery at the same time [3]. This door also had a heavy steel bar, that could be used to bar it from this side.
This time they opened the door only enough to send the fly spy through and checked out what was on the other side. No more automated defenses were triggered by this, but the area behind the door did not match the sterile hallway. Instead of smooth, white, plastic-like surface there were hewn stone blocks, instead of cold, fluorescent light, the flickering of torches.
Watching the feed, they felt their skin creep. After a very short tunnel, the area opened up into a cavernous hall, in the center a large alter-like stone of one and a half by 3 metres. On the far side of the altar a book was propped open. Someone was sitting on the floor on the far side of the altar and leaning on it with his back. 5 trenches led away from the central, slightly elevated platform on which the altar was placed, running into small, sewer like tunnels. They were spaced in regular angles, if you would see the approach from the door as an imaginary 6th trench. And those trenches were filled with a slowly sloshing viscous dark red liquid. All around the walls of the hall mangled bodies were piled up. They were casually strewn about as if they had been disliked ragdolls. Taking a closer look at the altar, they saw that the man leaning there seemed to be just unconscious, and they also identified him as one of those who got the book from Marley’s hut.
Observing this they decided to make use of the disabled Steel Lynx drones. After briefly considering if it was possible to rewire them into their own service (to risky with the available skills), they left them disabled to use one as a door stop and the other as mobile cover.
Creeping in slowly, meter by meter, Jace quickly lost his patience and decided to just make a dash for the book and be out of this place as quickly as possible. When he was about half way to the altar he got the attention of… something. Above the altar a whirling circlone of blood, flesh and pieces of bone manifested. Feeding its grotesque vaguely humanoid form from the blood trenches around, strings of blood were running into it, dripping, like pieces of a giant cobweb in the morning mist.
With a careless flick of the blood spirits finger, one of the mangled corpses came flying and smashed Jace to the ground. Even with his synaptic booster he had not been quick enough to doge this gruesome projectile.
It then fixed its gaze on Discord who experienced extreme pain and started to bleed out of his nose, ears and eyes, as various blood vessels in his body started bursting.
Jace got up and released a long burst at that thing, but it simply made room for most of the bullets to pass through its body, and the one that hit and exploded did not seem to faze it at all.
Discord rushed in and swung at it with his silencer. This seemed to do some actual damage, although not a terrible amount.
Romeo, high on Cram, decided to use Jace’s and Discord’s struggle as a distraction and get the book, running around the perimeter and jumping over the first of the blood trenches in an attempt to get behind the blood spirit, which continued to half float over the altar in all its 3m tall dripping gruesomeness.
The blood spirit now also focused on Discord, since he seemed to be the biggest threat and swatted him with a backhand, hard enough to topple him over and almost send him into unconsiousness and close to deaths door. [4]
Jace now aimed more carfully and released another burst. This time the bullets hit and the explosions sent chunks of meat flying in a mist of blood. He seemed to have managed to get its attention away from Discord.
Discord, barely upright tries to hit it again, and after missing, started to run back, while Romeo was grabbing the book and trying to get back the same way as he came.
With the gaze of sprit fixed on him, Jace also now experienced the agonizing pain of blood vessels bursting all throughout his body. His bleeding was less severe than that of Discord though.
Jace tried to revenge himself, but this time the bullets did not find their mark.
As more blood vessels were bursting in Jace’s body all of them were heading out the door, with a last burst at the spirit as a goodbye. While running they notice that the whole bloody mass seemed to be vanishing into thin air.
Reaching the sterile white hallway, they however qickly found out where it had gone. It re-materialized at the end of the hallway, blocking their escape. While slightly smaller then in the chamber, it still was menacing enough for Jace to immediately open fire again, wounding it further. Discord, risking his life, rushed closed and managed to hit it with a desperate swing of the silencer. Having a bit more access to his power back helped to give the strike enough force to effectively explode the spirit and shower him and the hallway in blood.
Remembering the man in the center of the hall, they sent the fly-spy back in, but noticed that he had vanished. Slightly worried that this might not have been the last of the horror, they got the drone back and barred the steel door behind them.
Taking one of the Steel Lynx with them, they got back to the car, to the worried faces of Andrea deSantis and Hunt0rKill0r69.
deSantis was quite happy to pay them the agreed upon hazard pay and the original book price as well.

Notes

[1] Of course a company focussed on cosulting about magical security had some of that itself. The mana ebb was caused by the “Haven Lilies”, to the maximum of 3 on the executive floor.
[2] A level 1 Domain zone.
[3] A level 2 Domain zone.
[4] After this hit Discord had only 1 physical hit point remaining.
For this and the last session combined the got a total of 5 Karma and 11500Nuyen each.
Total: 9 Karma, 21.5k NY

Thoughts

The conclusion of the halloween run was fun to, well, run. I am not so experienced with horror, but my players seemed to like it. The tone remained mostly serious and creepy, which, as many game masters know, can be a challenge.
It was also nice seeing them actually fearing for their life. I mean their characters life. But, I am a gentle GM, and therefore I did not play the blood spirit as smart as I could have. However, sending a force 5 spirit in a domain 2 zone (making it effectively force 7, and costing Discord 1/3 of his adept powers) against them had been a challenge anyways.
The next sessions should be a bit more lighthearted again.
Once again, my wife made a brilliant write up from the point of view of Jace, which can be found here.

Healing up - Playing Shadowrun

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Team

Discord, Ork Adept
Jace, Elf Streetsam
Romeo, Elf Face/Decker
Hunt0RKill0r69, Elf Decker/Rigger Support (NPC)

The L0g

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720910---1138---

Damn this was a mess. If I hadn’t checked that the feed was secure myself I would not have believed what the FlySpy transmitted.

But they DID look hella smooth when they walked out of that building, blood dripping of them. Discord with this strange weapon of his casually rested on his meaty shoulder, Jace with his long sword back on his back and the SMG peaking through his open coat the definition of cool. Romeo, seemingly completely elsewhere with his mind already. Could have been the end sequence of an episode, no of a whole season of “Resurrection Breach”. They were only missing the cute girl who is actually the most badass of them all with the grenade launcher. Dang, I should send Seri0zBizznezz some of the footage, that would shut him up about that Anime being “over the top” and “seri0zly unrealistic”. Pah! Just the walking out part would be enough, no need to spill about the job to civilians. Nah. But I will definitely keep it as inspiration.

And now they are sitting in my nice car and staining everything with the blood they are covered in. Jace and Discord really do seem quite worse for wear. And Romeo is lighting another joint. Because of what they have just been through, I let it slide. Because of the blood my lovely van will need a deep clean anyways. I new why I use smooth faux leather on all seats other than my on…

On a brighter note: Payday! While I found it a bit strange to bring the Johnson to the run, it did mean a rather quick payment. After some back and forth about what the Johnson plans with the book, they handed it over. And of course this Andrea deSantis did not give a clear answer. But “he will make sure it is safe”. Sure. But hey, the money was good. And fast. The run also was quite tame and safe - well for me. Next I will bring the Johnson to the Airport and then we are off to get some medical support for Jace and Discord. Looking forward to meeting the pretty nurse Jace keeps yapping about.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720910---1204---

Johnson delivered to the airport. Off to see the pretty nurse. No waiting in the car for me this time, I want to see what all the fuzz is about. Should be a fairly safe part of the sprawl, so no problems there.

//---Hunt0rL0G---20720910---1416---

Hehe, cute!

Jace seemed not only surprised that I wanted to come along, but also a bit annoyed. And up in the flat I quickly found out why. Our chum Jace clearly has the hots for his pretty nurse. The nurse was all business, so I could not tell if he was not interested or if he was just better at hiding it. Jace clearly wanted to hide it, but failed miserably. Oh, and that was the other thing. I had thought that Jace was quite the ladies man. With his pretty face and chiseled jaw and all. And with his “hot mafia chick” being true to the description as well. But I guess this Omae is playing both fields.

In any case, the nurse wanted to keep an eye on Discord over the night, and also on Romeo for when his drugs wore off. Jace of course also wanted to stay. But since I had seen what I came here for, and since I was clearly just the fifth wheel on the bicycle I decided to scram once the most serious patching up was done. Off to the garage and to get the Steel Lynx into a faraday cage. Turned off it should transmit jack shit anything anyways, but better safe than sorry.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720910---1535---

The Steel Lynx is safely in its cage. Looking forward to tinkering with it. Guess I should wait for Romeo though, he seems to be a bit of a wizz with electronics. At least he is always opening the doors for the team. Now: burgers, baby!

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720911---1412---

I can’t believe it! I think I need to stick with this team. Those Omaes are off the charts! I mean the stuff thats happening to them. “Resurrection Breach” all over again.

Shortly after getting Romeo home, he called again - the whole team. Something was wrong in his apartment. Stuff got moved about. How he noticed that in that mess, no idea, but he turned out to be right. He pinpointed also a strange signal inside his flat, and when he physically closed in, he was attacked by a freaking weasel! I mean, drek, a honest to god mustelid jumping at him, and he dodging. And, as if that was not crazy enough, that freaking weasel shows up in the matrix as well and also attacks him there. He, being distracted by that gets a bite in his leg, before the thing scampers off under the bed. Next that cracy Omae wants to give it some chips as a peace offering. Someone chimes in, that those things are carnivores, which is why it is not interested in the old potato chip offered.

However, Romeo finds some food - that he apparently had not ordered - that then turned out to be weasel approved. Which… I mean the weasel had a matrix icon and seemed to have eaten a decorative icon of Romeo’s persona. So had that creature not only broken in, but also ordered itself some food? In any case, Romeo decides to just chill out on his bed, watch some trid and befriend that weasel. As I said, that chummer is off the charts.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720911---1414---

Not a weasel. Weasels are apparently quite a bit smaller and have a lighter colour. Maybe a stoat or a marten?

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720911---1533---

I think stoats are also smaller. Might be an american marten or a pacific marten though. I need to look at the colour of his throat and chest bib in more detail when I get the chance. Interesting creatures!

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720917---1839---

The Steel Lynx is now officially ours. Me and Romeo did the ownership change over the week. And of course Romeo did bring is frikkin marten every day as well. Luckily it was not too much trouble. As long as one is careful enough so that it can not nab any shiny icons or chew through any important wires, it is quite cute.

That reminds me. We now have an animal mascot. If we are not the archetypical shadowrunner team that you can see in trids like “Resurrection Breach”…

We only need a whizz team name. What about frikken “Killer Mustelids”? Need to broach it to the rest of the team at the next chance.

Notes

This session was quite short, since I return later from work then expected. And since there was a longer break after the last run, it also took some time to get back into the game.
I also decided to switch the voice from a neutral observer to Hunt0rKill0r69, since it does not terribly matter and it simply is more fun to write. It however misses details such as the paranoia that Romeo developed about the rats from the balck site. Even though he never encountered them - and they played no role in this session at all, he was quite convinced that the happenings in his apartment were done by the rats.

Gang business - Playing Shadowrun

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Team

Discord, Ork Adept
Jace, Elf Streetsam
Romeo, Elf Face/Decker
Hunt0RKill0r69, Elf Decker/Rigger Support (NPC)

The L0g

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720919---1317---

Discord had gotten a call from his old ganger chum Cheeks. So, as usual I pick them up and we went into the barrens. Drek, I hate Redmond. No place that you can leave your van even for a second. Not that Kaori could not take care of herself for a while, but still. I simply would not want to risk finding her completely gutted when I return. And, since this are the Redmond barrens we are talking about, I also don’t want to get completely gutted by some scum when I step out. So, cozy van life for me.

Still, since they don’t mind the FlySpy following them around, and since Romeo never revoked my access to it, I now know that the gang is missing 5 members by now. Snag, Gorel, Nit Pick, Kyle and Dig. Although apparently nobody is actually missing Kyle, they seem almost glad that he is gone. Still disappeared though.
Discords chummer Cheeks seems to be running that gang and suspecting poaching by the Crimson Crush or by the Skraacha.

Do I need to mention how much I adore getting involved in gang business? Why you ask? You know what gangs are known for? Drive by shootings, and shooting up cars. You see what I mean? I mean, Kaori is a tough gal, but still. Can’t be healthy to be dragged into gang violence. Much prefer to be the getaway driver who is never really involved. Just sharing the payday and cleaning blood of the seats from the Sams who don’t mind getting shot up a bit. Or getting their insides torn apart by fragging blood spirits. Drek, no need to return to that again. Focus on the job at hand and to get out of the barrens without even the need for a paint job

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720919---1528---

Drek, this place really is shit. We have now visited the old places of Snag and Gorel. I can’t believe that they actually lived here. Or rather, I am surprised that they managed to survive here for some time. At least I am not surprised that they vanished. Keeping my trap shut though, seems like Discord liked at least those two. And according to him they knew how to take care of themself.
I mean, the place of Gorel at least had a door.

Back to the topic: No trace of those chummers. Seems like Discord is running out of ideas. Next he wants to visit “the black site” for clues. I think thats the place that I already picked him and Jace up once. Something to do with rats? In any case, the name is wiz, so I am stoked to check it it out.

Oh, and we should keep our eyes open for Petey, another chummer of Discords. Apparently some confused grey wandering around the barrens seeing things. But since he keeps wandering, he is not so easy to find.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720919---1651---

What the Drek?
Those fragging rats were fragging terrifing!
So, we go to the “black site”, and it turns out, they call it that, since it is an abandoned, well, black site! How wiz is that? Used to be a hidden sound lab or something.
The entrance is completely hidden. I mean, not hidden hidden. But unassuming. Just like an abandoned residential. Then they walk in, down into the cellar, and here is were is already is starting to get a bit strange, if you pay attention. The staircase into the cellar is wider than usual. Alomst double the width. But, you would miss that, if did not know what to look for. Then below grounds, there is the black site proper. I mean I an almost see Rami from “Ressurection Breach” sneaking in there to extract some scientist. But, when they get down there, the rats are starting.
More and more of those furry critters keep showing up and monitoring them. Yes, monitoring. They kept there distance, and they kept reporting by a communication line of squeeks running into the dark. Creepy as fuck.
But when they reached some dome (for sonic research, according to Discord), is when drek started to get real.
This creepy furry critters set up in a kind of half circle, or maybe rather a half moon shape, watching us (Well, I was the Steel Lynx, while my meat sack was safe and sound in Kaori), with their beady little eyes. And then big hairless rats showed up as well. They squeeked and watched. 6 of the the big ones (Jace called them devil rats, and he and Discord said that in the past there was only one) had now taken position as well. And still all the rats kept squeaking, watching and waiting. Creepy.
This is when Romeo had the bright idea to feed them. He had started to carry some food around for the mustelid of his and threw the rats a piece of meat or something. One of the regular rats picked it up and carried it to one of the devil rats. that one took a sniff and after a moment of hesitation ate it. Now the sqeaking really started.
Finally the big boss showed up. Escorted by more of the devil rats an even bigger rat, completely clad in black fur with a purplish sheen to it and horns on its head marched in. Fragging horns! Since none of us are Crimson from Battle Mage Alpha, we decided to scram. And as we started to make our way out the big black rat vanished. Not ran away, not ducked out of sight. Simply vanished. Seemed to blur in the air for a moment, and gone. I hope it can be clearly seen in the recording.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720919---1657---

Off to a place called “Whiskey at the Crossroads”, and old haunt of Jace. After that I can use a drink as well, but he seems to be more keen on information gathering and sharing. The Whiskey at the Crossroads is a bit of a distance from here, but close enough for Jace to think that they should know about the rat infestation close to their turf. Fair enough.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720919---1733---

For the drink I had to jack out again. Being tethered back to the sack of meat, stumbling around half blind on wobbly feet, really not my favourite. The crisp sensors and solid body and wheels of Kaori and the Steel Lynx are much preferable. But I guess it can not be helped.
In any case, the drink turned out to be, surprise, surprise, a whiskey, and the place an Irish bar. And we found another of Jace’s chummers in there - this “hot mafia chick” of his. And with her the name really fits. Seemed like even though she really is smoking hot with her fiery mane, her temper runs even hotter. Jace knows how to pick his chummers.
We showed Miri - the hot mafia chick - the video, and they also asked her a bit about the missing gangers.
The Mafia will now also keep a look out for the rats, just in case, but did not know nothin about the missing tusks. Or at least that is what Miri claimed.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720919---1912---

Since we are already in the outskirts of the Barrens, and it’s getting late, we decided to call it quits for today. But tomorrow we really have to hit up the gangs suspected by Cheeks. Hope this does not go sideways.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720920---0901---

Bright and early, off into Redmond. Oh what fun.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720920---1019---

Met the first Crimson Crush gangers. 2 tusks and one trog. They first had the nerve to make fun of Jace and Romeo, just because they are elves, but Romeo started chatting away, and then they quickly agreed to escort us to their boss. That Omae really has a silver tongue.

Did I already mention that he brought the damn weasel? Peaking out from under his coat and everything.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720920---1021---

Marten.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720920---1030---

The “HQ” of the Crimson Crush is connected to an underground club, also named “Crimson Crush”. Deep thinkers those tusks. But, the club deserves the name. Was not sure if leaving my meat sack in the car or with them would be safer, but in the end I decided to join as the fly spy again. Kaori is tough, and I can also jump back in on any notification from her sensors.
Inside of the club was a whole lotta red. and rusty grating and stuff like that. Although I can imagine that at night this place really lights up. Will not try it out though, seeing how those perimeter guards reacted to elves. Don’t want to see what they will do when drunk and among their friends.

You would not believe it. Romeo, once again wagging the silver tongue of his, gets the leader to spill the beans. If I ever have a favour open with a mage, I might want to ask him if Romeo uses some kind of mind altering voodoo.
In any case, apparently Crimson Crush has lost some members in the recent past all well. More than normal that is. And our Omae manages to not only get him to spill about gang affairs, no he also talks him into giving us two, hm, lets call them envoys to accompany us to the Skraacha. That we truely come in peace, etc.
Also, cause no one of us knows any entrances to the Ork underground…

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720920---1048---

We were just cruising along, when Romeo suddenly remembered about Petey. Told me to make a left turn here, and two blocks later we found that grey. Since Petey is Discords chummer, I was confused, but it seemed to me, that Discord was even more confused.
In any case Discord talks to him for a while, and this Omae really has no longer all his diods slotted. Seemed like a chiphead to me. Or some other junky. Although he seemed to know stuff when you asked the right way.
After a while Discord gave up and we made our way to the Ork underground.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720920---1101---

Romeo is telling me again where to go. The frag?

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720920---1118---

Under the serene guidance of our clairvoint (or whatever), we reached an entrance of the Ork underground. His excellency’s silver tongue opened doors and we were once again escorted to the gang leader. All upon the path groveling in his shiny presence.
I mean, maybe I exagerate slightly.
But we got to talk to the Skraacha head as well. They also lost a few. Discord an Jace are starting to suspect involvment of Humanis. Just what we need.

Oh, and we brokered a meeting of the Orkgang leaders the day after tomorrow. Easy. Cause thats how we roll. Apparently.

Notes

Since I forgot the time before, they got Karma for both sessions: 7. I also got reminded about Street Cred and Public Awareness, and it seemed time that they got some Street Cred as well. No notoriety though. That brings the totals to:

16 Karma
21.5k NY
1 Street Cred

Friendly encounters - Playing Shadowrun

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Team

Discord, Ork Adept
Jace, Elf Streetsam
Romeo, Elf Face/Decker
Thalmak Silverbeard, Dwarf Demolitions Specialist
Hunt0RKill0r69, Elf Decker/Rigger Support (NPC)

The L0g

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720920---2018---

Discord sent me a message that he has some ideas of how to modify the Steel Lynx and that I should bring it over in the morning. I wonder what that is about.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720920---2302---

Another message, this time from Jace. We should pick someone up at the Whiskey at the Crossroads. Apparently the Mafia is worried about the rats as well, because this guy should be able to obliterate a nest if necessary. And so we should bring him with us, in case we find a rat nest that is responsible for vanishing people. What drek did we get into?

//---HUNT0RL0G---202720921---0945---

So, Discords idea is to mount some tuning forks on the Steel Lynx. To somehow use with Silencer?
No idea what the drek he thinks that he can achieve with that, but since it should not impede the functionality of the Steel Lynx, I see no problem with that. Might look a bit funky.
Looking at the inside of the van, it might get a bit crowded when we load the additional passenger. Discord is not the smallest, the Steel Lynx also takes up quite a bit of room. And while Jace and Romeo are both quite slender, they still need a seat each.

//---HUNT0RL0G---202720921---1008---

Oh, he’s a charmer. That Omae greeted with a grunt, obviously disappointed in seeing elfs. Racist fuck. Kind of out of place, as he stood there in full body armor, an armord bag in his hand and a fragging grenade launcher slung over his shoulder. No doubt the military style pouches hold other such niceties as that. I mean fragging who carries a fragging grenade launcher as his only weapon? Painted it in rainbowcolours too, because that is fragging normal.
Oh well. We’ll probably just have him with us for that run. And since this is basically a favour for the Familia I am pretty sure it will be worth it in the long run.

For some reason Discord decided to roll out his life story in front of this Omae. The rats I understood. I also showed the video to him and everything. But that he had his awakening there? Drek, he hadn’t told me that before! And there was really no need to brag about the blood spirit. Did he want to look good in front of the halfer? I did not show any footage of that. Not that it matters too much since they also told him that the blood spirit wiped out the building and it has not been long since the TFS case was on the news. So even if I don’t trust that squat, he now has something on us.
Did I already mention that his name is “Thalmak Silverbeard”? Like out of a third class fantasy trid.
Well, lets get rid of the rats, I guess.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1013---

Damn it. Just as we were starting to drive of, Discord got another message from Cheeks. Another of his chummers - Bob - got taken last night. Seems like we need to find a more solid lead than to hope that the rats are responsible…
Jace seems to think that Petey knows more than we got out of him the first time. Maybe it’s worth a try?

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1149---

Found Petey again. This time Jace and Discord helped by spouting some stuff about his usual routes and the lay of the land in the barrens, but in the end it was of course Romeo who found him again. And this time it also was Romeo talking to him.
You would not believe it: that grey already knew that Bob had been taken. It started out as cryptic as the first time, but this time Romeo was able to extract some details from him. Not stopping his staggering along the road with the gutted, sometimes burned out vehicles Petey told us that Bob had been taken by an Ork and two Humans, with a bunch of tats.
Jace clearly did not like the sound of that. I heard him mumbling about “An orc? So definetly not Humanis then…“. He also asked Petey to draw the tats, and what clearly looked like a single, random squiggly line to me seemed to make sense to Jace. The follow up question if they had been asian was confirmed by Petey. How did he get that from a squiggly line? No idea.
In any case, they seemed to have taken them to the Drylands, not too far from Glow City. Fun times. Guess we are going there now. Everyone has their radiation shielding? No? Oh goody.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1203---

While Jace was busy with his link, Thalmak had nothing better to do than to seize him up. And then he accused him that he did not have any battle scars! I swear, if he makes a fight break out INSIDE Kaori, I will personally run him over.
Luckily in this case Jace just said that he knows how to dodge. And that he has a good medic. Seemed to blush a bit on the second remark. Especially when Romeo mentions that the pretty nurse is very thorough. Maybe it is reciprocated then. Good for Jace. Discord also seemes to know something, based on his smile.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1317---

After reaching the area Thalmak is useful for the first time. He sets up a kind of search grid that I should drive. Apparently this is “standard operating proceedure” in such cases. Seems this squat is ex military. Might explain but not excuse his grumpiness. Maybe its just his age though…

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1529---

After driving around for quite some time we finally get a break. A norm and a tusk are dragging an orc boy along in the paralell streat. Discord saw it and immidiately jumped out of the car and ran down the side alley towards them. Jace and Romeo jumped out at the next side alley to cut off their retreat, while I drive around the block to get there. Grumpy is with me. Seems to not want to be of help just yet. Not being paid for that or something.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1532---

Well, well, well. Maybe there is a heart inside that grumpy old squat deep underneath the full body armor. When prompted if someone can help the ork boy, he grumbled something about not being a complete asshole, got out of the car and quickly revived the boy. Romeos question if he could also have some of the chemicals that had this rousing quality was just met with disdain again though.
But I forgot to mention: Apparently Jace and Romeo had been to slow. Or Discord to quick. In any case the tusk was unconscious and the norm dead. Silencer bloodid a bit.
With the tusk alive, I guess we have a more solid lead now. And Romeo can take a crack at their links. Jace happily had already taken their weapons and together with Discord tied up the tusk. Jace’s knots are a lot more… thorough(?) elaborate(?) than Discords though. I guess this is another glimps into his private life. Lucky nurse, I guess?

Thalmak decides to call up one of his contacts (belitteling us and telling us that he will now show us how such things are done while doing so), and finds out that it has gotten a lot easier to get orc organs on the black market for those in need. Tasteful.

Romeo calls up his detective chum to ask about the players in organ legging. The big boy is Tamanous. They seem to have a rather large smuggling operation in addition to their legitimate business. In Seattle they are being supplied by two gangs: the 167s and the Disassemblers. And then there is the Komun’go ring, as a bit of a smaller fish in the same pond. Since our friendly neighbourhood kidnappers were asian and with a lot of asian looking tatoos, we assume that they belong to the Komun’go ring. Drek. Having pissed of the Vory v Zakone already, I don’t need to be on the bad side of a second syndicate. The Seoulpa rings also do seem to handle people that get in their way rather quickly. Or they tend to quickly handle them quite slowly, if you catch my drift. Drek, drek, drek.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1559---

We had brought the boy home and Romeo had gotten a location out of the links. We had just scooped out the place, and Discord mentioned that he wanted to tell this at the gang meet tomorrow, when an orc was dragged out of one large door through the street and into another door. Apparently Bob is still alive. Or at least being dragged around… So we are going in then. At least we can know that, if we fail and die, our organs might safe someones life. Fragging Drek.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1604---

So, we have a plan. Romeo is the Distraction: He is knocking at the door that Bob was dragged out of, and will try to gab their ears off. Just in case, I will cover him with the Steel Lynx.
In the mean time the others will make their silent entry through a third large entry on the other side of the building. Two omaes are standing there on their smoking break, but Jace and Discord should be able to handle them quietly. Oh, and Mr. Gumpy is going with them as well. Jace had confirmed with Miri that they will pay him even though the vermin to be exterminated is of a less savoury flavour then the 4 legged squeaky kind. Of course I will support team backdoor as well, in my capacity of infiltrator in the fly spy.

Thehe, team backdoor. Jace and his pretty nurse would probably approve of that.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1606---

So far so good. Jace slotted one of the smokers with a silenced burst, and hit the other as well. Discord layed him out before he could drop is smoke, let alone give alarm.
We had not fully thought this through though, since our lock picker was on the other door, fruitlessly knocking. Luckily Thalmak also has some tricks up his sleave. No, he did not hack the door, he simply took out the whole locking mechanism with a strip of thermite. Quiet enough and hella wiz. Like “Full Assault Black Ops”, which is almost as good as “Resurrection Breach”. Could even be in “Resurrection Breach”. More “Full Assault Black Ops” vibes though. In any case: wiz. Maybe Thalmak does have his ups.

Corridor was empty, but covered by surveilance cameras. Romeo paused his knocking to hack it remotely. Lucky that the spider did not hardwire it, but simply left it on the matrix.
He then changed to the other large door on his side, because the corridor almost leads to it, after some bends, with maybe another room or two inbetween. We will try to meet him in the building then.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1607---

Laughter behind one door, some electronic hum behind another. Thalmak wants to boobytrap the door with the laughter, but Jace does not want to be blown up because he is standing too close to the boobytraped door.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1607---

Suddenly a buzz like from a saw behind a door a bit deeper down the corridor, just before the second corner. They run up to it, Discord tries to open it. Locked. Romeo is just cracking the entrance door on his side. So Discord shoots it open with his shotgun. I guess quiet is over now. Inside a guy in a white coat was just starting to cut opens Bobs sternum. The alarm rings. And from somewhere a growl.

Notes

A new player has joined and brought a bit of a different team dynamic to the group. I am looking forward to see where it leads.
You can read a different perspective in my spouses brillian write up.

Battle in the Butcherhouse - Playing Shadowrun

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Team

Discord, Ork Adept
Jace, Elf Streetsam
Romeo, Elf Face/Decker
Thalmak Silverbeard, Dwarf Demolitions Specialist
Hunt0RKill0r69, Elf Decker/Rigger Support (NPC)

The L0g

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1607---

Discord jumpes into the room and puts his rage into hitting the butcher. Seems like the Silencer really does more than just act as a club, because the top third of this omaes body fragging disintegrates into a red mist coating the wall behind.
Jace and Thalmak take up defensive positions inside the room and around the corner respectevely, guarding down the hallway in the direction of the door where we heared the laughter before.
Not too late, since a the door opens and a elf chick as well as a tusk dude jump out and open fire. The elf chick targets Jace, who dodges easily and the tusk shoots at Thalmak. He hits, but the bullets flatten against Thalmaks armor and it does not seem to slow him down at all. He answers by spinning his grenade launchers cylinder to black and lobbing one towards the entrance. The grenade explodes exactly in the door. The orc is turned to mincemeat by the blast, the elf survives barely, since she had managed to jump some distance away further down the hallway.
In the meantime Romeo has opened the entrance on our side and I focus on getting the Steel Lynx up the steps. A wonderful machine on the street, the wheeled configuration does not really work well with steps. I will be able to get it up, but it will take me a second or two…
Jace takes out the elf and runs down the hallway to check the room where the pair had come out. I can’t see from the flyspys perspective what he shoots at, but he fires another burst into the room and then turns around.
We are getting in trouble over here as well. Inside the room a norm and a trog come down a staircase and open fire on Romeo. He takes a full blast of the trogs Remington Roomsweeper in the chest and staggers back. It does not help, that the gun seems more like a toy in those meaty hands.
Discord rushes to help and manages to open the door that separates the hallway from the room Romeo and me are trying to secure.
From the flyspy I see Thalmak spinning the cylinder of his grenade launcher again, this time to green and lobbing another grenade towards us. This explosion is far less violent than the last, but instead coating everything with fire and filling the room with a thick smoke. Discord and Romeo get coated as well and start burning as well. While Romeo falls back out the stairs and lies on the ground, I hear Jace’s angry yell over the com. I guess he is not happy with Thalmak. Neither am I, to be honest. Turning the room your team mates are in into a fragging inferno is not the most considered choice.
Discord now gets in and takes out the human who came down the stairs first. While the human was screaming in pain, Discord simply ignores the fire on the ground and that he himself is burning as well. Jace sprints down the complete hallway, through the burning room to help Romeo. He starts to tear away the burning clothes, so that our wheezing face does not turn into a piece of charcoal.
Discord smashes the troll through the staircase, ending his pain. He looks down through the hole and does not seem happy with what he sees.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20729021---1607---

I finally finish getting up the fragging stairs, leveling the barrel of my HK SMG towards the stairs and rolling into the burning room. Jace finishes undressing Romeo. Drek he is fast.
Two more ladies come done the stairs, a norm ahead of another trog, opening fire towards Jace and Discord. From the fly spys view I see that Thalmak also got company, a pair of tusks surprise him, while he was checking on the downed elf lady. They seem to hit him quite bad this time, and he ducks into the room where he before turned someone to chunky salsa.
No time to take a closer look. On our end now some people run up from the cellars as well. They turn out to be ghouls, and one of them immediatly charges Jace and tries to claw at him, although he dodges easily. And another norm lady with a katana charges Discord from the corridor, so that he is boxed in between ghouls, the two from the upper floor and her. Still burning brightly as well. He seemed surprisingly gleeful, especially that the others with him were standing in the fire as well? Note: Never piss off Discord. That chummer is fragging crazy.
He also quickly dispatches the trog gal with a single blow.
Romeo fires at the Ghoul attacking Jace and manages to take it out with two bursts. Jace fires at the norm who had shot at him before and takes her out.
I notice that the two attacking Thalmak had run up to the room and fired inside, not taking out our pyromaniak. He skittles out of the room again, past the two and around the corner into the room katana gal had come out before. Discord tries to take her out, but that fragging breeder manages to block his strike and let it glance of ineffectually from her blade. Romeo and Discord take out another ghoul. I hit some as well, not doing enough damage to take one out though.
Jace hits the katana gal with two bursts, but she still keeps fighting. The room was cleared other than her, but there is deeper growling from below. Two more ghouls come out, a former trog and former tusk. The tusk goes for Discord, and the trog for Jace and Romeo. Discord manages to finally land a solid hit on the katana girl, smashing her into the ceiling and ending her quite effectively. I concentrate my fire on the trog ghoul, with Jace being busy dodging it. Romeo manages to take it out with two slugs from his underbarrel shotgun. Discord ends the other ghoul.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1608---

Drek. What a fragging mess. The room is still fragging burning, Discord has hurried out to check on Bob in more Detail. The two syndicate men who had attacked Thalmak had decided to flee instead of risking their life further. Jace, not wanting to go through the burning room with strewn around sizzling meat, the copiouce amounts of blood not being able to quench the flames of whatever substance Thalmak has unleashed, decided to walk around the building instead. On his way he also found the spiders nest, but that omae has already skidaddled. Wise choice, I would say.
It seems like Thalmak has sealed himself into the room that he ran in, because of instead of simply coming out of it that crazy halfer blew a hole in one of the other walls of that room and came back to us through the bathroom. Drenched, since he blew up some of the piping in the wall…
He casually asks if everyone is alright, but Jace is NOT happy with him. He picks up the banter about the battle scars and asks the halfer if he managed to aquire any. Thalmak prefers to applogize about the white phosphor instead of answering him. So he is not completely demented. Although I think it will take more for Jace to forgive him. At least he promisses to kill him if he ever hurts one of his teammates again. Does this include me as well? I would hope so at least.
In any case, since we have found the “rats nest”, even though they were not real rats the cooperation probably is at an end anyways.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1611---

Romeo just casually mentions that he got a job offer while he was on the ground taking out ghouls. What the frag? Apparently DeSantis was happy with our work and would like to hire us again, if one of us know our way around the Sierra Nevada. Non of us do. Except Thalmak. So maybe we will not get rid of him this quickly after all?

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1625---

The search of the building has not turned up too much. The cellar is connected to the sewers, with the dirt being most disturbed towards the east. Towards glow city. So I guess we know where the ghouls lived. Well “lived”.
The Room Thalmak so thoughtlessly trashed contained the most interesting stuff: Documents and data storage from the Komun’go lieutenant - you remember: the tough breeder chick with the katana. Copies were sent to various connections: Jace’s chummer Miri got one, so the mafia gets to know more about the competition, and so did Discord’s chummer Cheeks gets another copy. And apparently Romeo has a Chummer with Knight Errant? So they get a copy too. I assume they all will have some use of the data and hopefully remember that we were the ones providing it to them.

Notes

They got 7 Karma and loot worth of 5k Nuyen as well as 1 street cred each. This brings the total to:

22 Karma
26.5k NY
2 Street Cred

I noticed this time how big a Steel Lynx is supposed to be, and that it probably would not fit into the back of a van. Even a GMC Bulldog would probably be too small. However, I will gloss over that for now, since there is another toy on Hunt0rKill0r69s wish list anyways, that would replace the Steel Lynx as a drone to bring.

You can read a different perspective in my spouses brillian write up.

Shopping spree - Playing Shadowrun

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Team

Discord, Ork Adept
Jace, Elf Streetsam
Romeo, Elf Face/Decker
Thalmak Silverbeard, Dwarf Demolitions Specialist
Hunt0RKill0r69, Elf Decker/Rigger Support (NPC)

The L0g

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1636---

Apparently the best way to get around the Sierra Nevada is by off-roading. I don’t think Kaori would be up for that, since she really is more of a city gal.
But weirder: Thalmak has asked us what we are and what our long term goals are? Has this chummer no idea about a shadow runner team? And worse: when I explained that we are like the team in “Resurection Breach” he said that he has never heard of that! I mean, its only the biggest Anime in the last decade, maybe ever! I thought about offering him a copy of the first 5 seasons, but apparently he looked it up in the matrix, and you will believe what this halfer said: “Eh, not for me.” Drekhead.
Discord mentioned that he thinks it’s “not bad”, but that Cylian’s voice is annoying. Not bad! Fragging “not bad”! I though more of him. I might need to reevaluate how I view him. Drek, I might need to reevaluate that for the whole team! On the other hand, it might have been just a hidden jab against Thalmak. I mean, Cylian is a bit like him, isn’t he? Ex military gal, fond of chemistry, grumpy most of the time? Not big into explosives, but otherwise? And a rather sexy orc lady, and not a old dwarf, of course.
Talking about old dwarf and ancient history: The halfer also mentioned that he was one of the first dwarfs, born right in the first wave after the awakening. I have no fragging idea what to do with that. That makes him ancient! How long ago was the awakening? 60 years? Yeah, I think 60 years exactly. Crazy.

Maybe a bit more relevant at the moment: Thalmak not only knows his way about explosives, as he has just shown, but after Discord probes him about what he acutally can do, he tells us, that he also knows his way around chemistry in general, and that it would be oh so useful if he had a chemistry shop. And we should buy it for him? What the drek? But some shopping would be a good idea in any case.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720921---1821---

Just dropped of Thalmak at Pike place. He spouted something about ancient history, that this was the founding place of StarBucks. Looked it up, seems that it was a large coffe shop chain, before it got gobbled up by the Azzies. I wonder why they did not keep the name around, even though it seems like it had been a rather prominent, well loved brand?
Anyways, I am on my way to drop of Jace and Romeo @ Nathaniels. Jace is worried that Romeo will fall over and die when his drugs run out, and this might be a real possibility. In any case, not a bad idea. He insists of changing and getting a shower first though. And of Romeo being clean and having on proper clothes as well. So I performed a little dance of dropping of Jace at his place, before swinging by Romeo’s and then coming back with Romeo to pick Jace back up. He said he will need some time. I guess to prepare. Dirty little lovebird.
Discord stuck around his old gang, they planned to hang out at his chummer Two $hort’s place. Since this omae is not only a fence, but also a pimp, I understand why he might want to let off some steam there. Violence does heat up the blood for some people. My obviously slightly nervous passenger is a clear example for that. Not that I mention anything, I value my life.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720922---1512---

After the talk yesterday that we should buy the chemistry shop for him, Thalmak made another turn. We discussed and decided that not only a chemistry shop, no also a armorer shop would be a good idea. And, that while the Steel Lynx is fine and dandy, they agreed that a more indoorsy drone that can handle stairs etc. would be a better choice to bring in the back of Kaori. So we also decided to buy a Ruhrmetall Wolfsspinne. Together. Would have bought it alone, since I now have the funds, since it is an absolutely whizz machine. Terrifying as well. But I appreciate that we share the cost. Nobody besides me can rig it, so it will be effectively mine in any case.
What did I want to say? Ah, yes, after all the fuzz about we buying if for him, then sharing the cost, Thalmak then went ahead and orderd it just himself. Weird omae.
The Armorer shop I share with Discord and the Wolfsspinne with Jace. Romeo offered to buy some decent firepower for our new many legged toy. I think I will call her Barbara, or Barbs.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720922---1911---

Fancy drek. The place we are meeting the Johnson this time is a mexican fusion restaurant called “The Hole”. Did not sound fancy, but the whole area is upscale, so we dressed decently. Well, we tried, each to our abilities. Romeo dressed fancy, Jace put on a suit and the rest of us wore more or less clean clothes.
The place was in the sub-basement of one of the downtown skyscapers. Walking up to it, the name started to make a bit more sense. The entrance was designed to look like a black hole, the wall and hallway around it with the swirly light patterns you see on pictures from deep space telescopes.
The door itself was pitch black. Not dark. Not black. Pitch black. I could not make out any details, I would not have been able to find a doornob. It was more hearing the swish of the automated sliding door than seeing anything. The hallway behind it was the same kind of unnatural black. In the light from the hallway we were standing in, we could see the dimly lit figure of our elven waiter - a pretty one, in a nice uniform remenicent of some sci-fy space ship crew. She led us through the pitch black hallway into a private room, which was dimmly illuminated by projections of stars, swirly galaxies and colouful nebulae floating above the black table. The Johnson was already waiting for us there.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720922---1919---

The menu was quite mundane. I ordered chilli con carne. While we were waiting for the food, deSantis started to talk biz. Discord immediately asked if he wanted to get another book. “Not a book, something way more interessting.” “Two books?” Joker. The Johnson remained professional and told us that he had heard that there was a new grove of bristle cone pines. Which would have been interesting in itself, according to him. But the trees in this grove are already thousands of years old, even though it only appeared recently. So he expects it to be an alchera, and another stable one at that. Since most of us did not know what he was talking about, he asked if we heared of the Deep Lacuna in LA. Well, of course. Thalmak chimed in that he had been there when it formed. That halfer really has gotten around in his many years. So, deSantis suspects the new bristle cone pine grove to be another stable alchera, since it seems like the rumors about it already accumulated over multiple years, originating at different points in time. Since he was talking about rumors, I am not sure how reliable his information is, but he seems willing to lay out some cach to find out and take some samples there.
The hitch? Its inside the PCC. And while the Pueblo Corporate Council does encourage tourism, it has strict laws of taking souveniers. (Unless of course you buy them from the PCC). So it will be a bit of a smuggling operation. And to reach the PCC we will have to either cross the Salish Shide lands or go via boat and approach the northern Sierra Nevada from the south.
Before deSantis has named a number, Romeo already starts to negotiate. Discord chimes in with how dangerous the last mission was, and since Alchera are usually unstable, nobody knows what would happen to us, if it vanishes while we are in there.
After a bit of back and forth, deSantis tells us that he is willing to pay 50k up front. And another 150k upon successful completion of the mission, that he would like to join this time. He also will take over the travel expenses, and possible rentals in the PCC. This is a large pile of cash, so I am happy. Thalmak is not, though. He starts to negotiate again about expenses for special equipment. It seems however, like our Johnson does not like that too much and he shuts him down rather quick. “This is what the up front payment is for. If you prefer, you can get the 150k upon completion, and I am willing to reimburse you for the expenses up to a limit of 50k.” Even the thick skull of the dwarf quickly calculates that this actually a slightly worse deal than before.
So we stick with the original offer and accept.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720922---1921---

The food has arrived. The kitchen seems to be not only fusion, but also likes to deconstruct the food. The chilli con carne is a almost clear pudding? Jelly? With sparkling dots inside, again reminding of the fathomless deep space. It is also delicious.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720922---1939---

So it seems we will probably take a boat to the PCC. And for travel organize a Ford-Canada Buffalo, that I will modify with a smuggling compartment. This RV sleeps 6, so it is perfect for us.
Discord asks if we will need to fell one of the trees, but deSantis thinks this would be barbaric, since they are invaluable witnesses of bygone eras, since they get so old. No tree shall be harmed in our name.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720922---1944---

Bristlecone pines are whizz! They usually get thousands of years old, and seem to not die, unless they get felled or the environmental conditions become not suitable anymore. They grow in groves in areas where other trees can not survive. I have looked at some pictures, and they truely are amazing! I am happy that deSantis does not want to fell one of the trees and take it with us, but just gather some cones, a branch or two and take a core sample by boring into a trunk.

//---HUNT0RL0G---20720926---1816---

I spent the last 4 days with Discord helping Thalmak fireproofing Discords armored jacket. Drek, this is annoying work. Lucky the fragging armorer shop had arrived quickly.
And now all of them are quite familiar with my garage, since we set up the two workshops in a corner of it.
Thalmak is not so bad when you are working with him for a while. Gruff and strange, but not a complete asshole.
But I am happy that Jace and Romeo just buy new stuff, that already can withstand Thalmaks fiery hobbies.

Thamlmak also now started to use the shop to put some chemicals inside grenades? Fragging freeze foam. Drek he has strange ideas.

Notes

This session they got 10k NY each, to total of:

22 Karma
36.5k NY
2 Street Cred

This session consisted mostly of in character banter which was nice. Unfortunately I was to tired to properly note most of it down or remember it clearly until todays write up. This was a rather nice change of pace compared with the battle taking the whole session last time.

You can read a different perspective in my spouses brillian write up.