So tonight's roleplaying session started at 6:30 and since I only woke up from an afternoon nap about an hour prior, Pedro and I were forced to forego our usual Thursday afternoon/early evening dinner cooking session (more on this in a later post when I'm not feeling stoned from lack of sleep ^-^') to make it there on time. I guess at least we'd had a nice breakfast earlier that day ^-^

Anyway!!! The session started with me, Olivehead, Alex, Katrina and Marcus -- unfortunately, the other members of our party (Owen, Dave and Amber) weren't present :( -- trying to escape from some sort of factory which had just come under the control of Saeder-Krupp, the largest and most powerful megacorporation in the Shadowrun world. To give you a bit of background, in the previous session our party had flown out from our base in Seattle on a job to test out the security system of Saeder-Krupp's newly acquired factory in Europort. To do this, we had all of our equipment of questionable legality smuggled into Europort by our employers and snuck through customs using expensive fake IDs. When we got there, we took up residence in a very shady 'no-tell hotel' (on our budget we couldn't afford much better).
We had been told that we had a timeframe of two days to complete the job, that our payment would be left on the top floor of the main building and that our employers were not too worried about there being casualties on either side. With this information in mind, we proceeded to conduct our infiltration of the factory.

First, our sniper (Marcus) and our hacker (Alex) took up their positions close to the building; Alex, who was pretending to go jogging, with more success than Marcus who failed epicly with his stealth roll and ended up falling not-so-gracefully on his butt while trying to scale a nearby building using the drain-pipe. To make it worse, because he failed so epicly he was also spotted by a civilian who he consequently shot. At the same time, Owen, Dave and Amber gained entry into the factory with their fake IDs which identified them as one of Saeder-Krupp's site inspectors and his bodyguards respectively. From past experience (namely our mission involving Star Genetics) we knew that this could go horribly wrong, especially considering who we were dealing with, so it was a pleasent suprise when it worked, especially since Owen the Cat started to panic when the guard at the main gates pointed out our sniper who was being led out of an alleyway by two police officers, one of them shocking him with a tazer everytime he tried to put up some form of resistance. In the end, they made it inside the factory with not too much trouble and Owen with the added bonus of a pair of soiled pants :P

While all of this was going on, Alex hacked his way into the factory's matrix security where he encountered the company's hackers and promptly soiled himself due to his combat paralysis. When he finally recovered, an epic Star Wars-like battle ensued and he came out of it victorious ^-^

As for the fate of the sniper... enter Team Distraction!!! This team, consisting of Oliver, Katrina (absent) and me, had been tasked to create a distraction outside the building so that Team Infiltration could set off several canisters of mildly-toxic but generally non-fatal sleeping gas in the air vents to knock out the factory employees. And what better combo than a drugged up, trigger-happy, intellectually challenged Orc and a sociopathic, pyromanic Elven combat mage to cause a distraction? XD First, against my better judgement, I took out the police officers and freed the sniper in case he would be needed later. At the same time, Loliver concocted a daring stunt whereby he duct-taped twenty highly explosive hand-granade to a rented moterbike, attached strings to the pins and rode it straight into the front gate with the intention to pull the pins as he dismounted the bike moments before impact. Unfortunately, Loliver failed miserably at his Logic roll which resulted in a critical glitch and his foot got stuck as he was trying to disengage. He was then thrown many feet into the air by the resulting explosion, had his eyebrows burned off but managed to pull off a great Athletics roll to sumasault in the air and land squarely on his feet, pistols drawn :D Then, using his awesome skills in Gun-Fu, he took out a bunch of guards and cybernetic dogs and my wolf spirits took out a guard and the rest of the dogs before I completely obliterated the magical barrier surrounding the building with Shattershield and cleaned up the rest of the guards with a Stunball cast at full power (coz I can :D). In the ensuing lull, I cast Heal on Pedro (who had suffered nine points of physical damage and was one point away from dying) and by some miracle got a fantastic 'resist drain' roll which meant that I didn't take any stun damage for healing him ^-^v
About a second later, Saeder-Krupp's combat mages, having been alerted by the collapse of the magical barrier, arrived on the scene...

......................................the battle was over in seconds..........................................

One of the enemy mages started off the battle by casting Stunball. This being an area effect spell, both Pedro and I took a small amount of stun damage. The other mage cast a dreaded Manabolt at me which I managed to dispell by counterspelling before returning fire with a full-power Manabolt which essentially blew the mage apart. At this stage, the two spirits that he had bound to him went rabid, one of them attacking one of the other mage's spirits and the other (more sensibly) attacking us. Pedro managed to dodge the attack but, because I have below-average dodging skills, I earned myself four points of physical damage before Pedro shot and killed the spirit with his magically attuned pistols ^-^ Then I took out the other mage with Manabolt, Pedro killed his last remaining spirit and my wolves took out the rogue spirit. We then proceeded to the mainbuilding's reception area and noticed a door sporting a security system at the far end of the room. Loliver demanded that the receptionist open the door and when she said that she didn't know how, he shot her dead in a fit of drugged-up cold blood :( In the meantime, I simply passed through the door (Astral Projection allows mages to walk through walls ^-^) and took out the guards with Fireball and a few seconds later, Pedro kicked down the door. We proceeded down a corridor and ran into Team Infiltration as they, having taken out all the workers in the factory with the sleeping gas, were running up a set of stairs which led to the room containing the briefcase with our Certified Cred Chips.

This brings us to this week's session, at which none of the members of Team Infiltration were present, and our daring escape from the depths of Saeder-Krupp's factory of doom... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! XD

The session began with me, Pedro and Katrina running into a few members of the factory's management in the room with our Cred Chips. We were informed that because of the mess that we had made (namely killing two police officers and two civilians and carrying out a stunt which looked very much like a terrorist atack), we were no longer under the protection of our employers and that when SWAT arrived (in approximately two minutes) and began to ask questions, our discriptions would be passed over. At this stage, Pedro grabbed the briefcase with our money in it and ran while Katrina and I contemplated how to deal with this new threat. She tried but failed to alter their memories of our descriptions and a successful Assensing roll told us that these people were increadibly powerful and that we should run while we can. So we did ^-^

In the meantime, Oliver decided to satisfy his curiousity of what was in the suitcase by trying to shoot the lock off the case seconds before SWAT arrived at the front gates. He managed to shoot one lock off before Katrina made him change his mind with a well-timed Influence spell. She then cast Sterilize on the site so that no traces of our DNA would be left behind. Then Owen (NPC) hotwired a car and everybody but Katrina and I (who were now back in our bodies which we had left behind at the hotel) piled in and headed back to the hotel. Realising that we had been left out in the cold by our employers and that it was now unsafe for us to travel back to Seattle by plane and that we had a large amount of illegal equipment to smuggle back with us, we packed up our stuff and headed over to Amsterdam, the dodgiest place in Europort.

When we arrived, Pedro used his street smarts to seek out a drug dealer and proceeded to ask questions about acquiring "services". The conversation went something like this...

Pedro: "I'm looking for service, yah"
Dealer: "Vat services are you after, my friend? Asian?"
Pedro: "America. I vant service America to."

The dealer pointed him in the direction of a building with a red light in front of it and tried to interest him in a drug which would "assist" in his "services". Never one to turn down drugs, Pedro bought a large amount and immediately took a dose before heading over to the indicated building. Wondering what on earth he was doing stumbling away from the group, Katrina and Marcus followed him.

Upon his arrival, Pedro marched up to the reception where he spoke to a scantily clad female flacnked by two equally scantily clad, muscular men.

Pedro: "I vant services, yah. I has big package to in America put."
Fem: "Well let's start off with some basics. Human or Metahuman?"
Pedro: *looking confused* "Metahuman... Orc specifially."
Fem: "Very well. Male or Female?"
Pedro: "Male. I would have thought you could tell just by looking at me."
Fem: "No, sometimes it can be very hard to tell. Alright. Please go up to Door number 3."

Pedro did as he was bid and upon entering room number 3 he sees a big male orc dressed in skintight leathers with a biker cap perched jauntily on his head. The man begins to pull down a bed from the wall with the question...

Orc: "Whatcha into?"
Pedro: "Many things... I mainly do confidential contract work."
Orc: "Right. Well it's 300 nuyen an hour."
Pedro: "And it only takes vun hour?"
Orc: "That depends."
Pedro: "Vell since I am in a bit of a hurry I vould very much like it to take only vun hour. Do you need to see th size of zee package?"
Orc: "Not really. Now take your clothes off!"
Pedro: "Oh! Zis is vat zey call a Customs check yah?"

By this time, Katrina and Marcus had made it to the building and were asking about Loliver. However, the female behind the desk refused to give out any information about their clients so Katrina had to astral project to find him. She approached door number 3 and proceeded through it, but upon seeing Pedro being subject to a "very thorough Customs check" by the Orc and his mouth, she retreated immediately and immediately started to rage incoherantly about Pedro. In the meantime, Dave (NPC), Amber (NPC), Alex and I headed into the first bar that we could find to see if we could glean any information about where to find a smuggler. Apparently Dave's mafia-boss-like appearance and my level 8 Charisma attracted the assumption that our group was a pimp and his workers; we were told by the bouncer that they weren't looking for any 'talent' at the moment but hat if we headed upstairs, the boss might be able to point us in the direction. Deciding to take him up on that suggestion, we were escorted upstairs by a girl called Diva where we met the establishment's boss Roberto. Being the Face of the group and having been 'trained in the art of seduction', I proceeded to negotiate for the information we needed. I very nearly landed myself, Amber and Alex into a situation where we would be doing a stage show of our own but luckily, Roberto decided that he would do a little checking up on us first to make sure that we weren't police. A while later, his friend Antonio arrived, announced that he knew about us and that he would be able to smuggle us out of the country. He warned us that if anything went slightly wrong he would hand us oer to the police because he couldn't afford to have anything suspicious linked back to his business. We negotiated a deal (which didn't involve stage shows ^-^) and were picked up from the building half an hour later by a Limo. From there we were taken to an old overpass in Amsterdam's wastelands where we boarded a rusty tanker and spent the next two weeks to Seattle resting.

Upon arrival back at our headquarters, we were offered another job by our very influential contact Vladimir... but THAT is another story... ^-^

In conclusion, many many lols were had at tonight's session, tali was forced into roleplaying her british 12-year-old elf mage, everyone earned muchos EXP and tali is now dead tired from blogging... hence...

Tali out!!! ^-^v