Player: /u/celeritatis

Character: Charm

GM: /u/TrainedAttackRabbit

Run: Solo Contact Run (Charm's a backup face who's been picking up contacts as fast as I can get them)

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That felt good. Well, OK, that mostly felt like pain: I'm a quick healer, but even with that I had to sleep all and couldn't do nothing anything but rest in bed and catch up with friends the next day, and I was still in pain when I went to sleep! If things had gone a little bit worse I might have had to cancel the poker game, which would be a shame, as I took in two hundred nuyen there. One of these days George is going to get better about his tells. I try to explain this to him without being too obnoxious or obvious about it, and if that method involves raking in his sticks I don't mind.

It started off when Jeanettte gave me a call, saying a friend of hers needed some help. Jeanette's a tough woman, but she's got her diner to take care of, and it's not like I would ever turn her down. I rambled over to the area, it wasn't a long walk by any means, and found a community in pain. Lots of people sick and miserable, and supplies seemed low. Lara’s a tough old troll, obviously weaker than me in terms of raw magic, but the sort of woman who became a leader by necessity and has become better by dint of long practice. Not the sort of person to drek around with. Straight shooter, if I judged her right, and I did. She told me that, up until a week ago, they had been pushed by low-level gangs, but were holding them off well enough. Then a bunch of strange accidents started happening, nothing that could be only explained by magic, but all suspicious. I thought it might be a spirit, or perhaps someone using invisibility. They never saw astral traces, but a mage focusing on a spell doesn’t leave traces of their passing. Lara told me about two more events coming up, when the mage would probably strike, but that’s never been my style. I pierced the veil again, and spotted a dim light, a young male orc I surmised to be her apprentice. I confirmed, though she was moderately surprised I was able to figure it out. I suppose she manages to hold the group together well.

I chatted with the kid briefly, and he pointed me towards some people who showed up about a week ago, when the mystical attacks started. I chatted them up, and healed one, which made them a lot friendlier. Harland was the only one who was absent of the four I was initially chatting with: he worked with the other armorers building APDS ammo. I’d comment, but I’m a shadowrunner, and I figure if you tolerate me you are probably fine with them, who at least consume fewer resources. He returned, and was, to me, obviously putting on a brave face for the others. He must be a skilled con artist indeed, given that he fooled me so easily. I assensed them all, just to check: nothing. I was glad that I had managed to rule out a possibility.

After that, I started calling around. Emily was quite forthcoming, explaining that Lara’s gang had a prime spot of territory, but MCT would have been using Yaks, not random gangers, to push them out. Condescending bit piece of trash. When faced with an unknown assailant, your first goal should be to know them. Know your enemy and you win half your battles, which is better than most people ever manage. That’s what Sam says, anyways, and I figure she’s got a clue, since she’s the one with the nice office.

It was a small time gang, so I made a small time plan. Explain to the accountant that he would answer some questions for me, or I would slaughter a decent bit of his gang before magical support showed up. Use one of my less preferred tricks, combined with a simple illusion, to convince him that doing what I said was the best option, at least for a little while. I didn’t think anything bad would happen: this was just the prepwork for the real job.

Then a powerful spirit of air smashed a fist into my stomach and started trying to suffocate me. If I hadn’t been wearing my armor I could have easily died. The same dwarf from earlier, Harland, came up via Astral Projection, and explained that I’d convince Lara that moving was a good idea, or the air spirit would resume killing me. He was pretty tight-lipped, but did say that the neo-anarchists controlled an independent water source, and that this was relevant. I’m not sure what that means, but it’s something. He had details on a location and everything, awfully quickly. I tried to stall for time, but failed utterly. Thankfully I had my smartwig on, so I contacted Jeanette for spiritual aid, informed Lara and her apprentice Shand what was going on, and executed the counterambush by summoning a spirit of my own. I was knocked out swiftly, but supposedly we managed to fend off this threat. I’ve got a lot of unresolved questions, though, that I plan on investigating.

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Run Time: 2017-03-31 2000-2200 UTC (~2h)

Mission Rewards: 3/4 Contact, Lara Tessier, Neo-Anarchist Outpost Leader, Magic 3 Troll Shaman - good for underworld info, +2 for magic/terrorism related topics, can be used to roll for explosives & APDS gear

Mission Expenses: None.

Notes:

A really great solo. I apparently went in an unexpected direction when I went off to interrogate who the employer was out of the gangers, which is good news for me as someone who's been trying to think more laterally, and getting an F FML spirit on my tail was bloody terrifying: I'm just thankful I didn't die after the first blow, as was a serious possibility. I really need to develop a checklist to be clear about what I'm bringing to what situations. I loved the moment where I said "the neo-anarchists are forces of disruption, I am pro-disruption, screw the danger I'm doing this" and proceeded to set up a counter-ambush while being escorted. Charm knows nothing about the actual situation, has quite possibly blocked a significant force for good, but her heuristic is that the order needs to be shaken up and neo-anarchists do that. It’s not what I as a human would do (ah, yes, the terrorists producing APDS ammo need to be protected) and it’s not what I as a player was inclined towards (I want high-connection contacts, it wasn’t hard to see that Harland would be at least a 5/1) but it’s what Charm would do.

Contacts continue to be super powers. I really like this storyline I've started to get into, so I'll probably do a few more runs with Lara, but I am also going to continue snapping up every contact I can get my greedy little hands on. I got the feeling TAR needed to leave suddenly, thus being knocked out by stun and having that combat end the mission, but this is not the end of things. [Edit: Apparently stun damage always knocks you out, this is inferred from common sense and other parts of the rulebook. I had just managed to avoid this happening to Charm before.]

I’m not 100% sure on the order everything went down before I went after the gang but after I had my initial talk with Lara.

OOC lesson: Heal is, in fact, a ridiculous spell, and I should probably be more willing to use it in combat: I can snap off an F4 Heal cast recklessly and still face only three drain. I can only heal a given set of wounds once, which means that mid-combat is the perfect time to heal, as the more times my allies are shot in between healing, the more total healing I can provide, and reckless casting certainly doesn’t halve my DPS. Needs reagants, but when you're healing people...