UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
They are not mutually exclusive, but they do means you gotta cough-up for 'em like another Sphere.
Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
- Location
- in the trash
She picked up Entropy and Correspondence from the Ixoi grimoire.
- Location
- in the trash
Also, in terms of allies, Rose should be in Spain right now, so if the option to prioritize allies wins she'd probably be a good option since she's relatively nearby and equipped to stab ghosts to double death. Though it would mean interrupting her vacation.
Last edited:
Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hmmm... looks like Elissa has what it takes to tear chunks out of wraiths, Mind Control them, and dreamwalk them. That has... possibilities.
For one idea, she could set up some sort of a ritual to climb inside of his mind and rewrite him a bit, with help from Mom and Dad as buff-casters. Who doesn't want to get into a one-on-one fight with a powerful Shadow on its home ground?
I didn't say it was necessarily a *good* idea.
For one idea, she could set up some sort of a ritual to climb inside of his mind and rewrite him a bit, with help from Mom and Dad as buff-casters. Who doesn't want to get into a one-on-one fight with a powerful Shadow on its home ground?
I didn't say it was necessarily a *good* idea.
[X] The Enemy: The first and last step is to find An-Jin Choi and set him on fire before he can create a coherent gameplan.
None of them really need much tools as foci.
Gathering allies kinda clashes with the whole 'secret daughter' thing.
Could run away, but then what is the point of being a couple of super-assasins in the first place if you don't assasinate?
None of them really need much tools as foci.
Gathering allies kinda clashes with the whole 'secret daughter' thing.
Could run away, but then what is the point of being a couple of super-assasins in the first place if you don't assasinate?
- Location
- in the trash
Who do we need to keep Elissa a secret from, exactly?
Even then, we can just pretend she's Harlan's daughter if it's really an issue. We wouldn't even really need to pretend.
Last edited:
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Indeed.
Though, I think any Technocratic ally we call will likely wonder why exactly Harlan and his Boss were meeting with the former's estranged daughter who defected.
It shouldn't be an insurmountable hurdle but it probably won't be nothing.
Update CCXXXV: Escape Plan
JB CCXXXV: Escape Plan
Grey water laden with the fumes of Paris falls from a grey sky. Elissa looks both ways before crossing the street, then darts between red Renaults and white Fiats. There's an ambulance parked further down the street, and she sends out a guarded pulse of thought. No. It's safe. Just paramedics seeing to someone who's not going to live. The death lies too heavy for them to manage anything. It's a fact of life, and this death is… different from the death that haunts her.
The wind catches the hood of her waterproof and tries to whisk it away, to reveal the dark hair that falls in front of her eyes.
She's here at the address from the card. A nondescript apartment in a middle-class apartment block, a place so boring it's practically invisible.
Elissa suspects that she's dealing with one of Jamelia's safehouses. She tentatively knocks on the nondescript apartment door as she steps to the side, one hand in her purse holding onto the revolver she's smuggled past so many security checkpoints, pulling the hammer back so that if she senses anything wrong she can return fire through the door.
The door opens to welcome her. "Come in," Harlan says gruffly. Elissa doesn't know what she's hearing in his voice, some sort of melange of anger and relief and bitterness, and she's thankful that he doesn't ask her any questions or expect her to say anything. She suspects she knows why he's here, and it's not only because of professional interest. Someone as powerful and dangerous as Jamelia Belltower surely could have had her pick of professional killers who didn't ask questions and had magic more politically correct than psychic powers.
"I'm ho… here," she says, and just for a moment she's seven again, back from school for the summer. She hangs her coat up on one of the racks, and glances into the living room. She can just barely see the television tuned to CNN international, hear the 24-hour news on the imminent North Korean crisis, the anchor talking about the latest provocation by North Korean forces. There's an undertone of inevitability in the anchor's voice when she talks about the people streaming out of Seoul, the knowledge that things will get very bad soon combined with the inability to predict when the hammer will fall. The half-visible news ticker is a string of meaningless, contextless statements, as if the reporters and producers know that everything else pales in importance. Even if they still only think that the fight will be between the forces of liberal democracy and a repressive nuclear power, it's easy to consider police raids on human traffickers in Los Angeles or the mysterious earthquake in Japan a few weeks ago irrelevant compared to the out-of-control crisis which threatens millions of lives.
"I know. Get in here," Halan grumps. He looks his age now, for all that his movements still hold a martial artist's precision, and she knows what it means. Was this her fault? She needed to escape, and she's never really regretted running. But did she hurt him in the process? Did he deserve to be hurt? Does it even matter anymore?
Harlan and Jamelia have unpacked already, and their luggage is neatly laid out on the table in front of the flatscreen TV. One of the perks of being a Technocrat, Elissa muses jealously. They didn't have to worry about airport security or customs when they could compromise them on a hardware level, and built their equipment to hide from millimeter-wave scanners and metal detectors, all of which are built to Union specifications with Union backdoors. The coffee table and living room floor are neatly piled with covert ops gear of Technocracy make. There's nanoweave inserts and armored clothing, spy microdrones, medical packs, a handful of EMP bombs, disposable lockpicks, filter plugs, augmented contacts-everything you'd need for a covert operation laid out in neat organized rows. Elissa even sees explosives disguised as coffee or chocolate or other dry goods and a couple of single-shot poison dart pens. Some of it's familiar to her. The rest of it is more advanced than she's dealt with, latest-generation Q Division hypertech.
Jamelia is busy assembling a modular rifle from what looks like a laptop computer and video camera's worth of components, and she spends the minimum amount of time to politely look up and acknowledge Elissa's presence. Elissa doesn't know if she wants her biological mother to say anything, and so she doesn't push it. Instead, she just politely gestures to the equipment on the table, and waits for a response.
"Take what you need," Harlan says gruffly. It reminds her of his tone when she had misbehaved, back when she was young. Gruff, but not angry. Just unambiguous cold disapproval. It takes all of her experience and training to not let her emotions show. But it helps for her to sit down and disassemble, check, and reassemble an X-7 machine pistol. She doesn't have to look at her adoptive father, or her biological mother, if she's concentrating on loading magazines with the multicolored cylinders that are Union-standard caseless rounds. One fragmenting, then one armor piercing. In the X-7's hyperburst mode, they'll land almost in the same spot. More than sufficient against people, or even weaker risen, if you aim for the head.
"We need an escape route," Jamelia says, echoing what Elissa's thinking. "We're dealing with an unknown and powerful hostile who wants us dead, but he's not going to be able to move that many dead people quickly, or keep them hidden for long. Hopefully he'll get into trouble without us around, and either he solves his own problem for us, or at the very least he's forced to retreat and rebuild, which buys time to find a more permanent solution."
"His soldiers and weapons come from the underworld," Elissa says. "He can travel through it. And he's a powerful deathlord. Are you sure this will work?"
"I saw someone who claimed to be a god die just a few weeks ago," Jamelia says. There's no braggadocio there, just a cold statement of fact. "This only ends one way if he reveals himself, and if he's inclined to force this confrontation, it might as well happen sooner rather than later." Such calm confidence. The privilege of a woman who worked for an organization, however riven with infighting and intrigue it was. Someone who could rely on having backup and equipment and intelligence as a default, rather than having to beg and plead for every talisman and every favor. Someone who didn't need to herd cats endlessly to get anything done. Someone who could rely on rank and institutional backing rather than having to work through word of mouth and personal charisma.
"What are your ghost-hunting assets in Paris at the moment?" Elissa pauses. "You as in the Technocracy, that is."
There's a pause from the other two - the pause of two people considering how much they can release to someone who's technically on the other side. "Mostly Void Engineer specialists, from what I recall," Harlan says. "The Parisian catacombs have a recurring problem there. So that's probably good news for us."
"Unless Choi uses the catacombs as his entryway." Jamelia slides a touchpad over to Elissa, with the 'blue zones' of high Technocracy presence marked out. She's sure it's not all of it, but it's something.
"No," Harlan says confidently. "He won't do that. He'd set off all the watchdogs and make it clear to the Union that there's a major RNE incursion. We might want to even consider deliberately making use of the subway. Tempt him into making that mistake."
"Or maybe he won't care," Jamelia counters. "We're dealing with an obsessive here."
"An obsessive who'll do anything for revenge and tipping the Engineers off to his presence here is the single worst thing he could do," Harlan says. "If he's going to walk himself into a killbox with the bare minimum of coaxing, that's going to make our lives much easier."
She wants to believe. She wants to believe that she can just dodge the problem and it'll work out. Even so, Elissa can't quite manage to believe it. Maybe the 'crats have enough firepower to make An-Jin Choi re-dead. But she doesn't know if they have that firepower here, what with the Void Engineers spending all their time in space fighting aliens, what seems like most of the Shock Corps and the newly militarized Damage Control deployed to fight North Korea, and the unpleasant shadow wars going on between the Union and the Camarilla and Pentex in Los Angeles, the one she's heard involving the Union and the Sabbat in New York City, and all the other conflicts it's trying to manage at the same time. But Elissa is no friend of the Technocracy, and if Jamelia Belltower is willing to make Elissa's problem the Technocracy's problem, she's not going to object. And who knows? Maybe Jamelia's right and taking out a Deathlord isn't that much of a problem.
Destination: ???
How does the party plan to escape?
[ ] By Land Vehicle: There are a lot of roads and railways in and out of Paris. A lot. Ground transport is easy to acquire, although it's also just as easy to chase. On the other hand, a chase of that sort is easier to survive.
[ ] By Air: It's easy enough to tinker with a passenger manifest, and nearly impossible to find the changes until after the fact. Air travel allows an escape as speedily as possible, but also creates unique risks if an ambush occurs in midflight.
[ ] On Foot: There are hidden passages, secret bases, waystations that can be used to get to Traditions safe routes and Union rapid transport. Although the stealthiest of all possible routes, and although the waystations are shielded themselves, the sheer amount of time spent in perfect ambush territory is in and of itself a risk.
Weapons and Equipment OSP:
Because the second winning vote was to seek equipment (actually it was tied but I figured the 'equipment' vote worked better as an offscreen bennie) Harlan has been ransacking some old caches for stuff. Most of Helmetshrike and Vigilance's gear has been retrieved or destroyed thanks to a certain wolf, but everyone had their own caches that weren't on official channels. Most of them don't have anything worth mentioning after decades and decades of time, but there's something Harlan's recovered that might have some use. Besides for the standard sorts of odds and ends-small arms, explosives, generations-old espionage gadgets that are probably no longer better than equivalents of Sleeper make, what did Harlan find in his cache diving?
[ ] A set of PK Resonance Knives: Although of Etherite construction, back when Owl was on active duty these psychokinetically resonant weapons could have been considered legitimate hypertech, even if their use would get you side-eyed by Progenitors and Iterators. With blades carved out of psionically resonant crystal, PK Resonance Knives interface with a telekinetic's subconscious mind, allowing them to float and attack freely. The crystal they're forged from also holds a monomolecular edge, letting them cut through non-hardened materials, and are chemical-resistant enough that they can be coated in most toxins.
[ ] A customized Carwennan Mk-6 SMG: When Harlan was operating for Vigilance, he was the primary psi-op, which meant that he tended to be the one packing light, carrying stimulants and combat drugs instead of heavy weapons and ammo. But he was still trained to standards which would impress any special forces commando from the masses, and he was expected to be capable of using any NWO Tactical Division standard weapon. The Mark 6 iteration of the Carwennan is an impressively well-designed electromagnetic SMG, capable of firing just about any ferromagnetic object at hypersonic speeds, even if it performs best with actual ammunition. Capable of being concealed in a small briefcase and interfacing with all 80s-era NWO tactical optics, the main benefit of the Carwennan platform is the integrated holoprojector system, which can literally erase the weapon from masses sensors and visual acquisition. Combined with anti-shockwave ammunition, it's an assassin's weapon, with zero visual or auditory impact.
[ ] An old set of modified Model 1981 TacOps BDUs: Harlan's nature as the psi-op meant that he might have had slightly looser physical fitness standards and was allowed to shirk on acquiring quite the sheer breadth of skills that the rest of Vigilance expected, but it also meant that he was allowed-and encouraged-to learn to maintain his own specialized equipment, and he branched out into a broad working knowledge of hypertech. All of his combat gear was customized, and it saved his life on a few occasions. They don't fit quite as well anymore-a little tighter around the stomach and looser around the arms and legs-but they're still in excellent condition. Standard issue TacOps BDUs for Enlightened personnel provide partial-chameleon capability, rifle and blade-resistant full body soft armor protection, selectively permeable fabric that protects against fire and chemicals, a hemoreactive inner layer to assist in wound sealing, and the ability to fail gracefully in tech-hostile environments. This set of BDUs has been customized with soft inserts made of Iteration X-build electro-reactive impact armor over the torso and in the collar, a myomer-fiber weave through the arms and gloves interfaced to an aim-assist computer, and unpowered carbon-composite exoskeletal elements in the legs for absorbing falls and moving quickly with heavy loads. More importantly, Harlan's also implemented various psi-amp components in this set, customized to his own psychic abilities.
Grey water laden with the fumes of Paris falls from a grey sky. Elissa looks both ways before crossing the street, then darts between red Renaults and white Fiats. There's an ambulance parked further down the street, and she sends out a guarded pulse of thought. No. It's safe. Just paramedics seeing to someone who's not going to live. The death lies too heavy for them to manage anything. It's a fact of life, and this death is… different from the death that haunts her.
The wind catches the hood of her waterproof and tries to whisk it away, to reveal the dark hair that falls in front of her eyes.
She's here at the address from the card. A nondescript apartment in a middle-class apartment block, a place so boring it's practically invisible.
Elissa suspects that she's dealing with one of Jamelia's safehouses. She tentatively knocks on the nondescript apartment door as she steps to the side, one hand in her purse holding onto the revolver she's smuggled past so many security checkpoints, pulling the hammer back so that if she senses anything wrong she can return fire through the door.
The door opens to welcome her. "Come in," Harlan says gruffly. Elissa doesn't know what she's hearing in his voice, some sort of melange of anger and relief and bitterness, and she's thankful that he doesn't ask her any questions or expect her to say anything. She suspects she knows why he's here, and it's not only because of professional interest. Someone as powerful and dangerous as Jamelia Belltower surely could have had her pick of professional killers who didn't ask questions and had magic more politically correct than psychic powers.
"I'm ho… here," she says, and just for a moment she's seven again, back from school for the summer. She hangs her coat up on one of the racks, and glances into the living room. She can just barely see the television tuned to CNN international, hear the 24-hour news on the imminent North Korean crisis, the anchor talking about the latest provocation by North Korean forces. There's an undertone of inevitability in the anchor's voice when she talks about the people streaming out of Seoul, the knowledge that things will get very bad soon combined with the inability to predict when the hammer will fall. The half-visible news ticker is a string of meaningless, contextless statements, as if the reporters and producers know that everything else pales in importance. Even if they still only think that the fight will be between the forces of liberal democracy and a repressive nuclear power, it's easy to consider police raids on human traffickers in Los Angeles or the mysterious earthquake in Japan a few weeks ago irrelevant compared to the out-of-control crisis which threatens millions of lives.
"I know. Get in here," Halan grumps. He looks his age now, for all that his movements still hold a martial artist's precision, and she knows what it means. Was this her fault? She needed to escape, and she's never really regretted running. But did she hurt him in the process? Did he deserve to be hurt? Does it even matter anymore?
Harlan and Jamelia have unpacked already, and their luggage is neatly laid out on the table in front of the flatscreen TV. One of the perks of being a Technocrat, Elissa muses jealously. They didn't have to worry about airport security or customs when they could compromise them on a hardware level, and built their equipment to hide from millimeter-wave scanners and metal detectors, all of which are built to Union specifications with Union backdoors. The coffee table and living room floor are neatly piled with covert ops gear of Technocracy make. There's nanoweave inserts and armored clothing, spy microdrones, medical packs, a handful of EMP bombs, disposable lockpicks, filter plugs, augmented contacts-everything you'd need for a covert operation laid out in neat organized rows. Elissa even sees explosives disguised as coffee or chocolate or other dry goods and a couple of single-shot poison dart pens. Some of it's familiar to her. The rest of it is more advanced than she's dealt with, latest-generation Q Division hypertech.
Jamelia is busy assembling a modular rifle from what looks like a laptop computer and video camera's worth of components, and she spends the minimum amount of time to politely look up and acknowledge Elissa's presence. Elissa doesn't know if she wants her biological mother to say anything, and so she doesn't push it. Instead, she just politely gestures to the equipment on the table, and waits for a response.
"Take what you need," Harlan says gruffly. It reminds her of his tone when she had misbehaved, back when she was young. Gruff, but not angry. Just unambiguous cold disapproval. It takes all of her experience and training to not let her emotions show. But it helps for her to sit down and disassemble, check, and reassemble an X-7 machine pistol. She doesn't have to look at her adoptive father, or her biological mother, if she's concentrating on loading magazines with the multicolored cylinders that are Union-standard caseless rounds. One fragmenting, then one armor piercing. In the X-7's hyperburst mode, they'll land almost in the same spot. More than sufficient against people, or even weaker risen, if you aim for the head.
"We need an escape route," Jamelia says, echoing what Elissa's thinking. "We're dealing with an unknown and powerful hostile who wants us dead, but he's not going to be able to move that many dead people quickly, or keep them hidden for long. Hopefully he'll get into trouble without us around, and either he solves his own problem for us, or at the very least he's forced to retreat and rebuild, which buys time to find a more permanent solution."
"His soldiers and weapons come from the underworld," Elissa says. "He can travel through it. And he's a powerful deathlord. Are you sure this will work?"
"I saw someone who claimed to be a god die just a few weeks ago," Jamelia says. There's no braggadocio there, just a cold statement of fact. "This only ends one way if he reveals himself, and if he's inclined to force this confrontation, it might as well happen sooner rather than later." Such calm confidence. The privilege of a woman who worked for an organization, however riven with infighting and intrigue it was. Someone who could rely on having backup and equipment and intelligence as a default, rather than having to beg and plead for every talisman and every favor. Someone who didn't need to herd cats endlessly to get anything done. Someone who could rely on rank and institutional backing rather than having to work through word of mouth and personal charisma.
"What are your ghost-hunting assets in Paris at the moment?" Elissa pauses. "You as in the Technocracy, that is."
There's a pause from the other two - the pause of two people considering how much they can release to someone who's technically on the other side. "Mostly Void Engineer specialists, from what I recall," Harlan says. "The Parisian catacombs have a recurring problem there. So that's probably good news for us."
"Unless Choi uses the catacombs as his entryway." Jamelia slides a touchpad over to Elissa, with the 'blue zones' of high Technocracy presence marked out. She's sure it's not all of it, but it's something.
"No," Harlan says confidently. "He won't do that. He'd set off all the watchdogs and make it clear to the Union that there's a major RNE incursion. We might want to even consider deliberately making use of the subway. Tempt him into making that mistake."
"Or maybe he won't care," Jamelia counters. "We're dealing with an obsessive here."
"An obsessive who'll do anything for revenge and tipping the Engineers off to his presence here is the single worst thing he could do," Harlan says. "If he's going to walk himself into a killbox with the bare minimum of coaxing, that's going to make our lives much easier."
She wants to believe. She wants to believe that she can just dodge the problem and it'll work out. Even so, Elissa can't quite manage to believe it. Maybe the 'crats have enough firepower to make An-Jin Choi re-dead. But she doesn't know if they have that firepower here, what with the Void Engineers spending all their time in space fighting aliens, what seems like most of the Shock Corps and the newly militarized Damage Control deployed to fight North Korea, and the unpleasant shadow wars going on between the Union and the Camarilla and Pentex in Los Angeles, the one she's heard involving the Union and the Sabbat in New York City, and all the other conflicts it's trying to manage at the same time. But Elissa is no friend of the Technocracy, and if Jamelia Belltower is willing to make Elissa's problem the Technocracy's problem, she's not going to object. And who knows? Maybe Jamelia's right and taking out a Deathlord isn't that much of a problem.
Destination: ???
How does the party plan to escape?
[ ] By Land Vehicle: There are a lot of roads and railways in and out of Paris. A lot. Ground transport is easy to acquire, although it's also just as easy to chase. On the other hand, a chase of that sort is easier to survive.
[ ] By Air: It's easy enough to tinker with a passenger manifest, and nearly impossible to find the changes until after the fact. Air travel allows an escape as speedily as possible, but also creates unique risks if an ambush occurs in midflight.
[ ] On Foot: There are hidden passages, secret bases, waystations that can be used to get to Traditions safe routes and Union rapid transport. Although the stealthiest of all possible routes, and although the waystations are shielded themselves, the sheer amount of time spent in perfect ambush territory is in and of itself a risk.
Weapons and Equipment OSP:
Because the second winning vote was to seek equipment (actually it was tied but I figured the 'equipment' vote worked better as an offscreen bennie) Harlan has been ransacking some old caches for stuff. Most of Helmetshrike and Vigilance's gear has been retrieved or destroyed thanks to a certain wolf, but everyone had their own caches that weren't on official channels. Most of them don't have anything worth mentioning after decades and decades of time, but there's something Harlan's recovered that might have some use. Besides for the standard sorts of odds and ends-small arms, explosives, generations-old espionage gadgets that are probably no longer better than equivalents of Sleeper make, what did Harlan find in his cache diving?
[ ] A set of PK Resonance Knives: Although of Etherite construction, back when Owl was on active duty these psychokinetically resonant weapons could have been considered legitimate hypertech, even if their use would get you side-eyed by Progenitors and Iterators. With blades carved out of psionically resonant crystal, PK Resonance Knives interface with a telekinetic's subconscious mind, allowing them to float and attack freely. The crystal they're forged from also holds a monomolecular edge, letting them cut through non-hardened materials, and are chemical-resistant enough that they can be coated in most toxins.
[ ] A customized Carwennan Mk-6 SMG: When Harlan was operating for Vigilance, he was the primary psi-op, which meant that he tended to be the one packing light, carrying stimulants and combat drugs instead of heavy weapons and ammo. But he was still trained to standards which would impress any special forces commando from the masses, and he was expected to be capable of using any NWO Tactical Division standard weapon. The Mark 6 iteration of the Carwennan is an impressively well-designed electromagnetic SMG, capable of firing just about any ferromagnetic object at hypersonic speeds, even if it performs best with actual ammunition. Capable of being concealed in a small briefcase and interfacing with all 80s-era NWO tactical optics, the main benefit of the Carwennan platform is the integrated holoprojector system, which can literally erase the weapon from masses sensors and visual acquisition. Combined with anti-shockwave ammunition, it's an assassin's weapon, with zero visual or auditory impact.
[ ] An old set of modified Model 1981 TacOps BDUs: Harlan's nature as the psi-op meant that he might have had slightly looser physical fitness standards and was allowed to shirk on acquiring quite the sheer breadth of skills that the rest of Vigilance expected, but it also meant that he was allowed-and encouraged-to learn to maintain his own specialized equipment, and he branched out into a broad working knowledge of hypertech. All of his combat gear was customized, and it saved his life on a few occasions. They don't fit quite as well anymore-a little tighter around the stomach and looser around the arms and legs-but they're still in excellent condition. Standard issue TacOps BDUs for Enlightened personnel provide partial-chameleon capability, rifle and blade-resistant full body soft armor protection, selectively permeable fabric that protects against fire and chemicals, a hemoreactive inner layer to assist in wound sealing, and the ability to fail gracefully in tech-hostile environments. This set of BDUs has been customized with soft inserts made of Iteration X-build electro-reactive impact armor over the torso and in the collar, a myomer-fiber weave through the arms and gloves interfaced to an aim-assist computer, and unpowered carbon-composite exoskeletal elements in the legs for absorbing falls and moving quickly with heavy loads. More importantly, Harlan's also implemented various psi-amp components in this set, customized to his own psychic abilities.
- Location
- in the trash
Okay, so Korean bishie deathlord almost certainly has assets monitoring the airports unless he's incompetent, and seems to have a way of determing Jamelia's general location, even if he apparently can't narrow it down that much. Which isn't as much of a problem when we're in a crowded major city, but when we're onboard an airplane that narrows down the possibilities significantly. We don't know if he's still working with the Panopticon remnants either.
Plus, I'm going to assume it's a given that we're going to be ambushed at some point, and onboard the confines of an airplane would be the worst possible location for that to happen.
Plus, I'm going to assume it's a given that we're going to be ambushed at some point, and onboard the confines of an airplane would be the worst possible location for that to happen.
Last edited:
FORTHEYOLOZ
Morgana-sama!!!
- Location
- Omega Hell
So the equipment vote turned out to be a bit of a bust. I had hope that we would have found better tools, but given what we've got I am tenatively leaning toward Escape by Vehicle and the Resonance Knives; which is the option that (probably) puts the most space between us and Choi's minion for the duration of the encounter.
Both the plane option and On Foot would likely puts us in a melee range engagement, which isn't optimal against such a durable enemy. None of our party specializes in melee.
Both the plane option and On Foot would likely puts us in a melee range engagement, which isn't optimal against such a durable enemy. None of our party specializes in melee.
- Location
- in the trash
...All of our temporary party members are highly proficient (well, Harlan is slightly less proficient) in melee and unarmed combat on top of being able to tilt the odds further with mage tricks, and Choi is unusually resilient and strong but there's nothing implying he's an augmented combatant on the level of say, Rose.
FORTHEYOLOZ
Morgana-sama!!!
- Location
- Omega Hell
Its certainly not optimal, being on the airplane and getting ambushed there, but the SMG is cloaked, disguised and silenced; so I'm assuming that it takes less Paradox if we take it on to the plane with us.
I dunno about that, at that battle in LA he had with the Tyrants Choi was shrugging off explosives left right and center. They had to seal him off with blast doors to recover our body, so I don't think it is worth the risk.
- Location
- in the trash
Of all the reasons to actually vote for escaping by vehicle, "we don't want to get into melee" is quite frankly, irrelevant. Nevermind that you're overplaying the threat and underestimating our party members.
Yeah, he's tough enough to survive 20 kilograms of mundane high explosive without any apparent injury. Which isn't a small feat, but it's not "shrugging off explosives left and right" and we also know he's not actually trained in melee combat and is pretty much running off raw physical enhancement, and Elissa has wounded him significantly before.
And this is even assuming we'd run into him onboard the plane immediately, instead of his patsies (far more likely). It's not like escaping by vehicle even means we'd be able avoid a melee fight, anyway.
Last edited:
FORTHEYOLOZ
Morgana-sama!!!
- Location
- Omega Hell
None of us are melee specialist. Being in a vehicle we're controlling allows us to put distance and maintain that distance during the intitial phase of the encounter, because we actually know very little about Choi's overall abilities.
So long as he's not all in our faces, we can probe into what his capbilites are and react accordingly.
Maybe I'm underestimating our party's capabilities a little, but this mess with Choi happened in the first place because we overestimated what we could do.
- Location
- in the trash
What the hell is your definition of a melee specialist, even? Jamelia has significant biotech augmentation and is capable of killing a room full of armed combatants with a goddamn spoon, with a paradigm that lets her further leverage those mundane skills in a hand-to-hand fight, Elissa and Harlan are almost as well trained and capable of pulling out psychic bullshittery to enhance themselves further. Why is specifically being a melee specialist even that goddamned important?
The bigger issue should we get into a fight is that everyone currently in our party is not significantly more durable than a normal human and would have huge problems surviving being shot in the face by a RPG or worse, a plasma cannon. Stop overselling CQC as some sort of dire threat, because it's not.
Last edited:
Our team's issue is that they're squishy, which is going to be a disadvantage in any fight at any range, not specifically in melee.
I expect Choi to be aware of the catacombs and that they're a recurring problem for the Technocracy. I'd be concerned that his first move here may have been subverting some of those defenses before deploying his troops into Paris, and getting ambushed in subway tunnels might not be as bad as getting ambushed in an airplane, but it's no joke, either.
I expect Choi to be aware of the catacombs and that they're a recurring problem for the Technocracy. I'd be concerned that his first move here may have been subverting some of those defenses before deploying his troops into Paris, and getting ambushed in subway tunnels might not be as bad as getting ambushed in an airplane, but it's no joke, either.
I think people are kind of spoiled by Rose and Kessler existing, which leads them to forget that most things don't need Rose or Kessler to kill because most things aren't werewolf chieftains, avatars of a powerful umbral god-conglomerate wearing literally divine bodies, or the like. Yes, Jamelia, Harlan, and Elissa aren't fantastic combatants by Shock Corps standards, but Harlan's standard is still "if you're faced with a mundane SWAT team kicking down your door when you're in bed and unarmed, your response should be 'eh, it's only one SWAT team,'" and Elissa is hardly worse at that. And you don't even need to kill Choi to temporarily get away from him, even on a plane because you can always kick him out of the door and divert somewhere. It's not like Harlan and Jamelia don't know how to fly a plane.
That said, Choi is really really tough if you don't have some way to bypass most of his damage resistance.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Clearly, the lesson to take from this is "Utopian Conventions OP plz nerf".
Gosh darned transhumanists and their cheating
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Frankly, I'd expect people like Jamelia to be quite a bit more durable than a normal human. Just, she expresses that toughness through a magic paradigm of "I have been a superspy for 50+ years", so she survives 20 kilos of high explosives by having honed instincts and rapidly diving for cover that's perfectly shaped to ablate the explosion's lethality zone. Which, yes, looks very different to Kessler's method of "I'm too tough, I shrug it off," but mechanically it's pretty similar.
TaliesinSkye
J.D., Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
So of our three attack options - the PK knives, various hypertech firearms, and magic - does anyone know which would be most effective at piercing ghost damage resistance?
I'm thinking magic attacks that disable instead of doing damage directly, or that do aggravated damage since that bypasses most damage resistance in general, but I'm open to correction.
If that's correct then going for the armor with the Psi-Amp sounds like the best bet. It also makes Harlan more survivable and a bit more mobile, which is always a good thing.
As for escape, I'm thinking vehicle is a the best option because it allows us to control range. Yeah, nobody's bad at melee combat, but they all work very well at range and not all ghosts will, so we might as well take advantage of that in a fight.
If we do wind up in a shooting match while driving then magic or the Carwennan Mk-6 SMG with holo stealth are going to be the most useable options. Both because of superior range and because flying crystal knives are vulgar, yo.
I'm thinking magic attacks that disable instead of doing damage directly, or that do aggravated damage since that bypasses most damage resistance in general, but I'm open to correction.
If that's correct then going for the armor with the Psi-Amp sounds like the best bet. It also makes Harlan more survivable and a bit more mobile, which is always a good thing.
As for escape, I'm thinking vehicle is a the best option because it allows us to control range. Yeah, nobody's bad at melee combat, but they all work very well at range and not all ghosts will, so we might as well take advantage of that in a fight.
If we do wind up in a shooting match while driving then magic or the Carwennan Mk-6 SMG with holo stealth are going to be the most useable options. Both because of superior range and because flying crystal knives are vulgar, yo.
Heavy augmentation is strong as hell, but remember that there are big downsides too in the form of maintenance requirements and permanent paradox that makes vulgar workings much more dangerous. Heavy augmentation basically makes you very strong at certain dice pools in exchange for reducing the utility of your magical skills.Clearly, the lesson to take from this is "Utopian Conventions OP plz nerf".
Gosh darned transhumanists and their cheating
Last edited:
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It was a joke, I know there are downsides to augmentation.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] By Land Vehicle: There are a lot of roads and railways in and out of Paris. A lot. Ground transport is easy to acquire, although it's also just as easy to chase. On the other hand, a chase of that sort is easier to survive.
*deadpan* Oh no. A car chase scene. How horrible. (Cue the music!)
[X] An old set of modified Model 1981 TacOps BDUs
Bigger guns are always good, but your number one weapon is yourself. This doesn't just give better protection, it also enhances Harlan in multiple ways.
*deadpan* Oh no. A car chase scene. How horrible. (Cue the music!)
[X] An old set of modified Model 1981 TacOps BDUs
Bigger guns are always good, but your number one weapon is yourself. This doesn't just give better protection, it also enhances Harlan in multiple ways.
Acatalepsy
Firewall Proxy
- Location
- The Diamond Age
This is true right up until the transhumanists successfully work their bullshit into consensus through the power of 'providing useful tools for ordinary people', at which point they get all the bullshit powers with none of the downsides. Which is real reason why "Utopian Conventions OP plz nerf".
:dies howling with laughter:
- Location
- Jersey
[X] By Land Vehicle: There are a lot of roads and railways in and out of Paris. A lot. Ground transport is easy to acquire, although it's also just as easy to chase. On the other hand, a chase of that sort is easier to survive.
Most personal control of engagement distance, least potential for collateral damage, comes with its own cover.
[X] An old set of modified Model 1981 TacOps BDUs: Harlan's nature as the psi-op meant that he might have had slightly looser physical fitness standards and was allowed to shirk on acquiring quite the sheer breadth of skills that the rest of Vigilance expected, but it also meant that he was allowed-and encouraged-to learn to maintain his own specialized equipment, and he branched out into a broad working knowledge of hypertech. All of his combat gear was customized, and it saved his life on a few occasions. They don't fit quite as well anymore-a little tighter around the stomach and looser around the arms and legs-but they're still in excellent condition. Standard issue TacOps BDUs for Enlightened personnel provide partial-chameleon capability, rifle and blade-resistant full body soft armor protection, selectively permeable fabric that protects against fire and chemicals, a hemoreactive inner layer to assist in wound sealing, and the ability to fail gracefully in tech-hostile environments. This set of BDUs has been customized with soft inserts made of Iteration X-build electro-reactive impact armor over the torso and in the collar, a myomer-fiber weave through the arms and gloves interfaced to an aim-assist computer, and unpowered carbon-composite exoskeletal elements in the legs for absorbing falls and moving quickly with heavy loads. More importantly, Harlan's also implemented various psi-amp components in this set, customized to his own psychic abilities.
Armor, concealment, movement, and psi upgrades sounds great. Buff, buff, buff the fat old man.
Most personal control of engagement distance, least potential for collateral damage, comes with its own cover.
[X] An old set of modified Model 1981 TacOps BDUs: Harlan's nature as the psi-op meant that he might have had slightly looser physical fitness standards and was allowed to shirk on acquiring quite the sheer breadth of skills that the rest of Vigilance expected, but it also meant that he was allowed-and encouraged-to learn to maintain his own specialized equipment, and he branched out into a broad working knowledge of hypertech. All of his combat gear was customized, and it saved his life on a few occasions. They don't fit quite as well anymore-a little tighter around the stomach and looser around the arms and legs-but they're still in excellent condition. Standard issue TacOps BDUs for Enlightened personnel provide partial-chameleon capability, rifle and blade-resistant full body soft armor protection, selectively permeable fabric that protects against fire and chemicals, a hemoreactive inner layer to assist in wound sealing, and the ability to fail gracefully in tech-hostile environments. This set of BDUs has been customized with soft inserts made of Iteration X-build electro-reactive impact armor over the torso and in the collar, a myomer-fiber weave through the arms and gloves interfaced to an aim-assist computer, and unpowered carbon-composite exoskeletal elements in the legs for absorbing falls and moving quickly with heavy loads. More importantly, Harlan's also implemented various psi-amp components in this set, customized to his own psychic abilities.
Armor, concealment, movement, and psi upgrades sounds great. Buff, buff, buff the fat old man.