Prologue: Trade Chat
(Shadowmen In-Game OOC Forum, Seattle Section)
Reminder: This forum is for Out of Character (OOC) discussion only. Please direct in-character discussions (including business dealings and the like) to the appropriate in-world forums.
GreenGirl, Yolo, Scholar, DoReMi, RedFox, Rerun, ThirsT, SliceNDice, GrimDarkKawaii, NoNoNo, YesYesYes, Sniper, FoldingChair, Squeaker, Anonymous2, Anonymous5, Anonymous8, KittyKat, HurtMeMommy, HardReset, FlickerKat, DaddyIssues, Inquisitor, BattleSister, ScoopGirl, Wolfgirl, Spirit, Chill, and HoldMyBeer are in the chat.
Sniper: Man, this game is total bullshit! I just died, and I wasn’t even in combat!
RedFox: You mean that you weren’t aware you were in combat.
Sniper: What? No, we were in the van, driving to the intercept point, and then suddenly I’m at the reroll screen!
GrimDarkKawaii: Maybe run it back a bit, so we get the whole story?
Sniper: So, we took an extraction job. Some wacko scientist playing with body mods for one of the megacorps. Problem was, place he worked was really secure, and there were corporate strike team reinforcements nearby. So, we decided the best thing to do was get some patsies to do the hard work for us.
KittyKat: That’s a messed up plan. Can’t imagine why someone would want you dead.
Sniper: It should have worked, though! We were waiting nearby, so when power went out to half the district, we were ready. Didn’t even get to the site before I was back at the reroll screen.
ScoopGirl: This is related to the power outage down in Auburn? Where the ‘terrorists’ took out the substation bringing the heavy power lines to all those corporate facilities? According to my sources, there was a fight in the team responsible for that. Two were captured, alive with all their electronics (including cyberware) bricked, but enough data on their commlink to reveal they sent a kill command to someone in the van that blew up before rolling into a Stuff Hut and setting the place on fire.
Sniper: What? No, there was no fight. We were on our way to the target, and none of us ever even looked at the power substation.
HardReset: So, what made you think that trying to get another group to do the hard work was a good idea?
Sniper: Because they were just a bunch of bimbos being led around by some dick! They were just hanging off him, and carrying him in the game, instead of just keeping him at home and making sure he doesn’t do anything dangerous, that would make it harder for him to fulfill his Goddess-granted purpose.
Squeaker: Oh, you’re one of THOSE. Got it.
Scholar: While it is fascinating how the Y Plague has changed gender norms and reshaped religious fundamentalism, perhaps a game world where those conditions do not apply is not the best place for it?
Sniper: But he’s just a man!
Chill: Are you MissMe? If you have contact with She-Hulky and ByteMe in RL, send them our thanks for making the cleanup easy. Honestly, an AoE cranial bomb, and a hacker that isn’t securing the group’s comms? That’s just asking to have the interior of your van redecorated. And don’t worry about Hunter and Breaker. All their equipment might be dead, and their money gone, but I believe they’re being taken to one of the corporate labs as ‘volunteer’ test subjects.
KittyKat: Wait, you tried to do a double-cross on another team of players, and you picked Chill’s team, out of everyone?
Sniper: You! I don’t know how you cheated, but I’m going to expose you!
Chill: I didn’t cheat. You just made it obvious in the meet that there was a potential double-cross in the works, so we prepared. Knew that the best place to try and hit us to take the cargo without us being able to fight back properly would be as we were leaving the facility. Which meant you needed to be somewhere nearby. So BabyDoll spent a couple days scoping out the area. Know what she found? A motel, half a mile from the target, with an obviously up-armored van and truck sitting in the parking lot, for a place that mainly dealt with wageslaves seeking some ‘out of the corporate family’ companionship.
KittyKat: Oh, you stupid bitch. You have to be one of those second wave idiots. Did you think that having a rig that looks like a poor woman’s tank wouldn’t get noticed? Even with bribes to the hotel manager, you’d only manage to keep the Red Knights away for a few days before someone finally called and complained and they found a reason to bring you in on suspicion.
GrimDarkKawaii: Look, I’m going to be as gentle as I can with this, but you have multiple levels of stupid going on, that you need to fix. First, either your team didn’t know about the cranial bomb, or didn’t care about it enough for the team’s hacker to actually protect their team’s devices. That’s a problem, because you need a certain level of trust in order to ensure that you don’t have surprise grenades going off inside armored vans.
GrimDarkKawaii: Second, if you’re going to set up watch on a site, hide the obvious ‘work’ vehicles. That’s like cops trying for a ‘stakeout’ while sitting in the front of a marked police cruiser. Doesn’t matter if they don’t have the lights and siren on, they still are obviously cops watching a place!
GrimDarkKawaii: Third, you need to work on your target selection. I’m not saying that getting a ‘subcontractor’ isn’t a viable plan, but don’t let your religious and personal prejudices start getting in the way of good sense.
BattleSister: Oh, and before you start thinking about revenge plots, I will mention that probably won’t go well for you. And even if it does, you’ll have to deal with both the IC and OOC fallout.
Sniper: What does that mean?
BattleSister: In Character, you’ll find that people talk. And a rabid group of Shadowmen who go hunting other teams for no apparent reason is a group that isn’t going to be considered reliable for anything except jobs that have the people involved being ‘expendable’. Out of Character, the Admins sent down the equivalent of cease and desist orders after some of the other first-wavers caused too much trouble with their feuds, and started ruining the game for everyone else. Wouldn’t be surprised to see some account suspensions if any of the second wave starts that BS up again.
Chill: For my part, I’m content to let things lie. Consider it a learning experience, and move on.
Sniper: Oh, so magnanimous.
Anonymous2: Actually, yeah. Assuming that Chill has some of the tricks he developed in the Beta? That’s being nice. There are worse things than instant death, you know.
Sniper: Like what?
Anonymous2: Well, getting sold as a brothel girl, for instance. Being used for medical testing by the corpos. Live roasting for one of the cannibal cults that live in the less-pleasant areas, or being live feed for ghouls and other Infected. And then, there’s one that Chill managed to create during the Beta.
Chill: Ah, you mean the Permafrost spell? Yes, I do have that, but haven’t needed to use it in game, yet.
FlickerKat: Ooh, I heard from someone who got hit by that one. They were trapped in utter darkness, unable to see, hear, or move. After a week, the system decided that they weren’t getting out of it, gave them the reroll option. But they nearly went bonkers before that.
Chill: Yes, it took some work with the Arcana skill and the in-game interface to work out the specifics, but I managed to create a couple variants of the Petrify spell. Cryogenics temporarily turns them to ice, but Permafrost makes the effect permanent. And once a spell with a permanent effect ‘settles’ it is very difficult to undo, even by the caster. Which is why you can’t just ‘un-heal’ magic healing when it has set.
Anonymous2: What did you do with that statue you made from the ‘test subject’?
Chill: Well, I’d managed to get her in a good pose, so I used her as a decoration. Interestingly enough, the spell gives the ice some resistance to melting and damage. So long as you leave it in an area roughly 50F or lower, you’ll have a permanent attraction. After a week of that, though, I decided to have some plumbing installed, and turned her into a fountain. Which was probably when the System decided she was ‘dead’, since one of the pipes went through where her heart would have been if she wasn’t ice.
Anonymous2: So, if you hadn’t made her a fountain, she might have spent the rest of the Beta like that?
Chill: Well, at least until one of the Admins got around to looking at her, probably.
Anonymous2: And this is why you don’t try vendettas with people, Sniper. Understand?
Sniper: Uh, yeah. Got it.