After a bit of character rebuilding, we started into gaming this week.
Three players:
Three players:
- C playing Zephyr, an gnome Adept infiltrator
- M playing Ender, a human Technomancer
- M playing an unamed elven adept face
---
A well-dressed man in a suit falls tumbling down a a tunnel, huffing and puffing from a run. Its a pretty good fall, but a bed of corn stalks pads landing. Above light pipes, like giant optical fibers, funnel in light. Its an underground cavern with a dotted sky. The cavern walls is visible off in one direction and there are people off in the other direction. He walks towards the people.
Upon closer inspection, there is a road and an open space with all sorts of people -- humans, elves, orcs, and all sorts of others -- whooping and hollaring. There are internal combustion engines running and firing. Old cars and vans are strewn about. The unnamed man keeps walking, changing his looks slightly as he walks into the encampment. All the vehicles are marked with VW symbols and bright pastel paint colors.
We walks up to a group sitting in a circle around some open fire grill. Food, probably soy-based but something odd, is cooking. He starts to talk to the brightly-dressed folks cooking and they hollar over to Zeb. Zeb appears and asks where the man is headed? He asks where there is to go. The talk for a bit and the man decides to stay. Zeb, it turns out is a taxi driver. Zeb and Spaz are friendly, sharing booze and stronger stuff around the fire, talking mostly about cars. Finally, they ask the man if he has seen the barn-burner. He hasn't and they take him a few camps over.
There in the center with a man laying on the hood is a large stretched Kombiwagen. The man reads until the two Dubs (as they call themselves) ask him to fire it up. The back opens it up and a small turbine engine fires, sending flames and smoke. Kids gather, roasting soy dogs and marshmallows over the flames. This is the center of their culture.
The unnamed man settles in and finds his hosts offer him a place to stay. He trades his suit for clothes to fit in with, and settles in by the fire, drinking and enjoying.
...
Meanwhile, Zephyr, a gnome flies into the airport in Port Wayne, met by a taxi. He loads in his gear and the driver takes him to an industrial section of town, rough and somewhat abandoned. There, the car stops, and after a moment, a man appears with long hair and a large beard. He taps on the window and the car's driver takes something from him and gives him something back. He yells into the back seat that he will take Zephyr the rest of the way.
He leads Zephyr back behind some dumpster and opens up a couple of large iron covers over a ramp. Lighting down below shows an old beat up vehicle with the word Taxi scrawled across it in haphazard paint. The driver drives down a tunnel into a larger cavern and down dirt roads for a while. There are food fields surrounding them with sunlight piped in from the ceiling. Eventually they get to a ramp that takes them down into a lower cavern.
The taxi wanders through buildings. There isn't much light here. The cavern ceiling is only thirty or forty feet overhead, but it is hard to see with the signs of an urban sprawl. Weird though... most of the buildings on one story and spread out. They pull up in front a store with a bright sign above that reads V-Works.
Zephyr grabs his stuff and walks in. A short-haired red headed human is at the counter with a pale human moving drinks around. Its a typical coffee cyber-cafe -- booths, tables, comfort seats, plants, and security rail drone not too hidden behind a hanging plant. AROs give the menu and specials in a subtle image.
Zephyr hops up from his short stature to a tall stool. He is looking for food, orders, and heads over to a table to wait.
A high-class looking suit with black hair and nice shoes walks in. He sits down at the table with Zephyr, unbuttoning the jacket of his new fashion purple suit. They talk and Spinner, the suit, indicates he has a place for Zephyr to stay but he has something he needs done first. He gives a whistle and his usual coffee appears in the hands of the pale human.
"Have a seat. I need you two to do a quick job before you head to your place for the night. There is an individual that just dropped into the first level. Find him and bring him to me, unharmed." Spinner sends the image over to the two via commlinks. Its a nondescript elf in a suit.
Zephyr is distracted by the game of space invaders that appeared on his AR. Someone in the place is messing with him. Not surprising in this place.
The two climb into an old GMC Hermes delivery van that Eula, the red haired manager, keeps out back. Zephyr can't reach the pedals, so Ender drives.
They wander up to the first level and head for the Dubs camp. They stop in and look around, moving from camp to camp. Zephyr gets the bright idea of acting like a child looking for his lost parent. He gets the ear and heart of one of the Dubs, who leads them through looking for the lost parent, a man in a suit.
Eventually the two wander into the camp spot where the unnamed man sits, looking different in different clothes. The Dubs have begun their nightly ritual of libation that last until they either pass out or go to bed, so not many are around or with it. It is starting to get dark. Ender is a bit on edge with no signals around. The Dubs are pretty much tech free.
The unnamed man hassles Zephyr, asking him a lot of questions. He hassles him about his pack and asks him to open. Zephyr fumbles it and his lot of B&E tools fall everywhere. The man helps him pick them up and palms the lockpicks. Zephyr seems him and the man retorts, "These aren't for a kid. You could get hurt."
Eventually the man sends them off towards the cornfield. He grab a hunk of metal and jams into his pocket and follows them. He circles back around and pops out when they are on the road. Things get a bit more blunt now. The man wants to know why they are looking for him, giving them the impression that he has a gun in his pocket. They talk to the man about a job and Spinner. Not agreeing to go with them, the man agrees to meet them at 11 at V-Works.
Zephyr and Ender, dejected and unhappy, head back to V-Works feeling outmatched. They don't know what to make of this guy. He obviously has skills they don't.
---
Just before 11, Zephyr and Ender sit in V-Works waiting for Spinner to show. He shows up and isn't happy. He emphasizes the fact that he wanted him unharmed, but that didn't mean conscious. An Indian man comes in and chats up Eula, looking for a net connection or something, but not buying. Eventually he gets up and joins the conversation. It's the unnamed man.
It's real simple now. Spinner gives him a place to stay and an opportunity to talk the next day at 8 AM about a job. He mentions that he has a place for someone with his skills, speaking with platitudes and goodness in his heart. Spinner seems to more than he's letting on. The unnamed man bites. Spinner leaves in his fancy Euro Westwind. Eula gives the three their lodgings for the night -- three rooms at The Vintage. Its a hotel down a couple of levels.
The taxi wanders through buildings. There isn't much light here. The cavern ceiling is only thirty or forty feet overhead, but it is hard to see with the signs of an urban sprawl. Weird though... most of the buildings on one story and spread out. They pull up in front a store with a bright sign above that reads V-Works.
Zephyr grabs his stuff and walks in. A short-haired red headed human is at the counter with a pale human moving drinks around. Its a typical coffee cyber-cafe -- booths, tables, comfort seats, plants, and security rail drone not too hidden behind a hanging plant. AROs give the menu and specials in a subtle image.
Zephyr hops up from his short stature to a tall stool. He is looking for food, orders, and heads over to a table to wait.
A high-class looking suit with black hair and nice shoes walks in. He sits down at the table with Zephyr, unbuttoning the jacket of his new fashion purple suit. They talk and Spinner, the suit, indicates he has a place for Zephyr to stay but he has something he needs done first. He gives a whistle and his usual coffee appears in the hands of the pale human.
"Have a seat. I need you two to do a quick job before you head to your place for the night. There is an individual that just dropped into the first level. Find him and bring him to me, unharmed." Spinner sends the image over to the two via commlinks. Its a nondescript elf in a suit.
Zephyr is distracted by the game of space invaders that appeared on his AR. Someone in the place is messing with him. Not surprising in this place.
The two climb into an old GMC Hermes delivery van that Eula, the red haired manager, keeps out back. Zephyr can't reach the pedals, so Ender drives.
They wander up to the first level and head for the Dubs camp. They stop in and look around, moving from camp to camp. Zephyr gets the bright idea of acting like a child looking for his lost parent. He gets the ear and heart of one of the Dubs, who leads them through looking for the lost parent, a man in a suit.
Eventually the two wander into the camp spot where the unnamed man sits, looking different in different clothes. The Dubs have begun their nightly ritual of libation that last until they either pass out or go to bed, so not many are around or with it. It is starting to get dark. Ender is a bit on edge with no signals around. The Dubs are pretty much tech free.
The unnamed man hassles Zephyr, asking him a lot of questions. He hassles him about his pack and asks him to open. Zephyr fumbles it and his lot of B&E tools fall everywhere. The man helps him pick them up and palms the lockpicks. Zephyr seems him and the man retorts, "These aren't for a kid. You could get hurt."
Eventually the man sends them off towards the cornfield. He grab a hunk of metal and jams into his pocket and follows them. He circles back around and pops out when they are on the road. Things get a bit more blunt now. The man wants to know why they are looking for him, giving them the impression that he has a gun in his pocket. They talk to the man about a job and Spinner. Not agreeing to go with them, the man agrees to meet them at 11 at V-Works.
Zephyr and Ender, dejected and unhappy, head back to V-Works feeling outmatched. They don't know what to make of this guy. He obviously has skills they don't.
---
Just before 11, Zephyr and Ender sit in V-Works waiting for Spinner to show. He shows up and isn't happy. He emphasizes the fact that he wanted him unharmed, but that didn't mean conscious. An Indian man comes in and chats up Eula, looking for a net connection or something, but not buying. Eventually he gets up and joins the conversation. It's the unnamed man.
It's real simple now. Spinner gives him a place to stay and an opportunity to talk the next day at 8 AM about a job. He mentions that he has a place for someone with his skills, speaking with platitudes and goodness in his heart. Spinner seems to more than he's letting on. The unnamed man bites. Spinner leaves in his fancy Euro Westwind. Eula gives the three their lodgings for the night -- three rooms at The Vintage. Its a hotel down a couple of levels.
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