CyberFrance – Doc Says Rawr!

September 2, 2009

Torg update – Session of 27 August 2009

So…after three weeks without game, we actually got to play last week (and of course, I procrastinate on my update). We’d been left with some pretty significant cliffhangers from the session before (GM’s never allowed to give us another cliffhanger before a week off ever again–especially if he’s going to get Con plague) and most of the session dealt with the resolution of those cliffhangers.

Grace’s resolution was perhaps the most anticlimatic. The Marquis just…walked away. Told her where to find Fred and just left. There was a lot of blinking that went into that.

Ano found himself looking at a lump of flesh and metal that was Frederico DeSoto in a stupor worse than any alcohol-induced haze than we’ve ever seen him in. What’s worse? Ano has no hope of lifting this guy up, and his only job is to get him the hell out of there. Even between him and Grace (who arrived to help), they could barely get him moving. Of course, they had a little more excitement on the way out…

Topside, things aren’t going so well for Mei, Chris, and Mable. They’re in a stalemate with the Hunter–one of them agaisnt him would almost certainly lose. Mei and Chris, of course, start fighting over who’s going to grab Mable and run. Chris decides it’s going to be him. This plan is full of fail. Mei ends up pulling out the chip that’s a governor on her ability to use bullet-time (thus killing the limits on the ability) and does a very good job of distracting the Hunter while Christian grabs Mable and starts to run….and sees the Marquis quietly leaving. The Marquis who he has a major bone to pick with.

In the meantime, Ren plays prisoner with Odyle (who backpedals on bits of things she said before). The plan of Ren attempting to fake being Allison didn’t work so well (partially due to GM confusion), but “WWAD” definately paid off when Odyle was getting ready to zot Ren into a pit. A well-placed distraction and a high-tech bullet put Odyle down long enough for Ren and Grant to make an escape–and quickly learn that the cavalry (which is to say, a bunch of crazy French knights on the side of the pope) is on the way.

Grace, Ano, and Fred have a close encounter with the result of Grace’s Nemesis card, an Executioner named the Sorrow. He’s got it out for Grace–and she gets a taste of some pain before he bails out. Ren and Grant arrive shortly thereafter and all five head for the surface.

In the meantime, Chris has grabbed Mable and made a run for it….then proceeded to drop Mable somewhere “safe” along the way and made a move on the Marquis, who he managed to get by his metal gorget. They exchange some harsh words–some of which are important, such as the Marquis admitting that he knows where Odyle/Odette is going. She’s headed east, to something called the Well of Forever (also called the Well of Souls in some references, according to the GM, but we don’t know that in character yet). He warned that anyone looking into the well to find truth should be careful, because sometimes the well looks back. This information is later passed on to the rest of us. Before letting the Marquis go, Chris vows to end him should they meet again. I’m not looking forward to meeting this guy ever again myself (Ren doesn’t really like the taste of drywall, thank you).

I don’t rightfully remember what sent the Hunter scurrying (was it a bunch of Tachicomas? probably), but we did start booking down the streets of Avignon, really not sure how we were going to get the hell out of the city–and Mara didn’t have any ideas on that one, either. Odyle shows up with this gun bigger than she is and gets ready to take shots at us….only to be distracted by Tachicomas that were really, really happy to see her. She wastes one and then they get really confused. We ran.

And then the Red Hood and her zepplin rescue us–someone called in a favor (not Yuri; I have my theories on who might have been responsible for saving our arses, though), though she won’t tell us who it was. And we’re sailing away, to the east–putting as much sky between us and France as possible about now.

The first morning we’re on the zep, the Technomage that’s been haunting Mei shows up…and starts talking. He’s in violation of some rules by coming and talking to us, he tells us. I don’t remember getting to talk much before we called for the night (it was already 10 by the time we got rescued, which didn’t leave a lot of time for heavy plot discussions).

August 7, 2009

Torg update – session of 6 August 2009

So…a plan come up with shortly before leaving for session kind of sort of worked (yes, Vee, you’re right and we’re crazy, but maybe what we ended up doing might work out for us). No evacuation plan for the Inquisition prison we were going to break into…but misdirection seemed to work in our favor, at least for a while.

While on our way to the site of the Inquisition prison where Frederico DeSoto’s being held, Ren suggests that maybe we should let Mable set off some explosive distractions–the sort of things that will let some of us sneak inside hopefully unnoticed. She intended it to be a lot more hands-off than it ended up being, but in the end I’m generally more flexible than most. The plan, of course, gets changed even before we start setting it up and the group splits between an infiltration team (Ren, Grant, Grace, and Ano) and team violence (Christian, Mei, and Mable). Grant and Mable are going to rig up some explosives in optimal places and Grant’s going to find a good way in for the infiltration team first and then we’re going to start in, hoping to rescue Fred without everyone getting dead.

Ren, of course, chooses this moment to grab Grant by the collar and kiss him full-on, earning a surprised (but not displeased) look from him and a very dirty look from Mable. She tells him to be careful and he tells her “It’s better with the mask.” And then Mable and Grant go to set up explosives for the distraction team violence will be responsible for. They come back in the same amount of pieces we went them off in. In the meantime, Ren muses to herself about wearing the mask or not. She decides she’s going to.

Team violence wanders off first. They walk into what appears (key word being “appears”) to be a run-down old Cathedral. Inside appears to be more of the same until Mei notices and wastes a camera. Which results in a hologram appearing–a hologram of our good friend the Marquis, the same one who put some of us (ie, Ren) through walls while we were in Japan, the same one we hoped had died in that warehouse we tried to blow up in Japan. He advises us to get the hell out of Dodge. He’s basically told in his dreams, we’re coming to get Fred and that’s the end of it (we’re really not sure why Christian decided to tell him that we were after Fred). Which earned us a “bring it” and the hologram disappearing. Mei finds the entrance to the lower levels–basically, the prison and the like–and rips the door up and open.

Violence ensues, though it’s a bit of time before we get the explosion that the infiltration team was waiting for. As soon as we get that first explosion, Grant takes off like a shot without saying a word and the rest of us are at his heels. Of course, we’re in the first hallway when we just barely miss getting toasted by a trap (he saved Ren, again) but with the infiltration team cut in half by a very, very heavy stone slab. Of course…this could be both a good thing and a bad thing. It depends on who you ask. So Ren and Grant head off to find Fred while Grace and Ano are left to figure out another way in.

Insane violence is taking place outside. Ano and Grace find a new way into the tunnels…but it’s not too long before they run into our old friend the Marquis. Grace starts trying to talk to him after throwing Ano back down the hallway. Grant and Ren reach an impasse and have two options: either they wander around blindly trying to find the prison cells or they abuse some guards and “convince” them to tell us where they are. Grant is once again surprised when Ren’s okay with hitting the abuse the guard button. So we run into a group of four guards. Grant pwns three of them and Ren trains both guns on the last and makes him shit himself in fear (apparently, the punk didn’t feel very lucky). And then she gets to see a bit of Grant’s dark side (…something tells me he’s a little surprised how okay with it she is) as he “convinces” the guard to tell us where to find the prison cells before the guard is rendered violently unconscious.

Meanwhile, topside, the demon that almost gutted Grant the day before has shown up and gotten its claws into Mable. Thank god that Mei was paying attention, because otherwise we’d be needing another demolitions tech. Things went from bad to worse up there because the demon has a slight edge on Mei. Chris eventually manages to intervene and they slowly start to push the demon back. And that’s the cliffhanger they were left with.

Somewhere between the surface and the prison cells, Grace manages to get some interesting information out of the Marquis. Apparently, he’s been questioning a lot of the same things we’ve been questioning. Grace finally asks him, “Why don’t you just let us take Fred and leave France and never come back.”

Marquis: “What does that get me other than killed by the Inquistors for losing my charge?”

Grace pauses, and then: “You could always come with us.”

And that’s the cliffhanger that she was left with.

Grant and Ren reach the prison block after abusing some more guards. Grant produces a ring of keys and once again brings up the phrase, “You’re not going to like this.”

“You use that around me a lot.”

“Well, you tend to not like anything that involves danger.”

Which is true. Danger means people are going to get hurt. Getting hurt is bad. But once again she surprises him. He’s managed to lift a key ring from one of the guards, but this is a place where they lock up all kinds of bad people. We’ve got to open cells and let some potentially very nasty shit loose. Ren grins at him and holds out her hand for the key ring.

“You’re a better shot than I am.”

This he can’t disagree with. But before Ren can get the first door unlocked, Odyle shows up and starts taunting Ren. Of course, Ren deduces that she’s here to cause trouble–big surprise. Grant’s disappeared in the meantime, and Ren trusts that he’ll have her back if she needs him–when she needs him the most, since that’s his style. Odyle underestimates Ren, thinking that she hadn’t made a decision on whether or not she can hurt the girl. Ren, of course, has made her decision.

Damn guns jamming. Odyle gets annoyed with Ren’s attempt to solve the problem once and for all and smacks her in the head with her zotty staff. It was pain. Odyle asks if she’s ready to do it the easy way now. Ren shrugs and decides to play prisoner, for the time being. And that’s where my cliffhanger was, in part.

Ano, meanwhile, has made it to Fred’s cell at about the same time as Grant, who looks at Ano and tells him that his only job now is to get the man in that cell safely out of the prison.

Grant: “I left someone behind that I have to go pick up.”

He picks the lock and dashes off. And that’s where we cut for the evening.

We’ll have a week off next week since some of the crew will be at GenCon. I’ve teased David about consistently giving us cliffhangers when we’re going to be off for a week. It happens every time.

It’ll be interesting to see how all of this plays out. Hopefully–hopefully–in our favor. We’ll have to see.

July 24, 2009

Torg update – session of 23 July 2009

Let it be known across the land that Dr. Ren Colby is a mess.

Last week, the heroic (hair-brained?) death of Albert Westin caused a major panic across the streets of Avignon, since he turned into a werewolf and lept onto the dias where the pope was standing, giving a speech that was a call to crusade against demons–demons like the scary, snarling werewolf that turned some random guy in the pope’s entourage into goo (I know he wasn’t a random guy, I’m just not exactly sure who it actually was). Panic in the streets ensues and suddenly, there’s two groups of us seperated in a city gone insane.

Ren, of course, is on drugs and bleeding from the neck after trying to hack the GodNet. So render her (and me) halfway to useless for most of the session. I was largely comic relief for quite a wihle (for all the seriousness of the content of this week’s session…most of us laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe). Mercifully, she’s with…the newly dubbed “Team requires Adult Supervision”–two of our Nile characters, Grace and Mable (Molotov Dolly). Of course, being on drugs and blood loss…Ren isn’t exactly adult supervision at this time. The three ladies end up trying to work their way back to where we were staying without incident. But when does anything ever happen to us without incident? That’s right, next to never.

In the meantime, Grant, Anotep, and Mei have been left to their own devices in the courtyard where the speech was being held. Thank god Grant was there, because if he hadn’t been, I don’t think that we’d have ever seen Anotep and Mei ever again. They start threading their way through the crowds, also trying to get back to our lodgings. Also like the ladies…nothing goes according to plan.

Yeah, so that's what Mei, Ano, and Grant ran into

Grant, Anotep, and Mei get lost in some side streets that are more like alleyways–a result of Grant’s attempt to steer Mei clear of people, which were pushing her to the brink of a complete and total meltdown. At a point, as things start to get damper and cooler, they stop and Mei asks Grant if he’s sure they’re going the right way. He tells her very slowly that they aren’t, but he’s not looking at her — he’s looking at something else. And it’s ugly, and it’s in armor, and it wants to eat their faces. Badly.

So Mei comes up with a plan–and it wasn’t a bad plan, considering she was in powered armor. She was going to pwn it in the face as a distraction so the “squishies” (Anotep and Grant) could run and then she was going to bring up the rear and keep herself between them and the fugly. Brilliant plan. It would have worked, too, if Grant’s hero gene hadn’t flared up again.

For the record, when he wakes up…Ren is either going to slug him or jump his bones. Maybe both. Either way, there’s a lecture in his future.

Mei was in the process of stabbing the ugly in the face and Anotep had started to run when Grant takes out his pistols and starts his run. He runs up Mei’s back, steps on her head and jumps, firing down on the ugly as he’s flipping in mid-air and lands behind the thing.

He’s wearing no armor.

This thing has claws.

And it used them on Grant. It whirled, plunged its claws into his belly, and slams him against the wall. He goes down, unconscious and bleeding. Mei is like “Shit.”

I’m flailing at the other end of the table, unable to do anything since I’m nowhere near where they are.

Continue reading “Torg update – session of 23 July 2009”

July 17, 2009

Torg update – session of 16 July 2009

So another one bit the dust. We all saw Albert’s imminent demise comimg as players, though probably not quite in the spectacular fashion he went out. Though I get ahead of myself.

We start out on the pilgrim road to Avignon with a potential crusader against the technodemons. He’s rabble-rousing and building a peasant army as we go, Ren is getting sicker and sicker to her stomach as we skirt along the border of Germany and France, where the evidence of slave raiding is quite clear. She knows what that looks and feels like. This, of course, means she gets more and more quiet and withdrawn as we move along the border. Grace asks what’s wrong and Ren lies through her teeth. Of course nothing’s wrong!

So, at one point as we’re getting closer to Avignon, Grace wanders away from camp to clean her weapons. She proceeds to get into a fight with the Executioner we met before, who apparently wants to know what we’re up to before he kills us all. In the meantime, ignorant of Grace’s straits, Ren pulls Mable out into the woods to talk about Allison, who Ren wants to know more about. This is going to have to be played out via e-mail a bit since Liz doesn’t know much about Allison (David’s the one with all of that information). We end up stumbling upon the aftermath of the little duel between the Executioner and Grace but don’t learn very much about the situation.

We make Avignon a few days later, and it’s a seething mass of humanity so thick you can barely move in the streets. Amotep keeps going on and on about how awful and disease-ridden it is, saying that slaves in Egypt aren’t treated this badly (Grant turns to Ren at her eyeroll and says “Well, it’s true.”). Ren doesn’t disagree that it’s bad, she just chooses not to dwell on how bad it is. We eventually make it to our quarters in a less dirty area of the city and settle in for the night. Much to Mei’s chagrin, she’s been informed that the pope is giving a speech the next day that’s essentially going to be the call to crusade against the technodemons and that we’re all going to go listen. All right, minor wrench in our plans, since part of the reason we’d come to Avignon was to continue our hunt for DeSoto. So…we come up with yet another plan. We decide that while we’re at the speech, before the speech, Mable is going to swoon and Grace and Ren are going to drag her off to go lay down–of course, we’re not going to actually go lay down, we’re going to go hack the GodNet to see if we can get a lead on where DeSoto is. The others are going to stay and listen to the speech because we really don’t have a way to get them out of it.

So the next morning, we go to the speech almost before the sun’s up. Mable isn’t going to have a hard time faking a faint in her outfit, since she can barely breathe (she gets a promise that we’ll loosen her ties after we’re out of the crowds). We actually get primo “seats” for this speech–we can actually see that there’s figures on the dias from where we’re standing! Mable fakes her faint and the three of us beat feet further away to find a place to do our hacking. We eventually find our way to a saint’s shrine that has a terminal that Ren sneaks in to try to access as the speech begins.

Problem. There’s no keyboard.

So Ren sneaks back out and tells Mable and Grace that we need a new plan. Mable asks why and Ren brings her inside to show her. Mable looks at the apparatus for a few minutes and finally says that we don’t have any other choices–Ren’s going to have to improvise a head jack for herself to get into the computer, which is an idea that Ren’s wholly uncomfortable with. But she does it anyway, since someone’s got to and she’s the only one with a chance at success.

So she novacanes herself up and stabs a needle into the back of her neck with some wires attached with Mable’s help and then she’s in the GodNet.

…and God talks to her. It’s kind of scary.

And of course, the OS and organization of this computer system makes no sense. So Ren starts working at trying to sort through that mess so she can start trying to find the information she needs.

In the meantime, Albert has moved forward in the crowds listening to the speech, having seen someone on the dias he recognized (and apparently needed to kill). And someone starts tapping on the back of Mei’s armor.

Ting ting ting ting ting!

“Stop it!”

Ting ting ting ting ting!

“Stop it!”

Ting ting ting ting ting!

“Stop it!”

She finally turns around and there’s Odette, but it’s not Odette, it’s her evil half. And she taunts Mei. This is very amusing, since Mei is played by Odette’s former character (and David plays a very, very bad Odette. Which is fine, since we’re dealing with Odayle, Odette’s evil half). Of course, Amotep is staring at this mess very confused and Grant is the color of a bedsheet since he can’t do a damned thing without blowing all of us. Odette finishes her taunting of them and then bounces off to come find where we are.

And a few minutes later, Albert makes his move. Trish drops a martyr card, goes RAWR PUPPY and leaps up onto the dias, turning one figure up there into goo.

Then proceeds to be obliterated by energy weapons fire. Chaos and panic ensues. Chaos and panic Ren can feel on the GodNet. So she starts to pull out. As she’s pulling out, she hears the obnoxiously endearing voice of an old ally, our good friend the Tachicomas:

“Hey! Where’d you go?!”

And then she’s out demanding to know what’s going on. Grace tells her Albert just got himself killed. Ren utters a string of explicatives and tries to get back onto the GodNet, but the node is dead–like the system’s shut down as a security protocol in the midst of the panic.

And then Odette finds us. She taunts Grace, wondering aloud if Odette was ever real, is she in the back of Odayle’s head screaming to get out, to make Odayle stop. Grace isn’t sure what to do. Odette/Odayle taunts Ren. Ren counters. She taunts us all. Frederico DeSoto comes up in the midst of the conversation. Odette/Odayle says she really didn’t care much for him anyway and skips away. Ren laughs.

“Lying is a sin.”

And then we stumble out into the mess to try to find the others, or our way back to our lodgings. We’re not sure which yet. I’m bleeding from the neck thanks to my attempt to hack the GodNet. I’m muchly looking forward to Grant’s reaction to that. As Jen said in the car…at least it’d get them talking again.

…and as a side note…there was a zepplin that looked Nile when we arrived in Avignon. Grant and Mable both confirmed that it could be from there, but it wasn’t anything they knew about. So we’ll have to check that out. Soon…