We pick up with our intrepid and relatively amoral heroes where we left off. In the midst of a speeding motorcycle race! We had a few drops this game and one new addition, so we’ll see what happens next!
[Skip ahead if you read the last mission report]
For current status it’s a bit complicated. Ken our resident motorcycle racer is a bit behind, but still well within range of their deadly adversary Wislaw Pelc. Just rounding the 2/3rds mark of the track they just sped past Tkazi and Sayid. Sayid had managed a brutal shot against Wislaw Pelc’s body guard and old friend (or perhaps old flame?!) of Ken’s, Miyoshi. Her left leg was blown completely off by Sayid’s massive sniper rifle. Unfortunately for him it jammed and two moderators spotted the muzzle flash. Unfortunately for Tkazi he was pelted by some of the poor woman’s remains and became staggered (vommitting… a good bit) from the effect).
Meanwhile at the starting point of the race Kotsya the UberHacker is busily breaking into Wislaw’s quantranic defenses. Kirk Lazarus is preparing to sabotage the racers on approach the only way he knows how… by shouting “Survive!” and stabbing it.
Down the line at the first few corners a very drunk Dr. Pilot Aziz reminds Shadow the silent DogWarrior that “he’s a really great guy. The best man. Seriously this is some good vodka. Try a bit!…”
[And now the adventure begins!]
I’m going to write the events out of order, but that’s more so we can stick to specific chunks of the party for it to make a bit more sense.
Ken handily beats Wislaw Pelc in the face to face, so it is officially Canon that at this point in the action sequence, we smash cut between sequences and Ken is posed iconically atop his motorcycle just baiting Pelc to push it too far.
Just in front of the building that Sayid is perched on top of, a distinguished looking man, clearly an executive of some sort walks out of the lower floor Low Pan’s Noodle Hut, with a box of noodles in hand eating straight out of it with chopsticks. As he steps out he see’s Ken and Wislaw’s bikes streak by and hears a massive crack right above his head. Then see’s a motorcycle tumbling end over end. Followed by a female racer…that does not have enough limbs.
He takes a moment to take in what just happened. Could this be the man’s first experience of real danger? Was that a sniper he heard just above him (Yep…Definitely was). He spots a man taking video of the scene from afar (Tkazi) and two moderators. He takes some cover in the doorway for the moment and takes another bite of delicious noodles.
A little ways away, Tkazi manages to clean himself up and moves in to take a look at poor Miyoshi’s body. Surely he’s there to see if she needs help or could possibly be revived… Surely…
Meanwhile up above the burning bike Sayid, clears his rifles jam as quickly as he can to be ready. With the body guard threat out of the way (and not knowing that he’s been spotted), he settles into his perch and logs joins Kotsya in Wislaw Pelc’s quantronic network.
Smash cut! Ken on top of his motorcycle like it’s a surfboard, helmet off with majestic pompadour to the wind and just ahead of a grimacing Wislaw.
A block further up the track and at ground level Shadow, ignores the drunken Dr. Pilot and stealthily sneaks up behind the two Moderators that have spotted Sayid’s muzzle flash. The two moderators are conversing into their headsets deciding what to do as a cardboard box with feet beneath it slowly creeps up, and a Teseum Chopper slips through a hole in the side. The Dr. Pilot having suddenly (to him, 10 minutes ago to the rest of the world) lost his companion, turns towards an alley, where a very nice man ushers him into what probably is a bar. They gave him a drink though. Then something about signing things. It’s a bit of a blur.
Smash cut! Ken laying on top of his motorcycle looking completely relaxed with a cup of tea in hand (where did he get tea?!) as Wislaw streaks to catch up with the otherworldly space dandy style.
Meanwhile on the other side of the track, things are heating up. Artem’s gone missing, but Kirk Lazarus see’s the race organizers clearly talking into their comlogs. All over the faint afterimage that shows the gist of what other users are watching on their augmented reality spots of red start appearing then light up as system wide moderator core warnings are going out! Kirk decides it’s time to take a more active role his team’s SURVIVEal and starts racing towards the incoming bikes to see if he can stop Wislaw from getting to reinforcements.
Three of Wislaw’s posse of bikers hop on their machines and race towards Miyoshi’s body, the rest of his posse get ready and armed up.
Kotsya still blended into the crowd began moving through Pelc’s systems, but something’s wrong. Analyzing the data, and it’s a trap! Though not a terribly effective one. Pelc has Gaslight running and Kotsya got dropped into a useless proxy network! Luckily he figured it out quickly. He punched his way out and made it into the primary network.
Smash cut! Whatever the hell this is. Where did the goldenrobotm’n come from? Some questions are best answered by ‘he’s a dandy…in space…’
Just behind him and visibly fuming Wislaw nudges ahead while Ken’s distracted by his golden dance partner.
Finally the NPC’s get a go and immediately the moderators spring into action. They fire a pitcher (not in the core book, but it is in Infinity the miniature game), basically a launchable repeater near to Sayid, then per their orders run the spotlight program to designate their target. They report into command and await further orders now that the mystery sniper has been tagged for AR and guided munitions.
Reinforcements are very much on their way.
Smash cut! Wislaw is back in the lead while Ken is doing the Titanic pose on the front of his bike. Helmet back in place (helmet has fiberglass pompadour to protect Ken’s magnificent hair).
And we’re back to the PCs turns, let’s start with the race! Just up ahead of Wislaw’s professionalism and Ken’s Titanic pose, Kirk Lazarus takes aim with a thrown object, a pipe specifically. He throws and as the pipe spins towards Pelc and his bike, Pelc spots it, locks the rear brake and slides beneath effortlessly.
Space Dandy…does not… and takes a pipe to the face. He then fails piloting checks to stay on his bike so he’s down… and his bike… his poor bike! It’s scratched!
Kotsya still near the finish line manages to crack into Pelc’s first layer of encryption and breaks his way into the heavily secured Authorization Codes area. Where he spots the vault pass keys in their own separately encrypted area. Annoyingly to me, I actually made a version of the chart where stuff was much more hidden thinking to make it more difficult…then forgot the chart on a different PC. Curses! Timing wise it all worked out fine.
On the other side of the table our mysterious guy with noodles moves up to the two moderators targeting Sayid. He takes charge of the moderators and immediately sets them to work as his bodyguards. He seems to be an executive of a major firm and the mods recognize him as a major VIP in spite of the cheap box of Lo Pan’s noodles he’s still munching on. The mods tell him as much as they know about the sniper and that reinforcements are on the way.
Shadow just inches from sheathing his Teseum chopper in the moderators backs off and sneaks off past them to support Sayid. He also radios up to Sayid that he’s been marked!
Sayid for his part braces with his rifle and takes a brutal shot at the Moderators, the Mods try to dodge, but just barely they don’t make it. One of them is killed outright. The through and through was headed for the mysterious Executive Noodles (as I’m now calling him), but Noodles has a special skill that makes his minions jump in front of bullets and the second moderator is wounded, but not down.
Tkazi our minor maya star checks Miyoshi’s body… not so much for a pulse but for loot. He gets her stun pistol, stun baton, and a standard hacking device. Not a whole lot. He then runs Sayid’s building just opposite Shadow’s position.
NPC turn and reinforcements have arrived! Unfortunately I totally forgot about the 3 bikes I’d sent earlier to look out for Miyoshi and Pelc, so they I guess headed there, but then turned around and went straight back to reinforce Pelc. Probably because they heard about a gunship that just arrived and dropped two fire teams of Riot GRRLs. The Riot GRRLs drop in near the motorcycle crash site and get into position. They’re not currently worried about the people on the ground, they’re after the tagged sniper.
In hindsight I think they could have done more than just get into position, but thematically it made sense to me that this team got scrambled to an emergency and really arrived within minutes, having them drop and immediately firing/hacking/causing problems seemed a little rough.
The moderator guarding the executive did manage to get a pretty solid recover check and bumped his health up significantly. He certainly won’t take a sniper shot, but he may survive other things.
Pelc meanwhile has rendezvoused with his men back at the starting line and got his lesser AI’s his sirens loaded back into his system. Kotsya got a bit of a pop up notification that he’s not alone in there anymore. The race at this point is shutting down. The crowd and the organizers are dispersing as quickly as they can. After all this was an illegal race and now a Mod’s been killed too!
Back to the players and following the return of Pelc, Kotsya just manages to break the firewall around the access codes and pulls the vault data. While Kirk Lazarus, seeing the heavy reinforcements everywhere fades into the shadows whispering ‘Surviiiiiiiiive.’
At the accident/crime scene. Sayid manages to absterge the spotlight tag and sprints to the other side of the building where he does a swift action to recloak. Tkazi manages to just slip out of sight although the as yet unnamed Executive Noodles knows his rough location, and I think he’s planning to hunt him down as that camera man must be some part of this!
At this point our charismatic executive receives a transmission. One of his division’s subsidiary companies is being hacked! After some commanding and convincing back and forth he finds out that the incident is being contained as best as possible. There has been some negligence in security in this part of the organization (like someone shutting down their security to be better at racing motorcycles). They’re sending in three lesser AI’s now to deal with the hacker and they have security teams on site. He’s also given the option to try and have his teams burn out Wislaw’s systems just to stop the hack immediately. He decides to let the LAI’s handle it and take cover with his remaining Moderator.
Meanwhile Shadow has a very difficult decision. Charge headlong into a fusilade of RiotGRRL fire… or toss smoke grenades and escape. After some waffling back and forth (and probably some convincing from his teammates that heading straight into melee with Heavy Infantry link teams is not a great plan). He decides to pop smoke and with a swift action nails smoke cover on BOTH link teams!
Back to the NPCs and this battle is winding down. The RiotGrrls fail to spot Tkazi’s hiding place, but they do spot shadow and start heading his direction to question him. With the mark removed from Sayid, unfortunately the guided missiles aboard the gun ship will not be as useful this round, but they continue to search. He’s also unfortunately out of range of the repeater now too, so hacking isn’t possible.
On the start line side of the table one of the LAI’s runs directly into Kotsya and proceeds to attack. Luckily Kotsya manages to just defend against it as her Spotlight program (so that ground forces could intercept). She also signals to the other LAI’s that the hacker is here!
Kotsya starts off the action and manages a really solid hacking attack, breaking the local firewall and manipulating the data to cover his tracks. It appears now that the hackers were after Wislaw’s bike garage access. He then takes a swift action and manages to log out of the system and disappear into the Bakunin streets.
At the crash scene, Shadow, Tkazi, and Sayid manage to just slip away from the team of RiotGRRLs. Our mysterious executive heads out to check on what part of his holdings has been hacked!
Back to the ship!
It’s interesting, having started to play more RPGs and read more rules recently the Infinity one is not quite what I expected. It’s a good game, and I like a lot of the systems. The momentum and heat works really well. That said, the purchasing system is punishingly difficult to understand. I also feel that the price differential in a lot of the items is very weird and can rely on tariff to make the costs make any sense. I think it’s that it bothers me a bit that as an example the price for a Gecko TAG can range from 14 to 30, but because their challenge dice it’s more likely that it will be on the cheaper end. It seems like PCs can find ways to buy very expensive stuff very quickly. Which does lead me to believe that this may be better as a set of one shot missions rather than long long campaigns. PCs can really rank up in power and gear very very quickly with some good buying stuff dice rolls. That said it’s still plenty fun of a game and as most of the players at the table are Infinity miniatures players too I’m more comfortable modifying profiles to better fit the increases in skill level or adding other devices from the infinity universe with comparable profiles.
It Rhymes with Hockey 