Crazy RPG Stories

I thought Trolls were a naturally occurring race in SR?

That sounds pretty strange.

I played a game yesterday of our on going DnD campaign.
The thing is set in a bleak viking world of brutality and fickle gods.
My character was Gormorack, the berserker. He was from a race called Helspawn who are big and pale skinned and have horns.
Gormorack was a bleak, morose warrior who said things like "we go to our deaths" and "All cities crumble. Now is the time of the wolves."

He was obsessed with getting revenge on the people that destroyed his village at the expense of all else.

He made a point of not killing or fighting without a good reason, but was a totally murderous psychopath once unleashed.
He also didn't like having to help people or get involved in anything that didn't relate to his mission. When he did rescue people who were being held prisoner by the bad guys he would generally act scarey, implying he might still be a threat to them and demand they give him whatever cash they had on them.

Eventually the group travelled to a sinister island where dreadwolves (werewolf type beings) dwelt.

While there, all the party had dreams of the God of vengeance Fenria appearing to them as a giant wolf impaled on spikes and offering to have them drink his blood inorder to get more power to get revenge.

The other characters decided against this, but Gormorack reasoned that the gods aren't good or evil, but beyond mortals ability to judge. Therefore, if he could invoke this god and prove himself more worthy than the bad guys, than the god would help him instead.

This resulted in him turning into a giant werewolf with horns.

Him and the good guys hunted down and destroyed the bad guys and disbanded the wolf worshipping cult on the island.
The GM left the plot open for more adventures, but said we could stop at this point if we wanted.

I decided this was actually a good point for Gormorack to stop, since his story had kind of resolved. He had got the revenge he wanted and was now a literal monster.
So I decided to have him stay on the island with the werewolves.

The point of this little story is that I think its more important to tell a good story and have things resolve and follow some kind of arc is more important than viewing survival as the objective like some kind of computer game.
Its better to have a character that reaches their logical conclusion and go out on a high than just exist as a background character everyone forgets.

Don't live a life time as a worm! Grab your hour as a tiger!

Part two:

So the Otter and the WWB (Woman with Baby) have met up with the Technophobic Maniac and the Drone Lady. After getting some stuff done and cleaning themselves up (they were covered in blood). It turns out that the WWB had been blackmailing a VP of Alliance Design who had got her pregnant. The guy is married, of course, and so hired the hitmen. The Maniac suggests just sending a drone up to drill his head open while he sleeps, or, when the Drone Lady objects, spilling the information anyway in the hopes that the guy would decide "damage done" and leave the woman alone. They decide to sleep on it.

The Maniac and Drone Lady looked after the WWB while the Otter went home (constantly being followed by drones and such). In the morning, however, someone called the Otter; his creditor from the Russian mob. See, it turns out that being suddenly turned into an otter can result in some high medical bills, and the Russians were keen to give out a loan. The Otter, however, comes to a clever idea that could help them solve two birds with one stone. He told the Russian, named "Sergei", about the situation and prospective blackmail money. Apparently this would help cover some of the Otter's debt (but not all of it). Sergei told him to come see him with the WWB.

He finds the Van/Truck and trailer and explains his plan. After much dislike, a muttered "Raich" from the Maniac, they all agree on heading to the Russians. They walk into the Russian compound flanked by two war drones and obviously armed. This causes everyone else to draw guns until Sergei comes out and diffuses the situation with a "Come, we'll discuss like civilized people, with concealed firearms." And Drone Lady throws a nearby tarp over her drones, which causes the Russian to laugh.

The Russian agrees to keep the WWB safe, get her a job, and split the blackmail money with everyone. The idea is that it would be just one lump sum as opposed to lots of installments over time. Of course, to do this, they need to find out why this guy is so concerned about blackmail and if the child really is his. The maniac hypothesizes that his wife is the daughter of the President of Alliance Design, just theoretically. The search is accomplished by the Drone Lady's web skills... and the Maniac is right. Not only is his wife the daughter of the company's President, she is a major socialite with plenty of connections.

Then comes a matter of getting the DNA. The family lives in some upper class gated community with security drones and watcher spirits in the astral realm, which the Otter learns by astral projecting. As the Otter sits there drooling the Gunslinger is riding by and notes the people in the truck. He checks it out and decides to look in on the WWB out of concern. It turns out that he is interested in helping out.

When the Otter comes to, he looks at the number of dangerous armed individuals in the car and mutters "They've multiplied." Under his breath.

After some reconnaissance, it is determined that the house is too far from the edge of the gated community to just sit there and send in the drones. So they all think about getting a way inside. The Otter comes up with a great idea. You see, he's a vet. So on the off chance that his veterinary clinic has an animal from the Cartwright's Gated Community, he calls and asks if there are any he could drop off. He had one Edge point (luck basically) to roll on, and as it turned out, he rolled a 5, which is just what he needed. Not only was there a Beagle (daaaaw), it belonged to the Cartwright family.

So what happens? They decide to split the party. Drone Lady hops in the Otter's bike's sidecar and the two of them take off. The Gunslinger (who also happens to have an Alien's style Smart Gun rig) and the Maniac sit with the car in a somewhat middle class neighbourhood.

The Maniac notices that someone is watching them and darts into an alley. He seems to recognize this person from somewhere but can't tell. He immediately gets out to check the alley, and the Gunslinger goes to get his combat harness on. Except, here is the thing, the area is more middle class, and it doesn't take long at all for a SFPD drone to notice the heavily armoured individual. The Maniac doesn't have any identification and the drone asks him to leave. He goes back to the van and tries to drive it off. However, because he has a rating of Gremlins when it comes to technology...

The van stalls. The Drone Lady gets a ping saying her car has been damaged. She contacts them remotely via the speakers, gets the drone to go away, and starts diagnosing things. The Maniac stands away from the wheel and everything appears to be just fine. The engine starts again, but the car doesn't really go anywhere. "What about the manual brake?" The Maniac asks. Drone Lady sends a centipede drone to check out bottom of the truck and...

The manual brake is engaged. She tries to force the car to disengage the manual brake, but it won't work, saying that it is already disengaged. After taking a better look, it appears that the manual break has actually been "disengaged" because whatever the Maniac did, he somehow managed to flip the mechanism around so that the brake was on when it is labelled as off, and off when it is labelled as on.

This is impossible. Literally impossible. "Are you a herald of Cthulhu? An Avatar Of Nyartholep?" Came up. However, all that was necessary was to "engage" the manual brake and the car could move again, which she has it do to a nearby parking lot in a more run down neighbourhood.



With that dealt with, exasperated Drone Lady cuts her connection to her car. They arrive at the home and to cut a long story short, it works out well enough that they grab a comb that is probably the guy's. The wife seems nice enough and the Beagle is cute.

On the way back to the Russian's, it looks like the group is being tailed by a bike, so they pull over. They take this time to get yet another look at the implausibility that is the brake. In this time a police bike comes over and the officer asks about the drone stuff, but isn't really interested in that, instead he wants to know why they're being tailed by someone from the Tetsubo Gang. Apparently he is interested in dealing that.

The Maniac mistakes the Tetsubo Gang for some kind of affiliate for the Yakuza because they sounds vaguely Japanese and he knows he has seen one of them before from some time ago. Possibly from when he earned the Yakuza's ire at the request of San Fran's Mayor (who is a dragon, remember that), which he tells the Officer. This exasperates the Officer who, in turn, tells them to contact him if they find anything out about the gang's reason for following them, and tells them about the bounties and such. He gives his contact information.

The Officer's name is: Thalion Orchal Mairon. The Maniac, who is fluent in both Sindarin and Quenya, finds this particularly funny. "Mairon" is "Admirable" or "Excellent", and is also the name Sauron used for himself. "Tar-Mairon" The Excellent. The Maniac tells Mairon that it means "Admirable." To which he replies "I know." Followed by "Bloody runners." The Maniac avoids mentioning Sauron though.

They then decide to throw off their tailers before heading back to the Russians. They scare the guy into leaving his bike behind to probably lead them into an ambush. Instead of being ambushed, they wreck the guy's bike with a dragonfly drone and try to follow him with some others. These get EMPed though, but at least they can be repaired and are collected. In her wrath, the Drone Lady retaliated by not just keying the bike (although its tires and such were already gone), but having her machine gun drone riddle it with bullets.

They make it back to Sergei and he will carry out the DNA tests and so forth before getting back to them.

This was less fighting focused, but things are clearly going somewhere.

Of course, it seems likely that this Tetsubo Gang were hired by the villainous VP. It could be the Yakuza, but I don't think so yet.

Drone Lady had some choice words for Sergei about the Tetsubo Gang, who are basically mercs, "If they mess with me, I'll kill them."

"What? All 100+ of them?"

"Not all at once, but yes."

Sergei pours himself some vodka, does a toast, and says "To your funeral!" And downs it.

I don't think so.

Unless it was with that Brorg-Dao who thought he was Conan the Barbarian, and who let that prisoner go because he thought he was going to get laid.

Oh yes, we have to make sure it is archived for posterity.