Something Completely Different
Note: Before I get down to business on describing how this particular run went, I think that some things need to be spelled out clearly.
My guy who GMed this particular run spent a lot of time working it over and trying to make it as good as possible so my experiences may not exactly match yours. None the less, here we go...
Mission Quote: “You know if you'd like we could take some time and explain how the Matrix actually works to you Mr. Dada...” “Bah, I don't need to know how it works, I understand it conceptually!”
Meta Quote: …. (Sound of nobody saying anything)
Plot: The run starts like most runs when we get a contact from a Mr. Johnson who has a job for us. So we head off to meet him at a place called “The Smiling Bastard” which seems delightfully appropriate name for a themed bar. Sadly this place's theme seemed to be built about how New Jersey is land of terrible greasy hairstyles, and huge smoke spewing factories that nobody would ever willingly visit... much like it is today (I kid I kid).
He happens to be delightfully English but apparently he screwed up the conversion between British Pounds and American New Yen, because all he's willing to offer us is 2,000 New Yen. This is needlessly to say an insultingly low amount of money, but luckily once our face Gumbo drops and edged negotiations roll on Mr. Johnson's head he raises the price up to 8,000 and change. That's still less than I like to work for, but on the other hand we're only going to be working for a single night.
Our job is going to take us back to the famous museum that we happened to have robbed back in Ready Set Gogh, which is holding a big event that the Johnson's employer is going to be attending. It's our job to go there and effectively be undercover security. The official security won't know that we're there during the event, though we will be provided with special passes to make sure that we won't get called out for bringing firearms into the museum.
That isn't quite as nice as being proper undercover security agents (the kind who won't have to worry about getting fired on by the real security staff if we whip out our guns to attack any intruders) but it's the best deal we're going to get for this job. To further the theme of us being undercover security, our hacker Mastermind becomes an undercover Spider by hacking their node and giving himself admin access since clearly these people can't be trusted to keep proper track of their own nodes.
Our plan for the event is that Gumbo and our somewhat charismatic adept Hummer, will be walking around the place, talking with the various people there and making sure everything is kosher while Mastermind passes out in the bathroom to do matrixy stuff while I the street samurai Longshot stay in there to keep him company and make sure nobody tires to gank him while he's unconcious.
In an effort to be proactive we have Mastermind look up who could possibly be inside the museum and cause problem. One obvious answer that pops up is that the janitorial staff has access to all sorts of power welders that could do plenty of damage in the wrong hands. So just to be on the safe side Gumbo decides to pay them a visit, and after bluffing his way into their portion of the museum he talks to them a little and notices that they only seem to be going through the motions rather than doing their jobs with any real energy. He thinks that they might be up to something so he says he's going away and then ducks behind a corner and does the old stomp on the ground increasingly softly to make it sound like he's leaving. Okay he does something more complex than that, but that's what it amounts to.
As he's watching them from behind some pipes there's a sudden small explosion and it causes the lights to go out. Likewise the lack of power shuts down the place's node the security system which means that metallic shutters to slam into place over all the exits.
A moment later, a man with a shock of white hair steps out of the crowd and announces that he is from the Mini-Bosses, and that we are all welcome to their happening.
Then all of the statues suddenly come to life and start dancing about.
Needless to say, the security and the fancy upper class people who are present for the event instantly start dropping monocles in their glasses of wine in shock and wondering just what the f*** is going on. Mastermind operating through his favorite anthroform drone Arnold T (Talos) Muderbot threatens the guy and tells him to bring all of this to a stop at once.
One intimidation roll later we discover that this guy only has one IP pass. In fact we're the only ones in the room right now who have more than one IP pass which means that conversations are a bit awkward as it takes him about three times as long to speak as it does take us to. Eventually however he agrees that maybe things are getting just a bit out of hand (as the alternative is getting a face full of stick and shock bullets) and tries to stop the statues from dancing.
Except that when he tries to stop them nothing happens, and cries out that “Mr. Dada” isn't behaving according to plan. A quick burst of S&S from Arnold towards one of the statues shows that the stuff just bounces off rather than having any serious effect as it would on normal spirits.
That leaves us with two big problems, one of them is that we're trapped in here with a bunch weird spirit possessed statues, and the second is that we've got a whole bunch of other people trapped in here with us.
The second takes priority but luckily Longshot brought some E-Ex ammo for his supermach and a long burst from it creates a hole in the metal plating big enough for people to crawl out trough. Aided by hummer's commanding voice we manage to get the other patrons to exit the place in a fairly calm manner before returning our attention to the dancing statues.
Since they are evidently immune to stun damage our only choice seems to be shooting them up with E-Ex and other such attacks that would utterly destroy them. Luckily the white haired guy has another plan, and says that we can take some mystical drugs he has on him (side effects include dry throat, temporary loss of hearing or vision and being stoned the F*** out of your gord) to go tot he astral plains to talk with the free spirit named Mr. Dada and convincing him to stop all this foolishness.
We're tempted to just try fighting the statues but a quick call with Mr. Johnson confirms just how valuable those statues are and that he would much rather not see them destroyed if at all possible throwing in another 3000 New Yen (total not per person sadly) for us to find a way to stop the statues without destroying them.
So we decide that the time has come to turn this run into a trip and take the pills.
Not so long later we find ourselves... somewhere having a conversation with some sort of strange spiritual creature that has decided to take the a form which we will have an easier time comprehending and trusting.
In other words the form of a now prime runner that we used to work with. He lets us know that before we can contact Mr. Dada, we need to pass some tests, the test of the past, the test of the self, and the test of the future.
We decide that given that we’re now in the metaplanes where you can never be quite sure of what is going on, the idea of trying to pick a fight with this mystical being has “bad idea” written all over it so we'll just have to do what it wants.
I suggest that we should probably do the test of self first since whatever we learn about ourselves should help us deal with the other two tests.
A moment later we.... a moment later I find myself standing in the middle of a barren beach where clocks melt and ants devour a bird. There's no sign of anyone else nearby, until I hear someone calling my name form behind me.
Looking around I find myself face to face with... myself. Or at least a really ugly version of myself with extravagant eyes grown to frog like proportion, and looking run down and tired.
The “other me” says that it is my very own inner killer, implanted on me by Aztechnology (my character (a gnome) was a vat grown Aztechnology experiment in creating super soldiers that could pass for children if the need required it) like a corporate trademark placed upon my very soul.
I promptly inquired if being my inner killer it can by defeated by shooting it (since I was holding it when I took the special pills I still have my Ingram Supermach in the metaplanes or at least some kind of spiritual version of it that works just as well) since something like that would probably be too easy.
It responds by telling me that guns are how I express all of my feelings in this world that firearms are to me as a paintbrush is to an artist. I agree with this fact, but I am still far from sure that being in the metaplanes and all I can solve this problem so simply.
He mocks me telling me that just because other people might have deep philosophical quandaries in the metaplains don't mean I deserve to have them. I glower at other me and tell him that as he's supposedly an evil version of me why should I trust anything he tells me?
So then dark me starts to bring up the black and spiky Ingram Supermach that he is armed with to center it on my body. I of course was waiting for something like this so I deny him the opportunity of a surprise round.
We roll out initiative and I manage to get 22 base 15. This is followed up by me having no clue in hell what I am up against, deciding that clearly when in doubt use more gun. The downside is that my gun is still loaded with E-Ex from opening up the museum door instead of S&S which means I'll be at a disadvantage against a spirit, or really anything with a lot of armor.
The upside is that I'm still going first and starting things off with a full narrow burst taking advantage of my Supermach's HV capabilities. I roll decently on my 24 dice (being alone I no longer get tacnet) and get 9 hits, but since I have no idea what “evil me” is capable of, I edge the roll to re-roll 15 dice and surprisingly manage to get my hands on another 7 hits.
He only rolls three hits on his dodge which means he gets to eat 29 P and explodes in an especially violet fashion.
A short while later I find myself back at the same “somewhere” as we started with all of my other runners showing up a moment later. Most of them seem fairly calm but Gumbo is rather freaked out and wants us all to confirm that we're really us and not some sort of evil spirit doppelganger. He seems to accept our promises that we’re really us and then we decide to do the test of the past next.
We find ourselves in some sort of strange sunny glen with a large tomb in the middle of it. We approach said tomb and try to open it up, but even with all four of us working on it together we can't budge it an inch.
So as we sit back to catch our breath and ponder just what the hell is going on, four people in old timey robes show up. They walk over and pose around the tomb one of them seeming to trace their shadow on the tomb completely ignoring the four of us. So despite the fact that we call up to them/rub up to them, use our shadows to block out their shadows, they ignore us complete tracing their shadows and start to wander off.
We using the peerless adventure game logic of when in doubt interact with all the objects on the screen in every way possible, decide that there are only two choices, we can either follow after the people and see where they go, or we can try and repeat whatever it was they just did on the tomb.
We decide to go with option two and a short while later hear our mystical guide asking us why we're doing what we're doing and what importance it would have to Mr. Dada.
We bullshit him around a bit before coming to some fairly reasonable conclusions. Chiefly that that to Mr. Dada while humans are temporary and die off, the art lasts forever. He agrees with us on this one, and we decide to take the test of the future now.
A moment later we find ourselves in some kind of bizarre node and guess what, we're all technomancers now! Except that other than Mastermind we're all horrible technomancers who can maybe do one or two minor things effectively (all Longshot can do is Encrypt or Analyze) so we're more or less just floating there waiting to get our cyber asses kicked.
So basically a lot of technomancery stuff happens, one of them is that he finds this node that has some ice and a spider on it. He edits himself admit account and makes it so the spider can't find him. But he can't do the same for the rest of us, so he decides that there is only one thing to do.
He and his rating 12 paladin sprite (summoned with a point of edge to help) decide to surprise matrix kung fu the spider into sleepy land. After doing that he changes the nodes settings so that no one can do anything on the node unless they have admin access.
As the ice only has security level access, that leaves it helpless. We explore the matrix a bit more and eventually find what we were looking for the “words that define the future” which is some famous artists manifesto having to deal with a new art movement.
We then explain in turn how we had to break with tradition to get where we are to our mystical guide and he ticks off another cosmic check box for us and says that we're now clear to go meat Mr. Dada. So we find ourselves in the middle of a large field of wheat and head for the only building nearby a large farmhouse.
Sure enough, Mr. Dada is inside, and he's upset over how we've deprived his happening of an audience.
Through the strange screen that he's been using we can see that the statues are still dancing, and that they're slowly destroying the museum as they do.
We argue with him about what we've learned, about how new art can only be brought into the world based on old art. Even his happening couldn't possibly exist if he didn't have the statues (old art) to manipulate in the first place!
We throw in how if he moves the happening to the parking lot outside of the museum we'll see it to it that it gets all the coverage he could possibly ask for even having Mastermind hack some news feeds if necessary. He agrees and we go back, lead the remaining museum guests back outside, and let the statues dance to their hearts content. It's a good feeling to know that we've helped bring some new art into the world... thought not as good as knowing that we'll be getting paid by Mr. Johnson before too long.