So we're still playing the
kiddie party. We did some fluff or as we call it flower picking via chat, played face to face for the action and are now back to flower picking in Skype.
A list of characters is
here
Glitzy offered a small run to Maggie, Ray and Rusty: a pirate transmitter is broadcasting information about people going into comas while using the Matrix, similar to what happened during the
Matrix Crash 2.0 and the mission is to silence those pirates, by any means neccessary. Glitzy has her own agenda, she wants to talk to them to find out where they get their information and she wants to keep them alive.
aaand action!
The kids are of course up to the challenge, they are confident they can handle this. So they do a bit of planning and Glitzy gets ready to find the location of the pirates. She thinks she'll be able to pinpoint it to a radius of about fifty metres and it's then the job of the kids to find the van or from whereever the pirates are broadcasting. Since they move around and change locations every fifteen minutes without downtime, there are probably at least two people involved.
It's also Maggie's birthday and she gets a cake and AR contact lenses from Glitzy. Ray has a golden, sticky substance called Desert Dew for her, but challenges her to a game of three cups and a pea first, which she wins. She hasn't yet found out what exactly it is she has won.
Rusty takes his chance to finally talk to Liana when she comes into the pub - without her friends for a change. She works at the garbage plant, sorting through the trash and so he asks her if she can get him electronic scraps they can torch to make it look like they destroyed the pirates' equipment. To his own suprise he also asks her out to dinner. Equally surprised, she agrees to both questions.
Ray gets together some stuff to build a fake bomb, with play dough as a stand-in for C4. Rusty goes to collect the scraps Liana agreed to get for him and also builds a Molotov cocktail. Maggie plays with her contact lenses and when the programming crashes, she's left temporarily blinded. To Ray's and Rusty's amusement, this happens on the street and she walks right into a pole, knocking herself down into the mud. Rusty finally comes to her aid and after she fixed the lenses, they are off.
On their way to Touristville, where they plan to wait for Glitzy's first fix on the pirates, they soon find they are being followed by a kid dressed all in yellow. Maggie knows him, he's one of the Picas. Ray and Rusty would probably be able to shake him if they were on their own, they drive motorbikes that are at least equal to what the kid is driving, but Maggie only has a scooter. So Rusty stays with her while Ray tries to draw the Pica off.
That works, but soon they have not one, but five Picas, all dressed in yellow, following them and cannot shake them. They have arrived in Touristville and there, in the side streets, a battle on motorcycles takes places. After it's over, one of the Picas is as good as dead and the rest all are hurt, with their bikes trashed, mainly because Ray rammed two of them and Rusty shot one who wasn't really hurt, but still fell, crashing into his friends. The Picas, as hinted at by their clothes, are no longer the Picas, but the Canaries, but they still are out to get Maggie.
Ray, Maggie and Rusty drive on for a bit to get away from the scene and are now waiting for Glitzy's call at a noodle shop. Rusty has made further plans to meet with Liana tomorrow evening and has carelessly left the choice of the restaurant to her. He nearly swallows his cup of noodles whole when he reads what she has chosen...he can just hope the food is good there because he won't be able to afford anything else for the rest of the month.
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The Picas are now the Canaries. And if that bring up the picture of mine canaries, you are exactly right. Not that the characters except Maggie know that and I as a player have no idea who is sending them out. But in any case our characters did fairly well against them, although we were lucky. And we haven't seen the end of this, not for a long time.
One of our players comes in via Google+ and so far it has worked great, without much lag or total blackouts. I can only recommend this if you have a player who moves away but still wants to game or if you have problems finding players locally. You just need a good microphone, especially when you have several people in one room and not everyone in front of their own computer.
And speaking of interested, I noticed that we were being followed when we walked back home from the party. There are always the people of the thieves' guild who watch us, but this time there was someone else. I almost missed him, he was highly skilled at staying in the shadows and moving quietly. But I did spot him eventually. Logan and I decided to ignore him, this was what we had intended after all. So I have attracted attention, it remains to be seen of what kind exactly.
We were busy planning our next step when a servant brought a letter from Robert who asked to meet us this evening at a tavern a small distance outside the town. De Chevalier went first, followed by Ramon and I, pretending to go for a ride, and Logan and Lucia who left town on foot and in disguise. The tavern was filled with local farmers and workers, so we did attract some atention, but not too much.
When Robert arrived, he spotted de Chevalier first and joined him, asking why we had asked for a meeting? De Chevalier immediately realised that we has walked into a trap and tried to get out, only to close the door again quickly when he came face to face with even more men, including the insufferable Charles René Flaubert du Doré. The men inside turned out to be under du Doré's command as well.
The trap was more for Robert than for us, as du Doré called to him from outside, gleefully remarking that he had finally captured Robert. But the man was counting his chickens before they had hatched. Ramon and I had chosen our seats upstairs, so I couldn not see what Logan and Lucia were doing, but from the sound it it Logan avoided being hit by a shotgun, pushed someone through a window and continued to brawl with the men. De Chevalier and Robert fought with rapier and dagger, but no less successfully.
Upstairs, eight men took a shot at us with muskets, but failed to hit anything of significance. Ramon made quick work of four of them and then left me to dispatch the others since he had a engagement with a woman who had left her calling card in form of a knife in his shoulder.
I was too busy for a while with one of du Doré's better trained henchmen, who learned that a rapier is not much use when trying to defend oneself against thrown knives unless your adversary lets you come close enough, which I didn't do. The rest of the men were knocked unconscious with a well-placed table and I had time to see what the others were up to.
Ramon had been nailed to the wall by the woman with a couple of knives, but she had either missed or had deliberately tried to render him helpless without hurting him. In any case, when she saw that the fight was lost for her side, she threw a last knife at the man who was threatening Lucia, killing him, and then fled. As did du Doré, much to Ramon's chagrin. I really hope Ramon won't go into battle with du Doré lightly when the time comes - but come it will, I'm sure of that.
The woman belonged to El Gato. We're not sure if she killed her companion to get rid of any witnesses or if she did it to help Lucia or both.
I had hoped we would get out of this town without too much violence. Naive of me, probably, even more so in view of the fact that we're not nearly done here. I promise I will take care, as much as I can.
Love
Marcello