This seems like the majority of our data collection.
You find the territory of the thugs easy enough. They call themselves The Saints, based on the graffiti. They don't keep an open door policy, to say the least. They've barricaded the place up with trash bins and pieces of scrap and wood. There's a guard out, wielding a strange-looking pistol. The guard is fiddling around with it, and you see him open it up.
SIX BULLETS. Not just balls, too, they look pointier. Six-shooters sound rather dangerous, to say the least. Nothing you can deal with on your own. But...
Heyyy, girly.
A sudden, rough hand hits your back. You feel a familiar tickle in your neck, confirming your children weren't squished or anything. You've been growing out your hair for a while now, before because you didn't have scissors on you during the travels, and now to give your kids someplace to hide.
You just came in from topside, eh? I can tell. You look amazed at any old piece of junk.
The voice is forced and raspy, and the owner is a fairly small man in a hoodie. The hoodie even looks several sizes too large for him.
...
...I see you've danced before. Fine, enough niceties. There's a toll here, see. This is Saint territory, and consider me the local collection plate. Come on, we saved this town, don't ya know?
And how are YOU going to make me pay.
With a flick of his wrist, he reveals a butterfly knife. Nobody is around, at all. It's just you and him.
You snort.
You fiddle with your new knife as the man continues crying on the ground with a freshly broken nose and arm. You didn't even need to pull out your sword, ultimately. You briefly considered stinging him, but he's just some punk. You don't quite trust the police in this place, considering that this part of town has been taken over completely by what looks to be a bunch of angry teenagers and perfectly average scumbags. You look over the territory on the rooftops, grateful that this isn't one of the really tall buildings. Closer to about fifty meters, at the VERY most. You just had to climb about ten. The place looks fairly well-guarded, but there are holes everywhere. The sewers, for one, look completely unguarded. The rooftops are (obviously) not looked after...
If you were to stage an attack, it'd be easy enough. But you've never really worked with gunbattles before...
But with those shadowrunners it should be easy enough.
hm.
Armed guards, random thugs roaming the streets, possibly wary of a drider though, unless the guy didn't want to tell the tale or nobody believes the story of the giant spider lady("attacked by a giant spider" is less embarrassing that "picked a fight with a girl who fought back"...). Driders are rare enough around here that they might be fictional to the less educated, even a few people outside didn't know what we were... There is no proof that we were after them, just that we were in the neighbourhood and don't feel like paying taxes, but their "brain" sounds like the type to be wary of new faces.
We can't go bigger than a dog, but yes, a small flying zombie mouse for scouting and a bigger one to watch our backs
Some dogs are properly huge, bigger than humans even, so that can be a bit of a vague size estimate, but let's assume a decent-sized sheep-dog or similar. There is a big question about whether we focus on one weapon or diversify. We could focus everything onto its mouth or give it gripping hook-claws at the front and slicing claws at the back and a tail-club and some back-spines... Even if it is just a mouth there are options, enlarging the mouth and reinforcing everything, maybe even shortening the teeth to make them more reliable, and adding some extra structures(These dwarves must have some great mechanical vices!) for more bite-force are obvious, but teeth are a wealth of options. Taking out the front teeth and adding serrations gives you a slicing ramp, good for reliable damage quickly. Scissor teeth give you rapid and brutal chunk removal, but are prone to failure against armour. Back-curving teeth give you gripping power, maybe throw in some double-facing claws and a prehensile tail to add grip when reversing and you have a good assistant that is prone to getting stuck. Maybe we could stick an alligator skull on a monkey, unless familiars need to be consistent parts. They may need to be skeletons too, we only have the one familiar to reference...
There is that guy we want to interrogate, some bolas would be good, maybe even the punny undead ones...
If they have some sort of bullet-resistant chest-piece then such would be comforting, unless it is too heavy to climb in...
If Sucy wants a cut but isn't in the mood to join us then she could consider selling things to the group. That way the mercenaries can't really complain, they just bought some exotic out-of-town mixtures that we swear by and we don't entirely pay her out of our own pocket for providing support that the others likely won't respect.
We can likely climb one of their own buildings without raising the alarm. Not the main one, but something close enough to provide oversight that they wouldn't expect to be hostile. We could throw down some rope for the sniper and witchhunter and then barricade the entrances to a floor from which they can provide support and information while protecting each other and being able to get away via abseil.
We can get moreundead than just our familiars. Leaves us shy on mana, but a plague(well, 22, tops, and that would drain all our mana, but we might get that back as they die off...) of rats can really spook an untrained squad, and it gets bonus points for irony.
These people seem to like ranged combat, and rely on limited ammunition. Smoke and such is our friend. Saving mana would be nice so we should keep an eye open for mundane smoke sources... And we are advised against incendiaries so that is a thing to keep in mind with smokebombs.
Yunikki will want to come keep us safe. She should get back into the habit of wearing armour. Cutting a proper helm in half and putting a hinge at the top and a couple of loose clips at the side should give her something that covers but won't get in the way if she transforms. Same deal with some metal plates strapped over her with something that'll break or release if we have a giant chicken incident. On that note, Both us and Yunikki are... "excitable"... and Eveline isn't around to sneak up on people with sleep needles. see if we can hook the witchhunter up with some sedative arrows and bolts for emergencies, but talking would be preferable if it seems practical.
Oh, and bring a very robust travel-lantern, we ought to train our soul-capturing if we get a chance and the extra mana wouldn't hurt. Not to mention that soul abuse is not the worst approach to "enhanced interrogation"... "this guy I like!" *stab* *dying cry* "This guy I don't like" *inject spiderling venom* *screaming* *Rip out fresh-and-flailing soul and shove it into a lamp* *intense but brief screaming* *watch lamp visibly dim as we drain it to raise a zombie* "I like people who answer my questions! Or I could bring out Alexia, but she worries me... She wants to know if she can turn people into mentally-crippled spider-hybrids by scaring them to death..."
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Topic: Web of Life: A Drider's Adventure (Ended) (Read 185892 times)