#17 Elemental, My Dear 1nv4d3r

The story so far: if you're tuning in now for the first time, that is... unfortunate.

First thing out of the way -- my hard drive died last week. Thankfully, my Antumbra saves were backed up to Steam's cloud (but my Ire saves were not, we'll deal with that over there.) Computer's running better than ever now, but we don't need a great deal of processing power for the Shadowrun Returns engine.

We're coming to the end of the second module of Shadowrun Returns: Antumbra. Our character is 1nv4d3r (don't judge me), a fool-punching shadowrunner who saved the Antumbra nightclub in Seattle from sabotage in the first module.

The second module began with him being hired by the Antumbra financiers to investigate the Aztechnology corporation in San Francisco - and by "investigate" we mean shoot up their magical pyramid skyscraper in search of useful info.

But a lone troll named Shavarus killed the Aztech boss and stole our data. We tracked him down to the Colma necropolis, hideout of a mysterious faction called 'Norton's Army'.

"Norton" turned out to be either a reincarnation of Emperor Joshua Norton from the 1800s or a crazy old man who thought he was. Shavarus had been using Norton to gather followers for a scorched earth strike against the metahuman-hating Imperial Japanese invader, Saito.

We convinced Norton to fire him, fought our way out and chased him to the docks. There, we discovered that Shavarus was plotting, with the elves of northern Tir Tairngire, to destroy San Francisco's water supply and force Saito out, killing innumerable poor people in the process.

We said hell no and chased him away. With our friend and loyal hire Hailey, as well as Saito's goons, we broke into his base in hopes of stopping the madness.

The big battle is ahead of us.

The game is kind enough to start us off in turn-based mode. While annoying for movement, it's a reminder that we're in close to immediate danger.

Eh, who am I kidding? It's actually a way to prevent us from autohealing damage from the last zone. I borrow a heal-kit from Arai and the group starts to advance.

We stumble upon a spat between Shavarus and his minions.

And this is why they're called trolls.

Shavvie baby doesn't get the difference between necessary and unnecessary sacrifice.

Oh no, he's going to start monologuing.

...that innards comment might actually make sense if we'd started chroming up with cyberware. As is, it's just an unnecessarily gross "euphemism" for torture that doesn't make sense. Of course, we're talking about a monologuing villain making sense.

Straight to business (though 'friends' option is hilarious.)

Hey now! We just know you're destroying the water supply, not how. Or at least, not in as much detail as you're probably about to explain to us.

Giving shamans everywhere a bad name. But yes, this plan is every bit as lethal and terrible as it seemed when we had fewer details.

And you're the most poisonous of all, man.

We're all for helping metas but when 'helping metas' is defined as 'killing metas and letting our enemies retreat', it seems like Shav needs to buy a new dictionary.

Hey! That's not what we said!

We pick 'none of the above'.

Here's our battlefield.

The star of the show is way ahead of his buddies. Our mage is hurt and I didn't bother to heal him earlier because I assumed he'd stay in the back lines - but we might regret that soon. And of course, Shavarus has his minions around him.

Our fool-puncher and the mage take down the enemy on the far left.

Haley's drones and Arai take down the guy on the far right. "Oh, no!" is right. We're in the first round of combat and two elves are dead.

Literally everyone lines up to blast 1nv4d3r, like some kind of demented firing squad.

Haley's RoboDoc wheels over to play doctor, and our hero runs over to knock an enemy out of cover - a mage, to be precise.

But what's this? He's immune to damage! And gloating too! "Our elven brothers will secure us." Are they protecting each other from harm somehow? That would explain the reaction to us killing mooks earlier.

Our mage and Haley's other drone test this theory by blasting - and sniping - the Tir soldier to the far right.

Haley OP plz nerf.

Arai (circled) advances, artfully dodging Shavarus' misplaced shots.

The enemy mages are shaking in their boots. Instead of damaging 1nv4d3r, they use magic to slow him down.

But not slow enough. We knock the captain out of his hiding place.

Our Japanese allies let loose on him, and he tries running to safety as an increasingly desperate mage punches 1nv4d3r. The captain goes down in a hail of robo-grenades.

The fool who punched the fool-puncher is next to go down, to Shavarus' dismay.

Our other mage goes beyond desperate into foolhardy - casting before her cooldowns are ready and draining her own health.

With Shavarus, she knocks our mage into critical condition.

Haley's drone snipes the mage.

Our hero does something quite unexpected at this point - he retreats while Arai covers him. The goal is to revive our mage before he dies outright.

Arai peppers him with bullets, and...

Whatever happens, we're probably going to default to Haley's opinion here.

Truer words were rarely spoken.

We don't hate him. We just think he's a short-sighted idiot.

But...we can't afford the risk, no.

"Give up". Urgh.

You'll try.

Shavarus quickly heals himself, drops the paydata, and runs off. He no longer needs it...

...because its purpose was to give him access to the water system in the first place. We've already resurrected our mage by now.

We get ten points of karma along the way, which we put into Close Combat and Unarmed.

Finally, finally, this mission is over. Time to go back to the club...

...and hopefully get a shower. We close it off next time!