#22 On the Road Again

Welcome back to Before the Shadow and our ongoing playthrough of Shadowrun: Antumbra. It's been a month and a half since our last update, "thanks" to the chaos of Christmas, including visiting family and a competing project or two.

So, a reminder.

In the first module, 1nv4d3r, a fool-punching ork shadowrunner, saved the people and holdings of a Seattle nightclub named Antumbra, run by music artist and producer Kali.

In the second module, he was hired by the Antumbra financier megacorp (Mitsuhama) to investigate the Aztechnology corporation in San Francisco, but quickly got diverted into stopping a metahuman terrorist plot, led by a troll named Shavarus. He'd been hiding among the devotees of Emperor Norton IX, a strange man who claimed kinship to the original Norton and rulership over California. Norton later became both ally and friend.

Aided by the elves of Tir Tairngire, Shavarus had planned to depopulate the entire city by destroying its water supply. We stopped him but spared him so that he'd reverse his plans.

In the start of this module, our hero got overwhelmed by the publicity and tried to escape it. Instead, he ran into Norton. Norton recruited him to defend against an upcoming invasion by the same belligerent nation of Tir Tairngire, who among other things boast the support of a whole megacorporation behind them. Sponsored by Kali, we're meant to gather allies and supplies, and sabotage our foe from hiding. We spent last update walking around and discovering exactly who we have to work with and how empty and underequipped our forces are (hint - very.)

We got three missions, and decided to go with the first one -- to secure our supplies which were being hjiacked on Interstate Five, presumably by gangers. I usually do this one second.

Here we are...

...on the road again.

The highway stretches on ahead, a vehicular graveyard. The corpses of buses, cars, trailers and even the occasional cycle litter the road. Bonfires decorate the scene, some surrounded by hapless homeless people. This is a road to be navigated, not driven on.

Gang country.

Selene described Rick to us simply as 'a colleague' and 'a good man'. He's probably both. She didn't mention that he's a troll rigger. This is one of Cirion's trademarks - he loves unusual race-class combinations. Trolls have an Int cap of 6, and a troll rigger just screams non-optimised to those kinds of RPG players.

So our goal here is assassination. Groovy.

The minute the call ends, two men, a woman and a (female) dwarf assemble in front of us.

So these gangers are definitely waterjackers, and this Dorbi character is rubbing it in our faces. Thankfully, we actually have an Etiquette we can use here, so we take that.

She buys our pitch. Looks like Rick's assassination plan is on schedule. Out comes the boss and ... oh my goodness.

All of these fashion choices are wrong.

Not a single thing has been done right here.

Oh sweet summer child, why so embrace the winter?

...Dorbi's not the average road bandit is she?

This is where Rick comes in and blasts this guy to pieces.

THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A JOKE.

Combat screen!

In keeping with the original plan, I ignore all mooks and send everyone straight at the boss.

He ends up near-death, and this is how I'm rewarded.

I'm not your babe, man.

One more round of combat and then...

...their reinforcements are led by a skinhead.

Sadly, joke that might be, it's not too far from the truth.

Token black party member, meet our new partners. The KKK are here to save the day!

Seriously guy, what.

In case y'all needed a reminder (it's been a month and a half after all)

This isn't Redding but it's the same group.

Yes, clearly not wanting to align with a faction that wants to kill your people is 'going soft'.

This guy's brain cells are going soft.

So Dorbi defects as combat restarts. She's a fire mage - meta, since not only do dwarves make the best mages of the hardcoded races but as mentioned earlier in BtS, HBS has a longstanding tradition of not providing non-hire mage companions in the main campaigns (until Shadowrun Hong Kong's extra content, years after this was made.)

And y'know, fiery personality.

We had a temporary mage back in update sixteen (along with our explanation of the class) - mages have powerful magical effects that directly buff allies or hurt enemies, unlike the more circuitous conjuring powers that shamans get.

So what can hermetic magic do? Well, this.

From full health to -10 with a single firebolt. We're putting out so much damage that all enemies go down in half a round, leaving Claude and the leader.

In a very familiar bit of scripting, the leader exits our scene like the Flash and Claude runs for it too, leaving his reinforcements die covering his racist behind. You can just see him on the far right, facing away from the battle.

He's apparently taken the same coward pills as Shavarus.

Dorbi is not having it. She. Burns. Everything.

Can we keep her, dad?

Dorbi gives us a brief scare in the battle that follows, but we clear them out.

We try advancing into position but our first enemy appears before we get there.

Our Native Californians have made a little hideout for themselves. We head in to smoke them out.

They make clever use of barricades and even wing our dog, but we steamroll them.

Our eye in the sky's spotted another group ahead, but they're even more ready this time.

Streetlight glints off of a shotgun barrel in the distance. The road between has minimum cover. It's a shooting gallery and we're the targets.

In theory.

In practice, more like the missing gallery.

We close the gap, our hero knocking the shotgunner into a daze. The guy at the far left manages to blast Rick, his partner and fool-puncher with a grenade but it's pretty much over. Rick slices him down...

... and his drones do the rest.

I hope this is the last batch. Here's our Stuffer Shack.

...and our enemies hiding behind it.

Everyone springs into action when we draw close, and 1nv4d3r gets shot from long range. It doesn't actually matter, because like the others, these mooks seem to be made of paper.

They all go down in one round, and by the second, the gang leader finds himself facing down three guys, a lady, two drones and a hellhound with no backup.

..that looks stranger in text than it did in my brain.

My guess is that Rick wants him dead.

Or Dorbi.

I'm on Dorbi's side here. Even if the NCs weren't horrible racists, he still sold out a good chunk of his team (who never actually appeared on screen.)

...uh.

Sorry man but do you think you even look trustworthy?

We ask the eternal pacifist for an opinion on killing people.

Being the guys who unwisely spared Shavarus, we decide to spare Fu Manchu McGanger as well. We just blazed through like fifteen of his gangers with just a few scratches; no need to kick this idiot when he's down.

And with that, he scurries offscreen.

Rick then says his piece.

Before we continue this conversation, let's do a bit of mechanical clarification.

We just chose from two options, obviously, kill or spare the gang leader. It was phrased subtly, but different benefits were promised for each. Killing would secure our supplies for good. It would send a message to other gangs in the area and stop the raids.

Sparing allows the leader to run around telling people that the NCs are horrible and that they should look to Kali's little band for leadership.

You might remember that our introduction to the base said that we were lacking two things - manpower and supplies. And this is how those resources are gained - these decisions draw people to our cause or get us material goods to equip and take care of our army. This isn't some abstract story element - the game keeps track.

Balancing these resources optimally might mean taking some decisions for purely pragmatic reasons. And balance is important, you can in fact overdo one resource and neglect the other. In past playthroughs, I've tended to fall on the 'people' end of the spectrum but we'll see if that happens again.

And if it wasn't clear earlier, Dorbi's saying outright that she wants to be a new party member.

Another thing about Dorbi - she's the one party member in module three who you might never get a chance to recruit at all.

If we didn't choose the Gang Etiquette earlier, we could have fumbled or skipped the conversation and taken her down in battle.

Shavarus' pro-trog race agenda was less obvious to us because we're playing an ork, but it's definitely a core part of his character.

We're talking about...

...the same Shavarus, right?

The guy who had cartoon supervillain powers of escape? Because if you're saying that the NC's are more cowardly than he was, we're in for a frustrating but hilarious chase.

That's the only explanation I'm taking. I accept no historical revisionism of Shavarus' bravery.

And who names their racist bastard Claude anyway? Am I obliged to make French jokes now?

Oh wow. I knew someone had to pay us in this module but I wasn't expecting it to be our fellow foot-soldier. I also suppose this is where we part ways.

Conversation ends and we're left with one last obstacle in our way - a van.

Some jackass picked the worst possible parking spot.

Thankfully, we're strong enough to just casually shove a van, what.

The game gives us an impressive creaking noise to go with our feat.

And Dorbi channels the audience reaction.

Down we go, into the junkyard. Cause that's what this highway didn't have enough of - junk.

Anyway that's it for now. It feels good to be back in the saddle.

Next time, we kick in Claude's rusty door.' Until then!