Wordslingin'

We may be sitting on a pile of money, but we’ve still gotta plan one more job. There’s always one more job. (But we can stop any time we want. Honest.)


[You may recall that last session ended with Lukas shooting Daniella Morris in the head.]
Brock: “So what are we gonna do?”
Zac: “Since when is this a democracy?”

[Lukas has to break the news to Miranda. He eases into it.]
Lukas: “If you were to never meet up with your guardian again, would that upset you?”
Miranda Petit: “No.”
Lukas: “How far would you go to not meet up with her?”

[Miranda takes it better than we thought she would.]
Miranda Petit: “You shot her over me?”
Lukas: “Partly. But not mostly.”
Miranda Petit: “No one’s ever murdered someone for me before.”
Lukas: “It wasn’t murder. It was preemptive self-defense.”

[Miranda is once more an orphan. Which leaves us in a somewhat awkward situation.]
Miranda Petit: “As long as you’re here, I can stay with you?”
Lukas: “Unless we’re all killed.”
Miranda Petit: “Then I’d die with you.”
Lukas: “Would you consider that a victory or a defeat?”

[Torgath and Fennec head down to Thebes to lay the groundwork for our next job. Torgath scouts out the headquarters of the Thebes Design Institute while Fennec sets up our secondary base of operations.]
Zac: “How do you go about setting up your base of operations?”
Brock: “You’ve been here a few seasons – how do you do it?”

[Fennec sets up our secondary base of operations in a bus graveyard. For good measure, she manages to get the bus we’re using into an operational state for a quick getaway, if we need it.]
Brock: “Why didn’t you just build a catapult to launch us over the fence?”
Zac: “Because then I’d need to build parachutes, and I don’t know how much everyone weighs.”
Brock: “…That’s a reasonable answer.”

[Back in Oxford, Lukas contacts Okran Radsley and arranges to meet up for coffee.]
Lukas: “So… there’s been a complication. And a simplification.”

[Lukas dips a toe into the waters of his conversation with Radsley.]
Lukas: “So, did you know the SRID has been actively working against you?”
Okran Radsley: “No.”
Lukas: “…The SRID has been actively working against you.”

[Lukas reveals that Daniella Morris is a senior SRID agent, that Miranda Petit is her ward, and that we met her because she was the apprentice of Elroy Krog, the guide Radsley hired for our first job.]
Okran Radsley: “So that’s how you met her? The guide?”
Lukas: “Yeah. And that’s how this goes back to being your fault.”

[Lukas continues to explain the situation to Radsley.]
Okran Radsley: “I’ve lost count of the complications. Six? Seven?”
Lukas: “It’s all sort of one big one.”

[Lukas is still dancing around the main point.]
Lukas: “Are you ready for the simplification?”
Okran Radsley: “Yeah.”
Lukas: “Now, this is a bit of a mixed simplification/complication.”

[Lukas gives the big reveal.]
Lukas: “I told Morris I agreed, I told her I’d call the girl, and then I shot her in the face.”
Okran Radsley: “…What was that bit at the end?”

[Radsley absorbs the news that Morris is dead at Lukas’ hands.]
Okran Radsley: “I’m a little shocked. I’m a little pissed off. Not all of it’s directed at you.”

[Now to deal with the fallout.]
Okran Radsley: “What makes you think you haven’t just declared open season with the SRID?”
Lukas: “That’s a possibility.”
Okran Radsley: (sarcastically) “That makes me feel so much better.”

[After a bit of discussion, they come up with a game plan.]
Okran Radsley: “So, regarding the SRID, let’s… hope for the best?”
Lukas: “I think that’s all we can do.”
Okran Radsley: “And same plan with the Protectors as SRID? Pray and hope?”

[Back in Thebes, we get more details on our next job, a fairly straightforward corporate espionage mission.]
Julie: “So we pop this data spike in, wait 30 seconds, and leave?”
Georges the GM: “Pretty much.”
Zac: “Which conveniently means we don’t need Gabriel on this job.”
Brock: “But we’re bringing him anyway.”

[Torgath has been scouting out the TDI complex.]
Georges the GM: “It looks very casual. And you guys are all well-versed enough to know that is an exceptionally crafted guise.”

[Despite TDI’s defenses, the job is actually fairly simple.]
Brock: “So this is pretty much about walking in, keeping our cool, and walking out?”
Georges the GM: “That’s how Winters sold it.”

[We do some more planning. We start at the natural starting point.]
Lukas: “Imagining everything goes wrong…”

[The crux of the matter is how to get the data spike into one of the TDI computers without getting caught.]
Lukas: “What if we could program the drone to do it?”
Fennec: “I don’t know how to do that… but I’ll say sure!”

[Another option is to set up the data spike on some sort of delay timer.]
Brock: “…And after we leave, the thing goes off, alarms sound, chaos reigns, and we eat popcorn.”

[We discuss some of the potential complications.]
Torgath: “Are we gonna take bets on whether Bhakir will break in just as we’re about to get the data and shoot everything to bits?”
Lyta: “That would be unprecedented in the history of our operation!”

[We also contemplate exfiltration options. Like a hopper.]
Zac: “So we need not only an illegal hopper, but also an illegal hopper pilot?”
Georges the GM: “It’s much easier than getting the hopper. May even come with it.”

[There’s only so much we can do with the information we have. It’s time to meet with our principal.]
Brock: “Me and Torgath will meet with Winters.”
Zac: “What are me and Lyta doing?”
Brock: “Preparing to rescue me.”

[Lukas and Torgath arrive at the meeting.]
Miss Winters: “What can I serve you?”
Lukas: “Plans, intel, datacards…”
Miss Winters: “I was thinking more along the lines of coffee.”

[Lukas and Winters get down to business.]
Lukas: “What are the chances the data key will trigger an alarm?”
Miss Winters: “Low.”
Lukas: “How low?”
Miss Winters: “The same that the pass to get you through the door will trigger an alarm.”

[Winters also gives us a data key with the various schematics, passcodes, etc., that we will need.]
Ariel: “I will make sure to access it safely.”
Georges the GM: “Good. Because otherwise it will self-destruct.”

[The job really does just seem to be as simple as go in as workers, pop the data key onto a computer in a relatively non-secured office, and walk out.]
Lyta: “It seems straightforward, and that worries me.”
Lukas: “Some days you wake up and it’s a workday.”
Lyta: “That’s never our days.”

[More scouting of the TDI offices, including of their compound’s fence.]
Julie: “Is this fence the sort of thing a person could jump if they had a blanket?”
Georges the GM: “That’s what it’s meant to look like.”

[The fences are in fact both electrical and have a very large invisible security net above them. Also other defenses.]
Julie: “Zac, add to our list of things we want: swarm of mini-drones.”
Brock: “Carnivorous.”

[The mini-drone swarms used by TDI can’t really do all that much defensively on their own. What they can do is set up a wonderfully precise forward-observation triangulation net.]
Georges the GM: “You see these things, and you’re like, ‘What’s it gonna do?’ And then you get mortared.”

[We will all be going in on this job. All of us.]
Julie: “Miranda gets to wear my hand-me-down flak.”

[We realize that there may be other targets of opportunity for this job. Like, say, the research archives of the most advanced military technology on the planet.]
Georges the GM: “So the sales offices are here, and the research archives are there.”
Julie: “On the complete opposite side.”
Zac: “Naturally.”
Brock: “Could be worse – at least they’re in the same building.”

[Why mess with a good thing? Because we’re us.]
Ariel: “So if we stick to the sales office, we’re fine.”
Zac: “But while we’re there anyway, we might as well complicate things…”

[Not all of us are keen on hitting the research archives.]
Julie: “We could just do the easy job.”
Brock: “But then we won’t know what we don’t know.”

[More of the same.]
Fennec: “I’m kinda curious.”
Lyta: “Curious enough to risk a smooth job?”

[Lyta is outvoted.]
Lukas: “Having a secondary objective is good. It lets us be paid twice.”

[Of course, if we’re going to try to hit the research archives, we’ll need help. Computing help.]
Georges the GM: “There are probably three people on the planet who can get this information, and Mads is one of them.”

[Mads is in the middle of end-of-semester university exams on the opposite side of the planet.]
Lyta: “If you can’t convince Mads to come down here…”
Lukas: “I can. I haven’t insulted him yet.”

[We discuss the fact that things will inevitably go horribly wrong.]
Brock: “In our narrative history, things went smooth all the time. It’s just in the played history that they haven’t.”

[More of the same.]
Georges the GM: “Things went really well when Ti planned the ops.”
Brock: “It’s good when the GM is helping you.”
Ariel: “Radsley’s plans haven’t gone so well.”
Georges the GM: “Radsley’s… not really a planning guy.”

[We realize that if we go after a secondary objective, we really don’t know what we’ll be facing.]
Lukas: “I think at some point we may need to improvise.”
Fennec: “The last time you improvised, you shot someone in the face.”





Heavy Gear Roleplaying Game