Dragonfall

[silencer_pl]

 

 

We are in front of the giant doors with maglock that can only open with magic word. Inside the room we can see some hooded people. This probably is bad. Those persons are the Blood Mages, the evilest of the kind. Unfortunately this is the point when subtlety has to end as Tenacious D. is not strong enough to resist any tricks the Mage can throw (You can bypass this checkpoint if being a mage with high willpower or adept with magic resistance or having big enough endurance - body 6. Everything else points to a fight and the character spills the beans).

 

 

This is one of the toughest battles yet, being surrounded from two sides. The mages and the security throws everything at you, including kitchen sink and bag full of kittens. Too boot, you are also limited (sort of) by time, because that big bad squad is coming. With some stroke of luck, the team managed to deal with the enemies. But still there are things to do. Once a little free Tenacious D. jacks-in to the local computer. There are some locked slaves that needs to be freed. While she plays in the matrix the team moves forward towards the generator.

 

 

When the generator was sent to overload there was a limited time to escape. Just in time Tenacious D. managed to return from the matrix and freeing the slaves.

 

 

Now it was truly a race against time. It appears that our escape route is also closed and Tenacious D. was racing to hack it opened. As timer closely was reaching 0, she managed to open the doors and everyone managed to escape in the last seconds.

 

 

When the dust finally settled it was time to return home.

 

 

Upon arrival Paul informed about some important information.

 

[silencer_pl]

 

Upon arriving Tenacious D. goes meet with the Paul. The crew is already gathered and awaiting. From what he has learned that our Dragon is supposedly shipped a very very dangerous bio weapon. From what was told, this bio weapon of nickname "Doom" can dissolve any organic tissue. That means any person "infected" with it, just would wither away from the inside. A truly gruesome weapon. But why would a dragon want that?

 

 

During the escapade in the Aztechnology building, Tenacious D. has acquired a data file for project Bloodline for our information gatherers from the phone book. However it is written in strange language. Talking to Paul suggested that we should go see Aljernon.

 

 

Aljernon however was not please seeing this. But when poked a little he reveled about a dangerous blood magic ritual.

 

 

This is potentially very dangerous knowledge. And like Aljernon said it should not exist. This was probably the true goal of the mission. To bury this information. Without any hesitation Tenacious D. deleted everything.

 

In other news, Blitz had some progress in following his ex. Any one taking bets that it will eventually go wrong?

 

 

Maliit has also given the last of the DVDs, this one was so damaged that she hired some other guy. This disc contained only 4 tracks. The first track contained interview with Vauclair after he defeated the Firewing. Second track contained information about what has happened during the Dragonfall and some Vauclairs notes. While everyone thought that Vauclair killed the Firewing, in truth he managed to separate her astral body with physical body. Third track contained Winter and Vauclair arguing. Winters just wanted that his older brother dropped the Firewing issue and get on with his life. Unfortunately Vauclair was pretty much set at finishing the job. The last track was probably some kind of prank or something or just Winters snapped.

 

The last thing to do for now is to go talk with Bannik. An acquaintance of Eiger. She has learned that some very dangerous person is in Berlin and she must find out where, what is he doing and stop him and Bannik can help with that. A little talkie talkie, revealed the location, probably a purpose and a little gadget to help with capturing the individual. He is a very brutal person, and chromed from head to toes.

 

[silencer_pl]

 

In Today's episode we will be doing the Lodge trial run mission. In theory this should be done as first mission after returning from manor. But nobody likes the lodge and who cares they pay 35000 nuyen right? Anyway Tenacious D. was asked to go alone. The "chosen ones" from the lodge will be awaiting in the target destination. Upon arrival she meets the first of the team. A dwarf woman. She made a small briefing about the situation. Looks like we have two impatient people and there is good hope for her either. At least she has a taser and is crucial to the mission.

 

 

Inside the building we meet up with the other two people. James who is practically working on everybody's nerves and a silent big elf.

 

 

Our mission is to go to put some "magical" surveillance on the upper floor and also disable the alarm. But first we need to find elevator control room to even get access to the floor. There few minor points of interests here. A shop where you can buy elegant body armour or a brain cyberware that boosts intelligence by 2. Also there is an Ork wondering in the main hall. He has a presentation and is very nervous. He can be given a drug to bolster his confidence and in return he will give you access to his room. However Tencious D. doesn't carry drugs. Deeper in the floor we have found the doors to the elevator control room, but there was a guard. In one of the shops there was a junction box and Jana can make a power spike to fry the guard.

 

 

Done that, we have now access to the top floor. Once on it Jana explained what needs to be done. But before that, there is a console on this floor which Tenacious D. can use. Jacking in the Matrix she was able to open other rooms and also escape hatch leading straight to U-Bahn. Probably will come in handy later.

 

 

Next thing is to disable the penthouse security system. When doing so, we were interrupted by the owner of the room we were in. The bad thing is, this man was stubborn as an ox. Adding that with James being an asshole, everything went to hell. Oh and our big elf friend also turned hostile. We had to battle our way to the next room.

 

 

Once we have reached it. James did what he was ordered to, also kept bragging how important he was. Once that was done we have used our escape route. No point in fighting more guards right? When we did that it was to report back to Luca. There he explained that the Elf was expected to die. He also thought that James will also die. Oh and the biggest thing is that this run was a setup. The lodge intended to kill some guy and they did with a blast. Unfortunately Jana didn't took it well.

 

[silencer_pl]

 

Today we will be dealing with the dangerous Engineer for Eiger. He was spotted in Schattennest, a kiez next door to Kreuzbasar. The mission is pretty straight forward. Find and capture The Engineer. Locals confirm that there is new face in the area.

 

 

Once we have reached the warehouse, we had to fight through the goons to reach The Engineer. But eventually we have captured him.

 

 

Now what was left to do is to let Eiger interrogate him. The Engineer was a tough nut to crack, but once we have found his weak spot, he was singing like a bird.

 

 

In the end Eiger got what she wanted and a new assault rifle.

[silencer_pl]

 

Although we have gathered enough money to pay Alice for the information about Vauclair. There is one more mission to attend to. We are task to infiltrate Pharma lab and kill the survivor of last team who screwed a silent mission. This is pretty straight forward standard shadowrun mission (it's so straight forward that they even added the coolest soundtrack). As we enter are "greeted" by Knight-Errant security. Although we have to fight them, there is something strange about this place. It has too much gore for a mission that suppose to be silent. And the further we move the more gruesome sights.

 

 

 

Once we have cleared all the guards on the main floor, the team moved deeper inside the lab.

 

 

Inside we have found a cage with corpses. By the looks it must have been the last team. Poor souls. Behind the doors we have found our target and the guarding Knight Errant said something about fast response team being on it's way. Frortuanetly there was a terminal nearby where Tenacious D. might jack-in and blocked reinforcments. There was also a switch to unleash 3 basilisks. They should create some chaos.

 

 

Once the enemy was defeated. It was time to deal with the captive. Of course his line of story didn't add up. He said something different than the client. And I don't know why would client would lie. Eiger as usual goes with mission above all else. Of course at this point normally you wouldn't know this. But the real deal is that this dwarf is a murdering psychopath. He is a rigger, but not just normal rigger that deals with drones. He connects with the building and has every piece of machinery under his disposal. All that slaughter and gore you've seen was his doing, so the only option is to kill this SoB.

 

 

Upon returning, team was approached by a 3 people. It looks like the client send a check in team. At this point if you wouldn't kill the dwarf now would be the last chance, although Herr Fuchs would be disappointed and would never deal with Tenacious D. But since we had killed him everyone's happy.

 

 

Returning back to the base, we also have a conclusion of Blitzs' story. If you didn't see it coming, it ended badly. He found her alright in the Matrix, but failed very miserably.

 

[silencer_pl]

 

Having done all the jobs, it's now time to pay Alice. 50000 nuyen, a lot of money. Will it be worth it? Once reaching the "Rabbit Hole" Tenacious D. inserts the secured credstick and the arcade machine comes to life. However the message received was very ominous.

 

 

Upon returning home, Tenacious D. gets a call on her PDA, but this call is very strange. It looks like someone made an assault on our base of operations. As it appears Audran, the heavily chromed Ork, is out there to kill Paul, and there is no one to help him. The ork has one goal and he doesn't stop for anything.

 

 

Upon arrival to the station, Tenacious D. is greeted by Eiger. The Kreuzbasar is under attack and we must gather the team and stop the attackers.

 

 

When we exit there were few bandits waiting and a hellhound. After killing the bandits, the hellhound was identified as Dante. Fortunately Dante recognized Tenacious D. and is now on our side.

 

 

Following the information given by Eiger we first go rescue Glory,

 

 

then Dietrich.

 

 

When we rescued Dietrich he had bad news. It looks like the attackers are planting bombs in the sewers. That is no good. We have to stop the fast.

 

[silencer_pl]

 

The team rushes to the sewers. There are 3 bombs to be disarmed and limited time of 11 turns. We split into 2 groups to go for the first 2 bombs. Because we have saved the ghouls, they are also helping in stopping the mercenaries. Once two of the bombs are diffused, the team makes full out assault on the third one.

 

 

Upon return the team gathers around Paul or what's left of him and give him last one prayer. Although this was a heavy loss to the team, they must keep going forward. It's time to see what Alice has gathered.

 

 

So it looks like Alice found Vauclair, being held hostage in the Manor the story has started and is also being guarded by a deadly AI called APEX. We know the location where the core of APEX could be and we should go there and deal with it.

[silencer_pl]

 

Although we now have the clear goal of what to do, I've been keep forgetting about one member of our squad. We did help Eigher, Blitz and Dietrich but we have left out Glory. It's time to fix this. Tenacious D. approached glory and slowly learned how Glory got this super old tech cyberware.

 

The story is as follows. Glory was living in Stuttgart. Her father was Euro war veteran who joined some "religious" group. As we all know such groups are nothing but troubles. Her father drank a lot and we also know how this goes well in families (well most of them). At the age of 14 Glory found magic in her self. She was one day caught by her father, beaten to a pulp and banished from home. She was then living in a street for a while. Then she has found a girl named Marta in which she has fallen in love. Marta has introduced Glory to a fellow named Harrow. Harrow was running this save haven for street kids, providing shelter and all the good stuff. However it wasn't all that beautiful as may think, and Harrow was secretly indoctrinating the kids. He also manipulated Glory to accept his God - because shamans are associated with some Gods. As it turned out this God was literally The Devil himself. At that point Glory did not care. But everything changed when she was back in Stuttgart. She had this urge to pay a visit to her dear old father. Unfortunately the Devil tricked her and with rage, Glory burned her mother. Of course she didn't want to that, but that was the trick of her God. At this point her eyes opened and she wanted to get away and break connection with The Devil. So she took all the money from the "save heaven" and run. She went towards the first cybeware surgeon and asked for the most old cyberware. She wanted to shred her essence in order to lose any magical abilities.

 

 

And the conclusion of the story is that now with Tenacious D. she wants to return to her old place and finish Harrow and free the kids from him. The main goal is to destroy a shrine Harrow uses. Unfortunately the entrance to the shrine is magically warded and as much Glory doesn't like we will have to confront Marta who stayed loyal to Harrow.

 

[silencer_pl]

 

Confronting Marta wasn't easy for Glory. Both sides to convince the other was wrong and unfortunately no consensus was achieved. Marta did not want to give a key so we could pass the wards. We had to make more forceful acquisition.

 

 

Now with the key Tenacious D. and Glory approached the shrine, but before they could do anything something strange happened.

 

 

They both were transported to some strange hellish looking place. In the end they have found the spirit of this place and the shrine. The spirit was twisted by the evil God and Glory wants to cleanse him.

 

 

After a fight, they have weakened the evil spirit and then he was turned back to his old self. Glory explained to him what has he done, and that he should help and make amends. The spirit accepted and glory accepted to be his vessel in the mortal world.

 

 

All now what to do is gather all remaining "cultist" and get away. Although the spirit of this place is no more, Harrow still lives. And Glory will want to catch him, otherwise he will start a new cult far far away and probably very well hidden. But for now we have much bigger threat to deal with.

 

[Space Voyager]

Wow, you're flying through the game... After all hell, Hell. When confronted with hell, it is good to have Dante on your side. Even if it is a dog. Where was it, dammit?

[silencer_pl]

Not sure what you mean by "flying through the game".

 

----

 

 

So we are finally finally done with every possible side mission. Now it's time to find that APEX AI. When the team arrives at the destination they are greeted by an Ork fellow. He is a local gang member although he wouldn't call him as such. They call themselves The Arbeiters and are sort of neo-communist faction. Protecting the inhabitants of the building and taking protection money. The usual staff. It looks like they have been force out by another "gang" of sorts. A group of mages that just came and started to kill everyone. In theory we don't care about this situation, but the problem is that the only way to the basement were APEX is, is out of commission and the only way to go down is help The Arbeiters kill the leader of the mages gang. Also inside there is another group that they call themselves The Community. Without any choice Tenacious D. accepts the deal.

 

 

Inside the building we meet Parson, the leader of The Community. He knows where the leader of the mages is, but he will tell if we help him in his task. Standard RPG approach. He wants us to take back his stuff from group of Deckers. Preferably peacefully. So we move to the next floor.

 

 

On the first floor first we encounter those hostile mages. Without any trouble we kill them. After that we went to Janet. Although door to her apartment were locked, Tenacious D. managed to hack the log. She wasn't pleased with such intrusion, but she wasn't that hard to convince to let us help her.

 

 

Further on this floor, we also met Franz and his friends. They were also kicked out from their apartment by the mages and want to return back. Of course the mages were playing with spirit summoning and some of them broke lose. Now we will have to clear them. Not that difficult. So now we move to the second floor and clear it of any hostiles.

 

 

Once that's done we return to Parson and give him the good news. He then in return tells us how to find Trithemius.

 

 

Franz is too notified that their apartment is free.

 

 

When we have reached Trithemius he tried to convince us that we should not kill him and kill Ullrich instead, because he is lying. I don't know why he would lie, so we don't make any deal and kill him like was originally planned.

 

 

Once we had Trithemius' head, Ullrich was very pleased and kept his word. He gave us the needed part to fix the elevator to the basement and a key to his armory. So yeah screw you Trithemius.

 

 

[Space Voyager]

Just that you're playing a lot and seem to be enjoying the game.

[silencer_pl]

Same as you and Nuclear Throne I guess.

 

-----

 

 

So the team has managed to get access to basement where the APEX core should be. In the nearby room we have found an instruction on how to erase APEX.

 

 

Before they went to the main terminal, the team has "plundered" the armoury of The Arbeiters. After all they had permission. When the team entered the terminal room, they were "greeted" by the APEX. The form he used was not pleasing to anyone. Nobody likes if you bring out the dead for first impression. Especially if you were responsible for killing. Of course any self aware form no matter flesh or not will try to defend itself from being killed. At first APEX tried to make an agreement, that we shouldn't kill it but free it. It said, that he killed all the deckers to sort of "feed" itself. It also said that "consuming" Monikas brain changed it and opened "eyes" to something new and better. As tough decision might be, releasing unshackled AI is not very optimistic. Even if it might be friendly on this meeting, Tenacious D. was not convinced of it's sincerity and proceeded with the original plan of erasing APEX.

 

 

Of course APEX will not give up so easily and begun summoning drones and the subjugated people from "The Community". When the purging process was reaching finish, APEX called out one more time to stop it. But it was too late. In it's last "dying breath" he showed a true image of what is going on in the Manor.

 

 

It looks like what Alice said was the other way around. Vauclair is continuing his experiment on eradicating dragons, and he has captured the astral form of the Firewing. When everything was done, the team returned to the basar and prepared a plan for final assault on the Manor.

 

[silencer_pl]

 

Ok, this is it the beginning of the conclusion of the story. It's time to return back to manor and stop Vauclair from whatever he is doing.

 

 

The first part is to get inside the lab itself and that means a lot of fight with guards. Once inside first Eiger was shown the place where Monica died. Before continuing forward, there is a terminal with information about some kind of Panacea project. Although Tenacious D. can't decipher everything, she is intelligent enough to make a good speculation about it.

 

 

In short Panacea is a virus that once injected into a dragon will spread through dragon fiery breath eradicating all of metahumans like elves, dwarfs, orks and trolls and other dragons. A truly evil plan.

[silencer_pl]

 

The team proceeds through the labs, fighting with any hostiles they encounter.

[silencer_pl]

 

After breaching our way through the labs, the team has finally met Vauclair in person. The doc however had upperhand, because he closed shut our escape route and he his behind very very tough glass. Through the conversation with Vauclair we have learned everything what was he planning (not that we didn't know already). However reading from the reports having some knowledge of her own Tenacious D. will try to convince him that this plan of his will not work. Also the key role here plays his brother. Vauclair loved his brother, and he didn't take well hearing his brother died, because of him. With presenting every possible argument she managed to convice Vauclair to stop this nonsens. Unfortunately Audrian is so depraved that he wants to see the world burn and kills Vauclair. When he departures he leaves us here trapped and released 4 firedrakes.

 

 

When the firedrakes were dead, the team went on to check the woman in wich Firewings astral form resides. She asked us to release her body and showed a way out.

 

 

Using the "escape hatch" the team finds itself in some sort of abandoned military compound. They now must find way out and stop Audrian from completing Vauclairs job. During searching they have found out that one level below there are welcoming committees.

 

 

The second party could be dealt with on this floor. There are blast caps placed directly above them. We need to find a room, where we can detonate them.

 

 

Once that's done the team moved to the lower part of the compound. There on the wall they found a ventilation map. It will be helpful against the other mercs. You could also bypass them by hacking into this jack-in point and open the secondary door.

 

 

In case you didn't there is a Nerve gas. With the nerve gas you will have to find ventilation intake fans and using the map direct the gas to the room where the mercs are.

 

 

Making their way through the exit the team finds itself in a medical room. Looks like the exit from this room will lead to the final confrontation with Audrian.

 

[silencer_pl]

 

So this is it. The final battle. Audran seemed a little surprised that we are still alive.

 

 

Now how this battle proceeds. Audran is "pouring" virus into the Firewing. When it reaches certain level it's game over. We have to stop that. The level starts at 2 and raises by 1 each turn. Of course there are lots of baddies here to stop us. Now how to proceed with this. It's definitely hard battle and may require few retries depending on how much high % misses you get. This game can be sometimes frustrating and you can miss 3x 75% chance (and I've managed to score a miss on 99%). If you have decker like Tenacious D. his first priority is to jack-in to this terminal. In matrix you can activate two nodes that will lower the virus level by total of 2 points.

 

 

Once that's done in the middle of the room there are two console. Each consoles enables the use of manual ventilation hatches. A person who uses those is unavailable for 2 turns. There is also a risk that Firewing will spit out small flame injuring anyone nearby.

 

 

Once you kill enough of the goons, Audran himself rushes in. And he brings real pain. That minigun of his deals heavy damage and destroys armour layers like hot knife cuts butter.

 

 

Once Audran was defeated he dropped a keycard that allowed us to stop the virus flow. Done that, Audran had few last words. Not going to help him though. So now it's the last final choice what can be done. Blow everything to smithereens and leave, just leave, or free or kill Firewing with combination of the above. I'll leave to take a guess which option Tenacious D. chose.

 

 

Upon returning to base. The team had a little sum up of what has happened and they decided that although Paul and Monika are dead, they will stick together. Also Eiger said that Altug had something important to say.

 

 

It looks like Altug wants to be our new Fixer, and he has already got a new client. Sounds good. Do you wonder who that new client might be?

 

 

So let's head out to the U-Bahn. During the ride, there was only one familiar looking person. I hope you remember Mr. Hans Brackhaus from Seattle bug incident. He, or rather his employer proposed Tenacious D. to work for HIM.

 

 

And this concludes the story of Tenacious D.

 

[silencer_pl]

 

Although the story is complete, one question remains. What would happen if Vauclair released the weapon he has made? Well before Tenacious D. can join with Vauclair, first she needs to dispose of her ex-team mates. An easy task for someone as skilled as her.

 

 

Once they were killed, Vaucalir could safely deploy his new weapon. However after a year of releasing the weapon, something strange begun to happen on Earth. Vauclair has given an urgent call to Tenacious D. He opened few terminals with information and she must learn everything from them.

 

 

Well in general the world is in "deep shit". When all the dragons were killed a few months after that a mana storms started to appear. At start they were harmless, but later they changed into mana rifts. And from those rifts came strange alien creatures killing everyone. Conventional weapons don't work on them and magic is becoming less and less stable each passing day.

 

 

After a while Vauclair came to a conclusion that the world would need someone as powerful as dragon to contain this new threat. Having realized that he then put a bullet in his head. Without any tools to counter this new alien threat, the only thing to do is to wait and see the world burn.

 

 

[Space Voyager]

I always knew the world NEEDS dragons. Dragons are cool. https://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b348/SpaceVoyager/Smiley/xtreme.gif

 

How many hours did this playthrough last? Your verdict?

[silencer_pl]

Something of 25+ hours. Maybe 30?