Companero

AUBREY:

The armed security guard on the door, who looked about to arrest you when you walked towards the gate, takes a look at the card, at you, at the card again, puts it through a scanner, looks at you again, frowns, and gives it back to you, letting you through and ignoring the very obvious wail from the security scanner as it picks up the contents of the case.

"Of all the companies in the world likely to have their own aircraft, you would think Orbital Air would be one of them...The plane is on a landing platform half a kilometre out. There is a minibus waiting to take you in 10 minutes."

The gate itself is basically a small room, 10 metal chairs, television at each corner each playing a different channel with the sound turned up, with glass automatic doors at the end, beyond which is a distinct lack of plane and a small electric volksbus.

One chair is occupied by a heavily built dark haired man, two obvious and rather disconcerting soviet made (?) cybereyes, little red LED pupils. He is wearing a heavy great coat, with two leather cases set down to either side. He regards you with those LED eyes and nods.

EVERYONE ELSE: The 13:05 from Vancouver is in the process of disembarking and there are suddenly a lot of suits in the terminal.

SMITH'S TICKET:

Juneau Airport, it must be said, is not the most prepossessing place on the planet. The central terminal is an ugly concrete clam shell, internal support pillars like stalagmites, covered in television screens. Cheap coffee shops and even cheaper vending machines line every wall. But you aren't going to be here for long.

Its been a long couple of days, getting here, meeting Smith, making any final arrangements. Smith was a jovial man, well known to the Night City crowd as a man with giri and his own style of business - based on a sense of honesty rather rare among fixers. He turned up to the individual meetings in a white tuxedo flashing black and white images of Laurel and Hardy making various pratfalls, making various pratfalls and giving what sparse information he knew - Petrochem want operators for a deniable operation, pay that might extend into five figures, the need for haste that had been emphasised by his petrochem contact.

Then he moved into smaller, but just as important details. 4 operators, all hired in Juneau, a fifth whom Smith calls Holt meeting the team in Philogaia itself, having left Juneau just a couple of days before. An address for the meeting with Petrochem, 44B Michelson Street, apparently an abandoned lot in the warehouse district according to the dataterm.

"And if you need any firepower that isn't of the legal kind, there are a couple of people you can talk to. A few months ago I would have advised you to find a man called Jackson - we used to call him the Militech special envoy, so you can guess what he sold - but he ain't been in contact with anybody recently - in fact if you have a chance to have a look into what the hell happened to him I can compensate you for the effort - so he isn't such a good choice. That leaves a Limey rat called Leeson, who has the most arcane suppliers I have ever seen. He operates out of the Leeson/Marcusi Import Export Business in Clarke. He mainly stocks Darra Polytechnic, Fabrica des Armes and CCMMC (Christ knows where he gets that from, I thought they were strictly Chinese continental), all at inflated prices. Anything else and he has new suppliers I don't know about, which will piss me off intensly. Be careful dealing with him, right?"

"One last thing - There is a reliable, if cryptic info broker, operates out of the corp zone, the Better Latte than Never Coffee House on FreightRunners Inc Avenue. We call him the Jew because he, well, looks like he's an orthodox Jew, you know, a skull cap, the beard... For all I know he could be something else completely, but since I don't know anything about the guy, I dunno. He sits in that coffee house all day, drinking coffee and reading his paper. He also seems to have a rather strange knowledge of everything going on in the city, for a price..."

After that there is just the matter of transport. Smith has apparently arranged a "freelance special transport operator" to take you up north - an Osprey pilot calls himself Jimmy Rae. Any protests that one could fly the plane better are met with the blunt response of "if you can afford to buy an aircraft, go for it". The aircraft will be landing at gate 30, 13:30, for half an hour. He suggests that you meet with the others at the SoyBurger Platz in the central terminal, at 13:00, since it's obvious and easy to find. Payment is arranged already, courtesy of Petrochem.

So, here you are, in a clam shell airport, outside a German franchise burger outlet at the centre of the terminal, about 13:00, surveying the rather motley crowd assembled, and already feeling the cold.

What was Air Pirates?

according to an Iraqi chemistry teacher I had once had:

Silver foil + meths + Glass Bottle = Throw and run.

Never tried it.

He also told me the recipie for C4 but it was kind of complicated (to remember rather than create)

I came up with Media. Suppose someone had to do it...

I passed 200 hundred today, which isn't quite as impressive...but then again that was in less than 2 months. At this rate i'll probably have caught up with Wilphe and Phipps by the end of the year

Yeah, especially as the technology for full scale eugenics is becoming available NOW. That actually puts a really cool cp spin on it. Might have to use them...

The gemini I mentioned ealier was an attempt to do that but it is expensive and not as powerful as some of the other versions. It uses mynomar bundles to simulate muscle.

Because with the exception of one very expensive model called the gemini, most full borgs share design aspects with the terminator. While some borgs can look attractive (if you're into that kind of thing lol) it also precludes ever having sex etc. And most people will treat you like a robot. For a good reference watch ghost in the shell. The female lead role is a full borg, fully metal inside.

There is another factor - humanity. In CP the more cyberware you have, the more like a machine and less emphatic you act, eventually finding human contact repulsive and becoming cyberpsychotic - a condition which usually seems to end in a killing spree. A full borg conversion involves removing the mind and putting it in a metal shell, and while that costs less humanity than adding each part /arms etc individually, you will still come out of it mentally different to when you started.

In fact the most dangerous borg, the military grade Dragoon, costs so much humanity that without supressing drugs that effectivly turn you into a robot for the duration of the mission (these things have 'biopods' so that you can place the brain back in a safer borg once the mission is completed) anyone put inside one would go cyberpsychotic.

Also Bioware is abit useless in a full borg, because all virtually all bio-functions have been replaced in a borg lol

Borgs aren't a role, but rather anyone who has undertaken full body replacement -getting their entire body replaced in one cybernetic package.

A solo is a hitman. A techie is pretty much what it says on the tin, a guy who messes around with technology. A fixer is a person who organises, wheels and deals. An Assassin is in one of the sourcebooks I don't have yet, but I imagine that it is a more covert version of the solo.

If you want a (very) cut down version of the character creation rules I don't mind typing it up and sending you it.

I think it explains it somewhere in the book, and i seem to remember it being an implant of some kind that allowed him to project his dreams.

It also said later on that a much simpler version of the tech involved trodes.

...who can blind people

A game set in the sprawl would be easy to run, given that every archetype of CP2020 is present in the three sprawl books and burning chrome. Its funny to go through and see each role in those books from the netrunner (Case), solo (Molly), fixers (Finn, Julius Deane), and just about all the missions. Compare the corporate extraction in Count Zero to the screamsheet corp ex mission. They even use some of the same names lol. Posergangers (gothicks and kasuals) in Count Zero, exotics in burning chrome, basicly if its in those books its in CP...

Thinking of the top of my head, things that would need to be added into a neuromancer campaign.

SKILL: Jive

Jive is a universal sign language that is used across the world, with varying degrees of proficiency. Molly and Armitage both have higher skills in it than Case.

Streetwise is just as if not more important in a sprawl campaign.

Hackers always use trodes, there are not implant plugs.

Riverias (unique as far as i know) ability needs work to come up with...

Someone should scan some of the 2000AD Sinister Dexter comics. They are cyberpunk, no question about it. Everything from Full Borgs to hacking. I think i've missed the best of it though...

Just an idea, but could there perhaps be a major smuggling ring in the region? I can just imagine that region of the Baltic becoming a major area for smuggling. especially if Kal. is this huge free enterprise zone. Say a primarily polish group running yaughts out of Gdansk, shipping soviet guns and illegal cyberware into denmark, north germany etc. and Eurodrugs and perhaps even software back through a covert network of 'pleasure craft'. The Polish guys, by virtue of location have set themselves up as middle men in the trade, and deal with handovers. The Organtiskaya (is that the actual Russian or the polish name) have their hands deep in the neo-soviet coastguard and the Finns as well. However the police are onto it, cue series of battles as Org. Spetnatz mercs take on both them and Eurocorp troops in the Eastern Baltic, and the cops try to locate the hq in Gdansk.

(I've heard of the GROM, real hard b*******s, apparently some of the toughest in Europe, they operated in was it Grenada?)

Hi,

I haven't been playing CP for that long, and because of the group I almost always GM, so it would be nice to have a change. I don't mind playing anything, but I don't really want to do netruuning because I don't know the rules. A nomad character would be fun.