Part 16: Back to Business
Part 16 - Back to Business
Hello, and welcome back to Dragonfall. Before we get into the update proper, let's take a small step back and see how things would've ended up in the Trial Run had we gone for the somewhat short-sighted yet satisfying choice of siding with the foreign elf upon his having had enough of James' shit.



The elf stabs the sneer elemental to death so hard his leg spontaneously explodes. Children cheer, birds sing, a clogged toilet on the first floor suddenly clears itself without anyone quite knowing why. A good time is had by all.

The rest of the mission progresses much the same as before, though we obviously skip the camera planting part and proceed directly to murdering our way through the Knight-Errant squad waiting outside.

And so we once again arrive at the U-bahn station, though this time in rather different circumstances. There'll be no call from Luca this time around, so we sadly can't tell him to stick his dumb sunglasses sideways up his urethra.



[Her voice is full of venom.]


Things branch here, depending on if the elf survived the return trip. If he did not then the conclusion is as follows:
quote:
You could come back to the Kreuzbasar with me. I'll keep you safe.
They got to you, same as they got to me. You wouldn't be here if they didn't. I won't be safe with you. I won't be safe *anywhere.*
Well, then, what are you going to do?
I don't know. I'll have to figure something out.
[She hugs herself and turns away.]
Leave me alone, please. I'll get the next train.
Let me help. I can protect you, Jana.
You think that I feel safe with you? I just watched you kill a guy who was on your own team!
He deserved it. James was a bastard.
[She struggles to calm herself.] I have to deal with irritating, insulting people every day at work. I don't like it, but I don't *murder* them! Sane people don't *do* that! I'm not going anywhere with you, Rosa. I'll figure something out on my own.
If that's what you want... but I'm telling you, you're making a mistake.
Yeah, well, it won't be the first.
And that's that. There are of course other dialogue choices not impactful enough to show off, including telling her you really don't care what happens to her and that hey, getting involved with such a dangerous organization means that all of this was really her own fault anyway.
Now if the elf is alive, Lana's lamentation regarding her impending doom gets a response from him instead.


[Jana blinks up at him, but holds her silence.]



Whoah...
[After a long pause, she looks back up at him and nods.]



Jana can't really catch a break no matter how things end up, but maybe this way things ultimately end in a slightly more hopeful note for her. Or maybe they both get murdered before they even get off the train. Life's unpredictable like that.
The last potential route to show off has Jana die in the escape while the elf survives. Upon arrival at the station:
quote:
[The elf studies you, his arms crossed over his broad chest. His expression is neutral.]
Well, we're out. No more James, and no more Lodge.
[He holds his tongue, still examining your face. A long, awkward silence descends over the both of you.]
Um. Pity about Jana. I wish that we could've gotten her out, too.
[He continues to stare. Eventually, he seems to come to some sort of decision. He nods once, then drops his hands to his sides.]
So... what're you thinking of doing next?
[Without a word, the elf hitches his weapons over his shoulder. He steps past you and boards the train.
With nothing left to do here, you follow in his footsteps.]
The chemistry is palpable. As one final thing, this conclusion to the mission nets you a different loading screen description:

And indeed with this route the whole Lodge business ends here and Luca, together with the promised payment, will have disappeared for good.
But that was not the path we chose, so let us return back to our reality where only the elf died and we completed the job successfully.



We only get measly 2 Karma from this one, presumably due to the mission's status as an extra one only added in Director's Cut. Shops have also not gotten any new wares and only a couple of people have new things to say compared to before.
But first, let's head for the café to properly wrap up this unpleasant business.




[He reaches into his pocket, and produces a slim plastic rod. A credstick.]

Ultimately we have little room to argue though, we can tell him to fuck off which he will, but with our payment and all future Lodge stuff in tow. We could also tell him we can't be paid enough to violate our own principles, but that promise is maybe a little too lofty for us to make considering our profession and situation.



Yeah we kind of figured that part out already.





Well that changes everything, I can't recall anyone powerful ever attempting to accomplish "social order and stability" by questionable means in the past.

[He stares you in the eye.]

At the end of the day though, business is business. As always we should at least keep our options open, we do need all the support and allies we can get.




[He taps a neatly-trimmed fingernail against the earpiece of his commlink.]

There are no further Lodge-exclusive missions, but instead certain runs will have alternative ways to finish them which'll net an extra payment upon completion. These alternative ways are pretty much always doing something shitty in order to serve the Lodge's interests instead of your own or even your client's. Completing most of them nets you a bonus reward at the end and completing all of them an achievement and the firm knowledge that you're a bad person.



Let's hope we don't regret this decision...

And how's our local incomprehensible mystery entity doing? No not you Aljernon

[She pauses for a moment.]





Pretty sure that was just a scene from Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden.

[She looks away.]

Well that sure was... enlightening?

But we're not here to just listen to cryptic prophecies which may or may not be related to our future missions, we also pick up a couple of basic spells since we have the money and slots to spare.

Now you may recall that we wasted some money on a piece of cyberware we'll never use during the previous mission and had it sent to our shady neighborhood doctor. Let's find out what exactly it was that we bought.


[Ezkibel takes the purchase order and scans it over.]






The answer is "hella much". Even for deckers and riggers who use Intelligence as their primary stat, the Encephalon NEXT is a pretty questionable purchase because raw Intelligence is just not that useful. It also requres switching to an eye- or hand-based datajack due to it occupying the head slot. It makes a comeback in Hong Kong where it provides a more useful +1 Intelligence & +1 Decking instead, though it retains its fearsome price tag and money is pretty tight in that game.

"Simmy" Kim is one of the few people around with something new to say.







It certainly sounds like Monika didn't try very hard to get her off the BTLs, and maybe even encouraged their use.



"It's escapism! Can't you see? It's not healthy!" -History's Greatest Villain, 2003





This isn't Planescape: Torment so despite the vastly expanded repertoire of asshole options, you can't actually straight-up kick her out. At worst you can tell her to "earn her keep".




The only other resident feeling talkative, sort of, is the taciturn war veteran Laine.








[The old troll rubs a thumb pensively across his single unbroken horn.]


[Laine grumbles and massages phantom pain in his synthetic legs.]




Last I checked, Russia was to the east of Finland, not west. Treacherous Swedes or too many years of Koskenkorva vodka having taken their toll on the troll?




"Russians invaded" and "the world was a mess", the two constants of the universe.



Moving on, we dropped a little something off at Maliit's last time, maybe she's done with it by now.










Gee, wonder who this mysterious unique drone could belong to!

If you guessed "Dietrich" or even "Amazon", you're probably drunk and/or high as hell. That's very understandable in these dark times, so we'll let it slide.







We could lie here and claim it was us who fixed it. Why? Because we can is why, don't ask such silly questions.


We could also refuse and keep the drone to ourselves here. Why? See above.


[His brow furrows in concentration.]



"Disorganized and Selfish" eventually ends up being the title of Blitz's autobiography, in which he finally admits that global conspiracies not working in a magical dystopian cyberpunk world probably ranked as the 347th dumbest call he made in the year 2054.

[He shrugs.]



There's no new dialogue to be had from the rest of our crew nor has there been any new activity down in the Shadowland BBS, so we're free to directly get started on our next job, namely the one Paul told us came from Samuel Beckenbauer.





We don't pay much attention to infamous global crises either. Look, we've lived a very sheltered life.

The most well-known such incident took place in Seattle (where else?) where a terrorist firebombing of warehouses claimed the lives of hundreds of metahumans detained inside despite the presence of the Seattle Metroplex Guard who were supposed to be protecting them. Another famous terrorist attack by a different group which took place around the same time was the bombing of the Sears Tower in Chicago, which destroyed both the tower and several city blocks around it.





Let's face it, with a name like "Volker Stahl" that guy was never going to end up as anything but a video game villain.




Metahuman characters can ask why Humanis would want anything to do with them, to which Samuel explains that Stahl is pragmatic enough to work with metahumans when it suits him to do so.


Now this is more like it. Socialites can squeeze him for an extra 500 which is hilariously dickish considering it's pretty much demanding your own donations back, but we'll have to make do.




There's nothing left to sidetrack us so let's get right to it. Some good old-fashioned racist punching ought to be a good palate cleanser after that last mess.

'Sup Dietrich. Wait, aren't you supposed to be at the safe house?


[He takes a deep breath, then slowly releases it. Looks you in the eye.]

We literally just picked it up like thirty seconds ago and came down here directly. Could this be the mythical power of punk?






Well that'll make for some pretty awkward family gatherings.




That's right, we've just found Dietrich's personal mission! Well kind of, as his is more of an extra objective added to a regular run rather than a whole separate thing. Proper personal missions for the rest of the crew weren't introduced until Director's Cut and so in OG Dragonfall only Dietrich got some extra time in the spotlight. Now it's kind of the other way around as everyone else gets a whole mission dedicated just for them while Bal D's is tacked on to Beckenbauer's job. Such is the cruel pendulum of game design.



Despite being "his" mission there is absolutely no requirement to bring Dietrich along at all, not even after promising him you would. This, as you might expect, has some consequences which we'll explore when we get there.

Being the first mission where we actually get to pick our team, the runner hiring system announces its return. Since we have our own crew now we have absolutely no need to bother with anyone else though.

The list of available runners which includes our previous acquaintance Lucky Strike is way shorter this time, though on average they're also much more useful than back in DMS.

Lucky Strike in particular eclipses pretty much everyone in our crew, at least this early on. She's incredibly durable, specializes in the best ranged weapon type in the game, has the strength of a troll and even comes with some magical ability, allowing her to cast Heal and Aim.

Her very high stats are complemented by a unique assault rifle that packs almost as much punch as Eiger's sniper and very decent sword which allows her to deal large amounts of AP damage with ease in melee.

To top it all off she comes pre-equipped with one of the best cyberware augmentations with the absolute worst acronym in the series, Wired Reflexes With Reflex Trigger. While eventually our crew with their unique upgrades will start catching up, at this stage finishing jobs with just yourself and LS isn't even particularly difficult.

Alas, her one fatal flaw is that she's not a proper crew member and thus in this LP she'll never see even a shred of action. Instead we'll be bringing Dietrich, Eiger and Blitz. This'll probably be our most common team composition, though we'll make sure to give Glory time to shine as well. Eiger and Blitz are both hard to replace as one holds almost all of the team's physical firepower and the other all the decking expertise, so Dietrich and Glory end up as the most common bench warmers in most playthroughs unless you picked a Decker yourself.

Let's get in there and turn Humanis... into HumanWAS!
mm yeah that's the good stuff right there