Part 19: Puppets and Puppeteers

Part 19 - Puppets and Puppeteers










Upon arriving in the basement we quickly learn why the alarm brought in so few guards, they seem to be busy with the violent and abused mental patients presumably released by Silas. In fact this entire section will pretty much be one long gauntlet of fighting off guards and crazies.





That being said neither of the aforementioned groups is especially well armed or armored, nor do they possess any magic. The guards are the same 30 HP weaklings armed with handguns as on the main floor.



The violent patients have more varied weaponry, but "more varied" doesn't equal "better" as demonstrated by this guy bonking Savoy on the head with a crowbar, slightly messing up his hairdo.



A grave offense and one Marchetti repays by one-two punching various bodily fluids out of him.



As we start heading deeper, Holmes continues crossing off the squares on the cliché villain bingo by giving us a monologue via the intercom.



A little ways into the main hallway, more maniacs attempt to ambush our drones from a small maintenance room. One of them takes a swing at Pascal, but somehow manages to miss the stationary drone.



Just like Hello World, Pascal is equipped with a mortar which hits all hostile targets directly adjacent to each other. The Robo-doc teaches the pair an important lesson in positioning and then immediately blows them up to make sure they don't get to tell anyone else about it.



Again a little further in, another trio of inmates are loitering in one of the larger patient rooms. There's also a door on the opposite side of the hallway, but it's locked and thus bound to be where we need to go.



Some of the unstable patients carry firearms, making them a little more threatening than the ones swinging pieces of wood or metal. We're still not exactly talking LMGs here though.

There are also some green sparks floating around what looks like a hazardous waste container nearby, indicating a spirit summoning point.



And speaking of hazardous waste, our hazardous drone promptly wastes the armed woman, no signs of remorse about gunning down the mentally damaged visible on its cold sensors. Maybe Amazon's feeling something but she's too far to check.



Savoy on the other hand is all about bathing in their blood, putting into question who the crazy one really is here.

Meanwhile Shannon has reached the scene and promptly uses the summoning spot to conjure up a spirit.





And by "spirit" I mean this godforsaken abomination bearing the name "Apocalypse". Man, I remember when we used to summon cute water and earth spirits, these days it's just one affront to nature after another.



Like Pestilence it can spit acid and reduce AP with its normal attacks, it's own trick being the ability to exhume a disease cloud in a large radius around it.



The patients' lack of armor makes them pretty vulnerable to critical hits, making Amazon's drones even deadlier than usual. With the room cleared of anything breathing, we can continue down the hallway unmolested.



After turning a corner Pascal comes face-to-roboface with a masked fellow who has taken the Shotgun Surgeon perk from Fallout to its logical extreme.



Alas he forgot to tag Guns so he whiffs a shot after getting a mortar in the noggin, fleeing to the room behind him afterwards.



Pascal chases after him while the rest of the group are still catching up, spotting another patient patiently hiding behind the corner. Whose side is this surgeon guy on anyway?





Pascal isn't here to question such things, Pascal is here to support and heal turn people into golf ball-sized chunks, apparently.

With the last immediate threat in the area eliminated, the team gets a chance to catch their breaths for a bit.



Which turns out to be a bad idea in this particular room. Explains why the occupant of the place was wearing a mask.



Imagine if this key hadn't happened to be here, we might've been stuck forever!



Examining the cart a second time also yields us another unlabeled trivid disc. We can only pray these aren't some fucked up snuff tapes.





As we backtrack to the locked door from earlier, Mengele Jr. here continues his rambling.

I could remake you as well. What wonderfully twisted thoughts must churn in a mind such as yours. But I'm more inclined to use you for parts.



There's a big guy with a big gun chilling in a padded room here. If he hadn't gone mad yet, a walking nightmare like Apocalypse suddenly popping up in the doorway probably would've done the job.



Despite his size he's not much of a threat with that kind of damage output, though of course that could've just as well been a 24 damage crit with some bad luck. The damage system and armor changes in Dragonfall and Hong Kong stabilize damage numbers a lot, but here in Returns it's anybody's guess whether a hit will blow someone's brains out or lightly tickle their nose.



His 50 HP take a bit to whittle down but Apocalypse and Marchetti get the job done together.



The door to the northeast leads to the last room of this area, and in here we have one last security guard and a machete-wielding doctor. I'm still not sure what the deal with these violent medical professionals is, but presumably they're in cahoots with the Ripper and are defending him for some reason.



This room also has the first Heavy ley line we've been able to make use of, increasing the damage and accuracy of all of Verbena's spells in addition to reducing their cooldown by 1 for as long as she's standing on it. A real nice but also rare treat.





In any case, these two aren't any tougher than the dozen other chumps we've already killed here. Machetes might be a real threat in horror movies but here they're just a poor life decision.



Before we move on, there is one thing of interest in this room - namely a trivid player which conveniently holds a collection of Silas' personal diaries.



Some of them are missing, but we did pick up #1 and #3 on the way here so might as well start from the top.

#1




#3




#6



In real life, bunraku refers to a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre. In Shadowrun the term is used for so-called "meatpuppets", prostitutes and sex slaves slotted with a variant form of BTL known as a personafix chip which suppresses their normal personality and replaces it with one that suits the customer's needs. Basically sex robots except they're actual people whose bodies are being controlled by a program.

These are often used by specialized bunraku parlors which provide meatpuppets for pretty much any fetish one can come up with, with many of the "workers" further modified with cosmetic surgery to make them look like celebrities and what have you. Whether these people are willing participants or some poor bastards who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time one night is largely a secondary concern.

If one were to run a contest to find the most messed up Shadowrun concept, bunraku would be a pretty solid contender.


#8



So yeah, in case Silas being a serial killer didn't make him evil enough yet, it turns out he's also been modifying and selling the mentally damaged as mindless sex slaves to rich customers.



Incidentally, the paydata we grabbed during our Matrix run on the main floor was a complete list of those customers.



Behind this door is where our chase will finally come to its end, hopefully. We get 4 Karma for getting this far.

But wait! That means...



Having reached 120 total Karma, Amazon has her base AP permanently upgraded from 2 to 3. That's right, she has finally gained the ability to actually move and do things in combat! For 1 AP's worth anyway.

Feeling more active than ever, we head through the door.



Of course he has an evil lair as well. There are some very morally ambiguous characters in these games. Silas Forsberg is not one of them.





How much longer you going to hide, doc?

Hide? Nothing of the sort. I'm simply in observation. And what I have next in store should prove most illuminating.






(I like Shoot Straight but by now I'm pretty ready to hear some other combat theme for a change)




This is it, the very final confrontation ever for certain! We're up against a mage, a surgeon with a baseball bat ( ) and Pitezel, the giant cybered-up troll who apparently likes donuts.



One ugly-ass SOB, Pitezel is by far the toughest enemy in the game thus far, sporting a rather absurd 100 HP and packing a serious punch. Literally as punching is his only method of attack, so the good news is that he has no ways of dealing damage from range.

He apparently also has a chance to go berserk similarly to spirits going rogue, but I haven't seen it myself.





I don't know what oil Amazon used on Pascal but the little bot has been on absolute fire today. Completely disregarding the mortar's poor accuracy at range and with a little help from Crow, the drone rains hell on the two henchmen accurately and effectively, taking them both out of the fight before they get single a turn. Guess that's one way to support the team.



As Pitezel gets closer, Shannon summons our old zombie bird friend Pestilence using a pool of blood on the floor. You know, shaman things.



The team focus-fires the monstrous troll, but it's not nearly enough to actually kill him.



Make no mistake, this guy can beat the absolute daylights out of anyone he gets his giant metallic hands on. If this had been Amazon instead of her drone she'd now be nothing but a messy pile on the floor.

Also I tried to land Blindness on him with Verbena like three times but he somehow always managed to be out of her LOS due to the pillars in the room. I'm bad at video games.



In what is quite possibly the dumbest move the man could've made, Silas himself runs into the battlefield after Pitezel has taken sufficient damage. Despite his scrawny appearance he does have a very impressive 70 HP as well, but...



...unfortunately for him, Pestilence's Confusion spell sticks so all he gets to do is flail around like an idiot. Sadly the spell description turns out to be false advertising and we don't get to control him ourselves, probably due to UI limitations.



I've never felt so Weak! in my life as trying to bring this jerk down. Considering what a critfest this has been up until now, Pitezel really highlights how big of a difference high Body and armor can make.



But no matter how resilient he is, at the end of the day it's still a 1v7 situation and in what is probably the coolest action shot one could feasibly hope for with these graphics, Savoy finally fells the giant with his axe just like in his favorite fantasy novels.





To add insult to injury, Pestilence (which makes an absolutely horrifying noise every time it attacks by the way) knocks the hell out of Silas' AP leaving him confused AND stunned.



In the end, the Emerald City Ripper's bloody tale is brought to its conclusion by the absolute wimpiest-looking punch the world has ever seen.



This is a place of broken things... I remake them... She... she asked me to remake her...



Could it possibly be that there is some greater evil at work here and Silas turns out to be merely an insignificant pawn?



Good riddance. We get delicious 8 Karma as our reward for ending this menace.



Here's the workbench the elf was looking at before croaking, so it's bound to be important.



I admit it took me a few seconds to realize "pocsec" referred to a pocket secretary. Let's take a closer look at the workspace first.



Charming. What about that leather-bound journal?



The Watts name comes up once again. Melinda must be Sam and Jessica's mother, but what would Silas do with a copy of the disinterment order? Was he planning on getting something from her corpse as well?

Maybe the pocket secretary can shed light on this.



Not much we didn't know already here, though I guess it confirms he was specifically aiming for transplanted organs. While we're here we also pocket 4,500 nuyen from his account. Not like he has use for it now.

The rolled sheet of paper is the last remaining thing of interest here.



Now hold on, is there some Frankenstein's ladymonster made by this guy traipsing around somewhere? Or is it just some mad plan that never came to fruition? It's definitely looking like we're still missing some major pieces of this puzzle.

But first things first, we need to get out of this place. We head through the doorway Silas ran in from earlier.



Hello, are we interrupting something?



Oh, right, the bunraku.

Well, hello there. Did you come to play?

Are you okay? How long have you been here?

Of course we're okay. We're ready for a little party. You want to have a little play party with me, BUYER NAME?



Well that was extremely uncomfortable all around.



Ah, but what do we have here?



Maybe we can fix things with this.



For some reason we can only use the chip on the guy as we can't interact with the woman at all.



The hero saves the day once again!

Sweet Jesus. What did he do? What am I?

Well uh that's



We... we're just going to go now good luck bye



There's a convenient back door located past a few empty cells in the adjacent room. Good thing Silas didn't think to use this instead of charging to his death like a complete moron.



We have removed two vile creatures from this world, and so ended a growing shadow they cast upon the city. Our paths crossed and joined, and we did this thing together. But now here our paths must divide.

You saw what I saw. This isn't over yet.

I kinda wish there was a "yeah it's been fun now I'm off to get paid and get the hell out of this town" -option, but unfortunately all the dialogue choices here are variations of "still need to see this through".

No, it won't be over for some time to come.



There is still more work to be done, for both of us. But what must be done differs, for each of us. I came here to find justice for my brother, and that has been done. His spirit can now find rest. But there are other victims of the Ripper, both alive and dead, who still struggle to be at peace. Many of them are here in this place, filling the halls with their torment. I cannot leave them behind.



I do appreciate that there's some closure about the whole "facility filled with tortured mental patients" thing. Of course if you didn't bring Shannon then you just end up leaving them to their fate without a second thought like the stone-cold shadowrunner you are.

I suppose I can respect that.

Thank you. Thank you for everything. Because of you, my brother's killer has met swift justice. And justice of the only sort such a man as Holmes deserved. Death.



You're good people Shannon, not something we have in abundance around here.

And what about Lone Star? They can't be far behind.



Good luck to you, Amazon. I hope you can find the same justice for your friend that I found for my brother.

I appreciate that. And good luck to you.



Up to this point we've had an obvious goal to aim for which was dealing with the Ripper, but what now?

For the time being let's head back to the Union, rest for a bit and see if we can put some of these pieces together.