Part 23: A Look Under the Hood

Part 23 - A Look Under the Hood




As a kid I had a recurring nightmare where I was riding an elevator, but instead of stopping when it reached the top or bottom, the doors would remain shut and it'd just keep going without letting me out.

I... wasn't really going anywhere with that, except I guess that kid me would've made for a terrible teammate for this job.




(Slightly spooky new ambient theme!)




And so our brave explorers reach the super duper deep secret basement. Amazon has ditched her disguise since it smelled kind of weird.

In front of us is a door and behind it, the secrets of the Brotherhood laid bare right before our eyes!



Nah actually it's just a normal dining room. Maybe these guys aren't up to anything particular shady after all. Let's try this next door.



Okay, there's a dead body leaking some kind of green goo in the middle of the hallway. That's at least +15 to Shadiness, so maybe we're on the right track after all.



Welp, guess we're not gonna be getting anything out of Shane. What the hell happened to him anyway, I don't think getting shot leaves a corpse like that. And why leave him lying in the middle of some random hallway, have some respect.



Might as well bring his card with us. Cherry Bomb might want to know about his fate once we're back at the Union, and she isn't going to believe us unless we bring her his membership card. Or something.

Anyhow, only one way to go here, so we head through the door at the end of the hallway.



Looks like an office, probably Father Willy's since it was his card that took us here. Love the pile of skulls next to the desk, really keeps anyone looking for a raise on their toes.





Nobody promised to pay us for this job, so we might as well take matters into our own hands.

Onwards!



Oh hello uh is this not the counseling center



Wow, they really did go all out on this dark cult thing. Purple robes and a creepy altar and everything. They've even got burning skulls!



What they also have is some lady in a holding cell. Since these guys don't look like policemen, I think this is about as far as diplomacy's gonna take us.



Luckily the cultists' fancy robes don't give them any mystical powers, they're just ordinary and incredibly outgunned 40 HP scrubs.



Cadence demonstrates assault rifles' hilarious Full Auto Fire ability which hits for five times for 2 AP. Sure it uses 10 bullets, the shots can't crit and they suffer a 15% accuracy penalty but the sheer damage potential of it is a big part of why rifles are so good and effective at practically any range.



We grab the holding cell key from the ventilated man's pocket and use it to free the mystery damsel in distress.





Relax, you're safe now. What's your name? And what kind of noises?

[She sighs. Coming down off the adrenaline rush.]

Marie... Marie-Louise. And first it was chanting. Priests and acolytes have been going down that hole since they locked me up. But then it changed to screaming. And something else, something... foul. We've got to get out of here!

What did they want with you?



The aunt she's talking about is Jessica by the way, she says as much if you pick a different dialogue choice. She doesn't mention who her father is though.

Okay, time to go.

But then, almost like on cue..





Nice getup. I like to think Jessica's holding up a flashlight from below for spookier lighting.

What does it look like?

[There is a hungry glint in Jessica's eyes.]

No! You're needed here!

I'll bet. I won't be your sacrificial lamb, Jessica.



Sure. It isn't eternal life, but it'll do.

Credit where credit is due, our only death so far was to that ambush. It was a solid effort.

[She composes herself.] So you say. But I'm glad you're here. Truly, I am. You've helped me more than you can know. Further opened my already wide eyes.



Oh no, it's looking a lot like she's caught Obvious Villainy from Silas.

Self-destruction. It was Sam's path, and it is humanity's path, if we don't make a change, if we don't embrace a new way of thinking. We must put each other first. And this is the basis of my new family.

And does your new family know how you treated your old one?

Sam and my mother were anchors, dragging me down with them into the gutter of human existence. But that part of my life ended at the burial. I am free now. Free to be uplifted by my new family.

Yeah, we sure got a real paragon of caring and selflessness talking here.



Okay okay we get the picture

Lady, you're nuts. Just plain nuts.

Visionaries are seldom understood in their own time. But someday you will all join me in transcendence.



I hate getting involved in other people's family meetings.





What in the everloving fuck



Ho-ly crap.

Don't be afraid, darling girl. No one will hurt you. You are our Queen!

Man, all we wanted was to solve one silly murder and get paid. What is even happening anymore?



I can do it, just stay behind us.

Look, I went to the best school in the country for Matrix engineering. I KNOW what I'm doing! They locked the nodes down when they caught me but I slipped in some code before they did, so it has to be me that jacks in. Just hold them off and let me fix it!

What about intrusion countermeasures?

I write IC as a hobby, okay? Just trust me. And keep those... things away from me!



Her confidence isn't entirely baseless, in fact her decking skills are downright demonic. Also for some reason she has two etiquettes selected. I'm afraid the protagonist spot has already been taken lady, maybe try your luck in Dragonfall instead.



She's also dressed like a school girl, and not necessarily the kind that goes to school.






(BTL Burn is probably my favorite combat theme in the game, maybe aside from the final boss theme. The 70-second buildup is only present in the soundtrack version but I decided to leave the whole thing in because it's great.)




I'm still not entirely sure how things turned out this way, but we're now facing a pair of human-insect hybrid monsters alongside a couple of Brotherhood members with swords who just entered from the now-locked door to the south. The latter continue to be nothing special, but the former, one a "True Form Worker" and the other "True Form Venom" have 80 and 70 HP respectively making them quite durable. They also spit nasty acid which deals pretty heavy damage and reduces AP to boot.



Coyote is in her element in these close quarters and thus she's the lucky recipient of Falk's Haste buff.



Since he has an AP to spare, we might as well demonstrate Lightning Barrier. You first pick 5 connecting and unoccupied tiles on the floor like so...



...and voilà, cover-on-demand. What form it takes depends on the type of barrier you cast, obviously.



Blam, blam, Coyote's burning anger came down upon their heads



Blam, blam, Coyote's burning anger made sure that they were dead



Whatever these things are, they seem to bleed just like anything else which is always a good sign.



80 is quite a lot of HP but with a little teamwork we bring the first one down on the first turn. Jessica sure talked them up a lot, but in the end they do seem to be just oversized bugs. With human parts.

Also you can see the lightning barrier animation more clearly there. It's pretty nea- hm?



Now hold on a minute there.



An insect spirit, huh? Guess it was to be expected for them to have some trick up their sleeve. Cute, but it's only 40 HP and this isn't exactly the first spirit we've faced so it doesn't seem like much of a problem.

No sense in taking risks though, so let's deliver a demonstration on how we exorcise pesky spirits... in full auto.



Okay I take it back, this now officially seems like a problem.



I don't know what this is, but it isn't right.

You can't just turn Godmode on like that in the middle of a match, have you no morals?

This is the future of Man. This is how our species will achieve everlasting life.

Are you blind, woman? These things are giant bugs.

Open your mind, Amazon. They are so much more than you think.



All right, I've had just about enough of this.

Despite her earlier claim of wanting to see us die Jessica runs off, baselessly confident that she doesn't need to confirm our demise this time either.



So here's the bad news: Jessica is completely right, these things are effectively unkillable. Every time you bring one down, they turn into an invincible spirit at the end of that turn. And after spending one turn as a spirit, the physical form revives with 50% HP at the start of their next turn.



Here's the good news: In spirit form their attacks only deal 1 HP and AP damage as opposed to the physical form attacks which burn like hell. This means we're also effectively unkillable, provided we can keep the physical forms down and thus prevent them from hitting us with the bad stuff. The spirit form always gets a free attack after it spawns, but fortunately the physical form does not.



Of course given enough time we will eventually die before the unkillable bug monsters, especially with the occasional miss and the need to reload, so the only thing we can do is to keep bringing them down while Marie-Louise makes her way to the door systems in the Matrix so we can escape.



It is possible to use another decker to go and assist her as there are multiple jackpoints in the room, but between her high skills and the Attacker ESP she comes with, she doesn't really need the help against basic ICs. Amazon's drones are more useful in keeping the chittering menace at bay anyway.



In the real world our party slowly makes their way towards the doors to the northwest while keeping the bed bugs from biting.



The second Matrix area which holds the door controls features a couple of White Sparkies, but as before they take so long to charge up that they die before getting an attack off.



When Marie-Louise eventually makes her way to the node, she encounters... a man in a top hat? Yeah okay sure, par for the course at this point really.



Harkeem? Is that you?

Call me Samedi, please! We're in an unsecured node. Hang on - I'm running a decoy operation with a mirrors utility to mask you so the rest of the Brotherhood's grid doesn't swarm you with ice.

What, you get to call other people by their real name but everyone else has to use your Rad Online Nick?

How did you find me?

You leave a very distinctive trail, ML. You need to work on that. Now what the hell is going on here?

There's no time! The "next level" the Universal Brotherhood is always talking about - I think they transform into bugs!

I had heard some rumors on Shadowland but this is worse than I thought. I warned you about these people. You've got to get out of there!

Shadowland as in the Shadowland BBS. BBS as in Bulletin Board System. Look it up if you're too young to know what that is.

Way ahead of you. This node controls the doors. We're free. Now we just need to get out of here. I'll see you soon... I hope.





With her chat and job both finished, Marie-Louise cyberhoofs it back to the cyberexit...



...and from there to the actual exit, now opened up, while the rest of the team covers her escape.

The door you can just see at the bottom is also unlocked until you free Marie-Louise, but there's nothing in the room behind it.



Being the reliable team leader she is, Amazon waits until everyone else is out and then quickly flees the scene herself.







And we're out! Our basement trip ended up being shorter than expected, but somehow it still feels like we spent an eternity in that building. Presumably the door we escaped through led to another elevator, seeing how we're now on ground level.



Hold on - What WAS that back there?

[She's glassy-eyed. Maybe in shock.] That was... I don't know. That was bad. Really bad. I'm out of here. Sorry...



Well bye then I guess, hope you had nothing you were supposed to tell us. Can't really blame her for being a bit of a mess after what happened I suppose.



Fortunately Mysterious Facepaint Man figured she might forget about his request and opts to contact us directly.

Who are you, and how did you get this commlink code?

Forgive me... I am the Baron Samedi. Perhaps you have heard of Samedi? He is a decker of unique gifts. Some have gone so far as to call him a technomancer. We two, we have a common knowledge now, and we share a common purpose.

Both this guy's name and looks (or rather the name and looks he's chosen for his avatar) are based on the "actual" Baron Samedi, one of the Haitian voodoo spirits who likes his vices and primarily handles things related to death and passage into the next world.

Also technomancers who are able to interact with computers using their minds eventually did become a real thing in Shadowrun, but that's a couple of decades from here and in Samedi's case it's just a fancy title.

I'm listening...



And what's your stake in this business?

The one you are after poses a grave threat to many. But that is for later. We must hurry now!



Guess we have a goal again, albeit a pretty vague one.





Today sure was a rollercoaster. Jessica turned out to be even more unhinged than she seemed, and now we've got some kinda immortal ghost... bug... things... walking around. And our only lead to what the hell any of it means is some weirdo acting like a voodoo spirit in cyberspace.

Life used to be so simple, once. Hopefully the Union is still standing at least, some familiarity and sanity would be a welcome change right about now.



Extra

You may recall that there were two ways to enter the underground portion of the Brotherhood, the secret route and the main route. Let's take a quick look at what the main route would've entailed.



First of all, bringing the party to the main entrance has us understandably stopped by security.



New members that Grandmother Jessica requested to see.

[He seems satisfied.] I see. Well, until you deliver them to Grandmother Jessica you're responsible for them, so don't let them go wandering off.



We start from the main hallway which was unaccessible from the other path. The second door to the west connects to the dining room, but it can't be opened from either side.



The first door to the west leads to a small resting area and... Shane? That's right, where you find Shane's corpse depends on which way you entered. This phenomenon is known as Schrödinger's Shane.



There's also a Basic Medkit in one of the lockers and a data pad located on one of the desks, only readable on this path.




Moving on in the main hallway, we eventually reach a security checkpoint and another door to the side.



Behind this particular door is a storage room containing an Advanced Medkit.



Even more doors plus a second cultist are visible past the checkpoint. Obviously we can't just walk over there though.


Sorry, that's as far as you go. Don't worry... all the Brotherhood's mysteries will be revealed in time. Now please step away.

I have learned so much! I can't stop now. Stand aside my friend, our enlightenment awaits.



Yeah, there's no way to avoid this fight no matter what you say.





As has been established they're not particularly dangerous opponents however.



The western door leads to an armoury and contains a pair of Cavalier Frag Grenades.



Finally, the door at the end of the hallway leads to the altar room and everything proceeds as before from there. Also since the door to the office isn't locked and thus nothing's stopping us from going in there and picking up the pay data from this side, in an unusual twist the main path is pretty much strictly superior to the secret one due to the loot and the tiny bit of lore in the data pad. You do have to fight one extra battle against the checkpoint duo, but that's a minor speed bump at worst.