THIS QUEST IS NEWBIE FRIENDLY

Reading this summary:

>http://ironmaster.wikia.com/wiki/Plot_Summary

Will get you up to speed on the quest without having to dig through the entire archive.

Also, advance warning, I might not be able to do this very long today.

THE IRON MASTER
Health: 1 (3)
Power: 4 (12)

Athletics: 2
Cunning: 3
Technology: 4
Insight: 2
Observation: 3
Nefariousness: 2
Stealth: 1

Powers: Super Strength, Super Speed, AI, SynthSkin, Model T, Mobile Dolls, Ghost Whisperer, Deathless

Action Points:

The Iron Master: 2/2
Julio Pedone: 3/3
Rica Rivera: 2/2

Resources: 47
XP: 0

Do we need to make suggestions or are you writing an update?

Action points are all filled up, plenty of resources to go around, I'm waiting on you to try something.

Gonna suggest the idea of cloning ourselves so we have extra bodies with powers scores laying around. Not like sentient clones, but like spare bodies that just lie around.

Also seeing as it was suggested, lets get Cat in on our next attack on Red Death.

>>21224529
Just, the previous thread we had given suggestions, I thought you might start with that.

Anyway, lets contact Kronos and ask him about Mesmer. Ask him about a person that is important to Mesmer.

Also, we should build a swordman suit and give super strength serum to Julio to improve his survivability.

Plan for the Week:
Julio bribes the set that Bouncer is working with. (this is still an auto success right?) IM then sends in Swordbreaker mechs to ambush Bouncer and mess his stuff up. Then Rica leads our two elite sets in an attack on the remaining hounds. Then us and Julio form sets to wall off neighborhood. We call in black cat's favor and have her and Red death hang around until Deadeye shows up.

OP, did you give a thought to helping rebuild the vaporized neighborhood suggestion?
I'm sure at this point, the city will be happy to get any help

>>21224595

Unfortunately, Kronos isn't particularly eager to talk to any villain who decides to give him a call. His secretary informs you that he'll get back to you when he can, and that's the last you hear of him. On a related note, Whisper eventually sends you a quick text back, informing you that he's become extremely busy recently; it would seem just about every villain in the city is preparing for the endgame now, and it's probably best to just leave messages and he'll get back to you when he can. Concerning Mesmer: he can't give that sort of information away, as it would violate his status as a neutral mediator of Team Red. Worth noting that you haven't yet informed him that Mesmer is missing.

>>21224573

I presume you mean your next attack on Dead Eye. Red Death is pretty much on your side right now.

>>21224728
Well, inform that Mesmer is missing.

Also, ask him if he knows any other telepaths we can contact

>>21224670

Yes. The rudimentary system I've got worked out now is that the neighborhood has been dropped to -5 prosperity (vaporized), and with both actions and resources you can restore it, which comes with the opportunity to turn basically the entire place into your own personal Bond villain lair, not to mention some really nice PR.

>>21224646

Yeah, still an auto-success. Bouncer doesn't have the Cunning to do anything about it. Or the Insight to realize it's happening, for that matter.

File: 1350848354100.jpg-(278 KB, 1440x878, Kaas-City-Entrance.jpg)

>>21224904
Really nice, moderately sized, affordable, futuristic apartments (legit business right?), and we can drop a new tech company on that spot. I'm thinking sith empire look, even roads and the like.

>>21224904
>Yes. The rudimentary system I've got worked out now is that the neighborhood has been dropped to -5 prosperity (vaporized), and with both actions and resources you can restore it, which comes with the opportunity to turn basically the entire place into your own personal Bond villain lair, not to mention some really nice PR.

Well, I want to see this happen.
How many resources are we talking about? And how many turns do we need? Is it safe to assume that the more resources and help (robot workers) we give the faster it will be completed?
When doing this, use one Command Mech with bunch of robots to help reconstruction and make sure to build a franchise while rebuilding so that we don't have open a new one in established neighborhood as it will be more expensive.

>>21224960
>I'm thinking sith empire look, even roads and the like.

While that's cool, it might hurt our PR. Lets just go with very nice, futuristic look with lots of vegetation (roof gardens and such).

>>21224960
lets take out bouncer first. use this plan: >>21224646
Bouncer should be hilariously vulnerable to swordbreakers.

>>21224960
>>21224985
>>21225004
We're in the middle of a gang war (even if no one else knows) deal with that first.

>>21224740

Within about twenty minutes you get a message back. He must be busy, if he's sending you texts while on the phone with another villain. You've never known him to be anything but completely focused on the call he's taking before. Well, you suppose maybe he's just good at faking it, and before now he was spending his spare attention watching YouTube videos.

Either way, he can tell you that Mesmer had a lover, a telepath who'd never gotten into the hero or villain business. Mesmer had her officially registered as Team Red with Whisper (for what that counts for), but her existence was never announced to anyone else. Her name is Emily Reed and he sends you a picture. She doesn't look particularly remarkable.

>>21225046
Now we have a name and a face.
Use our amazing Hax skills to search all kinds of databases about her then have our ghosts look for her to see if she is alright.

>>21224985

The resource cost is going to be 2 times the absolute value of the neighborhood's prosperity or, in less math-y terms, 10 resources to go from -5 to -4, 8 resources from -4 to -3, 6 resources from -3 to -2, etc. etc., until you get it back up to a 0 (Arms) neighborhood. But you have to pay the resources just to make the Improve rolls; if those fail, the resources (and the action) are wasted. Once rebuilt to 0 prosperity you can take an action to arbitrarily set it to be whatever sort of neighborhood you like; it might be a lawless wasteland when first rebuilt by virtue of the fact that no one is living there, but if you rebuilt it as a bunch of swanky apartments then you're going to get rich people moving in pretty much immediately. The action is spent on basically a marketing campaign to let people know there's new real estate on the market and get the economy jump-started. It doesn't cost any resources and you don't have to roll any ACTIONS; just spend the AP and it auto-succeeds.

>>21225149
that's nice what is the Difficulty of making the checks? In the meantime, can we please start the damn gang war already?

>>21225149
Does having robot workers help do anything?
Like improve our rolls or lowering resource cost?

>>21225065

She has a mostly normal, mundane life. She has no job; Mesmer's occasional criminal hijinks kept the both of them afloat with apparently enough cash left to spare to buy psychokinetic conversation pieces. She vanished about a week or two before Mesmer did.

Bribing the Lunatic Hounds over to your side takes a huge chunk of change, but it works.

Bouncer, meanwhile, is convinced that he's about to be undisputed criminal kingpin of Compton. The Stalkers are buckling under his attacks, half gone already, and probably don't have the income to hold out much longer. And then one day he gets ambushed by the Sword Breaker squad. The battle is over before it starts, a pack of mechs emerging from behind their hiding places to sprint towards him at mind-bending speed and beat him into the pavement before he even knows what's going on. So...Now what are you going to do with him?

>>21225213

Considering the scale of the project, a few dozen extra workers won't really change anything. Even a few hundred (dedicating your entire mech squad to just that for the duration of the reconstruction) would just barely make a difference, maybe reducing the cost of each roll by 10 or 20%.

And the TN of the rolls is going to start at a 7 and increase by 1 each time. So from -4 to -3 would be an 8, -3 to -2 is a 9, -2 to -1 is a 10, and finally -1 to 0 will be an 11.

>>21225337
I was thinking we drop him off at the nearest police station that can actually restrain him. Do we can cat on deck?

>>21225337
>She has a mostly normal, mundane life. She has no job; Mesmer's occasional criminal hijinks kept the both of them afloat with apparently enough cash left to spare to buy psychokinetic conversation pieces. She vanished about a week or two before Mesmer did.

Any hints on where she could be? Can we search her apartment for clues?

>>21225337
Well. Get DNA ample and anything else we need if we ever want to clone his body.

We should try to recruit him but if that fails, then we can throw him into jail or something. But I think we can come to an agreement, we are both Team Red after all

>>21225360
Hmm. Okay. IM in super sense bot. Auto succeeds on the insight roll, needs a 4 or higher to beat the cunning. so 3/36 chance to fail on the roll. Good, but not great. But if we wait until we've completed the White and red and... Just a second, need to run some numbers...

>>21225422
Okay 8xp to unlock shape-shifting and grab monster form. (fluff as transforming power suite) we can get + 3 to cunning and +2 to insight plus gaining the empathy power while transformed. So C6 I7 for the ultimate improving machine. We can grab another monster form to pump athletics instead of cunning for another 1 xp, which will make us much more powerful when we get cloning tech.

>>21225388
I think this is an incredibly stupid idea, but feel free to try.

>>21225388

How exactly do you plan on recruiting him? As in, what do you plan to say?

>>21225642
You know, I'm not really feeling recruiting him. Just grab his DNA and dump him off at a police station.

>>21225642
I'm the Anon that thinks it's not going to work, but the only thing I can think to say is to start off by warning him precisely how deep the waters are that he is swimming in. (Us controlling all of the remaining Stalkers, and his best set, Chimera prepping to invade, plus hint at whatever plans the Damio had in mind for him).
Then give him two options:
1. Work for me and be one of the top guys at the largest gang in town. Get fancy new armor and powers too.
1. Go to prison and watch me rule Compton by the end of the week.

>>21225504
What kind of monster would we transform into?

>>21225904
it's fluff. I would argue that our suite would shift around a bit and start glowing different colors depending on what we do.

>>21225991
Ah, so not actually transforming into hideous bat-monster or anything.
That's cool.

Rolled 44

>>21225337
>How exactly do you plan on recruiting him? As in, what do you plan to say?

wake him up dangling from a rope in a ware house mecs at the reddy and terminators.

"hey wake up " plasma blast the rope down
"we can do this one of two ways 1 you leave town its mine. 2 you stay work for me making a good pay it comes with a hell of a health package

>>21226078
I like
>>21225757
better.

It would appear that we don't actually want to recruit him, so instead you dump him off at a nearby police station.

Julio, meanwhile, is heading out of Compton, his work there finished and eager to get back in your turf where at least Dead Eye has to sneak around in order to shoot at him, when another car crashes into his. Julio ducks and covers immediately, fearing an imminent attack from Dead Eye. It's not Dead Eye who steps out of the car, though, but Lily. Peering out over the windshield of his car, Julio immediately pulls a gun and levels it with her. "Don't come any closer," he says.

"This is some gratitude for the people who saved your life," she says.

"You've done a lot of work to undermine our organization," Julio says, "and you couldn't be more obviously working for Asrael."

"We're not working for Asrael, he's a rogue member of our organization. And we really don't have time for this," Lily said.

"What do you want?" Julio asks.

"I have a gift for you," Lily says, "you'll need it in the near future." She pulls out another spike similar to the one found in his room previously and tosses it towards him.

"Another one of these?" Julio says.

"You've seen it before?" she asks.

"Someone planted it in my room," Julio says, "it nearly got me killed."

"Asrael wants you to be suspicious of these," Lily says, "'humans are dumb animals by choice,' is what he'd always said. Don't follow instincts or first impressions when he's involved. It's what he's counting on."

"So what's this for?" he asks, gesturing to the spike.

"Use it when you're in great danger and out of options. I can't say anymore. Asrael hears everything," Lily says. Then her eyes flick up as she notices something Julio had not. "Shit," she says, eyes widening and leaping towards Julio.

Two gunshots ring out. The first from Julio's handgun slams into Lily as she springs towards him, her momentum carrying her through. The second from Dead Eye's rifle as it tears off her shoulder, which is now at the same level as Julio's head had been a moment before.

>>21226208
Wait, why did Julio shoot her? Is she dead?

>>21226274
gut reaction I guess

Can we get Julio some superpowers now? Or are we waiting till he dies so that we can make him Deathless too?

Your mechs have just finished delivering Bouncer to the authorities when Julio encounters Lily. Before you can even give the order to move into position to support him, however, Asrael attacks...And your blitz mechs are not at all equipped for a battle with him. The first blast of fire badly damages all six of your mechs, destroying two of them outright. The police open fire on Asrael, but he almost seems bored as he evades the bullets.

>Fight or flee?

>>21226359
The question is, if we flee do we lose Julio and Lily? Or can we get them away.

>>21226297

Gut reaction is correct. He doesn't trust her, still hadn't lowered the weapon, and when she lunged for him he fired pretty much on auto-pilot.

She's not dead yet, as both the shots where in her torso, but she is basically guaranteed to die within the next ten minutes without some kind of super powered intervention.

>>21226391

If you flee Asrael you may or may not be able to get to Julio and Lily depending on how much faster than him your mechs are and whether or not he tries to keep them away.

>>21226359

Lets have Rica give support.
Maybe call Kestrel to give back-up too? Though there is a good chance that she can die and lose her body, then we will have trouble explaining how she came back.

>>21226397
... can we have Rica rush deliver a cancer serum? as for the Mechs, have them engage Asreal, its not like we care if they get burned. Where are cat and red death?

>>21225046
>Either way, he can tell you that Mesmer had a lover, a telepath who'd never gotten into the hero or villain business. Mesmer had her officially registered as Team Red with Whisper (for what that counts for), but her existence was never announced to anyone else. Her name is Emily Reed and he sends you a picture. She doesn't look particularly remarkable.

We should use our Ghost Whisperer ability to determine if the girl is dead or not before it is too late. After we deal with this shit, of course.

>>21226484

Yes, though it will cost resources. Are we sending Rica with a Cancer serum or without, then?

>>21226484
Why the cancer serum?
You want to save Lily?

>>21226665
Yeah, lets make a serum just in case for Julio.

>>21226716
Yeah, why not help her, she gave us the spike.

>>21226807
what did the spike ever do for us?
And I don't really trust her. On the other hand, we could interrogate her.

Shit, we really need to find Mesmer

>>21226857
I don't know, do you want to make a habit of leaving people who might be trying to help us to die? That's a great reputation to have, anyway, I'm sure we'll be able to find out more if we save her and have her in our custody.

>>21226916
Do you really trust what she says?

Well, okay, lets give her benefit of doubt then.

Rolled 67

>>21226665
send her with a Cancer serum

Asrael mops up the rest of the mechs with his next holocaust blast, and they're unable to so much as lay a finger on him in the meantime; Sword Breakers aren't super good at fighting enemies they can't ambush.

Julio, meanwhile, takes cover from Dead Eye's fire behind his car. He takes a graze across his shoulder, but the Red Death arrives moments later, jumping from a nearby rooftop to attack with his staff. Dead Eye uses his gun as a club and begins fighting back against Red Death.

Rica, meanwhile, is intercepted en route by Asrael. He lands on the hood of her car, but she pulls out a Photon rifle and blasts him off. He stumbles to her feet and leaps towards her as the car spins out and screeches to a halt while she lowers the gun to fire again, but Asrael closes the distance in an instant and turns the barrel upwards and it fires through the roof. Asrael rips the gun out of her hand, and Rica barely has enough time to swear before he sends a bolt of white fire into her chest which blasts her out of the car and sends her tumbling across the pavement. Asrael walks around the car towards her while she pulls herself to her feet and pulls out a switchblade. "Come on," she says, seething with rage, "come and fight me, you bastard, I'll carve you up like a turkey." She steps and staggers a bit, Asrael tilting his head curiously, his expression blank while she limps towards him. She stabs towards him, and he sidesteps, grabbing her wrist and twisting it painfully around until the switchblade falls out of her hand.

"Who are you?" Asrael asks.

"The person who's going to kill you," Rica says through clenched teeth.

"Well, I can't have that," Asrael says, and Rica bursts into flame.

>>21227375
... Kinda running out of ideas. Where the hell is team blue?

>>21227457
we should really invest some super powers into our henchmen. They only cost resources, if I'm not mistaken.

>>21227457
We could always call for some, all anonymously and such.

>>21227603
pretty sure they Asreal is all over the news. More important question, where is Black cat?

>>21227375
Have Rica run if she isn't already dead. (Also, why the hell is someone with meta speed using a car?)

Rolled 70

>>21227375
please tell me she took a bot and not a good meat suite

>>21228029
I'm more confused by the fact that our super speed mechs (with ranged weapons) were apparently arranged in a nice neat clump for Asreal to AOE to death.

>>21228080
A lot of these sudden wipe out our mech attacks are pretty bull. Even more so since there isnt a lot of AOE powers.
And we had at least Three people on recruiting Bouncer, and i just showed up and wanted to recruit him too, im the one who argued for it last thread. Dammit. You'd said we'd pull back if enough people argued for it, now we've got 4 to about two people on recruiting Bouncer.

Your attempts to make contact with Cat are fruitless; she's not answering.

Red Death, meanwhile, has gotten the upper hand on Dead Eye again, who jumps down from the rooftop where he'd been hiding and rolls up to his feet five stories below, and the Red Death leaps down after him, but something in his new wings snaps and he plummets to the ground, a leg snapping under him as he hits the ground. "Dammit," Red Death says as he limps towards Dead Eye, "where is the Cat?"

"No supernatural bad luck on your side today," Dead Eye says, loading his weapon.

A sudden burst of white light draws his attention way. "No," Asrael says, drawing a sidearm, "today you're just regularly unlucky."

>>21227787

It's a waste of PP to activate Meta Speed to go somewhere, then activate it again to do something. Meta Speed is slower than a car anyway.

>>21228080

That "nice neat clump" was about a hundred feet in diameter; Asrael doesn't need a whole lot of bonus damage to insta-gib Insight 0 mechs with a Cunning attack. You do this sort of thing all the time and just got done doing it to Bouncer in literally this exact same encounter. Complaining that other people are allowed to fight back using your own tactics is not going to get a ton of sympathy from me.

>>21228216

It's trivial to retcon the recruiting offer made to Bouncer.

>>21228348
On whom is Asrael drawing his weapon?

>>21228348
It's that we're getting destroyed with Area of effect attacks. an a hundred feet Area of effect spell with didnt harm him while he Danced Around Bullets. If he flipped his hair majestically i'd punch you in the dick. more and more he seems too awfully special that is grates me more.
Why was every mech bunched up in a perfect little ball for that? Why didnt the cops get effected in that case? Why is Asrael now all of a sudden, just Poof! Here, when we've seen him racing around before?

So this mean you're going to recon the attempted recruitment of bouncer or no?

>>21228348
>Asreal using a gun
Someone is running low on power. Might want to mention that to interested parties on team blue.

And I need to be going now. This is not the best note to be ending this thing on, but oh, well.

>>21228454
Our mechs are just not built in such a way to do any damage to him. It probably happened too fast for cops to take action. And it has been said before that Asrael can just pop up out of nowhere and make everyone's life difficult. It's how he operates. Besides, if he was easy to deal with he would be dead long time ago seeing as he is on Team Black

>>21228454
look, he's not going to retcon that, a far better request would be to let Rica turn and run sometime during the fight that she was instagibbed in. Oh well, just steal her body when no one is looking with that one bot we have.

>>21228565
I think he said it was Trivial. my question was if it was
A. A trivil matter to retcon it to the attempted recruitment when someone attempted a decent offer
or
B. It is too trivial a matter to retcon it so why bother

>>21228623
because whatever we did, Asreal would show up and start wrecking everything.

>>21228658
still doesnt answer my question there.

>>21228623

I think the thread is done, but to clarify: It's trivial to retcon as Bouncer having been made an offer. Bouncer is out of HP, so you can't turn around and point him at Asrael or anything, and it really doesn't matter exactly what your mechs were doing when Asrael caught up with them. The only reason I didn't back things up immediately is because I didn't want to interrupt an important battle...Which, of course, got interrupted anyway when I had to dash off, but there's not much I could do about that.

>>21231094

I just realized I probably failed to actually clarify while clarifying, so let me make this explicitly clear: Yes, we can make that retcon. It doesn't make a big difference and apparently some players want to make it happen, so sure, why not.

>>21231094
>>21231101

So, next thread tomorrow then?

>>21228348
Didn't complain about the first attack in that we should have been bunched up, nor am I asking for a retcon. I just want to bring your attention to an important balance issue, that cunning attacks seem to preempt normal athletic attacks. (ex: the mechs didn't get to shoot back using athletics for a double hit or something). I'm not really sure what happens when two people try to attack with different ACTIONS, and I wanted to know how that actually worked. (We ambushed bethmoth, he doesn't get to hit back anyway)