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Old 02-15-2017, 09:24 AM   #30
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: Coast Guard response to distress call on Jewell Island, ME

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Time to go hunting for the jammer and kill it, I think. Using the radio should be able to help with locating the jammer.
I was wondering about that. O'Toole's player is an electric engineer (and a software engineer) and he didn't seem very confident that there were any settings on a hand-held radio like that to get any useful directional data. On the other hand, he didn't look over the specs before he said it and it's not as if anything he has done professionally has had anything to do with deliberate radio jamming.

If Electronics Operation (Communications) will give us any data on the location of the jammer, though, Taylor and Col. Burr both agree that taking it out is the most sensible plan. O'Toole is still hesitant, mostly because Taylor made a huge deal out of informing him that there was no reliable non-lethal option available if we decided to resist the guards. Deciding to attack a post where armed guards are going to be was effectively a decision to kill those guards, because Taylor was not going to promise any magical solutions that didn't involve shooting hostiles holding guns.

This bothers Agent O'Toole, whose military service was in an air-conditioned comm center and whose short law enforcement career has so far proceeded amicably without him ever firing his weapon except in qualification. He says that there is no way to know whether all the guards are equally guilty and in any case, they are all American citizens, not enemy combatants, and deserve the right to let a court decide questions of guilt or innocence.

To which Taylor replied that killing armed hostiles wasn't a matter of their guilt or innocence, it was a matter of cold necessity in the real world.* Waiting for them to aim at you before deciding to shoot them changed the situation into a race between your reaction speed and a bullet. Not good odds.

As far as Taylor could tell, everyone else was in favour of killing them all and letting God sort them out. As a player, I know that Dr. Anderson is a Reluctant Killer, but he didn't demur any in play. Townsend seems nervous, but willing to accept that Taylor knows what he's talking about when it comes to surviving the night. And Col. Burr is remembering long-ago days when he was a junior infantry officer, positively chortling with glee at getting to kill the guards who've been chasing him around, now that we've got guns of our own.

Taylor is assuming that Sherilyn Bell wants the guards dead, but actually, she has been surprisingly** indifferent to them and expressed no desire for vengeance or retribution. She did help Taylor subdue one of the two armed guards we've encountered by making him believe that his holstered pistol was a viper, which made him extremely unwilling to draw it and actually led him to frantically try to remove it from his belt without touching it directly, weeping and whimpering loudy.

Actually, Taylor would prefer not having to kill anyone. He probably likes it even less than O'Toole does. But as it seems he has to kill in this situation, guards with guns trying to kill him right back certainly don't trigger his Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) and it turns out, Sense of Duty to a wide variety of things including friends and all innocents does not actually include men who are certainly complicit in violence and kidnapping and possibly guilty of much worse crimes.

If one of them were to surrender and beg for mercy, forgiveness or help, Charitable would come to his rescue, but killing them in the heat of action, while they are a threat to others, isn't forbidden by Charitable. Trying to engage multiple trained men with longarms using less-than-lethal hand-to-hand techniques isn't high moral principles, it's Delusions, On the Edge and Trickster.

If Warden Tyrrell tries to surrender, I would probably roll against the Self-Control for Charitable. And not roll for the more-or-less Quirk-level Bloodlust that only operates during combat, not before it or after it. Broad-mindedness, emotional maturity and Christian values only go so far. Taylor hates bullies, those who prey on the weak, and someone who'd abuse a helpless patient in his care for years fits the bill pretty well. And, yeah, of course the identity of the apparent victim matters; no matter how enlightened he tries to be.

*I'm hoping we'll revisit this debate next session, because I forgot to maneuver the conversation around to whether the guards deserved to die, so Taylor could quote Eastwood: "Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it."
**Well, maybe not that surprising. Anyway, Taylor would be pretty surprised, if he were to consider it dispassionately and he might revisit some of his assumptions. Then again, he might not. After all, the fact that Natascha Kampusch cried when she found out that her kidnapper and abuser had died does not make what he did any less of a crime, nor her in any way complicit or responsible for anything that happened while she was in captivity.


Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
The other way you might be able to get out of the complex is the sewage system, but that depends on how it's been set up on this island, and how well it's been secured.
It is an option. It opens up directly into the sea, however, and during in-character discussion, Taylor claimed that the Atlantic in February would kill us before we could reach shore.

Actually, it's not impossible that someone very fit could reach Cliff Island, only about a mile away, but as the sewage exist is on the other side of Jewell Island from Cliff Island, it would mean a swim of some 2.5 miles in the Atlantic. The first half mile of which would have to be mostly underwater, coming up briefly for air, to avoid an eagle-eyed guard with a thermal imager spotting a swimmer and using the M2HB to ventilate him with a .50 BMG round. And you'd never hear the shot that got you. All the way, you'd feel a burning sensation in your back, just knowing that this second would be the one your spine was severed with a huge bullet.

So, Taylor wasn't quite telling his fellow PCs (and three NPCs) the truth when he said it was suicide. It's actually just an insanely scary and dangerous plan that pretty much no one but Taylor could attempt and which would require him to leave everyone* else behind, probably to a gruesome fate if he failed. And he really, really doesn't want to try it.

Agent O'Toole's player has another, alternate plan that they could try if they use the sewers. He can use his psychokinetic powers to make a bubble with DR 2, Sealed and Pressure Support 1, which would enable someone (or all of us) to walk on the bottom to Cliff Island. Cons are that there is no new air produced, so maybe we would suffocate, and that Agent O'Toole is keeping his powers secret from his superiors in Onyx Rain, so he didn't mention the possibility to Taylor or anyone else.

*No, that doesn't refer to any specific person. Taylor would also be sorry if Agent Danny O'Toole (PC) were killed. He'd even feel briefly sad and perhaps a little guilty over not feeling sadder if Dr. Michael Anderson (PC), Col. Andrew Burr (US Army Counterintelligence) or Jonathan Townsend (polished legal bureaucrat) died. Though Dr. Anderson could be described as an understudy for Dr. Mengele, Townsend is a charming-but-amoral representative of our unfriendly handlers and Col. Burr is only there to play jailer to Taylor, not to mention that he might now be plotting to have poor little Sherilyn Bell murdered because of her mind-control powers.
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Last edited by Icelander; 02-15-2017 at 10:04 AM.
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