Haywire slipped through the host, her avatar a merest flicker of a shadow. Her prize, a datafile containing damning evidence on a certain Ares VP, was in sight, but a security spider had taken up a position watching over the host’s most sensitive files. Focusing on the file for a moment, a small icon of a wolf’s head came into view—the marks of the spider, clearly showing ownership. Haywire’s avatar shifted slightly, her sword growing in length and her ninja costume (her love of cliches knew no bounds) blending even more closely to the host’s color palette. She moved slightly more slowly and some of the finer points of resolution were lost on her now, but she was willing to take the risk.
A small shuriken appeared in Haywire’s hand, giving off an exaggerated glint that only she could see. Manga-dyne isn’t good for much, she thought to herself, but they make the best damn skins out there. A flick of her wrist sent the shuriken at the spider, striking him in the back. The response was both immediate and predictable. The host was bathed in a red light, and somewhere an alarm klaxon echoed off its virtual walls.
GAME INFORMATION
Haywire’s Overwatch Score at the beginning of the scene is 12.
Having already entered the host, Haywire is running silently and using hot-sim VR, effectively offsetting the –2 dice pen-alty from being silent. She’s using a Renraku Tsurugi cyberdeck with its ASDF values set to 3/6/5/5 to maximize her Sleaze attribute. Additionally, she’s running Configurator, Stealth, and Baby Monitor. Once she spots the file, Haywire decides to switch some of her attributes and cyberprograms. The gamemaster decides to allow her to swap as many times as she wants instead of keeping track of how many Simple Actions she uses. Haywire’s configuration changes to 6/5/3/5 and her cyberprograms become Hammer, Configurator, and Decryption. The loss of Baby Monitor means she’ll be flying blind when it comes to her GOD score, but it’s a risk she’s willing to take.
GAME INFORMATION
Haywire tags the spider with her signature shuriken mark using a Brute Force action. She rolls her Cybercombat + Logic for a total of 13 dice. She scores four hits, well under her limit of seven (Decryption added one to her Attack attribute).
The spider is using a Hermes Chariot, is in cold-sim VR, and is not running silently. His ASDF array is set to 4/2/4/5, and he is currently running the cyberprograms Lockdown and Encryption, which bring his Firewall up to six. The spider rolls his Willpower + Firewall to defend against Haywire’s mark, a total of ten dice. He only gets two hits; Haywire’s two net hits are enough to mark him and inflict Matrix damage. Normally, this would only be 1 DV, but because she’s running Hammer, the spider needs to resist 3 DV. The spider rolls his Device Rating + Firewall (eight dice in total) and scores two hits, taking one box of Matrix damage.
Since Brute Force is an attack action, two things happen in addition to her placing the mark and doing some Matrix damage. First, the defender’s hits are added to her OS, making it 14. Second, the target is immediately aware of the action, even though he cannot currently see the persona responsible.
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Moving behind the spider—an old habit from the meatworld—Haywire thrust her ninja-to into his back. Vibrant, multi-colored ribbons spiraled out of the spider’s now-flickering avatar as he crumpled to one knee. But he did not fall. Cursing silently, Haywire quickly called up a new array of cyberprograms, ones that could hopefully protect her from the oversized pistol that appeared in the spider’s hand.
The attack didn’t surprise Haywire, but its ferocity did—the extra defenses she had erected were torn apart, but they likely saved her life. Coughing up a series of ones and zeroes, Haywire struck again, severing the spider’s head.
She was already off schedule and knew the host would be crawling with IC in a matter of three heartbeats. A second shuriken appeared in her hand. She was going to claim her prize before that happened.
GAME INFORMATION
The gamemaster now calls for initiative. Haywire’s Initiative Attribute in hot-sim is the sum of her Intuition (6) and Data Processing (3). She adds that to the result of her roll of 4D6 for a total of 17. The spider does the same—his Intuition is 3 and his Data Processing is 5. However, since he’s only in cold-sim, he rolls 3D6 initiative dice. He rolls particularly well though, getting a total of 22.
On his first Action Phase, the spider needs to locate Haywire’s silently running avatar. The gamemaster decides that the spider is certain there’s something running silently in the vicinity (he was just marked, after all) and rolls the spider’s Matrix Perception, a Computer + Intuition test. His eight dice generate four hits. This is opposed by Haywire’s Logic (7) + Sleaze (5), 12 dice. Unfortunately, she only rolls three hits and is spotted by the spider. Note that while the spider can see Haywire’s avatar, she is still running silently, so other participants in the combat will have to roll separately to see her unless she is marked. The spider then uses his Free Action to activate the host’s alarm system, calling for IC.
On her Action Phase, Haywire attacks the spider with a Data Spike, rolling Cybercombat + Logic once again. This time, her 13 dice roll particularly well, getting her five hits. Unfortunately, her luck is contagious and the spider’s Intuition + Firewall roll lands him four hits. Haywire’s current Attack attribute is seven. The one net hit brings her DV to 8 and her mark and her Hammer cyberprogram both add an additional 2 DV on top of that, giving her a grand total of 12 DV. Not wanting things to end so quickly, the gamemaster has the spider use Edge to Push the Limit. The spider rolls his Device Rating (2), Firewall (6—Encryption adds one to the value), and Edge (3). After all the exploding dice are sorted out, he ends up with nine hits, taking an additional three boxes of Matrix damage, bringing his total to four boxes. Those nine hits are also applied to Haywire’s OS, knocking it all the way up to 23. Haywire then uses a Free Action to activate her Configurator cyberprogram, changing her Matrix attributes to 5/3/5/6 and cyberprograms to Encryption, Shell, and Armor. The change in her Data Pro-cessing attribute also changes her initiative to 19.
GAME INFORMATION
At the beginning of the second Initiative Pass, on the spider’s Action Phase, the gamemaster decides to go all out. The spider rolls his own Data Spike, a total of 12 dice. The gamemaster decides to use Edge for a Second Chance to reroll fail-ures, for a total of seven hits. Haywire resists with her Willpower (3) and Firewall (7, Encryption adds one), with an extra die from Shell and two extra dice from Armor, for a total of 13. Her dice let her down, rolling only three hits, giving the spider four net hits. In addition to taking Matrix damage, Haywire is now link-locked thanks to the spider’s Lockdown cyberprogram.
With her newly adjusted initiative score of 9, Haywire enters her second Action Phase. She goes for the kill with another Data Spike, rolling her 13 dice (Cybercombat + Logic) against the spider’s nine dice (Intuition + Firewall). Fate smiles on Hay-wire (at least for a moment) and she ends up with three net hits, putting her attack’s DV at 14. With a sigh, the gamemaster uses the spider’s last point of Edge to Push the Limit on his Matrix Damage Resistance Test, once again rolling Device Rating + Firewall + Edge. His dice roll well, but not well enough, and the seven hits only reduce the damage to seven boxes, bricking the spider’s cyberdeck (and ending the link-lock). Haywire’s OS also increases to 30, giving her very little wiggle room to crack the file in front of her.
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MASTERING THE MATRIX >>
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<< MASTERING THE MATRIX
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