This is the lead in for this weeks adventure for my group, thought ya might enjoy it, comments and critiques are appreciated... The character's are on a smuggling ship run by another firewall team, in the last adventure they found out about a renegade, possibly exhuman scientist named Dr. Ghrey that aided a Jovian scientist named Arcosta in creating an illegal uplift process (similar to the Lost generation expirements), Arcosta's lab assistant makes a trip once a year to Mars to a highly secure storage facility on the outskirts of the TQZ where the team believes he is storing his expiremental data. They also discovered the assistant meets with another man (believed to be working with Stellar Intellegence) before going to the storage facility... (he may be selling the research data) The Captian informs you… “In three weeks we’ll be joining up with a Scum flotilla called the Mars Cyclers that orbits from the L5 Colonys and earth to Mars, we’ll be meeting them on their mid orbit jaunt where we’ll will be picking up that storage container that the Barsoomian movement wanted from a ship named “Dào Yì Yo˘ u Dào”. The container will have to be smuggled aboard (not because of illegality, just about everything’s legal in a Scum swarm, but because of potential watching eyes) and there is a high possibility of running into trouble, likewise when we make the drop off on Mars but I’ll detail that a bit more later...” “As a side note were finally picking up your dedicated hacker at about the same time were picking up the storage container, I’ve heard a lot about her and without a doubt the skills are top notch but reputation does not tell me anything about her personality or background which of course is shrouded in secrecy, ultimately after meeting her it will be up to you if you want to take her on, but after this point Kiki and members of my crew will only be available to you here on the ship and in cases of dire emergency. We have some of our own ops around the Martian area, and the only member that will be aboard or available to you during our business will be Mac. “I also understand some of you have some shared history with this Scum fleet, If you want an extra day or two to see old friends or what have you, we can permit for that before the pick up, just let me know if you need a little extra time.” “Now about ya’lls Martian assignment, We’ll be setting down on a private and sympathetic port just outside Elysium, but the way in is going to be much more… uh… exciting. Ya see we cant run the chance of getting inspected with that container on board, so on our decent were gonna jettison it. The Barsoomians have set up a large demolition zone for teraforming that we’ll be flying over, there’ll be huge rust clouds that they will time with us as we’ll dislodge the cargo. The clouds will protect us from the aero-sats, and we’ll claim it the container’s total destruction. In truth JDAM aerobrakes will be attached to the container and in the last seconds, after its in the clouds but before getting turned turning into a Martian pizza we’ll fire em and save the cargo… one small detail though, your going to have to be inside. We need you to make sure that the container does not fall into the wrong hands or if the authorities should happen to show up (because they didn’t buy our ruse about lost cargo) we’ll need you to blow it up. Just another day in firewall really.” “After that, Barsoomians will arrange your transport to Elysium proper, you’ll have some time to see the sights but then your gonna take the M4 rails out to the Portmanteau colony skirting the edge of the TQZ, where hopefully you’ll figure out a way to subvert Goulet, Arcosta’s research assistant, capture and interrogate Marcus Korvin, (that ugly spook asshole in the ugly Hawaiian shirts,) liberate the stored outlaw uplift research at the super secure storage facility, and make it back to the ship without alerting the authorities, or getting eaten by left over TITAN remnants from the zone. Again, it’s just another day in Firewall.” Your muse says “If you want more information on Scum swarms and flotilla click here” http://eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/Scum and continues “For more information on the Mars Cyclers and the ship who’s name translates as “Even Thieves Have Principals” click here” http://eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/Mars+Cyclers and continues “If you want to know more about mars in general, and the TQZ click here” http://eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/Mars and continues “If you’d like more information about Elysium, and Portmanteau click here” http://eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/Elysium and continues and continues and continues… In the three weeks you have before connecting with the Scum swarm the captain insists that you VR train exclusively on Martian soil scenarios. If you take this seriously, for .2 of an xp you’ll get +5% to all movement related rolls (fray, freefall, running tests, etc) on this adventure. Many of the scenarios are of battles against TITAN remnants, if you want you can spend .2 xp to have an extra moxie just to spend against TITANS or nanite attacks, and +10% to avoid trauma from contact with TITAN remnants. Also, Dr. Stroud continues your group meditation classes, all of you have advanced quite a bit. You can now purchase the Psi Defense trait for 7 CP rather than the 10 CP it normally costs (level two would cost 17 pts.) this will be available to you as long as you continue the meditation classes (Atilla/Jay, if your going to try and back out of all of these let me know..)