#gm: you do realize that's a salarian and they don't do romance and stuff?

[nemossubmarine]

FATE / ME one-shot

This week, it was not our usual grimdark sci-fi stuff we were playing. Gimlet’s player had first go at GM’ing and ran a session of some Mass Effect -flavored Fate for us. But first, the characters:

All the characters belong to a mercenary group Blue Suns.

Davrak Brux (or Rakki, for friends) is the leader of our little merry band of misfits. A Krogan who has lived to a very respectful age indeed, nearing thousand. He lives every day like it’s the last, because it quite well might. This mostly means picking fights.

Naal’Muram nar Neleya (or Naali, if you haven’t the time) is a Quarian on their traditional pilgrimage. Except they’re a bit too old to be still doing it. They’re apparently gathering information on jokes and children’s games to bring back home.

Nusek Drian (no nickname, thanks) is a Drell who’s mostly here for the money, got his mind on the business and sticky fingers. Unfortunately him being part of a less common race often draws attention to him, much to his eternal discomfort.

We meet up our heroes at the bar celebrating a gig gone well. Their free evening gets rudely interrupted by their boss, a Turian named Casbius Velidas, who tells them there’s a new gig that needs to be done, now. 

Davrak curses that they only just sat down. 

Naali complains about this not being in their labor agreement. 

Casbius promises them triple pay, it’s that important. 

Their rival gang Eclipse(?) is apparently getting a shipment of special weapons and the higher ups in Blue Suns want to know what these weapons are, so samples are in order. 

Luckily the weapons have not yet been shipped, but are currently in a warehouse at an asari estate, and the daughter of the family, by the name of Penova Iessaala is having her birthday. 

Casbius has managed to get the trio all invites, they need to dress their best, leave their armor and weapons with a Blue Suns accent working undercover at the house and get three words from Penova that will grant them access to the warehouse, those words being claw, fire and cobra. 

Seems easy, right? 

Casbius gives the orders and leaves the trio to plan. 

Davrak complains about the Casbius, saying that if this kind of attitude continues, it’s the boss that’ll soon be booted out. 

Naali is most concerned about what to get as a birthday present, as no one really knows how old the daughter is. 

They decide on a rocking horse in the end (inspired by their human colleague Mauri).

Then it’s time to dress up, for a party. 

Davrak’s get up includes an ill-fitting suit (on account of his Krogan physique), monocle, top hat and a bow tie. 

Naali puts on a suit top-half, skirt bottom half (all on top of their robot suit, obviously) and also painted nails (or nail paint on top of their gloves) (translator’s note; the Finnish word for claw also means (finger)nail).

Nusek’s idea of dressing up includes putting on a dress shirt, a crumbled dress shirt, but dress shirt none the less. 

Then it’s off to the party!

They meet up their Blue Suns contact outside the place, a young Krogan named Wreg who takes their weapons and Davrak’s and Nusek’s armor. Our heroes head to the party. 

Davrak looks for any people he may know as he’s been around and indeed spots a fellow Krogan named Garlock. 

He goes to greet him and orders him to get him some drink, which he does. 

Naali has also grabbed a drink from somewhere and is slupring away. 

Our heroes spot the birthday girl (on account of her giant birthday hat that’s totes a thing), talking with some other asari. 

Our heroes approach and Naali hands over the rocking horse. 

Penova turns out to be quite a snooty fella, but she does take the gift offered. 

She questions if she even knows us, but we wave it off, yeah, yeah, old family friends and all that. 

Now’s our change to get some key words. 

Davrak points out Naali’s painted fingers and pretends to not know the word nail polish, thus getting the Penova to say claw (or nail på finska). 

Naali complains about there not being any games here and offers to play some riddles with the Penova. 

They go first, laying out a riddle with the fire as solution. 

Unfortunately in addition of being snooty, Penova isn’t great at riddles, so Davrak has to give quite a lot hints to get her to say fire. 

Penova seems quite done with the conversation, but hey we haven’t even introduced ourselves. 

Davrak says his name and says he can be called Rakki (approx mangy dog) by friends, which Penova is not. 

Naali says their name and points out that they totes have a theme going on, their nickname meaning arctic fox, and yeah this is Nusek, who’s known as the Cobra. 

King Cobra, Nusek clarifies. 

Apparently dog and arctic fox are acceptable nicknames but cobra gives Penova pause, so she clarifies if we mean the sort of snake living on Terra, cobra? 

And thus we got all our words, and bid Penova good-bye.

Before we go to do our job, Davrak is of the opinion that we could do a bit of partying. Nusek isn’t that keen on it, but sure whatever. 

Nusek slinks off and steals some asari jewelry. 

Davrak finds some guardspeople and attempts to lie that he’s from a moving firm and has been hired to move the stuff from the warehouse, but it doesn’t really pan out. 

Naali goes to hover by the dance floor and awkwardly waits for someone to ask them to dance. 

Davrak tells them to go get someone, and Naali has their eye on a salarian named Ukart. 

Obviously salarians aren’t that into flirting or whatever, but Naali manages to persuade him to a dance nonetheless. 

Davrak goes and finds himself an asari matriarch named Nielde. 

He flirts up a storm, being a veteran seducer and gets a dance from her. 

At some point Casbius sends Davrak an impatient text, which Davrak ignores. 

Nusek has settled at the edge of the dance floor and is approached by a Turian, who is quite intrigued by this strange Drell and attempts to get him to dance with her. 

Nusek declines, awkwardly, as he is wont to do.

Davrak joins Nusek and Nusek asks if they should get Naali (who’s still dancing with the Salarian). 

Davrak says he doesn’t care, he’s the one who persuaded Naali to go ask for a dance. 

So it’s up to Nusek to go drag Naali away, which he does. 

Naali drops Ukart their number and mimes ”call me” -motions as Nusek drags them away. 

Upon joining the two, Naali dramatically complains to Davrak about how their new love is an arms’ merchant and they are doomed (like Romeo and Juliet, the two). 

Davrak tells them that love’s often that way, ends up bad (like his three marriages). 

Nusek pushes Davrak and Naali towards the actual job.

Our heroes recall their armor and weapons from Wreg and head into the warehouse complex. 

They pass by a security room and overhear some workers’ talking about the CCTV going out. 

Well that’s better for them, so our heroes decide to ignore this and continue on. On the hallway an asari in a lab coat runs towards them, in clear panic. 

Apparently something has been let loose in the laboratory that’s attached to the loading dock. 

Naali calms the woman down and Davrak orders her to go hide in the bathroom while we go check out what’s wrong.

The lab doors are ajar, and some kind of zombie-like creature that none of us recognize is attempting an escape. 

It tries to grab Naali who just smacks it. 

Inside the lab there are several more of these type of creatures. 

Davrak rushes them as he is wont to do. 

Naali uses some loose cables to electrocute the rest. 

While Davrak and Naali high-five or whatever, Nusek actually examines the scene, spotting several spikes that some still have zombies on them (what’s that all about, who knows), some medicine that he nicks as well as the entrance to the warehouse leading to the loading dock. 

One problem though, there’s company, and that company is robots (ie geths). One big guy and three little ones. 

Davrak takes the big guy head-on. 

Naali hacks into one of the little ones (dubbing them Tapani). 

They also try to use one of the guns that the geths were carrying somewhere, but can’t figure it out. 

Nusek attempts to shoot, but misses so uses his cloaking device to reposition himself (or bc he is so embarrased, whichever explanation is preferred). 

Tapani takes care of one little one and Naali shoots down another. 

Davrak suffers some hits from the big geth, but it’s not much worse for wear being the tough big boy that he is. 

From the shadows Nusek finishes the big geth, though Davrak is not aware of it, taking all the glory for that. 

The battle now over, Naali’s hack on Tapani stops, so Davrak has to smash the poor creature down. 

Davrak calls boss to come pick us up, but apparently there’s someone in the loading dock. 

We go take a peek and notice a bunch more geths loading up the weapons led by a turian Davrak knows to be known as Spectre, a man you don’t want to cross paths with. 

Fortunately there’s few weapons back in the warehouse, so we’ll still get paid. 

Once the Spectre leaves, Casbius comes to pick us up, but Davrak and Naali both ask to be dropped off at the party.

Epilogue time! 

Nusek stays with Casbius and in an attempt to not get everyone fired, seduces the boss (as one does). It somehow works?? Also he goes to sell his stolen goods and rakes in quite a prize.

Naali loans Davrak’s expertise in a seduction attempt of Okart, which apparently works perfectly, as they score a date for the rest of the evening. 

Once the pair is done with the dancing, they retreat to the birthday girl’s room to do some cuddling and talking. 

Unfortunately at some point, they get caught as the birthday girl would like to retreat to bed and get thrown out. 

But hey, that’s life.

Davrak returns to the party, and being the old dog that he is immediately goes to score drugs. 

He attempts to also score with the asari lady Nielde, but unfortunately she is turned off by the drugs. 

Frustrated that Naali is getting some, and he isn’t, Davrak starts a fight with the security. 

He manages to down several guards before getting kicked out. 

All in all, a good night?

And that’s all for that little adventure!