| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Bus Killings & LSSS (Couple of things...) |
| Date: | Fri, 27 Feb 1998 00:35:22 +0000 |
<Avenger@*******.DEMON.CO.UK> writes
>Why Paul's bus posts didn't have drones and whathaveyou lurking around,
They did. (The detailed external post for Ronin's bus, for instance:
Lynch and Lilith were using camera feed from a LS Condor-II to track the
bus while they paralleled it)
However, observation drones are limited in what they can do and where
they can do. A Condor high overhead is damn near invisible. A Condor
drone coming through a doorway you're guarding, not twenty yards away,
is plenty visible,
>Assume the possibility of a magically capable
>person being with the terrorist teams, if an astrally scouting DPI is
>noticed by such a person the situation will logically escalate a hell of
>a lot quicker, becuase that person will know of the kinds of things that
>can be brought against them.
"We see a cop, we start killing hostages". How do you know that one
terrorist is not astrally perceptive? For the money the bus hijackers
were demanding, magical involvement was entirely credible.
>It is, and I think will continue to be, policy to discuss, negotiate and
>bring down a situation than risk escalation by infiltration, until it
>becomes essential to do so. There was no way that Lone Star or anyone
>else could have known that the intention was to obliterate the
>passengers. The second that gunfire is heard in the buses, then all
>hell would be let loose outside, but...
This was my position throughout, running the plot. Lone Star were
wrongfooted because the terrorists had no real interest in collecting
the ransoms: they had orders to create maximum publicity, then kill
their hostages, on a clock.
In two cases, the massacre proceeded unopposed, the move to the Barrens
delaying Lone Star's response to the gunfire enough that the killers
escaped after mass murder. In the third, Lone Star SWAT attacked within
seconds of the killers opening fire on their prisoners, but the result
was still a bloodbath. In the fourth, Ronin's objections allowed SIGA to
save the captives, and that was _not_ an accident.
>I appreciate that I'm using current day information to judge future
>actions,
What else can we base our thoughts on?
> but I personally find too much reliance on Magic as
>distasteful, dangerous, and unfaithful to the low magic statements
>issued so often by FASA.
Not to mention unutterably tedious for mundane characters.
>And as for cutting down my posts and saying things in one sentence.
>Why? I'd be breaking with a 25 year tradition. I never say in two
>words what I can say in two dozen. :)
But can someone else's characters have a turn in the barrel, pretty
please, Pete? :)
