Eraser's Tales of Being a Player #1

I wasn't always a DM/GM....every gamer has to start somewhere.
I was a little late to the party, I didn't start my roleplaying career until my junior year of high school.
Back in the day, the game was Shadowrun.....3rd Edition.
I was joining up with a group who was going on one last run before starting over with new characters.
They were letting me join up because they had lost their spellcaster, and this was my trial run before starting the new campaign. You know, they were letting the new guy get a feel for the system with a group of elite runners before throwing him to the wolves with a fresh group.
Well the party needed a spellcaster, so I "rolled up" a Wolf Shaman.
I have always had an affinity for wolves as you will see as they show up in various postings.
Anyway, the run was gonna be a tough one, and I was utterly depending on the group to keep me from getting geeked inside of the first 10 minutes. The job sounded easy enough, break into secret warehouse, protect the decker's meat while he grabs the paydata, and then hustle hoop out the back door. Little did we know, the GM was preparing to hose the party something fierce knowing that this was gonna be the last session anyway.
It was too easy, and a few of the players knew it. They were double checking everything, hell, they were triple checking corners. But nothing had gone wrong yet, and my invisibility spell had got us past the first and second groups of guards with no alarms going off or anything.
Now I should point out that the group was thrilled having a spellcaster that didn't JUST know combat spells, they had never had that utility before. The GM wasn't ready for it either as we were supposed to set off at least one alarm on the way in. Point #1 for me.
So we get the decker into the main lab where he needs to jack in to find the paydata. It was quiet, too quiet and we all knew it. Dropping into a lotus position, as long as the gun bunnies were all hopped up and paying attention, I quickly summoned a low level air spirit to patrol the halls and report if anything appeared to be out of the ordinary. Once again, the party wasn't used to the utility, and that meant another Point for me. Point #2 to be exact.
Well everything was going swell until our decker tripped up on some IC, pronounced "ice" in the lingo of the streets, on his way out of the system. All of a sudden it was nothing but sirens and lights. My spirit was back to me in an astral flash informing me that guards were everywhere, and that at least one security mage was also present. Well, we didn't need to be told twice, as we all booked it for the back door. Well wouldn't you know, the back door was a garage door in the maintenance bay of the warehouse we were in, and did I mention the catwalk that run above said bay. It was a shooting gallery, and we were the targets. Our leader called for a general "run the @#$% away" and all of a sudden it was every meta for themselves. The decker had downloaded the file to everyone, so as long as one of us got out we could still get paid. So with no need of anyone else, everyone split. I didn't realize that I was gonna be left behind, and I was a second late on the uptake, that second saved my life. Sprinting from cover in all directions, the entire team ended up in the open. They all took hits, but the team decker, not being as tough as the gun bunnies, went down, hard. Now I should point out that no one in the party, none of the players as it were, role played much. They were in it for the running and the shooting. So the GM had to ride herd on them alot to get any amount of role playing out of them. Let me tell you, he was just waiting for me to run, because he was gonna stop me. You see, the downfall of being a Wolf Shaman, is that you actually have to make a the equivalent of a Will Save to leave a pack member "teammate" behind, and he was just waiting to remind of this when I declared my actions for the round. let me just say that I did not share the other players pension for poor role playing, as my shaman never thought for a minute about leaving the decker behind. Exerting himself almost to physical pain I cast a ball of pure physical energy "powerball" toward the catwalk, knocking it from the beams supporting it and causing it to crash to the ground as I ran forward to grab the decker and throw him over my shoulder. With the momentary lapse in gunfire the team regrouped at the backdoor, where one of the gun bunnies slapped a heal patch on the decker which woke him up right quick "Adrenaline slap patch". He was moving to jack in and open the door when the security mage walked in on the far side of the room, a fire spirit trailing after him. I yelled for the team to "Geek the Mage" as I turned and fainted to the floor. Ordering my air elemental to harass the WageMage, I passed my spirit onto the astral plane, and went straight for the fire spirit.  My character didn't have the skill for banishing, but I did have an astral dagger, and I used it to strike at the fire spirit that waited near the Mage. Not expecting this kind of attack it took the spirit a moment to fully bring his conscientiousness to his astral form, and that was all of the chance I needed. With the extra initiative pass, I closed to grapple range and plunged my dagger deep into the spirits essence. It was not without defenses though, and the team saw my body spasm as I was struck by the spirit. I attacked like my namesake patron, without fear, and with no hesitation, and my second strike caused the fire spirit to be unmade, and sent back to the meta plane of fire. As my astral spirit made its way back to my body, I felt my air spirit wink out of existence, as it was banished from this plane, but as I opened my meat bodies eyes, I saw that the Secuirty Mages physical barrier had fallen, and he was being turned into a piece of cheese of the swiss variety by my gun bunny teammates. With the threat down, everything would have been fine except when the decker finally got the door open, we were looking at a 100 yard run from the door to the helipad where our ride was supposed to land, and it was covered by two elevated towers. It also didn't help that two security vans were bearing down on us from the main gate. As we began to sprint across the field I heard the team leader yelling into his commlink telling our ride to land. From the tone of the conversation, our ride wanted no part of the towers. It seemed that we were between a tower and a hard place, and we were getting ready for our last stand, when I grabbed the comm and told the pilot to start his approach, by the time he got here, the towers would no longer be a problem. With that, I tossed the comm back to the team leader and began casting the most powerful spell I could muster. Another powerball, but this one enormous in comparison with the first. As I let the spell go, blood spurted from my nose and my hearing rang, as the drain from the spell hit me, hard. I was casting at such high levels that my body just couldn't handle it, but as I watched our heavy weapon specialist pull a rocket launcher out of his bag, i knew he could take out the other tower. Even as I had the thought my spell struck the first tower. It was wonderful, Wolf would have been proud, in fact I know he was, it took the top of the tower, including its anti-aircraft assets out of the picture. As the first tower exploded I heard the gush of the single-use rocket launcher being fired. We all watched as the rocket set out after its target, and all of our hearts fell when he missed wide to the right. With no other option the team was going to try to make it but inside the maintenance bay to make a final stand, but we knew that additional security had to already be on its way, and we knew we would run out of ammo eventually. As the team leader started giving the final order I made a decision. I formed the spell one final time, putting everything I had left into it, and as he was speaking the words to retreat, I let it go. Blackness took me, but only for a moment, as I felt hands lifting me. I was being carried, and as I came back to the land of the living I saw the smoldering wreckage that was the second tower, and our ride, a Hughes Stallion Helo just getting ready to touch down on the pad. Then in that instant I was back on the ground, I felt the impact before I realized I was falling. The teammate who was carrying me had been hit, and he had glitched on the resistance roll. His cyber-arm, the only thing giving him the strength to carry me had me hit, and it was malfunctioning. He tried to drag me, but it wasn't going to work, and the rest of the team I knew would not have hesitated to leave the both of us behind. Gathering my voice and all of the strength I could muster, I growled, and howled at him to leave me. The fearsome visage he was facing, and his own sense of survival was enough to have him running as fast as he could for the chopper. It began taking off even as he was jumping aboard. To their credit I saw them laying down cover fire toward the security team bearing down on me, but I could barely feel my legs underneath me, and I wasn't going anywhere. I reached down inside of me for the spark that fueled my magic...but it wasn't there. I knew it was the end. But Wolf did not teach his followers to go quietly into the dark night. As the vans bore down on me, I reached into my vest...and pulled a pristine and very new looking Ares Predator. I had never had reason to use it...it had never even been fired. Well that was about to change. The adrenaline patch that they had slapped on me might have been stopping me from reaching my spark, but it gave my reactions just the boost I needed, and as I felt the bullets ripping into me I just kept pulling the trigger....as I hit the ground I heard the click of a dry fire right before the darkness took me...and me last thought was...

For my character that was where it ended. The newbie, the rookie, the greenhorn, had proved exactly what the party needed to escape from what we later found out was a suicide run. The GM was impressed. So impressed that in all of his games from that day on, whenever the runners were looking for gossip in a bar, they always heard that story. The story of Lobo. The Wolf Shaman who refused to let his pack lose. A true alpha if there ever was one.

Alas, that summer before the new campaign started, the GM moved away. I never did get to run with those guys again, and it was four years before my next brush with role playing. But I still talk with the GM from time to time, and he always tells me that his current group doesn't believe a word of the story. We always share a laugh.

As for the rest of my Role Playing history, well I guess that has to be another story...