One by one the members of The Squawd showed up to The Skein. Commander Xander had...pulled some strings to get Harry to close down the bar for the next few days.

Louis, his roommate Carmen, Carmen's lover Percival, Percival's savior Ryan, Ryan's twin brother Steve, and Steve's mentor Nene had all gathered in the backroom. Some hadn't seen each other in years and began to catch up. Others still had fresh scars from their last job, making for an awkward reunion for some. Xander interrupted the festivities by violently clearing poker chips and ash trays off of the central poker table, sending them scattering onto the concrete floor. He opened up a folder and began to lay out some images as the flock all gathered around.




"Now, Dr. Doomore's charity ball is in three days, but before we can even begin to put a plan together for that we're gonna need to pull off another job."

Xander pointed his wing at the photo at the top of the table.

"This man is Mikhail Popov, a high ranking member of the Russian Goose Mob and Percival's former cellmate. Ryan, I believe you've had an up close encounter with him once or twice yourself.."

Ryan tenderly clutched his once broken wing.

"Thanks to intel from Percival, we now know that Popov has come into possession of a device called X-Rray Gaggles. If we're going to locate which animal The Babble device is hiding in, we are gong to NEED those Gaggles folks. Unfortunately, Popov isn't exactly the type to just hand it over..."

Xander pointed at another photo. "Seagift Fishing Co - Mikhail Popov's main operation. It's located on the east side of the city at the docks. Drugs, weapons, technology, you name it, it all comes through there. Our drone took some overhead photos, we believe the X-Ray Gaggles will be stored in his warehouse. He keeps his valuable tech in the crates marked with the name "Volga", we looked it up, fake company. A smokescreen."

Carmen shifted in her chair while Nene adjusted her glasses and looked on.

"Now compared to Dr. Doomore's estate, this could be a walk in the park. The Russian Goose Mob is no joke, but they are nothing compared to the National Hunting Association."

Louis winced upon hearing the name aloud.

"Here's what I'm thinking. Percival, you know Popov. Maybe you can waltz right in and talk to him to keep him preoccupied, come up with a good bullshit excuse to have to see him. Ryan, I don't want Popov seeing you at all, not after that happened between you two. You're better off staying far out of sight and securing a nearby boat for a quick getaway. Find a boat and bring it into position on the west side of the docks, here."

Percival and Ryan nodded in agreement.

"Louis, time to put your chameleon skills to work. Carmen, use your charm to lure a guard and then take them out. Louis, you take their uniform and sneak into the warehouse to disable cameras."

Louis cracked his long neck.

"Steve, we'll need you to create a distraction somewhere on the opposite side of the shipyard. Think you can come up with something grand enough?"

Steve began to stammer. "Uh yeah, totally. That shouldn't be a problem I don't think."

"Great. And you Nene, once the diversion is set and cameras are down, you'll have to use those sharp eyes of yours to figure out which crates are marked with the Volga tags so you can begin to crack into them to find the X-Ray Gaggles. Now I've been out of the game for awhile, you all are the experts. If you need to improvise or have any better ideas, I trust you."

The Squawd nodded silently and looked around the table at each other. A mix of confidence and excitement began to take over. It was good to be back.

"Now, any questions?" Xander asked.

Carmen spoke up. "Yeah, since you laid this out on a table instead of a cork board why would there still be threads and pins--"

"Okay you sons of bitches." Xander interrupted. "We're all in."

It's time to run a job! Not THE job, but a job. This will be a light version of how your main heist will run. A tutorial of sorts. Here's how it'll work

Each of you will post your segment of your story, like what you just did. There is NO turn order this time, you can all fire at will. If this was real life, some parts of this heist would require you to wait for others to complete their part of the heist before you can initiate yours. That won't be the case here since turn order would be miserable, so you can play around with non-linear storytelling

For example, Louis is supposed to get a guard uniform from Carmen. But if JJ is ready to post before Mal, she can just assume she gets the uniform from Carmen or from somewhere else if Carmen ends up failing her task. Honestly...it doesn't matter much! Just have fun with it and post when you can

Here's where the main mechanic of the game will come in. Again, in lite-form for this intro. Each of you must roll a 1d6 as soon as you can. Keep that number off to the side.

When you post your segment of the story, leave it on a cliffhanger as you are attempting a major action. This can be trying to deceive someone, avoiding detection, hacking something, fighting, making a getaway, etc. It's up to you to determine what your major action will be, but do not resolve that action within that same post. Instead, after your cliffhanger, you will post the following:

[ROLL CALL!]

When another player sees this, they will take the number that they rolled and ASSIGN their roll to your segment of the story. The number rolled will be compared to the chart below:



For example, if someone is trying to hack into a system before guards break into the room, the player may call for a roll. If I rolled a 2 and think it would be funny or fitting or interesting, then I will assign my 2 to that player's cliffhanger. That player must then post a resolving segment of story based on the 2 on the chart

Do NOT feel bad giving someone a bad roll! Often times, a bad roll is far more interesting than a success. Once you assign your dice roll to someone else, it's gone, so use it wisely. Each of you will have one roll to assign to someone and one roll assigned to you. You should not be asking anyone if they want your 1 or would rather a 6 etc, you should just go for it and do whatever feels right to you and the story

In the main heist, this will be expanded on. I took some things off of the chart since this minor heist will only have one roll per person and is scaled down, so for example 3 and 4 are very similar but will be a bit different in the main heist where multiple rolls will be a thing. The chart itself was written with that in mind, I kinda added this minor intro heist idea in kinda recently cuz I was having fun =]

When someone gives you a roll, post a story update sometime after. IMPORTANT! If you want, you can always post segments of your story that don't end in a roll call. This is if you just feel like you have more story to tell or are bored and waiting for others to tell theirs etc. But eventually you must of course call for a roll. I may even be posting Xander or NPC updates as it goes, which may or may not change the stakes. But that’ll likely be saved for the main heist, we’ll see!

And that's it! There's no guarantee that this mission even ends in a success, which will make your main heist harder. Read each other's stories, build off of each other’s segments if others have already posted, but mostly don't be afraid to set the tone and just go for it, you all did v good in your Flock Formation story bits. This one does not have to be very long at all and don’t sweat it if it isn’t perfect. Gl hf! Lemme know if something is confusing