High Threat Response Teams
Lives are not expendable. Ammunition is!
- HTR motto
Because Griffin produces a complete line of Cyber and Bioware (as well as it's own mil grade armor and weapons), you can expect to find any Griffin trooper to be heavily augmented. The average mundane trooper is loaded up with heavy duty muscle toners, cerebral boosters, reflex enhancements, eye and ear enhancements, comm gear, and gun enhancements. Because of these "typical" augmentations (typical for Griffin) and extensive training, the average HTR (or military) squad is capable of flattening all but the best 'runner teams with little effort.
Give me a break. No corporate trooper can hope to match a streetwise shadowrunner. No matter how "augmented" they are.
Feral
In this case you are wrong, oh drooling one. When you run afoul with a Griffin HTR team, treat them like you would special forces and you just might survive. Some of the earliest know action by a Griffin HTR team was back in '54 when Griffin sent in a HTR team to clean out what everyone thought was a terrorist hideout. In actuality, the site was hiding a group of a dozen Leopard Guards. In the rather vicious fighting that followed, the Leopards were extermined completely, but not without putting several of the HTR team members in the hospital.
Hammer
I'd worry more about the implications of this, Hammer. Griffin is
showing a new line of thought here. When I was doing corp work back in the
Cali Free, the suits I worked for were of the opinion "why should I spend
money on the expense of installing cyberware in my troops when their just
going to die sooner or later anyway?" Griffin has taken a different tack
here... This would seem to indicate that they consider this sort of expense
a worthwile investment in keeping their HTR teams and team members alive.
And THAT is waaaay scary.
Howlin Mad
How So?
Doc
Simple Doc. Who would you rather run with, a group of people you dont
know ANYTHING about (even if their rep is their Drek hot) or your chummers
whom you know like the back of their hand. You know, how they think, how
their gonna respond to the unexpected, just what they can or can't do. Do you
have a 'Corporal Hicks', or an 'Ahhhhnold' in your group....
Howlin Mad
Typical personnel profile for an HTR team includes one sniper, one rigger, one heavy weapons specialist, two close combat specialists, and a pair of Krand mages.
It is interesting to note that there have been no reported sightings of adepts of any kind(or any shamans at all for that matter) working as part of an HTR team. Instead, Griffin uses their own specially trained "mages" for that purpose.
Most members of the team wear the usual sword wielding Griffin as a symbol. The Krands, on the other hand have a Griffin holding a starburst for easy identification.
Are you trying to tell me that the only magic slingers who serve with
the HTR teams are thoose specially trained Krand ones?
Fly onda Wall
It would seem so.
Scared in Sin City
Krand mages don't fit well into either hermetic or shamanic schools of magic, but for some reason seem to be neither. While their magic has definite hermetic leanings, it's not what most of us would think of as hermetic.
Oh, please. They're just some corp mages with a few tricks.
Skeptic
Not hardly. I got the chance to work with an HTR team and I got a good look at the aura of one of the mages. These Krands have an unusual aura about them and I'm not sure what limits they might have. One thing I am sure of is that they are very dangerous and have some new tricks that no street (or corporate) mage can hope to match.
Talon
The average age for a Krand mage is usually in the late teens or early twenties. It seems that most of them were originally from Z zones such as the Barrens and because of this, they show an unusually strong loyalty toward Griffin. Training for a Krand takes approximately five years. The first several are spent on basic magical techniques, spellcasting, astral projection, etc. Also included is firearms training and other skills useful to a security mage. At the end of the third year of training, Krand mages are implanted with the highest grade of damage compensators available.
In other words, they take a licking and keep on Ticking??
Phil
More than that. By suffering a slightly reduced ability to use their magic, they can keep
slinging their spells at full effectiveness despite being wounded.
DA Doc
Given that they're supposed to be all inititates, I'd say that it probably doesn't reduce their effectiveness much at all.
Talismo
The fourth year is spent learning a wide variety of spells and early on during the year, they are inducted into one of several local magical groups exclusively for Krands. The fifth year is spent learning the specialized techniques, including metamagic,(that's right, they're all initiates) that makes them so dangerous.
The average Krand mage is a low to mid grade initiate capable of some impressive tricks. They can sling spells that would put most of us flat on our backs without breaking a sweat and they can call up any type of spirit that they need for any situation.
Bulldrek! No one can call up both elementals and nature spirits. It's impossible.
Professor Drake
No, it's true. I've seen them do it. I was hired out on a run (back in '56) to help a Griffin strike team. Part of the job included watching over the mages while they did their elemental summoning. I thought that I understood magic fairly well, but watching those two in action gave me the shivers. And the worst part about that was that they were using techniques that I didn't understand and can't duplicate. But that wasn't what scared me the most about it. During the actual assault we ran into some fairly strong magical resistance, apparently more than was planned for, and the next thing I knew one of them had whistled up a city spirit and sent it into the fray.
Frightening.
Magister
I'd like to know why you say its so Impossible, Prof. Every Mojo
slinger I've ever gotten to really talk about their art has admitted what they
still don't know about Magic exceeds what they do know.
Howlin Mad
What worries me is if this is the level of commitment to their HTR
teams, it stands to reason that this commitment to overkill would extend all
the way down to their street troops. This could be decidedly unhealthy if
they decided to start competing for other cities police service contracts.
Suddenly Sleepless in Seattle
This "level of commitment" as you call it, has to do with the fact that I value life more than the average corp suit. I'd rather spend money and throw away machinery than needlessly sacrifice lives.
Hunter
Back to the Personnel Profiles Sub-Directory
Back to the Main Directory
