From the Shadowland BBS Forums - Awakened Critter Section

Hell Hound

The hellhound is a dog with red and yellow eyes, usually seen with coat colours ranging from dark red to coal-black. It stands close to 1 meter tall at the shoulder, and weighs 80+ kilograms when it reaches adulthood. An efficient predator, the hellhound hunts in well co-ordinated packs, generally hunting smaller prey, but occasionally grouping up against bigger prey. Can hunt humans and metahumans, but only when feral or very desperate for food.

Hellhound eyes are capable of seeing through invisibility techniques. They can also breathe fire, and are immune to most fire spells. Hellhounds have been tamed and used as experimental guard dogs by Renraku's Seattle branch recently. A hellhound pelt can be required on occasion to perform certain ritual magic.

-Data sent in by RangerSix, approved by Captain Chaos on [REDACTED]

~~~

Leon, Sylvia, and Brandon had their guns out in a flash, as what seemed like over a dozen hellhounds descended upon the group from a direction they weren't expecting.

"Hey, uncuff us man!" screamed the red-shirted elven rigger, before him and his partner realized there was no chance of that happening. They tried to flee, but lacked balance with the handcuffs on, and both took hard tumbles onto the tar highway, leaving them even further out of commission than they already were with their guns gone.

Leon raised his Predator Heavy Pistol and Model 101T Light Pistol, and got two clean headshots on the two rabid dogs leading the pack. Undeterred, the rest of the pack continued, and Leon raked a third hound across the back with a shot, before a fourth one pounced at him.

Sylvia nailed a hellhound right between the eyes with her Fichetti Security 500 Pistol, and then tried to cast a Barrier spell to cover herself, Leon, and Brandon. She got the spell up, but a hellhound loped over to her and unleashed the nastiest trick in its arsenal: Flamethrower breath. Sylvia's leg caught on fire and her concentration on the spell broke, leaving the group vulnerable!

Brandon had killed two hellhounds with well-placed shots from his own Predator Pistol, before a third one jumped him. Brandon threw him off, before a 4th and a 5th one piled onto his back. Brandon threw them off too, with effort, but lost his gun in the fracas.

However, Brandon had gotten enough space, and managed to draw a quick breath. He inhaled, exhaled, and then suddenly began to glow with a yellow-ish aura. Brandon's internal chi flow had kicked into overdrive, and now he was more than he was before.

One of the hellhounds trying to get a literal piece of Brandon charged him again. Brandon roared, drew his blacksteel trench knife from his hip holster, and hammered the charging hellhound with an overhand right punch. The brass knuckle grip of the trench knife damn near shattered the hellhound's skull under the impact of the blow, and it flopped lifelessly to the ground.

With nearly impossible speed, Brandon moved quickly to a second hellhound, and sliced its throat open, leaving it to bleed out on the grassy ditch of the highway. The third hellhound breathed fire at Brandon, which he sidestepped with impeccable agility and grace, before bringing down the pommel of the knife hard between the fire-breathers eyes. On the bottom of Brandon's trench knife was a pyramid-shaped blunt spike known as the skull-crusher, and it worked as advertised, punching through the hellhound's skull and poking its brain with the bone fragments, killing it instantly.

Meanwhile, Leon was fighting a desperate battle for his life with a hellhound that had pounced him. He had lost one gun in the fracas, and was trying to beat the hellhound over its head with the long barrel of his Predator Pistol, all the while taking some damage even through his armour with bites. He got space for a shot, and almost obliterated the hellhound's head with a close-range blast from his Predator. Leon slowly got up, and noticed Sylvia in big trouble, as a hellhound had pounced on her and was trying to rip out her throat!

Leon screamed Sylvia's name before charging over, plugging the hellhound three times before Leon was set upon by another one that had circled around, late to the attack. Sylvia recovered to see Leon in trouble this time, and as the hellhound burned Leon's shoulder with fire breath, Sylvia raked through the hellhound with multiple shots from her Security 500, causing the hellhound to spasm and breath fire at the sky before mercifully dying.

Brandon killed one final hellhound that was after the trio, before noticing the last three in the pack were chewing down on the handcuffed elven riggers, who had been unable to escape. The red-shirted hotblood elf had most of his upper body blackened from flames, and had his legs being eaten by two hellhounds, while the green-shirt elf had his throat almost torn out by a particularly blood-thirsty hellhound. Brandon found his Predator Pistol amidst the carnage, and plugged the hellhounds full of holes to end their last supper.

Leon took a while to get up. He had bite marks all over his arms, and a severe burn on his shoulder. Sylvia was limping from her left leg burn as the adrenaline wore off, and she too was covered in bites. The two looked around wildly, desperately trying to find out if there were more enemies to contend with. Leon saw something flickering in a faraway grove, and emptied his pistols in its general direction. The flickering disappeared right as Leon ran out of ammo.

Brandon rejoined the trio. He took the least damage of the three, but was also looking around wildly for more wild animals trying to sneak up on them.

"Leon, Sylvia, you all righ-Oh no, you're hurt!"

Brandon went to work casting healing spells, working on Sylvia's wounds first. Leon stripped off his armor to check on his wounds, but part of his burned armor bonded to his skin. Leon gritted his teeth and ripped it off, feeling the impulse to cry out in pain all the way to his eyelids. The pain was intense, but Leon knew he'd live.

Brandon finished treating Sylvia, and then they treated Leon together with more healing magic.

"Damn, they got you good on the shoulder. I can almost see bone."

"Yeah, cause I had to rip a piece of the armor off my skin, it bonded to it. So much for this armor being fire-resistant!"

"Magical fire or anything else beats armor, except maybe Stun spells." said Sylvia, as she prepared to cast another Heal Wounds spell on Leon. "Remember what I did to that Green Beret in the Jackal's Lantern?"

Sylvia had once shredded a tough-talking military guy in a rotten Seattle bar known as the Jackal's Lantern, blasting him with a Mana Bolt spell after he insulted her and tried to grope her while she gathered info for a shadowrun. Leon had walked into the bar right on time to see the military man flung backwards against a table, a giant hole in his armor and a wound on his chest from the mana-based lightning. Heavy amounts of cyberware and armor did nothing in the face of magic, a fact that almost every chromed-up street samurai with a gun and a blade learned the hard way.

But damnit, this armor was supposed to be flame resistant! Surely this was designed to offer at least some defense from a crazy bastard with a flamethrower, yet those hellhounds just burnt right through it!

Brandon and Sylvia worked away, and Leon eventually healed, although he suspected that the shoulder scars would not go away anytime soon. As he recovered and came down off his combat high, he realized something.

"Where are the riggers!?"

"They bought it." said Brandon. "One of them got his face burned off. Three hellhounds caught them while they tried to run."

The trio walked over to the two dead bodies. Leon almost felt bad for them, as hellhound attack was a pretty bad way to go, and the guy getting his face burned off looked like some sort of creepy sculpture of death on a mage museum. Still, they were BTL dealers...... and the army was probably going to kill them just as bad anyways via interrogation, if they had survived this.

"We better call Chief Hillborn." said Leon. "We gotta tell him his prisoners got geeked."

"Maybe ask him why the Sioux satellites didn't pick up these damn hellhounds."

"Yeah, that too."

~~~

Leon did in fact call War Chief Carl Hillborn, and the call might've gone terribly were it not for their mutual respect for one another. Leon almost shouted down Chief Hillborn for the Sioux not giving them notice that hey, a hellhound ambush might be coming from the north. Carl explained that the Sioux satellite was so zoomed in that they didn't see the hellhounds coming from the north until they were practically on top of them, and yelled down Leon for letting the riggers die before he could interrogate them. Leon responded by asking how three of Hillborn's top soldiers would deal with a goddamn hellhound attack while maintaining prisoner control.

Eventually, everyone calmed down, Hillborn arranged a slightly bigger share for Leon's trouble, the truck and the dead elven Riggers were looted, and the BTLs and bodies were destroyed via careful usage of fire and grenades. Leon pulled out with a truck full of goodies to take back, even managing to bring a few of the hellhound corpses with him.

While they were finishing up, Leon could not help but get the feeling that the hellhound ambush was planned by someone, or something. Hellhounds were more common in the Salish-Shidhe plains around Seattle, as any runner tackling that wilderness knew all too well. A few did pop up now and again in the Algonkian-Manitou Council, but this far north? And more than a dozen of them? Something was up. Was it related to those flashes of something Leon saw in the trees?

Unbeknownst to Leon, it was.