By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 10: 02.06.70>
Hustle. Loyalty. Respect.
That’s the code of the streets. It’s my code. And that’s why, when someone messes with my Familia, they can look forward to a world of hurt…
En-route to Lamb we picked up news reports of a small quake in San Fran. It eased my mind a little – I figured the lost communications would be because of the quake and as there had been minimal damage and few deaths, the chances were slim that our loved ones were affected. I also had a good heart to heart with Ki-rinn. I was surprised because he initiated it but I welcomed it. We both spoke frankly about the situation and what had gone on.
We’re not best buds or nothing but we have an understanding now. We’re tight. I like that.
Lamb had snagged Download, the Decker who worked for CAT on Dreamseed. With the information he was able to supply us I think we got a bit closer to understanding what’s going on. Seems there’s a power struggle in CAT with the founder Lucian Cross trying to ditch Dreamseed, while his son Dominic Cross evidently believes the old man no longer has the stones for cutthroat business and intends to sideline him and proceed anyway. Now I don’t know whether CAT are responsible for Dreamseed, agents of Dreamseed or hapless bystanders but there seems to be some sort of regular ebb and flow in the magic in the world and Dreamseed is tied up in hastening the next ebb of power. War, Malady and Trickery seem to be the three initiatives of a campaign to disguise what is really going on while Allisom, the fragger who possessed Silk, is supposedly a free spirit drawn to the ebb of magic and usually precedes something called The Scourge which scours magic from the earth. Don’t fucking ask me what it all means – it’s way over my head, I’m just telling it like I heard it. Maybe someone reading this can make more sense of it and hook me up!
Either way, seems this Dominic Cross has all the answers and when Lamb checks him out, she’s surprised to find he has an 11am appointment for earlier today all lined up – with us! Now as far as we know, the guy’s never heard of us - spooky drek – but we’re not going to pass up the opportunity.
We blaze back to San Fran and once we’re back in short range, comms start coming through. I still get nothing from Kitty and Ash gets bupkiss from Daisy but I do get Nunzio, pissed as all hell because some Corp hit squad went looking for me at Momma’s and tried to kidnap ma familia. Nunzio had been there checking all was ok after the quake – seems he does have a compassionate bone left somewhere in his body – so he and his boys drove the Corp Goons off. I check in with Pops, drill him for info, but there’s a dead weight in my gut and I’m already blazing to Kitty’s while Ash heads off towards Daisy. As we fear, we find signs of forced entry, a struggle and both of them gone. Ki-rinn does some checking and finds CAT internal files detailing a hit by their own forces against our girls. He drops a membership list for the CAT team and we see Blake’s name on it. Seems Ash’ own bro has helped kidnap his sister and my girl. Ash is devastated but at least we know now why Cross has cleared a space in his diary for us. A steely certainty settles over. I’ll not stand for this. I’m going to rescue Kitty or die trying and heaven help anyone who stands in my way.
Continues: 1/2>
>
Sadly, the first person to stand in my way is Glyph. Ash is distraught, a grade A fucking mess and he starts mouthing off, demanding that we all do this, that and the other to rescue the girls. Glyph don’t react too kindly to it. Obviously had a compassion bypass as part of her ‘specialist’
training and rather than make allowances for his emotional state she kicks off back at Ash hard. He walks and I don’t take too kindly to seeing my boy hurting. I get right back in her face to tell her she’s bang out of order and needs to either help us or step aside and get out of our way. It all goes sour from there. She tells me to ‘make her’ and the red mist falls – I draw down on her and waving my Gat in her face I chase her out, before going after Ash.
We let tempers cool a good while before heading back. The emotional fall out seems to have drawn everyone together like some sort of glue. We all talk things out quietly and reasonably, apologies for heated words are exchanged.
I dunno, maybe Glyph made herself some sort of emotional dump valve for us all – with the blow of pressure behind us, we’re all on the same page.
What’s been done is unforgivable and we’re all resolved to make someone pay.
We don’t have much of a plan but we tool up. Ash and I have the most at stake so we’ll put our asses on the line and walk into a potential trap for the meet with Dominic Cross. If nothing else I want to look the bastard in the eyes myself. Ki-rinn and the Replacement Killers are gonna be nearby as an FRT and maybe a Cas Evac…
Down in Silicon Valley at the CAT HQ, we meet Cross. Smug bastard lets us in, strapped and tells us if we back off, we’ll get the girls back after his grand scheme comes to fruition. Fuck that. Cross’ eyes are totally black and blistered around the sockets like Silk’s – I get the distinct impression this is another possession by Allisom and that Cross ain’t home no more. Our protests, threats and pleading fall on deaf ears but he does agree to let us see and speak to the girls on a live link-up. It’s Blake standing guard which hits Ash hard but I’m too busy celebrating that the bastards have slipped up. Kitty and I slip into patois and she manages to give me some hints to her location. I pick up that the girls are near moving water, possibly by one of the bridges out of San Fran and that they went East rather than North. I’m hyped. That can only put them somewhere near the Bay Bridge. Ash is amusing himself damaging CAT property but it’s not impressing Cross and I don’t want to let our edge slip so I drag him away.
Ki-rinn has traced the active line and his triangulation ties into the hints Kitty gave me, only it’s not the bridge they’re near but the Dam. We blaze and meet up in sight of the gates which we can see are heavily patrolled by CAT console soldiers. Now for me that’s strike three. Kitty’s hints, Frosty’s trace and an unusually high security presence all point to this being where Cross has the girls – it’s worth the risk so we hit the Dam hard and fast.
Gotta be honest, the next 30 minutes pass in a blur of flying lead, bloodshed and death. All I do remember, clearly, is that for the first time we worked like a team. We cover each other, move in unison, watch each other’s backs and prove once again that a team of Shadowrunners are more than a match for these ‘Perfect Shooters’ – Ash and Ki-rinn take a bullet each but nothing life threatening. In contrast, Cross loses a score or more of his men and after Stick/Shocking Blake we’re reunited with the girls.
Bastard’s had the place booby trapped though. A sluice gate into the tank where the girls are held starts to open and high pressure water starts to jet in. Once again, the team works like a well oiled machine. Ki-rinn hacks the sluice, while Sickle rips up gantry stanchions to create a makeshift ladder. Glyph covers us as we help the girls out and blaze to a safe house Ash knows nearby. Now, we’re committed, to making Cross pay, to obtaining our pound of flesh, to getting Gauge his info so the bastard will pay and to getting out of shit we know is over our heads. But goddamn we’re a team. I think we can pull it off.
Mood: Determined.
Ends: 2/2>
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 29, 2006
The Dam Rescue
Wednesday 31st May 2070
Six, Sickle, Ash, Glyph, Ki-Rin.
The runners left the area of the barrens where they had found silk, with no word from their friends or contacts except from Lamb who told them that she had something to tell them. As they headed out their Commlinks picked up news feeds of a force 4 quake in San Fran.
They headed back into Seattle and went directly to the Vory club called the Star, as instructed by Lamb. When they arrived she introduced a man called Download, he was the decker that she went after and he told them about when he worked for Dominic Cross, son of the CEO of Cross Applied Technologies. Dominic had forced him to launch the attack code at the Ares controlled AI, Thetis. He then Commed them a bit of a datafile which he had half hacked, half had dumped onto his PAN.
Lamb pressed on to tell the runners that she had hacked Dominic’s diary, and found an appointment already made by Dominic for Friday June 2nd at 11:00 with Six, Sickle, Ash, Glyph and Ki-Rin.
Lam had her run boxed off, she had found out who had transmitted the virus, which attached Thetis and was on her way back to see Ares. She wished the runners luck and left.
They sat for a short while discussing their options before blasting back to San Fran to find out what had happened to their friends.
When they got into commlink range they started picking up messages from friends. Nunzio left a message with Six, telling him that a corp goon squad had attacked their parents. When they did a ring round, there was no answer from Kitty, Six’s girlfriend, or Daisy, Ash’s sister.
San Francisco had prepared well for quakes, and most of the buildings were able to weather the forty second shaking of the earth. Windowpanes had shattered, and some buildings would need structural repairs, but all told the city was well. The runners blazed in with Six and Ki-Rin heading to Kitty’s the rest to Daisy’s. Both of the girl’s apartments had stoved in doors, signs of a struggle, and a conspicuous absence of the resident. Ash was already struggling to cope with the strain, and he went from absolute despair to raging anger.
The runners decided to play along with Dominic and go to the meet. Only Ash and Six went, with the others close by as a FRT. They were cordially shown into the building, and were ushered up to meeting room 5.
Friday June 2nd 2070
Dominic stood in the room looking away from the runners out of the window he indicated a trid screen that showed Kitty, Daisy bound and blindfolded in a concrete room. Ash’s brother Blake guarded them.
Once the runners had taken in the scene, he turned, his eyes black pits, his face blistered and raw. He explained that he wanted them to back off and not get involved with what he was doing. Six and Ash argued with him that taking their family got them involved. Dominic didn’t seem to understand how they felt. Ash threatened him and came close to killing him there and then, Six implored to speak to the girls, and after a few moments Dominic accepted.
The moment he gave the runners access to the girls Commlinks, Ki-Rin ran a trace. Six tried to have a coded conversation with Kitty but she was dazed and didn’t pick up on it straight away. Ash was unable to get through to Blake.
Once they had done, Dominic dismissed them and once they got out onto the street Six told Ash that he thinks kitty was trying to give him a code and stood trying to work it out. Ash phoned Ki-Rin who told them that they were burning rubber across town zeroing in on the location of the PAN signals. Ash and Six blazed after them.
About 60 miles outside San Francisco lies the Goodwin Dam, and the runners pulled up within a mile of it looking across the road, which spanned the blocked river. They saw guards patrolling between the gated road.
Forming a loose plan the two cars sped toward the gates, at the last minute Ash yelled to Six to shoot the lock off the gate. Six’s gum mount was rearward facing, so he snapped it into a sharp spin, stitched a line of bullets across the lock and corrected the vehicle in one fluid move, Meanwhile Glyph sped past ramming the gates open. The 5 guards on top of the dam were run over, shot and grenaded before the cars had come to a halt in front of one of the control towers on the dam.
The runners made their way through the guards who were positioned in the dam interior, using increasingly sophisticated tactics to clear the sections, the last section cleared they had a mortally wounded guard who pointed them toward generator 1.
They opened up the bulkhead door to generator 1 and saw that Kitty and Daisy were guarded by Blake in what appeared to be the water channel of generator 1. If the genny were turned on they would surely drown. Six dropped Blake with a stick and shock round. Sickle then fashioned a makeshift ladder out of the gantry and railings they had been running along. Once the runners got down to the level of the hostages the iris that held back millions of tons of water began to open. Ash, Six and Sickle desperately got the girls and Blake up out of the death trap in the increasingly deepening water, while Ki-Rin hacked the controls to the dam to shut down the Iris.
The runners escaped.
The headed back to town, and Ash claimed he knew someone who they could trust to look after Kitty, Daisy and Blake, while they head back to Cross Applied Technologies to finish this whole thing. Six, Ash and Ki-Rin wanted payback, Sickle was just happy for a rumble.
Six, Sickle, Ash, Glyph, Ki-Rin.
The runners left the area of the barrens where they had found silk, with no word from their friends or contacts except from Lamb who told them that she had something to tell them. As they headed out their Commlinks picked up news feeds of a force 4 quake in San Fran.
They headed back into Seattle and went directly to the Vory club called the Star, as instructed by Lamb. When they arrived she introduced a man called Download, he was the decker that she went after and he told them about when he worked for Dominic Cross, son of the CEO of Cross Applied Technologies. Dominic had forced him to launch the attack code at the Ares controlled AI, Thetis. He then Commed them a bit of a datafile which he had half hacked, half had dumped onto his PAN.
Lamb pressed on to tell the runners that she had hacked Dominic’s diary, and found an appointment already made by Dominic for Friday June 2nd at 11:00 with Six, Sickle, Ash, Glyph and Ki-Rin.
Lam had her run boxed off, she had found out who had transmitted the virus, which attached Thetis and was on her way back to see Ares. She wished the runners luck and left.
They sat for a short while discussing their options before blasting back to San Fran to find out what had happened to their friends.
When they got into commlink range they started picking up messages from friends. Nunzio left a message with Six, telling him that a corp goon squad had attacked their parents. When they did a ring round, there was no answer from Kitty, Six’s girlfriend, or Daisy, Ash’s sister.
San Francisco had prepared well for quakes, and most of the buildings were able to weather the forty second shaking of the earth. Windowpanes had shattered, and some buildings would need structural repairs, but all told the city was well. The runners blazed in with Six and Ki-Rin heading to Kitty’s the rest to Daisy’s. Both of the girl’s apartments had stoved in doors, signs of a struggle, and a conspicuous absence of the resident. Ash was already struggling to cope with the strain, and he went from absolute despair to raging anger.
The runners decided to play along with Dominic and go to the meet. Only Ash and Six went, with the others close by as a FRT. They were cordially shown into the building, and were ushered up to meeting room 5.
Friday June 2nd 2070
Dominic stood in the room looking away from the runners out of the window he indicated a trid screen that showed Kitty, Daisy bound and blindfolded in a concrete room. Ash’s brother Blake guarded them.
Once the runners had taken in the scene, he turned, his eyes black pits, his face blistered and raw. He explained that he wanted them to back off and not get involved with what he was doing. Six and Ash argued with him that taking their family got them involved. Dominic didn’t seem to understand how they felt. Ash threatened him and came close to killing him there and then, Six implored to speak to the girls, and after a few moments Dominic accepted.
The moment he gave the runners access to the girls Commlinks, Ki-Rin ran a trace. Six tried to have a coded conversation with Kitty but she was dazed and didn’t pick up on it straight away. Ash was unable to get through to Blake.
Once they had done, Dominic dismissed them and once they got out onto the street Six told Ash that he thinks kitty was trying to give him a code and stood trying to work it out. Ash phoned Ki-Rin who told them that they were burning rubber across town zeroing in on the location of the PAN signals. Ash and Six blazed after them.
About 60 miles outside San Francisco lies the Goodwin Dam, and the runners pulled up within a mile of it looking across the road, which spanned the blocked river. They saw guards patrolling between the gated road.
Forming a loose plan the two cars sped toward the gates, at the last minute Ash yelled to Six to shoot the lock off the gate. Six’s gum mount was rearward facing, so he snapped it into a sharp spin, stitched a line of bullets across the lock and corrected the vehicle in one fluid move, Meanwhile Glyph sped past ramming the gates open. The 5 guards on top of the dam were run over, shot and grenaded before the cars had come to a halt in front of one of the control towers on the dam.
The runners made their way through the guards who were positioned in the dam interior, using increasingly sophisticated tactics to clear the sections, the last section cleared they had a mortally wounded guard who pointed them toward generator 1.
They opened up the bulkhead door to generator 1 and saw that Kitty and Daisy were guarded by Blake in what appeared to be the water channel of generator 1. If the genny were turned on they would surely drown. Six dropped Blake with a stick and shock round. Sickle then fashioned a makeshift ladder out of the gantry and railings they had been running along. Once the runners got down to the level of the hostages the iris that held back millions of tons of water began to open. Ash, Six and Sickle desperately got the girls and Blake up out of the death trap in the increasingly deepening water, while Ki-Rin hacked the controls to the dam to shut down the Iris.
The runners escaped.
The headed back to town, and Ash claimed he knew someone who they could trust to look after Kitty, Daisy and Blake, while they head back to Cross Applied Technologies to finish this whole thing. Six, Ash and Ki-Rin wanted payback, Sickle was just happy for a rumble.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Six's blog. Silk
By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 9: 01.06.70>
Just got back into signal range and I’m posting this update quickly while we wait for the cars to drone around to our position and pick us up. We’ve been and poked some sort of hornets nest with our collective stick and now I can’t get hold of Kitty or Pops, hell I can’t even get hold of Nunzio. I fear the worst. Oh Gods please don’t let this be my fault as well…
The run up to Seattle was pretty uneventful although we did have a run in with a Go-Gang looking to hijack the cars. We taught them a lesson but it cost us two sets of tyres when we ploughed over a Stinger spike strip. Don’t know much about that Glyph but she can at least handle her ride. I’ve kept the Stinger for my own personal future use.
Once in Seattle, Sickle said Lamb had tipped him off to a Shadowrunner called Silk living out in the Barrens. Silk’s name had appeared on some official CAT documents in reference to Dreamseed contract work so she figured we could all do with talking to him.
With nothing to go on other than a name and a rough location, we took a quick blaze into the Barrens and Mr Contacts started laying down his charisma on a couple of the locals. The place is rough – no way is the wheelman leaving his sled unguarded in these parts so Ki-rinn and I left research mode to Ash and the Replacement Killers. We sat in stony silence. I wanted to talk to him but I don’t know what to say now. He’s cold as ice.
Untouchable.
A couple of hours legwork, turn up the fact that everyone knows of Silk and is terrified. The nearest we can get to pinpointing his location is a tenuous suggestion that he hangs out at a church a few miles away so we head that way, only to find the streets blocked off with barricades. These barricades ain’t there to keep us out though – they’re there to keep something in. I drone the vehicles out and we make to clamber over these barricades on foot. One of the locals, a guy by the name of Cable, tells us we’ll piss off if we know what’s good for us and when we say we don’t want trouble, just a quick word with Silk, he reiterates that Silk IS trouble. He tells us it’s our funeral and him and his boys let us by with pity in their eyes.
I figure this is all bullshit, That Silk is trading on a Rep, plain and simple; that he has all these bumpkins believing his hype. About half a mile past the barricade I think again – the whole area, three square miles, is shrouded in spider web and at the centre of the web we find an old Church.
Place is seriously freaky shit and we really have to steal ourselves to go in. I spot a manhole cover and we figure we’ll sneak in through the back door but the sewers are a dead end and we’re forced in through the front door.
I hang back, having loaded up on Stick/Shock rounds and agreed I’ll be responsible for knocking Silk out if necessary while the rest of the team handles any combat. I figure they can risk their asses. There’s a brief fire fight with some sort of paranormal critters that look like Preying Mantis but I don’t get involved and then we have to trek down underground into what looks an awful lot like a Funnel Web’s lair. Glyph can’t deal with the bugs and lets rip with a teen drama queen scream that alerts something to our presence and in the heart of the lair we find the biggest fucking spider going.
Continues: 1/2>
>
I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s an enormous Black Widow, it’s pissed and it goes for Sickle, hard and fast. Feeling a little out of my depth I sock two Stick/Shocks into it but it ignores them. It doesn’t ignore Sickle’s hand cannon though or Ki-Rinn’s personal artillery. Neither of them flinches. Neither seems surprised to encounter a spider quite so big and they take it down pronto. Once again I wonder why I’m here at all.
On the far side of the lair I spot someone and call out Silk’s name. He looks up and nods but before we can even think of talking to him or trading for the info’ bullets thud into him from all around me. He’s unarmed. We’ve busted into his turf and killed his pets. Now we’re shooting our only lead?
Ki-rinn is all for killing him. We’ve seen cocooned human bodies hanging around the place like spider snacks and for once it’s gotten to Frosty. I ain’t exactly keen on me or my loved ones becoming dinner but I know what a fucking food chain is and I guess a spider that big has to eat. Ki-rinn seems to think it’s Silk’s fault though and Sickle agrees. Whatever. It’s too late now. We’ve shot Silk so diplomacy is out of the question. It’s just a good job they had enough self-control to only use Stick/Shocks. I wash my hands of it. If they can’t get any info out of Silk by force, they’ve fucked the entire mission. Not that they give a shit. So long as they get their guns off, who cares about the consequences eh?
Ash and I move off to explore the lair, leaving Frosty and the Replacement Killers to try torturing Silk for any Dreamseed titbits. Unsurprisingly he turns out to be uncooperative. They were right about one thing though – he is an evil Fragger. He keeps repeating something like "I am Silk, Herald of Alisom, Bringer of the Scourge" and all Ki-Rinn and Sickle manage to do is beat him enough to piss him off. Dude’s eyes went black, totally black and he now starts telling us "I am Alisom, Bringer of the Scourge." That’s when it hits me. Some sort of vision or flashback. Of Kitty. Of Mom and Pops. Of Nunzio. Of Ono running through the PS programme to escape some fucker in a black robe. Of the moment I ripped the Neural Net Trodes from his head and triggered the dump shock that killed him.
As quick as it starts, the flashback is gone. Fragger’s still chanting and Frosty’s beating isn’t making him shut up. I suggest a gut shot – painful enough to distract him and keep him occupied but slow enough we can get him out for further questioning later. Ki-rinn shoots to kill though and having given us precisely squat, Silk expires. What a waste of time. Glyph says she had a vision of her loved ones and can’t reach them via PAN. In a panic, I hit my phone book and get nothing but voicemail. Please let them be ok.
Please don’t let their blood be on my hands now as well.
We hightailed it back to the barricades. Frosty is talking to Cable again – probably telling him the Barrens should be safe from Silk’s menace now – while I drone in the getaway cars. Sickle and Glyph say they’ve heard from Lamb and she wants to talk. I hope she’s got more info than us because all we have are some sigils Ash and I found marked on the wall of Silk’s lair. I still can’t raise anyone in my phone book on the PAN. We’re a three day ride away from San Fran. If I don’t manage to speak to anyone soon, I don’t know what I’m going to do…
Mood: Desperate and scared.
Ends: 2/2>
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 9: 01.06.70>
Just got back into signal range and I’m posting this update quickly while we wait for the cars to drone around to our position and pick us up. We’ve been and poked some sort of hornets nest with our collective stick and now I can’t get hold of Kitty or Pops, hell I can’t even get hold of Nunzio. I fear the worst. Oh Gods please don’t let this be my fault as well…
The run up to Seattle was pretty uneventful although we did have a run in with a Go-Gang looking to hijack the cars. We taught them a lesson but it cost us two sets of tyres when we ploughed over a Stinger spike strip. Don’t know much about that Glyph but she can at least handle her ride. I’ve kept the Stinger for my own personal future use.
Once in Seattle, Sickle said Lamb had tipped him off to a Shadowrunner called Silk living out in the Barrens. Silk’s name had appeared on some official CAT documents in reference to Dreamseed contract work so she figured we could all do with talking to him.
With nothing to go on other than a name and a rough location, we took a quick blaze into the Barrens and Mr Contacts started laying down his charisma on a couple of the locals. The place is rough – no way is the wheelman leaving his sled unguarded in these parts so Ki-rinn and I left research mode to Ash and the Replacement Killers. We sat in stony silence. I wanted to talk to him but I don’t know what to say now. He’s cold as ice.
Untouchable.
A couple of hours legwork, turn up the fact that everyone knows of Silk and is terrified. The nearest we can get to pinpointing his location is a tenuous suggestion that he hangs out at a church a few miles away so we head that way, only to find the streets blocked off with barricades. These barricades ain’t there to keep us out though – they’re there to keep something in. I drone the vehicles out and we make to clamber over these barricades on foot. One of the locals, a guy by the name of Cable, tells us we’ll piss off if we know what’s good for us and when we say we don’t want trouble, just a quick word with Silk, he reiterates that Silk IS trouble. He tells us it’s our funeral and him and his boys let us by with pity in their eyes.
I figure this is all bullshit, That Silk is trading on a Rep, plain and simple; that he has all these bumpkins believing his hype. About half a mile past the barricade I think again – the whole area, three square miles, is shrouded in spider web and at the centre of the web we find an old Church.
Place is seriously freaky shit and we really have to steal ourselves to go in. I spot a manhole cover and we figure we’ll sneak in through the back door but the sewers are a dead end and we’re forced in through the front door.
I hang back, having loaded up on Stick/Shock rounds and agreed I’ll be responsible for knocking Silk out if necessary while the rest of the team handles any combat. I figure they can risk their asses. There’s a brief fire fight with some sort of paranormal critters that look like Preying Mantis but I don’t get involved and then we have to trek down underground into what looks an awful lot like a Funnel Web’s lair. Glyph can’t deal with the bugs and lets rip with a teen drama queen scream that alerts something to our presence and in the heart of the lair we find the biggest fucking spider going.
Continues: 1/2>
>
I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s an enormous Black Widow, it’s pissed and it goes for Sickle, hard and fast. Feeling a little out of my depth I sock two Stick/Shocks into it but it ignores them. It doesn’t ignore Sickle’s hand cannon though or Ki-Rinn’s personal artillery. Neither of them flinches. Neither seems surprised to encounter a spider quite so big and they take it down pronto. Once again I wonder why I’m here at all.
On the far side of the lair I spot someone and call out Silk’s name. He looks up and nods but before we can even think of talking to him or trading for the info’ bullets thud into him from all around me. He’s unarmed. We’ve busted into his turf and killed his pets. Now we’re shooting our only lead?
Ki-rinn is all for killing him. We’ve seen cocooned human bodies hanging around the place like spider snacks and for once it’s gotten to Frosty. I ain’t exactly keen on me or my loved ones becoming dinner but I know what a fucking food chain is and I guess a spider that big has to eat. Ki-rinn seems to think it’s Silk’s fault though and Sickle agrees. Whatever. It’s too late now. We’ve shot Silk so diplomacy is out of the question. It’s just a good job they had enough self-control to only use Stick/Shocks. I wash my hands of it. If they can’t get any info out of Silk by force, they’ve fucked the entire mission. Not that they give a shit. So long as they get their guns off, who cares about the consequences eh?
Ash and I move off to explore the lair, leaving Frosty and the Replacement Killers to try torturing Silk for any Dreamseed titbits. Unsurprisingly he turns out to be uncooperative. They were right about one thing though – he is an evil Fragger. He keeps repeating something like "I am Silk, Herald of Alisom, Bringer of the Scourge" and all Ki-Rinn and Sickle manage to do is beat him enough to piss him off. Dude’s eyes went black, totally black and he now starts telling us "I am Alisom, Bringer of the Scourge." That’s when it hits me. Some sort of vision or flashback. Of Kitty. Of Mom and Pops. Of Nunzio. Of Ono running through the PS programme to escape some fucker in a black robe. Of the moment I ripped the Neural Net Trodes from his head and triggered the dump shock that killed him.
As quick as it starts, the flashback is gone. Fragger’s still chanting and Frosty’s beating isn’t making him shut up. I suggest a gut shot – painful enough to distract him and keep him occupied but slow enough we can get him out for further questioning later. Ki-rinn shoots to kill though and having given us precisely squat, Silk expires. What a waste of time. Glyph says she had a vision of her loved ones and can’t reach them via PAN. In a panic, I hit my phone book and get nothing but voicemail. Please let them be ok.
Please don’t let their blood be on my hands now as well.
We hightailed it back to the barricades. Frosty is talking to Cable again – probably telling him the Barrens should be safe from Silk’s menace now – while I drone in the getaway cars. Sickle and Glyph say they’ve heard from Lamb and she wants to talk. I hope she’s got more info than us because all we have are some sigils Ash and I found marked on the wall of Silk’s lair. I still can’t raise anyone in my phone book on the PAN. We’re a three day ride away from San Fran. If I don’t manage to speak to anyone soon, I don’t know what I’m going to do…
Mood: Desperate and scared.
Ends: 2/2>
Silk
Monday 29th May 2070.
Six, Sickle, Ki-Rin, Glyph, Ash.
The runners saddled up and set off for the long circuitous drive to Seattle. Having to miss out the bulk of Tir Tangire added a day to the drive, but it avoided the hassle of trying to get through the boarder.
The had been on the road for well over 12 hours, Swapping seats every couple of hundred miles, to give everyone a chance to stretch their legs. Glyph was in the lead car with Six following when 4 bikers ambushed them. Three of the riders hung back and fired long-range pot shots aiming to hustle the 2 sports cars on. The 4th rider sped on ahead along a dirt road and set up a spike strip to immobilise the cars.
These would be car jackers didn’t anticipate their prey would fire back, and they aborted the attack as the odds changed. The runners caught one of the bikers alive, he was a young local ganger who was battered and scared. They tied him to the bonnet of Six’s car and accelerated. The lad knew there was a spike strip ahead yelled for them to stop, but he wasn’t heard over the engine noise, Six hit the strip with all 4 wheels followed by Glyph who also had no time to react.
The would be car jacker was freed, and the runners waited for ATS to turn up with 8 new shoes for their cars.
4 hours later the runners were back on the road, they made their way to Seattle with an uneventful journey. Arriving at the UCAS Seattle border the runners found that the usually slack checkpoint was stop searching every vehicle. Not keen on having a chat with the authorities they swung the cars round and looked for another way into Seattle. And after half an hour they found a forgotten road running through barren wasteland into the north of the state.
Sickle still had the keys to his downtown apartment, and the runners swung by there to gather their thoughts. What was the plan? Lamb said that she had two names. Download, a decker, and an unknown person named Silk. These names had turned up in an internal memo that Lamb had found in Cross Applied and she wanted to find out more. Silk was known to be in the Seattle barrens but that was all that was known.
The runners knew no one in the Barrens so decided to head down and ask the residents of the forgotten quarter of Seattle.
The area known as the barrens comprises of a shantytown built in the shadow of the collapsing buildings long since abandoned by civic care. The people are the detritus of corporate Seattle, the SINless, the criminal and the unlucky. All trying to survive in the world that doesn’t know them.
The runners drove into the barrens in their sleek sports cars, and instantly drew attention to themselves. People with cars have money, and people with money in the barrens are lost, stupid or dangerous.
Asking on the streets the runners found no information on this Silk, until they found a bar operating out of an old apartment building. Heading into the metahuman bar, Ash strikes up a difficult conversation with an Old timer Ork who points them in the direction a church a few miles away. And he warns them that they are in too deep.
The team mount up and drive towards the church, only to find a barricade ringing 6 blocks worth of streets. A guy called Cable, manning the barricade tells the runners that it is to keep Silk in, and that the runners are signing their own death warrants heading in there. They head on in anyway.
The buildings are covered in spider web, the closer to the church they get, the more dense the web. And there is not a soul around. The runners start to realise that this is something they have never encountered before.
The church, nestled between a couple of apartment blocks is shrouded in web, with only the front door as a way in. The runners try to get into the building some other way but come up with nothing. Ki-Rin is the first through the door and is snatched by a Preying Mantis type critter. The rest of the team swing into action and kill 4 of them in total.
Once they cleared the room, the runners looked around. The floor had given way exposing the dried up sewers, and above there were fifteen or so dead bodies cocooned in spider silk.
The runner’s head down into the tunnel system, and eventually come to a large pumping room. The mechanism removed, and the shell of the pump a home for a massive spider. Ki-Rin kicks off again and in short order they kill the spider.
Silk who had been observing made himself seen and the runners dropped him with stun rounds.
Extracting Silk to the interior of the church the runners begin to question him. His only reply is “I am Silk, Servant of Allisom, bringer of Scourge” Ki-Rin lays the boot in, and Sickle makes threatening noises but they get the same mantra. And then “I am Allisom, Shedim, Bringer of the Scourge” The runners look at each other and back to Silk, and then are hit with visions of friends and families, as if someone or something was searching though their memories. And then it stopped. Ki-Rin plugged him, and Silk was dead.
The runners begin quickly phoning their friends and family, they get answer phone. Dread sets in and The Lamb calls and tells them that she has found out something disturbing and needs to meet up with them.
Six, Sickle, Ki-Rin, Glyph, Ash.
The runners saddled up and set off for the long circuitous drive to Seattle. Having to miss out the bulk of Tir Tangire added a day to the drive, but it avoided the hassle of trying to get through the boarder.
The had been on the road for well over 12 hours, Swapping seats every couple of hundred miles, to give everyone a chance to stretch their legs. Glyph was in the lead car with Six following when 4 bikers ambushed them. Three of the riders hung back and fired long-range pot shots aiming to hustle the 2 sports cars on. The 4th rider sped on ahead along a dirt road and set up a spike strip to immobilise the cars.
These would be car jackers didn’t anticipate their prey would fire back, and they aborted the attack as the odds changed. The runners caught one of the bikers alive, he was a young local ganger who was battered and scared. They tied him to the bonnet of Six’s car and accelerated. The lad knew there was a spike strip ahead yelled for them to stop, but he wasn’t heard over the engine noise, Six hit the strip with all 4 wheels followed by Glyph who also had no time to react.
The would be car jacker was freed, and the runners waited for ATS to turn up with 8 new shoes for their cars.
4 hours later the runners were back on the road, they made their way to Seattle with an uneventful journey. Arriving at the UCAS Seattle border the runners found that the usually slack checkpoint was stop searching every vehicle. Not keen on having a chat with the authorities they swung the cars round and looked for another way into Seattle. And after half an hour they found a forgotten road running through barren wasteland into the north of the state.
Sickle still had the keys to his downtown apartment, and the runners swung by there to gather their thoughts. What was the plan? Lamb said that she had two names. Download, a decker, and an unknown person named Silk. These names had turned up in an internal memo that Lamb had found in Cross Applied and she wanted to find out more. Silk was known to be in the Seattle barrens but that was all that was known.
The runners knew no one in the Barrens so decided to head down and ask the residents of the forgotten quarter of Seattle.
The area known as the barrens comprises of a shantytown built in the shadow of the collapsing buildings long since abandoned by civic care. The people are the detritus of corporate Seattle, the SINless, the criminal and the unlucky. All trying to survive in the world that doesn’t know them.
The runners drove into the barrens in their sleek sports cars, and instantly drew attention to themselves. People with cars have money, and people with money in the barrens are lost, stupid or dangerous.
Asking on the streets the runners found no information on this Silk, until they found a bar operating out of an old apartment building. Heading into the metahuman bar, Ash strikes up a difficult conversation with an Old timer Ork who points them in the direction a church a few miles away. And he warns them that they are in too deep.
The team mount up and drive towards the church, only to find a barricade ringing 6 blocks worth of streets. A guy called Cable, manning the barricade tells the runners that it is to keep Silk in, and that the runners are signing their own death warrants heading in there. They head on in anyway.
The buildings are covered in spider web, the closer to the church they get, the more dense the web. And there is not a soul around. The runners start to realise that this is something they have never encountered before.
The church, nestled between a couple of apartment blocks is shrouded in web, with only the front door as a way in. The runners try to get into the building some other way but come up with nothing. Ki-Rin is the first through the door and is snatched by a Preying Mantis type critter. The rest of the team swing into action and kill 4 of them in total.
Once they cleared the room, the runners looked around. The floor had given way exposing the dried up sewers, and above there were fifteen or so dead bodies cocooned in spider silk.
The runner’s head down into the tunnel system, and eventually come to a large pumping room. The mechanism removed, and the shell of the pump a home for a massive spider. Ki-Rin kicks off again and in short order they kill the spider.
Silk who had been observing made himself seen and the runners dropped him with stun rounds.
Extracting Silk to the interior of the church the runners begin to question him. His only reply is “I am Silk, Servant of Allisom, bringer of Scourge” Ki-Rin lays the boot in, and Sickle makes threatening noises but they get the same mantra. And then “I am Allisom, Shedim, Bringer of the Scourge” The runners look at each other and back to Silk, and then are hit with visions of friends and families, as if someone or something was searching though their memories. And then it stopped. Ki-Rin plugged him, and Silk was dead.
The runners begin quickly phoning their friends and family, they get answer phone. Dread sets in and The Lamb calls and tells them that she has found out something disturbing and needs to meet up with them.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Six's blog. Perfect shooter
By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 8: 25.05.70>
Ono is dead.
I think it might be my fault and no one seems to give a good Goddamn. That old adage about finding out who your real friends are when it all goes sour is right; these Shadowrunners I’ve been hanging out with aren’t my friends.
They weren’t Ono’s friends. We’re a collection of assets and seems the only one shedding a tear when those assets get expended is me… Frag man. I feel hollow, empty. The emotions have passed. I only know one thing – if these guys only see me as a wheelman, a driver, then from now on, that’s all they get.
We were hit up by a Suit called Gauge who represents a PR firm called Horizon. They run marketing for a game called Perfect Shooter which is manufactured by our friends at Cross Applied Technology. We should have hit the bricks as soon as we heard the name mentioned. CAT is bad Karma for us.
But the offer was 100k each and greed made us hear the man out. Horizon had picked up some scuttlebutt that something called Dreamseed was in some way involved with the Perfect Shooter game. CAT were giving them the brush off and they didn’t like it so they needed some covert investigative work doing to find out as much as possible about Dreamseed. Should they be concerned?
Or was it just a hoax?
We bought a few copies of the game and began playing, figuring we’d need at least a working knowledge of the game if we were going to be able to fit into the sort of gaming circles muttering about Dreamseed. PS turned out to be a realistic-physics first person war-game – it does everything Unreal Tournament does but with scary accuracy. You practically have to take an in-game shower to stop the other grunts catching a waft of your BO on the wind. THAT realistic… Unable to find anything left-field about the game itself, we hit the Gamers forums and by talking the talking, I manage to get one of them to spill the beans. He Emails me a six word file: ‘Dreamseed War, Dreamseed Trickery, Dreamseed Malady,’ and an address in Seattle. Now the fancy names mean nothing to us but an address is something concrete and we resolve to follow it up.
With hindsight, we maybe shouldn’t have gone to Seattle. We leave our friends, contacts and support network behind. Hell we even leave our gear behind. We go by boat, in Ash’s little Smuggler’s Cruiser, even me – a Rigger sans vehicle. Stupidity personified. In short order, I hired a rental pick-up and we blazed to the address where we discovered two murdered twenty-somethings, a copy of the Perfect Shooter game and a letter congratulating some dude called Josh Phillips on his success in the PS Regional Tournament. Ash went fucking white man and showed us a picture of the three flatmates. The one in the middle, Ash tells us, is his long-lost Bro who Ash lost contact with while he was in the Big House a couple of years ago. Stunned, we check the corpses. Neither of them is Ash’ familia so we figure they’re the two other flatmates. Neither of them is called Josh Phillips either, so it looks like JP is an alias. Ki-rinn hits the security footage and we piece together that Ash’ brother won the PS Regional Tournament, received the congratulatory note from CAT, packed a bag, iced his flatmates and relocated to Cross premises in Seattle.
Continues: 1/4>
>
We speculate that CAT are using the PS game to train killers but there’s no catalyst to explain why console geeks should suddenly start capping their homies – at least there’s nothing in the standard game but a bit more research reveals that the tournaments run from secure servers so we can’t access or study the code for clues. You gotta have 100,000 game credits and an invite from SysAdmin to play a tournament and a few hours game play tells me you need to seriously dedicate about a month of non-stop real time play to get to that level. We need an in and opt to stake out one of the local gamers who’s holding down 100,000 credits and looks likely to play in the tournament. We’re smart and tag the eventual winner but end up spending a week in the back of the van, waiting for this kid to go Manchurian Candidate on us, without hitting the paydirt. We’re missing something and have no clue what so we change tack. Ki-rinn raids CAT files for info on Josh Phillips.
The Corp are callous – referring to the tournament winners by consignment numbers rather than by personnel records but Ki-rinn follows the trail to a secure installation in the North Cascades National Park.
We blaze but security is tight – the place is like a military installation.
Fortunately, Drifter has been keeping an ear to the ground back in San Fran and picks up an entirely separate run to drop off a consignment at this self-same depot. He gets a brief look around the inside before hooking up with us and after comparing notes, we decide to go in through the ventilation shafting while Drifter watches our back. We kit up but make a meal of the entry. It’s SNAFU and as we head inside, we know we’re leaving Drifter with no easy task – cover our tracks and beat a hasty retreat. It’s out of our hands. We have to trust the Squaddie Squad to do his bit.
Insertion goes down sweet and we find a nice little bolthole in what we reckon is the commandant’s office. Only thing is, one too many co-incidences start to crop up as Ki-rinn confesses he once served with this commandant in the forces. The guy’s called Duke and has a reputation as a tough SOB. If he’s working for the Corp on this one, it means they’re not pissing about.
Ki-rinn’s wary about hacking the Mainframe for fear of detection but the military security protocols are so tight it means we soon give the game away while sneaking about the place. Ono got himself into a fight with the Padre so the rest of us laid down covering fire against the security response while Ki-rinn made with the relevant downloads. Exfiltrating, we’re on a high, we’ve pulled files on Josh Phillips and a couple of other tournament winners as well as hacking the Mainframe for all the Dreamseed info we can find and we’re out without casualties. That high makes us sloppy and complacent and as I pop out of the ventilation shaft, I find our escape cut off by a squad of CAT’s PS Console Soldiers. Duke has Drifter on his knees with a gun to the back of his head.
It ain’t going down like this. No way. I’ve got my boys in the shaft below me. I think we’re a team. More than a team… I think we’re like fucking brothers. I count on them backing me up and take a swing at the nearest soldier. As the shots rang out, I took a couple of hard hits and went down.
As I pass out, the only thing I know for sure is that I’ve been left high and dry. No one but Ono has followed me out and I can see he’s at gunpoint instantly as my consciousness fades.
I come round in a dilapidated cottage. Hog tied and dumped on the floor with the rest of the team. Seems like there was some sort of fight after all – we’re all bruised and battered and the Duke’s standing over us giving it the big ‘I am’, dark side monologue treatment. He wants answers. I couldn’t give a shit. I tell him some Johnson from Horizon has paid for the datasteal. He seems satisfied but he’s a sadistic bastard. Tells us we’re a real-time training mission for his Console Soldiers now. At the shot, they’ll put the skills they learned in the game hunting us down for real. He hopes we don’t escape, if only because it’ll make his expensive experiment look bad if a bunch of busted up, unarmed Shadowrunners give his boys the slip. The shot, when he fires it, slugs Drifter in the gut and Duke tosses us a bayonet to try and cut ourselves free as he leaves.
Continues: 2/4>
>
Ki-rinn and I manage to work the bayonet around where we can use it. We free the guys quick but Drifter’s in a bad way and can hardly move. We take what improvised weapons we can. Ono grabs the bayonet, I take a piece of the window frame as a makeshift club and everyone else loads up on house bricks.
We blaze, trying to break through the cordon before the Soldiers tighten the noose around us. We get the drop on three of the bastards and Ki-rinn sets out a sweet ambush. My piece of windowsill hardly cuts the mustard against a Squaddie with an automatic rifle but Ono steps into the line of fire while I’m still reliving my Senior Prom and dispatches the goon with a grimace.
Score one for the team man – I could practically see the bullets starting to rifle down the barrel when tall, dark and scary pulled his hero shit for me.
We snaffle the weapons and head back for Drifter only to run into some street-savvy looking Russian guy who seems to have tried to patch Big D’s wound up. He talks fast, tells us he’s called Sickle and has been sent in to Cas Evac us by a Decker called Lamb. Twist is, we’re IN the Perfect Shooter game and Lamb has had to hack the code to put in a back door to let him in and to let us out.
The back door is in the cellar of a farm building a couple of clicks away and we hustle on over. Half the team stay with Drifter to provide covering fire with the stolen AR’s while the rest of us head down to poke the hornets nest. Ono and I go with Sickle and the three of us watch each other’s back as the drek starts to hit the fan. Turns out Shadowrunners are a match for the Console Soldiers. We drop maybe a dozen of them as we move in with our own version of military precision. I grab one of their Hummers and use it as a mobile firing platform and provide cover. In short order, we’re through the farm, down into the cellar and out of the back door…
We wake up in a squat, in a grotty apartment in Downtown Seattle, connected by Neural Net Trodes, a shonky laptop and a Satellite Uplink to whichever CAT server was running the PS scenario we’d been abandoned in. Sickle, unsurprisingly, wasn’t with us having piggybacked in from wherever Lamb had set up her back door to the programme. Woozy, we start coming round, ripping off the trodes and clearing our fuzzy heads of the dump shock. Ono’s flat out so I hunker over to him and yank off the neural net. He gives a big sigh, his dying breath, and fucking flatlines right there in front of me.
Ono’s dead. It’s all I can think about. I yanked out those cables and Ono expired. I tell the others but no one really seems to care. Maybe they’re stunned. Maybe they’re just cold. Maybe it’s protocol when you’ve more experience at this shit than me but they just don’t react. They’re utterly compassionless and just start touching base with contacts, making arrangements for medical care for Drifter and to get us hooked back up with our support network and away from this flat, away from anywhere that CAT and the Duke know we’ll be. Hell, Ki-rinn even starts making arrangements to move Ono’s body like it’s some troublesome slab of meat not a fallen comrade who just helped save all lives and get out of that damn programme. I’m seriously pissed at their lack of respect but I bite it back. If they’ll not give a fuck for him, I’ll have to. I call his Sensei in San Fran and break the news to him. Find out where to send the body for the appropriate funerary arrangements.
I’m a wreck man but there’s no respite. We go meet up with Sickle and give our thanks to this Lamb. Seems they have a small team all their own. There’s some Weapons Specialist called Glyph there too. Lamb reveals an element of self interest in helping us out. She needs info on Dreamseed too – for her Employer – and hoped she could trade our rescue for our datasteal. No way. I make it clear we should get Gauge to cough up first then pass a copy on to Lamb. She understands and sends Sickle and Glyph back to San Fran with us to protect her investment. I have no idea why. It’s like they’re some sort of Replacement Killers to keep us alive now that our Street Sam has bought the farm. Disgusting…
Continues: 3/4>
>
Back in San Fran, Gauge refuses to pay up. Fragging Corp lackey rolls over when his board say we don’t have enough info to justify paying out on the run. Ono’s death means less than nothing to these fools, so I tell him to ram it and walk. I feel responsible for Ono’s death. I missed his damn funeral on the road back from Seattle. Duke burnt out the rental vehicle and I had to cough up 25 large to avoid a spell in the slammer. Now this ass thinks he’s gonna stiff us for the dough. Fine, if that’s the way it’s gonna go, I’m getting out. I got into this game to make money not lose it along with people I considered my friends and my last shreds of self respect. Hell it reached a point where I’d be making more money working underneath the bonnet of a car than playing wheelman. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach as I walked out of Horizon. I killed my PAN, headed over to Kitty’s place and hit slobsville. I wanted nothing more to do with the whole sorry business.
Four or five days slipped past without me noticing. The weekend came and went and then a few hours ago Ki-rinn showed up at my lock-up. He listened to me venting steam about how sour things had gone and then gave me his ex-forces perspective on things. Life’s hard. Shit happens. People die on the battlefield. I’ve got problems of my own kid and don’t need to listen to you whine. Helpful shit like that. I think he thought he was telling me a few home truths but he just made me realise I really don’t know him at all.
I thought I could count on him – but he was so damn frosty, like the first time we met. He sees us as expendable assets I think. While we’re alive and contributing to his success we’re useful but after that… I don’t know. I really don’t know. Can I trust him to help me get out of a bad scrape alive or will he cut me loose when the going gets tough? Will any of them?
Ki-rinn did have a point about us all having our own problems though. I pulled my finger out of my ass and went to see Ash not long ago. He’s still my boy and he’s hurting about losing his Bro. He wants to go back to Seattle, partly to finish the job and force Gauge to put his hands in his pockets, partly to help Lamb and the Replacement Killers and above all to find out what happened to his brother. I can deal with that. I can relate.
Ash says he’s only be waiting for me to deal with my hurt and come back to the team to get on with it. We’ve agreed to watch each other’s back and for his sake and the sake of his brother, I’ve told him I’m back in.
Which is why I’m here, laying down this Blog as I collect my gear. Ki-rinn got Gauge to cough up half the wage and bump it to 150k so my bank balance is looking a little healthier. I have my misgivings about this but I’m going to do it. Maybe I can snag a little payback from the Duke for Ono. I’ve had a few days rest and recuperation but the cold, dead, weight in my stomach hasn’t lifted. Am I a Shadowrunner or just a kid with big ideas? Can I do this? Do I want to?
Mood: Grim.
Ends: 4/4>
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 8: 25.05.70>
Ono is dead.
I think it might be my fault and no one seems to give a good Goddamn. That old adage about finding out who your real friends are when it all goes sour is right; these Shadowrunners I’ve been hanging out with aren’t my friends.
They weren’t Ono’s friends. We’re a collection of assets and seems the only one shedding a tear when those assets get expended is me… Frag man. I feel hollow, empty. The emotions have passed. I only know one thing – if these guys only see me as a wheelman, a driver, then from now on, that’s all they get.
We were hit up by a Suit called Gauge who represents a PR firm called Horizon. They run marketing for a game called Perfect Shooter which is manufactured by our friends at Cross Applied Technology. We should have hit the bricks as soon as we heard the name mentioned. CAT is bad Karma for us.
But the offer was 100k each and greed made us hear the man out. Horizon had picked up some scuttlebutt that something called Dreamseed was in some way involved with the Perfect Shooter game. CAT were giving them the brush off and they didn’t like it so they needed some covert investigative work doing to find out as much as possible about Dreamseed. Should they be concerned?
Or was it just a hoax?
We bought a few copies of the game and began playing, figuring we’d need at least a working knowledge of the game if we were going to be able to fit into the sort of gaming circles muttering about Dreamseed. PS turned out to be a realistic-physics first person war-game – it does everything Unreal Tournament does but with scary accuracy. You practically have to take an in-game shower to stop the other grunts catching a waft of your BO on the wind. THAT realistic… Unable to find anything left-field about the game itself, we hit the Gamers forums and by talking the talking, I manage to get one of them to spill the beans. He Emails me a six word file: ‘Dreamseed War, Dreamseed Trickery, Dreamseed Malady,’ and an address in Seattle. Now the fancy names mean nothing to us but an address is something concrete and we resolve to follow it up.
With hindsight, we maybe shouldn’t have gone to Seattle. We leave our friends, contacts and support network behind. Hell we even leave our gear behind. We go by boat, in Ash’s little Smuggler’s Cruiser, even me – a Rigger sans vehicle. Stupidity personified. In short order, I hired a rental pick-up and we blazed to the address where we discovered two murdered twenty-somethings, a copy of the Perfect Shooter game and a letter congratulating some dude called Josh Phillips on his success in the PS Regional Tournament. Ash went fucking white man and showed us a picture of the three flatmates. The one in the middle, Ash tells us, is his long-lost Bro who Ash lost contact with while he was in the Big House a couple of years ago. Stunned, we check the corpses. Neither of them is Ash’ familia so we figure they’re the two other flatmates. Neither of them is called Josh Phillips either, so it looks like JP is an alias. Ki-rinn hits the security footage and we piece together that Ash’ brother won the PS Regional Tournament, received the congratulatory note from CAT, packed a bag, iced his flatmates and relocated to Cross premises in Seattle.
Continues: 1/4>
>
We speculate that CAT are using the PS game to train killers but there’s no catalyst to explain why console geeks should suddenly start capping their homies – at least there’s nothing in the standard game but a bit more research reveals that the tournaments run from secure servers so we can’t access or study the code for clues. You gotta have 100,000 game credits and an invite from SysAdmin to play a tournament and a few hours game play tells me you need to seriously dedicate about a month of non-stop real time play to get to that level. We need an in and opt to stake out one of the local gamers who’s holding down 100,000 credits and looks likely to play in the tournament. We’re smart and tag the eventual winner but end up spending a week in the back of the van, waiting for this kid to go Manchurian Candidate on us, without hitting the paydirt. We’re missing something and have no clue what so we change tack. Ki-rinn raids CAT files for info on Josh Phillips.
The Corp are callous – referring to the tournament winners by consignment numbers rather than by personnel records but Ki-rinn follows the trail to a secure installation in the North Cascades National Park.
We blaze but security is tight – the place is like a military installation.
Fortunately, Drifter has been keeping an ear to the ground back in San Fran and picks up an entirely separate run to drop off a consignment at this self-same depot. He gets a brief look around the inside before hooking up with us and after comparing notes, we decide to go in through the ventilation shafting while Drifter watches our back. We kit up but make a meal of the entry. It’s SNAFU and as we head inside, we know we’re leaving Drifter with no easy task – cover our tracks and beat a hasty retreat. It’s out of our hands. We have to trust the Squaddie Squad to do his bit.
Insertion goes down sweet and we find a nice little bolthole in what we reckon is the commandant’s office. Only thing is, one too many co-incidences start to crop up as Ki-rinn confesses he once served with this commandant in the forces. The guy’s called Duke and has a reputation as a tough SOB. If he’s working for the Corp on this one, it means they’re not pissing about.
Ki-rinn’s wary about hacking the Mainframe for fear of detection but the military security protocols are so tight it means we soon give the game away while sneaking about the place. Ono got himself into a fight with the Padre so the rest of us laid down covering fire against the security response while Ki-rinn made with the relevant downloads. Exfiltrating, we’re on a high, we’ve pulled files on Josh Phillips and a couple of other tournament winners as well as hacking the Mainframe for all the Dreamseed info we can find and we’re out without casualties. That high makes us sloppy and complacent and as I pop out of the ventilation shaft, I find our escape cut off by a squad of CAT’s PS Console Soldiers. Duke has Drifter on his knees with a gun to the back of his head.
It ain’t going down like this. No way. I’ve got my boys in the shaft below me. I think we’re a team. More than a team… I think we’re like fucking brothers. I count on them backing me up and take a swing at the nearest soldier. As the shots rang out, I took a couple of hard hits and went down.
As I pass out, the only thing I know for sure is that I’ve been left high and dry. No one but Ono has followed me out and I can see he’s at gunpoint instantly as my consciousness fades.
I come round in a dilapidated cottage. Hog tied and dumped on the floor with the rest of the team. Seems like there was some sort of fight after all – we’re all bruised and battered and the Duke’s standing over us giving it the big ‘I am’, dark side monologue treatment. He wants answers. I couldn’t give a shit. I tell him some Johnson from Horizon has paid for the datasteal. He seems satisfied but he’s a sadistic bastard. Tells us we’re a real-time training mission for his Console Soldiers now. At the shot, they’ll put the skills they learned in the game hunting us down for real. He hopes we don’t escape, if only because it’ll make his expensive experiment look bad if a bunch of busted up, unarmed Shadowrunners give his boys the slip. The shot, when he fires it, slugs Drifter in the gut and Duke tosses us a bayonet to try and cut ourselves free as he leaves.
Continues: 2/4>
>
Ki-rinn and I manage to work the bayonet around where we can use it. We free the guys quick but Drifter’s in a bad way and can hardly move. We take what improvised weapons we can. Ono grabs the bayonet, I take a piece of the window frame as a makeshift club and everyone else loads up on house bricks.
We blaze, trying to break through the cordon before the Soldiers tighten the noose around us. We get the drop on three of the bastards and Ki-rinn sets out a sweet ambush. My piece of windowsill hardly cuts the mustard against a Squaddie with an automatic rifle but Ono steps into the line of fire while I’m still reliving my Senior Prom and dispatches the goon with a grimace.
Score one for the team man – I could practically see the bullets starting to rifle down the barrel when tall, dark and scary pulled his hero shit for me.
We snaffle the weapons and head back for Drifter only to run into some street-savvy looking Russian guy who seems to have tried to patch Big D’s wound up. He talks fast, tells us he’s called Sickle and has been sent in to Cas Evac us by a Decker called Lamb. Twist is, we’re IN the Perfect Shooter game and Lamb has had to hack the code to put in a back door to let him in and to let us out.
The back door is in the cellar of a farm building a couple of clicks away and we hustle on over. Half the team stay with Drifter to provide covering fire with the stolen AR’s while the rest of us head down to poke the hornets nest. Ono and I go with Sickle and the three of us watch each other’s back as the drek starts to hit the fan. Turns out Shadowrunners are a match for the Console Soldiers. We drop maybe a dozen of them as we move in with our own version of military precision. I grab one of their Hummers and use it as a mobile firing platform and provide cover. In short order, we’re through the farm, down into the cellar and out of the back door…
We wake up in a squat, in a grotty apartment in Downtown Seattle, connected by Neural Net Trodes, a shonky laptop and a Satellite Uplink to whichever CAT server was running the PS scenario we’d been abandoned in. Sickle, unsurprisingly, wasn’t with us having piggybacked in from wherever Lamb had set up her back door to the programme. Woozy, we start coming round, ripping off the trodes and clearing our fuzzy heads of the dump shock. Ono’s flat out so I hunker over to him and yank off the neural net. He gives a big sigh, his dying breath, and fucking flatlines right there in front of me.
Ono’s dead. It’s all I can think about. I yanked out those cables and Ono expired. I tell the others but no one really seems to care. Maybe they’re stunned. Maybe they’re just cold. Maybe it’s protocol when you’ve more experience at this shit than me but they just don’t react. They’re utterly compassionless and just start touching base with contacts, making arrangements for medical care for Drifter and to get us hooked back up with our support network and away from this flat, away from anywhere that CAT and the Duke know we’ll be. Hell, Ki-rinn even starts making arrangements to move Ono’s body like it’s some troublesome slab of meat not a fallen comrade who just helped save all lives and get out of that damn programme. I’m seriously pissed at their lack of respect but I bite it back. If they’ll not give a fuck for him, I’ll have to. I call his Sensei in San Fran and break the news to him. Find out where to send the body for the appropriate funerary arrangements.
I’m a wreck man but there’s no respite. We go meet up with Sickle and give our thanks to this Lamb. Seems they have a small team all their own. There’s some Weapons Specialist called Glyph there too. Lamb reveals an element of self interest in helping us out. She needs info on Dreamseed too – for her Employer – and hoped she could trade our rescue for our datasteal. No way. I make it clear we should get Gauge to cough up first then pass a copy on to Lamb. She understands and sends Sickle and Glyph back to San Fran with us to protect her investment. I have no idea why. It’s like they’re some sort of Replacement Killers to keep us alive now that our Street Sam has bought the farm. Disgusting…
Continues: 3/4>
>
Back in San Fran, Gauge refuses to pay up. Fragging Corp lackey rolls over when his board say we don’t have enough info to justify paying out on the run. Ono’s death means less than nothing to these fools, so I tell him to ram it and walk. I feel responsible for Ono’s death. I missed his damn funeral on the road back from Seattle. Duke burnt out the rental vehicle and I had to cough up 25 large to avoid a spell in the slammer. Now this ass thinks he’s gonna stiff us for the dough. Fine, if that’s the way it’s gonna go, I’m getting out. I got into this game to make money not lose it along with people I considered my friends and my last shreds of self respect. Hell it reached a point where I’d be making more money working underneath the bonnet of a car than playing wheelman. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach as I walked out of Horizon. I killed my PAN, headed over to Kitty’s place and hit slobsville. I wanted nothing more to do with the whole sorry business.
Four or five days slipped past without me noticing. The weekend came and went and then a few hours ago Ki-rinn showed up at my lock-up. He listened to me venting steam about how sour things had gone and then gave me his ex-forces perspective on things. Life’s hard. Shit happens. People die on the battlefield. I’ve got problems of my own kid and don’t need to listen to you whine. Helpful shit like that. I think he thought he was telling me a few home truths but he just made me realise I really don’t know him at all.
I thought I could count on him – but he was so damn frosty, like the first time we met. He sees us as expendable assets I think. While we’re alive and contributing to his success we’re useful but after that… I don’t know. I really don’t know. Can I trust him to help me get out of a bad scrape alive or will he cut me loose when the going gets tough? Will any of them?
Ki-rinn did have a point about us all having our own problems though. I pulled my finger out of my ass and went to see Ash not long ago. He’s still my boy and he’s hurting about losing his Bro. He wants to go back to Seattle, partly to finish the job and force Gauge to put his hands in his pockets, partly to help Lamb and the Replacement Killers and above all to find out what happened to his brother. I can deal with that. I can relate.
Ash says he’s only be waiting for me to deal with my hurt and come back to the team to get on with it. We’ve agreed to watch each other’s back and for his sake and the sake of his brother, I’ve told him I’m back in.
Which is why I’m here, laying down this Blog as I collect my gear. Ki-rinn got Gauge to cough up half the wage and bump it to 150k so my bank balance is looking a little healthier. I have my misgivings about this but I’m going to do it. Maybe I can snag a little payback from the Duke for Ono. I’ve had a few days rest and recuperation but the cold, dead, weight in my stomach hasn’t lifted. Am I a Shadowrunner or just a kid with big ideas? Can I do this? Do I want to?
Mood: Grim.
Ends: 4/4>
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Back into the game.
15th May 2070
Six, Ki-Rin, Sickle, Ono (Glyph), Ash.
The runners Slowly came round. Hands bound behind their backs, on the floor of a crumbling brick building. The Duke stood over them and asked them a few questions. He found out that Horizon had sent the runners to investigate the goings on of Perfect Shooter but little else. The duke didn’t care anyway, these runners were in way over their heads, he had arranged for them to die and then their bodies would be found in some flat, months from now.
He told the runners that his recruits were on an exercise to track and kill the runners, and then to hinder them further, he levelled his gun and shot Drifter.
Dropping the runners a knife to give them a sporting chance, he turned and left.
Drifter was mortally wounded, if he wasn’t evacuated soon, he would die from blood loss and shock.
The runners cut their bonds and fled into the forest, headed for what they thought was west, to where they hoped was some civilisation.
A decker called Lamb had approached sickle. She told him that a bunch of runners were in trouble, and these runners might know a bit more information about the run that she is currently involved in. She wanted Sickle to track them down and help them escape.
Stumbling across a small three-man patrol, the runners set up an ambush, armed with a knife, a metal bar, and half a house brick they leapt and panned the surprised young soldiers. Arming up with the dropped weapons, the runners now felt that they had a fighting chance.
The runners were Tracked and found by Sickle. After they exchanged a few words and they realised that he was here to help, he dropped the bombshell. The runners were in the Perfect Shooter mainframe. Only the ASIST overrides had been turned off, so death in the game resulted neural death for the meat body. Sickle also told the runners that his contact Lamb had programmed a back door out of the program, all they would have to do is get to the farm where the code was embedded and escape.
The runners made their way to the farm and found that it was the spawning point for the game players. Two hummers were parked outside with what appeared to be the game coordinator directing the dispersal of the soldiers.
The runner’s split up, with assault rifles trained on the CO, the rest stole round to the rear. They stumbled in two guards, and opened fire, this kicked off the fight and the sound of discharging weapons echoed around the computer simulation.
After a prolonged firelight the runners found the back door and went through. Coming round the runners found themselves in a slummy building near Seattle downtown. Drifter was out cold and had to be disconnected, as had Ono, only when the cables were pulled from Ono’s head did he convulse once, let out a gasp, and then was still.
Ono was dead.
The runners cleared out. They wanted to get back to San Fran, once they had spoken to the people who helped them escape. And they tracked them down to a Vory club in Seattle downtown.
Thanking Lamb, and the man who had come to their aid, Sickle, the runners met another. Called Glyph, she seemed to be fire support, drafted in by Lamb in case this meeting was less cordial. Glyph was a San Franciscan, out here for whatever reason.
Lamb explained that she was a runner, investigating the death of the Ares programmed AI, Thetis. This AI maintained the Ares satellite network (which includes military and civilian communications) but was destroyed by some line of code. Thetis transmitted two words before it was deleted. Eclipse, and Dreamseed.
Lamb discovered a few bits and pieces about Eclipse and Dreamseed, but not enough. She discovered that the runners were coded for termination and decided that if they were enemies of Cross Applied Technologies, then they may be of some use to her.
Eclipse was a strip of code salvaged from the first matrix crash. This code was modified and instigated the second crash of 2064. And now it appears it was involved with the destruction of Thetis. Dreamseed appears to be some program run by Cross Applied. Broken down into three parts. War, Malady and Trickery. Lamb had also found that there were two other people involved in the project. People outside Cross. A decker called Download, and someone known as Silk. She was going after the Download but wanted the runners to track Silk.
The runners wanted to head back to San Fran though. Six had taken Ono’s death badly, and they were all battered and tired. They left.
Ash was keen to wrap up the payment from Horizon and arranged a meet with Gage. But it seemed Horizon were not happy that the runners had got all of the info about Dreamseed. Six stormed out of the meeting, Ash had a shouting match with their contact but there was little he could do. Ki-Rin negotiated further funding, and agreed to continue with the job, Gage also got Glyph and Sickle onboard.
The runners had some down time. Six dedicated a piece of poetry to Ono’s memory, the others relaxed and healed up. Six needed some time to get over the passing of the man who had saved his life a few times. The others waited for the time to go.
Thursday 29th May 2070.
The runners got back together. Meeting outside Ki-Rin’s apartment. They briefly discussed what was to come, before jumping into the cars, and heading back to Seattle.
TBC.
Six, Ki-Rin, Sickle, Ono (Glyph), Ash.
The runners Slowly came round. Hands bound behind their backs, on the floor of a crumbling brick building. The Duke stood over them and asked them a few questions. He found out that Horizon had sent the runners to investigate the goings on of Perfect Shooter but little else. The duke didn’t care anyway, these runners were in way over their heads, he had arranged for them to die and then their bodies would be found in some flat, months from now.
He told the runners that his recruits were on an exercise to track and kill the runners, and then to hinder them further, he levelled his gun and shot Drifter.
Dropping the runners a knife to give them a sporting chance, he turned and left.
Drifter was mortally wounded, if he wasn’t evacuated soon, he would die from blood loss and shock.
The runners cut their bonds and fled into the forest, headed for what they thought was west, to where they hoped was some civilisation.
A decker called Lamb had approached sickle. She told him that a bunch of runners were in trouble, and these runners might know a bit more information about the run that she is currently involved in. She wanted Sickle to track them down and help them escape.
Stumbling across a small three-man patrol, the runners set up an ambush, armed with a knife, a metal bar, and half a house brick they leapt and panned the surprised young soldiers. Arming up with the dropped weapons, the runners now felt that they had a fighting chance.
The runners were Tracked and found by Sickle. After they exchanged a few words and they realised that he was here to help, he dropped the bombshell. The runners were in the Perfect Shooter mainframe. Only the ASIST overrides had been turned off, so death in the game resulted neural death for the meat body. Sickle also told the runners that his contact Lamb had programmed a back door out of the program, all they would have to do is get to the farm where the code was embedded and escape.
The runners made their way to the farm and found that it was the spawning point for the game players. Two hummers were parked outside with what appeared to be the game coordinator directing the dispersal of the soldiers.
The runner’s split up, with assault rifles trained on the CO, the rest stole round to the rear. They stumbled in two guards, and opened fire, this kicked off the fight and the sound of discharging weapons echoed around the computer simulation.
After a prolonged firelight the runners found the back door and went through. Coming round the runners found themselves in a slummy building near Seattle downtown. Drifter was out cold and had to be disconnected, as had Ono, only when the cables were pulled from Ono’s head did he convulse once, let out a gasp, and then was still.
Ono was dead.
The runners cleared out. They wanted to get back to San Fran, once they had spoken to the people who helped them escape. And they tracked them down to a Vory club in Seattle downtown.
Thanking Lamb, and the man who had come to their aid, Sickle, the runners met another. Called Glyph, she seemed to be fire support, drafted in by Lamb in case this meeting was less cordial. Glyph was a San Franciscan, out here for whatever reason.
Lamb explained that she was a runner, investigating the death of the Ares programmed AI, Thetis. This AI maintained the Ares satellite network (which includes military and civilian communications) but was destroyed by some line of code. Thetis transmitted two words before it was deleted. Eclipse, and Dreamseed.
Lamb discovered a few bits and pieces about Eclipse and Dreamseed, but not enough. She discovered that the runners were coded for termination and decided that if they were enemies of Cross Applied Technologies, then they may be of some use to her.
Eclipse was a strip of code salvaged from the first matrix crash. This code was modified and instigated the second crash of 2064. And now it appears it was involved with the destruction of Thetis. Dreamseed appears to be some program run by Cross Applied. Broken down into three parts. War, Malady and Trickery. Lamb had also found that there were two other people involved in the project. People outside Cross. A decker called Download, and someone known as Silk. She was going after the Download but wanted the runners to track Silk.
The runners wanted to head back to San Fran though. Six had taken Ono’s death badly, and they were all battered and tired. They left.
Ash was keen to wrap up the payment from Horizon and arranged a meet with Gage. But it seemed Horizon were not happy that the runners had got all of the info about Dreamseed. Six stormed out of the meeting, Ash had a shouting match with their contact but there was little he could do. Ki-Rin negotiated further funding, and agreed to continue with the job, Gage also got Glyph and Sickle onboard.
The runners had some down time. Six dedicated a piece of poetry to Ono’s memory, the others relaxed and healed up. Six needed some time to get over the passing of the man who had saved his life a few times. The others waited for the time to go.
Thursday 29th May 2070.
The runners got back together. Meeting outside Ki-Rin’s apartment. They briefly discussed what was to come, before jumping into the cars, and heading back to Seattle.
TBC.
Sickle
Born on the streets of Seattle, Sickle had nothing. His mother died before he reallyknew her, his father was a drunk and violent man. By the time Sickle turned 14 he was on the rap sheet of Seattle’s finest. Burglary, assault, grand theft auto. He spent as much time in jail as he did in the squat Sickle called home until one officer took him under her wing.
She enrolled the kid into the SSBA (South Seattle Boxing Academy) where he learned discipline, how to look after himself, and how to fight.
Life without a SIN is hard but he copes. Working as an enforcer for the Vory (Russian Mafia) for the last 5 years had put money into his pocket, and taught him life lessons, some that he won’t forget, some others he tries hard to.
It is time to move on, Sickle knows that there is other work out there, rather than just following his Vory paymaster, it’s time to pick and choose the work for himself. Sickle has heard it called Shadowrunning, but that’s just pretentious crap. It’s just breaking kneecaps for a frag load more nuyen.
She enrolled the kid into the SSBA (South Seattle Boxing Academy) where he learned discipline, how to look after himself, and how to fight.
Life without a SIN is hard but he copes. Working as an enforcer for the Vory (Russian Mafia) for the last 5 years had put money into his pocket, and taught him life lessons, some that he won’t forget, some others he tries hard to.
It is time to move on, Sickle knows that there is other work out there, rather than just following his Vory paymaster, it’s time to pick and choose the work for himself. Sickle has heard it called Shadowrunning, but that’s just pretentious crap. It’s just breaking kneecaps for a frag load more nuyen.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Glyph
By S.Burns
Glyph
Born to unknown parents Glyph was dumped on the door of an Orphanage with no letter or information with regard to her age or identity. For the first few years of her life Glyph was kept in the orphanage and raised in a formal uncaring manner. She had been given the name Marie but she hated it and, even at the early age she was, decided that she wanted it changed. None of the people in the Orphanage, due to budget cuts and low staffing levels, we able to spend enough time with any of the children.
After being at the orphanage for 2 years Glyph was put onto the foster list awaiting a foster family to come forward and the following 6 months she was made to sit in with families and “act properly and well behaved” luckily Glyph was smart enough to be able to tell if a family were nice or not and for the first 12 months she was able to avoid being “selected”
By her 4th year in the Orphanage Glyph was asked to meet another family and by this time the whole process was becoming a nuisance rather than a hopeful endeavour. With reluctance Glyph stepped into the room with a young woman and a slightly older man. The woman was sitting across the table and the man next to her was holding her hand.
Glyph took one look at the two, ran across and threw her arms around the woman’s neck. It was a short lived interview, and after 30 minutes the woman who was named Jade agreed to adopt Glyph, the paper work was drawn up and the new family left the Orphanage. On the way back to the woman’s house Glyph just stared at Jade. She was beautiful and radiated something else, something she could not put her mind too.
Over the years Glyph learned a lot from Jade and her friends, especially one called Wisp, a soldier for hire that visited her mother on various occasions, normally at least once a week. Wisp was working with a group of mercenaries that Glyph heard called Shadow-runners.
Glyph learned that these Shadow-runners, people who operated outside of the “Law”, did various jobs for whoever asked and could do the job however they wanted as long as they got it done. Glyph could tell that her mother wanted to go with Wisp a lot of the time but was never able too, she helped from the back ground as opposed to being directly involved.
Over the years Wisp and Jade taught Glyph all she would need to know about how to sneak into and out of buildings, how to use blades and guns and Glyph’s foster Dad even helped out with the Weapons side of things, he was an ex weapons trainer for one of the Security companies a company called Red-samurai but left when he became disillusioned with their uncaring attitude towards both their clients and the general public, although Glyph always thought it was because of the conflicting interest between work and home.
By the age of 18 Glyph was old enough to forge a life of her own, she had built up a little shop customising weapons for Wisp and Jades friends but wanted more. She always felt that the only reason people used her shop was because Jade and Wisp asked them to go, not because of her ability and as such she told her mom she would be leaving and moving to San Francisco.
Jade and Wisp both knew people in San-Francisco and were happy that it was safe enough to let her go as she could be kept an eye on, even if it were not as close as they would like.
Within one year of arriving in San-Francisco Glyph had invested in a Facility. The facility was her only income and within it walls she spent her time customising weapons and Armour to any client’s wishes. She met a guy when he can in for a weapon and they hit it off immediately and within a few months he had moved in and was helping out in the shop.
Donnie was a Rigger, one from out of town originally but he had gotten involved in a garage not far from her facility that had been robbed so often that all of the staff were starting to arm themselves, needless to say he quit his job and learnt Glyphs trade and started to help out.
All was well for a number of months and the two were happy as could be, until a knock was heard at the door in the middle of the night. Glyph grabbed her Pistol and went to the door. Standing in the door was one of her customers, a shadowrunner that she had done some work for a number of times. The guy was beaten and was in a terrible state.
After talking to the guy, a runner by the name of Glitch, it turned out that Ares, a big Mega-corp has become pissed off that Glyph was customising their weapons and had threatened him if he used her services again he would “Dissapear” as normal the Corp had hired other runners to do the deed but one of the runners was a little outspoken and dropped the clanger that it was Ares who employed them. Glyph and Donnie patched him up as best they could and called his street doc a guy called Mal and had him picked up. Disturbed the two sat up for the night and wondered if any of their other customers had been “Roughed up”
Over the next could of days they heard from one of their other contacts although he was too scared to come and visit he told them some Ares goons had roughed him up and that he needed 12 stitches to his cheek, others just simply didn’t come back.
Two weeks after the initial report of threats to clients, Glyph and Donnie were working in the facility customising a heavy machine gun for a Security company vehicle, Glyph went to the Kitchen to get a drink for the two of them and heard a smash from the workshop. Running downstairs she saw flames billowing around her equipment and tools and Donnie unconscious on the floor. Running towards Donnie Glyph was hit in the head by something and blacked out.
When Glyph awoke she thought she was blind, initially she could not move and blackness was all she could see. After a few moments she was able to move enough to lift a huge piece of Aluminium sheeting off of her and get up. All around her were the remnants of a big fire, it appeared that the Aluminium sheet had acted as a heat shield and apart from a few minor burns she was largely unhurt.
After a few minutes with a muddled head Glyph remembered about Donnie and ran over to where she last saw him. As she reached the spot her stomach turned and she threw up. Donnie’s body lay where she had last seen it, charred and deformed. The gases in his stomach had expanded under the heat and his insides had ruptured out of his body blackening in the extreme heat.
Nothing was left of her facility and her Boyfriend had been killed. Glyph had found a piece of paper with her address on it and a phone number above it with the name Mr Johnson by the side of it. Phoning the number she got through to the secretary of an Ares executive and when she asked for mr Johnson she was told he was “unavailable”. Those bastards would pay. Anger started to build up inside her and she knew what must be done. It wasn’t like she could bring Donnie back and as she had no SIN (Jade had not re-applied for her after the crash of 2064 as she thought it was just another way to track people) so she had no insurance to re-build the facility.
One week after the incident Glyph was joined by her parents and Wisp. When they heard what had happened they moved down to the area to support her. They were not able to pay to re-build her facility but they would offer all that they had to help.
Glyph did not want them to put their lives on hold for her, she wanted to sort this out on her own, all that she requested was that if she needed help finding out any information that they would help her in that way. They agreed and were proud that glyph wanted to do this on her own.
Glyph cleared out the rubbish from the facility and arranged a funeral for Donnie spending some of her savings and vowed that she would keep the facility and build it back to how it was before remembering that he had said that he never wanted to leave her or the job behind.
Glyph then spent the rest of her savings on Cyberware. She had not been blessed as a mage or an Adept so she needed the edge in another way and she went for equipment she knew would help her. After weeks of recuperation she climbed into Donnie’s car put on her sunglasses and headed out, if she was to get back at Ares, she was going to need to have a team…..
Glyph
Born to unknown parents Glyph was dumped on the door of an Orphanage with no letter or information with regard to her age or identity. For the first few years of her life Glyph was kept in the orphanage and raised in a formal uncaring manner. She had been given the name Marie but she hated it and, even at the early age she was, decided that she wanted it changed. None of the people in the Orphanage, due to budget cuts and low staffing levels, we able to spend enough time with any of the children.
After being at the orphanage for 2 years Glyph was put onto the foster list awaiting a foster family to come forward and the following 6 months she was made to sit in with families and “act properly and well behaved” luckily Glyph was smart enough to be able to tell if a family were nice or not and for the first 12 months she was able to avoid being “selected”
By her 4th year in the Orphanage Glyph was asked to meet another family and by this time the whole process was becoming a nuisance rather than a hopeful endeavour. With reluctance Glyph stepped into the room with a young woman and a slightly older man. The woman was sitting across the table and the man next to her was holding her hand.
Glyph took one look at the two, ran across and threw her arms around the woman’s neck. It was a short lived interview, and after 30 minutes the woman who was named Jade agreed to adopt Glyph, the paper work was drawn up and the new family left the Orphanage. On the way back to the woman’s house Glyph just stared at Jade. She was beautiful and radiated something else, something she could not put her mind too.
Over the years Glyph learned a lot from Jade and her friends, especially one called Wisp, a soldier for hire that visited her mother on various occasions, normally at least once a week. Wisp was working with a group of mercenaries that Glyph heard called Shadow-runners.
Glyph learned that these Shadow-runners, people who operated outside of the “Law”, did various jobs for whoever asked and could do the job however they wanted as long as they got it done. Glyph could tell that her mother wanted to go with Wisp a lot of the time but was never able too, she helped from the back ground as opposed to being directly involved.
Over the years Wisp and Jade taught Glyph all she would need to know about how to sneak into and out of buildings, how to use blades and guns and Glyph’s foster Dad even helped out with the Weapons side of things, he was an ex weapons trainer for one of the Security companies a company called Red-samurai but left when he became disillusioned with their uncaring attitude towards both their clients and the general public, although Glyph always thought it was because of the conflicting interest between work and home.
By the age of 18 Glyph was old enough to forge a life of her own, she had built up a little shop customising weapons for Wisp and Jades friends but wanted more. She always felt that the only reason people used her shop was because Jade and Wisp asked them to go, not because of her ability and as such she told her mom she would be leaving and moving to San Francisco.
Jade and Wisp both knew people in San-Francisco and were happy that it was safe enough to let her go as she could be kept an eye on, even if it were not as close as they would like.
Within one year of arriving in San-Francisco Glyph had invested in a Facility. The facility was her only income and within it walls she spent her time customising weapons and Armour to any client’s wishes. She met a guy when he can in for a weapon and they hit it off immediately and within a few months he had moved in and was helping out in the shop.
Donnie was a Rigger, one from out of town originally but he had gotten involved in a garage not far from her facility that had been robbed so often that all of the staff were starting to arm themselves, needless to say he quit his job and learnt Glyphs trade and started to help out.
All was well for a number of months and the two were happy as could be, until a knock was heard at the door in the middle of the night. Glyph grabbed her Pistol and went to the door. Standing in the door was one of her customers, a shadowrunner that she had done some work for a number of times. The guy was beaten and was in a terrible state.
After talking to the guy, a runner by the name of Glitch, it turned out that Ares, a big Mega-corp has become pissed off that Glyph was customising their weapons and had threatened him if he used her services again he would “Dissapear” as normal the Corp had hired other runners to do the deed but one of the runners was a little outspoken and dropped the clanger that it was Ares who employed them. Glyph and Donnie patched him up as best they could and called his street doc a guy called Mal and had him picked up. Disturbed the two sat up for the night and wondered if any of their other customers had been “Roughed up”
Over the next could of days they heard from one of their other contacts although he was too scared to come and visit he told them some Ares goons had roughed him up and that he needed 12 stitches to his cheek, others just simply didn’t come back.
Two weeks after the initial report of threats to clients, Glyph and Donnie were working in the facility customising a heavy machine gun for a Security company vehicle, Glyph went to the Kitchen to get a drink for the two of them and heard a smash from the workshop. Running downstairs she saw flames billowing around her equipment and tools and Donnie unconscious on the floor. Running towards Donnie Glyph was hit in the head by something and blacked out.
When Glyph awoke she thought she was blind, initially she could not move and blackness was all she could see. After a few moments she was able to move enough to lift a huge piece of Aluminium sheeting off of her and get up. All around her were the remnants of a big fire, it appeared that the Aluminium sheet had acted as a heat shield and apart from a few minor burns she was largely unhurt.
After a few minutes with a muddled head Glyph remembered about Donnie and ran over to where she last saw him. As she reached the spot her stomach turned and she threw up. Donnie’s body lay where she had last seen it, charred and deformed. The gases in his stomach had expanded under the heat and his insides had ruptured out of his body blackening in the extreme heat.
Nothing was left of her facility and her Boyfriend had been killed. Glyph had found a piece of paper with her address on it and a phone number above it with the name Mr Johnson by the side of it. Phoning the number she got through to the secretary of an Ares executive and when she asked for mr Johnson she was told he was “unavailable”. Those bastards would pay. Anger started to build up inside her and she knew what must be done. It wasn’t like she could bring Donnie back and as she had no SIN (Jade had not re-applied for her after the crash of 2064 as she thought it was just another way to track people) so she had no insurance to re-build the facility.
One week after the incident Glyph was joined by her parents and Wisp. When they heard what had happened they moved down to the area to support her. They were not able to pay to re-build her facility but they would offer all that they had to help.
Glyph did not want them to put their lives on hold for her, she wanted to sort this out on her own, all that she requested was that if she needed help finding out any information that they would help her in that way. They agreed and were proud that glyph wanted to do this on her own.
Glyph cleared out the rubbish from the facility and arranged a funeral for Donnie spending some of her savings and vowed that she would keep the facility and build it back to how it was before remembering that he had said that he never wanted to leave her or the job behind.
Glyph then spent the rest of her savings on Cyberware. She had not been blessed as a mage or an Adept so she needed the edge in another way and she went for equipment she knew would help her. After weeks of recuperation she climbed into Donnie’s car put on her sunglasses and headed out, if she was to get back at Ares, she was going to need to have a team…..
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
No update, update.
There is no game this week due to the GM taking his girlfriend to the Race for Life. However next week will see the introduction of one and maybe two new PC’s, and the spectacular loss of at least one of the characters.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Run 10. Perfect Shooter pt2 (storage depot)
Friday May 12th 2070
Six, Ash, Ki-Rin, Ono, Drifter.
Drifter took a job. Simple delivery run, collect a package and deliver it to a corporate depot. The helicopter that dropped him off, took off and left him with a big long walk home.
Setting off he flicked on his PAN to call a cab, and found that a couple of runners he knew were less than a mile away. Drifter put the call through, and they met up.
Once the runners found out that Drifter had been into the same depot that they were heading to, Ki-Rin and Drifter set off back to have a good scout, they found the compound was secure, but a series of 6 air con vents positioned outside the perimeter fence which seemed a better access than trying a full frontal assault.
Falling back to the van they outlined their plan, cut through the vent covers and with the aid of climbing gear drop down into the tubing and explore from there.
After a brief visit to Richmond to buy up the necessary kit, the runners were in position by nightfall. They hid the rented Avis truck in a ditch and leopard crawled to the vent. Six burnt through the heavy grill that covered the vent and Ono held it so it didn’t fall. After they gained access they re positioned the grill with Drifter up on the surface to clear up and keep watch.
The runners crawled through vents for over an hour before they came across the first view of the underground base through a large vent. The drop into the underground marshalling yard was to high and the security was tight so they backed off to find a better entry point.
Descending another level they found an air extractor vent went directly into an empty office. Slipping inside they were pleased to find it was the base commanders office an ex-British army office who called himself the Duke. Ki-Rin knew of him from his days in the service, and knew that he was a bit of a wild card.
Six rummaged through the filing cabinets and found Ash’s brother file, and took a few more for evidence.
The runners then felt that they hadn’t got enough info from here and were going to go looking for more, Ki-Rin went active on his PAN and started hacking the computer systems, this put the base on alert. Guards descended on their location and the runners had to fight hard.
Beating the guards back the runners welded shut a door to the rest of the base, this stopped them from being attacked from the rear as they pulled back out of the base through the vent systems.
Drifter was not having such and easy time of it. Hauling 400 metres of rope back to the van he was an easy target for the patrol that was already searching for something funny out near the vents. Drifter practically stumbled into the two guards who set up near the rental 4x4.
Duke monitored the COM burble from his patrols and decided that these insurgents must be trying to retreat the way they came in, and when he heard about the runner captured he took a squad to meet the runners coming out of the vent.
Six was the first to clamber out of the tube, glancing over he saw that Drifter was on his knees with a gun pressed to the back of his head, Six spotted more soldiers guns trained on him, on the vent, and on Drifter. Six painted the targets with his PAN for the others to pick up on then pretended to comply with the demands to lay down. Six had hung onto the tailored golf putter found in Dukes office and hefted it once before bringing it hard down across the side of one of the soldiers faces.
Ono, the next in the pipe was slow to react and the sound of gunfire rattles across the forest. Ono eventually flew out but was hit with a hail of bullets, Ki-Rin emerged next, dropping one of the young shooters, and Ash used the pipe to give him some cover as he returned fire.
Six was already down; Drifter received a swift blow to the back of his head, which knocked the spark out of him. Ki-Rin was dropped by two bursts and Ash was shot and fell back into the pipe unconscious.
Ono, the troll, stood as he was hit by multiple rounds, his friends dropped around him, he bellowed and charged, sword drawn at Duke. A single shot rang out and the troll slumped to the ground.
Duke stood smelling the cordite in the air. He needed these runners alive to get some answers out of them. He ordered the Soldiers to replace the stick/shock rounds for the standard ammo clips, and to carry the unconscious forms into the supply depot.
To Be Continued…
Six, Ash, Ki-Rin, Ono, Drifter.
Drifter took a job. Simple delivery run, collect a package and deliver it to a corporate depot. The helicopter that dropped him off, took off and left him with a big long walk home.
Setting off he flicked on his PAN to call a cab, and found that a couple of runners he knew were less than a mile away. Drifter put the call through, and they met up.
Once the runners found out that Drifter had been into the same depot that they were heading to, Ki-Rin and Drifter set off back to have a good scout, they found the compound was secure, but a series of 6 air con vents positioned outside the perimeter fence which seemed a better access than trying a full frontal assault.
Falling back to the van they outlined their plan, cut through the vent covers and with the aid of climbing gear drop down into the tubing and explore from there.
After a brief visit to Richmond to buy up the necessary kit, the runners were in position by nightfall. They hid the rented Avis truck in a ditch and leopard crawled to the vent. Six burnt through the heavy grill that covered the vent and Ono held it so it didn’t fall. After they gained access they re positioned the grill with Drifter up on the surface to clear up and keep watch.
The runners crawled through vents for over an hour before they came across the first view of the underground base through a large vent. The drop into the underground marshalling yard was to high and the security was tight so they backed off to find a better entry point.
Descending another level they found an air extractor vent went directly into an empty office. Slipping inside they were pleased to find it was the base commanders office an ex-British army office who called himself the Duke. Ki-Rin knew of him from his days in the service, and knew that he was a bit of a wild card.
Six rummaged through the filing cabinets and found Ash’s brother file, and took a few more for evidence.
The runners then felt that they hadn’t got enough info from here and were going to go looking for more, Ki-Rin went active on his PAN and started hacking the computer systems, this put the base on alert. Guards descended on their location and the runners had to fight hard.
Beating the guards back the runners welded shut a door to the rest of the base, this stopped them from being attacked from the rear as they pulled back out of the base through the vent systems.
Drifter was not having such and easy time of it. Hauling 400 metres of rope back to the van he was an easy target for the patrol that was already searching for something funny out near the vents. Drifter practically stumbled into the two guards who set up near the rental 4x4.
Duke monitored the COM burble from his patrols and decided that these insurgents must be trying to retreat the way they came in, and when he heard about the runner captured he took a squad to meet the runners coming out of the vent.
Six was the first to clamber out of the tube, glancing over he saw that Drifter was on his knees with a gun pressed to the back of his head, Six spotted more soldiers guns trained on him, on the vent, and on Drifter. Six painted the targets with his PAN for the others to pick up on then pretended to comply with the demands to lay down. Six had hung onto the tailored golf putter found in Dukes office and hefted it once before bringing it hard down across the side of one of the soldiers faces.
Ono, the next in the pipe was slow to react and the sound of gunfire rattles across the forest. Ono eventually flew out but was hit with a hail of bullets, Ki-Rin emerged next, dropping one of the young shooters, and Ash used the pipe to give him some cover as he returned fire.
Six was already down; Drifter received a swift blow to the back of his head, which knocked the spark out of him. Ki-Rin was dropped by two bursts and Ash was shot and fell back into the pipe unconscious.
Ono, the troll, stood as he was hit by multiple rounds, his friends dropped around him, he bellowed and charged, sword drawn at Duke. A single shot rang out and the troll slumped to the ground.
Duke stood smelling the cordite in the air. He needed these runners alive to get some answers out of them. He ordered the Soldiers to replace the stick/shock rounds for the standard ammo clips, and to carry the unconscious forms into the supply depot.
To Be Continued…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
