Thursday 26th October 2070
Glyph, Ki-Rin, Six, Ash, Drifter
Glyph, Ki-Rin and Ash returned from the barrens with the business card that they had acquired from the gang called the Whites. Six was back up and well, and had met Drifter who was back in town looking for work. The team all met back up and discussed their options.
Ki-Rin was the first to do some legwork in the matrix. He tracked down the number for the Mr. Johnson and hacked into his comlink. He had some security but Ki-Rin bypassed that with ease and was able to have a sniff round. The Mr. Johnson was a Lone Star Facilitator, whatever that meant, and he had files on hundreds of people including Dr. Ford. The data itself was deleted though. Six contacted Croner, his Lone Star contact and found out that a Facilitator was the Lone Star equivalent of the Company man. He arranged for things that the normal bobby on the beat can’t do.
They decided after some debate to arrange for a meeting with this Johnson, and Drifter was going to make the meet as he hadn’t been seen by anyone involved in this shadowrun and was the least likely to trigger suspicions.
The team decamped to the Bowlarama and Ice rink complex, and set themselves up in various locations within eavesdropping distance of Drifter. The Johnson arrived and quickly deduced who it was he needed to meet. After introductions they asked him about Dr. Manton Ford, and after a fee was negotiated, he told them that he was solely responsible for Dr. Ford’s disappearance. He worked for Cross before he moved across to Lone Star, and while there was instructed to extract Ford and move him to Nixon by someone higher up in Cross Applied Technologies. Ford’s life was being threatened and Johnson’s job was to make him disappear. After scrubbing his identity and hiding him out in the barrens for a few days, Dr. Manton Ford became John Austin, resident of Nixon, and employee of Tectonic Industries.
The runners had been to Nixon before when they had launched the attack on the underwater facility at Pyramid lake. The team kitted up and set off.
Arriving late into the afternoon the runners headed directly round to the home address given to them for Manton Ford, and after a bit of surveillance Ki-Rin and Ash went in with some smooth talking and good hacking they were inside the flat without a problem. It was an off the peg residence with standard fixtures and fittings and barely any personal touches. They did find a smashed up comlink and after traling through the damaged memory they found that Ford was receiving instructions from Dominic [assumed to be Dominic Cross] and his demands appeared to be driving Ford to acts of frustration, including the smashed comlink. Ki-Rin scanned the airwaves for any other signals in the building and found that there was a camera that was fixed in the lighting. Not part of the building security and the team suspected that it was there to keep an eye on Ford. There was nothing that they could do about the signals that had already been broadcast, but Ki-Rin recovered the hard memory and watched back the moments that led Ford to smash his comlink and then leave the apartment the following morning.
The runners feared that he had become spooked by Dominic’s demands and did a search on his credit trail and car. They were surprised and pleased to discover that he hadn’t fled as first thought and was in fact smack bang back at the facility that they had bombed not so long ago.
It was about now that the Juggler informed Ash that his brother, Blake, had been drafted into Cross Applied Technologies mini army, called Seraphim. Ash took the information on board but could do nothing about it at the time.
The team headed off to have another look, and after parking up in the same place that they did last time out and walking the trail that they did they looked down onto a building site. A lot of the pre-fab buildings had gone, and some kind of bio-dome was being erected over the whole site. There were dive teams working the lake, and there was a good deal of construction activity all over the place.
Ki-Rin cracked out his sniper cannon and started scoping the site. He picked out their mark, Ford, inside a building talking to a site foreman, and while Glyph tumbled her way into a better position, Six dispatched the flyspy.
The flyspy made it’s way in and using a circuitous route crawled it’s way onto Ford’s jacket, but the keen eyed foreman spotted it and swatted it thinking it to be a biting bug. When they saw that the insect was actually a small drone, Ford got onto the phone. The runners knew the game was up and moved. Ki-Rin handed over the sniper cannon to Glyph and led the walking charge down toward the compound with Ash and Drifter in tow. Six remote controlled the trio of vehicles to the site and ran to meet up with them.
Entering the site wasn’t too hard, the civilian contractors fell under Ki-Rin’s stick-shock rounds and the trio made their way quickly toward the building where Ford was. A helicopter thundered overhead, a rapid response troop transporter flew low. Glyph started shooting at it but didn’t have enough time to bring down the chopper before it was able to unload its cargo of six heavily armoured soldiers. A squad of Seraphim troopers.
They moved quickly and began shooting up the team who had made their way inside the building and had dropped Manton Ford. Bullets flew and the runners found themselves fighting a desperate battle with Glyph firing armour piercing shot after another, even these shots were being mostly deflected by their armour. Ash and Drifter were taken down, and only with the aid of their team did they survive.
After the smoke had cleared and the team had survived did what had transpired dawn on Ash, who frantically checked the bodies of the Seraphim soldiers to see of they were his brother. None were, but this didn’t stop the rush of emotion which took over Ash.
The others were out of there, with an unconscious Ford and Six knew that now was not the time for Ash to be soul searching, he picked him up and bundled him into his car and the team left the scene.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Pig in the Barrens
Wednesday 25th October 2070
Ki-Rin, Ash, Glyph.
The runners have been approached by The Juggler who has told them of his friend Book, who has taken into his possession an orachalcum book that had belonged to Dominic Cross and was in some way related to the Shedim, Allisom. The Juggler has since been informed that the book could be key to destroying Allisom and now wants the runners to help him find his friend and the book for the fee of 50k and the promise that the Juggler will do everything in his power to find Ash’s brother, Blake.
The runners had tangled with Book more recently that the Jugglers last sighting, and remembered that they had seen him headed for Las Vegas with an unidentified man in a cowboy hat. They had traced him to the Volcano, a club in Vegas. They had also seen Book at a party that had been held by Dr. Manton ford, a man that they were employed to terminate, but failed to do so.
It was nearly 3am by the time that they had pooled their information, but they were keen to make the move there and then and rushed round to the house where they had spied Manton Ford. Six was beginning to come down with some kind of flu that was making it hard for him to focus and he elected to stay in the van while the others went in.
They had spotted that security had been ramped up since the last time they were parked outside the doctors AAA mansion but Ki-Rin worked the security from the matrix, disabled the alarms, and looped the cameras to playback the previous night. They then headed over toward the front gate. A pair of security guards spotted them but did nothing as they were presently only loitering. They didn’t seem to care for the idle banter that the runners were offering, so Glyph opened fire on them, Ki-Rin dropped the second before Ash could even get his hand on his gun.
The trio stole into the property and made their way into the house. Ki-Rin mooched around downstairs and found a fridge full of beer. He helped himself and couldn’t help but think that Manton Ford didn’t seem the type to drink this much beer.
Ash and Glyph headed up stairs, and Ash made his way into the main bedroom, stick-shocking the pair in the bed. He then flicked the light on and drew back the covers to find a young couple now comatose. The man he recognised, an up and coming simsense musician called Johnny Rock.
The runners had a brief discussion before leaving. Ash convinced Ki-Rin to find out when the house had been sold and where ford had gone, and after a bit of a data search Ki-Rin found that Ford had stopped paying his rent from July 1st and had defaulted the house. Not only his household bills stopped being paid, everything, his SIN trace, transactions, his comlink activity, all had stopped on the 1st of July. The runners retired for the night planning on heading out to Las Vegas the following morning.
Six’s fever got progressively worse, and by the morning he was in no state to do anything but lie in bed.
Thursday 26th October 2070
Ash got a mysterious message left on his comlink advising him that if he was to find Dr. Ford, then it might be worth talking to Sergeant Buck at the NRA shooting range in downtown. The team met at Ki-Rin’s before heading off to the range.
The team went through a few checks at the range before they were let in, and they met up with Sergeant Buck, a shooting instructor. They asked about Dr. Ford, and after some money changed hands, Buck told them that he used to be part of a Cross Applied Technologies elite guard called Seraphim, he quit when the Corporation began to fall apart and his squad was being bolstered with “console kids” who had only done simulator missions. But the last mission he had done before he left involved Dr. Manton Ford. For some reason Cross (or whoever his employer was that day) wanted him extracting for his own safety, and then have him delivered out to the barrens where he was to be handed over to a street gang called the Whites. He gave the runners the coordinates and told them that the gang leader was called Silence. The runners chatted for a bit longer, and one ex-forces man to another Ki-Rin made a new contact.
The team decided to head out. Ki-Rin bought a third hand scrambler bike, and then joined Ash and Glyph on the rat bike that they had acquired a while ago.
After an uneventful drive into the barrens the runners found the hang out for the Whites, an old power station. A rough barricade had been set up around the perimeter and as they rode up the runners were approached by the spokesman of the barricade. He insisted that they could only see Silence if they were unarmed, and not keen to leave his battle rifle and the bikes in the barrens unattended, Ki-Rin went in alone leaving Glyph and Ash on watch.
Silence was a two bit gang leader who had beaten his way to the top. He had charges to look after and a rival gang was causing him troubles. He decided that the information he had about Ford was clearly valuable to this runner stood before him, and told Ki-Rin that he would tell him what had happened if he dealt with the other gang.
It turned out that the gang called the Razors had gotten lucky not so long ago and had managed to liberate a Lone Star Citymaster during a riot. They are now driving around in the vehicle killing the Whites and capturing and booty that they find. This riot van had been called the Pig on the streets and Silence wanted the Pig for his own gang.
Ki-Rin made a friend with a packet of cigarettes who had warned him that the Razors liked their booby traps. After Ki-Rin told the others what they had to do, he headed back to San Fran to pick up the Sniper Cannon, which would be more than capable of punching through the armour of a riot truck. Ash and Glyph headed down to the Razors territory for a bit of a mooch.
After setting up a look out from a building Glyph got bored and headed out for reconnoiter alone. In no time at all she was being followed by a couple of gangers and Glyph decided to challenge them. They drew a knife while politely asking for a tithe for walking around in their turf. Glyph drew her guns. She then began to make her way back the way she had come, aware that she was on their turf. The pair followed her although he guns were loosely trained on them. One broke off to get reinforcements the other just followed at a distance. Glyph continued to retreat and spotted one of their improvised pipe bombs that appeared to be quite obvious. She took a detour around it and stood on another explosive.
Glyph picked herself up from the explosion and dusted herself off quite unharmed but something had gone off in her head. She drew a grenade and pulled the pin, and made her way back to the ganger who was following her asking if he liked to play with explosives, the ganger was scared but he had buddies (one with a shotgun) and as his eyes flicked to his friends, Glyph drew her gun a killed both of them before they moved a muscle. The ganger ran.
Ash having watched all of this suggested that they get out of dodge and wait for Ki-Rin to get back, but Glyph was having none of it, and while Ash left she rode around the streets of Razor territory. The Razors reinforced but they also knew that the crazy has at least one grenade and a pair of SMG’s so they held back until the Pig got on the scene.
Ki-Rin called in to see Six before he picked up the sniper cannon to drop off some lemsips and was completely unaware of the action that Glyph had kicked off.
The Pig duly arrived and Glyph decided that a single handed assault of the riot van was in order. She began to ride rings around the slow moving pig on the rat bike. Inside the vehicle gangers fired from gun ports, and Glyph took many hits triggering the nanite medkit. She finally leapt on top of the vehicle and began to cut her way through the windshield. The driver rammed the vehicle trying to shake her off but she was on a one girl mission and when the rear bulk head doors opened so gangers could shoot her off she lobbed in a flash bang which disabled almost everyone.
She drove down the street triumphant, picking up Ash on the way, who bundled the unconscious gangers out onto the street. Glyph phoned up Ki-Rin to tell him that the sniper cannon was not needed. Ki-Rin rode back to make the hand over with Silence.
Silence was pleased and told Ki-Rin that he had been approached by a suit who wanted the gang to look after a man and ensure that no harm came to him, when he made arrangements for him to disappear. Silence agreed and a few days after that call, a team of soldiers arrived in a helicopter and dropped off the man. Silence and the Whites looked after him for two days, and then another helicopter turned up and the man was taken away. Silence had kept the business card left by the suit. A Mr. Johnson, and a telephone number, and he handed that over to Ki-Rin.
Ki-Rin, Ash, Glyph.
The runners have been approached by The Juggler who has told them of his friend Book, who has taken into his possession an orachalcum book that had belonged to Dominic Cross and was in some way related to the Shedim, Allisom. The Juggler has since been informed that the book could be key to destroying Allisom and now wants the runners to help him find his friend and the book for the fee of 50k and the promise that the Juggler will do everything in his power to find Ash’s brother, Blake.
The runners had tangled with Book more recently that the Jugglers last sighting, and remembered that they had seen him headed for Las Vegas with an unidentified man in a cowboy hat. They had traced him to the Volcano, a club in Vegas. They had also seen Book at a party that had been held by Dr. Manton ford, a man that they were employed to terminate, but failed to do so.
It was nearly 3am by the time that they had pooled their information, but they were keen to make the move there and then and rushed round to the house where they had spied Manton Ford. Six was beginning to come down with some kind of flu that was making it hard for him to focus and he elected to stay in the van while the others went in.
They had spotted that security had been ramped up since the last time they were parked outside the doctors AAA mansion but Ki-Rin worked the security from the matrix, disabled the alarms, and looped the cameras to playback the previous night. They then headed over toward the front gate. A pair of security guards spotted them but did nothing as they were presently only loitering. They didn’t seem to care for the idle banter that the runners were offering, so Glyph opened fire on them, Ki-Rin dropped the second before Ash could even get his hand on his gun.
The trio stole into the property and made their way into the house. Ki-Rin mooched around downstairs and found a fridge full of beer. He helped himself and couldn’t help but think that Manton Ford didn’t seem the type to drink this much beer.
Ash and Glyph headed up stairs, and Ash made his way into the main bedroom, stick-shocking the pair in the bed. He then flicked the light on and drew back the covers to find a young couple now comatose. The man he recognised, an up and coming simsense musician called Johnny Rock.
The runners had a brief discussion before leaving. Ash convinced Ki-Rin to find out when the house had been sold and where ford had gone, and after a bit of a data search Ki-Rin found that Ford had stopped paying his rent from July 1st and had defaulted the house. Not only his household bills stopped being paid, everything, his SIN trace, transactions, his comlink activity, all had stopped on the 1st of July. The runners retired for the night planning on heading out to Las Vegas the following morning.
Six’s fever got progressively worse, and by the morning he was in no state to do anything but lie in bed.
Thursday 26th October 2070
Ash got a mysterious message left on his comlink advising him that if he was to find Dr. Ford, then it might be worth talking to Sergeant Buck at the NRA shooting range in downtown. The team met at Ki-Rin’s before heading off to the range.
The team went through a few checks at the range before they were let in, and they met up with Sergeant Buck, a shooting instructor. They asked about Dr. Ford, and after some money changed hands, Buck told them that he used to be part of a Cross Applied Technologies elite guard called Seraphim, he quit when the Corporation began to fall apart and his squad was being bolstered with “console kids” who had only done simulator missions. But the last mission he had done before he left involved Dr. Manton Ford. For some reason Cross (or whoever his employer was that day) wanted him extracting for his own safety, and then have him delivered out to the barrens where he was to be handed over to a street gang called the Whites. He gave the runners the coordinates and told them that the gang leader was called Silence. The runners chatted for a bit longer, and one ex-forces man to another Ki-Rin made a new contact.
The team decided to head out. Ki-Rin bought a third hand scrambler bike, and then joined Ash and Glyph on the rat bike that they had acquired a while ago.
After an uneventful drive into the barrens the runners found the hang out for the Whites, an old power station. A rough barricade had been set up around the perimeter and as they rode up the runners were approached by the spokesman of the barricade. He insisted that they could only see Silence if they were unarmed, and not keen to leave his battle rifle and the bikes in the barrens unattended, Ki-Rin went in alone leaving Glyph and Ash on watch.
Silence was a two bit gang leader who had beaten his way to the top. He had charges to look after and a rival gang was causing him troubles. He decided that the information he had about Ford was clearly valuable to this runner stood before him, and told Ki-Rin that he would tell him what had happened if he dealt with the other gang.
It turned out that the gang called the Razors had gotten lucky not so long ago and had managed to liberate a Lone Star Citymaster during a riot. They are now driving around in the vehicle killing the Whites and capturing and booty that they find. This riot van had been called the Pig on the streets and Silence wanted the Pig for his own gang.
Ki-Rin made a friend with a packet of cigarettes who had warned him that the Razors liked their booby traps. After Ki-Rin told the others what they had to do, he headed back to San Fran to pick up the Sniper Cannon, which would be more than capable of punching through the armour of a riot truck. Ash and Glyph headed down to the Razors territory for a bit of a mooch.
After setting up a look out from a building Glyph got bored and headed out for reconnoiter alone. In no time at all she was being followed by a couple of gangers and Glyph decided to challenge them. They drew a knife while politely asking for a tithe for walking around in their turf. Glyph drew her guns. She then began to make her way back the way she had come, aware that she was on their turf. The pair followed her although he guns were loosely trained on them. One broke off to get reinforcements the other just followed at a distance. Glyph continued to retreat and spotted one of their improvised pipe bombs that appeared to be quite obvious. She took a detour around it and stood on another explosive.
Glyph picked herself up from the explosion and dusted herself off quite unharmed but something had gone off in her head. She drew a grenade and pulled the pin, and made her way back to the ganger who was following her asking if he liked to play with explosives, the ganger was scared but he had buddies (one with a shotgun) and as his eyes flicked to his friends, Glyph drew her gun a killed both of them before they moved a muscle. The ganger ran.
Ash having watched all of this suggested that they get out of dodge and wait for Ki-Rin to get back, but Glyph was having none of it, and while Ash left she rode around the streets of Razor territory. The Razors reinforced but they also knew that the crazy has at least one grenade and a pair of SMG’s so they held back until the Pig got on the scene.
Ki-Rin called in to see Six before he picked up the sniper cannon to drop off some lemsips and was completely unaware of the action that Glyph had kicked off.
The Pig duly arrived and Glyph decided that a single handed assault of the riot van was in order. She began to ride rings around the slow moving pig on the rat bike. Inside the vehicle gangers fired from gun ports, and Glyph took many hits triggering the nanite medkit. She finally leapt on top of the vehicle and began to cut her way through the windshield. The driver rammed the vehicle trying to shake her off but she was on a one girl mission and when the rear bulk head doors opened so gangers could shoot her off she lobbed in a flash bang which disabled almost everyone.
She drove down the street triumphant, picking up Ash on the way, who bundled the unconscious gangers out onto the street. Glyph phoned up Ki-Rin to tell him that the sniper cannon was not needed. Ki-Rin rode back to make the hand over with Silence.
Silence was pleased and told Ki-Rin that he had been approached by a suit who wanted the gang to look after a man and ensure that no harm came to him, when he made arrangements for him to disappear. Silence agreed and a few days after that call, a team of soldiers arrived in a helicopter and dropped off the man. Silence and the Whites looked after him for two days, and then another helicopter turned up and the man was taken away. Silence had kept the business card left by the suit. A Mr. Johnson, and a telephone number, and he handed that over to Ki-Rin.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
The Jugglers hit on Cross
Six (book), Glyph (O’Bannon), Ash (Slab), Ki-Rin (Fenix)
Wednesday 25th October 2070
The runners were contacted by their St. Doc contact, Mal. He seemed a bit odd on the phone and when the runners headed to meet him at 11pm as instructed they were cautious. He met them in his surgery at the back of the Gym and sat them down in his office. He then asked the runners if they remembered when they had first met, and they recalled that they were trying to track down The Juggler. He then began to tell them a story of a run against Cross Applied Technologies that happened over six months ago.
Friday 3rd March 2070
The gang sat in the back room of Clive’s Dive for 20 minutes. The Juggler was always late. There was the dark skinned, bespectacled mage, Book. The street doctor, Mal. The troll bruiser Slab, the face of the party, O’Bannon. And the covert ops specialist, Fenix.
The Juggler turned up and like always carried on as if he wasn’t late. He had another hit against Cross Applied technologies. He had been tipped off that Dominic Cross had recently acquired a small book, the pages made from orachalchum. His little bird also had suggested that this book had something to do with summoning a spirit called a Shedim, and the Juggler thought it best that they recovered this book before Dominc got himself into trouble with things he shouldn’t.
O’Bannon had a contact on the inside of Cross Applied technologies, a security guard who would be prepared to open the doors and things. The team began to put together a plan.
The team were going to go into Cross HQ late into the evening disguised as cleaners. They would make their way up to the 15th Floor where they suspected the book to be. Book would confirm the location of the book by assaying the area astrally before they set off. The team split up to get hold of the various bits and pieces, ammo, overalls and cleaning equipment, a battered van and signage to imply a contract cleaning company. O’Bannon let his contact know that they wanted the underground car park un-attended, and also asked for passes for the five of them. His CATco Security guard contact obliged.
The Juggler made his way into Mal’s surgery to the surprise of the runners. Six was especially perturbed as last time out The Juggler was the enemy. But he came with coffee as a gesture of goodwill, and the story Mal was telling was making for interesting listening, the enemy of my enemy and all that. The juggler just encouraged Mal to carry on to the good bit.
The team went in. Book was able to confirm that the book was clearly visible from the astral plane even though the 15th floor was isolated from the astral plane by a bacteria shield that had been embedded into the walls, floor, roof and glazing.
The team snuck in, and the security guards waved them past without really studying their ID’s. Inside the team were again waved past by the security guards who were quite blasé, although after they had made their way to the lifts, they did notice that the guards were making a quick phone call to someone. It was enough to make O’Bannon nervous and he contacted his security guy, who told him that all was fine.
The team made their way to the 8th floor where they had to change lifts, and were briefly accosted by an indignant cleaning lady who was having her floor invaded by outside contract cleaners. (When she buzzed down to security she was told that they were going to be got rid of shortly). Fenix was sure that they were being flanked by some security and went into a door that had just clicked shut, backed up by Slab. Going in there was a stressed out young exec who was working late. He didn’t like being disturbed and decided to run the ID he had demanded off the cleaners through the database so that he could file a complaint. Slab made out that he was getting the bin, before inverting it and jamming it onto the head of the suit. Fenix lifted the bin off the stunned exec, and then smacked him out cold with a decorative glass paperweight.
The team continued up. This time using the emergency stairs. Rather than the lifts. They made it up to the 14th floor, the last floor they could get up to before changing lifts one last time to get to Dominic Cross’s executive apartments on the 15th. Book too a quick peak through the wall in the astral plane and saw that there were guards out there, and also a watcher spirit. He warned the others who burst from the stairwell, guns blazing.
The fire fight was short lived, Book took on a watcher spirit in astral combat and dismissed it with flagrant ease, and the rest of security were dropped without too much of a problem by the other runners. Almost too easy. The team dashed across to the lift and Fenix bypassed the executive override system. Book thought of a gap in the security and astrally projected through the lift out into the apartment. He found the orachalchum book. And there was some kind of spirit actually reading the astral form of the book. The mage returned to his body and warned the team what was up there.
The lift came and they all headed up. They spread out in the plush apartment of Dominic Cross. The book was left open on a table. Switching his perception from the mundane and astral planes Book could see the spirit regarding them and almost encouraging them to take the orachachum artefact. Slab found Dominic Cross in one of his offices, his eyes black pits, he was coughing up blood. Slab killed him there and then.
Book was worried with how keen the malevolent spirit was with them taking the book and he sought advice from contacts, and the rest of the team, take the book, destroy the book, leave it here. In the end the mage took charge, took responsibility for the magical artefact and they left…
And this is where Mal ended the story. The Juggler then took over explaining what happened since. The mage had taken the book, and over the course of about a month had lost contact with his friends, and now was missing. The Juggler had received advice that implied that this book was key to dispelling this Shedim, and now wanted the runners in to help.
Knowing that the Juggler knew a bit about CATCo, Ash asked if he knew about the Dreamseed project, about Perfect Shooter, and about his brother, Blake, who was missing again and probably in the clutches of whichever guise Cross Applied was working under. The Juggler knew nothing new.
Six wanted to see the colour of the green, and when they were offered 50k they were set to leave. The Juggler came in with one last offer. 50k to cover the expenses of finding his friend, and the book that could deal a death blow to Alisom, and in return The Juggler would pull his resources to help find Blake…
Ash was set to refuse the job on account of being fragged with too many times over this. Yet something in the Jugglers voice made him really believe that he could help. Six was there and would back up Ash no matter what. Glyph and Ki-Rin were also ready to back up their team.
The runners and the Juggler traded information for many hours, they learned that the Notable Anarchists was a front used by the Juggler to strike out at incursions by a type of spirit called a horror. Alisom was just one Shedim trying to pervert one corporation, but there were many more, The Juggler was at the forefront of the battle, trying to stem the tide. the Dragon, Alamais, who also worked against these spirits was financially backing the Notable Anarchists.
The runners then remembered that they had seen Book more recently than the Juggler. He was embroiled in a run that they had trying to solve the deaths in the Castro sector. They had seen him enjoying a party with Dr. Manton Ford, a man they were paid to kill but failed to do after the run went sour. They also trailed the mage, Book, to Las Vegas again before the run went wrong.
They had some leads and were going to start with Dr. Manton Ford…
Wednesday 25th October 2070
The runners were contacted by their St. Doc contact, Mal. He seemed a bit odd on the phone and when the runners headed to meet him at 11pm as instructed they were cautious. He met them in his surgery at the back of the Gym and sat them down in his office. He then asked the runners if they remembered when they had first met, and they recalled that they were trying to track down The Juggler. He then began to tell them a story of a run against Cross Applied Technologies that happened over six months ago.
Friday 3rd March 2070
The gang sat in the back room of Clive’s Dive for 20 minutes. The Juggler was always late. There was the dark skinned, bespectacled mage, Book. The street doctor, Mal. The troll bruiser Slab, the face of the party, O’Bannon. And the covert ops specialist, Fenix.
The Juggler turned up and like always carried on as if he wasn’t late. He had another hit against Cross Applied technologies. He had been tipped off that Dominic Cross had recently acquired a small book, the pages made from orachalchum. His little bird also had suggested that this book had something to do with summoning a spirit called a Shedim, and the Juggler thought it best that they recovered this book before Dominc got himself into trouble with things he shouldn’t.
O’Bannon had a contact on the inside of Cross Applied technologies, a security guard who would be prepared to open the doors and things. The team began to put together a plan.
The team were going to go into Cross HQ late into the evening disguised as cleaners. They would make their way up to the 15th Floor where they suspected the book to be. Book would confirm the location of the book by assaying the area astrally before they set off. The team split up to get hold of the various bits and pieces, ammo, overalls and cleaning equipment, a battered van and signage to imply a contract cleaning company. O’Bannon let his contact know that they wanted the underground car park un-attended, and also asked for passes for the five of them. His CATco Security guard contact obliged.
The Juggler made his way into Mal’s surgery to the surprise of the runners. Six was especially perturbed as last time out The Juggler was the enemy. But he came with coffee as a gesture of goodwill, and the story Mal was telling was making for interesting listening, the enemy of my enemy and all that. The juggler just encouraged Mal to carry on to the good bit.
The team went in. Book was able to confirm that the book was clearly visible from the astral plane even though the 15th floor was isolated from the astral plane by a bacteria shield that had been embedded into the walls, floor, roof and glazing.
The team snuck in, and the security guards waved them past without really studying their ID’s. Inside the team were again waved past by the security guards who were quite blasé, although after they had made their way to the lifts, they did notice that the guards were making a quick phone call to someone. It was enough to make O’Bannon nervous and he contacted his security guy, who told him that all was fine.
The team made their way to the 8th floor where they had to change lifts, and were briefly accosted by an indignant cleaning lady who was having her floor invaded by outside contract cleaners. (When she buzzed down to security she was told that they were going to be got rid of shortly). Fenix was sure that they were being flanked by some security and went into a door that had just clicked shut, backed up by Slab. Going in there was a stressed out young exec who was working late. He didn’t like being disturbed and decided to run the ID he had demanded off the cleaners through the database so that he could file a complaint. Slab made out that he was getting the bin, before inverting it and jamming it onto the head of the suit. Fenix lifted the bin off the stunned exec, and then smacked him out cold with a decorative glass paperweight.
The team continued up. This time using the emergency stairs. Rather than the lifts. They made it up to the 14th floor, the last floor they could get up to before changing lifts one last time to get to Dominic Cross’s executive apartments on the 15th. Book too a quick peak through the wall in the astral plane and saw that there were guards out there, and also a watcher spirit. He warned the others who burst from the stairwell, guns blazing.
The fire fight was short lived, Book took on a watcher spirit in astral combat and dismissed it with flagrant ease, and the rest of security were dropped without too much of a problem by the other runners. Almost too easy. The team dashed across to the lift and Fenix bypassed the executive override system. Book thought of a gap in the security and astrally projected through the lift out into the apartment. He found the orachalchum book. And there was some kind of spirit actually reading the astral form of the book. The mage returned to his body and warned the team what was up there.
The lift came and they all headed up. They spread out in the plush apartment of Dominic Cross. The book was left open on a table. Switching his perception from the mundane and astral planes Book could see the spirit regarding them and almost encouraging them to take the orachachum artefact. Slab found Dominic Cross in one of his offices, his eyes black pits, he was coughing up blood. Slab killed him there and then.
Book was worried with how keen the malevolent spirit was with them taking the book and he sought advice from contacts, and the rest of the team, take the book, destroy the book, leave it here. In the end the mage took charge, took responsibility for the magical artefact and they left…
And this is where Mal ended the story. The Juggler then took over explaining what happened since. The mage had taken the book, and over the course of about a month had lost contact with his friends, and now was missing. The Juggler had received advice that implied that this book was key to dispelling this Shedim, and now wanted the runners in to help.
Knowing that the Juggler knew a bit about CATCo, Ash asked if he knew about the Dreamseed project, about Perfect Shooter, and about his brother, Blake, who was missing again and probably in the clutches of whichever guise Cross Applied was working under. The Juggler knew nothing new.
Six wanted to see the colour of the green, and when they were offered 50k they were set to leave. The Juggler came in with one last offer. 50k to cover the expenses of finding his friend, and the book that could deal a death blow to Alisom, and in return The Juggler would pull his resources to help find Blake…
Ash was set to refuse the job on account of being fragged with too many times over this. Yet something in the Jugglers voice made him really believe that he could help. Six was there and would back up Ash no matter what. Glyph and Ki-Rin were also ready to back up their team.
The runners and the Juggler traded information for many hours, they learned that the Notable Anarchists was a front used by the Juggler to strike out at incursions by a type of spirit called a horror. Alisom was just one Shedim trying to pervert one corporation, but there were many more, The Juggler was at the forefront of the battle, trying to stem the tide. the Dragon, Alamais, who also worked against these spirits was financially backing the Notable Anarchists.
The runners then remembered that they had seen Book more recently than the Juggler. He was embroiled in a run that they had trying to solve the deaths in the Castro sector. They had seen him enjoying a party with Dr. Manton Ford, a man they were paid to kill but failed to do after the run went sour. They also trailed the mage, Book, to Las Vegas again before the run went wrong.
They had some leads and were going to start with Dr. Manton Ford…
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Six Blog
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 30: 18.10.70>
We’ve had quite an entertaining few days just lately – a successful run, the beta test phase of some new Corp medikit (which, needless to say I was paranoid and savvy enough to turn down, it remains to be seen whether Glyph and Ash suffer for their enthusiasm) and a sniff of info on Ash’ brother Blake that was tied to a sabotage mission we just couldn’t justify undertaking. Some damn Troll Toxic Shaman worked Ash over out in the Barrens and having beaten nine bells out of him, told him to sink a ship inbound for the San Fran Bay area if he ever wanted to see Blake again. Trouble was, our research soon found out that the ship had a 10,000 tonne cargo of carcinogens. Cuts me deep to think of the look on Ash face when he realised we were being asked to pollute and poison the whole San Fran Bay but I’ve got a whole trunk load of respect for him being the one to realise that sometimes the price is just too high. He made the call and we bailed but at what cost? I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, thinking he just gave away his last hope of finding his brother…
It isn’t all doom and gloom though. We know Blake is out there somewhere now and that word of him is circulating through the shadows. If there’s information to be found, we can try to find it ourselves and we also have a new face to look out for. That Troll Toxic wont be blending in at many Frat Parties so if we can hunt him down, maybe a little violent persuasion can be employed to make him cough up the goods.
It’s our second run in with the toxic underbelly of the world in the last five days. Through Snow, we picked up a run from Saeder Krupp to investigate a lapsed Governmental black op codenamed Buttercup. SK wanted the project files because they thought it would help inform some ongoing research of their own. The only catch – if there were any project files, they’d be hard copy because everything else had been wiped in the crash.
Old documents about Buttercup recently made public thanks to historic declassification regulations gave us the names of both scientists who headed up the project. We hit research mode, trying to find them or tie them to a location during the project run but quickly discovered that both Docs were dead. However, Doc Schaeffer’s missus was waiting for God in a retirement home just outside of San Fran so we blazed over to try and milk her for Intel. Mrs Schaeffer didn’t know much, her hubby had kept pretty tight-lipped about his research, even in the bedroom, but she did point us in the direction of a colleague and research student who had served under the main men. She also tipped us off to the fact that someone else had been asking the same questions and sure enough, we were a little way behind a.n.other interested party.
Knowing Mrs S had given the other goons the same name and address, we blazed on over to a quiet little residential area. I clocked a rotordrone high and we saw and heard a gunshot from an upstairs room of our man’s house. I pulled up, dumping Frosty out so he could get busy and then pumped a Flashbang and a Thermal Smoke grenade into the upper floor of the house with the Antioch. With the front of the house covered I burned rubber heading around back to cover anyone trying to give us the slip. It proved unnecessary, the Dream Team had whacked the goons before they left the back yard and Glyph had patched up our man well enough for him to tell us that the lab had been out in the Nevada desert at a place called Duckwater.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
Duckwater had been caught in the fallout of a nuclear reactor that had gone critical in the nearby town of Ruth and that meant our target location was slap bang in the middle of a toxic hotzone. The less time we spent in the toxic zone the better so while we geared up in the proper toggs, I remoted the drone van out there, figuring we would zip in onboard the chopper to rendezvous with the van, do the job and then get the fuck out of there just as quickly.
Flying through the toxic zone in the chopper was an education and no mistake. The engine struggled in the mucky atmosphere and I spent the whole flight on the edge of my seat, monitoring and managing the engine so it didn’t fail on us. Even so we had to ditch at one point, after attracting the attention of an amorous toxic spirit and though I do say so myself, it was only my skill at the stick that kept us from face planting high speed dirt. Right about then we realised the chopper was a bit of a white elephant. Ground vehicles were certainly slower but there was less risk of death if the engine conked out. We got the bird back in the air and limped to the rendezvous but then I just got the chopper out of the zone, up above the ceiling of the worst pollutants and on the quickest and most direct route to clear air and then home. We were anchored to the earth from then on.
Duckwater was a shocking mess. A small community of largely residential buildings, decaying and half buried in the toxic debris and scavenged over by a pack of pitiful grey skinned bottom feeders scratching out a living in the filth. There was only one building that looked like it might be large enough to conceal Buttercup’s labs so we wasted no time in heading over there. Ash immediately got himself spooked, insisting he could hear children’s voices but for the first time, I was able to seal myself into the safety of the Step Van and let the drones do the work, sharing point duty with the Steel Lynx and using the offensive Iballs to scout out rooms.
The labs were smaller than I had been expecting and largely empty. We’d been warned that the project had ended abruptly with a lab fire during the crash but had hoped to find something intact to prove we were on the right track.
We finally struck paydirt with a small file store – computers and filing cabinets for hardcopy that were largely undamaged by the fire but beginning to suffer from the ravages of the acidic atmosphere.
Glyph almost began a new career as snake chow right there and then as this damned viper rose up out of its nest. Cursed thing was as thick as a man’
torso and easily ten or twelve feet long – I’ve learned since that they’re called Nagah and use human mimicry, the children’s voices Ash had heard, to lure prey to its death. All I knew as I opened up with the LMG on the Steel Lynx was that I was glad to be tucked up inside the van. All told there were maybe six or eight of those damn snakes and they took some killing! Ash copped a nasty bite that looked like it would need attention but we didn’t need a second invitation to take the hint and get the hell out. We grabbed as many of the files as we could and the hard disks from the computers, loaded up and slowly rumbled off through the mire.
The lengthier return journey gave us opportunity to catalogue some of what we had found to see whether it would satisfy the Johnson from Saeder Krupp and although none of us was a specialist, we seemed to have got what we needed. We gave Ash chance to visit Mal back in San Fran while we finished up our collating and then we handed the data over. Remarkably, no one got shafted – Johnson paid up with minimal fuss. Something tells me he’s not cut out for life in the Corps.
Mood: Despondent. Wish there was more we could do for Ash.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 30: 18.10.70>
We’ve had quite an entertaining few days just lately – a successful run, the beta test phase of some new Corp medikit (which, needless to say I was paranoid and savvy enough to turn down, it remains to be seen whether Glyph and Ash suffer for their enthusiasm) and a sniff of info on Ash’ brother Blake that was tied to a sabotage mission we just couldn’t justify undertaking. Some damn Troll Toxic Shaman worked Ash over out in the Barrens and having beaten nine bells out of him, told him to sink a ship inbound for the San Fran Bay area if he ever wanted to see Blake again. Trouble was, our research soon found out that the ship had a 10,000 tonne cargo of carcinogens. Cuts me deep to think of the look on Ash face when he realised we were being asked to pollute and poison the whole San Fran Bay but I’ve got a whole trunk load of respect for him being the one to realise that sometimes the price is just too high. He made the call and we bailed but at what cost? I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, thinking he just gave away his last hope of finding his brother…
It isn’t all doom and gloom though. We know Blake is out there somewhere now and that word of him is circulating through the shadows. If there’s information to be found, we can try to find it ourselves and we also have a new face to look out for. That Troll Toxic wont be blending in at many Frat Parties so if we can hunt him down, maybe a little violent persuasion can be employed to make him cough up the goods.
It’s our second run in with the toxic underbelly of the world in the last five days. Through Snow, we picked up a run from Saeder Krupp to investigate a lapsed Governmental black op codenamed Buttercup. SK wanted the project files because they thought it would help inform some ongoing research of their own. The only catch – if there were any project files, they’d be hard copy because everything else had been wiped in the crash.
Old documents about Buttercup recently made public thanks to historic declassification regulations gave us the names of both scientists who headed up the project. We hit research mode, trying to find them or tie them to a location during the project run but quickly discovered that both Docs were dead. However, Doc Schaeffer’s missus was waiting for God in a retirement home just outside of San Fran so we blazed over to try and milk her for Intel. Mrs Schaeffer didn’t know much, her hubby had kept pretty tight-lipped about his research, even in the bedroom, but she did point us in the direction of a colleague and research student who had served under the main men. She also tipped us off to the fact that someone else had been asking the same questions and sure enough, we were a little way behind a.n.other interested party.
Knowing Mrs S had given the other goons the same name and address, we blazed on over to a quiet little residential area. I clocked a rotordrone high and we saw and heard a gunshot from an upstairs room of our man’s house. I pulled up, dumping Frosty out so he could get busy and then pumped a Flashbang and a Thermal Smoke grenade into the upper floor of the house with the Antioch. With the front of the house covered I burned rubber heading around back to cover anyone trying to give us the slip. It proved unnecessary, the Dream Team had whacked the goons before they left the back yard and Glyph had patched up our man well enough for him to tell us that the lab had been out in the Nevada desert at a place called Duckwater.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
Duckwater had been caught in the fallout of a nuclear reactor that had gone critical in the nearby town of Ruth and that meant our target location was slap bang in the middle of a toxic hotzone. The less time we spent in the toxic zone the better so while we geared up in the proper toggs, I remoted the drone van out there, figuring we would zip in onboard the chopper to rendezvous with the van, do the job and then get the fuck out of there just as quickly.
Flying through the toxic zone in the chopper was an education and no mistake. The engine struggled in the mucky atmosphere and I spent the whole flight on the edge of my seat, monitoring and managing the engine so it didn’t fail on us. Even so we had to ditch at one point, after attracting the attention of an amorous toxic spirit and though I do say so myself, it was only my skill at the stick that kept us from face planting high speed dirt. Right about then we realised the chopper was a bit of a white elephant. Ground vehicles were certainly slower but there was less risk of death if the engine conked out. We got the bird back in the air and limped to the rendezvous but then I just got the chopper out of the zone, up above the ceiling of the worst pollutants and on the quickest and most direct route to clear air and then home. We were anchored to the earth from then on.
Duckwater was a shocking mess. A small community of largely residential buildings, decaying and half buried in the toxic debris and scavenged over by a pack of pitiful grey skinned bottom feeders scratching out a living in the filth. There was only one building that looked like it might be large enough to conceal Buttercup’s labs so we wasted no time in heading over there. Ash immediately got himself spooked, insisting he could hear children’s voices but for the first time, I was able to seal myself into the safety of the Step Van and let the drones do the work, sharing point duty with the Steel Lynx and using the offensive Iballs to scout out rooms.
The labs were smaller than I had been expecting and largely empty. We’d been warned that the project had ended abruptly with a lab fire during the crash but had hoped to find something intact to prove we were on the right track.
We finally struck paydirt with a small file store – computers and filing cabinets for hardcopy that were largely undamaged by the fire but beginning to suffer from the ravages of the acidic atmosphere.
Glyph almost began a new career as snake chow right there and then as this damned viper rose up out of its nest. Cursed thing was as thick as a man’
torso and easily ten or twelve feet long – I’ve learned since that they’re called Nagah and use human mimicry, the children’s voices Ash had heard, to lure prey to its death. All I knew as I opened up with the LMG on the Steel Lynx was that I was glad to be tucked up inside the van. All told there were maybe six or eight of those damn snakes and they took some killing! Ash copped a nasty bite that looked like it would need attention but we didn’t need a second invitation to take the hint and get the hell out. We grabbed as many of the files as we could and the hard disks from the computers, loaded up and slowly rumbled off through the mire.
The lengthier return journey gave us opportunity to catalogue some of what we had found to see whether it would satisfy the Johnson from Saeder Krupp and although none of us was a specialist, we seemed to have got what we needed. We gave Ash chance to visit Mal back in San Fran while we finished up our collating and then we handed the data over. Remarkably, no one got shafted – Johnson paid up with minimal fuss. Something tells me he’s not cut out for life in the Corps.
Mood: Despondent. Wish there was more we could do for Ash.
Ends: 2/2>
||
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