Shadowrun 4 Campaign

Into the Network

2009-02-18T16:00:00.000Z

In the background the 2020 computer geek film “Into the Network” played out on an antique flat screen TV, the then teen actor (who recently celebrated his 68th birthday) tapped a couple of keys on his keyboard and with the aid of computer graphics was literally sucked into the Matrix… Internet, Screech mentally corrected himself. He watched the film out of the corner of his eye, knowing every line and every scene inside out. As a child he would watch this and other films of the genre avidly. He was destined to take up a career with computers though his chosen route isn’t quite what his mother intended.

Watching the rushing effects of the actor zooming down the information superhighway Screech turned back to his own keyboard. He didn’t need the manual interface as he was also jacked in but there was something tactile about the keys that he liked. Letting his eyes fall to where his fingers danced across the keys he smiled. There was something entrancing about the keystrokes, and you could be more expressive on a keyboard that the standard mental commands.

With a flourish he stabbed at the Return key, and thousands of terabits of information flowed into his memory drive. He watched the flow of data for a few moments to ensure that no anomalies or nasty bits of code were being run, it all seemed clean so set his own analyze program to watch the rest of the transfer. He was getting paid for this chunk of data but that didn’t mean he should sit there like a plum doing the job a line of code was capable of doing and squander the opportunity of a broken node. He drifted off to have a look at what other tasty information sat in the datastore. He wasn’t disappointed.

The Debrief

2009-01-06T10:33:00.001Z

“So, talk me through what happened.” The man asking the question was human, tall and well built with a clean shaven head. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the top and bore a dragon motif on the left breast.

The man he addressed wore a dark blue swat style uniform, though there was no identifying mark other than the yellow sergeant stripes on his shoulder. He let his salute fall sharply to his side before he began. “Sir, after allowing Kirby to return to his apartment we set up drone only close obs. We hoped he would reveal the location of the missing medcase. After an hour or so some wannabe shadowrunner team turned up. Finding him couldn’t have been too hard, Kirby wasn’t that discrete about his presence in town”

The bald man nodded “Choosing him was a mistake. Okay, go on.”

“This runner team had a half baked stakeout before they proceeded to shoot up the neighbourhood. They took out Kirby’s sentries with some stun rounds but I think there must have been some confusion in their team regarding the level of force as some were using lethal ammunition.”

“Were your team observed?” the bald man asked.

“I don’t think so, not at that moment. After a shootout that lasted about ten minutes these runners managed to take Kirby alive and retreat back to their safehouse”

The bald man scratched absently at the back of his neck and found his own RFID tag embedded under his skin.

The sergeant continued the debrief “we activated the tracker tag after we had lost visual on Kirby. It was a risk but this runner team didn’t look too switched on, and we tracked them to a safe house only a couple of blocks away.”

The bald man grinned “It seems they made it easy for you. Any metahumans?” he asked.
“Sadly no sir. These wannabes were a disgrace to the true race.”

“Shame.” He gestured for the debrief to continue.

“We followed them to their hide and started with a personnel lead surveillance as the drone was stranded a couple of blocks away. This seemed to spook them and within a short time they made attempts to move Kirby. At some point in this move Kirby tried to break away from them and we were forced to go live to eliminate him.”

The bald man scrutinised the face of his soldier before nodding his approval.

“Rounds were exchanged between the running team, one of my men is in critical condition at Southpoint.”

“My personal physician will be made available to him if it will help” the bald man said.

“Thank you sir. I will inform Southpoint of your offer.

“At some point during this exchange the running team were able to snatch Kirby and evacuated from the scene.”

“He escaped?” The bald man arched his eyebrow.

“Not exactly sir, it seems the running team bungled the job and killed him at some point during the escape.”

“Interesting” Steepling his fingers the bald man let a grin roll across his mouth. “The case?” he asked.

“Sadly sir this has not turned up during our investigation. Though we continue to follow lines of enquiry”

“Thank you sergeant. You are dismissed.”

The sergeant snapped a salute out before sharply marching out of the office. The bald man waited for a few moments after the door clicked closed before making a comlink call to a very dear friend.

Bad news.

2009-01-05T15:25:00.001Z

Monaco hung up the comlink to Bullet. She pinched the top of her nose and closed her eyes as an exasperated sigh escaped from her throat.
Looking out of her tall bay windows across the city she dialled the Mr. Johnson.
“They killed the target.” She told him bluntly. No point in beating about the bush.
“I’ve heard better news.” He replied. “The contract is scrubbed then. Any explanations?”
“Nothing that won’t sound like an excuse. I picked the wrong team, that’s all.”
“Okay. Fair enough.” He paused for a moment, clearly thinking. “Sounds like you might have a team better suited to another task I have”.
Monaco allowed her eyebrows to arch in surprise. She didn’t expect to be being offered another job on the back of this fuck up.
Mr. Johnson laughed as he read into the pregnant pause. “There will be penalty clauses this time Monaco. I don’t mind using your gun-ho runners, they might even prove to be better suited to this task but if they fuck up this time…”
Monaco winced. She had been stung by contract clauses once before and it cost her dearly but she was over a barrel now. Take the job and redeem herself as a fixer, or ditch the job and lose face.
“I’m listening” she replied, though she knew there was little room to manoeuvre, this time the Johnson was calling the shots.

Monaco

2008-12-09T08:46:00.001Z

Monaco loved meetings with Mr. Johnson’s. The pair of them sat there in their Mortimer suits sipping designer coffee, smiling their poker smiles, talking in riddles. There was a certain charm to the manoeuvrings of corporate types that reminded her of the courtiers in the Tir.

What he was saying without directly saying it, was that he wanted to employ a team of Shadow Runners to track down and bring in a man, forcefully if need be, who was probably somewhere in San Francisco. His reasons for wanting to remain at arms length from the kidnap were all too obvious, the last thing his corporation would want, is to be seen involved with activities like this. What she couldn’t yet determine was why they wanted him.

Sliding a couple of images of the man across the table, the Mr Johnson answered her unasked question. Stills from a closed circuit monitoring feed showed a man in a leather jacket smoking a cigarette, the distinctive logo of the Haloweeners biker gang clearly on his sleeve.

Smiling still she agreed a fee, took the photos and left the Mr Johnson to pick up the tab at the coffee shop. She knew a few people who would find this line of work just what they were looking for, and was dialling the first number before she was on the sidewalk.

A New Dawn

2008-11-14T15:50:00.002Z

The four men before him were sat in the four closest seats on the same side of the of the long conference table. The CEO of New Dawn let out an unpleasant sigh as he levelled his gaze at each in turn. His temper slowly grew and he found his rage intensifing as he looked at these incompetent men who sat dumbly staring, awaiting his wrath.

Surging to his feet with unnatural speed he stepped around his desk and smashed his fist with a force that belied his elven frame into the face of the closest of them. The rest mutely stared on as he stood over the Ork he had lashed out at, his fist wet with blood from the ruined nose.

Seemingly satisfied that he had rendered the man unconscious he looked up at the next closest man who was also an Elf like the CEO. In a disquieting voice he said “You tell me that you are part of the cause, that you are with the New Dawn, yet you allow breaches of this magnitude to go on.”

The elf stepped over the prone form of the Ork and walked to the next man, a dwarf. Standing behind the seated man he rested his hands reassuringly on his shoulders. Looking upward toward the high ceiling he let out a long breath through his nostrils while he massaged the dwarf's muscular neck with more force than was pleasant.

“You know how sensitive our work is.” He continued while his thumbs worked and dug into the flesh of the man's neck “You know that there must be utmost control on the information we allow out. Yet here you are before me telling me that we have lost something that could alert the world to our work.”

Slamming a firm pat onto the dwarves shoulder he walked to the next man, a human.
“I believe that you are directly responsible for the third circle member who has allowed this breach of security. Is this so?”

Nodding quickly he answered “Yes sir, and I will ensure he is…” but he was cut off with a shushing sound from his boss.

“What do we know about the situation?” the CEO said as he moved back to his chair at the head of the table “Is this simply misplaced or is it a theft?” These questions were now being directly addressed to the only human in the room, the others relaxed a little, the ork remained unconscious.

“Sir, we don’t know at this time. We believe it is theft”.
“By whom?”
“Again sir, at this time, we cannot answer that question.”

The dwarf spoke out now “We can assume that it has been some kind of inside job. No one on the outside knows of our activities. There is someone within the circles who is less concerned with the overall goal.”

The elf at the head of the table nodded slowly before posing the rhetorical question: “less concerned, or less aware of the importance of our work?”

Turning his attention back to the human the he continued. “Find me the culprit, and find me the missing equipment, or you will find yourself on the thin end of my patience.”

With that he stood and walked out of the room, leaving his council to sit in silence.

---------------

Except for the security guard on the front desk, Dr. Brightling was the last man in the building. He always worked deep into the evening and tonight was no exception. He finished his writing and carefully placed his old fashioned paper notebook and fountain pen into his briefcase.

He slipped off his lab coat and exchanged it with his heavy fog coat on the coat hook. Dressed to face the bitter cold outside he headed to the elevator. Te light in his office dimmed automatically when it detected the doctor's RFID tag had left the room.

“Goodnight Dr. Brightling”, Guss, the security guard offered in his usual monotone voice. Dr. Brightling, as always, just nodded.

Outside, he strolled across the near empty car park to his car. In the morning he would be a rich man and he allowed himself a smile. As he drew closer to his car it detected his RFID signature and the engine automatically sparked into life.

His phone rang. He brought up the ID of the caller into the corner of his iris and seeing who was calling, allowed the image to overlay across his vision. The caller's semi translucent image gave the impression that he was stood directly in front of the doctor despite his continued walk across the car park.

Taking his cue, the Heavy pushed away from the wall that he had been leaning against and strode purposefully across the car park. Taking one last drag, he flicked his cigarette to the ground while reaching with his other hand into his half unzipped leather biker jacket. Closing the distance he brought the old style Roomsweeper out and up to aim at the back of Dr. Brightling’s head, two more paces and the double barrel of the short shotgun was practically touching the back of the Doctors head. Without pausing the assassin pulled the trigger.

Distracted by the conversation on his vidphone, Dr. Brightling had no chance. He didn’t notice the approach from behind of his killer. He died instantly without even registering the distinctive blast of a flichette cartridge being discharged.

The End?

2007-10-22T12:04:00.000Z

Six, Glyph, Ki-Rin, Ash,

The runners had made their way onto Alcatraz, and were now engaged in a firefight with Allisom’s elite Seraphim troops. Ki-Rin, Ash and Glyph were inside the main prison block backed up by Six’s drones, while Six remained hidden in an old unused concrete toilet block.

Ki-Rin lobbed in a few grenades into the kill zone and a few moments later Six’s drone led the charge into the corridor followed by Ash, Ki-Rin and Glyph. It could have easily become a kill zone, with Seraphim soldiers overlooking the corridor they ran down but Six spotted the movement of men suiting up and the team lobbed some well aimed grenades which reduced the fighting fit to mortally wounded. Glyph and Ash made their way up to make sure they were dead.

Six, outside, heard movement and braved a snap look out from his hiding place to see a small squad heading over to a underground emplacement not far from where he hid. An inspection with a drone indicated some kind of concrete bunker, he gave the others a heads up, and this was enough for Ki-Rin who left the main block to investigate.

Ash had made his way over to the now dead Seraphim and found that the area where they were was an equipping station. There were sets of their hi-tech armour scattered about the flooring, and although blast charred from the grenades, seemed relatively undamaged. His mercenary tendencies shone through and he quickly began to don bits and pieces of the armour, until someone remembered that the last time they were able to inspect one of these suits they saw that the man inside was attached to the suit cyberneticaly and a warning was shouted out that he may become entwined into the Seraphim system. He had a moment of clarity and aborted the idea.

Ki-Rin came to the top of the concrete emplacement and saw that it lead down into some kind of bunker. Six tried to send a drone down to investigate but there was some kind of signal shielding and nearly lost contact with the drone completely. Ki-Rin waited for the rest of the team but managed to tweak a signal booster so that Six could drop a eyeball drone and get information back. The drone reported that there was a circular room at the bottom of the ladder that was completely empty with the exception of a dead body, that of a Seraphim trooper.
Glyph announced her arrival at the top of the bunker by lobbing a grenade down, obliterating the corpse, and the eyeball drone.

The runners had gathered at the top of the concrete bunker when Six realised that they were in the open and could be fodder for the sniper, he aligned the Flyspy onto the lighthouse tower and both the Sniper and the spotter were overlooking their position and for some reason hadn’t fired. This news was enough to hustle the runners out of sight into the bunker despite Ki-Rin’s protestations that they could be dropping into a trap.

Cautiously the runners investigated and discovered that this bunker seemed to be the housing for a gigantic computer that they presumed housed the A.I, Choir, but when they descended into the computer room they were surprised to find more dead Seraphim troops. Each seemed to have been in the process of laying anti-personnel mines before having been killed with some kind of laser, the runners assumed that Choir had struck them down.

The runners experimented by taunting the A.I.’s weapon system and realised that she tracked the runners constantly but only fired when Ash brought out his weapon in the computer room, Ash was lucky to survive, but his combat reflexes were good.

Ki-Rin decided to engage the A.I. in the matrix, and was surprised and a little intimidated when the computer was able to impose it’s own profile over his own powerful persona, he persisted and tried to talk to the AI. Being given nothing but riddles and unhelpful answers he gave up and apologised to the rest of the team. They then barracked him back into the matrix and he tried again.

Choir was more helpful than he imagined, and once he cut through her computer jargon, she told him that she had killed the guards so the runners would be able to stay alive to cease the scourge. When questioned deeper, she knew nothing of what she had just said and the runners assumed that she had been hacked in some way. Choir also told the runners that Blake was on route with the Primary (whom they took to mean Allisom) and that the Primary had stood down the rest of Seraphim.

The runners realised that this was their chance to take out Allisom and hurried up to the only helipad which was on the roof of one of the buildings. They set the anti-personnel mines around and took up positions around the helipad. They then watched in dismay when two helicopter gunships and an executive helicopter swooped over head, the executive touching down on the scrubland at the other end of the island. The runners moved quickly and hustled across to where Allisom stood outside the helicopter.

Allisom had Blake at gunpoint and was surrounded by six handpicked Seraphim troopers, the runners were quickly closing on the scene. Ki-Rin was first on the scene and fired the first Salvo at Allisom. The Sedim realised that it was not going to be able to bargain with the runners and dispatched Blake with a single bullet before ordering his troops to open fire.

The runners were forced into a desperate fight, Six had to break cover, his drones stranded on the rooftop ambush, Ki-Rin was strafed by both helicopters and had to make a do or die shot at the pilot through the windshield. Glyph and Ash engaged the Seraphim guards in a close run firefight.

After the dust settled, Dominic Cross/Allisom lay dead in the dirt. The runners weren’t sure how to kill a Shedim but urged Ash to decapitate the body with his weapons focus. There was a slight glint of light at the cut, but that was all. They weren’t sure if they had banished the spirit but they could think of nothing else to do.

The runners took Dominic Cross’s helicopter and flew back to San Francisco main land with Blake’s body which they left in Ash’s care.

The runners returned to their homes. Blake was dead. Allisom was gone. Cross Applied Technologies had become nothing more than corporate assets divvied up between the bigger corporations.

But was that the end?...

The Rock. Part 2

2007-08-24T10:34:00.000Z

Six, Glyph, Ki-Rin, Ash.

Monday 13th November 2070 03:00

The explosion sent a shower of debris down the tunnel back toward the runners and none were aware of the prickling sensation that accompanied the activation of a spell. After a moment or two to gather their wits the runners began to make a move, but before they could react, Six was knocked off his feet by some kind of projectile web and dragged into the dusty darkness beyond the breech in the wall. Ash and Glyph reacted quickly firing shots into the gloom towards some kind of massive arachnid. Seraphim troops stormed towards them from the entrance to the pipe that the team had made their way up. A desperate battle ensued, The massive spider was topped with a muscled human torso belonging to the long dead mage, Silk. Ash and Glyph deployed grenades towards the three Seraphim troopers who were blown to pieces, Six managed to free himself from the web, but in an effort to aid the rigger, Glyph became caught up in the spiders silk. Ash made his way to the entrance of the tunnel to fight off any more Seraphim troops and was horrified to see that one of the troops they had already killed was Blake. In a flat panic he tried to medikit his brother, but as he sat waiting for the nanites to do their work, he saw that all three troopers were the visage of Blake. Thoughts of cloning and other horrors flashed through Ash’s mind. The runners fought on, the mutated Silk/spider seemingly ignoring horrific wounds inflicted onto it continued to try and cocoon the team,

Six’s attention was attracted by a familiar voice, he sent his drone across to investigate and was shocked to find the long dead troll runner, Ono. He seemed to be gesturing back towards where Six’s meat body stood, and Six was confused. He called out over the com that Ono was here but the others had become bogged down in a firefight with more Seraphim troopers. Six focused on what Ono was trying to tell him, and eventually he could see a faint outline of words hanging in the air across where the new concrete wall had been. He yelled for Ash to come and investigate, but was snatched from his feet by the spider and he too began to get cocooned. Ash made his way over and could see that the writing was some kind of spell lock, he swiped once with his weapons focus which broke the spell. The runners found themselves in what seemed to be an old pumping room underneath Alcatraz, they had been firing at mirages and their own fears, made real by the spell. They knew they could well have made enough noise to bring the Seraphim army down onto them and they hustled.

They arrived at another pumping room with the all of the equipment removed. The pipe continued onward through the island but again was blocked up with a newer concrete wall. This room seemed to be a junction for some kind of sewage system and there were several apertures in the ceiling which had old crumbling pipes. Six dispatched his flyspy drone up one of the larger pipe sections and planned out a navigable route that led to a toilet block. They would need to smash their way through a toilet but it was doable.
Glyph was sent first and set a small explosive charge beneath one of the porcelain thrones. The team quickly swarmed into the toilet block and secured it. They then considered their options, they guessed that the supercomputer would need power and identified the buildings around them which did seme to have power. That logic discounted all but four buildings. The light house, the large building in the centre, and two of the lower outlying buildings. The initially planned to start at the lighthouse, but the sniper nest and the open ground made them change their minds. They instead went for the large building in the centre of the island. Ki-Rin was first, and he bypassed the doorlock, the rest quickly followed, with the exception of Six who remained hidden in the toilet block, preferring to use the drones.

The searched the building from room to room, until Ki-Rin opened one door that lead directly into the main prison cells. Six, through one of his drones saw that Ki-Rin was already compromised. Although there seemed to be no reason why the alarms hadn’t already sounded.

No longer used as cells, Seraphim used the main prison building as the bunkhouse for the troops while on base. Ki-Rin opened his account with a shotgun blast through the bars of one cell. But the Seraphim soldiers, although not dressed up in their full mil-spec armour were still more than capable of returning fire and very quickly the room Ash and Ki-Rin hunkered in became a fire trap. Ki-Rin was dropped, but Ash, on hand was able to administer first aid. And although this floor of Seraphim were all but wiped out, there were more on upper floors.

The fight continues…

Finding Blake

2007-07-27T10:21:00.000Z

Ki-Rin, Glyph, Drifter, Six, Ash.

Sunday 12th November 2070.

The runners had to spend a bit of time R&R after the clash with Book but they were beginning to get a bit restless when Ash finally received the phone call from The Juggler about his brother, Blake.

Ash went round to see the Juggler at Clive’s Dive where he was told that Blake had been drafted into the Seraphim, the strong arm of Cross Applied Technologies. Apparently Seraphim had two classes of soldiers, C1 and C2, Blake was designated as a C2 soldier. Both class of troop were interlinked with a semi autonomous AI called Choir, which coordinated their actions. It seems that Choir was in constant communication with each Seraphim troop.
The Jugglers network of information gatherers had also managed to locate the headquarters of the Seraphim and that it was on the Isle of Alcatraz. Cross had somehow managed to move in as General Saito was moving out and now that they were there no one really knew that they occupied it, and those that did, didn’t have the balls to try and oust them.
The Juggler told Ash that his brother was sure to be on the old prison island, and if he wasn’t then that computer would know exactly where Blake was.

Ash made his way round to Six’s apartment and after filling him in on the intel, Six took charge, summoning the rest of the runners to remove some of the burden from his friend.
Once the team had arrived and the information had been shared, they swung into action formulating a plan to storm Alcatraz.

Ki-Rin tapped the information that he could from his contact who used to be a member of Seraphim. They discovered that magical security had been provided by Dominic Cross himself, that the surface was covered by two separate sniper nests, and that the rest of the troops would stay inside the buildings of the island. Ki-Rin’s contact also told him of two ways into the island that he considered to be weak points. One was an automated re-supply ship that departed on a weekly basis from a Cross controlled facility. The other way was an inlet pipe that the patrols would to use as a sneaky smoking spot, he suspected that it led deep into the interior of the base.
With the intel gathered the runners set about ordering ordinance. Bullets and grenades featured highly. Six dispatched a newly purchased skimmer drone out to the island to get a closer look.
They decided on getting to the island by swimming the 1 mile cordon underwater to gain access to the inlet pipe.

The runners launched from Glyph’s boat and swum unhindered to the pipe. The team quickly and relatively easily made their way into the pipe and changed their scuba gear for their armour. The Flyspy drone was sent on ahead and came to a square sump room which seemed to be occupied by a small crystalline ring that hovered and rotated in the centre of the room.

The runners went closer to investigate, Ash, being the magical one went first but retreated back as the ring began to head towards him. After discussions they decided to head into the room two at a time to try and trick the ring. Ash and Glyph headed in, one on either side but they hadn’t counted on the power inherent in the magical trap, and both were whisked off to an astral realm where they were assailed by some kind of spirit.

The rest of the team watched in horror as the two runners disappeared, but a matter of seconds later they both reappeared as the ring winked out of existence, battered and bruised, by their encounter with the spirit but they were able to defeat it.

The runners made their way out of the sump and continued down the tunnel into the heart of the island when they came across a new cement wall that now covered the tunnel. To a man they turned to the demos expert, Glyph, who declared that she hadn’t bought any more plastique since the last run. They stood around as if it was a union meeting for a while before they all shuffled out of the tunnel and headed back to Glyph’s boat. While the rest of the runners waited Ki-Rin went back to his apartment where he had a can of explosive foam and a detonator cap lying about. He got back to the boat, the team suited up and made the long swim back to the pipe. 3 hours later the runners were back in the tunnel, explosive foam primed and ready to blow. The team retreated back to the sump and Ki-Rin detonated the explosive sending chunks of concrete wall down the tunnel.

TBC…

Six's blog

2007-06-13T15:48:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 31: 28.10.70>
Man, do I fucking hate Las Vegas. Seems we can guaran-damn-tee that everything’s gonna go belly up the minute we hit town. Maybe it’s cursed.
Maybe it just hates us because we never go to gamble? I dunno, but if I never see Vegas again, it’ll be too soon. Wish we’d never ended up back there…

Few days ago, we got a call from Mal asking us to drop by his surgery.
Understandably for a guy who spends his working days elbow deep in gore, Mal doesn’t scare easily but he sounded spooked. We smelt trouble but Mal was safe and he told us he had a job for us. By way of background he started to tell us a ripping yarn and revealed that he had some close links with our old nemesis the Juggler and the Notable Anarchists. We knew Mal had street docced for them but the story he told us now made him an integral part of the team – a team which had an almighty boner for screwing over Cross Applied Technology.

The way Mal told it, Juggler had tipped them off to Dominic Cross’
acquisition of an Orichalcum book that could be used to summon the Sheddim – the goofy spirit that had Essence-raped Ash and I and left us bleeding out our auras into Astral Space. The NA had decided to spoke Cross’ wheel and raid his offices for the book and had togged up as commercial cleaners for a covert insertion before their contact on perimeter security had decided to boost his pension prospects by turning them over to the boss mid-op. They were screwed but pressing on and succeeding was going to be no more dangerous than bailing out so they forged on and you’ve gotta admire their balls.

In the middle of the tale, the door opens and the tea boy waltzes in – only this tea boy is the fucking Juggler. He’s carrying nothing more offensive than a double espresso though and Mal points out that Cross had originally employed us to stop Juggler’s attacks yet ironically we had ended up attacking Cross ourselves. We’d gone Poacher turned Gamekeeper and had been fighting the Juggler’s war for him ever since! Mal had a point, the enemy of my enemy is my friend so we all sat down with a brew and Juggler took up the tale.

The team mage, named Book, had done an Astral scout and located the Orichalcum book but it was being protected by a spirit of some kind. In real space the team had battled their way through to Cross’ private apartments and found the man coughing up blood, his eyes blackened and burnt, lying not far from the physical book itself. Seems the team finished the job and iced Cross (there’s a lot of that going around lately) but then couldn’t decide what to do about the Orichalcum Book. Their mage believed the spirit seemed keen for them to take it but they were worried about getting mixed up in things they didn’t understand. In the end, they seemed to think the Wizboy could protect himself against spiritual influence and had taken the book until they could destroy it. Bad move. Book the mage seemed to have gone screwy and was now officially AWOL with the Orichalcum Book. Juggler wanted both back and Mal was the go-between offering us 50k for our services.

Now this, this was a head fuck. I know that in real life nothing is black and white and it’s all just shades of grey, but this was totally blurring the lines between friend and foe, right and wrong. Time was when I would have shot the Juggler for less than 50k and the thought of us all trailing off after this Mage and a book that could potentially push us all over the edge into mad servitude to the Sheddim was far from appealing.

Continues: 1/4>
|| >

However, Juggler sweetened the deal with the promise of further info on the whereabouts of Ash’ brother and also said he had been told that the Orichalcum Book could be used to banish Allisom. Helping find Blake, giving the Sheddim the Bird, shafting Cross and plugging my sucking aura wound all added up to an interesting answer to the question – what the frag’s in this for me? We shook on the deal and started swapping info – Juggler had been totally frozen out of Book’s life but we’d had tabs on the man twice in recent runs. He’d been hanging out with Dr Manton Ford poisoning the Caribou sports drink and we’d been on his trail in Vegas before Ash and I were busted…

Ford was the weaker link and we we’re all set to hit research mode. A bad Burrito I’d picked up at Deano’s Diner intervened however and laid me up a while. As I lay dying in my bed, the rest of the team quickly established that Ford had fled town. Don’t ask me where Ash got the info – I’ve realised just lately that it’s better for me not to query his dubious contacts – but he found out a crack squad of Cross’ Console Soldiers called Seraphim had spirited the good doctor away and deposited him with a Barrens’ street gang called the Whites. The way I understand it, the Whites traded their info in a deal that required Glyph to go gung-ho on their local rivals. Maybe the Whites get off on ladies fighting? Whatever, the deal went down and the gang handed over a business card for a Johnson who had picked Manton Ford up in a chopper.

Johnson turned out to be a Lone Star Facilitator – a can do man who made things happen. I was back on point by this stage and Croner filled in the blanks for me. We met up with the guy and he was happy to talk about his brief stint working for Cross. He had made Manton Ford disappear and replaced him with John Austin, an executive for TecTonic who lived in Nixon.
We well-remembered Nixon and particularly the CAT facility at Pyramid Lake where we had swamped the technology being used to produce clones of Dominic Cross in dozens of feet of dirty lake water. It didn’t take too long to put two and two together and sure enough CAT were trying to rebuild the facility and Ford was slap bang in the middle of it. Surveillance went badly when my FlySpy was spotted by an eagle eyed brickie and we decided we had to move fast before we were thoroughly rumbled. We assaulted the facility as stealthily as possible but the alarm had already been sounded and before we knew it, a chopper was dropping a Seraphim Elite FRT on our heads.

The fire fight was intense and brutal. We weren’t equipped for heavy combat while Seraphim were togged up in military gear, but even their Elite were just console soldiers when you got right down to it and we had faced them before and knew how to defeat them. Ash and Drifter hit the deck and needed resuscitation and then, just as we were ready to Cas Evac Ford and high tail it before Seraphim reinforcements arrive, Ash goes totally postal, sobbing over the console soldiers’ corpses and tearing their helmets off. Only afterwards do I realise that he’s worried Blake has been drafted into the elite…

Ford sang like a canary. I get the impression the team’s ‘innovative’
interrogation techniques were more than he knew how to handle. I think Ki-rinn threatened to ram his teeth down his throat, Glyph let him drool on her cleavage and Ash just sobbed about the loss of his brother. I don’t do interrogation so I kept well clear. Props to the guys though, whichever method it was that worked, it got results and we were soon off to Vegas, back to the Volcano Club – scene of our last sighting of Book and my ignominious beating at the hands of a Lone Star patrol trooper.

Ki-rinn quickly established that if Book was inside, he was with the movers and shakers on the high rollers tables. I deployed drone observations while Frosty and Glyph tarted themselves up. They would play a young, flush couple splashing the cash inside while I kept tabs on them and Ash played fire support. I’d managed to pinpoint Book’s motor in the car park so we were confident he couldn’t easily give us the slip.

Continues: 2/4>
|| >

Ki-rinn and Glyph demonstrated a remarkable skill for wasting their money on bad bets. They played the ‘easy mark’ nicely and had obviously soon caught the attention of someone in the casino who wanted to strip their credsticks bare. They were escorted into the private elevator and whisked up to the private card tables. Shame Ki-rinn wasn’t quite so good at placing surveillance devices inconspicuously. My IBall Drone had been rumbled straight away so we were effectively blind. A tense half hour ticked by until Frosty dropped the dime in the callbox and tipped us off to the fact that he was sitting opposite Book. He and Glyph had been forced to go in unarmed and there were guards on the high stakes floor so Ki-rinn needed a rapid distraction before he lost the shirt off of his back.

Ash grabbed K’s sniper rifle and moved into position as our poker playing duo painted the guards by Smartlink. I held my breath as Ash took the shot – he was shooting high, through at least one wall and into an unseen foe… It was impossible to work out what was going on – the paints started to wheel around chaotically as a fight ensued. Ash was firing, reloading, moving and firing again, smashing shots through the wall. Worse, Glyph and Ki-rinn might have painted the enemies but we really didn’t know who was who or where our friends were. Each shot Ash fired could have hit Glyph or Ki-rinn or shattered the Mage’s skull like an over-ripe melon preventing us from ever finding out where he’d stashed the Orichalcum Book. We started losing paints. At first I wasn’t sure if they were ticking down confirmed kills but then so many of them flicked out at once we knew either Glyph or Ki-rinn was down. Ash was out of sniper rounds and helpless and then the rest of the paints disappeared. Both of our chummers were down, definitely shot up; at best unconscious and at worst dead and we had no way of working out which it was.

Ash and I sat in the van just looking blankly at each other. It seemed like hours but I guarantee it was just a matter of seconds. We didn’t know what had just happened to the other half of our team and going in to find out seemed like suicide. It didn’t take us long to decide to commit suicide though – what else could we do? Ki-rinn and Glyph had risked their lives to rescue us last time we were in Vegas. Looked like it was time to repay that debt. We at least knew Book was still inside, but it was a fair bet that he and the Red Samurai security in the joint would know that we were coming. We stealed ourselves for an assault. Frag Vegas.

I made a call to Nunzio and paid for a few Mafia goons to come and lend us their guns. Ash got hold of a shiny new rifle and we planned to go in hard and fast. My drones would lead the assault – parts come cheaper than lives – backed up by Ash who would lead in our hired heavies. The casino was emptied by Red Samurai and the disgruntled gamblers turfed out into the pre-dawn gloom told us we were expected.

I opened the batting by sticking the drone van through the casino’s front windows, laying down covering fire from the HMG as I deployed the drones and as the meat made its way in. The ground floor was open plan and Red Samurai didn’t stand a chance – we were clear and making a move on the first floor.
Trouble was, Red Samurai now had the edge. They knew where we would be coming up and had the escalators covered. Until those escalators were working again, the drones were effectively useless – unable to reach the next floor. It meant the meat had to go in first and take the brunt of the enemy fire and they suffered. By the time I had drones in support, we were men down and limited on medical supplies. One of the Mafia goons, Mario I think, got Ash back on his feet with a nano-medkit and the extra automatic fire from the drones helped tip the tide in our favour.

On the second floor, a nasty surprise in the form of twin-linked sentry guns awaited us but I know what I’m doing when it comes to confusing sensors. A grenade brought down debris from the ceiling tiles to confuse the targeting computer while the drones zipped in. By the time the drones had been acquired, Ash was able to pop up from the stairwell and finish the job properly with no casualties.

Continues: 3/4>
|| >

The sentry guns were covering the glass elevator to the High Rollers floor and we again realised anyone using the lift was making themselves a sitting duck. Sending the drones first was an easy compromise so I patched Ash in on the camera feed and we sent them up. I flattened the Steel Lynx down on the elevator floor and that gave us an edge of surprise over the Red Samurai who were expecting man-sized targets. The cameras revealed a private bar that looked a dead match for the room Ki-rinn and Glyph had described. Six guards were dotted around the place and amongst them was the Mage from the Notable Anarchists, Book.

I popped the Steel Lynx up and started firing through the glass as targets presented themselves. Book threw himself over the bar to take shelter from a volley from the Doberman and on the other side of the room I saw another set of elevator doors open and vomit out Glyph, guns blazing. She was alive! And now we were rocking! Attacked unexpectedly from two different directions, we had Red Samurai on the run and the glass elevator began to descend again to collect Ash and Mario.

My exultation was short lived. Book has a couple of mage tricks up his sleeve and reduced the Doberman to smoking metal with a stream of acid out of the end of his fragging fingertip and then the Steel Lynx ran out of ammo. I saw Glyph go down in a hail of gunfire and my only option was now to run distraction. The Lynx drew the guards fire while Ash piled into the lift, before a couple of grenades blew it right off of its legs.

I was blind. A little dump shocked and completely fragged for intel – all I had was an occasional burst of gunfire relayed to me over the comm. I was out of combat-effective drones too. My one consolation was that the grenades used on the Lynx hadn’t gone Ash’ way but it was small beer compared to the creeping realisation I’d have to go against everything I’ve learnt lately and put my carcass on the line in a firefight against Red Samurai with nothing but my Ares Pred. What else could I do? Three of my friends’ lives and the success of the Run could hang on whether or not I was there to put a bullet in one of the fraggers. I ditched the van and ran for the escalators.

By the time I got to the top floor, things had gone from bad to worse. I could see the bodies of Glyph, Ash and Ki-rinn scattered about the room and it was only our Hired Help Mario who was preventing MDK. Almost whooped with joy to see him knelt over Ash, spraying suppressing fire from an AK in Book’s direction while he stuck the nano-medkit into my boy. Ash eyes cracked open and I could see he was able to fight on. With Mario keeping Book’s head down, Ash and I flanked the fragger. As Ash wheeled around one end of the bar, Book turned in that direction, no doubt with some vicious spell in mind. I rose on his blind side, opening my flick baton and clubbing him over the back of the head as Ash pulled the trigger and thumped a Stick Shock round into his grid.

Book was out for the count. His Rentacops were goners. We were all alive. A quick medical once over convinced us neither Glyph nor Ki-rinn was about to shuffle off of the mortal coil and we discovered that the devious swine Glyph had somehow managed to lay her hands on the Orichalcum Book during her attempted escape. We knew it wouldn’t be long before Lone Star, a Red Samurai FRT or more of Book’s friends came running. Ash, Mario and I carried Glyph, Frosty and Book downstairs double time and blazed. We’re en route back to San Fran now and you better believe I gave Las Vegas a big old bird as we crossed the border and left the dusty hell hole behind. It’s a shame Mario lives there. I liked him – he proved to be a good man in a pinch and we swapped numbers after it all, but I don’t imagine I’ll be too keen to visit!

Mood: Bone weary. I needs my sleep, but not until we hit SF!

Ends: 4/4>
||

Rescue from the Volcano Casino

2007-05-17T11:30:00.000Z

Six, Glyph, Ash

Friday 27th October 2070

The runners were in Las Vegas trying to find and capture a Mage who had gone AWOL with an orachachum book. Glyph and Ki-Rin had found him in a casino and had played a round of cards before trying to take him down. Glyph and Ki-Rin were out gunned and were near killed and were taken captive. Six and Ash, powerless to do anything initially, decided to stage a daring rescue attempt.

Six phoned his brother, the mafia man, and arranged for 5 mafia goons to come down and help out lay down some bullets and maybe draw some fire. Meanwhile Ash contacted Snow and arranged a weapon upgrade complete with under-slung grenade launcher.

Glyph came round, seemingly in Book’s private quarters, Ki-Rin unconscious in the room with her. She heard the mage talking on the phone outside the room, clearly making preparations for some kind of robust defence of the building. Eventually he left leaving a couple of guards watching over the captured runners.
Glyph seemed to be in Books bedroom, and after checking that Ki-Rin was alive she sought around to try and fashion some kind of improvised weapon.

At about 6 in the morning the Volcano casino emptied rapidly. Although early, Casinos never completely emptied but over the course of an hour every guest was ushered out of the building. Ash and Six had the feeling that someone was onto them. Six’s mafia goon squad turned up, and not long after, a Ork fixer known to Snow called Baz turned up with Ash’s bullets and grenades. The plan was simple, Six was going to drive his drone van, in through the plate glass lobby and lay waste to the pop up targets. After that point they would pick their way through the building killing anyone who would be a threat until they found Glyph and Ki-Rin.

Six rolled and exiting the road at speed, ploughed through the glazing of the casino. The mounted gun began taking out the guards who were in the lobby area while Ash the mafia goons and the drones deployed. The ground floor was relatively easy considering, and while Six sat in the comfort of the van controlling the drones, Ash and the Mafia made their way up the escalators.

Glyph had managed to fashion some kind of electric prod, out of a bedside lamp, a pole from a wardrobe, a length of ripped cloth and 3 metres of flex, and then began to try and lure the guards into the room. Eventually one of them stupidly opened the door and was electrocuted when Glyph jabbed the home made lightsabre into his ribs. She quickly dropped the second guard with the first guards weapons.

At the top of the escalators Ash and the mafia goons were coming under heavy fire. The Red Samurai guards had prepared a killing zone and despite Ash delivering a grenade to the minigun nest, three mafia goons had been cut down, and Ash was lying unconscious on the floor before the drones reached the top of the escalator and were able to come into play. The Steel Lynx was devastating though and the Red Samurai were quickly dealt with. Ash was brought back round and they moved onward to the next floor.

Glyph had checked around the apartment and had found a chair that seemed to be used by the mage. An orachalchum chippy lead had been strung through the eye sockets of five skulls and linked into an old Fairlight Excalibur. She had no idea what it was for but took the cyberdeck so that Ki-Rin could have a look at the data once he was up and well again. She then took the unconscious decker across to the lift to make their way down.

The next floor for Ash, the Mafia goons and Six’s drones had been cleared back of all furniture and two static mounted pintle gun drones, these locked onto and tracked the team making their way in and opened fire. The team kept their heads down while Six’s drones went in to distract these gun turretsbefore Ash finished them off with some well aimed bursts of armour piercing bullets.

They moved across to the single glass lift, and decided to send up the drones first. They sat in the lift and made their way up to the room where the card game went wrong for Ki-Rin. The drones sensors scanned the room and detected amongst the 6 guards, Book was in their. The Steel Lynx and the Doberman drones began to take down targets.

Glyph and Ki-Rin descended into the same room from a different lift. And as the doors opened Glyph let rip with the guns she had liberated. Book wasn’t getting taken without a fight and fired an acid stream at the Doberman which fizzed before popping. The Steel Lynx took down as many guards in the room as possible before running out of ammo. Ash summoned the lift and the last thing Six saw through the drones cameras was Glyph getting dropped by another magical stream of acid. Two grenades dropped into the lift with the Steel Lynx, and that drone was reduced to twisted metal.

Six was now out of contact with everything that was going on, and after a brief mental debate hopped out of the van and decided to dash up the stairs to help out.

Ash and the remaining mafia goon called Mario (the one with the big shoes and the AK97) made it to the top floor and were instantly under attack by the mage, Ash instructed Mario to use the medkit on the unconscious Glyph and then was also hit by one of Books acid stream spells which dropped Ash. The mafia goon was able to keep Books head down long enough with suppressing fire to administer more first aid to Ash, and long enough for Six to arrive. Ash and Six moved round either side of the bar Book was using for cover and shot him with stick shock rounds and whacked him on the head.

Ash, Six, and Mario then had to haul the unconcious Ki-Rin, Glyph and Book down three stories and back into the van. After thanking Mario for his efforts and an exchange of phone numbers Six blazed from the wreckage of the casino lobby and headed back to San Francisco to hand Book over to the Juggler.

The Mage in the Volcano.

2007-05-10T14:26:00.000Z

Thursday 26 October 2070

Glyph, Six, Ki-Rin, Ash.

The runners drove away from the facility with an injured and unconscious Manton Ford. They drove to a secluded spot on the highway and parked up. Six had a bit of a heart to heart with Ash while Ki-Rin and Glyph questioned Manton Ford.

The questioning was light and friendly, an approach Ford hadn’t steeled himself for, and he found himself opening up to the runners, hinting at his fear of Dominic Cross. He gave the runners a phone number for Book and after Ash joined in the questioning gave them the number for Dominic Cross as well.

Ki-Rin ran a trace on Books number while Six made a phoney call, and they pin[pointed his location to the Volcano Club. They suspected he was going to be there, but now they were sure. Six and Ki-Rin went onto the Volcano Club in Las Vegas, while Ash Glyph and Drifter went back to San Francisco to palm off Manton Ford onto The Juggler and to seek medical attention.

Six and Ki-Rin pressed onto Las Vegas, and after setting themselves up in the Volcano car park, set about surveillance. Six deployed drones for visual obs, while Ki-Rin picked up a tux and headed into the casino to see what he could see. After about an hour, and after loosing one of Six’s drones Ki-Rin came out and retired back to the van with the knowledge of the rough layout, the security measures laid on by Red Samurai and that there was a high rollers table on the 3rd floor of the building. The pair settled down and waited for Ash and Glyph to catch up.

Friday 27th October 2070 02:00

Ash and Glyph caught up with the others at about two in the morning, they caught up on what had transpired so far, and they came up with a bit of a plan, Glyph and Ki-Rin would go in to see if they could get up to the high roller table to see if their quarry, Book, was up there. Six and Ash were to remain outside as a fast response.

Ki-Rin started splashing the cash at the tables, and eventually his keenness to loose his money was noticed by someone. He was approached by a bouncer who told him that he could make his way upstairs with a 50k buy in. Ki-Rin accepted and then had to pool the teams money to be able to afford the buy in.

Heading upstairs, Ki-Rin was introduced to Book and his four gambling mates. Glyph joined them at the table, and watched in horror as over the course of half a dozen hands Ki-Rin lost a good chunk of the money. Ki-Rin himself readily admitted that he was no card shark, and he knew soon enough that he was going to loose the lot, he was in on the last hand an knew he would be out, he got on the phone and called Six and Ash to tell them that they had Book in their sight but needed a distraction.

Ki-Rin painted up the targets with the smartlink, and seeing this, Ash took Ki-Rin’s sniper cannon and found himself a sneaky place to shoot from. He was shooting at range, through the external concrete structure at an unseen target marked out only by the smartlink system, he had two armour defeating high velocity anti materiel shells left, and two guards near the lift to take out.

Ki-Rin was shaking the hands of the card players when Ash took the shoot. It punched through the wall but a lot of the potency had been taken out by the exterior cladding only winging the guard. He kicked up a stink all the same, and guns appeared in the hands of his colleagues and one of the card players had come in with a six shooter too. Ki-Rin went over to the guards all pally-pally asking what was going on before snatching the gun of the guard who was shot.

Glyph saw what was going on, and was going to take out Book, but instead went for the card shark with the six shooter. A mistake, as bullets flew, he attacked magically, dropping first Ki-Rin and then Glyph bringing them to the very brink of death.

Ash and Six were helpless, loosing the smartlink feed from one, then the other. They knew it had gone badly, and didn’t even know if they had survived. They sat outside, and thought, and were unable to do anything. They watched, and hoped that they would be dragged out by security, or that lone star would turn up and collect the body bags, or their friends would get a message to them but there was nothing.

It was Six in the morning, the sun was just coming up, and then they decided to go in. Six made a phone call while Ash checked the trunk of Glyph’s car to see what they had in the way of ammunition.

Back to the Facilty. Looking for Ford.

2007-04-26T15:18:00.000Z

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.

The Pig in the Barrens

2007-04-19T08:31:00.000Z

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.

The Jugglers hit on Cross

2007-04-12T11:35:00.000Z

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…

Six Blog

2007-04-11T07:21:00.000Z

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Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
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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>
||

The (un)-sinking of the Nova

2007-03-29T08:49:00.000Z

Six, Glyph, Ash.

The runners had returned from a successful run in the Nevada toxic zone. They had to spend some time to disinfecting themselves and their kit but the Naga bite that Ash had suffered became infected, for two days he suffered a raging fever which filled his nights with nightmares. By Monday though he had snapped out of it and was better than ever.

Monday 16th October 2070

Snow contacts the team and tells them that he has a Mr. Johnson from Mitsuhama who wishes for a team of shadowrunners to field test a new bit of kit that his company are looking to bring to market in the first quarter of ’71. The runners agreed to meet up but Six was concerned that they had messed with Mitsuhama a run or two ago and chose to go in a nanopaste disguise.

The Johnson was not only from Mitsuhama, but was also the executive that had been on the receiving end of the cat prank but he didn’t seem to make the connection to the runners in front of him.

The device was called Shugotenshi, or as it was to be marketed in the west as the Guardian Angel. It is a medkit device which hooked up to the bio-monitors and when the users life was threatened it would automatically fire life saving nanites into the blood stream. Mr. Johnson openly admitted that the final prototype device that they would be testing for about a month would have monitoring systems for Mitsuhama to assay the systems workings but assured the runners that they knew their client base and wouldn’t do anything to compromise their anonymity. The pay was 10k up front, and a further 10k if the device was used successfully or not, there was a payout to next of kin should the worst happen also. Six called a private meeting and argued that it wasn’t for him and warned the others that this was bad. Glyph and Ash however were not swayed by his decision and opted to take and use the device.

Tuesday 17th October 2070

Daisy had arranged a meeting and Ash had met up with a construction company to quote him for the building of his house in the desert, and after a good meeting where Ash aired his needs for the site, he was approached from yonder, by a distinct and unpleasant troll. There was an air of disease and corruption about him. The troll didn't introduce himself but he knew Ash's name and also knew that Ash’s brother was missing. The troll then professed that Blake was going to be killed but would be prepared to tell Ash where he was, for a favour. There was a ship called the Nova bound for San Francisco and the troll wanted it sunk before it arrived. With that the troll departed, walking back off into the desert.

Ash’s mind raced, and the first thing he did was get Daisy onto the matrix to find out about the Nova. The info she came back with wasn’t good. The Nova was a bulk goods ship which was escorted by a mercenary frigate, Greenpeace were haranguing the ship because of it’s cargo. Cyanogen Chloride V, a lethal toxin destined for the UCAS Naval port in San Francisco.

Ash wasn’t going to be fragged with by some ugly pig faced troll and drove across the desert towards the retreating form. Ash demanded that he give him some proof that he knew about Blake’s whereabouts. The troll was dismissive, if Ash didn’t believe him it was his problem. Ash’s temper flared and drew a gun on the shaman.

The fight was short. The shaman had a bound toxic sludge spirit that tossed the pickup truck Ash was in as though it was a toy. Ash woke in the desert sun a few hours later, covered in a foul smelling substance, the van a battered mess. Ash tried to find this toxic shaman again but couldn’t.

He sought the help of his friends, Six and Glyph. They debated long and hard about the pro’s and the con’s of doing the work of this toxic, they contemplated how they would go about the mission and the consequences that their actions would have on the environment as well as the corporations that it would affect. They knew that it would be folly to even attempt this mission and vowed to try and find this troll and get the answers they need from him by other means. Ash sometimes wished that he didn’t have family that he had to look after.

Project Buttercup

2007-03-22T16:13:00.000Z

Six, Glyph, Ash, Ki-Rin.

Friday 13th October 2070

The runners were contacted by their fixer, Snow, he was quite keen to pass on the latest job that had come to him, this one from Saeder Krupp, and they asked for this team specifically. Snow game the team a word of warning about SK’s intolerance of failure and then passed them the job.

Contacting the Mr. Johnson they met up with him in a swank five star hotel where a boardroom had been booked for the meet. The Johnson, told them the details of the run.

70 years ago the then government of the united states instigated a black project called Buttercup. A genetic research program aimed at integrating genetic code into the human genome via viral carriers to make the population resistant to biological terrorist attacks. This project disappeared off the radar during the crash of ’29. The government forgot about it, and for whatever reason the scientists working the project didn’t start screaming out when the funding from central government stopped.
Following the 70 year rule, the CIA released documents purporting to the Buttercup project into the public domain. Saeder Krupp were keen to see if any evidence of this project still existed and were prepared to speculate 200k on the off chance that it did and that they could make use of some of the findings.
This is where the team came in.

The only evidence that the runners had that this project existed was the CIA document. But this did mention the names of the doctors who would head up the project. Ki-Rin hit the matrix and found the doctors details. Both dead. One died during the Eurowars in Belgium the other was killed during the crash of ’29. One of the doctors, William Schaefer, had a wife who was living in a retirement home in San Francisco.

The runners also looked into medical facilities around the city that could accommodate the Buttercup project because the report that they were given suggested that it may use an existing facility in San Fran. They had three set aside and would follow those leads if everything else dried up.

Heading to the retirement home the runners quickly discovered that a pair of company men was a few hours ahead of them, having already visited William Schaefer’s wife. Ki-Rin got their images up on camera, while Glyph and Ash asked the old lady a few questions. She didn’t remember much, and as her husband had worked for the government, she didn’t know very much either, but she did point the runners in the directions of one of Schaefer’s undergraduates who worked with him not long before he had died.
Ki-Rin isolated the sound feed from the surveillance cameras and determined that the company men already knew about the undergraduate.

The runners were already on the move heading out of San Francisco to get out to the undergraduates house in Sacramento CA.
Screaming into the residential area, the runners spotted the Company men’s car parked on the drive of the ex-undergraduate, a rotor drone hovered in the air above the cul-de-sac and then they saw the muzzle flash from an upstairs window. Six dropped a flash bang grenade and then a smoke grenade into the window of the house, while the rest of the team surged out of the cars to storm the building Ash and Glyph went in through the front, Ki-Rin surged round the side and to the rear of the house.
Ki-Rin marked two targets, one began to flee and as soon as he was painted up on the smartlink Six headed off in the car to head him off at the pass, the other stopped and began shooting at Ki-RIn. Between Ash and Ki-Rin the first company man was dropped, the second had got away over the fence but Ki-Rin charged through the fence and trapped him into fighting.
Ash and Glyph headed upstairs and found the ex-undergraduate bleeding, Glyph used her medkit to save his life, while Ash helped out Ki-Rin finish the fight with the company man by shooting him from one of the upstairs windows with a harpoon.

The ex-undergraduate was alive and told the runners that the other men begun to ask him about his life working for William Schaefer. He told them that they had worked together ion a place called Duckwater until the crash of 2029. The power was cut off and the people they were experimented on tried to escape. A fire started and all but him were killed. There were bigger things going on in the world, and the death of a few scientists in a secretive and forgotten science project didn’t register and the whole incident was forgotten.

Duckwater was a town in the Nevada Desert. It was until the nuclear power plant at Ruth blew creating a toxic zone across a large portion of the desert and had to be evacuated, surrendering the town to the corrupting elements.

The runners weren’t keen to head into the toxic zone but guessed that this was the best lead they had at the moment, so the team headed back to see their fixer to source chemical seals for their armour more ammo, and a bit of advice.

Five house later the runners were en-route in the helicopter, Six had remote rigged his drone van out into the toxic zone already to give them some obs. on the ground, the road was rough and Six knew that the thin polluted air would make the flight a taxing journey.

The runners flew into the toxic zone, the governmental health warnings displayed on the runners AR giving them one last warning to the dangers beyond. The polluted air quickly began to tell on the helicopter engine, surging and choking, Six did his best to manage the engine, but the buffeting was too much for Ki-Rin who was getting air sick.

The runners were 20 minutes into the flight when they were joined in the air by something. Looking like a large skeletal carrion bird with tattered leathery wings and completely lacking flesh it assayed the runners helicopter for a moment before diving into the engine ducts, using its powers to starve the engine of oxygen to bring the helicopter down. Six fought to handle the now heavy controls to bring the helicopter into a controlled landing.
Landing heavily the runners spilled out of the helicopter to attack the spirit that was attacking them.

Spirits barely notice mundane weaponry but the sheer volume of fire that the runners put into the corporeal form of the Harbinger made it think twice about being manifest, and it fled to the astral plane.

The runners were able to get the helicopter airborne again and flew the rest of the distance to the ruined town of Duckwater. A quick flyover the runners saw that the town consisted of approximately 100 buildings, most of which seemed to be residential but one building Six picked out was larger and completely demolished. They all agreed that this building was worth a closer look. The runners also saw movement on the ground, ghouls were eaking out a living amongst the spoiled remains of the land, and they were steering clear of the large demolished building.

The runners landed near the van and swapped vehicles. They headed back into town on the ground and although regarded by the ghouls, threats from Ki-Rin seemed to keep them at bay.
The runners headed across to the building and began to pick their way amongst the rubble. Six stayed in the van, rolling out a Steel Lynx in his stead. Around them, they saw flickers of movement, the heard noises, they heard a child’s voice plead a single word “Please”.
The runners didn’t know what was going on, but they headed to the source of the voice, the centre of the ruined building. Ash was picking his way through the rubble jumping at shadows.

The rest of the team found a short strip of concrete steps which led down to a fire door. The acid rain was pooling at the foot of the stairs and the bottom of the door was mostly rotted away. Ki-Rin kicked the door down and Six (the Steel Lynx) Ki-Rin and Glyph made their way though into a short corridor, Ash was convinced that they were going to get ambushed from the rear and remained on guard near the steps.

There were Six doors off the corridor and the runners quickly checked the rooms. They found some kind of nest with discarded bones that the runners assumed were that of Ghouls. The sixth room they found computers, files and data tapes, a lot of them were rotting away in the acidic atmosphere.
Glyph was the first into the room and she heard the pleading voice again behind her. A large Naga rose up behind her using it’s mimicry to lure its food to it’s nest. It lashed out, and the rest of the nest came out of the walls and through the vents to kill. The nest of Naga has become lazy and complacent, more used to hunting sluggish Ghouls rather than wired shadowrunners and they were all slain quickly. Ash received a bite though and the toxic tainted Naga pumped venom into his system before being taken down by the Steel Lynx’s gun.

The runners were keen to get out of the toxic zone and quickly bundled up the files, computers and hard copies into the back of Six’s van, and they left. The drive out of the toxic zone was a long and arduous one, but it passed off uneventfully, and the runners headed back to San Francisco once they had spent a bit of time in a jet wash.

Ash headed off to see Mal who treated the Naga venom, (although he had to cross his fingers that the linctus he gave his patient would combat the toxic corruption too) They were going to make an impression on the Mr. Johnson from Saeder Krupp, and while Ash sought medical help, the rest of the team stayed up through the night sorting filing and cataloguing the information. The runners met up with Mr. J. the next day and he was happy to pay the runners, confident that the Saeder Krupp reputation for dealing with defaulting Shadowrunners would ensure he got what he wanted.

The runners left happy. Saeder Krupp got what they wanted and the Mr. Johnson was equally happy. Maybe the runners had found a corporation they could work for?

Six's blog, Scavenger hunt.

2007-03-21T15:53:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

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Initializing…>

Entry 29: 28.09.70>
From the sublime to the ridiculous – I can’t believe what Glyph and I just put ourselves through for the good of Brutal Deluxe. I’m whacked!

So yeah, Brutal Deluxe - long story. This time the call came in from a man called Milan offering 250k for a brief sally on to the streets of San Fran.
I was interested but Glyph was the only one of the team free to join me and we soon found out we were outnumbered. Two other Shadowrunning teams were at the meet and it quickly became obvious that this was far from run of the mill. Each team had to register itself with Milan, which is where Glyph decided to christen us Brutal Deluxe, and was then given a shopping list.
Each item on the list had a points value and each team had three and a half hours to collect as many items from the shopping list as possible. At the end of the night, the team with the most points would win the 250k.

The teams blazed and I got vehicles on to the road via remote as we began calling down favours. Our strategy was to go for the biggest points first and then pick up what else we could incidentally. I blazed to the San Fran Giants stadium and we spotted a grid guide camera en route which we liberated to notch up our first point! At the Giants, Glyph diverted off to pick up some cats for a later item while I laid it on thick that I needed the First Base for a charity fundraiser. The manager swallowed it hook, line and sinker. I got the base, signed by the entire first team, a pair of box seat tickets for the match against the Padre’s and a cheque for 100k. The blag had been good but it was getting out of my control and I needed an out from this hairy situation fast. Feeling slightly guilty, I contacted the legitimate charity to collect the 100k and then, explaining that my charity treasure hunt was against the clock, I got the funk out of Dodge with the First Base and five guaranteed points.

I paid honest money for 50 gallons of AvGas and remoted one of the vehicles down to the airfield so it could be loaded up and that was our seventh point in the bag. I thought Papa could source a pre-grid guide car and called in a favour there, though that one never came off, and then begged Nunz to ‘liberate’ a Yakuza finger for me. I figured that with his Mafia connections there would be some coup to count against the Orientals but Nunz wasn’t playing ball. I could cough up ten large to pay for a hit or get the damn finger myself. I figured I had to speculate to accumulate and put my hand in my wallet again to secure two more points.

Snow proved willing to lend Glyph and I a Panther Assault Cannon for a test firing and we met there. Glyph had the transit full of half-feral rescue cats and it didn’t look as though she’d had a pleasant journey. The whole debacle was lunacy but Snow was able to shed some light on Milan’s bizarre game. Seems the treasure hunt is Corp-financed and allows Milan to put fledgling Shadowrunning teams through a dry run and test their resourcefulness. With our Rep and possible future contracts on the line, we redoubled our efforts for the sake of the whole team.

We took the Panther Assault Cannon out to the Barrens. We needed a spent shell casing to earn our tenth point and there were bonus points available if the shell had been fired at us. We had no intention of risking anyone else shooting at us so we set it all up. Glyph fired and recorded a POV film of the shot while I concentrated on jumping aside just before the shell hit.
It took us a couple of tries but we pulled it off and headed back to Snow in high spirits.

Continues: 1/2>
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En route, I realised that an RFID tag in the grid guide camera we had first pinched had attracted Lone Star’s attention. I called in another favour, this time from Bumfluff and between the two of us we managed to get away from the cops long enough to burn the tag. Seeing Lone Star reminded us that we might get some joy from Croner and sure enough he was game. We were going to have to put our hands in our pockets again but he could help us out with a couple of items on our shopping list.

From Snow, we went to the Municipal Waterworks and cut free the door for another point before loading Glyph’s rescue cats into the helicopter and heading for our next target. There were five points riding on rearranging the letters on a corporate building to say something rude, with bonus points for targeting an A, AA or AAA firm. We wanted to combine this with an item demanding we leave a dozen cats in a CEO’s office and that made this at least a seven pointer, plus bonuses. I’d realised that Mitsuhama was a perfect anagram of u_shit_Mama and we identified a small depot that would fit the bill.

Landing on the rooftop, we bailed out the cats and Glyph rappelled over the side of the building and got to work. She soon attracted the attention of the Rentacops so I bought the vehicle mounted weaponry into play to cover her ass and drop the opposition. Needless to say, that only attracted more attention and though Glyph was working like a Trojan, we soon had a Citymaster full of CorpSec en route. With Mitsuhama rechristened u_shit_Mama we moved to phase two, located the CEO’s office and started lobbing mangy feral cats in through the window. CorpSec appeared and the vehicle weaponry was called into use again while Glyph and I finished up and hightailed it in the chopper.

Time was running short so we headed to Lone Star and coughed up the cash for a set of Lone Star rims and a uniform shoulder patch. We struck lucky and spotted a ganger in the holding cells who sold us his jacket which took our tally for that encounter to four plus any bonuses we picked up for the rank of the shoulder patch.

Glyph wanted to stop for at least one more item but I was twitchy. By now I had four vehicles on remote, each carrying valuable points-paying cargo and I knew that if just one of them didn’t get to the meet by 11pm we would forfeit the whole game. I called it, took the gamble that we had done enough and we blazed. Fortunately, I was proven right. We dragged our haul into the meet to find we had been beaten back by both of the other teams. It didn’t matter though, we were back before Milan and that meant our points would all count. He did the totting up and announced the Brutal Deluxe total of 27 points as the winning score and by some margin! Result!

We’d coughed up the best part of 30 large between us but still earned 110k a piece, to say nothing of the boost to our Rep and the potential contracts Milan might now poke in our direction. It’s clearly time for a well-earned break though so Kitty and I are off to Paris for a romantic week away – our first visit to Europe. Back soon!

Mood: High as a kite!

Ends: 2/2>
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six's blog. Eleven nameless men

2007-03-21T15:52:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 28: 18.09.70>
I just made it back from the briefest run of my career – there’s something pleasantly pre-ordained about spotting the wet work target you’ve just been set, sitting about five feet behind the Johnson doing the hiring!

I picked up a call from a man called Donovan who had been pointed in our direction by Lone Star pragmatist Croner. We met at a waterfront café and Donovan announced he represented an international business cabal called the Eleven Nameless Men. They pride themselves on their anonymity and the power that gives them to manipulate the Stock Markets. Unfortunately, their identities had been compromised and an assassin had begun systematically taking them out. With two dead, the remaining Nameless Men wanted the assassin stopped and his employer identified before anymore bodies hit the floor.

Donovan claimed to be an unknown factor, working as a go-between for the Eleven but otherwise unconnected to them. However, Ki-Rinn spotted someone at a nearby table paying a bit too much attention to our meet. He was concerned enough to run a Matrix sweep on the man and turned up that he was French ex-military, Special Forces and dishonourably discharged for mental instability. His poor surveillance skills had made him our Prime Suspect and we resolved to keep him in our sights until his guilt or innocence could be confirmed.

I began remoting vehicles into position, while Glyph went off to meet Croner and check out the police reports on the two deaths. Ki-rinn kept tabs on our man while I pulled a quick vehicle switch to give us an unmarked tail we could use on him. Glyph was soon back in touch with details of a magical ‘bent’ to the assassinations and a unique orichalcum bullet that had been used. Orichalcum bullets had to be hand-made – if Frenchie had made them himself we were fried but Glyph had spotted an engraved ‘A’ on each bullet and that led Ki-rinn to a Weaponsmith called Apollo though we knew he wouldn’t be too forthcoming about his clients.

Our mark was being far too relaxed – going about his daily commute with all the innocence of the other tram passengers and that was getting K and I twitchy. Either we were in danger of losing our man, or we were wasting time on an innocent bystander. We decided to ask him directly and at the next stop I blocked the tram so Ki-rinn could board it and take our target out.
As he surged aboard, I saw the driver reach for an alarm and had plugged him before I’d really thought about what I was doing. That bought Lone Star down on us and it was only good preparation that meant I was equipped to deal with them. Using the Antioch, I slammed a FlashBang through the windscreen on the Patrol One to take out the cops inside. Out of control, the Patrol One careened toward innocent bystanders and I couldn’t face having that on my conscience. The next grenade had to be precisely planted but I got it under the front off-side and the blast knocked the car to one side where it crashed harmlessly.

Ki-rinn bundled Frenchie into the van and we hightailed it. I left the subsequent interrogation to Frosty and Glyph but the guy was stone cold and they weren’t getting a peep out of him. Ki-rinn hit the matrix again, checking back on Frenchie’s first arrival in San Fran. From there it was a fairly routine sweep to track him through to his accommodation and we headed there to see if we could turn up any evidence.

Continues: 1/2>
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I made damn sure our slippery customer would still be present and correct when we returned to the van and then we headed inside. We didn’t have an apartment number and my smart mouth soon got me in trouble with a redneck nationalist who didn’t like the idea that I might know someone from another country. Glyph and Ki-rinn’s speedy trigger fingers dealt with that problem and Frosty got lucky with the B&E.

Frenchie had photographs of eleven people we assumed were the Nameless, a custom sniper rifle, a box of orichalcum bullets and some sort of ritual magic thing going on, using blood on the bullet and on the photographs to defeat his targets magical defences. Ki-rinn was able to hack Frenchie’s Commlink and that allowed us to piece together who his employers were and what the Eleven had done to piss them off in the first place.

And that, was pretty much that. We dealt with Frenchie, passed on the info to Donovan and even got a little extra cash from the Eleven because we were able to warn them how their magical defences were being bypassed. Talk about sweet.

Mood: Job done.

Ends: 2/2>
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The Urban Scavenger Hunt

2007-03-15T12:54:00.000Z

Six, Glyph

The runners had spent a bit more down time finishing off projects, and getting more cyberware installed. Ki-Rin was having some problems with his bone lacing, sections of the dikote sheath had failed and his body was presently trying to reject his elbows and knees, Mal got him back into surgery to fix the problem.
Glyph had also spent some time at Mal’s getting some more headware squeezed into her skull. Ash, had not been heard of for a couple of weeks and the suspicion was that he was hanging out with his new magical friends.

Wednesday 27th September 2070

Six got a cryptic message on his Comlink from a man calling himself Milan. He had a job and the runners had to meet him at The Cat Club at 7pm sharp. Six put the call out but only Glyph was available, with a quarter of a million nuyen being touted for this job the small team would have to do.

Heading round to the Cat Club the runners realised that it wasn’t open for usual business. Rather than the street lined with taxi’s and clubbers cars, there were four pimped motorbikes, and a modified Citymaster parked outside. To the experienced eye of Six, he guessed that these were the vehicles of shadowrunners.

Heading inside they found two separate teams of shadowrunners. Both were also here to take the high paying job. They introduced themselves and it was cordial enough. The man who had called them all here arrived quarter of an hour late, and he let the runners know that only one team would be taking home the money. To get the payout they would have to compete against each other and the clock in a game of Urban Scavenger Hunt. He was going to com them a list of items, and the team back at 11pm with the most items checked off would win the money. Everyone was game.

He went round the teams, asking their team name and taking a comlink number to contact them on.

Gecko were first to pipe up, they were the team with the citymaster.
Gecko are an experienced team who have been running for about 3 years, made up of three individuals they have an elven mage (Kiss) , a human face / rigger (Bates), and a human Merc type (Tex)

Banshee were next to offer their comlink number and team name.
Banshee are a young team from Vegas. They are exclusively humans, and are all hooked up to their bikes. There is a hacker (Crimson) and two gun bunnies (Easter, Freshman) in the team and the mage (Lucid).

Six and Glyph were panicked, they didn’t have a name and when Milan pointed at the pair and asked if they were in Six just said that they didn’t have a name. Glyph quickly piped up that they were team Brutal Deluxe, and they handed over their comlink number to be contacted on.

Each team received the list and quickly skimmed through the host of bizarre items before heading out to their vehicles. Six and Glyph followed last contemplating taking out both of the other teams to ensure that they won, they wisely chose not to take on two experienced teams of runners.

[It was at about this moment that I checked my watch and Nick realised that this game was going to be timed in real time. 11pm my time, was 11pm San Francisco 2070 time]

The Urban Scavenger Hunt List

1. A set of 4 Lone Star wheels. 2 points.
2. Grid guide traffic camera. 1 point.
3. A gangers jacket. 1 point.
4. Live devil rat. 1 point.
5. Photograph of the team at the top of a support of Golden Gate. 2 points.
6. Footage of you rearranging and/or removing the letters on a corporation building to say something obscene. 5 points
7. The first base from the Giants stadium. 5 points.
8. Get a photograph of you having a drink in the Troll exclusive bar Hatchets. 1 point.
9. A tribal shamans Medicine Stick. Bonus points for how powerful it is. 1 point +
10. Steal one of the mayors monogrammed bathrobes. 2 points.
11. The entire door from a civic building. 1 point.
12. A spent Panther Assault cannon casing. 1 point Bonus point if you can prove the shell was fired at you.
13. Leave a dozen feral cats in a CEO’s office. 2 points Bonus points if it an A corporation.
14. Lone Star shoulder patch. 1 point. Additional points if it has a rank
15. 50 gallons of aviation fuel. 1 point.
16. A car that predates Gridguide. 2 point.
17. Video feed of being cuffed and escorted away by Lone Star. 2 points.
18. Lone Star footage of you speeding along Golden Gate Bridge. 1 point.
19. Severed Yakuza finger. 2 points.
20. Footage of you jumping from the golden gate bridge. 1 point.

They studied the list quickly and Six remote rigged his Dodge car to him, if they were going to do this they needed a bit more speed than the Step van offered. Once swapped over they sped to the San Fran Giants stadium. Six and Glyph were mentally working on which corporations lettering would make for something obscene.

En route to the Giants Stadium the runners spotted one of the thousands of grid guide cameras looking down to the road below from the bride they were on. Six Stamped on the brakes and skidded onto the footpath, Glyph leaped out with the miniwelder and chopped the thing off, chucked it into the rear of the car and one point was in the bag.

Screeching to a halt outside the Giants stadium they found that the team were having a training session. Six headed over to the window and attracted the attention of a cleaner in the merchandise booth. He spun her a line about how he was doing a charity treasure hunt and wanted to know if he could have the Giants first base for Unicef. The cleaner went off to ask someone if they could.

Six remote rigged Glyphs car to them and they split up, Glyph was off for some cats.
Then while Six waited he remote rigged his Jeep to the airfield and contacted his flying instructor and asked to buy 50 gallons of aviation fuel. And once paid he pursueded Jerry to load the two barrels into the back of the Jeep. Jerry was more than happy to help. 20:40 the Jeep rolls into the airfield remote controlled. Jerry loaded the fuel into the rear and the Jeep groaned under the weight.

Six then contacted his dad. As an old car nut he was sure to be able to source a pre-gridguide car. Papa was interested in his sons new project of restoring old cars, but didn’t know any off hand. He said he would call back. Dad actually liked the idea of this new vintage car project that Six was about to take up but his son is always so keen to just take on any project and finding a good vintage car took time and couldn’t be rushed. No point in looking till the morning, so he carried on watching the trid.

Six then got onto the phone to Nunzio, a mafia man he would be able to source a Yak finger. Nunzio told Six that a Yakuza man wouldn’t just let his finger be hacked off and it would be easier to whack him. The Mafia were more than happy with wet-work but Six would have to pay the rate for it. Six paid. At about 10:30 the severed finger gets dropped into a remote rigged Jeep which is heaving under the weight of 50 gallons of aviation fuel in the rear.

Six got onto the phone to Snow. He asked to borrow a Panther Assault Cannon for a couple of test shots. Snow agreed to hire it to him, and then as Six tried to tap him up for some more of the bizarre items on the list, Snow guessed what was going on. Snow knows Milan, a fixer with flair. Milan’s thing is to find good shadowrunners in cities around the world, he then sells the shadowrunners contact numbers to corporations who are looking for good runners. Milan finds these cash cows with high paying Urban Scavenger Hunts, the money fronted by his backing corporations.

Six’s conversation was interrupted as the 1st pitcher of the San Fran Giants, Rickie Diamond opened the side door and asked which charity Six was collecting for. Unicef is a wonderful charity and when Six used its name he was lead through and out onto the pitch. A lifelong Giants fan, Six’s jaw dropped slack. Not only was he stood on the pitch that he had worshiped from the stands, he was surrounded by the first team, the second team and the reserves who were all having a mid week training session.
The next twenty minutes was a roller coaster. Press photos of Vincent Caznotti being handed the first base was just the start. The team manager came out after hearing what Vincent was doing for charity declared that the San Francisco Giants would also make a pledge and handed Six a cheque for a hundred thousand nuyen. Six’s head was swimming and he quickly called Unicef San Fran to get one of their men down to take the cheque. As it was for charity the team manager then thought that the first base would be better signed, and that was whisked away from Six to be signed by every member of the team.
Six contacted Ash’s sister, Daisy. He had panicked, and now tomorrow morning his civilian SINned name along with his shadowrunning face will be splashed all over the media and that could only be bad, he needed Daisy to hit that delete button.
Six made his excuses and was waved away by the San Francisco Giants as the hero of the hour.

Glyph was talking to women in comfortable shoes about cats. She was at the San Francisco Cattery and spun them a yarn about how here cat had been put to sleep when she was a child and now Glyph wanted to make amends by taking in as many poor unfortunate cats who were destined to be euthanized. Glyphs story was so compelling and heart felt, that the cattery owner was prepared to hand over 20 evil, mangey furred, flea bitten, hissing, spitting cats to be cared for by Glyph. Upon hearing about this Six convinced his girlfriend to drive the beaten up transit van to meet up with Glyph to collect these cats. Six had to promise a holiday to Paris in return.

Six, in the Dodge with a grid guide camera and a signed Giants first base headed to Snows to meet up with Glyph who was driving in the transit full of caged cats intent on tearing her to shreds. The runners had a brief chat with Snow, thanking him for the Assault cannon and the climbing gear he had dug out for them. Six asked if Snow could pull some favours with Duncan Croner, the San Fran Police chief, and Snow pointed out that they knew his phone number as well.

Leaving the van of livid cats they headed off to the barrens, the plan was for Glyph to shoot at Six with the assault cannon, so that they could film it and collect the spent casing. They found a strip of run down suburbia and they staged a faux shooting of Six. He was going to run and leap clear and the shell fired by Glyph would just miss him. They were going to film it first person shooter style from Glyphs perspective.
It took three attempts to get the footage just right, Six jumped too early, Glyph fired too late, and it looked phoney but the third one was the charm. Collecting up the spent casing they sped away.

The phone call to Duncan Croner came up with some more good news. They had to pay, but he would be able to get them a set of Lone Star wheels and a shoulder patch, they would have to pay, and Six and Glyph now owed the Police chief again. They would have to collect the wheels a bit later.

Back to Snows to drop off the Panther AC and to pick up the van load of felines vehicles were remote rigged all over. The helicopter that they had liberated a few weeks ago was controlled into San Fran airspace, the Step van was brought back online, and Six drove the cat van to a water works. The helicopter was landed nearby and cats were loaded into the hold. The rappelling gear was lobbed into the footwell. Six and Glyph ran back to the water works and nicked the main door with the alarms going off they hot stepped it across to the step van, and threw the heavy door into the back. The step van was remote rigged across to their next target. Mitsuhama.

Six noticed on one of his car feeds that one of his cars had attracted police attentions. They were looking to tow the vehicle away. They guessed that the traffic camera that they nicked had a RFID tag. Six got Bum Fluff to do a high speed drive by the scene to draw away Lone Star so that he could move the car.

10pm and time was getting tight. The helicopter landed briefly on top of the Mitsuhama distribution centre. Not quite the main HQ, but good enough. In the down draft of the rotor blades Six and Glyph hopped out and unloaded 20 cats onto the roof. Once done Six remote rigged the helicopter away. The rope was secured off and Glyph hung over the side of the building she got out the miniwelder and started cutting off and repositioning sign letters.

Lone Star had a hi-ab crane ready to hoike his car away and Six had to move it, he reversed hard and rammed the Lone Star car and then jammed it forward and remote rigged his car away. Bum Fluff was speeding in the opposite direction to draw off Lone Star and narrowly missed Six’s car. Six sent this car to meet up with Snow, who he had arranged to burn the RFID tag out of the camera.

Glyph had attracted the attentions of Mitsuhama security and Six had to drill them with the flip turret gun mounted on the van. And this caused the alarm to go off. Glyph had to work quickly. Cutting off letters and re-welding in a different position.

Six was pleased. u shit Mama was too good to leave alone and Glyph had done well. Now for the cats. Glyph put in one of the windows and they were lucky to come across the CEO’s office. Six verified with the flyspy which he then positioned to film the cats getting pushed in through the window.
ushitMama security reinforcements turned up and began to start shooting at Glyph, while she passed screaming cat after screaming cat into the executive officers office. Six dealt with these also with the HMG on his van and a grenade.

Time was running really tight now, and they called back the chopper and fled the scene. They sped as fast as they could to Lone Star HQ where Duncan Croner had the wheels and the shoulder patch set aside. Six and Glyph headed inside and Six spotted a ganger being booked in. He headed over and asked for his jacket. The haggling was quick, and in the gangers favour, but Six got the leather gang colours Glyph got the wheels and the shoulder patch.

They sped back to the Cat Club and arrived with only a few minutes to spare. The other two teams were already there and were sat with their collections. Six and Glyph brought in their collection.

Banshee were surrounded by their collection Set of 4 lone star wheels. Grid guide traffic camera. A ganger jacket Photograph at top of golden gate The door from the national library. Lone star sgt. shoulder patch. 50 gallons of aviation fuel. Footage of jumping off golden gate (bungee)

Gecko Sat with their Lone Star wheels. Grid guide traffic camera Gangers jacket Live devil rat Rearranged corporate letters. AAA corporation Photograph in hatchets.

Seeing their oppositions collections Six and Glyph surveyed their own trophies. A set of 4 Lone Star wheels. Grid guide traffic camera. A gangers jacket. Footage of you rearranging and/or removing the letters on a corporation building to say something obscene. The first base from the Giants stadium, signed. The entire door from a civic building. A spent Panther Assault cannon casing. Leave a dozen feral cats in a CEO’s office. Lone Star shoulder patch. 50 gallons of aviation fuel. Severed Yakuza finger.

Milan joined them a few minutes shy of 11pm and was pleased to see that all three teams were gathered. He quickly totted up the points, and it was clear to see that Brutal Deluxe had won. The money hit the comlink.

A few days later Six and Kitty flew to gay Paris, and were able to confirm that there are a lot less street cameras than in the UCAS.

The Eleven Nameless Men

2007-03-08T11:18:00.000Z

Six, Ki-Rin, Glyph.

The runners spent some quality down, getting a chance to catch up and spend some cash that they had earned over the last few months worth of shadowrunning.

Six started work on a van conversion to turn it into a drone dispensing command vehicle. Having had a very near death experience twice, Ki-Rin decided to invest in some bone lacing, and Glyph worked on the design and build of a pair of snap-on gyromounts after she had some cybereye upgrades.

Monday 18th September 2070

Six got a call from a man called Donovan. Six and the team had been recommended to him by Duncan Croner, the Lone Star chief and he had a job that needed immediate attention. The meet was at the Jetty Point Café, a little continental style café nestled amongst some shops on the westward facing coast.
Six conference called every member of his nefarious friends, and all but Ki-Rin and Glyph were unavailable. He told them where to meet and set off there himself.

Donovan was sat outside at one of the tables and invited the runners to sit. He laid the job on the table; he was representing a group of people called The Eleven Nameless Men, a semi secret society who advised corporations and governments on the ebb and flow of the stock markets. Their predictions could be seen as self fulfilling prophecies and at a word they could make one corporation happy and at the same time, make an enemy of another. They knew this, they were comfortable with this, and they took physical and magical security precautions to protect themselves.
It seemed that The Eleven Nameless had triggered some kind of vendetta from some organization and an assassin had already killed two of their number. The Eleven needed to find out who this killers employer was so that they could negotiate an amicable solution.

The conversation wafted across Ki-Rin, but he was distracted by someone sat a few tables away. The elf was paying a bit too much attention to their conversation. Maybe because they were talking about contract killers, maybe something else. He pointed it out to the other two and then while Donovan talked about the ins and outs of the run Ki-Rin tried to find this man on the Matrix.

A facial scan and a few clever search programs later, Ki-Rin found him. A guy called Louis Veron. A Republic of France national, who served in the BFST, the French special forces. Not only that but he was part of the magical strike division. He was discharged after failing a psychological exam. He failed to re-submit his SIN number after the crash
and then his records run dry. Ki-Rin shared this info, and although now suspicious all they had was a nosey Frenchman.

Donovan finished the meeting by telling the runners that Duncan Croner would allow them to look through the evidence that Lone Star had gathered so far, and then headed away. The team slowly split as well. Ki-Rin made arrangements for the Elf to be followed using the street surveillance cameras while Six wired one of his Vans to a spot not far away so that he could switch into an un-spotted vehicle, Glyph was detailed to go and view the evidence that Lone Star had.

Ki-Rin got into Six’s spare car while Six sat in the van, both ready to tail their mark who was presently ordering another coffee.

Glyph headed down to Lone Star and was shown into Croners office. As she was about to ask to view the files he gestured to the files on his desk, and went off to get them a coffee. Glyph didn’t need telling twice and took the hint.
The files related to the two murders. Both shot with a single bullet, and the evidence bags with the bullets was what caught Glyphs eye. They were an odd bore and they appeared to be an orachalchum full metal jacket. Moreover, they had been etched on the side with the victim’s name. This was bespoke ammunition and an small engraved ‘A’ hinted at the manufacturer. Glyph was done and she left thanking Duncan Croner.

Ki-Rin and Six tailed the Frenchman and watched as he got onto a tram. Six was remote driving his Dodge with Ki-Rin as passenger while he drove the Transit.

Glyph contacted them and let them know the info about the bullets. Ki-Rin quickly found the manufacturer on the matrix. A Dwarven weaponsmith based out in the Tir Tangire. He hand made bespoke arms and ammunition. Ki-Rin contacted him but didn’t know how to take that line of enquiry forwards, so dropped it.

Six was getting twitchy. His gut feeling said that this Elf that they were following was related to this investigation and let Ki-Rin know that they were going to make a move before the tram drove into the station. He waited for the tram to make its next stop and then parked the Dodge in front of the tram. Ki-Rin got out and got on board ignoring the tram drivers complaints about the car he drew his pistol and started firing stick-shock rounds at the elf. Six drew up along side the tram and shot the driver dead while in the back Ki-Rin first wrestled with their elf, and then with a have-a-go-hero. Six then had to deal with Lone Star who were closing on the alarm that the driver had triggered One flash bang through the windshield of the cop car, knocked the driver out, and the patrol car careened at speed toward the tram full of screaming civilians. Six dumped a frag grenade in front of the front axle of the car. His timing was perfect and the car was flipped away and past the tram. Six and Ki-Rin sped away from the scene with the now unconscious French Elf.

After an hour or so of running avoidance from the Lone Star patrols that hit the street, the runners met up at an abandoned end of the East coast docks. They brought the elf round and began to interrogate him. Ki-Rin played the good cop, Glyph played the sadistic cop and they got nothing. They cut him, they threatened him, they asked civilised non consequential questions and they were only told that his name was Tristan, that he was an author and that he was in San Fran researching a book. The only thing is that he was as cold as ice. Nothing more than a slight grimace when Glyph cut him nothing but casual flippant answers to any questions. His comlink was clean too, this man was either so good at the stealth assassin persona, or they had got the wrong man.

Ki-Rin went back to basics and let the matrix do the work His hacking was good. Hundreds of French nationals had come into San Francisco over the last few months, but one called Tristan Veron stood out as too much of a coincidence. He then followed the camera feeds from the airport and saw their man arriving from France three weeks ago. He got into a taxi and headed away. Ki-Rin then followed the taxi trial through town to a block of flats near the San Francisco barrens. He got footage of Tristan coming and going from that residence for a few weeks and was sure that they would find what they wanted their. Their best lead yet, the runners headed off that way.

Six had a feeling that Tristan would be one of those slippery types, and was not keen for a French stealth assassin escaping on them, so even though he was unconscious and bound, they gaffer taped his head up, tied his hands and feet to the inside of the van, smashed his left knee to beyond repair and then left him locked in the back. Six still wasn’t happy about leaving him here but agreed to go inside the flat to help track down his flat.

They knocked on doors and asked questions. On the 5th floor Six met a bear of a man who took an instant dislike to him. Six’s usual charisma when meeting people let him down and when asking if he had seen a French friend of his the guy kind of assumed that Six was one of those, you know, reverse parkers, and wasn’t having any garlic flavoured baguette chomping going in this apartment block. He went off to get his shotgun.

Ki-Rin and Glyph saw the guy come out and stick shocked him. Six then went into his apartment and liberated his beers for the trouble.
The gunfire did however cow the locals and no-one was keen to open a door for the runners after that. Ki-Rin lost his rag a little bit and booted down a door. No one had answered the door, and the reason for this was that the owner was bound in the back of their van.

The team had found his base of operations. They found a box full of these special bullets, minus two. They found a pen sized etcher and some photos of the Eleven Nameless Men. Their was evidence of some kind of ritual magic, and they found the rifle. The Mercedes Benz of custom made firearms. The team also found another comlink; this one was running French language software. Ki-Rin hacked it and found this hitmans contact list. His most recent employer, Index-Axa, a French finance company whose stock collapse a month or so ago has all but ensured their takeover by a rival firm. This was good enough for the runners who contacted Donovan to tell him the run was done.

The runners dealt with the hitman in the obvious way, broken neck and ditched somewhere in the barrens, before they headed off to meet up with Donovan. They managed to squeeze an extra 5k each out of the deal by offering up the sniper rifle and the bullets with an explanation as to how the hitman had bypassed their magical defences. The runners headed home 6 hours after starting out, 45k richer.

Six's blog

2007-03-07T16:44:00.000Z

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 28: 03.09.70>
Life has a habit of getting on top of you from time to time, which is why it has been a while since my last update. It has been a wild few days – hell at one point I even thought my friendship with Ash was gone. We’re still on patchy ground but I’ve been able to lay some doubts to rest.

Back around the 26th of August, Snow put us on to a job from a small marketing Corp called Ocean Blue. On the verge of closing a major deal, one of their star execs had gone missing and with his handshake and signature needed for the contract, Ocean Blue needed to find out what had happened to him – pronto.
Research mode revealed that our boy wonder, Brent Masters, had been taken away for some ‘recreation’ by two delightful looking young ladies but it was a clear set up, less legit than a 30 buck Rolex, and we quickly tracked Brent’s last known location to a Shadowrunner flophouse where we assumed he was being held hostage.

I watched the street while the rest of the team busted in. The place was empty but Ash quickly started jabbering that he could see Brent Masters there and that he was trapped in the Astral plane. Before we could even start to puzzle that little snippet out, I saw the runners who owned the flophouse coming home, laden down with jerry cans of petrol. Who burns down their own flop and why?! Well, we had the drop on them and after a brief and bloody scrap we were able to ask the survivors exactly that. They claimed to have kidnapped Brent as per their contract, only to have him disappear on them. They claimed the flophouse was now haunted and had planned on burning it down to exorcise the spooks and recoup some of the costs of their botched job from the insurance. It was our only physical link to Brent, if a somewhat tenuous one, so we had other ideas. We sent the surviving runners from the other team packing and holed up. Inevitably, they came back looking for revenge and we were forced to shoot up the flophouse for a second time but the scrap was more dramatic this time out and with Lone Star closing in, we fled the scene.

The other team’s Mage had speculated on Brent’s disappearance with us and Ash had sorted out some sort of magical tracking that linked the flophouse where Brent was supposed to be astrally trapped with a familiar location in Silicon Valley. The former home of CAT’s CORE project had been refurbished, rebadged as a Genesis facility and was once more on our radar. We went for the direct approach, busting in and working our way down to the basement where the CORE project had been based. This too had been refurbished and now boasted a corporate suite to rival any Penthouse in the city. In residence?
None other than the previously deceased Dominic Cross.

Now I’m no Doctor but people who get their fucking heads blown off are not, in my experience, in the habit of getting up and strolling around afterwards. I was stunned. So was Glyph. Ash however, strolled into the suite like a friend of the family and sat down for tea, biccies and a nice chat. To say we felt betrayed was an understatement. Who sits down and takes tea with a supposedly dead scumbag whose life achievements including brain washing your brother and kidnapping your sister. Ash’ actions were way outside my comfort zone but before we could twitch, the door to the suite was slammed in our faces and despite our best efforts proved utterly impassable.

Continues: 1/3>

Ash emerged, unharmed and unfazed by our astonishment with his blasé reactions, clutching an ornate wooden box. I was mightily pissed at this point. I just could not comprehend why we weren’t putting Cross back in his grave. Glyph agreed so with a small C-15 charge, we did just that and you better believe I made damn sure this time. Drone obs confirmed Cross was pate. All that remained was the CORE orb he’d had embedded in his head but I even rolled that into the heart of the flames and stopped to watch it melt.

Ash started in on us with some damn fool scheme to free Brent that Cross had given him and that just about pushed me over the edge. I couldn’t accept the fact that Ash was going to tamely accept anything Cross had told him and take it at face value. We’re talking about Cross, a man who should be dead, a man who brainwashed Ash’s brother, a man who kidnapped and threatened our loved ones, a man whose schemes have caused us no end of trouble and loss.
And Ash is going to trust him and follow his instructions to try and free Brent Masters? Not happening, no way. I told Ash there and then in the middle of the Genesis facility exactly what I thought of him, his unpredictable behaviour of late and his reaction to meeting Cross again. I walked, packed up my kit, drew the Lone Star away from the facility to at least help the team make their getaway and washed my hands of the Run.

I kept an eye on the news and the development of the run as best I could but it gave me no satisfaction to be proven right when Lone Star discovered the bodies of Brent Masters and our liaison at Ocean Blue and put the time of death several days before we had first met them. From start to finish the whole thing had been a screw job, and I could only assume it was done to manipulate Ash into doing Cross’ dirty work for him.

Hours ticked by and nobody responded to my warning. Even having fallen out with Ash, I couldn’t stand the thought of the team being in trouble so I headed back to the Flophouse, where I was picking their vehicles up on GPS.
It seemed the guys had been involved in a third firefight there but beyond a Lone Star mopping up operation there was no sign of them. Worried now, I quickly linked into the stealth tag I had put on Ash and tracked them to a Corp called the Alamais Foundation. All set to bust in and try and get them out, I was somewhat surprised to find them sitting in the lobby, a little shaken up, a little battered and bruised but otherwise OK.

They filled me in. It seemed Cross had given Ash a statue – a magical seal that it wouldn’t be a good idea to break. Cross was prevented from breaking the seal by the magic worked into it but someone with pure intentions, such as rescuing a trapped man from the Astral Plane, could have broken it. The whole plot had been a set up by Cross to persuade Ash to break the statue for him. Fortunately a Dragon called Alamais, CEO of this Alamais Foundation, had gotten wind of the plot and intervened, sending his goons to subdue Ash and the team and haul them in front of the Dragon. Alamais had taken the statue and clearly had no intention of giving it back, but he had filled in a few blanks. The Legion and CORE projects CAT had been working on were designed solely to create clones of Dominic Cross that Allisom could possess and work through. At least we know now why Cross appears to have more lives than a cat.

And so to the bombshell. Ash had cut a deal with the Dragon and taken on a job to kill the head of the Legion project and throw a spanner in the works of Cross’ clone factory. Hell I would have done that for free, so when the team asked me to come back onboard, I agreed, despite any misgivings I had about whether or not the Dragon was out to screw us over too. Ki-rinn picked up a data trail on Simon Crusher, the man Alamais identified as leading the Legion project and we soon found ourselves masquerading as horsey types to gain the confidence of a man called Philip Myers. Myers had part-owned a racehorse with Crusher and we thought he might still be in contact with our target. Sure enough, he sang like a canary and using a nanopaste facial disguise we decided I would pose as Myers to meet Crusher at the racetrack.

Continues: 2/3>

The meeting went like a dream, in spite of a couple of hairy moments and we all worked together to con Crusher into believing he was talking to his old friend while we slipped a stealth tag on to his jacket. I played Myers, Glyph played the drunken broad who made a pass at Crusher and Ki-rinn played my personal bodyguard, intervening physically to tag our man while hauling the horny drunk away. I wasn’t keen on staying any longer than necessary and increasing the risk our deception might be noticed so we made our excuses and left. When Crusher finally departed the racetrack he used a helicopter and while he had the edge on us for speed, we were as close behind him on the ground as four wheels and a beefy engine would allow.

The Legion Facility was on the shores of Pyramid Lake, near Nixon and we made our way there without too much fuss. Glyph and Ki-rinn teamed up well to gain us access to the compound and although ill-advised use of explosive ammunition soon gave our presence away, our slick teamwork meant we were able to mop up the opposition without too much trouble. During the firefight, Glyph and Ash had discovered an access point for an underground extension of the facility and we cautiously headed inside.

Security was tight. Automatic blast doors. Steel Lynx security drones. It took all of us, working together to access the lower levels and fight off the security detail – more of CAT’s damned console soldiers. Most of the lower level was dominated by a huge cloning room with hi-tech medical bays for 16 copies of Dominic Cross. Only 8 of the bays were occupied by fledgling clones but there were also experiments being conducted on the good townsfolk of Nixon, who were presumably supplying the raw genetic materials for the clones. It was a drawn out and bloody battle down there and I’m not ashamed to say that I kept my head down. A fly-spy drone made for a good targeting spotter, locating and marking targets for the heavy guns of Ki-rinn, Glyph and Ash but my rudimentary skills as a medic were also in demand. I pumped so many medical Nanites into Frosty it must have been like a miniature Charge of the Light Brigade in his bloodstream.

We’d still seen no sign of Crusher so headed deeper into the facility, out under the lake and up inside the pyramid shaped rock formation that had inspired its name. Here we found Crusher, protected by a pair of the CORE vampires we had previously encountered, engaged in some sort of huge ritual.
Glyph and I dispatched the Vamps, previous experience making us wise to their moves, while Ki-rinn and Ash concentrated on Crusher. Ash I think got the killing shot in and his fall seemed to disrupt the ritual, sending lightning arcing explosively around the room and earthing through us! I’ve cursed the wasted cash since buying insulated armour for the swipe of the Thunderbirds but it paid dividends that day!

We figured it wouldn’t take that long for Crusher to be replaced and then the clone factory would get back on track. Well we couldn’t have that could we? I know we’re making something of a habit out of blowing up CAT facilities but Glyph had plenty of C-15 and some damn fool had tunnelled out under the lake which made flooding the place laughable simple. It was too good an opportunity to resist, so we didn’t. We added insult to injury by making our escape in a stolen helicopter too…

Ki-rinn has his ex-army buddies stripping the chopper down as we speak and Ash even managed to get the Dragon to pay up. It has been a wild ride these last few days but things seem to have turned out alright in the end. We all deserve a break now. I’ve got the Step Van up on the ramps and a few devious plans for modding it so I’ll welcome a couple of week’s alone in the garage.

Mood: Well satisfied
Ends: 3/3>

The end of Simon Crusher

2007-03-01T11:39:00.000Z

Six, Glyph, Ki-Rin, Ash.

1st September 2070 17:00

The runners gathered outside the ramp which ran down underground. They hadn’t found Simon Crusher amongst the dead on the surface of this facility and guessed that he had fled down. They were also keen to find out if there was a cloning facility here too.

Looking down the ramp they saw that it was 3 vehicle widths, well lit, terminating in a roller shutter door. They decided to hotwire one of the vans and drive it down the ramp slowly. Approaching the roller shutter doors Six and Ash noticed that there was a pair of some kind of slam plate in the floor, one near the roller shutter, one ten metres away. Ki-Rin and Ash hopped out of the vehicle and jogged over to the pedestrian door set in the left hand wall, Glyph covered them while Six rolled the van’s engine block over the slam plate. Ki-Rin found that there was a decker on site who cut his connection to hacking the electronic lock on the door, and rather than take him on in cyberspace opted to bust the door lock by bypassing the circuitry.

Ki-Rin triggered some kind of security device, and two massive bulkhead doors slammed home onto the plates in the ground. The one nearest the roller shutter door nearly took out Ash’s arm; the other drop bulkhead crushed the van but was unable to slam completely home, leaving a gap of about a foot.

As soon as the kill zone had been set up, two Steel Lynx drones dropped down from hatches in the ceiling to join Ash and Ki-Rin. One drone squatted low and rolled under the gap in the rear bulkhead to take out Six and Glyph. Bullets flew. Ash stuck his AK into the mid section of the drone and fired a couple of bursts into it at close range. Ki-Rin scrambled across the floor and blind fired at the other drone, Six and Glyph finished it off before anyone was badly injured.

Ki-Rin finished cracking the door, while Glyph and Six slipped under the gap in the drop door. The door clicked open and the team announced their arrival with a flash bang grenade, the three stunned guards stood no chance when all four runners unleashed a volley of lead from the doorway.

A window ran the full length of the wall and the runners could see the expanse of the cloning chamber beyond, at the far side of the room was another door. The runners kept low and made their way to the next door. Glyph popped the door open and saw four civilians, strapped to chairs, tubes and cables running from their bodies. Ducked low just out of sight was another guard. Glyph didn’t have any flash bangs. A frag grenade was rolled into the small room instead. The explosion destroyed everything in the room. Ki-Rin began shooting out through the glass screen into the guards the he spotted moving around in the clone chamber. The guards returned fire, shooting through the walls at the runners.

Six sent out his flyspy drone to mark the targets for the rest of the team and they began to take out the guards.

Ki-Rin was filled with lead and he died. The rest of the team were taking hits as well. Six stood in cover and saw the decker go down. He dashed to his side and administered first aid, with the help of the nano-medkit Ki-Rin was brought back from the brink.

Glyph and Ash finished off the rest of the guards. Inside the massive cavern four pillars ran from floor to ceiling. Embedded into each of the pillars were four growth vats. Tow pillars worth, eight in total, housed the nearly fully formed clones of Dominic. Alive, but lifeless. The other eight pods had been opened. Ash Shot each clone dead.

A bulkhead door at the rear of the chamber was the only other way out and the runners donned gas masks before throwing a nerve gas canister in. On the other side of the bulkhead was a long corridor. This terminated in a ladder which went up. Checking the GPS the runners could tell that this would go up and inside the Pyramid shaped island in the middle of the lake. The runners were beginning to experience electrical interference with their equipment and disconnected unused electronics.

Looking up the step ladder the runners could see a large vaulted space above them, a mesh catwalk running overhead. Inside the pyramid had been hewn away leaving a vast space. A catwalk ran around the outside edge of this about two metres up, and a walkway from either side liked up to a dais in the centre. Electricity was arcing from sigils and symbols daubed on the walls and focusing down onto 5 forms that were out of view on the dais. Glyph stuck her head up for just a moment and then a shot rang out. Simon Crusher was stood on the cat walk and was laughing as he fired off a couple more blind shots toward the now out of sight shadowrunner.

The team surged up the ladder, each diving out in a different direction as quickly as possible. 2 essence hungry Dominic clones surged at the runners and attacked them with tooth and claw, lead flew. Two of the clones were dead before they could do any damage and then Ash fired the fatal shot that killed Simon Crusher. There was a moment before his body tumbled from the catwalk, then their was an explosion of energy. Electricity arced from the dais struck the catwalk and then earthed through the runners.

Six, Glyph and Ash all wore their electricity non-conductive armour that they had bought when they were paid to steal some Thunderbirds, Ki-Rin became the conduit for the full charge; the energy struck his chest and burned a deep wound.

For the second time that day, Ki-Rin died. For the second time he was resuscitated. The runners took stock and then made moves to flee. Ash gathered up dropped weapons. Glyph and Ki-Rin set explosive charges. Six made preparations to bring one of the helicopters online.

The runners hovered over the site in the stolen helicopter long enough to watch the explosion they had set cause the underground base to be flooded by the water of Pyramid Lake before turning back towards San Francisco.

The next day the runners did their own thing, Ki-Rin headed to the street doctors who told him that the wounds would Scar. The Six and Ki-Rin sent the helicopter to one of Ki-Rin’s contacts to have it stripped down to check for anything incriminating.

Ash Sold on the stolen weapons to Snow, before getting the runners back to meet up. Ash had decided that he should march into Alamais’ headquarters and demand their payments. Only Glyph accompanied Ash, and after getting told that the Dragon was out of the country Ash lost his temper. The runners dragged Ash down to the pub, and they all got drunk.

The next morning, Ash received a package. A credstic with enough money to split amongst the team, and a weapons focus in the form of a dagger. Ash assumed that it was from Alamais.

Simon Crusher

2007-02-28T09:55:00.000Z

Things had been getting progressively worse for Simon Crusher, Philip had been holding back on him, in fact at the race track he got the feeling that there was something going on, Simon couldn’t place it though, was Meyers compromised? The feds maybe? Or was he back to his old trick of squeezing every last nuyen out of the deal. No matter, he was becoming less than useful now and would need to be dealt with.

Arriving at the facility hadn’t improved matters; he had been away for just over two weeks setting up the big play for Dominic and he expected his deputy to keep things on schedule, this was not the case. He learned that the Legion project had suffered four unrecoverable failures because the civilians in the local town were becoming “edgy”. Not only that but last night a snatch had been rammed off the road, and the team were still alive. Simon dispatched the useless deputy with a single bullet, and then instantly rued his short temper, he could have made amends by joining Legion.

Simon handpicked three of those cold ass console soldiers, Perfect Shooter was a stroke of brilliance by Dominic, and sent them into Nixon. The Snatch team would not be able to tell the authorities anything by morning. And then he decided to take the bull by the horns. Jacket off, sleeves up, Simon did a quick tour.

The facility had been running on tick over since he left, the guards were efficient as always, both above and below ground but for some reason the labcoats were on half shifts, it took all of Simons control to not put a bullet into each and every one of them. Their brains were more useful not spread across the back wall he reasoned.

The growth chamber was more pleasing. There were four pillars that ran floor to ceiling, to each of these pillars four growth pods were secured. Eight fully formed husks were ready, and a further eight were close to completion. Each one looked magnificent, trapped from their waist down in their own pods, their arms pulled and locked into the pillar thrusting their naked torso forward.

Each one looked like the visage of Dominic but not quite. Simon was sure Dominic wouldn’t mind that he had spliced in sections of his own code. All sixteen strained at their tethers, mouths biting silently at the air in front of them, their dark eyes focusing on Simon. He knew they wouldn’t be able to understand his words but he found himself taking to them anyway.

Simon’s eyes traced the cables that fed the lifeless husks the essence from the living, up to the ceiling across the humid camber wall and then back down into the unassuming room where four people were slowly dieing. His gaze lingered there for a moment when his eye caught sight of the little red light. How long had the security alarm been triggered? Was this some kind of drill organised by the new deputy in a vain attempt to impress him. Then he heard the gunfire.

The Facility assault

2007-02-23T13:05:00.000Z

Six, Ki-Rin, Ash, Glyph,

1st September 2070

Tooled up, the runners sped out of San Francisco following the tracking signal they had placed on Simon Crusher, the man they had been tasked to kill by a dragon.

The tracking signal stopped moving not far from the shore of Pyramid Lake, which itself was situated not far from a town called Nixon. The runners headed there as quickly as possible although they were about four hours behind the helicopter they were following.

They blazed through the streets of Nixon and linked up with the main trunk road, headed north toward the facility when they very quickly came upon stationary traffic, and before they could swing the cars round they had traffic backing up behind them.

The runners checked traffic and news reports and discovered that there was a civil disturbance up ahead. Some kind of demonstration about corporate illegal activities seems to have been sparked after a vigilante group attacked a vehicle, which they claimed had been responsible for a spate of disappearances. The people who were attacked had been picked up by Lone Star and brought to the hospital where the demo was now going on and the media had whipped up the crowd who now blocked the roads.

There was nothing to do but sit tight. Ki-Rin used the time to gather some matrix info on the location of their mark, and discovered that there was a whole facility built up on the lake shore. Gaining satellite photos of the area they could see that there were a couple of aircraft hangars and half a dozen other buildings surrounded by a pair of high voltage fences. No corporate owners, no information at all. Whatever Simon Crusher was doing up there was being kept off the radar. With the civil disturbance keeping the runners pinned in one spot for a while Six did some flyspy reconnaissance and tracked down the injured men in the hospital. They were guarded by Lone Star who didn’t have any idea as to their identification. Six and the team surmised that these men might be part of a snatch squad to supply people for the CORe and Legion projects that they knew to be going on at the facility.

The traffic started to be backed up by Lone Star officers who coordinated removing vehicles from the rear of the line and after about a two hour delay the runners were on the move again. It was dusk by the time they parked up at a leisure walk car park, and they spent a moment donning armour and stowing armaments the team set off on a 3 mile hike to the site.

They chose to come in from the east and apart from a moment when a small squad of soldiers walked past where they hid they were not spotted. They looked down on a heavily guarded base and the runners had to formulate a plan to get in. Six sent his Flyspy drone down to have a quick look round. The base had everything medical facility, barracks, offices, hangars complete with two helicopters and a STOL fighter jet. The Flyspy couldn’t see everything, and didn’t pick up their quarry, Simon Crusher so Ki-Rin and Glyph headed down to isolate the electric fence and snip themselves a way in.

Twenty minutes later after some tense moments with the guards Ki-Rin and Glyph returned to where Ash and Six sat with a small gap in the fence and a base full of guards unaware of their presence. The team moved silently to the edge of the fence, and in teams of two they slipped past the patrols. They were inside the base and the silently stole from shadow to shadow eventually meeting up in hangar two.

They rigged up an explosive charge to the helicopters in case they were spotted and then they could use the detonation as a distraction and then they split up. Six and Ki-Rin kept an eye across the base while Ash and Glyph snuck round the rear of the hangar to access a small building that had aroused their suspicions. There were two guards. Ash and Glyph had sound suppressed weapons, aimed and fired. They also had explosive rounds, and the quiet muzzle was betrayed by the loud impact. Ash and Glyph quickly tried to hide the bodies before the another patrol found them out, but it was too late, the whole base went onto high alert and bullets started to fly.

Six and Ki-Rin made their way to the next hangar, and with half a mind on stealing the helicopters they sabotaged the fighter which could, if able to get airborne, shoot them down. Ki-Rin and Six then worked their way to Simon Crushers helicopter to see about rendering that incapable of flight as well, bullets continued to fly and Six found himself dancing across the helipads and was forced to dive for cover into another building. Ki-Rin on the other hand was trained for this kind of arena, and was taking out guards from all angles with short controlled bursts, all the while dodging incoming fire.

Glyph and Ash were likewise watching each others backs, Glyph dual gunning foes both left and right, Ash’s assault rifle picking off surviving stragglers. Inside the building that had caught their attentions in the first place they found a ramp that led underground, and from deep in the bowels of wherever this ramp led, there was a deep resonating sound.

Glyph knew that they would need to help the others above ground before heading down so rigged up a grenade booby trap before heading out to finishing off the guards who remained in the base.

Ki-Rin was running low on ammo, and had to switch to single shot mode. Six had cleared out the building that he had dashed into and was now making his way around the outside to where he suspected there was a remaining guard.

Tony Mulholland had watched as a team of 4 men burst into the camp that he was employed to guard and saw as they had slain every friend he had on the base, he was scared, but his training in the computer program kicked in. He scrambled onto the roof of the building and silently drew his combat knife from his boot. He watched as one of the punks crept round the edge of the building, looking for him, looking for Tony Mulholland. Tony leapt from the roof of the building with a scream of rage and set about this man with his knife. Stab at the neck, thrust for the gut, slash at the face, Tony heard gunshots, but Tony was invincible.

Six fended off the frenzied attack, but the knife wielding guard was too close and every time he tried to fire a shot the gun was batted away and the shots went wide, every time Six landed a punch the guard just kept coming Six thought his number was up.

Ki-Rin was making his way through the building and saw through infrared the fight outside. He aimed carefully, and shot through the wall, the first shot took out the assailant’s throat.

The guard staggered, blood pumping from his neck, Six took the moment to finish the guard with one last gunshot.

Ash and Glyph made their way round the camp, and it seemed every guard was dead. The runners were pretty shot up, and running low on ammo, but they hadn’t found Simon Crusher, and they hadn’t found the cloning facility that they suspected was here. They knew that they had to go down the ramp that lead underground.

To be finished next week.

RL gets in the way!

2007-02-12T11:04:00.000Z

Another Shadowrun-less Wednesday. This week we can blame Valentines day!

Back on course next week.

interesting valentine facts

Deal with the Dragon

2007-02-08T14:13:00.000Z

Six, Glyph, Ki-Rin, Ash

The runners are on a run to find and man called Brent Masters for a marketing company. They discovered that another running team seemingly working for a rival corporation had snatched Brent Masters.
Tracking down this other team of runners, they found that Brent Masters was seemingly in the Astral Plane. Impossible as he is mundane and also his meat body was also trapped.
The runners learned that there was a pocket of astral space that had been formed by a mage calling himself The Laughing Man. This astral realm was created in 1906 to stop an incursion of horrors, instigated by the Shedim, Allisom.
This astral realm had been closed with a magical seal that the Laughing Man enchanted and then hid.

Upon his return to the real world thanks to Dominic Cross, Allisom sought and found this seal. The enchantments placed on the seal made it impossible for Allisom to break it, so he engineered a situation that saw the running team that had tangled with him before in possession of the seal, ready to break it on his behalf.

Thursday 31st August 2070 13:00

Ki-Rin caught up with Ash as he headed back toward the house where they had last seen Brent Masters in the astral pocket. Ash had the statue and the plan was to see the man, and then smash it. Beyond that they were guessing what they should do. Something caught their eye….

Six was at home; his conversation with Ash had troubled him. Sure enough Ash was probably making a mistake but they were still his team. Skimming through the news feeds he came across a report about the explosion that they had caused a couple of days previously and the report said that amongst the bodies of staff and security, three dead were found to be that of Brent Masters, Philip Rudd and Martin Beecher. Their quarry, employer, and the supposed protagonist for this seemingly simple run they had embarked on. Suddenly things were starting to click into place, Six fired out a quick text message to warn the others.

Ki-Rin, Glyph and Ash were forced to dive for cover as shots impacted around them, they drew their weapons and returned fire. Five men wearing bulky form fitting armour equipped with some kind of glide wings had dropped out of the sky and were firing stick shock rounds to drop the runners. The team killed three of these before they were dropped.

Ash, Ki-Rin and Glyph woke in a large vaulted room that overlooked the city of San Francisco. They picked up their message from Six that they had been played and the runners pondered their situation.

The massive double doors opened behind them and there stomachs clenched in fear as a Great Dragon strode in. It looked around at all of them before fixing Ash with its gaze and demanded to know who they were. Mild hysteria took over and Ash back chatted the dragon. His smart tongue stopped running off when the dragon picked him up, and then threw him hard into the ground. Ki-Rin decided to lay the boot into the Dragon, and although doing no damage, he did attract the attentions of the dracoform. He dodged a few attacks before being swatted to the ground; Glyph was pinned to the spot with a combination of awe and fear.

The dragon demanded to know why they had the Lightbearer seal, and eventually Ash told him the entire story of this shadowrun to date.

The dragon announced that he was called Alamais, and that he knew of this Shedim, Allisom, and the Laughing Man, and also knew of Cross Applied Technologies. He decided to not kill the runners because in reality they did not know what they had in their possession and did not know the lengths Allisom was prepared to go, to be able to frag with the runners. Alamais decided to tell the runners about Shedim. How they have to find and corrupt a host, this takes time and effort, however Allisom had put into place a program of vet growing hosts, in a Cross project called Legion, and another project to give this hosts life, in effect, this project was called CORe.

The CORe project was being overseen by a man Called Simon Crusher, and the dragon told Ash that if he wanted to be able to buy enough time to prepare and be ready to fight Allisom, then killing this man would force Allisom to be more careful with its hosts.

It just so happened that Alamais also wanted Simon Crusher dead, so was prepared to remunerate the runners if they were successful. The dragon decided that the total compensation to be paid would be negotiated at a later date. The runners took their lives and made to leave.

Meanwhile Six had really begun to get worried, nobody had replied to his text saying that they may be in trouble, and a ring round of every contact he knew turned up naught. He did have a subscription on Ash’s pickup, and located where that was parked. Driving up to the car he found Lone Star surrounding the area, a clear sign of a gun battle in evidence… Six remembered that he had stealth tagged Ash and turned it on. The location was at a skyscraper in the business district of San Fran. The base of a corporation called Alamais Foundation. Six screamed across town thoughts of his friends in trouble rushing through his head.

The rest of the team descended in the lift and found themselves in the lobby area of a corporation. Security personnel went about their business side by side with secretaries and clerks. The runners, made their way over to the low designer leather sofas, sat down and sparked up a cigarette.

Six arrived. Snatched up the grenade launcher and the heavy machine gun from the back of his car and strode across the lawn area. The security personnel saw the threat and locked down the building, Ki-Rin also saw the oncoming rigger and headed off a bloody situation.

The whole team sat around in the lobby area and filled in the blanks. And now Ash had cut a deal with a dragon. Six was set to walk out again, but Ash asked that his buddy be on the team to watch their backs.

The team decamped to a better location. A stuffer shack. And Ki-Rin got down to some matrix tracking of this Simon Crusher. It seems that the man had disappeared from the records about seven years ago. But there was a slim data trail. Back in his university days, he had bought into a racehorse with a few friends, and one of them was still about in the San Francisco area. A man by the name of Philip Meyers. Meyers is one of the owners of an exclusive stables just outside Golden Gate national park, and the runners leapt into their vehicles and headed out that way.

Arriving at the stables they could see that it was packing up for the day. Staff were leaving. There were however a few people settling down for a quite drink in one of the office come meeting buildings. Six and Glyph decided to pose as boyfriend girlfriend looking to getting into horses.

They headed over and got talking to one of the members of staff. Eventually he began to give them the guided tour. Taking the cue, Ki-Rin headed in posing as an electrician he sauntered into the offices and came across someone else working on a computer. Ki-Rin distracted him long enough to deploy his shock glove, and then a swift punch in the face knocked him out cold. He then found that the man he had knocked out was the man they had come for, Philip Meyers.

Ki-Rin bundled him back to the car and the team withdrew to a secluded picnic spot for an interrogation. With the aid of some hacking of his Comlink, and some well targeted violence, they were able to get out the fact that he was meeting with Simon Crusher the next day at Fairplex Park, for the unlimited horse race meet for lunch. Ki-Rin took a nanopaste scan of the mans face and then they took him to a ISO container owned by Ash and locked him in.

The runners made plans to get into the racetrack the following day disguised as Meyers (and others) to make the meet with Simon Crusher.

Friday September 1st 2070

The runners headed to the track, and eventually got in, although there were some dicey moments when security wanted to see tickets. Ki-Rin had to work hard to smooth it over electronically. They also had to throw a few bribes to get some weapons in also.

The runners were shown to the table with Six waiting nervously as Meyers, and Ki-Rin as his bodyguard. Glyph and Ash were on hand nearby. As the other table guests arrived Six realized that they couldn’t just kill Crusher here without an exit plan, and the team formulated a plan to plant a stealth tracking tag on their mark. Ash made a few bets on the horses.

The plan was seamless, once Simon arrived Six kept him talking. Glyph moved in and hustled him nothing more than a distraction, Ki-Rin stepped up having positioned himself to be the first of the bodyguards on the scene, and in one smooth motion deftly palmed the stealth tag under Simon Crushers collar.

Six began to get nervous, and as they now were able to follow their mark, they decided to split and get out of the horseracing track before their ruse was rumbled.

Back in downtown San Francisco the runners turned on the stealth tag and picked up the signal in the air headed north. The runners followed the helicopter in the cars on the ground and are about 4 hours behind when Simon Crusher lands.

Meeting Dominic Cross and the Laughing Man

2007-01-19T15:44:00.000Z

Ash, Glyph, Six.

The runners had gained access to the compound. Ash and Ki-Rin were first to the annex building with Glyph and Six close behind. An alarm was going off from inside the building and Ki-Rin worked quickly to silence it. Ash, Six and Glyph hopped onto the freight elevator that Ki-Rin had activated while Ki-Rin stayed in the annex to cover their rear.

The lift descended a freshly cut shaft, and the runners could tell that they were bypassing some of the underground floors before it finally stopped deep underground in a small chamber with only one exit. A maglock / thumbpad secured door. Six comlinked Ki-Rin to toss down the body of one of the guards, which hit the lift at the bottom of the shaft more messily than Six had anticipated. Glyph found a maglock passkey amongst the gore, and removed a thumb for the print reader.

Activating the door, the runners looked down a long corridor and saw that there was a welcoming party of armed guards. The runners were trapped in a dead end and had to fight desperately under a hail of bullets. Eventually they had cleared the floor of guards but they were injured.

The runners then pressed down through the following floors. They found the room where the CORe project had been stored that they had blown up was as they had left it, blasted and charred.
The next floor down, where the CORe test subjects had been housed had changed somewhat. The door had been replaced, and thumbed onto the face of the door in red ochre was some kind of magical runes. All eyes turned to Ash, who took a photograph and forwarded it onto Halifax.

The runners sat for a few minutes, and they became aware that classical music was being played from the other side of the door. Six who was already getting restless went over and knocked on the door. The music stopped and there was the sound of footsteps approaching.
The runners tensed up ready to fight or flight and nearly bolted when the door was opened by Dominic Cross. He was the same as before. His eyes were black pits, and the flesh on his cheeks were pitted with black burns, however he did have a circlet across his forehead with one of the CORe devices embedded. Six and Glyph were set to shot him dead again but they paused as he addressed them, he told them that he had been expecting them and invited them in to his office to talk. Glyph and Six watched in horror as Ash stepped over the threshold and went in.

Cross and Ash spoke for a few minutes and when Six and Glyph were clearly not coming in, Cross gestured and the door slammed shut and was magically sealed in place. Six shot out the lock, but the door still wouldn’t budge, and the best he could do was squint thought the hole he had made and watch Ash and Cross’ conversation.

Dominic Cross asked what Ash was doing there and when Ash told him what he already knew, Dominic showed Ash the statue.

It was an orachalcum statue of Verjgigorm and it was the source of power that Ash had been following for some time. Cross told Ash that the statue was a seal that had managed to trap Brent Masters in an astral realm and that all he had to do to free Brent was smash the statue.

Meanwhile all Six and Glyph could do was try to batter down the door. Six burned through the red ochre symbols but it didn’t break the magical lock on the door. Glyph cut through the hinges on the door but again the door remained in place. Only when Ash was done and had the statue under his arm was the magical barrier lifted (which caused the hinge-less door fall flat) The runners then fled at speed after dropping a large dollop of C15 in the room.
After setting off the charge, Six wasn’t convinced that they would have got Cross, so sent the Flyspy down to see. Sure enough there was nothing but gory remains of him in the wreckage of the explosion.

The runners then had a bit of an argument about Ash’s unpredictable behaviour towards Cross, and then about the rest of this run. And in the end Six decided that he wanted no more and headed out. Ash gathered up some weapons that had been dropped by the guards they had killed and he too made to leave. Glyph wanted to get some more info and headed up to the next floor. She found some labs, which were guarded and was convinced that they could get more info from the computers there but the rest of the team had already decided that they were leaving, and Glyph withdrew before she got into a firefight she would eventually loose.

Lone Star had been called and were gathered around the streets in Silicon Valley they had found the source of the explosion but couldn’t or didn’t want to head into corporate extra-territoriality so instead circled the building and waited for someone to make a run for it. Six was keen to oblige, and prepped his car for a chase, he hoped to draw off the police for the others to escape. Draw them off he did, and after having the pursuit joined by the officer in the SAAB Dante, he lost all of the tailing coppers.

The rest of the team also withdrew. Ash handed the artefact to his contact within the magical group and asked him to study it, and then was at a loss and headed home.

The next day Ash hooked up with Halifax again and took him to the place where he saw Brent in the astral and asked him to have a look himself.
While Ash looked after Halifax’s body someone tapped on the window and told Ash that he was the Laughing Man. They had a chat about what had happened.

Allisom had been about in 1906 and tried to summon a greater horror. The ritual to complete the summoning was interrupted by the Laughing Man when he killed the sacrifice before Allisom. The Laughing Man then separated a part of astral space and sealed the horrors in before forming a magical seal in the visage of Verjgigorm.
Allisom had found this seal and tried to break it but the Laughing Man’s enchantments forbid it. Only someone with good intentions could break the seal, and conveniently Ash’s desire to rescue Brent would break the seal.
Breaking the seal would free Brent but Allisom could then seize the moment to finish the ritual he had begun 164 years ago and would look to use him as a sacrifice. The only way to interrupt the ritual would be to slay Brent before Allisom could.

At that moment Ash realised the problem. Break the seal, free Brent, then kill Brent before Allisom could seize him and begin the next scourge. Or do nothing leave Brent to an eternity in an astral realm, fail a job and take a rep hit again.

Ash explained it all to the rest of the team before returning to his magical groups HQ to get the magical seal into his possession again.

TBC.

Storm the Genesis magic research facility

2007-01-12T16:22:00.000Z

Ki-Rin, Glyph, Ash, Six

The runners decided that they wished to sit tight in the other teams apartment. They approached Banner, the guy who claimed to own it, and paid him 10k to lease the house for 3 days. He accepted, and then Banner and one half of the magic sisters, Duo, were set free.

Ash received a datafile from Halifax, which was attributed to the Laughing Man. It was dated 1906 just after the great San Francisco quake. In it, it described events where he claimed that he had stopped hoards of spirits in their tracks by performing some kind of ritual.

The runners weren’t stupid though and the prospect of the other team coming back to avenge the deaths of the other members of their team was very likely, so they prepared, setting up fields of fire with automated weaponry and drones, doors were welded shut, and each runner took up positions in the building.
Their preparations would not be in vain, and while Ash astrally perceived to see if he could find Brent again the other team came back. Initially they paid a street bum to leave a suitcase filled with C4 outside the house but Ki-Rin spotted this attack from the roof, and with a gun prompting the bum he commanded that the case was opened. The explosion surprised no-one, and it was the trigger for the assault.
The rigger brought down his heavily armoured Hum-Vee and started shooting the runners position up with a chain gun, the bullets chewing through the house. The mage sisters chucked lighting bolts at Ki-Rin from rooftop to roof top. Banner came in on foot, armed with grenades.
The engagement lasted about 5 minutes, culminating in a cluster of explosions, the biggest from nearly a kilogram of C15 plastic explosive which wiped the greater part of the building the runners were in, out.

The team fled the scene before Lone Star arrived. They realised that they were back to square one. They had few leads, no information and no ideas. Ash had a hunch though and told the runners that in Astral space it was possible to see a glow from the Silicon Valley area. He directed them down their to a corporate building that they had been to before. It was the Cross Applied Technologies building where the CORe device had been worked on. The sign outside now claimed that the building belonged to Genesis, and that it was the magical research offices. The building had been damaged the last time the runners were here, and work to repair the structure was well underway. An annex had been added to the side of the building, while the rest of it was clad in scaffolding and green gauze to stop debris from falling to people below.

The runners had a good long debate as to weather they were heading inside or not, and Ash attempted to divine the goings on. He was struck with a vision of Dominic Cross, the man who was taken over by the Shedim, Allisom. And he then saw Brent Masters being killed.

When Ash told them this is what he had seen the team decided that they had no choice but go in, informed or not. Ki-Rin attempted to hack into the closed camera system but was unable to locate a suitable tap in point before the guards approached him. Ahs decided that the direct approach was needed and headed for the recently erected 3m high security fence. And began to clamber over. As the guards came out, Glyph shot them dead and a fight ensued.

Ki-Rin and Ash made it into the compound and up to the annex doors. Inside they found a large 2x2m lift platform. Ki-Rin pushed the button and it went down. Glyph dived over the fence with the aid of Six’s pods. And Six was left on the other side mopping up the remaining outside guards with the vehicle-mounted weapon.

TBC…

The missing Ocean Blue exec.

2007-01-08T11:06:00.000Z

Friday 25th August 2070

Six, Sickle, Glyph, Ash, Ki-Rin

Ash was contacted by Ka-Hil who arranged for him to meet up with Halifax at Cable Tower, the magical groups headquarters in San Francisco. Ash duly did and after spending some time with the group he began to learn the intricacies of being an adept.

Saturday 26th August 2070

Six was invited to a street race. This point to point street race was organised by a guy called Loton, a man well known on the street racing circuit for organising pukka races. Six took the chance laid down 5k against some of the fastest cars on the roads. It was close, and ended up crossing the line at the same time as the Ferrari Fiorino driven by some French Playboy. Six realised that it was time to put some big effort into speeding up his machine.

Tuesday 29th August 2070

Snow got back into town and was fed a job by a man called Martin Becher. He worked for a marketing company called Ocean Blue, who had lost one of their employees. Brent Masters was a sales executive who was in the process of closing a marketing deal with a Chinese company called Tau-Sang which would be worth 15m to Ocean Blue when he went missing. Now Tau-Sang were getting nervous and were looking to pull out of the deal. Becher wanted Brent back fast, (or if not Brent, then his internal comlink would do, it has all the records of the Tau-Sang deal on and should be able to save the deal) the money on the table was ¥500,000 to get Brent back before Tau-Sang sign on the bottom line a week on Friday.

The runners took the job and began some back ground checks.

Tau-Sang, a construction company was looking to expand its market in the UCAS. Ocean Blue, Horizon and Cascade were all looking to win the advertising and marketing contract from Tau-Sang which would nett 15m over the next 5 years. Brent Masters was the young exec who had Tau-Sang eating out of his hand, and he had the deal sewn up. The runners got hold of his home address and headed round their for a quick clue look.

Ki-Rin got onto the video feeds while the other runners got busy inside and Ki-Rin turned up the last time Brent was seen, leaving his apartment 2 days ago with two very attractive women. They headed out to a limo and drove away. He then did a background check and got lucky, some records for the vehicle were doctored and it turned out that a Mr. Johnson was driving it, it also gave an address for this Mr. Johnson.

The runners headed round and checked it out. Six sent in the flyspy drone, while Ash took a look with astral perception. On the mundane world there was little cause concern, Six saw a few things which would indicate that this house was some kind of criminal or shadowrunner flop house, Ash saw a sort of astral shadow over the building. Having not had his abilities for very long it was hard to make any sense of what he saw.

Once the runners had assured themselves that the house was empty, they went in. Not taking any chances they went in SWAT style by the numbers. Six kept watch out the back and Ash watched the alley.

Once inside the runners found a few bits and pieces, of interest. There were some charcoal drawings of the skeletal remains of ruined buildings. And there was a business card belonging to Philip Rudd from Cascade. The runners had found the corp. who arranged the snatch on Brent.

Ash meanwhile was viewing things on the astral plane and saw not the magical mirror of the mundane world, but a distorted view of San Francisco. The building they were stood in was broken, and he could see through the absent wall, the scene of a rubble strewn Old San Fran. There was a bright glow from Silicon Valley with some things spiraling around the edge of the light.

Turning to view the other runners auras, he was shocked to see that they were not their but Brent Masters was! Brent seemed equally shocked to see Ash, but began blabbering on about how he had to help him, and that the Laughing Man would help.
Brent then seemed to stop seeing Ash, he despaired and then went to walk out of the room. Ash followed him but he vanished, and slowly the scene changed back to the reflection of the mundane world any other mage would expect to see.

The runners were concerned and worried for Ash after he told them of what he had seen, and their lack of comprehension at what was going on, Ash phoned Halifax.
Halifax hinted that it might be some kind of astral meta plane but assured Ash that he wouldn’t have been able to perceive it. Meanwhile Ki-Rin got searching on the Laughing Man, but all he found was an old Matrix address to the now closed down Denver Datahaven.

Six then called the other members of the team. It seems the residents of this runner flop house were home. And they were armed with containers of petrol and explosives. The runners set themselves up in the hallway and when the residents returned they dropped all of them in a few seconds. Only one shot came back in the runners direction. And they managed to keep two of them alive.

The girl, a mage called Duo, and the face of the team called Banner were the survivors of the bloodbath, and when the runners brought them round to question them, they knew the score. They answered Ki-Rin’s questions without resisting. They had been employed to snatch Brent Masters and brought him to their flop house until the morning when they could hand him over to the Johnson. Then within minutes he disappeared. Banner was a bit freaked out by this, and not only loosing the rep on the job, their apartment seemed to have turned into some kind of freaky mindfuck. Being subjected to visions of a ruined San Francisco, a glow covering the landscape. Banner decided that it was time to raie the house to the ground, claim the insurance and get out of San Francisco before their street rep takes any more hits.
Duo told the runners a bit more. She suspected that what they were seeing in the astral plane, was some kind bubble astral plane and that Brent Seemed to have been dragged into it.

The runners were at a dead loss again. Six complained that this might be another of their own runs going south. They guessed that this astral realm was coming into contact with the mundane realm, and when that had happened Brent Masters had somehow got snatched up, they wondered if his casual drug use might make him more suseptable to the astral plane. They also thought about the pulsing glow which Ash had guessed was in the Silicon Valley area of the city. The runners began wondering if they should stay the night at this house? Maybe they would get a better idea of what is going on if they did.

Mancell and the Bookie.

2007-01-08T09:37:00.000Z

Tuesday 22nd August 2070

Ki-Rin, Sickle, Glyph, Ash

The runners were kicking their heels, there was nothing on trid, the PS7 wasn’t filling them with joy, and Six was spending some quality time with Kitty so there wasn’t even a street race on, so when the phone rang with the offer of a job Ash took it up.

The bookie Smoove Frankie had a client called Mancell who was defaulting on a big debt, and as the client knew Smoove, and his enforcers it would prove difficult to get to him without the aid of the runners. Smoove also knew that the client in question, a gentlemen’s club owner, was taking some backhanders from the Mafia and he wanted the runners to head round, put some pressure on Mancell and to point out that Smoove wanted paying otherwise he would start letting it be known that the Mafia had a hand in his pocket.

Ash took the job and managed to talk an extra 5grand out of the man if they could find some more blackmail evidence on Mancell.

He got the rest of the runners together and they discussed their options. Mancell was a club owner with 3 clubs, all called Mancell’s the largest of these clubs was in San Francisco. Mancell had a past of dodgy dealings while in politics but nothing that would embarrass him. The clubs accounts were a bit suspect but would pass scrutiny from a lazy auditor, the runners guessed money laundry was taking place in the back room. Ki-Rin also found the floor plans for the club.

The runners saw no point in hanging around and planned a hit that evening. The split up arranging to meet back at Ash’s place at 9pm.

Between them, the runners laid on Ash’s coffee table, 2 battle rifles, 1 assault rifle, 4 heavy pistols, 2 sub machine guns, 36 assorted grenades, and nearly 1000 rounds of ammunition. 4 gas masks, 4 suits of armoured urban armour, 4 ski masks, and one soon to be broken combat knife. They were ready.

Heading outside, the 4 runners looked at their vehicle options. Ash wasn’t keen to have his van anywhere near the Mafia so refused to drive. Which left Sickles 3 wheeled 2 seat commuter, and Glyph’s 2 seat sports car. Although there were enough seats to go round they wanted an option on kidnapping Mancell so decided to carjack a van.

Sickle and Ki-Rin stood by the side of the road near some traffic lights and waited. Eventually a van pulled up. The driver was oblivious to the two ski masked men striding across to the drivers door and was unceremoniously hauled out onto the road and smacked round the back of the head with a pistol butt. The pair of runners then drove back to Ash’s.

The van was a plasterers, so while the runners ditched his gear, Ki-Rin took a black marker and changed the number plate subtly. Ki-Rin then decided to wash the plaster dust out of the back of the van with a hosepipe.

They were ready, it was 11pm, they had a van, they had the kit and set off. Ash drove, Glyph called shotgun with Sickle and Ki-Rin in the back. They pulled up at the back of the club, the rear door and the fire escape guarded by two burly goons. Ki-Rin looped the camera system and then they were good to go. Ash wound down the window and Glyph hosed them with lead rain (Ash got a face full of discarded cartridges) and the two goons were dropped. Ki-Rin was already out the back of the van to drag the bodies into the vehicle.

The runners moved quickly, Sickle and Ki-Rin hauling down the ladder arrangement on the fire escape. They dashed up. The runners got in through the top fire escape briefly tripping an alarm that Ki-Rin unusually missed. They then set about searching the top floor. Ash had told the runners to look for some evidence but wasn’t sure what would count as evidence, (It was around this time that Ash broke another combat knife trying to jimmy open a door) the alarm summoned some more guards to come and investigate. Ki-Rin was forced to take them down. Again silent and efficient.

The runners found nothing of interest, Glyph came across some accounts and things but without a super computer and a team of accountants couldn’t find anything untoward in the moments she looked at it. The team decided to move on down. Coming to the top of the stairs they found another goon coming out of a little guard room saying that he had head something. Ki-Rin dropped him, but then the lead started to fly. The team moved quickly Glyph got on the other side of the wall to the guard room exchanging gunfire, Ash and Ki-Rin marked the other doors, and Sickle tossed in a few grenades. The 5 guards were pasted.
There were two other doors and after the efficiency the team had so far displayed Ash had a momentary lapse and gaily flung the door open.

4 guards stood poised on the other side of the door ready to surge out and meet the runners were almost as surprised as Ash was to see them, behind them two men were fleeing down the fire escape one of whom was Mancell. Ash was dropped for his stupidity, Glyph received a hail of gunfire for her troubles as well. Ki-Rin and Sickle moved round to take the new threat out, Ki-Rin pumping shotgun spray across two of them, while Sickle took down another with his SMG. The fourth guard took to his heel toward the fire escape as well.

Ki-Rin was keen to catch up with the fleeing Mancell and got his head down to sprint, Sickle ran with him backing up his man. The fleeing guard saw the two runners after him and assumed they were after him, and threw himself off the fire escape in a bid for freedom.

Ki-Rin ignored the guard, took a mark on the retreating silver haired Mancell and took him out with a well aimed stick shock. Sickle joined Ki-Rin and dropped a flash bang onto the other man.

The runners quickly snatched up their quarry, leapt into the van and headed for some Z-zone wasteland.

The runners gathered around the dazed club owner IRA style, looking down over him ski masks and rifles. Ash told Mancell that he had to pay Smoove, and when he didn’t seem quite intimidated enough Sickle took a knife and began pressing into the flesh of his thumb. The runners failed to mention that Smoove knew about his Mafia back handers, but it didn’t matter he was going to pay the man as soon as he got home.

The runners contacted Smoove once they had ditched the van and beamed him some pictures of Mancell, and the other man they took down. Smoove knew the other man as Leonard Baines and once the runners received the payments with an extra 5 grand on top they realised he was pleased with their nights work.

The guard who threw himself off the fire escape in this run did survive. Along with the wounds he suffered at the wrong end of Sickles Ares Alpha he received two broken legs and a fractured collar bone. he will spend 6 weeks in hospital where he finds his faith, he will go on to found an evangelical church in Wyoming.

Six's blog. Bum-fluff

2006-12-20T14:24:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 27: 22.08.70>
Just back from a track day and I can still smell the burnt rubber and gasoline. What a great day :o)

I suppose a word or two of explanation. First things first, we’re back in good old San Fran and all seems sweet. Kitty is as hot as ever and someone gave my apartment a new lick of paint to repair the damage done by the Triad before we smoothed things over with them. I’ve decided I’m never getting caught unawares again and Mal has very kindly fitted me out with the latest Betaware cyber leg – fully synthetic and realistic to look at and touch but with a nifty little cyber holster built in so I can keep a surprise or two to hand. Good kit.

In addition, while I was away I seem to have become Grasshopper or Old Father Time or something, invested with the wisdom of ages. Why? Because Kitty and I took a reunion cruise down the strip for race night yesterday and that punk Bumfluff came to me with his life story begging for my help.
For real. I mean this kid has got serious stones and vitamin Reality deficiency if he thinks getting his ass handed to him on the streets a few times in some way makes me his protector and mentor… However, we all know I’m really a soft touch and it can’t do my rep any harm – so I listen.

Seems Bumfluff fell foul of Seto’s gig the same way I did. There was a 100k bet down on a simple drag, Bumfluff felt certain he’d have the edge but as soon as things got underway experienced an few ‘technical’ troubles. Now Seto’s an ass and he’s pulling this shit on decent folks. I’d love to sock one to the smug fragger so Bumfluff has my attention but he ain’t done yakking. To try and rectify his first mistake, he made another. Trusted a nobody by the name of Grifter who offered him a suitcase full of Smack for 20 or 30 large. Figuring he can sell it on for enough dough to cover his debt to Seto, Bumfluff bit the scam. He then tries to sell the Smack to the local Vory Novacoke dealer, only to be told the Smack is hookey, ripped off from the Vory not 24 hours before. So now Bumfluff has a fat debt and some explaining to do to the Russian Mafia if he hopes to live out the day. I’m about ready to walk and let the knobhead swing but maybe just maybe we can help…

I bring in the team, Glyph, Ash and our infrequent tagalong Drifter.
Drifter’s worth his weight in gold and remembers that when we were down on our luck, Ash paid this Grifter dude who just scammed Bumfluff for a run to pick up a piece of art from a museum exhibition. We never did get around to that run and a little checking now proves Drifter right – Ash has also been scammed by Grifter.

Well, now it’s personal so we make moves to track Grifter down. Thanks to Daisy, it soon transpires that Grifter was responsible for doing over the Vory drug den and lifting the Novacoke. From our knowledge of Sickle and a couple of other brushes with the Vory we know they set a great store by personal honour so I make contact with the Dealer, Kier and offer a trade.
He lays off Bumfluff and we give him the little turd who raided his safe house. Kier’s a reasonable chap it seems. He’s happy with the trade, so we set a fake hard luck story circulating on Shadowlands BBS and set Drifter up as a honey trap – a down on his luck Runner looking for a quick, no questions asked buck. We strike gold, Drifter is invited to a meet and we set up a stake out and get ready to bust some heads. On Fly Spy I watch Drifter make contact at the meet. He’s joining a gang of Hispanics and Grifter for a raid on a poorly defended drug den. Drifter makes his excuses and leaves, somewhat smacked off his tits from the Blunt the Hispanics are toking and we hastily rearrange our hit.

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

It soon becomes apparent that Grifter and his new friends are about to turn over the same Vory drug den he struck gold at, just a few days ago. It’s too much of an opportunity to really impress Kier so we take our chances against the whole crew and make our move – Glyph and I run a little drive-by as the Hispanics make to bail out of their vehicles and they come blazing after us.
Grifter, loaded down with the cash the Hispanics put up to buy into the hit, decides he’s got what he wanted and pushes off pronto with Ash and Drifter in tow.

Up and down the hills of San Fran, Glyph and I have our fun, taunting the Hispanics, outburning their lowriders and trading shots. They get outdriven, outclassed and outgunned – it’s Glyph and her custom automatics and me with the turret mounted Ares Antioch against SMG firing hippies so high they can barely shoot straight. It’s no contest – like shooting fish in a barrel. I lay down smoke and flash bangs as a distraction, dropping them through the windows and into the vehicles where I can, while Glyph methodically works her way through the whole damn crew. You’d count to ten slower than we made two burning messes on the highway!

By the time we catch up with Ash, he’s already run Grifter off of the road.
Glyph and I pull up just in time to watch the show as Grifter’s tub goes over on its roof and crunches to a stop in front of us. While Ash has a one-to-one with our itinerant scammer, Glyph and Drifter retrieve the cash – a cool 50k for the Bumfluff benevolent fund – and I arrange to hand Grifter over to Kier.

Kier is good to his word and I warn Bumfluff to steer clear of the Vory in future. He’s been a knobhead this time but he’s smart enough to know what a close shave he’s had – he could have been sleeping with fishes at the bottom of the bay if the Russian Mafia got hold of him. We still have a problem though – Bumfluff needs another 50k for Seto, PDQ. Fortunately, this time, Ash has a cunning plan…

And that’s where the track day fits in. Ash, Glyph, Drifter and Bumfluff came with me down to the track. I laid down a marker time for the others and they tried to beat it. If ten seconds slower can be counted as beating me, then I guess I’m in trouble lol. Bumfluff came closest though – kid’s got some skills and that was all Ash needed to know. At his suggestion, Ash and I have put up 25k each to cover the rest of Bumfluff’s debt and now the Punk’s gonna race for us. He’ll race in the colours and livery we choose, so we can advertise some of Ash’ contacts, my Custom work etc and he’ll race when we tell him to race. That means he’ll either play wingman to me and watch my back out on the track or he’ll split his winnings with us, 60:40 in his favour with Ash and I take 20 per cent a pop until he’s quits with us.
Bumfluff’s fragging ecstatic and while I have my reservations, Ash is convinced that we can make this work…

Mood: High. I can still hear the NOS firing!
Ends: 2/2>
||

August 2070 NPC update

2006-12-18T11:51:00.001Z

Kier – Vory dealer in San Francisco.

Yutaka Seto – Yakuza Oyabans son who has Six's old car.

Bum Fluff – Young Street racer.

Grifter – Con-man. Preys on wannabe shadowrunners with deals that seem just a little too good to be true.

Han Tze – Lone Star undercover cop who has infiltrated the Seven Star triad gang.

Ka-Hil – An Ork recruiter for the secretive magical group that approached Ash.

Halifax – Physical adept and mentor to Ash.

Smith – Fixer the runners met in Atlanta.

Fu Hong – Ex-Seven Star lieutenant. He was captured by the shadowrunners as part of the Lone Star arrest for cash program. After being released he was incensed to discover that Kung Lok had given the runners clemency. After declaring a blood feud against the runners he was disowned by the Seven Stars.

Kung Lok – Seven Star Triad gang leader. Impressed by the way that the runners had out smarted his Lieutenants, has called off the vendetta against them and has offered some work for the future.

The problem with Bum-Fluff

2006-12-18T11:49:00.000Z

13th August 2070

Ash, Drifter, Glyph, Six

The runners were in Atlanta but they had little to stick around for, and once they had packed they drove the drive back home.

Six had put a call through to Mal, the Street Doc, a few days before to order a cyberleg, with a few customisations and made arrangements to head round and have his meat leg replaced with the better harder faster version.

Ash made some enquiries about having his strip of desert turned into some kind of racing strip, although the verbal quotes he was getting were quite steep.

Glyph got back to normal as soon as possible. Clearing up the mess that the Triads had left she got back to finishing the large bore quad barrelled gun she had started for Six.

21st August 2070

The young street racer called Bum Fluff had been on the circuit for a couple of years, a talented but inexperienced driver, he wiped out as many times as he won. He had entered a race for ¥100k, against the yakuza oyoban’s son Yutaka Seto and after some engine trouble, he lost. He didn’t have the money and had been given a time limit to come up with the cash. Desperate for some way to make some quick money, he was quick to snap up an offer of a suitcase full of nova-coke worth in excess of ¥200k on the streets for a fraction of the price from a mystery man called Grifter. Bum Fluff then sold the class A drugs to a Vory drug baron called Kier who paid in counterfeit credsticks. Which mean’ that Bum Fluff was still unable to pay off Yutaka Seto.
Kier then discovered that the drugs he had just bought from Bum Fluff, had in fact belonged to him all along and someone had knocked off his own drug den the night before. Kier was fuming and gave Bum Fluff an ultimatum, get him a suitcase full of Nova-coke by Friday or face the consequences. Seto was expecting his ¥100,000 by Friday also, and Bum Fluff was scared.

Bum Fluff had always looked up to Six, and begged him to help him. He didn’t have much to offer, only his car, and Six was less than impressed that Bum Fluff had come begging to him.
Leave him to fend for himself and he could wind up dead, and neither Six’s conscience or reputation could take that. Help him out, and Six would either end up out of pocket, or pissing off both the Vory and Yakuza of San Fran, or both. Six agreed to help.

Getting the other runners involved they talked over what had happened in the twisted web that Bum Fluff had woven and it seemed that the one man who they could do wit questioning was Grifter. Ash thought on about it, but Drifter was the one who remembered the name. Grifter sold Ash a Shadowrun to raid a museum when Ash was on a loosing streak, and at a bit of a low. Ash called the contact number for that run and after a brief chat to a man that was supposed to be German and wasn’t ended up speaking to tone.

The runners set about tracking down Grifter. His car had been seen at a bar, and the runners headed there, Daisy tracked down the city cameras to try and find the car and eventually found a piece of footage of Grifter running over a Vory guard and taking the drugs.

The runners decided to set up a honey trap to lure the elusive Grifter out. He seemed to prey on shadowrunners and criminal elements when they are down on their luck, so Drifter was set up as a runner touting for work. Daisy spread the word on message boards and before long Drifter was inundated with spam offers to make money quick. He spent many hours filtering through the spam before receiving a message from Grifter himself. They had a brief conversation and Grifter let him know that he could help him out of he comes down to a run down bit of San Fran for a meet.

The runners swung into action and surrounded the place with sniper cover and FRT while Drifter headed in to make a move. Drifter found himself in a smoking den owned by a group of hispanic gangers. A reefer was passed to Drifter and after a couple of tokes, it became a bit surreal.

Grifter rolled in after half an hour or so later and tried to squeeze some cash out of Drifter, he feigned that he had left his wallet elsewhere and Grifter lost interest in his new mark dismissing him to go and get some cash.

Drifter left, and Grifter led his new gang of mugs to a stash of drugs that was going to be lightly guarded. The Vory drug den again.

Six and Glyph in one car, Ash and a slightly stoned Drifter in Ash’s truck took up pursuit. They followed two lowriders and an Americar across town, and watched in horror as Grifter led his little gang back to the Vory house, Six and Glyph did a drive by to attract their attention and the gangers took the bait, chasing the runners up the hill, Ash followed Grifter who decided that there was too much lead flying about.

Six and Glyph dispatched their Lowriding gangers with a few well-placed grenades, and joined Ash to see him ramming the Americar off the road.

Grifter was dazed in the crash; the runners dragged him from the wreckage taking about ¥60k in cash. They contacted the Vory baron, Kier to be told that he wanted Grifter bringing to a secluded location so that he could have a long chat with him. And the runners duly obliged as long as Bum Fluff was let off, after all he had his drugs back, and although neither made the point, the drugs were paid with counterfeit money anyway.

The runners then had the other problem. To pay off Seto, they would need to give Bum Fluff the 60k they had just taken, and still have to pay in 40k of their own money. Ash suggested that they take Bum Fluff onto the payroll; his earnings on the strip get split between the investors. Six wanted to see how good the kid really was, so arranged to spend an afternoon on a track day in his car. Everyone had a go to try and post a time. Six put down the benchmark, and all the runners were about 10 seconds off the pace. Bum Fluff was fast, better than the other runners, not as good as Six, and Six was satisfied enough to put his money alongside Ash’s on the kid.

Six's Blog.

2006-12-12T08:48:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

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Initializing…>

Entry 26: 12.08.70>
I knew Chuckles was going to be trouble… How much trouble? How about persuading Ash to bail out mid-run, trouble. Yes, that much trouble. I’m fragging fuming, not least because I had to put my ass on the line to pull Chumpzilla’s fat out of the fire afterwards too.

The day started well. I had a call from Nunzio who had negotiated a deal for us with the Seven Stars Triad. They respected our effectiveness at bypassing their security to take their boys in and collect the Lone Star bounty and understood that it was just a job, nothing personal. However, they needed to save face and that meant reparations had to be made. The Triad Head Honcho said that for 30k, all sins could be forgiven and we’d be free to return home. As an added sweetener, Kung Lok threw in a warning and a sop to our ego. The sop? That our skill and success rate had not gone unnoticed and the Triad might be interested in employing us at a future date. The warning?
That restaurant owner Fu Hong had disagreed with the Triad’s upper echelons about letting us off so lightly and been thrown out on his ear after swearing a blood oath against us. Glyph and Ash agreed to chuck in 10k a pop with me to settle up so that we could go home and Nunzio agreed to facilitate the deal.

Before we could even think of packing up and leaving Atlanta, Ash took a call from a local fixer called Smith – the fruit of his efforts at contact development and relationship building. Smith offered to put us in touch with a Corp Johnson who was looking to employ a team. I liked the idea of having a fixer on side here in Atlanta and a bit of a rep – if we could cultivate both San Fran and Atlanta it meant we could switch between patches and would always be able to use the other as a bolt hole. Glyph agreed it was worth trying to make a spot more money before we left and we let Ash make the connections.

We met Smith and then the Johnson at a hotel downtown. The introductions from Smith were costing us ten percent and though both Ash and I considered this money well spent, Glyph had her reservations. Johnson represented Future Concepts, an R&D company who had signed a deal to head hunt a research scientist by the name of Dr Lawrence Callahan from Mitsuhama.
Callahan had never shown up for work and Future Concepts wanted their employee delivering to them. Wrangles about cash, golden handshakes and contingency payments aside, it all seemed fairly straightforward and we happily took the gig on.

Straight to the horse’s mouth, I decided to check whether Callahan was contactable through his former employer or not and after playing the hold game with a series of switchboard monkeys I was surprised to be put straight through to our quarry. Callahan claimed to have changed his mind and rebuffed me fairly quickly and left us with any number of conspiracy theories running through our heads. Had he feigned interest in Future Concepts to carry out some sort of industrial espionage? Were Mitsuhama holding him against his will? Did they have some sort of leverage over him?
Ultimately, the whys and wherefores were unimportant, our job was simply to deliver Callahan to Future Concepts, but at least we now knew where to find the good Doctor and what we would be up against in order to extract him successfully.

A recce of Callahan’s old apartment turned up little other than the telephone number of Flick Stevens, a co-worker who claimed to know nothing of Callahan’s whereabouts or contract with Future Concepts so we blazed to Mitsuhama where we had our first unpleasant surprise.

Continues: 1/3>
|| >

Mitsuhama is one of the Big Ten – the world’s largest corporations and that grants them extraterritoriality, the right to claim their buildings and compounds as sovereign land, exempt from the laws of the country and subject to laws set by the corporation itself. You can expect those laws to be stacked in the corporation’s favour and get short shrift and no assistance if you should happen to cross them. Knowing this, we gave the Mitsuhama compound a wide berth and set up surveillance in the hills overlooking it from the north. The compound covers roughly a square mile of territory, ringed by a double fence and houses five separate buildings. A quick hackette from Daisy was able to identify the building where Callahan worked and the accommodation block housing his apartment but even so, we faced a tough infiltration if we were going to get into the compound.

Glyph snuck down to within 500 metres of the exterior fence and was spotted, attracting the unwanted attention of a dog team. I expected to be picked up instantly over corporate air space but with little other option I sent the Fly Spy down into the compound and began to worm my way through to Callahan’s apartment.

It was then we got our next surprise. An announcement from Ash that he had to go meet someone and would be leaving us for an hour. He tried to use the fact that we were settling down to do some surveillance as an excuse to bail, claiming it didn’t need all three of us to watch the compound. He was right of course, but leaving us still sucked and I damn well told him so.
What if an opportunity to snatch the good Doctor presented itself? How could he help us if he was having a beer and a chinwag miles away? It all harked back to the bad old days, when Ono was captured by the Notable Anarchists.
It was asking for trouble but Ash was resolute. As it turned out, he was gone for much longer than an hour and would have cause to regret his decision before the end of the night.

Glyph and I debated entry methods until nightfall and then in the darkness, we spotted approaching headlights. A two-man security team had come to sweep the area and I instantly realised the control feed for the Fly Spy could have been detected and traced. Killing the signal we slipped away, then took the opportunity to circle around, break into the Mitsuhama security van and stow away in the back. They carried us right into the heart of the compound without so much as a harsh word. Talk about providence!

From their own garage, we hot-wired the van and used it to move unnoticed around the compound. Across at Callahan’s accommodation block, we aped a maintenance team and slipped unseen up the fire escape. As we climbed, all hell broke loose. Dogs were barking, security klaxon’s began blaring and shots were fired. Below us, we saw Ash sprinting across the compound like a fun-runner at the New York marathon. Knobhead. We had no idea how he’d gotten in but he clearly hadn’t been as savvy as us about it. We had a hurried conversation but there was no alternative, Ash was providing the perfect distraction and we had to capitalise on it. Helping him would jeopardise the entire run and all of our lives. He had made his bed, we had to let him lie in it. It was hard. Damn hard. Whatever those bastards were doing to Ash, it was making the poor fragger scream like a bitch. I think I had a little coming of age on that fire escape. I had no alternative but to harden my heart to those screams and the only thing that gave me any comfort was the thought that if he’d stuck with us, it would all have been fine.
These were the consequences of his own decisions, made at his own volition and he’d have to deal with them… Damn I sound like Ki-rinn but that’s all there was to it.

In Callahan’s room we found his lover Flick Stevens. I was shocked that the little bitch had lied to me with such aplomb and put a Stick-Shock in her to keep her compliant. When Callahan arrived and saw our hostage, he had little alternative but to cooperate. Ash had stirred up a hornet’s nest at the rear of the accommodation and that meant sucking it up and walking bold as brass, right out of the front door.

Continues: 2/3>
|| >

We got back to the van without any hassle and made our way down to the gates. As we approached, there was clearly a lockdown in effect – again, a legacy of Ash’s stupidity – and we had to think fast. Glyph surrendered one of her weapon projects but the grenades wouldn’t fire for me. Typical! I stamped on the gas, roaring towards the outer gate and Glyph took matters in her own hands, shooting the windshield out and then pinging a grenade off of the fencing. We roared toward the explosion just preying the gates would be weakened enough for a ramming and we got a lucky break smashing our way out on to the open road.

As Glyph strip searched Callahan and Stevens for RFID security and stealth tags, I played logistical Kerplunk with the security van, my car and Ash’
pick up. With the FN-Har in the back of the Dodge, I downed a tree so that it fell across the road behind us. We then ditched the van and all possible tags, switching into the pick-up before returning to Atlanta. Once in Atlanta, Glyph and I split again. She took Callahan to see Johnson and collect our pay while I took Stevens to negotiate a hostage exchange for Ash and managed to evade pursuit.

My heart was in my throat for the next couple of hours. I’ve never played spy before and I didn’t really know what I was doing. First I made contact with the head of R&D at Mitsuhama – Stevens’ and Callahan’s boss. I told him I had Stevens and gave him 15 minutes to ascertain if Ash was alive. Then I moved on, changing location and phone so they couldn’t track or trace me. On the second call, I offered a prisoner swap and gave them time to prep Ash for transport. It was then I broke the news to Daisy and with her help selected a suitable location for the exchange. On the third call, I gave my instructions, timing it so that Mitsuhama had time to get to the meet but little time for any dirty tricks. They’re a Corp for frag’s sake. I was expecting them to double cross me. I knew it would go wrong somewhere on down the line but I had to secure Ash’ freedom and just did what I could to protect myself. Tense? Check my pants…

At the appointed time, Stevens’ boss pulled up at the appointed place and we made the exchange. Ash got halfway to the car before Mitsuhama hit me with the double-cross. Ash was strapped with a TNT waistcoat and unless I sold my employer down the river it was goodnight good buddy. I made a quick call to Glyph on my other PAN to get her to explain to Johnson that Ash had been captured and there was a risk his PAN had been hacked for sensitive info. It was a feasible story that I figured would cover our asses and explain to Johnson how he had been compromised without actually souring our relationship or deal. And then a weird thing happened. I trusted the Corp. I mean, I had nothing to lose, Ash was dead if I didn’t co-operate and I suspected they’d betray me and kill him even if I did co-operate so all I could do was train the FN-Har on their car, whisper a silent promise that if he died, they’d all die too, and trust them. I gave them half of Johnson’s phone number and made them take the explosives off of Ash. With him walking toward the car, I gave them the rest of the number. I steeled myself for the gunfire, the sniper shot, the explosion. Nothing. They got back in their vehicle and drove away. The Corp dealt with me on equal footing. We negotiated and for the first time in my short career, I got what I wanted and the Corp got what they wanted. Colour me surprised… and relieved!

There was still every chance Ash was tagged so we hooked back up with his pick up and gear and he scanned himself for RFID transmitters before we blazed back over to Glyph’s location to help fight off the imminent arrival of Mitsuhama’s Snatch Back Squad. We were too late. Glyph was covering the doorway with smoking guns and two corpses, still warm, were slumped behind her near the unconscious Dr Callahan. Forewarned by Glyph, Johnson arrived in short order to collect the Doc and paid his dues. Job done. We blazed.

We still have issues. Mitsuhama may not let sleeping dogs lie and Ash needs to decide on his priorities. It’s either Chuckles or us and the job, especially when we’re mid-job, but for now we can breathe a sigh of relief and head home. Apologies have been made and the air between us cleared.
We’ll see if it sours in future.
Mood: Tense.

Ends: 3/3>
||

Mitsuhama assault

2006-12-11T13:44:00.000Z

Sunday 12th August 2070

Ash, Glyph, Six.

Nunzio contacted six. He had been working hard behind the scenes with the Triads to bring an end to this feud that they had with his little brother. Nunzio put a call through from the Triad gang leader, Kung Lok.

Kung Lok told Six that he was not happy with the disrespect the runners had show to the Seven Star Triad family, but that he understood why they had taken the Lone Star bounties. He offered Six a deal. 30k payment as a show of deference and Kung Lok would end the attacks on the runners. Six accepted, and the triad leader also hinted that their effectiveness didn’t go unnoticed and that work may come their way in the future.

Meanwhile Smith contacted Ash again, the fixer he had made contact with a week or so ago. Smith told him that there was the prospect of a job available and if the runners were interested to meet at the McMurray Grand hotel.

They were, although they had the chance to head back home, they fancied one last job in Atlanta. It may open up possibilities to make a few more contacts outside San Fran and may provide a familiar bolthole to retreat to in the future.

The runners met the fixer at the hotel and he took them through to the bar to explain the deal. Rather than get his fingers burned with runners he doesn’t know, he offered to pass the runners to the Johnson directly. That way his rep wouldn’t suffer so badly if things went wrong for the team. He asked that he took a 10% cut of their final pay. A finder’s fee for linking the runners up with the job. They accepted and they headed to a hotel suite where the Mr. Johnson waited.

The job was simple, a simple search and retrieval of a doctor who failed to turn up for work, he job was coming from Future Concepts a corporation who poached the best scientists, innovated the next big thing, and then sold the ideas back to the bigger corporations. They had been approached by a Dr. Lawrence Calahan who wanted to move from Mitsuhama and they gave him a contract. Only, a week after he was due to start work, he never showed. They accepted the job, but Glyph quibbled on the pricing structure between the Johnson, the Fixer, and the three of them. Wanting to make friends and influence people in Atlanta, Six took Glyph to one side, and Ash closed the deal with no more arguments.

Settling down in the bar area with all of the information to hand, the runners planned their moves. Six called Mitsuhama to see if Dr. Calahan was still working for them. After getting passed through the switchboard system he eventually spoke with the man they were after. Six briefly mentioned the job at Future Concepts Calahan dismissed it and said that he no longer wanted to work for FC.

Ash contacted the Johnson again, who was only mildly surprised that he was still working at Mitushama, as far as he was concerned the job was still on, and the runners agreed. Glyph again quibbled that the remit had changed and they should try to squeeze more money out of the Johnson. Six and Ash ignored her.

The runners pulled down some information about the Mitsuhama complex, and found that it was a sprawling self contained corporate enclave with housing and working requirements fulfilled in the 1 mile x half a mile extraterritorial portion of the CAS. Surveillance was in order, but first the runners wanted to get together some equipment and visit his old flat.

His old flat was empty. Cleared out of all personal effects. The runners hunted around and found little. A few scraps of paper with some phone numbers jotted down. Six called one of the phone numbers and seemed to turn up a colleague of his. But otherwise they found nothing.

The runners then headed to the Mitsuhama complex. Ash and Glyph parked up and took up observations about a mile away, Six drove on and parked the car on the road, just in case they needed options. And then they sat and watched. Glyph had to abort a closer inspection because guards spotted her, so Six then sent his fly-spy drone in for a look.

Meanwhile Ash took a call from Ka-Hil. He wanted to meet up with Ash to discuss the magical group. Ash was torn, he was desperate to further his relationship with this mysterious magical group, but at the same time didn’t want to leave the job part way through. Six didn’t make it any easier when Ash told them that he was off. Ash took the truck and headed back into Atlanta. Glyph and Six sat on a log watching the complex. It started to rain.

Hours passed, Six had managed to get his Flyspy drone into Dr. Calahan’s apartment and the two runners sat and waited. A van pulled up nearby. It was still raining and it was dark but they could see that Mitsuhama security also performed sweeps of the local countryside if prompted by something. Six realised that his Drone link could be giving them away and killed the connection. They then moved off.

Thinking quickly, they then moved back toward the van. They disabled the alarm and slipped into the back while the two security men performed their sweep. They sat quietly and then were driven straight into the heavily guarded complex unseen, with not a shot fired.

Ash spent 3 hours talking to Ka-Hil. He explained the magical group, he told him the practices, and he told Ash that he would need to choose an adepts way. Ash had a tough decision regarding the way he wanted his training to be focused but eventually chose the Invisible Way. Ka-Hil nodded his agreement with the choice and told Ash that he would get a chance to meet up with his mentor soon.

Ash then blazed back to his friends outside Mitsuhama. Only they were no longer outside Mitsuhama. Ash got worried. He could see that another vehicle had pulled up, and he could see that people had gotten into the back of the van, and Ash feared that his friends had been taken prisoner.

Meanwhile Glyph and Six were sneaking around inside the complex. They had taken one of the vans and were presently making their way up a fire escape into Calahan’s living block.

Ash made a rash move. He snuck down the hill to the main security fence and cut his way through. Then after crawling through the gap he had cut he saw that a guard dog had spotted him even if the handler hadn’t. Ash ran, scrambled over another fence, only to hear shouts of alarm from more security guards. Glyph and Six saw Ash in trouble but would jeopardise the run if they went to his aid. Ash ran past the fire escape they were climbing up, but came face to face with more guards, He ran back the way he had come but again guards were closing in, Ash got his shotgun and began shooting, and the guards began to return fire. And then Ash screamed. They pinned him to the ground with a pain inducer, before knocking him out cold. Six and Glyph heard Ash’s screams cut short.

They made their way to the fire escape door and cut their way through. The headed to Calahan’s door and Calahan’s girlfriend answered. They pushed in and after trying to explain that everything would be okay if she co-operated they shot her with a stick-shock™ round. Calahan turned up not much later and Glyph forced him to co-operate at gun point. The plan was simple. They would head out casually to the van, and then once on the move, they would drive out of the automated gates before anyone could stop them.
They got to the van; Calahan was able to provide enough credibility to bluff the guards. And they drove out towards the gates but the second set of gates were on shut down. Glyph handed Six her custom gun with mini-grenade launcher and Six leaned out of the window and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Glyph had forgotten that she had put a biometric safety on the weapon, the van ploughed into the firmly shut security gates.
Glyph and Six were unhurt, and they fled.

Six got his rig on, firing up Ash’s truck and his own car while driving the van. Glyph searched for RFID tags on their two hostages while Six worked an escape plan. His own car parked up next to a large tree and as the van flashed past he remotely shot out at the base of the tree, if fortuitously fell across the road barring any pursuit vehicles.

Once the RFID tags had been found they ditched the van and switched to Ash’s truck and fled into the night.

Ash was captured. The Chinese corporation employed a specialist interrogator to find out what was going on. Ash screamed as he was tortured but he didn’t give away anything. Even his own name he protected.

Six and Glyph contacted the Johnson to tell him that they had his man. And the Johnson asked a favour. Look after him until the morning, Future Concepts didn’t realize that they would have a hostile employee, and needed to put measures in place to ensure that he stayed with them once the runners left. Six and Glyph had to split. Glyph looked after their scientist. Six took the unconscious woman who was also employed by Mitsuhama and contacted them to exchange her for the captured Ash.

Things happened quickly, Mitsuhama agreed to meet up with Six at a park he had arranged.

The two cars, Six’s and Mitsuhama’s were parked 100 yards or so apart. The man Six had been negotiating with stepped out of the car and Six instructed him to send Ash. Ash was sat in the car with an explosive device strapped across his chest wasn’t keen on getting out to be used as some kind of remote control mine, but at the same time didn’t like the idea of being sat in the car either. He stepped out.
Six sent the woman back to her employers, and then Six got a call from the Mitsuhama man. He explained that Ash was rigged to blow, and he wanted to know who their employers were. Eventually Six told them the Johnson’s number and the name of the Corp who was employing them. Ash had the explosives taken off and was free.

Glyph sat in Future Concepts HQ alone with a magazine and a cup of coffee for company waiting for the morning. Two men approached. They told her that Mr. Johnson had sent them and that she was relieved of watching Dr. Calahan. She didn’t believe that their employer had sent them and called him to confirm that the two goons were not from Future Concepts. A hail of bullets followed leaving nothing but two dead goons.

The runners quickly met up again, and were relieve when the Mr. Johnson from Future Concepts finally took delivery of Dr. Calahan. They were paid in full. And Ash treated them to dinner…

The runners were free to get back to San Francisco if they choose. Six has ordered a new bit of Cyberware that he wants Mal to fix him up with when he is next at the street Doc’s.

Six's Blog

2006-12-11T13:43:00.000Z

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Rety in 3..2..1..

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Entry 25: 06.08.70>
Ash is up to something. Devious little turd. I know he’s been out and about in Atlanta, doing his thing, flexing the feelers and trying to set us up with sufficient contacts to make us more effective. However, he’s going about it in a manner I’m not sure I like, getting us involved, again, in far deeper shit than I think we can handle.

He came in from one of his contact meet-n-greets a few days back with a mission he told us just had to be done. Pressed, he told us it was for ‘a friend’ and admitted that we wouldn’t be getting paid. Now give the lad his due, he offered to pay Glyph and I for our assistance, out of his own pocket but alarm bells were already starting to ring – none of us know anyone down here well enough to be doing jobs on the house… With reservations then, we agreed to help and soon came to realise that there was a philanthropic kilter to the Run he’d picked up. Atlanta has its very own Orkish Underground, which goes by the name of The Falls. The place has been getting terrorised for the past six years by a serial killer dubbed Lobo and Ash wanted us to go down there and serve up a slice of justice. The authorities don’t care about the place – evidently this new ‘friend’ Ash has made, does.

We resolved to head down there as disguised as we could make ourselves. We bought a couple of Rat Bikes and I got them running, while Ash invested in some tatty clothing and dirtied up our gear – we didn’t want to get lynched for our ‘shinies’ by a horde of Ork Tramps. Reasoning that cash would have little value in the slums of the undercity, Glyph collected together some barter items – food stuffs, medical supplies, booze and fags and suitable togged up we went looking for trouble.

Just getting into the place was a trial. Friendly and welcoming they ain’t but we made our way around the barricades, observation posts and obvious ambush points thanks to the bikes and rode on in. Place is called The Falls because of the constantly streaming water that cascades from the foundations of Atlanta above down on to the undercity – a brackish mix of rainwater, spill from cracked utility pipes, sewage overflow and the natural leak from the water table. It’s a shitty way to live basically and whole areas of the place are flooded with several feet of collected water.

The inhabitants could see through our disguises straight away. Proud to a man, they were unwilling to accept help from outsiders and it took all of our collective powers of persuasion just to get them to talk to us. The art of persuasion often includes violence however and as Ash negotiated, Glyph and I clocked a group of Toughs moving in to get personal. One of them was carrying a sap and intended to use it but when it was shot right out of his hand, he took the point that we might object. The air was thick with unspoken threats of violence for a while but I twigged we were outside what passed for a hospital down there. Medical supplies changed hands and we ‘bought’ the information we were after.

We were pointed in the direction of an area of the undercity known as The Dark. The power seemed to be out in the entire area, evidently giving the place it’s name and as we made our way down to that sector, we mulled over the information we’d been given. It seemed Lobo’s victims were often found with circular abrasions on their chest and temple. We speculated that they might correspond to the medical pads used to monitor heart rate and brain activity and suddenly we began to smell rat. It was beginning to have all the hallmarks of another fucking Corp screw-job, using The Falls’ inhabitants as guinea pigs.

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

We were all twitchy, but it was Glyph’s eagle eyes that spotted the first concrete evidence we were right about Corp involvement. As we hunted for a likely-looking building to serve as a temporary base of operations, she spotted that we were under surveillance from the distinctive profile of a set of night vision goggles. It was kit far too high tech for the undercity’s indigenous population so we began to revise our expectations of what we might come up against.

A quick recce soon confirmed that we would need to descend down to the lowest level of The Dark and overcoming a mixture of fear and distaste, we pressed on, chasing half seen shadows of movement, flickers at the edges of our vision and a deep baritone growl. Down at the bottom of the Underground we encountered our first serious resistance – a Corp kill-team kitted out for surveillance. Pinned down at the bottom of the stairwell we had to think fast and pull a twin flanking manoeuvre to switch around behind them and put them out of action. It was then we discovered the first body. It had clearly been the Corp team’s objective – relatively fresh but fitted with sophisticated medical monitoring equipment. Here was a pretty puzzle. Were the Corp ‘feeding’ civilians to Lobo? What information could they hope to obtain from the medical data of a sacrificial lamb?

Pushing on, we got a stroke of luck and spotted light reflecting off of the waters. Tracing it back to the source, we found a relatively intact building, with its own power supply and slipped inside the building opposite so we could make our way up to the windows and see what the hell our neighbours were up to. Jackpot! We were looking across at the Corp nerve centre, just a street’s width away, fully kitted out with computer equipment, signal uplink, medical monitoring bay and armed guards. We lined up, showdown style, at the window and on the count of three let hot lead rip from room to room. It was over in seconds – a concerted burst of fire that took them completely by surprise and finished the battle in our favour before they even knew they were fighting for their lives.

The Corp Ops were monitoring four camera feeds – three from ordinary residents going about their business and one from the viewpoint of someone stalking the Dark near our position. Figuring this to be Lobo, Ash and I headed out to pick up his train leaving Glyph at the monitoring station. She soon found that the Corps had been doing more than simple monitoring – they were directing the flow of certain stimuli to Lobo, effectively switching him on and off, controlling when he was a killer and when he was indistinguishable from other civilians. The bastards had themselves a Manchurian candidate and by the looks of it, several more waiting in the wings. Glyph turned down the stimuli so we could approach this Lobo and try to talk to him but the instant he came down from his drug-fuelled high, he was wracked by remorse, threw down two monowire scythes and fled sobbing.

We had ourselves a dilemma. These Lobo’s weren’t in control of their actions and that made bringing them to justice unfair at the very least. We also didn’t dare sabotage the equipment for fear it would activate all of the Sleeper Lobos and send them running riot. We needed guidance so Ash phoned his mystery contact. In moments, the Run was off. Ash’ new buddy Chuckles had known about these goings on all along and set the whole thing up so that the true evil of the corporations would be revealed to us. What a crock. If Chuckles had bothered to talk to us instead of being all pious and holier than thou he’d have found out our true feelings where the Corps are concerned. With the trials and tribulations we’ve had, he’s preaching to the converted and I don’t like it. I don’t like being taught unnecessary lessons in morality by strangers and worse still, I don’t like the thought that Chuckles is effectively party to the problems in The Falls. He admits to knowing what’s going on yet permits it to happen? Poor form. Ash needs to wise up pronto and ditch this paizon.

Mood: Irritated.
Ends: 2/2>
||

Ash's test.

2006-11-30T15:29:00.000Z

Ash, Glyph, Six.

Six, Ash and Glyph boarded the plane back to Atlanta with Daisy and had an uneventful flight. They touched down and got in touch with Ki-Rin and Sickle. They had found a new safe house and the runners headed round for some much needed rest.

For the next week little happened and the runners settled down into a bit of a routine. Six worked on Ash’s truck to get it back up to Six’s Custom quality. Glyph got together some tools to work on building a new personal weapon and disappeared into her makeshift workshop. Ash headed out into the city to see if he could make some contacts here in Atlanta.

Thursday 3rd Aug 2070

About 3pm Ash received a call from a man calling himself Ka-Hil. He told Ash that they should meet at a nightclub in Atlanta called the Cauldron so they could talk about magical tutorage. Ash had put the feelers out a few weeks previously to see if he could join a magical group, and he jumped at the offer deciding to go alone to this meet.

The nightclub was a magicians paradise with a light display augmented by several other magicians in the room competing to show the best visual display. Ash stood for a few minutes taking in the scene when a 6foot + Ork made his way across. Wearing jeans and jacket lined with a form of snake skin, he wore a chainmail undershirt, with a pair of wicked blades crossed across his chest. He studied Ash for a few moments before thrusting out his hand and introducing himself as Ka-Hil.

Ka-Hil told Ash that he belonged to a magical group and although he couldn’t tell Ash anything about it he did offer to test Ash to see if he was suitable. Ash eagerly agreed to take Ka-Hil’s test.
Ka-Hil went on to explain that there is a place under Atlanta, an underground habitat that has become a slum occupied by the unwanted, the homeless and metahumans, and Orkish Underground named by the residents as the Falls. This area has been terrorised by a Serial Killer named by the denizens of the Falls as Le Lobo. This killer had been on the loose for well over six years, and Ka-Hil wanted Ash to bring the murderer to justice. Ash was allowed to involve his friends, not to do so could well be suicide, but he mustn’t tell them the reasons why.

Ash went back and told Six and Glyph what he intends to do. Six and Glyph were dubious and Ash’s faltering reasons raised suspicions. But they had his back.

Over the next couple of days the runners gathered together some scrap heap bikes, which they repaired, they got hold of some trampy clothes, and they bought up some supplies of food booze fags and medical supplied which they might be able to use as barter in case money isn’t the only form of currency.

Sunday 6th August 2070 4pm
The runners headed off through the city to head to one of the old roadway entrances to The Atlanta Underground Habitat dressed in their old clothes riding beaten up scrap bikes. They found that the AUH had been barricaded off and now had some kind of watch at the door to deter unwanted topsiders from entering. The runners just rode past.

Entering the underground habitat the runners found why it was called the Falls. Water from the city above streamed in from the roof above. Waste, sewage, lost fresh water all rained down in a hundred acrid waterfalls. The runners got on with the task in hand and started to approach locals to ask about Le Lobo.
It was Ash’s gig so he was asking all the questions, but his human face didn’t fit in, and when he proclaimed that he was here to help clear away a problem the local enforcers took umbrage and gave Ash nothing but attitude. It wasn’t until the runners showed a bit of force followed by a calm attitude that they started to get some answers.

Le Lobo seemed to be taking victims from all over the city, and then the mutilated corpses were turning up near a place called The Dark. An area of the underground city that didn’t get any of the already patchy power at all. The runners headed over and holed up in an abandoned building.

The residents had long since moved out of the no mans land between The Dark and the rest of the Falls, but Glyph spotted a couple of people equipped with high tech equipment keeping an eye on them.

The runners surmised that The Dark is where it was happening and although they didn’t like the idea of descending into the depths of the abandoned habitat levels they felt they had no choice. At the foot of the stairs the runners were engaged by thee special operatives, equipped with cutting edge armour, Glyph Six and Ash got shooty, and eventually prevailed.

After the gunfire had stopped, they were able to squeeze a few answers out of one of the dying guards. The murderer seemed to be some kind of corporate sponsored project and that there were more of these special ops. guys down here. And then before they could ask any more, he karked it!

The runners found nearby a butchered corpse, with some kind of medical monitoring equipment attached to her body. Then the runners heard a bestial roar. The runners did a circuit of this level but found nothing noteworthy. They then decided to head down to the flooded level below, surmising that whatever murderous operation was going on, the corporation would need to hide it from the locals, and the water would dampen the heat sources generated.

Wading though the water the runners spotted a single well lit building. They headed over and took up position in the building opposite. There were 4 operators inside, working on computer terminals and getting on with their jobs, oblivious to the runners taking aim in a darkened building across the street. A hail of bullets took out the 4 ops. inside and saved the runners a messy building assault.
Inside the operations room, the runners found a high tech monitoring station with video feed coming from 4 individuals. 3 of whom were going about day to day life, the fourth was stalking around in the flooded levels not far from where the runners were.

Ash and Six headed out to take out the murderer, while Glyph tried to look into the computer code. It seemed that the murderer(s) were being controlled from this terminal, and Glyph shut down this one.

Watching the killer Ash and Six were ready to open fire, when Glyph threw the switch. The Troll had a moment of disorientation before fully realising what he had been forced to do, again, by the corporation. Emotion overwhelmed him and he broke down.

This left Ash in a quandary. The murderer was being coerced into killing by the corporation. How could he bring justice to the killer? Ash called Ka-Hil and began to explain the situation. Ka-Hil interrupted him and told him that he knew what was going on. He told Ash that they needed to meet up.

Ash, Six and Glyph left The Falls, and headed to exit ramp 5, where they were to meet Ka-Hil. Ash went over alone to talk with him. Ka-Hil then explained that the test was to find out if Ash could find the enemy, and then identify the real enemy and to show him that the real killers who need to be brought to justice are the corporations who continue to abuse the populace for their own ends. Ash had passed the test that was set for him with the help of Six and Glyph. Ka-Hil agreed to petition for his admittance to the secretive magical group, and told Ash that he would be in touch.

Six and Glyph had the distinct feeling that they had been fucked over again, and that Ash was once again getting involved in things above his head. Ash was chuffed.

Six's blog

2006-11-29T13:45:00.000Z

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 24: 20.07.70>
Revelations and retribution overnight – in roughly equal measure. Again I’m feeling calmer now that we’ve taken action, made a stand, and done something proactive to look out for our own rather than sitting back and letting life happen to us.

Glyph, Ash and I hauled ass down to the airport and took delivery of the little turboprop plane I’d leased for the flight into San Fran. The whole city was shrouded in fog but good to his word, Drifter was waiting for us when we touched down – when you know you’re walking into trouble it pays to have as many friends as possible watching your back.

Wasting little time, we blazed right on over to Daisy’s and did a cautious little recce. Our suspicions were raised that someone was mooching around inside – Drifter covered the front and Glyph headed for the rear while Ash and I made our way inside. Man I felt for Ash as we crept across the blackened remains of his sister’s lounge. Some sort of freak ass explosion had made the room bulge outwards, literally pushing every single item as far up against the walls as it would go. I made my way into the bathroom, covering the hallway as Ash crept down to surprise the lurker. I only heard one shot – Ash drilling the little toad – and it was a good job he’d controlled his temper enough to use Stick Shock because the intruder was prettied up with a Lone Star badge proclaiming him to be part of some sort of Occult Investigator. While Ash made with the thumbscrews, hot coals and whatever else passes for torture and interrogation in a young woman’s kitchen, I switched on the lights and found that Daisy had been graffiti-ing the tiles in her shower with lippy. The phone number got me through to some Corp-line with an automated switchboard. Clearly Daisy had tried to send us a message but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.

Fortunately, Ash was a bit more savvy. The Occult Investigator was a dwarf by the name of Glyn Boucher who was investigating the activity of a Spirit of Man. Daisy’s place had all the clues that pointed to this spirit’s involvement apparently but the only lead Boucher could share with us was a suspicion that a recently elevated Corp called Genesis had some sort of tenuous involvement. Having learnt that there’s no point pissing off Lone Star unnecessarily, Ash let him go and we pooled our ideas.

Glyph had managed to retrieve some video feed from Daisy’s front door and that showed Daisy and Blake being bundled out of the flat by the same spirit-creature we’d faced at April Walkers talismongery in Birmingham, Alabama. Creepy Little Bastard. Realising we’d need a mage to have any hope of tracking a spirit, we picked one at random from the White Pages – dude by the name of Starr who seemed to have all the right professional credentials.
Ash set to work on Daisy’s little conundrum to see if he could fathom out what the hell clue she’d tried to leave us.

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

It was about then that several things started to come together and point in the same direction for us. Lone Star’s finest had tipped us off to his suspicions about Genesis, while Starr returned to confirm he’d traced the CLB back to the very same corporation. Ash found out that Daisy hadn’t stored his telephone number next to his name in her PAN. Instead there was some random number that he didn’t recognise. It all made sense when he called the number lipsticked on the shower wall though – the random number activated a stealth tag, which we assumed Daisy was concealing about her person, and the locator on the stealth tag also pointed us towards Genesis.

It was clear we were going to head down there and kick some fucking heads in so we cruised around our apartments to tool up. Every single place had been trashed and the gift of a grenade booby trap had been left for each of us.
We assume this was done by the Triad when they came looking for us. Clearly originality is not one of their strong points!

There was nothing doing at our pads so we settled for beating the morning rush to head over to Genesis. Remoting the transit, I hit the gate hard and with all of us clustered in Drifter’s Americar, he ramped us up the steps, through the plate glass and into the lobby. Startled security guards are no match for pissed off professionals and we were past them and following the locator beacon fixed on Daisy’s Stealth Tag before they had time to sound an alarm.

We’d learnt that Genesis had only just acquired extraterritoriality but we weren’t expecting to find their HQ building an empty shell. The place was all but devoid of life. Clearly the Corp was in the process of moving in – everything was still shrouded in bubblewrap and protective polythene and bar those corpses in the lobby there was not a guard, nor an employee to be seen. We made five floors before the CLB spirit appeared out of nowhere and started laying in to us. It was a desperate fight and if I’m honest, I think it was only weight of numbers that helped us succeed. Just like before we had to literally beat the shit out of it, flay the skin from its hide and turn it white with fear before it disappeared. Fighting spirits is so unsatisfying – how do you know when you’ve geeked the damn thing and it isn’t going to come back?!

Anyway I digress, needless to say, we made the top floor without any further interruptions and it was freaky drek central in the penthouse. Daisy was sitting in some sort of bondage contraption with her head wrenched back and drips of liquid silver pooling on her forehead and running off down her face. Ash and the others claimed they could see the shimmering form of a woman, stood behind and slightly to one side pouring that drek on to the girl. I couldn’t see it, but Ash evidently saw enough to take confident aim.
That huge boomstick of his roared once, twice and the body of Solace slumped to the ground. Course, she’s supposed to have died once before so we did one, sharpish, grabbing Daisy and buggering off pronto.

We know curiosity killed the cat but we couldn’t help scoping out the basement level before we left and it was there that we made our big revelation. Computers and other equipment branded with the Cross Applied Technologies logo made it clear that the Corp was being reborn as Genesis.
Regular readers will know we have something of a grudge against CAT so we couldn’t just stand by and let this happen. Fortunately Glyph still had plenty of those explosive charges left in her satchel. As we drove away watching the complex sag down into its own basement, we felt a certain sense of grim satisfaction. If Cross are being resurrected maybe all that Allisom nonsense isn’t over either… We’ll muse on it during the flight back to Atlanta.

Mood: Satisfied. Daisy is safe. Ash is happy. But Cross have Blake AGAIN…
Ends: 2/2>
||

Rescue Daisy

2006-11-24T09:05:00.000Z

Drifter, Glyph, Ash, Six.

Wednesday 19th July 2070

The runners headed back to San Francisco in a private hired plane for one night only to track down Ash’s sister Daisy. Glyph had tagged along too.

Landing in a fogged out San Fran the runners met up with Drifter who had been phoned ahead to see if he could help them out. He was at a loose end and was more than happy to join the hunt for Daisy.

The runners went straight round to Daisy’s house and found that there had been some kind of explosion in the front room. They also found someone mooching around upstairs. Ash snuck up and took him down with a well aimed stick shock round.
The man was a dwarf, and when they looked in his wallet they discovered that his name was Glyn Boucher and he was an occult investigator with some kind of Lone Star badge. He also had a strange pin badge with a half moon with an eye in the centre, and a 5 pointed star above. While they waited for him to come round they had a hunt around the house for other clues. All they found was Daisy’s comlink, and a phone number hastily scrawled on the bathroom wall in red lipstick.

Ash waited for the occult investigator to come round and when he did began to question him. It turns out he was investigating an illegal magical disturbance which originated from the toxic spirit of man which took Daisy and Ash. They had a long chat which helped Ash understand what was going on a bit better, and in the end Glyn Boucher was let go.

The runners got video feed of the spirit of man which had manifested and forced Daisy and Blake out of the house. They then decided to try and track the spirits astral signature by employing a freelance magician called Star.

They then decided to call the number that Daisy had scrawled on the bathroom wall and found that it was an automated help line for a Stealth RFID tag activation service. They spent a good amount of time trying to figure what the password is to activate the tag before Ash found that Daisy had changed his phone number in her pan to a 5 character pin number. They keyed in the number and a stealth tag was activated which was in a corporate HQ for Genesis.

The runners headed round to their apartments to grab some gear. Each of them found that their apartments had been turned over, valuables smashed or stolen, small grenade booby traps had been left for each of them. Ash was the only one to get caught out. The others were aware of the risks after Ash’s apartment. They salvaged what they could, and Ash presented Six with a belated birthday present which had sat in San Fran awaiting their return for nearly 2 weeks. They took what they could and pressed on with tracking down Daisy.

On route to genesis the runners were contacted by Star who confirmed that he had followed the astral signatures of Daisy, Blake and the Spirit of man to the Genesis corporation but was being stopped from going in by some kind of mage barrier. The runners thanked him and told him that they needed no more help at the moment.

Arriving at the scene the runners found a new corporation taking over an existing building. The Genesis sign was brand new, and there were few people inside, a few security guards at most.
They thought that it would be the best time to strike now, even though the sun was coming up and Drifter drove his Ford Americar through the Plas-Glass doors into the lobby. Guards scrambled to get out of the way of the vehicle and the showering glass.

The runners decamped and dealt with the security in short order. They then headed up the stairs at speed to get to Daisy. Each floor was deserted, save for new computer terminals left to be set up on new desks still wrapped in polythene.

They were attacked at about the 5th floor by the Spirit of Man which fought them before at April Walkers Talismonger shop. The runners again beat back the spirit and pressed on up to the top floor. They found Daisy bound to some kind of sacrificial device, her head wrenched back, a mercury-esq liquid dripping to her forehead. Looking closer they could make out the near invisible shimmering form of a woman, her hand outstretched over Daisy’s head pouring the metallic liquid onto Ash’s sister.

The runners swung into action, but Ash was taking no prisoners, and blasted the woman with his pump shotgun. She dropped to the floor lifeless. It was Solace.

Daisy was okay, and the runners made their way out, but they weren’t sure that they had worked out what was going on and decided to stay and find out some more. They made their way down to the basement levels, and they found a lab that was in the process of being set up. It seems that Genesis was being re-born from Cross Applied. Their hardware was still packaged in the bowels of Genesis corporation.
They decided to kick Cross Applied again, and rigged up plastic explosive in the lab area, and attached the rest to supporting beams.

Driving away they detonated the charges, and were pleased to see the internal structure of the Genesis HQ slump inward as the buildings backbone was broken. The runners blazed.

Drifter told the runners that he would stay in San Francisco to keep an eye on the Triad activities, he hadn’t been bothered by them so far and was sure he could keep out of their books. Six and Ash headed back to the airfield with Daisy and flew back to Atlanta.

Six's Blog

2006-11-15T13:36:00.001Z

By N.Barnes

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 23: 19.07.70>

Dunklezahn’s Balls! It’s happened again! We’ve been screwed, again, and this time by Nunzio’s boy Carlo! Goddamnit… It broke down like this. By the time Orange Jay had deposited us back in Birmingham, Alabama, it was about 9pm.
Ash was still sweating about being out of contact with Daisy so I rang Nunzio and asked him to send some of his boys over to check things out. We had a couple of beers while we were waiting but even the edge of inebriation couldn’t soften the blow when Nunzio reported in that Daisy was missing from her apartment and there had clearly been a struggle.

Understandably, Ash was all for heading straight back to San Fran until I pointed out that it was a road trip of several days back across country.
Instead, I talked him into heading back to Atlanta with me where we could arrange to have a charter plane waiting for us so we could make a quick overnight jaunt back to the Bay Area. He could see the plane was quicker and made more sense, so agreed to do it my way. En route back to Atlanta, Carlo called to say he had set up a meet with a buyer for the guns. We were going to just make it back to Atlanta in time so it seemed prudent to attend before catching our flight. How could we know it would turn out to be a mistake?!

We drove the wagon load of hookey shooters to an abandoned industrial park for a 1am meet and were joined by Carlo and his muscle – a runner named Hilt. In due course, a motor and two transits cruised up and Mr Cowboy himself, Johnny Kickback, lazily hauled his ass out of the driver’s seat and came on over for a chat. He reckoned the guns were his – obviously the Yakuza hit we interrupted was their attempt to spoke his wheel – and didn’t seem to care about the circumstances under which they entered our possession. I told him about the Yaks, pointed out that without our intervention the guns would be a couple of hundred miles away and offered to return them for a small consideration – a finder’s fee, if you will. Well, that just seemed to wind him all the way up to inarticulate rage. He spat out that we had been a thorn in his side for too long, drew down and just started shooting.

I scrambled for cover in the back of the wagon while Ash gave the Cowboy a gutful of hot lead slug. I didn’t see it myself but apparently that was when Carlo turned on Ash and shot him with one of our own guns! Cheeky feck!
Carlo had clearly decided there was a brighter future for him in Johnny Kickback’s employment but fortunately, Hilt has a conscience… Hey, I guess that makes him our kind of Runner! Carlo had told Hilt they were there to sell the guns and make sure nothing went wrong. Clearly Hilt felt that everyone shooting at Ash and I counted as something having gone wrong. As the Cowboy’s friendly neighbourhood muscle lumbered from the vans, Hilt picked a side. Ours.

While Hilt moved off to draw fire away from the unconscious Ash, I did the only thing I could and remoted the Dodge into a position from which I could offer supporting fire. I took care of Carlo as he tried to frag me then concentrated fire on the petrol tank of the transit. I saw it blow, catch the Cowboy’s car before he could escape and the secondary explosion from that was enough to topple the second van. His goons were toast but Hilt said there was no sign of Kickback in the wreckage of his burned out car…

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

We didn’t have time for mysteries; I just wanted to get the frag away from there. We blazed to the other side of the industrial estate where we could lay low long enough to patch Ash up and give Nunzio a mouthful of abuse for his sell-out staff. I don’t think he knew. Hard to tell with Nunz but I think he was genuinely surprised and hacked off that Carlo would turn his back on the family and compromise our safety.

Either way, he picked up where Carlo had left off and made moves to buy the guns from us himself for the family to use. I took a risk and told Nunzio we were heading back into San Fran. He didn’t push that either – I think he understood that with Ash’ sister missing, there was sufficient personal interest for us to justify heading back into the city against his express warning.

We’ve just handed over the guns to Nunzio’s buyer and taken payment. We’re going to cruise over to the Safehouse and give Ki-rinn, Sickle and Glyph a heads up that it might be time to find new digs. Hilt is apparently a San Fran native so by way of thanks for his help, we’re going to take him on the flight back with us. I’d like one of the others to come with us as back-up too but Ash and I are intending to head back to Atlanta so it might serve our purpose better if a couple of the guys stay with the vehicles and use the time while we are away to find us a safe Safehouse!

On a more positive note, as I mull things over, it occurs to me that we’re probably not going to have to do the Cowboy’s dirty work and fabricate the death of April Walker and Snow to lay a false trail for the Separatist Shamans now. Still no word from Snow though which remains a concern. I just feel exhausted by the bullet train of events we’ve been riding. It shows no sign of slowing, so here’s to Johnny Kickback! May his soul burn in Hell.

Mood: Numb.
Ends: 2/2>
||

The stolen guns sell out.

2006-11-09T15:45:00.000Z

Tuesday 18th July 2070 pm

Six, Hilt, Ash.

Six Ash and Ki-Rin finished up their talk with April Walker and began the drive back to Birmingham Alabama. They quizzed Jay some more on what she knew of shedim, and their brush with Alisom. She didn’t know much but she did tell them that their aura’s had been scarred and torn by their brush with the shedim and their astral presence was lit up like a beacon. If the shedim returned it would be able to find the runners very quickly. She told them that they would need to find out the spirits true name, and banish it for good if they were to be rid of it forever.

The runners fell asleep as Jay cast the spell to conceal the meeting location once again.

Waking in a bar at about 21:00 somewhere near where their cars had been left the runners tried to work out what to do next. There was still no answer from Daisy back in San Fran, so Six contacted Nunzio to see if he could see where she might have gone. Nunzio called back to say that Daisy’s flat was empty, but there was sign of some kind of explosion. Ash was keen to get back to San Fran that minute, but Six held him off warning that there was still danger for them in their home city. Six arranged for Nunzio to get his mafia goons out looking for Ash’s sister.

Carlo called. He had found a buyer for the stolen guns, and he made arrangements for a meet at 1am in an abandoned industrial estate.

Six told Ash that once they had off loaded the guns, they would hire a private plane, fly back to Frisco, and see if they could track Daisy down, ignoring Nunzio’s best efforts to keep them out of the city. Ash agreed, and they drove straight back to the safe house where Glyph and Sickle were watching the truck of guns.

Collecting the truck Six and Ash went to the meet. It was dark but in the headlights they saw Carlo’s car. He got out, and was backed up by another who was introduced to the runners as Hilt. He had been working with Carlo for a few months. They stood and talked for a bit, Carlo helped himself to one of the MP5’s, before the buyer turned up. A car, followed by two transits.

The Cowboy stepped out of the car. He smiled at Carlo and greeted him before telling the runners that they had stolen his guns and he was going to take them back. He wasn’t in the mood for Six’s bargaining and the fact that he held a gold Revolver in his direction showed his intent.

Six instinctively dove for cover as the Cowboy loosed off a shot. Ash fired at the cowboy, Carlo shot at Ash, Hilt stood there for a moment not sure who was on who’s side, before 4 goons stepped out of the transits firing a hailstorm of bullets in his and Ash’s direction. Ash was dropped after the first volley of fire but Six was able to fend off Carlo with his own pistol, while he brought the Car with mounted FN-HAR into play.
Bullets flew, and the Cowboy attempted to flee in his car while his goons plugged the runners but Six was wise to it, and carefully aimed shots at one of the transit van fuel tanks blew the van and the Cowboys car to pieces, the remaining goons perished in the fireball.

Hilt, Six and Ash patched each other up and made more formal introductions. They had no idea Carlo was about to set them up, and Hilt had no loyalties to him other than financial so they were cool.

Six phoned Nunzio and told him that they had been played by the Cowboy and Carlo, and that they were sitting on a truck load of stolen guns. Nunzio arranged for some more reliable contacts to collect the guns from them, and Nunzio paid Six himself.

Wednesday 19th July 2070 03:00

The run seemed to be off, the Johnson (The Cowboy) was dead, so Six and Ash vowed to head back to San Fran and track down Daisy. Hilt, a San Franciscan himself agreed to tag along. They headed to the private airstrip and picked up the plane that they had chartered.

Six's Blog.

2006-11-07T14:31:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 22: 19.07.70>

Alright, today is a better day, Today, I’m chilly. There are three reasons for that. One – I think I have a better handle on what the frag is going on out on the streets; Two, we’ve decided on a course of action that I’m happy with and we’re not just going to sit around waiting to get dicked any more and Three, Ki-rinn finally showed up. Hell, I’m first to admit Frosty and I have a fractious relationship – he hadn’t been in Atlanta 24 hours before we were at each other’s throats but damn it feels better knowing he’s watching my back too. Hell with Glyph and Sickle playing Roomie back at the Safe house, it’s getting to be like we moved the entire damn team coast to coast!

So anyways, while my brain was still frazzled and while Ash and Sickle were still trying to get their asses off of the Express and back into Atlanta, Ki-rinn made contact. He’d been chasing Skirt and Bastards with a fucked-up old army buddy over in Singapore and was on a flight path back that meant he could detour via Atlanta. I picked him up and filled him in and got myself a tight bundle of cynicism for my trouble. Frosty thinks we can’t keep our asses outta trouble without him and we’re reading way too much into the situation. Maybe he has a point.

Just about the one thing he believes least of all though is these visions from Allisom. Which meant it was a bad time to suddenly get hit by one – of Snow, in a marshalling yard, with a datadisk, getting his card punched by that laser with the high pitched whine. While my head’s still clearing, Ash gets on the phone. He had the vision too and now he’s looking out of the express train window at the self same marshalling yard. He resolves to dump the emergency brake on the train and bail out and I tell him Ki-rinn and I will blaze over there. Man Ki-rinn thinks we’re overdoing the dope. He has some valid points – there is a certain sort of devil may care lunacy to just taking these visions on faith. We don’t even know WHEN this vision is of but I tell him we’ve followed our guts on them so far and been done right by.
Trusting your gut is right out of Frosty’s Mantra of Modern Warfare. It’s something tangible he can believe in so for once he takes it on faith too.

Now the marshalling yard turns out to be an interesting place but not because it fulfils our vision. We find the warehouse soon enough and there is a welcoming committee waiting there packing heat. Thing is, they look more like manual labourers than Separatist Shaman’s or whomever the frag it is that has it in for Snow. We sit tight a while and in short order the San Fran Yakuza turn up, bold as brass, including Mr Cock of the Walk himself Yutaka Seto driving MY beloved car! Two things strike me as odd – firstly that Seto is looking to use my car out here for his own business, he isn’t just rubbing my nose in the fact that I lost the Bullet to him and secondly that these are the San Fran Yakuza – in Atlanta of all places! It’s like the entire Bay Area has been evacuated to the East Coast for the week – why are there so many familiar faces turning up out here?!

The Yaks spring a surprise on the manual labourers waiting in the warehouse and when they begin loading up crates of gear from inside, we can’t resist the opportunity to spoke their wheel and try to snatch the stuff for ourselves. Combat breaks out but we’ve got the drop on them and they aren’t quite expecting the level of trouble we bring to them. It’s short, bloody and brutal and I make sure no one sees me knocking around the place – extra trouble with the Yaks I can do without – but Ash could be in a world of hurt back home. He reckons they got a good look at him. That could incriminate me too – but I’ll have to play dumb.

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

Seto takes off so we grab the Yak truck full of merchandise and Ki-rinn and Ash blaze with it while I go back on over watch. Frag all happens at the Marshalling Yard thereafter and there’s certainly no sign of Snow. Frosty and Ash report it that we’ve struck pay dirt and picked up a wagon load of hooky guns. We cherry pick the best of the lot for ourselves and after a few heated words, brought on mostly because Ash doesn’t take kindly to me ripping the shit out of his idea that we can sell these babies on the street, I make contact with Carlo and ask him if he’s interested in taking them off of our hands and selling them on through the family. I figure if the Mafia can’t use a load of hot shooters, who can?!

Right while we’re cooling our heels, I get a call from Orange Jay, the beatnik hippy chick who was running the shop over from April Walker’s talismongery in Birmingham, Alabama. Seems Sickle didn’t meet the real April Walker after all and that just about clears up some of the confusion – evidently Sickle met the Cowboy, Johnny Kickback, who was fishing for info on the actual whereabouts of Binary Pulse. Jay tells us that April has seen through the thinly veiled charade I’d constructed for wanting to meet up with her but is willing to have a chat nevertheless. There are conditions – we have to meet Jay and travel in her unmarked, beat up Datsun. We have to accept some herbal magic tree shit that sends us right off into the land of nod – that or some sort of damn sleep spell I presume – so we lose track of the route and we get to have our PANs hacked by Binary Pulse herself so that as far as we can tell, the lakeside cabin where we hook up is actually at the North Pole… Neat.

A long and in-depth conversation ensues at the meet and I’ve no intention of boring you with too many details. Suffice to say the key points are that a Free Spirit is looking to find and kill Binary Pulse and her team because of a run in which they learnt its true name. That gives them some kind of hoochie koochie power over said spirit apparently. Last April knew, the spirit was masquerading as her dead team mate Solace. Maybe Johnny Kickback is another incarnation of this spirit or working for it to ice April – either way, he’s bad news too. Worse, now that we’ve hacked April’s computer, the files we’ve all downloaded to our PANs could make us targets for this spirit too. Daisy is almost certainly in a lot of trouble. Jay tells us our ‘auras are bleeding into the Astral’ which goes right over my head. It sounds bad though and apparently could be responsible for the visions we’ve been having. Something else to curse the name of Allisom for.
We also confirm that Shift is Snow by another name and that means to complete our run, we’d have to give up April and Snow…

Now none of us are keen on that. April has been very helpful and well, professional courtesy and a budding friendship means we aren’t going to give up Snow on a whim. So we’re faced with another botched run and I am not a happy lad. It almost spills over into an open argument at that point but I manage to talk Ki-rinn and Ash round. Rather than just binning another run and taking another hit on our reputation, I argue that there’s a way we can justify our pay without giving up April and Snow. Ki-rinn produces the memory foam face mask disguise kit he’s been sitting on for the last few runs and we take a scan of April’s face figuring that this spirit didn’t know Kote was dead so it won’t know the truth if we fake April’s death at some future point. We’re in no rush – we weren’t given a time limit, so we can afford to wait for a prime opportunity. If we can just get hold of Snow, we can explain the whole gig to him and set up something similar. We’ll then hand over the info that the team of runners is long since dead and Bob’s your Uncle, Fanny’s your Aunt.

Now, if we could only get hold of Snow…

Mood: Concerned.
Ends: 2/2>
||

Meeting April Turner. Yakuza and Guns.

2006-11-02T10:16:00.000Z

Ash, Ki-Rin, Six.

Tuesday 18th July 2070

Ki-Rin had been overseas helping one of his contacts for a few weeks, but as he flew back towards UCAS airspace, his comlink pinged with a few messages; one was from Six warning of possible trouble, so Ki-Rin gave him a call. Six gave him a very rough outline of the situation and Ki-Rin decided to join the party.

Ash and Sickle were en-route to Charleston on the east coast express train. Six was on his way back to Atlanta in his car after chasing Binary Pulse/The Cowboy.

The runners were hit with another vision. Snow again, this time he was at a warehouse in a train marshalling yard. He handed over a microdisk to someone unseen, and then there was a high-pitched whining sound and then the vision ended.

Ash blinked as the train made it’s way through a marshalling yard. Ash saw the same warehouse that he had seen in the vision. Ash phoned Six and told him that he had located the location of the marshalling yard and that he will be back in about 4 hours once he had got on a train to make the return journey.

In the meantime Six gave Ki-Rin a detained run down of all that had happened so far. Ki-Rin was sceptical of these visions, which he himself had not been having while overseas, but he took a look at all of the footage that the runners had gathered and gave his opinion of what might be going on.

They eventually decided to meet up with Ash at the train yard, and when the return train Ash was on came near to the yard, he jammed on the emergency brake. After the train had rapidly decelerated, Ash leapt out and went to ground until the fat controller gave up the chase.

Six and Ki-Rin drove past the warehouse and saw a pair of goons stood at the rear of the building near a door. Ash walked past the front and saw that the roller shutter door was half open. He suggested that Six sent the Flyspy in to have a look about. There were three yard workers inside who seemed to be waiting for something or someone.
The runners chose to wait and see what happened and enjoyed a quiet smoke of their preferred brand.

Half an hour or so passed and then the Yakuza turned up. A transit van pulled round to the roller shutter door. Six’s old muscle car headed round toward the rear. That meant that Yutaka Seto, the Yakuza Oyoban’s son was here. They came equipped for action, and went into the warehouse guns blazing. They had clearly come for hostages, using stick shock rounds to drop the warehouse guys. They quickly bundled one of them into the transit for questioning. The Yakuza came for the crates though, and as soon as the warehouse was clear they brought up a curtainsider and began to load the crates in.

The runners were holding a watching brief, and as soon as they saw the crates were loaded with weapons and munitions, they decided that they were going to take the lot. Moving in close, the runners waited for the Yakuza to load up all of the crates before attacking.

The gunfight was fast and short lived, Seto was able to make a break for it, clocking a good look at Ash before being forced to flee under a hail of bullets, and the runners quickly secured their load and drove away with 100+ guns and ammo to suit.

Six calmly parked up and waited for Snow to turn up while Ash and Ki-Rin looked at making moves at selling on the weapons that they themselves hadn’t laid claim to. Eventually Six contacted Carlo to see if he was interested in the weapons and Carlo said that he would come back to him.

While Six waited he received a phone call. From the woman from Orange Jays, the hippy shop he had left his contact details at. The woman on the phone named herself as Jay and said that April was prepared to meet up with them. She implied that they already knew what Six was really after and Six guessed that April had put to use her long time learned Decking skills to have a poke around in Six’s past.

Without a better lead Six agreed to the meet and the three of them headed back to Birmingham (Alabama). The truck full of weapons was left in the care of Glyph and Sickle.

Jay, met with the runners and told them that they would have to ride in her jeep, so that she could protect April’s hiding place, and once en-route she case sleep on them. Waking some hours later, the runners were understandably annoyed at being magicked, but they found themselves at the side of a large lake surrounded by woodland. Jay, and a slight attractive woman in her forties stood talking by a Ford Americar.

Jay cam across and told the runners that she had studied their auras and had seen that they had been damaged somehow. That essence was leaking into the astral plane and that they should be experiencing vivid dreams and other connections to the spiritual world.

Then, April came across and told them that she wanted to warn them of the trouble that they were getting involved with. She used to be a runner and her old team had broken up after a run had gone sour. The team’s mage, a girl called Solace had been taken by a free sprit that they were trying to banish and the rest of the team took her loss badly.
Now it seemed that the spirit was back in the form of Solace, wanting to find all in that team who knew it’s real name, the only thing that had power over a spirit.

The runners listened and then got back to the job in hand. They had been paid to find 3 people. One was already dead. One was Snow, their contact. And one turned out to be a charming woman who just wanted to settle into a quiet life. The runners weren’t prepared to hand them over to their employer, but at the same time they were fully aware that they had jacked far too many runs lately and that another DNF would harm their reputations irreparably. The runners decided to make moves at handing over faked info. They would stage some kind of death of April and Snow, and although the details hadn’t been worked out yet they took a face mask of April to use on some other poor sap they would kill.

The runners got back into the Jeep with Jay, who began to drive them back to town.

TBC…

Six's Blog.

2006-11-01T15:16:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 21: 17.07.70>

Man, my Swede is fragged. What a head-fuck! If you wanna follow what’s been going on in the World of Six, take your time and read slowly or you’ll never keep up…

Sickle joined us at the Safe House in Atlanta after we’d gotten Ash’s ride fixed up some. It wasn’t too long before Nunzio’s contact in Atlanta, Carlo, showed his face to sub-contract some work out to us. Seems the Shindig we spotted at the Triad club Province happened at the behest of someone called The Cowboy. IIRC, at the time we identified this fellah as an Atlanta mover and shaker called Johnny Kickback. The Cowboy was buying up the services of the West Coast crime syndicates and getting them to work for him. It was the first job he’d handed to the Mafia that was being subcontracted to us.

Carlo put 100k on the table and asked to find three Shadowrunners who were big time back in the ‘50’s – Shift, Kote and Binary Pulse. All that was needed to earn the dough was the current location of all three so we immediately put our contacts to work. I tapped up Snow and had another one of those damn Allisom visions in which Snow was shot dead in his living room so I advised him to get the hell out of dodge at the same time. Snow had heard the names and added a fourth who used to be part of the team – Solace.

Now it turned out that Solace had died, mid-mission, in the late-‘50’s and it was this which led to the break-up of the team. Kote had gone postal, possible because of Solace’s death, and had killed 13 people in a botched raid on Renraku, before killing himself. So far, so easy. Binary Pulse had kept on running solo into the ‘60’s before finally handing herself over to the heat to answer for her crimes. That meant Lone Star had assigned her a criminal SIN and that made things much easier because it allowed us to identify her as April Walker, owner of a Talismonger’s in Birmingham, Alabama called Walk the Path.

Daisy told us there was a heavily encrypted signal coming from the shop.
Binary Pulse had been a Decker so that made sense – Daisy said she could give us some kit that would help her do a data-steal and decryption if we could get access to the source of the signal. We cruised out to Birmingham, Alabama and found that Walk the Path had been abandoned for a month or more.
With little alternative but to take direct action, Sickle and Ash broke in while I provided cover and FRT. As the download started, the Daring Duo heard something downstairs so I sent the Fly-Spy in to investigate. There was some sort of fragged up Bot just standing at the bottom of the stairs (though Sickle later heard tell it was a spirit – which figures in a
Talismongers) but the Drek only seriously hit the fan when Ash started to break into the shop safe.

Suddenly the freaky Bot is on my boys and worse, a remote-rigged drone turret flips from the ceiling to start handing out tickets for the Chaingun Cha Cha. I blaze down a back alley, blow open a fire door and let rip with the vehicle weaponry while Ash and Sickle take down the Bot. In short order they complete the download and we blaze but once in the car Sickle reveals that April phoned her own shop after that little confrontation. I guess she was watching their tomfoolery through the building’s security system.
Apparently they had a nice long chat and agreed to meet – sounds like a recipe for disaster to me but with Daisy estimating that decryption will take days rather than hours, it’s at least a quicker way of earning our cash.

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

Personal misgivings aside, I wasn’t about to let Sickle hang his ass out to dry so as he took the meet play by play, Ash and I provided cover from a vantage point nearby – ready to leap to his defence. To all intents and purposes, Sickle and his date had a nice quiet breakfast together. They discussed her and her team’s history, the dangers of Shadowrunning and her (fairly justified) paranoia that someone was out to get her but she didn’t exactly spill the beans. With little to go on, we decided on the spur of the moment to follow her via a combination of remote vehicle ops and matrix nous.

The canny lass certainly gave us the run around heading north by train only to switch onto a southbound express train to Atlanta. Fortunately, with little else to do in Birmingham, Alabama, Ash and Sickle head headed for the safe house and were already ahead by some margin. As I pursued the train by car, Ash and Sickle took up point on the platform, watching and waiting for April to arrive. Shame she didn’t get off of the train. Our best laid plans had gone to rack and ruin but quick-thinking by Ash meant Daisy was already hacking the camera feeds from the train carriage…

April had locked herself in the bathroom en route to Atlanta and emerged dressed all in denim, complete with moustache. She looked depressingly like Johnny Kickback in her new outfit and had obviously walked right out past Ash and Sickle as they kept tabs on the platform.

Now this is where it all gets just a tad surreal. Either, April Walker is masquerading as Johnny Kickback or Johnny Kickback is masquerading as April Walker. Whichever it is, it doesn’t make much sense that April/Johnny is then bringing in hired help to try and find Binary Pulse – unless it’s some sort of test. Maybe April is pretending to be Johnny to throw the people she knows he is sending after her off of the scent. Alternatively, Johnny has been trying to find April, keeping her shop under surveillance and, not realising the Mafia had subcontracted the job to us, thought he should try to screw information out of us ASAP when he saw us busting in.

I have no idea.

All I do know right now is that we are missing several pieces from the jigsaw. And here’s another surprise: Daisy decoded a forwarding number for Shift from the encrypted files on April’s server. Shift’s number matches Snow’s. Sure, Snow has his fingers in many pies, but does that mean he used to be Shift or just that he’s acting as an agent and go-between for April’s team-mate? What a twisted web we weave…

We’re not sure we’ve done the job yet. Frankly, if finishing the job means handing over Snow’s address, I’m not sure we want to – and that’s without even considering my vision of Snow’s death. We’ll protect Snow – no doubt about that. It’s a matter of honour and professional courtesy – you don’t rat out your Chummers.

Which kinda means this job is another fragging bust. Another screw job.
Sure, we’ve got the money up front this time but unless we cough up the information in return, keeping it will mean dicking the Mafia and that gives you the life expectancy of a woodchuck on the freeway. To say nothing of the fact that my brother subcontracted this to us and blood is thicker than water.

We are so screwed.

Mood: FINE: Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.
Ends: 2/2>
||

Search for runners past.

2006-10-26T14:00:00.000Z

Sickle, Ash, Six.

Six and Glyph headed down to Nunzio’s safe house, Glyph stayed behind and watched the apartment while Six headed back to Albuquerque to see how Ash was getting on with the repairs to the pickup.
Repairs were completed as quoted and the pair of them headed back to Atlanta.

Nunzio phoned, he told the runners that he had been given a job that he wanted to pass onto the runners. Once they got back to the safe house Carlo would give them the details. The runners met back up with Glyph and not long after Carlo came with beer and a job for them.

Carlo explained that there was a meeting with some significant crime bosses that was held in San Fran a few weeks ago. A guy called the Cowboy assembled the Mafia, the Seven Stars Triad, and some Yardies from New Orleans (the Yaks were also invited to the meet but they declined to attend). and started waving the almighty nuyen around to get these crime syndicates to dance to his tune.
This meeting happened to be the same meeting that the runners had witnessed, and they quickly placed the name Jonny Kickback to the man called Cowboy.
Nunzio wasn’t happy with the deal but the Don wanted to stay in while the other syndicates were in to ensure they weren’t missing out on anything so Nunzio shook hands with the other crime bosses that night.

A couple of weeks passed before the Cowboy made his first request. Find three people. Shift, Kote, and Binary Pulse. Unimpressed with the task Nunzio passed the job onto his little brother, Six, who he knew was kicking his heels and better to keep the free flowing money in the family.

Sunday 16th July 2070

Six and Ash started to do the legwork, Ash called Daisy to see if she could get any info on these people, while Six put a call straight through to their fixer, Snow.

Six was hit with a vision of Snow stood in front of his field of vision, scrabbling for a gun. There was a whine and then a beam of energy punching a neat hole through Snow’s forehead. Snow stared for a moment with a stupefied expression, before collapsing like a broken doll.

Then Snow answered the phone. Caught off guard for a moment all Six could do is warn his friend to get out of town for a while and to trust him. Snow was confused but agreed. Then Six asked about the three names. Snow knew who they were. Runners back in the 50’s, there was a fourth runner called Solace, but they had long since retired.

Six let Ash know what he had gleaned, who then refined the search parameters with Daisy. The decker then came up with some more snippets of information. Kote, had killed himself 13/03/58. Went on a killing spree in Renraku before blowing a new hole in his own head. Shift and Solace went under the radar at about the same time. Binary Pulse was a decker who continued to run until 2065, when she turned herself in to Lone Star for the crimes she had committed. She then seemed to have gone straight, ditching the name Binary Pulse in favour of her real name, April Walker she had opening up a Talismonger shop in Birmingham (Alabama)
Keen to follow up leads quickly Ash and Six headed there.

Sickle received a phone call message from Six warning of possible issues in San Fran, and when Sickle finally picked up the message he called Six, who advised him of the situation. Sickle decided to join the other runners out in the CAS.

Checking out the talismongery called Walk the Path, the runners found that it was locked up. And had clearly been closed for a time. They asked around and Six found a women’s boutique where the store owner claimed to know April. Six left a spurious calling card for April to call him and then headed back to the shop.

Checking over the shop they decided that there was little of value inside except a Fairlight super computer that was broadcasting a heavily encrypted signal to somewhere. This piqued their interest enough for them to have another look.
Daisy advised Ash that she could download the information from the computer but they would need to go inside and tap into the cabling itself. She sent Ash a plug and play transmitter that they could use for this task.

Sickle and the transmitter arrived the following morning. After a long brief the trio headed back to the mall for about 10pm to start their B&E.

Six sat outside not far away in the car, Ash and Sickle went in. Getting inside was easy, getting to the computer was easy, selecting the cable and starting the download of the data was easy. Sickle and Ash detected a faint odour of heating surface oil, and then Sickle saw movement down the stairs.
Sickle called Six and asked him take his drone to go and see what was moving around. Six duly did and saw an eight foot tall machine with weaponry for hands. Six reported in. Sickle and Ash got worried but it seemed to be waiting for them down stairs.

The pair waited quietly while Daisy raped the hard drive of information. Then a large safe in the opposite room finally broke Ash, who whipped out his acetaline torch and began to cut the doors off.
The machine/creature pounded up the stairs as soon as it heard the torch flick into life, and the pair of them readied themselves for a fight. Six sped to the scene also.

They fought for not much more than a minute before a rail gun appeared in a track along the ceiling and opened up on the machine as well. The concentration of fire killed it and it detonated with force to knock over the runners.

In the aftermath Sickle heard a phone ringing. He headed to answer while Ash raided the safe, which housed all manner of magical goods.

The call was from someone claiming to be Binary Pulse. Sickle sort of explained who they were and eventually agreed to meet up with her. Ash filled his pockets with semi-precious stones, and gold powder.

The runners headed back to their hotel in Birmingham. They argued for a while over the benefit of meeting up with Binary Pulse but Sickle stuck to his guns, and duly did the following morning.

Monday 17th July 2070

Binary Pulse was into her forties now, but she still had a subtle attractiveness, Sickle met with her over a coffee while Ash and Six observed from another table. She asked a lot of questions and Sickle answered vaguely, she then left with a warning that shadowrunning was a dangerous business.

Six tailed her with a drone, while Ash hassled Daisy for the information from the computer. Daisy said that she had only decrypted 10% of the mass of files held on the computer, but she did have a forwarding number for Shift. Ash recognised the number instantly as one he recognised. It was Snow’s.

Six phoned Snow but there was no answer. They assume that Snow took Six’s advice and had left town.

Meanwhile Binary Pulse had headed to the train station. Headed out of town before doing a switch back to head back to Atlanta. The runners blazed to catch up arriving in the train station with 10 minutes to spare. Ash and Sickle then watched and failed to spot Binary Pulse leave the train.

The headed onto he train and began searching the cabins and toilets as the train began to move off, on a one stop run to the east coast. Ash asked Daisy if she could check the video feeds for the cabin that Binary Pulse had sat in, sure enough she sat down. Only to get up when the train moved off. She headed into a toilet, and a few minutes later stepped out of the toilet as the Cowboy and settle back down for the rest of the ride to Atlanta.

It was too late now, Ash and Sickle were en route to Charleston on the coast. Six was in his car speeding into Atlanta, and Binary Pulse, or the Cowboy, or whoever had slipped past them.

TBC…

Six's blog.

2006-10-24T13:09:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

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Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 20: 12.07.70>
What a difference a day makes. Well, a few days anyway. I’m in dreary Albuquerque now and it has been a few days since I last had the time to settle down and write a Blog entry...

Right at first, we tried to finger Mitchell for the stitch up that had plastered our names and faces all across the media in association with Suki’s kidnap. He played it pretty cool – cool enough to give us doubts and we settled for just sitting tight and waiting to see what the next step in the game would be. Turned out it was a sniper who crept along the cliff top near my position to try and get a bead on the boat. We didn’t rightly know how we were still being tracked but with me covering the road and tracking the sniper via Fly Spy, the poor sap didn’t have much of a hope. Glyph and Ash were able to rain lead down on him with some accuracy thanks to my triangulation and in short order we had dealt with the problem and decided to relocate yet again.

This time I clambered aboard the boat too. We decided we should see what Suki knew about her situation. We had our misgivings about talking to the mark but we needed information and boy was that a worthwhile conversation.
Suki name checked Mitchell as her agent and we began to get the confirmation we needed that Mitchell had been playing us for fools all along – presumably to boost sales of Suki merchandise. Not long after, Mitchell made his final play, telling us it was all getting a little too hot and offering to pay us extra if we’d ice Suki and remove her from the picture permanently. Didn’t take a genius to see Mitchell was after the insurance payoff on Suki and that we’d be fingered in about ten seconds flat if Suki did turn up dead.
Mitchell thought he’d got the perfect set up but he reckoned without a little Shadowrunner ingenuity. We recorded the conversation and once Suki had confirmed that the Mitchell ordering the wet work was her agent we knew we had the upper hand. It was now in our best interests to keep Suki alive and make sure she could finger Mitchell rather than us for the crime. Better still, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and Suki was willing to pay us 30k for the evidence against her agent and safe passage to her father’s San Fran estates.

We told Mitchell he could poke his extra cash. We expected trouble and sure enough, as we got set to move off, two speedboats sped out of the darkness and opened up. All but useless without a vehicle or a drone and lacking boating skills of any description, I stayed below decks to protect Suki should we be boarded and administer first aid to keep her alive should a stray shot hit her. Boy was that a possibility! Sniper rounds were tearing through the carcass of the ship and I could hear the distinctive chatter of machine gun fire. Glyph and Ash were doing the team proud beating back the assault but I could hear them taking fire. I think Glyph must have copped a little too much lead – Ash yelled for help and up on deck I found him administering first aid while still under fire. One boat was quite a way back and seemed to be out of commission but the other was moving up towards us. I knew my pistol didn’t have the range or the punch and headed back below decks for a flare pistol I’d seen. Waiting in the darkness of the hatchway, I counted off the distance under my breath before coming up and bringing the flare pistol to bear. Man that shot was sweet, straight and true and right down the gullet of some scumbag on the pursuing speedboat.
Take it from me Dog, the phosphorescence in those flares burns like a bitch and with the engine going up in flames, our assailants were soon cast adrift like some sort of Viking funeral pyre.

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

Thinking hard, Ash finally twigged that Glyph had bought her yacht from a commercial dealer and as such was fitted with a standard RFID tag that we’d neglected to burn. With that done we could make landfall safely and remoted the cars to the dock before pulling a stunt switch to confuse any observers.
Glyph and Ash headed off to draw any assailants away from Suki who I chauffeured up to her father’s estate reasoning that with vehicle mounted weaponry I was a better bet for protecting Suki should it come to a car chase.

Dropping her off, we pretty much figured we could settle down and relax for a few days but I had an unexpected visit from my brother Nunzio. Now I know Nunz was a Mafioso Made Man and I know he’s been playing dead man’s shoes to work his way up the hierarchy. I dunno how far he’s managed to get but when he tells me the team has been upsetting the wrong sort of people and we need to get our heads down for a few days, I pay attention.

I suspect it is the local Triads who object to our presence in San Fran this weekend. I also suspect Nunzio wants me out of town because he has his finger in the Big Deal Pie that the Triads are serving up from Club Province. To make sure I look the other way, he throws me a bone. A simple courier job between San Fran and Atlanta with a little pay packet and the use of a safe house thrown in for a few days. I know there’s more to this than meets the eye but I don’t particularly want to come to blows with Nunzio so I agree to do the deed.

It starts out simple. Tracking a courier by an active PAN he’s transporting cross country. We have to catch him, switch the PAN he’s got for a standard factory spec duplicate and then carry the PAN on to Atlanta and hand off to one of Nunzio’s contacts. Though it starts out simple, it soon gets complex – Ash, Glyph and I all start having the same sort of visions we last experienced when we prevented Allisom from using Cross to get a foothold in San Fran. We see a biker chasing our quarry and using a car bomb to wipe him out. We resolve to intervene.

Pedal to the metal across country, we soon catch up with our courier and the biker we think is out to get him. Ash and Glyph orchestrate an RTA – driving head on into the biker to put paid to his plans before he can interfere with our Run. Ash’ truck is a pitiful wreck but he gets the job done and there after it was a simple trail and switch. Ash has some nifty knock out gas so our man has no idea we’ve even been near his cargo.

We limped on to Albuquerque where Ash has put his ride into a garage for some meaningful repair work. Glyph and I took the PAN on into Atlanta, passed it on to Nunzio’s goon and picked up the keys for the safe house but we’ve not yet stopped by there to check it out. Instead, we’ve come back to Albuquerque so I can help fix up Ash’ sled. I figure being in Albuquerque is far enough away from San Fran to be paying heed to Nunzio’s warning. We’ll head back to Atlanta to the safe house when we’re good and ready. Nunzio said his Atlanta contacts might want to put a bit of work our way but they can wait on us – we need a second roadworthy vehicle if we’re going to make an effective team on this side of the country. I just wish I knew how long we were supposed to hang out over here. I also wonder if any of the others got my message warning them to get out of the Bay Area. I guess we’ll know if anyone turns up here over the next day or so…

Mood: Edgy.
Ends: 2/2>
||

Sukie Red-Flower pt2. And then a Trip to Atlanta

2006-10-13T10:40:00.000Z

Sunday 7th July 2070

Six, Ash, Glyph.

Glyph’s new yacht was moored in a sheltered lagoon not far from San Francisco. Glyph watched the unconscious Sukie below deck, while Ash kept watch above. Six sat in his car, about ¾ of a mile inland on the main road, which hugged the coastline.

The runners read the fabricated news report and were sure that their contact, Mitchell was behind it. They couldn’t prove anything but Ash phoned him to see if he could glean any other information. Mitchell brushed off Ash’s concerns and told them to sit tight.

The runners sat tight, and the hours ticked by.

Mid afternoon, Six was reloading the Antioch when he saw a figure dart across the road. Six instantly warned Ash and Glyph, and Ash took up a position to see if he could see their assailant. Six then sent the Flyspy drone after the man to see if he could track him down.

The man was dressed in full combat fatigues and was armed with a sniper rifle. He was watching the boat, but out of the corner of his eye say the Flyspy. He fired but missed. Ash got a bead on the target, based on the muzzle flash and fired blindly through the tree he sat up against.

Ash, glyph and the Sniper traded lead for a few moments before the sniper was shot dead. Ash made his way over and discovered that he was some kind of mercenary. Maybe a hunter, maybe on another job, probably after Sukie/the runners.

They decided to move out at sea away from land, Six got supplies and the three of them took the boat 7 miles out into international waters. They waited some more. Sukie began to regain consciousness, and after untying her, Glyph began to talk to her under the watchful gaze of Six. Ash remained above deck on watch.

It turned out that Mitchell was Sukie’s agent, and that he had set up this whole kidnap affair to boost sales of her flagging back catalogue of sim-flicks. In the meantime Ash received a call from Mitchell. He claimed that negotiations wither her agent had gone badly and he wanted her dead. Ash asked to consult with the team and offered to call him back.

The team were not going to do the wetwork, and when they phoned Mitchell back to tell him, they cajoled him into re-asking for Sukie to be hit, this time they recorded the conversation. Mitchell had anticipated that the runners would turn him down, and had made arrangements for two powerboats to be positioned within striking distance, and once he had given the word they closed in, and began to shoot. They intended for no one to survive. The runners returned fire and eventually beat off the assault. They hot footed out of the area back to land.
The runners had been tracked by the RFID tag on Sukie, and once the skimmer drone had identified the tag on the boat, the runner’s position was compromised. Ash had burned off Sukie’s tags, but had neglected the boat. The runners realised this and rectified the mistake.

Sukie was told everything. And the runners offered their apologies and a recording of Mitchell asking to have Sukie killed. She asked to be taken to her dad’s home, and paid the runners for the recording. It seemed money was so important to them after all. And after this the runners headed home for some sleep and a bit of downtime.

12th July 2070

Six was making his way back to his lockup when he saw a black sedan parked outside. He didn’t recognise the car, but played it cool and walked over. A mafia man stepped out. It was Nunzio, Six’s brother.

They went in, had a coffee, and caught up a little. Nunzio told Six that he and his friends had made some very dangerous enemies. Nunzio had been keeping tabs on his little brother and knew that something was about to happen. Nunzio knew how proud Six was so he offered him a “Job” to get him and the team out of town for a while. It would also get Nunzio a man he could trust in Atlanta for a time.

The job was a cake walk, catch up with a man who was headed to Atlanta, steal a comlink from him without him noticing, and pressing on to Atlanta to hand it over to someone Nunzio had already positioned there.

Six rallied the team; they tooled up and then blazed. Their target was travelling at the speed limit, at the runners pace they would catch up with him on the second day of a four day journey to Atlanta. Border checkpoints were a cinch, and the runners made good time.

Six had noticed a rider at one check point. He eyeballed Six from the back of his BMW bike, and six gave it right back. He was through the checkpoint first and was gone.

The runners stopped at a motel for the night and slept. The runners had been touched by the astral when they defeated Alisom, and they had a similar feeling. The all saw the same things.

Their target eating in a diner.
A man on a bike.
An albino man lying on his back on the floor, dead. A bullet hole in his forehead.
A photograph scene. Some kind of school, or military photo.

The runners puzzled over this as they drove onward the following morning. Slowly, mile by mile catching up with the target.

About 60 miles ahead, and about 100 miles from the border the comlink trail they were following, stopped. The runners were subjected to another waking vision.

A man eating, a briefcase between his legs.
The bike rider securing something under a car.
Their target opening his car door.
An explosion.

Six took the hint and pushed the throttle to the bulkhead, Ash tried to keep up but the crewcab was not as fast. Six arrived at the diner and saw the targets Ford Americar. He pulled up in a parking space opposite and sat, waited and watched. 10 minutes later, a motorbike pulled, the same rider that Six had eyeballed at the border days before. Their eyes met and the rider sped off back in the direction of the oncoming Ash.

Ash spoke to Six briefly and then saw the oncoming rider; he was travelling fast. Ash veered onto the other carriageway to stop him. He stopped.
The bike smashed into the bonnet of the car, the rider thrown through the windscreen.

Glyph and Ash pushed the broken rag-doll body of the rider out of the car and staggered from the wreckage. The crewcab truck had taken serious damage but the bike was nothing more than bent metal. Ash checked the riders ID. He was a nobody. Glyph checked the panniers on the bike and found a small charge of explosive. Enough to blow a car to pieces.

They cleared up and Six arranged for a towtruck to pick them up. Meanwhile the target was moving again. Six took up the tail and followed him to another motel. Six booked a room and set up observations. Ash and Glyph hit the road 4 hours later, with the crewcab patched together and they met up at the motel.

Sneaking into the mans motel room, the runners took the comlink, and switched it for a new one the runners had purchased for the task. They then left.

Easy as that. The runners drove on, and made it to Albuquerque. Ash headed for a garage where he could get the truck repaired properly. Getting a hotel room he would catch Glyph and Six up.

Glyph and Six headed onto the prosperous city of Atlanta, they met up with Nunzio’s contact, who gave Six an address for a safe house as they handed over the stolen comlink. The runners were paid the easiest money they had earned.

Six's blog. Sukie Red-Flower

2006-10-10T13:37:00.000Z

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 19: 07.07.70>
I’m beginning to wonder why anyone bothers with this Shadowrunning lark.
Perhaps San Francisco is the bullshit capital of the western world? Perhaps Ash is the unluckiest Son of a Bitch to walk God’s green earth? Maybe I have ‘Fuck with me’ stencilled in Braille across the palm of my hand, encouraging everyone I make a deal with to do just that. Whatever the explanation, it’s beginning to feel like every other Run is a set up or a screw job of some description. Don’t these people realise we have guns and we’re not adverse to using them?! I swear, I will shoot the next fool that fucks with me over a contract!

Sooo, where am I and why is rage mode active? I’m sitting in my ride, perched on a cliff top overlooking the Pacific and somewhere down below me bobbing around in the brine on a brand new motor yacht are Glyph, Ash and some second-rate B-movie simsense star called Suki Redflower, whose box office hey day is definitely well behind her. I just got off of the phone with Kitty who has tipped me to the fact that we’ve been stung, which is pretty much why I’m pissed. Mostly I guess, I’m angry with myself for ignoring my gut instinct that something about the job just didn’t add up.

The contact went by the name of Mitchell and claimed to represent an organisation with the best interests of San Fran’s children. In an effort to demonstrate the crime doesn’t pay he wanted us to kidnap Ms Redflower who is best known for film roles glorifying the life of a Shadowrunner. While we held her hostage, he wanted to bring pressure to bear on her agents, encouraging them that Suki should take on a couple of more savoury projects to redress the balance and show kids that wholesome lives led to brighter futures.

The hypocrisy of hiring Shadowrunners for this job wasn’t lost on me. I questioned Mitchell about it but he reasoned that the ends would justify the means. It was about then that I got to feeling funky about the whole gig and my unease was only exacerbated when he asked us to bid for the job and name our own price. About then, I really should have spotted that there was a good chance of us not getting paid. Ash was handling the arrangements though and I didn’t want to slow Mr Contacts roll so I let him negotiate on all our behalf and kept my misgivings to myself.

We weren’t sure whether Suki was a runner herself but she certainly had a runner escort – the team she was supposedly a part of. They were coming into San Fran to do some press junkets and promo’s so we researched their limo company, the airport and then the hotel looking for ways to get close enough to Suki to do the snatch. Despite our best efforts we bummed out at the limo company where a Runner named Deuter picked up two armoured Hummers and at the airport where they deplaned from a commercial jet onto the landing pan like the Pope. We got a good look at the whole team though – hard mothers every one of them and having landed a room at the same hotel as Suki, we resolved to hit them there the next morning.

We waited in the underground car park just after breakfast. I was heavy fire support, Glyph was extraction and Ash was up close and dirty. Suki’s well drilled team came down in two groups. The first group we let pass us by before moving into position. While they were heading for their armoured Hummers, we were pulling the snatch. As the lift doors opened, I popped a precision Flash-bang into the elevator with the Ares Antioch. Backwash from the blast must have pretty much finished the opposition there and then. Ash finished off the two grunts with swift shotgun blasts before bundling Suki into Glyph’s ride.

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

As Glyph roared off, one of the Hummers steamed off in pursuit. I played outrider, using up my Flash-bangs and thermal smoke in an attempt to distract them. Glyph easily outdistanced the Hummer and rather than create a very public and very drawn out scene, I peeled off as well.

We’d long-since decided that taking Suki aboard ship and out into international waters was the best bet of laying low. Glyph and Ash did just that while I hung back to deter any pursuit. As soon as the yacht was clear of the coast though, the team was buzzed by a Rotordrone. A quick scan revealed two tracers on Suki – Ash burned them out but the damage was done.
We resolved to head next to this remote cove and sit tight for a while to see if there was any further sign of pursuit. The beach itself is unreachable by land, unless you fancy a spot of abseiling, so any effective counter attack will have to come by air or by sea, which is why I’m perched here on the cliff top ready to provide covering fire.

Thing is, maybe there won’t be any counter attack and maybe we’ll never hear from Mitchell again. Kitty tells me an article about the kidnap is all over the Matrix. It’s a tissue of lies that offends me deeply. Ono is named as one of the kidnappers for fuck’s sake so their Intel is seriously out of date. Mitchell asked for Ono by name when he first tried to contract us, a coincidence that doesn’t sit well with me. Further proof of the almighty bunkum in this article is provided by a photograph of Ash and I bundling Suki away from the scene of the kidnap. Someone has been a busy little tinker with Photoshop because I haven’t stepped out of the car since 7am. I reckon 50 metres is about the closest I’ve gotten to Suki in this whole operation without having a skin of metal wrapped around me.

So all we have now is a combination of anger and curiosity - anger at being diddled yet again in the course of a job and curiosity about how the other players in this charade will play out their next moves. Someone is trying to dirty my name again though, just after I managed to get it clean. I expect to extract a small measure of retribution for that misdemeanour and right now, Mitchell’s name is top of my list…

Mood: Tense.
Ends: 2/2>
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Sukie Red-Flower Kidnap

2006-10-05T12:10:00.000Z

Ash is told by Mal that he has a blood infection similar to that of VITAS, but Mal thinks he is able to clear it out of his system. 20k lighter and 12 hours in a filtration tank later Ash is still not dead, but Mal isn’t convinced that the infection has passed. It seems that the strain of VITAS that Cross Applied Technologies had been playing with was a little stubborn.

A week passes.

Thursday 6th July 2070

Six, Ash, Glyph.

A man who calls himself Mitchell contacts Ash. He claims to represent an organisation keen to reduce childhood criminal uptake, and he believes that role models like the nova-star; Sukie Red-Flower should be making films other than Shadowrun flicks. He wanted the runners to kidnap her while she is in San Francisco so that he could then get in touch with her agent to suggest that she could do more savoury things. Ash negotiated a price, and despite Six’s bad gut feeling about the whole job, they went with it.

The runners set about doing some legwork from the table in the stuffer shack, they found out what flight that she was coming in on, and they got a rough itinerary for her visit. They realised that she would need a car and found out the agency that was leasing the armoured cars. Armoured Secure Services.

Heading down to the lease firm Six posed as a driver for Sukie, and dropped in the name of the bodyguard who was due to collect the car. The girl at the desk accepted Six’s fake I.D. but wouldn’t release the vehicle until she had verbal confirmation from the bodyguard. Six played it cool and blagged his way out of the office but didn’t get a sniff of the vehicles.

Not long later, the bodyguard turned up. And collected both vehicles, remote rigging one of them. The team followed from a discrete distance, and once they saw that he was heading into the Regal hotel they phoned ahead booked a room themselves. Heading into the car park the runners were able to get a close look at the armoured cars. Designed for body guarding work, big, armoured, and difficult to stop. The runners headed off to their room to plan the next move.

While they waited the cars moved on to the airfield. They came up with a bit of a plan. Wait at the airfield until the plane lands and find out who is in their entourage, and then try a snatch back here at the hotel.

They staked out the airport and watched Sukie get off the plane with her 3 other bodyguards, and to be joined on the landing pan by the 4th. The runners followed them back to the hotel and got a chance to eyeball their targets. An male Elf called Redial, a large troll called break, two humans, one called Deuter, and the other called Flattop, and of course, the simsense star, Sukie Red-Flower.

The runners planned on, snatch them in the morning, drop a couple of flashbangs into the lift in the carpark and snatch the girl. Six positioned his car outside the lift to deploy the grenades from the mounted launcher. Glyph sat in her car ready to pounce and Ash stood in the stairwell with a shotgun under hit coat ready to finish off any survivors.

Two of the bodyguards headed down in the lift first, and headed to the cars, unaware of the trap that had already been set for their charge. The other two, Redial and Deuter accompanied Sukie. The lift doors opened and Six had a grenade drop neatly into the small space. Redial was quick to react making a jump out of the lift, Deuter dropped and covered Sukie, and the flashbang went off.

Even flash bangs pack a concussive kick, and inside the lift the force was enough to instantly kill Deuter who took the full blast and Sukie suffered severe injuries. With the sound of the grenade still ringing Ash stepped out of the stairwell, ratcheted the shotgun and blew a hole in the back of the prone Elf.

Glyph came screeching round the underground carpark and she and Ash bundled Sukie into the car. Meanwhile Six deployed flashbangs and smoke grenades in an effort to distract the oncoming armoured SUV. Glyph was gone and the SUV couldn’t keep up with the sports car.

The runners drove a winding circuit through the city before heading down to the newly purchased yacht. They loaded Sukie’s unconscious form onto the craft and headed out to sea. Ash burned the RFID tags that were on Sukie, and then headed to a cove that he knew, where they could sit tight and wait. Six parked his car on a road about a mile from the cove working on the basis that he could get to them quickly enough if problems occurred. And then the runners waited.

Sukie’s Kidnap was all over the news, a readily prepared statement and a doctored photo which pictured Six and Ash grabbing Sukie had the runners concerned. This had become more than just a case of putting pressure on Sukie’s Agent.

TBC.

Six's Blog. CORe

2006-10-03T13:39:00.000Z

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 18: 02.07.70>
So yesterday I gets a call from a Johnson and with some trepidation I take the team down to Silicon Valley for a quick meet. Ash and I are particularly cautious. Johnson + Silicon Valley = Corporate and that combination hasn’t exactly left us smelling of roses up to now.

Nothing ventured and nothing gained though right? After some debate an offer is on the table of 75k and the job gives Ash and I a chance to thumb our noses at Cross one last time but also tickles Glyph’s fancy because it will stymie Ares for a nanosecond or two. Cross are in freefall, their business shut down and their resources in liquidation. I like to think we played a part in that. One of their departments goes by the name of Fleche Armaments and Johnson says they were working out of a small facility in Silicon Valley, researching a way of tapping off energy from the body to use as power. I’m imaging it’ll mean cybernetics and internal PANs and what have you can be installed without the need for a bulky power pack because as long as you’re alive you’re charging your gear. It’s kinda neat if you think about it. Well it seems the facility, like all Cross resources, has been sealed up by the courts and the rights to the contents have been bought by Ares. Johnson wants us to slip inside and lift the prototype before Ares get their grubby mitts on it. It’s called CORE and it’s a small marble-sized and shaped piece of kit so easily transportable. Secondary objective is to destroy any hard copy records – just the hard copy because Johnson has a team of specialised Deckers taking care of the virtual paperwork.

Now we’re not dumb. We’ve gotten street savvy the hard way but we do have a little smarts these days. We know it isn’t going to be as easy as Johnson makes out but we quiz him pretty good and satisfy ourselves that at the very least he will pay up if we perform. I use the Fly Spy to check out the facility while Ash liaises with Daisy to see what she can clean from the Matrix. Glyph starts scouring forums and message boards for disgruntled employees made redundant and bitter by CAT’s crash who’ll spill the beans for a little green.

It’s now that we find out Knight Errant are on the job and making sure that no one violates the lockdown on Cross resources until the new owners move in. We also learn that the facility is sealed up pretty tight – by design, it seems the front door is the only way in or out. Glyph hits paydirt though and a Wage Slave with a grudge sings like a canary. He tells us there are three floors above ground, six below and lets us know what’s where. File store is on floor -4 or -5 with the high security research lab way down on -6. He’s never heard of CORE but reckons -6 is the Emerald City and common sense means we concur.

Now the size of the building’s footprint is giving us cause for concern.
Presuming the worst, that Knight Errant will be on our tail, it’s fairly clear we won’t have time to search a file store that occupies an entire floor to find the hardcopy CORE files. Glyph has a little expertise with plastique though so makes up some detonation charges. We’ll search for the files if time permits but carry enough charges to level a couple of floors in case a quick exit becomes necessary. Boy, did that decision prove to be a saving grace!

I’m ramped. Snow has delivered my Ares Antioch so I’m tricked out with a grenade launcher on my ride. I figure I’ve now got sufficient firepower to hold off Knight Errant for at least a little while so we tool up and swing down – that was maybe 2am this morning and Glyph’s going to play stranded woman driver to allay Knight Errant suspicions until we can jump them…

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

Now that’s just about where it starts to go wrong. Our theatrics are wasted – Knight Errant haven’t left anyone watching the street so we move on the main entrance while Glyph leaves a little booby trap for any trooper returning to the car. The grenade and the patrol car blow up almost instantly and we only just get out of the way. A second or two earlier and we’d have been pate…

Now there’s a nice burning beacon on the Fleche lawn to let everyone for miles around know we’re hitting the joint. Clock’s ticking. Time to move fast. We’re through the door and systematically quartering, checking and clearing the rooms in short order. As we head down we begin to hear gunfire and figuring maybe someone else has had the same idea we double time it only to come face to face with a group of Knight Errant pouring shot after shot into one corner of a cube farm. We join the fight and Glyph’s grenade curse keeps its end of the excitement up. As she tosses a High Explosive into the room we all see it bounce back towards us. I take cover behind a wall and still feel the concussive force as bits of plaster and ceiling ran down on me. The fight is short and brutal, Glyph and Ash heading into the cube farm like some sort of strutting Wild West heroes. Best believe that gets them shot up some for their arrogance! Glyph discovers Knight Errant have been drilling a young girl. She’s still alive but as Glyph goes in to administer first aid the little bitch comes around and goes for Glyph’s throat. I scrabble for my Stick Shock rounds but Ash is faster and puts her down. We tie her up before she can come around again and we’re stunned to see her healing in front of our eyes. She’s got a mouthful of fangs and a silver circlet with a marble shaped and sized depression in it that starts to make us think there might have been more to Cross’ research here than meets the eye.

A few floors below we get our confirmation. As we raid the file store for the CORE paperwork we’re jumped by another couple of these Vamps and have to put bullets through their spinal cords to make sure they quit. One floor down from there we find a lab with three huge freezers holding countless complete prototypes of the CORE marble. That’s about where we get grateful for the charges, Glyph made. After giving Johnson some feedback and getting clarification from him on acceptable mission parameters, we set a charge in each freezer to make sure that once we leave, the CORE marble we give to Johnson is the only one left.

We’ve got the CORE prototype and the paperwork but there are unexplored floors and we just can’t walk away and run the risk of leaving the job half done. I check my Fly Spy and car-cams to check we’ve still got time to proceed and head down to the Restricted Access lab on -6. Five empty Medical Bays tell us that we’re missing two Vamps and as we explore, the Granddaddy of the whole stinking cabal puts in an appearance. He’s toting a CORE marble, neatly slotted into the depression in the palm of his hand and uses it to fill the air with bolts of bio-electricity. None of us fancy being electrocuted so we fight fire with fire, well lightning with lead at least and with us all keeping up a barrage of shots in his direction we soon put him down and make sure he stays down. Glyph leaves one of the ready made charges in his lap to destroy him and the CORE marble he’s tooled up with and we vamos.

We eliminate the Vamp we left tied up but realise that leaves us minus one critter. The upper floors are all sealed so it’s hard to imagine he’s up there. We play it safe and rig up a tight network of charges to blow the top floors. We make sure all the documentary evidence is going to go up in that blast too.

Back in the cars, Glyph hits the detonation and we listen to the satisfying crump of the explosions. That will have taken out the upper floors, the paperwork, the CORE prototypes and the Vamps bodies. It feels professional – a job well done but conscious Vamp 5 might have left the building before us, we don’t hang around. We head straight to a meet with Johnson, hand off the goods and collect our pay. It feels like the first time a Corporate job has gone right for us from start to finish and that feels good.
Mood: Fulfilled. Job Done.
Ends: 2/2>
||

The CORe project

2006-09-28T14:01:00.000Z

Saturday 1st July 2070

Six, Ash, Glyph.

Cross Applied Technologies had begun the rapid collapse into financial ruin

Mr. Johnson contacted six. He worked for a ‘well funded organisation’ that wanted a team of runners to break into a research facility owned by a subsidiary of Cross Applied, called Fleche Armaments, and snatch a prototype device called CORe.

The CORe (Centred Ordinance Research) research was to test the viability of harnessing biometric energy and the organisation Mr. Johnson represented understood that a prototype had been made which did just that. The job for the runners was to find and recover the prototype and to destroy the hard copy records of the research so that Ares, who were clamouring to get at the data wouldn’t be able to. Mr. Johnson had made arrangements for a hacker to access the digital files and wipe these records separately.

Ash wasn’t keen on the price offered and was able to haggle the Johnson up an additional 15 grand for the team.

The runners took the job and Six dispatched his fly spy drone to have a look-see at the facility in question. Ash got in touch with Daisy and got her to work on tracking down some blueprints for the building but she turned up blanks. For whatever reason there were no files on the floorplan for Fleche Armaments San Fran Facility, she did discover that the security systems had all been turned off, probably because they were manned by Cross, but Knight Errant had been put in place to guard the building until Ares were allowed to move in.
Six’s fly spy was sending back video footage of the building. 3 stories of faceless concrete, two doors in and not a window to be seen.
Seeing this Glyph had the idea that they could find a previous employee who may be able to fill in the blanks in their knowledge. She started in chat rooms and got surfing the net. Eventually tracking down a disgruntled employee who told them for a fee that the building had 6 lower levels.

The runners bought up equipment that they thought they needed and made plans to storm the building in the early hours of the following morning.
Glyph approached the Knight Errant patrol car that was parked outside, and when she found that there was no-one in it, called in Six and Ash to begin infiltrating the building. Glyph then attempted a booby trap for the squad car, with a grenade and gaffer tape. It didn’t work too well, and the car was blown to pieces before Glyph even made it into the building. It would be one of those nights.

The runners swiftly cleared the first floor without any problems, but as they began sneaking down the stairs they heard muffled gunshots, and as they approached the door for the first basement level they found Knight Errant having a blazing gun battle with someone. As the runners appeared, the semi-soldiers thought they were being flanked opened fire. Ash has a habit for being in the wrong place and was shot up.
The runners cleared the Knight Errant from the room and found a wounded girl. As Glyph went to offer her first aid, the girl sprang up from the floor and tired to bite her. The runners dropped her with Stick-Shock bullets and surmised that she was a vampire.
She had a silver circlet around her head with an indentation in the centre, which looked about the size for the CORe device, and the runners began to see the bigger picture.

The runners left the girl bound, and pressed on down to the next floor, only to find a couple of butchered Knight Errant guards. They pressed on to the next level and found the file store. Ash and Glyph began to search for the CORe files while Six guarded the door.

Two more of these ‘vampires’ charged at Six and he had to be quickly backed up by Ash before he got overwhelmed. They both got into melee combat and both were scratched and bitten, Ash more so, loosing a lot of blood from a throat wound.
Glyph found the files they were looking for as the vampires were taken down.

Moving down to the next level the runners found a testing lab and they found 30 or so of these CORe devices. They contacted the Mr. Johnson and informed him that there were more than one. Mr. J. wanted one and the rest were to be destroyed. Glyph planted explosive charges.

The runners had got what they had come for, but they wanted to do the job properly and carried down to the next level. They found 5 test beds where it appears these human/vampires had been kept sedated before breaking out when they didn’t receive their daily dose. The runners did a quick count and realised that they were missing two, when they saw another coming across the room. He had a CORe device in its holder and fired an arc of electricity toward the runners. They returned fire, filling the air with lead. And once they were sure the vampire was dropped they fixed him up with some compound 15 plastic explosive. The Man had an ID badge. Cross Applied Technologies Mr. Johnson.

The runners split and detonated the bombs. Ash didn’t feel to good, and as he used his medkit, it warned that it had detected an unusual pathogen.

They met up with the Johnson as soon as they could and handed over the prototype. The Johnson was very please with their nights work and paid in full before departing.

… The next day, Ash went round to see Mal, the St. Doc, to see what the medkit meant regarding the unknown pathogen...

Six's blog. Triad bounties.

2006-09-26T14:05:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 17: 29.06.70>

Creed, like the vagrant he took fashion advice from, had moved on by daybreak. Evidently he preferred the cold hard planks of a park bench to the warm soft cushions on the sofa or decided he didn’t want to share any more bounties with Ash and I. For our part, we resolved to head after drug addled fattie Zhang Jie while our intel was hot. He was worth £25k to us if we could bring him in alive and given the number of goons and mooks we had seen caught up in the gravitational pull of his flabby gut we knew we’d need a bit more back-up to have any chance of pulling the job off. Glyph and Ki-rinn got the call and both responded – it was beginning to feel like the team was back on song.

Given the time of day, we decided to look in on Fu Hong at the Paper Dragon restaurant and see whether we could do anything about collecting his bounty as a bit of a Brucie Bonus. We did see him hanging around the fringes, haranguing some poor fool on the other end of the telephone in warp-speed Cantonese but by the time we had decamped and moved into a position from which we could attempt to throw down a kidnap, he had jumped into a vehicle and steamed off. There was every chance he would return however so we had the rest of meal put into doggie bags and settled down in Ash’ pick-up to stake out the streets for his return. Like all of our stake outs thus far, it proved to be fruitless and after an idle few hours we reset the stake out outside the Province strip joint.

Security had been ramped up, front and back and even on the roof. There were disposable ninja everywhere we looked and it was obvious that getting in after our man was going to be far from easy. Ki-rinn found himself a sniping position, Glyph and Ash set up to watch the streets and I took my balls in my hand and headed inside to scope the joint. Apart from the increased security, all was as it had been 24 hours earlier although there did seem to be some sort of high level bigwigs meeting going down on Zhang Jie’s all-you-can-eat balcony. That part of the venue was thoroughly rammed with muscle so when I thought I saw one of them gesture in my general direction, my sphincter squeaked and I fled double-time.

Agreeing that discretion was the better part of valour, and that life as a coward was the better part of a short career as a brave fool, we decided there was no way we were dumb-ass enough to try and raid Province until the heat was off. We hung around figuring they’d have to go home sometime and sure enough the party began to break up as the night ticked by. Now we took visual idents of as many of the main men as possible, just out of curiosity, and Ki-rinn ran an agent over them on the Matrix and we turned up the movers and shakers from all of the major criminal organisations on the West Coast.
Hell, even Nunzio and a couple of his Mafioso batty boys where there. Not getting involved was beginning to look like the best tactical decision we ever made and that was confirmed when the place finally emptied out with no sign of Zhang Jie. Fatty Jap Perp was still holed up inside and by our reckoning there were no more than a dozen toughs left at his side.

The operation was sweet. Ash and I used the winch on his pick-up to rip the security grills off of the front doors, while Glyph used an improvised explosive key on the fire door at the rear. Ki-rinn played commando, sniping the guard on the roof and then swinging in through a skylight. Flash-bangs flew, followed in short order by hot lead and after a few minutes of mopping up, we were winching Cartman Hong’s fat ass down the fire escape and onto the load bed of the pick-up for a one way trip to the local Lone Star precinct.

Continues: 1/2>
|| >

Say what you like about Lone Star but if nothing else, they pay out promptly on their bounties and that meant I had some green with which to go cruising for a little race action down on the strip.

Now this dog who called the meet had hooked himself up with a sweet little gig. Four racers take each other on for Pinks, lured in by a tidy looking little Mustang charger being offered up as a prize. The hit is, while the winner keeps their car and drives away the charger, the Big Dog keeps the three losers rides – all of which are custom, race tuned rides. He essentially trades one stock boot for three custom sleds and keen to prove that they’ve got the biggest balls on the circuit, dumb Street Racers keep falling for the gig. Now how could I resist?!

The kid Bumfluff who’s trying to make a name for himself with his souped up, welded together Toyota Commuter was there on the starting line along with a couple of lads I didn’t know by the names of Pimp and Quarterback. I again lost out at the start to Bumfluff but got the drop on the other two both of who dropped it sideways into the wall at the first corner. They came back strong though so as well as trying to gain ground on Bumfluff, I had to watch my mirrors and hold off the pressure they were putting on me.

Down the back straight, I was pushing Bumfluff dodging the rims, wing mirrors, door seals and bits of exhaust pipe he was shedding as the welds began to fail. Quarterback had some top end under his hood and put it to good use, screaming up like a cat amongst the pigeons but he tried to take the penultimate corner too fast. His brakes gave way in a shower of brake dust, carbon and glowing metal and he hit the bricks hard. Bumfluff had a sticky moment and by keeping the revs high and the ride smooth and consistent I was able to draft past to take the final corner and the flag with a flourish. Hand over the keys Poppa Smurf, Daddy’s taking his new girl home tonight!

Celebrations were short-lived. Someone picked up on the fact that Quarterback had taken a pretty heavy hit when he span off and collected the corner of that warehouse. I’m not sure if he’s alive or dead but it was the sort of accident to get the Heat steaming in on our location so we had to split fast before I could find out. I’ve never met the guy before but we all feel it when one of our own buys the farm in a race. If you’re gonna go, go doing what you love I guess but no one deserves to die because they couldn’t make the turn.

Mood: Subdued. Here’s to the Quarterback’s memory.

Ends: 2/2>
||

The bounty hunt at Province

2006-09-21T09:26:00.000Z

Friday 23 June 2070

Six, Ash, Glyph, Ki-Rin

After splitting up for the night, Six, Ash and Creed woke late, Creed had received a call from one of his contacts who needed a favour and he left, but Six and Ash were still keen to work on the other Lone Star bounties.

Deciding they would need some back up they called in Glyph and Ki-Rin and the four of them discussed how they would collect the bounties. Finally deciding to check out the Paper Dragon restaurant first and then to move onto the strip club called Province.

Booking a table for lunch at the Paper Dragon the runners mulled over their options, in a back room Six spotted Fu Hong, one of the two bounties that they were after. He was having a loud and animated conversation in Chinese on his phone but they couldn’t make out what was said. The runners sat and discussed whether to make a move on Fu Hong here and now but as they talked he came out of the back room and headed for the back door. The runners spent a few minutes deciding their plan of action as to how to take him down and by the time they had gone round the back he had already left in one of the red delivery vans.

Guessing that he would come back, and that the club, Province, wouldn’t open until much later the runners set about a stake out of the Paper Dragon. They observed the comings and goings for a few hours before noticing a black sedan arrive out the front, collect 5 heavies and leave. The runners had an inkling that something might be up.

Little else happened at the restaurant, and as the doors were closing, they headed off to check out the strip club. Security was heavy. More so than the last time they were here a day or so ago. The club was still open to patrons though. The back alley of the building had been blocked off by a couple of large pickups, and goons were on high alert to anyone attempting to access from the rear.
Six headed in, as a punter, and spent a time checking the place out. He didn’t even try to get up to the balcony level of the club, but could see from the ground that there were almost 30 people in a meeting where Zhang Jie held court.

As the runners checked in all of the intel that they had gathered, they realised that something big was going on, and tonight was not the best night to be staging a hit on the fat Chinaman, Zhang Jie. Rather than pulling out completely, they sat tight and watched. And after about an hour the meeting seemed to break up and interesting characters left with their own entourage of goons. Ki-Rin gathered images of the people and ran various matrix searches on them. Of the ones Ki-Rin found records of, they seemed to be wanted by various law enforcement agencies across the UCAS states.

By about 03:30 in the morning a lot of the hubbub seemed to have passed, and the runners took the opportunity to strike. Glyph nearly blew her arms off with a home made door lock breaker, Ash and Six tag teamed the front doors with a tow line and pickup truck, and Ki-Rin swung in from above through a skylight.
Too many flash bangs were deployed, and most of the opposition were out for the count, the rest took a few moments to take down with small arms fire.

The runners gathered up Jhang Jie, his girth proving to be a bit of a problem, again solved with the winch and Ash’s pickup. And then they took their catch to the cop shop to claim their bounty. Ash filled in the paperwork again and the runners got their bounty paid.

The runners headed home for some well-earned sleep and down time.

Ki-Rin wrote some fake ID’s for the team to use in an emergency. Ash headed out to his plot of desert to dream of what it could become. Glyph continued to work on her latest weapon and Six won another street race. For pinks this time round.

Six's Blog. The rendering plant

2006-09-18T09:36:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 16: 27.06.70>

Exquisite bliss… It’s late and I’m posting this from my favourite armchair.
There’s a replay of last night’s Giants match on the Trid. I’m wearing nothing but my comfiest pair of boxers and there’s a bourbon on the rocks and a stogie laced with a little weed on the table at my side. In a little while I’m going to go curl up in my own bed and sleep for a good ten hours.
Bliss.
Why am I so caught up in simple home comforts? Because they’re MY home comforts and having paid the Devil his due and danced to Croner’s tune, I can now enjoy them for the first time in ages. My record has been made to disappear, I’ve a few G on my Credstick again and I can relax – at least for a little while.

We never did head down to the Museum. Snow and Croner wanted us to move and move fast so, considering how much I wanted my name cleared, we damn well blazed. Croner’s gig was to locate an undercover cop called Han Tze. He’d been masquerading as a street-level drug dealer trying to infiltrate the Seven Stars Triad when he last made contact but a clear fortnight had passed with no word. Was he still working the case? Had he been compromised? Had he gone native? Croner wanted us to find out. By way of cover, he tipped us off to three bounties out on members of the Seven Stars Triad. Not only did this give us just cause to distract the Triad from our real objective within their ranks, it presented Lone Star with an opportunity to clean some pond scum off of the surface of the San Fran underworld while we lined our pockets.

We hit Chinatown and while Ash and Glyph opted for a little B & E at Han Tze’s apartment, I tapped up some of the local kids for info on who was dealing and where. I can’t say the little bastards were as easy to relate to as I’d hoped – not my circle at all – but for a little green they fessed up the location of a club called Province which they seemed to think was a hive of local drug activity. Meanwhile Mr Contacts and Rapunzel had spotted a little spy cam Han Tze had set to watch his pad. The footage showed Han Tze leaving, two weeks previous, in the company of one of our Bounties – Fu Hong, a Seven Stars Lieutenant with a penchant for explosive solutions and a reputation for running a sideline in the white slave trade. If Han Tze had been rumbled, maybe Fu Hong had found alternative employment for him as a slave?

We knew Han Tze had been reporting in to his faux masters within the Triad at a restaurant called the Paper Dragon and it was rolling on toward dinner time so we went for a recce on the pretext of getting us some grub. There was some sort of commotion outside with Trid Cams and a local news reporter lauding the Paper Dragon for handing out its left over food to the homeless each night. We’d hit jackpot in one respect – by happy coincidence, Fu Hong was the interviewee taking all the praise for his generosity and it’s not every day you stumble across a media savvy Triad lieutenant outside your local MSG emporium.

Mr Contacts did his thing and managed to have words with Fu Hong across the remains of the prawn crackers and pineapple fritters. Unsurprisingly Hong played dumb about Han Tze which left us contemplating kicking off and beating some answers out of his smug face. Before we could do anything rash, we received word that Han Tze’s PAN had just gone active out in the barrens and that was just about too much of a coincidence for us. We figured it was a trap and that having been quizzed about Han Tze, Hong had rumbled us and decided to lure us out by lacing a snare with a little Han Tze PAN bait.

Continues: 1/3>
|| >

Stuff that. We’ve learnt to be wary and we’re savvy enough not to be that dumb. We’re not that desperate for leads yet so we leave the Paper Dragon and head for Province instead, which turns out to be a lap dancing joint where the drugs are being passed around quite openly. As expected, we find the second of our Bounties here – Zhang Jie, Deputy Master of the Seven Stars who handles the Triad’s drug trafficking activities. We also find a hell of a lot of Triad mooks, toughs and heavies. Zhang Jie is quite obviously the big cheese and any attempt on his Bounty is going to need to be handled very carefully indeed. We back away with our tails between our legs – for a little while at least.

Having given anyone manning a trap for us and luring us in with Han Tze’s Comm signal chance to get bored and drop their guard, we now blazed out to the Barrens to hit them hard and fast. Turned out two street kids had found the PAN at a local dumpsite and were busily whacking off over Han Tze’s collection of Oriental Bongo. The dumpsite yielded a couple of other clues and after a couple of hours sleep, on Glyph’s sofa again, we split into teams to work the leads, Ash was the only one of us to hit paydirt – Daisy managed to recover the data from Han Tze’s wiped PAN and that connected up the dots for us. The last recording on Han Tze’s PAN showed us that the Paper Dragon’s delivery van was being used to shuttle slaves around the city and that Han Tze had been knocked out and unceremoniously dumped in amongst the rest of the ‘merchandise.’

It was clear now that we’d have to investigate the Triad slave trade if we were to pick up any further leads on Han Tze so we set about monitoring the movements of the delivery vans. Sure enough, in the dead of night, we scoped them laying claim to the city’s vagrant population as well as picking up a choice target or two from obviously predetermined drop off points. We tracked the Triad snatch team to the Hong Abattoir and Rendering Plant and watched them bundle their catch inside.

I scoped a black fellah sitting on a bench down near the gates to the plant paying much more attention to us than I was happy with. I figured maybe he was a spotter for the Triad – a fear confirmed when he hauled his carcass up off of the bench and headed towards the perimeter. Ash and I double timed over to head him off at the pass and were startled when he took a running jump at the fence and began to climb. Either the Triad were in the habit of locking their early warning system out for the night or we had a third party on our hands and he was about to blow the entire gig for us.

We got him down off of the fence and turned on the charm. He introduced himself as Creed and told us he was here to take a Triad bounty down – Ruan Shu a rising young star within the Triad who had probably been given a leg up by well-placed siblings. Sure enough Ruan Shu was the last name on our list of potential bounties and with a common goal, we were able to find some middle ground from which to work together on cracking the Triad. Using a handheld welder we made short work of both the fence and the fire door and found ourselves in a staff canteen where it kicked off. Ash was still keen to make amends for the past couple of weeks and put himself in the firing line. He took out a couple of goons but copped a volley of bullets in return so I called in the Medibot. I’m not too proud to admit taking cover and picking my shots with care, while Creed proved to be a decent shot to boot.

Continues: 2/3>
|| >

The canteen gave access to a series of offices, soundproofed against the rest of the plant, which meant no one else had noticed our John Woo shit.
The main body of the abattoir seemed to be split into a warehouse area and a separate freezer and there were about half a dozen heavy hitters out on the shop floor. Most of there were wearing furry parkas against the chill of the cold storage so we liberated the least blood stained and snuck out. Ash dealt with the nearest mook while I laid down covering fire against the others as Creed advanced. The fight was brief and bloody and having discovered and freed half a dozen unknown vagrants locked in ISO containers we were soon moving on toward the heart of the plant.

Past the jointing machines and the offal store, we found the rendering plant proper – a basement level dominated by a huge vat containing the chemical bath. The floor above had a large trapdoor and crane arrangement for lowering the animal carcasses into the vat, as well as a ladderway down to the basement level. We could hear voices issuing up from below so while I watched the ladder, Ash and Creed got the trapdoor open. As shots began to ring out, I heard Creed call out that Ruan Shu was down there and heading my way so I cooked him up a little Ki-rinn Special and tossed a flash-bang into the hole. As the ruckus continued, I felt footsteps on the ladder and to my surprise, a quick peek revealed Han Tze clambering up towards me. I didn’t want to blow his cover so I used the codeword ‘Blue Dragon’ which Croner had given us and made like I was taking him prisoner, holding him at gunpoint and playing tough guy.

From the main trapdoor, I could hear a mixture of live ammo and Stick/Shock rounds being fired as Creed and Ash tried to take Ruan Shu alive. Give them their due – they were brutal and efficient. No one but Han Tze made it up out of that hole. In the aftermath, I put Croner and his man in touch. Seems Han Tze was still down with the Triad but in some way had slipped down the pecking order and had been put to work out of sight at Hong’s. He wanted to stay with the Triad and continue his assignment and Croner agreed. I think his cover’s blown – he wouldn’t even trust us to put him down with Stick/Shock like we had some of the other mooks – but that’s not my problem.
Croner verbally confirmed that he was happy with the job and that we were square so we hauled Ruan Shu to the nearest Lone Star precinct house and collected our 11K bounty. In the cars on the way back we had a little chat with Creed. We’re going after the other Triad bounties while we know where they can be found and Creed said he’d come in on the job with us and give us a hand – we’ll need the extra trigger finger, especially against Zhang Jie’s mob down at Province so that’s cool and we’ll take things from there. Maybe one day he’ll join the team…

Oh yeah, just as an aside. My birthday came and went in the flurry of action between Vegas and San Fran. Ash’ birthday wasn’t so long ago either. Kitty, Daisy and Snow threw us an impromptu, surprise party – a lovely thought and a welcome break from an otherwise stressful run of days. It’s to my family and friends’ generosity that I owe my ability to participate in the run against the Triad. They rebought most of the gear I lost as presents for me.
Hell Snow even went one better – he got me these trippy number plates that can be written and rewritten and a third party PAN that he’s promised to mock up for me with a fake identity. From now on, Vincent Caznotti is a straight up, above board guy, wholly separate to the dashing enigma behind the wheel - a Shadowrunner known only as Six. Man what a gas ;o)

Mood: Chilled. Bottom of the 7th and the Giants are 4-1 up. Life is good

Ends: 3/3>
||

The rendering plant

2006-09-18T09:35:00.000Z

Thursday 22nd June 2070 01:20am
Ash, Six, Creed.

Ash and Six watched as the red delivery van drove into rendering plant, the driver removed his human cargo, and then went inside. Glyph retreated back to the cars to keep an eye on them and offer a quick getaway option while the other two runners sussed out what to do next.

Running out of money fast, Creed had to take a job to pay his rent at the end of the month, the police bounties weren’t the highest paid work, and not generally considered by real Shadowrunners and bounty hunters, but times were hard and Creed took a job to track down and bring in a Triad lieutenant called Ruan Shu. Paying informants, and doing the legwork brought Creed to a park bench outside the Hong Rendering Plant. Staking out the plant, Creed saw nothing of note, until a red delivery van turned up. On the heels of the red van, two men, runners, also began to scope the building.
Not sure of their intent Creed decided to make a move on bringing in Ruan Shu, as he approached the fence Six and Ash approached, they confirmed that they were all after the same bounty, and retreated to discuss a coordinated plan.

They cut their way through the rear fence, and assaulted the back fire escape door, Daisy had the cameras out of action while they hit hard and fast. In though the fire door they met some opposition, triads armed with Uzi’s.
They fought their way through the factory taking out all the guards. Ash and Creed were shot up pretty bad, Six was fairing better.

They found two ISO containers and inside they made the grim discovery of half a dozen drugged people slowly dieing. Leaving these containers open the runners headed into the cold store. They found a large trapdoor which dropped into a basement level. Creed opened up this trap door, and Six headed over to a ladder down to the basement level. The triad guards below the trapdoor opened fire almost as soon as they saw the runners and another gun battle ensued.

Six was covering the top of the ladder and was shocked to see Han Tze, the lone star officer the runners were trying to find, and were convinced was dead. Six took him captive while the others eliminated the guards and took down their bounty, Ruan Shu, using Stick and Shock rounds.

Han Tze told Six that his cover might have been compromised so this is why his reports were not forthcoming, and he had been put in the charge of Ruan Shu to keep an eye on him. Six was not convinced so put a call through to Duncan Croner, the police chief, who then confirmed that he was happy for Han Tze to remain undercover, and that Six would get his record cleared as agreed.

The runners pulled out, taking their unconscious pay check to a Lone Star precinct. Six and Ash told Creed that they were after two more bounties, and wondered if he might be interested in joining them. They split for the night, heading to bed, set to take out the other bounties the next day.

Normal service to resume

2006-09-18T09:34:00.000Z

Right back from holiday. Normal service to resume.

A short Hiatus

2006-08-31T11:14:00.000Z

The Shadowrun game pauses as I head off for my holiday. Back up and blogging the events in two weeks time, all things being equal.

Triads

2006-08-17T11:06:00.000Z

Wednesday 21st June 2070

Six, Ash, Drifter, Glyph.

The runners were at Glyphs pad considering doing the run that Ash had bought, and were set to snatch the statue from the Californian Free States Museum when Kitty phoned Six.
She had a problem, and needed the runners to gather at an address in Diamond Heights.

The team kitted up and flashed round to the apartment block. The front room was in darkness as they flanked the building, Ash was first through the door with the others close behind. Hearing a noise through a far door Ash charged in raising his gun to eye level. Kitty turned on the lights, shocked at having a gun in her face, she kicked the surprise party off with a deflated yell of surprise. Someone blew a party horn.

Partly to celebrate getting out of jail, more to celebrate Six’s and Ash’s birthdays Kitty, Daisy and Snow threw together a bit of a party. Snow dished out some fake ID’s as birthday presents and gave the runners a little lecture in covert ops. Snow had to talk shop as well. He had been in contact with Captain Duncan Croner, who had the job that was to clear Vincent Cazznotti’s SIN record.

Meeting up with Croner, the runners were told that one of his undercover agents hadn’t reported in for two weeks and Croner needed to send in some non-badge help to find out if he was still operational or had been compromised.

The officer was known as Han Tze, and had been sent into the Severn Stars Triad gang to locate the leader Kung Lok. His cover story was good enough to keep him alive and undercover for almost 9 months. He had even been given his own patch to sell narcotics through a few foot soldiers, and he often reported to the Paper Dragon restaurant

Croner also informed the runners that there were three bounties available for members of the Sever Stars, and if the runners saw an opportunity to bring them in it might be worth their while. The bounties were for.
Deputy Master Zhang Jie, one of three deputy masters within the Seven Stars Triad organization. He was thought to co-ordinate the drug trafficking activities of the Severn Stars.
Fu Hong, a lieutenant for the Severn Stars, he was wanted in connection for the firebombing of the Topaz Lantern, and was also thought to be coordinating some kind of slave trade.
And Ruan Shu, a young member of the Severn Stars. The younger brother of Ruan Li, the master of Wo Feng Wo, another Triad organization operating in San Francisco.

The runners took all the info down, and headed round to Han Tze’s apartment, situated in Chinatown. Six questioned some local gangers about purchasing drugs and they pointed him toward a Triad run strip club called Province. Meanwhile Ash and Glyph broke into Han Tze’s apartment. They found little of interest except a micro camera that had been installed by Han Tze to record the visitors who came to his door. Viewing the footage they saw that Han Tze was met by Fu Hong on the day he disappeared two weeks ago.

The runners made their way down to the Paper Dragon restaurant and as they approached they saw that Fu Hong was speaking with CTN (California Trideo News). They had a table booked for a meal so the runners went in, and they heard the interview was about the free meals that the Paper Dragon was giving away to the homeless after they closed business every evening.

The runners took in a meal, and Ash asked some questions of Fu Hong about Han Tze, but didn’t get any kind of answer and just roused Fu Hong’s suspicions. While the runners were having their meal at the Paper Dragon, Han Tze’s Comlink was turned on. The runners assumed trap and didn’t go and investigate. Instead they went round to Province.

Province. Part strip club, part drug den and overseen by Zhang Jie. The runners went in and began checking out the activities. Everyone but Ash Saw that Zhang Jie looked down on the whole operation from the second floor level, guarded by many Triad heavies. Ash got himself a lap dancer.

The runners decided to go and find this Comlink that was out in the barrens. They tooled up and headed out. They found the building quickly and cautiously they made their way up to the top floor. The Comlink was being used by two scrawny street kids. The runners took the comlink and discovered that they had found it at an area that is used as a bit of a tip. They headed over and after picking through the detritus, found half a dozen bags with torn clothes in. Glyph found the clothers that Han Tze had been wearing. Cut with a blade, and with bloody hand prints on the runners began to fear the worst.

It was late and the runners weren’t getting anywhere, so they headed home for the night with plans for the morning.

Thursday 22 June 2070

The runners got up early. Ash took the comlink round to Daisy to see if she could find any info stored in the memory. Six and Drifter headed round the locan shelters, clinic and morgues to see if Han Tze had turned up at any of those locations.

The morgues and shelters did not yield any fresh clues, but a visit to a Street Doc in Chinatown did make the runners wonder how far and wide the Triads influence went. They also began to wonder if his cyberware was being sold second hand.

Daisy came up trumps after she had shaken the hangover from the party the night before. She found The last footage from Han Tze’s cybereyes. He was taken to the back of a Paper Dragon delivery van, as a live body in a body bag was dumped in. As he questioned what was going on Fu Hong told him that they had found him out, before he was punched out.

The runners decided to tail these delivery vans and placed a stealth tag onto one of them. The delivery vans spent the day working. Delivering take-out across San Francisco, and then at about midnight the vans loaded up with lots of meals for the homeless and set off about the city. The runners tailed one of these vans and didn’t notice anything suspicious until they got to the barrens and the vans were as good as empty. At a run down house the driver loaded something heavy into the back. He stopped at one other location and again loaded something heavy into the back of the van.

The runners then tailed this van as it headed back into San Fran toward the industrial district. The van pulled into a heavily gated abattoir and rendering plant. Six and Drifter watched as two people were hauled out of the back of the van and were taken inside kicking and screaming.

The runners had seen enough. They knew where two out of the three bounty targets were, they had a good idea that the answers as to the whereabouts of Han Tze would be inside the rendering plant, and there were about ready to kick off.

TBC...

Six's blog

2006-08-15T15:27:00.000Z

By N.Barnes

Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>

Entry 15: 22.06.70>
Looks like we’ve had another moment or two playing the fly rather than the windshield. I’m writing this from the couch at Glyph’s place because just at the moment, I can’t run the risk of heading back to my gaffe. My Dodge is up on blocks out in a pristine little weapons’ workshop that Glyph has tacked on to the side of her place and I can’t even go see Kitty or my folks. About
24 hours ago, I was cooling my heels in a Las Vegas jail and now I’m a fugitive, on the run, wanted by Lone Star…

Let me take it back for you. All the intel we gathered had given our Johnson some concern and he asked us to sit tight and wait on his comms. He’d coughed up the 10k and frozen the bonus at 400 large so when he got back in touch, he was looking to restructure the deal. It would be 200k to ice Manton Ford provided we made it look like an accident and then another 200k to find out where the Chloro-Manganese 5/1 was being manufactured and processed. It seemed reasonable and we agreed, making a few quick moves to get Ki-rinn access to Dr Ford’s vehicle subscription and then setting about tailing the NA. The subscription to Ford’s motor meant Ki-rinn could ride the vehicle through its sensors and put it into the path of a truck or over the side of a cliff at an opportune moment. Sweet as a nut. It was clear the NA were getting their mitts on the 5/1 somewhere and hopefully they would then lead us up the chain to the supplier, so when they headed for Las Vegas we followed suit, using the Fly Spy as a tracker.

We burnt rubber, pushing the sleds redline to make up time and thought little of it when we got our asses Gatso’d by a state trooper. He was tenacious though, sticking on us long after we’d sped out of sight. I figured he must have painted the vehicles so, to prevent him from being a problem at the Vegas end of the trip, I hung back and rolled out the Stinger. I played fox and hound with him, letting him catch sight of the car before roaring off with a wheel spin that picked up a good cloud of dust to conceal the Stinger. He bought it, hook, line and sinker and popped all four tyres before spinning off into the desert. We rolled back to collect our gear and spotted that the patrol car could explode at any moment. Ash played hero and hauled the fellah out – probably saved his life – before pinching his badge and gun. Pay attention now. The gun was a Lone Star edition Colt Manhunter and I didn’t like the look of it one bit. It screamed RFID at me but Ash was determined to pilfer it. I shrugged but told him not to leave it in my car or near any of my gear – just in case…

A little research into NA fronts had given us the names of three Vegas nightspots, housed within the same building. An order of hermetically sealed vaccumn flasks – the same sort used to poison the Caribou with 5/1 – had gone to this building and it seemed Book and his buddy were headed that way too. The nightspots, Dragon’s Breath, Pussycat Lounge and Tiberius were all run by Volcano Inc from a giant, faux-volcano façade shrouded building in Downtown Vegas. Having finally arrived, we headed straight there while Ki-rinn and Rapunzel shadowed Book. Pay attention again. The plastic volcano had a standard patron’s policy – no firearms – so we shucked our gear out into the glove box of the vehicle before heading inside.

There wasn’t much of interest inside the plastic volcano, so when our tail told us Book was headed over, I was happy to split rather than risk being spotted and ID’d. I clocked that there was a motorbike cop paying a bit too much attention to my car so I activated the remote and started to drive it off of the lot. CHIPS decided to be a clever bastard and toggled a signal jammer so readying my snap baton, I headed over.

Continues: 1/4>
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I try to play it cool, try to just clamber in and drive off but as expected, this extra from the Village People is lonely and fancies a chat. He tells me, there’s a signal coming from my car that relates to a stolen piece of police equipment and my heart sinks. I visualise jabbing Ash in the eye with a sharp stick but T.J. Hooker spoils the moment by insisting I let him search the vehicle. Sure, no problem, help yourself officer I say as I fetch him a sharp rap in the signal box with my snap baton.

Now this is supposed to go down quickly. With the advantage of surprise, I should be able to strike quickly, knocking the signal jammer off-line and then jump into the car and blaze. That’s how it’s supposed to go down. Turns out I’m up against the only motorbike cop in Nevada with a PhD in Smug. In response to my snap baton, he produces a snap baton of his own and we go at it Hey Nonny Nonny style like a pair of fucking Morris Dancers for a while.
I lose my baton in the melee and I’m fortunate that he looses his too but all he does is go for a Tazer. We brawl, schoolboy style for a while, and I come up with the gun but the copper seems unfazed by my threats. I point and shoot but there must be some sort of biometric scanner in the pistol grip and I get nothing more than a slug to the jaw as he moves to attack once again. Turns out I’m facing Tyson and he systematically begins to beat the living tar out of me. Last thing I remember before I black out is calling Ash for help…

I woke up in a 6’ x 4’ cell, with a missing tooth and a splitting headache.
After letting me cool my heels for a while the Heat haul me out and in the corridor, we pass Ash, forlornly clutching a rap sheet and shuffling back to a cell of his own. In my interrogation they present me with a foot-long rap sheet of jumped up Mickey Mouse charges. Some of them I admit to – I did assault T.J. Hooker, I did have an illegal firearm on a concealed weapon mount and I did blaze past a radar gun at 210mph. But they’re trying to fit me up for Ash’s crimes too and make me an accessory to offences committed while I was unconscious. Seems Ash was just as rubbish in a fist fight with the motorbike cop as I had been, so he resorted to stabbing the guy and even managed to Frag that up! Ash is going down on attempted murder and has admitted culpability. I demand my courtroom trial. I wonder if they’ll let me flip the switch on the electric chair when Ash gets his sorry ass fried.
I wonder if the schmuck even realises it was the RFID tag in the LS Manhunter that got us into trouble. The RFID tag I warned him about. The LS Manhunter I told him not to leave in my car. Cock jockey….

Lone Star gave me one phone call and there was really only one man who I figured would be able to spread the word far and wide and try to send some assistance my way. That man was Snow. To add insult to injury, I’d loaned Ash 100k to buy a plot of land and that meant I had nothing but pocket change – not enough for my bail, not enough to settle my fines and certainly not enough to finance any activity to guarantee my freedom, legal or otherwise. I was in Snow’s hands and in the hands of my comrades. Ki-rinn and Glyph were out there in Vegas somewhere and I just had to hope that I’d built up enough credit with them to making rescuing me seem worthwhile.

I got another night in the slammer for my troubles and early in the morning, was rudely awoken by the screws. I was bundled into a prison van, with Ash and another few villains and set off for our appointment before the Beak. En route, I felt the subtle shift of weight then a rapid change in momentum as the prison van’s brakes were squeezed and then slammed on. Ash wasn’t quite so wise to the movements of the chassis and as the tyres began to squeal in protest, Ash was thrown sideways, smashing his head against the safety cage.
With the thump of vehicle on vehicle, we came to an abrupt stop. It was obvious there was a break on, whether for us or one of the other inmates I couldn’t say, but I knew what was going to come next and despite cursing him for a chump, I moved to protect Ash prone body with my own.

Continues: 2/4>
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Sure enough, there was a muffled explosion from the rear of the van and the lock popped through pinging off of the security cage. Our minder cranked his shotgun but the door swung open and two quick bursts of small arms fire dropped him where he stood. Glyph swung the door open and beckoned us out. I could hear further gunshots from outside so I knew that Ki-rinn and maybe one or two of the other guys were nearby but man, I have never been so happy to see Rapunzel in my life. I was wrapped! We hauled Ash’ sorry carcass out and with Frosty urging a hasty retreat, we blazed. Ash and I had been strapped with electronic tags and I knew we would have to get them off sharpish if we were to avoid immediately being tagged and traced. Ki-rinn set about cutting the tag off of Ash while Glyph filled me in.

The Daring Duo had spent an eventful night raiding the local impound yard and had managed to retrieve my vehicle. It had been stripped of weapons and personal effects and the engine management system had been locked up separately to immobilize it. They’d had to substitute an engine management system from another vehicle but they had got my ride and that was the main thing. The damage done by running the wrong EMS was hardly going to be permanent! Bad news was, that Johnson had gotten wind of our little excursion to the big house and had decided we just weren’t pro enough for his corporation. I was going to fetch Mr Contacts a hefty smack upside his damn swede for bringing that on us later on. From the sounds of the tazer built into the E-tag discharging into Ash’ leg as Frosty struggled to get it off, it sounded as though K was getting his payback right there and then. I don’t pretend to understand Johnson’s position. Sounds like a crock of drek to me. He’d changed the parameters of the deal himself two or three times without a word of complaint from us. Frankly, he owed us. Without our intel, he would have known nothing about what had been going on. Didn’t stop him from dropping us though. Hell, WE didn’t know who he represented so there was hardly any connection between us and his organisation – how was our misfortune with Lone Star going to kick back on him?!

Hell, whatever. It WAS unprofessional to let something so minor throw such a spanner in the works of our operation. I knew Ki-rinn would have something to say later on but I knew I’d already learnt my lessons. (1) Stay tooled.
(2) Run under a SINless identity. (3) Don’t fly solo and (4) Fuck the Corps – they’ve been nothing but trouble to our team the whole time we’ve been running. I’m not inclined to work their circuit again.

Frosty finally got the E-tag off of Ash but I was still running hot and we’d picked up a helicopter tail. We slowed and stopped to let Ki-rinn dive out and head over to where they’d left my ride. He was hoping to run decoy but I stayed in Glyph’s car – I knew the Chopper would have painted the Eurocar and it was my tag they were trailing so there was no point trying to throw them off of my scent. As we hit the highway once more, K took off in the other direction. Pursuit was dogged and relentless, so I finally admitted defeat and pulled over to let Rapunzel shoot off my E-tag. I realised then, as she pointed her gun at my ankle, I trusted her to make the shot. Shame she couldn’t do anything about the anti-tamper Tazer discharge. My vision swam and everything faded to black…

I came round, who knows how long later, to find myself all neatly strapped in with a worried Glyph panicking about the Lone Star chopper she’d been unable to shake and the snake of patrol cars winding back across the desert.
We were nearing the San Fran city limits and Glyph had a point – any minute now we were going to run out of road and luck. Surely Lone Star Vegas had radioed ahead and alerted their Bay Area colleagues. Hell, according to Rapunzel the determined bastards had even hung around while she took an excursion into Tir Tangire to try and shake them.

I was woozy but without the E-tag on my leg, all of my Cyberwear was coming back online and I had an archived electronic warfare programme on my PAN.
That little doozy worked like a dream and with the laser painting broken, Glyph was able to dive into Golden Gate park and break the chopper’s visual.

Continues: 3/4>
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We were back on home turf and free from pursuit but it quickly became obvious that things wouldn’t be getting back to normal for a while. There were unmarked police cars staking out my home and lock up, one outside my folks’ place and one tailing Kitty. I need to give a word out here to Glyph who has been an absolute diamond. She let Ki-rinn park my dirty Dodge in her clinically clean workshop and says it can stay put until I replace the EMS.
She offered my carcass the sofa to sleep on until the heat lose interest in my place and she took the risk of heading down to the lock up and pretending to be a customer collecting the jeep. If not for her cojones, I’d have nothing to drive! All of which is to say nothing for the simple fact of her putting her ass on the line to help bust me out of jail.

Ash hightailed it the minute we hit the city centre. I could see in his eyes that he knew damn well he’d fucked up and it was tearing him apart. Yes, he made a dumb mistake leaving that Lone Star Manhunter in my car after I’d warned him about the possibility that it was tagged but I was the one who couldn’t throw down against a single beat cop on my own and he only got arrested because he came to haul my ass out of the fire. I’ve said my piece and as far as I’m concerned, that’s it, enough said, done. I hope he doesn’t let it hit him too hard. I’ve still got his back 100 per cent. If nothing else, I owe him one for doing his best to prevent me from being arrested.

I’m worried for him though because in an attempt to rectify his mistake, he’s gone straight off and done a dodgy deal to secure a run worth 250,000 Nuyen. The run is to snaffle a statuette from San Fran State Museum and the only guarantee we’ve got that there will be a payout afterwards is one brief phone call with some German Johnson. I certainly can’t afford to turn it down though and we’re resolved to tackle the museum tonight.

For my part, I want this record to disappear. I don’t want to be a fugitive, hiding out in San Fran rather than heading round to see my folks and my girl. I’ve learnt my lesson, I need a SINless ID to Run with, but I want to keep my legit ID as well. I can’t Shadowrun for ever after all and at some point I intend to make a pukka business of VI Customs and I’ll need Vincent Caznotti’s SIN to make that dream reality.

Fortunately, while I may not have the same breadth of contacts as Ash, those that I do have, I keep for a reason. Like Capt. Duncan Croner of San Fran Lone Star. He’s got dirt on us but we have dirt on him too and I’m sure there’s a little bit of a favour owed both ways. I tapped Frost up to see whether or not El Capitan could do anything to make my record disappear. We heard back not long ago. Croner might be inclined to help if we deal with a little problem for him first. I’ve told Ash to help and to be fair to my man, he’s more than willing. Glyph, again a diamond in the rough, also threw her hat into the ring. As expected, Ki-rinn had some wise words. He thinks I’m being foolish and that Croner might be out just to set me up. He’d much rather I let him work his Matrix magic and let Vinnie Caznotti die so that Six can truly live. That said, he respects my position and he has got my back – he’s in for the job too.

So we’re off tonight to raid the San Fran State Museum and then tomorrow we expect to hear back from Snow letting us know exactly what price Croner has put on his services. I’ve been involved in a goof-up these past couple of days and by and large, I’ve been lucky enough to get away with it. Now, it’s time to make amends and put things back on track. I owe Ki-rinn and Glyph big time too. My incarceration scotched a good job for the whole team, I’ll not forget that and I’ll not let them down when it comes to making my reparations.

Mood: Determined.

Ends: 4/4>
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