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?...
Showing posts with label ki-rin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ki-rin. Show all posts
Monday, October 22, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
The Rock. Part 2
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…
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…
Friday, July 27, 2007
Finding Blake
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…
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…
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Mage in the Volcano.
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.
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.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Back to the Facilty. Looking for Ford.
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.
Glyph, Ki-Rin, Six, Ash, Drifter
Glyph, Ki-Rin and Ash returned from the barrens with the business card that they had acquired from the gang called the Whites. Six was back up and well, and had met Drifter who was back in town looking for work. The team all met back up and discussed their options.
Ki-Rin was the first to do some legwork in the matrix. He tracked down the number for the Mr. Johnson and hacked into his comlink. He had some security but Ki-Rin bypassed that with ease and was able to have a sniff round. The Mr. Johnson was a Lone Star Facilitator, whatever that meant, and he had files on hundreds of people including Dr. Ford. The data itself was deleted though. Six contacted Croner, his Lone Star contact and found out that a Facilitator was the Lone Star equivalent of the Company man. He arranged for things that the normal bobby on the beat can’t do.
They decided after some debate to arrange for a meeting with this Johnson, and Drifter was going to make the meet as he hadn’t been seen by anyone involved in this shadowrun and was the least likely to trigger suspicions.
The team decamped to the Bowlarama and Ice rink complex, and set themselves up in various locations within eavesdropping distance of Drifter. The Johnson arrived and quickly deduced who it was he needed to meet. After introductions they asked him about Dr. Manton Ford, and after a fee was negotiated, he told them that he was solely responsible for Dr. Ford’s disappearance. He worked for Cross before he moved across to Lone Star, and while there was instructed to extract Ford and move him to Nixon by someone higher up in Cross Applied Technologies. Ford’s life was being threatened and Johnson’s job was to make him disappear. After scrubbing his identity and hiding him out in the barrens for a few days, Dr. Manton Ford became John Austin, resident of Nixon, and employee of Tectonic Industries.
The runners had been to Nixon before when they had launched the attack on the underwater facility at Pyramid lake. The team kitted up and set off.
Arriving late into the afternoon the runners headed directly round to the home address given to them for Manton Ford, and after a bit of surveillance Ki-Rin and Ash went in with some smooth talking and good hacking they were inside the flat without a problem. It was an off the peg residence with standard fixtures and fittings and barely any personal touches. They did find a smashed up comlink and after traling through the damaged memory they found that Ford was receiving instructions from Dominic [assumed to be Dominic Cross] and his demands appeared to be driving Ford to acts of frustration, including the smashed comlink. Ki-Rin scanned the airwaves for any other signals in the building and found that there was a camera that was fixed in the lighting. Not part of the building security and the team suspected that it was there to keep an eye on Ford. There was nothing that they could do about the signals that had already been broadcast, but Ki-Rin recovered the hard memory and watched back the moments that led Ford to smash his comlink and then leave the apartment the following morning.
The runners feared that he had become spooked by Dominic’s demands and did a search on his credit trail and car. They were surprised and pleased to discover that he hadn’t fled as first thought and was in fact smack bang back at the facility that they had bombed not so long ago.
It was about now that the Juggler informed Ash that his brother, Blake, had been drafted into Cross Applied Technologies mini army, called Seraphim. Ash took the information on board but could do nothing about it at the time.
The team headed off to have another look, and after parking up in the same place that they did last time out and walking the trail that they did they looked down onto a building site. A lot of the pre-fab buildings had gone, and some kind of bio-dome was being erected over the whole site. There were dive teams working the lake, and there was a good deal of construction activity all over the place.
Ki-Rin cracked out his sniper cannon and started scoping the site. He picked out their mark, Ford, inside a building talking to a site foreman, and while Glyph tumbled her way into a better position, Six dispatched the flyspy.
The flyspy made it’s way in and using a circuitous route crawled it’s way onto Ford’s jacket, but the keen eyed foreman spotted it and swatted it thinking it to be a biting bug. When they saw that the insect was actually a small drone, Ford got onto the phone. The runners knew the game was up and moved. Ki-Rin handed over the sniper cannon to Glyph and led the walking charge down toward the compound with Ash and Drifter in tow. Six remote controlled the trio of vehicles to the site and ran to meet up with them.
Entering the site wasn’t too hard, the civilian contractors fell under Ki-Rin’s stick-shock rounds and the trio made their way quickly toward the building where Ford was. A helicopter thundered overhead, a rapid response troop transporter flew low. Glyph started shooting at it but didn’t have enough time to bring down the chopper before it was able to unload its cargo of six heavily armoured soldiers. A squad of Seraphim troopers.
They moved quickly and began shooting up the team who had made their way inside the building and had dropped Manton Ford. Bullets flew and the runners found themselves fighting a desperate battle with Glyph firing armour piercing shot after another, even these shots were being mostly deflected by their armour. Ash and Drifter were taken down, and only with the aid of their team did they survive.
After the smoke had cleared and the team had survived did what had transpired dawn on Ash, who frantically checked the bodies of the Seraphim soldiers to see of they were his brother. None were, but this didn’t stop the rush of emotion which took over Ash.
The others were out of there, with an unconscious Ford and Six knew that now was not the time for Ash to be soul searching, he picked him up and bundled him into his car and the team left the scene.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Pig in the Barrens
Wednesday 25th October 2070
Ki-Rin, Ash, Glyph.
The runners have been approached by The Juggler who has told them of his friend Book, who has taken into his possession an orachalcum book that had belonged to Dominic Cross and was in some way related to the Shedim, Allisom. The Juggler has since been informed that the book could be key to destroying Allisom and now wants the runners to help him find his friend and the book for the fee of 50k and the promise that the Juggler will do everything in his power to find Ash’s brother, Blake.
The runners had tangled with Book more recently that the Jugglers last sighting, and remembered that they had seen him headed for Las Vegas with an unidentified man in a cowboy hat. They had traced him to the Volcano, a club in Vegas. They had also seen Book at a party that had been held by Dr. Manton ford, a man that they were employed to terminate, but failed to do so.
It was nearly 3am by the time that they had pooled their information, but they were keen to make the move there and then and rushed round to the house where they had spied Manton Ford. Six was beginning to come down with some kind of flu that was making it hard for him to focus and he elected to stay in the van while the others went in.
They had spotted that security had been ramped up since the last time they were parked outside the doctors AAA mansion but Ki-Rin worked the security from the matrix, disabled the alarms, and looped the cameras to playback the previous night. They then headed over toward the front gate. A pair of security guards spotted them but did nothing as they were presently only loitering. They didn’t seem to care for the idle banter that the runners were offering, so Glyph opened fire on them, Ki-Rin dropped the second before Ash could even get his hand on his gun.
The trio stole into the property and made their way into the house. Ki-Rin mooched around downstairs and found a fridge full of beer. He helped himself and couldn’t help but think that Manton Ford didn’t seem the type to drink this much beer.
Ash and Glyph headed up stairs, and Ash made his way into the main bedroom, stick-shocking the pair in the bed. He then flicked the light on and drew back the covers to find a young couple now comatose. The man he recognised, an up and coming simsense musician called Johnny Rock.
The runners had a brief discussion before leaving. Ash convinced Ki-Rin to find out when the house had been sold and where ford had gone, and after a bit of a data search Ki-Rin found that Ford had stopped paying his rent from July 1st and had defaulted the house. Not only his household bills stopped being paid, everything, his SIN trace, transactions, his comlink activity, all had stopped on the 1st of July. The runners retired for the night planning on heading out to Las Vegas the following morning.
Six’s fever got progressively worse, and by the morning he was in no state to do anything but lie in bed.
Thursday 26th October 2070
Ash got a mysterious message left on his comlink advising him that if he was to find Dr. Ford, then it might be worth talking to Sergeant Buck at the NRA shooting range in downtown. The team met at Ki-Rin’s before heading off to the range.
The team went through a few checks at the range before they were let in, and they met up with Sergeant Buck, a shooting instructor. They asked about Dr. Ford, and after some money changed hands, Buck told them that he used to be part of a Cross Applied Technologies elite guard called Seraphim, he quit when the Corporation began to fall apart and his squad was being bolstered with “console kids” who had only done simulator missions. But the last mission he had done before he left involved Dr. Manton Ford. For some reason Cross (or whoever his employer was that day) wanted him extracting for his own safety, and then have him delivered out to the barrens where he was to be handed over to a street gang called the Whites. He gave the runners the coordinates and told them that the gang leader was called Silence. The runners chatted for a bit longer, and one ex-forces man to another Ki-Rin made a new contact.
The team decided to head out. Ki-Rin bought a third hand scrambler bike, and then joined Ash and Glyph on the rat bike that they had acquired a while ago.
After an uneventful drive into the barrens the runners found the hang out for the Whites, an old power station. A rough barricade had been set up around the perimeter and as they rode up the runners were approached by the spokesman of the barricade. He insisted that they could only see Silence if they were unarmed, and not keen to leave his battle rifle and the bikes in the barrens unattended, Ki-Rin went in alone leaving Glyph and Ash on watch.
Silence was a two bit gang leader who had beaten his way to the top. He had charges to look after and a rival gang was causing him troubles. He decided that the information he had about Ford was clearly valuable to this runner stood before him, and told Ki-Rin that he would tell him what had happened if he dealt with the other gang.
It turned out that the gang called the Razors had gotten lucky not so long ago and had managed to liberate a Lone Star Citymaster during a riot. They are now driving around in the vehicle killing the Whites and capturing and booty that they find. This riot van had been called the Pig on the streets and Silence wanted the Pig for his own gang.
Ki-Rin made a friend with a packet of cigarettes who had warned him that the Razors liked their booby traps. After Ki-Rin told the others what they had to do, he headed back to San Fran to pick up the Sniper Cannon, which would be more than capable of punching through the armour of a riot truck. Ash and Glyph headed down to the Razors territory for a bit of a mooch.
After setting up a look out from a building Glyph got bored and headed out for reconnoiter alone. In no time at all she was being followed by a couple of gangers and Glyph decided to challenge them. They drew a knife while politely asking for a tithe for walking around in their turf. Glyph drew her guns. She then began to make her way back the way she had come, aware that she was on their turf. The pair followed her although he guns were loosely trained on them. One broke off to get reinforcements the other just followed at a distance. Glyph continued to retreat and spotted one of their improvised pipe bombs that appeared to be quite obvious. She took a detour around it and stood on another explosive.
Glyph picked herself up from the explosion and dusted herself off quite unharmed but something had gone off in her head. She drew a grenade and pulled the pin, and made her way back to the ganger who was following her asking if he liked to play with explosives, the ganger was scared but he had buddies (one with a shotgun) and as his eyes flicked to his friends, Glyph drew her gun a killed both of them before they moved a muscle. The ganger ran.
Ash having watched all of this suggested that they get out of dodge and wait for Ki-Rin to get back, but Glyph was having none of it, and while Ash left she rode around the streets of Razor territory. The Razors reinforced but they also knew that the crazy has at least one grenade and a pair of SMG’s so they held back until the Pig got on the scene.
Ki-Rin called in to see Six before he picked up the sniper cannon to drop off some lemsips and was completely unaware of the action that Glyph had kicked off.
The Pig duly arrived and Glyph decided that a single handed assault of the riot van was in order. She began to ride rings around the slow moving pig on the rat bike. Inside the vehicle gangers fired from gun ports, and Glyph took many hits triggering the nanite medkit. She finally leapt on top of the vehicle and began to cut her way through the windshield. The driver rammed the vehicle trying to shake her off but she was on a one girl mission and when the rear bulk head doors opened so gangers could shoot her off she lobbed in a flash bang which disabled almost everyone.
She drove down the street triumphant, picking up Ash on the way, who bundled the unconscious gangers out onto the street. Glyph phoned up Ki-Rin to tell him that the sniper cannon was not needed. Ki-Rin rode back to make the hand over with Silence.
Silence was pleased and told Ki-Rin that he had been approached by a suit who wanted the gang to look after a man and ensure that no harm came to him, when he made arrangements for him to disappear. Silence agreed and a few days after that call, a team of soldiers arrived in a helicopter and dropped off the man. Silence and the Whites looked after him for two days, and then another helicopter turned up and the man was taken away. Silence had kept the business card left by the suit. A Mr. Johnson, and a telephone number, and he handed that over to Ki-Rin.
Ki-Rin, Ash, Glyph.
The runners have been approached by The Juggler who has told them of his friend Book, who has taken into his possession an orachalcum book that had belonged to Dominic Cross and was in some way related to the Shedim, Allisom. The Juggler has since been informed that the book could be key to destroying Allisom and now wants the runners to help him find his friend and the book for the fee of 50k and the promise that the Juggler will do everything in his power to find Ash’s brother, Blake.
The runners had tangled with Book more recently that the Jugglers last sighting, and remembered that they had seen him headed for Las Vegas with an unidentified man in a cowboy hat. They had traced him to the Volcano, a club in Vegas. They had also seen Book at a party that had been held by Dr. Manton ford, a man that they were employed to terminate, but failed to do so.
It was nearly 3am by the time that they had pooled their information, but they were keen to make the move there and then and rushed round to the house where they had spied Manton Ford. Six was beginning to come down with some kind of flu that was making it hard for him to focus and he elected to stay in the van while the others went in.
They had spotted that security had been ramped up since the last time they were parked outside the doctors AAA mansion but Ki-Rin worked the security from the matrix, disabled the alarms, and looped the cameras to playback the previous night. They then headed over toward the front gate. A pair of security guards spotted them but did nothing as they were presently only loitering. They didn’t seem to care for the idle banter that the runners were offering, so Glyph opened fire on them, Ki-Rin dropped the second before Ash could even get his hand on his gun.
The trio stole into the property and made their way into the house. Ki-Rin mooched around downstairs and found a fridge full of beer. He helped himself and couldn’t help but think that Manton Ford didn’t seem the type to drink this much beer.
Ash and Glyph headed up stairs, and Ash made his way into the main bedroom, stick-shocking the pair in the bed. He then flicked the light on and drew back the covers to find a young couple now comatose. The man he recognised, an up and coming simsense musician called Johnny Rock.
The runners had a brief discussion before leaving. Ash convinced Ki-Rin to find out when the house had been sold and where ford had gone, and after a bit of a data search Ki-Rin found that Ford had stopped paying his rent from July 1st and had defaulted the house. Not only his household bills stopped being paid, everything, his SIN trace, transactions, his comlink activity, all had stopped on the 1st of July. The runners retired for the night planning on heading out to Las Vegas the following morning.
Six’s fever got progressively worse, and by the morning he was in no state to do anything but lie in bed.
Thursday 26th October 2070
Ash got a mysterious message left on his comlink advising him that if he was to find Dr. Ford, then it might be worth talking to Sergeant Buck at the NRA shooting range in downtown. The team met at Ki-Rin’s before heading off to the range.
The team went through a few checks at the range before they were let in, and they met up with Sergeant Buck, a shooting instructor. They asked about Dr. Ford, and after some money changed hands, Buck told them that he used to be part of a Cross Applied Technologies elite guard called Seraphim, he quit when the Corporation began to fall apart and his squad was being bolstered with “console kids” who had only done simulator missions. But the last mission he had done before he left involved Dr. Manton Ford. For some reason Cross (or whoever his employer was that day) wanted him extracting for his own safety, and then have him delivered out to the barrens where he was to be handed over to a street gang called the Whites. He gave the runners the coordinates and told them that the gang leader was called Silence. The runners chatted for a bit longer, and one ex-forces man to another Ki-Rin made a new contact.
The team decided to head out. Ki-Rin bought a third hand scrambler bike, and then joined Ash and Glyph on the rat bike that they had acquired a while ago.
After an uneventful drive into the barrens the runners found the hang out for the Whites, an old power station. A rough barricade had been set up around the perimeter and as they rode up the runners were approached by the spokesman of the barricade. He insisted that they could only see Silence if they were unarmed, and not keen to leave his battle rifle and the bikes in the barrens unattended, Ki-Rin went in alone leaving Glyph and Ash on watch.
Silence was a two bit gang leader who had beaten his way to the top. He had charges to look after and a rival gang was causing him troubles. He decided that the information he had about Ford was clearly valuable to this runner stood before him, and told Ki-Rin that he would tell him what had happened if he dealt with the other gang.
It turned out that the gang called the Razors had gotten lucky not so long ago and had managed to liberate a Lone Star Citymaster during a riot. They are now driving around in the vehicle killing the Whites and capturing and booty that they find. This riot van had been called the Pig on the streets and Silence wanted the Pig for his own gang.
Ki-Rin made a friend with a packet of cigarettes who had warned him that the Razors liked their booby traps. After Ki-Rin told the others what they had to do, he headed back to San Fran to pick up the Sniper Cannon, which would be more than capable of punching through the armour of a riot truck. Ash and Glyph headed down to the Razors territory for a bit of a mooch.
After setting up a look out from a building Glyph got bored and headed out for reconnoiter alone. In no time at all she was being followed by a couple of gangers and Glyph decided to challenge them. They drew a knife while politely asking for a tithe for walking around in their turf. Glyph drew her guns. She then began to make her way back the way she had come, aware that she was on their turf. The pair followed her although he guns were loosely trained on them. One broke off to get reinforcements the other just followed at a distance. Glyph continued to retreat and spotted one of their improvised pipe bombs that appeared to be quite obvious. She took a detour around it and stood on another explosive.
Glyph picked herself up from the explosion and dusted herself off quite unharmed but something had gone off in her head. She drew a grenade and pulled the pin, and made her way back to the ganger who was following her asking if he liked to play with explosives, the ganger was scared but he had buddies (one with a shotgun) and as his eyes flicked to his friends, Glyph drew her gun a killed both of them before they moved a muscle. The ganger ran.
Ash having watched all of this suggested that they get out of dodge and wait for Ki-Rin to get back, but Glyph was having none of it, and while Ash left she rode around the streets of Razor territory. The Razors reinforced but they also knew that the crazy has at least one grenade and a pair of SMG’s so they held back until the Pig got on the scene.
Ki-Rin called in to see Six before he picked up the sniper cannon to drop off some lemsips and was completely unaware of the action that Glyph had kicked off.
The Pig duly arrived and Glyph decided that a single handed assault of the riot van was in order. She began to ride rings around the slow moving pig on the rat bike. Inside the vehicle gangers fired from gun ports, and Glyph took many hits triggering the nanite medkit. She finally leapt on top of the vehicle and began to cut her way through the windshield. The driver rammed the vehicle trying to shake her off but she was on a one girl mission and when the rear bulk head doors opened so gangers could shoot her off she lobbed in a flash bang which disabled almost everyone.
She drove down the street triumphant, picking up Ash on the way, who bundled the unconscious gangers out onto the street. Glyph phoned up Ki-Rin to tell him that the sniper cannon was not needed. Ki-Rin rode back to make the hand over with Silence.
Silence was pleased and told Ki-Rin that he had been approached by a suit who wanted the gang to look after a man and ensure that no harm came to him, when he made arrangements for him to disappear. Silence agreed and a few days after that call, a team of soldiers arrived in a helicopter and dropped off the man. Silence and the Whites looked after him for two days, and then another helicopter turned up and the man was taken away. Silence had kept the business card left by the suit. A Mr. Johnson, and a telephone number, and he handed that over to Ki-Rin.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
The Jugglers hit on Cross
Six (book), Glyph (O’Bannon), Ash (Slab), Ki-Rin (Fenix)
Wednesday 25th October 2070
The runners were contacted by their St. Doc contact, Mal. He seemed a bit odd on the phone and when the runners headed to meet him at 11pm as instructed they were cautious. He met them in his surgery at the back of the Gym and sat them down in his office. He then asked the runners if they remembered when they had first met, and they recalled that they were trying to track down The Juggler. He then began to tell them a story of a run against Cross Applied Technologies that happened over six months ago.
Friday 3rd March 2070
The gang sat in the back room of Clive’s Dive for 20 minutes. The Juggler was always late. There was the dark skinned, bespectacled mage, Book. The street doctor, Mal. The troll bruiser Slab, the face of the party, O’Bannon. And the covert ops specialist, Fenix.
The Juggler turned up and like always carried on as if he wasn’t late. He had another hit against Cross Applied technologies. He had been tipped off that Dominic Cross had recently acquired a small book, the pages made from orachalchum. His little bird also had suggested that this book had something to do with summoning a spirit called a Shedim, and the Juggler thought it best that they recovered this book before Dominc got himself into trouble with things he shouldn’t.
O’Bannon had a contact on the inside of Cross Applied technologies, a security guard who would be prepared to open the doors and things. The team began to put together a plan.
The team were going to go into Cross HQ late into the evening disguised as cleaners. They would make their way up to the 15th Floor where they suspected the book to be. Book would confirm the location of the book by assaying the area astrally before they set off. The team split up to get hold of the various bits and pieces, ammo, overalls and cleaning equipment, a battered van and signage to imply a contract cleaning company. O’Bannon let his contact know that they wanted the underground car park un-attended, and also asked for passes for the five of them. His CATco Security guard contact obliged.
The Juggler made his way into Mal’s surgery to the surprise of the runners. Six was especially perturbed as last time out The Juggler was the enemy. But he came with coffee as a gesture of goodwill, and the story Mal was telling was making for interesting listening, the enemy of my enemy and all that. The juggler just encouraged Mal to carry on to the good bit.
The team went in. Book was able to confirm that the book was clearly visible from the astral plane even though the 15th floor was isolated from the astral plane by a bacteria shield that had been embedded into the walls, floor, roof and glazing.
The team snuck in, and the security guards waved them past without really studying their ID’s. Inside the team were again waved past by the security guards who were quite blasé, although after they had made their way to the lifts, they did notice that the guards were making a quick phone call to someone. It was enough to make O’Bannon nervous and he contacted his security guy, who told him that all was fine.
The team made their way to the 8th floor where they had to change lifts, and were briefly accosted by an indignant cleaning lady who was having her floor invaded by outside contract cleaners. (When she buzzed down to security she was told that they were going to be got rid of shortly). Fenix was sure that they were being flanked by some security and went into a door that had just clicked shut, backed up by Slab. Going in there was a stressed out young exec who was working late. He didn’t like being disturbed and decided to run the ID he had demanded off the cleaners through the database so that he could file a complaint. Slab made out that he was getting the bin, before inverting it and jamming it onto the head of the suit. Fenix lifted the bin off the stunned exec, and then smacked him out cold with a decorative glass paperweight.
The team continued up. This time using the emergency stairs. Rather than the lifts. They made it up to the 14th floor, the last floor they could get up to before changing lifts one last time to get to Dominic Cross’s executive apartments on the 15th. Book too a quick peak through the wall in the astral plane and saw that there were guards out there, and also a watcher spirit. He warned the others who burst from the stairwell, guns blazing.
The fire fight was short lived, Book took on a watcher spirit in astral combat and dismissed it with flagrant ease, and the rest of security were dropped without too much of a problem by the other runners. Almost too easy. The team dashed across to the lift and Fenix bypassed the executive override system. Book thought of a gap in the security and astrally projected through the lift out into the apartment. He found the orachalchum book. And there was some kind of spirit actually reading the astral form of the book. The mage returned to his body and warned the team what was up there.
The lift came and they all headed up. They spread out in the plush apartment of Dominic Cross. The book was left open on a table. Switching his perception from the mundane and astral planes Book could see the spirit regarding them and almost encouraging them to take the orachachum artefact. Slab found Dominic Cross in one of his offices, his eyes black pits, he was coughing up blood. Slab killed him there and then.
Book was worried with how keen the malevolent spirit was with them taking the book and he sought advice from contacts, and the rest of the team, take the book, destroy the book, leave it here. In the end the mage took charge, took responsibility for the magical artefact and they left…
And this is where Mal ended the story. The Juggler then took over explaining what happened since. The mage had taken the book, and over the course of about a month had lost contact with his friends, and now was missing. The Juggler had received advice that implied that this book was key to dispelling this Shedim, and now wanted the runners in to help.
Knowing that the Juggler knew a bit about CATCo, Ash asked if he knew about the Dreamseed project, about Perfect Shooter, and about his brother, Blake, who was missing again and probably in the clutches of whichever guise Cross Applied was working under. The Juggler knew nothing new.
Six wanted to see the colour of the green, and when they were offered 50k they were set to leave. The Juggler came in with one last offer. 50k to cover the expenses of finding his friend, and the book that could deal a death blow to Alisom, and in return The Juggler would pull his resources to help find Blake…
Ash was set to refuse the job on account of being fragged with too many times over this. Yet something in the Jugglers voice made him really believe that he could help. Six was there and would back up Ash no matter what. Glyph and Ki-Rin were also ready to back up their team.
The runners and the Juggler traded information for many hours, they learned that the Notable Anarchists was a front used by the Juggler to strike out at incursions by a type of spirit called a horror. Alisom was just one Shedim trying to pervert one corporation, but there were many more, The Juggler was at the forefront of the battle, trying to stem the tide. the Dragon, Alamais, who also worked against these spirits was financially backing the Notable Anarchists.
The runners then remembered that they had seen Book more recently than the Juggler. He was embroiled in a run that they had trying to solve the deaths in the Castro sector. They had seen him enjoying a party with Dr. Manton Ford, a man they were paid to kill but failed to do after the run went sour. They also trailed the mage, Book, to Las Vegas again before the run went wrong.
They had some leads and were going to start with Dr. Manton Ford…
Wednesday 25th October 2070
The runners were contacted by their St. Doc contact, Mal. He seemed a bit odd on the phone and when the runners headed to meet him at 11pm as instructed they were cautious. He met them in his surgery at the back of the Gym and sat them down in his office. He then asked the runners if they remembered when they had first met, and they recalled that they were trying to track down The Juggler. He then began to tell them a story of a run against Cross Applied Technologies that happened over six months ago.
Friday 3rd March 2070
The gang sat in the back room of Clive’s Dive for 20 minutes. The Juggler was always late. There was the dark skinned, bespectacled mage, Book. The street doctor, Mal. The troll bruiser Slab, the face of the party, O’Bannon. And the covert ops specialist, Fenix.
The Juggler turned up and like always carried on as if he wasn’t late. He had another hit against Cross Applied technologies. He had been tipped off that Dominic Cross had recently acquired a small book, the pages made from orachalchum. His little bird also had suggested that this book had something to do with summoning a spirit called a Shedim, and the Juggler thought it best that they recovered this book before Dominc got himself into trouble with things he shouldn’t.
O’Bannon had a contact on the inside of Cross Applied technologies, a security guard who would be prepared to open the doors and things. The team began to put together a plan.
The team were going to go into Cross HQ late into the evening disguised as cleaners. They would make their way up to the 15th Floor where they suspected the book to be. Book would confirm the location of the book by assaying the area astrally before they set off. The team split up to get hold of the various bits and pieces, ammo, overalls and cleaning equipment, a battered van and signage to imply a contract cleaning company. O’Bannon let his contact know that they wanted the underground car park un-attended, and also asked for passes for the five of them. His CATco Security guard contact obliged.
The Juggler made his way into Mal’s surgery to the surprise of the runners. Six was especially perturbed as last time out The Juggler was the enemy. But he came with coffee as a gesture of goodwill, and the story Mal was telling was making for interesting listening, the enemy of my enemy and all that. The juggler just encouraged Mal to carry on to the good bit.
The team went in. Book was able to confirm that the book was clearly visible from the astral plane even though the 15th floor was isolated from the astral plane by a bacteria shield that had been embedded into the walls, floor, roof and glazing.
The team snuck in, and the security guards waved them past without really studying their ID’s. Inside the team were again waved past by the security guards who were quite blasé, although after they had made their way to the lifts, they did notice that the guards were making a quick phone call to someone. It was enough to make O’Bannon nervous and he contacted his security guy, who told him that all was fine.
The team made their way to the 8th floor where they had to change lifts, and were briefly accosted by an indignant cleaning lady who was having her floor invaded by outside contract cleaners. (When she buzzed down to security she was told that they were going to be got rid of shortly). Fenix was sure that they were being flanked by some security and went into a door that had just clicked shut, backed up by Slab. Going in there was a stressed out young exec who was working late. He didn’t like being disturbed and decided to run the ID he had demanded off the cleaners through the database so that he could file a complaint. Slab made out that he was getting the bin, before inverting it and jamming it onto the head of the suit. Fenix lifted the bin off the stunned exec, and then smacked him out cold with a decorative glass paperweight.
The team continued up. This time using the emergency stairs. Rather than the lifts. They made it up to the 14th floor, the last floor they could get up to before changing lifts one last time to get to Dominic Cross’s executive apartments on the 15th. Book too a quick peak through the wall in the astral plane and saw that there were guards out there, and also a watcher spirit. He warned the others who burst from the stairwell, guns blazing.
The fire fight was short lived, Book took on a watcher spirit in astral combat and dismissed it with flagrant ease, and the rest of security were dropped without too much of a problem by the other runners. Almost too easy. The team dashed across to the lift and Fenix bypassed the executive override system. Book thought of a gap in the security and astrally projected through the lift out into the apartment. He found the orachalchum book. And there was some kind of spirit actually reading the astral form of the book. The mage returned to his body and warned the team what was up there.
The lift came and they all headed up. They spread out in the plush apartment of Dominic Cross. The book was left open on a table. Switching his perception from the mundane and astral planes Book could see the spirit regarding them and almost encouraging them to take the orachachum artefact. Slab found Dominic Cross in one of his offices, his eyes black pits, he was coughing up blood. Slab killed him there and then.
Book was worried with how keen the malevolent spirit was with them taking the book and he sought advice from contacts, and the rest of the team, take the book, destroy the book, leave it here. In the end the mage took charge, took responsibility for the magical artefact and they left…
And this is where Mal ended the story. The Juggler then took over explaining what happened since. The mage had taken the book, and over the course of about a month had lost contact with his friends, and now was missing. The Juggler had received advice that implied that this book was key to dispelling this Shedim, and now wanted the runners in to help.
Knowing that the Juggler knew a bit about CATCo, Ash asked if he knew about the Dreamseed project, about Perfect Shooter, and about his brother, Blake, who was missing again and probably in the clutches of whichever guise Cross Applied was working under. The Juggler knew nothing new.
Six wanted to see the colour of the green, and when they were offered 50k they were set to leave. The Juggler came in with one last offer. 50k to cover the expenses of finding his friend, and the book that could deal a death blow to Alisom, and in return The Juggler would pull his resources to help find Blake…
Ash was set to refuse the job on account of being fragged with too many times over this. Yet something in the Jugglers voice made him really believe that he could help. Six was there and would back up Ash no matter what. Glyph and Ki-Rin were also ready to back up their team.
The runners and the Juggler traded information for many hours, they learned that the Notable Anarchists was a front used by the Juggler to strike out at incursions by a type of spirit called a horror. Alisom was just one Shedim trying to pervert one corporation, but there were many more, The Juggler was at the forefront of the battle, trying to stem the tide. the Dragon, Alamais, who also worked against these spirits was financially backing the Notable Anarchists.
The runners then remembered that they had seen Book more recently than the Juggler. He was embroiled in a run that they had trying to solve the deaths in the Castro sector. They had seen him enjoying a party with Dr. Manton Ford, a man they were paid to kill but failed to do after the run went sour. They also trailed the mage, Book, to Las Vegas again before the run went wrong.
They had some leads and were going to start with Dr. Manton Ford…
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Project Buttercup
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?
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?
Thursday, March 08, 2007
The Eleven Nameless Men
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.
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.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
The end of Simon Crusher
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.
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.
Friday, February 23, 2007
The Facility assault
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.
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.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Deal with the Dragon
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.
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.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Storm the Genesis magic research facility
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 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…
Monday, January 08, 2007
The missing Ocean Blue exec.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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