I decided I'd post the journals from my 5e Shadowrun campaign. The campaign is an ongoing face to face campaign that runs only about once per month at the most. The adventures are pretty much all home brew content.
It's set in L.A. in 2076.
Session #1 (A night on the town),
Runners: Skull (elf adept), Big Nasty (orc, street sammy), Hashtag (human decker), Tip (human, occult investigator)
The runners are recruited by an agent named Tony Milan who represents B trideo star Bruce Lanceman. They are to accompany Bruce for a night out in LA, ostensibly acting as his hired muscle. He will be streaming his night on the town on his p2.0 feed, so part of the job is to be entertaining.
The next evening (Saturday, March 7th, 2076) Bruce picks them up in at a burger joint in Studio City. He’s driving a purple, custom, open topped low rider and he’s wearing a batman costume- a prop from the Batman vs Predator movie he played in back in the mid 2060s. Accompanying him is a well known gangsta rapper named Monsta. Monsta is a hairless freak with scaly orthoskin and shark teeth implants. Monsta’s posse follows behind them in an SUV. The runners pile into the low rider’s two back seats and they head for the Athena- a night club that has just opened at the top of a luxury hotel called the Olympus.
Things get interesting at the club when they are out on the patio and Tip takes note of basketball star Dwayne Mosley and his super model girl friend Tara Ambers. Tara Ambers is a cat shaman, and she is in the midst of projecting astrally and giving comedian Jerry Sanders an astral lap dance, much to the amusement of her NBA boyfriend. Things get crazy suddenly when Tip is scanning astral space and notices a few hostile spirits rapidly closing in on Tara's astral form. She identifies them as demonic Shedim- a strange type of spirit from an unknown metaplane that are said to be capable of possessing the bodies of the recently deceased and giving them a semblance of life. Tip tries to warn Tara, but she can’t get to her in time. Two of the shedim start ripping apart Tara’s astral form, while a third one takes possession of her empty body.
Tip tries to help her by jumping on her and attempting an exorcism, a metamagic feat that Tip has yet to fully master. Big Nasty helps to hold Tara down. Unfortunately the spirit proves too difficult to cast out of Tara’s body, and a possessed Tara slashes manically at Tip with her hand razors and eventually throws her off, sending Tip crashing onto a low table.
Meanwhile Monsta has offered Hashtag 1500 nuyun to hack Bruce’s commlink and shut down his p2.0 feed for a few minutes. Hashtag gets on it, shutting Bruce down and leaving Monsta the only one streaming the exorcism. Bruce loses his s~!!, allowing Skull to convince him to get away from the potentially dangerous situation to have a drink. He demands that Hashtag get his p2.0 feed going again ASAP (he doesn’t seem to suspect that Hashtag was the one who shut it down). Hashtag obliges, but doesn’t make it happen too quick, causing him to miss out on covering the exorcism, giving Monsta a ratings edge.
Having failed her exorcism attempt, Tip conjures a beast spirit to attack the Shedim in attempt to save Tara. Unfortunately, it is outnumbered and isn’t able to prevent her astral form from being destroyed. It does destroy one of the shedim and a second one retreats. The third remains in Tara’s body. Bouncers quickly arrive on the scene and subdue what is now Tara’s animated corpse. Dwayne Mosley is a wreck. He confides in Tip and tells her that he has been worried about Tara for a while, as she has been making some astral trips in the evening, and he doesn’t know where she has been going. He was worried that she was having an astral affair, but now he wonders if the two things are connected. He’s too shaken up to think on it much more or offer Tip a job investigating, but he makes sure to get her contact information, and says that he might call her sometime soon.
The evening starts to drag as police are called to the scene and Tip is required to give a statement. Bruce decides he needs to shake things up, so he runs for the balcony and vaults off. His batman cape kicks in (sort of), and he starts gliding towards a boat he has waiting in the bay. Bruce had previously given Skull a parachute and warned Skull that it was an “exit strategy.” Skull takes the cue and follows after Bruce, also jumping off the balcony. S#!+ gets real when Bruce’s cape malfunctions and he starts to spin out. It looks like he’s going to hit the water pretty hard and well shy of his boat. Skull sees this and holds off on activating his chute, which is linked to his PAN. He goes into a dive and crashes into Bruce, grabbing onto the falling star and triggering his chute just in time. They hit the water a little hard and come in just short of the boat. Luckily they don’t have to spend too long in the drink before a couple of Bruce’s buddies haul them out and onto the boat. Skull is very much concerned about his exposure to the harbour water. He’s heard many a horror story about its toxicity and fears for his life. Fortunately, his exposure was pretty short, so beyond a nasty rash it seems likely he’ll be fine.
Back at the club, Nasty gets a call from Mr. Donovan the “CEO” of the Cutters street gang, of which Nasty is a member. Mr. Donovan has some urgent biz for Nasty to handle. It seems that a booster gang called the A-Kidz just destroyed one of the Cutters’ betameth labs, and Mr. Donovan cannot abide by such insolence. The Cutters are all about the bottom line, so he wants to be compensated with interest. He asks Nasty to pay a visit to the A-Kidz and issue an ultimatum- pay the Cutters 3 million in compensation or die. Big Nasty easily convinces Bruce and Monsta that this little errand will make good entertainment for the night, so a couple of hours later they all rendezvous and head for downtown.
They meet up with van full of Cutters that Mr. Donovan has sent to back Nasty up with, and then the whole crew of them roll up to the A-Kidz doss. Their pad is more of trid set than anything else. The gang is well known for their reality show “Gang Life.” And it is rumoured that they are mostly corp brats with weird cybermods payed for by Horizon- the AAA megacorp that sponsors their show. This doesn’t much concern Big Nasty. Two A-Kidz chicas are hanging out on the street when they arrive- Demon Girl and Feline, and the pair seem to think that all the company is for some sort of party that they weren’t informed about. Big Nasty let’s them keep thinking that, and the entire crew walks through the front door (except for Hastag who remains in the car). It’s a party.
They are greeted by Timberwolf the leader of the A-Kidz. He too thinks it’s some kind of publicity stunt for the show. His make up guy rushes over to attend the guests, and the cameras are rolling. Big Nasty takes point and makes it clear that he’s hear representing the Cutters, and that he’s here to make it very clear that there are consequences for f!$!ing with the gang. Timberwolf at first thinks he’s joking, and to some extent thinks his gang is untouchable because of who their daddies are because of their Horizon sponsorship. Big Nasty doesn’t give a f~#@ about daddies and sponsor; he pulls his ruger, blasting Timberwolf with a stick n shock round in the chest, intent on making sure the punk gets the message. A fight breaks out, as several of the A-Kidz rush to backup their leader as he falls to the ground twitching from a pair the stick n shock rounds. Demon Girl pulls a pistol and starts firing on Nasty. Hashtag is watching the scene through Skull’s camera drone, and he shifts to VR and moves to brick her gun, which he does with little trouble.
Skull watches the show for now, ready to help if need be, but more interested in keeping an eye on Bruce and making sure he doesn’t do something stupid that gets him killed. Two more A-Kidz b~*@%es- Big Guns and Blade Girl get in on the action. Guns predictably pulls a gun, while Blade Girl manifests a cyberblade from her forearm and starts slashing at Nasty. Nasty goes on the defensive and fends her off, while Tip conjures a beast spirit that overwhelms Big Guns with supernatural fear and sends her screaming to hide behind the bar. Skull fails to notice Gecko (another A-kid) crawling along the ceiling, and Gecko drops on Bruce just as Bruce throws a pool ball that hits Blade Girl in the back of the head. Skull blasts Gecko point blank with a gel round from his shotgun, which takes Gecko down.
Brainiac, the gang’s own decker attempts to brick Nasty’s gun, but Hashtag has it slaved to his deck, making the weapon well protected. He starts searching for Brainiac’s icon so he can engage him in cyber combat, and in seconds the two deckers are blasting it out in the matrix. Hashtag proves to be the superior Decker and has little trouble crashing Brainiac’s icon/deck.
The rest of the A-Kidz are smart enough to stay out of the fray, and they promise Nasty they’ll come up with the money. Just to be sure the message is clear, Big Nasty sets the Cutters along with Monsta and his posse loose on the common room, and they start trashing the place. Skull is all over the prospect of scoring a cyberdeck that they can sell, so he calls Nasty to go with him upstairs where Brainiac is holed up. They bust into the geek’s bedroom and take his deck. Then they decide to go after the nice Stoner Ares machinegun that Big Guns keeps in her room. Too bad they don’t notice the monowire strung across the entry! Nasty trips over it and nearly severs his foot. His boys have to come carry the poor bastard out to the van. On his way out he shoots Big Guns in the face (with a stick n shock round). His boys toss him in the van, whereupon Tip quickly enchants a healing stone. Unfortunately for Nasty, he has too much cyberware, and the stone’s magic doesn’t help.
The Cutters rush him to the street doc they use, and get him there in time to save his foot from having to be replaced. The dust up with the A-kidz brings an end to the evening’s partying. Bruce and Monsta are happy with how things went down. They both feel it was even more eventful than they had hoped. The runners are paid and head home to crash.
Session #1, GM commentary: This session was a blast to run. I love Shadowrun- so much great opportunity for interesting rp, plus gritty mechanics that really make players think twice about their actions. The main problem with Shadowrun is that there are so many f#&%ing rules. The bar of entry to this game is high, and it takes a long time to master all the subsystems. Once you get the hang of it, the game actually plays pretty good, but it can be a bit of slog if you don't have a good handle on the rules. I've played/run shadowrun off and on for over 20 years (since 2e), so I'm pretty familiar with the setting and the general mechanics, but even so, I find this game really challenging/time consuming to prep for and GM. The pay off is worth it, but it's not a game I could run weekly these days.
Session #2 (Transcendence Clinic Run)
Runners: Skull (elf adept), Big Nasty (orc, street sammy), Hashtag (human decker), Tip (human, occult investigator)
Skull is contacted by a fixer he briefly met at the Athena nightclub (Deigo Lopez). Lopez has a job in mind for him and his crew. Skull takes the meet, and has a pow wow with two Mr. Johnson’s at an indoor driving range in Fun City. The gentlemen want Skull and his crew to hit a high security, medical clinic called Transcendence and dig into their secure backup server to locate files regarding procedures done on Alexi Summers (simsense start) and Gary Cline (CEO of Horizon). They are offered 75,000 for each of the files with the possibility of additional money for other juicy files they can dig up. The Johnsons want the files within two weeks. Skull decides he’s interested in the job and he puts it out to the rest of the crew, and they decide to go for it.
They begin the planning phase of the job. Hashtag does a bunch of leg work on the matrix, digging up intel about the clinic and its security. The clinic itself is part of chain of clinics that is owned by EVO and it's located at top of Mount Wilson. They contract their security to Spartan Security Services, which is another EVO owned corp. Spartan Security Services is a 5 star security firm, capable of providing a complete range of security coverage. Over the course of his research, Hashtag comes across an interesting Jackpoint thread posted by another runner who attempted a run against the clinic. The run didn’t go so well, and this was in a large part due to his team being gassed by neurostun grenades, which the Spartan guards carry. The guards are equipped with full chemical sealed armour, which protects them from gas.
Upon sharing this intel with Skull, the two decide that they are going to need chemical protection, and they come up with a plan to go under cover as pest control exterminators equipped with full hazmat suites. To make this plan work Hashtag does a bunch of hacking and plants various customer complaints about the clinic regarding a pest problem. He also learns that the clinic’s preferred pest control vendor is called 5 Star Pest Control. He hacks the host of both 5 Star and Transcendence and he plants a work orders in each one requesting a visit. He also inserts falsified employment records into the 5 Star Pest Control host that tie to the Fake IDs they are going to use.
Finally, they look to getting gear. Big Nasty uses his Cutter gang contacts to hook them up with Hazmat Suites. The Cutters also introduce them to a man named Tinker who operates a specialty shop in the San Fernando valley. Tinker was a former prop designer, but he now builds “speciality items” for people like the runners. They commission him to make two custom pesticide spray tanks with smuggling compartments inside them that they will be able to use to smuggle some small arms into the facility with.
Once they have all their gear and have got their fake IDs in order, they get on with the job. They set up an ambush and hijack the pest control van. One of the exterminators recognizes Skull and promises that he and his guys will be cooperative if the runners put them up in a motel room for the day and order some take out for them. They even offer some tips on how to better do the pest control job. More importantly they mention that Transcendence had actually booked them in response to all the online complaints and that they had visited the clinic the day before.
The runners attempt to pass through the access road check point near the bottom of Mount Wilson. Unfortunately, Skull’s fake ID triggers a minor alert at the security booth. The guards don’t immediately suspect that Skull is up to anything, instead they assume he is a Sinless who acquired a fake ID and is trying to now make a legitimate living on it. However, their polices still prevent them from allowing him in. Skull has to do some pleading and bribing to get the guard to allow him into the facility (he rolled some very good social checks).
They drive up the road and into the parking lot. They are met at the entrance by the clinic’s assistant director, Evan Chan, and two armored Spartan security guards. He is suspicious because a crew had come by the day before and claimed that the place was clean. Again some more social skillz finesse is required. They succeed on convincing Chan to let them do another inspection, but he insists that a security guard accompany them.
They start with the kitchen and manage to locate a few pests, which lends a bit of credibility to their deception. They then convince Chan that they need to do a more complete inspection that starts from the bottom up. They go through several of the downstairs rooms and finally reach the server room. At first Chan doesn’t want them to inspect it, but again they are convincing. He allows them in under watch from a guard. Luckily the server room is protected by a Faraday Cage, prevent any wireless signals to escape. The guard is unable to communicate with his team. Big Nasty gets him from behind in a choke hold, and then Skull takes him down with a stun baton. Hashtag jacks into the terminal, granting him access to the backup server host. It is filled with important clinic data. Its host sculpting takes the form of an icy cave, with data stores appearing as clusters of purple crystals. Patrol IC in the form of penguins waddle about, keeping an eye out for trouble.
Hashtag soon discovers a list of names that might be potential aliases for Gary Cline and Alexi Summers. He chooses David Griffith, the father of modern cinema, as his first pick for Gary Cline’s alias. He then attempts to copy the file, but finds out it’s protected, and he first has to hack the lock on it. Before he can get this done, patrol IC comes to inspect him. He deceives the first penguin that scans him, but the second one flags him and triggers an alert. The host starts launching IC, and an angry polar bear suddenly appears before him. Hashtag continues to try to copy the file while engaged in cybercombat. The polar bear (Blaster IC) proves a dangerous opponent, and Hashtag’s deck is blasted while he is hit with nonlethal biofeedback. He manages to get the file, but he gets link locked and can’t jack out. He has to message Skull to pull his trodes off before he gets fried. This results in some nasty dump shock, but that is much better than having his deck destroyed and his brain fried by IC. It turns out that he bet on the right horse, and the file is in fact Gary Cline’s. Unfortunately, he’s in no position to jack back into the host and attempt to take any other files.
The runners will have to make do with only half the pay data they were asked to acquire. Their next problem is getting out. They spray the server room down with pesticide, and they come out holding up the KOed guard. Skull once again pulls off some amazing fast talking and convinces Chan that they have no idea what happened to the guard- perhaps some kind of medical condition. The ruse lasts long enough for them to get to their van before they push it too far and their cover is blown. They make a break for it, gunning the van down the access road. A rotor drone soon catches them and starts firing on the van from above. Tip summons an air elemental and brings the drone down. Their troubles are far from over. The guards at the entry gate have been alerted and are ready with their assault rifles. Knowing that they are going to be firing on a vehicle, they have exchanged their gel rounds for clips of APDS rounds. Bursts of bullets tear into the front of the van but don’t hit anyone. Nasty rams the gate bar and breaks through, but he loses control of the van and it goes into the ditch. While all this is going on, Hashtag busies himself with transferring the pay data to their employer and getting the team paid.
The guards close in on the vehicle and as Nasty is trying to back out of the ditch they fire on Skull. One of them puts a burst into Skull’s chest, but Skull’s thick armoured vest under his hazmat suite saves him. Tip conjures another elemental, this one a water spirit. She sends it to engulf one of the guards. Big Nasty does some fancy driving and gets the battered van out of the ditch. They then drive off, leaving the elemental to distract the two guards, so they can escape the clinic. They meet up with Nasty’s Cutter gang contacts and ditch the van, making more or less a clean getaway.
All things considered the job has gone fairly well. Not as much money was made as the team had hoped for, but they escaped with their lives. More importantly, they didn’t kill anyone, so hopefully there won’t be any huge blow back from EVO.
Session #2 GM Commentary: For this session I wanted to run a really iconic style shadowrun, where the runners had complete freedom to come up with an infiltration plan. It was lot of work to set up this session because of all the details I needed to figure out. Plus mapping out a high end medical clinic was tough since I don't really have a background in that kind of thing. All in all, the session went fairly well. I think I might have let them get off a little easy, but Skull has some pretty good social skills and edged a bunch of key social skill checks, allowing them to come out with a lot of net hits. Consequently, they got away with some bluffs that seemed fairly unlikely to pull off.
Anyhow, I think overall they had a good time with this run, but it will be a while before I do another one like this.
I love Shadowrun as well, and it certainly has its share of fans, but it's probably one of the most rules heavy systems out there, and for that reason I think it's a tough game for people to get into. It certainly isn't a game for newbies. Fortunately, I have a pretty open minded group of players that will pretty much try out anything I want to run, though they definitely have some games they like more than others. We don't play this one that often, but they are always excited to jump into it whenever I decide to run a session.
Session #3 (Tara Ambers Investigation)
Runners: Skull (elf, phys. adept), Tip (human, occult investigator), Hashtag (human, hacker)
It is April, 2076.
Tip, Skull and Hashtag meet Dwayne Mosely (Lakers star forward) at the Horizon Centre, along with the head coach and assistant coach. They are hired to further investigate Tara Amber’s death (Mosley's dead girl friend, who was murdered by shedim spirits at club Athena during their first run together). Dwayne gives them what he knows. Besides being a super model she was also a cat shaman, and he knows she’d been attending secret meetings Sundays and Wednesdays for the past year. She wouldn’t say much about them, but she would attend them astrally. He had originally suspected that these "meetings" were a cover for some sort of astral affair she was having. A few days before her death she missed her Wednesday meeting, which was quite odd, and she returned home very late. She was highly distraught afterwards and spent the next couple of days holed up in her medicine lodge (a room in Dwayne’s house).
The runners go to Dwayne’s house to check it out and to get her commlink from him. In her medicine lodge, which is a well decorated room in Dwayne’s home, they find many cats, one of which Tip notices is actually a beast spirit. They also find a secret commlink that belonged to Tara. Dwayne claims to know nothing about this commlink. Tip attempts to question the cat spirit, but doesn't have much luck getting useful information from the creature, though it is quite content to purr and rub against her leg.
Hashtag hacks Tara's two comms, and he gains some useful info from them. They learn that there appear to be eight other individuals in the group that she had been meeting with (It doesn't look like she was having an affair). The one who sends out the e-mails about the topics for discussion for said meetings goes by the e-mail handle “Loremaster.” Topics for the meetings include all manner of arcana, suggesting that the group is some sort of magical society. The runners also learn through the e-mails that Tara had been meeting regularly with a person from the group called "Keeper" at a cafe called Cabana for lunch (maybe she was having an affair after all).
Tip recalls some recent news stories about other horrific deaths in LA’s awakened community. One of the deaths was the lead singer for the band Autopsy, and on Tara's commlink there is an e-mail dating back several months from a group member named "Raven" inviting other group members to his band’s concert. That band was Autopsy. It appears Raven was the lead singer, and that he is now dead as well.
They decide that next they will meet Tara’s BFF model friend Kyah and ask her some questions about Tara’s death. They meet Kyah at an expensive Beverly Hills fashion boutique where she is having a fitting for an upcoming photo shoot. Kyah has met Keeper, and says that her name was Casi. She also mentions that Manny, Tara’s photographer friend, slept with Casi and would likely know more about her than she does. Manny is around, so they talk to him, and get Casi’s address (Manny had gone back to her place during their one night stand).
The runners go Casi’s house in Fairfax (Studio City neighbourhood). By this time it is about 9:00 pm. They find that someone has broken into her home very recently. Inside they come into conflict with the intruders- a trio of shedim spirits using possessed bodies. At first it isn’t entirely clear what happened, but eventually the runners deduce that two shedim controlling possessed bodies had kicked down the front door and killed Casi. Then a third shedim that had been following along in astral space had possessed Casi's body. The shedim attack Tip and Skull with knives and cleavers. Tip is injured quite badly by a stab wound from one of them. Fortunately, Skull takes down the shedim hosts with a combination of his shotgun (gel rounds) and stun baton. This forces the spirits out of the bodies and back into astral space.
Police arrive on the seen seconds after the fight ends. The runners are all held for questioning and required to make extensive statements. Fortunately, they aren’t arrested, which can likely be attributed to the fact that the lead homicide detective is a loyal contact of Tip's. Two of the dead shedim victims are identified as UCLA students, one of whom was awakened and enrolled in the arcane arts program. The other was his room mate.
As mentioned above, Tip has a contact among the PSS (Peublo Security Services, aka the cops, aka the PSS or Piss), and they are able to give statements and convince the PSS that they were not responsible for the deaths of any of the three individuals in the house. The bodies were dead before the shedim occupied them, so the runners were actually fighting walking corpses. Tip is given permission to investigate the crime scene and use her astral perception to help the PSS gather additional clues. Astral space doesn’t give her a great deal of clues, but in Casi’s lodge she finds another commlink that she takes. Hashtag hacks the comm and finds an e-mail in her trash that hadn’t yet been deleted. The e-mail gives the physical location of the society's meetings.
The runners are stuck being questioned by the PSS for many hours and aren’t released until the wee hours of the morning. They are tired, but they head straight to the lodge where the meetings were taking place (normally the group members would meet astrally, but there was indication in the e-mails that the final meeting before Tara’s death was a physical meet). The meet location was a lodge is located in Beverly Hills, among the homes of the Hollywood’s rich and famous.
Access to the lodge's long private driveway is blocked by a gate, which Hastag hacks the lock for. They walk up the curving, tree lined driveway and come to a large, lodge like structure- a strange design for the neighbourhood. They use the buzzer at the massive front doors, and the buzzer is answered. The person they speak to refuses to talk to them or allow them in, even after they clearly explain much of what they know and why they have come. He insists that they wait outside, and he informs them that he has contacted his master, who will be arriving to speak with them shortly.
About ten minutes later an imposing, dark haired man in an immaculate black suite appears before them on the drive way. He has seemingly materialized out of no where. They soon learn that this man is the one called Loremaster in the e-mails, and possibly the leader of the group. They explain that they are investigating Tara’s death, and they share what they have learned so far. They ask him to help them fill in the pieces to the puzzle about what happened to her, so that they can give their client closure. At first he is vague, and tells them only that she was a hero who died doing something for the greater good of humanity. However, this explanation isn’t good enough for runners, and they persist on asking for more details. Eventually, they convince him to share.
He invites them into the spacious lodge and has them sit down in a sitting area. Inside they are introduced to his security advisor, an elf with a sword (the individual who answered the buzzer). They also notice that there are three Bhargests in lodge. Here he tells them how his society attempted to destroy a potent and evil relic from the 4th world, but during the ritual, as the artifact was destroyed, a surge of manna was unleashed and a horde of shedim were released into the world along with something else. Loremaster isn’t sure what exactly the something else was, but he refers to it as a demon, and he claims that it is essentially a very powerful and dangerous free spirit. Two members of the society were killed in astral combat with the horror immediately after the horror was freed (Mammabear and Lunar). The shedim have since been hunting down the remainder of the order.
Skull sees an opportunity for work and asks if there is anything that he and his crew can do to help. Loremaster, thanks them for their offer but declines. He says that the thing they are up against if far too dangerous an opponent for a team of common shadow runners. However, he says he will keep the offer in mind, and if he thinks of any work he can use them for he will contact them. In the meantime, he asks that they keep quiet about what they have learned.
The runners report back to Dwayne Mosley. They don’t give him all the details, but they do explain that Tara was a member of a secret magical society, and that her group was involved in a ritual that was attempting to destroy a dangerous magical artifact. During the attempt the group inadvertently unleashed a host of shedim into the world, and the spirits have been actively hunting down the members of the group ever since.
I created the adventure for session #3 for my occult investigator character. I had planted the seeds for the mystery in session #1, but I didn't really know where I was going to go with it at the time. Luckily I came up with some ideas and got it together. I was pretty happy with how this one came together, though I think maybe I could have made the ending work a little better. I was trying to set up some Earthdawn/Horrors tie in, as the shedim spirits are mentioned as being harbingers of the coming of Horrors (from Earthdawn).
I'll likely run a sequel to this adventure, but not for a couple of more sessions. We've got another shadowrun session scheduled for tomorrow night.
Unfortunately, the shadowrun session I was supposed to run last Saturday feel through, so it won't happen for a couple of more weeks.
We did finally run another session of this last weekend, so hopefully I'll get a journal done for it in the next day or two.
Okay so it was more like a month...
Session #4 (Damage Control)
Runners: Skull (elf, phys. adept), Tip (human, occult investigator), Hashtag (human, hacker)
A month or so after their last job (session #3), the runners are contacted by the rapper known as Monsta, (a guy they met in session #1). He asks that they come by his place to discuss some biz. Skull, Tip and Hashtag show up in the afternoon at his luxury Hollywood Hills home. Nasty can’t make it because he has some s!#! of his own to take care of. The team is greeted by one of Monsta’s gangsta posse. The poor bastard has been forced to wear a butler outfit and talk with a bad english accent as a result of losing a bet. The “butler” leads the team to the outdoor pool. Here they find Monsta sitting in a sun chair, dressed in a speedo and a silk robe. The man truly is a monster; he has had extensive body mods, including a pair of horns protruding from his forehead, patches of reptile textured skin, and even shark teeth implants. Several bootylicious girls frolic in the pool, while members of his gangster posse acting as security guards. The runners are offered food and drink, which they readily accept, and after some small talk they get down to talking biz. He explains to them that he has a fairly valuable collection of swords, and that one of his rivals, a rapper named Ice Dawg, recently came into possession of a valuable, enchanted elf blade. Ice Dawg has been rubbing it in Monsta’s face that his collection is now far superior to Monsta’s thanks to this new acquisition. Monsta hasn’t seen the blade in person, but Ice Dawg has sent him some hi-res pictures of it, which Monsta sent to an appraiser he knows. The appraiser believes the blade is the real deal, though that is difficult to fully confirm without looking at in person. Obviously, Monsta wouldn’t get away with having the runners just steal the blade and add it to his own collection, but he does figure that they might break into Ice Dawg’s home take the sword and others from the collection and then sell them. He tells them that he can put them in touch with several buyers that will pay good money for the sword. The heroes are intrigued by Monsta’s idea, and tell him they’ll look into making it happen.
They are about to leave, when Skull gets a call from a man named Lopez that Skull met a couple of months back (see session #1). Lopez is a fixer, and Lopez tells Skull that he wants his team for a job that needs to happen right away, a job that will pay around $200K. Skull pounces on the chance to earn some big money and asks for details. It seems that Lopez put together a team for a Mr. Johnson to pull an extraction job on a high profile industry target that just arrived in town. Unfortunately, the job went south. During the extraction the team lost two of its crew, and their rigger was badly wounded. They got the target to a safe house, but what’s left of the crew isn’t in shape to deliver the target to Mr. J. They reached out to Lopez for help, and Lopez contacted Skull. He wants Skull and his crew to clean up the mess. They are to go meet with the runners at their safe house and help deliver the target to Mr. J. Lopez isn’t too happy with the team that f#+#ed things up. He doesn’t much care what happens to them at this point, so if the runners want to fully cut them out of the job that’s up to them. All he cares about is the job being completed and Mr. J being happy with the service Lopez has provided. Skull doesn’t immediately agree to the gig, but he gets the contact info for the other team’s leader and promises to give him a shout, get a few more details and then get back to Lopez ASAP.
Skull makes a call to the contact for the other crew. He finds himself speaking to a runner named Rico. He is their leader and apparently the only one on the team still alive that is of any use. Their mage and other street sammy were both killed by security forces during the extraction, and their rigger is shot up too bad to drive. They claim that they have made a “clean” getaway and the target is KOed but unharmed. While the runners are being driven around by Juan, Skull’s favourite Uber cabby, Hashtag does a bit of legwork in the matrix and finds out that Rico is a street sammy, and he and his team have a reasonably good rep in the LA shadows. He also finds some breaking news reports. It seems a famous simsense techie/editor was kidnapped a few hours ago. His name is Giancarllo Baggio. He had just arrived at the airport and was travelling to Fun City (Horizon’s massive walled enclave). While going across one of the long causeways that passes over the bay, his vehicle crashed into a magically conjured barrier spell. Shadowrunners emerged from a car in front of his, hauled him out of the wrecked limo, injected him with a narcojet (or some other tranq), strapped a harness on him and then lowered him down to a waiting boat with climbing rope. Baggio’s vehicle was being followed by an SUV containing additional security, and while the runners were trying to make their getaway a firefight erupted on the causeway. Their mage and ork street sammy were taken down, but Rico and Wrench (their rigger) repelled down to a waiting boat with Baggio. They blew up their van to cover their escape and got away. Baggio had just signed a big contract with the Horizon megacorp and was being taken to one of their facilities. Horizon security forces are now searching for Baggio and the runners that abducted him.
The job looks like it could be very dangerous, but Skull thinks if they move quickly on it and stay sharp there might be a big pay off at the end. The team agrees to the job and they let Lopez know. Unfortunately, Big Nasty isn’t with them- having the ork street sammy around would be handy. Rico tells them that he is holed up in San Bernadino, so they head east on the highway. It takes Skull significant effort to convince his driver to take them to San Bernadino, as San Bernadino is now one of the worst areas of the sprawl. It’s not unlike horrible urban wastelands like the barrens in Seattle. As they get closer, Rico gives more specific directions. The safe house is in a residential neighbourhood that is completely controlled by a hispanic gang called El Inferino Locos, aka “the Crazy Infernos”. Rico tells them that he has connections with the gang and that they will be expecting Skull and his crew. They will give them safe passage and escort them to the safe house.
Soon enough they reach the gang’s territory. The roads into the neighbourhood are blocked off with old cars and the gangers have to move them out of the way to allow vehicles in or out. Once they pass the blockade they find that the streets are in complete disrepair. In fact, there has been no infrastructure upkeep to the area in years. The neighbourhood likely doesn’t even have working power or running water. Most folk seem to use solar panel blankets, and diesel generators to produce power, if they have any at all. Water is collected in cisterns or occasionally imported by the gangers by water trucks. The people of this hood live in abject poverty, and it is the gang that controls whether they live or die.
The team’s cab is escorted by some gangers on bikes to a decrepit bungalow that serves as the safe house. A couple of gangers with assault rifles stand guard on the porch, but they send the runners inside. Here they find Rico. They also find Baggio on a couch unconscious. In a bedroom a few women try to keep Wrench alive. The runners bring in a decent medkit and are kind enough to stabilize him, but his injuries happened too long ago to perform effective first aid. They talk to Rico, and he explains that he is waiting for a call from Mr. J to give him directions to where to deliver the package. The runners decide to cut a deal with Rico and allow him to continue to get a share of the pay for the run. As Rico is about to get in touch with Mr. J and sort out the final details of the exchange, several Crazy Infernos burst into the safe house. They are led by the gang’s leader, Diaz, who is also Rico’s younger brother. Diaz is clearly pissed off. He figures that he and his gang are perfectly capable of helping Rico deliver the target, and he feels betrayed that Rico has called in outside help. Rico and Skull try to settle Diaz down, while Tip and Hashtag tense up, ready for trouble. Diaz makes some threatening comments towards the runners, but the runners are smart enough not let him rile them up.
Suddenly, they hear sounds of helicopters approaching. A ganger rushes in from the porch and shouts out that there is a Horizon SWAT team inbound. Skull ask Rico what the f~*% is going on. After all, Rico had claimed that his crew had made a clean getaway. Rico denies knowing anything about what is happening. Hashtag starts inspecting Baggio’s unconscious body and discovers a red mark on the nape of his neck. He scans the area with a RFID chip detector and determines there is a tiny tracking chip in his neck. The runners cut it out and show it to Rico. Rico curses, explaining that he didn’t think Horizon would have already chipped him yet; Baggio was only on his way from the airport to Horizon offices to finish signing the contracts, and he wasn’t yet fully signed on. Diaz grabs the chip and hands it to one of his gangers and orders him to get in a vehicle and lead the Horizon team away. The stupid ganger pops the chip in his mouth and swallows it. Rico and Skull’s jaws both drop and face palming ensues. Then Skull pokes his head out the door of the bungalow just in time to see a rocket fired from a couple of blocks away. It hits an inbound attack helicopter and blows it up, raining flaming debris down on the neighbourhood. There is still a second chopper on its way a little further back. It seems the Crazy Infernos don’t like the megacorps and are pretty f+!$ing crazy. The ganger follows his boss’s directions and hurries out to a van where he drives off. Meanwhile the runners, along with Juan and Rico, load Baggio into the trunk of Juan’s uber and get the f$#& out of the area, praying that Horizon drones or satellites haven’t made them yet. The car is packed pretty full, but the team and the package are good to go.
Soon they are on the highway. Rico manages to make contact with Mr. J, and he is given instructions to bring Baggio south towards the Azlan border. Once they get closer, Mr. J tells him that he will contact him again with more instructions. Going towards Azlan is disconcerting to everyone, but sticking around isn’t an option. They roll with it and drive south. There is no sign of Horizon pursuit; the helicopter is busy taking fire from gangers, and they don’t see any sign of drones. It appears that they have either lost Horizon or the corp is biding their time and being subtle.
They drive for nearly two hours, and soon they are getting close to the border, which is just north of San Diego. They contact Mr. J again, and he gives them instructions to pull off the I5 a few miles south of their current location. Here they will find an old industrial park. Mr J wants to meet in a warehouse there. Unfortunately, before they get to the exit, they come upon a military road block set up by the PCC army. It seems they are checking SINs. The runners have little choice but to go through the road block. When they are checked they use their fake IDs, the soldiers seem suspicious of them and even mention the recent abduction of Horizon’s latest golden goose. However, it seems their IDs hold up, and they are allowed to pass and the runners continue to the meet site.
They find three black SUVs waiting for them in the warehouse. They are contacted by comm and ordered to bring Baggio forward for inspection. Skull and Rico handle this job, while Juan, Hashtag and Tip remain in the car. A couple of big men in dark suites get out of one of the SUVs. They both carry smgs, but one of them also has a medkit. He does a scan on Baggio and makes a comm call. Mr. J then confirms that he is satisfied with the condition of the package. He transfers the money to Rico, and Rico in turn transfers shares to the runners. Mr J’s muscle load Baggio into one of the SUVs. Suddenly Mr. J curses over the comm, and asks Rico why the hell the PCC military is converging on them. There is crack of a high-powered rifle and Rico’s head explodes. Skull bursts into action and he races for the van. All hell breaks loose as the runners in their car and the three SUV peel out of the warehouse just as several armoured PCC hummers burst on the scene. A chase ensues as the the team tries to make a getaway. They manage to loose the hummer that is after them. Unfortunately, they blow a tire when they run over some skids while taking a tight corner. They are forced to take shelter in an abandoned factory building to change the tire. This gives the PCC time to catch up with them. They have little choice but to surrender or try to fight the PCC army. They wisely decide to give themselves up. Soldiers order them to lay on the ground with their hands on their head. They are then injected with narcojet and loose consciousness. The session ends here.
Yeah, there was a glitch rolled on the an important driving check when they were trying to escape the army, so I decided that they had blown a tire, which was kind of a nasty consequence for them. I hadn't really anticipated them getting captured at the end of the session, but I'll roll with it. It opens up a lot of fun opportunities for me to create paranoia, inject experimental cyberware, hook them up to crazy VR s!$& etc... for next session.
I haven't decided exactly where I want to go with it, but I've got a few ideas. The question is, just how much do I want to f@+! with them?
I'm not sure if this was actually a good session or not. The players seemed to have fun, but I felt like they didn't get to do quite enough.
Session #5 (Suicide Squad)
Runners: Skull (elf, phys. adept), Tip (human, occult investigator), Hashtag (human, hacker), Dengar (Elf, covert ops), Big Nasty (ork, cyber gangsta)
When last we left our runners, Tip, Hashtag and Skull had been drugged into unconsciousness and taken into custody by the Pueblo Corporate Council military. The three regain consciousness in the container of a parked rental truck. Fragments of recent, but unfamiliar memories float around in their heads, memories that they can’t piece together. They are dehydrated, hungry and extremely overheated- probably suffering from hyperthermia. They each notice a strange itching sensation around their abdomen. As they take in their surroundings, they note they aren’t entirely alone. There is another individual with them, an elf that introduces himself as Dengar. He doesn’t know how he ended up in the container either, and the last thing he remembers is being on a job in Denver. They are all dressed in shorts, T-shirts and look far more ready for a day at the beach than a shadowrun. There is no sign of any of their gear and they don’t even have a commlink between them. Hashtag immediately starts to freak out. He feel’s naked without tech. Skull notices an envelope taped to the partially open back gate. He looks in the envelope and finds 100 Y in cash and a hand written note that says, “Buy yourselves something to eat and drink and talk to Paula.”
They step out of the truck, and find themselves in the parking lot of a what looks to be a remote truck stop that is just off a freeway. It appears to be late afternoon, and it is hot, real hot. The sun is beating down, and the land around them looks like the PCC desert. They head into the truck stop restaurant and take a seat at a booth. They quickly learn that the waitress is named Paula. She has a commlink that she has been instructed to give to Hashtag. She hands it over, and the three order food and drinks. Hashtag’s thumbprint accesses the comm. He finds that it is fairly empty. There is little in the way of content on it and only a single contact in its address book. A text message is waiting, and the message says “Call me.” It’s from Ms. Johnson, which happens to be the name of the one contact. He also notices that the date is June 1st 2076, which is about six weeks since they were taken in by the PCC. It looks like they have lost six weeks of time, with only the vaguest snippets of memories to give them any clue about what they’ve been up to. He gives the number a call, and “Ms. Johnson” picks up. She explains to him that her employers are pleased with how the team has performed thus far, and that she has another mission for them. This will be their last mission. There is a van waiting for them in the parking lot. They are to drive the van to a motel in a small town called Banning, which about fifteen minutes west along the highway. Their room is already booked and passcards to access the room are in the van. Hashtag checks the address and realizes that Banning is off the I 10, which is a couple hours out of LA, and that they are at truck stop just east of that. Once they arrive at the motel, they will find gear waiting for them, and at that point they should call her for further directions. Finally, she informs them that they have each been implanted in with a nanite hive. The nanite hive is loaded with cutter nanites, and it is programmed to release them in three days. If that happens the nanites will tear apart their veins and arteries and kill them from the inside. However, if they do the job and do it well, she says that she will see to it that the nanite hives are safely removed and they will be free to return to their previous lives. She also lets them know that the hives are programmed to release the nanites if anyone tries to tamper with them, so heading for a street doc is ill advised. At this point, they realize that the cause of the itch they had noticed on their abdomens is the result of a surgical scar that has mostly healed.
Skull’s immediate instinct is to call his lawyer, but without his commlink he doesn’t know the number. Hashtag tries to check some of his e-mail accounts but discovers that almost all of them have been deleted. He does access one of his most secret matrix drop boxes and there he finds some important personal data- like a copy of his address book. He looks up Big Nasty’s number and makes a call. He asks/begs the ork to come meet them at the motel. Nasty doesn’t have anything going on, so he agrees and says he’ll be there in a few hours. They finish their food, and head out. Sure enough there is a van in the lot for them- a black Honda Odyssey. They drive the van to Banning and check into the Days Inn, room 110. Waiting in the room, they find useful gear- armoured vests, commlinks, guns, more guns, an electronics kit, reagents for Tip’s alchemy and even a cyberdeck. Hashtag calls Ms. Johnson back, and she briefs them on the mission. She explains that there is a man staying in room 115 that is very dangerous and should, for now, be avoided. She refers to him as Mr. X. However, this evening it is expected that another man will be arriving at the motel to meet with Mr. X. She refers to this man as Mr. Y. Mr. Y has chipjack, and will be carrying a data chip with important information that he apparently doesn’t trust to send over the matrix. He is going to be handing the chip off to Mr. X. The job is recover the chip and kill Mr. Y. It is up the team if they want to kill Mr. X as well, but Ms. Johnson thinks it’s probably a good idea. Mr. Y may or may not be travelling alone, and she isn’t certain exactly what time he will arrive. She sends them a picture of Mr. Y. Once the chip is recovered and Mr. Y is dead, they are to start driving towards LA. At that point, they are to call her again, and she will provide further instructions.
The runners have little choice but to accept the job. Hashtag does a search on the Matrix, trying to see if he can figure out who the Mr. Y is based on the photo. He has some luck, and it appears that Mr. Y may be a Mr. Johnson/Fixer that works primarily for the Aztechnology. While this is happening, Tip starts brewing up some healing and pain resistance elixirs to aid the team. Skull chills out, and Dengar demonstrates an interesting trick. The elf has a cyber eye that he can remove, and is in fact a flying ocular drone. He sends his flying eye out of the room and sets it up on the roof, so that it has a view to Mr. Y’s room, which is across the parking lot. He monitors the drone through its sensor suite and determines that there is currently a single occupant in room 115. There is a white Honda Civic parked in front of the room. Dengar also notices that there is a spider-like mini-drone stationed on the roof above room 115 that is positioned to look out to the parking lot.
Time passes, and things are pretty quiet, until Big Nasty arrives on a motor bike. Nasty comes into their room with a bag full of booze, drugs and guns. He’s ready to party. The rest of the team isn’t much in a partying mood, probably because they are each implanted with a cutter nanite hive. Nasty, doesn’t let their dour mood hold him back. He puts on is swim trunks and flip flops and walks down to the outdoor pool. There he finds a hot looking mom and her kids swimming, but they quickly evacuate when they see the monstrous ork in his speedo approaching. After his swim, Nasty returns to the room and suites up for action.
Around 11:00 pm things start to go down. Dengar, who is still doing recon with his ocular drone, spots a black Audi sedan pull into the parking lot and park beside the civic. The team moves into action. They put towels over their shoulders and try to make it look like they are going for a evening swim- alhough Skull is carrying a duffle bag (full of guns), which looks a little odd. They cross the parking lot towards the section of the hotel where room 115 is situated, and once they are up agains the wall, out of view from the drone and whoever might be getting out of the audi, Skull starts handing out weapons. Hashtag remains in the hotel room and scans for silent running devices. He locates the matrix icons for Mr. X’s commlink and his drone. He attacks the drone in Matrix combat, brute forcing his way through the firewall of Mr. X’s commlink which the drone is slaved to. Then he hammers it with a data spike, hoping to overload it with hostile code. His first attack isn’t enough to brick the drone, but it alerts Mr. X to trouble.
Nasty and Skull sprint to get around the far side of the motel, close to Mr. X’s room, while Dengar and Tip come from the other side. Mr. X’s room is a corner room. Nasty takes up position on the side window with his Ingram X sub machine gun. Skull darts around the corner to the front side. Here he sees that there is a large ork with a big handgun standing guard in front of the door to the room. The ork raises its gun to fire on Skull, but isn’t as fast as the elf adept. Skull tries to do things quietly. He activates the monofiliment whip in his finger tip compartment and attacks. The ork just barely avoids the deadly weapon, and opens fire with several rounds from his pistol. Skull ducks back around the corner of building as a several rounds spray chips of brick and plaster past his face. Nasty opens up with his Ingram, firing through the side window, spraying the room down with lead. Skull then retracts his whip, and pops back out from cover and blasts the ork with an explosive slug round from his AS-7 combat shot gun. The shot catches the ork in his armour jacket and the force of the round sends him crashing to the ground. Dengar targets him with his assault rifle and finishes him off with a burst.
Suddenly the Audi guns it in reverse. It seems there is a driver in the vehicle. It swings around ready to peel out of the parking lot or maybe run someone over. Tip had been busy summoning a beast spirit, and she takes action, ordering the beast to kill the driver. The spirit manifests as an oversized venomous snake that materializes on the passenger seat. The rigger driving is in VR and is so in tune with the car that he at first doesn’t notice the viper. This changes fast when it strikes and bites him on the wrist. He howls in pain, jacks out, suffering dump shock. Then he throws himself out of the car, rolling across the pavement, leaveing him very sore and disoriented. Skull takes advantage and runs over to him and pumps a round into his face, obliterating his head.
Meanwhile, Hashtag finishes destroying the mini drone on the roof from cyberspace and starts looking for other things to hack. Dengar moves up towards room 115, and Nasty finishes hosing down the room with his submachine gun. As the smoke clears, he sees through the shattered window that the two men in the room were sensible enough to hit the floor as soon as the lead started flying. They are prone on the ground. Mr. Y is his clearest target, so Nasty uses the remaining few rounds in his clip to fire a more focused bust at him. At the same time, Mr. Y raises a semi automatic pistol to fire back at Nasty. Both men get off shots. Nasty’s burst catches Mr. Y, but Mr Y’s shots hit the window frame. Fortunately for Mr Y, his suite has ballistic weave, which leaves him injured but alive. Skull decides it’s time to get in the room, so he leaps through the front window. He bounces off one of the hotel beds and lands on his feet with his shotgun ready. He sees Mr. Y firing at Nasty, but he also sees Mr. X laying on the carpet near the second bed with a sniper rifle aimed towards him. Skull leaps aside just as Mr. X pulls the trigger, and Skull feels the high powered round tear through the air where he had been a microinstant before. Dengar kicks in the door, sees Mr X firing his sniper rifle, and takes him down with burst from his assault rifle. They then finish off Mr. Y with a few rounds. Skull uses his mono wire to cut off Mr. Y’s head, which does indeed contain a chip jack. They grab the sniper rifle and its case, load into their van and drive off, while Nasty follows behind them on his bike.
The runners call Ms. Johnson, and she forwards them the address of a self storage facility near San Bernadino. They start driving towards it on the I10. Hashtag works on examining Mr Y’s head, and he confirms there is a chip in the chipjack. He decides to leave it alone for the moment and let Ms. Johnson worry about getting it out. They aren’t far out of Banning when trouble comes their way. An SUV passes them, and suddenly a shimmering wall of magical force appears across the highway. The barrier spell is too close to their van for them to do anything other than drive into it at highway speed. The force of the impact shorts out the spell, and the van keeps on going. It swerves violently, air bags deploy, and it scrapes across a guardrail, spraying sparks. The autopilot kicks in before they can do anything to stop it, and it safely brings the van to a halt.
The SUV slams on the brakes; then it switches into reverse and starts backing up hard at the runners’ van. As it does so, Nasty goes flying past it on his motor bike. He extends his Ingram, and as he passes the driver’s side, he unleashes a storm of hot lead through the side window. He doesn’t have chance to see the damage he inflicted, as he keeps on hurtling forward. The SUV collides with the front corner of the van and pins it against the guardrail where both vehicles become stopped. Skull manages to puncture his air bag and he tumbles out the driver’s door, popping up with his shotgun ready. At about the same time, a fast human, that vaguely looks like Wesley Snipes from Demolition man, leaps out of the SUV and opens up on the runners with an assault rifle. A tightly clustered burst hammers into the van, just missing Skull. The situation gets worse as a black sedan pulls up behind the runners. The four doors fly open; more men with assault rifles pop out and open fire. More rounds tear into the van, popping air bags. Hashtag and Tip get as close to the floor as they can. Hashtag, jacks into his deck. He goes into VR and starts hunting for the matrix icons of their guns. He locks onto one of them and drives a data spike into it, which shorts out the electronics of the weapon, bricking it. Dengar fires on them with her assault rifle and takes another one down, and Tip conjures a water elemental that she orders to attack the reinforcement gunmen, and an instant later a water elemental materializes to engulf another of the men.
Skull finds himself in trouble when a mage in the back of the SUV targets him with a manabolt. There is little Skull can do to combat such magic, and a powerful surge of magical energy rips through the elf, inflicting a nasty injury. Luckily, Nasty comes flying up on his bike and pulls a stoppy in front of the hood of the van. The mage has the upper half of his body sticking out of the shattered rear window of the SUV, allowing it to rest on the hood of the van. Nasty vaults over the front his bike as its rear tire goes up, and he elbow drops the mage on the temple, taking him out. Dengar, Tip’s water elemental and Hashtag finish dealing with the gunmen that arrived in the sedan, while Skull keeps firing on “Wesley Snipes”. Snipes is fast, probably cybered; he ducks behind the front of the SUV for cover, but Nasty comes bounding over the top as Snipes sticks his gun around the corner to fire on Skull. Putting dents in the roof as he goes, Nasty again leaps through the air. He tackles Snipes, and they both go sprawling to the pavement where Nasty punches the f#@@ out of him, removing him as a threat.
Even though the fight has lasted less than a minute, a couple of cars and trucks are approaching. The autopilots on the vehicles detect the disturbance and kick in automatic safety features to stop them before they get too close to the action. The runners know it’s time to book it, so they jump into the sedan and drive off. Hashtag immediately begins hacking the Sedan, trying to alter its icon and otherwise make it so that its owner can’t use it to track them.
They make it safely to the rendezvous where they were to meet Ms. Johnson. But as they arrive, they see something is wrong. The waiting SUV sits quietly in the deserted parking area in front of the self storage office, but it is riddled with bullet holes. They approach cautiously, first sending out Dengar’s drone to scout. Tip goes astral and does her own recon. They see no signs of anyone around, so they move in and check the vehicle. They find that there are four men inside, all of them are dead from gunshot wounds. Hashtag is about to call Ms. Johnson when suddenly he gets a text from her. It simply reads, “We’re going to have to cut you loose. Do what you want with the chip. Good luck.” Skull curses, as his chance to have the cutter nanites removed has seemingly evaporated. Hashtag tries to call Ms. Johnson and ask her what the f+&* is going on, but he can’t get through.
They get back into their stolen car and start driving. Skull calls his agent Turtle and asks him if he can get them in touch with a good street doc. Turtle gets on it, informing Skull that he now owes him one. Nasty, who missed out on being captured and implanted with nanites, wishes his friends good f#+@ing luck and takes off on his bike. Hashtag removes the chip from Mr. Y decapitated head with his electronics kit and starts trying to hack it. He finds that the files on it are protected by a data bomb, but he manages to diffuse it, preventing it from detonating, which would delete the files and damage his cyberdeck. On the chip he discovers files that point to an assassination plot geared towards the CEO of Horizon and some of the highest ranking members of the Pueblo Corporate Council. He decides to send the files out into the matrix and see what happens.
Turtle is quick to get back to Skull, and he directs him to a Street Doc operating out of nearby San Bernadino. The doc goes by the name Dr. Feelgood- some reference to a song by a fifth world metal band. They hurry to his clinic. He informs them that the nanite hive could be very tricky to remove without triggering it, assuming it is set up how the runners suggest. The good news is that he will certainly learn from his mistakes. At this point, Hashtag immediately volunteers to go last. Dengar takes it for the team and goes first. Fortunately, Dr. Feelgood gets the hive out successfully. He analyzes it carefully, and he informs the elf that the nanites inside it aren’t actually cutter nanites. Instead they are designed to send out a GPS signal, allowing whoever implanted them to monitor their location. The nanites are already circulating in his system. In order to take care of them, he gives him several good jolts of electricity, which should in theory take out the nanites in his bloodstream. He then goes on to successfully perform the procedure on Skull, Tip and Hashtag. They each pay him 5000 Y and get the hell out of the clinic before Ms. Johnson sends people after them.
Exhausted and paranoid, they return to their respective homes, uncertain just who Ms. Johnson is or how much she now knows about them. They have lost several important items of gear, but gained others. The status of their various fake IDs is unclear, as is whether or not their abductors have any more interest in them. It appears they might be in the clear, but they can’t be certain. Fragments of memories from the last six weeks haunt them, and they still don’t have any real information about what happened during that lost time. Laying low for a while seems wise, despite the fact that they need to cash to pay debts, replace lost gear and otherwise get their s%$% back in order.
The session ends here.
Karma for Session #5: 14
It didn't probably play as fast as my journal might suggest. It didn't feel super slow or bogged down, but shadowrun combat isn't as fast and furious, as I'd ideally like it to run, which is no surprise. It's probably the most rules heavy system I've played.
I think this little campaign is going on hold for a little while. I'm going to run some Call of Cthulhu next. Starting with Timeless Sands of India from the Goodman Games Age of Cthulhu Line.
It looks like we'll be getting back to this game on Friday for another session/run
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Session #6 (Pooch Palace Run)
Runners: Skull (elf, phys. adept), Tip (human, occult investigator), Hashtag (human, hacker), Big Nasty (ork, cyber gangsta)
About a month has passed since the runner’s last job. It has taken Hashtag, Tip and Skull some time to recover mentally. They still don’t know what happened during the six weeks of time that they lost.
Skull’s been having some flashbacks that involve him on a yacht killing someone with a his monowhip and then jumping overboard to escape security. Hashtag’s fragmented memories are much weirder, and he suspects that a lot of the time he lost was spent delving into different corners of the Matrix. Tip’s memories involve vague visions of astral jaunts and interactions with strange spirits.
It is Thursday, July 30th, 2076. Turtle, Skull’s “agent”, gives him a call with a business opportunity. He doesn’t have all the details, but he knows it involves abducting a Lifepet Golden Retriever from a luxury doggy hotel. He explains that Lifepet dogs are basically fancy, custom made drones created from the latest in 3-D printing technology. They look nearly identical to a real dog. Turtle wonders why anyone would bother checking a robot dog into a doggy hotel, but LA is a weird town with lots of rich bastards who do weird stuff… Skull thinks that the job sounds kinda f&#@ed up, but he needs the money, so as long as it pays well he figures he convince the crew to take it. Turtle sets up the meet.
The meet goes down that evening at a club on Hollywood Blvd. called the Singularity. It’s a hot new dance club filled with laser lights, AR imagery and pounding music. It’s not the ideal place for a meet, and it’s pretty much impossible to chat without the use of subvocal micophones. As they make their way through the crowded dance floor, Nasty’s new single “B~$*+ Got my Foot” (in reference to almost losing his foot to a monowire body trap in session #1) is blaring. He is recognized by a few girls who are in midst of performing the dance move that goes with the song, which basically involves extending a leg and shaking it it while pretending to be in great pain. They try to pull him onto the dance floor to partake in the B#@~% Got My Foot dance, but since he’s working, he’s trying to keep a low profile and otherwise be “professional”, so he keeps on moving. Skull and his crew are directed to a booth where they order drinks from the AR menu and wait for the Mr. Johnson. Tip and Hashtag support each other’s alcoholism by ordering doubles. Soon their patron slides into the booth. He doesn’t seem to have a much security with him, but at the same time doesn’t seem too worried about meeting up with a group of shadowrunners. He has slicked back black hair, clubbing attire, a spray on tan, and thick moustache (the latest fashion trend for men). He explains that his employer is a fan of Skull’s Matrix show “Running LA”, which is why he requested him and his team. He gives them the full details of the job. They are to extract a Lifepet Golden Retriever named Wallace from a doggy hotel called Pooch Palace. It needs to go down in the next couple of days, and they will need to hang onto the “dog” for up to 48 hours at which point they will either release it or detroy it. The trick of the job is that Pooch Palace is the “Fun City,” which is a walled corporate enclave that occupies much of what was once Anaheim. It is owned and controlled exclusively by Horizon, which is one of the big ten mega corps. Getting into Fun City always entails ID checks and their is extensive security in the enclave. All security contracts in Fun City are required to be handled by HSS (Horizon Security Services). This means that HSS will be handling Pooch Palace security. However Mr. J doesn’t suspect that the contract would be that extensive. The job pays 50K, but Wallace is known to wear a diamond studded collar that Mr. J thinks they could fence for another 50K. Finally, he makes it clear that his employer wants the job to be clean and without bloodshed. Skull and the team discuss it over their comms and decide to take the job.
Hashtag goes to work on the Matrix doing some legwork. He learns that Wallace belongs to a Simsense star named Tommy Talent. Tommy Talent has made a name for himself in the past couple of years and his career has skyrocketed. He has an exclusive contract with Horizon, but rumour has it that his contract is due to expire, and Amalgamated Studios has been making him offers. Hashtag suspects that the job could well be connected to all this, and he hopes that it won’t bite them in the ass. It seems that Tommy is currently out of town for a few days on a shoot. He also take time to hack the Pooch Palace host. Here he learns, which kennel Wallace is in, and he learns that Wallace has been slaved to the HSS host, which means hacking the robot dog from the Matrix would be real tricky, as it will be protected by the HSS firewall. He also does a brief hacking run into the Pooch Palace host. He discovers the file regarding Wallace, which indicates which kennel the dog is in and all its appointment times for spa treatments and such. It also indicates that it has been slaved the HSS host for the duration of its stay at Pooch Palace for security purposes.
Getting in and out of Fun City is going to be the biggest hurdle of the run. They decide to go with subcontracting a Coyote to help them out. Nasty gets the name of a guy that the Cutters (a street gang he’s associated with) knows who specializes in moving people and goods in and out of Fun City. The guy is named Mako, and he runs a dive shop in Santa Monica. Mr. Donovan (“CEO” of the Cutters gang) reaches out to Mako and informs him that Nasty and his crew will be coming to see him. The following evening they go to Mako’s dive shop. Nasty and Skull are both wearing ridiculous old style golf outfits. Mako wonders why the team looks like they are ready to go play 18 holes, but it’s LA, so he just shakes his head and they move on. Mako has slick looking Aztechnology Nightrunner boat ready to go. They rent dive gear and couple of waterproof duffle bags. Mako is even able to make good on Skull’s odd request for a pair of waterproof golf club bags. Skull puts his shotgun, and Hashtag’s cyberdeck and some other gear in one of the golf bags. The other one they leave empty (it’s for the dog). Next they suite up with their dive gear and head out. Mako and a couple of his guys operate the boat. He knows the local waters well and is good at dodging the coast guard and other hazards. About an hour later they are approaching the dark sea wall of the Horizon enclave (The Anaheim area is waterfront property due to the a couple of major earthquakes known as the Twins, which took place a few years earlier). The runners enter the dark pacific waters. Mako launches a small submersible drone and they follow it underwater to the wall. It leads them to a massive drainage pipe that is about 6 m in diameter. They swim into the pipe. Up ahead, Hashtag thinks he spots something in the murky waters, something big, real. It was about 30 m away and it swam further up the tunnel, so he didn’t get a good look at it, but it spooks him. Tip conjures a water elemental and uses one of its services to conceal their presence, making them difficult to detect. They go a little further up the pipe, but see no sign of the creature.
The drone leads them into a smaller pipe. Here they must swim single file. Eventually they reach a shaft with metal ladder rungs that takes them up out of the water filled pipe drainage pipe system. By this time Mako is losing comm reception, but he informs them that once they get up the shaft they shouldn’t need to do any more swimming. At this point the drone leaves them. They climb up the shaft one by one, and find themselves in another tunnel. This one has a little water trickling through it, but it is no more than ankle deep. Here they take off their dive gear and stow it in the water proof duffle bag. They hang it in the shaft and follow a schematic map that Mako has sent them. They make their way through the rat infested sewer tunnels and eventually they come to another shaft. This one leads up to street level. Mako indiciates that there are normally motion sensors set up in the shafts, but the one that he has directed them to is “clean.” The team clambers up onto the street. They look like a group of golfers coming back from a late evening at the golf club. Nasty and Skull each carry one of the golf bags. They switch their comms to open mode and display fake IDs, as they know that there are plenty of surveillance drones in the area that may perform secret spot ID checks, and everyone in Fun City is expected to be running an open comm signal. Skull has his face disguised (mystic adept power) to match the face that corresponds with the fake ID he’s running. Back up comms are run in hidden mode for more secretive communication. The area they find themselves in is fairly residential. It’s around 1:00 am on a Friday night, so the traffic is light. They do come across a few girls heading to a bar. The girls already seem a little wasted. One of them thinks she recognizes Nasty and tries to chat him up. Skull tries to convince her that it isn’t actually Nasty and he tells the girls to take off. Afterwards Nasty texts the girl’s comm and tells her it really is him. She forwards him a picture of her boobs, which he checks out using his jiggle app.
It’s a few blocks to Pooch Palace. They make it without incident (other than the tipsy girls Nasty had to fend off). They approach the staff entrance at the back. Tip calls on her water elemental for another service and again conceals the team as they hang out by the door. Hashtag gets out his electronics kit and cyberdeck. He removes the panel from the maglock with his tools and plugs in his deck. He jacks in, going hot sim. Since the deck is connected directly to the maglock which is slaved to the HSS Matrix host, he gains a backdoor access into the host. When he enters, he finds himself in a high tech, virtual security room. He takes a seat in the awaiting chair and checks out the camera feeds. He can vaguely make out the characters at the entrance- the spirt does a good job of hiding them. His first task is looping the camera feed by the back door. Next he checks on Wallace’s kennel and finds that the dog is where he’s expected to be. He opens the mag lock. They help his limp body inside. Tip stays with him to guard him. Nasty and Skull sneak down the hall towards Wallace’s kennel. There are only two security guards on site. One is in the staff lounge eating. The second one is patrolling the halls near the luxury kennels. That second one is in the way, so Skull sneaks up on him and take him out with is stun baton. With this done, Hashtag is about to let the dogs out by opening all the kennels at once. Before he can do so, the door the virtual security office opens and a droid enters. It appears to be patrol IC. It does quick scan of the room, but doesn’t detect Hashtag’s hidden icon, so it leaves. Hashtag then opens the kennels. Nasty grabs Wallace and starts carrying him back to the exit. Hashtag tries to destroy evidence by deleting the camera images of Skull and Nasty in the halls. Unfortunately, he only gets one of the hall cameras taken care of before the patrol IC scans the room again. This time he gets spotted, and an alarm is triggered. Another droid enters his room. This one fires a strange sticky globule at him, but he ducks out of the way. Hashtag isn’t in the mood to deal with Horizon IC, so he jacks out before things go real south. The characters start pull out a tag eraser and deactivate Wallace’s RFID tag. Then they stuff him in a golf bag. As they are about to leave, the second security guard comes into the hall. It’s chaos because music is playing loudly through the comm system (thanks to Hashtag) and there are loose dogs everywhere. The guard spots the team and starts going for his taser. Skull rushes him, and takes him down with his stun baton.
They flee into the night with Wallace in the golf bag. The dog is thrashing around, which looks suspicious. Hashtag had planned on using his electronics kit to deactivate him, but he hasn’t had the chance yet, and they didn’t want to spend five more minutes at Pooch Palace waiting for him- especially since an alert has surely been triggered and security assets are en route. They set a brisk pace for the sewer shaft. Suddenly a Horizon security rotor drone swoops down and intercepts them. It’s about 100 m away, but it hails them through its comm speakers and demands that they halt, lay on the ground with their hands on their heads and await Horizon Peace Officers. When the runners keep walking, it starts to fire. Fortunately, it is firing stick n shock rounds. It targets Nasty first and just misses him. Because of his cyberware and Skull’s adept talents, Skull and Nasty are much faster runners than Tip and Hashtag. Nasty scoops up Hashtag and starts to book it. Skull also breaks into a run. Tip hangs back a minute and calls on her water elemental once more. She sends it after the drone, which is still firing at Nasty as the ork sprints down the street. The elemental manifests around the drone, engulfing it in water. The water shorts out its circuits and causes it crash in the middle of the street. Sirens can be heard and they see a patrol car coming. Tip starts to run as well, but before she gets far a second drone starts to fire. It’s first shot just misses her. She uses her spirit’s final service to go for this drone, but before it gets to it, the drone tags her with a stick n shock round. It zaps her good, leaving her KOed on the sidewalk. By this time, Nasty and Skull are quite a ways up the street. They look back and see the patrol car closing in. The drone continues to fire on them. A stick n shock round clips Nasty. Fortunately, his armoured vest has some pretty extensive non conductivity features built into it, and he grits his teeth and keeps on trucking. Skull apologizes to Tip and yells that he’ll get her a lawyer- she’s out cold and can’t hear him. The water elemental completes its final service to Tip and takes down the remaining sniper drone.
Skull and Nasty arrive at the sewer hatch (Hashtag is slung over one of Nasty’s shoulders, and his golf bag with the dog is over the other). At the same time, a patrol car skids to a stop just in front of it. Two HPOs (Horizon Peace Officers) jump out an open up on the runners with tight bursts of submachine gun fire. Fortunately, they are firing gel rounds. A cluster of shots tag Skull. His vest absorbs most of the impact and he stays on his feet. Nasty heaves the sewer hatch out of the way and he jumps down with Wallace and Hashtag. Skull follows behind him and they run off into the sewers. The HPO’s don’t pursue, and instead wait for back up. They do take the time to arrest Tip. In the sewers, Hashtag shuts down Wallace so that he can’t be tracked in the matrix. The runners gear up in their dive suites and swim out where they rendezvous with Mako and make their get away.
They hole up for a couple of days in a safe house provided by the Cutters. In the end, they are ordered to release the robodog. They put it in a cab and send it on its way. Their employer follows through with the cash, and they get the diamond collar, which they fence for 50K. Unfortunately, Tip is in Horizon custody and it turns out that lawyers are expensive.
Karma for Session #6: 7, Total Karma to date: 49
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So we got in another one of our rare face to face Shadowrun games last Saturday.
Session #7 (Trouble at the Pit)
Runners: Skull (elf, phys. adept), Hashtag (human, hacker), Big Nasty (ork, cyber gangsta)
A few weeks have passed since the runners hit Pooch Palace and Tip was arrested. It is a Tuesday, August 18th, 2076. Skull, Hashtag and Big Nasty find themselves at a sketchy nightclub in San Fernando called “The Pit.” The club is owned and operated by the Cutters street gang, a gang that Nasty has ties to. The club features regular underground “fight nights,” and on this particular evening Big Nasty is due to have a fight against a guy named Matt Wrath who has come in from Chicago. However, Mr Donovan (The “CEO” of the Cutters) has informed him that he wants to talk biz after the fight. It seems he has some work in mind for Nasty and his team. Thus, Skull and Hashtag are at the club with Big Nasty. Monsta, the gangsta rapper that Nasty has gotten to know, is looking to improve his street cred, and he has convinced Nasty to make him his corner man. At the club, Mr. Donvan introduces Big Nasty to an old Chinese fellow that has come in from Seattle to watch the fight. His name is Mr. Zimm, and he runs a similar club in Seattle. He is always scouting new talent, and he is interested in seeing both Big Nasty and Matt Wrath in action.
A little while later, the main event begins- Big Nasty versus Matt Wrath. Matt Wrath is a jacked up elf that is built more like an ork than an elf. He’s a hardened street fighter who has seen plenty of action. His mascot is a big devil rat called “Matt Rat.” Wrath’s fighting style is built around his massive upper body strength and hardened “Fists of Wrath.” His lower body is his weak spot, and Big Nasty targets it mercilessly, while scrawny Hashtag calls out from the sidelines, “That’s what you get for skipping leg day!” Eventually, the big, cybered ork brings the elf adept down with a big kick to Matt’s knee joint. He collapses, and Nasty pounces on him, taking advantage of the opportunity and pummelling him in the face until he is a bloody unconscious mess. The odds were slightly in Matt Wrath’s favour, so Nasty’s victory is an upset, an upset that nets him, Monsta, Mr. Donovan and Skull each some good nuyen.
After the fight, the runners gather in Mr. Donvan’s spacious office. The office is built on the large balcony level that overlooks the main dance floor of the club (as well as the fight ring). Mr. Donovan is in a good mood, as had money riding on Nasty and has cashed in. He explains to the team that he wants to hire them for some shadow work. It seems that the Cutters are involved in the manufacture and distribution of “Calfornia Hots,” which are dangerous simsense chips that are simliar to BTL chips (better than life). The output level of a Cal Hot is a little lower than a standard BTL, and as a result the chips are legal in the California Free State, and in the LA. metroxplex (which is technically part of the Pueblo Coporate Sector). Recently some of the Cutters’ top female performers were poached by a rival production company called Utopia Studios. Mr. Donovan wants to send the competition a message. The runners are to hit Utopia studios and blow the place up. The Cutters can provide the explosives and 45K in certified cred as compensation to the team. Given all the favours the Cutters have done the team, they figure they owe them, and Skull opts not to bother haggling over their fee.
As the meeting is wrapping up, Mr. Donovan gets an alert over his commlink. There seems to be trouble brewing. He bursts into action, rushing to a weapons locker, popping it open and tossing Skull a shotgun and Nasty an assault rifle and armoured vest. The tatter of automatic weapon fire gets their attention. It sounds like it’s coming from the main floor of the club below. Screams of panic can be heard, and it is clear that there is indeed some serious s#$@ going down. Suddenly, bullets tear through the wall of the office. The runners and Mr. Donovan hit the dirt just in time to avoid catching any lead, but a couple of his slower moving gangster guards aren’t as fortunate, and they get shredded by the onslaught. The bullets keep pouring in. Whoever is firing on them has some serious firepower. They stick to the floor and crawl to the office’s back exit. Big Nasty pushes open the door, he risks getting hit by getting up into a crouch; he moves out into the stairwell and starts down the stairs that lead to the club’s back exit. He safely reaches a landing, but as he does so, he notices movement in front of him. Suddenly a submachine gun appears out of nowhere (assailant wearing ruthenium polymer armor) lower on the stairs ahead of him. A burst sprays out at him. His wired reflexes kick in, and he throws himself to the side just in time. He then leaps down the stairs to engage the near invisible attacker with his bear hands. He knocks the gun to the side just before he/she can get off another burst. The assassin responds by drawing a monosword.
There’s a massive crash, as something slams into the security door to the Mr. Donovan’s office. The door buckles inward and almost bursts off its hinges, but it holds. Finally, the machine-gun fire comes to a stop, as it seems the shooter has spent his clip. Skull takes advantage of the opportunity. and he rushes out into the stairwell and leaps over the upper railing to land beside Nasty on the lower section of the stairs. Here he and Nasty face off together against the the ruthenium clad assassin. The assassin has drawn a monosword and is trying to cut down Nasty, but the bid ork is a skilled in melee combat, and he’s holds his own defending himself. Skull and Nasty working together gives them an advantage, and Skull tries to take their enemy down with his stun baton. Their foe is fast a f%+~ and avoids his best attempts. The clock is ticking, and he knows he needs to deal with her quick. He grabs the tip of his finger, detaching it and extending a monofilament whip spooled inside the hollow of his cyber finger. Suddenly Nasty’s silent running commlink starts smoking, followed seconds later by Skull’s, revealing the presence of a decker trying to hit them from Matrix. Meanwhile Hashtag throws himself into a utility closet at the top of the stairs. He pulls shut the door and does his best to hide himself. He then takes out his cyberdeck and jacks in. He starts searching for hidden icons, hoping to brick his enemies’ gear. He finds several hidden icons operating in the area, so he chooses one at random to make a cyberattack against.
As this is all going down, the door to the office bursts open, and two killers sweep through. One is a big troll with a urban camo coat and a Stoner Ares machine gun. The other appears to be some sort of combat mage. They see the office is empty and exit the back door that the runners fled through. Here they spot Mr. Donovan on the landing and Skull and Nasty trying to deal with the infiltrator assassin on the stairs. They arrive just as Skull slices her (turns out she’s a female elf) head off, using his monfilament whip like a garrotte. Nasty aims his assault rifle up towards the new targets, but before he can shoot, the combat mage hammers him with a mana bolt. With the way now clear, Mr. Donovan bolts down the stairs, past Skull and Nasty, escaping to the first floor before the troll can bring his machine gun against him. Nasty and Skull consider making a run for it. Unfortunately, Hashtag is still in the closet at the top of the stairs, and if the attackers find him, he’s f@*+ed. Thus, Nasty rushes up to face off against the mage and the troll, dodging a lightning bolt from the mage as he bounds back up the stairs. He lands a good shot against the mage with his brass knucks that nearly knocks him out cold, but the troll bloodies up the cybered ork gangsta with a big full auto burst from his machine gun. Nasty’s armoured vest, dermal plating and natural ork toughness saves his life, but he’s still brutally wounded. Skull takes a few seconds to regroup. He then parkours up the stairs and lands at the top among the troll and the combat mage with his stun baton, zapping the troll, but failing to bring him down. Nasty focuses on the mage, while Skull takes on the troll. Nasty and the mage’s fight is a sad thing to watch. Both of them are badly hurt and staggering about like a pair of drunken zombies. Nasty is definitely the bigger and stronger fighter, and he keeps the mage on the defensive, which prevents him from getting any more spells off. Finally, the mage zigs when he should have zagged, and Nasty clocks him in the face with a meaty, brass knuckled fist, knocking him unconscious. Skull versus the troll is a prettier sight to watch. Skull begins by using one of his adept tricks to get in the troll’s mind and command him to throw his machine gun down the stairs. The troll draws a big ruger revolver immediately after, but Skull pulls the stunt off a second time, and the revolver goes clattering down to join the machine gun. This evens the odds a little, and the troll is forced to face Skull in melee combat. Skull goes to work with his stun baton, and lands a couple of hits. They weaken the troll enough that he gets too slow to easily avoid the weapon, and finally Skull gives a jolt that takes the hulking killer down.
While all this is going on in the real world, Hashtag finds himself busy battling it out in cyberspace. His deck comes under attack, but his firewall holds up, and he gets a mark on his attacker allowing him to locate the rival decker’s icon. The icon materializes in the matrix as a big, red battle mech. Hashtag’s own icon is more like a bouncing 3-D happy face emoji. He flies over to the mech, dodging a bombardment of missiles and expelling a stream of emojis at him from his smiling mouth (data spike with multiple marks on his enemy). The cyber combat is brief, but fierce, and Hashtag comes out on top, bricking the Decker’s deck and dumping him from the Matrix. He then continues to hunt down enemy icons to attack. However, by this time his companions have about finished off their foes and there doesn’t seem to be any more threats in the club.
Mr. Donovan informs the runners that someone has taken out his driver who was in the process of bringing his car to the back exit to pick them up. The runners fear more assassins are lurking outside the club, so they regroup and exit out the front door with Mr. Donovan, and Monsta (who took a bullet in the arm when the troll first started spraying the place down) doing what they can to quickly disguise themselves and blend in with the crowd of panicked clubbers that are all trying to get out. Monsta leads them to his Escalade, and they drive off. Mr. Donovan directs them to a local street doc he has contacts with, and orders a bunch of Cutters to meet them there. He also has a couple of his men bind and hide the body of the KOed mage in the closet and pay off the cops to ignore said hog tied mage in the closet. The mage is later delivered to the street clinic for some interrogation. Big Nasty’s injuries are quite serious (being shot up by a machine gun tends to have that effect), and even with a nanite injection, it will still be several days before he’ll be of any use. Thus, the team has to post pone their job for Mr. Donovan. Given the circumstances, Mr. D accepts the delay without taking issue.
They conduct an interrogation of their prisoner. Skull tries to play nice and treat him as a fellow professional by forgiving him for his role in the attack and understanding that it is just business. The mage isn’t overly cooperative, but they eventually get some information out of him. They learn that his street name is Fenris, and that his team was hired by an elf Mr. Johnson that they were put into contact through via their fixer. The elf didn’t identify himself, but he was well dressed. The only clue that the mage noticed was that the elf was wearing expensive snake skin boots that had silver spurs on the back of them. The spurs were shaped like the upside down anarchy symbol that the Ancients go gang uses. The Ancients are one of the most well known go gangs out there. They are said to be an all elven gang with chapters in multiple cities and nations throughout the west of North America, and they are both feared and idolized by the populace. They also learn that that killers were hired to take out Mr. Donovan, Big Nasty and anyone with big Nasty. They consider allowing him to go on condition that he drops the job and promises never comes after them again. However, Mr. Donovan, can’t let the attack on him slide unpunished, and he has other plans for the prisoner. The runners don’t do anything to stop the Cutters from taking Fenris into the clinic’s operating room and dealing with him as they see fit.
Around the time all this is going down, Skull receives and interesting anonymous e-mail. It provides him with the passcode to access a sleeping capsule in a coffin hotel near Long Beach Airport. Here, he is told he can find information regarding the time he lost when he was taken captive by the PCC military. He’s very suspicious and paranoid, but his curiosity gets the better of him, and he decides to go check it out. Nasty is laid up and can’t come along, so it is just he and Hashtag that make the trip the following day. Everything ends up being on the up and up, and in the sleeping capsule Skull finds a data chip. The chip turns out to have security cam footage that shows him coming over the side of large yatch in scuba gear. Using his monowhip, he decapitates a hispanic man dressed in a speedo and silk robe who is hanging out with several gorgeous women on the deck of the boat. Before security can do anything to stop him, he dives back overboard and disappears. Hashtag does some digging on the Matrix. He finds rumours of the death of a high ranking Aztlan government official named Horatio Alvarez, which took place while he was on his yatch. The death reports indicate a heart attack and don’t make any mention of foul play. However the image of Horatio looks like the man in the security video, and the timelines match, so it seems likely that his was the man that Skull killed. There are no clues to indicate who sent Skull the chip or why.
The session ends with Hashtag and Skull arriving back at the street clinic plotting their next move. Nasty is still badly injured, but he has received some first aid. Mr. Donovan has had a shift in his priorities. He wants to find out what the f++* is going on and who is trying to kill him and Big Nasty. To that end, he wants the runners to investigate the attack further. Perhaps starting by paying a visit to the Ancients to see if they can confirm if in fact the gang had anything to do with the attack. Mr. Donovan can’t fathom why the Ancients would try to take him out since the Ancients and the Cutters have a truce, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t involved.
Karma for Session #6: 7, Total Karma to date: 56
This was a tough session to GM. Trying to effectively run a decker, a mage and two combat NPCs was tough. In other systems it wouldn't be a big deal, but because of the complexity of shadowrun, it was mentally exhausting. However, the players said they really enjoyed the session, and they are looking forward to figuring out what is going on and playing the next session, so I guess that's good. I probably won't get to running another session for a few more weeks though.
It looks like we will be having another session on March 4th, so the team will have a chance to try to figure out what's going on.
So here's what's been going on with Tip (occult investigator) since she was taken into custody by Horizon Security Services.
So after being arrested by Horizon Tip was taken into the corp’s custody. Because Horizon is a AAA megacorp, and her crimes took place on Horizon property, she falls under Horizon’s jurisdiction and corporate law.
Because she was not a Horizon corporate citizen, and because her Pueblo Corporate Council SIN was found to be a fake, meaning that she was actually a SINless individual, she had virtually no legal rights, and Horizon was not obligated to follow the same legal procedures that they might otherwise have- including a trial and giving her access to legal representation.
Consequently, almost immediately after her arrest, she was taken to a place in LA called the Haven Reeducation Facility. There she was made part of Horizon’s Simsense Rehabilitation Therapy program (SRT program). Over the past few weeks, she has spent most of her time hooked up to trodes and in VR where she has been exposed to a dizzying bombardment of SRT. The objective of SRT is to rehabilitate criminals, so that they can return to society in a state that will allow them to be productive and useful with no interest in engaging in any further criminal behaviour. This sort of rehabilitation is intended to work much more quickly and effectively than traditional rehabilitation techniques.
The SRT program is still experimental. In particular, more research is needed about how the therapy interacts with awakened individuals, making Tip a valuable test subject. The therapy has only had a limited effect on Tip over a three week period. However, her rehabilitation coach (RC), Martin Landers, seems to have his own agenda. He’s secretly offered her a deal. He’ll sign off on saying that the treatment has worked and that she has been cured, which will allow her to be released from custody, if, in return, she promises to do him a few favours once she’s on the outside. Tip isn’t sure the exact nature of the favours, but Martin is aware of her former career as an occult investigator, and he has alluded that these favours will involve using these skills. Not wanting to spend anymore time in SRT, Tip agreed. Thus she has been released after the three week minimum therapy time thanks to Martin’s glowing report on her rehabilitation progress.
However release isn’t full freedom. Tip is now burdened with a criminal SIN (you have the quality of the same name from the core rules). She is on a probation period, and she has to make weekly reports to her rehabilitation coach that involve visiting Haven and having a meeting with Martin to discuss her progress. She has also been implanted with a GPS tracking chip (in the back of her neck). The chip monitors her location at all times, sending the information to Horizon. They can track her movements and see if she is behaving herself. However, the good news is that most of this monitoring is the job her RC, and as long as his reports continue to indicate that she is doing fine, then everything is good. If for some reason, she tampers with the chip and Horizon discovers this, she will be considered in violation of her parole and will be a fugitive from Horizon Security. They may attempt to take her back into custody.
Despite her new criminal SIN, Horizon does see her as a potentially valuable asset, thanks to her magic. They have promised her an opportunity to interview for a legitimate job with the corp (where she will be able to make use of her magic) if she can make it through 2 months of probation without any violations. Of course, if Tip had wanted to be slaved to mega corp, she would have gone down that path a long time ago. However, the therapy is making her have some second thoughts on the issue.