Shadowrun: Of Course You Know, This Means War

 (guest post by Michelle)

Wednesday morning arrives, and our group wakes up late after crashing the night before. Val (formerly Cleo) takes off to go check in on her place and make sure no one’s hocked her stuff, after imparting everything she can remember about the abandoned warehouse in the Barrens where the war council is supposed to take place. Coil and Kombucha get some blueprints of the place and set about making a plan with the rest of the group for how to approach the event. Hocus heads over in early afternoon to get some astral recon in, and what he sees is basically an empty warehouse with fenced yard around it and a gate, and a couple of nonmagical guards hanging around the door. There’s a main section that’s a huge warehouse/truck loading area, and then an office side that’s only one story high, sort of built onto the side of the main space.

After some discussion, the team decides to get a couple people in position a little bit before the event, and then spends the day doing upkeep, maintenance, and generally getting ready. The other thing that gets noted is that the commentary on the “Ripper” means that Griffin, the missing street hitter, is likely running a Jack the Ripper chip (a bad idea no matter who is running it) and is probably linked to the dead, cut-up hookers being left on street corners in the Barrens in the last two weeks.

A little detective work on the part of the team, combined with running the local Lone Star police blotter feed records, yields a 15 block radius in the Barrens, just northwest of the main inhabited/business area of the Barrens, down toward Bellevue. Looking over things, the team decides that the best way to get Griffin’s attention is to use one of their own as bait. Since Cappy’s the prettiest, they decide to dress Cappy up after the war council in some of Kombucha’s clubwear and set up  an ambush. First, though, the war council and Khan/Cooperman have to get taken down.

So after they pick up some dinner on the way out to the council in the Gorpmobile, Kombucha parks a few blocks away and sends in his drones. Hocus and Coil sneak into the yard and climb up on top of the warehouse so they can peek in one of the skylights. There’s a skeleton crew of Blood Ragers there, getting the place ready. Inside, there’s a table set up with a couple kegs of beer, some chips, and a bowl of candy – it’s all giving big “con hospitality suite” vibes. The rest of the group waits, and then five after 8, everyone arrives at once (in the way of gang war councils). There’s like a parade of gang colors, each with a leader and a small entourage and bannerman driving up and being let in, one group at a time. They each take their place in the yard, forming up around various burn barrels. Eight different groups show up, followed at the end by Cooperman surrounded by a contingent of Blood Ragers and flanked by two women acting as bodyguards. Each of the gangs has a clear leader along with a single second/bodyguard – they all go inside, accompanied by Cooperman and his two guards. The rest of the gangers start milling about outside, more or less civil if not exactly social.

As the initial refreshments and festivities get kicked off, Diablo sneaks in, dressed in plain black leathers, to ostensibly sell some “party favors” to the gangers. He knows a couple of them, so they nod him in and he makes a quick sale for cover. He eventually sneaks closer to the building until he’s standing by the window with a clear shot inside as needed, letting everything else move around him and all the others forget he’s there.

Not too longer after he gets in place, Cappy comes over the side fence, offering booze to the group in front of the gate in an effort to get them out of the way . Kombucha has his drone Bad Harry around the very back of the building, out of sight, start playing some music. Cappy says that the booze is courtesy of the Khan, and he’s just charming enough that the gangers fall for it, moving out of the way.

Meanwhile, inside the building, Cooperman has taken his place on the podium inside the building. The two bodyguards flank him, one on either side, and a quick scan tells Hocus that they’re both street mages. This prospect didn’t get impossible, but it’s not going to be the cakewalk that Val was. Still, nothing’s going to make it better. One of them casts a spell – Detect Enemies, but between Hocus and Coil, they manage to make their Will saves so that the spell doesn’t detect them, and none of the rest of the team is in potential line of sight.

Hocus casts a manaball, but it doesn’t do much to the mages (works decently on the other gang leaders, though) and people scatter. His air elemental swoops down and tries to smother Cooperman, but the mages are defending him, so he has a chance to fight it off. Diablo draws out his bow and aims at one of the mages, skewering her quite effectively before she can do anything to interfere. Coil keeps an eye out for trouble and bodyguards Hocus, taking shots at the gang leaders below, while Cappy starts hoofing it back over the wall and to the van after locking the gate behind him, to slow down pursuit.

The second mage throws up an Armor spell and gives up her attention to defending Cooperman. Again, though, Diablo goes early and often, and manages to put an arrow in her eye well before anyone even knows where they came from, shooting through the window as he is. Hocus stenches the rest of the leaders inside, drooping a bit from spell drain, and the air elemental manages to incapacitate Cooperman and whisk him out through a window, showering glass on the ground.

And of course, someone outside yells, “it’s a trap!” not knowing what’s going on, and the fragile truce that was holding for at least the duration of the meeting is broken, and everyone starts attacking everyone else, running for cover and generally making bad decisions. Someone’s going to come out on top, but it’s not going to be Cooperman at this point.

The air elemental rushes Cooperman back to the Gorpmobile and drops him through the roof hatch. Coil jumps off the roof and heads over the wall, while Hocus levitates off the roof to the street. Diablo manages to Kool-Aid man his way through the closest fence and everyone gets picked up by the van at the end of the street, with Kombucha driving off like crazy and manages to get away in the confusion.

While Kombucha is driving, Hocus looks for the chip in Cooperman’s datajack. He sees it, looks it over, and pulls it out. In the process, however, something sparks hard, there’s a terrible smell of burnt flesh, and Cooperman convulses. Hocus tries to heal him, but Cooperman’s dead and the chip is zorched. Once they’re far enough away, they pull over and Kombucha pulls out his tools, taking a run at fixing the chip. Coil took a look first, but he’s more of a coder than an electrician. Kombucha’s all about the hardware, though, and manages to clean up and mostly repair (or at least confirm it’s accessible) the chip’s data.

The team grabs a quick moment of respite and some snacks, dumping Cooperman’s body along the way. Cappy gets changed into his outfit and they drive up to an abandoned, partially burnt-out old truck stop over by the highway that’s within the area. There’s a working streetlight and some smaller buildings around to give some cover. The group sets up – Kombucha pulls the van around out of sight, and his spider drone Edith Piaf takes a ride in Cappy’s beard. Diablo goes up on the roof of the main building and lays down with a gun, acting as oversight. Coil goes inside the building and covers Cappy, while Hocus is in a secondary building waiting to set his fire elemental on Griffin as needed. A couple of people stop – this area’s rep as a “rest stop” is well known, apparently; the regulars who work this spot have the sense to take some time off so as to avoid getting slashed up, which means the coast is clear. Both are sent on their way by Cappy. Finally, a black sedan pulls up and a man gets out, wearing all black, with glowing yellow cybereyes in the misty evening air.

He asks for directions, mentioning the weather, and offers a moment out of the rain in his car. Over comms, Coil confirms that this guy is Griffin, and Cappy plays it a little coy. He talks money and gets closer, and then Griffin flexes and his hand razors come out. Luckily, no one is surprised, and the whole team comes to Cappy’s rescue. Griffin/Jack is snarling and cursing as he attacks Cappy, determined to do some up close slashing damage. It doesn’t take long to put him down, though Cappy only evades the first couple attacks by the skin of his teeth. Diablo and Coil shoot and put Griffin down, proving that sheer fuckery is really no defense against a couple of well-placed bullets.

With Griffin shot and down, Coil this time goes to remove the chip, and nothing seems to go wrong. Griffin gets dropped at a doc shop given that he did try to help Freya, and the kills weren’t really his doing and the team have a little bit of ethical code going on. They call Roxanne and get told to meet her at the Banshee, where she and Urlan take back the chips, as agreed, and pay the team handsomely, as agreed. On the way over, it comes up that no one here feels like making decisions above their paygrade about what people might intend to do with these chips; it’s enough to do the small bit of general good having kept the company in Urlan’s hands and out of Junior/HSE. Shadowrunners aren’t paid for ethical or moral qualms, after all. In the end, everyone starts planning for how to spend/invest their pay, and maybe—just maybe—they’ll work together again in the future.

Shadowrun: Classy Costume Parties

 guest post by Michelle

So our team gets some sleep and Tuesday rolls around. Tonight is the HSE party, and the general suspicion is that the head of HSE, Booker Pengrave, is the one sporting the chip. At the very least, he’s likely not a great person, and so the team wants to go in prepared.

The group decides that Cappy, Hocus, and Diablo will all go in person to the shindig, using Junior’s invites. Cappy sets out to have a shopping montage with Hocus, who as usual has nothing to wear to the ball. Cappy offers to do the same for Diablo, but given how hard it is to get off-the-rack clothes for trolls that look good and fit well, Diablo falls back to his trusty suit. He’s not going to look like he’s part of the moneyed elite, but he can pass for a bodyguard without too much effort. He brings his supplies in case anyone wants a bit of pharmaceutical refreshment. Kombucha and Coil are going to stay in the van a little ways away, doing overwatch.

Hocus does a bit of scouting in the astral during the day, and notices that the penthouse on the 20^th floor is locked down tight. There’s the odd bit of warding here and there, given that it’s an apartment complex, but those wards are more like “closing the blinds” against astral passers-by vs. actual security. There’s a lot of activity on the 16^th floor, in the lobby, and in the grounds and pool area of the building. Streets outside the building are blocked off, with clear plans for the party to spill out and expand. There’s the main doors, one on each of the other sides, and a loading dock/service door in the back. There’s also gated parking underneath the building, so there’s a basement entrance as well as the ramp down to the parking levels. Last but not least, there’s a helipad on the roof. The final takeaway is that there’s SO MUCH MONEY being spent on this party. Tons of fresh flowers, all real food, the entire 16^th floor being set up as a lounge/simsense viewing area, the freaking palanquin being set up in the lobby, everything being rearranged to accommodate traffic flow…. No expense spared. Hocus is vaguely horrified by it all, as any toiling grad student should be.

Coil takes a more mundane approach and takes a run at the building’s systems. They discover a nice, tight, secure system that actually gives them some resistance. Given that it’s an apartment building, the security for the building as a whole and its systems and security is a baseline for individual nodes/apartments, but their security varies wildly depending on how savvy/paranoid a given tenant is. He finds the 16^th floor set up, arranges a backdoor for later, and steals an advance copy of the show they’re previewing here for a bit of a cash grab. He’ll have to turn it around pretty quick to make some nuyen off it, but that’s not a huge problem. Kombucha also takes a fly-by – with a look at the security, he sees not only the standard building security coming in, but also some Knight Errants filling out the ranks and handling the traffic rerouting. Again, apparently no expense spared.

Time passes, Kombucha checks the feeds, and there’s word of another murder in the Barrens. This is one of those that has to be pretty bad, because it’s actually hitting the news cycle. The team find themselves going back over Junior’s PDA info and trying to contextualize what they learned. Junior’s shorthand of “Val’s running Cleo, and Griffith’s messed up with the Ripper” takes on some new relevance given the palanquin and everything – there’s supposition that maybe it’s not Booker with the chip after all, and that Ripper might be a reference to Jack the Ripper, though why anyone would want to put a Ripper persona in a chip boggles the mind.

So evening rolls around, and the group takes the Gorpmobile and parks a few blocks away. Cappy, Hocus, and Diablo all get out and head over to the party, with Edith Piaf (Kombucha’s spider bot) riding in Cappy’s beard. Their invites get them in the door without a problem, and the doorman gives them a special invite to the 16^th Floor to check out the latest HSE title. The weather is lovely, for a change, and people are gathering on the steps and the sidewalk at small tables, holding cocktails and chatting. The side courtyard is full of music and flowers and waiters moving around with trays, as well as seated guests looking for a more relaxing experience.

As the three move into the lobby, Coil goes ahead and logs back into the building via the backdoor he set up earlier. Hocus takes a look around and sees four corp mages patrolling the astral, two with elementals hanging out. Given the level of heat present, he decides not to spend a lot of time generally scouting the area on the Astral plane.

The trio walks in and immediately clocks the palanquin, as it’s smack in the middle of the lobby with an awkward looking Booker Pengrave sitting on the edge, effectively holding court. He’s dressed conservatively but well – not a handsome guy, but clearly he’s got some juice. This is his event. Hocus scans him but doesn’t get a lot, the gist of it being that he’s healthy, he’s intently focused, he’s proud of himself and this event, and he’s… happy? Oh heck, he’s in love.

There are four trolls standing at the corners of the palanquin, clearly intended to be the bearers – they’re all wearing some tunics and pants that hint at Egyptian/Classical influences without being full-on costumes. House security has another variant of this uniform as well. The decorations for the party are all sheer white curtains and draperies, water features, stone columns, and flowers, with colors of gold, blue, turquoise, tan, and Nile green – again, perfectly tasteful and exquisite, but somehow just a touch exotic for Seattle as well.

Cappy decides to work the room, and Diablo and Hocus head for the elevator. They’re going to visit the 20^th floor, but the floor is keycarded. A quick call for Coil on coms gets them moving, though, as he takes control of the elevator systems, ensuring also that no one is going to come up and bother them. The doors open, and the pair look out onto a well-appointed hallway, this one not decorated for the party. An ork in a suit stands by the single door at the far end. He says, “Can I help you?” As they mumble an answer, he steps forward and says, more forcefully, “I said, can I help you?” as he starts moving toward his radio. Diablo steps forward and hits him with his shock implant, and the guard’s eyes roll back in his head as he drops to the ground. Hocus is impressed, and says as much as he searches for the keycard the guard had. Diablo picks him up, and the two go in, with Diablo confiscating the guard’s weapons as well. What they find is a lovely penthouse apartment, with objet d’art, some minor magical trinkets, and a lived-in art exhibit feel. They look around and find notes on Pengrave’s computer referring to a launch at 9:30pm. They also find two bedrooms – one done over in modern ancient Egypt with a HUGE bed smack in the middle of the room, and one much plainer and more masculine. They’re in the middle of figuring out what to do with the guard when Cappy gets on coms and says, “Val just walked in. You guys should see this.”

During the trip upstairs, Cappy takes a moment to survey the room, schmooze, and generally figure out the plays happening here. There’s a little eavesdropping, and the gist of what he and Kombucha pick up is that someone’s surprised Junior isn’t here, someone else asks about Flair, a third person talks about how their stock in HSE is really taking off, and another wants desperately to get cast in the next film. Cappy takes a minute to clock the ones who want something and/or the ones likely to be goaded into a public meltdown if the situation arises.

About 15 minutes go by, and then Cappy notices Booker looking around distractedly. A couple of bodyguards exit the other elevator, and behind them walks an absolutely stunning woman. Her hair is up in a gold filigree sort of arrangement with some complicated braids going on; she’s wearing a simple designer number, strapless, white with a high-low hemline and on the sheer side, but with enough layers that it’s glimpses rather than a full show as she walks across the floor, her fantastic legs on display. She’s not classically beautiful, but she’s absolutely eye-catching – she’s got a sort of beaded turquoise, lapis, coral and gold Egyptian-style collar necklace with a big scarab in front and sort of wings encircling her neck. Her eye makeup is stunning, worn with a nude lip and little other color so that all you see is her huge dark eyes. She glides over to Booker, allows him to kiss her hand while she smiles at him, and then settles herself on the palanquin to lounge like she’s done it every day of her life in a gown and heels. She has a gold scarab decoration on her scalp, likely over her datajack.

Cappy alerts everyone while this is happening and the entire lobby falls quiet without meaning to as she walks in. Booker refers to her as Cleo. Kombucha gets a shot of her face and does some quick searching, and discovers that while you wouldn’t think the two had anything possibly in common, she’s a match for Valerie Westerfield, the rigger who was on the run against GTI. Valerie doesn’t wear makeup or dresses, doesn’t wear boots, and can get you anywhere you want to be within the city in short order, but this is way outside her normal skillset. Even without an astral scan, it’s clear to see that Booker is seriously smitten – his craggy face lights up when she comes over.

Diablo and Hocus join back up with Cappy, and share what they found. Cappy makes a quick call to a contact and discovers that there’s no reservations out there in Pengrave’s name, but that he does own his own ship – currently booked at the marina, pier 29, with the name “Explosion.” (ostensibly named after an action/softcore IP into its 7^th entry in the HSE stable of properties).

At 8:45, Booker sits back and the music rises a bit, and the trolls step forward to lift the palanquin and carry it outside. The runners decide to hit the side entrance and see if they can beat Booker and Cleo to pier 29, as they are fairly certain at this point that Cleo is Val, and she has the chip. They see Booker and Cleo get set down next to the black sedan on the street, and he hands her in and they pull away.

Luckily, between the bit of a headstart and Kombucha’s driving, the traffic and construction don’t cause too much of an issue. They don’t manage to beat Cleo and Booker to the docks, but they pull up right as the two are getting out and walking over to the boardwalk. Diablo and Hocus get out and head over to grab Cleo/Val. The pair see them coming – Booker shoves Val forward away from the two to help her get away and turns to stop Diablo and Hocus. She kicks off her shoes and takes off running, but to very little avail, as Hocus sends his air elemental after her and tells it to Envelop her. Diablo catches up with Booker, and with no ceremony picks him up and knocks him off the boardwalk into the water.. He yelps and sputters, but starts swimming and doesn’t drown. Hocus’s elemental brings Cleo/Val back, and Diablo catches her and they take her back to the van and drive off.

While she’s unconscious, Cappy flips open the scarab cover and pulls out the chip. It’s intact, and there doesn’t seem to be any damage. They take her to Renton to the safehouse and ask her questions when she wakes up. Unfortunately for the team, she doesn’t remember anything since she slotted the chip. Cooperman stiffed her and Griffith – refused payment as agreed and said instead that they should take the chips, as they were worth more. She didn’t feel she could argue given that they’d just dropped Freya at Dr. Bob’s and there were all the ganger thugs around as “security.” She took the chip, headed out, and slotted it to see what was on it – and that’s the last thing she remembers. She did hear Cooperman talking through the door, but it was muffled and didn’t make sense. “Now I …. Khan!” Which sounded weird, but she thought she misheard it. She does know about the warehouse Cooperman’s taken over with his gang, and provides the team with the address and layout, since that’s where the run against GTI took off from. Hocus and Cappy bonded over the fact that Val does not seem very streetsmart (she’s a rigger, not a brain surgeon, Jim!) and decided to spend some time tomorrow morning looking up info about the place to plan an attack. In addition, Kombucha and Coil decide to do some recon on the murders of streetwalkers in the Barrens, as they have a bad feeling that’s the best way to find Griffith. Time’s getting short, but at least they’ve got one chip. Join us next time for the War Council fracas!

Shadowrun: The Banshee, Redux

(guest post by Michelle)

So following up casing Cooperman’s place, with the prevailing opinion being that Cooperman was channeling Nero or some shit given the special order for the palanquin, the team trundled back over to the Banshee to meet with Roxanne. Hocus starts thinking about whether or not it might be a good idea to have some elementals on call for the party on Tuesday and/or the attack on the compound/war council, and enters into discussions with the group about putting together the funding for materials. Kombucha pulls up outside and leaves the van parked, with Bad Harry primed just in case but otherwise staying in the van.

The whole team comes inside, handing over everything but their pistols at the check-in window  before they’re buzzed through the gate. Once inside, the Banshee looks much as it always does. A bit on the threadbare, stained, keep-the-lights-low-so-you-don’t-have-to-look-at-the-carpet side but well-staffed and serviceable. The piped-in oldies top-40 music feed keeps the background noise level and randomized, the noise generators on the tables add an extra layer of static protection, and the drinks are mid-range on pretty much all fronts – cost, quality, and taste. Enough to ease conversation and give people something to settle nerves and hands, but not enough to either grab attention or encourage you to stay past your initial appointment.

Roxanne is sitting at a table in the front room this time, with bouncers at all the exists, a bartender and waitress keeping the hospitality flowing. The team orders some drinks, including a troll-size beer, and is just about to sit down with Roxanne when the music cuts out. The bartender curses, mentions something about wiring, and people with questionable lineage,  promises he’ll have it back on in 5. Roxanne dithers about waiting for the sound system, but in the end opts for expedience. She suggests that Cappy start the update.

With that in mind, Cappy starts in letting her know that TeeHee was safe, something that Roxanne wasn’t personally invested in, but knew that Urlan would appreciate it, the big ‘ol softie. She is informed that he doesn’t have the goods and was something of an idiot, as he hadn’t been paid yet either. They verified that he doesn’t have the goods – that they were handed over and that it was an inside job. When Junior’s name is mentioned as the inside person, Roxanne is clearly momentarily startled. Cappy mentions that there are supposed to be backups of the research on Junior’s computer, Roxanne excuses herself to make a phone call. The tunes start flowing again, and there’s some motion at the security door. The team turns to see what’s going on and Diablo and Cappy figure out that things are about to go down. Diablo spots Junior’s walking cape through the security door and realizes everything Is nearly about to fo sideways – of all the people in the city, Junior is definitely not someone who should be here  – also, apparently neither Roxanne nor anyone who works for her can spot a tail.

Cappy informs Hocus and Diablo tells Kombucha, and the next moment Coil realizes what’s going on as well. Before anyone can act, though, Junior shoots his shot. He slams the cage door open, breaking it in the process, and shoots a sawed-off shotgun at the bouncer in the corner, on the other side of the door. He misses, instead putting a hole in the storage closet wall next to him. The grumpy dwarf who collects the weapons comes out of the door that leads into the weapons safe and starts shooting at a couple of the other bodyguards, but doesn’t do a ton of damage.

Among the team, Hocus acts far and away ahead of the others. Figuring out that Junior probably has his thugs in the entry with him, he sets off a magic stink cloud by the door that neatly catches all the bad guys without any real Drain for him in the end. Junior and two of his thugs start retching, but neither is incapacitated, while one of them resists entirely. Diablo goes after Gus at the same time, going hand-to-hand given his titanium bone lacing – he packs a heck of a wallop, and while Gus is sturdy, he’s not a troll. He manages to ring Gus’s bell a bit, but he’s still up and fighting. Kombucha calls Bad Harry into action and sends him to the front door, effectively boxing in the bodyguards. He has his drone announce that they should stand down, guns at the ready but not firing. Coil turns over a table to get behind for cover, and Cappy joins him, trying to talk Junior down, but the ork is in no mood to listen. The waitress and the bartender get down behind the bar, and the bouncers scramble a bit, caught on the backfoot and try to get into position. Roxanne ducks down behind a table and pulls out her pistol.

Junior yells for Roxanne and barrels through the wrecked cage door. He shoots at Diablo but doesn’t manage to do much other than some impact damage thanks to the armored jacket and dermal plating the troll has. Hocus isn’t done yet, though. He readies and lets loose a Stunball on the orks and Gus, since the floor plan means they’re nicely bunched up. Given that none of these people have what we would call a strong will, Junior, Gus, and two of the bodyguards (the two nauseous ones) drop where they stand, passed out. The head bodyguard, who’s still by the door looking askance at Bad Harry, decides to surrender as he knows when a job isn’t worth his life.

From there, it’s cleanup. The bartender/manager, Dylan, and his bouncers are none too gentle with Gus, who’d been on the outs for a while as it turns out his grump level had gone off the scale – when Junior had approached him, he’d just decided to rob the place and get some payback for being made to, you know, work and not steal shit. The team ties up Junior and the two other bodyguards and begins some interrogation – namely, Cappy starts asking questions and Kombucha starts sending his spiderbot, Edith Piaf, up Junior’s left nostril. Junior tries to bluster and get free, but having Edith wiggle a bit makes him compliant. Turns out, perhaps predictably, that Junior is a complete wuss.

His goal, as admitted somewhat under duress, was to capture/kill Roxanne along with killing the team. He’s working with HSE (Hollywood Simsense Entertainment) to kick out Urlan at the GTI Board of Directors meeting on Friday by claiming financial malfeasance since the whole project that was taking up all the money and plans of GTI will have gone missing. Junior plans to claim that it didn’t exist at all. He will then be put in charge (according to his plans) and agree to a merger by HSE that leaves him in charge of the division under the HSE umbrella – all the perks, none of the work. He is unhinged about Urlan, clearly a nightmare boss/relationship for anyone unlucky enough to get drawn into his orbit, and has a tremendous number of anger/emotional issues. The team searches him and comes up with his sawed-off shotgun, two grenades, his PDA, and a set of invites for the HSE party tomorrow night. He has dictation notes on the PDA mentioning a) plans to kill TeeHee if he finds him instead of paying him, b) notes for his speed on Friday, c) recorded notes about how the chips are messing up the runners he gave them to, with Cooperman as Khan, Val’s running Cleo, and Griffith’s all messed up with the Ripper.

Roxanne arranges for GTI people to come secure Junior et al. Hocus gets the card of the head bodyguard in case they need muscle later. The group has a moment of consensus and decides to communally chip in for a couple of elementals that Hocus can summon over the next day, one force 4 air elemental, and one force 2 fire elemental (with the exception of Coil, who does not want this to happen at all because Magic Sucks). And we’ll see where we are when we get back!

Shadowrun: Docs & Details

 (guest post by Michelle)

All right! So when last we left our team of runners, they had found the runaway decker in the deeply shabby studio apartment of his old mentor, Flair. The group decided they should probably stash the pair in a safer place, since it wasn’t as though they were well hidden as it was. Flair didn’t want to, but his wishful thinking gave way when faced with the fact that 1) TeeHee hadn’t been paid yet, 2) the kid had no leverage left, and 3) his protégé was a fantastic coder but had the street smarts of a confused snail. In years past Flair would have been able to protect him better, but between the lack of resources and the still occasional TBI symptom flares, he admitted that he wasn’t really going to be able to do much if someone came for the kid.

Cappy volunteered one of his mid-tier hidey-holes in Renton, and the team decided to take the two there, as neither had their own transportation. By late afternoon they were ensconced in a furnished place with a window onto a courtyard, actual carpet, and something approaching privacy given that it wasn’t just all one room. Cappy also put in a call to Roxanne, their employer contact, to let them know that TeeHee had been found, that it was an inside job aside from him, and that he didn’t have the goods any longer. Roxanne stopped Cappy before he could tell her more details, saying that the line wasn’t secure. She instead set up a meeting for 11pm at the Banshee, as that was the soonest she could get away. Given that it was about 5pm, that meant the team had some time to kill.

First, Kombucha cobbled together a quick transmitting camera with a decibel sensor that he placed in the living room, facing the door, to act as an alarm if anything should happen or someone show up unexpectedly. Second, the team arranged for a quick grocery/food delivery to Kombucha’s van via drone, so that Hocus could a) get some ingredients for a tracking ritual and b) make some cookies. One one-bowl snickerdoodle batch later, and Hocus set to work tracking down the astral signature he had from the blood traces left in the abandoned car after the GTI run. Diablo hung out and Coil did a little coding while people were waiting – oh, until Hocus went into trance, and then he drew a mustache in sharpie on the unconscious mage while the others critiqued Coil’s technique.

Meantime, in the Astral, Hocus sets off to track down the signature. Following the traces he has, he finds himself at Dr. Bob’s Quickstitch, a no-questions-asked, cred-only clinic in the Redmond Barrens that doesn’t turn away anyone, but also caters to a more occasionally cred-rich shady clientele. He sees that three rooms inside the business are warded, and the person who has the signature he was following is nowhere in sight. Surmising they’re in one of the warded rooms, Hocus makes sure there’s no nasty Astral surprises, then returns to his body to loop in the group – the blood belonged to the elf mage, who at the very least went to the clinic and is likely still there. No one mentions the mustache.

Following a quick procurement of food from a drive-thru in Renton and an admonition to Flair and TeeHee to stay put and off the Matrix, the team is off to the Redmond Barrens again. The team sees some gangers in Blood Rumbler red and blue putting the BR tag on top of Brain Eater tags in the BE’s territory – they’re kids, not soldiers, but that’s still not a great sign. Diablo clocks it as they pass by, but they don’t want to get involved – it’s not part of the run, after all, so they keep to the plan.

Dr. Bob’s isn’t that far from the Banshee, as these things go, as long as you’ve got your own transport (aka the Gorpmobile). The clinic is out to the northeast of the city of Redmond proper, so it’s got semi-reasonable roads in place, though no one lives right near it – we’re past the point where about anybody wants to live who doesn’t have to, and the area around the clinic has been cleared out. There’s a vacant lot next to the building that people use for parking, so the team pulls up there and proceeds to look the place over.

Coil does a quick logon and checks out the system at Dr. Bob’s. He wants medical records, but Dr. Bob is a believer in “KISS” (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and does not keep the clinic’s medical records online (they are in fact in pasteboard shelving/file cabinets with a gas can next to it, but the team doesn’t know that). The system is pretty barebones, with the medical equipment that requires an online connection to function, a link to payroll and personnel info, and security alarms/surveillance/systems. He taps into the security systems and quickly sets up a surveillance feed loop in case they have to break in and need cover. In addition, he figures out that on top of the maglock security doors and alarms, there’s a physical pacification system in place in the form of multiple panic buttons and gas release vents in each room.

Kombucha puts his spiderbot Edith Piaf into action and has it sneak in as patients go in and out. He gets it past the security door (also back where the exam rooms are) and into the hallway, where it looks around. There’s two guards on the door, one walking along the halls, and presumably at least one street mage on staff given the warded rooms. EP crawls along the ceiling toward the warded rooms, as Hocus points them out on the viewscreen in the van. Two are vacant, but one has a sleeping blonde elf woman in a hospital bed – looks like the woman from the surveillance video.

Cappy and Diablo decide based on this info to go into the clinic and try to handle this in person, as no one wants to go loud on the clinic and cut off a potentially valuable resource of healthcare. No sense in preemptively burning bridges among runners. The waiting room is packed – old linoleum flooring, acoustic tile ceiling, those waiting room, rows of DMV-style chairs all branching off a single metal rod anchored to the floor. One dusty fake plant at the end of the room. There’s a security door with no windows, a guard on either side of it, and the “reception” desk is behind thick plexiglass with a mic, a small window to hand forms through, and a credstick reader to the side. There’s a bunch of clipboards hanging on the wall next to the window for people to use, and the nurse/receptionist behind the window looks checked out despite her physical presence. “Take a number. 37? 37?” she says.

The patients look up – it’s evening, so it’s a mix of work injuries, sick kids, and street people filtering in. Lots of potential collateral damage if things go loud. Diablo and Cappy walk up to the window. “Take a number,” says the nurse. Cappy immediately starts asking questions, but the nurse just says “I can’t help you” and points to the credstick reader. Cappy nods, a little annoyed, but keeps his pleasant demeanor. As a little green light flashes at the nurse’s desk showing a positive balance, Cappy makes a “donation” of 500 nuyen. “We’re friends of Freya, and we’re here to see her.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” She glances at the credstick again. “However, I will have a doctor come talk to you as soon as they can.”

Temporarily mollified, Cappy and Diablo go join the crowd, with Diablo sitting on the designated troll/ork bench since those bucket waiting seats weren’t made for butts like his. It takes about 15 minutes, then Dr. Bob slows up. He ushers Cappy and Diablo back to his office, and Kombucha has EP follow them back to keep an eye on the conversation.

Before anything gets started, Dr. Bob shuts the door, indicates a cred reader, and says that he gets 100/hr or part thereof, and information or requested services beyond basic medical examinations are a la carte. Cappy raises an eyebrow, but slots a credstick and pays for three hours of time, plus expenses. He quickly gets to the point, that they know Freya is there and want to talk to her. Dr. Bob dissembles a bit, but then gets to the point himself, noting that he can arrange for them to see her, but a) she doesn’t leave the facility, b) no violence, and c) she gets to say when the interview is over. Everyone agrees, so he walks them down to the hospital room where Freya is recovering.

There’s a bit of pleasant enough conversation, and Freya doesn’t pull any punches. She doesn’t owe anything to her team members, given that they were within three seconds of leaving her behind. She got approached by Marcus Cooperman, the Historian, a high-end fixer who was looking to extract an asset along with some material. It should have been in and out, but Knight Errant showed up and everything went to hell in a handbasket. The chips were some high-end historical sim/Skillsoft chips, designed for educational purposes – nothing that should have gotten that sort of high-threat response. Val was the rigger in the car, Griffith was the corp razor Cooperman talked into helping (the one who didn’t leave Freya behind despite orders to the contrary), and Cooperman who went along as additional muscle/decking support. She doesn’t have the chips and doesn’t know where they ended up, though Cooperman was really hot to get his hands on them. She was glad to hear that TeeHee was safe, but she didn’t want details and wasn’t inclined to get more involved with that end. She feels real sore at Cooperman and once she’s recovered (always tricky as a magic user) she is going to take care of some unfinished business with him, since she suspects he set them up. He lives in the Barrens and is cozy with the Blood Rumblers gang, acting as a fixer for them to offload product of various kinds.

With that done, they all get shooed out. It’s about 7pm now and there’s still time to kill. Everyone takes a little time to call some people and get some info:

• Kombucha calls a rigger friend named Spork to find out if there’s been any high end vehicles moving, and the friend notes that it’s not exactly high tech, but there’s been an order go out for a palanquin, one of those sorts of chaise sofas carried on poles by bearers, for the HSE party on Tuesday in Queen Anne. Gold plated, no less, meaning that it’s got to be custom made and not so heavy the bearers can’t lift it if they’re not trolls.
• Hocus’s auntie, Martina, who’s in the Slovak mob, asks what he’s up to and tells him to stay on campus for the next few nights and away from Redmond, as there’s a big power grab about to go down among the street gangs, including a “war council” meeting on Wednesday night, followed by a big show of power. She would hate to see him get hurt for no reason.
• Cappy talks to Gabriel, the crew’s fixer, for more info on Cooperman, like how to get in touch with him. Cappy learns that normally you’d head to the high-end clubs downtown, but for the last two weeks the Historian hasn’t been seen – he seems to have gone all in with his gang affiliations and let his acquisitions business lapse entirely. He’s got a “compound” northwest of Redmond in Blood Rumbler turf where he lives, has a garden, and keeps all his rare and valuable historical and cultural artifacts he collects. Gabriel apologizes as if he’d known Cooperman was involved, he’d have provided more info upfront and sends his love to “that delicious dwarf” Kombucha.[

Desirous of getting a bit more of the lay of the land, the team drives over and find’s Cooperman’s place. Kombucha parks across the street, next to some joyboys and girls with BR marks. He uses them as cover, so they can take stock of Cooperman’s compound without being noticed. The street kids offer some good rates at a “store closing” sale, as they say this is their last night out here. Their friend Simon got cut up, and it’s not safe to do business out here anymore. That’s a little odd, as here in gang territory ought to be fairly safe from anyone but gang members and they won’t usually kill off their own property, but nothing Kombucha wants to dig into.

All of them taking a look at it in their own ways, It’s about an acre of land with a house and a wall around it, a high plastered stone fence with metal spikes on top, about 8 feet tall. There’s a driveway gate you can get buzzed through, a walking gate, and theoretically a gate in the back of the property, not streetside, but they can’t see it. Inside there’s a very nice modern house, 1.5 stories, split-level, with gardens and a couple of out buildings, including a large unattached garage. There’s surveillance cameras around, motion-sensor lights, and 2-man patrols around the grounds, one of which has a dog. All the guards are armed and look like they know what they’re doing with a gun, and they’re wearing BR colors. Astral scans indicate there’s two warded rooms on the inside but that’s all. All the guards are a little the worse for wear, with one Awakened but no spells, probably an adept, and one that reads street mage. No elementals, though. Coil’s scan likewise indicates a lack of tech investment – there’s no data stores accessible, no comms. Further watching seems to indicate walkie-talkies – the entire place is effectively reliant on physical security, as though magical or online isn’t also a threat. Kombucha could probably get a drone in, but not during the day without being noticed.

After everyone gets done, they compare notes. Cooperman’s surprisingly set for a fixer, even a high end one, and that’s a lot of BR muscle he’s employing – particularly since ostensibly he works for them, not the other way around. The place can be hacked, but there won’t be a lot and it won’t do much about the muscle. It’s going to take time to find the best way to get in and out, and they’re not even sure if he’s got the goods. Kombucha wonders if the reason Cooperman’s changed up his MO is that he’s slotted one of the chips and is caught in the middle of some historical re-enactment in his head or something. Diablo remembers the war council thing that Hocus mentioned, and it seems like maybe they just need to wait for Cooperman and/or his security to go to that and then break in when no one’s home, which strikes the rest as a potentially good idea.

Either way, by the time all this is done and dusted, it’s time to load up and head over to the Banshee. Roxanne is waiting for news, and Monday is drawing to a close. Next time, picking up with the meet!

Shadowrun: Legwork

(guest post by Michelle)

And we’re back with our runners after a night of intrigue and getting hired for a retrieval job. Morning comes early after a night of drinking, dancing, doing business and nearly getting shot. The gang’s on a deadline, though, and there’s no time to sleep in when money’s changing hands. They started out by meeting up for breakfast – syntheggs with enough ketchup to mask anything, and enough soykaf to make the morning worthwhile. They react in their usual fashions – that’s still too much like food for Coil, who prefers a nice protein paste shake; normal fare for Kombucha, Hocus, and Diablo; and Cappy turns it down flatly but politely, sticking with soykaf.

Once they’ve broken their fast, they head out to the Gorpmobile and go through the crate of TeeHee’s belongings from his office, provided by their contact. In going through the crate, they discover that a) TeeHee is not much for housekeeping, b) he likes Urban Brawl and is a big Seattle Screamers fan, c) that he has a lighter from a decker hangout called the Breadboard, some organic tea from a grocery store called Orion’s that actually smells like a nice green tea blend, and a holocube with some various pics of TeeHee and his friends from Seattle University, including one of a professor, an older guy holding a deck in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. There’s some generic other circuit boards, blank data chips, a microtool set, and some general desk doodads as well, all of them with a fine layer of dust and the occasional crumbs.

They also load up the surveillance footage that Roxanne provided them. They can see a blonde elven woman, a clear human street Sammie, and another human guy who seems more fight oriented and less stylish come into the building and down the hallway to an office. They go in, are off camera for a few moments, and then come out with TeeHee by the arm, escorting rather than dragging the guy. He’s carrying a small messenger bag and looks excited.

The four of them get almost to the door before the siren starts. Once outside, the security hits like a cloudburst of gunfire, sudden and everywhere all at once. There’s lightning bursts that look like an elemental at work, even, seemingly belonging to the elf woman. The runners are professionals and hold their ground as they make it toward the car waiting on the street. Halfway there, the elf gets shot. The muscle guy runs for it and pushes TeeHee into the car, while the Sammie yells out “Freya!” There’s clearly a difference of opinion between the two fighters, but the Sammie movie like lightning and grabs the elf woman, loading them both into the car so quickly it’s practically blurred on the footage.

Between the footage and the items, they’ve got about three different directions to look into. If the runner who was shot survived, then she’d need medical care, and if she was a mage, then it’s no slap patches and quick ERs for her. She needs long-term doctoring that’s magic-user friendly. So to find her, they’ll need to track down a doc, probably one that doesn’t work for/with DocWagon and has a deferred payment plan available – that means street docs. In addition, they decide that Orion’s Grocery and the Breadboard are the best places to start looking for TeeHee, figuring that if they find him, they’re one step closer to the chips. A quick bit of searching gets the address of the grocery, then, and off they all go.

So as they drive over, a bit of Matrix knowledge on the part of Coil and Shadowrunning lore on the part of Diablo zero in on who Flair is – turns out he’s a retired SU prof named Norris Hendrix, also known as Flair, one of the OG Shadowrunners. Hendrix was a legend among SU students as well as the decker community as a whole, given that he was one of the architects of the Matrix and a pioneer of Matrix geometry. TeeHee was apparently one of his proteges.

Flair had a bad run against some IC and went down, staying in a coma for a couple of years. When he came back, he wasn’t quite the same – traumatic brain injury will do that to you. He retired, and now he’s consulting on a more or less legal basis, of late for Hollywood Simsense Entertainment (HSE). Turns out they’re a competitor to GTI. Interesting coincidence, that.

Regardless, they soon arrive at Orion’s, which is just over the border in the Barrens from Bellevue. The area’s a bit down at heel, but the working classes can still rent a relatively safe if shitty apartment hereabouts. You can see the edge of paycheck-to-paycheck to the east from here, though. They park, and Kombucha sets Edith Piaf (his arachnodrone) to watch the van. They all go into Orion’s Organic Grocery, whereupon Cappy brightens up at the smell of actual food and Hocus is deeply confused at the assault on his senses. The store’s a mom-and-pop establishment, with security cages around the cash registers, a buzzer in the back with a low-tech security camera setup, and a few rows of not-terrible canned goods and staples with some fresh actual food (both ready-to-eat and ingredients) in the back of the store. An older human woman comes out and greets the group, asking if she can help them.

Being the negotiator, Cappy takes the lead in talking to her while everyone else goes shopping. Cappy buys an apple and offers a bit to Hocus, who is discomfited at how…. APPLEY it smells. It’s not a great selection, but there’s some definite local suppliers represented and what’s there is good quality. The lady, one Madisynn Orion, directs Kombucha to the organic tea, which matches what they found in TeeHee’s stuff. Kombucha realizes he can get the ingredients for a new batch of gorp here, so he loads up, and Madisynn recognizes what he’s making and invites him back, with a business card that’s also a disposable radon tester.

Cappy charms the lady, who doesn’t recognize TeeHee, but does know Flair. He does most of his shopping there, but she doesn’t spend a lot of time talking to him as her husband, Rank, is the jealous type and doesn’t like the way Flair chats Madisynn up. With a twinkle in her eyes, she rings up purchases and suggests they stop back by after noon, as Flair is almost never in before then.

From there, as they step out, they see that there’s a place with a circuit board sign hanging out about three blocks down. Coil identifies that as the Breadboard, which happens to be where they were looking to go to next. They walk down and it is a decker hangout from the word go. If you’ve got an AR eye up and a wireless connection available, you can see the menu visual and place your orders via signal. If not, you have to wait for physical service. The place is full of metal and skin bodies, most of them looking at devices or into the middle distance. When the group comes in, they all mostly focus for a moment, but seeing Coil reassures the clientele that there are no strangers here, and so the group gets ignored again. They all squish into a larger booth and a waitress comes over – an ork with steel capped tusks, twin datajacks, and a Screamers tattoo on her arm, as well as a deeply on-point eyeliner game going on. There’s a cook in the open kitchen behind the bar making syntheggs and soyjacks, and everyone except Cappy decides on breakfast for lunch, while Cappy sticks to the apple.

Diablo is taken by the waitress and decides to shoot his shot, and ends up with her number for later. They’re able to confirm that Flair does come in sometimes, but more than that they’re not willing to say. They agree to tell him the group wants to talk to him, though. After razzing Diablo about his level of game, they compare notes and decide to do a bit more research from the handy virtual jackpoint. Kombucha is able to identify the car used in the surveillance, a Ford Nightrunner, and do a bit of tracking. It was headed east into the Barrens. Coil sets up a quick bot to scrape mentions of TeeHee, while Kombucha tracks down Lone Star reports – a burnt-out black Nightrunner was picked up a few days ago in the Barrens. A bit of quick thinking identifies the closest junkyard to the place, “Barrens Pull-a-Part” and they decide to go look that up while they wait for Flair to show. Edith climbs up to the top of the sign to watch for Flair, and Coil sets Rufus up to watch Edith and boost her signal/place a call if Flair shows up while they’re gone.

As they get in the van, Diablo notes that there’s three Blood Rager gangers with colors flying on bikes, riding in formation down the street. Given that this is Crimson Clash territory, this seems ill-advised at best and downright suicidal at worst. They don’t seem interested in the group, though, so nobody gets in the way.

The Barrens Pull-a-Part is about 20 minutes away, as the Barrens suffers greatly from “you can’t get there from here” syndrome, which doesn’t mean you can’t get there exactly, but your route will be neither quick nor direct. Upon entering the junkyard, they’re greeted by an elf in a set of grimy coveralls who introduces himself as Scooter and immediately gets Kombucha’s mostly undivided attention. He says they did get a burned out car a couple of days ago – it’d pretty much been there probably a week before they got called out to tow it. He pulls out a printed map of the junkyard and circles the car’s location. The team heads back and starts checking out the car. It’s a mess – burned to within an inch of its existence. There’s no physical evidence to speak of, except that Hocus is able to detect Freya’s astral signature on the car thanks to some baked on but not obliterated blood evidence – the kind of thing Freya would have cleared if she’d been able. Without anything else but maybe a lead to come back and do some talismongering for Hocus later, Freya’s signature, and an elf that’s totally Kombucha’s type, they decide to head back to Orion’s.

As the group in the Gorpmobile gets within a few blocks of the store, Rufus/Edith raise a signal – Flair is in Orion’s, being helped by a somewhat surly older man – ostensibly Rank Orion keeping Flair firmly at arms length from his beloved Madisynn. Flair takes it all in stride, though, and leaves with two bags of groceries, heading away from Orion’s/the Breadboard and back down the street toward an apartment building. Coil dismisses Rufus and has Edith follow Flair from the rooftops as the van hangs back – no one wants to spook Hendrix, certainly not before they figure out where he’s going.

A block up and over and Flair enters a three-story walk-up apartment building. Edith slips in the slow-closing door, and sees Flair check his mailbox and then trudge up the stairs – no elevator here. Kombucha has her follow Flair up to the third floor and then slip into the apartment behind him, as she’s spider sized and extremely sneaky.

Flair’s apartment is a studio roughly the size of a box of tissues, or at least it feels like it. He’s got a very small kitchenette with a hot plate, dorm fridge and a sink, a small bathroom with shower, an alcove with a bar across it for a closet, a dinette set, a double bed, and a work desk with a chair. The carpet pattern is 20^th-century Stains and the window has a lovely view of the brick wall across the alley through the bars across it. On the floor, his feet sticking out from behind the workdesk, sits TeeHee with his eyes closed, jacked into his deck and with his fingers fluttering across the keyboard. Flair walks over to the kitchenette and starts putting groceries away, setting the teakettle on the hotplate and getting out mugs.

Seeing the threat is minimal, the runners get out of the van and walk up. They knock on Flair’s door, and at first he doesn’t answer. He pulls a big folding screen out from the closet area and puts it in front of TeeHee after pulling a blanket over him, then puts the work chair in front of that. It’s not like there’s an extra room to hide him in, after all. He takes a pistol and puts it in his waistband, in back, under his old SU sweatshirt, and calls out that he doesn’t want whatever they’re selling.

Cappy steps up and explains that they just have some questions, that they’re looking for TeeHee but only want to talk. Flair immediately employs his best grumpy old man manner and insists the kid’s not there, but Edith gives the team their proof. Finally Cappy convinces Flair to let them in to talk, and so Cappy and Hocus step inside, with Kombucha and Coil staying with the van. Diablo stands out of sight while this discussion goes on, but when Flair lets them in, he steps forward and blocks the door closing with his hand. Flair is concerned and annoyed, but he’s been in the game a long time. Once he sees Diablo’s gigantic troll self, it’s not a question that the door on his shitty apartment would have really kept the runners out anyway.

The three go in, and Cappy sits with Flair while Diablo goes over and pulls off the cover from Tee Hee. Flair makes a real effort at convincing the team that the kid isn’t a threat, and nobody gets out a weapon. Instead, Hocus fills the mugs with tea while everyone talks and Kombucha and Coil listen in from the van.

Flair wakes TeeHee from his coding daze (Coil make sure he wasn’t in the Matrix, just jacked in locally to his deck) and hands him a cup of tea. Hocus verifies that TeeHee is healthy, but somewhat flat of affect as a general state of being about most things except maybe for coding, the Seattle Screamers, and Flair. TeeHee immediately admits that he did let the runners in to steal the chips, he doesn’t know where they are now, and Flair had nothing to do with any of it. His loyalties clearly aren’t with GTI – he says he’s a shadowrunner now (and Flair harumphs and rolls his eyes) and he says he feels bad about Urlan and Roxanne, but Junior said they were going to shelve the project, which is the best work TeeHee (aka Tadashi Hawkins) had ever done, while Junior was going to use the chips to take the company to the next level, as well as rehiring TeeHee, giving him a raise, and buying him a Fairlight Excalibur deck (a piece of info that made Coil’s eyebrows raise in sympathy – no wonder the decker turned on GTI).

TeeHee admits that Junior has backups of the data that Urlan doesn’t know about. The team that helped with the theft has the chips – that was part of the deal. TeeHee hasn’t been paid anything yet, and wasn’t supposed to be until after Friday – he was just supposed to lay low and stay out of sight/off the Matrix. He doesn’t really feel stupid yet, but odds are good that blessed ignorance won’t last. Flair asks them to just leave TeeHee with him, but the team isn’t sure that’s a great idea – after all , they were able to find him and Flair without much hassle, and Flair isn’t exactly in a secure area. Cappy offers one of his many real-estate hidey-holes in Renton as a place for the pair to lay low that isn’t otherwise connected with them. 

It’s not a bad plan, but will the two take the team up on it? Is anyone going to call Roxanne and get her in the loop? Will Kombucha’s next batch of gorp taste any better than it sounds? Tune back in to find out!

Shadowrun: Poppin' Tags

(guest post by Michelle)

Welcome to the first real session of our Shadowrun 3rd game!

As a reminder, our group consists of Coil, Kombucha, Hocus, Cappy, and Diablo. I start off the session asking what the characters did during the previous week:

• Coil is working on training his agent program “dog” Rufus to “fetch,” and he’s close to getting the animation and behavior he wants.
• Kombucha had a great VRMMO raid that he helped orchestrate.
• Cappy bought some more small bits of real estate – he’s investing in creating “stashes” throughout the area in case he needs them. This one is in southern Renton.
• Diablo has been engaging in capitalism at troll thrash rock shows selling pharmaceutical enhancements.
• Hocus made some significant progress in his doctoral thesis project, and got three different first radicals synthesized.

So our story begins with Gabriel, the black gay elf fixer that works with the team, informing them that there’s a Johnson looking for some up-and-coming runners to take on a piece of quiet, short-term work with a good payout. He’s put the team’s name in the hat, and arranged for a meetup at Reno’s, a popular dance club downtown at 9pm. Cappy’s been noted as the one to approach, though they’ll all be in attendance.

Reno’s is a see-and-be-seen kind of place, popular with corp types who have money to burn and like to be seen with rockers, models, and sports celebrities (and vice versa, really). It’s not generally a place to make connections – it’s a place to show you’ve MADE connections already. It changes themes every couple of months or so, and tonight’s theme is Disco Bubbles, a post-neo-70’s revival in all its iridescent glory.

The team dresses to blend in, which means digging deep into their closets for some of the most outrageous stuff they can find. Kombucha rather effortlessly gets in theme as he’s a bit of a club kid on the side – light-up bubbles in the beard, colorful choices head to toe – his theme is basically rainbow dwarf fireplug. Cappy is in an iridescent tailored suit, mirrored tie, and matching hat and cane – in short, completely blending in an “Udo Kier would slay in this” sort of way. This isn’t really Diablo’s scene, so he wears clean black clothes and synthleather and mostly fits in. Coil applies a chrome wash to his arms and shows up in a tank top and denim. Finally, Hocus doesn’t have a dang thing to wear, being on the “you mean I get food this week???” side of grad school poverty, so he raids his S-K corp-dad’s stash of old clothing, as his dad was hot stuff the last time this trend came around, and he never gets rid of anything. As a result, Hocus is hot stuff in his Vintage Slovak bell-bottom suit with the open shirt and huge sunglasses at night. He thought he was coming in awkward, but it turns out that his look is so on point that he keeps getting offers from agents and managers all night, confusing him utterly and causing him to push all the cards he gets off onto Cappy.

The drinks here are the real thing, not just artificially flavored synthahol, so Cappy springs for one drink a piece for the group so they can blend. Kom takes his drink, which is nearly as tall as his head with at least three garnishes and a rainbow light, into the crowd with him to dance – the light from his drink reflecting off the bubbles in his beard, making him easier to track than he should be. Diablo starts making friends with the bouncers and staff, handing out small samples of Novacoke in thanks for their service (and in hopes of making some new contacts). Cappy, Coil, and Hocus find a table close-ish to the bar where they can be seen and wait for the contact. It’s not long before a cool blonde in a pearlescent ice-blue dress and jacket comes up to them, identifying Cappy, and introduces herself as Ms. Johnson.

“I wanted to make sure you’re the real deal, but this isn’t a place to talk business,” she says. They have a bit of back and forth, with Cappy and the group deciding to engage in further negotiations. “Meet me at The Banshee at 1am and ask for Urlan. We’ll set up the details then.”

The team is kind of excited – this is looking like a bigger score than they had initially thought. She leaves, and the table watch a bodyguard follow behind her, dressed in black and good at being invisible until he needs to not be. Hocus also notices, though, another guy sort of get up out of the dark corner where he’d been slouching. He looks at them, clearly trying not to attract their attention, and follows Ms. Johnson and her bodyguard, a discreet distance behind. Hocus does some aura scanning to follow what he did during the negotiation, and whereas Ms. Johnson and the bodyguard came up pretty clean and professional, this dude is a hot mess – no cyber, no magic, and with some systemic health issues. Clearly an entirely different (and much lower) league.

Across comms, Hocus tells the team what he saw. Kombucha decides to go trail the dude. He bounces his way off the dance floor and as he goes outside, he calls up Edith Piaf, his spider drone. The guy is about a block ahead at this point, but there’s not a lot of foot traffic out around the club this time of night. He hangs back and stays sneaky while Edith flies up ahead at roughly 1 story up, hugging the walls a bit and stopping overhead of greasy ponytail synthleather tail guy. As he gets into place, a helicopter takes off from one of the downtown helipads a block further along, as GPSTGuy watches closely. He lifts up his wrist and uses his watch to make a call, and Kombucha eavesdrops as Greasy reports that “she got on the chopper and headed northwest. Yeah. Hey, so when…” and then there’s a lot of cursing as whoever he was talking to hangs up on him.

Kombucha drops back as the guy heads off to the east, clearly done with whatever he was doing. He meets back with everyone outside Reno’s (it’s too expensive to stay in there). They try to decide what to do to kill some time between now (a bit before 10pm) and the meet time. They look up the Banshee, figure out it’s a meeting place in the Barrens that focuses on business arrangements, and Kombucha suggests they bail for a gay bar called Bret’s in the Capitol district. They all head uptown a bit, most of them recalibrating their attire slightly (it’s Elf Twink night!) and partying for another couple of hours. Coil absolutely slays here, and they have to peel a couple of new friends off him when they leave, while Hocus continues to get attention much to his confusion and the amusement of the rest of the group. Cappy gets ahold of a friend of his and traces the chopper back to GTI, as well as finding out they’re a skillsoft manufacturer that’s got a good product on the market currently. The flight to downtown’s a little unusual, as their HQ is in Bellevue, but nothing to set off any real alarms.

Most of the team lives around the Bellevue/Renton/Barrens southern border, so the area of the world closer to the Banshee is pretty familiar, all told – it’s got varying levels of security, clearly middle/lower class lifestyle costs depending, and a similar amount of freedom from surveillance. Most of them don’t spend a lot of time deep within the Barrens, though, so this is a newer experience for all of them as they head off toward The Banshee.

Once they arrive, Kombucha sets up the security on his van, the Gorpmobile (he was raised by hippie parents and likes gorp, although he does not adhere to a fully organic lifestyle himself) and they go inside. It is a stanky sort of bar with canned music, surprisingly no-nonsense security, and a very quiet clientele – including, the group spots as they check their larger weapons, Greasy nursing a cheap bottle of beer and huddling in the back corner, watching. The team comes in and sits at a table. A bored-looking waitress comes over and asks what they want, and Cappy orders a bottle of red wine and asks for Urlan. She heads over to the bar and talks to the bartender, who gestures over toward the door in the back corner with a human bouncer standing beside he. He hits a button under the bar to buzz them through, and the team heads to the back room.

The back room is a lot less stanky and stained, and considerably quieter with a nice undertone of white noise in the background. Inside is the blonde from Reno’s, her bodyguard, and a Tribal human wearing a fringed and beaded leather jacket, jeans and boots. He stands up and introduces himself as Urlan Manes, President and CEO of Global Technologies, Inc, and the blonde as Roxanne Winters, his VP. Kombucha mentions briefly the fact that Greasy seemed to have been tailing Roxanne and is in the outer bar – Urlan nods to the bodyguard, who excuses himself and steps out, with muted scuffle sounds following soon after.

Urlan explains that his company has suffered a theft of some cutting edge simsense chips from their R&D due to an inside job, and he wants those chips recovered by Friday morning. He will pay handsomely for intact, unused chips and very little for trashed chips. Also, if they can’t be recovered discreetly, the team shouldn’t bother. They need someone new and quiet to keep this out of the newsfeeds and gossip channels. Cappy and Urlan sit down to negotiate, and Urlan ends up agreeing to up the fee slightly for trashed chips and include up-front expenses payment.

The team accepts the offer, only for scuffle sounds to happen outside again and two ork bodyguards burst into the room immediately after, followed by an ork in an expensive 3 piece suit with a walking cape and a cigar. He looks pointedly at all the team members, leers at Roxanne, and notes that Urlan seems to have forgotten to notify him of this meeting. Urlan calls the man “Junior,” waves off help, shoots a quick nod to Roxanne and ushers the smirking ork and his bodyguards back outside.

Roxanne reassures the runners that this is unlikely to be a larger problem – Junior is part of the company, but he’s far more bark than bite. He’s annoying, but unlikely to prove dangerous. He just likes to provoke Urlan in particular. She says that the company’s had three untested R&D chips stolen, with the data and backups wiped. There was a fight, but the thieves got away. They aren’t important – recovery of the chips is the primary concern. The insider’s online handle is “Tee Hee” and he’s disappeared. She provides the contents of his office in a small crate, while noting that he was evicted from his apartment two weeks ago, and there’s nothing useful there. She offers her private number for the team to contact 24/7 while on this job, and tells them to contact her at least once every 24 hrs with progress. The room is rented for rest of the hour, so Roxanne invites them to enjoy the rest of their wine, plan their next moves, and get on the job bright and early the next day – the starting funds will be transferred via secure accounts as of open of business on Monday morning. What will be their first steps? We’ll find out!