Shadowrun: Tactical Espionage Arseholes - 25/01/2013 Session

So what’s the first thing you do after murdering vast numbers of armed criminals, wrecking two buildings, playing with explosives and taking on a spec ops team? Rearm, cover up, go to work.

This session was distinctively more espionage orientated and less shoot everything in sight. About five or six hours after air juggling a cyborg dwarf and setting countless people on fire the world caught up with us. A small segment of the local 9AM news reported on what appeared to have been a conflict between a group of dwarves and an armed volcano. With charred bullet ridden corpses littering the floor, blackened beyond recognition and a long blood-trail leading outside analysts were wondering what the hell had happened. The police were notably baffled by the presence of two dents in the building where things had visibly crashed through the walls. One roughly the size and shape of a large van the other curiously shaped exactly like a cybernetic dwarf, the occupant of which was nowhere to be found (dun-dun-DUN!).

Unfortunately for Amoral it didn’t take us long to realise that this very large police investigation was taking place right next door to him. Cue two rent-a-cops hammering on his door and demanding answers. Managing to bluff his way into making them think he’d been sleeping through the loud explosions and negotiate his way into having them come back later to investigate properly, he went to fix things. Specifically his van, to make it look less like it had been used to ram-raid an armoured warehouse and buy a replacement fake SIN. Mostly to prevent Aztechnology calling in an air strike the next time they recognise his SIN as the escape driver who abducted a scientist from their spec ops team.

Killbo meanwhile, upon learning that the fight had made it onto the news decided to immediately check his house for signs of intruders. His paranoia at an all-time high after Balrog had been able to so easily find him the previous night. Surprisingly despite checking for two hours straight he was unable to find any bugs he had not planted himself. Somewhat assured that he was safe he got into contact with his black-market pipeline, specifically asking for “explosives of the grenade kind” and meeting him a short while later.

During this meeting Amoral was working hard upon repairing his truck. Bartering with his supplier and landlord for parts he quickly contacted a friend to get a new SIN, he frantically went about rebuilding the van. Killbo meanwhile managed to arrange for a number of high explosives grenades to be delivered to him in two sessions time and grabbed some beer since their dealing was a pub. Thinking that he likely also needed a new SIN and they needed to actually plan their operation in the conference, he headed off to meet Amoral. It ought to be noted that the GM’s was working overtime with his voice talents, doing African, Redneck and Jamaican accents to differentiate his characters. Or at least what I think was Jamaican.

Well making the unfortunate start of having Killbo do their research for the floor-plan of the conference centre, they discovered little. Putting “bloody Aztech sciency building” into search engines he found only that every blueprint of the plan had recently been pulled from websites. Amoral promptly displayed his competence managing to not only find the blueprints after a short while of searching but managed an ingenious ploy to try and discover hidden corridors. He put it onto an FPS website claiming to be in the process of making a new map for a game and asked where the best places would be for hidden rooms and areas. Managing to get a few hints of information and advice (along with “lol noob” when he tried to press for answers) we were then rudely interrupted by the returning cops.

Fortunately Amoral had managed to mostly repair his van by the time they got back. Unfortunately Killbo was a convicted criminal still being hunted by Norway’s orchestral societies (long story) and had a hefty price on his head. With their being no other exit without loudly smashing a window, the dwarf proceeded to fire his grappling gun into the ceiling and flattened himself against it as he hid in the shadows. The police entered, examined the van, tried to inspect the vaguely concealed military grade drones (which due to a botched roll were apparently for red light purposes), and left. Business proceeded as usual and we got back to planning our attack. Or at least Killbo started picking out structural weaknesses in the building they’d use to demolish it if necessary. Others were more concerned about the presence of a helicopter pad on the roof.

Killbo also got into contact with one of their inside men for another target, a man called Heinrik, to get information and details. Mainly so that Killbo could attempt to pass himself off as a hired gun to infiltrate a location and find their target. Further planning was also made to fake the death of another target but that will come later.

Realising that they would need to inspect the grounds themselves, the three prepared to head for the location of the building a few miles away. Driving in Killbo’s jeep, after very reluctantly removing the autocannon on the roof, they arrived a few blocks from the park where the building was located.

Arriving there they find that the park was remarkably heavily guarded. Barb wire fencing encircled the edges of the park a good two or three hundred meters from the actual building and was more heavily guarded than a military prison. With various patrols surrounding the place we selected a café nearby to watch them from relatively inconspicuously. At this point Amoral asked if there was any way he could sense anything beyond the fence and realised he needed to get closer. I then asked the GM if there were any guards about Amoral’s size nearby, specifically alone. Giving me an unimpressed look he demanded I roll Edge only to have me get successes on all D6s. Almost as soon as we walk in the café we encounter a lone guard exactly Amoral’s size talking very loudly to everyone nearby.

Immediately we had Leona try to convince him to head out back for interesting times to get him out of sight.

She failed.

Amoral then tried doing exactly the same thing.

He succeeded with flying colours.

As they disappeared out back, Killbo kept watch and Leona approached him from behind and tazered him. Undressing the man we quickly realised it was in-fact a woman disguised for some reason. Realised that we needed Amoral to speak to effectively no one we had him head over quickly and scan only to find nothing and the head back. The only really notable part of this was that a guard, in a brief bit of one sided small-talk with Amoral on the way back, noted that they had brought in PMCs to help guard the conference. One of these was Camelot which Venn was noted to have gone off and joined which could easily end up throwing a spanner in the works.

Arriving back at the place (changing out of the uniform and Leona replacing the guard’s memories to a one-hour stand) we then had Amoral begin to hack into the CCTV cameras for more info. Leona then headed back to the jeep as she pointed out that the very strong magics on the other side, as well as having a barrier, would soon pick her out as staying close by. Killbo also noticed that there was a man paying very close attention to them in the café, and they quickly chose to move shortly after getting inside the network. As they left the man promptly followed them out until they got back to the jeep and left.

At this point the GM pointed out none of us had actually bothered to look up and checked if there were helicopter gunships or not. While thankfully this didn’t involve one being called in to blow us up doe to the man’s suspicions it was still a point of concern as we drove away back to Amoral’s hideout.

Simple planning and recon, the usual run of the mill session in Shadowrun before the bullets start flying.

The only final thing of real note was the GM confronting me on Killbo's extensive gun collection. Having pillaged everything in sight upon fleeing the now defunct Zainou Corp he had stolen every gun he could carry right the way though including multiple assault rifles. Irritated over this fact he wanted me to ditch them claiming that every session from here on I had them their value would go down to the point where Killbo would be spending money to hide his illicit goods.

The bad news was that my final plan of having enough guns to re-enact a certain scene from Tremors if someone tried to ram raid Killbo's house would never come to pass. The good news was that we now had a good dozen guns to plant on people to have them arrested on various charges if required.

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