Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Shadowrun: Not So Easy Money - 06/02/2013



So last time we ended with Killbo “any problem can be solved with the right amount of TNT” Fraggins going undercover.

Managing to use their contact within the Nova Prospect representatives, a company which would be at the scientific conference, he made arrangements to arrive and inspect the building. Turning up in combat tuxedo in the attack jeep, thankfully still sans-autocannon turret,   he got inside through the front gate without trouble. In fact he also got through the front door, up several flights of stairs and to the upper levels before anyone started to get suspicious of him.  Well, as suspicious as they should have been with someone calling himself John Smith. Hanging around checking several of the main areas for any security breaches, hidden cameras and bugs; he was eventually shooed off by increasingly suspicious guards towards his meeting.

Waiting outside Killbo joined the line of security consultants waiting to see the building’s representative. Deciding that some might be important he started quietly taking photos with his electronic eye of each person to check their identities later, the most notable of these being an orc who did what seemed to be a double-take as he showed up. The reason this is worth mentioning is because the orc’s face was blotted out from the photo and, unlike every other person there, remained completely silent refusing to speak to anyone. About thirty seconds after arriving Killbo was called in and spoke with the representative. One minute later he was out again, having learned little besides the room numbers of Nova Prospect’s allotted on suite and that our GM kept cracking up trying to do accents.

While this was going on Amoral was back at his house only to have Lone Star show up once again – this time about Wilson’s violent rampage. With eye witnesses and officers claiming he had started the local disruption. Amoral’s attempts to deny this were highly dubious with the rock music with “reports of Motorhead related noise infractions for over two miles, originating from this building.” Something only compounded by the apprehending officer’s report of the music being ““My ears will never fucking recover” loud.”

Luckily for Amoral the officers were only there to lean on him and not press charges, mostly to see if he’d get desperate and try something under pressure. After he left he was just about willing to do that. Unluckily for his rival, it was at this exact point Wilson returned home after being arrested to find it covered in hateful music related graffiti and many worldly possessions stolen.  Amoral needed a scapegoat to distract the police and one was now right next door to him.

Killbo meanwhile was in the suite and examining the living hell out of everything. Measuring the distances between the nearest window and elevator, finding the cameras, hidden cameras, hidden bug cameras, sound equipment and testing the structural integrity and layout of the room. Keeping this up for three hours, twenty minutes of which he spent trying to figure out how to break into the liquor cabinet before it was empty, he was eventually called for lunch. This distracted him from increasingly elaborate plans to bug the room when it was mentioned they had alcohol.

 Amoral meanwhile continued his personal rampage against Wilson while he was slumped at his kitchen table by hacking into the man’s com-link. With them both now being involved in a crime scene, he needed one of them to take the fall and draw the police’s further ire. His desired method to do this was by intentionally botching a badly made hacking attempt into Lone Star’s crime records to try and remove all record of the spat. The police would then track it back to Wilson. Believe it or not this plan went through two or three different incarnations before ending up with that approach.

Well after making a brute force attempt so obvious even Seattle rent-a-cop central would see it, dozens of GridSec officers swarmed into the com-link as Amoral pulled out. He was king enough to leave behind enough disturbing porn, incriminating images and links to certain lurid sites to make a man’s penis invert itself. Eliciting this reaction from the net security officers as they arrived –
Put your matrix hands behind your creepy head-! … My god man.”
Considering these are people whose job it is to hack into multiple offending com-links every day some small part of me just wants to know what the hell Amoral put in there.

Anyway, a few trigger happy Lone Star officers were soon to show up outside Wilson’s house to follow up the GridSec officers. Oddly enough though, Wilson was the first to open fire. Revealing more of his arsenal he pulled an uzi out somewhere and opened fire on the fuzz. As a raging gun-battle erupted throughout the remains of Wilson’s house, Amoral quietly lay in his hammock and cranked up the music to drown out the explosions.

Meanwhile in a canteen, Killbo paused mid-meal suddenly feeling as if he was missing out on something. Shrugging off the feeling he decided to investigate the mercenary forces for potential assistance in getting inside, or at least turning a blind eye to shadowrunners raiding the building. After a brief philosophical debate over vodka he headed after their leader, Major Mayweather, met up with him, and within the wondrously private confines of a soundproof tent began to get info from him. And yes the only reason he was helping them was due to Venn being owed a few favours.

Through a mixture of extremely specific denials and references to prior incidents Killbo learned that the site wasn’t so secure as it seemed. While Mayweather couldn’t speak for magic, he mentioned a hole in their defences via an inn which troops were using to sneak out of for the local beer on the north side. Along with this there was one unguarded sewer entrance and Mayweather just happened to slip out the net frequency they could use to gain access to it in the park, just not in the building.
Being the incredibly helpful and polite man he was, he further noted that people should stay well away from the tress and that while the executives had a helipad next to their club on the top floor, they did not have armed helicopters. Other corporations had objected to Aztechnology’s personal armed forces showing up in Seattle, so Camelot was to cover any air defences.

It turned out that one of the reasons Mayweather was being so helpful was that he was bored. With no action and most of the protest groups which had been against the conference suddenly falling silent once they realised armed mercenaries were protecting the building. He wanted the shadowrunners to cause problems just to give him something to do. It seemed like things would liven up for him soon though, as the only one which had not backed down we’d last encountered mounting a full scale assault on a major city airport.

Thanking and leaving him, and noting a large number of mercenaries outside hanging around and suddenly pretending to be doing nothing, Killbo left to take one last check of the building. Finding only more cameras and then left to head for Amoral’s home.
Outside Amoral’s house the police had managed to finally take Wilson alive, dragging him screaming from the building as he ranted about “that bastard neighbour” setting him up. Glitching his roll to resist taunting, Amoral was heard from his room cackling evilly. The police simply put this down to nerves over the nearby battle.

About an hour later Killbo showed up and was coerced by Amoral to help use Wilson to disguise their battle against Balrog. Changing into his shadowrunning gear he spent several hours rooting through Wilson’s home for things to plant. After pulling up a few floorboards he found a vast cache of illegal drugs. Apparently Wilson was supplying stuff to a few people. Well, with this it didn’t take much to make a few alterations to the warehouse crime scene - Leaving traces of drugs to make it look like he’d been using the place for drugs making purposes and had been interrupted by a the Dwarf Triad. Which had somehow ended in the detonation of a tactical mini-nuke. Yeah we didn’t quite think this through.

Still we didn’t have time to improve upon the plan. As we needed to fake the deaths of a scientist in order to recruit them the GM’s subtly prompted us to follow one idea (“Clonesclonesclonesclonesclones”) to create a clone body to hide in an accident of some sort. With Amoral having found a cloning facility willing to do back alley deals we managed to approach one and barter our way into having them make a full-blown unconscious clone – for a price. Either 100,000 nuyen or helping to bump off a rival.

Said rival wasn’t too far away and in a not very well guarded facility which we could easily put out of commission. Killbo’s initial plans to have a gas explosion or perform a drive-by via autocannon jeep were both vetoed in favour of a more subtle approach. With Amoral causing a malfunction in the cooling systems for the cryogenics facilities and causing them to lose their current orders and stockpiles.

Sneaking inside the two individuals inspected the facility and found it to be a simple warehouse. One guarded by two security officers, four moving cameras and a chain-link fence but no real opposition. Silently cutting through it with a monomolecular chainsaw (just roll with it) Killbo opened a hole large enough for Amoral to scurry through. Jumping up and grabbing onto the underside of one big heat vent, not on the superheated part obviously, he swung himself out of sight of the cameras. Then using his skinlink he proceeded to hack his way through its circuits and cause a major malfunction in the venting systems. Unfortunately this proved to be no more subtle than Killbo’s gas leak plan, after Amoral glitched his hacking rolls six times in a row. This caused a huge build-up in heat, uncontrolled and catastrophic. You can guess where this is going.

Sprinting away from the soon to explode building Amoral managed to get halfway to safety before one of the cameras turned his way. Caught in the open and with nothing to dive behind, Killbo stepped up to cover the nerd’s backside; hurling a rock at the camera. Not only managing to smash it but bounce off in exactly the right way to knock one of the guards unconscious. This was actually the saner of the two plans, with the original being to shoot Amoral with a grappling hook and drag him into cover. Still running the two dived behind cover, Amoral into an alleyway and Killbo behind trash cans. The building exploded, shrapnel filling the area, and Killbo almost got a close up lobotomy when a large sliver of metal punched through the cans. Fleeing from yet another burning crime scene the two sprinted back to the jeep and set off at full speed away from the warehouse.

You can only imagine what some of the news reports must have been like for the next day – “It was raining flesh across the northwest of Seattle last night…”



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