Shadowrun: Nerd War XX/XX/2012

Things went off to a surprisingly good if hair-raising start as he approached the Zainou facility. Despite Amoral’s decision to screw with a helicopter gunship remotely as it flew overhead, almost ending the operation there, every guard post let us through. Part due to Killbo’s high CON stat and partially due to some decent faked I.D.s. Amusingly this resulted at one point in Killbo convincing a guard to give him his weapon.

Once inside we spoke with the receptionist claiming we were security consultants called in response to the offices burning down the previous night. A few rolls and some prior hacking from Amoral meant we got through easy enough and we split up. Killbo to approach the head of the facility while Venne and Amoral went about scouting the place to find where their cyber security chief was. One of the people we needed to kill to proceed inside being a hacker who was in an armoured basement in some part of the building.  Also to recon the place I think, I’m a bit hazy as to what exactly they were doing. Largely due to the ridiculousness of Killbo’s actions for the next couple of scenes.

First of all he ended up outside the door to the overall manager to convince him they needed to be there. Mostly in order to give them full access to some areas they didn’t already have access to. Not only was this person a bureaucratic puppet who resembled a hippo, but Killbo argued with the guard outside so convincingly that the employee ran away in tears.

After a brief argument with the overall manager he then headed off to speak with the actual person Killbo needed to be talking to: The head of security. Shadowing them to the canteen, Killbo stood at the back. Waiting a few minutes as one man raged about problems with the guards while the other ate donuts, guess which, and then headed off again. Just to establish the head of security was evil, Killbo is then called into the man’s office. Not only was he a racist with severe hatred for metahumans but everything about him screamed supervillain. Either side of him were gun turrets, the heads of pixies were mounted on the walls and in the background the guard who had handed Killbo his gun was being hung upside down. He was also naked and being lashed with whips.

Well after a brief exchange which came down to “I don’t like you, get your job done and out of here in the next few hours or you might be accidently shot on sight” Killbo was allowed to leave. Just to make this scene all the more insane, when the dwarf commented upon the pixie heads calling them “easy prey” the man hits a switch. The walls revolve to reveal everything from troll heads to centaur ones on trophy mounts. No that actually happened.

At the same time the remarkably more sane scenes with Venne and Amoral took place. Upon raiding the network and finding both the enemy hacker’s location and how to get there, we regrouped and headed off. For context: We needed to kill him otherwise remote controlled minigun drones would kill us the second we broke into the labs. Sneaking inside the central building we eventually found the elevator shaft which secretly led to the basement. Okay it was actually a bunker but damn-it it was funnier saying the shadowrunners needed to attack a nerd’s basement dungeon. Well, with Killbo staying upstairs to keep an eye on the entrance, Amoral and Venne went down. The former hacking the elevator, the latter readying to kill whatever was down there. It’s a good thing she went down as well, as the place was armed to the teeth.

Emerging in front of a set of thick blast doors, with turrets and drones guarding, it the two went in guns blazing. Well, one did. Venne stormed in and Amoral hid at the back for the most part. Can’t blame him though, as Venne merrily shrugged off things which would have blown him in half. She then proceeded to break through the blast doors after hulking out (read: had herself possessed by an ancestor spirit). Beyond said doors was… I’d call it a super villain lair but it was actually more restrained than the security chief’s office. Wall upon wall was covered by laser drones with a cyberpod/life-support-system-thing in its centre where the hacker was. Venne dealt with the drones, mostly with her fists, as she manifested an aura resembling a pirate hat (which would be unfortunately retconned in the following session). Amoral went right for the pod, hacking it open to get at the nerdy centre within. The fight which followed between the two was hilarious but unfortunately too complex to really detail in depth. The eventual ending was a point-blank gunfight ending with Amoral shooting him in the head after duelling insults.

The death of the man responsible for their cyber-security chief had alarms going off everywhere and guards being sent out. Swarming the building and covering every square inch of it they began looking for the exact source of the alarms. As Amoral shutdown the trigger for them and tried to fool the system into thinking the nerd was alive, Venne came back to sanity. Killbo was having problems of his own, forced to hide behind furniture from patrols of guards. Successfully hunkering down as a few tried and failed to get inside the elevator shaft, Killbo watched as they left with one man remaining to keep an eye on it: The only dwarf guard in the base.

A few bits of information just for what follows: The guards were wearing full face mirrored helmets. Killbo had the mostly unused knowledge skills of oil wrestling and Nordic ballads. The dwarf had a bottle of oil next to him.

Despite the GM egging Killbo on to make use of the oil, the dwarf snuck up and snapped the guard’s neck. Quickly undressing, looting the uniform and hiding the body; Killbo proceeded to try and pass himself off as a guard. At which point the GM proceeded to try trolling even more. A guard immediately showed up trying to get Killbo to talk and reveal himself, specifying he had “a wonderful singing voice”. Stretching his knowledge ability a bit Killbo’s player proceeded to declare he would break out into full operatic song in a means to bluff the guard. After much pressing to let this go through from both Amoral’s player and a /tg/ chatroom (don’t ask) he rolled a dice: Odds to let this go through, evens not to.

He rolled a three.

The earphones of every guard in the building were promptly vibrating with the beautiful voice of an alcoholic bearded midget. With their eyes filled with tears they were alll utter convinced that the short guard was their friend Bob Bobinson, legendary operatic figure and hope of Norway. Passing off his slightly different voice as it being sore following several solid minutes of singing he convinced the guards to eventually leave.

Letting the other two out of the elevator shaft we managed to flee into one of the facility’s warehouses in the hopes of healing and planning. Instead what we got was the other shadowrun group. Exchanging bullets, eventually followed by words, and shooting out a few drones; we eventually stopped long enough to negotiate. Deciding there was no point in just shooting one another we discussed our plans and realised there was another problem. The head of security needed to be dealt with for very similar reasons to the hacker. With him still alive, additional security systems would prevent us getting inside the labs and the prizes inside.

Thus we hatched upon the single worst and simultaneously single greatest plan ever to be devised.

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