So, where were we?
Ah yes.
Ahem. Previously on Shadowrun:
Having been hired by the mysterious Mr. Johnson, the shadowrunners Killbo Fraggins (dwarf infiltrator and gunman) and Amoral Ray (technomancer and general-person-of-tech-extraordinaire) are called into action once again. Paired up with Leona (shape-changer, magic expert and only person with a sane name) they are tasked with infiltrating a science conference and recruiting/assassinating/convincing several major heads of various fields to join Johnson's corp. After rescuing one scientist they previously encountered on a preceding mission, the group make preparations and plans to infiltrate the conference. This involved burning down half of Seattle while it rained with meat, Amoral's hatred with his neighbor breaking out into open war, creating fire possessed pizza, and Killbo becoming a doctor of hollistic medicine.
After several days of operations they infiltrated the sewers. Following several tense moments, and a prolonged firefight with a guardian spirit, Leona and Amoral infiltrate the building under a cloak of invisibility. Killbo returned to the surface after giving a large chunk of his equipment to them, preparing to infiltrate the centre in a pre-arranged manner...
Quickly cleaning himself up from the engagement in the sewers, Killbo readied himself for a more formal infiltration by going in through the front gate. Being the only one who could enter officially under a pre-arranged fake identity, he was to serve as a security consultant for Novus Prospect. Unfortunately however, it turned out that the major Novus representative had learned of their reputations five minutes before Killbo arrived. Immediately taking him to one side the group's leader, Hendrick, begged the dwarf to keep the team out of things and not get them all killed. None of the others knew of the shadowrunners' involvement and were innocent. Calming him down, Killbo promised to leave them out of everything and put none of their lives at risk.
This put him at ease enough to focus upon his job.
Killbo's next actions utterly demolished any pillar of faith, calm or hope they would return from the conference alive.
Shortly after boarding the bus and while on their way to their conference, Killbo learned that his fake I.D., also John Smith, had been described as "bombastic, loud and confident". BRIAN BLESSED ensued, terrifying the poor unfortunates trapped inside the bus with him and making Hendrick look like he was about to keel over from heart failure. Pretty much as good a start as we would have hoped.
Amoral and Leona meanwhile were sorting out things at their end. Stealthing around the inside of the building, pillaging from the kitchen whenever possible, they decide to try and set up a safe-house of sorts. Somewhere to operate from and run to in times of trouble. With neither being particularly fond of the centre's secret underground lair, Amoral opts to use his hacking skills to look for unused rooms.
Heading up and out of the basement, Amoral lurked in the centre's ground floor restaurant and began to search for nodes. It didn't take long to find out he needed to gain access from a better location and, hacking on the fly, picked up the location of an office on the second floor.
At about this time the bus arrived. The now healthily paranoid scientists, more afraid of their bodyguard than the million or so potential bomb threats he'd listed on the way there, filed out. Gazing up at the Carl Sagat Memorial Centre for the first time, they were quickly directed by various security guards to some nearby tents. Removing most armaments any of them were carrying, disabling Killbo's in-built grenade launcher temporarily via security lock, the group was quickly sent through. Only Killbo had been able to smuggle a silenced pistol inside.
So far so good.
Meeting up with the invisible duo in the main foyer Killbo was signed his psudonym in the register,only to learn about a previously unknown "meet and greet". One between every security person who had arrived and Hedges, the man in charge of the building's security and the one person we were ordered point blank to avoid. The only good thing is that this was a mass speech to all of them, not a series of one-on-one meetings.
As Killbo was dragged off to listen to a very dangerous man for a few minutes, Amoral's further searches uncovered that the upper levels had been locked down due to "contamination". After some planning with Leona he heads up to the office to both insert them into the register of catering staff and find an empty room. After using his e-sense for a few moments to be certain their are no cameras, apparently forgetting he was invisible, he unlocked the door and slid inside. Making a bee-line for the nearest terminal once inside, his actions unfortunately caught the briefest of attentions by the enemy guards.
Taking a seat at the back of the large conference room reserved for the brief meeting, Killbo watched as events played out with a few familiar faces appearing among the crowd of bodies. Amidstt these was an orc who seemed to be trying to avoid looking in Killbo's direction in any way, the same one who had been there at the dwarf's brief recon of the place.
Not needing to wait long, a trio of figures soon emerged in the centre of the room ready to speak. A figure in combat fatigues of the mercenary unit Camelot, Mayweather, was the only one immediately recognisable. As for the other two, one was a hulking troll who was more machine than man while the other was a slender, blonde elf who seemed somehow "off" in a way.
As Leona joined him, Killbo asked her to look at the figures, the suspicious and the official, to see what she could learn of them. While the hulking cybernetic brute could barely be registered in any magical sense, Hedges was glowing like a halogen lamp. Leona clearly seeing him as a lizard with wings, engulfed within a bright light. So bright Mayweather's own magical presence was almost completely blocked out by it. It turned out that he was a drake.
No small wonder that Hedges had told us to keep away from him. Any direct fight against him would likely result in our deaths.
The orc meanwhile was clearly being protected magically by someone else, the question now being just who. Unfortunately Leona could tell little beyond that, glitching a roll so badly she initially believed him to be a "Tibetan Mountain Dog and a lost brother from a second life."
As this was going on, Amoral was well into hacking the node and about to meet some trouble. Going for an admin account on the security terminal, his efforts were quickly interrupted by an IC program. As it logged a security alert, manifesting as a growling bulldog, Amoral entered cyber-combat against it along with a few of his sprites. While ducking its opening attack, the second one clipped him causing Amoral a sizable amount of damage. Something which, being a technomancer, manifested in stun damage for him.
Giving his personal attack sprite the orders to "kill this fucking thing," Amoral unleashed it upon the program in a vicious counter attack which completely missed. The IC program wasn't so lucky the next several times and for the few seconds following the sprite proceeded to rip it limb from limb, Amoral added his and Leona's names to the list. The program proved to be an unsurprisingly persistent bastard however, within moments "respawning" to unleash hell upon the one who had beaten it.
The security guards also entered at this time, guns drawn and searching for anyone who might have been invisible. Thankfully for him, the tap on his shoulder which followed a second later didn't come from one of them but Leona. Having left Killbo a minute before and with little else to do she opted to meet up with the hacker. The shape-changer quickly proved to be her usual helpful self.
Amoral: "Why didn't you try to help me!?!"
Leona: "You never asked."
Now needing to steal new uniforms, the two abandoned the still clueless guards and headed for the staff rooms. As they headed downstairs, Amoral took the time to check just what the quarantined rooms they were likely to be using would be contaminated with. It turned out it was blood. Lots and lots of blood, covering the bedding, walls and floors.
Using her astral sense, we learned quickly that this was thankfully only the result of an extremely grisly murder. Not, as we briefly feared, a massive ritual to summon demonic spirits. The two promptly spun this after getting the uniforms to make it look like a clerical error and got better rooms.
Arriving in his own room with the Novus Prospect representatives, Killbo quickly searched about for bugs. Finding nothing beyond what would be normal for such a place, the dwarf swore loudly and repeatedly finding that this was the only good news. The bad news being that, while the minibar was fully stocked, it was also keeping track of its contents. Heading downstairs in search of cheaper alcoholic substitutes, Killbo once more bumped into the orc. While the voice seemed familiar, he was unable to shadow the man and was left none the wiser to his true identity.
On a more fortunate note, the dwarf bumped into one of our targets; a massive troll named Ergu, professor of science related stuff. Passing on a recruitment message to the professor's comlink, the dwarf managed to actually pull off something which resembled social skills for once. Convincing Ergu that he would receive bigger, more reliable, paychecks the troll agreed to at least consider it after a few minutes. One down.
Some distance away, Amoral was also making himself useful. Checking the guest list he found that two of our targets, Lansdale and Barton had turned up prior to us entering confirming their presence on this day but was unable to find any of the others. Unfortunately due to Killbo's brow-beating to get the tech expert to hack the minibar in his room to look like no drinks had been taken, this was all he was able to accomplish.
As the evening wore on, a party was set up in the main hall. As Killbo prowled the upper levels for any signs of their targets and Leona proceeded to rob various guests of their win, supposedly via "poison tasting", Amoral headed out back. While searching for wine the technomancer heard a number of sounds, soon finding himself face to face with a hovering gun turret. Worse still, he recognised its owner: Speak-Easy. A wheelchair-bound hacker and member of the group we'd briefly allied with in the Zainou operation. They were here in force, we had no guarantee that our goals coincided with one another this time, and now they'd taken one member hostage.
We really were off to a wonderful start, weren't we.
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Shadowrun and all related characters and media are owned by FASA Corporation, Fantasy Productions and Catalyst Games Labs.
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