I was a little surprised when Charlotte (the name she gave us; definitely an alias...) called with a new job, but I was excited the possibility of new thrills, so I agreed. She mentioned that I'd be working with a few familiar faces, and that this could be a start to more serious 'runs in the future, so I didn't think an aspiring rookie like me should turn down the opportunity. After getting the meet-up data from her, I decided the PJs I still had on from my latest two day "bakeout" weren't appropriate for a downtown club. Deepweed is great for communing with Trickster, but not so much for when you're being shot at - thank the spirits I was already coming down from this last trip!
Per Charlotte's instructions, I arrived promptly Tuesday evening - too early can lead to trouble, but too late in unprofessional. She's a good fixer, keeping in touch and matching jobs to my skills, plus she might be giving me and some chummers a shot at the bigger leagues, so I ain't complaning. I also really like the part of her that's like me, although I have yet to figure out exactly which part(s) of the NAN she could call home. Normally, the Gravity Bar isn't my kind of joint, but I know the value of fitting in, so I did my best to look the part. Wearing my armored business suit instead of my coveralls was a smart choice; having my heavier armor suit and weapons stowed at coat check was probably even smarter. You never know when those will be handy!
I spotted the familiar face of Rock, the Aussie ork street sammy, before I saw Charlotte's table at the back of the club. The poor slot looked completely out of sorts. Having run with him once before, I knew that Rock being uncomfortable leads to violence. Actually anything Rock does pretty much always leads to violence, but he's damn good at what he does and looks out for the team, so I decided to help him out. I made my way over to him and make like we're together: lovers, bodyguard and client, whatever - the act doesn't matter, as long he can focus on a teammate instead of the crowd.
By then, I'd noticed Charlotte sitting with two others: NVISIGOTH, one of the freakiest slots I know (and that's saying a lot!), and Kraner, a dwarf mage whose street rep says he's a firebug - having the magic lab at your college burst into fames will do that to you! Seeing Kraner, I was a little worried that I should have worn one of my old Salish camo armor suits with the flame-proofing, since fire and I don't really get along, but I figured there's no way Charlotte will let any drek go down in this posh place, so I gave the dwarf a wide berth and make my intro.
After some abbreviated meet-and-greet (who would've guessed Kraner was Quebecois?!) Charlotte reminded us that she was forming us into a crew and that this would be a trial run for bigger future jobs. The rest of the team was as gung-ho as I was about this opportunity, so that's good, although NVISIGOTH's frequent muttering about conspiracies and drek was wearing me thin. If I thought he'd lay off using his whiz tech skillz to jack me in return, I'd probably conspire with Trickster to prank him all the time. Sending a few spirits to mess with a mundane conspiracy nut is just too tempting, but I'll save that for the right time and place. Plus, NVISIGOTH knows his tech, and that makes him valuable, so I can resist the urge - for now!
[Scan this, too: I'm tired of inputting his name as an exponent or whatever, so he gets a new shorter nickname: "N". Not like it much matters, since he makes us call him by whatever alias he's currently using, and he'll probably just delete all this later anyways. That's right, chummer: Trickster told me you've been hacking my comm!]
All that drek aside, Charlotte got us on track fast: she walked us into a nearby VIP room to meet Mr Johnson and left so we could discuss the job. Johnson looked the part of the corp player and definitely fit in with the style of the Gravity Bar, with his slick shaved head look and trendy duds, but he was clearly uncomfortable dealing with us shadowrunners. Johnson was a bit different than I expected: he's probably in his early 30's and appeared to be either Filipino or Indonesian descent. He also had a bit more of a stylish edge than you might expect from the average suit, so I figured him for advertising or some other creative type work. That proved to be an insight worth sharing with my team, once we had a chance to discuss things later.
Anyways, the job was straightforward enough: track down and return Johnson's wayward employee, whose presence (and especially the data on his commlink) would be needed for a current big project. We are told that he and his date went missing after heading out for thrills in the Redmond Barrens about 24 hours previous. Totally off the grid, so no one knew what was up with them when he failed to show back up to work today. Johnson needs his man back and will pay extra for commlink recovery, but there's an extra catch: the guy's date would be worth even more in bonus pay if we can find her, too. A brief discussion of compensation yielded some nice numbers: 5kY for the employee, 1kY for his commlink, and up to 10kY for info about and recovery of the woman. Another brief or question or two about the general nature of the targets (mundanes both), and team agreed to the job.
Johnson produced all the relevant data and leaves us to get to our work. The files he shared indicate the following: the primary target is Lucas Mueller, an elf (poser, as we later discover), 27 years old, short spiky bleached hair; the girl is Hoi Vicky Chen, early 20's, Chinese, sporting a goth-y look (black hair with purple). We also have their comm codes and their last known location on the network, before they headed into the Barrens. The deadline is ASAP (by morning, if possible), and the emphasis on utmost discretion (no publicity!). Armed with this and our intuitions, N hacks his way into some relevant nodes and uncovers better data: Lucas is senior icon designer at New House (parent megacorp = Horizon); New House designed the AR at Gravity Bar; several Horizon sharks have recently been brought in to oversee New House including our Mr Johnson (junior exec) and the bigwig Huang Chen (Vicky's dad, it seems). So that explains the bonus: bossman's daughter! Ahhh, Trickster, you sent us a good one!
I made a quick call to Sully, my barkeep acquaintance - his place is in Auburn, but I'm guessing the big ork might know a guy who knows a guy... A little of my charm and a promise to bring my thirsty crew in for celebratory drinks buys me some info: he knew of a few ganger bars in the right end of the Barrens - notably Morrigan's, an Ancients hangout. A thrill seeking corp elf looking to slum it might head there first, so we took off in that direction. Between the three bikes (Kraner and Rock on their road hogs, me on my Yamaha off-roader) we drove ourselves into the vicinity while N worked on locating the missing via commlink signals.
The neighborhood around Morrigan's is totally decrepit, but it was easy to spot the ganger bar: blocked-up and painted-out windows on some old commercial building now covered in surprisingly crisp images of a black raven, next to a gutted office supplies store now used as a bike garage. We decided to investigate the area, since we know that walking into an Ancients bar with two humans, a dwarf, and a socially inept ork makes for instant bad. A little astral scouting by me revealed a mage with a watcher spirit inside, along with about a dozen other people. N managed to sort out the AR presence - there's local activity in the bar, but no link-up to the wider Matrix. Better than that, he also got Mueller's comm to ping from another nearby building that shares a back alley with Morrigan's.
Rather than sneak down a long narrow alley with one exit, Rock figured he could heave the back wall of the makeshift bike garage open to make alley access for us. Worried the roof might give, I prepared to cast a Physical Barrier, guessing I could keep the worst of the wreckage off of us if need be. Fortunately, Rock is very good at doing his thing, so we piled into the alley null sheen and made our way to the building with Mueller's commlink. After taking care to sneak into this other place, we found it was being used as a garbage dump by the folks at Morrigan's, so it was filthy inside and piled high with trash. I tried Levitating some of the pile off of the location painted in AR space by Mueller's comm, but the mess was too scattered and I had trouble grabbing any of it to fling around.
Leaving N out by the door and Kraner on our six, Rock and I crept forward into the drek, figuring we'll have to dig the thing out. As we approached, we caught sight of Mueller's body (still with a thread of life!) just in time for the floor to give way. Crash! Down we went into the sewers, with Kraner tumbling down behind. Right into a nest of devil rats! The critters were all over us, getting some good digs into me before I could even act. Kraner flung some wiz Manabolts at them while Rock "took care of business" (as he would call it) shooting and punching the fragging things to death, each holding his own. N even had to open fire (need to buy him a silencer! - that noise is going to get us geeked!) as a couple of the things scrambled up towards him. Knowing both the target and I were in trouble, I grabbed onto him as soon as I could and Levitated both of us up out of the fray. Hovering for a several seconds over the fight allowed the rest of the team to kill or scare off the the remaining devil rats.
After quickly determining Mueller was suffering from hot-BTL overload, we decided we could move away from the scene and tend his condition elsewhere, somewhere the Ancients were less likely to come looking for the source of gunfire. Once we found a spot to hole up, Rock made good with the first aid; chummer's got the medkit skillz! Then, Kraner tossed some wiz Healing around, and we were on to what's next. I called my street doc buddy, Dr. Zhuang, so he can tend to the fried Mueller until Johnson can pick him up. Kraner Mind Probed Mueller to get whatever info his soy-scramble of a brain will tell us about what happened. After learning that Mueller and Vicky's thrill night with the Ancients ended with his bad BTL trip and that the last he saw of her, she was chumming up with some Ancients gangers, we knew we'd need some extra hands (elf-y ones, maybe?) for the next part of the plan.
A couple of us delivered Mueller to Dr. Zhaung for safekeeping, checking in with Johnson on our status, while others called up some acquaintances from past jobs, Wraith the elf Adept (kung-fu fighting! chummer needs to bake out with me and watch some classic Wu-Tang trids!) and Shepherd, the Dog shaman (Trickster says to let Dog do his thing, since we're kind of related through Coyote or something, so whatever...). We met with the new recruits to review what came next and agreed to split whatever we made of the 10kY for the girl. The team decided that we'd have to go into Morrigan's to get more info, so the plan was to have Wraith and I head inside while the rest of the team waited right outside (with N keeping them tac-net linked and listening for trouble). Too bad I didn't have some fake elf ears and cheekbones like Mueller - fitting in with that rough crowd wouldn't be easy!
A half-hearted attempt to act as Wraith's girl out for thrills with him met with a mix of derision and amusement from the Ancients inside, but trying the stiff drink, chatting up the barkeep, and examining his makeshift tattoo studio bought us enough time to get the lay of the land: one tough elf barkeep (likely Ancient) and a group of five Ancients at a table, whose leader paid extra attention when we dropped Mueller's and Vicky's names during our small talk with the barkeep. Another group of three Ancients (one mage, the woman - found via astral scouting earlier) sat elsewhere and kept apart from the first group, a couple of drunks at the barstools, and a poor suit human guy scrubbing the floor to work off his debt to the establishment. After a few snide remarks about my human stench from the lead Ancient, I figured I needed to make our pitch now regarding a moneymaking opportunity of mutual interest, before we were forcibly ejected.
Trickster made me lie about the total pay, but I still think I offered the gangers too much - 3kY, Smoky! To cover that, I even had to call Charlotte for the advance on our pay for retrieving Mueller and his comm! I was way out of my element in there, but Rock's probably right to give me grief about that one - we're aiming for more than rent payments by risking our hoops out here! Better next time, I reckon! The gangers bought the line, though, since the pay was too good to pass up, so they rolled over on their buddy Roddy, a red-headed Ancient who took Vicky with him to a rave running until dawn over in Puyallup.
Armed with this, we made our way to the rave and scoped out the place for a while while I did some astral scouting (~150 people, slightly larger fraction Awakened than average, a few spirits in tow or just groovin' on the vibes, lots of substances), and N hacked his way into the local rave network so he could take control of lights, sound, and AR when we needed it. The rest of the team decides to go in to look for Ancients, Roddy, and Vicky - with the tac-net up on the commlinks and not knowing what's up otherwise, we'll have to play this one by ear and count on N to change the rave environment to help us when we need it. Upon entering, I totally had to buy some of that sweet-smelling deepweed, and I was about to roll up a fatty when Kraner suggested I save it for later, when I won't have to share. (Man, I like that guy! He's a real chummer for helping me look out for my stash. Save it for later, what a great idea!)
A little working of the room revealed to us the Ancients holed up in one corner, behind some makeshift walls of crates and cable spools. There was a lot of them, and Roddy was definitely among them, with Vicky close at hand. Since we didn't know what her deal was, Kraner tries Influencing her to take a piss so we could grab her from the bathroom. She was going for it when Roddy forced her to sit back down and she wasn't happy with that much at all. Poor dumb rich slot - got in over her head, so daddy's flunky has to hire us 'runners to come extract her hoop from the big bad Ancients. I hope this goes well for us, or she's my favorite mark for pranks for a long time coming. Leave the streets and the shadows to those who can hack it, honey...
So, we regroup and make our play, advancing various ways to the corner; Wraith is stalking trough the roof trusses overhead. We plan to use some NVISIGOTH-generated chaos buy us surprise, but the Ancients' mage detected us as we were about strike. A few quick exchanges of fire leaves several Ancients down and some of us roughed up, but N sets the rave on its head when he jacks the system and makes like Knight Errant is on its way to bust the place up. Chaos ensues, and I love it! I throw a Mass Confusion into the corner on top of Kraner's Manabolts and Shepherd's Stunball, all of which supported Rock's shooting (geeking Ancient enforcers point blank with his Ingram SMG) and Wraith's kung fu (taking the fight straight to Roddy and his mage - death from above!). In the end, we took many of the gangers out (particularly Roddy) and retrieved Vicky, who had been knocked out by Shepherd's Stunball.
We made good on the run, although expenses were probably unnecessarily high. Good luck to Mueller - he may well be good and fried from that BTL, but his corp medical plan will take care of him either way. Johnson should be happy since we also got the girl out more or less intact (some bad memories and some painful bruises teach a mean lesson!), and maybe Charlotte will call again soon. Until then, I'm going to roll-up, bake-out, and groove with Trickster...