Tadibya cleared her throat, making sure that she had the rest of the teams attention.
"Regardless of whether we take one job or the other – or indeed just leave the country, I want to take a few hours to put up a magical ward around the inside of the vehicle. It will give us some safety if there are any magical threats we encounter, but also it will help protect us against any kind of magical tracking or tracing if we do a job and leave some evidence behind."
"Good plan, Tadibya. So what do you need to make that happen?"
"Mostly just time. Though if any of you folk that can see into the astral plane wish to help me, I'm sure we can do a better job as a team, than just me working alone. The more precise we are with inscribing the wards, the longer they'll last."
"They won't be permanent?"
"No – there are ways to make them last until they're destroyed. One is to use some magical materials in the construction – that will cost you a few thousand to ten thousand or more, depending on just how big your area is, and how strong the ward is. The other way I've heard of requires some advanced techniques for manipulating mana. I'm aware of the general theory, but it's not something I've tried."
"Ok, so, we just need to decide what we're doing then, and that will tell us how much time we have." Kai leant back in his seat and waved a hand round the rest of the team, opening up the discussion to them.
"If we're going to do a job in this wretched country, I favour going into Tehran. It's going to be away from official eyes, and working in the shadows, dealing with black market sellers and Shadowrunners. Dangerous, but with a good chance of making contacts and getting involved with the scene." Marius looked around to see who else agreed or might support him as he laid out his reasoning.
"I think I would rather go with the job from Saito – not just because he's my friend and contact," Shimazu responded, "but because it's going to be against a much softer target. A museum might have alarms, guards and cameras – but it's not the remains of the capital city destroyed by draconic attack and inhabited by the ghosts of tens of thousands of people. Stealing a bit of old parchment doesn't sound too dangerous. Going into a city destroyed in a show of magical power that forced a million people to flee for their lives and abandon their homes to all kinds of wild creatures and magical threats does." Aswon and Hunter nodded along with Shimazu as he raised a counter point, and Marius found it hard to argue with the logic.
The world was still coming to terms with the ideas that Dragons and Magical Spirits were real, following the appearance of Ruymo at Mount Fuji in Japan, on Christmas Eve of 2011. The appearance of elves and dwarves had unnerved many, fuelling racial tension and genocidal riots across the world, and leading to the Pope denouncing metahumans as abominations, causing massive upheaval in the Christian world. The organised religions found themselves having to deal with theological questions they could never have imagined only a few years ago – was magic a divine gift from God, or the taint and evil of the Devil? Their world had been turned upside down, but simple human fear and prejudice had swayed many into making judgements based on their interpretation of faith that would split and divide humanity ever more sharply.
The ruling Imams of Iran's regime had seriously underestimated the impact their words and deeds would have when in the year 2020, they declared a Holy Jihad against metahumans and magical creatures, declaring any kind of Shamanistic practice as Haram and punishable by death. Unfortunately for them, the Great Dragon Aden had awoken on Mount Ararat in Eastern Turkey, not far from Iran, and had claimed much of the area as his domain – whether the puny humans in it liked it or not.
It was a wakeup call for the world. The first time a dragon had launched an assault so openly and publicly, and on such a scale. Commanding an army of spirits, supported by mages and guerrillas, Aden responded to the declaration of war with overwhelming, crushing force. Iranian fighter jets were blasted from the sky by megawatt blasts of lightning, tower blocks found their supports turning to liquid mud, sending thirty story apartment blocks sliding to the ground and devastating vast areas of the city, while spirits sent waves of fear and confusion through troops and police, shattering their morale and destroying any kind of organised resistance. The capital city of Tehran was savaged, with large parts of the city destroyed by fires or sunken by earth tremors, with millions dead and millions more rendered homeless, fleeing in panic from a force they could barely comprehend.
The Iranians effectively ceded control of the city to Aden, abandoning it and moving their capital. The Muslim world trembled at the force of the slaughter, finding themselves the target of a Jihad, hating every moment of it, but being unable to respond. With Tehran now a graveyard of epic proportions, Aden simply left, giving clear warning to the world – declare war on the magic of the world at your own peril. The hatred for him grew deep within the clergy, but they never made the same mistake again of openly declaring war upon him. Even when there was a second wave of 'goblinisation' that spread around the world, turning what had been normal humans into orks and trolls, the clergy was careful in their condemnation, fearing to bring down the wrath of Aden upon them again.
But now, thirty years later, Tehran was still officially abandoned, ignored by the Government as the consequences of their hubris, an embarrassment of international scope. Over the years, though, drifters had returned to scavenge through the remains, and along with them had come the criminal elements of society. Mixed in amongst the ghosts, toxic pools and charnel pits were smugglers, hired killers and those people for whom living out of sight of the government was a strong preference. It was a lawless place, where the only rules that applied were the ones you could enforce with fist, gun or magical power.
After they spent a while discussing the options, they reached a general consensus - Shimazu got in touch with Saito again, and told him they were considering his job offer, but they could really do with getting more information about the job.
Saito provided the name and address of the museum, and advised them to perhaps scope the place out and see if they felt confident about breaking in or infiltrating the place. If they then decided they were doing the job – he would provide more details. Shimazu agreed, and hung up, relaying the details to the rest of the team. Meanwhile Kai tried calling Anahita, but the number showed as not in service – he pulled a bit of a face and wondered just how much trouble he was in with her….
Shimazu and Aswon said they would get a cab to the museum, and then check out the place, and act as something to spot for Tadibya to come and provide some astral reconnaissance. Marius, meanwhile, got to work on stripping out the GPS chips from the other phones, so they could be used safely, and found that with a proper workbench and good light, the task was much easier to perform, making good progress over the afternoon.
Hunter and Kai chilled around the truck, enjoying the downtime. Later in the afternoon, Marius started work on a couple of smuggling compartments, building box section hides on the inside of the chassis. By the end of the afternoon he had two compartments large enough to hide a large assault rifle or sniper rifle on each side of the truck bed, and about four more that would take a medium size satchel, all tucked away on the chassis and disguised as far as he could to look like part of the vehicle structure.
The cab deposited Aswon and Shimazu at the museum, but they were initially distracted by a set of hothouses set up on the grassy area outside, showing off plants from around the world. They entered and checked out the plants, examining the flora of five continents, all in separate sections – keeping an eye out for anything with known magical properties or of medicinal interest, but not finding anything worth pursuing. They called Tadibya, who arrived mere seconds later, after spotting them. Entering the museum via a set of wide steps, they walked into a large corridor with a flight of steps leading up to the first floor, side passages leading to wings of the museum and a choice of routes into a rotunda and the information desk. After grabbing handy maps of the museum, helpfully translated into English, they wandered into the north wing – the "Art of the Ancient World" section. Kai and Shimazu found a doorway into the "Morse study room for Works on Paper", a small windowless room with a bead curtain hanging over the archway, and were just about to enter when Aswon felt a chill up his spine.
Tads was passing through his body, back and forth, giving him a feeling like someone was "walking over his grave". They moved away, down the corridor, and headed into the gents toilets, looking around to check for cameras and observers. Seeing none, Aswon called out to Tads, who then manifested, appearing as an ethereal ghost. Tads informed them that there was a low level ward over the bead curtain – Shimazu would be fine if he entered with no adept powers up, but if Aswon tried to enter, his tattoos were sure to trigger the ward. Armed with this knowledge, they returned to the section, and Aswon stayed out, scoping out the security cameras, alarms, sensors and lay of the exhibits while Shimazu checked out the room – finding one wall covered in a wooden set of pigeon holes, stuffed full of ancient manuscripts and texts. Two historians were working through the documents, translating and copying the text out, handling the papers with pristine white gloves in a controlled environment.
They happily chatted away with Shimazu, explaining what they were doing, and describing the age of their artefacts. After some time Shimazu moved out to find Aswon and finish the recon sweep, but was distracted somewhat when he came across an example of a set of Samurai laminate armour with paired swords, displayed on a manikin on a large display base. From the glint in his eye, it appeared that two things were now due to be stolen from the museum tonight…
Tadibya was just drifting down the corridor, trying to keep out of sight, when she felt a sudden burst of alarm – looking over her shoulder, an air elemental was bearing down on her at great speed. Twisting and diving sideways, she concentrated hard and accelerated her astral form, bursting out through the walls and heading east as fast as she could go. Split seconds later the elemental burst out of the wall in hot pursuit. Travelling at the speed of thought, Tads was almost to the border with Turkmenistan before the astral entity stopped pursuing her, and it took her much longer to get back, keeping a careful eye open for anyone watching or trying to trail her. She headed back to the garage and her body, and called Aswon and Shimazu to advise them to be careful, and shortly afterwards they left the museum and returned to the garage, too.
Back at the garage they mulled over the floor plans and the target, deciding if they could do it. Eventually they decided to try and keep it simple – stay in the museum until just before official closing time, then hide in or behind one of the exhibits. As soon as the place was a little quieter, thrown on a couple of burkas, disguise themselves as the cleaning staff and try to lift the goods, then just hotfoot it out of a fire-escape under cover of magic, into the waiting truck and away – relying on speed, stealth and big brass balls to do the job.
They all thought that with more time and gear they could do a better job – but sadly they were lacking in both…