RIP Bozo
| RIP Bozo | |||||||||
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| Part of The Name of Heaven | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven ch1t1n | Night Hunters | ||||||||
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Buck Digifex Lanius Saint |
Goons Small Enemy Spider Big Guy Biggest Guy | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Lanius Visits the Beach That Makes You Dissonant, Digifex Loses His Resolve | Yes | ||||||||
Summary
Night Hunters get clowned on, and the clown gets rescued.
Background
Caliban has done a terrible thing. In the wake of the destruction she's wrought, three technomancers, once bright-eyed and eager for the treasure hunt they'd stumbled across, languish in hopeless Matrix homelessness. Further straining their relationship, one of them, a technomancer with a harlequinn-esque, clown-adjacent living persona named b0z0, lashes out and latches onto insane conspiracy theories. His hostile prodding pushes the three apart.
chiTIN hurts for this, and for his friends as well. Despite being attacked and yelled at, he checks in on b0z0 every now and then, though hasn't heard from him in a week now. Fearing the worst, and unable to find or trace his icon on the Matrix, he resolves to ask for a few favors from some hacker friends of his, and the winding tendrils of his desperate plea snake into the shadows where the lowest amongst us might hear them.
Lanius, finishing up a practice session, hears from Adelaide Rollins about a smalltime hooding gig - track down and rescue a kid, simple work, simple pay, ne? Lanius instantly worries for her reputation as a heel, and Rollins talks corporate strategy and synergy and face-turns. "We'll get it in the edit," seems to be the only thing the two of them agree on in the end, but nonetheless, Lanius prepares to meet their Johnson in the downtown bar that he's holed up in, intending to go in person as well as on the Matrix.
Buck, while tending to his homestead, is visited by Cairn slithering out of his gutters. The snake has heard really cool things about this really cool skull, and would really love Buck to track it down. They've had their eye on it for a while, and only bring it up now because they finally have a concrete lead - a Johnson wants some shadowrunners to track someone down, someone who, in the days leading up to their disappearance, would post constant and consistently unhinged rants about his pet conspiracies and connecting data points and skulls that tie it all together. Buck, sensing nothing wrong in getting in good with Cairn with a favor to pay back later, easily agrees.
Saint, with a punctured lung and on ordered bed rest, languishes on top of a mattress, miserable in body for her injuries, in mind for her boredom. Alex "Good'ol" Samson phones in to save the day - she groans, barks a terse "What?." He tells her he's got a drek job for his drekkest runner, and offers outright that he's sending her primarily because he doesn't really like the client. Her eyebrows twitch. Through the awkward silence, Alex cheerfully reminds her that, if she gets paid at all (and there's no guarantee with this gig), he demands his standard %10 cut. Saint, incredulously, returns to the previous topic, and asks if he only ever pawns her off to people he doesn't like, and he instantly agrees and hangs up. She rolls to get out of bed and heaves an unhealthy cough, and decides to attend the meet purely on the Matrix.
Digifex speaks briefly with Argent. He has a gig lined up - not an impressive one, of course, but one he knows Digifex will want in on. Finding a kid, sure, it feels good to do good, ne? But more importantly, the kid might be a technomancer, along with the Johnson himself. For a devout Resonance gnostic, he is drawn to others like him, and easily agrees despite the dubious promise of pay.
The Meet
Syberspace is a mixed reality bar in downtown, one of many to follow in the footsteps of the legendary Dante's Inferno. Classically cyberpunk and accessible on meat and Matrix both, it is the ideal place for a secret technomancer to call a safe haven. Digifex, a sleek, futuristic, be-helmeted science-fiction hero, Saint, a blood-red knight, two swords at her waist, and two dark wings at her back, and Buck, who is Buck, arrive in the host one after another and swiftly clock the sad, alcoholic bug-man at the bar. Lanius, who arrives not just on the Matrix but also on the meat with a dashing little dress, can also instantly tie that sad alcoholic bug-man to a sad, alcoholic teen-man drinking at the bar.
After some banter, and a little bragging about sleazing free drinks off of the host, chiTIN digs into the history of his request - not so much because it is necessary, the runners seem to gather, but because this kid clearly needs the vent. His dear friend group has drifted apart after somebody "destroyed the world" of their host. (Saint, unimpressed, politely informs him that hosts aren't worlds). The situation truly broke the three friends apart - br34ker, their third, left the both of them behind, and b0z0, who styles himself as a clown on the Matrix, began to become hateful, conspiratorial, and detached from reality. Though apart and barely still friends, chiTIN has been watching his persona. He cares for them, despite what they've both said. And unfortunately, his dear friend b0z0, has gone completely dark.
As he speaks, Saint downs a bottle of simsense Glint Eye to prove a point that it isn't real. It very much is. She takes a seat.
Digifex waxes on about the divinity of the Matrix. Not only is it a real world, it is *the* real world, with what most consider baseline reality a projection of its form. All the world is composed of information, and all information must lead back to the Resonance. The rest of the group blinks, but chiTIN vaguely agrees.
At any rate, their target's last known whereabouts are in Renton, the Johnson informs them, and occasionally described how he had to go outside for sunlight, how he had to color coordinate his natural green. After some quick reassurances and gentle pats on the back, the two major Matrix nerds in the group track down his online presence and trace his physical location from the pieces he's left. Saint and Buck, presumably, recline back at home. Saint, prodded into action by Lanius, "helps" with a Matrix search by screencapping a page of Gizoogle results and sending it as a compressed .jpg.
Nonetheless, they find their mark. His persona went offline deep in Night Hunters territory - unfortunate, of course, when coupled with the other fact uncovered by their sleuthing. b0z0 is most likely a Xapiri Thëpë, an elven metavariant that is exceedingly rare, and one that unfortunately plasters their chlorophyll-filled, nature loving bodies in a bright and Ancient green.
If he weren't in danger just by being an elf, he is definitely in danger of being mistaken for a proper Ancient. The team move swiftly, and agree to meet in the suburb closest to his last known location, the most poorly kept secret of a dozen Night Hunter safe houses.
The Plan
Connections are made, and it seems likely that b0z0 is a Xapiri Thepe, but like, with umlauts above the e's I don't make the rules. The area is occupied largely by Humanis and Humanis sympathizers, including the thrill gang Night Hunters, which are themselves a more extremist cell tied directly to Humanis Policlub. A green elf in the wrong gang's neighborhood is just asking for trouble. They narrow the likely safehouses down to a specific suburb, and keep a distant watch on the situation just to confirm this is their target. The guys loitering outside seem suspicious enough - shaved heads, and Humanis tattoos on deniable areas of their bodies like the forearm. Seems good.
In lieu of an actual plan, the crew deign to just waltz in and start swinging, which seems pretty typical of this particular team composition to be honest.
The Run
Fight time, technos do techno things and surreptitiously get marks on the host by brushing their hand against a slaved car so they can go inside and hit their guns and other wireless objects. Saint saints, Buck bucks, Lanius clinches, and Digifex fex them up. Clearing the outside guard, Saint goes to a side door and gets punched through the wood - she wheezes with the effort, and her stitches tear open slightly. She is not making her doctor happy.
Ashford's evil racist twin emerges. Digifex, in a cruel twist of meta-irony, bricks his gun and puts him down as well.
Shots go through the walls of the home to ping several other humanis gamers. Saint tosses a frag into the garages and eats another couple of blows to dash through them to the interior of the house. It salsafies one of them, though two others remain, who promptly surrender.
Saint has a moment with the leader? The big guy, who has much more obvious tattoos and ware, like this dude is obviously not living a normal life outside of his dream job here. Oh don't forget the trap door in the garage that's important. She asks if he has any keebs in the building, and he says yeah, there's one in the basement. He asks if he should raise a white flag, and Saint wonders if the people he hurt ever did. He has a kid, he says. She asks him if he teaches his kid to do shit like this, and if he's got a wife to take over for him instead, and he says that's rich coming from someone so chromed out. She asks him who made her like that. He doesn't have an answer save to spit on her, and she kills him.
They find an escort shot by a bullet through the wall in the other room of the house. After some deliberation, the runners apply a trauma patch and resolve to bring her with them before the police arrive to make sure she gets the care she needs. Kind of a situation they themselves caused, but at least their hearts are in the right place.
Into the basement. b0z0, the chlorophyll elf, is alive and not well. He, like a feral animal, scrambles away from the light and digs his little nails into the compacted dirt in a corner of the basement room. Across from him, an ork's body lies dead in the dirt, freshly killed. In the dirt is a skull - Lanius grabs it and has a really bad time. Digifex is convinced that this is dissonance and that the kid needs to be put down, though Saint and Buck both object to this. Saint tells Digifex to stop being so morally grand-standing and to just shoot the kid if he really believes he should die, fully prepared to disarm him when he does. Buck, similarly though far more bluntly, says that he is leaving this room with the kid over his shoulder, alive.
Lanius escapes from the Beach that makes you dissonant and, similarly, says the kid's gotta die. The group eventually come to the consensus that no, he doesn't actually have to die, and they bring him back to ch1t1n's meat body, a sad human in a hoodie waiting outside a house in Redmond.
Aftermath
Lanius publishes a video (with the other runners edited out) of the massacre, lending her public awareness and insane negative reputation with the involved factions. Lanius also researches the Beach that Makes You Dissonant and sends Caliban a nastily worded message about what she did during Battle Not With Monsters. Buck brings Cairn the weird skull and Cairn is all about it, he loves it. Digifex is broken, torn between breaking the Dissonance that he sees as an affront to the divinity of the Matrix and the innocence of a child afflicted with it. Saint doesn't get any of this resonance drek but pats ch1t1n on the head for a job well done protecting his friend.
Rewards
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Digifex - "Everything was simple going until the damn kid had to be dissonant. If he's not fully gone, I can only hope that something can help, whether a paragon's divine blessing or a wiz doc, I don't care, just don't let one more of us fade into nothing. I'll say I won't hold out hope, but Paragons, I have to."
Buck - "You know, usually I like my dust-ups with a little less creepy-murder-basement-pits and a little more fun-in-the-sun. But then again, any day I get to save a sick kid and put down some racists is a good day. And everybody important walked away more or less unscathed. Or... Well, almost everybody..."
Saint - "They were seriously gonna kill some kid over the 'beach that makes you evil' or some shit - the frag does that even mean? Drek, he's got people who love him, you see how big that hug was? Glad he made it outta there - he'll be fine with friends like that by his side... Hope the girl makes it too."