Derezzing the Dead Zone

Derezzing the Dead Zone
Date 2084-01-15 GM Asmodeus Location Tacoma, Seattle Status Threat Level: Deadly
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Umezawa-gumi Asahiro Kunitoshi	AI
Lumina 4NG3L Heart of the Tempest	Drone Swarm SINtax Power Munger Grue
Casualties and losses
Lumina almost got chunky salsa'd. 4NG3L made an enemy for life.	Offline host prison was rebooted and purged of protosapients

Summary

The team clears a Rating 5 offline host that seems partially broken in terms of its sculpting due to past overpopulation and destruction wreaked by its captives. Someone who tried to work on freeing them sees them all die and swears revenge.

Background

4NG3L has long thought of getting an offline host for various activities, despite the troubles that might pose initially. It'd be handy to host more secure games and possibly even store information... among other things.

The Meet

These searches finally bore fruit; Yomiko Kunitoshi, sister of Asahiro Kunitoshi contacts 4NG3L's brother about a potential host she could offer as long as they can clean it up first. A few others are hired for the job as well: Tempest and Lumina are the most immediately available and their fixers have their own curiosities about the case. They meet in Auburn's Shiawase ET fortress where Yomiko tells them where the host is, that it used to house outdated computer viruses, protosapients and other oddities that Shiawase liked researching. As it no longer has any use for them, they can let it go for someone else's use given its inefficient use and inability to be moved without being destroyed. She sends one of her bodyguards, an Osaka native introducing himself as Yung King, to accompany them and drive them to the location. The man proves to be heavily augmented and a technomancer, leading some to suspect he's a cyberadept. He enjoys Japanese gangster rap and has ties to Neo-Tokyo Yakuza clans.

The Run

4NG3L gets ready to jack in through a hardpoint after Tempest and Yung King use magic and technomancy to boost her deck for a solo dive; the bodyguard peaces out, leaving them to do their own thing and Lumina and Tempest will ensure nobody will try to stop them, since they were warned an 'escaped prisoner' may try to stop them from purging the host by rebooting it, killing all the logged in personas.

This begins soon after 4NG3L has located the local system archives and barely avoided a power munger, SINtaxes and Heavyweights. She starts disarming data bombs, cracking strong encryptions and gaining admin access when Lumina goes outside to check out the area: a narrow alleyway leading to the only entrance. Immediately she's beset by chameleon coated rotodrone swarms that pepper her with flare rounds; she retreats inside just before the underbarrel grenade launchers turn the entire alleyway into a killzone with grenade spam and cave in the front entrance. With no physical access, the assailant floods the room with gas through the vent systems which the team's chemseal protects them against to a degree.

In the host, 4NG3L has to fight a brutal battle against a Psychotropic Feedback-wielding Grue that's been stalking her the entire time. She succeeds in erasing it and busting its Matrix Condition Monitor entirely to properly start programming reboot sequences. It takes several real-life minutes to complete, but she jacks out and gets the whole host to restart, purging the system. Lumina and Tempest find upon digging their way out that the entire alleyway is now covered in a crisscross of tripwires connected to plastic explosives. Lumina tries crawling under them invisibly, but is shot at with a rocket that hurls her through several tripwires -- and to no effect. The tripwires had dummy explosives the whole time. Yakuza reinforcements arrive, but they're instantly ambushed by the invisible drone swarm and killed with no survivors. Thankfully, Ryuichi, 4NG3L's brother, wasn't part of that hit squad.

This is enough of a distraction for the team to escape before KE comes investigating rocket fire and massive gunfire that the drones caused.

Aftermath

Yomiko is impressed and agrees that 4NG3L can do with the host as she wishes. It may currently be in Vory territory, but that's an issue the Yakuza clan can figure out later. Lumina, as technically an unaffiliated runner that isn't Infected, gets the privilege of becoming one of Asahiro's personal shadowrunner associates.

Rewards

• 10 Karma (10 RVP)
• 8 CDP (3 RVP)
• + 1 Shiawase Reputation

• For Lumina:
  1. 5 Karma
  2. Toughness as an Optional Quality (9 Karma)
  3. Asahiro Kunitoshi, Vice-President of Imperial Kami Services, 6/1 Fixer as an Optional Contact (6 Karma or 12 CDP)

• For Tempest:
  1. 10,000 Nuyen from finding out the mystery of a once-unsolved case (5 RVP)
  2. One more rank of Focused Concentration as an Optional Quality at Char-Gen Rates (6 Karma)

• For 4NG3L:
  1. Perceptive 1 & 2 as Optional Qualities at Char-Gen Rates (5 Karma for 1 Rank, 10 Karma for both ranks)
  2. Mundane Ascension Rewards (5 RVP)

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

4NG3L

"Well, host acquired. Now, it's a matter of keeping it under control from rivals. So, naturally, I'm going to have my hands full writing security code and an array of IC to assist in that regard, but I need to take Osaka into account; I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. However, the future home of the Gaming Grid Argon has been secured, which will surely give me and mine a competitive advantage in the gambling business through the Dark-Matrix. Further, you can't beat the opportunity to rub elbows with other Matrix denizens and form connections. Lumi-chan seems to be doing well, but I am taking the loss of my kobun lost due to the drone strike very personally. That e-ghost will be hunted down like an animal and I think I have a way to bait it..."

Lumina

"That was way too close for comfort. My heart was racing while I was being assaulted upon by so many drones. An endless hail of blazing bullets like rain, followed by avoiding a cluster of grenades in a narrow alleyway. If that wasn't enough, it would later be a rocket fired towards my direction while I was trying to crawl past tripwires. That E-Ghost was really desperate to annihilate us. It's a miracle I'm still in one piece after all of that."

Heart of the Tempest

Fuckin' sneaky bastard drones. Bein' able to melt any drone I can see does me no good when I can't bloody tell where they are, and I need a general idea of where they are to just open fire with nice big area-of-effect stuff. But I could chill for the most part, teaming up with a techno to beef up our decker and then sneaking us out invisibly and inaudibly. It's nice to have durable colleagues. I see why Ezekiel was interested in that host, the stuff that Angel saw was... huh. Weird.