Squatters Rights

Squatters Rights
Date 2085-09-22 GM Xaytan Location Seattle Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven
GOODLUCK Quinn Red Rover Dango

Summary

The runners are hired by an individual calling themself the "Dreamer" to do a good deed on the dirty: Prevent the destruction of a squatter colony in Snohomish.

Background

The Dreamer, an altruistic individual who operates exclusively through drones and proxies, has identified a threat to a squatter community in Redmond at which she has been providing medical care for the disadvantaged. She has also, perhaps, identified an opportunity.

The Meet

The meet is held in an abandoned corporate RnD facility in the worse part of Snohomish. Once there they discover that the building has become home to a squatter community as they are greeted by the smell of roasting devilrat and the sight of 6th world poverty. There, after asking around, they are directed to a room in the back which has been converted to a makeshift clinic and are confronted with an anthrodrone, which the tech specialists of the group identify as a custom model, that introduces itself as their Johnson.

The J has them take a seat while finishing with a patient, then closes the clinic and gives the runners their objective: The building they are currently in belongs to an unrated cybertech company known as Helix Dynamics which has fallen on hard times. Helix is on track to be acquired by another company, Nexus Systems, with the deal being finalized within the next few days. Dreamer predicts that as part of the acquisition the building will likely be demolished and the squatters living there robbed of their shelter. The job is simple: Prevent the building's destruction. The J expresses a desire for the runners to complete the task without killing anyone, but otherwise provides no specific instructions.

After a bit of back and forth, the runners are able to negotiate for access to pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, as well as drone modifications from the Johnson.

The Plan

The runners do their legwork, researching the two corporations involved. They are able to discover that Nexus is in fact a shell company used by MCT for acquisitions of smaller companies in the Americas and has been steadily buying up tech companies with interesting intellectual property.

They identify the CEO of Helix, as well as the representative from Nexus who is negotiating the buyout:

Mr. Voss, the Helix CEO, is a philanthropist tech entrepreneur whose passion project has fallen on hard times. They obtain information on his family, as well as background information tying him to a couple of cutthroat criminal acts: It appears he has hired shadowrunners to carry out ops against rivals in the past.

Kai Yoshida is a cutthroat corporate agent, and an MCT SINner, who is negotiating the acquisition. A Japanese native and a Mystic Adept of the Buddhist tradition, as well as an accomplished martial artist, Kai has a reputation for ruthlessness in the boardroom and on the mat.   The runners discuss a few plans: Threatening Voss, assassinating Kai, blackmail obtained through their contacts. The runners wisely determine that assaulting a C-Suite executive in his Downtown home, or ambushing an MCT agent in the streets of Seattle, were both horrible ideas and begin looking at other ways to accomplish their goal.

With a bit more research, they settle on destroying the company's research data, which they determine is the real target of the acquisition. After some investigation, they determine that the data is kept inside the main host as well as being stored on physical offline backups inside the building itself.

The Run

The runners waylay the company IT manager on her way to work, with Red Rover putting on the "orkhio sigma rizz" to distract her while GOODLUCK pickpockets her for her RFID passkey. Caught with her hand in the lady's pocket, Goodluck plays the part of the street thief as Red Rover steps up to defend this innocent human woman from the ruffians of the Sixth World with her big strong ork arms. In the following distraction, they team is able to make another attempt to snag the passkey and scans it before safely returning it to her pocket.

Key in hand, the team makes a copy and provides it to their infiltration team. Approaching the building under cover of night, when presumably the building would be most empty. The team dodges the main security and weaves around the sensor nodules along the outside of the building. Dango the decker disables the alarm on the building's emergency fire door and the team enters, opting to avoid the main lobby and the heavily fortified security desk with its armed guards and to take the emergency stairs so as to not get trapped in the elevators.

The team ascends the stairs to the 17th floor, where the office space for Helix is located. On arrival they attempt to use the passkey they copied to access the office, but Lady Luck does not smile on Goodluck and something goes wrong: Alarms are sounded throughout the building and security begins to approach. The group are put into a rush, smashing down the door and being confronted by the lone security guard who had been doing a sweep of the 17th floor along with his trusty hellhound. They threaten the man into surrender, and he complies; Unbeknownst to the team however he put out a DNI call informing the building security of the intruders location. Unfortunately, the runners were not true to their word and beat him within an inch of his life despite his surrender. Remembering their Johnson's wishes, they retrieve an emergency medical kit from the office first aid station and stabilize him as sirens approach outside and move him into the stairwell to get him out of the way of the next stage of their plan.

Quinn rushes to set up a bomb, provided by Dango, smashing down doors that get in her way as she rushes to the office IT section. With the bomb in place, the team begin their exfil down the fire escape. As they dash out the doors onto the street, a group of Knight Errant police cruisers and patrol drones have begun to swarm the building. Quinn scoops up the other runners and pops her mech's wheels to make a break for it, weaving between tasteful concrete planters and modern anti-homeless architecture to evade detection and the tightening grip of Law Enforcement.

Meanwhile, Dango finds the online copies of the data and destroys them, but not before making copies. Positioning nearby, she manages to blend into the crowd of rubberneckers as the block goes onto lockdown with Gridguide sectioning off traffic and police beginning their sweep in preparation for HTR's arrival.

The other runners scatter and attempt to blend back into the crowd of metahumanity, each going their separate ways to avoid all being caught together. Quinn and GOODLUCK make their escapes, with Red Rover's orkish complexion making her stand out here in the nice part of town. She makes a break for the Redmond wall, dashes across the 405 and slips through one of the checkpoints using some illusion magic and a lucky roll against the checkpoint ward. Safely across, the vanishes into the SINless masses.

Aftermath

The sale falls through, with Nexus Systems no longer seeing a value in the company. Dango plans to return the stolen data over the next few weeks, however this does not reverse the downward spiral and the company files for bankruptcy and shutters its doors before year's end. Much of their property is sold at public auction, with certain interested parties acquiring the Helix facility in Snohomish with no forthcoming plans to develop it.

Along with a sizable amount of their cybernetics and medical equipment.

Rewards

10K Nuyen (5 RVP) / 20k Nuyen in Medical Supplies, Drugs or Drone Mods up to 18 avail 4K Nuyen bonus for successfully completing the optional pacifism objective (2 RVP) 7 karma (7RVP) 2 CDP base

Qualities Available: Profiler for Dango (3 RVP) Barrens Rat for Goodluck and Red Rover (5 RVP) Steely Eyed Wheelman for Quinn (2 RVP)