This For Once

This For Once
Date 2086-07-07 GM Asmodeus Location Seattle Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Knight Errant West Coast Monolith	White Vory	Halloweeners
Colcannon Huntress Obsidian Tsarina	John Vory An Unidentified Mage	Various Gang Members A very blessed mage
Casualties and losses
2 heavily wounded but no deaths	None	All neutralized

Summary

A perfect example of how even the best laid plans can go to shit when the circumstances just don't line up. Runners are still people, and they have all sorts of different wants.

They worked together to get a rat out against the Vory, as sneaky as they reasonably could, without too much complications. Frankly? It could have been a whole lot worse.

Background

Dimitri Herrera was a former Aztlan cartel member, who then ascended to a higher ranking officer in the White Vory by revealing information to them about the cartel's drug routes. He was never really liked by most of the Vory, and when he got caught out by Bolt's forces he struck out a deal. They wanted him to spill the beans over White Vory operations, and were gonna torture the guy for it, but he was far more eager to fold to the KE and give that info up if they could do that instead of brutalizing him into talking.

Now, Bolt knew the Vory wanted him out of the picture pretty fast when he had to deal with their forces coming in to make problems for the WCM. He also didn't wanna expose his own group to the Knight Errant who miiiiiiiiight kick up a fuss later, and this kind of sneaky back-alley work lent itself the perfect opportunity to get shadowrunners to help.

The Meet

The meet happened in a section of Redmond that was recently hit by a huge wave of Influenza, so...that was something to prepare for right off the bat. Conveniently, this also meant that the runners got a convenient excuse to show up in new gear that they could ditch after the job to keep the cops from getting any ideas on tracking them later. The four of them arrived and were informed on the matter at hand - who they were escorting, where, some possible routes to get them started, and the opposition they would be facing.

Now, Tsarina was a former White Vory assassin. And that colored a great deal of the meeting. Not only due to her background knowledge into the organization, but because the thought of dealing another blow to the organization she hated was distracting her from any desire to haggle the price around. Notably, the team learned a few things about the group of opfor and challenges they were facing:

- They were going to be dealing with a mage using farsight detection rituals to try and spot out their target - one of the assassins they were dealing with just went by John Vory. Unfortunately, the unassuming name hid the fact that he was capable of easily handling shadowrunners with just an Ares Predator - The Vory had hired out gangs to patrol the highways and keep an eye out for the fucking rat that went against them, and just overall make life a problem for whoever tried to get him to the Knight Errant.

The gang would have to get Dimitri from Redmond all the way over to Downtown. Bolt helped them get started with a few plans of attack and a few different directions, and they found a few different issues with their routes.

- The Highways would be patrolled by gangs following the syndicate's offers to slow down the runners. A fast but dangerous route. The back-alleys and street level running could be a bit sneakier, but if they got caught out they'd be worse off and it'd be slower overall. Finally, they could try their luck through the underground where the Vory were going to have a hard time finding them, but the issue there is that Skraacha would need to be convinced to let this guy through and were definitely going to try and kill him otherwise.

- Renton had new outcroppings of Knight Hunters around who would make life harder for both Colcannon and Dimitri, a Troll and an Ork

- Snohomish had Humanis, sure, but possibly worse was that a necroplex had its ward destroyed some time ago and now there are shedim problems there.

Finally, Bolt offered a number of guns and balaclavas to help the team hide themselves from Knight Errant and not use personal gear. This included a horrid gun that was terribly modified which gave Huntress a small migraine looking at it.

The Plan

Given their options, and some rep that Obsidian and Colcannon had with the Skraacha, they decided the best course of action was to go through the underground after arranging a meeting with Warboss to get that permission slip. The team would help disguise Dimitri just in case, give a few half truths as to what they were doing with this guy to get him through, and then finally pop back up through Downtown sewers and head to the precinct.

Tsarina was going to ensure her spell defense was kept on Dimitri to make sure he wasn't detected by the ritual, and both Col and Obsidian would lead the charge on talking while Huntress would take point on rougher parts of the excursion and keep an eye out for threats if they did show up. If all went well, they would have a pretty simple escort mission on their hands.

The Run

And at first, the run was just that. A clean job.

The talk with the Skraacha reps Warboss sent went well. The two elves smooth talked them into thinking this was just someone who was going to be a massive problem for the Vory if he got to where he was going and didn't ask for too much beyond permission through, so they would be fine to let them through as long as they got a pat check. Which they did. It risked a chance of the disguise coming apart if they found out it was actually Dimitri coming through, but...some well timed distractions by an Obsidian willing to do what she had to do kept things more manageable. They didn't manage to notice what was up with Dimitri, and the team was on their way escorted to the edge of Skraacha territory and then on their own beyond.

After some time, they had to cross over some kind of Sewer slime - had nasty spores that would severely fuck up anyone who breathed them in, possibly killing them if it got inside. Thankfully the whole group had gasmasks and could spare Dimitri an MCT EE Suit to use for safety. They had to navigate the underground on their own and avoid detection for a while, but with Huntress leading the way the group was able to get through just fine - avoiding some very nasty company in both White Vory and Von Newman drones along the way.

Things...fell apart when they got up to the surface. At first it seemed fine, they managed to narrowly avoid being caught up in a chase between Knight Errant forces and Halloweeners attacking civilians as they are want to do. Unfortunately, the actually decent people wanted to rightly help the innocents even if it was out of the way, and the psychopathic black mage and indifferent mercenary fomorian were not so inclined. Tsarina tried to control both Huntress and Obsidian, but Huntress couldn't let that stand and Obsidian followed soon after, to Tsarina's very well communicated chagrin. What followed was a very close fight. A lot of explosives being thrown around, Knight Errant being burned alive by a force 12 fireball Tsarina threw but had reflected by the mage among the pyros, monofilament wires shredding colcannon and nearly killing her, it was a nasty fight. One the team barely recovered from before who should arrive but John Fucking Vory. The team immediately began to book it at that point (leaving a force 12 signature for KE to photograph in the rush) using the task spirit Obsidian had summoned as a distraction at best. But, thankfully, they did manage to give John the slip. And the mage that had been trying to detect them failed to do so after horrendously botching his ritual.

Finally, they were out.

Aftermath

Obsidian and Tsarina took care of the hand off to the waiting Knight Errant forces, well disguised and far beyond what the sensors could detect from their car and not leaving much physical evidence for KE to use as a profile on them later on. When the team returned to Bolt, he paid them the standard (meager) fare of 6k in nuyen, returned whatever gear they had brought with them to the meet, and helped them burn anything from the job so KE couldn't try to link commonly used gear to the runners either.

Rewards

Run Rewards for This For Once (Medium, 12 RVP)

8 Karma (8 RVP)

6,000 Nuyen (3 RVP)

4 CDP (1 RVP)

+1 WCM Reputation

Knight Errant has a quicksilver photograph of Tsarina's astral signature.

Game Quotes

Amusing quote from game.

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

"...Fucking hate working with bleeding hearts. God dammit." - Tsarina

"So that's that. Nothing left to offer. I'm done." - Obsidian