Flatline Firm

Flatline Firm
Date 2086-12-26 GM Asmodeus Location Seattle, Downtown Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Carolina Petrovski	Sons of Sauron
Samael Perdix Alfa Limitless	Faceless Fighters Hannah Greuber
Casualties and losses
None	Hannah Grueber took her own life rather than be captured. The other Sons either died on the rooftop or were captured when KE forces arrived after incapacitation.

Summary

An unfortunate night just after Christmas puts a group of runners off of a milk run and in a bind. One that leaves them without much holiday spirit, frankly.

Background

Carolina Petrovski is quite the interesting character in politics. Without getting too much into...yikes, she's been pushing for other metahumans in the workspace if they...reduced their visibility. Just a way to maintain looks, but...wow that's a lot. Now this, of course, sets off a lot of groups whom view this as pretty institutionalized metaracism and want to act against it. Some more extremely than others.

Hence, the Sons of Sauron wanted to send a message. Get some of their own members out, put pressure on the companies taking part of this endeavor, and show the world that forcing obedience and compliance with what metaracists believe humanity should be.

Now, unfortunately, their plan was to do this by holding a stock trading company's christmas party hostage while a group of shadowrunners were around, but that's just kind of the unfortunate scenario the best laid plans may come up against.

Speaking of...

The Meet

Debbie Green, a nice ork office lady, had just gotten her bags delivered at the party by Limitless, Samael, Perdix, and Alfa as the party was in its early stages. She needed her things carried for her stay in Seattle, but since she didn't know if she'd stay in one of the buildings floors or nearby she'd have the runners just...stay up on the top entertainment floor and not at the party. Limitless rushed up out of the party, Alfa and Samael politely excused themselves, Perdix took a catnap, things were fine. At the end of this easy night? 2k for doin' basically nothing. That's a solid, if boring as sin gig.

And then they heard the PA system go off and shots fired downstairs. Seems someone wanted to take over the building.

Dammit.

The Plan

There is no plan here - the team was almost entirely in the dark, on the defensive and reactive, and just trying to ensure that a majority of the hostages didn't die. This would lead to issues in the big picture but...well, no one was ready for a showdown on metaracist politics involving incredible violence that day, really.

The Run

First contact with the opposition went smoothly enough - despite Limitless wanting to go full Bruce Willis, Samael managed to keep her in check and got her armed since...well they were in a party in downtown, they didn't bring big guns here. they set up on opposite sides of a hallway, hidden by doors, and as the masked figure entered topside they opened fire with non-lethal rounds in a crossfire maneuver. It wasn't perfect, these foes were packing full FBA and assault rifles while they were stuck with light pistols, but high skill and high luck is a pretty potent combination. They hid the body and procured the commlink and radio that the group - whom they could not identify as Sons of Sauron due to lacking knowledge - were using to keep communications. It was quite useful, considering their own tech was being intensely jammed by something. They hid the body, luckily not needing to clean up any blood, and eventually more started coming up the stairs to check out the situation and interrogate the company head, Mr. Fitzgerald. Alfa projected over, and Limitless could barely hear the conversation, but it seemed like the group was after the codes to some old time government bonds that the company could use for trading. It'd be pretty easy to make money off them if the terrorists got their hands on em. Vulnerable. Easy if they had access. The majority of the conversation was in Or'zet, so no one there could understand it, but they did understand the sound of a man having his head sliced off for being a race traitor as negotiations broke down. This bode ill. The gang tried to ambush the 4 that went to assault this man, and managed to kill two members with the assault rifle they stole from the incapacitated fellow, but after some incredibly potent toxins were released by the fleeing survivors as they headed downstairs the group had to hole up and wait it out. They had no clue what to do really at this point. KE was gathering down below, trying negotiations, but things weren't going anywhere.

And then Samael got a call from Carolina Petrovski. She'd get them 8k each for making sure as little of the hostages died as possible and that they helped resolve the terrorist situation. Oh, and to hide the body of the poor, deceased Mr. Fitzgerald somewhere. Bad optics.

Despite the callousness for the deaths from anything other than a PR standpoint, the team was already thinking that they needed to work to protect the hostages, so being paid for it seemed fine. They were not, of course, politically savvy, and did not know this democrat incorporated a lot of odd policies for metahuman "assimilation" so...mm, it pays to study. But right now, they needed to keep people from dying.

Perdix woke up, and started working on the matrix side of things. A lot of the infrastructure on the public host was unavailable to work with, which according to Perdy meant that there was likely an offline host that he'd have to work on instead. Using an access in the maintenance closet a...few bodies were now in, Perdix got to work getting some things back online. Fans to circulate gas attacks out, the elevators, whatever he could use. He also managed to pinpoint that the signal jammer was probably on the roof. Meanwhile, Samael had to work as a negotiator to keep KE from just storming the place and getting a bunch of people killed. Turns out? Also a massive metaracist cop, great. So that was a struggle, but he managed to buy the crew some time. Which they were going to need. They figured they would first need to re-establish control of their equipment, which meant taking out the jammer. Then they'd want to find a way to sneak KE inside. And they'd need a distraction to make sure no heads roll too fast and there isn't anyone on the roof, or at least less people on the roof. So! While the rest of the team started being responsible, Limitless ran downstairs with the radio in hand to be a pain in the fucking ass.

Now, Limitless is a piece of shit when she wants to be, so after outing the bond thing on open airways where the cops could here and shit talking the leader for a solid few minutes, a spirit was coming to try and kick her shit in. Now, 7.62 can and will take all comers without mercy, which is good because if it weren't for her lucky shots and quick movement, she'd have been perforated by a wallbanger. That was when they started moving the group up to slowly cut her off of any avenues of escape and force her back up. Distracted but...not totally subverted.

Up top was similarly not great. They found the jammer on the roof, but a gunfight broke out and Alfa nearly got got. These guys were pretty well equipped, with RPC and automatic weapons at the ready for the whole group. Thankfully some quick barrier work from Alfa and the guns from Samael and Perdix managed to keep the duo at bay long enough for Perdix to take out the jammer.

Just in time too. Limitless had been flushed out into the rooftops now, and warned the group of the impending threat. But when they prepared for a fight, what came through were...the civilians. Hannah, the leader, had strapped bombs to them all and had a detonator at the ready. If she didn't get an escape copter for her and the remaining sons, bye bye to everyone on the rooftop. She was going to make the squad fake a failed attempt at breaking into the bonds' secret vault on the 6th floor, but Perdix managed to quickly engineer a solution to the detonator problem - Since it needed a constant signal, the cat made his own to keep the vests from going off. Then, the gang got to work manhandling the remaining members.

Alfa quickly shielded the hostages as the crew spread out to fire at each of the Sauron members. Hannah was well protected and hard to pin down, but as the fight dragged on the team kept knocking out members or just icing them on the spot. It wasn't a winning formula. Soon, Hannah herself was mere moments from going down. Not wanting to spend her life being abused in a jail cell, she took her one way out that she saw - a bomb vest on her own self. Samael had to dive on it, collapsing down a roof with Hannah in his clutches, nearly dying from the process but thankfully being able to live with his heavy augmentations.

Now, they just needed to...clean things up.

Aftermath

KE was still looming downstairs, but Petrovski at least didn't fuck over the shadowrunners - covered for them as "her personal team" sent to deal with the situation discreetly and kill these terrorists, these... dangerous orcs...

Yeah so that didn't feel *great* in hindsight for the runners. But they at least stayed anonymous, and had plenty of incentive to keep themselves informed in the future. Plus...well, they did save some civilians caught up in the whole ordeal.

It still doesn't taste too great though.

Rewards

10,000 Nuyen (5 RVP, you took Humanis corpo money from Horizon)

1 Karma (You saved hostages, 1 RVP)

6 CDP (2 RVP, learn about Sons of Sauron you goombas)

+1 Horizon Reputation

Game Quotes

Amusing quote from game.

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Limitless "...that was not a great way to end the year. Feels too shifty. Need to...need to look things up. Double check em. Fuck..."