A Ghoulish Case Of Bloody Business

A Ghoulish Case Of Bloody Business
Part of A Ghoulish Case
Date 2082-02-23 GM Aurora Location Puyallup Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Aztec Temple, Aztechnology
Sp4rks Rabbit Samsara Pell	4 Aztechnology HTR soldiers 1 Aztechnology HTR 1 Aztechnoligy Spider 1 Aztechnology Demi-God Decker
Casualties and losses
Sp4rks's pride	Total

Summary

In which a commune of Ghouls employs runners to investigate and put an end to an Aztechnology project kidnapping their people

The Meet

The team gets contacted one by one by their respective fixers, pitching them a job with a group of people ready to pay for them to help. The team quickly regroups at the clinic of Doctor O+. There Doctor O+, the J, offers them 20 K nuyens, or double that in augmentations. No one in the team feel like negotiating a higher price with down on their luck ghouls, and so they accept.

Doctor O+ explains to the runners that their people started disappearing in mysterious circumstances recently, and he got a lead he wanted capable people to follow up on. Indeed, somewhere in Puyallup he identified the place where a group of ghouls was abducted, notably because of the rushed job of astral cleansing that was done there, and sends the team to begin investigating.

Once there, Pell and Samsara studied the astral space and indeed found it badly masked, however no astral signature was to be found. In the meantime, Rabbit used her Fairlight deck to hack the cameras around the place, giving her an overview of the scene until a point where the recordings were obviously deleted. Sp4rks inverstigated the markings on the ground and noticed they were clearly from a confrontation, with the help of everyone they managed to find tracks from a heavy vehicle, and they followed them untill the highway where street cameras led them to an Aztec temple, the car entering it's basement.

The Plan

Sp4rks wants to go in guns blazing but Samsara prefers to do some recon before. Pell projects and analyzes their magic defenses, finding they are low outside of some wards and a BGC of 2 aspected to the Aztec religion. Sp4rks and Rabbit dive into the matrix, in search of interesting data, they rezz in a destination host and spot a Data host nested inside. They do not waste time entering it, and rezz in what looks like a prison corridor, here Sp4rks search for incriminating data about blood sacrifice, and finds an interesting file. As he goes to open it, Rabbit spots a databomb on it and gives him a heads up just in time, he proceeds to defuse and decrypt the file, raising the host's alarms.

Rabbit, as soon as the alarm sounds up throws up a Biofeedback laden data spike at the spider, killing him instantly. With the file, Sp4rks now drops back in the destination host as Rabbit jacks out, There he proceeds to have an intense cybercombat with a demi-GOD before Rabbit rezzes in again and uses an oversight in it's duellist defenses to data spike the demi-GOD, killing him.

Sp4rks proceeds to draw the incriminating file on every AR and trid projectors he can see, the building quickly shuts down and the team decides to walk in, passing for interested parties worried about those news about the temple.

The Run

Knocking at the door, they are received by an initiate of the temple, who they manage to convince to give them a tour. During the tour, some team members notice a hidden door, and inquire about it to the initiate. He is legitimately confused at it, as he never knew about such a door, but Rabbit convinces him by appealing to it's mentor spirit dragonslayer, to let them pass do their thing, to which the initiate responds well. Samsara promptly punches the door open and the group pass through, finding an elevator behind.

Getting down, the group opens up the bottom elevator doors to a prison-looking place, with ghouls behind bars, clearly being experimented on. Quickly, the sound of an HTR team approaching made themselves heard and the team prepared for a fight. The team was composed of 4 gunmen and one Aztechnology blood mage, who try as he might never managed to stab anyone.

The initiate ended the fight pretty beautifully by casting a huge fireball in the middle of the Aztechnology HTR gunmens, dropping them and making it look easy at that, the only OpFor still alive in the end was the blood mage, unconscious and bleeding out. Not being worth saving, Samsara killed him off before the team used the very van the OpFor used to abduct ghouls to liberate them from their cages and bring them back home.

Rewards

• 20k nuyen or 40k in 'ware (10 RVP)
• Doctor O+ (Connection 3) at Loyalty 3 (5 RVP)
• No CDP
• Toltecoh (Connection 1) at Loyalty 3 (3 RVP)

For Rabbit

• add 4 CDP

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Samsara

Always nice to help out the ghoul community. Frag, who knew Aztechnology was into such shady drek though - I mean, I've worked for them before, they didn't seem so bad, but I guess those blood magic rumors probably have some truth to them after all... at least that trainee priest seemed surprised, and he actually helped us out, which was cool. Glad he didn't get stabbed by that mage - jerk wanted to sacrifice people like a jerk, glad he's dead now. At least the ghouls are safe.

Pell

I'm concerned about Aztechnology performing blood magic research off of ET grounds, although I'm simultaneously disappointed that they're not making this easy for us, annoyed that this probably won't blow it all open for the Azzies, and somehow relieved, for some reason(?) by their stringent infosec.

Anyway, Toltecoh seems nice, I kind of feel bad for him losing his SIN, but the revelation that Aztechnology practices blood magic is probably more disruptive to his worldview than the uprooting of his life.

Got a shiny new pain editor out of this; heard from the grapevine that those are great, although the numbness in the fingers is off.