Ice Art

Ice Art
Date 2082-12-29 GM KaterSalem Location Seattle, Downtown Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Aztechnology	Museum
Sasha Bannerette La Rapide Donnager Camila "Novicio" Sanchez	F7 Free Plantspirit F7 Free Airspirit 4xMuseum Guards
Casualties and losses
	2xMuseum Guards

Summary

Camila has a new problem for which she needs Runner to solve it. Her boss's boss has fallen in love with an ice statue he saw at an unofficial viewing of the soon-to-open annual World of Wonders exhibit in Seattle. Since his birthday is coming up, Camila's boss is very interested in getting this statue and giving it away. Unfortunately, the artists are not willing to sell. Her boss then decides that this is Camila's problem from now on and so once again some runners get stranded in Purple Haze and have to get the ice statue (a feathered two meter tall snake).

The Meet

The meeting will be held at Purple Haze. All runners are offered the usual magically purified water from the Colorado River at the beginning, but no one wants to drink it. Camila then explains her task to the Runners after a hearty lunch. She offers 20,000 Nuyen for the job and gives La Rapide a flyer of the museum. Unfortunately, she does not have much more information. After a short negotiation, she also provides an expense account of 8000 Nuyen to organize a refrigerated truck for the job. But the runners have to take care of the organization themselves. She also gives the runners the information to which cold store the Ice Sculpture should be delivered. The birthday of her boss's boss is in three days and that is also when the exhibition officially opens. Therefore, the order is also somewhat time-critical.

The Plan

The Runners set about getting some information about the museum and organizing a refrigerated truck. Bannerette organizes the refrigerated truck through her contact Sunglasses. He can organize a refrigerated truck for the next two days, but has already promised it to another customer. So he asks for a favor in return. Raps tries to find Amelie which she finally succeeds in doing at 5 a.m. in a downtown disco. After a short small talk she asks Amelie if she could get some information about the museum as soon as possible. Amelie agrees in exchange for a favor. Amelie contacts La Rapide 6 hours later and gives her the following information:

• The artists produce their works of art in all possible ways from freezing technique to magic everything is represented and allowed.
• The winner is not so much determined by the best artwork - it is more important who knows whom and whether the artwork fits into the current time.
• The artists work until late at night but are kicked out of the museum by 10 p.m. at the latest.
• The museum has hired a mid-sized security company (We Secure You) based in Seattle to protect the museum.
• All sensors inside the museum are connected to an industry host of the security company.
• The artworks are secured modern printing plates. Any movement is registered and triggers an alarm.
• There are also drones on site that regularly check on things and a rigger is on call 24/7 to monitor the museum.
• There are usually 4 security guards on site to guard the museum. These are not heavily armed mostly just tasers and stun batons.
• She also found a strange forum post that in a work of art depicting a coniferous forest free spirits have moved in and are now trangsalizing the artists in the museum. The museum is thinking about removing the spirits.

After a short discussion with the team, La Rapide decides to ask Amelie if she can support the run and make sure that the sensors in the museum do not set off any alarms. Amelie offers to do this for three favors and La Rapide agrees. Amelie informs La Rapide that she can't hack all the camaras, but she can prevent the alarm from going off as long as she doesn't stay in one room too long. She can also influence the weight sensors so that the sculpture can be safely removed. In addition, the team must be careful because a rigger is still actively monitoring the museum.

The team's plan is essentially to park the truck in the backyard and enter the museum. To disable any guards before they can call for help and then remove the Ice Sculpture from the museum.

The Run

The group parks the truck in the backyard and enters the museum through the delivery entrance, which is open to the Runners thanks to Amelie. Raps has to avoid a guardian which is no problem thanks to the dual defenders. Once inside the museum, the group takes drugs and sets up magic buffs. Sasha doesn't hear any soft noises in some distance and draws the group's attention to it. Banerette then sneaks towards the noise and can hear two guards talking quietly in a kind of AR cinema room of the museum. Banerette can't see the guards from her position, but she takes a position so that she can take them out quickly if necessary. In the meantime, Raps makes his way to the sculpture and must pass through a large room in which an ultra realistic representation of a fir forest winter landscape is displayed. She looks for signs of other guards or ghosts but can't find anything and enters the snowy area (thanks to Traceless Walk without leaving any traces) and is completely overwhelmed by a "Opium Den" spell that comes from a free plant spirit (two free spirits were so taken with the artwork that they chose it as their new home). She then begins to survey the beautiful landscape while completely high. Donnager and Sasha want to follow Raps but are a bit too loud and attract the attention of the two guards in the cinema hall. The guards stop talking and want to check on things, but are then taken out with non-lethal force by Bannerette, Donnager and Sasha without them having a chance to react. Bannerette pulls the guards into a corner that is not immediately visible, preferably without a sensor cover in the AR cinema, so that other guards do not stumble over them.

After that, the team sets off to pass the room with the spirits on the shortest possible way, because they have discovered raps and assume that it is not good to go too deep into the room. Bannerette and Donnager can pass the room without the ghosts noticing them. Sasha, however, is not so lucky and is discovered by the Airspirit. The airspirit demands to know what she is doing in the museum and after a short discussion the spirit asks for a ransom so that she can pass through without being harmed. The spirits have taken to blackmailing the artists and guards for tolls and prefer reagents as payment. Sasha offers some of her reagents and the ghost trades them up to 20. He then demands that she place them by a tree to lure them into the Opium Den spell. Sasha then runs willingly into the spell, but manages to stay sane enough to leave the area. The team decides to leave Raps behind for now and head to the ice sculpture they want to steal.

Sasha can lift and move the sculpture with the help of a levitate spell and also disguises it with an invisibility spell. Halfway out, Donnager gets a call from Ezekiel Martin informing her that he has just received a warning from a contact at KE that HTR is on its way to the museum. The runners then drop all camouflage and hurry to get to the truck by the shortest route. But this way leads through the room with the spirits again. The ghosts start to negotiate again because there are now two more people who have to pay toll and also something has to be paid in order to be allowed to transport the sculpture outside. Sasha takes over the negotiation and pays with her remaining reagents as well as some spell forms. She can buy the passage for Donnager and Bannerette and free Raps from the spell. Raps is pretty pissed off with the spirits and lets them know emotionally on the astral plane. Raps also finds over 40 call attempts from Emelie and a message telling them to get their asses out of there because they set off alarms by staying in one room too long. She then pays for a large amount of reagents for the sculpture and the runners hurry towards the supplier's entrance. There, unfortunately, the runners and the two missing guards meet, just returning from their dinner. Since the runners have switched to lethal ammunition to be able to fight the spirits if necessary, the whole thing comes to a bloody end for the hopelessly outnumbered guards. The Runners can then load the Sculpture into the truck and drive away just in time to avoid a confrontation with HTR.

Aftermath

Atztechnologie and Camila's boss have mixed feelings about the run. While the sculpture was delivered and Camila's boss was very happy with the gift, the dead guards led to a deeper investigation into the incident. Camilla is happy in that she survived another mission. Knight Errant could not identify the runners (thanks to helmets etc.) but now has movement profiles of the runners and will check them against other incidents. Should too many debts accumulate here KE will become active.

Rewards

20.000 Nuyen (10 RVP)

5 Karma (5 RVP)

4 CDP (1 RVP)

Optional:

Camila "Novicio" Sanchez (C3/L2) (RVP 4)

Raps:

+1 Loyalty Camila "Novicio" Sanchez

-4 Chips on Emelie

Bannerette:

-1 chip Sunglasses

Atztech +2 Rep

Game Quotes

GM: "Well, Raps, looks like you're the mother of the group."

Donnager: "The janitors for this place are gonna be really unhappy."

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Bannerette

We broke into a museum to steal an ice sculpture, and man that thing was huge. Who the hell needs a 2 meter tall ice sculpture? Maintained stealth mostly, but needed to take out guards when some teammates made a little too much noise. When we got the call that HTR was on the way, we started to book it and I switched to lethal ammo. The last 2 guards got very unlucky and bit the dust. I later found out the free spirits in the lobby hit me with a spell called "opium den", felt great but I would prefer not to get hit by it again. It's dangerous to let things go to your head during a run. In any case, we got away before HTR showed up and got paid, so all around mission success.

Donnager

When they told me I'd be stealing from a museum, noone told me the loonies had the whole bloody place in a freezer. Thankfully, Bess managed to get me a coldsuit on short notice, though it's a bit hard to move in the bloody thing. We went in nonlethally to start with, but the boss gave me a call that HTR was incoming, and there were some guards between us and the exit. Thankfully, Mrs. J didn't mind the mess too much. And there were some weird free spirits in the lobby that we needed to... bribe? And they completely took Raps out, bloody hell. Still confused as to why someone would want that thing, but we got paid plenty so I don't really care.

la Rapide

Great... now I owe Emelie a bunch of favors because that pathetic, useless would-be Johnson was to stupid to hire a decker. I should pay those back as soon as possible, owing people one or four is never good, and I really need her to trust me. Plus she's great to party with. This run has also shown me two things: Firstly, I hate mages, spirits and their stupid spells... well at least most mages. And I have to work on my spell defense next. Maybe I can change the technique I use to disconnect myself from the astral, to not close in the virus, but harden my aura like a turtle shell. Will have to work that one out with Swerves help. I can never, ever again let something like this happen... Felt kinda great though, almost as good as getting turned.

Sasha

Definitely didn't expect to be bribing my way out of this one. Especially bribing free spirits. There goes two spell formulas because I ran out of reagents... Fraggin bastards still tried to Opium Den me even after I bribed them too, like seriously? All for a stupid ice sculpture. We nearly had to fight HTR as well. I've wanted to try fighting HTR, but it definitely wasn't the time for that. Kind of bummed that I didn't get a satisfying fight - we just knocked out some guards - but it is what it is I suppose. If I meet those free spirits again I'm definitely beating them up.