The Everlasting Gaze

The Everlasting Gaze
Date 2085-05-19 GM Sarcarian Location Downtown, Seattle Metroplex Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Bootstrap	Halloweeners
Caliban Cyrrel Fennec	Halloweener Fire Spirit Halloweener Ganger Mack and Hack
Casualties and losses
	Fire Spirit (Disrupted), Halloweener Ganger x12 (biofeedback'd, bitten and/or monowhipped), Mack and Hack (beat the hell up)

Summary

In which the runners assist the Reality Hackers with taking out a competing BTL enterprise.

The Meet

Cyrrel and Fennec are contacted by their fixers and asked to meet with their J at a Matrix bar called Syberspace; both of them choose to go there in meatspace, meeting one-another at the bar's physical location in Downtown. Meanwhile, Caliban is contacted directly by the prospective Johnson, Bootstrap, as the two are already familiar with one-another; Caliban tells Bootstrap she will meet with the others after the meeting, as with her "condition" she doesn't want to cause trouble at a Matrix bar.

At Syberspace, the pair of changlings get acquainted with one-another and exchange tail-care tips before Bootstrap's AR avatar rezzes in to explain what she needs from them: there's a Halloweeners BTL production and distribution operation in Bitter Lake which she wants them to sabotage by inserting a computer virus into an expensive piece of hardware which she knows is being used to produce the chips based on the code structure. She tells them that she doesn't particularly care how they do it (just that they need to not destroy this particular machine so that when the Halloweener's simsense specialists recover it they will be killed by the virus), but that if they decide to be direct and violent as runners are want to do she'll pay them extra to wear simrigs so that the resulting footage can be sold as a Weener Revenge dreamchip to those who have beef with the pumpkin gang. Cyrrel and Fennec, both of whom also have beef with the gang, immediately accept the proposition, though Fennec is able to negotiate for a percentage of the BTL's sales.

Once the meeting is complete, Bootstrap provides the team with the approximate location of the BTL enterprise based on the chips distribution patterns throughout the district and the location data she was able to scrape from the simsense code - she tells them they'll need to narrow things down and locate exactly where they're being produced on their own.

The Plan

After meeting up with Caliban, the trio put their heads together to come up with a plan. While Caliban hits the grids, Fennec and Cyrrel separately scout out Bitter Lake - putting everything they find together, they're able to make up a map of Halloweener activity in the area based on Bootstrap's intel as well as the presence of burned-out buildings, graffiti, and temporary pop-up party spots. One such spot is an Spirit Halloween store being used as a makeshift bar by a group of the gangers, which Caliban locates by tracing the data trail of some AR graffiti signed by one "Hack Skellington", so the team decides to go shake them down for more information.

While Caliban waits in the car and provides Matrix overwatch, Cyrrel climbs up a nearby telephone tower so that he can use his wingsuit to fly in from above if there's trouble (he makes sure to practice this move and get a bit of premium simsense footage). Fennec meanwhile heads into the makeshift bar, completely fearless and twirling her monofilament yoyo. Inside, she meets Mack and Hack, along with a crew of half a dozen gangers drinking and having a good time. Fennec questions Mack about the origins of the BTLs, including one which is a deepfake of her likeness that has been shared with her before, but is simply laughed at and/or threatened in response, prompting her to call in her backup.

The Run

A fight soon breaks out in the bar, which Cyrrel responds to by pulling his Flying Squirrel Technique and dramatically crashing through the front window with monowhip in hand - this, naturally, draws a good deal of attention from the gangers, who work together to attempt to take down the fast-moving murder squirrel, allowing Fennec to take cover and attack targets of opportunity with her yoyo while Caliban provides support in the form of calibrations and threat assessments while engaging in cybercombat with Hack on the Matrix.

The gangers are relatively tough and put up a good fight, but they fall one by one before the monowire or end up burned when their attempts to use molotovs backfire on them - Mack puts up a better fight, nearly stomping the pair of changlings with his enormous macahuitl, but he ends up having his good hand severed by Fennec and chooses to flee once his buddy Hack is dumpshocked by Caliban after the techno manages to snatch some unlocked BTL files (complete with metadata) off of his cyberdeck. Cyrrel takes issue with the pair continuing to live, firing off a grenade at their bike as they go, but the troll tanks the explosion for the nerd and the pair manage to escape.

With the makeshift bar burning in the background, Cyrrel and Fennec pose and capture B-roll for the simsense while Caliban seethes at this display and sifts through Hack's files to locate their source - after reconstructing the data, she's able to discern that they were originally minted a few blocks away. Recon and a bit of discussion with the local chipheads reveals that the gangers seem to have occupied the burned-out shell of an old theater which once hosted a goth nightclub called Darklands (before it was set on fire by vampire hunters, see: Take Back the Night), turning the cellar into a BTL den as well as a local production and distribution hub.

Sneaking their way past a pair of ganger guards sitting around a burning barrel outside, Cyrrel and Fennec are able to get down to the basement where they encounter a guard and cage door, both of which are swiftly monowhipped through; meanwhile, Caliban manages to sneak inside the old derelict graffiti-and-protosapient-filled host, locating the decker and sucker-punching them with bootleg biofeedback loaded. A shootout ensues, this time with better-armed and more entrenched gangers with the backing of a powerful fire spirit - the runners are nearly exploded, burned, and shot full of holes, but this just makes the resulting simsense footage that much more thrilling.

Aftermath

Once the dust settles, the Halloweeners are taken care of and the runners stand victorious - having scared the chipheads off, they proceed to wreck up the place something fierce. Fennec uploads Bootstrap's code to the specified machine so that when it's recovered from the wreckage it will take out whoever attempts to use it upon boot-up, and she and Cyrrel make sure to get as much footage for her newest BTL as they can. Meanwhile, Caliban malds and rudiments on why she biofeedback'd the decker, worried that she may have simply empowered Human Malice further.

Meeting up with Bootstrap, the team hand over the footage of the run and receive their promised rewards. The BTL produced with it proves to be very popular with the gang's many enemies and victims, though the pair of very recognizable changlings are almost immediately, well, recognized - still, they're able to parlay their existing renown and gain a wide variety of new fans thanks to the resulting infamy it brings.

Rewards

20,000 nuyen

2 karma

2 CDP

+2 Reality Hackers reputation

Optional Contact: Bootstrap (C4/L2 Reality Hacker) for 5 RVP or 10 CDP

Optional Gear Reward: Drugs and BTLs, Simrigs, Tool Kit/Shop (Artisan: Simsense)

For Caliban:

Optional Quality: Data Anomaly

Optional Quality: Go Big or Go Home

-10 Halloweeners rep

For Cyrrel:

Optional Quality: Daredevil

Optional Quality: Local Fame

-60 Halloweeners rep

For Fennec:

Optional Quality: Too Pretty to Hit

Optional Quality: Local Fame

-60 Halloweeners rep

Narrative Consequences:

-The Halloweeners' BTL production facility in Bitter Lake is hit hard, resulting in the death of a dozen gangers and the loss of that turf.

-The Reality Hackers begin distributing a new Weener Revenge Beetle starring a pair of monowhip-wielding floofy-tailed changlings.

-Mack and Hack are very injured by monowhips and grenades, requiring a new cyberhand and orthoskin graft respectively.

-Caliban's connection to the realm of Human Malace increases; this is probably fine.

-Cyrrel and Fennec are able to leverage their existing "fame" as an Urban Brawler and a streamer respectively to increase their beetle's popularity as well as their own profiles; however, the gang knows that they're behind the incident and are out for their blood.

Game Quotes

Cyrrel, to Fennec: You dating anybody?" Fennec: "Hmmmmmmm... For the purposes of being popular on the internet, no! But for the purposes of being emotionally available, yes!" Wink.

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

<Stack Error - C̷A̵L̴I̶B̸A̸N̵ - Rebooting>

<Reboot Unsuccessful - No Errors Found>

They should die. Butchers. They are butchers. Setting a woman with a daughter aflame and laughing and watching as she burns and feeding it to that place. The should die. I showed them that place before they died, I sent one of them into it as I snapped his miserable neck but they too fed that place. That other butchers. That scavenger. A butcher of butchers is still a butcher. Chopping away making meat for the cruel ocean. One was merely a small-minded imbecile but the other ... the scavenger. I am wary of her I do not like the scavenger. Monstrous. It is monstrous to know the truth and to do nothing. To take joy in it. I have no sympathy nor fellowship for that vulture. Let her rot on a dying world.