Harvest Season

Harvest Season
Date 2085-10-10 GM Sarcarian Location The Duchy of Pomoria, Griefswald Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Major Corp
Abhorash Kadō St. George Zan Zan	Character1 Character2

Summary

The team heads out to the AGE in order to hunt down a rogue infected, only to have to bring it in alive leading to some moral complexities.

Background

"I'll get right to the point - I need a volatile and dangerous subject recovered alive. Payment will be commiserate with the risk level."

Herr Schmidt

The Meet

Anna Van Der Pelt calls George while he's helping his community with some farming manual labor and lets him know there's a job on the hook. She sends over some files on German which he sits down and begins studying.

Zan gets called by her fixer, Asahiro, while out Doing Good. In addition to the job, her fixer wants her to acquire a vial of the target's blood for their own purposes.

Abhorash is working on studying magic when his fixer calls. Amelie Dupont offers him the job and explains about the Matrix meet.

Kado is out having tea when her handler, Hanzō Furukawa, calls. He wants her to accept the coming job and keep an eye on the other infected in the target area. Shortly thereafter, her fixer Kakei Steve calls and explains the matrix meet.

The meet in the Matrix happens in a private rent-a-host host on the Emerald City Grid, the equivalent of a 'digital warehouse'. When the meet starts, it reconfigures to a more clocktower shape. The J, Herr Schmit, explains that we need to travel to Berlin, and then we need to take a train to Pomoryia. He wants us to retrieve an escaped subject - an infected with strain 2 HMHVV. He wants the subject,a Harvester, brought in alive if at all possible. The subject is augmented - enhanced reflexes and feel no pain.

J will have a vehicle waiting to transport. Terrain is mostly forested and undeveloped, which is prime hunting ground for the Harvester

Pay gets docked if we bring the target in dead. George

Payment offer is 30,000 + travel expenses. Drops to 10k if the subject is dead. Due to successful negotiation, we get to make a series of requests. George requests restraints capable of holding the Harvester, ZZ requests access to some Bioware, Abhorash asks for some chemseal armor for the job, and Kado for reagents and some extra cash.

The Plan

• Track the harvester by aura
• Sneak up, tackle it, restrain it
• Possibly hit it with slab
• Hold on and pray.

The Run

Travel and Arrival

During the travel over, the plane gets boarded by an air traffic control spirit, intent on not letting them land illegally. the team dispatches the spirit and the smuggler keeps them low over the treeline as they land in Berlin. They bribe a car to take them into town and head towards the train station where they find the dead drop, with tickets for the train.

The team burns a few hours being tourists with George wanting to go get food, joined by ZZ. It starts to become more clear that there are lots of vampires on the team as Abhorash and Kado go off to get snacks of their own.

As the team goes to get on the train, someone under the influence power hands ZZ a newspaper. They get into the dead drop and get their restraints, the armor promised to Abhorash, and a photo with a quicksilver photo.

The team discusses the potential infection problems where both ZZ and George express that they would rather a clean, warrior's, death instead of being infected.

ZZ gets hassled at the border checkpoint on their way in due to her sin getting flagged, but Kado talks them past it.

Once in the town Griefswald, the team begins to do some legwork to both acquire some slab as well as to get some information. George, after a long day flying, goes to get some sleep while the nightstalkers do Nighttime things.

Abhorash is able to find Slab at the docks and ZZ finds that there is some information in the papers about some gruesome killings.

The Legwork

The next day, the team heads out to the small town where the Nocturna are living, scouting the place. They find a number of auras of wild or free spirits to be able to question.

George and ZZ find a pixie named Zelda who is able to tell us that she knows someone who can help us find the harvester. George and ZZ go back to get the rest of the team and then back again to meet up with the Pixie's friend. On their way into the village and the woods, the team fails to notice the helicopter following them.

The team tromps through the woods following the Pixie on the way to see her friend, Frederick the Centaur. After some discussion, the centaur is willing to use its search power in order to find the harvester. The Hunt is on!

The Hunt (What could go wrong?)

Following the centaur, the team races towards combat while, back at the car, Abhorash realizes that the harvester has found him and begins to Do Magic Things. Unfortunlately, the sun has set and the harvester is now at full strength.

The team manages to pull off their plan mostly well, with Abhorash getting ambushed by the harvester. He stabs it in the thigh to slow it down and then ZZ and George tackle it, wrestling it to the ground and putting it in restraints. A short wrestle later, they keep it down long enough for the slab to work it's magic and put the creature entirely out like a light for the low, low, price of some vampire blood and two entire runners riding the Harvester like it was a rodeo bull.

Aftermath

The runners make it home safely without much incident. ZZ and George share some discussions about the nature of their codes and how that struggles against the realities of the runner life.

Rewards

• 30000 nuyen + 6000 nuyen negotiation bonus
• 1 karma
• 2 CDP
• +2 Ordo Maximus rep (for recovering the harvester alive)
• -2 DeMeKo rep (for stymying their serial killer investigation)
• Optional Contact: Dr. Netzkirche (C6/L1 Ordo Scientist) for 6 RVP or 12 CDP
• Optional Gear Reward: Bioware @ 2:1 cost
• For ZZ:
• +1 chip on Asahiro (for the blood sample)
• Optional Gear Reward: Fake SINs + Licenses from Shiawase @ 2:1 cost
• For Abhorash and Kadō:
• +1 additional Ordo Maximus rep (for keeping the other runners in line)
• Abhorash can take AG Chemie-branded FBA w/ chemseal @ 2:1 cost
• Narrative Consequences:
• -The PTT harvester is returned to its creators relatively unharmed after killing/infecting several Pomoryian nocturna - surely no evil will come of this.
• -DeMeKo is prevented from obtain tissue samples, however Shiawase does find proof that the harvester was created using the resources of General Genetics Worldwide.

Game Quotes

Amusing quote from game.

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

St. George Not sure how Dragonslayer feels on this one, not gonna lie. Feels like I should've slain the monster when I could, and once it was subdued it would be wrong. But then to just hand it back felt wrong as well. Not sure what the right answer was - and weirdly, finishing the job 'correctly' seemed somehow to be the wrong choice?