Running Red 2

Running Red 2
Part of Paradise Lost
Date 2085-11-10 GM Robinton Location Seattle Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Major Corp
Cauldron Silver Lining Alkali	Character1 Character2

Summary

Despite some foibles during the legwork part of the run, the team manages to make it through the job without blowing anything up - despite some near misses solved with clever thinking.

Background

As part of a series of runs against Renraku, Trevor Hill is sending the team to break into a facility in order to steal some physical hardware - the data on which is important to his research.

The Meet

While on the way to the meet, Cauldron runs into an issue in the "A" zones of Bellevue where his SIN gets made. Thankfully, he had aimed for one of the more lax checkpoints where he was able to chat up and bribe his way past the KE guards.

Silver Lining hackers his way in through the SIN Scanners while Alkali manages to con his way through on a claim of being on a cleaning job.

The team meets at the Bellevue Crab house on Lake Washington, where Trevor Hill conducts all his meetings. SL gets some sideeyes on the way in, by dint of being a dwarf, but manages to walk into the building without incident.

Unlike Alkali who is struggling with his magic to carry his own bags as Cauldon gets out of his chauffered car. Bastard that he is, he walks right past the struggling maid. Alkali gives up and summons a task spirit to carry his bags for him though the spirit has to wait in the coat check room.

They meet with Trevor Hill who explains he wants them to do an unusual data steal - instead of stealing the data, he wants the devices the data is on. Some pitched negotiations occur but, ultimately, Hill is victorious and doesn't budge on the price. He does allow that he can see about hooking the team up with some cyberware he has access to, though he doesn't make any promises about it being 'good'.

The Plan

Plan A

• Cauldron infils during shift change as a new guard.
• Other two members as backup to cover lie, distract, etc.
• Alkali to sleeze the ward
• Silver Lining subverting the host (Doors, alarms, etc)
• Cauldron datataps the comm room to squelch calling for help
• Cauldron hits second floor for hard drives

Plan B

• Fuck it, we ball?

The Run

Legwork

• Misc:
• The team rents a nearby hotel room and Alkali begins making a temporary lodge there.
• Silver Lining spends time wrestling with the R4 Host while Cauldron calls Carly Reeves
• Alkali summons a task spirit to sneak the site
• Cauldron contacts Broker for a suit of FBA that will pass inspection while Alkali contacts his own for a R6 Burner Sin
• During the four days for the FBA to show up, Alkali works on learning some Japanese and does some Alchemy with Cauldron

• From Carly:
• This site should be boring
• Lots of chatter going on since August
• Renraku working on some kind of programming experiment in the site
• Renraku working on some kind of Swarm program upgrades, possibly tied to the high bandwidth drones lost in August - Ref: Running Red 1

• Magical Information Gained:
• F6 Ward
• F6 Alarm Ward
• F4 Door Wards
• F6 Watcher Spirits
• 2x F6 Patrol Spirit of Man (Patrolling in opposite arcs from the physical guard patrols
• Receptionist is mundane. Guards are mundane but appear to have wired reflexes
• One of the guards is a mage and has a spell focus

• Matrix Information Gained:
• T2 Search: Location is a matrix server farm which handles Renraku grid traffic for Everett and Snohomish. The physical building is two stories tall and rather unassuming.
• R4 Host: A5 S4 D7 F6
• Obvious Cameras, Hidden Cameras, Alarms
• First floor: Reception, offices, security room.
• People: 1 at reception, 4 in offices
• Guards: 2 at reception, 2 on patrol, 4 on idle. Security room has dedicated communication desk
• Guards: All Japanese, FBA + Helmet, HK227 with Gel Rounds
• Second flood: server room with 16 server towers
• Security Spider: Shiawase Cyber 5 - Attack 8(9), Firewall 7, Data Processing 6, Sleeze 5

• Physical Information Gained:
• Air handler is secured and locked
• Back door near security room

Running The Server Farm

Cauldron manages to slip in under his apparent guise as a Renraku guard, with Alkali acting as his vioce. Alkali manages to bluff them through the receptionist realizing that Cauldron has FLR, as evidenced by their hidden cyberware scanner. There is a brief back and forth discussing the "Renraku Rebuild" program for guards who got stomped in corporate wars or via shadowrunners.

Cauldron makes it to the security room, data taps their comm board, and then heads upstairs. Silver Lotus takes over the cameras and sets them to a loop to cover Cauldron as he heads upstairs. Silver Lining then spoofs Cauldron's arms to do the hardware work to remove the hard drives.

Hard Drives recovered: 16

Despite numerous routes of patrol IC, the team manages to snag the hard drives. The local renraku grid goes into a partial blackout and alarms start going off. Cauldron bails out a window into Alkali's waiting magical hands (levitate).

With chaos behind them, the team heads out as fast as possible.

Aftermath

The Renraku grid in Everett and Snohomish undergoes a brief blackout period during the night of 11/15 and is restored after about three hours. Local Renraku news cite this as a planned outage where the person responsible for sending the notice failed in their duty and has been dismissed from Renraku Computers.

Carly Reeves, however gets the scoop that the Renraku site got hit by shadowrunners trying to steal Renraku system programs in order to reverse engineer the programming on behalf of a rival corp.

Rewards

• High: 15 RVP
• 5 Karma (5 RVP)
• 20,000 Nuyen OR 40,000 Nuyen in electronic equipment (10 RVP) OR 40k in cyberware (Standard, Greyware, or Used) up to 19R
• 2 CDP
• Alkali: +4 Wild Index for releasing a spirit early

Game Quotes

"Local twink bleeds to death because he can't carry his bags." - Lotus

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Cauldron: "While I wish I could say that I was an invaluable addition to the team, I was rather hoping I could have contributed more. On a somewhat related note, I'll have to staunchly avoid allowing decker teammates to puppet me about in the future."