Homicide Hunting

Homicide Hunting
Date 2085-11-21 GM Sarcarian Location Seattle, Downtown Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Knight Errant	Unknown	Also, Knight Errant (Being difficult)
Angel Devil Lady Argentum Zero Garuda	Killer	Drones Cameras
Casualties and losses
Argentum and Garuda injured, but not killed	None	None

Summary

After struggling to find the answers to a case that her department deems unworthy of the Knight Errant's full attention and funds, Lt. Rebecca Montez hires out a team of runners to investigate further without much hope for their success but, at least, wanting to give it a shot.

They end up finding out that the unassuming pond leads to an ocean of secrets and danger.

Background

Starting on November 2nd of 2085, a series of gruesome murders in Downtown, Seattle began. Every 8 days, a university student from a particular friend group died. First it was Judith Schneider. Then it was Rosalyn Grovler. Then Ken Richmond. All killed by decapitation via monowire. The police are dumbfounded. Beyond some tenuous connections, there doesn't seem to be any sort of connective tissue. The case looks like it's going nowhere. Lt. Montez doesn't want things to end there, but funds for her department aren't exactly overflowing. But there is one stash she can tap into-an emergency sort of stash for paying off the less savory types of Seattle's finest. Perhaps they'd be able to find something that the detective couldn't. With that, she starts to make a few calls.

The Meet

The team meets up at a Soybucks at the Space Needle. The team is consists: Angel, the vampiric sniper angel; Devil, the social mage and support; Lady Argentum, the banshee knight with a good heart; Zero, the good ork soldier; and Garuda, hacker and former Ares changeling. The meet goes over the offer for the group, about six thousand nuyen if they get some new hint and up to ten thousand if they actually get the perp. Devil manages to sweeten the deal by letting the group access some of the "contraband" that KE have collected from over the years for...repurposing. With that, the team is given the main details that the police have gathered so far: times of death for each victim, the crime scenes, some loose details regarding the breaking and entering into two of the victims' homes. The team gets into action from there.

The Plan

The team first do some preliminary reconnaissance on the victims and their backgrounds, and when they've established some basic background after their first evening working together, they elect to go of into two different teams in order to cover more ground and follow two main possible leads: The heavenly and hellish roommates (Sure) would go ahead and attempt to get more info from the other students in the university, expecting to be able to gather a bit more information than the knights due to not being the knights attempting to speak to some more left-leaning, anti-establishment types that the victims seemed to generally fall under. The remaining three would be visiting each of the sites, doing another check on all the crime scenes to see if there's any evidence that KE missed on their own sweeps-all while not being caught and thrown to the wolves for not being allowed on a crime scene. With that established, the two teams take the next day to begin the investigation proper.

The Run

From preliminary searches with the help of Zero and Angel (Mostly Angel since Zero actually sleeps like a normal person), Garuda is able to establish a few things about each of the victims:

Judith and Ken were a part of the same study group. Ken and Rosalyn seemed to have similar friend groups. Rosalyn was the one who went the hardest of the three on clubs and drugs, with Ken on the periphery of that activity.

Majors: Judith was an Arts student, Rosalyn Sociology, and Ken studied History. All with some...general leanings into liberal arts.

They each were making some fairly large expenses

This is all on top of what they already knew about the victims: All young college students, each of varying metatypes, and killed exactly 8 days apart and late into the evening (Police already ruled out an infected murder, but the time of death is worthwhile to keep track of).

With that, things begin to split a bit as the team regroups and then splits off.

On the more personable side of things, Devil starts to make the rounds at the university with Angel keeping an eye out for her. Devil manages to pick up two different, very important things from some of the students: from a friend of Kenny's she learns that he was a part of the robotics club and that he was also somewhat sweet on the first victim, Judith, though she was taken. Not satisfied with just that, Devil decides to stick around a bit longer to find out more, and ends up finding Judith's former lover, Anthony Wheeler. From him, she learns a bit about Judith's roommate Carly-a lucky gal, being out the night of the murder. She had mostly been spending her nights with one Karina Holder. But the two aren't able to stick around for too much longer-the snoopers had sent them a concerning message.

As those two were trying to gleam info from the students, the other three had done their best to visit the crime scenes, doing quick matrix checks for any devices running silent or being looked over, starting with Ken's. This first site isn't the most productive-the crew learn of the small patrol around the crime scene as the KE protect the place from tampering, but due to the amount of surveillance and the overall strength of the defenses, they don't do more than a brief search and a bit of sneaking by Zero, before deciding that they'd gather some much better gear to take out the cameras keeping an eye out on the back porch. Little do they know, as they are leaving the site, that they too are being watched. The next site is Rosalyn's murder, in an alleyway on Ravenna Avenue. On a bit of a lucky break, Garuda manages to find...some silent icon on the grid, but it wasn't exactly clear what it is. Lady Argentum elects to take a look for herself, blending in and coming up around the much less guarded site, and upon examining the spot that Garuda had placed the icon at...saw nothing. Rather, she felt something-some kind of paste. Garuda and Zero realize that this was Nanospy paste-whoever killed the poor elf girl was watching the place. As Garuda works on tracing it back to some... incredibly ominous place known as the Darklands up north, Lady Argentum sees a message on AR from the Nanospy Icon: "BE SEEING YOU". With that utterly ominous message appearing, the on-site team makes the decision to stick together for safety, and alerts the two at the university-It wasn't safe to be alone right now.

The gang reconvenes at the address that Garuda fished up-some horrendous lounge with all too much awful history behind it. A part of that horrible background information was that some totally unknown people had gone in and wiped out the latest residents of that burnt out, cursed place, the halloweeners. And someone made a BTL out of it. Going through a deeply unsettling mashup of gang violence, Garuda manages to share the feed with the others and give them all a layout of the place. As she's doing that, the team's muscles Zero and Argentum spot two different things: A drone spying on the five of them, and a monowire trap going down into the old lounge respectively. Garuda and Zero work together to shut down and retrieve the spy drone for themselves, and as Garuda gets her hands on the datachip and clears it for any databombs or viruses (which she safely manages to disarm with some help from Angel), Zero gets a whole ass bucket of baby powder to help Argentum get through the trap. Some painful but regenerated wounds later, Argentum and Garuda's flyspy make it down to the basement. They notice a fuel canister left behind by the Halloweeners, which is...foreboding, and a device Garuda identifies as a re-transciever. With a data-tap on it. The killer was throwing some of the most expensive gear they could into this mystery to keep their captors at bay, and it was growing worrisome for the group. But as Argentum examines the device closely...she sets something off. With her adept danger senses firing off she bolts to the far wall, taking quite a nasty explosive blast from the HE grenade the killer had left behind. But it's the fuel canisters that truly become problematic. The entire place explodes, ablaze. Garuda's drone is destroyed, sending her into dumpshock and a panic as she fears the worst, but is stopped by Devil's calm and rational warning. Argentum shortly after gets back to them once she's regenerated, deftly avoiding the monowires as adrenaline kicks in. The team is forced to abandon Argentum's vehicle but thankfully Zero's Morgan can more discreetly carry them off to safety. With that close call with both killer and knight evaded, the team find a safe place to rest.

Aftermath

The team realized they were in over their heads right now. The data chip had shown footage of Anthony Wheeler setting the spy drone out-but Zero had pointed out that the person in that footage was wearing a synth mask. This went far deeper than any of them were prepared for right now. The killer had unfathomable resources at their disposal, a keen understanding of the groups of people they were dealing with- victims and investigators alike. They were constantly setting up contingencies and keeping surveillance. This was not a fight this battered team would win today. So, they brought their findings to Montez. And a warning: this rabbit hole went a lot deeper than any of them could have imagined. At the very least, with this evidence she could convince the department to allocate more funds to this investigation. And thanks to some convincing by Devil, the reward was re-negotiated to the full 10k nuyen-compensation for the Hell they went through.

Rewards

10000 nuyen (5 RVP) 6 karma (6 RVP) 4 CDP (1 RVP + base) Optional Contact: Lt. Rebbeca Montez (C5/L1 KE Homicide Detective) for 5 RVP or 10 CDP

Optional Gear Rewards: Weapons, Armor, Ammunition, and Electronics from the evidence lockup

For Devil: Optional Quality: Perceptive @ chargen prices (for spotting the many threats).

For Garuda: Optional Quality: I C U @ chargen prices (for seeing through the smoke and mirrors).

For Zero: Optional Quality: Common Sense @ chargen prices (for being sensible).

Narrative Consequences:

-The serial killer remains at large, however the attempt to frame Anthony Wheeler for their crimes is thwarted; Lt. Montez receives sufficient evidence to convince her superiors to dedicate more resources to the homicide investigation.

-Lady Argentum's car is left outside of Darklands due to the lack of runner's special, and is later retrieved from impound by Montez - however, the SIN her driver's license is registered to is flagged as a person of interest in the investigation, and will be at an increased risk of being burned in the future due to the scrutiny.

Game Quotes

"And they were roommates" - Us, to Angel and Devil

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Garuda

"I...I won't be sleeping easy after that one. There's...so much left undone. But there's so much we can't do right now. Sylvie almost died...I don't wanna leave things like this but...but I'll come back when I'm ready. I hope."