Going off the rails on a Crazy Train!

Going off the rails on a Crazy Train!
Date 2086-10-30 GM Tidanshock Location Los Vegas;The Mojave Desert; PCC; Various Metaplanes Status Threat Level: Extreme
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Atlantean Foundation Red Dragon Triad Ghost Train Woooo!	MCT	Neohaven	Metaplanar Threats
Angra Mainyu Oberon Stryker Asura	Various HTR Guard Teams A large detachment of mobile deploy MCT base units	Mundane Street Sam Adept Mage Rigger/Decker	A giant swarm of Wraiths Enraged Passenger Spirits Crystal Entities lying in wait
Casualties and losses
By the end of the run several members had taken heavy injuries and Stryker was barely able to survive the Engulf of an enraged Force 8 spirit	At least 5 killed, 4 knocked unconscious, and a giant armored VTOL's worth of a unit stranded in an active manastorm	The mage was near death due to the attack of various shadow spirits, but was ultimately resuscitated.	A vast quantity of Wraiths and Passengers banished away, with about 3 wraiths and around a dozen passengers disrupted during the chaotic travels

Summary

Normally, reconnaissance missions are rather simple. You find the location of a target and observe it for a given time you believe is appropriate to study it, learn what makes it tick, and report back. Sometimes there is a greater risk involved than the job itself would entail, or the job itself is innately risky because the target itself is dangerous, but the detached nature of the mission objective means that involvement may be minimized for safety's sake and for time.

But not in this case. Not when the reconnaissance can only be done from directly within the cabins of a great vehicle spirit. Not when that vehicle spirit is said to take you to exactly where one needs to be, and it seems like every player in the business and on either side of the fence of legality wants to see what makes it tick.

So when a spirit train shows up and a guy gets evidence that a miracle train has arrived in the Mojave Desert and your boss wants reconnaissance done on it, you should be ready for the Hell that's awaiting you.

And hey, think of it this way:

You might just find what you've been looking for all this time.

Background

Jason Thornton was struggling. Looking to make it and get a higher education but struggling to get accepted to the university he wanted, he found himself lost. What does he do with his life? How does he support his family without a high paying job that a good piece of paper from college can get? What is he supposed to do now?

One thing led to another. He went for a drive. His fraggin' car breaks down and he's afraid that he'll attract some very unwanted attention and get his ass killed in the middle of the cold desert night. So he wanders, and wanders, and wanders. And damn, is he lost as hell. Nova, right? The poor bastard should probably have been dead by now. But he wasn't. Because he had a golden ticket out of this mess.

Really. A golden ticket that appeared in his pocket the night prior. Back then it was just a piece of paper he was carrying around. But when he heard a sudden train whistle off in the distance and soon found himself standing at the threshold of its doors, that value really shined in how it changed from worthless writ to something life saving. Once the conductor got his ticket and sat the man down, he saw all sorts of places. All sorts of metaplanes, frightening and beautiful and as varied as only vibrant life could be. all sorts of places, even the esoteric ones like the damn home of the Crystal Entities.

But when he finally got off, he didn't remember a damn thing. He wandered into the outskirts of Vegas, found an ad for another college he could rep to, and...maybe for a lot of people that'd be it.

But Jason had a flashback system. And he got to go back to a lot of things that didn't get to see after the fact. And that information was worth a lot. Especially to a group that could make a lot of use out of metaplanar travel like that. Like MCT.

Yeah, the chummer sold what he knew to MCT. They tried to keep it under wraps, but somehow that got leaked. And for MCT, that was a big problem. That was only going to attract more and more issues for them. It had begun a long, long chase for a special kind of service that people would want to control and use for all sorts of reasons.

Jason was kept under close watch by MCT forces, and outside parties like the Atlantean Foundation wanted to get their chance to find out more.

The Meet

Archibald of the AF contacted four runners to help run this operation. Ahriman (or Angra Mainyu) and Oberon were already quite accomplished runners in their own right and magically gifted, whereas Stryker and Asura were less well known but skilled fighters who could help the crew muscle through and stay safe throughout the operation. At a High-Dining Low-Intrusion type of bar in Downtown the crew was called to meet with their J of the evening, getting a few moments to enjoy themselves but ultimately preferring to be more business than pleasure as Archibald gave the rundown of what he knew. He informed them of the train and its metaplanar traveling capacities as well as the headshot and name of Jason, whose testimony and simsense of the events was leaked to the greater public, and gave them their reconnaissance objective as well as informing them of...some of the possible dangerous players there. Namely, MCT.

Ahriman was rightfully concerned, Oberon and Stryker were non-plussed and more focused on the pay, and Asura seemed determined to see this through to the end. They were offered 20k Nuyen as a baseline but that would be adjusted depending on the complexity of the job and inflated with hazard pay if they needed to directly contend with MCT. Furthermore, they were allowed access to weapons, vehicles, armor, modifications, ware, the works. It was quite the lucrative payout, and despite worries to the extent of what could happen to them the four agreed, and began making preparations for their travel the next day.

The Plan

Preparations for the trip were vast. There were plenty of calls to requisition extra gear like a Panther xl, vehicles to rent and use in the midst of their operation in Las Vegas, private airline travel to ensure they could bring their gear along, modifying their equipment for the heat, getting emergency rations in case they had to perform long stakeouts in the desert proper, everything they could think of. Upon landing near Las Vegas, the group made their way to rent a hotel, get into discreet street clothes, and slowly begin doing the long and hard legwork to find their target and extract the information they needed to really plan things out.

The Hierarchy of the Plan was as follows:

- Follow their main lead of Jason to figure out how to get to the train

- Board the train and scout it out, see where it goes and what it does (Asura had a flashback so they could get their own recording for the AF)

- Get out without crossing the MCT forces that could be crawling all over the place and without getting arrested.

Simple structure. Very complicated execution. Preliminary investigations, psychometric readings, and dealings with the local section of the Red Dragon Triad showed the team exactly what they were up again. Essentially, MCT had sent a whole detachment of essentially HTR forces who would (according to Ahriman's experience and some light assistance from Asura) be operating with effectively mobile zero zone bases they could put up and take down to get moving incredibly quickly. An upfront fight with the whole group would be impossible to survive, straight up. To complicate matters further, during some psychometry Asura managed to find in their search of the city exposed the presence of runners whom the team later found out with triad confirmation (at the cost of sharing information) were from a different network, the Neo Haven. And, finally, there were whispers of a blood mage out somewhere in the sands who may have been responsible for making the situation with the train even more risky.

Utterly fraggin' ridiculous, thank you.

Asura took a small detour for esoteric this-insane-fucking-woman-is-talking-to-a-tumbleweed legworking and made some headway on the timing of the train's arrival (inside of a Mana storm when the sun is down, and also figuring out that the blood mage was involved) but the information was incomplete. The little free spirit had no way of knowing what made the train appear for certain people. There was no evading a confrontation with MCT to get to Jason.

Jason was being held in a casino over in Vegas, with a specific HTR team assigned to guard him as he was basically on house arrest in there to ensure no one else could get the information he had while MCT was investigating. Before anything else could happen, the team would have to get through the casino's security and MCT's personal forces to get to Thornton. Infiltration via social means was already a bit dicey at other casinos and they couldn't afford to get spotted early, but after some time staking out the guard rotations for MCT forces the group realized that they had a particular meet up with a smaller unit of members and regularly swapped who was watching over Jason and giving their reports. And a weakness that Ahriman in particular noticed was that these were trained soldiers, powerful mages, specially trained watchman...but not social experts. With the right look, the right mannerisms, the right gear and place and timing...there was a gap. One that even a team like theirs with lacking matrix and social talents.

If they can substitute one of their own for one of the HTR team, they could slip into their base of operations. From there, with proper preparations and good coordination, they can prepare to wipe out the entire group. It would alert MCT and there would be eventual reinforcements, but with this detachment here in Vegas and them unaware in the Mojave it would be delayed. There would be an opening. That opening would make infiltrating the casino, a likely unavoidable step, far easier to pull off. Then they could extract Jason, get the information they needed, and get the frag out into the desert before the bulk of forces came to rip them a new one. They needed to get a few things together first though.

- First, they needed to secure a separate vehicle from their rental to switch out of.

- They'd need to tail a guy as they do their switch, isolate him, and take him down quietly to steal his gear

- Before actually going through with the hit they would want to ensure the Red Dragons didn't hear the gunshots and start assuming the runners were up to some shit. They'd wanna clear that with the boss first.

Then the plan would be as follows:

1. Asura would take the place of the guard due to her being a ok con artist (barely) who didn't stand out, but also due to her knowledge and experience in playing the part of a security force.

2. When she was inside, she would find a place to possibly drop pepper punch grenades around. It was a cheap remedy to an issue they didn't anticipate: Needing to very quickly incapacitate a number of soldiers at once. She was resilient enough to withstand it anyhow.

3. Once the rest of the group of MCT arrives, the group would descend on them from all sides. Pepper punch, guns blazing on all sides to ensure none escape, take them before they can retaliate.

4. Gather whatever information they can out of the forces, then go ahead and dispose of them out in the desert.

5. Once they were disposed of, they would need to infiltrate into the casino and extract Jason. Stryker would pose as Oberon's guard with Oberon as the eccentric high roller. Asura would be snuck in, invisible, and make her way up quietly that way as backup. Ahriman would be at the car, their getaway driver

6. Once everyone was in position to take advantage of a quick struggle, they would quickly barge in, take out whatever security was still there, and then get Jason out. They could exfil a number of ways as long as they were quick.

7. Once in the clear, they could get information out of Jason, and then work on calling the train.

Totally, most definitely simple plan with no chance of failure.

The Run

Oberon settled things first and foremost with the Triad. Easy enough. A part of the legwork was already a bit of business, a quid pro quo of work to allow the runners to operate and learn more without getting shafted by the Triads, and paying their respect was a good call. They just had to make sure they didn't stir up too much shit using something like an Assault Cannon in there. Poor Panther. They managed to find a corporate type's nice, swanky car, and with Asura's mechanical expertise and Oberon's dexterity (and ignoring Asura's PSA ass warning about not stealing cars in the future) they got access to it easily enough the manual way. It took the team a few hours to hotwire it to force ownership, but in time they got everything they needed to assault their first man.

Their initial tailing didn't go too well. The team got the impression he knew he was being followed, so they had to back off in the car and try something else. Ahriman, thankfully, happens to be No.1 on MCT's shitlist, like a Katherine Tyler but way more fucking punchable. So isolating a guy, cutting his everything off, and luring him in to fight her would probably be the way to go. They did just that. Ahriman found him in an alleyway as the group prepared for an ambush with spell support to keep things quiet and themselves hidden. Angra Mainyu did her thing and challenged this bastard to try and take him on. Thankfully, pride runs deep and she's the type who can really piss someone off, so that bastard took the bait. Then three other runners descended upon him. Quiet was a bit hard to do for Asura and Stryker, who prefer their guns, but Ahriman and Oberon are excellent melee combatants and the other two helped a lot. A convenient stab wound in his uniform and an unconscious man later, and Asura was dressed for the part and ready to get going. The team got her the fun grenades she would need, she swapped out her usual for what the guard would have been using, and they let her rendezvous with the second guard who would escort her out to the others. He was suspicious of his partner's delay, but Asura had both been prepped on how to act in accordance with MCT procedures and had a good excuse up her way, so she managed to get past him. Likewise with the secondary group, when she made it to their current base of operations to set up for her teammates. She tried to set the grenades down and play it off as a trick she learned about and was just putting away because with 4 others around she really doubted she could sneak this by them, but no such luck. So Asura had to store them in the Armory instead. At the very least, she was able to scout out the building a little as a part of her relaxation and warned the others of camera positioning. With that, Oberon could easily sneak through and get ready to gas these guys the old fashioned way - ventilation. Ahriman and Stryker got into place, Asura spotted the others arriving in and came back downstairs, and the gas was dropped on everyone inside. A number of them were vomiting due to the irritating fumes in such high concentration - even Asura was affected somewhat - and a swift Stunball incapacitated almost all of the remaining forces. Those that tried to flee out the back were gunned down by the two waiting runners (although one nearly killed both Ahriman and Oberon as they came out) and the team managed to incapacitate the whole HTR squad in less than three seconds. Asura wasn't able to do much in the fight, stuck in her own head mostly, but the team got what they needed - a break in the defenses. Oberon...disposed of the bodies as the team confiscated and dealt with the commlinks and got out of dodge. Now time for part two of the plan.

Frankly, they could have planned the casino heist better. Oberon and Stryker did fine enough: Oberon has the funds, the look, and the suave to get in and get himself a room for being a money faucet for the casino, and Stryker just had to sit there and look scary. Easy enough. Asura was nearly caught just by a watcher, but she managed to rip it in half with her weapon focus before it could alert anyone, and she managed to get away with a very difficult entry in through the loading dock thanks to Oberon's spell. From the commlinks of the MCT guards, they learned Jason was on the 32nd floor suite, and so the three made their way there in different ways. Asura was invisible up the stairs with Stryker being allowed to wander up, and Oberon made his way through the ventilation to get the drop on them. There was an aware with a very powerful weapon focus and another heavily wared guard at the entrance to the suite's main wing, and Asura barely managed to sneak by them without notice thanks to her chameleon suit. Them and the motion sensor she barely managed to spot. Stryker would have to wait by the stairs, complicating matters. Oberon got through the vents just fine and spotted two guards in the suite room proper. With Asura invisible and armed with a shotgun and Oberon waiting, Stryker as backup, the team got blasting.

"What the actual fuck?" thought God, the universe, and most importantly every security personnel member in the damn casino.

The firefight was risky. Asura and Oberon managed to non-lethally incapacitate the guards in the suite but Stryker had to flee from the scene downstairs. Asura grabbed Jason (he tried to shoot her and just heard a 'plink' so, that's scary for anyone not made out of titanium) and handed him off to Oberon, who turned them into birds and got out as Asura zipped away with her grappling gun. Stryker would have to get to the car with Ahriman. He was a damn fast runner - skimmers are nova like that - but there were 32 floors to scale and a lot of fucking guards coming from below. The poor guy had to crash through a second floor window onto the ground below - where 4 guards were about to get in and get his ass anyways. He booked it as they tried to fill him full of lead, and while he was fast, bullets are usually faster. And four guns is a lot of gun. He went down, and he would've been captured had Ahriman not managed to swoop on by and grabbed his ass to get him in the car, much to the chagrin of the pursuing guards. They barely managed to lose their tails, waited for the heat to die down, and then made it to the wastelands where Asura, Oberon, and Jason were waiting. Jason filled them in on the rest of his story, which was...less than what they wanted. Maybe not really worth everything they had gone through. But they let him be recaptured so he didn't look like he wanted out and MCT killed his family - Asura gave him some guilty bruises to help sell the actual kidnapping as an actual kidnapping. He got Laes'd to keep themselves safe, and they let him go.

For a while, the team was lost on what to do. But Ahriman...Ahriman realized something. Of course she would, being the thaumaturgical expert of the group.

This was an expressway for the lost. Those who knew what they wanted, what they *needed*, but not how to proceed. A benevolent being that itself was trapped, guiding others to their next destinations. If one focused on that feeling, they would find a ticket in their pockets when they arose from their dreams. Ahriman didn't want to do this, frankly; She doesn't dream. Stryker was the first. He thought of family, and home. He dreamed of a man with green eyes, familiar to himself, through a chaotic mess of streets, and awoke with a ticket in his pocket. It had the letter H on it. A message in the works.

Asura dreamed of waves, of crystals, and of fiery red eyes. She awoke with the letter E on her piece.

Oberon dreamed of home, of forests and pride and hunters. He awoke with the letter L on his.

Ahriman.

Ahriman rejected the dream. She, for a moment, was not hated by the world. And that was something she rejected on principle. As the world despises her, so to does she assume those that betray this must be against her. They can only ever be against her. And in a response trained by years and years and years of rejection, she too rejected that connection. She tore the dream asunder. And she awoke with the letter P on the parchment in her pocket.

Together, they were being called to HELP. On the backs of their collective pieces was a map, and they were able to figure out that they were heading for somewhere up past the northern border. They'd likely be looking for a manastorm. And inside, their prize. Time to roll out.

The team split off for a bit. They wouldn't be coming back to the hotel ever again, so they were going to need to bring everything. Which meant that Asura had a Panther XL and a Franchi she needed to get out of there. Across the border. No way in Hell would the guards at the pass let it happen. And this panther was being lent to her by her friend Ashen Hand. She would rather walk across the desert alone to cross the border. Which, she actually did. The rest of the team would instead being going through the borders like civilized folks. There was a bit of issue with their restricted access gear, but smooth talking from Ahriman and Oberon (and a bribe) made it a lot easier to get through. Oberon took back the credstick the bribe was on with Magic Fingers when he got the chance. They heard a pop...a gunshot? As they were going through, but they had no clue what the hell that was about. But for Asura, that was her shooting an electric fence so she could short circuit it, jump it, climb over, and make a mad dash escape to the other side. She manages to eventually make her way to the others once they've broken camp for the night. The four set up watches on the astral and physical, and get settled in.

And eventually, Ahriman senses a mana storm.

Asura suggests they follow it from a safe distance. Ahriman is reasonably disgruntled by this, but since they know that the train is likely in there, they can sense the blood magic inside that might be a lead, and Asura says they can probably play it close or she *alone* will go in, the others agree, and they head off to the mana storm. And they do find the train, in the thickets of chaos and sorcerous turmoil. The train seemed trap in the boundaries of the storm. Off in the distance the group could spot a large, flying vehicle lying in wait. And fast approaching from the opposite side they were was another truck. That was shooting at them. The proceeding three way scuffle was a mix of Asura using the panther to try and slow down either of the two vehicles approaching them, prioritizing the VTOL fortress approaching, Ahriman deflecting the manastorm back at the VTOL to keep it off, Stryker going off with his Ares Alpha, and Oberon trying desperately to keep the car in tact. The VTOL full of MCT HTR was thankfully dealt with as both vehicles realized who the bigger threat was and focused it down, but when it came time to settle things with the other tricked out vehicle they couldn't get a shot off. They had to assume they were boarding and did so as well. Most of the team had no problems with it. Asura nearly got bisected falling but caught herself and did it right as she tried again. The team was now in the train, and the conductor - a spirit they had seen before who seemed...mostly fine before but looked awful now greeted them. They handed him the collected ticket - now golden - and prepared themselves for the final stretch of the journey.

The first task they had as the train was picking up speed was to clear the place of hostiles, aka the other runner team. At the very least they had to make sure they didn't get snuck up on. Asura lead a shield walk down to take care of the brunt of things, and beyond spirits they didn't find much until they reached the back of the train. A voice, foreign, called out to not do anything hasty and that they had guns trained on the door. They didn't want a fight though, and frankly neither did the shaodwhaven crew. So Asura, shields up, opened the door slowly to be greeted by the four of them: Armies the FBR Sam, Sanguine the Mage, Whistle the Adept Face, and Drift the Rigger. Though neither team exchanged identities. They kept things brief - they had jobs, they wouldn't interfere with each other on those jobs, just settle into their own spots and don't start drek. And they agreed, and headed back. The team went up to the front to explore the rest of the train and found the conductor bound to his seat, unable to move out of it now as the train was moving. He seemed to be under control of someone, the blood mage that was responsible for the storms they reasoned, and disturbingly it seems to have been bound via a true name method. It was unable to form coherent words to describe where its formula was at the moment, but with a mind probe Oberon managed to track down the location to somewhere in the Californian coast...way too far for the crew to handle no matter how bad they felt. For now, all they could do is go back and wait. For a while there wasn't much to do save focus on the scenery and play games, wait. However, Asura was astral sea-gazing outside and failed to notice when the train swapped metaplanes - to the plane of fire. She got thoroughly scorched just being there for a few seconds, and barely managed to duck back in fast enough to not get cooked alive. The cabins were at least better regulated, but they weren't impervious, and the whole group had to withstand hours of extreme heat until the cabins began to cool off. No one died at least, but it was god awful to be stuck in. A few more hours passed. They wisely stayed inside this time, and took the time to relax and rest, recover from the fatigue of both their battles to get there and the damn oven they came out of. Metaplanes passed them by, the astral sea was beautiful...

And then they spotted 4 moons, ominous and waiting, out of their windows in their next destination. Ahriman and Oberon identified it as the hyperplane of Shadow spirits. They also identified the massive swarm of wraiths coming by.

Fighting soon erupted throughout the entirety of the train as Wraiths poured in and started shredding the mana barriers. They were slowing down the train at the front to prevent anyone leaving so they could feast. The crew didn't know whether to stay and fight or move out of the cabin to somewhere else, but Ahriman reasoned staying here and all on their own was a death sentence. So they pushed through the hordes of the damned to get further and further to the front. Spirits had been ripped apart and disrupted, and the runner team from Neohaven was in disarray. Armies was shooting into his own team, possessed by homicidal rage, with Whistle desperately fighting back as Drift hid away and Sanguine was near death. As Shadowhaven's team made their way through the shadow spirits they managed to break Armies out of his rage and they were able to fight back against the stragglers inside. Looking back at the front they saw the swarm that was forming, and Oberon devised a plan to lure them out. A light at the very back to call them forward. Barriers to keep them at bay. Anything to help the conductor out. And it barely managed to work. With enough barriers up to keep the spirits from bursting through all at once and the conductor free, the train escaped the shadows of the metaplanes. That was the last bit of sightseeing in their journeys. Now they needed to reach each person's stop.

Ikari's was first. The Crystal Entities were waiting.

The sign that they were approaching it was the fact that the train was crashing into something and struggling to get through. They heard a scream through the lower cabins, and Asura and Stryker went to investigate. That was when they noticed, in one of the cabin's to the side, that the spirits were groaning in pain. Asura opened the door, shield in hand, and the pair saw a water spirit, one of the few to have survived, be taken over by a maddened pulse to kill. To destroy the invaders. The only three remaining spirits save for the conductor put up a hell of a fight as Ahriman and Oberon joined in. Consecutive mind magic made defense hard, and the fire spirit's powerful engulfing nearly took Stryker's life and left him a scorched mess on the floor. They were able to get through that just fine, but the issue was the train being stopped and slowly encased in crystal. Asura headed to the front with Oberon's help and spoke to the conductor, and saw the massive glacier-like barrier in their way. Ahriman thought at first that they might have to blow their way through, given that it didn't seem like the conductor could stop it himself. Even got explosives from the other runner team to do so. But after some thought on the matter, it was likely best not to do so. Even breaking through - if they could with their force - there'd be a host of spirits ready to punish them for the attempt.

Ikari called out. To the voice she knew. She asked permission. And She told her to run away.

Ikari fought with herself for a moment, not wanting to turn away when she was so close. But there was no other choice. The conductor allowed her to use the lever to reverse the train, get them out of there. And with a heavy heart, she barely managed to pull it off.

The train was back on course. Time to drop everyone off.

Aftermath

Everyone was dropped off one by one. Memories of the ride distorted from the time they got on it up until leaving. But each was where they needed to be.

Ahriman found herself in a small village of Null Wizards, people somewhat of her kin. A place she might belong. A stranger, much like herself, asked if she needed a drink. She asked for a hospital instead.

Stryker found himself in Cananea. Aztlan. His hospital stay was interrupted by a runner who went by Chupacabra. His uncle. He found a way to connect with his family again, and had a nice chat about his history.

Asura, though she could not find her destination, found another way to get answers; being dropped off at an MCT Facility, where she was picked up by HTR that seemed to know her. Who called her "Kyouken".

(Oberon to be added when Sarc and Tidan edit this)

The ways forward are open.

Rewards

• 60k nuyen (30 RVP) +10k (negotiations)

• 100k nuyen in gear rates for ware up to Beta grade/20 avail. Remainder can be taken in liquid nuyen. (25 RVP)

• 60k nuyen in gear rates for weapons/ammo/armor/armor attachments/vehicles/vehicle mods up to 20 avail. Remainder can be taken in liquid nuyen. (15 RVP)

• 21 karma (21 RVP)

• 42 CDP (21 RVP)

+2 base CDP

Counts as mundane ascension/ascension/initiation for anyone involved.

OPTIONAL QUALITIES

• Bodyguard for Stryker (10 RVP)

• Daredevil for Ahriman (6 RVP)

• Tough as Nails: Stun/Physical for everyone involved (5 RVP per)

• Toughness for everyone involved. (9 RVP)

Game Quotes

Amusing quote from game.