The Silent Screaming

The Silent Screaming
Part of The Wailing of the Walled City
Date 2083-04-02 GM Brock Location Hong Kong Status Threat Level: Deadly
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Wuxing Highrise Pippa Yung	Black Chrysanthemums
RC-45 Heart of the Tempest Merc Bollwerk	Screaming Saw
Casualties and losses
None	Screaming Saw

Summary

The runners were hired to travel to Kowloon where they were required to capture a Black Chrysanthemum triad by the name of Screaming Saw, they were to bring him in alive. They attacked an organ leggers run by the triad and found out where he lived, someone or something had got to him first and they retrieved his severed head from his apartment in the Walled City. They dropped off the "package" and successfully completed the contract.

Background

The Black Chrysanthemum triad have been at war with the Red Dragon Triad for years, their powerbase in the Kowloon Walled City has given them a well protected homeground from which to grow and expand. They have recently begun to get more brazen and claim territory nearer and nearer to the Red Dragons. The Red Dragons and their allies Wuxing see this as bad for business and bad for the people of Hong Kong. Unable to get close to the target themselves they hired outside help to do the dirty work for them.

The Meet

The meet was at a small private airfield in Snohomish, the runners were given a time to meet Highrise. When they arrived they boarded the plane and set off to Hong Kong. The briefing occurred in flight and there were snacks and refreshments available despite the small size of the craft that flew them to Hong Kong. In flight they were introduced to Pippa Yung who would be their contact on site for the job who explained the situation.

Screaming Saw was a red pole in the Black Chrysanthemum's, the runners were going to be dropped off in Kowloon and from there they were to extract the red pole and deliver him to the HKPF.

The Plan

Do some legwork on the situation, and with that legwork either try and draw the target into an ambush or use the info to bag and tag him.

The Run

The runners arrived in Hong Kong and soon realised the area was under lockdown. A full Hong Kong drag net was out in force, their vehicle was checked several times on the way into Kowloon. Lucky for them a police escort had been provided and they were passed through without incident. Eventually they are dropped off in a parking lot in the Fei Shi district of Kowloon. They quickly attracted attention, a SURGE a Banshee and two others all with obvious cyberware and dufflebags full of equipment were a curious sight in this area. They quickly decided that it might be an idea to get a safehouse, they put their heads together and found a nearby runner bar called the Bus Stop. Here a family of Trolls ran a bar that had access to a safehouse they could hold up in for the time being.

With a safehouse arranged the team chatted to some of the locals to get the lay of the land, they found out about the situation with the triad hostilities and pieced together a bit of background about the job. They then went off to check out their safehouse and do some legwork. RC-45 and Merc did a matrix dive and found a few nearby BC businesses, a cyber-surgery known as the The Chop-Chop Shop nearby in Kowloon and another called Irresistible Dentist which seemed to be on dentist street in the Walled City. They infiltrated the Chop-Chop host and found several files which they used to work out Screaming Saw's schedule, they also found evidence that the owner was skimming money off the top and short handing the Black Chrysanthemums.

Armed with this info they set off to the Chop-Chop Shop and quickly realised they had a tail, another vehicle was following the van they had hired. A short contest ensued but the runners were unable to shake their pursuers, the car revealed itself when it drove past to be full of Red Dragon Triads who had taken an interest in the runners actions. Nothing further happened but the runners were reassured that they were in someone else's turf and that their actions were being watched. As their car entered into BC territory however the Red Dragon's backed off.

The Chop-Chop Shop itself seemed to be a small business, as the runners arrived RC-45 and Tempest were going to enter and confront the owner about his embezzlement in a hope to get more info. Unfortunately they had set off the alarm in the host when they did their dive and the place was now swarming with triad grunts. The negotiation did not go well and the grenades started flying. Bollwerk and Tempest turned a number of these triads, armed with nasty meat cleavers, into a fine red paste with the help of grenades and area of effect spells, while Merc valiantly charged in to put himself betweern RC-45 and the beatdown he was about to get being surrounded in the shop.

The team made short work of the triads and found the owner, Gu Zian cowering in the back. With the mess they'd made of his shop he was too scared to resist the runners and gave up the location of what he believed was Screaming Saw's apartment in the Walled City. The team decided to bag Gu Zian as well and dropped him off in Red Dragon territory on the way.

They made their way to the Walled City after this, arriving around 5pm. The place was truly dark and creepy, they had a rough idea of the route to the apartment but it didn't help that matrix access was very patchy and seemed to intermittently cut out. The locals in the area seemed very interested and fearful of the team. They were being watched, but avoided. They made their way to Screaming Saw's apartment and prepared to breach. On entering they saw signs of what appeared to be a den of torture and found Screaming Saw and 3 other BC triads there, already dead. Their heads had been arranged on spikes by something.

Deciding now would be a good time to leave they grabbed Screaming Saw's head as proof, Pippa Yung wanted physical evidence of his elimination from the board, and bolted. Once outside they realised the sun had gone down and each of them remembered offhand comments that Highrise and Pippa Yung had made in the briefing, "Do not go out into the Walled City at night." All amped up on combat stims they decided to ignore this advice and began double-timing it out of there. That's when things started to get a bit strange. The city at night was almost impossible to navigate now the sun was down, light didn't seem to enter this area.

They moved through the tight alleyways riddled with garbage, feeling a strong hot wind blowing through the streets that smelled like decaying refuse and rotting flesh. Eventually they came to a three way intersection and realised they were lost. Taking a moment to survey their surroundings they realised that each pathway looked identical to the next, and that somehow the pathways seemed to be growing in number. At first there were 3 paths to this intersection they thought, but now they were 4. Heart of the Tempest decided to assense to work out if this was an illusion. On the astral she saw that the walls of the street were not in fact made of grey mundane cement, but seemed to be alive and made of muscle tissue and they did not lead in different directions but were in fact more like intestines, twisting and turning in a tightly packed maze. A strong gust brought with it the stench of decay and threatened to bowl the team over, followed by an ethereal, menacing, croaking laughter then silence, the team were left with the sound of their own breathing.

They continued on through the narrow streets until they came to an alley with several apartment windows on either side, from each of these windows hung a pair of limp arms, their owners concealed in the darkness. As they made their way down the alley the arms reached out to them trying to touch the intruders in their home. The team navigated this strange area slowly until they looked behind them and found they were being closed in on by an unnatural darkness that seemed to be swallowing the world behind them, even the most advanced vision sensors didn't seem to penetrate this fog. From the darkness they heard growling.

They ran again and the sounds behind them changed from growling to be more of a rushing water noise, it sounded like a tidal wave was pushing through the dirty streets behind them. As they made their escape the arms that walled the alleyway attempted to harry them, reaching out and grabbing at them to keep them here. At this point Screaming Saw's head seemed to reanimate and start screaming obscenities at them, biting at the bag it was held in. Then the wave caught up to them. A green bilious mass of liquid swept over them, flooding the alleyway and carrying not just them but much of the other garbage littering the streets with it. Eventually they were expelled out of a sewage outlet into the waste ground surrounding the Walled City. Covered in disgusting stomache acid-like residue they took stock of the situation, Tempest assensed the team and found a strange murky taint to each of their auras, similar to the astral signature of a spell but not like any magic she had ever encountered. Also from here the team quickly realised Matrix access was restored.

Each of them received several messages from their fixers asking how the job was going as it had been a few days since they had heard from them, and the team realised they'd lost 2 days somewhere along the way, they also realised that Screaming Saw's head seemed to have decayed by several months worth of time in the short time they had had it. Deciding they wanted done with this job as fast as possible, they called Pippa who seemed pleased to hear from them but had actually began to give up on whether she would hear from them again. She sends over a drop off location for the head.

The team hand the head off to a Red Dragon triad by the name of Top Dog who seems initially disturbed by the head, but then is very amused. He leaves and the team is paid via escrow.

Their fixers contact them shortly after to confirm and say that Highrise has put them up for a few nights in Hong Kong to enjoy the city, he has a hotel reservation for each of them.

When the runners retire to their room they realise their balcony gives them a great view of the Walled City.

Aftermath

The Black Chrysanthemum's influence in Kowloon is cut back, a little.

Gu Zian is forced to work for the Red Dragon Triads.

An ancient and powerful force has been disturbed by foreign intrusion.

Rewards

30,000 Nuyen (15 RVP)

4 Karma (4 RVP)

Merc, Tempest, Bollwerk: 4 CDP (1 RVP)

RC-45: 3 CDP + 1 Triads (1 RVP)

+5 Wuxing Rep

Optional:

Phobia (Uncommon, Severe): Yama Kings

Common Sense (3 RVP)

Contact: Highrise at 6/1 (6 RVP)

Contact: Pippa Yung at 4/1 (RVP)

Game Quotes

"What magic bullshit is going on here?" "RUN MORE"

"Sitrep: AAH FUCK"

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

RC-45 That job went south very quickly and all I could say in the end "Fucking run" There was some strange magic going on and whatever evil was in that place, was something none of us were ready to handle or whatever lurking in the shadows, I hope to never face again.

Heart of the Tempest

WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? Started like a normal extraction job, 'cept that I can't speak a word of Cantonese, so I couldn't really do half of my job, and there wasn't anyone on the team that could really do that. Aaand then we went into the Walled City, found the guy we were looking for beheaded, and them some eldritch abomination chased us out, and we ended up vomited out of a sewer pipe. Which is an excellent outcome, compared to dead or... changed. I assensed us pretty thoroughly, pretty sure we were uncontaminated.