White Stone Black

White Stone Black
Date 2085-10-13 GM Fangblade_ Location Seattle Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Necros
Christmas Nicolas Samael Limitless Emily "Emmerloth" Stilray	Necro Mages Corpse Cadavers
Casualties and losses
	Everyone

Summary

The Forked Fangs are an up-and-coming gang, at least in their minds. Halloweeners kicked the Fangs out of Fang HQ, an old gym underneath a Metroplex. The Fangs want it back and manage to hire our runners (barely) to kick the Weeners out. Our runners get a nasty surprise in the form of necro mages and corpse cadavers. They overcome the enemy and wind up freeing the captive Halloweeners, who agree to vacate the building.

Background

The Red Mage Emily "Emmerloth" Stilray (they/them), black-sheep scion of the powerful Stilray family of Tir Tairnguire and Telestrian fame, wants to hire runners to kick the Halloweeners out of his gang's building, Emmerloff comes equipped with the massive sum of 1000 nooj. Mind you, that's not each for our runners, that's total (about 250 NY each).

The Meet

Christmas arrives at the meet location first, living only a few blocks away. The Copper Drake bar is located in the Redmond Barrens. Most of those in this dive of scum and villainy are here to conduct illicit business. Once Nico, Limitless, and Samael enter the J waves them over to their table, failing the roll for subtle.

The J is obviously new to this, and their strung-out nerves are equally as obvious. The runners tease out details and are flummoxed when the nervous J says they can pay each runner a whopping 250 Nuyen. Christmas manages to calm J down, bonding with them and negotiating. The J reveals they also have a bag of these things their dad sent them, that the J has no idea what the stuff is or what to do with it, so they can toss it in as additional pay. The J leads them to their car, drags out a bag, and shows the runners a large bar of solid gold (no dancers, unfortunately). One of the runners with financial knowledge values it at 10k Nuyen, so they tell the J they have a deal. The gold has no magical signature but has a stamp of the Stilray crest. This is how the runners find out about Emerloff's Stilray bloodline.

The conversation turns to details. The runners get a plan of the building from the J, more information about the Halloweener opposition, and a picture of the Forked gang member being held hostage. Next, the runners arrange transportation. Two of them are without a ride, so one rides with Nico, and Christmas gets a ride from Emmerloff.

The Plan

Some runners are for blitzing the Halloweeners, but cooler heads prevail. The runners decide to meet one block away from the building. Emerloff will drop Christmas off two blocks away, teamwork Increase Reflexes with Christmas, and then Christmas will join the other runners.

At that point, Christmas will summon a Beast Spirit and send it to investigate for other spirits and mages. Depending on what they find out, the plan will evolve organically from there.

The Run

Christmas summons a F3 cat spirit. After petting it a bit he sends it into the building to scout.

The run goes according to plan until the Beast spirit starts seeing weird things, and Christmas sees them through his sense link. A cadaver waiting on the entry of the building, a background count slightly less than the spirit's force (BGC 2), with the background count aspected toward pestilence and death. The beast spirit comes back to report this, and asks if Christmas wants him to continue. Christmas says yes but be stealthy and run back if caught. The spirit spies a number of cadavers puppeted by cadaver spirits, and runs when one of them detects him. Christmas reports all this to the team and they decide to roll in heavy. Samael leads the team, exercising his SMUT knowledge (Small Unit Tactics) to enable the team to surprise the cadavers and have an easier time with the initial attack.

Christmas dismisses the F3 spirit, with services remaining, after a quick pat and cheek rub. Then he summons an F6, focusing on one with powerful teeth dripping with venom (Natural Weapons, Venom as additional powers). Christmas is satisfied, getting four services owed. It's go-time, so he pops a Psyche and a Red Mescaline. Nico uses their adept power to pinpoint the locations of the cadavers and relay that info over DNI. Christmas tries to identify the things, but all he can tell is that they aren't shadow spirits.

The team moves as one unit into the building single-file, with the soft and squishy mage bringing up the rear, his hulking great cat spirit by his side. Two corpse cadavers stand in the main lobby. They have paper face masks that register as alchemy preps to assessing. The doors inside are also shown to be rigged with Alchemy preps.

After that, things go fast.

Nico attacked one Corpse Cadaver and did a bucketload of damage with a shock glove. Nico almost goes berserk but doesn't. The paper alchemy prep on the face exploded as a fireball when Nico's attack touched it.

Limitless kicks the other cadaver in the head, they explode, and Limitless manages to run for their life into the hallway.

Samael does a staggering amount of damage to a third Corpse Cadaver, shooting it with his shotgun loaded with EX EX rounds.

Christmas's spirit tears a hole in the wall to make a new doorway, bypassing the Alchemy prep. Meanwhile, Christmas casts an F6 stunbolt into a fourth Corpse Cadaver. Christmas doesn't manage to kill it, but it's damaged and halfway to dead (re-dead?).

Limitless runs to the door next to that Corpse Cadaver and touches a prep on the door behind the Cadaver, causing the prep to explode into a fireball, but not fast enough to catch Limitless as they run for their life back down the hallway.

Samael runs back to the Fight Rings in the back of the building and sees two necro mages and a group of tied-up people in Halloweener outfits. One of the mages is in the midst of casting a necromancy spell.

Samael shoots that Necro Mage, hitting their head with an Ex Ex shotgun round and making it explode like a watermelon. The ritual rebounds, causing a small tremor.

The other necro mage then attempted to cast a spell at Samael, but it fizzled, to everyone's surprise. Apparently, the mage cast Slay Human. The mage exclaims "Vat the ...that spell is supposed to slay zee humans."

Christmas casts Stunbolt at that Necro Mage, but does no damage. Background count is at 3 in the Fight Ring and it's affecting Christmas's spell casting, the adept powers, and the spirits.

One of the two remaining Corpse Cadavers rushes Limitless and attempts to kick Limitless's head but does no damage due to Nico's excellent dodge. However, someone dared to try to hurt Nico, so he goes berserk.

The other remaining Corpse Cadaver tries to do an axe kick on Samael. Samael just shrugs and carries on.

Samael then attacks the remaining Necro Mage, who hides behind partial cover. Samael manages to shoot past the cover with a trick shot. The bullet rips through the mage's armor and the mage slumps to the floor. The remaining corpse cadavers also drop to the floor.

OPFOR dead and our runners are safe, except they are not. Samael sends over DNI "That went too fast, Nico will need some time."

Nico attacks Limitless full offense, swinging a bayonet, but Limitless dodges it completely.

Christmas has the spirit tear a hole in the outside wall, or try to. It gets halfway through. Christmas moves behind it, and Sam moves behind him. Christmas dismisses the cat spirits and summons a F6 Spirit of Man with the power of Influence and one service. Hopefully, it will be enough. Christmas then commands it to Influence Nico to Calm the Fuck Down.

Nico swings pipe at Limitless, but the pipe shatters on the bayonet doing no damage.

The Spirit of Man does implant the suggestion, but that only triggers another composure roll, which Nico fails. He remains berserk. The spirit then poofed, its service gone.

Sam asks Christmas if they want Sam to stay there. Christmas asks Sam to deal with Nico and help Limitless.

Sam shoots Nico, doing 9S AP -7. (Browning Ultrapower).

At this point, Nico's berserk rage evaporates.

The runners find the missing person has freed himself and is having a smoke while waiting for the all-clear.

Christmas tried to negotiate with the bound Weeners, but fails. Sam tells them to fuck off, emphasizing with his gun, and they do.

Aftermath

The Forked Fangs have their old HQ back, albeit with a high background count of pestilence and death. The building also has a hole in one wall, a partial hole in another wall, and fireball damage in several locations. Two runners (Christmas and Limitless) exchanged contact info with Emmerloff. However, several unanswered questions may come up in a later run. Who were the Necro Mages working for? What were their goals? Why did the Halloweeners take over the building?

Rewards

• Run Rewards for "White Stone Black" (High, 16 RVP)
• 10,ooo Nuyen in gold (5 RVP)
• 10 Karma (10 RVP)
• 2 CDP (1 RVP)
• 2 CDP Base (0 rvp)
• +2 Forked Fangs Rep

Optional Rewards:

• Adrenaline Surge for Nico and Limitless, 12 RVP
• SFDA for Nico, 2 RVP
• Spirit Whisperer for Christmas, 8 RVP
• +4 Wild Index for Christmas
• WoTS: Bodyguard for Sam, 10 RVP
• Emily "Emmerloth" Stilray, C1 L1 for 1 RVP

@Breeze (Garuda/Limitless/Asura) @LOV.E//☮|🌹32|Maid|🐱|🦋|🦹 @Rob (Galt/Sam/George) @BrightMorningSnow

Christmas will be taking rewards as:

• 7 karma,
• no nuyen,
• Emily "Emmerloth" Stilray, C1 L1 for 1 RVP
• Spirit Whisperer for Christmas, 8 RVP
• 2 CDP.

Game Quotes

The necro mage exclaims, "Vat the ...that spell is supposed to slay zee humans."

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Samael - An unusual run for me that started loud and stayed loud the whole time, but given the strange necromancers and the corpse spirits, I don't feel one bit bad about it. Always good to run with Nico - having to put a tazer dart in his thigh is just like old times. Limitless lives to her reputation - both for skill and impatience. Rookie survived, Christmas I think his name was, which puts him a step above most rookies.

Nico - Old man shot me. I remember that much. I also remember nearly getting exploded by a bomb zombie. And uh. Oh right, another one tried to flying spear kick me. Most of the go time was kinda a blur after that.

Christmas (IC) - It was going great until one of the team went Berserk. Limitless and Samuel managed to engage him until he calmed down, but I thought we had got rid of the Corpse Cadaver OPFOR only for Christmas to get scragged by friendly fire on my first non-milk run since coming to Seattle, just like what happened on my favorite Tri-D show 'Karl Kombatmage', when Karl almost got fire-balled by his friend. My spells contributed some, but the spirits did a lot more.