No Grave But the Sea

No Grave But the Sea
Part of Metaplot
Date 2020-04-16 GM Tekomandor Location (International Waters)
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Project Aurora Luna Tobias John Brown Trash Panda	Lachesis Research

Summary

The runners are hired to provide security for naval transport. Not only is the client 100% sure that there will be an attempt to steal the cargo by Lachesis, the original security team is suspected to have a traitor.

The original security was mindcontrolled and fierce combat ensued. The runners managed to succeed in defending the ship against chasing ships as well as a Great spirit with support. So after succesfully delivering the AI and unsuccesfully watching all the trid shows stored in it's data-core. The run is over.

Background

CONNECTING TO BLUE SUITED JOKER CONSULTING...

SECURE CONNECTION ESTABLISHED

AUTHENTICATING... PLEASE ENTER LOGIN CREDENTIALS

USERNAME/PASSWORD ACCEPTED.

WELCOME, USER: AURORA. YOU HAVE THE FOLLOWING HOST ROLES: <JOHNSON>, <GUEST NODE ACESS>, <EXTREME MATRIX THREAT>, <SERIOUSLY, YOU WERE WARNED>

post job listing: security contractors needed

flair job listing: <High Threat> <Escort Mission>

add text: Greetings. I once again have need of the services of Seattle's shadows. In addition to your truly impressive roster of Street Samurai, Physical Adepts, Costumeed Superheros, and Cybernetic Knights, I have need of the Haven's more subtle members. A silver tongue will be just as important to this mission as a gauss rifle.

add text: One might wish to learn to swim if you are unable to.

DISCONNECT

Run: A Night On The Slopes

The Meet

The meet with the johnson went okay. We were informed of the possible threats and the details of the ship once we agreed to the job. 30k nuyen is a lot of nuyen. Personnel files of the 5 cybered guards + 1 combat mage and specs of the ship.

The security may be compromised and so the team was hired to vet the original team and to provide additional security for the transport. Transport is NY to (somewhere past cape ivory). Travel back and forth will be arranged as well as any requirements for the run. This mainly involves ammo, grenades and the like. When the face wants to know what it is that needs all this protection the johnson became secretive. It is essential that nobody get's in contact or finds out what it is that is being transported. While this looks highly illegal, you are shadowrunners.

The Plan

There's only 4 hours to plan anything with little to no info on what will actually be hitting them. So with their essential runner gear, including numerous grenades provided by the johnson, they hop on to the chopper and make things up when it goes. Step one being to just send the original security team away confident in their ability to do the protecting.

The Run

Hitting the docks Luna get's captain rights to the ship. Thus allowing the group to immediately take command of the ship and all 5 visible security personnel. A quick assensing check reveals that all are heavily cybered to the point of having barely any essence remaining. Informing the 5 cyberguards of his rank they listen to Luna's commands to leave like good soldiers. This leaves all 5 to stand huddled on the docks with their gear. The mage is a different story. Constant objection to the new rulings and a short interrogation later it was clear to everyone the gig was up. This led to the mage throwing caution to the wind and commanding his team to take the runners out.

Most of the squad reacts instantly, taking command of the situation.

The security mage got instantly vaporized by Luna who commanded the ships weaponry. Tobias decided to grab his bag of goodies, leaving a couple choice presents (High explosive grenades taking out 1) and getting out of dodge.

The rest is a hard fought struggle where multiple members go down. But with the overpowering firepower of this ship combat was won.  The sole survivor was revealed to be mind controlled by a hijack system in the helmet/headware.

Trash Panda almost gets her gear bricked as soon as she tries to make matrix contact with the helmet on the surviving guard. It turns out to be backed by a hostile decker, who dataspikes her impressive 8 firewall commlink within a single box of being bricked before they activate the self-destruct on the helmet. With the guard free of control, he was sent to the brig for a while until the team could figure out what to do about him. Meanwhile, Trash Panda heads below deck to plus into the cargo and see what it contains. She finds it to contain a massive collection of trideo shows, raw uncompressed and many of which were never aired or thought lost. She immediatly calls her fixer Jessie Pop and begins transferring as much data as she can to his rogue host. further inspection of the data storage revealed that it holds the powerful AI aurora who is the real mastermind of this mission. While helping to relinquish the "grunt" from mind-control it wasn't able to provide assistance during combat.  The second part of the cargo kept Trash Panda busy for the whole trip. Loads of Mastercopies of famous Trid-shows. Classics and new releases alike were irresistible to her.

While in international waters the ship is hailed. The transit papers weren't in order and the ship had to be searched. This was not acceptable for it was paramount to keep the cargo hidden. So after trying and failing to run away from the single chasing boat we were forced to explode it's engines and the rest of it's hull. Sadly taking a friendly spirit with it that had just materialized.

(Second fight/session)

By this point, Trash Panda had justified use of Long Haul to the team with an argument that it allows her to stay up all night to maintain a spirit for lookout. This was of course a blatant lie that nobody bought for a minute, she just wanted to stay up and binge watch the treasure trove of shows she had available now.

2 AM strikes and alarm bells ring. Multiple spirits are heading to your location. This gives everyone a mere 3 seconds to wake up and get geared for the fight before multiple F6 water spirits materialize in front of them.

John Brown burns an edge to Smackdown summon a force 9 air spirit. Sadly the drain caused him to black out leaving the spirit to become wild. As luck would have it, this air spirit decided to help us and proved extremely capable in combat.

Trash panda meets them in Astral space and expertly handles the weaker spirits while Tobias and Grunt realize that simply punching hard enough will get the job done. This however leaves them with 3 enemy ships launching missiles at them and a F12 Great spirit that's been hammering the ship. Only repeated lucky dodges have kept them from taking massive damage.

After throwing everything at it from magical barriers to a barrage of missiles the Railgun manages to Disrupt the spirit.

The rest of the run is pretty calm luckily. Tobias tried to hunt a dolphin but was warned not to shoot the awakened ones, or any. Trash Panda offers them some food and they seem pretty happy about that. Nothing of note happens and the package is delivered.

Aftermath

The AI is delivered and nuyen was earned.

Rewards

30k Nuyen, 5 Karma and 3 rep with Aurora

Trash Panda: 20k Nuyen and 5 Karma +1 connection for Jesse Pop

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

John Brown:

This one hurt. I'll be honest, I ended up ending more fights out cold than not. That first conversation with the mind-controlled wagemage got nasty real quick. The old air spirit I summoned up really came through for me, and for that I am thankful, but I realize I need an edge here, and I think I know just the thing...

I'm interested in that AI, Aurora, and I hope things turn out well for her. I wonder what her deal is, and if she needs any more help. Our cargo seemed pretty much entirely irrelevant, and to hear her tell it, we were entirely a diversion. Between all of our pay, that totaled up to be a hell of an expensive diversion, and the forces dedicated to getting into that datacore were fairly absurd. They sent 6 mind-controlled corpsec goons, a mage, 3 attack boats, a false claim sent to the Asamando Navy that we were carrying weapons of mass destruction, and six water spirits that would seem pretty strong if it weren't for the biggest fragging spirit I have ever seen, great form no less, i drek you not. Whoever they were, they had a hell of a lot of resources and a strong desire to get at that datacore, and I don't think they were interested in trid shows.

Trash Panda

This has been the single most important run of my entire carrier. I can't believe what I managed to walk away from this with!!! If the AI had just offered me this collection of shows in exchange for the job I'd have done it just for that alone. Sucker. It still paid me and offered me the shows as a bonus. What a deal! Now... So much... So many... Jesse is working on backing up everything onto multiple formats and media. Something about the rule of 3s when making backups. I would have asked more about it but HOLY DREK you have got to see this WMAC Masters show. It's just amazing. I feel like now is the time to just sort of casually fade into obscurity for a few months while the heat dies down and.... Aww drek, I'm a master thief I've made sure I don't have any actual heat to die down. DAMN. How did I end up with being a master thief turning into a problem? If I was a shitty thief I'd have an excuse to lay low and just watch as much of this stuff as I want. But nooooo, I'm gonna have to go out and do stuff' at some point...

I have the weirdest problems.