Fuchi in Focus

Fuchi in Focus
Date 2082-03-10 GM Aurora Location Downtown, Seattle Metroplex Status Threat Level: Semi-Prime
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Fuchi Industrial Electronics/Shiawase	SegFault's Team
Babylon Charon Master Morty Sp4rks Zenith	Corpsec Security Spider	Ballista Fearsome Road-kill SegFault
Casualties and losses
	Security Spider

Summary

In which the runners are contracted to retrieve Artificial Intelligence research from an old offline Fuchi server, now owned by Shiawase.

Background

After Fuchi Industrial Electronics was dismantled, most of the assets that weren't incorporated into Novatech were sold off to Shiawase, who continued their research into cutting edge matrix technologies. Some of that information has born fruit in the form of AI research which is of great interest to rival corps - MCT has dispatched a J to hire one team (the runners), while SK has tasked their own operatives (lead by a technomancer called SegFault) with the recovery of the information.

The Meet

The runners are contacted individually by their fixers (except for Babylon and Master Morty, who are called to party by Alexander-James Brodrick Johnson III and incidentally told about the job). They are asked to meet with one Ms. Johnson at a fancy country club - Zenith proceeds to sneak inside, while Babylon ignores the dress code entirely and has Charon talk her way past the doorman for her. Inside, the runners proceed to act like boorish criminals in a fancy place that they don't belong while Ms. Johnson displays admirable patience with their antics. She explains what she needs from them - infiltrate a secure ET facility downtown and extract information from an offline server - and offers them a cool 40k nuyen for their time. Master Morty attempts to negotiate for payment in a new deck (in advance), however Charon's social adept bs is no match for the J's cool resolve, and Ms. J tells them she will look at alternate payment options - after they successfully complete the job. Everyone accepts the terms, and she presents them with the information she has on the target.

The Plan

Zenith invites the rest of the team back to his Redmond safehouse in order to plan out the operation. Babylon projects over to check out the astral security. She spots several watchers and bound spirits hanging about with different summoner's signatures, including an air spirit acting curiously and inspecting the building; going over to talk to it while acting like a curious astral tourist, she notices the bracers on its forearms with inverted crosses on them and asks what it's up to. The spirit doesn't seem interested in talking however, and influences her to leave - she detects the use of mind magic and grows suspicious, summoning her own air spirit to keep an eye on it as she returns to her body.

Master Morty meanwhile drops into VR and goes for a preliminary host dive, making his way into the Shiawase host and staying hidden as he locates the nested (rating 9) Fuchi host. Heading inside to look for files pertaining to their security measures, he manages to locate and cracks the encryption on one of them, which puts the host on alert. As IC is launched and the spider takes notice, he is able to make a copy of the file and escape before he ends up deleted. Checking out the information, he finds a shift schedule for the security personal which the team begin going over.

Meanwhile in meatspace, Charon and Zenith check out the Fuchi building, driving there separately in order to scope out the physical security measures. While Charon remains outside, Zenith heads into the publicly-accessible area, managing to get past the SIN scanner and ask reception some questions, mapping out the place with his motion sense and 3-D memory and checking out the floor directory. Finding suspicious activity on floors 5 and 9 (with floors 6-8 apparently being dedicated to matrix research), Charon takes note of the heat coming off the building with her thermographic vision, and the team put together that floors 5 and 9 are their most likely targets.

Babylon spends a few hours attempting to track the spirit-summoner link of the air spirit but has no luck; receiving word from her own spirit that it has left the building. They follow it back to a bunker in Snohomish, and the team decide to head there to investigate in order to determine if someone else has an interest in the building and deal with it before it becomes a problem. En-route, Morty performs a T6 search on the bunker and determines that it's owned by a series of shell corporations that trace back to S-K. Zenith, groaning internally, calls up Amrei Veidt to ask for information, and she tells him that the people there are not representing her interests; heading up to the bunker entrance, he attempts to knock and receives no response, so he starts to pick the lock and force an entrance.

Inside, the team find a recently-evacuated bunker, with a troll-sized arrow and a pewter pentagram left behind. Sp4rks recalls the runner team he encountered in A Ghoulish Case of Heart Delivery and informs the team that they are working against an S-K team. Morty uses his Prime Datahaven Membership to check for information on the team on the Helix, finding evidence that they are working the same job and some more information on the individual runners (SegFault - a cyberadept, Ballista - a troll archer, Fearsome - a dwarven black mage, and Road-kill - a rigger). Heading back to the safehouse, the team perform a Mona Lisa search on their J in order to determine if they're being set up, finding evidence that she's been seen going in and out of MCT facilities. Assuaged, they begin brainstorming a plan for how to deal with the rival team. Calling up the J, they give her an update and arrange for a safehouse to be waiting for them.

The Run

Deciding on a combination of social infiltration and misdirection, the team call up Freya for some fake SINs matching the security consultants on the registry that Morty pulled off the host. Using this, they forge a file containing a "plan" to be encrypted and placed on Zenith's commlink, then have him call up Amrei to have the information "found". While waiting on their burner fake SINs to be made up, Charon goes to a vampire simp club to drain some essence, Babylon summons a spirit and starts to search for the rival runners, Sp4rks and Morty watch the building and see a pair of figures (troll and dwarf-sized) entering while an elf accidentally knocks over a statue - they recognize them as Ballista, Fearsome and Road-kill, meaning the enemy team has put their plan into action.

While Babylon, Charon and Zenith rush to the scene, Morty hops into the host and sees one of SegFault's sprites guarding the elevator into which the rest of her team are entering. Marking it, he sees they're going up to floor 5, and attempts to control the device to stop it from ascending so that the rest of the team have time to arrive; he manages to stop it and force SegFault out of the host, seeing Ballista and Fearsome break out of the elevator and begin ascending the shaft before jacking out himself due to mounting overwatch. Sp4rks contacts SegFault and tells her that they can either work together or fail - she tells him that it's not an option for her to fail again (after the events of Piracy! On the High Seas! she is in rather poor graces with her corporate handlers. He appeals to her on a personal level and says that she can leave the corp and go into the shadows, and that he'll help her as best he can.

Sp4rks lets the rest of the team in on the situation, and a vigorous debate ensues between the runners about what to do - the rival team needs cover to exfiltrate, and their own plan is fairly shot, so after some disagreement they ultimately agree that they'll need to at least help them get the data and then figure out what to do with them afterwards. Sp4rks calls up Isadora Windthrope and calls in a chip in order to get a second safehouse set up for them, which the rich girl is able to arrange within the hour. Morty hops back into the host to provide support to SegFault and overwatch to the rest of the team, covering them as they make their way to the 5th floor and dealing with the spider with a quick pre-edged data spike; he takes control of the elevator, however his overwatch score eventually ticks over to 40 however, earning him the ire of the IC and leading to a bit of cybercombat before he jacks out.

Meanwhile, the others arrive on the scene and Zenith (disguised as a security contractor) rushes inside, pretending to be the initial response from corporate. He successfully lies to one of the officers (who jacks into a terminal and subsequently experiences massive dain bramage from a data bomb Morty placed), and is able to convince the others that the attackers are going to the 9th floor, directing the response there and buying the other runners a bit of time. While SegFault's team heads to the 5th floor and into a Faraday cage, Road-kill waits outside and Sp4rks makes contact in order to ensure he's not planning to betray them - after some diplomisizing, he agrees to the plan but asks if the team can get his sister (who is unable to walk) from their apartment in Snohomish, along with some datachips with family mementos on them. Given the lack of time on their hands, Babylon calls up her pals in the Ancients to go and get her.

Inside, Zenith leads the security team up to the 9th floor and locks them inside, shooting off the lock and running from the bullets they shoot through the door. Hopping in the elevator, he heads down to the 5th floor to meet with the other team, where Fearsome places a physical max on them to make them look like different people. He gets the chips containing the information, and they begin to exit the building and make for the ET boundary when they're fired upon by the remaining security forces. Zenith takes a hit and nearly passes out, so he rushes into the rival team's van and exfiltrates with them; their van is pursued by Shiawase corpsec (which Road-kill nimbly avoids) while the rest of the runners speed off in different directions and arrange to meet back up at the safehouse.

Aftermath

Successfully making it to the safehouse, the team lay low and deal with SegFault's team - Sp4rks sets them up with his fixer Chainsaw Catapiller and everyone offers to WFTP them some cash to set up new fake identities to help them out, since they're now on the run from S-K. Taking the data from them, the runners arrange for a dead drop handoff to Ms. Johnson and receive their promised payment.

Rewards

Charon, Babylon, Master Morty: 40k nuyen or double that in gear up to availability 18 20 karma 2 CDP

Sp4rks and Zenith: 40k nuyen or double that gear up to availability 18 13 karma Social Chameleon for free 2 CDP

Everyone: SegFault's Team (Connection 3) at Loyalty 4 (6 RVP) from run rewards if desired

Charon: Additionally +2 Notoriety for using Mind Magic on the Johnson

Game Quotes

Zenith: [to Charon, a vampire] "Bite me - actually wait no, stay away from me you monster."

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Babylon

Fragging rival runners, turning what should be a straightforward job into a fuster-cluck - I've worked against this SegFault person before, and left them alive at Sp4rks request, and now that just came back to bite us in the ass to make everyone's lives a lot harder. I was glad to go along with him to get them out since at that point our plan was pretty fragged anyway, but damn this could have gone poorly - especially with that mage mimicking my damn aura (the asshole!) - and it's a small miracle that we all made it out of this one. Frankly as much as I'd like to take credit for it that honor goes to Zenith (who walked right into the building and got his SIN burnt for it) and Master Morty (who, I'm told, absolutely crushed it on the matrix). Props to those two for their hard work and earning me a big payday. Now I've gotta go put the fear of God into that Fearsome drekhead and make sure he doesn't get the stupid idea to repeat that trick - I should really learn to mask my aura at some point, but eh, frag that noise, hiding is for chumps like him.

Master Morty

Got me a new deck, and some interesting theories on creating A.I.'s for reading material. Not a bad run. Had to go in against a beefy Host, but luck was with me and I managed to pull it off. Feels kind of weird being the main decker with Sp4rks in the party, but he begged off, saying something was futzing up his deck. As far as I'm concerned he's still the big boy on the block after scrapping that DEUS fragment like he did. We had quite a kill team to, with Babylon, Charon, and Zenith running hot. But strange thing was it never really came to a major fire fight. At least for most of us. Zenith took a few on his way outta the joint. The team B honchos kept to their word and turned over the data, so I guess they get to keep on breathing or some such. But like I said, not a bad run.