Attack Inside Attack!

Attack Inside Attack!
Date 2082-08-01 GM Aurora Location Puyallup, Seattle Metroplex Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Neo-Anarchists	Horizon Group
Delphi Hamilton Jiang-shi Zombie	Horizon Shills Zaid Howe

Summary

In which the runners are hired by Neo-Anarchists (“Attack!”) to resolve an internal dispute.

The Meet

The runners are contacted individually by their fixers while in the middle of their respective shenanigans and told to meet with their Johnson (a Neo-Anarchist named Zaid Howe) at a crummy dive bar in Puyallup. Jiang-Shi and Zombie, not having vehicles, are saved from the horror of public transit by Hamilton, who offers a lift, while Delphi grabs a ride from Clyde and shows up extremely high on novacoke.

Meeting with Howe, the team ask what he wants from them, and he says that he wants them to “deal with” Lylah Wilder, a rival within his organization with whom he has ideological differences. He offers them 8k nuyen each from his inheritance, which Zombie quickly starts bargaining upwards - however when he makes it clear that if the team gets more money than he wants Lylah “dealt with” in a permanent fashion, Delphi balks at the idea and makes it clear that she’ll be accepting the compromise price of 10k for a smear job but will draw the line at wetwork for some factional dispute. Coming to a reluctant agreement with Howe, they get a bit more information about Wilder before obtaining contact information and taking their leave.

The Plan

Heading to another nameless Puyallup dive bar to plan, the team put their heads together to come up with a course of action. Delphi hits the Matrix to try to obtain some more information on Wilder, being led by the data trails to an Attack! host which she manages (with some effort) to gain illicit access to; after disarming a data bomb and subsequently putting the host on alert with her attempt to mark the file in question (which seems to be an internal file on Lylah), she is able to grab a copy of the file and avoid being traced in the process before jacking out.

While she reads over and complies the information, Zombie heads out to a Neo-A bar to make friends; when one of them balks upon noticing her old Halloweener tattoos, she convinces them that she’s had a troubled past and wants to change, and accepts an offer to go to a tattoo artist to get some cover-ups done. While getting inked, the two have a chat about Neo-A philosophy, and Zombie directs the conversation towards Lylah to get a sense of her reputation within the community (generally fairly popular, brings in a lot of energetic and engaged young folks, etc.) Deciding that Lylah seems like a generally decent person while Zaid came off as a drekhead, Delphi does some more digging into him and finds that he came from New York after starting schisms in several Neo-A groups, and that there are some data trails leading back to a Horizon host. Sharing this with the rest of the team, she proposes the time-tested method of betraying their J by taking his money but letting Lylah know about the agent provocateur and giving her the means to strike back against him. Hamilton and Jaing-Shi are generally ambivalent as long as they get paid, while Zombie is eager to go along with it but wants to talk with Lylah first.

The Run

Getting a bit of rest for the night, the team spend the next day brushing up on their Neo-Anarchist philosophy before the Attack! meeting that night (which Zombie learned about during her info-gathering efforts). Making themselves look like normal folks (as much as possible at least), the team head to the meeting separately, with Delphi heading in as a lone curious person while Zombie meets up with her new friends and Hamilton stays in the car while observing through his fly spies. Jaing-Shi, being extremely distinctive, is asked to stay in the car and wait to see if things go loud, but heads in on their own a few minutes after and is stopped at the door by the bouncer and talked out of attempting to infiltrate using magic.

Inside, Delphi and Zombie find a series of panels and talks taking place; while Hamilton scouts out the talks (confirming that Howe and his ideas seem to be rather unpopular), the faces sit in on Lylah’s talk and ask her a few questions to show off their Neo-A cred before inviting her to have a more detailed talk at a nearby bar. Outside, Hamilton and Jaing-Shi notice several CU^3 drones hanging around, and borrows Delphi’s attack dongle to jam their signals while Jaing-Shi has her spirit conceal Lylah and the others while they head to the bar.

At the bar, Delphi and Zombie sit down to have a chat with Lylah, telling her that Zaid an agent provocateur from Horizon, and that he used to operate in New York under a different name where he was responsible for instigating several schisms in Neo-A groups; working together, they are able to convince her that the best course of action is to go underground and form a fifth column within the organization with her loyal supporters. She expresses reservation, wondering who will bring new people into the organization, but they tell her that she has done good work with recruitment and that she can let others handle this task.

Outside, Hamilton notices a stealth tag on the vehicle, quickly erasing it before pointing a directional jammer at the approaching CU^3 to keep it from eavesdropping on the conversation in the bar; Jaing-Shi asks her spirit to conceal Lylah and her friends as they make their way out the back and to a safehouse, while Delphi and Zombie exit out the front and keep the attention on them (after giving Lylah a burner number to contact them at).

Aftermath

Leaving the bar and ensuring that they aren’t followed, the team meet back up with Zaid and convince him that they managed to get Lylah to understand that she needed to leave town. Managing to sell the con, they get him to pay them their agreed upon amount, with Zaid happy to have seemingly removed an influential voice from the group.

Rewards

• 10k nuyen - 5 RVP
• 6 karma - 6 RVP
• +5 Neo-Anarchist Rep
• Lylah Wilder (Networking Contact - Connection 3) at Loyalty 3 - 5 RVP
• 2 CDP

Game Quotes

’’’Delphi:’’’ [disdainfully, to the J] “Collectivism vs. Mutualism… ‘’please’’.”

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Delphi

Fragging Neo-A’s. Always with the squabbling. Admittedly this one did turn out to be because of some corpo sellout intentionally looking to start drek, and Lylah seems to have a pretty good head on her shoulders - I hope she can do some good within her organization. I was glad to talk the team out of trying to kill her as the most expedient solution, and I was also glad to take that guy’s money to give it to MERC, so it seems like things all worked out.

Hamilton

Right man, never expected to make a spam zone on a run on a count of not wiring up my gear for Attack settings over Sleaze ones. Stealthy configs and me did always 'gree. J and his target were as far as I could tell some anarachists splitting hairs so fine a sniper would have trouble seein', we didn't take the assassination offer but decided to trick the target out of town instead. Not my style, but I was outvoted and trying to make sure the firestarter didn't start any fires. Talent Scout and Location Scout did their jobs and got us in, and just before we managed to get out I saw someone's cheeky ass decided to put a stealth tag on the car, didn't do them much good when I did a repeat of 'SPAM' and knocking all of their drones out of the sky. Taxi driver and partial spam zone, easy money.

Jiang-shi

This seems very fishy, what could be going on from the inside and how is this going to be a factor....someone is trying to gain more power to help those who are pulling on his strings, he's not very good at hiding it.