Find Your Flame

Find Your Flame
Date 2083-11-14 GM Aurora Location Downtown Status Threat Level: Extreme
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Gianelli Family Lord Emberrage Frank Grover	Finnigan Family
Ryan Danes Bulldozer Broken-Hand Mojo Joe 五代ロータス (Godai rōtasu)	Shotgunner Adept Street Ninja Mafia Spider Mafia Goons
Casualties and losses
	Mafia Spider

Summary

M3chan1c brings together a group of friends in the shadowrunning community for a rescue. Under the cover of running an inter-family theft job for a different faction of the Mafia, the runners set out to rescue his kidnapped wife. Starting a street war with the Finnegan family at one of their Downtown dock warehouses, the runners managed to get the goods, save the dame, and escape in a blaze of glory.

Background

WIP will be done later to flesh things out.

The Meet

M3chan1c called for the runners to meet him at The Days bar, after gathering the group, they disappeared into the back room. After greeting them, he explained that there was a job, one that was the true reason they were gathered in such a place. Pouring drinks for everyone, he explained why he came to Seattle, his previous life and how it burned down around him, the score he had to settle with the Finnigans, and finally, his mission and its progress. After collecting information over many runs with the Haven, had finally gathered the information needed to pinpoint the location his missing wife, Isabelle, was being kept at, a series of warehouses in Downtown Seattle. After some discussion, and apologies to Mojo Joe for the poor terms they left on after their last run, a call came in from Bolt. Picking it up, M3chan1c got into a short argument with the fixer, partially because of their usual hotheaded natures clashing, and partially because of the fact he was made fully aware of the Rigger's hidden agenda for the entire matter.

Tossing Bolt into AR on the table, the fixer got to explain the situation, warning the runners that, regardless of what M3chan1c said, the job was to come first, with dire consequences promised otherwise. Bolt spoke up, taking the place of Johnson for the run, apparently the Gianelli family had a piece of artwork stolen from them by the Finnigans, a hand-carved Gianelli original. Wanting a bit more cash for the pricey artifact's retrieval, Mojo Joe managed to coax some increased rewards out of the arrangement. The run was to take place in the Tacoma docks, in a Finnegan-owned warehouse. The art would be moved out the evening after to be sold in an art auction. While the made-men in the facility were Finnigans, and perfectly acceptable to kill, the unaware dockworkers were to be left alive, unconsciousness fine enough, but alive. Additionally, the true Johnson requested that the location be left clear of police presence, requesting a covert job, or, in the least, a job that ends up driving Knight Errant away from the scene afterwards. The Johnson made things extensively clear that backstabbing or failure would result in fatal consequences, a matter which Bolt made sure to remind M3chan1c of once again, explicitly due to the true purpose of the mission. According to additional details, magical defenses would be rather limited, although, a certain crack-shot sniper would be watching over the location, yet another thing to keep alert for. Additionally, the item in question was a hand-carved fireplace, a rather large item that would require additional hardware to move.

The Plan

According to a Tier 6 search, M3chan1c was able to pull up quite a bit of information on the location and its host. In addition to the sniper, there appeared to be a talented vibroswordsman, master shotgunner, and a subcontracted mage which occasionally would be dealing with wards, traps, magical threats and the like, potentially on-site. According to the list, dockworkers appeared to be armed with light arms, with a small group of made men armed better than the dock workers, but far less terrifying than the specialists.

Dropping into the Host, M3chan1c was met with a massive, gundam sized warehouse, stocked and operated by the massive armored mechs. Stepping in and attempting to zip around the massive warehouse, he quickly ran into a patrol IC, after a short fight, he managed to de-rez it, unfortunately, not before the Spider hopped on site, calling out the extra IC sitting in the host, after a short, defensive battle, M3chan1c bailed, failing to gather any useful information. Deciding it was about time to head towards the location, the runners made their way to a nearby parking garage. Mojo went ahead, going forward to astrally scout the area out, though, bumping into a ward, they quickly tried to escape the area before magical defense came into effect. Unfortunately, this did not go well, and a powerful fire spirit followed along behind them, leading the entire party to be discovered meeting in the parking garage. Turning back around, M3chan1c spotted multiple groups of hostiles stacking up outside beside cars, ready to ambush the runners, sensing the threat, M3chan1c dropped into meatspace, warning his allies of the impending attack, before suddenly being assaulted by the resident Spider and dropping into the matrix.

The Run

Bulldozer opened up strong, stepping out of the van with a Rocket Launcher and hurling an explosive into one of the groups of hiding gangers, utterly torching them. In response, a street ninja, the vibroblade specialist approached him, stabbing his blade into him and starting a melee as the shotgunner ran up to the van, firing a shot off which deflected helplessly. Leaping out of the van, Broken hand Sprinted up to the street ninja, slamming his fist into them, only to see his attack shrugged off as the ninja turned to face him, shrugging off a manabolt from Mojo Joe with his Grey Mana tattoo. Popping out from the shadows, Godai hurled an arrow to the shotgunner, who managed to soak it like a champ. Turning about after being attacked, Bulldozer unloaded into the Street Ninja, doing a chunk of damage to the punk. Meanwhile, a stray shot from M3chan1c's dogbrain drone managed to nail the shotgunner, who managed to soak the damage into their armor once again, only to spot the street ninja strike a blow on Bulldozer, who managed to deflect most of the attack with a throw of his armored gauntlet, who turned around, unloading his rifle into the weeb once again, managing to continue chipping away at the armored foe. As this went down, M3chan1c fired off his last dataspike, blowing the hostile decker's equipment into smithereens and finally freeing himself from matrix assault as he jumped into his sniper drone. Seeing an opportunity to properly harm the Minotaur, the ninja dropped a grenade, only managing to injure himself in the process. Turning about, the shotgunner turned down towards the van, blowing out one of the axles to disable the vehicle. Rounding about, Godai, Bulldozer, and M3chan1c's drone all continued to hose fire onto the Ninja, continuing to chip him down bit by bit. Meanwhile, M3chan1c, jumped into his sniper drone, poked the barrel out of the window, blasting the shotgunner in the chest, finally drawing blood from one of the attackers, a matter which Bulldozer followed up with, further spraying the distracted hostile.

With a moment free of being attacked, the ninja raised its weapons to attack bulldozer once more, only for Mojo Joe's water spirit to succeed in possessing him, only for the ninja to fall over, as the spirit was unable to control the cyberlimbs attached to its host, effectively removing the combatant from the fight. Turning about, broken hand spun to dodge a hail of bullets from the grunts at the entryway, sending off a painful nerve strike to continue hampering the shotgunner, leading into an excellent shot from Godai's bow, nailing them in the back and sending violent, shocking surges through their body as they screamed in frustration as their body convulsed while another peppering of shots rolled out of the window of the van, blasting the shotgunner, the mafia member decided it was time to go, scooped up the street ninja, blasting off with skimmers as M3chan1c blew up one of the cars the gang goons were using as cover, destroying the group as the proper mafioso split off.

As the combat died off, M3chan1c immediately got to work towing off the disabled roadmaster, calling Frank Grover in a panic and calling in some favor asking him to delay the KE response to the attack, after getting a rather pissy response, he managed to buy himself 15 minutes with the endeavor, as he got the vehicles moved, the other runners sprinted for the warehouse, Bulldozer kicked in the front door, utterly shrugging off the massive pack of c4 explosives on the front door, but unfortunately setting the building ablaze with the gasoline slick placed along the floor, though, a keen eyed observer chuckled at the sight Mojo quickly summoned his water spirit again, the spirit possessing a person inside to quickly put it out, as the smoke started to clear, the runners inside spotted a woman inside, dressed in medical garb with an aura around her, blasting the fire inside with water, of course, a woman they would immediately recognize as Isabelle. Mojo immediately got the spirit to bring her outside so that Ryan's dustoff evac drone could get her off to safety, even amidst all of the screaming in sheer horror at a combination of the combat, explosives, and possession as she was quickly crammed into the valkrie module on his drone as the aircraft took off at high speed to his safe house.

Seeing the extra work they would need to do in this situation, and also realizing that KE would be investigating the location at this rate, M3chan1c made another call, this time to Lord Emberrage, promising him three toxic mages in exchange for releasing a horde of fire-spirits to start torching other parts of the district, something to distract KE enough and make the mafia warehouse incident look like a freak accident during the carnage. With an extra half-hour available to them, the runners scoured the warehouse, Mojo's fire spirit blasting out the water it could as they searched, up until M3chan1c released his drone net after finally finishing with his vehicles, sending off a net of flying-eyes and fly spies, he eventually peered the smoke enough to spot the target crate, which Bulldozer quickly hefted onto the waiting GMC Armadillo outside, which immediately sped off at high speed in response, moving for the delivery. Hopping into Broken-Hand's car, M3chan1c sped off, making for home.

Aftermath

Though, a ping soon came for the runner, notifying him that his vehicle had been pulled over by Knight-Errant. Quickly asking Mojo Joe for a favor, the mage stepped into the AR display of his towing Dodge General Trailer, managing to ward off the officers with a lie that the car was damaged in the cross-fire of a street war, and that he himself was already airlifted by docwagon and was getting patched up. Checking the registry of the car and spotting the contract on M3chan1c's fake SIN, they bid him to have a good day and let the vehicle continue to go, the runners were home free.

Bolt contacted the party after the package was delivered, apparently the Mafia was disappointed by the burning down of the warehouse lot, though, as the fires were somewhat controlled, and Knight Errant never got involved, or even investigated the incident to find a connection to the crime family, they forgave such a matter, simply dropping the bonus that Mojo had Negotiated earlier on in exchange for not punishing the runners. As Mojo complained about the loss of extra Nuyen, M3chan1c slapped him with a slap patch to deal with his strain to shut him up finally.

Driving off to M3chan1c's old place, the rigger glanced over to Godai, tossing the keys to the apartment, giving it to him as a gift and promising to get the landlord to pass him the rent contract. Speeding off deeper into Downtown, the group eventually made their way to the Richmond Highlands in a rather secure, obscure, and simple suburb. Stopping at the safe house he got from Dr. Shinra during a run long ago, he lead the others inside, the sight of Isabelle sleeping on the couch inside peacefully. After cleaning himself up and having a drink to cool off, he sat beside her, immediately being hugged by her as the two broke down into sobs, simply cradling each other and refusing to let go. Once they settled down, Mojo Joe stepped up, once again apologizing for the previous situation at the warehouse, it was at that point where the slap patch wore off, causing exactly enough stun to his body that he blacked out, collapsing on the floor in a heap for Broken-Hand to drag back to one of the Valkyrie modules.

Thanking his friends, and promising to make things right by them for helping him in such a dire time, M3chan1c simply sat still with his wife, finally back in his arms once more after so much time.

Rewards

Run Rewards!!!

20k nuyen - 10 RVP

8 CDP - successfully negotiating then getting a penalty on the pay

10 karma - 10 RVP

Guts or 20 CDP - 10 RVP

2 CDP

Optional:

Shoot First Don't Ask for -2 KARMA

Impenetrable Logic for -3 KARMA

Battle Hardened (up to 2 levels) for -2 KARMA per level

Tough As Nails (1 level) (Stun) for -5 KARMA

Ascension for M3chan1c

Game Quotes

"Listen, I may or may not have had a spirit possess your wife for her safety." "You fucking WHAT?!" "I said it's for her safety!".

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Mojo Joe: "I am happy a person I now consider a friend got a happy ending. We did not meet on the best of terms... hell, they were rather sour. But at the end of it all seeing him reunited with the one he loves was one of the best experiences I have ever had as a runner. It was worth every spare bit of effort and pain it took. I wish them both happiness and I hope to work with everyone here again."

M3chan1c: "She's finally back.. I can't believe it's finally happened. As much as I wish we could have done this clear of the mafia, even if I had to work with one of the cursed bastards to get this done, it's all for good in the end. I'm gonna owe my friends a whole heap of favors, but it's damn worth it now that I get to hold her in my arms again, now I just gotta find out where I go from here."