Come Out and Play

Come Out and Play
Part of The Metroplex Governor Race of '84
Date 2084-07-19 GM Sarcarian Location Downtown, Seattle Metroplex Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Dark Star Security	Rival Runners
Draven Eidolon Pulse	Gecko Mustang Vortex

Summary

In which the runners are hired by the New Century Party to ensure the safety of their candidate at a public rally.

Background

There's bad blood between the Technocrats and the New Century Party ever since the latter split off from the former years ago; some old-timers in the Technocrats remember the slight, and don't appreciate being told off by political upstarts. In order to sabotage the NCP's campaign, they've hired a team of runners (the same ones from Metroplex Muckraking, now on their last chance) to do a little bit of terrorism and depress turnout at their public rally's. After a minor incident earlier in the week, one of the NCP's backers - a diviner working for the Illuminates of the New Dawn - has divined that a major attempt will be made at an upcoming event hosted by the University of Washington. The IND has covertly passed this information on to the Darcy Campaign's security contractor, Dark Star Security, who - being run by Rebel Enterprises, which was founded by former runners - appreciate the value of unconventional tactics, and who have decided to hire on extra hands from the shadows for aid.

The Meet

The meeting takes place at Rebel Network HQ in Downtown Seattle - Mr. Johnson makes no secret about who he's working for. Each of them manages to arrive at the meet without incident by suitably disguising themselves and not bringing anything overtly illegal. Mr. Johnson (a well-built orc man with black cybereyes and a fibre-optic fauxhawk) meets with them into the lobby and brings them into a conference room; he explains that they will require the group to act as security contractors for an event due to occur in a few days. He tells them that they have reason to suspect that shadowrunners have been hired to disrupt the event, and wishes to make use of their expertise in order to anticipate and counter the threat. After pursuing their contract (and unsuccessfully attempting to negotiate for hazard pay), each runner signs on the dotted line and accept the job.

Mr. Johnson reveals their principal - Angela Darcy - and that the party will need to protect her while she holds a campaign rally at Seattle University at an open-air amphitheater on campus. Their intel suggests that those responsible are proficient across meatspace, the Matrix and astral space, so the trio are assigned to cover angles which best suit their capabilities and assigned a handler within the security team who they can liaison with, though they are asked to keep their presence and purpose secret from Darcy herself.

The Plan

Studying an AR map of the venue, Eidolon spots out probable sniper positions and picks an appropriate perch to counter-snipe from. He also takes a trip to the campus with his new bodyguard license, talking his way past campus security, and does some physical recon, determining that there's no bombs under the stage and noticing a structural weakness in the clamshell of the amphitheater that would make for a good spot to shoot through; using his math SPU, he calculates a vector and figures out the most likely spot for a sniper to shoot at the spot form if they intended to hit someone center-stage on the other side.

Meanwhile, Pulse - taking a cue from GOD - purchases several bird drones in order to have extra eyes in the sky and positions them around campus; he also hacks into the University's host in order to identify the CCTV and campus security's communications network for access during the event. He also logs onto the Helix to see what sort of information he can find about the NPC - the European datahaven's info is a bit sparse, but he does find a number of posts talking about the party's main backers, the Illuminates of the New Dawn, and the various conspiracies surrounding them.

Draven spends his prep time summoning and binding several spirits so as to have as many extra sets of astral hands available as he can get, managing to get a few of them to answer his call and agree to a longer-term arrangement.

Eidolon also calls in a few contacts for assistance - he pays 3310 to provide some traffic analysis and access to cameras in the surrounding area, as well as facial recognition software to help identify anyone particularly suspicious, and to cut down on the amount of ancillary hacking Pulse has to do. He also calls News Van Dan to get the scoop on who may be targeting the NCP, but gets mostly conspiracy theory-level answers. As well, he calls Jennifer Ashton and pays her to bring some fans to the rally, hoping that it will help identify anyone suspicious in the crowd; this has the knock-on effect of increasing the noise in the vicinity, though it does give a boost to the rally's Matrix visibility.

The Run

The day of the rally arrives and the team stake out the campus as people file into the crowd area and the candidate takes the stage; the action which follows is broken up into by plane of existence - meatspace, Matrix and astral - with each runner covering one aspect of it:

Meatspace

Eidolon takes another sweep of the crowd and doesn't notice anything amiss, so he sneaks his way about half a kilometer the east and starts to scale a building to get into counter-sniping position - one of the rival runners witnesses him sneak away, but loses track of him when he puts on his RPC cloak. He is successful in getting into position without being spotted by onlookers or the police, and about an hour or so into the event spots the distinctive glint of light off of a scope in one of the positions he identified earlier; going into counter-sniper mode, he loads up the subsonic rounds and takes a potshot at them (Gecko). This leads to a short sniper duel where Gecko actually gets the upper hand, managing to drop Eidolon briefly - until his kamikaze kicks in and gets him back onto his feet a few moments, surprising Gecko enough to get the drop on him and land a disabling hit to the arm. With his spot (and chance to take the shot) blown, Gecko wisely chooses to flee rather than continue to engage.

Matrix

Pulse sets up at a nearby cafe and, after hacking into the host and loading up fly-on-the-wall, has his agent set to observe Matrix icons in order to see through wrapper while he looks for more well-hidden ones in the vicinity. With his bird drones and access to the camera feeds he has a good overall view of the rally, which he feeds to the others to keep an eye on things. He manages to spot a hidden icon and follow the data trail back to a dwarven decker (Mustang) sitting in a cafe down the street, which he alerts the others to, but takes no action for the moment. Once Eidolon engages Gecko however he spots out the sniper's PAN and traces it back to Mustang, seeing that the decker is in the process of loading up the fuck-the-techno-special - he goes big or goes home and lands 3 marks on the enemy decker's pan, getting his attention enough to force the dwarf to search out the new threat. Pulse's deck proves the stronger one however, and Mustang isn't able to pinpoint him before Pulse bootstraps one of his trolling protocols and forces their deck to reboot and reformat itself. Dumpshocked and now unable to either cover his team or mess with the Matrix side of the rally, Mustang is likewise forced to flee the scene.

Astral

Draven posts up just to the south of the main crowd with a good view of the scene and has his bound spirits on patrol around the perimeter. He opens his third eye to view the astral, though he isn't particularly adept (heh) at this - the spirits however work well together, and the security present includes several awares who are on the lookout for trouble as well. The spirits manage to locate an astrally-projecting mage (Vortex) lurking about and intimidate him into going somewhere else; Vortex attempts to sneak around and whack Draven in the back of the head, but the spirits give him enough of a heads-up to take defensive action and avoid the hit. Draven attempts to fry Vortex with a manabolt, however the enemy mage's counterspelling allows him to swat it aside - he attempts to do the same to Draven, however the mysad is able to do the same to him. Vortex manages to disrupt one of Draven's spirits, but the elf himself proves to be too dodgy to take down, and he calls for astral backup. With his spotting for a ritual attack foiled and his allies attempts at sabotage likewise stopped in their tracks, the mage beats feet and retreats.

Aftermath

Thanks in large part to the runner's efforts, Darcy's rally goes off without a hitch, and her visibility on social media platforms gets a nice boost thanks to the influencer presence; Pulse, ever-incouragable scamp that he is, decides to leave his signature by creating a bombastic AR banner displaying the text "NCP Endorsed by Pulse", which Darcy manages to play off with gentle good humor. Dark Star Security meets up with the team and pays them the promised fee for their services, congratulating them on a job well done.

Rewards

10k nuyen (5 RVP) 6 karma (6 RVP) 10 CDP (4 RVP) +2 Rebel Network reputation

For Eidolon: Can purchase Guts @ chargen price (for risking death to complete the mission)

Narrative Consequences: The New Century Party's multimedia rally goes uninterrupted, allowing them to gain additional popular support among the youth demographic (+1 to election score for the NCP).

Game Quotes

"If it flies, it spies." -Pulse, referring to the fact that birds are drones

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Draven: "So I am definitely beginning to think that people only see the ears. Apparently runners these parts of little in the way of social skills and are willing to look to a newbie to close the deal. Suppose I better freshen up on my contract law and sweet talk. Maybe Mom has some good advice? If I going to keep being expected to do this, I better get good quick!"

Eidolon: Second run with that norse mage, seems new but a quick learner. We plugged a lot of holes and we spotted the OpFor relatively easily, though I got overconfident going for optimal offense and took one too many rounds... almost failed or even died because of it. Need to be more careful in the future. Our matrix help was kind enough to patch me up on the way to collecting our pay, had a brief talk about the dangers of drugs. I don't want to take them, but without them my reactions and speed just don't cut it... need to augment that to avoid drugs...