Reject Enlightenment

Reject Enlightenment
Part of The Crow of Seattle
Date 2084-09-02 GM Asmodeus Location Seattle Status Threat Level: Prime
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Charon Black Lodge N-51 Rosenkurtz	Sea Dragon	Draco Foundation	Monolith	Aztechnology
Babylon Bleach Katherine Tyler Mojo Joe Shy Thunder	Sea Drake Trio Unbreakables Master Shedim	Haemothurge Security Detail	Monolith Preachers Nuclear Spirit	Huitzilopochtli Woedica Kryptman
Casualties and losses
Kate had to burn edge to live.	Verlaine survived. Edmund and Tohunga died in an explosion. Master Shedim was permanently destroyed in the gene therapy.	Jaethal and Sigrun, two of the security detail members were killed. Catherine the Mundane survived.	Nuclear Spirit disrupted, 1 warrior fell in battle.	Woedica joined the Wild Hunt. Huitzilopochtli's fate is unknown.
Crowning run signaling the official end of The Crow of Seattle metaplot's primary storyline. Counts as Initiation/Ascension/Submersion where applicable. Several points of Edge were burnt on the run.

Summary

Charon attempts to finally strike back at Leviathan and get her body back.

Background

See The Crow of Seattle. Charon's managed to break most of the shackles keeping her in line and now seeks to regain her body by having a team assemble and capture the Force 20 Master Shedim alive.

The Meet

The meet occurs piecemeal in an Awakened BMW Luxus limousine. The limousine goes by the name of Gilgamesh and finds the troll, elves and humans to be irritating passengers. Katherine Tyler gets warned by Masaru to not cross him by going on the job. Her and Shy both get sent a pre-recorded message from Asahiro whose diviners have seen the end of a shedim infestation in the cards. Thunder, Bleach and Babylon get less ominous portents, although Babylon gets contacted by Silas Vespasiano regarding the job. Mojo Joe encounters Ezekyle Burton who reveals his nature to be that of a relatively potent Horror Show shedim wishing to be freed from the Master Shedim, who he fears may attempt to re-assert control over Burton in the future. Mojo agrees considering this being will aid him in clearing the infestation's root cause.

• Shy strives to aid Charon who has promised to use the Lodge's vast influence to aid the N-51 in the future if she survives.
• Babylon plans on letting the Lodge get destroyed, she's more interested in saving the Baobhan Sith spirit pacted to Charon.
• Katherine Tyler intends to play both sides and destroy the Master instead of capturing it for Charon.
• Bleach intends to do the job and help Charon.
• Thunder intends to do the job and help Charon by capturing the spirit in unique mage restraints.
• Mojo Joe intends to destroy the Master Shedim at any cost; helping Charon or the Lodge is secondary and mostly irrelevant.

The Plan

The plan is at first horrifyingly bleak. Mojo received some intel about the locations: the Master has some kind of ace in the sleeve against Charon, its lair is underground, Leviathan provides it with drowned corpses of sailors lost at sea to possess and hitsquads coordinated by sea drakes will regularly mobilize to track Charon down. He also got a joker card with a question mark, though he's missing the intent of it. Limited intel is received at first, but eventually The Golden Hind manages to uncover some intel, as do Der_Opa and Treasa ke'Vedryn. The former uncovers limited information of a mage in Tacoma's docks that might be useful information-wise if she can be extracted. Trea'sa refuses to perform Astral Doppelgänger on Babylon as she's not touching this run with a ten foot pole, but offloads the responsibility to an 'acquaintance' that she guides Babylon to go meet.

The Run

This contact turns out to be Harlequin, the one who held Charon's leash before. He assures the elf is hit with the Compulsion power after a brief back and forth to betray the team at the right moment and ensure that the Master Shedim is not touched. The rest of the team discovers the true identity of the 'mage' at the Tacoma Docks -- Woedica Kryptman, a former blood mage held captive by the Draco Foundation for research purposes who is performing some kind of magical research by the docks under careful guard. They drive a boat close to do a quick smash and grab, but the security detail has a heavily augmented mundane that completely destroys Kate's speedboat and engages in a bloody, drawn out brawl with the CAS Navy trooper. In the end of the fight, much is lost and gained; Kate is almost killed in a lethal point blank explosion as a bomb is slammed right into her chestplate and detonated in a vice tight grapple by the shotgunner, Catherine. Shy, Woedica Kryptman and Bleach are all completely soaked in Kate's blood, contaminated with Strain 2 and 3. While Bleach has no injuries, having managed to get possessesed by Mojo Joe's water spirit to kidnap Woedica in the midst of chaos, Woedica and Shy are heavily injured and are exposed to both strains simultaneously. Kate finally manages to get barely conscious and pilots the stolen Vory boat away as it's barely left intact, the Draco Foundation security member having been blown out into the water by the explosion.

Woedica is aware that the experimental burnout assassin research called Project Yang has an escapee once she's given the chance to make a call to one of her old friends in Aztechnology, a man called Rafael. She suggests taking a look at the tracking chip data and Kate locates it in the vicinity of Mt. Rainier. Bleach is all too aware of the Monolith forces there and advises extreme caution. While a strike team heads there using a favour from a contact to get a helicopter, they approach on foot and get caught in a three-way fight between Huitzilopochtli the assassin, three Monolith snipers, a Nuclear Spirit and a pair of Hopper Shedim sent to track down Moonblessed Crescent-Slash, the Baobhan Sith that tagged along. The team manages to get Huitzilopochtli to tag along by using Woedica's command codes that the personafix is programmed to obey and disrupts the Nuclear Spirit and Shedim enough to get a relatively clean exfil.

As they're heading back, the site back home is under attack. Assassins have found Shy's safehouse and an Unbreakable and a sea drake assassin pierce the building, nearly killing the remaining residents. Woedica's still sick and Shy is also running a high fever. Charon and Crescent-Slash attempt evac as Thunder's kneecapped by the assassin's blade and the Unbreakable is hard for even Shy to overpower. Finally, the shedim falls and Shy's motion sense powers as an adept reveal the camouflaged sea drake, allowing her to capture the damn rascal alive.

When Babylon returns she successfully mind probes Verlaine the assassin, one of Leviathan's fanatical in-house runners and assassins. A powerful mystic adept, she feels worthless for having betrayed her Grandmother but the team keeps her alive as a potential bargaining chip down the line, if for no other reason then to keep Leviathan off their backs.

Finally, Mojo Joe has two leads for additional aid: the Wild Hunt misplaced one of its hounds in the forests of Sophocles and Ezekyle Burton is a suspicious shedim son of a bitch that might have more useful information. The latter is visited first by Bleach, Kate and Mojo. Bleach and Mojo manage to make a convincing argument to ask Burton for further aid, so Burton whispers Ysrthgrathe's name into Kate's ear, addling the navy soldier's already compromised brain with the mind-rending, cognitohazardous chill of a true Horror's name. He promises that uttering his name out loud will give even the Master some pause, but he won't join the fight himself, not unless Mojo temporarily binds him to turn him into a Great Form. Mojo considers it, but thinks of what a terrible idea it is and settles for the intel.

The trio then heads to the forest and Kate performs Wild Summoning with her arcane knowledge, using the ace in the hole that is Crescent-Slash's in-depth knowledge of Seelie etiquette. The hound appears, still utterly livid from the humiliation Mojo Joe inflicted upon it during Top of the Totem Pole. It demands a king's ransom to even attempt calling for its master - either a sacrificial eye from Mojo or a horrendous amount of karma. Ultimately, Mojo agrees to the karma and the Wild Hunt arrives to witness the foolish mortals that provoked its ire. Chalcis, the Hunt's leader himself rides out of the blood fog and speaks in Sperethiel to the team. It demands a king's ransom as well -- 100 karma or the captive Sea Drake. Woedica interjects via DNI and offers to pay the price instead, having been fascinated with spirits all her life. Shy's reluctant to let the blood mage go since she's tried to co-operate so far, but eventually the woman's request is fulfilled and Chalcis permits the team to leave alive, having found the sea drake's confession of their cult considering their shedim cannon fodder to be "their very own Wild Hunt, complete with a pack of wild dogs to sic on their quarries." Chalcis despises this perversion of their true Hunt and while he can't intervene with Leviathan directly, he assures that the Hunt will not hinder their efforts.

Woedica disappears and the team uses intel that Kate asked from Von Neumann to discover the land tunnel leading to the site. They then request the N-51 to do daring screening operations navally to lure the biodrone security away, allowing Kate to dive in and breach one of the adjacent rooms underwater. Crescent-Slash holds the water back with a physical barrier while Kate gets the next bulkhead open and the team gets inside the underwater base the Master bases its lodge in. Charon and Crescent-Slash head down the tunnel to clear their escape route of traps while the team enters the Master's lair.

Immediately their armor is nearly melted, the entire party cooked alive in hellfire and their thoughts twisted to serve the Master's needs, but powerful spell resistance, apotropaic arts, banishment and battlefield control via barriers allows them to survive. Thunder takes some of the toxic foci that he'd received from an old man during Sprinting Gallows and has Bleach throw them with expert aim, blowing them up and contaminating the local domain with the powerful toxic power the foci had contained. The domain tainted, it no longer boosts but hinders the Shedim forces. Kate's nearly forced to kill herself with mind control, but the team manages to stop the controlling Hopper in time. Finally, Bleach lands a clutch throw to land a tiny cold iron knife into the Master's skull, inheriting the cold iron allergy of Charon's old body. Unable to use its own powers, it relies on spells instead and nearly kills the party twice over again with sundering firepower while they clear the path for Kate to utter Ysrthgrathe's name, catch the Master off guard and with a twisting of fate, slam the restraints onto her through subduing combat.

The retreating battle begins and the astral shedim rip Mojo Joe's Guardian spirit into pieces. The astral gateway broken, no more reinforcements can come. The Unbreakable runs right through Babylon's desperate barrier setups with ease until she burns her nervous system trying to channel enough mana to put sturdy resistance in. Finally, the barriers are strong enough and the astral intersection banishes the relentless monstrosity. Horror Shows, Blade-Summoned and more harry Shy, Thunder, Bleach and nearly kill them by turning one of their own explosives against them. Only Bleach saves half of the party by catching the stick of C4 in time and throwing it as far away as possible.

Once retreated, Charon is there to cover their retreat and with rage casts a Force 32 Manaball that immediately incapacitates her, although it disrupts all remaining Shedim forces, few of them left hanging on the astral aimlessly. At the escape tunnel, the two remaining sea drakes, Tohunga and Edmund pin the team down and are nearly successful in stalling for Leviathan's next wave of attackers to arrive, only Huitzilopochtli the Jabberwock Assassin and Shy have different plans. Risking the minefield set up to hinder passage, the two Traceless Walk adepts bypass triggering any of them and Shy blasts one of them with her Barrett with a daring leap while Huitzilopochtli grabs one of the mines and slams it into the other drake's face, nearly exploding into pieces itself. The two drakes flatlining causes a Dead Man's Trigger, however, and the remaining mines detonate, Shy managing to dive into an adjacent doorway while Huitzilopochtli gets buried in the cave-in. Babylon uses an Earth Spirit summoned to clear the rubble and get them out of the area, but when digging towards the Jabberwock, its body isn't found, only a bloodstain.

Aftermath

Evading detection requires Kate to owe another favor to Von Neumann in the future, but it assures safe transportation to Puyallup where Mr. Herenight awaits with the secure Faraday Cage'd mobile genevat. Kate is endowed Biotechnology knowledge through a spirit bargain Babylon managed to strike and she enters the truck as it drives away, jacking into the terminal to start operating the technological aspect of the treatment. Herenight observes the ritual carefully and even reads Kate's mind, but she manages to just barely hide her true intentions of reversing the treatment's effects. The intent had been for the treatment to affect a mutable enough genetic structure and volatile aura to use great amounts of magical power to force HMHVV to evolve into a stronger strain through inverse correlation. Shedim Force goes down, HMHVV's force goes up. Kate flips this to a direct correlation instead and burns the Shedim to permanent dissipation, razing HMHVV's power alongside it. Charon's body is left uninfected and the ritual Herenight performs shifts the body from the elven wreck to the old, true body she had 60 years ago.

Charon wakes up and recovers later, discovering her fae-like SURGE is still relatively intact. With a stable spirit connection to Crescent-Slash, she's welcomed back into the Black Lodge and she re-establishes one of the chantries in Seattle, intending on bringing in positive change in the Lodge's ranks in North America, controlling the world to improve it and seeking Lodge acceptance to Emergent members.

• Woedica appears to Shy later, promising in no certain terms her future appearances. Chalcis will offer Woedica to provide occasional services, although at a steep cost and never in defiance of the Seelie Court or dragonkind.
• Mojo Joe survives and gets to bring about yet another great shedim infestation's end. Crescent-Slash provides him with a private tutoring session on fae charms and persuasiveness, improving his social finagling.
• Babylon has a massive debt to the spirit Rosenkurtz that practically coerced her into funding an entire factory shop as well as a great Spirit Marker, demanding a permanent power site at a location of its choosing.
• Katherine Tyler suffers severe cognitohazardous damage, although Charon offers her a curious choice of repairing some of the damage to her astral shape and possibly awaken her hidden talents, if any, at the price of her severing all ties to Masaru. She wants future technomancers to possibly join the Lodge if she ever convinces the Black Council of such a drastic change. At least, she'd be an associate!
• Bleach made contact with Ezekyle Burton and the man, if he can be called that, offers to get to know her better in the future, provided that she keeps her word and never seeks to harm him.
• Thunder realizes the true danger of toxicity and swears off all toxic foci in the future. He's also given a scavenged mil-spec undersuit that Shy refits for him, a model from Proteus AG's HTR forces. It's highly advanced!

And Charon returns her life in the Black Lodge, having considered walking away to have her own life. She feels guilty over all the lives she drained and destroyed for revenge in the half of a century she's lived in the Sixth World and seeks to put the rest of her life to use, living in the dark underbelly of evil to try and make a difference where she fits best. The Black Lodge may just chew her up and spit her out like it does many others or likeminded, more benevolent members might coordinate their efforts to overpower the greedy and self-centered ideologies that also exist within its ranks. One woman can't make the greatest difference in the world, but one thing is certain. It's helpful to have a sympathetic figure in the ranks of such a grand organization, even if she's unable to reform it. The Lodge won't become a humanitarian organization as long as its war with the Dragons continues and it will never accept second place to anyone. For an old-timer like Charon who ultimately views humans as the 'standard' this might just fit fine. Nobody said she's a perfect person either.

Leviathan's infuriated by her hard-earned artifact becoming worthless; the ancient tome in which the Master had been bound becomes nearly useless as there is no spirit to return to it. The Lodge returns to Seattle and while she can continue fighting them, two of her greatest assassin drakes are dead. Lofwyr blames her for her folly despite being completely complicit in it before, asking what she was thinking by using shedim of all things. The Great Dragons bicker and argue amongst themselves and only Harlequin looks at the true victory - the Horrors and their lackeys weren't allowed a foothold in this world, even as weapons. He's never the Lodge's friend, but with an elven woman as his pawn, he managed to at least do this much.

Seattle's shadowruns continue, threats rise and threats fall. A fragile calm is achieved. The City of the Dead does not become a reality. And in the shadows stands a former vampire, feeling freer than ever in her own skin once more and by her side, the first Unseelie member of the Black Lodge by association. A true traitor of her entire realm with all the spiteful venom of a woman wronged. And not only that, a woman and a fae.

Run Rewards for "Reject Enlightenment" (100 RVP x 4.66 Runtime Multiplier = 466 RVP)

• 100 Karma (100 RVP)
• 1,000,000 Nuyen in Deltaware for Mundanes (250 RVP)
• 120,000 Nuyen worth of Non-Ware Gear for Mundanes (30 RVP)
• Deltaware Access for Awakened & 1,000,000 Nuyen worth of Deltaware for Awakened (265 RVP)
• 60,000 Nuyen worth of magical gear for Awakened (15 RVP) (Can be extended with the liquid nuyen)
• 240,000 Nuyen worth of Non-Ware Gear to Everyone (Stacks with Mundane Non-Ware Gear) (60 RVP)
• If any money isn't used, cut the remainder by 50% and keep it as liquid cash.
• +5 Black Lodge Reputation (Herenight Divined Kate and realized what she did, but at least the leak is plugged)
• -10 Great Dragons Reputation (Leviathan is fucking malding but at least Verlaine is alive.) Babylon is exempt from this because Harlequin thinks it's funny.
• 1 Street Cred (1 RVP)
• 50 CDP (19 RVP)
• Thunder can buy the Proteus AG Salvaged Mil-Spec Armor (Ares Bug-Stomper with custom addons)
• Shy can take the nuyen reward RVP as karma explicitly to increase her Magic Score.
• Shy can get paydata from Woedica to remove her Wanted quality with Aztechnology
• Babylon can spend all gear rewards into Luxury Lifestyle at Gear Rates (1,120,000 Nuyen for Luxury)

Consequences

• 1. Mojo Joe has to pay 50 Karma to a Wild Hunt Hound
  2. Babylon accepted a Rating 6 Spirit Marker to Rosenkurtz and has to pay 250,000 Nuyen (possibly out of Gear Rewards) to get him 5 Tool Facilities
  3. Kate suffers a second rank of A Terrible Fascination for uttering Ysrthgrathe's name. Herenight also knows his name too. Kate has attracted his attention (Attention of a Terror)
  4. Woedica Kryptman is no longer available as a contact to her previous group. Those who lose it can refund CDP.
  5. Charon approaches Kate later about a very enterprising experiment if she's willing to reconsider her loyalty to Masaru (Cellular Repair x 9 + Latent Emergence (421.25 RVP) out of run rewards.) This requires breaking her loyalty to Masaru and opens the opportunity to take Charon at 6 Loyalty.
  6. Shedim infestation of Seattle is ravaged completely. Seattle's growing reputation as the City of the Dead fades away into obscurity. Leviathan's grip on the city weakens and the Lodge re-establishes some of its chantries in the sprawl, but remains cautious.

Contacts

• 1. For Babylon: Rosenkurtz, 6/2 F10 Great Form Task Spirit
  2. For Kate: 1 Chip owed to Von Neumann
  3. For Shy: Woedica of the Hunt, 6/5 Conscript of the Wild Hunt
  4. For Bleach & Shy: Ezekyle Burton, 2/3 """"Ghoul Therapist""""
  5. For Everyone without Dragon connections: Charon & Crescent-Slash, 8/4 Black Lodge Immortals

QUALIFIES AS AN INITIATION/ASCENSION/SUBMERSION IN CASE ANYONE WAS WONDERING

Game Quotes

Amusing quote from game.

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Bleach - How can you know you're alive if you don't stare death in the face? I don't know. I kept the samurai on the docks from putting a fist through my chest, I handled explosives capable of turning me into red mist, and I faced down spirits that would be worshiped as gods by the weak minded. It's like walking a razor's edge. I danced its length until I looked that Proteus suit in the face, and then I knew fear like a cold shower, waking me up from the delirium I'd been riding from the moment I sat in that car. One slip of the finger from that bomb the corpse threw and I would have died. Mojo would have died, Thunder would have died, and it would have been my fault.

Even after taking the Guts, I was still scared. I'm still scared now, and it's been hours since we met with Johnson and got paid. Talking to people didn't help. The apartment didn't feel safe so I fled to the vault. All this gear, all this weaponry, all these friends, and I go back to the same place I started in this city months ago, a hole in the ground nobody can find. Maybe I'll be less terrified in the morning.

Maybe I'll be less terrified if I just take another dose of the drug to help me sleep.

Katherine Tyler - A job well done. It was a hell of a time, though. Hopefully that puts the nail in the coffin on these Shedim throughout the city. Masaru will be pissed, but I made my choice and I'll have to live with the consequences. As always Babs and Shy were extremely dependable, but the new kids sometimes outshone even us. All the gear and ware in the world can't buy the skills you need to do a job like this, and they all seem to have them. I look forward to seeing them around. If, that is, I survive my next meeting with Masaru.

Mojo Joe: "I did it... it is done. All this time... all this effort... and it was completed. I wish I could have brought Broken-Hand with me but given what we went up against... I do not know if he would have had enough luck to make it through. God do I have a lot to explain to him once this is all done. But... still, I did it. The massive invasion in Seattle is gone and more of the truth of this shithole has been revealed to me. I feel... numb in a way. I need to celebrate... yeah... maybe that will cheer me up."

Thunder - Mention Shedims again and I'll gear-up. They don't belong here and I'll do what I can to send them back or destroy them. This, and the outlook of great rewards is why I intermediately applied for this job as I heard about it. I expected something like the job I helped out with on the island, but this was very different. So many supernatural things: Riders, Portals, Huitzilopochtli ...and shedim. A true learning experience which probably saved my soul from getting entangled with toxicity. I hadn't realized before what harm those toxic foci could cause to their users. I'm happy we blew one up. I've got to figure out what to do with my other toxic focus. Blow it up? Burry it? or keep it for an occasion to use evil against evil?

Shy - Never i was so worried during a job, between the Shedims, the Sea Drakes and the infection of Strain 3 going rampant in my veins...I was sure that i would be kicking the bucket at some point during that run. I'm so pissed off that they sacrificied Woedica like this, yet we had that spec ops of her to help us and it helped greatly.

Thunder thanks Charon for a good contract and re-pays the 21 carma she lent him to bind to the weapon focus knucks during the last part of the run.