Aching & Festering

Aching & Festering
Part of Festering Infestation
Date 2082-04-11 GM Asmodeus Location Seattle, Renraku Arcology Status Threat Level: Semi-Prime
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven None?	Tamanous & Black Lodge
Babylon Zenith Vip3r Skimmer
Casualties and losses
None.	Organ Farm

Summary

Tamanous gets its largest organ farm in Seattle destroyed! Victory... right?

Context

Due to the course of Festering Infestation it's become increasingly clear that Tamanous' operations in Seattle have outgrown their limitations. This temporarily exposed them, but ever since they've gone deeper underground and out of sight. This wasn't enough to avoid attention, as the little slip-up was all it took to attract the wrong kind of attention. Mr. Herenight has been tracking the organ farm for a time, purely for the sake of teaching the crime syndicate a lesson of exposing infected so openly to the rest of society.

Funeral

Darcy meets all four runners at Jane's funeral. It's a somber moment as the pastor leads the procession, only a few people attending the ceremony. Still, it's more than what most people get these days. After, she meets the runners inside the wooden chapel nearby alongside Ghaz and L'Etranger, both of whom arrived on request. L'Etranger provides information once Darcy explains her intel gathering and that it might've borne fruit regarding the evidence they have. Ghaz knew a thing or two and sent for the Night Throne to send their rat -- the new vampire thrall is more than open about his former affiliations and tells what little information he has. While it's not much, it's a start: an elevator shaft leading up to the ground floor, fourth basement level beneath the Arcology, water and bells. Babylon doesn't really trust the slimy bastard, however, and mind probes him without mercy. Though he doesn't appreciate this, he's not really in any position to resist either.

Preparations

While Vip3r goes to Zenith's place with the rest of the party and sets herself down comfortably (as much as she can, being harassed by Gomorrah, Babylon's ally spirit) and starts searching as much information about Foreman as possible. Bit by bit, either through the team's contacts or Matrix searches or just personal experience, they get at least some information -- Foreman's a geneticist, often runs under fake names, is a giant of naturally massive proportions and fortunately they get an image of the man. Grisly-looking and menacing, as expected, but this only fuels Babylon's thirst for vengeance further.

Ghaz offers his smuggling route knowledge since Zenith promises to owe him one and they're on good terms already. After the first day of preparations, missives for purchasing chemically sealed armor is sent out, longer term Matrix searches continue and Babylon steps out to take a drive to Everett, to meet with Herenight in person. Finding a ravaged gas station filled with carnage, she meets the man in the manager's back room, asking about what he knows. Surprisingly, Herenight's taken aback by the news and comes clean: he knows Foreman as a fellow member of the Black Lodge. Not only does he know he's a fomoraig, a troll variant of HMHVV, but also an accomplished blood mage. Herenight offers some advice on the powers of a fomoraig as well as what he may be capable of, as well as information he got from interrogating a corrupt UCAS lieutenant that there's a section of the underground tunnels filled with carbon monoxide. He suggests they pack oxygen tanks and bids Babylon farewell, appreciating being kept up to date on their progress.

On the way out, however, his banshee escort waves Babylon goodbye. The mage doesn't take kindly to infected acting all chummy and manifests a tiny ball of Sunbeam in her hand out of temptation. This swiftly gets a dismembered arm whacked at the back of her head as an improvised projectile. Rather than retaliating, she manages to contain herself and leave without incident. The following day, the team scouts out the Arcology mall and finds the elevator shaft -- however, once Vip3r loops security footage to let Skimmer inspect the wall more closely, he finds the stonework to be somewhat recent. The shaft's been walled shut and after Gomorrah confirms it, welded shut as well about a week ago, roughly at time of Jane's murder. They consider setting up an infiltration route here, but consider the public exposure not worth the risk and decide to try the smuggling routes.

The Descent

Ghaz invites them to a dinghy, banged up white van and drives them down in the underground, going as far as to the edge of Arcology grounds. After that, his smuggling route as a map will do the rest of them the hard lifting. Ladders, tight corridors, locked blast doors and water damaged, moldy tunnels are not the most fun environment to be in, especially since the flow of mana is choked and almost voided in these dead, abandoned tunnels. Eventually, they come across a corner where a static noise plays. The team freezes, tenses up and prepares to clear the corner. Finding a voicebox on the wall, Babylon attempts summoning a spirit to access it in her stead. However, due to the lacking connection to the Astral Plane, she finds it difficult to reach anything. After pushing her luck, something finally answers her call; a fledgling, low force Shadow Spirit of Muse. It obliges her by waddling over and pressing the play button on its oily, ichored limb. The recording booms from the speaker within, telling the team to leave or they'll all perish. This is their last warning, it says.

This isn't taken well by shadowrunners who have faced worse odds. As they contemplate whether to go forward or try another of the three smuggling routes Ghaz knows of, Babylon's subjected to a sudden, overwhelming pang of pain. A ritual spell of pure, sadistic agony wracks her mind and overwhelms her thoughts, causing her to collapse in paralyzing torment. As Zenith and Skimmer step closer, Vip3r's too stunned from the sudden development to do the same. It's at that moment that Zenith notices a tiny rat crawling up Babylon's thigh. Being strapped with -something- he pulls out his weapon and aims at it, meeting it eye to eye before it bites down on Babylon's thigh and explodes. The shockwave hits Babylon the hardest, but Zenith and Skimmer eat a faceful of it as well. All four get ringing ears and minor concussions, but the agonist spell wears off, thankfully for Babylon. She's treated with a medkit for a brief moment as the team immediately turns paranoid over every little hole in the wall. Vip3r and Zenith carefully shimmy the voice box open as another message rings through, telling them they've chosen poorly and none of them will leave here alive.

Turns out, there's a receiver antenna and a commlink connected to a small information drive to store messages. Creative, but the commlink does have a data bombed file that almost catches Vip3r at the last second. Unfortunately, the contents are far from helpful: "Nice try, intruder, but no cigar. You're going to die, you know." AFter this heavy impact, they advance down the route bruised for wear and come across a cross-section, all three paths forward closed by soundproofed blast doors. They contemplate which way to go and end up choosing the left corridor. Zenith notices that it's far too quiet and with Babylon's confirmation realizes there's a silencing area spell on their location. Babylon attempts to disrupt it, but to no avail, so they try to continue forward -- the second the door is opened, they hear the cacophony of the feral ghouls on the other side and summon all of their combined strength to push the door back shut. Babylon calls on all of her spirits to assist hre in this endeavor and with just barely enough force to resist the horde, shove the heavy bulkhead back into its place.

This wasn't fun.

After that, they try the middle way and find it to be a pool -- a diving section, as shown in L'Etranger's memories. This shows they're going in the right place at least. As they dive in and Babylon helps Vip3r keep up due to her lack of swimming skills, Zenith shines his flashlight down to see Abrams lobsters -- one and a half meter long carnivorous sea critters. Vip3r recognizes them, knowing all too well they've got a nature for 'freeding frenzies' -- one which seems to trigger as they hone in on the rat blood coming off Babylon's armor. All of them begin slithering and flapping upwards towards the team, but Babylon's spirit movement helps propel them at inhuman speeds to the exit.

Finally, having cleared this issue, they come across a catwalk down yet another corridor, nearing their objective as they actually spot a security camera. As they try approaching it, Zenith and Skimmer spot rats on the move once again, this time in great numbers. Babylon does her best to conceal them all with illusionist stealth, but Vip3r's lack of meat skills end up not fooling the security camera's sensor arrays. It spots where something's moving and the rats begin honing in on the location. Quick thinking from Vip3r faking her escape back down the corridor, then running forward again and Babylon distracting the rats with loud noise using psychokinesis wastes a good bunch of the rat bombs, them jumping on the catwalk in droves and exploding with a colossal bang. The remainder get disoriented and disabled with a Chaotic World spell, giving the team time to clear the blown catwalk's gap. Finally, Vip3r gets hands on this offline host's devices -- to her, its device rating is laughable and she infiltrates the rusty tetanus-filled cube host with ease. While there are several spiders present, she evades their detection masterfully.

Once inside, she starts getting her bearings. First, devices. Camera feeds, organizational files, floor plans. She accesses what she pleases, when she pleases, and even encryption and data bombs don't phase her at this point. She's been pushed around enough on the way here, but the Matrix is her turf. The spiders are unaware of the technomancer infiltrating their system even as she checks the cameras and spots Foreman in the organ farm's overseer's office on the other end of the compound. She leaves the mantraps surrounding the place cracked before letting go, making sure they all have a clear avenue. Unable to resist getting some payback, however, she leaves with a parting gift, Resonance Spiking one of the colossal rust construct personas that are Tamanous spiders with jarring amounts of data destruction. It shears off practically an entire limb of the persona, but it doesn't seem to notice until after she's left the host. High speed, low drag.

Unfortunately, while she's being held up by a spirit and groping a camera, Zenith and Skimmer hear a patrol coming by to investigate the noise. A corpulent abomination, a walking organ farm on legs like the one Samsara encountered in Pulling It By The Roots

Aftermath

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Rewards

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