Stealing Books

Stealing Books
Date 2082-09-25 GM Aurora Location Redmond, Seattle Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Horizon
Voiceless z	Horizon Publishing House
Voiceless gets addicted to Kamikaze

Summary

In which z and Voiceless team up to steal books, one to distribute them to the people and one to learn to read.

Background

After the talk about robbing a library in the oldschool chat chat, the two runners decide to rob a publishing house instead.

The Meet

z does a matrix search, and finds a publishing house operating out of Redmond, owned by Horizon. The publishing house specializes in mostly matrix-published works on how socialism and communism (which is equates with fascism) is bad, how capitalism is good actually, and how unions lower the productivity and happiness of workers, among other hyper-capitalism talking points. They decide to rob the place and repurpose their equipment to publish works in support of communism and socialism.

The Plan

z spends a full FIVE DAYS doing tons of research and sleeping in order to get 24 hits on an 'extended matrix search'. Meanwhile Voiceless, unsupervised for an entire five days, decides to go out and fight some gangers. She tries to sneak near some Cutters, but is spotted by one of them, who throws a paper cup filled with ice and soda slurry at her. This, of course, triggers combat. After knocking two of them out and taking some fire, she attempts to run away (and takes a bit of damage from some mana bolts).

At the end of the 5 days, z has also attempted to reregister a Sprite "Engels", who told her to read more theory. Being back in contact, she says she assumed Voiceless had scouted out the facility during the period she was incommunicado. She replies that she had! (She had not.)

The Run

Voiceless uses her commlink's agent to get directions to the publishing house, where she breaks in to scout in advance. Inside, she sees a camera pointing at the exterior door, and decides to snip the wires leading from the camera into the wall. z, seeing the feed from Voiceless, asks if she needs any help. After some banter back and forth, she hacks the host. Inside, she sees a very bored-looking Spider who hasn't taken any matrix actions for forty minutes. She quickly hacks the camera system and disables the alert just before the bored Spider looks around the host again.

Meanwhile, z gets in her car and heads to the Redmond Publishing House as Voiceless scouts out the rest of the building. There is a very tired office worker inside near the printers. Once z arrives, she tries to sneak up and fails to remain hidden from an employee leaving from a different building owned by the same company. z completely fails to convince this person that she works here, and he attempts to call the cops. z squelches the commlink and Voiceless narcojets him before he can Karen to the police. This skeeves z out a bit, but she uses the employee's commlink to order 2000 copies of The Vengaboys' EP while Voiceless drags him into an alley. Voiceless also stole his pants.

Attempting to sneak back in, the tired office worker from before spots them both. z fails to squelch his commlink, and Voiceless barely manages to hit him with the narcojet. The two runners decide to pretend to fake a pocket-dial. They barely manage to get this to work, but KE still says they'll give a driveby in about half an hour. The runners move the Karen from outside into the publishing house (and Voiceless steal his shirt).

Before KE arrives, z uses Voiceless' commlink to upload the communist literature to the printer, which succeeds on the third attempt. Voiceless then starts packaging the new pamphlets. Then KE arrives and does a drive-by of the building, and the runners manage to keep quiet enough that KE doesn't investigate inside the building.

Before they leave, z prints off a series of learning to read and YA fiction for Voiceless.

Aftermath

The board spider z saw gets fired. Voiceless starts learning to read! z laughs happily as Horizon delivers several dozen boxes of communist literature to various businesses.

Rewards

z:

• SG 2 Discount
• 13 karma - 13 RVP
• 2 CDP

Voiceless:

• Buying off Illiterate at chargen price - 5 RVP
• Shoot First, Don't Ask - 2 RVP
• 5 karma - 5 RVP
• Good Shirt and Good Pants - 0.025 RVP
• 1950 nuyen - 0.975 RVP
• 2 CDP
• May make 5 selections on the Mundane Acension table as she finally reads her mail and discovers she had more resources than she thought.

Game Quotes

GM: You can print out an audio book. Wait, what did I just say?

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Voiceless I had no idea it'd take so long to research a publishing house, but it worked out pretty well! I picked a fight with a couple of gangers to pass the time, and then it was go time. We got in, tranquilized the two employees, and subverted their equipment to get a shipment of better pamphlets out to the public. I um... don't really know what the ones we made said, but Z said they were good, so they must be! I also came away with a whole slew of books and audiobooks to help me learn to read, so that's super neat!