This Is Halloween

This Is Halloween
Part of Hail to the Pumpking
Date 2082-10-31 GM Asmodeus Location Sophocles, Redmond Status Threat Level: Deadly
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Pump King Jack Bone Daddy	Shiawase	RATS
Babylon Nora Inu Katherine Tyler Lucky	Asahiro Kunitoshi	RATS
Casualties and losses
At least a few years of stress from Kate's lifespan	Imperial Kami Services Stealth Operations, 1 entire squadron was wiped out	RATS

Summary

Sophocles celebrates Halloween. Everyone has a merry time! Except Kate, Kate almost dies. Babylon gets bullied. Rekt.

Background

Pump King Jack swore not to return to the world of the living. He promised Babylon -- and of course he breaks the promise to return at Halloween and bring people the holiday spirit quite literally, just without any Karma drain this time. Preparations have been made. It's time.

The Meet

Problem is, he needs security to make sure nobody does any skulduggery. A bunch of very samaritan shadowrunners should do the trick. One of the ex-Starscreamers going by the name of Bone Daddy (the name stems from his tailored greyware being skeletal in appearance from head to toe) helps the team handle preparations.

The Plan

The plan is to get some Watcher spirits in position and check out any weird sightings in the area.

The Run

The run goes well -- at first.

Then Babylon's watchers start getting destroyed seemingly from nowhere. She tries tracking the culprit, but it's a tense hot couple of seconds. Lucky and Nora Inu spot some odd noises in nearby dumpsters, going to investigate and finding one of the steel dumpsters to be home to demon rats. Very quickly, they close the lid and try to drop a grenade inside, then push it as far away as possible. Unfortunately, the rats are of the Epsilon variant and electrocute Lucky unconscious thanks to the metallic dumpster's conductivity. The grenade cooks off and a pink mist fountain erupts from the dumpster. The celebrating civilians, not knowing any better, assume this to be intentional and applaud at the fireworks which Nora and the unconscious Lucky happily take credit for.

Babylon's astral searching leads her to find out that some trails lead underground into the sewers where Pump King Jack was first seen. When the team regroups, they take a very careful peek down with Babylon's astral form functioning as the pointwoman. They uncover extremely well hidden Shiawase operatives that get subdued after a horrifically close call of Matrix supported special operatives making liberal use of flanking, suppressive fire, setting up crossfires and employing mundane stealth. That's not all; with some sensor shenanigans, Kate discovers several high grade explosives hidden in the ceiling of the sewers. Estimating the explosive power, she eyeballs it to be enough to send the asphalt coating of the streets above to turn into lethal shrapnel if any one of them goes off. What's worse, they're on mundane timers to go off. Hacking them isn't an option and there's a positive current functioning as a trigger; if the electrical current coursing through the bomb frames is disrupted by any way, it'll detect it as tampering and detonates prematurely. Kate, as the resident bomb disposal expert very nervously begins disarming one after another, employing every last trick up her sleeve to safely disconnect the explosive materiel from the detonator mechanisms. She succeeds, thankfully, leaving Babylon to find out who killed her Watchers.

What ends up happening is that she finds not only a Shiawase null mage, an expert of Banishing, but some supportive long range fire that utterly destroys the air spirit she attempts to summon to aid her. **Three times in a row.** This makes her patience grow short, causing her to double barrier the null mage and Manabolt her to submission. Thankfully, this means that the greatest threats are defused: the stealth ops in the sewers and the astral countermeasures in the shape of this well trained null mage.

In the distance, as Jack is finally Called on the stage from the astral, the crowd cheers as he begins doing his acts and spooking young children with a playful twist. Some of the runners spot Asahiro observing the proceedings from a rooftop far, far away, leaving the area once he's confirmed his troops to be beaten back.

Aftermath

Sophocles has some much needed healing in the form of happy, innocent celebrations after all the horrors the populace has been through. Asahiro's plans to kill this supposed scourge of humanity were foiled. Kate is somehow still alive.

Rewards

• 15 Karma
• 12 CDP
• Optional Contact: Pump King Jack, 5/1 Halloween Spirit of Man (5 RVP or 10 CDP)
  • For Babylon: May purchase Loyalty 6 for Pump King Jack
  • For Kate: May purchase Jury Rigger at chargen rate (10 karma)

Game Quotes

>runner shoots a HE grenade into a dumpster full of demon rats >72P AP-3 >the dumpster is now red chunky salsa to the next LEVEL man

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Katherine Tyler

Why am I the bomb expert? Sometimes I hate being the bomb expert. We saved Sophocles, and Halloween was a blast. Well, like a fun blast. Not a literal C4 induced explosive blast. Thang god. We stuck it to Asahiro, and therefore to Shiawase. So it's a good day for me. I finally made friends with the King of Halloween. It was good to see people happy. Pretty much every job I do in Sophocles makes me feel good about myself after.