Night Shopping
| Night Shopping | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Mush | Major Corp | ||||||||
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Shy Swerve Voltage | |||||||||
Summary
The team is tasked with stealthily retrieving a journal of Black Magic before a virtual auction.
Background
Mush's benefactor had a journal stolen from her in the past that detailed black magic notes and research. Of considerable value and rarity, the journal had been posted for a virtual auction, about to be sold to the highest bidder. Quite obviously not wanting to pay for the goods that had been stolen from them, a team of shadowrunners were hired to retrieve the item before the sale. In addition to returning the stolen journal, they were tasked to hide evidence of the theft, to cause an embarrassment to the seller when they failed to produce the goods.
The Meet
The runners, each stressed with the importance of acting with discretion on the job, are tasked to meet the J in a public park. Told little more than that their contact was a fairly unorky looking ork, each of the three began to make their ways there. Swerve and Shy managed to move across town without incident, being able to show a modicum of ability to blend in. Voltage however, had issues. First doubling back to her apartment to grab Stick-N-Shock ammo, still dazed by the idea of a kill-free run, her clear Ancients affiliation and lack of concern for road rules soon drew the attention of Knight Errant. Voltage was soon caught in a high speed chase, pushing her bike to the limit to avoid the law. Unfortunately, passing through Renton has hazards, and she encountered a horde of middle school children leaving school. Voltage, the kindhearted person that she is, slowed down to avoid running over the mass of children. In typical Renton fashion, they returned the favor with shouted slurs. Voltage was not pleased. Eventually though, she managed to shake her tail and continue towards the meet.
In the mean time, Swerve and Shy threw food at pigeons and ducks, as a increasingly angry Mush glowered. Shy made awkward small talk, while Swerve silently roasted and enjoyed the weak sunshine. After about thirty minutes of this, Voltage finally arrived, unsubtly approaching the meeting point. With the team assembled, Mush slowly and deliberately explained the terms of the job. The book was to be returned, no signs of the theft should be left, and there absolutely should be no murders. After questioning, he reveals that the book is stored in a upper-middle class home and that it must be retrieved by the next day, but for more information, the job would need to be accepted. After getting verbal affirmation from each of the runners that they would abide by the rules of the job, with particular focus on Voltage, Mush elaborated and said that the Book was in the possession of DA Mark Donaghy and gave the address of his home. Leaving the rest of the job to the runners, he told them how to contact him after the job and left the park.
The Plan
Realizing that illict plans should perhaps not be discussed in a public park, the group traveled to a nearby bar, the Greasy Sprocket. While technically a biker bar, it catered mainly to posers, so the group faced no trouble once they took a quick look at Voltage, her clear affiliation and general demeanor scaring off the clientele. Knowing little about the DA or his residence, Voltage calls up a recently acquired contact of hers, Freya. While she was busy with her own work, she spares the time to conduct a matrix search on the DA. Soon, the team acquired a dossier of information on Donaghy, detailing his personal history, habits and family. Voltage, not actually having money, promised afterwards that she would pay Freya back. The team then decides to scout out the house, first astrally and then in person. They head outside of the bar to its dingy alley. Swerve takes a seat in the filth and astrally projects, leaving her body behind in the care of her teammates. Swerve manages to find the vague location of the target's house, but lacks enough knowledge to narrow it down exactly. All she finds is that some of the homes have magical defenses, and that watcher spirits patrol the neighborhood. Resigned, she heads back to her body. Meanwhile though, the rest of the team is dealing with the consequences of leaving a comatose body in an alley. Not long after Swerve left her body, Shy and Voltage began to hear chittering sounds from the nearby dumpster. Soon a swarm of rats, lead by a rather nasty devil rat emerge and begin to approach Swerve's unconscious body. Thankfully, an expert show by Shy manages to shoot the whisker off of the devil rat, causing it to flee in terror. Swerve, soon awaking, leaves the alley in a hurry, shuddering in thought of what she narrowly avoided.
Since astral scouting failed, the team decides to take a closer examination of the target's house. Swerve casts a life detection spell and drives by the DA's home. She sees three life signs inside, likely the man and his wife, as well as an unknown third party. Shy calls her fixer, attempting to see if they can cause a distraction to lead the target out of the house, only to discover that the DA was already about to leave to a dinner for city officials. Not long after, a car exits the home, and Shy manages to observe that a man and a woman are inside. Swerve confirms soon after that only one human sized life form remains in the house. As night begins to fall, the team decides that this is the window to act, and begin to infiltrate the home.
The Run
The team meets a nearby park, empty due to the encroaching night and a light rain, and begin to prepare. Swerve casts spells to silence the group, as well as detect people near them. As they begin to head near the house, a Knight Errant patrol shines a light on Shy's motorcycle. For a tense moment, it seems like they might investigate, but the patrol soon passes on. Realizing this was a close call, the team hides their bikes better. They begin to head toward the DA's house, only for Voltage to have a "great idea". To make herself more sneaky, she takes a hit of Kamikaze. While the team reaction to this is mixed to say the least, she goes ahead with it. Forging ahead, the team makes it to the outer wall of the target's home without incident. Scaling the wall, they cross over and check out the grounds of the area for security devices. To the teams dismay, there are not only cameras, but motion sensors distributed along the exterior of the home. Unsure of how to proceed, the team scouts along the edge of the exterior wall, hoping to see a better path of entry. Eventually, Voltage, full of Kamikaze confidence decides the back door is the best path available to them. With only one motion sensor, the security seems perhaps conquerable. Leading the team around to the back wall, Voltage takes careful aim with her gun and shoots the sensor, shattering it. Free to move forward, the team approached the door, only to find a lock they couldn't pick.
Faced with an obstacle with no immediate solution, two members of the team come to two very different solutions. Swerve realizes that she could simply summon a Spirit of Air to seep inside and open the door. In contrast, Voltage decides the only way forward is to leap onto the balcony above them. Knowing it's obviously the best choice, she just goes ahead and does. She jumps high and almost succeeds, but ultimately falls back to the ground. In addition her Kamikaze fueled leap tripped a motion sensor the balcony, causing the lights to flicker on. Swerve, ignoring this, summons an Air Spirit and opens the door. The team enters.
As the occupant of the house goes to investigate the motion sensor, the team hurries through the door finding themselves in a garage. Housing a Lone Star branded bike, Shy wants to steal it. She get's shouted down though by Swerve. Moving forward, the team investigates for the book. Knowing nothing about it beyond that it's a leather bound journal, this could have been a hard task. Luckily though, it was in the 3rd room checked, in an easy to spot display case. Shy makes quick work of the security and opens the case. Swerve, knowing at least a little bit about magic, takes a look at the journal to verify if it was the target. Swerve soon makes a troubling discovery. While the book was old and certainly about magic, there were clear errors in how it described certain magical phenomena. It was obvious enough that even a relatively new student, like Swerve, could see the problems. Realizing this, the team begins to worry and deliberate about the possibility of a plant or forgery being left to fool thieves. As the discussion continues, and time ticks on, Shy realizes they forgot a critical source of information. Making a trivial matrix search, she looks up the auction listing for the book. She quickly confirms that the look of the journal matches, and a quick read shows that the journal was an exploratory work of magic at the beginning of the 6th age, which explained the errors in the work. Satisfied that the target had been acquired, the team cleaned up behind them and exited the house. There were no issues on the return, and the team entrusted Swerve to hold onto the book until they reconvened at the dead drop location. In between those points, Swerve made an image copy of all of the book's pages.
Aftermath
The team left the journal in a dead drop, which was quickly retrieved by spirit. Mush sent his approval, and said to wait to see if the theft was discovered. After a few days, the news broke that the DA had been placed under investigation for fraud, with no evidence of the theft having been uncovered. Satisfied, Mush sent a bonus for the good work.
Rewards
- 6,000 Nuyen
- 4 Karma
- May purchase Mush as a contact: 4/1 Black Magic Mentor