Suburban Jungle
| Suburban Jungle | |||||||||
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| ShadowHaven | |||||||||
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Pell Winter Sweetie_Sinful Bayou_Bill | |||||||||
Summary
What do you when you're outbid at a quasi-legal animal auction and you're looking to donate animals to the local public Zoo, so it isn't put out of business by the fancy private zoo on Outremer? Well, you hire Shadowrunners of course.
In this mission, the runners made their way to the meet, then across the puget sound to Vashon Island, Outremer, scouted out the Vashon Island Private Zoo, and then came back to do a good old fashioned zoo heist. Complications arose, and while they still succeeded, it wasn't a perfect score.
Background
The Woodland Park Zoo, that is to say the Public Zoo for all of Seattle, which has existed for a long time, it has some issues. It makes its money from visitors and donations, and lately despite it's being in Downtown, the fact that it's Public has made donations drop. Worse still, when the Woodland Park Zoo made bids on new specimens for its exhibits, a private, much fancier zoo in on Vashon Island Outremer district put up a bid Woodland Park couldn't beat, again and again. Now with less high up corps interested because of having to rub elbows with the Plebians, the Zoo's lost out on a lot of attractions which would have brought in everyone else. Worst still, the Vashon Island Zoo is rumored by some to mistreat it's critters.
So the mission's simple: Infilitrate the Vashon Island Zoo. Free the animals. Smuggle them to a secure holding location at the Downtown docks, where they'll be brought to the Zoo proper.
The Meet
The group arrived at an ancient hole-in-the-wall Salvadoran restaurant downtown near the docks. Sweetie simply walked to the meet, Bayou Bill and Winter both used their respective Dodge Scoots, and Pell arrived before any of the others.
Ever the professionals, Winter tried to order food before finding the Johnson, Bayou Bill started trying to wrestle a beast spirit that Pell had summoned, and Sweetie tried to pet Bayou Bill's gator and failed, almost getting snapped on.
After some struggles getting the group to focus, the Johnson, an ork from San Francisco with ties to the Bloody Tusks and who ran a smuggling gang, Juan Ortiz finally got their attention enough to explain the situation and the plan. Initially, a benefactor of the Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle's oldest and still primary public zoo, had contacted him.
It seems that the Zoo had bid on some wild life specimens and been outbid by a private zoo in Outremer. The benefactor, too late to simply give money to help bid for the animals, would like them stolen from the Vashon Island Zoo and brought to a secure warehouse where their RFID tags can be found and removed, and they can be hidden until they can be given to the Woodland Park Zoo. A ride to and from the island in the form of the Troll known as 'The Capt'n' was arranged, and so was a payment of 6,000 Nuyen.
A list of animals was handed over, hand written, with the number required.
The Plan
The runners decided to scout out the zoo and prepare a fog over the island just around the time night would hit. While Pell and Bayou Bill headed to scout out, Winter stealthily summoned a spirit and sustained a spell to bring in the fog.
Bayou Bill ran into some complications when he tried to bring his 'certified assistant animal' alligator with him, and his SIN almost got burned. Pell had no issue entering the zoo herself after Bill ran off, going so far to show her Guardian Spirit to the security and saying she had 'promised to take him to the good zoo and show him all the animals'.
The Run
After Pell scouted out the locations of the required animals, she returned to the group at the Marina. Heading up the island's roads, they took the time to summon a plant spirit (Winter) and a replacement Guardian Spirit (Pell) because the sun had set. Winter had specialized invisibility and silence put on them, and rather than trying to jump over the 3 meter tall wall?
Bayou Bill decided to kick the door down, which he did, but not without causing an eerie red light to flicker on the inside of the wall and throughout the area. After noticing a drone in the air scouting, which had no seen them yet, Bill shot it with a grenade launcher.
He then left the area of silence to find out that his kicking down the door had cause massive alarm noises to go off in the zoo and for much of the animals to freak out. Pell focused on the task at hand, while Bill gathered the animals from the list closest to his speciality, the Caimans.
Using her skill and the help of Winter, Pell gathered the Polar Bears, Ospreys, Cereberus Hounds, and African Elephants. Winter engaged two drones in combat and was hit with a canister of neurostun. Sweetie swung a club at a drone and got a glancing blow off of it.
The group couldn't locate the missing item on the list, some Juggernauts, and saw a sign saying they were 'away from the Zoo for testing' despite Pell having seen them before the zoo closed. As it became clear that they needed to hurry before more security showed up, the group left – though Bayou Bill had already left and thrown a caiman and some stun grenades in one Vashon Island family's back yard after them noticing him. No one saw this, however someone with his description was reported to Knight Errant and HTRP.
Aftermath
The crew made it to the cargo container ship hidden to carry them and the animals, and The Captain piloted through some choppy waters that required the group to make animal handling tests. In the end, they succeeded and explained the situation with the Juggernauts. After getting their pay, Bill offered to buy his compatriots drinks, but thy mostly turned him down. Perhaps because he insisted the buy the cheap stuff, or perhaps running a zoo heist was too tiring for them.
Rewards
Juan_Ortiz as an optional Connection 3/Loyalty 1 contact, 6K Nuyen, 3 Karma, 2 CDP.
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Bayou Bill - Woweee! That sure was fun one. Not so sure about that blue horned lady but this was great time. Didja know there are these spiritual gators? I had no doggon clue bout em before. The more you know. Also there's them little gators too. A whole new world of gator wranglin is openin up!