Cut to the Chase
| Cut to the Chase | ||||||||||
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| Factions Involved | ||||||||||
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ShadowHaven Ancients | Cutters | Kraken | ||||||||
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Cherry Bomb Duchess Luna Voltage | Cutters Bikers | |||||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
| Duchess's Armante dress and heels | ||||||||||
| Group ascension for Duchess, Luna, and Voltage. | ||||||||||
Summary
The girls have an action-packed road trip/boat trip to LA. Oh, and they have to deliver a mysterious package to Alex Bernard.
The Meet
The squad is in the Daisy Chain, bullying Cherry into doing an unhealthy amount of shots and making her dance on a pool table, when Babylon asks them to join her and Ether in a back room. She hands them a locked box, telling them that it must be delivered to Alex Bernard in LA three days from now and that under absolutely NO circumstances should they look inside. Gomorrah will be accompanying them for astral overwatch; they'll have to figure the rest out on their own.
The Plan
The Ancients immediately begin planning their trip. They decide that attempting to pass through Tir Tairngire as a crew of obvious Ancients is probably a terrible idea, so in order to avoid that, they'll do part of the travel by sea on Luna's boat. However, Luna knows that pirates on the CalFree coast are a hazard they'll likely have to deal with, and, hearing her say the word pirates, Voltage decides to call up her own pirate friend, Bilge-Rat Jones, for more specific information about where those pirates typically are. Duchess then cuts in with her brilliant plan to avoid dealing with pirates altogether, and calls up her good friend Woedica Kryptman before Luna is able to stop her. The two work out a deal to exchange the Ancients' protection for passage on an Aztechnology cruise ship and permission for Luna to follow in its shadow.
The go-gangers pack their bags and load their bikes into the fishing boat's oversized, sealed freezer (with Voltage giving Caroline a long and emotional goodbye) before going to meet the Aztechnology ship where it's docked. Voltage, Duchess, and Cherry Bomb all accept the offer of high-quality fake SINs, which they have to provide their blood for. (I'm sure that's fine and certainly won't be a problem in the future, the whole blood magic thing is a totally unfounded conspiracy.)
The Cruise
Luna submerges her fishing boat and follows alongside the cruise ship while Duchess tries on designer dresses in the fancy boutiques on board and Voltage and Cherry indulge in as much free gourmet snack food and expensive (free) blue tequila as their hearts desire, but their revelry is cut painfully short by an alert from Luna, who has spotted a kraken heading their way.
Cherry drunkenly stumbles into the ship's control room, demanding that the captain make the ship go faster to escape the "big octopus." He's confused, until a set of massive tentacles breaks the water's surface, gripping the side of the boat. The Ancients run for a lifeboat, Voltage scooping Cherry up under one arm like a football and slashing at one of the tentacles with her spurs as she passes, and land on the deck of the fishing boat. They scramble for their weapons, hoping to hold the massive sea beast off for long enough to make a getaway. Voltage assaults it with her flamethrower, blasting it with green flame and managing to piss it off just enough that it directs its attention to the fishing boat instead. It lashes out, hoping to hit its attackers, but between Voltage's agility and Luna's skilled piloting, they manage to avoid most of the harm. Duchess is much less lucky, however, and suffers a torn dress and broken heels. After a short time, a pack of jaguar-headed guardian spirits appears, summoned by Woedica, and they draw the creature's attention enough that it leaves both boats alone.
The Road Trip
The Ancients spend the night on the boat, and Luna finds a safe place near San Francisco to dock in the morning. They run into a group of Cutters on the road, and Luna's Shin-Hyung takes some damage, but they dispatch them rather easily and meet up with San Francisco's Ancients chapter to repair their vehicles and restock. They travel for a while longer, spend the night at an independent bed & breakfast somewhere off the beaten path, and meet up with the boat the following morning.
While on the water, they come across Wusan, a free water spirit. They offer him small things of value: the remains of Duchess's ruined dress and heels, Voltage's ticket stubs from a Miami Riptide match, and a photo of Cherry and her younger sister. He's content with their offerings and gives them each a piece of driftwood with which to summon him in the future.
Cherry and Voltage sit together on the deck of the boat for a while afterward, talking. Cherry hacks Voltage's commlink and changes its password, and when Voltage can't access it afterward she asks Cherry to fix it. Cherry tells her that not only is it impossible to fix, it's been rigged to explode; in a panic, Voltage throws it as far from the boat as possible.
The rest of the journey is relatively uneventful; they dock in LA smoothly and deliver the package, which contains a brick of novacoke and a pile of gold krugerrands. An Ancients cyberdoc, Dr. Nightshade, joins them to be escorted back to Seattle.
Rewards
- 10k nuyen (a gold krugerrand each) (5 RVP)
- 5 karma (5 RVP)
- 12 CDP (5 RVP)
- +5 Ancients rep
- Optional Contact: Alex Bernard (C2/L2 Ancients Pirate) for 3 RVP or 6 CDP
- Optional Contact: Jacqueline Grant (C1/L3 Ancients Bartender) for 3 RVP or 6 CDP
- Optional Contact: Nina Gniewek (C6/L1 Ancients Smuggler) for 6 RVP or 12 CDP
- Optional Contact: Wusan (C5/L2 Water Spirit) for 6 RVP or 12 CDP (comes with a cool piece of driftwood to summon him)
For everyone but Luna:
- One R6 Aztechnology fake SIN + 5 Licenses (5 RVP out of rewards)
- Records on File (Aztechnology), and Woedica Kryptman has a sample of your blood (I'm sure it's fine)
For Voltage:
- Optional Quality: Guts @ chargen price (must take PSC: Thrill-Seeker as well)
- +1 PA for the trid recording of the kraken fight going viral
Ascension rewards options (for everyone but Cherry Bomb)
Can pick up to five of the following (may take options multiple times), subtracting 1 RVP for each:
- 20k in Weapons/armor/vehicle mods out of the Ancients stockpile
- 10k in Cyberware/bioware upgrades from Dr. Nightshade, the new cyberdoc
- 5 karma towards a skill or martial art (Ancients martial artists will teach Carromeleg to those who are interested as a story beat)
- 6 karma towards qualities at post-gen price
- 4 karma towards edge
- +20 Ancients reputation
Game Quotes
Voltage: What's inconspicuous mean? That's a really big word. |
Cherry, drunkenly barging into the ship's control room: Does this go faster? |
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Voltage
BEST. ROAD TRIP. EVER.
Like, okay--I know it was a job and stuff, but nobody ever said you can't have fun on the job. I've never really gotten to like, travel with the rest of the squad, and I think it was a really fun bonding experience! Fighting that kraken was nova as fuck, and I can't believe Cherry saved my life by figuring out that my commlink was going to explode. That could've been a disaster. I'm just glad that I had all the stuff in there backed up to the cloud, 'cause losin' all of that would've sucked.
Duchess
I need to stop calling contacts and making deals when I'm so drunk I can barely stand. I -also- need to stay away from the water. I'm a -biker-, not a pilot. But more than half my runs involve ships and water and water spirits and now I've ruined -another- 8000 nuyen outfit thanks to sea water. I loved that shade of Jade, and that cocktail dress made me seen like a Goddess. *sigh* If only had Brodie had seen me. Fighting a Kraken with an assault rifle from the deck of a fast-mover with broken hears and a killer cocktail dress clinging to me like a contestant in a wet t-shirt contest? We could have made a recruiting VR for the ancients from that for sure, if only Luna's drone had been recording.
Fuck, wait! Did I give Woedike a sample of my fraggin' blood? Oh output, I really need to think about how I'm gonna tell Babylon about this.