Wine Tasting in K-Town
| Wine Tasting in K-Town | |||||||||
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| ShadowHaven | AG Chemie | ||||||||
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Ellis Red Ribbon Sizzles Trace Triage |
Blossom Cobra Natasha Whiplash ZigZag | ||||||||
Summary
The team is hired to provide security for a one day Wine industry conference in Kaiserslautern by Prof. Dr. Franz Andreas Buhl, owner of Weingut Reichsrat von Buhl. The Bundeskriminalamt believes that the Great Badisch Crusade (GBC) is planning a terrorist attack on the Wurstmarkt. The BKA believes that there is a small chance that there will be an associated attack on the wine industry conference that precedes the Wurstmarkt. Prof. Dr. Buhl is much more worried wine industry shenanigans. His worries are wellplaced.
Background
The wine industry is the second largest employer in Badisch-Pfalz; AG Chemie is the largest. The leading vineyards are all organic so they aren't in the market for chemical pesticides and fertilizers. However fermentation is one of the earliest biological technologies harnessed by metahumankind...and AG Chemie has substantial assets in the field of agricultural biotechnology (especially yeasts). The application of Green Magic to vineyards and the production of wine is controversial but growing in popularity. Weingut Reichsrat von Buhl is the leading proponent while Von Winning Winery are opponents.
In 1718 Pierre Jordan purchased the family's first vineyards in Pfalz. In 1849 the will of Andreas Jordan distributed the vineyards to his children Ludwig Andreas, Josephine and Margaret, This created three smaller wineries"Geheimer Rat Dr. von Bassermann-Jordan", "Reichsrat von Buhl", and "Dr. Deinhard" (now the von Winning winery). Over the years the relationships between the three family firms has waxed and waned. Currently there is fairly intense market competition complicated by the disagreements over Green Magic and the recent purchase of Geheimer Rat Dr. von Bassermann-Jordan by an outside family the Niederbergers. As fate would have it Charles Niederberger holds an MBA from Tilburg University. He concocted a plan with a fellow alumni that works at AG Chemie. They hire a team of *out of town* runners to extract Dr. Pascal Wegmann-Herr, a Green Magician and the featured speaker at the conference. After a week of interrogation they can drug & dump him in the country side. The conference will be disrupted to the detriment of Reichsrat von Buhl and suspicion will fall on von Winning winery. With the information gleaned from Wegmann-Herr AG Chemie can decide whether or not to pursue Green Magic. AG Chemie then backs the Niederberger family in taking over the appropriate competitor.
The Meet
The runners all converge at the Lucas Palace front desk exactly at the appointed time and are escorted upstairs to an ostentatious suite. After introductions they get down to business. Buhl explains his worries about the conference. The runners question Buhl about the conference, the Great Badisch Crusade, MET2000. Following Buhl's lead about industry competition they discuss the historical background of the three wineries and the current state of affairs...from Buhl's viewpoint. Inevitably the topic of compensation arose. A flat 25,000 nuyen, free commercial travel, onsite food & lodging, a GMC Armadillo and a civilian rotodrone. Armed with the free ids and travel papers provided by *CIA Bill* they left the hotel. The time till their flight was spent busily making arrangements with a smuggler to ship a weapon for the rotodrone and matrix searches for more legwork.
The Flight
Security checks at SeaTac went smoothly and the runners rested well on the flight. Once the flight landed in Frankfurt and met their escort, the team took mass transit to Mannheim at the other end of the sprawl. Then a short trip on light rail to Kaiserslautern station. The short walk to Design Hotel Zollamt was uneventful but the team was spotted at the station by the astrally lurking *Blossom*, the senior mage on the opposition team. Two magically active, one heavily cybered, one hanuman, and a nondescript human of questionable provenance. Concluding that its a team of four runners and a grunt she went back to her body to warn her companions.
The Hotel
The runners approached the hotel warily examining the hotel and nearby surroundings - visually, on the astral, and on the matrix. Seeing no obvious threats the team entered the lobby. There were roughly a dozen people some seated in chairs some standing by the front desk. The runners using AR or VR soon noticed there were two more matrix personas in the room than meat bodies. The runners using Visual perception noticed their Johnson, Buhl seated in a corner conversing with a bearded man and a very attractive human female in a sports jersey and snug denim jeans. At that point Cobra the opposition decker tried to place a mark on Sizzles. Sizzles responded in kind but successfully. Cobra jacked before Sizzles could get a location. The attempted hack set off a stream of DNI chatter. The team grabbed their room keys and rushed upstairs. Red Ribbon examined the hotel security systems and was underwhelmed. Sizzles hacked the unknown persona in the lobby and upon determining his location to be the MET2000 training facility decided to logoff. The entire team used contacts with shadow connections to determine the possible identity of the opposition runners and contacts with corporate knowledge to check on AG Chemie and the Neiderberger family. Seeing the outline of their opposition. The outline of a plan took shape.