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ShadowHaven Von Neumann | UV Host | ||||||||
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Heracles Queen Scrappenny | Garmonbozia's Entrance Security | ||||||||
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| Emotional Support Fridge | Valid MARKs were generated. | ||||||||
| Ascension for Scrappenny | |||||||||
Summary
The team totally goes to the moon. Except Red Rain. Rekt.
Background
Von Neumann's been trying to accumulate more resources and reliable allies; while an overwhelming majority of metahumanity is impulsive, emotional and unreliable, it's begun considering whether allying with other AI would be more productive. To that end, it's begun its search for the mythical nation of free artificial intelligences: Garmonbozia.
The Meet
The meet happens in an abandoned Auburn warehouse where a man on a trid projector elaborates that Horizon has a secret rocket launch site in West Africa. They've invested a lot in the operation so they're willing to support the team to a great degree, including minor gear acquisitions and flights there and back. Red Rain remains tentative, but the other three are curious enough to accept the job.
The Plan
The plan involves flying to the Moon and discovering a secret NeoNET vault that Renraku claimed as their property but never explored after the AAA's collapse. Supposedly it has useful schematics that Horizon wants. It has automated security, so the two riggers can provide firepower if the technomancers can't hack it. Literally.
The Run
The run gets weird when the team arrives to the launch site. Red Rain realizes she can't see anything astrally. Having lost her assensing abilities, she has a minor panic attack and begins asking the team to explore places. Their connection to the J calls in a security aware to double check the place just in case, but they find nothing wrong. This is too weird for Red Rain so she grabs an Ares Matilda, affectionately referred to as her emotional support fridge, and escapes the launch site with it, calling Corpseman to activate her jet so RR can remotely fly it over to Africa and escape to Asamando.
The other three runners continue with the launch despite their confusion and suspicions that not everything is as it seems and are walked through all of the launch procedure's steps. Given spacesuits and wearing them properly, they reach the rocky satellite (are moons satellites technically?) and use a Thundercloud Morgan to evade the detection of automated laser turrets. Being able to sneak up underneath them directly, the team slips frag grenades into each turret's housing and takes cover, the fragmentation doing short work of both. Then, with a crowbar they can wrest the vault entrance open and come to their first obstacle.
A fork in the road.
A tunnel to the left is titled ZEAL while the tunnel to the right is titled PARADISE. Immense radiation readings are coming from the latter whereas the former appears to have dozens of laser turrets and pressure plates. Choosing to try the radiation with a Shiawase Kanmushi, the attempt is soon abandoned as the drone's circuitry suffers immense damage due to the radiation levels. Scrappenny carefully jumps into the damaged drone and maneuvers the cockroach drone through the ZEAL tunnel's security systems, avoiding tripping even a single one of them and finding a blast door with a card reader. Jacking in with the drone's help, Scrappenny provides direct connection to the technomancers who are confused by everything in the bunker being Device Rating 11. While they manage to hack it and command it to open, they're equally confused by the room that it opens into. A blue-lit room with offline LCD monitors on the walls and a stone altar with a basin carved into it, filled with what appears to be nanites. Millions of commcodes are available in the basin and they almost cause a seizure in Heracles when he tries contacting them all as a mass call, the response overflowing his living persona's inbox.
Scrappenny sneaks in a Mitsuhama Akiyama provided by the J and tries touching the nanites. As soon as she does, she disappears from sight. The technomancer duo is alarmed by this and starts looking around, but finds no trace of Scrappenny. With few options left, they compile a sprite which strangely enough appears as a physical entity. It can walk through the radiation field with zero detriments and informs the team that there are marble statues all around with various odd statements on their faceless features. Going back and ripping part of the rocket's shielding plates off, they construct a makeshift radiation shielding bag that can transport a data tap across the radiation tunnel safely and connect it to the PARADISE tunnel's blast door. Heracles and Queen combine their might and barely manage to open the door, discovering the password to have been GARMONBOZIA. There, there is another altar with a laser barcode reader. Using the data tapped connection to one of the blast door terminals as a backdoor, Heracles spends the better part of a day threading Resonance Spikes to brick the laser turrets so they can enter the ZEAL tunnel safely, eventually reaching the pool of nanites in person.
Heracles manages to resist some sort of shunting reaction when he dips his hand in the basin, acquiring that seems like a MARK to the laser reader in the PARADISE tunnel. Queen acquires a MARK too, but disappears just like Scrappenny. Heracles, now alone, begins seeing the reality of the situation, recognizing icons, IC and host sculpting of the ultraviolet environment around him. Maybe the MARK imposes some degree of clarity for him, but this allows him to use Complex Forms to suppress the radiation and walk through to the laser reader, opening the exit of the host. With the MARK as a black strip around his marble persona's left wrist, he exits the host and is greeted by anthrodrones in a blank room, offering a small degree of hospitality. Von Neumann soon appears with a mostly disguised anthrodrone clad in synthskin and offers him his possessions as well as an exit to his home, only demanding unconsciousness during transportation for operational security. Since Heracles successfully completed the job, Von Neumann tentatively offers to further cooperate with the technomancer in the future, since his kind are unique and very valuable; he'd rather not make enemies more than he already has. Heracles has to think about it and is given a single-use commlink with a single commcode registered. With that, he grabs an inhaler, falls unconscious and wakes up in Auburn with a credstick containing 30,000 Nuyen, something all the other runners had experienced after their sudden dumpshock.
Except for Red Rain, that fridge-stealing slitch.
Aftermath
Von Neumann managed to circumvent Garmonbozia's primary entrance's defense systems against unwanted AI by getting the MARK to the UV host himself and inserting metahumans through it. He has a way in, now he just has to find a way to make peace with the residents when he eventually decides to enter Garmonbozia. The runners are unlikely to ever find the host again without assistance, however.
Rewards
- Scrappenny: 30,000 Nuyen & Mundane Ascension Rewards
- Red Rain: Nothing, she left like the fridge-hogging ghoul she is.
- Queen: 30,000 Nuyen
- Heracles: 30,000 Nuyen, Optional Contact (Von Neumann, 8/1 Xenosapient AI) and may purchase Greyware or Tailored Greyware up to Avail 19 at half price.
- Everyone gets 10 CDP