The Great Wave
| The Great Wave | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of The Arrival | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| Factions Involved | ||||||||||
|
ShadowHaven Officer Raven Hextech Bolt West Coast Monolith | Monolith Cult | Kalanyr | ||||||||
|
Eidolon Red Ribbon Blackhawk Artemisia Delphi |
Wish Granter Strider Herald Preachers Warriors Toxic Critters | Kalanyr | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
| Red Ribbon's Hellhound was completely wrecked. | The cult's activities in America have ceased completely. | Hand of God to survive the WW Warhead | ||||||||
| Capstone run for the Arrival Metaplot | ||||||||||
Summary
The team engages the cult's forces at the threshold of their plans and pushes them out of Seattle. Kalanyr gets flashbanged by a hundred kilograms of TNT as well.
Background
Monolith, the toxic cult faction lured to Seattle by their former member's brief communion with the spirit before her death, have planned moving to Glow City from Mt. Rainier's temporary base for months. Scouting, attacking and weakening the WCM's abilities to counteract their movements and letting their shamans get as many of their god's herald spirits together as possible, they've gained a foothold in the melted down ruins of a power plant. Shiawase Atomics built an impregnable defense against them, but focused most of their efforts in protecting the power source and were unable to mount an offensive to defend themselves. Kalanyr's cultists prevented any calls for aid from going out due to the dragon wanting to have the spirit for himself.
The Meet & Plan
Bolt can't make it out of the siege so he has a datachip with a quick brief established on a datachip and has the coordinates sent to the runners instead. Delphi engages Urubia by astrally projecting to the Funhouse and requests that she drops the siege now so the gang can fight to prevent an impending doom. Urubia agrees but with draconian requirements for WCM to pay back if she agrees to this. Delphi executes a Smack Down edge-burning Negotiation to convince Urubia to enter the negotiating table with Bolt after all is said and done. With the siege dismantling, the WCM convoy leaves and rendezvouses with the runners near Cottage Lake. Bolt exposes his planned route and that he aims to hit the reactor once they've relocated most of their materiel to a scouted, secured base of operations within the Glow. Delphi requests that the runners split off and deal with the radiation storms across Redmond on the way, which Bolt allows them to do. He refuses to slow down or wait for them, however.
The Convoy
The convoy's path is mostly uninterfered. With a mixture of draconic mind control, expert marksman sniping and forced astral disruptions, the Nuclear Spirits causing storms in various population centers in Redmond are disposed of. On one of them, the team discovers a detachment of cultists protecting the spirit and have little option but to engage in a firefight once they themselves are pre-emptively ambushed by a Preacher detecting them with a Detect Enemies spell. Razorcats slice and bite at Blackhawk, K-10-crazed cultists fire at Red Ribbon's anthrodrone and the Preacher taints the astral sphere with crippling mana surges fo corruption completely incapacitating the two Infected. The Preacher controls the flow of the battle until he's knocked down by concentrated attacks and his own spell drain, finally making the corrupted taint dissipate. Artemisia and Blackhawk extract with Red Ribbon's expert pick-up maneuver using Hextech's helicopter, picking up the wrecks of a helicopter as well. Delphi manages to disrupt the nuclear spirit by astrally projecting to it, although the battle is close. The cultists are left in the dust, shooting after the helicopter.
Near Sophocles, the team finds evidence of Energy Drain powers being used on cultists with the help of Psychometry. They have little to go on, but Blackhawk and Eidolon contact Asahiro and meet him in a Shinto temple built into Sophocles. There, the vice-president states that he hasn't intercepted any cultists yet, but will agree to help the team purge foul spirits since that's highly appealing to the self-appointed daimyo's sensibilities. He astrally projects with Shade to Fall City while Delphi moves to intercept the last Nuclear Spirit outside Glow City. The convoy starts moving again now that the roadblock they thought was near Sophocles is discovered to not be an issue.
The Glow
Kalanyr meets with Urubia. By him are some of the dragon's allies: Chaplain Carmilla and Officer Raven. Even Jeanne Hristvilg is present, having consulted the dragon on some research regarding toxic corruption. Delphi implores Kalanyr to aid them and he agrees, informing them that the gang must not enter the melted down reactor building. He'll arrive and entrap the Wish Granter and disable its powers so he may begin healing the spirit and possibly remove the toxic taint from it entirely if he's able. Those cultists permanently engaged to it may suffer death, but the dragon finds this a small price to pay for stabilizing a highly dangerous cult. He sends Delphi away with an Influence power.
The gang arrives to their headquarters, a bunker heading several levels underground and begin unpacking, giving people time to reload and restock. The charge into the largest radstorm is looming in the horizon and Red Ribbon's driving skills are required to make it work, but Bolt reveals his ace in the hole: by earning a favor from Arma Remington, one shadowrunner managed to convince Weapons World to provide critical supplies to the WCM. Bolt requested a housing for explosive payload delivery and received a hardened bomb casing which he and Hextech have been preparing a high yield charge into. Eidolon's demolitions calculations estimate it to be capable of vaporizing an entire bunker complex, making it unlikely for any spirits caught in the blast to survive without being disrupted. Bolt plans to storm the reactor, set the bomb near the toxic idol and extract, knowing the bomb can't be defused once it's set. Delphi plays as much to stall Bolt's plans in an attempt to find a way to save the cultists from their brainwashing, but the gang leader is stubborn. This leads the team to consider working with Kalanyr instead to try and maximize lives saved.
The Approach
Exploring urban territory near the reactor and underground tunnels, the team finds that feral ghouls have become afflicted by the radiatioactive contamination even in the OU tunnels under Glow City. The team manages to avoid combat with them and emerges in abandoned building alleyways. Having to take cover from the storm in alleyways, they slowly advance to scout cultist emplacements and find a sleeping quarters as well as some plans about entrenching positions, gaining insight into what the cultists have in store for them. They also find information regarding some 'Herald' and manage to find that the cult is in possession of Vichnozeleny's diary, taken during their raid of the WCM base in Devil Lake. Artemisia gains more insight into the cult's past by psychometrizing the book and reading the entries. Having been in a cult herself, she finds herself relating to the deceased ganger.
Unable to find the Gauss Rifle and risking exposure, they