It Belongs in a Museum 3: Half-Lived
| It Belongs in a Museum 3: Half-Lived | |||||||||
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| Part of The Cutter's Curator | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Cutters | ||||||||
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Flyboy Moth Strawberry Trash Panda |
Character1 Character2 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Major structural damage to building | |||||||||
Summary
The Professor hired the runners to recover a Fifth World artifact that had been stolen from him - a hard drive with all the iterations of the game Half-Life loaded. He assumed the Cutter had it in a secure location.
The runners identified the correct Cutter stronghold and scouted it. They realized there was a cache of Fifth World artifacts in the basement, and the game was in a top floor room. Though the plan had some hiccups, they eventually recovered all of the items and returned them to the Johnson.
Background
The Professor used to have a Fifth World artifact museum in Tacoma. That museum was robbed by the Cutters and burned to the ground; see report. He re-established the museum in the Redmond Barrens, with help from Mint.
The Cutters still had many of his artifacts.
The Meet
The Professor invited the runners to his newly established museum in the Redmond Barrens. Though the building looked run down on the outside, it was quite impressive inside. It had that posh quiet feel of a museum. The runners could see some of the collection on their way in, including the remarkable still living tamagotchi. Strawberry and Trash Panda particularly enjoyed the displays about Fifth World entertainment.
He explained that they needed to recover the hard drive with Half-Life from the Cutters. After a brief negotiation with Moth, he agreed to pay them 15,000 nuyen each.
The Plan
Between Strawberry, Trash Panda, and Moth's knowledge of gangs, the runners were aware of three Cutter strongholds - one in Cottage Lake, one between Tacoma and Puyallup, and one on the far eastern side of Redmond.
The runners moved to a hotel room to do some research and make an initial plan.
Working together, they searched the matrix for any mentions of Half-Life. They found some old message boards from pre-crash, suggesting that the community had been excitedly waiting for Half-Life 3, just prior to the crash. Eventually, they found a message from only two days prior on the P2P page of a ganger who was part of the Tacoma video gaming community mentioning playing the game. No picture or name. Only a handle. And one message in Sperethiel. Perhaps an elf?
Given that this ganger was part of the Tacoma gaming community, it seemed most likely that the game was at the stronghold between Tacoma and Puyallup. The team made their way there for physical scouting.
Flyboy sent in flyspys and was able to find the hard drive, and a larger cache of Fifth World artifacts - many still tagged by the Professor's museum - in the basement. There was also two helmets, a collection of swords,