The Bell Tolls
| The Bell Tolls | |||||||||
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| Part of Hail to the Pumpking | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Pump King Jack | Halloweeners | ||||||||
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Milliam Shy Swerve | 15 'weeners. | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Milliam's panther, Duma, has hollow point-shaped scars. | Traitors! They're all traitors! | ||||||||
Summary
Jack does some recruitment drive via the help of some morally bankrupt shadowrunners. Everyone wins.
Background
Due to runs like The Vantablack and Trick or Truce Jack's started to bleed troops for his rebellious offshoot of the Halloweeners gang. He needs to replenish his numbers before he loses control of his territory!
The Meet
Milliam doesn't really have transportation because she's a filthy hippie druid -- fortunately a fellow runner agrees to pick the satyr up! Shy gets forwarded the job by her fixer, Kerrigan, since the UCAS officer wants to keep tabs on the development of the gang. Fresh intel is always good. In a similar vein, Amelie and Jean-Baptiste tell Swerve to see how Jack's doing. Chloe Green, Milliam's hippie fixer, however, can't make heads or tails -- on one hand, Jack is a horrible sociopath spirit, but he also opened a community hospital. She advises that Milliam goes and finds out for herself if it's a worthy job.
So they do. All three of them.
As Jack is there to greet them, a girl apparently named Mary is there to serve all three of them really cheap tea. Even the banshee accepts the drink, only realizing a few moments too late that it's a bad idea. She's going to throw up later. Jack gets mostly to the point and butchers several idioms and other figures of speech as he still struggles with minor intricacies of spoken language. The idea is carried across, however: he needs fresh blood among his gang members. He can't exactly go and scout them out himself since he's not very high profile and he needs all hands on deck in Sophocles, so instead he gives the runners the location of a Halloweener-squatted warehouse in Bargain Basement, Redmond. He emphasizes that they don't leave much of a trail and that as many as possible are unharmed when brought to him. He at least arranges a truck driver with a cargo container, so hauling the captives to him won't be the issue -- it will be subduing them. He offers money, himself as a contact and the tried and true stolen karma to truly elevate the runners to the next level. Being the horrible, horrible people that they are, all three are enticed by the promise of power and agree to the job.
The Run
Initial scouting via astral projection from Swerve confirm that most of the Halloweeners are pretty mundane and mildly augmented at best, though a Joker-looking big boss is awakened and alerts the group once he spots Swerve peeking into his office. Milliam prepares an ambush while Shy prepares to infiltrate the place from the ventilation duct on the roof. Swerve dampens the noise generated by Shy's dismantling of the air conditioning with magical silence, which is then followed by Shy trying to sneak into thin sheet metal tubes. This creates noise and leads to a Die Hard-like sequence of one of the Halloweeners prodding the vents to see if there's weight on it at any point, indicating someone's inside. Just as the grunt's about to poke where Shy's frozen still, the big boss, calling himself Drekstorm, shows up. He tells three of the Halloweeners to head to the roof access and check it out while he pokes at the vent with his cane. Shy manages to wedge her knees and elbows to the corners of the vent, displacing her weight off the center and letting the metal flex when prodded. It fools the man below and makes him grumble his way back to his office. As she's preparing to leave, however, yet another grunt hears her making noise there once again and this time is not convinced that it's just a coincidence, rocking the pump action on his shotgun and shooting at the vent.
Shy climbs out just in the nick of time before getting riddled with buckshot; the three Halloweeners that were sent to the roof access ladder in the alleyway outside get ambushed by Milliam, her panther Duma and Shy in a pincer attack -- while Milliam does an inhumanely massive leap across rooftops and Swerve's levitating on elevated ground, Shy also has the high ground and the three catch the three mooks by surprise. One gets knocked out by a gel round to the temple, the other mauled and drugged by Duma's Narcojet-infused fangs and the last smacked in the face by another gel round. Admittedly, Shy at first tried goomba stomping the last guy by jumping down into his face like she's Super Mario, but to no avail.
Unfortunately, Swerve's silencing magic didn't reach every shot, and while Shy's weapon has a suppressor, it's not enough to stop the big man from hearing it. Luckily, he only manages to grab one grunt with him in the ruckus and the two are dispatched with haste -- the grunt himself is easy to bite down, but Drekstorm proves more challenging. As an adept with some skill, he not only riddles Duma with hollow point bullets from his gold-plated TMP, he roundhouse kicks Swerve's Stunbolt back at her with a harmonious reflection. Shy jumps in the way and thanks to Kamikaze, doesn't even feel the shock of it. After that, it's time to turn him into a pincushion; Drekstorm's heavy armor makes the kinetic impact of Milliam's arrows finally knock him out, which they take advantage of.
Shy ties him up, lifts him with one arm and stubs her Savalette Guardian into his neck to barge into the warehouse and intimidate the rest of the Halloweeners into surrendering. While this doesn't really work out since Shy's not the most vocally skilled member of society's dregs, Swerve as a banshee of exceptional charm manages to smoothe out the turbulent waves of the situation and takes control of the encounter. She ensures the remaining gang members that yes, while Nightmare is guaranteed to come after them if they defect or let Drekstorm get kidnapped, Jack can protect them reasonably well and is a far less dangerous employer. He even offers free health care, an utterly alien concept to a bunch of horror trid obsessed thrill cultists. Swerve manages to convince the remainders (except for one defiant, soon to be shot in the head protester) of the Halloweeners that they're already screwed and might as well go with the situation, considering.
Aftermath
Surprised with the compliance of most of the Halloweeners, Jack is overjoyed with the results and minimal casualties. He truthfully didn't expect the runners to be able to do this without shedding some blood, but the willingness of the gangers to join him helps his workload tremendously. As a result, he's glad to carry out his part of the deal and infuses all three of the runners with his dark, corrupt power. Tendrils of blackest night seep into Shy's, Millian's and Swerve's souls and they might possibly register as bearing the taint of a shadow spirit on their next run. But hey, they totally did a good thing tonight, right?
Right, guys?
Right...?
Rewards
- Stolen Karma Rewards
- For Milliam: Hawk Eye & Astral Chameleon (Good job, Hawkeye, you're an Avenger now!)
- For Shy: Drug Tolerant & Catlike
- For Swerve: It Works If You Work It & Indomitable: Mental
- 2 CDP
- 2 Starscreamers Reputation
- Optional Contact: Pump King Jack 5/1 Halloweener Usurper
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Shy's Report : Operation was nearly perfect. Did meet up with the "contractor" Pump King Jack. Mission was simple : Go to an Halloweeners warehouse and have them join his side or at least being abducted so he can "convince" them. Did have to work with a Banshee and some sort of Satyr who has a panther. It's was way better set than the last operation.
First Step we did a proper recon about the place, did had the Banshee scout first because she is a mage and then i did go on the roof of the building to sneak through the vent. Did get caught when i was about to get out. It could have gone wrong but we did just decide to take out the three guys that did come to see what was happening. Their chief and another one did came out and we did take them out as well, i did even jump from the roof on the chief, maybe because i was on Kamikaze
Since we got their chief we did pressure them that we will kill him and they'll be killed because of this. We did gave them the opportunity to join Pump King Jack so they actually accepted. So in the end we did bring fourteen of the fifteen Halloweeners to the Pump King so he was really happy about that. He pay us with power and it was awesome, i hope i could work with him again.
Swerve
This didn't go too bad for my first official run. The other two members of the team seemed competent. That cat in particular was amazing. It was so cute! Also deadly! Most importantly, none of them seemed to ask me too many questions.
Talking with the Pump King was difficult. The aura around him pressed down on me, almost like a physical force. I could barely move, barely think. I paid the price rather quickly when I drank a bit of cheap tea without thinking. I spent most of negotiations forcing the nausea down, and thankfully managed to keep the vomit away until I could have some privacy.
The run itself wasn't too strenuous for me. I scouted out the area astrally, which went well, until I accidentally alerted the adept inside. After that I just levitated onto the neighboring roof and provided support. The sun rose, which was unpleasant, but the combat wasn't too terrible. At the end though, I had to intercede to keep the rest of the Halloweener's from killing the other two. Seeing all those eyes on me was unpleasant, but they fell in line quickly. I doubt they'll be able to remember me after what Jack will do to them. Also, I did not eat that woman! I know everyone else was thinking it!