Tale of Blood and Oak

Tale of Blood and Oak
Date	2083-12-26
GM	Asmodeus
Location	Downtown Seattle
Status	Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
Casualties and losses

Summary

Team sneaks into the Aztechnology pyramid in Downtown and steals Woedica's own blood sample.

Background

A feuding mage currently staying in a docked luxury cruiser in Tacoma's docks has had a rivalry with Woedica Kryptman for a long time. She's been repeatedly slighted by the Aztechnology corporate mage and finally wants to get back at her, however doing it overtly would be playing right into Woedica's hand. Instead, she plans to acquire a material link and perform ritual magic on Woedica over time.

The Meet

The meet happens in the luxury cruiser. Janus and Blackhawk have some issues getting in at first due to tight security but once Janus and Lollipop talk to the Johnson, they get every runner to the meet safely. There's high astral security in the hermetic wizard's lodge and they have a mundane right hand woman as muscle to manage physical security. She explains that Woedica has an office in the Azzie pyramid, but the team is free to acquire material links in any way they see fit so long as Woedica nor her lackeys find out she's behind it. As rewards, the right hand woman offers some exotic and eccentric weapons choices while the wizard offers straight nuyen to fuel her revenge.

The Plan

Directly trying to extract samples from Kryptman is deemed too risky. Matrix searches confirm that the shadows are somewhat familiar with Woedica practicing low levels of blood magic. Instead, they make a plan to infiltrate her office - if she's a blood mage, sometimes keeping a stash of your own blood is useful for rapid use. The team is given a R1 Vault of Ages to store the sample in during transit.

The Run

The scouting takes a long time as does asking Emelie to do Matrix Searches regarding the Aztechnology pyramid. They pinpoint Woedica's office to only being in the 7th or 8th floors, nothing more concrete than that. Heavy physical security and numerous door wards are employed. Infiltrating will be hard, but Janus and Blackhawk are expert infiltrators and escort Tempest through stairways with the help of invisibility spells, Lollipop's drones scouting for pressure plates and sensors and Janus' silenced pistol employing Looper rounds to keep the cameras out when necessary. The two Infected leverage their HMHVV status to convince a Task spirit in the 7th floor offices that they're for unofficial visits to Kryptman and Tempest weaves her words appropriately to succeed at it as well.

Much of their success is owed to extensive stalking of two security guards whom they fed tons of laxatives to, squelched their sick calls and appropriated their IDs. With fake SINs, Synthskin masks and disguise uniforms, Janus and Blackhawk manage to look convincing as security guards doing patrols until they get to the 7th floor elevators and find that two of them are for Woedica's office alone on the 8th floor. After some workarounds to reset a password, they manage to get the elevator running.

Once in Woedica's quarters, the team spots a Magic 15 physical adept snoring on the reception lounge couch and very carefully sneaks around her and her scythe. They notice the collapsible scythe to be a faintly radioactive weapon focus. After they start rummaging the offices under the protection of Tempest's Silence banshee power, they discover a hidden safe which contains a signet ring, cipher paper notes and an ampoule of blood. Bypassing the safe's triple lock door took some effort -- upon asking Emelie to do some searching, she finds out that the signet as well as some of the mentions of research projects point to Ordo Maximus.

In one of the storage rooms, they get carefully around an alchemical preparation latched to a door handle, find what looks like a trapped sentience of a 1989-born German scientist in an offline host running on outdated 40s hardware and finally discover several Vaults of Ages with blood samples. Grabbing Woedica's and Wychking's, Dr. Lollipop calls Amrei Veidt to offer her the scientist e-ghost with an upload. With Lollipop's drone acting as a proxy, Amrei enters the offline host and **brutally** extracts the e-ghost's knowledge. The team evacuates by going to Floor -2 down the elevator shaft, employing Tempest's Levitate spell.

Aftermath

The escape is messy. Lollipop loses all Matrix access to the team as they enter deep underground and the squad finds an empty swimming pool in the underground filled with hundreds of slowly decaying corpses of various Infected strains. Ghouls, harvesters, wendigos, banshees. Anthrodrones stop by occasionally to dump more corpses into the pit and the two Infected are appalled both by the background count of that much murder as well as the sight of calculated genocide of their kind. They sneak in pitch black underground tunnels until they finally find a manhole cover in the ceiling, climbing up to it and emerging in another tunnel. Only one of their commlinks is strong enough to catch spotty reception and with that, they can connect with Lollipop who can help them navigate to a rendezvous point near an OU exit.

The wizard who hired the team is glad and pays them accordingly.

Rewards

24,000 Nuyen (12 RVP)
2 CDP
1. Dr. Lollipop: 2 Chips on Amrei Veidt, 8,000 Nuyen of Paydata regarding the Illuminati and a Terminus Project (2 RVP)
2. Tempest: 2 Karma (2 RVP) & may forfeit 7 RVP to acquire Catlike at Chargen Rates
3. Janus: 4 CDP (2 RVP)
4. Blackhawk: 2 CDP, 1 Karma (2 RVP)

Game Quotes

Amusing quote from game.

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Blackhawk

"No... I can't... I'm not a monster. Too much... blood. They're real... why are they real... he... he was one of them... no... need to be stronger... need to be stronger. Stronger than them... and stronger than me."

Dr. Lollipop

"Ah another successful run and I think this time I really made myself useful to Amrei. However, I am a bit worried about the content of the data we stole. Pink was quite upset and normally she chases after such things like a mouse after cheese. I think I'll have to do some research on my own. "

Janus

"Well that was... something. A well run, well executed infiltration. I am beginning to suspect I dislike magic users in general and mages specifically. Addendum: there is either a much larger population of infected in the city than I previously realized or I have some preternatural ability to attract these... creatures? Afflicted individuals? Either way, invest in woodpulp and silver rounds. Further addendum: practice Aztland Spanish skills, it could be invaluable for future missions and disguises. Also look into German for possible Saeder Krupp infiltrations. I don't want to be caught flat footed again."

Heart of the Tempest

Okay, that was fucked up. While I'm fairly certain most of those in that pool I'd probably not feel bad about killing anyway, just tossing them into a pool is weird. Anyway, the actual job went mostly fine, save for some random fucking Dumas scale fucking fifteen adept taking a nap in the target's reception, I dealt with the magical shit pretty well while the others did the locks and kept the way clear for invisible me. Then we ransacked the office while inaudible, stole the blood, and then jumped down a hole.