Unhaunt My House
| Unhaunt My House | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||
| Factions Involved | ||||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Twist Secure | Mysterious Spooks | ||||||||
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Red Ribbon Nearl Thunder Chameleon | Goons | Skinshedder | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
| None | ||||||||||
Summary
A troubling series of strange incidents is undermining the efficiency of an automated fulfillment center and scaring the admins and techs who work there. The man whose bonus is on the line needs it sorted, and hires some shadowrunners to handle this bizzare haunting.
Background
Justin Forstiche, the boss, recently squeezed one of his lieutenants into murdering and disposing of a labor activist for him. Unbeknownst to either of them, the dead man was secretly a technomancer, with a strong bond to his powerful generalist sprite, Skinshedder. Despite his death, Skinshedder has avoided being squashed by GOD due to its combination of convergence-monitoring and avoiding powers. It has spent the last two months stealing inventory and creating safety hazards for the people working in the warehouse where the murder took place, looking for some way to take more substantial revenge on Justin.
The Meet
The team meets with Justin, who lays out the situation as simply as he can - there's a haunting, it's impeding work. A paid-for astral security sweep has turned up nothing, and he can't afford to go multiple rounds on this - the warehouse needs to be back into operation pronto. The team consents - with the amount of magical muscle on hand, they're pretty confident they can easily swat any troublesome spirits.
The Run
The team rolls up to the warehouse and commences investigation. Nearl, Chameleon, and Thunder roll in with significant mystical firepower and search for spiritual activity. Skinshedder attempts to replicate spooks from several currently-popular horror films, including a "faulty" crane, a rampaging forklift, and a creepy doll playing back someone's cries for help. Chameleon takes a nasty shock when he picks up the doll, but the party is otherwise unhurt and mostly confused by what is happening.
Ribbon, in VR in order to manage her drone fleet, finally spots some odd behavior in the forest of device icons - a strange black snake, which seems almost impossible to keep track or make sense of. After chasing it through the forest of icons for a little while, she calls WRN3 for support. He agrees to assist, and mention how odd it is that the sprite is still even existent. Red Ribbon decides to invite a mark from the sprite, and the critter decides they might be safe to engage with. After some work at figuring out how to communicate with it, the sprite provides them with the video evidence of the murder and offers them an ambiguous reward if the team assists it in acquiring its vengeance.
Aftermath
The party decides that they're up for a good Johnson double-cross on account of how he's a labor-destroying jerk, and meet with him in his office to lie to him about their success in handling the job. Then, Nearl uses mind control magic to make him just hand over all the evidence he has of the murder conspiracy. The team steals away before the spell has faded, pays off a LS cop to push the investigation forward, and endures a little slander from Justin in the shadows before he is scooped up by the pigs.
A few days later, the party receives a geolocation tag from Skinshedder that leads them to a rich reward in electronics and other hardware pilfered from the warehouse while it was in operation.
Rewards
20000 in cash or 40000 in drones/drone modifications/electronics/uninstalled cyberware up to alpha grade, 16R (10 RVP)
+3000 negotiations/J buffaloing
4 Karma (4 RVP)
6 CDP (2 RVP)
1 Notoriety for all (betrayed the J, who is now imprisoned)
4k services debt from Chameleon to Lewis Fry
1 chip owed by Red Ribbon to WRN3
OPTIONAL
Skinshedder (Connection 4/Loyalty 3)
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Nearl
I wish we had killed the J, he deserved death for his actions. yet, the others decided that just sending them to KE was the best option. it felt good reading his brain.
Chameleon: Things have gone downhill ever since I died. First we had to fight and kill a nosferatu and got a bounty on our heads from Ordo Maximus. Then another vampire in the Mojave desert and a third in The Spire on the very next run? Coincidence? Uh huh. Now my own team runs a short con on me to cover up a necromancer! And the worst con ever to boot. I am not the sharpest tool in the shed but I'm not a fragging moron. "My 'friend' is going to scout astrally while I take a 'nap'." "My 'friend' lent me these two necromantic spirits to use." Really? What's next? "Hey Chameleon, you should meet this guy with the funny teeth, he really wants to get to know you...". The deception is to be expected I guess. These are the shadows and I am a professional liar. Turn about is fair play I suppose. The insult to my intelligence cuts deep though. A shoddy con for no discernable reason. I wonder what Nearl was up to?
I've gotten sloppy and complacent. I've forgotten what Mom & Dad said about Moscow Rules: Assume nothing. Never go against your gut. Everyone is potentially under opposition control. Time to use my bolt hole for a bit and let things cool off a bit. I need to retire Viktor Taltos for a while also. Everyone I've worked with in Seattle knows his face and name. I think I can trust the others with the bounty on their heads. We will see.
Red Ribbon
I'm a little worried about Nearl. Hiding things from the rest of the team - that nearly cracked things in half right there. At least Chameleon had the good sense not to do something reckless, or to sell us out, or... something of the sort. Either way, I keep running into technomancer drek. I really, really need a friend that's good at dealing with this kind of stuff...
Thunder: That J screwed us and then we had to risk our reps because we didn't want to get screwed. Luckily we managed to contain both Johnson and the damage to our reps and do some good to a lost spirit in one strike. That felt good.