Omenbearers
| Omenbearers | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Hail to the Pumpking | |||||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||||
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ShadowHaven Charon Asahiro Kunitoshi | Wanguo Anbu | Knights of Rage | Yama King | ||||||||
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Ty Vallynn Delphi Cleaner Cleaner | Counter-Intelligence Officers | Several members |
Terracotta Homunculi Qin Shi Huang Impostor | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||||
| All KIA | All terracotta soldiers were eventually broken. | ||||||||||
Summary
The team goes to retrieve a part of the lost and shattered Sohayamaru for Asahiro Kunitoshi but complications occur.
Background
Asahiro's fashioned himself a daimyo of old and wants to guide all who he rules over into a more glorious and happy era of history. To this end, he has to clear some of the evil tainting the world and seeks Sohayamaru, an ancient blade from Japan heralded as one of its national treasures. Thought lost, he's uncovered a precious few fragments and had them reforged into a blade the size of a wakizashi. He wields it to exterminate evil spirits, but it still isn't complete.
The Meet
Asahiro meets the team on his ET grounds in Auburn and informs them that the fragment has fallen into the hands of a Chinese collector living in Shaanxi. He can arrange transportation publicly, but leaves the specifics of the acquisition to the runners.
The Plan
The collector, Aiguo Zhu Zhao, used to work for Wuxing as a programmer and helped refine many of their logistics systems to be more streamlined. For these inventions he gains royalties even to this day, living somewhat comfortably in his personal museum. Retirement's nice! Unfortunately, the team doesn't have much to bargain with since the man doesn't care about money but increasing his valuable collection of historical artifacts. Ty owns a genuine Middle Ages copy of Robin Hood, but it might not be enough. So instead, the team looks at a couple of options and--
Then one of them gets a call. Unknown speaker, offering aid. Delphi attempts to trace the Meta Link, but miraculously her trace gets bounced back and she rage quits in frustration. The person on the other end offers them a juicy artifact they could klep if they are daring enough: break into the First Emperor's Tomb and take Qin Shi Huang's mercury medicine set. Such a historical artifact would be priceless to the man and he'd easily trade the fragment. The only caveat is that the benefactor has their own request: steal Qin Shi Huang's sword as well and stab it into a statue of Lung near the Asian east coast. The team's trepidation is warranted, and then Delphi pieces together that this is the Black Lodge member in Bellevue, Charon, based on her vernacular and sometimes cavalier attitude. The team looks at the floor plans and security of Zhu Zhao's museum and promptly decide "fuck that" seeing how fortified he is. So the tomb it is, then!
The Run
Planning a heist into the First Emperor's Tomb is spicy. Legwork reveals that there's not much of a background count outside but that the interior of the tomb has no possibility to perform normal magic whatsoever. In addition, Knights of the Rage, servants of Celedyr, have watched over the area recently. Lung's agents do exist in the area but they don't watch the tomb explicitly and Leviathan's paid more attention to the Chinese coast, making the entire region a hotspot of Great Dragon attention.
Nevertheless, the flight is taken and with a somewhat strict deadline they get to work planning their heist. Get a diesel car, stock up on gear, wait for a good entry, ask Charon to distract the Knights (which she obliges ominously) and dart for the burial mound. As the Black Lodge and Knights of the Rage clash in scythes, rockets and rifle rounds, Delphi, Ty and CC bee line it to the mound and have to use the car to pull one of the heavy stone slabs out and get entry inside. Rappelling down, they see the mercury lake in the middle of which is the emperor's sarcophagus. They continue descending and Ty attempts sorcery, watching his mana get siphoned to the lake as soon as he tries casting anything. Delphi is utterly enthralled by this and jury rigs a probe to try and sense anything at the bottom of the lake. Coincidentally, her sensors imply there is a hollow space below the lake. Given the interest arcanoarcheologists have in the area, she pieces together that it may very well be a genuine Aquinae Vault that hasn't yet been discovered.
The team fill an inflatable boat and sail across the mercury lake, pushing open the sarcophagus lid and opening the coffin. Strangely enough, the emperor's corpse isn't mummified but completely fresh and unspoiled. Then it opens its eyes and gazes directly at the runners, immediately frightening them. Qin Shi Huang climbs out and speaks in archaic Mandarin to Ty and Delphi, asking what these new servants are doing. As the two runners very carefully try to not piss this ancient emperor off, they elaborate what the time is, little about the changes the world has undergone and that he's still remembered to this day. Qin Shi Huang, on the other hand, regales them with tales of felling a demon god, of leading China to glory and lifting the people from oppression. He's intent on leaving his tomb and leading his empire once more, which the runners try to warn him about to no avail. Utterly perturbed, they follow him outside and finally regain Matrix access, not having realized in the moment they lost connection. Charon's utterly terrified of the news and beseeches them to run as fast as they can. The emperor claps his hands and awakens his terracotta soldiers, telling them to go out and spread word of his coming before he walks through a conjured portal.
Obviously, the runners are both confused and scared and decide to leave, not taking any of the artifacts with them. They instead have to think of something else.
Coincidentally, they manage to pull some strings and get a small but acceptable hoard of artifacts together from contacts and their own belongings, going to Zhu Zhao's museum to not steal, but genuinely bargain for the shard. The negotiations are difficult and there's a lot of back and forth since Zhu Zhao's tastes are rather specific to Asian trinkets and he places less value on European items, but they manage to eventually convince him to buy a four-for-one deal, accepting the trade and giving the team rights to the shard.
Aftermath
News of clay soldiers invading small villages and butchering people spread across Shaanxi and neighboring countries. They're put down in roughly short order by officials, but they nevertheless raise superstitious panic and hysteria all over, further accentuating some local pollution issues with toxic background counts. Delphi later gets confirmation from Charon that this may have been a Yama King that escaped its bonds earlier in Hong Kong, but that the Lodge member hadn't anticipated it to just show up in the tomb apropos of nothing. Admitting that she got them in this mess but also defending her call by pointing out how little she could've predicted this, Charon covers for some of the team's expenses and doesn't guilt them in any way for not doing the job. She even lets slip some of the intel to Lung's servants because dragons aren't worse than Yama Kings to the world in her eyes. A very rare W of dragon-lodge cooperation, likely the last of its kind unless worse comes to pass.
Rewards
Rating 4 Weapon Focus, Shiawase Katana (7 RVP) Charon offers Hellhound puppies if you promise to learn Animal Handling at Gear Rates + 1,000 Nuyen (3 RVP) OR 20,000 Nuyen (10 RVP)
20 Karma (20 RVP) 2 CDP Cleaner Cleaner can take Charon at 1 Loyalty as a contact (8 RVP) May take 1 rank in The Enemy Optional Quality: Mnemonic Vault for Delphi Optional Quality: Catlike for CC
Consequences: Delphi owns a favor to the Black Lodge, this is fine Toxic Terracotta Homunculi charge across Shaanxi spreading terror, fear, butchery and misery. They're taken down within a week, but vastly cause turbulent astral tides which pisses local authority figures off. Finding the culprit becomes harder due to this astral smokescreen.
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Cleaner Cleaner: "...huh. I... what just happened? I thought we were going to raid a tomb, and then... something woke up inside it. They... they all say not to talk about it. So I guess I shouldn't. I know something I'm not supposed to. Why... why does it make me sweat to think about?"