The Jack Frost Jacking
| The Jack Frost Jacking | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Saint Nick | Ares | ||||||||
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Snickerdoodle Garuda Sang Monyet Zero |
KE Experienced Patrol KE HTR Caster KE HTR Pursuit | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 11 | |||||||||
Summary
Santa's presents for the good little boys and girls in Dallas has been stolen! He needs a group of Runners to help him get them back!
Background
Saint Nick was flying toward Boise on his sleigh when he was intercepted by a yertzed out BMW Trollhammer, rebuilt to look like a sleigh. It flew up on rotors, whereupon a dessicated, blue corpse jumped onto Santa's Sleigh, stole his presents, and hopped onto their own ride. Saint Nick, naturally, wants these guns back, but since the tags they'd installed in the presents were fried, they only have a general location. Assuredly by now the guns are in a secure location. Saint Nick wants some runners to track down the guns and get them back.
The Meet
Zero receives a message from Whistleblower with a new job. Jerry Can lets Snickerdoodle know they've got run for nearby that'll be worth some good Nuyen for drugs. Garuda receives a call from Daniel "Lucky" Guivera, and finally Sang Monyet got a call from Angélica Cabral, relieved to finally have something to do. With coordinates set, the Runners converge on Santa's Workshop; Snickerdoodle, most notably, on a bike. After briefly terrifying and baffling the security, Saint Nick explains the situation--After offering Novacoke cookies, of course--And offers access to their Krime Wing to drop the team in nearby.
The Plan
After Garuda scans through the Matrix with the help of Zero, they're able to determine that the "corpse" wasn't a corpse at all--It was a highly customized Drone, used by a Rigger going by the name Jack Frost. They're a severe FastJack fanboy, and after FastJack's disappearance they'd made a drone based on them. After confirming that, anthrodrone notwithstanding, Jack Frost is nothing special, they opted to fly in closer and figure out what's going on. Zero agreed to drive in on her Thundercloud Morgan. When closer to the site, Garuda was able to spot a Host five miles out through the Matrix, along with devices interspersed throughout the forest tied to the Host. After setting up camp, Snickerdoodle went about summoning a spirit and Garuda began scouting out the surroundings. After their fly-spy evading detection of the cameras, the guards, the Mage, and the Decker(!!!), they were able to get a good look at the entire group. Everything was looking easy. Up until Snickerdoodle got a good eye on the Astral, and found a Force 20 Barrier set up, along with four patrols of two watchers. For a Sasquatch, that was completely impassable. No chance for them to infiltrate.
The Run
Garuda started painting targets in AR, while Zero set herself up in a sniper's nest nearby. Amazingly, despite careful attention paid toward the cameras, she successfully managed to sneak through those, too, and set up around 100 meters away. With the Decker busy in VR, she was able to fire straight through the wooden walls of the farmhouse and they had one less Decker to worry about. With the guards taking over the cameras, perhaps they had a chance to catch something--But they didn't, as Zero repositioned before getting spotted. The Mage went to send its spirits out of the ward as the watchers were popped, one by one, while also failing to catch the OpFor. This turned out to be a mistake, as Garuda painted the Mage and Zero made short work of her as well. Finally, the three guards decided to lay down suppressing fire in the general direction of Zero--Who still!...Evaded detection. Snickerdoodle and Sang Monyet creep around toward the back perimeter of the Ward, which Garuda was able to spot with her Fly Spy. Zero passes off a grenade to Snickerdoodle who, miraculously, is able to chuck the grenade into the bedroom window! With a blast, the ward is down, and Snickerdoodle follows behind Sang Monyet, who busts down the door and strikes a pose. Before she's able to brain the guard in front of her, Snickerdoodle roasts a guard, and the fire spirit engulfs another. The OpFor is successfully eliminated.
The weapons are found still loaded in the sleigh, out resting in the barn. A quick matrix perception check reveals the stealth tags, which did a simply awful job of hiding. After a little while of peeling tags off, they decided to steal the sleigh and ride it back into town, only to notice they'd picked up an Ares tail. An especially pertinent detail, given Saint Nick's recent Ares trouble. Snickerdoodle commands his Fire Spirit to give one of the cars an 'accident,' resulting in the car suddenly accelerating and landing in oncoming traffic. The driver wasn't quite up to par, and was quickly turned into a smear. Garuda proceeded to screw with the remaining 3's feeds, trying to shake them off. One car did end up in a ditch, but the remaining two were going strong. Finally, Garuda gave up and, with Zero's help, bricked their cars entirely.
Snickerdoodle figured that Ares would probably use the excuse to detain the runners, and so the team abandoned the sleigh and returned in Zero's Thundercloud Morgan.
