The Observer Effect
| The Observer Effect | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Spetznas Deserter & Co | ||||||||
|
Armadillo Memento Mori Hierophant |
Marcus Hill A Bound Earth Spirit Cynthia Raymond Leopold "Roach" Tolles | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | All OPFOR were neutralized upon contact | ||||||||
Summary
A former member of the Spetznaz and friend to the SSC had found his morals compromised when outside influence began to encroach upon his duties. He choose morality, and nearly died for it. Knowing his time was short, he took someone he cared about and had a tentative situationship with into the SSC wilderness to work on a means of escape.
Unfortunately, the 6th world is not a place in which morals are valued above profits. Some cannot afford to be picky. Others cannot be bothered to choose the high ground. The shadows the world operates within are quick to swallow up all of that context, and leave us with only the hunters and the hunted in the end.
It is a shame that his morals could not save him in the end.
Background
Leopold "Roach" Tolles was a former member of the Spetznaz, but recently he had been working with Orc Tribes in the Salish-Shidhe Council. This worked, for a time, but the problem came when interference from Aztechnology started pushing things to a darker path. Leopold, highly trained and wared to the gills, thought he could make an exit of defiance. It nearly became a blaze of glory, and Roach was on the run. With the help of a contact of his, Marcus Hill, he arranged for a temporary place to stay and prepare for a long trek through the woods - after, of course, he healed up at cyberdocs in Seattle, which gave his pursuers a place to start following him. But Roach, injured and a little rusty, had decided to bring a friend and confidant Cynthia Raymond along to keep him company. A hermetic mystic adept whom he had a..."it's complicated" relationship with, but whom he did ultimately cared for in the end.
Aztechnology, meanwhile, wanted this little problem dealt with.
Due to "project deadlines" and his escape into the woods making things far more problematic for them to track him down, the more cost effective route for handling this was simply to off-load this to deniable assets. Having shadowrunners who could track him down and kill him was a far easier and cheaper solution than sending an entire team to hunt down the former Spetznaz. And so, Mr. Jacobson was sent out to gather a team to tie up loose ends
The Meet
The three runners selected covered a decent enough breadth of skills to handle the task at hand: Memento Mori, a former veteran of a PMC and an especially skilled tracker, was the bedrock of the operation, with Hierophant being a similarly experienced operative and magician and Armadillo serving as the muscle the group lacked. They met up in a C-zone apartment complex over in Renton, and the details of the job were handed over to them: 15k a head to kill Leopold "Roach" Tolles, sending a photo of his body and the dog tags-or his severed head, if dog tags were missing. One week deadline. The team scrounged for any additional details they could manage, learning more about his former Spetznaz affiliation and skills, his visits to the cyberdoctors, and getting the initial tip that he was using his contact Marcus Hill's cabin for at least...some amount of time. They'd also get access to...'tools of the trade' should pay not be in their purview, and the runners agreed to handle the mission. Mr. Jacobson arranged for a Coyote to get them across the SSC border the following day, giving them roughly 24 hours to prepare for what would be a long trek through the woods of Glacier Peak.
The Plan
Planning was unfortunately going to have to be very sparse. They didn't have much to go off of beyond a starting location and an objective. Hierophant got a heads up on the ware Roach was packing due to the investigative assistance of her contact Daniel Glenwood, finding the typical "super soldier" package of muscle enhancements, wired reflexes, a pain editor, armor, the works. But they lacked much else concrete beyond Mori assisting them with preparations for the journey for the week. With that in mind, they gathered the tools they needed and met up with the Coyote the next day.
The Run
After arriving in a small work town in Glacier Peak and beginning their investigation by following the directions Jacobson provided to the cabin, Mori took the lead with support from Hierophant and Armadillo. The first stop at the cabin was both easier and not at all as expected. Mori and Hierophant were working on scouting out the location when Armadillo began approaching the cabin, and just...knocked on the front door. Now, from the windows Mori could see two figures: A somewhat disfigured and large one that was hard to make out fully, and an older gentleman that the crew would later realize was Marcus Hill himself. Marcus, after the awkward exchange with the force of chaos, went to get his shotgun, and Mori felt that was enough justification. The team killed Marcus and disrupted the Earth Spirit with him, and then went on to investigate the cabin in his absence. They found traces of Hermetic reagents, women's hygiene products, and...well, there was an Earthy Golem by them. They figured out that Roach was not alone. The likely scenario here was that this magical asset of his had bound the Earth Spirit to help watch over Marcus and left in a rush, given the rather sloppy job they did hiding their tracks and the traces of their presence here. Those were plenty for Mori to help them keep on the track.
With Mori's handiwork, the team continued on towards what looked like the off-road ATV that Roach and his assistant left behind. Mori, quick on the draw to notice details, noticed the explosive designed to go off if someone messed with it. They considered working to disarm it for a time, but ultimately it was too much risk and work for not enough apparent reward, and so the trail had to be found again. The pair of tracks turned out to just be the single foot tracks of the feminine magician likely to have been working with Roach, but even those began to dissipate over time as she realized her magic was needed to make herself hidden. Thankfully, Memento Mori is an expert tracker and Armadillo was quite capable of helping her keep on the trail, so even with a few hiccups and little to go off of the group continued onwards, evading some other traps along the way in their multi-day voyage across the wilderness.
This trip finally led them to a cave where the trail ended, and Hierophant immediately noticed 2 things. One was the watcher spirit guarding the entrance, and the other was the mana barrier concealing the residents from magical trackers and spirits alike. Mori floated the idea of waiting out their prey here, see if they pop out and then kill them since they were ahead of schedule, but Hierophant was worried that the duo might've been working on something-hints of a fatalistic determination back in the cabin had her uneasy, believing there was some greater cause that the two were up to and that completing their goal would make the matter of assassination much harder. So the group snuck past the force 9 watcher and dropped all astral forms to get through the mana barrier without incident.
Once inside, they found a woman (Cynthia Raymond) and Roach discussing their next moves over a campfire. Over DNI, Hierophant instructed the other two on the positioning for a flanking maneuver, the group got into position, and with Armadillo's charge they began their ambush. Armadillo's axe made short work of Cynthia, unprepared for combat, while Hierophant used suppressive fire to keep Roach pinned down. He had managed to get a shot off on Armadillo with his massive Ares Desert Strike, but the resilient orc managed to take the shot with aplomb and remain standing. With Roach under suppressive fire and outflanked, Mori had an extremely clean shot on him, and even with his full focus on defense he was hit especially hard by her rifle, at which point Hierophant weaved a manabolt at him using recovered reagents from Cynthia before he could get a chance to return fire. The fight was over, the job complete.
Aftermath
The job was done, and Armadillo did not care to wait to see if Roach had his dog tags on him to begin beheading him, to Hierophants dismay. The group found a number of supplies in the little hideout the pair had made, along with notes detailing some more of the situation in which the duo found themselves in. No telling of the exact details, but Hierophant sympathized with the fallen's decision. Using the help of a Spirit of Earth, she buried the two bodies. After that, the job was a success.