To Catch A Cobra By The Tooth
| To Catch A Cobra By The Tooth | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Hospital (?) Workers | ||||||||
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All Gods Must Fall Rogozhin Kurobara Valvravn |
Doctors armed with guns Beast Spirit Man Spirit (Saxton Hale) | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | Both spirits disrupted, and both doctors killed | ||||||||
Summary
The 6th world is no stranger to the perverse incentives that can be brought about through capitalistic desires for monetary compensation. Many are caught up in the exploitations of corporations, of gangs and syndicates, and sometimes even just the machinations of small groups of individuals who find their chance to make some nuyen without necessarily playing by the rules. A lot of times, these schemes lead to a lot of people getting hurt. Sometimes they deserve it. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes, completely unrelated persons are taken from their lives, changed irreparably, and forced into a horrid fate because someone wanted to make that quick nooj, leaving someone else to clean up the mess.
It's not like shadowrunners can complain though.
It makes for good nuyen.
Background
Gaspé is a very, very small city in Quebec, barely even a town and off the coast. It's the kind of quiet place that makes for a wonderful retreat. That was Innes Parson's idea anyhow. A hardworking woman, if a little odd, she was your typical corporate worker: An orc who had to hide her features through surgery to fit in, who pushed herself to burning out in order to live comfortably, and followed her hobbies to recover afterwards. After a business trip to Montreal, she was planning on doing the same thing: Gaspé is a beautiful place to retreat to, it had a stellar nautical museum and tales of famous hunters to tide one over (even if the stories weren't all they were cracked up to be), and to be frank she just had the opportunity and excuse to do something good for herself.
Gaspé, like many other places in the 6th world, had bounties for infected. Now, there's a good reason for that, obviously. Magically enhanced predators of metahumanity born from our loved ones is a horror to experience, and many cannot fight the urges brought forth by the virus. Unfortunately, a bounty for every infected someone captures, kills, and turns in to the local law enforcement is like many other things in the 6th world become distilled into: A business. And business gets exploited.
HMHVV Strain 1 spreads through the act of draining essence. The victim will be left weak, tired, and desperately hungry. Vulnerable.
If you had a vampire helping you (willingly or not) make weaker infected so you could turn them in for a nice reward, that'd make for a very tidy business wouldn't it? Especially if you could force that vampire to make Renfield to further subdue victims. It becomes a problem when that vampire breaks out in a desperate attempt to feed, however.
Innes Parson had been missing for about 2 weeks before her sister had decided she needed to pay for professional help to find her sister. The local Lone Star subsidiary in Gaspé had been stalling on the case for a while. She didn't get what could have happened to her sister. She was just supposed to be on a detour for a trip. She just wanted to see Innes again. Find out what happened.
The Meet
The four runners were gathered together in a donut shop, their fixers unsure of much of Ms. Parson's background but vouching for the work, a menagerie of anti-socialites and freakish characters who were very quickly noted by the J and...reluctantly beckoned over. They ordered coffee and were filled in on the details: the trip, the timeline of her disappearance, the oddity of it all, and the paygrade. 6000 a head isn't exactly a lot of nooj, but they could tell the J wasn't exactly rolling in disposable income. That, and their collective social ineptitude made negotiations with a rapidly exasperated J much less promising. While the meeting was going on Valvravn began working on profiling the woman, and the rest of the team had the J arrange a meeting with Innes' husband as well, in order to give the more magical among them a chance to possibly divine her situation and get a scent for tracking.
The Plan
Valvravn was able to get a more complete profile of their target, but didn't find any particular business around her that would imply a certain enemy or lead or personage to watch out for. Likewise, the divination All Gods Must Fall revealed had been decisive in saying "what's done is done, there is only the aftermath you must deal with"...essentially. There wasn't a lot to go off of besides her image and known locations, like the nautical museum. So, the team acquired a private jet to get to Montreal and then ferry over to Gaspé. From there, they'd pick up whatever trace elements they could gather of her trail and go from there.
The Run
Slowly but surely, the gang gathered their evidence. Valvravn's searches helped to narrow down the last known location to a church that Innes seemed to have been planning on visiting, but on arrival Rogozhin, All Gods, and Kurobara discovered by speaking to the priest inside that there had not been any visitors that Sunday - the place was not so popular as that. They first suspected him of hiding something, but then moved on to investigating the perimeter, where All Gods found the faint hint of a psychometric impression. A violent affair, in which she felt the presence of something attacking her, draining her painfully - a vampire, she realized, had attacked their mark. Then there was confusion, panic, a vehicle of some kind - being shoved into it before the impression ended. All Gods gave Valvravn a description of the vehicle, which the engineer identified and began searching for, and they picked the trail up from there, taking some time to rest as the avian flitted about the matrix in search of the abducting vehicle's last location. She followed it through cameras to a grocery store parking lot and led the others there. A faint impression that was barely readable remained, and it was utterly abandoned, but Valvravn continued her searching throughout the devices nearby. The van had a gap of about an hour in its sensor information that implied a transfer and data wipe to another vehicle, and after a (embarrassing) struggle to gain control of a camera to look through the files they found the Ford Americar they were looking for in the footage. It wasn't exactly a popular vehicle here, with only 4 being around the city itself. 2 at the hospital, one at the nautical museum, and one at the police station. After eliminating one spot after another, the team found their way to the hospital. Scouting revealed that there was a strange draft in the building, and after some ultrasound work from a drone they discovered a stairwell that descended down into a basement that should not have been there.
Along with a bloodied bed, cages with tarps over them, medical supplies of all different kinds, and well prepared assailants who heard the team breaking in with AGMF's chainsaw. 2 spirits, and 2 humans drugged up and wared to the gills, ready to kill. Along with a flashbang at their feet.
A fight broke out. Valvravn was overcome by flashbacks to her surgical suffering, and retreated her drone back to the van. Thankfully, Rogozhin jumped into his tiger Mishka and Kurobara were holding off the assailants just fine, as his corpsified pup and AGMF helped to quell the spirits one by one. Though it wasn't a clean infiltration into the place or a clean fight, it was a victorious one. And now, they only had one last thing to resolve.
The cages.
Aftermath
Cages of metahumans. Some under renfield, bloodbags to be fed on by pet vampires. Others infected, kept as would be bounties. Well, "others" in this case being one Innes Parson, having been turned into a feral wendigo. And in the final cage, a vampire, chained up, and upon further investigation the creator of that renfield. A horrific kind of operation.
There...was not a lot the team could do. The vampire was freed due to being largely not responsible for what it was forced to do. Innes Parson was put out of her misery and her body hauled away as the team fled the scene. The other victims...they were left for the police to deal with. It was as All Gods Must Fall predicted: There was nothing to be done, besides clean up the mess.
Both sister and husband were dismayed and horrified at what happened to beloved Innes but...what else could they do? The runners, for their part, had done as they were asked to in finding out what happened and bringing her back. It was a shame what had happened to these people. Mrs. Parson, her family, the other victims...
...but at least someone got paid for it.
Rewards
Run Rewards for To Catch A Cobra By The Tooth:
6000 nuyen (3 RVP)
8 karma (8 RVP)
6 CDP (2 RVP)
Qualities:
Watch the Suit at chargen rates
Drug Tolerant for Kurobara
Brilliant heuristics for Valv
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Valvravn "...Always the FUCKING doctors...pieces of shit...fuck them, fuck them, fuck them, dammit! God...I should've just blown that hospital up and saved everyone a lot of hurt...dammit."
"It felt good to take Ryu-Oh out on a shadowrun. Hopefully next run, I'll have a greater challenge from a man armed with a blade. But, it did take two cuts to take him down.... I think I'm slipping..."