🎪 Circus of Crime 🤡
| 🎪 Circus of Crime 🤡 | |||||||
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| Part of Circus of Crime | |||||||
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Shadowhaven Echo Wave Rambozo The Clown Wolfheart Shark | |||||||
Background
The circus is in town, but this particular circus is a front for a band of traveling criminals and smugglers who have a lot of work to do before they leave town.
The Meet
The team is asked to come to the Tacoma Fairgrounds, where the Malini Circus of Wonder is currently set up. As instructed, they show a specific ARO to the staff at the Gold Gate, and are given entry tickets which also give them AR directions. Given that one member of the team is Rambozo The Clown, a bunch of children run up to the obvious clown and ask if he can juggle. Rambozo juggles some stuff he finds, with Wolfheart casting Trid Entertainment to enhance the performance. The team eventually manages to tear itself away from the kids, and are guided through to the staff area, and the trailer of Max Malini. They knock, and are greeted by Max. Max explains how a member of his circus, Gregor The Great, has bunkered down in Redmond, and is off his meds making him extremely paranoid. Max is unable to recover him himself, and asks the team to recover him and bring him home. He shows the team footage of Max's first attempt to recover Gregor using a holodrone, and Gregor's destruction of the drone using pop-up turrets.
Towards the end of the meet, a monkey that had sat in Rambozo's lap palmed a grenade from Rambozo's pocket. This was understandably not a good thing, and Wolfheart summoned a beast spirit to control the monkey and make it give the very dangerous grenade in the enclosed location back to the clown instead. This was a marginally less dangerous place for the grenade, as the clown immediately started playing with the pin to see if it was going to come loose.
File:Shadowrun Narrator Circus of Crime.mp3
The Legwork
The team needs to track down Gregor's new hidey hole, and starts their search at Gregor's old one. The place has been almost totally cleared out, but Rambozo finds an old napkin for a place called Runner Bar 16. The team decides to go there to investigate, and see if anyone knows Gregor.
They find the bar is a Shadowrunner poser bar in touristville, which caters to all the rich kids who want to cosplay as Shadowrunners and pretend to be badasses for the night. They ask around, and the bartender points them to a new kid at the bar who is super proud of his "Awesome Laser" who got into a fight with Gregor the other week.
Rambozo goes to to talk to the kid, and his buddies immediately assume that Rambozo is another poser, who couldn't even create his own runner persona and just copied a real runner. Rambozo's feelings are hurt, and he tries to intimidate the posers by slamming his Aztechnology Striker on the table. The posers respond with an Ares Alpha. Rambozo responds with his better Ares Alpha, modded out a lot nicer. The posers respond with a Yamaha Raiden. Rambozo responds with a bandolier of grenades. One of the posers goes out to his car and brings back a Fichetti Pain Inducer. Rambozo is pretty much done with this shit and goes out to his car and comes back with 6 more Aztechnology Strikers. One of the kids reaches down to his ankle holster to pull out a heavy pistol but his buddy stops him because it is way too late in this dick measuring contest to try and bring out a heavy pistol you'll only embarrass yourself.
Someone buys Rambozo a drink.
They talk for a while and Chet Awesomelaser offers to hire the team. He'll give them the commcode and vehicle tags his buddies picked up off of Gregor, and the team will go and kick his ass. A fair exchange. The team realizes they don't have to do any of that, but agrees just to get the info they want.
Someone else buys Rambozo a drink.
The team tries to track the location of Gregor's comm, but multiple failed hacks cause Gregor to go wireless dark. Echo Wave switches to hacking the car, which is no longer slaved to the commlink after Gregor shut it down to guard himself against hacks. As Echo is doing this, Gregor is swearing to himself as he goes around and manually shuts off the wireless on everything he has because he didn't spend the time to send the command before shutting off his commlink.
The Run
Gregor's place is now under a lockdown. The team arrives and realizes it's basically a cold war bunker. Rambozo finds some concealed turrets, and Wolfheart goes invisible to reach in and hit the button to turn them wireless on. Echo then hacks them to send a shutdown command.
At the door, Gregor tries to intimidate the team over an intercom, demanding they leave and makes it clear he doesn't believe anything they say. Not really sure how else to get in, the team blows the door.
Behind, they find the shelter has been expanded upon. There is a ladder that goes deeper, and another door. Another intercom comes online, and warns the team that Gregor doesn't want to kill them, but will if they continue. He warns them that the door is rigged to blow at the slightest misstep. The team isn't sure where Gregor actually is, but get out of him the idea that Gregor isn't going to blow himself up in the process here. They toss a grenade down, and set off the bomb themselves, blowing a second door.
Behind the door, is a staircase. Rambozo takes a step onto it, and realizes the stairs are rigged to drop under them, and turn into a super fun happy slide. Wolfhear has a spirit carry her down the, and finds a mess of barbed wire at the bottom, out of sight due to the curve of the stairs. Rambozo chucks some bolt cutters down the stairs, which Wolfheart uses on the wire. Wolfheart then goes back up and Rambozo tries to set off the stairs, but to no avail.
Gregor activates the switch when the whole team is on them, causing them to slide down and into what appears to be a lot of scrap and metal garbage that wasn't there before. Everyone takes some damage but Wolfheart realizes this is an illusion, a mass agony spell. Wolfheart starts counterspelling, and everyone comes to realize they aren't actually hurt.
The team goes farther in, and finds a room rigged to have a hall of mirrors pop up. They find another turret, and while they are disabling it, 4 spirits of man manifest to attack. The team deals with the threats quickly.
Finally, Gregor's tone changes and he sounds serious, and concerned. He warns the team about the true reason why he was trying to scare them away. Behind that next door are bug spirits which are trapped inside. Gregor insists he is dealing with them, but begs the team not to open the door because if they do, they will unleash the bugs on Redmond. The team resolves that they have to do something about the bugs, and wants to help, but Gregor is most insistent that they leave.
Rambozo walks into the room. the bugs make threatening motions, but don't attack until Rambozo gets RIIIIIIIIGHT up next to one... and the attack passes through him. The illusion created by Trid Phantasm looks very sad for a moment, and then vanishes.
Finally, the team reaches the final room. It appears to be empty, but Rambozo notices one of the wall panels looks off. He removes it, and finds Gregor's fiberoptic mage sight goggle network, and Gregor trying to escape through the inside of the wall. Rambozo grabs him, applies a tranq patch, and drags him out.
Aftermath
The team returns him to the circus, and Max is very happy to have Gregor back, and asks the team to bring him back to Gregor's trailer. Max insists that he wants to stay with Gregor until he wakes up, to make sure he will be okay and calm him down. The team is paid, and egts contact information for Max Malini.
Rewards
- ¥8,000
- 3 Karma
- Gained Max Malini as a contact at Loyalty 2.
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Wolfheart
Yes! Yes! Yes! Time for the circus! The circus is back in town! Did you know I was a circus performer, growing up?! I was part of a traveling circus family! We performed throughout CalFree, Tir Tairngire, and the PCC! Anyway, we were sent to capture an escape artist/illusionist! It was tough, but Wolf helps me track people down! We even entertained some children along the way with some shiny objects! And we entertained some little kids at the circus too! The guy's traps were deadly, but thankfully, a spirit of the mighty oak came by to help me dispel illusions! We caught him, and he's safe again! I hope Mr. Malini has more work soon! I love the circus!