A Shadowrun Based on Poison by Stick and Poke
| A Shadowrun Based on Poison by Stick and Poke | |||||||||
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Danny Boy Kay-O Purkinje Tanuki |
Ares Macrotechnology | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | Massive property damage, loss of irreplaceable research data | ||||||||
Summary
The runners were hired by the Ares internal resistance opposed to Project Pyro with the objective of destroying ritual samples and noting any that were missing. The samples were held in a highly secure facility in Pittsburgh.
Background
Wolf contacted one of her followers to give Wolf's Gaze a hand dealing with some bugs in a secret Ares compound in West Virginia (which I don't remember the name of).
The Meet
The team met the Johnson in a host made out to look like an American backyard barbecue. The offer was originally 10,000¥ apiece, but Danny Boy talked them up to 11,000¥ and half upfront. As an Ares employee, the Johnson had intimate knowledge of the facility and was able to provide information on both the physical and matrix security.
The Plan
The team decided to finesse the job, relying on legwork to support a series of bluffs to get them into the vault where the ritual samples were stored long enough to dispose of them and get out before anyone could stop them.
The Run
The runners flew to Pittsburgh from the Ancients' airfield in Seattle along with an odd-looking team of runners who seemed very knowledgeable about explosives. They bought some Ares corporate-approved clothes to blend in and received a rack of TNT to use on the safe if it came down to it. Purkinje did matrix legwork upfront by searching for online dossiers so Danny Boy could brush up on his con artistry. She also hacked into Ares' Pittsburgh regional host, bricked an important computer attached to facility, and then edited the security database's personnel files to register the team's SINs as authorized to be on site. In addition, she downloaded a strange file labeled, "PROJECT PYRO: MARKET INTEGRATION PLAN FOR SEATTLE." Delphi was unhappy with her for taking it, but she explained her concern for the world's welfare in the face of insect spirit invasion.
With the legwork out of the way, the team pulled up to the facility in meatspace. Knight Errant patrol officers almost caught them casing the perimeter, but they managed to play it off with Danny Boy's considerable face skills. Once at the gate, Danny Boy took on the persona of a highly displeased Ares Lieutenant General, and his bark was so fierce, no one questioned him for more than a moment. With the documentation seeming to back up his story, there was no room for doubt in the poor Ares security peons' minds.
Posing as a hardware specialist on the way in, Kay-O got to work on the vault door and had it open within seconds despite it having a high-tech anti-tampering mechanism. Purkinje kept the cameras occupied while Kay-O picked a mechanical safe inside that turned out not to have been changed from the default combination. Once inside, she browsed the documents and noted which ones appeared to be missing from the filing system per the contract. She rewired the temperature regulator that was keeping the ritual samples stable so that it wouldn't detect the fire she started, nor the bottles of bleach and turpentine she used to clean up. While it burned, Purkinje looked up the missing samples in the Ares database she had a direct connection to. She managed to snag a file labeled, "PLAN TO TARGET PROTOTYPE TRANSHUMAN EX-FIREWATCH LEADER IN SEATTLE."
Since they managed to avoid setting off any alarms, their way out was relatively unhindered. Tanuki leapt into action, driving the runners through a series of tight alleys like something out of a trid until they were safely out of Pittsburgh and able to rendezvous with the Ancients at the airfield. Unfortunately, they weren't out of the woods yet. Ares VTOL craft pursued them once they were aloft. The craft were dispatched, but the pilots who ejected seemed to disappear mysteriously into thin air.
Aftermath
Ultimately, Ares was thoroughly embarrassed and lost millions of nuyen in property damage. The client was pleased, and the runners were paid as per the contract.
Rewards
- 11,000¥ each, 5 karma each, +3 Rep with ex-Firewatch, +3 rep Ares: Anti-Project Pyro
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Purkinje's Report
Have you ever felt like you were just coasting your whole life, then you suddenly woke up and starting seeing yourself in a whole new way? I've had some close calls and all, but every run I've ever been on has been terrifying - anxiety fuel. This time felt different, somehow. It's hard to say exactly what did it. People were depending on me and I pulled through, but that's happened before. I got away without being detected, but that's happened before too. Something about this time felt like I was skating on a razor's edge, and there were a million moving parts to the plan that could've broken down at any point along the way. We did it, though. Téch, did we do it.
At first, I was nervous. A lot of the Haven runners have been talking about insect spirits, and it sounded like there was a high chance we'd run into them if things went sideways. The Ares host looked pretty tough, too. Most of my poking around in hosts has been small-time. But hey, the best shadowrunners can do the job without firing a single bullet, right? And I aim to be one of the best, not because I'm prideful but because I owe it to the people who trust me with their lives and nuyen. Anyway, I took time to pray to Delphi for Her favor, and I struck at the host. I got in without raising an alarm and took the time to brick a terminal that was in the facility we wanted to get into. Figured we could pose as tech support and get inside like that, classic con. I was really nervous though, and I had trouble threading my resonance spikes. Danny Boy managed to calm me down, though. He likes to keep things light, and between him and the Oracle, I was able to brick the machine in a few seconds. From there, I broke into the nested host containing the secure files and added fake profiles for the team into the authorized personnel list. Though, uh, not before I found this weird file that had something to do with Ares' insect spirit plans for operating in Seattle. Oracle wasn't happy I took that, but ultimately, she understood.
I struggled to sleep off the fading, thanks to my damn insomnia. We ended up going to sleep early so we could get up at midnight and catch the facility while they were still figuring out what the hell happened during the night shift. I dressed up in this Ares-themed technician outfit so I could pose as a matrix security assessment specialist and support Danny Boy's ruse. He ended up hardly needing my help, but goddamn if we didn't get straight to the safe room where the samples were being held without trouble. Kay-O was also terrifyingly effective. She had that vault open about as fast as I could loop the security camera feeds, except she was working with meat hands. Handled rewiring the safe like a pro, too. I'll admit my knowledge of hardware is... lacking. All I know is when the stuff is wired up right, I can feel it working. She IDed the missing samples before destroying the ones on site, and I was able to pull info about them from the database before wiping my presence in their system and getting the drek out of there.
Speaking of getting the drek out of there, Tanuki. Goddamn. I kept thinking we were gonna crash, but every time we came close to a wall or a corner, he snapped around it like it was the most natural thing in the world. My memory becomes pretty foggy at this point. I was really... freaked out? Hypnotized? I don't know a good word for it in English. It felt like how I always imagined zarien to be, a sudden transcendental awareness that drew my entire focus. I remember being shuffled back into that throwback airplane the Ancients used to get us to Pittsburgh, only now there were Ares VTOLs everywhere. They went down, and there were... things. Something I couldn't quite identify, like spirits of a rare sort. They vanished into thin air up in the atmosphere, no parachutes or anything. I really hope I'm not cursed now.