Nod Ya Head

Nod Ya Head
Date 2082-01-17 GM Asmodeus Location Downtown Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Agency	Various Corporations
Delphi Pell Fidem	Garry Foreman
Casualties and losses
None	One Outdated Commlink.

Summary

Three elves walk into a seminar and leave traumatized.

Background

The Agency has tried to be cool and make people think they're ominous for a long time. They've started to get some connections here and there, but it ain't easy being cheesy.

The Meet

Meeting in the Redmond Barrens in Agency territory (as figured out by Delphi) the team are given some minor information, most of it gatekept behind consent to the job. Ms. Johnson is severely lacking in essence and even possibly suffering from mild cyberpsychosis. After agreeing, information is given via a DNI data dump. A geneticist by the name of Garry Foreman is about to hold a seminar, really a glorified frat party between corporate talent scouts and himself to look for further funding as a private entrepreneur. He's a rare case of a troll, giant to be specific that managed to ace his university doctorate and has bounced between megacorporation sponsorships, going from one minor genetic research project to the next. With plenty of information to go with, the team proceeds to formulate a plan. Given that Ms. Johnson is cold and up front, professionalism dictates haggling would be a bad move anyway, might as well get to work.

The Plan

Delphi starts doing both divination and Matrix searches, donning a Second Skin and Heritage 12 that she requested as up front gear payment to attend the party in suitable style. While she does find some rumours and conspiracy theories about Dr. Foreman only doing the job about the elven gene of 1X214-Gamma because of its supposed correlation with the inherited Bruckner-Langer compatible gene in elves, an extremely rare mutation that allows elves to present as nosferatu instead of dying to HMHVV-IA. In reality, he's most likely researching the gene because it's been known to cause thickening of the ear drums in elves as they approach old age and as a result, dulled or outright loss of hearing. His treatment for this gene's complications has been novel and practically half the cost of the previous method, though its application is so scarce that it's considered a minor breakthrough at best. The team is given three objectives:

1. Retrieve physical information about the doctor's sponsors and sources.
2. Acquire preliminary information about the various corporate scouts' thoughts and potential offers to Foreman.
3. Get the previous commlink that Foreman has recently replaced with an implanted one in his head. The last one is still not discarded and may very well be in his lab still.

The Agency had requested the runners to accomplish any two of these objectives, though Delphi divines that all three may give them enough street cred in the Agency's eyes to get access to their personal spy gear. Determined to overachieve, they make plans to socially infiltrate, mingle, do elven things as elves do and charm everyone and everything. And so, after getting temporary Rating 5 burner SINs from the Agency, three elves walk into a frat party. What could go wrong?

The Run

The team splits up to cover as much ground as possible. One goes to talk to the Ares representatives, another tries fitting in and the last one spots Carolina Petrovski presumably as the Horizon representative, although Horizon isn't officially interested in genetics research. It seems she's here for personal reasons as well as keeping tabs on her competition, since the seminar is a somewhat neutral event for megacorporations to gauge one another.

While the team manages to figure out that Evo and Aztechnology might be interested in hiring Foreman if he provides proof of his talent, Ares and MCT aren't impressed or just outright hate him for being 'a filthy trog' as their representatives quietly mutter it. Delphi notices that a tree growing out of the penthouse garden's fountain has a peculiar, twisted aura and outright vomits once she excuses herself to the bathroom. Concerned that it might be blood magic, she decides to ask the guard outside Foreman's lab if she could interview the man -- after all, the SIN she's under gives her an identity of a Salish journalist. After a moment of conversing with his boss, the security guard lets her in.

Delphi wasn't prepared to meet the man in the flesh. Dread fills her body as soon as she enters his sight and with a clear assensing roll, breaking through his skilled astral masking, she sees him for what he truly is. Infected, a Fomoraig giant with magical power that makes her look like a puny ant by comparison. His aura is tainted by blood magic and it's a miracle nobody's noticed it. While Pell covers their bases by continuing their rounds over MCT's and Evo's representatives and Fidem distracts the guards at the right moments to complete their other objectives, Delphi's trying not to hurl in the doctor's lab.

Turns out Foreman is a member of the Black Lodge. Delphi's smart enough to turn her recording hardware off when prompted to do so and politely declines learning his true intentions, since he offers to reveal them if she undertakes a geas to turn the topic into a taboo. Instead, he points out his latest research -- a young elven boy from Skraacha slums, suffering from a ghoul bite to the leg. He's been treating him in a liquid breathing vat for some time and has reached a 93.7% succession rate in defeating the Krieger strain of HMHVV. When the befuddled Delphi asks why he bothers, given what he is, he replies with it being simply a hobby.

Foreman isn't doing this for some moral or ethical reason. It's a pastime, like a teenage boy feeding a pet tarantula or pulling quills out of a pet dog. He cures minor ailments because the challenge is entertaining, not because he truly feels for the plight of people. Seeing that Delphi's distressed about the helpless boy, he outright hands him over to the elf, wrapped in a towel. Since his treatment's over anyway, Foreman has no more use for him as a test subject. Surprisingly, the boy's not tainted by the man's magic. Offering to help him maintain his guise as a desperate researcher struggling for funds, Delphi gets Foreman to surrender his former commlink willingly, once his personal spider fills it with doctored fake data and conversations that enforce the narrative he's going for. Delphi's immensely grateful to not be considered someone Garry would take seriously. Instead, he laughs his way back to the lab over the thought of a shadowrunner stopping by his seminar and the nauseated, pallid Delphi drags the boy back to the car.

Aftermath

The boy wakes up in Fidem's luxury sedan soon after and briefly panics before being calmed by the chill-BTL using Delphi. They take him to a child psychologist Pell happens to know, then find Ghaz who he used to live with before being bitten in the Underground. While this delays Delphi and Pell, lowering Ms. Johnson's opinion of them, the run is considered a success. They're each given burner commlinks through which they can contact her when they want to make their orders for gear. Ms. Johnson is extremely straight-to-the-point and will deliver the goods on time, though straight cash is something the team can forget about. As it stands, they dodged a bullet, got some very respectable gear and realized just how tiny they are compared to the real monsters in the Sixth World.

Rewards

• 56,000 nuyen worth of gear at 19 Availability or less:

1. Cyberware (Beta or Alphaware only)
2. Geneware
3. High Fashion Armor (and any armor modifications for HFA)
4. Clothing
5. Chemsniffer Ring R6
6. Faceless Generic or Blurred R4
7. Faceless Specific R3
8. Tactical Grapple Gun
9. Autopicker R6
10. Maglock Passkey R4
11. Keycard Copier R6

• 2 CDP
• 2 Agency Faction Reputation
• For Pell & Delphi: Ghaz 2/1 Skraacha Sheriff (2 RVP, replaces 8,000 nuyen of gear)

(Note: Taking any ware gives the runner the negative quality "Records on File" with Ares Macrotechnology.)