Smother The Flames
| Smother The Flames | ||||||||||
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| Factions Involved | ||||||||||
| Wasp Bug Hive | Bot'Kham |
Cobra (Carrier Oriskany) 'A' Cobra (Carrier Oriskany) T-Bone | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||||
| Hive Queen | ||||||||||
| Units involved | ||||||||||
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6 Ork mercenaries 3 Hellhounds Havok Lilly 2 Bug Spirits Matthew Garneau | ||||||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
| 6 Ork mercenaries, Havok | None | |||||||||
| 3 Edge burned this run | ||||||||||
Background
The bug hive threatening the Haven is using an insect shaman, one Matthew Garneau, to summon more of their "kind". Their expansion has made them look for additional shamans to bring over and aid them, which lead Matthew to approach a friend of his in Lela Canales, another street mage. She became suspicious of his advances, however, and through posting about it on some shady Matrix sites caught the attention of the Aztech J working alongside Booker, Ashe, and the other runners looking into the bug hive. He organised a run to kidnap Matthew by attempting a sting operation through Lela and interrogate him for the location of the bug hive.
Meet
The runners make their way to the Everett Marina where they have been told an Evo Johnson has work for them. The messages from their Fixers seem strangely vague, and some of the runners are uneasy even before they meet their future employer. From the marina, they are ferried to a large, high-class yacht sitting in the Puget Sound. There they are greeted by a sparse crew, mostly guards and personafixed waiters, and their supposedly Evo Mr Johnson. After some negotiations, a price is decided on and though they question the Johnson about his true affiliation, they are greeted by smug silence.
Run
Having been given a meeting with a Bot'Kham smuggler named Marcelo Rojas who is providing security for Lela at noon the next day, the runners rest and make their way to the Ork Underground to meet their contact. With T-Bone leading the way inside and Dapper waiting back on street level in their van, the team heads down and into some more sparsely populated areas of the Underground. They start becoming concerned when the comm-code that was given to them to contact Marcelo with fails to become active. Arriving at the location of the smuggler hideout, they find other armed Bot'Kham members there and after a tense meeting find that Marcelo has been killed and Lela was taken by Orc mercenaries. Identifying one of these mercs as Havok, a bug-inhabited former Haven runner, the team tracked down Lela using one of her foci she dropped at the hideout in their confusion. Once A pinpointed her location, Cobra took over and followed her scent trail through the sewers. The trail guided them to a disused transfer station, where they were detected by camera drones run by the bugged rigger known as Lilly, another former Haven runner. After a brutal confrontation with two Ork mercs and a Hellhound, the three runners present along with Dapper in a Doberman assault the shaman and his entourage.
A brutal combat ensues, with the runners being hard-pressed early by the tenacity of the Ork mercs and Havok's intervention. Cobra rushes forward and quickly neutralises the shaman, but not before they call in two Force 4 bug scouts to aid the combat. She is left to fend for herself against two mercs and the spirits, managing eventually to take them out but not without significant trouble. T-Bone and Dapper, along with A throwing down fireballs on the mercs fight back well, but things start coming apart when Dapper's Doberman is hit by flechettes from an Ork merc and disabled, knocking the rigger out the fight and almost killing him with Biofeedback. The three remaining continue to struggle, with T-Bone falling unconscious temporarily from a savage attack by Havok. Seeing that the combat is taking too long for his liking, however, the bug takes a more direct approach, mutating his flesh body to better serve in combat, assuming a gruesome hybrid form. Meanwhile, Cobra is also knocked out, one Ork merc attempting to drown her before the stim-patch she had primed kicks in and she turns the tables on him. With his ranks thinning and T-Bone revived by A, Havok takes the offensive and impales A into a wall with a deep stab from his katana, knocking her out of the fight as well. T-Bone, seeing his opportunity, raises his Ares Alpha and pumps a stream of armour-piercing bullets into the bugged runner, finally ending the abomination's rampage.
With their enemies dead around them, the runners are greeted shortly after by the Bot'Kham who had followed the sounds of the drawn-out firefight. The leader executes one surviving Ork merc, paying back the blood debt owed by Marcelo's murder and allows the others to take the shaman away. They part not on friendly terms perhaps, but at least with common understanding.
Aftermath
The runners call their J from a secure location and have the shaman picked up by a recovery team. Now that he is in Aztech's hands, Matthew is tortured relentlessly until he spills information on the bug hive and its whereabouts.
Rewards
Player Characters
T-Bone
35k nuyen 5 Karma +3 Aztech
2 Edge burned to Smackdown consecutive Bullseye-Bursts
Got a job post from Bloodstains but he was being cagey about the details. While this did raise some flags, I decide to check out what exactly was going down at these docs in Everett. Cobra showed up and gave me one of her sandwiches which are always good. Then some folks from "Evo" showed up to show us around their boat and talk to us about our upcoming job. They apparently didn't like me very much, but I made sure to be respectful and take the food and drink that were offered. We were grabbing some shaman who was in connection to the bug runners that Haven had a while back. So I decided that the mission seemed alright, just dangerous as all hell. There were a coupl contacts we were going to talk to that were gonna give us more info that we were to meet the following day somewhere in the Underground. I took some of their fish crackers to go.
We missed out on having a sleep over at Cobra's, but loaded up and headed towards the Underground entrance near Eli's soup kitchen. It is run by the Sons of Sauron, but there are occasional benefits to being an orc. Very occasional, but I'm not one to complain. The Bazaar was same ol', same ol', but we made our way into the sewers and uncharted areas. I threw on my FBA for protection against all the drek in the water and to be ready for bugs if there were any. We came to our meet location, but it was full of smugglers, but not the one we wanted. He was lying dead inside. I had to talk down the mercs into letting us through as we were bug hunting. Mentioning bugs calmed them down some, but they were still wary. A did something to find the girl and we took off after. We finally get close and I almost run straight into a camera. Smooth T-Bone. Real smooth. The rigger starts checking out up ahead when we hear gunfire and we realize the jig is up and we need to go fast. We take out the first wave, but then almost walk right into a trap. Well, Dapper kinda did, but A and I started throwing some distance gear while Cobra went to secure our target. We are doing alright when Havoc, the street sam from the Hive, appears out of nowhere and starts bashing into A. I keep shooting at mooks and Havoc, but nothing seems to stick, until A got a good blow on on Havoc. Havoc took that to mean, grow into a fucking monstrosity and that's when things took a turn for the worse.
The mooks just weren't dying and the Kami they were taking was making them fearless. The bug monster starts laying into A and I. Thankfully, Cobra had taken down the mage and was just dealing with some mooks, but that bug wouldn't leave us alone. It knocked me out and then I started to get real mad and very precise with my shots. I didn't care. Either I was dying or it was dying, no questions. Dapper had lost his drone and was radio silent, A took a horrible stab wound and Cobra was getting knocked around. Havoc was still reeking himself all over the place and I made one last stand against this drek, hopped up on Kami and my stimpatch that was keeping me conscious. I blew its brains out, pouring an entire clip of APDS into this bastard and it was barely enough. I am standing there, clip empty, Cobra fighting off the last of the mooks when two jump me. I just drop a grenade behind them and let them block the explosion for me as I walk out unphased and they are gone. I go to help A when the smugglers arrive. I hand over one of the mooks to appease them while we take out captured mage to our Johnson.
It was brutal and I was *this* close to dying. And it was scary, but we managed to pull through and live to fight another day. I am just glad no one died today. Now to take it to the Hive.
A
35k nuyen 5 Karma +3 Aztech
1 Edge burned to not die
Dapper
35k nuyen 5 Karma +3 Aztech
1 bricked Doberman and damaged RCC
Cobra
35k nuyen 5 Karma