Time to Make a Mess
| Time to Make a Mess | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| Shotogumi, Knight Errant, Omega Dawn, Yellow Lotus, Octagon Triad, The Orchid | Octagon Triad, Peacemaker, Ashe, and Val | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Unknown Body Snatcher from Octagon | |||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | None | ||||||||
Background
During the events of The Pain, Disorder, a Cataclysmic Dawn, a very large bomb that Omega Dawn had planted with the idea of using it to blow up the Tattered Black Flag was discovered by the runners and defused. The Runners of that run gave the bomb to the Octagon. They wanted to bring pain to the other Triads, give a causa bellum for the other Triads to enter the fight against the Shotozumi and to frame them for using a bomb that Knight Errant and Omega Dawn were actively looking for. An Unknown Magical Body Snatcher captured a low level Yak and assumed his identity to become a Shotozumi Johnson.
Meet
The Runners were told to meet at the Tacoma docks at 10 PM. While the location was dark, it was a public location that also had cameras that made the meet very visible. Val determined that the Johnson was magical and that they were hiding their appearance. The Johnson offered 20k to blow up the Orchid restaurant, a neutral Triad zone that was known to have civilians as well as members of all three Triads protecting it. He would provide the explosive. The Johnson gave them a specific time of 3 days from now at noon when a meeting of minor leaders of all three Triads would be taking place to make the hit. The bomb was armed and would have a timed explosion on it and that this bomb was big enough to take out a city block in the Barrens and would be more than enough for the Orchid.
Run
The Runners agreed, but were immediately suspicious the events. The Johnson's muscle did not look like typical Yakuza and the magical change of appearance and the meet location being in broad light made it seem like they were meant to be seen. Ashe discovered an audio receiver that was on the underside of the briefcase that connected into the bomb casing. Ashe asked Madam Butterfly to look into what she could find out about the Johnson, and waited til morning to find out. Val's fixer Obelix told her to go frag herself til morning. Same with Peacemakers contact Sarge. Val did remember though that Knight Errant was looking for this bomb and the Yakuza definitely stole it (glitched).
Val astrally projected to the meet site in order to scope out the location, finding only a force 4 spirit of Guidance guarding the location. She then went off to a shadey part of Tacoma to feed, finding a homeless man out drinking. She almost lost control of him but had her spirit bind him in place so that she could feed. He whimpered, asking for his daughter as she shot him in the head, putting him out of the same misery she was in.
The next morning, Madam Butterfly called to inform Ashe that the Johnson did not work for the Shotozumi at all, and that the meet location was almost public access information for how badly it was guarded. The Johnson looked like someone from the Shotozumi, but they were a low level member that had disappeared the day before. They didn't know who he worked for, but it was suspicious. Peacemaker got a bomb kit from Sarge and went to an empty location to pop the top of the briefcase that they were given and sure enough, there was a big bomb in there. And the wire from the audio device definitely tracked into the explosive itself somehow. Peacemaker closed it, and called Sarge again, hoping that she could be of some help. She was reluctant, but she poked around and informed Peacemaker that KE was looking for the bomb and that it was military grade explosives. As Val woke up in the late afternoon, and the rest of the team informed her of the results. She sent a spirit after the aura of the person with the location going into Little Asia into Triad territory. They arrive and realize that this is the headquarters of the Octagon. They realize that they are being set up to make KE go after the Shotogumi, the Triads go after the Shotogumi as a united front and for everyone to be upset with them. They did not like this plan, but they also couldn't storm into the compound. They called up Madam Butterfly and Johns in order to set up meets with a kyodai in the Shotogumi, and a demolitions expert to disarm the bomb.
The next day at 8 AM, all of the runners made their way to the Demolitions man in the Redmond Barrens, an old human ex-KE explosives unit who had a fair amount of cyber replacements on his body. He was not very happy about the whole bomb situation. He looked at the bomb, questioning the Runners why they had military grade hardware, and upon closer inspection, realized that the bomb was the bomb Omega Dawn was looking for. Thoroughly spooked, they paid him to disarm it and brought it to the meeting with the Shotozumi kyodai. He was pleased and upset to hear what was occurring, pleased that they found out so much and didn't frame the Shotozumi but upset that there was someone else trying to strike them from the shadows. He gave them 10k nuyen each as thanks and told them to be on the look out for a job from the Shotozumi in the future.
Aftermath
The Shotozumi are pissed that the Octagon tried to pull this off, but are hesitant to declare open war on two of the Seattle Triads at once, as it would likely lead to all three and the might not be able to face all of them. They are planning on dealing with the mysterious Johnson that the Runners informed them of as well smooth things over with the Octagon while still putting them in their place.
The Octagon do not know that the Runners have given the bomb to the Shotozumi, but they do know all about their incompletion of the run as well as conversations they had openly, not on DNI around the bomb up until the point it was defused. They know they are bringing it somewhere, but they are not sure if they are disposing of the bomb or giving it to someone else. Either way, they are not pleased.
Rewards
10k Nuyen
8 Karma
+1 Notoriety
+3 Rep Shotozumi-gumi -3 Octagon Triad
Player Characters
Ashe
Ashe poured a margarita after getting home from the run, and she was likely going to need a second. It wasn't every day the Octagons tried to hang you out to dry for Omega Dawn to clean up. Still, Ashe had to thank her lucky stars that Val had noticed the Johnson wasn't all that he seemed. Their investigation led them to discover a false flag operation, wherein the Octagons sent a body snatcher to pose as a Yakuza Johnson hiring them to plant a military grade bomb on the Orchid during a meeting. The meeting consisted only of low level Triad personnel, the bomb had been stolen from Omega Dawn, and the meet had been staged that it would unavoidably be recorded by surveilance cameras that store their footage in a very weak host. The dominoes were lined up so that Omega Dawn would know that their bomb had been used in the syndicate war, and they would easily find the footage of a 'Yakuza' Johnson hiring the team to plant it. Omega Dawn would then retaliate against both the team and the Yakuza, dealing a crusing blow that would followed up by all three triads launching a coordinated counterattack against their believed assailant. The Yakuza would have been blind sided by this. Instead, the team had averted Omega Dawn's wrath by handing the bomb, and their findings about the false flag operation, over to the Yakuza, who were very appreciative of the tip off. In a way, Ashe was glad the job turned out this way, she didn't have to attack a soft, civilian target, and she didn't have to blow up the restaurant where she had taken Cobra on their first date.