A Demo to Die For
| A Demo to Die For | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| Nullnode Team |
Ladybug Kilbo Monty Yokai (Dusk) Brick | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Nullnode | Ares Global Media | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| One nulnode decker | None | ||||||||
Background
Call of the Shadows: Revengeance is a new SimSense game premiering gameplay footage for the first time at Deckercon. A team of Nullnode runners were hired by a competitor to sabotage the presentation. The marketing department in charge of showing the game, which features Shadowrunners as its protagonists, decided they wanted to do something special to show the game off - they wanted to hire Shadowrunners to play through the demo.
Meet
The meet took place in popular brunch spot in Bellevue. The Runners met an eager young marketing consultant and began to enquire what the job was. After reassuring them that their faces would not be plastered all over the matrix, the Runners accepted the job.
Run
The Runners were taken to a back entrance at the convention centre, and headed backstage to find the new SimSense consoles - dev units, of course - waiting for them. The technicians had, unknown to the Runners, been replaced by enemy Shadowrunners. What seemed like a well paying milk run was about to turn into a nightmare. As the Runners loaded the game, they saw a glitchy figure appear into the lobby area where they were waiting for the demo to begin. He informed them that he had hacked the game, and that the Runners would suffer deadly levels of biofeedback if they were killed in game. He informed them that, unless they beat the demo, they weren't getting out of this one.
The first section of the demo involved boarding a moving train, disabling or co-opting its defences, and then uploading a program stored on a datachip to a terminal on the train. They were provided with in game copies of their equipment, as well as an Aztechnology Striker one-use missile launcher, and then the demo was on. The Runners all made it onto the train, where an entrenched team of security guards waited for them. Led by an Ork adept with a claymore weapon focus and military grade power armour, they also had control of the train's anti-air laser cannon.
The runners managed to defeat the security guards, using the anti-air laser cannon to take out the Ork, and mopped up the tecnhoghouls (a fictional variety of biodrone that features heavily in the *Call of the Shadows* series). They also managed to defeat the mystic adept guarding the terminal.
After that, they then fought their way through the second section of the demo - retaking a boat after it had been captured by pirates - but the nullnode decker, frustrated by the Runners' progress, appeared in the game with the body of Kilbo at his disposal. Though a challenging opponent, he was defeated by the Runners and the demo ended. Upon waking up, the RUnners killed the nullnode decker, but his teammates had left him for dead a while back.
Aftermath
Call of the Shadows: Revengeance was a massive hit on social media, the surprise ending of the demo being a crowd favourite. It was quickly patched into the game by the developers - in Nightmare Mode, the difficulty setting the Runners played on, the entire team is duplicated.
Rewards
Player Characters
Kilbo
22k Nuyen 4 Karma 1 Ares Rep
Ladybug
22k Nuyen 4 Karma 1 Ares Rep
Yokai
22k Nuyen 4 Karma 1 Ares Rep
AAR: Well, it was deckercon and I was hired by Ares to try out their new VR console and new multiplayer matrix game. The only problem was we later found we were locked inside and someone fragged with the system so if I died there, I die or at least go into a coma in the real world. This wasn't good, not good at all. I fought my way over a running train, equipped with an anti aircraft gun, after which the techies were finally able to pull me out. Guess what, found the rascal nullnode hacker as well who messed with the system. Guess how'd it go for him, no take a guess. That right, fried crispy using 1 million volts of electricity.
Brick
22k Nuyen 4 Karma 1 Ares Rep
Monty
22k Nuyen 4 Karma 1 Ares Rep