An Invitation to Wine
| An Invitation to Wine | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Major Corp | ||||||||
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Fire Mage Tsarina Wildflower |
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Summary
A clandestine operation to find and nurture a prospering mage is yet again close to paying off, until their target disappears into the bowels of the megabuilding in which she lives. Runners are hired to extract her silently and act as a finger for The Red Eyed Woman, and she is able to acquire yet another promising contact for her long term goals. The Runners of Tsarina and Wildflower are none the wiser to who their J is, or the grand picture for what they're doing.
Background
The Red Eyed Woman has machinations and plans and schemes for her grand design and great work. While she alone is working towards greatness, she still needs those faithful to her to gain strong and grow. So, in order to do that, she's been looking for promising and aspiring mages to help with her desires, and lo, in Seattle, Inessa Dolinsky fits the bill. So, after an extended period of 'nurturing' her, fire mage moves in to extract her student. That goes well until Inessa goes missing, and while The Red Eyed Woman knows where she is, she's too public for her to move in, and so The Red Eyed Woman hires runners to do the extraction to keep the heat off of her own tail.
The Meet
The duo of Tsarina and Wildflower meet in an alley with The Red Eyed Woman, who manifests from the astral with two bound spirits. Asking the duo nicely, she says that she wants her 'friend' to be seen safe from the hole she's dug herself, and to keep quiet about it. She offers 30K nuyen to the duo to rescue Inessa and keep quiet. The Duo runners feel a pit of dread in their stomachs when dealing with the Johnson, but ultimately decide to do the gig.
The Plan
The duo decide to don disguises and aim for a stealthy, social approach to the problem, trying to make sure to have their intentions hidden behind layers and layers of social prowess and doubt. With new disguises on, the duo head inside the megabuilding to find Inessa Dolsinky and bring her to her fate.
The Run
The team starts to investigate. Finding their way around the apartment by splitting legwork. The building is super slummy with skeevy landlords, and the underground area of the megaplex is currently in a losing fight against gang activity, since the building had illegally built suites to rent. Some initial legwork shows that Iness is living in 3215. Tsarina and Wildflower think to try and flirt their way into getting info on Inessa Dolinsky, which does go well, and Wildflower finds out of a disturbance on the right floor, and the security lead falls for her, and she sets him up for a date but doesn't show.
Wildflower heads up to check out the investigation and find a dead decker with info on his computer. Tsarina does some investigation and talks to the sec team that seems too invigorated to find the target, then Tsarina and Wildflower accidentally find some hoodlums that want money for cancer medications.
Finding Tsarina in a pinch, Wildflower uses mass confusion on an area to try and help Tsarina escape. The gangers, confused and hardpressed by the spell, choose not to follow, given that security is around.
They find footage of Inessa heading to the slums and nobody going into the slums, as well they get a nearby decker to do some work. that being said, the amateur decker they hired was boasting his skills, and the team failed to realize they were not up to snuff, and cheesed it trying to decrypt some data bomb protected files.
Below is the text found on the cyberdeck;
- ID
- The potted plants
- GG
- What do yo mean
- You *
- ID
- I don't wanna be ap lant
- They planted me
- A seed
- A tree a seed, they planted seeds in people
- GG
- Woah woah slow down dude
- Srs wtf r u tlkin abt
- ID
- She came in my dreams
- The clocktower
- THe man was at the cloctower and he planted
- A seed in me
- The book"
- I don't want to blossom
- Don't make me go
- GG
- Dude if ur in trouble just hide in the slums
- Literally nobody will find u
- ID
- Its too late
- I'm already photosynthesizing
- I knew they were real
- I told you
- I warned you
- Now there's seeds in all of us
Figuring what to do next, the team thinks that Inessa is with a go ganger in the basement, but they check the apartment of Inessa first. Running in blind, the team gets hit by a deadman trap, and Tsarina takes buckshot to the chest, but manages to survive.
they talk with the camera store owner who had been stalking Inessa. He mentions a book and a new friend, but that he's afraid to investigate in case she's dead. He hands over the burner commlink attached to the stealth tag, wanting to clear his name of any issues.
They start to head towards the tag location, but end up finding one of the groups of underground go gangers, and when they try to ask for their friend they are unfortunately spurned by the weighty numbers advantage in the gangers favor.
The gangers use their mage to compell truth, and when Tsarina talks it seems like things are going well, but when she's unnable to say the name of of the person they're looking for, the gang's leader breaks down the negotiations; 20K nuyen or the name of the person, otherwise no deal.
The team decide to sick the building guards on the 'gang' that is holding Inessa, and the ploy works after bribing them to get them to 'do their job'. Finding the pay more than adequate for more than a few hours of work, the team, now aided by the cover of a raid on part of the megabulding district, are able to sneak in to find Inessa.
Inessa, sitting in a room with a background count of 4, is mumbling and telling herself "don't go mad don't go mad don't go mad don't go mad don't go mad don't go mad don't go ma-", but when Wildflower appears to help calm them down and bring them to safety, the two crawl into a hole in the wall to make sure Inessa isn't caught by building security.
Aftermath
The tunnel yawned in the dark, a narrow throat carved deep into the earth, slick with dripping moisture and coated in a film of slime of blood that oozed with something unnatural. Cold seeped through the walls, sinking into Wildflower’s fingers as she crawled on her hands and knees, nails breaking against the stone. Behind her, Inessa's breath came out in desperate, frenzied whispers, barely louder than the soft sounds of her shuffling through the dirt.
"We should burn the trees," she muttered, her voice wavering as she crawled. "Burn the leaves, burn the roots, burn the seeds..."
Wildflower, ahead of her, lead in silence. She moved with grim determination, a stoic counter to Inessa’s unraveling, her body cutting through the close, damp air as if the weight of the dark pressing against them was something she could ignore. She didn’t shush Inessa, though she could feel the madness creeping into her companion’s voice, spreading like a poison through the murk of the underground.
"We should have turned back" they may have thought. Perhaps it was too late now. Ahead, shadows twisted, thick and heavy, waiting for them in the long stretches of the tunnel. Wildflower could feel them brushing against her, though there was no wind, no breath to stir the stagnant air. The walls seemed to stretch around them, melting into shapes that bent and buckled in impossible ways, curving away from light that wasn’t there. And still, Inessa crawled forward, her eyes glassy, her hands trembling as she babbled her warnings.
"They see us," she hissed. "Twilight red, red like blood. The red eyes, the face of a king…"
Her words were barely coherent, fragmented visions of horror that drifted past Wildflower like smoke. She may have clenched her jaw, keeping herself grounded in the dark, focusing on each movement, each desperate inch forward. Perhaps her mind tried to conjure the world above—a clean sky, cold air, something safe—but every time she pushed forward, the darkness seemed to answer her hope with a malevolent whisper.
Did they both know, without speaking, that the path led only deeper into despair, even though the stairs lead to the above ground parkade now. The world beyond seemed farther and farther away, a place they might have dreamed of once, long ago.
Yet The Duo of Tsarina and Wildflower whisked Inessa away to the Red Eyed woman, giving her freely, with only the demand to take the money and run, and to forget everything here ever happened. Not for Inessa's safety, but for their own.
Rewards
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Wildflower
"Well, I woke up with 30k nuyen... guess it was something pretty high profile. Phoned my fixers and they don't seem to know much either. Not gonna look into it further, for now."
Tsarina
"Changed my address. Glad I haven't forgotten to be a good and forget when I needed to. Easy 30k nuyen~"