Barren Flowers
| Barren Flowers | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||
| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Shadowrunners | ||||||||
| Zenith | Orion | ||||||||
| This was an initiation run. | |||||||||
Summary
A strange delivery propels Zenith to undertake an investigation into his past for answers moving to his future.
An Ordinary Afternoon
Spending time outside of Twin Pines private school in Bellevue, Zenith is attempting not to look like a professional criminal while waiting for Harriot to get out of her school. Trading glances with the security guard. Getting the paranoid hair-raising of someone being watched, Zenith sneaks over to the corner of a building and looks around. Seeing nothing on ground level, he looks up and sees a small Flying Eye drone watching him and flying away. Putting aside that problem, Zenith's commlink rings, a message from his fixer. According to Johns a package was asked to be delivered to Zenith. Deciding that it's a bad idea to give a current location Zenith decides to forward this mysterious package to Gus' Bar, a street-level runner hangout where Zenith's mother used to take him after a successful job. He called his Mirage and left his Shin-Hyung for Harriot to drive back home after sending her a quick message. Moving from Bellevue to Redmond with a bunch of illegal materials is harder than one might think, and instead of risking being delayed even further, Zenith calls up Ghaz, a lieutenant of the Skraacha and cashed in a favor in order to get his gear into the Barrens. Ghaz sends a young elf boy to ferry his gear to Gus' Bar while he is "randomly selected" for additional screening by Knight Errant.
Eventually Zenith is let through and heads to the run-down bar in the middle of the Barrens. Finding several familiar faces from his past, Zenith recalls his first job, where his mother had him distract a corporate worker as he was driving through the Barrens by having a young Zenith hit by the car, and then pickpocketing the man while he was distracted. Taking in the pleasant memory, he approached Midge, the bartender of Gus' Bar, a dainty looking elf with a cyberimplanted shotgun on her arm. Midge gives a long package from a flower delivery company to Zenith, who takes it over to a booth and carefully checks it over for explosives before opening it. Inside the package is a bundle of fresh Forget-me-nots and an old piece of electronic paper. The note has two messages on it; the first: "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt.", and the second on the other side of the note: "Quill. This is your last chance. Penumbra. Tonight"
The Brightest Shadows
Zenith leaves Gus' Bar with his equipment and a new desire for answers about who is sending threats to his family. He calls up Delphi as someone who already knows about Harriot, and asks her to look after his daughter until he can figure out what's going on and if there's any danger to her. He drives to Downtown and finds the large line outside of Club Penumbra, and recalls the jobs he's done to get here. Including a smash and grab of a jewelry store when he needed funds for Harriot's school again. Deciding that waiting in line is for posers rather than actual Shadowrunner, Zenith walks up to the Troll bouncer who tells Zenith that he's not on the list. There is a non-zero amount of posturing before Zenith simply slides a credstick with 500 nuyen on it to the Troll and walks inside. After divesting himself of far too many weapons for a well-regarded runners bar. Zenith gets a drink and searches out people who he might recognize. Seeing the same Flying Eye that he had spotted outside Twin Pines, Zenith is led back to a familiar face, an older man with two missing eyes, one of which is replaced with the flying eye drone, slightly shorter than Zenith himself, and one that the adept recognizes as Orion, a street sam that used to run with his mother, one of the members of her team that he assumed was dead.
Orion explains that this meeting is a courtesy that he is giving to Zenith as a favor to his mother. He informs Zenith that something bad is coming, and it is in his best interest to get out of Seattle and go somewhere else before whatever is coming hits. Zenith, being a flippant jackass, decides that this warning is little more than a runner trying to push his way through potential opposition without any actual opposition. However Orion shows Zenith a scene from another Flying Eye in Loveland, where Zenith's Shin-Hyung is parked in front of a Thai restaurant that Delphi and Harriot were at. Orion warns Zenith once again that it's in his family's best interests to get out of Seattle as soon as possible, or else things might get ugly, like they had with Scarlett.
This last phrase pushes on Zenith's last nerve and he takes a swing at the older runner, however punching a man with titanium bones is unwise and so all he gets for the effort is a sore hand and a bunch of looks from Penumbra's clientele as it's well established that no violence is to take place within the walls of the infamous runner bar. Zenith finishes his drink and gathers his gear, leaving the bar and getting back on his bike.
Return to the Source
Zenith starts heading of Loveland, intending to find Delphi and Harriot before anything can happen to them, but stops in transit. Recalling the days of a precocious youth spent playing Shadowrunner, emulating his mother's behavior, including following her to some of her more private hideaways, including a shed that she used to store some of her more illegal acquisitions. Turning around and heading towards Redmond again. He arrives as a burnt out area of the Barrens and makes his way through to the shed with a heavy-duty door and a heavy lock. Luckily Zenith keeps an autopicker on him and uses it to unlock the door, stepping through and thanks to his adept powers, doesn't set off the pressure-sensitive explosives around the door. Zenith moves forward and finds a dusty room filled with old tech, including an old-model commlink that unlocks using the password that his mother used for her personal comm. While there were several files that he couldn't access, there was a file of his mother's known associates, including Orion. Going through the file, Zenith finds a safehouse that Orion often used in the day. Taking the commlink and making sure the shed is locked up once again, Zenith sets off for the safehouse location, deciding that he's going to make good on a promise he made at Penumbra a few hours before. "If you come after my family, I will end you."
Unsafe House
Zenith stops his Mirage outside the safehouse and takes his time to don his FBA, in plain view of the Flying Eye belonging to Orion. Zenith sneaks near the safehouse and unlocks the maglock by taking it apart and opening the door, only to get surprised by a large flashbang explosion. Zenith and Orion enter a shootout, ending as Zenith rushes in with his Warhawk, shooting Orion's gun out of his hand and then making a successful gut shot that incapacitated the older runner. With Orion vomiting up his own blood, and Zenith standing over him, he questions what the older runner knows about Scarlett, and is informed that Old Tusk, his mother's old fixer, has more information about his missing wife. Orion also implies that Zenith's mother is still alive. Zenith prepares to end Orion's life when the runner says "Wait..." but Zenith doesn't stop to listen, killing the older runner and leaving his body in the safehouse before changing out of his FBA and heading back to Delphi's office in order to pick up Harriot.
A Long Night's End
Zenith picks up ice cream for himself, Harriot and Delphi, apologizing to his daughter for his job taking longer than he thought, as well as to Delphi for getting her involved. On the drive home, Zenith asks Harriot if she has a good life in Seattle, telling her that the opportunity to move came up recently, but that he liked Seattle, and it was his home. She seems to agree with the sentiment, and Zenith recalls a similar conversation he had with Scarlett before she was taken from their home, where she assured him that they had a good life together and that everything would work out.
Zenith returns home and watches some trids with Harriot before she goes to bed and he finds Orion's other Flying Eye drone among her belongings. Concerned about the connection, he puts the drone in a safe in his bedroom, as well as getting a vase and placing the forget-me-nots on his table.
Rewards
- IG1 - Power Point
- 2 CDP
- School of Hard Knocks @ Chargen price
- Horizon Flying Eye w/ Pilot Rating 5 (Sensors: Camera (Low Light, Thermographic, Vision Mag), Laser Microphone (Spatial Recognizer, Select Sound Filter), Laser Range Finder, Cyberware, Geiger Counter, MAD Scanner, Motion Sensor, Ultrasound)
- Commlinks full of secrets/plot hooks
Game Quotes
-Zenith, to Orion |
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Zenith
Frag, looking over my notes for this job make it very clear that there's something going on here that I don't understand yet. First of all, Orion, the fragger who decided that spying on my family and I was a good idea, as well as threatening me and trying to get me to leave the Metroplex, should have been dead. He was a friend of my mom's, and part of the team that disappeared when I was a kid.
Second, that shed I found wasn't as out of sorts as it should have been. I remembered that place today. It was dusty and old, and the tech in there was ancient, but this commlink has been used recently, and the file said that it was last edited in '64, years after she'd gone missing. I've got to pass this off to someone who knows more about computer drek than I do, but for now I'll just focus on my investigations.
Orion said that my mom was clever, and might have survived even to this day. He also said that Old Tusk was behind Scarlett's disappearance. Either this is a personal issue and I didn't realize I pissed off a bunch of people my mom used to run with, or this is some professional level drek and I'm getting shafted by the fact these people know what they're doing. Orion might have been a useful source of information if I could pull more out of him, but it's a policy of mine that if I nearly kill someone, they might come back and try and get revenge, so I made sure that he was actually dead.
Frag I need a drink.