Choul as a Ghoul
| Choul as a Ghoul | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Humanis Policlub | ||||||||
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Delphi Vip3r | |||||||||
Summary
Humanis has been supporting the extermination of ghouls as an effort to obtain some good PR. Two hacktivists, T00F and Patches, hire runners to get to the bottom of it.
The Meet
Vip3r and Delphi receive calls from their fixers with an offer of work and the location of a host where the meeting will take place. Situated on the Redmond public grid, this host is sculpted to look like an abandoned shopping mall, covered in graffiti and overgrown with vines. The runners' two personas spend a few minutes wandering the empty food court until they spot another pair of users, who appear as a patchwork scarecrow and a goblin with a wide, toothy grin. The pair introduces themselves as Patches and T00F, and recognize these two as the runners they've hired.
Patches and T00F explain that local Humanis chapters have recently been cracking down on ghoul populations as PR grab. They've discovered a nested host inside a Shiawase manufacturing facility's host where the group's meetings take place. The two hacktivists would like the runners to infiltrate that host to try to obtain information on the group's membership and who's behind this ghoul extermination effort. They offer ¥10k for that specific data, ¥4k for any other data they find (which Delphi negotiates up to ¥6k), and another ¥2k if they're able to brick some of the group's valuable equipment.
Legwork
The two runners meet up at Casey's Bar in Auburn, which Vip3r frequents due to its popularity with hackers. While Vip3r looks for information on the nested host, Delphi looks into their employers' backgrounds. She discovers that Patches is a ghoul infobroker and community activist who has a loose association with the 162s. T00F is more strongly associated with the 162s, though they aren't a full member, and is much more militant and aggressive. Meanwhile, Vip3r uncovers a significant amount of shady business associated with the Shiawase facility, including heavy metaracist biases among much of the management and black market connections. There have been incidents of violence on the factory floor, for which offenders received barely more than a slap on the wrist as punishment. She finds a post on a hacker forum from someone who completed a job concerning this factory, and they mention its R5 host that is monitored by a spider, as well as the R7 nested host they noticed inside. Additionally, information leads her to a nasty forum where members are spewing metaracist bulldrek, in which someone who appears to be a member of this local group mentions attending meetings on Wednesday evenings.
Once Vip3r manages to gather a sufficient amount of information, she and Delphi begin to discuss their approach. They decide to scope out the host today, copy the information that they need, and then return tomorrow to attend and disrupt the meeting.
The Run
Vip3r and Delphi meet up at Vip3r’s safehouse, which is situated only a couple blocks from Casey’s, and prepare to enter the host from there. The R5 host poses no problem for Vip3r, who could basically hack it in her sleep. Delphi, who is hacking on a commlink, has some difficulty getting in, but Vip3r helps her out by threading Infusion of Sleaze on her persona.
The nested host is well-hidden, and it takes Vip3r some time to find it. She expects she'll be able to get in without issue, but is concerned that Delphi may again have trouble. With some quick thinking and a Resonance Veil, she tricks the host into thinking that Delphi is a legitimate user, and as long as she's able to act like she belongs, everything should be okay. The door to the nested host opens for Delphi as intended and she enters without incident. When Vip3r gains her marks on the host, however, the spider catches a brief glimpse of her but is unable to act as she vanishes in a puff of purple smoke.
The nested host looks like a fictional Illuminati HQ out of a low-budget trid. Vip3r and Delphi search the host for a file archive and find what appears to be a library full of arcane tomes that appears smaller than it seems it should be; half of it is blocked off by a wall of static. Vip3r is nearly stopped by the barrier, but when she pulls back to analyze it, she notices a weak point in its code that she is able to exploit and break through. Once inside, she finds a couple files of interest, which are protected by R4 and R5 databombs respectively. Knowing she's going to need some time to circumvent the security measures to copy the files, she tells Delphi to find and distract the host's spider by talking with them. She does, posing as an interested new recruit in a Black Lodge robe.
Once their objective for the day is completed, the two runners go back to Casey's to blow off steam and celebrate Delphi's first success as a Real Hacker, and make the decision that instead of giving all the information to Patches and T00F, they'll turn it over to Sarah Snow to send to her associates in the Ghoul Liberation League to potentially do some real good. They crash at Vip3r’s safehouse that night, and after they finish recovering from their collective hangover/novacoke crash, they prepare to attend that night's meeting.
They mingle with their friendly local metaracists as they wait for the meeting to begin, passing themselves off very effectively as not being their filthy knife-eared selves. The group's leader takes the stage and begins to introduce their honored guest and benefactor, who then rezzes in and comes up to speak. To everyone's surprise, and the group's disgust, their persona is an elf-- and both Vip3r and Delphi notice a resonance signature on them.
They begin their own speech by voicing their disdain for the alliance they've made--which they punctuate by directing a sprite that follows them to begin dataspiking members of the crowd--but declare that they're willing to put it aside in favor of pursuing a common enemy. Vip3r prepares for conflict by threading a Primed Charge on herself, but the technomancer notices and immediately stops what they're doing to call her out as an infiltrator and demand to know what she's doing here, since Humanis hates Emerged just as much as they hate metahumans. Vip3r is partially honest about her goal, admitting that she's working against them because they're scum, but claims to be intrigued by this person's motivation. They tell her that they hate Infected and find them to be untrustworthy monsters with no regard for metahuman life. She agrees--at least nominally--citing her experience helping her friends hunt down vampires to put a stop to the atrocities they've caused. When they seem impressed and convinced that Vip3r is an ally, they hand her an ARO with a comm code, tell her their name is St1tch, and exit the host.
As the last of the few terrified spectators begin to trickle out of the meeting, Vip3r and Delphi exchange a knowing look and prepare to absolutely fragging obliterate everything in the host. Delphi fires off a couple small dataspikes, and Vip3r follows them up with a massive forked blast that turns the archive to dust and bricks the connected devices.
Aftermath
After exiting the host, they met up with Patches and T00F again, handing in the requested information but stating that anything additional was difficult to find. Vip3r gives T00F just enough information about St1tch to sate his curiosity, knowing that they're likely to chase after them recklessly in a way that's unlikely to end well.
Later, Delphi quietly sends the information on the Humanis group to District Attorney Mark Donaghy, telling him that metaracists are being radicalized right under Shiawase's radar and that they need to be stopped.
Rewards
- 18k nuyen or 36k in questionably sourced hacking gear (9 RVP)
- 4 Karma (4 RVP)
- Optional Contact: T00F at 5/1 (5 RVP)
- Optional Contact: Patches at 2/2 (4 RVP)
- For Vip3r: Optional contact: St1tch at 5/1 (5 RVP)
- For Delphi: +1 loyalty with District Attorney Mark Donaghy
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Delphi
Well that an interesting introduction to the world of hacking. I've done a bit of script kiddie work here and there, but going into a host and watching a VK at work was something else. Not sure how I feel about working for ghouls, but I guess it was just trying to keep a bunch of them from getting killed by Humanis, and it was nice to dig up some dirt on Shiawase to send to Donaghy. I'll have to keep working on these Matrix skills and see if I can get good enough to do this kind of thing on my own.