Enemy of my Enemy
| Enemy of my Enemy | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Humanis Policlub | Ares Blacksite OpSec | ||||||||
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Babylon Stygian Frostbite Zenith Carolina Petrovski | |||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | Two kidnapped Ancients were rescued! | ||||||||
Summary
Two black mages with very loose morals and a couple of street sams infiltrate a blacksite and get some dirt to fuel a cowgirl's crusade. It's weird, I know.
Background
Carolina Petrovski is a central figure in the Renton Crusade and has begun to plan a direct strike on the HMHVV III infected in the Renton Underground after she failed to coax the Skraacha out; while collateral damage wouldn't be something she'd feel too bad about, she gave Ghaz her word that she'd back off their doorstep and gassing the tunnels below the streets would break that promise. As a result, she's had to begin gearing up for an underground war.
The Meet
Meeting Carolina in the Humanis base of operations that Stygian had visited discreetly during the mission Worlds Collide, the team is let in by a posing Troll Killer mage, masking his aura to be way higher than it really is. After offering some expensive whiskey and exchanging verbal fire back and forth with Babylon - who openly antagonizes her Johnson - Carolina explains that her Ares contact has begun to get cold feet over supplying her troops with heavy ordnance for her operations. Wanting to put the guy's balls in a vice and make him go through with his deal, she offers them tens of thousands of nuyen each to go visit an Ares blacksite where plenty of missing people have ended up and get proper evidence of the activities there; time is of the essence, so they'll have to move fast. Bonus pay will arrive if this is done discreetly.
The Plan
Some legwork with astral projection is done by Babylon and as usual, Ares' magical protection is laughable aside from a few minor exceptions. Carolina offers to get them temporary and convincing burner SINs to get in if they want to be professional about this. Three will infiltrate through Route 2 while one stays back and checks a smaller outpost used for monitoring the river water quality.
The Run
Babylon, Stygian and Zenith get in a car and start driving, posing as asset reviewers (which is aided by their social skills and Babylon's contact decker sneaking an upcoming visitation from three weeks later to that very day). The guards don't spot anything to be wrong and let them in where the paperwork executive called Ms. Zheng Yu is ready to meet the trio. Stygian goes on the offensive to try to shake the woman up, but despite his convincing and pompous act as an Ares bigwig, Yu is no stranger to adversity and offers to make up for the (apparently) mixed up calendar schedule. Babylon goes off investigating 'assets' on her own and bumps into a doctor who is in charge of the test subjects kept unconscious on the blacksite. They appear to be doing some sort of research on their dreams, maintaining them in a perpetual REM-state. Babylon spots the elven albino twins she recognizes as being Ancients members. After faking symptoms of arrhytmia in both of them, she cons the doctor into stabilizing them and gets them hauled into her car, promising to get them back in 72 hours after providing proper medical attention at one of Ares' better medical facilities.
Stygian and Zenith, meanwhile, are off to meet the local spider, a pink mohawk-wielding gray-haired war veteran who smokes until visibility drops to zero inside of a shipping contained turned into spider den. He's clearly far too competent to be fired from his job, given his uncaring nature towards protocol and open tantrums over brass incompetence. While he's distracted and jacked out by the higher-ups visiting, Zenith palms in a data tap which their decker guardian angel uses to steal as many valuable files as he can find. Before anyone's the wiser, Zenith takes the tap back, the spider named Jack jacks back in with a grumble and Zheng Yu reports that the rest seems to have gone as well as can be expected with low funding. Frostbite, meanwhile has been investigating a purification site and took pictures of paper documents for additional reference.
Aftermath
After providing the evidence to Carolina, she offers them full payment as promised, though what Babylon doesn't mention is that she copied the information and gave it to the Ancients alongside the albino twins who are very happy to be rescued; naturally, this bumps her reputation up a bit. Unsurprisingly, working for Humanis is lucrative -- but what are they going to do with the weapons that the runners just secured for her?
They'd be used against shadowrunners in an upcoming underground firefight, New Canaan.
Rewards
- 26,000 Nuyen
- 2 CDP
- 1 Ancients Faction Reputation
- Optional Contact: Carolina Petrovski, 6/1 Generalist (Cost: 6 RVP)
- For Stygian: 1 Chip for Amelie and Jean-Baptiste
- For Zenith: 1 Chip for Ghaz
- For Babylon: 2 Ancients Faction Reputation, -6,000 Nuyen for decker services.
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Frostbite AAR: BT001
- Report_Operation: Entered water treatment station at area 1 to secure an escape route. Placed data-tap, recorded documents on the facility, and then climbed the station to use as a . . . while the team documented, as well as exfiltrated 2 subjects of importance. After operation completion, I reobtained the data-tap, and exited my original entry point without being detected.
- Report_Runners: Contact with the Johnson was less subtle than originally anticipated, the runners did not maintain a 100% professional standard - - - though regardless, in planning they seemed to have experience to allow an inverse of the common dynamics. Zenith and Stygian seemed to have an . . . conversation of . . . while Babylon was . . . the run went as anticipated, and we got paid – While their professionalism was . . . Their efficiency was respectful – future contact with these individuals will have a [POSITIVE] effect on my longevity within this profession.
- Report_Opinion: My own – minor jobs, tend to have micro-instances of violence, followed by an escape for minimal pay – and threat that there is a - - - Resurgence in continued conflict. This operation was in comparison better payed, as well as have better information before initiation of conflict. This was a - - - - - - - - pleasant - - experience. I would welcome continued endeavors of this – kind.
Babylon
Never thought I'd work for fragging Humanis of all people, but as it turns out they pay really well and have cowboy chicks who feed you decent whisky and trade insults with you without getting too pissed off that you have a hooded spirit with a burning cross as a bodyguard. Turns out this Carolina lady wanted blackmail info on some Ares bigwig so he'd supply her people with weapons - I didn't really care who those weapons got used on, and it turned out there was even an opportunity to rescue some missing Ancients in the bargain, so no skin off my nose if she didn't like my pointy ears. Some Night Hunter freak made the mistake of throwing his drink at me though, so I sent ol' Kenny B to haunt the drek out of him for the next week or so and teach him a lesson about not fragging with elves.
The job itself went surprisingly smoothly - not sure whether to credit that to good planning, good teammates, or just my own personal brand of literal magic, but everything really came together. Stygian was great to work with as always, Zenith was a smooth operator and liked my bike, and even that Frostbite freak was good for a laugh and an interesting conversation - though his aura is ten kinds of fragged up, whether from SURGE or some other drek, and it made my skin crawl just to high-five the poor guy. Ah well, what can ya do - he knew how to take orders and secure our backup exit, even though we didn't end up needing it. I was a bit shocked that we managed to get away clean from a place like that, but Stygian is a good bulldrek artist and Zenith knew how to stay on the DL, plus I was rolling on nova and lying my ass off the whole time, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that it all worked out in the end.
Oh, and massive shout-out to Freya for all her hard work making this go so smoothly and facilitating the con with her l33thax0r skillz - 6 grand was a bargain for everything she did, I highly recommend her services if you need them. Time to go party with those albino twins and celebrate their newfound freedom!
Zenith
First things first: Frag buses. I spent 11 hours on a bus from Puyallup to Renton. FRAG BUSES
The job itself? Actually pretty smooth. For a group of three stubborn argumentative people and a creepy robot-person, I'd work with them all again. Though I'd be sure to keep my gun a little closer at hand. During the meet with the Humanis J, I thought for sure we were about to go loud and dirty. We ended up parting without blood being shed and set up in Stygian's safehouse. Babylon did their weird mage drek and gave us some details on the three locations that we had to check out for this Ares blacksite. Been back in the shadows for little over a week and all of a sudden I'm reminded of all the shit that's been rolling over the years I was gone. Either way, we split up, Frostbite went to a water treatment plant for some data and an alternate way out, while Magic-Cubed headed over to the blacksite with some Burner SINs that the J provided. I've worked for Humanis a couple of times in the past, don't care for their idealogy, but they typically pay well, and this one was particularly effective.
We had a Decker on comms and I just got to play the dumb muscle. It's a role I excel at, because it means I don't have to open my mouth and just get to put the hurt on if need be. For this job though, literally just had to plant a data tap on a spider's chair for about a minute, then grab it back before anyone got a chance to notice it. We even got out some pale elves for the Ancients. Not every day you help Humanis and the Ancients on the very same job.
I got a map of the blacksite, gave a copy to Carolina, and sent another one over to Ghaz since he'd mentioned some issues with folk going missing from the Underground. I don't know what's going on in the big picture, but this is two jobs with Ares and Humanis dealing in some shady drek. Keep an eye open chummers.