Good Samaritans
| Good Samaritans | |||||||||
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| Part of Festering Infestation | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Nameless | Renraku | ||||||||
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Nameless Dr.Trauma Samsara Potato Pell | A Harvester and Renraku sniper. | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | One Strain 2 infected, one unlucky explosive-happy sniper. | ||||||||
Summary
Nameless ends up getting basic amenities for his brand new ghoul commune under Glow City. Also, a building collapses.
Background
Following the events of New Canaan, Nameless managed to escape Renton Underground with most of his feral ghouls intact. He claimed to have found a place to stay in the underground tunnels below Glow City, which he was determined to reach despite Samsara's objections.
The Meet
The team bypasses the SOX perimeter by accessing an underground tunnel. Nameless personally leads them to a large underground storage area where the remaining three hundred or so ghouls are corralled, maintained and cared after by the few sentient ghouls Samsara had saved on a previous run. Turns out, living in a warehouse (or perhaps underground prison block) without any furniture or amenities sucks. So, having little else but calling runners for help, he requests for them to find medical supplies, beds, blankets and possibly a water purifier. While the Glow above has plenty of abandoned furniture stores with relatively functional bed frames left, they could always try reaching alternative options. He has little to offer as a reward but his gratitude and knowledge. This seems to be enough, especially for Dr. Trauma who is so much of a bleeding heart that he is physically incapable of refusing this request. This is only further exacerbated when Nameless reveals that after several tries, he's managed to find some semblance of personality and identity in the ghouls, hidden under the immense trauma of being organ farm victims. They weren't truly feral due to the Krieger strain, but due to the cruelty Tamanous had subjected them with. That, compounded with the transformation had turned them into ravenous wrecks, but now there is hope of rehabilitating hundreds of innocents. This is too good of a cause to pass up.
The Plan
First off, Trauma calls Rev. Toby Newton in the Barrens. He's known for charity work and, as a fellow Christian like Nameless, accepts Trauma's request for basic furniture scavenged from abandoned buildings in Redmond. He in turn offers to help Toby with his medical talents. This solves one issue already. As for the remainder, Pell has some know-how for radiation shielding and decontamination, but one of the sentient ghouls, Ben Shamir seems to have learned the spell Decontaminate all on his own. Another ghoul going by the moniker of Shaitan, due to her mutated blood red eyes, is told to show the runners a nearby manhole to access the surface. They plan to check nearby buildings for medical supplies, since a water purifier is unlikely to be found intact.
The Run
The team splits in two groups: Pell and Potato, Trauma and Samsara. While the former head north towards a machine shop and apartment complexes, the latter head south. Pell and Potato have some trouble getting to a somewhat wrecked doorway, but after bashing the front door to the stairwell down hear a bloodcurdling scream from within. Cautiously, they advance in only to get nearly swiped by a gaunt, wiry packet of muscle and gray hair with an uneven row of teeth for a mouth. With half a drum magazine of buckshot from Pell's automatic shotgun, the critter falls over and screams its way back upstairs, bleeding profusely the entire time.
Pell and Potato decide to search the place regardless of the threat and begin slowly clearing one floor at a time, setting motion sensor trapped flashbangs at the stairwell just in case the creature returns. While they find remains of people and thrashed apartments, little seems to be left that can be salvaged. Just as they're about to start progressing to the third floor, a flashbang trap goes off and another howl can be heard. The creature, later revealed to most likely be a harvester, was blinded completely and in its pained thrashing fell down an exposed elevator shaft to its death. Turns out, a suicidal couple had hidden hard drugs like cocaine, opium as well as Vicodin in a ventilation shaft, along with a basic medical kit. Some of it was rendered old and unusable, but majority was still serviceable.
On the other hand, Samsara and Trauma were shot in the back by an invisible aggressor. Samsara, being made of more steel and fiber than flesh at this point, barely noticed and charged in the direction of the shot without fear. Coincidentally, she stepped on not one but two landmines during her reckless charge, barely noticing the damage that her augmentations absorbed for her. Trauma, in the meanwhile, took cover behind a car wreck and tried to spot the attacker. Without a muzzle flash, however, he could only ascertain the target to be on an elevated position a few hundred meters away. Pumping himself up with alchemy, he follows in Samsara's wake and the two take up positions behind more cover, only for Samsara to get tired of playing chicken and charging in the building they believe the sniper to be in. On the way upstairs, she runs into flashbang tripwires and spike swings, ignoring or dodging all of them. Meanwhile, Trauma sees an invisible assailant prepare and long arm a massive clump of C4 across the street.
The good doctor, however, shoots it out of the air like a true crack shot!
The same detonation signal causes the entire fifth floor to detonate as several other plastic charges go off, nearly burying Samsara under a literal ton of reinforced concrete. She barely dodges it by throwing herself recklessly down a flight of stairs and avoiding any significant damage. As the building grows a few meters shorter, it starts tilting and falling over onto the street. Trauma runs off to the side to avoid the impact, but spots the invisible assailant grapple hooking across the street to the other building. This time, he knows where the target is and fires a nuke-like crossbow bolt, loaded with a powerful lightning spell. It's enough to just barely knock the bastard out, a stick of C4 in his hand. Samsara shuffles out of the building's ruins, crashing on every drug imaginable and passing out from the stun she'd incurred over concussive force of land mines going off under her feet. Trauma treats her to the best of his abilities and together they find some intact stitching supplies and gauze in the building they're in.
Aftermath
Turns out, the guy was a Renraku operative, stationed in Glow City to observe and assassinate unauthorized personnel. With toxic spirits, monsters and infected roaming around, the heavy ordnance started to make more sense. Potato eagerly accepts the C4 while Trauma grabs the Terracotta Arms sniper for himself. The armor is provided for the ghoul overseers along with the medical supplies, much to Nameless' relief. With these and the soon to come beds, he might be able to begin rehabilitating the traumatized, yet not truly feral ghouls he's decided to shepherd.
Rewards
- 14 Karma
- 2 CDP
- -10 Renraku Reputation
- For Dr. Trauma: Terracotta Arms AM-47 (9 RVP)
- For Potato: 4 x Plastic Explosive R20 (2 RVP)
- Optional Contact: Nameless, 4/1 Ghoul Priest (Cost: 4 RVP)
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
This isn't my first trip into Glow City nor while it be my last. I understand the dangers and capabilities of HMHVV almost as much as those who have it, any sane person would crater a room full of 300 feral ghouls, but if Nameless says they aren't feral but traumatized and acting on instinct I feel no issue of giving him all that he needs to save them. At least until it dangers those who I protect and care for, me and Nameless can agree on that much.
Pell
That Glow City Renraku presence worries me. Even more than the horde of ghouls confined to an abandoned warehouse(?). Poor sods all around, about that harvester. I'm curious (and cautious) about that Awakened-non-infected presence; sounds like they'll cause trouble for Nameless and his flock in the future.
Anyway, I've been meaning to find someone to teach me Aikido and Hapsum-Do; apparently Nameless is also a master martial artist. Yeeeeee.
Samsara
Fragging Renraku, fragging snipers, fragging mines. I figured this would be an easy - if dangerous - job to get some supplies for those poor ghouls, and it turned into a damn building collapsing around me; Bagrak says I don't have cancer, so that's nice, and somehow I managed to shrug off the bullets and explosions (I'm honestly not sure what can kill me at this point, but I'd rather not find out).
At least the Renraku drekhead didn't get away, and we got his commlink; Warboss had someone take a look at it, and he says there's some facility out in Glow City somewhere, so I guess Nameless and his folks have that to worry about in addition to the infected horrors, the toxic shamans, and all the other mundane problems. I wish them all luck, but that whole place just seems cursed - at the very least I can try to do what I can to help. Hopefully those supplies are a good start. Still, apparently that sniper got a signal out, so Renraku defenitly knows I'm still alive now and are probably super pissed off that these augs they gave me are what helped me survive. Good.