Hearts and Minds Ground Game
| Hearts and Minds Ground Game | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||||
| ShadowHaven | The Shepherd's Light Ministry | GreenTomorrow | Halpin Applied Systems | ||||||||
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Ez-Azael Baji | |||||||||||
| A well made long con. | |||||||||||
Summary
The team was hired to go undercover in a political campaign and subtly influence it to distance the candidate from two specific supporter groups. Over several weeks, the runners gathered intelligence, built leverage, and executed operations to discredit both targets. The work blended investigation, infiltration, and carefully staged incidents designed to avoid public suspicion.
Background
The job came with clear parameters: work independently, maintain cover, and minimize violence to avoid compromising the campaign. The two designated targets were the Shepherd’s Light Ministry, a religious movement with suspicious healing claims, and GreenTomorrow, an environmental activist group with a militant edge. Both had strong ties to the candidate and needed to be quietly pushed away without damaging his public standing.
The Meet
The initial meeting took place in a Matrix-only café called La Casa, offering an unusual but secure environment for shadow business. The contact explained the political climate, the need for subtlety, and the limitations—no overt attacks on the campaign, and any action taken must appear organic. The runners were to be embedded within the campaign’s ground team, giving them access and mobility while keeping them under the radar. Payment and further details were tied to the success of their integration and results.
The Plan
The approach was twofold: embed within the campaign to observe and map relationships, then create or exploit opportunities to weaken the influence of the two target groups. For the Shepherd’s Light Ministry, this meant investigating their activities to find exploitable flaws. For GreenTomorrow, it meant engineering a public incident damaging enough to make them a liability. Both threads required subtle execution to keep the campaign insulated from blowback.
The Run
The runners first focused on the Shepherd’s Light Ministry, tracing them to a major gathering at the Beacon Dome. Infiltration revealed the use of a psychoactive drug cocktail on attendees, later identified as Aisa mixed with Memory Fog—both cheap but potent, the latter linked to an awakened poppy strain and Triad suppliers. For GreenTomorrow, the team staged an eco-terrorism frame job, planting evidence to implicate them in a damaging act of sabotage. Both operations unfolded without public exposure of the runners’ role, and the campaign began to shift its alignment away from the two groups.
Aftermath
Following the success against the targeted groups, the runners were instructed to accompany the campaign to a meeting with new corporate backers, Halpin Applied Systems. Their role was to remain in the background and confirm their cover story if asked. The meeting location—a derelict recreational park—was heavily staged, with concealed armor, hidden shooters, and magically boosted personnel on both sides.
Moments into the exchange between the candidate and the HAS delegation, the situation exploded. Gunfire erupted, a spirit struck one runner in the astral, and sniper fire cut down concealed operatives. Both runners were hit—Ez taking armor‑piercing rounds from behind, Baji dropped by tranquilizers they’d unknowingly been dosed with earlier.
When they came to, the scene was devastated. The candidate was dead, High Threat Response units were inbound, and newsfeeds were already broadcasting their names as the prime suspects. Their contact was gone, having left with a surviving HAS executive, and the runners were left bleeding, disoriented, and with a choice: disappear into the shadows and accept the loss, or stay and uncover who really killed the candidate—and why.
These lead to the follow up run Hearts and Minds: Escape Clause
Rewards
0 Nuyen
+2,000 Nuyen (Negotiation Bonus)
10 Karma (10 RVP)
8 CDP (4 RVP)
+2 CDP Base
Optional:
Baji: Alibi Quality at chargen cost (5 RVP)
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Baji Things were going well till they weren't. The job was tailor-made for my skill set and I had an awesome colleague. I could never have gotten very far with the Shepard's Light Ministry without Ez's insights as a Christian theurgist, not to mention his other abilities. I do feel guilty about sabotaging GreenTomorrow but we did one hell of a frame if I do say so myself. Damn shame we got fragged by the johnson. I'm going to enjoy putting a .308 handload into center body mass when we find him.