Here But Now They're Gone
| Here But Now They're Gone | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Independent Runner Group | ||||||||
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Solitaire Pockets Lumina Čarivnýk Tsarina | The Independent Runners | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None, save for maybe some wounded prides | None, all OPFOR got out safe and sound | ||||||||
Summary
A horrid job of corporate retribution, one that could have ended in a lot of dead runners and bad news, ended up with a surprisingly warm ending...somewhat by accident.
Background
A group of 5 runners - Manticore, Desperado, Shroud, Luna, and a temporary member named Honest Jack - took on a hooding job to steal a highly dangerous artifact from one particular Federatio Boeing. An Alexander James Brodrick Johnson II, was in charge of gathering people to utterly ruin these runners. Not just get their revenge - make an example out of these hooders. And for what?
A mana siphon.
...I'm sure it's fine.
The Meet
The various runners Alexander selected for this nasty endeavor were picked up on a street corner in Touristville in a limo to keep the talk discreet and on the move. Soltaire, Čarivnýk, Lumina, Limitless, and Pockets all patiently (or impatiently) waited for the J to arrive. They unceremoniously piled into the thing and heard his terms - kidnap these other runners for 20k nuyen a piece.
Limitless...walked on this. And so Alexander replaced her with a more amenable woman - Tsarina, who had no qualms about this task. She did however, negotiate for bolthole security juuuuuuust in case these runners had friends who would become problems should they learn about their runners' disappearance, and with Čarivnýk's useful mention - half up front. With that deal secured, the team was let out to start their investigations.
The Plan
The original plan was rather...loose. With the amount of facing potential the 5 of them had on this little ragtag group, they thought they could ingratiate themselves into the group over time, get them somewhere vulnerable, and then either poison them or eliminate them. However, Soltaire performed a divination on Tsarina and found out that one of these 5 were immune to poison.
He thought Honest Jack was an immortal elf
With that conclusion jumped on, the plan was very swiftly changed: Try to negotiate around the thousands year old (apparently) runner, because no they were not going to be able to deal with an immortal elf.
The Run
Legworking was...fine. It's hard to find out much about runners in hiding of course, but the group had quite a few different avenues. Čarivnýk tried astral projection with Lumina as a guard, Tsarina contacted Kruger and gave him a 6k nuyen down-payment to discreetly search for these runners and their hideout as well as see if any gang relations Čarivnýk had noticed between Desperado and the Braineaters would lead anywhere, and Soltaire went conspiracy diving. Pockets was busy getting poison supplied for the others when a projecting Čarivnýk, utterly lost in the Downtown metroplexSot background count, ran into Honest Jack. Jack gave him some helpful information on where he usually hanged out at and how to get back out of the metroplex and Čarivnýk tried his best to not give away his nerves at meeting the target. Once the group reconvened, they settled on a plan(?) of letting Tsarina butter this man up so Soltaire could talk to the immortal and handle things from there.
They arrived at the hangout, the Alabaster Maiden, and after snapping Soltaire out of yet another research rabbit hole and finding their target, casually moved Tsarina and Lumi in to start wearing down suspicion. Pockets, unprompted, faked hitting on Tsarina, then spilling his drink on her, and then 'cleaning' it up for her as he worked on stealing Jack's commlink. Tsarina, silently furious but still acting as best as she could, silently signaled for Jack to help her out of this. Jack obliged, giving Pockets his out along with his commlink, but as Tsarina tried to maneuver him somewhere more private she realized he might have already understood what was going on. The Team cut the bullshit (not Čarivnýk he was hiding to not be seen by Jack earlier he was still doing so now) and Soltaire tried to talk to him about this plan to avoid fucking with what the team believed was an immortal elf. Now Jack made it clear he wasn't a fan of selling out his fellow runners wholesale, so Tsarina instead offered a chance to potentially get the J responsible with a double cross, and the totally immortal elf seemed...coy about it, but it was the best they got. However, that was good enough for the group, because with Jack explaining more about the situation at hand (and the selfish face liking Jack a lot right now for cleaning up her outfit with a spell) they weren't really willing to fully bend these people over right now. With the commlink secured and taken to Redmond to both give Pockets a chance to get his poison and for his decker friend to crack it open, they managed to find the location (and gave Jack the chance to warn his fellow runners just in case).
Heading over to negotiate, the two faces could already tell things were...tense. They had the rest of the team ready outside for any emergencies, but negotiations basically hit a brick wall right at the gate. The other runners, quite reasonably, did not trust them to keep their word on the matter. Despite a shockingly candid black mage and Lumina's pure hearted appeals, there was no convincing them. Things were not going well, and the other runners were beginning to fear for their two now isolated talkers. Soltaire and Čarivnýk sent Pockets to try and infiltrate as backup through a window, which he managed to do successfully, but his infiltrator BTL that he was running gave him quiiiiiite the impulse when he found himself in the equipment storage of the other runners and started shamelessly klepping their shit. This was spotted on the cameras, and when their face (speaking through Desperado) pointed this out to Tsarina, it took all of her willpower to not stomp on over and execute Pockets right then and there. No, she "politely" asked to go deal with it, walked over, grabbed Pockets by the lapel, and slapped him hard across the face to snap him out of it. She tried to get him to go back out because ruining an already bad negotiation was infuriating, when she felt the barrel of a gun pressed against her temple by an invisible Shroud. Too annoyed at Pockets and too used to this kind of thing to give a damn, she complied easily when she asked for her to sit down, getting a smoke from the rather polite captor and idly chatting away in this hostage situation.
From there, the chances of negotiating otherwise were basically doomed. Lumina didn't have the heart to try and take these people by force, and couldn't convince them to work with these runners. And Soltaire was unwilling to endanger his comrades for the higher paycheck. So the ork and the human shook on walking away and covering these runners high-tailing it out of town, not before Tsarina gave Shroud her number and made Pockets give back what he stole (Shroud let him keep the auto-sequencer).
Aftermath
The team gathered around for drinks, got their story straight, and got to a few more days of investigating to try and make their little lie of the runners already being gone more plausible, assisted by the rather weighty contribution Tsarina had put out for Kruger's good work. Alexander bought it, and the other runners were safe, with Jack heading out to another adventure and spreading the good word to the others he knew about these runners who wouldn't sell out their own kind (...apparently).
Rewards
10,000 nuyen
5 karma
10 CDP
+1 Street Cred (Honest Jack spreads the word that you guys are alright)
Optional Quality: Closer OR Daredevil @ chargen rates
For Čarivnýk:
1 rank of A Terrible Fascination (for learning Immortal Elf Lore from Solitaire)
-3 Draco Foundation reputation (for glitching the forbidden knowledge check - the net is closing in)
For Pockets:
Loss of Confidence (Escape Artist) (for the Incident with the Infiltrator Chip)
R6 Sequencer, Lockpick Set and Miniwelder ("stolen", 1 RVP)
Optional Contact: Snakebite (C1/L1 Cutters "Toxicologist") for 1 RVP or 2 CDP
Narrative Consequences:
-The rival runners escape with cover from the PCs, who successfully manage to sell the lie to Mr. Johnson II that they had already left the city; they will remember the runners in the future.
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Tsarina
"...Weird job. Confusing job. God I'm glad I could spin it, but it was a good reminder to not allow for sympathy ever."
Solitaire
"While we walk in shadows deep, whispering words of witless wonder
and through the alleys creep, all in all to peal of thunder
In discretion and want of wit, for all we see and all we do
Such fun to come to close of it, and see my fellows whole and true."
Lumina
"All that ends well is well. I hope we meet those runners again in the future."
Pockets
"I actually got winnie-the-pooh'd in a window."