Justice for the Betrayed
| Justice for the Betrayed | ||||||||||
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| Factions Involved | ||||||||||
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ShadowHaven Laesa Syndicate | West Coast Monolith | Feral Ghouls | ||||||||
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Kong Felix Iris Tsarina | Jason Hotchkins | Oh god so many of them | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
| None, thankfully | Mark was killed swiftly via decapitation | There were a lot of blown up and electrocuted ferals by the end of that fight... | ||||||||
Summary
To get vengeance for a relatively innocent family after the murder of wife and husband left behind 2 orphans, a runner team was hired out to track down and eliminate the overreaching assassin in a 24 hour time frame. Despite the unexpected complications, the run was a straightforward and speedy success.
Background
the West Coast Monolith sees it as their duty to 'cover the blindspots left by KE' so to speak and deal with the most heinous of criminal organizations, things like human traffickers, organ leggers, protection rackets, those kind of horrid businesses. They operate on assassinations, and try to do their best to research their targets before taking them out. But vigilante justice can't be 100 percent accurate. You're bound to leave behind shattered homes no matter what, and sometimes you just hit the wrong target entirely.
Sometimes you kill a mother and father of 2 elven daughters for being tied up in a protection racket when one of your members just goes off and shoots up a Tarislar embassy.
Sometimes you piss off the Laesa Syndicate's member who was actually close to these people and motivate a hit on that agent's head.
...This whole thing is fucked.
The Meet
The team met with the Johnson over in a little alleyway in Redmond. A brief meeting - the J didn't have much for the team, save for a basic dossier on their target a name, and how to prove they got his ass: Jason Hotchkins, former KE HTR dropout and member of the WCM as the team identified. To prove the kill they'd need to remove the patch every member wore on their shoulder that identified them as a member of the vigilante gang. The J offered 8k for the group to get him within 24 hours, but Tsarina felt that was a bit of an undersell. Pissed the J off a bit, but she managed to convince her to help her fund a contact of hers she used for talismonging and offer some vehicles for the team as well, with a little bonus: get it done in 12 hours and they'd be getting a real good bike for their troubles. Tsarina tried to get a talk with the girls to see about getting the man's face or something but, the J seemed uninterested in exposing the girls to strangers.
The Plan
Now the team only really had one lead at first: the dude was still in Redmond. They spent a good deal of time just trying to put together possible locations and information they had on the WCM, whittling down target areas and likely places where he would be hitting next until they narrowed it down to three spots: a 162's tower where they dumped bodies off and did organ-legging from, a Cutters skyscraper, and an XBTL den of the Crimson Crush down in the OU. they spent more time compiling info and doing searches, at which point Iris managed to find news of a recent shooting over by Touristville where 2 cutters were killed. Figuring this was a good place to start, the team raced off with Felix going on ahead. Now the hunt was on.
The Run
Lo and behold, the team managed to find a few things at the site of the murder. Felix went on ahead astrally with a spirit while his body was guarded in Iris's car, and managed to find a radiation trail which Felix began tracking while leaving his spirit behind to keep the team in the loop when they arrived and eventually to help keep track of the body for Felix. Kong managed to climb up and find bullet casings from the same kind of weapons a member of the WCM would likely use on the roof, and with a strong likelihood of this trail being from Jason or another member of the WCM, the team was in hot pursuit.
They tracked it down into the OU, whereupon the trail seemed to...sputter off a little bit. Which was odd, until Felix and Tsarina realized that there was a pack of Feral Ghouls about to descend upon the team. Not confident they could hide, the team tried at first to slow down the massive swarm of ferals but ultimately just went with the tried and true method of "massive area attacks" to thin the herd and leave only three ferals scampering off for easier prey. Then, after some sterilizing to keep the place from being too infectious, the team investigated around the trains to try and pick back up on the trail. They managed to find evidence of a strange marker they realized was used as a kind of hideout sign, trail sign style, and physically removed it from the train car to use later. They also found a trap on the inside of the train car it was attached to and realized that Jason was probably here for a while to rest. They were closing in. Kong struggled at first to pick up on the trail, but then the team managed to find it going north through a mixture of the tracking and an Earth Spirit's searching for the next symbol to go to.
The team followed the trail back out of the underground and into another part of Touristville, basically going in a U shape to head out topside again, and the Earth Spirit pointed out the symbol was up top on a roof. Kong was turned invisible and given a Gecko Crawl to get up extremely fast along with a drone Iris was controlling, and the two tried to find Jason together. They struggled to get a visual, but a matrix perception did show that a persona was running silently nearby...but with no real way to pinpoint a location. So Tsarina and Felix worked on an admittedly very silly plan to lure him out: A projecting Felix and an impersonating Tsarina to call Jason out on his bullshit, make him take the first shot, and the countersnipe him with a gliding monkey's sword. This plan worked...shocking well, and with a visual on the target Kong sailed on down without being detected and cut his head off in one clean swing. He grabbed the patch fast, and then bolted out of the way of the ensuing bomb vest explosion. The team couldn't really get too much else from the body or the hideout, but it gave time for Felix to leave his signature up on the rooftop to get his name out there and the team a chance to escape back out the way they came, astral signatures scrubbed fast.
Aftermath
The team returned back to the J in a shockingly speedy 5-6 hours total, and earned themselves that bike while the J got proof that Jason was no more. With that, Iris earned herself a truly gnarly bike, the team got paid, and Tsarina managed to fuel her preferred talismonger more resources for...later.
Felix's signature was made known to the WCM. So...hopefully he's not too screwed by that!
Rewards
8,000 Nuyen (4 RVP)
7 Karma (7 RVP)
4 CDP (1 RVP)
+1 Laesa Syndicate Reputation
+1 Ancients Reputation
-1 WCM Reputation
WCM knows Felix's Signature and Bolt goes on a raging rant about 'fucking civvies not understanding the necessary sacrifices' - sad!
Optional Reward: Motorbikes up to 40,000 Nuyen in gear rates, mods included (10 RVP more or less)
Optional Reward for Iris: BMW Blitzkrieg (Costs 12 RVP)
Optional Reward for Tsarina: May increase Isolde the Crafter's Loyalty by 1 for 4 RVP/8 CDP
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Tsarina - "Hmmhmmhmm~...that went MUCH better than the last job at least. No compunctions or prattling about justice or anything, people just did their jobs. A shame I couldn't get something more solid than a bullet out of the ordeal but...I'll make it work."
Kong "I will need better preparations against the mobs of infected before heading back underground, but this felt good. Felt like actual community service.