Me And The Bad Boys
| Me And The Bad Boys | |||||||||
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| Part of Hail to the Pumpking | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven West Coast Monolith | Ares MacroTechnology | ||||||||
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Shine Babylon Gav Jacinto Shy | A lot of cops. | ||||||||
Summary
Runner team infiltrated the Knight Errant Seattle Training Academy in Renton and successfully exfiltrated 40 unknowing and unwilling trainee HTR members out at the behest of the Johnson, Bolt McBigFlank McMuscle. The Johnson's mental illness was exacerbated by mind magic in the process of convincing him to not pledge allegiance to local liege lord Pump King Jack. The three bakers dozens of HTR trainees (and one random guard) form the core of the West Coast Monolith group.
Background
Bolt "McBigFlank" McMuscle is a incredible human being who took a lot of drugs while in the Redmond barrens after a particularly awful day at work. From there, he wandered the Redmond Barrens for days, before ultimately experiencing a life changing epiphany. No longer the brutal, boring man that would be satisfied working to do nothing good under a megacorporation, the brutal nutcase decided he would become a true Knight Errant, and would forcefully convert the class of corporate goons he once taught into his army of incredibly honorable and good goons, and would make them change with force, charisma, and probably drugs. He cashed out his actually insane pension and sold his laser rifle to the highest bidder and went to do the work. Then he met Pump King Jack while setting up his run, and found the being that neatly solved the significant issue of having to change the viewpoint of these HTR trainees and providing him with a actually good person (in his mind) to follow, as he wasn't the greatest at planning missions that would provide net-goodness in the world.
The Meet
Runners were contacted 2 hours before the meet at 7:15 AM. All runners were asleep because they are runners - except for Shine, who was playfully arguing with Zenith's daughter concerning who got to use the bathroom first -and were rudely woken up by their fixers. All runners made it to the run with their own vehicles: Every single one of them went on a bike. The meet was set up at a burned down library in the Redmond Barrens. The J was sitting in his white pickup truck in the middle of the parking lot, playing loud music and waiting. With him was a set of shitty plastic lawn chairs, a flipped over whiteboard on a stand and two drones with shotguns built into them. There was also a TV in the pickup. He was wearing a armored jacket stylized to look like a Hawaiian T-shirt, a pair of ballistic sunglasses, an armored hat, snake mesh socks and cargo shorts. He is an older person, with a militarized body with signs of cyber and bioware installation.
The runners drove in, and the meet went stunningly well, considering the circumstances. The runners threatened to kill him at least once, questioned if he actually had any money, if said money was in nuyen or monopoly money like UCAS dollars, as well as questioning his sanity and intelligence. The J presented the simple plan of inserting into the facility, extracting either 4 guys or the entire "Lions Guard" class of 40 people. He offered a total of 16,000 per runner or 30,000 per runner if the bonus objective was fulfilled. He did this with an incredible drawing on a whiteboard which crudely depicted the runners crossing the border into Renton and then returning with 4, or 36 guys. They were given a list of 36 names, which were very interesting.
Theodore Pain, Sarah Pain, Slab Bulkhead, Maxx Power were the four that had to be extracted, no IF'S ands or BUTS!
- Killiam Shakespeare
- Sargent Slaughter
- Ralf Assault
- Punt Speedchunk
- Butch Deadlift
- Mike Truk
- Bold Bigflank
- Splint Chesthair
- Flint Ironstag
- Bolt Vanderhuge
- Thick McRunfast
- Blast HardBass
- Buff Drinklots
- Trunk Slamchest
- Fist Rockbone
- Stump Beefgnaw
- Smash Lampjaw
- Punch Rockgroin
- Buck Plankchest
- Dirk Hardpeck
- Crud Bonemeal
- Brick Hardmeat
- Gristle McThornBody
- Slake Fistcrunch
- Reef Blastbody
- Maximilian Murderface
- Bob Johnson
- Crush McStompbones
- Hank Chesthair
- Killing McKillingalot
- Rex Dudekiller VII
- Duke Killington
The runners actually accepted the job, and promptly figured out that the J was gonna pledge allegiance to the dark lord Pump King Jack, and were incredibly miffed about this. Some of them. One runner was pretty cool with that.
The Plan
The runners contacted a Freya, who acted as matrix support for the rest of the run, at the expense of having to help another person infiltrate into the place and paying a significant chunk of change. They met up with an agent of the Aleph Society, who successfully kept who he worked for a secret, mostly by being a confusing entity and being very good at lying. The guy promptly rented a hang glider and began doing aerial recon of the area, sending unwanted and unneeded pictures of the AO that was effectively unused. The plan was simple: Freya would slay deckers, Get them a false exercise plan for the Lions Guard to have a field trip to the Redmond barrens, and handle any matrix needs. Shine would scout out a suitable locations for the "training site". From there, Gav and Shy would walk in and convince the students to leave in a bus, which would leave the facility and then be transferred to a bus provided by the J which had a built in faraday cage. Meanwhile, Babylon would provide magical support and overwatch. (GM's note, it was a mistake to have the Johnson provide this, the runners should of made the effort to acquire it.) (Shine's note: They did. But when we made it clear that we were going to make our own arrangements, the J told us an obvious lie and somehow the bus he was supposedly working hard to get for the next few hours became available the minute the runners made it clear they'd be making their own arrangements. This did not strike -any- of the runners as suspicious. Honest).
The Run
The runners drive into the AO with the agent. they drive into the checkpoint into the facility, and pass a gauntlet of scanners. The agent's R6 sin gets burned, and he smoothly manages to talk himself out of getting clubbed to death by the 10 dudes plus twenty that were immediate reinforcements that hung around the checkpoint. The agent leaves the car, enters a building, and exits the scene forever. The two runners park their car, and go to look for their targets. they are stopped by a warrant officer, who asks to see one of the runners guns which is not an ARES predator. he mocks the woman and throws the gun into the trash, and leaves. Eventually, they find a random goon, Maxx Pain, and successfully ask him where the rest of the class was. They were in the Dark room, being held for a 48 hour sleep deprivation training. The runners go over there, meet up with the people who beat the sleepy trainees if they try and sleep, and tell them of their new operation they are gonna take. The instructors accept this, but will only release the Lion's Guard after the 48 hours are up. The runners wait two hours.
Meanwhile, Shine spends the morning examining the J's bus with a fine-toothed comb, trying to work out the J's angle and figure out just what is going on with this bus the J didn't want his runners to know he'd had run-ready and pre-rigged with a Faraday cage. It proves to be a frustrating morning, and she eventually gives up the search and drives the bus to the "training location" she'd selected in the Barrens the day before.
Babylon and Gamorrah (Babylons ally spirit) gets invited to drink with the J. He is absolutely bonkers, and reveals that the reason that he is a bit burned is because some gangers threw a match on him after he washed his face with a bunch of rubbing alcohol, so he returned the favor by crucifying said gangers and lighting them on fire. He didn't mention that last part, and Babylon got to witness some really burnt up gangers. She decides that having this ex-corporate psycho under the tutelage of a shadow spirit might not be the best idea, so she finds the dude, whose third sense kicked in while he is trying to run away. His mind gets invaded by Babylon, and he receives a vision of the incoming apocalypse, humanity being fed into a meat grinder as shadow spirits cackled like so much fire. He tries to fire off a flare to signal his location to the Star Screamers, and to signal the 3 gangers he intimidated into providing over watch at the meet that he is in trouble (they would've just fired on the J with their AK's, not help him out.) From the hateful liturgies and the baneful influence, he rightfully assumes that he is being haunted by a spirit, and runs away. Babylon lets him do this, but keeps him under observation with a lightning bolt ready.
Exfiltration
Shy and Gav order the HTR trainees out after two hours, move them onto a bus, and get them past a checkpoint. They pass inspection by a Major, and are ordered to accept a excitable checkpoint guard who wanted to train with his brother who was on the bus. They pass through the checkpoint into Redmond, and have the KE bus return to base. Shine promptly begins drilling the Lion's Guard in CQB tactics to to the point where most of them probably can't stand anymore. Elsewhere, Bolt "McBigFlank" thinks back on his previous experience, and comes to two conclusions: That there were two separate entities or events that had influenced his thought process: The first being a return of his Cereprax overdose demon that gave him the specifications of another liege lord to follow: Vichnozeleny, who is absolutely trustworthy, and because Jack is probably up to no good, and that free healthcare is bad. The second entity that messed with his head was Babylon, and he figured that she was a mind mage who prevented him from firing a flare gun to summon his buddies, for reasons unknown. He figured that it was Babylon through four reasons.
- Babylon is an Elf.
- Babylon is an Elf Magician.
- Babylon is part of the Ancients.
- Babylon has a ghost that follows her. And the ghost also pretends to be an elf that looks like her.
He runs for 30 straight minutes towards one of his old buddies' aspected lodges in a plant nursery (run by a Aztechnology mage as a hobby) and cashes a favour to hide in it. This shakes off the horrific mind magic stapled to his psyche, and stays there. He does some red masque, finds out about another option than Jack, and notes that their was an attempt to contact him by the runners. He promptly calls the star screamers, and gives them a commlink code for Babylon, and asks them to relay some information.
Babylon receives a call asking for the location of the J's boys by the star screamers, which is given and relayed to the J. He arrives 20 minutes later, using the mage's scooter, which he dosed with the last of his rubbing alcohol and planted a thermally insulated bomb into before he arrived. He disposes of it by throwing a match on it, which lights on fire, and it detonates 30 minutes afterwards after the insulation is ruined and the meet is concluded. He walks into his bus, pays the runners, checks for bombs that the runners may or may not have planted, and asks the runners to leave the bus. He keeps the nature of where he is gonna go secret. The runners are told that he is not going to Jack before he drives off, leaving the runners there with a buggy full of Star Screamers observing the situation.
Meanwhile, two of the runners, Babylon and Shine, are independently of each other considering whether or not they should blow the bus sky high. By fireball or grenade launcher respectively. Both weigh the circumstances carefully however, and for reasons that remain their own, decide not to fire.
Aftermath
Bolt "McBigFlank" McMuscle: Devoted to a changed life and given a bus filled with unknowing members of his new legion, Bolt has big plans for a future which he made a meaningful impact in, and the West Coast Monolith group headed by Vichnozeleny could make it reality.
Pump King Jack: Doesn't get his army of 40 HTR trainees, and is very sad.
The Agent: probably gets gunned down doing stupid drek in a place crawling with police officers.
The Runners: Got Paid.
Freya: Absolutely slayed three deckers and got paid extra by the runners for being such a big part of the run.
That one Guard who joined the exercise: thinks that HTR team members are really hardcore, but doesnt know if this excercise is an excercise anymore, because it is really hardcore.
Rewards
16 RVP 26,000 Nuyen (13 RVP) 3 Karma (3 RVP) Can take Freya as a 5/1 for 5 RVP
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Shine: "I've never wanted to kill a J before a meet even ended before. I've never taken a run that I expected I might have to sabotage before either. That J is a dangerous maniac who needs to die. And now he's a dangerous maniac with 40 HTR trained goons at his back.
Frag. Fraggit Frag Frag Frag! I should've just taken the shot the moment we were paid and fuck the consequences for my rep. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck FUCK!"
Shy: : Operation was smooth and professional. I mean we did perform really well but the J was a mess, always high or drunk. The whole thing was weird tho he seemed to was willing to go with Jack then change his mind...Not really my problem tho it's a good news that Jack didn't got those would have been too much maybe.
Babylon
I knew Ares and KE were bad, but holy shit was this J ever something else - I don't know what drug cocktail fried his brain so hard, and apparently Ishtar has no idea either, but miss me with that drek. Omae was the most unstable person I've run across in a while, and that was before I did mind magic on him. Still, I couldn't let a maniac like that bring three dozen HTR goons in training to Jack of all people, so something had to be done about it. Maybe Shine was right, blowing up the bus might have been the way to go - still, there's no way we could have guaranteed it, and we'd have been slaughtered if even half of them had survived. Frag, what a mess; least it's somebody else's problem now.
Gav: : Honestly, I feel kinda bad for taking the money here. Mostly, I was just there to look intimidating for five minutes. And to talk to an idiot. I guess that comes with the territory - more often than not, you're there as insurance in case shit goes horribly, horribly wrong, but it's still boring as hell standing around for eight hours waiting for a something that might not happen. I guess I should be grateful that things went off (mostly) without a hitch? Seems like some of the other runners were steamed about something towards the end, but honestly, I had headphones in at that point, I wasn't paying much attention. I've worked for much worse guys for way less cash, Johnny-boy seemed pretty on the level, all things considered. Nice taste in shirts, too.