Meatgrinder, Part 1 - Tide of Darkness
| Meatgrinder, Part 1 - Tide of Darkness | |||||||||
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| Part of Meatgrinder | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Foreman's Legacy | ||||||||
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Oberon Blue Jay Neznayka Insonia |
Tempo-drugged SINless Janine Foreman | ||||||||
Summary
The gang investigates a situation in Amazonia that the local government's trying to sweep under the rug. It isn't particularly comforting to find out.
The Meet
While Ace Powers was the one hiring people, he is found gagged and bound in his office when the runners arrive. Instead, they're met with a dark-haired female smoker without an aura who offers forty thousand nuyen for exploring the source of the riots taking place in a remote part of Amazonia. Failure to do much will still get them ten grand, but going above and beyond will net additional quality of purchase (standard, alpha and even betaware if enough intel is found). The team tentatively accepts.
The Plan
Blue Jay has the plane to take the team over, although Neznayka contemplates bringing her horned bear Mishka along. Considering the ill-fitting climate and danger, it's advised against. Some Matrix searches are made on the 14.6 hour flight over to a Ghost Cartel airstrip hidden in the rainforest and limited intel is found, although information about the Amazonian military organizing a convoy to enter the area is found, giving them a somewhat tight schedule to explore the location. During legwork they find two hosts in Amazonia that are relatively accessible, one called the Serpent's Nest which appears to be authored by naga and contains metasapient-friendly sentiments. Naga population in Tucupita's ruins fled into the rainforest despite the extreme dangers the jungle holds instead of staying in the ruins. The ecoterrorists whom hold the other host are less cooperative.
The Run
Oberon has to wait until nightfall and bathe due to his magical tradition's restrictions. Sad! Blue Jay does some scouting and finds the overgrown favelas utterly overrun with what appears to be nearly the entire local population, minimum triple digits in size. All of them appear violent. As they continue scouting, they find no Matrix grid meaning noise becomes a minor issue; after detecting some commlinks and hacking them for message history they start piecing things together. With one of their generators breaking, they started looking for new sources of water and found a relatively safe one, although details are vague. The 'western' families found it and appear to be very restrictive about who they allow to know about it. Some younger individuals decide to lounge around the water tower in the middle of the favela, but many messages hint that the spread of the riot was extremely rapid.
The background counts get increasingly violent and Neznayka's ability to tame and control animals combined with Blue Jay's drone scouting allows them to look at some of the areas without much danger to themselves. They find the highest concentration of background count, a rectangular building with its roof covered in a pool of blood and a hundred 'infected' individuals surrounding it. Taking a sample of the blood reveals that these individuals are under the effects of Tempo, a Bio-Awakened Drug that once had entire wars waged over it. Oberon's assensing gives limited information but combined with his description and the team's knowledge of magical threats, they conclude that the locals are possessed. The blood sample retrieved by one of the parrots Neznayka manages to pacify shows the blood to have waste byproducts of invertebrate lifeforms, although this is somewhat unhelpful.
Finally, they discover two breakthroughs: a survivor, a 17-year old Francois hiding in his apartment after his parents told him to keep quiet and a broken bunker entrance to an underground lab which appears to be the 'new source of water' that the western family elders had discovered. Rescuing Francois is difficult since changing him into a small animal Oberon's shapeshifting abilities can carry is fraught with peril. Possessed locals break through his door and almost dispel the shapechanging spell from Francois as he's leaving the building off the balcony, held in Oberon's clutches, but the spell manages to survive the dispelling attempts.
A drone flies into the bunker and finds a very realistic-looking red-haired anthrodrone introducing herself as a receptionist and co-owner of the facility despite its dilapidated, bloodied and trashed appearance. She appears somewhat unable to comprehend the real state of affairs, implying her dogbrain is still limited despite its apparent sophistication, but the team pieces together from talking to the drone that the locals did find the place and enjoyed an amount of fresh water from the lab complex. After something went awry, however, she had to ask them to leave, implying the Tempo contamination started from the lab and spread somehow to others - how the drug could spread like a virus is unclear and the team are unable to figure that out. The drone also mentions her name, Janine Foreman, wife of the man who the lab belonged to, Garry Foreman. On the team's way out to the ghost cartel strip with Francois in tow, they research the name given to them. Janine Foreman was a somewhat unsuccessful country singer from Texas while Garry Foreman was a world-renowned geneticist known for finding gene therapies for various birth defects and genetic disorders. While he did have acclaim, he ran independent most of his career and never clung to obviously lucrative projects, appearing to enjoy the challenge of the science instead.
Unfortunately, security protocols prevented them from going further into the lab as the Janine anthrodrone repeated that she's unable to let them proceed due to security protocols. Further details of the lab are left unclear and mysterious, but the team decides they got what they could and bail.
Aftermath
The J is reasonably satisfied, but takes some convincing to give the team the full forty grand since they discovered a piece of the contamination's nature. While its source is now pinpointed, its nature is yet unclear. Unwilling to capture a contagious captive after asking the J, the team barely manages to convince her to be generous. They're paid handsomely for the threat, but questions are left lingering as to what exactly they discovered in Amazonia.
Rewards (Deadly, 1.16x Multiplier = 23 RVP)
- 40,000 Nuyen (20 RVP)
- 2 Karma for rescuing Francois and telling him to become a Coyote apprentice (2 RVP)
- 1 Street Cred for surviving a Meatgrinder Run (1 RVP)
- 2 CDP
- May purchase drones and vehicles at gear rates.
- May purchase augmentations up to Alphaware grade at gear rates.
- May purchase non-Power/Weapon Foci to Rating 5 at gear rates.
- May purchase Power/Weapon Foci to Rating 3 at gear rates.
- May purchase Fake SINs and Licenses at gear rates.
- All runners that consent gain 1 Chain Link Tattoo.
- Oberon May take the Fuchi Cyber-X7 with a R3 Stealth Dongle and R6 Agent Program Carrier out of run rewards. The agent is called "Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall.