Minime Senuisti" Part 1
| Minime Senuisti" Part 1 | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Ordo Maximus | ||||||||
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Chameleon P23 Sizzles |
Aquarium Security Alexandru Sarafin | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Alexandru Sarafin | |||||||||
Summary
The team is hired to persuade the holders of an old Cincinnati aquarium to stop resisting eminent domain seizure and accept the sale of their property. It turns out, the reason the aquarium won't sell is because it's being used by the Ordo Maximus as a facility for their weird nonsense! The team doesn't manage to get a solid grip on what's happening here, but they do kill a bunch of vampires, which seems to do the trick.
Background
One of the national-level NCP political footballs is the planned new Cincinnati megaplex arcology - a project that has been in development hell for years. The NCP is finally pushing the project over the start line, with national funding flooding in, and as part of that initiative, their fixers are smoothing over the last few wrinkles impeding the kickoff. Hassan Bahreini, as one of those fixers, reaches out to some runners he has personal experience with from his whirlwind time playing fixer for the Seattle governor's race and pulls them out east to get a property deal closed with a minimum of muss and fuss.
The Meet
The runners attend a major virtual event in Ohio and their nominally anonymous employer explains that he wants this matter handled without substantial news coverage, carnage, or anything else that would cause the new development effort to stumble over the starting blocks. He's not really sure who owns the shell company that owns the aquarium or why they won't sell, and he doesn't really care. He just needs them to sell the damn property. The team agrees, though they don't do anything to assuage how very jaded he's become about shadowrunner negotiating tactics.
The Legwork
The team smuggles itself to the operational zone and spends a day at the aquarium, just scoping the place out. The aquarium, by day, appears to be operational and the staff reasonably well taken-care-of. They slip a Festo Sewer Snake into the facility's waterways and leave with no-one the wiser. That night, they activate the snake remotely and use it to explore the aquarium, which reveals that the closed shark exhibit has been separated from the rest of the facility by a slick FAB-3 aquaculture pod, ensuring that nothing dual-natured can get into or out of the tank via the existing water connections. The sewer snake, being a robot, wriggles through easily enough and finds itself in a confusingly-pitch black tank with a film of light-absorbing goop floating at the top. Above the goop, sensor-overloading UV light generators appear to be running continuously, while bizarre Latin chanting runs on a loop. The team takes all that in and tries to make sense of it, but fails. Vampire sharks, maybe?
They track down a local PI who previously resisted investigating this matter and shake him down for information - he reveals that the facility's ultimate owner is a local oligarch, who also happens to be a mage and a dues-paying member of the Illuminates of the New Dawn. The team reaches out to a wholly unrelated contact of theirs who is also a notable member of the Illuminates, Hassan Bahreini, and ask him about the man. Evidentally, the oligarch pays his dues but he doesn't participate with the group much.
The Noise
The runners are left confused and uncertain how to proceed - leveraging an oligarch is fairly challenging. They decide that the quickest way to cut through this Gordian knot is to simply demolish whatever weird (science? magic?) is taking place in the Shark Tank.
Chameleon sneaks inside the facilities room for the shark tank, sets a remote camera up, and then activates the FAB-3 colony, instructing it to spew aquaculture death into the shark tank at maximum volume, then bugs out. The team reunites in the parking lot and watches in mounting horror as a twisted, inhuman nosferatu climbs out of some kind of rigger cocoon in the facilities room, discovers what has happened, and attempts to put a stop to it. It becomes evident, as the vampire empties the tank, that the tank was being used to hold HMHVV mutants, of which only one appears to have survived. The team elects to use cyberwarfare to identify the exact location of the vampire in three-dimensional space, drives around to the back, and uses an overabundance of firepower to assassinate the vampire from outside of the building with a double-tap. Then they scarper as a luxurious vehicle, presumably the vampire's intended exit vehicle, rolls past them.
Rewards
"Minime Senuisti" Part 1
Deadly TL - 20 RVP
40,000 Nuyen (+15k negotiation/hazard pay bonus) - 20 RVP
Ordo Maximus (-10 Faction Rep)
Optional Qualities:
Sizzles - "Lucky" at chargen rates
Paz - "Perfect Time" at chargen rates
Chameleon - "Catlike" at chargen rates
With player permission, the players gain the negative quality: Wanted (Ordo Maximus)
P23 may treat this as a Mundane Ascension
Game Quotes
"Time to get my snake wet." - Sizzles
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Sizzles: Decker's log: magicians don't know jack.
This was a weird one. It's a shame that it wasn't just some rich idiot with more money than sense trying to create vampire sharks for his spy-execution pool or something. Instead, we've got weird cultists operating their whack shit in spitting distance of a family vacation spot. I don't know who those people are, and I don't really care - a little industrial sabotage seems to have been all that was needed to get the job done. Paz is too blast-happy to let us jet and collect our funds without shooting something first, but hey, the guy was a famously bad dude, so maybe there's some good karma coming our way for the righteous deed.
Chameleon: Never a dull moment in the shadows but wowza, what a run. I'd never heard anything good about southern Ohio and, in fact, it is a shitehole. And Cincinnati is the good side of the river. The run started pretty well, the pay was pretty good. Sizzles and Paz were legwork wizards. On-site recon went smoothly and then the aquatic drone did its thing into the sealed shark tank in the Newport Aquarium. The more we learned the worse it got. Magical research on awakened sharks? That explains the FAB III [both aquatic and aerosol] but why the gigantic bank of UV lights? The guards in FBA carrying crossbows with wooden shafts?
Up until now all of my infiltration has been body sculpting professional liar stuff. Time for technical work. Paz is an amazingly good clown and did quite the distraction so entry was easy. Snuck to the entrance to the shark tank and put a data tap on the biometrics of the lock so Sizzles could rummage through the host while I hid in the bathroom. He was very successful and the news got even worse. A fragging nosferatu. New plan - I sneaky-feet to the FAB III containment controls, flood the tank and hope like hell we kill everything inside. I hit YES to the emergency over ride and as I left a sensor tag the rigger cacoon above opened up and someone flowed out onto the floor. I can hide behind ruthenium and thermal damping, I can manipulate my aura in all sorts of interesting ways but I can't hide my living aura on the astral. Sneaky feet got me out in time though. We got 6 of 7 people(?) but Alexandu the nosferatu saved one and stuffed him in a body bag. While I snuck out to our wheels Sizzles and Paz did some matrix stuff to tag(?) Alexandru. Then Paz shot his arse right through the exterior wall! Twice. That is the biggest gun I've ever seen. All's well that ends well but this isn't over. Sizzles has video of Alexadru bringing the tanks to the aquarium 7 years ago. He was accompanied by 6 tall figures cloaked in black.
P23: "Y'know. Ostensibly I don't mind vampires. I know, I know, controversial opinion when my job is a protector of people. But like. Some of them try hard to overcome the monster the shit makes em and that's fuckin righteous, y'know? But Nosferatu - I've heard horror stories. Plus the man was wanted by interpol. Seventeen different reasons I could tell you that this shit wasn't kosher. I just wasn't havin' it. And between clever matrix work from one of my favourite deckers, Sizzles, and my trusty barret, Bertha, I scratched one problem plague bringer from the face of the earth. People are important. Spooky latin speaking nosferatu chanting over a vantablack pool that 'what we do is for your own good' is less than ideal. Even if those vamps were problems, they could have executed the problem instead of putting a timebomb with a NOSFERATU in place."
"Silver lining? I got a new car and a fish."