Sabotage, Subterfuge, and Syncretism
| Sabotage, Subterfuge, and Syncretism | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||
| Factions Involved | |||||||||
|
ShadowHaven Templars | Major Corp | ||||||||
|
Six of Hearts Europa Geodesic Oberon |
Character1 Character2 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| none | |||||||||
Summary
Runners are asked by the Templars to investigate happenings in Basque country. After some investigation they discover themselves to be at the precipice of a very deep rabbit hole.
Background
The Basque Catholic Church split off from the Vatican way back when Euskal Herria declared independence from Spain.
While tensions between the Basque Church and Catholic Church have been high in the past, hard feelings have cooled over the decades as the Vatican has become more progressive and pro-Awakened.
Euskal Herria has hosted ecumenical (interfaith) conferences for decades. They're generally as exciting as trade conferences, and until this year attract little notice from non-religious organizations.
Through back-channels, the Roman Catholic and Basque Catholic churches have recently begun discussing the possibility of merging again. By the start of the conference nothing had been definitively planned out, but a clandestine meeting between members of each faith discussing the merger was set up, using the ecumenical conference as both a location and as a smokescreen for their intentions.
Several days before the run, a trio of events happened: First, Bishop Manganiello (one of the Vatican delegates in town to discuss the merger) disappeared, the convention center was bombed, and every conference attendee involved in the secret meeting began to recieve anonymous death threats on their comms. These events seemed too focused to be coincidence, and drew the attention of the Templars.
From there, Father Uriel assembled a team of out-of-country runners, fearing that runners from the area might be entangled in this religious issue or in the machinations of whichever regional power was behind it all.
The Meet
The team was called together to meet at a rented office space. He outlined the situation to the runners, being fairly open about his involvement in the Catholic Church but being coy about being a Templar. He asked that the runners go to Euskal Herria, find the person/group responsible for the happenings, figure out what happened to Bishop Manganiello, and deal with said responsible group. Initially Father Uriel meant unconditionally killing them, but that was negotiated to "phone in and ask Father Uriel if killing was necessary once you've found them." No timeline was given, but urgency was requested in addition to discretion and conscience.
As part of the cost of the job he offered to set up an expense account for the runners (which would cover burner fake SINs, paying a smuggler for transportation, hotel fees, food, rental cars, the cost of a babysitter, and a few other things too minor to mention) in addition to the actual job payment.
The Plan
The runners planned to head to Gasteiz in Euskal Herria (where the incidents had occurred), investigate some loose threads, and improvise from there. Said loose threads were: the bomb site, the conference members involved in the secret meetings, the death threats, and the lack of an actionable police response to any of these things.
A smuggler, Cascade, was hired for the job after the J conferred with her to be assured of her discretion.
Oberon pulled some Basque music from the massive stash of pirated tunes he earned in a past run and started listening on the way there, using his adept powers to get a grounding in the language. Six of Hearts did some learning Basque in a more conventional way, managing to get a solid grounding in the language by the time the team arrived by studying.
Once travel arrangements were made, the journey itself was painless. Cascade did her job and no heat was raised.
The Run
Once in Gasteiz, the runners started by investigating the conference, with Europa and Six eavesdropping on the Basque Church and Catholic Church delegates and finding some friction between them.
Meanwhile Geodesic did some research into the bombing (with Oberon helping to translate), finding that the police explanation that a certain terrorist group being responsible seemed baseless. Digging into a police host, Geodesic found that the file on the death threats investigation had been "misfiled" by one Lt. Zabala. Geodesic grabbed the Lt.'s personnel files and left before the spider could catch her. Doing some more matrix research into Zabala, the runners found enough irregularities to be suspicious of her but couldn't tie her to any of the incidents.
Oberon followed up by asking around the nearest Romani enclave for info, reinforcing the team's views on the situation with new info.
Next, the FLRs investigated the conference building that had been bombed (after the bombing, they moved the conference to a different building--the one the duo had already been to). The job looked professional, so Six contacted her one-time acquaintance Picante to ask about local explosives experts. Picante didn't know who did the conference bombing but offered to do some digging.
That evening, Oberon (backed up by Geodesic on the matrix) staked out the suspicious police Lt.'s house. He noticed a spirit over the house, but didn't see anything worth his attention. However, Geo's matrix sweep of the area caught a stealth tag on the cop's (personal, not work) car. Geo traced this to the slums outside Gasteiz, and the four runners drove towards the ping, hoping to get there before the tag-owner caught on to the trace.
Oberon and Geodesic got there first. Searching the slums on foot, they found the tag-owner passed out in VR with a pair of bodyguards holed up in a hovel. Worried about their targets escaping, the duo attacked. After a brief exchange (one that left the tag-owner bleeding out, revealed a previously-hidden spirit in the hovel, and saw the runners uninjured) a truce was called so everyone could figure out what was actually going on. Geodesic got the story from the hired guns while Oberon talked to the spirit. Geodesic found that the hires had been hired by a new (to the runners) Mr. Johnson at a warehouse by the river, while Oberon displayed his Infected powers to impress the spirit, which told him to find "the chantry." By this point Six of Hearts and Europa had arrived to secure the area. Geo attempted to trace the new Mr. Johnson, but he hung up too quickly. Then she tracked down a chantry in town that seemed both spooky enough and historically significant enough to be the chantry mentioned by the spirit, and the team split once again. Oberon went alone with comms off to his rendezvous, while the rest of the team went to the warehouse to investigate their other lead of the night.
Oberon found the chantry abandoned but secured with powerful wards. Finding an entry around them, he entered to find a potent ally spirit going by the name of Bertrand, who explained what was really going on in Gasteiz: The Basque Black Lodge Order of Mordred had sabotaged the religious merger to keep the Vatican's eyes out of their dealings. The Black Lodge had control over every aspect of the country that mattered to them, and wanted to preserve their status quo. In exchange for this knowledge Oberon was conscripted into doing the Lodge's bidding--tracking down the goons the party had roughed up and convincing them to continue monitoring the police lieutenant. Oberon agreed to do this, because he did not want to make an enemy of the Black Lodge.
Over at the warehouse, the rest of the team found some evidence of the meeting but didn't get much further than that before reconvening.
Oberon, still working solo, tracked down the hired guns and convinced them to continue their work in exchange for a pay raise, framing the incident at the hovel as a misunderstanding between everyone involved.
Reconvening with the rest of the team, Oberon did not tell them about Black Lodge interference. He did explain that he believed that the team was very much out of their depth here, and that they should leave the job unfinished and tell the J to send in the heavy hitters from his organization to handle the obviously magical conspiracy at hand. The team agreed, seeing that their mage was clearly shaken by whatever he had uncovered, and called Father Uriel to discuss terms. He was willing to agree with their request if they discovered the fate of the kidnapped Manganiello. Oberon went back to Bertrand and told the spirit that he could get the other runners out of the Black Lodge's hair if he could just give them a throwaway explanation for Manganiello's fate. The spirit assured Oberon that the bishop would be returned to civilization alive in a few days, giving the runners a location to await the bishop. After an unmarked van dropped off a drugged (but still alive and largely unharmed) Bishop Manganiello, they phoned in to Uriel for their payment and got out of the country as fast as possible, most of them still unclear exactly what kind of hornet's nest they had stirred up.
Aftermath
The Black Lodge will continue to pull strings in Euskal Herria. Their monopoly on power was not meaningfully threatened by the outcome of the run.
The Catholic Church-Basque Church merger is dead in the water for now. One of its initial major backers has turned against it, another is hospitalized, and everyone involved is spooked. It will be some time before someone seriously broaches the possibility of formally reconciling again.
The Templars will send a team into Euskal Herria to investigate. What they will find remains to be seen, but by this point the Black Lodge knows they're coming and can prepare accordingly.
Rewards
- 2 CDP (free)
- 30k nuyen (15 RVP)
- 5k nuyen OR 10k nuyen in weapons, ammo, armor and spy gear avail <19 (2.5 RVP)
- 15 more CDP, likely to spend on languages related to the run (7.5 RVP)
- 15 karma (15 RVP)
- 8k nuyen in Krime products avail <19, from picking up some souvenirs from the local industry OR 4 CDP (2 RVP)
For Six of Hearts:
- Treat the run as an ascension
- +1 chip on Father Uriel
- May take "Picante" the Spanish Ancients demolitions expert as a contact for a discount, as per IKAG rules
For Europa:
- Father Uriel turned up another lead on Yamatetsu's dealings for you
For Geodesic:
- May buy Trust Data Not Lore at chargen price
- ...I guess Father Uriel will compensate you for the ammo you used?
For Oberon:
- You've drawn the attention (but not the ire) of the Basque Black Lodge of Mordred. They consider you to be a useful pawn, and have let you leave the country unscathed.
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Geodesic - "Hm. It's hard to know. How to feel about this one. Euskal Herria is interesting. It was nice taking a trip. Somewhere sunny. A less... dysfunctional state of society. But... we totally. Left a job half-finished. We got paid for the whole job. And the Johnson is. Satisfied. Is the wrong word. Accepting. But it's like biting into an apple. And hitting bedrock. Or clay. Oberon was acting strange about things. Maybe I can probe him. Later. For now. I'm going to spend time. With Oliver. And figure out. What to do with these Krime Bosses. Where to store them, even. Frag. Why did I take all these."
Six_of_Hearts: Well... that was interesting. New country was cool... new languages is cool... but the job was just weird. Technically we didn't really complete it the way we were supposed to, but still completed it to Father Uriel's satisfaction, I guess. Task failed successfully and all that. At least we got paid, so I can't really complain too much.