Swallowed By The Earth
| Swallowed By The Earth | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Wuxing Highrise Octagon Triad | Kanaga-gumi | ||||||||
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Dr. Lollipop Al-Ahmar Pell Jiang-shi |
Character1 Character2 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Yes | |||||||||
Summary
Wuxing has had someone they have an interest in disappear suddenly, they believe foul play is involved. They hire a team of runners to track this person down, and punish the perpetrators in a fashion most permanent.
Background
The Kanaga-gumi and Octagon Triad share a border in Redmond and have been skirmishing for years trying to gain a hand on one another. This time the Kanaga-gumi have managed to kidnap a very valuable associate of the triad and are attempting to extract every bit of useful information they can from her.
The Meet
The runners are contacted by their fixers who give them a few details about the run and are told the meet location. Jiang-shi's fixer Dane asks for the GPS location of the job after it is complete.
Highrise asks the runners to meet him at MacGuffins, an Irish bar in Everett. However the night of the run is one day after St. Patrick's Day and when the runners turn up the bar is in a, lets say dishevelled, state. There is a drunk outside who is sat in the vomit covered street just rocking back and forth as he stares at his 21st pint of Soy-Guinness. The decorations inside have fallen down of their own accord, and there is a barmaid who is complaining that her boss went out for the night and left her in charge but told her that she wasn't allowed to leave until the clients stopped drinking. She has been on shift for 40 hours.
The actual meet happens upstairs, Mr. Wu (Highrise) explains that a troll by the named of Fei Wenling who is an associate of his employers has gone missing. He would like her found as soon as possible, preferably tonight. He suspects the Kanaga-gumi are involved as she work at a business near to their territory known as The Sparrow Room. The team wisely ask what they should do with the captors and Highrise says he desires that they are permanently prevented from causing inconvenience again, which makes the job involve wetwork and he actually ups their pay.
The team accept and as Highrise leaves a round of free food is delivered, this time some hearty bowls of Irish Stew! Which is delicious.
The Plan
Wing it.
The Run
Al-Ahmar starts the ball rolling with a Matrix Search on Fei Wenling's face. With a flash of skill she manages to construct Fei Wenlings entire schedule from where the troll has been spotted. Her schedule seems to be that she leaves her apartment, walks to The Sparrow Room (a "Mahjong House"), then she spends all morning visiting several businesses in the area on foot, these are usually oriental or East Asian, such as dumpling shops, electronics stores, ramen shops, and grocery stores. Then at lunch she goes back to The Sparrow Room, before visiting more businesses again in the afternoon, then she goes back to The Sparrow Room again, then she walks home. Each of these businesses that she visits she seems to visit on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and spends a few minutes at each one. Before finally on the night of her disappearance, Fei Wenling is seen completing her day of work and then she disappears from camera feeds at the junction of Ambrosia and Pine Street North in Redmond which is on her route home.
With the teams Triad knowledge, they work out that Fei Wenling is likely a triad, and that her activities indicate she collects red letters from the businesses that the triad extorts.
Next they look at the location she disappeared, there is nothing interesting about this location physically, however strategically there is. With a call to her contacts Jiang-shi manages to find out that the location where Fei disappeared is in Octagon Triad territory but just a block over it becomes Kanaga-gumi territory. The contact also manages to find out that the nearest Kanaga-gumi site that she knows of is a Bunraku Parlour called "Cloudy Heaven" which seems to be a few blocks away from the abduction site.
Al-Ahmar visits the site on the Matrix from the comfort of Macguffin's and is initially invited into the Host where a sleazy, silky, brothel lobby awaits her and shows the various models of Bunraku that Cloudy Heaven offers. Inside this is another internal host that is suspiciously beefy. Al-Ahmar attempts to enter this host but fails and decides to jack out and try again later.
Now the runners all head toward Cloudy Heaven, which is located on the 5th floor of an apartment building. Outside are a number of modded Suzuki Mirages and two Yakuza goons. They seem to be letting people into the apartments and actually chat occasionally to some of the pedestrians that pass on the way in. Jiang-shi asks for the help of an air spirit and gets laughed at in her face, then Pell steps in to help. With some spiritual assistance the team manage to get into the building unseen and up the stairs to Cloudy Heaven. Al-Ahmar covers them by looping the camera feed while Dr. Lollipop keeps an eye out front for trouble. Pell sends her spirit to see if it can find the target, the spirit returns and says there is no sign of them at this location or anywhere near here.
Inside they recon the layout of the Bunraku parlour. The first room is a lobby where clients wait while a room is free and chat to Bunraku while getting drinks from the bar, behind this is a hallway with cubicles down one side, these cubicles have frosted glass doorways that mostly obscure what is going on inside. Finally there is a backroom which they don't enter until later, but this backroom has an area for the Bunraku to get ready, as well as a workshop to service them.
The team deliberate on how to proceed and Al-Ahmar does a bit of snooping on the Matrix and find the entrance to the backroom, Dr. Lollipop also spots a customer coming inside who is deciding to use the staircase tonight. Jiang-shi and [Pell]] both under the effects of conceal wait until this old man arrives and follow him through the door, then when the guards all come to greet the man they use that opportunity to gain entry into the backroom undetected.
As they open the door to the backroom, the patrol IC manages to spot Al-Ahmar (who has had another go at the Host and got in this time!) and the Host's alarm goes off. The business has already fended off a probe earlier in the evening, they know that someone is likely coming to hit them, and now the Patrol IC has found an intruder in the host. So this time the drek hits the fan. Dr. Lollipop sees the goons outside begin to move into the building and sees panicked customers begin to rapidly evacuate, so jumps into her drone. Jiang-shi and Pell have a quick look in the workshop in the backroom, they find a severed troll sized cyber-hand that matches the description of Fei Wenlings and a dufflebag full of bloody troll clothing and a metalink. There is also an empty chair that is bolted to the ground with open manacles attached to it that is also covered in blood. They grab the hand and the duffle bag and wait to ambush the guards. The guards outside begin ushering the clients out of the building before sweeping the building from room to room. Eventually they are ambushed by Pell and Jiang-shi, Dr. Lollipop manages to take out the guards outside as they run up the staircase, and Al-Ahmar supports this from the Matrix while remaining unseen.
Eventually there is only one Yakuza left who is overpowered and interrogated, Pell shoots him in the genitals with gel rounds and this is enough to have him reveal that two of the now deceased Yakuza buried the Troll alive earlier that night and she has been 'taken care of.' The team retrieve the commlinks of these two Yakuza and follow the GPS coordinates that are stored within. They track them to an abandoned construction site on the edge of Redmond. On the way there the Metalink in the Troll's things comes to life and they receive a call from Fei Wenling who is in a state of distress but the connection is spotty and few details are gained. Once there and with the assistance of some spirits they eventually find a vehicle with it's back half in a hole that has been filled with fresh concrete. The spirits dig channels to let the concrete run off and the team help by digging some of it out. Inside this vehicle is Fei Wenling. Success!
The team deliver Fei Wenling to Highrise at a safe location he organises, there they are met by him and another associate of his. This associate consoles Fei a bit, then jacks into the datalock that is stored inside her head, shortly after both Highrise and the woman leave, and ignore Fei Wenling. The runners receive a ping that their money has been released from escrow, the team give Fei Wenling her hand back, Al-Ahmar offers the distressed troll a place to stay but she isn't too convinced.
Aftermath
Kanaga-gumi gain info on Octagon Triad businesses, but lose control of Cloudy Heaven to the Red Vory.
Fei Wenling gets her arm fixed, a protection detail, and goes back to collecting red letters. She actually really loves her job.
Highrise and his associate retrieve the data that connects Wuxing to the Octagon Triad that is stored in Fei Wenling's datalock.
Rewards
Rewards for "Swallowed By The Earth" (12 RVP)
12k Nuyen (6 RVP)
6 Karma (6 RVP)
2 CDP
+2 Wuxing Rep
Optional Contact:
As a 4/2 (5 RVP)
Optional Qualities:
Al-Ahmar - Fade to Black (5 RVP)
Dr. Lollipop - Sharpshooter (4 RVP)
Jiang-shi - Tough as Nails (5 RVP)
Game Quotes
"Unfortunately for her St. Patrick's Day has a long history of association with alcohol and several Japanese Sararimen are in the bar and doing their part for the tradition. They are all stood at the bar wearing AR-neon green and white striped suits and overlaid full ginger beards, they have been stood there drinking for 36 hours straight now and are still going. "
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Dr. Lollipop
Uh this new rifle is really a whole different league. I have to be more careful with it, it really punches big holes in metahumans. The run was pretty relaxed for me the mages and deckers did the main work. So this was more of a rest compared to my visit to Glow City.
Jiang-shi
this was something I was not ready for but I was able to handle myself, trying to sneak into a place without being caught and saving some troll from a slow death
Pell
Fragging yaks. Anyway, the run went okay; we found the missing person in the nick of time.
Al-Ahmar
I feel bad for Fei. I can't help but have very little empathy for the yaks because they do this drek -- who is psychotic enough to kill someone by burying them in cement? Come on, chummer, that's literally what villains in Ring of Light trids do. What next, evil monologue about master plans?!