True Will
| True Will | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Enemy Shadowrunner | ||||||||
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All Gods Must Fall Europa Geodesic Rogozhin |
Abigor The Seven Deadly Sins | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 'ANOTHER' dog, these are NOT free sleevey. | Abigor and his spirits were dematerialized. This is fatal for only one of them. | ||||||||
Summary
Ignorance is bliss, and Bliss is trouble.
Background
As is so often the case, Ms. Johnson has a bone to pick, and the nooj to shell out for the biggest bone pickers she can find. A shadowrunner named Abigor has made a name for himself throughout the years running low-stakes jobs for various real estate developers. His job, typically, is to clear out entrenched encampments of the SINless and homeless, and to do it quickly. His other enterprises, typically a little more dangerous, involve recruiting a militia several dozen strong to clear armed gangs out of other, slightly more contested territory.
His secret? Mind magic. Easy to see how Ms. J can hold a grudge. Though she doesn't share her motives with our protagonists, they're easy enough to infer. He hurt someone close to her - and in a world with supercriminals for hire, fair is fair. She wants to hurt him back.
The Meet
The KC Bar in Auburn is a faithful throwback to 1950s Americana, a classic checkerboard diner with reasonably-priced soyshakes on tap. The meet is short and bitter - a brief on the man, an explanation of her intentions, and any clarifications the runners would like to make. Rogozhin expresses interest in the specific nature of her grudge, and receives only a glare in response.
In particular, Abigor has some means by which he creates a great many clones of himself. It's reported that he has serpentine tattoos as well, though these are magically active, and typically hidden. She speculates, however, that they may flash onto the visible spectrum on death, and that this may be how the runners confirm the truly correct man has died.
Bring his corpse to her. Recognizable, of course, but mangled. The more painful his death, the better. The team, minus Geodesic who's not OPPOSED but is maybe a LITTLE squeamish about it, are utterly on board.
The Plan
The Johnson has a tip off, that he's got a new job down in a Loveland homeless commune. Abigor typically finishes with his job in three-to-seven days - and so the team's deadline looms.
While Geodesic sets about looking for information on past incidents, the team buckles down to brainstorm, and formulates two competing strategies. The first, to send in an infiltrator to pose as one of their members, and to wait to catch the mental manipulation first-hand. The second, to visit and interview residents of the commune, and to glean from those who have encountered this man before any information that might lead them to him. While the team plan to pursue the latter, however, Geodesic strikes gold.
This has happened before - of course. In different communities, in different sprawls. Almost always, days to weeks after a homeless encampment is cleared away, similar figures are reported participating in gangland turf wars - never big names, always small time, but with enough firepower to drive off any riffraff for more entrenched presences to take over without any casualties to themselves. The implication is obvious - these people he manipulates into leaving are recycled into his personal soldiers. Mind mage that he is, he is double dipping.
In looking for this information, Geodesic happens on the social media profile of one such person, a survivor of one of dozens of incidents of that kind. She reaches out, and after convincing this person to open their DMs, bluntly offers bloody retribution to someone just trying to heal. Though they speak openly of their experiences and poorly of their wishes for the man who did it. Geodesic INSISTS she can offer blood, at which point Europa gently prods her aside to take over the conversation.
She tells this person what the team knows - that he is a mind mage. That any information they can provide helps in stopping this from ever happening again. This softens the mark just enough to let slip what they know in turn - he doesn't use traditional spellcasting. Those who fall into a trance, under his spell, do so after consuming Bliss.
Rogozhin immediately suspects alchemical preps, though knows they do not typically last so long as to do the work they are doing now.
Geodesic also notices with a little help that the drone traffic over this homeless encampment is unusually dense, and inspiration strikes - this is how the Bliss is being delivered, isn't it? With a little help spotting out suspicious devices from Rogozhin, Geodesic manages to hack through and slip inside a delivery drone, and to reroute it to the team - while this is happening, Rogozhin and All Gods Must Fall both slip into the astral space to account for the populations' auras, and to find any lingering signatures. Each and every one of those in the commune shine a bright and bloody red - far more than any reasonable mage could ever have under his command. This is either an impossibly potent master of his craft, or something more suspicious is going on.
The drone bears fruit, however - a shipment of Bliss, hot off the press. All Gods Must Fall deigns to grab one to inspect, and instantly tendrils of blissful haze cloud her mind, though she is not softened by their grip. She pushes them away, and the team confirm their theory.
Geodesic slips the resonance through the seams of its code, divines its secrets, and finds a winding trail back in time leading back to a talismonger shop in Southern Tacoma, High Stars Talismongery. All Gods Must Fall, bitter and ready to strike back after being mentally touched, psychometrizes the Bliss, and experiences the life of an orchid, grown from seed, picked and pressed flat and dried, ground by an old man in mortar and pestle and mixed with a compound she knows in a distant memory of a distant life to be Bliss. She is packed in darkness, and shipped away, and awakens back to her flesh.
The team have a location, and a good idea of what seems to be going on. All that's left now is to act on it.
The Run
A brief scout of the premises, and the team are confident moving in on this talismonger. Though Rogozhin moves to flank the rear escape just in case, the team vaguely decide to opt for a subtle, quiet, reasonable social approach to coax the talismonger into-
No, actually, there goes All Gods Must Fall with a deafening chainsaw, cutting down the plastic shell of the front door. The old man inside is terrified, obviously, though All Gods Must Fall, for additionally mysterious reasons, is suddenly struck with fear. As soon as she breaks the entrance, she books it across the street.
Though the team are baffled, they adapt quickly enough to salvage the operation, with Europa spearheading the blow. Some interrogation, and some investigation into the alchemical preps he has ready to ship later, the team learn everything there is to know about their target - including where he's expecting to receive his shipments.
Little do the team know that Abigor's eyes are everywhere - even on them, even right now.
Back at the encampment, the air is eerie, and alive. Whispers on the wind track their every move. They assense the location and move to a large, open building in the center of the encampment - and with a little know how, they recognize the danger they're in. A mob of people, each entranced - and an old man, Abigor by his description, at their center, distributing Bliss.
Europa sets up just off-site. Geodesic tags the target. Europa aims through the silhouette behind a wall.
Fire.
He explodes into viscera - and that viscera into paltry smoke. A spirit, one of seven bound and deadly sins, had taken his form, and inadvertently sacrificed itself.
The room explodes into activity. A dozen dozen SINless scream in wanton rage. All Gods Must Fall, on the Astral plane, scans for those threats she can identify, and finds only that self-same red aura eclipsing all other sight. Geodesic and Europa continue picking away at viable targets, though only Europa is susceptible to this man's magic. She is clipped by mind altering magic, filled with the unshakeable rage that begs her to kill, and finds her mark in the faceless crowd.
Rogozhin's carcass spirit, a rotting dog with hollow eyes, bounds into the building and strikes at the mage in her stead - a narrow miss that prompts the old man, in a kneejerk panic, to summon an immutable snap of lightning. The creature's shell of flesh cannot hold, and, charred, burnt and liquid all at once, slumps to earth.
Rogozhin and the rest of his creatures guard each exit - before our panicked mage can escape, however, All Gods Must Fall singles him out. Her chainsaw, a focus as well, pierces the man's soul. His body collapses on the floor, followed shortly by all his flock. His spirits, unwilling to continue without their master, leave as well.
A job well done, ne? Mission accomplished, and a pristine corpse to show for it.
Aftermath
The meeting with their Johnson afterward is bittersweet. She sees his corpse, almost peaceful in its repose, and asks if he's even really dead. Though All Gods Must Fall eagerly recounts the evisceration of his actual soul, she seems, nonetheless, to be disappointed this man does not seem in more pain.
Still, a deal is a deal, and a job well done well done indeed. The team is paid, and an evil man laid to rest.
Rewards
- Rewards for True Will:
- 20,000 Nuyen (10 RVP)
- 5 Karma for chainsawing a mind mage (5 RVP)
- 4 CDP (1 RVP + 2 free for run)
- Optional Qualities (Only Take One Pls Honor System):
- Strive for Perfection (12 RVP)
- Shoot First (2 RVP) for Geo
- JOAT (2 RVP)