Monday, July 13, 2015

Shadowrun Report – Everybody Needs Somebody – Session 3

[This session happened on July 6th.  After the chaos of last session, things started winding down but didn’t quite wrap up.]


Player Characters

The Fin – female human con artist and gambler from India, by way of Russia, posh and elegant
Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says it
Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser
Killroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat (and apparently machineguns)
Void – female human physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily
Murdoc – male elf kilt-wearing street mage, at home with the hobos


NPC’d Characters

Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm


Monday, January 6, 2076
10:30 AM
[I rolled back time slightly from the end of last session as Sin also acted at 10:30 AM on the timeline and his player was actually at the game this week.]

Sin and Prometheus arrived at the Tacoma Ferry Terminal and found a parking spot relatively near the ferry entrance.  After a quick game of rock-paper-scissors, Sin carried the satchel with the Rosa Electronics logo over to a bench where a dwarf in a green suit was sitting.  [This was not stated ahead of time, but seemed reasonable after the fact.]  Sin and the dwarf looked at each other and the dwarf asked if Sin had a package for him.  Sin asked the dwarf if he had a package for him.  The dwarf pulled a gold credstick out of his jacket, so Sin sat down on the bench next to the dwarf.

As Sin was sliding the satchel over and the dwarf was handing Sin the credstick, the back of the dwarf’s head exploded out, spattering blood and brains on the people standing in line for a soydog behind him.  There was an indeterminate pause as what just happened registered on all present and then the screaming started.

Thinking quickly [or merely reacting automatically, depending upon on your point of view], Sin grabbed the credstick AND the satchel and started running for cover, using the satchel and its contents to shield his head.  Sin had seen the entry wound of the sniper shot form squarely between the dwarf’s eyes, right at the top of the nose ridge – there was a sniper somewhere behind him and he needed to get something large between him and the sniper.  Sin ran behind the first car he could get to while the sniper started shooting at him [with only a single bullet hole in his pantleg as a result].  Sin called Prometheus on his commlink for some counter-sniper attacks.  Prometheus was aware of the situation, but still trying to locate the sniper.

The sniper fired on Sin’s position, perforating the car twice before catching Sin right through the chest.  [Sin took 8 out of his 10 Physical boxes from a single shot.]  It was this third shot that allowed Prometheus to finally locate the sniper – over 150 m away, on top of the Point Defiance Boathouse.

Sin, bleeding badly, staggered across to the next row of cars, getting closer to his panel van while staying under cover.  Prometheus missed the sniper widely on his first shot, leading the sniper to ignore Prometheus and keep shooting at Sin.  This turned out to be a poor choice as the sniper missed Sin again, but Prometheus took off the top of the sniper’s head with his second shot.

Sin crawled into the back of his panel van and started digging out his high-grade medkit [Rating 6].  Prometheus watched to make sure the medkit got attached and then drove the panel van away.  The medkit was able to stop Sin from bleeding out, but that was it.  Prometheus asked where Sin wanted to go and Sin gave the address of a street doc he knew.  Prometheus started driving and called The Fin to explain he was taking Sin to a street doc due to a gunshot wound.  This led to a somewhat exasperating conversation for The Fin as she learned about the duo’s morning activities.  [This conversation was fun, especially due to Prometheus’ deadpan replies to The Fin’s somewhat horrified questions.  "What do you mean 'the van is OK but there are four bodies in it'?"]

10:33 AM
Murdoc, still needing to deliver the message Gino gave him to the deadbeat mage, was tired of waiting for the mage to wake up.  Murdoc decided that electricity to the balls would do the job and cast lightning bolt at the unconscious man’s groin.  This failed to wake up the mage and merely filled the room with the smell of burnt flesh.  Exasperated, Murdoc cast a healing spell on the mage to repair the injury and then started wandering the apartment, looking in everything to see if he could find anything useful (or valuable).  He wasn’t very optimistic – the apartment was a mess and smelled bad.

10:35 AM
The Fin, still trying to decide what to do about Sin and Prometheus, received a call from a man identifying himself as Mr. Johnson.  Mr. Johnson had a job for the Pleiades Group and wanted to meet to discuss the job.  The Fin set the meeting at 11:30 AM at the offices of the Pleiades Group.  She then started driving in that direction to make the meeting.

10:40 AM
Void, after driving her motorcycle out of Everett through Snohomish, the Redmond barrens, and most of Renton, finally arrived at Scottie Jim’s place in western Renton.  Before she would deliver the cyberdeck, she argued with Scottie Jim about the difference between “dogs” and “fire-breathing hellhounds”.  Scottie Jim eventually agreed that there was a difference and he would make it up to Void at a later time.  Somewhat mollified, Void turned over the cyberdeck and collected the 9000¥ for the job.

10:53 AM
After having a Club Club at the Club’s club with Doug, Killroy called Bookie to assist in his job.  Ears still ringing from the dumpshock from his last gig, Bookie agreed.  Killroy went to the offices of Chapman and Robins, which was in the old Alaska Building on 2nd Street.  According to the business card Doug had given him, the law offices were in Suite 700, somewhere on the 7th floor of the 15-floor building.  Killroy called the number on the Chapman and Robins card.  The receptionist answered and Killroy, using his Benito Gallagher fake SIN, talked his way around the receptionist to secure a meeting at 11:15 AM.  Killroy then called Bookie and told him to hack the law firms system and find a client list so Killroy would have a patsy to blame the hit on.

Bookie tracked down the host for the Alaska Building.  As he went to mark the host, he attempted to access the system as “Admin” with a password of “Password123”.  It never worked, but it was a little something he did as a matter of habit.  This time...it worked!  The host system recognized Bookie as the Admin of the system and gave him full control.  Bookie was surprised, to say the least.  [The host had critically glitched its defense roll against Bookie and this is what I came up with.  It made the rest of this run very interesting, if slower.]  Bookie next looked inside the host for the Chapman and Robins subsystem.  This was more difficult than expected, especially with control of the host, but eventually he located the computer systems for the legal firm…and a spider watching over it.

The spider wasn’t paying much attention and appeared to be watching the early parts of some sort of lesbian porn trid or possibly a telenovela.  [There’s actually backstory here, but it never came up in play.]  Making use of the spider’s distraction, Bookie quietly rifled through the files and located the legal firm’s client list.  Due to bitter personal experience, Bookie took the time to check for a data bomb and found one on the file.  He attempted to disarm it, but failed to do so and it exploded in his digital face.  This alerted the spider to Bookie’s presence and the two immediately squared off.

During the resulting matrix fight, both sides summoned IC to go after the other decker – Bookie summoned a Scramble IC from the building host’s defenses while the spider activated a Probe IC from the law firm’s subsystem.  The two deckers were evenly matched, with Bookie have more talent while the spider had a better cyberdeck.  In the end the spider had better luck, just fending off Bookie’s attacks while consistently just beating Bookie when attacking.  Bookie quickly had three marks on him and a successful trace run by the spider.  The spider then forced Bookie’s cyberdeck to jack out, inflicting dumpshock on Bookie.  Realizing his location was compromised, Bookie staggered out of Club Telepathy before any Knight Errant police could show up looking for him.

Once safe, Bookie called Killroy and confessed that he’d been unable to get the client list, but had a complete rundown on the buildings security cameras, which he sent to Killroy.

11:12 AM
Killroy entered the Alaska Building, leaving his taxi at the curb with a large tip and orders to wait for him.  The only weapon on Killroy was “Steve”, his Ares Crusader II machine pistol, carefully hidden on his person.  Killroy made strategic use of his hat and appearing to be indecisive to carefully follow a safe path through the building’s security cameras, leaving few recorded images and none with his face.

On the 7th floor he was greeted by the receptionist, an attractive young man named Carl.  Carl led Killroy down the hall past offices and a large conference room to a small conference room adjacent to the copier room.  Carl fetched some bottled water for “Mr. Gallagher” and then left Killroy alone in the conference room.  Killroy contacted Bookie and asked Bookie to be ready to set off the fire alarm in the building when Killroy told him to.  Mostly recovered from the dumpshock, Bookie agreed to do so.

Shortly after 11:15, Laurie Chapman entered the small conference room to discuss the case “Mr. Gallagher” needed her help with.  Killroy started spinning a tale about a very large trust fund he wanted to access freely, but was restricted from due to his father’s will.  While Laurie was asking questions about the size of the trust fund, Killroy surreptitiously texted Bookie, “Now”.  When nothing happened, Killroy texted, “Now!”, but still nothing happened.  The third time seemed to finally capture Bookie’s attention and the fire alarm went off.  [Bookie’s player was talking with other players and didn’t hear Killroy’s player give the signal the first two times.]

Laurie asked “Mr. Gallagher” to wait here in the room while she went to see if this was a valid fire alarm.  Once she was up from the table and turned towards the door, Killroy quick drew his machine pistol and fired a long burst from the silenced weapon directly into her back.  Laurie’s armored clothing wasn’t up to the assault and she went down in bloody mess.  Killroy walked up, fired one more shot into her head, and then holstered his weapon.  He then stepped out of the conference room (carefully closing the door behind him) and followed the people leaving the office due to the fire alarm.

While Killroy was on the way down the emergency stairs, Bookie decided to set off all the sprinklers in the building.  This accomplished two things: it damaged whatever evidence Killroy left in the law offices and drenched everyone in the building, including Killroy.  Killroy could have done without the latter.

Once he was back in the waiting taxi, Killroy called The Fin to check in.  She told Killroy that she had a meeting with a client at the offices at 11:30 and asked if he could make the meeting.  Killroy leaned forward and told the cabbie that if he’d pay the cabbie 1000¥ if he could get Killroy to an address in Lower Queen Anne in 10 minutes.  In response, the cabbie floored it, driving on a section of sidewalk to get around a slower vehicle.  Killroy (now engaging his seat belt) told The Fin he’d be there, but would need to change clothes before meeting the client.  After that he called Doug and told him the job was done.  Doug thanked him and transferred the payment for the job to Killroy’s account.

End of Session

[This took longer to run than expected.  Part of that was we don’t know the matrix rules very well, so Bookie’s player and I had to keep looking things up in the rules during the matrix fight, which slowed things down a great deal.  This is also why we are only using the rules in the main book and none of the splat books – we just aren’t familiar enough with the base rules to go adding new complications.]

[There is also a retcon in here.  Sin originally told Prometheus to take him to a hospital, not a street doc.  This was based on bad information that I, the GM, gave him and started causing all sorts of problems for the team.  After the game, I thought it over and realized I had given Sin’s player bad advice, so I called him and we discussed it.  [The bad advice was that going to a street doc with only 2 health boxes and lots of valuable cyberware in you was a good way to end up as spare parts, especially with a loyalty of only 2.  This is still true, but I forgot to factor in that Sin would be going with a heavily armed friend, which would tend to dissuade the street doc from doing anything but patching up the patient.  The end result was the retcon.]


Session 1
Session 2

Session 4 [Not Written Yet]

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