Shadowrun Report – Everybody Needs Somebody – Session 4

[This session happened on July 13th.  I thought this would be the last session of the run, but not quite.]


Player Characters

The Fin – female human con artist and gambler from India, by way of Russia, posh and elegant
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



NPC’d Characters

Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says it
Murdoc – male elf kilt-wearing street mage, at home with the hobos
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm


Monday, January 6, 2076
[Due to the retcon (see the  Session end notes for Session 3), rather than Void go try to break Sin out of the hospital before Knight Errant showed up, The Fin went to Sin’s street doctor to spell Prometheus.  Prometheus then took the four dead BR&T security goons in Sin’s panel van to Vlad’s chopshop (“You stab ‘em, we slab ‘em!”) for resale of anything useful.  Profit would be low again, but it would offset Sin’s medical bill.  Prometheus returned to Sin’s street doc so The Fin could meet Mr. Johnson at the Pleiades Group’s office at 11:30 AM.]

11:25 – 11:30 AM
Void arrived at the office first.  She quickly changed out of the mostly disposable clothes the Doc Wagon technicians had given her after peeling off her melted chameleon suit.  Luckily, her goggles were still working, even if the thermographic lenses were now slightly glitchy.

The Fin arrived second, while Void was still changing clothes.  The Fin turned on the lights (Void hadn’t bothered) and started the coffee maker – meetings went smoother with the smell of coffee in the air.  Not needing to change clothes, she simply removed the Drishti Korapatti disguise she was still wearing.

Killroy arrived last, entering in through the back door as the client’s vehicle was parking out front.  As it was not currently raining outside, his completely soaked appearance drew a raised eyebrow from The Fin.  “Bookie set off the sprinklers,” was his quick response as he stepped into the changing room to switch into his Meeting-the-Client clothes he (and in fact the rest of the group) had stashed away at the offices.

11:32 AM
Mr. Johnson entered the offices and was greeted by The Fin.  She escorted him into the meeting room just off the main hall and was joined by Void, Killroy, and Bookie (who was attending the meeting virtually).  Mr. Johnson wanted the Pleiades Group to steal an invitation to the Full Moon Gala, particularly the one for Norris Micrologistics, and deliver it to him after modifying the data on it and in the invitation database.

The Fin recognized the Full Moon Gala as a minor prestige networking event held each year on the first full moon of the year.  The Gala is invitation only and the invitees are selected by a low-functioning AI from a database set to select only the sharpest corporate managers in Seattle and only one per corporation.  The invitations have circuitry embedded in them, identifying the recipient and precluding anyone else making use of the invitation.  And of course, the physical invitation must be presented at the Gala to gain entrance.

Mr. Johnson provided the address of the printing shop (identified only by a symbol) and a data chip with a script on it to change the invitation data to what Mr. Johnson wanted it to be.  He also informed The Fin that the invitations were to be delivered starting at 6:00 PM this day, meaning  couriers would start arriving and filling up the print shop at 5:00 PM, so the sooner the job was done the better.

Mr. Johnson and The Fin then negotiated for a bit and eventually settled on a 36,000¥ fee for the job.  Delivery was to be made to Mr. Johnson at The Hellhound Club, preferably disguised as a legitimate delivery of the invitation.  Mr. Johnson then left, having to make a different meeting elsewhere.  [Void was just able to suppress a physical reaction to the word "hellhound".]

After some discussion after Mr. Johnson left, The Fin set off to get a delivery uniform sized for Void to wear.  Void and Killroy took Killroy’s car over to the East Renton Highlands to scope out the print shop.  In the meantime, Bookie took the data from the data chip and headed over look for the print shop in the Matrix.

11:45 AM
Bookie found the print shop’s Matrix presence and proceeded to break into their server.  It was easy (especially compared to the last two runs he’d made against hosts) and he easily sleazed his way in and found the database he was looking for.  He immediately started looking for the data record to be modified…without checking for a data bomb first.  The bomb detonated and set off an alarm, which brought a spider to see what set off the alarm.  Bookie was running silently and ran circles around the spider, but couldn’t quite shut down the spider’s cyberdeck before a DemiGOD noticed what was going on.  The convergence damage knocked Bookie for a loop, but it was the dumpshock on top of that that caused his ears and nose to bleed and left him unconscious for the better part of an hour.  [He took two boxes of Physical damage on top of completely filling his Stun track.]

The only thing that kept Bookie from waking up under arrest was the Stealth program he habitually ran on his deck.  It bounced and spoofed his signal enough that the only address the DemiGOD could get for him was for Pike’s Place Farmers Market.

12:25 PM
Void and Killroy arrived at the physical location of the print shop and started scoping out the one-story building.  After about five minutes, Killroy tried to call Bookie to see if Bookie could access any interior cameras.  Bookie never answered and the call rolled over to voicemail.  Void then got out of the car and went around to the back of an adjacent building.  She leapt up onto the roof and used the extra height to scope out the roof of the print shop. 

Void found there were two sun roofs (neither usefully placed for her), a HVAC unit, and a metal access hatch for accessing the roof from inside the building.  Looking more closely at the access hatch, she could make out the telltale signs of security devices on the hatch, but it looked like something she could handle.  She returned to the car to consult with Killroy.  They decide to go get some lunch nearby and wait for Bookie to call back.

12:45 PM
Bookie woke up with a splitting headache and crusted blood on his face and ears.  After a stiff drink (or two) and wiping his face with a wet rag, Bookie saw in his AR that Killroy had called and so he called Killroy back.  Bookie provided a brief overview of what he saw in the print shop’s system to Killroy (completely skipping over the databomb, the fight with the spider, and getting booted out by a DemiGOD).  Bookie said he’d be ready to support Killroy and Void entering the print shop in about an hour – he had something he needed to do first.  Killroy agreed to wait until near 2:00 before entering the building.

Bookie promptly turned his commlink off and took another nap, with the alarm set for 1:45 PM.

1:00 PM
The Fin, having secured a delivery uniform for Void, called Bookie to get an update.  It went straight to voicemail, which peeved her.

1:45 PM
Bookie’s alarm went off, waking him up from his nap.  He was still groggy, but he could not put off the run any longer.  [Due to his low Body, Bookie doesn’t roll many dice for recovery of Stun and he only made one success when what he really wanted was two successes.  Two successes would have been enough to reduce his damage penalty to his rolls from -2 to -1.  Such is life.]  Bookie noticed in his AR that The Fin had called 45 minutes earlier, so he immediately called her back.  She asked for a status update (sounding a bit peeved at the delay, which she was).  Bookie told her that Void and Killroy were set to go into the print shop shortly and he’d be backing them up.  He’d swap the data in the database then.

1:55 PM
Void and Killroy returned from lunch and made their way up onto the building adjacent to the print shop.  At 1:57 PM they texted Bookie, stating they were in place.  Bookie hacked back into the system and provided access to the shop’s security cameras to Void and Killroy (he also planted a data bomb of his own to warn him when the spider reclaimed control of the system).  Void started disabling the lock and alarm on the roof access hatch while Killroy prepped one of his few remaining Neuro-Stun IX grenades.

2:00 PM
Just as Void and Killroy were ready to open the access hatch and toss in the Neuro-Stun grenade, a different runner entered the front door of the print shop and threw two Neuro-Stun grenades of his own into the shop.  Employees immediately started falling unconscious.

Watching through the security cameras, Killroy could tell this was Neuro-Stun VIII, which doesn’t become inert until 10 minutes has passed.  He asked Void to go back to the car and get his gas mask as she would be the fastest.  While Void was quickly doing this (it took her less than 15 seconds, round-trip), Killroy watched the other runner make for the boxes of Full Moon Gala invites and start going through them!  Killroy was having none of that and tossed in a flash-bang grenade.  The other runner was not expecting this and dropped unconscious as a result of the concussive force of the flash-bang.

Killroy put on his gas mask and entered the shop, quickly stepping over to the boxes of invites.  He found the one for Norris Micrologistics and left with it.  While she was waiting for Killroy, Void studied the various machines below her.  One of them seemed significant, but she couldn’t place why.

2:04 PM
Void and Killroy, returned to the car, calmly drove away from the print shop area.

2:06 PM
A Knight Errant High Threat Response Team arrived in response to an alarm triggered by a chem-sensor inside the shop, finding all the employees (and the solo runner) still unconscious.  They contacted the spider registered as the Matrix security consultant for the shop and asked him to supply the recorded video feeds from the security cameras.  The spider didn’t think to check for a data bomb either.  Boom.

2:30 PM
Void and Killroy met up with Bookie to see if Bookie could update the data on the invite.  Bookie determined that they needed a data terminal with an inductive connection to access the circuitry in the invitation.  This triggered a memory in Void – the machine that looked significant back at the print ship had been just such a machine.

End of Session

[So, running deckers takes up way more time than I thought, so instead of wrapping up this run this session, we have another half session to go.  Sigh.]

[Things would have gone quicker and simpler if Bookie’s player had stopped to check for the data bomb on the database.  It wasn’t a big one, but it caught him flat-footed and triggered an alarm to the spider.  The spider was mostly out-classed by Bookie, but rolled just well enough to drag out the combat until Bookie hit convergence on his Overwatch Score.]

[I’ve set up a side session with Bookie’s player to handle the run he still needs to do to get the modified data into the database.  This will be harder to do now that Knight Errant security is on the scene and probably has their own forensic people looking for matrix signatures.  Bookie has been very busy on this day and not had time to clean up after himself, so things may get very dicey for him.]

[Yes, that was a Shadowrun pun.]


Session 1
Session 3

Session 5 [Not Written Yet]