Monday, August 24, 2015

Shadowrun Report – Implants – Session 1

[This session happened on August 17th and is directly related to the metaplot of the campaign.  See the Timeline.]


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
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

Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm


Monday, February 10, 2076
At 8:58 in the morning, The Fin received a text from Prometheus, warning her he had given her phone number to his uncle, who would be calling soon.  She asked back which name Prometheus had given his uncle and Prometheus replied “Pleiades”.  The Fin immediately told her bed guest to get out.

At exactly 9:00 AM, The Fin’s commlink rang and she answered.  A voice with a Mediterranean accent stated he was Zeus and he had work for The Pleiades Group – could she meet him at Kovac’s Delicatessen in an hour.  The Fin said she could and Zeus hung up.  While she dressed, The Fin had her commlink locate Kovac’s Delicatessen and plot the fastest route there.

The Fin arrived at Kovac’s Delicatessen just before 10:00 AM, finding the delicatessen closed.  As she approached the door, a 12-13-year-old boy opened it and asked her business.  The Fin stated she was from the Pleiades Group and had a meeting here.  The boy smiled, but then remembered this was business and put his serious face back on before saying, “Please, come in.”  His name turned out to be Marco.

Inside, The Fin was escorted to a back room between the seating area and the kitchen, where she found an older gentleman in a well-worn suit going through a physical ledger.  The man was human with a debonair Mediterranean look, his once dark hair mostly white.  He closed the ledger before rising and introducing himself as Zeus.  The Fin introduced herself as Aswari Rai.  Zeus then got immediately to business.

His client had requested the Pleiades Group by name for the job, so Zeus was giving them first crack at it.  The details were:

  • Insert two computer agents into two terminals inside a corporate office building without anyone knowing the terminals have been used.
  • The terminals are in different rooms on different floors of the same building.  The building has heavy anti-WiFi defenses so it cannot be done at a distance.
  • The agents are on two different data sticks.  Both take about 5 minutes to run and will tell you when they are done.
  • The job has to be completed by 5:00 AM on the 12th (Wednesday), so they have 42 hours to get the job done.
  • Payment is 65,000¥ upon return of the datasticks and verification the agents ran successfully.  Delivery will be at 6:00 AM on the 12th.

The Fin wanted more details, but Zeus would not supply them until she agreed to the job.  Not pleased by this, The Fin eventually relented and accepted the job.  Zeus immediately gave her the rest of the details:

  • The target is RiddleNetics, maker of HVAC air quality and filtration systems.
  • The location is one of their smaller facilities on the border of Renton with Redmond: 1700 NW Gilman Blvd, Issaquah, Seattle
  • Zeus provided maps of the relevant floors of the target building.  They were marked with the locations of the two target data terminals: in the Server Room (4th floor) and the Research Archive (5th floor).  The maps also showed the patrol routes of the guards and their nightly schedule.
  • There is also a bonus job that pays 65,000¥ if any significant paydata on the RiddleNetics bid for Aquamatics is delivered.  The data is minimally useful if RiddleNetics knows it has been taken, so if the team gets caught, pay is only 10% for both jobs.
  • Payment will be made at Jack’s Box Seats, a sports bar in Bellevue at 3179 156th Ave SE.  Payment is AFTER the client has received the datasticks and verified the agents ran properly.

The Fin spent some additional time negotiating for additional pay due to the short timeline and was able to increase the pay for the primary job to 67,100¥.  Negotiations on the payout for the bonus needed to wait until they actually found something.  Marco escorted her back out of the shop.

After the meeting finished, The Fin texted the entire Pleiades Group, telling them the group had a job and to immediately meet at the office.  The entire group was assembled at the office by 11:00 AM (although Murdoc was somewhat groggy and Bookie smelled of whiskey).  After explaining the job, The Fin tasked Bookie with assembling a quick file on the target, RiddleNetics.  Sin sent some of his drones to go scout out the building and the area around it.  He noticed that floors 2-5 had jammers active, creating more noise than he could cut through, even after optimizing his rig for that.  Additionally, those floors had tempered glass and he could not see in during the day, although he got reasonable images of the handful of exterior balconies and the maglocks on the access doors.  The vents he would have normally sent a Fly-Spy in through had high-tensile steel meshes protecting them.  Murdoc headed out to the building to check it for magical defenses and later reported they appeared to be minimal.

At this point planning of the run started.  Sin suggested a HA-LO (High Altitude-Low Opening) jump from a commandeered passenger jet.  Killroy quickly vetoed that as too complex.  The group quickly focused on using a zipline from an adjacent building to access a corner pocket balcony on the 4th floor [pocket balcony = a balcony that is barely larger than one square meter, almost decorative in nature].  As the tallest buildings in the vicinity were only five stories tall, the ride on the zipline would not be the quickest.  To avoid being seen during the slow ride, Murdoc would make those going in invisible.  This mandated a small insertion group [due to the cost of maintaining multiple spells by Murdoc], which eventually was fixed to Bookie, Void, and Killroy.  Bookie to access the RiddleNetics system from inside to look for the requested paydata, Killroy to keep him safe [and out of self-inflicted trouble], and Void to actually deploy the computer agents.

For minimal time traveling in building, after Void handles the agent insertion on the 4th floor, she will run up the exterior wall of the building to the 5th floor pocket balcony and re-enter the building there.  The Records Archive is very near the 5th floor office and after dealing with it Void can drop a rappelling stealth line down from the 5th floor pocket balcony that all three can use to escape the building.  Sin will pilot up a vehicle to the corner at just that time [but not his panel truck – it is starting to be recognized].  Application of a catalyst stick will eliminate the incriminating rappelling line and the team can leave the area quickly.  Meanwhile, the observation team (Prometheus, Murdoc, and The Fin) will decamp from the building across the street and leave via a second vehicle.

With a reasonably solid plan ready, the team dispersed and went about handling necessary preparations.  [Notably, Prometheus took Void to a place in the Redmond Barrens where she can practice running up a wall from one balcony to the next.  Adept powers or not, this was a move she wanted to practice before performing it at height.]

End of Session


[Next session will probably be the entire actual run as this run is not very complex.  This is due to it being a metaplot run where the goal is very defined and requires leaving no evidence.  This is the first hostile action in what becomes the 4th Corporate War.  Things will start heating up and getting bloody after this.]


Session 2

EDIT: corrected day of week from Friday to Monday.

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