Session Report – Urban Surfin’ – Session 2

[This session happened January 11th, but I didn’t get around to writing it up until two weeks later.  My notes for what happened is barely a paragraph with side notes on which contacts will be used to get what and how much time and money it takes to get things.  We did work out which side jobs were going to be necessary for gear and to turn a real profit on this run.]

PCs
Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser
Murdoc – male elf kilt-wearing street mage, at home with the hobos
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm
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
Void – female human physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily

NPC’d
Killroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat (and apparently machineguns)


Wednesday, March 11, 2076 [Later the same evening.]
With a plan in place, the Pleiades Group started hitting up their contacts to locate the necessary gear to complete the run.  Sin went to Danny Archer (his fixer contact) and Kaylee (his trusty mechanic/fixer) looking for arrestor wire – it was a long shot with both contacts, but with several military bases in town it was possible to find it.  Killroy went to his arms dealer, Leona, to locate an Aztechnology Striker and some thermite (for evidence destruction).  Void went to her fence, Sarah, for ten doses of NeuroStun X, willing to pay an expediting fee to get it quickly.  Void also contacted her fixer, Shisou Tomodachi, and asked for a set of Gecko Tape Gloves, also paying to expedite that acquisition as Void wanted time to practice with the gloves and associated gear before the job.  The Fin contacted Aung San, her fixer contact specializing in acquisitions, and offered 3000¥ for a working harpoon gun, with harpoons, no questions asked.  [The Fin effectively paid for a Shadowrun to steal the equipment.]

While this burst of communication was happening, Bookie finally returned from his scouting mission of the Everett Ares host.  The host looked brutal and he would need a topline cyberdeck to pull it off.  He’d hacked the Fairlight Hub, looking for the nearest Fairlight Excalibur in Seattle.  He’d hoped they had a warehouse or storefront of their own in town, but no luck.  The only Excalibur in the Seattle Metroplex was in a luxury boutique electronics store in the middle of Bellevue, the center of a AA security zone.  After a short discussion, the Group decided it was worth boosting the Excalibur to maximize Bookie’s run on the Ares host to get the route the target would take.

Additionally, Prometheus decided he needed a power-actuated fastening tool [a powered concrete anchor gun like John Malkovich uses in the movie Red] to anchor the harpoon gun for the Smash and Grab backup plan.  As he would likely abandon the tool shortly after using it, he did not want to just buy one and leave a trail for Knight Errant to follow.  He discussed this with Void and she agreed to go with him to a construction site after hours and help pick up the needed gear, plus anything else that could be resold at a profit.  Like a bulldozer or crane.


Thursday, March 12, 2076
In the morning, Void and The Fin, both disguised, went to Bellevue to scope out security on the electronics shop.  What they found was not good.  The store was on a corner, sandwiched between two adjacent stores and was replete with active security devices [apropos for a high-end electronics boutique].  The Excalibur itself was on a pedestal in the center of the store, inside an armored glass display case with biometric locks and several motion and vibration sensors INSIDE the case.  They brought this information back to the office so the Group could plan the heist.

End of Session

[A large part of the actual game time was dedicated to Bookie hacking the Fairlight Hub to locate an Excalibur.  Running a decker takes a relatively large amount of real time for the small amount of game time consumed, but what are you going to do?  Bookie’s player had hoped to find a warehouse where we could “liberate” more than one Excalibur so we could sell the extras to significantly increase our profit on the run.  No such luck.  The rest of the session was discussing what gear we needed and who we’d ask to locate it.  By spreading the search over many contacts, we kept the value of each request low, keeping the time increment on the contacts’ rolls to one day as much as possible.  This also made it difficult for anyone not part of the Pleiades Group from figuring out what we are up to and should make it very difficult for Knight Errant and/or Ares to track us through the gear after the fact.  This last part is very important to us.]


Session 1

Session 3