[This job happened April 18th, May 9th, May 23rd, June 27th, and August 1st. Most of the sessions were receiving the job, planning, and scouting until the job happened on August 1st and took up the whole session. Most of the sessions in June covered portions of the Ludovic’s Hell run and not this one.]
[This was also the point in time where being without work started to really oppress me creatively and I started to go radio silent online. Luckily, I had the runs outlined and the Johnsons, meeting places, and pay outs already calculated and written down or the game would have ground to a halt. Unluckily, I started getting skimpy on my notes during the game and some details got lost. I think I covered most of it, but any sparse areas in the session report are due to lack of notes on my part.]
PCs Involved
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
Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser
Murdoc – male elf kilt-wearing street mage, at home with the hobos
NPC’d
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm
Tuesday, March 31, 2076
While being driven home by Sin from the limo meeting with Mr. Johnson for The Mendoza Hit, The Fin received a call. The voice on the other end said, “You once delivered a ring to me from a dwarf with no respect. Meet me at The King and Tiger in Casino Corner at 10:00 PM tomorrow. I have a business proposition for you.” The Fin recognized the reference to the Mafioso who paid the Pleiades Group to kill Sam back in January [see A Dwarf in Need, Session 5]. The Fin stated she would be there.
[Originally, the meeting was scheduled for 10:00 PM the same day, but I as the GM dropped the ball and forgot about it until after we were past it in the timeline. So, one small ret-con later, the meeting was the following night in game.]
Wednesday, April 1, 2076
10:00 PM
The Fin arrived slightly early at The King and Tiger, a small pub-style drinking establishment tucked away in the back of a casino, and was escorted to a back-corner table. The table was flanked by several bodyguards while a single man sat at the table. The Fin recognized the man from video taken by the team back in January. More than that, she recognized him as Giacomo Montagna, an underboss in the Finnigan Family, the top Mafia family in the Seattle Metroplex.
After the initial pleasantries, the underboss got to the point. “There is a group with no respect encroaching on our business here at Casino Corner. They’re spreading a lot of corporate script around to fund this. We want their bankroll to disappear to slow them down and make them lose face. They have a warehouse in Everett where they store a lot of it. We’ll supply the address, you hit the place before the 9th and remove the script from their control by, what’s the term – ‘by whatever means deemed expedient.’ That sounds about right. No one can know I asked you to do this thing, but if you play ball for me, I will owe you a solid favor.”
This perked The Fin’s ears right up. A favor from a Finnigan underboss was no small thing, plus, if the Pleiades Group was stealing a Yakuza or Triad war chest [both crime syndicates were known to work the Everett district] full of actual corporate script… The Fin played it cool and accepted the job offer without asking for any other payment.
[There was a little more to the interaction, including getting the address, but I didn’t get any of it written down in my notes.]
Thursday, April 2, 2076
Morning
Sin, Killroy, Void, Murdoc, and Prometheus met with The Fin to discuss the job. The Fin explained the client had Family connections and wanted all the corporate script extracted from a rival organization’s stockpile. Anything else the team found was theirs to keep and considered part of the pay for the job. The Fin carefully refrained from explaining exactly who the client was and that she would collect a favor from a Finnigan underboss. From the address of the location they were going to hit, the group worked out that their target was the Yakuza in Everett district. This did not dissuade the group, but impressed upon them the need to never be identified during the job, meaning “no witnesses” and all that entailed.
The group brainstormed for a while, tossing around several ideas that were discarded as being either too complicated or too easily trackable. After an hour or two of discussion, the meeting broke up with only a rudimentary plan in place: A) smash in, B) swap script for paper ash, C) leave with the script and hope no one does a chemical analysis on the ash. Killroy had a meeting with Ash and Seol-ki to plan out a different job [see Ludovic’s Hell, when written], Void needed to go scout out the Mendoza Telecommunications office building [The Mendoza Hit], and later in the day Void and Bookie had to go with Killroy to Lilies of the Lake to scout out security [see MoM Defense, when written].
Friday, April 3, 2076
Afternoon
[This happened at the same time as Void was performing the Mendoza Hit.]
Bookie tracked down the blueprints for the converted carwash the Yakuza were using as a repository for their war chest. He then asked Killroy to give him a lift out to Everett so he could check the Yakuza’s Matrix security. Killroy agreed and they drove over there in the afternoon rain.
Once they were a couple blocks away, Bookie sleazed around the Matrix to see what the Yakuza had. He found a single system running security for the whole site. Unfortunately, Bookie got cocky and the Yakuza spider [slang for a decker providing security to a system] watching the system noticed him. The two deckers danced around, exchanging attacks, until Bookie finally targeted the Yakuza computer system and bricked it, giving the Yak spider a bad case of dumpshock. Bookie hung around to see if the Yakuza site had a backup data system and they did. They also had two more spiders show up from elsewhere [the original spider got in a distress call before getting bricked]. The two new spiders didn’t spot Bookie, but he didn’t want the Yakuza boosting their security because they thought they were going to be attacked. Bookie ran silent and sleazed his way out of there.
When he dropped out of the Matrix into his meat body, he reported what he saw to Killroy. Bookie also added that he could probably take the additional spiders if it became necessary when the job went down. Killroy then put the car in gear and drove the two of them back to the Pleiades office.
Saturday, April 4, 2076
Afternoon
A full day after Bookie checked the Yakuza’s Matrix security, Void went over to scout out the physical security. The Everett neighborhood was a mix of low residential and commercial buildings. The Yakuza building was a modified car wash. All the car washing equipment was long gone and large doors closed off the area, now apparently used as a warehouse.
The property was fenced, with a number of nice cars parked on the premises, clearly belonging to the Yakuza soldiers on the property. The Yak soldiers appeared to be the only real security on the outside, most of them sitting around and playing tile games while drinking. Civilians periodically came up to the entrance to the old office, apparently to do business or make payments to the Yakuza within.
Void decided that the Yakuza here were well known and apparently feared or respected enough that their mere presence was enough to keep anyone from moving against them. After spending the afternoon watching, Void observed the Yakuza boss leave for the day at 5:00 PM. The remaining soldiers moved inside the office area for the evening party. Local restaurants delivered food and more alcohol.
Void liked what she could see and reported back that the Yakuza were overconfident and if the Pleiades Group attacked after the boss left, they’d be drinking as well.
Monday, April 6, 2076
5:38 PM
The team rode to Everett in Sin’s GMC Bulldog, remotely driven by Sin. A couple blocks from the target site, Sin directed the delivery truck into an alley to let Prometheus out. Prometheus hiked on foot until he arrived on a roof top overlooking the remodeled carwash. This position allowed Prometheus to provide overwatch fire with his Remington 950 “hunting” rifle that was loaded with APDS ammunition [“armor piercing, discarding sabot” ammunition, meaning it is designed to pierce vehicle armor].
Once Prometheus was in position, Bookie slipped into the Matrix to go hack the Yakuza’s data system. Bookie set off a databomb while looking around the system, which triggered an alarm announcing he was there. The Yakuza spider and Bookie mixed it up a bit, but Bookie way out-classed the spider and drove the spider out of the Matrix. The spider, still smarting from the dumpshock, pulled the plug on the data system, denying Bookie access to the site security cameras and any data on the server. Bookie instead starts tagging Yakuza commlinks for later control until he comes to the attention of a demiGOD [police decker from the Grid Overwatch Division]. The demiGOD cuts Bookie’s connection to the Matrix, causing Bookie some dumpshock. [The demiGOD also alerted local security to the data hacking, but this being Everett, the fastest HRT will still take an hour to show up.] Bookie, shrugging off most of the dumpshock, tells the team he has taken out the Yakuza spider, but he may have set off an alarm. Bookie then rebooted his cyberdeck. He neglected to mention that he’d been kicked off line by a demiGOD.
Murdoc cast improved invisibility in Void, Killroy, and himself [recasting the spell on himself a time or two to get a high enough effect]. Sin then drove the Bulldog around to the front gate and let the assault team out the back of the delivery truck before driving away. The assault team approached the old lobby entrance and could see several Yakuza soldiers turning over furniture and preparing to be attacked. Void checked the door to see if it was locked, just as one of the Yakuza soldiers reached over and locked it. Killroy pulled out a NeuroStun grenade and hand-gestured to Void to open the door for him. Void quickly unlocked the door and pulled it open just wide enough for Killroy to lo0b his grenade into the room. She then pushed the door closed.
The Yakuza soldier closest to the door, who was turning around to the door to see why it unlocked itself, saw the grenade fly into the room. He called out a warning and dove for cover. Two Yakuza soldiers dove for a door back further into the building, screaming in Japanese that the attackers were using gas grenades. The rest of the Yakuza in the lobby area very quickly succumbed to the effects of the knock-out gas and slumped to the floor.
After waiting a full minute to allow the gas to disperse, Killroy and Void entered the lobby. Void started cuffing the Yakuza soldiers with zip-tie cuffs and removing their weapons. Killroy checked the door in the back, right corner of the room. It opened into the side of a hallway that ran the depth of the building. He paused to relay this to the rest of the team. Just as he was about to step into the hallway, several Yakuza soldiers popped open doors down the hallway and started repeatedly firing long bursts from their submachine guns down the hallway in Killroy’s general direction [remember: he’s still invisible].
Killroy was tagged a couple times before he could pull his leg back out of the free-fire zone the hallway had become, but his armor held and he was not injured. Killroy held his position just inside the lobby as the Yakuza emptied their magazines, shooting up the drywall, door frames, and doors at Bookies end of the hallway. Through the splinters and clouds of powdered drywall, Killroy saw the door across the hallway was marked “Security”.
When the Yakuza paused firing to reload their weapons, Killroy stepped into the hallway and fired Vera in controlled bursts to kill several of the Yakuza soldiers in the doors, and then smashed into the “Security” room. Inside were sever reclining chairs, a small data server, and two Japanese men. Killroy called out, “Freeze,” in Japanese. One of the men brought an Uzi to bear and Killroy quickly shot him dead. In his bad Japanese, Killroy told the other man to put on the zip-tie cuffs Killroy tossed at him. He complied with Killroy’s order immediately.
Killroy heard submachine guns finishing being reloaded all down the hallway. He pulled out another NeuroStun grenade out and tossed it down the hallway. The Yakuza resumed shooting blindly down the hallway. As the gas reached each soldier, noticed the reduction in the number of bullets shooting up his end of the hallway and heard the thump of the body hitting the floor. During this point the Yakuza server rebooted and Bookie took control of the handful of security cameras on site.
When the fire stopped [plus a few tens of seconds for the gas to disperse], Killroy calmly walked down the hallway, checking the side rooms as he went for any conscious Yakuza. In the back rooms, Killroy found some Yakuza who decided to go out in a blaze of glory. Killroy was more accurate that they were and had body armor, so shortly the Yakuza were all dead. One had been calling for help on a commlink and Killroy warned Prometheus to be on the lookout for Yakuza reinforcements. Sin decided that a quick get-away would be necessary and turned the Bulldog back towards the Yakuza building.
With the back office cleared, Murdoc entered the building. Then he and Void joined Killroy at the restrooms, which contained the connecting doors to what had been the observation area when the carwash was functioning. They carefully went through the men’s room [finding two unconscious Yakuza soldiers] and into the warehouse area [the converted carwash area]. The lighting was poor, but Bookie spotted three groups of two waiting in ambush and some stragglers trying to escape around the improvised warehouse doors.
The assault team went in and eliminated one group of Yakuza ambushers before they got a shot off. One of the groups panicked and fired wildly, shooting up the third group. Murdoc used lightning to take out the panicked two Yakuza.
Prometheus reported he had eliminated one of the escaping stragglers and that Sin was just arriving. He also reported that all the civilians on the street were running away or closing their shops by pulling down steel shutters.
Killroy, Void, and Murdoc started searching the warehouse area for the large amounts of corporate script and anything portable and valuable. By the time Sin had the truck backed up to the improvised warehouse doors, two crates of cash, one of street drugs, two of black market cybernetics, and other assorted valuables had been located and rounded up. The team quickly loaded all the loot into the back of the Bulldog and then climbed in behind it. Sin rapidly drove away, turning a corner just as a cycle gang of yakuza soldiers on motorcycles of all types and descriptions came around a corner behind them [Sin’s player made an amazing Pilot: Ground Craft skill check to break out what could have been an ugly car chase sequence]. Prometheus stayed in place to verify the Yakuza missed seeing the escaping GMC Bulldog and then left on foot. Sin directed a separate car to go pick Prometheus up before the entire neighborhood was crawling with yakuza looking for revenge.
End of Run
[The players had wanted to do an Ocean’s Eleven swap-out job so the Yakuza would not know the money had been stolen (and so they wouldn’t come looking for it) but had no source for corporate script-grade paper to create the ash. As it is, they got away with a lot of physical loot and a bunch of corporate script that might be too hot to spend.]
[For the miscellaneous gear the players stole, I had them make a perception test and based the value of what they found on how well they rolled. This gave each of them a nebulous pile of gear that they could pull specific things from until they pulled that value of goods in total. This saved me time and made sure the players got the cool things they wanted to find, a win-win for the GM.]
The other jobs are:
Overview
ZAT SIN Codes
Aquamatics Schematics
The Mendoza Hit
MoM Defense
Ludovic’s Hell (A.K.A., “Well that escalated quickly”)
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