[This session happened on August 24th and is directly related to the metaplot of the campaign.]
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
Void – female human physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily
Killroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat (and apparently machineguns)
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 Characters
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm
Monday, February 10, 2076
Sin sent several of his drones to the target building, timing their arrival to just after sunset. With the darkness he could now see inside and watched the corporate wage-slaves finish their day. Gradually they left, taking the elevators up to the corporate housing in the floors above. At 8:00 PM, security guards started patrolling the floors. The team, watching the video feeds from Sin’s drones, realized that there was only 10 minutes between patrols when no security was on any particular floor, not the 20 minutes they were told to expect [by the GM who goofed the timing originally]. This meant their available time to move and do what needed to be done was tighter than anticipated, but still usable with their current plan. They also noted that occasionally employees would return to their workstations after hours, sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for as much as two hours. This was something they would need to watch for during the job.
Sin also spent time investigating the roof or the building across the street from the target for security, as this is where the team would start their infiltration. The building was a 5-story office building with offices leased by numerous small businesses. This meant security overall was not as tight and Bookie would be able to loop the roof cameras during the run.
Tuesday, February 11, 2076
The team arrived at the launching roof at 8:00 PM, with Bookie easily hacking the security cameras and looping them. Scouting the 4th and 5th floors of the RiddleNetics building across the street from this vantage point allowed the team to notice a few things. Murdoc could now see that the rooms with four interior walls were magically warded. He could not see the server room on the 4th floor as it was on the far side of the building, but it was likely warded as well, meaning the invisibility spell Void would have on her might not survive her crossing the barrier or worse, warn the mage who cast the barrier that someone just broke into the server room. Murdoc and Void discussed how to handle it and decided Void would attempt to push through without breaking the barrier. If the invisibility spell dropped it wouldn’t be a disaster, but it would require more work to keep her off any cameras.
Second, several members of the team noticed that the cubicle directly facing the Archival Records room on the 5th floor was occupied by someone working late. This was going to be a stickier problem, especially if Void was no longer invisible once she attempted this room or lost the invisibility spell while trying this room. With too many variables to work it all out, the team decided to go forward anyways and trust to luck and improvisation to get the job done. Plus, they had to be done by 5:00 AM, so they didn’t have time for a new plan.
Watching the first security patrol make its rounds, Prometheus fired his grapple gun just as they finished walking the 4th floor at 8:28 PM. The grapple caught the railing of the corner pocket balcony on the 4th floor and Prometheus tightened the stealth rope on a high point on his end. Murdoc then cast invisibility on Void, Killroy, and Bookie, who only now learned he would be making the crossing in a body bag, carried by Killroy. At first Bookie refused, but then Killroy said, “C’mon, man – don’t be a Sin.” [This was a reference to Sin nearly dying on a previous run.]
Faced with this argument, Bookie had to agree it would be safer for him, so he climbed into the bag and zipped it up. Killroy then shouldered the bag’s strap, attached his zipline hook, and swung out across the street on the line. As the line was descending at a shallow angle, it seemed to take forever to make the transit across, but eventually Killroy arrived at the far end and climbed up into the pocket balcony with Bookie in the bag. [Killroy is the physically strongest member of the team.] Void followed across immediately after. Once she was safely across, Prometheus applied the catalyst stick to the stealth rope, which dissolved.
Void was able to bypass the maglock securing the [bulletproof] glass door and the three of them entered the corner office. The decorations were typical corporate middle management, with an animated image on one wall showing a ship in storm-tossed seas, the captain (who looked suspiciously like the CEO of RiddleNetics) steering the ship with a firm hand. Back across the street, Prometheus, Murdoc, and The Fin kept watch on the areas inside the RiddleNetics building they could view in case something unexpected happened. [Prometheus’ implanted commlink was a high enough rating that it could get a message through the jammers and anti-Wi-Fi paint, even if no one on the intrusion team could answer back.]
Bookie accessed the terminal built into the office desk. It was significantly less effective than his cyberdeck, but it was hard-wired into the buildings matrix systems and registered as belonging there, allowing Bookie a freedom of action he would not have had otherwise. He immediately started looking for the requested paydata.
Once Bookie was inside the system, Void exited the office and made her way to the server room, leaving Killroy to keep Bookie safe. Void arrived at the server room well before the next security patrol stepped out of the elevator. She bypassed the card-reader maglock easily and then slowly started pushing through the magical barrier. She could feel the barrier resisting as it flowed across her, but she passed through it without breaking it and with the invisibility spell on her intact. [She rolled a single net hit against the barrier, but that was all she needed to get the single spell on her through.] Void let out a quiet sigh of relief and then located the terminal she needed. She plugged the datastick with the first computer agent into the terminal and hit the Run button. Then she settled to wait the five minutes it took to the agent to run.
Three minutes into her wait, Void heard the beep of someone accessing the server room door with a passcard. Three human males wearing what could only be described as “movie ninja costumes” hurriedly entered the server room, shushing each other. Not certain what was going on but recognizing non-professionals, Void backed up against the wall between the two banks of servers she was standing by. The three “ninjas” started setting up a microcamera, an AR projector, and a motion sensor in front of the row Void was hiding in. They were clearly setting up some sort of prank, but Void was concerned they would either accidentally bump into her or make enough noise to draw the attention of the guards.
They almost alerted the guards, shutting up just as the guards were passing the door. One of the two guards paused to listen and then opened the door to look in. The “ninjas” hid and each held their breath until the guard decided it was his imagination and resumed his patrol. The “ninjas” started to laugh until they shushed each other again. Void was contemplating stabbing them, but decided she didn’t want anyone wondering what a shadowrunner was doing in the server room. Still, these clowns offended her sense of professionalism.
Once they were done setting up their prank, the “ninjas” left, making way more noise than they thought they were. Void waited until she was certain they weren’t coming back and had not been spotted by the security patrol before studying the problem in front of her. The “ninjas” had set up their prank right in front of the banks Void was hiding between. Looking it over, she realized she could reach the power switch of the motion sensor without triggering it as she knew exactly where it was [she watched the “ninjas” activate it]. Once the computer agent finished running, she retrieved it, turned the motion sensor off, pocketed the AR projector, stepped past the motion sensor, and then carefully re-activated it. Following the path of the “ninjas” out of the room, she then made her own way across the 4th floor, returning to the corner office where Killroy and Bookie were waiting.
While Void had been dealing with the server room, Bookie had toured the local matrix and located the bonus paydata on RiddleNetics bid for Aquamatics. Bookie also located evidence that one of the account executives was skimming money from the company. He copied that evidence as well to see if Mr. Johnson would pay extra for it.
With half the job done and the bonus paydata secured, Void went back out to the pocket balcony. Balancing on the balcony railing, Void focused her chi into strengthening her legs and then ran up the outside of the building to the balcony on the next floor. [Void used the Strength Boost and Wall Running adept powers plus some Edge to accomplish this feat. It was impressive.] She then tied off a rappelling line that she, Killroy, and Bookie would take to the ground when they left. [She did not toss the rope down at this point to avoid a pedestrian noticing the line and alerting security.]
Void broke into the corner office on the 5th floor (which had better quality decorations than the one on the 4th floor – this executive was clearly more self-confident). She could see the cubicle lights from whoever was working in the cubicle facing the door to the Archival Records room, but did not have the angle to see who it was or what they were doing. Void waited until the next security patrol passed by.
Once the patrol passed, Void left the corner office and approached the cubicle, staying low to avoid being seen. She used her endoscope to peek into the cube without having to look over or around the cubicle walls. Sitting in the cubicle was an elf woman playing a MMO on the company server. There was also a timer counting down that Void realized was timed to when a security patrol would next pass by – what Miss Elf was doing wasn’t corporate approved!
As Miss Elf was wearing headphones and AR goggles and clearly involved in a large combat online, Void realized Miss Elf probably wouldn’t notice anyone or anything that walked by behind her, hence the timer. Freshly emboldened, Void stepped over to the Archival Records door and bypassed the lock on the door. She slowly pushed through the magical barrier and again the barrier gave just enough to let Void and the invisibility spell through. Void closed the door just as Miss Elf’s warning timer went off. Looking [invisibly] through the door window, Void could see Miss Elf switch her video display over to a spreadsheet full of numbers and curves [with a small window still showing the battle] just before the security patrol passed. Once the patrol passed by, Miss Elf switched the battle back to the full-screen.
Inside the Archival Records room, Void located the needed terminal and ran the computer agent. Just over five minutes later Void exited the Archival Records room with Miss Elf none-the-wiser. Void then exited the office to the pocket balcony and signaled for Sin to drive up the getaway vehicle. She then dropped the rappelling line down the side of the building and rappelled down to the street. Killroy and Bookie, who were waiting to see Void go by on the rappelling line, exited the 4th floor office and followed Void down the line to the street where Sin’s vehicle drove up. Killroy and Bookie climbed into the car as Void applied her own catalyst stick to the stealth rope rappelling line. As the line dissolved, Void entered the car and then Sin (remotely) drove the trio away.
Meanwhile, Murdoc, Prometheus, and The Fin left the staging building, taking a separate vehicle away to the offices of the Pleiades Group. There Murdoc and Prometheus transferred to Sin’s vehicle while Void passed the datasticks over to The Fin. Bookie supplied a third datastick with all the embezzlement evidence on it, explaining what it was to The Fin. The Fin then took a nap in one of the side rooms as the meeting with the client at Jack’s Box Seats wasn’t for another eight hours. The rest of the team dispersed.
Wednesday, February 12, 2076
At 6:00 AM, The Fin arrived at Jack’s Box Seats. In the dawn light and without all the AR illusions, the area looked sparse and disreputable. There was a single vehicle parked by the front door to the sports bar. The Fin parked her car next to it and got out of her car. As she approached the other car, the front door of the sports bar opened and an orc woman in a suit leaned out and asked her business. The Fin indicated she had a meeting and the orc woman waved her inside the sports bar.
Inside the closed sport’s bar, seated at the only table without chairs on it, was a human male in a an expensive but off-the-rack business suit [the type of things The Fin notices], a Shiawase Cyber-5 cyberdeck and a Fairlight Caliban commlink sitting on the table. The Fin approached the man who asked her if she had the datasticks. The Fin slid the two computer agent datasticks across the table and the man slotted them into the cyberdeck. After checking some AR readouts, he picked up the commlink and said, “We’re good.”
At that point every screen and display in the entire sports bar activated. On every one of them was the grinning face of a troll in a tailored business suit that The Fin immediately recognized – it was Mr. Jumbotron. He congratulated The Fin and the Pleiades Group on a job well done and asked if she had any additional information. The Fin told Mr. Jumbotron she had the entire RiddleNetics bid package, plus evidence one of the account executives was embezzling. This caught Mr. Jumbotron’s attention. He and The Fin negotiated a while before settling on a good price for this additional paydata. The Fin slid the third datastick with all the paydata across the table to Mr. Jumbotron’s flunky. Mr. Jumbotron then had all of the agreed upon money transferred to the Pleiades Group’s company account. After a few pleasantries, The Fin left the meeting. On the way home she split the money and paid the team their shares. When she got home she immediately went to sleep – she was still short on sleep.
Later that day, the local news channels broke a major story about RiddleNetics using the homeless in the Redmond Barrens to test their anti-nerve gas filters. Evidence had been leaked by “unnamed internal sources” at RiddleNetics, including videos of the failed tests. Many of the test subjects died without ever being told what they were really testing. Shortly thereafter the story went national and RiddleNetics had to start performing major damage control.
Thursday, February 13, 2076
At midnight The Fin received a call from Svetlana. Svetlana had a rush job from a client who was asking for “the Monkey Burger team”. Was The Fin interested? Thinking on it a bit, The Fin asked, “When’s the meeting and how much are they offering?”
End of Session
[Next run: The Saint Valentine’s Day Monkey Burger Massacre and BBQ!]
[Also, I'm back on a project at work with a major client,so my writing time is back to being a little crimped. Therefore, session notes might not get updated as promptly as I'd like. On the plus side, I'm still employed and I can't argue with that right now.]
Session 1
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