Monday, February 15, 2016

Session Report – Urban Surfin’ – Session 4: Patsy Cake

[This session happened February 1st.  This session ended up being a spontaneous side job for a side job to the main job.  Seriously.]

PCs
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
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


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


Friday, March 13, 2076
The afternoon after the caper at the boutique electronics store [see Session 3], the team returned to the Pleiades Group office.  Killroy presented Bookie the Fairlight Excalibur cyberdeck, Bookie leering at it as only an alcoholic decker can.  Bookie immediately swapped his peripherals over to the new deck and hit the power button.

Instead of booting up, the Excalibur exploded in a shower of confetti!  Killroy nearly fell out of his chair, laughing at the look on Bookie’s face!

Somewhere on the way back, Killroy had acquired a dummy cyberdeck and rigged it with confetti bombs as a practical joke on Bookie.  While Killroy and the rest of the team were still laughing, Prometheus leaned over to Bookie and said, “I have reasonable rates.”  [Killroy’s and Bookie’s players are brothers in RL, which should explain the reason for the prank.]

Once things had settled down a bit, Killroy presented Bookie with the actual Fairlight Excalibur, plus a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label as an apology for the prank.  After checking for more confetti bombs, Bookie accepted both the cyberdeck and the apology.  He declined to share the whiskey.

The team turned to discussing the next side job – raiding a construction site for a power-actuated fastener [a pistol-shaped tool for firing concrete anchoring bolts into place] and possibly some thermite.  Sin and Void had located a suitable construction site near the Federated-Boeing Shipyards in the Downtown district of Seattle.  While discussing the details, talk turned to a way to misdirect Knight Errant investigations after the fact.  The simplest method seemed to be framing a nearby street gang for the job, possibly by painting some gang-sign on a couple of walls or equipment.  Another possibility was leaving a dead ganger on the property, staging the death like an accident.  Void had issues with killing anyone we were not being paid specifically to kill [she has Code of Honor: Assassin’s Creed as a negative quality].  Prometheus [who suffers no such compunctions] agreed to throw the ganger off the building himself.

Further discussion suggested a better way: grab several gang members using NeuroStun, disguise ourselves as them while robbing the construction site, “accidentally” miss a security camera when deactivating the cameras, and get recorded by that camera looking like the gang members.  The group could then leave the unconscious gangers on the site and reset the security for the site.  When the gangers wake up and go to leave, they’ll trigger the security and alert Knight Errant on themselves.  Knight Errant will then review the camera footage, arrest the gangers, and we never get tagged.  What could go wrong?  [A surprising number of things as it turns out.]

Looking into the local gang situation, the only gang in the area that seemed like a good fit were the Troll Killers, a racist bunch of red-necks with a hate on for any of the Awakened races.  Perfect.  They deal drugs, so Murdoc used his contact Gino to arrange a buy of 20 units of Nova Coke at 11:00 PM that night.  The Fin contacted Baelthor [a low-level shadowrunner she hired for the Sam’s Run who happens to be immune to NeuroStun] and hired him cheap to “pop some NeuroStun on some unsuspecting gangers”.

10:00 PM
Prometheus, Killroy, and Murdoc arrived at the scene of the drug deal and scouted it out.  After placing some drones to observe the area, they then settled down to wait in a van two blocks away.  During this time, Prometheus fell asleep [critical glitch on his Perception test].  No one on the team noticed, but this lapse had consequences…

11:00 PM
Baelthor arrived at the site of the drug buy, followed shortly by three members of the Troll Killers – the dealer and two bodyguards.  Baelthor was relaxed and when the suspicious gangers asked him what he had in his hand, he released the NeuroStun grenade and said, “Just a spoon.”  The three gangers dropped unconscious almost immediately.

Unfortunately, there was a fourth ganger in a building across the street.

The fourth ganger started shooting up Baelthor, who fell back into a doorway for cover, leaking blood.  Sin immediately floored the accelerator on the van Prometheus, Killroy, and Murdoc were waiting in.  It took 9 seconds for the van to get to Baelthor, which felt like forever as the ganger continued to hose down Baelthor’s doorway with lead.

Baelthor magically healed himself of some of the damage he had taken and then went on the offensive against the ganger, muttering to himself, “I’m not getting paid enough for this.”  Baelthor cast Fireball at the ganger for little effect, exposing himself to the ganger’s next attack.  Luckily [for Baelthor], Killroy could now see the ganger’s position [second floor bedroom window directly across the street from where the drug buy was supposed to happen] and fired a grenade from the grenade launcher under-mounted to his Ares Alpha assault rifle.  The shrapnel filled the room and killed the ganger just as the van pulled up.  Prometheus [wearing a gas mask and chem-sealed armor – the NeuroStun was still active] popped out of the van and dragged the three unconscious gangers into the van.  Baelthor piled into the van at the same time.  Once all the cargo and the team were back inside the vehicle, Sin drove it away.  Baelthor was dropped off at a bus stop outside the territory belonging to the Troll Killers.

End of Session

[Important lesson learned – do not assume your non-mobile drones have all the approaches covered.  The fourth ganger had approached form behind the building we had Sin’s drones parked on, so we never saw him until he started shooting.  In the future, at least a couple of drones will be on patrol around the area so we do not get surprised by this.  If I (as Prometheus) had not critically glitched, we might have been tipped off or known to check for snipers, but that didn’t happen.]

[The write-up for next session will be a bit sketchy as I missed the game due to illness and no one else took notes.  Le sigh.]

Session 1
Session 3


Session 5

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