Friday, April 27, 2018

Session Report – Code Name: Parrot T-Rex – Session 7


[This session happened July 2nd, 2017, and was run by New GM.  This was mostly deciding upon our plan, which in Shadowrun is possibly one of the more critical points in a storyline.  This is the top of that first big hill in a rollercoaster - after this, things start happening quickly and there is no getting off the ride until it’s over.]


PCs
Baelthor – male human mage with a loud mouth
Void – female night elf 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)
Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says it
Wren – male human that registers as an elf, no explanation as to why
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm

NPC’d
Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser
The Fin – female human con artist and gambler from India, by way of Russia, posh and elegant
Dai – male human fixer who operates in Cara’Sir, recommended by The Fin


July 3, 2076
Afternoon
After reviewing the two days of video of the New Dawn Technologies campus, the team made some decisions.  This job was going to have two major parts: Part A to get all the biosamples and setup the destruction of the lab and data, Part B to grab all the targets and trigger the destruction of the lab and data.  These two parts would happen on separate days.  This would keep the number of tasks the group needed to achieve at one time down to a manageable level.  It was confirmed that the paragoose (Bonus Job #2) was going to be too much a pain to pull off and too dangerous to have in the hyperjet afterwards, so it would still be ignored.  [This was the team giving up on 70,000¥, which says a lot about how far the team has come.  Their first job together as a team only paid 12,000¥ and that was only 8 months ago in game.]

While discussing how to eliminate the data files and backups, Bookie stated he had access to a program called Nuke-from-Orbit that obliterates targeted files and make Matrix recovery impossible.  That said, he would need to get the latest updates for it before use.  The team agreed this is how they will eliminate the online files, but Bookie, as Dr. Reynold, will need to meet with Dr. Valdi and find out if New Dawn Technologies keeps backups anywhere.  Bookie placed a call and arranged a meeting for drinks that evening.

Looking over the AR model of the campus the group [and by group, I mean Bookie] had assembled, it was clear that a roof-top entrance would be best.  The animals they needed to sample from were in two different labs in two different, but connected, buildings.  One of the buildings on campus came relatively close to a side street [Building 55 for later reference].  From that building it would be possible to run along the rooves to the target buildings with only one three-meter gap between two buildings to jump across.  Easy.  [This gap is between Building 36 and Building C.]  Bookie would need to adjust the sweep pattern of only one roof camera so the team could climb a line from outside the perimeter to the roof of the first building.

Once in the target building [designated Building A], the group would be able to move around between the buildings [through Building B to Building C] they needed via third floor skywalk.  The interior maps provided by Dr. Valdi showed a roof access hatch at the top of a stairwell that was pleasantly close to each of the first-floor labs they needed access to.  They would have to slip through a hallway patrolled by a basilisk in each case, but it looked do-able.

The interior maps also showed the server room for the building.  This offered several possibilities, which were discussed.  The group settled on inserting a remote access point here to give Bookie direct access to the servers.  The group also decided that these servers would be the highest probability place for back-ups, so the team would plant incendiary charges inside the servers and in the ceiling here, wired for remote detonation.  The chaos of a building fire would provide cover for the teams exit after Part B.

The plan for Part B of the job was a little more nebulous.  The residences on campus were across a large, open field from the target labs.  There was a kennel run for dogs and a picnic area on the far side of the residences, which put them relatively close to the perimeter, but with an intervening berm blocking line of sight [not to mention two layers of surveilled fences, the inner one electrified].  If Dr. Valdi could talk Dr. O’Seahnasaigh into a picnic with all the hell dachshunds in one place with “Dr. Reynold”, who would actually be Baelthor with some NeuroStun, he could trigger the NeuroStun to knock them all out [Baelthor, being immune to NeuroStun, would not succumb], allowing for easy pick up.  Then the data and servers would be taken out and the team would infiltrate the campus as part of the fire rescue.  This was pretty iffy, but the best the team had for the moment.

After this, the team discussed possible options for the delivery part of the job in the Czech Republic.  For the amount of pay the job was worth, the Pleiades Group could hire some local shadowrunner teams to act as decoys and still turn a nice profit.  Three to four teams with orders to shoot anyone following them would provide plenty of cover for the actual delivery.  Sin and Prometheus poured over the maps of the Czech Republic and plotted an indirect route that was would not add on too many hours to the trip.  There was no hurry on implementing this as they needed to concentrate on actually getting the target and packages first.

Evening
Bookie met with Dr. Valdi and discussed the data files.  There were backups in the server room, on an isolated, hardened server.  Also, Dr. Valdi agreed he could get Dr. O’Seahnasaigh and the hell dachshunds out for a picnic on either the 11th or 12th to meet Dr. Reynold in a social environment.  Bookie asked him to do so.

When Bookie returned to the Windsong Corporate Apartments, he relayed everything he learned from Dr. Valdi and that Dr. Valdi would arrange a picnic lunch on either the 11th or 12th.  This let the team finalize the plans for Part A and firm up the plans for Part B.

The plan for Part A now looked like this:
  1. Bookie resets the scan length of the camera on Building 55 so there is a gap on the western corner out to the street.
  2. The team will drive up on the side street and park in this gap.
  3. Prometheus will use his grapple gun to fire a line of stealth rope to the western corner of Building 55’s roof and secure it.
  4. Void will run up the line while Killroy, Wren, and Baelthor use climbing grips to climb up the line inside a Silence bubble.  Once everyone is up, Prometheus will apply a catalyst stick to the line and eliminate it.  Killroy will grab the grapple to return to Prometheus later and not leave evidence.
  5. The infiltration team will then move from Building 55 to Building 36, jump across the gap to Building C, move across Building C, rappel down to the roof of Building B, and run the length of Building B to Building A.
  6. The infiltration team will enter Building A through the roof access hatch and take the stairs down to the first floor.  There they will split up: Void and Baelthor to get the biosamples, Killroy and Wren to access the server room and plant the incendiary devices and access point.
  7. After completing their goals, both teams would meet back up on the third floor and make their way to Building C through Building B, avoiding any interior security [little to none was expected].
  8. In building C, Void and Baelthor would collect the rest of the biosamples.
  9. The infiltration team would return to the roof via roof access hatch on Building C and make their way back to the western corner of Building 55.
  10. Once there, they would contact Prometheus via micro-transceiver [just within range] and he would fire another grapple line to the roof.  Killroy would tie off the line and remove the grapple [again, to leave no physical evidence].
  11. The team would zip down the line to the ground outside the perimeter and apply the catalyst stick to the line.  They would then enter the vehicle and drive away.
  12. Bookie would reset the scan distance for the roof camera to close the gap.

The next thing to check would be for magical defenses and plan around them.  It was late [both in game and in real life], so the team decided to put that off until the next day.

End of Session

[In case it was not obvious, the buildings on the corporate campus are of varying heights, with Buildings A and B being two floors lower than buildings C, 36, or 55.  Also, the map New GM had of the campus had all the buildings numbered, but the numbers on some were blurry due to being a JPEG she found online, so we just listed the target buildings as A, B, and C to differentiate them from non-target buildings and not worry about their actual numbers.  We could retcon it to make it a form of information security – if we say Building B, no one listening in somehow would know which building we were talking about – but really it was just to keep the game going.]

[So I started having the characters build AR models of the target locations for two reasons: it would be helpful for the characters to have and you see them in heist movies all the time.  I’d like to think that in 2076 with ubiquitous AR, shadowrunners would no longer be looking at 2D maps but three dimensional representations of the actual locations they could zoom in on or virtually walk through.  Plus, I really like the visual in my mind’s eye.]



Session 8 (not yet written)
Session 9 (not yet written)
Hurricane Harvey!
Session 10 (not yet written)
Session 11 (not yet written)
Session 12 (not yet written)
Session 13 (not yet written)
Session 14 (not yet written)


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