How to plan the Perfect Hit, And get away scot free. Options

[CoalHeart]

You're a lone runner. Why are you alone? Because your Johnson just screwed you over so badly your entire team of lifelong chums got ventalated. You barely survived because you were not even in the same part of town.
Your once good J whom you want to kill with an utmost vengance is the boss of a really bad news syndicate. They have mages, riggers, information gatherers. Spirits, elementals. The works. They know who you are and would kill you if you stepped on the same block as thier building. You're presumed dead, but somehow survived the bomb planted in your car. You don't have the resources to get a whole new identity yet. You have a score to settle. You don't want a single shred of evidence pointing this back to you because the whole org would come after you hard. You can't give it up because you've taken the vindictive flaw. You want him gone erased dead missing. No sniping because you want to see the guy suffer at the end of your hand/gun/blade/whatever.


How do you get the job done and have no one point a finger at you.



Just a hypothetical situation :) I'm just curious as to how people would do such a thing.


Resources 10,000 yen cash/certified cred. The weapons in your holsters and the armor on your back. All of your safehouses were hit and destroyed. Can't contact lowlevel contacts for fear of them ratting you out.
Archtypes Adept/Samurai, or aspected mage.


and I can't think of anything else :)

[Pavlov]

That's tough. You have to figure that if you geek the Johnson in the next 3 weeks, people might start thinking it's you. "Remember that guy whose body we never found and who hated us?"

It really depends on your timeframe and the GM's view of the Vindictive flaw. If I was playing (or GMing), I would try to erode the Johnson's professional rep first. Set up bogus stories then sell the scoop to some rival screamsheet. A long-term smear campaign means he has less money as circulation drops. Less money means fewer guards. Plus, you want to ruin him in addition to killing him, right?

This will take money, time, and execution (ha!). For now, lay low and let the heat drop a little. Then start running for slush fund money. You'll get your revenge, but hands-on murder tomorrow is going to get you caught most likely.

[Large Mike]

Carbomb.

[Spookymonster]

Infect everyone he cares about with Vitas. Then send him a package consisting of a note and a tab of cyanide. The note should be a sadistic masterpiece, explaining to the target why everyone he knows is dead or dying. Throw in every sick and twisted detail you can scrounge up on the Johnson, and rub it in his face. These people are paying for his sins, and there's more where that came from. The only way you'll stop is if he's dead. Johnson pops the pill. Hilarity ensues.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[moosegod]

Nuke where he works! :silly:

[Morphling The Pr...]

Sorry, can't help ya. The most important resource is friends.

I find it much more satisfying to wetwork the people who aren't important or powerful, but try to screw you over anyway. People don't care if they disappear, and there are not too many cops who want to bother with some low-income, possibily SINless nothing.

For instance, I got screwed over by a bouncer who I bribed to tell me when a particular man showed up. Gave him 300. When he called, I arrive, scope out the place, and wait for the target to leave. I offer the bouncer 100 more to make it noisy when he comes out. Turns out he cut a deal with my target on the way out to jump me for my cred. Fortunately, I got my target, and the bouncer fled in fear of my 1337 Unarmed Combat skill. When I was finished with him and my mission, I went back. Same ork sonofabitch is working.

Mistake Number 1: Double crossing an assassin.

That was fun. It felt good to be able to carefully and precisely exact some Draconian revenge. Sadly, doing that to someone who is powerful, has friends, connections, or other people willing to take vengence is not nearly as easy.

Basically, I'm saying, DON'T be like my bouncer-mopping adventure. You can NEVER be too careful. That, and if at all possible, try to be satisfied with just killing him; you don't need to kill his entire family, his dog, ruin his friendships, and drain his bank account. Just kill him, and leave no evidence. It works just as good.

[Dr Vital]

I'd say that :nuyen:10K is going to have to go for as much legwork as possible. Also, get a fresh bolthole for a couple of weeks while you plan this out.

Then I'd answer as many Q's as I can:

Why did he screw you over?
When does the Johnson come and go from the building?
Where does he live
How does he travel?
Who are his enemies?
What are his weaknesses?

Get answers and ask them again:

Why did he want you to fail?
When does he have the least security?
Where does he park his car?
How does indulge in his vices?
Who hates him the most (besides you)?
What are the ways in which you could kill him?

And again:

In this case the most useful question seems to be; why didn't he want you to succeed in that mission? And do his bosses know that he hired a bunch of strangers to do a job for the company, then screwed them over?

Has he ever screwed over anyone else? Are they alive? Are they angry?

As gather info is gathered chinks will appear in his "armor", whether that's physical, social, political, or all 3.

[Digital Heroin]

I'd take my 10k and re-locate. Work the shadows of another city for a while, come back when I'm not irrational enough to think I have a snowballs chance in hell of getting into an uber-fortress with no contacts or resources...

[Chance359]

He ended your world, let him know how that feels.

The following has been changed to more accurately fit.

"He waits until his friends are in the ground, and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He kills their kids. He kills their wives. He kills their parents and their parents' friends. He burns down the houses they live in, the stores they work in. He kills people that owe them money. And like that, he's gone."

The way I see it start at the bottom of his organization, and start cleaning house. For each member you put in the ground, it's more potential resources taht you can bring against him.

Take the 10K and invest in explosives.

[Talia Invierno]

Aspected mage? Mage (air or water aspected), ideally with masking, centring, and a couple of levels of initiation - ideally as high as possible for masking purposes.

Sell all weapons and everything else not short-term relevant except the single basic distance weapon and melee weapon. The money goes partly to buy the Johnson's exact itinerary for the next (however long). [Edit: obviously can't buy this from "friends" - too much risk they'd rat. But Shadowland should provide reasonably neutral sources.]

Alternative 1:
Conjure two elementals (if they're not already "on-hold"): one middling-strong fire (that one's the distraction), the other air or water and as powerful as possible. (Force 10 would not be excessive - this is why the weapons were sold for nuyen.) You didn't specify he lived in an arcology, so I'll assume he steps off company property for the odd moment. The fire elemental creates the distraction and draws away as much of the magical security as possible. A heartbeat later, the air or water elemental engulfs the Johnson and suffocates or drowns him.

Alternative 2:
Get a masked spirit to pick up something that could be used as an anchor for ritual magic against the Johnson. Learn Agony and a really nasty Disease-type spell (if it's not already known). Quicken and mask.

Alternative 3:
Go for the chauffeur and/or other staff accompanying the Johnson. Same general strategy re itinerary as described, only the focus this time is Control Thoughts. Doom makes a very nice bullet coater in this case - and the intent is not to shoot to kill.

Alternative 4:
Not for the short-term satisfaction, but should be greater for all that. Go deep, deep underground. Wait. (Sell a few heal spells if needed for basic survival purposes, and if a few nuyen can be squirrelled away, no harm.) Let the heat calm a little. The nuyen go for reconstructive surgery, DNA modification, and establishment of an identity which will permit (eventually! years down the road, if necessary) getting hired onto the Johnson's staff (as a bodyguard - should make a nice irony). Wait for the perfect opportunity, or help set it up as appropriate.

In all cases, take as much time as needed, erase all signatures, and use a Clairvoyance or linked senses or similar, tied to the elemental if possible, to watch the results. In all cases except the last, I'd suggest hiding in high(est) lifestyle rather than low: ideally the mage has also managed (with spell or reasonable computer/decking skill - I'd give this mage a datajack and such skill) to set up a hotel account for an existing executive, maybe even of the Johnson's own corporation.

[BitBasher]

Honestly it's unlikely the johnson is even actually responsible. The Johnson is just a middleman, he doesn't amke the runs or pay for them. All he dies is find a person to do it for the real employer, the one that sets the job up and makes all the decisions. That's likely who you really want.

[Talia Invierno]

True. And it's not something any of my PCs would ever do, not least because they tend to believe in getting the person responsible rather than the messenger (something that frequently makes NPCs underestimate their potential for sheer destruction in the "right" context).

It is required, however, by the parameters of the scenario per the first post.

[Digital Heroin]

[Herald of Verjig...]

[phelious fogg]

Depending on how many people are in the compnay, just take everyoen out... Im sure for 10k you could buy enough explosives to blow the whole building up.

[Abstruse]

Relocate to another city and preferably another country. Lay low and build up resources. THEN extract your revenge. The GM should be cool with this and the vindictive flaw as long as you keep to the plan. Anytime anyone asks you why you're working so hard/saving so much/buying so much, tell them "I have a score to settle." Revenge is a dish best served cold. Plan it out and make sure you have the resources and muscle to pull it off. Then you start small. Take out their support structure, ruin their career, their family life, their social life...and you make SURE he knows someone's out to get him and then that YOU are out to get him. After you've destroyed every aspect of his life, you make your appearance. Get through his security, put a gun/sword/whatever to his head. Make sure he knows it's coming. Then, you leave.

Why do you leave, exactly? Because you've proven to him that you can get to him. You can destroy him, everything about him. You can end him. He will know this now. And he will spend the rest of his days in fear, knowing you can attack him at any time.

The Abstruse One

[Backgammon]

SMITE him :D

[Shanshu Freeman]

I hear you can order an orbital cow bombardment for surprisingly cheap these days...

[moosegod]

If you're a worm, sure.

[Lindt]

I hear that truck bombs are all the rage now a days...