Redneck Runs (GMs ONLY - SPOILERS), All ah need is mah truck an' mah thirty-thirty. Options

[Koekepan]

All Wheels Flat turned on the burners, and heavy guns popped out of the rig's bodywork, and Francois realised that he was indeed fresh out of options. It was fight, or die - either here, or in jail. He called upon his magic, and with the unexpected addition of this force, the tools of Lone Star (both biological and artificial) were outclassed. All Wheels Flat was surprised, but grateful, and carried him the rest of the way down to New Orleans. There Francois learned that the fisheries were a dying closed shop, which even if he could joined, didn't pay much, but that his talents were worth both a lot of money and some respect too. He joined, with All Wheels Flat's word in his favour, a team of runners called the Bayou Babies, largely francophone (two immigrants from Quebec round them out).

The Bayou Babies were glad of Francois's assistance, and went on a run which took them to old Alabama, where the target was a bioware processing plant where they were supposed to introduce a flesh eating bacterium into the sprinkler system and start a fire. It all went right, until it started going left. Who knew bioware companies would have such frighteningly effective guards? Francois escaped - barely - leaving a massive spirit in his wake which wreaked destruction. The surviving members of the Bayou Babies (both of them) think that Francois is dead, and pulled a Samson act, bringing that wing of the plant down around his own ears,but in fact he managed to escape and patch himself together, and since he, on his stumbling run out of there, collected a batch of altered gator eggs, which he managed to flog, has a little cash on his credstick.

After this experience, Francois turned his back on the shadows. It was all too risky for him, and had no place in his future plans. Now, wandering around, as SINless as ever, and presumed dead, his options might be limited but the trail will probably run cold for untalented investigators. The Bayou Babies, even if bribed, can only describe where they saw him making a last stand, and that's pretty much it. The building went down, and they never saw him again.

Francois decided that cities were the wrong land for him, so he went down South, further and further, until he could hitch a ride on a boat with some fishermen. They were iffy about it, but he handed them a fat certified credstick and told them he wanted to just slide off into the Everglades. They thought him insane, and they remember him all too well, but nuyen are nuyen, and they just filed a regular property loss claim on their dinghy, claiming it came loose in rough conditions in the Gulf, and didn't tell the insurance company about the crazy cajun swamprat in the boat.

More to come

[Tecumseh]

Marvelous!

[Koekepan]

As of the start of investigations, Francois has found a forgotten corner of the Everglades in which to hole up. He's used to slightly different swamps, but knows the survival skills which can get him by. There are also many snakes, and he feels at home with them as well.

Investigators who intend to seek Francois out will need to be adept at piecing together many clues to find him. His break out of the swamp wasn't well documented, but the shootout relatively nearby involving All Wheels Flat made the headlines, of course. It shouldn't take a genius to find it worth following up.

All Wheels Flat isn't super secretive. After all, he spoke to the Bayou Babies about Francois, so that's an easy link to follow.

The Bayou Babies are willing, to shadowrunners in good standing, to discuss the course of events and explain what happened. They believe Francois to be dead, and it's very hard to prove any different. On the other hand, All Wheels Flat should mention that Francois considered the fisheries, so if he did survive, looking in that direction would be feasible.

Burning some shoe leather with fast talk and some data on which boats set sail and when (available from the harbourmaster, either officially or not) will bring up the fishermen, and a bit of surveillance, perhaps by aircraft, might actually find him.

If all the jigsaw puzzles fall right, Mama Grenouille would be very generous, in her means, for the information on Francois's whereabouts, and better yet if contact is established.

If the investigators are stymied, she'll be a lot less generous for news of his death. She won't be ungracious, but a reported death without a corpse or burial site just isn't much good to her.

If investigators find Francois himself, he will be cautious, but if they can win his confidence, even fairly frank. That said, he is just not a talkative person. He would gladly go back to the old bayou, if he could be sure that his family wouldn't persecute him.

A very clever and hard working team of investigators might get a follow-up job, bringing Lucille and Francois together, but it would have to be founded on some stellar social work, and Mama Grenouille would certainly get some insurance in the form of spirits watching over the runners to make sure that they didn't decide something else would be more profitable.

[ShadowDragon8685]

If you're gonna play in Texas, you've gotta have a Runner in the band.

Troy McGraw is a young man with a humble dream: to have his voice and guitar strings crooning out of the speakers in the dashboard of every pick-'em-up truck bombing down every dusty, dirt and gravel road from Georgia to California. Texas born and bred, Troy's got the voice for it, and he's hot on his six-string acoustic guitar, too. Now, Troy's not poor, nor is he insufficiently talented, but the family money's mostly gone (his inheritance was five, almost six figures,) and in the Sixth World, just having the talent to be a novahot music star doesn't guarantee drek.

You need to be good, you need to have your ducks lined up, you need your own band, and you need to be ready to fend off the corporate sharks that want to own you. Troy achieved some local stardom in his hometown of Houston, but that only resulted in the rest of his band getting poached by a megacorp who wanted him to play for them. Troy didn't bite, and now they're ready to start contemplating more aggressive measures to convince him to sing for them.

He needs some Talent, and not necessarily the musical kind. He needs professionals who can help him rustle up a band or poach his own band back from Shangri-La Productions, he needs professionals who can ensure his gigs go smooth and play to packed venues. And if any of them happen to play fiddle, well, if you're gonna play in Texas, you've gotta have a fiddle in the band.

The Job: Ongoing. Basically, the Runners have been hired to help propel Troy to stardom, to make his name such a hot property that he can dictate the terms of the contract he signs with whatever company he signs with. That may or may not be possible, but the group have an opportunity to enrich themselves and get their fill of travel around the sunny Lone Star State while they do it. There will be problems along the way: not only are Shangri-La Productions and other record labels trying to sabotage Troy's launch so they can make him their bitch, but there's just going to be plain-out problems along the way; rowdy venues where the crowd will hurl beer bottles at the band if they don't like what they're hearing (and if they do like what they're hearing,) go-gangers trying to hijack the tour bus, unscrupulous venue operators, rival bands who'll hire rival Runners to attempt to murderously end Troy's career, or disastrously end it by burning down a crowded venue or whatever.

Complications:

• As the group and Troy work together, he starts to trust them more than he trusts the other folks he should be able to trust, like his manager. This presents opportunities to betray him for significant financial gain, but is the hit to their professional reputations worth it?
• A fan comes forward claiming that her baby is Troy's. She's an orc. A cute, Texan cowgirl orc, but an orc nontheless, and this is a place where people still get skeevy about racial miscegenation, let alone metatype. Worse, Troy's an honest man, and if it turns out the child's his, he'd be thinking of making an honest woman of her, despite the massive blow that could be to his career. On the other hand, she can sing like nobody's business. How do they advise Troy to proceed? Do they even tell him, or do they handle the situation without his knowing about it?
• The manager who tried and failed to poach Troy for Shangri-La is replaced by a company shark by the name of Ari Tarkasian, and depending on whether the players have been through On the Run (and how thoroughly they investigated,) they may have baggage with him (and he them.) Ari's not going to be playing by any rules, and he's running the show from CalFree, but he won't have any qualms about sending a company team to extract Troy, or even assassinate him if extraction proves impossible!
• Go-Gangers in pickup trucks with mounted machine guns attack the tour bus between cities. Have the Runners been paying sufficient attention to vehicular safety, or could this brazen daylight assault succeed in kidnapping the star?! If Troy does get kidnapped, they'd better come down on the gangers like the hand of God to get him back, or he may not trust them anymore. If they can't get him back in short order, Troy will be handed over by the go-gangers to the highest bidder.
• Troy's no-good drunken cousin Jim-Bob McGraw saw him play on stage, and now thinks he's rich. Jim-Bob wants a modest piece of the action, but thanks to some old bad blood between them (Jimbo slept with Troy's girlfriend when they were in high school together,) Troy doesn't want anything to do with him. Unfortunately, Jimbo has some dirt on Troy that could make life very uncomfortable for him, and Troy doesn't want them to just grab Jimbo and rough him up or worse, kill him. (He may be an asshole, but he's still blood.) They either need to pay him off, discredit him, steal his proof, or figure out a way to mend the rift between the cousins; which, while difficult, would satisfy everybody, since Jimbo has the skills to be an excellent roadie, and Troy wouldn't think twice about hiring him for the road crew if they were good.
• One of the band's members Goblinizes into a Troll while on-stage! This creates a problem, as it completely disrupts his musical ability. Troy doesn't want to just cold-heartedly kick him to the curb, but his playing went to hell, even if he gets an instrument sized for his new body. The band's music suffers if he stays on, and the group need to figure out how to fix this situation without alienating Troy, such as by convincing the poor bastard that resigning from the band would be best for everyone. They'll also need to replace him, and finding a good player won't be easy.
• A rival band challenges Troy to a musical duel, and this is Texas, so Troy can't refuse or he'll lose face. Troy wants to play a clean show, but the other group sure as hell won't. How far will the group go: will they just foil the other band's hired guns and let Troy and his band face the other group fairly, or will they try to go a step further and try to sabotage the other side and make it look like an accident (or a backfire of their own sabotage attempts.)

Pushing the Envelope:

• Troy's hit it big in the Lone Star State, and now the act needs to expand out of Texas. Plan A is a tour of the CAS, and Plan B is to try and reintroduce Country & Western to the southwestern NAN, where there's certainly enough pinkskins and disillusioned Natives ready to listen to the songs Troy's ready to sing. The riskier the road, the greater the profit; Troy's voice would be very welcome in the CAS, but the market's already saturated with old-school Country & Western, whereas he could be a breakout hit in the NAN, but would likely face backlash from hardliners NANners who don't want a stetson-wearing cowboy in their lands.
  
• Ari Tarkasian has had it with opportunities slipping through his grasp, and decides to play super-dirty. He goes after the group's contacts, family, whatever and whoever they care about back home, and presents them an ultimatum: hand over Troy so he can be made an offer he can't refuse, or their loved ones get organlegged. To show he's serious, he actually goes and hands over one of the group's contacts or family members to Tanamous and films the exchange so there's zero doubt he's playing for keeps here. Now it's personal. They could hand over Troy, but if they tell him what's going on, he'll take it personally too, since he's come to think of the group as silent partners in the band, and an attack on one is an attack on all. They could try to expose him to his corporate overlords at Horizon, for whom his tactics are far beyond the pale and they would rectify the situation, or they could decide that blood demands blood and travel to the California Free State for old-school Biblical retribution.
  
• The group's excellent work has gotten attention, and their Fixer calls to tell them they've got big offers on tap, bigger even than the now-financially-secure and heading-to-stardom Troy can pay. Do they part ways amicably with Troy, rustling up some other talent for him, or decide to hang on to a cushy gig and ride the tour bus to prosperity?

[Freya]

Still loving these. I was considering getting in on the act myself but I've ended up busy with a bunch of RL stuff...

[Shortstraw]

Make the runners steal a road?

[Koekepan]

I like the musical story. Kind of brings back memories of first edition. Misty, fond memories.

Sorry I haven't been around much, but I had this were-cougar eating my cockatrices ...

[Koekepan]

I have a few more bouncing around my head, but I wanted to ask:

Any GM reports back on running any of these, or variants which worked? Or failed to work? Don't keep your success (or shame) a secret.

We won't judge you, much.

[Koekepan]

Background:

Worker rights, unions, and all that good stuff can turn a quiet neck of the woods into a battleground. Robotics and production economics make it all worse. Don't they always?

The parties:

Shenandoah Agricultural Workers' Cooperative, or SAWC. They are a group of poor hard working folks, mostly ork and troll, who sweat in the heat, freeze in the cold, and get paid a little less than the running costs of equivalent robots. Now the workers are getting a little sick of how they're treated, and really angry about their robotic competition.

Pittsburgh Steel and Machine. PSM is a fairly large corporation, though nowhere near the corporate court, but they license many technologies and put together some very impressive agricultural automation tools. They will till your fields, pick your berries, inspect your plants, chew up your pests and even collect your cow pies.

Shenandoah Valley Farm Bureau. Many farmers (the few independent holdouts as well as corporate representatives) in the area have joined what amounts to a trade association. They share knowledge, negotiate for good collective insurance rates and lobby the government together.



The problem:

Same as always, and fresh as ever. It's the sixth world peasant's rebellion against the landholders. Orks and trolls are good in the fields because of their muscle, and because they tend to have a hard time getting work elsewhere. They want more money (although the robots are nipping at their heels in financial terms), better working conditions (not easy to arrange, to say the least) and less competition from the robots (a lost cause if ever there was one). By any measure of trends, they're cornered by history and physical reality.

The Farm Bureau's members run the gamut of luxury producers to simple hardscrabble folks who barely hang on. None of them want to pay more for anything if they can help it, and while some could afford more, they are united in adamant opposition to the SAWC.

PSM are the wild card. Ostensibly, they are disinterested parties just leasing and selling their robots to their customers, through a network of local representatives, but in actual fact they have been planting the seeds of rebellion in the SAWC. Not by anything as straightforward as agents pushing their agenda, but through the offices of RCSI (Renraku Corporate Security Intelligence) which have infiltrated the Matrix hangouts of the SAWC and suggested to them what they might, could and should do. Why? Because unstable work forces make for great robotic sales!

The proposition:

There are two propositions available here.

The first is obvious: the Farm Bureau wants the runners to do security for the robots against raids by the farm workers. They don't want a bloodbath, because that's bad for public relations, but they want the disgruntled workers dissuaded. This is actually arguably legal owing to the possible food safety implications.

The second is less obvious: the local sheriff isn't a fool, and wants the sources of the unrest sniffed out. This is a suitable run for more sophisticated runners, because whoever does this is likely to end up face to face with Renraku.

The facts:

It's really pretty simple. The farm workers are angry, strong, and motivated by their own hungry children. The fact that they aren't very experienced at this business, and aren't thinking clearly, is only going to complicate matters.

Renraku's goons have been smart enough to quietly sell the farm workers some instruments of destruction as well, along the lines of WP and thermite bombs for sabotage work - a little more cash in the bag, and increasing the level of threat involved.

Some complications:

Maybe the farm workers don't stop at robots, and target some farmers.

Maybe the farm workers get some support from urban unions acting in solidarity.

Maybe the farm workers have family members who are runners too, and are calling in a few favours.

Maybe it's a slow news week and the valley is crawling with trid camera crews.

Aftermath ideas:

Renraku doesn't love you any more! Well, maybe they have a new reason not to.

PSM doesn't like being found out, and makes sure that the runners have an offer on some kit which is way too good to ignore, and turns out to be sabotaged, or sending surveillance back to the mothership.

Maybe the runners decided to back the workers, and the sheriff, the Bureau, PSM and Renraku are all upset. Oh dear.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Up the working mantrog!


This could get plenty complicated, because this could easily cross from just a labor issue to a racial issue - I'd be willing to bet nuyen to AZT corporate scrip that less than one in twenty of the members of the SVFB have tusks or horns. While I don't think the Spikes extend out that far, there's probably similar trog gangs in local 'plexes. You fire up the working man and the disaffected urban trog both and convince them they both have a common enemy in the face of big industry, and shit will be going down.

Hell, if the SVFB is primarily human, or if the Renraku/PSM connection comes out early, you might even see the Ancients getting in on the action in the name of "fuck the breeders," and happily selling at a good rate to poor trogs.


If the runners played their cards right and were sufficiently neo-A or neo-commie, or just labor-friendly, they could turn this clusterfuck into an all-out race-relations and labor-relations nightmare up and down the eastern seaboard of north America. I bet they could find a way to make money out of that. A good labor riot or lightning strike is a great way to draw attention from someplace you want to get in and out of quietly - and then blowing up or setting aflamee the place you got in and out of quietly is an even greater way to draw attention back from the workin' stiffs.

[Grinder]

The last run idea is aweseome!

[Koekepan]

Danke sehr. Hoffentlich finden Sie diese Ideen auch gut:

Background:

Old Europe is a complex place. The destruction which reigned in the birth of the Sixth World was both new and as ancient as the armies of the ancient world tearing bloody swaths across the hills and fields and forests of what maps now call Europe. Some other things remain constant: the need to eat, and the profits and power available in controlling the food supply.

Sadly (but profitably, for shadowrunners) there are many sources of conflict - nationalism is a constant undercurrent, sometimes manifesting in naked bigotry - but of all of them need and want are the strongest. To large corporations which wield propaganda and financial power, this means control for as long as they can keep riding the tiger. It also means that they keep a tight grip on their farming operations, for all the most obvious reasons.

The parties:

NeuHund AG is a family corporation in what is known in English as Pomerania. Years ago they were pioneers in extremely high quality cyberhounds for police and military use, but the insatiable demand for their products has given them the capital to expand into a number of related lines. They have developed an experimental farm in which they are extending the idea of permaculture into what they are branding as CyberHof. They claim massive conversion ratios of incident sunlight into desirable results. Be clear: the security around Cyberhof is utterly deadly, as would be expected from a custom maker of cyberdogs. Their own guards are boosted intelligence dogs with cybereyes, cyberears, bone lacing, modified hearts, livers, adrenal glands and all the rest of it. One of their trademarks: their dogs don't audibly bark. Runners who aren't careful will have just about zero warning before a 130kg cyborg, running at 60km/h, makes contact. And it will just be the first of the pack. Runners who make it into the farm will find themselves surrounded by flora and fauna of extremely high voracity and lethality. NeuHund is a pioneer in selective breeding for awakened traits. They have a herd of Gorgons, which crops grass so sharp it will cut feet - and mobile enough to carve up flesh deliberately to feed its ravenous roots. They have modified ficus with trailing roots which turn into grasping tendrils. The dessicated husks of incautious animals can sometimes be seen dangling there. The cockatrices have learned to avoid the roots, and instead scratch and strut in the rose bushes, which put out soporific pollen. Somehow the pollen doesn't affect them. NeuHund's major advances related to management techniques (largely robotic) allowing for a good harvest from this otherwise lethal zone, but their advances are not yet market ready. Still, they make a good bit of cash off it to support their research.

Baltic Harvest is a russian corporation which makes most of its money in kelp, krill, and anything else it can extract from the seas (mostly, but not exclusively the baltic). They are trying to settle a number of problems relating to how they perform their harvest, and they are also struggling against competition while they try to expand throughout Central Europe. They have a few brands - Baltic Harvest is a name mostly seen on prepackaged foods in the lower strata of society, but they have a few luxury lines related to real fish, caviar and so on.

The problem:

This is a big corporate problem, not an individual farming situation. NeuHund and Baltic Harvest had a contract, under which NeuHund would modify and train dolphins and sharks and seals to do harvest and security work for Baltic Harvest. NeuHund's management started to get suspicious when they discovered that Baltic Harvest showed little interest in the efficiency of the results, but paid through the nose for the highest technology, and were more interested in getting a couple of each, rather than a full working team. They found a fixer who got them confirmation of their suspicions: Baltic Harvest wanted to leapfrog their technical position by purchasing examples for reverse engineering.

Baltic Harvest didn't choose NeuHund randomly: NeuHund is a technical leader, but also something of a political flagship run by people who are openly patriotic, german nationalists. By giving NeuHund a black eye, Baltic Harvest would be in a position to extract a lot more kudos from the powers inside Holy Mother Russia. In this way the corporations are proxies for national conflicts.

NeuHund went to court and secured a cancellation of the contract, as well as damages for Baltic Harvest's behaviour. At this stage, NeuHund's management have made the rather stiff-necked assumption that the matter is closed, and they have moved on. Baltic Harvest, on the other hand, have done no such thing and their management are smarting from their losses, from frustration at their failure, and not least from the perceived insult of the judgement against them. They have now started fishing for fixers who can get them teams with specialised skills.

The proposition:

"My clients are an environmental group - the details are confidential, of course - but they are very worried about the consequences of genetic manipulation on the part of NeuHund AG. They require samples. If you can obtain whole animals, that is better. If you can obtain cybernetically modified animals, that is yet better. Accepting the contract means that you will obtain data on their security, quite comprehensive, as well as ten thousand nuyen worth of sampling and management equipment for your use, and to keep afterwards, in case you may find it useful."

"My clients do not have limitless financial means, but the genetic health of Europe is reason enough to open their coffers. What is required is information on genetic codes, and where relevant, chemical or cybernetic modifications to lifeforms. Anything could be indicative of the threats. Shall we say, two thousand per sample, five thousand per complete plant and ten thousand per complete animal?"

The facts:

The security information is pretty decent, but any experienced shadowrunner should regard this as a near-suicidal run. The problem they have is that their employers will probably keep a grudge, and definitely object to the runners pulling out. It's crystal clear that whoever is hiring them wouldn't think twice about sending a cleanup team after them, so they can either face a stream of assassins, or face death at cyberhound jaws. This is a very difficult scenario, intended for cunning and creative runners. The fact that pretty much any lifeform on that farm is potentially lethal and is not meaningfully domesticable, means that just walking up and taking tissue samples is not going to work.

The best bet is for a combination of smart work by riggers, matrix operatives, and possibly magicians. This will require planning, timing, and not a little luck.

During negotiations, Johnson is happy to let the runners bid him up, although he'll make a show of driving a hard bargain, since Baltic Harvest does not envision actually paying in full.

Some complications:

NeuHund have developed cybersecurity in the form of black IC run by rat brains. The brains do the decision making, the IC eats matrix intruders. Light on electronics, powerful in effect. Since the rats train in their own death arena using nonlethal IC to practice their techniques, it's a frighteningly effective mass defence. CyberHof is well-named.

Baltic Harvest's donated equipment includes trackers, monitors, and other supplementary goodies to check up on the runners.

NeuHund have developed insects tough enough to survive their farm, fertilise their flowers, and territorial enough to kill intruders. Simple, basic, but lethal.

Baltic Harvest intend to kill the runners anyway so as to leave fewer traces, and give any credit to russian researchers.

Aftermath ideas:

NeuHund has scent traces of the runners, and a lot of dogs. Can you run fast enough? Can you hide well enough? There is a german word which describes how they will search for intruders: grundlich.

Baltic Harvest may frame the runners, assuming they escape the planned death, for any number of hideous crimes across the length and breadth of Russia. Why not? It would discredit the runners, or so they hope.

[Koekepan]

Ok. I don't get it: what is Boris about to do with or against The Perforated Condoms (IMG:style_emoticons/default/question.gif)

I just realised that I never answered this question.

Boris has the Perforated Condoms doing the drop-off for the runners, for no other reason than that the package is bogus, and he wants a little distance between himself and the hand-off. The Perforated Condoms, being go-gangers, are chronically short of cash, so a couple of thousand Nuyen for a simple run and dump is welcome. Boris has nothing against them, but doesn't think highly of them. He just wants a big distraction, and it's easy to blame distractions on them because they're flashy. The idea is to deflect blame from him.

[Shortstraw]

Going to be running some of these in the near future as our group finally got around to finishing S3 Missions and as the players are a bunch of paranoid loons they don't trust anyone to ship their gear to Seattle and thus are going on a road trip.

[Koekepan]

Going to be running some of these in the near future as our group finally got around to finishing S3 Missions and as the players are a bunch of paranoid loons they don't trust anyone to ship their gear to Seattle and thus are going on a road trip.

Awesome. Let me know how that goes. I think I gave a few run ideas adaptable to most environments. Desert, hills, forest, mountain country. Have fun with it.

[kirtimlak]

Background:

Talking to the trees is a common activity for romantic, love-lorn folks.When the trees talk back, it's usually spirits, or drugs, or some kind of mischief. Not this time.

God damn it! I'll deffinitely take tis one and the others to my DH chronicle!!!
Thank you! Awesome!

[Koekepan]

All I ask in return is after action reports. That way we can all be better GMs.

[kirtimlak]

All I ask in return is after action reports. That way we can all be better GMs.

I'll do it this sunday, so you'll get it pretty soon))

[kirtimlak]

I kindly ask to forgive my grammar and style as English is not my native language))

All I ask in return is after action reports. That way we can all be better GMs.

Maybe I'm writing it not so soon, but the game itself was really fast and ugly!

Well… I ran the

Background:
Talking to the trees is a common activity for romantic, love-lorn folks. When the trees talk back, it's usually spirits, or drugs, or some kind of mischief. Not this time.

mission , adjusted to DH campaign last sunday.

Just a small side mission that turned out into something… something.

Group was on a backwater world - their spaceship was damaged and waiting for delivery of some rare part from a nearby industrial planet. In the spaceport they heard a rumor of a lumberjack, who complained on voices in his head which he heard after having worked for some time in a specific area.

Lumber from that specific area was delivered to the spaceport by sea once a year in a large trawler “Vulpa Veritas”, was picked by a passing by merchant space ship and then delivered to some gentry-planets, where fletchers created masterpieces of wood-carving or just ceilings out of it. Just for some extra thrill and to kill some time (and possibly, extra heretics) the Group gathered everything they might need (survival gear, gasmasks, weapons, armour and ammo) and headed to the seaport.

It was the rain-season so the trip was quite rough. In the sea they encountered the trawler spoken above. It was nailed to a shoal right near delta of the river, by which it travelled to the chopping area. From the trawler latrine they got a SOS signal and decided to board. Being pretty experienced they equipped with bolters, torches, flash-bangs, polarized googols, smoke grenades and gasmasks they entered the bridge of the ship.

At least they tried to. It was locked from the inside. After breaking the door they found the captain, who had destroyed the controls and killed himself outlandishly – covered himself in ship fuel and light it up. In the board journal the only words that survived the flames were “I deny such an end” . They proceeded to the cargo hold. All they found there were some dead bodies but they definitely didn’t like the way those people died – killing each other in really gore-some ways just a couple of days ago. Not really willing to step in someone’s teeth-torn apdomen, the Group moved in the direction of the latrine.

Then they noticed something… None of them was sure what or who it was, but – just in case - bullets started flying… And bolter “bullets” – that’s something that thin cargohold walls are not gonna endure. They hit the fuel tank and had about 30 seconds to get to the latrine, find a living integrated-filter-breathing clancking thech-adept there, jump to the sand-beach. And run away. Really fast. After several explosions the trawler burned with all possible clues. And lumber))

//As it had been planed)//

The tech adept’s version of events was clear: illness, mutiny, fight, he took cover, the ship stranded, the door jammed and he had no tools to rip it open – ha was in the very beginning of the mechanicus evolution chain.

They got back to their ship, sailed up the river to the area 241, where, according to the rumors, a month ago or so one of the lumberjacks heard some voices. They got into the woodchoppers’ hut and found the majority of the workers missing. Locals saw the tech-man and thought them to be representatives of mechanicus, who recently were hired by the landlord to increase the rate of wood-cutting, as a large part of the workers got ill and were sent to the hospital with the last visit of “Vulps Veritas”. So the locals, drunk, some of them already hearing voices as well, attacked the group. It’s a miracle, how much fuss a man with a flamethrower can do in a wooden hut))) Pure intimidation was enough.

Of course, some of the lumberjacks turned out to be badly ill – their lungs were corrupted with an unknown (to the group surgeon) bacteria or worse. The others were more than willing to show the way to the tech-priests’ and their lumber-servitors’ site or to the current wood-cutting area. The Group chose the second option. Not even bothering to eat or drink as nobody wanted to put the mask off.

When they got to the point they found a tech-priest and his servitors cutting the wood and some local tribesmen intently watching them. The tribesmen didn’t like the “dead in the woods” and thought servitors were the reason for spirits of the forest to curse the lumberjacks and the tribesmen by cerebral illness and insanity. Sort investigation in the traditions of the tribesmen proved their cult of The Great Emperor Galactic Star Tree legit and approved by all Imperial standards.

So they took samples of water, soil and samples of wood - by sawing up a trunk. That’s when they found that the majority of trees only seemed healthy, being rotten deep inside in the middle of the trunks – unnoticeably to the eyes of wood-cutters. And what if a year supply of this planet was delivered to different highly populated planets???...

//my mistake – I tried to leave in only on a local level, so it shouldn’t have been about interstellar lumber export, it would better have been some kind of local county or planet-government villas matter//

They applied to the local mechanicus in order to find the means of learning, for how long was this bacteria active, what is its incubation period in trees and in humans, is id infectious through human means or only through trees… Mechanicus promised to study the matted urgently. Then they applied to the planet government, secretly informing it about spread of trees and men disease in the area 241. Government was more concerned about future of their export income. At that time their ship had received the parts and had finished the repair procedures. They returned to the sheep.

The Group thought for a while…

There was no chance to learn about all the areas where the mushroom or bacteria was active without the government’s help.
They considered government to be too greedy to reveal true information, especially if the scale was wide.

Mechanicus finished the research and came to the conclusion that the disease was the result of a mushroom – some rare variation of a mushroom spread in the area 241 of the tropical-subtropical part of the planet (about 10 000 000 acres); it was dangerous to people but did not spread from human to human, and it was vulnerable to cold. Its incubation period was about one year with faster passing in case of constant presence of the cause. The only thing they could not understand – if it was a mutation of some local flora, extraterrestrial microorganism or genetically tailored weapon.

The group said “Sorry!” to the planet government, evacuated the mechanicus from the area 241 of the forest belt, gave a week to evacuate other woodcutters, took into consideration approximate speed of the mushroom spreading… And zapped the area of 100 000 000 acres from the orbit by macrobatteries and lance fire!

Hoo-ba-doo-ba-doo, amigos!!!

The ashe clouds raised and covered both hemispheres’ sky causing too-big-camp-firе winter. The temperature dropped below zero throughout the planet, chilling the sleek asses of planet gov and, probably frustrating tribesmen and jacks! And killing the mushroom everywhere on the planet)))

Should I say that their chef was not really happy about all that? Still, the slyboots managed to represent all this as the only possible way of solving the problem.

Safe, assured, secure – guaranteed!

Redneck?
No, not really. Sorry))
True DH WH40k?!
Yes, it definitely is, sir!!!

[Koekepan]

Background:

It really doesn't matter who you are in the countryside, varmints are varmints. To farmers, they're crop ruining, livestock raiding varmints. To hunters, they're game displacing, cover ruining varmints. To gardeners, they're flower munching, root grubbing varmints. To technicians, they're wire chewing, culvert nesting varmints.

Except for a few crazy bunnyhuggers who feed the adorable little rascals.

The Parties:

Just north of the border with the CAS, halfway between the coasts, lies some highly productive farmland. Some people consider it to be boring miles upon miles of soy and corn and whatever else they pick to grow, but the fact is that the world eats because of these places. Most of the land has been snapped up by megacorps who want to make sure that their pet sararimen are first at the trough. The farms are actually run by more sararimen, who just happen to be highly specialised in their fields. The modern farmer is half roboticist, half biologist, and corporate backed.

Maxine Venables is a fairly typical case. In her younger days, she was a rigger for DocWagon, but the lousy hours and stressful environment gradually wore her down. She studied up on plant biology and animal husbandry instead of human, and persuaded her employers to upgrade her rig as technology advanced. Finally she moved laterally into rigging a farm rather than a flying ambulance. She is now in her late forties, and a spokesperson for local farmers. They don't all work for the same corps, but that doesn't matter. They share some concerns and cooperate to face challenges which crop up.

Morningblossom Canarysong Starseed is one of the very few independent farmers left. She's a wiccan magical practitioner, but also the only daughter of a farming family, who inherited everything. She is utterly dedicated to incredibly high quality organic farming, and her farm is a veritable temple - just a highly productive one. She knows Maxine and they actually get along quite well. She affectionately calls Maxine a farming cyborg, while Maxine calls her a filthy barefoot hippie. Their methods are different, their approaches are different, but there's a lot of mutual respect.

The void. The void isn't particularly literal - it's an ecological void. Apex predators have vanished from the area, which means that the largest predator around is the coyote. Raccoons, possums, skunks, armadillos, porcupines, and dozens of other species both native and invasive have descended upon the productive belt with nothing on their minds but gluttony. Deer populations are at all-time highs, feral pigs roam the landscape rooting up anything they feel like rooting up (which is everything). Rats, pigeons, starlings, you name it.

The Problem:

In the big picture, it's your classic trophic cascade at work. No wolves? No cougars? No big raptors? The smaller critters get busy. Not much in the way of human hunting any more? It's a furry wonderland, and that is bad for business.

The local tribe, a group known as the Broken Antlers, don't care about the problems too much. Their main reaction is that the hunting is good, and paleface farmers need to stop whining. The palefaces are the real vermin here. Trouble is, this is the UCAS and while the Broken Antlers are tolerated, they hold little effective power. So they are frustrated, bound by laws they dislike, and generally angry.

The Proposition:

"Look, you're around here for a while, right? Every varmint corpse your crew brings me, twenty-five nuyen. No fooling. No maximum. Bring me five thousand? A hundred and twenty-five thousand nuyen. Birds? One nuyen apiece. You won't stop the problem, but you might get us some production back this year at least."

The Facts:

The runners could pick off a few varmints, make a few hundred nuyen and call it good. And why not?

Or they could work out that the varmints are way too fat and densely populated for the area, and that someone is feeding the hell out of these varmints. There are other tell-tales, like yellow stripes on skunks. Yellow stripes happen because of skunks which eat a lot of cat or dog food, rather than their usual diet.

The real problem is that the Broken Antlers have become corrupted by their medicine men: Singing Wolverine is the leader of them all, but Jumping Armadillo, Dancing Roadrunner and Lonely Dove are all behind him and all toxic. Yup, a circle of toxic shamans with a whole tribe as their followers. They deliberately worked with the spirits to locally extirpate apex predators. They perform rituals which are intended to produce awakened animals, and they feed the varmints on dog food, on carrion, on whatever they can find with the goal of driving the farmers out of business.

Some Complications:

Under the hood, this is a race war with biology used as a weapon. Rabid raccoons are every bit as nasty as smallpox, in their own way. And rabies is an ugly, ugly way to die.

An awakened skunk is basically impossible to keep out of anywhere, and almost impossible to shoot if you're puking your guts out because you were downwind of it. And if it's downwind of you? It knows you're there, dumbass.

The Broken Antlers are not above engaging some of the greener (and stupider) policlubs as interference if the runners get too successful.

Aftermath Ideas:

If the runners succeed? They'd darned well better have wiped out the whole tribe because the fact is that this is a problem which can recur all the time. The tribe is beyond any kind of return to human rationality. They worship a toxic totem, whether they're magically aware or not.

If the runners fail? Nobody's going to be impressed. This is a great way of taking down a team which thinks their reputation is untouchable.

What happens if the awakened critters start multiplying and entering urban areas? Or hell, just ordinary ones? You can't run away from this problem. It's in your conduits, chewing on your cables.

[Koekepan]

Background:

"Ah 'member, when Zeke was still alive, how we'd go down to that ol' dam and throw in our lines. We useta bet, which one'f us would get to wrassle with ol' Whirlpool. He wuz a catfish, but he was a catfish the way a cougar is a kittycat. We called him Whirlpool for the way the water would swirl in when we tossed bread on the water and he'd come up and open up his jaws to eat.

"Anyways, now them company men wanta catch him for their fish farm. Don't seem right. Whirlpool oughta go down fightin', pullin' a fisherman in to drown, not miltin' out for millions of farm fry. Don't seem right to me, an' ol' Zeke woulda said so too."

The Parties:

The dam is a dam shared between three farms, because of old water rights and easements. It sits in a valley high in eastern Kentucky, just the way it has for over a hundred years. The farms now belong to different companies, but the water rights were sold along with the farms, so nothing really changed. If anything, the farm managers have been more scrupulous about maintenance than before.

Bluegrass Ventures, GriTeFo and Bubbles Aquaculture are the three farming companies in question. Bluegrass Ventures is connected to megacorps (Horizon and Ares) through ownership of a parent company, but the others aren't connected to any megas.

The local population is not concentrated, but dotted about in little villages here and there. There simply are no large settlements for at least a hundred miles. If you want to meet people, go to church or hang around the tack and feed, or bait and tackle stores.

The Problem:

Bubbles Aquaculture is a small outfit, which is combining greenhouses with fish farming in a virtuous and productive cycle. This is arguably good from a sustainability perspective, but the appearance of greenhouses and laying of concrete tanks rubs some of the locals the wrong way. Now they want to catch the best fish from the dam to seed their tanks, and while they've had some success, it's getting to be controversial. Fishing rights were always generally viewed as an incidental public prerogative, but never formally established, and while neither Bluegrass Ventures or GriTeFo give a damn about the fish, they're not happy that Bubbles Aquaculture is apparently pissing off the locals.

But by the letter of the law, Bubbles isn't doing anything wrong.

All Sentients Rights Organisation got word of the situation from the Matrix, and you will be completely amazed to hear that they decided that this was a situation which could only be improved by their direct involvement. They sent a small team of hard core activists, armed with small arms, to take out the evil exploiters. They're dithering about an actual frontal assault on Bubbles, but they haven't ruled it out yet. Funnily enough, nobody wants them there at all.

The Proposition:

Bubbles wants a fish. A big, sly, slippery, cunning old fish. Not awakened, but well over a hundred pounds. In his lips are a few old fishing hooks, with broken lines trailing from them.

Everyone else wants Bubbles out of business. The other farms don't want their attitude known, because it's bad for businesses to turn on each other, but annoying the locals is also bad for business. The locals want Bubbles out, because they're interfering with what is seen as a tradition. They're not poisoning the water, or tearing down old growth forests - they're just trying to catch a fish. The wrong fish.

This whole thing could come from multiple sides. ASRO might even try to hire the runners to do their dirty work.

The Facts:

It's pretty straightfoward. Bubbles has a team of fish wranglers trying to net Whirlpool. Whirlpool doesn't want to be netted. Nobody else is supporting them, and ASRO is occasionally taking potshots at the guys with the nets because they get wood every time their guns go off at bad people. Of course, it would help if they knew how to aim.

Some Complications:

A carp shaman is an obvious complication which adds a certain outraged je ne sais quoi.

Bubbles might be placated with genetic material from Whirlpool, with which they could clone him.

ASRO might have crossed swords with the runners before, and find them a more entertaining target for serious conflict than farmers.

Aftermath Ideas:

If the runners don't run exemplary personal information security on their front, they could easily (depending on the side they pick) find themselves publically painted as being responsible for keeping food out of the mouths of starving orphans, or personally responsible for the rape of Gaia.

[hermit]

After-Action report, part 1: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...t&p=1291275

The setup: The Runners are escorting a shipment of mysterious but highly valuable stuff in two vehicles, both courtesy of Johnson - an RV and an SUV. The wares are hidden somewhere within the vehicles. The scenery is changed a bit, as in it's just inside the Sioux Nation, with half the protagonists Sioux citizens and half from the nearby Pierce-Willoow Creek Reservation, including Maxine (who used to work for DocWagon in the nearby Lincoln-Omaha Conurbation).

The runners are on the run, since a hillbilly gang jacked their cars the other day posing as police officers, in a way that strongly hinted that the hillbillies had inside knowledge of their route and location. They suspect there's a mole in Johnson's crew (hint: that's not the problem) and have taken to back roads and crumbling freeways to drive as off the radar as possible.

The problem: On their first rest near Maxine's farm (owned by Meridional Agronomics), a few varmints - I have taken the Electric Marten from Parazoology for it's additional love of frying technology that it mistakes as delicious technocritters - took out both cars. Subsequently, the runners were stranded, and Maxine had a drone roll over to make them an offer.

The offer: "Look, your vehicles are fucked up, right? Say, I offer you use of my repair shop, and 25 bucks for each head of one of these pests. Bring me five thousand? A hundred and twenty-five thousand nuyen. And a bonus 1000 each if you find out where they're from."

The proceedings: Initially tracking down burrow after burrow, they soon started to just use commlinks as decoys and kill the critters. 31 in an hour. This got those with Survival skill thinking. They were reasonably sure most of them had migrated from Morningblossom's farm, so they went to investigate. After turning down free weed, but accepting the all-vegan dinner stew, they sat down and talked. Morningblossom knew the pests started showing up a month ago and came from a nearby shrubland, where the Broken Antlers tribe had it's territorry. Next session they'll investigate the antlers!

Additional Background and Changes: A minority pinkskin tribe, the Broken Antlers in my game weren't exactly the darlings of Cheyenne, so they got a shit deal, land-wise, and are upset. they're even more upset the Sioux government is letting a pinkskin company (Meridional is actually Italo-Arab, but they don't really discriminate there) farm land they consider rightfully theirs, though it is an Oglala holding in fact, and decided to rid the Earth Mother of this stain. they also aren't really fond of Moningblossom (a half-Lakota) and her co-workers/hippie commune because they do the Indian thing wrong, but the mechanized farms of Meitional? No way. Other than that, they're toxic because their lands are toxic, and have come to appreciate it that way.

Morningblossom is the daughter of a wealthy and influential tribal shaman and to daddy's chagrin a wiccan practitioner following the Great Mother. She did take over the old family farm that's been in their family from way back (the family has toughed it out as Indian farmers throughout the US, until they were forcibly relocated, and after the NAN's founding re-claimed their farm and lands, soiled as it was). Morningblossom has done her best to cleanse the land, with some help from the government and her tribe, but most of the land still is poisoned, courtesy of the Ressource Rush's fracking in the area.

Maxine is an employee of Meridional Agronomics, and has reasonably good, thouggh lightly strained, relations with Morningblossom. there's mutual respect, but each lives in their own world the other cannot really understand.

[Koekepan]

After-Action report, part 1: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...t&p=1291275

Thank you! I like the flavours you added. There's obviously a well-realised vision behind them, and I look forward to the next report.

[hermit]

After-Action Report, part 2: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...t&p=1291275

The setup: Having fought electric martens and aq couple other critters, the runners had found Morningblossom's farm. Indeed, Morningblossom had seen where the critters came from - Broken Antlers territorry. After staying a night at the hippie farm (which involved smoking the fine Chicago Grey they grow - one character said no to drugs and got herself thoroughly pissed instead - and a bit of adult proceedings for some characters), the runners are ready to go and explore the hell out of the broken antlers. And by explore, I mean shoot and get shot up.

The proceedings: The scouting runners soon found more martens (killed them dead) and then saw three greater thunderbirds rise - which they promptly took down. Three birdsplosions later, they're in the shrubby woodlands that is the toxin-soaked territorry of the antlers (courtesy of a Freedom Industries fracking-chemical storage facility a SAIM cell flattened in the Ghost Dance War - Freedom Industries is such an unbelievably cheesy name).

And then, a sniper shoots the mage into overflow. Failed surprise tests are a bitch.

I gained a lot of respect for the Springfield Arms M1A here. The sniper used a modded M1A (from GH 3). The sam critically failed his composure test for impulsiveness and spent the turn hosing down shrubberies and yelling things like "SHOW YOURSELF YOU MOTHERFUCKING DREKFACE". Vicky the adept managed to evade the second shot, but was downed next phase (though not fatally, the player just said he wouldn't resist knockdown). The sam, now managing his composure, takes a look, spots the sniper and downs him, then finds out his gun only has 7 ammo, oh no! Sniper-guy isn't out yet, but Vicky kills him in the end.

They find out the guy (who was wearing a post-apoc ghillie suit and had some toxic awakened compounds, which they looted off him as well as the M1A) is indeed one of the antlers, so now it's war. They treat their mage the turn before his overflow runs out and manage to stabilize him, then head off to Morningblossom, where he is patched up.

Next session will be very combat heavy, I think. A stand in a frontier farmhouse that is under attack by vicious, evil tribals. A true Western classic. Very much looking forward to that.

Additional Background and Changes: I decided to give the Antlers some more creep, and sicne I recently binge-watched True Detective, and their name ... it kinds fell together. I decided the toxic cabal is worshipping a doom-like but also pestilence-like hybrid mentor along the lines of the Yellow King, and aside from destroying the machine farm out of spite they want to raid Morningblossom's place anyway, though the arrival of the runners has hastened their plans considerably. Still, they have a bunch of cultists (tribals) at hand, and serious mojo to back them up.

Maxine can call in a fast response team (really Knight-errant mercs Meridional subcontracted, because they don't have the military manpower to cover every damn remote farm). She will very much need to, I think.

Chicago Grey plays a certain role in Maxine's cleansing efforts; she sells it to get necessary cash, and it drains heavy metals from the soil. Plus, they really like weed.

[Koekepan]

It just gets better and better.

Gun geek note: the .308 round is a very serious antipersonnel round, and with modern medicine even immediate medical care is still not foolproof at saving people who've been shot. It's still quite effective out to hundreds of yards, and against unarmoured targets it's a credible contender at 1000 yards and more, in the hands of a good shot. So yes, assuming Shadowrun medical care and body armour, this is a very credible outcome.

At ridiculous ranges (over a mile) I'd either take a .338 or a .50, or even for the old school buffalo hunters out there, a .45-70. But that is, as I say, ridiculous. At that point coriolis forces are playing a measurable role in trajectory.