After Jimmy and Trog gets some suits, they all meet up. No one is stupid enough to bring any firearms through the checkpoint, and they get in without a hassle.

They speak to the chica bartender, and Uzz charms her with a smile, so they get up to the Blue Room where Johnson waits with no problem. After a short introduction, the Johnson presents the case:

Find an old optical disk stolen from his employer before it is sold on the black market. The disks contains music data that has great sentimental value to the Johnson's employer.

Of course, the team thinks this a bit odd - they don't get to know exactly what's on the disk, they don't get to check out the crime scene - it seems like a needle in a haystack. However, the Johnson informs them that the disk itself is very rare on today's market, and that someone is trying to sell it to people in the Seattle music industry - which is a limited group of people. Just by snooping around they should be able to locate the disk he wants.

The Johnson also impresses upon them that the disk is not be copied or spread around at all, and expects them to destroy any copies found that they don't give him.

Mr. Johnson offers 10k, half in advance. That's very nice for such a green group, but he got them recommended by Uzz's contact. Uzz still manages to drive the price up to 11k total, althuough they only get 5k upfront.

Now for some legwork - Jimmy searches the matrix, while Uzz makes his contact ask around for anything about this special disk - and in a few hours they learn that NaBo - the ork rockstar - has recieved a mail regarding a disk with the recording of an old dead rock star. They also learn that NaBO has a concert tonight in the Barrens!

Since this is their only lead, they start planning. Jimmy wants to get in touch with NaBo himself, and then make a deal with him to learn who sent the mail in the first place. This isn't easy though, as NaBo is a star and not available to everyone asking - and sending a message through his fan mail won't work.

Uzz and Trog simply wants to go in the concert and steal the commlink, but Jimmy comes up with a plan: To fake an audio recording on an assassination attempt on NaBo set during the concert - this is easily done by using Uzz's adept power to duplicate any voice, and make it sound like Black Rock hires an assassin to kill NaBo for "thinking he IS something".

They try to get in touch with NaBo by going to his former gang - The Black Fangs. But they can't help them other than telling them that NaBo is driving around with corp guys in his mobile star trailer, and that Jager is dealing with security.

So they go to the concert place in the Barrens - warehouse. It's still early in the day, so there are people all over the place rigging it up, making a stage, bar, delivering porta potties etc. Uzz sees and records a converstation between Jager (NaBo's security chief) and a lone star officer, where a bribe takes place.

He then wants to go in for a look - goes to the Port-a-Potties™ truck, acting like he's one of them, and goes into the front seat for a jacket and cap with the corp logo. A worker asks him out, but believes he's a worker late for work (good disguise check).
Uzz walks into the warehouse easily fooling the Troll guards stationed outside, and scouts out the locations including the place where NaBo is most likely to be right before and after the concert.

Trog wants to buy some tickets, and notices some black-market sellers nearby. He's shocked and insulted by the price (500 ), and tries to intimidate the seller to give him 3 tickets for 100! Trogs lack of charisma, combined with the seller's ready Ares Predator and 3 buddies nearby means the attempt fails miserably, and Trog get's blacklisted by the black marketeers - Trog backs off, in a rare glint of common sense and let's it be.

Uzz wants to have a date with him, so he checks up his old sweetheart in the Vatos, Claudia. In fact, she's already bought 2 tickets and wanted to ask him out in the first place!

It's now evening, and they still haven't managed to get in touch with NaBo. Jimmy mails Jager concerning an attempt on NaBo's life, saying he has evidence. He even find a good sniper spot where an assassin could kill NaBo as he walks in the back door, and warns Jager about it. Unfortunately, Jager's commlink is off - he logged off when he started to get spammed by mails and calls, and won't get any until after the concert from anyone he doesen't already keep on his favorites list and from his gangers.

Uzz wants company, and buys two tickets for 1000 , then proceeds to find a pretty ork girl, offers her the ticket and the company of Trog, which she accepts (being a great fan and not having any ticket!). Together the two pairs go to the concert, while Jimmy waits outside.

The concert is great fun, and they drink and listen to the music and have general good fun - especially Trog is in his right environment They want to get backstage though, so Uzz starts stir up a few large drunk trolls and gives them the idea of get past the security and metal bars, get upstage to stagedive! This causes enough disruption that they manage to get backstage.

They sneak past the lone guard here easily, and goes right for NaBo's dressing room - which to their suprise is occupied! An ork guard and 3 scantily clad ork girls are getting hot and heavy on NaBo's couch. When he noticed them and confronts them, the Trog's date whispers into his ears "get him". She doesen't need to ask him twice. Trog takes the ork in his massive arms with wired-reflexes speed, and proceeds to squeeze him unconscious. Tossing him into a corner, Trog takes his place on the couch with now 3 ork hotties who are too high and drunk to mind, while Uzz picks up NaBo's commlink lying in the floor. Uzz and Claudia goes down, find a nice corner and proceeds to make out themselves...

When the concert is over, NabO and co comes out, ignores the oblivious pair making out in the corner, and comes upstairs to his dressing room where he finds Trog making BIG love with no less than 3 groupies. Since he's helped himself with the booze in the room he's oblivious to danger and wants to party with NaBo... with the still unconscious Black Fang guard lying in the room! NaBo's security proceeds to throw out Trog who is too drunk to fight back.

Ah, ah perfect concert


Now they have the commlink - and get's the email easily. It doesen't tell them much though, and Jimmy lacks a Track program to trace it. After some ado, he get's hold of his hacker contact who traces the email for him to a hacker named Zipper.

After some searching they find that Zipper is a female dwarf hacker who hangs out at Cathcode Glow.

Jimmy insist on going there alone, (so much for hacking the party members's commlinks), and tries to find Zipper to make a deal with her. Since she's not the only dwarf chick hacker in the place, he initially can't find her. Jimmy also fails his etiquette check to learn her location, and the other hackers look at him as someone out of place. After all, even if he's a hacker, he's nothing like these old-timers with their outdated antique equipment, and goes about in hidden mode when most communication here is done by free chat in active mode.

In the end though, he figure that one of the dwarf girls couple playing a game together must be Zipper, as he knows she's a lesbian. Now he calls Uzz, who calls Zipper by her commcode number (gotten from the hacker contact), and pretends to be a girl who found some comlinks to hack). Jimmy watches the couple, scans and detects the right comlink, decrypts the call and even uses his sniffer program to intercept the call. Now he knows how she looks like.

He hangs around until Zipper and her girlfriend goes home, and learns where she lives by shadowing them.

Next day Uzz and Trog meets up with Jimmy and tries to get hold of Zipper. They call the buzzer on her apartment block, but she doesen't answer, as she was up all night playing with her girl, then came home to play alot more....
They follows someone in in the morning, but don't get past the maglock at Zipper's apartment floor, so instead they decide to wait until she comes out.

Zipper's girl leaves first, then she comes herself. Trog walks past her while Uzz walks up to her to talk to her. She is quite initmidated by the presence of Trog alone, and Uzz's calm smiling confidence and his remark "oh, that's just trog" when she glances nervously at the massive cybered troll doesen't help. She spills the beans, telling the PCs about her employed Kerwin Loomis and the disk he wants to sell. She tries to contact and warn Loomis, but Uzz simply grabs her comlink and accessories. In the end she promises never to tell anyone about this, get's her commlink back, and proceeds to leave town WITHOUT warning Loomis.

Ok, now the team get's a new location: Coda. They go their right away, Uzz and Trog walks in while Jimmy goes to the backdoor to guard it, but he fails to observe the Shangri-la retrieval team.

Uzz and Trog asks the bartender for Loomis, but he sees this through the security camera and proceeds to escape while sending the Thrasher gangmembers at them. Jimmy observes Loomis escaping to the junkjard, and follows suit. Meanwhile, Trog and Uzz talks to the gangers, and when getting nowhere simply leaves when they get the report from Jimmy that "Elvis has left the building".

They leave and starts for the junkyard near the hole in the fence, while the gangers follows suit. Loomis trips over rubble and cuts his leg, and the gangers comes after Trog and Uzz to stop them. They discuss a bit more (the gangers are not eager to start a conflict with such a large troll), when Trog and Uzz notices the Shangri-la team running towards the junkyard going through the main gate. Since their objective is Loomis, and they're triangulating his commlink, they ignore the runners and the gangers.

Jimmy get's told though, and proceeds to escort Loomis away from the corp guys and back through the hole. Jimmy is a good thief and sneaks easily, but Loomis sucks big time. Luckily, on 13 dice the Shangri-la team fails their perception check miserably, and they get across unseen. During this time Jimmy pickpockets Kerwin while supporting him, and get's the disk.

Now in a dashing act of negotiation, Uzz convinces the gangers that this team is after Loomos (true enough) and that they'll help Loomis into safety if the gangers can stall the corp guys for awhile. Scoring a critical success (6 hits) on a -4 leadership test, Uzz convinces them!

Trog lifts the injured Loomis and runs away with the team, while the gangers make a distraction. Although the gangers are easily incapacitated by the security team's tasers and the mages' Stunbolt, they runner team gets away!

Away from the corp guys, Uzz and Trog asks Kerwin for the disk, which to his suprise he doesen't have! He thinks he's lost it, and Trog and Uzz are upset that he lost it. During this time he reveals than the disk was from his dad K-Spot, and contains JetBlack's music. Still Loomis is scared and tired and only wants to get away from it all.

Now the team has the disk. The smart thing to do would be to call Mr. Johnson right away and set up the delivery. They don't doubt the have the right disk, the deal fits, the mail fits, and Loomis even said it was JetBlack's music.

So that's exactly what they do. Although Jimmy realizes that they might be able to play the disk using the Cathcode Glows' machines, he tells the rest of the team it can't be done.

Mr. Johnson is unavailable at first, and the team has to wait 3 days before they can meet him and Infinity again, but they simply hide and stay low for the duration. The Shangri-la team doesen't have enough data on the runners to track them, and JetBlack and his people never learned about the disk in the first place since the team never visited Marli Bremerton.

The team met with Johnson, and needless to say he was pleased. They got their 5k bonus in additon to the 6k promised, and the chance to work for him again - and 7 karma for their outstanding performance.

A van from Aztechnology drives tonight. Steal the cyberware parts in the van and bring it back, and you get a share (30%). They also got 1500 nuyen in advance.

Of course they were a bit disappointed about the inital downpayment, last time they got 5k, but Singh convinced them that it was an easy quick job over in one evening.

He was right. Although the party spent a couple hours planning it all (several hours in real time), they did manage to come up with a few nice plans. They knew where and when the van left, how it looked like. They also checked up on armored vans in the matrix, and found out Aztech often uses certain models, with 2 bucket seats, 3 folding seats in the storage section, and 3 optional firing ports.

Basically, I had to update the stats of the armored truck in the module, and just made it a Bulldog step van with armor 12 (better than limousines, worse than ares citymaster), improved speed, pilot 3 (with autosoft 3 program) and the 3 firing ports. Since the driver was a rigger, I gave it a vehicle control rig as well.

Jimmy and Trog rode out on his bike to check out the route, and found a couple of nice ambush places were they could jam the vehicle enough for them to attack it. Jimmy also hacked an old crappy car for them to block the armored van with.

Plan 1: The GridGuide makes sure that traffic runs smoothly in Seattle, and in theory all vehicles are connected to it. Because of innovations in AR and wireless matrix, traffic signs and lights are things of the past, as the GruidGuide system can just control the flow of traffic itself much smarter and efficiently than having the drivers look at signs and lights. (Well this is my take on it at least, everyone can run their own Shadowrun world).

Thus, Jimmy wanted to spoof the signal from the GridGuide to certain cars, making the cars believe that the signal for stop came from the Grid. Basically he could hack the Grid itself and control traffic totally, but I adviced him that security would be VERY high and that hacking the cars themselves would be easier.

The plan was simply to make the car in front of the Aztech van stop, so that it would stop as well. Then make cars from other directions to drive, so they would crash into the other cars making a traffic mess.

Plan 2: The mage Simon summoned an Air Elemental force 4, and wanted it to use it's accident power on the armored van. That would force a crash test, with -4 (the force of the elemental). Once crashed, it would be vulnerable to attack.

Plan 3: Uzz was walking the street, toying with the Gridguide at a zebra crossing, sending AR signals that he wanted to cross the street, thus stopping vehicle traffic in certain directions. Additionally, he had a Predator loaded with APFSDS rounds, one with Ex-EX, and if all else failed he would shoot the driver through the bullet-proof glass.

Plan 4: Trog was also on foot, ready to engage the armored truck with his combat axe. Basically he said "I've got a plan" "What?" "Combat Axe!"

The plans... succeeded. Jimmy and Uzz caused chain crashes (at rather low speeds but nevertheless blocking traffic). Most importantly, Simon's spirit managed to use his accident power and the driver, a rigger in cold sim no less actually failed his crash test and ran straight into the edge of a building.

The driver and the 3 guards with AK-97s were all suprised.

Simon then used his car to drive behind the truck to block the truck from reversing, Trog ran to the rear of the truck and simply chopped a whole in the back door (He did 16 damage with it!), Uzz ran after and shot twice through the darkened bulletproof glass wall seperating the driver from the cargo area. Even at -6 he hit the driver and the second bullet killed him. The suprised guards could only grasp their rifles and shout alarm before Uzz shot down 2 more of them. Trog made the whole bigger, and then Uzz shot and killed the last guards.

It was all over in 3 seconds. Trog retrieved the cases of cyberware (2), and they fled the scene of the crime. They met up a bit later, used a tag eraser they got from Singh to remove the security tags on the cases, and then met up with mr. Singh in the Barrens. They only got 6000 for the cases though - mr. Johnson though it was more. Still, it was pretty easy money and no one got hurt (except the aztech personell and the material damage on cars and psychological scarring of the people at the scene of the crime, but that didn't seem to matter to this team).

Unbeknownst to the team however, a lone high tech spy drone recorded the attack on the van, getting good image of Uzz and Trog. This was sent by Mr. Johnson, which is Special Agent Simon Juàrez of the UCAS FBI! He saw the team in action at Council Island, and kept the video records from the investigation to use for blackmail. He also though that these guys must be pretty resourceful, and spied on them to learn who the members were.

He also hired Mr. Singh to hire the party for the Aztech job to get more damning evidence against the team, and will try to hire other fixers to give them a third job... but not until some time has passed to make sure they won't get suspicious.

The caller's name is Ellory Whitecastle, and he can offer Uzz and the team a well paid job judging from the fee he get's from Mr. Johnson to contact them. He tells them to meet 11pm at pier 36, Tacoma.

Uzz and the team discusses this, and everyone agrees that they need the job, especially if it's lucrative. Trog rides out to Tacoma to check up on the meeting place with Jimmy, and they find that it's very hard to ambush someone there or spy on people there, and find no hidden cameras or wireless devices.

They meet Mr. Johnson who tells them that he doesen't want the tridstar Euphoria to attend some events to promote the Strice Foods product Amber Gel. Thus the PCs are to detain Euphoria before her first event (in 2 days), and entertain her until the last event, when she is to be released. The girl is not to be harmed!

The Johnson offers them 10k nuyen each, half when Euphoria is gone and the rest after she is released and alive and well. Uzz starts his usual bargaining even though this is almost more money than he has got from all their previous jobs together! He brings up the fact that kidnapping an international trid star is risky business, and that he wouldn't normally want to do this to her. Basically instead of having Johnson offer the team 20k each (as the module says) and the risking the Johnson LOWER his offer if he gets good bargain roll, I just made him lowball the inital offering. It also fits since most of the team has low and squatter lifestyles.

Johnson and Uzz gets equal number of hits, thus the deal is 20k each, allthough delivery is unchanged - they don't get anything in advance. The team accepts anyway, because it's a shitload of nuyen, but also because they want to spend time with Euphoria. Euphoria baby, Euphoria!

The team get's a place to hide the girl - Royal Meadows apartments in Redmond. They check it out. It's a shithole, so the team decides to hide her somewhere else, although the money still will be delivered to Royal Meadows.

Simon (the sorcerer) starts to check out Pacific Towers where Euphoria lives on 21st floor astrally. He finds the tall building to be unwarded, and starts going through room for room in Euphoria's penthouse suite. There he encounters a spirit guarding what probably is Euphoria he leaves them alone after assensing them. He bothces the assensing on the spirit, and think what's really a fire elemental to be beast spirit.

He checks out the other rooms, and this time he encounter 2 spirits and a sleeping man. One of them, also a force 5 fire elemental pursues Simon and attacks him astrally. Simon almost gets knocked out cold, but barely manages to escape.

Meanwhile Uzz uses his contacts to get information about ephorias security, and Jimmy uses the matrix as much as he can.
They learn that Knight Errant has got the job, and that she also has a Bodyguard named Osprey, and also a Mage named Stone. Simon says there is a Shaman as well (because of the "beast" spirit), but they cannot find any more evidence of that.

The team finds a rat and goes back to the old Renraku secret lair they used to live in before the gas/disease thing (see previous post). Trog puts on a gas mask and throws the rat through the front door gently... he forces the rat to stay inside until it is obvious no one is dying... the place seems safe. However, there is no power, and the team cannot go further in than the first room. Trog goes to buy some food and drink, and Uzz buys some survival gear so they can camp. Trog also buys Amber Gels because he remembers commecial were it seemed Euphoria liked it (silly idea but he's actually right - she loves the stuff).

Now Uzz, Jimmy and Trog goes to Pacific Towers. Uzz has rented a suite there for a week, and Trog acts like his bodyguard while Jimmy seems like some drunken hanger on.

Meanwhile Simon rests in the crappy apartment to get over all the stun damage he got from the astral combat, and to set up a ward there.

While Uzz checks in at the Pacific Tower, they all checks out the place as well and discreet as they can, looking for security measures. They find out that there is an elevator that goes to each floor, and that there is a thumb reader on it that allows right person to go to the right floor. The backup fire stairwell is similarily guarded (there wasn't one in the module but I felt that it would be silly not to have some kind of fire escape).

They also find out that all the elevators are controlled from the security station in the lobby, which is wired and not connected to the matrix - this security setup is more than 20 years old. In the lobby is a single security guard (with a Panicbutton to Lone Star) and a courier for room service.

The team check out their own suite for security, finds out if they can get from there to Euphorias penthouse (they can't as they can't get a grapple gun soon enough). They check out the possibility for using Levitate spell as well.

In the end, after hours upon hours of planning, the team decides a frontal assault.
Uzz goes in disguised, shoots both the security guard and the courier with his newly aquired tasers before they can react. So far no alarm.

Jimmy comes in, also disguised, and starts to work on the computer system. After a few seconds, he has hacked in, tripped the alarm, fought and destroyed a black IC, turned off the alarm, found the security code to Lone Star after defusing a Data Bomb, and then switched to AR to call Lone Star and abort the alarm.
He also turns off the cameras and gets the code to all the doors in Euphorias penthouse. Sounds easy, but he used 3 or 4 edge to accomplish this!

Uzz, Trog and Jimmy takes the elevator up to the penthouse, and goes in. They encounter a guard, but Uzz takes him down with yet another taser shot before he can react.

In the living room they encounter 3 more guards who are also taken down before they can do anything, and one is killed by Trog's supressed SMG. They rushed into her bedroom, and used neuro-stun to sedate her while Simon sicked his force 4 elemental to attack the one guarding Euphoria (actually only providing her with spell defense but they didn't know that).

They quickly leave the building, Jimmy erases all traces of them including all data that Uzz had ever rented a room there (in addition to 4-6 more random stories with tenants). They go out to their car that they stole an hour ago, and drives to the Barrens.