Well, last night's game went poorly. I know where I screwed up, and will, hopefully. learn better.

But, I think I redeemed myself when everyone went, "That's it?" and started doing pre-emptive planning of their own stuff going on.

So, they framed a corporation responcible for this, and invested cash in one of their competetors.

Whereupon "Vic the Cabbie" gets a call from his Mob Connection going, "OMGWTFBBQ! The sky is falling, and I need you guys to do a job NOW!"

"OK."

"Go to this company, which is going bankrupt faster than Haley's Comet, and steal one of our personal items! I need you to steal Cow #42!"

"... ... ..."

"20,000 !!!"

"... OK."

Usually, I'd give a whole rundown of what happened, but hilarity ensued, and I'm going to now throw a question to the group to see if my idea was totally wack, or if you guys can come up with an even cooler reason as to why Cow #42 was important.

And, before you ask, "Is the cow magical?" was asked by someone that read "Knights of the Dinner Table", and Greg the Pixie Mage said, "No."

Cow #42 isn't actually a cow. It's an administrative, book keeping paint job, for a black/grey project/person/device/bacteria.

i think the runner team has already caught the cow.

about the only suggestion i can make (given it's owned by starback's coffee) is that said cow is genetically modified to produce their newest amazing coffee flavor or something like that.

It produces chocolate milk.


But anyways, you could have the thing carrying any number of potential bioware pieces. Or, it could be carrying a bunch of antigens or custom proteins. Its milk could act as K-10! Imagine feeding THAT to a horde of small children at preschool.

Well lets see.

Generic, profitable for the Johnson answer: Cow #42 is some kinda bio testbed or something or other.

Kinda Messed up answer: The J is into beastiality and #42 gave him a wink when he went on the factory tour a while back.

The answer where it depends on the players: It's a test. You read knights of the dinner table so you'd get that players, when faced with something the GM cares about, or a Gazebo, will tend to go to much into dealing with it. Many runner teams are the same. So they have the team grab the cow and then send some agents out into the matrix and chec with their contacts to see if anyone is doing searches for cows from the company, especially in regards to #42. They'll also check the cow out for any signs it was investigated.

If the runners just deliver the goods and don't ask questions they get complimented on it and their next run is something secret and sensitive to the Johnson.

If they did something to try and figure the cow out and get caught the J doesn't say anything and pays the money but then the next run is a burn as they get labled as untrustworthy by that J.


Either way the run after that features a situation where they would beinifit greatly from investigating their employer and quarry. Never let them turn their brains off or start following a formula.


Sixth world answer: It's a cog within a cog kind of thing. Think like the origional Harlequin adventure. For example maybe a semi sane free spirit said they'd work for someone if they could bring them the answer to a non sensical riddle.

But the person figured out an answer to "What can you drink from, ride, and divide by seven"

... That, is the most amazing answer to a riddle ever. I am going to totally steal that for my players.

Just because there really /is/ a cow #42 doesn't mean it isn't a cover for something

Decker checking financial records, "Uh... whoa, that's odd. They spend more money on this cow than all the other cows combined... but... it's just a cow right?" hilarity ensues.

You guys want to keep guessing, or shall I give the answer?

Aw. I thought you broke the session before the reveal and were looking for a reason.

Nah. I had a full reason for it, and it was an answer to a question the group had about the Cow while they had it.

I'll give a few hints and suggestions...

One: The Cow is being stolen for one of the Mafia Families.

Two: When Greg the Pixie Mage checked to see if the Cow was Magical, he insanely rolled his Astral Peception, and detected Bioware throughout the Cow. (Amazing as it was Deltaware!).

One of its spots look like Mickey Mouse?

My gut reaction is that its some kind of fabri-cow that produces some kind of enzyme laced milk.

Other thoughts:

• Its actually a former associate who's been permanently shape changed into a cow as a punishment.
• The cow is a living incubator for a particular type of bioware mod. It just hasn't be harvested yet.
• That much real beef must be worth quite a bit of nuyen.

Otherwise, I have no idea where you're going with this.

-paws

It's the gorram chocolate milk isn't it?

Hm. I think if the cow was a shapechanged metahuman, the spell would have been seen by the pixie stick. All I've got is that the cow is being used to smuggle bioware (per Paws), or the reason the bioware was delta grade was because the cow in question is actually a shifter (werecow?).

A cow shapeshifter? Oh dear...

-paws

It's a Beast of Resplendant Liquids!

Wait! It was an illegally modified race cow.

http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s2/neoncoax/1.jpg

'Ol number 42 needed to be brought in alive to prove that it had secretly been equiped with deltaware enhancements that had slipped past the officials.

Reminds me of a get-rich quick scheme in a SR game long, long ago.

We put a pain editor in a cow, then my sammy and another player's shaman just lead it around Seattle, selling fresh beef, cut to order.

I lop off the beef, the shaman heals the cow, and the cow never knows the difference...

So many close answers, but so far away.

OK, another hint...

I'm a Traditionalist.

My first guess was someone has put bioware into the cow to turn it into a biological bomb which they planned on blowing up at an agricultural fare a rival mob boss / gang leader / politician etc was at. But that might be a little too weird...

An Agricultural Fair? In SEATTLE?

In Snohomish. According to Runner Haven's (P107) it's got a fair bit of corporate argiculture there.

Edit - And the idea of an exploding cow bomb being used for a Mob hit is probably stranger than the idea of an argicultural fair!

Where do you think they got the cow in the first place? Snohomish.

Well, the group had been complaining that they focused on only four parts of town.

Curse you! I am now far too curious about what this cow was now.

On a random aside in an Non-Shadowrun game I was in once I had a herd of GM cows spliced with Frog DNA. So they produced hallucinogenic milk. The idea being to smuggle it via school milk trucks..... Of course to make sure the stuff worked I felt I /had/ to deliver a shipment of it to a school first.....

the johnson fell in love with the cow?
granted, the probability would rise with the proximity to the aequator, but it'S not unheard of either . .

The cow contains the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

Chris

Close. But, no, when I need a "Random Number" I usually come up with 42.

My Random Number Generator must be broken.

You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using Letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then Execute a debt/ equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The Annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. - No Balance Sheet provided with the release.
Then when the cow pies hit the economic fan you get a bunch of shmoes to steal one cow and write up a police report as to how all but one cow was stolen by the cattle rustlers.

There was a large herd. At least more than 42.

The Mob are secretly growing their deltaware implants inside cows.
Or they have clone body parts hidden inside and someone important needs a new organ pronto.

Oh, I know. They were actually supposed to get cow #24.

Or the family is playing a joke on Vic The Cabbie.

You know, I should have thought of that one.

Have the cow contain a baby clone of Vic. That would weird him out no end.

The mob has stopped feeding corpses to pigs, as they have meat-eating cows now.
Last victim was a vatjob ninja, hence the deltaware.

My guess would be close to the ninja one. The cow was modified with Bioware that would strengthen it's digestive enzymes. They need to get rid of it because it's cud still contains genetic evidence of it's last meal, and the last person they off'ed. They need the cow taken in by this team so that a replacement can be put in it's stall to hide the evidence.

So many wonderful ideas I wish I used.

BTW, my group loves the ideas you're giving as well.

The real reason has to be that augmented cows don´t taste like chicken at all. Deltaware cows are good 'eating.

Or there is the superhero angle: harmless cow at day, "The Horned Avenger" at night. Hmm, troll cow shifters... it is one, yes?

It is one, no.

I've skipped ahead after the first 1/2 a page, however, in regards to why cow #42 was/is important...


It's a big diversion for the *real* job. While the runners are sneaking the cow out, they are more than likely to
(or have if the adventure is over) engage the security guards. These distractions were a perfect cover for the team
that was in there to extract some other research/item. In fact the other team that went in could know this and during
the adventure can lead security guards to the player group. Worse comes to worse, the two teams can accidently run
into each other and the players could have to figure out why the 2nd team is there.

Depending on the make up of the party, and how closely they examined the "item" is it possible to say the cow is/was
a spirit of somekind instead of actually a cow?

Wait, the cow used to be a biodrone superassasin for the mob and now is enrolled in the witness protection programm!

the team's mage assensed the cow and got enough hits to determine it had a bunch of bioware in it. the odds of it being a spirit are pretty slim, i'd say

Engulfed by spirit cow.... the horror.

Can't... resist....

In communist Russia, cow eats....

carnivorous awakened cows fighting for bovine freedom.

I think though it could actually be a brain farm. Cows have cyberbrains and are used for processing valuable corp information. Cow #42 is Fat Tony hiding out from the mob.

Awright, Canny, spill it. I'm beginning to think your cow doesn't actually have a raison d'être and you're either fishing for ideas or, and this I find more likely, leading us on. Why you gadda be a tease, mon? =ib

Everyone else ready to give up as well?

Classes started this week, and I have driven over 2k miles in the past 3 weeks, what little clever I had left in me was exhausted with my Douglas Adams reference. I give.

Chris

Alright, I'll be nice. Was planning on letting this run until Friday, but this is close enough.

The Cow was fitted with custom Deltaware Stomachs and Udders to process Cocaine. You feed it Coca, let it graze as normal, and out came a mixture of Milk and Cocaine. (The "Traditionalist" thing: "Which one of my Droogs wants to hit the Milk Bar?").

It's an attempt to come up with a low-cost processing procedure for the drug to break the South American Cartels hold on the product. And, even if a failure in that respect, the Family in charge of the project was sure they could market it as a "All-Organically Processed Drug" for the richie-rich folks that care about that sort of thing at a massive mark-up. (Hollywood would be a HUGE market!).

Unfortunetly, this meant the cow was "High on it's own Supply" for the entire game, and freaking out left right and centre!

Okay, that's cool.

CanRay.Karma++;

Is that idea cool or what? Congratulations!

You never denied that deltaware cows are good eating... I might have another marketing idea for your trick.