Hi folks, i thought i'd subject you all to a bit of fiction I wrote to show my characters how things are shaping up in the game world around them both because of and inspite of their actions. The protagonist Kevin Blackwood is a Knight Errant operative who has slowly been rising through the ranks fo the company in spite of basically being kind of the equavalent of Jim Gordon in Gotham city. Well Jim Gordon if he was also moderately wealthy to hire shadowrunners to suppliment his interests. He's been both obstacle and contact to the PC's and their relationship is complicated as some weeks they'll be working for him, and some runs have had them working directly against him. Also one quick note, in our game due to a geographical mistake we have Omaha as being a treaty ran by the tribe of the same name nominally aligned to the NAN. Surrounded by UCAS territory. Comments are welcome and you guys are being subjected to a bit rougher draft so there is some grammar stuff in there. But sometimes you just gotta write you know.

I don't trust people, so therefore I need to buy my own damn soy milk." That's the thought that was running through Kevin Blackwood's head an answer to his own query on why he was standing in line at a stuffer shack after four hours of meetings and a press conference, and another ten hours of trying to get some actual work done. He could hire a house keeper, but he didn't like giving anyone else access to his apartment. He'd even hacked his landlord's account off the maglock three times now. He could assign a drone to do it but as a professional rigger he knew that drones could be hacked and exploited so instead of a gallon of milk and the kelp chips he liked he wouldd end up with a bomb one of these days. All that meant was; Knight Errant's Deputy Chief for Vice Crime in Omaha NAN needed to stop at the stuffer shack and get his own milk. On the whole it seemed a small but annoying price to pay for a safe place to sleep at night. He flashed the bored looking clerk a tusky grin as his PAN rolled off the credit for his modest purchases the auto-bagger getting everything ready to go for him in short order. The clerk nodded and waved him through. "Night detective." He said pleasantly, the two men had gone through this ritual a couple times a week for the past three years.
"Take care Joe." Blackwood said on his way out to his car in the parking lot. His AR was already flashing warning signals detecting a congregation of people who had arrived on motorcycles and in pickup trucks. There were ten of them in all uniformly orks and trolls. He didn't need his AR to tell him that they were wearing Sons of Sauron colors, which could mean a number of things considering the number of false flag operations and other things going on in gang land these days.

"Chief Blackwood, a pleasure to meet you. Me an' the boyz here we'd like to have a quick chat about some of the things you and the Knights have been doing to our boys. We'd like to file a bit of a citizen's complaint as it were, you seem to go after us a bit harder then you go after everyone else round these parts." The leader a hulking ork with a heavy clipped Russian accent to his English spoke. It seemed the reports that the Vory was backing the Sons were spot on.
"I'm available at police plaza for appointments through my secretary but being as I'm here and you're here I'll gladly correct a misconception or three as you folks are new to town. First off, I persue everybody, it's kinda my thing." Blackwood said through clenched teeth his systems already picking up the slow circle being made around him. This could get messy very quickly. "Your little club just happens to have been making the most noise right now which tends to prioritize things for me. Two your facing an entrenched criminal structure who like to golf and buy nice things for my bosses and other folks in the department so while going after other syndicates I have to do almost everything in person or by a hand picked crack team of officers who are as crazy as I am." Kevin made a slight shrugging gesture which caused several to reach for weapons allowing to notate who among the group had guns and were twitchy to use them. The leader at least didn't respond. This at least was a man he could deal with and hopefully not have it end in violence. "But dealing with you guys you'd be amazed at how much my fellow officers and the government authorities are falling all over themselves to bring you down." He shrugged again. "So yes if it feels down I'm beating up on you guys unfairly I'd say it's a matter of leverage." He set his groceries down on the trunk of his car and turned back to face the young men and women, trolls and orks, wasting their lives in the gang life. Choosing life of violence, he understood acutely that he certainly received more opportunities then these people growing up. He was the son of a council member and shaman, at the same time he was contemptuous of them. When people looked at him, no matter how intelligent he was no matter how professional he was, people would always end up seeing these people standing around him, see their shadow cast over him. He sighed looking up to the cameras that covered the parking lot and the drones hovering nearby. "Last thing you guys havn't figured out, this isn't the barrens of Seattle or Vladivosk or whever your from, this is Omaha, a good part of it no less. We're the most wired and controlled city outside of Manhattan and you're trying to shake down a Deputy Chief on camera. You get one chance to walk away now or your all going to jail." He crossed his arms, waiting for a decision, hoping they would make the right one.
The leader grinned at him. "Well then I spose you should know we got a boy who can deal with the camera's and we know something about leverage too. Speaking of which I think you need a lesson in what leverage we can put on you, now we aint gonna kill ya, or even hurt you that bad like. But the guys your used to like to play all nice like, an' we aren't that kinda people." The leader grinned as two huge trolls grabbed the officer from either side, they literally hadn't been there a second before so Blackwood figured it was magic, his tacsoft guessed some kind of concealment spell and noted the new combatants and also reported no less then three meshed jammers operating in the area. The leader backed slightly away as a hulking troll with chains wrapped around his fists approached banging them together and leering at Blackwood. The look on his face changed quite suddenly when the troll holding his left arm screamed in pain and alarm as a few thousand volts found their way to his central nervous system, Without missing a beat the officer lifted the slumping trolls body in the vice grip of his cybernetic arm and tossed him at his would be assailant like a three hundred pound sack of potatoes. His flesh and blood arm, while not capable of the same strength was certainly stronger then what was expected as he ripped it out of the trolls grasp and hammered his elbow into the man's groin as he went to kneel. He extended the baton in his flesh and blood hand as he drew it off the belt and drew his predator in the other. He rarely had the opportunity to employ FireFight outside the dojo, he hadn't been looking for a fight, but now that it was inevitable he was going to try and enjoy it. The tricky thing would be not killing anyone. He set it as a personal goal and launched himself at the ork woman closing in on his left with a shotgun.

Conventional wisdom held that a paramilitary trained cyber or magically aided combatant can disassemble your average lightly cybered street gang in some cases single handedly. Even they would have trouble with ten to one odds all at once. DC Blackwood was a former Sioux Wildcat and Ares Firewatch commando cybered with delta grade combat gear. A gang of street muscle like this Sauron war band was more trouble to write up the after action report then actually to fight.

The fight lasted longer then expected two of the gangers were actually cybered or magically enhanced to the point where they could match him for speed if not for actual skill. In the time it had taken to deal with all the people with shotguns or other weapons he was actually worried about the leader and presumably the mage and maybe the hacker had sped away. Now he had a problem. A motorist who had been hiding in his car had been pulled out and a wide eyed and possibly tempo'd up ganger had a gun to his head.
"I'm not going back to jail." The ork said one tusk broken by a punch to the face he'd taken during the fight. He had the wild eyed look of desperation as he pressed the barrel painfully into the human males neck and grasped the man's artfully tattered Mariah Mercury shirt. "I walk or this breeder gets it."
Kevin wiped some of the blood from his nose, he'd not come through the fight completely without a scratch but nothing major was injured. He shook his head emphatically.
"I can't let you do that." He kept his gun lowered, as he suspected if he brought it to bear it would cause the young man to panic. "Just let him go, if you shoot him I'll have to shoot you, you put the gun down we can work a deal maybe for testimony, but I can't let you walk."
The ork ganger snorted heavily. "Yah right! You may of turned your back on your kind for some nice chrome and a cushy job in the master's house, but I'm an ork born and bred. So what's the answer cop, you gonna trade this breeders life to put a bullet in onna your own kind?"
"No, but I'll trade your life for his." It was a trid-worthy quip and Blackwood immediately regretted saying it, but the only point to this whole conversation other then trying not to end this with a gun shot was to give his gear time to cut through the ECM. The high velocity round dispersed enough kinetic energy into the orks head to not only release a mist cloud like one saw in movies but send his body careening into the pavement comically. Blackwood hadn't been able to raise his own weapon but the sniper drone on the roof had landed and set up the moment it had detected an armed group approaching. The only reason it hadn't turned the scene below into a blood bath was the stand-by order already given before the Jammers were activated. Kevin walked over and kicked the pistol away form the corpse and then turned to check on the victim.

It was supposed to have been just a milk run, but with the tempo trade and other factors lighting up the under world he didn't believe he'd have any of those anytime soon. It was time to make some calls.

Edited to fix some formating stuff, stupid Office

Cool stuff

Am I alone in seeing a formatting disaster with badly insufficient line breaks and a whole bunch of odd characters replacing everything but letters?

Uh, no, you're not. Its really weird.

That's really wierd i could have sworn it wasn't doing that when i preview posted, let me see if i can clean it up.

I'm guessing this qualifies. It looked fine yesterday afternoon when I read it. (http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=28366)