As the title says. Learned about them tangentially from Ancient Files while looking up something else. Any stats? What's the story behind them? Who's on "the team?"

Dunkelzahn's personal runner team. Detailed in the Dragonheart novels.

Ryan Mercury- Drake Physical Magician male
Axler- Human Street Sam female
Jane-in-the-box- Human Decker female
Grinder(?)- Dwarf Street Sam male
Talon- Human Mage male was part of them but broke off. They had and lost many mages.

All I can remember off the top of my head.

They were all official PC's, except the mage, who was a red shirt.

??? Sorry, not familiar with the red shirt term (outside of the NCAA).

Where are they now? If they were working for The Big D are they now working for Nadja? Where there ever published stats?

Thanks!

"Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Ensign Ricky are beaming down to a dangerous alien world. Guess who's not coming home?"

It's a reference to Star Trek - to show the grave peril the crew was in, someone must get killed by the monster/bad guy of the week. Of course, it was never one of the main cast, who mostly wore Gold or Blue uniforms. The Red-shirted security team, however, was fair game, and ruthlessly killed week after week...while the Heroes escaped unharmed again and again.

It has entered popular culture as a way to refer to NPCs who are only there to take a bullet or "find a trap". If you're the only one on the team not issued a namebadge and your Orientation Manual is entitled "I'M EXPENDABLE! ...and so are you!"...you might be a red shirt.

I believe Grinder founded the Red Hot Nukes, a Seattle gang. They fight with the Rusted Stilettos alot.

ah yes, the gang with the initiation rite where one have to disable a ticking bomb.

Instead of Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a Reneck if..." line of comedy, you could start the, "You might be a Redshirt if..." line.

Ah, many thanks. And I'm all for the you might be a red shirt thread. It sounds hilarious.

Two links regarding "Redshirts"...

• You Might Be A Redshirt
• Wikipedia: Redshirt

-M&P

Think they are different Grinders. The Assests Inc Grinder was definately augmented he had an articulated arm IIRC. While the Red Hot Nukes Grinder was a physad.

Assets Inc now runs for the Draco Foundation.

Entirely possible. Is the Assets Grinder a dwarf? That could help determine

IIRC Wasn't Jane in the Box trapped in the matrix? That would leave just three team members.

You might be thinking of Alice, wife of the former President (Hauffner, Kauffner, something like that, drawing a blank currently). Jane-in-the-box spoke with Alice as I recall.

So, they're currently taking missions for the Draco Foundation. Any canon references to them? I find the group idea fascinating and am looking for plot hooks.

The Assets Grinder is a dwarf yes. He has obvious cyber though, while the Red Hot Nuke Grinder iirc is a physad.



Not that I recall. Now I have to reread the novels and my old books to try to find something. Only thing I seem to remember is a brief mention in a bit of shadowtalk of Nadja Daviar having a hunky mystery man with her at some function or another. Might have been in YotC.

That would be Ryan "Mary Sue" Mercury their referring to. THe problem with asset's at least out of the box is their an established team with a core roster (plus Talon). If you wanted to use an established shadow organizaiton for hooks to get PC's involved with I respectfully suggest outfits like Argus or Matador/Picador's outfit. (whose name sscapes me at the moment) Granted they are intelligence and mercenary companies respectively but all the more reason for them to be interested in retaining Shadowrunners to assist them or to round out their skill sets.

Good advice. I'm actually thinking the runners are sent on another typically amoral mission and run afoul of a more powerful team doing the "right" thing. (In our game Draco Foundation are the "good" guys - what are others doing with them?)

Having a rival runner group to compete with can be fun. In a Denver game I'm running there is another group in town that the PCs have had to deal with in the past. They first met them at a hand-off, they've competed with them to get a job, at some point I will put them on the other side of the same job. So far, both sides have kept it professional and not made enemies regardless of the situation. For those of you that've seen the movie "Things to do in Denver When You're Dead," the NPC runner team is based around thsoe characters when they were in their prime (before the movie).