In the process of setting up for tonight's session I realized I cant find the notes i've kept on my campaign up till this point. As such I retyped them just to keep things straight and thought I'd post them at least in brief tonight.
Disclaimer 1: My games are high octane, they run like a spy thriller and action movie. I punish stupidity and poor planing but not actually discharging firearms or explosives.
Disclaimer 2: I rend and rape the canon material or even real life to make things work. Story and common sense are my only masters, as such I've taken liberties with some aspects but remained wholly faithful in others. As such if you think you've got a nice "that could never happen" moment needless to say I disagree.
The setting: The setting at least to start is Omaha which just to play with things a bit is a NAN territory surrounded by UCAS lands. Despite this the tribal council that runs it sided with the US during the ghost dance war so their not perfectly popular with either side. They more or less have control of the city although very little change has actually been made and the city has open borders with the UCAS. There are other kinks with the arrangement that never got fully explored.
The PC's:
The original team consisted of:
Sakura AKA Poison bitch, a surged tree woman. Formerly the husband of Shiawase's North American security head and daughter of VP for security over all. Sakura's arranged marriage sealed quite a bit of infighting within Shiawase. Unfortunately when she surged her humanis aligned husband didn't take it well and attempted to have her killed and succeeded in killing her children (and a whole bunch of others, arson was his tool of choice) she went into the Shadows to seek revenge. She served as the teams face and infiltrator and sometimes melee specialist.
Ena - Ena was a corporate citizen until the second crash where she fell on hard times and started running with the ancients gang. She developed technomancer abilities during this period and became a full on Shadowrunner when the local ancients chapter got stomped on pretty hard by the SoS. She runs the shadows looking for wealth and answers.
Allan AKA Big Asshole - A sinless troll who discovered his magical talents in prision before using them to escape. He ran the shadows because as a criminal sin holder he really had no other choice plus he really doesn't fit in very well in main stream society. He is fairly pink mohawk where the rest of the team is fairly stone cold pro.
Alice - Shaman and registered nurse practitioner Alice had gambled and lost on Docwagon loosing the city medical services contract. As such she started the shadows as she started the game with an ambulance and a fair amount of debts and little desire to be a wage mage. She's is a pacifist and usually serves as the teams moral compass. She's far from a paladin and more often than not her less killy death responses are accepted by the team as a reasonable course. The approach works as someone put it "If the medic's not happy the team's not happy"
Later add-ons include:
Treads - An ex-Shiawase company man who left the corporations employ to fullfil and obligation to care for his buddies daughter. He serves as the team’s rigger, recon man, and tactical planner.
John - A human street sam, fairly devious occasionally causes internal conflicts motivated by his greed but has proven loyal to his team mates. Whether intentional or not he is very similar to Jane from firefly and his solutions brought to the teams problems usually fall into the more dakka catagory.
Foggy: Human mage, recent addition still working on her character. She is a russian native and fought in the eurowars a bit. Good friend with one of the NPC's.
First Mission: The price of treachery
The team introductory mission they were hired by a local criminal syndicate(The Hidden Path a Koshari offshoot) to locate and recover a drug shipment stashed in a Z zone as well as the turncoat who had stolen it. While on the mission the players were approached by a KE narcotics officer who bribed them into working for him in part. They spearheaded the assault on the compound and captured the traitor before leaving the drugs in KE's hands under the cover story of a raid. The syndicate were NOT happy and i'd originally planned this outcome to lead to a fight but some good roleplay and some good social rolls not to mention my NPC glitching on his con roll meant the Hidden Path while suspicious bought the characters story.
NPC's Introduced:
Yuri - Yuri started out as a fairly blatant excuse to use a russian accent to give the character definition and but got deeper and deeper as the PC's have come to rely on him as both a source of work, intel, and even dare I say it friendship. He's formerly vory but had a falling out with them so he works for the Hidden Path in exchange for protection and has actually risen fairly high in the organization.
Lt. Blackwood: A Knight-Errant officer and later division head. Blackwood got his job as a political appointment as his father is on the city council. Despite this Blackwood is a good cop and mostly an honest one taking his responsibility to tribe and city very seriously. Unfortunately his honesty and the perception that he’s a rich boy playing cop leaves him often ostracized by the force forcing him to rely on shadow talent.
Mission 2: The great corpse caper:
The runners are hired to steal a recently buried corpse from a cemetery and turn it over to their J. They didn’t do much if any legwork on the target other then finding out he was a military vet who later worked for Ares late in life as a programmer. This ended up biting them in the butt when they were trying to infiltrate the cemetery only to be captured by Damian Knight’s security detail as he was on his way to pay his respects. They then found out that the target’s corpse had been a programmer on the Echo Mirage team and had done significant work on the smart system that would later become the A.I. Mirage. They were released by the security detail after a brief meeting with Knight. He was aware they planned to take the corpse but decided to allow it based on the target’s Pinkskin religious belief. While working to deliver the body they found out their J’s had been killed and were contacted by his killers who offered them money for the body. Not knowing what else to do with it they opted to come to the meet looking for trouble and predictably found an ambush which they managed to fight their way free of. It seems ex-pacis really wanted that corpse. They were then contacted by their J’s employer with new directives and the offer of a bonus. Now they needed to perform the autopsy and delivery their findings to him.
NPC: Arclight – Arclight is a powerfull Otaku turned technomancer based loosely on a friends character from a game I played several years ago. He is one of Mirage’s original Otaku (created in the likes of Dark Father, Bloody Guts, and Hitomi Shiawase) and has years of experience under his belt. He is physically crippled after trying to speed bump Deus at the ECSE and now has to rely on shadow talent more then he’d like. He has become a digital seer more or less and has come to the conclusion it should be possible to resurrect the A.I. Mirage and has devoted his life to that goal. His probability sifting activities often allow him to preplace runner teams at locations that might further his ends but he’s not quite sure what he’s looking for. Arclight is likely one of the best hackers on the planet although by his own admission his abilities fall signifigantly below that of say Fastjack or Silvery K save for some of the abilities multiple submersions have granted him that normal hackers just can’t duplicate. As such he has significant financial and intelligence resources to put towards his goals.
NPC: Rex – Rex is more or less Arclight’s dissonant reflection although he is not nearly as talented due to his mental instability. He is considered crazy even by the likes of Pax and puck as he still actively worships Deus.
The run concluded with the team dissecting the corpse and finding that all the target’s cranial cyberware had become some sort of technological artifact that conventional science couldn’t explain. After some considerable debate the team opted to turn the artifact over to Arclight as they were starting to get the hint that screwing over your employer seems to bring bad things down on their ears.
Run 3: Tractor theft
Yuri contacted the runners and basically said intimated his bosses had heard that the drug raid from mission 1 didn’t go down quite like the runners said. Now he’s concerned because his own loyalty as well as the runners word has been called into question. As such he needed the runners to do a job for him and steal a large agricultural drone. They managed to accomplish the mission and make good with the Hidden Path who from a metaplot standpoint used the tractor to pay their dues with the Koshari averting a gang war.
The lost runs: During this time the team worked a bit for both the local syndicates as well as Blackwood (and therefore KE and Ares) none of these were very earth shaking other then some comical moments as they balanced their criminal ties and affiliations with the more lucrative corporate work. Allan and John both worked to become mafia affiliated with mixed success and Treads joined the team.
The hospital run:
The team are hired by Arclight on behalf of a militant technomancer group to infiltrate, extract data and rescue anyone held against their will from an MCT facility that they suspect is performing technomancer research under the cover of AIPS care. Alice goes in under her nurse credentials and a job and is in place for a few days. Becomes aware things are normal on the surface but there is a lot of substructure she doesn’t have access to. Ena checks herself in as a patient. And that’s where things go off the rails. Turns out the hospital administrator is Rex under a cover identity. He identifies her and orders she be heavily sedated until she can be moved underground. Alice doesn’t notice the change in meds and because of this it is almost 12 hours before they notice she is out of contact. To the PC’s/players credit once they are aware Ena is in the hands of the enemy their number 1 priority becomes rescuing her. Arclight with confirmation of dissonant technomancer involvement authorizes whatever steps necessary to recover her up to and including bypassing the primary mission. During this time Ena is basically tortured and subject to brainwashing. The team elects for speed over subtlety but in a suprising move opts to leverage their contacts rather then make a frontal assault. A sizable bribe to a contact on the Tribal Council puts a search warrant in Blackwoods hands. He grabs a tactical team and gives the MCT folks a choice they can turn over Ena or he can search the building. They pull her out of VR and pass her over. MCT cancels it’s local contract with KE which ends up biting them in the butt when the team assaults the facility a week later. After a pitched battle they are starting to cut their way through to the underground lab with the full intent of of blowing the place. Unknown to them in the intervening time MCT has cleaned house and captured Rex. They are contacted by the head of MCT’s Technomancer research program, the runners have him over a barrel. He will remotely detonate the facility to keep the runners from gaiing the research inside but that would set him back considerably. He appeals to their desire for revenge and their greed and offers to turn over Rex in exchange for the runners departure. After some internal debate they accept. Rex is sent up via the secure elevator and they escape before follow on forces can arrive. Ares makes them an offer for Rex via Blackwood which they accept as it’s higher then the corporate court bounty.
The team does some evaluation and decides now might be a good time for a change of venue as they’ve annoyed the Vory, the SoS, MCT, and have come to rely on a few of their contacts more then they’d like. They’ve also pissed off the Azzie’s and decide a place nominally out of that groups reach might be in order.
Weighing their options the decide to head to LA.
Their first run in LA is a disaster. They are hired to destroy a DIMR vault that’s been submerged since the quake. They are very explicitly told not to take anything from the vault, just crack it, plant the charges and blow it. They get to the vault site after trials and tribulations with a local water gang and succeed in breaching the vault, they have to tussle with a very angry Shedim that’s been cooped up inside since the quake but succeed in destroying it. One the way out Jack grabs a safe deposit box at random more out of curiosity then anything. One of the vault’s safe deposit box contains a sample of the vaccine that Dunkelzahn wanted distributed to the world. Their secret employer, Lofwyr wants it destroyed and the vaults contents to be double damn sure. The boat they’d been provided with (and had to assemble, failing the checks to notice the extra equipment, partially because the rigger wasn’t with them) had an agent and sensor package designed to detect anything from the vault. Once it did it cut out the manual controls and drove out far from shore the runners were smart enough to bail out before it exploded. To add insult to injury their reputation in the LA shadows was now mud.
The next weeks were bad, their first job offer in a week or so turned out to be an ambush. They survived and did some research into the assassins hunting them. They dealt with the local assasins and set about hijacking the plane of the next coming into town in mid air to restore their rep. It worked and with their enemies mostly vanquished they are firmly in the world class runner range. KE asked them to investigate the Japanese consulate as it was believed that Tempo was being moved through there. Their investigation coincided with a state visit by Empress Hitomi who was petitioning to enter Calfree/San Fran to apologize for Saito’s misdeeds. They also had a list of targets to extract for intel including senior members of the Ghost Cartel. The whole thing played rather well as a tense political thriller. Over the course of the adventure they discovered two things, one of their optional targets was actually Arclight, who they’d never met in person and who is an old friend of the Empress. Also complicating matters was the machinations of Sakura’s husband. The team performed admirably performing favors for the Empress and others. Sakura was exonerated and the blame for the school arson placing it firmly on her husband’s shoulders. Sakura returned to Japan to resume her place in society as a servant of the Empress. She may come up as a powerful NPC later needing the help of her friends.
The next run allowed Sakura’s player to introduce foggy. I lightly modified Knassers excellent Cold Blood adventure wanting to give my character’s a cake walk (the adventure is meant for starting runners most of my PC’s have been playing once a week for around a year real time so they’re in the 100-200 range karma wise.) The players assumed I had some hidden twist or extra complication throughout the whole run so I had a gas seeing their paranoia blossom and grow but other then adding an advanced combat drone to the mix ran it more or less. After swapping Foggy’s blood out for her sisters infected sample Foggy decided to stay on with the team.
Now how to top that, well Arclight has a plan, it’s not enough to resurrect Mirage, he needs to make sure his lord can’t die again. His plan is simple in concept although although near impossible in scope. He intends not only to resurrect Mirage but use a dracoform as a living bio node to house. (There was one that was rendered a vegetable in the Crash that is an ideal candidate) to that end he has worked to look for information on dragon physiology and has found an unlikely ally. The Great Dragon Aiden has found her faith again (it’s complicated) and is interested in undertaking the Muslim Haji to Mecca. As such she has requested Arclight provide appropriate people as she cannot rely on any of her normal power structure and cannot use her powers if the Haji is to have the desired effect. So yea unknown to them my players are now escorting a Aiden in the guise as a female orc from North America to Mecca with planned stops in the ruins of Tehran. They are aware their charge is powerful but unable to use her powers. After a stop in London and a confrontation with a drake representative of Lofwyr they are starting to suspect their charge is either a very old free spirit, a dragon, or some similar creature but have no idea of her specific identity, that should play in heavily when they actually get to Tehran.