Hello all,
I'd like to ask your advice on a rather delicate situation that my character has found herself in. Note that all information I'm about to post is from the characters point of view, i.e. the facts are far from being objective.

My character:
A Dryad Mystical Adept focused on investigative skills. Has a very high perception/assensing pool, and moderately high magic and social skills pool. She's an orphan (the lovechild of a major Tir politician and an unkown mother), and the protegé of Rowena O'Malley, the capa of the Seattle Finnigan mafia. Until now, she has never been directly involved in the family business.

The situation:
My character returns from a team debriefing, which took place in a Yakuza residence. Our contact was the daughter of the local Oyabun (more on that later). The contact was kind enough to In downtown Seattle, she witnesses the bombing of her penthouse and the sudden departure of 5 Asians in a nondescript van, one of them a Cyberzombie. Using Physical mask, she sneaks past the arriving cops, and investigates her completely bombed out apartment. Turns out, milspec incendiaries were used. And her cat miraculously survived (snuck out of the apartment in time, I guess). She then proceeds to the security room, to recover any surveillance footage. The entire security personel was murdered professionally (poisoned injection darts), and the room is mined with claymores. As expected, surveillance tapes were removed. She sneaks out of the building, and a car from the Finnigan mob is awaiting her.
On the way to the Finnigan mansion, the driver refuses to answer any of her questions. She then takes part in a meeting with the Finnigan leadership, where the following events are described (in chronological order). Note that this is second hand information, so ymmv:
1. The Yaks took out several of the family's drug dealers (they were dealing in Tempo). The Donna claims that there's physical evidence to this.
2. The Finnigans, in retaliation, took out the Oyabun and his personal guards. Our contact, the mob daughter, takes over control.
3. Several of the Finnigans' assets were hit.
4. The Finnigan family is preparing for an all-out war. Within 2 hours, a major Yakuza warehouse will be raided.

After the meeting was over, my character went to see the Donna in private. She says she expects the character to help, but she should rest for now. My character calls one of her teammates (another PC) over, a mage who is very good friends with our Yak contact (15+ years). She outlines the situation to her (omitting the raid), and asks for her help. The mage says she'll side with the Yaks, should the conflict escalate, but will ask them to spare my character if she withdraws from the conflict.


Ok, that's the situation so far. We've got two additional player characters, a pacifist technomancer (who, if push comes to shove, will rather side with the mage) and another player who is making a new character.

Here's some Meta info that might be relevant:
-The date is 10-30-2071 (MM-DD-YY)
-I trust the DM to play this out fairly, since another player vouches for him ooc. I hope my trust in him is well placed, since I don't know him that well.
-My character and the mage are (unbeknownst to each other) (half-)sisters. In a straight fight, the odds of winning are slightly in the mage's favor.
-The Yak contact is a highly initiated black mage, with a high force ally spirit. She's the DM's former PC, played in an earlier campaign DM'd by the mage player.
-The Yak contact is Harlequin's lover, and the group knows this. Whether he will participate in the conflict or act as plot armor is unknown.
-My character's cat is emergent. She does not know this.
-Several hints were dropped that suggested that there's more to this than the character currently knows.

Question is, what should my character do? The way I see it, here's the possibilities:
1) Side with the family, and fight a war where the enemy has potential access to a superweapon (Harlequin). Even if not, it would mean going against the majority of the group, which I'm not comfortable with.
2) Neutrality. Watch the own family potentially getting wiped. Lose a major connection (5/5), but survive. My character wouldn't be comfortable with that, since she's more the loyal type.
3) Try to negotiate a truce. Obviously, I would need the mage's support, and it'll involve a lot of legwork and pulling favors.

Is there something I'm missing? What do you Dumpshockers say?

So wait.

The Yaks take out some low level drug dealers, and the Finnigan reaction to this is to take out the HEAD OF THE YAKS In Seattle? That seems extreme, and weird. They took a low level turf war, and turned it into a fight for survival. the Yaks can't let this slide, they will want blood for blood. They'll want the head of an equal level Mafia leader. Rowena basically.

Either the GM is a dick, or something is fishy in Denmark.
What your Character should do, is ask Donna Rowena why the hell she would authorize such a crazy escalation in hostilities. If you're personally loyal to Rowena, you're kinda screwed. The Yaks will not rest until Rowena is dead.

Not only that, but you have a Yak killsquad wipe out your apartment, kill the security staff, and booby trap the room to ensure maximum collateral damage. For no raisin.

Sounds like the GM wants to give the illusion of TPK since you have half the team on one side and half the team on the other. I'm going to assume that somewhere down the line after everything has escalated, the GM is going to bring in an all-powerful third faction that is going to snap up the pieces that fall off of Mob/Yak territories - and they'll realize that osnap, they've been had, and there will have to be a trusted party attached to both that needs to end it.

Enter your shadowrunning team, well-put together for an investigation like this was an episode of CSI. You'll probably find that there are elements in both organizations that are loyal to the third party, you'll have to take them down in a public and nasty manner, thereby gaining you enemies of the people you're loyal to, and will end in a spectacular showdown between you and the Big Bad, with both factions outside waiting to gun down everyone inside the - we'll call it a warehouse for expediency. Shoot the man in the face, walk outside where all is forgiven, get paid, roll credits.

My suggestions:

Get a camera and image link for your glasses. Record everything.
Ensure your Technomancer can set up a broadcast relatively quickly.
Get both sides to stall and set up a meet to cut this out - and then start investigating the hell out of everyone selected to go. At least one of them is your mole. Expect your third party to attack this meet.
Be ruthless. You're going to be killing a cyberzombie at some point in this arc. Gear up for it.

My question is why the gm would let you make a character so loyal to one side and have another be so closely tied to the other. Since I don’t know you're gm I'd be concerned about having his pet NPC as a contact on the other side. Especially being uber enough to be involved with an IE. Unless pc conflict is suppose to be a plot point in the story, which could be the case.

The best course I can suggest is to bring your concerns up to the gm with the person you trust to vouch for him being there. I see this as being a set up for your character to have to be forced to suffer while others may not. While it may be part of the story it may not end up being fair to you as a player. It is worse case I think but if you don’t make your concerns known ahead of time, I see a lot of issues OOC coming from this.

My suggestion:

1) What would your character prefer to see happen?
2) How can your character cause that outcome to come about?
3) Go for it and let the dice fall as they may. If your character is going to go down, make sure that the experience will be memorable

Basically I'd suggest playing your character as she would react in the situation, and consequences be damned. It's just a fictitious character we're talking about here. If she goes down, screw it and make another one.

Anyway. As I see it, your character is basically caught between a rock and a hard place. The two obvious avenues open to her is either side with her family, and possibly end up fighting the other PC's and the Yaks, or side with the Yaks and her team, and get in real trouble with her family. She can try to keep neutral, but that's unlikely to work. Someone's already blown up her home, and staying on the sideline when the Family needs her is not likely to be taken well, and if the Family wins, there'll likely be hell to pay for her. That leaves option three: Make your own path. Your character effectively have two hours to catch a break. If she're friends with the Donna, try to get her to postpone the attack, and try to buy some more time. Has someone else wanted to start a war between the Mob and the Yaks? Ask your characters friends to try checking out things on the Yak end. Do they know about the first attack? Do they acknowledge having done it? Do they acknowledge blowing up your character's appartment? If they don't, are they then lying? Or is someone else behind this.
Your character is an investigator. Get your shit together and get cracking. You need to see the evidence of the first attack on the Dealers, which you mentioned. If that doesn't reveal anything new, then you have a situation where the Yaks took out a few pawns, and the Mob retaliated by taking their King and his defense. That's one hell of an escalation, but that could be a simple miscalculation on the part of the GM. At any rate, the Zero-hour is approaching rapidly, and if the Mob makes this full-scale attack on Yak property, then the war is definitively ON.

At any rate, the optimal situation for your character IMO has to be that things go back to what they were, prior to the attack. But the only way that is going to happen, is if someone can either prove to both sides that they have been played, or if someone can convince both sides that they are better off not going to all out war.

Personally I sort of like the situation you describe. I can see several potentials for some fun playing. Yes, it might mean some PvP, loss of contacts, and perhaps even the need for a new character, but frag it. Just make it fun to play and memorable


Have fun

Kyrel