Yes, it's time for another one of my reports from the front.. this session is rather different from the previous ones for one big reason - I didn't end up feeling that it went very well. I think some of the players were unsatisfied and that doesn't make me feel great about the whole thing.

So, we began with Kane still invisible and observing Alex in the club, while the remaining runners had parked their car around the corner and were rifling through the case of tempo they'd obtained. I didn't schedule anything to happen immediately at the start of the session because I figured that what the runners did at this point was going to be critically important - in particular, what they did with the Tempo.

So, after a few moments the bouncers at the front of the club started to realize that the "Lone Star" who had shown up didn't act much like Lone Star at all, and so it was only a few minutes before the real Lone Star showed up to answer the call, at which point Alex decided to make himself scarce and slip out the back door. Kane followed him, and Kane also got to catch a view of the other man tailing Alex, who he snapped a photo of with this cybereyes and send it off to the rest of the team - Mr Happy Punch has Underworld knowledge and was able to identify the man as Yakuza. Alex takes a look out the front to see what's going on, sees that dead Ragers' bodies, and decides to call Caine to find out what's going on. I tell the other group that the commlink on Caine's dead body is indicating a call. And Face decides, remarkable, to pick it up ("audio only") and pretend to be Caine on the phone, saying he's been shot and is being taken away by DocWagon. I really am not sure how to do this, so I let him get away with a Con roll - after all, it's not like Alex isn't going to be goddamn suspicious and what's going on no matter which way. By now, Lone Star are putting up their crime tape around the scene outside, and so Alex and the Kenran-Kai both decide to slip away in different directions. Kane decides to tail the Yakuza as far as his car, then heads back to meet with the other runners and they head home for the night.

The following morning, they receive a call from Ms. Johnson. The massacre outside the club has made the news and she wants to know if they found out what was going on. Kane picks up the call and explains about the dealings with the Ragers and how they've recovered the case of Tempo and escaped from the police. Dae is not too bothered about the Ragers dying, as long as the runners make sure that taking the heat for it remains their responsibility, and appreciates the info on Alex and the Yakuza. She also informs them of Tempo's currently-untested-and-not-illegal status. Kane responds by telling her they've worked out it lets the user see astral auras! Boom-bang-a-bang. Now the Komun'Go know that, and it's going to spread around pretty quickly, so any doubts about "seeing the invisible" will likely no longer apply.

The runners do some legwork on Xa and head over to the University's Union building. Parking a few blocks away, Kane is turned invisible by Dawg and sneaks in to observe Xa. Now, Xa does know about the beneficial effects of Tempo, and is quite aware of the invisible guy watching him (plus he has a radar simrig - I'm not sure if Improved Invisibility works against that or not, but I figured not), but doesn't immediately respond. After a few moments, he heads out to his bike, and Kane follows, directing the other runners to tail him in the car and joining them as they go past. Xa is already on the alert, and silently calls Lone Star to get the tail off him - and Lone Star also recognize the car from the bouncers' descriptions, so a cruiser quickly pulls in behind them. The team decide to stop, losing Xa's tail, and the Lone Star officers announce that the car resembles one used in a major crime and they'd like to inspect it. (Of course, they were basically looking for any excuse to impound the thing at that point.) They don't find anything suspicious in the car (the Smuggling Compartment remains unnoticed and everyone has fake licenses for things) until they notice the Morphing Number Plates, at which point Dawg throws a Mob Mind on the officers telling them to leave and forget about what they've seen. I ask the player if he's really sure he wants to do that. He does. The Lone Star officers head off covered in his magical traces. Um.

The next day, they decide to try a more subtle approach to tailing Xa. This time, they went to buy some tracking devices through their fixer, then Kane invisibly planted one on Xa's bike and they followed at a much more discrete distance. This got them to Xa at the docs, where Kane again was turned invisible, snuck through the gates behind the First Nations van, and got to eavesdrop on the meeting between Blood of the Buffalo and Kaz - while noticing Xa also eavesdropping from a rooftop. He didn't feel the need to do anything more than listen (and given that Kaz appeared to be on Tempo, didn't want to put himself into line of sight), so the meeting proceeded peacefully and Xa and Buffalo left. Kane did consider attacking Kaz, but when he overhead Kaz mention that he had "heard it allows astral vision", Kane realized a possible connection between Kaz and Ms. Johnson. Kane returned to the runners who decided they wanted to continue tracking Xa. Xa drives his bike into a parking garage at an apartment building and there discovers the tracker, disconnecting it. The runners head out to the apartment and look through the names on the doors, but none of them is Xa Firebird (I figured he'd use an alias there as well - plus Xa Firebird is already an alias)

The following day, Ms. Johnson calls them again for an update, and they tell her what they've found about Xa. Now, the runners had worked out that Xa was spying on the drugs deal for some reason, but had not realized Xa was Lone Star, although they guessed at it when they spoke to Dae. Dae tells them to kill Xa and to drop the Tempo off with them at her club, adding that if they want to take a few patches of Tempo to power up their astral vision they're welcome to do so.

During the early evening the runners decide that they want to go and kill some more Ragers just because they're a scummy street gang, so they try to use contacts to find a Rager stronghold. They find Caine's (former) lair, pull up the car, and machine-gun the guards. All the Ragers inside immediately flee through the basement exit. The runners don't try to pursue.

So, that night, they had to Xa's apartment building again. Since they suspect that Xa is Lone Star, they have decided not to kill him after all, but to warn him about the hit and ask him to cooperate in faking his death. (Number of runs this group has been on: 2. Number of times they have betrayed their Johnson: 2. Actually wrapping up the campaign with "And nobody ever hires you again." is looking realistic at this point) Dawg sends a Watcher spirit in to find which room is Xa's, and the spirit recognizes the elf in one of them. So Dawg then levitates Faceman up to the window of the appropriate apartment and knocks on it sharply several times. Now, Xa didn't get to be where he is without being paranoid, so the players promptly see the curtain inside the apartment pulled away from one side, while Xa hides behind the corner of the wall. Faceman's first word to Xa, while he is floating outside the apartment window on the street side, is "So, we've heard you're on an undercover operation.." Head-desk.

They warn Xa about the hit, and he's rather surprised that they're doing this. He tells them that he'll arrange a new identity, and also that Lone Star are seriously onto them now - blowing away the Ragers was considered "scum on scum" and not a high priority (although the fact that they did so in front of a busy club didn't help) but combining radio logs with the mind controlled officers arriving back at base was a different matter. (He didn't explicitly tell them that.) They ask him for some evidence of his "death", and he gives them a pair of shades with some blood on them.

(At this point I didn't want to be too generous and have Xa be too grateful, but at the same time, I didn't want to start a fight that would likely end up with Xa dead anyway. So I tried to be as ambiguous as possible - there was some time that passed after the spirit left and Faceman couldn't actually see who was in the apartment, so I've got a get-out in case I later want to say it wasn't Xa they talked to, or he was lying, or it wasn't his blood on the shades.)

So, the runners now want to go and kill the rest of the Ragers in their main stronghold. Is there a reference for this anywhere, or for Moloch or HardRain? Ghost Cartels mentions there's details in Runner Havens which I could get on PDF if it'll be useful. Does it have anything like this?

Hey, that's almost 3 days IC without mindless slaughter!

OTOH, they can build some good contacts with Lone Star... They will hate you so much at the end of the campaign

Yes, but it seems they want the mindless slaughter.

Oh, yes. That sounds much more preferable. A little "Alright, you did bad, but you did good, too. Help us, and we'll let you off easy."

Except if the campaign stays canon, Lone Star loses the Seattle contract. Talk about betting on the wrong horse...

True, but up until then, the contact is good. And then you might have a few friendly, cybered runners...

Or people who got laid off by the Star, to be picked up on by KE.

Improved invisibility doesn't work against RaDAR (even though both light and RaDAR use EMR, unlike ultrasound). Perhaps if you stepped the drain up by 1 to remove the Single Sense limitation (Street Magic spell design) it might work, but RaDAR is a sensor, not a sense. Concealment spirit power would do the trick though.

Presumably the LS grunts had some kind of tacnet (even if at a low rating) for communicating, flagging targets, flagging informers and undercover agents, etc. etc. and this tacnet would have recorded the inspection of Facevan on Rating x 2 sensor channels from each LS officer. It doesn't sound like the team did anything to the LS commlinks after casting Mob Mind so once they get back to base everyone will have a full view of the team, their vehicle (inside and out), and the casting of a spell in LoS of all the officers. The LS patrol vehicle also has RaDAR (standard sensor package) so even if the officers themselves don't carry RaDAR (why not?) the car's sensors may have picked up the smuggling compartment.

And a Watcher spirit found someone it was told to look for?

Radar doesn't pick up on compartments inside things. It picks up on things.

Plus, wether or not the casting of a spell can actually be picked up by any sensor at all isn't a given. Being aware of a spell being cast might not even rely on the classical 5 senses.

Also Mob Mind IIRC controls what someone is thinking, but the effect ends as soon as the spell does, which means the Star will still remember everything they saw. Changing memory is a different spell. Plus now they know the crew includes a mage and will take anti-mage precautions. As far as going Invisibility everywhere, with 1% of the population being magically active, plus the occasional astrally-projecting patrol, sooner or later someone at random is gonna see Captain Invisible and wonder what he's up to.

On the other hand, my desk has a forehead-shaped dent I've named Zod, and it didn't get any bigger this week!

I can assure you that if I discovered a tracker on my vehicle and a day later an unknown levitating mage (Xa doesn't know it was a mage levitating a face) tapped on my window at night, calling out, "So, we've heard you need your cover blown by some people talking within metres of cameras that come equipped with microphones" there's no way I'd take a box of damage to hand him a ritual link. FaceMan is lucky he didn't say, "Sure, just a moment" and hand over a paper noodle carton full of grenades.

Was there any particular aspect of the session you identified as a source of dissatisfaction for the players or was it just a nebulous vibe you picked up?

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I like where this campaign is going. Really. Can't wait for that TPK to finally happen.

I can't help but point out that Concealed Vehicle Armor caps out at 10 points. At 20, you're driving something that will never be confused with a normal, legal vehicle.