Speed Wraith requested it, and who am I to disagree with kickin' it a little old school?

I didn't really have a plan for this week's game - I was kind of riding on the "my players will come up with something interesting if I just let them go" idea - but then Speed Wraith started talking about Dark Angel in the adventure module thread and I got an idea.

I have a particular attachment to Dark Angel; it's actually the first Shadowrun book, besides the 2e corebook, that I ever bought myself. So I've got a sort of emotional connection to it it. Wraith essentially stated that Dark Angel was a stupid adventure with a quick route to success; he compared it to On the Run. I challenged this, then thought about it, then said, "you know what? I've never run this straight. So let's give it a go."

So I did. And I'll post my conversion stats at the end, if folks are interested.

Story Summary



The Players



NPC Who's Who and Motivations



Notes

Haha, awesome blast from the past
I hope you had fun, and conversion stats sound interesting

Heh, I just wanna hear how the story being run straight played out. This thing was always the ugly red-headed step-child adventure for our group. No one wanted to bother working with it. But as I said in that other thread, if it brought someone into the Sixth World, it couldn't have been so horrible as my younger self recalls, right?

Heh, exactly. But I thought it was worth a shot, and then as I was reading through it, I was impressed with how much it would fit into the campaign I'm running. So I went with it.

But why not post what I've done, right?

Hey funny: I'm currently playing that one too.

I've got a question about Dark Angel's character: Does he do a comeback sometime later in a book. It's written that he record an album called Earthdawn. As his next was about to be recorded (named Earthdawn: The Scourge) he mysteriously disappear.

All right, sorry about that delay....

Part One

The group is hired out by their fixer to meet a friend of his - a woman that goes by the handle Icelady - at a local bar.

Once the formalities are out of the way, Icelady begins to lay out what basically sounds like a plot out of some paranoid scenario: her boyfriend Angel[1], a musician who was motivated by The Music and Avoiding The Man and did little more than play music with his band, has died, and not quietly. Angel died via self-immolation while tripping on BTLs. Worse, before the body was even cold, some random no-name studio suddenly has the rights to his music and they're going gold.

Something stinks to Icelady: one, Angel was never a chiphead. Two, Angel was vehemently opposed to ever signing away his music. Icelady slaved for years to get him to even do shows, but he signed a recording contract? Icelady wants the group to do some digging.

There's some questions floated out - where did he die? How did he die? What was the last thing she said to him? Did he have any relatives?

Icelady lays it all out: Angel passed away in a little BTL den called Heaven by lighting himself on fire - presumably on one hell of a bender. Icelady and he had an unfortunate falling out a few weeks before his death, and that was the last time she saw him (she regrets this). And on that last one? She says that Angel never talked about any family[2]. She gives out addresses and names before they split off.

First stop? Heaven is a wonderful little hellhole, tucked into the northern sprawl of Austin. It used to be a drug addiction treatment center, but now it just sells the drugs. A gang called The Gators[3] call it home, and they're the ones dealing the chips. Also, the place is crawling with Angel fans, all of whom have decided to treat the place like a shrine. The Gators aren't quite sure what to make of this situation just yet.

Maggie notices the yellow gator design on the back of the ganger's jackets and decides to go talk to them. The gang is frosty to our party at first, until Maggie pulls out Gracie and shows her off. The ice broken, the Gators warm to the group (while patting Gracie) and explain that the two trolls (standing quietly off to the side, watching the scene in front of Heaven) were the ones that found Angel's corpse and took it to the Star.

Suddenly the trolls notice that something is afoot, and take off running.[4] The group takes off at a tilt to catch up to them, and do, and proceed to interrogate Hack and Slash, troll body collectors[5]. H & S ain't the brightest of trolls, and it doesn't take long for the group to twinge onto the fact that their story - that they found the body post-cooking and took it to Lone Star - doesn't add up. Mags does some distracting and Mags palms Hack's comm. A quick read of their contact list - and one Edward Crull is on it, with the note that he works with Lone Star.

On the way to their next stop, they get a frantic call from Icelady, who demands some assistance. Pulling up at her shop, the group spots a group of kids[6] terrorizing Icelady's shop. Cub tries getting them to knock it off using Ball Lightning, but it doesn't work quite as well as the group would like. As they gear up to get a little more physical, Lone Star finally shows up and takes the kids away in the back of a patrol car. The group is giving a warning that while they were acting in self-defense, to try to be a little more careful.

Icelady thanks the group, but says she's still feeling a little nervous. The group offers to take her to the coffin motel they're staying at[7], but Icelady just offers her shop for them to stay in. The group, sick of staying in a coffin motel, agree.

Turns out that Icelady is a talismonger and Enchanting aspected magician[8], and her shop is full of Cool Stuff. Nothing too powerful, but the group gets the feeling that Icelady turns a decent profit for herself. They crash for the night.

The next morning starts with the group getting roused with coffee - fresh coffee - offered by Icelady. As they pull themselves together, Icelady talks to an adjuster outside. The group takes the time to talk to a couple of contacts, one of which pulls together an address and quick background for this "Edward Crull". Turns out that Edward is a relatively deep in the Research and Development section of the Department of Paranormal Investigation. Intrigued, and now in possession of his address, the group goes to check him out.

In the Judge's Hill District of Austin (an area of land owned and used exclusively by members of Lone Star Security Services), the group finds Crull's home - a simple home not really worth talking about. As they approach the door they have a small argument over how exactly to sell their story to Edward or whomever is at the house, but when they finally do, the pretty young woman seems friendly and willing to talk.

The woman introduces herself as Sarah, Edward's wife. Maggie introduces herself and the group and starts to inquire about Angel. Sarah's eyes light up at his mention, and she starts to clue in that she is in fact in front of real life shadowrunners. Sarah would love to hear more, and invites them inside.

In the cramped space of the Crull living room, Sarah urges the group to spill the beans about what they're here for. On her end, Sarah spills about everything Edward is up to - including the deal her husband cut with a certain member of the Blue Brotherhood[9][10]. Sarah pleads with the group to take her with them - she's sick of being a bored housewife, and even has a bail bag[11] ready.

Here's the problem - her husband has a group of heavies guarding her - and the house - at all times. Three of them are with Edward at work, but there are two still here, and they're the heaviest of the heavy. How will the party get Sarah out?

Cub. Cub summons a spirit and orders it to distract the group while they all escape out the back. The plan works, but they're forced to blow the gate at the entrance to Judge's Hill to get out of there.

The group takes Sarah to a safehouse in the local Red Light district, and deposit Sarah there for the moment. Then they decide to check out Xanadu Studio and find out the connection between it, and Edward Crull.

They drive over to the studio, but before they're able to get into the studio, they're targets of a random sniper! Lone Star quickly shows up to save the day - but Cub recognizes one of them as a heavy hitter from Crull's house! It's Edward's protection!

The fight doesn't quite go their way, and the group is forced to beat a hasty retreat. And that's where we ended for the night.

Notes

I find that the fact you changed Icelady's motivation for the Shadowrun change a lot of stuff in the way the PC would approach this adventure.

As written, she wants them to get her rights on records, either on provin that Xanadu is responsible for Angel's death or by "convincing" them to give up on those rights.

This puts Xanadu and Dynamo Blue more in front of the runners.

Second: Dark Angel is a rocker with a band. Rappers tend to be main and alone star. So you probably dropped the fact he had a band. That band had the perfect purpose to make the character suspicious about Icelady. Either someone is trying to fool them, either Lili played some role in DA's death.

That doesn't make the story that much more difficult to resolve, but at least, you've got something to build on.

Rappers could have a crew instead of a band. All their homies and such.

I don't think that I changed Icelady's motivation at all. She still hired them to do some digging into the music issue; I could have emphasized Xanadu and Dynamo Blue more, but it was the players that smelled a rat when it came to the death. All of their questions revolved around how Angel died, and it was their decision to check out Heaven first - which is a valid investigation path within the module.

And if you think about it from Icelady's perspective, Angel's death seems really fishy. The book never mentioned if Angel had ever had a BTL problem prior to his death. But then he goes to some random BTL den and mainlines crack, essentially? Kind of sketchy. The module isn't the greatest for spelling out histories and things like that - namely, again, whether or not Lilli is aware that Angel had a brother.


Like Halinn said, rappers can have crews. And as I imagine this newer Angel, he's sort of a rapper / performance artist, mixing Ork culture with Japanese Noh theater.

However, I did mention that he had a band / production crew, but they just never came up. In the book as written, they say that the band starts to make trouble for Lilli several hours after she hires the players. However, the book also says that there are several ways in which Edward Crull will discover that the players / Lilli are digging around in Angel's death, and start doing some damage control. This happened when the players went to Heaven and started asking around; there were two agents of Edward's specifically listening for stuff like that, succeeded their Perception tests to see what the players were up to, and contacted Edward while they were chasing down Hack and Slash. This lead to the encounter at Lilli's shop with the gang.

So, long story short, Edward Crull got there before the band did. The players did ask about Angel's band though, and did get an address to check out at some point.

sk8bcn mentioned motivations for characters, and I thought that it would be cool to show this.

When I first started reading this adventure, I did a quick run through of all of the major NPCs, who they were, and what their motivations were. I wrote them down for future reference, and I thought I could put them here for people's enjoyment.

NPC Who's Who and Motivations

A few notes:

* SR2 loved the gangers because they were easily restatted on the fly by the GM in order to make things harder/softer for the players. Also, it's cyberPUNK - rule of cool:)
* Although I do like the adventure as written, I am very impressed at your excellent relocation and reskinning of a decent story! It's good when a GM tries
* Evil brother being from DIPs? Ok, now that is a damned fine chunk of adventure modification. Nice to see how you can make everything flow on from that, as well...

Looking forward to hearing how your players manage to screw up their etiquette/face time and be on the sorry side of the largest gang in Austin

-Tir

Thank you

When I was first sitting down to write Austin up as a location for my players, I had all sorts of stuff for the Aztlan side of the city, but I couldn't come up with a good, overarching villain for the CAS side of things. With Speedwraith's suggestion to run Dark Angel, I had to stop and think about who the organized crime in Austin would be. None of the traditional folks seemed right, and gangs were too small time for an operation like the Yaks. Eventually? Crooked cops, a la Serpico.

And we finished this up last night.

We ended up diverging pretty far from the module as written, because my players decided on a plan of action, and stuck to it. That means that they kidnapped Crull and brought in Lillie and Sarah Crull and sat down for one hell of a discussion.

But that's getting ahead of myself.

Having escaped the ambush by Crull's / Akmura's folks, the players re-grouped and got in touch with their fixer, who had originally set them up with the job. They wanted some background information on both Dynamo Blue and the Blue Brotherhood, and he gave them what they could. Dynamo was a relative talent within the music industry with some success, but her company never seemed to get as big as the talent she found should make it. The rumors had it that she was in bed with the Brotherhood...and meant that in more ways than one.

There wasn't much more than that, so the players left the meeting with their fixer but decided to take care of a couple of chores first.[1]

After said chores were done, they decided to try getting into Xanadu Studios one more time. As they hunkered down in their coffin motel to prepare, Cub took an astral saunter over to the company to do a little scouting. He didn't get much there, other than the fact that they had no magical security[2] and that security was, surprisingly, sparse. The group still figured it would be better to approach the situation in the morning.

Returning to Xanadu the next morning, the group finds it easy to get in and talk to the pink bun-haired secretary at the front desk. They also take note of the faux-punk band waiting in the lobby as well, the Lab Rats. Maggie tells the secretary that her name is "Dixie Cup" and that she's here to audition for Dynamo Blue; the secretary directs her to wait while she gives Blue the message. Maggie strikes up a conversation with their lead singer, who discusses living in a slumhole and bumfights[3]

Finally Maggie gets called into Dynamo's office to audition[4]. The audition....doesn't go well, despite everyone in the group giving it their all. Stuck for options, Maggie decides to just say "fuck it" and uses her Enthralling Performance ability to distract Blue long enough for them to case the joint. This doesn't get them much besides Blue's commlink[5] and a strange blue ring that Fettid pockets.

They leave unharrassed, and where things start to go off the map.

Despite nothing on the commlink, the party still figures that this is a net win for them. They use her commlink to call Edward Crull[6] and set up a meeting at a local eatery to chat. Crull agrees, and they set up a meeting for later that night.

This time the party comes prepared. Maggie and Cub take a table, while Fettid sits by the door to watch. Edward shows up and is directed to the table, while Fettid watches all assortments of folks walk in and out - including a short Japanese man and his obvious troll bodyguard.

The conversation doesn't go well. In fact, it quickly spirals out once Crull figures out who Maggie and Cub are. Crull tries to pull a Han Solo and shoot Mags before booking for it, but thankfully luck (and terrible rolls) are on Maggie's side, and she has Crull knocked out and down on the ground. Meanwhile, Fettid, approaching the situation, spots the Japanese man and his troll bodyguard get up and start getting some mojo ready. Cub spots them too, and whistles up his Great Form spirit to throw out a quick Fear effect.

Leaving the protection to quake in their boots for a few rounds, the crew gathers up and spirits Crull out of the restaurant.[7]

There's some brief panic as the group realizes that they've abducted a cop, and someone with a decent, high end connection in Lone Star. They also figure he's got some sort of tracking / commlink device on him, so they need to either shut it down or get it the heck out of him. They flounder around for a bit, calling contacts, until one of them directs them to a local electronics expert that can do what they need to. The connection gets them what they need, and they make the surprise decision to call up Icelady and Mrs. Crull.

Edward Crull wakes up in a burnt out slum somewhere in northern Austin, with the party, his brother's girlfriend, and his wife standing over him.[8] Edward, nonplussed, essentially tells everyone to go fsk themselves. This, despite torture, harsh language, and annoyance, is all they get from Crull.

That is, until Mrs. Crull, in a moment of fancy[9], leans in and says something in Edward's ear. Crull starts to tell them everything - except where Angel's at and who has him - a lady by the name of Christina "Kat" Akamura[10]. But he confirms everything for the party - Angel's alive, and he's been taken by someone pretty high up in the Brotherhood.

Sick of listening to her husband whine, Mrs. Crull puts a couple of bullets in Edward's chest. There's a moment of panic on the player's part, as they suddenly realize that not only have they abducted a member of Lone Star, they're also now party to his killing.

They torch the body and the apartment they're in. Well, Icelady does, as a moment of revenge for her boyfriend. She decides to toss in a Sterilize spell in there too, for good measure.[11]

Now that it's been confirmed that Angel's still alive, Cub calls up a spirit and sends it off looking for Crull. It discovers that Angel is up in one of the lakes north of Austin, sitting in a houseboat. The players take off to investigate.

Security is loose at the houseboat; Kat probably figures that its remoteness and slight magical defense would be enough to keep people away. There is a guard out front though - easily taken care of via Cub in wolf form and the back of Mag's gun.

They discover that the houseboat is actually the entrance to Kat's underwater fishing lodge. The walls are covered in mounted fish and faux wood stylings, and it's obvious that this is Kat's refuge[12].

Deeper inside the house of (fish) horrors, the group stumbles across a pair of troll physads waiting for them! There's a scuffle, and while the group begins to get the upper hand, they hear a sudden explosion from beneath them! Out the porthole, they see a mini sub floating away!

Does this mean that Kat has escaped? Is Angel dead? Or did Kat stick around, and toss Angel on the sub, never to be seen again?[13]

With the physads disabled, the players enter the final room of the sanctuary and find Angel, unconscious, slumped on the bed. In front of them is an open porthole, obviously down to the dock with the sub in it.

As the crew moves to investigate the room, they hear a slump behind them. Kat, looking just a little ticked off, arrives and positions herself into a martial arts stance. Maggie just grins and the two launch into an epic catfight![14]

With Kat subdued, the players rescue Angel and escape from Kat's sanctuary.

Epilogue

A few days later, the group is relaxing in their new low rent apartment, watching the trid. On it plays the local news discussing the startling revelation that there's a web of corruption within Lone Star Security Services! Imagine! More investigations, both internal and external, are to come, promises the upper echelons of Lone Star.

Meanwhile, Angel's second album, Flaming Wings, is one of the most anticipated releases of the year. Icelady has finally managed to talk Angel into a recording contract, and they're happily living off of the advanced sales and profits from Icelady's talis shop (which she doesn't particularly feel like getting rid of just yet[15]).