13/11/2070.
Sarah was taking her sweet time doing the number crunching for her charity run, working out which Lone Star server we'd have to hit to ID the Decker. So when Shadow called and told us that he'd been contacted by a Johnson for a quick run on the side, I figured 'sure, why not?'
The meet was at a high-class bar downtown. Amazingly, Nitro looked quite snappy in a suit and tie, while unsurprisingly Shadow looked completely out of place in his lined duster. I have no idea why his fixer decided to call him first when the Johnson contacted him... maybe everyone else was booked or something. Anyway, he wants us to switch out a book owned by some magical cabal with a fake, and bring the real one to him. Apparently these guys are pretty well connected as they're renting a floor in a high-security skyscraper complex known as the Galaxy Tower. How high security? Well the building is owned and run by Lone Star, who then rent out space to interested parties. Most of the high-end clients have left in the months since they lost the security contract for Seattle as the place now lies in Knight Errant jurisdiction and they quite reasonably feel that the old promise of top priority police response no longer carries weight. Since then the Star has reduced the security at the 45 story skyscraper to a skeleton crew and the former high-rollers have been replaced by more mundane businesses seeking showrooms that would otherwise be above their means, and the place has basically been transformed into a vertical shopping mall with an illusion of great security.

So, we head out to do some basic recon, minus our rigger/hacker. The first thing we notice is that while they're running a skeleton crew for security these days, all the infrastructure from the Galaxy's glory days is still in place. That basically translates into tons of motion sensors and cameras strategically placed to prevent people from covertly scaling the building, a complex lockdown system designed to strategically trap or channel intruders and gas them with nausea gas, and plenty of other fun surprises that make a frontal assault completely suicidal.

Hopefully I can convince the others to do this run smart.

Our target is on the 30th floor, between a weapon shop on the 29th and a security floor on the 31st. After a bit of back and fourth we decide we need to get a bit more intel on the security there, so we call up Sarah. After a while she manages to get the floor plans for the 30th, which have both RFID and key-codes on the doors. The easiest way to get both of those would be to kidnap a member of the cabal and interrogate them, though to be fair kidnapping a mage is never exactly going to be safe. Problem: we can't exactly tell who's a member of this cabal at a glance, which makes kidnapping the right person a bit difficult. Nitro of all people suggests the solution: we each head to a different floor, browse a shop or two, and keep an eye on the elevator. once one stops at the 30th then hopefully we've got our man.
Yeah, the plan's not perfect by any stretch. The elevator could stop at the 30th to deliver a member of the cabal, rather than to pick him up. There could be too many witnesses in the elevator when we get on, preventing us from kidnapping or planting a tracker on the guy. Someone could have made a mistake and ordered the elevator to the wrong floor. However, it's getting late so we're giving it a shot, and if it doesn't work we can try for a plan B in the morning. In the mean time Nitro gets to be geeky about his silly swords (it's a length of sharp metal you use to stab things with. Pistols are more elegant weapons from this civilized age. Luddite.), Shadow will spend his time at a pet store on the 23rd floor (I had a cat once. The company's nice, but I'm not certain the mess and maintenance are really worth it.) while I do the sensible thing and go shoe shopping down on the 15th floor. What? I need the right shoes for the scene in order to do my job. Don't judge me!

10 pm (1 hour later). Note: I need to start keeping better time stamps on these things.
It worked like a charm. Seriously, I'm beginning to think that Nitro is some kind of luck mage and hasn't told us about it. Not ten minutes after we started he not only had a new katana (some kind of titanium steel that he was very excited about. Hand made too, which is good if the rumours about nanites are true.) but also managed to bag a member of the Cabal, alone in the elevator. I got in on the 15th floor (Shadow got distracted by a puppy or something) and struck up a conversation while Nitro applied the Narcojet patch. We breezed past security with some line about him not being able to hold his drink, found his car and told it to take him home. A bit of fast-talking got us in (after all, who really expects two people in suits helping a resident of the apartment building get home [he was coincidentally also wearing a similar suit. The luck of Nitro strikes again] to be up to no good?) and we got into his apartment without much trouble. Shadow and
Sarah soon joined us (Shadow was wearing a military gas mask in public again. What is your damage, man? just go get a respirator like everyone else!), and for some reason Nitro decided to start slipping laxatives into random pieces of the guy (Ian)'s food. After a brief but revealing conversation I wasn't sure which I should be worried about more: Nitro following the a trickster mentor spirit he called the Raven, or the fact that he keeps a bottle of fast-dissolving laxatives with him AT ALL TIMES!
Memo: Never eat or drink anything with Nitro around. Ever.
I switch out the guy's RFID chip for the Cabal and put it in my wrist. It was going to be Nitro's, but he chickened out at the last minute. I had the whole operation over and done with in about a minute and a half, and I can only hope putting it back afterwards goes half as smoothly.
Anyway, our wait for the sedative to wear off was interrupted by a pair of shady types abseiling down onto the balcony, sliding open the door, and throwing in a flash bang grenade. Just another night in Seattle, I guess. Sarah panics and flees, Nitro takes cover, Shadow Hulks out and I'm just clinging to consciousness after that, not helped at all by the small size of the room, but I do manage to keep enough of my wits about me to pull out a tazer and cover the door. Sure enough it opens and some badass chick steps in, ducks my shot, catches Shadow's punch and almost lays him down with one of her own. Nitro leaps out of the kitchen, sword in hand, and takes the other guy's suppressed full auto burst to the chest. Luckily the gun was loaded with Gel rounds and through sheer dumb luck Nitro manages to shake off the hit like it was nothing, then hacks the girl in the spine with his new sword. Unsurprisingly she goes down, and Shadow heads off to take on the gunman and is soon joined by Nitro. The guy never stood a chance, but over the sound of the fight I hear heavy footsteps coming from the way Sarah ran. I decided that the boys had the gunman handled and spun around to cover the door just in time to see a troll chick with a fricking riot shield drawing a bead on Nitro. I yell a warning and shoot her.

I like my Tazer. It brings people down good, and as an added bonus it's perfectly legal and normal to carry it around. It's reliable, I take good care of it, and it has never let me down. Until today.
This is the first time I've ever seen someone no-sell a body shot like that. She barely seemed to notice the hit. I got off a second shot in the span of about half a second, right in the same place, and... nothing. Luckily Nitro heard my warning and took cover as she tried to pull the same trick on him. Then, in a display of speed that would impress the Olympic sprint team Nitro crossed the room in the space of about a second, clearing several obstacles including ME, and smote the troll mightily.
As far as I can tell, she barely noticed. I'm so disappointed that I couldn't see Nitro's expression when she just took a hit that would fell most people without any display of concern, just switched her tazer to contacts and began trying to zap him.
Now Nitro is one of those people who subscribe to the belief that when all you have is a sword, everything is just begging to be stabbed. So he starts trying to carve up this troll lady, who keeps catching him on her shield in an almost insultingly casual manner. Given how ineffective my tazer was last time I decided not to bother and started putting all my effort into encouraging Nitro. This worked in the sense that he fought more vigorously than ever... however, at best he was dealing scratch damage to this monster.
It's at this point that Shadow finds the gunman's grenade belt and hurls a flash bang into the fray. Unsurprisingly given the confined space, this ends the fight by bringing down Nitro and, after a few heart-stoppingly uncertain moments, also the troll. I grab the apartment's first aid kit and go to revive Nitro only to hear Shadow crash to the floor as whatever he was on wore off. I manage to get Nitro back to his feet... and building security show up. I spin a tale about how we'd all gathered in our good friend Ian's apartment for a few quiet drinks when these thugs had attacked out of no-where, and how I was so frightened, blah blah blah. I manage to spin the whole thing enough to convince them that we were the victims, and by the time the cops showed up we'd been bundled up and given something to calm our nerves. Not bad work for someone still deaf in one ear.

10:50 pm
Nitro and I get carted off to the cop shop to fill out paperwork and answer questions. They give our SINs a cursory once-over, listen to our sob-story, then send us on our way. We head out to the hospital, and on a sudden inspiration head out to see Ian first. He's understandably shell-shocked, waking up in a hospital and all, and we use that to our advantage by spinning a tale of how we met up in that elevator and he'd invited us out for a drink, seemingly a spur-of-the-moment thing. We use as much truth as possible in our story so that he can verify it later, but at the end of our elegant fabrication he's convinced that not only are we good friends of his but he literally owes us his life. We pick up the others, convince Ian that it's getting late but we'll meet up with him again soon, then headed out.

14/11/2070.
Guess where the data server we're after is? Yep. Galaxy Tower. 21st floor to be exact. I go to meet up with Ian while the others start bouncing around ideas (I love having a neural commlink), and a joking suggestion by Shadow gives me an idea. Shadow suggested that Nitro gets a job at the Starbucks in the tower to get intel on the guards, and it occurs to me that it might be a workable plan with some modification.
Specifically, Shadow Sarah and Nitro put some uniforms together, paint up the roadmaster (they are not coming anywhere near my van!), then approach the tower as part of a cafe chain trying out some new flavors of soycaf. That way they can sedate a whole bunch of the security guards in one fell swoop, all without attracting any suspicion. I make a few calls and source a Soycaf wholesaler, we work out how much the gig is going to cost us and how much we'd need to charge per cup to come out even, then while they set to work on that I started charming the pass-codes I needed from Ian.

15/11/2070.
Now my section of the run turned out to be a bit of a walk-through. I got the impersonation of Ian down perfectly, had all the security details I needed to do the job without arousing suspicion, and got through it without anyone any the wiser. Most of what follows is second-hand. Complements to Sarah for spinning the tale.

'Well, we got off to a decent start. Everyone was tired of the overpriced Starbucks soycaf and even the least adventurous individuals were willing to try something new. I mean, it's soycaf. You're not exactly taking your life in your hands trying a new soycaf, right? Well it turns out that Shadow makes epic-level bad soycaf. I still don't know how he managed it, he had the same tools as the rest of us. Nitro, on the other hand? Complete natural. Whatever that guy does just seems to come up roses. I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but I make a pretty mean soycaf myself... but I digress. We laced the security guards drinks with slow-acting sedatives which we estimated would kick in over the next hour or so. Outside of our target floor we just added enough to make them a bit sluggish and apathetic, but on the 21st we really went the whole hog and gave them enough to knock them out. I can't prove this, but I think I saw Nitro slip some of those laxatives into a couple of the cups as well. I don't envy the poor souls who ended up with those cups.
Anyway, we kept going until we hit the 45th, then on our way back down slipped into the 21st. I worked my usual magic with the cameras, then we got to work. The backup server required a direct physical connection to access, but outside of that and a basic login system the security was nonexistent. I guess that they figured deckers wouldn't be much of an issue if they couldn't reach the damned thing to connect to it, which is true... until someone sedates all your guards and waltzes in. Shadow managed to convincingly play the part of the guy on desk duty for the routine check in, and we were out before anyone knew we were there. Piece of cake.'

You know the funniest part of all this? Ian, the guy we kidnapped, performed unwilling surgery on (twice, I had to put the chip back), impersonated, lied to and generally abused? He still thinks we're his best friends in the world. Seriously, I'm almost at the point of feeling bad about all the stuff we put the guy through, and I don't usually feel guilty about any of this stuff! Well, he's volunteered his services should we ever need a talasmonger, so maybe I'll get a chance to make it up to him or something. Nothing overt, obviously, or he might work out that something's wrong.

Anyway, we got the intel on the decker. He's been seen hanging out with a human supremacist gang in Snohomish, so that's our next stop on the search for answers.

Hahahahaaaaaah.

Fast-dissolving laxative tablets... What an arsehole.


That one had me laughing the whole way through.

*Takes a bow* I aim to entertain.

16/11/2070. (sunday)
Well, today started out interesting and didn't let up from then on. Sarah decided to look into the cop who last updated the target Decker's file... by parking a few hundred meters up from Lone Star HQ in her unregistered roadmaster and hacking in. I think this idea seemed good BEFORE she had her soycaf for the morning. Anyway, that went about as well as could be predicted and she was arrested. I think she overestimated her roadmaster's ability to get her out of trouble, as she didn't surrender easily. The cops parked an armoured up patrol car at either end of the 25m long alley she'd hidden in and she couldn't get up enough speed to bulldoze her way through.
Also, protip: Roadmaster vs AV missile, Roadmaster loses.

So Shadow drives in from his new place about an hour out of Seattle to meet up with me and plot a way to get her out. We go through a list of options to get her out, all of which have low probability of success and virtual certainty of disaster. Then, after another hour or so we got a call from Sarah. She managed to get herself out and even managed to get some new cyberware out of the whole thing: a nice, shiny... cranial bomb. Yeah, this cannot end well. Also, special thanks to Nitro for having his commlink off. Not being able to contact you in an emergency is so convenient.

So now we're doing a freebie for Lone Star. Specifically, we're kidnapping a high-ranking Knight Errant Lieutenant on zero budget and one week, with the price of failure being troll brains everywhere. Today just keeps getting better and better.

There is one piece of good news. Sarah's new best friend is fine with her leaving Seattle after the job is done, though none of us believe that this will be the last we hear from him. I hear Neo-Tokyo is nice this time of year.

17/11/2070. (Monday)
Tickets have been taken care of, packing is done, passport is ready. Whether we succeed or fail, I am out of here come Monday afternoon. We did some computer research on the target, and managed to find out that he's spending the weekend at his bosses mansion out in the country. Odds on this is the best chance we're going to have to grab him. Shadow wants to go in guns blazing, leave no living witnesses, that whole murderous rampage thing. Sarah and I don't like the idea, and we try to work out a plan that doesn't involve mass murder. He then started to suggest kidnapping the guy's wife and using her as leverage. One of the great thinkers of our time, ladies and gentlemen! Sarah suggests that we biosculpt some shmuck to look like the guy, add a personafix to make him think he's the guy, and try a simple switch. I pointed out that the plan was better, but would be difficult and expensive to implement. Also, considering the heat we we're going to be bringing down with kidnapping one of the highest ranking cops in the city we couldn't really afford to leave anyone to put two and two together with that nice big reward for information just lying out there.

In the end we decided that a body of about the right height and weight, plus a latex mask and the target's clothes, might be enough to confuse when the target was actually kidnapped. At the very least it would confuse investigators for a little while, hopefully long enough for us to leave the country. So that's part... 3? 4? I don't know, one of the later stages taken care of. Sarah put in a couple of hours of VR research and turned up the fact that our target's boss likes hunting. A lot. Odds on that our target would be dragged out on a hunting trip during his weekend.
Perfect. He'll be away from the security of the mansion. We'll hit him then. That is to say, Sarah will hit him. I like Sarah, I really do, but there is no way I'm going out into the woods to kidnap a top KE detective for her without at least getting paid. Shadow's much the same: We'll help in the setup, we'll do research and buy gear, but Sarah is going to need to deal with her own mess on this one.

Speaking of setup, Sarah wants to do the whole thing by remote. I don't blame her.

18/11/2070. (Tuesday)
Drone shopping. Sarah wants to get a smokecloud drone to act as a distraction while her manservant switches the unconscious cop with the corpse double. We've sent Shadow off to round up either a body or a suitable hobo, Sarah's stealing a car, and I'm using my black market contacts to find her drones.

Did I mention she's still broke, so these are coming out of my money? She owes me so big for this.

19/11/2070. (Wednesday)
Shadow sucks at finding people. He managed to piss the crap out of the Crimson Crush and had to make a retreat from the barrens under gunfire. I've taken over for him.

Found our guy. Right size, right shape, even still breathing. Got him on a drip and high on slab so the time of death can be as close as possible. Normally I don't like civilians getting caught in the crossfire but this chiphead's brain is so badly fried that it's a mercy killing.

20/11/2070 (Thursday)
Sarah is doing preliminary recon on the forests near out target's mansion. She says she thinks she knows where he'll be hunting. Also, every drone going on the mission is getting rigged with explosives to reduce evidence.

22/11/2070 (Saturday)
The op went as well as can be expected. Every drone that went along is a writeoff, totaling over ten grand in assets. We managed to pull the switch, just, but given the circumstances I can't be sure they bought it. The dropoff went well enough, the location Sarah did her broadcast from got hit by so many SWAT officers you'd think it was a doughnut shop (she was long gone by then), and the reward for information regarding the run is growing by the hour. I'm fairly sure that nothing leads back to me, and Sarah says she thinks she's in the clear. Shadow might be in a bit of trouble with the Crimson Crush, but as far as I know nothing links him back to the kidnapping.

So, Neo-Tokyo. Everyone else is coming along too, though sooner or later we're going to need to find a way to beat Sarah's cranial bomb or it's just going to keep coming back to haunt us.

Oh, and everyone is broke by this point. Next week will be interesting.

Wow. That sounds like a complete and total Foxtrot. Charlie's leading the orchestra, and your girl Sarah's wearing the dress.


On the topic of folks being compelled by circumstances or force (circumstances, in my case) to work with folks they'd just as soon see dead than work with... In my Sunday Star Wars game, my players are working with The Empire.

They're all Jedi. And it's 23 ABY, so it's not quite as bad as it could have been. Plus, they're colluding with an Imperial high-level law enforcement officer to gather evidence needed to prevent a war, so it's not all bad.

Yours sounds like it was probably cooler, though.

The best bit? Sarah's big character arc is around her hatred of Humanis Policlub. IE, the guys who're in bed with Lone Star. Let's face it, I couldn't have set this up better if I tried.

Now I will be running the group through Anarchy: Subsidized as their ticket out of the Seattle heat (yes I know it's winter. The heat comes from Knight Errant). Therefore, unmarked spoilers will be ahead.

Suggestions for other runs to do in Neo-Tokyo over the next year or so will be considered, but no promises

Those last two stories have been very slick, thanks FuelDrop.

Thank you for your kind words, but I would be nothing without my players. Their crazy antics are the core of this thread's entertainment.

22/11/2070.
Evening.
Got a message from Miss Johnson, asking for a meet at Teiko Ikemoto's concert. I personally find most pop music a bit shallow for my tastes, and Teiko's offerings are no exception. I will admit that she has a captivating voice, credit where it's due, but it's no more natural than my own vocal implants.
Maybe it's my performing arts degree speaking. Or jealousy: I'd love to be able to play a crowd like that. It'd make my job so much easier.
Anyway, the ticket is worth a couple of grand so I kind of feel compelled to go and tell Miss Johnson that I'll be out of town in person. It's more polite than just messaging her.

Later.
I'm not certain if this is coincidence or conspiracy. Miss Johnson is recruiting us for a long-term job in Neo-Tokyo, with transport and accommodation payed for by Horizon. We've just got to prove ourselves by putting some graffiti on a bar called Lost Wages without being spotted, preferably making the news at the same time. We finished recon about half an hour ago and now we've met up to talk about what we're going to do next. The synthetic hot chocolate in the dive we've picked isn't completely undrinkable, though it's pretty close. Shadow seems to be handling his soycaf just fine, so maybe living the high life is making me soft. Then again, it is Shadow. I don't doubt he'd be able to stomach paint thinner if nessessary.
Oh, I almost forgot. Miss Johnson foisted a new kid onto us for the mission. Elf, 19, Blue hair, sword. Cute, but a bit too young for me. Goes by the name of Seth.
Because if there's one thing this group needed it's more muscle. Speaking of which, Nitro left his commlink off again. I can understand going dark, but generally a reason is required before going to ground.

Later still.
We've thrown some ideas around about how to pull the job off without getting caught. Shadow suggested use gas grenades full of Warp or CS, but I'm pretty sure he was joking. There's no way he's dumb enough to suggest a stunt like that seriously. The new kid suggested disposable drones, but our budget isn't really big enough to cover that kind of cost after the last fortnight's expenses. Another suggestion that came up was a sniper rifle full of paint rounds, but everyone agreed that was plan G: It's quick and dirty, but it'll get the job done if everything else fails.
Sarah then pointed out that we didn't need to use physical paint: AR would do just as well. We just needed to pick up some tags, reprogram them, paint them to match the building's exterior, then stick and run. Expanding on that, I suggested that we put tags on every exterior wall and the roof as well. After all, we wanted to be noticed!
We're refining the specifics as I write this, but it's looking like we'll be able to go overboard on this one and get payed too.

23/11/2070.
4 am.
Most of the tags are in place. Sarah set them up with a 16 hour delay so that they wouldn't trace back to us and should light up at about 8 pm, when plenty of people are there to see. She says she's set it up for a rather overwhelming AR sensory bombardment that should be all but impossible to ignore.
Slipping the tags onto the walls without anyone noticing isn't exactly hard, and Sarah has a fly drone putting one on the roof. Shadow's in the van keeping an eye on things. This might just be flawless... Uh oh, Shadow's spotted something.

Ok, crisis averted. Someone spotted Seth and recognized him, how I'm not sure. Anyway, the orc intercepted him, but with a bit of prompting Seth was able to logic bomb the thug and slip away while he tried to work out what was going on. Everything is proceeding as planned.

8:30 pm.
We leave tomorrow. Miss Johnson was most impressed with how we handled the situation. Turns out she had some hired thugs keeping a lookout for us so she could see how we react to unexpected complications. The one who spotted Seth apparently managed to see through his disguise, but he was fine with letting us go as he thought we were still putting in recon rather than doing the job. We got 5 grand apiece for lighting up the bar without getting caught, but more importantly we passed the entrance exam for Horizon's little mission. One 20-page contract later and we're good to go.
Now I just need to sell off my boat ticket. I think I know where to look for a buyer...

24/11/2070.
Ok, this plane is pimped out. Sauna, cinema, bar, private chef... Horizon hasn't skimped out on this one. Good thing we're freelancers, I doubt most of their citizens will ever even dream of flying on something this nice.

25/11/2070.
4 penthouse apartments, company transport while we wait for our vehicles to arrive... this might be a rather nice year. The food they stocked the place with is almost as good as what I usually buy, though Japan's gun laws are already irking me. I like my pistols, and I don't appreciate having to hide them.
Anyway, we've received our first job. Get a gene sample from the pop star Teiko Ikemoto, clone baby.

Easy.

Our new handler, Mr Johnson (come on, can't you be even a little creative?) has put us on to a stalker who might be able to tell us when our target will be vulnerable. Sarah has e-mailed him, we should be hearing back tomorrow.

26/11/2070.
It should surprise no-one that stalker boy is a bit creepy. He's given us the intel we need, but wants a lock of her hair in return. Since she'll be at the world mall Monday at 8 I can spend the week brushing up on my Japanese and trying to get a handle on the culture.

2/12/2070.
Part 1 accomplished. We found her at a clothing store, looking at sweaters. 10 security guys were with her, 4 obvious bodyguards and 6 more hanging out in reserve. So, we go in for a distraction. First is Seth and I, playing the part of a pair of bickering tourists. As anticipate, the moment we wander close to Teiko her bodyguards come to shut us down. I'm impressed with their self-control at not punching Seth, he was playing the role well enough that I wanted to punch him. As we got into an argument with them Sarah came wandering up the isle, distracting the other obvious bodyguards. While everyone was busy dealing with dumb tourists Shadow slipped out of the clothing rack he'd hidden in and cut a hair sample off Miss Ikemoto so cleanly she didn't even notice. After a few seconds one of the bodyguards glanced over and spotted something was wrong, leaving us as they escorted their pop queen to safety. The 'hidden' guards continued to keep tabs on us for the next hour or so, necessitating a shopping spree on Horizon's Nuyen to stay in character. What a shame.
Anyway, now we just need to find a cloning lab to make us a baby.

3/12/2070.
Sarah is good. Seriously, on an unfamiliar grid she managed to find a black market cloning bank in about an hour. We've now finished getting everything organized, given Creepy Mcstalkerface his lock of hair, and get to enjoy the fruits of our labor for a few weeks until next job gets out of prison. I'm going to spend some time making connections, as a couple of assets who know the score around here are bound to be useful in the near future.

Wow. Somehow, you manage to make "everything went smooth and more or less according to plan" into a captivating story.


Between working for Horizon, being in Japan and being on the run from the law, though, you guys are pretty screwed if you have to light anything up. Then again, I suspect you have set this situation up to make the muscle branch out into new skill sets that don't involve some variation of hurting things or breaking people.

It went smoothly for the players. As the GM, they managed to bypass huge chunks of the runs without even trying through lateral thinking (Most noticeably the Bomb Gang encounter).

I just hope we can keep it up without bringing down too much heat on ourselves. That would probably put us in breach of contract

Also, to whoever wrote Anarchy: Subsidized. Great module, having a bunch of fun so far, but next time you send the runners off to another country in a luxury jet remember to include previsions for their vehicles. I know my riggers, and they HATE being separated from their toys.

Thanks to all my readers, hope you continue to enjoy! (And yes, I am still working on that other fanfic I promised. Including the Rule 34 ascendant AI. Blame Sendaz. Probably won't be out for a while, as I have a bunch of stuff that has higher priority. Sorry.)

Reposted with permission: Seth's background.

As a GM, I'd make an allowance for that, personally. It would raise far too many red flags to transport a riggermobile from Seattle to Tokyo (Neo or otherwise,) so I'd have had Horizon put the Riggermobile in safe, long-term storage, and provided a new, less-tricked-out but completely clean riggermobile upon arrival, something new for the rigger to sink his/her teeth into, with the promise that the group can keep it as a bonus if it survives everything they get up to by the time they're ready to go back home.

First draft on Walker's background. I could use suggestions on what to add, anything you guys want me to expand on, that sort of thing.

So, my history. Let’s start at the beginning. My full name is Jill Kara Bonds, daughter of Tara Parker and James Bonds. I was born on the 25th of February, 2044, in the UCAS city of New York. My mother was a human who worked as an accountant for Cerebrotech (an Ares subsidiary that deals in cybernetics and optics). Nothing interesting yet, right? Let’s spice things up a bit. My father is an old-school shadowrunner. He married my mother as part of his cover identity… yeah, you can already tell this isn’t going to work out, can’t you? Well they managed to stay together for a good eight years, 2043-2051, before his work drove them apart. Ironically, as far as I can tell mum never found out about dad’s real job, it’s just that he kept having to leave town for extended periods with little to no warning. She may have suspected an affair towards the end… which was absolutely correct. I have the younger half-brother to prove it.

My childhood was pretty much corp standard while my parents were together, but once they split up it began getting a bit less production line standard. See, while I was with mum I was getting the hunky-dory corporate education from Ares, the All American Corp™. When I was with my dad on the other hand, I was learning crime. Now dad was a confidence man, and he ran with a pretty standard team. Decker, Rigger, Muscle, Face. No magic, but there were less mages back then so that wasn’t exactly uncommon. Initially I was basically the mascot, sitting in the van and watching the others work. After a while I started getting more important jobs, such as keeping an eye on the monitors in case something unexpected happens. I got a fairly well-rounded education here, everything from hitting people to basic computer skills and demolitions. My real talent was fairly obvious, I was following in my dad’s footsteps.

Then, at 11, the crash 2.0 happened. I was with my dad at the time, and we were out of town on a job. In our hotel room, planning the next step, we hear a car crash outside. Then another one. And another. All the auto-pilot systems had simultaneously failed, leading to total anarchy. Our Decker tried to log in and find out what was going on, but… yeah, let’s just say we ditched the mission at that point. Given the chaos following the crash it took almost a week for us to get home. I hadn’t been able to contact mum in that time but, well, the crash. I don’t know what I was expecting when I arrived at mum’s place, but… she’d been in VR when it happened. Logged in, then never logged out. I kind of… freaked out. What? I was 11, and my world had just been turned upside down! Like you would have handled it better.
Anyway. My corporate SIN was gone, but dad suggested that I sign up for a national SIN. Being an actual person has its perks. After that, dad got a LOT more protective of me. Sent me off to boarding school for a while, and a good one at that. He spent a lot of money getting me a top-notch education, and I can even remember some of it. I’ll be honest I wasn’t really that good a student, not that you can tell by looking at my straight A grades. See, with the crash rich people were less than thrilled with their kids spending most of their time in VR. That meant actual teachers, who are as vulnerable to being manipulated as everyone else. One area where my scores were legit was performing arts. I love acting, and I’m a fairly solid singer as well. Oh, and if you can name the instrument then odds on I at least know how to hold it… except Harmonicas. Those things and I have a history.

I was good enough to get a scholarship into collage, where once again I focused on acting. Also did some debating, which was fun. Half the time my opposition was totally out of their league because they were limited to using actual evidence to support their arguments. I can think of at least two occasions where I managed to convince them that their research was wrong and whatever BS I was spinning was actually the truth. Now it’s not exactly uncommon for students in collage to have a side job to help make ends meet. I know one girl who was working at a strip joint, and another who sidelined as a building consultant. It takes all sorts, I guess. My sideline was killing people and stealing stuff. I may have put it a bit bluntly, but it’s the truth. I’d use my skills as an actress to get in, then take what I need or kill my target. Just small jobs, I wasn’t ready for the big leagues at that point, but it was enough to get by on comfortably.

After collage I started a double life. Officially I’m a small-time actress, and I’m legitimately part of the industry. You can find my name hidden in the credits of several B-grade Trids, I’m even the leading lady in a couple. Directors like it when their actors do their own stunts, it saves them needing a stunt double and makes editing that little bit easier. Most of my ‘ware is registered as ‘work related’ because of that. I tend to favor Science Fiction works that allow me to play the green-skinned alien chick. Makeup is hell, but it means I don’t have to worry about someone recognizing me on my other job: corporate espionage agent. Running the shadows makes more money in a night than most acting jobs make in a month, letting me live the high life. I like the high life.

05/12/2070.
Meet Mr Brax. He's a Fixer. Why a Londonite is one of the best-connected Fixers in Neo-Tokyo is anyone's guess, but that's the word on the street.
Mr Brax is well out of the league we used to work with in Seattle, so we might be stepping up in the world. Of course, the higher we climb the further we have to fall. He knows this better than we do, so naturally we get a test run to see if we're up to snuff. I seem to be saying that a lot lately.

The mission in brief: We have to make sure a meeting between the heads of some A-level corporations follows a script. Another team is handling one side of the conversation, so we need to make sure that Mayumi Akio follows his lines. Now fortunately, over the last few years he's started spending more time with his family and less at the office, allowing us to have a good shot at slipping in an impersonator.

Naturally, it's not just a matter of walking in and saying "I'm the boss, let's sell the company!". We need a couple of things before we can pull the con off convincingly. First and foremost we need his security access pass. Easy enough to copy, but we need to get our hands on the original first. Next, we need either his commlink, or some quality time with it to copy his comm codes and schedule. Finally, we're going to need a thumb print and retinal scan in case they have biometric sensors. Quite the laundry list of stuff, but we have a plan.

Firstly, we're going to need to get him somewhere we can pick his pocket to swipe his commlink, then slip it back to him after we're finished. That means somewhere that his Commlink going bye-bye won't take down his PAN.
GameNation is having a big miracle shooter event in two days. They hand out PAN enablers and require that people switch off their Commlinks while inside to prevent hackers from cheating. Mr Mayumi is big on his electronic entertainment (his corp makes parts for knock-off commlinks, so he's already in the industry), so if we can get him tickets from a legit source then there's good odds that he'll make it a family day out. This also gets us his thumbprint.

Meanwhile, the rest of our team will hit his apartment. He's converted 4 floors into a super-penthouse (The building is pretty compact, so I can't exactly blame him. I'd do exactly the same thing if I owned an apartment complex.), take the scans to copy the card, then get out nice and quiet. If they trip an alarm once they're inside, the cops will call Mr Mayumi's Commlink and we'll tell them it's alright, just a glitch in the system.

While I get the gear we need to copy the card, Sarah is organizing the tickets. Now last time Sarah tried to pull something like this she screwed up so badly she ended up with a cranial bomb. She learned from that experience, and from what she told me Ares marketing division never stood a chance. So now that Mayumi is on their promotional free ticket list, all we have to do is wait for our chance.

07/12/2070.
06:00 PM.
I'd forgotten how much fun picking pockets could be. One quick jostle, one commlink. Sarah is on fire once again and blasts through that thing's firewall like it wasn't even there, in spite of the fact that it's a top-of-the-line piece of hardware. While she's on that, I dust for fingerprints. After about a minute we have everything we could ever need from it, and in another minute it's back in its owners pocket without him being any the wiser. We retire to the car and begin screening his calls in case the others screw up.

EDIT: Little did we know...

06:30 PM.
They made the news. Cops, security company thugs, the whole lot. Pure luck is the only reason those two aren't rotting in prison right now. Okay, here's what happened as far as I can piece things together.

First, they get in. Shadow tells me that he just pretended to be on the comm while one of the residents was entering and got them to hold the door for him, after which he let Seth in. All in front of a security guard, but lets face it: running security is boring enough without being stuck on the front desk of some nothing apartment building. So then they head to the elevator and Seth presses all the buttons. I swear it's just to annoy Shadow... so, good cause. The elevator doesn't open on any of the penthouse floors, but does open on the roof. Now they go back down to the sub-levels, checking them out. I will never know what security thought they were doing, but whatever. Then Seth goes over to one of the security people and tries to talk to them, but immediately runs into a problem: He doesn't know Japanese. We're going to be working in the country for a year, and he hasn't bothered to start learning the language yet.

Well he leaves the bemused security guy behind and walks up the stairs to the roof, clambers up on top of the elevator housing and starts playing air guitar. A few seconds later security rock up. I can only assume that by now they're watching these guys on the cameras. They start telling him to get down in broken English. Meanwhile, Shadow is busy taking down the guy at the desk and a final guard who's talking to him, then grabs one and drags him into the elevator to use his authorization to open the penthouse door. Doesn't work. Meanwhile Seth has pissed his guys off enough that they draw tazers and threaten him. He still doesn't co-operate, so they taze the shit out of him. That gets him to do what they say for a moment. He gets down. Then Shadow's elevator dings open, with one of their security guys slumped unconscious inside. He tried to bluff his way out of the situation and fails epicly. So one of them calls the cops while the other tries to shoot him full of darts.

It pretty much went down hill from there. Only interesting fact that came to light during their escape was that Seth is a mage. Yeah, he didn't bother to mention that. Anyway, they get out in one piece though the entire thing is on Mytube with close to a thousand hits before they've even left the building.

Now Seth is 19. Just a kid. He did something stupid, sure, but he's a teenager. It's built in. Shadow is 40, AKA OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER! He should have reined in Seth before things got too far.

Anyway, now I have to find a way to salvage this situation.

08/12/2070.

Okay, we have a plan. Cops are all over the place and security are under the spotlight. Fortunately nothing was stolen, no-one was killed, and the only real property damage was some damage to a chain-link fence in the carpark, so the cops aren't really putting that much effort into this case. We can use this.

The security contractor is Parashield. Sarah is hacking their systems right now. Plan is to use the incident as an excuse to send a couple of inspectors in to assess the building's security setup. With luck, we will be those inspectors.

09/12/2070.

It took an hour, but we've got the card. We are good to go.

10/12/2070.

We're done. In spite of some rocky patches we completed the mission, we've been payed, and Mr Brax seems to be happy with our work. All in all, a good day.

Don't you just love it when your teamies decide to go pink mohawk while you're counting on them to be blackhat and mirrorshades?


Good work on salvaging a Charlie Foxtrot, though. I think these guys really would prefer full pink mohawkery, though.

I actually think it was more testing me on how much I'd let them get away with. Seth's player (our old GM) hasn't actually been just a player in forever, so he's still getting back into it and pushing boundaries to see how hard I push back.

11/12/2070.
Big pay day yesterday. First priority: new shoes. I've decided to try going native with fashion, starting with the feet and working my way up. After seeing some of the more... extreme designs originating around here I've decided to start conservatively. I mean, just look at some of these!
Naturally I bought some anyway in case they're needed for some social occasion or other, but I'm mainly looking for practical designs for day-to-day wear. As for the rest... well, let's just say Japanese fashion is too vast a subject for me to get more than the smallest sampling of it in my time here so far. Of course it doesn't help that I limit myself to ballistic resistant cloth and hesitate to wear anything that doesn't cover my vital organs, but that still leaves me with a vast selection to choose from.

I suppose I should also look into getting some new cyberware too. Once I finish my clothes shopping.

12/12/2070.
One thing I dislike about Japan is the inability to accessorize properly. I feel naked without a pistol by my side, and a tazer just isn't the same. I'm considering picking up a sword since they seem to be all the rage around here, but it's impossible to find one that goes with all my outfits. That means either I need to get several swords, one for each outfit, or simply go with a concealable weapon chosen purely for practicality.

I'm going with option two for now. My trusty combat knife will suffice for now, and it's not like I plan on getting into close combat if I can avoid it.

Also, I've managed to find a good street doc and get some new 'ware. I've replaced my reaction enhancers with a name brand version, and added some decent cyberears to boot. I made sure to get a dampener, considering Shadow's inordinate fondness for flash-bang grenades.

13/12/2070.
Found a great sushi restaurant a few blocks up from our apartment. Never been a fan of sushi before, but the stuff they serve here is really nice.

15/12/2070.
I met an arms dealer today. He had a beautiful Ruger Warhawk in stock, and it was calling to me. I mean, I know it can't be silenced. I know it can only fire six shots before I need to reload it. I know it's horrifically illegal to own here in Japan... but none of that matters. I absolutely had to have it.

18/12/2070.
Got a job today. Some pirates pissed off the wrong person, and we've been hired to take them down. It's one of the simplest runs I've been involved in: Go in, kill everyone, sail their boat in for the fixer to resell.
As part of this we've made a new friend. Dr Wu the alchemist was kind enough to supply us with the preparations we need for the operation, though to be honest I'm not really that comfortable relying on magic like this. I'm not that comfortable being honest like this, either.
Insertion is by air. We're currently flying to our target, and once we reach them we'll bail out and activate these spells. I really hope they work as advertised. Also, Shadow bought his mutt along. Five Nuyen says it won't jump out of the plane.

Voyage home.
Well, as they say in the industry: never work with children or animals. We landed safely and stealthily, complements of some preparations that made us invisible. Seth used a spell to give the two guys who might spot us sea sickness, then Shadow landed on one axe-first and Seth tipped the other one over the side. So far, so good. Unfortunately, once Shadow's hound caught the scent of blood it abandoned stealth for an altogether less subtle attack: It set the nearest pirate on fire. It's a hell hound, so that kind of thing is expected.

Anyway, one long battle full of more magic than I care to remember (seriously, I think about 5 spirits got involved at various times. Having two Shamans face off is not something you want to get in the middle of!) we managed to get out of it all in more or less one piece. The puppy got its ass handed to it by a spirit, but fortunately it doesn't look fatal. Seth's last spirit seemed to like him and he said something or other about a binding. All I know is that when we pulled into dock and I went down to the shamanic sanctum to check on him he was out cold. I suppose that spirits tend to get a bit irked when you try to enslave them, not that I can blame them in the slightest. I'm not sure Seth views it that way, of course.

Wow. Sounds like you had a blast. Seriously, though, how did Seth get a hellhound to agree to a paradrop?



My game didn't go off. More than half were no-shows, and I have a huge battle lined up for my players, since the last four or five games running have been nothing but straight roleplay.

Funny thing: both of the new guys who I was expecting to be there and designed the run as an introduction for were no-shows, as was nitro's player (again)!

Shadow got his hell hound to jump with an animal handling check. He only got two hits, but I was kind and let him do it so that he could finally try out his new toy. He seemed to think that the hell hound would basically act as an extra character under his control. One glitched animal handling check to make it be stealthy later and that idea went out the window.

I still let him do the rolls for it, but I basically had veto on its actions. "No, it can't automatically distinguish between the enemy beast spirit and Seth's beast spirit." "You just started killing people. It doesn't realize you want it to do so quietly." that sort of thing.

On a side note, the street shaman archtype's build in SR5 core is cripplingly bad. Our MysAd (Seth) outclassed him at summoning, spellcasting, and combat by a massive margin.

Also, Seth's player gets a thumbs up for roleplay this week. Seth is supposed to be a protege as far as raw power is concerned, but he doesn't really understand magic very well on an academic side. As demonstrated when he directed the group to start firing blind at a target IN ASTRAL SPACE! That is what I call player-character separation.

Looks like Sarah's player will be GMing the next session. should be interesting

23/12/2070.
Two days till Christmas. All my gift shopping is done, but my attempts to find some top-end augmentation for myself continue to be thwarted. Probably because of the sheer number of shoppers making a proper search all but impossible.
Anyway, I've gotten Shadow a new collar for Fido, some new shoes for Sarah, and a nice jacket for Seth. Synthleather. Anyway, I have no idea where he's gotten to at this point, as I've just gotten a call from Sarah. She wanted everyone to meet up for a job. I suggested the sushi place down the block.

8:00 am.
So, our Horizon Johnson got a family member kidnapped, payed the ransom, and got them back. Now he's sending us after the ransom money and a bit of revenge on the side. The credstick was bugged so we have a general location, though they jammed it before we could get a lead to their base. That gives us a ten mile radius area of sub-tokyo to search. The gang calls themselves the Sewer Rats and according to Sarah they're infamous for chemical weapons and booby traps.

Hours upon hours of searching through booby-trapped sewers? Yeah, no thanks. Shadow said he'd check out the subway while I talked to some people, maybe find out a bit more about our targets. Sarah can deal with the christmas customers stocking up on supplies for the expedition.

8:30 am.
Shadow went to the abandoned subway and spotted a bum buying drugs. The bum spotted him, so he pummeled him with full auto gel from his assault rifle. I feel sorry for that bum. Then he tracked down the drug dealer. I get called in to interrogate and, to no-one's surprise, he doesn't know anything we need. Amazing, some random picked up from a shady deal doesn't know anything about a gang that happens to operate somewhere in a nearby district. I am shocked.

10:00 am.
after a morning of making friends and being my normal awesome self I've run across Michael Garrot. He's a kid dwarf who fancies himself a shadowrunner, but more importantly he's been hired by a rival gang to take down the sewer rats. I tell him to meet us for dinner, we'll discuss working together.

7:30 pm.
Michael scrubs up nice. Still no idea why he's picked a western name since as far as I can tell he's a local, but whatever. Maybe it's to cause confusion for people trying to track him down. Anyway, we work out a plan and basically set it up so that we'll cut him in on our payday if he'll cut us in on his. Why is he worth that much as an ally? Well, he's managed to wrangle his way into the gang we're trying to take down and can give us an exact rundown of their forces, their current location, and its defenses pretty much earn him that paycheck in my book. Admit it, I did better than Shadow managed skulking around in the sewers all day. The man has had two showers so far and he still reeks. In other words, nothing new.

Ok, I retract that. The showers are a new development.

24/12/2070.
Bit more recon. The gang has apparently holed up under a dive bar, and there are some hints that the sewer rats leader is hanging out there. According to Michael he's not really the type to spend his time chilling with his chummers in the gang. Or maybe he can't stand the smell. Can't blame him on that one. Anyway, despite my best efforts I can't talk my way past the bouncer (A dive bar with a bouncer? That's new.), but Sarah was able to walk in without difficulty. Then again, who's going to stop a troll? She gets line of sight to the target and we begin phase 2, a classic half-pincer movement.

AKA, a frontal assault. Who the heck trained Shadow?

Fortunately we'd set up a distraction attack on one of their strongest defenses: a smoke grenade, a disposable jammer, and a cap gun. All set up to go off remotely, of course. Plan was to activate that then hit them from one of their weak points. We'd go in, slit the guards throats, then hit their defenses from a flank. All that? out the window. Why? Well one of the guards spots us and tries to gas us. Both Shadow and I are wearing sealed suits (because A: we know these guys love their gas and B: We're in the sewers, you damn well bet I'm wearing a sealed suit.), so the initial effects are negligible. I chase down the second guard and taze him while Shadow deals with the first guy.
Note: Tazer + wet environment + me in a sealed, rubberized suit = bad news for the target.
Anyway, I've barely turned the corner when I hear a massive explosion behind me. Turns out Seth had pulled out a lighter and the gas from the grenade was flammable. I am so glad I got that dampener ear-ware.

At that point our initial tactic was pretty much blown. Michael contacted us and informed us that the gang was heading for their fallback position, so we put plan B into operation.

Long story short, this gang was full of nutcases far too grenade happy for their own good. Past tense. They managed to blow themselves up during the fight and would have taken us with them if it hadn't turned out that Michael was a mage.
A fact he had neglected to mention to us up till now.

What, do I have some weird 'teenage protege mage runner who hides his true power' magnet hidden somewhere? I've found 2 over the past two months.

Anyway, with all that out of the way it's Christmas eve. I've disinfected and bandaged all of my wounds, taken two showers and a bath, and now I am going to go outside and celebrate.

Merry Christmas to all. Hopefully I'm flush enough on karma that Santa won't give me coal this year.

That was awesome, FD.

25/12/2070.
Yay! Christmas!
The day where I prefer not to kill anyone. I mean, normally killing people is distasteful but it's something that I'll do for pay. On Christmas... well, I actually hate working Christmas if I can avoid it.

This year it looks like I can't avoid it. One of Sarah's online friends has gotten themselves in a bit of a jam, and has come to us for help. He's a decker who goes by the handle of NetBlaze, and his sister has been kidnapped. He can't afford to pay us (Seriously? If my job routinely risked me getting my brain fried I'd hold out for as much cash as I could), but he says he'll work it off with us. Normally that wouldn't fly with me but, well, Christmas.

Also, He barely speaks English. Not a problem, except that Seth barely speaks Japanese. Oh, and the kid spent most of the meet listening to music from his headphones rather than paying attention so NetBlaze hacked them and started changing up his playlist a bit.

So we all go and start gathering intel. Sarah gets a photo of the kidnapping. NB gets a line on a Yak stronghold where we might find more info. I talk to some people and discover that she's not the only person who's gone missing in the last few days. Seth's spirit finds a bunch of magical defenses mucking up the trail. Shadow gets a bite from Fido and has to get rushed to hospital. Brush your abomination against nature's teeth more often and not only would you not have to worry about infection when it bites you but WE won't have to deal with the thing's horrible breath!

So the logical course of action is to sneak in and drain the Yak server, pinpointing our target and readying us for the next stage of the plan.

It starts off so well. NB hacks the external cameras, brings up blueprints, the usual Decker stuff. Everyone decides that the fire escape is the best way in, so we climb up there under the concealment of one of Seth's pet spirits. Things start to go wrong when we hit our first obstacle: a closed door. No handle on the outside (Gee, who'd have thought that someone might make it impossible to get IN through the fire escape while at the same time making it easy to get OUT? Fire safety that isn't a massive hole in security? who'd have thought it possible?!?), so NB decides to trip a fire alarm to unlock the fire escapes without, you know, actually sounding the alarm. I wouldn't think that sort of thing is possible, but I'm not a Decker so what would I know?

It turns out that NB isn't as hot as he likes to think he is and he trips an alarm. Everything from then on went down hill, but that's a long story. Cutting to the chase: NB in hospital in critical condition. Building destroyed inside by grenades. Big hole in outside where someone drove in an Ares Roadmaster. Run has to be scrubbed due to lack of leads.

Is it just me, or has every charity-style run we've been on recently ended in a complete disaster? Oh well, at least we tried to do the right thing for once. I dunno, maybe we're just out of practice or something.

Wildly entertaining, thanks for writing it

FD: For future reference, you may want to bear in mind that det cord and a silence spell are sometimes more subtle than hacking.

Or a silence spell and a circular saw. Most security set-ups that aren't AAA mega wouldn't think to monitor the whole door for damage, just to see whether it's open or not. Funny thing, a door which has had a human-sized hole cut in the middle of it still registers as a shut door on most security systems.

Sounds like Seth needs a chipjack and a Linguasoft.

Due to real life interfering there will be no update to the diary this week. sorry all.

Dang it Fuel. Don't your players know they are letting down a captive audience?

Hanging out for the next one. Your posts usually make my Monday.

01/01/2071.

A new year, a new mission. Our Horizon Johnson contacted us and told us we needed to get a confession from some street trash by the name of Kiyoshi Takahashi to doing something nasty with Ikemoto as his partner in crime. The main challenge, if you can call it that, is finding the guy.

We do a bit of research and find out that young Takahashi has been a VERY naughty boy. Sarah also finds the address of his elderly mother. Not bad for sitting around the table eating lunch. So Shadow goes off to set up some cameras for surveillance on the old lady's house and we start kicking around ideas, Shadow keeping in touch over comms. He makes the first suggestion: Drive Sarah's road master through the house, killing the mother then nabbing her son at the funeral.

I have an objection to killing anyone I'm not being paid to at the best of times, and offing a defenseless old woman to get to her deadbeat son is morally repugnant to me. However, making the target come to us has possibilities...

Next idea, after some group input: acquire a body at the morgue, kidnap mom Kiyoshi, leave body in her place, burn house down (making it look like an accident), have Sarah switch dental records, nab son at funeral. Seth jokingly suggested skipping steps 1 through 3 and just burning the place down with mom in it. He's just lucky I knew he was joking.

So now there's the question of the best way to get a defenseless old lady to open the door to strangers. My first suggestion was that Sarah and I go to the door: Sarah is the girl Takahashi knocked up, I'm her lawyer there to serve a paternity suit. Sarah seemed a bit less than thrilled with that, so I said that it'd work just as well with me pregnant and her as my lawyer. Eventually we decide to go in as delivery people, using a large crate to get the body in and kidnapped mom out without raising suspicions.

So I'm off to the morgue to pick up a body while the guys go and pick up a crate big enough to hold a body.

03/01/2071.

Plan has gone off without a hitch so far. It took me about a day to find both a body that fitted our needs and a mortician willing to look the other way. We talked our way in easily enough, took our target's mom out with a single shot from my tazer, then set it up so the fire would start after about an hour. Sarah pulled out all the stops and it'll look like the gas was left on when some wiring shorted out, starting the blaze. She's set up mom with a drip and enough slab on slow tap to keep her out of it until we're done, and she says there'll be no permanent damage. She assures me she knows what she's talking about, she once dated a physician! Very comforting.

05/01/2071.

Job done. We approached our target as representatives of his mother's estate and convinced him that he needed to come with us to our offices to clear up a few minor matters for his considerable inheritance. He was suspicious, hardly surprising considering how his mother was living, but we convinced him that most of the money was due to her taking out a life insurance policy while he was in prison. This guy had been cooking his brain with something the night before so he wasn't exactly sharp, and with Seth providing the distraction we managed to get him to sign a confession to helping Ikemoto burn down his mother's house in revenge for kicking him out without reading it first. Then, we got him to make us a voice key by making him answer some 'routine questions', giving Sarah all she needed to get a verbal confession to... well, pretty much anything we wanted.

The finale? We told him that there was a final, minor hurdle which he would need to discuss with our associate and dropped him off with directions to the room where his mother had woken up about 5 minutes ago. The reaction shot when he got up there would be on PPV if we didn't need to keep this whole thing low key.

Mr Johnson was very happy with the results and gave us the next mission right away: install a program on a secure, hard-wire only server surrounded by elite SWAT-type security forces in a crowded train station.

06/01/2071.

Sarah has given herself a position in the Mitsuhama payroll and accounting office across town, worked a shift, and found the chief admin for the target system. Now all we need to do is get to his commlink and upload an agent with the program. It'll hide, then covertly install the package next time our admin jacks in to work. He'll be tough to get to, but it'll be easier than cracking station security.

Did you know I only buy adventures for the initial pitch and conclusion, because my players manage to bypass pretty much all of the premade adventure more often than not?

I didn't either. Seriously, I don't think I need a spoiler warning after all as they don't actually do any of the stuff the module expects them to!

Setting up the street trash like that - hilarious. I just hope the insurance on Mom Takahashi's doss will cover it. Rendering an old woman destitute to fuck with her son is only slightly less abominable than straight-up geeking her.

FD: My players have been that way, too. They managed to tick most of the locations for "On the Run," but usually at different times, and definitely in different ways.

Don't worry, we checked that it was sufficient to cover it. I gave more karma than the difficulty of the mission probably warranted simply because of the innovative solution to the problem that they came up with.

07/01/2071.

Okay. Our target is male, single, and likes cruising for chicks at exclusive clubs. I've got this.
Sarah put an agent and the program on a data chip, and assures me that all I have to do is plug it into his commlink and next time he logs in for work the virus gets uploaded and we get paid.
Simple. We even know where he's likely to go tonight after work. I'll be going in alone, get him talking, pick his pocket and slip the chip into his commlink.

Later.

No one is hearing of this. Ever.
First things first. Getting into an exclusive club wasn't any problem, a smile and a wink was all I needed to convince the bouncer I belonged. It was actually rather nice to be able to wear my new outfits to work. I was a little out of practice with my high heels, but I got back in the swing of things fairly quickly. It didn't take long for me to find my target, and getting a guy who's looking for a quick hook-up to talk to a beautiful woman isn't exactly hard. I think the tailored pheromones were just overkill. Anyway, before I tried to pick his pocket I noticed that he had a datajack hidden at the nape of his neck. The signal scanner in my handbag confirmed it: Internal Commlink.

I had a few drinks with him as I tried to work out how to get past this sudden hurdle... which was a bad idea in retrospect. Alcohol goes to right my head and he'd been biosculped to be pretty cute. I'm not going to go into specifics but I'll confirm that he had been augmented down there as well. It took a while to tire him out, but eventually he fell asleep and I managed to upload the program. I just hope no-one notices that I'm a bit off kilter tomorrow.

08/01/2071.

Now I've heard everything. Seth got contacted by one of his friends on the other side last night, an american spirit who goes by Runs-Like-Wind. It was acting as an agent for the NAN who wanted him to recover an artifact that was recently stolen from Seattle museum before it could be returned to them. So the group decided to pull the job without me.

They spent a lot of time brainstorming and Sarah says they went through about a dozen plans before finally coming up with one they thought would work. Now apparently there wasn't much intel to gather, as the target was in the middle of an AAA area and any major intelligence work was too risky.
Remember that.
The information that they did get included a basic layout of the grounds, along with a hint that there were hellhounds on site and that Renraku was providing security.

So the plan was for an earth elemental to create a small cave beneath the basement and ferry the group into it (Bringing their own air supply with them), then have Seth cast a silence spell to cover the sound of Sarah's jackhammer. This worked well enough and they found themselves climbing up into the security center for the main house. Luckily, the only person there was jacked in and thus hadn't noticed the silent jackhammer... okay, that is something I never expected to say. A bit of slab and Sarah was free to replace her. It was at this point they find out that "Renraku security" means Red Fricking Samurai.

Well, they manage to get to the target, deal with the security, and grab it. At that point 2 Red Sammies came up on a routine patrol. Seth turned invisible and Shadow hid in the... shadows. Huh. However, the theft was noticed and one Red Sam went to help check the perimeter while the other stayed behind to investigate.

Long story short they quickly twigged that Sarah wasn't the real admin and a spirit spotted Seth, forcing a fight. 2 on 1, our guys striking with surprise... Seth almost died and Shadow was heavily wounded before they managed to knock the guy out. They bailed and managed to get out alive... just.

What I had to do last night might have been a bit degrading, but I suppose that getting nearly killed by Red Sams was probably worse.

Ha-hahahahaaaaaaah!

Bloody hilarious, that is. Keep up the good work!

Last session they bypassed my plans, to the point where I had to call the session early so I could spend the week rewriting the run to fit in with their new tactics.
First thing they did this week? Find a way to completely avoid the run I had set up.

That's a derailment within a derailment. I didn't even know that was possible. The entire session was thus improvised, and was possibly the best session I've ever GMed.

Also, those red sammies are badass.

That happened to me on the first run I set up. I wound up with three derailments.


The Plastic Jungles hired my players to help them arm themselves and set-up their defenses. To do this they chose to go to the Ancients to acquire guns. Rather than negotiating a trade (using the Jungles' own resources,) they took a secondary Run from the Ancients to hijack an AK-97 nanoforge from the Vory. Rather than hijacking the Vory's truck, they decided to rig the boat so it offloaded the Vory's goods onto their own truck. Then the hacker AI managed to fuck everything up by fucking with what she oughtn't have fucked with and had no reason to fuck with, and the container got dumped into the sea. So then they had to fly down to CalFree and hire a boat to sail up the coast, find the container, and bring it back.

All to get a shitload of cheap assault rifles for a bunch of farmers.

I seem to remember that story from some other thread. Didn't the AI pick a fight that was completely unnecessary solely for the purpose of flexing his digital muscles and being an a$$hole? (I seem to remember him attacking a spider who had nothing to do with the run simply because he could, thus giving the game away and getting a big beating to boot.)

Now I'm actually looking for a bit of advice on how Walker should develop from here. She's broken one of her cardinal rules as a Face: don't sleep with the target.
Now there are several reasons that she's always held to that. Firstly, she's always held that she's too skilled at persuasion to need to resort to carnal acts to achieve her ends. Secondly, in her youth she got knocked up by her then-boyfriend, and got an abortion. Ever since then she's wondered if she made the right choice and as a result has been very hesitant with her sexuality as she sees her ability to create new life to be a great responsibility that should not be taken lightly.

Now, after ten years of this, she's slept with someone she didn't even know in order to do a job. From her point of view this makes her feel like a very high priced prostitute, as in the long view she was sleeping with the guy for money.

So now I need advice. Should she be distraught about this moment of weakness? Should she see this as a failure of her skills despite the fact that the mission was technically a success? Should she try and rationalize it with herself by telling herself that he was attractive and she probably would have been willing to sleep with him anyway if circumstances had been different (Which is an obvious lie, even internally)? Or should she go the other way and realize that she's been keeping herself repressed all these years and thus denying herself the pleasures of the flesh for no good reason? The other extreme, where she follows a bit of a slippery slope along the lines of 'Well I slept with one guy for money, the damage is done now, I might as well make this a standard part of my arsenal'? Even further, combining the above reasoning with enjoying the act to the point where it becomes her preferred method of operation?

I'm honestly not sure how to have her react to this. The last session was a bit of a life-changing event for her psychologically, so any suggestions as to how I should handle it and have the character grow are welcome.

One thing is for certain: She's getting a toxin extractor implanted so that whatever she chooses from now on it's her choice rather than the alcohol's. As far as I know there isn't any published 'ware available that protects against unwanted pregnancy or STDs, so if she went one of the later paths I might have to mock something up.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that just before this run she had a rating 2 cerebral booster implanted, upping her logic from 3 to 5. This probably didn't help with the whole 'psychological stability' side of things, and could justifiably lead to an extreme change of viewpoint on the issue if that's what everyone thinks is the way to go.

That's exactly what happened. She got into the ship's systems and altered the manifest without the IC seeing her at all. Then she decided to flex her digital penis by reverting the spider's hacked admin account to a security account. That set off the data bomb, alerting the Spider, who jacked in to fight her.

The AI took very little hurt and was escalating to the point of killing the security spider with Black Hammer despite said spider having Firewall 7 and Biofeedback Filter 7, so the security spider cut the transmitter's power and dumped the AI. Then they dumped the cargo.




I would say, go the "Hell, it felt good and I got paid. Why shouldn't I do this when I want to?"



I don't think you need 'ware to prevent pregnancies. Intra-uterine devices are old tech by the time of Shadowrun 4 (or do you play 5? Hell, that statement applies true if you play SR1!) and by the time of Shadowrun, are probably orders of magnitude more reliable and safe. Alternatively, she could probably have her ovaries extracted and cryo-frozen. I imagine that's what high-class, augmentation-minded folk would do - it prevents the monthly curse and all chance of pregnancy (by default!) and makes motherhood a much cleaner (and safer!) affair.

As for protecting against diseases, I'd say that a nanite hive and some kind of nannies are your best bet for disease protection. The right tool for the right job - if you need to beat someone up, you don't get nanites to power your fleshy muscles, you get a cyberarm. But when you need bodyguards in your bloodstream and your whole body, nanites are the way to go. Alternatively, bioware might do the job, but diseases keep mutating - it's easier to update a nanite colony's targeting paramaters than to get a new bioware immune system every five years or so.

(Though if you play SR5 with the stupid nano-retcon, that may not be a viable option.)




Eh... Getting your grayware augmented is always a good reason for a change in psychology. I'd recommend visiting a shrink and getting some PAB work done so she's fine with her new outlook and moving on.

Interesting. How far do you think I should go with that? How much internal conflict should this new outlook have with her old one? How would you play this change in outlook if it were your character?



I'm afraid I am playing shadowrun 5th, and I agree that the nano-retcon is dumb. When the new Augmentation book comes out it might have something I can work with, but otherwise I'll think of something.



Which actually brings us to a few interesting philosophical points:

1) Would you notice that something is wrong with your own mind? Can you feel yourself going crazy, so to speak?

2) If a change in opinion on a subject were to come after an augmentation that is supposed to make you 'smarter', and you realized that your opinion on the subject has changed, would there be a risk that you'd assume that the new outlook is the correct one because you're quantifiable smarter now?

Also, would a cerebral booster implant muck up your hormones in the short term? The long term? Cross a wire in your brain during surgery by accident? Should any change in attitude or behavior be attributed to any of the above?

EDIT: How many shadow-shrinks are out there? more importantly, she's only been in Neo-Tokyo for a few months so it's not likely she'd already know a local shrink she trusts and most of her local contacts that could hook her up are either very mercenary or belong to a corporation infamous in the shadows for rumors of brainwashing people...

Zoé would probably be too guileless to use sex to manipulate and distract people. She wouldn't feel bad about sleeping with someone to get information or something, but she wouldn't be able to bring herself to do it with someone she didn't want to have sex with.

Shades is older. Like, way older. She'd do it if she felt it was the safest, best way, and if she thought she could have fun with it.

Neither of them would particularly care to sleep with someone they're planning to fuck over, though, although Zoé might not consider the ramifications of her actions.




6th World medical care is probably up to the challenge of nuking viruses without nanites. If nothing else, you can go see your friendly local kanmiko.




Depends on whether or not you're going actual crazy, or if you're noticing changes to your outlook that don't sit well with your old outlook. If you're going actually, factually 'round-the-bend nuts, then no. You wouldn't notice it, because you're neurologically unwell. If you're just evolving as a person in ways you didn't think you would and which scare you, then you would, yes.



Entirely possible. Or you might assume that the augment fucked with your head in some manner that it wasn't supposed to. Or, it's entirely possible it's just a coincidence.



A change in your behavior could be attributed to any or all of those, or none. It's basically up to you as regards how you want your character to go with this.



No idea. They're probably pretty rare, but if Shadow Stock Brokers exist, Shadow Shrinks likely do as well. As regards Horizon, well...

It seems to me that after the Corporate Portfolio came out, CCG launched an immediate shitboating campaign to make the otherwise nice-looking AAA mega into a monster. Personally, in the Shadows, I'd assume that so much dirt coming out at once was more likely the result of a smear campaign by Aztechnology than anything else. Remember, Shadowrun is entirely Unreliable Narrator territory.

I think we have a contender if we go for a hormonal balance issue being a factor: At the same time as she got the Cerebral booster she got a sleep regulator. I think that's the most likely implant to screw with your body chemistry short of something like an adrenal booster.

Also, would her damage compensators (which she's had for a while) have an effect on her decision making, particularly in regards to risk assessment?

FuelDrop: It's whatever you want it to be.

It could be any of those. It could be none of them. It could be them being a convenient scapegoat for her to let loose and do the things she wants to do but didn't previously.

It's also possible that a massive increase in cognitive power would lead to a surge of dispassionate hyper-rational thought processes. In time, I could see the mind finding a new balance between the new hyper-streamlined thought processes and the older ones. While it doesn't mean the person is temporarily crazy, it might look that way to plenty of onlookers.

15/01/2071.
Busy week. I've managed to spend most of the money I've been saving up on some new augmentation, specifically the Mnemonic Enhancer I've been chasing for the last month and a half. Stupid Christmas rush.
Anyway, the other big news is that Sarah has finally managed to get her hands on the Steel Lynx she's been chasing. She's asked me if I can get my hands on a Panther XXL Assault Cannon fitted for drone mounting and some ammunition to go with it. That fight with the Red Sammies shook her up something fierce, hence the push for new hardware.

20/01/2071.
I am good. Despite the fact that ALL guns are illegal around here I've still managed to locate a supplier who can get one in, slightly used but otherwise in good condition. Apparently the previous owner died from a bad case of nanite failure, poor sod.

There was a funny smell of fish coming from the crate that hung around after I dropped it off. Sarah was good enough to spring for a new air freshener.

(OOC: Half the group were no-shows so we did some housekeeping and called the session early. )

Ouch. Sorry to hear that, FD.

21/02/2071.

10 AM.

Someone's posted a bounty on the head of a gang shifting drugs and beetles in downtown Neo-Tokyo. Probably not the Yaks as they deal with this sort of thing in house, so might be a rival gang or some private citizen trying to clean up the streets. Whatever. The bounty is 50K and specifies that the death has to send a message, so based on my research into gang politics around here I'm going to guess that there are two organizations trying to shift product in the area, the Yaks have come along and said "One of you now works for us, the other is gone. Decide among yourselves which is which."
Or not. What matters is that Sarah and Shadow reckon it's a way to make a quick buck and want me in on it. Seth's busy doing some magic meditation or something so can't be with us on this one, but I suppose that shamans must need extra downtime to appease the spirits or something.
I almost decided to sit this one out, as Sarah and Shadow seem dead set on using explosives to make sure the message is heard. In the end I agreed to come along just to prevent any collateral damage.

1 PM.

Sarah's spent the last 3 hours searching the matrix for details on our target, and has found 3 leads. Each of us is suiting up to stake out one location, see if we can get a positive ID on where the target lives ect. The three possibilities are all apartments, with the first adjacent to a shopping mall, the second next to a girls collage and the third on the outskirts of the area, up near a courier depot. Sarah says she can handle the first one, and Shadow suggested that he could dress up as a Japanese school girl to infiltrate the second one. After the mental image of that scarred me for life and left me wondering why in the world I got these mnemonic enhancers I told him no, just no, and sent him to keep an eye on the third location while I handled the second one.

3 PM.

Sarah managed to get herself arrested again. She was careless with her hacking or something and apparently GOD backtraced her. I didn't even realize she was religious. Anyway, her Lone Star contact got her to drive to where they had jurisdiction rather than the real cops and then arrested her with much fanfare. Luckily, that area is Horizon property so our Johnson should be able to bail her out for a favor owed and a new SIN (her old one will be hanging out in the system padding out LS's arrest numbers for this quarter). I don't think she's getting paid for our next run for that guy.
Shadow's managed to tail his target's girlfriend to the mall and is looking into kidnapping her for interrogation. I have my doubts that this is going to work...
I've managed to talk my way inside my target's apartment, have a chat with him (it turns out he's a lieutenant for the gang we're after, not the boss) and convinced him to set up a meeting with his boss for a large transaction of novacoke, 5k worth with payment in corp script for tomorrow. Provided no-one else screws up we should be able to pull this off then. I love a clean assassination.

3:30 PM.

Shadow's plan worked about as well as you can expect doping someone with slab in a changing room and whisking them away in a wheelchair through a crowded mall to work: not at all. He didn't get the target, got shot up by some police rotor drones, got his SIN tagged, and generally had a bad time of it. He ended up getting away but he's had to burn that ID and he's got some nasty bruises from the experience. He should just be glad that the drones were packing gel.

Considering the setbacks the others are considering holding off until we've got better intel and less heat but some of my contacts have let me know that there are other teams going after this bounty too, and they're rookies who don't care about civilians getting caught in the line of fire. We have to get this done, and get it done ASAP to prevent innocents from becoming collateral.

22/01/2071.

Mission accomplished. One briefcase with a false bottom, one kg high-end explosives hermetically sealed and hidden inside said false bottom, 5 grand in corpscript notes, and one hell of a lot of sweet talking to convince the boss that I was, in fact, on the level. eventually he bought it and we traded suitcases, then when he reached the car Sarah hit the button. The car was one of those armoured Rovers that riggers love so much, and it contained the explosion fairly well. Well enough to ensure that no-one outside it got hurt, anyway. It was still pretty impressive to watch and netted us the full bounty plus a bonus, so all's well that ends well, right?

Now all that's left is to work out what to do with 500 doses of Novacoke...

Sounds like you had fun.


I have not been having fun.

I've been locking horns with my Shadowrun GM over information technologies for three fucking hours now.