I have a situation I could use some help with.

My players are on a typical extraction run. They have the target, but had to keep him for 3 days before the dropoff.

Last session, the mage fought off several attempts at ritual tracking, putting a handful of Boeing mages out of action.

I run corps with a mission budget. I don't really put numbers on it, but I think about how much a corp would really want an objective. In this case, the target is valuable to Boeing, but not so valuable that his recovery becomes the sole focus of the entire corp. Boeing has committed a ritual circle, 1-2 combat mages as tracker escort, and one recovery team so far. I think that is reasonable for one engineer.

Bottom line, I want Boeing to locate the runners (they are in Cascade Ork lands now) and send in a recovery team (to give the rest of the group some spotlight time). I don't want to just overpower the team's mage with manpower.

Do I have any other options?

I thought about having them dimed out, but they are hiding in the hometown of two of the 'runners. I was thinking that even Cascade Ork have more regard for family than that.

Was the extraction willing?
Is the subject doped/tied/restrained/etc?
Did they strip him of everything and dress him in "Flats" from the SSG?

If not, he could:
Activate a homing beacon
Call his spouse/loved one and make sure they know he's all right
Slot a chip loaded with a SK into their telecom to act as a beacon on the Matrix.

There are other forms of tracking availiable. If they made any credstick purchases anywhere then they would be vulnerable to matrix tracking. If they have any contacts who are less than Friends for Life and know where they are then the runners are vulnerable to tracking through them.
Also, don't forget Watcher Spirits. TN 9+(target's grade)-(summoner's INT) so long as the summoner knows the target

Have an amber alert sent out ... huge media attention and reward for the safe return.
Post photos if there are any

All of a sudden people are willing cough up tips, and tracking gets easier.

I think the burrito idea is the rest of the teams spotlight. If they do a good job
it is fine to let someone sweat more than the others. It all works out in the end.

I had some runners do the same thing once.
Even went so far as to set up an IV for nutrition and hydration and a collostamy bag for waste removal.

Luckily for me it was the brainscan module where they kidnap the scientist off the boat. So the "it all goes horribly wrong" was already fiated in and I could just point at the book to deflect blame.

Generally speaking, the folks that used to live there may have torqued someone off at sometime beforethey left, that person could always drop a dime on a local fixer and sell some info.
"Hey isn't that Johnny Lone Eagle? I coulda sworn he died four years ago in that Stuffershack shootout. Bet Tommy would pay nicely for that tidbit."

If all you're after is giving the rest of the group some spotlight time, then there's no need to have Boeing find them at all!

Since they're in the home town of two of the runners, any threat to that town concerns them. If you throw in a gang of marauding smugglers, or an incursion by a corp team, or whatever. Maybe somebody's been coming by and dumping toxic waste near the town's water supply. The runners just happen to be the only ones who can do anything about it. Use your imagination.

If the runners choose to try to hide out, then they have some negative consequences and people in the town now have a reason to snitch on them. If they get involved they get the spotlight time and maybe they do something that puts Boeing on their trail anyway. Everybody wins no matter what they choose.

The recovery team has contacts too; somebody might have told someone about 'that suspicious looking group of characters that came through town yesterday'. Even avoiding all human contact doesn't mean someone hasn't seen them on the road; have them delayed for an hour or so while an irate shepherd moves his flock down a narrow mountain trail. They'll be looking for an ambush all the way down. And who's to say the shepherd didn't dial up his tribal fixer to tell him about that nice bunch of wasichus he met while coming down Smuggler's Trail?

That might give the recovery team enough info for the company's satellites to pick up their trail and plot a proper ambush.

I seriously think going on with a Recovery team even though the mage SUCCEEDED in fighting off the astral tracking is very, very bad GMing. Makes the player's efforts completely worthless, and they'll realise that.

I do understand the need to have the rest play a role, so I back up the idea of having an unrelated attack on the town: rival traders, gangs, etc.

Well, I imagine a groupe of runners holed up will attract some attention from the local gangs and such. They could try something just assuming that whenever someone holes up like that they just did something bad and may have loot of some kind. (in this case Mr burrito.) Besides, if this is a group hiding after a run, they may be weakened and easy prey. Nothing else, runners tend to have expensive cyber and magic stuff.

Yeah, fiat tracking teams suck.
Could always have the obligatory run from thunderbirds on the smuggling trail as one border patrol or another takes offense to their existence.

Better yet: a corp team is in town for unrelated purposes. Someone friendly to the group spots 'em, and warns the team that "they found you somehow!"

Hilarity ensues.

I never planned on having an assault just because.

The group is essentially in a siege state. Their "walls" are their secrecy. Sure, the Mage knocked over the first set of ladders, but I don't feel it's unfair for the enemy to still be looking for a way into the castle.

It isn't worth a Deus Ex Machina, but if I can find another way for the corp to reasonably find the runners, the corp will try it. That is the purpose of this thread.

(BTW, the mage's actions have held off the Corp for roughly 20 hours so far... )

The next choice would be forensics and investigation (which takes time). Did the team leave any evidence? How long will it take to process that evidence? Can that evidence be used against them in the time frame?

For example:
One of the runners left some blood at the scene, you can 'immediately' know blood type, metarace?, gender?, nanite content, and maybe a few other things. Then you can try breaking it down for DNA, but that will take a few days (?). Which may give you the SIN of the runner (if they have one), which will hopefully lead to past convictions, known addresses, purchase records, etc...

If the runner that left the blood is SINless, or used some substance on the blood to break down the DNA (like bleach), then you might be back to square one. Most forensic evience is only good for IDing your guy once you have him in custody, not finding him in the first place.

(If you know that your perp is a caucasion ork, who bleaches is (normally black hair), wears size 11 shoes, and has a coke habbit you can't round up al the orks matching that description. But if you get a suspect who does match that description, then you can lean on them much harder.)

Another reason you might want to consider is that the corp may not want to publicise the fact that the scientist is now missing. If they do, a third corp might grab the opportunity to snatch that scientist off the runners.

Just to clarify, because this makes a difference... Someone started ritual tracking then the team's mage beat them? How? did he follow the thread back to the ritual team and kick the ass of the ritual sorcery team in their own ritual circle that acts as a barrier? Or was it a different scenario... This actually may matter a good deal.

The ritual team completed the ritual to make the link between the ritual sample and the person it came from. I could not find any way for my players to stop that. Then one of the ritual team had to follow the astral link from the sample to the missing person.

This is where the player comes in. He follows the same thread and intercepts the astral tracker somewhere in the middle. If the tracker cannot reach the end of the link, the ritual is ruined.

It's the only countermeasure I could find for ritual tracking in MITS and BBB.

Oh also, I read that anyone astrally percieving in the area would be able to see the ritual effect building up on the target.

IIRC being inside an astral barrier (warded area, medicine lodge, active hermetic circle, etc) or in an area with high background count both effect reitual magic, iirc. So to prevent ritual tracking you either shove the guy in your handy medicine lodge to camp out on a mana warp.

Could they possibly acomplish the same result by layering the Burrito with FAB-3 and other wierd fun stuff?

Just be careful, though. If you overdo it, remember to store the Burrito in a cool, dry place, lest you open it up when it's time for the hand-off, and you find you've cooked your merchandise into burrito filling.

Some great ideas here. Let us know what you go with? I want to know how it all works out.

Luckily for the Burrito, one of the runners used to be a medical doctor...

...Which means I cannot toss out an "allergic reaction to the sedative" without gaining major cheese factor.

WHat are the chances that Boeing would be able to track down the other end of the run, the Johnson and his recovery team?

Hire a team of Shadowrunners for "Asset Recovery"

Is there enough left to psychometrize the abduction site?

The astral trail of the ritual sorcery should have given them a direction to look - whatever way the trail pointed. Can they make a guess as to where along that vector the runners might be holed up? If nothing else, they may monitor that direction for when the runners go to make the drop.

Is there a chance they could hire runners familiar with the areas along that vector? Or when they contact a fixer or two, they suggest another runner from the same hometown, or a fixer mentions he knows a couple of runners from out that way (that turn out to be the runners).

How about having the Boeing mages do another ritual tracking from a different location with the secondary intent of triangulating a position, if the ritual gets headed off again?

If the subject is in a hermetic circle or lodge, that will hose the tracking. The second try will take place much later. Tracking rituals take a great deal of time.

And hermetic circles, lodges and wards go up in seconds? All the while the party mage might be on the lookout? If you say so...

no ... those do take a lot of time to construct, something like force hours/successes, but if I remember correctly, an astral barrier will work, and that is instantaneous.

:edit you can either summon a spirit or contruct a ward. They take about the same amount of time to raise as a ritual team to create.

I hate to overuse the "screwed by the Johnson" cliche', but I think I might this time.

Boeing quietly puts out a substantial counter offer to the Seattle Johnson community. This Johnson accepts and sells out the runners, and his own retrieval team.

The Johnson and target get a stunbolts (have to make it look good) and everyone else gets geeked.

Sound reasonable?

I have been reading up on this to make sure.

There are two things that the team can do.

1. It says that astral tracking is tn 4 and time is 6 hours /successes.

I am going to go out on a limb, and say if the burrito is in either a ward or an astral barrier, you get the rating of the barrier added to the TN, since anything passing the barrier gets an additional modifier according to the descriptions.

edit: if they fail, they can try again with a TN+2

2. Reading up on ritual tracking from MitS: page 39
They need a material link, and the time is 6 hours, but they get a boat load of dice to sink into the tracking. It is the same as astral tracking except, you have a whole team contributing dice. If someone drops out of the ritual before it is complete, they have to start over from scratch.

You know... I don't like this.

The message you're sending with this is "Don't do everything professionally and perfect by-the-numbers like you could be writing a Field Manual to Shadowrunner Operations, or else I'll pull out all the stops and pull out all the crap out of my butt to screw you as hard as possible."

The players did the job, they did it well. They performd the extraction, the mage blocked ritual tracking, and the burrito blocks any sensors.

They've done the job, and they've done it right. Let them get paid. End o' file.

Shadow, you are right. That is why I have been struggling with this all week.

The _characters_ definately deserve to hang out in Cascade Ork for another day, then just drag the Burrito back across the border and collect their cred. They did very well.

It's the _players_ I am thinking about. Success can be boring if you are just watching it.

Ed, not nessessarily... Sometimes, it feels good to just pull everything off hitchlessly and get paid.

That said, again, if you want something for them to do, have problems break out at home, unrelated to the Shadowrun, but that they definately can and should get involved in, and that they have a chance to do some karmatic good.

You know. I really think the unrelated problem idea sounds like fun. Kinda like a western. I bunch of 'neer do wells show up and brew some trouble. They are more then the local constabulatory can handle. Shot the sheriff and are making time with the woman. Then, from out of one of the houses steps a team of hardened Shadowrunners to dispense justice and teach them the error of there ways. Come on, what team wouldn't love that. Have the mage involved in a ward or something so he stays out of the gunfight if need be.