Shadowrun (was: Now that Helen and Atilla have moved back to our area...)

[Bob Schroeck]

(Sorry that it's been so long folks.  I actually finished typing this up last night, but I was simply too wiped to post it.  And good thing I didn't, as I made more than a few embarrassing typos which I've just fixed over lunch.  Oh, and the other reason that this took until now to post is that Helen woke up on Saturday with a migraine, so the game was pushed back to Sunday.  Unfortunately, Tiffany couldn't make it on Sunday, so Attila played Yoruichi.)

Before we got started, we had to re-sync the calendar again.  The big issue was how much construction had been done on the warehouse and the time that took, and after we worked it all out, we determined that the  wyrd mantis hunt was taking place on Saturday July 24, 2055.  Once that was settled, we picked up where we had left off at the end of the last session, which was tracking back the mantises through the semi-rural outskirts of Iserlohn on the eastern edge of the Rhine-Ruhr metroplex -- after killing a wild minotaur which seemed to come out of nowhere.

Bikavèr, who had just caught up with us, got tasked with dragging the carcass of the wild minotaur back to the farm where we started the hunt.  As he trudged off into the growing twilight the rest of us followed the mantises' trail back until the woods we were in abruptly ended at a small industrial area.  The trail led us to a mid-sized one-story factory-like building with a prominent "Stultz Machinenwerks" sign on it; it continued around to the back of the building to a loading dock, where there was a metal garage-style door that looked like it'd been torn apart from the inside.  We studied the site a bit more and Valentine realized that the twisted metal was hiding an equally-damaged side door; it appeared to have been ripped open from the outside by someone humanoid and very strong, before the larger door was destroyed from the inside.

About this time Bikavèr had gotten the wild minotaur's body to the farm, where his arrival with it absolutely stunned the cops there.  He negotiated a 20,000¥ bounty on it plus 5000¥ per head for the mantises (and the right to keep the bodies).  In the process he had to dicker with a cop who's an anti-troll bigot.  However the cop's sense of duty and fair play (and the fact that Bikavèr was defaulting negotiation off his Intimidate skill) actually overwhelmed his prejudices and we got a good deal.

Realizing that we're going to want to keep the mantis and minotaur bodies in good shape until we can get them to our buyer, Bikavèr called Gunther back at our base and had him arrange for a refrigerated trailer to be delivered to the farm.  Bikavèr then approached some of the other cops -- ones who had looked disgusted at the first one's obvious bigotry -- and asked them to call him when the trailer got there.  They agreed, and he traded phone numbers with them.  Bikavèr then took off at his top running speed -- which is considerable, given that he's a troll -- and beat feet to catch up with the rest of the group.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch industrial park, Lukas had gone astral to scout around before we entered the building.  He immediately found a ward over the structure.  Pulling up short, he changed his plans and spent some time circling it and trying to get an idea how strong and how big it was.  A careful circumnavigation of the so-called "machine shop" revealed the ward was quite large and covered the whole building.  And while he couldn't get a solid read on the ward's strength without actually interacting with it, he was able to get a sense that it was more than a token barrier.

Just about the time Lukas decided that they'd have to break down the ward (because although it posed no impediment to physically walking through it, doing so would likely nuke their quickened spells, among other things), Bikavèr actually caught up with them.  Lukas explains to Bikavèr that they need to take down the wards, but doing so will alert whoever cast them.  "We'll need to be ready to move fast and get out fast, because whoever did this isn't just going to ignore the wards coming down," he says.

"You know," Valentine says, "we're working for the cops right now.  We're actually supposed to be here."

"Yeah, so?" Lukas says.

"So," Valentine replies, "call for backup!"

So Bikavèr called the cop with whom he'd traded numbers, and told him what we found and what we expect would happen the moment we blow the ward.  The cop took him seriously, thankfully, and let him know that they'd dispatch men immediately to intercept anyone responding to the ward.

That settled, Lukas and Bikavèr attacked the ward together from astral space.  (Well, Lukas attacked from Astral Space; Bikavèr has a physical adept ability that lets him attack astrally from the physical plane like a dual-natured creature.)  Slashing at it with his knife focus, Lukas drove the ward down to half-power with one blow.  (Which suggests that it was not too terribly powerful.)  Bikavèr, who had kindly let him go first, finished the job with an almost casual killing hands strike.  The ward collapsed utterly, and we all piled in through the shredded door.

Inside, the loading dock turned out to open directly onto the machine shop proper, with nothing more than a bit of warning tape on the floor separating the two areas.  We had no trouble finding where the mantises came from, because there was a clear path of wreckage through the various stations and equipment, leading to the left rear of the shop.  Naturally we proceeded along the path of destruction, Bikavèr stealthing his way out of paranoia.

But it was well-justified paranoia, as we'd barely entered the shop area when we were ambushed by five mantises which dropped out of the shop rafters onto us.  When we go through the surprise rules, it turns out to be a bizarrely complicated situation.  They gain surprise on half the party -- Lukas, Wolfgang and Valentine are caught flat-footed -- but the mantises never even noticed Bikavèr (what with his stealth and all), and he watched them drop, so he has complete surprise on them.  Yoruichi and Ylva weren't surprised, and can deal with the bugs normally.

(What does it say about us that the 300-pound, seven-foot troll child is the least noticeable of our little gang?)

Bikavèr took advantage of his situation and immediately splatted the two mantises attacking Valentine and Lukas with his Ranged Killing Hands adept ability.  Swinging her rifle through a short vertical arc while firing, Ylva killed the one landing on Wolfgang and then the one in midair just above her head; as she drilled the one above her it tried to attack her but it missed her head and instead the strike glanced off her body armor.  (If I haven't mentioned it before, most of us have child-model Secure Ultra Vests.)  The last the ambushing mantises tried to land on Yoruichi, but she just side-stepped and let it smack into the concrete floor.  Sadly, these things weigh too little for their size for that to actually have done anything to it.  She and it trade blows; its attack glanced off her armor as well while she drove a blade through it.

After gathering up the remains for further bounties, we proceeded further toward what we could now see were furnaces, smelters and kilns, all in a separate area to the back left of the floor -- and a staircase in the midst of it all from which the mantises had obviously exploded outward, judging by the damage.  We'd barely registered all this when we heard a voice -- female, hoarse -- say "Stop!"

There was a long give-and-take here which I didn't transcribe, but the upshot of what we learned is that, at the bottom of that staircase, behind more wards, was a female mantis spirit who'd been trapped in this facility by its owners to facilitate the breeding of wyrd mantises.  For what purpose, she didn't know, but she'd been there for weeks if not longer... and she was dying. 

Honestly, I somehow missed the point where we determined that she was sincere and not the bait in a trap, but apparently we did, because the next thing I have in my notes is that we studied the three-layer ward that was guarding the staircase down into what was apparently a camouflaged lab.  Lukas, as it turns out, doesn't have the Magical Theory skill needed to tell anything about the wards (he's all about the practical magic).  Fortunately Ylva and Bikavèr do -- and they identified first an alarm ward (which is exactly what it sounds like), after which there were two conventional wards of rather high strength.

By nature the alarm ward is no impediment, and we'd already alerted someone to the fact we're in here, so we blithely passed through it.  Then Bikavèr smacked the first conventional ward around.  We deduced from his die rolls that it was a Force 8 ward; he took it down with a pair of astral hits as sirens started blaring outside.  He then stepped forward and took down the next, even stronger (Force 10 we determine), ward.

Downstairs, we found the wrecked remains of a mantis breeding facility -- and a sickly-looking young woman in tattered rags, chained to the wall in her own cell, the air of which is redolent with an unpleasant chemical smell.  This, we learn, is "Laila" (or maybe "Lila", I never did get the right spelling), the mantis spirit, who had been forcibly manifested into the body of an unwilling young woman.  A couple small male mantis spirits attended her, but were not able to free her.  We learned that she was not only ill from mistreatment and undernourishment, but because the chemical smell in the air was a low-level insecticide used to keep her weak and manageable.  Well, long story short, we pulled one end of the chain out of the wall, and after giving us a "you guys are stupid" look, Valentine hacked the electronic lock on her collar at the other end of the chain.  As Bikavèr carried her up and out of the lab and the machine shop above it, Ylva and Lukas both took a look at her astrally and concur that she is indeed a Force 8 mantis spirit -- but she's in rotten shape.

When we got back outside, the cops were there waiting for us.  As we explained to them who Laila was and what's up inside the machine shop, we heard a helicopter approaching, apparently flying very low over woods in a different direction from that which we came from earlier.  The cops confirmed it wasn't something of theirs, and we told them to take cover.  Laila's little servitors carried her into the forest we came from to hide and protect her; she promised that we'd be able to find her later.

We prepped for imminent battle, but just to be sure, as the lights of the helicopter appeared above the treeline, Ylva hit it with a Detect Enemies spell, pushing the spell's range as far as she could, and very briefly detected five potential enemies aboard it.  But once its crew spotted the cops, and it abruptly turned around and buggered off.  Fortunately we were able to get its registration number for the cops, who don't have as good eyesight as <s>Bikavèr does</s> we do.

After we settled things with the cops, who proceeded with an investigation of the site, we looked for Laila.  True to her promise, it was easy to follow her attendants' trail -- the idea wasn't to hide from pursuit but simply shelter her from possible harm.  When we found her, we offered to take her back and give her shelter until we can figure out how to separate her from her host.  She accepted.

So, with Bikavèr carrying her again, we traipsed back through the woods to the farm where all this fun started.  We set Laila up in one of the fold-out beds in the van (remember, it's the camping model).  The trailer we requested had arrived in the hour or so that we'd been gone, and as Lukas swore that Gunther was going to get a bonus, we got it hooked up to the van.  Then we maneuver it around to where we'd stacked the bodies, and Bikavèr rolled the minotaur corpse into it.  After that, the rest of us packed mantis exoskeletons in around it.  We got our 100,000¥ bounty credited to us on the spot (16 mantises at 5K each, and one minotaur at 20K), and we headed back home. 

By the time we got back to the warehouse/base it's late and dark out.

We set Laila up in one of the few finished rooms in the former "office" area of the base, then looked at each other and asked, "now what?"

As we're trying to decide what to do next, Roksa let us know he's out of money for construction supplies. Lukas and Ylva gave him 4000¥ out of their shares of the bounty.  After that, Gunther gave us a lecture about firearms laws and what kind of trouble we might get into if we flaunt the illegal parts of our gear a bit too obviously.  (It's pretty clear he's worried that not only might we get ourselves in trouble, we might just cost him the cushy job he's gotten with us.)  During all this, we were making ourselves late-night snacks in the base kitchen, and after Gunther finished with his lecture, Roksa mentioned off-handedly that an accountant in the neighborhood had recently gone nuts at his office,  According to him, this guy grabbed a gun from his office's security guard, and shot the place up, killing half the staff.  Somehow we miss finding out what happened to him...

Anyway, over this snack the shamans were researching and discussing the problem of how to get Laila separated from her host, and the bad news they come up with is, they can't, not really, because the host's almost certainly not there any more -- the poor girl is dead in every way except her body is still breathing, and the only way to get Laila out of the body is to kill it.

This revelation causes dissension in the ranks.  Bikavèr points out that he promised to free her, and is willing to kill the body himself; and if he can't, he wants to be there when she's freed.  Lukas wants nothing to do with killing the body, and worries about its disposal afterward.  Ylva doesn't want to see the spirit suffer but never actually says what she thinks of about killing the host.  Yoruichi doesn't seem to care one way or the other.

As we argued over this, sometime around ten at night, Bikavèr's mentor Joachim showed up to check on him.  (I think there was a phone call made to let Joachim know we had just come back or something; I missed and/or failed to log why he chose to come by that late.)  He met the team on good terms and invited us all to a pool party that's being thrown by his wife to celebrate his return from a long, difficult assignment.  When he learned about Laila, he offered to handle the matter for us, with sensitivity and care. 

Later, when Joachim left with Laila, he also offered Lukas and Ylva a ride home, which they accepted.  On the ride to Lukas' apartment building, he and Joachim had a long talk about being a runner, where Lukas explained that while it's scary and not like the trid, he thinks they've been helping people, and as long as they keep helping people, he'll stay a runner.  Joachim offered to help him if he ever wants out of the profession, and gave Lukas his business card before got out of the car.

Joachim similarly quizzed Ylva as they proceeded to her uncle's place and she ended up telling him about how she originally was in Germany only for the summer, but now is thinking she wants to stay longer.  (There was more, but it went by faster than I could get it down on paper.)

The next day is Sunday.  Lukas stays home to reinforce his "ordinary school kid" cover.  Ylva plans to spend the day planting trees -- memorials to her father -- with her uncle.  And Bikavèr goes to check on the kids he was looking after way back in the first adventure of the campaign; Yoruichi goes with him. 

As they're leaving afterwards, they spotted a van on the street nearby rocking wildly.  The two of them went up to it -- "to check out the sexytime, no?" as Bikavèr puts it.  But when they got closer, the back doors of the van burst open and a crippled griffon leapt out.  It wass obviously injured, with a visibly infected and suppurating wound in one wing, and while it couldn't fly away, they couldn't calm it down either.  So Bikavèr carefully stunned it with a martial blow.  Looking in the van for any clues, they found only a dead fellow in a zookeeper's uniform, recently snacked upon by the griffon.

The two of them bundled the unconscious creature into Yoruichi's van, and called Lukas to come heal it.  Lukas reluctantly agreed, but when he got there he pointed out that the wound is obviously much older than an hour, and his only medical spell, Treat, only works in the first hour after taking damage.  They then called Ylva, who reluctantly left her uncle (with a promise to return quickly).  She actually has some real medical skill -- called Biotech in the game -- and managed to treat the griffon's infection and bandage the wound.

Lukas decided he doesn't get enough face time with his father and bailed on them.  After this, Yoruichi checked the news feeds and discovered that a zoo in Essen was robbed of several griffons a week or so earlier.  The motive was believed to be using them as the targets of an illegal hunting club.

So Bikavèr, Yoruichi and Ylva drove to the zoo.  After a little light comedy with the security guards and staff, who understandably wanted to know what they're doing with a wounded griffon, the zoo staff identified (via implanted chip) the griffon as one of the ones they lost in the robbery.  After Bikavèr lectured them on security, the three of them got a 10,000¥ reward for returning the creature.

And that's where things ended.  The only other thing of note is that by end of session Lukas had enough Karma to raise his Initiation grade from 0 to 1, which he did.