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

[Bob Schroeck]

Sorry it took a week and a half, but here's the log:

Peggy: How was Yoruichi raised?
Me: On a hydraulic lift, once every 50,000 miles.

So once again we got a late start -- this time because Helen's car picked up a screw in one of its tires, and because AAA was having a bad day, it took them a good three hours to get someone out to her to take it to a shop to be repaired. So Helen, Attila and Tiffany (who was with them) didn't show until 4 PM -- and then Helen immediately took Tiff into another room for half an hour of private session, after which she ended up parked on the couch waiting until our storylines intersected again some hours later.

For the rest of the group, we picked up roughly where we left off, late(ish) in the evening of July 26, 2055. Yoruichi still hasn't gotten back from wherever she is. Gunther informed us that she'd left on foot in the morning without letting anyone know where she was going. Ylva tries to call her but it goes to voice mail. Bikavèr tries calling Valentine, but gets her voice mail. That's not nearly as worrying, because we know that due to her indenture to the nameless scum she stands a good chance of being incommunicado any time we call, but it is inconvenient.

Lacking any other idea what to do, Lukas turns to Wolfgang and asks him if he can track Yoruichi. Wolfgang gets her scent and leads us to the subworld under Neustadt, to a crude but functioning subway deep in these ostensibly abandoned tunnels, and points to where she got on a train. The signage indicates two lines with different destinations use this station, and obviously there's no way to determine by scent which she got on.

We do notice that there are cameras watching the area, and Lukas goes running off to find the security office just off the platform. There we learn that for 20 nuyen the security guys will go through their footage and tell us which line she got on. (And they're not doing us a favor -- turns out that there's a sign on the door well over our heads listing services like that and how much they cost. Fortunately, Yoruichi didn't take "We won't say where you went" for 350 nuyen.) A few minutes later, we find out she took the NW line -- which has as its most interesting stop what amounts to a 24/7 permanent flea market.

So we get tokens and take the train to the flea market. Wolfgang picks up Yoruichi's scent again and leads us through more tunnels to a massive cavern. We enter this space on what's basically a mezzanine lined with hovels ringing it a couple stories above its floor, where we see the market. The air in this place is warm, and humid, and awash with spices and other scents. Wolfgang leads us down a set of metal stairs to the market floor, and we wander our way through it following him, occasionally pausing as he searches for and picks up the scent again. Finally, at some point roughly in the middle of the market, we reach an open area which seems (based on the various posters and bills nearby) to be variously used as a meeting area, an amphitheater, and a fighting ring, among other functions.

Wolfgang dashes about, nose to the ground, and finally gives Lukas a telepathic summary of what he thinks happened: the scents are muddled, and the spices and other things in the air don't help, but to his nose it looks like Yoruichi walked into this area, abruptly fell over, and was surrounded and carried off by at least a half-dozen people, leaving behind a little of her blood as well as her scent.

This, of course, upsets everyone when Lukas relays it to them. Before we head off to follow Wolfgang pursue the very clear scents of those who carried Yoruichi away, Valentine finally returns Bikavèr's earlier call and gets filled in on the matters at hand. She says she'll join up with us, but to keep her informed if anything changes dramatically.

We get moving again, and Wolfgang leads us all the way across the cavern to another set of stairs directly opposite the ones we came down. From there it's back into the tunnels, where we we come upon a complex intersection and a complication: someone has laid down a scent bomb here to foil anyone doing what we are. It stops Wolfgang cold. But Wolfgang is of course no two-bit bloodhound; he can go astral to clear out his nose and remanifest physically a distance down each of the five other tunnels to see which way Yoruichi's captors went. It only takes a couple minutes for him to identify the right path -- and he waits beyond the bounds of the scent bomb for us to catch up to him. It takes a little while because Ylva has to convince her wolf Skadi to cross the scent-bombed area.

Once we join up with him, Wolfgang leads us to a less squalid area (the average building is now a shack or better, and not a hovel) and up to what appears to be a solidly-built structure that might once have been some kind of business but is now very clearly Private Property. Yoruichi, he tells Lukas, was put down in front of this building, and picked up and brought inside.

Ylva casts Detect Individual and confirms that Yoruichi is still in the building, but notes that she has to overpower a ward a few feet inside its walls to do so. Ylva then casts Clairvoyance and, after powering through the ward again, locates Yoruichi -- she's in a basement cell, in a chair with no pants on and her arms dislocated and bound behind her. Ylva glances around the rest of the building and counts ten other people in there -- and a few of them are watching us on video.

Just as she tells us this, a machine gun emplacement on the roof activates and begins unlimbering -- but only Lukas notices. Lukas shouts "Roof gun!" just as Bikavèr walks up to the front door and punches through it, with the intention of getting to the ward. It's time to roll initiative.

We all run for the front door, hoping the gun's arc of fire doesn't reach to straight down the building's facade. No such luck -- its mount is sufficiently articulated that it is able to get a few shots off at us as we scramble in behind Bikavèr. Bullets ping off Ylva, Lukas and Skadi's armor as we do. Once inside Lukas conjures a Force 6 hearth spirit and gets two services from it; he commands it to cause confusion in our enemies (which it will when its first action finally comes around, quite a while from now; it didn't have the best initiative roll).

Inside the door is a hallway with another door at the end; it looks like someone just put up walls in what was once a lobby area to force a kind of bottleneck entry. As we're gathering this, the door at the far end opens, and a guy steps out and fires two shotgun slugs at Bikavèr, who shrugs them off. The guy screams, "There's a troll out here!" and someone else yanks him back through the door and slams it.

Bikavèr smirks and makes a Ranged Killing Hands attack on the door, blowing a hole right in the middle and basically leaving it two independently hinged pieces a couple feet from each other. Seeing her opportunity, Ylva lobs a Stun Blast through the hole, targeting it on the wall she can see three or four meters beyond it. As usual for her Stun Blasts these days, the resulting explosion has a nine-meter radius; being a mana spell it goes right through the walls, including the one at the end of the hallway with its partial door, so it hits us. However, we are awesome and tank the spell effect handily, while on the other side of the door we hear the sound of people being blown into walls and furniture.

After people stop bouncing around, Bikavèr bellows that if they release Yoruichi they won't get hurt. (More than they already are, at least.) He's also using his Intimidation skill, and we have an amusing five or six minutes as Helen goes through the rules for Intimidation and totes up all the extra dice he gets for the events of the last 30 seconds or so. It's quickly obvious that we have terrified the hell out of everyone in the building. Oh, and when it becomes obvious they're surrendering to us, Lukas releases the hearth spirit.

As we were doing all this, Yoruichi had her moments, in scenes with a guard that were rife with cryptic comments about their motivations, and Yoruichi asking "Is the pay worth it?", especially after Ylva shakes the entire freaking building with her spell. We eventually gather from these moments that she'd been kidnapped for some kind of bounty, for which the runners who did the job got half in advance, with the balance to be paid on her delivery to their employer. When Ylva's Stun Blast seriously messes up their ability to repel us, one of the team (whom we realize is their leader, called "Volpe") comes down to free her, and as he does (getting her a pair of pants to wear and putting them on her because she can't do it with dislocated arms), she actually negotiates a deal to have them take her -- and us -- to their "Herr Schmidt". They agree and bring her to us while we watch everyone who managed to stay awake with a certain amount of trigger-happy suspicion.

There is a happy reunion, and with the application of a Medkit (or rather, the advice from its expert system), we get her arms un-dislocated and at least some of her damage alleviated. She and Volpe explain the deal they worked out. They were offered a half-million nuyen (half on taking the job, half on delivery as mentioned before) to kidnap Yoruichi and deliver her to an airstrip -- what they'll do is help us fake the hand-off, and let us have the remaining half of the payment (by giving an account number of ours to receive the payment). We agree.

But the hand-off is to happen well after midnight, which means Lukas has to call his uncle and let him know he's "staying over with his friends" again, which he does -- only to find out he's missed a surprise party thrown by his father for the "scholarship" he just received. Lukas quickly claims he's been at a party at his friend Zoltan's, who also received a scholarship; with Bikavèr's OK he gives Uncle Martin Magda's phone number to "confirm" the party and sleepover. Uncle Martin says he'll call Magda and then get back to Lukas.

Ylva calls her uncle and gives him the same story. She has less trouble as he's not throwing a surprise party for her.

Uncle Martin calls back and says all is okay -- he's reassured Lukas's father, there will be another (smaller) party tomorrow night, and Lukas should be back home by 10 AM. Lukas agrees.

That handled, we go back to planning the sting. We find out that the other team's "Herr Schmidt" has connections to a Japanese organization called the "Takogumi". We suspect they are Yakuza, but Yoruichi doesn't know. She doesn't even have any idea who might have a price on her head. Why, she knows -- she's an assassin, she's sure to have annoyed someone along the way. But specific someones? No one comes to mind.

The plan has us all arriving at the airstrip a couple hours before the hand-off is to take place. Volpe and his team offer sniper support, but will not otherwise take part in our "sting" beyond the drop-off, to preserve their reputation. We agree to this, and mention that we have our own sniper, but we need to call our support team to bring her Barrett. "You have a support team?" Volpe asks incredulously.

Ylva tilts her head. "Yes. Don't you?"

Volpe starts. "Of course. But I didn't think you..."

Lukas gives him a blank stare and says, with all the disdain and condescension an 11-year-old can muster, "We're professionals."

Before this can degenerate any further, we call Gunther to bring Ylva's Barrett and ammo and other gear we need, including Lukas' still-unused grenade launcher. While the rest of us wait up at ground level for Gunther to come in the van, Ylva and Bikavèr ride with Volpe's group to the airstrip. Gunther arrives, grabs an Uber back to the warehouse, and we take off. We get to the airstrip just after Bikavèr and Ylva got a sitrep on the people around the Takogumi jet -- which includes someone or something that might be an oni.

Helen calls the game there, it being about 11 PM at that point. Our next session is scheduled for Saturday, September 14 -- and we'll see what happens.