Topic: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

Session 7: Enter Shadowhawk

So, out of the blue I get contacted by my old friend Whisper, if by friend you mean some guy from a crew you used to do jobs for who you haven't heard from for years and that you thought was dead along with all of said crew.

So, out of the blue I get contacted by some guy I was aware of once for a job.  I'm not really clear what these guys have been getting themselves into, but they probably could have used an effective hacker a long time ago.  Doesn't matter, a job is a job and my funds are starting to dwindle.  It seems they're looking for someone and they're opting for a go where you've been and backtrack from there objective.  I probably could have spent some time investigating this guy before hand, but that's neither here nor there.  They wanted to go into the subway and beyond.  I'll admit, I wasn't super keen on this, but that's only because hundreds of feet of concrete and rock between me and the Matrix puts me on edge.  It's alright, there was a happy ending, of sorts.

The first thing that happens, though, is these shlubs make me chip in for the crapped up run down motor boat they need to bring along for the final leg of the trip.  I'm not answering the call for three minutes and already they're rifling through my pockets.  That's messed up.  I'm not saying it's a new experience, just that it rubs me the wrong way any time it happens.  But fine, whatever, we're going into a dank unused tunnel, which might as well be a cave, with no networks and no access to the Matrix, with a boat.  I still really don't know what these guys are into, just that if we're about to get shot I'm making sure they get it first, so I drag the cart with the boat while they inspect the walls.

Whisper seems to be very interested in every random bullet shell and subsequent hole he finds on our way.  Me, it all just looks like a Thursday, or Friday, whichever day.  Yeah, uneventful was definitely the descriptor, but uneventful is usually a good day.  I will say, this is some weird ass subway.  I don't think I've heard of them coming with serious lab space, even collapsed as it was.  Anyway, along the way the elf... the other elf, says his drone spotted a drone.  They started getting into how do get around it and deal with it and I'm all, like, raising my hand and saying, "Isn't this where I come in?"  I have to be fair here and say I didn't make the greatest first impression here, but it's not my fault the thing wasn't broadcasting, I just thought I'd done something wrong.

Turns out the thing was left behind by someone who is not someone named Michael.  He comes up a lot, but I really don't think he matters cause, spoiler alert, he's dead.  It was just an automated motion capture unit.  Someone was hoping to catch someone coming through here, evidently.  This one succeeded, too.  It got a video of yet another elf named Nightshade.  She was kind of hot, too.  They had me wipe the video and then I stuck a delay into the drone so it wouldn't start recording again until we left.  At this point I really wish I'd scrapped the motion capture code all together, but whatever.

I'm just going to skip ahead, there are basically no people in this story.  Everyone is either dead or not there.  There is a lot of sneaking and tracking, but as far as I can tell it did a whole lot of nothing.  That isn't to say there aren't a handful of juicy bits.

Our next stop is the end of the tracks, literally.  There is a messed up train car right on the edge of some kind of underground river, with a waterfall and everything.  Elf #2, not the chick, the one that's with us, has me wipe another drone watchdog.  This one had no juicy videos, and then I burned out its operations so it wouldn't record anything new.  Well, I thought I had.  On third thought, we really might as well have just taken them, or smashed them.  Whisper is really interested in the waterfall, but we didn't bring any equipment for getting through some underwater tunnel, so no one is super jived about taking a dip.  Instead the boat gets blown up, which is to say it is inflated with air because it's made of rubber.  As I understand it the qualification needed to be made because these guys have a history of blowing things up with fire.  Pretty sure I'm supposed to curb that tendency.

We have another uneventful trip, this time down a bit of a quick moving river with the loudest motor they could possibly have found in the city.  But like I said, no one is around to hear it.  Did I mention this place is a war zone?  So yeah, the gist of it is that there are two groups: Michael's guys, and I'll call them Black Over-Alls.  Black Over-Alls pursued Michael's guys through the tunnels, into cave, down the river and just shot up everyone.  They also brought some serious artillery as indicated by the auto-turrets we found minus the turrets, plus gaping craters.  On the other end of the river, before it goes back under ground in a nontraversible sort of way, we found a dock and a fairly nice wetworks operation.  Military grade shit, and also bodies, old bodies, old dead bodies.  Whisper has been in the shit for a little too long, I think, because he had no problem going full carrion diver looking for "goodies."  Me, I went to work to do what I'm here for.  This was a live network, well off the grid.  Three computers with what I would not be surprised to find out is basically Michael's, whatever he was about, whole operation.  One computer, the shitty one, was mostly video capture, we took that one with us when we left.  I did get a pretty good shot of that Michael guy off it, though, before moving on.  One computer was a Rating 6, that's pretty good by anyone's standards, but we left it behind.  I did nab some data off it before we left, though.  Got a list of names with some people that got them all excited, and I don't actually know what the other thing is cause it was coded.  Computer number three, though, that's a shiny gem.  That's the one that gets me excited.  I wish we could move it, but we were woefully ill equipped, she's a monster.  I got one file off her and it's coded just like the last but if we can break the code I'm very certain it will be worth everyone's while.

So this is where I have to make some confessions.  I kinda halfassed the work on the drones.  I wasn't feeling it, ok, but after playing with those databases, I was in the groove.  On our way back I rewiped the second drone and actually turned the stupid thing off.  The first drone, that was a problem.  Seems that while we were out and about, doing our thing, some punk kids, most likely spurred on by the pig face kid, started snooping about and stole it.  Not only did they steal it, they hung about trying to do some excavation.  Honestly, we should have just shot them, but then we'd need to dispose of the bodies, and it was easier to just not shoot them and let them do whatever they were going to do on their own.

Things get a little more touchy from here, though.  Seems my "partners" are occasional Bliss dealers.  I'm not judging, exactly, but when some junky starts stalking you trying to get her fix it can be bad for an ongoing operation.  It's just unprofessional is what it is, ok?  She didn't even have useful information.  She was a waste of space, time and breath, and once again everything would have been so much easier if we'd just shot her.  So of course what we did is bring her to some clinic so Whisper can get chewed out by the nurse. 

I don't really care, ultimately, it was an easy start to a caper, or whatever, hopefully there are some real credits involved and I'll eventually get some proper alone time with that server cluster.  For now I'll content myself with breaking down the video storage for all its secrets.

Last edited by Kal Spiro (2015-08-05 20:44:42)

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Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

I dare you to call Kath a nurse to her face. I double dare you.

It's always a fun day when I get to watch Kath kick some punk Elf's ass.

/But seriously...

That was a fun read, kind of interesting seeing some of the embellishments of our relationship and the whole splitting the cash thing since that never came up in the RP. Something we'll have to keep an eye on I guess.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

Session 8: Warehouses, Car Chases and the Target

One of the things I forgot to mention, back when we were slogging through tunnels, was that we picked up a pair of glasses.  Besides the unreasonable amount of porn on them, and I'm talking serious capacity here, this guy was a massive perv, there were some searches and locations.  One of those locations was the Inconspicuous Warehousing Company, a company known for its off the books and under the radar operations.  I mean obviously they are.  Who names their company that without being ironic, and gets away with it?  Apparently these guys do.  It might not hurt that this area is swarming with the Dock Rats gang while they expand their operations.

This is where Whisper and crew opted to go for our next great caper.  This time they brought a troll, a troll named Dave, or something like that.  I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to.

The Inconspicuous Warehouses are some of the most massive standout pieces of property I've seen in the area, so maybe it is ironic after all.  Blowout, the other elf, whatever his name is, parked just out of the property and I cracked their system for a little peak.  It was, admittedly, a bit more secure than I had anticipated and I had a small bit of trouble at first.  Not enough to matter, though.  It seems we could not have had better timing because shortly after we arrived a truck appeared to make a withdrawal.  In addition to that I was able to identify the driver of the bus that made off with our target, that Matt guy.  Still unclear what his roll in the warehouse was, maybe manager, maybe security, I probably won't get answers.

Whisper and Dan took this opportunity to infiltrate the facility.  Whisper for the driver and Derek for the truck.  I had to drop my feed just before the shooting happened, so I'm not entirely certain what happened, but according to Burnup the cargo intended for the truck was that same Matt guy we were looking for.

Next thing I know Driveout is moving us around the building, Densel is dropping the next best thing to a corpse in the trunk and Whisper is limping out after him to be shuttled to his bike and gone.  I'll make another confession here before we get to the next part, Bustout can drive.  It's a thing, he's got skills, moving on.

A real life car chase ensues between a suped up sports car full of troll and big rig that's mostly empty.  It's hard to say exactly who had the advantage in circumstances, but we had the advantage in skill.  We also had the advantage in guns.  Oh, remember how I said I was around to maybe curb their enthusiasm for explosions, well I failed that one here when Blowup decided to play chicken with a fuel tanker while getting us a clean shot on the truck driver.  The result was as expected, an impassable fireball in the middle of the highway.  In an attempt to end this faster and with less destruction I shot out the guys front tire.  I swear it was to reduce the destruction.  The result was the truck jumping the median and collided with, not one, two cars on the other side then exploded.  So that could have gone better.

We did get the guy, though.  Matt survived and I sacrificed one of my safe houses for the group cause obviously after all that nonsense the cops felt the need to intrude.  Not that it's a huge sacrifice, I'm mostly paying slum lords and gangs to let me squat in nearly condemned buildings in their territory after all.  Somehow Desmond managed to pull off hot chocolate, though, which was a trick.  Eventually Whisper showed up and then the party started.

Once we got Matt back to the waking world and up to date the other elf had a heart to heart with him and pulled him over to our side.  The other guy, though, was a different story.  He may have been more hardware than bloodsack, and he's from Aztek, which is rather bad news, he's also a dickbag, racist and nihilist.  I switched off his legs and we tied up the rest of him, but none of us have the skills necessary to get anything useful out of this guy, and torture doesn't seem to phase him.  Luckily he had a phone which I'm prioritizing, mostly cause it's going to be easier to crack and make use of than that video server.  It's also likely to be far more current information than exposition.

This trip was much more appealing than the last.  I didn't have to pay for anything, and they were much more professional about it all.  I think the Troll, Dwight, might actually be the brains of the operation.  Or at least the binding that makes them more cohesive.

Last edited by Kal Spiro (2015-08-13 15:48:06)

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Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

"Blowout, the other elf..."

God dammit.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

Session 10?: Preparing for the Heist

It has recently come to my attention that this group of runners has agreed to participate in a bank job.  Apparently this is going to be one of the most white collar heists ever, because rather than robbing the place, we're escorting some trumped up hacker wannabe to a data center in the vault where he wants to upload a remainder virus to steal unlimited amounts of fractions of pennies.  It's actually a pretty good deal because we get paid as long as we're not caught.  It doesn't matter if he succeeds or not because whatever comes out of it is unrelated to us.  Personally I hope he screwed up big time because would teach that pig nose hipster his place.

The troll, me and the other elf had a get together with Gobstopper about a week early to prepare the plan.  We threw around a lot of ideas, the orc predictably did not have any ideas of his own.  They weren't overly excited about my idea to infiltrate through the loading dock and mascaraed as repair techs in order to connect to the camera there and break into the network.  The plan we finally agreed on was almost as good, and involved me not being seen which was doubly appealing.

The plan was to have Whisper do his "thing" to get onto the roof.  He would evade whatever guards might be there and, following my carefully defined instructions, attach a wifi receiver onto the only camera on the exterior of the building, just off roof.  I would be available at a nearby Yoga gym, getting my stretch on, in case he ran into any problems.  In the mean time Darrel the Troll would apply for a security position at the bank.  He has some well falsified credentials and Goblin Bait assured us they would be short handed on heist day.  I didn't have any misgivings, Whisper had always seemed competent enough where the running, jumping and shooting were involved, so what was a little impromptu repair work, right?

As it turns out it was everything.  Infiltrate an office building?  No problem, door wasn't even locked.  Scale a building?  Easy peasy, plenty of gear for the job.  Avoid detection?  Got look outs and everything, no problem with stealth.  Remove the casing on a Mk II swivel cam and insert a modulated phase input device into the spare triple prong expansion slot with hyperdense callibrations and a mullet? Nope, that of all things is beyond him.  Not only did he manage to jam it into a memory slot it shouldn't have even fit into, he did it in such a way that the case wouldn't go back on.  He also took so long doing it wrong that the guard got back to the roof before he'd finished.

Of course the guard saw what happened.  A whole half of the camera was missing and the wires were spilling out.  To his credit, while he wouldn't know an emulated differential set from a tertiary emancipation port, he is definitely able to think on his feet.  While the guy was leaning half way over the rail getting a face full of bad engineering he got an ass full of taser followed by a mouthful of concrete when he went tumbling over the edge.  Unfortunately Whisper hadn't been fast enough to stop him from calling for backup on his comms.  He was able to plant the casing and get out before they showed up, though.

This is where things go from bad to amazing.  I'm completely in favor of failing to success.  While Whisper run off to drown his sorrows, or whatever, I got the number for their security company, spoofed it like a boss and let BurntElf make the call as if he were customer service calling about an alarm light on their main switch.  I thought he sounded a little stiff and unconvincing, but they bought it.  He scheduled to have technician Jack Handie "Yes I know I have a robot hand and my name is hand, thanks for mentioning it, I've never heard that one," come in to do repairs.  After a little shoddy work forging an ID and buying a polo shirt I was set to do the work I wanted to do myself in the first place.  As a second bit of Karmic failure, Devin got a call back about a sudden opening in security and asking him to come in immediately about the position.  Some celestial being is definitely dropping the ball with us, but all the better cause I like winning.

I was fashionably late to the appointment, showing up just at the end of the window, bothered some girl who looked like she was about to start counting some old lady's pennies to open a mediocre savings account for some kid that rarely even comes to see grandma.  Wouldn't you know I got helped immediately.  The manager didn't even seem to give it a second though, brought me up to the camera and it was all of twenty minutes before I had the device in the proper place, and the camera as good as new.  Better than new, cause now it was an open door for me to play with at my leisure.

While I was pretending to fix their tampered with camera Daniel got his introductions and a tour.  This is where our lives become a breeze.  His tour included the specific room we need to infiltrate with Gobsmacked.  So, to sum up.  We now have unrestricted access to the bank's security.  I shouldn't even need to worry about Matrix security because their network is offline and I own the point of entry.  I should be able to take all the time I need to fully infiltrate and effectively own every inch of this thing by the time we're ready to go.  We have a man on the inside.  We know exactly where we need to go.

I need Durdsly to get me a list of guards that will be on duty that day and even better if I can get their patrol routes.  Then, if our luck continues, I can get recordings of them as well as of blank hallway to feed to the security room while Whisper and Baggage are wandering through the building.  Lastly we need access to the vault itself, but that might already be taken care of at this point.

Last edited by Kal Spiro (2015-09-18 18:08:24)

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Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

I'm sure I've said this before...many times...but Shadowhawks a bit of a dick.

Just sayin.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

True story

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Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

Baggage sad

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

He meant Code Goblin.  Presumably Burnout will be in the car, yes?

Last edited by Kal Spiro (2015-09-22 15:27:13)

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Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

Ah true, just re-read that. Used to seeing Burnout being referred to as any name beginning with a B tongue

I will probably be playing Tetris while in the car, yes.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

Session 11: The Heist

It is very rare for a job to go as smoothly as this one.  Especially when you consider how very wrong it almost went during preparation.  I owned the security system.  There's no other way to put it.  I made it my bitch and taught it tricks.  I'm a little disappointed at not getting some of the video I'd have liked, but it's fine, it didn't matter.

BurnedOut drove us out, all but the troll, and parked well out of the way.  I think he could have been closer, a lot closer, especially if things had gone poorly, but that doesn't matter.  He is no longer relevant to this story, since all he did was play solitaire and draw on the HUD map.  Oh, and not get us more money for our spectacular showing.

I set up shop near the yoga studio I was in during the prep.  What can I say, the instructor is hot.  Daedelus was well entrenched in his guard role.  Whisper and Nutgoblin followed the same path Whisper used during prep, when he failed so miserably.  This time he didn't need to touch anything, though, he just had to be quiet, and he can be quiet like a champ.  Pigfaces, on the other hand, are not well known for their light feet, and there were a couple times when that could have been the end for us.  Lucky him that we were so well on point.

I was easily able to keep the path ahead of them clear, while also keeping the path behind open for patrols.  The patrols were a little erratic at times.  It would have been nice if they had defined routes.  Not like that would have been less secure, since walking random paths leaves the possibility of forgetting areas or just leaving them alone for extended periods.  Whatever, that's the bank's problem, not mine.  I did my job like a boss.

The weakest link in all this was Denis and his terrible acting.  I thought he was supposed to be some sort of con man, but maybe that only works from the concept of no one believing a Troll has enough to rub together to be clever with.  I might be prone to believing that after the outrageous spectacle he made of himself several times during the operation.  Despite his highly suspicious and over the top antics, he managed to sneak them in the building and through the vault door twice, which was all he ever needed to do.

Considering how straight forward the path should have been, they ended up having to take the most convoluted path to avoid the other guards.  Doesn't matter, though, cause it worked out.  Whisper got Ratbag to the server room.  Presumably he attached something to something, imprinted his Office Space code, and didn't completely waste his time and money.  I honestly kind of hope he screwed the whole thing up and gets nothing out of this.  Then they got out again, free and clear.  And the only thing to blow up was the bathroom due to ancient oatmeal raisin cookies being, apparently, the natural enemies of Troll bowels.  There is also rumor that he may have soiled an elevator.

So then, after the cleanest heist I've ever seen, "The Face" doesn't even try to renegotiate the terms of the deal.  Made us go from A-list cleaners to bumpkin thugs in half a heart beat.  Still, it's nice to have a payday, even if it only barely pays me back for what these jokers have already squeezed out of me.

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Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

Session 15: Curbside Service

This is the kind of nonsense that happens when I'm off doing my own work.  While I was busy working my way through Michael's server, Buttface and Whisper started a war with the Yakuza.  I mean seriously, who does that?  I thought they were professionals, but I've been proven wrong before.  It seems they were trying to protect someone Whisper knew, but it was still a bad call.  So now I'm sitting in a car because of course they needed me to fix the problem they got themselves into.

In order to make up for murdering their guys "we" have been forced to take a job.  To be fair, it's a pretty good job, and I don't really see a problem in having taken it anyway.  The Yakuza want some corporate bigwig, and amazingly are willing to pay for him.  Even better, we got some extra man power for free cause it was his fault they got themselves into this trouble in the first place.

The bigwig was scheduled to speak at a conference.  We opted for a snatch and grab on the way in on the last day.  Whisper is on the roof far away from the fighting, where I wish I could be.  My job is two fold, stop traffic so we can make the grab, and to blow the door so Dave can be the muscle.  Buttout is doing the thing he does, choffeur.  In addition to the usual suspects we have another troll across the way with heavy armaments, and I guess the useless guy that started all this.

It started out really well, because I had the first move, so of course it did.  Traffic stopped dead, with plenty of room for Buffup to get me and Dave right next to the door.  Whisper blanketed the area in sleeping gas and started popping windows.  I got out and went to work on the door.  Then things started going wrong.

It seems that Bigwig's security detail were not keen on him getting taken and started trying to repel us.  His rear guard was particularly zealous as he repeatedly rammed our ride and appeared keen on running me down.  I took it personally.  More importantly, though, some magically son of a bitch tried to murder me with fire.  This shaman conjured up a lady made of fire whole literally tried to hug me to death.  This is why I stay prepared for anything and put every kind of protection I could into my coat.  I had work to do, and I did not have time to be incinerated.

That was it, though, the only real hurdles were setting me on fire and possibly getting run over.  Big Boomer popper the rear guard, like a surgeon, and Bumout happened to have a fire extinguisher on him.  After that is was short work to blow the door and my job was done.  Dave went full Troll, popped the shaman, popped the aide I assume, and moved on Bigwig.  Right about then the driver seemed to get control of the situation and bolted.  Too little too late, though, obviously.  Rather than Dave flinging Bigwig into our car, he jumped out of a moving vehicle and we picked them up.

It wasn't as perfect as the bank heist, but it was still a job pretty well done.  The payday was also what I've been expecting since I hooked up with these losers.  I was able to renovate my craphole of an apartment and upgrade my wardrobe to something worth owning.  Hopefully these guys won't start any more unnecessary fights, but I think that's a far fetched hope.

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Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

Unnecessary fights got us a payday.

That's a bad connection to draw.

Also I don't felt you emphasized enough the fact that I put a big ol' imposing spirit of fire into anaphylactic shock with a fire extinguisher.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: RECAPS: SD Shadowrun: Shadowhawk's Story

Session 16: House Calls

While we were off collecting nuyen and blowing up cars it appears that some guys managed to get escape prison.  I don't think I've mentioned this, but we need to break in, because of this AI that's gotten the gang all riled up.  It has something to do with Michael and other things.  So this is big news for us.

For runners these guys have surprisingly uncriminal contacts, but whatever.  I hooked up with my landlord, leader of the Forsaken and my former boss.  I mean he's my landlord in the sense that I live in Forsaken territory and they don't let anyone else in.  They've gotten pretty strong since my time, especially for a bunch of orphan kids that usually break ranks in their late teens.  It probably does not bode well for the city, but as long as it keeps my secure I could care less.

Anyway, the point is he pointed me to the crew that was protecting our "runaways."  Seems their old crew is dead and gone, but they still had a few connections on the outside.  I brought Buttface with me for the financing, I kind of thought he'd represent the "firm" but I ended up doing most of the talking afterall.  He didn't have any real loyalty to the shmucks and it ended up being a pretty cheap deal, it didn't hurt that I'd worked with the guy in the past for things.  He gave up the address and we stopped by for a chat.

When we got to the door we met Brains.  Brains is not super bright, and basically gave away their whole situation before we were even inside.  Once inside we met Smarts.  Smarts is the guy who kept Brains alive inside, of this I have no doubt.  Brains is some kind of resource, though.  It seems there is something happening in the Prison, probably experiments, probably related to the target.  But the power drops and seemingly random intervals.  Brains, purely by observation, figured out they weren't random and produced an algorithm to explain them.  That's how they got out, Brains predicted the blackout and the escaped while the security was out.  I want Brains on team Shadowhawk.  I might, almost, even be willing to let him shack up at my place.  I mean, no, I really wouldn't, but I could think of it like a fantasy.  Still I could find a place to put him where he'd be comfortable and just spending time cracking things for me.  That's the dream, but Smarts would absolutely have to be out of the picture first.

Regardless of what happens with Brains, I have the algorithm now, and so we have a very important step handled for how to get into the Prison.  It was a pretty good day, that I probably could have done on my own and been just as effective.  It was really tempting to just drop Smarts and take Brains, but ultimately it wouldn't have been good for me.  Too many people knew I was going there, and I prefer not to leave a trail.

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