Runners
Aleiron Grey
Butter
Eion Smash
Grackle
Three Card
Watt Tinbo
Yanko Lazer

The team starts getting ready to trigger their escape plan. They bribe the Reality Hackers with more gear and a promise of some future work to assist in gathering info. Between the RH’s and asking around the prison, they find out that last 1/3rd of the of the missing prisoners on their list are technomancers, who are gathered up when detected and sold off in a monthly auction to various corps- Mitsuhama Computer Technologies and Horizon seem to be frequent buyers. Horrified by the likelihood of corporate torture and vivisection, Watt vows to try to free those that he can.

The team also finds out what they can about D Block cold storage, and the inmate they have to get out of there- it seems that she is housed under an alias and was thrown into D Block almost immediately upon arrival. They can’t find out more about her true ID, but seeing as Elisa Seawind was the one who approved the transfer and edited the file info, they assume she’s a runner being kept on ice for some reason. Aleiron gets a lecture about how awful D Block is by tricking a guard, and they confirm that it will mostly be mechanical/drone security- not many cameras and not much metahuman presence. Supposedly the interface for retrieving prisoners’ pods is simple, so they hope to be able to bypass it easily.

Meanwhile, Eion has run into some trouble: after attracting a large amount of rats with Drekbomb’s corpse, and starting to teach a promising few some useful tricks, he hears some commotion in the steam tunnels, and hides himself and the corpse just in time as some guards in full tactical gear start searching. He manages to elude them while holding the rats at bay, but uses most of DB up doing so. The guards seem to be working directly for Seawind, and looking for evidence of where everyone has been disappearing to. Eion has to stay on the run in the tunnels as the patrols continue for the next while. He manages to climb a ways down the hole, and finds that the jagged collapsed portion empties into slick mud chute after about 5 meters. He can see heat sig’s at the bottom that look like some small moving things and a larger stationary object.

He manages to teach 3 rats some tricks (mostly to keep the other rats from eating him), by feeding them DB’s portion of the food that Yanko continues to deliver, believing them both to be alive. However, Seawind’s patrols found the opened grate and welded it shut again, so he’s having to just kinda mash all the protein paste through the bars. Yanko has also been moving useful bits of sharp metal and other supplies the hole underneath the mechanic’s shop to the team’s hidey hole, in preparation. Unfortunately, all of this smuggling has cut into his drug acquisition time, so Aleiron makes a deal with the Nova Rich instead. She agrees to ensure the murder of an NR members parents within 2 months, to ensure that he still receives the family inheritance upon is release. He fears they plan to transfer control to his younger sibling due to being ashamed of his circumstances. In return, he gives the team so cram to keep themselves going and a cocktail that Yanko chose to wake up the cold storage prisoner.

3C and Butter spar some, working on combat skills, and Butter designs a boring drone that he can juryrig out of all the scrap bits they’ve been saving. Butter also makes a fake cover for Watt’s datajack, which Watt manages to carefully open without injuring himself, under the pretense of needing special tools for his IT work. Feeling as ready as they can get, they all put in for transfers to the cleaning crew, which due to the cult spreading rumors of something “wrong” in the basement, and the fact that a number of prisoners have vanished, is currently understaffed. They get the transfers, and work a few days to get the routine down, as well as warn Eion of when they’ll move. Yanko also figures out how to concoct a bleach bomb to clear the bottom of the hole of threats before they go in.

The day of, the team is on 2 cleaning crews of 4, having convinced 2 cult members to come with. Each crew has a guard overseeing (with the new tighter security). At the preset time, both teams attack, unfortunately failing to fell the guards before they can call in the attack, partially due to one of the cultists slipping and knocking himself unconscious. Watt and Grackle try to impersonate the guards, confusing things a bit, but aren’t able to keep it up long. Grackle and Aleiron race for the tunnels in a panic while everyone else hightails it to the hidey hole to get supplies. Eion, hearing the sound of a prison alert system, uses the crowbar to pry open the grate again with a massive feat of strength, as Aleiron and Grackle arrive and yell back for the others to hurry. Eion heads into the tunnels to direct them team along the correct path.

The rest of the team grabs the stashed gear, and hightails it to the tunnels as they hear the riot squad chasing after them. Butter barely dodges a shotgun blast as he rounds a corner, and only avoids an SMG burst as it hits the cultist right behind him. He staggers as he is hit with another shot, but manages to stumble out of sight for a moment and dive into the tunnel behind the rest of the team. Eion sees some flashlights headed down the tunnels from another direction looking to cut them off, and calls on the team to hurry. Yanko chucks his bleach bomb towards the lights to slow them down, which seems to help, and the team dive into the hole, not having any time to dally. Slamming into a pile at the bottom, Eion is the only one to avoid injury as he had time to scout it out a bit.

The rest of the team hears a sort of humming and sucking sound coming from a large machine next to them, and some slavering noises coming from the darkness nearby…

Runners
Aleiron Grey
Butter
Eion Smash
Grackle
Three Card
Watt Tinbo
Yanko Lazer

Butter attempts to take Grackle further under his wing, and they begin working together in the machine/repair shop to try to start making some armaments, as instructed. 3 Card does her best to keep Eion from losing his mind in the “too nice” conditions, by destroying his mattress and getting them shitty, hard jobs. Yanko falls back on sex for drugs trades, but eventually rallies to doing something useful and gets assigned to a cleaning crew, where he eventually tracks down a really good, concealed stash spot for the gear the team is making/acquiring. Watt continues to collect parts from his tech work detail and smuggle them back to the cell, to eventually make jammers, or upgrade other devices if they can get hold of them.

Aleiron and Sharky are the first to come under attack from Mafia goons, specifically some Leather Devils. Sharky loses it and kills them all as Shark takes him over. Luckily he exits his killing frenzy before taking out Aleiron as well. Unfortunately, this is well past his 3rd demerit, so he gets transferred to D Block to begin serving the rest of his sentence in suspended animation, plus 3 more manslaughter charges tacked on. Aleiron gets off with a night in the hole, which isn’t as bad as it could have been.

Watt comes under attack next, by a member of the Leprecunts, once again with the guards looking the other way. He gets badly injured, but nerve strikes and temporarily paralyzes the Irishman, then impersonates him to get the guard to open the locked bathroom they are in. The guard seems surprised but plays it cool, and Watt goes along with it. As he officially “slipped and fell”, there is no punishment.

Imaginary Annie Goldsmith visits again, and plans out with Watt how to use his dog Ada to smuggle in a basic commlink for the team. She tells them that based on her digging, it looks like the person likeliest to have set them up is indeed the mysterious fixer Rex Simmons, with help picking them all out from Theo “Flipside” Harrison. It is unclear how involved Flipside was, but she says she’ll keep looking. She also smuggles in a hairshirt for Eion to make his life more miserable, which helps.

Eion and 3 Card successfully grab the comm from Ada while out on a work detail, and Yanko gets it safely stashed. Watt collects enough parts to upgrade it to have limited hacking capabilities, and they agree that’s a good move. Aleiron and 3 Card begin scouting out people to recruit to a con/cult while planning out what the belief system will entail, and the team also begins developing a secret language for use amongst themselves.

3 Card and Eion come under attack the next day, from a pair of hulking Spikes. They barely escape with their lives, killing one and knocking the other out. They spend some time in solitary for it, but the guards once again try to play it cool as an industrial accident. Yanko also ID’s 2 members of The Disassemblers on his crew, who seem to have a strong interest in caustic chemicals and take a disturbing glee in dissolving rat corpses and the like. He thinks they could prove useful yet…. He comes under attack by a Scatterbrains members with vials of acid the next day, but manages to knock him out with his elemental electricity. Yanko leaves the body to the Disassemblers, who begin gleefully experimenting with various chemicals, leading to some horrible smells and noises as he exits. He also manages to grab one last acid vial for his own use.

Aleiron spends some time doing library research on various topics and passing useful texts along to the team, as well as beginning to recruit for the cult. The Koshari tell the team to take out a few members of the Blue Dragons, a Yakuza affiliate, which the team is worried about, as they just barely got off the syndicates bad side. However, they need Koshari protection inside, especially having heard that there are regular sweeps for magic users, who are taken off and not seen again. So, the team decides to try to find a way to get to the BD’s without getting spotted/caught.

Watt makes a deal with the Reality Hackers to smuggle some gear in for them in exchange for hacking assistance, and also upgrades the commlink the Ada smuggled in to be able to hack. Imaginary Annie visits again, and they get her the list of needed items. She tells them to have a viable escape plan ready to go within a month, in case she can’t stall the legal process as much as she would like. They get hustling. Yanko finds some old, sealed, steam tunnels under the prison while cleaning, and uses his acid vial to weaken the spot welds on one that’s especially shoddy. 3 Card makes a deal with the Vory V Zakone to gain access to the basement through the kitchen by getting transferred to the dishpit crew in exchange for planting a datafile on a certain system in the admin wing.

Watt calls in the favor with the RHers to plant the info, and Eion smuggles them in the promised gear from Ada. Eion is barely holding it together, spending a bit of time in solitary due to his attitude. However, he gets a little intel on the secretive “D Block,” which seems to be fully underground and guarded mostly mechanically. Butter and Grackle continue bonding, but manage to smuggle the team a crowbar to use to pry open the steam tunnel cover. Yanko, 3 Card, Eion, and Watt, being the team’s best unarmed fighters, head down to the basement through an enormous grease trap with the Vory’s help. They manage to sneak past the cleaning and maintenance crew down there, as Yanko knows the area pretty well by now. They pry open the cover, and carefully place it atop a debris pile to appear as if still attached from a distance.

Entering the tunnel, they begin mapping it out on Watt’s comm while Eion makes grease marks on the walls in case the tech fails. They eventually find a body, looking to have been eaten by large rodents, near a mark scratched into the old brick wall with an arrow pointing forward and a crude skull. The corpse is wearing tattered prison uniform bits, and looks to be 5-10 years old. So apparently they aren’t the first to have this idea. Eion, feeling that they’re better knowing than not, ventures forward. He and 3 Card eventually find a collapsed section of tunnel with a drop of unknown height below and the sound of some sort of equipment running faintly in the distance. Before they can investigate further, Yanko and Watt dash up to warn them that some heavy boots are approaching from the direction they came- they aren’t sure if they are guards or what, but they overhead one of them say “Another one from Elisa, eh?”. There are at least 2, whoever they are, seemingly transporting a 3rd, who could be heard making muffled noises.

After a brief debate, the team decides to get ready and fight the newcomers, especially if they are guards, as this could give them some useful gear, or at least some info if they can take one alive to question. They quickly kill one of the men and disarm the other. They turn out to be trustees, in this case ex-runners recruited by an LS employee named Elisa Seawind to do her dirty work inside the prison. After 3C convinces him to spill the beans in exchange for his life, he fills them in on how it works: Seawind recruits promising “talent” when they enter the system, and either gets them released early or gets them special privileges in exchange for working for her. In the case of these 2 trustees, that means using a secret tunnel in the medical facility in A block to bring “problem prisoners” down here and throw them in the hole.

He doesn’t seem to know much more than that, so they kill him (breaking their promise, but how can they trust him?) and toss both bodies down the hole. Then, they check the prisoner, who is still alive. It is none other than the obnoxious ork decker, Chaimberlain ‘Drekbomb’ Jackslaw. They are quickly annoyed by him, but realize he could be useful, and make a deal to bring him food and some supplies in return for him mapping the tunnel system. They leave one of the trustee’s tasers with him for protection, and trade the other to the Vory for future kitchen smuggling. They cash in quickly, when they realize that the hole gives them a perfect secret way to do their job for the Koshari. Yanko does some recon and finds a time when 4 Blue Dragons will be on an unsupervised cleaning crew, and the team ambushes them.

They grab the cleaning cart, and hide it in the steam tunnels, dumping all 4 bodies in the hole. Sadly, it looks like Drekbomb is totally inept at survival, given his poor mapping efforts thus far. They let the Koshari know that it’s done, which is fortunate timing since the Black Coats come shortly thereafter, sweeping the cell blocks for magic users. The team gets the feeling that some of the Koshari’s awakened members are using masking metamagics to conceal themselves and their allies from detection. However, some others are not so lucky, and the team sees (and hears rumors) of a number of prisoners being taken away, including Sharky- so there is at least one way out of D block…. However, comparing the dates of the Black Coats visits to the missing prisoners list, they account for about 1/3rd of the names. Another 1/3rd appear to line up with those “transferred to Asamando” aka dumped in the hole in the basement, which perhaps has ghouls at the bottom, given the euphemism. The final 1/3rd is still a mystery, the only clue to which is that all the names included are for prisoners between teens and late 20’s in age.

The team continues using Vory access to the basement to keep scouting the tunnels, sending 3C to the medbay due to paralysis caused by Watt’s nerve strike, in order to try to help them find the secret access point there. 3C cons her way through medical interactions, claiming the paralysis is a long-running condition and stomping around to help “walk it off”. She notices while near the bathroom that the attached storeroom has 2 chest freezers, one of which appears to be unplugged- the access point perhaps? Below, the rest of the team manages to track the trustee’s path partway, and then explores a bit til they hear some noise from above, and find a spot they think is likely the access point- a newer ladder with a retrofitted cover have been inserted.

With this info, they feel like they can proceed on another mission- getting the Project Pegasus info from a prisoner in A block. They make another deal with the Vory to get kitchen access, in exchange for which Grackle agrees to take out 2 human supremacist Troll Killers who have been causing some trouble for some of the Vory’s subsids. Luckily, the other Halloweener in here is back out of solitary and sharing Grackle’s cell (in Sharky’s absence), and Grackle convinces him to help. They arrange to have him working at the machine shop, where the 2 men also work. Grackles tells Jack O’Lantern that the men have been talking shit on the ‘Weeners and Jack fashions them some crude shivs. He tells Grackle to sneak around behind them while he approaches from the front. He walks right up to the men and stabs one in the throat before he figures out what’s happening. Grackles slices the other’s legs before tossing his knife to Jack and sneaking off again. Jack leaps at the other man, slicing and stabbing wildly as Grackle returns to Butter’s work station and tries to keep his head down.

They hear some screams, shouts, and gunfire as guards try to break up the fight, and shortly thereafter, the shop is locked down as 3 bodies are wheeled out on stretchers- looks like Jack and one of the Troll Killers are definitively dead and the other isn’t looking good. However, Butter and Grackle manage to bluff the guards that they didn’t see anything and don’t know anything, and are eventually returned to their cells, as the whole facility seems to be on lockdown now…. Meanwhile, Aleiron has been spreading the word amongst her cult that something isn’t right in the prison, especially in the basement, and that more disappearances should be expected, by which they will know that her predictive abilities are accurate. She keeps working her regular job, as does Watt, so that the whole team isn’t gone every time something suspicious happens. Aleiron also makes a deal with a member of the Nova Rich to make sure the prisoner they need to question is sent to medical at the right time, in exchange for NR getting the drugs from medical, which will require the medic and guard to be taken out.

Eion gets his arm infected by smearing shit in a wound, and letting it fester for a while, before getting sent to medical, along with 3C, who is “paralyzed” again. Yanko sneaks into the tunnels and waits til he is needed near the entrance to medical. They clean Eion’s wound and dose him with antibiotics, and tell him to wait while they run some further tests, before turning to 3C. They get distracted when another man is brought in, also paralyzed. They run some tests to make sure there isn’t some kind of outbreak/contagion, but the NR member who dropped him off winks at Eion and 3C, so they think it’s likely a drug effect. They know they have less than an hour to question him and take out the medic an guard (as the medic disables the local security and cameras for a short period whenever the NR come to buy drugs off of her, scheduled for later this morning). They wait as long as they can, to let 3C regain some movement, and then attack.

Eion and 3C manage to stop the medic from sounding the alarm, which is more difficult due to the fact that she just disabled security features, but both get ko’ed by the guard. Yanko, hearing struggle, gains access to the room using the crowbar, and manages to take out the guard and finish off the medic without raising the alarm. He lets the Nova Rich guy in to grab the drugs, and is frustrated in his ambitions to get some for himself, although he does manage to secure a stimpatch to wake 3C back up. They quickly question the man, and find out that Project Pegasus was a NeoNET initiative to entrap Monads who were trying to get safe passage to the Roskosmos facility in Russia. However, some well-armed Monads apparently interfered in a handoff on neutral ground, rescuing some of their people from corp capture, but resulting in a very public firefight. This guy and his security subsid took the fall for it, but they got cushy prison spots and compensation waiting outside if they stay quiet.

3C kills him, reasoning that the info is more valuable if no-one else has it, and drops his body into the tunnels. Yanko and 3C together manage to drop Eion in as well, before Yanko ko’s 3C, leaving her right on the edge of death, perfect for their cover story that unknown persons attacked medical. Yanko bleaches everything down and then exits, careful to leave no trail to the freezer/ladder, even tipping some stuff over on top of it to make it look less suspiciously clean. He hauls the corpse to the hole, and dumps it in. He finds Drekbomb, who whines about being hungry, but he convinces him to help move Eion, who is pretty injured. They return to find Eion’s wound being gnawed on by devil rats, and scare them off in time.

They haul him to the pit and try to tend his wound as best they can, but Yanko realizes he didn’t grab any medical supplies in his rush to escape, and he needs to get back to the kitchen ASAP, so he knocks Drekbomb unconscious to keep him from messing around, and leaves Eion a stun baton, hoping he’ll wake up first. He gets back upstairs just as a facility lockdown is called, and the Vory give him a look. The teams spends the next 3 days locked in their cells with minimal food and no movement allowed.

Meanwhile, Eion finally wakes up downstairs, right around the same time as Drekbomb. Assessing the situation, it looks not great. His arm has a huge chunk missing, and is infected again, and they have no food or supplies. He dresses his wound as best he can, and manages to hold the infection off for now with his impressive dwarven fortitude. However, when no food is forthcoming 2 days later, and unable to rest sufficiently to heal, he feels that drastic measures must be taken, and kills Drekbomb in his sleep- a possibility Drekbomb seems to have been worried about, due to his irregular sleep schedule and locations, but Eion is a far better survivalist. He then field dresses the corpse as best he can, dumping all the useless bits and implants and such in the hole. He gorges himself on the edible bits, and finally gets a good nights rest. He figures the corpse will keep him fed for a few days at least before it turns, unless he can somehow cure it….

Runners
Introducing:
Aleiron Grey
Butter
Eion Smash
Grackle
Three Card
Watt Tinbo
Yanko Lazer

A young group of aspiring runners (+ Eion, a destitute dwarf in his 50’s), all having come up (or washed up) in the Redmond Barrens of Seattle, are all separately contacted by an older runner named Oldtimer, fresh out of prison and looking to make one last big score to set himself up to get out of the game once and for all. He tests them all out on their own, running small scams and scores to check their abilities and coolness under pressure. Once approved, he starts assembling them into a big enough team for the final job.

Through a fixer who he did some favors for while inside, Oldtimer has access to the ShadowSea job board, and pulls in some decent job to test the team out: They courier around a set of 3 mysterious locked briefcases, supposedly containing brokerage instructions for some paranoid financiers who don’t trust matrix comms after crash 2.0. They ‘kidnap’ a rich girl who wants to extort money out of her wealthy dad, but her turns out to be broke due to debts to the mafia, who have been using this leverage to ensure that he lawyers for them as needed. They still get paid a bit and Oldtimer is satisfied with their problem-solving. And lastly, to get together a decent fund for equipment for the main heist, they fulfill a hit. Oldtimer wants to get them all blooded together, to make sure they can handle wetwork if it’s necessary, but also check if any of them are total psychos, as well as to make sure everyone is on the hook for murder if anyone turns on anyone else.

The Johnson is Regina Mathis, a mid-level Shiawase Corporation ad exec on the rise. Her husband has been frequenting bunraku parlors run by the Yakuza. She isn’t bothered by the infidelity, just the specifics, given Shiawase’s conservative corp culture she is worried that when it someday gets out, it will slow her ascent as well as his. So, she wants him quietly removed, permanently. She also wants the PI Casey Elton, who she paid to investigate her husband, to either be intimidated into giving up his copies of the info, or killed if he seems like he can’t be trusted.

The team splits into a few groups to handle it all. Grackle breaks into the PI’s office and finds out that he owed money to a bookie named Squirrel, though a big chunk was recently cancelled out, so they worry he already sold on the info on the husband. 3 Card, Eion, and Watt head to the bookie’s bar to see what’s up, and due to Eion’s temper get in a fight pretty much right away, which ends with the bookie and his bodyguard dead, and the team fleeing with the file folder of printouts and a small drive that seem like the PI’s info. They hear that the mafia is on the lookout for them now, as they killed one of their affiliates (though luckily not a full made man).

Butter and Oldtimer trail the PI and intimidate him into promising to back off, and believe that he’ll hold it up. They make very clear that they’ll be back if he doesn’t. Grackle, Yanko, and Aleiron ambush the husband during his afternoon visit to the bunraku parlor, using the PI’s info to figure out his schedule. They grab him before he can head in (and thus to try to keep out of trouble with the Yak), and Aleiron stabs him in the heart after Grackle, an aspiring Halloweener can’t manage. He gets good footage of the death though. They hide his body a little ways a way after emptying his pockets to make it look like a random robbery gone wrong. Mathis is satisfied, and pays up, telling them she may use their services again in the future.

Feeling they are as ready as they can be, Oldtimer lays out the big job: a casino heist up in Everett. One of the non-Mafia or Yak casinos hosts a weekly private game between some high rollers, and Oldtimer’s fixer, Rex Simmons has some tips about suggesting there will be a brief window where a huge stockpile of chips and credsticks will be laid out in the private room before the bigshots arrive with their entourages and guards. The timing is going to have to be close for it to work, but it seems doable with a big enough team. Simmons asks to be kept up to date, and negotiates a split with Oldtimer, who decides to keep a sizable chunk for his retirement before splitting the rest with the team. The team agrees, and they begin planning it out.

One other detail: they are to set up a man named Fingers Barducci as the fall man, by leaving his body at the scene and making sure he didn’t die too far beforehand. They find out he is a mafia hitman, currently on the run. They eventually track him down, and make a plan to grab him earlier the day of the heist. They will dose him with slab to keep him movable, and use explosives in the job (his signature), making sure he dies in the blast. They are a little concerned about further aggravating the mafia, but hope that word of their involvement won’t get out.

They check out the casino, and surveil the game a week ahead of the planned job, and formulate a plan. They get the final set of details from a disgruntled ex-employee named Brick, who is working with some smuggler gangs on Fox Island. Grackle and Watt steal a car, which Butter tunes up for the getaway, and the rest of the team plans the ways in, checks security, and plots their escape route through the sewers under the building. Oldtimer updates Simmons on the details, and gets the go-ahead. Simmons provides funds for job materials (including car upgrades and explosives), but is tight with the purse strings. Also, disturbingly, Oldtimer is unable to clearly remember his face, with is rare for him given his perfect memory. He mentions it to the team, but they assume it to be a pro move on the fixer’s part.

The heist goes off pretty much perfectly, with the exception of some strange explosions outside as they blow their way into the sewers. They escape with roto-drones on their tails, and almost link up with Butter, Oldtimer and the getaway ride, when Oldtimer is felled by a sniper’s bullet to the head, and the rest of the team is ko’ed by Knight Errant. They wake up about a day later aboard a KE prison transport boat, and hear a news report that a mafia heir and 2 Yakuza underbosses where killed in a “terrorist attack” at the casino. There is some speculation that it may have been a rival mafia faction is behind it, not wanting there to be peace between the mafia and Yak’s. However, the news reports that the runners thought to be responsible are in custody and awaiting charges- the team feels that they must have been betrayed and set up, but what have they gotten themselves in the middle of?

Arriving at McNeil Island, they are transferred from KE custody to Lone Star Security Services. They wait in holding for quite a while before they are told they have a visit from their lawyer, which surprises them. They are brought to a conference room and meet Imaginary Annie Goldsmith, who seems to use magic to disable the room’s camera before turning on a white noise generator concealed in her bag. Some of the team noticed that she was closely examining 3 tarot cards as they entered, but she quickly stashed them away. She tells them that they are being held until KE and the city DA decide what to charge them with, and agrees to take some messages for them and run a few errands. She gives them the lay of the land, and says she will pull some strings to get them assigned to the block that the mafia and Yak aren’t on, to try to keep the alive a little longer. She suggests they start making some friends.

She says she’ll be back soon, but won’t tell them any more about why she was there in the first place than that she “had a feeling it was important.” She gives them some smokes to use as currency, and gives Grackle and Watt lockpicks. Aleiron loses some of the smokes to a guard almost right away, but cons her way out of a demerit. They head back to holding before being assigned to C block (the “safer” area), and meeting their new cellmate, a touchy dwarf brawler named Sharky. He gives them the rundown of prison layout and factions. They make a few friends in the Reality Hackers at breakfast the next day, given a mutual love of “Marry Me Kat Katana”, and Watt offers their services to the Koshari, through his good rep with the Dogmen. They work shitty jobs the first day, but the RH’s get them reassigned to more choice labor by calling in a favor (to be paid back by the team) with Andrews, the officer in charge of assignments.

Butter goes to work in the machine shop, buddying up with some 405 Hellhounds to avoid the human supremacists who are in the majority. Eion and 3 Card do manual labor outside the walls, and make some contacts with Cascade Orks. Watt and Grackle get assigned to a tech gig, overhauling some of the prison’s ancient systems, and manage to start scrounging some scrap parts. Grackle gets a demerit when they find his smokes, but manages to hold onto the lockpicks. Yanko seems content to keep stamping license plates and trading handjobs for random drugs. Aleiron and Sharky get assigned to the library, hoping to be able to move messages around, and start working on a secret code language the team can use.

They survive another few days like this, with Grackle being the only one wounded when an overexcited ‘Weener named "Jack O’Lantern" (the name all ‘Weeners are supposed to use when arrested) bites off part of his face. He gets to see the medical area in the white collar wing, and starts to get a feel for the sec systems and practices. Annie visits again, and tells them all they’ve been denied bail under a “terrorism” provision, they are all assigned criminal SINs (those that didn’t have them yet), and she says she hasn’t found a ton of into about Simmons, they fixer they assume is behind the setup. She asks them for a list of anyone else who might have betrayed them, which they provide, and they also give her their version of events. She says she will spread it around as much as possible, which will hopefully get the Yak off their back, but will likely not help with the Mafia for obvious reasons.

She tells Watt to listen hard that night as she is leaving, and the team hears Watt’s dog Ada howling outside that evening. Aleiron shifts to wolf form and howls back, telling Ada to be patient but stay close. The team rests up and prepares to get to work on the list of jobs that Annie gave them, hoping that pleasing her (and the Johnsons behind her) will help them stay alive in here, while they begin to plot an escape.

Runners
Senk Gethin
Sanquals Love
Toast
Fentin
Christopher Toff
Speed Tanaka

After completing the chal’han, and getting the lowdown]] on all the synthesized info that Frosty Jane has assembled from the various caches, the team agrees to do one last job together: head to Aztlan, find the fovae, and do whatever they can to destroy the bridges the Horrors are trying to build across. Jane briefs Love and Toff on a modified version of the ritual Dunkelzahn used for similar purposes, which she has put together from cache knowledge (as well as having dealt with a Horror crossing point before). She explains that although unwilling sacrifice is more potent in blood magic, a willing self-sacrifice will be harder for other blood mages to break, given it’s purity of purpose.

Chessick Allens-Whitehill decides to sit this one out, preferring to live to enjoy his fortune, and returns to work at the All-Seeing Eye as well as freelancing for other spots as a sort of gonzo crisis reporter (after some significant cyber upgrades). Chem is crushed to be sidelined, but given his astral sight/sound replacement, he is having hard time adjusting to the perceptual input, and heads to the Ex-Corporate Scientists lab to get fitted with some sensors that should help.

Toast links back up with the team as they begin setting their affairs in order, training for the mission, and gearing up. They are all very suspicious, especially as he is now pretty much all cyber, but he explains that they only managed to save his head, and had to replicate the rest of his abilities as best they could. Toff reads his mind and can only detect the pre-existing magical interference from the nightmare spirit when they were leaving Boston, so they decide to trust him for this job, and then go their separate ways. Gethin considers using her spirit key to flee back to the Fae Realms, but decides to complete the mission first. Toast and Gethin both will all of their stuff to each other in case they don’t make it (unbeknownst to each other). Fentin signs a contract with Saeder-Krupp Heavy Industries to become a fulltime corporate runner, after this job is done, but also gets the news that the last remaining Ro Tain was killed after she attacked an SK facility in France (apparently after Toast told her they were keeping clones there). It seems that Ro believed (true or not) that SK had been using her runs against Renraku Computer Systems’ cloning program to jumpstart a program of their own.

Finally ready, the team heads to Madagascar with Jane, along with a mysterious woman that only Fentin recognizes as Hestaby in human form, to convince the notorious pirate Kane to help them in their mission. Being a longtime hater of all things AZT, he agrees, and they arrange for him to attack a coastal facility to distract some naval elements, and hopefully allow them to sneak in to the country undetected. This part of the plan goes off without a hitch, and they quickly reach the foave site. Unfortunately, they find it guarded by the new AZT/ Ordo Maximus cadre:The Bloodpanthers, vampiric combat-focussed mystic adepts. Hestaby and Jane, through spellcraft, manage to stabilize a crossing point through one of the fovae, and Jane, Toff, Love, and Gethin head through while Hestaby holds it open, and Speed, Fentin, and Toast hold off the Bloodpanthers.

The exterior team decides it’s time to bail after the other team crosses, hoping they will be able to exfiltrate themselves astrally. They try to make for the chopper but get cut off by AZT reinforcements. Speed volunteers to stay behind and hold off the Bloodpanthers while the rest retreat, and Hestaby manages to whisk Toast and Fentin to relative safety in Amazonia through a massively overpowered levitate, which leaves even her stunned and gasping for breath. Speed casts aside her scabbard, no longer needing it, and the last anyone sees of her she is dogpiled by Bloodpanthers while swinging wildly about her with her blade. The three escapees spend a short time in Amazonian detention before Hestaby secures their release through high-powered local friends, and they head off: Fentin to SK, Toast to Cara’Sir, to check in with the Moonlight Thorns, who are distressed to see that all his magic is gone, but his Prince agrees to keep him on in a slightly less-official capacity.

Meanwhile, as the Chasm, Jane and the rest are disturbed to see that one bridge has had significant progress made on it. Toff is quickly overcome by the whispers offering the answers to all mysteries, though not before he tells Jane to kill him if he starts to do anything strange. Love and Gethin hold it together, and Jane begins the modified “Dragonheart” ritual, with Love joining in. Gethin volunteers to sacrifice themself in order to add power. Toff, Love and Gethin are forcibly merged together in Gethin’s heavily-cybered body, and have a brief moment of knowing each other completely before they are all erased, and the magically animated cyberzombie is set to patrol the most intact of the remaining bridges, from where, far in the distance, it can just make out the primary astral bridge, and the figure standing astride it, holding back the coming Horrors. Jane makes her way back to the material plane, wounded and drained. She ensures that some higher-ups in Imperial Japan know of, and understand, Speed Tanaka’s sacrifice, which is deemed sufficient to erase the stain on her family’s honor, and they are given their title and ancestral holdings back.

As 2078 continues, Toast has been doing any assassinations he can, while also doing odd ‘dirty’ jobs here and there for the more liberal Princes in Tir Tairngire. He also engages in some further O’Connor investigations, and some anti- Brokerage X activity. He feels a strange urge to compile notes on all these activities and forward them to a commcode he has memorized from time to time. He and Fentin also contribute some of their payday (Jane provides!) to the memories of their dead former team-mates. They pay for a bunch of supplies, including the crazy repellers which they’ve been working on at the lab, into Boston, along with a statue of Gethin. Toff’s will left his assets to the Library at Alexandria, which adds a “Christopher Toff Reading Room”, with a cozy fireplace, some comfortable chairs and benches, and many shelves of rare tomes, scrolls, and tablets. Toast inherits Gethin’s spirit key, as well as her share of the lab, and rewrites his will so that, should he die, his 2/3rd’s share can never be sold to a corp, although anything developed there can be sold to the public.

Chem, getting used to his sensors, hires on an alchemist at the lab as the latest staff addition, and begins dabbling a bit himself, pushing the limits of his new astral senses. Chem and Fentin both begin to have strange dreams of a circle of figures in black and tan robes chanting around a ritual mark. They confer with each other, and Toast, and decide this is likely the vaunted Group X, coming to collect as promised. However, they confirm that Toast contains no parts of original Toast, as he has not been targeted, meaning any bio samples they had are useless for a ritual link to him. Fentin reports all of the happenings in AZT to SK, as well as doing a major writeup on Jackpoint (gaining full membership), and gets SK to “officially” report his death to his parents. He then calls in all his favors to get transferred to Zurich Orbital, and begin working for SK’s demi-GOD, figuring that Group X won’t be able to get to him ritually outside of a manasphere, which will give him time to look into them.

Chem seeks tech and alchemical solutions at the lab, while doing his own investigations, as well as seeking out the remnants of the Brotherhood of Flesh in Metropole, hoping to learn more about their abilities, and possibly gain some magical protection. Toast promises to report back anything he finds about the mysterious assassins. Chessick globetrots, reporting from a variety of battlefields, warzones, refugee crises, z-zones, and the like. His following grows significantly, though he sometimes misses the camaraderie of the old days.

Runners
Senk Gethin
Sanquals Love
Toast
Fentin
Chem
Christopher Toff
Chessick Allens-Whitehill

The runners enter the Chambers, a series of polyhedral rooms connected by branching hallways, in order to seek the ancient and secret knowledges rumored to be contained therein. They find extensive expedition notes by a series of astral explorers throughout the ages, and confirm many of their suspicions/beliefs about the layout and connectedness of a variety of metaplanes. They also discover notes suggesting that Aztechnology has been heavily invested in uncovering the mysteries of this area, including a potential hidden faction, and have been spending most of their efforts in the Seelie Court here.

Finding expedition notes from a few explorers and comparing them to records left by an AZT employee also reveals the Horror’s location: across a deep and wide chasm at the far edge of the astral sea. Although Big D still guards the Bridge (in cyberzombie form), it is not the only bridge- others are under construction, here and there, trying to bridge the gap. Toff, after touching the writing, begins hearing persistent whispers offering knowledge beyond anything he could have imagined if he will only repair 1 of the bridges. They also find out that the chasm is shrinking, though not close enough the Horrors can cross unassisted as of yet. It seems to be tied to the magical cycle, as speculated previously.

The AZT employee’s hurried scrawlings also reveal that AZT has been working to develop a plan for defending themselves (& any paying customers) against the next Scourge, working to redevelop kaer tech, studying and learning blood magic as an offensive and defensive tool, and researching the Horrors themselves. Unfortunately, the Horrors corrupting power is too great for many mortal minds to ponder, and there is a pro-Horror cult deep within AZT that is actively trying to speed their arrival. This is the Smoking Mirror that the team had heard of before, who were backing the Righteous Province brujos, as well as Logos, as well as connections to the vampiric cabal within the Ordo Maximus. The AZT employee has become convinced that SM has sent spies along on their mission, and that they have been converting/corrupting others to their cause. Worried that they are next, the employee decided to secretly leave a record.

The team also finds 2 bronze heads in separate chambers, and is able to query them: they each promise the answer to a single question. The team manages to keep on task, and inquiries as to the location of, and how to secure, the cache. They are told that it is within the Labyrinth, and that the flowers are the key. They manage to make their way out of the shifting and treacherous chambers, and split up to research flowers in the libraries. They also finally look into what happened to Toast, and find that he was killed (or nearly so) in the arena, and that Niall O’Connor’s ally spirit managed to retrieve his head and some other bits. When they confront O’Connor, he tells them that he passed Toast’s still barely animate remains (in a magically stabilized state) along to Saeder-Krupp, as they promised to assist.

Chem and O’Connor also sent along the envoy from Comet to meet SK, as promised. O’Connor seems to have his own hidden agendas, but definitely not working for the Queen (or not exactly anyway). Toff thinks he will be a good contact for the Vigilia Evangelica, fulfilling another task. Fentin cashes in their munera debt with Gilik to have his arm removed to rid himself of Gwynplaine’s mark, replacing it with a clockwork contraption which he hopes will translate back to real cyber on the material plane. Hoping that this will at least prevent GP from easily tracking them whenever they return, they plan to blow off his jobs. Then, they meet up at the Labyrinth.

Entering, they find some sleeping benches near the front, where they minotaurs drop off the drugged individuals who have given up. They follow some clues in the stonework to choose an initial path, and head off. Moving through a series of chambers by analyzing the subtly different carvings of flowers, they make their way- they are not sure if the other subtle clues hidden in the rooms also lead to secrets or treasure, only following the path they have been told to follow. Eventually, they find a chamber devoid of any carvings, and looking around, are eventually able to find the cache, invisible and hidden high in the room. They manage to retrieve it, and decide to crack it open as promised to show to Thisbe Sorrel’s spirit, Walks Through Tall Grass. However, when they open it, they hear a strange sound, and reality rips open around them. They find themselves falling through the sky into the area near Yellowstone.

Taking some damage, but nothing lethal, in the fall, they are distressed realize that they are in wilderness, with almost none of their gear (weapons, armor, etc) as this was all left in their quarters in the Castle. They manage to get a call through to Frosty Jane, who seems surprised and delighted to hear from them- it’s been 7 months since they went into the fae realms, which they experienced as 7 days. Apparently the Atlantean Foundation had returned 6 and a half months ago, seemingly disappointed, from the fae realms and has been unable to find any further caches on Earth, so the team is declared the winner, once Jane scrambles a chopper to bring them safely in.

They examine the contents of the cache, and take their prizes/payout. WTTG, satisfied, makes his exit to seek passage back to the Seelie. Love gets a strange piece of blood magic called a blood crystal, effectively magical ’ware, and Chem finds another ancient symbiote, which replaces his eyes and ears with astral sense. Jane also informs them that what is being referred to as “The Yellowstone Incident” apparently occurred many months ago, with a portal opening in the sky long before the team fell out- so some sort of strange fae time manipulation must be in play. However, the portal has moved since the team came through, though it seems in general to signal a new connectivity with the Seelie Court, and crossing has become much more common, if not always easier.

Jane pays the team out for the Chal’han victory, and congratulates them. She says that given the info they uncovered about AZT and Horror cults, she hopes at least some of them will stay on to work with her on disrupting their work. She confirms that herself, Harlequin, and Bull MacCallister had destroyed a previous bridge in the making, but that many runners lost their lives in the process, so it will be dangerous work. She also reports that fovae have been detected in Aztlan by the Jackpoint user Elijah who was almost corrupted in the process. The fovae allow far easier access to the Horror’s chasm and bridges, and she worries this could quickly ramp up if not contained. Love and Toff seem interested.

SK offers Fentin full-time employment, having been quite satisfied with his work- they say they can always use runners with professionalism on the payroll. He is told that Toast should be back on his feet and with them soon, also. Which they are all a bit worried about, having seen the Toast clone in the SK facility in France. Fentin is also told that the team and SK have no bad blood, as they completed a sufficient number of the tasks assigned to them in the Court (specifically, finding someone skilled at crossing over, making an intro to a potentially friendly faction to ally with, and uncovering the origins of the Jewel of Memory, as well as significant further intel). Chem tries to adjust to his new sight/hearing, with much difficulty. Gethin ponders a return to Boston, or possibly the Seelie Court. Chessick, having finally gained access to his huge Boston payday, decides to go in for some major upgrades.

Jane, as promised way back at the beginning of the chal’han, releases all of the info and magical knowledge they recovered, in at least some form. Most of the magical stuff she puts out publicly, although she reserves some of the most intense blood magic and the Horror knowledge for Jackpoint and other selective forums, feeling that the public would not take this news well (though AZT is surely working on a way to break it to everyone someday via their massive PR engine.

Runners
Senk Gethin
Sanquals Love
Toast
Fentin
Chem
Christopher Toff
Chessick Allens-Whitehill

Having feng-shui’d their quarters appropriately, the team sets out to pursue their various day’s goals. They decide to attend the Morning Hearing to get a look at who else is around and see if anything interesting comes up. They see some of the same strange biz as the day before, and witness the surprisingly abrupt execution of a baobhan sith prisoner, although the hearings end a bit early today after a powerful illusion spell denouncing the Queen is triggered (and quickly counterspelled). Fentin determines it was likely an alchemical trigger set off from the cheap seats, but is chased off by 3 of the Queen’s royal guard, a mismatched trio of a left-handed duelist, a longbow-man, and some sort of social adept. They all wear black half-masks, and seem vaguely threatening.

The team also receives a few messages during the hearing, specifically an Elvar man named Honeysuckle seeking a meeting with Toast, a Wild Fae croki named Riva Dhillon requesting Fentin’s attendance (cloaked in a subtle insult), and some back and forth between Love and one of Thisbe Sorrel’s pages (who once again appears possibly related). They split up after the hearing to pursue these various meetings during the midday hours. Fentin meets with Dhillon, and is requested to do some info gathering to make up for the Wild Fae having ID’ed him as a member, after he claimed affiliation. He also embarrasses himself a bit due to his inability to operate in the strange freefall sky room that the meeting is in.

Chem and Toast go to the Cube, a truly 3d dining hall with people seated on every surface, to make their secret meet, and it seems that Honeysuckle is passing along info from the Moonlight Thorns, who want Toast to do some info gathering on the team’s sponsor Niall O’Connor. He agrees, and tries to interact with the 3d-ness of the room, but it seems that some magical property firmly keeps entrants orientated to the plane they entered on. Love and Toff grab a quick lunch at the freeform Grand Hall before afternoon tea with Sorrel, at which she explains some of the history of the court and it’s tech, especially pertaining to the Jewel of Memory and the coimeadai/Keepers. She also tries to hook up with Toff, but he is not enthusiastic. Also, disturbingly, she seems to have already produced a child from her previous day’s union with Love, who she says will have a full life of safe and gainful employ in her household. She also tells Toff that she can removed Gwynplaine’s mark using blood magic, if he wishes, and suggests that Harlequin and Gwynplaine would be difficult but not impossible to reunite.

Gethin returns to the Gallows, entering the old west paradigm, to meet again with Duke Flowerpot. He makes some general inquiries, and they both dance around the issue a bit, but he seems to be attempting to recruit the team to work with the secretive Bastard faction, and hints that they do not see eye to eye with the Queen. Gethin says they will discuss with the team and report back. Fentin goes to his 2nd meeting of the day, finding his way (despite a trickster) to the Geocache, a strange representation of a 2050’s style matrix- all green lines and hovering obelisks. He thinks the 8 enormous floating structures likely correspond to the Corporate Court members of the time, but can’t figure out how to gain access. Rooster eventually appears, and they discuss the use and nature of the Court’s “gramarye” aka it’s wireless aura. Rooster suggests that Fentin should be able to make good use of his hacking skills hear to access the Keepers, as well as locked portals and the like. They also discuss the team possibly collaborating with Hanged Man, although it seems Rooster mostly wishes to collect rare stories, to further his goal on becoming the Court Jester someday.

Chessick has been wandering and socializing, and getting shown the ropes here and there by Niall. He discovers that the Ember Banquet, though socially the lowest tier of the Banquets, can be useful to attend to make shadier contacts, and the team decides to head to a bar called Gilik’s to attend that evening’s feast. Love opts out, grabbing a snack at the Grand Hall, and seeking out one of the castle’s many Libraries, discovering much about the coimeadai/keeper system. He is told that the trick is not so much finding a library, as finding the specific thing you seek a 2nd time, and definitely gets the feeling that there are many more such stores of knowledge throughout the castle.

Fentin researches further at another library, and manages to use his recently acquired knowledge to get invited to a mid-level banquet in a strange inverted moonscape room that seems to defy gravity. He makes contact with members of the Comet and Eclipse factions, and thinks that Comet could be good to offer a contact to SK or the Vigilia Evangelica. He also gathers intel for the Wild Fae as requested. He tries a strange euphoric drug by accident as well. Meanwhile, at Gilik’s, Toast and Gethin make contact with some various folks on the outs at Court, and get some useful intel, as well as some hints of the castle’s mysteries. They also get the impression that Gilik himself could be a useful fellow to know, as he seems to have all sorts of strange connections. Chessick later gets a job from Gilik to assassinate a retired courtier of the Higher Power faction.

The next day Fentin passes along his intel, and Riva uses it to good effect to seemingly quash an attempt at a minor democratic reform. They do some further research into The Agents of Clarity, and seemingly have a good amount of options as to who to ally with. Love decides to try to impress the Magician faction as well, and boringly (though competently) crushes an opponent in the Arena with spellcraft. The team hears that the Queen’s arcana collection likely includes some Boston CFD (!!!) and also that her obsession with artifacts is a good way to manipulate her. They receive invites to banquets for the evening, and plan to reassess afterward what their next steps should be.

Love attends the Cyprian Feast, the lowest banquet of the top tier, where he makes some useful Magician contacts, more through skill than through charm. The rest of the team attends a Feast of the Fallen, discussing the castle’s mysteries and history. Toast and Chessick convince the HP assassination target to meet them on the roof after dinner for some secret knowledge, and grab Love once he’s free as well. Chessick strings the courtier along for a bit before telling him to wait and making his exit, at which point Love sends in an illusory Nightwatch Phantom, while Toast ko’s the guy with an arrow. Love scampers up under his illusion’s cover and drains the fae’s blood with his athame. He is about to recover the arrow and cover their tracks when both he and Toast are scared off by what seems to be the real Phantom.

The Phantom chases them to the exit, chilling their bones, and swipes at them with a massive blade just before dissipating into mist. They race inside, only to find that he has a left a small bleeding gash in both of their chests, that try as they might, they are unable to heal. They brief the team, and rest for the night. Nothing directly pertaining to them happens at the next morning hearings, although there seem to be more mortals than before showing up. Gethin gives info about the Queen’s CFD threat to Flowerpot/Bastard, in exchange for potential future alliance. Toast heads to the arena to try to overcome the shame of fleeing the Phantom, as well as prove his skill (especially after Love’s boring performance), and is having an impressive go at toying with and slowly disabling a shardik, when the oversized toxic bear gets a lucky swipe of it’s claws in and fells him, before feasting on his corpse. Though he tries to crawl free, he is unable, and is almost wholly consumed.

The rest of the team, unaware of his sad fate, head to the Catacombs to try to determine where the cache is, what the AZT team is up to in there, and what other secrets the catacombs contain…

Runners
Senk Gethin
Sanquals Love
Toast
Fentin
Chem
Christopher Toff
Chessick Allens-Whitehill

The team, examining their cells find them all just a bit too small for the occupant, no matter what size they are. They also discover that the latrine hole in the corner seemingly leads to a shit plane somewhere, and that some unfortunate’s who tried to escape through that route have become trapped down there. They can communicate aurally with each other, but otherwise have no ability to use any senses outside their cells. What seems like about a day passes, and as they all grow quite hungry, the void disperses, and they are ushered forth into a hallway, and directed towards a communal slop trough.

Deciding they best make some sort of play, Love and Fentin make reference to the strange song that Tanaka and Chessick heard, and Toff tries to cast some spells. This gets them all hauled off to interrogation rooms, as Toast, Gethin and Chem play it cool. Chessick decides to volunteer info to avoid anything unpleasant, having seen marks of torture on some other residents (including one man with a fresh brand of a dragon scarring his face). He secures an interview with Zeha Cadgris, the dungeonkeeper, who seems quite interested in what he has to say. He tells her what he knows of the story- that he was shunted here while fleeing Boston, and then wrongly identified as working for “the Unmaker” and hunted by the Wild Hunt. Cadgris accepts his tale, and says he will be brought before the Queen to receive her justice.

The other 3 don’t fare as well, receiving various amounts of torture before all giving up essentially the same story: they are pawns in a fey game, and came here on a quest, and merely defended themselves when the Wild Hunt appeared hostile. They are also told they will face the Queen’s justice, and shown back into their cells. Only Gethin, Toast, and Chem can still freely communicated, and begin conversing with someone calling himself Tom Foolery, who peaks Toast’s interest by mentioning Liam O’Connor’s former rule of the realm. He tells a story of O’Connor getting conned by some runners from the material plane to illustrate court dynamics, and also tells the team to seek a man with a crowing cock emblazened on his vest in the Crimson Hall some night, as he may be able to assist them.

Those 3 decide to volunteer up info at the next mealtime, not knowing what has become of their friends, and after confirming that their stories roughly match, and squeezing some more info out of them, Cadgris says she will send them before the Queen’s justice as well. The next day, the team plus the man with the dragon brand are all corralled together, and once again have their senses removed as they travel through what seems to be an astral gateway. They find themselves in the basement of an ancient castle, which seems somewhat alive. They are lead up a series of narrow passages and winding stairs, eventually emerging into bright daylight, and being paraded into court through the gloriously carved Dawnseeker’s Arch.

They take in the details of the court- the multitudes of fae races represented, the ornate and shifting art, and the massive tree that dominates the center of the chamber and seems to provide (or obscure) its ceiling. After watching a long litany of peon’s complaints to and requests of the Queen, they are ushered forward. The Queen, Lady Brane Deigh, is ringed with councillors, magistrates, advisors, ladies-in-waiting, and her champions and executioner, as well as other lesser figures in her retinue. Strangely, Toast notices that some of them share interlocking tattoos, and that one of the tattooed men strongly resembles Liam O’Connor, though haggard and bearing signs of traumatic injury only partially healed. He also notices Niall O’Connor, a former advisor to (and cousin of) Liam, lounging nearby, seemingly a respected figure though not part of the Queen’s retinue. Toast makes a subtle hand gesture implying loyalty to the O’Connor clan but isn’t sure if he picks up on it.

The Queen first deals with the branded man, declaring that his time in the dungeons and his prominent new adornment have rendered his sentence complete. the executioner seems disappointed. Then she turns to the team, questioning them intently, and occasionally conferring with Niall, who uses a ring to seemingly verify their truth. He vouches for them, and they manage to make a deal with the Queen, very subtly, to be able to seek the cache in exchange for helping located and secure the portal they entered through, as well as for providing the Queen with any powerful magical items that they find. She declares that so long as they stick to the terms of their arrangements, they will be forgiven their various trespasses. The team notices a rep of the Atlantean Foundation watching intently.

Love receives a private invitation to speak to one Lady Thisbe Sorrel that afternoon, and both Love and Chessick are summoned to the Queen’s private audience chamber immediately. The rest of the team go off with Niall to retrieve their gear, see their guest quarters, and use the valuable afternoon time to make some contacts. Niall makes a very subtle sign back to Toast, which seems encouraging. They go to an old-west style Tavern called the Gallows, hoping to make contact with the Hanged Men faction there (given the name), but instead Gethin manages to use her Society of the Golden Key membership to gain a meeting with a vain elf named Duke Flowerpot, who seems to represent the Bastard Faction. They set a follow-up meeting for the next day at the same place and time, in order to both take each other’s measure.

Meanwhile, at the Queen’s audience, Love and Chessick are thoroughly questioned about the song they mentioned hearing, as well as the man singing it and what he was up to. They tell her all they can and try to get some useful info, which she doesn’t provide much of. She tells them to come straight to her with anything else they uncover along these lines, refusing to confirm that this has anything to do with the Unseelie Court or the rumored Prophecy of the Unmaker. They head out, feeling hopeful that they are on the Queen’s good side for the time being. The rest of the team is shown their quarters, overseen by a somehwat mad hearth spirit named Castlekeeper, who seems to be the entity in charge of magically arranging and rearranging these quarters (as well as possibly the rest of the castle?) to suit needs. They have a moderate suite, and all take a minute to debrief while Niall goes off to deal with his own biz, telling them he will check in tomorrow.

Love heads to his tea appointment with Lady Sorrel, and is surprised to find what seems to be a teen elf girl, though her eyes perhaps reveal her true age. Niall had referred to her as the Queen in Exile, but the team isn’t sure what that means. She gives Love a very directly sexually appraising up-down, and then proceeds to launch forth in a long rant in hundreds or thousands of different languages, which Love has some trouble following (though his pacted spirit attempts to help translate). He eventually pieces together that she knows many things, claims to have lived since the 4th World (or before), and is drinking blood from a teacup. Bonding over blood magic, they head upstairs and engage in some raunchy knife-play with their athames.

She then bathes in fresh, steaming blood, and tells Love she can cure his radiation damage if he brings her fresh blood of an innocent or 2. He balks at this, but maintains his composure, and they agree to speak again, she seems likely to have ties to the Death faction. Love returns to the residence, just as the team receives a last-minute invitation to the Pranquet, aka the Prankster’s Banquet, in the Crimson Hall that night. They attend, and manage to all either gamely receive pranks or give as good as they get (except Fentin, who struggles), and eventually meet the event’s host, an human-appearing man named Rooster. He talks briefly with them of Tom Foolery and other matters, and seems to hint that a further meeting could be conducted the next day at some place called the Geocache, if they wish to pursue a relationship with Hanged Man.

The team, having many optional meetings and assignations for the next day, eagerly hits the hay, but wakens to find themselves poorly rested. Unsure why, they peruse the suite, and Love eventually determines that someone (or something) has rearranged many objects within to throw off the Feng Shui. He reorders the room using his geomantic knowledge, and the team almost instantly feels a bit better. But who was behind it?

Runners
Senk Gethin
Sanquals Love
Toast
Fentin
Chem
Speed Tanaka
Christopher Toff
and the return of: Chessick Allens-Whitehill

The team begins investigating the Fae Realms, which have recently become more accessible for some unknown reason (possibly to do with the unusual magical cycle of the 6th World). They hire Barnaby “Wombat” Rudd to do some digging, and also to get some of his friends to hack their datatrails and spoof their presence in other cities to throw off their assassin pursuers. They piece together what knowledge they can of what the Fae are like, how to behave there, and a few key figures who are power players in the Seelie Court. Lady Brane Deigh is possibly the most notable, as the ex-wife of Liam O’Connor and the current Queen of the Court. She also seems to be the main connective point between the civilian government of Tir na nOg and the Seelie.

Unfortunately, Deigh is thought to be allied to some degree with Jenna Ni’Fairra and other elf supremacists, which will likely mean that the Atlantean Foundation will be heavily favored in any operations taking place in TNN. So the team decides to take a riskier path to the Fae Realms: the mists of Brittany in NW France. They decide the isle of Lyonesse, though it also seems to be an access point, is too heavily guarded, and hope that with Frosty Jane using the artifacts, they can carefully determine which patches of mist they can “safely” enter to make the transit (and not just vanish as tens of thousands before them have). The Vigilia Evangelica contact Toff, and tell him that they have a request, for all of their assistance- they wish him to find and make contact with the Unseelie Court, some sort of rebel faction or shadow court about which little is known. The Catholics seem to wish to use this contact to subvert Deigh’s power. Toff agrees.

Before leaving, Gethin and Toast head south to the outskirts of Paris to a Saeder-Krupp Heavy Industries facility to get the promised interrogation of Canary. They get a lot of info from Canary, who seems to already have been sweated heavily and is under the influence of some sort of truth serum. He claims to be a member of a Cult of the Great Hunter, having apparently decided with other members that the Horrors are the only thing that can remove dragons from their current position of dominance over all other life (even at the extreme cost of a Scourge). They find out about some of the downtime hunters who slew dragons during the 5th World in their kaers, but it seems like many or even most of them were killed in the aftermath of the recent Draconic Civil War.

Unfortunately, he can’t quite confirm or deny that he killed Gethin’s parents, but basically confirms that Ni’Faira’s Songbirds acted as a deathsquad during the Tir Tairngire revolution, and that Gethin’s parents seem like exactly the sort of people they would have targeted. Gethin prompts him in a leading fashion, looking for more info, and he seems to relish playing along, helping build up Gethin’s guilt over possibly having been the person who (as a young child) accidentally betrayed her parents’ safehouse. Gethin starts slowly poisoning him to try to get more info, but SK gases the room. When Gethin and Toast wake up, they are restrained and Canary is gone. The SK man says that SK still has a use for him, so they’re going to keep him for now.

He also says that they have some further biz to discuss, and that he is glad the 2 of them came in without the rest of the team. SK, while double-checking on the team’s actions in Dubai, have discovered the duplicity around Brokerage X, and that Gethin and Toast likely acted alone in that. The man tells them that he will need certain promises, and certain deliveries made on those promises, from Gethin and Toast in order to allow this to pass without a stronger answer from the corp. He reminds them of SK’s rep int he shadows, and tells them they are lucky that SK likes the team so much, and that certain individuals in the org have been pushing for leniency.

Firstoff, they tell the 2 runners will remain members of BX, in order for SK to use their access to gain info on the shadowy org. 2nd, they will need any info on BX members and structure that the runners currently have; Toast gives up BX’s man on the ground in Dubai, as well as Mr. Bonds, which could cause problems if anyone on Jackpoint finds out about the betrayal of their rules. 3rd, SK knows the team is headed to the Fey Realms, and would like them to map and investigate any entrances/exits they can find to provide to SK, as well as to try to get a copy of the Fae census that Renraku secured a contract to undertake, and see if they can discover anything about the Jewel of Memory. Apparently dragons are not often allowed in, and Lofwyr is personally interested. And, 4th and final, the SK man instructs them to slot a datachip he passes to Gethin, which he says will upload another agent to the team’s TacNet.

Toast is furious at the demands, and unskilled at concealing it, but Gethin manages a passable bluff to get them out of there and back to the team, and figure out what to do. The SK man either believes them or chooses not to challenge them, and leads them out. He makes one stop on the way, and shows them what look to be full clones of both of them in vats. They can see other unlit vats stretching into the distance, and can only surmise that they contain clones of the rest of the team. The SK man tells the runners that SK is very invested in the team staying together and operational, and that they will take any steps necessary to ensure that this happens.

Angry and upset, they return to the team and tell them what happened. The team has various responses: Fentin and Love are extremely upset, Toff mostly wants to get going to the Fae, Speed feels they should comply with SK’s requests as the team dishonored their contract, and Chem wants to try to hold the team together and keep things from getting violent. Love burns the chip, and Fentin insists that Toast resign his Jackpoint membership, but other than that, they decide to go along with the requests, which don’t seem especially heinous. They decide to finish the chal’han together, as they are all bound to do, and then reassess if they can continue working together.

Speed flies them out to the mist, but says she will stay behind and guard Jane, as well as keep an eye on the chopper/keep it ready for an emergency pickup, not wanting to return to the Fae Realms, having been hunted from them once already. As the team exits the chopper, Toff is first out and is accosted by Gwynplaine- none of the rest of the team can sense him, though Fentin’s mark burns a bit. GP gives Toff a list of 3 names, and says that many Fae, for reasons unknown, still slumber, years into the 6th World. They are to discover these 3, sleeping in their hidey-holes, and wake 1 up, while ensuring that the other 2 never awaken. Toff, feeling helpless, agrees, and informs the team.

Frustrated and feeling cornered, they are excited to step into the mist and be transported away. They find themselves in total sensory deprivation, and manage to all independently fumble around til they find their way to a cave entrance. Love, first out, is surprised to Chessick running full tilt away from some large hunting dogs, and calls him over. They kill the dogs as the rest of the team stumbles out, distressed to notice that the cave closes off behind them. Also, the dogs’ howls have attracted more hunters, and a group of bowman as well as a massively tall man with an ornate helm and a spear descend on the team’s position.

They hold their own for a while, but are eventually all paralyzed or ko’ed, and find themselves transported roughly while drugged, eventually entering another full sensory deprivation area. They are brought forth and returned to their senses one by one, and told that they have been captured and will be held in this prison and interrogated until the Court decides what to do with them. They are told that the cells have no doors, but that if they leave outside of the instructed time, they will re-enter the senseless void, and likely never find their way back. They can speak to each other from their cells, but not see anything outside of their cramped individual quarters….

Runners
Senk Gethin
Sanquals Love
Toast
Fentin
Chem
Speed Tanaka

Christopher Toff splits off from the team to do some investigations of ancient Templar sites on Malta, and also look into the island of Lyonesse, which he and Jane believe holds the portal to the final cache, wherever that leads. As the team and the Atlantean Foundation are currently tied, the team needs to get the Ubar cache and the Lyonesse cache to ensure victory. They also hear of a group called Treasure Hunters, INC that has apparently been sabotaging some ATL digs in the Mediterranean region, and file them away as possible allies. The team also hears that they are basically persona non-grata as far as Ares in concerned, due to their activities in Dubai (luckily, NeoNET already hated them?), narrowing their future options just a bit further.

Fentin also checks out the Saeder-Krupp TacNet that they got at a heavy discount, and finds a high-powered agent program keeping an eye on things inside. He leaves it be, planning to deal with it after the run if SK doesn’t shut it down once their deal is complete, but the team is becoming a bit more paranoid of their erstwhile corporate “sponsors.” They contact The Blemmyae and call in their favor, and he puts them in touch with a Bedouin smuggler in the south named Nimat Jamillah. They arrange to have a few useful pieces of gear waiting for them when they meet, and fly south, reviewing everything they can find on Zero Zones, MCT’s famed ultra-secure sites.

Unfortunately, most of what they find suggest that MCT’s traditional weakness (magical support) is likely compensated for at this site by the presence of an Apep Consortium team, who often use paracritters and awakened security. So the team is expecting high-level response on all levels, and decides to just go as hard as possible. The isolation of the site play to their favor, as MCT won’t be able to easily muster reinforcements. Plus, the Bedouin’s, pissed about MCT denying them use of the oasis at the site, offer to help conceal the team on their approach, as well as get them over the perimeter fence, though they can’t provide much direct support.

The team agrees, and take the better part of a week to train new maneuvers and skills with the integrated TacNet. They choose their loadouts, tell Speed to be ready to swoop in with the chopper once they’ve cleared air defenses, and fill their auto-injectors with everything they can think of to keep themselves alive. The Bedouin’s, meanwhile, have been amassing a small force of their own, coming in on dune buggies and sand skiffs from the surrounding desert. They seem to be planning to pillage the site after the team completes their mission. Once everyone is ready, they head out, strapping into sand skiffs with skilled Bedouin pilots, after some of the elders do a ritual of some sort to get the sand moving.

They surf atop 100m high dunes, until they reach the edge of the Zone, when whatever magic kept the moving dunes aloft hits a barrier and collapses, flinging the team deep into the killing field inside. Love ramps them down safely with levitation and barrier spells, and has an earth spirit start quaking the ground to set off nearby mines. As they land and unstrap their motorcycles, some auto-turrets deploy from nearby camo’ed positions, and the team takes them out. However, the turrets are using devastatingly lethal loads, and the team is worried if they’ll be able to keep everyone alive long enough to reach the center of the Zone…

They encounter a series of traps and opponents, including: more turrets loaded with APDS as well as gel rounds with a blinding venom, irradiated razorcats, hellhounds, basilisks, landmines, a laser maze and a maze of monowire, moving in a cat’s cradle interlocking pattern. Luckily, the earth spirit manages to safely clear a path through the landmines before being disrupted by the monowire, and Chem and Gethin follow it in on the bike, with Toast sneaking behind on foot. Love and Fentin provide sniper and spell cover as the team approaches. However, they come under sniper fire themselves from the on-site sec goons, and get in an elaborate and deadly long-range duel.

As the bike team nears the oasis, they are felled by squads of the sec goons opening up with assault rifles and grenade launchers. They are both felled, but stabilized via the TacNet. Toast reaches them in time to start healing Gethin, as Chem comes back to under the influence of a stimpak. They finally locate the onsite anti-air defenses, when the sec goons deploy them against the team. Fentin manages through sheer luck to hack a frag missile headed his way and prevent it from detonating, though the physical missile still lands on him, causing a serious injury, and Love is reeling from drain, so they call in the chopper after Chem manages to use the AV missile in the launcher to take out the onsite missile array.

Speed races in, and manages to blast the quad cannon that rises to try to shoot him down. However, the team panics as an attack chopper rises from the dig pit to engage. They take turns taking pot shots as Speed handily dodges left and right, up and down, avoiding incoming missiles with the new onboard PDC. Chem lines up a final missile shot, and manages to take down the enemy chopper (already damaged by a stray grenade he launched down into the dig earlier) as Speed manages to corral them into his line of fire. Speed races back out the perimeter and scoops up the rest of the team, bringing them forward to the edge of the oasis, and the team prepares to storm the hill and explore the dig until they can find the cache and escape. Toff emerges from the chopper to heal his damaged teammates, having linked up with Speed after his research on Malta concluded.

Fentin starts picking up some strange matrix interference, and the TacNet comes under attack. He can’t spot the attacker, but their firewall is being degraded, so Chem and Toast blow up some different comm arrays they spot while advancing up through the camp. This stops the attacks but also prevents them from gaining any data from the destroyed equipment. They don’t find anything useful in the camp, other than signs of a quick withdrawal, so they head to the edge of the dig. They spot some large cats with some kind of holographic camo prowling around, and as these seem to be the source of the attack on the TacNet, they all go wireless-off until they defeat the e-critters. Chem takes over flying the chopper around and keeping an eye out while Speed, still un-injured, heads into the pit.

They also come under fire from 3 mini-tank drones with a variety of weaponry. They manage to defeat the drones and cats with no casualties, and begin heading down into the dig pit, finding an ancient fortress surrounded by toppled pillars and evidence of mummified remains having been removed. The MCT/Apep team has added a sealed sec door to the entrance to the fortress that they have uncovered, so Love slams through it with spellcraft. Unfortunately, this releases an overpressurized cloud of deadly Seven-7 gas that was inside the room, seemingly as a trap.

Love nearly dies, and many others on the team take severe injuries. Toff basks in his fully sealed armor. The team heads down multiple levels, dodging more traps (aside from Toast, who almost severs his foot on some monofilament). The building seems like a scaled-down model of the sky-fortresses of Thera that the team has heard tell of, and seems to have used sacrifices to serve some astronomical purpose, although the team can’t determine what. The statues they find seem to be more representations of the Passions, although many of the designs are a bit cruder, implying some might be later additions, from the early 5th Age.

They finally find the techs and scientists from the dig site holed up in the bottom-most excavated area, and try to intimidate them into surrendering. The lead tech refuses, saying that MCT will call in a Thor strike to prevent the team escaping with anything, if the team won’t leave. Chem also reports incoming choppers, but says they are in a holding pattern a ways out. The team believes the tech is telling the truth, but they also spot the cache, partially excavated from what looks to be a tomb set in the wall. So, they gun down the techs, and grab the cache, racing for the exit and the chopper in case a tungsten rod is currently hurtling towards them from atmosphere.

They get to the top, and see a disturbing glint rapidly growing larger above them. They jump into the chopper, and Speed takes back the controls. They race away from the site as the Thor shot impacts, sending up a huge blast wave and tons of sand. The chopper crashes, but Speed keeps it pretty intact, and manages to avoid much passenger damage. They make some jury-rigged repairs and limp back to the Bedouin rendezvous cave. They hide out from whatever MCT sends in to sweep the area, as the Bedouin survivors from the raiding party also straggle back. The imagery they bring shows that the area was fully glassed- SK is gonna love this, but it’s a major loss for archaeology.

They get ahold of Jane, who arranges to send the needed supplies to repair the chopper in via supply drone, and congratulates them on the successful cache acquisition. She says there should only be 1 more, and they can talk details when they link up at a set of coordinates she provides in NW France. They spend the better part of a week healing and fixing the chopper, with the cache concealed in the magic-proofed smuggling compartment, before flying Northwest. They link up with Jane, and get paid, with some keeping some items imbued with magical properties that were contained in the cache.

Jane reveals that based on her used of the artifacts, and Toff’s research, and assistance from the Vigilia Evangelica, they think the last cache is located in the fey realms, and the team will have to head there to gain it. Worse yet, the ATL team seems to have been tipped off as well, and could tie the chal’han if they get it, so the team needs to move fast. As far as Jane can tell, there are 3 potential access points: through the closed nation of Tir’na’nOg (the area most connected to the fey realms), through the mysterious mists of Brittany, and through an unstable portal on the recently risen British isle of Lyonesse, which is under heavy military security.

The team starts doing some looking into how to make their approach, with Jane telling them they will likely have to use the recently acquired Bianchi Orb to stabilize the crossing, whichever one they choose.

Runners
Christopher Toff
Senk Gethin
Sanquals Love
Toast
Fentin
Chem
Speed Tanaka

The team, having looked into some different fixers to talk to, begins digging into the “smaller fish” going after Saeder-Krupp’s biz (after dealing with the “sharks” of ARES and NeoNET, as Hans Brackhaus called them). They make contact with 2 of the fixers and arrange meets, feeling that this will give them a useful, cross-checkable list. The Blemmyae agrees to find some info for them, and tells them to bring an offering for his pack, as well as the money. Al-Tayyib agrees to a meet at the Midas Touch after reviewing their street rep and finding it acceptable. They decide not to meet with Baligh after hearing he’s a mercenary striver, who is trying to get in good with Brokerage X and worrying that that might complicate things for them.

In order to kill 2 birds with one stone, as it were, Toast and Love decide to split off from the team and track down Erik Dannover, the assassination target Toast has been given by the Moonlight Thorns, and bring him to the Blemmyae’s ghoul pack as their offering. They head to the Red Square Vory V Zakone bar near the port to look for info (and also maybe try to get some info on Chimera ops in the city). They decide on the spot to meet with the fixer Zakhar while there, and Love impresses him with his ability to pour down vodka (using his toxin extractor).

Zakhar tries to get them to buy a bunch of military surplus before getting down to their business, so they buy a replacement bike for Toast. Toast eavesdrops around the bar while Love continues the meeting, and finds a variety of pirates, smugglers, and gangsters discussing biz, including some mention of their team and the various bounties. He pulls his hood a bit further up. Love gets info on Dannover’s location from Zakhar, as well as a list of some small-time locals getting into SK’s biz. There is one larger AA corp on the list however: Global Sandstorm, who have been using Mudaween connections to extort businesses into switching over. Zakhar also tells them that due to regional politics, Chimera doesn’t operate in the region, and that he’s heard that they aren’t currently looking for the team any more until the bounty gets higher. Love and him bond some more, before they head to the port.

There, they spot Dannover transferring some smuggled child soldiers to his ship, and set an ambush. They lure 2 guards off and ko them quietly, but Dannover doesn’t fall for it and flees. Love cooks him completely with a massive fireball, and they flee in bike with one of the ko’ed guards. They barely manage to evade pursuit from the cops and their drones, and call in a favor from Zakhar to find a place to hide locally. Love finally receives an invitation to join Neutral Ground after they collect the bounty.

Meanwhile, the other team has left Speed at the hotel to keep hiding out for now, and headed to meet Al’Tayyib. The dwarf is all pro- right down to biz, high security at the meet, no nonsense. He gives the team another list of local corps, the main surprise of which is that it includes Brokerage X. Gethin and Toast quietly debate what to do about this fact, and decide to hold off for now on making a decision, until they get the 3rd list and see who’s on it. They link up with the other team, and fly out to the desert to meet the Blemmyae. They land a little bit out, and Fentin provides overwatch while they approach on foot. He spots a few camouflaged snipers on nearby dunes, but they seem set up for surveillance more than an ambush.

The team is approached by a ghoul guard as they walk up, and ushered into camp- a caravan ring with a cleared center area. The guard takes their captive and shoves him into the center, after which a bunch of feral ghouls come crawling out of the various wagons and tear him to shreds. As they finish, the Blemmyae makes his grand entrance, gently petting the as he walks amongst them. As promised, he lacks a head, and his oversized features are set into his naked torso. He carries a strange staff with a magical aura, and is wreathed in a camo cloak. He greets them in somewhat theatrical tones, and continues in this fashion, holding forth amidst his “pack.”

They make a deal for the info, and find that it basically confirms the other 2 lists. There are a few that don’t overlap (including BX), but they feel they got what Brackhaus wanted. They also get good intel from the Blemmyae on the Order of the Assassins and their ops, as well as a deal to work together in the future to use the Blemmyae’s Bedouin contacts in the south to get the team access to the Apep Consortium digsite at the lost city of Ubar. The Blemmyae warns that MCT has turned it into one of their famed “Zero Zones” since acquiring Apep, so they can use all the help they can get.

They arrange a drop with Awrah, and Gethin secretly edits the info to remove Brokerage X’s name from the lists. Gethin and Toast also give Mr. Bonds a heads-up that they did this, as well as a copy of the duplicate names on the lists, to give BX a headstart on recouping their regional investments. Bonds seems to think this is a good portion of the way to repairing their relationship. They don’t tell the rest of the team they’re doing this. Meanwhile, Speed barely survives an assassination attempt by the Hashishin at the hotel, when one disguised as a waiter cuts and poisons her at breakfast. She wakes up to find the man’s dead body nearby as hotel guards usher people out of the room and another waiter administers an antidote from a medkit.

The team all link up and rest at the hotel for a short period before Brackhaus calls them with the next gig: they are going to make an extreme example of one of the local A corps that has been stealing their biz: Native Land Industries is to be annihilated. They agree, and make a plan. Fentin hacks NLI’s corp office, which hasn’t upgraded their security to protocols matching their growing size while other’s surveil the site. Fentin get’s the CEO’s whole life: itinerary, home address, car GPS, etc, as well as discovering that his 2 bodyguards are secretly mages. They plan to leak this info after their attack to spread unease about who may be behind it. The others notice that the guards on site are very non-professional, and decide they can probably be scared or bribed off instead of killed. They examine the building’s and equipment on site as well, and head to IDEX to buy proper explosives to take it all down.

Fentin hacks the sec firms node to get blackmail info on all the guards on the nightshift, and then he, Toast, and Chem sneak into the CEO’s house while Speed waits nearby in a rental car. They trigger their ambush just as the CEO and guards enter, killing all 3 before any are able to respond. They sneak the CEO out to the car as Chem rigs a white phosphorous trap to set the site aflame shortly after they leave. They escape the neighborhood unnoticed, and get to the NLI site, where Gethin has concealed the bikes and explosives nearby. Love and Gethin sneak onsite while the other team drives over, and each takes one of the guard teams. Using the personal info Fentin got, they manage to scare them all into leaving with no combat, and the implied threat that if the cops happen to show up, the team will come looking for the men and their families.

They plant the charges around, destroy a bunch of on-site construction equipment, and leave the CEO’s body in his office to be discovered later. They also manage to open a small floor safe and find a hand-written journal. Fentin hacks the host again and copies and then erases all their records, as well as shutting down all their drones, and then uses C-squared to clean out the car and hacks and erases the GridGuide records, before sending it back to the rental spot. The team all escapes on bikes as they site explodes behind them. They rest up in the hotel, and pass all the info to Awrah again. The journal suggests that the CEO’s conversion to Islam was initially cynical but ended up being a very positive force in his life. SK only leaks the cynical bits, as well as the intel about the secret magic bodyguards, and some other damaging biz info. NLI is destroyed, never to be rebuilt.

Brackhaus isn’t quite done with them yet, however: he needs them to disrupt a meet between ARES and an Israeli diplomat, all while making it look like ARES’ fault (and making it impossible to trace back to SK, who want to keep the Isreali contract). The team agrees. After debating the merits of some various plans, and researching the diplomat in question (who likely works for Israeli military intelligence as well), they decide on a risky approach: they tip off the Hashishin about the meeting location, paying a fee upfront with more on the tail end for the killing of the diplomat. They use an official ARES corporate ID to call it in, procured from 2XL. They fail to mention the ARES presence and under-report the Israeli security detail to attempt to ensure that the hit fails.

They ambush and kill the drive of the speedboat that is to take the Israelis out to the ARES yacht, and replace him with Gethin, who does a good job of conning along as a very unprofessional driver, to get them in the mindset of disliking ARES a bit up front. Gethin also implies that ARES is double-dealing, and taking meetings with some of Israel’s regional enemies, sort of playing them off each other, just to plant an extra seed of doubt. Gethin then drops them off at the yacht, and plants a “fake” bomb that Chem made to look like a real bomb that had some small, common failure to detonate, and also plants a commlink with encrypted comms logs of communications and payments between the ARES ID and the Hashishin, intending for the Israelis to find it (if they survive).

The plan goes fairly well, with the team providing some suppressed long-distance cover fire when it might go unnoticed. They flee the scene after faking a call to the cops from the yacht’s transponder, to make ARES look even worse. They rest up, and then take another small job from Brackhaus: capturing, UNINJURED, 2 Lebanese militant/freedom fighters who have been hassling SK employees and jobsites in the region. SK wants to negotiate with them and see what the grievance is, but they won’t agree to a meet, so SK needs the team to make a quiet extraction.

They agree, and scout the targets: Tarif Yared and his LT, Nabil Saleeba. They hang at a dangerous fundamentalist coffee house called the “Jewel of Arabia”, so the team poses as gunrunners and arranges a meet with the 2. They lure them out back of the bar, and KO them both and stuff them in a waiting van (where they displayed the weapons as a tease). They race out of the area, with militants pursuing, but ditch them with fancy driving and an illusion. A short while later, a 2 million nuyen bounty appears on Neutral Ground, 1 mil for the team’s capture or death, and 1 mil for the militant’s safe return.

They get a call a few hours later from a very pleases Brackhaus, who says that Israel has reaffirmed their commitment to SK, and they are proceeding with negotiations with the militants. He has one final job for them before they leave Dubai, which he suggests they do soon- they are becoming a little too well known locally. For the final task, they are to gain access to DIVE (the Draconic Information Virtual Exchange) in order to purchase info from a member named The Impartial Observer who SK believes to be based in Dubai. The team uses their Jackpoint membership to make contact with another DIVE member/crossposter named Wyrm Watcher, and Fentin trades WW some of the secret dragon info the team has uncovered for a provisional DIVE membership.

Meanwhile, Chem and Toast dig around on the public portions of DIVE, and find out what kind of info they should offer IO to lure them in. They also find out that the source of the 1 million nuyen bounty against them is likely the middle eastern dragon Aden, who often antagonizes Lofwyr, and supports many radical movements in the region. The team decides to stay in the hotel until the job is done, and leave via the helipad on the roof, to not risk further exposure. Fentin contacts IO and offers the truth of The Black Lodge’s involvement in the beef between Lof and Hestaby in order to prove his seriousness, and also ends up paying out a half mil for all the info on Hestaby and Aden that DIVE has collected. IO sets a meet time for the next day, to give them time to collect and encrypt the info.

Gethin heavily diguises themselves the next day to go to the meet, and the team sticks to IO’s terms: 1 member only, no one following or observing, etc. While the rest of the team provides overwatch as best they can from the hotel, Gethin heads out, right past some assassins observing the front entrance, who don’t see through the disguise. However, they eventually notice a tiny drone trailing Gethin, high in the air. Fentin checks it out, and it turns out to be an SK drone. They call in to Awrah to confirm it’s on their side, and also to register their complaints at not being told, but she brushes them off, telling them that it’s their’s and no need to worry. The meet goes fine, with IO not noticing the drone, and Gethin gets the chip back to the hotel and makes the handoff to Awrah.

Brackhaus tells the team he is very pleased with their services, and pays them the remaining balance. He also says to contact him if they are looking for some corporate assistance on their next task, if it is what he thinks it is, in exchange for a small favor. The team contacts him, interested, and he offers them a steeply discounted TacNet to use against MCT’s Zero Zone around Ubar, the Atlantis of the Sands, which is where Jane wants them to go to seek the next cache. How Brackhaus knows this, who knows… However, they can’t pass up a good deal, and accept the TacNet. The one condition is that they will provide SK with all footage of their gaining access to and exiting the Zero Zone, however they do it, in order to prove that they are not infallible after all. The team agrees.

While digging around on DIVE, they also uncovered evidence that the shapeshifter assassin Canary has been posting their, and seems to have been using info to track and kill drakes and lesser dragons, and steal their hoards. As Canary is one of the assassins who killed Gethin’s parents, they are very interested in this info, and decide to offer it up to Simon Andrews on the condition that before they kill Canary, they get Gethin in a room with him to ask some questions. Andrews flits quite a bit but agrees- maybe Gethin will get another step closer to their final revenge! The team also notices a disturbing occurrence: it seems that IO was black-bagged after their meet, and although someone using the IO handle posted a thrilling account of their subsequent escape, the team doesn’t fully believe it to be the same person.

They call Brackhaus to verify, and he neither denies nor admits what happened, which they take to mean that SK snagged IO, and are now imitating them on the board, for some purpose. They register their displeasure at being kept in the dark about parts of the mission, putting them (and their rep’s) at risk, but Brackhaus basically gives them the brushoff of “well, you’re shadowrunners, what do you expect?” The team, a bit disgruntled and on the run from various hired killers, excitedly vacates Dubai, heading south.