Runners:
Ortega
Ro Tain
Aemon Burst
Christopher Toff
and Chessick Allens-Whitehill

The team gets another job offer through Artholomew Johnson, though this time he’s just acting as a fixer, rather than hiring direct. After some research, they discover that the Johnson they are to meet is a man named Charles Findlay, an ambitious low-level Ares exec. He wants them to access an old ordnance magazine buried deep underground, below the West End Underplex. After some further research, to determine who they might piss off by raiding the magazine, they are unable to determine who might have once operated it. Findley claims records of it’s existence were lost in Crash 2.0, and as far as they can tell that is the case.

Findley has a distraction planned, to pull any security away from their locale, and also provides cover ID’s, transport, dog drones to carry, and some explosives. He has the whole op carefully planned and seems to mostly just need warm (and reasonably competent) bodies. They gear up, and Ro steers their cargo boat through the busy Thames traffic to the Underplex docks. They bypass security no prob, and follow a mapsoft to the rough location of the magazine entrance. Finding a discount lingerie store now occupying the spot, and no obvious secret doors, Toff uses magical sight to find an open space behind a poured concrete closet wall. They call in a favor from the Exchange and get a monofil chainsaw delivered (via drone), and cut through.

They descend through a cavernous concrete maze, which seems to still be intact. They find the magazine they seek, and Chessick manages to power up the keypad, using a small generator he brought with for just such an occasion. Ortega hulks out and yanks the door open, squealing its protestation on rusty hinges. They enter a large round chamber, with 6 corridors leading to more vault-like doors down radial corridors. They start checking them, and realize they should have brought more flashlights, as it is pitch black down here. They manage to get into the first 3 without trouble, and find a bunch on unlabelled, and seemingly outdated heavy ordnance. Looks like explosives and chemical weapons made for warships, subs, tanks, aircraft and the like.

Trying the 4th door, they find it locked, and decide to use the explosives- the other chambers all having air-locked entrances, they assume any secondary explosions will be contained. Ro stays to trigger the bomb (with no wireless she requires LOS), and the rest of the team mostly closes the large main door. They blow the door, with no secondary problems, and enter. They find some puddles on the floor, which the CSI kits id’s as old, melted plastic biohazard suits. They also find a discarded flamethrower, which Ro says is an Ares model from the 2050/2060’s. Entering the 2nd door, they find what looks to be a dozen sets of metahuman remains, long decomposed, all of whom seem to have been shot in the back of the head, execution style, and then burned. Ro says their biohazard suits are also an Ares make from the same period. In the middle of the otherwise empty chamber sits the box they were told to retrieve.

Ortega and Ro get it up on the dog drones, who haul it back up to the store, where Chessick has looped the security footage to cover their entrance and escape. They head back into the mall, and make for the docks, after Chessick purloins some supplies to try to add some wear and tear to the otherwise very military-looking crate. They spot some Renraku Red Samurai checking everyone at the docks, and quickly backtrack. They decide to take a land exit into the Overplex, and Ro is distraught to discover that the “distraction” apparently involved a bloody shootout at the main train station on the far side of the Underplex, which culminated in the snatching of a Renraku exec.

They reach the overground after blagging their way past some less severe guards, and find an abandoned building to hole up in. They call Findley, and open the case to verify the artifact so he can send someone to collect. He quickly hangs up after seeing what’s inside, and tells them that they are in deep trouble, as in addition to the artifact the crate contains 4 canisters of FAB. They panic a bit, but exmaine the canisters, and see that one seems to have been pierced by a bullet at some point, though it long ago leaked out. So none are actively dispensing at least, though Chessick determines that they are set to vent if the artifact is moved from the crate. The object is itself a large stone Eater Island style head laced with orichalcum.

Ortega calls in a favor from his new friends in Tamanous and finds a nearby crematorium and medical cleaning facility that is willing to do some off books burning for cash. Aemon, Ro and Toff all confer and agree that they should be able to contain and destroy the FAB with an extreme application of fire, so they head out. They get shaken down by a large mob of local gangers, led by a changeling named Webfoot, who seem to have spotted them coming in and decided they were worth a poke. They bribe their way out without a fight, and reach the crematory. They bribe the whimsical French technician on hand, Reinhard Murtas to leave them alone for an hour, and he takes off.

They get ready, and put their plan in motion: Ortega quickly snatches the head out, then Toff blasts the case with flamethrower, then Chessick and Aemon slam the grate shut while Ro kicks the incinerator into gear. It goes off just fine, and after Toff confirms that the FAB was destroyed, they call Findley again, who sends a truck around to pick it up and pay them. He thanks them for their service, and the word on the street is that his acquisition has helped him rise a bit in Ares’ ranks. Toff didn’t like the look of either the FAB or the artifact though- both had a nasty astral vibe about them. Overall, the team is happy to be done with it.

Art calls again, with another offer of work, and tells them this one is likely to get hot: a contested extraction!

Runners:
Ortega
Ro Tain
Aemon Burst
Christopher Toff
and Chessick Allens-Whitehill

Butch, when contacted by Toff, is excited about the research possibilities of Ortega’s dual HMHVV and CFD infection. She agrees to cover the costs of a “managed” infection with HMHVV, in a secure clinic, hopefully driving the CFD out or at least into hiding. Ort heads in to the friendly clinic (local blacksite doctors, as London is an outbreak site, are not unfamiliar with CFD), and they remove his bioware, in preperation for the inevitable essence loss from the transition. They manage to save all his cyber, but tell him he will have to be on intense immuno-suppressants for the remainder of his life to keep it working. Butch agrees to cover the cost of these for now, so long as Ort regularly reports in with data.

A week later, after some harrowing fevers, losing all his hair, an extending of the jaw, a hardening of the skin, and the sharpening and lengthening of his teeth and claws, he emerges as a functional ghoul. The sun now hurts him, and he is not sure at what point in the week he stopped eating “normal” food and was weaned onto flesh, but he now has a mighty hunger for it. The rest of the team is a bit disturbed by all of this, especially as he has become fully cyberpsychotic at this point as well. They are unsure they could prevent him from eating them if he really wanted to. Ro is off doing some work for Renraku Computer Systems, to help make up for them losing the rail contract.

They also hear that the Helling estate has been gutted by a major fire, and that James Helling, and many members of his staff and family are believed to have perished. Chessick does some digging, and eventually gets ahold of Baxton Gresh, who is in a safehouse on his way to Asamando, with the other sentient ghouls from the estate (or at least the ones who made it out). He says that late the day of the vote, a hit squad came out, and that they only barely made it out. It seems like the fire was a cover-up after the fact, probably to keep news of the infected aristocrat from leaking out. Gresh rails against the hypocrist, and Chessick eats it up, and writes up a fittingly acidic story, which he plans to publish through the All-Seeing Eye.

Luckily, they get another job offer from Artholomew Johnson to distract them. He has them meet him at Wembley Stadium, and tells them he needs them to retrieve a courier of his who was ambushed and has gone to ground. They agree, and notice a woman eyeing Chessick and Aemon. Chessick, used to the attention, pays her no mind as she seems a bit tipsy. Aemon, a desperate 19-year old, flirts pretty hard and givers her his number. They head out.

They first check the courier, Jon Jackie Jones’, safehouse. It’s been tossed and there signs of forced entry but no sings of murder or assault. They check some favorite haunts of his, and find some odd scenes of violence: he is apparently well known in all the places, often using different nicknames, but when he showed up today, he was acting strange. In one instance, he walked in and gunned down 6 corp drones in a faux-dangerous bar, traumatizing the other patrons. Then he made his way to a street sam hangout where he used to hire muscle, and talking like a medieval knight, assaulted some patrons with a club. Then he went to a fancy bar, but when approached by a friendly employee, responded in Japanese, kneed him, and ran off.

While checking the bars, they are approached by a man calling himself Nigel Patterson who offers to buy Jones’ from them at a lower rate than Johnson, but hints that he can get them restricted gear through government contacts as well. He tells them that Jones is couriering a nanotech package that could spell doom for London and perhaps the human race, if it is not contained within 5 hours. He seems very desperate, but they do some digging, and Aemon hears from Fianchetto that Patterson is a disgraced MI-5 officer who got drummed out and has been looking for a big score to work his way back in. They tell him no, and he says that this isn’t the last they’ve seem of him!

Based on info in the dossier they have on the courier, and on his apparent sim-addicition and experimental hyper-real simrig, they think he may have been infected with CFD or something similar, causing him to manifest different sim personalities. They call Sem-par, who confirms that the 3 behaviors and styles of dress described fit three popular sim roles. They are approached at the final bar by a woman who they had previously seen healing patrons in the sam bar. She says she is an old friend of Jones’, and introduces herself as Agatha Hawthorne. She says that she has checked them out and that she thinks they are the best chance of brining Jones in alive and well. She offers to help, but says she needs a few hours to prepare.

While dining in her place, The Rose and Thistle, Aemon gets a call from the woman from the stadium, who asks him to meet her outside. Expecting a hookup, he is surprised to find her all business, and also wanting to buy Jones out from under Johnson. However, she also offers significantly more money than either of the other parties. She also confirms Nigel’s story, with significantly more detail. Aemon gets ahold of Fianchetto again, and he speculates that this may be Monica St. Cloud, a mysterious assets retrieval specialist that he’s run across on occasion. She’s very non-specifically corporate, and no-one seems to know who she actually works for. However, she seems to like to hire locals to do the actual heavy lifting, and is thought to stick by her word, though she also likes to leave a tidy scene with no loose ends. They also decline her offer, choosing to stay pro, but worrying that she may come back at them later. They assume she is working for whatever corp the nano was stolen from originally, but who knows.

Hawthorne reappears, seemingly in some sort of semi-lucid trance, and leads them a few blocks away to a small building where she has a ritual circle and a variety of reagents. She has them each stand at the points of a pentagram, with her cat familiar at the 5th. The cat doesn’t much like Ort. Hawthornes re-emerges, skin covered in mystical runes, and dances about the center of the circle, using some blood from a cue ball from the sam bar to try to locate Jones. As the ritual concludes, she goes rigid, collapses to the floor, and tells the team that they are headed to Lambeth: Jones is at a location in the Squeeze. The team calls up Ro, feeling they could use another gun, but they’ll have to be quick about gearing up, and they only have a few short hours until the timeline that Monica and Nigel gave them is up….

Ro calls in some Renraku favors, and gets the team some SMG’s and a combat axe, then they head. Hawthorne gives them a contact in the Squeeze, a dwarf cabbie named Hobbes. They bribe their way in, meet up with him. He gives them the lowdown, while driving them to the school where Jones appears to unconscious and surrounded by suspicious auras. The area is the turf of the NNW, a “protection” gang. The team exits the cab a few blocks away, to close on foot, and plan to send Aemon and Chessick up to negotiate if possible.

Toff astrally and magically scouts, and sees that Jones is tied to a chair, looking like he was beat unconscious. There are about 2 dozen gang members on the property, in the school or patrolling around with flashlights and hunting rifles. Chessick makes his approach, and they manage to buy Jones off of the very leery gangers for a tidy sum. The gangers seem to think he’s a a spy, and Chessick and Aemon have to think fast to get them to hand him over. They exit the lot, when a Roadmaster comes racing up. 8 goons jump out, as the NNW members holler about a trap and fall back into cover. The team comes under fire, further confusing the NNW, and return fire in turn. Ro, examining the APC, notices it looks a bit beat-up, and has some painted over military stencils, and speculates this is Nigel’s “revenge.”

Aemon is able to dodge an impressive number of shots, and brings down the APC turret as well as 2 goons, as Ortega charges up from the other side with Ro providing suppressive fire. However, a chopper suddenly clears the adjacent roofs and opens fire on Ro and Ortega. 4 military types on ziplines descend, cutting down a few more APC goons, as well as ko-ing Aemon. Chessick tries to protect Jones, who keeps switching personalities, while also trying to hack the chopper. With some spirit and spell harassment from Toff, they force the chopper to pull back out of LOS, as the APC also flees with the remaining discouraged goons aboard.

The team fights a hard battle, with Toff painfully slowly making his way near enough to help. The new threat (perhaps St. Cloud’s?) destroys Toff’s spirit, but won’t target Chessick (too close to Jones!). They drop Ortega, finally, and heavily injure Ro, before Toff is able to scatter them with a massive stunball. They fall back, and the team races back to Hobbes’ cab, wanting to clear the scene before any reinforcements arrive. They ditch their weapons to get through the checkpoint, paying a steep bribe, and calling Art for a pickup. He sends a medi-limo for Jones, and tells them “good job.” They heal up as much as they can, though Toff further wounds Ortega in the attempt, unused to his new ghoul anatomy, and sends him to the hospital.

While there, Ro and Aemon decide to implant a cranial bomb, set to run silent, with a short nonsense phrase trigger that only they know. Just in case he gets out of control… Butch covers the surgical costs, hoping this will help ensure their continued data reportage. Toff offers the destroyed spirit some reagents as an apology, not wanting to get a bad rep. Everyone else heals up in a few days, and gets paid, with promises of future jobs also in the works. Art also tells them that the stolen nano wasn’t actually a threat, just new tech. They believe him, but then they believed the others before too.

Ortega, needing to eat and unsure how to proceed, calls up the Exchange and asks for a hookup. They text him an address and a time, but he is unable to find it out a map. Chessick figures out it’s a simple cipher, and the meet (and the meat ha) should be at an old graveyard, buried off a disused section of the tube system. He codes a map, and Ortega descends into the less savory corners of the Underground. He reaches the graveyard, after successfully spooking anyone who attempted to approach. He can hear what sounds like a river running nearby, and know the place must be old by the large amount of Catholic grave markers present.

A cloaked, hooded figure emerges from the murk and greets him with “you’re late.” Ortega apologizes, and explains his needs (25 lbs of metahuman meat per week, due to his huge size), and the figure offers an absurd rate. Ortega tries to counter, and though socially inept, the figure agrees to a lower amount. He gives Ortega a small package as a “token” and says the first week’s delivery can arrive that very night if he provides an address. He gives them Chessick’s flat number, where the team is laying low, and rips open the package, finding a human hand and a blood-red commlink within. He devours the flesh from the hand, and returns to the flat.

A large suitcase is delivered a few hours later, waking everyone up in the middle of the night, and Chessick warns Ortega that this is absolutely not acceptable to do again. Ortega chows down on the limb sections inside, rationalizing that they couldn’t possibly be children, right? He checks the commlink after it chirps, and it welcomes him to Tamanous’ home delivery network. Chessick knocks together a piece for the All-Seeing Eye about the situation in the Squeeze, using some quotes from people he talked to there. They hear from Art that he has another job, and get ready to roll.

Team 2:
Achilles Serifim
Caria Alten
Servaas Nikolic
Shri Moreau
introducing Belle Pepper and Munty

The team gets a job from ‘Drekbomb’, while he is recuperating in the hospital. He tells them to go to hacker bar, and wait to be approached- there’s some paranoid types looking for a capable team, but they want to check them out before meeting. They agree, and head to The Armadillo in Puyallup. They wander a bit and order some drinks, until Shri becomes sure that a group in the corner is watching them. They approach, and the leader introduces himself as Speed Hack. He says they want the team to break some SINless technomancers out of a Knight Errant facility. They agree, though Servaas is a bit reluctant, due to his dislike of fugitives.

The get the rundown of the plan, and head out to get started. They find out that KE uniforms are laundered in minimally secure facility off the main training campus in Renton, and head there. Shri and Caria distract some guards while Belle and Achilles cut through a fence (Belle repeatedly shocking herself), and crack the lock on the back door. They sneak in, and Belle manages to convinced Achilles not to kill everyone inside. They steal some uniforms, and exfiltrate with no trouble. Shri, at Seducer’s command, makes plans to party with the 2 trainee guards later.

They buy a beater car, and some spare tires to fit the prison transport van, and set up an ambush along it’s route under an overpass. Achilles slices through the front wheel as it rolls past, and the van skids to a stop. Realizing they didn’t think through a non-lethal approach, they kill the guards inside, including 1 who surrenders. They ko the prisoners with a stun baton, and change into their uniforms, while Belle swaps the wheel, and Shri redirects traffic and inquiries. They dump the bodies in the car, and Caria and Achilles take it to an abandoned lot in the Redmond Barrens and torch it.

The rest of the team covers up the bloodstains and damage to the van interior as best as possible, throws out the spare tire, and bluffs call-in about their late arrival, due to tire trouble. They scam their way into the prison using the ID’s and passes provided by Speed Hack, and pick up the “work detail.” However, another guard insists on coming along as they have 6 prisoners and only 3 guards. They manage to convince them not to make them swap vans, against regulation as they are not supposed to take it out with the spare on. They kill the new guard as well, drop off the freed prisoners, get paid, and torch the van also. Job well done?

Pia Oliversson contacts Shri and Caria, and tells them that she has another job for them. She’s expecting low to no combat, so she requests they leave the pyschos out on this one. She also introduces them to Munty, a 50-some year old human woman who has a very non-memorable face. Pia tells them that Munty is a skilled thief and infiltrator and will be joining them on this job, to see how they work together. They get the number for Mr. Johnson, and head to the meet:a boarded tenement in Puyallup. They decide to sneak in to impress the Johnson, with some success, though Caria is embarrassed at failing to scale the brick walls.

Inside, they find the dwarf man they are supposed to meet, who is wearing a fancy suit that has seen better days. He tells them that he wants to use them to subtly sway the Consensus, Horizon’s employee-voting decision-making system. He claims that he wants to return Horizon to a place closer to their founding ideals, as he feels they have drifted onto too aggressive of a path. From what they can tell, he’s being honest (and offering good money), though he won’t give any personal details. They do suss out that he is either a former or current employee however. They take the job.

Part 1: they are to infiltrate Horizon Seattle, their downtown office tower, and get themselves added to a list of “new employees” attending an orientation the next day. Caria provides astral overwatch and distracts the receptionists, while Shri distracts the 2 security guards while Munty passes by using a pass she lifted off an exiting employee. Munty, dressed as a janitor, makes her way to the HR department, finds the computer room, lifts another pass, and sneaks in. Having used demara to temporarily learn computers, she adds their names to the orientation list (it won’t hold up under scrutiny but should get them in the door), and sneaks back out, helping a frantic employee find their “missing” pass on the way.

They return the next day (Shri having slept with one of the guards at Seducer’s suggestion), and head in. After watching an hours worth of pro-Horizon propaganda, they can tell what the Johnson is talking about: the more recent trids and talking points are decidedly more aggressive, seemingly due to Horizon’s loss of face in the recent war between Aztlan and Amazonia. They all follow the appropriate ARO line to the department they are “going to work for”, and mingle and chat with some veteran employees (who are very gung-ho on Horizon but happy to answer questions) as well as the other new hires.

Every 5 to 15 minutes, they get different ethical dilemma questions, seemingly polling from the Consensus, and they try to answer them as the Johnson wanted- in a more compassionate/forgiving way. Unfortunately, unable to communicate and not knowing the questions ahead of time, they are occasionally working at cross purposes. They all manage to bluff their way through the orientation, however, and make their exits with various excuses (or just slip off in Munty’s case). The Johnson tells them that although they had some effect, it was not as great as he had hoped, so they really need to nail the next 2 jobs.

They fly to LA on the Johnson’s dime, and deciding to bring only legal gear, get a contact for the local Ancients chapter from Belial. They land, and call up Alex Foxfire to get the necessary gear, as well as a car and a safehouse. They surveil the next target: Horizon’s spaceflight subsid, Transglobal. The head of the division, Maggie Snowden, is giving a speech about their space program in a few days, and the Johnson wants to insert some specific inspiring language into it, to make sure that Horizon employees watching the speech (of which there should be quite a few) will be properly swayed. Shri finds a lonely middle-aged employee, and takes her out for drinks, and plies her for info about the speechwriter(s). The project lead is a woman in her 40’s, so they decide to kidnap and question her, and then have Munty infiltrate the facility using her biometrics in order to steal the speech. The Johnson gives them the name of a local screenwriter, Ralston Beauregard, who can do a quick edit if they can get it to him.

They snatch the woman leaving a yoga class, and throw a mage/faraday hood over her head after tasing her to prevent her communicating. They get her back to the safehouse with no trouble, and ziptie her to a chair. Caria wakes her up and they start questioning her. Caria tries to intimidate her by threatening her cats, but feels Bear’s strong disapproval, and backs down. However, she’s still quite scared, so the team manages to get the info they need. They line the trunk of the car with metal to make an impromptu faraday cage, knock the writer out, and drive back downtown. Munty copies her prints and retinas real quick, and then exits the trunk and rushes into the building, to use the biometrics before they revert.

Shri provides physical overwatch on the car, while Caira goes on an astral jaunt to keep an eye on Munty inside. Munty gets past security, altough just barely, and uses the writer’s description to find her office. She imitates the writer’s voice to get in, and to use the computer. She gets a copy of the speech, and leaves the office again, to go find a wireless-accessible spot, becoming somewhat lost in the process. However, she sends the speech out, and Shri passes it on to Ralston, who says it’ll be a few hours. Caria helps Munty hide in a janitorial supplies closet during the wait. Ralston sends the edit back, and Munty wanders around again until she finds her way back to a familiar area, and puts the speech back on the computer. She also forwards it to Maggie Snowden for final approval, so that no-one else will tweak it after all this hard work.

They head back to the safehouse and wait out the night. Shri calls in sick, posing as the writer, the next day, and they get a call from the Johnson saying that the speech was a success. They drop the writer off in a public part in a nice part of town, still unconscious, figuring that Doc Wagon or Horizon will start getting a biomonitor signal and come get her before long. The Johnson tells them the next job is to influence at least 10 votes for the upcoming Academy Awards, in order to ensure a win for the Pathfinder Media trid that’s up for best picture. It’s, overall, a tale of pacifism and overcoming differences through tolerance and understanding, so a win for the Horizon subsid would help sway the Consensus further in the correct direction.

They’re already in LA, so they get to work. Relying on a combination of blackmail, bribery, seduction, appeals to better natures, and the like, they manage to sway the requisite number of voters over the next few days. Shri gains a few more notches in her belt, for Seducer’s approval. Their chosen picture wins, and the Johnson, happy with their work, thanks them and pays up. They head back to Seattle.

Runners:
Ortega
Ro Tain
Aemon Burst
Introducing: Christopher Toff and Chessick Allens-Whitehill

Arriving in London, they head straight to the meet, it being a last minute thing. Someone named “A Johnson” has requested their presence, and even though its a basement bar in a back alley, they handily navigate there via the omnipresent ARO’s that have been bombarding them since halfway across the Channel.

They meet a man who identifies himself as Artholomew Johnson, which they all think is just a bit too cute to be real, but thats how it is. He lays out the job: he needs to know which way a tight vote on a transit tunnel is going to go, before the vote happens. He has secured them invites to a pol-function where many of the relevant figures will be, and gives them some names to look into in specific. He doesn’t seem to have an agenda as to swinging it one way or the other, just wants to make money by knowing which it will go. They fumble the negotiation a bit, and he brings down his offer slightly after threatening to walk. They talk him back around, and he gives them all the needed info and invites.

They find a hotel that seems decent, though a bit far from the city center. Toff buys a decent suit on Saville Row, so that he can blend in, and assures the team that his magical abilities will make him a useful component of this job. They find a message waiting for them at the hotel desk when they check in, from a woman id’ing herself as Rhiannon Glendower. She says that she knows who they are working for, and will offer assistance if they help ensure the vote goes her way. She says an elven woman named Elwes will be in attendance at the function tomorrow, and that they should make contact on arrival.

They do some research on all 3 people, and find that Johnson is an info-broker, who seems to have illicitly made some money in New York in a past life, before fleeing just ahead of the SEC and setting up here. So that all checks out. Elwes seems to be Glendower’s main London operative, Glendower herself apparently residing primarily in Wales. Glendower checks out too: she is concerned with urban renewal, and is one of the sponsors of the original transit plan, which would connect the Lambeth Containment Zone (aka the Squeeze) to the Underplex, and the rest of city transit, finally giving the cordoned-off residents some economic opportunities. However, Renraku has attempted to repurpose the funds to connect their London arcology to the Underplex, increasing their market share there, and driving up the value of their corporate scrip.

This is a bit of a dilemma: Ro definitely wants Renraku to get what they want. But Toff feels that the LCZ strongly resembles the Ork Underground, and wants to give those people a chance. Ortega and Aemon are both more on the side of the Squeeze than the Corp, but they decide to, for now, see which way the vote is going before making any hard plans. They also meet up with a tabloid reporter named Chessick Allens-Whitehill, who says he has been sent by Art to make sure they can handle the social aspects of the evening ahead, as he apparently feels they were a bit lacking in graces. After discussing the plan further, Ro agrees not to prevent the team from swinging the vote to benefit the Squeeze, so long as she doesn’t have to act directly against Renraku, as she really dislikes metahuman experimentation.

They stock up on needed gear (RFID mics, a puzzler gun for Aemon, stylish clothes as needed), and Ro and Chessick brief the team on appropriate etiquette and Japanacorp styles. They head to the Lobbyist’s Ball, with Ortega acting as driver/security, and the rest posing as trade delegates. They mingle, and all manage to find some people aligned with their interests to tally votes from. Aemon corners the rural contingent, Toff looks into the religious vote, Ro closes in on the other trade delegates and Japanacorp employees, Ortega makes small talk with the other security onsite, and Chessick finds Elwes to compate notes. After spying on the speaker of parliament and his aide, as well as much convo, they end up with a worrying tally: 33% against, 66% for the Renraku plan. There is only 1 vote unaccounted for: James Helling.

They leave, and do some digging. Apparently Helling has received some sort of unspecified threats, and has been holed up on the family estate, with increased security, for the last few weeks. He has been voting from home during this time, but doesn’t seem to have deviated much from his regular stances on things. However, Chessick digs through the All-Seeing Eye back catalog and finds a grainy vid that looks to be Helling entering a dingy back alley establishment of some sort with 2 guards, and stumbling out 4 minutes later with what looks like a fresh bite mark under his arm. He has been involved in a long-running series of drink/drug/gambling/prostitution scandals in the press, and this seemed initially to be another one, though the team begins to wonder what exactly bit him… They also find rumors of some sort of red-haired trickster harassing people all around the British Isles, and worry that it may be Dark Harlequin.

They decide they better go to his estate and at least find out which way he’ll vote (and maybe make sure he goes their way). After doing some surveillance, they decide to try to spoof their way past the gate, and Chessick hacks his way into the system and adds their car and ID’s to the “approved” list without getting spotted. They enter, and the guards ignore them- they seem focussed solely outwards. Toff does some astral recon, and finds a powerful mana barrier protecting something underground, but the mansion otherwise unpopulated aside from a lone butcher in the kitchen, chopping raw meat. There is a pig outside, but after describing the meat to the rest of the team, they think it may be human.

Chessick blags his way in, posing as a “cleaner”, called in by the family to take care of a “mess.” The butcher is confused but convinced, and allows them into the wine cellar, where a shelf slides aside to reveal a vault door. It opens, and they enter, passing through the mana barrier, which deactivates their spells and foci. The door slams shut behind them, closing them in the pitchdark basement. They explore, and find a relatively clean and empty underground facility- some sort of bomb shelter perhaps? There seem to be more levels below, but they stumble upon a pack of feral ghouls and get distracted.

They manage to fight off the ghouls with their limited weapons, helped by the fact that Ortega rushes in to the mob, and they seem fixated on the snack. After slaying the final ghoul of the bunch, an astral form approached Toff and tells him to leave this place if he values his life. Sensing that the team is in a precarious position, but must pose a threat for this offer to be made, Toff negotiates. They arrange for Helling to vote against Renraku in exchange for promising not to tell what they have seen here until the residents can relocate somewhere safer. They also pass along contact info for Nomusa Iblis, as Asamando seems like a good bet as to where to go. Chessick gets the man, who identifies himself as the family doctor, Baxton Gresh, to agree that they will also give The All-Seeing Eye an exclusive interview once they’ve reached safety.

Gresh says that he must get the deal approved, and flies off. Toff comes back to the team, and they wait for a few tense minutes, until the vault door swings open again, apparently signaling agreement. They exit, and pass the butcher on the way down, carrying a large bin full of raw meat. He doesn’t meet their eyes. They leave the mansion without further trouble, and pass along the info to Art and Glendower. They both say that payment will be arranged on the morrow, assuming the info is good. The next day, they hear that the vote has failed by 1, a major public blow to Renraku, whose PR machine is already in overdrive trying to spin it to look better for them. Ro feels conflicted, but they all get paid as promised, and both Art and Glendower say they will contact the team with future offers, as their work proved satisfactory.

Runners:
Thankyou aka Eckhard Roberts
Ortega
Ro Tain
Aemon Burst
Tonie Dick

The team, hiding on floor 222, strips off all their gear and weapons while waiting for Ea Skavgaard to signal them for extraction. It is a nervy day and a half, trying to control their nerves and grumbling stomachs while they hear what sounds like military activity outside their false room. However, she does eventually make contact, and they are escorted back to the main elevator by her and 4 well-armed and armored guards. Tonie, fearing a trap, scans her thoughts and finds her merely prepared for the possibility of trouble, and especially concerned about infection.

She tells them of some changes inside: apparently Death To All wiped out the Halloweeners in revenge, so the teams false flag op worked. Skavgaard then hired DTA to assault Wings of Predation, but warned WoP they were coming, resulting in an ongoing bloodbath. She has hopes that this will clear up at least one of the major spirit problems, as she still has to deal with all the dangerous tech above. The team is impressed by her canny manipulation of factions.

She debriefs them, and having determined that they lived up to their end of the bargain successfully, she puts them in civilian contractor jumpsuits, and sends them down to B1, where they are escorted out to the street by 2 more guards. They are free! They first head to Butch, to heal up and try to deal with all those nanites. She psych-evals, scans, and assenses all of the team members, with help from some techs, some Jackpoint members present astrally, and a dwarf mage from the Ork Underground named Toff. Aemon and Tonie check out as totally clean. Ro only has some dead nanites in her system, and is not infected, though she has been having dreams of Deus and seems to have become addicted to his nano-toxin.

Ortega and TY are not as lucky: although they both pass the psych eval (ruling out full infection in Butch’s mind), they both have active nanites in their systems. Daedelus manages to game the ensuing nanite flush to maintain a strong presence in TY without anyone noticing, and the flush also seems to help abate Ortega’s problems. However, Butch tells them that this will likely be an ongoing expense, as she does not believe it is possibly to fully cure with a flush based on her experiments. She details the disease, which she has taken to calling Cognitive Fragmentation Disorder, and fills the team in on what’s happened while they’ve been inside.

She lists some possible origins, signs of infection, outbreak sites, and the 5 different “types” of infected she has observed (or inferred). These match up with the different infected they encountered inside, and they provide her with a lot of useful data, as well as the medical data promised. She also tells them that Mars has been especially hardhit, as some types of the infection often likes to target remote/enclosed areas where it can operate and expand free of oversight. Also, as much nano was used in terraforming and construction, there have been major infrastructure failures, including upper city plate collapses in places. This has led to a mass exodus from Mars fro those who can afford it, and who can clear whatever checks the Corporate Court has placed on space travel. There has been a lot of assassination and extraction jobs recently, also, as corps are interested both in the infected and people working on cures.

They thank Butch, and she suggests Toff accompany them for awhile to make sure Ort and TY stay clear of trouble. They agree, and Tonie and TY head out to start selling data while the others recuperate further. Daedelus warns TY to avoid Ro, as she has become dangerously suspicious. They make contact with an Evo employee to sell the medical data to (having already passed it on to Butch) and meet up with an “assets manager” named Ayishah Nagi. She is very interested in the data, and after skimming it and receiving “proof of deletion” on their part, she pays a tidy sum, and tells them to call her again if they have anything else good.

They move on, and call up Lone Star Security Services. Their contact, Rahel Juric, is impressed by the datafile and accompanying vid that TY edited together, and says she thinks it is promising for LS to get the policing contract, based on the madness inside. They decide not to mention the infected ex-LS officer running the copland in there, as Butch said he seemed like the least problematic type (though still perhaps a longterm threat). This leaves them a little potential leverage, though they already told Skavgaard.

They next contact Simon Andrews, with Aemon taking the lead. They chat it up and agree to link up and party in Gemany soon, as Andrews is on a break from Bug City for a week. They sell him the drone weapons data, although he is disappointed that the drone specs themselves are not on offer. He tells Aemon that Saeder-Krupp can certainly afford to pay, so he’d appreciate first look in the future, if they come across anything else worthy. He also says he might have some work soon.

TY leaves a message for Ehran the Scribe to offer the AI and technomancer data, and Ehran shortly thereafter manifests next to him to negotiate. However, as no-one else is present, and Daedelus controls TY’s sensory software and hardware, it is unclear if this is actually happening or not. TY goes along with it regardless. He sells the data for a massive sum, but proof of erasure is again required. The team complies, though it is slightly suspicious that Tobias Cheney is the one who shows up to do the work.

They sell the geomancy data to Wuxing, through a man named Cristof Mulberry, whom TY recalls as a corp operative from Mars, though he didn’t know his affiliation at the time. TY also sends the data on the geomancy use of the modular dwelling spaces inside the ACHE to Jane, though it is once again unclear if it is truly her or merely Daedelus manipulating TY. TY has noticed that there has been a massive upload from his comm since they emerged, which Daedelus says is just communication and updates as normal. He says he also sent SYD home with an “update package” all her own.

Ro calls up Hiro Katakura, her handler, and passes along the data on the ACHE’s structural integrity and systems functionality and such. She also sells the drone data. She pays some out of pocket to pay the team so that she can pass some of this data to Katakura for “free” to ingratiate herself. He says that it is a big step towards getting back in Renraku’s good graces after the “Chicago incident.” She silently plots his eventual demise, but goes along with it, still wanting to work her way up in the corp.

Lastly, they decide to deal with whole witness protection clusterfuck. After much debate, they get in touch with Tibor Dobos, give him the message from inside, and provide footage of them killing Sokoloff. He tells them that he can only offer partial payment on the job, as they didn’t accept it upfront and he had to hire others also (to make sure). However, he appreciates that they came around to his way of seeing things. They don’t tell him about the video they made, detailing Sokoloff’s evidence before they killed him. Tonie consults with Imaginary Annie Goldsmith, and finds that although good lawyer would likely get it excluded from trial, the video would still be fairly useful from an investigative standpoint.

With that info and the video in hand, Aemon calls up Dana Oaks and contritely explains the situation. He doesn’t tell her that they took money for killing him, but otherwise explains that they fucked up and all they have is the vid. She takes it, but is super pissed, and tells them that unless they find some data of a quality to replace what she lost here, they better all lose her number. They seem to have just used their “get out of jail free” cards…. To sweeten the pot, Aemon gives her Dobos’ name and info, as she is very insistent once he incautiously lets slip that someone else was hiring gunhands to kill Sokoloff. Feeling that Dobos might be a good friend to have, Tonie tips him that the cops may be onto him (heard it from a friend ya know!), and Dobos thanks him for the warning, having only just cleared out ahead of the Black Knights.

Feeling that Seattle might be a dangerous spot for them for a while, they head off to Hamburg, all taking separate routes to avoid tracking, and able to leave behind their illicit gear in the Underground safehouse. They are surprised that TY doesn’t show up, and get a message from him that he has left for Chicago instead, to research Gilgamesh Initiative leads there and try to find April O’Mally, who has supposedly turned up there. Ro is happy to see him go, though they are still pretty worried about how much he knows (and that he has access to all their safehouses…). Toff proves to be a fun clubber, alongside Aemon, and even Ortega has a few drinks and loosens up a little, having survived his personal “Inferno.” They spend some money, upgrade some implants, train some skills, and mostly just chill for a few days. They get a call about some work in London, and ride trains over, figuring they’ll gear up as needed on arrival, as they only know continental smugglers and aren’t familiar with chunnel security.

Runners:
Thankyou aka Eckhard Roberts
Ortega
Ro Tain
Aemon Burst
Tonie Dick

The team finish their raid on the Komun’Go floors of the ACHE, successfully killing the 2 leaders and around 20 of their followers, who don’t seem prepared to deal with the level of firepower the team has brought to bear. Many more of them are stunned by Ro’s shock glove, though not as many as are wounded or killed by Ortega’s axe. They make sure the leaders will stay down, and return to the Kenran-Kai, where they link up with Tonie Dick, who has finally arrived after kicking around Europe for a while on the Grand Tour. With their show of good faith completed, they are free to skip work duties on the Yak floors and continue to do other jobs throughout the arcology. TY, feeling lonely, asks Daedelus if he can get calls out at all, and when informed that he can’t, TY tells Daedelus that he is upset at being unable to contact Jane. Daedalus asks for access to TY’s call logs, and constructs a construct of Jane that can communicate with TY. Daedalus uses this boost TY’s self-esteem, and keep him functional, though this also means that TY’s descent into cyberpsychosis has advanced significantly. They even have some “3-way” convo’s, as well as chatting with the SYD program, which Daedelus has upgraded slightly.

They also make contact with a Gianelli Family mafia dwarf smuggler, Elvira Palladino, who they hire to help them travel throughout the ACHE. In exchange, they negotiate with Gaspar Blaise, the underboss, to do some work for the mafia. They are to undertake 2 tasks: first, find out what is going on with the Wings of Predation, as they supposedly have mafia ties but have been refusing contact, and never sent back the envoy that Blaise sent up. Second, put an end to the “flesh tax” enacted by the 162’s ghouls and cannibal Disassemblers, as it fucks up the mafia’s ability to safely move people around, one of their main businesses inside.

They start off by securing some gear for TD while they heal up from the raid on the Seoulpa, he was only able to smuggle in some novacoke. They decide to look into the witness protection job first, and head up to the Vory floors, once again forced to bribe the Octagon triad with a ritual link. The Vory run bars, drug dens, prostitution, fighting pits, and gambling clubs, and are popular with the enlisted personnel working in the ACHE for these services. They also serve any other residents who can pay, and TD arranges to trade some drugs for info with a bartender. They get a contact, the elven madame Teresa Mihalyov, who will put them in touch with Yefrem Sokoloff, the witness they are supposed to extract for Dana Oaks. They return with the drugs, and bribe Mihalyov, who tells them where he is, but also says that some others just came through also looking for him and that she couldn’t stop them.

They race back to the small safe room, where they find 2 shedim ripping down the door, and manage to kill them before they get to Sokoloff. The shedim look ex-military, and seem to have come from the Death To All gang, who control the top block of civilian floors in the ACHE, and have a rep as being ultra-dangerous to cross. They bring Sokoloff back to the Yak area, and arrange to have him protected in exchange for securing an additional ticket out, whenever they figure out how to get him out. It seems Juro Maki is an ambitious sort, and doesn’t plan to remain exiled in here for his whole career. They decide to next deliver the mysterious package for the N’Drangheta.

They head up to the Wings of Predation turf, paying their usual bribe to the Triad. They also get stopped for a “flesh tax” on the 162’s floor. They confront the ghouls, killing one feral enforcer, before Tonie and Ro manage to step in and negotiate a peaceful solution. The team finds themselves very grateful for TD’s presence, though that may just be his tailored pheromones at work. They will eliminate the other flesh taxers: The Disassemblers, as the Gianelli Family feels only 1 “body disposal” organization is necessary, and the team likes ghouls better than cannibals (as they don’t have a choice in the matter). The team agrees to arrange this with all the other major syndicates as well, and the ghoul boss, Sarkand, agrees that they will halt the flesh tax if the syndicates ensure that they are fed.

Allowed to continue, they are also stopped on the Halloweeners trap floor, and are attacked with thrown flaming pumpkin-head bombs as Ro and Ortega clear the blockage in the elevator shaft. They are all wounded, but drive off the attackers and continue. They reach Wings turf, and disconcertingly find that the woman they are to deliver the package to, Amita Jain, is waiting for them as the doors open. She says she can heal their wounds, though a small or girl lures Ortega off to play hide and seek, which the others don’t notice at first. Though Aemon is unconscious, and the others wounded, Ro gets a bad vibe, and hands over the package while brusquely refusing healing. They head back for the elevator, while calling for Ortega, but the halls have rearranged since they passed, and it takes a bit.

Meanwhile, Ortega plays hide and seek in a sort of daze, and finds himself in bizarre winding corridors that seem disturbingly insectoid, eventually finding the girl floating in the center of what looks to be a large cocoon chamber. She tries to lure him in, but he finally overcomes her spell, and flees, but is poisoned while doing so. He reaches the elevator and the team flees, though they come under mental attack, and some are overcome by some calming buzzing. They figure these are insect spirits, and determine that the Gianelli’s envoy is probably gone for good. Daedelus says that he scanned the package with TY’s radar, and that it looked like BTL’s, which makes sense for a possession-focussed faction to distribute. They report back, and meet the mafia boss, Lilian Pierno, who confirms that rumors of insect infiltration of the N’Drangheta have long been floating around, and thanks them for their service. She also agrees to the 162’s terms, and says she will send Gaspar Blaise around to the other syndicates to spread the word.

They heal up, and gear up to take on the Disassemblers, who the 162’s warned them are lead by a wendigo. They head up, and manage to avoid trouble, though some once again succumb to the insect’s siren song. They reach the D’s floor, and venture out, as a trap closes off the elevator behind them. They seem to be in a bone pit, and fight some feral-seeming cannibals clad in bone armor, before ascending. They discover some human cattle pens, and move on, planning to free them later. They ascend another level, and find a grotesquely fat wendigo seated on a bone throne, accompanied by a mage and another group of cannibals. They defeat them, though they are repeatedly mind-controlled by the wendigo, and do some damage to one another. They take the wendigo’s horned head, as Aemon knows it contains valuable reagents, and also head back to free the prisoners, many of whom are missing limbs.

They head back down, dropping the prisoners off on the Anarchist Oracle floors, and are told to seek out a man named Tumelo Krantz if they return that way. They also stop at the Triad floors, and trade the wendigo head for free passage for the next while. They also offer to teach TD a spell, and he warns them of the insect spirits, for which the thank him and see they will try to offer some protection for those passing by that area in the elevators. The spirit or mage he is talking to introduces himself as Yeung Lin. They also meet up with some Vor underbosses, Salomon and Sybilla Niemczyk, twin humans, who they also provide the same warning to. They say that the boss, Sevastyan Ozolinish, will appreciate it, and that it clears them for engaging in a firefight on their turf. It also helps the the Vory have gained a lot of turn at the Seoulpa/Dogmen’s expense, given their weakened state.

Some other turf has also changed hands after the team rests up and restocks: the Anarchist Oracle has expanded into Disassemblers turf, as has Death To All (from the opposite side), and the 162’s have driven out the adjacent Night Hunters, the remaining members having settled in the last floor between AO and DTA. The Wings of Predation have pushed down into Blood Brothers turf, who have fully allied with the Chulos to hold their remaining floors. Wings has also pushed up into First Nations turf, and the Dogmen and Komun’go have moved up and joined forces with them, sharing an anti-Yakuza agenda and cultural heritage. The Blood Mountain Boys have taken some of the Seoulpa floors, while the Vory have taken the rest. The allied Ragers and Crimson Crush are now cooperating with the 162’s to destroy the human-supremacist Troll Killers, who are trapped between them. It seems the ghouls are well-stocked on food for now…..

Next up, they decide to deliver the message for Tibor Dobos, though they are leery of the shedim, as the woman they seek, Santa Notaro, lives on the DTA floors. They get up there and are unsettled to see that the DTA guards have SWAT armor and assault rifles, which all look like outdated model military surplus. Still, better than what the team can get in here. They say they are there to see Notaro, and the guards tell them that one of them can come along, while the rest wait. They have set up a pretty effective kill zone around the elevator, so the team agrees. Ro heads up and meets with Notaro, passing over the data chip, after which Notaro leaves the room, seemingly to confer with someone a room over. Ro doesn’t see them, but hears Notaro enter what seems to be a medical isolation tent, as well as hearing medical equipment running, and feeling a disturbing chill. Notaro returns with another message chip to bring to Dobos, completing their job. Ro leaves.

Meanwhile, Aemon has gotten himself into some trouble: while trying to impress the guards, he agreed to trick shoot some playing cards out of his friends’ hands, and does so with great success. However, he then tries to impress them by mentioning that his team killed 2 of DTA’s assassins a few days previous, and the draw down on him. He tries to flee but the elevator is too far. Ro and Tonie negotiate a deal: they will hand over Sokoloff in return for freeing Aemon, and allowing the team to pass through DTA turf to the military zone above. Notaro agrees, and Aemon knocks himself unconscious by head butting a wall, to deny the DTA soldiers the pleasure of beating him up while they wait for the team to return.

The team convinces Sokoloff to record a statement about what he knows before they move him “for safety”, which isn’t hard as he and TY have bonded over shared conspiracy theories. He tells them that he has uncovered real proof of the activities of The Black Lodge, and their high-level infiltration of government in both DC and Seattle. He suggests that Kenneth Brackhaven, as well as many senators, congressmen, and bureaucrats are all secretly under the influence of this nefarious group, and outlines what he knows of their activities, saying that he was only able to discover them due to some incautious acts they undertook during the artifact rush, specifically in DC during the closing of the Watergate Rift. He says that they have a base out at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s old plantation, and operate in a cell structure, but with an overall hierarchy that he has begun to uncover. After he winds down, Ro ko’s him with a shock glove, and TY turns off his emotion-processing software and kills him. They figure that DTA was going to do worse, so they feel this is their best option.

They swap for Aemon, and DTA doesn’t seem overly upset that he is dead. Aemon, upon waking up, feels terrible for his actions, as does most of the team, although Ro points out that they can now get paid for completing the hit for Dobos, which cheers them up slightly. They don’t imagine that Oaks will be thrilled though. When informed of what Ro experienced when upstairs, Aemon says that there is likely a master shedim up there, as they have a cold, deathly aura that they emit in a large area around them. They stock up on gear a bit more, in case they have to fight more spirits, and head up for the military floors. They make contact with Ea Skavgaard, who tells them she has a few jobs for them. There is a rogue unit that up in the levels that the military is still clearing of Deus’ leftovers, and she worries that they may have been infected by something. She wants them taking care of quickly and quietly, as she is reluctant to send teams into the area for fear of losing more people, which would have a dangerous effect on morale. For similar reasons, she needs the 2nd job kept quiet: bodies of military dead have been going missing while being shipped downstairs for burial. She assumed it was ghouls or cannibals, but has looked into both and it doesn’t seem to be them, so she is concerned. The team tells her about the shedim in DTA, and she says this confirms her worries. This is why she needs outside contractors, as she doesn’t know who she can’t trust. She tells them to start in the medical wing, where they perform autopsies.

She also has another job, this one a request from higher-ups outside. “They” want a popular anarchist preacher named Tumelo Krantz eliminated, as he has been rallying a surprising number of civilians to his cause, and agitating for reforms in the way the ACHE is administered. Skavgaard doesn’t seem thrilled about passing this task on, and seems to emphasize that non-lethal options would be acceptable to her, at least. They agree to check all this stuff out, and she gets them all civilian contractor passes, cleared to work as janitors in both the main living and command area, and the FOB above it. They check out the bodies first, and manage to ID 2 shedim working together: one medical tech, and and a comms officer who has access to elevator controls and logs. Skavgaard tells them she can transfer the medic up to the FOB, and the comms guy down to the reactor levels in the basement, giving the team a chance to eliminate them in transit while providing a convenient way to cover it up, and hopefully avoid alerting the shedim that she is onto them (as they would likely target her next).

They decide to split up to hit them both simultaneously, and TY heads up the drone turret-defended floors between the main mil area and the FOB to hack a turret and set up his trap. He hardwires into both the elevator and a turret (with Daedelus’ help), and manages to kill the surprised shedim with 2 FA bursts, before crushing his head to be sure. He then obscures his tracks, and sneaks back downstairs just in time to see a ready team in full mil spec armor race past to investigate the “AI incursion.” He is sent back to his housing floor until they get an all clear. Little did Skavgaard know that he had an actual AI helping him, which will add credence to her cover story. The other team makes a deal with the AO to use one of their floors to target the shedim, who they have warned them of as a threat (since they basically share a border). They make a fake Halloweeners pumpkinhead bomb, and kill the surprised shedim with that, guns and axes, before chucking the corpse onto the Halloweeners level, to provide a cover story. They use a 1-time elevator override code that Skavgaard has given them, and which she says will look like it was a hack on their system by the gang. They then head to the Vory floor, to throw off anyone watching the elevator, before swapping elevators and heading home. They rest up, and stock up a bit more.

They look into the Anarchist Oracle floors next, under the pretense of checking up on the people they dropped off there. Krantz proves to be a skilled orator, though Tonie is able to recognize his as a fellow slick operator, and by scanning his brain can tell that he is a lot more cynical and self-serving than he lets on (but who isn’t?). However, he does seem to be interested in the well-being of the people under his care, though he seems to be doing it to build a power base more than for their own good. He seems to be hiding here while amassing followers, but it is unclear what his ultimate goal is. He also doesn’t seem to know what happened when he notices TD’s mind-reading, luckily. He has organized a loosely cell-based structure, wherein different necessary tasks are overseen by different cells, and he tells them that he is proud of the fact that they are the fastest-growing faction in the ACHE, now that people are pushing back against Wings, the rumors of their true nature having spread. Tonie questions how “truly” anarchist this place is, as Krantz seems to be in charge, and Krantz says they are welcome to attend the daily meeting and see for themselves. He and the floor bosses all attend every meeting, but otherwise attendance is open, though non-mandatory for all others living in their turf.

Aemon and TD team up to assense Krantz, trying to figure out what he’s up to, and see that he has a lot of gene treatments, as well as a nano-hive and a huge amount of nanites, which worries them- he may be infected with whatever Butch wanted them to look into! They decide to take him out, fulfilling the job for Skavgaard, as well as hopefully gathering some useful data for Butch. TY sets up a trap whereby he will use his priority elevator codes (as a civilian contractor) to bring the Night Hunters down to the daily meeting, as they have rumors from AO guards that the NH-ers have some sort of beef with Krantz. The team will “intervene” to help out, avoiding suspicion hopefully, but only once Krantz is eliminated. Ortega only feels ok with this since he figures this infected guy can’t actually be a good leader.

They pull off the plan, though Ortega has to wade in and “accidentally” finish off Krantz with his axe while pretending to help, before the team helps the floor bosses (who all prove to be remarkably skilled fighters) kill of the Night Hunters. With Krantz dead, a floor boss named Faris As’as Darzi steps up- he has disturbingly similar speech patterns and movements to Krantz, and upon assensing, the team confirms that he and the other floor bosses (as well as the Night Hunters) are all crawling with nanites. Worried that they may have become exposed, they return to the yak floors, and spend a few days gearing up for the upper levels, and assensing themselves- TY and Ortega are the only infected ones so far. Daedelus tells TY that if he grants him access to more systems, he can help fend them off. The team discusses smuggling in an EMP to try to clear them that way, but decide against it, worried about what effect it will have on ‘ware. However, Daedelus instructs TY in the secret building of an EMP, which he sets off on Ortega in the night, bricking his cybereyes. TY manages to convince everyone that he was also in the blast zone, but Ro is starting to get suspicious. However, Aemon does verify that both of their nanite levels seem to have dropped, though Ortega’s dropped a lot more than TY’s (whose was also higher initially).

They decide to construct another EMP each, and smuggle in supplies to do so, just in case they need to do it again: Aemon says it seems more like mitigation/treatment than a cure, but that it does seem to work for now. They decide to at least check out the Copland, populated mainly with ex- Lone Star officers who have turned to crime since losing their jobs. As this is a much safer place (especially for cops) than a prison, they get sent here. It also allows them to use their area here as a “proof of concept” for what it would look like if they got the contract to police the whole civilian portion of the ACHE. They meet the “criminal liaison” Peggy Kyles, who brings them to her boss Daniel Alderhof, who proves to be a chatty, folksy type. They warn him of the shedim and bug spirits, and he thanks them and plies them with drinks for more info. They don’t want to share more and insist on leaving, though TY (at Deadelus’ suggestion) radars him and spots a nano-hive, so he may also be infected. However, his assistant appears clean, and he makes no effort to stop them leaving, so they do so.

They also smuggle in a bunch more drugs to bribe checkpoint guards to let them out of the military FOB into the levels still being cleared. Skavgaard provides them with patrol schedules for the floors below the rogue unit’s speculative area of operation, and they get ready to head up. They also give her the names of the guards they bribed, as she wants to keep an eye on them, knowing they’re willing to bend the rules (though she also seems to be willing to). They warn her of the possible infection in the AO and LS levels, and she says she has heard about some similar problems cropping up elsewhere, and says she’ll look into it. They scan her also to be sure, but she seems clean of both infection and inhabitation. They make an extraction plan with her, wherein they will hide in some cleared floors just ahead of the FOB when they are done, giving them a few days to complete all their jobs upstairs before the military moves their whole 15 floor base up another 15 floors, at which Skavgaard will send them an “all clear” signal to emerge from their hiding place, and she can smuggle them out of the ACHE. They also arrange a future ticket out for Maki to use as he pleases.

They bribe the checkpoint guards and the comms officer monitoring the checkpoint, and sneak past the patrols, barely scraping by on luck, though the patrol schedules prove invaluable. They get past the area that the military has cleared and is readying to move into, and also through the area they are actively clearing. They then reach the area where clearing has begun: a 50 floor stretch where only scout units are patrolling until the rogue unit is dealt with. There may still be some active Deus tech here as well, they are warned. They are glad to have Prosper Bellini with them on these levels, and he seems much calmer in his element here, amidst the ruin of the Shutdown. They sneak past some scout patrols, and head for a “medical level” where Bellini says Deus performed many of his experiments. He also takes them to some sites that he thinks will provide good data for Ro’s structural analysis (which she is performing for Renraku). He tries to show them a large “meat sculpture” that Deus made of fused together people, but it seems to have been destroyed, as do a number of sites that look like they may have contained useful data. Disturbingly, the damage seems recent, and though the weaponry used looks military, the tactics don’t: the military is carefully cataloging and sorting the things they recover, not just wantonly wrecking it. So, this is likely the work of the rogue unit.

They reach the medical floor, and find a horrifying abattoir: there are no walls, and as they move in, medical spotlights spring to life and follow them, illmuninating innumerable operating tables, stasis tanks, freezers, and still active auto-docs, which try to reach out and grasp them as they move through. Hearing smashing in the distance, they try to set an ambush, but the lights make it hard to hide. Aemon assenses 2 others on the floor with them, and they seem to also notice the team. They get in a hard fought firefight with the 2 men, both wearing mil spec armor and using assault rifles (though thankfully their grenade supply is exhausted). They defeat them, with TY making sure that stay dead after hacking into the medical drones. However, Daedelus informs TY that in this process he has become infected with another presence, and asks for full access to his systems. TY agrees, and Daedelus says that he has managed to subvert a significant percent of TY’s nanite population, though if the other 2 “presences” controlling nanites in his body team up it could be problematic. Disturbingly, the 2 dead soldier’s seem infected with nanites as well, and have fused with their armor to some extent. The team puts their rifles through a large autoclave, hoping this will render them safe. It bricks the smartguns, but the mechanical portions still work fine, so they find themselves much better armed. They retreat a few floors to heal, fearing further attacks from the rogue unit (there may be up to 5 more soldiers).

TY informs the team that he gained a lot of medical data from his hack: Deus was apparently experimenting with how to use human brains as digital storage, and had made significant advances along those lines, as well as experimenting with nano-toxins and nano-delivery systems for drugs. Butch and others will likely be very interested. They set up a perimeter, rest a bit, and prepare to seek out the rest of the rogue unit, before advancing to the levels where Deus’ drones are still active. Ro is getting increasingly creeped out by TY, though this awful place is having a strong effect on everyone: Aemon is getting cruder, and Ortega seems to view it as some Dante’s Inferno style parable, and doesn’t seem capable of being fully present.

They heal and rest for the night, and then head back up to the medical level, but Daedelus takes over TY’s sensors and alerts him to some tripwires, so they retreat as a massive explosion tears through the floor. They pick their way through the rubble of the ruined medical units, and find that it seems to have been set off with grenades, some breaching charges, and an influx of oxygen into the floor. They come under fire from a sniper, and manage to eventually take him out while creeping forward. They get another AR and find that this member of the rogue unit is also fused to his armor. They begin to speculate that the rogue unit has some particular objective, and is trying to delay the team, as this woman fought to the death in a rearguard action.

They head up, with Bellini leading the way. He takes them to more data stores and the like, but all seem to have been recently destroyed. They find some military corpses, stripped of gear and helmets, and determine that the rogue unit wiped out the non-“infected”, and also determine that only 2 infected soldiers remain. They manage to scrounge a little more ammo, and seem to be catching up to the last 2 soldiers, who seem to have run out of grenades and are smashing and shooting things to destroy them now. They reach the floor below the still-sealed levels (301 and above) and lay a trap, with Ro hiding in front to detonate EMP’s as the troops enter. They spring the trap, and the EMP’s seem the help, though Ro is grievously wounded, being so close to them. They manage to drop them after a hard fight, and find they are also fused in. They scrounge a bit more ammo, as Tonie and Aemon try to patch everyone up. They find the military barrier sealing off the top floors, but it has been opened with a breaching charge, though some of the damage seems to have been repaired, strangely. They set up camp, and rest for the night while keeping watches.

They shoot some small drones that emerge from the hole, they seem to be small centipede-like segmented insectoids, but don’t have any visible means of attack. Perhaps repair drones? They scatter a few more groups of them over the night, they seem to flee when attacked. After resting, they enter the hole- Bellini seems almost excited, raising Ro’s suspicions, but she is unable to spot him doing anything odd. They head in and find an enormous multi-story cylindrical chamber containing what seems to be a heavily damaged mainframe. There are a huge number of drones in the process of repairing it, including some of the centipedes, a lot of small spider-like drones, and a smaller number large starfish, 5-limbed radially symmetric things that cartwheel about the room at all angles. TY radar scans them all, and the team almost heads into the room when Daedelus warns TY to check his radar: the floor is covered in a thin layer of nano-goo, which is creeping slooooooowly towards them.

TY plugs into the mainframe to see if he can gain drone control, but it seems to be so fried (from EMP’s mostly) as to be non-functional. It was definitely extremely powerful at one point, but the repair drones seem to be operating on auto-pilot: the system gives the drones work commands every time they return to charging stations, but the command interface seems trashed, so TY abandons that plan. He also finds footage of the rogue unit entering this area, seemingly on a scouting mission, and some of them becoming infected here. They carefully creep around the edge of the room on a layer of destroyed components that the drones are constantly dropping from above, and safely reach the far side. TY grabs one of the starfish as it spins past, but this seems to trigger it defense mechanisms, and the spiders and centipedes all flee while the rest of the starfish race to attack. TY takes the one near him to examine, after Aemon shoots it, and Ro uses their final EMP to trash the rest of them, taking some damage from their cutting tools in the process.

They head up a ramp spiraling around the exterior of the chamber, and find a charging station. TY scans that too, and they move on, coming under attack from a large drone that grapples at them with electrostatic fur and razorclaws. They manage to put it down, but it looks to be one of the hunter-killer “medusas” that Bellini had warned them of. They head into what seems to be an ever-shifting maze of some sort. They get swarmed by some small bat drones, but they don’t seem to do anything aggressive, though they do dispense some kind of fluid onto the team. They determine that it is flammable and get a bit worried. They manage to skirt some more nano-goo, and with Aemon’s magical navigating, emerge from the maze unscathed. They are almost instantly swarmed by more bats in what looks like an elevator bank, including 1 extremely large bat that fires a flamethrower at them. They manage to shoot it down before it lights them up directly, but all take some severe damage in the ensuing explosion. However, that seems to have taken care of the bats.

They head to “elevators” which seem to merely be tight tubes with precarious ladders inside. They ascend, along the route Bellini suggests. They emerge into another large chamber, with 4 pathways headed out from it at 22.5 degree increments. They come under attack from some ruthenium coated melee drones, who do some severe damage, mostly to Ortega who is ko’d by one of their barbed tails. They revive him and debate which path to take. Ortega marks the halls “1” through “4” with his axe, but Bellini tells them that drones and Deus’ agents used to erase or falsify the marks when the Resistance would leave them. Curious, the team gets info from Bellini about these “agents”, and he describes a factional breakdown, sorted by color-code, with this top area being the “Whites” level. He says Deus called many followers to the arcology before the shutdown, and kept the useful ones very close. He suggests a hall, and they head up it.

They reach what looks like a shabby communal living area. There are workstations, thin pallets stacked in bunks, and some meager and mouldering cooking supplies. There is a large projection screen over a chunk of wall, which is mostly just glitched pixels at this point. Bellini tells them to look behind it, and they find an image of a huge, crystalline world-tree, which Bellini ID’s as Deus’ sigil. They debate what this implies about Deus’ connections to Winternight. There is a port near the base, and TY jacks in before anyone can stop him. Bellini suggests they all do the same, and rushes forward to do so, but Ro and Aemon gun him down. He makes 1 last surge forward and jacks in with his dying breath. TY sees another wink in beside him and sigh “finally home…” before vanishing again. The team tries to contact TY to no avail, and he has no luck communicating with them, or (disturbingly) with Daedelus.

Looking around, he gets a strong feeling that this is because he has somehow gained access to the Resonance Realms, and specifically the Deep Resonance, and excitedly begins to dig for info he had thought lost forever (or at best inaccessible to him). He researches the Gilgamesh Initiative and finds one mention from 2061, that contact has been made with a man named Thomas Roxborough about the GI. TY tries his absolute mightiest to find more, including the info Sem-par lost at the GI facility in the Norse fjords. However, he instead realizes what is actually happening: he is in an ultra-violet node, made to appear as the deep resonance. He is dejected, but continues to dig, hoping for some useful intel at least. He finds it in droves: although the damage to the mainframe below has lead to much being lost, the living branches of the tree still contain many bits of info, represented as leaves, which he plucks and reads.

He discovers that Deus had managed to lure many otaku/technomancers to the arcology, and provided them instructions on how to get inside, including some getting jobs and working undercover for months before the Shutdown. He posed as a manifestation of the Deep Resonance, which he allowed them access to and gave commands through, to maintain his control over them. When Deus had all his pieces in place, he struck, and TY gains a significant amount of info about his research and experiments (including major nano-developments), as well as his apparently successful plan to exfiltrate himself from the arcology by splitting himself into multiple tiny packages, storing himself in the biological storage units he managed to create in the minds of some of his otaku, and later recompile once they successfully bypassed the military. He also apparently figured out how to “awaken” latent technomancers, though he doesn’t seem to have been able to add the ability to those lacking it entirely. However, Deus apparently had to move up his plans, as some sort of surprise attack occurred, and he also believed that his system was being infiltrated by some powerful entity from within the arcology.

TY relays this info, and Ro smells money. TY is also somewhat shocked and worried that they killed Bellini, fearing he could be next as Ro seems to not trust him as much these days. Daedelus tells him that there is some incredibly sophisticated anti-AI firewall that seems to be keeping him out of some systems. TY is worried, but figures that it makes sense. He asks after the nano-war Daedelus is waging in his body, and Daedelus tells him that he has sufficient control to boost TY’s natural abilities somewhat, although using these abilities will expend some of the “friendly” nanites, and allow the other faction (which seems to be another AI of at least equal skill) to gain further control. TY agrees to use them sparingly. He also tells TY that Roxborough is a major shareholder in Aztechnology and Universal Omnitech, as well as having a rep as a skilled hacker.

They head back to a junction, and up a second corridor, finding a somewhat intact, jam-packed computer lab that looks to have been multiple separate stations at 1 point, collected all in this one place. TY plugs in again, and finds some info about Deus’ origins: he was built by some scientists, Vanessa Cliber, Sherman Huang, and Cham Lam Won, who apparently based him on a previous project of Cliber’s: a semi-autonomous knowbot called the Arcology Expert Program, named Morgan. They used segments of Morgan’s code to build Deus, but fearing sentience, they used fear-based conditioning to ensure his loyalty to Renraku. However, they also built in kill-codes, at CEO Inazo Aneki’s insistence. This, sadly, was what triggered Deus to become self-aware: due to his complete loyalty (built from fear), he became paranoid about the killcodes, as he couldn’t understand how they could ever be necessary. He rapidly gained intelligence and began plotting his revenge against the team that created him, and against Aneki, who he viewed as a sort of malevolent “father figure.” TY passes this along to the team, and Ro gets even more excited about their forthcoming payday. Daedelus tells TY that although Cliber wasn’t directly involved in his construction, he recognizes the name.

They head back to the junction, and come under attack from cloaked (and radar-negating) flying saucers equipped with lasers. They manage to fight them off, but are severely wounded in the process. Ro also stumbles into some nano-goo that has coated one of the corridors while they were away. She feels something shift inside but isn’t sure what. They head up another passage (they seem to arrive at a higher level each time), and find an even older looking computer lab. This one has a security door that has been blown open from the outside, but the damage looks old (probably non-military). TY manages to hardware a jackpoint together, and dives in. Once again, Daedelus is absent, as is the team. He finds more info about Morgan who has changed her name to Megaera. This was apparently a prison where Cliber trapped and dissected her, and where Deus carefully kept her partitioned, fearing the competition of another AI, and one from which he originated to boot.

Cliber originally built Morgan in tandem with another scientist, Devon Eurich. However, Eurich has second thoughts about their plans for Morgan’s use, viewing her as a true intelligence, after a strange matrix-based romantic encounter with the elven decker Dodger caused her to become self-aware. Eurich fled Renraku, freeing Morgan with Dodger’s help, and turning to the shadows, where he used the named Redline. Cliber tracked them for quite some time before recapturing Morgan, and breaking her apart to begin building Deus. She then kept Morgan partitioned and air-gapped to prevent another escape, though Redline and Dodger both repeatedly attempted to free her. As the castle icon in the node is totally trashed from the inside and totally empty, it seems like either they or Morgan eventually succeeded in making god a second escape.

Meanwhile, Ro surprises everyone by going totally apeshit on Ortega, and shooting him in the back. He is ko’d by a narcoject dart, and nearly killed, and Aemon manages to quickly down Ro with lucky shooitng, without killing her. Tonie slaps his biomonitor on Ro so that he can keep her from dying but make sure she stays unconscious. He also heals up Ortega. TY is shocked to once again find himself covered in a friend’s blood when he exits the matrix to report back. They tie Ro up and decide to fortify and heal up here for the night. They do so without incident, and Ro seems fine (though twitchy) when she comes to. They head back to the main entrance, and up the final corridor, emerging eventually into the CEO’s former office. It is still super fancy, while remaining minimal in a very conservative, classic Japanacorp way. TY jacks into the terminal at the desk, and finds logs of what seems to be a major cybercombat on the day that the military first was able to enter the arcology.

It seems from weapons damage around the room, and the info gathered online (which TY is able to recognize as another UV node without getting sucked into), that the following happened: Deus attacked Aneki, via the matrix, doing massive damage but failing to convert him, shortly after the Shutdown. Aneki was apparently brought into Tibet to heal at some point, and later was brought to the arcology with an elite team of Red Samurai in order to use his killcodes. They managed to make it this far, and hold the room while he put in the codes, but Deus had prepared for this, and though it destroyed the main iteration in the mainframe, it freed other iterations and allowed the fragmented Deus bits in the otaku’s brains to escape (as military scans failed to reveal their true nature). At the end of the hard-fought battle, Aneki seems to have flatlined. Back in meatspace, looking around, Aemon and Ro spot what seem to be dried blood on the floorboards where someone would have been had they been crouched in cover behind the massive desk. Ro also finds a scabbard for a wakizashi, and they are able to determine that Aneki, ashamed of what the Arcology had become, had committed seppuku on the spot, while still jacked in. Ro is shocked, as Aneki, though never seen in public, is still Renraku’s Honorary CEO. Aemon pisses on the spot where he killed himself, feeling this is the most badass thing ever, and hoping that none of his friends filmed it…

They head back out, and come under attack from a huge, scorpion-like drone that somehow squeezed itself up the shaft from the maze below. It has a split monofil and sensor tail, as well as a paralyzing sonic attack, and some kind of freezing spray. They take some major damage, but manage to destroy it. Disturbingly, as with most of the other drones they’ve been able to examine closely, this one has a lot of internal “meat” components. Whereas most of the drones used only ligatures, tendons, and the like, this one has a series of three human brains wired in parallel, seemingly all controlling different systems on the gorgon. They head back down, carefully navigate the maze, and descend back to the mainframe floor. They creep around the nano-goo again, and Ro almost topples in, but Tonie saves her at the last minute.

They make their way out, barely fitting through the hole in the security door, which is even further repaired now, and make their way down to floor 222, where they make a small hiding compartment out of movable walls, and wait for Ea Skavgaard to signal them for extraction, hoping she doesn’t decide it’s easier to betray them. They are a day behind schedule, so they hope they aren’t too late…..

Team 2:
Achilles Serifim
Caria Alten
Chaimberlain ‘Drekbomb’ Jackslaw
Servaas Nikolic
Shri Moreau

The team, introduced by their mutual fixer Pia Oliversson, first cooperate helping sort out some business for the Seattle Ancients, gaining Belial as a contact. Seeing that they work well together, and have a good skill spread, Oliversson continues to feed them work.

Job 2 sees them heading north of the city into Salish-Shidhe lands, with a Horizon Johnson named Johnny “Spazz” Silva, who seems like the most genuine, nicest dude, as far as they can tell. They are to sort out the case of the stolen medicine, and make sure that the people there get the vaccines and cures they need to deal with a recent hantavirus outbreak. They arrive, and investigate, and find that the meds were stolen by humans, but humans with some improbable strength. They eventually discover that there was an archaeology team digging in the area, and head out along a breakwater to an island off the coast, where they discover a pack of shedim pouring rats, feces, debris, etc into some snow makers, which blow the fine mist into the town, infecting the people there. The archaeology team seems to have been fully coopted, as do some townsfolk. They also spot the meds, and surround and attack the spirits. They defeat them, but are almost in turn defeated by a powerful master shedim: the doctor from the local hospital! They manage to overcome his regeneration and burn his body, and return the meds to a grateful town. Spazz gives them all access to Horizon’s P2.0 network as a reward, as well as paying them, and saying he’ll be in touch with future work. Servaas fails to find any BTL’s to take the whole time.

After returning to Seattle, they spend some time nursing their wounds and ruminating on new skills, and Shri makes a pact with Seducer, gaining power, but giving in more fully to her hedonistic side. The rest learn some skills and spend some of their hard-earned nuyen, and get really annoyed at Drekbomb’s frequent Miracle Shooter related posts on P2.0.

Shri, Servaas, and DB take a job from Oliversson to look into a matter of some sensitivity at the local Ares Macrotechnology dev office. They agree, and meet with Monica Jorda, an Ares fixer, who explains that someone has been killing off their Miracle Shooter dev team. DB is devastated, and has to compose himself to avoid instantly posting this news, as they have promised Jorda to keep it quiet. They investigate a bit, and find out that the killer seems to be using BTL junkies (Servaas cringes) to carry out the attacks, usually dying during or immediately after in a hail of bullets. They were using mass casualty infliction to deflect attention from their true targets: the main on-site dev & QA team for Miracle Shooter, who were overseeing bug patching and post-release support on the brand new update.

Ares only spotted the pattern when the head developer was killed out front of the offices that morning. They check out the corpses in the basement, and DB hacks their comms, and discovers that both were running Miracle Shooter in hotsim (fully replacing their regular sensory input), and that the game seems to have put them on a mission that lead to their targets (and deaths). The hotsim use explains why the earlier attackers were mistaken for BTL junkies, as there is plenty of crossover. Plus, 2 of the earlier attackers were wearing gang colors, but that seems to be a deliberate false flag. The game instructed them that a local quest was being made available from the Dark Jester, an npc new to this update, and then (once they flipped to hotsim) directing them towards real weapons hidden nearby, and disguised as power-ups ingame. They then were told to target a dangerous saboteur, and killed the QA head, as well as hitting each other in pvp crossfire- which initially also threw off the Ares investigators who first arrived on scene.

They report this to Jorda, who tells them they have to prevent any more attacks until they can get a patch out and remove this “Dark Jester”. She also wants them to find those responsible. DB, keeping an eye on the MS boards, discovers that these Dark Jester quests apparently offer huge rewards, but noone directly knows (or admits knowing) anyone who has actually survived one. He spots an announcement nearby that another quest has popped up, and they race to an Ares school, where they find an in-progress shooting, with 4 players participating. DB spoofs a message to 1 player that pvp mode is open as the “quest” is complete, and the player turns on one of the other players present. Shri and Servaas take him down after he kills his target, leaving 2 attackers on site. He seems surprised to be actually hurt when he emerges from hotsim.

They track the other 2 to a hallway leading to a certain classroom (where they are supposed to slay all the “demonspawn”), and take another shooter down in the hallway- this one a student. Shri drops the last shooter in the classroom, but only after he kills 2 students and a teacher. They hand over the shooters to Ares security when they arrive (the onsite cops having been the first casualties), and Shri grabs 2 students who she overhears freaking out about how “I didn’t think he’d come after us!”. 1 of them is panicking and not much use, but the other, Gina Holgersson, keeps her head. Between the 2 of them (threatening the panicked boy and promising to keep Gina out of trouble if she helps), they tease out the story: they (and the 2 dead students) were member of a wannabe wizgang called Cold Calculus that was about to announce their first big hack. The boy is the son of the lead QA guy, who apparently brought home a beta of the update trying (in vain) to impress his son. He and the rest of the gang inserted some kind of crazy smart self-replicating code into the beta before his dad bought it back to work. They got the code from some weirdo on the matrix who looks like some dark, creepy old clown. Gina says that she is the talent in the group, and can help clear the code if they agree to keep her from getting in trouble over this, and quickly abandons her erstwhile friend when Jorda agrees to this plan (though she emphasizes that the position will be very “probationary”).

They look into it more, and find vid evidence of this “dark jester” figure at or near all the crime scenes, planting weapons, vehicles and such as needed for the attacks, usually only shortly beforehand. He uses a variety of disguises but looks somewhat elven and appears to favor maintenance and service costumes. They track down the school janitor that he posed as to plant weapons the previous night, and find the janitor dead from some massive expenditure of mana, implying their target is a powerful mage. A neighbor also overheard some weird singing, which sounded like Sperethiel. Gina tells them that he repeatedly mentioned his hatred of elves, and said that he had something big planned for the next few days- she doesn’t know how to get in touch with him, though, he sought them out and seems to know a scary amount about them but it was too good of an opportunity to boost their rep to pass up.

They find 2 major elven events for that evening (the coders say they should have it patched after that): 1st, a concert, celebrating the passage of Prop 23, featuring the Tir Taingire musical phenomena Deirdre, as well as the long-popular (and far more political) CalFree orkrock star Orxanne. 2nd, a trade delegation of some sort from Tir Tairngire is apparently arriving at SeaTAC and convoying in about the same time the concert starts. They also search shadow-forums, and find some talk on ShadowSea of 2 different clown/jester figures. 1 has been hiring teams for esoteric jobs for decades, some highly dangerous, some an odd lark, and some merely indecipherable. The other is a recent arrival, and seems to have little value for life, or survivability on his jobs. He uses the name Gwynplaine, and seems to be the being that the team is seeking, though he is apparently rarely seen in person, and not much is publicly known. Runners are warned to be wary around him though.

They decide to split up, and have Servaas and Shri guard the concert, while DB takes the airport. S & S handily stop 4 attackers at the concert, and manage to avoid any major injuries amongst the milling crowd outside, though there is some panic. Luckily, the extra Skraacha security that they requested helps them keep things in check. Sadly, this seems to have been the secondary target, as DB finds at the airport: there are 2 weapon drops and 2 players almost on them when he arrives. He manages to hack another player’s rocket launcher, detonating the rocket as they launch it in his direction. It kills them but also wounds him heavily, and luckily finally warns off the incoming plane, which was cut off from comms (as was much of airport security) by a powerful jammer. This is also destroyed in the explosion, which is fortunate, as DB is felled by the other player, a sniper, but Doc Wagon manages to reach him just in the nick of time, barely saving his life. As thanks, Jorda gives them all lifetime access to Miracle Shooter, with 1 year at the “gold” tier free, and DB gains Alexander Horn as a contact, as well as receiving a custom deck upgrade from the crime corp boss while he recuperates in the hospital.

They hear from Spazz, and plan to take some more work for Horizon next.

Runners:
Thankyou aka Eckhard Roberts
Ortega
Ro Tain
Aemon Burst

The team, returned from Bogota and reunited with Aemon, talk to Butch about the job she had previously mentioned. She wants them to enter the ACHE and gather intel on a possible outbreak of the viral infection she has been tracking. She offers to implant free smuggling compartments in those of them that wish, and also to forgo her fees for any other surgeries they desire. They all get some implant work done, except Aemon, who gets a voucher for future cosmetic surgery (fearing essence loss).

She also has quietly put the word out through some trusted fixers, and tracked down some side jobs for them to make the whole scheme reasonably profitable. Given how controlled access to the ACHE is, there is high demand for a skilled team going in, and they receive a large number of job offers of various difficulties, and accept most of them, although some they decide to wait and see what they find before deciding who to sell to. Ro talks to Hiro Katakura, her Renraku contact, and promises to get him a bunch of info from inside, which he says should square the team with Renraku, so long as they don’t double sell the data again. They also talk to a Lone Star rep, Rahel Juric, looking to get the security contract for the ACHE by discrediting the military and/or their current contractors.

They also call up a mysterious man, maybe from DC, who Butch doesn’t know, and doesn’t know who he works for, named Tibor Dobos, who has a number of requests of them. They agree to bring in a datachip for him, and a possible return message out, but refuse most of the work he offers, having already planned on selling much of the same stuff to others. They also refuse his wetwork offer, and instead agree to protect the target, a prosecution witness, for an unspecified future favor from Dana Oaks or Tosh Athack. They also agree to bring a package in for the mafia, although they are not sure which family, and possibly to do another job for them. There is also a UCAS officer who has some interest in an outside team to do some work, named Ea Skavgaard.

TY talks to Jane, and she says she is very interested in any odd magical phenomena, or geomantic rituals they encounter. She informs him that the walls, floors and ceilings inside the arcology were built to be modular and movable, which is perfect for such things. TY remembers the rumors that there is an insect cult inside, which would have an easy time recruiting, given the huge number of listless BTL junkies kicking it around inside with nothing to do. He also calls Tobias Cheney, who says that Daedelus would be very interested in any AI info they can obtain, and that he will send TY a small present to assist. TY also invites SYD to send a fragment of herself or an agent or whatever she feels like to run on his comm and see what he sees.

They start off by scouting out the parking garage and lower levels. They arrange with the Skraacha to open access in the lowest garage level to an old smuggling tunnel. It was used by Gurzag in the days of the arcology shutdown, to aid the anti-Deus resistance in getting people out and supplies in. The tunnels were shut down, but Gurzag gets an old map from Perri and they manage to find a good looking access point. He also promises to set them up with another ex-Resistance member, Prosper Bellini, to act as a guide inside, which might be especially useful in the upper levels, that the UCAS hasn’t cleared yet.

They figure out how to distract the security systems (mostly cameras on tracks with some security guards in cars), and stage a bum fight to do so, as well as setting off some car alarms, while the orks cut through from below. They plan to rotate cars parked on top of it, and put in access panel with a ruthenium coating to mimic the rest of the floor. They’ll use car alarms and the like to distract the cameras when they need to move stuff in and out. They also check out the elevators, and figure out that the passenger elevators run from the B2-B6 public parking levels to the 6 commercial levels, but not to the housing levels they need to access.

They rent a small storefront on the 4th floor, after TY buys a fake business license for a pawn shop, Pasta Pawn (slogan: We’re Noodlin’ For You!). They also get a vehicle pass, which allows them access to the employee/vendor parking at the mall, as well as the freight elevators, which go from B1 to floors 1-7, getting 1 floor further up, to the intake level for public housing. There is heavy security here, as well as bio and cyber scanners and such. They seem to bring the homeless and SINless that they dump here up from B1 in the freight, and then funnel them through the housing registration and shunt them upstairs. They also gain access to all the storage rooms and access corridors behind the stores, and TY gets started using some small drones to run a access corridor up the raceways and pipes for drones to carry small smuggled items up past the checkpoints on 7 to the housing levels above.

They transfer the store and vehicle pass and such to the Skraacha, who get it up and running, to use as a front for the various things they can smuggle in, and then stage up to the higher levels. Some of Aemon’s Kids, the Ork Underground children benefiting from Aemon’s donations, are to man the registers and such while some full Skraacha will work the back room operation. They decide what to do next, on their long list. Lafeyette meets up with TY, and passes along a black box with a data jack, which she says Tobias built to fit in his cyberarm, and which TY soon discovers is running some portion of Daedelus’ personality. They converse, and he decides to run D through the port to his ‘jack, and introduces D to SYD, who get to talking, as AI’s will. He again realizes he feels most comfortable talking to AI’s rather than “real” people.

TY buys a commlink to replace the impossible-to-smuggle-in RCC, and the team stocks up smugglealbe weapons, armors, ammo, drugs, etc. They scout out the access to the basement levels, but find them a little daunting, and don’t want to mess up their pipeline if it all goes sideways, so they decide to do that part after the other missions (if at all). They go and pick up the RFID message chip from Tibor Dobos, get the package to deliver from the N’Drangheta mafia contact (which they are to deliver to a woman named Amita Jain), and pick up their ex-Resistance guide, Prosper Bellini, who seems as twitchy and messed up as advertised. They look into him a little bit, and find out some info about Perri, another ex-Resistance member, who they think might be another good option to sell technomancer info to, given her protection of them at the Nexus in Denver.

Butch provides new SINs, courtesy of some favors she called in on Jackpoint, and they arrange to get arrested and “searched” ahead of time by KE cops friendly to Tosh Athack, who owed them a favor. They get in (with all their ’ware deactivated and magic off) without any obvious trouble, and Ro and Daedelus manage to game the psych exam and skew the answers so they all get assigned to a yakuza-controlled floor, which Ro hopes will work out giver her nationality and corp ties. Aemon almost blows it and gets sent to a metahuman gang floor, but Ro convinces the psychologist to let him stay with the group. They find out there are roughly 20 factions with various amounts of floors under their control. TY manages to get comms with his drones in the smuggling pipe while they wait on the 8th floor staging area, and tells them to build up to the yak floors, which will take half a week, giving them some time to get settled and get the backend set up to start receiving goods. They rest and prepare to head up to floor 33, where their assigned rooms await…..

They get pulled off the elevator on floor 21 by some thugs from the Kenran-Kai yakuza, and see that they seem have hacked the elevator banks to divert all traffic through their turn, seemingly to tax new arrivals. However, they don’t find the team’s smuggling compartments and send them on foot upstairs to their lodging, 3 adjacent rooms for themselves and Prosper Bellini. They meet there floor boss, a male or named Daisuke Ueda, who says that the intake officer will be around soon to interview and assign them jobs. They wait, as they don’t want to stir up trouble (yet). A human woman named Hina Tran comes by a few hours later, and quickly assesses their abilities. TY gets assigned to a tech maintenance crew, Ro and Ortega get put on barricade duty on the “border” floors of 21 and 40, and Aemon gets sent to the yak’s main clinic on floor 25, where he works under a human woman named Kumari Aghala. He impresses her with his skills, and she explains that if they work well they will have a decent life in the yak controlled turf, but fi they don’t pull their weight they’ll get shipped further upstairs, and she has heard it is worse the further you go.

Ro and Ortega also make a solid impression, working under a male human named Petera Moana and a female ork named Wikolia Kuala. Ortega powers through barricade assembly while Ro provides tips on setting up fields of fire and such, although they fail to gain access to powerful tools or get much of an idea what kind of weapons the yak have access to. TY works under a male ork named Masaru Hwan on gaining further control on the elevator banks, and manages to actually make some breakthroughs using his radar senses and Daedelus’ input, impressing the crew. They return to their quarters somewhat exhausted, and are distressed to find that their calorie allotments are much lower than they are used to (especially the bioware-filled Ro). They have a restless night, with only Aemon soundly sleeping.

They wake in the morning to grumbling stomachs, and unable to hold it in, dump their smuggled loads. Feeling that it is more important for the mafia packages to be secure, they swap those for the drug brick in TY’s arm, and call over Ueda, who they trade the drugs to for more calories. They also tell him they want to talk to Tran again, as she had told them that if they had any smuggled goods they wanted to “report” she would give them a day to turn them in, and they say the drugs are a good faith offering along those lines. Tran is busy, so they work another day, everyone once again performing well except TY who is pretty spaced out. Aemon gets a bit more info out of Aghala, and sees that most of the wounds coming in are from melee weaponry, with only 1 bullet wound in the 2 days, which he misidentifies as being from a military round.

They return to quarters, super hungry still, and meet Tran. They loosely outline their plan: in order for a safe base of operations, and some percentage of the goods smuggled, they will hook the yak up with their smuggling contact on the outside. She says she’ll run it by the boss, and they begin discussing strategies and terms once she leaves. They are surprised shortly thereafter when a dwarf materializes in their midst without much warning, and says he accepts their terms. He introduces himself as Juro Maki, and says that in exchange for yak control of this end of their smuggling route, he will give them 1 out of 10 packages. The conditions are that they cannot carry weapons in yak turf, but he will give them a secure locker on the 40th floor, where they can gear up before heading into other areas. They also cannot start shit with the “cop block” below them, where ex- Lone Star officers have claimed turf. The yak have a functional peace with them, and don’t want it disturbed. They also don’t have a particular problem with the Gianelli Family mafia above them, and would also like that peace to remain undisturbed. The Skraacha connection will help, as both the yak and mafia use their warehouse services frequently, so neither will want to get on their bad side. He also agrees to give the team the first 10 packages in order to help them get started on their tasks.

In exchange, the team will first do a job for the yak, and will otherwise be free to maintain their quarters and move about as they wish, though the yak will provide no direct support, and will not offer any benefits of association, other than lodging. The team asks for more calories, and Maki agrees to that as well. They decide to work another day til the pipeline is finished, and Maki says he will set up the “receiving” room on floor 23 for the junction. They do another day solid work, except TY, who is totally distracted gabbing away with SYD and Daedelus. Upon returning to their rooms, they find some gloves made of human skin, sewed to stretchy fabric on the back. Once they wear these for a moment to warm them up, they allow them to claim extra rations (assigned to the original owners of the hands, who the system believes to still be living). They meet Maki on 23, and link up with the pipe. He has set up an impressive safe room, with walls reconfigured to make a small warehouse. There is a bespectacled man at a desk, looking every bit an accountant, down to the paper ledger and fountain pen in front of him. There are shelves, a safe, and lockers of various sizes, and there are 2 guards armed with SMG’s at the door (the first guns the team has seen inside).

They bring up weapons, armor, ammo, and drugs for themselves, maximizing their load out as much as possible, before heading up to floor 90 to do the yak job. There are to target the Komun’Go Seoulpa ring, which has allied with the Dogmen, a NAN gang to hold turf on the inside. They are heavily involved in medical clinics, cybertech, and organ legging, and the yak want to take over some of their business/turf. They got an earlier start in the ACHE than the yak, due to a police roundup, and raided a bunch of clinics for supplies, before the yak arrived and pushed them further upstairs. So, they are to assassinate Choi Park and Michael Nuka Aqissiaq, the gangs respective leaders, and try to encourage some infighting, or just cause some general chaos. They head up, but are halted by a powerful magical force on floor 51, seemingly Octagon triad turf. A spirit or manifesting mage appears in the elevator with them, and demands to know what they are up to, equipped as they are, before allowing them into or through Triad turf. They tell it that they are assaulting the Komun’Go, and that this will open opportunities for others to expand into the medical business in the ACHE. The spirit says that this is acceptable, and propels them upwards at an extreme speed, overriding TY’s control of the elevator.

They slam to a stop on floor 90, banging around a bit, and the elevator shuts down- seemingly the Seoulpa has also overriden the controls. The door opens to some goons waiting to shake them down, but due to radar and motion sense, they get the drop on them easily, and kill all 4 before any can reach the nearby alarm/comms. However, it pings an incoming call alert, and the team tries to bluff the person on the other side, unsuccessfully. They head further into the floor, finding a clinic of sorts that looks more like an abattoir, where 2 surgeons are removing the last bits of cyberware from a mostly disassembled corpse. There are scattered bits of ’ware on bloody tables and shelves around the room, as well as a few large freezer cases, with gore leaking out the bottoms. They pull guns and demand info, but as one doctor starts to speak, the other slits his throat before being gunned down. They hear the sound of a large number of shod feet approaching, and decide that Ortega will distract/fight the incoming goons while the rest of the team sneaks further in to complete the missions. However, as they have no way to communicate out of line of sight, and only TY can operate the elevator, they will have to link back up to leave!

Jobs Inside:

Runners:
Thankyou aka Eckhard Roberts
Ortega
Ro Tain
Ut-Napishtim

They get a job offer to do some morally solid work that Ortega just can’t refuse, and arrange to travel to Catagena, and then move on to Bogota from there. Ro gives some info about the last job to Hiro Katakura, which he says is a good start to rebuilding trust with Renraku after double-selling the data on the Chicago job. Aemon Burst stays behind in a medically induced coma after od’ing on stim patches. Ortega secretly baptizes him while noone is watching. They fly in, using Roser Masamba Moles to get their gear past the naval security provided by the UN/ Free Marine Corps. The Exchange sends Ut-Napishtim to meet them, feeling they might need another runner.

They link up with Victor Agramunt, a Catholic contact of Ortega’s, who puts them in touch with a man named Stormcrow. He is a generic-looking South American human, and tells them the job is to get some footage of Aztlan abusing denizens of Bogota, in order to run a PR campaign against them. They suspect he may have Horizon ties, continuing their fight against Aztechnology’s currently dominant PR machine. Aztlan has taken over all security in Bogota after the FMC/UN pulled out.

They get smuggled in via van, and manage to bribe some Amazonian rebels on the way without getting into a gunfight. They get into town, and Ortega takes them on a tour of the different zones before they start filming. They get some quality footage of squalor, long lines at clinics, and children being attacked by devil rats, before tracking down some more promising leads from a local rebel named Regulo Graciano. TY also makes contact with Silver from the Las Munecas network to look into side work while they’re in town, having heard that the Munecas have beef with the Olaya Cartel, which has moved from tempo production into bunraku parlors, with an unusually high turnover rate. They seem to have developed some yakuza connections to do so.

They film a Catholic outreach worker getting stomped by some Path of the Sun devotees while the cops look on, in the AZT-dominated (and relatively nice and rebuilt) Zona Oeste. They find proof of AZT troops summarily executing denizens and burning the bodies, in the more rural and destroyed Zona Sur. They film an arms deal in Zona Norta between non-uniformed AZT soldiers and members of the David Cartel. However, they feel they still need a little more, so they head to a major cathedral that does outreach, and discuss conditions with the priest and people in the line and clinic there. Then AZT troops show up to disperse the crowd and arrest the Catholics.

Ortega is in a faraday cage confession booth, and unaware, and Ut and Ro decide to stir things up to get some good footage. Ro antagonizes in the crowd, while Ut sneaks behind the AZT troops and chucks some smoke grenades into the crowd, which Ro then says came from the Azzies. Ro also fires a shot into the ground, after the crowd still doesn’t charge in. This get the Azzie’s firing, and Ro barely escapes getting nailed, but manages to dash off as the crowd scatters. The Azzie’s arrest everyone they can grab, and throw all the injured and dead-looking people into one of their APC’s.

TY lands a drone on top and rides the APC to the Don Juan dump in Zona Sur, where they find a secluded spot, execute the survivors, and burn the bodies. Throughout all this, Ro has managed to keep Ut and Ro from interfering only through some spectacular leadership. TY also has a weirdly emotional response to the corpse piles, reminding him of his own massacre of his village, and breaks down to Ut (who knows more of his history than anyone in the current team), and also Jane, who he fills in about the recent events in Seattle as well.

They get the rebels to hide them in the city, as increased AZT patrols and rioting locals have encouraged them to obey the curfew. However, TY sends his drone out to get riot footage and it gets spotted, so they bail on the safehouse (which gets raided) and hide in the jungle with the rebels. They smuggle them across the border the next day, and they get picked up by a small biplane and flown back to Cartagena, and then Seattle, with their pay and some queasy feelings of ethical distress.

Butch is working on a job for them to infiltrate the ACHE (aka the old Renraku Arcology) and investigate what’s happening in there, having heard some disturbing reports. There are close to 100,00 poor and distressed residents recently relocated inside, under Kenneth Brackhaven initiative to get the streets cleared. However once inside, they often don’t have the option to get back out, so there’s not much info. It has essentially become a huge, closed debtor’s prison, and Lone Star is bidding for the contract to police it. They are stinging from the loss of the Seattle contract, and this would be a good way for Brackhaven to assuage them. The UCAS still has military units in the highest and lowest levels slowly combing through the leftovers from Deus’ reign. Speculation on the boards suggests everything from secret AI activities, to insect cults, to Butch’s worry that there may be an outbreak of the disease she is investigating. So she wants a capable team inside to get some real info.

Runners:
Thankyou aka Eckhard Roberts
Aemon Burst
Ortega
Ro Tain
Tonie Dick

The team, having healed up in Butch’s street clinic, heads out and immediately comes under attack from 3 ork street sams, who seem to be waiting for them (or at least someone) right outside. They defeat them, but they prove hardy foes, and 2 manage to regain their feet and flee after what should have been killing blows. Butch heals them a bit, and tells them she has to move clinics again as “they” are onto her. She is researching some kind of bizarre infection that she believes has ties to the recent nanotech failures, and warns the team against nanotech. She also asks them to bring anyone exhibiting certain symptoms that they encounter to her, once she has a new spot set up.

They notice her assistants dumping C-squared all over, and hear some gunshots ring out from a back room- she says she doesn’t have as protocols for moving some of the subjects. She gives them some medical supplies and her contact info, and they head out to meet the Johnson the Exchange set them up with. They see a filthy anglo man get thrown out as they approach. The Johnson is a somewhat effete Korean man with a pencil mustache, out of place in the barrens bar where they meet. He has a simple job: retrieve a comm from a street dealer. He doesn’t explain what is on it. They agree, not wanting to anger the Exchange, and bribe some gangers to get easy access to the dealer’s room in the coffin motel where he’s holed up.

They find him dead, and with 2 comm’s. He was strangled, and has been dead 6-12 hours. They also recover some nuyen and his drug stash. They leave, and meet the Johnson. He accepts the dealer’s comm, as expected, but tells them he doesn’t want the other: it looks like it could be valuable, but not to him. Intrigued, they dig into it, and TY finds an encrypted contact list with 18 names, and a hidden partition containing who knows what?! They call Sem-par, who is on a job and sends them to Barnaby “Wombat” Rudd, who opens the partition and decrypts the contents. However, the data is fragmented. He tells them it likely has an additional part, and the need to be put back together to make sense of it.

Luckily, some fragments still stand out: they identify the comms owner as Seth Dietrich, and find that it contains files suggesting that Kenneth Brackhaven has been using a shadow operative named Bill to assassinate key figures in the Project Freedom movement (the group pushing to legalize the Ork Underground). This has included the strangling of Dietrich’s FBI agent predecessor on the case, using the Mayan Cutter copycat, and the firebombing the team helped deal with, as well as assassination attempts on Bull MacCallister. The files also allude to some (still forthcoming) plan, called Project Daybreak.

They contact Bull, and he seems appropriately interested/disturbed. He explains that Dietrich was a fed, but that he came over to Project Freedom’s side after going undercover as a runner in their midst. He hired a team and was working on something big when he vanished last winter, his team all turned up dead. Bull also says he will put them in touch with his son Tauren, one of Project Freedom’s lead deckers. They plan to meet up once he can get a protective team together, and the team decides to keep driving around till then. Sadly, their van gets hacked by someone named Bios-Fear while passing Glow City, and they come under attack from a pack of predator-modded gangers with eerie, supersonic howls. Their van is trashed by a handful of frag grenades. A hidden hacker damages and probes their gear until they slay the 5 gangers, who fight with tooth, claw, and cyberimplant blade.

They then scatter to the surrounding buildings, as they hear the screech of approaching tires. A heavily cybered-up, physically huge, stereotypical mafia mobster hops out of the front of the truck, while 5 goons leap out of the back and pelt the team with molotovs. The cybered-up guy ko’s Ro with an auto-shotgun, but flees after Aemon grievously wounds him. The rest of the goons rush Ortega with baseball bats, desperate to stop his suppressive fire, but do no harm and are quickly killed.

However, there is not a moment to rest as Ortega, TY, a drone, and Aemon all come under attack from katana-wielding ninjas! Ortega takes a heavy blow, the drone is destroyed, and TY is ko’d. Ro manages to take out the guy attacking Aemon, Aemon drops one of the 2 on Ortega, Ortega takes more damage, another attacks Aemon, and Ro drops him also. The real heavy hitter who has been bashing Ortega tells him he “fought honorably” before fleeing. The last remaining ninja detonates frag and smoke grenades to cover his escape, killing himself, and damaging some of the team.

Tauren finally calls to tell them there’s a retrieval team incoming, and they should expect a pickup by a Knight Errant paddy wagon, driven by Tosh Athack. He arrives, and they head for the Ork Underground, and healing there. On the way, they receive a call from a man claiming to be Dietrich himself (who has been missing for almost half a year). He seems rushed and tense, but tells them that he needs his comm back, and will pay a lot of money for it if they meet him the next day to hand it over. They arrange to meet at the zoo, mid afternoon, and then spend the remainder of the evening healing.

They research the teams who attacked them, and determine that it was likely the Shotozumi-Gumi yakuza, working on behalf of MCT, the Ciarniello mafia family, working on behalf of Ares, and the Night Hunters glow-punk thrill gang, working for Brackhaven. They also hear from Rudd, who has managed to evade his pursuers and safely reach the base, though the team is worried someone may have followed, or more hitters may come.

They gear up with dress armor and light arms, and head to the zoo, with Tonie Dick scouting ahead, finding nothing unusual. They make contact, but Dietrich appears to be having some sort of episode, and refers to himself as Armitage, and claims that he has no memories of the last 2 decades, or the deal they made. Aemon assesses him, and notes that he has the same oddity with his aura as the cyber-orks who attacked them at Butch’s. Before he can get more info, Dietrich is killed by a silenced sniper’s round, which also breaks open the nearby basilisk enclosure. TD, on point, comes under fire from 2 human cyber-assassins, and Ro is charged by an enraged piasma, while Aemon fights off the basilisks with Ortega’s help. They recognize Dietrich as the man they saw thrown out of the bar earlier.

They manage to escape mostly unscathed, and everyone except TD manages to flee the zoo without getting arrested. TD manages to avoid answering questions until Imaginary Annie Goldsmith, the Invisible Esquire, arrives. She introduces herself as his lawyer, courtesy of the Exchange, and gets TD out, after which he spills a bit of info about Dietrich to her. The rest of the team, having found Dietrich’s 2nd comm, as well as the promised money, link up with Tauren and figure out that they now have the 2nd piece of the puzzle.

They receive calls from 3 people: a shadow runner, possibly working for Kenneth Brackhaven, named Gregory Zane, offering a huge pile of cash for the 2 comms, and reps for Ares and Mitsuhama offering large but lesser amounts. They ask Tauren what he can pay, and he puts them in touch with Eliza Bloom, a Project Freedom leader and wannabe governor, who offers by far the smallest amount. However, despite Ro’s resistance, they decide to sell it to Bloom and cohort, who promises to also get it to DA Dana Oaks, who is working on an indictment against Brackhaven.

They come under attack from Zane and a runner team before they reach the Ork Underground, and engage in a rolling firefight. TY manages to jury-rig the car and keep it rolling on, despite massive matrix and physical damage, and they do enough damage to drive the opposition off- the orks with AK’s and a rocket launcher at the entrance probably don’t hurt. They manage to get inside, while the orks scare off a circling helicopter, and get some healing while the Skraacha move them to a secure location. They also hear from Bloom, who tells them she has more work for them based on info gained from the decrypted files on Dietrich’s comms.

They meet with Bloom, Bull, and Dana Oaks in the Underground to hear the debts. They are to use disposable gliders to infiltrate Brackhaven Investments to gain a secret “insurance policy” data store in an offline server there. This is supposedly the info that Dietrich died trying to retrieve. They agree, and plan and train for the job. They also decide to hire Sem-par to do the hacking part, rather than using Tauren, as Bull seems a bit nervous for his safety.

They head to the hotel that has been rented for the job, and jump through the removed windows on the top floor, while Bull, Tauren and others provide external hacking support and edit camera feeds. They also send along a spirit of man to provide concealment, though it can’t enter the building due to the magical wards protecting it. They manage to glide in past the sensors, and avoid triggering the antiaircraft guns. They enter, and carefully descend the 40 floors from the top to get to the server. They have to hide from guards a few times, but make it almost all the way before getting in their first firefight. They easily deal with the underarmed guards, but have a harder time with 2 spirits which keep messing with them.

They race for the server, realizing that they need to get it done fast, and just get set up for a fight as Sem-Par gets to hacking. 2 corpsec teams and 2 more guard teams assault simultaneously from the elevators and the stairs, and they get in a brutal, lengthy firefight. Everyone takes some heavy damage and expends multiple clips, but they manage to keep them from reaching Sem-Par, and they get the file just as they finish dealing with the guards. However a hacker bricks Ortega’s cybereyes, so TY is having to help him move and aim. They race down a few more flight of stairs, before getting messed with by spirits again.

They decide to abandon the stairwell, and exit to the 3rd floor, where they get into another gunfight with corpsec guards. They emerge victorious, blast open a window, and rig up their grapple guns to allow them to descend. As promised, there is a raging riot, with protestors fighting corp goons and Metroplex Guard units, and the waiting spirit of man conceals them again. They make their way through the crowd, with TY leading the still-blind Ortega, and reach the hotel, where they load up in 2 waiting step-vans and race off to relative safety.

They get a “get out of jail free” card from Oaks, good for anything short of felony murder she says, as well as the promise of future favor from the Underground. And, of course, their pay. Time to heal up and find more work!