Runners:
Thankyou aka Eckhard Roberts
Aemon Burst
Ortega
Ro Tain
The team is contacted by Sid Gambetti, a CZ Johnson, to come meet him at The Vault about a job. They agree, and head out, but come across some Fleshmongers on the way, kidnapping an unconscious family. Ortega rages, and rescues the child, while the rest of the team guns down the gangers. However, the 2 ghoul overseers manage to escape, although Ortega films them and posts a bounty for their death.
They reach the Vault, and TY tries to impress the Desolation Angels guards with the dead ’Mongers cuts, but they seem mostly bored. The team enters, and sees that Sid is in the ring, holding up the arm of the winner of a just-concluded pitfight. He messages them to meet him in back, and they do. He introduces them to Matt Wrath, the fighter, who is quietly petting a dire rat in the corner. Sid tells them that he is organizing a team to go on a run for Martin Tate, a doctor who operates a clinic out of the Vault. They agree to go meet him, and after Sid leaves, Matt tells them to talk to Becky 99 at the local barter market as well.
They meet Tate and he gives them the deets: he wants to open a 2nd clinic in the CZ, and has found a good site, but needs the team to go retrieve whatever ownership records are still there so that he can take possession with no trouble. They agree, and head to the market to gear up, grabbing some explosives and such. They also meet Becky, in a booth full of more DA’s. She tells them she is always on the lookout for relics of the city’s past, and that the site Tate has them headed to used to be a trid studio, pre-Bugs, so they may have some good stuff. She offers to pay them a small bonus for any trids they can retrieve, and tells them that it won’t interfere with their main job. They agree. She also says something cryptic about Tate’s corporate goals, but they don’t inquire further.
They rest up that night at the Vault, and reach the building the next day without incident. It is pretty well sealed-up, and there is a disturbing tree full of metahuman skulls growing out of the middle of the parking lot. TY scouts the roof with a drone and finds a large garden, as well as feral looking ganger tending a hydroponic setup on the floor below. They decide to enter the main warehouse via a rolling door, rather than try to gain access to the office building which looks more fortified. TY spots a dragon swooping down from inside as they open the door and shoots it! But it was only made of paper, and harmlessly explodes, merely startling those below. They enter through a cloud of mist and busted turnstiles, and find themselves, confusingly, in a forest of over-large trees.
A voice tells them to “leave our home!” and they look around to try to spot the speaker. Aemon really wants to shoot something. They spot some huts and bridges in the trees, as well as a bubbling swamp in one corner of the building. TY and Ro converse with the voice, and Ro uses psychology to recognize that his diction and accent imply he is some sort of delusional LARP-er, though he seems cogent enough to talk with them. They convince him to come parlay, and Ortega recognizes the man’s costume as a Neil the Ork Barbarian getup (though the main wearing it is merely a large human). He seems to fully believe that he is Neil, however, so they tell him they are on a heroic quest to retrieve some mystical scrolls from the cavern below this forest.
He agrees to allow them passage, so long as it will not harm his home or people, and they assure him. He calls out his fellows, more feral gangers with bows, who had concealed themselves around the “forest.” Aemon is getting super annoyed about all these fantasists. They head back through a “cave” into what looks like an old employee lounge, and meet Kira, who Neil introduces as his wife. She is very pregnant, and TY thinks she might be a technomancer, based on the static he suddenly encounters when he nears her. They pass through, and Neil whistles a pack of 6 hellhounds to bay and throws them some meat (good thing they didn’t enter the office first!). The presence of the hounds helps explain the totally burned out, hollow office building. Easy for Tate to remodel at least?
They head to the basement, and many of them slip and fall on the filthy shit-covered steps. They are standing in about a foot of still, fetid sewage, and check the rooms nearby quickly, finding nothing in the first 3, and then being swarmed by a huge pack of rats and devil rats in the fourth. TY grenades the room with everyone else surpresses, and Ro finishes them off (as well as zapping the team a bit) with her shock plate armor. They escape largely unharmed, and seem to have partially collapsed the rats access tunnel. They enter the final door and find an editing suite with a huge terminal which looks intact. TY manages to jury rig a setup to run power from the transformer in the corner, across the moldy drop-ceiling, to the terminal without getting electrocuted.
They run Tate’s program, and start looking for files for Becky. They find some but they are in such as archaic format that they need to process them before copying. TY almost has one finished when Tate’s program wipes everything off the computer! They head back upstairs a bit disappoited, and Neil & Kira aks what they found. TY falls under their charismatic sway and shows them, against Ro’s wishes. Not wanting to lose their home, they seem a bit upset at first, but TY and Ro sell them on a deal where they could stay in the warehouse and provide security for the the clinic in the office building, so they wouldn’t even lose much space. They agree, and Kira helps retrieve the rest of the one file for Becky that they had found.
They spend the night sharing stories of their adventures and exploits over ale around a fire, and Aemon finally demonstrates his shooting prowess on the roof, impressing a young archer. They head back in the morning, sell Tate on the deal as well (he is impressed with the peaceful resolution and says he’ll be in touch when he needs more work), and get paid. Becky is happy that they got the 1 file at least and also pays up. Ro is contacted by a few different people: Samantha Roth says she is looking for any useful intel on corp (or other) activity on the ground in the CZ, a woman named Corinna is seeking the same (as well as info on Roth), and an attractive elf woman calls with another job offer. Ro sells some info to Corinna for now, after TY does some research and id’s her as a member of the Nadja Fixer Network. She says she’ll pay well in the future for a first look at anything of interest that they come across.
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