Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
and a sad goodbye to:Locke

The team checks in on Tabasco’s healing process, and finds him mostly conscious at least, but still in bad shape. He plans to stay in touch via comms relay from the VTOL while the team checks out the ARES biodrone facility for Moreau. They get in touch and head over to Moreau’s position, and see what looks obviously like 2 shod and 2 unshod Alpha footprints leading into the facility, where they seem to have basically kool-aid-manned through the fence and wall. Moreau equips them all with dart guns to try to capture and rescue any animals they can, and says he has plans for the building if they can maintain it’s integrity.

They head in, worried about what they might find. Otters stays back with the van and accompanies via drone. They find some wrecked sec drones outside, and some bloody smears and drag marks inside. A perimeter hall wraps around a central core, which when they enter, they find filled with cages and enclosures, with various animals in various states of modification within. It looks like the Alphas tried to Infest some of them, but the animals (perhaps thankfully?) did not survive the transformation, leaving horrifying mutated corpses, and an awful smell, though the industrial extractors seem to still be working well so it only registers up close.

Worse yet, they spot a ritual circle carved into the ceiling, centered on an elevator shaft which seems to have a lot of unnecessary components attached. While exploring they are surprised when an unarmored Alpha bursts forth from under a pile of animal corpses in one of the cages and assaults them. They manage to take it out, and Otters runs in with some white phosphorous grenades provided by Moreau to burn the corpse and stop the regeneration. They continue exploring the top level of the facility, worried that the elevator is an obvious place for a trap. Astral space definitely seems buggy in a way they couldn’t detect from the exterior, also.

As they find a corpse pile (some of the metahuman guards, but definitely not all), they come under heavy fire from outside, through the loading dock. 2 more Alphas charge them, one armored, one unarmored. The unarmored ones, being more visible, are even more horrifying somehow, with their misshapen and mutating flesh pulsing and bulging, various bits of different bugs visible across the surface mixed with the once human features. They get in a brutal fight in which much of the team is badly injured, and Locke is felled and stabbed with an ovipositor. Chew Gum, acting quickly, blows the downed Locke’s head off with his shotgun before they can transform, a sad and sudden end for the talented investigator.

The team pauses briefly to mourn once they finish the Alphas off, and burn all the bodies, inclduing Locke’s.They head outside and see where these Alphas tunneled up from below, on an angle that looks to intersect with the base of the elevator shaft. They tranq as many animals as they can inside, and get Moreau to start hauling them out, deciding they’ll likely need to do some mega-damage to whatever lurks below. Creep heads down the tunnel, with the drone swarm. Creep hangs back a bit while the drones make a first pass, and uncover a scene of true horror.

The remaining armored Alpha is standing guard as the newly mutated facility staff feasts on various animals and metahuman corpses, seemingly fueling their transformation. More upsettingly, there is what looks like a stable portal, likely to Vhortas, that seems very similar to the team file notes on the portal on the space station that ARES had previously been using to instantiate the Alphas. They also see surgical bays, staff housing, and another tunnel leading off towards Downtown.

Panicked, Otters sends the VTOL to the Platinum Zone with a report on what they found, and Rifleman loads up a hard case with Ravenheart’s approval, when it arrives back, it contains one of the mini nukes that the Irregulars seems to have salvaged from one of the ARES APC’s that were carrying them. Creep sneaks it down to the basement, and gets it tucked in behind the portal, arming it and leaving a few smoke grenades to go off to add confusion to cover his exit, and then legs it. Luckily it wasn’t set to an immediate detonation, and he gets clear in time.

Dig seals up the tunnel exit with concrete, and the team all hauls out as many tranq-ed animals as they can. The massive explosion rumbles the earth, pancakes the building, and launches Dig’s concrete tunnel plug flying far away. Luckily, this all seems to have severely curtailed the radioactive spread, and likely amplified the explosion. Briefly checking astral space, Dig and CG confirm that the buggy vibe seems gone, annihilated by an overwhelming radioactive shredding that has destroyed the local mana sphere. Portal closed, but at a cost….

Luckily Dig and CG got a good look at the ritual circle in astral space, and think they could perhaps ID the caster. Otters sends a report in to the Plat Zone and they get paid. They also call the Detective to report on Locke’s death, which greatly saddens them. Dig and CG both contribute some funds to the Keepers, who Locke had just begun to hire and befriend, and also compose a memorial poem, which Otters also forwards to the Plat Zone.

Dig, in bird form and CG, in the VTOL, travel over to the bolthole safehouse in the storage facility and do a lengthy ritual to locate the caster of the insect portal ritual. They confirm that it was either Hendricks himself or a close associate based on where traces crop up around town, but he seems to be underground and likely behind some sort of magical defense. They think they could track him using this, however. They report this into the Plat Zone as well, and get paid. The rest of the team rests, heals, and repairs gear, with Iva frantically patching their armor.

They hear on the night’s Radio Free Detroit broadcast about Locke’s heroic death, and also some even worse news: there’s been an Alpha breakout to the West as well as the North. Some bugs tunneled up into a mostly SINless survivor enclave, and Alphas followed them in, slaughtering everyone inside. Also, Julia “Deadline” Pesina continues her reportage on the ghoul situation locally, and finally is able to ID the ghouls working to use the ferals to nefarious ends: Fear the Dark is in town! The slogan “Eat Locals, Fuck You” has been found at multiple bloody feeding sites, where they preyed on civvies trapped at home. This is a perversion of the popular Irregulars slogan “Eat Local, Kill Fucks!”, originally popularized by the neo-anarchist chef Castiron.

Otters also checks in with Howell about the completion of the job for Moreau and they settle up for that. Howell has another job, not a rush this time, to pull a museum heist amidst the chaos. Otters runs it by the team and they agree to get to it when they can. Disturbingly, as they all return to the safehouse on their rest day, they find that Dig’s golem has torn the arms off an intruder. Worried who it might be, they flip the body over but don’t recognize them. A scrap of paper falls out of their pocket as they shift the body though, and they find one of Roderick Kensignton’s journal entries, about the team and their possession of Tarot cards.

They decide they better look further into this, and add it to the list. Tabasco, finally not dangerously radioactive, gets flown over to the Metal Maniacs clinic and ushered quickly back into the surgical suite, where Leanna Octave once again tries to convince him to become a Monad, but settles for doing some radical implants, including a full cyberskull with junkyard jaw and some orthoskin to replace what’s absent. The team is collectively a bit horrified upon his return to the safehouse, aside from Otters, who is her usual chipper self.

Having gone for a stylized skull, Tabasco has a weird moment looking in a mirror when he realizes he can no longer take off his mask and cowl. The sharpened scrap metal jaw is also pretty extreme, to be fair. However, he’s feeling the post-surgery high and is excited to be back on his feet and ready to rumble. The team takes a moment to figure out which task to prioritize next…

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

The team kits out with the rad-resistant gear as best they can, with Tabasco and Otters’ mule drone getting the upgrades. Chew Gum plans to accompany them as near as possible to the hole to provide support and overwatch, while the rest of the crew secures a spot for Tabasco to hang out away from others when he emerges as he will be radioactive for some time. They head over to Grosse Pointe and Creep remembers a promising, poorly guarded lockup, where they steal a kayak with an outrigger and put out to sea in it. Creep and Locke hang out and chat while Dig flies above, keeping an eye out. He sees the wreckage of some watercraft that have tried to run the ARES cordon, unsuccessfully, and warns the boaters to stay well inside the perimeter.

CG holds back on the north edge of Zone 1, as his spirits are unwilling to go further- even astrally examining the irradiated Zone 3 causes them all light nausea, but they shake it off. They provide concealment as long as possible, and CG covers with his rifle. Otters, circling high above in the Dustoff guides in the mule drone, while Tabasco sneaks alongside. They find an old rusted car with a camo tarp over it parked right up next to the hole, and some tracks suggesting that between 2-4 people dragged one or more heavy items from the car into the hole. Tabasco becomes instantly fixated and abandons the primary mission to focus on this.

They descend into the hole, spotting the 3 ruined but not fully destroyed APC’s, still stuck in their side tunnels. Otters has to stop at the edge of her effective range before reaching the blast center due to rad damage and bad signal, but Tabasco, boosted by Stitches’ drug cocktail, pushes on. He stats experiencing some very disturbing side effects- hair falling out, skin blistering, hallucinations, but reaches the epicenter, and finds the wrecked bits of the other 3 APC’s. A path has been pushed through and the tracks continue.

He loses his astral sense of taste and feels blood pouring out of his gums, but he pushes through, and spots which tunnel the tracks head down, seemingly due south, before turning back. All of his teeth fall off and his skin begins to slough off as he begins to enter cellular death. He starts running for the exit as fast as he can, his cyberlimbs carrying him most of the way, with Otters (via the mule drone) getting him the rest of the way, and jumping into Tabasco’s cyberlimbs using previously granted permissions to use his grapple hand to get out.

Fortunately, while hanging back, Otters remembered to complete the primary mission, and retrieved a damaged data core from one of the command group APC’s for the Plat Zone to dig into. Otters drags Tabasco free of the high danger zone with the mule, then zips down in the Dustoff, loads Tabasco in, and manages to stabilize him through some miraculous medical checks with the Valkyrie module, and Tabasco’s strong natural resistances. However, all of his skin and external organs have sloughed off and he is in bad shape. The drone covers him in medical gel, as Otters heads back to the safehouse, leaving the mule a ways away from everyone for a day or two til it’s safe to fix.

CG stays behind to keep an eye on the mysterious car, but fails to spot when someone moves it, and decides toxic mages must be involved, if they were able to get both in and out of that terrible area. The Dustoff drops Tabasco in the kayak, and Dig tries to magically heal him but fails. The Dustoff circles at a safe ditsance to not take more damage from the rads, stopping in once an hour to maintain treatment. The rest of the team decides to chill at the safehouse for the night, and Dig shows off some cool illusions. Upsettingly, there is another earth shaking explosion from the south, but no mushroom cloud this time at least.

Creep goes on a solo recon to check it out, while Locke befriends some street kids who call themselves The Keepers and seem to collect mangy strays. From Creep’s recon, supported by a Watcher spirit from Dig, they determine that what they likely witnessed at the hold was evidence of toxic mages allied with Otto Hendricks using explosives salvaged from the downed ARES bombers to blow open a new front in the bug vs. ARES fight downtown. Luckily, this doesn’t seem to have pulled in the Plat Zone, so no worries there at least. The team reports all their intel in, and gets paid a decent amount, with a hazard bonus for Tabasco,

While relaxing after everyone is back, they get a frantic call from Jaga, who says that a new group of refugee arrivals to the area came in with one suspicious member, who apparently got lightly grazed by an ALPHA but seemingly escaped serious harm. After carefully examine, they confirm Jaga’s worry that the person was infested by the ALPHA in the same way they tried to do to Tabasco, and that the process seems to work incredibly fast. Jaga has contained the patient in a mana bubble, and Dig enters and lethally lightning bolts. This does seem to halt the transformation, so that’s good.

After confirming that this also took care of any astral traces, they send the body to the Plat Zone for some additional pay. They also call Carol to warn about Hendricks having gone full toxie/bug, and get some more cash, as well as a reminder that Weathernight wants them to look into dangerous infiltrators in ARES corporate. The team rests after listening to the nightly Radio Free Detroit broadcast, and hearing some more propaganda in favor of pro-social ghoul factions, including the surprising news that ALPHAS, as opposed to most bugs, make good eating!

The next day, Otters checks in with her fixer Howell, who is also her BTL-A sponsor. They check in about how that is going, and then Howell hires the crew for a mission on behalf of Moreau, the strange man at the zoo who wanted to join Dig’s Order but wasn’t magical. There is a secret ARES biodrone research facility outside of the No-Go Zone that Moreau has eyes on that was recently breached, and he wants to save any animals they can. They accept the gig, and Otters calls up Moreau, who is keeping an eye on things at the facility for now.

He tells them it looks like something broke in, not out, and it looks likely to be ALPHAS. Having already been worried that there could be a bug portal somewhere locally, and knowing this facility was likely one of Hendrick’s, the team decides they better hurry over there and shut down whatever is going on. Tabasco regains consciousness, but seems likely to be in for a long recovery, so he bows out of the next mission, and punches in a call to the Metal Maniacs, which luckily is close to the water in Grosse Pointe, so he plans to paddle over when he regains enough strength.

They hear the night’s Radio Free Detroit as they prep to head out, and apparently a lot of Chicago ghouls are answering the call, and requesting sanctuary if they help deal with the bug threat, with Presbitero’s “anti-infected” campaign apparently gaining enough steam in Chicago to make in untenable to remain there. With the recent influx of Neo-A’s as well, it seems like a lot of the weirder elements of Chicago are being forced out as the rebuilding corporatizes, though the spirit of the dance is still strong there…

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

First thing, the team decide they need their van back, and that the increasingly chaotic fight may have created the opportunity they needed. Otters does overwatch from the Dustoff while Creep and Locke head over on foot. Unfortunately, Locke gets spotted by an alert ARES gunner holed up in a ruined building, and nearly felled with an auto burst. Creep manages to chuck some smoke grenades out and they make their escape, with Otters providing some pathfinding for them and hot pickup via the van once she gets the drone close enough to leapfrog in and hot-rig it out.

They get back to the base, and convince Zennia to set up a radio at the Tin Can, but convince them not to use it too much to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Zennia brings them a little further into her circle of trust, showing them up to where she keeps her birds on the roof and revealing that they are messenger birds! She says the team can bring them with on missions when needed to send offline messages back to get relayed, but says that Myrryr (a Pidgeon shaman) is one of the few in town who can get birds to flew to destinations as well as back from.

The team head north to Vendor’s Row to finally see what happened with that nuke, with most of them doing overwatch while Creep sneaks up to the blast site accompanied by the fly-spys.Radioactivity is real bad, as is astral space- Dig and CG have to hold way back, and the Wealth vibe that had previously dominated the area is now overlaid with a nasty toxic aspect. Creep hangs back at the edge of the blast site after getting some visuals, and acts as a comms relay to the drones until Otters gets the Dustoff positioned high up over the blast zone. From what they can tell, something tunneled up from underneath the reserve line, and one or more APC’s entered/fell into the tunnels.

Otters pushes the drones further in, having to max out her signal strength on her RCC to counteract the bad interference.She finds blasted wrecks of 3 APC’s down some side tunnels, and the team recognizes these as part of the command group of the reserve force from previous recon- seems like a targeted tunneling attack! She pushes the drone a little further and finds the blast’s epicenter, getting some data before it fries. It is likely the worst background count area any of them have seen, and it looks like 3 more APC’s got stuck in the main tunnel further in and detonated as either a failsafe or desperate last resort.

The team surmises that the Alphas up here, already amped up from the pheromones let loose by other Alphas in combat, likely fully broke loose after the tunnel break out and nuke detonation, as the ARES reserve line seems to have totally crumpled and fighting seems rampant throughout the district. Not having any ability to get better data currently due to the high rads, they head back to the safehouse to regroup. Iva is still working on patching up the van armor, after having needed a long sleep following a long day patching up Tabasco and Locke’s armor. CG heads over the Magic Bean, has a weird convo with the new age proprietor Penelope Bean, and orders a summoning focus.

Otters then flies in the Dustoff down to Windsor, surveying the extensive damage to Hendrick’s former position on the north shore, and drops another radio off with the ghouls at Neverland, who seem eager to dispose of more bodies the team may come across. Otters return with this info, but decides to swing by the Plat Zone on the way to get paid, and gets some followups and further intel while there. She also sees that a bunch of Neo-A’s from Berlin and Boston have answered the call and come to town, and a big crew of radical bug fighters/Black Star/Midway vets from Chicago have rolled in as well. They’re setting up heavy duty anti-air defenses on/around the Plat Zone, and Otters also spots some merc patrols headed out- the leadership seems to be trying to integrate mercs and runners into small squads with perhaps mixed results.

Otters reports in, gets paid, and hears that they need a tunnel rat to physically head into the tunnels off Vendor’s Row and try to pull any surviving data from the not fully obliterated APC’s- the command group might have useful intel. Also, some toxies or possibly members of Hendrick’s force have been spotted trying to salvage explosives from the various downed bombers, and Otters get the impression that Vogel/Carol managed to get a message through to the bomber wing commander to get aloft just before the attack, which was ignored by the main base command, to their extreme detriment.

Tabasco, overhearing all this, volunteers for tunnel rat duty, surprising many, and Stitches and Rifleman send Otters home with some equipment to help Tabasco and Otters’ new Mule drone get into the radioactive zone while minimizing risk and exposure.Otters flies back with all that and starts modding the Mule while Iva tunes up Tabasco’s armor. Tabasco gets flown over to the Metal Maniacs clinic and gets a few mods that Creep reco’s for navigating an underground tunnel system, and also snags a MM bandana for Iva, a gang memorabilia collector, as the local implant junkies seem to have formed a street gang around the clinic.

Otters starts flying herslef over for some mods as well, but overhearing the bizarro transhumanist banter dominant at MM decides better of it and turns back, which gets a chuckle from MAMA, which also worries Otters a bit. With Tabasco loaded up and ready to go , the team rest up and prep for another mission north, while listening on the radio to the day’s broadcast- Julia Pesina, using her new street named “Deadline”, on “Radio Free Detroit”, giving the threats and recon update to any and all listeners. It seems ARES forces have been ordered to hunker down and hold position, so most of the civilian rescuing and bug fighting is falling to the Irregulars so far. There’s been some cooperation from ARES forces in a few Zones, especially the ones with heavier casualties and more command level losses, so the team gets some good ideas of where to distro the next few radios. However, a few other Zones, including Downtown, have gotten extra fascist and paranoid, with summary executions common, so travelers beware….

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

Locke rejoins the group after the chaotic shadow meeting, and they all split off to socialize a bit and make new contacts. They see Carol rush out after exchanging info with some of the movers and shakers. Tabasco tries to make friends with Rose from the Windsor crew, which initially goes well until he loudly announces that she is a technomancer, which she would prefer is kept on the DL. The Windsor crew leaves soon after this, and seems a little skeptical about the top down command style proposed, but overall on board for co-oping.

Dig starts speculating to some of the waitstaff about what it will be like for future archaeologists to excavate the nuclear ruins of Detroit, freaking everyone out, until Otters notices and distracts him for a bit. They both hang out with Tofu the dog and Walker, the blind adept staff fighter, and chat a bit about the situation. CG claims one of the bodies of the dead assassins for his future spirit needs, and talks to Ringmaster about the value of allying with ghouls, specifically the Skins, who helped them out. Ringmaster seems amenable and asks the team to set up a meeting. They are told they can recruit others to the cause as well, but they’ll need vetting at HQ.

Creep and Otters both notice a surprising lack of gangers present, which both enquire about. Walker tells Otters about the major roundups recently, and the Cutters weren’t invited for the obvious reasons. Creep also gets some info that they were mostly reaching out to pro’s when setting up the meeting, so if the team has useful gang contacts in the Blight or elsewhere, they should use them to bring more people in for the cause. Otters also helps Electric Blue set up a comms station with spare parts salvaged from the Numbers Station, to cut down on the young TM’s massive work load.

Locke chats with Julia Pesina, who seems hopped up on pain meds but amped on her reportage plans. She offers to pay for scoops and hot tips, and thanks the team for saving her, and says she will have to thank the Skins as well after Locke hypes up their role in the rescue as well. CG links up with Castiron and trades him some odd plants and ingredients that Jaga helped him find for some freezer access for the other corpses, and Locke calls the ghouls to tell them to come get them when they get a chance.

Otters quickly buys a mule transport drone, CG straps his claimed corpse to it, and the team heads out on foot (or wing, in Dig’s case) for the safehouse. They aim to bypass the loose Alphas they saw on the way down, but Otters botches it and gets spotted. They get in a brutal firefight, but due to Tabasco’s incredible armor, manage to avoid taking any damage and get some great data and some alpha samples. Tabasco licks one of the Alpha corpses to try to get some astral info, which works, but he almost gets stabbed with a post-mortem ovipositor and is covered with eggs which quickly hatch and start crawling into the seams of his cyber limbs.

Thinking quick, Dig fries Tabasco and the bugs with a lightning bolt, which luckily grounds out through Tabasco’s cyberlegs, not doing major internal damage. Still, he’s pretty hurt, but seems to be free of infestation. Otters flies Tabasco back to the Plat Zone in the Dustoff drone while the team keeps watch for more trouble and burns the bodies. Tabasco gets ushered into a decontamination unit and drops off the samples. Otters then flies herself back to the Plat Zone as well, and gets pay from Ringmaster, and then reverses the process to fly Tabasco and herself up the safehouse.

The rest of the team hoofs it up there and rests up, repairs armor, restocks ammo and the like. Locke fills everyone in on The Detective’s investigation into 2 Tarot cults that may have gotten operatives into town. Jaga helps CG do his corpse ritual. Iva patches up Tabasco once he’s back, and Otters finally gets into the guts of the med-drone (very impressive) and sets it about providing medical assistance to everyone resting. Otters and Locke, not otherwise occupied, head up the roof when they hear more explosions to the southwest.

Otters panics and thinks it’s for sure the Plat Zone, but makes contact with them and confirms it isn’t. She gets drones up and follows Locke’s fears, finding that Damien Knight Int’l has extensively exploded as well. It looks similar but larger scale to what happened on Belle Isle to the airbase there. Otters follows the airports bomber wing, who look to have gotten airborne just ahead of the attack, as they make a bombing run over Otto Hendrick’s position in Windsor, devastating the North part of the area along the river. Some anti-aircraft fire responds along with some spellcraft, but the bombs look very effective.

Lacking long enough landing strips, the bombers split, with some ditching into the water while the pilots eject, some flying over the town seemingly looking for clear stretches of road, and a few trying to flee the cordon around Detroit. Otters watches in shock and terror as the ones trying to escape are cut down by an orbital laser as they reach the edge of the magical cloud cover, leaving surely no survivors. Otters live streams this all to Ringmaster, who as usual requests follow-up’s and more info. She also sells the data to Carol, who once again proves the stronger negotiator but doesn’t aggressively take advantage.

The team all wakes up/finishes healing and reconnects- time to figure out what to do next, lots of opportunities for work!

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill

Locke announces they’ll be sitting this one out to make contact with some local allies, look further into the Tarot and Prophecies, and similar. They stay behind at the Platinum Zone to make use of their comms. The rest of the team prepares to head out, though Marv tells them to return by the next evening, as they’re planning a “big meeting” of some sort that the team should be at. They head out after debating what to look into first.

They cut around the main battle sites successfully, swinging out into Dearborn and finding only isolated bug outbreaks nearby. Luckily for the team, this means the underequipped KE troops guarding the Zone perimeters have their hands full, so the team easily bypasses them. Noticing a ton of air traffic at Knight Int’l Aerospaceport, they make a brief diversion to surveil. it looks like since that massive detonation at the FOB on Belle Isle, ARES has rerouted their air support, refueling and resupply here. The ground crews seem understaffed and frantic, and it looks like they’re running midair refueling flights as well to try to keep their drones in the air.

Useful intel! But back to the task at hand, the team continues South, and cuts over Grosse Isle into Windsor, swinging southeast to the park area where Otters instructed the sub to drop Julia Pesina off. Otters gets some pings from sub equipment but can’t make a direct connection, and when they arrive, Dig (as a dolphin) finds some of the sub’s armor and sensors have been blown off and are floating nearby. No sign of the vessel itself, so they hope it survived whatever happened here. Looking around, Creep and Otters piece together that Pesina seems to have crawled ashore and then been grabbed by what looks to be 2 shoeless ghouls.

The team tracks the ghouls back to a necropolis in central Windsor, and while surveilling from the perimeter see that the place is crawling with ghouls, with a high proportion of ferals. This is a recent change, as the team had scoped this place out for threats a few weeks back before renting their bolthole garage space nearby. They spot one friendly seeming ghoul approaching them, and Creep makes awkward contact. The ghoul, dressed as a pirate, introduces himself as Smee, and says that he saw a woman get carried, semi-conscious, into the cemetery, and offers to help. The team accepts.

Smee explains that he is a “Topsider”, one of the rare ghouls tolerated by ARES to live above the surface. He says most residents of Detroit are unaware of the quite large ghoul population that exists underground (who he calls “Downsiders”). Tabasco gets hung up on the Top vs Down distinction, convinced there are better linguistic options. Smee continues: the Topsiders want to ensure that the local populace doesn’t view ghouls universally as a threat (though some certainly are), so if the team will agree to put in a good word with their allies, he will introduce them to a ghoul gang called the Skins. The team agrees.

Creep and Otters sneak into the cemetery, though Otters quickly falls back when she notices some of the ferals sniffing around after her. Creep follows Smee to a mausoleum where they find some decently armed and armored ghouls waiting. Creep is introduced to their leader, Rains, and notices that they all seem equipped with a mishmash of KE gear and some seemingly prototype weaponry. He doesn’t enquire further, but the team has heard rumors of the KE tradition of needing to get a ghoul skin in the underground to join Firewatch, so presumably this is the other side of how that can go.

Rains agrees to the deal that Smee made, and the Skins and Creep head over to where the ferals are preparing to feast. Otters pilots the VTOL in for a quick rescue and some medical attention. The Skins breach through the back wall, grab Pesina, and chuck her in the VTOL, while Creep blasts a feral trying to grab hold of it as well. He sneaks back out of the cemetery and Smee tells them where they can contact him again if needed.

Otters checks on Pesina via the drone’s internal medical feeds, and finds that she is injured, but luckily not infected with HMHVV. She seems pretty drugged and out of it, so they have a brief convo and then he sends her to the Platinum Zone, giving Marv a heads up that she’s inbound. The team continues North to figure out what happened on Belle Isle, but come under attack from some of Otto’s troops, who are guarding their Southern perimeter as well as the Northern side. Otters almost eats a Gauss round, but Tabasco dives in the way and takes the hit, before the team retreats while CG’s spirits cause trouble for the soldiers shooting at them.

They do a bit more recon, and determine that roughly half of the visible forces in Otto’s area seem to be illusory, so they find a better place to sneak through, ditching the spirits for now since they are too magically obvious. They reach the bridge to Belle Isle and find it bombed out, though still barely crossable by pedestrians. CG barely dodges a sniper round before the team makes it the relative safety of the Isle.They find it a smoking ruin- the ARES air base seems to have been fully ignited- fuel, weapons, etc burning at such an extreme heat as to destroy the structures on hand and effectively cremate the personnel caught in the blast.

Doing some magical investigation, Dig finds that some number of personnel were killed before the explosion and piled up, and that much of the damage was done with Gauss rifles and other bizarro science weapons, so they suspect Otto’s troops were behind this- the illusion would be good cover for secret troop movements! They also find that the explosions were triggered by planted charges and not aerial bombardment, so it doesn’t seem likely that the forces here were overrun, especially given the lack of any sign of bugs. The eastern half of the isle seems in better shape, with some park buildings, wilderness areas, and water treatment facilities still largely intact, though currently seemingly unoccupied due to the toxic smoke from the chemicals still burning at the temporary airbase.

The team sneaks north again, finding the bridge once again too damaged for vehicles but traversable by pedestrians- seemingly designed to helped bugs and/or special ops more so than ARES military with their reliance on groundcraft. They cut around the main battle site Downtown, which seems to have contracted a bit, and find the other Zones have kind of sprawled out into multiple small/scattered engagements, some of which are quite mobile. They also barely avoid some loose Alphas rampaging around south Oakland/North Downtown before finally reaching the Platinum Zone.

Heading inside, they find the place filling up for the “big meeting”. They spot Carol, and grab a booth to catch up. They sell him the Malakim info as promised, and he shares some of Vogel’s plans, as well as giving the team another job- to look into some high level infiltrators in ARES known as “68G”- could these two things be connected? Creep also accidentally gives up the info about Otto being behind the destruction on Belle Isle, and Dig has to remind him about info exclusivity etc. Carol gives them a hefty payout, and they head over to talk to Ringmaster, giving him the recon report from the day. He doesn’t seem overly distressed that Carol knows about Belle Isle, but the team gets the impression that may not always be the case.

He also pays up, and gives them a few follow ups and updates, and is impressed by their extra recon re: ghouls, the airport, Otto’s illusions, etc. The team also sees Pesina up and about, quietly narrating events to a cam drone while stomping around in a medical boot. She gives them the “let’s talk after” look. Everyone starts to hush up as the meeting begins. Locke and Otters are a little surprised to recognize the woman they smuggled in, now out of disguise, as Colonel Anne Ravenheart, the former head of Firewatch, now leader of the Freewatch bug fighting org, last seen in Chicago under attack from ARES. She is accompanied by Li Wei, the man they smuggled in with her, who is wearing a red crystal cybereye, which Tabasco thinks is likely a blood crystal, a new addition since Chicago.

She introduces herself, as well as Ringmaster, Rifleman, and Marv, as the leaders of this meeting, and gives her spiel- they need to unite against the bugs, and defend this city and it’s people against them and against ARES/Knight’s foolishness. Dig and Creep notice a dog one of the other attending runners brought with is growling at a sweaty, bearded street sam, and Creep goes to tackle him, luckily giving the dog just enough time to prevent him chucking a vial he had concealed in his hand. Tabasco and CG leap to action just in time to prevent another street sam from opening up on Ravenheart with an implant cybergun, and (via inhabited dire rat) chomp down on the arms of a mob hitman looking guy as he tries to pull the pin on a grenade.

All hell momentarily breaks loose- the woman who brought the dog chucks her staff straight through the bearder sam’s head as Creep tussles with him, Rifleman quick draws and drills the cybergunner right between the eyes, and the mob hitman manages to pull the pin, but the explosion is contained inside CG"s spirit, though it is destroyed in the process. Everyone else has weapons out and is in a massive standoff, til Dig does a thought recognize and spots two more potential assassins who are headed for the door. He alerts the crowd who quickly gun them down as well, before Creep tries to get everyone to chill, fails, and then Marv does the same, successfully. He tells them that this is what their enemies want: everyone so busy fighting each other they can’t unite for the common good!

Ravenheart continues her spiel and explains that she understands that many runners won’t be used to working under a command structure but that it’s the best way to run something like this, and that no this is not the Shadow Chapters, which people are right to be suspicious of given the news out of Seattle. One of the street docs from downstairs stabilizes the mob hitman, who is missing his forearms, and after some quick drug and magical questioning, Rifleman reports that Otto Hendricks has taken out a contract on himself, Marv and Anne Ravenheart. Ringmaster doesn’t look upset to have been excluded.

The team makes some new contacts, including Walker, the blind staff fighter, and her dog Tofu, and also sees a few more members of the Belle Isle crew that they’ve worked with a few times. They prepare to chat with Pesina and figure out next steps.

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

The team, pausing to allow for Jazz crash to wear off, plot out their route to the next numbers station. While waiting, Otters and Locke do some analysis on the data Otters scraped while jamming the last stations and drones, and confirm that it looks like the drones were being used as a back channel/off-matrix comms relay to allow the stations to communicate indirectly without blowing their cover/being directly traceable. Worried that this will have blown their chance to find another station intact, they plan to rush along. Otters convinces Tabasco to carry her so she can stay hot in the VTOL and do some route mapping and then some long distance surveillance on what the explosions in the distance are….

Otters spots some ARES military deployments seemingly surrounding and slaughtering bugs pouring out of the craters that the explosions have opened. It looks like the the Alpha deployments are working well so far, with what appears to be a high kill to casualty ratio. Their support teams seem to be taking minimal casualties, and the Alphas appear uniquely destructive, almost frenzied. From what Otters can gather from the VTOL, it looks like the ARES detachments in the outer zones are looking to push the bugs back into the tunnels they’ve opened into the underground and follow them in, forcing them all to emerge from the major bombing site downtown, where the main (and most elite) ARES forces are. Interestingly, they don’t spot any Firewatch members anywhere, and given that the Alphas are all wearing modded Bug Stompers, it looks like the entire elite corps has been transformed into these merge monstrosities.

The team swings wide of the major engagement sites in the outer zones, heading south, and manage to avoid the poorly equipped KE patrols holding the outer perimeter. Unfortunately, Dig is unable to get his tech locator spell to work- either the gear is gone, or he’s too beat. Otters also is unable to find the expected broadcasts, so it seems like the Numbers Stations have switched protocols or gone dark in response to the team’s attacks. Feeling pretty tired after pulling an all-nighter, they head back to the safehouse. Unfortunately, Chew Gum gets spotted by a KE patrol, who open up with a machine gun mounted in their back seat. Creep manages to chuck some smoke grenades in the way and the team escapes, eventually, finally returning to the safehouse.

Dig instantly crashes while Otters does further drone recon, and the rest of the team pushes North to do some more recon on foot. Otters sees similar engagements in the rest of the zones, ARES forces looking successful so far at holding the line, and starting to push the bugs back into their tunnels, as the Downtown meat grinder continues. South of the river, bizarro science soldiers, seemingly Otto Hendricks loyalists from the R&D division, wielding modded Excalibur magitech guns, look to be ready for any breakouts that direction, though it looks like the bugs are fully north of the river at this time. The other zones all seem to be in a similar state as Otters does a quick flyby.

To the north, the on foot recon team gets a vantage at the Vendor’s Row area and gets some good intel- this looks to be the reserve force, deployable via VTOL’s, but they look to be bored and waiting for the most part at the moment. Many of the businesses (restaurants, brothels, etc) on Vendor’s Row look to have been allowed to remain open to keep the waiting reserve forces fed and entertained. The team does get a better look at the loadouts- it looks like squads of 6 in modded APC’s, with a containment chamber for the Alpha’s taking up half the space in the troop compartment. The reservists at least look to have one portal closer/tacnuke per squad as well- a distressing amount of explosive power!

Creep and Tabasco also sneak closer while Locke and CG provide overwatch and manage to overhear some chatter- getting some important stats updates on how the battle is going etc. CG also notices an astral aspect towards Wealth here, and Tabasco feels quite comfortable in the area. They head back to the safehouse, and Otters pulses a data packet to the Platinum Zone before they all crash. Waking first, Dig heads over to the Zoo in case anyone shows for his Red Magic Order meeting. He sees that Moreau seems to have taken charge of keeping the animals safe/fed during this crisis, with the minimal staff who remained onhand. After a short wait, a Watcher spirit shows up to excuse Norman from attendance, saying the University is locked down, while Marjo-Lin dashes in shortly after.

They schedule the next meeting, then send the Watcher back, and Dig teaches Marjo-Lin to shapeshift, though she makes Dig transform out of bird form first, as she says that Lion will only allow her to take feline forms. She cracks some jokes about Dig being naked etc which mostly confuse him. She seems to know Moreau and says she’s gonna stay at the Zoo for a while and study the big cats, so Dig heads out and flies back to the safehouse as a bird. The rest of the team is just starting to get moving as he returns. They check their messages and find that a few updates have made it- Chessick sent a retainer to help a colleague, assuming she can get into town, a journo who wants to try to document the situation on the ground.

More upsettingly, they get some major updates from the Plat Zone- apparently things have taken a turn for the worse for ARES in two major ways. First, the desperate bugs seems to have tunneled faster and farther than ARES expected and there have been breakouts behind their main lines, leading some of their forces to be attacked from flanks and rear if not fully enveloped. Second, the Alphas seem to be unable to leave their combat rage, which in areas where ARES has been successful, means that they turned on their support crews and handlers, seemingly content to rip through whatever is at hand. The pheromones from this have lead to Alpha attacks amongst the reserves as well, and there is apparently active combat up on Vendor’s Row.

The team decides to head in to the Plat Zone, get some on the ground recon, and figure out next steps. They check in with Zennia at the bar, and find many locals having a lock-in “end of the world” party. The team convinces them to all conserve some water, and head up to the roof to help Zennia start filling some tanks, just in time to see the distinct mushroom cloud of a tacnuke going off to the North. Rushing inside they all take some iodine that Zennia had stashed, but she explains that the explosive will have limited range and spread, giving the infantry size charges and the still weather. When the team looks overheard, it seems ARES has pulled something similar to Boston and pulled in some cloud cover, keeping it magically in place to conceal what happens here.

The team heads out and quickly encounters some Children of Loxley, who have fought off a small bug breakout. They heal up the wounded and send the dire cases back to Jaga at the safehouse for more attention, and then head in to check out where the bugs broke out. They find a slaughtered family, a 3rd dead bug, and a small tunnel chiseled up through the basement’s slab. Dig seals it with magic, and they report to Zennia and the CoL to tell people to guard and seal off basements and tunnels. They see Sikh Burn and some others going house to house to check for other breakouts, and no sign of KE locally.

Otters also gets ahold of someone behind the CoL to talk strategy, and chats a bit with someone named Alfredo, agreeing on an info trade. Alfredo seems to have some former ARES ties but seems quite bitter towards the corp so seems safe. Otters inquires about the Numbers Stations, and gets the feel that Alfredo isn’t involved but has some ideas who might be- some old-timers with a grudge, former corp special forces for CAT, a megacorp almost ran that ARES (and some other corps) devoured between the two Crashes. Locke calls The Detective, and gets some distressing talk about bugs and cities dying, but also passes along the Numbers Station info and finally gets a name for the mysterious fourth faction: The Malakim, having renamed themselves after dark angels from their former named, The Seraphim.

They head to the Plat Zone, and find Marv collecting intel from locals who are reporting in, Rifleman trying to keep on top of the tactical situation on a digital map spread over multiple shoved together pool tables, and Ringmaster eager to chat. The secretive dwarf hints that the Null Sect are behind the intense matrix blockade, though Dig massively misunderstands so Ringmaster has to clarify a bit. Using a way over-taxed onsite technomancer, he manages to get a data packet out with the team’s info, brokering a sale and getting them a sizeable chunk of change. He also arranges for them to train some small unit tactics, and offers them a few more jobs.

While training, Locke recognizes one of the instructors as the Asian man they helped smuggled in, who introduces himself as Li Wei. Tabasco also gets offered the opportunity to do some training himself, as he seems to know the ropes pretty well. The rest of the crew trains with Mama Dot, who Creep knows from Seattle, and who seems to have answered Rifleman’s call for aid, leaving her store in her son’s hands. All a bit better educated, they head back upstairs (having also seen a large, well-equipped clinic in the formerly secret basement) and get the latest from Ringmaster: they are to find out what happened with that nuke up north, and they are to find out who is behind the latest upsetting update.

Someone, just now, has bombed the ARES forward operating airbase on Belle Isle, with massive explosions taking out much of the ground fleet of planes and drones there, plus destroying infrastructure, fuel and weapons depots, and killing personnel. As this will significantly advantage the bugs, Ringmaster needs to know who’s behind it and what their next play is. Otters then uses one of the favors they took as partial payment to get access to the team’s sub’s feeds and controls via the TM, Electric Blue. EB says they’ll have to make it quick, as the matrix security keeping Detroit locked down is no joke. Otters manages to punch into the sub, but finds an unexpected passenger: Julia Pesina, the journo Chessick paid them to help.

Otters talks through the sub speakers to Pesina, and makes a plan to run her ashore a park peninsula in Windsor, that Otters and Locke have used as a smuggling spot before. However, she will have to trust to autopilot to manage to job since direct piloting for that long will prove impossible. Pesina provides some encouragement based on Chessick’s reco, and says worse case, she swam in college. Feeling bolstered, Otters does her best to quickly input the requisite commands before getting dumped, to find an even more fried looking Electric Blue saying he kept it open as long as he could. So another job: rescue to journo from the landing site! Luckily she said she still had a few days food and water, and it’s warm and muggy out but not deadly hot so in the tree cover should be fine so long as she can keep her head down…

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

The team gets the debrief on the situation and what’s needed from Marv, Rifleman, and Ringmaster- basically, reliable comms and recon. After consulting with The Detective, the team shares their numbers station suspicions, and get the go-ahead to try to gain the use of them through whatever means. Intel on ARES movements, positions, and activities is also quite useful. They stay for the concert, which closes with a duet with a holo of Jonny Silver, symbolically giving ARES the finger by celebrating the victory of the anti-corp forces in Denver who saved the Nexus back in the day. However, 2 members of Glock .50 are absent, either unable to make it cause of checkpoints and curfew or something worse, including Marjo-Lin, from Dig’s new magical order.

The team heads out, with Dig flying off in bird form to start using magic to look for a numbers station in the next zone scheduled to broadcast. The team swings by their safehouse to restock on arrows from Iva and crosses the last checkpoints with moments to spare. They camo their van as a delivery vehicle, and park outside an affiliated business, laying low for a bit while triangulating the broadcast as it goes out, and avoiding KE entanglements. Once the KE patrols move away/die down a little, Otters does some fancy sneaky driving to link up with Dig at the target location.

They do some drone and astral recon, and Tabasco sneaks up onto the roof. They spot some well-concealed hardwired sensors and antennae, and Dig decides to disable one as a bird, getting a bad shock for his trouble, and attracting the attention of a stealth drone which grabs him and pulls him into it’s body. He uses an lightning spell inside it to break free, but takes more damage and retreats. Meanwhile, Otters rigs Tabasco’s arms to use her superior tech knowledge to bypass the other sensors without tripping their electrical defenses, though not being a hacker, if anyone is watching the feeds they’ll know they are down.

Tabasco carefully creeps down to one window of the target unit, but since he and Otters (via flyspy) both spot turret HMG’s inside both windows, is reluctant to go in. Dig lightning bolts the window to get things going, as Otters can also see a human sized heat source inside blowing the tech. Dig zooms in as a bird and flies between one of the guns and the heat source, as Tabasco drops from the roof, fires an arrow while falling (taking out the other gun), and lands unharmed due to cyber-legs.

Dig avoids getting hit, but the turret gun shoots the shit out of the older man who was inside, as well as the last bit of tech he hadn’t fried yet. He then quickly explodes, seemingly some kind of failsafe or last ditch defense. Dig fires the last turret and leaves again, while Tabasco, Creep and Locke enter to investigate. They find a strange scene- the front door of the apartment is wired to blow with a massive outward facing shaped charge, and there are 6 months worth of rations on-hand, it looks like they set up early in the month.

They find a calendar with the current date marked (the start of Latvian Gambit?), and manage to salvage enough tech bits from all the fried station to make one radio from parts. There are three broadcasting stations, one receiver, and two code machines running in parallel- a decrypter and encrypter, seemingly how they are passing the messages around. They salvage what they can, but between their delayed entry, machine gun fire, and explosions, it’s not a lot- mostly deductions.

They decide to skip the next broadcast zone and try and beat the schedule to get to the 3rd station in the broadcast order before it’s time to broadcast, hoping to catch the messages mid-stream. Knowing what they know now, they have an easier time finding the place, which has a similar setup. They plan it out a little more carefully this time, and using Tabasco and Otters (via drones) use radar feeds to the TacNet as targeting info for Locke and ChewGum to blast the 2 turrets with their sniper rifles.

CG and Dig’s spirits both zoom in and try to disable the somewhat older man they find inside, successfully confusing and nauseating him. Creep slips in and finishes off the one turret that survived the sniper barrage, and Tabasco races in and restrains him, but unfortunately doesn’t listen to the others’ advice to get him out of the room, as he quickly explodes. Creep is nearly killed, Tabasco is badly damaged, as is Dig’s spirit, who he dismisses out of respect. They also once again lost the code machine, where the guy was standing.

They do however salvage all 4 radios this time, find another similar calendar, and a similar amount of rations etc. These operators all seem to be barricaded in, and both used a stylized angel wing icon. Locke and Otters think back and realize they’ve seen these around town occasionally, associated with anti-ARES graffiti, all of which is quickly sprayed over or washed off. They get out of there before the KE cars making sweeps can respond to the explosion and head out. Dig and Otters try to convince everyone to go back to their safehouse (in their current zone), but Tabasco makes a compelling argument that they need to hit the next station before they have time to find out what’s going on and respond.

Seeing as the team spotted two more stealthed drones watching them (before jamming and shooting them), whoever this is may already be onto them, but Tabasco convinces everyone to go along by suggesting they just try and talk to the occupant of the next one rather than busting in, and all agree to flee any combat, as they are not well-equipped for a fight at this point. Dig fixes up Creep magically as best he can, and they wait for the Jazz crash to wear off of Tabasco from the fight before heading out. As they push south on foot, sneaking around in the dark, they see a glimmer of light on the horizon and hear some loud explosions, sounding like demolitions or artillery from the direction of Downtown….

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke
and goodbye to:
Carol
and Creature

The team spends a while trying to figure out what to do about Ellis. Dig attempts to use his new “hacking box” to investigate the drive that Creature found in Ellis’ lab, but fails to cast the spell he needs to do so and decides to go to sleep instead. Tabasco gets Iva to patch up his shredded cyber-armor while the team discusses next steps. They scan the drive as best they can, and finding nothing worrying, check out the files within. They find a text note that says “sorry, they’re breaching, can’t wait” and an attached video file. The video file shows Ellis seemingly disabling the facility security to give the team access, while also preparing the pod in her lab to get rolled out. She gets overridden when the hit squad shows up and starts gunning down security, and starts trying to figure out next steps.

As a cutting torch from the hit squad starts piercing her lab’s bulkhead door, she looks to the camera and says that she doesn’t trust either Otto or Knight’s plans, and thinks she found a different path, before flipping a bunch of switches, and crawling into the pod alongside what looks to be a bug nymph spirit. They embrace each other as the pod closes again, tilts towards the wall, and a retrofit rocket blasts it out through the side of the facility. The feed cuts when Creature comes in and yanks the drive.

They decide to get in the sub, hope to avoid FAB, and get down into the river, though hours have passed as this point. CG manages to use assensing both to avoid the FAB and follow the pod’s path down to the river bottom, where it looks to have plowed in pretty hard and shed some plating and exterior bits. Following some drag marks, they track it to where it appears to have been winched out of the river into some woods. Carefully heading ashore, they find the pod itself camo’ed with some tree branches and debris, and some evidence that fight took place. However was involved used a liberal amount of Cleaner-Cleaner, and seems to have had a mage do some cleanup on the astral as well.

They report in to Ringmaster, and are told to gather what info they can and continue, but that if Ellis merged with the bug this is now a termination contract. CG uses his spirits to search out her last known location, and finds that however encountered her on the river bank took her over water to the large Docklands port area. They head there and Creep sneaks around a bit, finding that her last known location was a loading area for cargo containers, with mechanized cranes and huge stacks of isotainer all around, as well as ship and truck loading zones. So she could be nearly anywhere, and whatever she is in seems to be blocking further attempts to astrally track her.

Tabasco calls up Remo, who reports that there is something bad afoot in the Detroit matrix: lots of killer ICE, etc, so Remo refuses to help hack the port, and warns the team to be careful. Lacking a hacker, they decide to report in first to Weathernight, hoping Vogel might be able to salvage something out of this, before reporting their failure to Ringmaster. Weathernight convinces Carol to finally come in out of the cold (not that it took much doing), and he tells the team he’s stepping back to more a fixer role, and buys them a new van as a parting gift. Carol also calls RIngmaster and explains that they failed, but that he passed the info along to the “3rd faction” who he confirms he works for, without ID-ing Vogel, though Ringmaster as usual seems to know a bit more than he lets on. He agrees to an info-sharing agreement on this one particular gig, as a possible avenue to a future alliance. He also gets the remaining team members some fake merc SINs to allow them to continue to move about town, in exchange for the info gathered.

When they get back to the safehouse from the port, Creature also announces xe is leaving, along with Shan and Shun, to help maintain the Sea Dragon’s gains in Chicago amidst the corporate push back into the former CZ there. They take the sub and head off, with Tabasco briefly debating going along with as both he and Creep ponder what exactly they’re still doing in Detroit. CG and Dig have made some more local connections they’re invested in, and Creep is learning his way around the city, so they decide to stay. Creature seems more likely to return in a “day-to-day” capacity than Carol, though xe will be more geographically distant in the interim.

Dig, waking up from his nap, hears all this and informs the team he recently met a driver at the Zoo, who seems to do some shadow work on the side. They call up Otters and get her to come take the van for a test drive, very much impressing them. In Tabasco’s best attempt at OpSec, this all takes place in front of the Tin Can, instead of out back, directly at the safehouse. They sell Zennia the FAB suit they found in Ellis’ lab, but Creep proves to be a poor negotiator, so they quickly realize they’ll be neeeding a face. Luckily, Otters just met one, the face/sniper Locke, doing some smuggling jobs, and has actually just gotten a call from Locke to look into a mystery for The Detective, Locke’s mentor.

There are some strange broadcasts occurring around town, and The Detective thinks it might be a numbers station or similar, and wants it looked into. They’re too deep into a Zen binge to do it themself, so has enlisted Locke’s assistance. The team agrees to help Locke with this job in exchange for their help with a job they need a face for: getting the local rap collective Glock .50 to agree to sing to Johnny Silver’s “Silversound” imprint on Perianwyr’s label. Otters calls her Keepers contact Arda, who passes along the number for another Keeper who is also part of the loose G50 collective: Marjo-Lin. Recognizing her as one of his new magical order members, Dig makes contact, and after allaying her initial suspicions, she listens to Locke’s pitch and passes it onto the rest of the group.

They get back in touch shortly, agreeing to the terms with two addendums: they want a celebratory gig at the Brickhouse, and they want a meet and greet with Silver himself. The team gets the gig set up easily via Locke’s connections with Marv, who seems to view it as a good opportunity for a secret meeting that he invites the team to. For the meet and greet, the best they can get through Zennia is an agreement that it will happen sometime, when Silver is available, as he is still on the run from the Wild Hunt at the moment. G50 agrees, so job done! Zennia pays the team the signing bonus and seems to have taken a shine to her new safehouse renters, as they are proving adept at closing contracts for her.

They next all head out to check out the numbers station mission, as an exchange for Locke’s help. The team kinda fumbles around for a while before semi-accidentally revealing to Otters and Locke the existence of MAMA. the RCC/TacNet CCOB hidden in the van’s smuggling compartment, and a few other big/expensive secrets. However, once they give Otters access to the RCC, the mission goes a lot faster, though Dig did manage his spell this time and got some good data from it as well. They find 7 broadcast points on different frequencies, and spending some time on it over the day, figure out the schedule as well. However, Locke is unable to decipher the code, so they might be using a one time pad or similar, which would make decoding incredibly difficult. CG also harvests some interesting toxic-adjacent plants up in the Blight that Jaga had recommended as interesting culinary additions for Castiron.

As they all link back up with the van to compare notes, they spot and hear a number of KE drones and cars travelling the city, as well as receive matrix broadcasts, that there is a shelter in place order starting at midnight for the duration of an ARES “special military operation” training period (an unspecified duration). Remo manages to get a message through to Tabasco with a screenshot of Jackpoint post telling users there to “keep an eye on Detroit in the next few days”, as well as a linked video what looks to be a hacked weather satellite that JP was using to do just that getting shot down by a ship coated in Void Black.

In a bit of a panic, the team decides to quickly bring Otters and Locke into the team norms, files, and secret knowledge, and after they both agree, do so. Locke quickly disappears into a Tarot and secrets hole, and is almost non-responsive while sponging up info. The rest of the team decides to head for the Brickhouse for the G50 show ahead of the curfew, and see what this secret meeting is about. They are unable to get any matrix comms out of the city, though comms inside still seem to be working. Otters is very stressed about an AI with self-editing capabilities living on the teams TacNet but otherwise is very excited to be included.

Reaching the club, they are ushered into a back room, with some stairs leading underground, into the warded area CG had previously spotted from outside. Marv, Ringmaster and Rifleman, as well as some other mercs and runners, are poring over screens and info, and Marv ID’s a technomancer in a hacker’s crash couch, hooked up to IV drip, as their current means of getting info in and out. He says they have a lot to talk about, and invites them to grab what seats they can amidst the chaos and get down to biz, then enjoy the show, then head out to get to work…

RUNNERS:
Chessick Allens-Whitehill
and introducing:
Otters aka Roadkill
and Locke

Chessick, having learned some lessons from the reopening of Boston, where the corps crashed back in and undid a lot of the good work that runners had done building communities during the Lockdown (at least aboveground) has been working to keep the same from happening in Chicago. He has also as usual been documenting the casualties and losses suffered by the civilian populace, as well as the various figures who live along societies edges. With some Neo-Anarchist contacts in town he has also been trying to help runners, gangers and others in Detroit to survive the ARES crackdown there. Having lost connection to the city as ARES tightens their hold, he is looking to make some new contacts there and set up a new smuggling pipeline.

He takes a contract to bring a package in, assured that Detroit fixers have found some runners to meet him and get him safely to the delivery point Meanwhile, in Detroit, Howell has called up Otters and told her he has a transpo job for preem pay, and The Detective has instructed Locke to assist with this task as well. Both fixers were contacted by the PPI duo Smoach and Myrryr on behalf of an outside third party, and both runners are told that if they pull it off, this could be the start of a hot new smuggling pipeline, much needed in these tight times, especially for those who don’t want to live fully under ARES’ thumb.

Chessick hires some smuggler contacts to take him across Lake Erie from Toledo over near the ARES cordon, and waits there for contact. Locke and Otters meet up and do some scouting to choose an ideal spot to get him to shore, and choose a nature reserve in South Windsor. Otters uses a delivery drone to get a biofiber bag and wetsuit out to Chessick, and also to help him ashore after he proves to be a truly shit swimmer. Locke times all the patrols out and figures their patterns, but with the delay due to Chessick’s bad swimming has to take out a drone with their sniper rifle.

Chessick and Otters do some quick thinking, and use a burner comm for a distraction for pursuers, while using the ambient life in the nature preserve to try to lose any magical trackers, while Locke watches their backs and leads them out. Using the van provided by Howell, Otters impresses the other 2 with some quality sneaky driving over to the Green Groves water treatment plant, while Chessick makes sure cameras and other sensors don’t pick them up on the way, and Locke provides studied encouragement.

They deliver the mystery package to a gender-fluid eco-shaman named The Walker In Ways, who says some cryptic things about maintaining and balancing the local manasphere, and bids them well. They all crash at their safehouses, and get contacted by their fixers again the next day for a followup gig. It seems the first delivery was a test run for this, the true mission. They are to use similar tactics to get 2 people ashore with noone spotting them, and making sure to lose any magical pursuit as best they can. These two need delivering to a runner bar called the Razorboyz Edge in The Blight.

They pass along a message for the sub dropping the two off to park outside the ARES cordon in Lake St. Clair and wait for them to make contact. Chessick and Otters team up to boost Otters’ signal, and she takes over piloting of the sub to steer it in, while Locke provides thorough updates on ARES patrol patterns, and Chessick hacks some nearby stores and signs to create some distractions. They get the 2 passenger hustled into the van, and Otters once again does some impressive sneak driving, with Locke on lookout and Chessick keeping them off feeds and sensors.

They reach the Oakland County Zoo and Locke puts her specialty skills to use, taking the group near, through, and around a series of animals and enclosures to obscure their astral traces, especially via some access tunnels under the aquarium. Thoroughly “greenwashed”, they load back in the van after Chessick checks it for trackers, and head to McKenzie Arcology bordering The Blight. Chessick and Locke manage to negotiate a better deal than Otters has ever managed on her own to use the tunnels underneath, though luckily Otters knows the tunnels well as she manages to navigate them around some traps set by The Cutters, who seem to have taken over much of the turf from the Maulers, the traditional gang in charge.

They safely sneak the two passengers over the bar and drop them off. The Asian man seems very dangerous and tightly coiled, and the Dakota woman seems calmer but also quite powerful, or used to command at least. They refuse to ID themselves but say the team impressed them, and they may be in touch in future if they need their skills again. They also hint they’ve heard of Chessick and tell him to keep up the good work. They tell him the sub is available for him to return to Chicago, and he heads out, confident they can at least get supplies to their Detroit allies in a pinch. Locke notices that the 2 passengers are wearing subtle disguises, likely enough to fool AI facial recognition, but thinks they could recognize them again if they seem either of the 2 out of disguise.

The other 2 go their separate ways for now, but feeling they have a good thing going, vow to work together again soon….

Runners
Carol
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

Chew Gum and Jaga make some friends in Hamtramck with the People of the Book Burial Society and others, and CG uses this as an excuse to get a little more intel on the mysterious Children of Loxley. Carol receives a “condolences” message from Vogel, at some risk, who also suggests it might be time for Carol to come work for him directly since things are heating up. Carol wants to do this one last job with the team and then plans to make his exit. Creature, having given Shan and Shun the tour, also seems to be planning to leave to return with them to Chicago and focus on cementing the Sea Dragon’s position there, as Detroit already has too many dragons looking at it:Ghostwalker has agents on the ground looking to push for a Free City, Arleesh has an agent in town stirring up trouble, and Lung is apparently looking to make some moves into town from Toronto via the Triad. Plus, the bad bug vibes everywhere….

Shan and Shun arrange to rent the sub from the team for a few days in order to transport themselves to Chicago and then send it back. Dig hears back from a few more promising people about his Red Magic post, and manages to found a 3-person Order based out of the Oakland County Zoo room he rented from the rigger Roadkill. The two acolytes are a street-smart tough kid and a strict hermiticist academic, so an interesting combo so far. Creep scopes out “lay low” spots around town, and he and Tabasco head over to an unlisted cyber clinic after getting some names from Smoach and Myrryr. They find the former Probe/DeeCee transhumanist Leonna Octave running the spot, called the Metal Maniacs Clinic, which has amassed a small crew of aesthetic enthusiasts. Creep talks to them, planning to make fun of them, but actually has a nice convo about esoteric implants.

They both get some surgeries scheduled, with Creep adding a few more survival-focussed mods, and Tabasco clearing up some essence hole room to fit in some combat mods. Octave tries to sell them on more extreme mods and embracing maximum implant culture, but they demure, for now. Dig and Jaga help CG replenish one of his spirits, making a new rotting plant matter mass to twine about himself. Tabasco and Carol get a call from Ibn Hassan, offering work if they happen to indeed be in Detroit. They accept, and get a gig to drive the mafia loansharks out of Hamtramck in order to let the Hawala networks there fill the gap.

CG arranges a meeting with a local runner named Sikh Burn, a combat mage who fights with a flaming zulfiqar, and who maybe used to run with the CoL. After feeling him out a bit, SB agrees to put CG in touch with a man named Alfredo who he says is the tactical coordinator for the CoL. CG and Carol set up a deal with Alfredo to smuggle in a bunch of guns, armor, explosives, and other materiel in exchange for them working to drive the mafia off, a goal they already believe in. They seem to look more favorably on the team being in “their” neighborhood after this.

Having passed a few days and given Carol time to process his dead dad feelings a bit, they decide to crack down on the Ellis job. They look into Ringmaster’s dossier, and seeing no better option, decide to riskily contact Ellis directly, though in code. Carol uses his knowledge from the ARES space station to send her a message posing as her former lover, and she responds in a way suggesting that she knows what’s up and will help them help her. They roll over to the facility where she works (and seemingly can’t leave), and use their ARES SINs and van electrochromic coating to get into the lot. Spotting some passive magical security, Dig and CG stay in the van.

The rest of the team sneaks in through a side door, which unlocks, just as they approach. They find the drone guards inside temporarily disabled, with a map to Ellis flashing on their ARO projectors. They proceed further in, losing comms with those outside. The team outside spots another runner van similar to the hit crew they went up against on the Zoo/Jones extraction, and CG does some astral recon- it seems like they learned their lesson from last time, and left a guard and spirit with the rigger this time. The guard opens fire on the team van with a minigun, damaging it badly. Dig starts magically driving, as CG uses spirit powers to befuddle the rigger and gunner, but comes under attack from the spirit.

After some magical speed control and dramatic crashes, Dig and CG emerge victorious but the team van is almost wrecked in the process. Meanwhile, inside, the team gets into an intense fight with some sec drones camouflaged as vending machines, taking them out, but hearing what sounds like another team breaching into the facility along a parallel path to theirs. They continue in, getting into a running gun battle with facility security. They manage to turn building security on the other team, and loop around back behind them to try to get the drop. Unfortunately, amidst all the chaos, something triggers Ellis to decide to take her chances and trigger her own escape plane.

The team is surprised to see a large capsule blast through the facility walls and start sinking into the river outside, trailing various fluids. Creature sneaks into the lab it exploded out of, and finds no sign of Ellis, but does recover a hard drive that says “README” and one of the FAB suits before escaping before the goons in the next room can recover from the phosphorous arrows and lube grenade combo and start shooting again. Tabasco and Creep dive into the river to follow the capsule, but Creep can’t swim and starts drowning, so Tabasco has to save him instead. Creature debates following but doesn’t want to get the drive wet, and and head spotted a leaking FAB pipe in the lab and so is worried about that too.

Carol races back out to take over driving the van and get out of there as Dig runs to the river and leaps in, turning into a dolphin. He luckily also spots some leaking FAB trailing the capsule and abandons pursuit, not wanting to risk it. He swims to shore, and sneaks back to ground, meeting up with the drone he purchased to carry his belonging when in animal form. Tabasco and Creep also get to shore and sneak back to the safehouse using some of Creep’s new knowledge, worried their ARES SINs might be burned.

Carol picks up Creature with the drive, and races off with CG in the van as well. Unfortunately, he feels he didn’t drive fast enough and is worried about fast response tracking them, so they find an obscure spot to ditch and split up, also sneaking back to the safehouse on foot. It turns out it was good they did- when they are all about a block away a drone detonates the van with a missile, they can feel the heat even from where they are. Close call! With everyone reunited, it’s time to analyze the data, sell that suit, and figure out how/if they can get to that capsule….