Dramatis Personae
Runners
Lodestone aka Kealt Sanja
Thankyou
Rooster
UltraBoy!
“K”
Tobias Cheney

After a short rest, the team take off and fly til K is exhausted again. Upon waking, they can’t figure out where they are, why they are here, or what they are doing. LS recalls that they were heading back to the city, and they gradually piece together the rough outlines of their quest once LS finds the diamonds in his pocket. K assures everyone that it’s a curse of some sort on the diamonds, and they hope it will recede with time.

They rest for the night, uneventfully for once, and K powers them the rest of the way to the crater edge once he wakes. K and LS locate the tunnel with Baelor’s assistance, and they head for the nearby abandoned settlement where the car is parked. While striding in, Arlen Thompson emerges from the main building, and hurries over. K flies down and goes visible, and converses with AT. AT seems unusually excited and on edge, but K assures everyone it is ok.

He seems unperturbed to hear that their memories have been altered, but is thrilled that they got (some of) the diamonds. He pays them, after TY talks up the price. He calls forth a guard who delivers a suitcase full of untraceable credsticks. Then AT and the guards take off in a rugged-looking armored limo. The team loads up in Rooster’s car and on TY’s bike and head for the city.

When about 1/3rd of the way, the regain matrix connection, and K and LS receive a series of increasingly frantic messages from Madame Gavral. She was initially just worried aboout their well-being, but then becomes more agitated after a steel-grey haired man with golden eyes and his two guards, a heavily cybered Eastern European woman and a young First Nations woman, come in asking after K, TY, and LS. She then left two more messages: one warned that something seems wrong with AT, and she is worried, and another that she is going into hiding, after she did some research. She forwards them the address to a matrix site.

They are unable to get ahold of AT or MG, so they race back to the city as quick as they can. UB! sets up a payment with the skin noters while K and LS do some matrix research. The site is called DIVE, it is a VPN dedicated to sharing info and rumors on dragons. They find a series of recent posts by a “RedOwl” that they think might be MG, and come to the disturbing conclusion that the great dragon Lofwyr might be looking for them. He does not have a reputation for kindness.

After further research, TY is slightly encouraged to learn that Lof is apparently an old enemy of Mujaji, who TY has vowed to destroy. This only worries everyone else more. Tobias and Rooster decide to go into hiding ASAP, and LS begins to looking into the price and availability of tickets to Earth. They also find out that a coveted and powerful artifact called the “Jewel of Memory” was bequeathed to Lofwyr in Dunkelzahn’s will (“To Lofwyr, I leave the Jewel of Memory and a bit of advice: consider your works and the possibility that, in the eyes of the Universe, you are no more or less than any of the Earth’s creatures. I tried it, and it works wonders.”), and are worried that this may have been stolen and cut up. Worst of all, they don’t even know for sure who they just sold some diamonds too, although they paid with real money at least.

LS returns astrally to the vicinity of the abandoned town, and assenses to try to gain a feel for who they gave the diamonds to, but he thinks the aura looks like AT’s. While checking newsfeeds for any mention of Lofwyr or other dragons on Mars, they stumble across promos for a new show called Prime Runners. UB! is instantly enthralled, but everyone else is worried. They think the rigger, Geargrinder, might be the missing dwarf Mikko Asparen. They also worry this may have to do with LoneStar’s secretive “Project PR.”

They close in on the city and TY and UB! take the bike towards the skinnote meet, while LS and K head for AT’s. The payment goes off without a hitch and they head to AT’s as well, although UB! inadvisably brags about scoring the mundane diamonds he pays with in the crater. They see numerous ARO spam geotags for Prime Runners.

At AT’s, K is allowed up the elevator by the doorman, who keys in the 40th floor, and says AT has a standing order to let him in. They emerge from the elevator into an abattoir: two decapitated gaurds have sprayed their arterial blood all over the walls of the foyer. There are also signs of a struggle. Once TY and UB! arrive, they head across the lawn, past the fountain and garden. K is distrubed to notice the strong wind on the building top, which used to be kept at bay by a mana barrier. Seeing AT’s mansion door is ajar, they head in.

There are more signs of struggle in the entry, but the rest of the ground floor is clear. They head upstairs to the master suite, and discover AT’s nude and mutilated body lashed to the bed. His eyes, tongue, heart, and genitals have been carved out and are missing. There is surprisingly little blood, until they look in the bathroom, and discover that the bathtub is mostly full of it. K determines that the amount of blood in the tub is close to the total amount that a person would contain. TY, thinking back through his superstitions and knowledge of magic, gives a quick lecture on the nature of the magic used based on AT’s wounds, the missing organs, and the bloodbath (literally- ha). He speculates that some sort of sacrificial blood magick was involved, and tells everyone of rumors he has heard that some adepts can take another metahumans form if they kill them and bathe in their life’s blood.

TY also suggest that this may be the work of the Xhosa, his ancestral enemies. Although the rest of the team is less sure, there may be more than one dragon on Mars involved in this intrigue. While discussing their escape plans and next move, they are blasted by a number of bright spotlights coming through the windows. As they notice the sounds of multiple helicopter rotors, they head an amplified voice tell them that they are surrounded, and to come out with their hands up.

Next up: will they meekly go forth to meet their would be captors?

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Lodestone aka Kealt Sanja
Thankyou
Rooster
UltraBoy!
“K”
Tobias Cheney

The team is woken the 2nd by another pack of circling cats. UB! launches a grenade in their direction, hoping to scare them off. The team decides to leave this site, and travels a bit further on. They then cover themselves in Tobias’ scent masking cream, and even convince K to strip out of his armor for the first time in months to do the same. Feeling stealthier, they fly on, and manage to get some sleep upon landing.

The next day, they see what appears (incongruously) to be a forest in the distance. KS confirms that that is where they are headed, following the diamong trail. He does a bit more astral scouting while K flies them there and discovers that there are 3 powerful astral signatures within the forest, all bearing some traces of the diamonds unique signatures. They decide to make for the closest of the three.

K touches down outside the forest, and they decide to walk in. K, Rooster, and KS are all feeling the effects of the low mana background count that they have been traveling through, and the rest of the team is feeling a little off as well. When they step into the woods (which begin abruptly- an immediate transition from Mars desert to full cedar forest) many of them are overcome by a sudden influx of magical energy. As opposed to feeling parched due to the lack of mana, they now feel they are nearly drowning in it- an equally disturbing sensation. TY refuses to enter the woods, and says he will stand watch at the edge. The team continues on.

Not being used to wilderness travel, they are attacked for reasons unknown by two large bears, who brutally maul R and KS into unconsciousness before being shredded by T and UB!‘s machine gun and flechette fire. After reviving their fallen comrades, they continue to follow KS’ trail. They eventually come to a small clearing, in the center of which is an old looking Middle Eastern style building. KS senses no life inside, and T notes that it looks oddly porous, but before they can investigate further, UB! takes the initiative and strides boldly forward towards the front door. He is only halfway across the clearing when he is rushed and enveloped by a huge swarm of bees issuing from the house’s pores. He turns to try and escape, but is ko’d by the poison after a few steps. The team watches in horror as his condition monitor shows he is entering anaphylactic shock.

T shoots some holes in the side of the house with his gauss rifle, and K launches a massive fireball inside, hoping to clear out any more unpleasant surprises. KS chucks a flashbang towards UB! to clear out some bees, with great success, while T scatters the rest with the backwash from his jetboots/hand stabilizers. K rushes down to assist UB! (who is near death), while KS enters the building. A fire rages inside, having scorched or destroyed most of the interior. However, a prominent chest sits mostly undamaged at the far side of the room. KS opens it, and catches a brief glimpse of a spread of diamons inside, which quickly begin multiplying. Sensing a trap, he quickly shuts the lid, and calls in K, who dispells it. They gather the diamonds, of which there are 13. KS senses that 3 of them are the ones he seeks, but that they are only part of the whole.

They decide to flee the forest, fearing for their lives, rather than chance another of the astrally powerful sites. Upon reaching the edge, UB! and R seem suddenly very reluctant to leave, and T actually turns and begins sprinting back into the forest. K manages to overtake him and haul him out, using his flying harness. He pulls R and UB! along as well, and the team heads back out after collecting TY. They do not tell him that there are 13 diamonds, fearing his superstitions. They fly as long as they can in the remainder of the day, and make camp.

Next: can they make good their escape?

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Lodestone aka Kealt Sanja
Thankyou
Rooster
UltraBoy!
“K”
Tobias Cheney

Tobias hacks the LoneStar database, via antenna, while the others engage in their various business (see last session). He succesfully spoofs the ID of one of the legitimate users after gaining admin access, and manages to find info on a number of employees, a few snitches, and most disturbingly, an interoffice memo regarding “Project PR.” It includes a list of SIN’s, with accompanying intel, on a whole bunch of Mars City runners, including the entire team (except for new members Rooster and Sanja). Harmony Craig Bottow and Rolf Soren Ramis are x-ed out, and Mikko Asparen and Bathcat are checked off. This seems to answer Daedelus‘s question of where missing runner’s are going.

Tobias relays the relevant info on LS to One Shot Wade via ThankYou. T also calls Daedelus and they discuss Project PR and agree to look into if further, as many on the list are associated with the Exchange. The team regathers and he shares this info with them as well. They stock up and head for the crater after Wade tells them he’ll plan an assassination job against LS, and pays them for their work. K follows the car while flying invisibily, everyone else rides inside.

They arrive at a small abandoned settlement near the crater edge (a ways east of their hideout) without any trouble, and rendevouz with Rez and the guides. The guides turn out to be two rough looking and tooled up ghouls, which makes some of the team uncomfortable, especially after they sense Tobias and TY sneaking up on them via enhanced smell. Sanja tries to probe one of their minds to gain access to the crater route and negate their usefulness, but they retreat inside a neaeby building with guns drawn. The team encircles them, but Rooster manages to defuse the situation without any bloodshed after Sanja agrees to pay them the rest up front, as long as the team can disappear Rez. Stocking up the situation, the guides agree to take them into the crater, but no further.

UB! chases down and tackles Rez as he flees towards a car. UB! meets the skin note people nearby and quickly rejoins the team. The ghouls tell the team that the crater can have weird effects on people, although ghouls are not effected as heavily. They seem to usually guide people on crater safaris, letting the rich on Mars hunt the bizaare prey they might find therein. They take the team down a nearby well, through a tunnel, and up into the crater. Before slamming the hatch shut and heading back, they tell them to ‘watch out for the dragons.’ The terrain is barren, dry, and devoid of life as far as the eye can see.

K and Sanja do some scouting to try to find a trail, while TY becomes convinced due to superstition that a brief flash of light he saw will surely guide the way. K, fearing astral projection still, gathers everyone up into a giant flying shadowrunner ball and heads towards the light while Sanja tries to astrally investigate the diamonds. He picks up their trail near the Heliopolis side of the crater’s mana barrier, and with his earth elemental’s help, tracks them towards the interior. The first night, they make camp, but set an inadequate watch, and are attacked by some sort of mutated panther or hillcat. K gets caught in a thick spider-web like substance, but they can’t figure out if that was the cat’s doing, or some other creature (or mage?). They chase the cats off after killing a few. TY smears one of the dead cat’s blood on his face, and then tries unsuccessfully to sleep in his armor. Tobias does the same, with slightly better results (and minus the cat blood). K tethers himself to Sanja’s elemental and sleeps in the air.

The second day passes largely without event, although everyone is severely bruised and fatigued after hours of flying immobilized in the shadowrunner ball. Sanja makes good progress on tracking the diamonds, and locates a vibrant interior, vastly different from the desert wasteland they have been crossing so far. He reports this to the group, and adjusts their heading a bit from TY’s guidance to link up with the diamonds route. They prepare to spend another night in the crater, after crossing over 1000k of terrain airborne in two days.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Lodestone aka Kealt Sanja
Thankyou
Rooster
UltraBoy!
“K”

The team makes the first gun delivery, after Knight Errant drops off ten crates of assault rifles at the hideout. One Shot Wade has them split the delivery between Problem Children and Mad Martians, to foster unity. UB! takes some of his favorite PC’s out to the boonies for a shooting lesson with their new guns. Tobias heads home to work on a “BoneStar” art piece.

TY, Sanja, Rooster, and K all scout out Mikko Asparen‘s former hideout. After questioning the neighbors, searching the place, and finding some helpful camera feeds, they determine that LoneStar (or at least someone wearing LS gear and driving LS cars) raided the place. Although they don’t find evidence of them detaining Mikko specifically, they assume that’s what happened. But why haven’t they announced his capture? TY has a superstition attack, and believes that this raid was connected to him somehow. They also find some hidden cameras and compartments in the hideout, but they have been destoryed or emptied. They hope to find more evidence at the cop shop later on, although the one they are raiding is in a totally different part of town, so the chances of that seem slim.

Rooster gets a call back from the LoneStar HR department, and he charms them into hiring his (fake) company Vendiagram to provide machines and snacks to the cop shop the team is trying to raid. They tell him they have been having trouble securing suppliers, as the undercity is still a bit dicey. They ask him to send in SIN info and company records for all employees. They also suggest that if the first contract goes well, he might get additional supplier contracts to other precincts.

K decides to be the sole employee, a weak and somewhat slow mage who uses his abilities to move heavy objects. He buys a quality fake SIN, and him & Rooster get uniforms, snacks, machines, and make some surveys to give out to determine snack preferences. They head in, having been cleared, and pass through a series of scanners and two security doors before reaching the parking area under the building. They meet the LS liason, whom Rooster quickly charms. He takes them on a tour of the building, and Rooster convinces him to take both a vending machine for the main floor, and a smaller coffee maker for the upstairs, where the server room is located. They hand out surveys and leave.

Tobias instructs them how to make an antenna wired into the coffee machine that will allow him to get through the building’s electromagnetic security. The antenna will activate only when the coffee machine is on, and so shouldn’t be detected if scanned. However, if the internal network in the building is hardwired, they will need to hook it in somehow.

Rooster purchases some expensive chili, to pass off as homemade & win customer loyalty, and they head back, heeding the survey results on what to stock. They also get a rough idea of how many LS employees work out of the building. They once again enter without any problems, and their equipment passes the requisite scans. K sets it up while Rooster dishes out chili. Rooster also subtly inquires if he would be able to link the machines up to any sort of wireless network to have them report problems and outages to him, and the liason tells him to have the machines forward all reports to him (the liason) and that he will then send them out to Rooster- so, happily, they won’t need to hardwire the antenna, as Rooster has gained access to the local wireless.

They take off, mission accomplished on their end. Tobias will take a few days to slowly probe the system as necessary, gathering any info he can. TY and UB!, both bored, really want to kill something.

K gets a call soon thereafter from Madame Gavral, who says that she has some info about a Mars Crater smuggler. She is reluctant to give up any of her suppliers, but this guy apparently stiffed her recently, and Arlen Thompson has been leaning on her to help. He is a Heliopolis refugee named Rez Al-Shabib. She doesn’t know where he is right now, but provides a rough description and tells K that she believes he is a junkie of some sort. She also tells him that the fact that she sold out one of her suppliers, if it got out, would totally ruin her business, so she needs K to make sure that Rez permanently disappears after they get what they can from him. K agrees.

K relays all the info to the rest of the team, and Sanja calls up Ibn Hassan, looking for info. Hassan tells him that there are some Heliopolis refugees who have a small setup in the street bazaar in his area. He obliquely suggests that if one of them were to disappear, it would not be a terrible thing, as they have been late on their protection payments recently. Sanja heads to the market, and manages to track down Rez. He purchases some awakened drugs for a greatly inflated price, and tells Rez that there is much more Nuyen where that came from for anyone who can take him into the crater. Rez demures, but looks tempted.

Sanja leaves, and informs the team. They wait, and the next day Rez calls Sanja on the secure line he provided. K and TY wait near the market on TY’s new chameleon-coated motorcycle, in case they need to do a snatch and grab, while Sanja, Rooster, and UB! circle nearby in Rooster’s SUV. Rez again asks for a large sum, which Sanja agrees to, haggle free. Arlen Thompson fronts him the money. Rez tells Sanja that the sum includes transport in for himself and thee others, and that if anyone else wants to go it’ll be extra. He tells Sanja to meet him at a barren area a ways out from Heliopolis in two days, and bring his hunting gear.

UB! gets a surprising call from the skin-note people, to whom he owes a significant sum. They request Rez delivered when the team is finished with him, as they wish to study longterm effects of awakened drugs on the metahuman body. After K gets AT’s assent to this method of disposal (he seems to want to remain out of the loop on actual criminality), the team agrees, as it will help pay down UB!’s debt.

They prepare to head out, in search of the diamonds at last. TY also assents to Sanja searching his deepest memories for any more info on the diamond delivery. Sanja gains some insight into TY’s past, which is fairly disturbing- his village was wiped out, with him as the sole survivor. Even he would not have lived if not for a mysterious benefactor who paid for his transformation into the near machine that he is now. Sanja catches flashes of consciousness during the surgery, and is greatly disturbed by the feeling that each time TY comes to, he is less and less human. Sanja also finds deep reserves of survivor guilt, and a strong vengeful hatred of the Xhosa tribe, who currently are in a position of power in South Africa, under the protection of the Great Dragon Mujaji.

More relevant, Sanja is able to sneak past that mental block that someone put in TY’s mind, and get a look at the man he delivered the diamonds to. The man is a fairly standard metahuman size, and is wearing an obscuring overcoat and hat. In the shadow of his hat, Sanja makes out a hammered bronze mask, and cold, dead-looking eyes staring out of it. The eyes meet TY’s for a moment and something shifts in his brain. Sanja assumes this was the memory wipe spell. He also finds TY’s recollection of his earlier encounter with the diamonds: finding them on a job in South Africa, and getting a bad vibe from them, and then having them taken from them by an incredibly powerful magician shortly thereafter, and being compelled to bring them to Mars.

Sanja only tells everyone the diamond related info, keeping TY’s deepest secrets to himself.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Lodestone aka Kealt Sanja
Thankyou
Rooster
Tobias Cheney
UltraBoy!
“K”

The team, following One Shot Wade‘s instructions, hide out in the undercity after the car chase with LoneStar. UB! and TY hear some news from gang sources that Yoleus was indeed killed in the ambush. Wade is thrilled with the outcome, as noone seems to suspect that anyone besides the Star was involved. He has put out feelers to the remaining Mad Martian LT’s about joining up with the Problem Children, instead of getting into a war of succession for control of the MM’s, as Yoleus’ obvious successors are both also dead or captured.

Wade also suggests that the team take revenge on LoneStar for Yoleus’ death, and the raid on UB!‘s party. Wade suggests hitting one of the brand new fortified LS undercity precinct houses, to show that the Star can’t hold the turf. While there, Wade wants the team to acquire any info they can on LS employees so that the gangs can target them away from work. He also wants any intel on informants in the undercity. He tells the team that they should be able to make a decent profit fencing all the drugs & gear that they will find in the precinct’s evidence room. He also tells Tobias to get the Knight Errant guns flowing, pronto. Tobias starts a new meme of tagging a modified phallic LoneStar logo and a “BoneStar” label throughout the matrix and irl.

Tobias, UB!, and TY head out the the smuggler’s compound to fix it up a bit. Tobias and UB! deal with wiring and setting up defense systems, while KE contractors add in escape tunnels and some other handy features. Elton Massey & Wade agree to pay the team a monthly rate for their work as middlemen, allowing them to maintain the hideout for free, while still each pocketing 1000 nuyen.

Tobias also gets a call from Daedelus, asking him to look into some rumors for the Exchange. a disturbing number of runners have been disappearing of late, after getting nabbed on runs or picked up in LS sweeps. There are seemingly no records of their existence or demise, however. Daedelus puts Tobias in touch with Marlowe, an ork who knows one of the missing runners.

Marlowe reveals that his team was hired through an anonymous Johnson (who he now believes to be triad connected) to do a carbomb hit (UB! recalls rigging the bomb, some time ago, as a favor for the exchange). Marlowe’s team consisted of himself (the face), a dwarf rigger/pilot named Mikko Asparen, and two hackers that he works with sometimes. After the bomb went off, they found out they had hit not only a mafia target, but also his young children. Worried for their future, the team split up and went to ground. Mikko’s hideout got raided, supposedly by LS, but there’s been no word of him since. K recalls that Mikko was Harmony Craig Bottow‘s former bff, and Tobias finds that he left Evo shortly after HCB’s death was (falsely) reported from Deimos prison moon. He apparently joined up with Marlowe’s team sometime after that.

Rooster calls his LS streetcop buddy and finds out that there is a record of a tipline call about Mikko’s hideout, which should have been followed up on, but there are no further records. Rooster also gets LS’s undercity HR number, hoping to gain access to the precinct house in disguise as a vending machine repairman. Rooster and K are also interested in the mafia angle of the carbombing, as John Caruthers had asked Rooster to look into this very event. K calls Caruthers, and they reconnect, and Caruthers tells K to stay in touch this time. He also tells K that his uncle (the carbomb victim) was working on some blackmail against a rising star city councilwoman with Triad ties: Lihua Wan.

When questioned by Sanja, Wan effectively admits hiring the shadowrunners, or at least having knowledge of their activities. The team decides not to act on this yet, however, as they don’t want to end up in the middle of a mafia/triad war. Especially since different team members have loyalties to different sides….

They decide to research Mikko’s last known whereabouts, and then raid the cop shop, hoping to find more info therein.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Lodestone aka Kealt Sanja
Thankyou
Rooster
Tobias Cheney
UltraBoy!

The team assembles to look at their options. TY wants to pursue the diamons, feeling a superstitious personal connection. LS concurs, as that is his current job. K also agrees, but decides to lie low for a while, feeling paranoid about the team’s growing profile. Ub!, finally free of the vat, finds out he has a mighty debt to pay: 160,000 nuyen, due asap. He borrows from Tobias to pay an initial 15k. Rooster, hearing back about his spaceport inquiries, is able to affirm that the diamons left the spaceport for Heliopolis, and were picked up by a figure who, when viewed on trideo, seems difficult to look out, and whose appearance seems to continually shift. LS speculates that this is some form of high level illusion, which explains TY’s inability to remember defining details of the man(?).

Remembering a smuggling tunnel that their former teammate Ramose-Hotep’s cousin used, they head to the crater and try to gain access, but are unable as the tunnel is collapsed. They decide to prepare more before digging through, or finding seperate access. LS fills in Robert Toomey, who ends his contract, but says he will let him know if he requires his services further. The team does gain some benefit from the trip, however, as they stop in at the abandoned smuggling compound nearby and decide that if repaired, it would make a good place for a Knight Errant weapons drop, to funnel weapons to the anti-LoneStar undercity war.

They head back to the city, and LS gets hired to track down Dengxiang Wan’s activities before his disappearance. He traces the kid to another bug cult survivor, who he interviews, and discovers that Wan was frequenting bunraku parlors run by the Hikage Iinkai. When he reports this to Lihua Wan, she requests that one of the parlors be made an example of in a spectacular fashion at his discretion. She promises to pay and cover medical. The team agrees, and LS scouts it out while UB! prepares a car bomb and Tobias fins a sniping post near the back. TY boosts some cars to use for the bomb and escape.

LS finds out that the parlor has a main bar/dancefloor, an upstairs with a few levels of meatspace prostitution, and some private backrooms on the ground floor where the full immersion simrigs are. They decide to use a shaped charge placed in car in the alley to direct damage towards the back area on the ground floor, Tobias will snipe survivors from that side while LS deathtouches survivors out front, while pretending to be a concerned bystander. TY and UB! will drive the cars and escape together while LS and T sneak away in the chaos. Rooster bows out, feeling bad about the likely civilian casualties.

They set the bomb off, doing massive damage and partially collapsing the back edifice of the building. T sees no survivors after a few moments and takes off. UB! and TY are already on their way to the undercity to celebrate with malts. LS deathtouches a few people he thinks might be clients or employees, and heals a woman he doesn’t recognize, before leaving on foot. T heads home in a cab after leaving the building and doffing his armor.

The team decides to take a minute to plan their next job: One Shot Wade wants them to assassinate Yoleus, and frame LoneStar, in order to cement the Problem Children’s hold on local turf and gang activities. By framing LoneStar, they can also incite the gang’s to rise up against them, helping Knight Errant gain ground, and securing a more amenable security arrangement, as Tobias has planned. KE will smuggle weapons to the gangs through T and TY, until they gain control of the security contracts, and then work out a deal with gangs to look the other way as long as nothing too egregious occurs. T pays LS to assist, as LS has no personal interest at stake.

UB! plans a huge party, declaring it “HCB Day.” He invites both Mad Martians and Problem Children. He also hires a popular local orkrock band, the Orxplosions, to play, and request they do some Crod Stompaz covers. They oblige, as everyone gets drunk on free kegs. UB! and LS manipulate some of the MM lieutenants present into accidentally revealing Yoleus’ current hideout and appearance. Sadly, the party is raided by LoneStar shortly thereafter, and the team barely makes their escape. Tobias provides crucial hacking support and navigation while they hack through the back wall of the warehouse, and flee for their lives through nearby stores and the sewers. Wade hooks them up with a street doc, and they crash. Tobias also calls Elton Massey, and tells him to have KE provide some support, or their whole deal might fall apart.

After healing, LS sends a watcher spirit to track down Yoleus’ hideout, after Tobias finds a likely location based on the MM’s info. The watcher reports back that it found a false wall hidden entrance off the sewers, almost directly under Long Pig’s old compound. Wade is amused to hear it is under his turf- not where he expected. TY manages to find out the name of a MM lieutenant who is thought to have died in the raid the night before, which was a clusterfuck: around a dozen PC dead or missing, and as many or more MM. Strangely some milspec looking heavies showed up and hit LoneStar in the rear hard enough that most of the gangers escaped. However, Lonestar and the press are playing it up as a big win against crime.

Tobias uses the MM’s name to hack his comm code, and then frame him as the snitch who set up the raid. He then uses that same comm code (anonymized) to call a hint in to LoneStar about Yoleus’ location. He also hack’s the sewer controls and closes off or floods all the access points to the MM hideout except one, to funnel them into the trap. Then, he (again anonymously, but via a different comm) warns Yoleus that the Star is incoming. TY warns Wade as well, to keep his people clear, unless he wants to take the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, and take out some Star officers after they take out Yoleus.

LS watches the ambush site in astral space, while a watcher observes the hidden hideout door. The watcher reports back that people fled through it and encountered others, and then some died in the sewers. LS sees two survivors emerge from the sewer tunnel just as what he assumes is a Star van pull up and drop a dozen figures: SWAT? They engage in a heavy firefight, and the two sewer escapees are cut down, but then a shitstorm starts: the van explodes, and half of the Star swat team that was still alive winks out. LS reports this back to the team, and they tune into the news reports, to see that a high speed carchase/gun battle is occuring, seemingly on route towards an uppercity access nearby.

TY, T, and UB! head to the car to cut them off, not sure who survived and who is chasing who. They catch up, due to fancy driving, and see that it’s undercity gangers (Yoleus not amongst them) chasing Star Swat officers, both groups in apparently purloined cars. UB! detonates the SWAT car with a well placed grenade, the gangers crash spectacularly, and TY barely swerves in time to avoid the same. He pauses only long enough to pick up the three surviving gangers (after one shoots all the SWAT guys in the head), and they flee, ditching the car and scattering to hide and heal up.

Then, they await news of what actually occured, who survived, and more importantly, who didn’t.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Lodestone aka Kealt Sanja
Thankyou
Rooster
Tobias Cheney
“K”

Lodestone, using his Sanja SIN, has been operating a legit one-man detective agency on Mars for almost two years. Business has really taken off recently due to his success in rescuing the child of upper city politician Lihua Wan from an undercity Christian cult. Today is no different: early in the morning he gets a call from Robert Toomey asking for a matrix meet. He agrees, and Toomey hires him to track down some diamonds that arrived on Mars a few months back. They have unknown provenance, use, and ability, and Toomey’s only clues are the arrival date, and that a large South African man with oversized cyberarms is thought to have been the courier. Sanja agrees to check it out, for his usual retainer.

He traces the courier to the Mungikicontrolled area near the core, with the help of Ibn Hassan. He goes there, and meets Rooster at a free clinic run by the ork shaman Samson. Rooster offers to help him look around, and they talk to Daniel Agabo, who they bribe into telling them that he saw the courier outside a local church during a firefight there, and that he left with some Knight Errant security and a local dwarf ganger who recently died.

Rooster calls John Caruthers, who tells him that the dead dwarf is probably Harmony Craig Bottow, and tells them where the funeral took place. They go to check out Slot, and after asking after HCB get sent to the Slaughtertower, where Ivan the Jackle instructs the remaining team to meet them, see what they want with HCB, and take any actions necesary. Rooster and Sanja quicky recognize Thankyou as the courier, and a standoff ensues. After recognizing their common friend (Arlen Thompson) K and Sanja agree to work together. Thompson hires them out from under his old nemesis Toomey, although Sanja doesn’t tell Toomey yet. The rest of the team goes along, and TY tells them what he knows.

He brought the diamonds from Africa to Mars after a run in which a more experienced team was wiped out, and part of his team was killed, by an incredibly powerful mage. The mage instructed him to get the diamonds off planet, and told him a man would meet him at the spaceport to get them from him. TY then was recomended to Ivan the Jackle, presumably by this same group, although Ivan also knows nothing of the diamonds. Everyone’s contacts come up short, as well.

The team decides to check out the spaceport first, and find that the vidlogs of the day in question, as well as the flight records have been scrubbed. The mages locate a powerful astral residue lingering around the spot where TY made the handoff, and they track it out to the parking lot, back in, and then lose the trail at the entrance to a private shuttle facility. They decide that the diamonds likely remained on Mars, although where on the planet is in question.

Sanja gets a call from Wan, asking him to check in on their recently returned son, as he has been worsening in recent days and is mostly incommunicative. They think seeing his rescuer might help. Thompson calls K around the same time, worried that the cult the boy was rescued from may be related to the insect infestations. They check it out and it seems likely, given Sanja’s recollections, so he goes to see the boy at the Wan family compound in the upper city. The boy, Dengxiang, is about 19, and is pale, sweaty, and heavily bloated since last Sanja saw him. His astral presence is also somewhat skewed.

Sanja calls in Thompson and K, who verify that Dengxiang has been infected with some sort of awakened parasite, but appears to still be alive underneath it all. Thompson has him rushed to a hospital, where he assists in the surgery to remove the dozens of tiny insectoid life forces that Sanja found within him. The team goes back to looking into diamonds while waitig for news.

They check two undercity churches where the insect cult had operated, since TY’s superstition led him to believe that the two things are connected. Neither has traces of the diamonds, and are both cordoned off with KE tape. They decide to check Heliopolis as well. Rooster and Sanja are somewhat horrified to see the extent of the devastation of that town ( Better Nuke the Place From Orbit), having only heard the news reports of an ‘earthquake’. The center of the Thor shot impacts are huge crates, with a flattened glasslike surface for a significant radius around. Outside of that, remains and rubble increase in size and frequency, but the town has been utterly destroyed. The brutal astral disruption of such an act damages K, who flees astral space to recover. Sanja holds his own, and manages to filter out the diamond aura from the others, locate its strongest point, and compare that to a satellite image of the town when it existed.

The location? The old Thoth temple, under which the insect hive grew. However, the aura seems to have been fading since before the town was destroyed, so Sanja assumes they were moved again. He traces the path, and it seems to head straight for the Crater. Disturbing. The team decides to prep more before heading any further in.

On the way back to MC, Thompson calls and tells them that the boy survived the surgery, and the infectious nodes were safely removed and destroyed. However, he is unsure how much mental or physical function the boy will ever regain. The Wan family is distressed but optimistic. Rooster also tells the team that Caruthers wants him looking in to the assassination of his uncle, niece, and nephew via a carbomb, and K is excited to hear that Caruthers has returned to society, although he is surprised to learn that he has become a mid-level mafia boss.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Thankyou
Rolf Soren Ramis
Tobias Cheney
“K”

After returning to Mars City, the team gets a call from K, who (along with other members of the Hermetic Order of the Crimson Lands) has the ritual ready to transport the team to the insect plane. The basic plan is: they will use the ritual materials that they discovered in the undercity insect warren to open an astral rift to the insect plane, allowing the mundane team members to astrally project alongide K. The HOotCL will hold the rift open inside a ritual circle while Knight Errant Firewatch teams provide security in case any bugs come through(and medical attention to the team members bodies). As UltraBoy! is still mid- gene therapy in a blacksite clinic, they decide to proceed without him, so as not to lose the element of surprise. In a similar vein, they haven’t done any recon or even attempted to open the portal yet, to avoid alerting the Queen to their ability to do so, so the team will be going in nearly blind. However, the mages assure them that they will enter the insect plane at or near the target Queen’s hive.

Feeling that there is little to do in the way of preparation, the team heads down into the undercity warren once more. The abovegraound entrance in the church is heavily guarded, as the tunnels are below. KE seems to be taking this fairly seriously. HCB alerts the Hikage Iinkai about the mission, and they tell him they will post some watchers as well, to make sure KE doesn’t pull a stunt like they did in Chicago. Tobias takes out a life insurance policy, accessible to his teammates. Everyone descends, eventually reaching the room where they last fought the Queen. It is cordoned off, and there are 2 dozen or so KE members, many equipped with insecticide sprayers, as well as the medical personnel. The mages are further out in the middle of the room, seated around a ritual circle inscribed with insectoid runes. K is with them, although he stands to join the team when they arrive. HCB strips down, wanting to enter the plane naked, and, at a signal from K, Arlen Thompson opens the rift. The team steps through…

…Into an alien landscape that it takes their minds a moment to comprehend. They appear to be on some sort of balcony overlooking a flat arid plain that stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction. They are about 2/3rd’s of the way up a monolithic hive structure that appears to be made of some sort of extruded chitinous substance. Similar hives dot the landscape at irregular intervals on all sides. As they look about, they see that each team member appears to have taken to form of their idealized self: K: legless and glowing, HCB: his face replaced with the terrifying little girl mask from the Crod Stompaz, Rolf: a stylized version of the Ares centurion logo (accompanied by his faithful boxer), ThankYou: gleaming armor covered in symbols of his destroyed tribe, and Tobias: pretty much the same as always, apparently he is very self actualized. TY and Rolf unfortunately seem to have some trouble adjusting to this bizaare reality, and seem somewhat hampered in movement and action. TY manages to quickly overcome this, due to the power of his superstitions, as he takes the appearance of his tribe’s symbols (an affiliation he has long hidden) to be some sort of spiritual validation.

As they gather themselves, a portal irises open in the side of the hive. HCB sees a praying mantis like insect approaching and opens fire, killing it. The team hears an unearthly scream from above, and (deducing that it probably has a hive mind) decides to head upward and hopefully find the Queen. K levitates the shadowrunner ball, and ascends, while the rest of the team fires on flying insects that approach. They reach the top, and, lacking a visible entrance, blow one open. K drops HCB and Tobias in before realizing that it is quite a ways down. HCB manages to land on a centipede-spider hybrid that is racing to intercept him, somewhat breaking his fall. Tobias tucks and rolls successfully and avoids any damage. Both fire on the Queen while falling, but are quickly surrounded by more of the centispiders and praying mantis’. K chucks Rolf in next, at his insistence, before widening the hole, so he and TY can descend more safely. K chucks a massive fireball at the Queen, but she cancels it with a gesture. She also seems to once again be regenerating damage done to her by their attacks.

She rushes over and KO’s Tobias, while HCB fends off her guards, making a retreat towards the wall. Rolf manages to get some shots off while falling, but she reaches out and swats him into the wall, breaking most of the bones in his body. He attempts one final shot, but his bad luck catches up with him, and his bow snaps, taking his hand off at the wrist- he begins bleeding out onto the floor as his aura fades. K screams ‘TOBIAAAS’ before realizing that it was actually a different teammate. Fortunately, Tobias is back in the fight, seemingly having received some medical attention to his meat body. He resumes firing at the Queen, as does TY, with K providing spell support. Sadly, HCB is surrounded by her guards and beaten, clawed, and bitten to death while trying to hold them off. He lets off one final burst of machine pistol fire in the Queen’s direction before his aura also begins to fade. The team, greatly saddened, redoubles their efforts.

Having dropped a few of the guards, they continue focusing their fire mostly on the Queen, which begins to wear out her armor and regenerative capabilities. However, she unleashes a powerful acid stream onto K & TY, nearly knocking them out of the air. TY responds with a massive burst of machine gun fire, finaly dropping her. Tobias kills a few more guards as they start convulsing and seizuring, and then fires on the Queen repeatedly until she bursts & K sees her aura dissipating- which seems to send out a shockwave, leveling the bugs in the room. They decide to make good their escape, and K scoops Tobias up and heads for the roof hole. They barrel through the frenzied insect swarm above it, taking minimal damage, and rocket down the hive side for the (thankfully) still open rift. They see a huge wave of insects rushing through the portal, and begin firing while rushing through. Crashing back into the physical realm, only Tobias is able to retain his tenuous hold on consciousness- he scream ‘close the portal!’ as he takes in the chaos around him and fires on any insects he sees. Arlen Thompson complies, and the rift snaps shut, slicing a bug in half. Tobias gets up from his crash couch and helps the survivors of the Firewatch teams mow down the remaining bugs.

It looks like the mages & KE members both suffered heavy casualties holding the bugs at bay, but Tobias doesn’t have much time to debrief before he is rushed to a hopsital to deal with the massive of amount of damage he is about to take when his stimpaks wear off. He wakes up over a week later to the news that HCB and Rolf are dead, although K and TY both survived, similarly hospitalized. Tobias arranges to send flowers to the families of the dead KE members, who Elton Massey tells him were all given good funerals, altough their families will never learn the details of their deaths. K arranges for HCB and Rolf’s bodies to be delivered to Ivan the Jackle, who arranges an epic wake at Slot. HCB’s Yakuza connections bring his motorcycle, garlanded out, and have a heavy presence at the service (although they remain seperate from the numerous undercity gangers and Crod Stompaz fans). Rolf’s only other friend, Sylvain Georges, is there, sitting by Rolf’s picture, which has been displaced to a corner of the bar by the huge HCB display. Ivan and many of the Problem Children and Mad Martians attend, as does one of Daedelus’s meat drones, and a female ork with large dreads and a rugged look. UB! is there on vid, from his medvat. Crod Stompaz songs blare over the PA as everyone gets excessively drunk.

Later in the evening, a large security convoy pulls up out front, and a dignified older Japanese man enters, pays his respects at HCB’s shrine, and leaves. Although the team members aren’t sure exactly who he was, they are all impressed. Shortly thereafter, Ivan announces a convoy out to the desert outside the city, where UB! (from his vat) triggers the explosives which launch a rocket containing HCB & Rolf’s ashes skyward, towards the distant glow of Deimos, before exploding in a massive array of fireworks. It seems like a fitting send-off, although the team still grieves their loss.

The team members return to the hospital to continue healing after the night of debauchery, and wait to hear of what the next job entails. K feels unsure about his future with the team, feeling that with HCB gone, Tobias is firmly in charge, a position that K is uncomfortable with, especially given that he doesn’t really trust UB!, and baely knows TY, both of whom seem to gravitate towards Tobias anyway. He has some thinking to do…

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Thankyou
Rolf Soren Ramis
Tobias Cheney

UB! is still recuperating in the hospital while hoping his team will help him pay for his genetic reworking. K is busy preparing for the his metaplanar quest in the company of Arlen Thompson and Madame Gavral. So, when HCB receives another call from the Yak, he has a smaller team than usual. The Yak have had some success interrogating the kidnapped bunraku manager, and have some bad news. An assistant to Mitsuhama’s senior Mars rep has been a longterm customer of the parlor, having paid significant amounts extra to keep his visits quiet. He often attended in the company of his boyfriend, and was apparently into some fairly extreme activities, which the Yak don’t divulge to HCB. However, they worry that the assistant may have been infected, and may also have infected his boss. Worse, there is a conference coming up on Phobos, the government moon, which a number of major figures from the Corporate Court will be attending. Infecting any of these powerful people would be a huge coup for the insects, and the Yak needs the team to make sure that this doesn’t occur.

The team decides to check the assistant’s upper city apartment first off. HCB rocket packs up while Rolf tries to jump across from the building across the street. They crash through the window, and discover 3 empty husks and 1 partially mutated figure, which they ID as the assistants boyfriend based on pictures in the apartment. It looks like no-one has been here recently, although there are small beetles swarming the bathroom where the husks are located. So, they make a quick exit to avoid any incoming security, and report to the Yak that they will need to get to the moon.

THe Yak have passes and cover ID’s for the team to get up to Phobos as members of a work crew change. Once there, the team will split into pairs: Tobias and ThankYou will go to the conference room and plant a bomb. When this is triggered, the various corp delegates will be ushered to their saferooms, where Rolf and HCB will be waiting to assassinate the Mitsuhama group. This all needs to happen ahead of the CC delegations arrival the next night, so the pressure is on. The team will leave in the morning for the moon. The Yak tells them not to bring weapons or armor, as security is extremely tight. They disguise TY’s arm, making it look like a bulkmod, but disabling it’s use as a weapon (temporarily). The team requests some hi tech airborne poison and some guns (if possible) as well as the explosives to be delivered once they are on the moon. The Yak, as usual, covers medical.

The team does some prep, but mostly just has to wait. They get their fake SIN’s and board the shuttle. Disembarking on Phobos, they are directed towards the work boss, who gives them their toolkits and assignments. T & TY head to the conference room, and see that they have explosives (in lunch thermoses), as well as a disassembled ceramic pistol. HCB and R have a similar pistol and the poison (disguised as rice cakes). T & TY work on repairing the podium, while concealing the explosives therein. T also hacks a wireless mic, and routs to it through some other devices in the station. They head back to the spaceport bar once ready, and TY assembles the pistol just in case.

Meanwhile, R & HCB head into the access tunnels in the main compound. Using site maps, they manage to find an access hatch and HCB heads thru the ducts to gain access to the Mitsuhama safe room. R scouts outside to plan their escape, and let HCB know when people are inbound, if he can. At the appointed hour, the explosive detonates, shortly after Tobias has announced thru the hacked mic “This is Hamshallow. 3….2…1…”. THe explosion triggers a series of alarms, and the arrival of the CC ship from Earth is delayed temporarily. LS security officers fan out and start doing spot inspections and ushering everyone back to their quarters. T & TY dilly dally, but eventually go along. Along the way T hacks the work bosses console and makes it look like a different crew was assigned in place of both of their teams.

Meanwhile, HCB decides to wait until the delegation enters the safe room, to avoid triggering alarms or their suspicions. So he loosens the vent, and assembles the pistol. A few minutes after the explosion, a security team sweeps the room, clears it, and ushers in the delegation. HCB recognizes the two targets, and waits til the team seals the door. Then, he slides the vent aside, chucks down the poison cakes, and shoots a security guard with the pistol. As it is silenced, they seem confused as to what is happening initially as the invisible poison spreads thru the air. HCB drops a piece of sheet metal he grabbed over the open vent to seal it off while he escapes, and flees back down the vent- it looked the poison was already having an effect on the nearest person though!

R, having planned out their route, guides HCB back to the workers quarters, where they meet the rest of the team and wait. T hacks their datatrails. Shortly after, LS officers enter and haul off the workers that T framed. The team sleeps there, and the next morning is assigned to travel back to Mars after the security sweep is over. They return, and HCB is congratulated on his success. The Yak cleans them all thoroughly (physically and in matrix). Checking the news, they see that the attack is being possibly attributed to both Hamshallow and Olympus Prime, as the conference was apparently related to terraforming and development. T is thrilled. He also makes plans to cook up drugs in Daedelus‘s lab to help pay for UB’s surgeries. R begins to get interested in physical adepts, and wonders if he can unleash any inner potential. HCB is thrilled with his increasing presence in the Yak. TY is amazed that all they ever do is blow shit up. Shortly after their return, K calls and tells them that the astral quest is prepared. So they plan to embark shortly…. to a realm of terror- the insect planes!!!

Dramatis Personae
Runners
“K”
Harmony Craig Bottow
Thankyou
Rolf Soren Ramis
Tobias Cheney
UltraBoy!

The team, newly returned from the destroyed Heliopolis (which the news is claiming was a catastrophic reactor failure), and all healed up, the team awaits instructions. Tobias gets a response from Daedelus to his request for lab time (to manufacture street drugs in mass qunatities). Daedelus tells Tobias that in return for performing a job for the nascent Exchange, they will allow Tobias to use their labs for an unspecified amount of time. The job is to attack the front of a NeoNet corp facility north of downtown, fire upon any LoneStar first responders, and then flee unnoticed. Tobias agrees, but fails to convice the entire team of the job’s necessity/benefits, so only he UB! and Thankyou end up on the job.

Meanwhile, HCB has received a call from the Hikage Iinkai with the first name on the hit list. Kaz Hito-Ishi is a former manager at the bunraku parlor where many of the deaths occurred, and the Yak believes he may have useful info about any involvement of bug spirits. So, they want him alive, unless he can’t be captured, in which case dead will have to suffice. However, Kaz has defected to the Kuro-Mori Nakama, the opposing upper city Yak faction, and is holed up in a safe house on their turf. However, the HI worry he will be moved again soon, as the guy they had following him thinks he might have got noticed. So, the team needs to get there before dark.

Since both jobs need to occur in the same afternoon, the team decides to split up initially and then rendevouz at the kidnapping. Tobias, UB! and Thankyou take on NeoNet, while K scouts the Yak safehouse. TY steals three decent looking cars, and UB! rigs one with an insane amount of explosives (and gas for a fireball). Tobias infiltrates to a tower adjacent to the NN facility and sets up a sniper nest. UB! drives his explosive rigged car to the location, while TY brings up the getaway car. TY has to bribe the guard to let him through from the undercity, as it seems like his SIN is flagged. UB! cons his way through using his bodybuilder SIN.

TY parks around a corner 1 1/2 blocks away, and UB! parks out front, near the entrance. He gets out, and begins walking away, making it across the street from the NN facility before a CorpSec guard comes out shouting “Sir! You can’t park there!”. UB! cons him into approaching, shocks him unconscious, and turns to flee to the getaway car. Some more guards emerge and shoot him in the back (being in disguise, he is barely armored) and he blows the trap car to cover his escape. The explosion kicks up a massive cloud of dust, debris, and shrapnel, as well as the blinding flash and deafening roar. UB1 shuffles to the car, and gets TY to drive him to an undercity hospital after the skin note people refuse to admit him (saying he is being tracked). Ivan the Jackle gives them a streetdoc recommendation, and he gets dropped there. He asks them to dye him a different color, but they seem in a rush to get him under anaethesia, as he is bleeding heavily from his wounds.

TY, feeling superstitious and a bit paranoid, leaves, swapping cars three times on the way to Slot to meet Rolf and HCB. Meanwhile, Tobias ignores the DocWagon first responders, and successfully shoots down an LS chopper as it approaches the scene. He then flees, taking some damage from some of the extreme jumps he makes, and heads towards the HI turf for the next job. TY, watching the news in the undercity, sees that they have ID’d UB! (under hsi fake SIN) based on vid and biometric scans that they conducted on him. There is also specualtion that Hamshallow may have been involved- which makes sense, as he is known to have an ork companion. HCB & TY, fearing for UB!‘s safety, contact Ivan, and find out that the streetdoc’s office was annihilated by some sort of black ops corp hit team, but fortunately Ivan had already extracted UB! (and the doc) after correctly deducing that he had been tagged with tracking round by CorpSec at NN.

UB! wakes up in a Problem Children safehouse, surrounded by gangers, including his crush Jaro. She gives him a ride back to the skin note clinic after he calls and sets up an appointment for major genetech- he needs to make himself into a different person. He buys a bunch of kegs for the PC to celebrate in his absence, though. The rest of the team heads up to rendevouz with K in the third stolen car. Tobias arrives a little early, and sets up a sniper post across the street. K, assensing the house at Rolf’s request, picks up an illusion spell on the property, and decides to dispell that as the team approaches-with them entering immediately thereafter. He does so as TY rams through the fence surrounding the property. It seems the illusion was merely to make the house not stand out, as well as being a minor glamer, so they proceed. T blasts the front door with his gauss rifle, and HCB and Rolf approach while TY covers from the car.

They come under fire from a series of Yak goons, but handily dispatch them. K is attacked by 4 bug spirits, but fends them off with T’s help (using the last of his power pack). They start clearing the house, only to hear a car screech out in the alley behind. HCB rockets over the house, and shoots the driver, injuring him. TY comes around the corner, and frags the car, blowing two tires, while HCB shoots out another. K flies over, and T tries to join, but falls just short on a jump, and smacks the side of the building. Inside, Rolf finds some more reagents and a ritual circle on the floor, but no more goons (or the target, who must be in the car). As the team collectively blasts the car, their target blows out the windshield and flies through- a mage! HCB chases him with rocket pack, while TY shoots him in the leg, slowing him. HCB catches him, grapples him in midair, and then deploys a chute to slow them. K flies up a delivers powerufl knockout to Kaz, and they return to the ground, prisoner in hand.

The team returns to the undercity after delivering the hostage, and hopes they don’t need UB! for anything for the next month or so, as he is going to be in the hopsital for a while….