Runners
Carol Turpentine
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

Dig and Creature do some bonding by riding each other in various shapeshifted forms, non-sexually. Their animalistic natures seem to fit well together. The team gets some updates from previous members: Kit has managed to link up with some local Brokerage X operatives (Gina and 3 Card, the brains and muscle, respectively, though both have a lot of financial knowledge) and set up insurance for the Shadow Chaps locally. Teams will opt in or out as a group, and will trade paydata/early tips etc to BX in exchange for BX covering a certain amount of medical per runner per run. Aradia reports in that she is keeping busy doing party prep for Spinrad’s arrival- rumor say he has a big business deal or acquisition on the table and needs everything to go real well, but also wants to party outlandishly.

More disturbingly, Aradia says that noone at the Sisterhood of Ariadne has been answering her calls today, as she was supposed to go by later for another ritual lesson but is too busy with party planning. She asks the team to check in on them. Chew Gum also chats with Dig about strange dreams, as he has also started to have them, and they seem to overlap with Dig’s odd dreams a bit more than would seem usual. Creep and Creature take the van out to meet up with Dig and CG, not wanting to share their safehouse location just yet, though Dig seemingly unaware of the implications tells them all that he could easily find them if he tried. After some tension he agrees not to, for now, but Creature promises to let him try once they approve him for full membership.

They all load into van and travel (mostly via GridGuide) up to Snohomish. They notice that Kit has left the drones and RCC in the van for team use, but has removed the Carboxing arm and rigger interface, presumably to set up a new rig for themself. Reaching the SOA clubhouse, they do some external investigation, as something seems to be off and some unusual magical signatures are detectable from outside. They find no life signs inside, but a warded area appears to be the intact (likely their ritual chamber). There are a suspicious number of cars present, including a slightly concealed dirt bike out back. Both the front and back doors appear to have been breached while locked. After using his rotten possum’s Deathly Aura to try to spook out any stragglers, they carefully enter, searching for traps. The only one they initially find is an explosive under the dirtbike’s seat.

From the investigation inside, they determine a few things: one lone attacker entered through the back, and seems to have been a very fast and efficient killer, using a mix of quiet weaponry. A separate team entered through the front and appears to have been more methodical and used some kind of harpoon guns (some Witches are still pinned to walls and furniture, and appear to have been executed if not killed by the initial shot). The lone killer and the group seem to have intersected at the ritual chamber, where the surviving Witches made their last stand- unfortunately the Witches were all killed, and the team accounts for them all, except the top half of one which was cut off completely smoothly and seemingly somehow sealed or cauterized without burning. Her top half is also missing, as are all the assailants. There is also a sizzling cut through the otherwise intact ward around the ritual circle- the team is confused as the ward should either have failed or healed.

However, they also find the top half of a sword inscribed with a strange script, some burnt toxic reagents, and a satchel with an expended device that looks sort of like an explosive but doesn’t seem to have blown up. Creep speculates that some sort of portal or magical effect is likely responsible. Looking around a bit more, Dig uncovers a secret door in the floor, and after disabling some traps, the team heads down the revealed chute and enters a small tunnel. Chew Gum finds an ornate key around Aunt Clara’s neck, and Creature uses it to unlock the door at the end of the tunnel, but is badly electrocuted. Creep manages to knock xyr free, and they tumble into a small office. Searching it, they find a lot more tech than anywhere else in the clubhouse, including a high end commlink, an offline terminal with a digital whiteboard, a journal, some hermetic reagents, 6 alchemical potions, and one Tarot Card.

Creep opens the journal, which bursts into flame. He manages to put it out but is badly burned. Dig drinks one of the potions and feels like he gained some kind of heightened sense but can’t figure out what. They check everything else carefully for traps and then haul it all out of the basement and to the van, with CG concealing them as they exit. CG also has a spirit make a silence sphere, and then snipes the bike out back to set off the explosive trap so that noone will unexpectedly trigger it later- a real civic-minded guy. Recognizing that the journal is in some kind of code, that they aren’t hackers, and that none of them know whatever language is on the blade, they decide to seek help. Dig feels his extra sense going away and manages to focus and figure out it was an astral clairvoyance potion.

First off they head down to Lady Zelda’s Lore Galore store in Puyallup, as usual she talks their ears off but does provide some useful info- as Creep had speculated, the code in the journal looks somewhat similar to the text in the Voynich Manuscript, and Zelda concurs, suggesting it is likely an internal cipher used by the Black Lodge. She warns them about the dangers of messing with this group, and also ID’s the rest of the potions- all detection and mind effecting stuff, so Dig holds onto them. Creep and Creature remember there’s a Vault of Ages in the van so they chuck the potions in to preserve them.

Next they head to Severinus de Cloet’s cart, as she has hinted to Elven royalty ties in her past, to better ID the sword fragment, which Zelda said was Sperethial. Severinus seems a little spooked and drops it after examining, and says this was a blade supposedly crafted by experts in magical weaponry on the Seelie Court for a legendary assassin who later went rogue: Teachdaire, aka The Messenger. Supposedly the blade is able to dispel magic and is exceptional as piercing magical armor. This possibly explains the strange unhealing slice they found in the warded ritual circle at the Sisterhood’s clubhouse. Severinus warns them further about The Messenger, but seems relieved that he may have gotten shoved off into some metaplane- she says that he has killed multiple members of elven and Seelie courts, so hopefully someone will take a chance to get revenge….

They next contact Tauren and request some hacking help, but warn him there are probably some traps. He agrees and says he’ll work fast, but will bring in a couple others to help. They all rest for the night, and CG and Dig have another weirdly similar dream. Creep and Creature both get Kit to patch up their armor from the run. The next day it looks like Tauren pulled an all-nighter, and he requests some extra pay for medical expenses- they lost a few files, but recovered most of the data, but it was VERY well-protected. He says that it looks like Clara was the lone user, and appears to have been reporting to a handler ID’ed as “JB” on a number of different areas. One was the use of the Sisterhood to foretell various events, possibilities, etc, and the potential for recruiting various members someday. Another was new connections with some useful shadowrunners. The 3rd was a pressing investigation into a newly acquired photograph of the previously unknown plane of Dis.

There is a lot of back and forth with JB about what this could mean, and it seems like the primary consensus is that this could give them a serious leg up against their opposition in this area. After some digging, the team is able to ID this opposition as the APEP Consortium, newly acquired by MCT, who locally operate out of a magic research facility atop Cougar Mountain in Renton. Clara’s last report is that she is planning to use her Sisterhood to do a large ritual to try to gain more info about Dis, and JB warning her to be careful, as their adversaries are very jealous of their current advantages in this area. JB and Clara never directly confirm that they are Black Lodge, but the sense of superiority and unspoken human supremacy that comes through says enough. The team realizes that they didn’t find the Dis pic anywhere at the clubhouse. Creature also recalls that xe has seen harpoon guns before: the Rift Jumpers who attack the team when they were leaving the OZ hyperplane to go to the Library of Alexandria. So are the Rift Jumpers connected to APEP? Who are they?

They next contact Elijah to get help cracking the code in the journal. They head to his temporary basement office at UW Downtown, and find him with a few full-limb casts on, which he explains away as “Antarctica being interesting this time of year.” They get down to business, and he has a mini-me version of himself (some sort of Homunculus) close the door and fetch coffee. He seems very smart and just mildly condescending if he ever feels like they’re wasting his time. The team trades him a bunch of Dis info in exchange for help with the strange device and the journal. He examines the device and explains that it looks like someone has re-jiggered one of ARES’ “Project: Bottleneck” portal closers to reverse the polarity and use it to open portals instead. He says he thinks they would be imperfect, inaccurate, and very temporary. The tech doesn’t look totally finished, but nonetheless- very interesting! In combo with the burnt toxic reagents they found, he explains that you might be able to control portal size/shape etc a bit.

For the book, he calls in a colleague: Prof. Maggie Magnusson (with the team’s approval). Maggie and Creep chat a bit, having met at the Crypt, and then Creep, Creature, and CG are dismissed as they aren’t really much good at helping with the book and it’s a small office. Dig stays to assist. They don’t make much progress on the book, and Elijah suggests reaching out to some AI contacts of Maggie’s to speed it up, but the team rejects that idea for now. Dig asks for help learning some mind reading spells, which Elijah agrees to, in order to try to find the magical cryptographic key that might crack the journal quicker. The rest of the team decides to look into the Tarot card. Following some clues, they end up at the Numismatic Museum of Seattle, Downtown, and buy tickets.

They find the coin hinted at on the card, and “near” it find a huge glass jar with some trace magic, filled with tens of thousands of rare-ish dimes. The curator claims that is a world record collection of dimes, and seems to be a coin pervert. The team tries to figure out how to heist it, while Creep sneaks into the basement to try to find out who the unlisted donor of this item is. With some miraculous searching, Creep finds out that it was Dunkelzahn himself. They head out for now, planning to possibly return later to steal the thing but not quite sure how to proceed, as they guess it would weigh close to a ton. For now, they link back up with Dig and discuss next steps- it seems they’re waiting on the translation of the book, so CG and Dig reach out to Jaga, the Walking Witch, to suggest a sleepover, to bring the 3 Tzuri Group traditions together and see if their various dreams continue to align, and what that might mean….

The team also gets some new from around town: Romeo has been talking shit about them since they burned him with ARES, probably permanently, and he will not be working with them again. Annie has been doing some quiet damage control though, and she hopes this doesn’t harm the team’s rep too badly. Rahel Juric of Omnistar released the bunraku parlor info about Carl Derrick (UCAS rep), and also the info about Reed/ARES trying to cover it up to blackmail Derrick. This gets the public pissed at both ARES and the UCAS government (for being so in the pockets of the corps), playing into Omnistar’s hands nicely. Reed tries to do a damage control press conference, but is killed by a sniper. ARES tries to blame the whole thing on her and sweep it under the rug, announcing that their longtime political head for Seattle, Karen King, will be taking over their place on the Referendum.

The missing CAS rep has been located- the Blank Verses team managed to find a ship with his corpse aboard a ship docked at the local Proteus aquacology. It looks like the Null assassin Hitsec Burn corrupted or unleashed an AI aboard the vessel, which killed and experimented upon the passengers. The BV didn’t head further into the Proteus facility, as it was outside their job parameters, especially as they already had multiple casualties from the run. The BV spread the word about a mad AI on the loose on the ship, nd possibly in the facility, and a minor panic starts- likely what Hitsec was after primarily- bad press for AI’s.

Gregory Bear-Killer also went after his target: the Horizon rep Thomas Muir. Muir’s bodyguard, Sutun the Pillar of Ankara, managed to hold back a toxic wolf but was killed by acid while wrestling it. Muir himself had a surprise adept awakening and manged to fight off and subdue Bear-Killer, who was arrested and is now detained on McNeil Prison island. Horizon plays up Muir’s “good guy with magic” heroism, which is very popular with the masses, especially given his “awe shucks” vibe at the press conference he insists on concluding after the attack.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Creature
Tabasco
Creep

Goodbye to:
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
and Aradia

and Introducing:
Chew Gum
and Dig

While the team is busy hiring out tons of runners, a couple new ritualists roll into town. Chew Gum, a Necro Mage affiliated with the Tzuri Group’s Black Magic school, and Dig, a Beast Mage affiliated with Tzuri Group’s Red Magic school, have both found themselves in Seattle after ending or finishing their formal instruction. Dig has been having some prophetic dreams (a blood eclipse, an avalanche, and some underground cities) that have brought him here, while Chew Gum is seeking money, connections, artifacts and power, and heard Seattle was a good spot for all of it.

They link up, and get to know each other a bit. Both are very strange. Dig seems to be a homeless shapeshifter with some rock-skin SURGE qualities, while Chew Gum is a pot-bellied Ogre accompanied by some Necro spirits housed in a mass of rotten plant matter worn as a bandolier and a rotting possum. They get along just fine. Following up on some Tzuri Group leads, they decide to investigate some happenings in the Underground.

They bribe some Skraacha to watch CG’s bike (with sidecar for Possum and DIg, who is in dog form), and head down into the Umbra district from a Night of Rage memorial in a public park, which contains a secret entrance. They send some of their spirits off to search for signs of Green Magic, as they heard a fellow former student went rogue and may be down here. They eventually come across some Rooters members, who CG makes a good impression on, after convincing them that “his dog” isn’t laughing at them. Dig uses a mindlink spell to stay in communication with CG while in animal form.

The Rooters give them a bit of the lay of the land of politics and power struggles in the underground, and tell them the Green Mage they seek is a weirdo healer named Jaga, The Walking Witch. They follow the Rooters directions to bypass the main tourist/developed area, and cut around to the Ork Underground to the north. They pass through some construction zones that look to be SK and EVO sub-arcologies in the process of being built. Reaching the Ork Underground, they encounter Big V’s Monument, and eventually find their way to the Watering Hole, where CG once again overcomes his and Dig’s bizarre appearance by virtue of speaking Or’Zet (and being able to down Hurlg and Big D Hot Sauce with no trouble).

The barkeep uses an alchemical token to summon Jaga, and she walks in a few hours later. They converse, and she reports that she has been having her own versions of Dig’s dreams, seemingly filtered through her Green Magic perspective. They squabble a bit, as their fields usually do, but CG helps keep the peace. They agree to work together on some investigations, but Jaga makes clear that she won’t help them if they’re working against the “true” Underground at any point- take from above, not below and all. She also tells them about some other interesting locations to find (and avoid) down here. This includes the Ghoulberg area (good body disposal, but make sure you don’t get snagged too- helps to make some infected friends) and the toxie Druid cult harvesting the fatberg out in Redmond.

They also notice the barkeep gives her a human sized Hurlg mug, a rare sign of respect to a non-Trog in this establishment. She also seems to have replaced a former cyberarm with an animate plant matter arm, and has a small humanoid plant familiar of some sort that follows her. She seems to be kind of evenly somewhere between CG and Dig’s relative power levels. CG also makes contact via a bar terminal with Sung Yi, and info broker with the Choson Ring, one of the local Seoul’Pa’s, and proves his nationalist credentials sufficiently to get a test job: fuck with the Yak in a meaningful way and they will help him out and give him more work. He agrees.

They leave the bar and continue their investigations. They head to the Dwarf Underground, the ritziest area, to look into rumors of Menehune Dwarfs working some kind of excavation project. Sung Yi already tipped them that the Menehune are likely working on behalf of the Sea Dragon, so they tread carefully, plus they inevitably attract plenty of attention from the guards (Hard Corps mercs) who police the zone’s borders, and who insist on confirming magically that CG isn’t a shedim. They get in, but are under constant surveillance while there. They use their spirits to find the nearest large collection of excavating tools, and confirm that it is somewhere down under the bottom of the central elevator shaft of a new 10-story deep hotel.

The concierge confirms that the Penthouse suite (the lowest level, with a private elevator) has been indefinitely rented, and will not allow them access to any areas without renting a room, which they obviously can’t afford (the concierge has correctly assessed this). Dig checks it out astrally with his Watcher spirit, and finds a massive magical barrier blocking access to the bottom of the shaft, which also is laced with some impressive illusion spells to block sound and visual without being obvious about it. So it seems that whatever the Sea Dragon has the Menehune digging up/out/etc is down there, but will remain secret for now.

They head back to the surface and get a call from someone telling them that since they’ve been poking around, they might as well come have a chat. She invites them to her yacht, and suggests they head there immediately. Not having any better leads, they do, with CG riding atop Dig (in horse form) at an impressive pace through Downtown. This gets them noticed by any magically aware individuals watching, and they don’t do much better with subtlety at the docks, where they startle a man when Dig transforms back to man form, and then use a spirit to trip him into the water, where they watch while he drowns. Luckily for the man, some other boaters rescue him just in time, but CG and Dig are filmed and shamed on social media for standing by and doing nothing (though noone seems to realize they were also the cause).

They head aboard the yacht, and meet Eletheira Windtaker, correctly assessing that she is a Sea Dragon rep herself. She tells them (essentially) to stop poking their noses in, but suggests that the SD will reward them well and maybe share some info if they start working for her. They agree in principle, which seems sufficient for the time, and Eletheria gives them some contact info for some local runners she’s been using for a variety of jobs, who she suggests linking up with. For now, they head north to meet up with the Sisterhood of Ariadne and talk ritual magic, having a few forecastings they wish to attempt.

Meanwhile, the team has cleared up their jobs list quite a bit with subcontractors, and Kit has decided to retire from day to day running in order to focus on fixing and managing the Shadow Chapters. Aradia also takes her leave, in order to focus on her personal magical development as well as her investigations into Entropy circles and the Shades night club. Both promise to stay in touch with developments from those areas, but won’t be available on the regular for day to day runs. Aradia’s first stop is the Sisterhood of Ariadne, to do a ritual to learn about some of the assassins in town, where she encounters Chew Gum and Dig. They agree to help with the ritual, recognizing Aradia as one of the team they were supposed to seek out, and Aradia offers to connect them with the rest of the team for payment.

For payment to the Sisterhood, Aradia offers the mana plate photo of the door to Dis on the Moon, which Clara and the others eagerly accept. For all their grandmotherly vibes, their ritual chamber is quite nice and put together, and they decide first to focus on the legendary assassin Teachdaire, as the team decides to try to cooperate with the Moonlight Thorns to take him out. The ritual works, and tracks TD to a farm safehouse in Snohomish, but he has some kind of magical protection that cause about half the participants to forget ever having seen him (including the 3 runners). Luckily, Clara and the other team members, who were observing via TacNet, do remember, so not a total bust. But scary! He looked right at them as if aware of the ritual!

They also do some digging into some other assassins, and offer to help John Abernathy (as unpleasant as always) survive against the Wrecking Crew, a thrillkill explosives trio. They recommend a few bodyguards, and he chooses to hire Dynamic Solutions (“for the optics”), which proves useful, as the Executive Protection team does their job, engaging in a massive fire(/explosives) fight with the in disguise Wrecking Crew as they “sealed cracks” on the bridge to Council Island. The JTF and NAN military on either side of the bridge also got pulled in, but luckily due to some good planning from OrkCEO, civilian casualties were minimal and fatalities were limited to combatants. Unfortunately, the bridge was badly damaged and is closed for the time being, but Abernathy survived, ensuring his “leave” vote.

The team checks in with Romeo, who hassles them some more about doing Free Seattle jobs, as the referendum is flying by. They decide to do a twofer, and take Major Brenda Reed’s job with the goal of sabotaging her by feeding the info to Rahel Juric. Tabasco does his best negotiating since they don’t want to risk putting Carol on the call, and gets an OK promise of pay from Reed, to manufacture some blackmail on Carl Derrick, the weak-willed UCAS congressman, by taking advantage of his predilection for Bunraku parlors. Reed gives them his favorite in-town place, his schedule of visits, and his preferred type, and tells them to take it from there, so long as whatever they do is bad enough to give her permanent leverage for getting him “out of it.”

They do some recon, and get a good security head count and idea for the building exterior. Creep pays for a membership (after verifying his age) and does the same inside. Small building, lots of guards. They contact Las Muñecas to tip them to what’s going down and offer an opportunity to rescue the 6 “dolls” kept onsite. LM agrees. Dig uses magic to program the AIMAD, freaking everyone out, and leaving it so that Creep will just have to run the program. Creep buys some gamma-scopolamine, and heads back into the parlor, renting the room directly under the one Derrick always uses for the same amount of time as him.

Once the team observes Derrick arrive, Creep waits 15 minutes, then crawls down the dumbwaiter from his room and up the one into Derrick’s room, making good use of his linked camo skin and suit, and KO’s Derrick without any trouble. He runs the AIMAD on him a few times to make sure it sticks, and then heads back the same way he came, leaving before things get chaotic.

The rest of the plan springs into motion: without Kit present, the gloves are off! So Tabasco KO’s a Yak guard with an injection arrow, and Carol retrieves the arrows and breaks their neck, and then steps back out of the way as Derrick’s driver races towards the back door. Chew Gum causes him to have an accident, slamming into another Yak guard who rushes out back and going flying through the windshield. Tabasco and Creature KO these two as well, and Carol retrieves the arrow again.

Derrick comes running out back, screaming, with Yak on his heels, who start firing as he peels off in his car, abandoning his driver. The Yak try to grab the driver and head back in, but find the back door locked somehow. They send runners to other Yak bars in the same strip, but Chew Gum and Tabasco kill them both, and Carol splashes lube grenades in the alley to add to the chaos. Feeling that they’ve done enough, they exfiltrate, but Tabasco spots 7 stealthed VTOLs taking off from the brothel roof as they leave.

They report into Reed and send her the footage, and she seems satisfied and pays up, though she asks if it wasn’t a bit of overkill, though she doesn’t seem to mind. Not sure what she’s referring to, they check the news and find reports that an organized crime brothel went up in flames, with multiples bodies already recovered inside. Checking in with Las M, they hear that the rescue went well (all 6 dolls recovered and into hiding/recovery in their network), but that a local contractor was a it enthusiastic. They put together that Yoko Aruki was on the job, and is continuing her anti-Yakuza firebug style.

However, this also nicely fulfills Sung Yi’s request, so Chew Gum advances with the Seoul-Pa. They sell the info about Derrick, as well as the fact that Reed was behind it, to Rahel Juric, who also pays up, and then tell Annie that they did this, but don’t tell Romeo. They figure this is a good test of how he responds, in terms of getting a feel for him, and Annie overall approves the strategy. They also get her to negotiate a deal between the Yak and the Skraacha for ACHE smuggling once Shiawase takes over, on behalf of Shiawase Daigou, as the team is so unpopular with the Yak right now that they can’t possibly do it themselves.

They also hear the a Songbirds assassin named Oscen, a poisoner and thrown weapons expert, made a move on Margaret Telestrian (likely for not being a pure enough elf). Luckily, the Moonlight Thorns werewolf Saroosh was onsite, and saved Telestrian, but was killed in the process, though not before he also killed Oscen. Without Saroosh around to help though, what will happen with Teachdaire?!?!

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

After the confusing paydata selling day, with a lot of new feelings about what to do next, their relations with others, etc, the team decides to try to fortify the local Shadow Chapters by hiring a bunch of runners (for a small fee, of course) to do a bunch of the various jobs the team has amassed during their time in town. They also hear some worrying rumors about some very angry Marry Me… megafans who are are displeased about the team’s revelations. 6 out of 16 (in total) of the reprogrammed Shadow Chaps members are successfully deprogrammed, the rest die via the allergic shock trigger that was also implanted to prevent tampering. Shiawase is holding one of the 6 survivors for study by their MFID branch, but promises it’s “catch and release” and won’t be a regular habit.

The team does some research on local runners, figuring out who are the crews to know, who’s got good rep, etc.This includes all the teams they met while distributing VDH’s hoard, a useful reference, as well as some others they’ve encountered in their time here and in Chicago. With this list in hand, they compare it (the teams on it’s capabilities) with their list of available jobs, and assign out one to each team, with the explanation that this is a test run for the team to join the Shadow Chaps, which will bring more work. The team decides to keep certain Free Seattle/high secrecy jobs for themselves, especially as Kit wants the Shadow Chaps to remain officially neutral on Free Seattle and able to work either side, with Wei and Snow agree with.

Takashi and his Rusted Stiletto mutant recruits storm the Aqua Arcana lab facility and free the captive Merrow, as well as various other critter subjects kept there. The mutants remain reasonably restrained and only eat some of the staff, though at the request of the Sea Dragon, they make a horrifying video of them eating alive the project head in front of all his cowering coworkers, with the announcement that Merrow are under the Sea Dragon’s protection, and experimentation upon them will not be tolerated. Remo helps Creature with some research, and Takashi is able to shuttle the Merrow to one of 3 spots of their choosing: Enatai Beach Park on Council Island (already a free Merrow gathering point), Blake Island (the Sea Dragon’s recent acquisition), or the water-entry level of the Beaux Arts arcology in Bellevue, after Eletheria purchases a significant portion of it for their private use.

Next up, Kukulkan’s Crew is sent to investigate the Halloweeners, at Shiawase Daigou’s suggestion, and figure out what they’re up to trying to corrupt the Spirit of the City. They confirm some info that the team had provided from the early, early days of the team file, when Eion Smash had snuck into Glow City to observe a ritual done by Nightmare, the gang leader, and found himself mutated for his trouble. Asking if they should continue, the team decides to throw in some extra assistance and hires the New Assets to back up K’s Crew, though Picaro, the young ork adept on the crew seems gung-ho to go either way. With some injuries on K’s Crew and casualties amongst the new recruits to New Assets (Tommy Talon explains it was a test run anyway), the runners prevail and manage to destroy the statue of Chemosh that was being used to power the mutation rituals, corrupt the local Spiders, and attack the Spirit of the City. After a hard battle, they also manage to disrupt Nightmare, who seems to be some of Cancer spirit, likely from Miggon.

Imre Dahl’s crew is hired to look into all the assassins in town, and their on-call hitman, By the Numbers, gets a solid report back, backed up by their deckers and mage doing some research. They get names and likely targets of all the top tier assassins working, and manage to strike a few from their “concerns” list based on them being hyper-focussed or specialized on things the team doesn’t care about. They also spot some good possibilities for turning certain assassins against each other. Tabasco pays out of pocket for a side job, and hires the same crew to take out a Shedim merc/assassin named SIN who is in town. Unfortunately, By the Numbers is killed in the process, and this crew refuses to join the Shadow Chaps, and Dahl says not to contact them again.

Beltfed’s team takes on Rooster’s job, and successfully steal the secret rites of the all-Dwarf Stonecutter’s Guild and pass them along. They also report to the team that this is likely Rooster up to something on the Seelie Court, as the Stonecutter’s Guild and the Court’s Zhigul Makers faction are deeply connected. The team doesn’t know what this will entail, but files it away as potentially useful.

They hire the Coven of the Crypt for a few different jobs- looking into who owns Shades, who owns Fenris Nacht, and the Sons of Snohomish. They bungle the Shades job a bit, but confirm that it has unusually good, though not overly threatening security, and that Imre Dahl’s crew is involved somehow (too bad the team already burned that bridge…). They have better luck at Fenris Nacht, discovering that an ancient dragon-hunting order is behind it through a series of LLC’s and shell corps. The Sea Dragon violently takes over ownership, which most of the patrons accept, as she is obviously a strong hunter. Yoko Aruki and a bunch of sea drakes lead the assault, and they mount the heads of the local ownership (and any onsite who resisted) in the secluded alley leading to the entrance. Nyssa Hallas is satisfied with this info. The SoS turn out to predictably be a human metaracist org, with ties to some of the metaracist doctors from the destroyed Paladin clinic network in Denver. The team finds some old notes in the file about that. They’ve opened a new clinic in town, which will need dealing with. They also seem to be doing false flag attacks on humans under the “Sauron’s Legion” banner, in order to drive recruitment.

Grappler’s crew (who Carol knew from Chicago) gets tasked with sabotaging, false-flagging and overall making the UCAS JTF look bad, to popularize their pulling out. The team at Kit’s insistence request a “low lethality” plan, which costs more and is harder, but the team pulls it off with style. This greatly pleases both Rahel Juric and Shiawase Daigou, who gives them yet another job: Renraku will almost surely get various “x-guide” contracts for De La Mar’s new matrix relaunch, and he wants a sleeper agent inserted to make sure that Shiawase has some backdoors and kill codes in place, just in case. The team recruits a cocky and eager young hacker with some social/con skills named Kid Code, who agrees to the longterm assignment, and they successfully get him inserted and set up in his new position. Shiawase Daigou is most impressed with the team and their rapid results.

Howard and Phillips INC is given the job of looking more into the K-Code and the Null Sect, as well as this digital Horror entity that De La Mar has codenamed “Blackout.” They mostly just confirm the info the DDLM gave to the team, especially re: K-Code, but do discover some local Null connections that the team didn’t know about, including an infested host in Redmond that might be a worthwhile target. They also confirm the presence in town of the Null assassin Hitsec Burn, and report that they had a lot of gear fried in their investigations. They report that it seems that Null attacks are down in areas where DDLM’s new matrix is live (Boston, Chicago) but escalating in other places, suggesting they are attempting a pressure campaign to speed the transition. The team give H&P the Null Doc to help them keep safe in future.

Tommy Vermont and Las Muñecas set their trap as discussed: they put out word in some places they know Kellan Hunter will hear it that Natalia is a Monad, and sit back and observe. Hunter manages to kill Natalia after stalking her for a few days, and takes her eyes, and Vermont and the LM’s take him out (perhaps a little excessively, but best to be sure), ending that serial killer threat to the city, as well as shutting down the Death Ships pipeline. A matrix-based member of the Nadja Fixer Network named Sofia also contacts the team and thanks them for their efforts, having received proof of Natalia’s corruption and activities from the LM’s. She’ll be taking over the Seattle beat for now in Natalia’s absence.

The Mythfits are given the job of looking into the First Union smuggling org, and discover that it is a forced conversion recruitment Monad operation, which deeply upsets Kit. It also proves useful as a way to recruit other smugglers and go-gangers to take revenge, and the local FU chapter is basically wiped out, though with pretty high casualties on the ganger side. The Mythfits luckily only require some hospital stays to get back on their feet after a gnarly brawl.

With all these new crews signed up for the Shadow Chaps, and only one real failed job amongst the lot, Kit plans to start recruiting more fixers, street docs, etc to begin building the full network. The team also has to figure out what to do with all the assassin info. Miranda King from Spinrad contacts them on an old number of Carol’s asking if she was correct in recognizing them from Chicago. Aradia gets in touch to maintain Carol’s fake dead status, and agrees to work with her. First off, she does an interview on Kit’s Shadowcast “The Bolthole” in order to start building relationships between Spinrad and Monad communities, since they don’t like that EVO has the market cornered at the moment. She then hires Aradia/the team to begin prepping an epic night (or more) out for a certain VIP, who she will not confirm or deny is Spinrad himself.

They also hear that the referendum is officially starting, and will last for exactly one week. Creepily, Horizon is deeply involved, conducting opinion polls and surveys the whole time to gauge the populace. The team better get a move on to make sure things swing their way, and not let any of their preferred delegates gets clipped! Happily, they also got a list of high end bodyguard in town, and can recommend their services.

The team also hears from Su Cheng, and learns that due to his secret manipulation, Jimmy Kincaid has brokered a peace deal between the Ancients and the Triad to secure an arms smuggling deal, basically granting them the power that Cheng was worried about the Laesa/Yakuza having. Unfortunately, someone seems to take exception to this (or something else Kincaid did) and severs his arm, destroying his last bit of magic and cutting him off from his ally spirit. Hearing that she’s been appearing randomly around town, Aradia and Tabasco astrally track her to an apartment/office registered to a pair of people finder/bounty hunter/bailbondswomen named Skip and Trace. They try to offer assistance consoling the spirit, but S&T seem to have a pre-existing relationship with her and say they have it under control. Aradia tries to snoop a bit more astrally and gets KO’ed by the very emotional spirit. Tabasco leaves a number in case they can be of future help, and then carries unconscious Aradia out of there, successfully taking the hint. But who went after Kincaid and why?

Runners
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

With Creature at OtherCon, and Carol embracing the lessons he learned from ThinkTank (RIP) to take some vacation sometimes, the rest of the crew settles down to divy up all the paydata from Alice’s lab. After some debate, they decide to split it into some separate tranches rather than try to sell it all as one chunk, figuring it’ll be better overall payout and connections that way. They report in to Annie first, giving her some info on the Death Ships and missing persons cases, closing out a few investigations Tabasco had started back when.

Calling in some favors from Remo, and doing some research of their own, they find out some about Alice’s Death Ship contact, a local fixer named Natalia. Strangely, she’s a member of the Nadja fixer network, who are usually anti-trafficking, but rumors have been circulating that not everyone she helps to smuggle themselves somewhere reaches their destination. They find out that she survived an assassination attempt some years ago, and was kept alive partially with an experimental nanite treatment. They speculate she likely later fell victim to CFD but has kept it under wraps.

They report this in to Tommy Vermont, who has been working with Las Muñecas to crack down on trafficking locally. They decide to set a trap: they will tip off the serial killer Kellan Hunter that Vermont has been investigating about Natalia’s “Monad” nature, and then observe, and plan to take out whoever survives that encounter.The team’s a little iffy on the morals of this whole plan, but since noone even asked them to get involved decide to just wash their hands of it and move on, though Tabasco and Vermont get a little side action going on who they think will win.

As part of their pay from Annie, they get a couple contacts, to pursue other paydays. First, they call up a mid-level Shiawase exec in Tacoma, who Annie had some connections to from a ways back, and offer some valuable info to the corp about the ACHE. She passes it up and the chain (and seems to benefit from bringing it in), and the team gets a meeting with a retired C-Suite exec, Shiawase Daigou, one of the 7 adopted children who ran the corp for quite some time, but who know advises informally from his 5 story penthouse on top of the ACHE.

The team hires an air cab to get up there, and gets a very thorough search from very polite corpsec. Daigou’s grandson ushers them in to the large suite, and they find a huge greenhouse garden, explaining Daigou’s nickname on the streets, “The Gardener.” The grandson brings those who can drink tea, and Tabasco tries to see his condo- the view is incredible from 320 stories above downtown. Daigou eventually wanders over, taking off his work gloves, and begins negotiations. Aradia tries to spot magic, and there is definitely something there, though well-concealed, although he also has a lot of implants. He also has a set of color-coded hardlines to… somewhere on his sparse desk.

The team has a quick debate, and decide to sell this guy Spirit of the City info as well, as he’s a much bigger fish than they expected to be dealing with. Plus, Tabasco knows that Shiawase wants the contract to run the whole ACHE and the reactors below, and would be happy if Free Seattle passes as it will make that whole process easier. So, could be a useful ally! They turn over the info about the Spiders and Weeners infiltrating the ACHE and trying to corrupt the SOTC, and also tell about the Weeners smuggling old secret Deus tech out. They connect Daigou with Jaliyah Angél, their local ASPS connection, to stabilize the SOTC and prevent corruption.

Daigou says he will dispose of the undesirables, and Tabasco gets a little concerned and inquires, and Daigou reveals that they have also been making use of the Death Ships to get rid of problem elements. Tabasco convinces him to stop (after this last shipment, as the team decides Spiders and Weeners are best off getting eaten). He also agrees to provide access to one of Shiawase’s delta clinics to the team to put their payday to best use, and with a donation from Aradia of her chunk of the pay the ASPS helps her craft and bind some foci. Kit gets Daigou to potentially agree to bring Shiawase onto the Shadow Chapters, but he hints that they have been infiltrated or at least influenced by a corp, and he wont agree until that has been resolved, but he won’t say more for now.

The team gets paid, heads out, and agrees to do a job for Daigou as well- he suggests that his security would have spotted an artifact powerful enough to corrupt the SOTC if it had come into the ACHE, even if JTF security had missed it. So there must be someone on the outidie who’s the mastermind of the conspiracy who has yet to be revealed. He suggests starting by looking into the Weeners. He also offers bounty payouts to the team or anyone else who makes the JTF look bad- he will use the info about ganger/cultist infiltration to just such a purpose. But the worst of a public look the JTF has, the easier it will be to get them booted out of the ACHE- which will be especially easy if Free Seattle passes and the UCAS military pulls out in full.

Kit posts a warning about “Marry Me…” on Jackpoint and elsewhere, and reports start coming in from some other teams who have encountered similar labs in different Barrens-esque places around the world. It seems like spirit, drone, and Dissonant sprite security is the norm, but the other labs seemed long abandoned by regular visitors, so the team likely disrupted Alice getting a full new one up and running before she skipped town. Comparing dates of these other lab raids to various Marry Me outages and glitches, matrix sleuths confirm that most of the game beyond the base is likely being run by these technomancer meat-brain networks, which is deeply upsetting. The team gets some hate from some diehard Marry Me stans who suggest they are plants from an opposing game company, but most posters seem to believe the evidence, and thank the team for sharing it free of charge.

The team then calls in more Remo favors to dig into the Shadow Chapters further. They compile some info and compare it, trying to get as big of a sample size as possible from the dozen-ish cities where the Shadow Chaps have set up. What they find is a bit disturbing: Horizon and SK most often benefit from runs through the SC, and Horizon gets hits least often- both by a significant enough margin to not be random. This implies that the corp that Daigou hinted might be behind the Shadow Chaps (or have infiltrated them) is likely Horizon, which means probably the Dawkins Group. It seems like the reprogramming of uncooperative types is not a situation unique to Seattle- the team likely didn’t encounter it in Chicago since everyone had a common enemy and they were deeply involved in setting it up there.

Worried about what this might mean locally, Kit sets up a meeting with Ms Snow and Eddie Wei to use this as blackmail leverage to make themselves a third equal partner in the leadership. The rest of the team comes along as backup, but unfortunately are not paranoid enough, as Ms Snow quick draws and shoots Kit in the chest as soon as they present the info about Horizons/Dawkins infiltration.The team manages to KO Snow and corner Wei, but not before Wei puts out and APB to all Shadow Chaps members that the team has attacked the leadership.

They manage to convince Wei to a brief ceasefire by sending him the intel they found, and get him to tell the SC members who showed up to reinforce to stay outside (for now). Wei suggests they all back off a bit while he reviews the info. Kit stabilizes Snow before they leave. Aradia calls in a favor from Arthur Vogel to get an ARES AIMAD of their own, having seen that Alice had a modded one she was using to reprogram people for the SC (and others). Wei eventually agrees to the team’s proposal- Wei, Kit and Snow (if she can be deprogrammed) will all 3 run the local SC for now, and they’ll try deporgramming with the AIMAD first off on Snow before trying to round up all the other reprogrammed members at once and trying to clear them.

The team heads back in, and Aradia uses mind probe in concert with some drugs to soften the still unconscious Snow up for the AIMAD. Kit does a spectacular job, aided by their nanites, and manages to break the core reprogramming down on Snow (which seems much higher level than what Alice was doing- uh-oh!), as well as shove all the evidence of Horizon/Dawkins infiltration into her brain. They luckily also manage to magically and medically keep her alive as they fight the reprogramming which tries to kill her as a last ditch effort. She wakes up with an awful hangover but agrees to their terms of the deal and plan, and says that she guesses she’s thankful?

With this info in hand, Kit returns to all the skeptics around town (Tauren, Takashi, Daigou) and gets them to help all the uncorrupted local SC members round up the list that Wei and Snow have of reprogrammed locals. They plan to attempt the same protocol that Kit and Aradia established, and save as many as they can. Daigou keeps one for Shiawase to study, saying that this will not be how he usually operates in relation to the SC, but that they need to see how their adversaries work. He says Shiawase’s inhouse spies (the MFID) will be able to deprogram just fine once they’re done studying, and return the captured runner back to the streets. Kit and team reluctantly agree, not really having a choice.

Finally, they make contact with a one-use number Annie got them for the powerful socialite and matrix safety campaigner, Danielle de la Mar. She agrees to meet them for lunch at the Embassytown cafe on Council Island. The team review their SINs and ditches all their illegal gear and heads over. Tabasco gets some additional scans, but all his visible ‘ware is legal, and Aradia seductively distracts the guard from looking closer. They get to the meeting and find that DDLM has impressive magical, tech and physical security, all onhand but low profile. She explains that she will be jamming their meeting and that her mage will be using illusions to keep anyone from lip-reading or listening in. The team explains Alice’s diabolical plan, mentions the K-Code and Jormungandr, and brings up the Null Sect.

DDLM seems familiar with all of these, other than Alice’s “crash the global currency and take over” plot. She thanks the team for their info on that, and says she will update the robustness of the Matrix 3.1 launch she is preparing, as well an the new SIN and Nuyen registries, to counter that threat. She doesn’t seem as worried about the K-Code, suggesting it is more of a matrix bogeyman/vaporware, but is interested in knowing more regardless. The Null Sect however, she has a lot to say about. After conferring obliquely about safety protocols and level of knowledge, and establishing that her and the team are on the same page, she launches in.

She explains that the Null Sect’s ultimate goal, as far as she can tell, is to sever Resonance energy from tech energy, and be able to fully control what they consider the “real world”: the digital side of meatspace. The NS view Resonance (and e-life forms and digital sapients/AI’s) as threats to this, which is why they especially want to eliminate them. DDLM explains that based on some recent Seelie Court discoveries about the connected nature of magic and Resonance, and her dealings with the NS, she believes that Resonance has other similarities to magic as well: it grows in power with more use and belief in it, and if it gets too powerful, some kind of “digital Horror” will arrive to smack everything back down, much as happened to magic at the end of the 4th World. She believes the NS are seeking to hasten the arrival of this entity or entities, which she has codenamed “Blackout.” She isn;t sure what this Blackout will do, or even what form(s) it might take upon it’s arrival, but she thinks the NS might be something like the Invae or Shedim: early signals of the coming of something worse.

She also believes the NS have recruited some human allies to manipulate, pay, etc into doing their bidding in meatspace: the Freedom Network, and the Turing Army. Their various political proclivities make them easy to use, and they both are arrogant enough as orgs to likely assume that they are in control of the partnership (they are not). They are also working with global networks of Dissonant TM’s, who also hate Resonance. More worrying, according to DDLM, is that she believes the NS have struck some sort of deal with the Euro Vampiric cabal known as the Ordo Maximus, which could prove very troublesome indeed. Regardless, she explains that the real reason she is launching matrix 3.1 (as well as enhanced safety protocols) is because the Foundation has become to dangerous and she wants to get the vast majority of metahumanity further from the NS, to buy some time. She explains that she made a devil’s bargain of sorts with the NS: in exchange for abandoning the Foundation to their control, they won’t expand beyond it, and will limit their attacks to those e-life forms they find especially abhorrent.

She doesn’t trust them at all of course, but thinks this will at least give metahumanity some maneuvering room. She also explains that the CFD/Monad explosion out into the world was of course because of the experiments being done on AI/e-life, but also because something worse was chasing them, so the NS are also partially to blame for that. The team, all sitting back in their seats with their minds blown wide open, agree to potentially look into some of this stuff more, and not spread any of this info wide outside their networks. DDLM offers them significant additional pay for more details about any of this stuff, and suggest they come to her first in the future, as they now have a working relationship, and who knows who else you can really trust?

Shiawase Daigou calls back to share some info: Horizon is likely triggering their sleeper agents and sending subliminal commands through otherwise innocuous concealed programming in popular music they release. So they don’t have to specifically target any one agent or even know where they are, so long as they’re somewhat connected to pop cultural norms. This matches with Alice/Null Sect’s fucked up use of stolen Dawkins Group tech at the Iron Jungle, that Tabasco had previously ID’ed. They also call in their final Remo favor, and get some more K-Code info: it does seem like more of a rumor than a fact at this point, BUT there are multiple instances of air-gapped offline private code labs getting massacred, and every time the data drives are missing afterwards.

Looking further into the coders killed in these incidents, from what they team can piece together (it seems like lots of payouts and NDA’s have prevented much outcry publicly), they are all specialists in AI, economics, market forecasting, and the like, so it seems like Alice might be onto something with this K-Code biz after all…. yet another problem for another day! The team celebrates their big paydays with some implants and chillin’, closes out a lot of the investigations on their lists, and figures out what to do next.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

With Kit’s rough location data on the TM they need to rescue for Remo, the team does some research. Wherever they’re being held (and whoever by) it seems likely to be in the Carbonado/Crocker Mine complex, which after some digging turns out to be Mafia smuggling turf. Tabasco warns the team that Gianelli mafia shouldn’t be trusted (he feels burnt by his experience of Enzo corrupting Urban Brawl still), and they debate a few different options before deciding on stealth recon.

Creep gets dropped off via stealth VTOL while Aradia and an air spirit accompany in the astral. The area seems to be covered with ash clouds and runs over the powerful leyline Aradia had spotted at Grand Council Lodge. Plenty of cover and distractions, but harder to do their own surveillance. They find a sort of main entrance to the abandoned mine, and head in, moving slowly and looking for defenses and traps.

It looks like an active smuggling zone, but noone seems to be around at the moment, and there aren’t any detectable devices, sensors, etc. Aradia sends the spirit to search for irregularities, and it reports back that deeper in the mine is an area aspected towards Toxic Dog. Reporting back to the team, Tabasco suggests that this is likely another of Alice’s facilities, as he knows she follows that corrupted mentor. They gear up and head over while Creep keeps an eye on things.They also add some stealth mods to the van, and park it off track in the ash wastes to keep it from getting spotted (or stolen).

Heading in, they follow a winding path as Aradia navigates towards worse and worse feeling background counts. They eventually reach a mana barrier, and Kit sends a drone through, which spots a tunnel lined with explosives with a blast door at the end and a motion sensor above. Aradia sneaks herself and an invisible Kit through the mana barrier, and Kit sneaks up and hacks the motion sensor with nanites, but there’s a terrifying person inside so they bail. They then jury rig the explosives to blow the door. They then head back and cross the mana barrier with Aradia at the same time Tabasco comes through from the other side and waves his arms a bunch to trigger the motion sensor, before getting yanked back behind Kit’s shield as the explosives go off.

The team races down towards the door as the tunnel caves in around them, with Tabasco’s armor somewhat blasted. They get in a fight with two rail drones firing assault rifles and a horrifying toxic spirit inhabiting a mutating dog body (with extra legs and mouths). Carol gets pretty fucked up but Kit keeps him in the fight and the team prevails. They enter a server room, which was badly damaged in the explosion, but is connected to an adjacent chamber. Kit rips some data, and is distressed to find that this seems to be a major “Marry Me…” server, before getting chased off by the upsetting e-entity again.

The team enters the next room and hears many voices crying out for assistance, saying they were kidnapped and just woke up and can’t see anything. One of them seems to be the one who sent the message. They pull some tarps off some vats and find a bunch of brains wired together into some sort of meat computer, even worse, each brain seems to correspond to a major expansion, area, quest or NPC in “Marry Me”. Creep smashes the speaker on the jar closest, and suggests they don’t bother trying to save these brains, as this is obviously the outcome of the mind/body separation work that Alice was up to in her other lab.

Kit refuses and tells the rest of the team to go on while they stay behind and try to save at least a few, if they can figure out how.They also mini-weld shut some ceiling valves that seem prepped to spray Cleaner-Cleaner on everything, but also see that a countdown clock has passed the 4 minute mark, and the brain vats are all draining liquid onto the floor. They break open 2 vats and manage to get a little liquid in one busted end to slosh 2 brains around in, choosing 2 of their favorite expansions.

The rest of the team chases after Alice, but Carol stumbles into more rail drones and is nearly killed. The team takes them out and continues, finding Alice’s lab. Creep and Tabasco decide not to document and continue pursuit, and head the other way with Creature in tow. Aradia and Kit heal Carol, who goes to document the lab while Aradia mind probes one of the brains. It knocks her out, but they confirm that these are kidnapped TM’s from the missing persons list Tabasco has, and worst of all, they don’t know that they’re only brains in jars. Carol gets a ton of data to review later, and also finds a problem- the lab is flooded with a currently inert compound that is highly flammable when combined with some second element, aka a binary explosive! They need to get out of there.

As there’s only 90 seconds left on the clock, they flee to where the rest of the team went. Meanwhile, the rest of the team has found one of the mine’s boreshafts, and Tabasco has managed to shoot his grapple hand up to the ascending elevator therein. Creep and Creature start climbing a ladder stuck into the rock. Another toxic dog drops on Tabasco and nearly kills him before Carol and Creature (drake elemental attack very good vs spirits!) manage to take it out. However, the elevator reaches the top and Alice blows some charges, trying to drop it on Tabasco. Luckily he makes a heroic swing to the side and Creature catches him with a web. A massive explosion behind them seemingly destroys the lab and blows a huge dust cloud up the shaft.

They make it to the top of the shaft, and Aradia cleverly sets off an acid trap left for them using a trid phantasm. Kit and Aradia hurry the brains back to the van outside while the rest of the team chases. Carol is the only one fast enough to catch up to Alice, who seems to be riding on a massive dog spirit. He triggers a grenade trap without taking damage but chooses to continue the chase as the tunnel collapses, separating himself from the team. Racing around another corner, he is shot and nearly killed by some Ex-Ex rounds, and the team has to dig through the collapse to get to him before he bleeds out.

Seeing that Alice and dog are headed deeper into the mines instead of out, the team abandons pursuit and heads back to the van, getting out of there. Meanwhile, Kit has contacted Remo and S@m to try to get help uploading the 2 rescued brains before they shrivel and die. They jury rig an upload system using the RCC, van comms gear, and a satellite uplink, and manage to upload brain/persona copies into the Endless Archive. They aren’t full e-life forms, without the magic of the Tarot, or Big D’s “Jack-B-Nimble” program, but it’s at least a form of life and preservation, and who knows what else could occur. They thank the team but are horrified at what they found, and Remo feels a little bad at the level of favor this ended up being.

The team heads back to the safehouses and review the data: Alice has a plan of world domination through financial markets, and to that end has a few fundraising ops going: Marry Me is a big one, each brain she brings online adds new layers (and lairs) to the world, and gives the game it’s unique lifelike/dreamlike feel. She’s become a critical dev for the game, and it’s highest paid employee. She has also been selling her mind alteration skills to anyone willing to pay locally, using a purloined ARES AIMAD device in conjunction with Dawkins Group Project:Orion sleeper agent tech apparently stolen by the Null Sect and traded or sold to her. Her local clients include most major corps and syndicates as well as the Shadow Chapters, which explains some things Tabasco has heard.

They get the layout of her local network: which bars she kidnaps from, which gangs she works with, and her contact for selling the leftovers to the Death Ships: a fixer named Natalia. They also find out that she’s been helping the Halloweeners infiltrate the ACHE for some reason in exchange for recovered DEUS tech leftovers. She’s also after rumors of something called the “Kechibi Code” which seems like some sort of financial/predictive specialized AI. She modelled her program on Danielle delaMar’s “100” as well as the advances of Thomas Roxborough at UniOmni, though neither appear to be directly involved.

Also, the crazed e-entity that Kit encountered seems to be her former mentor, and originator of these projects, Dr. Halberstram, a true mad scientist thought dead. She’s trying to figure out how he was transformed (or created) in his current form, not to cure him but just to know. She seems to enjoy keeping him localized as a crazed defender. Anyway, she seems like a true supervillain with ridiculous goals, but maybe the skill and tenacity to at least cause extreme chaos?

The team, realizing they’re sitting on a gold mine (ha) of paydata, decide to take some time and think about who to sell what to, but warn people off the kidnap clubs for now at least. They rest and recuperate, and the next day Creature heads to OtherCon to make more contacts for the Sea Dragon. Xe meet all sorts of interesting characters there, and make some good connections, deciding to once again use local Merrow communities as an in for the Sea Dragon, by helping them out against Aqua Arcana experimentation and trying to get them recognized as sapients officially.

Xe quickly latches onto a hip Vashonista named Soresha, who says she is new in town but seems adept at making connections, and helps Creature make the rounds and meet some people. In the surgeries and mods hall, Creature spots the quiet street doc from Fenris Nacht, who intro’s herself as Trickster’s Daughter, and seems to possibly be a fox shifter. Creature gets some minor mods from her to cement the connection in case xe needs to rely on her medical skills (and discretion) in the future. Xe also wanders a bit, and spots various advocacy groups, panels, costume contests, fandoms, etc, as well as a “We Remember: The NIght of Rage” exhibit that the hotel seems to have put on with the Tacoma MoM chapter (they sheltered many that night using a formerly secret Underground connection, now another level of the hotel).

Eletheria also tasks Creature with observing corps at the con, as many use it as a recruiting opportunity for beings with unique abilities. EVO is well-represented of course, and seems relatively benign. SK is recruiting through a drake named Scale, who seems a lot less fun than Simon Andrews, but similarly loyal, and gives the corp a good sell. He’s also staring daggers at a merc corp called “New Assets”. which appears to be drake-only, and is also recruiting, offering peer alliance as an alternative to servitude to the “Greats” to their fellow drakes.

Creature buddies up to the NA rep, Tommy Talon a bit. He seems friendly enough, but is also a vain LA type. He seems intrigued by Creature, but recognizes that xe already has a bond to a Great, so doesn’t have much to offer beyond being a potentially useful connection out of town. Xe also make friends with some local couriers for (and the dispatcher of) the Alley Cat Express, aka ACE- some side work that Creature and Tabasco amongst others might find useful from time to time. They seem to be friendly with Jimmy Kincaid, amongst others, and Creature recognizes one of them as the decker from one of the team’s that helped distro the items from VDH’s hoard.

Creature also sees Proteus recruiting pretty hard, which is interesting as they are an AGS AA-corp, but do have a local Arkoblock. Their reps also seem to be meeting with some other corp reps using the Con as a cover: Creature ID’s reps from both Maersk and Wuxing, which worries Eletheria, as all 3 are involved in ocean experiments and shipping, and may be trying to cooperate against the Sea Dragon. She declares it’s time to teach them a lesson, and tells Creature to get the team ready for a job.

Tabasco also calls Rahel Juric, and tells her they haven’t forgotten about her. She seems agreeable to an open timeline for most stuff, but throws it out there that she would love paydata on the ARES rep, and also wants to know what happened to the CAS rep who was supposed to be at the gala but never turned up and has been incommunicado ever since. As the CAS was one of the sector owners in Denver, it makes sense they would want a say in a new treaty city, though it hadn’t occurred to the team before. Anyway, they missed their shot and apparently folks back home are steamed and want answers…

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

Kit decides to take a day off and go see a movie via hotrigging his wimp, using his new William Wimpleton SIN, while doing some background research for the technomancer rescue mission that Remo gave them. Aradia heads out to take care of some witchy business. The rest of the team decides to use their downtime to look into some mysteries Tabasco had uncovered, and try to knock some tasks off Creature’s list of jobs for the Sea Dragon.

After doing a bit of research, they head over to Tacoma so Creature can try to make some connections at Fenris Nacht, the predator/hunter bar. Xe gains entrance via namedropping the Sea Dragon (a powerful hunter herself) while the rest of the team hangs nearby to provide audio input and backup if needed. Tabasco tries to surveil other arrivals but is foiled by a magical fog, which Carol fears is vampiric in origin.

Creature first enters the bar area, and finds some various Infected hanging around, mostly starring daggers at a pair of cybered-up Catholics with a lot of prominent iconography. A pair of equivalently cybered Russians are loudly trying to outdrink each other at the bar. Creature wanders a bit further in, and finds Gregory Bear-Killer conversing quietly with what looks to be a wolf shifter or werewolf in a hunting lodge area- some of the trophies are definitely immoral if not illegal.

Creature continues down into a network of grottoes, small caves, and private rooms. The whole place is laid out to make visitors feel hunted/vulnerable if they don’t view themselves as an apex predator. Creature spots a young vampire woman emerging from one of the rooms, seemingly having just been treated by a street doc who looks a bit out of place here, and is wearing a fox lapel pin. The street doc hurries off, but the vamp, who is wearing a heavily battle-damaged anime “sexy schoolgirl” style outfit (looking extra bizarre now that it cut, burnt and shot to pieces, though her wounds seem to be healing quickly), sticks around.

Creature gets a drink and makes conversation with Bear-Killer, using Aradia’s name as an intro, and also is introduced to the wolf man, Saroosh. Saroosh seems to be an assassin, new to town, who is looking to kill one or more other assassins, though he won’t specify who. Bear-Killer also seems to have taken on some contract work during the recent uptick, and it seem they are sharing info now that they’ve confirmed their targets won’t interfere with each other’s work. Creature participates once they verify that xe also won’t be working at odds with them. They both seem to think that in the current landscape, doing mob/syndicate hits is small potatoes compared to the high value contracts that are being tossed around in the lead up to the referendum.

They all split off, and Creature is approached by the young vamp, who gives xyr a hard time for a while before revealing that she is a friend/protege of Red’s, and knows who Creature is. They chat a bit, and it turns out that this vamp, EB, knows the Triad vamp that Tabasco has been investigating, Su Cheng, and offers to make an introduction, though she offers no guarantees on how that will go. Creature agrees, and buys EB some blood from some onsite blood bags, who seem happy to trade for whatever the bartender gives them small doses of after they are fed on.

Creature also asks EB about membership, and EB tells xyr that xe must complete a major solo hunt of some sort- bring down a big target. a trophy and/or a good tale will also help a lot. Creature plans to pursue this for the Sea Dragon’s benefit, though this place doesn’t seem like a community per se, it seems like a useful place to have regular access to.

The team heads back to Tabasco’s condo to “party” which entails buying 2 six packs. Creature gets a call from Su Cheng, who sets up a meeting the next day. It feels like it could be a trap, but they’re all curious enough to go along. They head to Triad turf in the Downtown Chinatown district, and after an extensive security check (and getting all their weapons checked), are ushered into a windowless room with trid screens projecting nature scenes on the walls. Su Cheng turns to them from some sort of ritual task, and they all take a seat to discuss biz.

He proposes that, since they are asking questions, they go into business together. In exchange for performing some tasks for him, he will answer at least some of their queries. There is definitely an element of threat over the whole thing, but Carol pushes for a little more info (instead of money) and Su Cheng seems to appreciate that the team recognizes the value of the immaterial. He explains that the Laeasa syndicate has been smuggling in Tir Tairngire Peace Force armaments and selling them exclusively to the Yakuza, which is an obvious source of imbalance in the local crime scene. He wants the team to get evidence of this: footage of meetings, documentation, etc, and pass it on to a Puyallup PI named Jimmy Kincaid, who should be able to make good use of it in another deal that he is working on. They are not to let Kincaid know that the info came from Su Cheng.

The team agrees, and does some recon, splitting into 2 and tracking both some Laeasa and Yakuza members around town until they do find them meeting at the Tacoma docks, and get some good footage of a handoff. If they can just get some digital records/weapon ID’s etc to back it up, they should be set. Meanwhile, Creature is getting excited for the start of OtherCon the next day, another location xe is supposed to investigate on behalf of the Sea Dragon for possible allies.

Aradia, meanwhile, finally meets up with the Sisterhood of Ariadne and begins trading a little info on entropy circles and the like, as well as getting more info on the group in general. She also tips them to the powerful leyline from the Grand Lodge on Council Island leading to Mount Rainier/Tacoma. They hint that the forces behind the entropy circles are powerful adversaries but agree to share some info or assist in the investigation. They specialize in foretelling/portents and the like, so don’t seem as skilled in physical magics, though they do some alchemy and rituals as well. Aradia is also excited to meet a bunch of cool older ladies, who give her some tips on achieving lifelong power.

Next, Aradia and Iva conjure and manufacture up some over the top outfits to get into Shades, the new club up in Snohomish. They manage to catch the doorman’s eye and get ushered in past the line- the club is officially still invite-only but with some flexibility for the famous and interesting. Aradia talks their way into a “premium” area in the back of the former Masonic Lodge, where she can access more illicit substances than are available out front. She fails to bluff her way into any of the VIP/private areas further on, but gets some info about how to potentially apply for the exclusive memberships.

She also scouts out the security a bit, and notices that the club has unusually good magical security, and multiple means of verifying its VIPs. She also does some people watching and some info gathering amongst the crowds, mostly local celebs of various levels. She decides to return later with Creep and possibly some better surveillance gear to continue the investigation.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

Needing to get a move on, the team decides to do the heist with minimal mission gear (weapons, armor, etc) relying instead on implants and surveillance/B&E tech. Tabasco gets Bernie Carter to swing by his condo and pick up his gear from Emdachat, and Creep has all his stuff, but the rest of the team is going in their rented formal wear. Carol once again bemoans the fit of his rented tux. They head to the Tacoma docks to the location Telestrian provided, and meet up with a mini-sub smuggler named Sounder, who has a good rep on Jackpoint. Kit is a little bummed to not be allowed to pilot one, but Sounder insists on being in control.

They do a minimal amount of research on Council Island, but can’t get much useful surveillance data or security details, so they decide to wing it. Sounder drops them off without incident, successfully bypassing their water patrols, but tells the team that they’ll be stranded if they miss their very narrow pickup window, as she isn’t going to wait around. They head into a dense forest along the shore, and Carol and Tabasco quickly spot some hidden cameras and pressure mesh scattered around. Most of the team is confident on their ability to bypass them safely, but Aradia isn’t, and levitates herself and Kit, as well as making both of them invisible.

They safely pass through the forest, and come into sight of the Grand Council Lodge. They had heard there was a protest turned riot on the south end of the island, which they hope will distract on-island security. They spot some more pressure mesh, a spirit patrol, some patrolling guards, and 4 caged barghests, as well as cameras covering angle of approach across 100m of open space from the treeline. They check out the front of the building, but that has stationary guards and even worse coverage, so they decide to stick with the back door.

Kit disguises themself as John Abernathy, the targer, using his handprint that they copied, as well as their false face, plus some more spellcraft from Aradia and disguise help from Carol. Aradia and Kit approach the back door invisibly, with everyone else spotting them. Kit manages to bypass the door lock and disable the camera inside via nanites, while Aradia does some astral surveillance (noticing a powerful leyline connected to Mount Tacoma, as well as some underground levels), while Kit sneaks over to the SSC embassy wing, and uses Abernathy’s handprint to access it. Unfortunately, some guards notice the beep as the scanner works and opens the door.

Aradia drops the invisibility on Kit, and Kit bluffs as Abernathy, not doing a great job, but the appearance is so strong that they manage to sell it to the suspicious guards. Kit continues in and heads to Abernathy’s office, which fortunately has automatic lights so they know which one to go to. Tabasco repositions in the trees to cover the window to the office, now that he knows which one it is. The rest of the team watches for trouble.

Kit does a quick search of the room and finds that Abernathy doesn’t have a terminal and seems to prefer hardcopy. A safe in the corner looks promising, so Creep sneaks in, following the path the others took. Kit and Creep make quick work of the safe, and find some promising paydata inside. Kit quickly memorizes it all before carefully putting it back, wanting to leave some plausible deniability that anything happened. Unfortunately, something has tipped off the guards, who are headed in to investigate. Creep opens the window and Tabasco shoots in his grapple hand for them to zipline out on. Aradia slips out the back door and floats back towards the trees.

Creep ziplines back to the trees just fine, but Kit drops about halfway, luckily Aradia makes them invisible before anything bad happens. The team hoofs it back to the water and makes their pickup window, getting dropped back off at the Tacoma docks. They get a call from Romeo, saying that Telestrian has tasked him with collecting the data and paying them off. He also offers to buy any other paydata on behalf of Annie, as arranged. He says he thinks this is a power move by Telestrian to reveal that she did her digging on the team, and also why Annie wanted to use Romeo as a cutout.

Remembering another aspect of their job for Annie, they decide to dig into Romeo a bit before handing over the data, and get some intel from an Underground hacktavist named Tauren. Romeo has some family ties to Humanis and other extremist orgs, though his parents appear to have “officially” left when he was born a dwarf. He also may have some personal ties, which Tauren wants the team to confirm, as Romeo presents himself as a beneficent meta-rights supporter.Tauren also seems interested in the Shadow Chapters if the team can prove it’s a legit org, as he’s heard mixed things.

They pass along and sell the data, but get Remo to watermark the intel from the gala, and then check with Annie to see if Romeo copied the file or altered. He looks to have copied it but not altered it- could be pro, or could be sneaky! More investigation needed. The team does some various other digging around into assorted other ongoing missions and mysteries, and make some future arrangements for collaboration with Domingo Febles and others. They check in with Nyssa Hallas, Iva, and Don Michaels about assassins in town, and get some intel, and also some updates on some happenings in Snohomish.

They get Remo to look into matrix security at the Iron Jungle as a favor to Nyssa, and he reports back that, somehow, the Freedom Network/Popular Will crew there appears to have the Null Sect doing security, which is very troubling. In exchange for all these favors, Remo asks them to rescue a technomancer that just managed to smuggle a message to him from wherever they are being held, as they sound pretty scared and desperate. The team agrees to focus on that next.

They also officially make Creep a full member of the team! Though he doesn’t seem too interested in their safehouses, they have a fun time riding the jet ski around in the small lake while the water spirit makes waves. He shares a bit of his sad past as a child model/pageant star, which inspired his current anti-appearance, not particularly wanting to be observed anymore.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

The team readies themselves for the gala in a few days time. Creep takes advantage of the final touch construction chaos at the building site to sneak in ahead of time and insert himself into the ducts, where he can crawl around, surveil, and get an eye on security and layout. Kit and Carol do some research on the layout of the building as well as gather some info on it’s sister structure in Dubai. The configurable maze, on the 5th-8th floors, is the site of the main VIP portion of the gala, and will likely be set to it’s highest security/privacy setting, making exterior surveillance difficult. They discuss having Creep use a data tap to get Kit access to the maze controls if needed, but decide not to rely on that.

The team brushes up on social skills, and comes up with appropriate backstories. As the team travels downtown, they notice that there are some large protest crowds and clashes, just short of riots, seemingly advocating for either “stay” or “leave” with the recent vote tally from the informal poll at the music fest having riled things up. The team does a little research and sees that a lot of the “leave” faction seem to have backing related to the Real Americans and the Pacific Independence League, both of which are at least partially funded by Ghostwalker. The “stay” faction seems to have some local funding from a new group called the “Sons of Snohomish”, which almost for sure is a metaracist org based on name and location, and which the team has a job to investigate. They plan to dig in more on both sides in the future.

Tabasco reserves Bernie Carter and his armored cab for the evening, and Aradia and Creature rent a short distance town car, while Carol and Kit travel in another. On arrival, they spot a few people watching over the crowd and arrivals, as well as some notables from around town. Tabasco ID’s some organized crime figures from the Downtown and Bellevue families, but they don’t seem to have tickets to the VIP area. Aradia approaches the rumpled dwarf doing surveillance first off, and they have a friendly (on the surface) but probing convo about who exactly they each are. Recognizing each other’s magical abilities, they exchange contacts.

Aradia also gives a nod to the elf who watched them arrive but is ignored, and offended. The team in their 3 groups heads upstairs fairly quickly, seeing that most of the political and corp movers and shakers do so, not lingering in the semi-public soiree in the atrium. Creep re-positions himself near a private corner of the 3rd level of the maze in order to try to observe any quiet convos any VIPs might have there.

The other 2 pairs of the team make some conversation at the maze entrance with some of the various figures, and meet a Seattle government official, Chuck Beale, who they manipulate into revealing that he is the one compiling the list of delegates for the FS referendum, and that this meet and greet will give them a chance to make their cases to him. Kit manages to snag a copy of his hand print. but fails to scan his irises. They also meet a very jolly Horizon rep who creepily doesn’y have handprints when Kit tries to scan them. Most of the other VIPs cleverly rebuff handshake attempts.

The team finds out about a bit of drama between a few of the reps: the SSC guy really does not like the Telestrian sent on behalf of Tir Tairngire, and the PCC rep sent up to advocate for Seattle as a treaty city doesn’t think much of the SSC rep. Omnistar wants in, and their rep Rahel Juric makes Tabasco as a runner after he drops some hints, and hires him to ensure she gets on the referendum list, and hunts at more future related work. Creep overhears the UCAS govt rep get berated by Margaret Telestrian, who suggests that her vote will be amenable to bribes, but she’d prefer he offer her the best one. She also hints at some scandals in his background, which the team only finds some whispers and hints of online. Creep repositions a few times and overhears some more convos as well.

The ARES rep (who Carol steers clear of) and the Renraku rep seem to be planning to work together to push the “stay” vote, as both have a lot of contracts they might lose if things go the other way. The Horizon rep seems VERY good at navigating the maze and stumbling into convo’s at interesting points, and claims not to have a preference or agenda. This is also Beale’s line, who claims to just be excited to be in the room where it happens. The Pacific Independence League rep makes Creature as a drake beholden to the Sea Dragon, and suggests that both of their masters will want the same result so they should work together. Miranda King, here on behalf of Spinrad, confers with the Wuxing/PPG rep, and both seem open to either outcome, but interested in the possibilities present.

King seems to almost recognize some of the team, especially Creature, but doesn’t push it, so they avoid her as well. Telestrian eventually threatens the team into doing some work for her, having noticed Creep in the walls. She’s very friendly about it all. but seems like a real social predator, and Carol is a little spooked. The team decides to throw caution to the wind and steal Beale’s commlink, make sure Juric is on the list, and then send it before returning the link, in order to create a situation where it would be too embarrassing for him to admit what happened. Aradia distracts him by questioning the integrity of the process, and he goes off on how he is very neutral and wants an unbiased discussion with even opinions on all sides as well as some undecided.

Carol snags the link, though Beale seems to have some exec protection training and almost spots the palming. Kit does the hack, gets the full delegate list, and decides to add not only Juric but also Ceri Gilbredes (the PIL/Ghostwalker rep) and King (Spinrad), hoping this will give the “leave” faction a head start, and keep Stuck from killing them. Creature handily returns the comm to Beale’s suit, and the team disengages, needing to head out to do a quick B&E job for Telestrian that evening so as not to get Creep into hot water, plus wanting to get on her good side in the hopes of swaying her vote.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
and reintroducing: Creep

The team returns to Seattle, still mourning ThinkTank’s death, and planning to carefully guard their new ID’s to try to avoid blowback from ARES. Tabasco, noticing that one of their other sneaker/fighters is permanently absent, proposes a replacement: his occasional comrade Creep, a weird but reliable fellow. The team concurs, planning to try Creep out on some of the many upcoming missions they have in Seattle: astral library returns, throwing the Free Seattle referendum Stuck’s way, fighting off the many assassins in town while discovering their targets (and without their access to TT’s assassin contacts!), plus all the mysteries Tabasco was investigating prior to joining the team. Time to get to work!

Worried about being able to cover upcoming rent on their 3 safehouses, they decide to try to do some quick money jobs, get that settled, and then delve into the bigger concerns. The team meets up with Creep, and agrees to do a few test run jobs before fully onboarding him, but it seems like he’s eager for work, talented, and pretty weird. Tabasco calls up Cheeks and they arrange to meet up and chat about some jobs and investigations that Cheeks would like handled. Carol calls Vogel, and asks for any intel on what ARES jobs are on the line in Seattle, and which way Vogel wants those to go. Vogel tells the team to not interfere with the bug infiltration of the Mafia via the N’Drangheta (more of an international problem), as having his Mafia allies in disarray will put Knight at a further disadvantage. He also tells them that Dr. Ellis is seeking to capture one of more Botflies, a rare (in this region) bug spirit type, and that the team should instead wipe out this nest.

The team takes a few days to restock on gear, catch up on local events (Aradia is bummed that she missed a full moon chance to investigate the strange entropy circles), and give Kit time to set up the new van. Kit also borrows some money from the team fund (recently increased in size with the influx of ThinkTank’s funds at his death), and further upgrades their new Wimp drone.With the van arm and armor equipped, the team heads out to NE Redmond to meet up with Cheeks and some other Dogmen.

They make introductions, and Cheeks gets down to business: he wants Tabasco to follow up on the previous work he’d done for the gang, and figure out what exactly is going on with the Spiders gang, and also see if they can get any intel on what is happening to the people they snatch. The team agrees, thinking this will link up well with the Vogel job, potentially. They do some recon, and find some sort of huge trapdoor spider spirit catching stray passerby in a magic web, and passing those off the what seem to be Spiders gang members, but who have a bit more of a cult-y vibe.

Creep manages to follow them as they drag the unconscious kidnappee underground, but Tabasco has to fall back when he is spotted and caught with some sort of astral webbing. Aradia and Carol take a pic with the Quicksilver Camera for proof as needed of the situation aboveground, and KIt sends in a crawler stealth drone to back Creep up and relay signal. Creep and the drone follow the cultists done through some narrow tunnels into the sprawling sewer system under Redmond, which Creep knows is big and dangerous. Creature follows partway to keep the signal working, and Tabasco hangs nearby for combat assistance as needed.

Creep sees a shaman with a black widow focus (likely the gang;s leader, based on description), with about a dozen gangers/cultists all chanting “Grandmother” in various languages. Widow touches the kidnappee and speaks some quiet words in a language Creep doesn’t recognize, and as her focus glows, the victim transforms, mutating into a spider hybrid form. This isn’t bugs, but this is bad. Some of the cultists come forward and usher the newly transformed victim to a nearby bench to recline, offering words of reassurance that he is one of them now and they will take care of him.

Taking another scan of the large reservoir chamber, Creep spots a massive, newly manifest spirit lurking in the shadows, and sees another shaman come forth from it’s vicinity with some fluid from it in an ewer. He watches in mute horror as the shaman gets the newly transformed man to drink it, also offering words of reassurance. Creep decides it’s time to go, and the team exfiltrates. They report into Cheeks, and post warning to the Shadow Chapters, the Crypt and Jackpoint. Cheeks gives them the small “missing persons” funds he’s raised from the community, and tells them they did a good deed. He seems to be pondering next steps, and also not 100% sure none of them are corrupted, so he says he’ll be in touch.

They talk to Fargus Sol, who confirms that something weird is going on in the astral planes with Spider: Metabeles, their traditional home, has new connected hyperplane known as the Twisted Web, which seems to be the creation or at least home of a malevolent trickster spider who broke free from his astral prison in Metabeles. This is apparently where “Grandmother”, whatever it is, resides. Sol doesn’t know how it started corrupting shamans from there, but suggests this would be worth further investigation. He also suggests that both the trapdoor spider and the huge black widow were likely quite dangerous but both tend to not be overly aggressive, so just as well the team didn’t attack, for now.

The team starts researching Botflies, and manages to identify some likely focal points. Remembering that Cheeks had said the Spiders only really got bad and weird after they ran out of bugs to eat, they decide to try to play one faction off against another. Conversing with Prof. Maggie Magnusson about Botflies while he confers with some colleagues, they hear that some Spiders gangers recently got picked up Downtown without SINs and dropped in the ACHE, and decide to get a third faction involved as well. They call Tosh Athack and tip the Black Knights off to the panned Spider raids coming up. Unfortunately they then hear back from Maggie, who says that the hosts can likely be saved with the help of a skilled medic and a skilled banisher, if they are found before the incubation is complete. The team feels bad they already sent the Spiders after them but feels it’s too late to stop what they’ve set in motion.

They wait a few days and then hear the good news: a large number of Spiders gangers were detained by Knight Errant after being found in the vicinity of a suspicious number of recently deceased individuals, none of whom bore any obvious signs of harm other than having been restrained. Due to the Spiders’ lack of ID, they are being detained in the ACHE for now. They team pats themselves on the back, and calls Vogel, who says he will spread the info they uncovered about how to ID and counter Botflies far and wide, to make sure ARES can’t try to use them as sleeper agent infiltrators. He sends them some cash, and with relief, they pay their rent.

In worse news, Jaliyah Angél cakks Aradia from the ASPS, having heard about the Spiders ending up in the ACHE, and shares her worries that the Spirit of the City, which seems to be centered on the ACHE, could easily be corrupted in it’s nascent form by the cultists.So maybe not an unqualified success. But at least the team knows where to look for them. They also get some intel on the ACHE itself, which could play into resolving the Free Seattle referendum: Shiawase is bidding to take over care and upgrades of the structure and it’s reactors from the UCAS military, which is good leverage.

The team decide to go with Imaginary Annie instead of STV as an employer to look into Free Seattle, and givers her a call. She says that she wants direct reports from the team, but that jobs and money and gear and whatnot will all be handled by a local fixer named Romeo who she is testing out, and also wants looked into. She confirms that Shiawase info, and tells them that there is an upcoming gala where they could likely meet a lot of the power brokers in town and try to ID who the likely delegates to the referendum will be- the first step.

They contact Romeo, and are less than delighted by his easy sleazy nature, but he seems to know his business, and gets them tickets to the gala (except Creep, who wants to sneak in), as well as nice rental clothes. Carol cringes at the thought of attending an event in a rental tux but has to remind himself he doesn’t have the corp credit card anymore, and goes along with it. They get a down payment for any gear they need from Romeo, and have a few days to prep for the gala itself. It will take place as an opening event for a grand new structure called The Aspirant’s Tower, a vertical maze inspired by a similar building in Dubai.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
and a sad farewell to: ThinkTank

With TT and Kit on board to take Tate out, they start debating tactics. They decide to take a few more days to get some cyber upgrades and do some shopping, with Kit and Aradia taking a day trip to Cairo to shop the massive markets there. Aradia, unable to avoid temptation, goes looking for something illicit and special, and eventually gets put in touch with Am-Mut, a regional fence, black marketeer and info broker. She insists on getting their street names and checking their rep before doing business, but gets them what they need a day later after they check out. Kit buys schematics for Tate’s cruise ship, as well as some info on onboard security. Aradia gets some reagents, an ancient death mask that could be made into a focus, and also decides to drop a large sum on a mysterious weapon focus.

After spending some time examining the focus, they consult with Fargus Sol and do some internet research. It seems it is a legendary blade known as Ketel’s Dagger which can transform living matter to gems and crystalline forms depending on use and target. Sol says that since it uses blood magic to enact the transformation it would likely be quite addictive and might be an item that other’s seek to acquire, by force if needed. Aradia decides to trade it for a less dangerous magical sword, a Blade of Hark, which allows some level of spirit binding and control, and when bound as a weapon focus will make her a significantly larger astral threat.

Aradia and Kit decide to board the cruise ship as passengers to get some early intel, while the rest of the team approaches with all the gear on a zodiac provided by Ibn Hassan. Kit and Aradia spot some magical security, and confirm that the crew are either all bugs or maggots, and decide not to explore further until the rest arrive, though Kit inserts their new crawler drone into some maintenance raceways to skulk around and see if it sees anything. They also determine that there is definitely strong bug magic in and below the VIP spa area. Carol stays behind to get one more spa day, and also pilot in the escape boat if needed.

Tabasco learns how to pilot the zodiac, and after some trial and error and some withering looks from TT and Creature manages a successful stealth approach to the cruise ship. TT and Tabasco board via a tactical grapple, while Creature uses xyr web to stick to the side. Not seeing anyone inside the nearest chamber, Tabasco cuts through the porthole glass, and Creature manages to contort xyr way in. Using Tabasco’s radar and the plans Kit bought, everyone manages to link up, with Creature opening a door to the below decks area from inside, while Aradia bypasses the ward to allow everyone to pass through undetected.

They avoid some eerily efficient crew patrols (always in pairs and seemingly linked to some sort of hive mind or shared perceptive network), and head for what on the plans is supposed to be a bilge tank that seems to be the strongest magical location. They find it cut open, with some crude stairs welded together descending into it. Hearing more footsteps, as well as some voices, approaching, they dash down in. A horrifying sight awaits. At the far end is a massive bulbous, slimy entity, looking something like a huge putrid toad. In the center of the room is a Bug statue, similar to some they’ve seen before, this one obviously of the Scarab tradition.

Lining both walls of the room are various contorted metahuman forms in various stages of transformation, although they don’t look to be getting transformed into bugs. Instead, they seem to have some kind of small grub inserted into their heads, which seem to be causing the heads to massively swell and distort, consuming the rest of the body as they grow, and eventually projecting a mass of limb/antennae from the chin. The 11 bodies are in various stages of transformation, with the ones nearest the gum toad (as the team ID’s it) the most transformed. Two of these snap their massive, torso sized heads off of their shrunken husk bodies and charge the team on their spindly chin legs, targeting Aradia and Creature, as the gum toad flicks it’s tongue out at TT.

The team manages to dodge the initial assault, but are unable to connect with the enemies, who seem quite quick, until Tabasco targets the gum toad, who seems fairly sluggish. He manages to light it on fire, providing some better illumination in the dark chamber. Unfortunately, this refocuses the toad’s attention, and it quickly snags Tabasco with it’s tongue and begins to swallow him. TT gets off a solid javelin attack, destroying it’s mystical armor. Tabasco gets another arrow off, lighting himself on fire as well but badly injuring the toad. Meanwhile, Creature finds that xyr dwarf minigun is quite effective against the fast (but weak) head monsters, managing to slay one. The other continues to hyper-extend it’s jaw as the top of it’s head lolls back and it tries to chomp down on Creature.

Kit manages to prevent Tabasco from burning to death while the team finishes off the toad and remaining head, with Aradia loosing her air spirit on the grub/head monsters that are still incubating. 4 pairs of cruise ship guards dash down into the ballast tank, all moving disturbingly synergistically, and the team finds themselves straight back into combat. They all take some hard hits, especially TT, before Kit has a plan and manages to snatch the Scarab stone off it’s altar, and Aradia destroys it in astral space with her new sword. All of the cruise crew stop attacking immediately and sort of go limp, though their autonomic functions appear stable- Kit speculates that they are wimp clones, and decides to keep one for some experimental surgery.

Meanwhile, Carol has been chilling at the resort, and is approached by one Georgiy Abolev, who says he is a rep for the APEP Consortium, the magic/artifact hunters who were recently acquired by MCT. He fishes for info about VDH’s hoard, and offers large payouts in the future for other magical oddities, etc, giving Carol his number. Carol, with amazing perception, notices that his room was subtly searched while he was out, and calls Abolev on it. Abolev admits it was his people who did it, but nothing is missing, and he seems to be attempting to use it as a power play- “we can reach you anywhere”. Carol feels like he successfully won that social encounter by noticing it though, and expresses his displeasure in the skill level of the team Abolev used.

The next day, Carol plans to just chill more while the team does the job, but ends up deciding to get a second boat from Hassan and heading out to extract them when he realizes noone made an exit plan. He refreshes a bit on how to drive a boat, and zips over to the cruise ship, arriving quickly but not stealthily. Having lost comms with the team when they went belowdecks, he heads for the porthole Creature used to enter, and yanks open the compartment door from outside, using his grappling hook. Comms back on!

Creature and the air spirit finish off the grubs still in the transformation process, and the team prepares to chase after Tate, with Aradia sending her spirit off to search him out. As they follow the spirit, TT spots some chained plastic explosives all built into the lower area of the ship, that, if detonated, will definitely sink the vessel, so he offers to stay behind and sort that out while the rest of the team pursues.Kit heads for Carol’s zodiac with one of the wimps in tow, and manages to toss it down and wingsuit down after themselves. A very crispy Tabasco follows. They zip around the front of the boat to try to intercept Tate, who looks to be heading for an escape craft of his own.

Aradia and Creature give chase, with Creature faster. Xe gets lines of sight on Tate just as he is about to step off the cruise ship onto an emergency launch, which is starting to lower down the side. Xe fires with xyr minigun, and perforates both Tate and the rubber boat. Aradia, racing towards the deck, goes astral and summons a fresh air spirit, commanding to to engulf the wounded Tate. Seeing Tate about to press a detonator, Creature shouts a warning, and Kit manages to jam the signal just long enough for TT to clip the wires midway down, and prevent about half the explosives from detonating, the ship doesn’t start sinking. Unfortunately, the other half in the areas above/the spa/etc all do still detonate on a light lag, burying TT in a mound of debris after shredding his body. Creature cries out, seeing him flatline on the TacNet and heads back down to see if he can be saved.

Aradia jumps down to the zodiac, and has the air spirit drop Tate’s body in after is suffocates him. Kit is able to stabilize the unconscious Tate, while Carol restrains him. Creature manages to retrieve TT’s trashed commlink and one javelin but not much else, as he was blown apart and then crushed quite thoroughly. Though his face is hard to remember, Creature does not think xe will forget this view… Xe dashes back upstairs and webs down to the zodiac as announcements from the ship’s captain try to keep the passengers calm, especially since no other crew seems present/sentient at the moment. Kit gets them out of there before anyone can try to climb aboard, and they call up Hassan from the water and request a safehouse.

He directs them a bit west on the Mediterranean Sea, to an abandoned part of the former Libyan coast, where they link up with Bedouins traveling with a camel caravan including some dot camels. One of the Bedouins takes the zodiac and heads back out to sea, while the team covers up to blend in and hops aboard. A few hours south in the middle of the desert, they enter a secluded cave which looks like a smuggler’s cache. The Bedouins start their own fire and stay a short distance away, though seeing both the team’s injuries and the captive, say they are happy to help dispose of any corpses as needed. The team rests around their own fire for a bit and mourns TT, whose large sunny absence is noted.

Carol calls up Vogel, and gives him the intel on the Horror cult, and the suspicious fact that both the newly built cruise ship and the explosives were ARES manufacture. Even with the dot camel’s signal boost and Kit’s quality ECM, they are only able to text. Vogel gets back and says that Tate, under his new name, seems to have gotten added to ARES payroll during the bug dragon battle in Chicago, so seems to have fled and switched allegiances when he saw which way the wind was blowing there. But Vogel is distressed about what exactly he was up to and what ARES knew… as is Carol. Aradia mind probes Tate once she has rested a bit, eager for answers.

They find out that Tate seemingly got corrupted by V’golkatl after the team gave him the bug dragon to try to heal (before they knew it was buggy). V’Golkatl was apparently already using the dragon for its own designs, and convinced Tate to join it, as Tate came to view the coming of the Horrors as inevitable, and wanted to be on the winning side. He tried to bring Chicago contacts who were loyal to him along with, but most either refused (like Creature) or were killed during the chaos of his escape. He came to ARES’ attention due to the team, and Candice Phillips passed him up to Michael Turpentine II and III to run. In exchange for info on the last few nests in Chicago after the battle, they got him out and are using him to ferret out other nests in the Mediterranean region. They manages to insert him as head of a local Scarab cult using the artifact that Aradia destroyed, as Tate has no magical abilities of his own. He seems to have independently acquired the gum toad and the Crawlers (carol ID’s the grub/head monsters as something he saw in his vision of Kadath), and used them to maintain control of the artifact and also begin his own secret breeding program for lesser Horrors.

Meanwhile, ARES had him implanting various A/AA/AAA mid-tier execs and the like with various bug spirits that they think will be controllable, as what they believe could be the ultimate in corporate sabotage and infiltration. Luckily, Tate is very detail oriented, and the team gets the full list of all the converts, and this seems like a pilot version of this program, based on ARES’ success in it’s Project:Apex bug soldier hybrid experiments. Tate doesn’t think ARES knew about his current Horror activities, but they were very happy to provide him a lot of latitude as long as he kept up his target numbers.

Feeling like they’ve plumbed his mind as fully as they can, Kit kills Tate with a medical cocktail, and they trade his body to the Bedouins for a ride south. The Bedouins put it on ice in a large case, and also ice the wimp that Kit has hauled along. The team sells the list of names to Hassan, who compliments them on their work and says if they need more jobs in the region to get in touch. The next day they head south, and Carol starts to worry. TT is probably fairly identifiable, even in his exploded form, and they left the body there with distinct javelins and such scattered about. That night when they rest, Kit posts a memorial to TT on Jackpoint, and users there quickly link it to reports of a “shadowrunner terrorist attack on a cruise ship” that are being spread around. Someone also mordantly jokes that they’ll repost on Neutral Ground to get people off that bounty.

Carol finds that his corp credit card has been cancelled, and he doesn’t have any messages from his dad, bro, or Candice. He starts freaking out and planning to disappear in the desert and join up with Vogel, which Vogel seems excited about, but eventually talks him down from. Carol also passes along the general info about what Tate was up to for ARES, which Vogel is glad to know, and just seems like more motivation for him to take over. Carol makes a plan to get a fresh SIN or a few, and fake his death when they get to Asamando, using some bio-material removed from some major cybersurgeries he plans to get. They travel across a few countries in NW and central Africa to reach the ghoul nation, slipping over most borders deep in the desert without encountering anyone, and paying the ghouls at the Asamandan border with Tate’s body. The Bedouins leave the team at the outermost transit station, saying they have their own business, but recommending a few people and places in town for runners on the go.

Aradia and Creature get some minor biosculpting down in streetside walk-in clinics, while Kit just changes their appearance, and with the help of a curious aristocratic British “family doctor”, implants an ASIST rig into his wimp, effectively making it into a second body/biodrone for them to rig. Kit posts this info to Jackpoint as well, and gets a pretty wide range of responses, from the horrified to the impressed. Kit and the second body then help the doctor, Baxton Gresh, to do a series of surgeries on Carol, including giving him a False Face mod. Using the leftover tissue from that surgery, Carol pays off a fixer called The Butcher to report that Carol died of his wounds and was transported to Asamando and consumed, with the proof being some of his face in the Butcher’s possession. Aradia also calls in a favor with Juan Xiuhuitl, who flies the Brooch of Shifting over to AZT"s regional office (they are one of the few corps doing major business in Nyamkopon), and altering Carol’s aura to a different aspect, to throw off any attempts to magically track him. His low essence should also help here. The Butcher also offers them more regional work anytime they’re interested.

Aradia calls some Chicago contacts to report Tate’s death, and has another depressing checkin with Lothan, who is not doing well and has moved fully to his basement where he listens for tunneling in the walls. Aradia calls Goober to go check on him, and throws in a lot of money to start a “bug city survivors” PTSD support group at the Wisest Troll. The team all buys fresh SINs using Vogel’s contacts, and Hassan gets them suborbital tickets back to Seattle on a business flight where they won’t get searched (though they’ll still have to check and seal all their combat gear). They see some large, flagship-y Taco Temples on the way to the airport. What a vacation! As they swoop down towards Seattle, they are all a little depressed to realize that they have less than a week til they owe rent again…. time to get busy!