Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Asp
UltraBoy!
Ramose Hotep
Others
Lefty

The team, plus Ramose-Hotep, load into Ivan’s cab for the drive to the farm. Ivan and Ultraboy! once again trade tails to the horror of Asp. K scouts ahead astrally, noticing that both Asp and RH give off particular signatures on the astral plane-Asp’s is especially glaring. He also discovers a huge and powerful dual-plane barrier just beyond the farm’s location. Ivan, accepting a dare, tries to drive really fast, and nearly wipes out, but recovers quickly. Asp and K are launched into each other by the car’s sudden halt, giving K a bloody nose. RH is terrified of the speed. HCB is not impressed.

Ivan is still driving pretty fast as they near the farm, and doesn’t notice the concealed spike strip which springs up and shreds his tires. The car screeches to a halt again. Ivan and HCB exit and begin repairin/replacing the flats, and HCB drops a bunch of lugnuts all over. Ivan is slightly upset. He deploys the lynx to watch his back. The rest of the team gets out to check out the area, and try and find the hidden farm. Using thermographic vision, they pick up some heat signatures around the edges of a nearby rocky outcropping, and decide to approach. Asp leads, and calls a halt when he notices part of a ring of small concealed sensors embedded in the ground. Most of the rest of the team do not recognize his military signals, however, and he has to stop to explain. Ivan reclines in the cab after fixing the last tire, and dives into the lynx. The team throws some rocks into area within the sensors, which has no effect. They then destroy the nearest two, which also has no effect. HCB then decides to walk thru, which does have an effect.

One of the heat signatures moves, and the team sees a door swing open in the side of the rocky outcropping ahead. Some spiky mastiff-sized dogs approach aggressively. The team tries to respond, but misses with their initial shots, and then the dogs are on them. The lynx, and HCB both take damage, but RH manages to shrug his off, due to his troll hide and massive ceremonial armor. They counter-attack, felling two of the dogs. K manages to do a killing blow to the one in front of RH with a bolt of magic called from the sky, causing RH to believe that his gods have intervened in his favor. Asp attempts a non-lethal strike, but doesn’t succeed. The remaining dog takes another bite out of HCB before they put it down. As it dies, it lets out a terrible howl, which seems to slow most of the team members down quite a bit. The dogs don’t seem to have been fully natural.

The team approaches the cage-it is soundproofed, and now empty. They open the concealed door on the adjacent structure (the other heat signature) and jump when RH is hit in the face by a mop falling over. This room just has a lot of random supplies and heat generating engines inside. Both sheds are under a rock ledge that juts from the side of the outcropping, concealing their heat signatures from airborne surveillance. The team circles the outcropping, and finds a door carved out of the rock, that seems to be open a slit. K tries to project inside, but can’t force his way thru the living earth. RH opens the door and enters.

The room inside is trashed-shelves are tipped over, and bit of debris, food, and such are strewn around the floor. There are bloodstains aplenty, but no bodies. There is also a second door, in the back of the room. HCB cautions the team to be careful, as he smells some explosive residue, and this room doesn’t look like it was damaged by an explosion. Ultraboy! examines the door, and notice a trap set to it. K and Asp leave the room, Ivan pulls the car around. He manages to disarm it (it was fairly basic) and opens the door. Inside, they find the corpse of RH’s cousin, clutching a detonator for the explosives. There is also a small amount of magical items on the processing counter nearby, next to some scales and measuring devices. Asp searches the body for clues-he appears to have died from a series of deep cuts. He also finds a note, saying that “they came at night, and the rest of his team had been killed, and that he hoped to try to escape and bring word to Heliopolis once he was sure they had left. for now, he had set a trap in case they returned-he would not let them take him alive. he thinks they may have headed back to the crater, but is going to wait a bit longer to be sure. he is very tired.” RH translates this from the heirogyphics/script combination it is written in.

The team decides to head for the crater. K projects ahead, and figures that the enormous mana barrier he saw earlier marks the edge of the forbidden zone, and tells the group as much. However, they deduce that the smugglers must have had a way in and out, so Asp decides to try to track the group that left the farm back towards the crater, hoping to find their secret entrance. He gets a little ways, and then loses the trail, although he has a fairly good idea which direction to go. Th team continues along this route, until they see the shimmering barrier at the edge of the crater and halt. Asp once again searches for tracks, and finds an ATV trail along the barrier edge, which they follow to a concealed stone door set into the ground, near where they ATV track turn around. RH opens the door without further investigation, triggering an explosion which he manages to mostly avoid. However, UB!, who was nearby, is heavily injured in the blast.

The team then enters the tunnel, and crawls thru, losing wireless comms halfway, when they cross the barrier. Ivan instructs his car to fight back against anyone who arrives, and then to flee if it takes more than half-damage. They emerge from the far side of the tunnel, and see some firelight flickering from the mouth of the nearest cave set into the craterside. K astrally projects to see if their entrance was noticed, and encounters two watcher spirits approaching Asp’s strobing astral presence. He convinces the spirits to ignore the team, and they depart. But he is worried about Asp endangering the team, as he seems especially worried about water spirits, claiming they hate him for experiments he was forced to partake in back on Earth. They approach-K levitating while Asp sneaks and the rest of the party hangs back. Asp tries to signal that he sees three people around a fire inside, but the rest of the team is somewhat confused, and UB! decides to approach, to clarify. He makes too much noise, and one of the men comes to the cave entrance. Asp shoots him with a taser and knocks him unconscious, and then enters the cave with UB! with their guns out and tells the two remaining men to freeze. They comply.

The rest of the team comes up and they begin questioning the men. The men appear somewhat pale and sickly, and have longer than usual fingernails. They find out that the man they knocked out was the courier they were seeking, which they confirm with the picture Madame Gavral provided. They say they have been hiding in these caves, avoiding whatever is that is out there and has been killing their friends. Asp heals the courier a little, and he regains consciousness and rejoins them around the fire. They offer the team some of the meat that they are cooking. Asp refuses on grounds that it might not on kosher, and RH refuses for similar religious reasons. Everyone else partakes. They begin to feel ill almost instantly, and while questioning what the meat is, one of the men attacks Asp, and the other RH. The fight quickly ends, with two of the men dead, and the courier once again unconscious. They tie him up, and K levitates him to prevent him fleeing.

Meanwhile, UB! and RH have decided to check out the rest of the cave. They wander down the passage aways, and find a dead end, with some stacked boxes. They are pretty sure this is what they are looking for, and both feel a sudden and powerful urge to get the rest of the team back here, and they call out to them. Ivan And HCB join them and ask what they found-as UB! turns to reply, he is sent flying by a blow from a huge hand that swings out from the shadows along the nearby wall. A huge stone-colored furred beast emerges and attacks RH. Ivan slumps to the floor as he brings the lynx back and begins firing, and the rest of the team attacks. K and Asp rush to the area after hearing gunshots, leaving Lefty by the front entrance. K halts the levitation spell on the prisoner when he leaves, accidentally dropping him in the fire, which he doesn’t notice.

RH, Asp, and UB! are all attacking the beast in close combat, as HCB and the lynx attempt to fire between them, and K floats overhead providing spell support. The team is impressed by Asp’s two weapon fighting prowess, involving careful balancing of offense and defense, and swift, brutal counterattacks. However, for all the damage they are dealing to the beast, it seems to be healing rapidly enough to ignore much of it. Meanwhile, it is dealing out some serious hurt to the surrounding team members. Eventually, it seems to be weakening, and finally drops to the ground, leaving the team exhausted. K flies back to the front room, and discovers Lefty confronting a group of 5 more ill-looking humans (which the team has decided are ghouls, based on popular myths and trideo/sim programs). Lefty’s barks and growls were apparently inaudible over the combat in the rear of the cave.

Ivan has the lynx stand over his body while he observes the beast’s corpse to make sure it it actually dead. HCB suggests they burn it, when they have time, believing that he once read a sci-fi story where that worked with this kind of monster. The rest of the team returns to the front of the cave to fight the additional ghouls. Once they realize they have been spotted the ghouls stop trying to placate the dog and attack-1 on Lefty, the other 4 racing towards the team. Lefty takes serious damage, and goes on defense, as Asp races to his aid. K calls down magical attacks on the other four, while UB! launches grenades and RH closes in for the kill with his ceremonial vibroblade. They quickly finish off all 5 ghouls, with limited injury, much of which comes from and errant grenade shot from UB!. UB! and RH return to the back room to grab the boxes they found and make their exit.

Next up: can they escape the crater intact? did they find the answers they were seeking?

Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Remus Chandrasekharan
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Asp
Ramose Hotep
UltraBoy!
Others
Daedelus
One Shot Wade
Long Pig
Ut-Napishtim
John Caruthers
Madame Gavral
Yann Tillberg
Karen Cortez
Romulus Chandrasekharan
Tamany Clark
Kano
Thutmose

Ut and April rig the last of her c4 to the side of the wastechamber, and blow it open-it begins draining into the public sewers below. The team quickly drops down, motivated by the gunfire and grenades from the BS goons above. They begin making their way thru the sewers out of BS turf. They come across a t-intersection near the edge, and come under fire from the walkway opposite-some goons are crouched behind some stonework and in some alcoves in the sewer walls. Ut dives into the flowing sewage (he is wearing a fully enclosed suit) as does HCB. The rest of the team goes prone or takes cover where possible.

HCB fires and clips a goon, but is felled by machine gun fire in response. April jumps into the sewage to attempt to help him, and is herself knocked unconscious. K drops his levitating friend, and tries to start healing people, but is distracted by the shooting and explosions. The lynx provides covering fire a Ivan dives into the sewage. He dispatches one goon with a grenade-he attempts to throw it back, but fumbles it and takes a dive into the sewer to save his friends. It detonates underwater, limiting the blast. Ivan takes some fire in response, but Ut emerges from the sludge and sprays that goon with burst fire from behind, quickly dispatching him. Two goons remain, and the team is looking rough-Ivan takes a lucky shot at one and does some damage, as the lynx continues to fire, finishing off that goon (the lynx is also severely damaged at this point). As one of the goons leans out to take a shot at Ivan, Ut emerges from the sludge again, and lodges a knife in her throat, sending her tumbling back into her alcove, dead.

K spends a few round healing his nearly deceased team members, and then they make their escape from the sewers, piling into Ivan’s cab with the remaining captives, all of whom survived the sewer shootout, largely due to the lynx’s distracting fire. Ivan gets a message from Wade that the hospital was a trap, and to watch his back at the mansion, which had apparently been jammed whilst in BS turf and the sewers. They drive to PC turf (finally! back on safe ground). The team hires a cab and sends the captives to the hospital. April busts open a fire hydrant, and they all hose off. She then decides to head for the same hospital, to heal up and try to get some exclusive. She leaves her gear with Ivan, and buys some disposable paper clothes. She contacts Yann to meet her at the hospital with clothes, make-up and a camera, and then calls Karen, to tell her about her exclusive take on the rescue.

Karen is impressed-she had just heard about the arrival of the disoriented captives at the hospital. She temporarily lifts April’s suspension, and tells her that her hospital bills will go on the corporate account, since April convinces her that she was injured in the course of pursuing leads in this story. She goes to the hospital and heals, and then attempts to get an interview with the captives. Only John Caruthers accepts, and quickly wishes he hadn’t, as April suggests that the loss of his legs, as well as his kidnapping in general, were his fault, and were possibly deserved. She also gives him a really creepy wink, in an attempt to alert him to the fact that she was one of his saviors. He ends the interview. Yann is disturbed by April’s behavior; she has been having more and more trouble understanding emotions and feelings, which seem increasingly irrelevant to her. Karen extends her April’s suspension, and tells her she doesn’t want her working at all, as she is starting to become somewhat of a liability. April decides to take a break for awhile to heal and figure some things out.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team returns to Ivan’s cab, and discovers that both Ut and the detachable harddrive are missing, a note says “see you later-”the escapist””. Remus begins decrypting the credsticks, and gets three of them open, for a fairly large chunk of change, but wipes the fourth on a failed attempt. The team drives to Daedelus’ warehouse, which is positively imposing now, and sells it the bag it requested. It seems thrilled, and compliments the team on their continued good working relationship. Remus gets contact from his brother Romulus, and decides to go hideout for awhile, as there are a wide variety of folks are looking for him, and he is a bit wary of the rumors he has heard of Halfman. Romulus tells him that both Weyland-Yutani and Aztechnology have seperately offered to protect him from his other enemies if he will sell out the rest of his team. Remus decides to find a safehouse thru his Hack the Planet connections, and ponder the offer. The rest of the team heads to Wade’s.

They drop off the pistols, and discover Ut and Wade planning a job to hit the BS’ main money laundering operation. Wade wants revenge for the hospital set-up: apparently his source in the BS may have been compromised, as they definitely had prepared an ambush, with BS soldiers disguised as doctors, orderlies, and patients. And he has some especially bad news: Halfman is definitely in town-Wade’s never seen a metahuman that heavily cyber-modded before, and he made quick work of everyone Wade and Yoleus sent against them. Luckily, some of the BS guards were called off the site (probably back to the mansion) and Wade and Yoleus were both able to escape, with the help of some young ork thriller Yoleus picked up at Fat Carl’s. This reminds Wade that Yoleus is trying to unload this kid, who’s apparently kind of obnoxious, and suggests that the team go pick him up, as he’s decent in a fight. Test him out, see if he’s worth keeping around. Ut and Wade say they will be a bit yet planning the op, so the team decides to look for work elsewhere.

Ivan spends some time up-armoring the lynx at a city chop shop/junkyard operated by Tamany Clark. Ivan impresses him with stories of his exploits and prowess, as well as with the impressive speed of his drone repairs. HCB practices with the Crod Stompaz. K decides to seek out some formulae for some new spells he feels he might need after the last mission, and heads to Madame Gavral’s shop. She fills him in on the job she needs done, which Scrounge had previously gotten an advance on, and tells K that it needs to get done before he can supply all of the items he needs. She introduces him to Asp, a sad looking Israeli man accompanied by a dog. She had hired Asp to act as a local guide to the city of Heliopolis, aka Little Memphis, which is connected to the illicit magical supply harvest that takes place in the Mars Crater. K agrees, and rounds up the team to head out there. They go by Fat Carl’s and pick up Ultraboy! on the way. He is a young, pink-skinned ork, with some cyber-mods, an armored trenchcoat, and a grenade launcher. Ivan instantly falls in love-this is someone who will love all of his bragging. Asp worries about his youth and inexperience.

Ivan realizes that he forgot his eyeball drone on the mansion lawn, and re-opens the connection-it appears to be mounted in a torture chamber, overlooking the slow death of a Problem Children member lashed to an operating table. Ivan permanently severs the connection, and contact Remus to have him hack the datatrail. The team then leaves Mars City, and heads for Helipolis. Ivan spends the ride telling UB! (who is sitting bitch) tales about his various exploits and his past as an organlegger. UB! responds with stories of his idol, Ultraman. This disgusts and annoys Asp, who is a more of a quiet military professional type, and also considers himself somewhat of a humanitarian. He fills the team in on some local customs and practices on Heliopolis in between Ivan and UB!’s banter.

They arrive at the gates of Heliopolis, finding them closed and watched by crocodile headed figures with large halberds. After some quick questions about their purpose in Heliopolis, they are allowed in, and park nearby. The city streets are narrow, and not meant for automotive traffic. It appears to have been built to remind it’s citizens of the old city neighborhoods of many cities in the middle east and north Africa-3 or 4 story buildings surround the narrow streets and allies, filled with the cries of street vendors and small bizaars. Over all of this looms the massive temples to the various gods worshipped here. Following Asp’s lead, the team makes for the temple of Hathor-essentially an entertainment center, with sacred prostitution, gambling, bloodsports, and other activities available. In the attached bar, the Red Delta, they meet Asp’s old merc friend, Kano.

He seems like he is avoiding Asp’s line of questioning and suggests that the team partake of some of the temple’s offerings. They proceed into the partner selection room, and peruse the temple workers on offer. They are all exceptionally beautiful, and provide a plethora of choices in terms of gender, metatype, and size and shape. Asp only sees his dead wife when he looks at them, however, and an insensitive remark from Ivan nearly sets him off. A temple guard bumps into Asp and walks out, and Asp notices that something was dropped in his pocket. He carefully reads the small note, telling them to come to a certain nearby garage for the information they seek. He relays this to the team, and they depart the temple.

K trails behind and attempts to detect threats on both the physical and astral planes. He notices that there are an unusually large amount of spirits performing services throughout the town, but doesn’t find anything worrying. The rest of the team heads into the garage (near the protective wall which rings the town) and sees the troll temple guard from before. He introduces himself as Ramose Hotep, and explains about the current situation. Essentially, since the farming/harvesting of magical supplies in the Mars Carter is illegal without a permit, and these permits are controlled by the AAA megacorps and the great dragons, the local Collosus Corp is reluctant to be officially connected. However, many citizens are involved, and they have recently begun to disappear is disturbing numbers. There are always some people who enter the crater and don’t return, as well as some small processing stations near the crater which go silent, destroyed by unknown forces. But usually, these are a small percentage of the total operation-lately, the numbers have been unacceptably high.

Colossus is trying to keep it quiet, but locals are starting to wonder where some of these missing people have gotten to, so the High Priests on the governing board have decided to deputize an investigation. At the suggestion of Thutmose, from the temple of Thoth, they agreed to cooperate with Madame Gavral (one of their biggest local clients) in seeking out her missing courier, and simultaneously, seeing what has been happening to the harvesters and smugglers in and near the crater. Knowing thar Ramose-Hotep has a cousin on a farm which recently went silent, Thtumose suggested sending him along. RH, eager to please, agreed. The team decides to head for RH’s cousin’s farm, and see what they can find out.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Scrounge
Remus Chandrasekharan
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Others
Daedelus
Long Pig
Ut-Napishtim
John Caruthers

The team takes a second to collect themselves, and look around the ground floor. Flesh sculpture garden is profoundly offputting to most of the team, although Ivan is somewhat interested, until he recognizes the torso of a centaur as being from a missing Problem Children member. Ivan begins destroying the art on the walls around the ground floor, looking for a secret basement entrance. Remus and April head upstairs to see of they can discover anything. Meanwhile, K heals HCB back to consciousness in the shed out back. They decide to head back to the sewers-abandon the mission since it has gone so off track. HCB exits thru the hole in the fence, K decides to levitate over. They come under fire as soon as they leave the illusion’s radius from windows overhead, as well as goons in cover behind sideways cars at each end of the alley. They try to make for the sewer entrance, but are forced into cover by suppressing fire. K launches fireballs at the cars, reducing them to smoldering wrecks, and they take this opportunity to reenter the fence, and head back for the mansion. They contact the rest of the team to let them know that BS reinforcements have arrived….

Inside, Ivan has destroyed a number of works of horrifying art, and has finally uncovered what looks like a basement door behind a large oil painting of a shadowy figure (presumably LP) surrounded by a number of young males, who all look similar to the boytoy that the team recently ransomed. He can’t find any way to open it. Upstairs, Remus and April enter the right hand side door, and discover the smoking wreckage of a nice four poster bed. There is limbless, charred torso leaning against the wall, Remus turns it over to discover the boytoy’s face staring up at him, intact. They panic, thinking that the cranial bomb somehow didn’t activate-yet there’s a hole blasted in the wall, and the room bears significant evidence of an explosion.

Downstairs, Ivan has set up with the lynx covering the open front door from behind a nearby statue. He notices BS goons beginning to enter thru the front gate of the fence at the head of the yard-the illusion prevents him from seeing out, as it appears LP didn’t like looking at the surrounding neighborhood, and preferred mountain vistas. Ivan opens fire with the lynx, scattering the first wave of attackers, who take cover in the guard booth by the gate, as well as behind the various exotic animal cages in the small zoo set up in the yard. Ivan fires thru the animals to get the guards behind, with mixed successes, but he eventually finishes off the first wave. He lets the rest of the team know that they have company out front as well as out back. He ponders how long it will take his cab to get here on autopilot, and decides that they may need to find a different way out, although he tells the car to get near to the edge of BS turf, in case they need it for extraction.

Upstairs, they exit this room, and Remus tries to kick down the door in the center, at the head of the stairs. It is locked and doesn’t give, and he injures his foot. April decides to blow it with c4. As she’s rigging the charge, Remus barrels thru the other door (on the left), finding it open, and going flying into the room. He lands in a pool of blood and viscera at the top of a drain set in the floor beneath a gore-stained operating table. The room has a series of cameras, torture tools, and simstim rigs with accompanying restraint devices. There is blood spattered over most of the walls and equipment. Remus is readying to leave, when something breaks thru his “hidden” mode comm firewall, and opens a channel. It is Daedelus, requesting that Remus grab a bag which should be nearby-it describes it to Remus, and he locates the bag. Daedelus says it will pay the team well to deliver it, also, it has arranged so that there is a someone in the basement who can aid their escape, if other paths are closed off.

April blows the security door, and sees a security station, two guards, one of which was stunned by the blast. April quickly dispatches him, but takes serious damage from the other guard, who shoots her repeatedly with his sidearm, sending her to the floor in a pool of blood. Remus runs and blows away the still-seated guard, leaving brains splattered all over the cameras and readouts behind him. Remus first aids April back to consciousness, and then begins searching for ways to open the basement door and close the front door.

Downstairs, the second wave has arrived, this time with a rocket launcher in tow. April sets up at the top of the stairs to snipe, and gets the drop on a few goons, as Ivan continues to fire with the lynx, eventually needing to bellycrawl up and replenish it ammo drum. Many more caged exotic animals meet a grisly end. The goon with the rocket launcher dodges out and lobs a rocket directly into the statue the lynx is behind, sending Ivan and the lynx scrambling for cover. The lynx takes serious damage, but covers Ivan, protecting him from harm. Remus has hacked the system and is perusing a diagram of a nearby switchboard, to determine which switches to hit to open and close the doors he wants. He finds the switch to open the door to the basement and does so, and then finds the switch for the front door of the house and sets that to close as well. The door begins to slowly grind shut along a track. Remus turns to exit the control room.

K and HCB have entered the house thru the hole April blasted in the back and join up with the rest of the team, just in time to see a final missile slip between the closing front doors. HCB, feeling lucky, makes an amazing shot and wings the missile, sending it off-course (it was headed for the lynx again) and straight into the upstairs control room-a little bit of bad luck, but still an impressive shot. Remus dives out of the room as the missile approaches, and avoids taking serious damage, but April is unable to move far enough due to being in a sniping position, and is knocked unconscious again by the force of the blast. Remus lands atop her body sliding down the stairs to temporary safety. April is looking really rough by now, but K restores some of her vitality with magical laying on of hands.

The team enters the now-open basement door, and finds it to be an elevator, with no buttons. Remus examines the copied switchboard diagram, and finds the “use elevator switch. He returns to the blasted control room, and begins trying to hardwire a usable fix. HCB and April go to cover the hole in the back wall, as it seems to be the only other entrance. They shoot the top of the head off of the first goon thru, but then are met with noxius smoke grenades launched past his body. They retreat towards the elevator, as Remus sets up the switch-he rewires the circuit, but doesn’t want to hit the switch and get left behind, so he attaches a pullcord, enters the elevator, and yanks. The circuit closes, as do the elevator doors. The team begins its descent.

K decides to astrally project ahead of the group to scout for trouble, and discovers an astral barrier near the bottom of the shaft. Deciding that any alarms which might be triggered have already gone off, he destroys it in astral combat, and the team descends the rest of the shaft in peace. The doors open at the bottom with a loud “ding,” and they exit into a short hallway with a set of swinging doors at the bottom. A small amount of mist or fog of some sort is seeping thru cracks in the doors. They enter, Remus first. He is hacked with a meat cleaver as soon as he crosses the threshold, and turns in shock to see a large fat man in a sleeveless shirt and sweatpants, with long stringy hair and an unkempt goattee. He swings the cleaver again, and Remus dodges out of the way, as the lynx slips past him and prepares to fire. K suggests they don’t shoot, thinking this might be the ally Daedelus spoke of, but Ivan disagrees and opens fire, disembowling the man with a full-auto burst into the gut. He crumbles to the floor moaning and hemorrhaging. HCB executes him with a shot to the head, and tries to record the smell of the moment of his death with his olfactory system.

The team examines the frigid room, and all except Ivan are horrified to see human carcasses in various states of disassembly hanging on meathooks around the room, as well as some choice cuts layed out on a nearby butcher block counter. Ivan, having seen a lot worse in his days as an organlegger, is fairly blase about the whole thing. They decide to leave the room thru the second set of swinging doors at the back. This time April goes first, fueled by her adrenal pump. It is warmer in the next room, and the smell is a great deal worse. April sees 8 persons chained to the floor along the walls at the side. The floor slants towards the center of the room, where the is a grated drain which runs its length. The whole spectrum of bodily excretions is draining down the slanted floor, away from the captives, towards the grate. Many of the chained persons moan in fear, as April looks truly terrifying-covered in both dried and fresh blood, with a variety of bullet holes, scorch marks, and other wounds visible thru her tattered clothing, she also has the wild-eyed look of a heavy stim user, due to her adrenal overdrive.

The rest of the team enter-HCB is overwhelmed by the odors. K sees one legless captive, who he instantly identifies with. They also notice that only 1 of the captives, a bald elf with a large red beard, does not appear afraid of them. They question him, and he introduces himself as Ut-Napishtim, an expert housebreaker and safecracker. He then makes a deal with the team, after they fill him in on the current situation: he can help them escape, in exchange for a few things. He wants to be freed, reacquire all of his gear, and retrieve a small item from the safe in the next room. He says he was hired to retrieve this item by a family who paid it in ransom to the BS in exchange for their kidnapped daughter, and wishes it returned. He was captured while infiltrating the mansion, and is not sure how long he has been here, as he was being tortured in horrible “BTL” simstims for an unclear amount of time, and he obviously hasn’t been able to see the day/night cycles. He says if they would be so kind as to free one of his limbs, he will be able to do the rest. The team agrees to his demands.

He is far more heavily restrained than any of the other captives. Ivan frees one of his arms with his monofil chainsaw, and Ut removes some lockpicks from his beard and quickly makes his way out of the rest of the restraints. He dances a small flourish, and declares himself as “The Escapist”, his performing name, which he says he took from an old book. He proceeds to free the remaining captives. HCB attempts to heal one of the captives, who appears catatonic, but accidentally kills him in the attempt. K heals and levitates the legless man, John Caruthers, as he feels responsible for his well being. There are 5 other hostages remaining, 3 men and 2 women, all human. The walls in the room are covered in sratchmarks, where captives have attempted to record the length of their stays.

Ut leads the team into the next room thru a secure door at the back, which he quickly opens. They enter what appears to be a high-tech lab of some sort-there are a variety of computer systems and vats, as well as a large painting hung on the rear wall, and some supply lockers near the door. Ut opens one, and retrieves his gear, equipping various devices to his bod before donning his full body stealth suit and mask, and equipping his goggles. He rummages in a bag he has with him, and pulls out a variety of complex and arcane looking tools, and then approaches the painting, which swings aside to reveal a long corridor leading to a huge safe. Upon further inspection, this turns out to be a tromp-loeil, providing a false illusion of depth, the safe being much closer, and smaller, than it appears.

The rest of the team, while exploring, has found a medkit, which K keeps, as well as examined the vats. They contain a number of persons in various stages of development, but all sharing a familiar face: that of Eronemus, the boytoy. Apparently LP has really specific taste in men (in a metaphorical sense-his taste for metahuman flesh appears less discriminating). The team is fairly disturbed by this discovery. HCB and Remus provide some assistance to Ut while he hacks the safe, using a multi-digit glove and muttering under his breath. He seems surprised at how quickly it goes, putting it down to good luck. He grabs a small pouch, and checks inside. Satisfied, he tells the team that the rest is theirs, but that they out to hurry, as BS goons will probably find their way down eventually.

Remus checks the safe, and passes Ivan the pistols that Wade requested, as well as grabbing a handful of credsticks and a detachable harddrive. Ivan and Ut then rig up a series of grenades to the clone vats on a pullcord, and exit the room. Ut pulls the cord, and there is a satisfying explosion. He then pulls up a section of the draingrate in the dungeon room, and tells everyone to get ready to jump in. From a few rooms over, the team hears aloud ding which they recognize as the elevator arriving-they didn’t disable it or even try to jam the doors. Whoops. This convinces them that the sewers are a decent option. Ivan commands his car to meet them at a nearby location at the edge of BS turf, and the team begins jumping in, lead by Ut. K and his legless friend float down. As the team lands in the chamber below, they hear gunfire from above, and the two male captives who remained above drop down, trailing blood thru the air, to land with a grotesque splash in the filthpool.

Next up: can they make good their escape?

Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Scrounge
Remus Chandrasekharan
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Others
Daedelus
One Shot Wade
Long Pig
Halfman
Jerl

Daedelus’ warehouse looks more and more developed and fortified every time the team visits, but they don’t wish to discuss it in the car,or possibly anywhere else, as they believe Daedelus is constantly monitoring their comms. The team gets a call from Wade to meet up and get info for a new job. While driving there from Daedelus’, HCB is convinced that he sees Bathcat, his former jailer. It turns just to be a local newspaper vender, whom Remus recognizes and prevents HCB from killing. Scrounge takes this opportunity to slip away, seeming somewhat perturbed to have come back into contact with the Striking Crane. Everyone else gets back in the car, and notices an oily black cloud to the northwest, over BS turf. They arrive at Wade’s office in PC territory. He introduces them to a wagemage he has hired to assist them, named K. K is very apparently wearing fake legs, a fact which the team is amazingly tactful enough not to point out right away.

Wade informs the team that his inside source tells him that Long Pig was injured in the explosion whose evidence the have just seen outside. The plan is for Wade and Yoleus to go with some of their best soldiers to the hospital that LP is supposedly at, and finish him off, while the team infiltrates his mansion and steals and destroys as much as they can, as well as seeing if they can get any info on the extent of his injuries. K has done a variety of undercity wagemage work over the last year or so, and has been inside LP’s mansion, and will hopefully be able to direct the team to it, as it and it’s location are protected by some serious illusion magic. Wade also warns the team that LP is thought to have hired the services of legendary hitman Halfman to track down and destroy them.

April tries to figure out which hospital LP might using press contacts to no avail. The team goes to Slot to plan the job, and notice two exceedingly non-descript people watching them discreetly from a nearby both. When April approaches them, they get up and leave, entering one of the unmarked cars that Ivan had previously noticed before April can question them, although she gets trideo of their faces. HCB hangs with Jerl and his buddies at the bar-he has started a trollrock band called Crod Stompaz with them, in which he sings. Remus hacks while K astral projects, and they manage to locate the source of the smoke-presumably LP’s mansion, although the concealing spell is good: it looks exactly like the surrounding apartment building’s. Remus finds some sewer plans to follow there, and gets some advice from Scrounge on which route to take.

K loses one of his fake legs while trying to quietly exit the bar, and is fairly embarrassed. He puts on his running legs for the job, and leaves his show legs in Ivan’s car, which they leave parked out front of Slot. They enter the sewers thru the dump in back, and begin making their way towards BS turf. HCB is somewhat overwhelmed by the array of odors in the sewer, and has to tone down the input on his nose to function properly. He plans to add smell to April’s simstim uploads, having partially come to peace with them. He also decides to get a voice enhancer so he can sing in his new trollrock band, The Crod Stompaz, without external amplification.

As they make their way thru the sewers, following the route Scrounge marked on the city map, they eventually determine that they have reached the borders of BS turf, and proceed to move more cautiously in order to avoid setting off any traps that are present. There are some signs of the gangwar down here-blood splatter, shell casings, and walls pitted from gunfire and explosions. They encounter and disable some simple mechanical traps, and make their way towards the sewer exit in the alley behind their target. They spot and kill a cyber-rat which seems to be being used for surveillance. They then sneak up on and rapidly eliminate two BS goons at the bottom of the exit ladder. They emerge in the alley, and determine which building they are headed into-there are a pair of fences running around it, which they decide to cut through. It seems they are still outside of the illusion spell’s boundaries, however, as it still appears as a normal building. K astrally projects to watch the guard patrols, and suggests away one guard that seems to notice them cutting the fence. The patrols are irregular however, and K can’t quite get the pattern down.

Ivan sends his eyeball drone thru the hole so he can see what’s going on. The next guard along notices the hole in the fence, and is sniped while coming to investigate. This alerts the other guards, who K astrally see converging on the position from the front and side-yards. HCB chucks in a grenade, killing another guard, and they respond in kind. The team enters the yard thru the fence, as only K can see what is going on thru the illusion spell. All except Ivan get shot up pretty bad, Ivan is busy sending in the lynx. April runs up on a guard in a rage and tears his throat out as K watches in horror. Remus snipes another, and the lynx takes out the remaining two. HCB has been ko’d during the fight, and the team drags him into shed set against the back of the mansion (it’s much fancier looking inside the illusion-there’s grass in the yard, and simulated blue sky above). Ivan leaves his eyeball drone in the yard to watch for trouble, while K checks out the astral presences on the ground floor of the mansion and informs the team.

K begins working on healing HCB, while Ivan sneaks around to the front entrnce with the lynx. April decides she knows a quicker way in, and blows a hole in the back wall with a big chunk of c4. While squeezing thru the hole, she nearly gets her head taken off by a shotgun-she exits and beats that goon to death, and is promptly shot again by another goon from down the hall. Remus enters behind her, slides down the hall, and snipes that goon. Meanwhile, Ivan has entered the front yard, and after glancing around briefly to check for more guards, enters the house thru the monumental front door, which is wide open. In the main room, he finds a series of disturbing flesh sculptures, which he decides to investigate later, since he sees the final goon on this floor trying to sneak around behind April and Remus. He sends the lynx after him, and sprays him with machine gun fire, sending much of his insides all over some fancy looking, but very macabre art that hangs on the walls.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Scrounge
Remus Chandrasekharan
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
Others
Long Pig
One Shot Wade
Doc Todd
Karen Cortez
Yann Tillberg
Jerl
Daedelus

After they lose the cops in the undercity, Ivan spends as long as he can making sure to lose any other tails, based on the desperate need for medical attention of three of the passengers in his car. While doing so, he notices someone unfamiliar and unmarked cars that seem to be following him, albeit fairly non-agressively. He thinks he ditches the last one, and swaps cars to get to Doc Todd’s clinic, where Wade has told them to bring Eronemus. April gets called up by Karen to do a stupid little puff piece about a successful grade school in the undercity, since April is one of the only reporters that regularly operate there. She makes a number of children cry, by asking them how they feel about their dead parents, and the fact that most of them will end up as wageslaves, junkies, or both. She is immediately suspended for an indeterminate period.

Meanwhile the team heads out to Doc Todd’s private clinic in the stolen car, drops off Eronemus, and heals up. HCB uses this chance to get an olfactory enhancer implanted, and is instantly transported to a world of overwhelming odor. He has trouble focusing on things for a while. He also embarks on a project to record any unique smells he encounters, initially focusing on explosives, in order to better be able to notice traps.

Todd heals up the team, and performs some sort of operation on Eronemus. While Remus is still unconscious, April has Yann come out to the clinic and hack his comm, altering his share of the simstim subscription fee to 10%. Wade sets up the swap once Todd tells him the op is done and the team is ready-they have spent most of a week healing up. Todd explains the operation he performed-he implanted a high-powered cranial bomb, set to trigger the next time Eroneums ejaculates-he’s really gonna blow his load this time! Anyway, this should hopefully ensure that Long Pig is close by. Todd thinks he hid the bomb pretty well in some pre-existing implants, so he doesn’t think the BS should pick it up even if the do scan him. Todd seems weirdly excited about this-maybe he doesn’t get out enough.

The team heads to the meet-site with Eronemus, who threatens them the whole team with his boyfriend’s wrath. The site is an empty warehouse on the front between PC and BS turf-BS will enter from their side, two reps will approach the center with the payoff-money and some stolen data. Two team members will approach with Eronemus, and they will make the swap. The outsides of the building will be covered on either side by gang backup side is supposed to send more than the two reps forward. Easy in, easy out, right?

Surprisingly, it actually goes pretty well. They swap Eronemus for the credsticks and data, which check out. The BS goons scan Eronemus, but don’t show any obvious response, other than taking him back with them. They also have some tigers along, which most of the team (and the other PC members) have never seen before outside of trideo and sim. The team heads back under cover of the gang, and the BS reps do the same. The team returns to Wade with the loot, and Ivan wanting his approval, brags about a number of their other recent jobs. Wade doesn’t believe that he has actually killed Red Samurai, but when Ivan describes the specifics of the arcology run, Wade recognizes it from the simstim that April and Yann posted. He shows it to the team: HCB is aghast, as he feels this is a gross violation of trust. Scrounge is on the fence. Ivan is super stoked. Remus quietly removes his killswitch e-mail system, ad April tries to justify her actions by saying that all the profits are going towards the team. HCB is unconvinced, and worried about the effect something like this could have if word got back to NeoNet.

Scrounge uses Wade’s current good mood to get him to agree to allow Scrounge to build a mana lodge in an obscure corner of the sewers under PC turf. He does so, and establishes a force 1 lodge, where he proceeds to learn suggestion. When picking up supplies for the spell learning process, his talismonger attempts to recruit him to track down her missing courier and get her supply line up and running again. Scrounge agrees, in return for an advance on the payment. He returns to the team, and they decide to do this job a little later, as they all have some other stuff they feel like getting up to now. HCB has begun spending a lot of time at Slot, befriending some rowdy trolls that he meets there, especially Jerl. He is hoping to eventually start a band with them. Ivan goes off to a PC members-only gathering, where he proceeds to brag about the kidnapping anf swap they just performed-word gets back to Wade, who calls Ivan, furious that he almost told a bunch of people about the cranial bomb. Wade tells Ivan that it is imperative that this remain a secret. Ivan leaves, cowed.

Daedelus contacts the party with what it promises is a quick job-a Japanese importer is refusing to deliver a package to Daedelus until Daedelus pays more. Daedelus wishes to be taken seriously, and is not about to be extorted, so Daedelus wishes to hire the team to go get him the box, collateral damage to the importer is irrelevant. The team agrees. Ivan drives the team to a Yakuza district in the Eastern undercity, and pulls up outside the importer. HCB enters, believing that they have merely stopped to go shopping. Remus begins to try to hack the seurity, however it appears that their is just an irregular data burst leaving the store every few seconds, and the all the other security is purely on-site.

HCB gets in an argument over footwear fashion with the clerk, and storms back outside. He soon sheepishly reenters when he realizes that this is the destination. He pulls his pistol to shoot the clerk, but he dives over the counter, dodging out of the way of his shot and attacking him with some shoeblades. Remus jams the external signal, and heads in with Scrounge, April, and the lynx as Ivan stays in the car. They kill the clerk. Remus hardwires open the door at the rear of the store, and is sliced badly by a samurai sword as soon as it slides open. The team quickly. The team quickly dispatches the two goons in back, and locate the box fro Daedelus, based on a shipping manifest. Some of them are distracted for a few long seconds by a flashing light on the wall, which they eventually determine is the jammed wireless emitter. They clear out of there, only later thinking that they should have destroyed the store to avoid leaving evidence and such.

They drop the box off at Daedelus’, and it informs them that the importer was a Striking Crane Clan affiliate, which it thought Scrounge would appreciate. It thinks the yakuza won’t retaliate, however, since it appears the extortion attempt was not an official decision, but just some local thugs looking for some extra cash. One more group for the team to be wary of, though…..

Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Remus Chandrasekharan
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
Others
Daedelus
Yann Tillberg
One Shot Wade
Long Pig

As they are driving across the wastes back towards the highway, they are strafed by a small fighter drone, the car takes some moderate damage before Remus is able to hack and take command of the drone’s systems and crash it into the ground. The team drives to a nearby town to throw off tails and figure out what to do next. Remus scans the car and finds tracers, apparently fired into the car by the drone. He carefully removes them and the plant them on a semi parked nearby outside the bar/fuel station. They then head back to town to drop off the box at Ango’s arranged safehouse. The box tells the team that it was called “Mother” in the arcology, but wishes instead to go by Daedelus. It handily defeats April at chess. Shortly before arriving at the city, Yann sends April a breaking news feed of a semi truck shot up and in flames with the driver crucified near the side of the road.

They drop Daedelus off at the warehouse, and it installs each head on a cyber skeleton, sending the main core out of the team’s sight into the back of the warehouse. It tells them it might have use for them in the future and will be in touch. They get paid the full amount plus medical, plus a little extra for a job well done-which is good since they pretty much already spent it all. They heal up at Doc Todd’s. April gives the Yann the latest sim, which he quickly edits and uploads-it’s a near instant viral hit, and a major moneymaker and attention getter for their shadowsim service. Remus attends another Hack the Planet cafe location, and catches wind of the sim, however. He quickly recognizes it for what it is, and even with Yann’s careful editing, it is not too hard to deduce which team member is recording. He extorts April for 40% of the profits, and sets up a deadman’s switch e-mail to alert the other team members if he doesn’t check in regularly. April lacks the money to even fix her suit for now, but she begrudgingly agrees.

Wade has a job lined up for them, though, so it looks like they might not be broke for long. One of Long Pig’s favorite boytoys, Eronemus, is heading back into town from the spaceport, apparently having returned from a trip to Earth, probably financed with some of that intercepted ransom money. He will be traveling in a two-car convoy, probably through the upper city until they reach a ramp to a Black Shadows controlled area of the undercity. The team begins planning and preparing. HCB steals a beater van to ram and hopefully halt the convoy. April calls the cops to report a stolen car in the undercity in order to see if they will respond. Since she is an Upper city resident, they do, but it seems like they won’t to respond to undercity citizens. She calls it back as a false alarm. April then finds a sniper post on a fire escape across the alley from the main offramp from the highway from the spaceport to the upper city, and sets up to wait with her rifle. Remus hacks the spaceport camera feeds, and picks up and tracks the Eronemus (he thinks) leaving the shuttle and exiting into the second car of the convoy. He is spotted by some low-level security bots, but manages to exit the system before they track him. He then tracks the convoy via hacking the traffic grid, so he can give the go. Remus and Ivan are in Ivan’s car parked down the street a little ways from HCB in the stolen van.

As the lead car reaches the top of the off-ramp, HCB guns the van and slams into them straight on, doing massive damage to both cars, and launching the van end over end into a nearby building. HCB is nearly killed in the crash, but manages to bust out the windshield with the butt of his pistol before the leaking fuel that he is covered in ignites. Meanwhile, April snipes one of the goons in the second car, which tries to drive past the first, as Ivan pulls up in his cab, and sends a few autocannon shells into the front car. Two bodyguards and Eronemus exit the second car, and head for a nearby street level storefront at the base of one of the office towers. April takes another shot, as does Remus (from Ivan’s moving car) and they manage to take down one of the guards and wound Eronemus (which was not the plan). The remaining guard gets him inside the store, though. HCB begins crawling towards Ivan’s car, as Ivan sends the lynx into the store-shoots out the glass in the door and dives thru to enter. This triggers a booby-trapped grenade, but the lynx was moving fast enough to avoid most of the the damage. It jumps up on the counter at the rear of the store and is severely damaged by machine gun fire from the goon hiding behind it. There is also a shopkeeper screaming in terror.

Ivan pulls the lynx out, not wanting it to get destroyed, and Remus decides to play the action hero again, bursting through the door and leaping over the counter, to the surprise of all involved. April has begun her descent from her sniper post, as her and Ivan have noticed cops rapidly converging on the site from multiple directions. Remus and the goon both fire simultaneously, killing each other-or so it would seem, however, through some insane happenstance of luck, Remus has managed to knock a bunch of goods and the register off the counter while diving over it, and also managed to land partially behind the storekeeper, so some of the fire that would have killed him is absorbed by his flesh and merchandise shield. He falls unconscious and near death, in a state of shock at his grievous wounds. April double times down the rest of the fire escape and into the store, triggering her adrenal pump to allow her to haul both the passed-out Remus and the passed-out Eronemus to Ivan’s waiting car. HCB reaches it at about the same time, and hauls himself in. Ivan begins evasive maneuvers to attempt to escape the enclosing law.

After some ridiculously dangerous and high paced driving, he manages to lose the cops in the undercity. This might have something to do with the fact that the cops seem to know that the kidnapped boytoy is a Black Shadows member, and the cops hate the Black Shadows almost as much as the team does. At least the cops who aren’t employed by the BS, anyway. Also, once a chase enters the undercity, and its clear that it won’t be going back topside, the cops tend to lose interest pretty quick, unless they’re after someone they really want. The team contacts Wade to find out what the next chunk of the job is….

Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Scrounge
Remus Chandrasekharan
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
Others
Ango Tyrell
Daedelus

Remus is trying to distinguish himself on hacking forums, and leaves April’s hideout to attend the ever-relocating hacker cafe and symposium “Hack The Planet.” Posters of Fastjack’s avatar and t-shirts bearing logos like “Captain Chaos Lives!” are the norm. Sadly, Remus gets a little too amped on one of the meetings, and isn’t quite careful enough about disguising himself and his route when returning to April’s hideaway, not that he notices. He goes into the apartment and greets his roommate, Scrounge. Both suddenly hear a noise by the door and turn towards it-Remus is injured by the explosion which blows it open, but Scrounge is able to dive out of the way. He goes invisible, and overcast stunballs the first wave after they enter, then quickly executes all four of them. Remus takes some machine gun damage, but still, it seems like they might escape. They call for backup and exit into the hallway, where they engage in a running gun and grenade battle as they head for the stairs and the ground floor.

HCB, in his enthusiasm to rush to their aid, hails a cab and offers the driver a 30 nuyen bonus if he can get him there in two minutes. Being new to Mars City, he does not realize that this is dangerous bordering on impossible. The resulting 200 mph crash decapitates the driver and sends HCB flying thru the car, out the shattered windshield, and into the side of a brick building, where he lies broken and bleeding, quietly calling for help, until April tracks his signal and get him to a hospital. (But hey, at least he saved 30 nuyen. – The Dour Salmon)

Meanwhile, Ivan makes his way towards April’s hideaway in his cab with his newest toy alongside-a Steel Lynx fitted with a White Knight lmg. April lent him money to purchase it, and he feels like this will be the perfect test run. Scrounge and Remus are fighting their way down the stairs, heavily injured and outnumbered, when a dog-sized robot careens around a corner and jumps off the wall and over their heads quickly killing the nearest two hitmen with a full auto burst. Outside, Ivan fires an autocannon shell into the very surprised hitman van parked out front, as the driver frantically tries to start the already running engine. Remus and Scrounge make their way to the ground floor and into Ivan’s car. The lynx jumps out of the window and joins them, having sustained fairly serious damage while covering their escape. Ivan blows out the second floor facade behind it, as two hitmen appear and begin to fire. The team speeds off, away from the burning and partially collapsing building.

They have a few jobs on offer: Srounge’s talismonger (Madame Gavral) is having supply issues, Ango has an extraction that needs to happen, and the Johnson from the Azzie drug raid has a mission on the prison-moon. The team decides to do the job that Ango is offering: they need to extract the hirer from the core of the Renraku acrology in the wastes, and bring it to a safehouse that Ango has been preparing. Ango gives them the job details, and an advance on payment, which they spend all of on medical, lynx repair, 1 more missile that Wade finds for them, and various other gear. April sets up a press tour thru Hermes news -doing a puff piece on “life in the arcologies.” The team attends as cameramen (scrounge), editor (remus), driver/lighting (ivan), and sound guy (HCB). Ivan slips away well April gets the tour and does some staged interviews and Remus, Scrounge, and HCB get background shots and such. He meets up with a maintenance crew, and they take him to a still they’ve constructed back in the vents-shutting down some of the fans to get to it and back. He then proceeds to show off his extreme alcoholism by trying to drink them under the table, and then trying to extract information from them. He discovers that there’s a truck which takes non-processable wastes out to a toxic dump, and convinces the crew to allow him to ride along with well they go out. They all head down to the garage and convince the guys who were going to be driving that they should go instead. They take Ivan out and he sees the route and procedures for opening the outer gate and whatnot.

Meanwhile the press tour wraps up, and there is a minor crisis when Ivan can’t be found, and his visitor badge is detected offsite. April tries to explain it awa that he’s just a drunk, and only the team’s driver (hahaha), not even that important of a part-he doesn’t even have a camera, what harm could he do? April then threatens to release a severely negative piece about Renraku if the press agent doesn’t back off and let them leave. When Ivan shows back up in the company of drunken maintenance men, it seems to confirm April’s story, and Renraku doesn’t want unnecessary bad PR, so they let them go, but the press agent says she will be contacting Hermes News about their team’s unprofessional behavior. Ivan begins talking about how great of a way he found in before Remus shuts him up, suspecting that Renraku might have placed monitoring devices in their news van. They try to pay it off as the ramblings of a drunk and silently agree to talk later.

The hirer has promised he’ll be able to help with some alarm and internal subsystem control once the team is inside, but they need to gain entry of their own initiative, as there are limits as to which systems the hirer can affect. The arcology consists of 6 semi-spheres, each set inside of the previous. The outer layer is the least secure-lowlevel employee housing and such. The next level is mid-management, and some of the nicer dining areas and such. The third level is offices and lowlevel IT. The fourth level is upper management. The fifth level is the high level IT and research labs. The inner core is The Vice President in charge of operations, the boardroom, and the mainframe. This is where the employer needs to be extracted from. The employer will assist the team from when they access the third level on. All the food growing/waste processing/etc. is underground and only connected directly to level one.

The team returns the next day and stashes Ivan’s car a little ways from the dump. They sneak up on it, and ambush the guard and two maintenance guys onboard, killing all three. They dump the load, including the two maintenance guys Ivan had been drinking with yesterday, now gorily deceased. Dressing in stolen coveralls and the guards suit, Ivan, Remus and Scrounge sit up front. Ivan pulls his hat down low, to conceal his ears. HCB rides in back, and April (in stealth suit) up on the roof. Ivan eventually retraces the previous day’s driving thru the drunken haze of his memory, and they arrive at the gate. It remains inert. Remus eventually thinks to check the pocket of the stolen suit he is wearing, and find the code scribbled on a slip of paper-Ivan types it in to the overhead on the truck, and the gate opens. The three team members hold aloft their security passes as they enter and are scanned. Once inside, they exit the cab, and Ivan fasttalks his way past some other maintenance guys. HCB and April slip past the camera and the team enters the maintenance tunnels, and from there, the airducts.

Once again, Ivan’s questionable memories of the preceding day’s events are relied on to get them closer. He eventually follows his nose back to the site of the still, which is now gone. He finds the buttons to shut down the vent fans, however, and the team heads for the second level. They make it past a small array of sensors as Remus jams them for a few moments-hopefully not long enough to register. They continue through the vents towards the third level-the sensor array is much larger and more intense this time, however, and Remus’ jammer doesn’t seem to be taking effect on the floor sensors, only the scanners. The team rigs a line over the sensor pads and one by one crawl over. Remus and Ivan struggle mightily, both appearing to call up all their reserves of luck to eventually make it safely across. The team descends thru a ceiling panel into a bathroom, as the vent comes to an end here. April drops onto the lap of a man sitting in a stall below, and quickly breaks his neck.

They get contact from their employer now-they tell the team to prepare to make their way on foot towards level 4, as a distraction has been arranged. The team exits the bathroom to the sound of fire alarms and pushes against the flow of people-not totally out of place, as they still all have their coveralls on (except April, in her stealth suit). They reach a guard station at the entrance to level 4 and approach. The guards warn them off, but April quickly dispatches one, and the rest of the team perforates the other guard as he goes for the alarm. They use one of the guards’ prints and retinas to gain access to level 4. They quickly sneak along amongst the offices until they find an occupied one, they enter and hold the manager at gunpoint while Scrounge controls his mind and forces him to take them to the elevator to level 5, where they use him to get past the guards and into the elevator.

They emerge on level 5, and some more guards ask the manager what he is doing up there with these maintenance guys. The manager shakes free of control and makes a run for it-the team opens fire. They quickly slay the defenseless manager and two surprised guards, although Remus and Ivan are wounded. They then enter the nearest lab room (a chem research station) to obtain a box that their employer says is needed to complete the mission. The scientists inside have tried to bar the door ineffectually and when one of them doesn’t respond quickly enough to April, she (in her adrenal rage) breaks his neck. The scientists quickly give up the box (which they would probably have done anyway), and the team heads upstairs. One of the scientists splashes April with some sort of acid, which eats through a good portion of the torso of her stealth suit and some of the flesh beneath-she manages to stuble out to the hall, closing the door behind her against further salvoes.

The rest of the team has started up the stairs to level 6, their destination. Their employer has placed 5 dots on their huds, which are the necessary component pickups. As the team emerges from the top of the stairwell, they are fired upon, HCB being wounded, and hear “fire in the hole” as a grenade arcs into the stairwell-they manage to bobble it along until it reaches April at the bottom, who having just gotten the last of the acid off doesn’t have time to respond. It detonates near her, and she only dives partway out of the way, taking severe damage. Fortunately, it was clear of the much more enclosed stairwell, avoiding the proverbial “chunky salsa effect.” The team hears one of the guards above order someone to “release the special project.” The rest of the team takes some minor damage and then chucks grandes in response and charges up the stairs, finding 1 guard blown to bits and the other curled up behind the booth. HCB rolls him over and gets gunshot in the gut for his troubles, before the team finishes the guard off in a hail of bullets. Scrounge and April down below hear the elevator they came up on close, and begin to descend, and they decide to grenade the shaft to prevent anyone from getting to their position easily.

The team upstairs enters the boardroom and discovers what they are picking up. The three members of the board are all jacked into thick fiberoptics cables emerging from a new looking hole in one wall of the room. The team’s employer contacts them and tells them that only the heads are needed-there is a cradle in the box for each. just disconnect the cable and decapitate them. They do so, and then head across the hall to get the VP, who has apparently been resisting, Ivan chucks a gas grenade in, blinding the guards, who fire wildly in response to little effect. Scrounge enters and stunballs the room, knocking the guards unconscious. They drag the resisting VP over to the board room and hook him for a few seconds, and then decapitate him and place his head in the fourth and final cradle-one dot left to investigate. The team enters the mainframe room and quickly realized that they are extracting the arcologies central A.I core. It tells them to hurry as a detachment or Red Samurai appear to be making their way towards their position, shutting down all systems and closing off escape routes as they go.

The team takes the computer data core which emerge from the mainframe, and the mainframe quickly begins to sputter and shutdown. They slap the core in it’s slot in the box and seal it shut. The A.I. tells them it will be operating in a severely limited mode while in the box, but should be able to provide some aid-it tells them to head for the fourth lab, the experimental flight division. The team reenters the downstairs hall, only to come face to face (?) with some horrible mutated monstrosities-thy attack with hoof, claw, tooth, and tentacle, and inflict serious damage on Ivan, April, and Remus before they team puts them down. Not such a special project after all! They make their way down the hall, and bust through the door to flight division-two paragliders sit within. Remus and Scrounge shoot up the control board in one and the team enters the other, as HCB attempts to determine how to launch. They hear an explosion from the far end of the hallway, and then the sound of frantic cries of “help us” and “they went that way” followed by gunfire. as HCB launches the glider, the door to the room splits open, and some hulking red armored assault troops enter, blasting fire at the rapidly exiting glider.

As they break free of the acrologies walls and exit the flight tube HCB feels fully at peace. This lasts until the second glider emerges behind them, apparently not sufficiently disabled. They exchange fire, although at the speeds they are traveling, it is fairly inaccurate, and the gliders themselves are unarmed. HCB makes for Ivan’s car, and Scrounge launches a stunball at the tailing craft, dropping a red armored figure off the side and a long way to the ground. They rapidly approach Ivan’s car, and he dives in and deploys the autocannon. At the least minute, HCB pulls out of his dive, and Ivan fires straight thru the tailing craft, sending its’ flaming wreckage hurtling into the ground, barely avoiding the car. HCB lands the glider a little rough, but they all survive and make their immediate escape via automobile.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Scrounge
Barry Goldstein
Harmony Craig Bottow
Others
Karen Cortez
Yvonne
Fat Carl

After April sells her fearmongering “wasteland cult” story, Cortez tells her about a job. She needs April to use her undercity contacts to put together a small crew that can do a very subtle hit on a sensitive target. Specifically, she needs the ex-model Sebastien removed permanently from the life of Hermes’ top simstar, Yvonne. Seb has been dragging her down for months now, and Hermes can’t have these unnecessary lost profits. Cortez tells April she’ll get a cut, as long as the job is super discreet. April agrees, in exchange for running her piece in primetime. Cortez gives in.

Out in Yerbal, HCB gets in touch with Neonet, beams them test data from his implanted black box-they say they lost his signal after he went down-it seems Olympus Prime had established a wireless deadzone around their base. Otherwise they, of course, would have sent a security team out to retrieve him. Since he had vacation time approaching anyway, NeoNet suggests that he take a month or so off, to recover from his ordeal. He agrees. It seems like this crew might have the thrills he’s seeking.

Once they return to the city, Fat Carl tells them that he’s had a bunch of odd types looking for them-of course he didn’t give up any info, but still, they might want to watch their backs. The only one they asked for by name was Remus, the rest were just descriptions. A couple of corp heavies, some Japanese looking folks, and this odd looking dude in animal skins with a birdskull necklace that he kept rubbing. Barry heads off to help Yoleus on a big drug deal. The team tracks down some rating 4 micro tranceivers, so they can communicate better without relying on comms, a weakness they discovered in the cave raid. Ivan goes off to taxi for a while. Since Fat Carl’s has gotten a little too hot, Remus goes into hiding at April’s secret apartment-she has been putting Scrounge up as well, since his lair was destroyed.

HCB, Scrounge, and April all get together to plan the current job-they decide to approach Seb at a public club opening (“Upsilon”) that him and Yvonne are being paid to attend. They hope to entice him away from the public eye with the promise of some rare and radical drugs, and then feed him some poisoned shit and make it all look like one big accident. April decides to attend as her media personality, with Scrounge along as a photographer/paparazzi. April attempts to approach the VIP area and talk to Seb for a “story,” but is rebuffed by event security, who don’t seem impressed by her Hermes press credentials. HCB decides to pretend he’s some player and tells Scournge and April to play along-Scrounge begins following HCB taking pictures and proclaiming that he can hardly believe that Mr Bottow himself is here. April starts crowding HCB, trying to get an interview. The security guard at the VIP area lets HCB thru, to get away from the press, although he doesn’t recognize him, he figures he’s not nobody. HCB sits down and orders a drink, and sends some provocative messages to Seb and Yvonne’s table-he gets invited over and scoped out by security, but Seb seems pretty easy going, and they chat about street drugs and piloting. Seb suggests they bail on the party and go for a ride in his private heli, which is up on the roof. HCB agrees.

HCB talks him up the whole time about how he’s some corp’s upper managment’s kid, and he has a line on this awesome new deepweed variant that’s about to hit the streets, and if Seb wants a taste, he can score him some. Seb is flying dangerously, as he is all fucked up, but seems pretty into HCB’s plan-he arranges to meet him before some boring private dinner the next night, so that he can get all ripped first. He sets HCB down on the roof of a random building, declaring that he is drunk and is going home. HCB looks up the building in a matrix directory and convinces someone at the desk to open the rooftop fire escape for him. He joins back up with April and crounge, and they concoct the second part of their plan.

HCB buys some seizure and vomit inducing drugs, and then the team has Barry supply the deepweed, modified with some seriously lethal poison-they figure it would be suspicious if HCB didn’t do the same drugs as Seb, so they contact Doc Todd ahead of time to tell him what poison HCB will need curing of-and hope that he can avoid inhaling too much. Barry acts as HCB’s bodyguard on the deal, they meet Seb and his two bodyguards in an abandoned house in Mad Martians territory. As expected, Seb wants to smoke right away as well as buy some for later, and he pulls out a fancy vaporizer with two hookah like pipes attached. Him and HCB both inhale, HCB triggers the seizure drug and then passes out from the actual poison, Seb looks poorly as well. The two sets of bodyguards edge out carrying their charges with their guns in each other, and then race off to hospitals: Seb to an upper city ICU, HCB to Doc Todd’s, where he administers the antidote none too soon. Upon waking, HCB receives a call from Seb’s bodyguards, letting him know that they’re onto him. April posts fake bio and obituary for a Craig Avery, a conman that the obit claimed used HCB and other aliases/stolen identities in pursuit of his marks. Seb is soon announced to have died in surgery, and the team gets paid. Barry is still looking to buy more rockets, and HCB puts the word out that he would love to acquire a rocket pack.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Scrounge
Remus Chandrasekharan
Barry Goldstein
Ivan the Jackle
Harmony Craig Bottow
Others
Bathcat
Yann Tillberg

Soaring. Diving. Pulling out into a beautiful loop-de-loop. Just another day at NeoNet’s experimental aircraft division for Harmony Craig Bottow. Flying the friendly skies. He returns to the base for lunch, and after a quick soya protein shake, he jumps back in his newest toy and takes off. The launch tube clears around and he’s hit by the glorious glow of the sun. He likes the double length seasons on Mars. Really gives you time to appreciate the weather. All of a sudden, his sensors start going off wildly-he’s got incoming! He quickly pulls himself together, remembering his UCASAF days-but he’s amazed that anyone would fuck with NeoNet-it’s not like they’re just going to abandon their test plane and best pilot! He tries to lose to lose whatever’s on his tail, but he can’t quite shake it, and it clips his rear stabilizer-he’s spinning out of control and trailing a huge smoke cloud. He does his best to regain control, in order to land the craft as intact as possible, but to little avail. NeoNet contacts him and tells him that he will be auto-ejected and the craft detonated in order to ensure that no unsavory characters get their hands on the tech. He asks when they’re coming to get him. As soon as they can, they assure him. He doesn’t feel very comforted in the brief instance before the hatch blows and his seat launches him out.

He hits the ground hard, but doesn’t seem to have broken anything essential. He gets untangled from his chute and draws his sidearm as he sees dust trails approaching from multiple directions. He hears an explosion behind him as the craft explodes on impact. A number of armed men wearing piecemeal armor roar up on scavenged looking bikes, trikes and buggies. They confer about what to do with him, since his craft is gone. They figure he night still know something worthwhile, and they tell him to put down his gun. He knows he’s always been lucky, but he’s not stupid. He obeys. One of the men walks up and clocks him in the side of the head, and he falls to the ground stunned by his rapid turn of fate.

He awakens in a jail cell carved out of stone to the sound of gunfire and explosions-he hides back from the door, hoping not to die in this stupid place. His gear is nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, the team enters the cace, although something seems to be interfering with their vision as they try to peek in: Barry takes a shotgun blast to the face and responds with a grenade, and the team charges in. They seem to cross some sort of magical barrier (with Scrounge’s assistance) and then can see again. They quickly dispatch the 4 guards in the front room with minimal damage. Then they hear a voice calling for help from a nearby cell. Unbarring the door, they discover a dwarf in a skintight NeoNet flightsuit, and set him free. He finds his stolen equipment nearby. They make quick introductions, and HCB, ever the thrillseeker, agrees to tag along, partially motivated by revenge, no doubt. The team splits up, with Ivan and Barry setting up one of the machine guns from the nest outside by the cave entrance in case anyone tries to escape. Ivan rolls his eyeball drone down the tunnel to watch for movement-he sends it up one side path, while HCB and April explore the other. They are set upon by three more men, with axes this time-both take some severe damage before killing them. April is now in an adrenaline fueled rage, and tears one of them to a bloody pulp as HCB watches in bemused horror.

They leave the sideroom, finding little of use and HCB heads to where Ivan’s eyeball drone has found a bunk room with sleeping figures inside. Barry starts down the tunnel to join in on the massacre-unfortunately, it turns out to be an illusion concealing a dead end, only shattered by the sound of a door at the end of the tunnel splintering open and spewing forth 3 single rider bikes and two with sidecars. April has returned to the entrance and passed out from her adrenal overstimulation-Ivan pulls her to the side (leaving this part of the sim a very exciting array of sounds accompanied by a view of the wall). Barry and HCB stand their ground and fire at the enclosing bikes, taking one of them down. Barry dodges out of the way down the side tunnel, but HCB is run down, sustaining some serious damage. Ivan opens up with the heavy machine gun as the bikes round the corner, taking down one of the sidecar rigs, while Barry shoots a second single bike out from under it’s rider, who deftly jumps free of the wreck and makes a run for the entrance, only to be relieved of his head by Remus, still providing sniper cover. The remaining bike and sidecar exit, although the gunner in the sidecar is bleeding heavily. The single biker whoops with joy at his surprising escape, before he is also felled by Remus’ rifle. The driver of the remaining sidecar mutters an arcane phrase and transforms into a flock of birds which quickly disperse in multiple directions-Scrounge tries to discern which one is real to no avail.

The team searches the back room and discovers maps and markers detailing the plans of the group (called Olympus Prime) to reclaim Mars from the human incursion. Apparently Bathcat has set himself up as some sort of prophet of a coming technological collapse, and has near religious significance to members of the organization, which appears to be more widespread than the team had imagined based on their research. They seem to have plans to infiltrate corps and city government to help bring about the collapse, but it isn’t clear how much of this they have actually achieved yet. They haul April’s unconscious body to the car and they drive slowly and carefully back to Yerbal, having photographed the carnage and bringing along what’s left of the face of Gorode, the first victim of the sniper.

The mayor happily pays them the agreed upon price, plus extra for the map from their lair containing they plans. April wakes up, and decides this will make a good story for Hermes (“scary cult out in the wasteland”) heads back to they city in a cab, and begins going over it with Yann. She begins getting paid for subscription fees for run uploads. Get car patched up and running again at a local scrapyard, but it looks a little less sturdy and definitely more piecemeal. Barry feeds part of Gorode’s face to a stray dog that wanders into the bar while he’s waiting for the car to get fixed. The dog begins to follow him around, and he decides to bring it back to the city. They sell most of the weapons they collected in the cave to help offset the cost of auto repair, but they keep one heavy machine gun to mount on a newly installed swivel mount on the fold down passenger side windshield. They take 5 days doing all this.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Scrounge
Remus Chandrasekharan
Barry Goldstein
Ivan the Jackle
Others
Mr Johnson
Bathcat
Yann Tillberg

Remus’ comm and programs have taken some serious damage, but he manages to clear out all the Azzie tracking software (he thinks). Ivan heads out to the wastes to heal up and lay low. Meets up with Scrounge, who provides some initial magical healing. Barry regains consciousness and joins them. Remus manages to hack the box and kill its tracking signal. April goes to the city, Yann uploads the adventure (last freebie), and then he and April “discover” it on the matrix and do a story around the attack on the spaceport. April gets brownie points with the bosses for her diligence in getting the first scoop on this.

The team heads to a wasteland junkyard to fix up the car, which took some serious damage from the cops during the escape. They party with the junkyard crew, with Barry supplying some discounted street drugs in return for a discount on the mechanic work. Ivan gets all matching parts, and gets the car news plates, tags, transponders, and paintjob to conceal its involvement. Remus opens box to scope out whats inside-looks like they might get screwed if the Johnson is still paying by the pound. It’s only some small samples, and some encrypted datasticks. Remus tries to decrypt, succeeds on one-care instructions. The other one gets wiped by a databomb, but it looked like genetic code. Barry takes a cutting and a copy of the care info for the Mad Martians to work on. The team doesn’t tell the Johnson this when he arrives in another one of the hopping machines, which he refers to as a rabbit.

They negotiate for a big payoff, the Johnson actually seems happier with this than with what he expected to get, as this is more likely to pay longterm dividends, with less need to reverse engineer the plant. It seems to be a deepweed and zen blend, allowing limited astral projection/hallucination among the non-awakened. The team heads to the hospital for three days, and also rearms. Yoleus contacts Barry and tells him that he got some work out of shooting up those BS goons in San Pablo-the locals were so impressed with his ultraviolence that word got around, and folks want to hire him to protect the nearby town of Yerbal from some primitivist structure hitters who have been destroying a lot of atmosphere, food, and water processors in nearby towns. So far they’ve hit a bunch of towns in a semi-circle around the area where their base is rumored to be, and Yerbal looks to be one of the next few, if they plan on completing the circle.

When the team gets to the town to investigate, they are offered two alternatives-they can set up an ambush and defend the town, or they can take the fight to the structure hitters. Either way, the mayor is paying out 250 nuyen per member, and 1000 nuyen each for the two bosses: Gorode and Bathcat, a pair of brothers who have been kicking around the wastes causing trouble for longer than anyone cares to recall. The team decides to raid the base.

They lose comms as they near the area of the supposed base-it appears to be a wirelesss deadzone. On approach to the cave lair, they are somewhat incautious, and the car takes a full burst of heavy machine gun fire into the engine block from a concealed nest. Ivan manages to reverse over a hilltop and get the car into cover, but it’s barely running (and he just fixed it-sad!). Ivan and Joel leave the car and crawl to the top of the hill, Remus snipes while Ivan spots. April and Scrounge go invisible and near invisible and sneak up on the nests near the cave entrance, while Barry ops for the opposite approach, running up guns blazing counting on his thick hide and armor to protect him. It doesn’t go as badly as it might, as he quickly takes out 1 gunner with a lucky burst, and only takes moderate damage from the other gunner, who is shortly thereafter killed by April and Scrounge. Before they have time to congragulate themselves, they are set upon by two guard dogs, who seem to guide towards scrounge. They inflict some minor wounds, but are quickly disabled. But who have they alerted inside?