Runners
Thankyou
Rooster
Saul Chronic
Sem-par
Serge “Castiron” Merkel
The team proceeds, with CI’s guidance, through the ruined streets of GeMiTo. As they near the compound, they “hear” a voice in their heads screaming DIE in German, and a dragon attacks. The party scatters in fear, except for TY and Saul, who hold their ground. Their weapons seem to have little effect on the dragon, but they are saved as 2 other dragons (seemingly allies) bowl into the first, knocking him into a nearby building, and crashing to the street where they continue their brawl. The team carefully moves past, and reaches the compound. They cath glimpses of the battle in the sky between Lofwyr and Alamais, and work their way forward, along paths marked as safe on the common TacNet, avoiding minefields and spell-traps. TY, having decided to fake his own death to help evade The Order of St George and the Gilgamesh Initiative, is on the lookout for a likely candidate, and with CI’s help, finds a dead merc with one bulk cyberarm. TY spends a few minutes “distressing” the corpse to make it less obvious it isn’t him, drains out as much of it’s blood as possible, douses it with C-Squared, and then drops a bunch of his genetic material around the body to try and confuse any tests that might be done. He also plants a few burner comms with a bunch of his SIN’s on them on the body. Jane agrees to report on Jackpoint that TY was killed in the assault, to help him out, and TY only lets a few of his contacts know, deciding that the loss of connection is worth the reduced risk.
They head inside the walls, through breaches blasted by the merc teams, and find the remaining mercs in a pitched battle against a group of powerful plants spirits, while some more mercs rig more charges on a huge stone gate that seems to lead inside the mountain. The team decides to avoid the fight, and continue with their objective, and enter the cavernous tunnel once it is blasted open. They fight their way past some more spirits, and reach a room with 3 descending shafts. They spend a minute healing up, and wait for the 2 other runner teams to arrive (they seem to have stopped to help the mercs outside). Once they are all arrived, they assign tunnels, and the the team heads down the center shaft, using levitation and climbing gear. They reach the bottom, and find a large pile of bones and some burnt scraps of cloth and flesh. They fight another powerful spirit as they exit this room, and enter a long hall, with rooms carved out of the rock to either side- these seems to be dragon dens, as they are littered with more food scraps, and evidence that large things have been residing here.
Saul sees astral writing with the draonic symbol they were supposed to seek out at the far end of the hall, and the team is attacked by 2 more large spirits as he announces this. They are almost entirely wiped out, with most of the party dying or ko’ed, but SP decides to use one of Ehran the Scribe’s special ritual gifts, and manages to give Saul the power of regeneration, which keeps him alive just long enough to finish off the enemy spirits. They heal, and fortify the area, finding that the passageway marked by draonic text has been sealed off with rocked, and has a charged ward protecting it. They hear a distant anguished roar, and see reflections of light from far away in the cavern- possibly a large explosion of some sort outside? Being far underground, they are out of comms with anyone and just have to wait.
Eventually, Scale and a team of mages come down to relieve the team, and tell them that Lofwyr has grounded Alamais, and is allowing runners to take the final blows at him. The team heads topside to participate, although SP and Saul hang back, fearing the dragon’s wrath. CI, TY, and Rooster all wade in, firing and hacking, and manage to avoid Alamais’ frenzied spells, claws, and tail, which take their toll amongst the runners and merc’s participating. He is eventually killed, hacked and shot to pieces in a brutal manner, as Lofwyr watches from distance, while Lung is attending his wounds. SP finds a dead merc’s comm on the battlefield, disables it’s wireless, datajacks into it, and records the slaughter (specifically against mission instructions). The team hears that there was a huge explosive spell of some sort that targeted Lofwyr during the fight, and didn’t seem to come from Alamais. Mysterious…
They get paid (although TY, being “dead” gets a funeral fund payout that is considerably lower), and arrange transport via T-bird back to CI’s homebase of Hamburg, to rest up and get some medical care while they plan the next job. Rooster is hiring them to finally complete his favor to John Caruthers, and free Patrick Henry Hughes from an Ares Macrotechnology detention facility in Detroit.
They also hear some news from the other dragon attack: apparently Aztlan and Aztechnology successfully trapped Sirrurg, luring him out by destroying one of his lairs, and then assaulting with ground, air, and naval forces, including the deployment of some kind of new manatech jetfighter with insane reactive abilities, and some sort of hyper- or anti-coagulant that targets dragons called “Blue 227”. Although they suffered massive casualties, they seem to have managed to best The Destroyer- he was either killed or ko’d while trying to cast his entropy ritual, apparently Azt used a massive ritual cast from all of their Teocallis, along with the Sextant, to counter it. It still killed everyone within a kilometer of Sirrurg, and blinded many more, but was significantly smaller in impact than previous instances. However, when Azt troops tried to close in and ascertain his fate, a huge whirlwind encompassed him, holding them at bay, and by the time it dissipated, he was gone. Where to? No one who knows is saying…
This wasn’t Aztlan’s only move, though- they launched a massive counteroffensive on the Amazonia front in and around Bogota, first using targeted killings in the city and then military brunt, turning the tide in their favor. Aztechnology also got officially involved, claiming that Amazonian agents had been attacking corp sites. The massive Azzie PR machine has been working overtime, also, to gain public support, and attempt to link Amazonia and Sirrurg in the public’s minds. They have been fairly successful in this, and things are starting to look pretty good for them all in all.
Comments