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.