The Prime Runners are a new team of ‘reformed’ shadowrunners apparently put together by LoneStar in cooperation with Horizon’s entertainment division. They are being deployed in Mars City to help crack down on the pervasive culture of crime there, and track down and capture or kill a number of locally prominent runners, gangsters, and ‘terrorists’.

There is a sim channel largely dedicated to their exploits, with dramatizations of their backgrounds and captures, footage of their ‘rehabilitation’, and live streaming of their current runs (edited down into greatest hits digests every week).

This appears to be an attempt by LoneStar to regain some lost prominence in Mars City, where Knight Errant has been making large strategic gains due to a series of recent LS blunders. The partnership with Horizon ensures that they will be able to spread news of this new program far and wide with Megacorp efficiency.

The team of reformed runners have all been given codenames, and their SIN’s and identifying features are carefully concealed, but shadownet messageboards have specualted as to their real identities:

Birdman, a powerful shaman. (later id’d as Bathcat and killed)
Ghost Messenger, a sniper and infiltration specialist. (id’d as April O’Mally and currently at large)
Wolfchild, a hacker and combatant extraordinaire. (later id’d as Remus Chandrasekharan and killed)
Geargrinder, a rigger, pilot, and mechanic. (id’d as Mikko Asparen and killed on Mars)
Katana and Wakizashi, twin street samurai adepts. (both killed, id’s unkown)

Promos for the program are currently flooding the matrix, alongside a campaign of ARO spamming and hype-building geotags. One of the major first season teases is whether they will be able to track down the elusive Mars City terrorist known as Hamshallow. If successful, it is likely this program would be spun off into multiple verions (such as ‘Prime Runner: Seattle’). The effectiveness of the team, the permanence of their reformation, and the ratings the channel pulls in will all be important considerations, as the project is rumored to be extremely expensive.

The program was disavowed and abandoned by LoneStar after a series of controversial reports of their deathsquad-style activities. Even with a lot of authority, a large number of extrajudicial killings, combined with the Star’s seeming inability to maintain undercity security, heavily contributed to the loss of many contracts, and their subsequent transfer to Knight Errant.

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