[adzling]

Standing in line outside Miankong in the press of bodies the smell of fried soy-chicken burgers still pervades the old store facade.
A street vendor walks the line hawking the newest asian aphrodisiac craze, vat-grown salamanders speared on little wooden sticks and bbq'd on a tiny hibachi strapped to his chest.
Flipping to astral it's apparent that about a 1/4 of the crowd in line is under the effects of one or another BAD. A few quick "how's it going tonight" conversations and you manage to visually sift and tag the Tempo user from the Red Orchid ones, marking them with AROs for your teammates to compare on your tac-net.
There's a LOT more Tempo users than Red Orchid users in this little unscientific street sample.
After only about 10 minutes Ping is spotted by the doorman who gives her a nod and waves her and her compatriots inside.

Stepping through the leather whip curtain the pounding base hits you like a tidal wave, washing over your and leaving your hearing mostly useless, but communication continues unimpeded through the use of AR and AROs. It seems everyone else in the club is doing the same thing, tagging potential partners with smiley-faces and queuing text invites to private rooms and booths.

Ping quickly accumulates 5 such requests in a few minutes.

Looking out over the seething mob of partiers it's pretty clear that about 25% of the crowd is blissed out on Tempo, judging from their aura's they are LOVING it.

[MathBlade]

<ooc: didn't realize I could interact with that. Sorry!! I thought that was just your backstory. Tomorrow night/ Wednesday night I should have something up.

[Jan Schaefer]

Jan's coyote contact:  Connection 3, loyalty 2. 

While serving in the Kurdish militia near Istanbul fighting the bugs, Jan befriended Medya Hala, a human female of Kurdish descent.  She was a mechanic and driver in the logistics company and a fairly skilled rigger.  He lost touch with her for a while after leaving the unit, but later found her by chance in Berlin at a grocery store (of all places).  They found, after catching up over coffee, that they were in complimentary lines of work.  Jan's connections to the east and Medya's relationships in the south set them in the habit of helping each other from time to time.  Medya and her husband Joro Barzanji had a good set of routes into and out of the anarchist sector of Berlin for several years, but a run went bad one day- real bad.  As a result, Medya lost her husband and their well-equipped and heavily armored SUV.  After a few months of mourning, she has recently resumed work with a smaller and less well-equipped van.  As a result of his death, she is even more reluctant than the average coyote to take on passengers that she doesn't know well.  That attitude will help her live longer on the fringes of the anarchist zone of Berlin, but it's going to be hard for her to keep her head above water financially.  Medya has so far resisted being integrated with one or two regional criminal organizations but is seriously considering it as she searches for security in the absence of her husband. She currently works part-time in a body shop in the far southeast of Berlin and also does substantial volunteer work with orphans and refugees thru a local community center.  Like most Kurds in Germany, she has a love-hate relationship with its numerous Turks; there are cultural similarities and shared experiences, but also a history of political oppression.  She is 49 and childless and has long since lost contact with her few surviving cousins in Iraq and Turkey.  Her muscles have gotten soft but her reflexes are still sharp.  She accepts cash or easily-sold goods in payment.  She speaks fluent Turkish and Kurdish, decent German, and a little English.  She is remarkably short and has let her hair go white, which nicely accents her lovely dark complexion and jeweled nose ring.  She owns a machine pistol and a variety of sleep-gas-dispensing items which are installed in hidden compartments in her van, apartment, and tool kits. 

[adzling]

<ooc> nice contact post, added to your character sheet +1 karma! <ooc>

[Jan Schaefer]

Jan's fixer contact- Connection 4, loyalty 3.  Chips:  You and the contact are even. 

Jens von Hauch (pronounced Yenss Fawn Hohh with a hard "h" sound at the end) was born with every advantage:  human, wealthy, from a well-connected and cultured family in the Rhein-Ruhr megaplex.  He could have gone to private universities and been a banker like his father, or a lawyer like his mother, or a doctor like his older sister.  Instead he became a disgrace.  He stole from his parents and pissed away the money on drugs and parties for his worthless friends.  Time after time one family friend or family member or another would bail him out of trouble:  getting a cop to not write a ticket, getting a store owner to not press charges for theft and vandalism, getting a poor father to not press rape charges on his daughter's attacker, even sometimes bribing a judge to award suspended sentences.  But one day Jens just went too far:  he murdered an orc girl after she said "no" even after taking the date-rape drug he slipped her.  Jens had used up every possible favor and second chance, and went to jail.

After three years (his father's last favor for him was to get the charge written up as manslaughter instead of murder), Jens emerged completely unrehabilitated and better connected than ever.   His new friends in the Russian mafia loved the idea of having a High-German speaking "von" on board as a mouthpiece to use with "respectable" clients.  Now working in the small walled anarchist sector of Berlin, Jens' intimate knowledge of how the 1% live and talk has been a huge asset for the mob.  Jens never manages to hang onto cash that he earns from setting up jobs and helping with cons and fronts, but he always has recreational drugs and cheap women at hand.  He does not work exclusively for the Russian mob (the "Vory v Zakone", "thieves of the code") and can be trusted to do three things and three things only.  First, look for his own advantage.  Two, to disgust right-thinking wageslaves with his every word and deed.  And three, to never betray his Johnsons or his runners.  Jens knows that his life will be short indeed if he breaks his word to the Vory, the megacorps, or his stable of runners. 

Jens is now 35 and shows no signs of slowing down.  He is addicted to several street drugs but seems able to keep his usage at a steady level somehow.  He's been cured of every STD known to man five times, has had three livers and two spleens replaced, has burned through twelve SINS, and almost certainly gotten away with another half dozen murders.  He's five foot eight, slender, sandy-blonde, blue-eyed, handsome, and dresses like Elvis or a banker depending on what the day is likely to bring.  He has no magic, or computer abilities, but he has a strong knowledge of pharmaceutical chemistry and various methods of fraud, extortion, cons, and plain old theft.  He is reasonably good with a machine pistol but has never bothered to learn hand-to-hand fighting, knife throwing, or anything involving sustained mental effort.  He only meets clients that he doesn't know in back rooms in noisy, flashy discos where he knows the security staff.  He oozes charm when he wants to, and has an incredible talent for picking up languages:  he speaks accent-free English, German, Polish, French, and Russian.  He is strongly attracted to troll and orc women, especially if they can be made totally dependent on him via drug addiction, fear of violent debt collectors, or other mental holds.   

[adzling]

<ooc> nice contact post +1 karma

[Jan Schaefer]

"The last one", Jan thinks to himself, "did not have to die.  Was he stupid, brave or just unlucky?"

Reaching for more bullets to load into his clip, Jan suddenly notices a tiny spot of blood on the back of his right wrist.  "How the hell did that get there", he thinks.  "Well, there was enough blood spraying around, I guess it is no surprise."  He finds an embroidered cloth napkin, but instead decides to get it with toilet paper.  Returning to his task, he continues to muse and reflect.  He mutters to himself, alone in his still hotel room. 

"The run went pretty smoothly, all things considered.  Take the BTL factory out of commission, says Sacristan- no problem.  Make it look like the Red Dragon triad did it- seemed like it might have been hard, especially considering that we are already in the employ of the Red Dragon triad.  But the Red Dragons did in fact want it to look like they had done it.  So, lucky for us.  They told us exactly how to do that, showing us the exact character to write."  A pause.  "Oh, and how we wound up writing it."  Jan frowns as a bullet skitters out of his hand.  His hand was shaking with the force of the memory. With an effort of will, Jan places the damn Hoellenhund firmly out of his conscious thoughts.

As he continues to load the clip with the shiny APDS rounds, he walks through the steps once again.

"One.  Locate the target.  Easy."  Jimmy the Greek was easy to fool and follow to the factory to place the special order for 50 BTL copies of him working his ridiculously augmented schwantz.  Ping did a nice job convincing him to place the special order, thereby revealing the facility.

"Two.  Preliminary surveillance.  Ridiculously easy."  One warehouse, one door.  Some cheap cameras across the street and a leisurely day watching boring footage to learn the shift changes and estimate the number of guards.  Wyt's pet spirit confirmed what the cameras showed:  that something on the order of 20 people were inside, probably at least two-thirds of them hourly sweatshop employees with no loyalty or weapons.  Their estimates of the occupants had proved exactly right.  Except for- Jan forces it out of his mind again.

"Three.  Plan to isolate and weaken the target.  Ja."  Since there were no special guards or defenses expected, and since Deng had asked us to let him take posession of the BTL making equipment, the plans for a diversionary fire or explosion were abandoned.  A straight assault would do, with only the precaution of placing four area jammers on the roof.   The agile and stealthy Wyt handled that with no problem, attaching four devices that Deng conveniently provided on appropriate places on the roof.  "I could get used to this kind of help", Jan muses.  "Armor piercing bullets, gas grenades when we want them, explosives experts, jammers... we are pampered pet cats."

Back to business, no more thinking about- och- pets.  No pet dogs.  No.  Focus on the run.  What did we do right, what did we do wrong.  Another bullet leaps from the table to the other side of the richly appointed hotel room.  Jan curses and walks over to pick it up. 

"Four.  Separate and weaken the defenders."  That failed, Jan admits to himself.  Ping did a good helpless maiden impression.  Maybe a little over the top, but with paranoid triad members in the building, it was no real surprise that none of the guards took the bait.  On the ride back to the hotel, Wyt had pointed out that the guards were probably used to severe discipline from the Smoke Circle gang.  Not too different from the Vory v Zakone back home, probably- lose a finger for a mistake that costs the gang money.  If you're lucky, a finger.

"Five.   Attack with surprise and overwhelming force.  Ja, check."  It might have been smarter to have Cabbie in on the attack rather than driving the getaway car, though.  Jan makes a mental note to himself to see if Ping could drive in the future; she didn't contribute much to the evening's fight.  But, Jan remembers, she had been an asset against the Shedim.  Worth further thought, he says.  Suddenly uncomfortable at the mental images brought to mind by recalling the Shedim fight, Jan takes a deep breath and gets up to get a beer.  He returns to his chair and notices that the ammo tray is almost full and ready to be rotated into the clip.

"Five.  Where was I?"  Then, shouting,  "Scheisse!" .  His hands have spasmed as the huge, snarling dog comes crashing into his imagination again.  The tray flips over, and bullets fly across the room.  The beer goes tumbling, and Jan only regains his balance after leaping away from- nothing at all.  The dog.  The hell dog. Two meters tall, two hundred kilograms.  Two hundred fifty?  Surely it wasn't as big as a troll?  After a few seconds to catch his breath, Jan suddenly realizes that his eyes are clenched shut and his fists are over his eyes.  "It's dead.  We killed it.  It's dead."   Fucking Wyt.  Why did he have to make a puppet out of the dog head?  What an asshole.  At least he killed it fast.  "That could have been embarrassing", Jan thinks.  "The dog was dead right away and I did not retreat from it.  No."  Jan also remembers that Wyt had fled like a schueler in the fight with the Shedim.  "If he gives me more shit for that, I will remind him of his problem too."

Jan continues talking to himself as he gathers the bullets from all over the room and begins again to place bullets in the tray.  "Six, the optional step.  Allow the enemy to surrender."  That last damn guard didn't have to die.  The first two, sure.  Have to make an example, show that the threat is real.  Then, start over in another room, two more guards had to die right away.  No point in fighting fair. Wyt killed invisibly with tremendous swift blows of his sword, and Jan felt no remorse about shooting a guard in the back.  Overkill to use a full burst of six, but who cares?  Dead is dead, and a messy explosive death is not any more unkind than a clean, quiet one.

"Seven, check for remaining or approaching threats.  Eight, secure the objective."  Easy.  The civilian workers had scattered like sheep. Why, exactly, Ping felt like kissing some of them to sleep instead of just stunning them or letting them run into the night?  Jan's only guess after a moment's thought: The woman is hideously insecure about her attractiveness.  She has to show us all the time how she has sex power.   Still, generous, and good at talking to Sacristan for sure.    Remembering Ping's generosity, Jan glances at the beautiful suit she bought him today.  "I wonder if she feels like I owe her something?"  The smile is quickly replaced by another small frown.

But the last half of step eight had been sickening, even to a battle-hardened veteran runner.  "I'm pretty sure that that asshole Wyt was smiling as he carved the characters for the Red Dragon triad into the bodies."  Sick bastard. 

"Nine, get the hell out."  Cabbie again, reinflating the tire as Deng's cargo vans approached.  "The big round thing", he chuckles to himself.   Ping might have been over the top with that one, trying to pretend she didn't even know what a tyre was called.   

"Ten, review and reflect."   With a vicious snap, the bullets slide into the curved magazine of the AK 97.   "Let's see what everyone else thought about the mission."  Jan signals on the tacnet that he's ready for a beer in Ping's room if everyone else is.  "And after that", he things to himself, "it's time to plan how to find the source of the software."  Perhaps one or two of the guards there will be smarter, and not need to die.  Their choice, Jan thinks.  "Unless they have another fucking- don't think about it.  They won't.  No, they won't.  No more dogs."
 

[adzling]

<ooc> nice run recap post +1 karma! <ooc>

[Merz]

http://imgur.com/UwMIigb
Male, 28, 6'10" 185lbs
Nigerian/Hopi
Black Hair
Chrome eyes

-0-Born: Xavier X

Son of a deceased military SINner who died in combat before he was born, and a shadowrunner from Los Angeles. His mother pulled the run of a lifetime on a vindictive AAA corp shortly after she helped Xavier disappear (after the accident), and has not been seen or heard from since. It's unclear whether she fell victim to retribution for the heist, or simply hasn't contacted her son in order to protect him. Rumor has it she and her team walked away with enough newyen to make just about anything happen, then why? These days he often seeks unknowable answers at the bottom of a Lagavulin bottle.


-0-Stage Name: Tarus

Tarus was driving before he could walk. His mother (a decker) fabricated a small wheeled drone when he was just 3 years old. By 5 he was powersliding around the yard, and by 15, he had a control rig and was dominating the LA street racing scene. His skills were enough to draw attention from an action trid producer who gave him his first shot as a stunt driver. By 25 he had done it all, and got to a point where he could jump into any aircraft or ground vehicle and make it do things that would blow audiences' minds. Yet, stunt men are not trid stars, and thus despite his transcendent skill and prolific catalog, he only had a small fan-base of aspiring riggers and gearheads before he disappeared.

 He did, however, manage to catch the attention of some of Hollywood's most beautiful leading ladies. While the lead actor was getting out of a safe static car after shooting inserts, and proceeding to remove his makeup, It was Taru who proceeded to manipulate the car in a mesmerizing fashion; not unlike a 2 ton hummingbird darting over a hyperbolically deadly urban landscape. When the director called the day a wrap, it became clear to everyone on set who the real star of any action trid is.

T was loving life, and living it to the fullest, often burning the candle at both ends. One evening, his need for speed and penchant for showing off in front of beautiful women would culminate in a fatal tragedy, changing his life forever:. He was on a date with a budding young starlet; hammered and distracted is no way to manually drive at 180km/hour, and the starlet--not T--paid the price.


-0-After the accident: T

With he help of his mother, and made possible only by the fact that he remained SINless, he was able to disappeared into the Shadows of Hong Kong. For the past 3 years, he has been living off of 1,000,000 Newyen he had saved before his fall from grace. He spends almost all of his time in the matrix, goofing around, researching, playing games. Anything to escape the gnawing feelings of remorse and his deep longing to see, or even just speak to his mother again.

Perhaps the second most fateful day in T's life happened just last week. His old best friend from LA, Rockstar Jack Chekkr stopped by for a visit on his world tour. Jack gave T an ultimatum:

 "Look man, I can't keep coming here if you are going to continue to wallow in your own fragging self pity. I'm willing to help you, but you have to help your damn self first". T looks up and turns his AR off, he's never seen Jack this angry at him. "I mean it man, I am going to have a guy I know set you up with a guy he knows to get you some damn work, and I want you to get back to being my old fragging friend Tarus again. I wont be coming here again if things dont change. We used to go out and slay the clubs any and every night of the week. Now you sit here plugged into the fragging Matrix all day wasting your life.  I'll set up a meeting for you, and if you get out of those drek stained sweatpants and follow through on this, give me a call next month, if not, well, it was nice knowing you... At least the old you."  he states, with a firm close of the door.

"Damn", says T.

[Jan Schaefer]

Jan is disturbed when he finally manages to speak privately to Ping.  "Listen, please.  I have a lot I say want.  I like not this new way- we go without plans out."  Ping blinks but brings Jan's labored English into meaningful focus with some effort.  "Remember you the boat?  We were just up to blow it going. Not to explore.  Then the software.  We go to investigate, suddenly we in break.  Not the same!  Rush to find progammer.  Again to look over and suddenly the insertion."  Seeing Ping's confusion return, he corrects himself.  "Extraction.  Our plans, they have no shapes.  They bleed over into thoughtless action.  We have our faces too many times shown, we have lucky been, this can not last.  It must itself change.  It must.  I say not that I leaving am.  But we must think more, move carefully."  He's been pacing and almost ranting, but he finally calms down when he feels like he's been listened to, and waits for Ping's response. 

[Jan Schaefer]

Welcome, T!  Looking forward to the ride.

[adzling]

+1 Karma Merz for your origin story.

[Merz]

Welcome, T!  Looking forward to the ride.

::wink my chrome cybereye::

T's Rockstar Contact:
Connection 10 Loyalty 3
Jack Chekkr
Human, Male, 27

    Jack is a globe trotting front man for a band called St4nn, who plays to sold out audiences on a near nightly basis. When he isn't performing or making music, he is being wined and dined by rich and powerful fans, or spending time with enigmatic women.
    Jack and T have largely grown apart because of their geographical distance, and because of the ways in which T has changed since the accident. T has been in Hong Kong for a few years, and Jack is based in L.A. They see each other whenever Jack is touring through, but they find they have less in common now that T spends most of his time in the matrix. They both share a love of cars, partying, and spending money... and when T lost his car and will to party after the accident, they found they had much less to talk about. 
    Jack isn't interested in sitting around playing matrix games with a guy in stained sweatpants, and has vowed to write off T if he does not do something with his life. If T develops some good street cred, and starts earning money again, their relationship could be repaired to its former strength. Jack isn't expecting straight and narrow, he knows T too well, but he refuses to remain friends with a waste case.

[adzling]

<ooc> nice post +1 karma!

send me your updated character build when you can

[Merz]

Metatype: Human

Sex: Female

Age: 27

Preferred Payment Method: Barter (loves stolen vehicles)

Location: Los Angeles

Position: Chop Shop Owner/Former Illegal Street Racer

Personal Life: Single

Type: Shadow Service


Backstory:


T knows serena from his days as a street racer. They have not kept in contact since the accident, but were very close beforehand, even as he moved into stunt driving and started hanging out with rockstars. She is curvy with short black hair and dark green eyes.

Serena's chop shop is a fully functional auto facility with a large troll mechanic named Pedel who takes care of the heavy lifting. She will take cred sticks as a last resort but prefers hot merchandise, which she will try to change ownership of and resell, or chop up for parts if she botches the hardware.