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Five Minutes to Midnight (SPOILERS... but only 2 1/2 minutes worth)

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Jayde Moon

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« on: <02-11-15/1441:30> »
Oh, Portland Shadowrunners... you never fail to disappoint me.

So, Tuesday night we sat down with some of our Tir Tairngire Runners to assist with an extraction in London.  What happened seemed fairly normal at first... but then...

Shenanigans.  Well, shenanigans mostly at the end, if you just want the shenanigans, you can skip ahead a bit.

Our players include:

Alice the Rigger, Judah the Troll (with his brand new Ares Thunder Struck Gauss Rifle, purchased for the low low price of 78,000 nuyen, what a deal!), Tannim the (secretly evil) Mage, Xi the Gun Adept, Tai Lyn the Sneak, and Doc Shadow the Pacifist Medical Mage.

So, everything begins well enough.  The group gets the job from Art and between it being a rush job and having to go up against a runner group they maxed out their negotiation roll for a cool 12.5K nuyen.  Not a bad start.

They head down to Museum whilst making a few calls and checking the Matrix for any info.

Quote from: Legwork
The Museum is a Museum ho hum, boring stuff, research, yadda yadda.  Doctor Pelletierre is a governmental researcher blah-dee blah, languages and cultures, yeahwhateverwhocares... Wait, what's that, Corporate Fixer contact Fish?  You have some juice on some folks who may or may not be interested in our guy?  Why yes, that feels like important information.  What?  You want two grand to pass that information along?  Well, I feel that's worthwhile...

NeoNET and Saeder Krupp, you say?  Very interesting.  Saaaay.... do you have a contact at Saeder Krupp that you can patch me into?  Oh.  500 nuyen just so you can call the guy and see if he's willing to talk to me and another 1000 if he says yes?  Enh... I'll pass, I guess. (BUT!  This is important later)

Alright, well, we know what we're gonna know, let's get back to the biz...

On the way to the museum, Doc Shadow prepares some magic band-aids while Tannim summons a Force 6 Spirit of Man and prepares his own attribute boosting devices.

So they pull up behind the Museum, as per Art's guidance on the map, and hop out of the vehicle.  They come across the open door and downed guard.  Doc Shadow immediately checks the guy out.  Gotta make sure he's OK!  Turns out he'll live, so the group carries on.

Alice stays outside and sends out her mini drones to fly around and get a perimeter of surveillance, just in case anyone comes calling.

The group inside decide to wait upstairs and ambush the other team that they know is in there.    The Spirit of Man uses a service to conceal the group.  Xi sets camera near the south stair case so they'll get video of the other team coming up if they move that way.  They send Tai Lyn to the other stairwell to place a camera.

As she moves that way, she notices the other team coming up slowly, to make their escape out the front door, since their man posted outside has alerted them to the team coming in the back door.  She calls it in and the team explodes into action.  The next service for the Spirit is to apply judicious movement speed to the troll, who bounds at preternatural speeds down the hall, grinning wildly as he readies his new baby.  The sound reverberates through the Museum as one NeoNET operative is instantly greased.

Alice is about to react and maybe send her drones to support when she notices the hidden operative outside.  Deciding that this threat MUST BE ELIMINATED, she revs up the engine on her Roadmaster and beelines straight towards the guy's hiding place, blasting through brick and steel bars in the process, taking significant damage to the Roadmaster.  But it's all in the name of style (this is the same lady who spent 10K in Swing Vote to last minute rent a super swank, tricked out limo for the team to show up to the gala in).

Inside, the mage stun bolts the troll, giving him a massive headache.  The rest of the team is sprinting into action.  Xi gets around the corner and begins John Wooing it as Tai Lyn quietly moves forward so she can stick fight them, just in case the Gauss Rifle can't handle the lot.  Extendable Batons OP.

Outside, the Ares Roadmaster takes a direct hit from a High-Ex Grenade.  Alice pulls up under him and uses an action to launch her roto-drones.  They begin to fly up towards the operative who just launches another High-Ex grenade at the center most drone.  Two drones get obliterated and two moderately to heavily damaged.

Angered, Alice sends two spy-eyes equipped with flash bangs to alight on either side of the guy and go off.  Then she has the remaining drones fire away.  Being knocked out by two flash bangs leaves him with zero defense dice and a new life as swiss cheese.

Meanwhile, inside, the fight is going very badly for NeoNET.  Perhaps they would be heartened to know that a lot of edge was being spent by the Runners in this fight.  Scant comfort for the dead and dying, but as the GM, I was rather tickled to know they were just burning through it so quickly.  Anyhow, as a last ditch move to save their assess, their mage overcasts a manaball, which would have been excellent but for Tannim's excellent and improbably successful counter spelling roll.

The fight ends and they grab the target, hauling him to the Roadmaster and calling Art.

Up until this point, everything is fairly... 'normal'.

They get the address for the safe house, which means the Saeder Krupp team, with instructions to exterminate the target, has gotten that information and they rush to beat the team there.  Turns out they didn't need to rush, because the team decides to drive around for half an hour so they can make a few more preparations... so the Saeder Krupp team is able to set up a nice ambush.

Alright, so the author(s) didn't give the Saeder Krupp team any rocket launchers.  I can kind of guess why not, but surely such a team might have at least one single launch RPG type weapon available to them?  They must.  Absolutely have to.  I AM THE GM!

So in comes the Roadmaster and a 1 threshold perception test shows a man stand up on the roof, aiming said rocket launcher at the vehicle.  Alice guns it, and swerves, narrowly avoiding a direct hit, but the combination of the swerve and force of the blast tip the road master on its side.  Because DRAMA.  No additional damage to the Roadmaster.

The group egresses the vehicle to take on the Saeder Krupp team.  Alice launches her 'spinet' of drones to see what she can see.

Tannim the mage RECKLESSLY casts TWO force TEN Ball Lightnings.  This guy.  He's gonna die.  But it's going to be glorious.  Sadly for lightning bolt 1, the mage counter spells it completely.  You can't get many successes when you split your dice pool.  But the other spell goes off and grabs three of the team, pretty much obliterating them.  So that was cool... now for drain, you just need to... wait, wut?  SURVIVE?!?

Tai Lyn begins to try to climb up the building with her gecko gloves and is making good progress.  Judah slams home another round from his Gauss Rifle.

So, from the perspective of the Saeder Krupp team, there is a troll with a Gauss Rifle, a mad stick monkey fearlessly charging them, and a Mage who MUST be like a level 4 or 5 initiate, because who the fuck double casts 20 meter ball lightnings and doesn't die?  They call in their evac.

Alice's spinet sees the helicopter making it's approach.

So the author(s) didn't give the team a rocket launcher, but gave them a helicopter.  Without weapons.

WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!  Who wrote this... author credit lists McKittrick, Muneno, Rigel... RAY?!  I am blaming you entirely for this.  How do you put a helicopter in the run and not think that the Runners aren't going to temporarily abandon their Mission in favor of a new one?

It's called, "We NEED that helicopter!!!"

Never mind that the helicopter is flying low on the other side of a building that takes up a whole block and the team has absolutely no line of sight on it.  Planning for a museum extraction?  Let's just go.  Might be an ambush at the safe house?  Enh, just drive in!  Helicopter in impossible to reach location?  Employ MAXIMUM Operational Planning and utilization of ALL pertinent (and even non-pertinent) skills to retrieve helicopter in working condition.

I am happy to report that they didn't get the helicopter.  There were levitation spells, more overcast electricity spells and almost another lost roto-drone.  But the helicopter got away, trailed by a plume of smoke.

Now that the dust has settled, they try to reach Art.  No response.  Paranoia ensues.

So the team recognizes that their assailants were Saeder Krupp and Tannim calls Fish back.  I'll take that SK contact now.  After 1500 nuyen are exchanged, they call "Charles in Charge", SK Johnson.

"Hey, your guys just tried to take our extraction from us.  Seems we've been burned, but you know what?  Maybe we can deliver the package to you."

A few moments pass.

"Wait, what?  You'll pay us what we were offered to just put a bullet in his brain?"

Judah looks over, "Ask for double!"

Doctor Pelletierre's expression darkens.

"No.  We're not doing that," Alice and Doc Shadow both exclaim.

"Send the money to Fish and when I get confirmation, we do it."

"NO!" Alice and Doc Shadow are adamant, but the money transfers quickly.

Tannim nods at Judah, "Do it."

A final gunshot rings out as the run ends with Doctor Pelletierre dead at the Runners' own hands.

Tannim passes out the funds.  12,500 nuyen.

"Wait, I thought we were getting double!?"

"Oh, uh, no.  Sorry about that."

The next day, Art gets a hold of them.  "Oh, glad I found you.  How's the Doc?  Wait, you what?  What the-- This is terrible!  I don't understand why you would-- wait... you still want MONEY?!?  WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!?"

Notoriety for everyone after an amazing ending.

Oh, London.  An amazing place.
That's just like... your opinion, man.

Tony Gambino

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« Reply #1 on: <02-11-15/1557:56> »
You left out the part where dock shadow spend three points of edge trying to revive him. :)

-Tony

Herr Brackhaus

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« Reply #2 on: <02-11-15/1801:27> »
Man, that was glorious. Please write more run reports, you've got a talent for it :)

cyclopean

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« Reply #3 on: <02-12-15/2102:06> »
This is great! I'm looking forward to running this soon, I decided to do the London book out of order, so I'm midway through the 3rd mission right now, I'm saving this one for last due to all the crazy combat, and the extreme possibility of making it untenable to hang around London thereafter.