While quite true that there are a lot of Toxic spirits, this one was only called Toxic in that it's what people in 2070 would call it....not realizing that it is actually a Avatar of Corruption (read: Horror Construct). the truth is much much worse. and this thing is meant to be and unholy terror and scare the crap out of the players, so if it looks really powerful that was the point.
And a bit of a Break down of the run for the runners
They had after doing a lot of leg work tracking a pair of low end runners who had been stalking a charge of the Pixie player had what is called a Genetic Mirror Twin (same DNA culture, but flipped sex. I've incorporated the idea from reading over several cultures putting mystical importance one such twins in various magery) that had been stolen from the local hospital at birth.
After doing some physical and mystical leg work, made slightly easier that Mirror Twins have VERY faint astral link between them that the pixie managed to spot, they tracked the runners to a Salvation Army Thrift Store in in Tacoma (players were getting nervous as they were thinking bugs. I let that go as it played as a lovely red herring). They sent in James, the Elven Face man (Social Adept) to look the place over while a Free Spirit NPC they've developed good relations with. The store front was a typical thrift store for the area and the Social adapt made good enough rolls that he didn't think there was anything wrong with the staffers, but he discovered the first version of mystical spam ever (a Watcher Spirit told to bug any mystic coming in the door to check out the 'fetishes' for sale) (small amount of Crystal clacker stuff).
The Free Spirit discovered after doing some ground work that the entire basement complex below the building was surrounded by Astral Vines and some fairly hefty, yet subtle wards and could not sneak in from below (tho it did mention a underground access that ran below the building). That and it felt vaguely disturbed about what was down below, not entirely certain what was down there. After a bit of research and discussion, the players found out it was part of the older Sea-Tac Underground Subway that had been closed off and sealed (with concrete). Given land in Seattle is at a premium, this sent up a bit of a flag, and the group rigger snuck into a construction site that was nearby, hacked the control protocols for several construction drones and had one drill down towards the far end of the tunnel access then let in her cadre of recon drones. The first thing that was noted that there was no noises in the tunnels. At All. Not rats, bugs or anything except the sound of dripping water. Given the Devil rat population in Seattle alone, this gave the players pause for thought as the only relative noise was the occasional hum from the drones. The drones came across what appear to be a homeless (or possible Ghul) encampment, in a half standing position, food long gone to mold, but no bodies or signs of bones. Dark smears were here and there, but everything else looked okay.
Then the drones started going off line. The first one was at the tail end of the drone chain. Some vague impression of camera movement before a loud crunching noise ensured and the unit went black. The player had the drones get into a security wheel but couldn't see anything, but heard....something move off in the tunnels somewhere.
After a few moments, the player sent a sacrficial drone to investigate the noise. All it found was a shredded drone that while obviously the same one had gone to rust and appear partly melted. Checking all freqs rendered nothing. And another drone when offline from the security wheel (the thing was toying with them). The caught a vague glimpse of it's form as it went around a corner, but nothing to trying go off of. So the mage suggested they have the drones run down the mage-goggle line and they provide whatever it was with live bait so they could get a better look at it. The Samurai went to go find a Devil rat and came back with one in relative short order (learning from the locals in Lagos was useful), and so they had it taken down by one of the drones and sealed in while the mage watched on the other end.
The Rat ran around in panic as it obviously could sense something that the drones couldn't. When it tried running towards a turn off is when it manifested fully, And I made the player roll against it's Fear Power....to which he blew royally, and will have nightmares about for some time. But the players found out that it wasn't Insect Spirits but something far far worse down below.
So they got an assault plan together and called in what marks they had, with the samurai who had been in the Biz a while making discrete calls to Ares (he's on good Terms with them) to call in Team 1, Ares showboat strike team they use for such Reality shows like Bug Hunter, with theirs called "Team One: the Line", and generally used to swat big nasty threats in a very public way about the threat down below. While Team One would deal with the mess in the tunnels and KE would seal the area off, The runners planned to assault the SA place and charge into the Astral Vine protected sub-basement, after making sure the the civvies got out.
After the evac, they rushed the subbasement door, which the samurai and helpers made short work of, the Mage and the groups technomancer got a taste of Corrupted Astral and Netspace as they checked the place over ( the mage fighting against a Background count of 2, and the Technomancer Dealing with a Dissonance Well.
The combat was fast and furious with Cultists hopped on K-10 came at the players and the Local mage Rushing the Job on Summoning a Great Form Spirit version of an Infector.
The Fight was a very nasty door to door sort of operation, with the sams and other combat types dealing with the cultists. After a bit of work on the part of the groups techno and other decker buddies he called in favors from they managed to dig into the wireless signal of the place and founda floor map and discovered it resembled a patient care ward like in a hospital with small isolation cells lining about 1/2 the floor space.....a barracks style set up for the cultists, a room set aside under a double layer of astral vines, several other styles of rooms and a large room of undetermined function. Digging past the dissonance, the decker could only get distorted whimpers from various subjects, mutterings of 'kill me' and badly garbled pictures, as well as badly corrupted data records. After a lot of work he found out that the cult was a left over of the Winternight movement from back in the day.
At this point the players got the horrible realization that the place was an incubation chamber for something truly horrible and the gloves came off the group which are normally quite restrained on the lethal stuff (typically use stick and shock). They made their way through the cultists, inch by bloody inch, but had finally ran into the Cult leader (who had been busy elsewhere prepping a summoning of a Great Form) version of an Infector. The players had hired on some fellow runners, a rather odd cadre of physads called the Desolation Angels (yes, those nice ladies) to pick up the slack on gun-bunnies, and one of them charged the enemy mage. The mage seemed to take this in stride and grappled the DA, ripping away her flesh covering and exposing the humanoid manitd beneath before blowing her to hell with his Predator Pistol ( he made a very good shot).
The mage player could feel the reek of whatever this guy was and put everything into a manabolt spell, saying screw the normal caution he took on drain rolls, which turned out to be good for the party, and he managed to get by the mages impressive defenses. The enemy mage, blowing his int check, he pulled a spell he had on contigency and began using the essence of his cultists to fuel the summoning to bring the Great Infector across. Sadly he blew his check to control the thing and it ate him. However due to a lapse in thought on his part ( he had been shot and take a bit of spell damage), he had forgotten that the area was sealed in Astral Vines and it was too big to get out of the complex. Severely angered, it began to accelerate the mutation of it's....children.
The Pixie and the less combat oriented of the group had hunted room to room and finally found the kidnapped twin in his room with several books and toys that didn't indicate anything out of the ordinary.....if you didn't account for the magical formula on the wall in some language they didn't recognize and several books written in the same language. The child didn't seem very perturbed by the sounds of violence outside or the wailing, which disturbed the players. After a bit of evaluation, The Face and one of the magic types determined the boy was brought up in the cults worldview, but was also still a child and simply didn't know any better, as well as only spoke proper spetheriel (no contractions or slang at all), as well as seemed to have a grasp of the magic a formula on the wall. Seeing that he had no riders on him and a small teddy bear, which had a untainted guardian spirit bound to it, the grabbed him, several of his books on interest, and bugged out while the others laid down the fire power.
As it turns out the situation was far worse than they had guessed. Down in the sewers, Team One had been overrun buy a plethoria of the beasties (a lot of sacrfices had been dropped down there over the years and any local indigents made for decent meals when the things manifested from thier local astral realm) and KE troopers had called in the Plex Guard to try to contain the breakout, but it was a scene out of lovecraft as a the things began manifesting above ground and crawling out of the woodwork, turning the area into something similar to Chicago when the bugs broke out, but far more horrific as the creatures seemed to go out of their way to cause pain and misery.
Players went through most of their ammo and had to duck and cover as corporate and UCAS forces liberally paved buildings in the area and set up containment to scan for creatures or 'infestation' like they had with the Bugs. Given the situation, KE ignored the fact they were armed with weapons of dubious legality and merely asked them very pointed questions about the Things, what they knew about them, and more importantly, what seemed to slow the things down. The Players defintiely have a KE record at this point, but considering they we actually helpful with the information they gave, unless they do something foolish, KE is going to put them on low priority for finding.
The area in still a mess and the sound of Gunships flying over Tacoma is fairly common at this point.
The players declared the whole situation and absolute nightmare. Which is what I was aiming for, so I guess I did my job
