SDMB Shadowrun Campaign chapter 2: Golden Rule - players only!

The Game Room
181

4509 relentlessly smashes through the door, breaking the frame where it held the deadbolt in place. The door swings open, and the Universal Omnitech commando immediately rolls a “flashbang” grenade toward the center of the room.

Seneth begins to cast heal for the second time during the attack on Synthcorp. He is starting to worry that the group is losing its attack momentum. The chatter over the other characters’ comlinks would confirm his suspicion, if he could hear it.

“We’re losing men here!” Chaggo shouts via comlink. The last traces of his usual sarcasm are gone, replaced with a hint desperation. Goethe worries that Chaggo will soon lose the last of his self control, and do something recklessly suicidal.

The UO agent groans suddenly as Seneth’s heal spell restores him to consciousness. The man is confused for a moment, but relaxes as he realizes he’s surrounded by allies. “Glad you finally ma-” his sentence is cut off by a sudden roaring explosion.

The grenade tossed by the healthy UO agent has detonated, throwing metallic shrapnel particles in every direction. The particles are so fine they appear as reflective dust suspended in the air. The effect only lasts an instant, as a reactive chemical released in the explosion starts a chain reaction among the metallic particles. Instantly, every one of the shrapnel pieces is ignited, the matter partially converted to energy and released as photons. For a second, the room is illuminated several times brighter than the sun.

4509’s flare compensation protects him from the worst effects of the flash, but the others are momentarily awed. 4509 briefly scans the room for threats, and finds 8 agents inside. Three of the men have taken the full blast effect from the grenade, and have suffered minor wounds along with the flare effect. The others are not as affected, and will be able to fight with reasonable effectiveness. The agents inside are all wearing full body armor, except for an elf who seems to be dressed in “formal business” attire. The elf appears to be completely unaffected, presumably due to flare compensation similar to 4509’s. The group recognizes the elf as Sasheille, an important Synthcorp executive.

In the center of the room is a young, unconscious female elf. Goethe, Nail, and Seneth recognize her as Kirk. She is strapped to a chair, but otherwise unharmed.

Donovan is the first to recover from the shock of the flashbang grenade. Without hesitation, he rushes through the door. Nail recognizes a frightening look of rage on the man’s face as he activates an Adept power.

The room is large enough to hold several full-immersion VR studios, each approximately 9 feet square and extending to the ceiling. There are also bulky pieces of machinery and heavy furniture suitable for cover.

The group has discovered Kirk, who is currently Sasheille’s captive. Each of the two opposed groups is aware of the other, and there will be no surprise combat round. Several Synthcorp agents have been debilitated by 4509’s flashbang grenade, and will have their combat effectiveness greatly diminished.

All characters may participate in the next round of combat. Donovan is through the door and is currently taking cover behind a VR studio machine.

182

4509 takes aim and makes a called shot to the head of one of the agents not affected by the flashbang.

183

To Nail:

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t destroy the entire henhouse in the process…”

To Chaggo:

“Hold out for a bit longer, Chaggo. If we can get Kirk’s help, the virus should make it possible for her to actually turn Synthcorps own bots against them.”

Upon start of the next combat, Goethe will take cover and then fire a long burst followed by a short burst at one of the agents unaffected by the flash grenade. Both bursts will be wide bursts.

184

After Goethe responds to Nail and begins addressing Chaggo, Nail looks at the half-broken door and speaks coolly and calmly, as if half-talking to himself: “Don’t worry. I was never very chicken.”

One dramatic beat later, the door cracks wide open, and the UO agent rolls the flash-bang grenade through the doorway. Time seems to slow down as Nail realizes what’s about to happen. His body refusing to react fast enough to fully avert his eyes, he is temporarily blinded by the intense flash. For a few moments, all is a white chaos.

Suppressing the urge to panic, Nail soon shakes off his disorientation and scans the situation. 8 guards in body armor and one elf in business attire. Nail’s decision comes easily.

“Hey, pretty boy! Let’s dance!” Nail cries and lunges towards the elf to engage him in physical combat.

Nail will add a point of edge to his dodge roll if he is fired upon.

185

“Earth Spirit, kill any and all enemies you see. Do not kill that female elf there who is captive, but the one called Sashelle is fair game. Go nuts!”

At the same time as he is saying this, Seneth begins to cast a spell:

Seneth will use 1 Edge to cast **Manabolt **at either Sashelle or anyone else around her if the Earth Spirit is attacking Sashelle.

186

Seneth’s earth spirit stomps into the room, drawing fire from most of the Synthcorp agents inside. The spirit seems impervious to the bullets as it approaches an agent and slams him against a wall. The man struggles fruitlessly to free himself.

“Fools! Save your bullets for the living!” Sasheille commands to his underlings.

The earth spirit has engaged a Synthcorp agent in melee. The spirit’s protection vs. non-magical weapons was strong enough to prevent all of the damage dealt to it.

Sasheille himself draws a strange looking device from his coat pocket. It looks like a flashlight with a grip handle. 4509 enters the room, and immediately recognizes the device as a prototype energy weapon. He himself had requested a similar weapon to be installed in his cybernetics, but Universal Omnitech management had refused due to the unreliable nature of the technology. 4509 has the good sense to dash behind a VR studio machine for cover as Sasheille activates the weapon.

The device sends a stream of supercharged plasma toward 4509. The energy looks like a particularly long-lasting lightning bolt, which wraps around the VR studio like fingers establishing a grip. The plasma heats the machine up to an incredible temperature almost instantly. Nearly all of the energy from the blast is absorbed by 4509’s cover, but a small bit of it wraps around and reaches out to him, gently brushing against him before dissipating. 4509’s cybernetc systems react instantly to the strange energy, some of them shutting down completely, and others overloading from the sudden surge. He should count himself lucky, as the energy would have cooked a man’s flesh rather than simply overloading cybernetic systems!

4509 will suffer penalties to his skill use dice rolls until his cybernetics recover from the overload of energy. The penalty will begin quite large, and gradually decrease as more of his systems are brought back online.

4509 tries to ignore the cacophony of conflicting information being sent to his brain by malfunctioning sensors and other cybernetics, as he carefully aims his pistol at an agent that seems less affected by the flash bang than his partners. This agent was not quite fast enough to reach cover, and pays the price as 4509 pulls the trigger. His aim is surprisingly true, and the agent falls to the ground.

Nail is next through the door, and sees the energy from Sasheille’s weapon whiz by him. Suddenly he recalls some of his last words, “I was never very chicken,” and regrets being unable to make a fried chicken joke in the chaos of battle.

“Let’s do it!” Donovan shouts, and runs alongside Nail toward Sasheille. The elf doesn’t stand a chance against the two Adepts, and is quickly overwhelmed by lightning fast strikes from both of them. His strange prototype weapon is knocked free from his grip, but unfortunately only Nail or Donovan would be close enough to retrieve it by the next combat round. Although Sasheille can not hope to beat Donovan and Nail together in close combat, he is still a very well trained fighter that won’t be defeated quickly. Donovan appears to be holding back a bit, apparently hoping to take Sasheille alive.

Goethe is next through the door. He’s not quite fast enough to reach cover this round, but manages to fire off two bursts from his assault rifle as he advances, hitting two Synthcorp agents. The men suffer wounds that appear to be minor, saved by their body armor from the full effect of Goethe’s fire.

Darwin and the two UO agents enter the room, and spend their entire combat round finding cover.

Seneth is the last to act, and uses the doorway itself as cover. He doesn’t have to enter the room to concentrate on casting manabolt at the closest Synthcorp agent to Kirk. The agent’s armor is useless against the spell, which knocks him down and unconscious. Seneth has resisted the drain from casting his spell.

End round 1, initiative pass 1

Synthcorp forces remaining-
Sasheille, engaged in melee
3 uninjured Synthcorp agents
2 slightly injured Synthcorp agents
1 Synthcorp agent engaged in melee with Seneth’s earth spirit

Seneth has given his final order to the earth spirit, who will continue to carry out the service until it feels it has satisfied his obligation. It will not listen to any further commands from Seneth.

Seneth and 4509 will not participate in initiative pass 2, unless they spend a point of Edge. All other characters will participate in the next initiative pass.

187

For the next pass, Goethe will pretty much do the same as last round.

He’ll take cover and then hit one of the slightly injured agents with a wide long burst. He’ll then follow that with a wide short burst (to either the same agent, or if that agents dead, to the second slightly injured agent).

188

“Hey Donovan, get your own dance partner,” Nail wisecracks while continuing to melee Sasheille.

189

Seneth watches the battle actively, waiting to cast his next spell, which should be a doozy.

190

Begin initiative pass 2

Donovan ignores Nail’s wisecrack, and leaves Nail alone with Sasheille in order to retrieve his dropped energy weapon. A Synthcorp agent realizes what Donovan is doing, and rushes to intercept him. The agent crashes into Donovan as he reaches for the device, sending both men sprawling across the floor. Donovan immediately rolls the man over to his back and begins to pummel him.

Nail is discovering that fighting Sasheille on his own is not nearly as easy as with Donovan. Nail regrets making his wisecrack. Sasheille draws a short-bladed knife and lunges at Nail. Nail turns to avoid the blow and counterattacks. Too late, he realizes that Sasheille’s thrust was a feint, and the direction of the blade’s motion suddenly changes. The knife grazes Nail across the torso, and as it does Nail feels agony far out of proportion to the severity of the cut. The knife blade is electrified, and has delivered a powerful shock to him! The shock nearly sends Nail to his knees, but he keeps his balance and staggers backward as Sasheille advances on him.

“I knew you roaches would turn on us,” Sasheille says. “You Runners are all the same. Disobedient dogs that need to be put down!”

Seneth’s earth spirit makes several blows against the man it has pinned against the wall, without any response. The spirit releases him, and the man slumps to the floor, unconscious.

“My service is complete,” the spirit says, and vanishes.

The professional training of the remaining Synthcorp agents finally begins to show through, as they organize their fire in an effort to pin the UO agents behind their cover. One of the UO agents risks exposing himself for a brief moment to fire at the Synthcorp men. He squeezes off an aimed burst at one of the agents, but it’s unclear how much damage he has done. The Synthcorp agents return fire, striking the UO agent in multiple locations across his body. Goethe sees everything, and realizes it’s not likely his ally will survive the extensive injuries he suffered.

The second UO agent takes advantage of the fire his partner has drawn to fire at the Synthcorp crew. Unfortunately, he underestimates the reaction of the Synthcorp group, and is himself riddled with bullets from the organized group.

Goethe reaches his cover, a heavy piece of machinery that only exposes him to a single Synthcorp agent. Goethe fires two bursts at the agent, hitting with both. The man’s armor isn’t enough to stop enough of the incoming, damage, and he falls out of the fight.

Goethe’s second burst was cut short for lack of ammunition. He must spend a simple action reloading his weapon next combat round.

Darwin seems more concerned with Kirk’s condition than the battle raging around him. He makes no effort to attack.

End initiative pass 2

Some characters have extraordinary speed in combat, due to Adept powers or cybernetic upgrades, and will act in a third initiative pass. These characters are;

Nail
Goethe
Sasheille

All other characters and NPCs will not take action during next initiative pass. Round 2 will start immediately afterward, which every character will participate in.

191

Goethe ejects his spent clip and reloads. He then fires a long wide burst at the other injured agent.

While he does this he shouts to Sasheille.

"That’s rich coming from a Synthcorp zombie. We’ve seen what you do to runners even when they succeed at their jobs. "

192

Initiative pass 3

Goethe fires another burst at the Synthcorp agents from behind his cover. He scores a hit, but once again the agent’s armor saves his life. The agent must have been affected by the attack, but unfortunately Goethe can not tell just how effective his shot was.

Nail and Sasheille are still locked in melee. Nail has become more cautious, not wanting to suffer a second dose of Sasheille’s electrified knife. Nail is clearly the superior fighter, but the weapon may be giving the Synthcorp elf the edge. Each scores blows that seem to do very little to actually hurt the other.

End round 1, initiative pass 3

Begin combat round 2

All players will participate in round 2, initiative pass 1.

Nail and Sasheille are locked in melee combat.

Similarly, Donovan is in melee with a Synthcorp agent.

Synthcorp also has 3 remaining unengaged security agents.

193

Goethe will make a called shot to the head of the agent he’s injured. He’ll fire a short wide burst saying “Die already!”

If the agent obeys his command (or at least falls out of the fight), he’ll then fire a long wide burst at one of the non engaged agents.

Otherwise, he’ll fire another short wide burst at the agent he’s injured.

194

4509 holsters his revolver and makes his way to the unconscious woman across the room. As he approaches he spreads his arms and extends his blades, easily cutting through the straps keeping her down. He effortlessly pulls her into his arms and makes towards the door, shielding her with his body, oblivious to any incoming gunfire.

195

Seneth begins to wave his arms. It looks like he’s swimming in mid-air.

“Spirit of Water, join me and obey my commands. I have need of you!”

196

Nail banters with Sasheille while fighting: “Not bad. I haven’t had this much fun in a while.” He dodges and weaves a few incoming blows. “Still, it’s a shame you have to rely on that toy of yours,” he says, and deftly attempts a maneuver to disarm Sasheille’s electric knife (band name).

197

Begin round 2

“Not bad! I haven’t had this much fun in awhile,” Nail says, as 4509 confidently walks across the room toward Kirk.

“Stop him!” Sasheille cries, and attempts to disengage from Nail to intercept 4509. It’s a terrible mistake, as Nail grabs the elf’s wrist with one hand, and uses the other to leverage against his elbow. Sasheille realizes what has happened too late, and hyper-extends his elbow attempting to escape. The knife drops from his hand and clatters to the floor. Sasheille makes another feeble attempt to hit Nail with his other fist, but Nail easily deflects it. “It’s a shame you have to rely on that toy of yours,” Nail taunts, and uses his leverage against Sasheille to throw him to the ground. The elf now lays helpless before Nail, scrambling away as he advances, his right hand dangling uselessly.

The men in the room obey Sasheille’s orders, and each turn their attention toward the cyborg. Gunfire erupts from all corners of the room, some from Goethe, and some from the Synthcorp agents. 4509 takes heavy fire from the agents, and must actually struggle to stay on his feet as he slashes his arm blades through the straps securing Kirk to the chair. He lifts the tiny elf to his chest with both hands, and turns his back to the Synthcorp agents to shield her.

Just as it seems 4509 may collapse under the concentrated gunfire, a sudden surge of energy pours into the room from the hallway, cresting like a wave and smashing into one of the Synthcorp agents. Seneth has successfully summoned a water spirit*, which recognizes the urgency of the battle in the room and rushes to help Seneth’s allies. Goethe and Donovan each dispatch an agent in the chaos of the raging battle, and even Darwin manages to come to his senses as he sees Kirk being moved, shooting his low caliber mounted pistol at one of the Synthcorp agents and scoring a hit which does not seem to have penetrated armor.

Two Synthcorp agents remain, who are both still slightly affected by the flashbang grenade. One is being pinned by the water spirit, and the other has taken gunfire to his body armor, likely causing stun damage. Likewise, Nail is in a dominant position over Sasheille, and may casually decide his fate. Synthcorp is defeated in this battle. it’s now up to the group whether to show mercy, or finish them off. Due to the overwhelming advantage shown by your group, you may choose to do either without dice rolls.

*water spirits are not known for their combat prowess, as the spirits of earth and fire are much more popular among mages who want to hurt people and break things. However, water spirits are quite well known for their ability to heal, either by augmenting a mage’s ability to cast the healing spell or by casting heal themselves. Although water spirits are naturally gentle and nurturing, they can be roused to battle, just not as effectively as their dangerous cousins.

This particular water spirit owed Seneth 4 services, but has determined on his own that 1 one of the services was met by it engaging Seneth’s enemies, even though the mage did not directly request it to. Seneth may attempt to argue the point with the spirit, with one possible consequence being that the spirit becomes offended and less cooperative.

A note on healing - 4509 is quite injured, but healing magic requires sensational effort to affect him, due to his alarmingly extensive cybernetic replacements. A “whole” body is much easier to affect with all types of magic, except physical damage spells.

198

4509 slowly makes his way into the hall, his vision clouding with error messages and warning pop-ups as some of his systems relay to him the results of self-diagnostics. The cyborg itself seems unconcerned and he continues with his task without hesitation. He sits the elf down outside the door, steadying her with a tight grip on her shoulder. He gives her a firm slap across the face with his free hand. “Wake up.”

199

Nail dusts himself off a bit. “Hey Goethe, what do you wanna do with pretty boy over here?”

200

Goethe will order the Synthcorp agents to drop their weapons and surrender if they want to live.

“Awww…you got me a gift Nail. And it isn’t even my birthday!”

Goethe will toss out a set of wire ties, one for each agent still alive, including Sasheille.

“First we tie their hands behind their back. Then the fun starts. Nail…Donovan, you make sure they’re securely bound. Also, Nail, here’s my medkit. There might be enough stuff left to save the life of the UO agent. Seneth, your job will be to start healing. I’m still down from the first encounter we had in the hallway, and I know 4509 is lucky to still be walking. Nail and Donovan might need some as well. And assuming Nail can save the UO agent, he’s definitely going to need some. But most important is we need to make sure Kirk is all right. The virus should still be in affect, which means she can essentially turn Synthcorp’s own security into a deathtrap for them. As for Sasheille, well, he and I are going to have a little chat.”

As that final sentence escapes his lips, Goathe’s demeanor changes. Any semblance of warmth he once had disappears as he draws himself up to his full height and squares his shoulders back. He turns his neck to the side, letting out a crack as he purposefully stretches his arms and cracks his knuckles. It’s as if he’s become a completely different person. If one didn’t know any better, they’d swear he even had some Troll blood in him. Even Nail, who’s seen Goethe in his interrogation mode many times, is a bit off balance by the change. Donovan, who’s only experience with Goethe’s interrogations was back when they nabbed Fortnight, isn’t sure what to make of it other than he’s glad Goethe’s on his side. The Fortnight thing was child’s play compared to this.

Goethe will use his specialization in physical intimidation for this next part.

Goethe slowly makes his way toward Sasheille and begins pacing back and forth in front of him. Occasionally leaning in with the more salient points. His demeanor is cool, but the malice behind his voice and words is intentionally thinly veiled.

“So Sasheille. You and I are going to play a little game. It’s called ‘What do you know?’ And the rules are just as it sounds. In fact, since I’m a sporting guy, I’ll even go first. I’ll tell you what I know, and then you tell me what you know. So let’s begin.”

"It’s funny you mention how we turned on you. You’re either stupid, naive, a shitbag liar, or any combo of the above.

"I don’t know for certain why Nail, Kirk, and I were chosen for this little task. It’s possible it was random and McManus was contacted by you guys and he passed it along to me, and I brought Kirk and Nail in because they’re among the few people I actually trust. But it’s also possible that Synthcorp already knew about me and picked me because of my reputation of never backing out on a job, even when given a better offer. Either way, Synthcorp no doubt researched me at some point before we met with Johnson, so they know I don’t break my contracts. And they were no doubt counting on it.

"See, we were all dead the minute we accepted your blood money, we just didn’t know it yet. I’m never comfortable taking wetwork jobs, because rarely are they what they seem to be. But McManus vouched for you guys, so I figured I’d give it a chance. Besides, the pay wasn’t all that bad. But if you thought I’d just blindly follow your orders, than you clearly didn’t do your research. We tracked down Chaggo, and I could have let him fall from a train to his death, but I didn’t. I saved him because I wanted to know what would make a guy that desperate to piss off a corp so much that they’d put a hit out on him. I mean, he kidnaps a guy, and you hire us to whack him? That’s a bit overkill, literally. So while we grab him and take him to an abandoned house to nurse our wounds and find out what’s going on, little do we know that Synthcorp has already turned on us. McManus’s safehouse got raided, and Kirk got kidnapped. We didn’t know it was you at the time, but once Chaggo filled us in on what was really going on, you definitely hit the prime suspect list.

"Anyway, Chaggo told us why he kidnapped Arry. He wanted to know what Arry knew. He had a personal reason to take you guys down, even if it cost him his life. He wouldn’t say more, though, until he could show us the evidence.

“So we go the safehouse where he as Arry. We let Chaggo alert his accomplices and they escape. Then we walk in with Chaggo tied up and free Arry.”

Goethe leans in really close to Sasheille, his breath hot on the zombies face.

“Are you listening? Here’s where it gets good.”

"Arry mentions how he didn’t say anything. And Donovan promptly shoots him point blank in the guts. Yes, your own guy shot your other guy, much to everyone’s surprise, particularly Chaggo and Arry. I’m still not sure who was more surprised, but Arry isn’t around anymore to clear up that point. But I digress. Turns out, Chaggo wanted to know how to overcome the ICE protecting the rest of the evidence that reveals your corps dirty little secrets and how you’ve been killing people to protect them, and he thought Arry was the guy that could do that for him. See, your corp hired Chaggo’s crew to do a run. And when they finished, you decided that they knew to much. So you were going to gas the entire crew. However, Chaggo’s friend locked himself in the room to prevent the gas from getting anywhere else. He sacrificed himself for the rest of his crew. And Donovan here, well, see he’s following in his father’s footsteps. Just like his daddy, he was a loyal Synthcorp employee, however, you paid his father’s loyalty back by killing him. And Donovan has been looking for his revenge ever since.

"So really, you sit there in judgment of my team and I, calling us cockroaches and turncoats, but though our sins might be many, the one thing we’ve never done is killed people whose only mistake was that they actually did what we asked them to. I had real issues breaking my contract with you, until I realized that it was never valid to begin with. You guys never intended to keep your end of the bargain, and if I hadn’t saved Chaggo’s life, my team and I would probably be dead by now at your corps hands, not even knowing why. So we turned. Because sure this job was a long shot, but it paid much better than you, and at least if we died here, we died on our own terms, not yours. My daddy’s a corp zombie like you, but he was always a straight shooting businessman. He always honored his deals, even when it was easier not to. And really, if a twat like him can pull it off, it really can’t be all that difficult.

“So that brings us to the now. It’s just you and I. Your little corporate paradise is crumbling down all around you. You can fall with it, or you can tell us what you know and get out…maybe find some honest work for a change. Volunteer at a soup kitchen maybe. Anyway, you’re going to tell us what we want to know regardless. See I could try to beat it out of you, but that gets messy, and it makes it harder to understand someone when they can barely breathe and their face is all swollen and they’ve lost some teeth or bit their tongue or whatever. So I prefer cleaner methods. Usually I use my shock gloves. Their quite a jolt from what I gather. However, it was hard enough for us to justify the guards to let us keep our guns. I don’t think they would have let me take the shock gloves as well. So unfortunately, I’m going to have to improvise.”

Goethe fumbles around in his coat pocket for a bit, and then his fingers grasp what he was looking for and he pulls it out.

“See this. It’s called a miniwelder. It’s great for melting through locks and other metal. It’s also amazing what it can do to human flesh.”

Goethe then clicks the miniwelder on. The tip instantly heats up red hot. And Goethe holds it up right under the zombie’s nose.

“See, this little baby can hit about 1000 degrees once it get warmed up. I think I’ll start by cauterizing your nostrils together. It’ll be fun…Of course, you could always just tell us what we want to know. Personally, in your shoes, I’d really consider taking that option.”

“So where’s Johnson. What kind of security does he have. And what’s the best way to take him out. And what did Kirk have to do with Johnson’s plans? And if I so much as think you are lying to me, you’re going to need a throat tube to breathe and eat…”