SDMB Shadowrun campaign Chapter 3 - Prey To The Dark: Players only!

The Game Room
21

Johnson replies, “Nope. Bad for your health.” He smiles smugly, despite his knee being blasted to bits. “Got another question?”

He’s good, Nightshade realizes. It doesn’t add up. The man was a sniveling coward weasel literally hiding in a closet, back in the raid on Synthcorp. Where’d he suddenly get the guts to look someone in the eye?

Nightshade has performed quite well with an interrogation roll. Johnson should be intimidated, spilling his guts…but it’s almost like he’s not afraid to die. She may ask him specific questions now.

Johnson will attempt to resist Nightshade’s interrogation. Each question he answers will roll against Nightshade’s current interrogation success level (determined by her most recent interrogation roll). She may allow her current roll to stand, which all of her questions will use (5 successes, after modifiers), or she may attempt a new roll (even using Edge, if she desires) to try and reach a higher interrogation threshold against Johnson. This represents Nightshade trying a new angle in her intimidation attempt. Each of Nightshade’s rolls from now on will suffer a cumulative -1 dice modifier against Johnson, as he will eventually sense failure and desperation.

Goethe approaches the Universal Omnitech building. As he walks toward the main entrance, an unfamiliar security agent moves to step in front of him, and is quickly yanked backward by a higher ranking officer. The officer nods slightly to Goethe, allowing him through.

The busy bees of Universal Omnitech aren’t used to seeing a Shadowrunner in full armament stroll so boldly through the front door. An awkward hush follows him all the way to the executive elevator, as the people around him are unsure whether to panic or salute. Goethe doesn’t like being recognized.

When he reaches the elevator, he pushes the button marked with a star, instead of a number. The elevator goes to the very top floor, and then the digital display showing the current floor goes blank. The elevator begins moving down at varying speeds, making it impossible to determine just how much distance has been covered. It’s one way UO uses to disguise the location of the executive offices, since there is no way to know for sure which floor the elevator opens at.

What a waste of time, Goethe thinks. He walks toward Rescigno’s office, and is surprised when a secretary stops him. He’s about to give the secretary a verbal lashing, until she says “This way, sir. Mr Rescigno wants you to watch the interrogation with him.”

Goethe follows the woman, who drops him off at a room with one-way glass. Rescigno is inside, watching Nightshade and Johnson on the other side.

“Pull up a seat,” Rescigno says to Goethe. “It seems Johnson knew more than he’s letting on. This is about to get very interesting.”

22

“Concerned about dying of cancer? That’s quite optimistic for a man in your position.” Nightshade pauses, considering. Not acting like someone more scared of his bosses than of us. More like someone who thinks they’re winning. Let’s see how sure he is of that.

“These killings–they aren’t a desperate, defeated enemy lashing out. Your bosses are trying to put us off-balance, setting us up for a big counterstrike. That’s obvious.”

“What I don’t understand, is why you think you might still be a part of it. Whatever you were supposed to be doing with Synthcorp, you fucked it up beyond redemption. Unless you want to try to tell me that was all some kind of ridiculous gambit?”

“You were just a tool. And now, you’re a used-up, broken tool. And however incompetent you looked as an executive at Synthcorp, I’m having trouble believing you’re stupid enough to believe what they tell you about your future role in their plans.”

“When a tool breaks, you might use it just a bit longer, maybe to stick under a wobbly table leg. But that’s just short-term–as soon as you can, you fix the table properly, and the tool goes in the trash. So I have to admit my curiousity. What did they tell you that you might still be useful for?”

(Nightshade sees that intimidation isn’t effective, so she shifts to working on Johnson’s ego. She’ll make a new Interrogation roll, using a point of Edge.)

23

Nail hangs up the phone and begin dressing silently. Noticing his wife’s increased agitation, he says, “It’s good news, actually. A coworker can take you to a safe location.”

His wife sit in silence for a few moments, unsure of what to say. “Do you have to leave so soon? You’ve barely been home.”

“Can’t be helped. The sooner this is over the sooner I can tell you what’s going on.” Straightening up the last pieces of his outfit, he continues to say, “Until then, I gotta go.”

Nail gets up to start walking out the door. His wife complains futilely:“Why are you doing all this? Why can’t you tell me?”

“It would just make you less safe,” Nail replies tersely.

“Well… what if I get in trouble?” she says desperately, not wanting to see Nail leave.

“I’m only a commlink call away,” he says with his hand on the door, before he turns around suddenly, and gives his wife a firm embrace. “Love you honey.”

“You too.” she replies, which Nail hears just barely as the door closes behind him.

After leaving his home, Nail heads towards the Universal Omnitech building. When he arrives at the interrogation, he says, “Hey Goethe,” and pulls up a chair. Lounging as only Nail can, he says ,“Looks like I made it in time for the show.”

24

Nightshade has rolled quite well for her second interrogation attempt, scoring 8 total hits. Even a hardened professional should break under the circumstances.

Johnson replies, “Like you, I am more than I seem. I am the Dark. I am we, and we are you. How can you resist the coming of yourself?”

He’s insane, Nightshade realizes. The understanding doesn’t come with any satisfaction. The madman is looking right through her, at nothing. In fact, Johnson more resembles a wax figure than a man, utterly emotionless, expressionless, and hopeless.

Another realization strikes her; she’s seen this before. He’s possessed! Somehow, a mage has managed to cast an immensely powerful domination spell on him, and now controls the man like a puppeteer. Johnson’s consciousness is trapped in the background, helpless as he is forced to witness his body being used like a tool.

The mage Dominating Johnson probably doesn’t realize Nightshade has discovered him yet. She can either continue the farce interrogation, or report her knowledge to Rescigno immediately.

Nightshade now has 1 used Edge

25

4509 is in the cyberware development lab at Universal Omnitech, with a technician he recognizes but hasn’t bothered to learn the name of. This is one of the few places he actually likes to be. The technicians are still pitifully human, but cold, logical, calculating. He understands them. They don’t see 4509 as a man losing himself in the tech…they see an engineering marvel. The bastards are actually excited to download his combat data and pore over the minutiae of his battles. They don’t care about his “soul,” only how well their creation has performed.

The technician says, “I’m sorry, but I can’t find any equipment failure here. The shaman’s curse affected your biology, not the hardware. I can’t fix you. There’s nothing here to ‘fix’.”

Numbers and schematics scroll down a screen as the technician speaks, while he shakes his head with confusion. After a moment, he continues. “Even the new bioware is operating at full capacity. Everything’s fine.” As an afterthought, he adds, “except the flesh, I suppose. I guess that’s your weak spot.” He grins at what he considers to be good-natured ribbing, but the humor is drained completely from him as he meets 4509’s relentless glare.

“Alright, alright. I’ll see what I can do.” The man is immediately back to business, his entire demeanor flipped as suddenly as a light switch. He extends a cord from the terminal he’s working at toward 4509, and plugs the cord into a hidden socket in a panel of his cyber-torso. His movements are stiff and mechanical, and although 4509 hates to admit it, he can recognize the “spark” of life in the man is gone in an instant.

4509 has a moment to wonder at how pitifully people are ruled by their emotio…

PAIN!

The cyborg’s limbs seize in agony he hasn’t felt since before his cybernetic upgrades. There is nothing but burning anguish consuming him, as the technician commands the terminal to sabotage 4509’s hardware. The machine in him is completely overwhelmed by the attack, crushing him like an insect.

There is no thought, only action. 4509 can’t stop a scream erupting from somewhere primal inside him, as the sabotage runs through his programming. Other technicians in the room turn in startled surprise toward 4509 as he cries out.

One technician among the group calmly walks toward a locked cabinet, and swipes a key card in front of it. He emerges a moment later with a prototype assault rifle, which he turns on the other technicians. He doesn’t even make a demand, but simply opens fire…

Three men are cut down in a second, with 4509 paralyzed with agony and unable to intervene. One of the technicians recognizes what has happened, and sprints toward 4509. Bullets pour into the man as he throws his body at the console. He falls upon the cord connecting to 4509, tearing it free from the socket jack. 4509 slumps with sudden relief as the connection is severed.

“You are nothing!” the unarmed traitor growls. He reaches for a handheld arc welder next to his console, and moves toward 4509. “Metal, flesh, human, machine, all of it nothing but prey! The Dark hunts you, and you’ll n…”

4509 doesn’t allow the man to finish. Instinctively, he seizes the fool by the neck, and pulls him along as he rolls off the steel examination table. Bullets from the armed traitor soar past him, striking harmlessly against the far wall.

The cyborg isn’t exactly graceful, landing with a metallic CLANG on the floor. He is badly damaged by the technician’s treachery. Beside him lays the broken body of the man who betrayed him.

Worthless, 4509 realizes. The man’s neck is snapped. Frustrated, he tosses the man’s body aside.

4509 has been gravely damaged, and most of his systems are offline. His smartlink system is not operational, his comlink and many of his sensors are down, and his cyberware offers only a fraction of the strength it is capable of at full capacity. 4509 will suffer significant penalty for all tests (-4 for non-combat actions, -5 for combat actions) except Body tests and armor checks, until he can be properly repaired, or his systems recover from the damage. 4509’s cybernetic weapons are offline, but there is still an armed man in the room!

26

4509 opens and closes his fist as he gets a feel for his damaged state. Unable to retrieve his machine pistols he calmly drags one of his bags from around the corner of the table to his side and unzips it, pulling free the shotgun inside. Unable to activate it with his smartlink, its safety system instead recognizes his touch and the weapon springs to life in his hands.

27

Combat round 1

Initiative pass 1

The still-living traitor technician spends his entire turn talking to 4509, as he walks in a wide arc around the table to get a firing angle on the cyborg.

“It’s starting to sink in, isn’t it,” the man gloats. “You’re finally starting to realize. I can strike you anywhere. Anytime. You want to know the funny thing? I didn’t even hack that pitiful elf’s drone! I hacked her! Even if you kill this miserable shell, it’s nothing more to me than your ammunition is to you. My weapon is metahumanity! Kill one, and another rises. Do you see, fool? It’s hopeless!”

As the man speaks, 4509 calmly draws his shotgun from his bag. He’s crouched behind the steel block table, waiting for the perfect moment. His sonar tracking module buzzes to life, and suddenly 4509 can ‘see’ the man from behind his cover, walking slowly in an arc.

Initiative pass 2

4509 is around the corner, advancing and firing before his image even registers in the scientist’s awareness. The first shot is wide by a mile, as 4509 struggles to control his spasming limbs. The second shot comes a bit closer to its target, but still misses as 4509 takes another step.

The scientist fires back in response. There is absolutely no hint of a preservation instinct in the man. He simply stands and shoots. The rifle is a design completely unfamiliar to 4509, a prototype that might be seriously dangerous in the hands of an expert. But this man is no expert. He can’t find the weak points in 4509’s cybernetics, and both of his shots bounce off the cyborg’s incredible armor.

4509 has 2 initiative passes remaining in this round of combat, while the scientist will not act again this round.

28

4509 ignores the taunts, firing twice more in each pass. He’ll use Edge on his final attack if all three prior shots have missed.

29

Carefully–don’t want to let whoever, or whatever, this is realize how close I’ve come.

Nightshade snorts. “Weaker than I realized, I guess. Was it the firefight, the Chinook, or that last close encounter with the cyborg that broke your brain?”

“Time to let the docs take a look at you, I suppose. I hope, for your sake, that you’re not faking. If I have to come back, this will get very ugly.”

Nightshade glares at Johnson for a few more seconds, then flings down her cigarette in disgust and turns towards the door. It slides open, and she leaves without a backward glance.

Quickly, she glides to the observation room. “Rescigno, you brought in the wrong type of specialist,” she snaps. “That’s Johnson’s body in there, but it’s not him. If you’ve got a mage handy, maybe he can tell us whose hand is working the puppet.”

Her eyes narrow as she takes in the other occupants of the room. “You might want to have him check out your ‘contractors’ while he’s at it–there’s no way to tell for certain who else might have been compromised. Actually, might have been smart to do that before they were allowed this deep into the building with all that hardware. Too late now.” She doesn’t make any overt moves, but you get the impression that she’s plotting routes to the nearest exits.

30

When Goethe sits down to watch the interrogation he says to Rescigno:

"Who’s the skirt? I hope she’s good at this, because I don’t want to be sitting around just spinning my wheels.

“Hell, I’d offer to interrogate Johson, but I know that in the end I’d probably just kill him, which while being immensely gratifying, probably isn’t going to help matters for anyone. But if you ever need someone to kill him, I’ll happily volunteer, though someone like Donovan or Nail might be better since Johnson has taken more from the first and the second has more to lose. Me, I’ll just get some therapeutic benefit.”

“Yep. And don’t feel bad about missing the previews. They weren’t all that interesting anyway.”

“Hey Nail, didn’t you write something like that during your teenage bad poetry years?”

"If I were any danger to you or Rescigno, you’d both already be dead. I don’t do subtle, as Nail will fully attest to. Even if someone else was pulling the strings, my being subtle just won’t happen. You can’t steer a train, the best you can do is derail it. And as sure as I’m not possessed, neither is Nail.

“But if what you’re saying is true, there’s something really bizarre going on. The man in there was not the man we handed over to the Chinooks.”

31

Combat round 1

Initiative pass 3

4509 is learning to adapt to his weakened condition. His next shot tears the scientist’s arm off, and the following shot hits him in the chest, knocking him backward off his feet. The man sneers in hatred-an expression that remains on his lifeless face long after his heart stops beating.

4509 knows with certainty that this is not the end of the mysterious mage’s attack on Universal Omnitech. His comlink is down, and the local network communications are offline.

All the murder victims so far have been linked through the Synthcorp raid. The conclusion is obvious; Goethe and Nail are either already under attack, or will be soon.

In the executive office, Rescigno and the others are oblivious to the danger they’re in. Rescigno listens to Nightshade’s report. He picks up the intercom transmitter, preparing to call the most powerful of UO’s wage-mages.

“That’s funny,” Rescigno says. “Intercom’s down.”

A sixth sense tingles in Nail.* I don’t like this*, he thinks.

Goethe and Nightshade have similar feelings. Subconsciously, Goethe readies his assault rifle.

Rescigno’s secretary walks into the room. Nightshade is the first to realize the woman who greeted her at the entrance is not the same person standing before her. “Down!” she shouts, as the secretary pulls a pistol and aims it at Goethe…

Ominously, the crew hears the elevator ding from the lobby, and the doors open. A hooded figure strides into the office, flanked by several UO drones and employees, all with the same blank expression. The group begins walking toward the interrogation room.

Begin combat round 1, initiative pass 1. Only Nightshade will participate in this initiative pass, as the others have been caught by surprise.

32

4509 calmly returns his shotgun to his bag, swinging it over his head and letting it hang at his side. He picks up the prototype weapon and jogs out, examining the firearm as he goes. For now the cyborg’s priority is the company’s (and, as a corollary to that, Rescigno’s) safety and he makes his way towards where he knows Walken’s replacement to be, opening fire on any belligerents he encounters along the way.

33

The weapon 4509 is carrying appears to fire common rounds, and does not require special ammunition. He recognizes magnetic “rail gun” technology, which will probably help the bullet achieve a higher velocity as it escapes the muzzle. As far as 4509 knows, its the only weapon that uses chemical propulsion from normal bullets in conjunction with magnetic acceleration.

Whether it actually performs as well as either tech would alone remains to be seen…

34

“Hey Nail, didn’t you write something like that during your teenage bad poetry years?” jibes Goethe during the interrogation.

“Ha ha, very funny,” Nail casually replies. Putting on a thinking face, he follows up with: “You know Goethe, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he sounds possessed.”

Once the interrogation finishes, Nail hears Nightshade give her report to Rescigno. Talking over the part about how possibly Nail and Goethe are possessed as well, he says, “Damn, I hate it when I’m right.”

He has little time to make further wisecracks. As soon as Goethe finishes amply demonstrating verbally his non-possessed status, Rescigno alerts everyone that the intercom is down, and a chill runs through Nail’s spine.

Immediately after, Nail notices the secretary walk into the room. “Oh, it’s the secretary from the lobby. Probably come with more bad news,” Nail says pessimistically.

35

Nightshade does not hesitate. Too bad–she was a nice lady. But we can’t get to the bastard hiding behind her without taking her down. She quickly steps to Rescigno’s side and firmly pushes him to the ground with a hand on his shoulder. The other hand grips a machine pistol (it’s not entirely clear how–that hand was empty a second ago), which spits a hail of bullets towards the secretary’s center of mass.

(Nightshade is firing a narrow burst from her Ceska Black Scorpion at the immediate threat.)

36

The woman in front of Nightshade is a secretary, not a soldier. She’s helpless against Nightshade’s attack. The elf places the bullets within an inch of each other over the secretary’s heart, as the possessed woman pulls the trigger. The pistol bucks against her untrained hand, and Goethe easily steps out of her line of fire. She sinks to her knees and falls forward, never to rise.

The group has an important decision to make. Through the glass of the interrogation viewing room, they can see the hooded figure approaching from the elevator lobby. The glass is bullet proof, and the crew will be safe inside the interrogation viewing room, assuming the figure and his minions can’t hack the door open. Hopefully loyal Universal Omnitech security crews will respond to the attack soon!

Alternatively, they can attempt to fight their way out. There are too many to defeat outright, but a clever distraction or sudden burst of violence may buy enough time for a few of the crew to get out via the fire escape.

37

Meanwhile, 4509 is jogging through the bowels of the Universal Omnitech building. Those who recognize him give him a wide berth. Security agents who know his reputation look quizzically at him. They’ve never seen him run before.

“Trouble?” one of the agents asks.

4509 stops immediately, and draws his pistol from the thigh holster, leveling it at the security agent’s forehead. The man stumbles backward in sudden fear. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he says.

“Had to be sure,” 4509 says, as he holsters his pistols. “Get a crew up to the executive floor.” He doesn’t explain further, and doesn’t bother waiting for a response before resuming his hustle to the elevator lobby.

38

"The way I see it we got two choices. The first choice is to stay in here and hope that everyone comes to their senses before they hack the door. Who knows, maybe even backup will show up. Of course, that backup might be for them and not us. But, at least we’re safe in here…for now.

“The other option is we make a break for it. When I realized I might have to go into hiding, I started scoping out places to hole up in in this general area of Seattle. One of those places is a few blocks from here. We can hide there for a couple hours while we plan our next strategy. Of course, the tricky part will be getting there through all of them. Since I’ve got the best armor and firepower combination, I can take point on this, laying down suppressing fire while the rest of you make a move. However, we should remember that most of these people are not themselves, so they should’t be faulted for attacking us, additionally, good employees can be hard to replace, and then there’s the cleanup of all the blood…”

As Goethe says the above sentence, he mechanically and and swiftly ejects the clip of explosive rounds from his AK and let’s it fall into his hand as he slams a replacement of stick-n-shock rounds in the thing instead. He then chambers the first round. All this is done in a seeming blink of an eye with Geothe not even changing his speech cadence. Goethe has made an effort in his running life to shun the overt enhancements, but one can never truly hide the existence of reflex wires. Normal people just don’t move like that.

"…Anyway, I’ve just loaded stun rounds into this. It should take out most of those who are opposing us without killing them, but unfortunately it does dick against robotic drones. So after I go out and start laying down suppressive fire against the humans, Shadow you follow and concentrate on the drones. Nail, you than grab Rescigno and head for the fire escape as Shadow moves behind you and I follow up in the rear. If all goes well, we should be able to pull this off without too much patching up to do afterwards.

Of course, the most important thing is we stick together here. If you guys would rather take your chances in this safe-for-now-room, I’ll support you. I just think we stand a better chance at surviving this in the long term if we aren’t caged like rats."

After stating his piece, Geothe can’t help but reflect on what he didn’t tell the rest:

Didn’t want to tell them the whole reason you changed out your rounds, did you, Chummer? Sure, you’re genuinely concerned about the zombies out there, at least, you’re concerned as much as you can be about nameless corporate drones you don’t know from Adam, but that’s not all, is it? You didn’t want to tell them that you fear what you might do should you become one of the possessed, turning on the lion’s share of the only allies you have right now and tearing them apart with your lead thrower. They didn’t need to hear that part; they’ve got enough to worry about…

39

Lol.

40

Nightshade nods. “I don’t like the idea of being trapped in a corner either, even behind bulletproof glass. Leapfrog to the fire escape; you’re on point & focus fire on meat bodies, I’ve got the drones, Nail protects Rescigno.” She pulls a second machine pistol from the small of her back. “On three?”

Nightshade activates her wired reflexes as well, which she didn’t have time for before.