SDMB Shadowrun campaign, New World Orders - players only!

The Game Room
141

As Nail bends to pick up the credstick, Fortnight sees the motion.

“Take it!” Fortnight says. “Whatever you want, it’s yours. Just let me go!”

Goethe hears Fortnight’s outburst, and turns in time to see Nail pick up the credstick. He doesn’t suspect that Nail was attempting to steal it, though.

Nail failed his palming attempt, and was seen by Fortnight. Luckily the failure wasn’t bad enough that he was suspected of theft.

When Seneth arrives, he casts Mindprobe on Fortnight. The effort causes Seneth to collapse in exhaustion.

Seneth’s mind probe was successfully cast, but not with enough success to delve into his secrets. Seneth can only pick up surface emotions from Fortnight. He learns that Fortnight is terrified, especially of Goethe and Seneth, and is trying his best to satisfy them. Seneth can not determine the truth of Fortnight’s statements, but strongly suspects that Fortnight is not willingly giving false information.

Seneth cast Mindprobe, while suffering the effects of moderate stun damage due to Drain from previous spellcasting and summoning. The penalties were enough to limit the effectiveness of the spell. Seneth also suffered penalties in his attempt to resist Drain, and has suffered another 3 points of stun damage. Further damage will likely knock him unconscious. Seneth needs rest!

As Kirk and Darwin scavenge the building, it’s clear not much of the tech will be useful to a machinist of her caliber. The drones in particular are both damaged nearly beyond recognition, but she’s able to salvage the AI logarithm chips from them. Nobody would miss the AI cores, and it would not be theft for Kirk to take them (at least, not by her own standards!).

The command-center room is full of mostly useless, outdated machinery not suitable for drone conversions. She sees nothing of interest there.

Fortnight’s Harley is still in great condition, and would make an excellent platform for Kirk to make modifications with. Fortnight would surely miss his most prized possession, however. If Kirk takes the bike, it will be theft.

142

As tempting as the bike is Kirk has been trying to curb her impulse to grab anything not nailed down, so she puts the proposal to the group: “This bike could be modified, possibly extensively, and used to support us in future operations. There’s nothing unique about it, however, and I’m hesitant to implicate the group if it doesn’t serve our purposes. Is there consensus regarding its disposition?”

After a moment’s thought, she cautiously adds “Far be it from me to venture into the realm of maneuvering and utilizing meatsuits, since such actions are outside of my direct area of operational expertise, but while our captive is still feeling cooperative, may I suggest that we consider impersonating his crew tomorrow? If his contact is attempting to assemble a crew of runners, it’s possible that masquerading as Fortnight’s crew could give us a chance to draw closer to Chaggo under seemingly legitimate circumstances. I for one would rather walk in and shoot my way out, it’s safer than shooting both ways.”

143

Seneth to the group:

"What is the plan now, my children? Should we keep this Fortnight with us and have him continue with the Chaggo meet-up? We could go with?

No matter what we decide, I need rest. I feel like I’m going to collapse."

144

Darwin, seeing that Fortnight is cooperative and no longer fighting, helps the elf hacker push the Harley off him. Fortnight scoots away from the bike and leans with his back against a wall.

Fortnight is in bad shape. His leg wound has stopped bleeding, but he won’t be able to walk right for some time. He has burns, scrapes, and bruises over most of his body. He certainly won’t be able to personally directly participate in any scam attempt against Chaggo.

At Kirk’s suggestion of impersonating Fortnight’s crew, the elf shakes his head. “It won’t work. Chaggo told me to come alone. He might stink like a shithouse, but he’s crafty, and he’ll sniff out your scam for sure. If he really betrayed Synthcorp, like you said, he couldn’t have survived this long by being gullible. I’d suggest a more covert operation if I were unlucky enough to be charged with capturing him.”

145

Forgot to specify this earlier, but Kirk will definitely take the AI cores.

146

"The bike stays with Fortnight. The bike won’t fetch us much resale, we have enough bikes of our own, and this job is paying us enough that we’re not that desperate for cash. Really, the guns and ammo we’ve taken are more than enough to pay for this part of the mission, even with the cruddy quality of them all.

"Now that being said, I have an idea. But we’re likely going to need Fortnight’s cooperation. And it might not be the best idea anyway, but I’m throwing it out here. How about in exchange for your credstick being returned to you, and the fact that we’ve spared your life and the lives of your crew that surrendered, you attend that meeting and pretend that everything’s normal, except for the fact that you claim you got hit because someone is after the guy that Chaggo sold that info to. You barely escaped with your life, and your crew was taken out. You inform Chaggo that someone may be able to trace things back to him, since they were able to find you, but that you’re sure you weren’t followed to the meeting place. One of us is accompanying you, as you lean on the person. You’re not going to be in any shape to do much of anything to assist Chaggo in his run anyway. Your injuries are real, so you won’t have to worry about that part. You recommend our member as someone to take your place on this run. This way we infiltrate Chaggo’s gang directly, and make him concerned that people are on to him. We might even be able to sow discord among his own crew.

"It’s a huge risk, for us and you, but it’s also a huge opportunity. Besides, you help us out, and it’s likely Synthcorp will forget you even exist.

“But even if we don’t go with that plan, you need to come with us. Because the last thing we need you doing is tipping off Chaggo. And if I even so much as suspect that you are thinking of double-crossing us, you’re going to wish we had killed you.”

147

Nail picks up the credstick and stares at it for a bit. Visions of casino benders, free drinks, complimentary massages, VIP treatment all the way, flit through this head. He’s had so many unlucky days recently; certainly he’s due. He’ll win and nobody will even care he used their money… What seems like a minute-long fantasy passes by in his head, when he sees Goethe glancing over at him and his new find. Snapping out of it, he throws the credstick over to him. “Look what I found,” he says normally.

148

Fast forward a few hours to now. Goethe has just laid out his rough plan. Nail has taken a chair from somewhere and is sitting down. Nail is actually listening this time, his pose like a rendition of The Thinker, his head on his palm instead of on his fist. Straightening a bit, Nail speaks. “It’s fun, tricky, subtle, with lots of things that could go wrong. I like it.”

Nail yawns a bit. “It is a lot of work though. We could always ambush Chaggo at the station, take him somewhere, mindrape him, bust in his hideout, save the Indian, and be done with it.” Nail pauses and scratches his chin. “You know, that sounds like a lot of work too. Let’s go with the fun way.”

149

Fortnight turns pale as the party suggests he meet Chaggo. “Really,” he says fearfully, “you don’t want me doing this. Chaggo’s an Adept. First time my voice squeaks, he’ll cut me apart and be halfway to Portland before you even realize he’s gone. There has to be another way!”

150

Kirk frowns a bit as Fortnight protests to the group. “I don’t like depending on the frightened one for our con,” she offers, “And I especially don’t like the idea of waiting to fight the adept when he has reinforcements. Is there any contingency that would allow us to take him at the meet without tipping off the authorities? We have to assume he’ll attempt to conceal his arrival, and if he finds anything amiss he’ll likely utilize a very public exit route.”

151

Okay, so we leave Fortnight out of this. That’s fine, we still need to stash him somewhere until this is all over, both for our protection and his. We don’t need him tipping off Chaggo, and we don’t need Chaggo coming after Fortnight…unless we want to use Fortnight for bait, but I don’t like using someone I know little about and trust even less as the keystone to any operation.

So we’ll do it the simple way. We get to the meeting place early and wait to ambush the guy. However, while Chaggo’s unlikely to expect an ambush, he’s no doubt going to have his guard up and be watching very closely for anything out of place. Even more so when he realizes Fortnight isn’t coming. And there are going to be a lot of escape routes.

This might be our only chance to snag this guy. If we fuck this up…well…let’s just not fuck it up.

The other option is we somehow find a way to track him somehow after the meeting. He might lead us to where he’s holding Arry at some point. At that point we go in and finish the job.

In the first case, we have a very public place with a lot of escape routes, but Chaggo’s likely to be alone.

In the second case, we’re likely to be going up against all sorts of security.

152

“Wait. When is Chaggo likely to be alone?”

153

Well, Fortnight says Chaggo’s meeting him tomorrow about assembling a crew. Now I don’t know about you, but bringing a whole crew with for what should be an innocuous meeting seems a bit overkill. Especially to a place as public as that.

Granted, we’re thinking of doing that, but we have a good reason.

It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare for any surprises, but it’s less likely that he’s going to have a lot of backup at such a meeting.

154

A train terminal is a pretty public place, though. If we attempt to ambush him, all he really has to do is scream “Help I’m being kidnapped!” and we have cops to deal with on top of one ticked off adept.

155

I’m not talking about ambushing him in the terminal itself if we can avoid it. But we probably can have one or more of us shadowing him when he realizes Forthnight isn’t showing up. We can then ambush him somewhere less public.

Or we just tail him full out.

The problem with tailing him full out is it’s going to be hard to pull off without being made. Tailing someone in public place is fairly easy.

156

“Is anyone here any good at stealthy maneuvers? In all my years, it is one thing I have yet to master.”

Seneth looks like he is going to pass out.

157

“Seneth, could you stun Fortnight from afar? Barring that, how loud are the stun gloves? Third idea. Any contact poisons we can get our hands on quickly?”

158

"Stun him? Do you mean Chaggo? I can’t stun like that, but I can cast clairauidence, which allows me to hear from afar. This would at least help us if we have this Fortnight continue with his meeting with Chaggo.

Oh, and I can turn invisible as well. That could be helpful."

159

Some things the group should know while they are planning what to do about Chaggo:

If a character wants to follow Chaggo without being discovered by him, they will make a test using their Intuition + Shadowing skill, vs Chaggo’s Perception + Intuition. Some positive and negative modifiers will apply, for example; it’s easier to be inconspicuous in a large crowd, and Chaggo will probably be suspicious if Fortnight doesn’t show up.

Also, this particular location (terminal 27) is a very public place. Everyone is familiar with it, as it’s the most likely route anyone will take to get to the sprawling Evo corp compound.

160

Geothe says:

"I’m decent enough at being stealthy when I need to be, so I’m fine being the one who tails him.

Geothe has a dice pool of 7 before modifiers for shadowing someone. In fact, he’s a seven for the whole Stealth group. So if someone’s got a better pool, they’ll probably want to shadow Chaggo instead.

As far as the stun gloves, they’re pretty much don’t make any sound. Still, it’s going to look really awkward when Chaggo’s body twitches uncontrollably for a bit as his system is hit with hundreds of volts of electricity and I’m standing over him applying the juice. Not to mention that as an Ork, I highly doubt one hit of the gloves is going to knock him out. Plus, even if it does, there’s the whole thing of getting out of a very public area with a now unconscious Ork that people saw me just assault. Honestly, if we want to take him out in the terminal, we’re going to have to use some pretty heavy knockout toxin or narcojet, which McManus could probably get us pretty quickly, but it might take a couple hits. And while a narcoject pistol is about the size of a holdout pistol and easily concealable, it still might be made out by others as I fire it at him–likely twice, assuming I hit both times.

Really, it’d be easier if Fortnight came with us, but if he doubts his ability to fool Chaggo, I sure as Hell am not going to recommend he come along.

But what we could do is have one of us keep an eye out for Chaggo to show up, and have Seneth tail him in the Astral. Though, a public place such as that no doubt has plenty of astrally projected authorities who might get a little suspicious of Seneth’s behavior.