Mice & Mystics on the Living Room Floor

We're just a little ways into chapter 5; we had to stop for the evening, and left it out in the hopes of finishing it some night(s) this week.

Shadowrun game recap

Shadowrun game recap

We played last weekend, and had an exciting session.  Slider, the magician hired by Canoti to investigate the missile attack and the fire at Colson Towers, has been accepted as a member of the team, more or less.  He didn’t turn up an awful lot of answers for us yet, though.

We checked out the building at UW from which we needed to steal data on the Amulet of Suns.  We needed to penetrate a second-floor lab.

Kryptek was able to hack the UW system and tag us as permitted to been on the grounds.  Slider was to be a Wuxing magic researcher; Kryptek and I his research assistants; and Canoti and Agave his security detail. 

Early the next morning, I summoned an air spirit, and we drove to the lab building.  We entered with no real problem, and there was hardly anyone around.

Kryptek erased security footage as we passed through the halls, and we soon made it to the 2^nd floor and found the door to the lab.  This door was completely on another system; we did not have access to it, so Kryptek hacked it and got us in.  Just as we were entering, an older guy with unkempt hair approached us with a briefcase and said, “Oh thank goodness you are here!  Here’s this.” And he gave us the briefcase.  He was pretty frazzled and nervous.  We quickly found out that he was a professor.  To cut a long story short, he had something concealed in the briefcase, and we think it’s the stolen Amulet of the Suns, and he was told to expect us at that moment and give it to us.  How did he find us?  How did our Mr. Johnson know we would be there at that exact moment? How did the professor steal the amulet?  We don’t know, and are a little creeped out.

Within was a room with an actual mainframe crunching data, and lot of marker boards full of scribbles.  Kryptek decked in and found HUGE quantities of data, which filled all her available storage space and took a minute or so to download.  At the same time, some campus security cars pulled up out front, in non-emergency mode.  Right when Kryptek finished, she sent a false emergency signal from across campus, and the security cars started to roll away.

(At some point, during all this, one of us slapped the nervous professor with a tranq patch, knocking him out.)

Canoti watched the three campus security cars start down the street, but then saw the sudden appearance of several other black cars racing past them towards the building, causing the security vehicles to swerve out of the way.  They quickly stopped in front of the lab building we were in, and black-armored commandos hopped out.

Kryptek had the data, and we were fleeing the thaumaturgical lab when we saw two silhouetted commandos drop in front of the screened windows and plant an explosive device.  We were running down the hallway towards the stairs, with Agave carrying the prof firefighter-style, and Bingo carrying the mysterious suitcase, when the lab windows blew in.

Slider cast a trid phantasm spell [an type of illusion] in the second floor hallway:  he made it look like Canoti and Agave were there, taking cover in doorways, firing down the hall at our pursuers.  As we exited to the first floor, we could hear the sound of gunfire, both illusionary and real, above us.  Kryptek triggered the maglocks on the doors as we passed to slow down pursuit.

In the lobby we encountered two campus guards exchanging gun fire with the black-armored guys outside.  We acted like the innocent civilians we were disguised as, frightened and looking for protection, and the guards bought it, telling us to duck into the security room nearby.

Kryptek went back into the Matrix and soon found local network the assault team was using.  There was an large icon over the building: Some kind of large, silent black helicopter.  Kryptek, with great skill and effort and luck, was able to get some marks on the helicopter and attack it with data spikes.  She must have hit it pretty hard, because moments later, down on the first floor, we heard the sound of screeching turbines and some loud rooftop crashes.

Somewhere, up the stairwell we descended, we heard an explosion as another locked door was breached by the commandos. 

The enemy’s network stayed up, though.  Kryptek was disappointed to note that the enemy decker must not have been on the chopper.  She went hunting, found his deck, and killed it, too.

This left the enemy network open, and Kryptek quickly got marks on it.  As Bingo cast a stun bolt spell at the nearest commando in black armor, and the guards fired out the door, Slider cast another trid phantasm to make it look like we (and the two guards) were wearing the same type of commando gear as the enemy we were facing.  Kryptek immediately put fake AROs on their network for us to make us show up in Matrix as members of their team.  Slider—whom we all know by now to have exceptional social skills—told the guards to come with us.  We fled the building, with Slider announcing on the enemy’s communications network: “Leaving ground floor with wounded!”

We ran to our two vehicles and piled in and, as we did so, heard another voice on the network say, “…But, we’re not on the ground floor!”

The commandos realized they had been duped too late, and we were able to drive away into the surrounding busy streets and vanish.

We called our Mr. Johnson, who asked us if we had “both packages.”  So, apparently, he was expecting us to have the briefcase, too.  He gave us a location in the Redmond Barrens to meet him, and we were about to arrive there when we stopped the game for the night.

Questions:  Who was the commando team?  Our best guess is a rapid response team from The Atlantean Foundation, coming after the stuff we had just stolen from them, but there could be other players involved that we don’t know about.  How did our Johnson know we would be there at that exact time, and how did he arrange for the professor to meet us there with the stolen contents of the briefcase (and we’re assuming that the briefcase contains the Amulet of Suns, but the case is shielded and the professor seemed to be very nervous about us opening it, so we don’t know.)  What is the Amulet of Suns? Is it powerful?  Is giving it to our Johnson a mistake?  Will he kill us and use the amulet to conquer the world?  Can we get more money out of him before we hand it over? Who the hell knows?

Game night with friends

Sheriff of Nottingham on the living room floor

Some old friends and their kids came over for dinner. Then we stayed up past midnight playing Sheriff of Nottingham, Telestrations, and Beyond Balderdash, with wine, tea, and lots of leftover holiday chocolate. This was, to me, a great way to be closing out the Holidays. Now begins the long slide into the back half of the school year, and the less festive portion of winter. Maybe more hanging out with friends will break up the dreariness.