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Bottled Demon
Runners: Fingers, Barger, Neo, Crazed Jake, Iceface,
Lilith, Running Wolf, Red Hammer While
lazing around in Joe's one afternoon, the party were approached by a Johnson
for some bodyguarding, 5000 nuyen apiece,
for 3 hours work....Iceface, knowing Steelfist is out of town,
recruits Neo a freelance decker. Fingers hit the streets to
find out more about the guy hiring them & Neo hits the Matrix. Between
them they discover he's a Topal, a
Talismonger and a Raven shaman, his
shop burned down a couple of days ago. He is connected to a mage circle
called the Children of Sophocles which was founded by Simon Templeman.
Templeman was recently extremely interested in archaeology and particularly
ancient anomalous artefacts. He'd recently had contacts with both the Draco
Foundation and the Atlantean Foundation. Templeman had died a couple of weeks
previously from a disease contracted on a recent dig in the South Pacific.
The party met Topal at 3 AM next morning. He led them by a roundabout route
to a junkyard in the Pullayup Barrens ( not a nice place). Going into the
yard the party made their way to the meet!
Running Wolf went Astral and identified 3 elves waiting, one of
them also astral. Topal seemed
unnerved, even more so when the contact obviously wasn't who he was
expecting! He slipped the briefcase he was carrying onto Fingers' wrist and
goes forward for the meet. At that point ( in finest Shadowrun tradition) the
drek hit the fan! The place was suddenly full of flashing blue lights,
searchlights and sirens as Lone Star crash the party, in force, supported by
helicopter gunships. The elven contact acts like greased lightning
quick-draws a gun and Talon took a hollow-point round to the centre of the
forehead. The party splits,
dispersing through the piles of rusting metals. Neo got busted ( and
it was his first run too!) Crazed Jake went invisible and started
lobbing grenades around as a distraction, Running Wolf, Fingers
and Iceface made it over the fence (after Iceface discovered
the hard way it was electrified!!!). Barger managed to seriously
injure two cops while escaping trough a drain! Next
morning the runners all made their way to Finger’s apartment downtown,
where they proceeded to investigate the case left by Topal. Inside, protected
by several magical wards is a small statuette, which Fingers
identified as an incredibly powerful Power Focus of an unknown type - just
about the same time as Lone Star SWAT teams arrive… after various shoot outs
and a hair raising cross-town car chase the party ends up in the Redmond Barrens attempting to meld
into the crowds there, except Lilith who was busted at the scene while
pretending to be an innocent bystander. They soon discovered that they are
plastered all over the local tv stations and Seattle Headline News, wanted
for Topal’s murder, with a hefty reward posted. Deciding
to lay low, they head for the old hideout at William’s garage, pausing only
to deal harshly with a bunch troll
Gangers that tried to mug them. Hiding
out in William’s garage, the party were joined by Red Hammer (who’d
managed to hook up with Neo after Lone Star had kicked him loose
-after asking lots of question a about someone called “Bloodwing”). Deciding
in might be best to lay low there for a while, Red Hammer and Iceface
ran the perimeter while Running Wolf, Fingers and Barger began
an astral investigation of the statuette. Running Wolf decided to
follow the weird astral trail the thing was exhibiting – straight into an
astral warp, and almost died from the damage! Fortunately, her chummers came
to the rescue, Fingers taking heavy damage from the warp, Barger
very wisely didn’t like the look of it and hung back. On returning to their
bodies Barger used the power of the statuette to help heal his injured
team-mates . Neo went into super-hacker mode and managed to ID
Bloodwing as a top-flight elven assassin. He then went on to hack in quick
succession the Tir Taingire council (
to track down Bloodwing), Seattle Headline News ( to try to get the
Runner’s side of the story across),
the Atlantean Foundation (accusing them of hiring Bloodwing to retrieve the
statuette, and Saeder Krupp (
offering to off Bloodwing for them) Deciding
that lurking about in a garage in the
Redmond Barrens wasn't really getting them anywhere the Runners decided to
take decisive action. Neo was able to track the source of the stories in the
press accusing them of murdering Topal as Joe Bloggs - a reporter with
Seattle Headline News and connections to Lone Star. Neo, Iceface
and Barger decided to pay him a visit. Running Wolf and Fingers
meanwhile decide to hit their contacts once again to try and find out more
about the idol. Arriving at Blogg's apartment they find it empty (as he's at
work) and decide to wait - at which point Lone Star turns up in force. The
runners hole up in an apartment across the corridor while Lone Star cordons
off the building. Neo wonders out loud how Lone Star got on to them so quickly and Iceface
suddenly clicks ! Lone Star cut Neo loose so he could lead them to Bloodwing
- he's bugged !. Indeed they find a
small transmitter in his cyberdeck. Back at the garage. Freya comes back to Fingers with the info
that although she couldn't find anything out about the idol, someone else - a
fortune-teller called Trixie - has been asking questions about it. Running
Wolf and Fingers decide to pay Trixie a visit. Receiving a call
from Neo to the effect that Lone Star are probably following them - they go
through some manoeuvres to shake off any tail (Running Wolf having a lot of
experience shaking tail !!!). Trixie
turns out to be a dog shaman, who saw the idol in a dream-vision and recognised it as evil. She asks to see it -
unfortunately Barger's got it.
Back at the stand-off with the cops, Neo cuts a deal with Lone Star.
They'll call off the dogs for 48 hrs and the party either deliver Bloodwing
or take the fall for Talon's murder. They head for Trixie's. Trixie examines the idol carefully and
says she has to think about it. She goes for
a walk and returns - the runners suspect possessed by Dog - warning them the idol must be destroyed
and only a dragon has the power to do it. There are only two dragons
currently in Seattle ( the cops ain't
gonna let them leave town). One,
Hasselich, has a bad rep on
the streets, the other, Greyswain seems a better bet. They head off to Tacoma
to meet the friendly wizworm. Things
go well(-ish) at first, he eventually offers to help them destroy the idol in
return for a Blood Debt. However,
when Barger tries to leave with the idol, Greyswain suddenly
goes all physical on them !!!! 24
hrs later the runners wake in Seattle
General, completely cured but minus the idol! As they leave the hospital they
meet a strange woman ... The mysterious woman who met the runners outside the
hospital introduces herself as Arleesh - a great feathered serpent. She seems
to know everything about what has gone on and basically tells the runners
they gave the idol to the wrong dragon. Greyswain is a lesser dragon and has
insufficient power to avoid being suborned by the evil. She "suggests" the runners rest
and tool up and meet her that night to retrieve the idol. Iceface, Neo and Barger try unsuccessfully
to tool up but their various fixers seem unable to help at such short notice.
Neo goes online and scans the matrix access to Greyswain's building, finding
it red hot. The runners met up with
Arleesh at 1 AM. Neo takes another matrix-run at the SAN for Greyswain's building and discovers
the node dead. He manages to access to find the CPU has been burned out !
Arleesh and the runners head to the building to discover a scene of carnage.
There is evidence of a firefight, however some of the bodies seem strangely
wasted as if they had been dead for decades. While Arleesh goes to
investigate Greyswain's lair the runners are dispatched to check out the basement. While her too they find
evidence of a firefight, it also looks like the inhabitants have been turned
into some kind of ghouls, there are bodies everywhere again strangely wasted,
evidence of cannibalism, people being torn apart with bare hands etc. They find one survivor incoherent and
insane who attacks them mindlessly and Neo puts him down. Deciding
to head up to Greyswain's lair they find the Dragon, obviously insane
"playing" with Bloodwing. He attacks the party with his breath
weapon then hits them with claw and fang taking out Barger before gong
down in a hail of APDS bullets from Iceface. (14 bloody successes!!!).
Arleesh appears and grabs the idol, performing some weird draconic
special-effects laden ritual on it and deactivates it. Neo hits Bloodwing
with a stun baton to stop him running ( as if he could after being mangled by
a dragon) and Lone Star arrive late as always to clean up the mess. |
Friends: Arleesh, Trixie, Dog Foes:
Bloodwing World
events: Maurice
"the Butcher" Bigio chosen over Rowena O'Malley as the new Don of
Seattle, |