Are we officially shadowrunners now?
Mar. 31st, 2006 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothHad the last session of Jen's new world of darkness game. We achieved a 'major victory', according to the conditions she'd specified, which means we only made enemies of the main villain, and not also of the mafia.
The party waited, variously hiding in trees or behind trucks, while the rent-a-cops examined the grounds, and radio'd in that it was just a blown transformer. After they left, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and Tony the Star picked the lock on one of the two barnlike structures making up Dr. Nitter's house, and they went inside.
Immediately, the Star started raiding the drawers for silverware. This was not a quiet process.
TtS: "I'm looking for silver, in case we run into more of those werewolves."
JT: "... you're going to throw spoons at them?"
MrE: "Can I have your shotgun, then?"
Unfortunately for him, Tony couldn't think of any reason (or way) to steal the large plasma screen television or leather-upholstered furniture. The party split up to search for the secret entrance to the basement lab, that they were sure was around *somewhere*. It turned out to be in the closet.
JT: "People with shotguns go first."
TtS: "Hey!"
JT: "I don't want to be in *front* of the shotgun."
The power was still on in the secret basement lab, and the motion sensors that turned on the lights spotted them, at least. The interesting features of the lab were a large mainframe computer with a blinking green cursor at the prompt, and four darkened cells with keypad locks.
Tony the Star looked in the first, and found a druggie friend of his who'd helped him out before, locked in the cell going through DTs. While he started shooting at the bulletproof glass in an attempt to 'accidentally' kill his teammates with ricochets, Jack looked in the other cells. One had a very, very dead werewolf, and the other had Susan McGregor -- the chick who'd last been seen with Blinky, who they'd been looking for.
The cells weren't quite soundproof, so they talked to her, and she revealed that Dr. Nitter was doing a demonstration of the werewolf project for some government types at Genomer right at that moment! He'd locked her up in here when she'd objected to randomly turning into a mindless killing machine. Jack and Einstein convinced her that she should join forces with them to reveal the truth about Dr. Nitter's work, rather than getting shot by Tony, which was the other choice offered to her.
Of course, they'd have to jimmy the card-key lock to get her out. Jack had his tools with him, and thought he might be able to manage it... and it was hard, but the dry run on the empty cell worked, and it opened. Tony's 'shoot a bullet into the card swipe' method of opening the cell with the very dead body in it did not work -- instead, it triggered the release of potentially lethal gas into the cell. But no pressure.
So Jack was extra careful, and managed to get Susan out [thanks to spending a point of willpower relating to the virtue of 'prudence'], and then her cardkey worked to get Tony's friend Jane out of her cell. Then they all left the place, since the computer (Susan warned them) was just a trap, rigged to kill everyone in the lab if it was messed with -- the real data was on Dr. Nitter's laptop, or on the mainframe at Genomer in his account.
So they headed for Genomer, planning to use Susan's card key (and assistance) to get inside the building. Taylor Asherton (the creepy Schroedinger chick) split off at that point to go sneak into the demonstration, while the rest of them pretended like they belonged in the building, and went up to Nitter's office to steal his laptop.
Of course, his laptop wasn't there, and none of them were good enough at hacking to access his account remotely. They also managed to set off a motion sensor, but found it (while searching the office for, say, Dr. Nitter's password written down somewhere) before the guards arrived, and switched to a nearby office to try hacking from someone else's terminal.
When the guards arrived, they acted innocent -- Einstein had eidetic memory, and had memorized several papers on advanced genetics, and was able to regurgitate enough phrases from them to fool the nontechnical security guards, with Susan explaining that he was there to interview for a position. Jack and Tony just hid.
Luckily, before their ruse could fall apart, Jane (who Tony had insisted they take along as a good luck charm) wandered out of Nitter's office looking drugged, and staring at a snow globe -- they'd forgotten all about her. The guards figured she was the one who'd set off the alarm, and started questioning her -- she kept them talking, flirting with them to distract them, while the rest of them snuck down to the mainframe, which was in the basement.
The door to the mainframe room was locked, and Susan didn't have access. But the ceiling tiles were the particleboard removable variety, so Tony the Star got boosted up into the ceiling and quietly dropped down on the other side. Unfortunately, the door was locked from both sides... and Tony still wasn't a hacker... and there was a tech asleep on a cot in the back of the room, who'd wake up if he made any noise.
Like, say, 'Ka-click!' "Okay, don't make any noise if you want to live," Tony said to the tech, holding the gun to his head. To make a short story shorter, they held the sysadmin at gunpoint, forcing him to use root access to copy all of Dr. Nitter's files onto a hard drive, then left him tied up under the floorboards next to the power cables while they headed back to the parking garage, calling Taylor on her cell as pre-arranged to let her know they had the goods.
Susan: "So I can go now, right?"
Jack: "I don't think so."
Susan: "What more do you want from me?"
Jack: "Look, you're in a lot more trouble than you know. Maybe if you come with us, Miss Asherton can sort it all for you. Stay with us at least long enough for us to explain everything."
Taylor Asherton came out hot, with six werewolves on her tail -- she'd been recognized at the demo, and Dr. Nitter had set his dogs on her. But werewolves couldn't catch a well-driven truck, and they managed to escape to the Schroedinger institute, where, among other people, the mob boss was waiting for them.
They explained to the Don that Susan here was the girl he'd sent them to get, but that Dr. Nitter was the one actually responsible for his son's death -- he'd given Susan drugs that turned her into a mindless werewolf. The combination of 'I can't let Nitter make a fool of me', 'the Schroedinger people won't let me kidnap a mostly-innocent person in front of them', and 'torturing a werewolf is maaaaaybe not such a hot idea' made him leave Susan in the institute's care, so long as they decrypted the files and provided the proof he wanted that it was Nitter who was his enemy.
Since they'd obeyed both the letter and the spirit of his 'request', he also didn't have the trio killed. Instead, they were sent to the far ends of the earth on vacation while things cooled down. They *had* just broken into Genomer and held someone at gunpoint, after all.
last session
According to Jen, we were supposed to go to the demo to get the laptop and end up fighting the werewolves... she'd put the tech in the computer room to scare us away, and hadn't anticipated the whole 'hold him at gunpoint' thing. "Plus, when I was coming up with this storyline I expected heroic characters, who'd want to know who Dr. Nitter was selling werewolves to." She was happy enough with how it turned out, though.
If Patrick doesn't come back (and we've heard nothing from him for months), we'll probably continue this storyline, or at least this world. Jeff wants to GM it, though.
The party waited, variously hiding in trees or behind trucks, while the rent-a-cops examined the grounds, and radio'd in that it was just a blown transformer. After they left, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and Tony the Star picked the lock on one of the two barnlike structures making up Dr. Nitter's house, and they went inside.
Immediately, the Star started raiding the drawers for silverware. This was not a quiet process.
TtS: "I'm looking for silver, in case we run into more of those werewolves."
JT: "... you're going to throw spoons at them?"
MrE: "Can I have your shotgun, then?"
Unfortunately for him, Tony couldn't think of any reason (or way) to steal the large plasma screen television or leather-upholstered furniture. The party split up to search for the secret entrance to the basement lab, that they were sure was around *somewhere*. It turned out to be in the closet.
JT: "People with shotguns go first."
TtS: "Hey!"
JT: "I don't want to be in *front* of the shotgun."
The power was still on in the secret basement lab, and the motion sensors that turned on the lights spotted them, at least. The interesting features of the lab were a large mainframe computer with a blinking green cursor at the prompt, and four darkened cells with keypad locks.
Tony the Star looked in the first, and found a druggie friend of his who'd helped him out before, locked in the cell going through DTs. While he started shooting at the bulletproof glass in an attempt to 'accidentally' kill his teammates with ricochets, Jack looked in the other cells. One had a very, very dead werewolf, and the other had Susan McGregor -- the chick who'd last been seen with Blinky, who they'd been looking for.
The cells weren't quite soundproof, so they talked to her, and she revealed that Dr. Nitter was doing a demonstration of the werewolf project for some government types at Genomer right at that moment! He'd locked her up in here when she'd objected to randomly turning into a mindless killing machine. Jack and Einstein convinced her that she should join forces with them to reveal the truth about Dr. Nitter's work, rather than getting shot by Tony, which was the other choice offered to her.
Of course, they'd have to jimmy the card-key lock to get her out. Jack had his tools with him, and thought he might be able to manage it... and it was hard, but the dry run on the empty cell worked, and it opened. Tony's 'shoot a bullet into the card swipe' method of opening the cell with the very dead body in it did not work -- instead, it triggered the release of potentially lethal gas into the cell. But no pressure.
So Jack was extra careful, and managed to get Susan out [thanks to spending a point of willpower relating to the virtue of 'prudence'], and then her cardkey worked to get Tony's friend Jane out of her cell. Then they all left the place, since the computer (Susan warned them) was just a trap, rigged to kill everyone in the lab if it was messed with -- the real data was on Dr. Nitter's laptop, or on the mainframe at Genomer in his account.
So they headed for Genomer, planning to use Susan's card key (and assistance) to get inside the building. Taylor Asherton (the creepy Schroedinger chick) split off at that point to go sneak into the demonstration, while the rest of them pretended like they belonged in the building, and went up to Nitter's office to steal his laptop.
Of course, his laptop wasn't there, and none of them were good enough at hacking to access his account remotely. They also managed to set off a motion sensor, but found it (while searching the office for, say, Dr. Nitter's password written down somewhere) before the guards arrived, and switched to a nearby office to try hacking from someone else's terminal.
When the guards arrived, they acted innocent -- Einstein had eidetic memory, and had memorized several papers on advanced genetics, and was able to regurgitate enough phrases from them to fool the nontechnical security guards, with Susan explaining that he was there to interview for a position. Jack and Tony just hid.
Luckily, before their ruse could fall apart, Jane (who Tony had insisted they take along as a good luck charm) wandered out of Nitter's office looking drugged, and staring at a snow globe -- they'd forgotten all about her. The guards figured she was the one who'd set off the alarm, and started questioning her -- she kept them talking, flirting with them to distract them, while the rest of them snuck down to the mainframe, which was in the basement.
The door to the mainframe room was locked, and Susan didn't have access. But the ceiling tiles were the particleboard removable variety, so Tony the Star got boosted up into the ceiling and quietly dropped down on the other side. Unfortunately, the door was locked from both sides... and Tony still wasn't a hacker... and there was a tech asleep on a cot in the back of the room, who'd wake up if he made any noise.
Like, say, 'Ka-click!' "Okay, don't make any noise if you want to live," Tony said to the tech, holding the gun to his head. To make a short story shorter, they held the sysadmin at gunpoint, forcing him to use root access to copy all of Dr. Nitter's files onto a hard drive, then left him tied up under the floorboards next to the power cables while they headed back to the parking garage, calling Taylor on her cell as pre-arranged to let her know they had the goods.
Susan: "So I can go now, right?"
Jack: "I don't think so."
Susan: "What more do you want from me?"
Jack: "Look, you're in a lot more trouble than you know. Maybe if you come with us, Miss Asherton can sort it all for you. Stay with us at least long enough for us to explain everything."
Taylor Asherton came out hot, with six werewolves on her tail -- she'd been recognized at the demo, and Dr. Nitter had set his dogs on her. But werewolves couldn't catch a well-driven truck, and they managed to escape to the Schroedinger institute, where, among other people, the mob boss was waiting for them.
They explained to the Don that Susan here was the girl he'd sent them to get, but that Dr. Nitter was the one actually responsible for his son's death -- he'd given Susan drugs that turned her into a mindless werewolf. The combination of 'I can't let Nitter make a fool of me', 'the Schroedinger people won't let me kidnap a mostly-innocent person in front of them', and 'torturing a werewolf is maaaaaybe not such a hot idea' made him leave Susan in the institute's care, so long as they decrypted the files and provided the proof he wanted that it was Nitter who was his enemy.
Since they'd obeyed both the letter and the spirit of his 'request', he also didn't have the trio killed. Instead, they were sent to the far ends of the earth on vacation while things cooled down. They *had* just broken into Genomer and held someone at gunpoint, after all.
last session
According to Jen, we were supposed to go to the demo to get the laptop and end up fighting the werewolves... she'd put the tech in the computer room to scare us away, and hadn't anticipated the whole 'hold him at gunpoint' thing. "Plus, when I was coming up with this storyline I expected heroic characters, who'd want to know who Dr. Nitter was selling werewolves to." She was happy enough with how it turned out, though.
If Patrick doesn't come back (and we've heard nothing from him for months), we'll probably continue this storyline, or at least this world. Jeff wants to GM it, though.
