We resume our duties on our next shift, but we are all kind of tense about all of the things that have gone on.  Fortunately it is a quiet shift, until a call comes in around 9 pm.  It is on the other side of our patrol area so we have a ways to go.  Mari says hold on and starts speeding there.  The patient is  Ben Adkins, 31, human, and is basically healthy, but he has a hazardous occupation although it doesn’t say what.  Blood pressure is low and dropping.  It takes us 20 min to get there.  We arrive at Zee’s Club.

Thumper leads the way as we move to the door.  The bouncer confirms our ID and lets us in.  Inside it is loud, crowded, and hard to see.  Isaac cant find the guy so we talk to the bartender.  He says there is another business in the basement that is not part of the bar.  He goes around to the back of the bar and opens a hidden door.  We head down the secret steps into the basement.  We hear different music, much more grinding.  Two guards in security armor approach us and try to stop us.  The trolls keep going and we follow them in.  As we look into the club there are 2 trolls just beating on each other in the center of the floor.  There are a bunch of orc gangers and others around the floor, watching the fight.  They are Sewer Rats.  We also see a guy in a very expensive suit and a woman with blue eyes.  She is very powerful in magic and a little bored but intrigued.  We see the signal is coming from the back of the club.  The bouncer says that the ambulance crew already arrived.

We get to the patient and see the other crew from Crash Cart., 2 guards and 2 medics.  They try to stop us and say that they were here first.  They pull up their guns and point them at us.  Espadas rolls in and slices the barrels off of the guards guns.  Thumper thumps one of the medics in the face, and he lands on his back like a sack of ham.  Ryoshi and Isaac move past the stunned Crash Cart guys and move towards the patient.  The rest of the crew follows.  Ryoshi kicks in the door (everyone else is very impressed).

We see the patient on the ground in a pool of blood with a woman bending over him.  He has been beaten to a pulp and is close to bleeding out.  He is not even recognizable.  We slap on a Trauma patch and start moving him and his girlfriend out of here.  Two trolls start to block our way and say that Ben has to fight and they own him.  Ben comes around a little and says he wants to fight.  We keep talking to the troll bouncers, and to Ben to try and keep the fight from happening, but he really wants to fight and is willing to waive his Doc Wagon contract.  Isaac slaps a Tranq patch on him to try and keep him down.  He passes out.

We tell the troll manager that he can’t fight but he will be able to find him once he is healed.  We keep moving out.  On the way out we notice a person in the crowd with a Universal Brotherhood symbol.  Espadas assenses her and she is a magic user, very strong but the aura is strange.  She also has some cyberware.  We carry the guy out of the club and to the ambulance.  We start treating him in the ambulance and start driving to the hospital.  We get him there and get him secured.

On the way out we run into Dr. Hyun.  She tells us that her man we talked to after the explosion has since passed away.  We are not surprised.  Our shift concludes and tomorrow we are on duty in the station.

We head to the Triple Tap for a drink after a weird night.  We run into Bright there along with his new crew.  He is really happy to be back doing medical work.  We eat and decide to go and look at another of the Sewer Rat sites that was flagged on our map, the one by the old Gold Coast.  We know that this mostly run down and inhabited by homeless people.  We do see one cluster of people hanging around some of the remaining buildings.  These people seem to have better clothing and are more on watch.  We settle in and watch them.  After a while a van backs up to a side door.  Looking through his scope, Ryoshi sees crates similar to the ones we saw in the warehouse.  There are 4 orcs helping with the crates.

After the van pulls away we decide to hit the gangers and take the weapons off the street.  Espadas sneaks up to the gangers and hits two of them with his swords.  They both die instantly.  One of the remaining guys notice the sound but Ryoshi drops him.

Isaac uses his Maglock key on the warehouse door.  He opens it and we look inside.  There are 4 more gangers opening the crates.  Combat ensues.  Ryoshi hits one of the gangers, but doesn’t get through his armor.  Thumper kills one with his shotgun.  They shoot back and Icebox is hit, but he shakes it off.  Icebox hits the guy who hit him.  Espadas charges in and takes out two guys.  Ryoshi drops the last one.

We start looking at the crates but hear more voices from behind the other door in the room.  They say go around and several others try coming through the door.  Several of the crates had grenades and Espadas throws two of them at the door they are coming through.  A bunch of them drop, but one of the grenades bounces back and Espadas catches the edge of the blast, but he is OK.  Thumper also takes out several with another grenade.

Icebox shoots and he shoots Espadas in the back, in spite of the Joker.

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We dispatch the remaining gangers.

We hear other noises from in the building.  We grab what we can carry and Thumper shoots a rocket into what is left to blow the rest up.

Thumper gets caught in the explosion but manages to not die.  Mari comes an picks us up and gets us all back to the Triple Tap.  We stash the weapons we took.  Isaac gets a message from an anonymous person.  An older man’s face appears on the screen.  Isaac recognizes him as the guy who was with the blue eyed girl in the basement bar.  His name is Vincent Dupree and he is an executive at Saeder Krupp.  He asks to meet when it is convenient.

<scene>

Work has gone back to normal at Doc Wagon, except that Thumper seems to be really quiet and keeps to himself.  We keep going to the restaurant and things are OK there, but Thumper seems to be troubled about the Troll gangers we ran into.

Bright was promoted into an EMT position, which he is really excited about.  He has been moved to a different team as their primary med tech.  However they have not yet backfilled his position, so we are running short handed.  We have a day off.

We know Franz was organizing the weapons shipments from Germany, but didn’t know who was behind the idea and why they helped Franz.  However we did not see a Universal Brotherhood symbol there, so we don’t know if it was related to the previous deal down by the docks.

We are at the Triple Tap with a day off.  Thumper is really busy working both the front and back of house, so he cant leave. We decide to go look around the city, to see if we can find Dr. Hyun’s nephew as well as find any more information about the weapons deals and the Universal Brotherhood.  He was last seen near Clybourn and Larabee in the NW part of the Shattergraves.  She also give us a description and a video from one of his presentations.  Ha-Joon Hyun.

We take the L down there.  On the way we also get a message from Charlie Zero say he found something, with a link to Noose Net.  We get off near his last know location.  There are still some businesses, but may are boarded up and things look really sketchy.  Matt finds a quiet stoop and accesses the message while Espadas and Ryoshi keep watch.  However he is not able to connect.  He head to his last known location.  We find a community of apartments that is being built around a park.  The project seems abandoned, and there is only some work going on in one building.  We go into one of the other buildings.  There are some squatters, and we ask them about Ha-Joon.  One of the squatters identifies himself as Jim.  He says the project was shut down after some sort of a problem.  All of the workers just left after some sort of security people told them to leave.  We ask about the Universal Brotherhood.  Another guy comes forward and says he was in there but he got out.  They lie about projects and preach a lot, but nothing ever comes of it.  At the higher levels they get really weird, and people often go missing.  That was why he got out.

We leave and check some other buildings.  Issac notices that another building has a basement and looks a little more finished.  It also seems empty, with no squatters.  We head downstairs and it doesn’t seem to be residential.  There is a large boiler and it is very damp, dirty, and smelly.  We find some boxes and cases from old supplies, but a lot of it is ruined.  There is one computer terminal that seems to control all of this machinery.  It saws it is a water treatment system.  Ryoshi notices a Universal Brotherhood symbol on the wall, scrawled by hand.  There is a trap door nearby, but with no visible mechanism.  Issac looks at the terminal and sees it has some hidden commands.  However when he tries to access them he fumbles and ends up shutting off the terminal.

We go old school and Espadas whacks the floor with his swords.  He slices through the latch and the trap door opens.  There is a lot of dust and darkness, along with a stairwell that goes down.  There is a different smell from below, like chemicals or cleaning solutions.  We head down and find a hallway with a very high tech looking door at then end.  The door says C-104.  The door also senses as magical.  Isaac has a maglock passkey and is able to get it open.  The lights are also on in the room ahead.

Inside is some sort of lab, with an isolation chamber.  There are some glass tubes to one side with some blobby, living things moving around in them.  There is a panel on one wall that says “Verify identity”.  When we don’t respond some small drones drop out of the ceiling.

Espadas moves to block the door so it can’t trap us in here.  He shoots at one and misses.  Issac is able to use his maglock key to hack the security and get the drones to go back into the ceiling.  We grab some files and Issac scans the room and records it with his cyber eyes.  We close the door and get out of there as quickly as possible.

We head to the roof, intending get from there to another building.  We see some security on the road below us.  We quickly climb to the roof and climb over the wall to the next building.  The cops think they saw something and follow us, but we are able to slip away and out the back.

We head to  the restaurant to check on the link and let Charlie Zero know what we found.  The link takes us to a video and a directory that is self deleting, we need to download the data then it will erase itself.  The data has a map of the city showing locations where the Sewer Rats activity have been concentrated.  There are at least 4 hotspots, including the location of the original weapons deal on the docks.  There are 6 or 7 other gangs listed that are competing with the Rats, including two larger gangs.  We can see where the gangs might come into conflict, including the apartments where we just were and around the Triple Tap.

After looking at that we scrub our video to remove faces and voices, and send him the results.  We also include Ha-Joon’s image and tell him what little we know about the Universal Brotherhood.    Since we still have some time we decide to head down to the docks to check out where the weapons deal went down.

As we were riding the L down there, we see that there was an explosion in the area where we just were.  There were casualties, and the explosion leveled multiple buildings, including the building where the lab was and where the homeless were.

We get to the docks, and this area is even seedier than the last area.  There doesn’t look like there has been much activity since the bust.  We find vehicle tracks, marks from large trunks, and many foot prints.  We also find some crumpled paper.  One is a business card for Scott Wilson, who works for the FBI.  The other is a crude map of the warehouse with an area marked to the south is circled.  It is about 1-2 blocks away.  We head that way.

Things smell even worse in this area.  We find another set of buildings that are abandoned.   This was another hot spot on the Sewer Rat activity map.  We stealthily case the neighborhood.  We see some activity on the south side of the building.  There is a cellar entrance there, and some people standing around outside.  They are on watch but we are not spotted.   They do have Sewer Rat patches, and they are all orcs.  Once again Issac records the location and all of the faces to share with Charlie Zero.  We don’t want to take on the whole gang so we retreat.

We head back to the Triple Tap.  We first get a message from Charlie Zero saying that after he started looking around based on our last message when he attracted a lot of unwanted attention.  He is going into hiding and said we should destroy anything we took from the lab.   So of course we look through the folder that we took from the lab.  There seems to be data on test subjects that are identified by a serial number.  The  data tracks them over time and records symptoms.  All of the patients seem to have died, except for the last one.  That one says stage 4 achieved, moving subject to another location.

We decide to replace the binder with a Doc Wagon cover and then hide it work.  We find out that the VTOL crew went to the explosion site. Jay walk says that they had two patients and one fatality.  The patients said he saw some people there right before the explosion and he saw a van.  That guy is in surgery right now.  We head home and will come back just before our shift tomorrow.

When we get in we ask Dr. Hyun.  She says one of the patients is in a coma, but the other one is awake.  She says we shouldn’t talk to him, but Issac goes anyway.  He does his best doctor routine.  Louis Chatwell is the patient.  He is an architect for a firm downtown and was looking at a potential job site.  As they were going past the apartments he saw a black van pull up and several people go into the building carrying big cases.  The ran out shortly after and drove away.  He was about a block away when the explosions started.  It looked like several people were caught in the buildings when they exploded.  He can also describe one of the men:  long nose, Van Dyke goatee, and quite pale skin.

We start our next shift.

Things have calmed down after the action from last time.  Mari got a settlement from Saeder-Krupp to keep it hushed up.  She is going to use it to help her mom, and she is incredibly happy and thankful around us.  She knows we saved her from a bad situation.  We are finally back on regular duty.  The runs have been mostly boring, but there does seem to be an increase in gang violence.

Things have gotten a little rougher around the neighborhood, and the regulars at the Triple Tap are carrying more weapons.  We still hang out there several times a week.  One night we are hanging out there when Isaac gets a high priority message from Dr. Hyun.  Her 20-year-old nephew Ayun has been missing for 3 days.  He was part of a young person’s organization that went on a humanitarian project in the slums.  He has not been seen since.  They have not found anything around his last known location.

We recognize the symbol as the Universal Brotherhood.  They have a cover as being an organization about the sharing of universal truth and companionship.  However, we know they have a violent side as well and they have gathered weapons.  The founders of the group created it to promote peace, however they both got sick and committed suicide.  At a guess there are 18,000-20,000 members in the Chicago area.  We decide to keep our eyes and ears open but keep doing our regular runs.  We cannot afford to get in trouble again.

The next day we go back out on patrol like normal.  We get a call around midnight on Thursday.  We notice that the name is Franz Donner, Thumper’s cousin.  The signal is coming from down by the docks, which is nowhere near the restaurant.  It is coming from a warehouse.  As we pull up, we see several Eagle security units with bullet holes in their cars.  The ping from his bracelet is coming from inside this building on the south side.  We get the cops to move and then pull the ambulance to the south east corner of the building.  There are no doors on this side.

We sneak around to the West side and find a side door, along with Edge and Scales, the shadow runners we ran into before.  They try to wave us off, but we come up anyway.  They say there is a blood bath in there and we might not want to go in.  Thumper tries to break the door but fails.  He shoots out the hinges and then runs into the room, yelling for Franz.  We see the same orcs that were bothering the Triple Tap, part of the Sewer Rats.  As we move into the room, we see a group of trolls on the other side.  Many of them are people that Thumper knows, but some of them are dead and others are wounded.  They are in bad shape.

We manage to stabilize Franz and get him on a stretcher.  As we are loading him up one of the trolls says they were selling the weapons so that the gangs would destroy each other.  As we start moving towards the door, the big garage door explodes inward and a combination of Eagle Security and Corp Sec busts in.  They immediately start exchanging fire with the orcs.

The EMTs look in the bins and find some riot shields.  They grab them and use them to cover the stretcher as the group starts moving towards the door.  The trolls start following us, and the orc gang members start shooting at them and us.  Espadas drops one gang member who gets close to us, and Bright swings at another and wounds him.  The orc gangers and the corp sec keep exchanging fire.  A couple of the troll gangers take wounds.

Icebox gets the stretcher and Franz out the door, while Espadas drops another ganger.  Thumper also kills one.  The group piles out into the alley and runs for the ambulance, with Ryoshi and Thumper covering the rear.  We all head for the ambulance, and two of the troll gangers also escape.  Isaac keeps working on Franz, who seems to be getting worse.  We keep driving to headquarters and rush him into emergency surgery.

Isaac helps with the triage and surgery.  Thumper waits at the emergency room.  Franz is in surgery for three hours, but he does pull through.  Espadas and Ryoshi go back to the restaurant.  A few of the trolls that are usually there are not anymore.

Franz wakes up around mid-morning.  He is covered in bandages and very weak, but lucid.  He says that 3 months ago he was approached by corporate guys who said they could make money while the gangs tear each other apart.  Franz wants to get rid of all the other races, metahumans and otherwise, then trolls could take over.  Corp security shows up soon after to question Thumper and Franz.  Icebox rolls up behind them and starts telling them they cannot question him now.  They leave.

Thumper gets the details from Franz about the weapons shipments.  There were 8 shipments with assault rifles, pistols, armor, shields, and cannons.  The shipments come from Germany and are smuggled through customs then they sell them to the gangs at cost just to move more of them.  The meetings were anonymous (his face was masked), but we have the location and time.

The cops come back and separate Thumper and Franz.  They grill Thumper in their paddy wagon.  He cooperates and tells them what he knows.  Eventually they let him go and he comes back to the restaurant.  Ringo had no idea that any of this was going on with Franz.

Our next move is to try and meet with Edge and Scales to see what they know.  Thumper’s fixer does not know how to contact them, but suggests we get a message out on Noose-net.  Isaac wows us with his hacking skills and can find a way to contact them.  We also find out there are possibly thousands of sewer rats and other gangers underground that come out at night, commit crimes, then go back underground.  A user named SuperWiz has tons of information about them including maps of activity.  We also find that Edge and Scales work with SuperWiz, and they are helping law enforcement.  We decide to try and meet them at a restaurant near us and send SuperWiz a message.

We agree to meet at a nearby noodle bar in the afternoon.  SuperWiz shows up and asks is we have some information on the Sewer Rats.  Thumper and Icebox talk to him and agree to share to their knowledge about the weapons deals.  Icebox will give him the video from the warehouse fight (minus Espadas face of course).  They arrange for a drop point.  The decker reveals that his actual handle is Charlie Zero, and SuperWiz is an alternate username. After the drop we get a message says he has it and will be in touch.  We go back to work for Doc Wagon.

Dr. Hyun has been promoted to the emergency room across the street.  Icebox is now in charge of the ambulance crew.  It has been two weeks since our last high danger run.  We spend some evenings at Thumper’s restaurant, and have some other calls.  Icebox is taking his new role very seriously.  He is making videos of our runs and editing them into suggestion videos for upper management.  They are very well received, along with his extended cleaning of the ambulance by the EMT crew.

The area around Thumper’s restaurant is deteriorating.  There is a lot of new weapons and hardware, and several gangs are picking up activity, including the Sewer Rats.  Thumper gets some more security for the place.

One day after a long shift we return to the office.  Mari is in a good mood.  She comes out of the locker room all made up, and says “I have a date.”  She seems happy and then heads out.  We are still hanging around the office with some of the other crews.  Jaywalk approaches us and starts making small talk.

We decide to head to Ulrich’s for dinner.  Jaywalk comes with us.  He and Bright really hit the booze hard.  The rest of us hang out, eat dinner, and talk.  During dinner Icebox gets a call from Mari, and she seems in trouble. We agree to go help her.  Icebox tries calling corp HQ to get her location.  Jaywalk says he can drive us, but he is pretty slammed from his margaritas.  Mari is located in the core of downtown Chicago, in the Saeder-Krup building.

We head back to HQ and Jaywalk runs to the VTOL pads.  We pile in and he takes off suddenly. Icebox was not belted in and flies into the back bulkhead.  We make it to the building in record time.  Icebox is trying to call Mari.  She says she is on the 31st floor of the Saeder-Krupp building, apt 3108.  She is bleeding from a cut on her face, and says she has three other women with her.

A security guard tries to waive us off, and says he has gotten no calls.  We land and say that we have a call.  More security comes out to question us.  Icebox tries to talk to them and let them know we are on a legitimate call.  He doesn’t buy it, but Icebox tries to go along.  Ryoshi tries to help talk, but fails miserably.  They come towards us threateningly.

Meanwhile, Espadas grabs rappelling gear and goes down as far as he can.  He slashes open a window  and tries swinging into it.  He succeeds and then cuts the rope.

We jump back into the ambulance.  Jaywalk drops us down to the 39th floor.  We see the hole where Espadas went in.   Some drones come up around us and we have to duck around behind another building in the VTOL.

Espadas calls us and tells us he is heading down to 31st floor.  He gets down there and sees two security guards.  They spot him and start approaching.  He rushes them.  They shoot at him and miss.  He knocks one of them to the floor.  A melee ensues as they try to get tasers on him.  Espadas turns and busts the open the door to 3108.  He hears Mari from one of the rooms and he goes into the room, where she is waiting with 3 other girls.  They lock the door and he calls us for a pickup.

They bust into an interior courtyard down from the apartment.  They cut through a few more walls and break a window to get access to the outside.

We swoop down in the ambulance to the opening, but several combat drones also close in.  We shoot and disable the drones, but more appear.  Ryoshi accidentally shoots the back wall of the ambulance.  Mari and Espadas grab the girls and jump on the ambulance.  We shoot some more drones, and they shoot back.  We sweep away from the building.

On the way back to the garage, Mari tells us what happened, after thanking us profusely.  She was dating a nice, rich guy (Charlie Dupree), but she admitted she ignored some warning signs.  They went out for dinner with him and some other guys and friends (Jenny, Bambi, and Laurie).  They all went back to his apartment to continue the party.  The guys started getting abusive, and trying to attack them.  They talked about doing a deal tonight with some serious weaponry laying around the apartment.  She was able to take a picture of the location of the deal.  It is in the Shattergraves area near the lake.

We come up with a cover story that Mari was calling for one of the other girls who has a bracelet but wasn’t able to activate it.   We make sure everyone knows it and then return to the base.  The station manager meets us at the pad and we tell our story.  He is clearly pissed but doesn’t want us to yell at us in from of the girls we rescued.  He tells us to meet in one hour.  Mari coaches Jenni to tell her dad that we saved her, so at least we will get a customer to help our case.

We are suspended for a week.  Espada was not involved as far as the corp knows, so he is still working.  Ryoshi works at the Triple Tap to help out Thumper and family.  Mari and Jaywalk stop by during the week.  Later in the week we here that the weapon sale was not stopped, but several people were arrested leaving the scene.  Charlie Dupree is in prison awaiting trial.

After a week we return to work.  Grunt seems to have gone to bat for us.  There are some dirty looks but otherwise things seem to return to normal.

It’s September 2054 in Chicago, more than a year after the Spiritbane incident. We are a team of medics and security personnel for a DocWagon High Threat Response (HTR) unit that patrols the streets and rescues clients.

John – Ryoshi, elf physical adept and sniper
Bill – Thumper, troll street samurai
Matt – Icebox, human medic
Paul – Espadas, troll physical adept and sword fighter
Jon (NPC) – Bright, human street samurai and former medic
(NPC) – Mari “Gearz”, dwarf rigger
(NPC) – Dr. Hyun, human doctor and team leader

We spend the end of our shift at DocWagon sitting around the station and talking.  Thumper shares that his family has a restaurant nearby and invites us all for dinner and drinks, including Mari.

We go to the restaurant and meet his wife and daughter.  Some sewer rat gangers come in and start pushing around his daughter and other customers.  Thumper goes and and speaks gently to them, at which time they decide to leave.

The next day we spend most of a boring shift just riding around in the ambulance.  However towards the end of the shift we get a call about a car accident with gunfire.  We pull up and a green car with gangers has crashed into a silver coupe that has our patient and four others.  We pile out of the car and the gangers seem like they are threatening the car.  Ryoshi quickly shoots off the side mirror of their car and the gangers all hit the dirt.  There are also two shadowrunners there, Scales and Edge, who say the green car rammed into the silver one and they are there to help.

The runners stay out of our way as we move in to stabilize the patient.  Just then the window of the building next to the scene explodes as a desk come flying out of it…followed by two grenades.  Everyone dives for cover.  Thumper and Espadas dive on top of the victim and his friend.  Dr, Hyun and Icebox are stunned and knocked flat.

Espadas runs and vaults off the desk up into the open window.  He hits and kills one of the 3 guys there with his vibrosword, effectively cutting him in half.  The rest of the team starts to move the patient to the ambulance.  Ryoshi drops another ganger in the window, and Espadas slices the last one.

Just then another truck crashed into the intersection.  The team is able to get the victim in the ambulance, along with Dr. Hyun who is still stunned from the grenade.  One of the gangers shoots at Bright as he is moving back, but Ryoshi shoots the ganger.  Thumper drops a ganger and Scales drops another ganger.  Dr. Hyun finally gets up and is able to get in the ambulance.  Scales waves at us to indicate danger and shoots at the truck.  We start getting the other people into the ambulance, but the panel of the truck pops open and a ganger pops out.  He shoots a missile launcher that catches our med tech, two of the victims, and Icebox.  The medtech is down.

Bright pulls out his SMG and drops the guy with the missile launcher.  Another jumps out but Thumper drops him.  Two more gangers pop out from the van and shoot at Thumper, but miss.  Ryoshi kills one of them.

Eagle Security shows up and the last ganger cowers against his car.  We get the rest of the people in the ambulance.  The last ganger shoots at Thumper but Ryoshi drops him.

The gangers all had Sewer Rat paraphernalia. However they usually do not attack in large groups in public, and they usually do not have this kind of hardware. The med tech expires.

The original victim who called us in is Locus Pendleton.  Icebox recognizes him as the son of a Corp from Shiawase.  Locus is a well known celeb partier, and we recognize his girlfriend as well.

Eagle Security contacts DocWagon and lets them know that the danger has passed, and they are investigating what happened.

The next day, Dr. Hyun is reassigned to a post at the hospital across the street as the director of the ER department. As a result, Isaac “Icebox” is now the team lead on the ambulance and will have two med-techs under him.

Chicago, the year 2053. It’s been fourteen years since the terrorist organization Alamos 20,000 destroyed the Sears Tower, and that areas is still haunted — literally — by the ghosts of the thousands who died on that day, but also by ghouls and other nasties. The area is referred to as the Shattergraves, and the neighborhood by the unpleasant name “the Noose.” The group is located only a dozen blocks away in Little Italy, right near the University.

Bumble (Dwarf Rigger, John), Dusty Raven (Street Shaman, Paul), Zed (Physical Adept, Matt) and Thumper (Troll Street Samurai, Bill) are a group of runners staying over at their friend Shades’ house (Dwarf Investigator, NPC).

The group has been running together for about six months and have pulled a few jobs for different corps, working through a fixer friend called “Grizzly” and otherwise using the local hacker-run “Noose-Net” to keep in touch with other runners in the area.

It’s been mostly smooth sailing with a couple of close calls, particularly on a Shiawase job that almost went sideways when Bumble’s cyberware malfunctioned and one of his drones were seen by security. They got away but are all still getting the scorch marks off of their armor after that one — Shiawase probably won’t be hiring them for a while.

Partly because of that snafu, things haven’t been great for the past few weeks and creds are starting to run dry. Most members of the team have been crashing at Shades’ place, since he is the only one with a nice apartment, much to his annoyance.

On night, the group talks about their history together and the general state of things. Thumper talks about how he has to support his ex-wife and children, which has been hard, but he appreciates being part of the group.

Dusty says that he loves having his spot on the roof where he can see the sky, and that he has all he needs here — he doesn’t want to leave.

Zed says that he doesn’t approve of Dusty’s spirits hanging around, because spirits have it out for him. The only good spirits are the ones you drink, he says.

Finally, Bumble professes how much he likes being with the group and that he will do better during the next run, after his cyberware conked out on him last time.

Early the next morning, Shades rouses the crew and lets them know that a vid-call came in from Grizzly that he has a juicy job for the group — minus his usual finder’s fee, of course — with a Johnson who represents an up-and-coming biotech firm called Grail Biogenetics. He says that if the runners take this job, they may finally have enough cred to stop squatting at his place.

When asked for details, Shades says that according to Grizzly, this corp seems hungry to prove themselves. They have some strong investors but haven’t produced much revenue in the two years they’ve been in business. They seemed eager to get some help on one of their recent projects, and want a team that can be discreet. Shades rolls his eyes at that. Dusty says “So who are they going to get?” Undeterred, Shades says that the Johnson wants to meet at Leroy’s Cafe at noon.

Shades then announces that he will go make some coffee. Dusty comes with him and asks to make it, to which he agrees. Dusty makes it extra strong.

Leroy’s is a throwback cafe with approximations of 20th century diner dishes — still mostly made from soy, of course — but they do the best they can. Once seated with the Johnson, the waitress wearing a large nametag that reads DOLORES pours everyone a soykaf and then leaves them to their business.

The Johnson considers all of them carefully, and then gets right to business. “Mr. Grizzly assured me that your group would be able to handle matters of discretion, yes?” he says with a raised eyebrow. “Grail Biogenetics has a very sensitive matter that they need independent assistance with. As you undoubtedly are aware, the area around the Shattergraves has been unusable for many years due to the…strange creatures that roam there. Grail has been working tirelessly for the past two years to create a compound that these…emanations would be abhorrent to, and their tests have been going well. Unfortunately a rival corp — we suspect it to be Ares — sent a team in and they stole a sample of the test substance, called Spiritbane. Luckily it’s only a small sample, but the substance is extremely toxic to humans as well as spirits, so could be dangerous if it has fallen into the wrong hands. We engaged a local hacker to track it down through net chatter, and set him up in a safehouse. Your first task is to meet up with him and together determine where the sample might be, and then get it back to by any means necessary. For your efforts, we are offering 30,000 nuyen. We hope this sum is acceptable. Here is a datachip that shows the location of the safehouse and the dropoff point.”

The group agrees to do the job, but asks for more money. Dusty says “That’s a nice watch, you must have a lot of money.” The Johnson agrees almost immediately to do an additional 10k. Thumper stares him down and tells him to give Dusty his watch. The man looks perturbed but agrees. He says that the group must do the job to the best of their ability, to which they agree.

On the way to the safehouse, Dusty tells Bumble to stop at a small shop. He goes in to see his friend Corman, an apothecary. He has all kinds of herbs, mixtures and strange things in his store. He is mixing something and takes too much of a swig, and his eyes go wide. He then sees Dusty and greets him. Dusty asks if the old man has heard anything about a substance called Spirit Bane, but he hasn’t. He does recognize Grail Biogenetics and says that they are a decent company — he knows someone who works there — but they are a bit too eager and are bordering on reckless. He suggests to be careful when dealing with them. Dusty thanks the old man and asks if he has any filtration masks, which he does. Job complete, he goes back to the van.

The safehouse is further uptown, and takes Bumble about 20 minutes of driving in the team’s van. Pulling up, the neighborhood the place looks normal enough — nice, even. They take the elevator to the 40th floor and arrive at 4023, the address of the safehouse. 

Dusty hears the sounds of a struggle within and tasks a spirit to go inside and look around, then report back. It does and says that there are 2 people in the room.

Bumble knocks loudly on the door and at first there is nothing, so he pounds on it. Gunfire erupts through the door and a couple of shots spang off of his armor.

Zed  breaks the door down and they rush inside. There are several Ares corpsec men in here, and the group takes them all down. Thumper blasts several with his roomsweeper shotgun.

From the next room they hear someone yell “back off, or the kid dies!” The group continues through undaunted, and the corpsec guy follows up on his promise by shooting the young man he has captive, an elf. The shot goes through his shoulder and he seems to be in a lot of pain. Blood is leaking from his cheek and he is holding his chest.

The runners take out the last two guards and ask the kid who he is. He says that his name is Zippo and he was hired by Grail to track down the sample. He found out through the NooseNet that Ares fumbled badly and had the sample stolen by a bunch of gangers called the Sewer Rats. He was tracking the rats’ movements with a program but his hard line was cut off when the Ares goons broke in. He will need to find a safe place to finish his search.

The group takes him to a local net cafe, and they try to break into a back room to get some privacy, but the proprietor notices and kicks them out (TWO CRIT FAILS!). They decide to go right from a line in a nearby alleyway, the group doing surveillance while Zippo decks in. He makes quick work of it, getting the data in under fifteen minutes.

When the trace is completed, Zippo tells them that they are likely in the tunnels beneath the old Garfield Park Conservatory, which has been abandoned for twenty years. He gives the runners a likely entry point but there are no known remaining maps of the tunnels beneath that area.

As the runners enter the sewers, it takes them a while to wind their way down into the tunnels, following a trail of footprints that are likely from the Sewer Rats gangers. Descending down a long ladder, they see disused caverns, and the smell down here is horrible. They are orks, after all. The group dons their masks.

Moving further down, they see some bodies here. It looks like they have been torn up. A group of gangers are barely alive in the next room, and Dusty heals them. When they are able to speak, they say that they did steal the sample from Ares, and one of the gangers busted it open down in the tunnels. Strange things started to happen — they were attacked by something and some of the gang members were acting crazy. They ran away but the things attacked them and killed their friends. Then, only a few minutes prior, some “people like you” came — people with guns.

The group surmises that Ares has beaten them here, and rushes down the caverns. They hear gunfire and Bumble sends his drone through the doorway which is slightly ajar. It smells bad in here, and there is a green mist. The drone sees that some of the gangers have been turned into zombies, and the corpsec guys, along with a female elf, are shooting at them.

Thumper rolls a grenade into the room and it kills two of the gangers. The rest of the party busts in and begins shooting, taking out corpsec guys and also zombies. Everyone is fighting each other.

Bumble’s assault drone takes out one of the corpsec guys, but another shoots it down and it is wrecked.

As the battle comes close to the end, the runners hear a sound from the chamber to the west of them. Two strange shambling spirits come through and begin to attack them, seemingly drawn to Zed first. The thing exhales a cloud of poison around it, but Zed’s mask is able to keep him safe.

Dusty comes from around the corner and uses a spell to banish one of the spirits. The other ones continues to attack, but Zed slices it with his magically-enhanced sword.

Thumper takes the last guy down with his monosword, finally changing things up from simply shotgunning people.

Bumble gathers up the sample, which seems to have some chambers still intact. It is sort of like a half of an egg carton, with two of the sections broken and four unharmed. He wraps it up tightly and grabs the remains of his drone, then they head for the surface.

That night the runners go to the drop off point and return the sample, as well as Mr. Johnson’s watch. The courier is confused but accepts it. The runners get their 40k nuyen as well.

Later, Shades congratulates them on a relatively “easy” run, which the others groan at. He says that finally they may be able to get their own places, but Dusty says that he likes it there, why would he move?