Milwaukee's Best

Session 3 – Three Months Later

It is now March 17th. We have been training and busting up criminals for the past few months and learning about the local superhero scene. There is one superhero team called THE CRUSADERS that Science Chimp seems to get along with. We are not sure how he knows them since he’s only mentioned them a couple of times, but they could potentially be a source of training for us. He describes them so we don’t accidentally start fighting if we meet them.

There is also currently a crime wave going through Milwaukee by a group called THE CRUSHERS. Science Chimp has to this point kept us away from them since he thinks they are too powerful for us. Unfortunately the Crusaders have been missing for the past few weeks with no signs of them returning. Science Chimp is afraid that with them gone, the Crushers may be operating unchecked.

A special police task force was recently created to minimalize the damage currently being caused by the Crushers. Detective Broyko is heading up the effort, and he has appealed to Science Chimp for aid in their endeavor.

Later that day, Science Chimp introduces a new person that will be joining our group, he introduces himself as HARRIS. He has gravity powers of some kind and is wearing a black outfit.

To meet with Detective Broyko, we use Avatar’s portal to travel to the Milwaukee Police Dept. Cane asks the person at the front desk to see him. Proteus uses his mental powers to read her mind and he finds that she thinks Cane is kind of cute. He turns and asks her to go out sometime. She gives her his phone number; Proteus ascertains that she is telling the truth.

Det. Broyko comes from the back and talks with us. He explains that the Crusaders haven’t been around lately and the Crushers have been running loose. They have been attacking several technology companies in the area — after the attacks a lot of experimental hardware and computer software were stolen. The police are not quite sure what they are planning, but they are suspecting what their next target will be. The company is Manning Enterprises, in Brookfield. They deal in manufacture of computer parts and some research. They have some government contracts. The police have already contacted JB Curtis, the facility manager at the company, and he has agreed to have us come into the facility and lie in wait for any attack. Minimal personnel will be at the site beside us, but a couple of SWAT teams will be on standby near the location to assist. We are given blueprints of the building as well.

Brokyo says that the Crushers is a large group, but lately only a few have been spotted at these crimes. FIST, an acronym for Flying Infantry Shock Trooper, is a man wearing power armor with destructive blasts. He is somewhat of a Robin Hood type villain, stealing from the rich and giving to the less fortunate. Next is the MERCURY MERCENARY, sometimes just referred to as Merc. He is a master of weapons and also has increased speed. Thirdly the SHREW, a previously semi-pro female boxer who is on “roids.” Fourth is Big Bill Buckford, THE BULL. He is enraged by the color red. Victor Tuttle, the VULTURE, has wings and talons. Lastly is TEMPER, who makes those he fights very angry.

The group goes to the warehouse and sets up shop. We paint a couple of crates red in order to enrage The Bull. We also procure several paintball guns from the police and load them with red paint. We wait, but we don’t have to wait long.

In a short while, as expected, we see The Bull in one of the parking lot cameras. Seconds later he smashes through the rear door, quite a ways from our current position. Several other members of his group follow behind. They split up and half of the group goes upstairs, the rest head for the server room. We wait and teleport behind them in one of the hallways, surprising them. Schwarz and Proteus open up with the paintball guns on Temper and Merc. Proteus then creates a barrier of crackling energy to seal them in.

Bull, predictably, gets very angry and punches Merc’s lights out. He turns and tries to attack Temper. Gray Guardian uses her force field to smash into Bull, but it doesn’t seem to do much damage. Avatar teleports behind them but his power blasts do not seem to do much with the force field in the way. Harris uses his gravity powers to make Bull very heavy, so he becomes extremely slow in the process. He pummels the walls of the invisible cage until he goes unconscious.

Milwaukee's Best

Session 2 – A Night on the Town

Toxin and his gang are hauled off to jail by the police. Cane shrinks back to his normal size and finds himself without clothing. He asks Science Chimp to design him a suit that can stretch to a larger size.

We take the Monkeymobile back to Science Chimp’s lair. The chimp offers to pay for a night on the town due to our victory.

Upon our return, Proteus does some research in Science Chimp’s library for a while, and the others rest and refresh themselves. Afterwards the group goes to Romine’s on the south side at the suggestion of Cane. Gray Guardian retracts her armor into a wristband, revealing herself to be a geeky college student. Proteus begins asking about group tactics, but Avatar says that they should try and enjoy themselves. They have dinner and play some pool.

On one of the large TVs the group sees there is a newsbreak announcing a hostage situation at the Mitchell Park Domes. An anonymous tip told police that a yearly event is being held there, and no superheroes have yet been seen at the scene. Proteus tells Avatar that he should create a portal to the location so we could respond quickly. Science Chimp radios us and says that this is most likely the work of HIGHWAYMAN, a brigand who steals from people while dressed in period renaissance garb. He also has a group of “Merry Men” who help him in his crimes.

Avatar creates a portal and the group warps through to the lawn of the Domes. There is certainly a media circus going on with cameras, cops and a news helicopter. We approach and are stopped by a policeman, who comments that we look like circus freaks, and that Cane just looks like he rolled out of bed a few minutes ago. Cane responds by turning into his 15-foot tall wolf form, scaring the pants off of one of the nearby cops. Avatar apologizes for his “furry friend” and says that they are indeed superheroes. He introduces himself as Avatar, Master of Magic. The cop laughs at him, but seems to take them a bit more seriously.

The cop explains that there are maybe 10 thugs in the building along with Highwayman, and possibly 25 civilians. The group devises a way to get inside and protect the civilians. Everyone except Cane teleports in at the back of the dome to approach them from a blind side. Cane busts through the front door, attempting to take out the two men who are guarding it, but he doesn’t exactly make it all the way through. Gray Guardian, Avatar and Proteus begin to attack. Soon all of the brigands are restrained and the cops come in with guns drawn. The police captain seems impressed with the performance of us since we are “rookies.”

Milwaukee's Best

Session 1 – Secret Origins

It is Fall in the year 2007 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but history is not our own. Since the mid-nineties there have been an influx of stange occurrences that have resulted in super-humans. The first known superhuman was a man who called himself OVERLORD, and became a super-villain leader of FIST (Fear, Insurrection, Sabotage & Terror). Someone soon rose to oppose him, a man who calls himself ICON, and has near god-like powers. The events of 9-11 never happened. The current President of the United States, the most popular man to ever hold the position, is himself a superhero. He revealed his powers when a sniper tried to assassinate him; the bullet simply bounced off and he leapt after the assassin, pummeling him.

The bulk of the superheroic happenings have been centered around the midwest. Our heroes currently reside in Milwaukee. At around the same time, they receive a strange email inviting them to a nearby home to increase the “size of their powers.”

For reasons only known to them, they all decide to show up, and are greeted by a butler named Wentworth. He asks us if we would like anything to drink.

The new arrivals are: PROTEUS, an older white man; AVATAR, a well-coiffed gentleman in a green suit and an ascot; GREY GUARDIAN, a woman in a slate gray power suit; CANE, appearing like a normal man but with a strange ferocity about him.

After bringing us our drinks, Wentworth leads all of us into a library with thousands of books. Sitting in front of a fire in an overstuffed chair, wearing a fez and monocle and smoking, is a chimp. Cane remarks, “It’s a monkey!” Proteus corrects him, saying that chimpanzees are apes and not monkeys.

The ape seems to appreciate Proteus’ correction says that he was called Bongo, but now has taken the name of SCIENCE CHIMP. He says that he wishes to create a super-team, since the human race has done him right in the past. He explains that he was rescued from his savage natural habitat and well cared for in a zoo, until a meteor struck the chimp house and gifted him with speech and higher understanding. It also affected two other simians, a gorilla called SILVERBACK and a spider monkey called SLINGER, whom he introduces from the next room. They have formed Science Chimp and the Simian Squad, a group to do good in the world, but wish to have assistance with their efforts.

Proteus and Avatar, themselves both able to use telepathy, are contacted by Science Chimp via mind link. Apparently he has the ability as well.

Science Chimp has made several inventions (he mentioned selling the idea for the iPod to Steve Jobs) and has amassed quite a bit of wealth under the company SimiaCorp. He wishes to help us with these resources to fight crime. Cane mentions that he is low on cash, having been laid off from the brewery. Science Chimp assures him that he will get all the resources he needs.

He mentions that we may be fighting against a man named TOXIN, who specializes in poisons and other formulas.

Avatar asks how he found us, and how he knows that he can trust each of us. Chimp says that he has vast resources, and how he found us will be revealed in time. He says that he does not trust us completely.

Science Chimp takes us down to his secret crime lab lair, where there are an impressive array of computers and monitors. He shows us each to our own rooms, and gives us a communicator to contact him or Wentworth at any time if we may need anything.

Avatar asks Gray Guardian where she got her suit. She says that it “found her,” and she is not sure who it was created by. She has only gotten in a few fights so far, and the suit hasn’t as of yet been damaged so she hasn’t needed to try and fix it. Avatar asks what happens if it runs out of batteries, or fuel. Gray Guardian is not sure.

Cane explains that he does not have a costume because he changes into a wolf when he gets angry. Avatar asks him if this makes him a real superhero, and Cane says that he did save a bus full of children once.

Science Chimp takes our heroes to the War Room, where he shows a 3D rendering of his factory where they are developing a reagent which can be used to calm riots or hostiles with mild hallucinations. Toxin is likely planning to bring his thugs to steal the formula.

He also tells us that Toxin is part of a group that calls itself the DEVASTATORS, that seems to have some sort of higher agenda. Theft and wanton destruction have been their modus operandi the past few years. Toxin himself is a homocidal maniac who cares nothing for the lives of others. He is not, however, terribly cunning. SPARK and CHARGE are a man and woman who both have electrical abilities; TORNADO who has wind generation; CRUSHER is a large brick; DEMO-MAN is a dwarf who wears a tactical vest and builds devices.

Science Chimp retires, and the rest of us decide to have dinner. Avatar offers to teleport everyone to Thailand for dinner. We do so, and during dinner we discuss the veracity of Chimp’s claims. We decide to wait things out and do what he says for the time being. We return and retire for the evening.

The next morning we have breakfast and then go to the warehouse to tour its layout. We stay in the security office and monitor the security cameras. We have Cane walk around the building in a lab coat, posing as a scientist. Presently we see several white vans show up in front of the building, and Toxin and his thugs jump out. Demo-Man is setting bombs at the front door, even though the glass doors are open.

Avatar teleports the group to the lobby, and Gray Guardian creates a force field in front of the door to protect the building from harm. Avatar pushes the bomb away with his telekinesis, and Proteus detonates it with his electrical powers. Toxin is unharmed but three of his henchmen are blown back. We continue with the battle, Avatar attacking with his power blasts and Proteus with his electrical powers. Shortly Cane comes through the doors, transformed into a 15 foot tall wolf, and attacks Toxin. Proteus traps Toxin and the remaining thug in a cube of lightning, effectively trapping them and ending the combat.

Shadows of Sol

Session 18 – Sniper War

The last person we need to find is known as “Wheels” who headed east from Albuquerque. His car is now stopped at the Texas/New Mexico border.

The group splits up; Cam and Raptor stay at the farm while Eve and Stitch go to get the ship. Cam hacks into the farm’s security system and is able to give himself an admin account so he can keep track of any activity here from remove locations.

The others pick Cam and Raptor up in the ship and then go to pursue Wheels. Upon our arrival, his car seems to be vacant; he has obviously abandoned it and gone hiking a few hours ago now. Eve decides that she is going to go hiking and pretend she is lost in order to perhaps get his attention. Stitch sets up a sniper blind on a nearby hill, and Cam is standing by with the ATV.

Eve approaches the car and sees a figure inside. She investigates more closely and sees that it is indeed Wheels, and he is dead. There are no obvious signs of a cause. She grabs a rock and smashes the window open.

At that moment she is fired upon by a stick-n-shock round but manages not to pass out. Stitch spies a man hidden up on a nearby hill and snipes him. Doc reports that his nanobots noticed another person in a position to the north. Cam takes off towards the position, but his tire is blown out by the sniper. Another shot takes him in the chest and he falls off of the ATV, unconscious.

Stitch finally sees the man and takes a shot at him, taking him out. A third man is seen on a hill to the east and Stitch fires on him as well, killing him. Doc and Stitch rush to assist Cam. He is brought back to consciousness and jumps in Doc’s car.

Another sniper round takes out one of the tires on Doc’s car, and Stitch frantically looks for the other man. He sees him to the east, and tries to shoot him from underneath the car. Cam grabs his gun and tries to do the same, managing to take him out. Doc reports that there are no further life signs in the area.

We check Wheels, and it looks like he was killed by having his brain fried. The snipers are also checked and they have no insignias or ID on them; these are ghosts. We collect the bodies and their equipment (Ranger-Arms sniper rifles and thermally sealed camo armor on each).

We pack everything in and take the bodies to Eve’s doc friend. She appraises the tech on all of the bodies and helps us find body matches for us. El Buscador should be able to pin our previous activities on these people for us now.

Afterwards we meet with El Buscador and negotiate for our payment. We discuss the situation with Chelle, since she needs to be cleared of the terrorist charges as well. We decide to try and change the record in the database of her DNA so it does not match her. We also let El Buscador know what has happened. We mention that there was another mole on the terrorist team who was working for the other side of the Cold War. He says that we should watch the evening news to ascertain that he is keeping his word on the deal. That night we do hear on the news that these terrorists have been linked with our previous activities. Eve realizes that El Buscador’s plan was to do a power grab in the Jovian system with their Elysian Counter-Terror unit.

Eve contacts Aparna on the telecom and lets her know that Chelle has been cleared of all charges. Aparna thanks us and says that she is currently working on Ceres as a ship mechanic.

We then take care of our other assets (the cars & abandoned ships). We are able to “grease the wheels” by paying off a DMV employee for 5000 nuyen, and then we sell each for 20,000.

After that is taken care of, we decide to travel to Mercury to get some R&R and lay low for a while.

Shadows of Sol

Session 17 – Flash Bang

Our next target is “Doormaker” in Colorado Springs. It is an hour’s drive away, and we take the van and the two cars. We follow the signal to an apartment complex with several units.

Eve and Raptor go to the complex office, posing as police officers. They are able to get a security feed from the rooms and find the person we’re looking for.

Stitch scopes the room and sees two heat signatures. Eve and Raptor go to the room and Eve picks the lock. They run in and ambush the two occupants of the room. Two flash-bangs and a few stick-n-shock’s later, one of them is dead and the other unconscious. They grab some of the personal effects in the room and carry that and the his body (leaving his friend) back to the van. Raptor decides not to open Doormaker’s personal effects in case they are rigged.

We move on to Pueblo to an automated farm where “Bullethead” supposedly resides. We approach the area and a man scanning the grounds with binoculars is seen. Stitch takes a shot at him with his sniper rifle and nearly blows his head clean off. The automated farming equipment is still humming along, but no one else is here.

Cam brings the truck in and looks through the shed and other structures for tools. He spends a good hour picking through and taking tools and parts that may help with the ship. Eve opens the suitcase that Doormaker had and there are foam explosives and detonating caps in it. Raptor takes these for later use.

Leaving the two cars, we go back to the ship and travel to our next target in Utah. His name is “Sonic.” We take the ship about 15 miles ahead of him (we see that he is traveling 200 mph, so we only have a few minutes) and knock down a tree in the road. Stitch hides up in a tree with his sniper rifle and waits until he approaches.

Apparently he has noticed that something was up, so he slows down to 150 mph. Stitch takes his shot, hitting him in the head, and the car leaves the road. It turns over a few times and lands in the forest. We retrieve the carcass and leave the scene.

Shadows of Sol

Session 16 – Road Trip

We assess the situation and see that 10 of the vehicles on locators are now moving due to the cardio alarms on the four we’ve already killed. We see that the nearest vehicle is only about a mile away, and it belongs to the man codenamed “Grumpy.” We cut him off at an intersection and take him out, quickly stashing the body in the van.

Continuing on, we get on the freeway to pursue “Lucky Day” and “Tails.” We decide to pass Lucky Day and go after Tails first, then wait for Lucky Day to catch up to us. Coming behind tails, Doc tries to zap her car with a magical lightning bolt. This doesn’t stop the car so Stitch tries firing with his sniper rifle. He takes out a rear tire and she manages to control the car to get to the side of the road. We stop as well and Eve steps out, asking if she needs any help. Tails says “no thanks,” and when she turns to get the tire Eve strikes her. She throws her in the trunk and slits her throat. Cam fixes the tire and Eve jumps in the driver’s seat.

We see that Lucky Day is coming, so Stitch sets up with his sniper rifle at the side of the road. As she approaches, he takes a shot through her windshield and takes her out. The car is continuing on the road by itself, so Stitch is forced to take out one of the tires. We get the car over to the side of the road and fix the tire.

Moving on again, we see that “Sonic” is moving quickly towards Cheyenne. We go as fast as possible on the freeway to pursue. The car stops on our radar, and we see that it is parked in front of a townhouse. We stop and Doc tries using nano-astral to search the area, and finds a group of 15 people in one of the houses. One person, very angry, seems to be addressing them. There are 18 or so people total in the townhouse.

We decide to raid the townhouse, taking positions on all sides. Stitch blows one of the windows with his sniper rifle, but finds that there is impenetrable material behind it. Flood lights come on and a loudspeaker announces that we are under arrest and not to move. Raptor blows three grenades on the front door, destroying the porch, but the door is not destroyed. The person over the loudspeaker says that if we will give them any information we have, they will not have us killed. We decide to bail and jump in the vehicles, speeding away in different directions.

Reconvening, we find our next closest target is Crasher. Her car is coming into Steamboat Springs. We find her car at a nearby apartment building and we have Raptor go up to find her. He finds three people in the room, Crasher and apparently her parents. Raptor fights and kills her, while her parents flee.

Our next target is “Brick Wall” in Vale. He is one of the bodyguards of the group. The apartment building he is in has many units, so we are not sure how to find him. Eve walks in and pulls the fire alarm. People come pouring out, but we still don’t see him. Doc uses his astral projection to search the building and sees one person with a lot of cyberware, on the third floor. Eve goes over and knocks on the door, but he doesn’t answer. She hears him loading a gun.

Eve picks the back door of the apartment, and rushes in as Raptor is crashing through the window to attack him. After a moment he is dropped and we pull him out.

Shadows of Sol

Session 15 – Cranial Bomb

We travel to the other spaceport where the second “Z” cell member stores his ship. We try the same scheme where Eve lifts the keys off of a guard. She manages to do so but the guard seems to notice that something has happened. Raptor bumps into him roughly at that moment and knocks him off balance. Eve passes the key to Cam and he goes into the dock. After a moment he finds the ship and seems to be able to disable it. Mission accomplished, we leave the spaceport.

Afterwards we discuss our next move with regard to the cell members. We decide to split up and have Eve and Stitch do surveillance on all of the cell members to determine their daily patterns. Eve and Stitch drive around to each area to ascertain what the security measures are at each place. Unfortunately it looks like most of them have at least some security, though some are worse than others.

We reconvene and (using the call schedule) decide the correct timing to attack them to give ourselves the most amount of time before we are caught, and also come to the conclusion that we should all go to each of the locations together to be as effective as possible.

At “Rock’s” we see him through the window and Stitch takes two shots with his sniper rifle. The foe felled, Raptor goes over to take a body part so we have DNA evidence. Once he zip-lines over, he hears Rock’s corpse is beeping. Quickly he slices off the corpse’s hand and pitches him out of the window. It explodes violently in midair. We quickly leave the scene, realizing that this must have alerted the other cell members.

We quickly go to Roll’s apartment building and Raptor, Stitch and Eve rappell up to Roll’s window. Doc says that his nanobots detect 3 figures inside, and the others begin firing though they don’t have much of a solution. The cell members inside fire back, one with a nano attack. Our group members continue into the building through the broken window and engage in a full attack. After a few moments two of the enemies are felled, after which no beeping is detected. Doc sees astrally that the third person is still up, but the others don’t see him — he must be invisible.

Suddenly all three of them feel an invisible nano attack from the hidden nano mage. They attack and manage to disable him as well. Afterwards, identifying the bodies, we have gotten Roll and also Knuckles and Cookie.

Shadows of Sol

Session 14 – Blackmail

Several of us go to see a friend of Eve’s on Earth; her name is Marsia Arseievna, a doctor. Raptor goes in for surgery to make himself less “tweaky” and other procedures are performed. We also unload the corpses that we had in cold storage. It turns out that we had quite a few.

Meanwhile, Cam receives a letter from someone calling himself “El Buscador,” which translates to either “The Prospector” or “The Searcher.” He claims to have knowledge of some of our previous exploits, including our efforts on Ganymede. He says that unless we assist him with a matter, he will reveal our involvement in the Ganymede incident to the military. The party decides that they will play along until we can find out who this person is and how they found out about our involvement.

Before we leave we contact Yusuf and ask him to check on this guy before we show up. We meet with him briefly and Eve explains what we’d like him to do during the meeting. Yusuf will surveil the meeting but not too overtly. He tells us that the signal is most likely coming from Spain, and the node we will meet him at is on the Moon.

We message him and accept the meeting, and he seems pleased. He gives us the exact location of the meet and a passcode for air travel in the area.

We arrive at El Buscador’s villa and he comes to the door to greet us trailed by bodyguards. He is a well-groomed Spanish man and welcomes us warmly, seeming to know most of our names. He takes no notice that we are heavily armed. He invites us in, but Cam remarks that the meeting is very pleasant considering it started with a blackmail letter. El Buscador responds that he is trying to make a deal that is mutually beneficial.

He takes us into a formal living room and introduces a man he calls Doc. El Buscador says that he is an Alysian counter-terrorism specialist who has been concerned with a group named Zarathustra which has been causing panic throughout the solar system. The party recoils a bit at the mention of the Alysian as they were in charge of the base we attacked; however El Buscador assures us that we are not the target of their interests. He says that they have a double agent in the cell already (“Bolts” the mechanic), and we are to infiltrate and replace them.

There are 14 people total in the cell. They do a round-robin style check-in during the day to make sure that everyone is still operating. If they find out that something is going on, their protocol is that everyone should leave town. However Bolt has planted RFID tags in all of the group vehicles if they try to flee. We should not cross paths with Bolt during the operation but to be careful if we do. Also some of the cell members have bio-monitors to notify others in the chain in case they die. All 14 need to be eliminated and this needs to be verified by Doc as he has a DNA register. One of the two co-leaders of the group may be a nano mage.

They are planning on attacking a hospital in Italy in 10 days, and we must intercept and eliminate them before this happens. They are currently residing in Denver. We agree to take the job.

As we leave, Eve contacts an Earth politician she knows and fills him in on the situation. She tells him about the job and lets him know that if we don’t contact him within 14 days, that we have been eliminated and that he should make El Buscador’s life hell in some way or another for us. He agrees.

We decide to head to the spaceport first to take out their ships so they cannot escape. Eve will go in first to distract the guards, and Cam will sneak in behind to disable the ship. Eve manages to distract them and get the key to the area where the ships are held.

Cam slips in and goes to the ship, but a security system goes off with a warning. He figures he has 1 minute to try and do something before the owner is notified. He manages to pull a few wires that will prevent the ship from leaving orbit. After this he books out of there.

Shadows of Sol

Session 13 – Land Shark

After some searching, Stitch sees some tracks on the other side of the river we are following. It is decided to try and cross the river. Raptor tries to swim across to tie up the winch to a tree, but gets caught up in the line and we have to fish him out. Stitch swims across and ties up the winch; Cam activates the winch and pulls the ATV across.

Once across we pick up the trail and it seems to be still following the direction we are going. We continue on. After a while, we see off in the distance a smoke trail that seems to be coming towards us. We decide to take a shot at them to disable their ATV. We stop and both Stitch and Raptor fire at them, taking out 2 of their tires. We continue on.

As we pass by the other ATV, we see that they have no large animal in toe but one of the people is wounded. Also, they appear to be coming back from where the tracks are. Obviously they were attacked by whatever it is we are chasing. We come over a hill and hear a loud bird-like noise. We jump off the ATV and ready our weapons.

As we come over another hill, we see the Savannah Shark coming towards us. Two of us have the super-squirt guns, Eve has the Stick-n-Shock, and Stitch has a sniper rifle. It runs at us and we manage to avoid its attacks and shoot it into submission.

Using the winch cord we tie it up and restrain its arms. We use plastic restraints to keep its jaw closed. As we are doing this we hear the sound of an engine. Stitch and Raptor draw weapons and skulk off to defend from a distance.

The men come up and say “That’s a mighty nice catch you got there.” Cam tries to distract them as the others draw a bead with weapons. The men raise their rifles and the party members start firing. A well-placed grenade kills most of them within the first few seconds, however. We loot their equipment and continue to bind up the creature.

Cam and Stitch decide to go and get the ship; they take the ATV back to Boozy’s and get the ship in only 1:35. They bring the ship and load up the shark and the two ATVs. We see that we can get 100 grand for the shark (it appears to be a female) at the local zoo.

The zoo sends a doctor to check the female and he says that she needs a lot of medical attention so they can only offer us 75 grand. We are able to negotiate for 85.

We head back to the ship and check the news feeds. 4 of the 6 animals have been trapped, so that leaves only 2 males (worth 30 grand or so alive). We take off in the ship and scout around. As we get nearer to Cydonia we see they have deployed people to protect the city in case one of the sharks gets near. We decide to do another sweep a few miles to the southeast. On our second pass we catch a glimse of him.

We land about a mile away and take out the ATV. We come up to him but he sees us and takes off running. We chase it for a few miles and Stitch manages to shoot him in the foot. We close much quicker now and come up along side him. We start firing and manage to take him down.

The shark is loaded up and Cam takes a look at its leg wound. He is able to patch him up pretty well. Cam then takes a look at possible buyers, disregarding the zoo keeper. The other potential buyers are a university professor and two rich folks. We decide to talk with the professor as it is a possibly better cause and a professor might be a good contact.

Eve contacts her and we go to meet the professor, Corrina Schneller, at the school’s nature preserve. She looks over the creature and is impressed at how Cam dressed the creature’s leg wound. She says that it is in very good shape and gives us the 35 grand. The creature will be in a good home. She gives us her card as well.

We return to Boozy and give him 4500 nuyen (a bit short of what we actually owe him) and return his ATV. We then buy some replacement parts to fix the second ATV, which will take Cam about a day to do. We take off from Boozy’s and head towards Earth for our next stop.

Shadows of Sol

Session 12 – Kneecapper

We grab Overclock and Speech’s unconscious bodies and get out of the spaceport as quickly as possible. We see that a crowd of people have gathered, curious about the commotion. In the confusion we are able to get through unnoticed. We return to the ship and stow the prisoners in an extra bunk and bind them up. Stitch enacts a wireless jammer that will stop any communications that the hackers attempt. We remove the gear they carry including a Predator IV, a backpack server box and a 5,000 nuyen credstick.

Eve sees that we have received a communication from Bengal; he says that we should not come back to Venus but meet him at a safehouse of his on Mars. We start our trip towards Mars.

En route we begin interrogating Speech. He is not very helpul but says that Overclock was ordered to spread the Shitstorm virus by someone named “Zilch.” Eve and Raptor are frustrated with him and decide that they are going to blow him out the airlock. They tell him that they are going to let him go, and lead him to the airlock.

Once there he begins begging not to be tossed out, though the party is less than sympathetic. They taunt him for quite a long while. Cam comes around, and asks again why we have such a mad-on for the hacker. Eve and Raptor remind him that he was the one who we captured a few weeks earlier and let go, on the promise that he disappear. He later betrayed us to Overclock and we found him running with her. Upon hearing this, Cam becomes angry and opens the airlock. He shoots Speech once in each kneecap, slams the door and punches the button, shooting him out into space. Everyone else is stunned.

We come to Mars and land, meeting Bengal at his safehouse. We turn over Overclock and all her gear and server. Bengal says that we will get an extra tip for bringing in the server, so he gives us 60,000 nuyen. He says that we are welcome to stay for a while if we’d like. The party decides to go shopping while we are staying on Mars. Some weapons, tools and supplies are purchased.

Later we see a news feed that says there is an illegal xeno-zoo on Mars that had several creatures escape. It looks like the bounty for a live male is 30,000 and for the only female it is over 100,000 nuyen. The creatures are called “Savannah Sharks” and are 9 feet in height, resembling velociraptors. The most recent sighting is a farm off to the east.

We go to the farm on a borrowed ATV and see an obvious path of destruction. There are several news agencies here and other hunters on ATV’s. We follow the path but lose the tracks after it goes into the river. We follow the river to the east to see what else we can find.