Welcome back Chooms to our story. A story of a trauma franchise turned edgerunner team in Night City looking to make a name for ourselves. We have our base developing nicely within the borders of the hot zone, enough to keep some trouble away. We have formed a working alliance with a local community. They use our roof for growing fresh vegetables, which we enjoy and we benefit for tech expertise as required. In turn, we are helping to establish more stability for the area. One thing we need to do is to gain a better understanding of our locality.
Trouble at the marina
Before we started on our recon, I had a call on my agent from a fixer we know. He had a team go missing in action down by the marina. Not much information was given as their mission was covert, but we were to find them, assist where we can and help extract them. Arguably we are not much of a stealth team at the moment, but we have two solos and we’re not turning down a job this lucrative. We hired a Nomad and AV for the mission and dropped out nearby on account we were heading for a warzone between the Romanov and Maelstrom gangs. Thankfully, one of my team, Sharpe, took out some dude with a missile launcher, otherwise there was a good chance our AV wouldn’t be extracting us.
Once we reached the marina, we knew we hadn’t been spotted, largely on account of two gangs fighting each other causing plenty of distraction. Our AV picked up heat signatures coming from under a jetty, so we made our way, firstly to some boats until we realised, we were being rather incompetent at controlling them, then sneaking along the shoreline to rendezvous with our target team. They were mostly ok bar one who had been pretty badly shot up. Getting the team to safety meant bringing the AV down to the marina, but thankfully, with the dregs of the firefight still raging and the AV minigun giving a good reason to ignore us, we were onboard and away without incident after our initial attempt to help them recover their explosives.
It turns out they were trying to sabotage a boat with timed explosives, so that it would sink hours later when away from the port. We tried to remove the devices but it proved too risky in the moment so we retreated to get hired help. On our return a few hours later I used a ruse to get past officials, claiming that we were a claims assessment team and needed access to the boat in question. Once on the boat we removed the explosives, which we kept, and returned home for a further bonus. So, a little risk and hard work with no injuries, led to a nice payout.
An explosive encounter
Still looking to scout our area, we ventured out again sometime later, only to receive word that an incident was going down not too far away and that Militech personnel was seen in the hot zone. Of course, we had to go and snoop around and saw that an old vehicle wreck seemed to be the focus of their attention.
Being the new edgerunner team that we are, we were immediately spotted and outplayed as we found ourselves cornered by a Militech team and forced to surrender. We had no choice really; no way were we winning any firefight. But as fortune would have it, the onsite team leader, Paltrowe, looking very much the corpo type, offered us a chance to gain some easy eddies if we took on a quick, but risky job recovering some old data files from the vehicle. The building it had crashed into years previously was now unstable, with masonry already failing and with the risk of scavvies about, I guess she though we were expendable if it went all wrong.
Well, it almost went wrong. Gathering the data files was easy quite frankly, but they were heavy. We were carrying them away from the collapsing building when I realised this would be a bad time to get ambushed, so I shouted an alert to my team to get inside the nearest building. Once inside we heard shouts and a voice advising if we didn’t surrender the data files he’d throw in a grenade. We figured there was probably about half a dozen of them, so I said no to my team and the two solos promptly threw out two grenades killing most of the scavvies, the medic shooting one of the two remaining followed by my nonchalantly stepping out to shoot their leader. I broke his leg, then delivered the coup de grace with a bullet to his head. No data files for them. But it was curious that they knew about them. A leak inside the Militech team?
As we ventured back towards Paltrowe, we realised her team had prepared to gun us down if there were any issues, but it was obvious we had the valuable data files. They were impressed and I explained we were threatened by scavvies with a grenade, but they must’ve heard our grenade themed reply. I then took Paltrowe aside and warned her of a possible leak in her team, which was good for us as it led to more work coming up and we now had another good contact.
Player note: Apparently the whole encounter took 13 minutes to conclude in real time and one combat round in game time. GM a little sad… We were a little lucky as everyone scored a critical in some way, but sometimes you make your own luck and we certainly had attitude. Great work and good instincts to seek cover and react so quickly, even if I do say so myself!
A plan a while in the making
It wasn’t that long ago, we were quietly minding our own business in a drinking den, the ‘Needs Want’, used as an important meeting house for deals and social time. A new animal gang, the Kodiaks, turned up, all cybered up with a truck outside, a driver, a gunner manning the 50 cal on the back and another entering the establishment. They had cyberframes and sounded Russian and definitely more than we could handle in the moment without a serious risk of death and injury to us and other patrons. So, we had to watch as they grabbed their protection money. I chatted up the owner and persuaded her I could use my business acumen to help her with her business. Looking at the accounts, I could see the business was losing money thanks to the protection racket, so my team agreed we would look to help out.
I had my covert ops gal do some surveillance work over the space of a few weeks, and my netrunner to research the gang. We had their numbers roughly, their location and interestingly I hit upon the paperwork back at my corp, Rocklin Augmentics. They had received a large payment to equip the gang. Just business I know, but it made it clear we would need to careful in our plans and we decided to try and pick off a few at a time.
Jumping forward, after the data file mission, we decided on a plan. Quack, our medic, hired a few chooms to start a ‘fight’ once they received our signal. Sharp, now with a new sniper rifle and I took up a position in a nearby building, with myself acting as co-ordinator, with Quack, Menendez (our other solo) and a hired nomad (you’ll soon see why this was important).
The Kodiak truck appeared on schedule and one of them went into the Needs Want. Quack waited briefly before giving the signal for the fight, then I gave the signal for Sharpe to take out the gunner. It was on! The gunner went down after three hits before any reply, then those on the ground venturing forward and helping to take out the driver. The ganger inside eventually realised there was gunfire outside despite the distraction and stepped out to fire back at me, missing due to distance (must’ve spotted me observing). They were then taken out, the body bundled into the rear of the truck and the nomad drove the ground team away to rendezvous with us back at our base.
What a great feat. Taking out three of the suspected dozen gangers, was a good community service in its own right, but we had their cybergear too. The downside is the owner got hit badly as punishment, but the community rallied round with plenty of support and eddies to help. The gang hasn’t been stopped, but we are on the way to revitalising the Needs Want and restoring it as a community staging post. Plus, we have plans to hit the gang at their base, when they are out somewhere else. We are planning. But before any of that, we now have that Militech work to carry out, i.e. to expose the leak…
About the Author:
As well as playing board games, Neil has been playing a variety of roleplaying games since 1982, including creating campaigns as a GM and espousing the art and craft of being a good GM and the therapeutic value of games generally.
