Cluster-fragged sixteen ways to Sunday

Calling today a complete clusterfrag would be an understatement. The worst part of it was that we lost one of our allies, that rarest thing in the shadows; a Johnson who is good to the team and doesn’t try to screw you over.

Ares Johnson, RIP

Ares Johnson (We call him that because we never knew his real name. But that’s the rules) was good to us from day one. We didn’t initially know that he was from Ares, but he sent subtle signs. Like the fact that he was clearly a grizzled veteran. Or the cowboy accent. Or the fact that he liked to meet the team at steakhouses where he’d buy us all massive steak dinners (One of which was the first time Abbey had ever had Steak!). That sort of subtle sign.

And as we did more jobs for him (all of which paid very well), we managed to get ‘in’ with him as we found out more about what was going on. It was a complex mess involving a MCT AI research facility, a plot by elements of the Salish-Shidhe Council to engineer an incident that would allow them to annex Seattle, Bug Spirits, illegal street races, fire drakes, jumping out of hotels and fighting helicopters, the assistant to a Tir Tangire prince, stealing weapons research without hurting anyone in the process, the deaths of Wraith’s old team and, above all else, a Crazy Digital Murder God (I’ve heard the preferred terms are ‘AI’ or ‘Xenosapient’, but I think that this is more accurate) who was involved in manipulating all of the above in order to improve MCT’s market share. I am not making this up.

We actually thought that Pierce, the Crazy Digital Murder God in question, was an AI long before we met him for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that he’d never once appeared in person to anyone. This theory was thrown for a loop when we actually encountered him in the flesh inside a MCT facility. After a brief altercation which involved him killing several MCT researchers and erasing all their work, we confronted and captured him and bought him to a secret holding facility run by the aforesaid Ares Johnson. So far so good.

So we went to the facility at Areas Johnson’s request in order to help him and his own in-house team put together all the details. This was coming from three parties; Pierce, Shahira Sabery (Aforesaid assistant to a Tir prince) and Dusty Novak (Salish guy running a Bug Shaman smuggling racket). Shahira proved to be very cooperative and willing to explain her part in what was going on, and how she was largely involved in all this from an external opportunistic point of view. If Dusty went ahead with his plan to destabilize Seattle and annex it, then the Tir could move against the Salish council in their own land grab.

It was at that point that we discovered that Pierce had escaped from his cell, followed by the facility coming under attack. The unlikely team of a drug-addled Street Sam, a Drone controlling Technomancer and a swarm of gangers had discovered it somehow and had headed in to extract the subjects. Oh, and to make matters worse, a team of Tir Ghosts were also here to extract Shahira and Dusty. Fortunately, we were able to stop some of that; I managed to geek the Sam in what I thought was an awesomely cool moment (I drop my gun, then draw my concealed Colt while kicking my rifle to one of the Ares agents), while Wraith plugged Dusty with a headshot rather then let him get away.

Unfortunately, we then discovered that something had infiltrated the Ares computer system, and was in the process of screwing it up big time. Tracing the source of it revealed three things; the first was that the Ares Johnson was dead, and had been replaced by an advanced Cyborg operative with high-tech disguise abilities. The second is that said Cyborg had gotten in by pretending to be Pierce in the first place; so when we thought it was him it wasn’t. (Yes, I know this is confusing as all get out. I got shot by a drone today; I don’t think I’m at my most coherent right now)

Pierce,Crazy Digital Murder God

The third was that, what do you know, Pierce actually was a Crazy Digital Murder God (Apparently, Technomancers don't like it when you use that term) after all and was what had taken over the Ares system, probably by piggybacking his way in on the Cyborg. It’s one of those ‘I hate it when I was right’ moments. Fortunately, Neon and one of the Ares deckers were able to drive him out of the system before he got what he was after (We think) but it really wasn’t that much of a win. We’re still dealing with a CDMG on the loose who’s agenda seems to be based around destroying Seattle in order to push up MCT’s market share. (At least Renraku can say it’s not them this time).

And in the process, we’ve lost one of our best and most powerful allies. Ares Johnson is dead, and his team is effectively shattered (No leader and one of them went MIA during the mess). We also need to figure out how to find and kill Pierce, whatever the hell he is. Not good.