How not to be seen: a guide for avoiding Blood Magic

One thing about being a Runner is that often the jobs will come out of completely unexpected sources. It’s a part of the world, really; after all, you’re being paid to commit crimes and work outside the law. Of course people aren’t going to be walking around shouting about how they’re looking for you to go do something grossly illegal for them. But even then, allowing for that, you do get some strange ones on occasion.

The other thing you need to know is that often the difference between A professional runner and somebody who just happens to be in the right place at the right time is often very, very slim.

Both of these elements were key to the last Run we went on. It came out of nowhere, involved somebody who hadn’t ever really considered being a Runner but had the right skills and, as a bonus, also had an outcome that was completely unexpected when all the signs pointed in a completely different direction.

I got in on this job after the initial hire. My fixer called me up to say that a friend of his had a friend of theirs asking about finding some runners. People who know people, right? I was interested, ab needed the money (Delta-grade Wired Reflexes don’t grow on trees, you know!) so me and Neon went to meet the guy. He was, obviously, working the grounds at a swanky Golf course in one of the most gratuitously rich corp districts of the city. As one does. Like I said, odd sources.

Or guy was Glen Quarry, alias Shortcut, a Dwarf groundskeeper who just happened to have a burning pile of magical talent as well as a lot of resentment of rich snobs. So we get along already. Glen had been hired by somebody who’d seen him pulling a few tricks on the nobs who frequent the course, figuring that he would be suited for the job they had in mind. Glen had in turn reached out to find some others to help him, because he was new to this having previously just been a groundskeeper.

The issue was one of those things that is very specific to a particular corp and its culture. Wuxing had been having problems with the Feng Shui at one of its waterfront warehouse sites, of course. These problems began when a suit was brought to the site for whatever internal corp reason. Since then, while this Corbin Lao had been on-site, things had been going badly for them. Thus the Johnson wanted to know what was going on, what was Corbin’s role in all this and, if necessary, put a stop to it.

So me, Shortcut and Neon headed to the site. (Neon had to take her bike; yeah, Neon, you can’t freeload in Freddie’s Van forever). Shortcut got there by Golf Cart, which still isn’t the strangest method of getting around I’ve seen for a Runner. The site itself was your basic warehouse and shipping terminal setup; bland building, lots of crates and so on. Nothing too fancy. Although of course it all had to be laid out in a very specific way due to Feng Shui nonsense and the like.

Getting in was easy enough; a quick vault over the wall while Neon switched off a camera for us. Once inside, Shortcut was able to get a bit of a read on the place and confirm that, yes, something was indeed wrong about it. There was something up with its astral presence or background count to whatever. Blah blah blah magic stuff. I don’t know. Point is that five minutes into his first ever run and he’s already a better mage then Captain Cancer.

Anyway, Shortcut was able to deduce that the particular form of bad juju affecting the place was Blood Magic. Yeah, that’s about as nasty as it gets straight out the door and the sort of thing that’s definitely going to affect the place big time. That gave us even more of a reason to check out our target and see exactly what was going on with him.

Corbin was up in the control tower, so we decide to pay him quiet visit by scaling the outside and eavesdropping on what was going on there. Most of it was him having an argument with the site foreman, who was complaining about how everything was going wrong and all the problems, and Corbin was telling him to fix them. Bad Feng Shui indeed! Shortcut quickly assensed Corbin and found something interesting; while on the surface his aura seemed normal, it appeared that was actually being masked. Definitely the sort of thing you would do if you were, say, an evil Blood Mage who wanted to pass for not being a mass-murdering serial puppy kicker.

GMC Phoenix. A cool car to have a mid-life crisis in

So while we knew something was off, we decided to investigate further to see what exactly he was up to and why he was screwing with their mojo. Having finished his shift for the day, he headed off in his GMC Phoenix (Maybe he’s having a mid-life crisis? Maybe that’s why the blood magic) to the Gates Undersound Hotel, a stupidly expensive place that else itself on its underwater levels with unique views of the murk of Pugent Sound. We followed, with me and Shortcut quietly slipping into the hotel while Neon passed us some useful intel.

He and his wife were staying in a suite on one of the underwater levels. More helpfully, the pair of them had just headed to the restaurant to have dinner, giving us a chance to break into their room and search for anything that was amiss. Shortcut turned up something that very much fit that bill, being an obsidian sacrificial dagger hidden inside one of the suitcases that basically reeked of badness. Oh, and is the sort of thing that is so stereotypically Blood Magic that it burns (Possibly literally if you’re on the receiving end).

Well this looks completely legitimate and utterly harmless

So we had the how, but now we needed the why. We stuck a tracker on the dagger and then discretely retreated, given that the couple were headed back to their hotel room. Neon checked their hotel history and found that they routinely had breakfast in the hotel’s cafe, which gave me an idea for our next move to find out what exactly was going ion with the pair of them.

Our plan was rather simple. I would sit around pretending to be a customer and enjoy a nice breakfast. Shortcut would pretend to be my waiter, because once you put a waiter’s uniform on a Dwarf they are practically invisible. He came out to take my order and did a quiet assensing on the pair of them while they were being so disgustingly lovey-dovey. That revealed something interesting; not only was Corbin’s aura being masked, but so was his wife’s. The plot thickens.

The pair of them both headed off, Corbin in his flashy Phoenix and her in her much less flashy rental Mercury Comet. What was more interesting was that the knife was going with her rather then him as we expected. With that in mind, we took off after her to found out what was going on and what her role in all this was.

She stopped by a parkway, getting out of her car and nervously waiting for somebody. Shortcut followed by dressing as a gardener and looking after the topiary; again, dress a Dwarf up as a handyman and nobody will even look at them. It’s amazing. Figuring that was were best off dealing with her now before her meet arrived, I leaped into action, ambushing her with a shock glove attack.

Amazingly enough, she managed to get through it, woozy but still on her feet. In reply, she cut her own palm wih her very, very sharp nails. Yep, blood mage all right. Unfortunately, she then hit me with an attack that boiled my blood from insid, which as you can imagine, was insanely painful. I don’t really recall what happened next, but Shortcut managed to knock her out and stuff her in the car, allowing us to make something that resembled a clean getaway.

While my Cyber-Doc was busy patching me up (He’s able to treat Blood Magic attacks. That guy is amazing) we got in contact with the Johnson and told him about the aftermath. We arranged a handover for Ms Lao and the dagger, both of which I was happy to see the back of. We all got paid, and I exchanged numbers with Shortcut with an eye to working with him again. For a first-time runner, he was pretty sharp. And, again, a better mage then Captain Cancer.