DeckCon 2078

Well, it’s Deckcon time again, which means that we get a lot of work trashing one of the world’s largest consumer electronics shows. I mean, it’s the only reason I’d be there otherwise, as the thing’s a total nerd-fest. Just look at how excited Neon gets for it as proof. And just like last year, we were busy throughout the show doing various jobs for various people. The offers came in thick and fast, and yet we managed to be at cross-purposes throughout.

The first job we got wasn’t actually a job, however, but also was rather personal. Ishtar, our least favourite Babylonian Goddess-themed pop star, had thrown down an open challenge as a publicity stunt. She was goign to be putting on a livecast show on the first day of Deckcon, and she was openly daring people to hack the feed. Naturally, Neon immediately wanted to hack the feed, but was trying to think of a way to do such that wouldn’t immediately be giving her what she wanted.

Farmageddon II

Every run has its after effects. You do one thing and it sets off a whole series of other effects. Some of these are planned and were intended to occur. Others are collateral damage, the unplanned results of your actions. And then there are the times when it will generate further runs, as in this case.

Some time ago we burned down an Aztechnology experimental farm at the behest of an elderly (and creepy) Ork doctor. They were trying to develop blight-resistant strains of grain as a way of overcoming the problems that had been plaguing their food production for the last few years. We put a stop to that branch of the research, but it seemed that they had a lot more then just that one farm in the pipeline. The same Doctor had become aware of this, and had hired us to continue wrecking their agricultural plans.

More things you probably shouldn't do in a Bulldog

Wow. It feels like forever since I posted here.

So one thing that you quickly learn as a Runner is that there’s a whole world of different types of Mister Johnson. Not just different behaviours depending on which company (or whatever else) they represent, but also their approach to the run and the runners they’ve hired for it. On this last run we encountered one of these types in the form of the meticulous overplanner.

This type has a rather unique approach to their operations. They’ve basically plotted out the entire run in advance, and think they know exactly how it’s going to go. The only reason they’ve hired Runenrs is because they’re expendable deniable assets; otherwise, they’d do the entire fragging thing themselves. Of course, this type has two weaknesses. The first is that their plans rarely account for anything untoward happening on the run; rather, they simply assume it’s all going to go off like clockwork. The second is that they hate it when the Runners they’ve hired decide to creatively reinterpret their orders in a way they feel is better.

We definitely had one of those on our last job. And in our decision to go off-plan, we not only saved the job but probably saved our lives as well.

Guerrilla Gardening

The thing about Shadowrunning is that it i dangerous work. It’s also usually bloody and horrible, and dealing with the worst that Metahumanity has to offer. But Every now and then you have a run that is strangely enjoyable, even if in the most unexpected ways. And some days you find that members of your team have skills that might not seem useful at first, but in fact become vital to your success.

The last Run I went on was a lot like that. It was good for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I got to introduce Shortcut to the rest of the team.

It started off when Shortcut was approached for a job at the Golf Clubhouse (great place to network, by the way, even if the crowd is excruciatingly dull). A massively bloated Mister Johnson was asking if he wanted to do some work of a less then legal nature. Shortcut agreed, and then scored points by fake knifing him in the back, much to the surprise of him and his Ork bodyguard. A few calls later and me, him, Abbey, Freddy and Neon were in the club, meeting the Johnson.

Things not to feed to cows

So I say that I’m done taking jobs for Ares Johnson, so naturally I took a job from Ares Johnson. Its how the world works.

The job in question was, simply put, a complete nightmare. It was a mess from the very start and only snowballed from there. I’d like to think that something came from it, but really, apart from the Yens, nothing is coming to mind.

Anyway, to get back to what happened: Ares Johnson asked for a meet. That at least was an improvement over his prior habit of walking into our home and making a public nuisance of himself (Yeah, it looks terrible when a Suit walks into your place of residence and trashes your street cred to boot). And it was at a Steakhouse (Ares Johnson, what a surprise) so there was some good food on offer.

Obnoxious drones for beginners

Some days the jobs come thick and fast, so much so that you don’t even get time for a break or anything. Now don’t get me wrong, I like a bit of excitement in my life (Well, a lot), but at the same time, it’s nice to have a bit of a breather on occasion. You know, go to a club, have a good time, chase cute dumb Elf guys and so on. And to be fair, in the case of the last two jobs we had, both of them came rather fast an unexpectedly.

Job one came in the form of a Dwarf who worked at Hilderbrandt-Kleinfort-Bernal. For those who don’t know, it’s Europe’s biggest bank that’s not owned by one of the Megas, and is a AA in its own right. This guy, Jody Stubbleton, had been just a regular boring corp suit working as a Data Analyst within the bank. You know, the sort of boring, mindless no imagination corp drone job that we all loathe and despise. Anyway, Jody had stumbled across some data that He found to be rather strange and suggested that the bank had been up to something dirty (No, really?). Now he was looking to get out, and was afraid for his life.

Welcome back to Seattle, have some NERPS

So it’ been a while since I last wrote one of these things. Much of that has been due to relocation, Yep, we left behind awesome exciting classy and cool New York to return to dingy grey acid rain smog and volcanic ash filled Seattle. Yeah, I know it doesn’t seem like a fantastic move, especially given that in the process we gave up a luxury penthouse apartment with swimming pool and all that, but there was some actual logic to the decision.

As cool and awesome as New York is, it’s Runner population is still rather small and insular (Plus they’re all weirdoes) and tends to only operate within the bounds of New York itself. Conversely, Seattle is the Runner capitol of North America, and Its Runner population is accordingly higher. It’s also where Johnsons go to recruit for jobs not just across the city but across the continent and, yes, worldwide. So as boring a city as Seattle is compared to New York, it’s so much better for our job prospects.

Besides, now that Dayglo’s real personality had returned, she was more than a little cranky about us essentially squatting in her place without her knowing.

Deck-Con report, days three and four

Strictly speaking this report ends at the end of day two with the visit from the Jonson who had hired us asking for our status check. She also bought in a small surprise in the form of Abbey who had been added to the roster with her own brand spanking new fake SIN complete with VIP access and paycheck. So that was good, as we now had an extra set of eyes that had the advantage of being absurdly sneaky which would doubtless come in handy for dealing with what was ever increasingly looking like a pre-staged assassination.

Day three rolled around and we were now in action, as this was the day that De La Mar was supposed to arrive, give her keynote address and hopefully not be assassinated. (Well, hopefully for us. Not so good news for the Shadow community, but a job's a job, right?). Today we were in full swing with our plans, keeping a close eye on her schedule and movements throughout the con, as just about anything could be a clue as to what was about to unfold. Protect the VIP apparently means being pants on head retarded paranoid after all.

A rare day when nothing explodes

As you’ve probably noticed by now, our team tends to be rather casual on attendance. A lot of it depends on who’s available at any one time, what they’ve got on, urgency of the job and about a zillion or so other things. That’s one of the reasons why I so rarely work with Abbey; she seems to be doing her stuff all the time, and as such I rarely even see her. So when I recently did a job with her, it was a novelty to say the least.

I had been following up on our Ares Johnson issue, especially given how crawlingly involved he seemed to be getting and the worrying idea that he knew where we lived. It seems that he’s been going around the Barrens, even the really drekky parts (by Barrens standards, I mean. That bad) with an armed guard, apparently like he’s looking for something or the like, but we got no idea what or why. But it’s not like he’s doing anything immediately malicious, though at the same time, I don’t like it one bit.

We know what you want. We know what you need. We know where you live.

With Wraith gone, something strange has happened. I seem to have become leader of the team somehow. It's odd, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. On the upside, it does appear that everyone recognizes how just plain awesome I am and is willing to listen to me and let me call the shots. On the downside, there's a lot of responsibility and crap that comes with it, which is not helpful when really all I want to do is just run off to do my own thing.

The last little job we had pretty much covered the pros and cons of it, while also leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth, a sort of 'I don't like the way this is going' thing.

It started off with me out at the Skeleton having a good time and, amazingly enough, being recognized for who I am and what I do. An Elf Runner called Blidside approached me in the club, saying he remembered me from Penubra when everything went bad with the Azzie Johnson. I played innocent, saying that I was just there for a good time and had nothing to do with what went on and Jaguar Guards storming the place and all that crap in the spirit of covering my ass, and he seemed to buy that.

Sim Hell

Stylish early 20th century Me

I’m going to start this by assuming you know what the Foundation is. If not, go ask a Decker like Lightspeed or Neon and they’ll explain it to you (even if that explanation is ‘blah blah blah blah blah nerd stuff’) then come back.

So now that we all know what it is, let’s give you some background. We’d discovered that Pierce was a crazy digital murder god, and we discovered that he had some crazy long term plan. We didn’t know the full details of said plan, however, only bits of it. Added to that, we had no idea where Pierce was hiding, which meant that if we ‘killed’ him in the Matrix, he’d just run off to his safe haven to recompile. Above all else, to this, Pierce himself had deleted all the data we needed on his creation and function down to the point of destroying the research facility host.

The good news was that in theory it survived in the Foundation of the research facility where he was ‘born’. Added to that, Neon had been able to drop an anchor into that Foundation’s Portal Node, which mean that in theory she could get into it again. Unfortunately, we could only do it by jacking in through a friendly host’s foundation and then jumping across from there. The upside is that we know somebody who runs their own data store that we could use. And so Lightspeed joined us on this crazy little trip, which proved to be very useful.

I realised that I've been mis-spelling Abbey's name all along

She also often wears a mask, but that doesn't make
for as interesting a picture

Okay. Time for me to talk about Abbey.

Um... actually, I don't have much to say about her, really. We've only worked together a few times, and it's really hard to get a read on her. She's quiet and elusive, and definitely likes it that way. I really don't know much about her beyond ‘human’ but there's a whole bunch of stuff that I've figured out or that I’ve heard from various other sources. Oh, and apparently Abbey is not her street name, but like Freddie, she hasn't had much luck in making something stick.

So let's look at the things we know and what that means for the team. The first thing is that Abbey is an awakened adept. However, she's not the typical 'run around screaming and leaping off stuff and punching people and making them explode' type that you often find in Runner circles. Rather, she's actually more about agility and stealth then anything else, and has a number of tricks that make hr really damned good at it.

Dangerous Acquaintances

So while we're here, let's talk about the team I usually run with. I'll say now that they're kinda hard to define as a team; they come and go, and its rare that we'll do a run with everyone. More often than not, it's kinda situational and based on who's available at the time. Hell, I think I'm the only person who's actually been there for every job we've done so far (And that is because I'm awesome, of course) unless the others have done jobs together that they didn't tell me about.

Anyway, in no real order, here they are

Check out the 'stache

Freddie was the first of them that I worked with. He's an Ork, but apparently one of the rare "goblinized" variety that were born human and changed at puberty. That doesn't happen much anymore from all I've heard, so that makes him kinda cool in a way. He's ex-army, and picked up a lot of his skills from there, which is also what got him his start in what he does. The way I hard it, he’s originally from Tir Tangiere. That’s kinda crazy, huh? Only Ork on the team's from the Tir, but neither of the Elves are. Added to that, he speaks Sperenthiel, and I don't. Freddie's apparently his real name, but all efforts to get a street name have failed to stick. He just looks like a Freddie

Om the runner side of it, Freddie's a Rigger to use the conventions of the Runner world. He's got a control rig that he uses to run Drones and his Van (more on that to come!) remotely which makes him super-useful. He's great at recon (fly-spy drones which can get anywhere and are easy to hide because they look like normal bugs) and fire-support with his two Rotordrones, both of which pack assault rifles and grenade launchers (Boom!). He also recently came into a Steel Lynx drone with a MMG, but hasn't had a chance to use it as yet.