Intro: Runners end up setting up an ambush in the dark against an MCT convoy full of medical supplied, find out they should have looked into things more closely before deciding to hit it.
Job post
Runners:
Mouth: Breag
Wheels and bang: Psychedel >2 weeks since last game
Matrix: Jerry < 25 karma
More dakka: Whiplash
Body:
Runners get a call to meet under black smoke in Kingsgate at sunset, and they all make it to the meet (not a guarantee on this job). They are met by a member of the black cross, and figure out the counter sign (moving two black painted boards amongst some jotsom on the street) to have him call proximal to act as a face to the runners, who reveals that he set up the job posting. The runners negotiate, with breag getting a bad roll and declining to edge because it is a humanitarian action and it’s proximal, who has a good rep to the hub.
Proximal lays out a target of opportunity with MCT moving medical supplies forward on a crash basis after an attack knocked out a bunch of MCT affiliated stuff. Proximal is terribly mad at their automatic triage of non-corp citizens into the last priority and effectively leaving a bunch to die on the assumption they can’t pay.
They get his intel, which is that in the couple hours since the black cross has had an eye on this, they have seen convoys as light as a set of passenger vehicles, and as heavy as near military convoys. The convoys which head to the new medical setup seem to start in two places, Bothel and the bellevue side of Kirkland.
The runners come up with 2 plans, ambushing a convoy and social infiltration, and go to do a basic bit of recon on the Bothel warehouse location. They come to a fairly standard upscale warehouse setup, with retracting barbed wire topped aesthetically pleasing wall around the area to reduce noise and prevent eyesore, and follow a convoy leaving in the midnight hour, with their various plans for acquiring heavier ordinance before this ambush forgotten.
The convoy consists of: A motor cycle outrider, 2 vans (MCT nissan haulers, effectively stock), a security vehicle based around the “move fast, lots of firepower, armor on people not vehicle” concept described as a Quick Reaction Vehicle (stats on request, loosely based on the morgan) with a machinegun mounted, and a semi-truck. Notes: This was at night, in the rain, from a moving vehicle that they got their original perception.
Psycedel plants a fly spy on the underside of each of the two vans, managing to evade the physical sensors, and running silent without a sleaze rating. This goes unnoticed until they step up their scanning after crossing the redmond border, finding the drones. After finding the drones, psycedel get HOTF’d for 2 marks since MCT spiders are some of the best in the world and have the confidence to do such a thing
Team speeds up, gets in front of them and sets up an ambush. Psycedel mentions moving the mini-zep which has been following the convoy as the convoy reaches the extreme end of visual range given the location and “I got marks on an RCC, there are drones on our vehicles and another drone trailing us just moved, time to stomp it and deploy security” triggers the outrider to speed up somewhat, the spider to toss a data-spike at psycedel, with blackout, mugger and decryption running on a DR3 deck, bricking psychedel’s RCC. The team sets down their guns, and apparently Psychedel’s drones power down with termination of signal, since I let the player dictate their “standard response”. 5 roto drones popped out of the semi, and they set to searching, with one leading the pack by a mile as the rigger with an R2 control rig hopped into the lead drone.
Seeing this all, the team went matrix dark, falling back on microtranscievers. Breag and Whiplash set down their guns since they had no convenient transport of their own, having stated they had their bikes parked reasonably nearby, but not on hand. Jerry calmly shoves his gun into a dufflebag, making an ettiquete check to look casual and/or defeated enough not to be ventilated and passes. Breag and Whiplash take off for their bikes, socially stealthing through the barrens night, and manage to make it to their bikes.
Psychedel, fakes sleeping in the back of her van, chameleon coated to look like a non-emergency medical van. This is suspicious, but they have stuff to get to the triage station, and so decline to stop and investigate a relatively clean medical van in the barrens.
Psychedel checks on the mini-zep after the convoy passes, miraculously not shot down, and goes and physically has to power on the drones she had hidden because she stated they were fully powered down, imitating as close as possible inert hunks of metal. She manages to get her drones powered on with some amusing problem solving, and witnesses one of the two stashed guns go walking away with a ganger, and the other also ends up walking away before it can be retrieved.
Run Time: a hair over 4 hours
Mission Rewards:
4 karma for putting their lives on the line to do good, 1 karma for being good sports.
Would like to give them the -2 to proximal GMP cost, but they did not complete the run for him.
Expenses: Psychedel ended up with a bricked RCC, Breag lost an alpha, and Whiplash lost an AK97. Overall, they were just GMP positive even on a failed run.
GM Reward: 10 GMP from this, bonus tallied in team. 17 banked
GM Spending: none right now.
Notes: Team focused in totally on the objective, did not let anything slow them down, including a full threat assessment. They acted on insufficient information and chased a convoy MCT was willing to send out through the barrens at night. The actual security on the convoy would have been insufficient to stop them had the runners not been made and gone through with the ambush in the manner they had been planning to before this particular convoy was jangled out below their nose. They also took sketch information of “here is the basic details, roll perception for more” without rolling perception, so I either need to force those rolls rather than giving the option or give way less free information or accept that teams will take sketch information assuming it is all there is and nearly die because of it.
I really pulled the punch on this one. I’m kicking myself over it now, but I had another GM getting information from a player telling me I was being unfairly harsh, which made me question the written plan, and so about half the intended threat from the convoy never materialized as they never showed fight.
That said, they never fired a shot and so were not ventilated in return.
Quotes:
Hub Fodder:
This was all in response to a misunderstanding, because I had heard ecoterrorism and explosives about Tark’s latest run and assumed there was a major explosion somewhere, so when that was incorrect, a minor retcon to RRA resistance related explosion around avondale happened.