RE: Quick Dirty Bastards: Criminal Stupidity
06-25-2013, 03:42 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-01-2013, 07:21 AM by ☆ C.H.W.O.K.A ☆.)
SESSION 1 SUMMARY
PART 1: ghosts exist
"THIS ONE GOES OUT TO ALL YOU LOVERS OUT THERE," says Pete November (Chwoka) as part of his regular pirate radio broadcast duties, before slipping an old Barry White record onto the platter. Suddenly, there's a knocking at his van door! Pete tries to jump in the front seat and hightail it, but can't, because YOU CAN'T JUST DRIVE AWAY FROM ALL YOUR PROBLEMS, PETE. In comes one of Ben Bernanke's hired goons, holding a gun molded to be shaped like a dick. (Ben Bernanke got WEIRD after he died and turned into a ghost.) The goon points out that Pete owes Ben 45,000 nuyen, with interest on top of that. Pete says he'll do anything, and starts sucking some gun dick. This is like two minutes into the campaign. The goon, extricating his dick gun from Pete's mouth, explains that he wants some privacy before he will explain what's going on, which is, incidentally, the Barry White song that is playing. "Oh, sure, sure," says Pete, before leaning into the mic. "This one goes out to all you lovers out there." He puts on some death metal and turns off the mic that has actually been on this whole time.
The goon explains that Ben wants Pete to do a job in exchange for covering this month's interest. Apparently, one of Ben's shadowrunning crews was hired or extorted into doing a little corporate espionage on EvoCorp and, while successful, left evidence behind that could easily be tied back to Ben Bernanke: a dropped drone, and security footage. They are, remarkably, less competent than Pete, a man with no weapons, no useful experience, and no friends. The goon flatters Pete by telling him he's a hard man to find. In order to ensure that Pete does his job instead of saying he will and then driving away, disappearing into the afternoon, Ben has sent an escort. "What, like a prostitute?" asks Pete. No, not like a prostitute at all. More like a babysitter. Enter Shodan (soundlyParanoid), a Dire Borg — more machine than woman, more weapons than you can shake a stick at before being obliterated. She immediately takes a hating to Pete.
The goon leaves, and Pete ends his broadcast with a desperate plea for help from anyone listening. Who's listening? Damien Tanner (FelixSparks) and Lydia Ko (Schazer), aka Harvestine flatmates and presumed lovers. (The presumption couldn't be more wrong.) Damien wants to go help this guy because he thinks it will be interesting. Harvestine has to be dragged along, kicking and grumbling. Meanwhile, Shodan gives Pete an SMG that's never used, in flagrant violation of Chekhov's Gun. The four meet and greet. "So, are you the lovers out there?" is not a well-received greeting. Pete's not in a position to negotiate and so Damien and Harvestine demand undefined payment for services rendered post-hoc. He has to agree.
The crew goes to where Pete's Rad Van is parked and begin to argue about where to go plan the heist. On the back of multiple sarcastic comments Pete makes, everybody in the group literally takes turns punching him in the face. Only Shodan succeeds, and gives Pete a concussion. Eventually, Pete just hops in his van, Harvestine on her moped, and they drive to Pete's trap shack, a house with mostly-plywood walls and a corrugated aluminum door. It's a real shithole. Pete literally has to shit in a hole. Furnishings consist of a non-functioning toilet, a bedroll, a non-functioning refrigerator that breeds new species of spider, and a gigantic collection of antique music. I can't even remember why, but Pete gets punched in the face again, leaving his nose broken. "If we keep this up," says someone, "pretty soon the whole economy will be based on punching Pete in the face."
"Well, at least then my debt would be easier to pay off!" Pete jokes. "I'd just need to let Shodan here punch me in the face 45 thousand times." Shodan punches Pete in the face 45 thousand times and he dies. Reload from last quicksave.
The Quick Dirty Bastards begin to plan. Shodan has 2 janitor-level access cards to the EvoCorp building. Damien calls up his contact, Jamie the Computer Guy, and asks him for info on this EvoCorp place. Jamie asks for payment. Damien says 10,000 nuyens and Pete flips the fuck out because that's more than the whole mission is worth. So Damien lowers the offer to 1,000, which is still absolutely ludicrous, especially considering that the only thing Jamie digs up are the blueprints to the EvoCorp building, which is already public domain. Meanwhile, Harvestine goes out to case the joint out, which proves much more useful. There's a fat security guard guarding the employee parking lot.
"Easy as rhubarb pie," says Harvestine.
"Wait, pie!" says Pete. "That gives me an idea. What if we baked a pie for the security guard, but then didn't give him any silverware? That way, he has to go into the pie face-first. Then, we punch him in the face THROUGH the pie tin!"
"That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard," says Damien, and he's right. Somehow, though, Pete remains the brains of the operation.
The security guard points Harvestine to the visitor's lobby. Harvestine goes there. The receptionists asks why she's there. Harvestine bullshits and says she's there to see "Mr. Schneider," who does not exist. When the receptionist tells Harvestine such, Harvestine says he's from the east branch and leaves. But this small nugget of information forms the crux of the whole plan, which Pete formulates and actually works. Damien, who is good at disguising himself, will dress as a business man and say he's Mr. Schneider, from the east branch. The receptionist won't bother to look it up because the fact that two separate people talked about him is plenty cross-referencing. Shodan will play the part of his bodyguard and get a visitor's pass. Harvestine will check for Mr. Schneider again and be let in with another visitor's pass.
Pete could probably pull the same trick as Harvestine, but that would be too many good ideas for one day, so instead it is decided that all together, we need one more identity. The plan is to frame that person so as to throw the scent off our own trail. So, on her way over, Harvestine commits a hit-and-run on a random pedestrian, whose name is Guy Peterson. Harvestine offers to call an ambulance for him if she gives him all his identifying information and Peterson, dazed and confused, does so. Harvestine quickly looks around for a phone booth so she can call an ambulance untraceably and not connect herself to the crime, but finds none. Harvestine, at this point, has all the information she needs to steal this man's identity, so she decides to drag him into a dark alleyway, steal his arm, and leave him for dead. Then, she goes across the street and tears off another man's ear. Harvestine drives off into the sunset, a real modern cowboy.
Back at Trap Shack HQ, the plan is solidified. It turns out Guy Peterson was an intern at EvoCorp's west branch, so Pete will pretend to be Guy Peterson and go hack the servers under his name to remove the footage. Damien will discretely jam the radio signals that allow the cameras to send footage to monitors and servers. Then, he will go up to the crime scene the previous shadowrun crew left behind and either he or Shodan will palm the evidence. If it is necessary to turn off the lights to accomplish our goals, which is like, contingency plan C, Harvestine will be waiting by the fuse box, ready to hit the lights on any floor needed.
PART 2: Harvestine is not allowed to improvise
THE QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS SPRING INTO ACTION! The entrances, staggered out from Pete's Rad Van, go as smoothly as could possibly be hoped. Damien and Shodan enter and go to the ninth floor, where the crime scene is. Pete is waved through and waits for Harvestine. Harvestine says she's here to see Mr. Schneider again and gets her visitor's pass. The receptionist pages Mr. Schneider to the eighth floor to meet with Harvestine in a conference room, which is really no problem. Pete hits the fifth floor, where the servers are, on the way up. Shodan stays on the ninth floor.
Then, Damien jams the cameras. And the commlinks. Nobody knows what anybody else is doing, or what contingency plan we're on. Pete hacks into the servers and finds out that the footage is actually stored remotely. He goes to the eighth floor to meet with Damien and Harvestine to give them the update, but they're already long-gone, stationed at their posts and enacting their plans. Damien is lying to the 4 policemen investigating the crime scene. He says he saw a kid in a hoodie on the third floor who looked like he might be responsible for the commlink jamming, which has made the police officers suspicious. Two police officers run to the third floor, and two stay up.
Harvestine, however, has decided that without any instruction via commlink, she is allowed to add her own flair to the proceedings. Instead of breaking the locks on the fusebox and flipping the appropriate fuse and escaping before anyone knows it was here, she rigs C4 to the fusebox and — fittingly — puts it on a fuse, which should run out of length by the time the elevator gets her to the eighth floor and lets her out. Chwoka stammers about how this is a terrible idea the whole time it's being set up. When Harvestine reaches the eighth floor and every light, electronic, and elevator goes dead, Chwoka gets the opportunity to chew her out in-character.
"I blew up the fusebox," says Harvestine.
"That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard," says Pete, and he's right.
"Look," says Harvestine, "Nobody's going to suspect you were doing something as innocuous as checking records if you bothered to blow up the building."
"So your plan," says Pete, "is to cover up a smaller crime with a BIGGER CRIME."
"Plus, once the electricity is out, nobody's going to expect a hacker."
"Right," says Pete, "because it is impossible."
"Exactly!" says Harvestine.
"No, I don't think you understand," says Pete, "it is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to hack if the electricity's out."
Also, the fire alarm is going off everywhere, because there is a fire in the basement and it's spreading.
Meanwhile upstairs, Damien lies more because it worked to get rid of the first two policemen. When the lights go out and the fire alarm goes off, he says he thinks he saw a child in a cubicle over there. The policemen don't buy it for a second. A, why would a child be in the cubicle in Research & Development while it's closed off, B, why would that be relevant in our current situation, C, who the hell is Mr. Schneider and why is he up here? Shodan takes this opportunity to palm the dropped drone they were here to retrieve and high-tail it down the fire escape, leaving Damien with no backup.
Damien has got to be, like, the last one down the fire escape because he spent so much time on his terrible lie. (Don't worry if I paint everyone in a negative light, they redeem themselves during the car chase.) He's got two police officers in hot pursuit, and by hot I mean sexy, and on the way down he bumps into the police officers who went down to the third floor. These guys don't know he's on the wrong side of the law yet, they assume he's running due to fire, but they take off running downstairs immediately behind him all the time, which makes it LOOK like he's being chased by the police.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Quick Dirty Bastards wait in Pete's Rad Van. "Where the hell is Damien?" says Pete. "If he comes out of those doors and it even LOOKS like he's being chased by police officers, we're closing the doors and driving off without him."
Damien comes out of those doors, but it doesn't LOOK like he's being chased by police officers because Harvestine fires a smoke grenade at the front door as soon as she can see him, and now nobody can see anything. The Quick Dirty Bastards escape in style and smoke inhalation to Trap Shack HQ.
PART 3:
THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS IS FIGURING OUT WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED. The most important piece of information is that the security footage is stored remotely at a Lone Star branch. Pete, the brains of the operation, if only because he can't possibly be the brawn or the good looks, gets on the legwork.
He finds out a ton about Lone Star HQ with a simple data search, and he didn't have to pay 1,000 nuyen for it. There's two rooms on floors 4 and 5 that certainly fit the profile of a server room even if they are marked "classified." There's a dude on the 6th floor who, just this morning, threw himself out of a window — which is still open. At night, there's practically no human security guards, just drones. There's an armory hidden behind the cafe — okay, sidenote, there's a Lone Star Cafe, and it's a separate brand entity from the Lone Star Security Force. A long time ago, they realized there was a brand conflict but they settled out-of-court with an agreement that Lone Star Security Forces would have a Lone Star Cafe in every Lone Star Security Forces building. Okay, so in this particular place, there's an armory hidden out behind the cafe, but no ground-level doors, so you'd have to blow a hole in the wall to get in. I think Pete points this out just to get Shodan and Harvestine's attention.
Pretty much immediately, we have like 4 plans and over half of them are jokes, but the Quick Dirty Bastards don't really care. Plan A is that Pete is going to go into the Lone Star Cafe, get a with Guy Peterson's money, and sip it while he hacks the servers with Peterson's commlink. Plan B is that Damien is going to turn invisible because that's possible, climb in through the 6th floor and try to find information that could help Pete do a better job hacking, like, passwords and shit. Plan C is that Harvestine fights her way to the servers, presumably down from the window entrance, but Pete didn't bother to make that clear, so she assumes that it's UP from the GROUND FLOOR, and then BLOW UP ALL THE SERVERS. Plan D, which is the least real of all the plans, is that Shodan is going to try and land a job interview at the Lone Star Cafe.
The Quick Dirty Bastards realize their own limits, of course, and need extensive prep time. They split up to pursue their own interests. Damien learns to climb real good. Pete cracks open a big book labelled "HACKING FOR DUMMIES, 2071 EDITION." It's kinda weird that they still print those things in paperback, actually.
Shodan decides she can't possibly apply to a day job under her own name and goes to a retirement community to pull a Harvestine and steal an identity. Why can't she use the spare ear Harvestine grabbed? It's not the right gender. Briefly, Shodan pauses to consider the murder she is about to commit. Does she want to kill a defenseless old lady at random, in her own home, so she can get a terrible minimum-wage job with their identity? Paranoid rolls for morality and comes up bankrupt. So Shodan kicks down a random door, and is greeted with a "hello, sweetie" from Agatha Winters, sweetest old lady ever. "Would you like a pie?" Shodan WOULD like a pie. Agatha gives Shodan a delicious rhubarb pie. Shodan decides that the pie tastes better than Agatha's identity ever could and leaves, resolving to come visit again some time. Besides, Rickie James could totally be a girl's name.
Harvestine visits her ex-lover TNT and really uncomfortable flirting ensues. At the core of that exchange, though, is that TNT could totally make explosives enough to take out two floors of the Lone Star building with a bit left over if he had the money to do so with. Harvestine has a flash of inspiration and calls Pete up. Does he still have that arm with the commlink in it? Yeah, he does. He can use that to access Guy Peterson's bank account and we can spend all that money on explosives. Great. Pete accesses Peterson's bank account and finds 5,000 nuyen, just sitting in there. That's crazy, that's more than the job he is doing right now pays him.
...
Yeah, Pete tells Harvestine the bank account is bone-dry, then calls his loan shark Ken Johnson to transfer funds direct from Guy Peterson's account and pay off his debt. When Damien and Shodan immediately call Harvestine to tell her Pete's a liar, it's only then Pete caves and sends Harvestine Peterson's credit cards, which she maxes out on explosives and Pete is going to count as payment for the job.
Wait, let's back up a bit. Harvestine just bought 20,000 NUYENS WORTH OF VOLATILE EXPLOSIVES.
It's now like, midnight. Plans A and D begin concurrently. The codeword for starting Plans B and C is "rhubarb." Despite his extensive cramming, Pete is unable to hack into the servers from the cafe. He is barely able to extricate himself from the situation without being caught, and opts not to try again because it's too risky. What a fucking wuss. So, instead of risking absolutely anything at all, Pete exclaims "This coffee tastes like rhubarb!" as he leaves the cafe, very inconspicuous. He spends quite a while just waiting in the van while Chwoka doesn't pay attention to what happens.
Plan B begins. Damien scales the building successfully and sees the suicide note and on open email on the suicidal guy's computer. Turns out he was being extorted by some schmuck named Peter Marshall (sdegenko).
Meanwhile, Plan D is going swimmingly. Shodan is KILLING the interview portion and her falsified resume is sterling. Turns out Agatha Winters is world-famous for her pies and studying under her tutelage almost makes Shodan OVER-qualified. The interviewer watches, really admires, actually, as Shodan bakes a rhubarb pie. It looks good. The interviewer puts it to his nose. It smells good. He grabs a fork, puts a bite in his mouth...
KA-BOOOOOOM! Plan C is underway and all the entryways on the ground floor have just exploded. "That pie's got a hell of a kick!" says the interviewer. Harvestine runs in, oneshots a drone, and goes up several more flights of stairs before she finds another drone, which takes a kilo of explosive to the face after a flashbang grenade proves substandard. She finds one of the server rooms and rigs it with all the explosives she has, because TNT would never give her another centimeter of fuse rope if she didn't.
Another security drone hovers up, but then Damien pipes in over the commlink. "Hey, I found security central control. I turned off all the drones and cameras. Also, I found the admin password for the servers." Of course, Pete is a bit... busy to take advantage of this information, but we're going to have to double-back to catch that plotline as it dovetails. "Also, reinforcements are arriving in like, one minute, and there's nothing I can do about that, so we should get out of here." Harvestine sets the fuse for 90 seconds and makes her escape. We're QUICK dirty bastards, okay?
Okay, so meanwhile Pete's just chilling in his van when Peter Marshall walks up, sniper rifle in hand. "Hey, if you're here to shoot that guy on the 6th floor, he committed suicide this morning," is how Pete decides to initiate conversation. They make small talk, really hit it off. It's nice for Pete to know somebody who won't punch him in the face. Pete introduces Peter to his radio equipment. They turn the mic on and don't turn it off, this is important. The only social misstep is when Pete calls Ben Bernanke his "frenemy," which has never failed to make anyone listening cringe. Peter gives Pete some of his red mescaline, which is a great idea for a getaway driver, let me tell you. Shodan comes out, positively GLOWING from her successful job interview, and calls Pete the fuck OUT on his complete failure to do anything that could possibly be interpreted as helping with his own damn mission.
So, Pete and Peter go to try and help. Pete tries to climb the wall up to the 6th story, but because he's high and not too good at climbing anyway, he just ends up frantically humping the wall. It's still enough to rouse the suspicion of The Only Security Guard, who comes to investigate with his stun stick. Pete successfully dodges, while still maintaining his idiotic appearance by attempting to actually grab the stun stick and missing. Then the drugs REALLY kick in. The guard's got caterpillars for eyes and a delicious-looking fish in his hands. But Pete's not going to go after that fish with his bare mouth, he's going to grab some silverware. All he finds is a potato and a walrus. Luckily, Peter saves his ass with by tasing the guard from behind.
"Also, reinforcements are arriving in like, one minute, and there's nothing I can do about that, so we should get out of here," says Damien.
"WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE," says Pete, and then they do. Harvestine jumps on her moped, and everyone else piles into Pete's Rad Van. Pete throws his snake-arms around the steering wheel and we're off to the races.
PART 4: Don't bring an armored van to a grenade fight
THE PLAN? DITCH HARVESTINE. Harvestine's the only one who the two reinforcements, who arrive in armored vans, could connect to the crime. Harvestine is a liability and Pete is a mercenary asshole. Pete's Rad Van slips out unnoticed. The fatal flaw is that Harvestine apparently thinks we are a team and opts to follow us, and now we're in a car chase.
"Hey guys, shouldn't we go back for Harvestine?" says Damien. Out of sheer distaste for positive emotion, Pete orders Shodan throw Damien out the back of the van AT Harvestine, without a single word of explanation. Whatever happens from there is a positive outcome for Pete. What ends up happening is actually that Damien fucking STICKS THE LANDING onto the bike in sitting position, without Harvestine significantly altering her course or slowing down, and quickly switches to driving while Harvestine mans the grenade launcher. Or should I say... WO-mans the grenade launcher? (The women in this campaign are consistently awesome is what I am saying.) Harvestine launches ONE grenade under the first armored van and turns it into a burned-out husk. Harvestine's no longer a liability, now she's an asset.
Shodan gets to work on the second van with a grenade launcher of her own after Peter gets to snipe the dude in the passenger seat manning the gun cold in the face. Paranoia proceeds to have the luckiest dice in the whole world and for this whole section rolls nothing but 5s and 6s. So, Shodan fires like 9 grenades, rapid-fire, right into the gaping maw of a windshield. The driver's going down in flames, screaming "WHY DO YOU EVEN HAVE GRENADE LAUNCHERS," when Shodan finally gets that perfect shot. The grenade goes right into his big dumb screaming mouth and his head blows up.
Pete opens the back doors of the van again, to let Harvestine in, Knight Rider style. To facilitate this, he ALSO pops a fucking wheelie, in a VAN.
Peter says, "hey, I think I hear something coming!"
Pete says, derisively, "YOU'RE HIGH!"
Then, like 200 bullets rain down from above on Pete's Rad Van. This little moment of irony has GOT to be amongst the highlights of the night for the people listening to Pete's radio station. Also amongst the highlights: when Pete's gearshift turned into a dick gun before his very eyes (his very high eyes) and he resolved to just stay in 5th gear from now on.
There's an attack helicopter coming after us now, or a Hella Lobster if you took mescaline earlier, and the pilots are piping in "Flight of the Bumblebees" through their external speakers because they know exactly what they are a part of here. Pete, high on adrenaline and red mescaline, decides to attempt a backflip off a pile of trash. All he ends up doing is a barrel roll, which is still really cool, but it's not what he was aiming for. The Hella Lobster pilot is fucking awestruck and switches over to the Dukes of Hazzard theme song, which is crazy future-anachronistic but who GIVES a shit. Then everybody takes their turn firing fireballs, sniping, and launching grenades at the Hella Lobster from the surprisingly well-armored comfort of Pete's Rad Van.
Pete swerves off to the sidewalk, ramps off a homeless person, and does a FULL BACKFLIP while the machine gun fire from inside the van explodes the helicopter. The pilot's arm is immolated into a thumbs-up position, forever certifying Pete's van as truly rad.
Pete calls Ken and tells him the contract's been fulfilled in the coolest way he can. TNT, who we abandoned at a tall building next to the Lone Star branch, was filming the whole thing from the time the server rooms exploded to the end of it. It's going to get synced up with the audio from inside the van and go viral.
"You guys are pretty chill," says Peter.
PART 1: ghosts exist
"THIS ONE GOES OUT TO ALL YOU LOVERS OUT THERE," says Pete November (Chwoka) as part of his regular pirate radio broadcast duties, before slipping an old Barry White record onto the platter. Suddenly, there's a knocking at his van door! Pete tries to jump in the front seat and hightail it, but can't, because YOU CAN'T JUST DRIVE AWAY FROM ALL YOUR PROBLEMS, PETE. In comes one of Ben Bernanke's hired goons, holding a gun molded to be shaped like a dick. (Ben Bernanke got WEIRD after he died and turned into a ghost.) The goon points out that Pete owes Ben 45,000 nuyen, with interest on top of that. Pete says he'll do anything, and starts sucking some gun dick. This is like two minutes into the campaign. The goon, extricating his dick gun from Pete's mouth, explains that he wants some privacy before he will explain what's going on, which is, incidentally, the Barry White song that is playing. "Oh, sure, sure," says Pete, before leaning into the mic. "This one goes out to all you lovers out there." He puts on some death metal and turns off the mic that has actually been on this whole time.
The goon explains that Ben wants Pete to do a job in exchange for covering this month's interest. Apparently, one of Ben's shadowrunning crews was hired or extorted into doing a little corporate espionage on EvoCorp and, while successful, left evidence behind that could easily be tied back to Ben Bernanke: a dropped drone, and security footage. They are, remarkably, less competent than Pete, a man with no weapons, no useful experience, and no friends. The goon flatters Pete by telling him he's a hard man to find. In order to ensure that Pete does his job instead of saying he will and then driving away, disappearing into the afternoon, Ben has sent an escort. "What, like a prostitute?" asks Pete. No, not like a prostitute at all. More like a babysitter. Enter Shodan (soundlyParanoid), a Dire Borg — more machine than woman, more weapons than you can shake a stick at before being obliterated. She immediately takes a hating to Pete.
The goon leaves, and Pete ends his broadcast with a desperate plea for help from anyone listening. Who's listening? Damien Tanner (FelixSparks) and Lydia Ko (Schazer), aka Harvestine flatmates and presumed lovers. (The presumption couldn't be more wrong.) Damien wants to go help this guy because he thinks it will be interesting. Harvestine has to be dragged along, kicking and grumbling. Meanwhile, Shodan gives Pete an SMG that's never used, in flagrant violation of Chekhov's Gun. The four meet and greet. "So, are you the lovers out there?" is not a well-received greeting. Pete's not in a position to negotiate and so Damien and Harvestine demand undefined payment for services rendered post-hoc. He has to agree.
The crew goes to where Pete's Rad Van is parked and begin to argue about where to go plan the heist. On the back of multiple sarcastic comments Pete makes, everybody in the group literally takes turns punching him in the face. Only Shodan succeeds, and gives Pete a concussion. Eventually, Pete just hops in his van, Harvestine on her moped, and they drive to Pete's trap shack, a house with mostly-plywood walls and a corrugated aluminum door. It's a real shithole. Pete literally has to shit in a hole. Furnishings consist of a non-functioning toilet, a bedroll, a non-functioning refrigerator that breeds new species of spider, and a gigantic collection of antique music. I can't even remember why, but Pete gets punched in the face again, leaving his nose broken. "If we keep this up," says someone, "pretty soon the whole economy will be based on punching Pete in the face."
"Well, at least then my debt would be easier to pay off!" Pete jokes. "I'd just need to let Shodan here punch me in the face 45 thousand times." Shodan punches Pete in the face 45 thousand times and he dies. Reload from last quicksave.
The Quick Dirty Bastards begin to plan. Shodan has 2 janitor-level access cards to the EvoCorp building. Damien calls up his contact, Jamie the Computer Guy, and asks him for info on this EvoCorp place. Jamie asks for payment. Damien says 10,000 nuyens and Pete flips the fuck out because that's more than the whole mission is worth. So Damien lowers the offer to 1,000, which is still absolutely ludicrous, especially considering that the only thing Jamie digs up are the blueprints to the EvoCorp building, which is already public domain. Meanwhile, Harvestine goes out to case the joint out, which proves much more useful. There's a fat security guard guarding the employee parking lot.
"Easy as rhubarb pie," says Harvestine.
"Wait, pie!" says Pete. "That gives me an idea. What if we baked a pie for the security guard, but then didn't give him any silverware? That way, he has to go into the pie face-first. Then, we punch him in the face THROUGH the pie tin!"
"That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard," says Damien, and he's right. Somehow, though, Pete remains the brains of the operation.
The security guard points Harvestine to the visitor's lobby. Harvestine goes there. The receptionists asks why she's there. Harvestine bullshits and says she's there to see "Mr. Schneider," who does not exist. When the receptionist tells Harvestine such, Harvestine says he's from the east branch and leaves. But this small nugget of information forms the crux of the whole plan, which Pete formulates and actually works. Damien, who is good at disguising himself, will dress as a business man and say he's Mr. Schneider, from the east branch. The receptionist won't bother to look it up because the fact that two separate people talked about him is plenty cross-referencing. Shodan will play the part of his bodyguard and get a visitor's pass. Harvestine will check for Mr. Schneider again and be let in with another visitor's pass.
Pete could probably pull the same trick as Harvestine, but that would be too many good ideas for one day, so instead it is decided that all together, we need one more identity. The plan is to frame that person so as to throw the scent off our own trail. So, on her way over, Harvestine commits a hit-and-run on a random pedestrian, whose name is Guy Peterson. Harvestine offers to call an ambulance for him if she gives him all his identifying information and Peterson, dazed and confused, does so. Harvestine quickly looks around for a phone booth so she can call an ambulance untraceably and not connect herself to the crime, but finds none. Harvestine, at this point, has all the information she needs to steal this man's identity, so she decides to drag him into a dark alleyway, steal his arm, and leave him for dead. Then, she goes across the street and tears off another man's ear. Harvestine drives off into the sunset, a real modern cowboy.
Back at Trap Shack HQ, the plan is solidified. It turns out Guy Peterson was an intern at EvoCorp's west branch, so Pete will pretend to be Guy Peterson and go hack the servers under his name to remove the footage. Damien will discretely jam the radio signals that allow the cameras to send footage to monitors and servers. Then, he will go up to the crime scene the previous shadowrun crew left behind and either he or Shodan will palm the evidence. If it is necessary to turn off the lights to accomplish our goals, which is like, contingency plan C, Harvestine will be waiting by the fuse box, ready to hit the lights on any floor needed.
PART 2: Harvestine is not allowed to improvise
THE QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS SPRING INTO ACTION! The entrances, staggered out from Pete's Rad Van, go as smoothly as could possibly be hoped. Damien and Shodan enter and go to the ninth floor, where the crime scene is. Pete is waved through and waits for Harvestine. Harvestine says she's here to see Mr. Schneider again and gets her visitor's pass. The receptionist pages Mr. Schneider to the eighth floor to meet with Harvestine in a conference room, which is really no problem. Pete hits the fifth floor, where the servers are, on the way up. Shodan stays on the ninth floor.
Then, Damien jams the cameras. And the commlinks. Nobody knows what anybody else is doing, or what contingency plan we're on. Pete hacks into the servers and finds out that the footage is actually stored remotely. He goes to the eighth floor to meet with Damien and Harvestine to give them the update, but they're already long-gone, stationed at their posts and enacting their plans. Damien is lying to the 4 policemen investigating the crime scene. He says he saw a kid in a hoodie on the third floor who looked like he might be responsible for the commlink jamming, which has made the police officers suspicious. Two police officers run to the third floor, and two stay up.
Harvestine, however, has decided that without any instruction via commlink, she is allowed to add her own flair to the proceedings. Instead of breaking the locks on the fusebox and flipping the appropriate fuse and escaping before anyone knows it was here, she rigs C4 to the fusebox and — fittingly — puts it on a fuse, which should run out of length by the time the elevator gets her to the eighth floor and lets her out. Chwoka stammers about how this is a terrible idea the whole time it's being set up. When Harvestine reaches the eighth floor and every light, electronic, and elevator goes dead, Chwoka gets the opportunity to chew her out in-character.
"I blew up the fusebox," says Harvestine.
"That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard," says Pete, and he's right.
"Look," says Harvestine, "Nobody's going to suspect you were doing something as innocuous as checking records if you bothered to blow up the building."
"So your plan," says Pete, "is to cover up a smaller crime with a BIGGER CRIME."
"Plus, once the electricity is out, nobody's going to expect a hacker."
"Right," says Pete, "because it is impossible."
"Exactly!" says Harvestine.
"No, I don't think you understand," says Pete, "it is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to hack if the electricity's out."
Also, the fire alarm is going off everywhere, because there is a fire in the basement and it's spreading.
Meanwhile upstairs, Damien lies more because it worked to get rid of the first two policemen. When the lights go out and the fire alarm goes off, he says he thinks he saw a child in a cubicle over there. The policemen don't buy it for a second. A, why would a child be in the cubicle in Research & Development while it's closed off, B, why would that be relevant in our current situation, C, who the hell is Mr. Schneider and why is he up here? Shodan takes this opportunity to palm the dropped drone they were here to retrieve and high-tail it down the fire escape, leaving Damien with no backup.
Damien has got to be, like, the last one down the fire escape because he spent so much time on his terrible lie. (Don't worry if I paint everyone in a negative light, they redeem themselves during the car chase.) He's got two police officers in hot pursuit, and by hot I mean sexy, and on the way down he bumps into the police officers who went down to the third floor. These guys don't know he's on the wrong side of the law yet, they assume he's running due to fire, but they take off running downstairs immediately behind him all the time, which makes it LOOK like he's being chased by the police.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Quick Dirty Bastards wait in Pete's Rad Van. "Where the hell is Damien?" says Pete. "If he comes out of those doors and it even LOOKS like he's being chased by police officers, we're closing the doors and driving off without him."
Damien comes out of those doors, but it doesn't LOOK like he's being chased by police officers because Harvestine fires a smoke grenade at the front door as soon as she can see him, and now nobody can see anything. The Quick Dirty Bastards escape in style and smoke inhalation to Trap Shack HQ.
PART 3:
THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS IS FIGURING OUT WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED. The most important piece of information is that the security footage is stored remotely at a Lone Star branch. Pete, the brains of the operation, if only because he can't possibly be the brawn or the good looks, gets on the legwork.
He finds out a ton about Lone Star HQ with a simple data search, and he didn't have to pay 1,000 nuyen for it. There's two rooms on floors 4 and 5 that certainly fit the profile of a server room even if they are marked "classified." There's a dude on the 6th floor who, just this morning, threw himself out of a window — which is still open. At night, there's practically no human security guards, just drones. There's an armory hidden behind the cafe — okay, sidenote, there's a Lone Star Cafe, and it's a separate brand entity from the Lone Star Security Force. A long time ago, they realized there was a brand conflict but they settled out-of-court with an agreement that Lone Star Security Forces would have a Lone Star Cafe in every Lone Star Security Forces building. Okay, so in this particular place, there's an armory hidden out behind the cafe, but no ground-level doors, so you'd have to blow a hole in the wall to get in. I think Pete points this out just to get Shodan and Harvestine's attention.
Pretty much immediately, we have like 4 plans and over half of them are jokes, but the Quick Dirty Bastards don't really care. Plan A is that Pete is going to go into the Lone Star Cafe, get a
with Guy Peterson's money, and sip it while he hacks the servers with Peterson's commlink. Plan B is that Damien is going to turn invisible because that's possible, climb in through the 6th floor and try to find information that could help Pete do a better job hacking, like, passwords and shit. Plan C is that Harvestine fights her way to the servers, presumably down from the window entrance, but Pete didn't bother to make that clear, so she assumes that it's UP from the GROUND FLOOR, and then BLOW UP ALL THE SERVERS. Plan D, which is the least real of all the plans, is that Shodan is going to try and land a job interview at the Lone Star Cafe.The Quick Dirty Bastards realize their own limits, of course, and need extensive prep time. They split up to pursue their own interests. Damien learns to climb real good. Pete cracks open a big book labelled "HACKING FOR DUMMIES, 2071 EDITION." It's kinda weird that they still print those things in paperback, actually.
Shodan decides she can't possibly apply to a day job under her own name and goes to a retirement community to pull a Harvestine and steal an identity. Why can't she use the spare ear Harvestine grabbed? It's not the right gender. Briefly, Shodan pauses to consider the murder she is about to commit. Does she want to kill a defenseless old lady at random, in her own home, so she can get a terrible minimum-wage job with their identity? Paranoid rolls for morality and comes up bankrupt. So Shodan kicks down a random door, and is greeted with a "hello, sweetie" from Agatha Winters, sweetest old lady ever. "Would you like a pie?" Shodan WOULD like a pie. Agatha gives Shodan a delicious rhubarb pie. Shodan decides that the pie tastes better than Agatha's identity ever could and leaves, resolving to come visit again some time. Besides, Rickie James could totally be a girl's name.
Harvestine visits her ex-lover TNT and really uncomfortable flirting ensues. At the core of that exchange, though, is that TNT could totally make explosives enough to take out two floors of the Lone Star building with a bit left over if he had the money to do so with. Harvestine has a flash of inspiration and calls Pete up. Does he still have that arm with the commlink in it? Yeah, he does. He can use that to access Guy Peterson's bank account and we can spend all that money on explosives. Great. Pete accesses Peterson's bank account and finds 5,000 nuyen, just sitting in there. That's crazy, that's more than the job he is doing right now pays him.
...
Yeah, Pete tells Harvestine the bank account is bone-dry, then calls his loan shark Ken Johnson to transfer funds direct from Guy Peterson's account and pay off his debt. When Damien and Shodan immediately call Harvestine to tell her Pete's a liar, it's only then Pete caves and sends Harvestine Peterson's credit cards, which she maxes out on explosives and Pete is going to count as payment for the job.
Wait, let's back up a bit. Harvestine just bought 20,000 NUYENS WORTH OF VOLATILE EXPLOSIVES.
It's now like, midnight. Plans A and D begin concurrently. The codeword for starting Plans B and C is "rhubarb." Despite his extensive cramming, Pete is unable to hack into the servers from the cafe. He is barely able to extricate himself from the situation without being caught, and opts not to try again because it's too risky. What a fucking wuss. So, instead of risking absolutely anything at all, Pete exclaims "This coffee tastes like rhubarb!" as he leaves the cafe, very inconspicuous. He spends quite a while just waiting in the van while Chwoka doesn't pay attention to what happens.
Plan B begins. Damien scales the building successfully and sees the suicide note and on open email on the suicidal guy's computer. Turns out he was being extorted by some schmuck named Peter Marshall (sdegenko).
Meanwhile, Plan D is going swimmingly. Shodan is KILLING the interview portion and her falsified resume is sterling. Turns out Agatha Winters is world-famous for her pies and studying under her tutelage almost makes Shodan OVER-qualified. The interviewer watches, really admires, actually, as Shodan bakes a rhubarb pie. It looks good. The interviewer puts it to his nose. It smells good. He grabs a fork, puts a bite in his mouth...
KA-BOOOOOOM! Plan C is underway and all the entryways on the ground floor have just exploded. "That pie's got a hell of a kick!" says the interviewer. Harvestine runs in, oneshots a drone, and goes up several more flights of stairs before she finds another drone, which takes a kilo of explosive to the face after a flashbang grenade proves substandard. She finds one of the server rooms and rigs it with all the explosives she has, because TNT would never give her another centimeter of fuse rope if she didn't.
Another security drone hovers up, but then Damien pipes in over the commlink. "Hey, I found security central control. I turned off all the drones and cameras. Also, I found the admin password for the servers." Of course, Pete is a bit... busy to take advantage of this information, but we're going to have to double-back to catch that plotline as it dovetails. "Also, reinforcements are arriving in like, one minute, and there's nothing I can do about that, so we should get out of here." Harvestine sets the fuse for 90 seconds and makes her escape. We're QUICK dirty bastards, okay?
Okay, so meanwhile Pete's just chilling in his van when Peter Marshall walks up, sniper rifle in hand. "Hey, if you're here to shoot that guy on the 6th floor, he committed suicide this morning," is how Pete decides to initiate conversation. They make small talk, really hit it off. It's nice for Pete to know somebody who won't punch him in the face. Pete introduces Peter to his radio equipment. They turn the mic on and don't turn it off, this is important. The only social misstep is when Pete calls Ben Bernanke his "frenemy," which has never failed to make anyone listening cringe. Peter gives Pete some of his red mescaline, which is a great idea for a getaway driver, let me tell you. Shodan comes out, positively GLOWING from her successful job interview, and calls Pete the fuck OUT on his complete failure to do anything that could possibly be interpreted as helping with his own damn mission.
So, Pete and Peter go to try and help. Pete tries to climb the wall up to the 6th story, but because he's high and not too good at climbing anyway, he just ends up frantically humping the wall. It's still enough to rouse the suspicion of The Only Security Guard, who comes to investigate with his stun stick. Pete successfully dodges, while still maintaining his idiotic appearance by attempting to actually grab the stun stick and missing. Then the drugs REALLY kick in. The guard's got caterpillars for eyes and a delicious-looking fish in his hands. But Pete's not going to go after that fish with his bare mouth, he's going to grab some silverware. All he finds is a potato and a walrus. Luckily, Peter saves his ass with by tasing the guard from behind.
"Also, reinforcements are arriving in like, one minute, and there's nothing I can do about that, so we should get out of here," says Damien.
"WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE," says Pete, and then they do. Harvestine jumps on her moped, and everyone else piles into Pete's Rad Van. Pete throws his snake-arms around the steering wheel and we're off to the races.
PART 4: Don't bring an armored van to a grenade fight
THE PLAN? DITCH HARVESTINE. Harvestine's the only one who the two reinforcements, who arrive in armored vans, could connect to the crime. Harvestine is a liability and Pete is a mercenary asshole. Pete's Rad Van slips out unnoticed. The fatal flaw is that Harvestine apparently thinks we are a team and opts to follow us, and now we're in a car chase.
"Hey guys, shouldn't we go back for Harvestine?" says Damien. Out of sheer distaste for positive emotion, Pete orders Shodan throw Damien out the back of the van AT Harvestine, without a single word of explanation. Whatever happens from there is a positive outcome for Pete. What ends up happening is actually that Damien fucking STICKS THE LANDING onto the bike in sitting position, without Harvestine significantly altering her course or slowing down, and quickly switches to driving while Harvestine mans the grenade launcher. Or should I say... WO-mans the grenade launcher? (The women in this campaign are consistently awesome is what I am saying.) Harvestine launches ONE grenade under the first armored van and turns it into a burned-out husk. Harvestine's no longer a liability, now she's an asset.
Shodan gets to work on the second van with a grenade launcher of her own after Peter gets to snipe the dude in the passenger seat manning the gun cold in the face. Paranoia proceeds to have the luckiest dice in the whole world and for this whole section rolls nothing but 5s and 6s. So, Shodan fires like 9 grenades, rapid-fire, right into the gaping maw of a windshield. The driver's going down in flames, screaming "WHY DO YOU EVEN HAVE GRENADE LAUNCHERS," when Shodan finally gets that perfect shot. The grenade goes right into his big dumb screaming mouth and his head blows up.
Pete opens the back doors of the van again, to let Harvestine in, Knight Rider style. To facilitate this, he ALSO pops a fucking wheelie, in a VAN.
Peter says, "hey, I think I hear something coming!"
Pete says, derisively, "YOU'RE HIGH!"
Then, like 200 bullets rain down from above on Pete's Rad Van. This little moment of irony has GOT to be amongst the highlights of the night for the people listening to Pete's radio station. Also amongst the highlights: when Pete's gearshift turned into a dick gun before his very eyes (his very high eyes) and he resolved to just stay in 5th gear from now on.
There's an attack helicopter coming after us now, or a Hella Lobster if you took mescaline earlier, and the pilots are piping in "Flight of the Bumblebees" through their external speakers because they know exactly what they are a part of here. Pete, high on adrenaline and red mescaline, decides to attempt a backflip off a pile of trash. All he ends up doing is a barrel roll, which is still really cool, but it's not what he was aiming for. The Hella Lobster pilot is fucking awestruck and switches over to the Dukes of Hazzard theme song, which is crazy future-anachronistic but who GIVES a shit. Then everybody takes their turn firing fireballs, sniping, and launching grenades at the Hella Lobster from the surprisingly well-armored comfort of Pete's Rad Van.
Pete swerves off to the sidewalk, ramps off a homeless person, and does a FULL BACKFLIP while the machine gun fire from inside the van explodes the helicopter. The pilot's arm is immolated into a thumbs-up position, forever certifying Pete's van as truly rad.
Pete calls Ken and tells him the contract's been fulfilled in the coolest way he can. TNT, who we abandoned at a tall building next to the Lone Star branch, was filming the whole thing from the time the server rooms exploded to the end of it. It's going to get synced up with the audio from inside the van and go viral.
"You guys are pretty chill," says Peter.