looked like the rat’s offspring, though they were all still as large as any rat had a right to be.
A.J. tucked his injured left hand into his right armpit and beat feet for the far end of the alley. He was still ten meters from the mouth when two shamblers rounded the corner and locked their glassy stares on him. They were a comical duo, one a slightly built young man in a ragged business suit, the other a robust older gentleman in shorts, a t-shirt, and an apron that read, “Kill it and grill it! Real men eat meat!” A.J. could tell by both of the men’s bloody faces that meat had been on the menu, but it likely had not been grilled, and may not have even been dead yet.
A.J. didn’t slow. He drew the Colt on the move, raised the pistol, lined up the smartlink crosshair on the head of the grillmaster, and squeezed the trigger. The quiet chuff was followed by a crack, slurp, and pop as the bullet broke skull, slipped into grey matter, and then exploded.
The grillmaster fell to the ground while A.J. dropped his shoulder and shoved the young executive back out of the alley into the street.
A.J. made a quick glance to the left and saw another small pack of shamblers approaching. The right looked clear but wasn’t the original way he wanted to go. The choices were clear: fight forward, or retreat through the clear. With his hand already starting to throb and a burn-ing sensation creepburn-ing up his arm, A.J. chose the path of least resistance, and hopefully the path that could get him to medical aid.
As he moved quickly back through the streets and alleys he had only recently crept through, he laughed a little. It might have been the pain making him delirious, but he was able to find at least a little bit of humor in the situation. The battle-proven runner turned back by a common rat defending its home. There was a meta-phor in there somewhere, but he wasn’t clear-headed enough for metaphors, only delirious enough to laugh at the thought of his defeat at the jaws of a rather large, but still quite mundane, brown rat.
hubbub, as the area is beginning to settle a little bit. This group of events is designed to mirror some of the Shad-owrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown events and follow a similar pattern to the video game.
The runners will be hired to work for different groups and get counteroffers and new jobs as they complete work. This is similar to the game plot, but a quick single arc where the runners perform work for each group only once before they are introduced to and hired by the next faction.
It starts with Knight Errant hiring them to work inside the MIT&T quarantine zone. After that, NeoNET sees their work and hires them to infiltrate deeper into the labs at MIT&T. Next, Evo hears of their infiltration for NeoNET and hires them to steal data from one of NeoNET’s offsite data storage facilities. This is followed by Aztechnology hearing about the data theft and hiring them to plant data at a Knight Errant precinct. Next, the Independents catch wind of runners with solid skills and they hire them to deliver supplies to another group. The last event occurs when the Dissonant technomancers hear of the runners getting into the MIT&T labs and hire them to get access to the mainframe at the school. Here they face one of the AI offspring of Cerberus and Deus—Cereus!
SETUP
The setup event for each of these separate events is very similar. The runners are contacted by a represen-tative of each group that chooses to go by their actual names instead of the classic Mr. Johnson cover. The call comes to the commlink of the runner with the highest combined Street Cred and Charisma. If there’s a tie, just pick one and make all the calls go through them.
The job offers and payments are all made via com-mlink. The runners never meet any of these Johnsons in the real world. The payments and terms for each run are listed in the events along with the name of the contrac-tor. Many of these contractors are the same ones the characters in Shadowrun Chronicles will interact with, and each is detailed in the Character Trove (p. 211), along
with a short description at the end of the Characters sec-tion of this chapter.
EVENT 1
The runners are contacted by Detective Daniel “DJ”
McCarthy, the current head of Knight Errant’s shadow operations. He’s hiring runners for operations that KE won’t authorize regular officers to perform. In this case he wants the runners to go inside the MIT&T quarantine and help a group of survivors escape. The initial pay-ment offer is 500 nuyen for each survivor who makes it out. At their last message, sent three days ago, the group had ten survivors, meaning the run is worth as much as 5,000 nuyen to start, but they lose cash with every lost survivor.
DJ offers the runners access to one of the gates (Route 28 and 3rd Street) and gives them an address (65 Otis Street, Apartment 2C) for the group’s last known location, but the runners are on their own from there.
Inside the MIT&T containment zone, the runners en-ter the hell within hell. There are two ways to go about this event. The first is to use the outline of opponents and events presented here. The second is to allow more freedom, meaning this area can be as hard or as easy as the gamemaster desires, but the reward should match.
Inside the MCZ the runners should face head cases of all varieties, though mostly shamblers and ragers, as well as ghouls who have come up through the sewers to feed on the carnage. For the gamemaster doing his own thing, the location of the survivors can be at the address given, or the runners can be forced to sneak around the area or fight their way to another location after a clue from the first.
Assuming the runners are not charging straight through the middle of the streets, the first encounter they have will be with ghouls (p. 404, SR5).
As the runners sneak through the narrow back alleys of this neighborhood, they come across a pair of ghouls feeding on some recent victims of the head cases.
The ghouls are not being quiet, and the runners should eas-ily hear them slurp-ing and chompslurp-ing.
If the runners want
to sneak past they will have to make Sneaking + Agility Tests against the ghouls’ Perception + Intuition as well as against the group of shamblers they might come near in an effort to avoid the ghouls. If the runners are using gunplay with unsuppressed weapons, see the Here We Are sidebar for details on what follows.
After the ghouls, the next obstacle is a pack of ten shamblers wandering the bottom floor of the building where the runners were told to find the survivors. The shamblers have been trapped on the bottom floor for at least a day and are stumbling and bumping into every-thing but are unable to open the doors. This is actually the first clue that the survivors aren’t here. The group got the attention of the shamblers near their hiding spot and drew them into the building, then locked the doors on them so the group could climb out a second-story window and move elsewhere.
The runners can easily locate a fire escape to climb up and avoid the shamblers, but only if they manage to hear them first. The shamblers aren’t particularly noisy as they shuffle around inside and they are not all next to the door.
If the runners open one of the doors, the shamblers in the hallway (probably two or three of them) will yell and run at the door. This will attract the rest and either leave the runners with a fight at the doorway or a bunch of running shamblers slamming into a door. It is altogether possible the running shamblers could break the door down, but that is left to the gamemaster to decide.
When the runners reach the apartment where the survivors sent their last message, they find no one. There are obvious signs that people were living here, including empty canned foods, wrappers, a toilet full of urine and feces, and the smell of stale sweat still in the air. If the runners look around they will locate a note scrawled on
an empty cereal box in the cupboard. It is addressed to DJ, their contact (in fact the only person to talk to them) from Knight Errant. It expresses thanks for coming to look for them but says they had to move.
They’ve left another address (117 Charles Street) where they plan to go. It’s four streets south, so not far, but the message isn’t dated. The runners can make a Survival + Willpower (3) (Urban specialization applies) Test to determine that it has been two days since they were here. This is mostly from the level of drying in the toilet, so it’s a gross test.
Between the two locations, the runners will find mostly houses, a few apartments, and a lot of sham-blers. The group will have to make at least two Sneaking + Infiltration Tests. A failed test results in two shamblers noticing something and coming to look. A glitch results in four shamblers coming to look. A critical glitch results in two shamblers actually spotting them and charging at them, four more noticing that and following, and a rager hearing the commotion and coming to attack as well.
If the runners are attacked, they also get the atten-tion of a different group of survivors hiding in the nearby condominium tower. Once the runners defeat the head cases, they see a series of light flashes from an upper floor of the tall structure nearby. With vision magnifica-tion they can see a ragged-looking person with a large flashlight blinking it on and off in a random pattern. If the runners make any kind of gesture indicating that they want to communicate, the man holds up a commlink, waves it around, and then turns it on. They can now con-tact the group.
In this condo tower, a converted building that once held the Middlesex Courthouse, is a group of eight sur-vivors hiding out on the fourteenth floor. They warn the runners that the building is crawling with shamblers and ragers, and they think there is some kind of “Master” in their building as well. They ask the runners to help get them out and to the wall, where they have already made contact with a guard who will allow them to enter the KE facility. Though the runners don’t know this, Detective McCarthy will pay for any and all survivors they bring out, not just the group they were sent after.
Inside the building there is indeed a Master. One of the manipulators has taken control of a block of condos on the third floor as well as the rooftop area. He is build-ing up a force of head cases to eventually throw at the wall and break through to get out of the MCZ. He is well aware of the QZ beyond but also knows he can’t do any-thing against NeoNET from inside here. If the manipu-lator encounters the runners, he may change his plan.
Instead of attacking the walls with shamblers and ragers, he will try and contact KE to get him and his group of survivors out. The manipulator’s force consists of four-teen ragers currently out on the rooftop area and thir-ty shamblers stumbling around the third floor. In order to get to the group on the upper floor, the runners will need to get past the third floor. This is really as simple as
sneaking past the third floor on the stairwell, but runners can often be more creative than they need to be. Ten-sion can be added when sneaking back down, as one of the survivors recognizes a shambler on the third floor near the door and has to be restrained and pulled away to prevent them from trying to save their friend.
At the new address the runners find the building, a small house, is currently mobbed by twenty to thirty shamblers and four ragers on the outskirts looking like rabid dogs held at bay or waiting for some sign of what they need to go after. Part of the survivor group is inside.
They were spotted, the group got split, and this group got chased here. There are four survivors in here. Each one is currently watching a room and making sure the shamblers don’t manage to push their way in.
The runners will need to distract the head cases and draw them away from the house in order to get the sur-vivors out. Whatever they do is likely to bring more head cases to this area. The four survivors will thank the run-ners but insist that they go to the secondary rendezvous to find the others. If the runners refuse or insist they come back to the wall and get out before the runners go back for the rest of the group, a pair of them look at each other suspiciously and then run off in opposite directions.
The pair will meet back up a few blocks away if the runners chase and lead the runners right to the second-ary rendezvous, where they spot the other group on the roof of a house. The group will probably have two people awake and on watch while the other four lay on opposite sides of the roof, sleeping and tied together to avoid falling off the roof. This will change if it’s daytime and then they will all be awake and trying to occupy their time while trapped. The house they are on is surrounded by hundreds of head cases. An inner group of ragers cir-cle like sharks, occasionally leaping at the roof. The gut-ters are gone, and the runners can see where the ragers have managed to grab the roof, but have obviously been unable to climb up. A twenty-meter-deep ring of sham-blers wander the outer edges, held back by the ragers and all staring at the group on the roof.
If the two members of the group who ran are with the runners, they will suggest drawing them all off with a distraction. It’s a good plan if the group consisted only of shamblers, but this group has ragers who could run them down. Let the runners be creative in developing a plan. The head cases are easily distracted and almost mindless but they are tireless and will keep chasing the group. The runners will need to either kill them all some-how (not likely, but runners are creative) or trap them like the survivors did in the first apartment building. This is tough with ragers and shamblers, but if they can trap the ragers they should be able to outrun the shamblers.
After the runners have all the survivors, it’s just a matter of getting back to the gate and getting them out.
If the runners have brought back the survivors in chunks, they will find the ones they have returned in the
quaran-tine holding cells at the wall as KE tries to make sure no one who is infected with “encephalitis” is among those who try to leave.
The runners are paid in full for every survivor they bring back. Helping additional survivors without con-cern for payment should result in an extra Karma award for those players who never mentioned or argued about getting paid by McCarthy and simply wanted to help the other group of survivors.
EVENT 2
NeoNET quickly gets word through the grapevine that a team of runners has successfully gone into the MCZ and offers the runners another job within minutes of their exit. The quick turnaround doesn’t offer a lot of recovery time but the NeoNET Johnson, Zoh Rothberg, offers the runners 10,000 nuyen each to go back in for her. Runners can make the standard Negotiations + Charisma Test to increase the payday by 500 nuyen per
net hit, up to a maximum payment of 15,000 each. This quick turnaround also allows the runners to use a cov-er of going back for more survivors to allow KE to let them back in. If they are too beaten and refuse the job, she offers to pull a few strings and get KE to bring in a healer for them, but it will cost anyone who needs heal-ing 2,500 nuyen. If the runners refuse they can walk away and will get another call in a few days. Zoh puts a similar offer on the table, reduced by twenty-five per-cent, and suggests they use the previous cover and ask Detective McCarthy for a chance to earn more mon-ey. Rothberg is asking the runners to go back in, get to MIT&T Arcane Research Lab number 15, get footage of the room, including stills and video, and copy all the files off the comm terminal in the professor’s office.
The perils of the street remain the same as the team moves back toward the Arcane Research Lab. The labs are located all over the campus to take advantage of different aspects in different areas. Lab 15 is located on the fifteenth floor of the Pyramid building, one of the school’s primary thaumaturgy buildings. Reaching the building is only the beginning of the trouble; inside, the runners face a strange situation.
Security in the Pyramid is provided by spirits of ev-ery variety, all summoned and bound by the students as practice and loaned to the Security Services Officers (SSO). The spirits have done an excellent job of keeping the place free of head cases, with the exception of the four SSO who are on duty. Three of them are shamblers, the fourth is a rager. They no longer have the mental ca-pacity to command the spirits, but the spirits still pro-tect them due to their standing instructions. Runners who attack any of the head cases in the building will be attacked by the spirits attached to that SSO. Each offi-cer has two low Force (2 or 3) spirits and one Force 6 or greater spirit summoned by a graduate-level student.
All the students who summon here are studying cultur-al thaumaturgy, so the spirits come in a wide variety of
All the students who summon here are studying cultur-al thaumaturgy, so the spirits come in a wide variety of