Shanghai Shadowrun Part III - The Queen Celeste & The Lucky Coin

    Howdy there folks, this is the 3rd job overall in my Shadowrun campaign, you'll probably want to read both parts I and II, as well as my short article on the first coin of Luck

Locate the Mega-Freighter Queen Celeste. Break into the ship with the Bronze Sharks.

Steal the assigned cargo container. Do not sink the vessel. Avoid casualties.

The PC’s crew has become an important part of Pudong district’s underworld. Having exterminated the Glowing Eyes Circle and taken over the Jumbo Jackpots, they renamed both themselves and the Casino as The Golden Hands. Fixtures in the local scene, the crew have cultivated several notable allies; the tech-nomad tribe known as Godzilla’s Breath, The Red Pillar called Chen Silver Eyes, a White Paper Fan named Lao Long, and the Bronze Sharks. Business has recovered from the collapse it suffered from Sagacious Cho’s murder, and the Golden Hands has risen to a mid-tier establishment with a decent reputation.

Things are looking up, yet there are some issues the Golden Hands haven’t yet solved:

• Golden Toad still wishes to go into business with the Golden Hands and the Great Empire triads. If ignored, he will show up unexpectedly at a serendipitous time.

• Silver Eyes & Long hate one another intensely, and are both trying to find ways to use the crew to destroy their rival.

• Due to calling in some favors, the Golden Hands ended up in debt to the Bronze Sharks.

• Disney’s investigation into the theft of their animatronics is still ongoing. Ms. Delfonse is doggedly chasing down leads. Delafonse may be willing to play ball to nail Wuxing.

• The Spirits unleashed by Wingji’s failed Feng-Shui ritual are still hunting for those responsible for them being trapped on the physical plane. They are going mad. Wingji is also quickly going mad.

The most pressing of these is the debt they owe to the Bronze Sharks. The gang outnumbers the PC’s and their allies by 5:1, and even worse, the Red Dragon will not intercede on their behalf should it come to that. The Sharks cannot handle the Celeste on their own. The pirate gang was given the job by a Johnson calling themselves Rapacious Bao. A Red Dragon fence from the Qingpu district, Bao was hired through several untraceable intermediaries to acquire the first of the Four Coins of Luck for the Great Eastern Dragon Lung, which just happens to be in the hold of the Queen Celeste. To throw off observers, the dragon is stealing from himself; he owns the Queen Celeste. The Bronze Shark’s leader, Toothy Ruogang, is in his pocket.

The Queen Celeste is a mega-freighter in every sense of the term; 300 meters long, 100 meters wide, and 50 meters tall. The ship holds thousands of cargo containers, both on the deck, and inside massive holds. Lung couldn’t help but safeguard the coin and the Celeste with a number of defenses to make the heist appear legitimate. None of those involved know what they’re guarding:

• A squad of the 58^th Battle Brigade. Eight of the mercs are at the entrance to the level above where the coin is being stored, another eight patrol the deck of the ship in squads of two. These folks are incredibly trigger-happy, and have been given a list of allowed personnel.

• Several drones have been assigned to follow the freighter, normally staying far above the vessel. They are controlled by an on-site rigger named Bane Siphandon.

• Shadowrunners Nobira Toshiki & Tatsuda Fuminsho, are embedded as members of the crew. Fuminsho is part of the ship’s deck crew, while Toshiki acts as a navigator’s mate. Toshiki has summoned several Watchers and an Air spirit and set them to patrol the ship’s holds.

• The crew has been ordered to give an all-clear signal every 4 hours. If the signal is not transmitted, a Wuxing Maritime Security Division ship will be sent with a squad of marines to investigate.

• There are cameras at the entrances to the crew quarters, control room, security room, each of the holds, and on the corners of each of the stacks. A pair of crew members monitor the camera feeds, and their alarm system has been tapped into by the Shadowrunners.

Though there is much stacked against them, their new allies in the Bronze Sharks can provide them with a few advantages, and they can avail themselves of their contacts:

• Fickle is a demolitions expert favored by the Sharks. She is more an affiliate than a full member, and she is being paid by the gang for her services for the job. If asked, Fickle can be bribed into helping the party, or convinced to assist in return for a cut of the profits or a personal introduction to Silver Eyes.

• Loud Song would understand the enigma that the Queen Celeste presents, and the potential opportunity and danger therein. She will wish to help the party unravel the mystery, but will not risk the safety of Godzilla’s Breath to do so.

• The Bronze Sharks themselves contribute ten pirates and two vessels to the cause. The pirates are absolutely fanatical during this mission. Toothy Ruogang has spelled it out in no uncertain terms that failure here could result in all of their deaths.

The cargo container is on the 8^th level down in the ship’s holds. The container ID is 429-TJ-951, and the coin is hidden inside of a lead box, stuffed into what appears to be a nondescript bench.

NPCs

58^th Battle Brigader/Wuxing Security Marine

B	A	R	S	C	I	L	W	ESS	Init	IP	CM
3	5	4	3	3	4	3	4	6	8	1	10

Skills: Blades 3, Dodge 3, Intimidation 3, Pistols 3, Automatics 3, Unarmed 3.

Gear: Ceska Black Scorpion, Lined Coat, Knife/Sword.

Nobira Toshiki, Magus of Clouds

B	A	R	S	C	I	L	W	ESS	M	Init	IP	CM
3	3	3	3	3	4	3	4	6	3	7	1	10

Skills: Assensing 3, Astral Combat 3, Pistols 3, Conjuring Group 3, Sorcery Group 3.

Gear: Armor Vest, Fichetti Security 600

Spells: Detect Life, Light, Physical Barrier, Powerbolt, Silence, Stunball

Tatsuda Fuminsho, Yakuza Assassin

B	A	R	S	C	I	L	W	ESS	Init	IP	CM
4	5	5 (6)	4	3	4	3	4	3.8	9 (10)	2	10

Skills: Athletics Group 2, Blades 3, Dodge 4, Firearms Group 5, Infiltration 3, Perception 3, Unarmed Combat 4.

Cyberware: Cybereyes (Flare Compensation), Smartlink, Wired Reflexes I.

Gear: Assault Rifle, Katana, Knife, Full Body Armor.

Bane Siphandon, Drone Operator

B	A	R	S	C	I	L	W	ESS	Init	IP	CM
3	3	3	3	3	5	5	5	2.7	8	1	10

Skills: Cracking Skill Group 4, Electronics Skill Group 3, Gunnery 3, Perception 2, Pilot Aircraft 3, Pilot Ground Craft 3.

Cyberware: Commlink, Datajack, Control Rig, Simrig

Gear: Armor Vest, Fichetti Security 600

The First Coin of Luck - An Artifact for Shadowrun

 

A Recent History of the First Lucky Coin

    Known by the title Lu (wealth), this magical artifact in the form of a humble bronze cash coin supposedly brings prosperity and riches to it’s bearer. Originally given to a Hong Kong fisherman named Sun Yat-Sun through a bequest in Dunkelzahn’s will, the coin was stolen by a group of Yakuza from a now defunct branch of the Watada-rengo. After their murder of Sun Yat-Sun and theft of the coin, they family was rocked by a series of disastrous unlucky breaks; within months, every single member of the crew that stole Lu was dead, and the clan itself broke apart. From there the coin passed into the hands of the Great Eastern Dragon Ryumyo. Sensing the curse associated with acquiring the coin through dishonest means, Ryumyo quickly gave the artifact to one of his underlings, the Oyabun Fukumoto Kanzaburo. It only took a few days to prove how effective the coin really was—Kanzaburo’s horse won 13 races in a row, and the Yakuza boss won the lottery 3 times in spite of the fact he never bought any tickets.

Kanzaburo

    Seemingly a boon, the influx of cash brought along with it attention from the authorities. Even with their substantial influence, Kanzaburo was still imprisoned for a “mere” 25 years. Unwilling to pass up on such an obviously powerful magical artifact, Ryumyo tried to give the coin away to another one of his underlings. Politely rebuffed by nearly everyone with whom he was willing to trust with the coin, Ryumyo was annoyed but undeterred. The Dragon gave the coin to a homeless man by the name of Bakin Kita. Mr. Bakin went from being destitute to owning a mansion and driving a Maserati within 3 weeks. However, to Ryumyo’s horror, the man was murdered while in possession of the coin during an altercation at a casino in Macau, in spite of the fact that several dozen Yakuza soldiers were acting as surreptitious bodyguards for him. After disposing of the failures, the Dragon was able to arrange for someone to retrieve the coin; it should have been a milk run, Kita’s body had been dumped into a shallow grave in the city limits by the ignorant goons of the casino. Astonishingly, his agents were successful, but the plane that they were traveling in fell out of the sky, and the coin was lost somewhere in the East China Sea.

Ryumyo

    Searching exhaustively for the coin in their backyards, Ryumyo unwittingly tipped off Lung, Mang and Masaru to the fact that he was interested in something in the ocean. Not willing to let sleeping dogs lie, the other dragons sent out feelers. They soon discovered the truth, and began searches of their own. After nearly a decade of fruitless hunting, the plane’s wreck was finally located by a team which had been hired by Lung. The dragon told those who found the coin nothing, had them dead-drop it at a pawnshop in Hong Kong, and then paid them a truly exorbitant amount of money for their trouble. The coin sat, untouched, in storage for another four years as it was studied by a number of Lung’s apprentices. They declared that while Lu was as powerful as ever, it had been tainted by being party to so much greed and violence. They suggested to their master that the coin never be entrusted to anyone that Lung didn’t wish ruin upon, at least until Lu could be purified.

Lung

    The Great Dragon decided that the best course would be to hand the coin over to an organization, rather than to an individual. The Red Dragons and Wuxing are too central to Lung’s power-base to be risked to protect a single magical item. Resolving to kill two birds with one stone, Lung founded a new magical society made up of former Yellow Lotus members. No longer needing the Lotus within the ranks of Wuxing or in scattered gangs, the Dragon gathered 9 awakened former members, he named them the Siblings of Ill-Fortune, bound them with terrible oaths, and then bid them to stand vigil over whatever he turned over to their care. He smoke-screened the true purpose of the society by shipping them a bevy of mystical items before the coin was to arrive. Assigning a group of the 58^th Battalion to look over the Coin as it was being shipped from Hong Kong to Shanghai, Lung plotted a ruse to steal the coin from himself using a trusted minor triad known as the Bronze Sharks. The leader of the gang, Toothy Ruogang was a former apprentice of his, and her loyalty was unquestionable.

Stats for the First Coin of Luck

Befitting a relic from the Fourth Age, the Lu coin is incredibly potent. It grants the following bonuses to any character who has been willingly given the artifact:

• The bearer of the object gains +5 dice on any check related to gambling, games of chance, financial endeavors, or any action that is directly seeking to build wealth.

• Whenever the owner spends Edge for the purposes stated above, they only expend every other point used.

• The bearer will never be cut off from a source of funding. If their assets are frozen, they will be loosened by a coding error. If they are without cards or in an area that doesn’t take them, they will miraculously find the necessary type of currency that they need.

• The owner gains a re-roll on any test to check for availability or legality for anything that they wish to purchase.

    While originally the curse of the coin would only affect those who procured the it through violent or deceitful means, the relic’s long history of violence and greed has contaminated it. It now strikes anyone who bears it:

• The bearer can no longer re-gain Edge, short of completing a major story beat.

• When the owner is out of Edge, they gain a form of anti-luck; any action seeking to detect, track down or harm the character are at +2 dice. Further, they are subject to some sort of freak accident or run of bad luck every 1d6+2 days.

• The coin seeks to flee those who have run out of favorable luck; every 1d6 days when the owner is out of edge, the coin tried to slip from their pocket, grasp or possession in some way.

Shanghai Shadowrun Part II - Thank you Jumbo Jackpots!

 

     

     Howdy there folks! Thanks for tuning into for another installment of my Shadowrun 4e campaign overview. This is the skeleton for the second chapter of my game set in Shanghai and focusing on the Four Coins of Luck. While the Coins haven’t been introduced to my players yet, they will be alluded to over the course of the next couple of sessions, and then introduced into the narrative during the next arc.

Hunt down the surviving members of the Glowing Eyes Circle and either drive them out of Shanghai or into the ground. No need to be quiet for this; in fact you probably shouldn’t be.

     The murder of Sagacious Cho at the behest of the Red Dragon Association Red Pole called Silvereyes by the PCs has left a power vacuum that the White Paper Fan known as Lao Long cannot abide. After a short meeting, the gang leader gives them a simple deal, with a simply pay-off: Cho’s old crew has to go, and in return, they get the Jumbo Jackpots. Being a primarily Matrix-based gang, the GEC is distributed throughout the Pudong district in the few safe houses that they still have managed to keep secret from the onslaught of the newly arrived techno-nomad tribe called Godzilla’s Breath. The safe-houses of note are:

• The Black Silicon Tortoise – A Matrix Hotspot and retro VR-game and BTL arcade, this dingy shop is located a few blocks west of the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, and is a common hang-out for bored college students and white collar workers blowing off steam after their shift. There’s no seedy backroom, or anything untoward going on here beyond money laundering; the huge number of digital transfers makes hiding illegal ones within the stream child’s play. The defenses of the shop are minimal, the only guns on the premises are whatever weapons the gang members have on them, and there’s a pair of security cameras-- one at the outside entrance, the other inside and pointed down at the counter and till. There’s usually three or four GEC members around at any given time.

• Pudong Municipal Power Monitoring Substation #122 – Located adjacent to one of the major matrix nodes in the Southeast Pudong district, Monitoring Substation #122 was quietly suborned by a small group of GEC Deckers around two years ago. Breaking into the small building and moving in over the course of several weeks, the Deckers set up a back-channel into not only the power system of the district, but the nearby matrix node as well. With their hooks firmly dug into the local systems, the GEC here are able to act as digital headquarters for the gang as a whole. The building has a razor wire fence, a camera on each corner of the building, and a small automated turret mounted on the roof, close to the front door. The substation is staffed by a crew of three Deckers, with some muscle to back them up in the form of four moderately chromed out toughs. The GEC who work out of here are exceptionally paranoid

• Cheerful Apple Beauty Salon – A busy and well-maintained shop in the middle-class Jianping Red Flower Market, this unassuming front acts as the main repository for the GEC’s hard copies of valuable or sensitive data that the gang has stolen over the years. Though the gang does not expect violence in such a public location, the five Street Samurai and Decker assigned to watch over the trio of backrooms that contain the gang’s holdings are all armed, and supported by a small militarized drone. The employees of the beauty salon are well aware of who they are truly working for, and will not give up information easily. Conversely, they also won’t fight on the GEC’s behalf.

     For their parts, both the GBs and Red Dragon want to see the GEC gone, but they will give anything more than token support without exacting a public cost from the Party. The Godzillas are looking to take over the remainder of the GEC’s matrix holdings, and could care less about any storefronts or other existent locations. The Red Dragon as a whole could care less, but Lao’s Crew sees the gang’s removal as an opportunity to expand their street presence, as well as to eliminate a pesky black mark on their otherwise “sterling” legal reputation. Unwilling to potentially exacerbate a potentially district-wide gang war, Wuxing Security has taken a hands-off approach to the ongoing conflict between the Otaku and GEC—a policy which would not change should the PCs become obviously involved as well. Short of the use of explosives or obvious daytime murders, Wuxing Security will not involve themselves.

Aftermath from the Disney Job

     Aside from the cleanup they need to do for Lao Long, the Players were largely successful in their endeavor; the animatronics were undamaged (if bloody) and no one connected to the job was killed besides Cho, but Cheung Wingji is fine with him being dead. It saves her the trouble. She also pays them to the tune of ¥80,000!

     Unfortunately for Mr. Magoo, Disney Security has caught wind of him through the residual traces of magic from his illusory terrain trick. While his particular signature has not been identified, some the happiest corporate security mages on earth are hard at work trying to run down the culprits, led by Karine Delafonse. An intelligent magus under the tutelage of Sky Father, Karine hopes to impress her superiors by bringing the case in as quickly as possible. She and her squad are reviewing security footage and questioning any and all techs involved in the shipping and repair process of those particular animatronics.

     Impressed with their brutal murder of Cho, Silvereyes offers the players another target: a reticent pimp named Quan Honghua who nominally works under the employ of the Electric Devil Brotherhood. Honghua has decided to stop paying up to his superiors, and the EDB asked Silvereyes to do the job. Mr. Quan is decently chromed out, possessing Wired Reflexes I, Cybereyes, and a Forearm Gun.

NPCs

GEC Decker

B	A	R	S	C	I	L	W	ESS	Init	IP	CM
2	3	2	3	2	4	4	3	5.4	8	1	10

Skills: Pistols 1, Data Search 2, Electronics Group 4.

Cyberware: Cybereyes, Datajack.

Gear: Armor Vest, Streetline Special

GEC “Street Samurai”

B	A	R	S	C	I	L	W	ESS	Init	IP	CM
3	3	4	3	3	3	2	3	3.2	9	1	10

Skills: Dodge 2, Perception 2, Pistols 2, Unarmed Combat 3

Cyberware: Cybereyes, Retractable Spur, Smartlink

Gear: Armor Jacket, Colt American L36

Disney Security Investigator – Karine Delafonse

B	A	R	S	C	I	L	W	ESS	M	Init	IP	CM
3	3	4	3	3	5	4	4	6	5	7	1	10

Skills: Assensing 3, Astral Combat 3, Pistols 3, Conjuring 3, Banishing 3, Sorcery Group 3.

Gear: Armor Vest, Beretta Model 101T

Spells: Detect Life, Light, Physical Barrier, Powerbolt, Silence, Stunball

Idiot Pimp Burned by their Own Gang – Quan Honghua

B	A	R	S	C	I	L	W	ESS	Init	IP	CM
4	4	4	3	3	3	2	3	2.3	12	2	11

Skills: Dodge 3, Perception 3, Pistols 3, Long Arms 2, Unarmed Combat 3

Cyberware: Cybereyes, Retractable Spur, Smartlink, Wired Reflexes I, Wrist-mounted Smartgun

Gear: Armor Jacket, Stun Baton

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