The squad lands their spacecraft on the outskirts of Berlin, in a farming community, hiding the ship in a barn. We’re split on keeping it as a backup escape ship (albeit it does need repairs), or stripping it for parts to sell; its a bit too obvious to fly around outside of emergencies. After two weeks, the City Master somehow arrived, heavily modded. Bob had just disappeared for a week, and came back with it, offering no explanation as to how it managed to move continents, having seemingly erased his own memory of the undertaking. Even with it, its been a bit awkward living as shadowrunners so rurally (other than for Chester, who has been loving the pastoral climate).

[We’ll] order him a fucking cab. – Nightshade

With Hawkeye left repairing the Ship, and Bob Ross having welded himself into a room, the rest of us head to Downtown Berlin, into the Burrows. Berlin’s political structure has became rather complicated, having been split up into several districts each run by corps, with the residential core being a shared space, and the Anarchists who previously ruled the city having been pushed into their own district, complete with a Berlin wall sealing it in.

Styx leads the squad to the nearest pub, The Rusty Bucket, and sends a watcher spirit to request the audience of Bori, his cousin who has been living in Berlin for years. Bori easily spots Raptor, and exchanges pleasentries, but Bori doesn’t trust the group, so he chats with Styx in Russian, to which Nightshade rudely interjects, as she speaks the language as well (or at least, enough curse words to be a pest). After subjects become more sensitive, the group opts to retire to the quiet of Bori’s apartment.

Arriving there, we are greeted by Bori’s 10 foot tall Troll girlfriend. She is friendly, but is a little annoyed with Bori’s unannounced large group. Bori informs us about a fixer in town that has been looking for a shadowrunner group. Styx suggests asking for work from the Russian Mob. Bori interrupts with a long, detailed history of how he lost his legs, as evidently the Mob wanted him to construct a magical bomb, and Bori’s morals implored him to instead use its ingredients to craft a Foci, which they didn’t appreciate too much.

As the conversation begins winding down, Styx dismisses us for the night, imposing himself upon his extended family for some more intimate catching up.

The group meets up in a blue-collar pub with the offered Fixer, having been directed by the staff to his waiting room. The fixer begins his spiel – but as we step into the light we both recognize eachother, as its Mathias once again (evidently also dismissed from his Saeder-Krupp career): “whoa fellas, if you’re here to kill me, I’m sure we can come to some sort of arran–” but the group assures him, “oh no, we’re honestly just here looking for work, no hard feelings about that, thanks for the warning at least?” - at least we know we can trust eachother? Chester offers that we’ll take any job at this point, even fighting ghouls, so long as its out of SK’s radar.

Mathias gives us the contact information for his job’s client: Camille, an anarchist-aligned politician. In a brief call, she requests we meet her at a central restaurant. Camille arrives late, as a well dressed, tall ork. Camille greets us, and explains the details of the job: the city has a ghoul problem, as do most large cities, but in recent months Berlin’s has been getting much worse, with many more attacks on civilians than usual. As mitigating the ghoul problem was one of her election platforms, she wants them reduced back to regular levels, or at least information gathered to explain the recent increase, or else it’ll hurt her re-election. The job will pay 64k, thanks to Chester’s negotiation.

Bori and Styx starts looking into a safehouse for the group, and make quite the bad impression on dealmaking, but Chester walks in smoothing everything over. They get a decent space, with workshop space and car bays. Chester’s first order of business is, of course, to spray disinfectant everywhere. Bori presents a magical roomba to Chester, which does an amazing job of cleaning the space. Everyone takes a stake in the place for themselves, parking the City Master being in one bay, Hawkeye claiming another bay, and Styx plans to sleep in the City Master. Bori and Chester plan to commute.

Raptor’s Cage Fight

Raptor is fighting under the moniker, “T-Rex”, against the reigning champion: “Hammerhead”.

“I’m going to take you back to the cretaceous period!”

Unedited below this line

Raptor throws at his opponent, managing to cause him to go off kilter. At the start of the match, he kicks Hammerhead, knocking him off balance. Hammerhead comes back at him, hitting Raptor, but bounces back. Raptor uses his follow up move, kicking Hammerhead into the crowd. Hammerhead climbs back into the ring, as the audience throws things onto the ring. “It’s Hammertime,” he announces.

Raptor grapples Hammerhead, succeeding latching onto him. Hammerhead tries to launch Raptor, but Raptor is unmovable. Raptor throat punches Hammerhead, throwing him back. Hammerhead staggers forward, aiming to punch Raptor. Raptor headbutts Hammerhead, cracking the nose of Hammerhead, knocking him out. Raptor is quickly ushered from the arena, amongst the boos of the crowd. He is awarded $4500 for winning and being entertaining.

The group debates on what to do in looking into the ghoul problem. Chester finds a gossip blog about the ghouls. Styx tries to find corpses and enlists the help of Chester. Chester, with Bob Ross, goes to talk to a morgue and sweet talks them for some data and gets access. Bob Ross scrolls through the data, finding a recent attack and a witness.

Chester and Nightshade head out to go interview the witness, getting buzzed into the apartment by being “from Night Errant”. They described how the ghouls charged the apartment and attacked the roommate specifically, ripping the door off its hinges, but ignored the witness, which seemed odd behaviour for feral ghouls. He mentioned the roommate was involved with “The Family”, and the roommates arm was left behind. Bob Ross hearing this over the comms, searches to see if there are any other attacks that match this one and there seems to be. Hawkeye hacks into the buildings surveilence system and looks for the footage of the day in question. The video was of the three ghouls entering the building, taking the elevator, bursting into the apartment and taking the roommate.

After finding what we can for the day, we retire to our various domiciles. The next morning, we meet up for breakfast and look more into the ghoul problem at hand. We decide to do some shopping, to help protect ourselves from the ghouls toxins, with Chester purchasing a Chemical Seal helmet. Nightshade buys a whole new fasionable, but practible outfit.

Styx meets with a Mob Boss in his manor, who seems excited to have such a specialist to employ. He’s escorted down to an… interrogation room, with a fresh orc, fairly close to Styx’s desires. Styx experiences a summoning problem, so they end up having to carry the body out. They are covered in blood by the end of it.

Arriving back to the safehouse, we watch Bob Ross hose down Styx and Hawkeye. After they’ve been thoroughly soaked, they get the body into cold storage.

Once that is done, we decide to head to the anarchist quarter and we get there fairly quickly once we stop whining about sitting order, Chester having given up trying to convince Nightshade to get out of the passenger seat. We have a hiccup getting into the quarter, with Nightshade having a typical outburst that nearly got our SWAT van searched, but are let through with just a subvocalized note for later …

We head to the Flaming Barn and notice some ghouls working alongside regular folk. Nightshade pushes her way through and grabs a drink at the bar. Chester slides up to the bar and befriends the Bartender, but he gets chilly when the topic of Ghoul attacks comes up. Bori and Styx assess the astral plane for auras, and notice a strong astral pollution in the vicinity. Bori realizes this area has gotten worse in the last two months.

Hawkeye sets up a small first aid sevice. They make a few friends, but a random old man starts ranting about the corps polluting the place.

Chester is approached at the bar by a ghoul, being asked to bring his friends to see the boss. Nightshade volunteers to come with. Chester sighs at her. He begins to search the ghoul’s name and bar, but gets nowhere, so Bob Ross helps out and finds an article dated 6 months ago (before the recent resurgence), mentioning the ghoul attack which led to the guard’s infection.

We are lead into a very nice back room, Raptor grabs a bottle of clear liquid and pours himself a stiff drink, Nightshade laughs at him, telling him what it is.

The boss is trying to suss out what we are doing here and he hopes that we aren’t going to kill his ghouls or patrons. He offers us 50% bump if we bring him the cause of the increase in infections. He sends us a file of the attacks. There is a survivor that was bit two weeks ago, but didn’t change. Once we agree, we’re cordially escorted out.

We go to interview the survivor, Hartmut, whom lives in a dilapidated building. He directs us to the area of where he was attacked. Once there, Chester, Styx, and Bori assess the alley, feeling that the pollution is very strong here.

Styx rolls snake eyes on an Edge Test to find a body, discovering a dead dog, which he proceeds to shove a Force 6 spirit into……..

Styx finds the body of a dog and puts a strong spirit into the dog’s body. It runs down the alley, barking a pile of refuse. We trail the dog spirit, find a sewer grate, that’s been recently used. Raptor lifts the grate up for us and we begin hopping down, with Chester hopping down last. Waiting on the spirit to assense, which gets a trail quickly and starts down a tunnel. After 15 minutes, it stops, needing another prod, so Styx assesses where we need to go, coming into a dark area, the drones flood the dark tunnel. Styx notices a ghoul rising up from the murk and launches itself at us.

The drones spray a flurry of bullets at the ghoul, launching it at the wall. The other drone holds its action, as does Hawkeye, waiting for any ghoul movement. Four shapes rise up out of the water, with the drone and Hawkeye launching a flurry of bullets at the ghouls. Hawkeye downs a ghoul, shooting it through the eye.

There are three ghouls left, with the first launching itself at Raptor. Raptor kicks it away from him. The second ghoul is attempting to attack Bori, the drone takes the brunt of the hit, but otherwise is unscathed. Chester flails away from the last ghoul, expertly dancing out of its way.

Raptor kicks the ghoul fighting him, successfully pushing it away from him. Bori launches a lazer spell at the ghoul fighting him, spearing him through the torso, lighting up the tunnel and causing the ghoul fighting Chester to run away from the light. Styx steps forward, touching the ghoul with a death touch, killing it. Nightshade snaps her bow out, takes aim, and shoots her bow, killing the ghoul lashing around in the water.

Picture: Chester, Raptor, and Bori frantically trying to avoid getting slashed by leaping ghouls, cowering. Styx, Nightshade, Hawkeye, and a Drone mightily obliterating them for us.

Styx asks the spirit to keep leading us. It eventually leads us to a large grate, which is partially open. It is a large room that looks like it has been used as a base. The dog has entered the room, taking a hard left, out of the line of sight. Hawkeye and Nightshade assess the area. There is a lot of drag lines around in the room. As Styx steps into the room, he notices there is a lower area with stagnant brown water.

Styx notices an old man, whom yells at us to leave. Taking in the area around him and the scrawlings on the walls, this is a blood mage. Nightshade whips out her bow and prepares to launch an arrow at him. The old man launches an orb of water around him, her arrow strikes the orb, shattering on impact. He launches a blast of water at Nightshade, striking her solidly.

We hear shrieking coming from the tunnel behind us, Raptor drops a flash pack in the tunnel. Bob Ross gets the drones to shoot at the large and small blob. Chester shoots at the mage, his bullet going through the shield and striking true. One of the blood spirits launches itself at the dronenthat Bob Ross is jumped in, it wraps itself around the drone, damaging it and Bob Ross through bio feedback. The other blood spirit attacks Styx, wrapping itself around him, causing him to go limp. Hawkeye runs over, to attempt to pull Styx out of the blood spirits grasp, dragging Styx out its grasp.

Bori is angered about the blood spirit hurting his cousin, so he blasts a full strength spell, chain lightning, at the blood spirit and it also hits the blood mage. The force of his lightning bolt, blasts him off the drone, hitting the ground, with his magic gun cartoonishly blasted and his chest singed. Nightshade blasts the blood mage with an exploding arrow head, blasting him off his feet and digs into the hole in the side of his toroso and shoots a blast at Nightshade, launching her across the room. He collapses to the ground and his blood spirits retreat. Nightshade is covered in a pool of her blood. For all intents and purposes, she appears dead, until she sits up, gasps, and falls back down.

Nightshade and Styx are stabilized and carried back to the Uhaul. An SUV comes up to us and two well dressed steps out of the vehicle asking us what the fuck we’re doing with Schnitzel.

The gang members demand to know why we have the dog and want an explaination as to how we came to get this dog and what the hell happened to it. Bori and Chester have a hard time explaining what happend. Eventually, Chester wakes up Styx with some drugs, to get him to order the dog to follow the gansters. The spirit obliges and the gangsters accept this, but rather wearily and say we’ll hear from their boss.

We head to the boarder and get waved through relatively unimpeded. Once through, Chester calls our fixer to find us a street doctor. Arriving at the street doc, he is shocked about the state of Nightshade and somewhat concerned over Styx. He gets Nightshade stabilized over a half hour and then deals with Styx. The doc asks for a steep payment and Chester pays up. Once stabilized, the group returns to the safehouse and Hawkeye sets up a ward for Nightshade. Chester immediately has a shower as soon as the car stops.

The following morning, Chester and Bori go to the Mob boss, while Raptor and Hawkeye go to the politician. Raptor has a brief meeting and it goes smoothly. They meet in a seedy bar, as the politician doesn’t really want to be seen with us and $64000 is transferred to us. Chester and Bori have a more difficult time. The Mob boss grills then]m, worried about the political situation, to which Chester tells him that he should go to the press first. The mob boss is happy with the explaination and gives us the full payment of $80000.

– Transcribed by Chester and Nightshade

Previous Chapter: Space Piracy

Next Chapter: Mean Bean’s Defeat

Dramatis Personae

• B - Chester, exceptionally charismatic Dryad
• N - Raptor, The Big Kick
• R - Styx, Tactical Zombiemancer
• T - Bob Ross, Drone Master
• M - Nightshade, Uncouth Assassin
• M - Hawkeye, Pilot Hacker Extraordinaire
• B - Bori, Dwarven Artificer