Session started at 6:37 pm on 1/9/2007
Attending players: Michael, Ben, Sarah, and Eva
Presiding GM: Aaron
It's November 15th of 2070. Our month of vacation is finally up. I've met up with the gang. Ajax wanted to go to a nice place so we are at the Seven Seas restaurant. Ajax and the kid have sort of insinuated themselves with a wedding party that's taking up half of the place. It's kind of hilarious to watch since some of the older relatives are obviously shooting the kid dirty looks when his back is turned and trying to find out who would have invited him, but none of them have the guts to actually harass him.
(Ajax gets a phone call from Precious Shrewsberry.)
Ajax messages us to say that he's got a meet in the Matrix in about three hours. After a few hours of dancing, watching the happy couple get more and more drunk, and watching Ajax unsuccessfully hit on bride's maids, we adjourn to a fast food place so Ajax can go to the meet in relative quiet.
The node that Ajax was told to go to is another one of those nondescript meeting rooms. After not too long a dwarf icon arrives. He's got a rather fancy sharp beard, a three piece suit, and a comically huge flower in his lapel.
Apparently the Johnson needs someone extracted in Seattle. Timeframe is the next two weeks and he's offering 8k up front, 8k on delivery, and an additional 8k if the target is alive. The Johnson expects some security resistance but nothing military grade. On the up side the Johnson doesn't require subtlety.
Ajax negotiates the live delivery bonus up to 15k. He pauses to consult with us. The job doesn't sound too bad. We agree that we'll take it, barring insanely huge hidden dangers.
The target.As I thought, the target isn't expecting the extraction and probably won't cooperate. That should be interesting. We're going to be getting more info in a big bundle. After a few more questions, the Johnson hand over a packet of digital info and vanishes.
There's a picture, the address of the target, the address of the drop, and a contact number for the pickup. The target is a young woman with a thin face and blond hair. Her address is in the Archology Commercial and Housing Enclave or ACHE. That doesn't sound good. Giant huge pyramidal archologies never turn out horribly...
I gather that the place has quite the sordid history, including some upper floors full of God knows what which are still sealed up. Ajax offers more details on the mess that occurred there back when Renraku ran the show. Apparently after all that was over the city took it away from them, handled the cleanup, and made it into some sort of creepy locked down home for the homeless.
So we have two weeks to break into this sealed housing and get the woman back out. The only part of the whole place which is open to the public is the bottom few floors which are a huge mall. The mall is famous for having a hell of a background count, so the information gathering phase might be a bit unpleasant.
What Ajax found on the target.Ajax manages to turn up the target's name. Diedra Brougham. She was part of a duo called Two Chick Paranoid in the 60's. It was rumored she went into rehab and she dropped out of the public eye. She vanished well after all the bad shit went down in the Archology so hopefully she's just among the homeless residents. Diedra apparently went by the alias of Skinny-D. Her band had some really big hits, including a song that Nabo covered more recently. I find that coincidence a bit disturbing.
We sleep on it, since it's like two am at this point.
Info on the band Two Chick Paranoid.Our first info gathering step is to head to the mall for lunch the next day. It's five stories of open space with rings of stores and food courts. There are a hell of a lot of drones patrolling the place. We might as well kidnap someone in the middle of an airport as try to pull anything weird in here. It doesn't look like any of the mall employees live in the Archology, so that's not much of a way in.
Ajax looks at what the site itself offers to residents. Free food, shelter, clothes, and net access, but you have to sign your freedom away. They get occasional planned "vacation" days, but otherwise, you're stuck in there for good. Sounds about like hell to me.
After some discussion we decide to look up info on Kayla Kay, Diedra's partner from Two Chick Paranoid. She apparently failed continue her music career after Diedra disappeared and entered mild obscurity. There isn't much hint what she's doing now or even where she is.
Info on Kayla Kay.The kid brings up the fact that even after so many years, the royalty checks from the duo's work have to go somewhere. Ajax pokes around and discovers that Evan Morago was their agent back when they were popular.
Out of curiosity Ajax pulls the song that Kayla released on her own. It's absolutely terrible. I can see why she didn't do so well.
We come up with a tentative plan to get in contact with Kayla through Morago and ask some questions.
Anyway, we don't need to be hanging out in the mall full of simmering bad mojo for this discussion. We head out to the van and tell Dezzy to drive around and explore his favorite parking garages while Ajax makes some deceptive phone calls.
He contacts Morago's agency on the pretext that he may have work for Kayla. They promise to call him back when Morago is in.
The kid calls a friend (his arms dealer contact, a woman named Phoenix) to see if he can get some info about the homeless person dumping ground in the Archology. There is apparently a whole military base in the basement. That's not what I wanted to hear.
The military section of the building is connected with the residential area and the outside as well. The kid also says that the apartments have terraces, so in theory one could climb in... There are a good number of drones patrolling the outside, but not the top floors. The horrible sealed off top floors, which I don't want to touch with a three meter pole.
The doctor is suggesting that we approach the department of human services as loved ones looking for Diedra. This sounds like a good plan, especially since we can make some doctored family photos to back up our claims.
Looking into Diedra's recording history, Ajax turns up that Horizon owns the rights to Two Chick Paranoid's music currently. He digs up the name of the PR agent attached to the last Two Chick Paranoid release, Kevin Yahr. Ajax trolls around trying to get Mr. Yahr to give him contact information for Ms. Kay, but the guy won't give up much. He claims he'll forward correspondence to her. That doesn't seem very helpful, but Ajax sends off a formal looking email in the hope she might look at it.
(Sarah wanted me to note that next session we should make an attempt to find out if Kayla Kay is getting paid for some other sort of work we can dig up info on.)
End of Session
