Just so everyone is clear, we are starting a new season of ShadowSEA. We had a couple of players leave, and one joined. We are currently at five players. We are going to be trying to utilize this resource more frequently, especially since one of our players is about to get deployed and will be doing a lot of his gaming with us via the Internet.

A recap of last season:

Firewatch Team Bravo was in the basement of a building that was infested with cockroach spirits when the building collapsed via controlled demolition. The other Firewatch teams survived, but Bravo was written off as KIA. Afterward, Firewatch training sergeant Frank Vega decided to leave Ares’ employ and leveraged his substantial influence in the Seattle underworld as a mover and shaker for Ares to secure his new position as a fixer.

Several months after the incident at the building, the survivors of Team Bravo crawled out of Redmond. They had been blown up, left for dead, and literally saved themselves by tunneling out of the rubble of the building that had been dropped on them. Fortunately, the cockroach spirits were good builders, otherwise the demolition would have destroyed the tunnels. In the intervening months, Team Bravo had ended up working for and befriending a few of the street gangs in Redmond, who armed the team and used their skills to train up their soldiers.

With the newfound power of the Nativez gang, Team Bravo was allowed to leave Redmond. The team maintained strong relations with the Nativez leader, Loka, in part because of her sense of honor and integrity.

Upon leaving Redmond, the team was approached by a rival of Vega’s who had asked the team to murder him. When the team learned that Vega was their target, they decided instead to side with Vega and became embroiled in a conflict with the Komun’go Ring. With Team Bravo’s skills, Vega’s connections, and a whole lot of hardware, the team was able to eliminate several high-ranking lieutenants in the Komun’go Ring. This forced the Komun’go to the table for peace talks, where the Ciarniello family and the Wakagashira clan took several Komun’go resources. The Komun’go were allowed to stay alive, but they were severely weakened by Team Bravo.

By now, Team Bravo had made a name for themselves. They began to attract some bigger players in the Seattle shadows. They were contacted by a representative of one of the megacorporations, who offered to help Team Bravo with discovering who was responsible for the building demolition in exchange for some wetwork. Team Bravo did exceptionally well, and got put in touch with Abigail Blackwood, a detective for Knight Errant.

Blackwood hinted that there were elements within Knight Errant that seemed to want to make the building disaster (and the ensuing investigation) go away. She was forced to work outside of official channels to get information about the crime. The runners helped Blackwood to track down the people responsible for making the bomb, and she managed to force the bomb makers to give up the name of their employer: Yoshi Doyle.

The runners immediately made a move on Yoshi Doyle, and were forced to deliver a hastily-prepared full-frontal assault. When they confronted him, he revealed himself to be a Tsuchigomo, a spirit that looks like a spider and who hunts down insect spirits. Doyle was convinced that the runners were sent by one of the insect spirit colonies that he had destroyed, and attacked the runners.

The team was unable to kill Doyle, but they were able to steal his commlink. On the commlink were plans from several Tsuchigomo to destroy insect hives and colonies all over the world. They were going to excise the insects that had been plaguing Ares, because one of their own was in charge of the Ares Firewatch project. The runners ran the risk of derailing that plan, but they did not realize that Doyle was one of the “good ones”.

In the end, they handed the commlink over to Abigail Blackwood, who revealed herself to be a wasp spirit and then attempted to kill the entire team via a fiery auto crash. One of the runners, the medic named Needles, had managed to survive the crash and taunted Blackwood into returning. It was then that he detonated a pile of grenades on his person, ensuring that neither of them would survive the conflict and that the commlink (and the plans on it) would be protected.

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My fellow ruffians, rapscallions, runners…

Some few of you have caught wind of my team’s actions in the last few weeks, thank you very much for access. I figured it would make good sense to start out giving all you hard working folks a bit of info on the goings on under Rotary Park recently. An ant spirit colony WAS springing up there. Irony at it’s finest, being under such an historical picnic area full of homeless and drifters.

While I think it has been wiped out, there’s one piece of that puzzle that my illustrious team and I were not able to resolve. There’s a woman out there distributing “something” to the homeless. Nobody we could find knew what her name is other than ‘The Nice Lady’. She was wandering around the place handing out some kind of nectar, or “sweet water”… and in our dealings there we never actually ran into her or could find her.

This isn’t a new story of course; ants are excellent at making you think you’re loved and are going to become part of a community. Those feelings of belonging and having a purpose in life are just what insects take advantage of in the homeless and cast offs. Not to mention the cherub faces these things can wear to make you question whether you are doing the right thing (if it involves a flame thrower, you are!)

So if in your travels you run across folks talking about ‘sweet water’ or a nice lady distributing drink to the homeless, drop a line here pretty please. I’m not so established that I can offer a reward, but I can sure follow up on any sightings. Depending on how good the info is, I may consider myself in your debt.

Spectre

In the end we bit off more than we could chew and couldn’t get the right kind of backup in place. So I’m out, Seattle.

But before I go, I’m going to take a bit of advice from a kid I met recently. Fear the Dark is out there Seattle. They’re going to bomb the Olympics. You saw all the feeds that got released before, but they’re still going to do it somehow. Someone better than us is going to have to stop it.

Personally, I’m not done. Fear the Dark could use some lessons in real fear.

PRIVATE MESSAGE INCOMING
>>> TO: A%$**
>>> FROM: ^5-02alawncaredrone7
>>> SUBJECT: Tactical thinking

You’re young, and you probably won’t listen to this as much as you should. And I’m definitely not the right person to teach people anything, short of how to snort a line. But because you are young, you may have thought you were doing the ‘right thing’ when you blasted that paydata from our last job out for the world to see. So, in the spirit of doing the ‘right thing’, I’m going to tell you exactly who that screwed over and how it’s super bad for you, me and everyone on the team.

That majorly screwed over our fixer. The one guy you absolutely cannot screw over under any circumstances short of leaving the damned country. Your fixer is your only buffer against being sniped off at 2 klicks right after pulling off a job. Your fixer is the only reason you have any damned place to sleep that isn’t crawling with ghouls or worse. Your fixer is your life in this business omae, and you just put a big fat mark on his head. And now we have to clean it up, spending precious time away from doing paying jobs that actually keep our little family supplied and happy.

I’m not one for giving people second chances. In this line of work it tends to get you dead. But you’re actually on the verge of doing me a favor. So, let’s learn from this and go get our fixer back.

ATTENTION SHADOWSEA USERS:

This is the current list of Most Wanted in and around Seattle. If you see your name on the list, you might consider hiding. If you are interested in pursuing the bounties, contact the point of contact listed.

Hoi, Chummers. Troper here.

Those of us who run the shadows know that death is a daily happenstance. Whether it’s a stray bullet to the during a milk run, a particularly spiteful Johnson, or a bolt to the brain from GOD, the reaper has his hands full with us runners. That goes double for those of us unfortunate to be ex-corp – caught between our old masters and our murderous new coworkers, the average lifespan is low enough to make a fruit fly shake its head.

Unfortunately, the fact that this message is getting shotgunned across the Matrix means that I’ve bit the dust. To be honest, I’ve had it coming for a long time – I’ve killed my fair share, both runners and wageslaves alike. If karma’s a thing, I’ve been racking up a tab, and whatever it is that got me in the end probably didn’t even cover the interest on that ledger. They say to quit while you’re ahead. By that logic, I’d sign off here – die with dignity and be known as another poor shmuck who got himself geeked in the “line of duty.”

But, as my old handlers back at Neonet probably know, I’m not really the type to go quietly. I figure that I can’t do much worse than “dead,” so who cares if I sow a little chaos after the fact? Get your fixers on the line, chummers, because you’re about to get a fortune in paydata for free.

First off, you should be aware that the bounty on “Jack Rainier” in Seattle has been claimed by whoever offed me. If that name rings a few bells, it’s probably because I might’ve tried to fry your wetware back when NeoNET still held my strings, sorry ‘bout that. The pay was good and I got some wiz gear as part of the job – right up until NeoNET decided to “liquidate” me. Why? Because apparently the rest of my team got turned into headcases after they’d gotten caught up responding to a shadowrun in Albuquerque. Paydata #1: NeoNET has more to do with the headcase outbreak than they’ll ever admit, and I’m living (dead) evidence of their coverup.

>>ATTACHED FILE: CFD_Casefile.txt<< Size: 292 Mp

Here’s where it gets good, though. In the shadows, I was trying to figure out what NeoNET was trying to cover up and why I had a 50k bounty on my head. Unfortunately, I didn’t make much headway on that case – because instead, I got caught up with goddamn vampires. Ironic, ain’t it? Try to hunt down one epidemic, stumble right into another.

“Fear the Dark.” Some of you might know the name from links to the Mealtime Killer attacks back in ‘73. Well, hate to break bad news, but shit’s bad. Real bad. This isn’t some five-man-band of some newborn vamps trying to reenact cheesy horror trids – this is a well-funded, well-organized, and terrifyingly well hidden multinational terror organization.

Remember this little gem from a few months ago? >>LINK: KSAF BREAKING NEWS<< Well, if you managed to catch the #VampireKillFest stream, you were watching through my eyes – and if that abomination was a medical facility then Bug City was fraggin’ Disneyland. They have resources. They have connections. They have plants. And they are utilizing all of them to make us food.

Think I’m just another conspiracy theorist? Well, then check this drek:

>>ATTACHED FILE: Good_God_We’re_Screwed.txt<< Size: 188 Mp
>>ATTACHED FILE: FTD_Properties.txt<< Size: 19 Gp
>>ATTACHED FILE: FTD_Contacts.txt<< Size: 173 Gp

Names. Places. Plans. They’re everywhere, chummers, and this is only scratching the surface.

So there’s one last frag you, to the bastards in NeoNET and Fear the Dark! My condolences to whoever geeked me; you probably didn’t intend to set of this shitstorm. Then again, if you’re taking pay from NeoNET you probably deserve it anyway.

-Troper

>>DOWNLOAD ALL? Y/N<<

>>> Incoming News Alert <<<

Knight Errant performed admirably today in a standoff that could have resulted in multiple casualties. During a daring robbery of one of Bellevue’s most treasured business establishments, locally-owned Le Marche, the culprits were chased off by the intimidation of a local Knight Errant patrol. Officers Wilson and Kudrow were given congratulations for their swift and decisive action, resulting in what Knight Errant called “an act of heroism.”

The officers were on regular patrol near Le Marche when they saw something very suspicious: a group of cats and trash cans where they weren’t supposed to be. The officers began to keep tabs on the local business, which has asked to remain anonymous, and when the culprits attempted to enter the building, the officers swooped in with everything they had.

The Knight Errant HRT team was on-site in less than 30 seconds, truly proving the Knight Errant rapid response teams are extremely effective. In the ambush, one of the would-be robbers fired his weapon at the authorities, and they were forced to use lethal force against him. The slain robber is identified as Jay Gerrick, a former citizen of Evo who had his citizenship revoked when it was discovered that he was a Bliss addict.

Friends and family of Jay Gerrick did not mourn his loss. One went so far as to say “good riddance, he was always causing trouble and making noise.” Other neighbors had comments that were inappropriate for reprint.

>>> To access uncensored content, be sure to subscribe to KSAF Platinum <<<

Officers Wilson and Kudrow have been offered a substantial reward, as Jay Gerrick is suspected to have been involved in last month’s terrorist attack on a corporate medical facility. Authorities believe that whatever Gerrick was after, it was sure to have resulted in a similar massacre.

Those who were with Gerrick at the time of the robbery are considered at-large, armed, and dangerous.

>>> Incoming News Alert <<<

Knight Errant performed a raid today on a pawn shop outside the Barrens, where they found a massive arsenal of illegal weapons. Estimates are that as much as 200,000¥ worth of illegal goods were seized. The proprietor of Second Hand Dan’s Pawn, Dan Drexler, has been arrested and is currently released on bond.

More updates will be available as new information becomes available.