Resonance.Cascade() - A Shadowrun 2070 Quest

The year is 2070, and the Sixth World has seen better days. It's only been six years since the Second Matrix Crash (Dubbed Crash 2.0 by the Matrix Boards). Millions of bodies, the end of an entire generation of wired matrix technology, and perhaps most notably a new generation of Corporations.

Indeed, it's a bad time to live in the Sixth World. If the Crash didn't get you back in '64, you got caught in the resulting chaos as the cyberspace architecture that held the global economy together collapsed. Trains derailed, smart-cabs losing all tracking caused massive pile-ups. Banking and civic information data were wiped. You might not have been able to get your SIN back, or your job, or your bank account. A corporate bloodbath ensued, as those responsible were gobbled up by leaner, hungrier competitors. Fires raged, and corporate acquisition teams fought running battles with competitors' security forces for weeks. There are two new seats on the Corporate Council. There's a Dragon living in Denver. That happened before the Crash, but it's still some wild drek.

Slowly, the world tottered back towards stability. Infrastructure is being rebuilt. Wried nodes are a thing of the past - the shift to a wireless net architecture has created a new Wild West among the console cowboys and comm-jockeys that call themselves Deckers as all sorts of new vulnerabilities in this fledgling system are discovered and exploited. The engines of capital grind onwards - prosperity cannot be slowed. But as the new world order wobbles, still working out the kinks, opportunities arise for those willing to take risks.

Sometimes, the risks pay off.

Not tonight. Not for you.

The Sky is tuned to a color of what people used to call a dead television channel, over the city of:

Choose One:
- [ ] Las Vegas - The Corporate City of Sin. You've been sent on a job that could make you and your team *very* rich.
- [ ] Berlin - The Flux State, crushed under the boot of Corporate rule since '55. Anarchists and Idealists, a job that could change the face of the city forever.
- [ ] London - The Big Smoke. The Crime Families of the outer orbit have a simple but lucrative transport job for you...

Our lead darts into the frame like a comet, gunfire blazing their trail behind them. A Shadowrunner. An oft romanticized mercenary, living on the edge between a mercenary contractor and outright criminal. Tracer rounds burn crimson horizons in your direction. Tonight has gone very badly indeed. A chatter of gunfire lights up your face, revealing... who?

Choose Archetype from the options below; Metatype Votes will be held once an Archetype is decided.

The Haunted Detective

You used to protect people. That's what you said, anyways. You weren't a single-department detective, like the other folks in your company. No, you were special. You Awakened early, when you were quite young, and that arcane connection came in handy with your work. So you got all the weird shit, the unexplained cases, the truly gruesome events. You consulted on homicides, break-ins... anything with a whiff of magic, they called you. Never a powerhouse of magic, not you, but good with bindings, wards, and spirits. Especially spirits. Never knew what ghosties could stir up in an active crime scene, or what tidbit or clue a spirit could offer that an investigator missed. Some mages see spirit-bindings as a relationship - a give and take between the arcane forces of the world. Some mages don't even consider Spirits sentient, just slaves to the ambient psychic forces that created them. For you, they were either tools to get the job done, or dangerous forces to be bound and banished. You were sure about this case. Overconfident. You had the spirit handled. Until a binding went wrong, which meant the case went wrong, and now you're being hunted by... something. Something hungry stalks you through the Astral, and other spirits won't come near you. Mages and Shamans shiver when they look at your aura. Staying in one place too long got dangerous, and so you stay on the move, getting what work you can in the shadows. Things were going fine until tonight...

Metatype: [Any, except Troll or Orc]
Boons:
Cop Talk - Bonus to dealing with law enforcement and situations where your experience as an investigator would come into play.

Hermetic Mage (Spiritbinding Focus) - Gifted with the touch of magic, you can sling spells with the rest of them - which can be very powerful, but also make you a target.

(Hermetic Mage) Astral Sight - You can see the strands of energy and enchantment that bind the world together. It is beautiful. It is wonderful. The secrets of the Magical World are yours to grasp if you look hard enough. Careful, though - because the longer you look, the more likely something is to look back.

Experienced - You were a cop for a *long* time. You haven't been a Runner for much longer, but you'd be surprised how much overlap there is. (Small General bonus to most situations, especially leadership. You've seen nearly everything - it takes some seriously fucked up shit to phase you these days.)

Banes:
Marked: Spiritbane - Something marked you that day, and it hasn't left you alone since. Spirits, not your friends by any stretch but you could work with them, refuse to talk to you. And the last time you tried to summon... well, it's safer for everyone around you if you don't. (Trying to summon spirits, your primary focus of magical studies, is currently a really bad idea. Something out there is looking for you, and reaching out into the Astral like that is equivalent to ringing the dinner bell. ) (-10 to summoning spirits.)

Paranoid - Get hunted by a Something long enough, and you'd be twitchy too. All shadowrunners are paranoid, but you especially so - especially when it comes to magic. On the plus side, you've gotten really good at crafting wards and counterspells. (You're paranoid and twitchy, and sometimes doubt your own senses.)

The Scorned Heiress

There once was a girl who had all the gifts in the world, a loving mother, a powerful father, nuyen, and a castle all her own. Her mother left first, a wasting illness that nobody could fix. Her father after that, whose heart left to a woman who looked at her like a wolf does a rabbit and at her father like a slab of meat. Her only friend was a Cat, who taught her how to sneak, climb and play where she wished. As she grew older, her relationship with the evil stepmother grew worse and worse, until on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, the stepmother struck at them both, seeking to claim her father's power for her own. But Cat, her only friend, was there to help her flee. She swore one day to return, and reclaim what was hers.
(The Heiress used to be the Heir to a AA corporation, until a powerplay to get her out of the way nearly succeeded. An Adept mentored by the Cat totem, she took to the shadows as a thief and infiltration expert, and swore revenge.)

Metatype: [Elf or Human - Either way, you must be from somewhere in Europe]
Boons:
Uptown Girl - All those years of boarding school leave an impact. You know which spoon to use with soup, your smile dazzles, and you comport yourself with dignity where you can. Not much place for that in the gutter, but you'll have a better time with clients, and even old connections if they remember you.
Adept: Cat Disciple - You are an Adept, someone whose body is infused with magical energies, but cannot cast spells. This suffsion of power allows you to perform feats that to others, would be superhuman. You're incredibly flexible, dextrous in the extreme, and make no sound when you walk. Your mentor spirit, Cat, is a sort of focus or guide for your nascent powers. Your... patron, if it can be called that, has granted you some of her gifts, and you put them to use on your path to vengance. (Start with 3 Adept Powers and the Cat Mentor Spirit)
School of Hard Knocks - After living on your own since you were 16, you've got a bit of a chip on your shoulder. You know how biz works, the art of the criminal deal, and through your skills are intimately aquainted with the ciminal underworld. Even without your powers, you'd be an excellent theif.
Trust Fund - You've tried to avoid dipping into it, but you've a small cash reserve quietly building up since you ran away from home. The money would almost certainly be tracked... but it's a substantial ammount of money.

Banes:
Vendetta: Calling Card - You have an axe to grind against your stepmother's corp - your corp. And she's got it out for you too. When you hit her, you want her to know. You want everyone to know that you're coming for her. You sign your crimes, leaving your signature in big, flaming letters until she sits up and takes notice. (Must leave a calling card at jobs, grudge between you and Evil Step Mother can complicate jobs)
SINner - You never had the time nor the connections to burn your SIN when you fled. To this day, you're listed as missing - and your family's insurance is good enough that if it's ever scanned, it might cause problems for you.

The Technomancer - HARD MORE

One day after the crash you discovered that you could do things... things that usually required a computer. Without a computer. First it was opening doors, then it was free taxi rides, but eventually it became so loud it was noticable. Cut to two years later, and the memory of the dingy lab They kept you in beneath Seattle still keeps you awake at night. What are you? Why does everyone seem to be after you? Why can't they just leave you alone?
The people who busted you out felt sorry, just leaving you twisting in the wind like that. Good people. Criminals, but your life is so different from how it was that you were sure you didn't care. They offered a way to stay ahead of your pursuers. They threw you a lifeline and you clung to it, immersing yourself wholly into this new life of shadows. But now it's all falling apart, and you feel like you're drowning...

This is Hard Mode, fair warning. Technos have a rough time of it in 2070 - They're valuable commodities for research, and most people don't trust them after everything that happened in the Crash.

Metatype: [Any]
Boons:
Technomancer - You don't need a commlink to interface with the Matrix. You don't even need a datajack. You're attuned to a strange new force called the Resonance, and that makes you extremley powerful... but also paints a target on your back. (Start with 5 Resonance Abilities, essentially spells for hackers)

Blank Slate - You're never going back to the lab. You've sworn yourself to that. You may not have been in the shadows long, but that just means that you've nowhere to go but up, and you're eager to climb. (No Race Restrictions, Learns faster, but almost no connections whatsoever.)

Prime Data Haven Access - They really should guard these things better. You managed to get in once, looking for any kind of help, any kind of understanding, and the SysOP was so impressed you got past their ICE they made you a member. An excellent resource for advice, rumors, and best practices from the lips of veteran runners, which is useful when you don't have a clue what you're doing. (This can be earned by other Runners in play, but you start with it - thus, only three boons.)

Banes:

Wanted: Megacorp - Which one? All of them. You're not sure which one kidnapped and held you prisoner, but you're sure as hell a hot commodity to all of them.

Inexperienced - In your old life you never even fired a gun. Now you're living on the edge, and you are waaaaay out of your depth, omae. People can tell, and they'll leverage it. (-10 malus to most shadow-life skills, slowly ticks down with time and practice. Has the potential to hurt your rep.

The Street Samurai

Guns? Too loud. Your sword is a much better tool for the job. You have metal arms, metal legs and someone to protect. When the Crash hit, someone you loved went down with it, an AIPS victim. Treatment is expensive, even if they're lucky enough to be rendered capable of day to day life. Your service training has given you valuable skills, and you sell them for nuyen. The jobs aren't nice, but the treatments aren't getting any cheaper. Still, you do good work, you have a dependable team, and your rep is solid. You've managed to avoid most of the mistakes most Runner's make... Until tonight. You just need to make it out alive.

Metatype: [Orc, Troll]
Boons:
ORC Connections - The Orc Rights Commission (which extends to Trolls too) is a civil rights polyclub that... well, it's the middle of the road. Not as militant as the Sons of Sauron, nor the pacifist nonaction of Mothers of Metahumans, it's nontheless a network that seeks to help out folks like you and your family. Part community outreach program, part neighborhood watch. They know what you do, and they understand, even if they don't always approve. Sometimes they even ask for your help. (ORC Support Network and Reputation)

Local Hitter - You don't travel much, but that means you've had all this time to put down roots and build your reputation. Your capacity for violence has earned you a level of respect from street gangs of your city, and you're in the rollodexes of most of the Movers and Shakers that can put a pricetag on violence. You know all your neighbor's names, and if they have a problem they're unable to solve, they come to you. (You're more likely to know folks in your starting city, and have a bonus to social rolls while leaning on your reputation. It also means most organized crime folks know who you are.)

Chromed Up - You have... a lot of ware. Enough to make you faster, hit harder, be more durable. If you lose your sword, you've got claws you can fall back on. When shot, you can start to patch up your wounds. You have to take the freight elevator to get up to your apartment, but you're on the bleeding edge of violence in exchange, and sometimes being just that much ahead of the other guy can be a benefit. (Can start with 5 pieces of Ware)

Veteran - All of this, plus the combat training you recieved in the armed forces, makes you an utter Nightmare to deal with on the battlefield. Well versed in small unit tactics, explosives usage, firearms and blades of all stripes, there's very little you can't make into a weapon. When planning an "agressive action", you're the one your group turns to. (General Bonus to Combat rolls and rolls where tactics or training might be valuable)

Banes:
Dependant - You've got someone you need to take care of. They were plugged in when the Crash happened, and ever since then they've been... well, sick. The World at Large calls it Artificially Induced Psychotropic Schizophrenia Syndrome, or AIPS. And they've got it. It makes work hard to get, and living alone almost impossible. You could have committed them to any number of psychiatric care centers, but you learned the hard way not to trust corporate charity. They'll stay with you. You'll keep them safe. (One third of your take from any job goes to the upkeep of your dependant, and moving cities is more expensive.)

Sinnless - A buisness contact made it happen, once the jobs started getting bigger. You've a good enough fake to pay rent and pass a credit check, but your lack of a legal existence could pose a problem in the future. (You have no legal idenitity saying you are who you say you are beyond a decent forged ID. This is both good, because you cannot be tracked, and bad, because if that cover is ever blown, you'll have no legal protections whatsoever.)

The Former Fixer

You used to work for Aztechnology before the Crash, solving problems for your corporate overlords in exchange for a hideously large amount of money and a healthcare plan to die for. Amid the desolation of the big Two point Oh, your "husband" (you never officially got an annulment) saw the opportunity for a powerplay. He framed you for an information leak, made sure your SIN was never reinstated, and monolouged about it long enough to make your ears bleed. Gloating bastard. You ditched the Search and Recovery teams looking to plug the hole, raided a few offshore accounts you had stashed away for just such an occasion, and caught a sub-orbital to Anywhere But Here. But one day, you'll reclaim your spot at the top of the pyramid - and when you reach the top, you're gonna watch that bastard fall all the way down.

Metatype: [Human]

Boons
Ex-Fixer - Your old department was "Aquisitions", which means you know the Runner buisness inside and out. Your contacts list is large and extensive, and spirited negotiation is like breathing to you. You know your worth and your teams worth, and you're gonna make sure everyone gets paid. (Extensive contacts in the shadows, and killer management skills.)

Ruthless - You've been called a shark more than once, and you couldn't be happier with the comparison. The things you've done to climb to the top would make a Drake shudder. You've the cold-blooded calculus to ensure that the job gets done. Feelings don't factor into it.

Photographic Memory - You never forget a face. Or anything, really - contracts, exact wording, the smell of cordite, blood and gunsmoke after an extraction, all of your old jobs. Bonus in situations when recalling small details is important, and you've a treasure trove of Aztech secrets in your backpocket.

Watch The Suit - It takes serious skill to look this good. And you'll be damned if some two-bit SecFirm screwup is gonna ruin your wardrome with his incompetence. (No matter what, you always look flawless, no matter the combat that's happened around you. Small bonus to social actions where appearance matters.)
Banes:
Records on File: Aztechnology - Remember all that paperwork you signed when you joined up? All those "vetting" procedures? Safe to say, they've got everything on file: your SIN, your home adresses for the past twenty years, your sexual history, your psych profile, your fingerprint, your DNA, everything. You'll need to be careful not to leave traces.

Bad Rep: Aztechnology - Aztechnology has a bad reputation among the shadow community. Most of these mercenary "edgerunners" wouldn't be happy if your afiliation was to be known. And... well, you don't blame them. The Company's not the nicest out there. But you're not with them anymore, so it shouldn't be a problem, right? (Negative Rep with those that aren't the biggest fan of Aztechnology, until you take steps to disavow them completely.)

Enemy - Matt Stryker - That smug fucking prick sold you up river and left you holding the bag. It was never a happy marriage, more of a mutual-buisness-decision, but now he's really gone and done it. If you see him again, it's on. (Social malus whenever your ex is concerned, and he'll try to cause problems for you if he can.)

---

OOC: Hi folks! Long time lurker, first time QM. This is a joint project between me and a writing buddy of mine (not on this site, sadly, but following along with us!) I'm still feeling out how the system mechanics for this are going to look (but as a heads up, short of massive community demand, probably gonna avoid any of the original SR Rulesets) - keep your eyes out for a rules update coming shortly - but this is a bit of an experiment for me. I'm a long-time tabletop GM, but I've never felt my PbP skills especially up to par - and this is an attempt to change that.

The character options presented above represent the role you're filling in your current shadowrunner team. In most of the situations (sorry techno!) this is in addition to being the leader - which I hope will take a prominent role in the Quest. Managing your team of runners was some of my favorite parts of the Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Hong Kong experiences, and I wanted to try and bring that over to SV!

There might be a little bit of a slower pace to this quest, at least while we're getting settled in, due to the co-authorship and my relative newness to QMing and SV's forum setup in general. If anything's not clear about the rules, ask and I'll try to respond quickly - I'd ask that folks with mechanical questions wait a little bit for the Rules post before we get too deep into things.

Okay! Part one done! Let's do this!

So OG Shadowrun is very, very crunchy. Far too crunchy for a forum format, I think. When we sat down to draft this, my original pitch was something more akin to a CK Quest - d100 resolution, plus stat and modifiers. That's essentially how it's shaken out, with a little tweaking to be more in-line with the 6th world as a setting.

There are six stats in this quest, organized into two groups, Mundane and Special, that represent different ways of interacting with the world, or fields of specialist knowledge. When you attempt an action, you roll a d100 and add two stats, depending on the fictional position of the action.

The stats are:
Mundane
Meat - How good you are at coordinating your flesh-and-blood body.
Mind - How good you are at using your brain - quick thinking, mathematics, social reasoning.
Style - How good you look, and how skilled you are at using your charisma to your advantage.

Special
Metal - How good you are with non-Net technology. If you rely heavily on cyberwear, this is the skill for you.
Magic - How talented or knowledgeable you are about the strange arcane nature of the 6th World. If you're an Adept or a Mage, this is a priority skill for you.
Matrix - How good you are at utilizing the networked Matrix (internet analog) technology of the 6th world. There's probably some leeway here - I could see a Rigger using Metal or Matrix to represent their drones, as an example. It's intentionally designed to be a little flexible.

Skills can range from 0 to 20, at the following ranges:
0-5 - Street Level
6-10 - Average Runner
11-15 - Prime Runner
16- 20 - Metaplot Relevant Character
20+ - Dragons and other spooky shit.

Examples!

Picking a Lock as an Adept might be 1d100+Magic+Meat, but Picking a lock as an Unawakened Person might look like 1d100+Meat+Mind (because you know how locks work.)

In addition, there is the Edge special stat, which acts like Destiny Dice in other quests I've seen. For a single point of Edge, you can roll another d100 and add it to your first roll. You can permanently burn a point of Edge to survive an otherwise fatal encounter. Edge caps out at 5 points, but I haven't quite worked out starting stats just yet, that's tomorrow's deal.

I'll probably come back to this and update it as I go - should probably make a log of traits and their effects or something.

Character Sheets: THE TEAM

Abraham Salazar, Hermetic Mage and Former Detective

Name: Abraham Salazar
Handle: Mulder
Metatype: Human: +1 Mind, +1 Style, +1 Edge

Meat - 4 - You passed your physicals, but you're starting to get old, and are slower on the draw than you remember.
Mind - 6 - You're sharp and quick thinking. Grit, determination, and dogged detective skills have carried you so far. And paranoia. That keeps you very sharp.
Style - 4 - You dress down. "Kill the Mage First" is a pretty standard rule of thumb for most firefights and you don't want to make things any easier on your foes if you can help it. You constantly looking over your shoulder hasn't made you any friends either.

Metal - 0 - Cyberwear directly interferes with magical potency, and you avoid it like the plague. Maybe in time you'll pick up some non-integrated gadgets and tools, but those will never be your primary tools.
Magic - 6
Matrix - 2 - You know how to use a Gridmap and a search engine, but an elite hacker you are not.

Edge: 7/7

Boons:
**[Cop Talk]** - Bonus to dealing with law enforcement and situations where your experience as an investigator would come into play.
**[Hermetic Mage (Spiritbinding Focus)]** - Gifted with the touch of magic, you can sling spells with the best of them - which can be very powerful, but also make you a target. (Hermetic Mage)
**[Astral Sight]** - You can see the strands of energy and enchantment that bind the world together. It is beautiful. It is wonderful. The secrets of the Magical World are yours to grasp, if you look hard enough.
**[Experienced]** - You were a cop for a *long* time. You haven't been a Runner for much longer, but you'd be surprised how much overlap there is. (General +5 to most situations, especially including leadership. You've seen nearly everything.)

Banes:
**[Marked: Spiritbane]** - Something marked you that day, and it hasn't left you alone since. Spirits, not your friends by any stretch but you could work with them, refuse to talk to you. And the last time you tried to summon... well, it's safer for everyone around you if you don't. (Trying to summon spirits, your primary focus of magical studies, is currently a really bad idea. Something out there is looking for you, and reaching out into the Astral like that is equivalent to ringing the dinner bell. ) (-10 to Summoning Magic checks.)

**[Paranoid]** - Get hunted by a shadowthing long enough, and you'd be twitchy too. All shadowrunners are paranoid, but you especially so - especially when it comes to magic. On the plus side, you've gotten really good at crafting wards and counterspells. (You're paranoid and twitchy.)(+5 to wards and counterspells, additional +5 vs Spirits)