Prequel
In the interveneing two weeks since returning to San Franciso a lot has happened. Within a day of Alfred bringing the magical geode back to his home he was contacted by an old friend and fellow mage Vivian Grant and informed that she’d happened upon some information pertaining to the focus. A colleague of hers, a decker (Dev Null), had infiltrated a low level datastore on the outskirts of aztlan’s norte regionta telecommunications grid that, due to a configuration mistake in a backup utility, contained a nightly backup of a portion of internal aztechnology communications. He’d snatched the prize, triggered the breadcrumb utility to pull him out collapsing his path behind him and popped out back in the NOCAL RTG. He’d told Vivian that later that night he ran the data through his cheesecloth AI to find material to sell. The cheesecloth flagged a mail thread between the Departamento de Finanzas Espiritual and Oficina de la captura y destrucci?n de activos in which it was clear that there was an Op comissioned internally to Aztechnology to find a magical asset that was had been brough into the San Francisco bay area in the past few days, obtain the asset and destroy all resources that had knowledge of or had had contact with the magical asset. The mail thread indicated the Op had a budget of 1.2 million nuyen. Vivian said she had thought to contact Alfred due to the coincident timing of the events described in the Op and Alfred’s return from his week out of town (Alfred had mentioned to Vivian he would have to skip their regulary weekly tea in Golden Gate park because he would be out of town). Alfred revealed some of the details of the geode to Vivian and confirmed that this Op was likely directed at him and his associates. They both agreed that black Op with that kind of budget was not something to be trifled with. Vivian devised a solution that, after checking with the team, Alfred agreed with. In the following two days Vivian paid her the decker who had gotten into the Aztlan grid to sneak back in and inject a piece of information. Nothing big, a single record associating the target of the black Op with the name and address of one Enoch Percy living in the St. Francis Wood district of San Francisco. As Alfred knew, Enoch had, while at University, used his magical abilities to take advantage of and violate Vivian. Later that night Alfred and Rusty boxed up the geode, labeled it and drove it to Enoch’s home, leaving it with the house keeper.
Vivian and the team considered it a fair trade, Vivian preventing a tag and bag team from ambushing Alfred and the crew, Alfred helping Vivian right a past injustice.
Before unloading the geode on Enoch, however, Scott suggested that Rusty and Alfred swing by his estate on the way. In his workshop Scott has a computer controlled high speed carbide rotary saw with a glycol coolant bath from some forgotten hobby that he’d taken up. He cut the geode in half revealing a prismastic array of colored crystals of an unkown substance. A quick strike with a hammer and punch and two small crystals were broken loose. They only removed two for fear that the missing pieces would be noticed by Aztechnology.
A week after getting back to the city, Rusty swung by the Glenans Sailing Club and dropped off a data cube with Emmy asking her to keep it safe and that he needed to head down to Hollister for a few weeks. He suggested hitting up Ridge if a job came up. He’d met Ridge at Akademija, a Serbian club in China basin. She had been flirting with Rusty, lifted his wallet clean, left the club, saw on his ID that he was Rusty Billet, a favorite rally racer of hers, and went back to the club to return the wallet in trade for getting to talk with him about racing.
The Race
- The Racetrack : Mayfair Downs
- The Race : The Furukawa-Dentsu-Fuji 100
- Field size : 25 dogs
The teams
The De Lessep Family
Awakened Hound : June Prayer Odds : 6-1 Powers : -Elemental control 2m radius (water to vapor) (mist to rain) (earth to stone) (air gas mixture) (air density)-
The Morgenthau Family
Awakened Hound : Riot Tide Odds : 4-1 Powers : -Wasting 2m radius- Powers : -Gaze causes disease 5m-
Evo Corporation
Awakened Hound : The Pride (Alcatraz) Odds : 20-1 Powers : -Telepathy : line of sight- Powers : -Gaze causes charm/mood control 5m-
Last Years Results
Win : D is For Destiny Place : Riot Tide Show : June Prayer 17th place : The Pride
The jobs
Protection
Elven Lawyer : Finrod Telemnar : 3 piece suit The meet : Joe’s of Westlake
One of out informants has found that the Morgenthau’s intend to attempt to kill June Prayer before the race. We need our hound protected while not revealing to either the Morgenthau’s or the betting public the fact that we’ve employed you to protect June Prayer. June Prayer is transferred from our secure facility to the Paddock at Mayfair downs August 9th, 3 days before the race in order to conform to the rules.
The Stolen Cattle Dog
Annegret Bowdin The meet : Royal Blue (club)
2 years ago my families cattle dog was stolen from us. The dog had lived with us since before I was born. It’s now 48 years old. My father died last month leaving me our family estate. I met with people at the Evo Corporation and offered them a price to get my cattle dog back but they laughed at me and threw me out. I want you to get my dog back. The only time that I know of when Alcatraz isn’t in their high security coroprate labs in Marin will be at the FDF 100.
The Bookee House
Vivian Grant reports that Dev Null got access to information on the processes and intrusion countermeasures of the Mayfair Downs Bookee House which handles all local on-track and remote off-track betting for the FDF-100. He believes that if a team could get him in he could set a program to shift the final betting odds for the race by a small percentage on all dogs 30 seconds before the race starts after which point a notification will be sent out to a large capital interest which will then bet the field.
State as of the end of Game 3
It’s Saturday, race day, at 8am on the dot. Yakob is driving north on Santa Anita road away from Mayfair Downs in his truck. In the back is an unconscious Bookee House security employee next to the corpse of another security employee. Alfred and Dev Null are driving north behind them in the station wagon belonging to the dead man in the bed of the truck. Alfred is stunned (medium?) from his attempts at controlling people’s minds.
Scott is standing in the parking lot of Mayfair Downs having seen a Mayfair Downs security jeep drive out of the parking lot north along Santa Anita. Scott’s looking up the road to see when Alfred and Yakob are going to appear.
Ridge has just finished talking to Emmee, asking for her to come help her get back into the team pavilion area without getting noticed. Ridge has also just finished talking to her buddy Mac and has learned of some small plane flight possibly involving sky diving out of Carmel airport which supposedly departs at 8am (right now).
Smokey and Emmee are at the De Lesseps trailer.
It’s 4 hours until the dogs are released from the kennel and taken to the racetrack for the race. It’s 4 hours until betting closes on the race in the bookee house.
Conclusion after Game 4
Having killed the Morgenthau’s mage as he fell from the sky, intent on taking advantage of what seems to be the solitary chink in the armor of the Dog Shaman’s kennel, the ventilation ducts on the roof; and having succeeded at getting Dev Null into the basement of the bookee house, the team watched the end of the race and the return of The Pride to the Evo Corporation’s trailer. As the various teams were packing up their respective trailers and assembling their convoy’s, Yacob and Alfred got in the pickup putting Emmy in the back with the two corpses. Scott, Smokey and Ridge got in the stolen station wagon and followed Yacob in his pickup as they drove north away from Mayfair Downs with the crowds leaving the race. The two cars came to one of the spots along the road that had looked good for an ambush and pulled off. Smokey got out and went up to Yakob’s truck and said that with the number of cars on the road due to the end of the race trying to take the convoy here and ending up in a firefight surrounded by race attendees wasn’t a good plan. The team agreed and decided to continue north in hopes of attacking the convoy in a better location. As the team was getting back in their cars they could see 1/4 down the road back towards Mayfair downs that the Evo Corporation convoy was heading up the road. Both cars took off not far ahead of the convoy. Heading north towards Marin the team desperately looked for a suitable location for the attack but the first point that the traffic from the race thinned out was back at the interstate. The team continued north and finally pulled off at the exit north of Sausalito that they knew was the only way into Evo Corp. Nobody was comfortable with the idea of attacking the convoy this close to Evo Corps facility, knowing that inevitably more security personnel were behind those gates and could be called on my the convoy, but this was the only opportunity. At a bend in the road the cars pulled off, everyone got down behind them. The convoy approached, 4 motorcycle escorts, the trailer being pulled by the Semi, the sporty sedan and the mid-sized car. The mid sized car passed the bend along with the first two motorcycle escorts. Ridge pushed the detonator for the explosives placed under the Semi. Nothing happened and the Semi rolled by. Everyone looked at each other and then at Ridge. Ridge said “They must have found it! Or… did I put the blue wire on the second lead or was it the green….” The team let the convoy roll by since this idea had passed into a realm of suicide mission. Later Ridge called Annagret explaining the situation. Annagret was crushed, seeing this as her only opportunity to get Alcatraz back. Ridge said she would see what she could do.
The next day Scott contacted Telemnar, the lawyer, and had the teams compensation wired over 50,000 nuyen plus 3,000 nuyen in expenses. Scott explained about the attack that they foiled and Finrod said that the De Lessep’s would be very pleased with the outcome. Alfred called Dev Null and found that the plan had worked and that his overseas contact had gotten his money in and out as planned. Dev Null told Alfred to make sure that Yacob dealt with those bodies since though he had taken care of covering their tracks in every way possible in the digital world, if something went wrong in meatspace and the consortium of bookees and the entities that back them were to discover what happened or who was behind the cabinet full of bodies in the container they all would be up to their eyeballs in trouble. Dev Null transferred over the 80,000 nuyen as promised. The conversation ended with an absence of an offer to work together in the future from Dev Null.
This brings the team 133,000 nuyen total in compensation or if you were to split it evenly 22,166 a piece. Speak up if you don’t want to split it even. I’ll send out Karma awards separately