Date: 1st week of January, 2072
Location: Seattle, UCAS
Mr. Johnson: MacCallister
Team: Azuma, Fletcher, Slipstitch, Troublemaker
Overview: The team is hired to find a missing person.
Taken from a letter by Azuma:
Guang,
I hope this letter finds you well. I am adapting to a new life in Seattle and have already found some work that will hopefully lead to more. I will continue to share my adventures as you share yours.
I was hired by a man named MacCallister to find a young woman archaeologist who had just arrived from Greece. It seems she did not check in with her “employer.” I came to learn later that her father was the one who was worried and I suspect asked MacCallister to help him find his daughter. He seemed grateful when we ultimately returned his daughter and he provided us a calling card with his LTG and a Draco Foundation logo. I hope this is a good person to have helped.
The team with which I was placed included an augmented man named Fletcher who brandished two gleaming black cybernetic arms, a decker of sorts named Slipstitch who seemed capable but nervous, and man named Troublemaker who seemed as comfortable casting offensive spells as firing a gun. This last one seemed familiar to me, though not in a positive way. He seems to have some anger issues and I suspect his nickname is well deserved.
We were also approached, shortly after being hired, by a Laurent Nazareen from the Atlantian Foundation who wanted us to obtain a fist-sized rock with some latent thaumaturgical energy while we were performing our search. I suspect I need to look into him in more detail and find out if we chose well to even entertain his offer. We did some digging on the stone and supposedly it is an obsidian morel stone with a magical aura that was found outside of Phaestos in Greece. No immediate value could be determined.
Slipstitch was able to find a photo on a social media site that included Fiona, the subject of our job, along with the cab company that owns the vehicle she entered. We did some legwork where it looks like both Fletcher and Troublemaker have police or law enforcement backgrounds (moreso the latter) as we showed her photo to cabbie after cabbie. Eventually Slipstitch hacked the cab company and accessed her destination, a hotel named Mulvahill in Bellevue.
At the hotel Troublemaker was able to convince the desk clerk to let him and Fletcher into her room to search it, probably through a combination of intimidation and annoyance. In a day planner in her room they found reference to a meeting with a Jack Turner, who it turns out is a smuggler who operates around the Orc Underground in Seattle.
We headed to the Orc Underground, took an escalator into its depths (there is a tourist area that probably helps fund some of its residents), and immediately stumbled into a fight among local orcs and some local anti-orc humans. As the brawl expanded to engulf us, Troublemaker twice cast large spells that felled a half dozen combatants in each blast, most of them human. Slipstitch made his way back up the escalator until the Knight Errant riot police arrived, and Fletcher and I opted to fight through the chaos in hopes of getting clear of the combat and the security forces. Ultimately Slipstitch and Troublemaker joined us and we made our way further into the warrens of the underground.
With the help of a local orc youth who led us to the smugglers’ massive cave and less massive shanty town, I scouted the area to find this Jack Turner. Eventually I located his boat and Slipstitch and Troublemaker searched it looking for the girl or any other information. From that we were able to find which house was his, which conisted of a cinder block box with glass block windows and a large garage door.
We opted for the direct approach and knocked. Rebuffed, Troublemaker unleashed a bolt of energy at the door only to have it reflected back upon him. Two gun turrets emerged and fired on us, which Fletcher and Troublemaker quickly disabled. Troublemaker kicked in the door and entered and was set upon by a fire spirit which I dispatched with a single arrow. I moved up the stairs inside and kicked open the next door to find Jack Turner using the girl as cover and holding a pistol to her head. Fletcher came up beneath me and demanded Jack Turner relinquish his firearm, which he promptly did. At that point it was a matter of feeding and hydrating the girl, getting a boat ride out, and delivering her to our Johnson.
We also presented the morel stone to MacCallister in exchange for further payment. We heard no further from the man representing the Atlantian Foundation.
If the work here is this direct and the professionals in this trade can keep a calm head, there may be much opportunity for me to live a comfortable life here. Perhaps then I will be able to afford a trip to meet in Hong Kong and we can visit some of those tourist traps we always thought would be so entertaining.
– Aaron
Rewards:
5 karma for completing the run.
3,000¥ each payment
1,500¥ each bonus for turning over the artifact to MacCallister
+1 Reputation with Draco Foundation
-1 Reputation with Atlantean Foundation
+1 Street Cred
MacCallister as a contact, Initial Loyalty 1
Moreau as a contact, Initial Loyalty 1
2 Karma Bonus for Azuma for the run writeup