Chapter One — 2074: A Dragon in Distress

Denver, October 2074. A small team of shadowrunners accepts an extraordinary assignment from a woman known as Cat O’ Nine Tails. Their objective is to infiltrate Denver and rescue Perianwyr, a dragon being held captive by the great dragon Ghostwalker.

Smuggled into the city aboard a VTOL aircraft, the runners encounter violent magical weather and hostile drones before reaching their destination. With help from operatives Blitz and Krieg, they stage an assault on a military facility where Perianwyr is being imprisoned. The rescue succeeds, although their escape is complicated when another prisoner unexpectedly transforms into a fire spirit. Meanwhile, events elsewhere in Denver suggest that the team has become involved in something much larger than a simple extraction.

Perianwyr’s freedom is only the beginning. Badly weakened by his captivity, the dragon hires the runners to escort him to a safehouse in Berlin. Their arrival is anything but peaceful. An armed roadblock, an attack on Perianwyr’s nightclub, and a running gunfight on the way back to the airport turn the assignment into a succession of desperate battles. Despite the opposition, the runners deliver Perianwyr to safety.

Their continuing association with the dragon takes them next to Neo-Tokyo, where they search for missing associates of their employer. The surviving record of this adventure is frustratingly brief, preserving little beyond the assignment itself and Gaagé’s memorable dissatisfaction with a particularly unpleasant Japanese delicacy.

The final stage of Perianwyr’s recovery brings the team to Seattle, where they escort him to his hoard so he can regain the remainder of his power. What began as an improbable rescue mission has taken the runners halfway around the world, earned them powerful contacts, and established their reputation as professionals capable of handling extraordinary assignments.

Chapter Two — 2074: The California Jobs

With Perianwyr’s affairs concluded, the team returns to more conventional shadowrunning.

In late November, Gloria Weathernight hires Gaagé, Shard, Peat, and Chalks to infiltrate a small facility in San Francisco and steal an experimental weapons prototype. The assignment earns them new contacts in the California shadows, although the payment is considerably less impressive than their earlier work for the dragon.

Their next recorded assignment also takes place in San Francisco.This time, Javier Nunez contracts the runners to sabotage an electronics manufacturing facility belonging to Mitsuhama Computer Technologies. The job attracts a larger team, including a newcomer known as A.D., and results in another successful payday. It also brings unwanted attention to Peat, whose public awareness and notoriety both increase following the operation.

The team’s adventures have taken them through Denver, Berlin, Tokyo, Seattle, and California in a matter of weeks. But their next destination will be considerably less glamorous: Chicago.

Nearly two decades after the insect-spirit invasion and the abandonment of the Containment Zone, the Windy City remains divided between functioning neighborhoods and vast stretches of ruined urban wilderness. Now, Project: Takeback promises to reclaim portions of the devastated city, creating opportunities for corporations, speculators, local residents, and shadowrunners alike.

For the team, Chicago offers an unfamiliar kind of challenge. The dangers here are not limited to corporate security or rival runners. The Zone itself is hostile: crumbling buildings, territorial gangs, unreliable Matrix connections, and lingering magical contamination make every assignment an expedition into the unknown.

Chapter Three — 2075: Into the Zone

January 2075. The runners’ first assignment inside Chicago’s former Containment Zone comes from a mysterious employer known as Quantum Princess. The job initially appears straightforward: enter the Zone and repair a series of malfunctioning Matrix repeaters. But while working to restore communications infrastructure, the team receives a second request to investigate a facility and locate a missing person. The expedition introduces them to several important Chicago contacts and demonstrates just how difficult even ordinary work can become inside the Zone.

Their next employer, Dr. Martin Tate, has an altogether different objective. Tate operates a medical clinic serving residents who have remained in the devastated neighborhoods. With Project: Takeback offering opportunities to reclaim abandoned properties, he hopes to expand his operation into a nearby building. Unfortunately, the records necessary to establish his claim are trapped inside the property itself.

The runners are hired to enter the abandoned structure and recover its computer records, potentially allowing the clinic to expand much sooner than would otherwise be possible. For once, their work offers the possibility of directly improving the lives of people who have little power or wealth of their own. But Chicago’s ruins hold dangers far stranger than bureaucratic obstacles.

In February, an employer known as Booth hires the team to escort a shaman into the Shattergraves, one of the city’s most infamous devastated areas. Their destination is the base of the fallen Sears Tower, and their deadline is midnight on the anniversary of its destruction.

Whatever purpose lies behind the expedition, the assignment takes the runners into a district where Chicago’s traumatic past remains impossible to ignore. The Containment Zone is becoming familiar territory, but familiarity does not make it any safer.

Chapter Four — 2075: Beneath the Ruins

As the team’s reputation grows, their assignments carry them deeper into Chicago’s dangerous and frequently supernatural underworld.

Sarah Silverleaf hires the runners to retrieve a data node from a building inside the so-called hot zone surrounding the Cermak Crater. The area remains one of the most hazardous portions of the former Containment Zone, scarred by the magical catastrophe that helped end the insect-spirit occupation. The team completes the assignment, earning money, additional contacts, and an increase in both reputation and notoriety.

Their growing connections within Chicago’s magical community lead to another unusual job. Lothan the Wise contracts the runners to acquire a canister of enchanting ingredients from the Astral Space Preservation Society. The assignment offers one of the better payouts of their Chicago careers, although the surviving record provides few details of how the materials were obtained.

In March, their work brings them back into conflict with organized crime. Sid Gambetti hires the team to recover incriminating information from an unknown source. Their investigation eventually traces the data to a Mafia-connected security hacker in Milwaukee.

The assignment also marks a tragic turning point. The campaign log records the death of a teammate, Pete, from a drug overdose during the operation. Peat, a mainstay of the group since the rescue of Perianwyr, disappears from subsequent mission rosters. The loss changes the composition of the team as their adventures continue.

In April, another employer, Mr. Saito, sends the runners beneath Lake Michigan to investigate Facility #42, a damaged and abandoned research installation hidden deep underwater. It is the sort of assignment that has come to define their time in Chicago: a dangerous journey into a place left behind by the city’s troubled history, where valuable secrets may still lie buried beneath years of neglect.

Chapter Five — 2075: The Road Goes On

By late April, the runners are ready for a change of scenery.

Jimmy Parcells arranges a job in Seattle, where the team is to provide security for the lead singer of Troll Stomp, a band preparing to announce its return from retirement. The assignment promises a welcome departure from Chicago’s radioactive ruins and abandoned research facilities.

Unfortunately, the job ends before it can properly begin. While the team is traveling to Seattle aboard a train, their intended client is killed. The runners arrive without anyone left to protect, although they are permitted to keep the retainer they received for accepting the assignment.

Their stay in Seattle is brief. Within days, Simon Andrews connects them with a representative of Saeder-Krupp using the familiar name Hans Brackhaus. The corporation wants to send the team to Dubai, where competing megacorporate interests are threatening its influence across the Middle East.

Their initial objective is to gather intelligence about Ares and NeoNET operations believed to be undermining Saeder-Krupp’s regional alliances. The runners are provided with a substantial operating budget and instructed to make their way to Dubai.

The campaign’s final recorded entry ends with the team accepting this new assignment. No subsequent account of their operations in Dubai survives. Honestly, I’m not sure if we ever played that run or not? Sometimes, Shadowrun just fizzles…