Shadowrun: Fault Lines

Chapter One — Crash & Burn

Runs 1–2 | A Simple Job

Every shadowrunning career has to start somewhere. For Iron Hand, Rime, Silverline, Whisper, and Wildcard, it began with a security contract from a local fixer named Fletch. The assignment seemed straightforward: oversee a high-value exchange at the abandoned Midas Automotive Plant in Denver’s Aurora Warrens, keep everyone alive, and collect their payment.

Naturally, things went sideways.

The exchange erupted into chaos when unknown attackers stormed the factory, deploying drones, flash-bangs, and silenced weapons. With the buyer dead and multiple parties fighting over a mysterious crate, the runners found themselves caught in an ambush whose purpose was far from clear. They managed to secure the cargo and escape, but the identity of their attackers—and the true significance of the crate—remained unanswered.

The job also brought them to the attention of Hondo, a fixer who soon offered the team another opportunity. Joined by a new operative named Fuse, the runners accepted a smuggling contract involving a sealed briefcase and a series of timed dead drops across Denver’s divided jurisdictions.

The assignment carried them through UCAS, CAS, and Pueblo territory, navigating gang-controlled streets and the dangerous boundaries between sectors. They completed the deliveries, but strange incidents along the way hinted at something more. Iron Hand experienced an unexplained event at a border crossing, while Whisper encountered an unusual astral presence that would continue to trouble him.

What appeared to be routine smuggling had left the team with more questions than answers.

Chapter Two — The Price of Doing Business

Runs 3–4 | Friends in Low Places

With a few successful jobs behind them, the runners began finding more lucrative work in Denver’s criminal underworld. Hondo introduced them to Nico Morales, a man with connections to the powerful Chavez crime family, who needed a particularly sensitive piece of information recovered.

The assignment involved retrieving compromising files connected to a city councilor with organized crime ties. The data was held within MirrorLock, a secure Matrix escrow service, and the runners were expected to recover it without allowing the information to be copied, corrupted, or exposed.

The team successfully extracted the packet and delivered it to Morales, establishing a valuable relationship with the Chavez organization. The job also brought them into the orbit of the Golden Triangle Triad, another powerful faction competing for influence in Denver.

Not every assignment involved corporate espionage or elaborate criminal conspiracies. Another contract, arranged through a mysterious contact known as Miss Direction, sent the runners to Confluence Park to retrieve a physical dead drop from a public trash bin.

The instructions were simple: collect the package, deliver it unopened, and avoid drawing attention.

The team completed the job, adding another successful delivery to its growing record. But as their list of employers expanded, so did the number of people who knew their names, their capabilities, and how to find them when something needed to be done.

Chapter Three — Pieces off the Board

Runs 5–6 | The Denver Underworld

The team’s growing relationship with Nico Morales eventually led to a considerably less discreet assignment. A courier named Zhao Wei, working for the Golden Triangle Triad, was transporting a package through Chavez-controlled territory. Someone within the organization wanted the delivery intercepted, the package recovered, and a message sent to its rivals.

The runners tracked Zhao Wei and completed the interception, but the consequences extended beyond the immediate job. The operation damaged their standing with the Triad and drew the attention of the Karemasu Clan, whose interests were connected to an important commlink and a mysterious jade talisman.

Soon, the team found itself dealing with Katashi Noburo, a representative of the Karemasu Clan who demanded that the missing commlink be recovered and returned. Restoring the balance between the factions required another difficult negotiation, this time with Nico Morales himself.

Morales agreed to help, but wanted something in return.

The resulting assignment sent the runners into an abandoned Chavez safehouse in West Englewood, where they were tasked with recovering an item before competing interests could claim it. The team successfully infiltrated the property and recovered what they needed, although their escape proved less discreet than planned.

With the commlink finally in hand, the runners returned it to Noburo, settling the immediate dispute. In recognition of their efforts, the Karemasu Clan presented them with a jade token representing a debt that could be called upon in the future.

The entire affair demonstrated one of the central realities of life in the shadows: completing a contract was often the easy part. Dealing with the people affected by it could be considerably more complicated.

Chapter Four — Ghosts in the Divide

Runs 8–9 | Signal to Noise

As the team continued its work, a different kind of problem began spreading through Denver.

Unexplained drone failures, strange Matrix interference, and electronic disturbances were emerging from an abandoned region known as the Divide. Corporate security and Lone Star initially attributed the disruptions to gang-operated jammers, but the interference was spreading into active sectors and threatening systems well beyond the affected area.

Hired to investigate, the runners entered the Divide and traced the disturbances to a mysterious Resonance amplifier. The team successfully neutralized the device, but the investigation exposed something more troubling than an ordinary piece of illegal technology.

The mystery soon became personal for Iron Hand.

During a subsequent investigation, he activated a device known as the Tether, triggering contact with a strange digital-metaphysical intelligence. The entity attempted to merge with him, apparently seeking to restore a lost system known as the Empty Garden protocol.

The encounter revealed that Iron Hand’s cyberware contained dormant code associated with Red Steel, a clandestine program connected to his forgotten past. The Empty Garden had once linked Red Steel operatives into a state of extraordinary unity, blurring the boundaries between individual consciousness, technology, and something beyond either.

Whisper’s astral investigations added another disturbing revelation: the Empty Garden was, or had once been, an actual metaplane.

The runners managed to contain the immediate danger and preserve Iron Hand’s life and identity, but the experience left them confronting a mystery that neither conventional Matrix expertise nor magical knowledge could fully explain.

The Divide was no longer simply another dangerous corner of Denver. It had become a doorway into something buried in the city’s past—and perhaps in Iron Hand himself.

Chapter Five — Cold Cache

Run 10 | The Buried Secrets of Red Steel

The team’s next assignment came from Hardpoint, who had detected unusual residual power signatures beneath an abandoned industrial property in Denver’s Stapleton Zone. The job appeared to be a straightforward salvage operation: investigate the site, recover anything valuable, and return with proof of their findings.

Beneath Warehouse 12B, however, the runners uncovered something far more significant.

Hidden below the industrial complex were the remnants of a pre-Crash Mitsuhama research facility, long abandoned and apparently forgotten. The installation, identified as RE, contained evidence of clandestine experimentation and a frozen prototype known only as Subject Zero.

The discovery brought the runners face-to-face with another surviving fragment of the shadowy research that had begun to surface throughout their investigations. What had initially appeared to be unrelated anomalies and forgotten technology now suggested a disturbing history of corporate experimentation, concealed identities, and dangerous attempts to push beyond the limits of conventional science.

The team explored the facility, recovered valuable information, and survived its dangers before returning to Hardpoint. Among their discoveries were references to researchers Dr. Shinobu Ikari and C. M. Tanaka, the latter believed to be somewhere in the Sioux Sector.

But the investigation raised more questions than it answered.

The fate of Subject Zero, the intentions of Mitsuhama’s surviving personnel, and the full relationship between RE and Iron Hand’s past remained uncertain. Somewhere beneath Denver, pieces of a long-forgotten project were beginning to emerge.

The runners had started their careers protecting a mysterious crate in an abandoned factory. Months later, they were uncovering the remains of corporate programs that someone had gone to considerable trouble to bury.

In the shadows of Denver, old secrets rarely stay dead.