Back to Seattle

Chapter One — 2072: New Blood in Seattle

Seattle, January 2072. A new collection of shadowrunners arrives in the Emerald City, each with their own reasons for seeking work in one of the Sixth World’s most dangerous metroplexes. With few local connections and little reputation to speak of, they begin accepting whatever assignments come their way.

Their first job comes from a fixer named MacCallister, who hires Azuma, Fletcher, Slipstitch, and Troublemaker to locate Fiona Craig, a young archaeologist recently arrived from Greece. Their investigation takes them from Bellevue hotels into the sprawling Ork Underground, where they discover that Fiona has been kidnapped by a smuggler named Jack Turner. After fighting through Turner’s automated defenses and magical security, the runners rescue her and recover a mysterious obsidian artifact. Their success earns them contacts within the Draco Foundation, although their decision to surrender the artifact also attracts the attention of its rival, the Atlantean Foundation.

Next, the team accepts what should be a straightforward corporate sabotage assignment: tamper with an experimental weapons prototype stored at a Walther facility. Unfortunately, the weapon has already been stolen by the Crimson Crush, a violent ork gang operating in the Redmond Barrens. Rather than assault the gang, the runners negotiate a trade, recovering the prototype and earning both their payment and a measure of respect from the Crimson Crush.

The team’s next assignment brings them back to familiar territory. Assistant District Attorney Dana Oaks hires the runners to capture Jack Turner, who has gone into hiding with the Crimson Crush. Following leads back to the Redmond Barrens, they storm his hideout and bring him into custody.

With several successful jobs behind them, the runners are beginning to establish themselves. They’ve acquired useful contacts, made friends among the local gangs, and earned the attention of the authorities. But in Seattle, reputation is rarely an uncomplicated advantage.

Chapter Two — 2072: Lines in the Sand

The team’s growing success attracts another assignment from Dana Oaks and Knight Errant. This time, they’re tasked with hunting down a mysterious Irish mobster known as Junior, whose organization has been expanding its influence through violence and the illegal tempo trade.

Their investigation leads through brothels, mob-controlled bars, and the aftermath of a bloody confrontation between the Mafia and Yakuza. Eventually, they discover that Junior is actually Johnny Torrani, a respected businessman and benefactor within the Ork Underground.

Torrani makes no attempt to flee. Instead, he offers the runners a tour of the community he supports, arranging opportunities for them to protect local businesses and deliver supplies to an orphanage. His message is clear: whatever his criminal activities, the people of the Underground depend upon him.

The team faces a difficult decision. They have been hired to bring a dangerous criminal to justice, but doing so could deprive an impoverished community of one of its most important supporters. Torrani offers them a more lucrative arrangement, promising that Junior will disappear within three months.

The runners accept his proposal, sacrificing their standing with Seattle’s authorities in exchange for money and the goodwill of the Ork Underground. Azuma, in particular, remains troubled by the decision, convinced that his companions have allowed a dangerous criminal to manipulate them.

Their next investigation is considerably less morally ambiguous.

MacCallister hires the team to track down a copycat of the infamous Mayan Cutter, a serial killer targeting orks. The investigation becomes personal for Troublemaker, whose own family was murdered by anti-metahuman extremists. After collecting evidence and using magic to locate the suspect, the runners discover a fortified compound occupied by violent Humanis sympathizers.

The resulting assault is brutal. The team fights its way through the compound, and Little Hawk and Troublemaker kill the copycat before he can be captured.

Their actions earn further goodwill among the orks of Seattle, strengthening an alliance that began almost by accident during their first assignment.

By now, the runners have learned that Seattle’s conflicts are rarely divided neatly between heroes and villains. The authorities, organized crime, and local communities all have their own interests, and choosing sides carries consequences.

Chapter Three — 2072: Powerful Friends, Dangerous Enemies

In March, the runners receive an unusually urgent assignment from a mysterious Johnson calling himself Scion. They have just fifteen minutes to prepare an extraction from a Horizon corporate event on the twenty-eighth floor of a downtown skyscraper.

Azuma and Troublemaker infiltrate the building from a neighboring rooftop, snatch their target, and escape under fire while their driver, Highside, waits below. Only afterward do they discover that Scion is the very man they’ve extracted—and that he cannot pay them.

Instead, he offers them something potentially far more valuable: access to information coveted by the Draco and Atlantean Foundations. A reference to a mysterious codex draws interest from both organizations, and the runners find themselves negotiating with powerful magical interests while a Saeder-Krupp-connected operative attempts to buy their prisoner.

The negotiations nearly end in disaster. An invisible attacker wielding a monofilament whip severely injures Azuma and Troublemaker, but the team escapes and ultimately delivers Scion to Moreau of the Draco Foundation.

What began as a simple extraction has become another dangerous encounter with the hidden politics of the Sixth World.

Over the following months, the runners undertake several additional assignments connected to the magical underground. Prince Parris hires a team to recover reagents and telesma from Tir Tairngire. Fiona Craig, the archaeologist they rescued during their first adventure, returns as an employer, arranging transportation from rural Salish territory back to Seattle. She later hires another team to smuggle cargo across the border into Portland.

Other jobs pull them deeper into Seattle’s gang politics.

Belial, a member of the Ancients, recruits the runners to serve as his proxies in a challenge for leadership of the powerful elven gang. The contest is a violent, timed scavenger hunt involving attacks on rival targets and the theft of a Stuffer Shack shipment. The runners successfully complete their objectives, earning Belial’s favor and a place within the Ancients’ complicated internal politics. Another assignment draws a different team into a similar proxy contest for control of the gang.

Meanwhile, old entanglements with Knight Errant refuse to disappear.

The runners are hired to expose corruption within the corporation’s senior ranks. After an explosive disruption of their initial meeting, the investigation leads to a Bellevue mansion, stolen evidence, and a heavily defended compound. An assault supported by Knight Errant becomes a desperate firefight, leaving Susie gravely wounded and missing a leg.

The runners survive, collect their payment, and add another set of complicated relationships to their growing collection.

By the middle of 2072, they’ve become known across Seattle’s shadows. The Draco Foundation, the Ancients, the Ork Underground, and the city’s authorities all have reasons to remember them.

Some of those relationships are more valuable than others.

Chapter Four — 2072: Shadows Beneath the City

As summer progresses, the runners’ assignments increasingly involve the hidden magical and political struggles taking place beneath Seattle’s familiar criminal landscape.

Laurent Nazaire of the Atlantean Foundation hires the team to recover an artifact and a codex believed to be in the possession of the Initiates of the New Dawn, adding another chapter to the rivalry between organizations pursuing powerful magical secrets. The surviving account records the assignment and its rewards, but leaves the details of the operation largely undocumented.

Elsewhere, the team’s connection to the Ork Underground once again proves important. MacCallister hires Azuma, Troublemaker, Legion, and Little Hawk to investigate a series of attacks against the Underground’s residents. With the community under threat, the runners are tasked with identifying those responsible and bringing an end to the violence. Their work earns further goodwill from the Ork Rights Committee and improves their standing with Seattle’s authorities.

By September, the team faces an even more disturbing possibility. King Willy, a prominent figure in the Ork Underground, recruits the runners to investigate reports of a possible insect-spirit incursion. These dangerous entities represent a threat far beyond ordinary street crime, and their suspected presence raises the stakes for the community the runners have spent much of the year befriending and protecting.

Over the course of nine months, what began as a collection of strangers taking odd jobs had become a network of experienced shadowrunners with allies, enemies, and obligations across Seattle. Their adventures carried them from gang-controlled streets and corporate towers to magical conspiracies and the hidden communities beneath the city.