The Price of Doing Business

Chapter One — 2079: Lean Times

Seattle has gone quiet. For years, the Emerald City’s shadowrunners have prospered amid corporate upheaval, gang warfare, and the endless competition between megacorporations. But lately, business has slowed. The gangs have grown unusually quiet, Knight Errant has little reason to venture into Redmond, and the corporate auditing that once generated so much illicit work has finally settled down.

Some runners wonder whether the golden age of shadowrunning has ended. Others suspect the city is merely experiencing the calm before another storm. Whatever the truth, the bills still need paying. When a fixer finally calls with a job, a collection of freelance shadowrunners is more than willing to listen.

Their first documented assignment comes from Alexis Francosia, a corporate client interested in a seemingly insignificant piece of shipping information. Delian Data Tomb, a local business specializing in data storage, has entered receivership and is being liquidated. Francosia offers five thousand nuyen per runner to discover the recipient of shipping order #81218451. It’s the sort of job that makes shadowrunning worthwhile: a narrow objective, a reasonable payday, and comparatively little need to attract attention. Of course, the identity of the shipment’s recipient remains unexplained.

A second assignment appears equally straightforward. A mysterious employer hires the runners to escort a woman to a concert, protect her during the performance, and return her home safely. The job promises five thousand nuyen apiece for what amounts to an evening of bodyguard work. But the assignment brings the team into conflict with the Yakuza, and the final payment is considerably smaller than the original offer.

In Seattle, even the simplest contracts can carry unexpected consequences.

Chapter Two — 2079: Slinging Grave Dirt

As work begins to pick up, the runners find themselves accepting assignments with fewer opportunities for moral ambiguity. One such contract comes from a mob boss named Ronaldo Histeriga. His target is Bella Valentino, a prominent Seattle philanthropist and the celebrated founder of METAEmpathy, a charitable organization serving disadvantaged metahumans in Redmond. Valentino is a familiar face at society functions and a former recipient of the Metro Humanitarian Award.

According to Histeriga, however, Valentino has become a problem. He wants her dead. He also wants certain information planted where investigators will discover it, ensuring that her reputation will be destroyed along with her life. The runners receive two datachips: one containing information about Valentino and the other containing the evidence to be placed. The contract promises a substantial payment, and the runners accept the work.

On March 20, 2079, Seattle’s newsfeeds report a gruesome discovery on a roadside near Glow City. Eight people have been found dead, including Bella Valentino, her personal bodyguards, and an unidentified woman. The same day, damaging allegations against METAEmpathy make headlines. Whistleblower information accuses the charity of operating sweatshops in its Redmond outreach centers, exploiting vulnerable workers, and endangering children. Compromising photographs of Valentino provide additional evidence of wrongdoing.

Whether the revelations are genuine, fabricated, or some combination of the two is never established in the surviving records. But the consequences are unmistakable. Valentino is dead. Her charitable empire is disgraced. And somewhere in Seattle, the people responsible are collecting their payment.

The next assignment brings the runners back into the familiar world of corporate espionage. An executive at an Ares subsidiary has stolen confidential files from the company’s internal network and disappeared with them. The client refuses to explain the contents of the documents but provides identifying signatures for the data. The files are believed to be stored on an optical chip, possibly at the executive’s residence. The runners are hired to recover the information.

It’s another reminder that Seattle’s shadows are full of people willing to pay for secrets, and that the distinction between a valuable employee and a dangerous liability can be alarmingly small.

Chapter Three — 2079: The Price of Innovation

A new series of assignments begins with a piece of experimental technology. Renraku Components Group has developed an advanced optical lens that has attracted considerable interest outside legitimate corporate channels. A client offers the runners thirty thousand nuyen to infiltrate the company’s facility, steal the prototype, and replace it with a replica.

The objective is straightforward enough: obtain the device without allowing Renraku to immediately discover that its research has been compromised. But stealing the technology turns out to be only the beginning. The client soon discovers that the lens cannot simply be sold to the highest bidder. Its operation requires highly specialized knowledge, and without that expertise, the prototype is little more than an expensive curiosity.

A potential buyer needs more than the hardware. They need someone who understands how to use it. The runners are therefore offered a follow-up assignment: abduct Dr. Kevin Lesko, a wealthy young scientist whose work was integral to the lens’s development. The operation promises one hundred thousand nuyen, a considerable increase over the previous contract.

The two jobs illustrate a familiar reality of the Sixth World. Intellectual property is often worth more than the physical equipment that contains it, and corporations invest enormous resources in preventing their proprietary knowledge from falling into competitors’ hands. But the people responsible for creating that knowledge are valuable commodities themselves.

For the runners, the distinction is largely academic. First, they’re hired to steal a machine. Then, they’re hired to steal the man who built it.

Chapter Four — 2079: Here’s Johnny

The team’s next employer has another unusual request. Alex Guy, a marketing vice president employed by Prima Facie, a boutique public relations firm, has attracted the attention of someone willing to pay handsomely for his extraction. The job includes recovering Guy’s client files, but the employer imposes some unexpected restrictions. The runners are forbidden from stealing additional proprietary data, and the entire operation must be conducted with minimal violence.

For a team accustomed to breaking into corporate facilities, stealing experimental technology, and eliminating troublesome individuals, the limitations are unusual. The contract nevertheless offers sixty thousand nuyen, and the runners accept. Only after the extraction does the real purpose of the assignment become clear. Alex Guy is not who he appears to be.

He reveals himself as Johnny Spinrad, the flamboyant industrialist and leading figure behind Spinrad Industries. The supposed extraction was actually an elaborate job interview, designed to evaluate the runners before entrusting them with considerably more important work. Spinrad has plans requiring a capable security team, and he’s impressed enough to make the runners an offer. He needs personal protection while traveling across North America, beginning with a trip to Manhattan for a meeting with another corporate executive. Additional destinations may follow, depending on how events unfold.

The arrangement is lucrative: a ten-thousand-nuyen daily rate, with the possibility of several extended assignments. More importantly, the runners will be working directly for one of the Sixth World’s most recognizable corporate personalities. It’s an extraordinary opportunity for a team that began the campaign struggling to find even the most routine shadowrunning contracts. Of course, anyone familiar with Johnny Spinrad knows that his business dealings rarely remain routine for long. The runners have traded anonymous employers, street-level disputes, and corporate burglaries for a position at the side of a powerful and unpredictable industrialist.

Their next destination is Manhattan. And if Spinrad’s reputation is any indication, the job is unlikely to remain a simple bodyguard assignment.

The surviving campaign records end here, with the runners preparing to enter a considerably larger world of corporate intrigue. There was always a possibility of going back to these runners, but new characters and new campaigns always seem to come first.