A Shadowrun Media Adventure

The shadowrunners are contacted by a friend, a data-courier, who has gotten herself in some trouble and needs some back-up to finish her run. The runners have to deliver some data to Seattle-based trid station KSAF, data that a certain megacorporation doesn’t want to see aired.

Setup

The player characters are contacted (individually or as a group) by a friend, a data-courier who goes by the handle Fleet. She doesn’t work the kind of shadowruns that the PCs are used to; Fleet sticks to data-carrying, usually simple stuff. But this time she’s gotten in over her head and she needs help. One or more of the runners might owe Fleet a favor or she might have some info that would be useful to them. If there is another suitable NPC in your campaign to substitute for Fleet, feel free to do so if it will make the runners more likely to want to help.

Fleet is in a street clinic where she has been laid up for at least a few days. The reason for her sudden “illness” was an attack from a gang called the Tigers, the largest Asian gang in Seattle with known ties to the Triads (see Mob War! for more details on the Tigers). They took all of Fleet’s possessions, including the chip-case she was entrusted with. She’s already late getting the data to her employers and she really needs someone to get the chips back from the Tigers and get them to KSAF.

Event 1

The runners start investigating the Tigers and their activities. The gamemaster can let them do some legwork to find out what the current buzz on the streets is about the gang, but he should stress that time is of the essence, so prolonged investigations should be avoided.

The Tigers have been increasingly active recently and word has it this is part of an effort by the local Triads to grab more territory from the Mafia and the Yakuza as part of the local gang war. The Tigers are front-line “soldiers” used by the Triads. That might indicate that the Tigers bushwhacking Fleet was not a coincidence.

During their investigation, the runners get hints that there are other parties interested in information about Fleet and the missing chips as well. These other parties? Yakuza, chummer, definitely Yakuza.

Event 2

The runners get a lead on a Tigers hangout in a nasty area of the Puyallup Barrens. Unfortunately, so have the Yakuza, and they send some people to make it clear to the gangers that the Yakuza wants the chips and that they will brook no interference from any outsiders. The runners get caught in the middle between the two groups as it looks like a rumble is going to break out. The chips aren’t there, but one of the gangers knows where they are, if they runners can keep him alive and get the information out of him without being geeked by the Yak soldiers.

Event 3

The chips are being kept in a warehouse in Fort Lewis that is secretly controlled by the Yellow Lotus Triad. The runners try and break into the warehouse to steal the chips, but they encounter some of the Triad’s magical traps and protections and discover that the warehouse is a trap intended for the Yakuza. Zheng Li Quan, the Lodgemaster of the Yellow Lotus and himself a powerful physical adept, confronts the runners and asks about their involvement in the whole matter. It turns out that the chips have potentially embarrassing information about ties between Mitsuhama Computer Technologies and the local Yakuza gumis. Li Quan had not yet decided what to do with the information, but decides that allowing KSAF to have it could serve his goal of hurting the Yakuza while placing the player characters in his debt.

Climax

An MCT shadow-team hits the warehouse to recover the chips and there’s a big gunfight to wrap up the adventure. If the runners can survive dealing with the Yaks, Li Quan allows them to take the chips to KSAF, who broadcasts an embarrassing story about MCT and their possible involvement in the mob war.

Sequels

Mitsuhama and the Yakuza might not be too pleased with the runners if their dirty laundry gets aired. Fleet with naturally be grateful and the runners might owe Zheng Li Quan a favor the Lodgemaster could call in to pull the runners back in the Seattle mob war. It might also turn out that the data on the chips isn’t what KSAF or the Triads thought it was