If the runners make a lot of noise inside the MCZ, they will draw the attention of nearby head cases. Shamblers walk toward the sounds, while ragers tend to run after everything.
For every unsuppressed shot that is fired from a handgun or SMG, 1D6 shamblers and 1 rager respond to the noise.
For shotgun and assault rifles it’s 2D6 and 2 ragers. Assault cannons and explosions draw 3D6 shamblers and 1D6 ragers.
The amount of time the head cases take to arrive—and whether the runners are even still around when they do—is up to the timing of events and the speed of the runners in getting on the move. An entire combat could only last six seconds and not give the head cases time to arrive before the runners are already moving away. The runners could also run right into the approaching head cases.
Also remember any spells that might have a loud effect as well. Also don’t forget that these head cases have a sense for electronics in their area and Matrix attack potential. That’s why the messages from the group are sporadic, because they don’t want to draw the attention of the head cases when they activate their commlinks. Runners who are operating their commlinks in the open are constantly risking drawing every head case within 50 meters to their location. Make a Matrix Perception Test for the head cases to spot commlinks or active wireless gear that is not protected in some way, such as being turned off.
The points of the triangle each have an incense burner with nothing but ash left. The top point of the pyramid and star has a burner beneath the candle. Various arcane symbols are drawn in each section of the floor pattern.
Runners can make a Magical Theory + Logic [Mental]
(4) Test to determine that the ritual here was all about centralizing and merging something. Anything short of the threshold simply allows the runners to identify vari-ous symbols that seem to represent the middle or center of something, including the location of the ritual on the central surface of the building.
The runners’ presence in the lab will be noticed by the spirits and reported to their summoners who will or-der the spirits to delay the runners and try to keep them there until they arrive. They will be ordered to attack or seal the stairwell if the runners try to leave. The sum-moners will then summon air spirits to carry them down the elevator shaft to the sixteenth floor and then take the stairs down. The fifteenth floor has no elevator access.
If the runners are still present when the security mag-es arrive, the magmag-es will first try to talk and find out why the runners are there and who they are. The mages have been getting supplies from their employer, but they have gotten no word on a rescue. The runners can offer to get them out if they want, but the mages may take issue with being turned over to KE for a few days. They’ll offer the runners double the money to get them to the gate, and they say they will take care of themselves beyond that. The runners can be paid up front for this as the mages have access to their commlinks, but when they turn them on they attract the local head cases to their location. The way out may be a running battle down the stairs as the runners get mobbed by the head cases and the spirits that protect them.
The same issues occur out on the street, but the run-ners have the ability to ask the mages to provide some spell and summoning assistance if they’re smart. If the runners are not smart enough, or too proud to ask for help, the mages do it for themselves. Every time trouble rolls around, they hide through spells and spirit powers.
Back at the gate they use similar tricks to get past the guards. Along the way the gamemaster is free to add more survivors for the runners to help, but remember to add in a little more difficulty since they will be getting some good cash for all these people they bring back.
EVENT 3
If going into that place not once, but twice, wasn’t bad enough, the runners are contacted by a third Johnson as soon as they are out again. Evo representative Aaron Creech contacts the runners and asks them to go back in for him. He offers the runners a ridiculous 20,000 nuyen each, non-negotiable, to head right back in for him. He needs data retrieved from a location inside the MCZ and has heard the runners are the group to talk to.
Curious runners may ask how all these Johnsons know about them, and they will get a simple reply from Creech: “Knight Errant does not pay their officers enough to keep them quiet.”
Once the team agrees, he tells them that he wants all the files tagged Vulcan, Abyss, Imago, Dickens, and Inferno from the mainframes stored at the data storage facility located at 49 Allston Street inside the MCZ. He warns the runners that the facility does not look like any-thing they would expect as an offsite storage facility. In-stead, it looks like a small house at the end of a normal block in a middle class neighborhood. A goldmine of data, hidden in plain wrapper.
Runners face the usual on the way in but more of it, as they need to travel all the way across the area. If they slip down into the sewers they face ghouls instead of head cases and gamemasters are encouraged to put more manipulators and maybe some of the hidden in-side for encounters. Maybe even one of the hidden liv-ing among some survivors lookliv-ing to try to get out.
As the runners move through more of the MCZ, they should also start to notice areas that are relatively unin-habited, along with some places where the shamblers and ragers are starting to congregate. The longer these original infected survive in here, the more of a person-ality that can begin to develop. They can also fall into packs, working like animals trying to survive, and some may even be mistaken for ghouls from afar as they feed on the dead, since other food is becoming more and more scarce inside the MCZ.
The data storage house, officially known as Neo-NET Project Data Storage Facility 318, is a three-floor, 150-square-meter house in a quiet Boston neighbor-hood. The facility is primarily protected by its anonymity, but it has a small security detail assigned to it who have now dug in to try to survive the insanity of the MCZ.
The home’s security system consists of wired cameras all slaved to the homes terminal, with 360-degree cover-age of the surrounding property. It is a corner house and also has long sight lines along the two streets on which it sits. Approaching the home without being spotted will be difficult. The security inside the house, three highly trained members of Minuteman Security’s Asset Protec-tion Division (use Minuteman Security Asset ProtecProtec-tion Specialist, p. 223), will try and slow anyone trying to make entry before ducking into the basement and lock-ing themselves into the mainframe vault hidden there.
From the vault they have control of the automated door and window systems via the wired security sys-tems and will try to open them as well as making noise to attract head cases to the house to disrupt the runners.
Before they initiate this system, they will warn the run-ners and offer them a chance to leave peacefully. It’s not likely to happen, since the runners will probably have been injured by them when they enter, but the security detail doesn’t really want to be locked down in the vault for an extended period.
Inside the vault is one week’s worth of food and water for four people. Outside the vault, in the secure basement, is over two month’s worth of food and water for four people. It started out as three month’s worth, but the security team has been eating. This means that theoretically the runners can outlast the security team, but they don’t know that and they have to deal with the head cases that will be attacking. They also cannot leave the basement door unattended, as the security detail has control of all the doors and windows in the house. The basement door has motors on both sides of the door and opens both ways, meaning the runners can destroy the motor on their side and block the door, but the security team can still open it the other way.
It comes down to convincing the security detail to come out or beating them into the vault in the first place.
In order to convince them, the runners will have to offer them something they don’t already have and aren’t likely to be able to get. The security detail knows what’s going on, and they’ll agree to let the runners in as long as the runners agree to go along with their story on the outside.
The security detail wants out of their current job.
They aren’t happy being trapped inside this place. They will agree to let the runners copy files as long as the runners agree to help them get out of the MCZ and go along with the story that the runners were looking for survivors and the house was overrun by head cases. The security detail says they will destroy the mainframe vault as they leave. The runners can hand over their data to whoever they want, but the security detail promises to destroy the copies left behind. If the runners agree, the security detail comes out.
The long game does not play out like that, though.
When the runners reach the wall, the security de-tail informs the KE officers that the runners have stolen NeoNET data in their possession and that they forced them to destroy their facility and then return to the wall with them. The runners will be detained and KE will take the data, but only one copy—smart runners who made a back up can still get paid. The KE guards know that the players are shadowrunners, so they don’t arrest them.
They just return the stolen data to the security detail. The security detail also has in their possession a full copy of the vault storage data, so they didn’t lose anything. They just got the runners to help them get out and bring the secure data back to their bosses. Dirty corporate bas-tards!
EVENT 4
After the last debacle, the runners get a short break be-fore they get the next call to go back into the MCZ.
The call will come within a week. The voice on the oth-er side has a smooth Aztlanoth-er accent and asks them if they would be interested in using their experiences to help out his employers. The man on the call introduces
himself as Sandellero and politely introduces a second voice as Chen.
The pair pitch the runners on returning to the MCZ and doing some work for them. They offer the runners 5,000 nuyen each to deliver a datafile to a computer system inside the MCZ. Before giving any further details, they make sure to get the runners to agree to the basic outline of the operation. The reason for this becomes very obvious once the pair make their full pitch. The two do not say who they are working for or who they repre-sent, but the runners can easily ask around to discover the pair are Johnsons for Aztechnology.
Once the runners have agreed, Sandallero sends them an address and a datafile. The address, 200 Alba-ny Street, is the location of Knight Errant Station House 227B. The runners are assigned with breaking into the KE station house and adding the data file to the station’s data storage. Their employers ask the runners to be pro-fessionals and avoid accessing the data file, but there are no data bombs or encryption on it.
The file contains a list of names with images, brief profiles, and single-word codes attached to each. The codes might seem familiar, as they are the same words that the runners were hired to get the data off the NeoN-ET system for in the last mission. The names and profiles look like scientists or executives who were related to the projects, and the names even include the familiar Aaron Creech from Evo.
The standard issues apply when moving through the MCZ, but it should be old hat for the runners by now and to avoid most, if not all, of the head cases and ghouls.
Runners may actually spot other runner teams inside, if the gamemaster wishes, as a lot of activity is going down inside the MCZ by this time.
The Knight Errant Station House is not so easy to avoid, and what is going on here might be a surprise for the runners. When they get close enough to get eyes on the building, they get a chance to notice that it is not abandoned. In fact, it is quite busy inside and around the perimeter. The station house seems to be up and run-ning inside the MCZ, but looks can be deceiving.
The area for about a block in each direction around the station house is devoid of head cases. This is not completely abnormal, as the runners have seen other ar-eas without head cases, but it certainly is strange to see a concentration of KE officers in a working building right in the center of an open area.
Some runners may think that since they are work-ing for KE (probably the cover they used to get into the MCZ) they can just walk in and talk to the officers, may-be even talk their way into access, but most runners will just assume they have to do this the hard way. If they try to walk in, it gets very ugly, very quickly. The truth of what is going on here is a secret that can’t get out. The KE officers here are all head cases. The functional kind.
They are masquerading as KE officers and working on their acting skills in order to eventually sneak out into
the world and infiltrate other areas. For now, they wait, and they can’t let anyone find out what they are doing.
The station house is described in the Locations sec-tion, and the runners can sneak in through one of the non-standard entrances. They will be dealing with for-ty-five head cases if things go south, and these ones will run them down to the ends of the earth, or at least the MCZ, in order to save their secret.
Once the data is on the system, the runners can sneak back out and hopefully continue to avoid getting spotted. This job offers an additional payday and chance at future work if the runners bring the info about what has happened at the station back to Detective McCar-thy. He’ll drop an extra 1,000 nuyen on each of them for the info and tell them to keep their commlinks handy.
EVENT 5
So the runners have gotten good at working inside the MCZ—time to do it for a good cause. Kind of. The runners are contacted by Smedley Pembrenton III, an independent Mr. Johnson looking to hire the runners for work inside the MCZ. Before making the offer, he’s willing to tell them it’s a delivery, not a theft, but may require the team to go in a little short on resources.
For such a tight operation he’s offering 4,000 nuyen per runner. It isn’t the best pay, he’ll admit that, but he doesn’t have a big name megacorporation backing him—he works for the little guy. If the runners accept the basics, he expands the pitch.
Pembrenton wants the runners to deliver a load of supplies to a group of survivors inside the MCZ. He tells the runners to not bother trying to convince them to come out, since he knows about the deal with KE to pay for recovered survivors. He actually laughs and talks about how all the runner teams are in there “looking for survivors” and don’t seem to be finding many lately. If they ask, he blows off the comment and gets back to business.
The load Pembrenton wants delivered is a lot of stuff, in fact as much as the runners can haul in, and will likely take the place of any normal rations or extra gear the runners take into the MCZ when they operate. He doesn’t want them to look suspiciously over-burdened going in, but he asks that they carry as much of his goods as they can.
The runners will get an address in the QZ to go pick up the supplies, a perfect opportunity for some QZ fla-vor. Gamemasters are encouraged to use some of the other material from this book to develop the world out-side the MCZ but inout-side the QZ, as the two are often very different.
Once inside the MCZ with the goods—backpacks and duffels full of stuff—the runners will be responsible for delivering it to Dr. Brain in the MIT&T Electromagnet-ics Labs at 144 Albany St. The runners are told that Dr.
Brain should be in or near his office, and they can check the directory for where that is once they are in the build-ing. If they question this, Pembrenton simply tells them that they will understand when they arrive.
In the Electromagnetics Lab building lobby, the run-ners will find that the directory is an old-fashioned slide board with little plastic letters that have been rearranged.
Dr. Brain’s office is listed on the fourth floor of the west building. This part of town is crawling with shamblers and ragers, as the lab from which Eliohann escaped is only a short distance to the east. Runners should make much more frequent Sneaking tests here, as they will be forced to move very slowly through buildings and raised walkways to avoid the street. The number of head cases
Dr. Brain’s office is listed on the fourth floor of the west building. This part of town is crawling with shamblers and ragers, as the lab from which Eliohann escaped is only a short distance to the east. Runners should make much more frequent Sneaking tests here, as they will be forced to move very slowly through buildings and raised walkways to avoid the street. The number of head cases