Part 24: The Patriarch's Plea
Part 24 - The Patriarch's Plea


We have ascended from the darkness of the sewers hopefully never to return, and promptly report back to the nameless maintenance worker while another 4 Karma falls on our lap from wherever they store that stuff.

Well... are you willing to drop your standards down from "everything" a bit? Because in that case sure, it went totally okay.



If he does somehow pop up one day, you probably shouldn't invite him in for a beer or anything. Maybe consider giving the Ghosbusters a call just in case.



That's probably just an awkward pause resulting from us offering a bloodstained technical manual as a touching memento for the man's family. Still, he hands us ¥500 and we get another 2 Karma plus a third for returning the booklet. Not a bad haul for such a short job, though we ended up with a slight net loss money-wise thanks to that greedy bastard Ezkibel.
As a side note, you can actually finish the mission fine without ever finding Viktor. It's unlikely to happen by accident though, his corpse is not exactly hidden plus he has the turbine code, so to pull it off you'd have to either look the code up or use a decker to bypass it while somehow missing the very obvious room right next to the turbine one. But if you do manage to fail in that oddly specific way, you miss out on the Karma point and the conversation is slightly different:
quote:
What about Viktor?
Don't know. Couldn't find him.
No sign of him? Christ. I guess maybe I don't want to know what happened in there. Here's the money I promised you.

Time to move on. Since the last mission was just a quick side job, most people have nothing new to say (even Ezkibel doesn't mention it, at least yet) and our crew doesn't bother commenting on it. Couple of exceptions exists though, one being "Simmy" Kim.



[She then lowers her gaze from the heavens and regards you, her eyes showing slightly more clarity than before.]



What? That guy's clearly crooked, but if he's going around beating people up then he's gonna have to find somewhere else to peddle his glittery garbage in.







[Kim hugs herself tightly around her midsection, drawing herself in and doing the impossible of making herself even thinner.]

Come now, you know our policy regarding personal issues. May as well save us all some time and get to it now rather than later.




That's why all her BTLs involved taking care of a kid, huh... So Ezkibel was presumably her doctor while she was pregnant, and for some reason or another she ultimately ended up miscarrying which put her in a bad place. And then Monika hooked her up with BTLs with Zaak as her provider to help her cope with it, and that's the path she's been on since.



By the way, because we've talked to them every chance we get, we've just about exhausted the various Kreuzbasar conversations for the time being. Kim for example won't have anything new to say until after we deliver Alice's fee and start the endgame path, so she'll just have to hang in there for the time being.

Unsure of what we can do for Kim, we quickly excuse ourselves and head down the nearby trapdoor and into Lucky Strike's favorite hangout, the Weinkeller. Perhaps for the final time as I believe this to be the very last instance of Ms. Glowface having something new to say.






Man, I wouldn't mind an actually competent and intelligent rigger in our team either. We should send this Racter guy an invitation, maybe he'd be interested in running with a ragtag bunch of outlaws with wildly different personalities desperately struggling against an incredibly powerful force of largely unknown nature while barely making ends meet.
Then again, probably not.

[She presents herself to you with an ironic smile.]


Not really true, I mean we already have to leave one party member out of every run, two would be even more annoying.





[She raises her glass and takes a moment to study the amber liquid inside.]

[She lifts the glass to her lips, closes her eyes, and drains it.]

To be honest she probably wouldn't fit in anyway, her personality seems like it'd start grating on everyone after a while. But she does seem to practice what she preaches and apparently it's working out for her so hey, good on ya lady.






I've played my share of Yakuza and let me tell you, the kind of nonsense those guys get up to? We probably wouldn't believe it even if she told us.







We can only hope this power to track anyone no matter where they go stays in the realm of fiction. Really though, agreeing to something like that in the first place seems like an amazingly bad idea.


[She pauses for a moment to light up another cigarette. After she fills her lungs with smoke, she continues.]

Learning that lesson the hard way is one thing we definitely have in common.



Laine is also starting to run out of topics, but there's a few words left in the old war veteran yet.


That was the beating in which the beater took a beating and ended up beaten instead.
[The old soldier glowers, but given his physical handicaps and his recent injuries, he hardly makes for an intimidating figure, troll size notwithstanding.]



That's "Ork Rights Commission" by the way, not a confusing abbreviation at all.






[The old troll leans heavy on his crutch and takes a steadying breath.]

It's a minor pet peeve of mine that a supposedly Finnish man keeps saying "the Lapland" even though there's never been "the" in Lapland. Between that and getting the direction of Russia wrong, I'm not entirely convinced Laine isn't just some German troll who got really messed up one day and started imagining he used to be a Finnish war hero.
Oh, and t-birds or Thunderbirds are swift and armored Low Altitude Vehicles manned by small crews. Not to be confused with actual thunderbirds which are obviously a thing as well.




Beckenbauer isn't accepting any new donations yet, but we quickly stop by to ask him how Alexander is doing.

He'll probaby be fine, he's a big boy. Well maybe not compared to orks and trolls, but y'know.

We also stop by Aljernon's to sell some junk and to get our latest cryptic prophecy.

[She pauses for a moment, considering.]

Maybe you just need to cut down on the binge drinking, lady.

That's all there is to see around town, so let's head home and stretch our legs a bit. And maybe take a shower or three.

Afterwards we check our computer, finding no less than three messages waiting for us. Seems we've gotten all popular and stuff.

Might as well start from the top, with the message titled Thanks.
quote:
>>Silke
>>to: Rosa
Hi Rosa,
This is Silke, from the hotel. I hope it's okay that I'm writing you... Samuel gave me your email address.
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for everything that you did for me. Kicking my cram habit was the hardest thing that I've ever done, and I don't think I would've tried if you hadn't talked me into it. To celebrate my newfound soberiety, I've decided to sign on as a volunteer at the charity. Who knows? Maybe giving back to the community will help turn things around in my life.
Anyway, thanks again, Rosa. I owe you one.
Yours,
Silke
Aw, good on ya Silke. Glad we managed to have such an unequivocally positive impact on someone's life for once. Next is the message titled Still alive.
quote:
>>Jana
>>to: Rosa
I guess that I should thank you - you got me out of that horrible job alive. I don't think I could've made it on my own. What happened on that run took everything else away from me, but at least I'm still breathing. The Lodge turned me into a killer, Rosa. That gnaws at my guts every minute of every day, and I still can't sleep at night. Innocent people - *normal* people - died because of what I did.
And you know why they made me do it? Because they could.
I don't know. Maybe this doesn't bother you... you're a shadowrunner, after all. You kill people all the time. Just another day at the office, huh? Well, I'm not like you. I can't just kill people on the job and forget about it the next day. This is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
I don't know how to live like this, but it's still better than not living at all. That's what I keep telling myself. And so I figured that I might as well tell it to you, too.
-J
Sadly any real chance of Jana having a normal happy life went out the window the moment she was signed up for that accursed run. Hopefully she'll eventually find some semblance of peace though.
Had we killed James and scrubbed the run, Jana would never be heard from again. Instead we'd get the following pissy mail from the Lodge:
quote:
>>WITHHELD
>>to: Rosa
You have failed to live up to our expectations, and you have failed your audition. In light of your apparent inability to follow simple instructions, we have withdrawn our representative from your kiez.
After much internal debate, our organization has decided not to take punitive action against you or your team. We have wasted enough time and resources on you already. Consider yourself lucky, and enjoy your career in the shadows. We are confident that it won't last long.
The most immediately relevant of the messages seems to be the last one though. Something about a job? Let's see.
quote:
>>Mettbach, Gunari
>>to: Rosa
If you value new hardware coming into the Kreuzbasar, we need to talk. One of my weapons shipments was hijacked by a local gang. I can promise 500 nuyen - and if you can recover the shipment, I'll have some new gear on the shelf.
Come see me for the details.
Gunari's the Romani weapons merchant who we haven't seen much since guns are for people who can't set other people on fire with their minds. While we're not in dire need of better firearms ourselves, them ending up in the hands of gangers instead of the Kreuzbasar does sound like bad news. We should probably get this taken care of before it gets out of hand.

Before we hit the streets again, we collect the payment from the Humanis safe house data we posted last time.

Gunari's shop is next to the sewer entrance to the southeast.




It's certainly looking like Lucky Strike was right about Monika carrying too much responsibility here, things seem to be falling apart all over the place now that she's not around to hold the strings.



"Rabengeister" is for once an actually cool-sounding gang name. In German anyway, "Raven Ghosts" doesn't quite have the same punch to it.

Another low payment job... but it's for the good of the Kreuzbasar I guess. We're gonna have to start getting back to proper runs soon though, there is still that whole dragon thing going on.







Only one buddy this time, huh? Well alright, as long as we get to pick them ourselves. God only knows what kinda pyromaniac circus clown we'd end up with this time around.

Let's just get this done so that we can go back to bigger things, like avoiding death by dragon and screwing with Blitz's relationships.


Seeing as we're only limited to one person we might as well bring our biggest muscle, just in case our silver tongue fails to lick people in the right spots.

Let's teach these thieving bastards that having a cool name is no justification for stealing our darn guns.