Written by Peter Weilnböck
Published on: 2025-10-01
The team realizes how deep the trouble is they are in, but gets offered a way to dig themselves out.
Just as the friendly old gentlman opposite of them says “Good day gentlemen. I hear that yesterday you were quite successful in stealing something from us.”, they realize that they are dealing with the Mob. Jace, with a bit more insight into this specific syndicate knows that the person sitting opposite of them is none other than Al Cavalieri himself, consigliere of the Donna O’Malley, maybe the most feared man in the Seattle Mafia.
Calmly Al Cavalieri cut another bite of his steak and chewed it slowly and considered while watching them. Hard as they tried they were not able to read the man. Too many soldati around to try anything, or even to just get away.
This kind of environment however seemed to be exactly what Romeo was born for. Suits around him, and a powerful man opposite of him, he started into empty pleasantries and sincere apologies about this unhappy misunderstanding. Nobody’s fault of course. Will never happen again. Just like Romeo had seen his parents do at some informal business dinners with unhappy clients.
And even though they still could not read the man, Al Cavaliere seemed to accept it. Changing from just polite to almost friendly [1].
“Yes, of course. Misunderstandings happen.” Gesturing with another piece of steak already on the fork, “I heard that you did try to do your due diligence, but were a bit too late and could not wait for the confirmation. Such a pity. Well, no harm, no foul, eh? The crate was neither particularly important nor valuable. But now I assume, we do have a common enemy, don’t we?”
Looking at the confusion of the team he continued while slowly and carefully halving one of the brussel sprouts on his plate. “Didn’t you know that we were tipped of about your attempt? It is admirable how successful you were despite the fact that you were just the distraction. Of course it helped that the other team with the real target acted prematurely, so that the extra security did not get to you in time.”
“Ah, that was the explosion nearby.” Discord and Jace shot each other a quick glance. Being hired as distraction is fine, if you know about it and can plan accordingly. But being used like that? Even though they did get the payment, it did not sit right.
“So, if we get back the shipment to you, we can forget about our little misunderstanding?” Romeo was still all smooth talk and damage control.
“I would certainly see it that way, yes.” “How about the other runner team? Should they receive a message?” Mr. Cavalieri thoughtfully and carefully chewed and swallowed, before answering: “No, they did intentionally steal from us. They require a more… ah.. personal approach. We will take care of them ourself.” “And if we just happen to run into them? Should we at least deliver them to you?” “Hm, yes, I think a delivery - alive and mostly unharmed, mind you - could be accepted as appropriate. Now. About what you should get back: To our knowledge the same Johnson that hired you hired the other group as well. And he seems to be operating out of northern Puyalup. Belonging to our less friendly rivals out of Russia, you see? While the other team did not aquire there whole target, because of their rushed approach, they did get a crate full of high quality cyberdecks.”
“Wait, what? Cyberdecks?” Carefully cutting the next bite from the medium rare steak: “Yes, cyberdecks. 40 pieces. And especially the Vory do not need better matrix gear. They are annoying enough as it is. It would rather be time that we ourself started to increase our presence in this area. But I digress. Do you have any further questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, you could have a table, enjoy your meal and make plans. The food is on the house.”
Thus released the team let themselves be guided to a table in a different corner and started planning the run. It was clear to them - especially to Jace - that success was crucial. And so they started gathering what they knew. It seemed to them, that the best place to start would be to look into the other warehouse that had been attacked and try to retrace the steps of the other team. So they sent Romeo over to the consingliere once more, with the request to access that place and have a look around.
“Of course, I would have thought that you would look into your Johnson, since I would expect, that the merchandise had been handed over by now. But you did manage to get the crate of weapons, even though you were betrayed, so you seem to know what you are doing.” “Ah, so this is why they were on to us so quickly! I was wondering about that!” Romeo exclaimed. It seemed that while he was a rather smooth talker, he was not the quickest in the uptake, oblivious as he was. Cavalieri signed one of the people around to hand him some paper and took out a nice looking fountain pen from the inside of his jacket. He jotted down a few lines, before signing for an envelope as well. While he was sealing it in, Discord remarked about the nice sounding fountain pen. While the consingleri was slightly confused by this unusual compliment, he still acknowledged it and handed the envelope over to Romeo: “Here, give this to the men at the warehouse. This should avoid any misunderstandings and insure cooperation.”
Such equipped the team finished their meals, with Discord receiving the meat from Jace who had, not realizing that the steak here was real, ordered the same as the consingleri had, and then headed off.
On the way to the warehouse Discord contacted Harvey again. Because of the mess caused by the Johnson he [[connected]], he promised to expedite the research into this Johnson now. With the additional information the team got from the Mafia, the results should not keep them waiting too long.
In the mean time Jace asked Miri to meet in the evening, and even though he saw that she started to type an answer nothing came. The 3 bouncing dots appeared several times, before finally vanishing for good. Might have something to do with the fact that Jace still needed to square things with her Family first. And since it already was slightly after noon, it seemed rather unlikely, that that would be possible before that evening. And, to be completely frank, she also was rather surprised that he was in a condition to ask something like that. The meeting between the team and “Uncle” Al Cavalieri had gone much better than anyone would have expected.
Arriving at the warehouse, one of the first things they noticed, was the hole in one of the walls, and people busily running around already patching things up and making sure everything was alright with the inventory. Getting closer, they were quickly intercepted by one of the people there. Worker or Security was hard to tell. At a closer look this seemed the case for many of the people around. Apparently they were currently not taking any chances.
Producing the letter however, caused the suspicious man to quickly run into the building. Out came a rather burly human - size and muscle mass somewhere between your average orc and troll, and definitely not on the typical side for humans. He already had the letter unfolded and was all friendly and helpful, in a gruff sort of way.
When questioned he willingly described the incident. The team had spiked the security system, rolled up, blasted the way in, and were repelled fairly quickly, since security was just geared up and about to leave to respond to an incident a flew blocks away.
Next he took them to see the spider, a wiry dwarf who still complained about a splitting headache because of the system spike. But he pulled up the footage of the team fleeing, since he had had everything back up and running by then.
Hunt0rKill0r69 was just explaining how difficult it was to track a vehicle in such a case, when Discord heard back from Harvey. He had found out that the Johnson was called Kristoff Willczeck and even had the adress of the bar in northern Puyalup that he used as a base. Although bar might not be the right word for it, since nobody who was not Vory went there without getting into trouble. The area around was run down and dangerous as well.
Not wasting any time, they sped up and arrived outside the place in the early evening. Harvey had not been kidding. Most of the Windows of the surrounding buildings were either broken or boarded up, and the streets were deserted, with the exception of some derelict cars with everything usable stripped out.
The notable exception was the place they were here to find. Here the opaque windows showed lights behind, and some vehicles around seemed to be in usable condition. Hunt0rKill0r69 informed the rest of the team, that there were few signals in the matrix around, but absolutely nothing from the bar. A wireless dead zone. One more reason for him to NOT leave the car here.
Romeo took out a fly-spy to investigate, and when two people stepped out to smoke, they had the chance to send it in with them. However, as soon as the door closed behind them, they lost the signal to the little drone. Only when the next pair of goons stepped out, they got a glimpse of the internal layout. At least of the areas that the drone had been able to access. And one of the things they found, was a backdoor in a narrow side alley.
They got close to it and Romeo was able to open the mag-lock and then cracking it after establishing a physical connection. He also forced it to lock again while to door was open, to keep it slightly ajar for continued communication with Hunt0rKill0r69 and to ensure the possibility of a rapid exit. One of the things the flyspy had observed were a group of 8 people - all armed - in the main room of the bar. So the possibility for a rapid exit did seem useful.
One person the fly-spy was not able to find in the group though was Kristoff Wilczeck. They were hoping to either find him or the merchandise directly in one of the rooms the drone was not able to access.
The first door they came across seemed rather robust and featured fake wooden paneling. Still, rather nice for this place. Once again Romeo did his thing with the mag-lock, but the actual opening they left up to Discord, who probably could do it the most silently. Only a small crack though, to send in the fly-spy first.
The plan was sound, but on the image transmitted by the fly-spy they saw Wilczeck grabbing something from below his desk and ducking into cover behind it. Since the desk had been facing the door all the silence had not helped. The opening simply had been seen. Instead of waiting until the reinforcements arrived from the bar area, they decided to rush in and to try to silence him - ideally before he was able to call for help, if it was not already too late.
Discored rushed in and tried to silence him with, well, the Silencer. In the last moment Wilczeck was able to duck to the side and the monstrous tuning fork only grazed him and hit the ground. In response he got a long burst that did hit. And even for a tough orc like him this did hurt. Jace covered from the door and now also tried take out Wilczek with a short burst, and even though he did hit, the human seemed to be completely unaffected by the bullets hitting him.
With all the noise keeping a low profile was out of the question, so Romeo threw a smoke grenade to the hallway leading to the bar and covered that approach from cover behind a corner.
Firing up the wired reflexes, Jace took another shot at Wilcek. This time luck was with him, and the 3 bullets from the burst perforated Wilczecks body. Being even tougher than he looked, Wilczeck did not go down yet. Discord sped up by the magic coursing through his veins took another swing, but once again Wilczeck was able to dodge. Wilczeck with active wired reflexes as well, decided that his only hope to get out of this was to change the math and get to his friends. He took off and shot a full burst at Jace on the way, wounding him slightly. He managed to get down the corridor and through the smoke towards the bar area.
Luck was with them this time, because the box with the cyberdecks was stored in this office. Apparently Wilczeck had wanted to keep an eye on it, or just assumed that this room would have been the safest.
They quickly checked, saw that only one deck was missing. 39 out of 40 seemed good enough. And as a bonus they grabbed the data pad that Wilczeck had been working on before they interrupted him and then they got out of there as fast as possible.
They went straight back to Al Cavalieri, handing over the cyberdecks. Happy with the quick delivery, and very happy with the addition of the datapad the consingleri did not just formally forgive them the infraction at the warehouse, but decided to even compensate them as well. So he gave Romeo one of the cyberdecks, and the 5k Nuyen to everybody else. [2]
It was once again a rather fun session. I like that they tried to get around the violence, and would have preferred to just knock out their main antagonist rather than go in already guns blazing. Although this was partly because they thought they still needed him to find out where he took the crate, and partly because they were worried about the goons in the bar area.
It is also nice to see the new players getting to grips with the system and starting to learn how to optimize the characters a bit. While Discord might seem to have accomplished not so much, this was only because I used the prime runner’s edge rather freely in defense, since I think one hit with the silencer probably would have silenced him quite effectively and ended that confrontation there. I hope this did not hamper the enjoyment of this player too much, but I am sure that he will have enough chance to use the Silencer effectively in the next sessions. It is now October, and I plan to try to lean into the spooky factor a bit.
I used a map from Miscellanea maps on patreon for the Vory bar, cut up, so that they could only see what they had discovered so far. This got rather good feedback, so I will try to do that in the future as well. For now, I did not post the map here as well as a reference, although I might reconsider that, after rereading the copyright stuff on their page.
Since Romeo’s player gravitates more towards hacking, it is about time for me to write up the homebrew hacking rules that I intend to use. So far it was no problem, because Hunt0rKill0r69’s skills ebb and flow with the need of drama. So he will recede to being just a rigger, once Romeo takes over as decker.
I intend the rules to be a mash-up of 4th and 5th edition. No limits, since those are the reason that we decided to use 4th edition.
I think using Attribute+skill as in 5th edition would be better than leaving out the attribute as in 4th edition. A check then can only be accomplished with the appropriate program for it installed. The programs also should give some bonus dice based on their rating. And then I would think that the rating of the program is caped by the attributes of the cyberdeck.
Also my wife (the player of Jace) has started to blog about the campaign as well. She writes from the perspective of Jace, and I think her writing is more enjoyable to read than mine. Has more literary flair. The post for this run can be found here.