The BlackHammer "Millennial" CyberPunk Campaign

Originally, I was going to start this narrative about half-way through the campaign... with game 6. I've written up the synopsis of Game 1 of the campaign, but not for games 2, 3, 4 and 5. Since 6, 7 and 8 have been such good games, and I'm keeping closer track of what's going on, I was finally motivated to post them here.

But, in the interest of making the narrative somewhat understandable, I will start with Game 1, and just put in point-form posts for games 2, 3, 4 and 5 that maybe I'll flesh out later, and then go on to games 6, 7 and 8.

This campaign is not a standard CyberPunk adventure, but is an overview of the changes the world goes through and that humans must live through as the CyberPunk era comes to an end. This is projected to be a game that spans 30 to 40 years of game time, and many sessions include a year or more of 'downtime' between major scenarios. Over this time span, companies launch and others collapse, mergers occur, and new technologies come into play.

Our average game is about 8-9 hours long - some (like game 7) cover about 3 to 4 scenes in that time, others (like game 8) cover up to 9+ scenes in one game session.

The game is CyberPunk 2020, but with a chunk of house rules in place. The setting starts out as the classic "Fourth Corporate War" setting from the Firestorm supplements for CP2020, but we are advancing the timeline to the setting for the "Heaven Over Mountain" setting in GoO's "Ex Machina" and from there to the setting of SJGames' "Transhuman Space". Well, that's the goal at least - I know we'll get as far as Heaven Over Mountain, but we may never quite make it as far as THS. The ultimate goal is to run as far as the development of FTL spaceflight and the escape from the Solar System - where I intend to end the game and never actually play CyberPunk 2020 as written again.

Game 01 - Welcome to Indonesia

This game is heavily based on the first adventure from the Hardwired sourcebook for CP2020. The purpose of the game was to introduce the first elements of the Petrochem / Orbital Air launch facility plot that comes out after game 7.

The characters have met previously working an op for an unknown employer (unknown to the two non-corporate operations experts at least, but known to be Petrochem by the two Petrochem employees).

The operations team (Basaraki & Kasper) gets a call from a local tech junky named Otto, who has an office in the back of the East Marina warehouse that now has Joe’s Dinner (A6#1) (just down the block from the Nell Street Arcade). At roughly the same time, the Petrochem team (Catholic & Mr Alfie) gets tagged by HQ to go to the same address because Otto has information of direct interest to Petrochem.

As the ops team gets out of their CombatCab in front of Joe’s diner, they notice the black tinted corporate Toyo-Chevrolet Defiant of the Petrochem squad arriving at the same location. Expecting a corporate hit on their contact they dive for cover into the debris filled gutter until they recognize Catholic getting out of the car along with Mr Alfie. They compare notes (with the corporate team making it sound like they were contacted directly by Otto also), and decide to head around back together to see what Otto has for them.

Around back they see the harbor and old marina wharfs and piers. The back of the warehouse has the main entrance about ten feet above ground level, with a ramp leading up to it. The ramp is surrounded by a ten foot high razorwire fence and a gate with a camera and buzzer system.

Kasper presses the button, and Otto’s face appears, hidden behind his Industrial Supply smartgoggles, on the screen. He sends his autonomous unit, Marcus, to open the gate for them. Marcus is an old bomb-disposal robot with a basic AI-capable cyberdeck built into it, who uses the face of old Bob Marley on his display screen.

Otto’s joint is packed with stuff, and Otto himself is on the second floor watching over the massive collection of old crap. Otto tells the party that about half an hour ago, an Orbital Air supply ship launched from the Indonesia launch site had a telemetry short and came down not far off-shore from Night City. Odds are that most of the contents were destroyed during entry, but Otto wants the team to make sure there’s nothing worth salvaging from the wreck before OA shows up to reclaim it. He offers a share of whatever comes back, and access to his boat to get out there. Catholic calls in to HQ to get a Pilot Boat skill upload to a blank chip, and off they go, with a minor delay as they deal with the Night City Harbor Police (in a friendly manner)

On the site, the team collects some floating wreckage, including a document case. After dodging a pair of OA AVs on the way back to shore, as well as having to dodge the NC Harbor cops once again, they approach the East Marina to see Otto’s place has been hit and is on fire. Instead of heading to Otto’s they head to the North Marina, sell off Otto’s boat to a local fence and head back to the Nell Street Arcade where they can keep an eye on Catholic’s wheels and Otto’s place as well as see what’s in the case.

The documentation is about the current bids to produce a new OA mass driver. While a lot of the documents are in a Malay language, the English docs show that there are definitely some shady deals going on, involving supporting terrorist organizations and separatist political parties. Photographing and OCRing the Malay documents with her phone, Kasper gets them translated on the net and determines that an OA operations team is in place to help these groups achieve their ends in exchange for their help with OA’s bid to build the driver in Indonesia.

When Kasper is about to sell the information, Catholic contacts Petrochem. Petrochem is very interested in seeing OA embarrassed in this affair, and authorizes Catholic to work with the others and see what can be done.

And off to Indonesia they go by suborbital shuttle.

In the Spice Islands, the team has to move through very crowded streets of Islamic student protesters fighting against Western decadence and the laissez-faire Islamic state’s response to it. Fighting through the crowd to the Hotel Americana, they set up for the evening and then research the location of the local OA office where the documents found in the shuttle wreckage originated.

As dusk settles in on the islands, the team moves back through the crowded streets of people in filter-masks and hijabs, working their way to the OA office. Once there, they do a quick recon of the 5 story building, and then slip around to the back door. A quick tube of thermite opens the door into the first combat scene of the session as four cyberhounds rush down the hallway towards the team.

The incredibly fast Kasper throws herself up upwards, hooking her legs over the bars of the suspended ceiling as she pulls out her Uzi 2.3mm Needlegun. The first volley of needles from the nearly silent subgun tears through the first ceramet cyberhound and punches several rounds through the door at the end of the hall. The finely tuned hearing of Basaraki hears someone behind the door gasp in pain. Basaraki draws out a Teen Dream Machine pistol and his Colt Manhunter and moves into the hall with a spin, first unloading a magazine from the machine pistol in his left hand into a hound, tearing cerametal chunks out of it, then bringing his Manhunter to bear smashing a pair of rounds through the head of the next hound. Kasper then flips down from the ceiling, drawing her monowakizashi, and cutting clean through the hound she had damaged with her uzi. Catholic draws his monokatana as he rushes forward into a one-knee slide down the hall, removing all four legs from a cyberhound with the perfect two-handed cut. Much to everyone’s surprise, one of the damaged cyberhounds’ pops up a missile launcher from its forehead and launches it at Basaraki, who just manages to avoid it by jumping up and grabbing the ceiling support that Kasper had just been on, pulling his legs up into the pike position, leaving poor Mr Alfie, the one civilian on the team, with the missile flying right past his face and into the wall behind him. Determined not to allow this to happen again, Mr Alfie pulls out a Techtronica mk III EMP grenade, and tosses it at the door, but it bounces back to the middle of the hallway, zapping out the two semi-functional cyberhounds, as well as Catholic’s SPM-2 cyberglove.

Basaraki comes down from the ceiling shooting towards the door, slamming a pair of Depleted Uranium Core 11mm rounds into the door and hopefully into whoever is behind it. Kasper flips forward, grabs the doorknob, and flips up into the suspended ceiling again, this time pulling the door open. Behind the synthmarble security desk, trying to duck for cover, is the lone security guard on this floor. Catholic pulls up from his slide, runs forward and jumps up over the desk, landing on his knees on the desk and plunging the monokatana through the security guard’s chest and through the desk. Still dangling from the ceiling Basaraki unloads a single shot past catholic into the guard he's just impaled with the sword, finally killing him.

A quick look around and a hack into the security system to determine that the senior offices are on the fifth floor and the datacenter is on the fourth, and the team heads upstairs. On the landing to the third floor, Catholic slips past the door, not noticing that it is open a sliver and a security guard is peeking out. Basaraki pushes his manhunter against the door and fires two rounds through the metal into the head of the guard, and then pushes the door closed as Catholic continues up. At the landing to the fourth floor, they hear the sound of a door opening above. Catholic pulls out his paintball gun, hops up on the railing and fires a single alpha formorol biotoxin round up the stairs where it hits the security guard. As the guard topples backwards, the grenade in his hand bounces down the stairs to the landing. Everyone gets clear except for Kasper, who drops to the floor from the paralytic gas in the grenade.

On the fourth floor, without their intrusion and electronics expert, Mr Alfie downloads as much data as he thinks is important from the datacenter. Upstairs, Catholic discovers not offices, but apartments – likely of the operations team – as well as a briefing chip. Grabbing the briefing chip, the data Mr Alfie downloaded, and the limp body of Kasper, the team heads out to discover the police are already moving into position around the building. Splitting up, they head back to their hotel as inconspicuously as possible.

Seeing that he’s in the clear, Mr Alfie detonates the explosive charge he left in the datacenter, raining electronic debris and glass down on the street below as the police try to apprehend the team.

Next stop – follow the briefing chip to Timor in Game 02.

Game 02 - The Hotel Bomber

The team looks across the cheap hotel diner table at each other over their soy-eggs (over easy) and hashed synth-browns. Outside, the crowds have dispersed and the acrid tang reminder of tear gas greets the rising sun. Kasper is upstairs, laying in the hotel room bed, paralyzed completely by the gas in the grenade from the op last night.

The team checked the chip from the op last night, but need someone who can crack the encryption as well as read Indonesian, which appears to be the language the encryptor is in. Hitting the streets covered in the remains of last night's violence - the smell of tear gas, the broken glass underfoot - they find themselves at the Ominous Chifuri, a basement smartdrink lounge. As the cleaning staff cleans the place around then, vainly trying to wash away the stains of years of neglect, they sit down across from an old Javanese chip-junky who pulls crisp, fresh high-storage density bioplastic chips from a cardboard box with holes in the lid, labeled "Live Mice" in black marker.

The old man moves them a few regional tourism chips to fit in, replacements for some of Catholics burned out MRAM and APTR chips, and cracks the encryption on the briefing chip in only a few minutes before heading home for the 'night'.

With the briefing chip picked up at OA now decoded for them, they learn that the OA team is already en route to Jakarta to meet with leaders of the transplanted Tamil Tigers to discuss corporate backing of the Tigers in exchange for their support of the OA orbital launch facility. With the location of the meeting in hand, they leave Kasper with a drip-feed and hop over to the main Indonesian island of Java, and the ever-so-familiar sight of Jarkarta.

Jakarta is a huge, filthy city. It's like a tropical version of Night City with four times the beggars. Feeling the culture shock of being in a foreign land slaughing off them as they bury themselves into Jakarta's chinatown, the team gets ready for the upcoming meeting.

The team checks into the hotel (under Mr Alfie's account, which comes up later), and sets up operations in a room just below the room to be used for the meeting. They are given a lot of trouble trying to book the room, but get it in the end. They do a quick recon of the building, noting eurogoons on a few floors (including their own), and a few obvious guerrilla fighters on the floor above in a quiet face-off against the eurogoon there. Once in the room, they scan for bugs as Mr Alfie sets up explosives over the ceiling of the room, to blow out the room above when triggered.

That's when Mr Alfie spots the security monitoring cameras built into the room's lamp. Fortunately, the team had unplugged the lamp as the first thing they did when they entered the room, so whatever the cameras had captured, they couldn't upload into the system network running in parallel with the hotel's electrical grid.

Then the police officer and hotel dick knock on the door. Seems there's a pair of dead tamils lying on the floor, and no sign of the eurogoon. Mr Alfie fast talks his way out of the room, and then the five of them (officer, hotel dick, and the team) head for the elevator once it is shown that their personal sidearms are not 12mm. At the elevator, the hotel security pulls Mr Alfie aside and they take a seperate car downstairs. He feels genuinely concerned that Mr Alfie is traveling in the company of a pair of edgerunners who seem to be taking advantage of him and getting him involved in some dangerous situation. He gives Mr Alfie his card, and suggests he call him if things get weird.


Stuff to fill in still.

* Set monitoring system
* Wait for the show
* Blow the explosives
* Head upstairs
* Check the bodies
* Meet security, part 2
* Blow the story & Leave Town.

Game 03 - Global Assassins Issue

Hopefully I will go back at some point and try to fill in what happened in this game... When we started the wiki for the game, I was hoping that the players help flesh out the game descriptions from the point-form lists I created. But they suck at that, and never did.

* OA Corporate hit team moving in on Kasper
* OA Corporate hit team moving in on Basaraki
* Introduction of Akai when rescuing Basaraki
* Juicer hit team in the hotel
* One juicer left
* "Rescue" the knife artist
* Get a call from the dying Juicer describing the juicer uprising

Game 04 - TPS Reports

While waiting for Kasper to get more information about the Juicer uprising, the rest of the group gets involved in an incident with a defecting Russian firearms manufacturer employee working for TreePyatSem (Russian for 357).

This game is Akai's first real work with the team. During this session they discover that TPS has been stealing designs from Militech. The team recovers some of the stole data and "give" it back to Militech for future considerations.

This technology leads to the New Ammunition Advances timeline event.

Between Games Note:

In Game 4 - TPS Reports, the party intercepted some corporate espionage regarding a new bullet technology that is no more expensive to manufacture than standard bullets, but that provide significant improvements in defeating modern body armour.

The dissemination of this Militech firearms technology discovered in the possession of TreePyatSem AG has revolutionized ammunition and body armour quickly had to adapt to match.

Armour from the pre-second crash era treats all modern ammunition as being Semi-Armour Piercing, and only defends at 2/3 the normal stopping power. Pre-second crash era bullets treat all modern body armour as being +3 stopping power. Fortunately, since the PCs all have jobs, during downtime they have the time to replace all their body armour and ammunition with modern versions. However, this means that they can also replace it with different styles and so on. For the lazy – this means no change to the character sheets. For those who wanted to go through the update process, they could re-spend the money from body armour on new duds, and even spend some more from their personal cash.

Game 05 - Nuclear Silverhand

* Get more background info about the Juicers
* Head to Iceland to find the Juicer HQ
* Fight 2 juicers at hotel
* Head to the HQ
* Walk right in
* Hack the system - learn that the Juicer Leadership has been hacked by an Arasaka infomorph that is causing the current problems and is having the juicers killed off by their leaders.
* Force the AI to reboot
* Head downstairs to attack the mainframe and shut it down properly
* Fight one of the Juicer Leaders and some goons
* Blow up the mainframe and the Arasaka Brainworm
* Now that Arasaka has the Juicer location known and the full membership list, have to destroy Arasaka's secure data storage in Night City
* Get an EMP device from the Juicers, and pick up Johnny Silverhand in Europe
* Fly to Night City and drop Johnny off on the Arasaka towers where he is joined by Santiago and others
* Johnny triggers the EMP device (a small nuke it turns out) in the basement of the facility, setting off a much larger nuke.
* This adventure leads to The end of Corp War IV timeline event.

Between game session notes:

The climax of the fourth corporate war was at the end of Game 5 - Nuclear Silverhand in Night City, 2024, when a pair of nukes went off in the basement of the Arasaka facility. The entire downtown was destroyed, and in the aftermath the United States nationalized Militech forces globally.

This is the rebirth of nationalism and of America as a world power. The fourth corporate war will be looked back on by historians as the Second Crash (the Crash being the complete collapse of the world stock markets, US and global economies, and agricultural collapse caused by bioplague between 2005 and 2009).

There is now a widespread distrust for the megacorporations, and with the success of the attack on the Arasaka towers (and the disruption of the corporate headquarters of several dozen other megacorps), most megacorps are now going orbital, joining those corporations that were already in orbit such as Orbital Air and Petrochem.

In Southeast Asia, word is that Arasaka is attempting a military takeover of Japan. Indonesia has mobilized the world’s largest Navy in order to defend its waters against whoever comes out on top between Arasaka and the Japanese Defense Force.

Game 06 - Five in the Net

The party contacted by a group of five cyberspace entities to get information, and these same entities required fast transportation from a section of Jakarta that is undergoing urban renewal (read: is being torn down by the government to be replaced with shiny new buildings, so get the out now).

The five are old-school Chinese biotech experiments calling themselves 同人 (Tong Ren - the Concording People) who live in massive life-support units hooked up to huge old-school cyberdecks. They live in the sealed and secret basement of a warehouse that is now the home of a consortium of ghouls (ripperdocs and organleggers). The ghouls aren’t really a team, they just live together because the only people who don’t hate ghouls are other ghouls and really desperate ripperdocs.

As the party first arrives at the building, they see the police and demolition crews working their way down the block, so they know they only have an hour or so to get the job done unless they can distract the crews.

The party managed to sneak in the back (after coming under fire at the front of the building), beat some respect into the ghoul populace through the use of remote-operated explosive carriers, and send a remote-operated Scarabee around the front to help load the five guys into the waiting truck. However, as they finally get into the building, they get word from the five that “Donovan has been activated and sent out here”. A quick brief from a police honcho buddy of Basaraki's and they get the Donovan dossier. Donovan was an NPC from a prior campaign who defeated a team of four PCs who had set an ambush up for him – to make things worse he did it non-lethally. Seems Donovan is now a retired USGov operative living in Jakarta. And for some reason, he’s heading here, now. To make matters worse, the construction crews demolishing the area are getting closer with paramilitary looking types in tow.

So, the party double-times the job, and starts loading the Tong Ren into the truck using the Scarabee and come up with a quick distraction plan to keep the construction workers from getting near their building (and hopefully any paramilitary types) until they've left the the area. This involves Herman remote operating one of his spiders under a construction crane, detonating it, and when it falls over (splatting a random worker under a falling wrecking ball) everyone's attention is turned towards the carnage. This is in concert with some long range rifle fire from Basaraki and Catholic heading out to chase someone into a former bank building around the corner, a brief exchange of gunfire and the "someone" ends up nearly blowing catholic's head off. Basaraki meanwhile had gone to backup Catholic, finds his corpse in the bank lobby and rather than investigate/engage a source of movement and noise at the back of the bank, decides to instead drag Catholic's body back to the building where the ghouls and Tong Ren are along with Akai, and hopefully enough combined medical equipment/knowledge to save Catholic. Luckily a deal is worked out where they stick his body in a ghoul’s portable cryobed and rolled into the truck along with the Tong Ren. But just as they're done loading, the long-range sniper fire begins from across the street from the loading dock they're using, shooting out the windows of the cab of the truck, and taking out Basaraki's assault rifle as well and thus eliminating the only weapon the party had easy access to (Basaraki's gun bag being in the cab of the truck with his other assault weapons) that could fire far enough to engage the sniper. A quick series of moves are made to try and get Basaraki's guns to him but in the end the party decides to make a quick escape while they can, with herman driving the truck while crouched on the floor, Akai riding in back, and Basaraki in an amazing gymnastic move getting himself and his gun bag secured under the truck's frame, above the drive shaft as it drives over the collapsed fence outside the building, the curb, and down the street without a scratch to him.

Once they’ve relocated the five, the Tong Ren indicate that some major benefactors will pay large sums to see Donovan eliminated (and that is who had just put a large bullet into Catholic's skull) – benefactors who have been on the wrong side of Donovan’s operations years ago in the US. But first they have to get Catholic to the hospital...

Game 07 - Donovan Endgame

We start off in the hospital as Catholic is getting checked out by his friends after the reconstructive surgery on his head from the bullet Donovan lodged there. As they walk towards the nurse’s station to sign him out, he sees two classic goons in black armor-trenches step out of the elevator behind them. In the ensuing fight, one goon is killed and the other badly injured. When pressed for information (as the sirens ring throughout the hospital) he explains that they were sent by Orbital Air to safeguard the team on the Donovan mission, and were only ‘geared up’ because they were afraid that Donovan had already found Catholic and removed him. One of the OA goons (the dead one) is a character from the prior campaign where Donovan was involved, who worked for a competing edgerunner team.

The team then heads to the Petrochem embassy in Jakarta (post 4th Corporate war, Petrochem is one of several companies that have become “orbitals”, companies who claim extraterritoriality worldwide because they are based in orbit, not in any one nation) and see two Orbital Air vans in the driveway. Up until now in the campaign, the target of a majority of the team’s actions have been in the name of Petrochem and targeted against Orbital Air and its associates. The team learns inside that today is the first day of the OA/Petrochem merger, now under the name of the Orbital Energy Consortium.

The next evening, the team (now plus one, the OA agent) heads out to a bar where they are to find someone who knows where Donovan is staying in Jakarta. At the all-stainless steel bar full of American and Soviet ex-pats, they meet one of Herman Alfie’s very old friends and family members (Janet) – a rocker techie second cousin that he met on the road at 16. She has been working for TransTechnic, an American entertainment company here in Jakarta for the past year, but her contract expired last month.

At this point, an American businessman joins the group at the bar, orders Gin & Synths for everyone, grabs his and spills one each on Herman and Janet at the same moment. As Janet reaches down to wipe it off her lap, he pulls his smartgun and goes to shoot her in the back of the head. The whole team leaps to her defense, but are pretty ineffective until the OA goon who is now on the team hurts the guy enough that he loses his perfect point-blank shot on her. Instead, he shoots her in the shoulder and drops her to the floor, then his two companions at the back of the bar join into the fight with their subguns. Once the violence is over, the team and Janet (now minus the OA goon, who died in the fight) head for their hotel.

The next morning they get the rest of Janet’s story. While working in TransTechnic’s virtual reality systems developing full immersion music videos, she discovered a massive super-realistic VR hidden there. Inside, she met someone named Donovan who pretended that he was part of the VR, but she felt that he was something more, something real and human, and she fell in love. Since the contract ended, she’s tried doing netruns against the TT datafortress to get into the VR to meet Donovan again. Once it worked, but since then she’s been caught, her access revoked, and obviously she pissed off security based on last night’s attempted hit. Now she wants her old friend and the party to help her get in again, and they agree (not telling her that they want to kill Donovan).

After casing the TT building, the party arranges to mug an employee as he leaves at the end of the workday. They successfully grab his security card and get into the building after bypassing a few security systems (so as to leave no video recordings of their break in). Upstairs in the VR editing room, they hook into ‘hotsuits’ that allow them to interface with the VR directly, and Janet hooks them into the VR environment and they go meet Donovan. As Janet tries to convince Donovan to meet her in reality (to which he keeps claiming he is not a human being, but part of the software in the VR), the party tracks the Donovan code and finds net connection links to three locations in the US, and one in the Nova Clarke hotel (a massive 5-star hotel) in downtown Jakarta. Logging out of the VR, they drag Janet along to the Nova Clarke to find him.

The Nova Clarke is a huge hotel, with the 2nd through 10th floors being a massive waterpark with a huge glass floor looking down over the first floor lobby. As the team is booking a room (so they can access the outbound net system from the inside, and then trace back where the Donovan connection came from), they have a moment of recognition as Donovan looks down on them from the floor of the waterpark above (although 40 feet to one side of the group). As everyone grabs iron, Donovan gets off the first shots, firing a pair of HEP grenades into the pool directly over the party’s heads. The first grenade sends a massive shockwave and crack through the floor above them, and the second one actually blows through, sending a massive torrent of glass, water and waterpark attendees smashing down into the lobby, and Donovan starts running for the causeway that leads to the mall next door.

In the mall, a massive gun battle ensues, with what was the most grenades yet seen in close quarters in one of my games – frags, AP frags, HEPs, Defensive Frags, Stuns, Flashbangs and more. In the end, the battle left Donovan and one of the PCs dead on the ground. Further, most of the fighting occurred directly in front of the passport office in the mall, so government soldiers got into the action and many innocents were caught in the crossfire. A call back to the ‘benefactors’ and the five and one of the government AVs coming in to quell the “terrorist attack” on the passport office is bought off, and picks up the team to move them out of country ASAP, and to bring the dead character to the appropriate trauma centre in a cryotank.

Between Game Notes:

As many of the big megacorporations have headed orbital in The End of Corp War IV, the landscape that they operate in is changing rapidly as nations begin reasserting their powers over their territory. With blows dealt to Orbital Air in Indonesia and several other countries in the process of setting up the new Orbital Launch Facility, they have found themselves in the position of merging with Petrochem as a new company, the "Orbital Energy Consortium".

This makes them the single largest orbital carrier in the world, just ahead of the ESA, and well ahead of the USAF. The only unknown in the space race at this time is the Chinese Launch Authority, which has remained out of the global politics involving the gathering of angels in orbit and the establishment of the new super orbital corporations.

With the creation of the Orbital Energy Consortium, OA finds itself with the last choice for the orbital launch facility left - Colombia. As of 2025, construction of the world's biggest mass driver has begun in Colombia, with the Consortium conducting itself in an unprecedented open manner. It is expected that the launch facility should be fully operational in three years.

Game 08 - Puesento Sins

The game begins on the streets of Bogotá, Colombia. With OEC now building a massdriver launch facility in the lowlands of Cartagena de Chairá, several OEC operations teams have been moved into this South American nation. Catholic and Herman have been working for OEC in Bogotá for the last eight months, and Basaraki has been working in the wet lowlands of Cartagena along with other OEC operatives trying to disrup the activities of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). On a tip from Basaraki, Akai has moved her cyberclinic operations into Bogotá to take advantage the the new-found riches moving through the corrupt country.

Two events take place that launch the game and bring the team together on the afternoon of August 5th, 2026 - the first major night of the Carnaval de Bogotá. OEC has charged its operations teams to work on diverting the interests of one of the competing drug cartels from supporting FARC to supporting OEC. As the team assembles in the crowded streets of Carnaval, Catholic finds his cyberglove reaching out to a payphone and dialing a number he doesn't know. On the other end of the line, an OEC controller informs him that El Pelavacas has stolen Heironymous Bosch's "The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things" from OEC's Bogota HQ where it was on display. OEC requires that the team find El Pelavacas and return him alive immediately, the painting is irrelevant.

Trying to figure out what to do, the group pushes through the throngs of partying Colombians into a market area with almost no crowds, there they run into a group of shopkeepers who are paying off Andrew Mosai, a local up-and-coming middleman of the Puesento Cartel. Trying to figure out what's going on, they try to infiltrate the group, and Herman's remote-operated spiderbot is spotted by one of the shopkeepers and they think it is an assassination attempt on Andrew.

Andrew blames Therese (who has been holding out on her payments lately) for the attempt and goes to shoot her. The team stops him, and he's sure it is a hit attempt on him by them, and Catholic jumps to his "rescue". Catholic and Andrew hole up in a storefront where Catholic's love for narcocorrido music and stylings comes in handy as he's able to replicate the Puesento Cartel handshake. Together, Catholic and Andrew leave the scene and head through back alleys to the local Puesento Cartel blockhouse. There, Andrew goes to move inside (past security goons that won't let Catholic through) and Catholic tries to plant a tracking bug on him, but is spotted not only by Andrew, but by the security goon. A bit of fast talking and Catholic manages to escape without being shot.

Meanwhile, Akai has followed some of the other shopkeepers into a botanica where she pumps them for information as a tourist, not letting them know that she actually understands enough Spanish to understand what they are saying to each other between her questions. She learns about the purpose of Andrew's shakedowns as well as the fact that most of the shopkeepers also assume like he did that Therese was the one that bought the hit attempt, and that he'll be hunting her down as soon as things cool off. Learning that Therese runs a Hindu Flesh Mechanic's a couple of blocks away, Akai collects Basaraki and Herman and heads off to Therese's place where they find her packing up and getting ready to hide out for the next while until things blow over and Andrew realizes that while she may have been holding out on payments to him, she wasn't dumb enough to call for a hit on him. Convincing her that it is in her best interest, the team gets the keys to her shop and wait there for the return of Catholic.

Once Catholic is back, the team decides it needs to wait until the heaviest part of tonight's celebrations, then launch a distraction in order to sneak Basaraki and Catholic into the Puesento Cartel's blockhouse to tap their phones. For the first time in the field, Catholic removes his cyberglove and he and Basaraki go into disguise to take advantage of the distraction being planned. As they approach the blockhouse, Herman settles down in the entrance to a closed storefront and takes over remote operations of one of his Raven Demolitions Spiders. Once they are on the same block as their target, they see Andrew and another guy step out of a house about a block away from the target house, holding a struggling young woman between them and flanked by a pair of older women working as security.

As they begin moving the woman towards a waiting car, Akai and Herman move into action. Akai pulls out her handgun and advances on Andrew and begins firing at him, while Herman sends his demolitions spider scuttering underneath the ToyoChevrolet Relentless that they are dragging the woman towards. As the car errupts into the air, ejecting the now dead driver, the Puesento cartel goons start looking for alternate routings while Akai closes the distance between them, now only feet away from Andrew. Andrew surprises her by dropping the prisoner and going for Akai's gun, pulling it out of her grasp.

Fortunately, she is linked to her Gover 10mm by livewires, and she sends the commands to eject the magazine as well as engage the electronic safety before her connection is severed. As Andrew turns her gun on her, Herman steps out of the storefront and opens fire with his .50 AE Desert Eagle, trying to take Andrew down. As the second shot jams the slide back on the Eagle, he discards the gun into the crowd.

That's when the two grizzled women on the security team pull out their Delta-5 Subguns - one starts suppressing the crowd in general to reduce opportunities for attacks from the market, while the second runs towards the burning Relentless and fires over it towards Herman who finds himself pinned behind a hotdog vendor's stand, pulling out his Olin Assault mk 2 from his bag and wiring into it as the metal stand is being beaten down by autofire. Andrew hooks a leg behind Akai's legs and smashes her Gover into her face, dropping her down to the sidewalk before pulling the trigger in her face, with no effect.

Then the whole team except for the one security shooting for Herman move quickly down the street, dragging the screaming woman with them. Akai sits up from the sidewalk and throws her monoknife/gun, slamming cleanly into Andrew's side as he keeps running down the street. Herman gets the nerve up to stick his head out from under the cover of the hotdog stand, gains a clean shot on Andrew, and fires a burst from the Assault II that slams cleanly into Andrew, sending him flying head over heels. The security woman takes the clear shot presented by Herman to tag him with a burst of her own - most of the lead slams into the hotdog stand again, but one bounces off his skull, dropping him and triggering his combat evacuation card. With her magazine exhausted, one assassin down, and her team running for a safehouse, she slips back into a building for cover.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Puesento cartel team, minus Andrew, continue down the sidewalk and dodge into a side alley. Akai moves in on Andrew's unconscious form, flips him over, and uses her eye extractors on him, then also heads for cover as a large group of Puesento cartel goons move down the sidewalk towards Andrew's bloody body.

Taking advantage of the distraction provided, Basaraki and Catholic sweet-talk their way into the courtyard of the Puesento cartel blockhouse and join in the festivities there. Once in the courtyard and joining in the discussions about the gunfire down the block, Catholic slips into the building proper as Basaraki causes quite the distraction by breathing fire using a combination of dragonsbreath rounds in his shotpistol and a bottle of rum. Once inside, Catholic plants a couple of bugs on the lines and is just about to leave when the goons rush in carrying Andrew's eyeless and semi-conscious body. As they rush around to get medical attention for him, Catholic whispers a greeting in his ear to let him know that Catholic could have killed him right then and there.

Feeling accomplished, the team heads out on the town to party it up on a diet of black cocaine, rum and adrenaline. As they are finally falling asleep, Catholic is once again contacted by the OEC controller to see how the search for El Pelavacas is going.

The team assembles at Therese's Hindu Flesh Mechanic's to hash out their ideas on how to track down El Pelavacas as well as capitalize on the chaos they have created in the Puesento household. Catholic's monitoring devices catch a call from the very injured Andrew to an unknown party, explaining that they have been betrayed to Kenor and must collect the bag immediately from locker 4077 in the train station next to the airport. Wasting no time, the mostly hungover team heads there to beat Andrew's subordinate to the punch. In the locker, they find a bag containing four cut down Four Rivers SAW-Seven assault rifles as well as some grenades. As they are in the midst of setting a booby trap in the locker for Andrew's team to discover, they are tagged by said team in a quick and brutal gun battle, finally dispatching the two grizzled security women of Andrew's entourage, as well as two other Puesento goons.

Some quiet street investigation reveals that the guns were definitely the ones used to eliminate Emilio Varela, the previous head of the Puesento cartel in Bogota. And now it seems that the trail of the guns leads directly to Andrew Musai, a man with a lot of ambition. However, instead of finding himself promoted to the position, an outside commander of from the South-Eastern regions of Colombia (Camela la Texana) was brought in to head operations in Bogotá instead. Worse, Camela la Texana is a big supporter of FARC and is moving more arms and money into FARC operations in her home region, right where the OEC launch facility is being built.

Six hours later, the team arrives at the Puesento blockhouse again like a scene out of the Matrix, back to back with guns out. They present Andrew with a new set of top-end cyberoptics (picked up with Catholic's corporate resources) and the sybersurgeon skills of Akai to implant them. They also explain to him, quietly, that they have the guns from 4077, and are more than willing to spill the beans, but are even more willing to help Andrew eliminate Camela la Texana in addition.

24 hours later, the team and the remaining core team of Andrew's most loyal people set up an ambush for la Texana's return - after all the violence aimed against the Puesento cartel in the past week she's bringing a core team of her FARC allies to town with her to help pacify the situation, and maybe take the war against the Dorinaga Cartel, who she blames for the latest violence. The ambush is nearly perfect, with Herman dropping a building on the lead vehicle of the convoy and the remaining vehicles gunned down by the squad automatics found in Andrew's locker. At most one or two FARC rebels survive the ambush, and la Texana is one of the confirmed casualties.

In continued negotiations with Andrew, the team (now known as the "Red Eyes" in Bogotá) arrange for Andrew's loyalty to OEC (along with a bribe of an armoured and armed AV-4) and the withdrawal of support for the FARC rebels. Then they begin to discuss with Seven Deadly Sins investigation with him. According to Andrew, there are only three art dealers in town who could handle something as expensive as the Seven Deadly Sins, and only two of them could store it for the length of time required to allow it to cool off enough to move it out of country. The first of these, allied with the Puesento cartel is the El Dorado Gallery, owned by Senor Rosalino Sanchez Felix.

The "Red Eyes" arrive at the El Dorado Gallery as it opens on the morning of August 9th. There they discover that Senor Felix only comes in around noon or 1 pm. They go on a tour of the facility and Akai spots the Seven Deadly Sins very well concealed in a back room. When Senor Felix finally arrives, he is introduced under another name in order to protect him. The team sees through the ruse and they head back to his office with him, where he opens a 17k eb bottle of wine, expecting that Andrew is about to have him eliminated in this latest cleaning of the Puesento house. When the Red Eyes explain the issue at hand and how they require contact with El Pelavacas, Senor Felix gives up his meeting place and time with El Pelavacas that evening, along with a case of counterfeit US funds that he acquired in an auction a few years ago and has no use for (to make the money case look legit at first glance).

The Red Eyes show up at the meeting place - again Catholic goes in disguise, along with Akai dressed in a traditional Kimono. Herman stakes out the bar at the restaurant, and Basaraki sets up inside Catholic's car to cover the entrance to the building and to provide for a quick getaway. When El Pelavacas shows up, the team distracts him with the case of money, Catholic grabs him and hustles him out to the waiting car without a hitch as Akai dumps the case of phony money of the floor of the restaurant to discourage pursuit. Once in Catholic's car, El Pelavacas puts two and two together and connects the Red Eyes with OEC. His next statement "It's because I saw those Chinese Freaks in the basement, isn't it?" catches the team by surprise. They immediately connect his statement (correctly) with the Tong Ren they had helped in Jakarta last year, which likely means that OEC is working with the Chinese at some level.

Then another blast from the past shows up. Donovan tries to disable Catholic's car to recover El Pelavacas for himself so he can find out whether or not he had indeed found the Tong Ren. Freaked out because they had killed Donovan not a year before ("There ain't no coming back! This is the really real world! There ain't no coming back!"), the team narrowly evades his attacks and makes it to an OEC safehouse where they drop off El Pelavacas, knowing full well that they will never see him alive again.

They then immediately log into the net to contact the Tong Ren to talk about the Donovan situation. The Tong Ren, having paid for the elimination of Donovan (in the aftermath of the Donovan Endgame adventure, were less than impressed to hear that he was operating again, and now in Colombia. The team contacts Janet again, and she tells them that she's been seeing Donovan in the TransTechnic VR environment that they shared, and she last saw him there last week. The Tong Ren and the party transfer via LDL to the Jakarta grid, and log into the TransTechnic VR. Once inside the virtual mansion, they identify the Donovan engram and verify that it is indeed a personality engram being loaded by an AI, and that the AI has a ghosthacking software that allows it to load the Donovan personality engram over the personalities of other trained operatives.

As the game ends, the screen fades to a shot of a US government installation where a skilled military operative is strapped into a machine and ghosthacked with the Donovan personality engram and then loaded with a set of specialized skill chips to augment his existing training to operate independently as a Donovan.

Game 09 - Heaven Over Mountain

This game session report is somewhat disjointed as it was written primarily by the players instead of myself:

Mr Alfie is contacted by the Tong Ren explaining that they have backed the wrong faction and need protection. They ask Herman Alfie to bring Basaraki and company to Bogotá. Basaraki is currently conducting air ops with the Fly and they quickly land to pickup herman for the quick flight to the city.

Andrew Mosai has used his connections with the Tong Ren to make CrystalJack Softwiring triggered by a black cocaine analog. His hit teams then move in to kill the Tong Ren who helped develop the CrystalJack. As Basaraki and Catholic are strolling into Andrew's old blockhouse they encounter one of these wannabee RedEyes on his way out the door. At the house they have one of Andrew's lieutenants call him so they can get him to call off the hit. Andrew refuses, explaining that the Tong Ren are betraying him and "know the trigger".

With no other options, our heroes the real redeyes leave to track these wannabees and foil their plans. Just after they cross through a police checkpoint they stop in front of a karaoke bar/nightclub. As the team is following them (with Herman's flying spybot keeping tabs from above), the team decides to fling a couple of Herman's EMP grenades into the hover truck the wannabees are using as they drive past. Since Herman is busy operating his remote unit, Basaraki and Aiko volunteer to do it. Bararaki gets his into the bed without being noticed, but Aiko isn't so lucky though and they notice her doing it. After the grenades go off with many sparks and lightning the hover truck settles to the ground as its engine fails and the various wannabees experience some difficulty as their cyberwear overloads and reboots.

Catholic drives her car around the corner and Herman dispatches his spybot to hover overhead and see what happens. The wannabees stumble out, dragging one of their team with them into the bar. Catholic, Basaraki and Aiko sneak down the alley behind the bar to see about getting inside and after Aiko gets the lock open, Catholic and Barasaki sneak in. Inside the club they find the wannabees occupying a corner booth obviously still suffering some effects from the EMP. They stroll over and sit down. The wannabees recognize them for who they are, the REAL redeyes and become edgy and nervous. As this is going on, Hermann has switched to remote operating one of his spiders and planted it under the bumper of the hover truck, figuring if they do leave he can monitor their position as long as he's within a kilometer of it. At the very least he can try and log into it occasionally and see if they're coming to where the team wants them to go. Meanwhile back in the bar, Catholic strikes up a conversation with their leader and tells them to leave the Tong Ren alone. They refuse and offer her a bribe to tell them where they're hiding. She accepts it and gives a location for the Tong Ren in Dorinaga territory. They then get up and leave the same way they came into the bar to drive off to Dorinaga territory and stir up a reception for the wannabees.

When they reach Dorinaga territory they get out of their car in what seems the right spot and start asking around for where their closest blockhouse is. Of course their reputation as the RedEyes is well known around the city and during this time Basaraki notices a sniper setting up on a rooftop above them and promptly puts a 37mm fragmentation grenade onto the exact spot the sniper rested his bipod for his rifle. After the explosion many small guns come out among the crowd, many bigger guns and grenade launchers among our heroes and Aiko goes dashing off for the building hoping to if not provide first aid, to get some more eyes for her pickle jar.

As a tense situation appears to be developing, some fast talking by catholic diffuses the situation enough for our team to explain why they were there and about the impending arrival of some wannabee redeye hit teams from Andrew's gang looking to stir up trouble and execute a hit on someone. Always up for a fight, the Dorinaga's rush off to where Catholic said the hit teams are heading to setup an ambush of their own.

After leaving Dorinaga territory the team goes back to where they left the wannabees and discover their hovertruck still parked out front. Wondering what's up, they do the sneak-a-roo again and this time Aiko joins them on going into the bar from the back. As Catholic and Basaraki take up position to observe the booth with the hit team still in it, Aiko goes up to the stage and joins a japanese businessman in a duet on the karaoke machine. The hit team see her do this and become visibly agitated. Quick human perception rolls by Basaraki and Catholic and they realize its because they've made her as one of the people who threw the grenades at her. Complicating things further are that there's a guy with the hit team that is apparently about to spill his guts about the TongRen. Attempting to be sneaky about it, Basaraki and Catholic both try throwing a couple of Basaraki's throwing knives at the guy, and both succeed in hitting him right in the throat almost perfectly together. Unfortunetly they both threw the knives with "Kayaiieeee" noises spoiling the whole "sneaky" part of trying to shut this guy up. The hit team immediately know the is about to hit the fan, and trigger their speedwares and bring out the guns. Basaraki and Catholic respond in kind with Basaraki going for his handguns and Catholic his sword. A quick little fight ensues where some innocent bystanders are shot, the hit team is alternative sliced and diced and had heads blown off but a couple are left alive and bleeding, to tell andrew how the redeyes silenced their witness and maybe the tip about their location was accurate.

After the team exits the bar, they get a call from OEC explaining that they've lost touch with an important hacker who was collecting vital espionage for them, and arrangements have been made to relocate them already away from the hit teams. With some legwork, the team tracks down the errant hacker who has found religion and is supposedly in an old church in an outlying squat. Once they force their way into the church, they discover that the pastor is non other than Vaughn, a Night City expat who is completely insane and thinks that he can hack the spirit world. As part of the team deals with Vaughn to keep him out of their hair, the others finally find the missing hacker. Dead in a closet of an apparent suicide. When confronted with his body, Vaughn explains that the hacker has had to go to Cairo as he originally explained to them, but couldn't afford the trip, so had to go without his body.

Finally convinced that the hacker actually did a datatape dump of himself to a location in Cairo, the team arranges for a quick suborbital shuttle to Egypt, and find themselves painfully under-equipped upon their arrival (as they can't bring explosives, ammunition or longarms along).

While in Cairo, they're followed from the airport by a couple motorcyclists back to their hotel and try hiding in the lobby with Herman doing his best police academy movie hooker impersonation under the doorman's podium. Afterwards with the obvious need to up-gun themselves, Basaraki and Hermann go shopping while Catholic and Aiko go and enjoy the hotel's spa together.

Joining up back at the hotel, the team proceeds to the soccer stadium where the massive servers for where the hacker's trail apparently leads. Splitting up, they eventually all find themselves inside and on the way down to the basement levels. Along the way Basaraki spots a white figure taking aim at them with a sniper rifle and promptly kills it. On closer examination it appears to be a genderless plastic body, and a naked one at that. After looking around they find another such body wandering around, without a mouth but with data ports. Logging into a terminal to go onto the 'net, Aiko and Catholic are trying to find the target datafort.

In the net, the team discovers that the plastic body is indeed housing a ghosthack of the missing hacker. With the help of both the hacker and Vaughn logged in from Bogotá, the team grabs the data the hacker was originally trying to secure from the CairoPlastics IEG Consortium. In the process of uploading the data to Herman, the deceased hacker also uploads a copy of his personality engram into Herman's head.

Somewhere in all the carnage back in Bogotá, one of the Tong Ren was killed in the aftermath of the double cross with Andrew. Now down to 4 of the original 6 members, the Tong Ren have renamed themselves the Quian Gen.