Dry Run

General Summary

Meeting at 300,000ft

The runners met with their Mr. Johnson aboard a sub-orbital jet, which would make them completely safe from surveillance. The Johnson was actually a Virtual Intelligence interface calling itself MR-JN, who was speaking on behalf of one of the presidential candidates. The campaign had received intelligence that the Technocratic candidate who was currently polling at a laughable 1%, James Booth, had scheduled a clandestine meeting with a representative of one of the other campaigns. They did not know who nor what the nature of this meeting was. Their best intelligence suggested that Booth planned to help the candidate steal the election so that he can have some role in the new administration.
The job was simple and straight-forward: Break into the VIP garage in Washington DeeCee and record this meeting as evidence. It would go down later that evening, so time was limited and the jet was already on route to DeeCee. MR-JN said that their employer would pay 20,000¥ for a successful mission as well as provide them with any expenses or equipment they needed for the mission.

The Democratic Process

They landed at the Eisenhower-Ares Aerospace port just outside of DeeCee, where a contact welcomed them to Heart of Democracy™. He provided them with additional information, including a layout of the garage. He gave them the equipment they asked for, "brought to you by Carl's Jr" he said.
The runners posed as VIPs from Telestrian Industries to gain access to the garage. After parking their limo on the bottom level, they took the elevator to the security room and gassed the guard. Taking command of the garage’s own security cameras, they waited for the meeting to begin.
Booth’s contact turned out to be General Franklin Yeats. The Republican presidential candidate looked real good for someone who was assassinated 3 months prior. The exchange between them was strange, and even stranger when Booth gave Yeats a bizarre glowing rod capped in stones of archaic runes. Yeats betrayed Booth and ordered his bodyguards to gun him down while the General inserted the rod into a complex machine in the back of his van. As this happened, the awakened runners felt something shift in the astral plane.
The runners decided they had enough and moved to make their escape. They witnessed Booth get up from his fatal wounds and the two men battled hand-to-hand with more vigor than two men over 50 should be capable of.
Denied exit as the garage was on lock-down, they parked their car in front of the closed gate which Yeats’ van driving full speed towards on a collision course. They used their various abilities of telekinesis and shapeshifting to fly over the fence and then remotely detonated their limo as the General’s Van passed it. It spun out to its side and Yeats tore his way out, only to be met by another fist fight with Booth. Yeats’ hands extended into claws and he ripped Booth in two.

Game Over

The night sky had grown brighter as the clouds opened up and what looked like a meteor shower rained down on the city. Insect spirits were invading the material plane in swarms of thousands at a time, and the runners were forced to battle a giant armored Insect that crashed like a meteor. While they inflicted great damage upon it, it was pulled into the earth by shadowy arms of other entities. The runners saw that there were more than just Insect Spirits here, and made their way to the extraction point at the Potomac harbor.
Chaos reigned as the city was overrun and the military arrived in power armor and heavy Wolf Spider drones. A great insectoid monstrosity emerged from the rift, a massive 30-story form of chitinous flesh who’s taloned legs spread across the horizon. The kaiju-sized insect spirit, which they would later know as a Hive Tyrant, destroyed the Senate Building and began inhaling the senators like popcorn along with thousands of other civilians. In the astral, they could see that its aura was slowly inhabiting the aura of the gaiasphere itself. The runners realized that this infestation would quickly spread beyond the city to the entire world. They made their way back to look for Yeat’s van, hoping to put a stop to this.
While the van was gone, the machine it housed was damaged in the explosion, and leaked a trail of astral energy. The runners saw a nearby DocWagon armored ambulance which was separated by its pinned down team. The runners stole the ambulance to pursue the General, watching the DocWagon team disappear beneath a swarm.
Shooting their way though insects, living shadows, reanimated corpses and stranger horrors, they followed the astral trail across a bridge which was heavily damaged by the invasion. They managed to save a school bus full of children. As Vola pulled the bus in her dragon form, she questioned what a school bus was doing out past midnight, and why one of the children aboard so closely resembled one of the trafficked children she failed to save aboard a school bus years ago.
They eventually caught up to Yeats, who’s van had been overturned again as he was surrounded by hungry shadows. The runners made their way past and to the van’s machinery. Speaking on the comm with an Illuminate of the New Dawn (who’s mana-barriered tower was currently begin bombarded by spirits like a giant bug zapper), they were guided through disarming it. He told them it wasn’t possible, the astral rift opened by the machine was now self-sustaining. The only thing it could do would be reverse the process, but the expulsion of energy would destroy everything within a 12-kilomerter radius of the machine.
Jenobli, against the arguments of her companions and Squid in particular, chose to sacrifice herself. She telekinetically carried the van through the air as the swarms slashed at her and detonated the unholy machine as far from the city as she could. The runners flew away in a plane at an alternate extraction point, and their plane went down in the shockwave as half the city was consumed by chaotic astral energies.

Pulling the Plug

They awoke to the sight of flames and the sounds of screams. Not a good sign after you’re sure you were just killed. Several armed men in paramilitary garb tried to gun them down, but Vola brought down one of them, leaping from her hospital bed and tearing against the wires jacked into her. The majority of the gunman were too far to reach before any of them could reach them, but moments later they disappeared in a torrent of flame from the wall. The others were torn down by the claws of the great sapphire dragon, Dunkelzahn. He offered his apologies to the runners, and promised to explain everything.
The sub-orbital jet never took them to DeeCee but a VisionQuest VR facility just outside Mason City, Iowa. The entire run in DeeCee was an advanced SimSense VR simulation as a test of their abilities. Dunkelzahn had heard of their exploits and DeeCee, and was looking for extraordinary people to handle the difficult times ahead. He needed to test their character though, and so the scenario was devised.
This dry run was based on an exercise of the old world known as the Kobayashi Maru, a scenario that would test the runners’ character in the face of certain defeat. It was also meant to help them understand the stakes they faced. This simulation was constructed around a possible future that had already been averted. Yeats was indeed infested by an Insect Spirit, but had been assassinated before he could accomplish anything resembling what the runners saw. A similar future could still happen, and Dunkelzahn told them that "the right people in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world." He needed to know if the runners were those people.
Unfortunately, on top of abducting the runners and subjugating them to trauma, the facility had been overtaken by terrorists of the Human Nation, an offshoot of Humanis. They held the facility’s staff hostage, demanding the dragon drop out of the race. Their broadcast never made it to the public airwaves, and Dunkelzahn decided to race to the facility to handle them personally. He regretted putting the runners in danger, and agreed to increase their pay as compensation. He also offered to answer any other questions they may have. He did so through the voice of his interpreter, Nadja Daviar. The runners were fine with this, after having experienced the unsettling discomfort of dragonspeak, their own voice speaking the dragon's words in their minds.

Dunkelzahn Explains it All

The simulation, while very convincing, still had a number of flaws and limitations. Ares, who owned VisionQuest before the great dragon bought it from them, had an advertising deal with Carl's Jr which still slipped through at times. Much of the sim was dynamically created by their own minds, which is why DeeCee looked like it does in documenteries as wekk as why Vola got to re-experience the trauma of the school bus. Other things were off or inconsistent, such as odd mannerisms and speech patterns of the NPCs, the inability to astrally project or use karma, and the gross stale taste of DeeCee's mana. Dunkelzahn assured them that the real DeeCee's is much worse.
The runners asked about the metaplanes and the nature of the extraplanar spirits they had been encountering.
The dragon reiterated the story of the magic’s 5,200 year cycle, but expanded that once the mana levels reach a critical mass, the astral veil becomes unstable and opens rifts to the deeper planes. The entities that come through then devour all mana on the material plane along with most of the beings it touches.
The Insect Spirits, also known as the Invae of the Hive plane of Vhortas: The Hive , are always among the first.
The Hive Tyrant is a semi-omni intelligent biological machine, or at least that's the best way to describe it. The endless hives of Vhortas are in constant war with one another. Hive Tyrants are not exactly rulers or peacekeepers, but act as coordinators of the conflict to prevent them from wiping each other out, or pruning hives that become too powerful. Dunkelzahn admitted that what they saw was an approximation of what they think a Hive Tyrant is. If one ever made it to Earth, it would likely already be too late as it would attempt to inhabit the essence of the Earth itself.
While the Invae inhabit the bodies of the living to consume the dead, the Shedim inhabit the dead to experience the pleasures of life (often in depraved or sadistic ways).
The two are long rivals, and have hated each other over eons of war using their puppet proxies.
The Shadow Spirits are lesser beings whose plane was conquered by the Shedim in eons past, and now act as their front line soldiers. Akin to their masters, they are able to control and then feast on the emotions of the living.
The 5,200 year cycle is moving 100 times ahead of schedule, as the Invae, Shedim, and Shadows are already here, and the terrors that are still to follow them. All far too soon.
Dunkelzahn said that the cause is being investigated and a solutions being worked on. He was happy to have reliable people in reserve for the challenges to come.
As the great dragon did a beeg stretch and settled in for a nap, Nadja saw the runners out and conveyed a message, that they were to "go to where the red rose blossoms". Whatever that drek means.

Rewards Granted

20,000¥
3 Karma
Additional protections for their stronghold
PTSD

Character(s) interacted with

Dunkelzahn (Client)
Nadja Daviar
James Booth
General Franklin Yeats

Threats

Insect Spirit 
Shedim 
Shadow Spirit 
The Human Nation (offshoot of Humanis 

8.3.2057

Shadowrunners

• Cat-Sith 
• Grendel 
• Jenobli 
• Squid 
• Vola 

Report Date

10 Nov 2021

Primary Location

Washington, FDC

Related Historical Events

• 2057
  Dry Run