So... That Special Projects directorship you’ve been angling for finally came in, but it’s what you thought, was it? You’re in the unenviable position of being Mr. Johnson...
Now that you’re up to your datajack in wired go-gangers and vatjobs with delusions of wetwork, I thought I might offer a little advice:
Pulling off a proper shadowrun, keeping it in the black and out of our zones, is a fine balancing act. It takes all kinds of assets: Street sams, Faces, PMCs, finesse people, operators, overwatch... The list goes on.
If you have to get shazzy, you skimp on the triggermen and muscle. There is always some wired up chiphead waiting to prove themselves, afterall.
What you don’t skimp on is your support team. They’re you’re information, your eyes and ears. You spend deep to hire proven magic talent and matrix overwatch.
Always.
And remember, great work is rewarded, drek work you’ll end up vapor.
This was the main prompt that caught my attention, to be honest. Here’s a sketch page just hashing out ideas. Below are some more thoughts about the roles and characters each Rose and Kanaya play in a Shadowrun/cyberpunk universe.
Blurbs :
Rose [SEER] was a high potential magic recruit, rushed through the Ares Firewatch academy. Present at the Wilds Lab breach, during her first duty watch, Seer was the sole survivor of the event. Afterwards she was moved to special projects within the Ares Magi-Tech division. Aspected several times, she’s become a dedicated scry, working on high level Corporate Espionage and Material Retrieval.
Within the universe Magic and High tech doesn’t interact well. Despite this, Ares Magi-Tech was able to develop a cybernetic implant that allows her to see via fiber-optic camera, through a a fiber-optic cable. This would allow Seer to cast spells from around corners, or have the camera carried by a small drone, preventing line of sight on her person.
At some point in recent years she departed Ares to join the shadows, selling her abilities to whatever Mr. Johnson could spare the cash.
Kanaya [INSECTRA] grew up on the streets of the Emerald City, where she used her large stature, percussive diplomacy, and a budding talent with electronics to settle many disputes. By the late 2070s she had established herself as ‘Buzz’, a competent combat decker working the shadows in mostly street level ventures.
After a dumbluck during a job, Kanaya was able to flip paydata for semi-retirement. Dropping off of the grid, effectively, She focused on sharpening her skills and bought some out of the way property. A few years later she reemerged as INSECTRA; a matrix specialist, drone pilot, and all around info broker. It’d be years before anyone saw her outside of her Matrix icon.
On the Matrix, INSECTRA appears to be a large 6-armed insect, made of emeralds, pearls, and gilded wings. A crown hovers above her large angular head, with the eyes being the only portion appearing organic. When attacking, cracking, or otherwise being hostile on the matrix INSTECTRA’s top most arms will reach out and physically tear away at her target. The Lowest most arms are always busily interacting with AR interfaces. The Central arms maintain a serene mirrored gesture.
Rumors of a potential HMHVV (Human Meta-Human Vampiric Virus) infection have circulated in recent years. No one has substantiated beyond she is definitely “not a ghoul”.
We offer a range of Trouble Shooter solutions. Capable of either close to target, personal touches, or a light, trackless approach. Over 20 + Years of experience with Sioux Special forces as consultants.
Results Guaranteed.
Nepeta rolled her head back, looking away from the screen and up at Equius. He shrugged.
D --> Can't we just say we're assassins?
:33 < n-not really...
@nepeta-week-love
Favorite AU (Shadowrun Homestuck), and a cheater sketch of Best Friends day I can’t finish (Nepeta and Terezi godtier outfits).
What does Magic/cyberpunk and homestuck have in common? Probably not much. But I so love stories that come from Shadowrun games; greed, hate, violence, troll rock, backstabbing Johnsons, love, and massive explosions.
In Shadow!Stuck, Equius and Nepeta both have served in the Legendary Sioux Wildcats special forces. Equius retires to become a Leon the Professional style cleaner in his civilian life. Using his fists, a specialty bow, and assorted grenades, he made quite the splash in the runner community. A few years later, Nepeta would end her tour as the senior NCO in a recon unit, and join him on the job; a stealth and CQC specialist, she can mix it up with with most anyone thanks to bleeding edge reaction enhancers and move-by-wire neural upgrade.
So, needless to say, the Nuyen is good and the work is plentiful.
Wish i had thought more about the background, and had more practice with overlays and transparencies (the second colored sketch Equius is supposed to be using an Augmented reality display).
To make up for it, sketches. Sketches galore. And always remember: Geek the mage first.
Hey all! i know i dont have much of a following but those of you who stuck around i have big news!!!!
shadowstuck is getting a reboot!!!
problems with the last one arose due to a toxic situation with the people whose characters i was including, im in a better friend group and shall be giving all of it a sick nasty glow up!!!
No one pursued you away from the scene of the heist; you’d wager that the Yaks and Lone Star must’ve ended up butting heads, giving you three plenty of time to disappear. All-in-all, a clean extraction, just the way you liked it. You could already taste the second half of your fifteen thousand nuyen paycheck. All that was left was to make the handoff.
Mr. Johnson was terse with you when you called to announce the successful acquisition of his package, the technomancer named Dirk. He directed you to an address in Tacoma, the meeting to occur in several hours. This left you with some time to kill.
Dirk, for his part, seemed to be taking getting passed around like some burnout’s deepweed pipe in stride. He spent the drive to Tacoma sprawled out in the backseat of Mindfang’s bullet-hole pocked Eurocar, idly flipping through stations on the radio with his fragged-up brain.
“Hey, drekhead, will you pick one and stick with it?” Mindfang shouted at him after ten solid minutes of his indecision.
“Man, it’s like Springsteen said: fifty channels and nothing on.”
He settled on a classic hip-hop station in the middle of a non-stop block of your faaaavorite aughts hits! Mindfang snorted as the opening lines of Good Morning started pounding out of the car’s speakers. Wake up Mr. West, Mr. West, Mr. by-his-self-he-so-impressed...
“You listen to this grandpa drek?”
“Kanye,” he said, tapping a finger in time with the beat, “is a tiny god, you fragging philistine.”
“Yeah, if you’re ninety-five years old and start sentences with ‘back in my day.’”
“It’s better than listening to a bunch of cranky losers holler about how hard it is that the girl they like doesn’t notice them while they do violence to their guitars,” you interjected.
“Oh blow me, Redglare, Malcolm Tent shreds and you know it.”
“The only thing shredded was my ear drums.”
The rest of the trip proceeded uneventfully, Dirk maintaining veto power over the music to prevent Mindfang from inflicting any of her godawful taste on you. Eventually, as you neared your destination, she pulled off into the parking lot of a Stuffer Shack. It was well after midnight, with still nearly an hour until the meet, and the only other soul in sight was a BTL-head reclining against the wall, lost in his own private fantasy life being piped directly to his senses from the chip wedged into his brain.
“You want anything?” Mindfang said to you.
“I could stand a bite to eat. What about you, Mister Package?”
“Soycaf. Black. Leave the car running; they’re playing Kendrick next.”
The interior of the ‘Shack was equally deserted. The scrawny, pimpled young ork manning the counter gave the two of you a jaundiced look as you entered.
“Welcome to Stuffer Shack, home of the five nuyen mexisoymelt combo. Let me know if I can help you in any way,” he recited in a tone of voice suggesting that there were literally thousands of things he’d rather do than help you, then returned his attention to his commlink.
While Mindfang filled two cups with toxic-smelling soycaf, you busied yourself among the racks of brightly-colored candies, snatching up a fistful of tooth decay in a bag.
“Seriously?” she said, eyeing the gummy worms and licorice you dumped onto the counter. “What are you, eight?”
“I don’t tell you not to cram yourself full of creepy machinery, kindly return the favor and do not tell me not to cram myself full of artificial colors and sweeteners.”
“Y’know those give you cancer, right?”
“Dear me, you’re right! I could die before my time! What a terrible risk!”
The ork resentfully slouched over and started ringing you up. Mindfang added a pack of Kowloon Kings cigarettes to the order.
“Speaking of cancer,” you snickered.
“Bite me,”
“You keep making these invitations that I do not think you really want me to follow up on.”
You clicked your teeth at her. Like those of most trolls, they were sharp.
“Jesus, get a room,” the ork muttered, somehow managing to bag your purchases in a resentful fashion.
“Excuse me? You feel like making a contribution? Speak up!” Mindfang snarled, leaning over the counter at him.
The ork remained unimpressed. Given the state of the neighborhood, you were probably far from the first sketchy customers of the night.
“Down girl,” you said, shoving the bag of candy and cigarettes into her hands. “Please excuse her, sir, she’s very poorly socialized.”
“Thank you for choosing Stuffer Shack, please come again,” he recited as the automatic doors slid open for you, letting you back out into the night. “Or, like, don’t. Whatever.”
Mindfang passed Dirk his soycaf through the window, then leaned against the car and sparked a cigarette.
“So,” she said, “is it just me or do you smell something wrong with this job?”
A gummy worm twirled away between your lips.
“I always operate under the assumption that there will be unforeseen complications,” you replied, “but yes. Something smells wrong here.”
She blew a plume of smoke from her nose and took a sip from her soycaf.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never complain about being well-compensated, but thirty thousand for this run feels like too much money for something so easy.”
“Do you think the Johnson means to try and stiff us?”
“Among other things. It’d be pretty poor form, but getting ahold of a technomancer with no witnesses might be worth the hit to his reputation.”
“We are, after all, deniable assets. Very few people would miss a couple of Shadowrunners.”
Dirk’s window rolled down.
“Hey,” he said, “hate to interrupt, but I couldn’t help but overhear. I’ve had Hal crawling the corporate grids and—”
“Who’s Hal?” Mindfang interrupted.
“Lil’ Hal, my sprite. A semi-autonomous entity made of pure Matrix-stuff. Try not to think too hard about it, you’ll just give yourself a headache.”
“And you named it ‘Hal?’” you said.
“What, not a Kubrick fan? Anyway, point being, he’s been scraping corp chatter and there’s definitely something popping off. Mitsuhama’s pissed, obviously, but there’s also some movement happening with Saeder-Krupp. Assets of the non-deniable kind being mobilized, that sort of thing. Nothing specific, a lot of it is encrypted, but if you’re worried about a double-cross you might not be too far off the mark.”
Mindfang ground her cigarette out on the ground.
“I’m starting to think we aren’t getting that other fifteen thousand,” she said.
while it might seem a little strange to have Terezi be an adept of a power called “the Dragonslayer,” in Shadowrun, dragons are ~bad fucking news~ on a level that not many other things can match. imagine if Smaug ran a multinational megacorporation capable of toppling governments and you begin to touch on the reason why one of the maxims of Shadowrun is “never make a deal with a dragon.” the Dragonslayer is primarily focused on fighting the kind of awful shit that dragons represent - corruption, greed, destruction, and so forth. and this seems like a very Terezi ethos, with a bit of an ironic twist given the name of the guy. hes actually pretty chill, really. unless youre a bad guy.
the worst part is that you cant really do anything about the dragons, because they are the only thing standing between reality and lovecraftian things lurking beyond the veil. kill one and you just make the defenses weaker.
oh also there was a dragon president. dont ask, long story. Dunkelzahn was actually an alright dude; shame he got exploded.
