Shadowruns With a Mature Theme

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Page last updated:
Tuesday, June 8, 1999.

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Original Shadowrun material Copyright 1999 by FASA Corporation.
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Okay, now that you're up on sexual attitudes and what sort of odd cyberware you can install, how about some adventure concepts?

A Test of Greed
This is an adventure that should be a test for all those nuyen-hungry greedy shadowrunners.

The team is hired by a surprisingly honest Mr. Johnson. It seems that a corporate exec's 9 year old daughter has disappeared and foul play is suspected. The runners are hired to return this beautiful little girl to her family. A small, but reasonable sum is offered for this job, which should be relatively low risk. If she's dead, well, the parents want to know that too and if possible, her body retrieved for a proper burial.

Let the runners work their contacts and the Matrix. It should be difficult, but eventually they should get a lead on an international ring of child pornographers. Seems that little Melissa is their latest kiddie porn star. Before the runners get a chance to rescue Melissa, the pornographers catch wind of the runners and their goal. So they send a neutral representative, who knows nothing, to meet with the runners and try to buy them off. Offer what should be an excessive amount of nuyen to the runners to simply tell the parents that their little girl is dead and there wasn't enough body to return.

Most runners teams will reject the nuyen and hit the child pornographer ring. Give the opposition plenty of muscle to protect them; if they can offer huge sums to the runners, they can certainly hire plenty of muscle to protect themselves. This should be an exciting, Hollywood sort of ending, with guns blazing and heroes rescuing innocent children (several dozen "missing" children will be found). Lone Star might have some questions for the runners, but will be glad to take all the credit and leave the runners alone if they don't squeal. This should enhance the runners reputation all the way around. Trouble is, they didn't kill all the bad guys...some time later, when they least expect it, hit the runners with this enemy from their not-so-distant past.

But what if the runners decide to be bought? It's certainly possible, especially if you have runners that are extremely mercenary or are far more interested in the next nuyen than anything else. In this case, the pornographers will be keeping tabs on the runners to make sure they stay bought. And if the runners can figure things out, certainly others can too. It'll take longer, but eventually the child pornographer ring will be caught and destroyed. Lone Star might wonder why these folks spend so much money on the runners; what did they do for the pornographers? And once Melissa is eventually returned to her parents, word will leak out that not only did the runners allow themselves to be bought out, they showed a lack of humanity that even gangers and murderers find repulsive. In other words, they may have made major nuyen, but their reputation is now trashed.

Screwed to Death
It's an odd, perhaps even sophomoric, title, but this one utilizes one of the pieces of lethal bioware discussed previously.

Someone is killing wealthy men and then robbing them, stealing their Matrix passcodes and transferring major sums of nuyen to off-shore accounts. These men are both single and married, tend to be human or elf (with an orc and dwarf or two to spice things up), are both corporate and organized crime and have little apparent in common. A female Johnson hires the runners to track down the killer; any nuyen that the killer still has is theirs to keep (which should be considerable, at least in theory).

This adventure should put their legwork and their own deductive skills to the test. The men have no apparent wounds, at least nothing obvious. Tiny traces of Death Rattle poison were detected in their blood, but no one knows how it got there (and Death Rattle poison, at least for purposes of this adventure, isn't toxic when ingested, only when injected). So Lone Star and their coroner's department is baffled.

Eventually (and I mean eventually; make them really work for it) they will find out that all of them, even the married ones, were seen with a beautiful brunette elf, a woman of such beauty that she stands out wherever she goes, before their death. (Note: for something different, you could change the gender to male and make all of the victims gay, bisexual, or "curious." Or you could make the victims female and the killer male.). Ekaterina Oreskovich is most recently from Vladivostok. She has Cultured Pheromones Level Two, Enhanced Articulation, a Cerebral Booster and Enhanced Reaction. She also has a Retractable Vaginal Thorn that can inject Death Rattle venom directly into the penis. Because it's such exotic bioware and Ekaterina is so skilled with it's use, no one has been able to link her more than circumstantially with the murders. And once the runners pick up on here trail, this very smart women begins to use her feminine wiles on the men on the team...

How it ends is entirely up the runners. They may scare "Kat" off. She may kill all the runners in the heat of passion with her poison thorn. She might convince one of the runners to let her go, and take off to another city. Or she could also be killed by the runners. Regardless, the nuyen pay-off will turn out to be much smaller than anticipated; Ekaterina has extremely expensive tastes and burned nuyen very fast. With additional research, the runners may learn that she had essentially been chased out of Vladivostok after getting caught, but managing to escape somehow. She may be going on to New Orleans next...

A side note; I ran this particular adventure with my crew of players some time ago. Without going into specifics, Ekaterina escaped. Seems that an elf with Cultured Pheremones is far too much woman to resist for nearly any man. While half the group was chasing her down, the other half fell into her charms and helped her escape. The first half came away with no nuyen; the other half mysteriously pocketed a fair amount of nuyen. She'll be coming back around again sometime...

Secrets From the Past
Pick a contact from any runner. It had probably better not be a favorite contact, but go ahead and use an existing contact from one of the runners.

The contact is desperate for help. A secret from their past is on the verge of being revealed and they are desperate to stop that from happening; it could ruin their reputation, not to mention perhaps losing their job, business, mate, whatever (depending on who the contact is).

Seems that some old "friends" are threatening to blackmail the contact. These old friends are members of the radical "Panzer Pansies" policlub, a militant gay rights organization. Seems that the contact was once a member of the policlub, but after a secret sex change operation, restarted their life anew. Yes, this works for both gay men and lesbian women.

How will the runners react to finding out that their butch and manly armorer was once a women? That their beautiful corporate secretary contact was once a man? Will they keep it a secret? Will they try to blackmail the contact also? Will they say a job is a job? Will they stand by their contact?

If combat breaks out between the Panzer Pansies and the runners, you can simply use the Humanis Policlub members stats. This group advocated full and equal right for all gays, lesbians, transsexuals, ambisexuals and transvestites and government/corporate reparation for past damages. They are also extremely militant and frequently resort to terrorist activities. Fortunately for the average citizen, they aren't well funded and their membership is somewhat small. They do have some serious muscle boy/street sam types in their membership though, which should be able to provide a serious challenge for the gun bunnies in the group. I just have the image of a giant-muscle bound male "queen" wearing a pink cowboy hat and toting a Vindicator mini-gun. Tell me that's an image your players won't be telling stories about for months, even years to come.

I'm sure I'll come up with additional adventures and as I do, I'll post them here. Check back every now and again.