STALKER7

New Employee Orientation

An Exploit Zero AAR

Tuesday night was Brandon B’s last session with us. On Cape for the summer, he ended up working with Other Pat at the family restaurant and soon enough was part of our weekly game nights. We decided to go outwith a bang and ran an Exploit Zero mission: four Agents helping a Yakuza hacker understand the benefits of an exciting career in their corporation’s cyber-security division.

The target was one “Luis DeJour”, a digital Jedi in the organized crime scene who regularly evaded frightening amounts of ICE on secure corpo-networks. Rather than eliminate him, the C-Suite decided he should redeploy his extensive talents on their behalf, and offered him a job. Sympathetic to potential reluctance, the executives thought his move might need to be incentivized. So, a team of Agents was dispatched to walk him through the orientation process.

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Loyalty is everything, but it turns out if you wave enough eYuan around, you can find out all kinds of little details. An informant mentions that Mr. DeJour is a regular at ‘The Diamond Age’, one of Lower New Kowloon’s hottest AR clubs. Armed with his itinerary and their usual load-out, the team dropped into the district just as he was exiting, 0200 local time.

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Target sighted, Dr. Death and the Shiver moved in and it took all of ninety seconds to drop Mr. DeJour’s wingmen, then hack in and deactivate his tracking chip.

[Package Secured] Time to vacate the district.

As the Sawbones moved out with an astonished DeJour in tow, the team’s tac-net flashed with a secondary objective: upload spyware to the neighborhood’s Info-Tree one block up and over. Corporate wants their fingers in this area’s data-stream.

[Acknowledged] Gotta keep the corporate paymasters happy.

Of course alarms start screaming in cyberspace the instant DeJour’s tracking chip goes offline, so Yak gunmen arrive within minutes.

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Just Gary decided he needed elevation, so he climbed to the roof of a noodle house. From there, he can cover two possible entry points with his Daewoo bullpup. (this proved to be an invaluable move)

A wave of Yak enforcers on the streets, sub-machine guns start to chatter. Dr. Death pulls Luis after him as RonCena the Razor and the Shiver with No Name begin firing back. Gangsters go down but more arrive by the minute. Next wave is the local Boss, his personal assistant, and two Geisha Dolls.

Here, Just Gary’s decision really starts to pay off. From his vantage point, he’s been taking out reinforcements who luckily/unluckily have been spawning practically at his feet.

(It is widely acknowledged after the game that if the H-SEC spawn rolls had been different, the mission would have been far more difficult)

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Lots of metal zipping through the air looking for a home, Dr. Death, the Sawbones, drags Luis up the street and takes a hard left toward the Info-Tree in an effort to get away from the shooters. Unfortunately for him, a Yak enforcer and the Boss’s Assistant move to intercept.

Meanwhile, the Boss – the suddenly named Mr. Nakamura – starts up the ladders toward the roof of the noodle shop after Just Gary. “Do you have any idea how expensive those Geisha Dolls were?”

Seems Dr. Death zigged when he should have zagged. Hippocratic Oath be damned, the Sawbones ends up slugging it out with not one but two Yak gangsters, taking some serious damage in the process. He stays on his feet thanks to McCoy Slap Patches, but just barely.

Meanwhile, the Shiver with No Name makes his first attempt to splice into the Info Tree but is distracted by Luis, who cowers by auto-vendor and screams like a little girl.

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New turn, the LNKPD show up, responding to reports of gunshots and screams. Patrolmen run in on one side, SWAT on the other. Mr Nakamura just cannot get up that last ladder. So Just Gary gains his fifth Yak kill by dropping a micro-grenade over the edge before settling in to cover the street in front of the club.

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Not having much luck with the InfoTree, the Shiver plays to his strengths and starts assisting the good Doctor. A dose of healing nanites and some timely cerebral hemorrhaging, Dr. Death breaks away from the brawl, yanks Luis to his feet, and takes off for the exit.

LNKPD are out in force now. Heavy Pacification Droids and a pair of Detectives arrive on the scene. With all the bodies on the streets, there’s talk of sending in helicopter gunships next. Just Gary tosses his last micro-grenade the SWAT team in the street below. Another officer goes down, but his partner start blasting away and manages to put a couple holes in the sharpshooting Ronin.

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Final turn, the shooting on the street is absolute Hollywood, but it doesn’t matter; the Sawbones takes Luis DeJour through the exit as RonCena shows up to assist with the InfoTree hack. Just Gary patches himself up then puts a big hole in one of the Droids. It’s game over, Agents for the win.

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A fast-paced game with tense moments and lots of gun play, it was a good way to close out Brandon’s time with us. He’s off to his last semester at college, then he’s going to do adult things, but he’s always got a seat at our table.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you enjoyed the AAR

If you want more information, Exploit Zero, the Tsim Sha Tsui Expansion, and the corporate war, player-v-player version, Hostile Takeover are available in print at Amazon, and in PDF at WargameVault.

Have an excellent day.

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