Freezing Shadows, Book 5 Prologue

Prologue: Trade Chat

(Shadowmen In-Game OOC Forum, Seattle Section)

Reminder: This forum is for Out of Character (OOC) discussion only. Please direct in-character discussions (including business dealings and the like) to the appropriate in-world forums.

GreenGirl, Yolo, Scholar, DoReMi, RedFox, Rerun, ThirsT, SliceNDice, GrimDarkKawaii, NoNoNo, YesYesYes, FoldingChair, Squeaker, Anonymous2, Anonymous5, Anonymous8, KittyKat, HurtMeMommy, HardReset, DaddyIssues, Inquisitor, BattleSister, Wolfgirl, Spirit, Chill, and HoldMyBeer are in the chat.

DoReMi: Don’t know what happened. We were chill, last time I saw her, but now she’s gone and got religion, or something close to it.

Spirit: Sometimes people just have that kind of experience.

HardReset: Was this a player? Or one of the AI NPCs?

DoReMi: NPC. But she’s one of my contacts, so I do have some reason to care about her suddenly changing like this.

Rerun: What kind of contact were they?

DoReMi: Stripper. Was addicted to novacoke, but she has been talking about getting clean. That’s why she went to rehab.

Yolo: Hate to say it, but a lot of places that try and get people clean? They go hard on the brainwashing kind of thing. Turns out, when people are strung out and desperate, they’re susceptible to those kinds of tactics. Main reason the megacorps and ‘corporate religions’ are the main sources of drug rehab programs.

DoReMi: Damnit. I told her that anyone offering free rehab services was sketchy as fuck.

Wolfgirl: Did she at least check things out?

DoReMi: Supposedly, she did. But she didn’t find anything bad about them. Not even an angry post from some crackhead that fell back into drugs after leaving them and blamed them for it.

Inquisitor: That is a red flag if I’ve ever heard one.

BattleSister: What outfit was she going to?

DoReMi: Better Days Rehabilitation Center, out in the Puyallup Barrens. Only thing I could find on it is that the group behind it is something called the Brotherhood of Unity.

Wolfgirl: That screams ‘cult’.

DaddyIssues: Hmm. You know, I heard something from my cousin, in Cairo. One of their buddies from another crew was involved in a run gone bad. Like, went in on an infiltration, and wound up finding a full-on kill squad ready for them.

Yolo: What happened?

DaddyIssues: Apparently, the buddy was the sole survivor. Whatever they saw, had them freaked bad, apparently. My cousin said that they refused to talk about it on the Matrix, but wanted to see her in person, so they could spread the word.

Wolfgirl: So, what did they say?

DaddyIssues: That’s the thing. They didn’t get a chance. My cousin saw them, not twenty meters away, coming to the place were gonna meet. This random homeless person moves up with a blade for an arm, and takes her head clean off! Grabs the buddy’s head and then runs off.

SliceNDice: That’s… impressive. Despite what anime and movies would tell you, cutting someone’s head off in a single blow, when they’re not held in an execution-type position, is not easy. I should know, I’ve been on both ends of it, in game.

ThirsT: That kind of timing, it couldn’t have been coincidence. That was a clean-up job!

Yolo: Yeah, hate to say it, but your cousin probably got lucky, with the buddy dying before they met up. Did she at least know who they were hitting?

DaddyIssues: That’s the thing. It was a private building on the outskirts of town. One of the local crime lords wanted to know what they were up to. The group is the Hermandat di Unidat.

Scholar: That translates from Arabic to English as Brotherhood of Unity.

Anonymous8: There was nothing like this in the beta.

Spirit: I mean, we had to expect that the admins would have held something back. Wonder what this is?

NoNoNo: Did they run into a dragon? They say dragons do stuff like that. Maybe this Brotherhood is dragons?

RedFox: No. Well, maybe. But not likely. Dragons aren’t known for acting like that. And they definitely aren’t the type to go around running rehab clinics, soup kitchens, or the like.

Scholar: From what I’m seeing, the Brotherhood of Unity is worldwide. And yet, there’s nothing out there negative about them. Like squeaky clean. Not even a bad review on social media sites.

Anonymous2: Oh fuck. No, that’s BAD bad news! Nothing gets that squeaky clean on the Matrix without people pulling strings. And not just the light touch ones, either. We’re talking people going deep.

GreenGirl: Do we know anyone with first-hand knowledge of what this Brotherhood is up to? Like, what did they have going for them that there was a kill team on site, and they sent someone to clean up the loose end?

DoReMi: And how does this relate to my contact suddenly being all different?

HoldMyBeer: I’m willing to bet that if anyone here does have first-hand knowledge, that they won’t be talking, not openly. Even if this is an ‘OOC’ room, you can’t trust people not to spill the beans about things.

RedFox: So, what can we do?

Chill: Several things. First, you keep away from the Brotherhood. Keep your chummers away from them. If you gotta go in, go in expecting trouble.

Anonymous2: Bring the assault cannon trouble?

Chill: Assault cannon is for when you know there’s no way of this going quiet, and you don’t care how much collateral or extra heat comes down. I was thinking special ammo.

Scholar: Special ammo?

Chill: Our hacker did some research on the Brotherhood. Only places they don’t have some sort of presence, other than Antarctica, are Ola Serin and Ola Tarin, the elven nations.

GreenGirl: So, what do the knife-ears know that they aren’t sharing?

Chill: As a ‘knife-ear’, perhaps I shouldn’t share, then?

GreenGirl: Sorry, slipped out. Took the Prejudiced quality, since it looked like free points. Been screwing with me in game.

Scholar: Might want to schedule a talk with the therapists, hmm?

Chill: You’ll get used to filtering things, in time. Anyways, I can’t speak as much for Ola Tarin, but before the revolution in Ola Serin, the bigwigs were known or suspected to be big magic types.

RedFox: So, this Brotherhood might have some magic juju?

Scholar: Could be. And a team going in light wouldn’t have gear to take on, say, some bound spirits.

Wolfgirl: So, how do you prep for spirits and not bring out the heavy weapons?

Chill: First thing is to have a mage, or an adept who can do magic damage somehow, even if only with a weapon focus. After that? Best common ammo to use on spirits is the Stick-n-Shock stuff. Does the same damage whether you’re using a holdout or an assault rifle, but the ‘-half’ AP applies to a spirit’s Immunity to Normal Weapons ability. If you can’t bring heavier guns with the really good ammo, like the APDS? That’s your best bet.

Spirit: How’d you figure that out?

Chill: Lots of deaths in the beta.

Anonymous2: Yeah, spirits were always a beast in the beta. If this group likes to keep them around, that’ll be a problem.

DoReMi: But what are they doing to the people they ‘help’?

Inquisitor: Are you sure you want to know the answer to that, given what DaddyIssues’s cousin witnessed?