A little adventure (Part 1)

INTRODUCTION
Players get a notification from Edgerunners Inc., someone needs a group of edgerunners to check for the welfare of a lost friend. The contact is from Japan, and while he will hide his identity he will pose as Totoro (with according avatar).

Edgerunners Inc is a good way to incorporate adventures into a game. They can be exchanged rather easily to conform existing campaigns NPCs, and they are a never ending source of missions for the players. So you should feel free to change them if you like.

George "Jaws" Fredderick

Totoro has a friend named George "Jaws" Fredderick who have been missed for a few weeks now.

Jaws was a netrunner from nightcity, he was into something big. Totoro doesn't know if he is alive, hidden or flatlined and frozen in a life support system. Edgerunners should go to the last known apartment, investigate and report to the contractor (Totoro).

It's a simple go and spot mission so the reward is low, 1000 eb. If Jaws has been killed, Totoro will post a new revenge mission for a greater reward.

CHAPTER 1 - MEETING JAWS
Getting to Jaws apartment could be a problem bi itself. Jaws was a resident in Little Italy (A1 in map), the building is the territory of Marchelo's boys a little gang dealing with protection rackets, drugs and muscle bikes ... they inhabit between Mob buildings and under they law. Jaws have done some jobs for them so they don't touch his dwelling.

Average member:
INT 5, REF 6, TECH 4, COOL 6, ATTR 6, MA 6, BODY 6, LUCK 6, EMP 5
SKILLS: Awareness 4, Melee weapons 6, Handgun 5, Brawling 6, Intimidate 7, Human perception 5, Persuasion 7, Dodge 5, Stealth 7, Streetwise 5
CYBERWARE: Optishields (ChrBk1, pg31) are common, and other usually low-level modifications, ciberaudio, etc.

They roam on that area and don't let anybody who they don't know to enter the building. There area 2d10 members at any hour of the day. Player's can get violent or try a more stealthy option.

For example they could go to the surrounding buildings and try to jump to the top (if they can jump the gap). Or maybe climb one of the walls on a side street.

The building were Jaw is is the nº 26, it's an empty building waiting for it's proprietary to decide if he want's to build an hotel (with gangs messing with his attempts). Meanwhile it's occupied with the gangs and other nice guys.

The nº 27 houses a series of upscale condominiums. Many upper-level mobsters live here, with the occasional well-to-do outsider thrown in for cover.

The right building, nº 24, it's Balboa Aeronautics. This is nominally a designer and manufacturer of aircraft, but the premises also serve as offices for many illicit Mob enterprises. Most Mob netrunners use Balboa's back room as base of operations.

Jaws was not with the mob so he didn't use those installations. The back building, nº 20, is Tamalpias Crimson Winery a business used by Mob accountants to launder illicit funds. In addition, the winery actually ferments grapes and markets an annual vintage.

Player's should be wary about the Mob goons. They are not particularly dangerous, but making enemies with them isn't a casual affair. Someone with good persuasion and social skills could convince them to access to the top of one of those buildings (dif. 20).

The door on the nº26 roof is closed (dif. 20).

Also, they could provoke distractions on the street and sneak in while they are not watching. This is a stealth check opposed to their awareness roll.

Jaw door is closed with an electric lock with a pad. It's quite difficult to bypass (Dif. 25), and doing so can activate alarms on the building alerting everybody. Breaking the door will cause the alarms to jump too. But the walls between condos aren't worth a shit, so player's could sneak to a side door and break the wall (Strength Feat Dif. 15 ... or SP 2, SDP 20).

Climbing down the wall to enter from the window is a Dif. 17 test. The window is flimsy and can be broken quite easily.

Once inside the air is stale and dust covers everything, although there isn't much to cover. Jaws is sitting on his couch, head hanging inert and with his corpse dried. His interface plugs have signs of being burned and his terminal has a blinking light of an unread message waiting.

The life support seems to have failed, unsurprisingly as it is a cheap replica.

The message is a Watchdog program alerting on an attempt to access a remote Datafortress. This is the only thing in the terminal, all programs have been erased by outside forces and even the terminal is half fried by anti-system programs.

There are a bunch of chips scattered on a table nearby full of documents, reports and forms. The information in them is thick and require long hours of work to understand what they mean.

Contacting Totoro about the fate of Jaws grants them the reward and the next mission.

The files are about brainwashing technology of an undisclosed corporation, there seems to be something odd about them. Someone who has read the files and make a programming dif. 25 check can understand the technology is oriented to some kind of human digital minds.