Completed Jobs

Into the Plastic Jungles

Prompt

Mama Palazzo needs some well-armed people to escort her daughter on a search and rescue mission for one of Mama's sons, who hasn't come back from a trip to gather a dual-natured fungus from along the banks of the Snoqualmie river. The area has become increasingly depopulated of metahumans over the last few years, due to a growing number of disappearances and the exodus of those scared away. However, because of the value of the flower to the trade Mama carries on with the outside world, her son had been making monthly trips to gather the fungus, without serious incident until now. Mama has insisted that her daughter have an armed escort if she's going to go after her brother.

A good reputation with Mama is worth free low-quality medical service for the purposes of overcoming injuries and access to any information she might be able to gather in the vicinity of the jungles. In addition, if the runners can retrieve the fungus, Mama will allow the runners to have the fungus rather than trade it. The fungus is worth a tier 1 cash parcel for each runner if traded for money instead of food and other basic supplies. Alternatively, Mama can make a spray from the fungus for the runners. The spray, if applied to someone, deposits dual-natured spores in their lungs. This would make the target trivial to track in astral space (as they would appear as a disembodied pair of lungs). In addition, the spores die if the target passes through an astral barrier, releasing a toxin that causes lethal bleeding in the lungs. An infestation of the spores cause a cough after a few days that would likely prompt medical attention.

Conclusion

Mama's son Rich was taken captive by a group of wendigo engineers and their cannibal horde, aided by a small biomedical firm, Ace Biologics. The wendigo were running the water plant for the dome complex, with Ace supplying the group and using the aerosolization of the vapor distributors to test behavior modification drugs on the inhabitants of the Jungle. The runners killed the wendigos and their horde, and with the cooperation of Green 4800 – after convincing them not to destroy the jungle infrastructure – eliminated the next delivery run by Ace, giving the runners time to set up their own operation in the water plant.

The runners blackmailed Ace using trid recording proving their involvement, which they have used to fund the first month of continuing operations for the plant, at a cost of a tier 2 parcel each. They've received the spray of the dual-natured fungus, as well as a few hundred credits, sufficient for a tier 1 cash parcel for the group.