#castellankurze

The first:

Mitchell Westmarch was a middle manager for a Finance department in NeoNET’s Seattle HQ branch.  By all rights he was somewhat popular with his team, his boss didn’t mind him, and IT thought he was hilarious because he spent So Much Time looking at strategies and stories about one of the more popular Sixth World MMO’s - Shadowrun Online.

In it he was Royce, the dead-eyed pistolero who had a silver tongue and a one-liner for every situation.  He had the finest vat-grown muscles and brain enhancements, eyes and nose that could see and smell everything, and friends all over the social strata ingame.  

Mitchell went and Got Obsessed. 

The next thing you knew, Mitchell had raided his department’s budget and used a couple contacts over in Marketing/Medical to get a host of vatware and cyberware installed so that he could be his character ingame.  So when he woke up and realized he just dropped a cool quarter mil on Looking Cool, he might’ve panicked a bit.

He talked with a friend of a friend his boss had commented about in passing - a fixer, well known in the region by Those In The Know, about what he could do to make that quarter mil back before the quarterly audit came up.

“Governor” J. LePetamaine had the perfect job for someone with his talents.

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The second:

Not much is known about Decker the Decker, save this:

He’s from Johannesburg

He’s a decker

He can only say three lines.

See, Decker was on a run that went wrong back in Cape Town, and since he was a nasty little hunchback he couldn’t get away.  His brain got fried by psychotropic IC, his personality rewritten, and he was kicked on the next boat to Seattle with nothing but his cyberarm (and the deck contained within).  To date, Decker is only able to say the following:

Decker

I will have the #6 special, please

I believe we have an arrangement

And somehow with being able only to say those three things, he managed to survive a Deep Run into the Foundations of the Matrix in order to find the True Secrets He Was Being Paid To Find.

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The third:

He was a pint-size frontman for KRUSIBYL, the greatest Goblin Metal band in the world.  His music reached millions and was the undeniable voice of the Ork and Troll communities worldwide.  His influence was vast, his resources unlimited, and his bed was frequently filled with a stunning cross-section of metahumanity.

Yet, for all of these things, Flea Knickertwister (born Bertram Charlemagne Morgan, but Flea Knickertwister sounded so much more metal)  was very confused as to why his olfactory sensors were telling him a bespoke genetically-engineered canine was trying to lick him awake, whining as it did so. Flea identified it as a limited-edition Lipwigzer strain, a 41-S to be specific. This was curious, because he was reasonably certain he did not own one.

Flea cracked an eyelid to assess his situation, hands pushing the dog’s snout out of the way.  The CalFree sun was covered in a smoky haze, obscured by the charred remains of a ramshackle stage that had not survived the previous evening.  The gentle sound of waves crashing on the shore reminded him he was on a beach, yet his tour bus was nowhere to be found.  Shattered remnants of amplifiers, speakers, and precision instruments - the finest his money could buy, which was very - were strewn about on the sand. A second plume of smoke was rising from beyond a dune, out of sight.  

This may reveal the location of his tour bus, Flea surmised.  He would have to summon the replacement.  

As he blearily looked for his bandmates, Flea discovered a pile of half-barrel kegs the size of three trolls and a pile of white powder the size of two orks.  Flea could see the pile move and dust blow into the air in a slow rhythm, like a kettle about to percolate.   This was also curious - a pile that large in Flea’s proximity could only be novacoke from his private stash.  Last night’s gala must have had him feeling excessively generous.    

Despite clearly being surrounded by sand, Flea felt like he was floating on water.  He could feel the forgiving plastic of a float ring gently cradling his small form. It bobbed in a hot tub fashioned from wood of the Sangre del Diablo - one of the originals, not the more-recent Bogota cuttings. His ever-helpful olfactory sensor cheerfully informed him that the spectrographic analysis indicated the 162 gallons or so of liquid he was floating in held hints of juniper, cucumber, a healthy measure of water, lime, and approximately 40% alcohol.  This was further curious, as Flea was reasonably certain the tank he kept in reserve was smaller than 162 gallons. It had also been emptied well before what he could only assume was another sold-out beach concert.  

The tub’s placement on the beach was a minor detail, despite the knowledge that said tub wasn’t meant to be removed from the tour bus.  But, Flea noted, the smoke was rising in the distance, and of all the items that could be saved he was pleased this was the priority.

The most troubling development for him was that he was alone - save for the poodle licking his face from the hot tub’s edge - and that was a fate he would wish only upon his worst enemy.  Even more troubling, he could not find his commlink - and without it, he was utterly bereft of contact with his legions of adoring fans.  His MeFeed wasn’t going to update itself - unless his Social Media Coordinator had it.  In which case, it would.

Feeling about in the ginwater, Flea came up with a lengthy chain of orichalcum links that led over the edge of the pool and into what he could only believe was the voluminous aether.  Pulling on the chain only brought him to the very edge of the tub, disappearing into the oddly-contorted sand. It  reminded him of that pile of novacoke he’d been meaning to investigate in the five-second eternity since he was rudely awakened.

Flea managed to roll off the edge of the float tube (and, coincidentally, the pool itself) and sprawl on the sand in question.  As he did so, it started to shift and rise as a sky-clad form arose from its silicate tomb.  An Ork, thin, yet voluptuous in all the places he enjoyed, looked down on him with a mixture of hangover and concern.  That orichalcum chain led all the way up to a luxurious black Naga-hide choker encrusted with diamonds around her neck. It was designed by masters of leather work and crafted by trained servants of a dragon that Krusibyl played a birthday party for. Schwartzkopf, it turned out, wanted a somber celebration of Dunkelzahn’s hatching in the metahuman style. It was a trifle - the novacoke was more entertaining.  

“There you are!” he said in happiness, looking up at her.  “Suffer DarkBlood BoneRaven, you could’ve given me a terrible scare!”

Suffer, as Flea preferred to call her, knelt down to pick him up in her arms.  She cradled Flea upon her heavenly chest, which had been worth the nuyen to install.  The agent has told Flea that her name was Charlene Hubbart, but who cared about peasant titles anyway?

“I’m sorry I got lost,” she mumbled with reverence, as she was trained.  “Will you forgive me?”

“This time,” Flea said magnanimously.  While he wanted to find his commlink, activating the electric shock program that terminated at her collar wouldn’t be necessary.  This was nice.  

“Where are the oth- No, a more important question. Why is there a Lipwigzer 41-S here affectionately asking for walkies?”

Flea revised the priority of the electroshock program.  Suffer was slipping - she should’ve answered this before he asked.  She had been buried underneath sand, but his benevolence could only be pushed so far.

“Um,” Suffer said while carrying Flea towards the mountain of kegs, “You said you were keeping it until your demands were met.”

“Demands?” he asked, frowning.  “What demands were - oh, sirens.  Bother.”

The archives of his cybereye footage were already coming up as the first patrol buggy roared into view.  Flea was certain that they would handle things, and if they wouldn’t then Suffer would.  After all, she had a MBA from Harvard and her sister was a leading geneticist in her field.  He had more important things to occupy his time, such as the passing fancy of this Lipwigzer’s abduction.