PinkCat: Running in the Shade “Jailbreaker” (A different sort of SR campaign report)
28 March, 2021
To understand what is going on here, you had best read the first PinkCat: Running in the Shade post, but short summary, this is a campaign report for our Shadowrun campaign set in NorCal through the filter of a cartoon made by one of the team members.
Episode Forty Seven: Jailbreaker
Guest Starring: Clawz, DoubleUp, Gimmick and Tora.
Pink and the crew are asked to help some local families of some of the poorer students, they comms keep getting cut off by greedy corporation (“GreedLink, it is all about the money.”) and their commlinks stop working. They need them for school so . . . Time to jailbreak some comlinks! Includes a PSA about how comlinks work, contracts and jailbreaking comlinks. The team has to work out how to break the phones free from GreedLink, which involves sneakinginto one of their branch offices and disconnecting the comlinks . . . and then finding a fair service (“Connect Coop”). A big party with food follow now that everyone has working comlinks again.
What really happened:
We are hired by our friends in the orkish vehicle gang to “acquire” access to diagnostics machine or decryption key or both to allow MFH (Mack-Freightliner-Heil) vehicles and engines to be analyzed and repaired.
PinkCat quickly determines that hacking for the decryption key will not be successful (too much matrix security) so we start scouting for mechanics using authorized MFH diagnostic. We find three possible targets and start analyzing weaknesses and opportunities for them all.
We finally settle on one that is protected by Automated Defense, a regional security company specializing in drone and electronic defenses. Usual scouting and analysis of their defenses follows. It is a tricky situation as the diagnostic machinery is large and heavy, design to be semi-mobile within a shop but not easily portable.
So, we acquire a cargo trailer, a troll to help with the heavy lifting and decide that our best bet is to hit the place late at night. The security is trickier than we had hope with more drones than expected leading to a brief firefight in which the team gets very lucky and rapidly disables the dangerous drones. We grab and load the diagnostics machine quickly and not as well as we should have but luckily we are not chased.
We turn the machine over to our friend, get paid and fade into the night.
Notes: Still two games behind but I will try and get caught up. Locking down the electronics of vehicles so that only approved people can diagnose and repair them is an actual thing.
Previous Episode 46 “Haul Sixteen Tons”. Next Episode: 48 “?”
Photos: Upper: stolen from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and used without permission. Lower: stolen from Peach State Truck Centers and edited, used without permission.
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