The Drunk One

## Description

“so they start in new york and they get away from the cops n meet edan at that bar but then it turns into a hideout and mr sour is there and then the roof opens and turns into a spaceship or something and they fly to LONDON which dave briefly forgets but then there’s this mad mission impossible style break in to get into the matrix and then they have to be all ocean’s eleven about gettin some stuff outta there and i think they’re still in there when it ends it was real great cant wait for the next one” – Benny Davis

## Synopsis

The Dragon Friends meet up with Baston at the Glam Clam, which is revealed to actually be a holographic projection covering a safehouse operated by the Horizon corporation. Mr. Sour contacts them holographically and Bobby Pancakes reports to him that Johnny Playstation has been taken to Freeside. Mr. Sour declares this is a disaster and also that Philge has now been associated with an apparent terrorist attack at the Guggenheim. In order to get to Freeside, the Dragon Friends would need to be added to a database which is kept on an airlocked server in the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaftsbank building in London, which is heavily secured by Renraku. The only way to access the server in order to hack the database is to to physically enter the node inside the building. Mr. Sour offers to transport them to London and gives each of them some equipment to take on the heist:

* Bobby Pancakes gets a red, shiny, Microline Kaneda 650 motorbike with mounted beanbag launchers and invisibility feature.
* Baston gets (back) the sword of Sergei Von Zarovich which was found with his body in the alley.
* Philge gets a third-generation Matrix-accessing Shiawase Cyber 5 Deck (although she actually wanted a gun)
* Freezo gets a replacement Colt .45.

The Dragon Friends abseil onto the ceiling of the ZOG bank building, where Baston shaves Sally Gunbear in an attempt to allow her to blend in better and Bobson shows Philge how to use the cyberdeck to access the Matrix - and she discovers she has a natural talent for hacking, which she uses to attempt to take control of the building's security and open a ventilation shaft for the other Friends to enter (with Bobby taking his motorbike down the shaft with him). They enter the top floor archives, with the database they need to reach being in the sub-basement; Philge hacks an elevator to take them down to the public lobby - the lowest they can reach without special clearance - where Bobby pretends to offer his motorbike as a raffle prize to a random employee, asking employees to allow their IDs to be scanned in order to enter.

Dichael Carmichael, a Renraku Vice-President from Somerset, approaches to enter the raffle, and Bobby tries to convince him that he only needs to apply his ID to the sub-basement security scanner in order to unlock the motorbike. He quickly becomes suspicious, but once he is inside the elevator, Freezo forces him at gunpoint to unlock the lower floors. Meanwhile, Philge is attached by LAICEU, an ICE system, but is able to temporarily neutralize it by pretending to be its superior, and command it to open the blast shields protecting the database CPU. Finding two gun turrets protecting the CPU enclosure, Baston attempts to fly-kick one of them but misses. Sally shoots one of them with a haywire dart, while Bobby charges the second turret with his electric baton on his motorbike using Dichael as a human shield, destroying the turret and killing Dichael. Sally is then able to insert the Dataspike into the CPU and take remote control of the database.

## People

### Dragon Friends

* Philge
* Freezo
* Bobby Pancakes
* Baston

### Non-Player Characters (NPCs)

* Sally Gunbear
* Mr. Sour
* Bobson Dugnutt
* Dichael Carmichael

### Bestiary

* Gunbear
* Hoverdog, a dog with its legs cut off offered as a crooked raffle prize
* LAICEU, the Limited AI Countermeasure Extrusion Unit
* Terence and Clive, two AI controlled gun turrets

## Places

* New York City (Shadowrun)
* London (Shadowrun)

## Themes, tropes and running jokes

* As Dave mentions, the motorbike being named *Kaneda* is a reference to the biker character Shotaro Kaneda from *Akira*. (He was in turn named after the protagonist of the 1956 manga *Tetsujin 28-go,* the manga that introduced the humanoid mecha.)
* Two Guards, except it's two AI driven gun turrets named Terrence and Clive.
* Kung Fu Baston

## Quotes

* "Look. There is one way to do this, and it could kill you, but to be honest I do not - how you say - care." -- Mr. Sour
* "What do you get the man who has a gun? Another gun! So he like big cowboy man." -- Mr. Sour
* "Wait a minute! I don't think I'm even getting a free motorbike!" -- Dichael Carmichael
* "Tell me mum I died! Tell her I'm dead, because that's important for her to know." — the last words of Dichael Carmichael
* "That is the tenth innocent bystander you've killed this adventure!" — Dave

## Table Talk

* God/Dave calls the UK "these united kingdoms". (Although historically, he's not wrong..)
* The podcast episode closes with an electronic remix of Johnny Playstation's hit Girlfriends, by GUNF.