Cyberpunk RED Easy Mode - Play Report

A trio of edgerunners drove their stolen van away from their latest act of super-crime, traveling at a speed slow enough not to be pulled over, but fast enough not to be immediately suspicious for obeying the speed limit. In the car:

• Mover the Solo
• Redtail the Medic
• Torch the Tech

They had just dropped off the goods from their latest heist and were on the way to pick up their payout from the fixer. Said fixer, name of Lazlo, gave the Solo a call on his disposal burner phone - a violation of protocol that ran against the very purpose of a burner phone. The Solo, buffoon that he was, answered the call. Lazlo told him that the location of the pickup had changed - they'd be picking up their payout in the industrial side of Heywood. The group immediately suspected a double-cross, but wanted the money more than they wanted to spend the night in complete safety.

 

Large sections of the industrial district were still "under construction", caught between Night City's successive waves of deindustrialization and reclamation as the real estate keiretsu waited out a more favorable economic climate to rebuild. The pickup was set for an alleyway in the shadow of a skeletal building, whose rebar was laid so long ago it was already starting to rust. The group parked the van a block away and approached on foot. Mover peered into the alley with his cybernetic eye and spotted several armed figures waiting in ambush, one of whom wore a Night City Police badge under a hoodie. He casually strolled around the block and set up behind them without attracting their attention.

Redtail and Torch pretended they hadn't noticed anything amiss, and went down the alley to collect their paycheck. One of the goons came down the alley in response, clad in a hoodie and carrying a briefcase cuffed to his wrist. He stopped and fussed over the key, unlocking it and inadvertently dropping it on the ground after about half a minute of fiddling.

Torch took the case. Two more plainclothes cops stepped into the alley, blocking his egress.

"He's got a gun!" one of them shouted.

 

The NCPD squad drew their sidearms. Mover surprised the three bulls on his end of the alley, brandishing his rifle and telling them to toss their guns. They didn't ditch their weapons, but the staredown rattled them enough that he easily seized the initiative and shot one of them.

The vice squad fired back, forcing Mover behind cover and allowing them to advance on his position. Redtail and Torch ran down the other end of the alley, firing their weapons. Torch let fly with his pistol and battered his way out with the briefcase. Redtail was a surgeon with the shotgun, firing disabling shot after disabling shot and sending everyone in his path tumbling to the ground - but taking a bullet to the back for his trouble. 

 

Mover ran down the street, dodging behind cars and avoiding the cops' hail of pistol fire. Torch made it to the car and pulled around the block. Redtail threatened to execute one of the downed officers, buying everyone time to get in the vehicle and escape.

 

On the road, Redtail tended his own internal injuries while Torch examined the bills. They were fake, but at least there were no tracking devices or dye packs to contend with. Annoyed, Mover gave his fixer one last call. It went to voicemail and Mover left a sarcastic message saying that the kill team Lazlo sent had failed. Lazlo picked up halfway through. He was locked in a building adjacent to the alley where the firefight took place, and he needed help. Wary of a second ambush, the team turned the van around and went back to the scene of the crime.

There were no cop cars or crime scene investigators at the site of the shooting - the cops were running a vigilante operation off the books and didn't call it in. The abandoned building nearby was locked but easy for Torch to break into. Lazlo was tied to a chair, his mechanical hand was severed and all the fingers on his living hand were broken. Redtail repaired his ruined hand and Lazlo explained that he had been set up by one of the doctor's old girlfriends, who now had a grudge against the team. He had been forced to call them at gunpoint and the corrupt cops had taken the 10k he owed the mercenaries. He had a good idea of where it might be - a warehouse at the Port of Night City.

 

Mover surveyed the perimeter of the port district. The facility was guarded by port authority security guards, and within that perimeter the individual warehouses were also guarded by private security hired by the owners. It was easy to sneak past the perimeter fence, but the facility where the loot was held (another warehouse) was a tougher nut to crack. The team wasn't interested in another gunfight with an even larger force than the last one, this time operating in an official capacity with the prospect of reinforcements. Mover climbed up a stack of containers and jumped onto the unguarded roof, then let down a cable so the others could climb up. Torch unlocked the roof access so they could get inside.

 

Paul Chadeisson

 

Inside the warehouse, a catwalk looked down on a storage space, where guards patrolled outside an office holding a safe. Torch dropped onto the ground floor and sneaked over to the safe while Redtail provided overwatch and relayed the movements of the guards into his earpiece. He had no trouble getting into the office, cracking the safe and shoveling the 10k into his duffel.

It was easy for Redtail and Mover to escape by climbing onto the roof, but Torch was stuck on the ground floor. He tried to sneak out through the front door but knocked over a stack of boxes, making too much noise for comfort. Mover took his shotgun off safe and hurled it as far as he could with his bionic arm, producing a gunshot when it hit the ground several stacks of containers away. That got the guards' attention and masked the sound of Torch exfiltrating.

 

At cost of being shot a few times, the team was ten thousand Eurodollars richer. The bent cops put a thousand dollar bounty each on Mover and Torch, and a five thousand dollar bounty on Redtail - a badge of honor for the grievous organic damage he inflicted on the would-be bushwhackers.