Shadowrun Shaken

DOWN THESE DARK STREETS… Most folks see Puyallup as the worst Seattle’s got to offer; a tangled mess of metahumanity and greet, poverty and ghettoes, vice and corruption, where the crime is more organized than the government. They call it a Barrens, an armpit, a cesspool. Jimmy Kincaid, though, calls it home. Walking the line between shadows and the desperate light, semi-legit like only a Puyallup brat and former cop can be, he insists Puyallup has a heart and a soul, that it’s a place of life, magic, and starving hope. A former combat mage, now as burnt out as his neighborhood, he does what he can to police the worst excesses of the crime-riddled city he loves. In the darkness of the Seattle Sprawl, what’s one more murder? To Kincaid, it’s everything. He’s got a dead mentor, a hermetic group in need, and a mysterious file that might have been worth killing for. To unlock the data and get a little justice, he’ll face the worst the Sprawl has to offer, wading through blood, darkness, and a murderous web of lies. It’s a good thing he’s got friends—in high and low places…

Jimmy Kincaid is an elven p.i., damaged mage, and friend to the downtrodden. He roams the streets of 2074 Seattle, dispensing justice the only way he knows howfast and direct. But when a mage contacts him to let him know hie magical mentor has diedand left him a datachipKincaid thinks his old professor was simply taking care of some minor unfinished business. But the professor hires Kincaid to find out who killed his mentor, an old enemy from Kincaid's past pops up as the prime suspectthe same vampire that stripped him of his magic. Now Jimmy's got two reasons to tie up this loose endpermanently. But the bloodsucker's involvement goes deeper than Kincaid first realizes, and soon he's running for his life while trying to figure out exactly what his old mentor was up toand why so many will kill to get their claws on it.

DARKNESS EVERYWHERE... The Sixth World is a dangerous place, with deadly hazards lurking around every corner. Everywhere shadowrunners go, from the top of the world to the deepest, darkest Sprawl neighborhood, someone’s always looking to make their rep by taking you down. World of Shadows is the second anthology of original Shadowrun short stories, each one showcasing some of the most far-flung, treacherous locations around the world. From a scientific mission gone wrong in the snowy wilds of Russia to an AR nightclub in Morocco sheltering runners on the lam to a recovering runner drawn into a deadly web of intrigue in the darkest alleys of Hong Kong, these eighteen original short stories explore exotic settings far off the beaten path. Featuring stories by Michael A. Stackpole, Mel Odom, Jean Rabe, Aaron Rosenberg, Phaedra Weldon, Annie Bellet, Chris A. Jackson and many others, find out what happens when shadowrunners have to battle not only with the ever-present threat of the corps and Mr. Johnson, but also the dangers of the very land they stand on.

BLOOD RUNS RED... Every day in the Sixth World people die in a thousand different ways. Every day blood is spilled. Every place that rain falls, it washes away some of the red that stains the streets. Eliminating every killer in the Sixth World is as impossible as drying up every raindrop in a storm, but Thomas McAllister doesn’t want to get rid of all of them. Just one. He’s been on this killer’s trail for a while, and he knows he’s getting closer. The only question is if he’ll be able to handle getting as close as he’s about to be, or if his blood will join the stream that regularly flows into the gutters of the sprawl...

A DEADLY QUEST FOR RICHES… A seemingly-harmless photo seen by the wrong person sets off a dangerous treasure hunt for a fortune contained in the opalized fossil skeleton of a dragon in the Australian Outback. On one side, the corporate operators of a ruthless mining company, who’s greedy owner wants the potential billions of nuyen such a find would bring on the black market. On the other side, a loose alliance of shadowrunners, Awakened magic-users, and local tribespeople for whom the site of the fossil, nicknamed the Old Timer, is sacred land, and who will defend it by any means necessary. But when the megacorp ups the stakes by releasing a debilitating nanovirus among the scattered communities around the site, the shadowrunners do what they do best—execute a daring run both in the Matrix and real-time at the mining corp’s headquarters in search of something—anything—to get the corp to stand down. But will they succeed before the corp operators find the Old Timer and steal it away?

WHEN HOME BECOMES A PRISON... Fixer BlotterBabe has been around longer than most people realize. Long enough to have built herself a secure home in a protected park reserve. She greased all the right wheels, paid off all the right people, forged all the correct documents, hid all the tracks of her passing, created the perfect security systems inside and out. She planned for every contingency—except one. The need to escape from her own home. After realizing her sanctuary has been discovered, BlotterBabe brought just the right people to the right place to help her flee from her gilded cage with everything she holds dear—but she is too late. Now she has to escape the underground complex she spent decades building. The enemies are inside the perimeter. They have control of the security systems. Spinrad Global will stop at nothing to keep her a prisoner in her gilded cage. BlotterBabe and her friends must risk everything for her freedom—including their lives.

THE BRIGHTER THE LIGHT… Dirk Montgomery, former Lone Star cop turned shadowrunner, knows the dark byways of Seattle and the city of Cheyenne. He knows when to take chances and when to take cover. But when a megacorporate exec demands payment of an old debt, Dirk finds himself where the familiar rules don't apply anymore. THE DARKER THE SHADOWS… The Kingdom of Hawai'i is a tropical playground...with a sinister underside. Dirk must navigate its treacherous paths as he tries to stay one step ahead of all the factions battling to control the islands: the megacorps, the government, the rebels, and the yakuza. Not to mention dragons, elves, new friends...and old enemies.