Bloodline

 is a mission in Shadowrun: Dragonfall.

Synopsis
Aztechnology. A giant in the worlds of technological and magical research. One of the most powerful - and feared - corporations on the planet. There are very few places in this world that the tendrils of Aztechnology cannot reach.

Germany is no exception. The black glass edifice of an Azzie pyramid dominates the courtyard of the Zitadelle Spandau. And countless other, more innocuous facilities can be found all over Berlin.

The lab that they maintain in the Jewahl District is one of these. According to your client, the project that the Azzies are working on here is dangerous.

So dangerous that she's paying you to bring the entire building down.

Preparations

 * Bring at least one good decker.
 * If you want to do this with the absolute minimum combat, you'll need Etiquette:Security, Charisma 6, and Body 6 (or be an Adept; see below).
 * You can also get by with Etiquette:Security OR Charisma 4 if you bring Blitz with you.

Walkthrough

 * If at any point of the mission you enter combat, the KE threat response team will be deployed and you'll be racing against the 20 turn counter. If they arrive, you're in a world of pain.

Outside

 * Welcome to the run where you do something really stupid, like tugging on the tail of a feathered serpent. Nobody said it's easy being a shadowrunner.
 * Pick up the Schockwellenreiter package from the information stand nearby to trigger the first optional objective.
 * If you're on the Lodge's payroll, Luca Duerr will call and ask you to deliver a message.
 * If you enjoy war, you can invade the building through the front door. But you probably won't make it down to the generators in time before the KE team shows up.
 * Ignore the Azzie team at the entrance and continue past. To the north, around the back of the building, you'll find an LTG tech working away at the power system. With Decking 4 (or with Blitz in your party), you can offer to help her with the system. Then use Charisma 5, followed by a ¥300 bribe (or ¥100 with Charisma 6) to convince her to leave. Or use Strength 6 to intimidate her (she values her kneecaps). Peacefully getting rid of her is worth 1 karma - and with Decking 4, you can easily open the door and enter the building, though if you do not get rid of her before causing a power outage, a security guard will come out and start accusing the worker of sabotage. They will also make your entry harder.


 * If you turn south instead of north, you find a closed soykaf shop, followed by the proprietors Heimerich and Mira. Talking to them will unlock an optional objective: finding Danni. They give you a keycard that opens a nearby hatch.

Utility tunnel

 * You find Danni at the end of the short tunnel, cornered by a pair of Azzie killbots. When you save her (probably from vacationing in a hospital after the Azzies break every bone in her body), you get 1 karma.
 * Eiger or Blitz will point out that you can use the power tap to your advantage, by creating a power spike to knock out the power supply temporarily and open the way into the building. Danni will object, but if you can't get past the LTG tech, it's your way in. Doing this also makes the invasion easier by knocking the Charisma checks down; see below.
 * If you do overload the tap, you will cause Azzies to track Danni, Heimerich, and Mira down - for questioning. If Blitz is in your team, he will offer to cover their tracks to save the kids. This unlocks a new optional objective to modify the Azzie facility operations logs.
 * Alternatively, with Charisma 5 or Etiquette: Street, Heimerich will give you this objective as you exit.

Inside

 * Welcome to the inside of the pyramid. Three of the doors surrounding you are locked. The fourth one leads deeper into the compound - and if you walk into it willy-nilly, you'll trigger an alarm and the Knight Errant will deploy their response team. So don't do that. There's a jack-in point on the north door. Enter it and face three IC in the central area. After you wipe them out, you can access elevator controls, secure doors, and cameras. Jackpot!
 * The room next to the jack-in terminal contains a terminal that you can hack with Decking 4 to obtain paydata: DNA "donor" list.
 * The locked room near the entrance contains a terminal with some ominous foreshadowing. Gags, restraint, and HCl. Real party.
 * In order to penetrate deeper into the facility, you need to watch out for patrols, using the cameras. Time your movements to stay away from guards. The one in the center moves in a circular pattern around the room. The one in the lobby circulates between the corridor and the lobby.
 * Sneak into the locker room to the east and dress up as Knight Errant. You'll need Etiquette:Security to convince the guards that you're actually KE. Alternatively, if you turned the power off, Charisma 4 will do it. As a last resort, Charisma 6 will always work.
 * Cross the lobby to the north to find the Azzie executive to finish the Lodge's bonus objective. Guess you scared the poor man out of his wits.
 * Access the elevator once you're done fooling around.

Laboratory

 * Welcome to where you really start yanking the Azzie tail. Open the door and you'll be immediately faced by an Aztech security team. Presuming you picked up the KE uniforms, you can pose as a relief patrol using the same skills you did upstairs. The patrol team leaves, which means they won't attack you once you confront the mage below.
 * Pass the terminal and go through the door to the south. If the power was out, it comes back on. You'll run into another pair of Azzie guards, watching the lab door; the same skills will get you through this pair as well. Continue south and jack-in.
 * The first area has one Sentry IC, and three regular whites. Once you dispatch them, you can unlock the blast door that leads to the lab.
 * Beyond that node, there are two portals. The south one gives you access to the security cameras. The north one leads to the facility operations records node, which is where you can hack the operations logs to cover the tracks for the coffeeshop crew and their power tap. Both sides are protected by a pair of IC programs.
 * Open the laboratory blast door. If you didn't encounter the second set of guards outside, you will now.
 * The biometric door can be opened with your voiceprint. Open it and you'll meet the Azzie blood mage. He will draw his own blood and prepare to interrogate you magically. You have a handful of options. Any of the options that involve starting a fight will provoke the 20-round KE response timer, but that should be plenty of time if you're careful.
 * With Quickness 6 you can get the drop on him immediately. Your team acts first in the first combat round.
 * If you have a Cybereye, you can blind him, also allowing your team to act first.
 * You have a couple options to attack him, but the mages will act first.
 * You can also allow him to torture you to figure out the truth.
 * To resist his spell, you need Body 6, or you must be an Adept and have either Magic Resistance or Pain Resistance.
 * Then you need either Charisma 4 to convince him (or Willpower 4 if you still want to attack him by surprise).
 * If you succeed, you get to wander the lab freely. If you fail to resist the spell, he attacks.
 * If you are compromised, any patrols that you bypassed that didn't leave will start flooding into the lab. Get Blitz into the Matrix as soon as possible so you don't lose time. (He's not a great shot anyway.) You will also have to (eventually) fight the two guards back by the generator controls.
 * Talk to the man in the cage, the test subject, to realize that Bloodline is a huge cloning project, supplying vat-grown humans for blood magic experiments. Freeing the subjects is worth 3 karma.

Decisions

 * If you don't care about the clones or Schockwellenreiter, go straight for the generators, and jump to the next section.
 * If you do care, or want the Schockwellenreiter to be happy, jack into the main terminal (standard security sweep, you say?).
 * There are three gates. The one on the right contains the controls for the east cell door, the one on the left to the western one. The one in the center leads to the north cell door node and to another area where you can find Bloodline terminal access node. If you open the cell doors or unlock the Bloodline project terminal, eventually you'll trigger the alarm. To give yourself as much time as possible, consider killing ALL ICs first before unlocking the Bloodline project terminal, then opening all 3 cell doors.
 * Once you unlock the Bloodline project terminal, you can access it in meatspace and decrypt the language with Etiquette:Academic or Intelligence 6 - otherwise, you copy it for later analysis, fulfilling the Schockwellenreiter mission objective.

Exiting the Facility

 * To open the back door, you need a decker. Jack in, take out the two white IC, and open it; the whole thing should only take you two or three turns. Note: It is recommended that you open the back door before attempting to open the cell doors or to gain access to the Bloodline project terminal.
 * Once you've opened the back door, log into the generator console. If you somehow haven't started a fight yet, the guard at the generator can be pacified with the same skills (Etiquette:Security) as before. You'll need to disable the safety overrides (Paul gave you the password XOLOTL on the way in) and then overload the generators.
 * You then have seven turns to exit the building through the back door. However, the alarm WILL be triggered. It takes about 2 turns to run to the back door without spending AP on other actions.
 * If you get out of the facility before it blows, congratulations. You just bruised the nose of the feathered serpent. Hope you feel good about yourself, 'cause they don't. Thankfully, the manner of your escape guarantees they won't be able to track you using blood magic.

Aftermath

 * Log into your mission computer to claim your final reward, which should put you over the line on the money you owe Alice. (On the off-chance that there's any money above the 50k you need, you'll receive it directly afterwards.) You get 12 karma, find out what happened to Fraü Muller, and personally collect 6000¥.


 * If you pressured the exec for the Lodge, meet up with Luca in Cafe Czeve and he will reward you with 1000¥. If you have also completed tasks for the Lodge in False Flag and MKVI (at least 2 out of the 3), look out for a package in the safehouse...


 * If you deciphered the Bloodline data, you now have a difficult choice to make. The Schockwellenreiter would like to see it, but Paul will tell you that the whole point of this run was to destroy that data forever. He also suggests you go talk to Aljernon if you want more information about it. In fact, Aljernon will also tell you to delete it. Spooky.
 * If you decide to give it to the Schock, they reward you with 2 karma and 500¥. As with the Lodge, if this is the last objective for this group they will give you an additional reward - in this case, a free bioware upgrade.
 * If you decide to delete it, there's an option on the mission computer to do so. You get 1 karma for dealing with the data this way.
 * You can also post it as if it were Paydata on Shadowlands.