Session 3 — Blood Ramen

Played Saturday, October 3, 2026.

The final act of the Sato job. Session 1 (Legwork), Session 2 (Action, through Get Paid), and this session together make up one mission — Mission 2, “Ghost Route.” At the end of Session 2 the crew collected their pay, handed Mara Sato over to her mother, and promised to come back for her. This session keeps that promise. The GM ran it as a “mini mission” (“Mission 2A”) with no legwork phase and an action clock already at 1800, but it is the back half of the same job, not a new contract. Nobody is paying for it.

The table agreed afterward that this was the action payoff the mission had been building toward. Session 2 had been mostly talk.

Summary

The session picks up the moment the handoff ends. The crew tails Iona Glass’s convoy out of the REIS Six garage, argues about how closely to follow, and loses sight of it behind an executive-access barrier. Then they lose it again when Bullfrog stops navigating to take a call. The call is from Jade Krasny of VYRAL’s Research Department, the contact Bullfrog secretly worked for in Session 1. She offers him 300 credits to report Mara Sato’s location within 24 hours. He accepts in the middle of the rescue and doesn’t tell the crew what the job is.

Speckz Arioso picks up the trail on foot and tracks Iona and Mara to a high-end ramen shop at Cross and Angle. The crew goes in the back. Speckz takes down the rear guards quietly with gel rounds, and that is the last quiet thing that happens. Muktar walks through the dining room in plain view. Eight Arms to Hold You tears through Iona’s security with its autocannon. A Cadillac smashes through the front window. Iona turns out to be heavily cybernetic, fast, strong and leaking blue fluid, and she nearly pulls her daughter’s arms out of their sockets rather than let go.

Mara gets out the back and into Van Buren, where Bullfrog is hiding. The crew backs out past an injured, furious Iona as police sirens close in. Bullfrog runs the arcology keys to open every barrier on the way out, and Neon Drift drives them out of the arcology to an abandoned Van Life rest stop. Mara is free. Muktar is badly hurt. Iona knows exactly who did it. And Bullfrog now knows exactly where Mara is, with a VYRAL deadline still running.

Key Events

The Tail

The convoy leaves the garage: four black Cadillacs and the black van with Mara in it. Neon peels out after them before anyone has agreed on a plan. Speckz, whose pay is already in hand, asks the obvious question: “We got paid, guys. Do we have to do this?” Muktar’s answer catches the split in the crew: “We do have to do this. Or I have to do this. We do not have to do this.”

The convoy passes a barrier that drops shut behind it. The GM’s description: “an actual barrier meant to keep riffraff like you out,” between a rougher part of the arcology and a nicer one. Bullfrog: “Oh my God, it’s a cyber gated community.” Bullfrog opens it with the arcology keys. Neon points out that opening a gate they aren’t supposed to open is a red flag in itself.

The tailing argument runs for a while:

• Neon wants to stay close. Once the van is out of sight, there’s no guarantee Mara is still in it. “In my experience the flashier van wins the race. Paint it red, it goes faster.”
• Muktar and Speckz want distance. Muktar uses an arena analogy: an aggressive opponent puts you on guard, and a hidden one doesn’t. Speckz: “I’m a hunter and I would never blatantly follow a person.” They settle on shadowing from a mile or two back and following Bullfrog’s trace.
• Bullfrog spends one of his three console-cowboy holds on the REIS van to track it (the GM ruled that tracking counts as a “control” use). He confirms the van has no hackable interior cameras, and that going deeper risked tipping them off.

The Call

In the middle of the chase, Bullfrog gets a ping from the contact he did “a little work for last time”: “We need your help again.” He turns his full attention to it, which leaves Neon driving blind.

The contact introduces herself as Jade Krasny, of VYRAL’s Research Department. The job is 300 credits to locate a missing courier of theirs named Mara Sato, with 24 hours to do it. “Just provide us her location, we’ll do the rest.” She also promises, “we’ll help get your name out there too.” Bullfrog rolls Get the Job and picks the employer is identifiable, which is how her name comes out. He accepts: “I’m Bullfrog. I’m the best.”

Speckz tells him to hang up on his little friends. Neon calls it “your little internet LARPs.” Bullfrog, from the back: “They’re not LARPs and you’re not my dad.” The crew hears that Bullfrog has taken another job. They don’t hear what it is.

Losing Them

With no directions coming from Bullfrog, Neon throws All Correct out the window. He rolls Act Under Pressure with his Driver bonus (Cool +2, plus +2 from the vehicle) and gets a 9. He has to choose a direction before the drone reaches the van, so he swerves left on instinct (“I feel the heart of the machine pulsing through my body”), climbs out the window and rides on the roof of the moving van.

All Correct catches the van about two miles ahead as it pulls into a standalone parking garage. Two Cadillacs go in with it, and two peel off. Bullfrog’s Assess on the drone’s thermal feed goes badly: the garage is heat-shielded, the door closes, and the signal drops.

Legwork in Everything but Name: Speckz on the Trail

There’s no formal legwork phase in this mission, but this stretch plays like one. The crew parks a few blocks away in a nice mid-rise district: shops on the first four floors of every building, high-rise apartments above. Speckz goes in alone. (He mentions he’s done work in this part of town before.)

• Eye for Detail. Speckz surveils the garage from the top level down, looking through the gaps between floors. That earns him Intel and an Assess, which comes up a 7 for one hold. The van is empty with a warm engine. One Cadillac is parked and one is gone.
• Reveal Knowledge. Speckz says Iona, being a high-end corpo, would have taken her daughter somewhere nice, and spends the Intel to make that true. Joe (Muktar’s player) points out that the move also covers the opposition’s dispositions, so Speckz should learn more than which building they’re in. The GM gives him the layout: a high-end ramen shop with two of Iona’s security standing outside the front door, a couple more inside, two more at the back, and Iona at a table with a dark-haired woman Speckz takes to be Mara.
• Assess hold. Speckz spends his hold on the best way in. There are only two doors and both are guarded, but if things get loud, noise in the back alley is less likely to bring the front guards running than the reverse.

Meanwhile Bullfrog hacks the restaurant’s network and pulls the menu. The seafood ramen includes “spiny lobster” that is almost certainly synth, and the kelp is real. That leads to a long side argument about whether kelp is seafood. Muktar, who has never seen the ocean, thought kelp was grass. The restaurant has one camera, pointed at the register to catch employee theft, and Bullfrog unlocks the back door for the crew.

While they’re setting up, a digital billboard over Muktar’s shoulder changes to a picture of Bullfrog at his computer, in his suit, captioned “Hire the best hacker in Knight City,” with his contact information underneath. VYRAL is already making good on “get your name out there.” Bullfrog: “I’ve got fans. I can’t go anywhere without stuff like this happening. That’s just how good I am.”

Two smaller moments come before the assault:

• Muktar tells Speckz that once Mara is free, he’ll pay Speckz his own share from the job. (“Minus one lobster’s worth,” says the GM.)
• While Bullfrog plays Galaga in the van, Muktar quietly asks Neon whether something is wrong with him. “I care deeply for Mr. Bullfrog and I do worry that something is distracting him.” Neon: “He is a strange kid.”

The Mission: The Ramen Shop

Positions. Speckz hides behind a dumpster near the back door with his silenced holdout pistol. Muktar waits about 150 feet back at the corner of the alley. He left the Rontai behind as too conspicuous and is carrying his automatic shotgun. Neon is beside him with Eight Arms, and All Correct watches the front door. Bullfrog stays in the van.

The back door. Speckz rolls Mix It Up with gel rounds and hits both rear guards twice in the head. They go down unconscious and probably concussed, but alive. Inside, the chef tells Speckz the bathroom is over there. Speckz puts a finger to his lips and shows him the silenced pistol (Play Hardball), and the chef ducks behind the counter without a word. Through the little window in the kitchen door Speckz confirms that it’s Mara, looking like she’s only there because she has to be, and that Iona is lecturing her.

The walk. Muktar can’t be discreet, and says so. He comes in through the kitchen, tells the staff “Bitches leave” (“I always wanted to say that”), and walks through the dining room toward the front door to cut off the guards. He gives Iona and Mara a polite “Ladies” on the way past. Iona turns and sees Speckz: “Shit.” Speckz fires a gel round at her head, but she ducks and it hits the booth. The staff run out the back, and one of them knocks into Speckz on the way.

The front door. The two front guards come in with shotguns pointed at Muktar. “Mara Sato does not wish to be here. I ask that you let her leave.” One of them shoots him. Muktar is offered Act Under Pressure to dodge and declines. He takes the 3-harm blast and rolls the campaign’s first harm move (2d6, −2 for dermal plating), getting a 2. He shoots back (Mix It Up) and kills the guard; the slug goes straight through the body armor under the man’s suit. Muktar starts flipping tables into a barricade. Eight Arms comes in with Neon, swings out its old chain-gun autocannon (5 harm) and tears the second guard in half. The GM: “Blood ramen.”

The reinforcements. Van Buren pulls up at the back door. Two Cadillacs come down the alley right behind it, one pulling in front and slamming its nose into the wall, one ramming it from behind. Four more guards get out. Bullfrog, inside, tries to make himself small, which his oversized suit doesn’t help with. He calls in the REIS van from the garage with his console-cowboy access, which is still a few moves away.

A third Cadillac smashes through the front of the restaurant. Neon and Muktar each Act Under Pressure to dodge, with +1 forward from Muktar’s barricade. Both take a hit. Neon’s armor absorbs his, but Muktar is thrown to the back of the restaurant. He gets up with a crater in his chest leaking black ichor and the dermal plates showing, pulls a shard of ramen bowl out of his head, and asks Speckz what he’s waiting for.

Iona. Speckz grabs Mara and pulls her toward the back. Iona takes hold of Mara’s other wrist and doesn’t let go. She is far stronger than her build should allow. Speckz fires a gel round at her head. She dodges faster than anyone unaugmented could, and the round hits her temple with a thud like metal and bounces off. “Mukhtar. She’s a bot. I need your help.”

Muktar claws at Iona’s arm (Mix It Up, 7–9) and gets her to let go. The arm is cybernetic and leaks a blue fluid. As she pulls back, though, she yanks Mara so hard that Speckz loses his grip and wrenches his shoulder. Mara screams and collapses with both arms hanging limp. Muktar chose an ally takes harm and something of value breaks, and the broken thing is Speckz’s pistol, which jams for the rest of the fight.

Outside, the van. The two guards who were peering into Van Buren head inside. Van Buren’s roof autocannon swings around and its PA announces “Back away from the vehicle or you will be shot.” That’s Neon playing Play Hardball through the van, and he rolls a 14. The two remaining alley guards dive behind pallets and a dumpster. The REIS van arrives, and Bullfrog spends his last hold ramming the Cadillac pinning Van Buren’s front end along the wall. Someone outside screams. Van Buren’s way forward is clear.

Clearing the kitchen. Eight Arms shreds the two men in the front-seat Cadillac. Two more guards come in the back with shotguns. Speckz holsters the jammed gun, pulls a knife and Mixes It Up, throwing both men back into the kitchen to clear a path. “Mara, run to the van.”

Muktar lets go of Iona’s arm and tells her: “Iona Glass, Mara Sato does not wish to see you anymore.” He stands between the two of them. She comes at him with a jiu-jitsu throw. He puts his claw hand over her face, lifts her off the floor and slams her into the wall. She crumples, leaking blue fluid and real blood, and tries to get up.

Mara in the van. Mara stumbles out the back with her arms useless. Bullfrog has the van door open, and his pistol is shaking in his hand. A shotgun round ricochets off the wall behind her, and she dives in. “Thank you. Let’s go.” She tells Bullfrog to start the van. He says he has his permit. Mara: “Great, I don’t care what you have. I don’t have arms right now.” Bullfrog jams the start button on an engine that’s already running and grinds the starter.

Getting out. Speckz takes Neon’s heavy pistol and holds the two downed guards at gunpoint (Play Hardball, 7–9). One of them shoots anyway. Speckz chooses to return fire rather than take cover, kills him, takes the hit, slips on wet noodles and goes down against the wall. Eight Arms kills the other guard in the kitchen (Mix It Up, 7–9). Neon chooses advance the mission clock (Eight Arms is very loud) and take harm, and a ricochet hits him in the back. He helps Muktar up and gives Iona one more piece of parenting advice: “You gotta let that bird fly. You squeeze her too hard, she’s gonna die.”

Iona, from the floor: “You cannot take my daughter from me. She’s my kin.” Muktar: “We are not taking her. We are doing what she asked.” He backs out keeping himself between Iona and the others, and she drags herself up into the booth.

“You’ve made a grave mistake here, Mukhtar. You do not know who you have angered.” “I’m sorry.” “So am I.”

The Escape

The crew piles into Van Buren as police sirens get closer. Bullfrog is in the driver’s seat, confused by the clutch and convinced he’s driving. Neon is on the roof with his locks streaming behind him, actually driving through the link. Bullfrog uses the keys to route them out: “Barriers come down, arms go up, lights turn green at the perfect time and red again behind you.” Police pull up at the front of the restaurant as the van leaves the alley, and nobody follows, though the GM’s “maybe” leaves room for doubt.

Neon heads out of the arcology to an abandoned Van Life rest stop a few miles down the highway. He remembers Van Life keeping supply caches there, enough to keep Mara alive now that she’s on her own.

Mara, Free

“Thank you so much for what you’ve done for me. I appreciate your sacrifice, though I have nothing to give.”

Muktar asks for only one thing: that she let her mother know she’s okay. She says that won’t be any time soon, because any message could tell Iona where she is. Muktar: “She clearly cares about you, even though I suspect she is not a good mom. But she is your mother. You are lucky to have one.” Mara isn’t sure about that. Neon reminds her that “a lot of blood was paid to get that freedom.”

Muktar then asks for something larger. He committed to her freedom because of the choice she made, and others will make the same choice. When they do, he’ll be committed to their freedom too, and he wants to be able to ask for her help. Mara: “I will consider it. I have a lot to think on and a little recovery to do as well. But I will listen. I promise that.”

Muktar wires Speckz his two cred. Neon calls in a contact for this mission: his lobster guy, an ex-Van Life member who quit to live on a boat and knows someone who once saw a lobster. The GM allows it as “a guy who knows a guy” and suggests it might drive the next mission.

Aftermath and Injuries

The GM skips the first-aid scene and treats recovery as a montage for when the game resumes. Everyone except Muktar comes out with injuries that will heal easily. Speckz’s shoulder “is gonna hurt like hell tomorrow.” Neon was hit in the back by a ricochet. Bullfrog is mostly traumatized. Muktar’s harm clock is at roughly 2200–2300 and he needs real treatment. The table settled on an EMT kit or urgent care rather than surgery, since Eight Arms has medical sensors but no supplies. Neon says he’d stock medical gear if they kept playing. The table floated a beach-vacation recovery session for whenever The Sprawl returns.

Rough count of Iona’s security: about six dead (two at the front door, two in the Cadillac that crashed through the front, two in the kitchen), plus the two rear guards Speckz knocked out, two alley guards still behind cover, and whoever got hit when Bullfrog rammed the Cadillac. The restaurant is wrecked.

Standout Quotes

“We do have to do this. Or I have to do this. We do not have to do this.” — Killjoy Keegan (Muktar)

“In my experience the flashier van wins the race. Paint it red, it goes faster.” — regular human faits (Neon Drift)

“Oh my God, it’s a cyber gated community.” — Duskit (Bullfrog)

“I really want to support your little internet LARPs there, son, but we’re on a job.” / “They’re not LARPs and you’re not my dad.” — regular human faits (Neon Drift) and Duskit (Bullfrog)

“I’ve got fans. I can’t go anywhere without stuff like this happening. That’s just how good I am.” — Duskit (Bullfrog), on the billboard

“Last time I took the boy to the shooting range, they didn’t even ask us to leave. I was hoping that he’d get some action here, but I guess he’s safer in the van.” — regular human faits (Neon Drift), to Muktar

“Bitches leave.” — Killjoy Keegan (Muktar), to the kitchen staff. “I always wanted to say that.”

“Blood ramen.” — SiliKen

“There’s a lot more blood falling out of people than I was expecting on this mission.” — regular human faits (Neon Drift)

“Well, I have my permit.” / “Great, I don’t care what you have. I don’t have arms right now.” — Duskit (Bullfrog) and SiliKen (Mara Sato)

“You gotta let that bird fly. You squeeze her too hard, she’s gonna die.” — regular human faits (Neon Drift), to Iona Glass

“You’ve made a grave mistake here, Mukhtar. You do not know who you have angered.” / “I’m sorry.” / “So am I.” — SiliKen (Iona Glass) and Killjoy Keegan (Muktar)

“I had not ended anyone who did not deserve it.” — Killjoy Keegan (Muktar)

“Not a good mom, but she is your mother. You are lucky to have one.” — Killjoy Keegan (Muktar), to Mara Sato

Open Threads

• Bullfrog has a live VYRAL contract to locate Mara Sato. 300 credits, 24 hours, with “twenty hours remaining” at Jade Krasny’s check-in. Bullfrog now knows exactly where Mara is, because he helped put her there. He stalled Krasny (“not ready to share… don’t want to give out anything faulty”) and told the crew only that it was “business stuff.” VYRAL has already paid in advance with the billboard.
• Bullfrog’s Session 1 mystery contact is VYRAL Research. The unidentified client who had him pull an NSMC-encrypted video file in Session 1 is the same “we need your help again” contact: Jade Krasny. That ties his side job to the same corp that commissioned Mara’s theft of the NSMC footage of the crew.
• Iona Glass is now an enemy, and she knows Muktar by name. “You do not know who you have angered.” About six of her security team are dead.
• Iona is far more machine than she looks. Cybernetic arm, metal under the skin of her temple, inhuman speed and strength, blue fluid along with real blood. Whatever she is, it’s beyond ordinary corpo chrome.
• Mara is hiding at a Van Life rest stop, injured (both arms useless after the tug-of-war), with no money and a VYRAL drop she never made. She won’t contact her mother until she can do it untraceably. She has promised to listen if Muktar ever asks for her help freeing someone else.
• The police. The firefight happened in an upscale district of REIS Six. Police reached the front as the van left the back and didn’t appear to follow. “Maybe.”
• The crew’s arcology keys still work, at least some of them. They opened the gated barrier and every barrier on the way out, and Neon already pointed out that the first gate was a red flag.
• Muktar needs medical care. His harm clock is around 2200–2300.
• Neon’s lobster guy. He was declared as a contact at the end of the session, and the GM suggested he could drive the next mission.
• Muktar is worried about Bullfrog. He’s noticed the distraction and asked Neon about it. Neon still connects nothing.

Meta / Errata

• Mission framing. The GM and players called this a “new mini mission” on-mic, and the GM’s opening framed it as Mission 2A. It is recorded here as the conclusion of the Sato mission. Joe (Muktar’s player) said afterward that this was the action phase the mission had lacked. No Get Paid was rolled, since the crew had already been paid at the end of Session 2. No end-of-mission experience or directives were marked on-mic this session. That includes the “when the mission ends” XP the GM held back in Session 2 because the job was being extended.
• Mission clock. It started at 1800 and advanced one segment, to 2100, when Neon took advance the mission clock on a 7–9 Mix It Up for Eight Arms’ noise. Muktar asked whether a mission clock was even running, and the GM confirmed it was. Muktar didn’t pick that option.
• Console-cowboy holds. The GM had posted the hold options in Discord, and tracking the van counted as a “control” use. Bullfrog spent all three of his Session 2 holds this session: one on the track, one on calling the van over, and one on the ram.
• Eye for Detail triggers when you survey a person or place. You mark Intel and roll Assess (Edge).
• Reveal Knowledge. Spend Intel to declare facts about the opposition’s dispositions or the environment. Joe pointed out that “dispositions” means how the enemy is positioned and organized, so it should return more than just a location. The GM allowed Speckz to invent the high-end restaurant outright because he spent Intel on it.
• Who gets to invent details. Joe raised it and the GM agreed: players should freely add detail about their own characters, and about the wider world when the GM invites it or the character has the relevant expertise (Bullfrog on the Matrix, say). The GM wants to encourage more of this. Bullfrog’s player still got to decide the menu.
• Gel rounds deal s-harm (subduing) in place of their listed harm.
• Incoming fire. NPC attacks don’t trigger a roll by default. The GM can offer Act Under Pressure to avoid one, and a player can decline and take the hit. Muktar did exactly that.
• Harm move. The first in the campaign. Reduce incoming harm by armor, fill that many segments on the harm clock, then roll 2d6 + harm suffered, where low is good. That’s the “backwards” part the table complained about. Muktar’s dermal plating subtracts 2 from his harm rolls rather than reducing the harm itself. The VTT needs a custom 2d6 roll formula for it.
• Armor doesn’t wear down in The Sprawl the way it did in Chasing Adventure. The MC can take it away with Use Up Their Resources.
• Second Skin (Driver). It applies to Act Under Pressure when the action actually involves the jacked-in vehicle or drone, like driving. It doesn’t apply by default when Neon is personally diving out of the way. Neon’s position is that being jacked in sharpens his reflexes in general. The question was left open.
• Mix It Up on a 7–9 still achieves your objective. The cost options used this session were advance the mission clock, take harm, an ally takes harm, and something of value breaks. The GM tracks NPC harm privately.
• Wireless range. Neon’s link to Van Buren and Bullfrog’s hacks both run on short-range local wireless, a few hundred feet. Neon parked about 300–400 feet away for that reason. Bullfrog can steer a hacked vehicle, but without a Driver’s precision. Remote control of vehicles and drones is the Driver’s special power.
• Contacts. The table remembered it as one declared contact per mission. Neon had already declared one, and the GM let him have the lobster guy anyway as “a guy who knows a guy.”
• The very first game was a reset. Neon once spent gear on a van-disguise system, and Joe remembered it from the group’s first game (when he played a character called Taco). It doesn’t carry over: “this is a reset.”
• The crew holds the arcology keys. They belong to the crew as a whole, not just Bullfrog. He’s simply the one who used them this session, twice: once on the executive-access barrier and once to clear the escape route. Confirmed after the session.
• GM feedback, given live. Joe suggested the GM ask “what do you do?” before calling for dodge rolls, and the GM started doing so. Afterward the GM said re-reading the MC principles rather than the moves cheat sheet was what helped most.

Player Notes

• The session ran about 3h37m on a Saturday. The GM said it was “ninety-five percent off the cuff,” with nothing planned beyond “they’re leaving, what are you doing?” He also had computer trouble at the start.
• Table retrospective. Everyone enjoyed it. Joe felt the characters executed it poorly, with Muktar walking in and starting the fight. Neon’s player said the crew “lost the plot”: the whole reason for handing Mara over was so Iona wouldn’t know they’d turned on her, “and then we just went in and almost basically murdered Iona and all of her people.” His question was why they didn’t just shoot it out in the garage at the end of Session 2. The GM’s answer was that splitting Iona’s people up meant they weren’t fighting eight or nine at once.
• The Sprawl is going on hiatus. The group is switching to Mythic Bastionland, an OSR hexcrawl Joe will run, using LLM-generated hexes. Characters are rolled randomly, three per player, pick one, and there’s no session zero. The first session is October 17, then every other week. The GM can’t make October 31 (a Sharks game, a soccer tournament and trick-or-treating) and floated the 7th instead. The Sprawl resumes “if and when we pick this up again,” possibly with a beach-vacation recovery session (“Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball”).
• Running jokes: “Spermageddon” (which Neon found on one of Bullfrog’s chips and is afraid to load), Bullfrog’s David Byrne suit, and Muktar’s lobster.