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GM Note — Spoilers

The Plot

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Behind the Blackwall — GM material. Spoilers and prep. Crew of Kill Fee, jack out now.

SET decided · SOURCE verified in the campaign summary · YOURS GM invention · OPEN undecided · NOTE caution

NOTE GM only. Spoilers for the whole campaign.

The setup

  1. Orbital Air (Corp A) owns a breakthrough technology, long considered its exclusive domain.
  2. Orbital Air gets a tip that Kang Tao (Corp B) is about to announce essentially the same breakthrough.
  3. Kang Tao genuinely developed it independently. It did poach a few mid-level Orbital Air staff (a brain drain, not senior people and no significant IP theft). That gives Orbital Air a story it sincerely believes: they hired our people, so they must have taken our work.

OPEN The breakthrough. Options:

  • A cheaper launch or propulsion system (threatens Orbital Air's grip on the sky; fits Kang Tao's AV expertise).
  • Microgravity manufacturing on the ground (cuts Orbital Air out of the supply chain).
  • A cyberware compatibility treatment once only producible in orbit (ties to the no-chrome fixer).

The false flag

  1. Orbital Air hires the crew through a cutout to "rob" an Orbital Air lab.
  2. Orbital Air's own people clear the vault first.
  3. The crew arrives to find the job already done, and leaves confused and empty-handed. They never get paid.
  4. A crew member (the traitor) was secretly paid to record the job as a braindance.
  5. The traitor hands over the BD and is killed to tie up the loose end.
  6. Orbital Air's people splice the crew's real footage with the real job, producing a damning fake.
  7. Kang Tao makes its announcement, and Orbital Air releases the BD. Kang Tao's breakthrough now looks like stolen goods: lawsuits, injunctions, outrage.

Why the crew must die

They're the only people who can say the vault was already empty. Orbital Air puts out a hit publicly as "righteous vengeance," and nobody questions a corp hunting down thieves.

The complication

Kang Tao badly wants the crew alive, since they're proof of its innocence. The crew is hunted by one megacorp and courted by another. Kang Tao reaches out in the last third, offering the corp legitimacy the crew has always wanted, while only using them.

The reveal ladder

  1. "We've been framed."
  2. "Our teammate sold us out."
  3. "The victim framed us."

Evidence and clues

  • Splice seams: mismatched lighting, timestamp gaps, a "killer" who moves wrong.
  • Editor signature: good BD editors have recognizable styles, a lead into the BD underground (Kabuki, Japantown).
  • The traitor's life: payoff money, the recorder, possibly a half-sent warning message (they may have gotten cold feet).
  • The ripperdoc who installed the traitor's recorder.
  • The poached researchers: one could know Orbital Air's lab security or how the vault was cleared, and is scared because Orbital Air sees them as a traitor too. Possible tie to the lunar netrunner.

The finale

OPEN Public exposure of the truth, or a quiet deal that lifts the hit while the world never learns what happened?

OPEN A journalist sitting on the real story who needs proof to run it. An echo of the title.

Source · Kill Fee campaign summary, 2026-10-02