The way I know Africans, from fucking Paris Streets, they will look at their freshly created fields and wonder, out of pure boardom, what else they can do there.
So, while we developed the Gartenzwerg, they will like bushes, flowers and all other stuff that makes it all nicer...
Tha FUG:
And they like:
Nooooooh. Can wee av' thosss
Here’s a full Shadowrun Noir adventure frame for your crew, built around the first-edition (2050s) rules and atmosphere.
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# BLACK TULIP BLUES
*“In the shadows, even flowers bleed. You haul a truckload of something that smells like profit and looks like a botany textbook—but out on the Sahara road, the petals unfold into nightmares. You’re Dutch-Surinamese. You know about empires, about crops that enslaved your ancestors, about soil soaked in blood. And now you’re driving a freezer full of bulbs to the middle of nowhere. It ain’t just business. It’s a blues song with a body count.”*
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## 1. THE SETUP
**Run Concept:** A discreet Mr. Johnson from **EuroVerde Agritech B.V.** (an Aztechnology subsidiary, though that little detail is buried deep) hires a crew of Dutch-Surinamese shadowrunners to transport a sealed, climate-controlled cargo of “Tulipa Sanguinea” experimental bulbs from Rotterdam to a corporate research station outside Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The bulbs are to be planted in a secure bio-dome to create a new pharmaceutical compound. The runners are promised ¥50,000, plus expenses, with half up front. The catch: the truck and its cargo are bait, a diversion for a much nastier Aztechnology operation, and the bulbs are not what they seem.
**Noir Hook:** The team’s own diaspora ties—a relative in Paramaribo, an old contact in the Surinamese enclave of Amsterdam-Zuidoost, a blood-magic whisper that haunts their lineage—will force them to choose between cold nuyen and a truth that could drown them in corporate blood magic.
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## 2. THE CAST OF SHADOWS
**The Crew (Dutch-Surinamese archetypes for First Edition)**
- **Rigger/Driver (Wheels):** Ex-Surinamese National Army, knows every smuggler’s route from the Low Countries to the Sahel. Drives a modified Ares Roadmaster cab, pulling a refrigerated trailer under fake “FloraDelft” livery.
- **Street Shaman (Juju):** Afro-Surinamese Winti practitioner, sees spirits in every shadow. Her raven mentor warns of “a great hive beneath the sand.”
- **Decker (Pixel):** Javanese-Surinamese matrix cowboy, raised in the Rotterdam digital underground. Hates Aztechnology with a passion after they “relocated” his family from a corporate enclave in Suriname.
- **Street Samurai (Steel):** Dutch-Surinamese ex-corporate security (former EuroCorps border agent), knows customs inside out and carries a monofilament-edged machete with a Paramaribo steel tang.
**The Johnsons & Shadows**
- **Mr. Johnson (Hendrik de Vries):** Slick EuroVerde middle-manager, cybereye with golden iris, speaks flawless Dutch and Sranan Tongo. Too friendly. His smile never reaches the scars on his neck.
- **Femme Fatale (Yolanda Pinas):** Childhood friend from the Surinamese community in Rotterdam, now a fixer with a taste for danger. She tips the crew off: “Those bulbs sing in the astral, *mattie*. I touched the manifest and my mother’s *obia* screamed.” She hands over a flimsy datachip with partial cargo gene sequences—and a cryptic warning about a blood mage in Ouagadougou.
- **Rival Team – Die Spinne:** A Saeder-Krupp black ops cell led by a ruthless elven physical adept, Greta “Weber” Kraus. Lofwyr wants the bulbs for his own arcane bio-weapons division. They shadow the runners from Marseille onwards, picking off their support contacts.
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## 3. THE JOURNEY & OBSTACLES
### SCENE 1: ROTTERDAM SPRAWL – RAIN & ROT
*Mood:* Midnight, neon reflections on wet asphalt, the scent of algae and diesel from the Europoort docks. A jazz saxophone wails from a third-floor window.
- The crew receives the refrigerated trailer at a EuroVerde warehouse in the Botlek district. Astrally, the bulbs emit a faint, warm pulse—like a sleeping heartbeat. Customs seals are already applied (forged, but top-notch). Manifest says “Decorative Bulb Shipment – Phytosanitary Certificate #772-Delta.”
- **Obstacle:** A surprise visit by **EuroCus Controle** (European Customs Enforcement). Two officers in full-body armour, one a mage with an astral perception focus. The shaman must mask any magical aura the bulbs leak, or the decker must loop the cargo scanner feed. If they fail, the mage mutters, *“I feel something… pregnant,”* and they’ll have to bribe or neutralize the inspectors.
- **Legwork:** Yolanda meets them in a smoky *bruin café* off Witte de Withstraat. She reveals that the bulbs carry Aztechnology’s patented “MorphoSporic™” gene markers—used for rapid, forced Awakened metamorphosis. She doesn’t know the target species, but the destination, a farm near Ouagadougou called “Le Jardin Caché,” has no botanical purpose. It’s built on a dual-natured desert node.
### SCENE 2: MEDITERRANEAN CROSSING – THE CORRUPTED SEA
*Route:* Rotterdam → French Corporate Corridor (Renault-Fiat territory) → Marseille smuggler’s docks. The trailer boards a converted freighter, *La Sirène Noire*, captained by a Corsican smuggling clan.
- **Obstacle – Maritime Customs (MedSec):** The Toulon-Mediterranean security zone has a Tarot-using diviner mage on rotation. She casts a Foreboding spell as the truck rolls onto the ferry. The crew must distract her (fake explosives threat, bribe an officer to delay the search, or a steamy bit of misdirection).
- **Die Spinne strikes:** During the night crossing, Greta’s team infiltrates the freighter. A running firefight in the claustrophobic cargo hold, with sparks igniting crates of synthetic olives. The rigger must hot-wire the truck to escape onto the North African dock before the ferry explodes. First blood.
### SCENE 3: ALGIERS TO TAMANRASSET – THE DESERT ROAD
*Mood:* Blazing sun, shimmering heat, the radio playing Tuareg blues. The highway is a cracked ribbon of asphalt, patrolled by unmarked corporate dune buggies.
- **Obstacle – Sahara Road Pirates:** The “Sand Dogs,” a gang of cybered-out Toubou nomads, ambush the truck with EMP harpoons and motorbikes. A high-speed desert chase, with the Street Samurai leaning out the window, mono-machete howling.
- **Awakened Sandstorm:** The shaman feels the desert’s wrath—a sandstorm laced with mana. The storm forces them off-road into the ruins of a pre-Awakening **Desert Wars proving ground**, now a half-buried Aztechnology black site. Inside, they discover a hatchery of immature insect spirits (beetle-type), tended by a lone, deranged blood mage. The mage cackles: “You carry the queen’s brides!” The cargo is not tulips—it’s incubator pods for a new queen insect spirit, engineered to thrive in West African mana lines.
- **Noir moment:** The team finds a log: Aztechnology planned to “test” the queen in Burkina Faso, a stable, non-corporate country, far from AAA auditors. If successful, they’d unleash a hive that would consume the nation’s astral signature, paving the way for a mass blood ritual to empower an Aztechnology Great Form Insect totem.
### SCENE 4: CROSSING INTO BURKINA FASO – THE FALSE GARDEN
*Route:* Enter Burkina Faso via the northern border at Gorom-Gorom. The paved road turns to laterite dust. The local gendarmerie are underpaid and look the other way, but an Aztechnology “agricultural advisor” (a were-jaguar physical adept) insists on inspecting the cargo personally. He carries a ceremonial dagger shaped like a mosquito’s proboscis.
- **Obstacle – The Last Checkpoint:** The advisor’s spell reveals the crew’s hostility. A brutal, close-quarters fight in the customs shed. The decker jacks into the local matrix and overloads the electrified fence to fry the advisor’s backup.
- The contact, **Mamba Diallo**, awaits at Le Jardin Caché, a walled compound with lush, unnatural greenery. She’s stunning, wearing a boubou embroidered with insect-wing patterns. She offers them a bonus if they stay for the “planting ceremony.” That night, a drumbeat begins, and the bulbs start to hum.
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## 4. THE CLIMAX – QUEEN OF A THOUSAND WINGS
At the compound, Diallo sheds her human mask. She’s an Aztechnology blood mage, bound to a Great Form Insect Queen metaplanar entity. The truck’s refrigeration unit fails deliberately—the warm night air triggers the bulbs’ final metamorphosis. Each bulb cracks open, releasing a thumb-sized, glowing larva that crawls toward the central dome.
- The crew must destroy the queen before it materializes. Options:
- **Rigger’s gambit:** Ram the dome with the truck, detonating its fuel cells.
- **Shaman’s sacrifice:** Counter the ritual by summoning a Winti earth spirit (Aisa Mama) to seal the astral rift, but at the cost of a lifelong spirit pact.
- **Samurai’s stand:** Fight through a swarm of insect spirit warriors to decapitate Diallo, severing the link.
- **Decker’s sabotage:** Overload the compound’s geothermal mana pumps, turning the dome into an inferno.
- **Die Spinne returns** at the worst moment, trying to steal a surviving queen larva for Saeder-Krupp. A three-way battle erupts. Noir twist: Greta Weber offers a deal—“Give us the larva, and we erase your EuroVerde debts.” The runners can accept, turning the betrayal into a darker, morally bankrupt payday, or refuse and add Lofwyr’s enmity to their list of troubles.
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## 5. AFTERMATH – RAIN IN THE DESERT
If the crew succeeds in destroying the hive, they’re stranded in Burkina Faso with a burned truck, no final payment, and Aztechnology kill-squads on their trail. Yolanda has one last message for them: a glowing datachip with coordinates to a Surinamese diaspora safehouse in the Caribbean League, and a dead-drop account containing 20,000 nuyen – everything she could scrape together. She signs off, *“Dja, yu ben srefi. Now run, shadow boy.”*
The final scene: a Ouagadougou dawn, the rain—an impossible rain in the dry season—washing insect ash from the runners’ faces. A distant jazz trumpet echoes from a transistor radio in a street vendor’s stall. The blues, as always, never ends.
**Shadowrun Noir Motto:** *They hired you to deliver flowers. You delivered a funeral.*
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### GAME MASTER’S TOOLKIT (1st Ed.)
- **Customs:** Use Social/Decking skills against a EuroCus Threat Rating of 4. Bribes cost ¥2,000–5,000. Astral perception tests versus a Mana Mask of Force 4.
- **Die Spinne:** Treat as Prime Runner opposition with Karma Pool 2. Weber is Physical Adept (Unarmed 8, Killing Hands S).
- **Insect Spirits:** Use Shadowrun 1E *Universal Brotherhood* stats for Worker/Beetle spirits, Queen at Force 8 Materialization.
- **Key Noir Elements:** Rain, jazz, betrayal, a virtuous choice that ruins you, a virtuous choice that saves a nation but no one will ever know.
