Neo-Anarchist trid pirate

Gollum is the name that he chose. Why? Because he's a troglodytic pain in the hoop to all that the swell folks hold dear.

Gollum's pretty cool in his way. Technically fairly adept, but will come to Carlos for the heavy stuff. Realistically, his forte is getting news around. Especially the stuff that royally ticks off the high and mighty. He is the walking, talking proof that information can be sold, but that verification of information can be sold higher. How does he finance his work? A combination of brokerage of information, donations, and taking a percentage on bounties.

Data Haven

Corner Library is a homage to one of those things you sometimes still find, with give-a-book, take-a-book sort of attitudes going on. Granted, the books themselves are an oddity now, but there's something about old tech that appeals to the senses of humour of the keepers of Corner Library. In the Matrix, it's even presented to look like a library, complete with card catalogues, and a cheesy sculpted hot librarian figure as the gatekeeper.

Rigger

Jon Martinez is a rigger. Nothing very fancy, in some ways. He specialises in big, heavy, industrial equipment. The kind of stuff that costs meganuyens to buy, and many kilonuyens to insure. Why? Because in some ways, it's the pinnacle of the career. Where else do you get to feel three megawatts of power delivered to your arms? Nowhere, that's where. He is also a pilot for extreme conditions freight planes, which means that he can pilot a plane carrying very expensive equipment to hellish places, run the equipment, cart it all back, and collect a credstick. A very, very fat credstick. He lives well.

Go-Ganger

Carlos and Blazer have crossed swords - or smoking rubber trails - a few times. But Blazer's one of those who will win against you, and then buy you drinks afterwards. Not a bad sort. Also, Blazer is quite capable of transporting a few small items in a hidden compartment in a vehicle, and staying quiet about it - for a price.

Bartender

Tamra is a bartender. She can whip you up a cocktail, sure, but she's best at getting a good head in a frosty glass, quickly, and helping folks get past a rough time. She could have been a therapist, but the licensing body frowns on people who were caught dealing pills as teens. Mid-tier clubs are less picky.

Corp Scientist

Marilyn Steck is a combustion scientist for Ares. In theory, she should be designing rocket nozzles. In practice, she spends a lot of time setting tiny little lumps of impossible chemistry on fire and watching trids of them burn in ultra-slow motion. She also moonlights as a pyrotechnician for a fireworks crew, but Ares doesn't mind.

Street Doc

"Sewing Machine" is the only name you need. She's fast, she's grim, and she has her own little medlab where she can culture tissues. Go-gangers like this, because she can patch up burn wounds well. She charges for this - usually in kind, but she'll take money. A lot of what she uses isn't legal for unlicensed people. Nobody she helps seems to care. The last troll that made fun of her short dwarf legs got his foot nailgunned to the floor, and she made him apologise on trid before she'd treat him.

Security Decker

Joy Takahara works for Renraku. She's cool, or at least cool enough to walk among the freakier elements of the Matrix and still go to work for Renraku. Carlos suspects that she gathers intelligence, but she seems to drop a few hints on what's hot as well, so maybe it's a wash? Or maybe she genuinely does walk on the wild side.

Mafia Soldier

Tony Menicucci is a solid dude. Really, walk right up and rap your knuckles on his pecs. Feels real, but solid, somehow? Yeah, they're paid for. The capo likes it when his boys have all the trimmings, and has the means to pay.

Ork Nation Organizer

Bella Wildwood's a serious pragmatist. She can be calm, dispassionate, a negotiator with style, or she can grab a mic and go nuts. She finds people, pulls them in, and brings the nation together. She also has a little black book of about five hundred orks to help her do nearly anything.

Lone Star Dispatcher

Bobby Grant has a job to do, and it's to connect problems with solutions. And he has heard it all. The whispered requests, the bored status reports, the final screams, and the entitled idiots. Then he goes, takes his pay, drinks, sleeps, and does it again.

Club Owner

Nolan Beres owns the Rebasket, a club noted for the opposite number of goblin rock - they tend to do more complex music, even things that in principle could get intellectual snobs interested, if only there weren't hundreds of people in glowing clothing gyrating to it. There are some back rooms available for more private discussions, if necessary.

Shark Lawyer

Alicia Conter, Esq. is a well-presented, talented raconteur, witty, charming, and probably has a heart of ice and a brain of steel. She knows Carlos. She knows things about Carlos that she might not officially know. And as long as he pays, on time, in full, nobody else needs to know.

Gunsmith

Mark mcNeely is one of the old school. He can trick out your Fichetti, he can repair your Ingram, and he can also turn a screw on a lathe to replace a part on your old '94 Winchester. That's 1894. Would you like the slide on your Predator case hardened?

ID Manufacturer

Carlos is pretty sure her name isn't Tookigoo, but she has an ID that says so. And Carlos doesn't know how to see if it's fake or not, it's that clean. OK, Tookigoo can do IDs.

Talent Scout

"Eeey, howyadoin'? Ever thought about trid work? It's easy, one day, three hundred nuyen. Catered. Here's a chip, if you're ever interested." Hugh Maxinet gets around, gets orders, finds people. Sometimes even a few gangers get drinking money for looking tough on a camera for half a day. They like that. They also know that he has a line on some contracts for more interesting things, like combat biking. Good to stay on his good side.

Dock Worker

Steve Receno is a bit of a stereotype. He's a dockworker. The pay is good, and while the rig he got from the company isn't top grade, it can be upgraded. Maybe one day he'll go independent, but first he just has to pay this off. In the mean time, he gets good overtime rates, and on off days his buddies let him fish off the end of the dock. It could be worse.

Taxi Driver

Joao Vigo is an old go-ganger, known to Carlos through the network. He got a job as a taxi driver when the heat got too heavy, and too many of his generation were dead. But you know what? The gangs remember him, and he gets to drive in places other drivers don't. It keeps him going.

Technician

Samantha Pettigrew doesn't look or sound like a technician, rather than a preppy kid from the Boston metroplex. This is because she is one - or was one, until something happened. Carlos doesn't know what, but he knows that she is a great tech, and knows how to play tennis, polo, and sail. Maybe one day if he gets close to her, he'll find out what happened. Or if he plays his cards wrong, he'll find out how a soldering torch up his urethra feels. Life is full of learning experiences.

Troll Street Sam

You may call him Soft Touch. That's because he teaches Aikido and Tai Chi. He's very gentle. Until he's not, and then things are usually over too fast for conversation anyway.

Fixer

Snoochy used to be a pimp, so the saying goes, until his networking skills turned out to have more than one dimension. Snoochy is a really nice guy who just so happens to know all the people you need to solve tough problems. If all he is telling you is where to get your car fixed without nasty questions, it's cool. It probably just costs a cup of good coffee. If it's something a bit tougher - well, that's why it's a business, right?

Electronics Shop

Ada Edison is the poorly-chosen name of a shop where you can buy, fabricate, or order any of a vast range of bits and pieces - either whole items, or components. What's a lot more interesting to some people is the used and recyclable bins out the back of their place in the Kent area. Fewer regulations about heavy metals, in that end of Kent. But lots of biz.

The "Talent Scout" contact I had in mind was from pg57 of Mr Johnson's Little Black Book. He's a fixer that only deals in people rather than a combination of people, gear, safehouses etc. If the Tri-D scout works better for the story that's just fine. I just want to make sure we have some ways to get temp muscle when needed, or a link to future runners when people see this story take off.

Point taken. It's more that he has a cover job. Can he get someone who has the skills you need? Sure. But it's easier to slide by when asking someone: "Do you know how to boost cars?" when you can tell the 'Star "It's for a trid show, here's my business, calm down officer."

Hmmm. We haven't talked about how you want to roll dice yet. I'm not decking or anything but running more of a reverse image search on those two unknown suits. Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, the Corps internal site, that kind of thing. Not expecting any hits but you never know when someone is autotagged in the background of another photo.


And you never know when I'll be able to fit in "The cake is a lie" for the fun of it. If I was a corp firing a group of people in shadowrun, there just might be a sedative in the cake.

Dice rolling (sorry, should have mentioned before):

https://orokos.com/roll/


But sure, I'll give you the image search for free: the unknown suits are:

Gareth Rhys-Davies

Ahmed Chatterjee

They both work for Mitsuhama, based out of Seattle. Gareth is an HR director and headhunter, while Ahmed is a finance and investment expert with a role in Mitsuhama's internal investments wing. Of the two, Ahmed is senior, but they're both pretty heavy hitters.

Good timing with that. I was about to roll against Impulsive to hijack the wireless connection to the projector and display it for everyone in the room.

That may be kinda fun anyway!

Couple of area questions. Do the majority of the workers commute here in their own vehicles or take a company shuttle from somewhere?

If we are "light blue" security I presume that there are no weapons emplacements to send haywire but I could try and run the corp goons over with a rigged forklift?

Most of the Seattle Maps that I have seen end at the south side of Ft Lewis (JBLM) where the Nisqually River is (as the eruptions from Rainier would erase that entire river valley). What type of security zones are in this area, can you still get around the base on the south side or is that all Salish territory in 2060 (as you go through the Reservation today)? Just looking at options if we want to have the pink mowhawk sticking out of the moonroof or if I roll all 1's on impulsive at some point.

Commuting: majority commute, although there's a bus service that does stop at the charging station, so quite a few (especially the lower-paid workers) take that. It's one of the far ends of the metroplex transit system.

There are no weapons placements as such, although it's possible to flood the building with CO2 as a fire control measure. This is obviously bad for people inside. It doesn't do much with respect to people outside. You could run over goons with a forklift when they're on a paved surface, but otherwise the chances are strong they'd just duck behind a tree.

This place is south of the Nisqually, but not very far south of it. The river valley got whacked, but a sort of float-capable bridge did get installed so that traffic down the old I-5 corridor could continue. It's still a major logistics route, and even the tribes recognise that this has value for them.

In other words, there are ways around the south, and security here is relatively light. Some of the old exurbs of Olympia were basically abandoned, but the tribes were happy to have the metroplex take on, and pay for the maintenance of, a chunk of road that they didn't care about except to sell the palefaces food - and money sure is nice, even when you're in a tribe.

That said, a lot of the commuters here could easily, if there were a corp outing with booze aplenty, tell their vehicles to run home driverless on their autopilots, or even stumble into their vehicles drunk and take a ride home on autopilot. If you want to avoid the road on the way out, well, that's a tougher proposition. If you're considering that, you may want to roll for some smarts on that front.

I was thinking more the Yelm Highway - 510 - 507 route around the south side of the base. The feds have cameras covering it certainly, but will they give the footage to someone else, less likely.


Actually potentially relevant roll, did I drive the SUV or the 3220 today (1=SUV, 2=3220) The 3220

hmmm... no off road capability but I can certainly lose a Bulldog. Their support is an entirely different story. Just starting to work through options in my head.

The Yelm highway certainly still exists, but is in rough shape. The feds maintain it to a standard that doesn't bother military vehicles, but they really don't want anyone else casually using it, so potholes are repaired on an as-needed basis. The further reaches, down in the direciton of Yelm itself, end up in tribal hands, and they've applied a policy of benign neglect, to the point that it should be considered just this side of offroading.

If ntwi were to bust out of here with screaming engine and bad attitude, he could get off the hill, onto an old rural route that serves the remnants of the the old Lacey/Tumwater area, and then head south into tribal lands, east to skirt tribal lands, or onto I-5. The old route 101 is pretty much where the Metroplex's last gasp ends, going south, and heading west on it is solidly tribal.

Alternatively, if he were feeling more like a smuggler, he could in principle suggest to his vehicle that it autopilot empty, to look as if it's headed home, and then pick him up at some other point on the roads if he can make it to the pickup point on foot. How he would get past the goons on foot is a separate and different question.

Knowledge skills and background info that may be relevant. No rapid colorful and narrow hair growth planned, just wanting to understand the area as you see it and options that may be available if we end up on the bus.

1. Where might Mitsuhama be taking us in the bus? (presuming they plan to take us all somewhere in it) - No relevant knowledge skill, default to Intelligence at +4 TN (expecting somewhere closer to Seattle):

2. How secure is I-5 or other likely route to location from Question 1? - Gang Turf 2? Police Procedures 2? Street Racing 5? Default to INT?

3. Is Blazer (Go-Gang Contact) part of a big enough gang to hit a bus and bulldogs on I-5 (or location along #2) and pull everyone off the bus for random go-gang fun (preferably near the barrens)

4. Could Joy Takahara (Renraku Decker) loop the traffic cams or other footage in the area of #3? Street Racing 5 (might know the density of cameras in an area)? Police Procedures 2 (who owns what sets of cameras?)

5. What would the Lone Star response be to a AAA bus being hit on I-5? Police Procedures 2, Bobby Grant (Lone Star Dispatcher, how could he alter or slow the response?)

6. How long might it take Bella Wood (Ork Nation organizer) to get a protest going somewhere useful?

7. Is the bus likely to be remotely rigged or auto-drive? Corporate Security 3?

8. Chance of stunbolt and replace the driver/rigger without crashing the bus?

Feel free to answer or not (and correctly or incorrectly as Carlos would know). Just trying to reset from all the home ruled changes to the Seattle area that I'm used to playing with. (My in person group have all be in the metroplex for decades and modified the Book setting in many ways, both subtle and not)

What I will do is give you a screamsheet level of knowledge, and either agree with your roll or suggest a roll if you want to puzzle out more/better info.



Mitsuhama corp. central for the metroplex: downtown Seattle. Unless they have some other site lined up, in which case how would you know? Certainly the bus looks like a highway trip, and Seattle's in easy range for the job.



Pretty good; it's well-patrolled along most of its length. It's a little dicey in the sweep past the Tacoma/Puyallup area. The exact roll would depend on what you want to discover, but Police Procedures would be a good bet.
It has been much worse in the past, but it's such an important route, that if anything, that's the safest part of any such trip. Some of the old industrial areas around Tukwila can be hairy as well. Now, if they're going to divert to the east side, all bets are off - but why would they do that?



Maybe. A definite maybe. What they almost certainly could do is run the 'dogs off the road and finagle a roadblock by making an 18-wheeler fishtail, or similar. How much time they'd have before they got a hard response? That's different.



Possibly, although she'd probably want some notice if so. The real problem would be the bus's own comms, which are guaranteed not to be nil. Mind you, what you could arrange on the long trip up, is an open question. Street racing could help you dredge camera density and placement out of your memory, but it's a fair bet that any particular stretch has between two and four cameras roughly watching it. Mind you, if a trog with a concrete cutter were just to cut some posts down, those cameras would get useless really quickly.... but that's the sort of thing five go-gangs would arrange before a major race for honour.



Bobby would be out of the loop, unless he somehow were given a reason to fire off a whole lot of police tailchasers before the action started. You think Lone Star would probably offer hands-off assistance and information to a Mitsuhama response team, who would be some very bad asses.



You've seen her sweep up flash mobs in 15 minutes, when the excuses were right.



If it's important, it's a cinch that there will be a rigger in a crash-proof armoured cel inside the bus. So ... odds are good it's direct drive, plugged in.



You can't be sure. Probably not good. The pro drivers are very, very well protected precisely to avoid hijacking stunts.



Your gutfeel is: once on that bus, you're cargo with very few options until the bus stops, and no meaningful way of affecting the driver. Your instincts are screaming that the only place you want to be on that bus, is in the rigger's seat, and what with the security goons around, your odds of getting in there are very, very low. If you do not want your hoop to be branded with a corp logo, then you want to find a plan B that involves not getting on board. Maybe Connor knows something different; maybe. But you don't.

Off the top of my head, most spirits provide Concealment. We could sleaze our way out and about. Daytime makes the Force of the spirit tricky, so how strong the Concealment might be is a question, but I think that, and some distractions provided by other spirits that don't need to be all that powerful, would be one avenue.

Of course, that largely depends on domain - and the degree to which you're in view, anyway.

Good call, it was spoken, not thought. I'll get a hang of it.

ntwi has caught on that I used :

OoOoOo as Owl talking to Connor, and

_+_+_+ as mindlink-speak

The building itself is about all covered in cameras. The only exceptions are the bathrooms, some crawlspaces, and effluent flush pipes.

Is the bakery delivery truck still here?

How plausible is the effleuent channel -> holding tank -> sewage system for egress? You mentioned it as a "a tunnel leading like a short, wide sewer." Are we talking 12-18" pipes or 3-4' culvert size pipes. - Hey, Carlos probably saw this on the Tri-D.

Corporate Security 3 – How likely for a mage to be here in one of the Bulldogs? Given LOS and such, how likely to notice a spirit using it’s concealment power on us? 5,5,3

Security Systems 4 (and knowledge of the building) – Route out of the building (side door, loading dock, etc) that provides the most cover/concealment from the goon squad and the buildings security system. 10,7,4,2

???? – I know our security systems, how difficult would it be for me to loop camera footage on one or two cameras?


Worst case, Ork Flash Mob on Ellis and 509 at the docks while a big rig gets jackknifed on I-5 over the Puyallup river might be enough to force them out 512-167 where bad things are known to happen to corporate stuff.

A problem will be transitioning from inside the facility to outside. As we change domains, the hearth spirit inside will lose power over the two escapees, and Connor will have to summon another 'outside' spirit to take over the task. So if we can duck out a culvert or something, we may end up in a place where they are not looking, and he can summon another spirit without getting noticed.

Oh! How armoured up is Carlos at the moment? If not much, Connor can change the appearance of their clothing, and makeup/hair etc. That may help confuse searchers.

Speaking of confusion, there are lots of other things spirits can do. If Connor gets lucky in the daytime (!!) a summoned spirit may be able to do more than one thing for the two of them.

The bakery van left shortly after delivery. They didn't even stop to flirt with some of the cuter ladies in the office; they must be on a delivery schedule.

Effluent pipe pathway: plausible, if dirty and smelly. The pipes have to, by law, be available to inspection, and given that they're buried beneath the building, that means that they're crawlable. If one of you were a troll, that would be off the cards, but they're 1m internal diameter round tunnels. They lead right into the holding tank, which is basically a covered reservoir on the hillside. The reservoir has multiple access hatches (again, a legal requirement) as well as the valve controlling when the effluent is flushed to the sewage infrastructure. The reservoir itself is maybe 20m distant from the outer wall of the R&D facility, somewhat downhill, with a little grass and dirt around it. The reservoir stands about 2m proud of the soil level at its highest point, but rests on piles driven deep into the hill for seismic stability.

Mage in bulldogs: Enh. Could happen. Maybe fifty-fifty. Are they really expecting trouble? Depends. But it didn't look like a HTR tac team.

Security: The doors all have at least one camera on them, and while there's a bit of overhang at each (this is a rainy part of the world), there's barely visual cover from the goons' lines of sight, and none to speak of once you step away from the doors. The roof is a bit of a blind spot, but even if you climbed up there, what would you do? Jump down screaming a warcry?

Looping camera footage wouldn't be hard, assuming they haven't sneakily revoked access in the last ten minutes. Or simply turning a few cameras off.

Carlos is not wearing armor currently. He has a Secure Longcoat hung on the back of his chair. (It's March in Olympia, but you'll never see a local with an umbrella)

How tall is the perimeter fence? Cleared area, sensors, cameras on the other side?

Do I have any idea about the sewage infrastructure on the other side of the tank? Any rebreathers or other air systems for servicing the insides of the tanks?

There is no perimeter fence. It's patrolled, but the perimeter that the company cared about was the building.

There are cameras on the building, facing outwards (which is how Carlos got to spot the vans and bus) but nothing too fancy in terms of sensors. The real security is the fact that the place is constantly occupied, there is a rig into the building, and a couple of rentacops walking around just in case of stupids - which has never happened, because this place is just out of the way. The worst is the occasional vagrant, who gets told to buzz off, and that's that.

The reservoir for flushed biologicals isn't under particular separate surveillance, and while you can see that it's there in a camera, the cameras that pick it up are a lot more directed at the area immediately around the building itself.

The sewage infrastructure goes down through a grating, into a big effluent pipe that leads ... somewhere. Carlos honestly doesn't know beyond "sewage infrastructure".

Inside the building, specifically in the fermentation lab, which is where the technicians manage the flushing and maintenance, there are filtration masks and bunnysuits. Honestly, they're more to satisfy regs than anything else, but the interior of the tanks and pipes is smelly and will stain your clothes, so they do get used. The pipes are ventilated, so it's not as if it's a gas chamber.

Gotcha, I had misread "The reservoir itself is maybe 20m distant from the outer wall of the R&D facility" and thought there was a perimeter fence around the entire area. Guess I won't need to practice Dwarf throwing after all.

Hey, Connor could have a spirit fly him over! None of this meta-speciesist humour, alright? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I'll get something in tonight, work went crazy the past two days.