Umbrae Europae [IC] (part 3) - Mist of Nycthemeron, A third installment of the Umbrae Europae Campaing (started elsewhere) Options

[Jack_Spade]

Rex told his partner: <<I'll keep watch while you work, tell me if you find anything interesting in the telemetrie.>>

[Haywire]

#200

Waywalker observed the mess that were the drones. "Who did this? A drunk ape?"
Shaking his head, he turned to the drones and started to work on them.
"Thank you pal. I'll be right here, trying to fix this hot huge pile of drek..."

[ Spoiler ]

I connect to the drones directly
agent teamwork (deck): 12d6t5 1
Hacking on the fly (2 MARKs): 16d6t5 6
Once I'm in, I want to check the drone to look for the problem and look for the data
matrix perception: 18d6t5 6

[Romain Pelisse]

Waywalker hacked into the drone without any difficulties and started immediately analyzing the logs of the last actions. Gosh, the people from the university had really no idea what to use those drone. They kept sending to them a command saying something again "activate astral scanner" and the drone replied that it was not a known command...

However, and this is the worst, one of them knew what to do, because their "astral camera", sort to speak were indeed activated. Along the drone, Waywalker got access to hours of weird and confusing image. Apparently, the drones was able to make "astral capture" and they did a series of pictures, roughly one by minute, while being moved around all the site!

Opening one more file, Waywalker could not refrain to laugh out loud. The one of team member who managed to use them apparently desperately tried to make his coworker understand how they could retrieve the data, but they keep complaining that it was no use "because those damn things never worked properly anyway!".

Suddenly, running the shadows appears to Waywalker, a far less annoying job than doing fundamental research at an University....

[Haywire]

#201

"It looks like a trained ape did this, only without training!"
Waywalker chose to crack the protection and get a copy of the data, hoping that his partner could make some sense of them.
Aftet that, he decided that the teacher could be helped, after all...

[ Spoiler ]

crack file: 17d6t5 6
edit file (to copy): 16d6t5 4

Are the drones slaved to a Host/Master?

[Jack_Spade]

Getting a look at the images, Rex shook his head: <<Honestly, I think it would be worthwile to send the drones out again and redo all this - but this time give them actually time to focus and get a clear picture. These photos are very blurry. But I'll do my best to interpret them.>>

[ Spoiler ]

Assensing: 11d6t5 2 [11d6t5=2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 6, 1, 2, 6]

Ups, that's a glitch

[Romain Pelisse]

Rex looked into the data for a couple of hours. Studying the weird shape and trying to make sense of it was, at best, a difficult task. As he pointed numerous time, he also didn't have the acumen to do theoretical magic. Or rather in this case, astral background analysis. After a few hours, he gave up. He could feel there was, somewhere in those picture, something interesting. He just could not figure out how to extract the information.

He was also afraid that simply redeploy the drones will not do it. The picture were not blurry as he assumed at first, they were capture of the ever changing form and shape in the astral. By doing the all experience all over again, all he would get will be an other iteration of the same data set. Rex was so frustrated that even Waywalker could see it by looking at him - even at him as a dog.

[Jack_Spade]

<<Damn it. Those pictures are no good - or rather I'm no good with those pictures. Can you give me the location where those drones where deployed on a map? I might have to visit them myself to make heads or tails of that. There is something there, I cust can't grasp it.>>
Rex replied with considerable frustration.

[Romain Pelisse]

Waywalker provided the information needed by Rex in a matter of seconds. Rex added the geolocalisation data to a map of Paris to try to assess where he would need to go. After a little while he realized some strange. The deployment of the drones was a bit "off". He expected them to have been deployed right on top of Montmartre, centered on the famous little place where the wanna be painters are hanging but it seems that deployment was focused a bit more north from here. Looking again at the most confusing astral print, Rex realized that the most "confusing" pictures actually came from this northern part of the perimeter. Maybe the students who deployed the drones did find something?

[Jack_Spade]

Rex conveyed that information to Waywalker: <<You better report back to the professor. Maybe she can make something from those photos. In any case it wouldn't hurt if we'd take a look there.
Gah, I hate feeling clueless - especially since this doesn't bring us any closer to the book. I think we'll have to take a look there ourselves - or look for that supposed free spirit roaming around Notre Dame>>

[Haywire]

#202

Waywalker replied to his partner:
"I think we should forward the information to the Professor and then have a look on our own, before it's full of people... What do you think?"

[Jack_Spade]

Rex thought for a moment: <<Yeah, using the help of an expert certainly is a good idea. Hopefully that will get her into a better mood.>>

[Romain Pelisse]

Waywalker packaged the data into a proper file before sharing it with the Professor Dusquenes. She replied almost immediately by text:

>>> Thanks for figuring this out. I've been quite misinformed. I've been told the drone were not functioning properly while it appears they did their work perfectly fine. I'll transmit the information to the astral explorer team. Thanks for the great work! Can you prepare the drone to be deployed again? We'll do that in a few days, when we get the proper authorization from the city of Paris.

[Haywire]

#203

To the Professor:"There was a bug in their software that I fixed. I can have them ready for deploying, but I'll need some more "permission" on their use to get them to function without incidents."
To Rex: "If this goes the way we want, we can have the drones send us all the data and analyze them in our safehouse, without having to get there physically. What do you think?"

[Jack_Spade]

<<I'm very much in favor of that. I'm woefully behind schedule on studying the book for clues to the other book.>>
Rex replied.

[Romain Pelisse]

It has been already several days that the duo is waiting for Dusquenes to provide them an update. Waywalker sent her a couple of reminders, to which she replied she was waiting for the authorization of Paris to deploy again the drone. Waywalker was getting worried that Dusquenes were simply ignoring them. She did not reply to his last reminder…

Rex used the time to explore again into the book. Thanks to the notes and pointers of their employer, he was quickly able to confirm the ghoul intuition. All this book was a cipher, alluding to a mysterious ritual. Given the elements involved in the ritual, Rex agreed with Corbitt - this would definitely open a door to another plane of existence. Rex was now trying to find more information about the plane of existence. This was pretty hard because the mention of this were very much indeed inside metaphors and analogies.

[Haywire]

#204

Waywalker knew they needed to rest a bit, so he was glad for the pause in their game of cat and mouse with the book.
"Did you find anything interesting? I think we should have a look for ourselves on site, the legitimate way is traking too long and I'm afraid we'll lose our advantage."

[Jack_Spade]

Rex showed his partner what he had found so far: <<I agree. Let's take a walk around there. I'm still wondering who I could ask for help with the cipher. Anyway, can't hurt to take a look myself at the mystic site.>>

[ Spoiler ]

Assensing: 11d6t5 6

[Romain Pelisse]

As soon as Rex's astral form reached the site, he realized they have been kept in the dark by Duquesnes. Clearly she was not caring about the drones being deployed at all and she had already instructed a few student to start looking through the "weird" area identified by the drone. Indeed, Rex could see a dozen different auras, flying all around and standing still while focusing on some shape or distortion in the astral. Frag, with that many people searching so efficiently, it was a matter of hours for them to find the portal! Unless the professor was spectacularly bad at what she was doing, she clearly saw something, like Rex did, in those astral imprints...

[Jack_Spade]

Back in his body, Rex replied: <<So, looks like you are not yet ready for her inner circle. Seems like they found the portal alright. So, do you think we can send in your drone again? It worked well last time with the mists. Plan B would be for me to go in.>>

[Haywire]

#205

"That professor! I'll make sure she regrets it. What about sending an anonymous tip on her funders? Or hacking her commlink so she drains her bank account?"
After regaining his usual composure Waywalker sent a message to Rex: "My drone has no means to perceive the astral. I can send it in at night, but I'm not sure on what I will find..."

[Jack_Spade]

Rex replied: <<I meant sending it through the portal if we can find it. I think it might be time to take a look at the personal notes of the Professor. We could break into her office for anything written down, or you could hack her work account to see what and who she is working with.>>

[Haywire]

#206

"Let's see what that woman keeps in her commlink..."

[ Spoiler ]

matrix perception: 18d6t5 6
agent teamwork (deck): 12d6t5 5
hacking on the fly (2 MARKs): 20d6t5 6

[Romain Pelisse]

[ Spoiler ]

Dusquenes commlink resist: 12d6t5 8
I'm guessing Waywalker will want to reroll with post edge here.

[Haywire]

[ Spoiler ]

post edge: 14d6t5 5

[Romain Pelisse]

Waywalker almost got defeated by the professor’s commlink. The device had a pretty biffy firewall. But in the end, he prevailed and added one of his MARK on it. Accessing the files in the commlink Waywalker realized quickly that she has not lost a minute to take advantages of their findings. The project was not making any progress for several months but the data provided by the drone’s telemetry had caused a breakthrough. A breakthrough that Dusquenes had certainly claimed the paternity of!

However, Rex’s fear was unfounded. The research group had not yet located the portal. Actually, they had confirmed it was not a fixed portal and it occurrences were bound to yet unknown factor. But the research group was making progress. One of them had identified a dragon line that the portal seems to be attached to, which reduced greatly the potential location for its opening. Dusquenes, exploiting the telemetry had concluded the portal would only open at night. The excitement in the exchange was obvious, the researchers were pretty sure they were only days away from getting access to the portal…