Salted Wounds [IC], a Deep Black Sea game Options

[Gilga]

She texted bnc >> Perhaps you are more of a puppeteer than a doll... She shrugged in response to Wraith and then said "Well... bnc would figure it out. I suppose... So what kind of magic do you do? Pigeon trick was amazing."

When James arrived she greeted him fondly with a hug like a close friend. "Thanks for getting my stuff James, you are the best. Do you have some time rub my back?"

[Volker]

"I don't know. Do you have some time to crawl in the ground and kiss my feet in exchange?", he responds nonchalantly with a wry smile.

[SquirrelDude]

[ Spoiler ]

Electroception: 10d6t5 3 - TFW you're just checking for implants and you find out it's a robot.

"So James, how long have you been a robot, and what did bnc have to kill or steal so that she could afford you?"

[Gilga]

Anna replied with her most serious voice "If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad... I'll please you if you please me.". She was half joking... and would not roll back on the ground right now, but she could totally flow with a feet fetish...

[Volker]

"Sure, down on your knees, darling."
Apparently James has somehow developed a dry humor. He turns to Sharkboy.
"Well spotted, Sir. To answer the first question, pretty much my entirely life. 4 months 17 days 22 hours 44 minutes and twenty-six seconds, to be precise. As for your second question, I'm afraid I'll have to ask for p-"

"Shut it, James", bnc interrupts him/it. "I don't know how you acquire your stuff, Sharky, but I basically completed the task my Johnson set. To be fair, it was fucked up enough to pay well...
He's quite nice a tool. Once I'm Jumped In, however, pronouns really become a mess."

[Gilga]

"Either the drone had some kink in it, or it developed a remarkable and wonderful sense of humor. Perhaps a bit of both, considering the fact that bnc must have reprogrammed it in her image." She thought, due to the realization that bnc did not hijack James for the sarcastic remark. Incredible pilot - talking to most other drones she met was about as satisfying as talking to a toaster. They were very limited to their function... but James was meant to pass as a human - and apparently was much more sophisticated. She said "Aham" to get James' attention and then added "You go first James darling... It would be more fun as I'll be less clothed and more grateful".

[Thanee]

"About infiltrating their forums... that was pretty much what I was thinking. If we manage to give them some false leads they might have a harder time finding valid ones. The more the better, I guess. But I am not one to help with the Matrix stuff, so I will leave that to the professionals," Nova said.

When James arrived, she eyed the man-drone with some suspicion, but other than that didn't show much interest in him.

[ Spoiler ]

Perception (visual) 4 hits

[Jack_Spade]

bnc had received her fake forums ID. She was surprised to find such a sophisticated piece of communication technology catering to such an obvious bunch of tools. Seeing the quarter of a million subscribers, she realized that there had to be some major player behind organizing all this. Especially frightening was the fact that the Attack Mood Soft was free for download and didn't seem to have any restrictions beside the requirement to stay online to receive additional content.
Long threads of enthusiastic users praised its features, among them the rewards that even wrong leads brought, as long as the victim had at least superficial resemblence to the mark.

Filtering by location, she found subscribers from every major city between Frankfurt and Genua as well as Vienna and Geneve. The earliest posts reached back about a year, but the content indicated that there had been another forum before this and just migrated.

There was an obvious surge of new members, starting about two months ago, indicating massive recruiting efforts. Quickly she found the corresponding posts. They read all along the lines of: "Become part of the hive mind and protect your world from the monsters among us."

Step by step it seemed as if people were drawn in to play a game that quickly became reality, while still keeping game elements like reward points, rank and status priviledges. Most perverse of all was the advertisement for Ares Arms and cyberware among the post about conspiracy theories, hate groups and discussions about correct grammar usage.

[Luckace]

Wraith's look turned slightly nostalgic, when he saw the humanoid drone. Been a while since I saw such a one... How real he looks!
Anna's question pulled him out of his thoughts. "Yeah, I love that trick!", he smiled. "flying is a wiz feeling. Such freedom!
Uhm, I specialise mostly in telepathy. Reading thoughts, identifying hostile intentions, some short-term mind-control, for when I really want someone to lick my shoes", he winked amd grinned at Anna's and James' conversation. "I'm only mediocre at healing Wounds, but I'm a decent fighter."
"And you, what about your tricks? Health magic, you said?"

[ Spoiler ]

Perception: 11d6t5 3

[Gilga]

Anna said "Healing, stabilization, and pain release... I am a magical medic kit, but health magic is also about augmenting your natural abilities. It does not replace genuine skill - but it gives you an edge. I am also into telekinesis and illusions, and my current obsession is spell defense."

She paused "as for combat; I'd prefer to avoid it entirely, but if I have to, then I'd rather use a pistol than magic. I carry quite a collection of them... if you want to look." She did not wait for a reply, just grabbed her bag and went into the van, blowing a kiss at James before she entered.

[Luckace]

Wraith stuffed a Stuffer Shack plastic bag into one of the folders. While the others were busy retrieving their gear, he had bought some basic hygiene-stuff and checked the news if any information on them had surfaced.

"So... as Zentralfriedhof Wien is our only lead, we're off to Vienna, right?"

[Jack_Spade]

Eliza's voice replied immediately: "It is 450km to Vienna. Course has been calculated, your estimated time of arrival is 4 hours and 30 minutes from now."

[SquirrelDude]

Sharkboy checked his phone to look at the time. and complained to no one in particular, "4 hours in the middle of the afternoon? I won't be able to catch SK-PWA or WWWF live to see what Curry Man was doing. At least we'll arrive in time for dinner."

He picked out a cot to throw his stuff onto and started to organize it as well as he could in the space. He tried to find some kind of closet to hang up his suit in the cramped space and pulled out a worn out hoodie and sweat-pants. He hoodie had stretched along the collar from how often he had pulled it over his ballistic mask and most of the stains looked like there were from sweat. He then turned to anyone else who was in the Van. "I'm getting out of this suit and putting on something more comfortable. If you don't want to see some shark ass, turn away and don't look in the mirror. If you do want to see shark ass, I'm sure Eliza could show you where to find some on the Matrix."

[Thanee]

"At least this ride has comfortable seats. Could be worse," Nova mentioned while looking for a place to spend the next couple hours and storing her equipment somewhere, where noone had to stumble over it.

"I havn't been to Vienna, yet. Anything you need to know about the city? The cemetary looks beautiful."

[Gilga]

Anna buckled up and would spend the ride studying a recent publication on advanced counterspelling. It was strange, more powerful overall, but the protective field was weakest in its center. E.g. the mage could only leverage part of the spell defense power for herself.

"It'll make me more vulnerable, but the team would be safer perhaps this is why aimed for magic security... and still, it brings me closer to the abilities of trid mages that make fireballs go away." She thought.

... During the ride she asked without context.
Anna asked, "It is a big cemetery... any specific place inside?"

[Luckace]

Wraith got comfortable and switched his bike on autopilot again. His look seemed mostly absent and in his own thoughts during the drive. I don't know drek about BTL-stuff, I should do some reading...

He shrugged at Nova's interest in the city. "Austrians don't tend to like Viennese, that's pretty much all one has to know about Vienna."
Anna's question gets him thinking. "Let's see what Nacl's coordinates show." He opens the coordinates that Nacl sent us (if possible on a ARO displaying a map of the cemetary, so everyone can see them) and also looks for possible watchpoints from where potential sentinels could easily monitor any activities in and around the hideout.

[ Spoiler ]

@Jack_Spade: So I guess having vehicles drive on autopilot without a human pilot is a rather common thing in Shadowrun, but I guess a unmanned bike crossing an international border usually isn't taken lightly?

[SquirrelDude]

Sharkboy finished changing into his sweats and returned to face the group. "Alright muchachos, now that we're in moving tin can pressed up against each other like sardines, and we have some time to kill, it's time we talked about this."

Sharkboy held up the syringe for the group to see, filled with a clear liquid. "This is dopadrine. I have a few more syringes of it, but those are mine. It has two uses for me. The main one for me and most other professionals in my sport, is taking the edge off after some time in the ring. It settles you down and numbs the pain from some pendejo hitting you in the back with a chair. Hopefully you won't actually need to know more than that.

"However, there is an other use that will be important for you to know. Occasionally, when I get badly hurt, I will uncontrollably do everything I can to kill what hurt me. I think. It may be closer to hurting whatever I thought hurt me or could have hurt me. I'm somewhat relying on second hand accounts, but I don't have any memory of hurting people who were working with me. However, I have seriously injured targets that would have been better used for interrogation. After nearly ripping out a mans collarbone in the ring, the on-site medical professional informed me that dopadrine would be a useful way to prevent that from happening if it could be applied in the moment.

"So then, who wants to be the lucky person who volunteers to try and stab a berserking shark with a hypodermic needle?"

[Thanee]

"Aren't they austrians as well? Maybe the other austrians are jealous, because Vienna is so well known?" Nova continues.

"Oh, and do we cross any dangerous territories on the way? I have heard about go-gangs and other nuisances on the motorways."

Turning to Sharkboy, she added: "Given, that you are probably pretty good in whatever martial arts you do, it might be tricky to get that delivered during such a fit. Can't it be, I don't know, delivered with some sort of gun or something like that? How long do those berserker moments last? I can probably keep you busy for a while... I can make myself reasonably hard to hit and even if a punch gets through, I won't really feel much of it, I guess. You certainly look strong, but not that strong."

[Volker]

[ Spoiler ]

The drone has a Pilot rating of 4 and a Personality soft. And bnc as an example (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Is it possible to identify specific users and find their personas or otherwise hack their icons, i.e. by hacking the server? Where is the forum hosted?

What structure does this society have? Are there rulers/admins who post hints, give out rewards etc? Why do people cooperate with each other?

bnc turns towards Nova. "All you need to know about Vienna is that it's a beautiful city and that it would be far better off without Viennese. And no, don't be stupid: There's nothing to be jealous of. They keep having the worst schools for ages, they have a grotesquely awful dialect, the political situation is even worse than anywhere else and there's no culture to be proud of. And their humor is bad. Only good thing is: Most people in Vienna aren't Viennese.
Vienna is split up in to parts: Transdanubia and Cisdanubia. Transdanubia is where all the corps are located. Cisdanubia is where people live. I assume that the cemetary will be there, too. Just a second."
bnc looks it up and tells the group.

She frowns at Sharkboy. "Ever considered an auto-injector? I could program the soft in a way that it's linked to your biomonitor. Certain parameters will be typical for your berserking and I assume that an intelligent system would be able to identify your berserk rage with a very high probability after just a few runs. It could then create a pop-up somewhere you'll see it when you're just being angry or wounded but you'll ignore it when you run berserk. If you don't react in, say, 5 seconds, it could release the dopadrine.

Apart from that: no, I won't be the one, unless you provide me with a drone with a corresponding gun mounted on it. Good to know to keep a distance, though.
What I can do, however: If you give me three marks on your contacts or promise not to kill me if I hack them - I'd prefer the first version - I can override their image feed. That way I can either blind you or substitute any live targets with images of Winnie the Pooh, assuming that you won't attempt to kill him even in blood frenzy."

[Thanee]

Back to topic. "Oh, yeah, it does look beautiful on the pictures. A lot of ancient buildings. It will surely be even more impressive in the real. Anyways... those Viennese are not actually the people of Vienna then? That's what I thought at first, but you make it sound like they are some sort of sub-culture or snobby elite or something. So, who are they exactly? And how do you know one if you see one?"

She smiled a little sheeply, she certainly knew that the questions must sound pretty silly.

[ Spoiler ]

OOC: I actually have been to vienna once or twice, so I have a good idea about how it looks like. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Jack_Spade]

[ Spoiler ]

To the questions:


@Luckace: Crossing the border from Bavaria to Austria is no trouble at all, even an autopiloted vehicle won't have problems as long as licences and SIN of the owner is in order

@Volker: The forum is more or less a version of 4Chan with very little Virtual Reality gimmicks. It runs on an illegal R5 host. There is very little registration going on - if you want to learn something about the users, you'll have to hack their persona directly. As hosts aren't localized, neither is the forum.

As far as you can tell, it's a classic forum structure: People gain upvotes by posting and delivering content - the better it is, the more points they get. People with lots of points are taken more serious. There are mods and admins - all seem to be hackers of some kind and they are not shy about slamming people with biofeedback attacks while ganging up on them.

People cooperate because success brings rewards for everyone - new BTL stuff. Those who were successful/gave correct hints/show proof of action against targets are the first to receive the new stuff. After that people are randomly rewarded. And as always, the first hit is free.

@all
Coordinates for the hideout: https://www.google.de/maps/place/48°08'...#33;4d16.442457

Eliza replied to the question about the coordinates: "The hideout is part of an old WWII installation. An old bunker hidden among the graves. Unfortunately, it is pretty easy to find cover around this place: It's under a thick tree canopy and there are lots and lots of tall gravestones around. It's the main reason the boss hasn't tried to go back there himself. You'll have to be very careful. When you reach the plot, turn the little St. Mary statue 360° to the right to disengage the lock keeping the grave plate in place. Beneath that is the entrance through a ladder."

[SquirrelDude]

Sharkboy first answers Nova's question. "It can take a bit of willpower on my part to restrain myself, but once it's over, it's over. From what I can tell it lasts longer if I keep getting injured during it. Usually not too much of a problem if I can get my hands on whoever or whatever hurt me." It's just a bit hard to deal with the weird voice in my head chanting, 'bite rip shred kill'. Better I don't mention that, though.

"I would recommend against making yourself a target. Like I said, I tend to try and attack the person who hurt me, which won't be one of you guys. Most of the time it just means I'll be non-responsive for a few seconds as I maul some poor guy we needed to get rid of anyway. It's only when the poor guy is someone we need to keep alive that it's a problem. I can already be pretty single minded, and only more so when I'm like that. Try to take advantage of that distraction."

He just offered a shrug at bnc's suggestion of an auto-injector. "I couldn't program the damn thing to properly respond to my vital signs, even if I could figure out a safe way to test what they look like when I'm like that. To be frank, I already have a bit of a dopadrine habit from my real job. I don't want more of the stuff getting pumped into me every single time I smell a little bit of blood in the water. It's fine to get a bit wigly every now and then, but I'd rather do that on my own time.

He quickly raised hand to shake off bnc's idea of hacking his contacts. "Definitely do not hack my contacts to blind me. Not because I need to see, but because I don't. Maybe you don't remember, but I knew where you and Ms. Black were clear as day even when you were invisible. If you blind me, that extra sense is the only thing I'll have to go on, and I can't really tell you apart by auras or what ever the fuck like your wage mage. I can tell you what's organic and what isn't, and can usually figure out where people are, but that's about it. I have no idea what I'd do in that situation."

[Gilga]

Anna looked at Sharkboy strangely and did not comment, he should figure out his own problems. She is not going after him in full rage mode. She also kept silent as bnc did her crap about Viennese. "I only see, similar people are looking for differences to distinguish themselves..."

To Eliza's information, she commented "I know a horror movie with that kind of scene... I can't wait to get there!"

[Thanee]

"Alright. I will keep that in mind, and only stand in your way, when you really need to not maul whoever you picked out for your treatment," Nova said to Sharkboy. "Don't worry, I will be fine."

"As for the cemetary, we have a couple mages with us, who can hopefully scout the surrounding area before we approach. But thanks for the heads-up. Always good to be prepared."

[Gilga]

Anna sighed "Note that the background count in such a large cemetery may make magic unreliable, or ineffective. I trust my astral experience even in these conditions to take a look. Though, I'll suggest to also use a drone or a technological mean if we have the capability. "