The Found Arcana – Chapter 6 [IC], Continuation of https://www.rpgplayroom.net/forums/topic/the-found-arc Options

[Gilga]

AM logs in and lets her body grows numb, feeling comfortable that Trouble will protect her. She observes the matrix for a while and then moves to the sensors trying to find some intruder. "I should have asked Iktomi for wits rather than brains." she thinks at Trouble, understanding that she has the wrong gift for the task at hand.

[ Spoiler ]

Perception (hot sim): 12d6t5 1
Int + EWAR (hot): 12d6t5 6

[Tecumseh]

Mato comms with his findings.

<<There was an antihistamine in the wine. Older antihistamines promote drowsiness and make you more susceptible to the depressant effects of alcohol. Unless Van der Bloom is having allergies in late December - and treating them with medications from 100 years ago - then we should assume this was done intentionally to knock him out.>>

He reports the same to Brad, Hamington, and Cunningham. The latter if only to retroactively justify the expense of the chemsniffer ring.

To Van der Bloom he says, "Sir, your cheese has been laced with diphenhydramine. It's a first-generation allergy medicine that promotes drowsiness and reduces the body's ability to metabolize alcohol. Diphenhydramine was even used to treat insomnia. We should consider putting the system into active alert."

[Beta]

Keeping his blade handy, Jawsey went to investigate the indicated area. They were more interested in finding intruders and scaring them off than in sneaking up on them, so he started off high, looking down. The plan was then to work his way down to see under anything he couldn't see past from above. And finally he'd actually work his way through any vegetation that could be hiding something.

[ Spoiler ]

asensing-1d: 10d6t5 5 hot dice!

[Jack_Spade]

Van der Bloom looked apalled: "What? Someone tried to dose me? Damn right, I'll get to the bottom of that. Keep an eye on me while I dive."
The IT-admin leaned back and went slack as he went into VR.

AM meanwhile had searched through the logs and found the sensor in question. It was on the northernmost point of the estate, watching over a long stretch of wall.
Looking through the recording, she nearly missed the short glitch, but once she found it, enhanced the image and had a good look with an integrity probe, she noticed that for about three seconds, the sensor had been looped. AM was pretty sure that it had been no normal hack, for that would have been a much cleaner edit. It looked more like someone had used a cheap looper round to get past the sensor.

Meanwhile Jawsey found the place - and was surprised: There was nothing there - literally nothing. Someone had gone to the trouble of wiping away all signatures around the incident site. Noticing this absense was a lot harder than finding a faint trace, but their mistake had been to also erase the signature of the destroyed watcher. And another thing struck him as curious: The watcher had not raised an alarm when the attack happened. So it either hadn't noticed something sneaking up on it, or it had dismissed the entity as harmless.

[Gilga]

AM shows the images to Van der Bloom, and texts >> Looper round. Northmost part of the estate. she also notifies the team.

>> one of the sensors was hacked with a looper round, be vigilant someone entered the perimeter. To Van der Bloom she then asks >> who brought you the cheese?

[Tecumseh]

Mato updates Brad, Hamington, and Cunningham.

<<In addition to Van der Bloom being drugged, we have a potential perimeter breech: a camera along the wall was hit with a looper round. I understand that we'll be reluctant to disturb our guests, especially given the emotional significance of the evening to the Sir Pike and the Duchess. Should we alert MET2K about the possible intrusion?>>

[Beta]

Per instructions, Jawsey moves back to cover and lets McElroy go look. But he as he pulls back he makes sure to emote that he is worried.

[Gilga]

Finding and reporting the lopped sensor, AM knows approximately when and where to look. So she checks nearby sensors that may have overlapped with the looped sensor and hopefully caught a glimpse at what happened. Next, she attempts to track the possible courses of the attacker by searching for more looped sensors within a temporal proximity of the one she discovered. She also takes another look in the matrix for possible intruders, or unwanted marks on important devices like maglocks, doors and windows.

[ Spoiler ]

Matrix perception: 12d6t5 6 matrix perception.
sensor reading:
sensors: 12d6t5 4

[Jack_Spade]

AM carefully searched all available sensors around the looped one, but couldn't find anything... except for one of the microphones from a sensor array a bit to the west that cought a few seconds of a high pitched wirring noise. Besides that, there were no MARKs or other manipulated sensors.
Van der Bloom answered: <<I don't know, I'm trying to find out. The food was there when I came back to my shift - about an hour before the dinner started. There. Location data suggests that Masha brought the food from the kitchen. The signal from her link is congruent with the movement sensors along the corridors.>>

Hamington replied to Mato: <<Good catch, I'm instructing the Boche to get their asses into gear and search the grounds. You boys go out too and look for the intruders too - the Krauts don't know the area. Except you, Red. You stay in reserve and patrol the corridors inside. Wouldn't do if we were outflanked. And everyone: Make sure your biomonitors transmit and you check in every 10 minutes. Can't take an intrusion lightly.>>

Jawsey looked around on the astral until McElroy returned: 'Nothing - everything wiped clean - something intelligent and dual natured was here and tidied up behind itself. We could be facing a practicioner here - or a spirit.'

[Tecumseh]

<<Yessir!>> Mato comms in response.

So he's on patrol duty. That likely sets him up for an ambush - by Chan, most likely. Maybe he'll get lucky and find Invictus up to no good. Maybe he'll get unlucky and offend Komarova somehow. Well, only one way to find out!

He comms AM and Jawsey: <<My instructions are to patrol the hallways. I'll be nearby if you need me.>>

With that, he heads out into the hallways, regularly sweeping with his sensors to detect anything amiss.

[Gilga]

AM shares the noise to the team asking "Anyone recognizes that?" She also shares with Kurt to see if he has anything to do with the pitch like filtering it or cleaning it.

[ Spoiler ]

Is there something she can do with the sound?

[Jack_Spade]

[ Spoiler ]

Memory test - Log+Int to identify the noise

[Beta]

Jawsey heads back to his body along with McElroy, so that they can report their findings. Jawsey quickly informs the team of their findings, does his best to identify the sound that AM sent, then he mentions to McElroy as well as the team "We can't be sure if it was someone breaking in or breaking out. Breaking in the bigger immediate threat so we focus on that. But maybe we start the process of seeing if anyone or anything is missing?"

Then he asks Copper Woman to go find Mato, and to defend him astrally and to let Jawsey know if she needs to do so.

[Jack_Spade]

Listening to the recording closely, the team quickly determined that it must have come from a small to mid sized flying drone

[Tecumseh]

Mato comms AM and Jawsey.

<<Sounds like a drone. Maybe they used it to snipe the cameras.>>

He then decides to bounce some ideas off of them.

<<These could all be distractions or diversions rather than a straight-forward intrusion. Jawsey, like you said, if the watcher got popped without sending up an alarm then either it didn't see it coming or it didn't think the entity was hostile.>>

<<There's plenty of evidence to suggest an inside job. Van der Bloom getting drugged, the MET2K merc knocking over a vase - and looking surprised by it - even Hamington overreacting to the vase. All of these could be the product of magical influence. Knock out a camera, pop a watcher, get the MET2K mercs outside, long story short: draw resources and attention away from the main building.>>

Mato pads around the hallway.

<<I think the ring is the most likely target. Anything draconic is going to attract attention. I'll head that direction.>>

[Gilga]

>> Good catch, and let's secure the ring. Trouble, please look for the ring again.
AM sifts through to the data and tries to sees if one of the guests seems overly eager to get out.

[Beta]

Jawsey mentions to McElroy "Invictus left the party early. Assuming it didn't do this, it could have noticed something. Do you have any good way of contacting it?"

[Jack_Spade]

Mato paced through the silent hallways, protected by Jawsey's spirit on the astral. He reached the family quarters. The doors were closed and no sound could be heard from behind them.
Trouble quickly reported back to AM: 'Can't get to the ring. The family quarters are warded extra hard and have awakened stuff in the walls. You'd have to send me away, step through the doors and call me again for me to be able to go in there.'

McElroy didn't answer immediately, apparently he was rather distracted. Finally he said: "Unfortunately no. He is a free spirit and can materialize or dematerialize at will. Also he is authorized for the outer wards of the building and the fence. We'll have to wait until me makes his appearance again."

[Tecumseh]

Mato certainly isn't going to try the door nor is he even going to knock.

Instead, he tries his radar sensors, wondering if he can see through the door to get a sense of what's happening on the other side.

[Jack_Spade]

Mato's radar sensor penetrated the outer wall and registered another wall about half a meter in, creating a closed crawlspace inside the walls. The inner wall appeared to be shielded with a Farraday cage setup. Someone had gone to quite some effort to shield the family's private life from any kind of surveillance. The doors had been shielded, too.
For just a second he thought he could make out a humanoid silhouette inside the wall, but when he looked closer it was gone. In any case the image had been to brief and indistinct to tell if it was a person or a spirit.

[Tecumseh]

Mato frowns, not liking what he's seeing. He shoots off a comm to AM and Jawsey, plus the security team (Cunningham, Hamington, and Brad).

<<I'm outside the family quarters. Sensors indicate a humanoid silhouette inside the utility crawlspace. I'm requesting permission to investigate, plus astral support.>>

Usually he'd just go do it without asking, but he's feeling sensitive about the nature of the evening, given the young couple's engagement.

[Jack_Spade]

Cunningham replied: <<Don't enter. I'll go there myself now and see what's going on there. Stay where you are for the moment and keep an eye on things.>>
True to his word, Cunningham came jogging along only a minute later, entered the first set of doors, closed them - and entered the crawlspace as Mato's radar sensor showed.
Cunningham reported back: <<There is no-one in there. I just walked around the whole perimeter. Are you sure you heard someone in there?>>

[Tecumseh]

Mato tries to indicate where he had detected the presence, either via ARO or just knocking on the wall.

<<Radar sensor, sir. There was humanoid silhouette inside the wall right about here. It was brief and I thought it might be a spirit materializing or dematerializing, hence my request for astral support. I know there are Awakened plants and bacteria back there that have to be maintained. It is possible to create a gap or an opening in the defenses that would allow for astral intrusion?>>

He realizes that Cunningham might be the wrong person to ask, but Mato doesn't know either. It seems like a weak defense if a spirit could just materialize, move some plants aside, and then pass through astrally, but maybe that is what the bacteria is for. But who knows what it takes to maintain that, and if a portion might be defeated (or simply released/dispersed) by conventional means.

He figures he'll ask AM and Jawsey separately: <<Any vulnerabilities to Awakened plants and bacteria preventing astral trespassing? Are there common ways to defeat them that we might need to investigate?>>

[Jack_Spade]

Cunningham relplied: <<It's a layered defense. A strong ward protects the plants and seals the bacteria in between another ward. Any dual natured creature forcing its way through both would get a nasty astral infection - and leave a visible outline even in spirit form. As far as I can tell, the lichen has not been disturbed - it's radiated with UV light to also ward against HMHVV creatures that can turn into smoke as well as keep the plants growing. But I'll have McElroy and your partner examine the barrier and plants momentarily.>>

Indeed, McElroy and Jawsey came down shortly after, having been called by Cunningham.

AM meanwhile found no sign that someone had tried to leave the estate - the sensors showed the twenty mercenaries patroling outside and doing a reasonably good job at keeping each other and the environment in sight. The staff had - insofar as they weren't still cleaning up - retired, leaving the corridors empty.

[ Spoiler ]

Jawsey can make another assensing test, following McElroy into the crawlspace.

[Beta]

Jawsey replied to Mato <<Not something I've had the opportunity to learn about yet. Can't say that I'm eager to meet such defenses, but I suppose that is what will happen next>> Indeed he was soon headed down -- sword returned to its can form -- and hearing the details of the set up from McElroy.

Once there he learned that they were to go in physically. Well, that was probably better than risking his astral form getting stuck in the defenses. So in he went, and only once he was sure of where he was positioned did he open his astral senses and look around.

[ Spoiler ]

asensing: 11d6t5 5