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

[Gilga]

"Is her Grace safe?" AM asks quietly, as Katya is the personal bodyguard of the Duchess.
As a trickster follower, she observes carefully the reaction of the bodyguard with all her senses.

[ Spoiler ]

Assensing: 10d6t5 2
judge intention + Mato's monalisa: 13d6t5 6

[Jack_Spade]

"As safe as she can be in this place."
AM couldn't make much out in her aura, which was riddled with essence holes, but this statement at least felt to be truthful.

Katya moved fast and sure, cloaking herself again, but gave Nato an ARO, so he could track her position.

Entering the greenhouse meant leaving the wards of the building, moving a few meters across the open roof and entering the large greenhouse.
The lights were out and only dim emergency lights showed the scenery.
As before, the place was a riot of colour on the astral.
Katya moved through the place, checking for hidden gunmen.
Her method was thorough and professional, but didn't uncover anything.

[ Spoiler ]

Perception (smell) and assessing tests

[Tecumseh]

Mato does his own sweep. He looks for shell casings (unlikely, given the prevalence of caseless ammunition) but also viable targets to shoot. Cameras, like on the perimeter? Other sensors?

"What's up here in terms of sensors?" he asks AM. "If there are cameras, can we tell if any of them got plunked with looper rounds?"

He scans the skies for drones using both his eyes and his radar sensors. He checks for angles that a sharpshooter might able to use to exploit cover.

He also follows his nose, sniffing along with his olfactory boosters. From Jawsey, Mato knows that Invictus was just here. Is there a scent of olive oil lingering in the air, or any gunpowder residue that might suggest what was shot or where shots were taken?

[ Spoiler ]

Intuition 6 + Perception 5 + Specialization 2 + Olfactory Boosters 4: 17d6t5 6 hits

[Jack_Spade]

Apparently at least where his nose was concerned, Mato beat Katya with his cybernetics.
Besides a plethora of plant smells, he could detect the same olive oil smell as well as the sharp tang of cordite or one of its cousins. But there was something else as well. Crouching, he found splatters of a pinkish substance. Another deep breath reminded him where he had smelled it before. In fact he carried the source of the smell with him. His own gun smelled of the stuff - Blight rounds.
And now that he knew where to look, he saw a disturbance in a patch of flowers - a hand print large enough that it could have been Invictus'.

There was no sign of a drone around.

AM found no cameras or other sensors inside the Greenhouse - a perfect blindspot or more romantically expressed: The perfect place for a tryst.

[Beta]

Once up above the building, Jawsey kept look for anything living, trusting Mato's mundane senses to look for drones.

[ Spoiler ]

Asensing: 11d6t5 1

[Jack_Spade]

Looking around, Jawsey couldn't make out anything suspicious outside the mansion, though he was aware that he had lots of blind spots from his current position.

[Tecumseh]

Mato frowns.

"Invictus was here a minute ago," he tells Katya.

"Where was Invictus standing?" Mato asks Jawsey. "There's a handprint here," he says, pointing to the disturbance in the patch of flowers. "And it smells like Blight. Did Invictus take a Blight round, or was Invictus standing somewhere else?"

A disturbing thought. Presumably Jawsey would have noticed a shooter on the astral. That suggests a drone at work, or something else that wouldn't be seen on the astral. He looks to see if it's feasible for a drone to enter and exit the greenhouse. If not, it might suggest that the drone is still here, although he would presume that Katya would have found it by now... unless she has her own motivations to not find it.

<<Same olive oil smell>> he comms to AM and Jawsey. <<I wonder if there was a clue when Invictus said 'immortal soul'. Hopefully we don't have Infected running around.>>

He tries to give Katya a subtle sniff. He'd be surprised if she smelled like anything, but the only way to find out is to try and catch a whiff.

[Jack_Spade]

Katya frowned, not looking happy at the news: "That damn spirit is nothing but trouble. But Blight is hard to come by. We need to make an audit of the armory and see if any rounds are missing there. Get to it. I'll keep looking for an intruder."

The gruff, Russian woman turned around, cloaking herself again.

[ Spoiler ]

Do you want to sniff her out obviously or more circumspect?
In the later case, you have -6 to your perception roll, -3 otherwise

[Gilga]

Iktomi willing, and a cute black cat by her leg, the short skinny elf follows the invisible killing machine, and Mato into the greenhouse. Her senses still augmented Iktomi's blessing, she carefully examines the scene.

[ Spoiler ]

Perception(smell): 14d6t5 4
Assensing: 12d6t5 4

[Jack_Spade]

To her astral senses, the Blight appears like a luminescent black void. Having not yet experienced what the stuff does, AM has still a good inkling that it certainly isn't good for an awakened being.
But she also recognizes an echo of Invictus - and his violent disruption. Whatever happened here, the free spirit had met a very ugly egress from the mortal plane.

[Tecumseh]

Mato is circumspect about his sniffing. It goes almost as well as before. Mato wonders if the greenhouse, being an environmentally-controlled area, effectively traps scents.

[ Spoiler ]

Intuition 6 + Perception 5 + Specialization 2 + Olfactory Boosters 4 - Circumspect Sniffing 6: 11d6t5 5 hits[/color]

Mato doesn't openly disagree with Katya, but he drags his feet a bit before moving to leave.

<<Could Blight rounds explain the 'nothingness' you found on the astral?>> he asks AM and Jawsey. <<Like that emptiness where the watcher popped?>>

[Gilga]

>> I think that Invictus is disrupted... meaning he won't meet us in an hour. Meaning that someone did not want him to talk to us.

In the lab? There was nothing awakened, here there is something, something bad.

[ Spoiler ]

Jack Is that a good answer to Mato's question?, any relevant knowledge skill to understand what it is?

[Jack_Spade]

Katya didn't smell like she had fired a weapon, but she now smelled a lot like the greenhouse after having moved through the whole thing after checking everywhere. Including the traces of blight that Mato could smell on himself too.

[ Spoiler ]

@gilga
There was no trace of blight at the border where the watcher expired. Since it was incorporeal it would have been impossible to apply the toxin.

[Gilga]

AM examines the greenhouse for the ballistic of a proposed silenced shot, looking for a hole in the glass, or at least to understand if the offender is the invisible drone - or is it a person?

[Jack_Spade]

There was no damage to the greenhouse and no casing lying around.
So either the shot came through the open door, or was fired inside the greenhouse.

[Tecumseh]

Mato is glad that it doesn't seem like Katya was the shooter, since that would complicate things, but he's also annoyed that she doesn't seem to be the shooter because having a shooter still on the loose also complicates things.

"I can do the audit," he says, "but the armory is hardly the only source of Blight in the world."

It did suggest that someone intended to shoot Invictus specifically. It also suggested that they knew where he would be.

<<AM, speaking of audits, are there any records you can access about the use of household weapons? Does the system record shots from chasseurs, for example?>>

Before leaving, Mato takes a moment to look out the greenhouse door to see if there are any potential shooting positions along the trajectory of the open door and Invictus' last known position.

He also looks around the roof to see if there are any ways down or off it (rather than, say, jumping off it with hydraulic jacks, like Mato would do) other than the way up that the team took.

As he leaves, he tries to track any of the foreign scents - cordite, olive oil - to see if there were any additional traces of them, or if the scents might have left a path leading away from the scene.

[Beta]

The three up in the green house didn't seem to be in a hurry to leave, and Jawsey had a limited view from a static position. So he did an astral outside circle of the mansion, once again looking for any out of place astral spoor.

[ Spoiler ]

astral perception: 11d6t5 4

Then he returned to his body, letting the team know <off astral overwatch for the moment. I'm running low on astral jaunting time until I get some rest, so I'm popping in and out. Let me know when you are moving out of the greenhouse or anything comes up and I'll get back on guard. >

Then he caught up on the messages, and asks for an update on the finding from the greenhouse. After getting that news he thought for a minute and asked <How did Invictus leave a handprint in a flowerbed? Just in the soil? Or did he do something to the plants? A spirit shouldn't need to lean on anything so he must have had a reason for putting his hand down there. Have you checked that handprint carefully?>

[Tecumseh]

<<I think the shot was taken inside the greenhouse>> Mato reports. <<The scent of propellant is strong in here. But that raises the question of where the shooter went. Katya doesn't smell like a triggerman. I'm guessing it was a drone, maybe the same drone that plunked the perimeter camera.>>

<<One imagines that Invictus was ambushed. The spirit's reputation for self-preservation makes me think that it would just dematerialize if threatened. I take this handprint to mean that it was surprised and was forced to take a knee under the assault. Thus the handprint in the dirt.>>

Mato leaves to conduct the audit. He waits to make sure AM accompanies him as he doesn't want to leave her alone with Katya.

[Jack_Spade]

The team left the greenhouse and Mato went to the armory. Lt. Fines was on duty here. Mato hadn't spoken to him before, but he seemed to be easy going enough.
When Mato told him about the potential spiricide he nodded: "Hell of a thing. Alright, we'll do the audit and check each other's work. Cameras are life and record everything."
He opened the weapons locker and took out the purple capsule rounds. Each was stacked in a neat 10x10 blister with 10 blisters total. All in the 9 mm autopistol caliber. None seemed to be missing, except for the last blister, which only conained four bullets.
"Alright there are no bullets unaccounted here. All us chasseurs got one magazine with 24 bullets each. I haven't fired mine..." He took out his service pistol, removed the magazine as well as the bullet in the chamber and counted out 24 bullets.
"Now you. I'll call the others to bring their weapons here for the audit. But the system didn't register anyone firing them, so unless someone has a backup gun hidden, they can't have been the ones."
10 minutes later, Brad and Corporal Varis arrived.
They too counted out their bullets into the blister, until it was completely full again.

"So, what now?" Brad asked Mato.

[Tecumseh]

"This isn't a surprise," Mato says. "This armory isn't the only source of Blight in the world. It just means they brought it with them.

"We heard a buzzing sound on the perimeter, and then a camera was plunked with a looper round. Now Invictus gets drilled by an unknown shooter that left no trace. Odds are the shooter is the same drone.

"It means whoever is doing this knows what they're doing. They're prepared and informed and executing quite precisely so far.

"It also suggests that Invictus was a threat to their plans. The same goes for the watcher that was popped on the perimeter. That suggests that astral surveillance is a concern of theirs."

He looks to Brad.

"Are the hell hounds trained to alert us to astral threats, or are they only trained to attack? Is there anything they've been trained to identify as non-threatening? I'm just wondering what the gaps are."

[Jack_Spade]

Jawsey hadn't found anything outside that would show up on the astral as remarkable. All the violence must have happened inside the greenhouse.

Brad answered Mato:

"True. Cunningham for example gets his bullets handmade and sent directy to him, in his capacity as bodyguard of course. Not that I think it was him - unless he tought Invictus was a threat.

Though with the breached perimeter it sounds like someone from outside infiltrated this place.
The hellhounds are currently a non-issue. Since Hammington made the MET2K go outside, they couldn't be released without getting mauled by the hounds. Quite a bit of luck for the intruder."

[Tecumseh]

Mato rubs his chin while he thinks. It's an old habit from when his fingers had skin and were soft. Now that they're hard and metal it feels strange, but he keeps doing it anyway.

Mato didn't suspect Cunningham. And, even if he did, Cunningham was technically the team's employer. If he's up to no good, the team's loyalties might still reside with him rather than anyone else in Pike Hall. Such was biz.

"Yes, luck..."

But what about Hammington? Mato doesn't know what his motivation would be, but he was the one who overreacted and sent MET2K outside. Did he do so intentionally to prevent the hell hounds from being released, thus freeing the way for an astral intruder. Or is someone manipulating Hammington, knowing how he would react?

He comms AM and Jawsey: <<We know there's an inside agent, to the degree that Van Der Bloom's meal was tainted. Someone knew where Invictus was and how to ambush a free spirit.>>

<<But, in true paranoid style, we need to wonder if Van Der Bloom drugged himself, possibly as an alibi. Did you notice if his drone has a weapon mount and could be used for these attacks? Is there anything we can do to track the drone's movements, or Van Der Bloom's activity? This may fall on your skills, AM, with Trouble's assistance...>>

Back to the physical world.

"Are there breach protocols?" he asks Brad. "Short of an active intrusion and herding guests into safe rooms. What are we responsible for in terms of chain of command and decision-making?"

[Jack_Spade]

"Nothing more than we already did - the familiy is safe behind their wards. The guests should be too, as long as they stay in their rooms. Can't really do anything about them if they don't want to.
Otherwise, we patrol and search. If we don't find anything... Well, we'll discuss it tomorrow with Lord Pike. For tonight we do what we can.
Maybe this whole thing was about Invictus anyway. Though I wonder what he was doing in the greenhouse."

Brad replied with a shrug.

[Beta]

After all the checking of cameras and bullets and astral signatures, all that Jawsey can think to do is summarize the data to see if he's neglecting something.

<<OK, would you two cross check me on this?>>

<<There is magic on the ring, although we don't know the purpose, the caster, or when it was applied. Or for that matter if the ring is authentic, or just made to look that way by spells>>

<<We have one of the MET2K guys likely hit by manipulation magic of some sort before trashing the vase, which should mean someone in the room at the time. But we saw no signs of casting. Alternate explanation is that the 'sounds like magic' story was made up to cover something else, but we didn't think he was lying.>>

<<Van Der Bloom was asleep, and had ingested antihistamines. We are assuming that they went up with his snack, but don't know that, and have anyway not found any point where anyone was noticed doing anything to the cheese tray>>

<<Someone hit the perimeter camera with a looper round, and took out a watcher spirit -- possibly with blight. Any magical trace was scrubbed from the site.>>

<<Invictus wanted me out of the greenhouse, and implied that he'd be available to talk in an hour's time. Very shortly afterward he was apparently shot with a blight round, and we have no trace on who or what shot the round, and where they are now.>>

<<anything else? Oh right, the figure in the passageway by the Pike's bedroom. Which might have been Invictus, based on the olive oil smell? But we can't be sure.>>

<<Perhaps we could put together a timeline, just to see if it rules anything out, but I doubt it>>

<<Any other ideas of what we do next?>>

[Gilga]

>> Just one thing to add, blight cannot effect watcher spirits it is physical.