The Found Arcana - Chapter 10, X marks the spot Options

[Gilga]

Wouldn't keeping a window slightly open be less suspicious? I am currently mapping the devices and silently running devices. Would let you know if I find anything suspicious.

[Jack_Spade]

Mato spotted immediately the reason, why the skylight was slightly and: the motorized clasp mounted on the ceiling smelled of overworked metal. Barely noticeable, but slight scratches on the extending rods indicated that the skylight had been pried upward with considerable control and force.

AM found four silent running devices within 100 m. One of which had the signature of a Kanmushi cockroach drone. The other two were sensor tags. The last one identified as some kind of actuator.

Rachel noticed that the lodge and the outer ward had been created by two different people. Both signatures she would recognize again if she felt them.
Also there were signs that a recent summoning had been conducted by the person who had created the lodge.

Tamarind's drones had no problem to find the drone and the sensor tags in their sweep: One Tag was in the workroom, one in the living area they were standing in and the drone hid in the master bedroom on top of the lamp.
It had been modified with a single manipulator arm and an adhesive sticker - likely to carry and place a tag.

[Tecumseh]

Mato waits for the sensor tags and Kanmushi cockroach drone to be neutralized before speaking freely.

"We're not trying to surprise the IV," Mato says. "These are clever people. They will know that people are looking for them.

"The bigger concern is, shall we say, 'the competition'. See these scratches here?" He points to them on the extending rods of the skylight. "Someone pried open the skylight just a crack, presumably to place these snoops." He indicates the drone and the tags. "Now why they didn't close the skylight behind themselves is beyond me. Perhaps it jammed, or maybe they were sloppy."

Mato tries to close the skylight to test his theory. He'll force it if necessary. "The IV is rich, but water damage could seep to the neighbors below," he explains. "Big hassle."

[Thanee]

<< I think you were right about the ward, AM. It has a different signature than the lodge in there, and that lodge likely has been there for quite a while, so it would make sense for it to be his. Not certain, just likely. Anyways, I could pick up four more people in the building. I will go astral and take a closer look. Carefully, of course. I am right outside the apartment door. >>

Rachel waits a moment to give anyone a chance to answer, in case they have anything to comment on. Then she will sit in a corner comfortably, and slip into astral space, to sneak into the other apartments, and see, as long as there is no magical protection, what she can find out about the other people living here.

[ Spoiler ]

She can simply buy 3 hits on Assensing here. Should be enough for the relevant information.

[Beta]

<<THoughts about the electronic spies? I can have one of my drones taser them, without showing ourselves anymore than we already have. Or AM can hack them if you want to see what additional info we can pull from them. >>

Personally Tamarind figures that they've likely been noticed, and that there will be little to pull from the drones or tags -- but she she is happy for AM to put them through the wringer if she wants to go to the bother. At least there is comfortable furniture to be on, should she want to go into hot sim

[Tecumseh]

<<Let's squeeze them to make them squeal>> Mato suggests.

<<If they're sloppy with the skylight, they might be sloppy with their signals intelligence.>>

[Gilga]

>> I am hacking them because we need information the most. If anyone objects, I'll stop.

[Jack_Spade]

AM went to work. Gaining a MARK on the sensor tag and therefore its master device was easy, but not totally trivial. The Agent on the device resisted. Also, the drone had uploaded it's data files to the commlink only a few seconds earlier, leaving the drone blank. Still, the files were on the commlink and she had access to that as well. Though the agent was using quite a few resources for self analysis. She knew she had to act quickly. AM saw the file with the lable "surv_2079-03-19-12-42-39" as the most likely. Firing up her editing software she tried to copy the file - only to receive an error message "File Encrypted - Password: _______"
Meanwhile the agent had begun a shutdown, only milliseconds remained for an educated guess which password the agent had set on the file.

[ Spoiler ]

Knowledge test cracking, technology or something else applicable (or log -1 for untrained), Threshold 5

[Gilga]

The one time I do it in AR and without magic turns out to be essential; there is an agent there a step ahead of me. I would have cursed, but there is no time for that- I don't blink and work as quickly as I can within the limitations of the physical space. Password - dammit, I type the first thing that comes to mind.

[Jack_Spade]

Useless facts are a funny thing - they are useless until they aren't.
In that case AM remembered a blog post about a bunch of vulnerabilities in new software. Among them, that a particular brand of agents developed by Mitsuhama had a weakness in their encryption scheme. Unless explicitly changed by the user, they chose a default password based on the timestamp they encrypted a certain file. Probably a legacy bit of code from early development that was never patched out, since a new user could pretty easily change the default setting to something much more secure.
All that information ran like a flash through AM's mind.
Entering the six digits... And the copy process started just in time to transfer the file, before the commlink vanished from the matrix.

It became clear, that really only the drone and the sensor tag in the living room had recorded video and sound, the second tag was not part of the infiltration.

[Gilga]

I suppress the urge to cry something dramatic like "I got it!" mainly because I do not want the opposition to know I did. I have no idea what they would do with the knowledge that I got *something*, but people can justify a lot of immorality for getting their hands on a three-of-a-kind artifact. I protect the file and then continue with my investigation. I then take a few precious moments to finish checking the other devices - which are sadly dull.

>> I found two devices used for infiltration, the drone and a sensor tag, in the living room; the other tags are not recording. Their master comlink turned off once I placed a mark on it, but I managed to steal a file right before it disappeared. The devices were wiped clean once the infiltrator identified our meddling; perhaps it was better to scan the Trix before breaking & entering. Just a thought for the future. So let's hope that our new file has something worthwhile in it. [file attached]

[Jack_Spade]

A quick scan of the material revealed that at about midnight the last activity had been recorded in the living room.
The video showed a man - Xavier IV - and a woman - Victoria, presumably - as they left the building. Scrolling back another person was there, according to the quick dossier this had to be Phillip - he left at about 2300h.
Before that, the three seemed to have been enacting a ritual with Victoria leading. The whole thing had been going on for 10 hours.
Just at the start of the recording the team got a glimpse of the Xenobite Tesseract as Phillip picked it out of a black sportsbag and quickly put it back inside.

In the hour between Phillip leaving and IV and Victoria leaving, both seemed to use the bathroom and pack things into tracking bagpacks.
The rest of the gear also indicated wilderness activities.
The whole time, none of them spoke a word. But they looked at each other a lot - just as the team did when Bobby cast Mindlink.

[Tecumseh]

"Great work, AM," Mato tells the elf. He pats her on the back, a gesture of questionable comfort given his hard, inhuman hands.

"What jumps out to me here," he says, "is that this is from last night. The IV took the artifact yesterday, which means that he would have only had it a short while before this was recorded.

"To me that means one of two things: either a third-party knew about the theft almost immediately, or they knew in advance that the theft was going to happen and they were ready for it."

Mato juts out his jaw as he ponders things.

"It means we're behind the well-informed third party. We have a lot of catching up to do."

[Gilga]

I enjoy Mato's gesture; perhaps my transformation is making me closer to his size and more approachable. I'd want him to warm up to me. Still, considering how stoic he is about everything, reaching out is not easy. I struggle to keep a bucketload of emotions and occasionally hallucinations that only I can see under the guise of sanity and civility. I mean, the man does not even need coffee because of the sleep regulator, whereas getting up after a night of gaming or studying is a struggle to me.

His amped-up carbon masterpiece limbs took some getting used to; it took a while to stop staring at them when I arrived at SIS, and then I just had to research them a little bit. He overclocks them well beyond the specifications, allowing me to overclock the deck and understand its true limitations - rather than what the manual guarantees. When he pats me, I grin at Mato and say I was lucky. I feel comfortable saying that I should have been augmented by magic and in hot simulation before handling such a delicate piece of hardware.

I agree; there is a third party, and we are behind, but the critical question is where they went. Do you want to visit the parking lot to see if they used his car?

[Beta]

Tamarind admires what AM was able to grab so quickly. Over the years various people have suggested to her that she had the makings of a hacker, and she'd toyed with trying to learn the skills at one point. But the fear that she associated with being in VR after her arrest made her all the more wary of too much matrix activity. But AM had managed this in AR! Perhaps Tamarind should invest in modifying some of her electronics to support proper hacking, not just the potential of quick emergency jabbing at things. Well, that was something to consider when they were not on a deadline.

For now, she saw a couple of loose ends before they headed out. <<that other stealth tag, whose it it then? Ana Maka, can you pull anything off of it at all? Is it even matrix active currently? And how tough is the building security, any chance we could trace their departure, see who took what transportation? Otherwise the trail gets more challenging.>>

She gathered up her drones, checking over each one quickly to make sure that they were doing well before packing them away. "Not much else to find here I guess. Too much to hope that they would have left a nice paper map around with a destination circled."

[Tecumseh]

"III said, 'He is not in his flat, nor in one of the summer places of our family. And he hasn't checked into a hotel under his name. My yacht hasn't left the harbor and my private jet also is grounded. His SIN wasn't registered as having left Seattle.'

"Let's presume that's all true and that IV isn't just, say, camping out on the yacht while it's moored at the dock. Although we should check that.

"The wilderness gear they are grabbing suggests that they are headed somewhere rural. It's possible they could sneak onto Council Island, especially with the collective magical abilities, but I'm not sure that it would be worth it. If there's no record of the IV's SIN having left Seattle then there are two possibilities: first, that they're in one of the rural areas of the Metroplex, or two, maybe they're smuggling themselves out of town. They might be familiar with smuggling from their experiences in Boston.

"If they stayed in town, they could be somewhere up in Outremer. The eastern fringes of Snohomish and Redmond start butting up against the foothills of the Cascades too.

"If they're smuggling themselves out of town, I know a few possible routes off the top of my head:

"There's a farm up in Snohomish that straddles the border. For the right price they'll let people cross.

"Down in Carbonado there's a bunch of mining tunnels that cross the border. They lead to Cascade Ork lands. I've used those tunnels myself back when we were trailing Bonita. I know some of those guys.

"Or you can cross the lava or ash flats. There's the Verge in southeast Redmond, or the southern edges of Puyallup. The elves of Tarislar can get you across too.

"Or, you know, you could just jump on a boat on Puget Sound and sail for Salish-Shidhe."

He puffs his cheeks out and exhales at all the possibilities.

"And they have, what a 16, 17-hour head start on us? We're going to need to narrow down the options. The only good news is that they had a full day of activity with that ritual, so they were probably exhausted. I'm hoping they didn't get far before needing to bed down for the night.

"At this point we probably need to start snooping cameras outside to see if we can get a sense of which direction they went."

[Thanee]

Rachel also looks at the video footage, mostly trying to discern the social order between them. Are they acting together in a manner that suggests they see each other as equals, or is one commanding the others. Now, they do not talk, but there is still the body language and posture to be considered.

<< Maybe the drone is from Gladius? Maybe he isn't quite in on all of this, and so he got curious / greedy. >>

[Jack_Spade]

Judge Intention roll, Threshold 3

[ Spoiler ]

Victoria is clearly in charge. Phillip is the omega dog of the whole operation. Xavier appears to be her right hand - the two work very well together.

[Gilga]

I comment to Mato "They are a bunch of nerds from MITnT obsessed with magic; I am not sure they have the street smart to deal with that kind of people, but speculation aside, they may have dirty laundry, and with your olfactory sensors it can help find them. Mages may be invisible or soundless - but I haven't encountered a spell for being odorless. Raven, if you can pull a Bobby and turn into a hound or something, it may also apply to you."

She thinks Let's scan the room, perhaps they made a mistake and forgot their earbuds slaved to their very expensive and highly secure comlinks or a magical trinket that Raven or a spirit can use to trace back to them -heck there can even be bounded spirits here. With the long-term service of preventing theft or something along these lines. We really need to finish here before we move on, let's give it ten minutes?"

I say and carefully examine the stealth tag slaved to the comlink - perhaps that one has some data left on it, or perhaps I notice anything else of importance. After that I'll help with the search, starting with the kitchen, and then the bedroom and whatever other rooms they have. I'll even check the shower or toilets, and their trash. Perhaps they ordered something unusual and the package is still there.

[Thanee]

<< Judging from the video, Victoria is clearly in charge here. Xavier appears to be her right hand. The two work very well together. Phillip just seems to be their lackey. So, either Victoria is controlling Xavier somehow, or these two are just made for each other. If it is the first, we need to break her control somehow. If it is the latter, I wonder, if we even can get him to talk to his father again. Of course, first we need to actually find them. >>

[ Spoiler ]

Judge Intentions 4 hits

[Gilga]

I am a bit surprised at my recent discovery, a heat signature RFID and a can opener - are likely the way the window was opened, but there are footprints, probably the guy installing the actuator; I wonder how he had the sensor inside - someone that could legitimately enter the apartment? Perhaps.


I send Trouble to look at the roof, looking for anything 'engine' near the sky window where he found his footprints. >>... I think I am close to figuring out how they placed the drone inside - they used an electric can opener parry the sky window and a heat sensor inside to trigger the can opener. We're dealing with some creative minds here, but I suspect someone has been here before because the sensor needs to be placed inside. I want to find the actuator and verify that it is on the sky window that we're not missing anything - and that RFID tags are running silently and understand which room they wanted full before activation.


I enter the workroom to see if anything happens; if the actuator starts working, then the tag is there. Then I take an astral look and try to make sense of what I am seeing if there is anything there, I want to talk to it.

[Jack_Spade]

The moment AM stepped into the work room, she heard the whirring sound of a stressed motor and the unmistakeable sound of a tin can getting ripped open at the seams.

From under the desk a tiny potted cactus fell on the floor. The terracotta pot hit the floor and broke.

For a moment that was all that happened. Then the cactus began to grow - massively so. It's arms elongated and grew hands, two bulbous blossoms bloomed at the top, giving the appearance of two large eyes - focusing on the intruder.

And still the creature grew, turning moment by moment more humanoid. It took AM a moment to realize that she was looking here at a plant spirit, albeit one of such power and intensity as she hadn't seen ever before.

A voice like a thousand needles grating against each other said only one word: "INTRUDER"

[ Spoiler ]

Greater Plant Spirit
Ini: 20+2d6 26

At ini 26: Materialization

[Tecumseh]

"They are a bunch of nerds from MITnT obsessed with magic; I am not sure they have the street smart to deal with that kind of people...

"Pause there," Mato says, holding up a hand.

"IV made it out of Boston. Philip made it through the Lockdown. That suggests a certain survival instinct. IV's girlfriend Gracie did not make it out. That kind of thing will harden a man.

"They made it into town without it registering on their SINs. We know from our research how discrete IV is. See how meticulous this research is? Let's assume they apply that same level of rigor to all areas of their lives.

"Let's not dismiss them as academic nerds. Let's work under the assumption they are geniuses who have applied their massive intellectual gifts to the situation at hand. We should not underestimate them."

Then they start searching the other rooms and all hell breaks loose.

"Time to go!" he suggests.

Initiative: 1d6+15 21

[Beta]

Tamarind was glad that she'd packed up her drones, because it would have been a bad time to be chasing after a stray Kanmushi.

As soon as Mato makes the call, she is heading out the door. The noise, and the glimpse of the growing cactus she sees through the door, are enough to convince her that there is no point in setting up a drone taser swarm, their best bet is speed. She heads for the stairs, then pauses to see if the others are making it out OK. She even unzips the tote bag, to let the Aunties and Uncle out if needed as a distraction. That could be a very expensive distraction, but it would probably be worth it to save one of her colleagues.

[Gilga]

It takes a millisecond to appreciate my nonexistent odds against such a spirit. I run, but I don't completely lose it. If I survive it, I'll feel so stupid for assuming silent devices are connected to each other - there was no reason to assume it. Silly me and silliness have terrible consequences.

I briefly look at Mato with a worried expression and say I agree, Run!.


I run toward the ward - for a brief moment, I hope to cross it peacefully, but I can't, and there is not enough time to keep trying. I go though knowing full well that it may be embarrassing to lose a foot of height and giving up a spell that I bled for - but like with the watcher spirits, sometimes things just don't work out. If the spell fails, I'll change clothes and continue with my life until we finish this job, but first, I need to get out in one piece with the people I care for.