I will assume that Blackie hacks into Foxtons and gets you in as a team which is doing electrical work. He also supplies you with an access code and mag key for the front door. If he canceled every contract someone would notice. The contracts state you can only "work" between the hours of 8AM-8PM due to local housing laws. I also would like to issue a common sense point. You had better do actual work, otherwise one of the other contractors (most of whom have worked for over ten years in the industry) will suss you out.

The first order of business in the vacant lot is to sweep it for surveillance and to do some actual work on the lighting while my agent works on all the nearby encrypted wireless signals.

Once we are certain there isn't anybody watching us and that there aren't any existing bugs in the targets apartment we can start placing our own ones.

Random OOC items.

1. Going to be casting Improved Invisibility and Increased Reflexes on The Professor before entering the unit which is adjacent to Karkoff's apartment. Results are in Invisiblt Castle underneath the character name "Tyler Crey" and the campaign "Behind the Shadows.

Improved Invisibility = 6 Successes.
Increased Reflexes = 3 Successes.

2. Toreador will sit out of the manuel labor and going inside with the rest of the team. He does not do well around electronics and has the Harry Dresden effect on technology. He'll also make a big deal about being above manuel labor.

3. Would anyone be able to provide me with a tutorial on the emote codes to color the text and include spoiler tags?

4. If the team manages to get into the unit, Toreador will setup a level 5 astral ward in the apartment as well as setting up rotating watcher spirits to guard the area. This will take up most of his night while Cruze goes to live it up with Zoltan. Afterwords he might go conduct more legwork on Mr. Johnson.

5. X-men Origins: Wolverine was an okay movie. It's darker then most Marvel flicks with a lot of action. My female friends loved the part when Hugh Jackman was running around butt naked. I was happy Gambit is in the movie, despite not having the over the top cajun accent.

Cruze will have suggested that perhaps those with access to the Hardware skill should go in first and the rest of the team can enter when the area is secure.

I'm not sure we will be able to stay past 8PM unless we are very careful.

Professor can only sustain one spell at a time. Given the 'sneaky' nature of the dealings we wish to conduct first, the Improved Invisibility sounds more useful. It would also allow him to stay in the condo after 8 pm, as an unnoticed, forward observer or first responder. So that's what Professor would ask for. The second casting (Increased Reflexes) is therefore unnecessary, SincereAgape, unless you wish Toreador to sustain it himself (!?).

As an aside, with 6 successes, the Improved Invisibility is strong enough to overcome the most complex vision sensors. This could be useful.

A technical question for all and sundry. RFID tags are readable in many places. Do we have anything that can read them, in order to record the actual ID. Can commlinks do that? Can commlinks emit the ID as if they were RFIDs?

Next, do we have anything that can write new RFID tags with the recorded ID? If not, is this a piece of equipment we should buy?

Normally, I would ask this publicly on DS, but this idea would really help the players in my game, and I don't want to give them the idea for free.

If this is doable with the tech currently in our possession, Professor may start invisibly reading/recording RFIDs from the workers who appear at the condo. All legitimate IDs expected to be there.

Are you talking about RFID tags or SIN's?

You've confused me slightly here. RFID tags can be read by any wireless device and you can edit the data with Edit. They can be detected easily with Scan assuming that they are not in Hidden mode which requires a Threshold 15 extended test. Stealth Tags are harder to detect because they don't transmit constantly but they can be found with an NLJD but this is hard, particularly if the Tags are Hardened.

A device that isn't in Hidden mode that is loaded with a SIN will respond to a request from a recognized law-enforcement agency. I don't think there are any rules for faking such a request but I suspect Spoof will be involved.

Yes, RFID, not SIN. So, say you want to emulate a DocWagon vehicle, and have the Vehicle Mask spell to make your van appear to be appropriate, but the DocWagon vehicle has an RFID that gets it through the facility gate. What would be needed to scam the gate detector into thinking your vehicle is the real thing?

You would need to spoof the vehicles node with a legitimate Doc-wagon ID. You could buy that on the black-market as a fake licence or Intercept Wireless Signals on a legitimate vehicle.

Hmmm.... so what if you wanted to emulate the RFID of a piece of merchandise in a store? I don't know why... oh... say you want to place a fake RFID in a customer's pocket so he trips an alarm as he leaves the store.

That would be Intercept Wireless Signals to get a real tag's Data and then Edit to alter a blank tag to contain the same Data.

You could also hack the real tag but that's a bit risky.

Thanks, crizh. That helps me think of things in this game and prepare for possibilities in the one I am running.

Thank you as well Crizh. I continue to learn something new about 4th edition SR each day after logging into Dumpshock.

Great idea about the increased reflexes Peter. Laur, if it's okay. Would like to sustain the increased reflexes for Toreador based on the roll above. All I'm looking for is Since I only have a sustaining focus of low levels, he would only be able to hold a increased reflexes spell of threshold 2 = +1 initiative pass and plus one initiative. Let me know if this is kosher (Good food by the way) or if you would another roll.

"And some men just want to watch the world burn."
-Michael Caine playing Alfred Pennyworth in the Dark Knight.

I'm sure I'm just suffering from major paranoia but your first description of Larry gave me the fear and this second one makes me want to just shoot him in the face.

He can have a couple of those Stealth RFID sensors when Cruze elbows him.

I don't expect Toreador to find anything out of the ordinary but she isn't going to let her guard slip for a second. Priorities are altered and she is going to discretely 'wire' every room in this unit and discretely distribute the rest of her grenades to cover as much of it as possible.

Hehee. But I it's only a description of Paul Bettany from memory. Of course I realise afterwards Paul does not have curly hair, but Greco-Roman busts do. Besides I like little curls.

I have to admit that I have never really mucked about in buildings under renovation so I know I got something horribly wrong in the descriptions.

Paul Bettany, I see....

Are you perhaps enamoured of his first scene in A Knights Tale?

If I said yes, would you hold it against me?

Otherwise the movie was terrible.

@pbangarth

Yup

That's acceptable. Go with it!

-Laurie

Peter, found anything new on the icon?

Sorry, Chrysalis, I've been really busy with annoying RL things. I will try to pay some attention to it during the weekend.

Huzzah.

Aka padding personal post count.

Well done, Chrysalis. You have both Awakened PCs paranoically Assensing a house decorator. Just because he's using pencil and paper.

Well done.

It appears, as per Street Magic, page 114, that it is possible for Astral forms to communicate with each other, even in a form of speech, for which communal language is pertinent. So I guess Toreador and Professor while Astrally perceiving or projecting may converse with each other on that plane. Once again, emotional content comes through more than exact words.

I guess we need another colour for that form of communication. How about this one?

And a bit more of the turning of the screws.

Have we just run across someone who is ready to be Awakened but hasn't had the guidance? What a cool thing to roleplay if we have!

And of course, Professor, created by the whiz-kid Shadowrun player Peter, is a former university professor with NO Instruction Skill. Well... that actually could sum up a lot of university professors I have known, come to think of it. But still! *heel of palm to forehead*

Maybe

I can see what you will be spending karma on next time. There are afterall so many skills to pick from.

Besides professors do not instruct they lecture

So far I've lined up the Data Search and Instruction skills, and the Psychometry metamagic. They're piling up way faster than the karma!

Peter you're hilarious and Laurie. Stop encouraging him

Dang those maps are hard work. It's taken me about three weeks to work out that the right hand edge of the architectural plans is West.

Where were we when this 'scene' started and which rooms is everyone in now? I'm assuming everybody started in the Great Room. Any rough idea of scale? How wide are these units?

Actually, the unit we are in is 32'9" according to the front plan...

edit - or 9.98m in 'real' money...

edit II - which makes the main building 25m long by my estimation..

Professor is currently close to Larry the Unawakened elf. Somewhere outside near the truck?

Believe Larry is somewhere in the Foyer. One of Laurie's post mentioned the painter working on some sketches in the living room with the paper and pencil. Toreador then tried to read his astral signature, which in turn caused Larry to leave that room.

Assuming/Hopefully he's now in the main foyer with Cruze so she can put a bullet through him, just kidding

*sighs* gets her coat.

Pedro. Have to give it up to your boy. Despite all of Toreador's shenanigans, The Professor has been a pro.

Hoo-rah.

He gets it from years of dealing with petulant students, with ego greater than intellect and sense of entitlement greater than common sense.


Professor's first pass at organizing the team (Alpha and Omega seemed kinda cool names) appears to have dissolved, as he and Cruze are in the unit beside Karkoff's and Toreador is back at his hideout. I'm not sure about the placement of the other PCs, or who is currently watching/watching over Karkoff.

I believe Blackie is nearby working on hacking the local network. That leaves Warrior and Dick, who I guess have taken it upon themselves to stay close to the subject we are being paid to protect, given that the rest of us are mucking about in our own little worlds.

Players, fill me in if this is not what your PCs are doing.

To be honest, I hit that period of minimal activity, and was left far behind. I've been trying to figure out where to reinsert myself into the game.

Following the target as a dozen different people seems like as good a place as any. Dick's doin that.

I'm still trying to get my head around who said what on team comm's and solely in Astral.

Cruze is biding her time until the Orks leave and then she can worry about how to get rid of or neutralize Larry.

She is uncomfortable having the Prof in the building. He's already tipped their hand somewhat with his mere presence and is limiting her options for dealing with Larry.

She may tell him to clear out shortly depending on how things develop.

My responses have also been slow as I am too having a bit of a challenge in figuring who is saying what and when.

If you notice at the bottom of my signature there is a little PBP guide. May I recommend we use that?

Furthermore, when talking in different modes can we use:

**Speaking on the astral** (as in like stars in the sky)

<<Speaking on the commlink>> (those funny pointy things)

"Speaking normally" (quotes like most people use)

If you are going to speak in a foreign language

And then Lauri said in Finnish, "Alakko nää mua?"

I also like using:

why would anyone do that to another human being , I thought.

Is that better?

I will lurch the story on on Friday. I have been notoriously lazy the last week and I have not done anything in terms of packing stuff or work wise.

I've been the biggest perpretraitor of confusing people with the dialouge. I'll go back sometime tonight (USA, NYC standard time) and tinker around with PBP Guide to revise the previous posts.

I'm not confused. I know exactly what's going on! I will give Chrysalis' text coding a try. I still wanna use the pretty colours!

In her last IC post, Chrysalis tells us the unit is empty, and the orks won't return until called by the electrician telling them the electrics are done, so Cruze can go ahead and start doing things. Larry is a bit of a wrench in the works, because he is buddingly (?) Awakened and seems to catch glimpses of Toreador and Professor. The orks are gone, and I would have thought Larry would have gone with them, but he is out back having a cigarette, looking like he needs a break. I can't say I blame him, seeing 'ghosts' and all.

Dick is out tracking Karkoff, Blackie is network-busting, Toreador has retreated to his hideout, and Cruze is in the unit setting up electronic surveillance. The necessary equipment for her work has been unloaded into the condo. Warrior has not been involved in the online conversation, and is not able to change appearances the way Dick can, so unless this is an issue for bmcoomes, Warrior is with the vehicle that he and Dick used to get close to Karkoff, and is staying in contact with Dick. That places two of our people, with good firepower, close to the guy we are supposed to be protecting. Warrior can maintain contact with all parties as needed.

It would appear as if things are progressing in the direction we need them to go.

Since Larry is bothersome and seen as a threat by both Toreador and Cruze, Professor will take it upon himself to deal with Larry, in a non-terminating way, one that hopefully will get everyone out of Cruze's hair. If Cruze needs physical help while Professor is out, she can call on Blackie.

Check the IC thread for Professor's actions.

Gosh. Balls in the wind....

Incidentally when did the IC threads start multiplying?

The Toreador thread started yesterday. Chrysalis may have other threads in mind for the rest of us, considering how each of us seemed to show active history going on when we first met each other at the job meet.

Professor is in the Shadows at all because he is looking for somebody (hmm... sounds like Toreador?) who shafted him royally. Part of the attraction of this job was that Mr. Johnson said he could get Professor in contact with someone who knows the guy.

Fearless Leader inspired me to choose a new avatar.

I'm sticking with the creepy doll.

Use an elf boys. Join the movement.

For that kind of movement I eat fiber.

You had to say that while I was eating!....

I once succeeded causing someone to have pot noodles come out of his nose with the simple phrase "But I am innocent! *blink* *blink*"

-Chrysalis

impressive

That's terrible.

Friends don't let friends eat Pot Noodle....