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LurkerOutThere
So last weeks run featured my runners being hired by the Technomancer Liberation Front to investigate an if necissary liberate anyone trapped at hospital that at least on the surface cared for people with AIPS. Since there's a definite link between AIPS and technomancers the group sets out to investigate. They look over the site and one of them with a medical background and a solid fake sin gets a job there. She's in place a couple days taking it slow. The group technomancer decides to check herself in as a patient as she presumes as a tehcnomancer she'll be able to fake the disease easily enough and identify other technomancers.

Unfortunately the group missed a couple of hints and didn't do nearly enough legwork. Nearly as soon as the technomancer was through the doors she was made by an enemy dissonant technomancer the team (although not the nurse so hence why she wasn't identified nor recognized him). To compound matters when the parties inside woman came around to check on her she critically botched her medtech roll (downgraded to botch) so she didn't notice the TM was sedated and not just sleeping which will slow the alarm being raised until after the TM is moved into the secure ward.

Now i don't know what i'm going to do. We broke at that point. Next week we're going to piuck up. I figure the opposition will have any where from 2-6 hours of unrestricted access to the TM depending on the team's actions. So the question becomes what form (from a roleplaying standpoint) would these VR sessions take place. I'm soliciting ideas, i've got a few but wanted to poll the dumpshock community. I have a Prisioner, V for Vendetta, or the Torture episode from Babylon 5 in mind. Emphasis on psyche outs and other horror roleplay and less on actual hot pokers torture.
AndyZ
Thanks to magic, torture in 2072 is really unnecessary unless someone wants to play around or is particularly sadistic.

The spell Mind Probe will tell the NPCs anything and everything that they want to know. From there it's a simple matter of having utilizing this information, finding out all sorts of stuff about the other PCs and so on. I suggest using this to advance the story by giving the NPCs some valuable information out of this.

The spell Influence can also be used to make the captured TM betray the group after he's already been freed. You may choose to not even tell the PC about this at the time and let him find out later, but it might be best depending on your group to let him know that he remembers doing it and he doesn't see it being a bad idea.

Cranial bombs may be worth using. The PCs had better have some way of getting it out fast, though. The problem with actually using one is that either the PC should be ready to die, or you should know from the start that you won't actually use it.

The enemy might set things up so that he manages to steal some wireless access, only to find out that it's been hacked so that friends seem like enemies and enemies seem like friends. What if he starts destroying data only for a PC to find out later on that his entire commlink has been wiped by the TM who didn't know what he was doing?

Once they have everything they want out of the PC, they may just offer to sell him back to the other PCs at a significant cost. Can the party scrape together 10,000 nuyen.gif to bail him out and get him back? 25,000? How bad do the PCs want this guy?

How far you want to go with this is up to you. I would say that it's not the style of torture you want to look at. Nobody likes torture. Instead, consider the cost-profit bottom line that corps deal with. Assuming the enemy they're dealing with works for a corp, they may even let him go if he does a job for them, even if he doesn't know that that job will destroy his rep and send yet new enemies after him.
LurkerOutThere
Hmmm ok all fair comments but i should state a few things that I may have ommited. The goal of the enemy is to recruit the PC preferably through convincing them to their twisted cause by means up to and including full on brain washing.

They will use no magic, after all they have technology and emergent capabilities.
They arre not a corporation but rather a disonant cult who firmly believe in the bottom of their twisted little black hearts that the PC in question should join them. They have some allies among corporate and other conspiricy groups but their "front company" is barely a single A. What it does have complicating things for the runners coming to break her out is a contract in good standing with Knight Errant who also holds the local law enforcement contract and can call on support from a nearby Ares arco.

So yea what i'm mostly looking forward here is ideas for scenes to horrify and mess with the minds of a PC in the form of a disonant realm. Without resorting to the easy press of rape and torture.
Heath Robinson
You need to select which kind of Dissonant your players have encountered, then tailor the imagery to that kind. Most of the Dissonant groups have SFA in the way of flavour, so you're going to be hard pressed. I've got some ideas, but they're nowhere near complete.

Cyberdarwinists
A boot stomping on a face. Over and over and over. Cuts to the face of the person doing the stomping - a sadistic slasher smile. Images of the graves at Auschwitz. Beethoven playing softly in the background. News reports of corruption and disaster and crimes of passion layered on top of each other both visually and audibly like a stream of bad news. Iconography of the KKK, Neo-Nazis, and Humanis morph into each other, and into the iconogrpahy of the Big Ten. That famous statue of Iwo Jima set before images of nuclear bomb tests and Godzilla. Scenes from famous action movies played backwards and forwards, each replay zooming closer to the main character's face - digitally morphed into the same sadistic smile. The music building up to a crescendo all the while.

Everything cuts out, and after a dramatic pause a symbol appears before them before a disembodied voice speaks to them. It says "we can save this world".

Using the ability for tactile and emotional feedback in VR, you can have the "patient" feel every bootstomp, and amplify (or induce, but their real feelings would be more convincing) every twinge of guilt, shock, disgust, and reverence. All of the imagery before the AI-symbology is disjointed and cuts suddenly and in a sort of waverish manner with little flashes to previous sequences, perhaps.

Infektors
Floods of information on the the basic ideas behind networking. Lectures, monotone automated voiceovers, diagrams, texts. It layers into a babble, noise, until it is cut short by a growing distortion. Simple graph diagrams growing and connecting nodes in green with a coherent voice over describing the benefits of an integrated, viral networking solution. Slick editing, professional - almost salesmanlike in demeanor - voice over. Buzzwords a plenty.
shuya
obvious route: psychotropic black IC, UV environments, whatever is necessary (from an evil GM standpoint, but all the rules are in unwired), run the characters through some twisted story where the group's TM is forced to give in to some terrible evil desire, etc etc.... a hospital would be a good background for all SORTS of creepy medical stuff going on... gene-twisted stuff, vivisections... think maybe System Shock 2 for atmosphere (if you've played the game, it's a good cyberpunk thriller for those who don't know about it)...

anyway after that session, "wake up" everyone, ya know? segue into the party waking up the TM after a crazy dose of being out of it... say that the whole run beforehand WAS really grabbing her out of there, but the way you tell it with all the gory/crazy stuff was all in the TMs head... like basically, as a GM narrating from the perspective of one of the PCs who's absolutely batshit crazy, right?

sorry if that was all disjointed, i was kinda brainstorming through a keyboard, but maybe you'll find something of it useful, ne?
The Jake
QUOTE (shuya @ Oct 7 2009, 07:40 AM) *
obvious route: psychotropic black IC, UV environments, whatever is necessary (from an evil GM standpoint, but all the rules are in unwired), run the characters through some twisted story where the group's TM is forced to give in to some terrible evil desire, etc etc.... a hospital would be a good background for all SORTS of creepy medical stuff going on... gene-twisted stuff, vivisections... think maybe System Shock 2 for atmosphere (if you've played the game, it's a good cyberpunk thriller for those who don't know about it)...


Yep. Spot on.

Between psychotropic IC, UV/Resonance/Disonance Wells, there is nothing stopping a Disonant TM using all sorts of ghastly tricks to interrogate the PC. Check the rules for memory programming in Unwired for some REALLY nasty ideas. 6 hrs would definitely allow memory tampering (albeit somewhat limited by time constraints). If the PC gets shirty, just point out the number of mistakes that they made and to cop it on the chin.

I'd put the TM through a series of Composure/Interrogation tests, apply Disonance penalties and see how well they cope under interrogation. I'd try and roleplay it through with the TM as much as possible (without boring the other PCs). If the PC wants to mitigate/avoid disclosing too much, let him spend Edge. But I'd consider this to be reminiscent of the standard Deus introctrination of his 'Banded' (think Picard when he was captured by the Borg). I'd force a composure test every hour and draw a table - either within 8 hours or more, the PC is mentally broken and converted into a Disonant TM or otherwise given flaws the PC can work off ... e.g. Judas, Scorched, Flashbacks, Amnesia, etc. This may sound harsh, but the PC may enjoy the potential roleplaying experience of playing a potential 'Judas'... heh heh (just keep this secret however).

I'd also put the PCs on the clock too - let them know that the PC is captured and they don't have much time. Let it be known that conceivably if they don't hurry, their comrade could be mentally broken down and 'corrupted' somehow. At least that way both sides know they're on the clock and there's no room for misunderstanding.

- J.
Blade
Brainwashing can be done by reprogramming the brain with a PAB (it's in Unwired). If they don't have access to that kind of thing, they can still go the old fashioned way.

People have points of reference they need to function properly. They have ideas about what's wrong and what's right and some other clear cut definitions. These are what they base everything else on. If they see something that confirms it, they'll accept it. If they ever see something that goes against this, they'll reject it.
People will be able to resist indoctrination thanks to these: as long as the doctrine goes against these points of references, it won't work.

So if you need to indoctrinate someone whose points of reference are different from yours, you'll need to destroy these points of references first. This can be done by causing an overload of cognitive dissonance. First of all, you need to make him loose all physical points of references: time (no day/night cycle, no fixed hour meal, irregular sleep schedule). Then you can move on to the psychological part: have someone visit the person regularly and be really nice and then suddenly the worst kind of guy, bring him food that looks exactly the same everyday but can be either delicious or disgusting. Breaking him down physically might also help (sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation) but going too far might get him crazy. Once the victim has lost all points of references, he'll crave some. He'll want to be able to tell if something is right or wrong, if that guy is good or bad and so on... And that's exactly what you're going to give him.

There's a very good example of this kind of torture at the end of George Orwell's 1984.
LurkerOutThere
I am aware of the mechanical systems, sadly what i'm mostly drawing a blank on are the roleplaying side of the house. I intend to take the PC in question aside a lot seperate if nothing else to amp up the paranoia about what's happening. I may even get a kitchen timer to time the sessions between the two groups.
The Jake
QUOTE (LurkerOutThere @ Oct 7 2009, 10:26 PM) *
I am aware of the mechanical systems, sadly what i'm mostly drawing a blank on are the roleplaying side of the house. I intend to take the PC in question aside a lot seperate if nothing else to amp up the paranoia about what's happening. I may even get a kitchen timer to time the sessions between the two groups.


UV host (Disonance Well). Have the PC wake up in a completely foreign time and place - e.g. a hallway with lots of doors that stretches forever (like the Renraku Pyramid? Heh). No matter which door he goes into one of the Disonant TMs is there and explains he wants a chat with the PC. The door locks. The lights go out. Then start employing the tactics Blade mentioned.

Over a long enough time frame, any mind will crack. A Resonance TM in a Disonance Well, subjected to the whims of a Disonant TM will crack that much quicker.

- J.
kanislatrans
why am I hearing "Relax" by Powerman 5000 in my head? wobble.gif

MikeKozar
Funny you should ask...

I've been rewatching old Star Trek episodes lately via Netflix, and last night I saw an episode called 'Second Skin'. The main character was abducted and wakes up in an alien home...with an alien face. It is explained to her that she is an undercover operative - in Shadowrun terms, she had the Judas flaw and never knew it. She is of course presented with tons of evidence that she discounts as lies, but is then challenged by her interrogator: Consider two things - is anything I'm saying we have done to you beyond our resources? I'm sure you know it's not. Second, you know that if we simply wanted information out of you, there is no reason for this elaborate ruse. Despite the fact that the audience *knows* the character is not going to turn out to be a Manchurian Candidate, the interrogator's logic is pretty hard to argue with. (If you're curious, the loophole is that she was part of a con being run on a third party - the Interrogator really didn't want anything out of her.)

The reversal of the 'You aren't who you think you are' con would be to convince your Technomancer that his friends aren't who he thinks they are. The more information that the interrogator can reasonably have, the more subtle the lies can become. For instance, if a team member took Restricted Gear to get high-end upgrades at character creation, the Interrogator can explain just who *really* got them that upgrade, and what the price was. The upgraded character may even be a sleeper agent, with a cranial bomb and brainwashing in place to keep them from realising they're working for the corp. Mages may be tainted by Blood, Toxic, or Insect affiliations.

Breaking the character's loyalty is an incomplete victory unless they also join the Interrogator. This is an even more subtle angle; the Interrogator has to sell the faction as being loving, righteous, welcoming, and believable. For it to stick, the story has to have enough truth in it to keep the Technomancer playing for the Interrogator's team long enough to generate real loyalty. One good angle is 'The enemy of my enemy' - explain the Real Villain, and how the Interrogator's team is simply doing what's necessary to protect the innocent. Salt the story with some humbling defeats or embarrassments to fit what the characters know: a Trusted Lieutenant who did something terrible (Whatever the players are after these guys for) in the course of (achieving noble goal) because he believed it justified (collateral damage), and although his intentions were good, he had to be (punished, demoted, cashiered, executed). The crux of this is that whoever the hypothetical 'big bad' is, he needs to make the Interrogator look like a guy just trying to do the right thing.

The Interrogator simply lays out the Truth for the character, and each disturbing fabrication is answered with an opposed roll - call it Charisma+Con vs Willpower+Perception, or whatever is appropriate. It should be easy to get a mindbender NPC who can seriously challenge the character, and make the roll a real tense moment. Make sure that the Player is aware that he will be expected to change alligences if he fails to resist, and have a plan for handling it if he doesn't. This should really include a method for breaking the mind control that will allow him to rejoin the party after a non-lethal battle between the technomancer and his former friends.

[EDIT]

I almost forgot - the absolute top twist to apply in this situation is to simply have the Interrogator be completely honest. The Big Bad really is coming, and the Interrogator's faction has been trying to stop the fifth column/cultists/agents all along. When the PCs take them out, the Big Bad can move unopposed, and several games later they find out that the Interrogator was right all along. When that threat is taken care of, have them start wondering about the other 'lies', about the team's Cyborg being compromised or the Mage being a potential Insect Queen Host...
The Jake
I was thinking "Clockwork Orange" the more I dwelt on it... biggrin.gif

- J.
MikeKozar
It's also possible that the Interrogator isn't interested in information or recruitment. Imagine that the Dissonants normally grab young Technomancers and turn them, but for whatever reason the PC is immune or unsuitable, and a security risk. The interrogator is told to 'get rid of' the PC, and decides to try out the best psychotropic attack they know - not out of anything other then a desire to playtest it and a streak of sociopathic malice.

Normal torture wouldn't make sense here - you don't want the player to submit or give in, you want them to believe there's no way out. The interrogator is looking to do as much psychological damage as the program is capable of dealing and then observe the results after the fact. This is where you get your mindbenders.

I'm reminded of a sequence from Sandman - somebody manages to inconvenience the godlike incarnation of Dream, and when he gets out he delivers his payback. The victim is trapped in a nightmare of awakening - he wakes up from a terrible nightmare, and calms down, gets his bearings, confides in a friend...and realises he's still having a nightmare as the friend begins to melt, screaming, before him. He awakens, and his assistant asks him what was wrong...the victim weeps, and tells her it was only a nightmare, and the assistant cannot answer, because the assistant is made of thousands of spiders in a human skin, and the victim screams. He awakens from his nightmare, and...

For years.

The PC in your game might be due something similar - what if you had him awaken from his ordeal with no recollection of what happened, but know he needs to escape. Have him run a short escape sequence - hack a few sensors, make it to the lobby, to find his friends roughing up the staff demanding to know where he is. When they spot him, they are relieved, happy. They smile. They execute the orderly (If the group has a pacifist, make sure they take the headshot) and pull out vibroblades. They slowly and calmly advance on the PC, explaining that there's nothing to be afraid of, but that there is something inside of him and they need to take it out. It won't hurt. Emphasize the sizzling humm of the blades as his friends, friendly and sweet, walk up to him and start using the knives. He awakens... Have the hospital look grittier, more real. A patient next door is hacking. As the player sneaks out (and let him roll a few times so he thinks the dream sequence is over), he finds patients and staff all with the same, hacking cough. As he makes his escape, have one of the NPCs start hacking up foot-long red centipedes. They drip blood and fluids as they scurry off into vents, drains, and away. The victim lies dying in a pool of blood. An orderly points a sensor at the Technomancer, and tells him..."Sir, there's...there's something inside of you." The Technomancer begins coughing, and he can feel something moving... He awakens. This time he has an IV drip with a cloudy blue fluid feeding into it - with any skill check he will identify it as a known psychotropic. Allow the player to advance normally, but have his hacking attempts fail - sprites flee his presence and refuse to explain. Allow him to get a look in a mirror, and see a sprite of a red centipide, crackling with dissonance, snaking in and out of his chest. Another one leaves his eye socket and corrupts a nearby data cluster. His closest sprite friend gets a look at him and screams, "There's something inside you!" He awakens...

Before he rejoins the party, tell the other players via an NPC or a log leaked to the Nurse infiltrator that there's a good chance he has a cortex bomb, and if it is not disabled immediately it will kill him and wound the party badly. Use the phrase 'something inside him', and hope that they innnocently repeat it in conversation without prompting.

~Mike
Deadmetal: "You, sir, are a Dick GM."
LurkerOutThere
Hmmmm intriguing i may have to look at the last one carefully and adapt it a bit.
kzt
QUOTE (MikeKozar @ Oct 7 2009, 05:18 PM) *
I almost forgot - the absolute top twist to apply in this situation is to simply have the Interrogator be completely honest. The Big Bad really is coming, and the Interrogator's faction has been trying to stop the fifth column/cultists/agents all along. When the PCs take them out, the Big Bad can move unopposed, and several games later they find out that the Interrogator was right all along. When that threat is taken care of, have them start wondering about the other 'lies', about the team's Cyborg being compromised or the Mage being a potential Insect Queen Host...

This is evil.... smile.gif
The Jake
There are so many deliciously delightful, wicked ideas in this thread! I love it!

- J.
LurkerOutThere
I thought i'd post a quick synopsis of how this went.

The PC in question was in enemy hands a little under 8 hours of real time. During that time they were sedated and threatened with forced cyber implantation and then dumped into VR. The VR scenario she was taken into was sort of an anarchist school. While she was cut off from her technomancer powers she was able to call upon one of the sprites she previously had acess to before being shunted into VR. Within the school her teacher was actually a construct shaped to look like and programed by the leader of her TM band (I refuse to use the term guild) he explained to her that he was on the oppositions side all along and he looked forward to explaining more in person. This was in keeping with what she knew abotu him (he's a former CIA operative speacilizing in interrogation techniques and fancies himself a reluctant technomancer Malcom X. By calling upon her sprite from earlier she was able to have it determine that not all the students were actual people and many were just agents to weed out dissenters. It did point her out to a student that was neither an agent nor human named Jack. In their time alone Jack confided that he was traped there as well and offered her an out (at the cost of her life) she refused. Later Pax visited the school node and had a discussion with her (basically a soft sell attempt at recruitment along with more low level psychotropics. At that point she was extracted by her team with the schools administrator knowing they were coming took one last chance at her basically giving her a nice visit to psychotropic rapey town.

Outside:
The runners were in a pickle they found out that their operative was in trouble and had to try and figure out how to remove her. The problem was the site is both dark to them and under a knight errant s3ecurity contract with very close proximity to the the local ares archo. To make matters worse no blueprints or details of inside the facility were availabile to them online meaning they'd have ten minuetes from when they hit the site to get in and flee before a security response arrive. They know from past experience that duking it out with ares in this town is a loosing proposition as in addition to the risk factor it would scrag some of the positive connections they've made with KE and Ares. They decided instead to use the contacts they've got. They call up their KE contact (A captain in charge of Vice) if they can get him a warrant he'll help them extract her from the lab (none of the territory in the city is extra-territorial except for the Ares Archo the Azzie period and the local assetts of the bonafide megas and some of the larger double A's. After a hefty bribe to one of the Shaman's lodge members who has a seat on the city council the warrant was secured in a few hours. Though the facility stonewalled the team bluffed them into giving up the TM.

Fallout: The J canceled the run and gave the team a partial payment ass he doesn't feel the primary objective is achievable. KE lost the security contract for the hospital. The team plans on watching for when their enemies try and relocate the patients in question and trying to intercept them in transit anyway. The way they see it some payback is in order, the fact that their enemy has a standing bounty on his head for his efforts during the crash means they'll get paid to do a good deed. They also owe their KE contact big time but that will be resolved at a later date.

Mechanically the TM glitched one of her rolls to resist the conditioning but made the rest so at the least she's probly picking up siome negative mental issues paranoia to start.
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