That's why my comment at the end.

Void should be interesting. As I said in his background, his memorization of Sun Tzu and Nietzche is ahead of his actual comprehension of them, so look forward to lots of quotes from them which may or may not actually be relevant to the current situation.

Cool!

Does anyone think they'd be able to pick up Jovan's plotting stuff where Sithney left off?

Also, sorry for the long absence. Last two months have been really hectic, but I should be back now.

Yay! The psycho, paranoid bloodsucker is back! Yay!

If Sithney were willing to share his notes on it, one of us could. Given the right stimulus, I might go for it.

Bleh!

That would probably require that Sithney come back again sometime soon. I have a few private notes from him on my own; if he doesn't return soon, I could send them to you, pbangarth.

Also re:Void: I still really don't know what to think about Void's vampire furry BDSM fetish. I don't even know. God help Jovan if his vampirism ever gets uncovered by Void. *cringes*

Oh, God! Please let Sithney come back! That kind of post is beginning to happen!

Jovan is pretty safe from becoming fetish fuel, but he will still likely get annoyed if he gets exposed to "vampire knowledge" from someone who has Laurell K. Hamilton, Anne Rice, and Twilight (and their 2070's equivalents) as his sources.

OK, so Jovan has sent me some info about things he and Saint have been talking about in the background, in hopes that I might carry on part of the story. So here are some questions for folks.

A) My memory is not the same as Professor's so can folks tell me whether the following is correct, please?

1) Charles is the Mad Hatter guy seen with Ms. Johnson. German speaking according to Amber?

2) Jonathan is Archer, the pseudo-activist for Infected rights.

3) BDLL is no longer in our presence.

4) We have had no response from the Vipers to our call for cooperation or return of the communications equipment to them.

5) We are basically ready to start the return of the weapon trucks to Mr. Johnson.

B) Questions about the team or individual members

1) Does anyone on the team speak German?

2) Is Professor the only one who knows what Jovan is?

3) Did we figure out who put the traps in the trucks?

C) Red-ROM, if you are still checking in, do you have background material you are willing to share?

D) I've tried three times to get Professor's story working, once in Virtual Seattle, and twice here on DS. His background and reason for being in the shadows (see post #36) lend themselves to a story in which there is a background figure screwing with Professor and anyone associated with him. The background figure is modeled on Richard Onslow Roper, the arms dealer in The Night Manager by John Le Carré. If Jovan thinks he is a planner and manipulator, he would worship at this guy's feet. This guy believes he can outmaneuver dragons.

If I were honest with myself, I would acknowledge how hard it is to get someone else to run this for me. How amenable would players here be to me finally giving up on Professor being a PC, and trying him as a semi-PC with the rest of the players, working towards his goals and being -sort of- a team leader/Johnson for the crew? It wouldn't be the same as having a climactic scene in which Professor nails the criminal mastermind through perseverance and clever play on my part, but I would like to see the story come to an end one day. Think about it.

Answers in red

1) Charles is the Mad Hatter guy seen with Ms. Johnson. German speaking according to Amber?
Yep, and the summoner of unfriendly Red Queen spirits.

2) Jonathan is Archer, the pseudo-activist for Infected rights.
I thought Jonathan was one of the ghouls working for Archer, but may be mistaken

3) BDLL is no longer in our presence.
Off to injun territory(?) for some shamanic ghoul cure.

4) We have had no response from the Vipers to our call for cooperation or return of the communications equipment to them.
Correct.

5) We are basically ready to start the return of the weapon trucks to Mr. Johnson.
Also correct.

B) Questions about the team or individual members

1) Does anyone on the team speak German?
Nope, but isn't that what linguasofts are for? Ferret would score one if he had any cash!

2) Is Professor the only one who knows what Jovan is?
The crazy spaceman also knows.

3) Did we figure out who put the traps in the trucks?
Gut feeling is that it was the ghouls after lifting a few guns for themselves

How amenable would players here be to me finally giving up on Professor being a PC, and trying him as a semi-PC with the rest of the players, working towards his goals and being -sort of- a team leader/Johnson for the crew? It wouldn't be the same as having a climactic scene in which Professor nails the criminal mastermind through perseverance and clever play on my part, but I would like to see the story come to an end one day.
Definitely up for it. The Prof is about the only team member that seems trustworthy to Ferret. And not just because he is a dwarf.

I just PM Red-ROM to see if he'll retake the reigns. I'd sooner not loose another play. Will St. be coming back as a player?

Hmm, Saint has not been to Dumpshock since September and Red-Rom was last here in July.........we might have to look for a new GM.

1) Charles is the Mad Hatter guy seen with Ms. Johnson. German speaking according to Amber?
Indeed.
2) Jonathan is Archer, the pseudo-activist for Infected rights.
Jonathan is a messenger boy of sorts for Archer. Jonathan was the ghoul that Acme encountered way back when, who needed to get back to the Barrens post haste. When Jovan talked to Archer, Archer admitted that he, too, was wondering where Jonathan was.
3) BDLL is no longer in our presence.
Apparently.
4) We have had no response from the Vipers to our call for cooperation or return of the communications equipment to them.
IIRC we ran out of time to contact them about returning the comms equipment before they switched to different commcodes. We currently have no direct way to reach them.
5) We are basically ready to start the return of the weapon trucks to Mr. Johnson.
Jovan is trying to plan some things out and make sure the team is prepared and has done its legwork before returning the trucks, which may take a day or two, but the rest of the team seems to want to get it done immediately.
B) Questions about the team or individual members

1) Does anyone on the team speak German?
Jovan's air elemental speaks German, but Jovan is still working in a past time frame and by the time that everybody else is currently in, the air elemental has already dissipated.
2) Is Professor the only one who knows what Jovan is?
Oswald used mildly sketchy guesswork to "figure out" that Jovan was Infected, partly based on Jovan's obsession with quoting Shakespeare. Amusingly though, Oswald is now of the belief that Jovan is several hundred years old and possibly a direct relation to Dracula.
3) Did we figure out who put the traps in the trucks?
Most likely Archer, from the plotline notes that I've had to keep so far.


If you think you can stay committed to it and maybe introduce some clever plot twists for us to work through, I would be quite eager to be a player for you and help you in any way I can. Jovan is always up for a challenge.

On that note, don't we have a couple more people interested in playing? Why don't we have one of them fill in for Oswald and/or Professor for now so that we can get this game back on its feet?

I'm taking three weeks off from work around Christmas. There would be time in there for me to develop some plot lines and characters. Since two people have indicated interest in my idea, and one is in general interested in finding another GM, I will give serious consideration to the commitment.

I feel kind of proprietary about Professor. Don't know how I would feel about someone else playing him.

I am still game and the recollection is about what I have. Though I'd prefer to not loose Professor as a PC, that der dem's da breaks.

hey guys.
I have to admit, I've been sucked back into magic the gathering.... damn you xbox!! also Call of duty black ops 2... what can I say, I'm week.
You guys deserve to see how this ends though. I'm a little rusty and I haven't read a post in months, but I could give it a shot if you guys want... who all is left?

also if Pban wants to start something. I'd be interested in that too.

Hey, Red-ROM!! Good to see you hear you read your posts again!

You are the one who has all the original planning and NPCs, etc. Are you saying you are willing to run us through this job, and then play a PC afterwards? That would make my job with Professor's story way easier.

As far as I know, besides myself there are Sephiroth, Warlordtheft and Notsoevildm still as regulars, and Glyph has joined us recently, poor guy, just in time to see the whole thing grind to a near standstill.

Still here.

I know how that is... the games falling apart, that is. when it takes over a year or two to play one adventure, folks get impatient or bored. I myself do allright until I'm researching 50 combat/hacking/magic rules to make half a post.
Anyways, It might take me a few days to get back up to speed.

one point of clarity, Jonathan and Archer where partners. 2 different people. I don't know which characters know and which ones don't. Johnathan never returned from a meet with mrs J.

ok, I've skimmed over what I missed....

It seems like Archer got away , You guys made it back to Oswalds with all the gear. The German (Charles) tracked you down with a spirit and it got squashed. Void is joining up to get charles. And you guys are making plans to get to the docks .... or something...

anything else??

Also. I feel like I should keep Oswald alive in some fashion, if not an NPC. I don't think I could kill him off after my own hiatus.

Jovan is trying to outsmart Archer and Charles and is currently stuck in limbo talking with a F7 spirit in order to fine-tune his plan (half of which I have not yet posted).

Welcome back RED-ROM!

Sounds about right - handing over the goods without getting ganked is main focus. Team definitely has the feeling that Silver-eyed lady is playing us.

Saint had mentioned making Oswald a contact / NPC before he dropped off the grid so I would keep him around as rigger overwatch and have his warehouse as a reasonably safe place to crash.

@ Notso: yea, that's what I was thinking, although, role playing the old man could be pretty hard to live up to.

just checking in, I'm not sure I have much to post until you guys have a plan of action.

@ Seph: you might want to let me know what Jovan is up to, I'm not 100% on that.

As I understand it, we are going to give the vipers a call and tell them where to get their coms. Also, we were going to drop off the trucks at the warehouse. We need to work out some of the details though....CYA stuff.

Contacting them via phone call isn't possible at this point. We were going to do that after we had captured Viper 5, but they all changed their commcodes before we could contact them about the offer, and have no direct way to reach them besides that. I don't think we even have an aura assensing that we could use to Search for them using a spirit, because they contacted us via watcher after we took Viper 5 prisoner and obliterated the others who were tailing us.

As for Jovan. Here is the part of his plan that deals with Archer specifically. He would have Oswald and Ferret go posting in some paramilitary Matrix chatrooms (which the Vipers, as a paramilitary group, would be likely to frequent or at least visit from time to time) and anonymously drop hints that this ghoul named Archer feels wronged by his partner-in-crime, the toxic mage Charles. Oswald and Ferret would hint that they heard that Archer is planning to overpower/kill Charles and take the bounty on Charles's head in order to fund his own megalomaniacal ghoul rights agenda. Jovan's goal here is to turn the Mad Hatter against Archer and eliminate one of our problems that way. Jovan also is thinking of introducing a red herring (saying in the Matrix that Archer has the comms the Vipers are after) to both throw the Vipers off the team's trail and set them after Archer as well. He is currently asking a Force 7 spirit to advise him on this plan and help fine-tune it. Said spirit said that if Charles* really is mad, then he won't react to threats in the same way as a normal person, because his priorities are different. According to the spirit, in order to direct a madman, Jovan must know how to needle him.


*I thought when Sithney posted this that he was referring to Archer, but looking back on it now I think he really was referring to Charles. I will email you what Sithney told me about what Jovan would have deduced about Charles.

EDIT: There is more to Jovan's plan, which is intended to deal with the threat Charles faces as well as earn the team a decent amount of extra pay, but I will post that after the spirit and Jovan get the first half of it figured out.

Zo is working on that end and has followed up with one of his contacts (Roper) to see about getting into contact with the Vipers (Not that Jovan would know at this point--but he's still 6 hours behind the rest of the group in terms of timeline).

Also, as I and Zo understand things the Vipers, Archer and Charles are different groups with different motives. Our real concern is if the Mrs. J plans to screw us. Not sure if you've communicated to the group (iirc it was a post over 6 months ago in RL ) thatyou recall when meeting with the Mrs. J that Charles or Archer (one of those) was at your meet.

I think it was Amber who saw the two together.

There is enough evidence to suggest that Charles and Archer were (maybe still are) in some sort of partnership. Per whatever their agreement was, Archer would have gotten BDLL's warehouse as a base of operations, as the spoils from whatever his part was in ambushing and eliminating BDLL's team (for example). Since Archer has Mrs. J's number in his commlink, and the Mad Hatter was seen by Amber having dinner with Mrs. J as well, plus the fact that Jonathan never came back from a meeting with her, there's a really good chance that Mrs. J, Charles, and Archer are in league with each other to some extent.

Was that the were-tiger?

So many corpses I can't remember!

Nope! She was a dwarf and the only face we've had on this team. I think ZO was actually Amber's replacement.

so,

Jovan is searching for Charles and Archer; I'd like to know what and how your searching and the accompanying rolls, also time check your spirit if he's still around (I'm still trying to catch up)

Ferret is doing some Matrix recon; I'll need details and dice rolls for that as well

Sure. Make me look through the first fucking twenty pages of posts.

EDIT: OK, so it wasn't twenty pages.

Bollocks, just noticed that the internet ate my homework. I'll dig the rolls out of Invisible Castle over the weekend and post them up again.

Lots of data search rolls (Data Search 4 + Browse 3 + Hotsim 2): (first 45 = http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3820464/, next 9: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3820484/

Hit totals are: rerolling all dice(rerolling reducing dice)

Mr J - 22(14)
Mrs J - 26(15)
Yacht - 30[16]
Charles - 24(14)
Vipers - 24 +1 glitch(12)
Ghouls - 28(14)
Analyze test on node where Ferret met Mrs J. If (System + Firewall) > 6 then he doesn't bother trying to find an exploit and just spends rest of the day surfing the matrix and watching the latest episodes of his favorite shows:
Computer 4 + Analyze 3 + Hotsim 2: 9d6.hits(5)=6 - system rating, firewall rating, alert status, active programs/agents, ratings of active programs (starting with agents/IC)

If it looks hackable, then try to hack an admin account (slowly : 1 hour interval): http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3820521/Takes 5(9) hours to hack a rating 6 node (system 3, firewall 3).

Mr J is tough, you have nothing to go on (that I know of): running face recognition on trideo in Seattle came up empty, at least on the less secure cameras, like he never left the boat. Running the search in spain will take weeks without narrowing the search.

The boat was docked in California under a shell company(I'd have to look through the early posts for the details). no solid connection to the fat man.

Mrs J is also a virtual ghost. but She's been a little vulnerable lately getting so hands on. Face recognition caught her outside a stuffer shack downtown Seattle yesterday with a tall Amerind fellow. Another hit was on a camera outside of a fancy restaurant alone , also downtown (this was the dinner with Amber, I'd have to look up the details).

There's a man with her in the resteraunt, but anytime you would see his face, it's obscured by swirls of colors or smoke, like its been hacked, but the nodes haven't been tampered with. It's what they actually recorded. There's no trace of Charles on the Matrix.

The node you met Mrs J on is a proffesional Hacker site and it will murder you. They pride themselves on their privacy. On the other hand her Data trail was left all over the nodes in the area. You trace it back to an abandoned comlink behined a Sushi place not far from the hotel where she met with the elf shaman( Acme ) .

You found a matrix site called CredForces , for contacting mercenaries The Vipers are fairly active on there, but they started tracing you as you were poking around. you had to bail before they got to you.

Not much on Archer and the ghouls, Johnathon on the other hand had a whole tridcast on Ghoul equality. Sort of a seperate but equal kind of plan. Kind of a charismatic guy, even though his ideas seemed half cocked.

Sorry for the delay on this. I've been and still am dealing with finals for the last week, but I'll be done with all that after tomorrow, so I'll give a fully-formed explanation of Jovan's activities and rolls then. Right now, he's relying on analysis, deduction, and talking to contacts to get a picture of Archer's & Charles's activities rather than physically/astrally looking for them.

also @Red-ROM: just to clarify, Jovan is using an actual service for his "planning session" with the air elemental. I don't remember exactly if he has any services left beyond that one, but IF he does, he should only have one.

Is it okay if I shift the timeline forward a couple of hours so Ferret can report back on his findings?

Jovan is still stuck in a planning session with his spirit that Sithney never finished, about 7(?) hours behind the rest of the team, if I remember correctly off the top of my head. Due to the time difference, and in an attempt to catch up to the others (although should I even be doing that? Jovan's not going to be of much help during the middle of the day...), I will try to sort this all out OOC.

First, Jovan deduced that Charles truly believes that he is the Mad Hatter from Lewis Carrol's novels. Jovan will therefore try to reason out who the main NPC's we know might be in Charles's mind, i.e. which Wonderland figures he believes them to be. The big Wonderland figures Jovan is looking for in the people the team knows of are Alice, the Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, and the March Hare.


He's also looking for information on Archer from his contacts in the Ghoul Liberation League. He may alert them to the fact that Archer sacrificed many of the feral ghouls under his care in order to save his own skin. After that, he calls his other contact Zayne and asks for info on Charles and advice on how one would best hunt down a toxic mage (as Zayne is a professional assassin, I figure he'd be the one to know such things).

Lastly, here is Jovan's plan for dealing with Charles. This overlaps with his ideas for dealing with Archer, which I already outlined a few posts back.

Cool with me. Void might know what "perspicacity" means by then.

per·spi·cac·i·ty (pûrsp-ks-t)
n.
Acuteness of perception, discernment, or understanding.

I'll be in and out the next few days. I'll try to stay in contact.

Did Red-Rom disappear again?

Possibly.

I'll start thinking as a potential GM again.

How are you doing with this, pbangarth?

I'm not sure I have enough info to follow through the way the original story was meant to go. Give me some feedback, folks. Do you want this current run to continue in detail (I'll do my best), or do you want me to wrap it up and start something of my own?

Sephiroth, I think you in particular seem attached to the hunt for the Hatter.

I've just been introduced to the current storyline, so it wouldn't matter to me as much, but like you said, some of the others might want to wrap the current story up in more detail. If you wrap up the current storyline, you could probably just run with whatever you feel works, rather than trying to guess what the previous GM was going to do.

Yeah, it would have to be something like that.

Also is St. going to be playing or is he effectively gone for good? I'm guessing he's gone.


I'm all for wrapping up this ghoul apocolypse and then starting fresh storyline (but as always feel free to use the current one as a start point for all of us that are concerned). Seph, I know you're trying to do as much legwork to figure out the whole story, but at this point what ever twist has probably been forgotten between Archer, Charles, and the Ms. J. So is Zo, more so to figure out if he should expect and ambush or not.