I didn't find anything in a quick search of the core book, but is it common knowledge (or does the information Dr. C hands us) mention where in the solar system the habitat is located?
My assumption would be that it is not too far from Phalen's, so they activated the closest cluster of agents - but I suppose with egocasting, it could be just about anywhere.

Also, Dr. C said "And, since it has been 5 hours since they were reported missing, Firewall has deemed it necessary to have this matter looked into further.”

Our message to meet with Dr. C arrived 4 hours ago (since it said to meet him in 4 hours), so does that mean that Firewall actually acted after they boys were missing for 1 hour, or that it has now been about 9 hours? (I'm assuming 9)

About to begin another batch of research (which a handful of shot-in-the-dark questions), but I thought it would make sense to discuss it here first. I suspect some other people will have some research rolls to throw around (even if only asking their muses to look into something), and we can probably combine it all together into a teamwork roll, if it would speed things up.

Depending on whether or not Firewall already arranged it, we may also need someone in charge of arranging transportation/egocasting services, and someone in charge of additional equipment (although at this point, I have no idea what that might entail - maybe obtaining a vehicle on Renewal, depending on how large it is, or lining up some 9 year old morphs for us to sleeve into). Not sure what other preparations we might need to make, but feel free to suggest something.

Sorry for the ambiguity, Murphy is mainly concerned with physical threats, terrorism and ex-surgent weapons conspiracies. Mainly he was just assembling a sitrep of the highest probability rumors he has come across for his fellow operatives and Cornelius since he is a big believer in the whole "no information is useless in the proper context" thing. Sincr hr id in fact a security operative primarilly most of his networks relate directly to that sort of thing, with the exception of his fame networks of course. Really just need the details on how well he can parse the information provided by Fixit from the datadumps off of active forum threads and threads Murphy would have already marked as high interest items.


I could have explained better originally, honestly I've been going through my yearly bought of extremely bad insomnia. but it seems to have snapped. If you provide me with an idea of how well he can parse all that and what sort of info is available I'll work up a post and pm it to you for approval Jimson.

Going to answer these quick before leaving work for the day. Its not common knowledge, but it shouldn't be difficult finding information on it. Or you can ask Dr. C. You will find your assumption is correct.

As for the timing, the boys were reported loss, Firewall called out you guys 1 hour later, then waited 4 hours just to make sure the parents really didn't know where their kids were.

I always find the IC and OOC timing a bit awkward in these interrogation sessions; five characters will grill the Johnson before he answers them all in a sweeping solilquy.

Which is why I'm asking this OOC: Why did the station's surveillance/sousveillance devices keep track of the kids? How did they fall off of the mesh? Where were they last seen? Who do we talk to get this information?

I'll throw up an appropriate IC where Jonah asks this stuff at an opportune time. Might be good to just collect all the questions OOC and throw up a monster post -- players could even write the parts their characters would say and then Jimson could fill in the gaps.

Who's Johnson? This is Eclipse Phase.

Also, going along with the above question structure, Three would like to ask specifically why Firewall is looking into this enough to send combat ready sentinels in with two techies and an alien expert, what is Firewall expecting us to find, is Cornelius leaving anything out about Renewal, etc. Each subsequent question is asked after recieving an answer so as to avoid soliloquoy swapping.

Thanks guys! That sounds like a great approach. I know there was going to be a lot of questions, but your approach will probably be the best. For the questions, can you put them in number format so I can keep better track of them.

1. Why did the station's surveillance/sousveillance devices keep track of the kids?
2. How did they fall off of the mesh?
3. Where were they last seen? Who do we talk to get this information?
4. Who's Johnson?
5. Why Firewall is looking into this enough to send combat ready sentinels in with two techies and an alien expert?
6. What is Firewall expecting us to find, is Cornelius leaving anything out about Renewal, etc.?
7. ......
8. ......

I probably won't be able to get to these today. A lot going on today at work. But maybe that's good so you guys can get all your questions organized. If you want to post IC with these questions, that's ok, but I probably won't get a post of Dr. C until after all of them have been asked/answered.

For the record, I would actually like to include number 4 IC. Three has a mental disorder related to his memory loss, so it is likely he is hallucinating this entire thread, or at least that someone mentioned Johnson. Three is as likely to refer to Cornelius as Dr. Johnson or Mr. Cornelius as his real name. His Research Tests, if any, will probably be finding out which megacorp he works for...

Besides, I have a vacsuit with lets me survive in the vacuum beyond the fourth wall

Some of these may not be available through Cornelius, I am expectign to have to do some digging to pursue the strange leads. Don't hesitate to ask for research rolls, and you can feed the information to us later once we've had a few minutes to go through the process of looking it up on the mesh. Also, if you think you're not spoiling too much by saying something is irrelevant, feel free not to spend too much time on any strange requests and I'll just make something up that suggests there is no correlation.

7. What are the two boys exact ages (the difference between them, mostly - down to the date of conception, if available)? If they were born on the same day, or hour, or minute - that's interesting. Likewise, it looks like they were likely conceived before the fall ended.
8. Did they always live on renewal? Did the parents? If not, where where the children born/conceived?
9. Where did both boys live (again, proximity to one another could be interesting, and the type of lifestyle might provide clues - were they rich or poor, etc)?
10. How many of the 2498 remaining people are in the same age range?
11. Has anyone else been reported missing in the last 5 hours? (my guess is no)
12. What kind of morphs did they have? Where they actually 9 year old splicer children, or people in 9 year-old-looking neotenics?
13. Do they have recent backups? (I assume the backups will not be activated until days or weeks have gone by, but curious)
14. What other habitats were near Renewal in the last 9 hours? (In the time it takes us to get there, the perpetrator may have just as much time to go somewhere else - possibly taking the boys with them).
15. What were the occupations of the parents?
16. Any contact between the two boys, or their families (shared relatives? attended the same schools? etc)
17. Any other strange occurrences on Renewal recently? (I suspect the Firewall report would have mentioned them, if they knew, but once we're doing legwork in the area or research online, we might hear about something else)

I'm sure I'll come up with more as the day goes on. Dr. Esterly doesn't intend to overwhelm Dr. Cornelius with requests for information he assumes he would have been given, if it was available to Dr. C - and expects to basically research this stuff himself, but if it comes out that Dr. C has more information and is waiting for us to ask, Dr. E will, before spending a half-hour looking all of this stuff up.

How about

0: Where the frak is Renewal and how are we going to get there?

As for how we get there. If its part of Phalen's, or close by, we could probably grab a shuttle with our current morphs (pg 283-284 suggests this might be a matter of hours, not days).
Otherwise, we could always try to egocast over right away, which would save a lot of time, but would be expensive and mean needing to pick up new bodies and new gear over there.

My only real concern with physical travel is that the trail is already 5 hours cold. If it takes us another 5 hours to shuttle to Renewal, that's twice as bad. Also, that means that whoever is behind this has had 10 hours to flee the scene, or clean up after themselves, or strike again, or put into motion whatever horrible purpose Firewall thinks he/she/it might be up to.

I'm thinking even if it is close it might be worth 'casting an Ego over to get started while the Morphs are in transit.

MADNESS!

Yeah, actually, I guess that could work. The only issue I see is the price tag.
Space travel within the cluster should be ~ [High], while egocasting would be [Expensive] + the price of whatever morph we grab to tool around in while we wait for our old bodies to arrive (So, at least [High], again - unless we want to clank around in cases).
I suppose, if nobody is that attached to their current morph, you can always trade it in. The rules for Morph brokerage suggest that morphs are in high enough demand that you can pretty much get what its worth, and then spend that on your next body wherever you end up - but you probably wouldn't have it quite as customized as the one you have now. Also, dropping ~$100,000 to egocast the 5 of us over to Renewal is still probably prohibitively expensive, without everyone calling in some big favors.

Might be worth adding:

18. Despite this mission sounding low-risk, at the moment, will Firewall be covering backup insurance?

BlackHat has most of my questions covered pretty thoroughly, murphy would include the contacts list of course though. And I'm of the mind that the time thing can actually work in our favor, remember that holding someone captive is labor intensive work in it's own right due to the need for monitoring of the captive's situation and psychological state, forking mitigates most of that but widening the time frame does force the kidnappers or whatever they are to deviate from their routine. This is of course assuming it is not some sort of creepy exsurgent threat which is just as obviously a possibility but I'ld put it at the lower end or probability.

I was rather assuming that an organization of Firewall's reach would be able to cover the cost of ego-casting one or all of us to Renewal on top of physically transporting us there should it be close enough to be practical.

Once there renting a Morph or paying someone to upload us into a Ghostrider module and escort us while we do some preliminary investigation shouldn't be too expensive. Honestly, I'm not sweating about money or favours, Rebel's ability to generate cash is substantial and she has no shortage of favours to trade.

Yeah, Esterly's not doing too bad in the money or rep departments either, but it would still be significant if we needed to pull favors for the entire team. If Firewall can do it, awesome, though.

Murphy has enough favor built up in certain areas, and Firewall could likely afford it, but transit time only helps us get the research out of the way, maybe even work our personal favor networks to get some people discretely digging around on site to take care of the mundane, preliminary stuff for us.

Sorry again...vendors are in town. Hope to start getting to these questions tomorrow.

No problem, gives us more time to brainstorm.

Unfortunately, Jonah is both poor and not well-liked which makes egocasting much trickier for him. (Unless Firewall foots the bill.)

I was thinking that it would be nice to take the question list and add a brief IC by the blurbs our characters asked in order to lighten Jimson's load when he writes his monster response post.

For instance:
1. Why did the station's surveillance/sousveillance devices fail to keep track of the kids?

"Did the kids fall of the mesh? Hard to get a lot of privacy these days, especially if you're a nine year old on a dangerous Cole Bubble."

2. How did they fall off of the mesh?

"So how exactly did they fall of the mesh? I'm not a hacker, but I imagine there's some security specialist on the asteroid who could tell us whether the kids leaving was particularly suspicious from a codeslingers point of view."

3. Where were they last seen? Who do we talk to get this information?

Jonah scratched the black stubble on his scalp, his puzzlement evident as rubbed the grip pads on his hands at an angle that tugged on his forehead. He spoke up as his face scruched up.

"I guess if the mesh doesn't have them we just have to ask who saw them last. Do we know that? Or is it local law?"

Or another PC does.


I like this idea. Once I get to work and make it look like I am doing something, I will get a start on Esterly's - but if those questions were also on other people's mind, feel free to borrow from the list so DE doesn't seem so gabby.

I did mention not well-liked, right? I wouldn't foot any bills for that guy.

Some attempts, feel free to work them into any reply, or I could post them IC if easier, but it would probably make for better conversation if the Q&A alternated. DE isn't expecting DC to have answers to all of these, of course. Some legwork on our end should be expected.


"It is unlikely to be coincidence that both children were nine years old. Has Firewall pulled their records, yet? Do you know their exact ages? What sort of morphs were they sleeved into? If Firewall has biometric and medical data, may we have access to this? I would like to run some statistical models on the data, and determine just how many unusual commonalities there are."

"When did the families move to Renewal, and where on Renewal did they live? Where did they live previously - particularly when the children were born?"

"What are the occupations of the parents of the children? Any chance of contact between them? Again, one of us should cross reference their individual social networks and look for common links."

"How many of the 2498 remaining people on Renewal are in the same age range? May I have access to any records Firewall may have already pulled - I intend to cross reference the population against the commonalities between the two boys to search for likely targets among the rest of the population."

"Have there been any other missing person reports, or other reports of suspicious activity, in the last 5 hours? One of us should scan local media and lifelogs for anything interesting that took place roughly 5 hours ago."

"Do they have recent backups? Should recovering the children even be a priority? I do not mean to be callous, but may we assume Firewall is interested only in any connection these kidnappings may have to KL-7925's history of TITAN activity?"

"What other habitats are within 5 hours travel of Renewal? The perpetrator has already had ample time to escape or to put his plan into motion - we may need to broaden our net. We may also want to consider egocasting to Renewal to deny the kidnapper of any additional time."

"Despite this mission sounding low-risk, at the moment, will Firewall be covering backup insurance? Will Firewall foot the bill for either egocasting or travel to Renewal?"

I'm sure he'll earn it when we find ourselves in need of something built... in space....

I am working on responses to the questions. Some of these may require Research rolls. I'll get these questions to you and have you put some rolls together for me. Some of the questions are fairly easy to Reaseach (i.e. 14. What other habitats were near Renewal in the last 9 hours?), therefore I won't waste time with a roll, if that is ok. I'll just answer it. Or, if you like, you can just roll me a set of d100's and I'll take them in the order that I go through the questions.

Either way, although most research rolls will need 2 d100s (one for finding the information, and one for interpreting what was found), and complementary skills might be used if appropriate (investigation?) as well as teamwork rolls if we all dive into some of these, but I'll toss out a link to 22 1d100 rolls and you can sort them out.

Research = 60, +20 from pattern recognition, and +10 from the morph, so 90

THE ROLLS

Looks like 3 failures, one of them critical (double zeros - unsalvagable), and a whole bunch of successes, 3 of them critical, many of them "excellent successes". Complimentary skills, or teamwork, could probably provide a bonus that would turn the 2 non-critical failures into successes, but the double-zeroes is going to stay a failure.

I think I would also like to use DE's moxie point to turn the critical failure into a regular failure, because I want to avoid us getting off to a bad start, and barking up the wrong tree, or drawing unwanted attention to our investigation, or whatever that critical failure might represent.

I assume you'll want to keep the information about which rolls were applied where to yourself, so we won't know which information has been misinterpreted and which is accurate.

P.S. If you need more, feel free to roll them yourself. I don't mind, and at this point DE is out of moxie to do anything about it, anyway.

I'm doing my best to live up to that SAV 10 score.

Remember something pragma, the book states that a 10 attribute is equal to a normal human from out time, he is no more likeable or unlikeable than the average joe schmoe we would encounter in our day to day lives.

I hadn't thought of that either, but that is a good point. Even by 10AF standards (on page 174), a SAV in the range of 6-10 is "personable". A save of 1-5 is only "awkward".
Of course, Pragma can make his character as unlikable as his concept desires.
I mean, try defaulting to any social skills with a SAV of 10, and we'll see how "personable" that character ends up being.

Ok, I would like to apologize ahead of time for any lack a creative writing. I figured for now, the content of the answers were more important than the writing, since there were a lot. BlackHat, I did not forget Dr. E's ability to make sense of what seems non-related information. I wanted to get the answers off first, then we can dig deeper if Dr. E wants too. Here we go....

(Color - Indicates research or Dr. C talking. Color - Indicates GM OOC with IC information.)

Family Questions (7, 12, 8, 9, 15, 16, 13)
"It is unlikely to be coincidence that both children were nine years old. Has Firewall pulled their records, yet? Do you know their exact ages? What sort of morphs were they sleeved into? If Firewall has biometric and medical data, may we have access to this? I would like to run some statistical models on the data, and determine just how many unusual commonalities there are."

We do not believe their ages mean anything. Based on common human behavior kids tend to play with other kids near the same age. They were still in the same morphs they were born into: splicers. As for the Biometric data, we may be able to come up with something.

"When did the families move to Renewal, and where on Renewal did they live? Where did they live previously - particularly when the children were born?"

The families both moved to Renewal on the same ship 2 months, 3 days ago. They previously lived on Dione in Thoroughgood. The children were also born on Thoroughgood.

"What are the occupations of the parents of the children? Any chance of contact between them? Again, one of us should cross reference their individual social networks and look for common links."

The Fathers worked construction on the beehive habitat in Thoroughgood. Based on local authority investigations, the families are friends, as are the children.

"Do they have recent backups? Should recovering the children even be a priority? I do not mean to be callous, but may we assume Firewall is interested only in any connection these kidnappings may have to KL-7925's history of TITAN activity?"

The children’s backup was 1 year 2 months ago for Raymond Coley, and 1 year 3 months ago for Samuel Combs. In order to maintain the secrecy of Firewalls involvement, the recovery of the children, or their bodies, is not a priority. If discovered, mark the location and notify me. Through various sources we will get word to the local authorities. If they have been kidnapped, you are expected to free the children from their captors and eliminate any threats.

The history of KL-7925 is the reason for you 5 being called out.


Renewal Questions (1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 17, 14)
"Did the kids fall of the mesh? Hard to get a lot of privacy these days, especially if you're a nine year old on a dangerous Cole Bubble."
"So how exactly did they fall of the mesh? I'm not a hacker, but I imagine there's some security specialist on the asteroid who could tell us whether the kids leaving was particularly suspicious from a codeslingers point of view."
Jonah scratched the black stubble on his scalp, his puzzlement evident as rubbed the grip pads on his hands at an angle that tugged on his forehead. He spoke up as his face scruched up.
"I guess if the mesh doesn't have them we just have to ask who saw them last. Do we know that? Or is it local law?"

According to mesh records and other accounts, the 2 youths were last seen on the mesh near a park in the small dome city of Rocktown. It is believe they turned their Mesh ID into Privacy Mode. There are not many cameras in Rocktown, however between them and eyewitness accounts, they were last seen in the area of one of the access portals to the inner asteroid.

"How many of the 2498 remaining people on Renewal are in the same age range? May I have access to any records Firewall may have already pulled - I intend to cross reference the population against the commonalities between the two boys to search for likely targets among the rest of the population."

There are approximately 102 children which are 9 years of age. Firewall will provide any information it has.

"Have there been any other missing person reports, or other reports of suspicious activity, in the last 5 hours? One of us should scan local media and lifelogs for anything interesting that took place roughly 5 hours ago."

There have not been any other missing person’s reported.

"What other habitats are within 5 hours travel of Renewal? The perpetrator has already had ample time to escape or to put his plan into motion - we may need to broaden our net. We may also want to consider egocasting to Renewal to deny the kidnapper of any additional time."

Oh boy, this question could get quite complicated fast. Unless I’m blind, the book doesn’t really say how fast space travel is. Also, the book does not do well in detailing what rings some of the habitats are in. For now I’ll tell you the location of Renewal and some of the closest habitats. Renewal is located on the outer edge of the A Ring, beyond the Keeler Gap. Prometheus and Pandora are in the F Ring, Epimethus And Janus are in between the F and G Rings, and Atlas is at the edge of the A Ring (assuming it means the outer edge, p. 103, . Does that help? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn)

Firewall Questions (5, 6, 18)
Why Firewall is looking into this enough to send combat ready sentinels in with two techies and an alien expert?
It is uncertain what the problem may be. Firewall wants to be prepare for any situation that may come up.

What is Firewall expecting us to find, is Cornelius leaving anything out about Renewal, etc.?

They are hoping you find the kids alive, and alert Dr. C of their location. Or, they are expecting you to find their corpses, and again, alert Dr. C of their location. (Is Cornelius leaving anything out about Renewal…you can roll me a Kinesics test)

"Despite this mission sounding low-risk, at the moment, will Firewall be covering backup insurance? Will Firewall foot the bill for either egocasting or travel to Renewal?"

Yes, upon you departure we will provide backup services to each of you. As for transportation, once you determined your travel method, Firewall will cover the cost.

Pg. 48 has a section labeled "Travel" that may be of some help. It actually has some neat ideas about renting basic morphs, staying an infomorph, or hiring a living "taxi" to shuttle your infomorph around, since resleeving can cost as much as egocasting. Also pg 283 has a section called "Space Travel Basics" which says "Travel times between locations are constantly changing as various bodies move in their orbits around the solar system. Within a cluster or planetary system, travel takes a matter of hours." (days/weeks within the inner system, and weeks/months to go to/from the outer system). I suspect that the answer is that within the last 5 hours (plus a few hours for our morphs to reach Renewal), the kidnapper and/or the children could basically be on any habitat in or around Saturn - which is way too broad of an area for us to search effectively, but that person would have a hard time getting the children through most space shuttle security checkpoints, due to the missing person reports. We could double-check some surveilence records for all ports on Renewal, filtering for 9 year old splicers, as well. However, if the kidnapper did something, left the bodies, and made a fast getaway, he would have plenty of time, and we would be better off looking for clues on renewal than trying to track him/her/it down. After all, Firewall is interested only insomuch as this relates to Renewal's past - so any answers we care about will (probably) be found there.

If Firewall is footing the bill, egocasting seems to be the smart way to go. It'll take multiple hours (2-10, who knows) to travel to Renewal physically, which could triple the time the crime scene has spent cooling down. Conversely, backups, egocasting, and resleeving could all be done in an hour. Dr. Esterly would rather get there immediately, and start doing what needs to be done, and although he has had his current morph for a while, he's no so attached to it that he wouldn't be able to function in another (bio)morph. Not having all of this morph's augmentations at hand might impair him, slightly, but not so much that he's against the idea - besides, if there really is any danger, its probably best if he goes into it in a disposable loaner, than his primary morph with hundreds of thousands of credits worth of augmentations accumulated in it. If we decided to clank around in synths, or ride as infomorphs, we could shave that down to probably 15 minutes, but DE will be significantly less useful if he's not in a biomorph.

Double Zero is a critical success.

Just saying....

Is it? I thought it was 00 = 100 = automatic critical failure. I'll look it up, but you may be right.

Ah, yo uare right, 99 is the automatic critical failure I was thinking of. Can I have my moxie point back?

I hate to say it, but I didn't get that far in the rolls. Sorry you wasted a 00. So, yes you can have you moxie point back.

Just need to point it out, if the kids where being held for ransom there would be a demand already, if they are being held for something unique to their mental state we are basically screwed, rip out the cortical stack, hide it in the casing of a nano-fabbed device and I don't see much that any security system can do to find them.

Rolling SAV, defaulting Kinesics. And, yes, I'm rolling 2 10s. (2d10=7)

The lack of ransom demands is a good observation. For the second part, we're still only speculating about whether the ego or morph was the target, or whether either child was specifically targeted in the first place. For all we know, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, with their mesh inserts in private mode, when something bad happened that prevented them from calling for help.

There are innumerable situations that would result in them being irrecoverable, and with the purpose (if there even was one) of their disappearance already satisfied. That said, we still need to go and figure out what the cause was - even if there is nothing we can do to reverse the situation - other than tell the parents it is time to cash in their the backup insurance policy they took out on their children. Even if we cannot recover the children, and cannot stop the criminal from getting away with whatever he wanted to do to them, we may still be able to uncover clues as to why it happened and whether or not that has any relevance to Firewall's concerns.

You mean 2d10 = 43 Three does not think Dr. C is leaving anything out.

For fun, I thought I'd give it a shot (should have known better)
SAV = 10 + 5 morph = 15. Rolled a 33 (critical failure)

What I should have done was go... 15% chance of success... 8% chance of critical failure... and not bothered.

I take it Dr. Esterly trusts Dr. Cornelius so completely that he's sure if there was anything else of relevance it would have been said?

I've got another question, why so long between backups? not that it is completely out there but IIRC most services specify a quarterly backup if not monthly, and yearly at a minimum. If I am recalling correctly expect Murphy to bring this issue up. Murphy is also gonna ask about being provided with a scent marker and smart dogs if possible. I can't even begin to speculate on how awesome a smart bloodhound would be for tracking and I've hunted using dogs in real life. If the kids where last seen within several hours that is more than close enough for a good dog to get the scent, prisoners have been successfully caught days after escaping a prison through use of tracking dogs after all. Murphy isn't gonna say no to egocasting but when it comes down to it using our various networks to get some groundwork done and resources in place makes more sense than casting over there and improvising entirely off the cuff to me. It gives the team time to brainstorm, check what they can do to prepare and implement it in a sensible manner instead of ad hoc.

Also, what sort of epic favour(s) would Three have to call in to get a reaper? I spent the CP for Right At Home and I'm determined to use them!

The other thing to ask about is what the legality of such a morph on Renewal would be. Getting your hands on one may be a level 5 favor, or something (not 100% sure), but the local sheriff might frown on us flying around in war-bots hunting their children. Then again, that might be just the sort of firepower we need.

(Mixing IC and OOC)

Why so long between backups?
Dr. C merely shrugs his shoulders while hanging from a branch. "Transhumanity hasn't changed in all areas. Sol is still full of procrastinators and penny pinchers. Might as well toss in favor pinchers too."

I couldn't find scent maskers in the Gear section, but I did see Scent Alteration. Also looked at Smart Dog. I'm not all the impressed. Their Perception skill is only 30. Perhaps Enhanced Smell and Hearing should be added to them. Dr. C "Minor things, plus the things mentioned early, can be covered by Firewall. However, you will need to track down the items yourselves.

Dr. C "I'm not sure if Renewal will have a Reaper morph in storage. Feel free to look into it though."

hmmm, in theory then Murphy would have as good a chance of following a scent trail as most smart dogs trained for the purpose, if I'm reading your interpretation correctly....