All: while Quixote and the Spider get read to fight it out in the virtual world, is anybody else doing anything? Don't want to leave the rest of you out of this while the Hacker is doing his thing.

I know Tundra Wolf contact his fixer friend who didn't have any info directly but could give him the name of somebody she felt would. But info like that isn't free (typically something like this would cost a couple hundred nuyen). Was he going to pay her for the contact info?

Well, unfortunately, Legs is pretty much going to be driving them to SeaTac, and finding someplace to park. Other than that, all he can do is watch for any indication that the Spider might be tracing Quixote back to the RoadMaster's location.

Hmm...come to think of it, it might be a better idea to keep moving...

Sorry, weekends are difficult for me to get computer time. Hope our hacker isn't about to get his 'link melted, though at least it isn't his brain.

TW will transfer the ¥250 to his contact for the info, I'll set up an IC post for it.

His access ID would be great. Also, quick question. Due to the Mute option on my Exploit program (Unwired pg. 115) I supposedly get a whole combat round before the alert is actually triggered from my hacking in. Since what picks up the hack attempt is the Firewall + Analyze functionality of the node and not the spider himself (near as I can tell, once I'm in the node I'm fair game for analyze shenanigans from him) does that mean that I actually have 3IP to play with in which the alert hasn't gone off yet?

If so, I have nifty ideas for dealing with this.
If not, I still have nifty ideas.

Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about the hacker's 'link. I'm not so harsh a GM that i'd fry it in the legwork phase of the mission. hehe

Anyway, Tundra Wolf's fixer friend confirms her commlink's acceptance of the money transfer, before saying "
The guy you need to talk to is the bellhop at the Hilton downtown. He keeps tabs on all the hotels, and can lookup who's staying at any of them." Your commlink registers an attachment being sent across the link. It's the name and commlink number for one Gregory Pendleton.

Done, you have his Access ID.

I'm sure you have nifty ideas. But really, it was the Spider noticing your presence and triggering the alarm and not your action with the exploit program. He was in the middle of doing a diagnostic on the network nodes when you stepped into his home. And him triggering the alarm and speaking to you were his actions for the first initiative pass.

Gardner is waiting patiently for more info, just like when he has to handle something magical, he knows that he has to wait when the tech guys do their thing.

I'm cool for now.

if there is chat in the Roadmaster about this information, Mr. White will suggest skipping the airport, since we have already confirmed via Quixote that she arrived. Instead our time might be better spent going straight to the bellhop.

Yeah, kinda thinking the same thing myself. At this point, I think Quixote's just gonna wave bye bye to the Spider and flip his commlink off.

I'm assuming Tundra Wolf tells us about this bellhop who might have information? I would agree on contacting him, particularly if Quixote is laying low on the hacking route...

Awww...I was looking forward to seeing what tricks Quixote would come up with, but yeah. It'll probably get us moving along quicker without a fight in the middle the legwork phase. You can already see a curse on the avatar of the spider as Quixote's connection to node is severed. He will likely spend the next few hours cursing you and scrubbing all the network nodes to check for any tampering. And the next day being bitched out for incompetence in letting you get away with whatever you were doing on the nodes.

So, I think its a safe assumption the Tundra Wolf shares the name he got and suggests Gardner adjust their direction towards the Hilton instead of Sea-Tac.

If nobody has anything else they want to do along the way, you arrive without incident.

How are you guys going to play it once you get there? Everybody jump out and drag the bellhop into the van? Do a Princess Bride impression with Gardner playing the roll of Fezzik? ("Want me to jog his memory?") Or just have a quiet chat with the bellhop?

I am of course inclined to have a quiet and polite chat. But I'm open to alternate suggestions.

This strikes me as someone who it'd pay to have available again in the future. So...dragging him into the van is probably out, and random threats usually aren't the way to go. I like the quiet and polite chat option. Possibly just send Mr. White and either Russkie or Gardner as backup.

Yeah, I'm crafting an IC post with "Russkie" passing on the info right now. As much as I like terrorizing civilians (and god, the Fezzik reference had me laughing for 5 minutes, that's one of my favorite movies) we should probably light touch this guy to start. If nothing else, TW doesn't want to damage the relationship with the only fixer who'll still give him work.

"I have no gate key"

"Fezzik, tear his arms off."

"Oh, you mean this gate key."

I'll say Quixote does a quick data search on the way regarding the hotel and/or any of you with Area Knowledge:Seattle would know the following. The dowtown Hilton is an extremely posh hotel catering to the higher level executives that travel to Seattle for the various megacorps and high profile guests....perhaps Maria Mercurial is even staying their tonight (Quixote would certainly see rumors to that effecton the Matrix).

It is located in a AAA security part of the city. So you can expect to see a fair number of drones in the area as well as regular Knight Errant patrols.

Anything else you'd like to know about the place?

Let's just jump to the hotel then. Seem to be some paparazzi outside, but they shouldn't bother you as the hotel staff is keeping a close eye on them.

Is Mr. White just heading on inside to try finding the bellhop?

Area Knowledge Seattle roll, for anything about Mulvihill Hotel. Surely in 2072 we can just punch it into the Fairlight TomTom and get directions, but if there's any helpful dirt or knowledge about the hotel....

7D6E5 => 2

Slacker: Real quick, just for continuity, Gardner is crouched behind the back seat of the roadmaster, I'm pretty sure Legs is piloting his own car...

Everyone Else: Looks like we have a definite lead on where she could be, or at least a place to start a search if she isn't there. Anyone else feeling some sort of catch coming?

Doh. Sorry about that. Rough day at work and I just slipped up. I'll edit the IC post.

Yeah, Legs has no trouble finding the address and heading off. The Mulvihill is a mid-range hotel, reasonably priced, but posing as a more expensive hotel. All the rooms are decent moderately priced suites that run about 150¥ a night. Definitely not in a high security area, but heavy armed/armed people would be noticed.

Btw, if you're actually interested, you might have caught one of the reporters doing a live tridcast mention a magical attack on Maria Mercurial after the show at Underworld '93. The reporter goes on to say that her sources say Maria is ok, but she's yet to get confirmation on that.

I'm going to roll with that and amend my post.

No problem.

Gardner uses the area information provided by Legs, along with his own Mapsoft (what I was using to look it up in my own post). Real quick he'll also ask if someone knows how the floor plan is laid out (or can look it up real quick). He'll do his best to figure out the route and everything so he can find his way to the hotel, then he'll astrally project and travel there at the extreme speeds of astral travel to check out magical security on the hotel before he heads inside.

Let me know if any of this is going to be problematic and/or require rolls or whatnot...

Quixote could log into their public node and see if there's a map/directory loaded up on there. Despite the shenanigans of earlier, could also see if he can tap into security cams or something and check if there's a cam on/in the room and such like. Could also potentially check the register to see if she in fact did check in.

Gardner is easily able to navigate his way to the Mulvihill through the astral space. He can see the residue of some sort of protective ward on the building, but it has been a long while since it was last renewed. Its power has long dwindlwed to obscurity and empatence. You see no other obvious signs of magical security. Is there anything in particular that you are looking for?

Quixote finds the public node of the Mulvihill without much difficulty. Its not nearly as well sculpted as the SeaTac's network world. Still youd guess it does a fair job of matching to the meat space lobby of the hotel. When you first log in you noticed that there was a pause in the animation of a virtual fountain in the lobby making you guess that this system doesn't have nearly the processing power of what you are used to working with. Are you going for admin access again? And what are you specifically looking for?

I think he was going to look up the directory/map for Gardner, that way I could find the room and check it out before we get there. If he were doing that, I'd be waiting the couple of seconds it takes to get that room location...

Yeah, seeing if they have a publicly accessible directory/floorplan first since we have the supposed room she was checked into.
If this isn't publicly available, I'd like to analyze the node to get the system/firewall rating, and check for other personas and their identity (ie are they a user, IC, agent, etc).

Analyze (6) + Computer (4) + PuSHeD (1) + Encephalon (1) (12d6.hits(5)=3)

In the public section of the node. There are some layouts of the different types of rooms they have on offer. But there is no building layout that Quixote can find.
System 2, Firewall 2 and seems like there is only one piece of IC running that appears as a cleaning drone though it passes right next to you without even a hint of noticing your avatar.

Yeah, suppose an admin account is going to be the way to go here.

Exploit (5) + Hacking (6) + PuSHeD (1) + Encephalon (1) + Codeslinger-Exploit (2) + Optimization-Exploit (1) (16d6.hits(5)=6)

Actually, I'm just going to move us along if you don't mind Quixote. This system is not going to be much of a pain for you at all. The IC is too low to do anything to you. and I just rolled a bunch of attempts for the system to detect you with the assumption that after getting admin access you'd be turning off it's Analyze program again. It glitched its analyze test before you even turned off the Analyze program and will continue to glitch with enough frequency that you have no worries of it detecting your presence.

After some searching you find a diagram of the building for Fire Safety with the exit plans. Also, you discover that security in general is pretty lax. They've got a couple cameras on the exterior of the building to watch the 3 entrances (front entrance, side guest entrance, and service entrance in the back) as well as one camera in the lobby. It doesn't look like there are any other cameras.

Each guest room has a pretty secure Maglock on it that is tuned to the keycard they are given on checking in.

Oh and you confirm that one Fiona Craig checked into room 1408 the previous afternoon.

Anything else you are doing on their node?

If Quixote could see archived security footage of her entering/leaving it might be handy. Was she with anyone? Carrying anything?

Regardless, I say we continue to the hotel. She arrived yesterday in seattle and checked into the hotel. Is she still there? That's our job.

Sure, based on the check-in time, Quixote is able to look at the cameras for around that time and see her walk in with a large purse and one smallish wheeled piece of luggage. Nobody is with her. There is a subsequent registration of her keycard at the door of room 1408 approx 7 minutes later. Doesn't look like the keycard has been used since then, but you notice that the doors don't seem to record when they are opened from the inside.

Is Quixote going to look through the rest of the footage too see if she ever left? Wait for Gardner to astrally perceive his way to her room to see if she is still there? If he does go through the footage, is he just watching them on fast forward to see everybody who comes and goes? Or is he using the facial recognition software mentioned earlier to try and scan for just Fiona in the footage?

I'd love to do either (or both) to see if we can confirm if she is or is not still in the room.

I'd be more than willing to borrow someone's facial recognition software to fast scan if that's possible. Otherwise, suppose it's watching tapes in fast forward for me. If the software is a go, what sort of rolls?

Looks like its supposed to be an extended Matrix Perception test except you use the rating of the Facial Recognition program instead of Analyze. I will assume that Gardner does give you access to his Rating 4 program. Let's say the threshold is 4 and it takes 30 minutes per roll.

Also, I'll go ahead and say the Gardner finds the room in astral space. There is no sign of any occupant or magically active items.

Nobody home... Would he be able to tell if there were a corpse in the room? Can he tell whether the room is trashed or all neat?

In astral spaces, objects appear as grey lackluster shadows of themselves unless there are emotional/magical traces of contact left on them. There are perhaps some residual aura of passion in the bed, but it's likely older than a day and only still visible because of years of repeated use. Nothing else in the room has very much trace contact at all, though perhaps an Assensing roll from Gardner would be able to identify some of those traces.

He can certainly tell that there are no dead bodies in the room.

Mr. White will offer to ask the person at the desk (or doorman, if there is a doorman) if he knows anything about Ms. Craig's departure - did he call her a cab? Did she ask how to get somewhere? Did she seem flustered or upset?

You guys arrived at this hotel perhaps a little after 1am with Quixote still running the Facial Recognition program. Depending on how many rolls it takes him to reach the threshold it'll be between 10 and 40 more minutes before he comes back with any info on if the cameras spotted her leaving.

Are you waiting until he comes back with something? Are you simply jumping out of the van on arrival and walking up to the Ork doorman saying "Where's Fiona Craig?" Or walking into the lobby to tell the night clerk that you've hacked their cameras to see Fiona Craig leaving and want to know how she looked when she left?

Specifics would be nice as I'm sure you can tell I can come up with all kinds of bad situations for you if you just let me guess how you're going about it.

It took us 1.5 hours to go from the Hilton to this place? Traffic at midnight must be a bitch.

Spoken like a true SR GM, Slacker.

I had something along the lines of "Ms. Craig left your hotel sometime during the day, can you tell me any details about her departure?"

Regardless, some of the character may soon need some sleep, or to start popping amphetamines. I'd be inclined to ask the daytime desk person about her departure, since whoever is working now is unlikely to have been the same person that was there this morning, and they might not log "Guest left in a taxi, looking frightened." into their system.

I say we see what scanning the cameras turns up- maybe we can see her getting into a vehicle and get some clues from that.

Perhaps that was a little bit long, for some reason I read your last time posted IC as 23:54.

Still, I assumed you weren't going to want to deal with driving across the bridge that takes you through Mercer Island aka Salish-Shidhe Council Island that could easily end up with you being stopped and there was an accident on the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. So you either had to wait in traffic for an hour or spend an hour driving the long way around the north point of Pontiac Bay to get to the Mulvihill which is located in Bellevue.

Guess it really depends on what time she left on who would know more about her departure, night clerk or one of the two day clerks.

Assensing -> 2 hits.

If I can tell that Fiona isn't in the room (alive and thankfully not dead), then while I'm waiting for the group to get to the hotel, I'll summon up a Water Spirit (my Tradition's Detection spirit) at Force 5 with the optional power "Guard".

Summoning Test -> 2 hits.

When the group arrives I'll let them know that it looks like there isn't anybody in the room, but I will also let them know that in the astral it is hard to tell if anything happened there.

With only two successes, you don't get much. You get a vague sense of femininity from various grey forms in the room. But other than noting that there is no order to the locations of items with the strongest sense of woman, you can't identify anything.

The spirit only got 1 success. So it owes you 1 service and you need to resist 2 drain.

Drain Resistance: 2 hits

I will tell the Spirit to use its Search Power to find Fiona Craig, using the mental image I have from her picture that Quixote found for a target.

This is an extended test with a ten minute interval. Threshold 5+distance to target.

First roll: 4 hits.
Second: 3 hits.
Third: 3 hits.
Fourth: 1 hit.
Fifth: 3 hits.
Sixth: 1 hit.
Seventh: 3 hits.
Eighth: 1 hit.
Ninth: 1 hit.
Tenth: 0 hits.
Out of dice due to reduction from extended test

so, overall 20 hits.

After nearly two hours of searching the Spirit reappears long enough to tell you that he could find no sign of Fiona Craig. He is then free from service to you and fades away into the astral space.

Facial Recog. (4) + Compter (4) + Encephalon (1) + PuSHeD (1) (10d6.hits(5)=3)
Facial Recog. (4) + Compter (4) + Encephalon (1) + PuSHeD (1) (10d6.hits(5)=2)

So, two checks, so takes 1 hour.

Ok, i'll say you finished the scan around 1:20am Quixote finishes running the facial recognition software on the video footage from the time Fiona checked in until present. She only appears once on camera as she gets into an autocab at 19:03 on Tuesday. From what you can tell from the footage, she is not in any particular hurry or distress. Nor did she stop by the front desk at all.

The software first picked her up at the edge of the lobby camera. She walked calmly to the front door and a second or two later the outside camera catches her stepping up to an autocab owned by the Orange Cab Company. From what you can tell, she did not exchange any words with the Ork doorman that opens the door for her as she leaves. A perception roll with at least 2 successes would tell you that the same ork in the video is working at the door currently.

That is the last time she appears on the video footage of any of the cameras.

Since, I believe Gardner's intention was to send the spirit off while you were in transit. I'll say he hears back from the spirit around 2am that it can find no trace of Fiona.

What's the plan now? Mr. White heading inside? Calling it a night to get some rest? Breaking into her room?

Sleep regulator for the win!
Locate Orange Cab Company's node and login to the public part of it. Standard analyze, Firewall, System, purpose of any other icons I see there, any other random information that might be handy with leftover hits.

Analyze (6) + Computer (4) + Encephalon (1) + PuSHeD (1) (12d6.hits(5)=7)

Oh, did the footage happen to catch a cab number/license plate?

Orange cab company: Seconded.