Since matrixy things are typically just a few seconds to a minute, afterwards we can look at me breaking into her room as well (dual specializations for the win!)

Agree with the cab company. As TW can do nothing right now other than cause trouble, he will go back to sleep after the recon group begins working with a request to wake him up if they get hits (or get hit, for that matter).

The cameras at the hotel aren't very good and didn't catch a cab number.

You can easily find their public facing node. The node is sculpted to appear as the interior of a rather large limo, an suv stretched limit with enough room to seat trolls even. The divider glass between your avatar's position and the driver area seems to be a connection for another higher security node. As you connect you see a plain jane avatar of somebody that was apparently booking a late night cab to come pick them up, but the blink out an instant later without noticing you. Where they were sitting is a floating screen that is used to request pickups and check on how much longer it will take your cabby to arrive.

The node is Firewall 4/System 3. You do notice a piece of patrolling IC that appears as a tabby cat. You see a drink dispenser icon that looks like it dispenses coupons to registered users. Not much else to it.

The cat has not noticed you yet.

Hmm...suppose I ought to take over the node and go a hunting for cabs dispatched to the hotel around that time.

Hacking + Exploit vs Firewall + 6 (going for admin account)

Exploit (5) + Hacking (6) + Codeslinger (2) + Encephalon (1) + PuSHeD (1)+ Optimization: Exploit (1) (16d6.hits(5)=4)
Exploit (5) + Hacking (6) + Codeslinger (2) + Encephalon (1) + PuSHeD (1)+ Optimization: Exploit (1) (16d6.hits(5)=7)

Wandering IC rolled 2 successes with your first attempt and 3 with your second attempt.

So as you obtain admin access. the tabby cat turns and looks right at your avatar hissing dramatically. But you have Mute for your Exploit program. So I will assume you take care of that before anything actually comes of it. The IC is no more difficult than the last one you ran into. So for expediency, I'm just going to say you handle it in stride.

Make your data search rolls.

Searching for cabs that went to the hotel during the right time frame. If possible, searching for where they stopped afterwards (I'm assuming lojack of some variety would have this information, or if it were an autocab that'd be stored)

Browse (6) + Data Search (4) + PuSHeD (1) + Encephalon (1) (12d6.hits(5)=4)
Browse (6) + Data Search (4) + PuSHeD (1) + Encephalon (1) (12d6.hits(5)=5)
Browse (6) + Data Search (4) + PuSHeD (1) + Encephalon (1) (12d6.hits(5)=3)
Browse (6) + Data Search (4) + PuSHeD (1) + Encephalon (1) (12d6.hits(5)=6)

I'll say you have Fiona's commlink code from when you hacked the SeaTac computer and got her flight and passport data. You find a call coming in from that number to the Orange Cab Company around 6:30pm scheduling a pickup at 7:00pm. And all cabbies register pickup and drop-off points. So you find that she was dropped off at the Parkland Mall at 7:28pm.

The only other pickup requests from that commlink in the database was for her to be picked up at SeaTac in the afternoon and dropped off at the Mulvihill Hotel.

Anything else you are looking for?

Is the Parkland Mall a 24/7 gig?

I suspect the trail will get a bit harder to follow from a mall. Lots of people coming and going. We can and should still give it a shot, I think.

Meanwhile, I'm going to start digging elsewhere.

Slacker, my mafia contact is 4/4. I don't recall what I need to roll to ring him up. (its.. 2AM? He might be up)

I can't find hours listed anywhere, but from the descriptions I see it seems to be a regular mall. Two stories of various stores. It's located a short distance from Fort Lewis military base and McChord Air Force base. Catering to mostly tourists and military personell that have to be back on base at normal times, it probably isn't 24/7. I'll say it closes down at 10PM on weekdays.


Roll Cha+Etiquette+Loyalty. What are you asking him about?

Couple of thoughts.

I do think we should check her room.

I anticipate the mall being a big fat dead end. We can try talking to people, checking security tapes, etc, maybe turn up something, but it seems like time consuming work.

Mr. White can call on a contact and ask if a friend can dig around for information.

Slacker, Mr. White is checking for any news about anything out of the ordinary at or around the mall earlier in the day (local news outlets and social media, whatever passes for twitter in 2072)

Thoughts, gang?

Give me a Seattle Knowledge roll. You don't find anything in the news about anything out of the ordinary happening Tuesday night at the mall or anywhere in close proximity.

Area Knowledge Seattle: 7D6E5 => 1

While you were searching you did come across some information about fire damage, but it seems it was from something that happened a little over a month ago. On a whim, Mr. White follows the thread anyway and suddenly remembers something. Oh yeah. The Tourist Highway's entrance is underneath LordStrung's at Parkland Mall.

You all know that the Tourist Highway is the public entrance into the Ork Underground that lays beneath the city; 50-60 kilometers (depending on the day of the week and how much has either collapsed or been expanded upon by its residents).

Mr. White will share this information with the group.

I'm tempted to get someone to sneak into the hotel room to check for anything helpful left behind. I'm interested in seeing if we can access security camera archives at the mall - especially if there's a camera at the entrance to this tourist's highway.

Any cameras at the entrance to the Tourist Highway would be part of Knight Errant security who maintain a manned guard tower 24/7.

I'm putting in a quick call/text/whatever to the Knight Errant Commander (5/2) He may be asleep, but maybe he's got a functionary that I can contact...

Either way, I just want him to either authorize me/us to have a look at the security footage, or to have a beat cop see if he can spot Fiona entering the Underground.

Cha+Eti+Loy, 12D6E5 => 3 Crappy roll.

At Loyalty 2, the relationship is strictly business though you treat each other with respect. Would you consider some guy you've talked with a few times for business calling you at home at 2am treating each other with respect? I would suggest Mr. Wolf knows that the Commander would not look too kindly on being woken up for you to ask him a HUGE favor of letting you get access to Knight Errant video feeds.

But if you really want to do it anyway.... The commlink number you call connects directly to voicemail (he rolled a 2 when I checked to see if he was available).

I'm more than willing to go sneaking into her room and looking for items. Cheapy hotel, probably isn't too much of an issue. Going to take the stairs instead of the elevator (assuming that the stairs are not alarmed). Assuming I'd be looking at an infiltration check to walk around un-noticed, and then a hardware roll to try to pop the lock.

Wearing my chameleon suit, gonna pop my street clothes off in the Roadmaster and set it to stealthy mode (folks get a -4 to their pool to spot me)
Infiltration (3) + Agility (7) + Enhanced Articulation (1) (11d6.hits(5)=6)

Hardware test to pop the lock
Hardware (4) + Logic (7) + Encephalon (1) + PuSHed (1) (13d6.hits(5)=8)

Perception test for when I get into the room
Perception (1) + Intuition (3) + Vision Enhancement (3) (7d6.hits(5)=2)

Also gonna broadcast a feed of what I'm seeing to the rest of the group.

Clearly Mr. White would not call the commander's personal phone at 2AM. Ring ring sleepyhead!

A message to him however, via whatever passes for text messaging or email or what have you is a much more attractive option at 2am.


Are there rules to use my contacts in dealing with other people? Not even conning people....

"Ahh, Captain Smith. You recall that we met at the Knight Errant Commander's christmas party last year. Listen, I need something...." I guess that would necessitate Captain Smith being a contact. Hrm.


Either way, I'll leave him a note/message that I'd like to check for a certain person entering the Ork Underground from the mall that you indicated.

Sorry about the lack of postings. Been busy with work, and that aside there's not much Legs can do here besides play taxi. But you can assume that he'll drive you all where you need to go, at least until he needs to rest. Not all of us have a sleep regulator.

Finished with hacking for the moment, Quixote jumps out of the van to begin stripping in the hotel's parking lot, revealing a chameleon suit beneath. Once down to his skivvies, he dashes off into the night to quietly enter through the side entrance of the hotel. Once inside he scopes out where the stairwell is and moves from shadow to shadow to reach it, before cautiously heading up the 14 flights of stairs to Fiona's floor. As he opens the stairwell door and peers around the corner....he spots a group of people standing in front of one of the doors. The door he would estimate as Fiona's room!

There's a giant of a man, another an automated wheel chair, an older human in a nice suit, and a guy with some obvious cyberware.

-----------------------

Mostly I'm kidding. But I'd like to try keeping the team mostly together so that people don't feel left out at all. Basically, anybody that wants to be there can walk in like they belong and just head up the elevator to the 14th floor. The doorman politely opens the front door for all of you (a bit intimidated by Gardner's size if he heads in) but are not bothered or asked any questions if they don't start any trouble.

Either Quixote hacks the maglock open with his hardware test or somebody else notices the maid's keycard still on her cart while she is busy with some early morning cleaning.

Regardless, Fiona’s room is a mess. At first glance, it looks like someone trashed it searching the place, but aft er looking around a moment the runners
will realize that it’s not been searched, it’s just that Fiona’s a slob. Papers are everywhere, a suitcase lies on the bed unpacked, and a pile of dusty, dirty clothes are balled up in one corner of the room. There’s also a tray of half-eaten food lying on the dresser, obviously left there the day before.

Anybody that is there and wants to help can give me a Perception Test.

6D6E5 => 3

I'm trying to let one of the players that hasn't had much activity get a roll in. So I'll wait a bit longer for more details. For now, Mr. White finds a disposable credistick with 100nuyen on it to help make up a little for the high price the guy at the Hilton charged him for info.

Are you implying that I'm a common thief?

Oh, sure, Legs can wheel himself out of the RoadMaster and take a look.

Perception (2) + Intuition (3) = 2 hits

Lol, you can take it or leave it. Just saying you found it among the discarded clothing.




Legs wheels his way around some clothes on the floor to try to get a look at something he noticed underneath a pillow on the bed. It looks to be a leather bound journal. Flipping through it, you find a couple of things of interest: 1) A sketch of the stone Laurent mention with a few notes by it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/h8wvzouli4af04o/F..._MorelStone.jpg
2) A note jotted in the margin of the next page “Jack Turner, Seattle, 20:00.”

The rest of the papers are useless. They’re just Fiona’s old research notes, travel itineraries, and a collection of take out menus from around the world.

"Maybe alive" huh? This should be interesting.

Yeah - we're searching her room looking for clues as to her whereabouts. While he has no problems in engaging in some criminality when necessary, Mr. White is a professional. So stealing cash from the people he's looking for is beneath him.

(but I appreciate being thrown a bone, regardless, Slacker )

Fair enough Mr. White.

You continue to search, but don't find much of anything else, except junk food wrappers and dirty clothes. A few more research papers, but nothing else referencing a stone.

I think we're done with Mission #1. Someone call Macallister and let him know that Ms. Craig is in the Ork Underground.

Next?

(kidding)


What time is it now IC? 3AM?

I'm inclined to say that we should get at least a little rest and then pick up again come daylight and head for the Ork Underground.

Agreed with the pack it in until morning. Slacker, I'm going to make a Seattle Area Knowledge check about the Ork Underground to see what TW knows about it, especially as it pertains to weapons.

Intuition (4) + Seattle Area Knowledge (2) = 1 hit. Hmph. Probably fuck all, with that roll.

You've heard all kinds of stories about the Ork Underground. There are giant invisible alligators roaming the tunnels to eat of anybody that takes a wrong turn. There is a secret kingpin of all the gangs of Seattle living there, he's a 20' tall troll that has lived for 200 years. You've heard it's all a hoax just to get tourists to come waste their money. You've heard Knight Errant is secretly poisoning the water to try to kill off all the metahumans; There's an old pirates treasure buried down there that is booby trapped so even the Goonies couldn't get to it...

Yeah, the list goes on. But basically you don't know much of anything with only one success. There are certainly a lot of stories of gangers fighting in the Underground as well as at the entrance, including melee, ranged weapons, and grenades (thus the fire damage mentioned on twitter).

We're shadowrunners, right? Have we been to the ork underground before? I mean, we're talking about Seattle's basement, right?

I don't know, have you been to the Ork Underground? I don't remember anybody mentioning it in their background and there is plenty of work on the surface for shadowrunners to keep busy. In general, topsiders are not welcome down there. So unless you specifically have it worked into your background or at least have some close contacts that live down there I'd say it's highly likely you've never been.
Well, maybe if you were new to town and doing the tourist thing.

Fair enough, I wasn't sure if it was considered part of the city enough that people would go there to get things or what have you.

I need to do some reading apparently. This place is so terrifying that shadowrunners fear to go there, but tourists frequent the place? Weird.

Shadowrunners know that the tourists are getting a fake sense of danger from the areas near the entrance. They certainly don't go anywhere passed that initial facade where many denizens bilk them out of money. Those tourists that do simply disappear. Or so the stories go.

Mostly you just wouldn't have any reason to go down there unless you are a tourist, somebody that lives down there, or on a specific mission that would take you down there and those are few and far between.

It's no different than Touristville in the Barrens, Dak. The norms go their to slum and tell their friends and coworkers they went into the Barrens (Ooooohh Ahhhhh), when they'd go nowhere near the actual Z-zones because the predators there would eat them before they took ten steps. Shadowrunners go there if they're paid to or live there, but otherwise why bother?

Quixote is willing to be dropped off last (since he needs sleep the least) a few blocks from his actual abode. I'll be throwing a post up in the IC thread in a few (4ish or so) hours once I'm done at work to reflect the various things done in this thread (I do like doing the writeups, honest!). Once at home, probably going to start on working on some software in the downtime before nabbing the required three hours of sleep. Debating what to work on first (part of me says stealth 12 w/ergonomic 6 ) or mebbe I'll fiddle with the commlink. I'll decide later.

Oh, also, going to start throwing some data searches out on general information about the Ork Underground (and, hopefully speaking Or'zet will nab me a bonus or two on Ork only matrix sites or something )

lol. Your stealth 5 seems to be doing just fine. Stealth 12 would be insane.

Well, that and the fact that I think stealth 12 would take like...most of a year IC to program, heh.
In all honesty, probably going to start hunting around for warez sites/places to pirate from (assuming that in Missions, pirating software is rules legal) and get a couple of programs that I've been disliking not having (nuke, armor, shield, medic...maybe one or two others, heh) and starting to work on improving a few programs in my off time (exploit and stealth, for starters).

Well, it looks like it would have a threshold of 36 and in interval of 1 month. When I just did a mock test roll, you got to 25 success and the last three rolls were glitches before you ran out of dice.

After everyone is finished at the hotel and they get dropped off, Legs will head for home himself, where he'll load his Doberman up with ammo and get it into the large drone rack, then hit the rack for the next day. If we're going to the Ork Underground, it can't hurt to have some heavy artillery.

So what time are you guys meeting back up the next day and where at?

if we know other ways into the underground (and the seattle book implies that there are multiple entrances) I say we meet up early, ~7AM and head in. Otherwise.... we wait till the Mall opens?

There are two known entrances to the Ork Underground. The Tourist Highway beneath Lordstrungs and another beneath the Big Rhino "authentic" ork cuisine restraurant that is only open during hours of the restaurant (10AM to Midnight). While there are rumors of other secret entrances, if they do exist only the individual Ork Underground citizens that discovered them know of them and keep them secret lest the topsiders start visiting regularly (they are quite distrustful of anybody from the surface).

For reference, Big Rhino is about 40 miles north of the Lordstrung entrance.

I'm pretty sure Legs will be all for the entrance he can get himself, his drone chair and an armed GM-Nissan Doberman through.

How much sleep do we need to avoid sleep deprivation? I'd say we should avoid wasting too much time, I'd like to get this done asap particularly to avoid any problems our target might face... Personally, I could probably manage to stay up later, but we do run into the issues of people not being up, so a short nap might help.

Gardner is fine with crashing in the van or on the floor of someone's doss, not wanting to bother people by extending travel times now and in the morning. He has a sleeping bag and is used to roughing it...

In the morning (after sunrise), before we head out, Gardner summons up another Water Spirit, this time going out to the Mall that the cab company indicated that Fiona went to...

Summoning -> 4 hits.
Drain Resist -> 1 hit (that's gonna suck)...

I'll hopefully get a few services, and tell it to do the same thing as last time, but from this new starting location. (doesn't hurt [much] to try)

1: 2 hits
2: 3 hits
3: 2 hits, but a glitch
4: 4 hits
5: 3 hits
6: 2 hits
7: 1 hit
8: 1 hit
9: 2 hits
10: 0 hits
No dice.

Total: 20 again, but a glitch at the half-hour mark.

I'll probably be spending the next few hours hour resting to recover the damage I'm taking from that botched drain test...
Hour One: 7 hits to heal stun damage (probably good enough...)

I'm pretty sure Legs would be (more or less) all right with Gardner crashing at his place, if the giant can ignore the sounds of gunfire and violence that tend to erupt throughout the night around his converted, broken-down warehouse.

Sorry for the delay. For some reason the forums weren't showing me new posts....Also sorry to say that on 5 dice this spirit actually just rolled 4 successes. So your summoning fails, but you stil have to resist the drain. So take 3 boxes of stun damage since you only got 1 success. Oh, but i guess it doesn't matter since you'll be healing back up.

Before you try summoning again. I'll just go ahead and tell you that she's more than 20km into the Ork Underground so unless you summon a higher Force spirit, you aren't likely to get anything with Search.

Regarding sleep. I'm not going to worry about rules for deprevation unless you guys go more than two days without sleep. Just take as much or as little sleep as would be appropriate in character

Big Rhino only mentions having stairs and is in the heart of downtown (at least AA security level), perhaps Gardner could be convinced to carry you and the wheelchair down if you guys decide to go to that entrance.

The Tourist Highway at least has escalators and I'll go ahead and add a service elevator to it. Still, it does have a manned Knight Errant guard tower.