Eclipse uh... stayed outside because I was super busy today, and it all worked out ok. Hurrah!
He would have been super bummed to find out he zoned out to check his email, and when he came back the restaurant was a smoldering crater...
I'm going to echo Needle's hope that that's 10k for all of us though, and not just the three at the table.
Edit: If it was just for those at the table, Eclipse totally went in.

I would have expected more discussion between Acson and Moreau about the terms of his employment (what no benefits package?), but then again I guess our team isn't really concerned about what he wants at this point huh? Also, let me say, for a guy supposedly toting around a secret tome of arcane knowledge that could/will likely get you killed for stealing, he really sucks at the whole secret thing.


On a completely unrelated note:
Accessing the public node of the restaurant, how does this place seem to be set up? For an entirely roleplaying perspective I'm contemplating grabbing Silas a doggy-bag, but not all buffets let you do that. I'm not sure if the adventure would even have something like that in it. Either way, I'm assuming this place isn't super high-class enough to go beyond my normal food budget from my lifestyle. Purely a role-playing thing of getting Silas some (hot) food since he was complaining so much about missing the party

Slacker, from now on Kiirnodel can have all my Karma - for all eternity*







*this statement is not legally binding, please refer to my attorney over here, Mr. Lofwyr.

Basically I didn't want to boar you guys with a long IC post of back and forth between Moreau and Acson. Besides, as I've mentioned before, Moreau the the uber-negotiator and would be enfluencing Acson with his pheromones and natural charisma to agree quickly and without much fuss. They may have negotiate some on the price of the book, but regards benefits packages Moreau would simply repeat the line about knowing the short pass to success for Acson. And considering Moreau has 16 dice to Acson's 3, that will be more than enough.

Regarding the food, did you miss the rumors that this place has some all natural food? Many of the items are not soy or krill based, but the genuine article. Like the honest to god coffee they serve and the home grown apple pie. This is a HIGH class buffet. There is a separate charge of 50 nuyen for a togo box. They do not simply allow people to take home what is left on there plate.

As Moreau is leaving the restaurant, Needle notices an increase in encrypted traffic coming from somewhere out on the water.

So, those in the restaurant staying for dinner or is everybody heading out?

Makes sense, but did they sit and discuss things for more than the 1-2 minutes that was implied so far?

As for the food, apparently I did miss the high-end part of the buffet description.



I don't suggest we stay to eat, but Gardner will probably be grabbing a togo box or two, mostly grabbing stuff that he doesn't usually get at home (High Necessities particularly for the purposes of food means that this is probably just going to be this week's treat, not blowing his budget for the whole month). If you want me to spend the cash, I'm not too worried about it.

And don't worry guys, that second box is for everyone

No, they did not spend more than the minute or two discussing things. Moreau's presence and personality set Acson into a very agreeable mood.

And yeah, go ahead and mark of the nuyen if your getting togo boxes. Moreau paid for meals at the table, but not for you to take food with you.

Oh well, that's what we get for being in a bit of a hurry... unless others want to come in and eat too?

IC post inbound ... this is a step too far !

Sorry, I added the "too" when I probably shouldn't have... None of us inside have had a chance to eat yet, that meet was way too short. I was meaning that based on our actions so far people probably aren't wanting to stay and eat, so I'm grabbing us some to go boxes.

"Unless people want to come in and eat" [despite how we've been acting so far]

Well, now...that's rather interesting. I guess maybe I should do something about that. However, I need to put some stuff out there regarding what I am about to do because the RAW are rather...ambiguous, I guess is the right word...when it comes to Intercepting Wireless Traffic.

Per the RAW, there is nothing there that says you need to have a subscription to a node to intercept and/or decrypt wireless traffic. Which, when I GM SR, I find rather retarded. You can pretty much intercept, decrypt, insert edited stuff, etc., without needing a subscription to a node. Which means you could potentially abuse this and hack without really hacking. But that's a GM call.

Either way, I'm going to Capture Wireless Traffic and Decrypt it. And I'll do this in VR for the Hot Sim bonus dice.

Capture Wireless Signal (threshold of 3 per RAW): 17d6.hits(5) = 8
Decrypt: 17d6.hits(5) = 8

So I will be having Analyze, Decrypt, Edit, Sniffer, Stealth running on my commlink. Per RAW, I do not need to roll any longer once the signal is captured so long as I stay in mutual signal range. The capture is also undetectable per RAW, and I can copy, edit, record, redirect...pretty much anything I wish to do to it. So I guess I'll be recording/copying as long as I'm tuned in. So what juicy gossip am I listening to?

Silas is utterly paranoid that you are stuffing you faces and pockets with fine food and drink .. regardless of whether you are or not, or have had time ..
purely for RP purposes, he's upset that he passed up a chance to grab some real grub

hope Needle doesn't mind me abusing her in my IC, I think I got it across with her sharp glares in my direction ?

You can capture a wireless signal without having a subscription to a node, but you can't manipulate how it's received by its intended recipient without being subscribed to a node involved in the data transmission. Meaning you can get a copy of it for yourself and do whatever you want to that copy on your commlink, but the original, unmodified transmission still went out to its intended recipient.

In this particular case, you haven't listened in on anything yet. The data seems to be encrypted with a higher than 4 rating encryption program. One more decrypt test should do it though.

Yeah, I was getting Capture and Intercept mixed up. D'oh on me!

But on the decrypt...8 hits wasn't enough to decrypt? Wow. Guess I'm making this an extended test.

Decrypt: 16d6.hits(5) = 2
Decrypt: 15d6.hits(5) = 8

That's 18 hits on the extended test for decrypt. If that's not enough hits, then I'm at a loss.

18 is enough the 10 from your original roll and your second one was not.

You captured a portion of an ongoing transmision.
<<...met with four unknowns. Subject Alpha now leaving the premises. Recommend observation of new subjects for more information.>>

Sunovabitch.

Four Unknowns - Tundra Wolf, Gardner, Mr White, Ascon? Do I Win ™ for guessing Moreau was under surveillance and being super unprofessional to try and clue us in!!?!

As Slacker mentioned earlier, Moreau wasn't acting at all out of character when he spoke that way. It didn't strike any of us who knew him as strange...

I'm still a winner on the inside.

It is not unprofessional to be a straight talker. Moreau is a business man first and foremost. He deals in facts, not conjecture. So that was reflected in his explicitly stating what was on the table with Gardner called.

But yes, it does appear he's under surveillance by somebody (or somebodies)...

Nope, the only winner here is the clown who's going to get a shit ton of free publicity when his van is repeatedly photographed in surveillance by multiple parties and they all start wondering just who this Bigfoot Clown guy is.

purely meta conjecture here, as a significant player in a large organsiation, we should have guessed that this would be a semi permanent state for him to live in, under surveillance by "others".

the restaurant was an adequate attempt to cover as much as possible, but nothing is 100%.

let's see what needle does with the info and how this plays out

just to add in a side note ... this is really Rockin' Slacker ! ... havin a blast thus far.

LOL ... or he's gonna have a REALLY bad day .... full body cavity search followed by a "Chat" with an agent of a Dragon

Sorry, it isn't necessarily that you were wrong. I never disagreed that we didn't have to be careful. But there really wasn't much we could do except have the meeting if we wanted to move the mission forward...

Glad you're enjoying it so much Mach_Ten. I'm having a lot of fun running this group through this mission.








I'm really going to hate to have to kill you all.....

sorry, I'm not having a dig ... not at all ... I just suddenly got the realisation that this "should" have crossed my mind.

and your right, we should have done some careful legwork beforehand, but we seem to be on the backfoot at every step so far

we stop to think and we get hit .. we go too fast and we run into something we should have seen.

tying to find that middle ground is proving ... well it's giving me AND Silas a headache ... in a nice way
at least we are still alive
AAaaaaaw CRAP ! ... spoke too soon !

That was the unprofessional part. If he's a player in the shadows, and has done something in the background to warrant surveillance (that he knows of), or he's dealing with illegal activities in a big-brother society where everything you do is monitored... saying Ascon's name, the jist of the run, and the address of the meeting place in one unsecured transmission is enough to make a runner go: "What." The straight talking is awesome - I'm positive it helped him and Mr White reach an agreement quickly.. and straight talking is not the same as "Oh, you're extracting a highly sought after package? Let me go over all the details in recap for everyone listening in."

So! I waggle my finger at Moreau. Shame on you sir, shaaaaaame!

-

Eclipse starts up his bike when he sees the people exiting the bar because, again, apparently he decided to check email instead of going inside. It was a lot of spam, if you're interested (Though Netflix did add season 66 of Breaking Bad...)
<<where 2>>

Well, I'm obviously going to continue listening. But before we get that far, I need a GM ruling on something please.

I want to try and Trace the location of the wireless activity. Both ends - submission and receiving. However, the rules for Track User don't include anything regarding tracing wireless traffic, only icons on nodes. Capture Wireless Traffic has no rules in it regarding tracing, but the Track program description includes the definition that it "...is used as an intrusion countermeasure with the intent of identifying/locating a hacker or launching a counter-attack...". The major problem here, though, is that a node subscription is implied.

So, Mr. GM...is it possible to use Track/Trace to follow wireless signals back to their origination and destination points considering the RAW (as far as I can tell) don't address this?

Eh...you say tomato, I say tomato(totally different inflection). What you say is unprofessional, Moreau says is absolutely professional, because any intelligent runner would assume there is always a chance of surveillance and be prepared to deal with the consequences. He was prepared should any number of other players came at him during the meet, including several exit plans and extraction methods. Were you?

Yup, absolutely. Step 1: follow Moreau (he knows his shit). Step 2: ????. Step 3: Survival (and maybe Profit)

I love this group so much.

You can't trace the recipient without being on a node the signal is passing through, or at least having that target be within your signal range. In this case, you can identify the originating signal coming from a node just off shore (you'd need a Perception test in the real world to tell what you can see of what is at that physical location), but the recipient is not within your signal range.

From where Eclipse is watching Moreau, he looses track of Moreau for a second as he walks behind a van. Moments later the van starts up along with another vehicle on the other side of the van. Both have tinted windows. Should you wish to really follow him, which vehicle will you follow as they will shortly be going separate directions? hehe

Nah, I meant that was my escape plan if something bad broke out while we were in the restaurant with him. For now I'm suggesting we continue our goal of contacting the Atlantean Foundation and get our second bid...

Oh ok. I didn't really think you were going to follow him now. I was just trying to fully play out that, yes, he really does have multiple plans going on.

Yup.

Considering I've already got the traffic and am listening in on it (and recording for future reference)...how close are we to shore? I mean, if we aren't close enough, a Perception test ain't gonna amount to much, is it. However, I'll add the dices here in case we are close enough. Switching to AR for the Meat World perception test.

Perception 3 + INT 5 + Vision Enhancement 3 = 11 dices
11d6.hits(5) = 6

That, obviously, is to just see if there's anything out there that MAY have a node that I'd have to go hunting for with a Matrix Perception test.

The shore I'm referring to is the one you are parked at. The signal appears to be coming from something a little bit further away than the restaurant at the end of the pier. Looks like maybe it's coming from an unmarked yacht sitting in the water. It could maybe be heading towards the marina. But if it is, its doing it extremely slowly. It's a model produced by Saeder-Krupp if that helps any.

You calling him or going to drive by the address listed?

Let's call him.

Mr. White probably has a better understanding of telecom privacy and such in the 2070's than I do.

Gang, shall White just phone him up? Is there something more secure we should try?

I would suggest a phone call, it's common (not to mention professional) courtesy.

edit: Dammit, too slow. Maybe we should use TW's comm. He's replacing one, why not both. It's low-level enough that replacing it won't be too painful.

Can't think of anything more secure really, except the whole in person thing... But at this point we've been driving around this town enough, I would rather get this done...

I'm waffling between getting a burner comlink to call him on, or just using Mr. White's comlink. We (us, OOC, and our characters, IC) know that we're being surveiled. So does it matter? White generally conducts business via his own comlink, unless he's totally scumming it.

Further intercept transmissions:
From unknown origin:<<Transfer data on 4 unknowns. Have units 4 and 5 follow them until Air 3 can be called in.>>
Response from signal on the water appears to have an encrypted file attached <<Subject Alpha had support masking audio. Video of subjects is attached.>>
Unknown origin: <<Good work. We'll get Lips to review.>>
Water signal: <<Target Alpha has left the parking lot. Units 2 & 3 picking up tracking. Water 1 returning to inactive status>>

Presently the boat offshore is revving up it's engine as it begins to speed up and leave the area.

You can encrypt the signal. I'd assume you have some sort of low level encryption program even if you didn't buy it. Though Needle has been proving how much Encryption is actually worth considering the people she's spying on have pretty good Encryption running.

Yeah, it feels like using pig-latin as an "encoding method". May as well make the call and have some conversation.

By the by, there's still the dangling thread of Lung's (proxy's) interest in why we were going to talk to Draco. I just left that hanging. Are we happy with that, or want to do anything further with it?

Ok, for starters I'm going to decrypt the attached file.

17d6.hits(5) = 4
16d6.hits(5) = 5
15d6.hits(5) = 6

And just in case it's needed...

14d6..hits(5) = 8

Now...hmmm...I've recorded everything, including copying the decrypted file. I guess I'll push all of that to the team. Encrypted message, of course.

/* To: Team
/* From: Needle
/* Message: We're being watched. Heavily. Off-Shore is moving. File Attached. */

Finally, if the off-shore is still in range, Matrix Perception to find a hidden node on/near it.

17d6.hits(5) = 4
16d6.hits(5) = 4

I believe (without looking) that the threshold to find a hidden node is 4, but I could be wrong. Either way, if that isn't enough hits, I'll assume (unless the GM says otherwise) that the node is either hidden very well OR the off-shore has moved out of signal range.

No kidding. Disposable commlinks forever, then. No point in buying the good shit unless you can rip stuff out and replace it yourself for cheap.

Eh, leave 'em. They'll mess with us, regardless.

The file that was attached is a video file of Moreau's table. It includes video of the team members and Acson walking up to the table (with momentary zooms onto each of their faces). The audio portion seems to have been using a soundfilter to block out normal restaurant noises, and yet it does have any usable conversation from Moreau's table (there is a note in the metadata citing possible magical interference). At one point, when Acson burst out "Thaljun Cordex" a bit too loudly, something comes across the audio, but its still garbled (this is tagged with a note saying the tech-heads may be able to do something with that). Other than than, there appears to be a subchannel of the same video, but with a focus on the mouths of whoever is speaking.

As far as the boat goes, what are you trying to do with them? I was basically using GM fiat to let them be within signal range for you to catch the transmissions.

It seems to me that we're no longer simply "Trying to sell Acson to the highest bidder". It seems now that we're pushing "Acson and this book to the highest bidder". And I'd hate to undersell ourselves. There's a big difference between selling a new mustang, vs a new mustang with a rare siberian tiger sitting in the passenger seat.