Oh wait, for everyone or just themselves? If that's the case, we should be caught up other than Amy's just purchased scotch.

ETA: OK, I see the OOC post about covering the cost. No problem, I think we're square other than Amy's drink at this point.

Excellent - since it is synthhol, we'll call that a Standard Drink at 5

If folks do want to poke around their expense reports and just make sure I didn't miss anything, it would be awesome.

I keep track of Amy's expenses, but they're usually all perfectly updated before I get the chance. I'm fine with you taking care of the file.

ETA: Amy will take a look around in the astral. If she can, she'll take a quick glance at Murphy and assense the man.

Looking around in the astral shows a bar full of mundanes, each in various stages of inebriation.

Focusing on Murphy himself, you see that he is a mundane with a fair amount of bodyware and a few bits of headware. He seems, if anything, annoyed.

@Lobo: I think this question got missed in the post fusillade:

Oh - sorry about that.

Its a little less than 4 miles, so, with average walking speed a little more than 3 mph, figure a little more than an hour to walk it.

Thanks, I'll follow the posts and post an IC post when Jack gets home.


"Uh, pics? Better yet, we've got a body, would that help?"

LOL

...yeah. I am probably going to tell him the unit numbers from memory (I presume they had big numbers on them), but will hold back on showing him the video just yet.

DrZ

You can always select frames in the video that show the information he's looking for.

Drave is going to run his bug scanner and do a Matrix Perception check to make sure no one is listening in to the conversation and there are no hackers lurking about.

Edited post #864 to reflect Overkill doing this IC

Quick IC post is up. I'm here all morning, so we can probably have a quick back and forth. I'll keep checking in periodically.
-DrZ

OOC: If anyone wants to ask questions of Murphy, I think it's reasonable to send Grease a quick AR message. I'm just going to go through my list I came up with before Dumpshock crashed late last week, along with any followups that seems relevant.

I'll be here all morning as well, and will be checking in too I think we can probably bang out the meeting today

Ok, so can I show Murphy the video without showing Amy murdering a cop? How quickly can I creatively edit this thing? Or have Drave do so?

-DrZ

Well, you haven't actually edited the footage, all you have is the raw data.

If you don't want any incriminating stuff on the video, you are going to have to edit out:

1) Amy yelling to get the cops
2) Amy casting Ball Lightning at the drone
3) Amy casting Confusion at the cops
4) Amy casting Ball Lightning at the cop car as it is running away
5) Rhex's gunfight with the cops (although technically that is just a drone, so the video doesn't prove it was you who did it).

Technically you don't have to chop out the cop shooting at Amy, but it would raise the question as to why he is shooting at her, specifically.

I would imagine if you just edited all of that out, the video is going to be a little confusing.

Alternately, you'd have to have Overkill edit the file changing Amy's appearance in the video so that the file showed a mage doing all of that, but it would look like someone else doing it. Depending on how long the video is, that is going to take him some time.

RAW, it takes one complex action to edit 3 seconds of video.

Grease's Negotiation Roll (taking into account modifiers)
12d6.hits(5)=3

Murphy's Roll
6d6.hits (5)=2

Increased the payment (Murphy took your last statement as a method of trying to gouge him for more cash.)

Did she cast Ball Lightning before or after the cops started firing?

Pretty incriminating video for Amy... Changing her appearance would be great; but I doubt anything Drave would be able to whip up quickly would hold up to any serious scrutiny.

Perhaps I could swap the sequences to make it look like the cops opened fire first?

Oh, clever! I like that idea; simple, and limited amount of extra work needed. Of course, Amy sitting 6 feet away and being in a video murdering a cop might be an issue. If it's possible to change her appearance I'd give that a shot. Maybe the mage in the video cast invisibility at some point?

ETA: I will DEFINITELY be cutting the video off before we show my car (which is sitting in the parking lot) rolling up, loading the bleeding cop, and driving off.

She cast ball lighting at one of the drones before anything else happened (apart from her yelling at everyone to get the cops).

You bet she did!!

Can you just cut her out completely?

You basically have the option of either:

a) Chopping the footage up into pieces so that she is never actually on camera
b) Editing the footage effectively frame by frame to change her appearance.

Option B will look more realistic, but will take longer, and it, if it is examined, will potentially show that the footage was tampered with.

Option A is quicker, but then you get things like ball lightning's being thrown around without an origin point - or the cop shooting at someone who is not that far away, and given the angle that your drones would have been capturing the video from, Amy is going to be in the frame - so if you chop it out, it is going to look weird.

Remember that all the footage is shot from an overhead angle, so you are going to be getting wide panoramic shoots, not close ups. (I assume that you took the time to get close ups of the cop cars and the drones, and even the armored figures - but that wasn't the general angle of the footage.

Btw - given that no one went through the officer's gun, and the one officer never actually fired a shot, you don't know that both were carrying explosive.

I'm starting to get the feeling that we killed the wrong one. I knew we had to catch the other one!

I will wait for Drave to edit the video before passing it along to Murphy.

Ok, so since all of this is done with Grease's permission, there is no actual test necessary. He sends Overkill the file, invites 3 Marks from Overkill, Overkill marks the file and starts editing. In AR (since I'm assuming that Overkill isn't going to slump unconscious in the booth), he averages 2 actions per combat turn, so 2 Complex actions per 3 seconds.

That basically means that to edit a 10 minute file, it will take him 5 minutes.

At what point does the footage start and end?

I'll say the footage starts with the cops showing up, and ends after the one cop goes down and the other speeds off, but before my car shows up to drag Amy, Overkill, and the cop into the car.

-DrZ

ETA: The footage may follow the fly-spy following the fleeing police cruiser, conveniently not showing me loading the cop into the car.

ETA2: Per the editing stuff; I'm not sure if he actually needs to "EDIT" that much; I had 3 cameras, I'm presuming through some chicanery it might be possible to switch around the angles so the whole story is told, but certain aspects are harder to follow than others (if that makes sense).

That makes sense. And if I may, not every minute of footage needs to be edited, just the parts where one of us can be seen (mostly Amy).

Do I get the sense Murphy is lying to me about why he hired me? I think Grease thinks he knew something was going down.

-DrZ

My concern would be if you have Flyspy A overhead, and the shot has the cops and Amy in the frame, and now it suddenly jumps to another angle from Flyspy B- i.e. clearly another camera - then what is to stop Murphy from saying - "Where is the rest of the footage from the first camera?"

Given that Amy is basically next to Greeley and Chomsky, and interferes and asks the two cops for proof of the warrant while on stage with them, and then follows them closely all the way back to the cars - how are you going to show that footage without her in it?

However, probably easier if you tell me what you think the footage would show, and I can tell you how (and if) that can be achieved.

Grease's Judge Intentions:
6d6.hits (5)=2

Your gut tells you that you trust him.

Now that I think about it, with regards to the footage, this is probably something that Overkill should tell me what is on the file.

You aren't going to be able to give him step-by-step instructions on what to cut and what to edit.

So, Overkill,

Using the IC posts I put up describing the action, please post the play-by-play of what the footage shows. If you edit Amy's appearance or just cut her out, etc.

Agreed- fine by me!
-DrZ

Is there any way I could cut out the first ball lightning spell taking out the drone and make it look like the cops acted first?

So the footage would show them walking Greeley and Chomsky to their car, and then one officer just turning around and shooting Amy?

Yes, you can do that.

Just an aside: I think this is great and all, but there is no way given the ubiquity of cameras in the 2070s that several dozen someones didn't also take footage of this incident and upload it to WatchMe! by now.

I think the saving grace for Amy is going to be that she was disguised.

That grease sure is handy! ... When he isn't handing over incriminating evidence to the cops...

Drz

When you leave out the capital letter in "grease", it completely changes the meaning of the first part of your sentence...

Once Overkill posts what he sends to Grease (to give to Murphy) we can wrap up this interaction.

Any thoughts on where to go next?

The danger of posting with your phone

I don't know; I may have a few more questions for Murphy. Amy, Overkill, anything else you'd want to ask about?
-DrZ

Yeah what does he plan to do with the video??

ETA: My posting will be maybe spotty tomorrow and I won't be able to post at all Thursday.

That is so true. Pretty much any major event on the vid that we could alter or rearrange, can be easily debunked with the slightest scrutiny.

At this point I am wondering if we would be better off just giving him the whole video intact and unmolested. At least we seem credible

@Lobo: What about the last Ball Lightning Amy launched at the fleeing cruiser; seems like that could be easily clipped off at the end of the vid.

I think if I bother to do anything to change the video, it will be to take out Amy's initial and final volleys of Ball Lightning. The video can end with the patrol cruiser driving off; there is no need to show them Amy's attempt to stop them. It wont stand out as unusual if the vehicle fleeing is where the recording would end. Cutting out the beginning of the incident is a little riskier, because if we cut it and he questions it, we aren't going to be looking very good to Murphy...(Unless Grease could come up with some clever BS on how the spell actually caused a short in the video feeds.)

As the conversation is still going on, Drave will be checking out the Matrix in his AR to see what videos from the rally have already been posted on sites like WatchMe!; checking in particular for any videos of Amy's first Ball Lightning.

You can cut it so that the end is the car driving off, that isn't a problem.

A brief Matrix search shows multiple videos - none of the videos are complete versions of the event, each captures segments of it.

However, there are several where Amy is featured - talking to the police, being shot, throwing the ball lighting at the drone - but again, each is in isolation.

You don't have an unlimited amount of time to search through the videos, but that is what you find.

If Drave gives me a nod, I will send the video over to Murphy.
-DrZ

EDIT: OR, I can hold onto it. Murphy is a contact, and if we feel it tells too much, then we can always scrap it. Grease obviously doesn't want to throw the group under the bus for a few cred.

Could I make the recording look damaged. I am just worried about two things: burning your contact with Murphy, and handing him smoking gun evidence that the whole incident (including the death of the Lone Star cadet) could very easily be pinned on Amy.

Main trouble I see is that if I damage the recording at such a critical moment, he will try to figure out what happened. And it won't take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out what Amy did in that instant.

Off-topic: Were the Drones we fought the standard issue Rotodrones Lone Star normally uses, or different?

I suppose you could try and make it look damaged - was that rhetorical (since you already sent it back to Grease with just some footage chopped).

What kind of damage?

As far as the drones were concerned, most rotodrones look alike - just looking at them flying around, they seem to be the same, yes.

Unless I hear from OK or Amy, I'm going to pass the footage over.

-DrZ

Updated the Campaign Locations document.

Map updated

It became somewhat rhetorical when I was thinking my indecision on the matter was holding things up, and after Jack made the point that footage from the event would be all over the Matrix already, I thought I would just help move things along and pass the video on.

I was thinking electrical interference that might have been caused by say, a large ball of electricity passing too close to a Fliegegeheimagent. I was just hoping to obscure Amy's initial actions against the Lone Star officers, but they will be looking for her with or without us giving Murphy the footage.