I'm basically down for #1. We can at least try to locate Bradshere and see if we can't dig into his commlink.

Do we have any other schemes we aren't mentioning? How can we find out more about Brown?

I don't recall if Overkill ever did a Matrix Search for him specifically. Then again, I'm not entirely sure what that would pull up. It's been a few days, maybe some dirt has churned up concerning the rally that might shed some light on the situation.

Depends what you mean when you say "more"

He is an employee of Lone Star, and so basic information would be available on the Matrix about him.

What information are you looking for? For an address you'd probably have to hack into some data files at Lone Star.

Um, considering the challenge Overkill experienced trying to wirelessly hack a streetlight camera, I'm not particularly confident in our abilities to pull that one off. Ramirez has already denied our request for access to Lone Star offices, so even a direct connection is probably not going to happen (even then, he'd have to contend with full Host ratings to get to the files).

For Plan A: Is "Owner: Calvin Bradshere" sufficient information to try to spot his commlink, assuming we were able to get close to his place of work?

Yes - that is perfectly reasonable to find his "official" commlink.

OK, so based on that, we could try to have Overkill spot his official link. Now, a lot of this is going to depend on whether Lone Star requires/allows its personnel to slave their links to the Lone Star Host. If that's SOP, we're pretty much in the same boat as trying to hack their system. Otherwise, Overkill might stand a chance of getting a few MARKs on his 'link, enough to trace the icon and follow him to his house. I guess we could always just try to stake out Lone Star HQ and follow Bradshere from there as well. Once there, Overkill can try to spot silently running icons to see if we can locate the burner comm he may or may not be using to communicate with Lynx.

Everyone always want to try to break into Lone Star's database- what a fun challenge for a hacker!

This is going to be tough, I think. This is a rules question; is it easier to hack into something if you have another hacker helping? Do we have any hacker contacts we could sub-contract out to help Overkill?

One thing I don't like about SR5 is that if you don't try to min-max your hacker like crazy, it can be difficult to be effective in the game. Other archetypes seem to work fine, but the way the hacking rules are setup you're basically setting off klaxons and alarms very easily we even decent sized dicepools.

-DrZ

Ok - after thinking about it, I think the correct answer is that while on the premises, any wireless items that belong to Lone Star employees hook up to the host, and then when they reach a distance to where they can no longer be covered by the security of the headquarters, they are removed from the host - similar to the way our current mobile devices hook up to the wireless networks at our office and disconnect when we leave.

There would be a little more to it than that, but in general that is the case.

Does that help?

Other than the Files issue (defending with Host attributes all the time), I've come around to the opinion that it works pretty well for what the devs seemed to have decided is the important part: namely getting the hacker out of the van. I mean, IF you can get that precious direct connection on a device with a nominal device rating (usually requiring you to tag along with the team), you can easily get a MARK on the host though the Master-Slave relationship and pop in, making hacking devices an awful lot easier, assuming the GM doesn't go bananas with having Patrol IC scanning every move you make or being smart enough to ask for an icon's Attack or Sleaze rating.

...and I in no way want Overkill to try to hack the Lone Star Host, LOL. I just want him to get into Bradshere's commlink. I think Lobo's solution works and is realistic.

Ok - assuming that is what you would like to do, that brings up a slight issue, in that it is Friday night at 9:00 PM.

This means that unless Bradshere works on the weekend, (which is possible), you will have to wait until Monday to get him at the Lone Star office.

In any event, you should probably decide what time to go to Lone Star, and if there is anything you want to do in the meantime.

Ugh... yeah. That does make things a lot more difficult given the work week. I'm a little stumped on this one... I guess we could head over there and Amy could have a spirit use the Search ability to try to find him. We have images to work with and warding doesn't actually seem to prohibit the power, just makes the threshold higher.

ETA: Honestly, I guess we could technically do that with any of our targets...

You could, in fact, do it with any/all of your targets

Where the matrix fails, sometimes magic can provide another angle of approach.

Influence can be the perfect spell for our plan, changing it slightly. If Amy can insert a suggestion in Bradshere's mind that he needs to set up a meet with Lynx at a time and place of our choosing, he will do just that, using whatever means is appropriate. We'd have to think carefully about the details but this can offer a way around our hacking difficulties. His mind might be a weaker spot than his electronics.

And yes I think searching for him could work.

I mean, we could have a spirit search for Mr. J and Lynx. We have images of both of them. Maybe we'll get lucky.

ETA: We might even have an image of Falcon, although tenuous at best. I remember Amy ran into a powerful mage when she was slumming the LM territory. Now that we know Lynx's crew operates out of there, it could be him, I guess. Again, that's tenuous and I'd rather not piss off some unrelated powerful mage. I'll admit this is totally a metagame Chekov's Rifle here, LOL.

EATA: If we're going to change our plan, I think Amy is going to have to suggest it since Jack/Grease/Overkill know frag all about magic. We've seen the Search power used all of once to find some commlinks, but we generally knew their exact location.

I just threw up a post about "Anyone have any bright ideas?" just to keep the IC thread movin'. It's always bad when we have these long discussions OOC and we forget to recap IC

Thanks

I think we wait for Chrome to log on (since he is on the west coast) for him to post IC something about using magic to search for them - and then we can handle the various summoning rolls.

Yup, that's what I was doing. Didn't want to post on his behalf.

Sorry to make you wait. I've been busy lately, so my posting rate is slightly lower, but you can still expect at least 1-2 posts a day from me.

Oh - no worries - Jack posted what he did on Friday, and usually the weekends are quiet anyways

Yeah, no rush here.

ETA: Huh... what did we ever do with Truck's commlink? <- Never mind, I looked the post back up and it was a burner without contacts and the only call-history matched the link for the blonde dude we left for the Road Warriors. I did forget that Amy recovered some kind of focus, however. Maybe we could swing by Stingray's if it's open and see what he knows about it.

I had completely forgotten about that, would have asked Hubert to look at it while we were having tea. Oh well.

ETA: I think it's pretty unimportant for our run though, and investigating it can probably wait. I forget, what did Amy learn from assensing it?

Its rating was less than your magic attribute

Oh certainly. I just suggested it since it seems we have some time to kill, Stingray's is fairly close to Los Mags territory, and I know I wouldn't mind if we happened to be visiting with a powerful shaman and spirit ally if we suddenly become the mouse in our game of cat-and-mouse with Lynx.

I'm open to any suggestions, I'd just like us to do something, to be honest. We've been in something of a holding pattern for 5 IRL days now.

I'm here for whatever you guys need. I think at this point we just need to work out the Force of the spirit that Amy is summoning so I can do the rolls.

There isn't any reason that I can think of that she would have to wait to get to the Bar-rel before summoning it (but you could wait if you wanted to).

Just FYI... and we might want to retcon a bit, but Amy does have a F4 Spirit with the search power currently called up and ready to go.

Thanks - I remembered Amy having that, but then I thought I wasn't sure if she wanted to use that one or if she wanted to summon another more powerful spirit instead.

I'm happy to have the Spirit of Beasts search (wouldn't take much of a retcon - Amy could simply say no thank you to Grease's offer - that she already has one available, etc).

Once Chrome posts (either to use the spirit you have or to summon and use a different one), we can get moving

While it is searching we can just skip time if you want, or if you wanted to do something specific - it may take a while before the spirit finds whoever you send it to look for.

I think regardless of who we want to search for, we should probably do it closer to Commerce City. It's closer to the LMs territory and it seems like a lot of the cops worked out of that area. Without further information, we can take a stab and assume that Bradshere probably lives/works somewhere in the proximity of those officers (Precinct Office or possibly HQ). We can definitely just head straight to the Rust if we want. I just didn't know if we wanted to get anything else done while the spirit is doing its thing.

Makes sense - I can put up a transition scene to the Rusty Bar-rel (I don't want to pick sides in the Great Bar Name War of 2014) if you want, no problem.

But before that, did you want to go check on Honeypot?

I did. Do you want me to put up a post to that effect? Basically a "If y'all want to work this out, I'm going to go check in with someone who's staying here" deal. Jack would grant Overkill MARKs on his commlink in case there are still lingering trust issues.

Sure - that works

Amy will use the already summoned spirit. Even though summoning has becoming somewhat routine in this game, each dice roll is risky, especially at force 5+.

Lobo does seem to roll surprisingly poorly with summoning resists. LOL

I don't think I actually left Honeypot a firearm, at least not IC, and I've definitely been walking around with the Streetline like I still have it. I guess I probably should have left it with her...

Yup so far, not complaining!

Ok - fixed her having Jack's gun (we'll assume she had one concealed on her hen you whisked her away from her hotel).

Who are you having the spirit search for? Bradshere or Lynx?

Just to confirm, we are going to the Rusty Bar-rel to initiate the search? The only reason I ask is that you keep mentioning Commerce City, and the Rusty-Bar-rel isn't really in Commerce City, its in Montbello (although that is certainly closer to Commerce City than here).

Hmm... yeah, checking the map, that's a lot of area. Especially if the threshold increases by 1 per kilometer. Finding Bradshere is going to be something of a crapshoot. We might want to start the search somewhere in the vicinity of I-70 between Newton and Jackson's murders. Finding Lynx may be easier if we think he's going to be in/around Los Mags territory (if he is actually there).

ETA: On the way out of the hotel, Jack is going to put the screws to ole' Jim to have him repair the A/C unit in Honeypot's room. If it takes a roll, I imagine I could make a Negotiations roll with his Contracts expertise to point out that the hotel is likely in violation of their agreement by not providing A/C. At worst, I imagine he could get him to move her to another room where the A/C unit is working. If he succeeds, he'll send her a message to that effect so she doesn't shoot Jim on accident.

Jack:
Negotiation 3 + Charisma 3
Jim is wildly neutral to basically everyone - no modifier
Advantageous to Jim - doesn't want to lose his job +1

7d6.hits(5)=3


Jim resists
He has only a rudimentary knowledge of Negotiation and a poor charisma (for an elf)
5d6.hits(5)=2

Jim will noncommitally agree to have the AC fixed in the room

Hey! I get two more dice up in that deal, assuming I can parley it to a breach of contract Either way, I'm good with the results.

Just an FYI, but I got an email from Google that our map is going to be "upgraded" soon. I'm not sure if this is the current "upgrade" that screwed up the map (requiring us to use the old maps option), but if so, I will have to reconstitute it. No big deal if that's the case, it just may take a bit.

As always, I am supremely appreciative of your work on the map!

Yeah we'll be searching for Lynx, but only once we're ready to actually get on the offensive, equipment-wise and otherwise. As soon as the spirit finds him, things might escalate quickly, since the spirit might conceivably be discovered during its searching. In any case, we'll need to act fast to get there before Lynx is elsewhere, and the information isn't that useful anymore.

ETA: We should discuss strategy IC when Jack comes back to our room.

I'm back in the room. I was going to hit Jim up on the way out.

Ok, IC here's what I think we need before we push forward.

One - agreement on who the spirit is searching for (technically it is going to search for whoever Amy tells it to search for, but in post 1440 IC, Jack seems to indicate that you will be looking for Bradshere, while in the OOC thread Chrome indicated you will be looking for Lynx.

Two, an actual place where you will be making the search from. OOC, I know exactly where Bradshere and Lynx are, but I need a reference point on the map from where the spirit will be making the search so that I can calculate how long it is going to take the spirit to find whichever one you are looking for.

Jack had suggested a location (I-70 between Newton and Jackson's murders) - as long as everyone else is okay with that we can start there.

As far as IC posts, I think we need:

1) A post where all of that gets said

2) A post of Jack interacting with Jim on the way out

3) A post transitioning the four of you to the location (wherever you pick) and the beginning of the search.

I can do any or all of those if you would like (I will definitely do #3)

Well ok here's the rundown imo on Lynx vs Bradshere:

Lynx:
- More likely to find him, and to find him quickly.
- Higher priority target.

Bradshere:
- Probably harder to find.
- Less dangerous.
- If we can hack his link and/or the rest of his stuff, it might help us when we go against Lynx. Similarly if we can cast Influence on him.
- If we spook him, it's possible that Lynx decides to just leave the Metroplex and disappear.

I'm honestly not sure what's best. If everone prefers Bradshere, that's absolutely fine by me.

I think Lynx should be the target if we can grab him. Now... if the spirit shows him being in Los Mags territory, that might change things. But I agree that he and his crew is the higher priority.

I can do Post #2 if someone else wants to handle Post #1

Should I post a transition scene to Nic's now?

That or a transition to the Rust ( ) or spot where Amy is going to task the spirit. We can just assume we grabbed whatever gear we needed and update our first IC posts appropriately if we want to move this along.

Ok - transition post up. Is it your plan to just sit at the Rusty Bar-rel until the spirit returns?

ETA - at least 1 hour passses and the spirit has not yet returned.

I don't know what else we can do in the meantime; unless Overkill can do some relevant hacking. I can't think of how any of Grease's contacts would be helpful at the moment. I'd put my fly-spies in the air around the bar to scout for trouble.

Grease will buy the team some burgers and beers while they wait in the Bar-rel (I think I am one of the few team members not nearly broke).

-DrZ

Can Amy tell if the spirit is somehow disrupted/banished/leaves her control? I would assume that yes, but it's pretty important to know if it's not the case.

ETA: There's not much more to do, at least from Amy's point of view, than to just wait.