Int+will
int+will: 10d6t5 4

base perception:
base perception: 7d6t5 2
*** only 1 success if right near the proposal, when he is also asensing***

spirit asensing (for new spells or astral forms)
spirit asensing: 6d6t5 1

Jawsey asensing (only starts just before the proposal)
asensing: 11d6t5 6
(note: general asensing for possible magical threats, not aura reading anyone just yet)

More rolls -- aura reading this time (along with an 'astral sneaking' roll which is basically can he look at Invictus while Invictus is looking at others?)

aura reading on Pike: 13d6t5 7

aura reading on Maria of the many names: 13d6t5 4

astral sneaking: 9d6t5 4

aura reading on Invictus: 13d6t5 4

Beta, Invictus bailed back in post 82.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&a...t&p=1352084

He's not at the proposal.

Thanks, I'd forgotten. Edited my IC

I presume Chan's invitation is a test vs. Thorton's specific instructions, "Do not let any of the guests draw you into conversation or pull you from your assigned charge."

That said, if Igor, Invictus, and Thorbjörn have all departed, does that mean that their assigned servants are standing around as surplus staff, or did any of those servants depart with their charges?

Those instructions were meant as part of the event - once guests leave, their servants are no longer bound - and can help clearing the table

But yes, here your own discretion is required.

Can I get a sense of what Harabia is up to at the same time? Dancing? Sitting and talking?

Is it also possible to get a sense of the scene in terms of crowd or room size or general confusion? Is this a vast room where dancing would take Mato far away from Harabia, or are things fairly intimate, where you're never too far away from anyone else?

The room itself is pretty large, but the dancefloor is relatively confined.
Pike dances with the Duchess, Harabia with Jenny.
If you dance you'll actually be closer to them than if you stand to the side.

Thank you, that helps. It seems that both options entail a degree of risk. I'll take a chance on the dance.

Not sure if a skill test is in order. Reviewing the rules, Dance is a specialization of Gymnastics. I thought for sure that it was under Performance, but I guess it makes more sense for it to be linked to Agility than to Charisma.

@Jack if Trouble pierces the illusion what does he sees? Is a spell to make the ring prettier or perhaps it is a fake ring?

The reverse: The illusion is covering the detection spell - the ring does seem to be the genuine article.

As a History major, I appreciated this line.

Thanks

Aha... Manscape or something like that to make the detection spell invisible. ofc AM would not know that.

@gilga if Van Der Bloom is drugged or drunk, Jawsey has the detox spell -- he could even send a spirit to cast it if he is occupied elsewhere.

Tanks for pointing that out.

Summonr F4 spirit of Man with innate spell: detox
summon spirit 3+1=4: 9d6t5 1
spirit resist: 4d6t5 1
drain resist: 13d6t5 3
Fizzled, but no drain,

Try again.
summon spirit 3+1=4: 9d6t5 1
spirit resist: 4d6t5 2
drain resist: 13d6t5 4
OK Orokos, very funny. (fizzled, no drain)

Try, try again.
summon spirit 3+1=4: 9d6t5 4
spirit resist: 4d6t5 0
drain resist: 13d6t5 2
Finally! 4 services, no drain

Once the spirit gets there:
detox spell from F4 spirit: 8d6t5 3

Cool post, Beta.

Thanks! Sometimes the dice rolls just scream out for a story to explain them. And it is fun coming up with his own inner (implicit) mythology to identify spirits.

Chemsniffing:

Chemsniffer Ring R6 * 2: 12d6t5 3 hits

Not a great roll, but per Cutting Aces (p. 140) the Threshold is 2 so it should be enough.

You find a chemical compound on the cheese that a quick matrix search reveals to be a medicine against allergies - with the side effect of severely reducing the body's ability to metabolize alcohol.

Logic tests are usually Logic + Willpower but in this case the dice pool is the same for Mato:

Logic + Intuition/Willpower: 9d6t5 4 hits

OOCly, I'm going to guess a quad-copter or some sort of drone.

memory: 10d6t5 5

(also same pool either way for Jawsey, too)

Question on this:


So it sounds like there's a half-meter gap between the inner wall and the outer wall. Is that space filled or is it empty? Is it like a very narrow hallway that goes around the perimeter, or is it full of utilities or ____? I'm trying to determine if this is medium suspicious or highly suspicious.

If Mato goes through the first door, is there a second door right away? Or is the outer door the one that's shielded?

You can't make out much of it, but you know about the barrier of awakened plants and bacteria. Those have to be maintained.
So it is a utility crawlspace, allowing access
There are two sets of doors

When you make a 'probably nothing here, but let's make a perception roll anyway" roll, and score 6 successes on 7 dice. Wish I could have saved that for when an ambush is imminent or something!

@Jack was the service to help James find the dwarf a remote service? I am trying to figure out if Anna's spirit is still available to help.

No, it was within 600m, so the spirit is still around.

what dwarf?

Sorry, that should have gone in the other OOC thread of Uncaring Stars

Does Mato have any instructions at the moment other than, "Do what you can for now and then go to bed"?

I know Cunningham is standing watch outside the private quarters of the Duke and Duchess, but is there anything obvious that Mato should be doing that I have overlooked (or forgotten)?

Nope, you are free to do what you think is necessary - directly ordered from Cunningham, superseeding any other directives you have.
Questioning Masha was for example an excellent suggestion.

Sorry, mix of family stuff and the US election have eaten my head this week. Tomorrow I'll try to come up with something productive for Jawsey to do.

I'm also in the whirlwind of the US election news cycle.

Let's have Jawsey go talk to both Masha and the MET2K guard who knocked over the vase. Mato can supervise and use his sensors. He has a lot of Judge Intentions dice, although I'm not sure that's going to be any more useful than Jawsey's assensing.

For Masha, Trouble believes her, but let's trace her story back a bit, swimming upstream to a time when she wasn't on camera. We can ask her if there was anything unusual or suspicious about her evening.

Invictus being in the kitchen is obviously pretty sketchy. Perhaps we will interview him if we find him, although we'd have to be diplomatic given his status as a guest. I'm not sure whether free spirits get guest quarters of their own or if they just pop back to the astral for some downtime.

Our legwork suggested that Invictus allegedly owes Sir Thomas Pike a big favor. This might be connected to that. Either Invictus could be trying to get out of the big favor, or he could actually be working in Pike's best interests even though he seems suspicious.

I'll admit that I took some time to try and figures out what's going on in US election - it is a great escapism.

Late now and eyes are getting heavy, but another angle we could potentially pursue is to try to track down the source of the allergy medicine.

Is there a dispensary or a pharmacy or anything of the kind in Pike Hall? Any records about inventory or what was requested or dispensed or _____?

It might be a dead-end, as allergy medicines are usually over-the-counter (if that distinction means anything in the Sixth World), but it's another tree to sniff.

Personal update:

I'm going to be jammed up this week. I have a major report to deliver on Thursday that's a week earlier than usual because of US Thanksgiving. On top of that, this morning my son's school announced that it is closing for three days because a staff member was diagnosed with Covid. So on top of having a 5-year-old running around the house for the next few days while I try to work from home, my wife, son, and I are all going to get tested on Monday afternoon. Should be a good time.

Things may move slowly for a few days, just wanted you to know why. If I make it through the week, the weekend and the rest of the month should be fairly normal.

I was thinking of having Mato take point with the mercenary for some of that "dumb muscle on dumb muscle" camaraderie, but given my availability is someone else available to take the lead? Let's promise him some food delivery as an incentive.

All the best to you - no worries about the pace. Things are turbulent all over right now.

As for the dispensary: There is no such thing in the house, but ordering stuff like that from the Amazon equivalent per drone delivery is pretty easy - even same hour delivery.
You could ask the staff about who received which package recently, but that would be pretty time consuming (and not something you can do this very night) - still worthy to investigate.

Coming back up for air.

It might be cutting a corner but I'm going to have Mato bring refreshments out to the mercs. In theory he shouldn't see that they're hungry until he gets out there, but I'll explain it by having Jawsey's assensing pick up on it. That saves a back-and-forth trip to the kitchen for narrative purposes.

Fine by me

Improve int: 15d6t5 5
drain: 10d6t5 6

+4 Int - no drain.
perception: 10d6t5 4
perception: 4d6t5 2
6 hits for perception on the impacted camera.

If she finds tracks, then she'll try and follow them:
I rolled 1 hit - but since I am speculative here that there are tracks, then let's see if this direction is getting us somewhere.

Sorry for the gap in posting. Days have just blurred past me this past bit, and I missed how many days I'd missed posting. Sorry. Nothing too constructive, but I wanted agreement on what Jawsey is going to ask Invictus.

Alright, just so I get this right:

You were currently with the mercs at the gate.
Jawsey moves his body back to the mansion and has it guarded by spirit to visit Invictus as astral projection, while
AM wants to get a good look at the looped camera and Mato is accompanying her for security?

I'll answer under this assumption. If you meant different I'll rewrite.

This is fine. I was split on which way Mato should go. I was thinking with Jawsey but it's more productive to go with AM (and AM potentially needs more physical protection out on the perimeter).

@Beta
So this is very important now: How is Jawsey trying to sound?
Depending on that, please roll an Etiquette, a Negotiation or Intimidation test

We know Invictus is a bit of a coward but unfortunately Bobby is the team intimidator.

apologies -- After having lost part of my first attempt at this post and having gotten pulled away a couple of times, I'd been thinking that in the end I'd posted it, but getting back onto this computer now I see it still sitter here, unposted (and now that I look more closedly, missing an orokos roll, so I'll add that). Sorry, thought I'd put it up yesterday.

===================

Hmm, the problem with writing posts in a rush late in the evening, I kind of wandered in the IC --I'm not even sure exactly what tone I was going for in there. For sure it isn't intimidation, but etiquette or negotiation? He kind of started on etiquette "we are just asking to gather information and rule out possibilities" but then he wanders into offering to pay* for answers which would for sure be negotiation
* I assume that a free spirit understands that 'pay' means karma

Mechanically, both are 13 dice. Given how much most spirits want karma there may be an advantage in going with negotiation? But not enough to push me one way or the other strongly.

All things considered, soft selling going into negotiation makes sense, but tacking a commercial transaction on the end of etiquette doesn't work as well. Etiquette might have been the better approach, but I think the IC feels overall more like negotiation

negotiation w/Invictus: 13d6t5 5

I owe a post. I'm running behind due to a crazy holiday weekend. I should be able to get one up on Tuesday.

Important info about the timing: Between the shot and the team getting in position there was about a two minute gap where no-one had eyes on the scene.

Thank you for that.

Where did we run into Katya? Is there any possibility that Katya was returning from the roof when we met her or did we encounter her in such a manner that it seems clear she was coming from a different direction?