I'll likely turn back as soon as we have the confirmation that we get the Leal.

Bobby can take care of driving - he'd likely stuff the sloth into a bag or something to keep Hugh out of trouble.

On the road, while Bobby drives or as it only takes a few seconds perhaps just do it before taking off. Once she has confirmation of the deal she knew what to do - (either hack to explode or hack to erase).

This was from a month ago so I'll post it here as a refresher.

To answer this question, I would say that none of the gangs have been directly exposed to AM's hacking. Certainly Sir Pike and Cunningham know about it, as does the Hacker Club, but perhaps not the gangs.

During the First Interlude, AM mentioned her cyberdeck to Andrew but, when Andrew asked to see it, AM didn't let him. So you don't know if Andrew believed AM or thought she was lying about her capabilities to impress him. Plus Andrew is in Japan at the moment so he's not conveniently located to share that information, although he could have mentioned it to the syndicate in the past.

The Spyders might know about it, but since they ended up on the outside of the syndicate then that information wouldn't circulate among the gangs.

It's possible that the cyberdeck was detected during one of AM's visits to the Fun House, but you don't know for sure, nor do you know how widely that information would be disseminated.

Long story short, AM probably does not have a public reputation as a hacker. But that's not to say that they couldn't put 2-and-2 together.

As for Beta's most recent IC post, I suppose the important question is how someone else (specifically, someone from outside of Sioux society) would interpret the breaking and entering. I'll say that Sioux culture is more widespread in the Sixth World than it is in our current world - especially since they have their own nation which borders the UCAS - so it's entirely possible for a casual UCAS citizen (or SINless) to heard of counting coup through popular culture, but who is to say if the syndicate would recognize it as such.

Alternatively, it's possible that if Huge wakes up in his bed with a screaming headache and no recollection of the night's events, then maybe the "hacking" attempt appears to be someone messing with his video feeds. The Sixth World equivalent of Matrix graffiti: hijacking cameras and doctoring the feeds for the lolz.

There is one other possibility I can think of off the top of my head. @Jack, roll Zoology please.

Zoology: 8d6t5 3

Are you thinking about Bandits? Awakened raccoons, known to break and enter while looking for food and shiny stuff? I think there is also a bunch of techno critters with technomancer abilities.

Edit: Libertines are the techno raccoons and mongrels the coyotes/canines techno critters.

Yes, I was thinking about bandits and libertines.

The good news:

A) Both are known to be kleptomaniacs.
B) Bandits have opposable thumbs and are smart enough to pick locks.
C) Libertines could mess with a host.
D) Both are common to this area.

Some holes in the story:

1) Bobby enters as a squirrel and exits as a raccoon.
2) Bobby was a pygmy (small) raccoon, bandits are large raccoons.
3) Things levitating.
4) Huge transforming.
5) They prefer shiny/sparkly things - of which there are many possible candidates in a garage - rather than satchels full of plastic explosives.

Perhaps some of this could be passed off on a libertine playing tricks on cameras.

But there's some seeds there with which to sew reasonable doubt.

Just happy to learn about the crazy wildlife.

There are a few assumptions on my part here, that I want to clarify:

The book suggests, that all those cameras around aren't coordinated - meaning, no-one corporation has the whole picture or all the angles those cameras capture. If this one corp has the monopoly for this area, we are in big trouble, otherwise someone would have to either hack all the different security hosts to get the full picture or serve each and every company a warrant, which would likely go nowhere as corps aren't typically a sharing bunch.
(That's kind of the basic reasoning that allows shadowrunners to still exist)

So ideally, we are only dealing with what Huge's personal security contract has access to:

- The drone
- Sensors inside his workshop
- Cameras/sensors around his building.

The drone was distracted when we made our exit.
It did notice the open window, but did not witness it being opened.
It did not see Bobby/Raccoon jump out, being distracted by a screwdriver
It did not notice the package being moved out.

Sensors inside were likely not pointed at the rafters but at the floor, doors and window sill.
Those might have noticed Bobby's entrance - my stealth roll wasn't particularly good
They pretty certainly did not catch what was going on in the rafters, unless Hugh has them pointing everywhere (in which case we are screwed)
They might have caught the screw driver falling from above, though I'd say that is a coin toss - a small object in bad lighting tossed fast without a particular strong heat or radar signature should be hard to make out
They shouldn't have noticed the package if it floated out at the top of the window, though that depends on Trouble's stealth roll (if Trouble made one)

Sensors outside likely don't catch things that happen directly beneath them, being aimed to intercept movement before it gets too close to the house.
Those are obviously trained to not go on alert if they notice small animals moving about or else there would be false alarms every minute
They likely did not catch Bobby/raccoon, as he moved with the package along the wall towards the bushes (as you kindly pointed out and let me change my previous action of making a beeline for the car)
Bobby dragged the package beneath the bushes and likewise the transformed Hugh, so there is a chance, that the outside sensors didn't catch the transformed form of Hugh.

That leaves the inside sensors as our biggest problem: seeing Hugh vanish from the window sill (as he toppled out of his clothes on to the ground as the most incriminating element, followed by the package flying through the air as well as a raccoon leaping from outside the frame on to the sill, vanishing from view and not appearing again on camera outside.


Now it all depends on what kind of contract Hugh has - are they only checking out the hacking attempt? Are they checking the sensor feeds and the biomonitor (that now reads it has been disconnected from its person if it was a wearable or has gone offline completely if it was implanted)?

My learning here is: Next time we also need invisibility from the start and use the Subvert Infrastructure hack beforehand (Kill Code p.39)

At least that is how we are getting Hugh back into his bed after we dose him to sleep. With any luck he wakes up to a report from his security provider with an alert about an open window and him vanishing out of said window. If there is nothing else wrong, they might dismiss most of the stuff as glitches or some hacker kids playing pranks on him.

Most of these assumptions and deductions are correct.

This location is a light industrial complex representing many different buildings occupied by many different businesses, most of them small businesses. Mom-n-pop shops as it were. It's possible that some of them share a Matrix security provider but, if so, that's more of a coincidence since there are multiple providers on the market. So, yes, it's likely (but not certain) that the Matrix security provider doesn't have access to the cameras of the surrounding buildings. Or, if they do, it's patchwork coverage and not all-encompassing.

You're trained investigators so, having visited earlier in the daytime, you would have noted that the camera coverage inside and outside the garage is pretty good. The rafters are a likely blind spot but things below the rafters were probably recorded. So the biggest correction I would make to the assumptions is to presume that Bobby the Raccoon and Bobby the Coyote would have been spotted running back and forth.

The question then becomes what does an outside observer make of this sequence:


Maybe that's a headscratcher, a baffling occurrence to sweep under the rug if nobody asks too many questions, or maybe that points directly toward a group of magical investigators with a known grievance who also perform shapeshifting magic (see: Bobby's street fight in Interlude 2, I think).


Also true.

The good news is this is Redmond so the Matrix security provider probably didn't call Knight-Errant. Or, even if the spider did report this to Knight-Errant, you can be confident that they didn't do anything about it.

Anyway, your thinking is on the track.

Quick IC post on my phone between bands at a concert. I'm hoping that it makes some sort of sense.

Also advance notice that I probably won't be posting (much?) Thursday through Saturday (unless we pick up covid tonight and have to cancel that trip -- we are just about the only people here wearing masks :-/ )

Hope you have fun on your vacation, and stay healthy

Well it can work, the thing is we need to think about the order of operations carefully as hacking without spells is less reliable.

If I invest a few tries and some reagents, I could aid you with an analyse device spell on your deck. That could net you a few more dice to throw around.

Yes and no on this:


Counting coup is complex and has lots of possibilities. The primary components are:

1) Putting yourself in a position of risk or danger,
2) Intimidating the enemy and/or wounding their pride somehow, and,
3) Getting away (preferably unscathed).

This could be done in battle, like a very adult game of tag, or it could be done more privately. One example is sneaking into another village at night, slipping into someone's tent, and then tapping them on the forehead while they sleep. They wake up, see you looming above them, and know that you could have killed them. Then, if you get away, you both have that knowledge for the rest of your respective lives. It's a psychological victory, and a potentially very effective one.

In that sense, getting "caught" or alerting the other person to your presence is actually required. If nobody knows you were there, nobody is intimidated and thus nothing has been accomplished in terms of getting the other person to admit defeat and submit to your will.

Interesting, I tought it was taking something from them, like a lock of hair or some other trophy and getting away without being noticed.
But I'll defer to your expertise

In that case we actually did manage it in two of three cases (steeling the packages, abducting Huge = win, hacking his system = fail)

As I said, there are many possibilities.

Taking a prize or a trophy would certainly qualify, but then you would need to publicize that somehow. If all you've done is stolen it and not taken credit, then you haven't shamed your enemy nor glorified yourself.

You're trying to demonstrate that you are superior to your enemy. Your enemy needs to know this, as the very least, but if it can raise your standing among your friends or your other enemies then so much the better.

That would argue that we should then use the explosives in a fairly obvious way, but something more showy than deadly. Sadly our story has not included any buildings in need of amateur demolition. Or I suppose a public gifting of them to someone, but I can't think of who for that either.

I'll prefer not to publically shame the syndicate - but perhaps we can blow up the cool Carn-evil van. Or at least, blow something next to it so that its windows are kaput.

Heck I'm guessing that those two satchels add up to quite an explosion. Do that in a corner of the parking lot will probably blow out all the windows (and knock over the bikes). And if we can do that without the spirits noticing anything, that would send a message. As everyone has said, how the syndicate would respond to that message is a question.

If we had the resources and were planning on moving out of Touristville, we could have drawn on another native tradition and held a good-bye potlach, and give the explosives away as part of that, but there is no way we'd look anything but pathetic in comparison to Urubia's near-permanent potlach. (Potlach's being the tradition of the tribes of the north-west coast of powerful people holding big events where they fed everyone well and gave away wealth to the attendees, the more you gave away the more your status rose, as I understand it (I'm sure there were all sorts of subtleties of expectation and reciprocation and alliances and whatnot, making the reality more complicated than that summary)

Like counting coup, potlatches also varied either from tribe to tribe or even occasion to occasion.

If the potlatch was between tribes then, yes, it would basically turn into a huge gift-giving competition where whoever (guest or host) gave the other one more effectively "won" and rose in stature.

But sometimes potlatches were more local affairs, like to celebrate births or funerals. Then it might be more about the rich person who was celebrating redistributing their wealth to the rest of the community. By doing so, they rose in social stature. From a sociological standpoint, it's an interesting way to promote income equality at the expense of social equality.

Comparing the parties at the Fun House to a potlatch is reasonably accurate. By giving away lavish gifts, Urubia "buys" herself stature and a fair deal of psychological control. At this point it's unclear how deeply that economic control extends, although Big Stank implied that he didn't care a lot about money from neighborhood collections.

As for the explosives, I was trying to keep it to a good amount that could be effective if directed appropriately and intentionally. Enough to mess up The Jackal's Lantern, depending on your approach, but not so much that you could knock down the Fun House. But I look to gilga to keep us realistic about what a few kilograms could accomplish.

One step after the other - giving away the explosives isn't going to gain us anything, except making the syndicate mad at us. I'm still contemplating how we can destroy Nightmare's vessel with them. That would be an action that would gain us prestige in the right circles (mayor and Spiders)

After all, we want to avenge our damaged property and our injured companion.

The trick will be doing it without getting caught or anyone being able to prove that we did it.

The alternative of blowing up the clown car is the next best thing sending the same message without the prestige of taking care of one of the more dangerous denizens in Seattle.

@Tecumesh I do not know how many explosives you need to take down a house (or a large building). I participated in some relevant military activity and we had plenty of explosives for the task (closer to 100kg than 2kg). I know that 1kg would probably eliminate the clown car and that perhaps it is possible to demolish buildings with considerably fewer explosives than what we did in the army if you have the time, but how much I do not know.

In principle, you do not need to take down the building but its vertical supports which is sort of like blowing up a steel-reinforced beam - if you drill into it and place the explosives in the hole you can probably do it with a very small charges and you'll need a lot more if the explosion happens outside of the beam (because of its omnidirectional nature - a lot of your energy would be lost). So I can imagine saying 4kg perhaps enough to take up a building but if you want to be that efficient it is a process rather than a B&E job.

That said, I honestly have no problem in fluffing explosives according to what you want us able to destroy.

Run&Gun actually has some useable rules for explosives (p.171ff). We have four kilos of plastic which has a rating of 6 to 25, depending on its quality. We are looking here at home made stuff, so likely more towards the lower end of the spectrum.
Using 6 as our baseline, 4 Kilos have an effectiveness of 12. Tamping that down at structural points, increases the effectiveness to 48 + whatever we can get from a demolitions test.

We'll have to ask our weapons dealer contact if he can test the explosive and tell us the quality or TNT equivalency (IRL they use a drop hammer for that and look how high a small amount of explosives manages to push it)

Basically, what I want to say: 4 kilos is a lot of boom stuff - and if we manage to place it beneath the Lantern's basement we can take out the cauldron. But we likely can't take down the whole building (a medium sized house needs about 100P DV to be destroyed. The plastics would have to be of very high grade for us to reach that level of destruction)

Of course, we can always steal the clowncar, rig it with explosives and fuel, and autopilot it into the building for some real destructive mayhem.

What Jack is describing is more-or-less what I intended. Enough to be dramatic and maybe even very destructive in a localized area, but not enough for widespread demolition.

And, gilga is correct, the assumption is that anything done is on on an improvised basis in the context of B&E rather than as a project where you have an unlimited amount of time and no constraints.

Alright, anything else we want/need to do before we meet the drug dealer?

Got a post up.

Apologies if Gilga had a notion about what Fagin looks like or acts like. What you see in the IC post is what fell into my head when I looked at the name.

Bobby putting his knowledge skills to use, I see.

We're jumping around in time a bit. Technically Jawsey already did some shopping back in post #385. That was a week and a half ago so I understand if it's not at the top of everyone's mind.

But if folks want to mine the rich RP of a Stuffer Shack, well then full speed ahead.

Oh right, he did.

But I can at least get the funnel

Fagin is actually one of Lorebane's contacts so I have no idea how he wanted him portrayed.

16 hours of driving over 56 hours, thanks to some pouring rain slowing things down, but for the first time since covid hit we left the city, left the country, stayed in a hotel, and all of those things that used to seem normal. And enjoyed the concert that was the excuse for the whole thing.

I don't have anything particularly useful to add to the scene at this point, but figured Jawsey's little Psyche habit should show up as more than an item in his monthly expense statement.

Psyche isn't technically illegal - it's Availability code is null - it's just expensive.

Same for Long Haul, but to a lesser degree.

I generally rule that you can pick up Long Haul at any Stuffer Shack; it's behind the counter with the rest of the expensive stuff.

Psyche I usually make people go to a pharmacy or a Doc Wagon dispensary, something like that, but it's technically over-the-counter medication.

But Fagin's an elf and he likes Jawsey so in the name of Narrative Convenience we'll put some in Fagin's pockets.

Anyone want to post about drugging Huge or should I? Bobby's plan will work; Huge isn't in any position to fight back. He might pee on you, that's about it.

Feel free to post the result - don't want to make a double post

Actually, reading the rules it seems like you'll want to do this when you're back at the garage.

If I'm reading this correctly, the stun/unconsciousness portion lasts 1d6 x 5 minutes. Since there's a chance it could only last 5 minutes, you'll want to do it before you return Huge to bed (or the floor, wherever you leave him).

(Another reading of the rules could suggest that the duration is 1d6 x 20 minutes, but in that case you'd still want to wait since you're a 20-minute drive away from the garage. Rolling a 1 would have Huge waking up before you were done, which would undermine the point of the exercise.)

So let's talk about the plan about how to put Huge back.

I suggest Bobby starts driving back while Trouble holds Huge in place and Jawsey and AM work on getting alcohol in him to start with -- doesn't hurt to have him black out drunk before hitting him with the drug. Then in a pinch if our timing is getting tight we go ahead and drug him and hope that between drug and booze he stays out for a bit.

Yeah, alcohol first to get him to sleep
Leäl afterwards should have a good chance of a stronger effect per the drug interaction table in Chrome Flesh p.193.

Sorry for not posting much been sick with covid. Still, not 100% but I am a lot better. Don't let me hold you up, AM would be game with anything babysitting Huge, pouring alcohol driving.


By the way Jack I admire your mastery of the rules and attention to detail about the alcohol.

I've known more people who caught COVID in the last two weeks than I did in the last two years combined. I don't know if it's all the booster shots expiring or the restrictions lifting or what but it's nuts.

As for the current situation - specifically, liquoring up a sloth and then feeding it a drug to erase its memory before tucking it back into bed - I don't know if it's the strangest/weirdest/goofiest thing I've done in Shadowrun, but it's up there.

All in a day's work

And yes, Omicron is doing a number on my social circle as well - but at least it isn't as deadly as it used to be (missed a chance to call it VITAS)
I'm still wearing a mask when I go shopping and keep interactions to a minimum, but temperatures are rising again, so I expect cases will go down again until fall - for another large spike...

The kids go to kindergartens and schools the rest is irrelevant. Much more likely to get it from them (as we did).
AM would sprinkle some invisibility spells to bring Huge to place without the cameras (I can also try to hack the cameras but this is sort of what got us into this mess to begin with.


drain: 2#10d6t5 3 3 taking 2 stun drain.
Invisibility F5 +Trouble: 2#15d6t5 5 7

So the basic idea is to turn invisible and just carry Huge in? Possible, although navigating the window might be tricky. Some rolls involved there.

Other decisions to make involve Huge's clothes, which will not be invisible, and anything else you want to do while there.

He's clothes ended up where? (I think he was looking out the window when Bobby turned him, so I'm assuming some combination of the window sill and the floor).

My thought is that we get him near his clothes and let him assume that somehow in his drunken haze he took them off then lay down to sleep.

Good question - since rose him from sleep, I assumed that he only wore shorts and a t-shirt. Is that correct?

Invisibility alone won't work as the drone had ultrasound sensors

So I imagined we levitate Huge, turn him back into dwarves form put his clothes on, turn him invisible and lay him on his bed again.

Before that we find his commlink, direct connect to shut off the drone and delete the message from his security provider about the hacking attempt.

By the way, you can start a trace without having a mark - Kill Code p. 37
Reckless hacking - for only a -5 penalty, you can find anything without risk

Huge is a warm-weather Australian living in a cool-weather climate. He was wearing sweats and a long-sleeve t-shirt. The shirt is outside on the ground while the sweats are inside on the windowsill.

An earlier sweep of the building's icons did not reveal Huge's commlink. It was on his person when you visited in the daytime, but AM's sweep at night did not notice it. Presumably it is off or (less likely) it is in something which suppresses wireless signals. Either way means you will have to physically locate it first. Then you could manipulate it how you wish, but a direct connect means that AM has to have it herself, so either AM going in or the commlink coming out.

@Jack you want to trace the link?


She'll augment logic or intuition and then try. (she can buy the 4 hits).
Drain: 10d6t5 4
reckless trace: 12d6t5 3

Do you want to go in the Trix and loop cameras and all? Because hacking is what got us into this mess, to begin with. I think with concealment and psychokinesis Trouble/bobby can sneak inside.


Perhaps some more hacking rolls and subvert infrastructure? (though the price of failure in hacking -- and almost no more edge) is big.

Well, we first need to find the link - once I can turn it on/find the farraday pocket, I can give you a chance to hack it.
Tecumseh already told us, that it wasn't on the matrix at all.

All in all, I'd suggest taking the control infrastructure action:

SUBVERT INFRASTRUCTURE
(COMPLEX ACTION)
Marks required: 1
Test: Electronic Warfare + Intuition [Sleaze] v. Intuition + Firewall
Sometimes, you need all the traffic lights to turn green for you and red for your enemies. And you want a free soyda along the way. This action allows a decker or technomancer to slightly alter the operation of multiple physical devices so they respond to the hacker’s commands. If the hacker has at least 1 mark on the host, a successful Electronic Warfare + Intuition [Sleaze] v. Intuition + Firewall Test allows them to control one similar simple device (traffic lights, vending machines, home appliances, desk lamps, etc., at gamemaster discretion) slaved to that host for every net hit. This action cannot be used to make an attack. The hacker can sustain controlling these devices as a Complex Action each Combat Turn.

With that you can control all the sensors in and outside the building.

The link we need to hack to edit the message from the security provider.

Once we have the sensors under control, I can drop all my spells and just put Huge into bed in my human form.

Alright, here goes:
Hack host: 17d6t5 5
subvert infrastructure(silent): 14d6t5 2 I'll spend the last point of edge here because I really do not want to do that mess again. (removed last two dice accidentally rolled 14).
subvert infrastructure(silent): 12d6t5 5

Hopefully it would give us control of the sensors.

Gilga, do you have any modifiers for sustaining spells?

I haven't used Subvert Infrastructure before but it seems like a good way not to get caught up in the minutiae of hacking/looping one camera at a time.

I probably wouldn't allow all "sensors" all at once for a more sophisticated facility with many types of sensors, but in this case it's all one type of sensor (cameras) so we'll say it Subvert Infrastructure applies.

@Tecumseh

The test already factors that in - you can only control a number of devices equal to your net successes, so it's not feasible for more than a couple, less the higher the security host's rating (and therefore it's defense dice pool) is.

Also, Perception test to find the commlink:

Perception: 11d6t5 4

Yes, I saw that the number of devices you control is equal to your net successes.

What I'm saying is "sensors" is too broad of a category for things you turn off with a single test. You could turn off all the cameras, or all the pressure sensors (if there were any), but not a combination of different types of sensors.