Good to hear that you and yours are safe

Gilga! Very happy to hear from you. How are your kids holding up?

~~~

Spirit looking for Bobby: Intuition 6 + Perception 6: 12d6t5 3 hits

Bobby spends a point of Edge.

Don't forget the dodge rolls to avoid the oncoming traffic while crossing the road.

Assuming two rolls - one for each lane and using full defense
Dodge: 16d6t5 5

Dodge: 15d6t5 8

Considering we had to let them know about the genocide since they would have found out about it via social media/friends etc. They are relatively well. We consulted with psychologists, and apparently, it is best to control the narrative rather than try to hide it/ignore it.

However, telling your children such things is an experience I wish no other parent would have to do - ever. They'll be scarred by the ordeal, like the rest of us, but we do what we can to minimize the damage and grow brave and confident kids.

Bobby does a good job zipping through traffic to safety.

Bobby is safe back with Tamarind.

Bobby and Tamarind technically have the afternoon and evening before they rejoin the timeline with Raven and AM. That said, I don't mind some timeline mismatch, so everyone can communicate with each other freely.

Anyone have an opinion on Bobby's IC questions?

If not, I'll just push things to the DocWagon clinic.

@Gilga, that sounds incredibly hard on so many levels. Really wishing you whatever shreds of serenity your family can gather in this situation.

-------------------------------------------

Sorry I was absent for several days. First my wife and then my son got covid, and somewhere between the dancing between rooms to give people space and the camping out on the floor to have some distance at night my schedule just got totally messed up, and without schedule sometimes I forget to check in on the game. Getting back to normal and I'll be back live with Tamarind.

Okay, just to bring everything together here's where we are now:

- Saturday afternoon: raiding Ms. Potter's apartment and passing over the acquired sample to the snooty technician
- Saturday evening: AM hacking the University of Washington

There's some flexibility about what AM and Raven do Saturday afternoon, and what Bobby and Tamarind do Saturday evening.

Of course there is Saturday night too, depending on your goals.

Plus all day Sunday. I think the only the currently on the agenda is having a volunteer in the clinic at the same time as Ms. Potter.

Monday you'll get the lab results back.

Here are the ideas that Sonya pitched during the meet. You're in progress on #1. The other two are optional, but just dropping them here as a reminder.

Hitting the campaign office next seems to be a good job for a hacker. Investigating the death would necessitate some Knight Errant contact - anyone has someone like that on their sheet?

AM took Adeline Peters after Jawsie invited her to his farewell party. She is a KE forensic mage and a fun NPC. So we at least have a contact person in the KE.

We can also try to interview the Duck.

Both those approaches are very viable.

Other things on the To Do list:
- Sunday evening volunteering at the animal clinic to meet Ms. Potter in person
- visiting the Print Services department to see if they have any record of printing a diploma for Ms. Potter

Note that it is Saturday and the Print Services department won't be open until Monday. You can go on Sunday, but that will be more of a breaking & entering approach rather than a social approach.

Yeah, let's not escalate that quickly - one breaking and entering per day is more than enough

I'll let AM suggest contacting the KE contact - Forensic mage sounds like exactly who we want to talk with.

I knew that contact would come in handy sooner or later for Jaws....oh, wait! (I'm glad AM picked Adeline Peters up as a contact, it seemed like a contact a detective agency should have).

For the campaign office, perhaps we could look if they make use of volunteers? If so, perhaps we could hack our way onto the list? (and by 'we' I'm thinking at least Rachel, who should be able to charm some info out of people). And once we know the layout of the place then we could plan any break-in in a more informed manner.

Beta, do you have any active descriptions for Adeline Peters? Age, metatype, fashion choices, personality, etc.

I'd thought I did, but apparently not. So a short on the fly thumbnail, and then I hand her off to public use:

- human, early 40s, a bit tall, simple professional hair-cut, dark hair that she's letting show some grey. She's reasonably athletic (mostly from dancing and yoga)
- She has a masters degree, and maybe would have prefered to have stayed in academia (or at least misses student days of magic by day and going to clubs at night)
- Pretty straight laced most of the time but still occasionally let's her hair down, figuratively, for live music -- but more often astrally than physically
- She's been in her role for quite a while and knows how to keep herself out of trouble

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

For volunteering, I wasn't looking at interacting with Potter, but picking up gossip and possibly finding opportunities to dig into files, figure out where to hack to get the sort of info we want, see if there is anything physical to look at / break into.

That's great stuff. More than enough to work with.

@Tecumesh: Very nice posts make it all feel real and vivid. Also, the tidbit about Aviv Castel made me smile!

I've written some stuff to perhaps describe what happens here right now. Not going into the stuff you see (or not) in the news.

For some trivia parts, about 30% of our students are drafted, so there is no semester for the university until they get back, and about 3% of the entire population is drafted chiefly in case a bigger war erupts. Everything feels different, mainly the lack of men at certain ages, which are abundant in my cycles. I am not part of this mobilization due to health problems. Many of the people not formally drafted are volunteering for the war effort, e.g., my parents are working the fields on weekends because all the foreign agriculture workers are gone.

There are over 100k Israelis that were evacuated from their homes and live at families and hotels and many of them were housed by improvisations such as drafted soldiers lending their apartments or constructors allowing them to sleep in newly built apartments not yet sold, volanteers furnished these to every little detail.

Civil society also does a lot of the stuff you'd expect the government to do - and does it much better. They made lists of all abductees faster than the state; they also volunteered to bring soldiers to the front lines when public transportation did not work due to Shabat (no public transportation in our day of rest for religious reasons), and the goverment took precious time to solve these issues.

They surveyed every soldier missing any equipment, raised donations, and bought insane amounts of military equipment, including night vision goggles, ceramic vests, and drones. Apparently, drones are a big difference in urban warfare, and most units use civilian drones bought for the war by volunteers. The army does use drones, but considerably less than what is now used. The IDF actually instructs the volunteers what drones to buy and then modifies them for military use. Kind of insane for me that it does not go through the ministry of Defense but private people deciding that if a drone can save someone's life, their children should have them - or body armor, or whatnot. Some of these improves are going to get standardized after the war but they started in this strange manner. I think it is amazing how civil society worked better than our state, even for seemingly militant tasks such as equipping soldiers.

End of the day, soldiers on the frontlines are better equipped than the previous standard for infantry, and it is all due to private people collecting donations and harassing (really harassing) every military gear provider in the world, including militias in Africa. The IDF was also able to adjust and regulate these donations to make sure that, e.g., body ceramic vests pass ballistic tests, and that drones are admitted to the recognized force and their security enhanced, and so forth.

Never imagined anything remotely similar happening. All the massive protest organizations have turned into volunteer organizations over night and they sort of managed the country for the first few weeks of the war, and in many cases, the government relied on them as they showed better aptitude for managing large events.

Gilga, thanks for the update. Always appreciate hearing for you.

In the US, the war is front page news every day. However, most of the attention is spent on the conflict within Gaza itself (and, to a lesser degree, the divisions that the war is creating within US society). What I haven't seen reported on is what life is like in Israel, which your post addresses.

One of the question I've had is about the cohesion of Israeli society. Are people unified and setting aside differences over things like the judicial overhaul, or are some trying to take advantage of the conflict to sidestep opposition to things that would otherwise be controversial?

@Tecumesh - I am always puzzled about why our conflicts have such a vast global ripple effect where so many larger, bloodier battles don't evoke such intense emotions. I have a few theories, but honestly, I do not know; I don't see why we are more interested than Armenia and Azerbaijan, where there recently was a transfer, the Sirian civil war, the collapse of Libya, the civil war in Yemen and the war in Ukraine. Some of these conflicts drastically affected even the demography of Western countries, with millions of refugees and yet all eyes on us (or so it feels).

For your question:

The Judicial reform is dead, the government lacks the popular support to advance it, and the next government is likely to be radically different and have a new set of issues to resolve. I think that the massive involvement you see right now is because we have so many political activists, people who care enough to act. We never had that and in a way, I think it makes us a very cohesive society.

Popular opinions are also shifting radically - there was a Wall Street Journal article By Danny Danon and Ram Ben Barak who are Knesset members from the two largest parties (opposition and coalition), about the voluntary transfer of the Gazans to many countries that support the Palestinian cause. Personal opinions about it are not very interesting IMO, but such an opinion was considered super radical before the war. This is a serious trauma, not just because of the tragedy, the death toll, but because of our very identity and history. I think that societies change from severe traumas. So the opinions we had until 6.10 are gone - and go figure what lies ahead.

Well I can report that the coverage of the war in Ukraine has been extensive in the US. The fact that the fighting in Israel has supplanted it at the top of the headlines is probably because things in Ukraine are at a bit of a stalemate at the moment.

It is more delicate than that. I understand why the US extensively covers both of these wars. You are a player in them, and in a way, the war in Israel is even more involved because you have (if I recall correctly) 50 wounded soldiers in attacks on American bases since the war started and have conducted attacks of your own. With two aircraft carriers in the region with their battle groups and massive financial aid to Israel. One can see these wars as a proxy war between the US and Iran.

Very similar to Ukraine, I don't think we even have enough resources for such a campaign without the US. We use super-sophisticated munitions that are expensive to replace and are unsustainable in a total war.

If I try to touch the open nerve, it is the strength of the emotional response we seem to evoke. Riots all over the Western and arab world about this specific conflict. Whereas (I feel) that others get a "Meh" response from the popular opinion of many countries. Perhaps it is me seeing the world from Israeli perspective though it is difficult to tell.

Yeah, the war in Ukraine has had a lot more coverage, but the more recent news are always a priority, obviously.

Bye
Thanee

@gilga, roll Charisma + Etiquette and we'll see how much information AM can coax out of Adeline.

What other questions did AM want to ask? I can start to include some of those in my next post. Give me a sense of what approach AM is taking: professional, casual, etc.

Charisma + Etiquette: 11d6t5 4

She will ask about Cannon's murder and try to keep it a bit gossipy.

@Gilga there are so many connections in North America both with Israel and with Palestine that it always raises strong emotions on both side, and news loves strong emotions. (Here in Canada there are historical jewish communities like in the US, based on those who were escaping Eastern Europe early in the 20th century, but many of whom also have more direct ties with Israel. And then plenty of Palestinians in the decades since their displacement, as well as many immigrant from other middle-eastern countries who grew up aligned with the Palestinian cause. At a previous job our two chief design architects were one jewish and one of Palestinian parents, it is not always that close but it is also not untypical.) So yes, much more emotional protests, much more for news to dig into.

Btw, really enjoying the AM/Adeline conversation. Great job, Tecumseh and Gilga!

About Tamarind's research on Potter's campaign office staff (and staff of some of the major defeated candidates). I posted mostly to show that I'm alive, this likely isn't key. I don't even know how many rolls that might be for looking at how many people, and I certainly don't want to roll that many, so I'd suggest one of the following:

- She buys successes (2) on her searches
- Treat it as one long extended test to find something interesting, and assuming that she gets one teamwork die from her agent she'd be at 10+9+8+7+6 before stopping, so a total of 40 dice, so a modest threshold of 10 could be met
- treat it as buying successes (2) that she can 'teamwork' onto an etiquette test later when she tries to blend in as a volunteer
- use the results of one roll:
- Matrix search teamwork test (agent): 6d6t5 3 nice start on the agent's teamwork
- matrix search (9+3 teamwork): 12d6t5 4 (apparently the agent did all of the hard work!)
- and as a final note, after the last run she bought the Analytic Mind quality, so if there are any odd patterns hiding she may have a chance at spotting them?

1. Way to go Tamarind: silly note the name always makes me smile me because Tamar is another fruit in Hebrew (Date) that also fits the way you described her reasoning for that nickname.
2. Glad you liked the conversation, I enjoyed it a lot.

@Gilga
Are we done with Adeline for the moment or is there more you wanted to cover?

@Beta
Was there anything specific you were looking for in the Potter campaign? I didn't see anything precise beyond "something interesting". If you have ideas about what might be interesting or not, I can tell you if Tamarind finds anything that matches that.

It was literally "I should post something. What would Tamarind do while AM is meeting with Adeline Peters?" And the answer seemed to be "learn more about the campaign team, mostly against future need but also just in case there are loose threads to pull at." More due diligence than expecting anything in particular.

I think the next big thing is AM and Bobby trying to volunteer at the shelter Sunday night? (I'm a bit worried that security is going to mess with that, but we shall see what we shall see.) But in terms of groundwork, maybe:
- reach out to contacts with regards to assassins who might have pulled off that hit? Granted that someone that good is not likely to a) be easy to find, nor b) be easy to get to divulge information, but I think we have the time/not-otherwise-occupied characters to go at least a little down that path.
- Consider if we have some way of putting the screws to Aviv, without creating more fuss than our employer would like. They might know nothing, but it also seems possible that they may have helped arrange the hit, to keep Potter farther from any connection (and even then Aviv probably had at least one more cut out)

Any other thoughts on legwork we could be kicking off?

If AM was to recruit an assassin, it would either be through Chou Junior, Andrew, or (a bit of a stretch) Jhonney. Chou senior would be the best contact but with connection 1, I feel like the relationship is not at a point where we can mention such matters.

After the conversation with Adeline, I am a bit worried about it as well.

Sorry for the inactivity - I managed to catch a cold that took me out for a few days.

No worries. Spotlight was on AM anyway.

Speaking of inactivity, it's almost Thanksgiving in the U.S. I'll be moving slowly Wednesday and Thursday as a result. I should be back up to speed by Friday.

Anything else? Time to fast forward? Sunday afternoon and evening are still available up until volunteering at the clinic.

Sorry to be so sporadic. Work crunch ongoing to mid-month, but the words heavy part should be done by the end of this week, and maybe the thought of sitting down and typing more in the evening won't be so unappetizing by next week.

Yeah, same here. Work is hectic this time of the year.

Will get better soon, though. Most of the time-sensitive stuff is done by now.

Bye
Thanee

Thanks for the updates. I have a couple reports due Thursday myself.

Some rolls: AM buys 4 hits for improve logic and begins working from the car.
Drain for the roll - no drain.
drain: 11d6t5 4 improve logic

Hacking defense:
resist 6 x2: 2#6d6t5 2 2
buying 4 hits to overcome.
Hacking defense 2:
resist 8 x2: 2#8d6t5 1 4



Hacking offense:
Hacking vs 6, vs 8: 4#18d6t5 8 5 6 5

all attempts are successful. She'll do hacking and then perhaps edit file (depending on what she sees there as for protections etc.

She can actually buy 4 hits for anything logic based (3 hits for intuition based) which should do her enough I think.

Next steps? It's Sunday afternoon now. There's dinner with Andrew tonight and volunteering at the clinic after that.

Do folks want to get back together and swap notes? Or does AM want to keep hacking cameras to try to follow the van? It's not impossible but it will be labor-intensive and take quite a bit of time.

Let me know if you want to fast-forward to dinner or if there's anything you'd like to do between now and then.

Bobby doesn't have anything to do before the meeting

Does AM has a license plate (or something similar?)

Yes, but to save some time it's a morphing license plate. AM will discover a few different values if she checks other cameras along its route.

If you want to track it to its destination, it will require daisy-chaining a series of hacks all along the way. Up to you if you want to go through the effort, but if the end goal is to meet the assassin then dinner with Andrew might be quicker.

No time pressure so it is also okay to move to Andrew. AM misses him

Let's get Charisma + Etiquette rolls from everyone.

Bobby knows a bit of Japanese, so he can use that as a Teamwork test to boost his Etiquette roll.

I'm not sure I see any other knowledge skills that would be applicable, but let me know if you want to make the case for something. And if anyone has any Knowledge Karma burning a hole in their pocket, feel free to spend it now.

Bobby does have Underworld (Yakuza) Knowledge

Underworld (Yakuza): 8d6t5 3

and just for completeness sake: Etiquette: 6d6t5 3

Bobby knows how far he can go

Etiquette + Intuition (due to empathetic listener quality) = 9d6, but I mis-remembered when I made the roll and rolled 10 dice-- however last die was a 1, so still 2 hits on the teamwork test. Now great, but hopefully helps AM that little bit.
etiquette: 10d6t5 2

We have 5 hits all in all.

The Teamwork aspect was for the relevant Knowledge skills. The Etiquette rolls are all individual. Bobby can reroll his Knowledge skill hits if he likes.

But nobody scratched or got a glitch, so you haven't done anything to derail the meeting.

Na, I figure 3 out of 8 is good enough

It probably is. Primary goal was to avoid glitches. Past that, everyone got a couple hits so you avoid any major faux pas. Transgressions, if any, are minor, and are ones to be expected of gaijin.