In Seattle's Shadows

Game Master psionichamster

"Yep, I'm in."

"Okay, excellent. One final thing," Mr. Johnson leans forward and waves his left hand roughly in the direction of the AR object that's been floating over his shoulder. "Apparently one of St. Cloud's lost little lambs couldn't make the meet in person, so he contacted me via 'link. Seems we had a few names in our history in common, so I allowed him to tag along. Don't worry about splitting your fee with him, though, he's already been taken care of monetarily."

He goes by the name of Sh4m, or something similar, nowadays. Names seems to be a fairly disposable commodity in our line of work, anyways, wouldn't you say?"

"He said he'd meet you at Micky's, unless you'd care to engage in VR conversation. If so, here's his 'link addy. Good luck, and remember, the disk AND what's on it." He pulls a leather folio from an inside jacket pocket, removing 5 standard certified credsticks and an antique silver Zippo lighter. He places the 'creds in the center of the table, and lights his cigar.

With that, Mr. Johnson pushes his chair back, stands, and by the time he turns around the door behind him already yawns open. He steps through as the panel swings closed again.

[ooc]Okay, you've got your target, there's at least one more runner who's looking to join your team, and you have next to no leads. What do you do?[ooc]

When the Johnson has left, Garus turns to his new teammates, takes a sip of his drink and asks right away.

"So, um, who has contacts in the music business, and who's here to turn the matrix upside down?"

"Unless that disc comes with wheels or bullets, I don't think I know anybody for it."

"well I have a bit of a fondness for classic music, and a few contacts that I can buzz. Let me see what I can turn up."
Rick pulls up the number for Alexi and asks his sometimes friend if he has heard of anything. Once complete he will ring up Mr. Charm and get him on the scent.
Not too sure what, or if, I need to roll anything for this. Rick has knowledge Music at (dice pool) 5.

I know someone I can put on the scent. Not really "music oriented," but she does hear a lot of things. We should meet this other 'team member' though. ASAP. I am gonna head to Micky's and see if I can sniff him out. We should also exchange contact info if we are gonna work together in any meaningful way.

Chris sends out a comlink "friend request" to everyone in the room, as well as to Sh4m.
"I know a couple club kids that might have heard something, but I'm not sure if this is really their thing. They're not even based out of Seatle."

On top of hitting up my matrix club owner contact up any idea on what else Chris could be doing via the matrix would be greatly appreciated.

Maybe you could look for any chatter on the Matrix about a disc, or someone looking for a reader for it.

Chris sends out a comlink "friend request" to everyone in the room, as well as to Sh4m.

"I know a couple club kids that might have heard something, but I'm not sure if this is really their thing. They're not even based out of Seatle."

On top of hitting up my matrix club owner contact up any idea on what else Chris could be doing via the matrix would be greatly appreciated.

Shade: The "Matrix Search" tactic falls under the "Data Search" skill, which is part of the Electronics group. In your case, using Browse (2) + Electronics (3) with a -1 modifier (for searching for specialized info), you'll be attempting an Extended Test to track down any trace of an offer to buy/sell/transfer such a unique piece of paydata.

Data Search [12 /1 minute]: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 3, 1, 1) = 10 Ouch, a single hit, but a also glitch. If you expend some edge, that can allow you to re-roll those failures, or you can accept the success and realize that you may have tipped someone off to your investigations. You will get some useful information after 12 minutes of work, either way.

Using Brain to run some legwork falls under the standard Using Contacts rules, which will entail him exercising his Knowledge Skills, asking around, or running his own Data Search on your behalf.

When you eventually make contact with Brain:
"Shade, chummer, what's going on? You looking for some data, again? I owe you one, anyways."
Brain will toss you one favor in recompense for your history, if you need more than that you'll have to offer ¥, data, or favors in trade.

Rick:

I'll break down the rolls for Mr. Charm, for both of our benefits

"Rick, long time, comrade! What can I do for you today, omae? I still owe you one, so shoot!" Mr. Charm will provide you one favor in recompense for your history, any more than that and you'll need to offer ¥, data, or favors in trade.

When you ask him about a "collectible music disk" that may or may not have recently come up for sale: 9d6 ⇒ (5, 3, 2, 2, 4, 1, 3, 6, 1) = 27 2 hits, enough to get at least a working lead!

"Funny you should mention that, comrade. Not too long ago a mass-email splashed across the scene advertising a huge old-school music score. Anonymous, of course. I treated it like all the rest of the spam & trashed it. I do remember the offer was supposed to be for some nova-hot Goblin Rock noone's ever heard before."

Getting contact information is as easy as flicking "virtual business cards" from 'link to 'link. Shade is more than capable of setting up a little personal 'comm relay, so long as you all remain either linked to the Matrix or within mutual signal range of each other, texts/voice/video (or simsense if you're rigged for it) can be sent easily enough.

Keep digging, you're starting to make some headway!

Knowledge-Music: 5d6 ⇒ (2, 3, 6, 1, 1) = 13
1 hit

Rick: Given the description and relative age of the music in question, you believe you're talking about a Pre-Crash artist, probably one of the trend setters for the Goblin Rock movement in the late 50's to early 60's. Unfortunately, that narrows it down about as much as "grunge bands from the 1990's, but it's a start.

Killer, thanks for the help/advice. I'll spend a point of edge to reroll failures, and if it's cool I'd like to have threaded the browse program. She has pretty small dice pools for a lot of matrix actions, so my plan has been to rely on threading quite a bit. If not that's cool, she'll thread the next interval for the extended test.

Wow, the dice roller doesn't like you, for sure. I was planning on using the "roll once, and multiply # of hits by interval" to determine duration on extended tests. This is not a super difficult search, especially with a threaded browse program, so don't worry about the 2nd point of edge spent.

Shade spends a few minutes deeply concentrating on tearing the matrix apart for the proverbial "needle in the haystack." After almost 15 minutes of sifting through data, checking forums, pinging and tracing email headers, you believe you have a decent point from which to work.

Someone in the last 48 hours created and hid over 3 dozen anonymous email addresses, sending out a large number of similarly-sized data packets. You can't make out what was on them, or exactly where they originated from, but you have a decent idea it was local. The timeframe (and timestamps on the email headers you ran down) all point to a West Coast sender, all within a minute or so of each other, and all from anonymized matrix addresses.

Were you going to ask Brain anything specific, ask him to run his own data search, or have him ask around with the people he knows to find out more? Or something else?

Rick passes on the info he has received so far, as well as his own ideas.

It looks like one of these messages talked about some goblin rock outfit. Maybe that is a direction to examine."

"Well, does anyone know a good underground goblin rock club? I'd say a club-owner could be interested in gettin' his hands on some hot illegal g-rock disc. It could be the stuff his audience digs, right? Ah, I'll call a friend."

Garus leans back and calls Shastar Malouk, his employer, who's a native-american orc and a shady talismerchant, with connections to the orc underground. He hopes that Shastar happens to like g-rock and that he might even know such a club.

hmm...karma rebalancing out after the string of hot dice at last night's warhammer 40k game I suppose

"Hey Brain, yeah I am actually. I think some friends of mine are holding out on me and I wanna know if you'd heard anything. Supposedly there are some stirings in the goblin rock scene, something about a mass of emails that went out recently. I'm not sure if it's about an upcoming conert, or some bootlegs someone's offering, or what. But I wanna know what's going on. How wiz would it be if the Misfunctions were getting back together?! No way I'm missing out if it's that big! Get your feelers out there pretty boy, and hit me back as soon as you find out what's going on!"

Would she be able to find out where any of the data packets went?

Shade will let the group know what she found out so far too.

Jak will leave a message for Persephone at one of her many drop addresses, after routing it through an anonymyzer, trying to do it like she told him.

Garus:

Jak:

All: Only a few hours gave passed since meeting the others in your new team, and already everyone's digging up plenty of info & covering all kinds of bases. 1k¥ is nice, especially after such a palatial introduction. There's still the question of who grabbed the missing disk, where it is, and just who is the mysterious "sh4m"?

What's the next move, now that you've heard back from your contacts?

"Mmh, no club where we can start knockin' on the door, but at least a name to look out for: Nabo. 'sposed to be a new prodigy kid on the g-rock block. So if that rings any bells for ya, we have a lead."

After Garus has saved the 'link information of the others and finished his drink, he shifts himself around in the chair and closes his eyes.

"Wake me up if you find anything important or if ya want to go find that sh4m guy. Hope he's real, teehee. And could someone look up what kinda club he's waiting at?"

"I think we should try and find this Nabo fellow and see if he knows anything. But first, we should go and introduce ourselves to our newest member. Once we are all gathered, then we can figure out our next move. What do you all think?"

Rick will pickup one of the cred sticks, check its balance, then drop it into his pocket.

"I like the idea of getting everyone together before we get too deep into this little adventure." Shade says, picking up her own cred, checking it out, and pocketing it.
Out of curiosity, is this another player that's supposed to show up or an NPC? If it's an NPC I'll send out a message to Sh4m saying: "Hey there, your party is looking to start the festivities but we don't want to begin without you. Hit me up with a time and place so we can start this thing."

Garus:

Shade:

The credsticks are all standard certified 'sticks, each marked for ¥1,000.

I was expecting Autobuck to have jumped in by now. He had a character all whipped up, but no word. I'm going to email him again and see if he's gonna join up. If not, no worries, we're pretty well set for the run.

The Johnson said that our other team member was at Micky's. I suggest that we entreat this other person to meet with us here for the time. As he speaks, Jak will distribute his contact info 'link to 'link.

"I'd still like to know what kinda club that is, to change my outfit if neccessary."

Shade will fill in the group on the latest search results (the last spoiler with her name on it).

Pretty sure Micky's is the bar that we all know St. Cloud from, so where we came here from. I think the other runner is a dead end as he seems to be a noshow for the game, though psionichamster said he was emailing him one more time.

"I like Rick's idea. We should find Nabo and see what he knows. If we go that route though I'd like to change into something a little more...kevlared. Nabo used to be a legitimate ganger, not just some poser wannabe. I bet wherever he's chillin' at things will be a little more lowbrow than what we have here."

Assuming Shade has the address to Nabo's new venue she'll send it out along with directions to the team.

(Sorry, folks, miscommunication issue. I was waiting to hear back from PH about my character and he was waiting for me to jump in ... meanwhile, Firefox decided to only refresh to a cached page, so I thought the game was on hold waiting for GM interactions, while it was actually still going on and everyone was wondering why I wasn't here yet.

I won't always be this wordy but I thought I'd, you know, introduce my guy a little.

Is there SERIOUSLY no way to upload my own avatar image? Because you should be picturing Max Sterling from Robotech/Macross, here, Veritech-style motorcycle helmet and all.)

He was asleep when the ping came in. Blurred images swam before his eyes and resolved into the UI of his 'deck. Customized, naturally, although mostly it was a skin over the default layout, with a few buttons reoriented to resemble his old gear. He habitually tapped the spot on his jaw, half an inch beneath the right ear, which used to activate his comms. It doesn't work that way anymore, but it comes on anyway because he expects it to.

"Connor," he answers.

But hell, he's not Connor anymore. Connor disappeared off the grid a month ago. He was last seen in Reno. It was getting inconvenient being Connor. The pun in the name had become a tell, and he kept pronouncing it with an "e" at the end.

It doesn't matter, because, he realizes, he's responding out loud in real-time to a message... so grunting, sitting up on his bed-roll, he opens a up a reply. He's in an apartment, if you can call it that, about the size of a walk-in closet. The music in Mickey's bar below is thumping a steady beat that begins to throb in what he can only describe as "a bad way."

Through this, he remembers vaguely that he was meant to meet with a new crew down-town. He set it up before he ran into Kit... Kit and her wonderful synthetic-skin satchel, lovely Kit with her lovely pills, and her wonderful warm body whose absence he had only just noticed. The clock said 5:47. Was that AM or PM?

"Gomes," he taps out. Cutting-edge newspeak straight from the streets of middle America. His fingers twitch in the air as he thinks the message into his deck. "Last jobby ran long, ran me ragged yaknow? Got your message and address. Havin a drink down Mickey's now, but I'll still be there before you..."

He hits send, puts on a pair of pants, and heads down to his bike, programming a route in his navi-com as he walks.

Nice...now we're all together all family-like and cozy.

An image of Max Sterling, for. Those unfamiliar.

Oh... you're right about Micky's. I must have mixed something up in my head. Okay, ignore Garus' comments about that, imagine he had said something about needing some time to change back his outfit.

Hey sh4m, good that you made it. :)

"Alright then. Let's get back to Micky's, check if that Sh4m guy is there, then go on and kick in Nabo's door. Ah well, might as well try knocking before."

Garus:

sh4m...I feel your pain on the avatar issue. There's a reason I don't have one...What worked for me was just putting a link on my profile (click on my name and you're in). If you need help with the coding I'd be happy to assist.
Garus, no worries...I'd typed up a whole speal and dice code about Shade rolling to see what she knew about "Micky's" before it clicked.

"Sounds like a plan, though one question. Any of you gentlemen fancy swinging a girl by her place? Car's in the shop..."

Rick smiles and nods to Shade. "If you dont mind riding on the back of my Harley, I'll take you."

Garus:

Jak stands up and collects his cred stick, Well, if we are going to meet this Sh4m at Micky's, I had best get moving. I will see you all there. Jack heads for the door, moving with purpose.

Interesting people...

"I got a free gunner seat on my four by four, if ya like."

Garus leans over the table to grab his credstick, then crawls back. Playing around with the stick for a bit, before stowing it somewhere between the other fetishes, he finally gets up.

"Let's move out then."

"Alright, let's roll."

So Shade is riding with Rick, Salazar has his tricked out bike, and Jak is riding with Garus?

If so, we are all set to move along back to Micky's.

He'll have to squeeze a bit to fit into the gunner seat of the Thundercloud Morgan, but sure, he can join. Garus will stop by the second hand shop, however, to give the guy his witchdoctor outfit back, thank him and tell him he'd like to rent it again sometime. Then he'll put on his complete protective gear (without helmet).

Jak will be very uncomfortable in the interest of saving time. As he rides crammed into a seat made for someone a meter shorter than himself, Note to self: get own car ASAP; this is ridiculous.

Just playing devils advocate here...there are lots and lots of vehicles around, just sitting there all lonely and such. It would be a shame for them not to be driven/ridden just because their owners aren't around.

The ride back to Micky's (via Bills secondhand store and Shades crash pad) takes only a few minutes. When you arrive, you spot a blue haired elf pulling away on his own bike.

First to post is first to arrive.

Almost before Garus stops the ATV, Jak is trying to extricate himself from the gunner's seat.

Thanks for the ride Garus. Lets see if we can find this person.

Jak leads the way towards the doors to Micky's

The blue haired elf pulling out on the bike fits the general description of the hacker sh4m, which is confirmed once you get within signal range of his 'link. You have his (as well as everyone else's commcode, and with your simrig, AR gloves, and image display glasses it'seasy enough to start up a chat.

Garus and Jak are at Micky's, which seems to have changed in exactly no way in the few hours since youleft. Sh4m is riding away, currently, while Shade & Rick gather up her running gear.

"Hey, wait a minute... is that guy on the bike the guy we're supposed to meet inside? I'll check if our comm info is right."

Garus sends a message to sh4m's link: Turn around and come back to Micky's if you still want a job.

After that, he parks his car, gets out and leans on the wall on the side of the entrance.

He idles his bike and swings a slow U to park out front, the dusty brown bike idling to a stop next to the car. Not heading straight to? Time for a little social? He raises sterling blue eyebrows in the shade of his visor, fingers twitching as he responds silently. He flips his collar into place as he walks and extends his hand, his fingers pale, slender, a rogue's smile on boyish lips. sh4m, he says.

So, that first part in italics is his commlink message answer, and "sh4m" is what he says out loud, if I interpret the context correctly? ^^
Since it seems you're new to this, please look at psionichamster's post in the discussion subthread. ;)

The dwarf in the urban camo outfit reaches up to shake his hand.

"So you really are sh4m, heh? Wouldn't have come back if you just stole his 'link, teehee. I'm Garus. I 'spose we wait for the others and fill you in on the way to our next waypoint, eh?"

Meant to be all electronic, but I used "said" and it wasn't clear I meant the italics consistently as commlink text. I'm familiar enough with BBcode so now that I've seen the local conventions I should be able to start making sense. ;) Just doing a quick reply this AM, I'll get my profile and stuff moved over from Chummer this evening.

He nods, brilliant blue hair bobbing out of his cycle helmet. "Aya, that's m'self." Their hands shaken, he turns round to stand side-by-side with Garus against the wall. A slight grin crosses his lips as he digs a pack of smokes out of his leg pocket and lights up, offering the open end of the packet to his new comrade. "Stims," he says, "If ya like. Milds."

On his way to the door, Jak stops as Garus starts contacting Sh4m. He walks up to Garus and Sh4m as they are talking.

Hello Sh4m. I am Jak. It's a pleasure. Jak extends one huge hand in greeting.

Sorry for the delays, went and did the horrible thing of getting myself a job. Shouldn't be an issue any longer.

Shade gives Rick a charming smile, "Sure cutter, I'll hop on your hog."

Changing back into her normal attire (see pic in profile), throws her armored coat on, checks to make sure her manhunter has a full clip in it and gets that in her concealable holster rig and heads back out to Rick. "Ready as I can be."

Salazar flips up the visor on his helmet as he greets Sh4m. "I'm ready if you are, but please, let me do the talking. That's what I'm good at."