Keskodai huffs and puffs, trying to keep up with the others, not used to all this running.
"Come back here, we only want to talk!"
The street team can use athletics to simply chase the leader down, acrobatics for some hardcore parkour to cut him off, or stealth to ambush him.
The diplomat grabs a cornice, vaults on one leg letting the flow pull her around and delays the leshee until pointing down the alley.
Maybe I should have stayed with the indoor team.
Cupi’s hacking program soon encounters issues with some more of the difficult servers, and the jovial atmosphere steadily turns into a long, boring session of Cupi and Iseph trying different ports and exploiting program vulnerabilities. Still, the progress is rather smooth, and only takes three hours of continuous work.
However, they soon discover that Cupi’s hacking program has been a bit overzealous and has pulled in far more data than the PCs need. Sifting through it all will take a computers check to write a script to search the data for you, or a perception check to manually search the data.
Meanwhile, after five hours of cat and mouse, the street team finally pins down the gang leader in a warehouse and begins interrogating him. They can use diplomacy to charm, intimidate to coerce, or bluff to trick the info out of him. If a member of the team chooses to intimidate, you can choose to torture for a bonus, but you are sure the society would frown on such actions.
The gang leader is a Drow but not a Nobel Drow. He’s not attached to a major house, just a hoodlum with a minor gang. Due to your previous investigations, you know he has the information you seek.
Iseph looks at Cupi and says “Hmmmm ... sometimes being too good is a problem, right?” He starts to write a code together with Cupi.
The gang leader is a Drow but not a Nobel Drow. He’s not attached to a major house, just a hoodlum with a minor gang. Due to your previous investigations, you know he has the information you seek.
"Friend M'Uffin. By now you have seen the feed. We are acting on the behest of House [Zeisor]. The person we seek has lost their favor. So much so that they are letting a NaDarr mouths the next word. ysoki and other off worlders adress the issue. If we fail it is entirely on us and noone will look twice at a local who decided to help. But stuck is the banner of the game that should we succeed we will not get the credit, but the house and any other bright individual who helped us will. And that is only the public perception. Imagine how valuable an asset as enterprising as you will become when House [Zeisor] hears of your Aid. And we shall make sure he does. " She smiles "You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!" She telepathecially adds "Outwordly you can refuse to help us and still pass on the information we seek, further insulating yourself. Come now, my credstick feels heavy help us lighten it.
Keskodai spreads his hands palms up as a supplicant would to the Lady of Graves. ”My friend there’s no need to run. Listen, if you give us the information we need, we’ll certainly let you go. There’s really no need for all this.”
The lack of Cupi’s enthusiasm for data analysis versus hacking shows as he and Iseph slow down significantly. Between Cupi’s multiple ‘look at cool stuff’ breaks, ‘this is stupid’ breaks,’ and one unsuccessful attempt to hack the vending machine, it takes four hours for the two to discern the location of the weapons.
Meanwhile, the Drow is surprisingly reticent to give up any information, probably more out of stubborn pride than anything else. However, after four and a half hours, he finally breaks down and tells you where the weapons are.
Each additional piece of information takes another 3 hours but no longer requires any checks. You can find out floor layouts, guard composition, digital security configuration, or other bits of information you think might be useful.
The location itself is a disused and supposedly abandoned Zeizerer office building on the outskirts of nightarch. It, strangely, still has water and power running to it, but no infosphere presence (meaning that the server is completely cut off on the infosphere, and cannot he hacked remotely.)
As the street team is not finished after 10 hours the computer team continues for another 3 hours.
As the street team is not finished after 10 hours the computer team continues for another 3 hours.
What info are you after? What kind of cyber secruritu they have? Floor plan? Troop number and composition? Any other information you want?
Feeling out of her element far more strongly than than expected, NaDarr is ready to return. However, "I do think we should be as prepared as possible." I will leave final decision to GiGi and Keskodai.
Iseph sends a comm massage to you all with the current situation and explains: "I have read many of the historic Shadowrun novels and thus know that floorplans and security systems are most important during infiltration. If people are involved we can sneak past their weak senses or fool them but I am not yet able to fool sensors."
Cupi and Iseph comb through the data for another few hours before turning up a map of the first level of the offices. Strangly, it seems that the map was uploaded when the offices were still under construction, as they show an elevator that is not complete yet. Try as they might, they cannot find a newer floorplan, meaning that they cannot find where the elevator leads.
Slides showing the floorplan are up.
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"Oooh! Broseph! I betcha we can find the access codes before the others get back! Eh?!" Cupi 'dives' into his computer network more enthusiastically than before.
After about half-an-hour Cupi gets a wild hair and begins scavenging some unused parts in the lab and starts building something off in the corner.
It quickly takes shape as some sort of screen, minus the actual screen in the middle. Instead there are a series of small holoprojectors lining the inside edge of the frame.
"Oooh! Broseph! I betcha we can find the access codes before the others get back! Eh?!" Cupi 'dives' into his computer network more enthusiastically than before.
After about half-an-hour Cupi gets a wild hair and begins scavenging some unused parts in the lab and starts building something off in the corner.
[dice=Engineering]1d20+17
It quickly takes shape as some sort of screen, minus the actual screen in the middle. Instead there are a series of small holoprojectors lining the inside edge of the frame.
Iseph finishes out the last 2.5 hours as Cupi abandons his post and comes up with a post on a forum from a few weeks ago where a Drow network technician says he worked for Villyth. He complains about how unprofessional she was when he was setting up her door security, threatening to kill him on multiple occasions. As revenge he posted the door codes he set up for the facility.
Halfway through the data search the street team calls in to say that they confirmed the information from a second source concerning the weapon’s shipment’s whereabouts.
Iseph sends a comm signal to the street team. "What do you think you can still do while we are working? Do you want to continue?"
Keskodai says, "Since we have some time while the others make their computer inquiries, let us ask this nice gentlemen if he'd give us the cybersecurity configuration/location. Then we can be on our way, yes?"
The Drow leader takes you to a popular nightclub and helps you ask around. You eventually get in contact with another Drow. He relates that he’s fed up with Villyth’s terrible terms of employment and wants her to get what’s coming to her. He lets you know that he recently was hired to install a new Zhx-376 server for her in the location.
He says it’s located in the upper left section of the first floor. He never visited the basement, but he did integrate the server to work with the tech down there. He even alerts you in to several little-known security issues with that model, giving you a +4 circumstance bonus to hack the server.
"Hmm," says Keskodai. "Though I very much like the city of Nightarch itself, I would rather not stay longer than the protection afforded us allows. Let us go to this place and retrieve the Society's weapons. We have the majority of what we need, and the rest? Well, that's where our training will come in!"
NaDarr agrees and takes in the sights as they head to Villyth's hideout. "It begs the question: What is it with villains and nightclubs?"
Returning to house Zeizerer to all get together, you find Ceobarn’s personal transport waiting for you on the street level. A massive 8-wheeled monstrosity that looks more like a troop transport than a personal vehicle. The loading door opens and you see a female Drow decked out in special Zeizerer detractor armor with a Horizon Walker sniper rifle.
”Name’s Nullira” she says with barely-contained contempt in her voice. ”I’ve been ODERED to help you. Give me your communication codes, get in, and shut up.”.
Brooking no objections, she waits for you to load in with a scowl on her face then forcefully shoves Cupi out of the way who has tried to weasel his way into the driver’s seat. She sits down and without a word of warning starts the massive vehicle.
The trip to the warehouse district is eventful insomuch as Nullira clearly avoids all traffic laws and almost runs over a dozen civilians, most of whom prepare to open fire on the vehicle for the transgression until they see who it belongs to.
The vehicle arrives at the officr in half an hour, parking roughly a quarter mile from the site. Without a word, she opens the loading door, steps out, and does a flip onto the top of the vehicle. She draws her sniper rifle and gets into a prone position, setting up the rifle and training it on the office building.
”What’re you doing? Get going.” she hisses into the comms as she adjusts her scope.
"Nice weapon," NaDarr admires of their chauffier. She heads casually toward the club. Turning to Cupi and Iseph she asks "If I can get you to the backdoor, can you disable the alarm system?"
"I will be able to support!"
"We have to make an infiltration plan! I can also take over some of the covert action. That is part of my specialization."
"Alright," the lashunta says as their near their target door. She pushes the ysoki into the shadows of an dumpster. Her armor glows with reflected light as a tiny hologram of a ysoki appears above her forarm. She waves her hand over it and the hologram, the light, and Dr. Cupi fade from view.
"Follow Iseph, and get us in. The rest of us will follow 30 feet behind or so." She nods to the android: lead the way.
As Iseph and the Cupi creep up on the green-tinted one-way window, they find it locked.
Iseph, I'll need a stealth roll.
Cupi: To open the window you can use Engineering to jimmy it open, or you could smash it, I suppose. Either Engineering or strength check to break objects.
Everyone else put your figures on the map, in case this gets messy fast.
Iseph confirms the planning with the group and starts to sneak towards a window near the servers that Cupi needs to access.
After choosing a good window for infiltration Iseph will use his kit and try to open the window.
He will then sneak into the building and check out the room.
Unable to see Cupi to tell if he's in position, Iseph goes ahead and pops out his toolkit and begins tinkering in his place. After :
Roughly a minute, he manages to pop the window open. The interior of this office is dimly lit. The desks and computers in this large, open-plan office are covered in a faint layer of dust. There doesn't appear to be anyone in the room.
Finding no SpaceWiFi signal in this office, Cupi carefully reaches up, taps a code into the security system, and opens the door.
Inside the room is devoid of people, but Cupi sees a large series of computer banks, obviously tied to a server. Most of the banks are empty, and it is reasonable to assume that this office once required far more computing power than it does now.
Stealthfully scurrying over to the terminal, Cupi is surprised to find that there is no password needed to log into this terminal, but that the terminal is fairly unremarkable, only showing current network activity (minimal) and the ability to look at the current temperature in the building..
His exocortex quickly alerts him to the fact that this is a Fake Shell, and Cupi starts using doing his thing to dig deeper into the system. He bypasses the fake shell with relative ease, and gets to the main system, which seems has a few more options.
Firstly, Cupi finds only one shipment of guns recently acquired, which has been labeled as 'Xicton shipment.' Apparently there are to be sold to someone called Xicton and are ready to move out as soon as the money has been transferred. However, the inventory system is a mess and it doesn't say exactly where they are stored.
Environmental Controls: With a computers check, Cupi can overload the environmental system to produce steam. This steam will emit for only a few seconds (3 rounds) before the systems burn out, but it will grant concealment to all in the complex.
Automated Defenses: There seems to be some sort of 'defense system' that is on standby somewhere in the complex. The computer does not say where or what these defenses are, but a computers check can turn them off.
Door Access: With a computers check, Cupi can put the facility into lockdown mode (lock all doors unless you have a physical keycard), standard mode (needs a code) or 'open' mode which will unlock all doors. A single check is enough to gain total access over this particular subsystem, at which point the doors and locks can be changed without further computers checks.
Light Level: The system can be set to be with no lights, 'standard' lighting (Dim lights, what it is at now) and 'High intensity' (Normal light). Cupi can make a computers check to overload the lights, producing bright light for 3 rounds before blowing out all the lights in the area.
Cupi has tied his exocortex to the computer and turned on the space wifi. From now on Cupi (or whoever he gives access to) can use their computer to activate any of the abilities that they hack. Thus you could hack the lights, and then later use your computer to set them to bright when you need to.
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Cupi pauses for a moment, seemingly lost in deep thought and then extends one of his clawed fingers toward the terminal. Before his finger touches the terminal a small spark of static seems to jump inbetween.
"Hoo yeah! Cupi! Finally I get to do something! You want me to wreck this thing!?" A very high pitched, devilish voice emanates on the team's comm frequency.
"Izz, we've got some automated defenses we'd like to not be working. Viki and I will be working on some other stuff. You think you can handle that? Cupi's voice replies.
"Fine, fine. But one of these days you gotta give me something fun to do," the voice replies with some obvious pout.
Cupi extends a hand once more and the same spark happens. He then relays on the team frequency, "The building is ours, where to next?" He seems much more cheery.
Cupi sets to work hacking, but his jubalation for a moment seems a bit premature as the system is harder to hack than he anticipated, and he is (rather disappointingly) forced to use the exploits pointed out by the drow instead of hacking it all on his lonesome.