Ada Babbage's page

Sad news, but an aftermath and putting it on hold until you are re-energised makes sense.

I had envisioned that Ada's mission would end up with her grabbing the violin, then being convinced to give it into 'safer hands' - presumably the persuasive Ms Anderson, who would send it back to the Laundry. To that end I've included some words, if everyone is okay with them.
This would then give a reason for Ada to be included in the next mission.

Ada holds the violin by the neck, much as one might hold a poisonous snake. Blood oozes from her hands as frozen red crystals thaw. "Well. Success. You got your target and I got mine." Despite the victory in her sentence, there is no joy in the young woman's tone. Worry leaks from every word like the bloody tears from her glowing and bloodshot eyes.
She sighs "This thing... I'm not sure I trust my Client with it. There is no good use I can think of for something like this - especially if it is what I suspect." She sighs again "Oh well. Hopefully they just want to..." she trails off, then picks up "lock it up."

Ice formed on Ada's skin, her hair broke like straw, and the eyes still glowing with extradimensional sight froze solid. The blood within - or the creature within the blood - railed against the cold, glowing with heat.
Ada growled, exultant to have a target, and flung herself on Heydrich, her entire body slamming behind a slim steel boot-blade with supernatural speed and damage.

Ada growls at the ground, desperately forcing her mind to work once more.

"Under the earth." growls Ada, running to the spot Heydrich vanished, with no plan but to tear the street up with her nails "Something is coming. Something" she snarls, eyes glowing blue through the storm "bad."

The pain had grown. Still separated enough that she could think - but every moment she stayed sentient that separation frayed.

Try 3.
Free: Beserking
Standard: Cast Blood Rage
Move: stand up
Free: 5ft step
Question: are there any other beings out here beyond Heydrich and the PCs? Guards, bystanders, even animals?

Ada wasn't sure what she'd fallen down behind - the blur left the world a riot of unfocused colours that suggested at least concussion and probably brain damage. Internally her geasa still argued about triggering her self-destruct, shredding her body and hopefully ejecting her soul to a safe distance. From a few feet away she heard roaring gunfire, the 'crack' of a grenade and a bloom of light and heat, incongruously reminding her of fireworks displays.

Standard operating procedure was to set her 'watch' to generating a 'shroud of innocuity' - a reverse engineered spell that somehow generated a field that twisted into uselessness one of the neurotranmsitters in the brain responsible for attention.

'Screw that' she decided. There was every possibility she was about to messily self destruct, pass out from brain damage, catch a grenade, or be soul-shredded by a particularly nasty nazi. 'If I'm going out, I'm going out fighting!'

The quartz ring she wore was torn out - providing both the gesture and the requisite drop of blood - while she intoned. The words were easy enough, even on the ground. Two words in Sumerian, two in Sanskrit, and an activation nonsense word created by her boss - this was not a spell you wanted to activate by accident.

The world sharpened. A host of neurotransmitters fired. Adrenaline flooded her system. Adenosine triphosphate flooded her system. Wards surged. None of this was to make her stronger in combat though - it was there to stop her expiring on the spot as the real effect kicked in.

Somewhere so far away in n-dimensional space that the human mind could not even consider it, a place where entropy was less a rule than a resource, a tiny, tiny window opened. Through that window something surged. A moment later the window closed, and whatever it was that came through found itself trapped in an iron rich saline solution.

Ada felt her heart struggle and stop as her blood stopped moving. She felt her limbs moving, the blood now pulling them into place a second before her muscles did. A shard of the quartz that had penetrated her skin sunk in further, infuriating whatever was consuming her haemoglobin, and she felt whatever it was that she had trapped inside her react.

Ada pushed herself to her feet, her eyes gone red. She snarled for a moment at Katherine, then turned towards where Heydrich was chanting.

The pain was still there - in an absent way.

false life: 1d10 + 9 ⇒ (4) + 9 = 13
... and the site just timed out on me.

Thinking about it, it is probably fairer to use the loadout she had in adventure 1
0 4 - Detect Magic, Oath of Anonymity, Vacuous Vessel, Ray of Frost
1 6 - Arcane Pocket, Ears of the City, Stone Fist, Heightened Awareness, Pierce Facade, Mage Armor
2 5 - Protection from Arrows, False Life, Bull’s Strength, Bullet Shield, BLANK
3 3 - Fearsome Duplicate, Blood Rage, Siphon Might
4 2 - Assume Appearance, BLANK

Ideally with
* Assume Appearance (that is a fortnightly cast) replaced with Communal Nondetection
* the BLANK 4th replaced with Night Armour.

She'd leave at least 1 slot open.

Given her everyday all-day duration spells are pretty easy to cast, I think she'd have cast them.

Ada takes 1 to 15 minutes to prep spells, and then time to ritualistically cast her all day spells.

At a minimum Mage Armor, False Life, Protection From Arrows and Arcane Pocket. At 10 minutes each that's a little under an hour.

Happy that she held off casting anything else, though also happy to have burned Communal Nondetection on herself if that doesn't affect anything (given its huge cost she is reluctant to use it, and can only afford to cast it on 1 person).

It's a good loadout for a frontal assault on guys with guns, not so much for hunting down a wizard, but she assumed there'd be guns going.

@GM Sappy: is that okay?

Edit: will need to reroll for false life, I guess.

Just in case you are wondering: the reason why you had no save for that shared hallucination was that it was not a hallucination. Heydrich's custom ENIGMA machine was running an algorithm shunting you into a parallel universe. Therefore, everything you experienced was real, although guided by Heydrich. Going in places unfamiliar to him (as you did) and causing enough damage to the world to break plausibility were the two ways to cause the program to become unstable and unpredictable.

I'm rebuilding his stats, I believe I'll roll initiative tomorrow.

I loved that idea :)

I have realised I did not declare Ada's loadout. I was going to go with her standard 'trouble' loadout - is that okay? I will post it here first.

Ada collapses as the effect fails. Geasa and wards belatedly crash, and she can feel the various autonomous processes within her consulting on whether she had been compromised.

While she awaits their verdict, she desperately struggles to think of a way to ward her mind against another such attack.

Ada feels fear clutching at her heart. 'I have to get there first, or someone else will find it. Why can't I get there? Why do I keep ending up in the ghetto?' A moment later, an answer 'Defences. He must have a ward up. Preventing unwanted visitors from getting there.'

very nice!

Internally, Ada swore as - much to her surprise - the plan went off almost without a hitch. 'If whatever it was I was supposed to find was in that car, it's probably gone now.'
Desperately she ran her perception over smouldering wreckage, hoping against hope to sense the side effects of a concentrated magical field on the crystal compass she carried.

assuming not, or this might be a bit easy...
While the others fled, she headed towards Heydrich's house, desperately trying to come up with a plan as she did. 'If I can find it, I can meet up with the others, maybe trade the item for safe passage.'

Yeah, this is somehow the most ominous post I've seen in a very long time.

Not a problem.
I need to apologise: I recently returned to university, and my first assignment is proving an unpleasant surprise. I know I'm slipping, but I'm hoping to have the **** thing done soon!

Ada keeps her spell readied, despite the burning desire to read the letter. 'Still dangerous... if he turns on us. A knife wound is the least we can expect.'
"Ahem. Kathrina?" - fortune favoured her that the sentence could be said with a damaged tongue.

Ada tenses, the command words to trigger the pre-prepared algorithm thick on her savaged tongue.

"The wordth. Thay the wordth." Ada grunts, blood running freely from her mouth where her teeth drove through her tongue. 'I don't know how Richard stands it, even out here it was bad enough my safeguards have started engaging.'

Ada lounges on the edge of a nearby sofa faking insouciant ease, but the unblinking gaze she runs over the sigils as she mentally checks Richard's preparations gives lie to her apparent confidence.

Ada whispers "I can grant the insight we gathered on paradoxes to Richard, and grant him a measure of protection. Katherine, if you can grant him a mind twisted enough to believe the oath - temporarily - I will stand by to disrupt any energies if it starts to go wrong." she looks doubtful "Last chance to back out, Richard."
'I'm not sure I'd go through with it, at this point.'

Ada excuses herself.
"I'm off to try to beg, borrow, buy or - if I have to - steal a book on formal logic. Given the Karolinum has been closed, I suspect I'll have to find a German mathematics department to ransack."

She waits long enough for anyone else who wishes to accompany her to get ready, and then leaves.

She's careful to leave by a winding route, walking far enough to cross the Vltava, and ground herself on the far side. That done she beings a slow tour of academies searching for a book on paradoxes by a German mathematician or philosopher.

apologies if I got historical facts wrong - chalk it up to Ada's lack of knowledge

Researching mathematical logic - though I suspect OOC that is a dead end, if no-one's spotted it...

@GM Sappy: That's fair, and sadly Ada's wisdom is not amazing.

Sorry for the wall of text, I've been trying to reason this out. Hoping I'm on the right track. Given Ada is smarter than I am, I'm hopeful reasoning her reasoning is my reasoning is reasonable.

This should definitely be backed with skill rolls. I'm confident she has the skills - she's a logical academic with intelligence training - but not sure which ones to roll. Or take 10, if taking 10 is possible. If she knows enough to know she needs to boost her ability in an intelligence skill, she'll use on of her spells that boost that.

I figure she'll only have memorised her daily & emergency spells at this point - until she can work out what she actually needs to do.

As he world slowly evaporates, Ada prepares, luxuriating in the absence of migraine. By the time she exits the mirror-ward, many of her companions are gone.

Walking to the room where the ward is kept, she studies it again. "Anyone here?" she calls "I need someone to check my reasoning."

"Alright..." she starts, talking to herself as much as the room, and taking notes. "A ward with a key, and a safety. The safety incinerates the paper with a short circuit, and lays a geas over the mind of the person applying the key. That means whoever uses the key needs to be sure they can reliably apply it - or be willing to face the consequences."

"The incineration may be something that can be overcome by reinforcing the paper. Connecting anything to the ward is likely to trigger the ward prematurely."

"The geas may be possible to redirect, or block. The easiest way would be to use a disposable mind to absorb the effect. That suggests that the key is something a disposable or blocked mind could not employ. That suggests the key is somehow encoded in the mind."

Ada nods to herself.
"Whatever this is, it was not destroyed. If it has been received, it has probably been read, and then kept. Either it is; stored for posterity, stored for sentimentality, the person involved lacks the ability to memorise, the information itself is too risky to allow someone to remember it, or the information may need to be passed on to a subsequent individual."

"I doubt sentimentality - more likely to be a trophy. Very likely the reader would have the ability to memorise anything but an extensive quantity of data. I'd discount those two. Both posterity, and subsequent use are similar enough to be essentially the same from design purposes. If the information is too dangerous to allow storing it in the memory of someone trusted with the key, then there would likely be even more security."

This raises a nasty thought "Does anyone know if they know it is gone? If so we should be keeping this in a radiation shielded faraday cage. If our ward protecting it should flicker, they could be on us."

Ada turns back to the topic at hand. "Alright. If this is designed to hold information that can not be stored in even a geas protected neural structure..." she trails off "I'm not sure even the Ahnenerbe is that level of paranoid."

"So; designed for someone else to access the data. Assuming so, the key must be describable. It also presumably requires exposing a neural structure that can be affected by the geas. That suggests some sort of patterns need to be set up, and set up in a reliable way. Emotions are possible, but would need to be universal enough that an unknown later reader could reliably feel them from a description, while still being specific enough that other sentients would not have them."

"That fits with the Oath - the Reich is very good at reinforcing that with loyalty. Anyone insufficiently indoctrinated to generate that on demand is probably not someone you want reading it."

"The music as well. That's less likely to be emotional - different people have different emotional responses, and even the same individual's emotional responses are likely to vary. It could be aimed at a different area of information processing in the target."

Ada nods at the thought "The more degrees of orthogonality, the harder it'll be to fool the ward with a synthetic thought structure."

She continues "So, given music is highly encoded information..." Ada had little love for music, and her broken recorder had been no accident "That suggests either listening or playing. Likely a violin, given the target. Violin playing is a rare skill that cannot be reliably achieved by adults without the use of neural restructuring that would likely tamper with results. Listening is something anyone not deaf could do. That suggests listening. Listening to a specific piece of music while taking the Oath?"

"The paradox... potentially aimed at a third area? Limits the pool of potential applicants - but Formal Logic can be taught relatively quickly, and most members of the Ahnenerbe would have the basics - and a proxy mind likely wouldn't. Contemplating paradoxes involves the logical portion of the mind. Everyone thinks differently, though. Working through proving or disproving a paradox... formal logic. Different brains should function similarly if going through the same steps of using formal logic. That suggests a formal logic of paradox - or something involving philosophy and paradox. Given Germans pride in their superiority, almost certainly something set down by one of their own."

"So: Katherine is out finding us a tame musician. She claims she can deal with the 'heartfelt' part of the oath, if needed. That leaves the Paradox. While Richard said he had one, if it is thinking about the formal logic we need to make sure we think about it the right way." She starts "Probably..." she adds "In German."

@Sappy: not sure what rolls to make to evaluate her reasoning, and see how well she is puzzling this out. I'm thinking that reading up on the philosophy of paradox might be the next step.

Ada takes 1 to 15 minutes to prep spells, and then time to ritualistically cast her all day spells.
At a minimum Mage Armor, False Life, Protection From Arrows and Arcane Pocket. At 10 minutes each that's a little under an hour.

@GM Sappy when the time has passed, please tell me and I will have her appear.

Hearing movement Ada started awake, almost accidentally bumping her head on the event horizon of the universe. Panicking she checked her watch and saw she had hours until the end of the world.

Something about mirrors allowed a properly charged electric field to entangle photons in such a way as to dramatically lower the metaspace potential between two universes, so long as the second universe was sufficiently small. It made for a wonderful place to camp securely, but the catch was that small universes could have irritating low physical constants, and a nasty tendency to evaporate in hours.

"I'll be out in a bit!" she called grumpily, then set about the laborious task of preparing her effects.

Ada looked up from her notes and called out from the flyspecked mirror she'd found on a dresser.

Ada can cast Mirror Hideaway to enter a mirror. I'm sort of assuming there'll be one somewhere.
Also I'll find an avatar - originally I'd thought she be shape shifting a lot more than we've actually needed.

Sweet, sweet spell refresh!

"Potentially the music's key could be the music itself - or perhaps the act of playing it." Ada pauses "I should add that this is a guess, and I'm not volunteering - my musical training finished when I broke my recorder."

She considers "I might have a way to alter my mental state enough to give the pledge - but that has risks of its own."

"Beethoven's..." Ada trails off, finger conducting an imaginary orchestra, before dropping in frustration. "I can't place it. Possibly if we transcribed it, something might trigger."

Ada's return is subdued. 'He seemed like a nice enough guy. Hope he doesn't get in too much trouble for getting fooled.'

"So" she asks the group "How did it go? Have you got the information we need to do this properly?" Noting the attention on the page she moves to help Tomasz "What did you find?"

"That might have been a lucky break for him." Ada confides, much more quietly, as she closes. "My boss has gone out to investigate. I'm not exactly sure what either." she does her best to forge some common bond "I'm not cleared. I gathered it was some sort of logistics screw up? He was furious about waiting - only left me on the off chance he turned up in the end - but if your boss is in hospital it gives a good reason why he wasn't in his office."

She sighs "I suppose you and I had best see if we can track them down. If we can move fast enough, we might be able to catch up before they finish at the first site. Otherwise we'll spend the whole damned day chasing them!" She starts moving, then looks back "Well, come on! I'm not waiting around any more!"

bluff (convince lie is true): 1d20 + 18 ⇒ (8) + 18 = 26
diplomacy (persuade) + chastise: 1d20 + 7 + 5 ⇒ (3) + 7 + 5 = 15

Panting Ada slips off the bike, pulls her hair from her bun and throws on a pair of glasses.
'Hopefully I'll have enough time to put on a uniform...'

A peek around the corner reveals the incoming 'clerk', and she skips to the core of her preparation.

Still moving quickly she pulls a journal from her handbag, quickly flips to the page with the green silk bookmark and activates the silver sigil carefully laid down in conductive inks. As soon as the effect washes over her she is pulling out her 'brooch watch' and activating a process encoded in the crystal memory.
Another moment later and she has half a cigarette in her mouth, another moment to light it, and she strolls casually back around the corner towards the clerk's destination.

Holding her cigarette in the book's hand she shouts an accusation in German-accented Czech. "You! You're one of Podlezl's men! Aren't you?"
With her other hand she brandishes the watch "What time do you call this? I was about to leave after this cigarette!"

Ada keeps her attention to the front, and does her best to simply ride on.
She rides past the Rudolfinum to the Vlatva, then turns a corner and stows her bike.
'Alright, genius. Now, how do you intercept someone heading here without putting all the guards on alert?'

Ada keeps her attention to the front, and does her best to simply ride on.
She rides past the Rudolfinum to the Vlatva, then turns a corner and stows her bike.

While the energy courses through her body she takes a moment to call up a stored incantation that borrows mass from somewhere.

The combination was going to leave her debilitated for a while later, but the strains, sprains and tears would go beautifully with the migraine she had coming from earlier.

Instantly she was on the 'borrowed' bicycle and on her way, hopeful Titus could buy enough time she could beat the three officials to the Rudolfinium.

Knowledge: Local: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (20) + 14 = 34

@Katherine, @Sappy: if there was prep beforehand then Ada could have helped, but as it stands I am assuming not.

@Richard: I'm hopeful you'll mostly be doing intimidate. Hold off giving any actual information, and just demand an action. Bluff would certainly help, though.

@All: I realise planning in discussion means a bunch of rp we're not doing, but my experience has been it is worth at least getting the basics down here so everyone is on the same page when it comes to gameplay. Otherwise you end up with a story with pages of rambling hypotheticals in the middle of a car chase ;)

@Titus, @Sappy: if you two are also okay with this, I'm happy to run with it now.

Hmmm. I was just thinking beak to the face, but if you can snipe tyres that might work. Needs to look accidental though.

I think Katherine, Leo and Tomasz are bluffing in. They should be a go.

Titus, Richard and Ada need to do what they can to buy the other three time to sneak in. The obvious way to do this is to delay the minister.

For us
I'm desperately trying to come up with something clever, heist-like and within our skillset... and failing to do so. This is what I have.
I suggest
(A) Richard drive out into the countryside with an officer's uniform.
(B) Titus bolts, then harasses (dive bombs as bird) the riders. If he can subtly damage the bikes, do so. Simply flying in front of the Minister when the minister is at speed may be enough. Flying should give him a huge edge getting there first. Aiming for delay, rather than injury.
(C) Ada takes her potion of Expeditious Retreat and if necessary potion of Urban Grace, and bolts to get there first. +30ft with ability to leap rooftop-to-rooftop should help. Assuming this is compatible with bicycles, it should make a huge difference.
(D) Ada approaches minister as he approaches, and explains that the officer in question has grown tired of waiting and gone out to the field. He is currently at <Richard's location>
She claims to be a secretary. If she has time to change slightly, that would be good, but it is unlikely she will be remembered. Could use Shroud of Innocuity or Assume Appearance (Greater) if needed, though would prefer to use Chastise. A minute to make basic changes to clothes would be good.
(E) assuming she can redirect them, they go to Richard's location. If necessary, she goes with them.
(F) Titus flies to Richard's location, does his best to look like prisoner.
(G) when they get to Richard's location he claims to be secret police. He tells the situation has been dealt with, the officer has had the situation explained, and this NEVER HAPPENED. Needs to do his best to be intimidating. If extra is needed, once they are out of LOS, "shoots prisoner".

@Richard, Titus: do you have any clever ideas on how to pull this off? I'm coming up blank. I feel like there should be a way, even if just to summon a flock of ravens to follow Titus in harassing them or something.

Sabotaging communications could work, if it happens enough it is not inherently enough to engage suspicion. Sabotage that triggers a high alert might work anyway (as the minister would then likely be kept outside by a lockdown) but also might lead to the minister going home anyway.

Part of me wonders if we could have them 'arrested'.
Alternatively I wonder if we could call the Rudolfinium and leave a message for when they arrive?
Hmm - these are the days of fairly primitive exchanges and unencrypted communication. Could we "hack" the exchange so we could intercept calls from the Rudolfinium to certain numbers? If we can intercept calls from the Rudolfinium to the Castle, then (A) we can ensure no alarm is raised and (B) potentially intercept any calls the minister makes back to his office.
That said, while Ada actually has good Engineering and Programming, her Disable Device is untrained.

Short of that all I have is Expeditious Retreat, a bicycle, and frantic peddling. I have a feeling attempting an impromptu infiltration is a highly, highly risky strategy.

Ada turns to Titus and Richard. Firmly but quietly she speaks "I doubt I can beat them to the Rudolfinum. Do either of you have a way to transport us there more quickly than they can ride? Titus, Caw twice for Yes."

"We need to follow them." Ada says, hurriedly - and to the crow, for all she answers Richard's question "They're going to eventually get out there and discover there are no ammo-beans. We need to ensure they get a runaround and return, much later, with no desire to learn more about what happened."

So, Richard and Ada now make sure that the patsies don't come back, or call in.

Leo, Tomasz and Katherine are infiltrating.

Titus is on overwatch (or can join A & R)

Have I got this right?

Ada checks her watch, startles as if late, farewells Katherine and heads for the door after the undersecretary, careful not to look at Richard.