Session started at 6:59 pm on April 1st, 2008
Attending players: Ben, Nick, and Eva
Presiding GM: Aaron
It's Monday August 11th, 2070
Four weeks after getting back to civilization we're still looking for work. Apparently Mr. Johnson was not so thrilled about receiving his crate a month later than planned and feels he needs to make life difficult for us in compensation.
At least today isn't a total loss since Blue Matt gives me a call. He needs someone to go up to a supermarket in Everett and buy some sort of weird question answering candy. "Tasty fortune", he says. I think Will buys them sometimes.
Well I've got nothing better to do with my afternoon.
I call up Will and pitch the job. There's candy, so it's a pretty easy sell despite the fact that we've only been offered a piddly 75 NY. He says he'll pick me up in about half an hour.
When I get in the car it sounds like Des is trying to confuse Will about math. I don't think he appreciates how much thought Will put into the price chart.
After some random weird bickering we arrive at the grocery store in Everett at the address that Matt gave us. Des is being kind of spazy, so I leave the two of them in the car and go get the damn candy. I buy it and get back pretty fast. No bumps so far.
I give Will the candy and he asks it, "What do we do next?"
The floating answer is "Retrieve a man named Arizona"
Will asks the second piece, "Where is he?"
The second piece says "Last seen in the Misty Pines neighborhood." Misty Pines is, naturally, in Redmond.
Will asks, "How much is he worth?"
The answer: "Rare objects of your desire." A bit vague but better than nothing I guess.
We start heading towards Redmond and I ask Des to check if there's anyone obvious by the name Arizona. He says there's a Paul Arizona who's a brilliant math genius. He disappeared at 18 and would be about 22 now.
Des goes off on a strange tangent after I mention evil shadow organizations. I get the feeling he just likes being contrary and stubbornly literal sometimes. When we finally get back to the topic at hand I point out that we might want to ask some more questions. We argue about it a bit but can't actually agree on any. Will hangs on to the rest of the candy for now. There are nine more pieces.
("If you have a connection rating of 5 then you're good."
~ Aaron
"Does a satellite uplink count?"
~ Nick
"Did you buy that after being stuck in the desert for four weeks?"
~ Eva
"Yes."
~ Nick)Misty Pines encompasses about four or five blocks. Des pulls up a college photo of the target, but it won't do us any good if we don't have a clue which building to look in. Des sends out his little metal spies to canvas the area. He mentions that the buildings are occupied. I'm guessing squatters.
Des lets us watch in on the drone feeds. Oh damn. The neighborhood appears to be inhabited by a community of ghouls and at least one of them has definitely noticed the drones buzzing around. I mention it to Des and he backs off the drones.
Des suggests that we ask the candy if our target is a ghoul. The response is an annoyingly ambiguous "signs point to no."
A small pack of ghouls seems to be congregating nearby, discussing something. Will listens and he says they're not sure what to do about us. They mention someone named Mariah. They seem to think she's a big nasty of some sort, but she's "sleeping" at the moment. I'd prefer not to find out if she's something nastier than just a ghoul.
We obviously can't just go in guns blazing, since we have no idea where our target is and there are a lot of ghouls. Scouting around the area it seems like the blocks around Misty Pines are in essence sort of abandoned buffer zone. From what Des can find in the Matrix it looks like the ghoul community has been settled there for at least the last two years.
Our best guess so far is that they might have the target stashed alive somewhere for future eating. We're going to try remote scouting a bit more covertly rather than charge in unprepared.
After very carefully poking around with his spy drones, Des finds the pit where they are dumping the "remains" from their meals. In a nearby building he also finds their prisoners. They're locked up in what used to be a set of basement apartments. Some, but not all, of them are chained up. Not too far away is their kitchen and adjoining dining hall.
He's handing us pictures and while I'm looking over the prisoners I notice that one of the ones who's chained to the wall is wearing low profile body armor. I'm 90% sure it's the model that NeoNet's elite corporate security is issued. The woman wearing it is a relatively capable looking dwarf. Like the other prisoners she looks none too happy at her current lot in life.
There's no sign of the target among the prisoners. It's possible they're keeping him somewhere else that we've overlooked, but at the moment we don't have any clues as to where that would be. It seems like the NeoNet security officer is probably worth money to someone and she may also have an idea of where we need to look for Arizona.
We're starting to formulate a plan for how to break out the officer. I'd like as much chaos as possible to minimize the ghoul's organization and cooperation. They don't appear to have any sort of commlinks, so it seems like more traditional distraction techniques will be effective.
I ask Des to get me sound clips of various members of the group speaking. I'm relatively certain I can mimic their individual voices well enough to give confusing and misleading information. Des manages to park one of his spies on the outside of the building near their dining area. He is able to pull more than enough data for me to work with.
Planning for chain removal, Des digs around in his toolkit and pulls out the cutters he would use to chop off titanium airplane bits in an emergency. He gives them to Will to hang on to.
(We are discussing the fact that Bill's character can be inserted among the prisoners if desired. ;)
End of Session