Session started at 7:13 pm on 2/6/2007
Attending players: Sarah, Ben, and Eva
Presiding GM: Aaron
So, we have a plan. I feel so much more relaxed about this whole run now.
It's November 19, 2070. It's a Wednesday. So we are going to go in tomorrow night.
We go over our possible contingency plans and deal with getting our gear together on Wednesday afternoon. I'm carrying the target's outfit, my clothes, my flats, and my gun in a concealed holster.
We get into the elevator and Ajax reports there is an AR military button. He hits it and the elevator goes.... down. Crap. We get Ajax to stop the elevator, but he reports that the elevator does not "know about" any floors above the mall, fun.
On the up side, Yorick points out that there is an emergency hatch in the top of the elevator and Ajax disables the associated alarms. We take the elevator to the top floor of the mall and climb out. It's about 19 meters up to the next floor. There are plenty of hand holds, but both the doctor and Ajax are going to have issues with this climb.
I watch out for the doctor since I know for experience she's not a good climber. Yorick has a glow stick, so he's first to watch out for booby traps. We leave Ajax on the elevator top. We get out the rope and tie ourselves together like mountain climbers. I'm glad I sprung for those better contacts before this mission so I can see what the hell is going on. About two meters up the doctor nearly falls and I have to steady her. She's so slow that eventually I give up and carry her piggy back the rest of the way.
When we get up to the next floor, the kid reports that the door is welded shut most of the way down the door. Not good. After some quick discussion the doctor insists that we try summoning a spirit to conceal the damage we will have to do to the door. I'm not sure if this is going to work out, but I'm willing to give it a try.
(The doctor summons an earth elemental and sets it to conceal us and door/open the door.)
We wait, and suddenly there is an earth elemental among us, wailing on the door. This will be fun... oh God... the door goes down in one blow. It's awfully creepy to see the people in lime green flats just keep walking by ignoring all this. Gah. Concealment is scary.
We use the rope to pull Ajax up. In our lime green flats we head through the door and into the sealed part of the ACHE.
The hallway is dimly lit and grimy. It stinks of dirty people and soy in here. A few people pass by but pay no notice to us. I can hear uneasy laughter in the distance.
Ajax reports that there are no wireless nodes in range. We gravitate down the hall, avoiding people, to see what the laughter is about. As we approach I can see there is an office looking room with an open door. There are folks inside playing cards that I think are made of cut up flats, sad.
We continue on down the hallway. The scenery is more varied than I would expect. It's amazing what people will do with what they have.
("Shut up seamstress."
~Aaron, after Eva asks him where they could be getting thread out of flats)("Fabric hangings made of hair!"
~ Aaron)We pass through a cafeteria filled with a plethora of soy dispensing spigots. It's all rather dark and drab. We even pass a maintenance crew replacing a light bulb in the hall ceiling. The kid suggests that we follow them, so we do. We follow them to a staircase. They go up three floors and into a door labeled maintenance. The stairs keep going up after that, but we pause to formulate a plan.
The doctor has had to send the spirit back to conceal the door. It couldn't stretch it's powers any further. The kid sneaks up to the maintenance area to try to find the information hook in we need to find the target.
(Yorick can see that the whole maintenance area is full of crap. All sorts of replacement parts are just piled up in every corner. Yorick thinks that the whole floor might be devoted to this crap.)
(The folks we followed are hanging out and chatting so Yorick pokes through their records. They're all written on bits of flats and they're not much in the way of info. They're organized by floors on a set of clipboards, but this is not going to be enough info to get us anywhere.)
The kid does some scouting and when he returns he suggests that we try talking to the maintenance people in order to see if any of them knows the location of the target. Sounds good. We round up some antacids for bribery and send him in to talk to them.
He comes back saying that the folks told him to go up to level 55 for the "new resident information office". Fun. We start walking.
So 47 floors later... we've passed medical floors on each tenth floor and Ajax is starting to wheeze and huff. The door to 55 says government.
We aren't about to just walk in, since the folks with the info should know that we don't belong here, so we send the doctor in astrally to look around. Ajax can't detect a wireless network from out here. I wonder if they have any better records than the folks on the maintenance floor.
The doctor is back in a few minutes. She says that the area is emptying out and folks are taking the stairs all around the floor to get back down. So I'm guessing they are residents. She also confirms that there is space for Yorick to sneak around.
He comes back with information on their insane date system, a ten floor range of years worth of maintenance requests, and a calendar of soon to come social events. Ajax can't believe all they use is paper. He's muttering something about it being the fragging dark ages all over again.
Ajax is going to look over the maintenance requests while the kid goes back in to talk to the government people. We hang on to his commlink and gun for him just in case.
(Yorick has found an orc gentleman at a desk and is asking him about where he can find his "cousin". They have a ridiculously huge filing system. He gets the info that the target is on floor 133, in block 8, room 57.)
Yorick got her address! Score one for helpful but clueless bureaucracy.
78 floors later... we passed a level labeled fire, a few more medicals, and a postal floor. Interesting, but not immediately helpful.
We have to ask some people on floor 133 to get directions to block 8, but don't have any trouble. After that finding room 57 isn't a big deal. The door is closed. We knock. In response a woman's voice calls out from inside, "Who is it?"
End of Session