Monday, November 19, 2012

Dystopic: Cover Stories and Tokyo's Death

Outpost Conversation
Nice (their Devil handler) makes the final offer on the third day and offers both full membership and an associate position and explains that there will be a probationary period of one year or Blue Clearance, whichever comes first.  She points out that each host was chosen because their affiliations are unlikely to clash with Prometheus goals.  Whatever their choice, she will deliver to them gathered research on their deaths after an additional two weeks spent re-engaging with their lives.  The three options she grants them are:
  • Membership: They will be given objectives and expected to fulfill them to the best of their ability.  They are expected to remain members for an indefinite period of time although it is easier to leave during their probationary period before they learn too much classified information.  They are allowed some license to disseminate low classification material to their Associates on a need to know basis.  They are granted greater access to information and are more likely to be re-summoned out of the Pit if they are slung back there.
  • Associate: They work alongside the members and are granted access to information that they need to know in order to fulfill their objectives.  If they are particularly useful, they may be re-summoned out of the Pit.  They are more employed by Prometheus on a contractual basis but are given less support and less access to data.
  • Friendlies: There is no consistent relationship between Prometheus and Friendlies but to the two must remain on good terms with each other.  Or, rather, the Friendlies must remain on good terms with Prometheus.  They are allowed to go about their lives and may be approached very occasionally.  Due to the investment made in drawing them out, if they turn against Prometheus than they will be hunted down and punished.
Leningrad considers the situation deeply and decides that if his loyalty to Prometheus is tested by his own organisation than he will be screwed anyway - giving his organisation information freely and perhaps even attacking Prometheus if asked.  Therefore, he might as well take what Prometheus can give him as it will be more likely that he can even find the organisation with their resources.  He becomes a member.
Nomad 6 is used to following orders and likes the Prometheus perspective of stopping societies that are causing atrocities and protecting fledgling societies whose differences may show a new way of doing things.  Tokyo joins up for her own enigmatic reasons, likely because they are powerful, resourceful and offer purpose and companionship.  They become members.
London feels it would clash with the oath he took to King and Country and so he became an Associate.  Cue plenty of jibes and peer pressure from the group (not from Nice) for him being an Associate and therefore not granted access to certain things.
Miami's player wasn't there.  I'll have to find out what his decision was and go from there.
She encourages them to take Dallas with them though warns them that as an unidentified creature it’s important for them to be aware that he’ll likely be a weirdness magnet.  However, he’s also well-schooled in books and would make a good employee as far as 14-year-olds go.
At first, all she says about Dallas is that he is of a kind kidnapped by strange entities and mutated using the entity's powers but that his kind are generally harmless and keep to themselves.  When the group enquire about the entity's nature, she says it's classified.  London asks if they're angels and points out that as they were taken to another world it would be worth knowing more.  Nice states that she can't be sure as she doesn't know where they were taken.  London gets 7 successes to Send Vision to show her twenty one seconds of the location like its a short commercial. 
Nice hesitates and then explains that this is highly classified information and the Luciferan Command, in particular, are trying to keep it close to their chests due to the risk of Fallen rushing off and making fools of themselves.  Yes, the evidence supports the idea that many were angels that have somehow become this Other World but perhaps not all Fae necessarily are angels.  She also points out that there's likely to be no more than a few thousand Fae, perhaps ten thousand in all, and that begs the question what happened to the other several hundred million angels that survived the War.
Nice explains that East Coast America have grown quite fond of certain occult texts and other important data and that while a lot of powerful people contact bookhounds to do their dirty work they don't tend to pay attention to them otherwise.  She’ll explain a potential official cover to bring them all together:
·         Miami has been a bookhound for some time although he was too busy with family issues to run his own book store and now wishes to settle down to a gentler life to recover from his wife’s murder. 
·         During his forays trying to locate the right book, he employed the assistance of Nomad 6. 
·         London has a dual layer cover.  He is a spy with British Intelligence (paperwork is all sorted out) whose cover is an official bookhound from the British Museum who is trying to get a hold of a number of antiquities in books.  Yes, he is an ex-police officer who was discharged after sustaining multiple stab wounds on a routine patrol but that’s because the Brits think America so ungodly and dangerous that they won’t risk sending their academics.
·         Leningrad is an unpaid Russian dock worker who is here on a forged temporary working VISA and is basically employed to carry heavy things and is paid on a pittance or else he’ll be reported to Immigration.  If anyone looks too deeply, or if it is helpful, he is an ex-military Russian dissident brought in for military considerations.
·         Tokyo is a Japanese exchange student who is only 16-years-old.
·         Dallas is a cousin to Nomad 6 who successfully applied for an East Coast residence due to Nomad 6's newfound +1 status.
Nice also explains their deaths although she requests that they do not attempt to locate their murderers for two weeks to ensure that they finish adapting to society.  They will be granted information concerning their case files at the end of those two weeks.  She will explain how they died:
·         Tokyo.  Suspected sabotage resulting in the company helicopter crashing on a trip from Tokyo to Osaka.
·         Nomad 6.  Attacked by zombies, he tried to escape across a window sill and fell off the side of a six-storey ruin.
·         Leningrad.  Death by Cheiron’s Curse alleged to be a rapid rejection caused by poorly tested alloys.  His body was kept in storage for a few decades and was liberated from Chancy Corp, a subsidiary of a particular company.
·         London.  Slashed by some sort of sharp weapon during a routine patrol by an as yet unknown assailant.
·         Miami.  Murdered by a fraternity in Miami.
Nancy Visits Her Father
The team flies out to Tokyo to meet Nancy's father, Kurosawa, who is the CEO of Kurosawa Bio-Connects which is a corporation trying to reach mega-corporation status that is, as far as they go, relatively stand up compared to some of the competition.  They have a number of enemies since they secured a lucrative military contract with the Japanese government.
Firstly, of course, there is a strained reunion between Kurosawa and Tokyo alone.  Kurosawa seems to want to say something more but finds it difficult and Tokyo keeps trying to return to business rather than draw out the whole painful business.  Eventually, Kurosawa relents and invites in the others to discuss business.
Kurosawa has already received a basic report is eager to have someone in the rich Miami city to groom contacts under the radar and is intrigued by this bookhoud idea. 
Nice heads the discussion. 
She steps forward as a representative from the Ophidian News Branch in New York who is hoping to defeat Cheiron’s inroads into Miami through public exposure.  She explains that Tokyo’s chopper was downed and she had been kidnapped across to a facility just west of the American East Coast Wall but was released from her cell when a zombie containment section went down.  She was rescued by a contractor and undercover reporter, Nomad 6, who had landed to deliver regular cargo and who assisted Tokyo when she made her way out of the medical wing alive. 
Nice will also explain the book store cover as: “These days bookhounds are everywhere and surprisingly well-paid in the East Coast.  It would provide sufficient cover for people seeking data or other information.  Miami is our local bookhound who will be heading this front and ensuring that they can keep to their cover.  Leningrad will provide military support – he has experience as an ex-military Russian dissident.  London has been loaned by British Intelligence – you can check, if you like – to oversee the proceedings as we’re hoping this might be the final nail in the Cheiron coffin."
Kurosawa asks if Tokyo wants to do this and she tells him that she does.  From there, he explains that due to the media attention and the current financial fracas that surrounded the downed helicopter, he hasn't managed to make much headway with investigations.  He explains that they recovered the helicopter and have obtained information from the coroner's report.  He passes the toxicology report around as being particularly interesting.
Toxicology Report Summary Prop Below
To: [Redacted]
CC: [Redacted]
Date: [Redacted]
Subject: Toxicology Report Summary
The pilot (Sumako Koizumi) involved in the crash of helicopter TKI-746 was found to have ingested a strong morphine-based derivative that is thought to have been kept in a digestible capsule slipped inside his hotdog at a street vendor.  No signs of a capsule were found in his stomach.  This morphine-based derivative would have caused a quick descent into unconsciousness within 30 seconds of the capsule being digested.  The capsule would have taken between 2 to 3 hours to digest depending on how much he had previously eaten.  The only contents in his stomach were the partially digested remnants of the hotdog.
The morphine-based derivative would have caused drowsiness, dissociation, and confusion and probably ended in unconsciousness judging by Sumako’s 178cm and 72 kilogram frame.  It is therefore our expert opinion that the helicopter crash was caused by Sumako’s drug-induced state.  This doesn’t explain, however, why the emergency autopilot failed to engage to steady the helicopter and keep it in place.  It is recommended that mechanical sabotage also be investigated.
Kurosawa’s Mission
Today’s date is 21/07/2052.  The crash occurred on 09/07/2052.

Kurosawa directs them to an automatic hot dog stand that was set up near the hotel where his credits were traced to have been spent.  He wants Tokyo to hack the New Yorker Hotdog Stand and see if there is anything suspicious about it. 
He also offers the others a neural implant that will affect the linguistic center of their brains and allow him to speak and understand fluent Japanese (2 xp - basically an excuse to learn a language in a few hours).  Only Nomad 6 takes him up on the offer.  Miami might have also done so.  We'll find out when his player returns.
It is assumed that in the next section (which will be in a different blog post for simplicity's sake), Miami took a look at the downed helicopter's remains while the others took a look at the Hotdog New Yorker Stand.  That way they can cover more ground and it justifies why Miami naturally didn't do anything during the later sections of the session.

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