[Tecumseh]

Scanning the crate with the cyberware scanner.

Intuition + Perception = 3 hits

[Poindexter]

You do not see the current commcodes for Ace, The Masked Woman, The Elf, or The Crumpled Man in any of the networked calls prior to yesterday.

but i DO see them on there yesterday? all four of them? If so, what are the first few messages between us about and what is the general tone of the messages overall?

[Ryo]

You do not see the current commcodes for Ace, The Masked Woman, The Elf, or The Crumpled Man in any of the networked calls prior to yesterday.

but i DO see them on there yesterday? all four of them? If so, what are the first few messages between us about and what is the general tone of the messages overall?

You do see them on there yesterday, yes. Crumpled Man and Ace mostly. It looks like Masked Woman and Elf were part of the call but did little talking. There isn't a log of the messages, just time stamps of when you sent or received audio messages.

There are some text messages that stand out, which appear to be status updates. You manage to gather from your knowledge of tactics and what little you can understand that the sender was acting as overwatch or coordinator for a large team, likely in the middle of a run. You can understand him specifying current time, current location of different people, with the people and locations referred to by letters or numbers respectively, current objectives, ETAs, and so on. Without context, it's incredibly difficult to understand what he's talking about, which you imagine is the point. Only the people meant to receive these messages would understand them, and you can't remember what any of it means.

There are many of these messages from the number that was consistently part of your network that you don't recognize, and two identical such messages from Crumpled Man yesterday, after the original number stopped being a part of the call. You gather from this that Crumpled Man was the overwatch/coordinator guy, and that he switched to a new commcode at some point yesterday.

[Poindexter]

You do not see the current commcodes for Ace, The Masked Woman, The Elf, or The Crumpled Man in any of the networked calls prior to yesterday.

but i DO see them on there yesterday? all four of them? If so, what are the first few messages between us about and what is the general tone of the messages overall?

You do see them on there yesterday, yes. Crumpled Man and Ace mostly. It looks like Masked Woman and Elf were part of the call but did little talking. There isn't a log of the messages, just time stamps of when you sent or received audio messages.

There are a few text messages when you scroll back more, mostly from Crumpled Man, which appear to be status updates. You manage to gather from your knowledge of tactics and what little you can understand that he's acting as overwatch or coordinator for a large team, likely in the middle of a run. You can understand him specifying current time, current location of different people, with the people and locations referred to by letters or numbers respectively, current objectives, ETAs, and so on. Without context, it's incredibly difficult to understand what he's talking about, which you imagine is the point. Only the people meant to receive these messages would understand them, and you can't remember what any of it means.

This is ALL good news. That means he's a pro.

[Ryo]

Made a slight edit when I remembered that Crumpled Man had a different commcode before yesterday. You manage to piece together that the code you don't recognize is his old one.

Out of Character knowledge, Crumpled Man's old deck got bricked mid run, and he replaced it with the deck of an enemy decker. He knows this from checking his own gear, but I don't think he's told anyone yet. You can tell he switched commcodes, what looks like mid-run, but you don't know why.

[Tecumseh]

Ohanzee sits quietly for most of the talking, trying to sort things out in his head. When the question comes up about contacts in Aspen he pipes up.

Yay, GrimWulf's back!

[GrimWulf]

Sorry, was kinda just waiting for the story to progress some, didn't want to just stack up more dialogue/actions with the rover just idling on the side of the road.

[Poindexter]

Sorry, was kinda just waiting for the story to progress some, didn't want to just stack up more dialogue/actions with the rover just idling on the side of the road.

When im in a similar situation, a good way to help move it along goes something like this:

i have a cheeseburger. When are we gonna leave?

"Does it have onions?" he asks, hoping for a bite, as he's been quite hungry.


---------------


Once they're on the road, he turns and asks the driver, "So, we got any more cheeseburgers?"

helps let people know you're still onboard AND that you'd like to get the show on the road.
hope that helps.

[GrimWulf]

Depends on if there's a tomato on it.  I hate fruit on my burgers.

[Ryo]

The car is now in motion, and has been driving for a good 5 to 10 minutes or so, judging by the actions that have been taken so far. It will stay in motion until such time as you guys decide where you're actually driving to. It still seems like a toss up between 'yes, we're driving into Aspen' and 'Frag that, we need to dump this rover before we get there and find another way into the city.'

So the questions that are currently on the table appear to be as follows:

1: Where are we driving to? Options include:
 a: One of the campgrounds between your current location and Aspen. Where you plan to go from there is then in question.
 b: Aspen. Where specifically in Aspen is then in question.
 c: Turn around and go somewhere wildly different.
 d: Stop in the middle of nowhere.

2: What's in the crate?
The crate has no shipping labels or anything of the like, just stencils across the side that read 'Fragile' and 'This Side Up.' It is currently right-side up. No tracking tags were found by the scan The Masked Woman just attempted, and you can't assense the contents of the crate without opening the crate.

When the dwarf tries to remember his knowledge and hears The Masked Woman list off the material the thing in the crate is made of, he remembers he has Academic Knowledge: Magic Artifacts 4.

Magic Artifact Knowledge: Logic 3 + Magic Artifacts 4: 7d6t5 4

The specific artifact she describes doesn't sound familiar, although actually looking at it and assensing it may jog your memory. You do recognize the list of substances she lists, though, being vaguely familiar with parageology due to how often artifacts tend to be made of awakened minerals. You recognize the base elements of orichalcum immediately, and you're pretty sure its alloyed with something with all the extra elements you hear in there. Your best guess is that the contents of the crate is an artifact of some kind, probably made of Ukkru or Hepatizon, though you don't actually remember which is which.

You can spend some of your spare Knowledge points on Parageology, if you want to suddenly recall what this thing is actually made of and what it means.

If you decide to open the crate and Assense it, you have Intuition 4, Assensing (Spirits) 4 (+2). Obviously, the specialization wouldn't apply.

[Ryo]

@Poindexter: I probably didn't make it clear enough, but Uncle Sam would have deduced that Crumpled Man is also part of the group he's been running with for at least 6 months.

You find some interest in your call history. Now that you've set yourself up on a network call with the group, you see in your call history a number of similar calls, with several other commcodes subscribed to the network. You notice quite a few with the same repeating numbers, two of which you recognize as belonging to Chino and the Dwarf, judging by the commcodes you're currently connected to. You guess by the history of calls that you've been working regularly with them for at least six months. There are other commcodes in the networked calls that you don't recognize, with a few that come and go, and one that was consistent up until yesterday.

The commcode that was consistent up until yesterday is the one that was sending texts providing overwatch / coordination. That commcode served this role reliably up until yesterday, when it suddenly disappeared from the network calls. Crumpled Man's current commcode appeared on the network after this disappearance, and there are three overwatch messages from his current commcode identical to the old ones. From this, you can gather that he changed devices in the middle of a run, and now has a different commcode.

The current commcodes for Ace, APB and The Masked Woman joined the network prior to Crumpled Man's switch, but only appeared yesterday, after the run already began from the look of the messages and calls. You have no idea if they similarly changed devices or not, but if they did, you hadn't worked with any of them in several weeks. There are other commcodes that came and went from the network, likely temporary runners picked up for specific jobs. You do gather that Crumpled, Chino and Ohanzee are a more consistent group you work with though, yes.

Also, you woke up around an hour ago. You guys spent a good 10 to 20 minutes in the van, then another 20 minutes outside the van before you attacked the rover, and probably another 10 minutes after that before you drove away. And you've been driving for about 15 minutes so far, considering APB already finished her matrix search.

[Ryo]

Known names so far:

Ren - The Human:
Names: James Anderson, Josh Adams.
Chosen Alias: Ace

Poindexter - The Troll
Names: Ralph Hendricks, Frank Muntz.
Chosen Alias: Uncle Sam

martinchaen - The Elf
Names: Susan Landon, Mireille Smith (real name)
Chosen Alias: APB

Tecumseh - The Masked Woman
Names: Ileana Anghelescu, Ivana Kutchukokoph
Chosen Alias: ????

Novocrane - The Ork
Names: None, SINless
Chosen Alias: Chino

GrimWulf - The Dwarf
Names: Ohanzee Oglala
Chosen Alias: ???? (Possibly just Ohanzee)

Ravensoracle - The Crumpled Man
Names: None, SINless
Chosen Alias: ???? (Possibly Crumpled)

[Poindexter]

@Poindexter: I probably didn't make it clear enough, but Uncle Sam would have deduced that Crumpled Man is also part of the group he's been running with for at least 6 months.

Also, you woke up around an hour ago. You guys spent a good 10 to 20 minutes in the van, then another 20 minutes outside the van before you attacked the rover, and probably another 10 minutes after that before you drove away. And you've been driving for about 15 minutes so far, considering APB already finished her matrix search.

corrected.

[martinchaen]

Ryo
I'm not going to have much more to add until we get to the point where I've managed to repair the links and sleaze a MARK on all of them, as discussed via PM, which should take around 20 minutes.

[Ryo]

Ryo
I'm not going to have much more to add until we get to the point where I've managed to repair the links and sleaze a MARK on all of them, as discussed via PM, which should take around 20 minutes.

Yeah, I know. But you're gonna get to your destination before 20 minutes pass, so you guys need to decide on a place to go before I can give you the results of that, or really do much of anything to advance things.