[inca1980]

[OOC: The picture i posted of the ground-floor of the Chalice would be taken from the view of entering through the front doorway and walking forward about 3 meters.  To orient ourselves we'll use north, south, east, and west.  The front doorway is on the north side of the room, the booths are against the south-west corner and Cynthia is just south of the booths.  The bar is in the south-east corner and the stairwell going down is in the north-west corner.  Everyone can easily see the stairwell which leads downstairs.]

@Woofer:
The group of ladies light up and become even more chatty with the presence of a male nearby.  The round of drinks runs you 30 nuyen.  The girl tells you the same story that she told Mercedes making it pretty obvious that it's all they know, but then starts asking you about what kind of work you do trying to start up some conversation.

[Walks Through Walls]

Ok.

I'm overcasting my physical mask spell at force 4.
(spellcasting 4 + magic 2 +specialiaztion 2+ mentor bonus 2=10d6)Rolled on: 2010-10-20 18:09:50.144438
10d6 → [5,3,4,3,5,5,1,5,6,5] = (42)
BBCode
    10d6=42 capped at the 4 successes for the force

Drain: DV3
Rolled on: 2010-10-20 18:11:12.734438
9d6 → [5,4,2,6,6,5,3,6,5] = (42)
BBCode
    9d6=42 no drain
I'm making myself look like any of the other women in the bar. I will then walk across the room on the west wall a foot or two away from the booths. "I'm heading downstairs to check it out."

[inca1980]

@Cynthia:
You duck back into the back hallway a little bit in case someone should catch some stray mana flashes and you see a dull glow pass down your body as the illusion washes over you.  Looking down at your hands you see they are covered with black nano-henna designs and the nails are polished in black just how you imagined them.  You quickly smile at the quality of the illusion you created this time and you stroll briskly out onto the floor of the Chalice.  Nobody even seems to notice you except a few ogglers and as you catch your reflection in a small shiny metallic strip along the wall you let go of any worries that someone might see through your mask.  Once B.B., Mercedes, and Woofer all give you a hidden little nod you head downstairs and you notice the music changes inside your earbuds from an industrial techno to an underground razor rock beat.  The AR screens flashing all over the place would surely give an epileptic a seizure as you see several groups of human and elven hipsters leaning around green pool tables, the cue's in the players hands and the balls on the table all purely AR illusions which by regulation look somewhat translucent and have an etherial glow to them.  The overhead lamps on top of each pool table are cluttered with fluttering AR advertisements, some of them just little screens streaming commercials, others just a small icon which strolls around the room.   The gothic atmosphere is still apparent but it seems the more casual night-goers like to frequent the downstairs.  

[Walks Through Walls]

I will go into the room and look around acting like I might be interested in learning how to play pool. I'll flirt with any unattached males

[FastJack]

Mercedes giggles with the girls as they sit there "interrogating" Woofer. She glances over at B.B. and raises her eyebrow at the gnome, seeing if he's finding anything in the system.

[inca1980]

[OOC: if B.B. goes downstairs then he should roll a Matrix Perception test and a normal Perception test.]

[Kontact]

[OOC:  Sounds like a plan]

B.B. was sitting in the booth with a woman on either side of him, sort of cooing and messing with his hair when he spotted Cynthia coming in.
"Ladies, please!  One at a time!" He paused a beat, made a show of looking around, and continued.  "Oh, uh.. just spotted my lady friend back that way.  I gotta go at least say hi to her or she'll be chewing me out later.. instead of the other way around."  He gave them a wink and disappeared under the table, sliding a hand down their legs as he went.

Hurrying over to Walks Through Walls he carried the mood with him.  "Heya good lookin'.  What say we take this party downstairs?"


[OOC:  Heading down, making rolls. 
Sights and sounds.  14d6.hits(5) → [3,5,5,4,5,1,4,2,2,1,1,6,2,1] = (4)
Checking the 'Trix 11d6.hits(5) → [4,3,1,4,2,4,5,5,5,4,5] = (4)

[inca1980]

@B.B.:
As you make your way down the stairs with Cynthia your Analyze program opens up an AR screen and notifies you that a node somewhere inside the pool room has begun to exchange data packets with Jeshua's commlink which you are carrying.  As you analyze the access log for his commlink you realize that a cookie stored deep in memory has become active and a node which was previously hidden in the basement has gone public.  You quickly analyze the new node and pin point its location directly overhead a pool table a few meters away.  Darting around some AR pool players you scan the vicinity with your eyes and all of a sudden you see it.  Tethered to a pool lamp and floating in the air, a little ARO no bigger than a playing card prominantly displays the symbol which Jeshua drew and slipped into his Kombat Mage Karl novel.

You slowly approach and keep your Analyze program running on it.  It almost beckons for you to touch it but you could swear you didn't read any simsense data packet transfers originating from it.  Must be just your mind playing games with you.  Deciding that it's safe enough you reach out your hand and touch it with your AR gloves and it lights up as soon as you "click" on it.  All of a sudden it unwraps like a scroll and you see just a message written in English text:

"So you seek eternity
Then the Hunt is on.
On puppets of flesh your path is drawn"

The message is a person to person AR screen so you are the only one in the room who can see it.  You quickly share the text with the rest of the group.

[Kontact]

[OOC: Anyone have any knowledge about Bunraku parlors?  Most are Yakuza owned/operated.  Would Brian's knowledge of Yakuza-affiliated corporations be helpful for finding a specific parlor that fits the "path is drawn" clue?

"Puppets of flesh sounds like one of those brothels with the persona-fix workers."
B.B. looks from one of his female team-mates to the other, noticing the look on their faces.
"What?!  Just because I don't leave the house much doesn't mean I don't get out...  Besides, hacking hookers for blackmail purposes is one of my favorite prelims for a hit on Yakuza holdings.  But this place probably wouldn't be connected to one of the big Yak ones if it's a front for vampires.  Bee tee dubbs, totes vampires up in this piece..  If my research from the car is correct, we need to cut their heads off and then stuff their mouths with holy wafers.  That's what the D&D 2nd edition monster manual says..."

[FastJack]

Mercedes smiles at the other girls, then grabs Woofer's arm, dragging him to a darkened corner of the club, "Sorry ladies, I'm claiming him for myself. Maybe when I'm done..."

As they get to the corner, she talks into her comm, "There will be no removing of heads, B.B.! We've got our info, see if anyone down there has seen or spoken with the boys, then let's go!"

[Sludig]

Woofer smiles as he's drug away, but that quickly vanishes, "So there's a ARO downstairs for this scavenger hunt lovely."  *pulls Mercedes closer to keep up appearances*

[inca1980]

You all ask around the downstairs and then ask a few more people upstairs, but only one regular remembers anything at all and it's the same story about the boys looking for a contact lens, finding it, and then leaving.  A booth opens up in the upstairs and you notice that the white curtains have a draw string which let's them fall and cover the entrance.  A few other parties have pulled the curtains for more privacy so you decide it's cool if you do the same.   The group sits down in the booth and draws the curtains shut, a little relieved to not have to look at all the posers trying to show each other up. 

[Walks Through Walls]

B.B. maybe do some sort of search thing to see if there have been any ritual or bizarre killings of Bumraku girls for the path is drawn part?

[Kontact]

[OOC:  I'm game.  If someone wants to write us back to the vehicle, I'll pull through some search data (should take 8-9 minutes,) while the others buzz their contacts, like Hannibal..  also, conspiracy theories.]

"Haha, no these suckers aren't vampires... I don't think..  But that's quite possibly what we'll be dealing with, so we need to prepare for vamps.  Well, that or some kind of consciousness-uploading BTL brain cult.  Did you guys hear that theory about the e-ghost cult and Horizon?  Horizon figured out how to copy people's minds and used it to create an Ultraviolet node where all these e-ghosts don't know that they're dead because they made it a copy of the real Earth.  Then Horizon just speeds up time to test out future products and ideas, and then resets things back to baseline and tries something else.  Seriously.  These guys are making perfect predictive models using e-ghosts of dead people from the crash and chump volunteers.  They'll probably be running the world in 6 years."  B.B. pops another Betel into his mouth and starts chewing.

[Sludig]

Woofer: "BB, if this is a video game, wouldn't they have guidebooks online for these...quests?  It's still a video game right?" *looks around to see if folks want to head out*