Eclipse Phase: Glory

[fabyak]

Sure, why not

Kinesics (16): Rolled 91

What's a colour?

[fabyak]

Unlabelled walks back to Marksley to ask him if he knows anything about the ship

We lagi looking for kapal. Kaya Yours. Stealthy. Padha Gear. Cilik. Racer. Stands metu. Dijenengi Keysrah. Katon iku?

That's as good as the translate can get, Joose let me know if you need to know what I actually said!

[Joose]

Son, you just described half the ships docked in Casa Arturo. Kesyrah... I think that's one of Shoggys. Yeah, Shoggy, that Uplift fella. Does good work, that guy. Good luck finding it if the pilot don't want to be found. If Shoggy can give you the ships Mesh codes you might be able to find it by broadcasting a direct connection request transmission. You would need to be within a few km of it first though.

[fabyak]

Unlabelled nods in thanks and heads back to Shoggy

[Dog Pants]

Sorry, I'm a little behind. I fucking hate writing anything but a few short lines of text on touchscreens.

Shoggys skin colour changes. If you want to know what that means you need either an appropriate bio-science skill or a really good kinesics roll.

Oh, right yeah! You must be Yu's friends. Honestly I'm not sure whether to be relieved about that or not, I was beginning to think she had just ran off with it. Yeah, the Kesyrah is mine. Its a...er...racing ship. Minimal cargo, only room for one pilot, one co-pilot. Built primarily for speed. And, just as a personal development project, it happens to be stealthed; radar defeating panels, minimal forward facing heat signature, EM clean, that sort of thing. Just to see if I could, you understand. Tends to be hired out by a certain kind of person, if you know what I mean. Yu didn't really fit the template to be honest, but I didn't object. Seemed more trustworthy than the regulars really. She was only supposed to have it for a couple of days, its been weeks now. If I can help you track down my ship and get it back to me I will absolutely help you out. Not sure if I can though. She didn't exactly file a flight plan, you know? If I knew where she was I would have sent someone looking already

I see your point. What would you say the range of the ship was? Do you think she would still be within the Greeks? You may have noticed she was in a Ghost Morph, and we know she had bought equipment to deal with unconventional data types. Do you know of anywhere in the Greeks which might attract such an infiltrator? Somewhere off-limits?

DCOM pauses and cocks his head.

You assumed we are her friends. You are correct, but taking into account her recent behaviour are you not concerned that we are hostile?

I'll try that kinesics roll. I aced the last one.

Kinesics: 55
2, 2: 22 Critical! Excellent Success!

Haha, I'm Sigmund fucking Freud.

[FatherJack]

A stealthed ship is going to be hard to locate, even if we can get into its general vicinity. As it's your ship, do you have anything that could help us in that regard - some unique signal we could trace or some autoresponse we could trigger within range?

Edit: oh, I missed the bit about the mesh codes, we're all responding to different posts.

[Joose]

The Kesyrah has a pretty good range for its size, but its still a shuttle. Almost certainly her destination was somewhere in the Greeks. I'm just a ... whats that old Earth term ... grease ape? I just build the ships, I dont go out there myself. If you wanted to hide something, the Greeks would be a good place to do it. Trouble is, thats because its full of shit. Big rocks, dumped husks of old ships, abandoned habs. Full of crap. Not much help for finding the ship though.

He scratches the back of his head (well, the big bulbous bit at the top of his body).

She seemed nice, actually. Professional, courteous. Not at all hostile. Besides, We are in my shipyard, in my home hab, surrounded by my close friends. You might be hostile, but you don't look stupid.

I'll try that kinesics roll. I aced the last one.

Kinesics: 55
2, 2: 22 Critical! Excellent Success!

Haha, I'm Sigmund fucking Freud.

You know a bit about the colours of Octopus uplifts! Their skin colour changes are a bit like a humans facial expressions. The colour change you just saw was the equivalent of a humanoid going from a confused frown to a happy smile. His overall behaviour seems pretty open and honest.

Oh sure! Here, I'll transmit you the mesh access codes. It wont broadcast any mesh signal, but if you fire a access request at the ship it will give you a connection. You'll have to be pretty close, but as long as you get within a few km it'll be able to pinpoint it easy. These codes will also give you access to the logs, controls and so on.

He looks thoughtful for a second.

It might be nothing, but she specifically wanted a two man ship. You might want to look for the second man.

[FatherJack]

Usagi doesn't really want to go there, but in her lecturely way feels compelled to correct him. Her muse Ramu - a fan of linguistics and arcane terms has been buzzing her like an annoying fly.

It's 'grease monkey'

She smiles tightly.

Did you see anything of this.. second man?

okay, Lum - i tell him, shut up already

[Joose]

Ah, thats it. Oh! Oh, sorry. No offence meant.

I'm not sure about the second guy. I mean, I'm just guessing there was a second guy. Inferring, you know. There was another guy came in on the same shuttle from Locus that she did. Might have been the second guy. I saw him, but ... well, he had two legs, two arms and hair at the top. Most humanoid morphs look kinda the same to me.

[Dog Pants]

Do you know the name of the shuttle which she came on? That would be very helpful, and you clearly know your spacecraft.

There's going to be a point when we can't schmooze our way through this investigation.

[Joose]

Ooooh, not sure the shuttle had a name. Its one of Gus Garretts regular transports.

[Dog Pants]

Gus Garrett. Thank you. Do you know where we might find him?

[Joose]

Might not be physically around, but he tends to leave a fork online to deal with things when he is out somewhere. Try him on the mesh, it will get through to him one way or the other.

I think I covered this when I was talking about Yu sending forks to Vishnukam, but just in case: People can make copies of their Egos that they then prune down to a kind of edited copy known as a Fork. Alpha Forks are direct or near direct copies, Beta Forks have personal details and other similar sensitive info pruned out, Gamma Forks are the barest bones of a personality, usually just enough of the original person left to do one specific job. Most people use Beta Forks for stuff: Alphas are a high risk for buggering off and living a life of their own, Gammas are often too restricted.

[Dog Pants]

Eesh. The Mesh again.

@Rep 20:
0, 9: 9 Success!

Aaaaaahahahaha! Lady luck is preparing the barbed strap-on as we speak.

[Joose]

Yo. What can I do you for?

[Dog Pants]

Hello Gus. I hope you can help me, I am looking for a friend who I am led to believe came here to Casa Arturo from Locus on one of your shuttles. She had a ghost morph and maybe a companion, I think you may have found her distinctive. Her name was Yu. Do you remember her?

[Joose]

Oh, sure, I remember her. Ghost morph. Had a guy in some sort of throwaway synth morph with her. One of those crappy things with a wig on to make it look more human. One small crate in luggage. Let me see...yeah, Tara Yu and Morteza Bey. Didn't get more than names off them though, sorry. You know how it is, they didn't say and I didn't need to know.

[Dog Pants]

Thank you Gus, I appreciate the help.

I'm painfully aware that we're just picking at the peas here while the steak's going cold. I was assuming that the companion was her AI combo, but now I'm not so sure. The spindle synth could have been in the crate and Robo-Wogan could have been a pukka gen companion. Or it could have just been her fancy AI wearing a mannequin. What do you guys reckon? I'll get Ignacio onto Morteza Bey anyway while I ask around. I love Anarchists, so helpful.

Research (Ignacio): 30
3, 7: 37 Failure!

You suck Ignacio. See how I get on.

@-Rep: 20
5, 4: 54 Severe Failure!

Eesh. Nobody ever hangs around in bars chatting any more.

[FatherJack]

I'll try those research checks:

Research 75:
Roll(1d100)+0:
94,+0
Total:94

nnnng.

Try the muse:

Research 30:
Roll(1d100)+0:
14,+0
Total:14

aha.

That's a bit silly, though.

Ramu radiates smug into Usagi's head.

[Joose]

OK, couple of things about dice rolls in EP:

1) Don't forget that you are not taking into account modifiers for how easy the test is. If you are researching something simple there is a whopping +30 to your roll that you wont know about. Just because you have rolled a failure doesn't necessarily mean you have failed.

2) You can pool your resources if you want for a Teamwork bonus. Teamwork gives a +10 to any roll (GMs discretion obviously. You cant use a teamwork bonus to drive a car for example. Totally fine for research though) for every additional dude on the task. So if FJ has the best research skill you would get him to do the roll, then get a +10 if Pants helps out, up to a +30. Of course, there are times when you might be better off making two rolls (if you had two characters with similarly awesome skill levels for example). And yes, I see no reason you cant get a Teamwork bonus from your muse.

3) You can always try again. Retrying tests is just the same roll with a -10 modifier. Obviously this means there is a hard limit on how many times you can try something, and sometimes you cant try again due to the nature of the test (If you failed a test to grab a ledge before falling to your doom, that's you done).

That being said: Both Ignacio and Ramu report finding some details on Bey.

Morteza Bey has a fairly public presence. He works at a hyroponics lab on Locus called Xiu’s Greenhouse, and is most well known (I had trouble saying this with a straight face when I played through this with a face to face group) for his gardening blog focussed on growing broccoli in space. No, really.

In recent news, Xiu's Greenhouse was attacked by some sort of terrorist attach in the last couple of weeks. Its thought that the attack was perpetrated by a group of particularly ballsy Exhumans (think the Reavers from Firefly), and the attack killed most of the inhabitants of that hab, including Morteza. He has since been resleeved from backup.

Ramu also uncovers that he has a bit of a reputation as quite a brilliant hacker. Ramu goes one further by pointing out that you have come across this name already: He is the other person on Locus Yu is known to have gotten a favour from along with Wang.